Mary Anerley : a Yorkshire Tale Part 13

And when the farmer heard it all, as he did before going to sleep that night, he had smoked three pipes of tobacco, and was calm; he had sipped (for once in a way) a little Hollands, and was hopeful. And though he said nothing about it, he felt that without any order of his, or so much as the faintest desire to be told of it, neither of these petty comforts would bear to be rudely examined of its duty. He hoped for the best, and he believed the best, and if the king was cheated, why, his loyal subject was the same, and the women were their masters.

"Have no fear, no fear," he muttered back through the closing gate of sleep; "Mary knows her business--business--" and he buzzed it off into a snore.

In the morning, however, he took a stronger and more serious view of the case, p.r.o.nouncing that Mary was only a young la.s.s, and no one could ever tell about young la.s.ses. And he quite fell into his wife's suggestion, that the maid could be spared till harvest-time, of which (even with the best of weather) there was little chance now for another six weeks, the season being late and backward. So it was resolved between them both that the girl should go on the following day for a visit to her uncle Popplewell, some miles the other side of Filey. No invitation was required; for Mr. and Mrs. Popplewell, a snug and comfortable pair, were only too glad to have their niece, and had often wanted to have her altogether; but the farmer would never hear of that.

CHAPTER XV

CAUGHT AT LAST

While these little things were doing thus, the coast from the mouth of the Tees to that of Humber, and even the inland parts, were in a great stir of talk and work about events impending. It must not be thought that Flamborough, although it was Robin's dwelling-place--so far as he had any--was the princ.i.p.al scene of his operations, or the stronghold of his enterprise. On the contrary, his liking was for quiet coves near Scarborough, or even to the north of Whitby, when the wind and tide were suitable. And for this there were many reasons which are not of any moment now.

One of them showed fine feeling and much delicacy on his part. He knew that Flamborough was a place of extraordinary honesty, where every one of his b.u.t.tons had been safe, and would have been so forever; and strictly as he believed in the virtue of his own free importation, it was impossible for him not to learn that certain people thought otherwise, or acted as if they did so. From the troubles which such doubts might cause, he strove to keep the natives free.

Flamburians scarcely understood this largeness of good-will to them.

Their instincts told them that free trade was every Briton's privilege; and they had the finest set of donkeys on the coast for landing it. But none the more did any of them care to make a movement toward it. They were satisfied with their own old way--to cast the net their father cast, and bait the hook as it was baited on their good grandfather's thumb.

Yet even Flamborough knew that now a mighty enterprise was in hand. It was said, without any contradiction, that young Captain Robin had laid a wager of one hundred guineas with the worshipful mayor of Scarborough and the commandant of the castle, that before the new moon he would land on Yorkshire coast, without firing pistol or drawing steel, free goods to the value of two thousand pounds, and carry them inland safely. And Flamborough believed that he would do it.

Dr. Upround's house stood well, as rectories generally contrive to do.

No place in Flamborough parish could hope to swindle the wind of its vested right, or to embezzle much treasure of the sun, but the parsonage made a good effort to do both, and sometimes for three days together got the credit of succeeding. And the dwellers therein, who felt the edge of the difference outside their own walls, not only said but thoroughly believed that they lived in a little Goshen.

For the house was well settled in a wrinkle of the hill expanding southward, and encouraging the noon. From the windows a pleasant glimpse might be obtained of the broad and tranquil anchorage, peopled with white or black, according as the sails went up or down; for the rectory stood to the southward of the point, as the rest of Flamborough surely must have stood, if built by any other race than armadillos. But to see all those vessels, and be sure what they were doing, the proper place was a little snug "gazebo," chosen and made by the doctor himself, near the crest of the gully he inhabited.

Here upon a genial summer day--when it came, as it sometimes dared to do--was the finest little nook upon the Yorkshire coast for watching what Virgil calls "the sail-winged sea." Not that a man could see round the Head, unless his own were gifted with very crooked eyes; but without doing that (which would only have disturbed the tranquillity of his prospect) there was plenty to engage him in the peaceful spread of comparatively waveless waters. Here might he see long vessels rolling, not with great misery, but just enough to make him feel happy in the firmness of his bench, and little jolly-boats it was more jolly to be out of, and faraway heads giving genial bobs, and sea-legs straddled in predicaments desirable rather for study than for practice. All was highly picturesque and nice, and charming for the critic who had never got to do it.

"Now, papa, you must come this very moment," cried Miss Janetta Upround, the daughter of the house, and indeed the only daughter, with a gush of excitement, rushing into the study of this deeply read divine; "there is something doing that I can not understand. You must bring up the spy-gla.s.s at once and explain. I am sure that there is something very wrong."

"In the parish, my dear?" the rector asked, with a feeble attempt at malice, for he did not want to be disturbed just now, and for weeks he had tried (with very poor success) to make Janetta useful; for she had no gift in that way.

"No, not in the parish at all, papa, unless it runs out under water, as I am certain it ought to do, and make every one of those ships pay t.i.the. If the law was worth anything, they would have to do it. They get all the good out of our situation, and they save whole thousands of pounds at a time, and they never pay a penny, nor even hoist a flag, unless the day is fine, and the flag wants drying. But come along, papa, now. I really can not wait; and they will have done it all without us."

"Janetta, take the gla.s.s and get the focus. I will come presently, presently. In about two minutes--by the time that you are ready."

"Very well, papa. It is very good of you. I see quite clearly what you want to do; and I hope you will do it. But you promise not to play another game now?"

"My dear, I will promise that with pleasure. Only do please be off about your business."

The rector was a most inveterate and insatiable chess-player. In the household, rather than by it, he was, as a matter of lofty belief, supposed to be deeply engaged with theology, or magisterial questions of almost equal depth, or (to put it at the lowest) parochial affairs, the while he was solidly and seriously engaged in getting up the sound defense to some Continental gambit. And this, not only to satisfy himself upon some point of theory, but from a nearer and dearer point of view--for he never did like to be beaten.

At present he was laboring to discover the proper defense to a new and slashing form of the Algaier gambit, by means of which Robin Lyth had won every game in which he had the move, upon their last encounter.

The great free-trader, while a boy, had shown an especial apt.i.tude for chess, and even as a child he had seemed to know the men when first, by some accident, he saw them. The rector being struck by this exception to the ways of childhood--whose manner it is to take chess-men for "dollies," or roll them about like nine-pins--at once included in the education of "Izunsabe," which he took upon himself, a course of elemental doctrine in the one true game. And the boy fought his way up at such a pace that he jumped from odds of queen and rook to p.a.w.n and two moves in less than two years. And now he could almost give odds to his tutor, though he never presumed to offer them; and trading as he did with enlightened merchants of large Continental sea-ports, who had plenty of time on their hands and played well, he imported new openings of a dash and freedom which swallowed the ground up under the feet of the steady-going players, who had never seen a book upon their favorite subject. Of course it was competent to all these to decline such fiery onslaught; but chivalry and the true love of a.n.a.lysis (which without may none play chess) compelled the acceptance of the challenge, even with a trembling forecast of the taste of dust.

"Never mind," said Dr. Upround, as he rose and stretched himself, a good straight man of threescore years, with silver hair that shone like silk; "it has not come to me yet; but it must, with a little more perseverance. At Cambridge I beat everybody; and who is this uncirc.u.mcised--at least, I beg his pardon, for I did myself baptize him--but who is Robin Lyth, to mate his pastor and his master? All these gambits are like a night attack. If once met properly and expelled, you are in the very heart of the enemy's camp. He has left his own watch-fires to rush at yours. The next game I play, I shall be sure to beat him."

Fully convinced of this great truth, he took a strong oak staff and hastened to obey his daughter. Miss Janetta Upround had not only learned by nature, but also had been carefully taught by her parents, and by every one, how to get her own way always, and to be thanked for taking it. But she had such a happy nature, full of kindness and good-will, that other people's wishes always seemed to flow into her own, instead of being swept aside. Over her father her government was in no sort const.i.tutional, nor even a quiet despotism sweetened with liberal illusions, but as pure a piece of autocracy as the Continent could itself contain, in the time of this first Napoleon.

"Papa, what a time you have been, to be sure!" she exclaimed, as the doctor came gradually up, probing his way in perfect leisure, and fragrant still of that gambit; "one would think that your parish was on dry land altogether, while the better half of it, as they call themselves--though the women are in righteousness the better half a hundredfold--"

"My dear, do try to talk with some little sense of arithmetic, if no other. A hundredfold the half would be the unit multiplied by fifty. Not to mention that there can be no better half--"

"Yes, there can, papa, ever so many; and you may see one in mamma every day. Now you put one eye to this gla.s.s, and the half is better than the whole. With both, you see nothing; with one, you see better, fifty times better, than with both before. Don't talk of arithmetic after that. It is algebra now, and quod demonstrandum."

"To reason with the less worthy gender is degeneration of reason. What would they have said in the Senate-house, Janetta? However, I will obey your orders. What am I to look at?"

"A tall and very extraordinary man, striking his arms out, thus and thus. I never saw any one looking so excited; and he flourishes a long sword now and again, as if he would like to cut everybody's head off.

There he has been going from ship to ship, for an hour or more, with a long white boat, and a lot of men jumping after him. Every one seems to be scared of him, and he stumps along the deck just as if he were on springs, and one spring longer than the other. You see that heavy brig outside the rest, painted with ten port-holes; well, she began to make sail and run away, but he fired a gun--quite a real cannon--and she had to come back again and drop her colors. Oh, is it some very great admiral, papa? Perhaps Lord Nelson himself; I would go and be seasick for three days to see Lord Nelson. Papa, it must be Lord Nelson."

"My dear, Lord Nelson is a little, short man, with a very brisk walk, and one arm gone. Now let me see who this can be. Whereabout is he now, Janetta?"

"Do you see that clumsy-looking schooner, papa, just behind a pilot-boat? He is just in front of her foremast--making such a fuss--"

"What eyes you have got, my child! You see better without the gla.s.s than I do with it.--Oh, now I have him! Why, I might have guessed. Of course it is that very active man and vigilant officer Lieutenant Carroway."

"Captain Carroway from Bridlington, papa? Why, what can he be doing with such authority? I have often heard of him, but I thought he was only a coast-guard."

"He is, as you say, showing great authority, and, I fear, using very bad language, for which he is quite celebrated. However, the telescope refuses to repeat it, for which it is much to be commended. But every allowance must be made for a man who has to deal with a wholly uncultivated race, and not of natural piety, like ours."

"Well, papa, I doubt if ours have too much, though you always make the best of them. But let me look again, please; and do tell me what he can be doing there."

"You know that the revenue officers must take the law into their own hands sometimes. There have lately been certain rumors of some contraband proceedings on the Yorkshire coast. Not in Flamborough parish, of course, and perhaps--probably, I may say--a long way off---"

"Papa dear, will you never confess that free trade prevails and flourishes greatly even under your own dear nose?"

"Facts do not warrant me in any such a.s.sertion. If the fact were so, it must have been brought officially before me. I decline to listen to uncharitable rumors. But however that matter may be, there are officers on the spot to deal with it. My commission as a justice of the peace gives me no cognizance of offenses--if such there are--upon the high seas. Ah! you see something particular; my dear, what is it?"

"Captain Carroway has found something, or somebody, of great importance.

He has got a man by the collar, and he is absolutely dancing with delight. Ah! there he goes, dragging him along the deck as if he were a cod-fish or a conger. And now, I declare, he is lashing his arms and legs with a great thick rope. Papa, is that legal, without even a warrant?"

"I can hardly say how far his powers may extend, and he is just the man to extend them farther. I only hope not to be involved in the matter.

Maritime law is not my province."

"But, papa, it is much within three miles of the sh.o.r.e, if that has got anything to do with it. My goodness me! They are all coming here; I am almost sure that they will apply to you. Yes, two boat-loads of people, racing to get their oars out, and to be here first. Where are your spectacles, dear papa? You had better go and get up the law before they come. You will scarcely have time, they are coming so fast--a white boat and a black boat. The prisoner is in the white boat, and the officer has got him by the collar still. The men in the white boat will want to commit him, and the men in the black boat are his friends, no doubt, coming for a habeas corpus--"

"My dear, what nonsense you do talk! What has a simple justice of the peace--"

"Never mind that, papa; my facts are sound--sounder than yours about smuggling, I fear. But do hurry in, and get up the law. I will go and lock both gates, to give you more time."

"Do nothing of the kind, Janetta. A magistrate should be accessible always; and how can I get up the law, without knowing what it is to be about--or even a clerk to help me? And perhaps they are not coming here at all. They may be only landing their prisoner."

"If that were it, they would not be coming so, but rowing toward the proper place, Bridlington Quay, where their station-house is. Papa, you are in for it, and I am getting eager. May I come and hear all about it?

I should be a great support to you, you know. And they would tell the truth so much better!"

"Janetta, what are you dreaming of? It may even be a case of secrecy."

"Secrecy, papa, with two boat-loads of men and about thirty ships involved in it! Oh, do let me hear all about it!"