Mary Anerley

Not that Mary, however, could believe, or would even have such a bad mind as to imagine, that any one, after being helped by her, would be mean enough to run off with her property. And now she came to think of it, there was something high and noble, she might almost say something downright honest, in the face of that poor persecuted man. And in spite of all his panting, how brave he must have been, what a runner, and how clever, to escape from all those cowardly coast-riders shooting right and left at him! Such a man steal that paltry skirt that her mother made such a fuss about! She was much more likely to find it in her clothes-press filled with golden guineas.

Before she was as certain as she wished to be of this (by reason of shrewd nativity), and while she believed that the fugitive must have seized such a chance and made good his escape toward North Sea or Flamborough, a quick shadow glanced across the long shafts of the sun, and a bodily form sped after it. To the middle of the Dike leaped a young man, smiling, and forth from the gully which had saved his life. To look at him, nobody ever could have guessed how fast he had fled, and how close he had lain hid. For he stood there as clean and spruce and careless as even a sailor can be wished to be. Limber yet stalwart, agile though substantial, and as quick as a dart while as strong as a pike, he seemed cut out by nature for a true blue-jacket; but condition had made him a smuggler, or, to put it more gently, a free-trader. Britannia, being then at war with all the world, and alone in the right (as usual), had need of such lads, and produced them accordingly, and sometimes one too many. But Mary did not understand these laws.

This made her look at him with great surprise, and almost doubt whether he could be the man, until she saw her skirt neatly folded in his hand, and then she said, “How do you do, Sir?”

The free-trader looked at her with equal surprise. He had been in such a hurry, and his breath so short, and the chance of a fatal bullet after him so sharp, that his mind had been astray from any sense of beauty, and of every thing else except the safety of the body. But now he looked at Mary, and his breath again went from him.

“You can run again now; I am sure of it,” said she; “and if you would like to do any thing to please me, run as fast as possible.”

“What have I to run away from now?” he answered, in a deep sweet voice. “I run from enemies, but not from friends.”

“That is very wise. But your enemies are still almost within call of you. They will come back worse than ever when they find you are not there.”

“I am not afraid, fair lady, for I understand their ways. I have led them a good many dances before this; though it would have been my last, without your help. They will go on, all the morning, in the wrong direction, even while they know it. Carroway is the most stubborn of men. He never turns back; and the further he goes, the better his bad leg is. They will scatter about, among the fields and hedges, and call one another like partridges. And when they can not take another step, they will come back to Anerley for breakfast.”

“I dare say they will; and we shall be glad to see them. My father is a soldier, and his duty is to nourish and comfort the forces of the king.”

“Then you are young Mistress Anerley? I was sure of it before. There are no two such. And you have saved my life. It is something to owe it so fairly.”

The young sailor wanted to kiss Mary’s hand; but not being used to any gallantry, she held out her hand in the simplest manner to take back her riding skirt; and he, though longing in his heart to keep it, for a token or pretext for another meeting, found no excuse for doing so. And yet he was not without some resource.

For the maiden was giving him a farewell smile, being quite content with the good she had done, and the luck of recovering her property; and that sense of right which in those days formed a part of every good young woman said to her plainly that she must be off. And she felt how unkind it was to keep him any longer in a place where the muzzle of a gun, with a man behind it, might appear at any moment. But he, having plentiful breath again, was at home with himself to spend it.

“Fair young lady,” he began, for he saw that Mary liked to be called a lady, because it was a novelty, “owing more than I ever can pay you already, may I ask a little more? Then it is that, on your way down to the sea, you would just pick up (if you should chance to see it) the fellow ring to this, and perhaps you will look at this to know it by. The one that was shot away flew against a stone just on the left of the mouth of the Dike, but I durst not stop to look for it, and I must not go back that way now. It is more to me than a hatful of gold, though nobody else would give a crown for it.”

“And they really shot away one of your ear-rings? Careless, cruel, wasteful men! What could they have been thinking of?”

“They were thinking of getting what is called ‘blood-money.’ One hundred pounds for Robin Lyth. Dead or alive—one hundred pounds.”

“It makes me shiver, with the sun upon me. Of course they must offer money for—for people. For people who have killed other people, and bad things—but to offer a hundred pounds for a free-trader, and fire great guns at him to get it—I never should have thought it of Captain Carroway.”

“Carroway only does his duty. I like him none the worse for it. Carroway is a fool, of course. His life has been in my hands fifty times; but I will never take it. He must be killed sooner or later, because he rushes into every thing. But never will it be my doing.”

“Then are you the celebrated Robin Lyth—the new Robin Hood, as they call him? The man who can do almost any thing?”

“Mistress Anerley, I am Robin Lyth; but, as you have seen, I can not do much. I can not even search for my own earring.”

“I will search for it till I find it. They have shot at you too much. Cowardly, cowardly people! Captain Lyth, where shall I put it, if I find it?”

“If you could hide it for a week, and then—then tell me where to find it, in the afternoon, toward four o’clock, in the lane toward Bempton Cliffs. We are off tonight upon important business. We have been too careless lately, from laughing at poor Carroway.”

“You are very careless now. You quite frighten me almost. The coast-riders might come back at any moment. And what could you do then?”

“Run away gallantly, as I did before; with this little difference, that I should be fresh, while they are as stiff as nut-cracks. They have missed the best chance they ever had at me; it will make their temper very bad. If they shot at me again, they could do no good. Crooked mood makes crooked mode.”

“You forget that I should not see such things. You may like very much to be shot at; but—but you should think of other people.”

“I shall think of you only—I mean of your great kindness, and your promise to keep my ring for me. Of course you will tell nobody, Carroway will have me like a tiger if you do. Farewell, young lady—for one week farewell.”

With a wave of his hat he was gone, before Mary had time to retract her promise; and she thought of her mother, as she rode on slowly to look for the smuggler’s trinket.

CHAPTER VIII

CAPTAIN CARROWAY

Fame, that light-of-love trusted by so many, and never a wife till a widow—fame, the fair daughter of fuss and caprice, may yet take the phantom of bold Robin Lyth by the right hand, and lead it to a pedestal almost as lofty as Robin Hood’s, or she may let it vanish like a bat across Lethe—a thing not bad enough for eminence.

However, at the date and in the part of the world now dealt with, this great free-trader enjoyed the warm though possibly brief embrace of fame, having no rival, and being highly respected by all who were unwarped by a sense of duty. And blessed as he was with a lively nature, he proceeded happily upon his path in life, notwithstanding a certain ticklish sense of being shot at undesirably. This had befallen him now so often, without producing any tangible effect, that a great many people, and especially the shooters (convinced of the accuracy of their aim), went far to believe that he possessed some charm against wholesome bullet and gunpowder. And lately even a crooked sixpence dipped in holy water (which was still to be had in Yorkshire) confirmed and doubled the faith of all good people, by being declared upon oath to have passed clean through him, as was proved by its being picked up quite clean.

This strong belief was of great use to him; for, like many other beliefs, it went a very long way to prove itself. Steady left hands now grew shaky in the level of the carbine, and firm forefingers trembled slightly upon draught of trigger, and the chief result of a large discharge was a wale upon the marksman’s shoulder. Robin, though so clever and well practiced in the world, was scarcely old enough yet to have learned the advantage of misapprehension, which, if well handled by any man, helps him, in the cunning of paltry things, better than a truer estimate. But without going into that, he was pleased with the fancy of being invulnerable, which not only doubled his courage, but trebled the discipline of his followers, and secured him the respect of all tradesmen. However, the worst of all things is that just when they are establishing themselves, and earning true faith by continuance, out of pure opposition the direct contrary arises, and begins to prove itself. And to Captain Lyth this had just happened in the shot which carried off his left ear-ring.

Not that his body, or any fleshly member, could be said directly to have parted with its charm, but that a warning and a diffidence arose from so near a visitation. All genuine sailors are blessed with strong faith, as they must be, by nature’s compensation. Their bodies continually going up and down upon perpetual fluxion, they never could live if their minds did the same, like the minds of stationary landsmen. Therefore their minds are of stanch immobility, to restore the due share of firm element. And not only that, but these men have compressed (through generations of circumstance), from small complications, simplicity. Being out in all weathers, and rolling about so, how can they stand upon trifles? Solid stays, and stanchions, and strong bulwarks are their need, and not a dance of gnats in gossamer; hating all fogs, they blow not up with their own breath misty mysteries, and gazing mainly at the sky and sea, believe purely in God and the devil. In a word, these sailors have religion.

Some of their religion is not well pronounced, but declares itself in overstrong expressions. However, it is in them, and at any moment waiting opportunity of action—a shipwreck or a grape-shot; and the chaplain has good hopes of them when the doctor has given them over.

Now one of their principal canons of faith, and the one best observed in practice, is (or at any rate used to be) that a man is bound to wear ear-rings. For these, as sure tradition shows, and no pious mariner would dare to doubt, act as a whetstone in all weathers to the keen edge of the eyes. Semble—as the lawyers say—that this idea was born of great phonetic facts in the days when a seaman knew his duty better than the way to spell it; and when, if his outlook were sharpened by a friendly wring from the captain of the watch, he never dreamed of a police court.

But Robin Lyth had never cared to ask why he wore ear-rings. His nature was not meditative. Enough for him that all the other men of Flamborough did so; and enough for them that their fathers had done it. Whether his own father had done so, was more than he could say, because he knew of no such parent; and of that other necessity, a mother, he was equally ignorant. His first appearance at Flamborough, though it made little stir at the moment in a place of so many adventures, might still be considered unusual, and in some little degree remarkable. So that Mistress Anerley was not wrong when she pressed upon Lieutenant Carroway how unwise it might be to shoot him, any more than Carroway himself was wrong in turning in at Anerley gate for breakfast.

This he had not done without good cause of honest and loyal necessity. Free-trading Robin had predicted well the course of his pursuers. Rushing eagerly up the Dike, and over its brim, with their muskets, that gallant force of revenue men steadily scoured the neighborhood; and the further they went, the worse they fared. There was not a horse standing down by a pool, with his stiff legs shut up into biped form, nor a cow staring blandly across an old rail, nor a sheep with a pectoral cough behind a hedge, nor a rabbit making rustle at the eyebrow of his hole, nor even a moot, that might either be a man or hold a man inside it, whom or which those active fellows did not circumvent and poke into. In none of these, however, could they find the smallest breach of the strictest laws of the revenue; until at last, having exhausted their bodies by great zeal both of themselves and of mind, they braced them again to the duty of going, as promptly as possible, to breakfast.

For a purpose of that kind few better places, perhaps, could be found than this Anerley Farm, though not at the best of itself just now, because of the denials of the season. It is a sad truth about the heyday of the year, such as August is in Yorkshire—where they have no spring—that just when a man would like his victuals to rise to the mark of the period, to be simple yet varied, exhilarating yet substantial, the heat of the summer day defrauds its increased length for feeding. For instance, to cite a very trifling point—at least in some opinions—August has banished that bright content and most devout resignation which ensue the removal of a petted pig from this troublous world of grunt. The fat pig rolls in wallowing rapture, defying his friends to make pork of him yet, and hugs with complacence unpickleable hams. The partridge among the pillared wheat, tenderly footing the way for his chicks, and teaching little balls of down to hop, knows how sacred are their lives to others as well as to himself; and the less paternal cock-pheasant scratches the ridge of green-shouldered potatoes, without fear of keeping them company at table.

But though the bright glory of the griddle remains in suspense for the hoary mornings, and hooks that carried woodcocks once, and hope to do so yet again, are primed with dust instead of lard, and the frying-pan hangs on the cellar nail with a holiday gloss of raw mutton suet, yet is there still some comfort left, yet dappled brawn, and bacon streaked, yet golden-hearted eggs, and mushrooms quilted with pink satin, spiced beef carded with pellucid fat, buckstone cake, and brown bread scented with the ash of gorse bloom—of these, and more that pave the way into the good-will of mankind, what lack have fine farm-houses?

And then, again, for the liquid duct, the softer and more sensitive, the one that is never out of season, but perennially clear—here we have advantage of the gentle time that mellows thirst. The long ride of the summer sun makes men who are in feeling with him, and like him go up and down, not forego the moral of his labor, which is work and rest. Work all day, and light the rounded land with fruit and nurture, and rest at evening, looking through bright fluid, as the sun goes down.

But times there are when sun and man, by stress of work, or clouds, or light, or it may be some Process of the Equinox, make draughts upon the untilted day, and solace themselves in the morning. For lack of dew the sun draws lengthy sucks of cloud quite early, and men who have labored far and dry, and scattered the rime of the night with dust, find themselves ready about 8 A.M. for the golden encouragement of gentle ale.

The farm-house had an old porch of stone, with a bench of stone on either side, and pointed windows trying to look out under brows of ivy; and this porch led into the long low hall, where the breakfast was beginning. To say what was on the table would be only waste of time, because it has all been eaten so long ago; but the farmer was vexed because there were no shrimps. Not that he cared half the clip of a whisker for all the shrimps that ever bearded the sea, only that he liked to seem to love them, to keep Mary at work for him. The flower of his flock, and of all the flocks of the world of the universe to his mind, was his darling daughter Mary: the strength of his love was upon her, and he liked to eat any thing of her cooking.

His body was too firm to fidget; but his mind was out of its usual comfort, because the pride of his heart, his Mary, seemed to be hiding something from him. And with the justice to be expected from far clearer minds than his, being vexed by one, he was ripe for the relief of snapping at fifty others. Mary, who could read him, as a sailor reads his compass, by the corner of one eye, awaited with good content the usual result—an outbreak of words upon the indolent Willie, whenever that young farmer should come down to breakfast, then a comforting glance from the mother at her William, followed by a plate kept hot for him, and then a fine shake of the master’s shoulders, and a stamp of departure for business. But instead of that, what came to pass was this.

In the first place, a mighty bark of dogs arose; as needs must be, when a man does his duty toward the nobler animals; for sure it is that the dogs will not fail of their part. Then an inferior noise of men, crying, “Good dog! good dog!” and other fulsome flatteries, in the hope of avoiding any tooth-mark on their legs; and after that a shaking down and settlement of sounds, as if feet were brought into good order, and stopped. Then a tall man, with a body full of corners, and a face of grim temper, stood in the doorway.

“Well, well, captain, now!” cried Stephen Anerley, getting up after waiting to be spoken to, “the breath of us all is hard to get, with doing of our duty, Sir. Come ye in, and sit doon to table, and his Majesty’s forces along o’ ye.”

“Cadman, Ellis, and Dick, be damned!” the lieutenant shouted out to them; “you shall have all the victuals you want, by-and-by. Cross legs, and get your winds up. Captain of the coast-defense, I am under your orders, in your own house.” Carroway was starving, as only a man with long and active jaws can starve; and now the appearance of the farmer’s mouth, half full of a kindly relish, made the emptiness of his own more bitter. But happen what might, he resolved, as usual, to enforce strict discipline, to feed himself first, and his men in proper order.

“Walk in gentlemen, all walk in,” Master Anerley shouted, as if all men were alike, and coming to the door with a hospitable stride; “glad to see all of ye, upon my soul I am. Ye’ve hit upon the right time for coming, too; though there might ‘a been more upon the table. Mary, run, that’s a dear, and fetch your grandfather’s big Sabbath carver. Them peaky little clams a’most puts out all my shoulder-blades, and wunna bite through a twine of gristle. Plates for all the gentlemen, Winnie lass! Bill, go and drah the black jarge full o’ yell.”

The farmer knew well enough that Willie was not down yet; but this was his manner of letting people see that he did not approve of such hours.

“My poor lad Willie,” said the mistress of the house, returning with a courtesy the brave lieutenant’s scrape, “I fear he hath the rheum again, overheating of himself after sungate.”

“Ay, ay, I forgot. He hath to heat himself in bed again, with the sun upon his coverlid. Mary lof, how many hours was ye up?”

“Your daughter, Sir,” answered the lieutenant, with a glance at the maiden over the opal gleam of froth, which she had headed up for him—“your daughter has been down the Dike before the sun was, and doing of her duty by the king and by his revenue. Mistress Anerley, your good health! Master Anerley, the like to you, and your daughter, and all of your good household.” Before they had finished their thanks for this honor, the quart pot was set down empty. “A very pretty brew, Sir—a pretty brew indeed! Fall back, men! Have heed of discipline. A chalked line is what they want, Sir. Mistress Anerley, your good health again. The air is now thirsty in the mornings. If those fellows could be given a bench against the wall—a bench against the wall is what they feel for with their legs. It comes so natural to their—yes, yes, their legs, and the crook of their heels, ma’am, from what they were brought up to sit upon. And if you have any beer brewed for washing days, ma’am, that is what they like, and the right thing for their bellies. Cadman, Ellis, and Dick Hackerbody, sit down and be thankful.”