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Springhaven: A Tale of the Great War

by R. D. Blackmore · English · Gutenberg #7435 · 1,102,077 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Springhaven: A Tale of the Great War

Author: R. D. Blackmore


        
Release date: June 6, 2006 [eBook #7435]
                Most recently updated: March 6, 2018

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Don Lainson; David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPRINGHAVEN: A TALE OF THE GREAT WAR ***




Produced by Don Lainson





SPRINGHAVEN:

A Tale of the Great War


By R. D. Blackmore


1887




CHAPTER I

WHEN THE SHIP COMES HOME


In the days when England trusted mainly to the vigor and valor of one
man, against a world of enemies, no part of her coast was in greater
peril than the fair vale of Springhaven. But lying to the west of the
narrow seas, and the shouts both of menace and vigilance, the quiet
little village in the tranquil valley forbore to be uneasy.

For the nature of the place and race, since time has outlived memory,
continually has been, and must be, to let the world pass easily. Little
to talk of, and nothing to do, is the healthy condition of mankind just
there. To all who love repose and shelter, freedom from the cares of
money and the cark of fashion, and (in lieu of these) refreshing air,
bright water, and green country, there is scarcely any valley left to
compare with that of Springhaven. This valley does not interrupt the
land, but comes in as a pleasant relief to it. No glaring chalk, no
grim sandstone, no rugged flint, outface it; but deep rich meadows, and
foliage thick, and cool arcades of ancient trees, defy the noise that
men make. And above the trees, in shelving distance, rise the crests of
upland, a soft gray lias, where orchards thrive, and greensward strokes
down the rigor of the rocks, and quick rills lace the bosom of the slope
with tags of twisted silver.

In the murmur of the valley twenty little waters meet, and discoursing
their way to the sea, give name to the bay that receives them and the
anchorage they make. And here no muddy harbor reeks, no foul mouth
of rat-haunted drains, no slimy and scraggy wall runs out, to mar the
meeting of sweet and salt. With one or two mooring posts to watch it,
and a course of stepping-stones, the brook slides into the peaceful bay,
and is lost in larger waters. Even so, however, it is kindly still, for
it forms a tranquil haven.

Because, where the ruffle of the land stream merges into the heavier
disquietude of sea, slopes of shell sand and white gravel give welcome
pillow to the weary keel. No southerly tempest smites the bark, no long
groundswell upheaves her; for a bold point, known as the “Haven-head,”
 baffles the storm in the offing, while the bulky rollers of a strong
spring-tide, that need no wind to urge them, are broken by the shifting
of the shore into a tier of white-frilled steps. So the deep-waisted
smacks that fish for many generations, and even the famous “London
trader” (a schooner of five-and-forty tons), have rest from their
labors, whenever they wish or whenever they can afford it, in the
arms of the land, and the mouth of the water, and under the eyes of
Springhaven.

At the corner of the wall, where the brook comes down, and pebble turns
into shingle, there has always been a good white gate, respected (as a
white gate always is) from its strong declaration of purpose. Outside
of it, things may belong to the Crown, the Admiralty, Manor, or Trinity
Brethren, or perhaps the sea itself--according to the latest ebb or
flow of the fickle tide of Law Courts--but inside that gate everything
belongs to the fine old family of Darling.

Concerning the origin of these Darlings divers tales are told, according
to the good-will or otherwise of the diver. The Darlings themselves
contend and prove that stock and name are Saxon, and the true form of
the name is “Deerlung,” as witness the family bearings. But the foes of
the race, and especially the Carnes, of ancient Sussex lineage, declare
that the name describes itself. Forsooth, these Darlings are nothing
more, to their contemptuous certainty, than the offset of some
court favorite, too low to have won nobility, in the reign of some
light-affectioned king.

If ever there was any truth in that, it has been worn out long ago by
friction of its own antiquity. Admiral Darling owns that gate, and
all the land inside it, as far as a Preventive man can see with his
spy-glass upon the top bar of it. And this includes nearly all the
village of Springhaven, and the Hall, and the valley, and the hills that
make it. And how much more does all this redound to the credit of the
family when the gazer reflects that this is nothing but their younger
tenement! For this is only Springhaven Hall, while Darling Holt, the
headquarters of the race, stands far inland, and belongs to Sir Francis,
the Admiral's elder brother.

When the tides were at their spring, and the year 1802 of our era in
the same condition, Horatia Dorothy Darling, younger daughter of the
aforesaid Admiral, choosing a very quiet path among thick shrubs and
under-wood, came all alone to a wooden building, which her father called
his Round-house. In the war, which had been patched over now, but would
very soon break out again, that veteran officer held command of the
coast defense (westward of Nelson's charge) from Beachy Head to Selsey
Bill. No real danger had existed then, and no solid intent of invasion,
but many sharp outlooks had been set up, and among them was this at
Springhaven.

Here was established under thatch, and with sliding lights before it,
the Admiral's favorite Munich glass, mounted by an old ship's carpenter
(who had followed the fortunes of his captain) on a stand which would
have puzzled anybody but the maker, with the added security of a lanyard
from the roof. The gear, though rough, was very strong and solid,
and afforded more range and firmer rest to the seven-feet tube and
adjustments than a costly mounting by a London optician would have been
likely to supply. It was a pleasure to look through such a glass, so
clear, and full of light, and firm; and one who could have borne to
be looked at through it, or examined even by a microscope, came now to
enjoy that pleasure.

Miss Dolly Darling could not be happy--though her chief point was to
be so--without a little bit of excitement, though it were of her own
construction. Her imagination, being bright and tender and lively,
rather than powerful, was compelled to make its own material, out of
very little stuff sometimes. She was always longing for something sweet
and thrilling and romantic, and what chance of finding it in this
dull place, even with the longest telescope? For the war, with all its
stirring rumors and perpetual motion on shore and sea, and access of
gallant visitors, was gone for the moment, and dull peace was signed.

This evening, as yet, there seemed little chance of anything to enliven
her. The village, in the valley and up the stream, was hidden by turns
of the land and trees; her father's house beneath the hill crest was out
of sight and hearing; not even a child was on the beach; and the only
movement was of wavelets leisurely advancing toward the sea-wall fringed
with tamarisk. The only thing she could hope to see was the happy return
of the fishing-smacks, and perhaps the “London trader,” inasmuch as the
fishermen (now released from fencible duty and from French alarm) did
their best to return on Saturday night to their moorings, their homes,
the disposal of fish, and then the deep slumber of Sunday. If the breeze
should enable them to round the Head, and the tide avail for landing,
the lane to the village, the beach, and even the sea itself would swarm
with life and bustle and flurry and incident. But Dolly's desire was for
scenes more warlike and actors more august than these.

Beauty, however, has an eye for beauty beyond its own looking-glass.
Deeply as Dolly began to feel the joy of her own loveliness, she had
managed to learn, and to feel as well, that so far as the strength and
vigor of beauty may compare with its grace and refinement, she had
her own match at Springhaven. Quite a hardworking youth, of no social
position and no needless education, had such a fine countenance and such
bright eyes that she neither could bear to look at him nor forbear to
think of him. And she knew that if the fleet came home she would see him
on board of the Rosalie.

Flinging on a shelf the small white hat which had scarcely covered her
dark brown curls, she lifted and shored with a wooden prop the southern
casement of leaded glass. This being up, free range was given to the
swinging telescope along the beach to the right and left, and over the
open sea for miles, and into the measureless haze of air. She could
manage this glass to the best advantage, through her father's teaching,
and could take out the slide and clean the lenses, and even part the
object-glass, and refix it as well as possible. She belonged to the
order of the clever virgins, but scarcely to that of the wise ones.



CHAPTER II

WITH HER CREW AND CARGO


Long after the time of those who write and those who read this history,
the name of Zebedee Tugwell will be flourishing at Springhaven.

To achieve unmerited honor is the special gift of thousands, but to
deserve and win befalls some few in every century, and one of these few
was Zebedee. To be the head-man of any other village, and the captain of
its fishing fleet, might prove no lofty eminence; but to be the leader
of Springhaven was true and arduous greatness. From Selsey Bill to
Orfordness, taking in all the Cinque Ports and all the port of London,
there was not a place that insisted on, and therefore possessed, all
its own rights so firmly as this village did. Not less than seven stout
fishing-smacks--six of them sloops, and the seventh a dandy--formed the
marine power of this place, and behaved as one multiplied by seven. All
the bold fishermen held their line from long-established ancestry, and
stuck to the stock of their grandfathers, and their wisdom and freedom
from prejudice. Strength was condensed into clear law with them--as
sinew boils down into jelly--and character carried out its force as the
stamp of solid impress. What the father had been, the son became, as the
generation squared itself, and the slates for the children to do their
copies were the tombstones of their granddads. Thus brave Etruria grew,
and thus the Rome which was not built in a day became the flower of the
world, and girt in unity of self seven citadels.

There was Roman blood--of the Tenth Legion, perhaps--in the general
vein of Springhaven. There was scarcely a man who pretended to know much
outside of his own business, and there was not a woman unable to
wait (when her breath was quite gone) for sound reason. Solidity,
self-respect, pure absence of frivolous humor, ennobled the race and
enabled them to hold together, so that everybody not born in Springhaven
might lament, but never repair, his loss.

This people had many ancient rules befitting a fine corporation, and
among them were the following: “Never do a job for a stranger; sleep in
your own bed when you can; be at home in good time on a Saturday; never
work harder than you need; throw your fish away rather than undersell
it; answer no question, but ask another; spend all your money among your
friends; and above all, never let any stranger come a-nigh your proper
fishing ground, nor land any fish at Springhaven.”

These were golden laws, and made a snug and plump community. From the
Foreland to the Isle of Wight their nets and lines were sacred, and no
other village could be found so thriving, orderly, well-conducted, and
almost well-contented. For the men were not of rash enterprise, hot
labor, or fervid ambition; and although they counted things by money,
they did not count one another so. They never encouraged a friend to
work so hard as to grow too wealthy, and if he did so, they expected him
to grow more generous than he liked to be. And as soon as he failed upon
that point, instead of adoring, they growled at him, because every one
of them might have had as full a worsted stocking if his mind had been
small enough to forget the difference betwixt the land and sea, the tide
of labor and the time of leisure.

To these local and tribal distinctions they added the lofty expansion of
sons of the sea. The habit of rising on the surge and falling into the
trough behind it enables a biped, as soon as he lands, to take things
that are flat with indifference. His head and legs have got into a state
of firm confidence in one another, and all these declare--with the rest
of the body performing as chorus gratis--that now they are come to a
smaller affair, upon which they intend to enjoy themselves. So that,
while strenuous and quick of movement--whenever they could not help
it--and sometimes even brisk of mind (if anybody strove to cheat them),
these men generally made no griefs beyond what they were born to.

Zebedee Tugwell was now their chief, and well deserved to be so. Every
community of common-sense demands to have somebody over it, and nobody
could have felt ashamed to be under Captain Tugwell. He had built with
his own hands, and bought--for no man's work is his own until he has
paid for as well as made it--the biggest and smartest of all the fleet,
that dandy-rigged smack, the Rosalie. He was proud of her, as he well
might be, and spent most of his time in thinking of her; but even she
was scarcely up to the size of his ideas. “Stiff in the joints,” he now
said daily--“stiff in the joints is my complaint, and I never would have
believed it. But for all that, you shall see, my son, if the Lord should
spare you long enough, whether I don't beat her out and out with the
craft as have been in my mind this ten year.”

But what man could be built to beat Zebedee himself, in an age like
this, when yachts and men take the prize by profundity of false keel?
Tugwell yearned for no hot speed in his friends, or his house, or his
wife, or his walk, or even his way of thinking. He had seen more harm
come from one hour's hurry than a hundred years of care could cure, and
the longer he lived the more loath he grew to disturb the air around
him.

“Admirable Nelson,” he used to say--for his education had not been so
large as the parts allotted to receive it; “to my mind he is a brave
young man, with great understanding of his dooties. But he goeth too
fast, without clearing of his way. With a man like me 'longside of 'un,
he'd have brought they boats out of Bulong. See how I brings my boats
in, most particular of a Saturday!”

It was Saturday now, when Miss Dolly was waiting to see this great
performance, of which she considered herself, as the daughter of
an admiral, no mean critic. And sure enough, as punctual as in a
well-conducted scheme of war, and with nice forecast of wind and tide,
and science of the supper-time, around the westward headland came the
bold fleet of Springhaven!

Seven ships of the line--the fishing line--arranged in perfect order,
with the Rosalie as the flag-ship leading, and three upon either
quarter, in the comfort and leisure of the new-born peace, they spread
their sails with sunshine. Even the warlike Dolly could not help some
thoughts of peacefulness, and a gentle tide of large good-will submerged
the rocks of glory.

“Why should those poor men all be killed?” she asked herself, as a new
thing, while she made out, by their faces, hats, fling of knee or
elbow, patch upon breeches, or sprawl of walking toward the attentive
telescope, pretty nearly who everybody of them was, and whatever else
there was about him. “After all, it is very hard,” she said, “that they
should have to lose their lives because the countries fight so.”

But these jolly fellows had no idea of losing their lives, or a hair of
their heads, or anything more than their appetites, after waging hot
war upon victuals. Peace was proclaimed, and peace was reigning; and
the proper British feeling of contempt for snivelly Frenchmen, which
produces the entente cordiale, had replaced the wholesome dread of them.
Not that Springhaven had ever known fear, but still it was glad to leave
off terrifying the enemy. Lightness of heart and good-will prevailed,
and every man's sixpence was going to be a shilling.

In the tranquil afternoon the sun was making it clear to the coast
of Albion that he had crossed the line once more, and rediscovered a
charming island. After a chilly and foggy season, worse than a brave
cold winter, there was joy in the greeting the land held out, and in the
more versatile expression of the sea. And not beneath the contempt of
one who strives to get into everything, were the creases and patches of
the sails of smacks, and the pattern of the resin-wood they called their
masts, and even the little striped things (like frogs with hats on, in
the distance) which had grown to believe themselves the only object the
sun was made to shine upon.

But he shone upon the wide sea far behind, and the broad stretch of
land before them, and among their slowly gliding canvas scattered soft
touches of wandering light. Especially on the spritsail of the Rosalie,
whereunder was sitting, with the tiller in his hand and a very long pipe
in his mouth, Captain Zebedee Tugwell. His mighty legs were spread at
ease, his shoulders solid against a cask, his breast (like an elephant's
back in width, and bearing a bright blue crown tattooed) shone out of
the scarlet woolsey, whose plaits were filled with the golden shower of
a curly beard, untouched with gray. And his face was quite as worthy as
the substance leading up to it, being large and strengthful and slow to
move, though quick to make others do so. The forehead was heavy, and the
nose thickset, the lower jaw backed up the resolution of the other, and
the wide apart eyes, of a bright steel blue, were as steady as a brace
of pole-stars.

“What a wonderful man!” fair Dolly thought, as the great figure, looking
even grander in the glass, came rising upon a long slow wave--“what a
wonderful man that Tugwell is! So firmly resolved to have his own way,
so thoroughly dauntless, and such a grand beard! Ten times more like an
admiral than old Flapfin or my father is, if he only knew how to hold
his pipe. There is something about him so dignified, so calm, and so
majestic; but, for all that, I like the young man better. I have a great
mind to take half a peep at him; somebody might ask whether he was there
or not.”

Being a young and bashful maid, as well as by birth a lady, she had
felt that it might be a very nice thing to contemplate sailors in the
distance, abstract sailors, old men who pulled ropes, or lounged on the
deck, if there was one. But to steal an unsuspected view at a young man
very well known to her, and acknowledged (not only by his mother
and himself, but also by every girl in the parish) as the Adonis of
Springhaven--this was a very different thing, and difficult to justify
even to one's self. The proper plan, therefore, was to do it, instead of
waiting to consider it.

“How very hard upon him it does seem,” she whispered to herself, after a
good gaze at him, “that he must not even dream of having any hope of
me, because he has not happened to be born a gentleman! But he looks a
thousand times more like one than nine out of ten of the great gentlemen
I know--or at any rate he would if his mother didn't make his clothes.”

For Zebedee Tugwell had a son called “Dan,” as like him as a tender pea
can be like a tough one; promising also to be tough, in course of time,
by chafing of the world and weather. But at present Dan Tugwell was as
tender to the core as a marrowfat dallying till its young duck should be
ready; because Dan was podding into his first love. To the sympathetic
telescope his heart was low, and his mind gone beyond astronomical
range, and his hands (instead of briskly pairing soles) hung asunder,
and sprawled like a star-fish.

“Indeed he does look sad,” said Miss Dolly, “he is thinking of me, as
he always does; but I don't see how anybody can blame me. But here comes
daddy, with dear old Flapfin! I am not a bit afraid of either of them;
but perhaps I had better run away.”



CHAPTER III

AND HER TRUE COMMANDER


The nature of “Flapfin”--as Miss Dolly Darling and other young people
were pleased to call him--was to make his enemies run away, but his
friends keep very near to him. He was one of the simplest-minded men
that ever trod the British oak. Whatever he thought he generally said;
and whatever he said he meant and did. Yet of tricks and frauds he had
quick perception, whenever they were tried against him, as well as a
marvellous power of seeing the shortest way to everything. He enjoyed a
little gentle piece of vanity, not vainglory, and he never could sec any
justice in losing the credit of any of his exploits. Moreover, he was
gifted with the highest faith in the hand of the Almighty over him (to
help him in all his righteous deeds), and over his enemies, to destroy
them. Though he never insisted on any deep piety in his own behavior, he
had a good deal in his heart when time allowed, and the linstocks were
waiting the signal. His trust was supreme in the Lord and himself; and
he loved to be called “My Lord Admiral.”

And a man of this noble type deserved to be met with his own nobility.
But the English government, according to its lights--which appear to be
everlasting--regarded him as the right man, when wanted, but at other
times the wrong one. They liked him to do them a very good turn, but
would not let him do himself one; and whenever he looked for some fair
chance of a little snug prize-money, they took him away from the likely
places, and set him to hard work and hard knocks. But his sense of duty
and love of country enabled him to bear it, with grumbling.

“I don't care a rope's end,” he was saying, with a truthfulness simple
and solid as beefsteak is, “whether we have peace or war; but let
us have one or the other of them. I love peace--it is a very fine
thing--and I hate to see poor fellows killed. All I want is to spend the
rest of my life ashore, and lay out the garden. You must come and see
what a bridge I have made to throw across the fish-pond. I can do well
enough with what I have got, as soon as my farm begins to pay, and I
hope I may never hear another shotted cannon; but, my dear Lingo, you
know as well as I do how much chance there is of that.”

“Laudo manentem. Let us praise her while we have got her. Parson Twemlow
keeps up my Latin, but you have forgotten all yours, my friend. I
brought you down here to see the fish come in, and to choose what you
like best for dinner. In the days when you were my smallest youngster,
and as proud as Punch to dine with me, your taste was the finest in the
ship, because your stomach was the weakest. How often I thought that the
fish would eat you! and but for your wonderful spirit, my friend, that
must have happened long ago. But your nature was to fight, and you
fought through, as you always do. A drumstick for your praise of peace!”

Admiral Darling, a tall, stout man in the sixty-fifth year of his age,
looked down at his welcome and famous guest as if he knew a great deal
more of his nature than the owner did. And this made that owner, who
thought very highly of his own perception, look up and laugh.

“Here comes the fish!” he cried. “Come along, Darling. Never lose a
moment--that's my rule. You can't get along as fast as I can. I'll go
and settle all the business for you.”

“Why should you be in such a hurry always? You will never come to my
age if you carry on so. You ought to tow a spar astern. Thank God, they
don't know who he is, and I'll take good care not to let them know. If
this is what comes of quick promotion, I am glad that I got on slowly.
Well, he may do as he likes for me. He always does--that's one thing.”

Stoutly grumbling thus, the elder and far heavier Admiral descended the
hill to the white gate slowly, as behooved the owner. And, by the time
he halted there, the other had been upon the beach five minutes, and
taken command of the fishing fleet.

“Starboard there! Brail up your gaff! Is that the way to take the
ground? Ease helm, Rosalie. Smartly, smartly. Have a care, you lubber
there. Fenders out! So, so. Now stand by, all! There are two smart
lads among you, and no more. All the rest are no better than a pack
of Crappos. You want six months in a man-of-war's launch. This is what
comes of peace already!”

The fishermen stared at this extraordinary man, who had taken all the
business out of Master Tugwell's hands; but without thinking twice about
it, all obeyed him with a speed that must have robbed them of a quantity
of rust. For although he was not in uniform, and bore no sword, his
dress was conspicuous, as he liked to have it, and his looks and deeds
kept suit with it. For he wore a blue coat (very badly made, with gilt
buttons and lappets too big for him), a waistcoat of dove-colored silk,
very long, coming over the place where his stomach should have been, and
white plush breeches, made while he was blockading Boulogne in 1801, and
therefore had scarcely any flesh upon his bones. Peace having fattened
him a little, these breeches had tightened upon him (as their way is
with a boy having six weeks' holiday); but still they could not make his
legs look big, though they showed them sharp and muscular. Below them
were brisk little sinewy calves in white silk hose, with a taper descent
to ankles as fine as a lady's, and insteps bright with large silver
buckles. Yet that which surpassed all the beauty of the clothes was the
vigor of the man inside them, who seemed to quicken and invigorate the
whole, even to the right sleeve, doubled up from the want of any arm
inside it. But the loss of the right arm, and the right eye also, seemed
to be of no account to the former owner, so hard did he work with the
residue of his body, and so much did he express with it.

His noble cocked hat was in its leathern box yet, for he was only just
come from Merton; but the broad felt he wore was looped up in front,
and displayed all the power of his countenance, or rather the vigor; for
power is heavy, and his face was light and quickness. Softness also, and
a melancholy gift of dreaminess and reflection, enlarged and impressed
the effect of a gaze and a smile which have conquered history.

“Why don't 'ee speak up to 'un, Cap'en Zeb?” cried young Harry Shanks,
of the Peggy, the smartest smack next to the Rosalie. “Whoever can 'a
be, to make thee so dumb? Doth 'a know our own business afore our own
selves? If 'ee don't speak up to 'un, Cap'en Zeb, I'll never take no
more commands from thee.”

“Harry Shanks, you was always a fool, and you always will be,” Master
Tugwell replied, with his deep chest voice, which no gale of wind could
blow away. “Whether he be wrong or right--and I won't say but what I
might have done it better--none but a fool like you would dare to set
his squeak up against Admirable Lord Nelson.”



CHAPTER IV

AND HER FAITHFUL CHAPLAIN


“I am not a man of the world, but a man of the Word,” said Parson
Twemlow, the Rector of Springhaven; “and I shall not feel that I have
done my duty unless I stir him up to-morrow. His valor and glory are
nothing to me, nor even his value to the country. He does his duty, and
I shall do mine. It is useless to talk to me, Maria; I never shall have
such a chance again.”

“Well, dear, you know best,” replied Mrs. Twemlow; “and duty is always
the highest and best and most sacred consideration. But you surely
should remember, for Eliza's sake, that we never shall dine at the Hall
again.”

“I don't care a snap for their dinners, or the chance of Eliza catching
some young officer; and very few come while this peace goes on. I won't
shirk my duty for any of that.”

“Nothing would ever make you shirk your duty, Joshua. And I hope that
you know me too well to suppose that I ever would dream of suggesting
it. But I do want to see you a Canon, and I know that he begins to have
influence in the Church, and therefore the Church is not at all the
place to allude to his private affairs in. And, after all, what do we
know about them? It does seem so low to be led away by gossip.”

“Maria,” said the Rector, severely sorry, “I must beg you to leave me
to my conscience. I shall not refer to his private affairs. I shall put
leading truths in a general way, and let him make the home application.”

“Put the cap on if it fits. Very well: you will injure yourself, and do
no one any good. Lord Nelson won't know it; he is too simple-minded.
But Admiral Darling will never forgive us for insulting him while he is
staying at the Hall.”

“Maria! Well, I have long given up all attempts at reasoning with
you. If I see a man walking into a furnace, do I insult him by saying
beware?”

“As I am beyond all reason, Joshua, it is far above me to understand
that. But if you escape insulting him, what you do is far worse, and
quite unlike a gentleman. You heap a whole pile of insults upon your own
brother clergymen.”

“I do not at all understand you, Maria: you fly off in such a way from
one thing to another!”

“Not at all. Anybody who is not above paying attention must understand
me. When he is at Merton he goes to church, and his Rector is bound to
look after him. When he is at sea, he has his Chaplain, who preaches
whenever the weather permits, and dare not neglect his duties. But the
strongest point of all is this--his very own father and brother are
clergymen, and bound to do their best for him. All these you insult,
and in so many words condemn for neglecting their duty, because you are
unable to resist the pleasure of a stray shot at a celebrated man when
he comes down here for hospitality.”

“My dear, you have put the matter in a new light,” said the Rev. Joshua
Twemlow; “I would be the last man in the world to cast a slur upon any
brother clergyman. But it is a sad denial to me, because I had put it so
neatly, and a line of Latin at the end of it.”

“Never mind, dear. That will do for some one else who deserves it, and
has got no influence. And if you could only put instead of it one of
your beautifully turned expressions about our debt of gratitude to the
noble defender of our country--”

“No, no, Maria!” said her husband, with a smile; “be content without
pushing your victory further than Nelson himself would push it. It may
be my duty to spare him, but I will not fall down and worship him.”

Joshua Twemlow, Bachelor of Divinity, was not very likely to worship
anybody, nor even to admire, without due cause shown. He did not pretend
to be a learned man, any more than he made any other pretense which he
could not justify. But he loved a bit of Latin, whenever he could find
anybody to share it with him, and even in lack of intelligent partners
he indulged sometimes in that utterance. This was a grievance to the
Squire of the parish, because he was expected to enjoy at ear-shot that
which had passed out of the other ear in boyhood, with a painful echo
behind it. But the Admiral had his revenge by passing the Rector's bits
of Latin on--when he could remember them--to some one entitled to an
explanation, which he, with a pleasant smile, vouchsafed. This is one of
the many benefits of a classical education.

But what are such little tags, compared with the pith and marrow of the
man himself? Parson Twemlow was no prig, no pedant, and no popinjay,
but a sensible, upright, honorable man, whose chief defect was a quick
temper. In parish affairs he loved to show his independence of the Hall,
and having a stronger will than Admiral Darling, he mostly conquered
him. But he knew very well how far to go, and never pressed the
supremacy of the Church beyond endurance.

His wife, who was one of the Carnes of Carne Castle, some few miles
to the westward, encouraged him strongly in holding his own when the
Admiral strove to override him. That was her manner of putting the
case; while Admiral Darling would rather have a score of nightmares than
override any one. But the Carnes were a falling as much as the Darlings
were a rising family, and offense comes down the hill like stones
dislodged by the upward traveller. Mrs. Twemlow knew nothing she
disliked so much as any form of haughtiness; it was so small, so petty,
so opposed to all true Christianity. And this made her think that the
Darlings were always endeavoring to patronize her--a thing she would
much rather die than put up with.

This excellent couple had allowed, however, their only son Erle, a
very fine young man, to give his heart entirely to Faith Darling, the
Admiral's eldest daughter, and to win hers to an equal extent; and
instead of displaying any haughtiness, her father had simply said: “Let
them wait two years; they are both very young, and may change their
minds. If they keep of the same mind for two years, they are welcome to
one another.”

For a kinder-hearted man than Admiral Darling never saw the sun.
There was nothing about him wonderful in the way of genius, heroism,
large-mindedness, or unselfishness. But people liked him much better
than if he combined all those vast rarities; because he was lively,
genial, simple, easily moved to wrath or grief, free-handed, a little
fond, perhaps, of quiet and confidential brag, and very fond of gossip.

“I tell you,” he said to Lord Nelson now, as they walked down the hill
to the church together that lovely Sunday morning, “you will not have
seen a finer sight than our fishermen in church--I dare say never.
Of course they don't all go. Nobody could expect it. But as many as a
reasonable man could desire come there, because they know I like it.
Twemlow thinks that they come to please him; but he finds a mighty
difference in his congregation when I and my daughters are out of the
parish. But if he goes away, there they are all the same, or perhaps
even more, to get a change from him. That will show which of us they
care about pleasing.”

“And they are quite right. I hate the levelling system,” the hero of the
Nile replied. “A man should go to church to please his landlord, not to
please the parson. Is the Chaplain to settle how many come to prayers?”

“That is the right way to look at the thing,” said the larger-bodied
Admiral; “and I only wish Twemlow could have heard you. I asked him to
dine with us yesterday, as you know, because you would have done him so
much good; but he sent some trumpery excuse, although his wife was asked
to come with him. She stopped him, no doubt; to look big, I dare say; as
if they could dine with a Lord Nelson every day!”

“They can do that every day, when they dine with a man who has done his
duty. But where is my pretty godchild Dolly? Horatia seems too long for
you. What a long name they gave me! It may have done very well for my
granduncle. But, my dear Lingo, look sharp for your Dolly. She has no
mother, nor even a duenna--she has turned her off, she said yesterday.
Your daughter Faith is an angel, but Dolly--”

“My Dolly is a little devil, I suppose! You always found out everything.
What have you found my Dolly at? Perhaps she got it at her baptism.” A
word against his pet child was steel upon flint to Admiral Darling.

“I am not concerned with your opinion,” Lord Nelson answered, loftily.
“But Horatia Dorothy Darling is my godchild by baptism, and you will
find her down in my will for a thousand pounds, if she behaves well,
and if it should please the Lord to send me some of the prize-money I
deserve.”

This was announced in such a manner, with the future testator's useful
eye bearing brightly on his comrade, and his cocked hat lifted as he
spoke of the great Awarder of prizes, that no one able to smile could
help a friendly and simple smile at him. So Admiral Darling forgot his
wrath, which never had long memory, and scorning even to look round for
Dolly, in whom he felt such confidence, took the mighty warrior by the
good arm and led him toward the peaceful bells.

“Hurry; we shall be late,” he said. “You remember when we called you
'Hurry,' because of being always foremost? But they know better than to
stop the bells till they see me in the church porch. Twemlow wanted to
upset that, for the parsons want to upset everything. And I said: 'Very
well; then I shall square it by locking the gate from your shrubbery.
That will give me five minutes to come down the hill.' For my
grandfather put up that gate, you must know, and of course the key
belongs to me. It saves Twemlow a cable's-length every time, and the
parsons go to church so often now, he would have to make at least
another knot a month. So the bells go on as they used to do. How many
bells do you make it, Mr. Nelson?”

“Eight bells, sir,” Lord Nelson replied, saluting like the middy in
charge of the watch. And at this little turn they both laughed, and went
on, with memory of ancient days, to church.



CHAPTER V

OPINION, MALE AND FEMALE


The fine young parsons of the present generation are too fond of asking
us why we come to church, and assigning fifty reasons out of their own
heads, not one of which is to our credit or theirs; whereas their proper
business is to cure the fish they have caught, instead of asking how
they caught them. Mr. Twemlow had sense enough for this, and treated the
largest congregation he had ever preached to as if they were come for
the good of their souls, and should have it, in spite of Lord Nelson.
But, alas! their bodies fared not so well, and scarcely a man got his
Sunday dinner according to his liking. Never a woman would stay by the
fire for the sake of a ten-pound leg of mutton, and the baker put his
shutters up at half past ten against every veal pie and every loin
of pork. Because in the church there would be seen this day (as the
servants at the Hall told every one) the man whom no Englishman could
behold without pride, and no Frenchman with it--the victor of the Nile,
and of Copenhagen, and countless other conflicts. Knowing that he would
be stared at well, he was equal to the occasion, and the people who saw
him were so proud of the sight that they would talk of it now if they
were alive.

But those who were not there would exhibit more confidence than
conscience by describing every item of his raiment, which verily even
of those who beheld it none could do well, except a tailor or a woman.
Enough that he shone in the light of the sun (which came through a
windowful of bull's-eyes upon him, and was surprised to see stars by
daylight), but the glint of his jewels and glow of his gold diverted no
eye from the calm, sad face which in the day of battle could outflash
them all. That sensitive, mild, complaisant face (humble, and even
homely now, with scathe and scald and the lines of middle age) presented
itself as a great surprise to the many who came to gaze at it. With
its child-like simplicity and latent fire, it was rather the face of a
dreamer and poet than of a warrior and hero.

Mrs. Cheeseman, the wife of Mr. Cheeseman, who kept the main shop in
the village, put this conclusion into better English, when Mrs. Shanks
(Harry's mother) came on Monday to buy a rasher and compare opinions.

“If I could have fetched it to my mind,” she said, “that Squire Darling
were a tarradiddle, and all his wenches liars--which some of them be,
and no mistake--and if I could refuse my own eyes about gold-lace, and
crown jewels, and arms off, happier would I sleep in my bed, ma'am,
every night the Lord seeth good for it. I would sooner have found
hoppers in the best ham in the shop than have gone to church so to
delude myself. But there! that Cheeseman would make me do it. I did
believe as we had somebody fit to do battle for us against Boney, and I
laughed about all they invasion and scares. But now--why, 'a can't say
bo to a goose! If 'a was to come and stand this moment where you be
a-standing, and say, 'Mrs. Cheeseman, I want a fine rasher,' not a bit
of gristle would I trim out, nor put it up in paper for him, as I do for
you, ma'am.”

And Widow Shanks quite agreed with her.

“Never can I tell you what my feelings was, when I seed him a-standing
by the monument, ma'am. But I said to myself--'why, my poor John, as is
now in heaven, poor fellow, would 'a took you up with one hand, my lord,
stars and garters and crowns and all, and put you into his sow-west
pocket.' And so he could have done, Mrs. Cheeseman.”

But the opinion of the men was different, because they knew a bee from a
bull's foot.

“He may not be so very big,” they said, “nor so outrageous thunderin',
as the missus looked out for from what she have read. They always goes
by their own opinions, and wrong a score of times out of twenty. But any
one with a fork to his leg can see the sort of stuff he is made of. He
'tended his duty in the house of the Lord, and he wouldn't look after
the women; but he kept his live eye upon every young chap as were fit
for a man-of-war's-man--Dan Tugwell especial, and young Harry Shanks.
You see if he don't have both of they afore ever the war comes on
again!”

Conscious of filling the public eye, with the privilege of being upon
private view, Lord Nelson had faced the position without flinching, and
drawn all the fire of the enemy. After that he began to make reprisals,
according to his manner, taking no trouble to regard the women--which
debarred them from thinking much of him--but settling with a steady
gaze at each sea-faring man, whether he was made of good stuff or of
pie-crust. And to the credit of the place it must be said that he found
very little of that soft material, but plenty of good stuff, slow,
perhaps, and heavy, but needing only such a soul as his to rouse it.

“What a fine set of fellows you have in your village!” he said to Miss
Darling after dinner, as she sat at the head of her father's table,
for the Admiral had long been a widower. “The finest I have seen on
the south coast anywhere. And they look as if they had been under some
training. I suppose your father had most of them in the Fencibles, last
summer?”

“Not one of them,” Faith answered, with a sweet smile of pride. “They
have their own opinions, and nothing will disturb them. Nobody could get
them to believe for a moment that there was any danger of invasion. And
they carried on all their fishing business almost as calmly as they do
now. For that, of course, they may thank you, Lord Nelson; but they have
not the smallest sense of the obligation.”

“I am used to that, as your father knows; but more among the noble than
the simple. For the best thing I ever did I got no praise, or at any
rate very little. As to the Boulogne affair, Springhaven was quite
right. There was never much danger of invasion. I only wish the villains
would have tried it. Horatia, would you like to see your godfather at
work? I hope not. Young ladies should be peaceful.”

“Then I am not peaceful at all,” cried Dolly, who was sitting by the
maimed side of her “Flapfin,” as her young brother Johnny had nicknamed
him. “Why, if there was always peace, what on earth would any but very
low people find to do? There could scarcely be an admiral, or a general,
or even a captain, or--well, a boy to beat the drums.”

“But no drum would want to be beaten, Horatia,” her elder sister Faith
replied, with the superior mind of twenty-one; “and the admirals and the
generals would have to be--”

“Doctors, or clergymen, or something of that sort, or perhaps even
worse--nasty lawyers.” Then Dolly (whose name was “Horatia” only
in presence of her great godfather) blushed, as befitted the age of
seventeen, at her daring, and looked at her father.

“That last cut was meant for me,” Frank Darling, the eldest of the
family, explained from the opposite side of the table. “Your lordship,
though so well known to us, can hardly be expected to know or remember
all the little particulars of our race. We are four, as you know; and
the elder two are peaceful, while the younger pair are warlike. And I
am to be the 'nasty lawyer,' called to the bar in the fullness of
time--which means after dining sufficiently--to the great disgust of
your little godchild, whose desire from her babyhood has been to get me
shot.”

“LITTLE, indeed! What a word to use about me! You told a great story.
But now you'll make it true.”

“To wit--as we say at Lincoln's Inn--she has not longed always for my
death in battle, but henceforth will do so; but I never shall afford
her that gratification. I shall keep out of danger as zealously as your
lordship rushes into it.”

“Franky going on, I suppose, with some of his usual nonsense,” Admiral
Darling, who was rather deaf, called out from the bottom of the table.
“Nobody pays much attention to him, because he does not mean a word of
it. He belongs to the peace--peace--peace-at-any-price lot. But when a
man wanted to rob him last winter, he knocked him down, and took him by
the throat, and very nearly killed him.”

“That's the only game to play,” exclaimed Lord Nelson, who had been
looking at Frank Darling with undisguised disgust. “My young friend, you
are not such a fool after all. And why should you try to be one?”

“My brother,” said the sweet-tempered Faith, “never tries to be a fool,
Lord Nelson; he only tries to be a poet.”

This made people laugh; and Nelson, feeling that he had been rude to a
youth who could not fairly answer him, jumped from his chair with the
lightness of a boy, and went round to Frank Darling, with his thin
figure leaning forward, and his gray unpowdered hair tossed about, and
upon his wrinkled face that smile which none could ever resist, because
it was so warm and yet so sad.

“Shake hands, my dear young friend,” he cried, “though I can not offer
the right one. I was wrong to call you a fool because you don't look at
things as I do. Poets are almost as good as sailors, and a great deal
better than soldiers. I have felt a gift that way myself, and turned out
some very tidy lines. But I believe they were mainly about myself, and I
never had time to go on with them.”

Such little touches of simplicity and kindness, from a man who never
knew the fear of men, helped largely to produce that love of Nelson
which England felt, and will always feel.

“My lord,” replied the young man, bending low--for he was half a cubit
higher than the mighty captain--“it is good for the world that you have
no right arm, when you disarm it so with your left one.”



CHAPTER VI

AS OTHERS SEE US


Admiral Darling was very particular in trying to keep his grounds and
garden tolerably tidy always. But he never succeeded, for the simple
reason that he listened to every one's excuses; and not understanding a
walk or a lawn half so well as the deck of a battle-ship, he was always
defeated in argument.

“Here's a state of things!” he used to say in summer-time; “thistles
full of seed within a biscuit-heave of my front door, and other
things--I forget their names--with heads like the head of a capstan
bursting, all as full of seeds as a purser is of lies!”

“Your lordship do not understand them subjects,” Mr. Swipes, the head
gardener, was in the habit of replying; “and small blame to you, in my
opinion, after so many years upon the briny wave. Ah! they can't grow
them things there.”

“Swipes, that is true, but to my mind not at all a satisfactory reason
for growing them here, just in front of the house and the windows. I
don't mind a few in the kitchen-garden, but you know as well as I do,
Swipes, that they can have no proper business here.”

“I did hear tell down to the Club, last night,” Mr. Swipes would reply,
after wiping his forehead, as if his whole mind were perspired away,
“though I don't pretend to say how far true it may be, that all the
land of England is to be cultivated for the public good, same as on
the continence, without no propriety or privacy, my lord. But I don't
altogether see how they be to do it. So I thought I'd better ask your
lordship.”

“For the public good! The public-house good, you mean.” The Admiral
answered nine times out of ten, being easily led from the track of his
wrath, and tired of telling Swipes that he was not a lord. “How
many times more must I tell you, Swipes, that I hate that Jacobin
association? Can you tell me of one seaman belonging to it? A set of
fish-jobbers, and men with barrows, and cheap-jacks from up the country.
Not one of my tenants would be such a fool as to go there, even if I
allowed him. I make great allowances for you, Swipes, because of your
obstinate nature. But don't let me hear of that Club any more, or YOU
may go and cultivate for the public good.”

“Your lordship knows that I goes there for nothing except to keep up my
burial. And with all the work there is upon this place, the Lord only
knows when I may be requiring of it. Ah! I never see the like; I never
did. And a blade of grass the wrong way comes down on poor old Swipes!”

Hereupon the master, having done his duty, was relieved from overdoing
it, and went on other business with a peaceful mind. The feelings,
however, of Mr. Swipes were not to be appeased so lightly, but demanded
the immediate satisfaction of a pint of beer. And so large was his
charity that if his master fell short of duty upon that point, he
accredited him with the good intention, and enabled him to discharge it.

“My dear soul,” he said, with symptoms of exhaustion, to good Mrs.
Cloam, the housekeeper, who had all the keys at her girdle, about ten
o'clock on the Monday morning, “what a day we did have yesterday!”

“A mercy upon me, Mr. Swipes,” cried Mrs. Cloam, who was also short of
breath, “how you did exaggerate my poor narves, a-rushing up so soft,
with the cold steel in both your hands!”

“Ah! ma'am, it have right to be a good deal wuss than that,” the
chivalrous Swipes made answer, with the scythe beside his ear. “It don't
consarn what the masters say, though enough to take one's legs off. But
the ladies, Mrs. Cloam, the ladies--it's them as takes our heads off.”

“Go 'long with you, Mr. Swipes! You are so disastrous at turning things.
And how much did he say you was to have this time? Here's Jenny Shanks
coming up the passage.”

“Well, he left it to myself; he have that confidence in me. And little
it is I should ever care to take, with the power of my own will, ma'am.
Why, the little brown jug, ma'am, is as much as I can manage even of our
small beer now. Ah! I know the time when I would no more have thought
of rounding of my mouth for such small stuff than of your growing up,
ma'am, to be a young woman with the sponsorship of this big place upon
you. Wonderful! wonderful! And only yesterday, as a man with a gardening
mind looks at it, you was the prettiest young maiden on the green, and
the same--barring marriage--if you was to encounter with the young men
now.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Cloam, who was fifty, if a day, “how you do make me
think of sad troubles, Mr. Swipes! Jenny, take the yellow jug with the
three beef-eaters on it, and go to the third cask from the door--the key
turns upside down, mind--and let me hear you whistle till you bring me
back the key. Don't tell me nonsense about your lips being dry. You can
whistle like a blackbird when you choose.”

“Here's to your excellent health, Mrs. Cloam, and as blooming as it
finds you now, ma'am! As pretty a tap as I taste since Christmas, and
another dash of malt would 'a made it worthy a'most to speak your health
in. Well, ma'am, a leetle drop in crystal for yourself, and then for
my business, which is to inquire after your poor dear health to-day.
Blooming as you are, ma'am, you must bear in mind that beauty is only
skin-deep, Mrs. Cloam; and the purtier a flower is, the more delicate it
grows. I've a-been a-thinking of you every night, ma'am, knowing how
you must 'a been put about and driven. The Admiral have gone down to the
village, and Miss Dolly to stare at the boats going out.”

“Then I may speak a word for once at ease, Mr. Swipes, though the Lord
alone knows what a load is on my tongue. It requires a fine gardener,
being used to delicacy, to enter into half the worry we have to put up
with. Heroes of the Nile, indeed, and bucklers of the country! Why, he
could not buckle his own shoe, and Jenny Shanks had to do it for him.
Not that I blame him for having one arm, and a brave man he is to have
lost it, but that he might have said something about the things I got
up at a quarter to five every morning to make up for him. For cook is
no more than a smoke-jack, Mr. Swipes; if she keeps the joint turning,
that's as much as she can do.”

“And a little too fond of good beer, I'm afeard,” replied Mr. Swipes,
having emptied his pot. “Men's heads was made for it, but not women's,
till they come to superior stations in life. But, oh, Mrs. Cloam, what a
life we lead with the crotchets of they gentry!”

“It isn't that so much, Mr. Swipes, if only there was any way of giving
satisfaction. I wish everybody who is born to it to have the very best
of everything, likewise all who have fought up to it. But to make all
the things and have nothing made of them, whether indigestion or want
of appetite, turns one quite into the Negroes almost, that two or three
people go on with.”

“I don't look at what he hath aten or left,” Mr. Swipes made answer,
loftily; “that lieth between him and his own stommick. But what hath a'
left for me, ma'am? He hath looked out over the garden when he pleased,
and this time of year no weeds is up, and he don't know enough of things
to think nothing of them. When his chaise come down I was out by the
gate with a broom in my hand, and I pulled off my hat, but his eye never
seemed to lay hold of me.”

“His eye lays hold of everything, whether he makes 'em feel or no.
One thing I'm sure of--he was quite up to Miss Dolly, and the way she
carries on with you know who, every blessed Sunday. If that is what they
go to church for--”

“But, my dear soul,” said the genial Swipes, whose heart was enlarged
with the power of good beer, “when you and I was young folk, what did
we go to church for? I can't speak for you, ma'am, being ever so much
younger, and a baby in the gallery in long clothes, if born by that
time; but so far as myself goes, it was the girls I went to look at, and
most of 'em come as well to have it done to them.”

“That never was my style, Mr. Swipes, though I know there were some not
above it. And amongst equals I won't say that there need be much harm
in it. But for a young man in the gallery, with a long stick of the
vile-base in his hand, and the only clean shirt of the week on his back,
and nothing but a plank of pitch to keep him, however good-looking he
may be, to be looking at the daughter, and the prettiest one too, though
not the best, some people think, of the gentleman that owns all the
houses and the haven--presumption is the smallest word that I can
find to use for it; and for her to allow it, fat--fat something in the
nation.”

“Well, ma'am,” said Mr. Swipes, whose views were loose and liberal, “it
seems a little shock at first to those on trust in families. But Dannel
is a brave boy, and might fight his way to glory, and then they has
the pick of the femmels up to a thousand pound a year. You know what
happened the miller's son, no further off than Upton. And if it hadn't
been for Dannel, when she was a little chit, where would proud Miss
Dolly be, with her feathers and her furbelows? Natur' is the thing
I holds by, and I sees a deal of it. And betwixt you and me and the
bedpost, ma'am, whoever hath Miss Dolly will have to ride to London on
this here scythe. Miss Faith is the lass for a good quiet man, without
no airs and graces, and to my judgment every bit as comely, and more
of her to hold on by. But the Lord 'a mercy upon us. Mrs. Cloam, you've
a-been married like my poor self; and you knows what we be, and we knows
what you be. Looks 'ain't much to do with it after the first week or
two. It's the cooking, and the natur', and the not going contrairy.
B'lieve Miss Dolly would go contrairy to a hangel, if her was j'ined to
him three days.”

“Prejudice! prejudice!” the housekeeper replied, while shaking her
finger severely at him. “You ought to be above such opinions, Mr.
Swipes, a superior man, such as you are. If Miss Faith came into your
garden reading books, and finding fault here and there, and sniffing
at the flowers, a quarter so often as pretty Dolly does, perhaps you
wouldn't make such a perfect angel of her, and run down her sister in
comparison. But your wonderful Miss Faith comes peeping here and poking
there into pots and pans, and asking the maids how their mothers are, as
if her father kept no housekeeper. She provoked me so in the simple-room
last week, as if I was hiding thieves there, that I asked her at last
whether she expected to find Mr. Erle there. And you should have seen
how she burst out crying; for something had turned on her mind before.”

“Well, I couldn't have said that to her,” quoth the tender-hearted
Swipes--“not if she had come and routed out every key and every box,
pot, pan, and pannier in the tool-house and stoke-hole and vinery! The
pretty dear! the pretty dear! And such a lady as she is! Ah, you women
are hard-hearted to one another, when your minds are up! But take my
word for it, Mrs. Cloam, no one will ever have the chance of making your
beautiful Miss Dolly cry by asking her where her sweetheart is.”



CHAPTER VII

A SQUADRON IN THE DOWNS


“My dear girls, all your courage is gone,” said Admiral Darling to his
daughters at luncheon, that same Monday; “departed perhaps with Lord
Nelson and Frank. I hate the new style of such come-and-go visits, as
if there was no time for anything. Directly a man knows the ways of the
house, and you can take him easily, off he goes. Just like Hurry, he
never can stop quiet. He talks as if peace was the joy of his life, and
a quiet farm his paradise, and very likely he believes it. But my belief
is that a year of peace would kill him, now that he has made himself so
famous. When that sort of thing begins, it seems as if it must go on.”

“But, father dear,” exclaimed the elder daughter, “you could have done
every single thing that Lord Nelson has ever contrived to do, if you
had only happened to be there, and equally eager for destruction. I
have heard you say many times, though not of course before him, that you
could have managed the battle of the Nile considerably better than he
did. And instead of allowing the great vessel to blow up, you would have
brought her safe to Spithead.”

“My dear, you must have quite misunderstood me. Be sure that you never
express such opinions, which are entirely your own, in the presence
of naval officers. Though I will not say that they are quite without
foundation.”

“Why, papa,” cried Miss Dolly, who was very truthful, when her own
interests were not involved, “you have often said twice as much as that.
How well I remember having heard you say--”

“You young people always back up one another, and you don't care what
you make your poor father say. I wonder you don't vow that I declared
I could jump over the moon with my uniform on. But I'll tell you what
we'll do, to bring back your senses--we will go for a long ride this
fine afternoon. I've a great mind to go as far as Stonnington.”

“Now how many times have you told us that? I won't believe it till we
get there,” young Dolly answered, with her bright eyes full of joy. “You
must be ashamed of yourself, papa, for neglecting your old friend's son
so long.”

“Well, to tell you the truth, I am, my dear,” confessed the good-natured
Admiral; “but no one but myself has the least idea of the quantity of
things I have to do.”

“Exactly what old Swipes said this very morning, only much more
impressively. And I really did believe him, till I saw a yellow jug, and
a horn that holds a pint, in the summer-house. He threw his coat over
them, but it was too late.”

“Dolly, I shall have to put you in the blackhole. You belong too much
to the rising generation, or the upstart generation is the proper word.
What would Lord Nelson say? I must have him back again. He is the man
for strict discipline.”

“Oh, I want to ask one thing about my great godfather. You know he only
came down with one portmanteau, and his cocked-hat box, and two hampers.
But when I went into his bedroom to see, as a goddaughter should, that
his pillow was smooth, there he had got tacked up at the head of his
bed a picture of some very beautiful lady, and another at the side, and
another at the foot! And Jenny Shanks, who couldn't help peeping in, to
see how a great hero goes to sleep, wishes that she may be an old maid
forever if she did not see him say his prayers to them. Now the same
fate befall me if I don't find out who it is. You must know, papa, so
you had better tell at once.”

“That hussy shall leave the house tomorrow. I never heard of anything so
shameless. Mrs. Cloam seems to have no authority whatever. And you
too, Dolly, had no business there. If any one went to see the room
comfortable, it should have been Faith, as the lady of the house. Ever
since you persuaded me that you were too old for a governess, you seem
to be under no discipline at all.”

“Now you know that you don't mean that, papa. You say those cruel things
just to make me kiss you,” cried Dolly, with the action suited to the
word, and with her bright hair falling upon his snowy beard the father
could not help returning the salute; “but I must know who that lady is.
And what can he want with three pictures of her?”

“How should I know, Dolly? Perhaps it is his mother, or perhaps it is
the Queen of Naples, who made a Duke of him for what he did out there.
Now be quick, both of you, or no ride to-day. It is fifteen long miles
to Stonnington, I am sure, and I am not going to break my neck. As
it is, we must put dinner off till half past six, and we shall all be
starved by that time. Quick, girls, quick! I can only give you twenty
minutes.”

The Admiral, riding with all the vigor of an ancient mariner, looked
well between his two fair daughters, as they turned their horses' heads
inland, and made over the downs for Stonnington. Here was beautiful
cantering ground, without much furze or many rabbit-holes, and lovely
air flowing over green waves of land, to greet and to deepen the rose
upon young cheeks. Behind them was the broad sea, looking steadfast,
and spread with slowly travelling tints; before them and around lay the
beauty of the earth, with the goodness of the sky thrown over it. The
bright world quivered with the breath of spring, and her smile was shed
on everything.

“What a lovely country we have been through! I should like to come here
every day,” said Faith, as they struck into the London road again. “If
Stonnington is as nice as this, Mr. Scudamore must be happy there.”

“Well, we shall see,” her father answered. “My business has been upon
the coast so much, that I know very little about Stonnington. But
Scudamore has such a happy nature that nothing would come much amiss to
him. You know why he is here, of course?”

“No, I don't, papa. You are getting so mysterious that you never tell us
anything now,” replied Dolly. “I only know that he was in the navy, and
now he is in a grammar school. The last time I saw him he was about a
yard high.”

“He is a good bit short of two yards now,” said the Admiral, smiling as
he thought of him, “but quite tall enough for a sailor, Dolly, and the
most active young man I ever saw in my life, every inch of him sound and
quick and true. I shall think very little of your judgment unless you
like him heartily; not at first, perhaps, because he is so shy, but as
soon as you begin to know him. I mean to ask him to come down as soon
as he can get a holiday. His captain told me, when he served in the
Diomede, that there was not a man in the ship to come near him for
nimbleness and quiet fearlessness.”

“Then what made him take to his books again? Oh, how terribly dull he
must find them! Why, that must be Stonnington church, on the hill!”

“Yes, and the old grammar school close by. I was very near going there
once myself, but they sent me to Winchester instead. It was partly
through me that he got his berth here, though not much to thank me for,
I am afraid. Sixty pounds a year and his rations isn't much for a man
who has been at Cambridge. But even that he could not get in the navy
when the slack time came last year. He held no commission, like many
other fine young fellows, but had entered as a first-class volunteer.
And so he had no rating when this vile peace was patched up--excuse me,
my dear, what I meant to say was, when the blessings of tranquillity
were restored. And before that his father, my dear old friend, died very
suddenly, as you have heard me say, without leaving more than would bury
him. Don't talk any more of it. It makes me sad to think of it.”

“But,” persisted Dolly, “I could never understand why a famous man like
Sir Edmond Scudamore--a physician in large practice, and head doctor to
the King, as you have often told us--could possibly have died in that
sort of way, without leaving any money, or at least a quantity of
valuable furniture and jewels. And he had not a number of children,
papa, to spend all his money, as I do yours, whenever I get the chance;
though you are growing so dreadfully stingy now that I never can look
even decent.”

“My dear, it is a very long sad story. Not about my stinginess, I
mean--though that is a sad story, in another sense, but will not move my
compassion. As to Sir Edmond, I can only tell you now that, while he was
a man of great scientific knowledge, he knew very little indeed of money
matters, and was not only far too generous, but what is a thousand
times worse, too trustful. Being of an honorable race himself, and an
honorable sample of it, he supposed that a man of good family must be
a gentleman; which is not always the case. He advanced large sums of
money, and signed bonds for a gentleman, or rather a man of that rank,
whose name does not concern you; and by that man he was vilely betrayed;
and I would rather not tell you the rest of it. Poor Blyth had to leave
Cambridge first, where he was sure to have done very well indeed, and at
his wish he was sent afloat, where he would have done even better; and
then, as his father's troubles deepened, and ended in his death of heart
complaint, the poor boy was left to keep his broken-hearted mother upon
nothing but a Latin Grammar. And I fear it is like a purser's dip. But
here we are at Stonnington--a long steep pitch. Let us slacken sail, my
dears, as we have brought no cockswain. Neither of you need land, you
know, but I shall go into the schoolroom.”

“One thing I want to know,” said the active-minded Dolly, as the horses
came blowing their breath up the hill: “if his father was Sir Edmond,
and he is the only child, according to all the laws of nature, he ought
to be Sir Blyth Scudamore.”

“It shows how little you have been out--as good Mrs. Twemlow expresses
it--that you do not even understand the laws of nature as between a
baronet and a knight.”

“Oh, to be sure; I recollect! How very stupid of me! The one goes on,
and the other doesn't, after the individual stops. But whose fault is
it that I go out so little? So you see you are caught in your own trap,
papa.”



CHAPTER VIII

A LESSON IN THE AENEID


In those days Stonnington was a very pretty village, and such it
continued to be until it was ravaged by a railway. With the railway came
all that is hideous and foul, and from it fled all that is comely. The
cattle-shed, called by rail-highwaymen “the Station,” with its roof of
iron Pan-pipes and red bull's-eyes stuck on stack-poles, whistles and
stares where the grand trees stood and the village green lay sleeping.
On the site of the gray-stone grammar school is an “Operative
Institute,” whose front (not so thick as the skin of a young ass) is
gayly tattooed with a ringworm of wind-bricks. And the old manor-house,
where great authors used to dine, and look out with long pipes through
the ivy, has been stripped of every shred of leaf, and painted red and
yellow, and barge-boarded into “the Temperance Tap.”

Ere ever these heathen so furiously raged, there was peace and content,
and the pleasure of the eyes, and of neighborly feeling abundance.
The men never burst with that bubble of hurry which every man now is
inflated with; and the women had time enough to mind one another's
affairs, without which they grow scandalous. And the trees, that kept
company with the houses, found matter for reflection in their calm blue
smoke, and the green crop that promised a little grove upon the roof.
So that as the road went up the hill, the traveller was content to leave
his legs to nature, while his eyes took their leisure of pleasant views,
and of just enough people to dwell upon.

At the top of the hill rose the fine old church, and next to it, facing
on the road itself, without any kind of fence before it, stood the
grammar school of many generations. This was a long low building, ridged
with mossy slabs, and ribbed with green, where the drip oozed down
the buttresses. But the long reach of the front was divided by a gable
projecting a little into the broad high-road. And here was the way,
beneath a low stone arch, into a porch with oak beams bulging and a
bell-rope dangling, and thence with an oaken door flung back into the
dark arcade of learning.

This was the place to learn things in, with some possibility of keeping
them, and herein lay the wisdom of our ancestors. Could they ever have
known half as much as they did, and ten times as much as we know, if
they had let the sun come in to dry it all up, as we do? Will even the
fourteen-coated onion root, with its bottom exposed to the sun, or will
a clever puppy grow long ears, in the power of strong daylight?

The nature and nurture of solid learning were better understood when
schools were built from which came Shakespeare and Bacon and Raleigh;
and the glare of the sun was not let in to baffle the light of the
eyes upon the mind. And another consideration is that wherever there is
light, boys make a noise, which conduces but little to doctrine; whereas
in soft shadow their muscles relax, and their minds become apprehensive.
Thus had this ancient grammar school of Stonnington fostered many
scholars, some of whom had written grammars for themselves and their
posterity.

The year being only at the end of March, and the day going on for five
o'clock, the light was just right, in the long low room, for correction
of manners and for discipline. Two boys had been horsed and brushed up
well, which had strengthened the conscience of all the rest, while sobs
and rubs of the part affected diffused a tender silence. Dr. Swinks,
the head-master, was leaning back in his canopied oaken chair, with the
pride inspired by noble actions.

“What wonderfully good boys!” Dolly whispered, as she peeped in through
the dark porch with Faith, while her father was giving the horses in
charge to the hostler from the inn across the way; “I declare that I
shall be frightened even to look at Mr. Scudamore, if this is a specimen
of what he does. There is scarcely a boy looking off his book. But
how old he does look! I suppose it must be the effect of so much hard
teaching.”

“You silly thing,” her sister answered; “you are looking at the great
head-master. Mr. Scudamore is here at the bottom of the school. Between
these big hinges you can see him; and he looks as young as you do.”

Miss Dolly, who dearly loved any sly peep, kept her light figure back
and the long skirt pulled in, as she brought her bright eyes to the slit
between the heavy black door and the stone-work. And she speedily gave
her opinion.

“He is nothing but a regular frump. I declare I am dreadfully
disappointed. No wonder the title did not come on! He is nothing but a
very soft-natured stupe. Why, the boys can do what they like with him!”

Certainly the scholars of the Virgil class, which Blyth Scudamore was
dealing with, had recovered from the querimonies of those two sons of
Ovid, on the further side of Ister, and were having a good laugh at the
face of “Captain Scuddy,” as they called their beloved preceptor. For
he, being gifted with a gentle sense of humor, together with a patient
love of the origin of things, was questing in his quiet mind what had
led a boy to render a well-known line as follows: “Such a quantity of
salt there was, to season the Roman nation.” Presently he hit upon the
clue to this great mystery. “Mola, the salted cake,” he said; “and the
next a little error of conjugation. You have looked out your words,
Smith, but chanced upon the wrong ones.”

“Oh, Captain Scuddy,” cried the head boy, grinning wisely, though he
might have made just the same blunder himself; “after that, do tell
us one of your sea-stories. It will strike five in about five minutes.
Something about Nelson, and killing ten great Frenchmen.”

“Oh, do,” cried the other little fellows, crowding round him. “It is
ever so much better than Virgil, Captain Scuddy!”

“I am not Captain Scuddy, as I tell you every day. I'm afraid I am a
great deal too good-natured with you. I shall have to send a dozen of
you up to be caned.”

“No, you couldn't do that if you tried, Captain Scuddy. But what are you
thinking of, all this time? There are two pretty ladies in riding-habits
peeping at you from the bell porch. Why, you have got sweethearts,
Captain Scuddy! What a shame of you never to have told us!”

The youngest and fairest of all the boys there could scarcely have
blushed more deeply than their classical tutor did, as he stooped for
his hat, and shyly went between the old desks to the door in the porch.
All the boys looked after him with the deepest interest, and made
up their minds to see everything he did. This was not at all what he
desired, and the sense of it increased his hesitation and confusion. Of
the Admiral's lovely daughters he had heard while in the navy, and
now he was frightened to think that perhaps they were come here to
reconnoitre him. But luckily the Admiral was by this time to the fore,
and he marched into the school-room and saluted the head-master.

“Dr. Swinks,” he said, “I am your very humble servant, Vice-Admiral of
the Blue, Charles Darling, and beg a thousand pardons for intrusion on
deep learning. But they tell me that your watch is over in some half a
minute. Allow me to ask for the son of an old friend, Blyth Scudamore,
late of the Diomede frigate, but now of this ancient and learned grammar
school. When his labors are over, I would gladly speak with him.”

“Boys may go,” the head-master pronounced, as the old clock wheezed
instead of striking. “Sir, my valued young coadjutor is advancing from
the fourth form toward you.”

The Doctor was nice in his choice of words, and prided himself on
Johnsonian precision, but his young coadjutor's advance was hardly to be
distinguished from a fine retreat. Like leaves before the wind, the
boys rushed out by a back door into the play-ground, while the master
solemnly passed to his house, with a deep slow bow to the ladies; and
there was poor Scudamore--most diffident of men whenever it came to
lady-work--left to face the visitors with a pleasing knowledge that his
neckcloth was dishevelled, and his hair sheafed up, the furrows of his
coat broadcast with pounce, and one of his hands gone to sleep from
holding a heavy Delphin for three-quarters of an hour.

As he came out thus into the evening light, which dazed his blue eyes
for a moment, Miss Dolly turned away to hide a smile, but Faith, upon
her father's introduction, took his hand and looked at him tenderly. For
she was a very soft-hearted young woman, and the tale of his troubles
and goodness to his mother had moved her affection toward him, while
as one who was forever pledged--according to her own ideas--to a hero
beyond comparison, she was able to regard young men with mercy, and with
pity, if they had none to love. “How hard you have been at work!” she
said; “it makes us seem so lazy! But we never can find any good thing to
do.”

“That's a cut at me,” cried the Admiral. “Scudamore, when you come to my
age, be wiser than to have any daughters. Sure enough, they find no good
to do; and they not only put all the fault of that on me, but they make
me the victim of all the mischief they invent. Dolly, my darling, wear
that cap if it fits. But you have not shaken hands with Mr. Scudamore
yet. I hope you will do so, some hundreds of times.”

“Not all at once, papa; or how thankful he would be! But stop, I have
not got half my glove off; this fur makes them stick so.”

Miss Dolly was proud of her hands, and lost few chances of getting them
looked at. Then with a little smile, partly at herself for petulance,
partly to him for forgiveness, she offered her soft warm rich white
hand, and looked at him beautifully as he took it. Alack and alas for
poor “Captain Scuddy”!

His eyes, with a quick shy glance, met hers; and hers with soft inquiry
answered, “I wonder what you think of me?” Whenever she met a new face,
this was her manner of considering it.

“Scudamore, I shall not allow you any time to think about it,” Admiral
Darling broke in suddenly, so that the young man almost jumped.
“Although you have cut the service for a while, because of our stingy
peacefulness, you are sure to come back to us again when England wants
English, not Latin and Greek. I am your commanding officer, and my
orders are that you come to us from Saturday till Monday. I shall send
a boat--or at least I mean a buggy--to fetch you, as soon as you are off
duty, and return you the same way on Monday. Come, girls, 'twill be dark
before we are home; and since the patrols were withdrawn, I hear there's
a highwayman down this road again. That is one of the blessings
of peace, Scudamore; even as Latin and Greek are. 'Apertis otia
portis'--Open the gates for laziness. Ah, I should have done well at old
Winton, they tell me, if I had not happened to run away to sea.”



CHAPTER IX

THE MAROON


If yet there remained upon our southern coast a home for the rarer
virtues, such as gratitude, content, liberality (not of other people's
goods alone), faith in a gracious Providence, and strict abstinence from
rash labor, that home and stronghold was Springhaven. To most men good
success brings neither comfort, nor tranquillity, nor so much as a stool
to sit upon, but comes as a tread-mill which must be trodden without any
getting to the top of it. Not so did these wise men take their luck. If
ever they came from the fickle wave-bosom to the firm breast of land on
a Saturday, with a fine catch of fish, and sold it well--and such was
their sagacity that sooner would they keep it for cannibal temptation
than sell it badly--did they rush into the waves again, before they had
dried their breeches? Not they; nor did their wives, who were nearly
all good women, stir them up to be off again. Especially at this time of
year, with the days pulling out, and the season quickening, and the fish
coming back to wag their tails upon the shallows, a pleasant race of men
should take their pleasure, and leave flints to be skinned by the sons
of flint.

This was the reason why Miss Dolly Darling had watched in vain at
the Monday morning tide for the bold issue of the fishing fleet. The
weariless tide came up and lifted the bedded keel and the plunged
forefoot, and gurgled with a quiet wash among the straky bends, then
lurched the boats to this side and to that, to get their heft correctly,
and dandled them at last with their bowsprits dipped and their little
mast-heads nodding. Every brave smack then was mounted, and riding, and
ready for a canter upon the broad sea: but not a blessed man came to set
her free. Tethered by head and by heel, she could only enjoy the poised
pace of the rocking-horse, instead of the racer's delight in careering
across the free sweep of the distance.

Springhaven had done so well last week, that this week it meant to do
still better, by stopping at home till the money was gone, and making
short work afterward. Every man thoroughly enjoyed himself, keeping
sober whenever good manners allowed, foregoing all business, and
sauntering about to see the folk hard at work who had got no money. On
Wednesday, however, an order was issued by Captain Zebedee Tugwell that
all must be ready for a three days' trip when the tide should serve,
which would be at the first of the ebb, about ten in the morning. The
tides were slackening now, and the smacks had required some change of
berth, but still they were not very far from the Admiral's white gate.

“I shall go down to see them, papa, if you please,” Dolly said to her
father at breakfast-time. “They should have gone on Monday; but they
were too rich; and I think it very shameful of them. I dare say they
have not got a halfpenny left, and that makes them look so lively. Of
course they've been stuffing, and they won't move fast, and they can't
expect any more dinner till they catch it. But they have got so much
bacon that they don't care.”

“What could they have better, I should like to know?” asked the Admiral,
who had seen hard times. “Why, I gave seven men three dozen apiece for
turning their noses up at salt horse, just because he whisked his tail
in the copper. Lord bless my soul! what is the nation coming to, when a
man can't dine upon cold bacon?”

“No, it is not that, papa. They are very good in that way, as their
wives will tell you. Jenny Shanks tells me the very same thing, and
of course she knows all about them. She knew they would never think of
going out on Monday, and if I had asked her I might have known it too.
But she says that they are sure to catch this tide.”

“Very well, Dolly. Go you and catch them. You are never content without
seeing something. Though what there is to see in a lot of lubberly craft
pushing off with punt-poles--”

“Hush, papa, hush! Don't be so contemptuous. What did my godfather say
the other day? And I suppose he understands things.”

“Don't quote your godfather against your father. It was never intended
in the Catechism. And if it was, I would never put up with it.”

Dolly made off; for she knew that her father, while proud of his great
impartiality, candor, and scorn of all trumpery feeling, was sometimes
unable to make out the reason why a queer little middy of his own should
now stand upon the giddy truck of fame, while himself, still ahead of
him in the Navy List, might pace his quarter-deck and have hats touched
to him, but never a heart beat one pulse quicker. Jealous he was not;
but still, at least in his own family--

Leaving her dear father to his meditations, which Faith ran up to kiss
away, fair Dolly put on a plain hat and scarf, quite good enough for
the fishermen, and set off in haste for the Round-house, to see the
expedition start. By the time she was there, and had lifted the sashes,
and got the spy-glass ready, the flow of the tide was almost spent, and
the brimming moment of the slack was nigh. For this all the folk of the
village waited, according to the tradition of the place; the manhood
and boyhood, to launch forth; old age, womanhood, and childhood, to
contribute the comfort of kind looks and good-by. The tides, though not
to be compared to the winds in fickleness, are capricious here, having
sallies of irregularity when there has been a long period of northeast
winds, bringing a counter-flow to the Atlantic influx. And a man must
be thoroughly acquainted with the coast, as well as the moon and the
weather, to foretell how the water will rise and fall there. For the
present, however, there was no such puzzle. The last lift of the quiet
tide shone along the beach in three straight waves, shallow steps that
arose inshore, and spent themselves without breaking.

“Toorn o' the tide!” the Captain shouted; “all aboord, aboord, my lads!
The more 'ee bide ashore, the wuss 'ee be. See to Master Cheeseman's
craft! Got a good hour afront of us. Dannel, what be mooning at? Fetch
'un a clout on his head, Harry Shanks; or Tim, you run up and do it.
Doubt the young hosebird were struck last moon, and his brains put to
salt in a herring-tub. Home with you, wife! And take Dan, if you will.
He'd do more good at the chipping job, with the full moon in his head
so.”

“Then home I will take my son, Master Tugwell,” his wife answered, with
much dignity, for all the good wives of Springhaven heard him, and what
would they think of her if she said nothing? “Home I will take my son
and yours, and the wisest place for him to abide in, with his father set
agin him so. Dannel, you come along of me. I won't have my eldest boy
gainsaid so.”

Zebedee Tugwell closed his lips, and went on with his proper business.
All the women would side with him if he left them the use of their own
minds, and the sound of his wife's voice last; while all the men in
their hearts felt wisdom. But the young man, loath to be left behind,
came doubtfully down to the stern of the boat, which was pushed off for
the Rosalie. And he looked at the place where he generally sat, and then
at his father and the rest of them.

“No gappermouths here!” cried his father, sternly. “Get theezell home
with the vemmelvolk. Shove off without him, Tim! How many more tides
would 'ee lose?”

Young Dan, whose stout legs were in the swirling water, snatched up his
striped woolsey from under the tiller, threw it on his shoulder, and
walked off, without a farewell to any one. The whole of Springhaven that
could see saw it, and they never had seen such a thing before. Captain
Zeb stood up and stared, with his big forehead coming out under his
hat, and his golden beard shining in the morning sun; but the only
satisfaction for his eyes was the back of his son growing smaller and
smaller.

“Chip of the old block!” “Sarve 'ee right, Cap'en!” “Starve 'un back
to his manners again!” the inferior chieftains of the expedition cried,
according to their several views of life. But Zebedee Tugwell paid no
heed to thoughts outside of his own hat and coat. “Spake when I ax you,”
 he said, urbanely, but with a glance which conveyed to any too urgent
sympathizer that he would be knocked down, when accessible.

But, alas! the less-disciplined women rejoiced, with a wink at their
departing lords, as Mrs. Zebedee set off in chase of her long-striding
Daniel. The mother, enriched by home affections and course of duties
well performed, was of a rounded and ample figure, while the son was
tall, and thin as might be one of strong and well-knit frame. And the
sense of wrong would not permit him to turn his neck, or take a glance
at the enterprise which had rejected him.

“How grand he does look! what a noble profile!” thought Dolly, who had
seen everything without the glass, but now brought it to bear upon his
countenance. “He is like the centurion in the painted window, or a Roman
medallion with a hat on. But that old woman will never catch him. She
might just as well go home again. He is walking about ten miles an hour,
and how beautifully straight his legs are! What a shame that he should
not be a gentleman! He is ten times more like one than most of the
officers that used to come bothering me so. I wonder how far he means
to go? I do hope he won't make away with himself. It is almost enough
to make him do it, to be so insulted by his own father, and disgraced
before all the village, simply because he can't help having his poor
head so full of me! Nobody shall ever say that I did anything to give
him the faintest encouragement, because it would be so very wicked and
so cruel, considering all he has done for me. But if he comes back,
when his father is out of sight, and he has walked off his righteous
indignation, and all these people are gone to dinner, it might give a
turn to his thoughts if I were to put on my shell-colored frock and
the pale blue sash, and just go and see, on the other side of the
stepping-stones, how much longer they mean to be with that boat they
began so long ago.”



CHAPTER X

ACROSS THE STEPPING-STONES


Very good boats were built at this time in the south of England, stout,
that is to say, and strong, and fit to ride over a heavy sea, and plunge
gallantly into the trough of it. But as the strongest men are seldom
swift of foot or light of turn, so these robust and sturdy boats must
have their own time and swing allowed them, ere ever they would come
round or step out. Having met a good deal of the sea, they knew, like
a man who has felt a good deal of the world, that heavy endurance
and patient bluffness are safer to get through the waves somehow than
sensitive fibre and elegant frame.

But the sea-going folk of Springhaven had learned, by lore of
generations, to build a boat with an especial sheer forward, beam far
back, and deep run of stern, so that she was lively in the heaviest of
weather, and strong enough to take a good thump smiling, when unable to
dance over it. Yet as a little thing often makes all the difference in
great things, it was very difficult for anybody to find out exactly
the difference between a boat built here and a boat built ten or twenty
miles off, in imitation of her. The sea, however, knew the difference in
a moment between the true thing and the counterfeit, and encouraged
the one to go merrily on, while it sent back the other staggering. The
secret lay chiefly in a hollow curve forward of nine or ten planks upon
either side, which could only be compassed by skilful use of adze and
chisel, frame-saw and small tools, after choice of the very best timber,
free from knots, tough, and flexible. And the best judge of these points
was Zebedee Tugwell.

Not having cash enough just at present (by reason of family expenses,
and the high price of bread and of everything else) to set upon the
stocks the great smack of the future, which should sail round the
Rosalie, Captain Tugwell was easing his mind by building a boat for
stormy weather, such as they very seldom have inshore, but are likely to
meet with outside the Head. As yet there were not many rowing boats here
fit to go far in tumbling water, though the few that could do it did
it well, and Tugwell's intention was to beat them all, in power, and
spring, and buoyancy. The fame of his meaning was spread for as much as
twenty leagues along the coast; and jealous people laughed, instead of
waiting for him to finish it.

Young Daniel had been well brought up in the mysteries of his father's
craft, and having a vigorous turn of wrist, as well as a true eye and
quick brain, he was even outgrowing the paternal skill, with experiments
against experience. He had beautiful theories of his own, and felt
certain that he could prove them, if any one with cash could be brought
to see their beauty. His father admitted that he had good ideas, and
might try them, if any fool would find the money.

Wroth as he had been at the sharp rebuff and contumely of his father,
young Daniel, after a long strong walk, began to look at things more
peaceably. The power of the land and the greatness of the sea and the
goodness of the sky unangered him, and the air that came from some
oyster beds, as the tide was falling, hungered him. Home he went, in
good time for dinner, as the duty of a young man is; and instead of
laughing when he came by, the maids of Springhaven smiled at him. This
quite righted him in his own opinion, yet leaving him the benefit of
the doubt which comes from a shake in that cradle lately. He made a good
dinner, and shouldered his adze, with a frail of tools hanging on
the neck of it, and troubled with nothing but love--which is a woe of
self-infliction--whistled his way to the beach, to let all the women
understand that he was not a bit ashamed. And they felt for him all the
more, because he stood up for himself a little.

Doubtful rights go cheap; and so the foreshore westward of the brook
being claimed by divers authorities, a tidy little cantle of it had
been leased by Admiral Darling, lord of the manor, to Zebedee Tugwell,
boat-builder, for the yearly provent of two and sixpence sterling. The
Admiral's man of law, Mr. Furkettle, had strongly advised, and
well prepared the necessary instrument, which would grow into value
by-and-by, as evidence of title. And who could serve summary process of
ejectment upon an interloper in a manner so valid as Zebedee's would be?
Possession was certain as long as he lived; ousters and filibusters, in
the form of railway companies and communists, were a bubble as yet in
the womb of ages.

This piece of land, or sand, or rush, seemed very unlikely to be worth
dispute. If seisin corporeal, user immemorial, and prescription for
levance and couchance conferred any title indefeasible, then were the
rabbits the owners in fee-simple, absolute, paramount, and source of
pedigree. But they, while thoroughly aware of this, took very little
heed to go into it, nor troubled their gentle natures much about a
few yards of sand or grass, as the two-legged creatures near them did.
Inasmuch as they had soft banks of herb and vivid moss to sit upon,
sweet crisp grass and juicy clover for unlabored victuals--as well as
a thousand other nibbles which we are too gross to understand--and for
beverage not only all the abundance of the brook (whose brilliance might
taste of men), but also a little spring of their own which came out of
its hole like a rabbit; and then for scenery all the sea, with strange
things running over it, as well as a great park of their own having
countless avenues of rush, ragwort, and thistle-stump--where would they
have deserved to be, if they had not been contented? Content they
were, and even joyful at the proper time of day. Joyful in the morning,
because the sun was come again; joyful in the middle day to see how well
the world went; and in the evening merry with the tricks of their own
shadows.

Quite fifteen stepping-stones stepped up--if you counted three that were
made of wood--to soothe the dignity of the brook in its last fresh-water
moments, rather than to gratify the dry-skin'd soles of gentlefolk. For
any one, with a five-shilling pair of boots to terminate in, might skip
dry-footed across the sandy purlings of the rivulet. And only when a
flood came down, or the head of some springtide came up, did any but
playful children tread the lichened cracks of the stepping-stones. And
nobody knew this better than Horatia Dorothy Darling.

The bunnies who lived to the west of the brook had reconciled their
minds entirely now to the rising of that boat among them. At first it
made a noise, and scratched the sand, and creaking things came down to
it; and when the moon came through its ribs in the evening, tail was
the quarter to show to it. But as it went on naturally growing, seldom
appearing to make much noise, unless there was a man very near it, and
even then keeping him from doing any harm--outside the disturbance that
he lives in--without so much as a council called, they tolerated this
encroachment. Some of the bolder fathers came and sat inside to
consider it, and left their compliments all round to the masters of the
enterprise. And even when Daniel came to work, as he happened to do this
afternoon, they carried on their own work in its highest form--that of
play--upon the premises they lent him.

Though not very large, it was a lively, punctual, well-conducted, and
pleasant rabbit-warren. Sudden death was avoidable on the part of most
of its members, nets, ferrets, gins, and wires being alike forbidden,
foxes scarcely ever seen, and even guns a rare and very memorable
visitation. The headland staves the southern storm, sand-hills shevelled
with long rush disarm the western fury, while inland gales from north
and east leap into the clouds from the uplands. Well aware of all their
bliss, and feeling worthy of it, the blameless citizens pour forth, upon
a mild spring evening, to give one another the time of day, to gaze
at the labors of men upon the sea, and to take the sweet leisure,
the breeze, and the browse. The gray old conies of curule rank, prime
senators of the sandy beach, and father of the father-land, hold a
just session upon the head borough, and look like brown loaves in the
distance. But these are conies of great mark and special character, full
of light and leading, because they have been shot at, and understand how
to avoid it henceforth. They are satisfied to chew very little bits of
stuff, and particular to have no sand in it, and they hunch their round
backs almost into one another, and double up their legs to keep them
warm, and reflect on their friends' gray whiskers. And one of their
truest pleasures is, sitting snug at their own doors, to watch their
children's gambols.

For this is the time, with the light upon the slope, and the freshness
of salt flowing in from the sea, when the spirit of youth must be free
of the air, and the quickness of life is abounding. Without any heed
of the cares that are coming, or the prick-eared fears of the elders, a
fine lot of young bunnies with tails on the frisk scour everywhere over
the warren. Up and down the grassy dips and yellow piles of wind-drift,
and in and out of the ferny coves and tussocks of rush and ragwort, they
scamper, and caper, and chase one another, in joy that the winter is
banished at last, and the glorious sun come back again.

Suddenly, as at the wave of a wand, they all stop short and listen. The
sun is behind them, low and calm, there is not a breath of wind to
stir their flax, not even the feather of a last year's bloom has moved,
unless they moved it. Yet signal of peril has passed among them; they
curve their soft ears for the sound of it, and open their sensitive
nostrils, and pat upon the ground with one little foot to encourage
themselves against the panting of their hearts and the traitorous length
of their shadows.

Ha! Not for nothing was their fear this day. An active and dangerous
specimen of the human race was coming, lightly and gracefully skimming
the moss, above salt-water reach, of the stepping-stones. The steps
are said to be a thousand years old, and probably are of half that age,
belonging to a time when sound work was, and a monastery flourished
in the valley. Even though they come down from great Hercules himself,
never have they been crossed by a prettier foot or a fairer form than
now came gayly over them. But the rabbits made no account of that. To
the young man with the adze they were quite accustomed, and they liked
him, because he minded his own business, and cared nothing about theirs;
but of this wandering maiden they had no safe knowledge, and judged the
worst, and all rushed away, some tenscore strong, giving notice to him
as they passed the boat that he also had better be cautious.

Daniel was in a sweet temper now, by virtue of hard labor and gratified
wit. By skill and persistence and bodily strength he had compassed a
curve his father had declared impossible without a dock-yard. Three
planks being fixed, he was sure of the rest, and could well afford to
stop, to admire the effect, and feel proud of his work, and of himself
the worker. Then the panic of the conies made him turn his head, and the
quick beat of his heart was quickened by worse than bodily labor.

Miss Dolly Darling was sauntering sweetly, as if there were only one
sex in the world, and that an entirely divine one. The gleam of spring
sunset was bright in her hair, and in the soft garnish of health on
her cheeks, and the vigorous play of young life in her eyes; while the
silvery glance of the sloping shore, and breezy ruffle of the darkening
sea, did nothing but offer a foil for the form of the shell-colored
frock and the sky-blue sash.

Young Daniel fell back upon his half-shaped work, and despised it, and
himself, and everything, except what he was afraid to look at. In the
hollow among the sand-hills where the cradle of the boat was, fine
rushes grew, and tufts of ragwort, and stalks of last year's thistles,
and sea-osiers where the spring oozed down. Through these the white
ribs of the rising boat shone forth like an elephant's skeleton; but
the builder entertained some hope, as well as some fear, of being
unperceived.

But a far greater power than his own was here. Curved and hollow ships
are female in almost all languages, not only because of their curves and
hollows, but also because they are craft--so to speak.

“Oh, Captain Tugwell, are you at work still? Why, you really ought to
have gone with the smacks. But perhaps you sent your son instead. I
am so glad to see you! It is such nice company to hear you! I did not
expect to be left alone, like this.”

“If you please, miss, it isn't father at all. Father is gone with the
fishing long ago. It is only me, Daniel, if you please, miss.”

“No, Daniel, I am not pleased at all. I am quite surprised that you
should work so late. It scarcely seems respectable.”

At this the young man was so much amazed that he could only stare while
she walked off, until the clear duty of righting himself in her good
opinion struck him. Then he threw on his coat and ran after her.

“If you please, Miss Dolly--will you please, Miss Dolly?” he called, as
she made off for the stepping-stones; but she did not turn round, though
her name was “Miss Dolly” all over Springhaven, and she liked it. “You
are bound to stop, miss,” he said, sternly; and she stopped, and cried,
“What do you mean by such words to me?”

“Not any sort of harm, miss,” he answered, humbly, inasmuch as she had
obeyed him; “and I ask your pardon for speaking so. But if you think
twice you are bound to explain what you said concerning me, now just.”

“Oh, about your working so late, you mean. I offered good advice to you.
I think it is wrong that you should go on, when everybody else has left
off long ago. But perhaps your father makes you.”

“Father is a just man,” said young Tugwell, drawing up his own
integrity; “now and then he may take a crooked twist, or such like; but
he never goeth out of fair play to his knowledge. He hath a-been hard
upon me this day; but the main of it was to check mother of her ways.
You understand, miss, how the women-folk go on in a house, till the
other women hear of it. And then out-of-doors they are the same as
lambs.”

“It is most ungrateful and traitorous of you to your own mother to talk
so. Your mother spoils you, and this is all the thanks she gets! Wait
till you have a wife of your own, Master Daniel!”

“Wait till I am dead then I may, Miss Dolly,” he answered, with a depth
of voice which frightened her for a moment; and then he smiled and said,
“I beg your pardon,” as gracefully as any gentleman could say it; “but
let me see you safe to your own gate; there are very rough people about
here now, and the times are not quite as they used to be, when we were
a-fighting daily.”

He followed her at a respectful distance, and then ran forward and
opened the white gate. “Good-night, Daniel,” the young lady said, as
he lifted his working cap to her, showing his bright curls against the
darkening sea; “I am very much obliged to you, and I do hope I have not
said anything to vex you. I have never forgotten all you did for me, and
you must not mind the way I have of saying things.”

“What a shame it does appear--what a fearful shame it is,” she whispered
to herself as she hurried through the trees--“that he should be
nothing but a fisherman! He is a gentleman in everything but birth and
education; and so strong, and so brave, and so good-looking!”



CHAPTER XI

NO PROMOTION


“Do it again now, Captain Scuddy; do it again; you know you must.”

“You touched the rim with your shoe, last time. You are bound to do it
clean, once more.”

“No, he didn't. You are a liar; it was only the ribbon of his shoe.”

“I'll punch your head if you say that again. It was his heel, and here's
the mark.”

“Oh, Scuddy dear, don't notice them. You can do it fifty times running,
if you like. Nobody can run or jump like you. Do it just once more to
please me.”

Kitty Fanshawe, a boy with large blue eyes and a purely gentle face,
looked up at Blyth Scudamore so faithfully that to resist him was
impossible.

“Very well, then; once more for Kitty,” said the sweetest-tempered of
mankind, as he vaulted back into the tub. “But you know that I always
leave off at a dozen. Thirteen--thirteen I could never stop at. I shall
have to do fourteen at least; and it is too bad, just after dinner. Now
all of you watch whether I touch it anywhere.”

A barrel almost five feet in height, and less than a yard in breadth,
stood under a clump of trees in the play-ground; and Blyth Scudamore had
made a clean leap one day, for his own satisfaction, out of it. Sharp
eyes saw him, and sharp wits were pleased, and a strong demand had
arisen that he should perform this feat perpetually. Good nerve, as well
as strong spring, and compactness of power are needed for it; and even
in this athletic age there are few who find it easy.

“Come, now,” he said, as he landed lightly, with both heels together;
“one of you big fellows come and do it. You are three inches taller than
I am. And you have only got to make up your minds.”

But all the big fellows hung back, or began to stimulate one another,
and to prove to each other how easy it was, by every proof but practice.
“Well, then, I must do it once more,” said Blyth, “for I dare not leave
off at thirteen, for fear of some great calamity, such as I never could
jump out of.”

But before he could get into the tub again, to prepare for the clear
spring out of it, he beheld a man with silver buttons coming across
the playing-field. His heart fell into his heels, and no more agility
remained in him. He had made up his mind that Admiral Darling would
forget all about him by Saturday; and though the fair image of Dolly
would abide in that quiet mind for a long while, the balance of his
wishes (cast by shyness) was heavily against this visit. And the boys,
who understood his nature, with a poignant love--like that of our
friends in this world--began to probe his tender places.

“One more jump, Captain Scuddy! You must; to show the flunky what you
can do.”

“Oh, don't I wish I was going? He'll have turtle soup, and venison, and
two men behind his chair.”

“And the beautiful young ladies looking at him every time he takes a
mouthful.”

“But he dare not go courting after thirteen jumps. And he has vowed that
he will have another. Come, Captain Scuddy, no time to lose.”

But Scudamore set off to face his doom, with his old hat hanging on the
back of his head--as it generally did--and his ruddy face and mild blue
eyes full of humorous diffidence and perplexity.

“If you please, sir, his honour the Hadmiral have sent me to fetch 'e
and your things; and hoss be baiting along of the Blue Dragon.”

“I am sorry to say that I forgot all about it, or, at least, I thought
that he would. How long before we ought to start?”

“My name is Gregory, sir--Coachman Gregory--accustomed always to a pair,
but doesn't mind a single hoss, to oblige the Hadmiral, once in a way.
About half an hour, sir, will suit me, unless they comes down to the
skittle-alley, as ought to be always on a Saturday afternoon; but not a
soul there when I looked in.”

Any man in Scudamore's position, except himself, would have grieved and
groaned. For the evening dress of that time, though less gorgeous than
of the age before, was still an expensive and elaborate affair; and the
young man, in this ebb of fortune, was poorly stocked with raiment. But
he passed this trouble with his usual calmness and disregard of trifles.
“If I wear the best I have got,” he thought, “I cannot be charged with
disrespect. The Admiral knows what a sailor is; and, after all, who will
look at me?” Accordingly he went just as he was, for he never wore an
overcoat, but taking a little canvas kit, with pumps and silk stockings
for evening wear, and all the best that he could muster of his Volunteer
equipment.

The Admiral came to the door of the Hall, and met him with such hearty
warmth, and a glance of such kind approval at his open throat and
glowing cheeks, that the young man felt a bound of love and tender
veneration towards him, which endured for lifetime.

“Your father was my dearest friend, and the very best man I ever knew.
I must call you 'Blyth,'” said the Admiral, “for if I call you
'Scudamore,' I shall think perpetually of my loss.”

At dinner that day there was no other guest, and nothing to disturb the
present one, except a young lady's quick glances, of which he endeavored
to have no knowledge. Faith Darling, a gentle and beautiful young
woman, had taken a natural liking to him, because of his troubles, and
simplicity, and devotion to his widowed mother. But to the younger,
Dolly Darling, he was only a visitor, dull and stupid, requiring,
without at all repaying, the trouble of some attention. He was not tall,
nor handsome, nor of striking appearance in any way; and although he was
clearly a gentleman, to her judgment he was not an accomplished, or
even a clever one. His inborn modesty and shyness placed him at great
disadvantage, until well known; and the simple truth of his nature
forbade any of the large talk and bold utterance which pleased her as
yet among young officers.

“What a plague he will be all day tomorrow!” she said to her sister in
the drawing-room. “Father was obliged, I suppose, to invite him; but
what can we do with him all the day? Sundays are dull enough, I am sure,
already, without our having to amuse a gentleman who has scarcely
got two ideas of his own, and is afraid to say 'bo' to a goose, I do
believe. Did you hear what he said when I asked him whether he was fond
of riding?”

“Yes; and I thought it so good of him, to answer so straightforwardly.
He said that he used to be very fond of it, but was afraid that he
should fall off now.”

“I should like to see him. I tell you what we'll do. We will make him
ride back on Monday morning, and put him on 'Blue Bangles,' who won't
have seen daylight since Friday. Won't he jump about a bit! What a shame
it is, not to let us ride on Sundays!”

Ignorant of these kind intentions, Scudamore was enjoying himself in
his quiet, observant way. Mr. Twemlow, the rector of the parish, had
chanced--as he often chanced on a Saturday, after buckling up a brace
of sermons--to issue his mind (with his body outside it) for a little
relief of neighbourhood. And these little airings of his chastening
love--for he loved everybody, when he had done his sermon--came,
whenever there was a fair chance of it, to a glass of the fine old port
which is the true haven for an ancient Admiral.

“Just in time, Rector,” cried Admiral Darling, who had added by many
a hardship to his inborn hospitality. “This is my young friend Blyth
Scudamore, the son of one of my oldest friends. You have heard of Sir
Edmond Scudamore?”

“And seen him and felt him. And to him I owe, under a merciful
Providence, the power of drinking in this fine port the health of his
son, which I do with deep pleasure, for the excellence both of end and
means.”

The old man bowed at the praise of his wine, and the young one at that
of his father. Then, after the usual pinch of snuff from the Rector's
long gold box, the host returned to the subject he had been full of
before this interruption.

“The question we have in hand is this. What is to be done with our
friend Blyth? He was getting on famously, till this vile peace came.
Twemlow, you called it that yourself, so that argument about words is
useless. Blyth's lieutenancy was on the books, and the way they carry
things on now, and shoot poor fellows' heads off, he might have been
a post-captain in a twelvemonth. And now there seems nothing on earth
before him better than Holy-Orders.”

“Admiral Darling is kind enough to think,” said Scudamore, in his mild,
hesitative way, blushing outwardly, but smiling inwardly, “that I am too
good to be a clergyman.”

“And so you are, and Heaven knows it, Blyth, unless there was a chance
of getting on by goodness, which there is in the Navy, but not in the
Church. Twemlow, what is your opinion?”

“It would not be modest in me,” said the Rector, “to stand up too much
for my own order. We do our duty, and we don't get on.”

“Exactly. You could not have put it better. You get no vacancies by shot
and shell, and being fit for another world, you keep out of it. Have you
ever heard me tell the story about Gunner MacCrab, of the Bellerophon?”

“Fifty times, and more than that,” replied the sturdy parson, who liked
to make a little cut at the Church sometimes, but would not allow any
other hand to do it. “But now about our young friend here. Surely, with
all that we know by this time of the character of that Bony, we can see
that this peace is a mere trick of his to bamboozle us while he gets
ready. In six months we shall be at war again, hammer and tongs, as sure
as my name is Twemlow.”

“So be it!” cried the Admiral, with a stamp on his oak floor, while
Scudamore's gentle eyes flashed and fell; “if it is the will of God, so
be it. But if it once begins again, God alone knows where France will be
before you and I are in our graves. They have drained all our patience,
and our pockets very nearly; but they have scarcely put a tap into our
energy and endurance. But what are they? A gang of slaves, rammed into
the cannon by a Despot.”

“They seem to like it, and the question is for them. But the struggle
will be desperate, mountains of carnage, oceans of blood, universal
mourning, lamentation, and woe. And I have had enough trouble with my
tithes already.”

“Tithes are dependent on the will of the Almighty,” said the Admiral,
who paid more than he altogether liked; “but a war goes by reason and
good management. It encourages the best men of the day, and it brings
out the difference between right and wrong, which are quite smothered up
in peace time. It keeps out a quantity of foreign rubbish and stuff only
made to be looked at, and it makes people trust one another, and know
what country they belong to, and feel how much they have left to be
thankful for. And what is the use of a noble fleet, unless it can get
some fighting? Blyth, what say you? You know something about that.”

“No, sir, I have never been at close quarters yet. And I doubt--or at
least I am certain that I should not like it. I am afraid that I should
want to run down below.”

Mr. Twemlow, having never smelled hostile powder, gazed at him rather
loftily, while the young man blushed at his own truth, yet looked up
bravely to confirm it.

“Of all I have ever known or met,” said Admiral Darling, quietly,
“there are but three--Nelson and two others, and one of those two was
half-witted--who could fetch up muzzle to muzzle without a feeling of
that sort. The true courage lies in resisting the impulse, more than
being free from it. I know that I was in a precious fright the first
time I was shot at, even at a decent distance; and I don't pretend to
like it even now. But I am pretty safe now from any further chance, I
fear. When we cut our wisdom-teeth, they shelf us. Twemlow, how much
wiser you are in the Church! The older a man gets, the higher they
promote him.”

“Then let them begin with me,” the Rector answered, smiling; “I am old
enough now for almost anything, and the only promotion I get is stiff
joints, and teeth that crave peace from an olive. Placitam paci, Mr.
Scudamore knows the rest, being fresh from the learned Stonnington.
But, Squire, you know that I am content. I love Springhaven, Springhaven
loves me, and we chasten one another.”

“A man who knows all the Latin you know, Rector--for I own that you beat
me to the spelling-book--should be at least an Archdeacon in the Church,
which is equal to the rank of Rear-Admiral. But you never have pushed
as you should do; and you let it all off in quotations. Those are very
comforting to the mind, but I never knew a man do good with them, unless
they come out of the Bible. When Gunner Matthew of the Erigdoupos was
waiting to have his leg off, with no prospect before him--except a
better world--you know what our Chaplain said to him; and the effect
upon his mind was such, that I have got him to this day upon my land.”

“Of course you have--the biggest old poacher in the county. He shoots
half your pheasants with his wooden leg by moonlight. What your Chaplain
said to him was entirely profane in the turn of a text of Holy-Writ;
and it shows how our cloth is spoiled by contact with yours”--for the
Admiral was laughing to himself at this old tale, which he would
not produce before young Scudamore, but loved to have out with the
Rector--“and I hope it will be a good warning to you, Squire, to
settle no more old gunners on your property. You must understand, Mr.
Scudamore, that the Admiral makes a sort of Naval Hospital, for all his
old salts, on his own Estates.”

“I am sure it is wonderfully kind in him,” the young man answered,
bravely, “for the poor old fellows are thrown to the dogs by the
country, when it has disabled them. I have not seen much of the service,
but quite enough to know that, Mr. Twemlow.”

“I have seen a great deal, and I say that it is so. And my good friend
knows it as well as I do, and is one of the first to lend a helping
hand. In all such cases he does more than I do, whenever they come
within his knowledge. But let us return to the matter in hand. Here is
a young man, a first-rate sailor, who would have been under my
guardianship, I know, but for--but for sad circumstances. Is he to be
grinding at Virgil and Ovid till all his spirit goes out of him, because
we have patched up a very shabby peace? It can never last long. Every
Englishman hates it, although it may seem to save his pocket. Twemlow,
I am no politician. You read the papers more than I do. How much longer
will this wretched compact hold? You have predicted the course of things
before.”

“And so I will again,” replied the Rector. “Atheism, mockery, cynicism,
blasphemy, lust, and blood-thirstyness cannot rage and raven within
a few leagues of a godly and just nation without stinking in their
nostrils. Sir, it is our mission from the Lord to quench Bony, and
to conquer the bullies of Europe. We don't look like doing it now, I
confess. But do it we shall, in the end, as sure as the name of our
country is England.”

“I have no doubt of it,” said the Admiral, simply; “but there will be a
deal of fighting betwixt this and then. Blyth, will you leave me to see
what I can do, whenever we get to work again?”

“I should think that I would, sir, and never forget it. I am not fond of
fighting; but how I have longed to feel myself afloat again!”



CHAPTER XII

AT THE YEW-TREE


All the common-sense of England, more abundant in those days than now,
felt that the war had not been fought out, and the way to the lap of
peace could only be won by vigorous use of the arms. Some few there
were even then, as now there is a cackling multitude, besotted enough to
believe that facts can be undone by blinking them. But our forefathers
on the whole were wise, and knew that nothing is trampled more basely
than right that will not right itself.

Therefore they set their faces hard, and toughened their hearts like
knotted oak, against all that man could do to them. There were no
magnificent proclamations, no big vaunts of victory at the buckling
on of armour, but the quiet strength of steadfast wills, and the stern
resolve to strike when stricken, and try to last the longest. And so
their mother-land became the mother of men and freedom.

In November, 1802, the speech from the throne apprised the world that
England was preparing. The widest, longest, and deadliest war, since the
date of gunpowder, was lowering; and the hearts of all who loved their
kin were heavy, but found no help for it.

The sermon which Mr. Twemlow preached in Springhaven church was
magnificent. Some parishioners, keeping memory more alert than
conscience, declared that they had received it all nine, or it might be
ten, years since, when the fighting first was called for. If so, that
proved it none the worse, but themselves, for again requiring it. Their
Rector told them that they thought too much of their own flesh-pots and
fish-kettles, and their country might go to the bottom of the sea, if it
left them their own fishing-grounds. And he said that they would wake up
some day and find themselves turned into Frenchmen, for all things were
possible with the Lord; and then they might smite their breasts, but
must confess that they had deserved it. Neither would years of prayer
and fasting fetch them back into decent Englishmen; the abomination of
desolation would be set up over their doorways, and the scarlet woman of
Babylon would revel in their sanctuaries.

“Now don't let none of us be in no hurry,” Captain Tugwell said, after
dwelling and sleeping upon this form of doctrine; “a man knoweth his own
trade the best, the very same way as the parson doth. And I never knew
no good to come of any hurry. Our lives are given us by the Lord. And He
never would 'a made 'em threescore and ten, or for men of any strength
fourscore, if His will had been to jerk us over them. Never did I see no
Frenchman as could be turned to an Englishman, not if he was to fast and
pray all day, and cut himself with knives at the going down of the sun.
My opinion is that Parson Twemlow were touched up by his own conscience
for having a nephew more French than English; and 'Caryl Carne' is the
name thereof, with more French than English sound to it.”

“Why, he have been gone for years and years,” said the landlord of the
Darling Arms, where the village was holding council; “he have never
been seen in these parts since the death of the last Squire Carne, to my
knowledge.”

“And what did the old Squire die of, John Prater? Not that he were to be
called old--younger, I dare say, than I be now. What did he die of, but
marrying with a long outlandish 'ooman? A femmel as couldn't speak a
word of English, to be anyhow sure of her meaning! Ah, them was bad
times at Carne Castle; and as nice a place as need be then, until they
dipped the property. Six grey horses they were used to go with to London
Parliament every year, before the last Squire come of age, as I have
heered my father say scores of times, and no lie ever come from his
mouth, no more than it could from mine, almost. Then they dropped to
four, and then to two, and pretended that the roads were easier.”

“When I was down the coast, last week, so far as Littlehampton,” said
a stout young man in the corner, “a very coorous thing happened me,
leastways by my own opinion, and glad shall I be to have the judgment
of Cappen Zeb consarning it. There come in there a queer-rigged craft
of some sixty ton from Halvers, desiring to set up trade again, or to do
some smoogling, or spying perhaps. Her name was the Doctor Humm, which
seem a great favorite with they Crappos, and her skipper had a queer
name too, as if he was two men in one, for he called himself 'Jacks'; a
fellow about forty year old, as I hauled out of the sea with a boat-hook
one night on the Varners. Well, he seemed to think a good deal of that,
though contrary to their nature, and nothing would do but I must go to
be fated with him everywhere, if the folk would change his money. He had
picked up a decent bit of talk from shipping in the oyster line before
the war; and I put his lingo into order for him, for which he was very
thankful.”

“And so he was bound to be. But you had no call to do it, Charley
Bowles.” Captain Tugwell spoke severely, and the young man felt that he
was wrong, for the elders shook their heads at him, as a traitor to the
English language.

“Well, main likely, I went amiss. But he seemed to take it so uncommon
kind of me hitching him with a boat-hook, that we got on together
wonderful, and he called me 'Friar Sharley,' and he tried to take up
with our manners and customs; but his head was outlandish for English
grog. One night he was three sheets in the wind, at a snug little crib
by the river, and he took to the brag as is born with them. 'All dis
contray in one year now,' says he, nodding over his glass at me, 'shall
be of the grand nashong, and I will make a great man of you, Friar
Sharley. Do you know what prawns are, my good friend?' Well, I said I
had caught a good many in my time; but he laughed and said, 'Prawns will
catch you this time. One tousand prawns, all with two hondred men inside
him, and the leetle prawns will come to land at your house, Sharley.
Bootiful place, quiet sea, no bad rocks. You look out in the morning,
and the white coast is made black with them.' Now what do you say to
that, Cappen Tugwell?”

“I've a-heered that style of talk many times afore,” Master Tugwell
answered, solidly; “and all I can say is that I should have punched his
head. And you deserve the same thing, Charley Bowles, unless you've got
more than that to tell us.”

“So I might, Cappen, and I won't deny you there. But the discourse were
consarning Squire Carne now just, and the troubles he fell into, before
I was come to my judgment yet. Why, an uncle of mine served footman
there--Jeremiah Bowles, known to every one, until he was no more heard
of.”

Nods of assent to the fame of Jeremiah encouraged the stout young man in
his tale, and a wedge of tobacco rekindled him.

“Yes, it were a coorous thing indeed, and coorous for me to hear of it,
out of all mast-head of Springhaven. Says Moosoo Jacks to me, that night
when I boused him up unpretending: 'You keep your feather eye open, my
tear,' for such was his way of pronouncing it, 'and you shall arrive to
laglore, laglore--and what is still nobler, de monnay. In one two tree
month, you shall see a young captain returned to his contray dominion,
and then you will go to his side and say Jacks, and he will make present
to you a sack of silver.' Well, I hailed the chance of this pretty
smart, you may suppose, and I asked him what the sailor's name would be,
and surprised I was when he answered Carne, or Carny, for he gave it in
two syllables. Next morning's tide, the Doctor Humm cleared out, and I
had no other chance of discourse with Moosoo Jacks. But I want to know
what you think, Cappen Zeb.”

“So you shall,” said the captain of Springhaven, sternly. “I think
you had better call your Moosoo Jacks 'Master Jackass,' or 'Master
Jackanapes,' and put your own name on the back of him. You been with a
Frenchman hob and nobbing, and you don't even know how they pronounce
themselves, unchristian as it is to do so. 'Jarks' were his name, the
very same as Navy beef, and a common one in that country. But to speak
of any Carne coming nigh us with French plottings, and of prawns landing
here at Springhaven--'tis as likely as I should drop French money into
the till of this baccy-box. And you can see that I be not going to play
such a trick as that, John Prater.”

“Why to my mind there never was bigger stuff talked,” the landlord spoke
out, without fear of offence, for there was no other sign-board within
three miles, “than to carry on in that way, Charley. What they may do
at Littlehampton is beyond my knowledge, never having kept a snug crib
there, as you was pleased to call it. But at Springhaven 'twould be the
wrong place for hatching of French treacheries. We all know one another
a deal too well for that, I hope.”

“Prater, you are right,” exclaimed Mr. Cheeseman, owner of the main shop
in the village, and universally respected. “Bowles, you must have an
imagination the same as your uncle Jerry had. And to speak of the Carnes
in a light way of talking, after all their misfortunes, is terrible.
Why, I passed the old castle one night last week, with the moon to one
side of it, and only me in my one-horse shay to the other, and none but
a man with a first-rate conscience would have had the stomach to do so.
However, I seed no ghosts that time, though I did hear some noises as
made me use the whip; and the swing of the ivy was black as a hearse. A
little drop more of my own rum, John: it gives me quite a chill to think
of it.”

“I don't take much account of what people say,” Harry Shanks, who had a
deep clear voice, observed, “without it is in my own family. But my
own cousin Bob was coming home one night from a bit of sweethearting at
Pebbleridge, when, to save the risk of rabbit-holes in the dark, for he
put out his knee-cap one time, what does he do but take the path inland
through the wood below Carne Castle--the opposite side to where you
was, Master Cheeseman, and the same side as the moon would be, only she
wasn't up that night. Well, he had some misgivings, as anybody must;
still he pushed along, whistling and swinging his stick, and saying to
himself that there was no such thing as cowardice in our family;
till just at the corner where the big yew-tree is, that we sometimes
starboard helm by when the tide is making with a nor'west wind; there
Bob seed a sight as made his hair crawl. But I won't say another word
about it now, and have to go home in the dark by myself arter'ards.”

“Come, now, Harry!” “Oh, we can't stand that!” “We'll see you to your
door, lad, if you out with it, fair and forcible.”

Of these and other exhortations Harry took no notice, but folded his
arms across his breast, and gazed at something which his mind presented.

“Harry Shanks, you will have the manners”--Captain Tugwell spoke
impressively, not for his own sake, for he knew the tale, and had been
consulted about it, but from sense of public dignity--“to finish the
story which you began. To begin a yarn of your own accord, and then
drop it all of a heap, is not respectful to present company. Springhaven
never did allow such tricks, and will not put up with them from any
young fellow. If your meaning was to drop it, you should never have
begun.”

Glasses and even pipes rang sharply upon the old oak table in applause
of this British sentiment, and the young man, with a sheepish look,
submitted to the voice of the public.

“Well, then, all of you know where the big yew-tree stands, at the break
of the hill about half a mile inland, and how black it looms among the
other stuff. But Bob, with his sweetheart in his head, no doubt, was
that full of courage that he forgot all about the old tree, and the
murder done inside it a hundred and twenty years ago, they say, until
there it was, over his head a'most, with the gaps in it staring like
ribs at him. 'Bout ship was the word, pretty sharp, you may be sure,
when he come to his wits consarning it, and the purse of his lips, as
was whistling a jig, went as dry as a bag with the bottom out. Through
the grey of the night there was sounds coming to him, such as had no
right to be in the air, and a sort of a shiver laid hold of his heart,
like a cold hand flung over his shoulder. As hard as he could lay foot
to the ground, away he went down hill, forgetting of his kneecap, for
such was the condition of his mind and body.

“You must understand, mates, that he hadn't seen nothing to skeer him,
but only heard sounds, which come into his ears to make his hair rise;
and his mind might have put into them more than there was, for the want
of intarpreting. Perhaps this come across him, as soon as he felt at
a better distance with his wind short; anyhow, he brought up again'
a piece of rock-stuff in a hollow of the ground, and begun to look
skeerily backward. For a bit of a while there was nothing to distemper
him, only the dark of the hill and the trees, and the grey light
a-coming from the sea in front. But just as he were beginning for to
call himself a fool, and to pick himself onto his legs for trudging
home, he seed a thing as skeered him worse than ever, and fetched him
flat upon his lower end.

“From the black of the yew-tree there burst a big light, brighter than
a lighthouse or a blue thunder-bolt, and flying with a long streak down
the hollow, just as if all the world was a-blazing. Three times it come,
with three different colours, first blue, and then white, and then
red as new blood; and poor Bob was in a condition of mind must be seen
before saying more of it. If he had been brought up to follow the sea,
instead of the shoemaking, maybe his wits would have been more about
him, and the narves of his symptom more ship-shape. But it never was
borne into his mind whatever, to keep a lookout upon the offing, nor
even to lie snug in the ferns and watch the yew-tree. All he was up
for was to make all sail, the moment his sticks would carry it; and he
feared to go nigh his sweetheart any more, till she took up with another
fellow.”

“And sarve him quite right,” was the judgment of the room, in high
fettle with hot rum and water; “to be skeered of his life by a
smuggler's signal! Eh, Cappen Zebedee, you know that were it?”

But the captain of Springhaven shook his head.



CHAPTER XIII

WHENCE, AND WHEREFORE?


At the rectory, too, ere the end of that week, there was no little
shaking of heads almost as wise as Zebedee Tugwell's. Mrs. Twemlow,
though nearly sixty years of age, and acquainted with many a sorrow, was
as lively and busy and notable as ever, and even more determined to
be the mistress of the house. For by this time her daughter Eliza,
beginning to be twenty-five years old--a job which takes some years in
finishing--began at the same time to approve her birth by a vigorous aim
at the mastery. For, as everybody said, Miss Eliza was a Carne in
blood and breed and fibre. There was little of the Twemlow stock about
her--for the Twemlows were mild and humorous--but plenty of the strength
and dash and wildness and contemptuous spirit of the ancient Carnes.

Carne a carne, as Mr. Twemlow said, when his wife was inclined to be
masterful--a derivation confirmed by the family motto, “Carne non
caret carne.” In the case, however, of Mrs. Twemlow, age, affliction,
experience, affection, and perhaps above all her good husband's larger
benevolence and placidity, had wrought a great change for the better,
and made a nice old lady of her. She was tall and straight and slender
still; and knew how to make the most, by grave attire and graceful
attitude, of the bodily excellence entailed for ages on the lineage
of Carne. Of moral goodness there had not been an equally strict
settlement, at least in male heredity. So that Mrs. Twemlow's thoughts
about her kith and kindred were rather sad than proud, unless some
ignorance was shown about them.

“Poor as I am,” said Mr. Twemlow, now consulting with her, “and poor as
every beneficed clergyman must be, if this war returns, I would rather
have lost a hundred pounds than have heard what you tell me, Maria.”

“My dear, I cannot quite see that,” his wife made thoughtful answer;
“if he only had money to keep up the place, and clear off those nasty
incumbrances, I should rejoice at his coming back to live where we have
been for centuries.”

“My dear, you are too poetical, though the feeling is a fine one. Within
the old walls there can scarcely be a room that has a sound floor to
it. And as for the roof, when that thunder-storm was, and I took shelter
with my pony--well, you know the state I came home in, and all my best
clothes on for the Visitation. Luckily there seems to be no rheumatism
in your family, Maria; and perhaps he is too young as yet to pay out for
it till he gets older. But if he comes for business, and to see to the
relics of his property, surely he might have a bedroom here, and come
and go at his liking. After all his foreign fanglements, a course of
quiet English life and the tone of English principles might be of the
greatest use to him. He would never wish to see the Continent again.”

“It is not to be thought of,” said Mrs. Twemlow. “I would not have him
to live in this house for fifty thousand pounds a year. You are a
great deal wiser than I am, Joshua; but of his nature you know nothing,
whereas I know it from his childhood. And Eliza is so strong-willed
and stubborn--you dislike, of course, to hear me say it, but it is the
fact--it is, my dear. And I would rather stand by our daughter's grave
than see her fall in love with Caryl Carne. You know what a handsome
young man he must be now, and full of French style and frippery. I am
sure it is most kind of you to desire to help my poor family; but you
would rue the day, my dear, that brought him beneath our quiet roof.
I have lost my only son, as it seems, by the will of the Lord, who
afflicts us. But I will not lose my only daughter, by any such folly of
my own.”

Tears rolled down Mrs. Twemlow's cheeks as she spoke of her mysterious
affliction; and her husband, who knew that she was not weak-minded,
consoled her by sharing her sorrow.

“It shall be exactly as you like,” he said, after a quiet interval. “You
say that no answer is needed; and there is no address to send one to. We
shall hear of it, of course, when he takes possession, if, indeed, he is
allowed to do so.”

“Who is to prevent him from coming, if he chooses, to live in the home
of his ancestors? The estates are all mortgaged, and the park is gone,
turned into a pound for Scotch cattle-breeding. But the poor old castle
belongs to us still, because no one would take the expense of it.”

“And because of the stories concerning it, Maria. Your nephew Caryl is
a brave young fellow if he means to live there all alone, and I fear he
can afford himself no company. You understand him so much better: what
do you suppose his motive is?”

“I make no pretence to understand him, dear, any more than his poor
father could. My dear brother was of headstrong order, and it did him
no good to contradict him, and indeed it was dangerous to do so; but his
nature was as simple as a child's almost, to any one accustomed to him.
If he had not married that grand French lady, who revelled in every
extravagance, though she knew how we all were impoverished, he might
have been living and in high position now, though a good many years my
senior. And the worst of it was that he did it at a time when he ought
to have known so much better. However, he paid for it bitterly enough,
and his only child was set against him.”

“A very sad case altogether,” said the rector. “I remember, as if it
were yesterday, how angry poor Montagu was with me. You remember what
words he used, and his threat of attacking me with his horsewhip. But he
begged my pardon, most humbly, as soon as he saw how thoroughly right I
was. You are like him in some things, as I often notice, but not quite
so generous in confessing you were wrong.”

“Because I don't do it as he did, Joshua. You would never understand me
if I did. But of course for a man you can make allowance. My rule is to
do it both for men and women, quite as fairly as if one was the other.”

“Certainly, Maria--certainly. And therefore you can do it, and have
always done it, even for poor Josephine. No doubt there is much to be
pleaded, by a candid and gentle mind, on her behalf.”

“What! that dreadful creature who ruined my poor brother, and called
herself the Countess de Lune, or some such nonsense! No, Joshua, no!
I have not so entirely lost all English principle as to quite do that.
Instead of being largeness, that would be mere looseness.”

“There are many things, however, that we never understood, and perhaps
never shall in this world,” Mr. Twemlow continued, as if talking to
himself, for reason on that subject would be misaddressed to her; “and
nothing is more natural than that young Caryl should side with his
mother, who so petted him, against his poor father, who was violent and
harsh, especially when he had to pay such bills. But perhaps our good
nephew has amassed some cash, though there seems to be but little on the
Continent, after all this devastation. Is there anything, Maria, in his
letter to enable us to hope that he is coming home with money?”

“Not a word, I am afraid,” Mrs. Twemlow answered, sadly. “But take it,
my dear, and read it to me slowly. You make things so plain, because
of practice every Sunday. Oh, Joshua, I never can be sure which you
are greatest in--the Lessons or the Sermon. But before you begin I will
shoot the bolt a little, as if it had caught by accident. Eliza does
rush in upon us sometimes in the most unbecoming, unladylike way. And I
never can get you to reprove her.”

“It would be as much as my place is worth, as the maids say when
imagined to have stolen sugar. And I must not read this letter so loud
as the Lessons, unless you wish Lizzie to hear every word, for she has
all her mother's quick senses. There is not much of it, and the scrawl
seems hasty. We might have had more for three and fourpence. But I am
not the one to grumble about bad measure--as the boy said about old
Busby. Now, Maria, listen, but say nothing; if feminine capacity may
compass it. Why, bless my heart, every word of it is French!” The rector
threw down his spectacles, and gazed at his wife reproachfully. But she
smiled with superior innocence.

“What else could you expect, after all his years abroad? I cannot
make out the whole of it, for certain. But surely it is not beyond the
compass of masculine capacity.”

“Yes, it is, Maria; and you know it well enough. No honest Englishman
can endure a word of French. Latin, or Greek, or even Hebrew--though I
took to that rather late in life. But French is only fit for women, and
very few of them can manage it. Let us hear what this Frenchman says.”

“He is not a Frenchman, Joshua. He is an Englishman, and probably a very
fine one. I won't be sure about all of his letter, because it is so long
since I was at school; and French books are generally unfit to read. But
the general meaning is something like this:


'MY BELOVED AND HIGHLY VALUED AUNT,--Since I heard from you there
are many years now, but I hope you have held me in memory. I have the
intention of returning to the country of England, even in this bad time
of winter, when the climate is most funereal. I shall do my best to call
back, if possible, the scattered ruins of the property, and to institute
again the name which my father made displeasing. In this good work you
will, I have faith, afford me your best assistance, and the influence
of your high connection in the neighbourhood. Accept, dear aunt, the
assurance of my highest consideration, of the most sincere and the most
devoted, and allow me the honour of writing myself your most loving and
respectful nephew,

'CARYL CARNE.'


Now, Joshua, what do you think of that?”

“Fine words and no substance; like all French stuff. And he never even
mentions me, who gave him a top, when he should have had the whip. I
will not pretend to understand him, for he always was beyond me. Dark
and excitable, moody and capricious, haughty and sarcastic, and devoid
of love for animals. You remember his pony, and what he did to it, and
the little dog that crawled upon her stomach towards him. For your
sake I would have put up with him, my dear, and striven to improve his
nature, which is sure to be much worse at six-and-twenty, after so many
years abroad. But I confess it is a great relief to me that you wisely
prefer not to have him in this house, any more at least than we can help
it. But who comes here? What a hurry we are in! Lizzie, my darling, be
patient.”

“Here's this plague of a door barred and bolted again! Am I not to have
an atom of breakfast, because I just happened to oversleep myself? The
mornings get darker and darker; it is almost impossible to see to dress
oneself.”

“There is plenty of tinder in the house, Eliza, and plenty of good
tallow candles,” Mrs. Twemlow replied, having put away the letter, while
her husband let the complainant in. “For the third time this week
we have had prayers without you, and the example is shocking for the
servants. We shall have to establish the rule you suggest--too late to
pray for food, too late to get it. But I have kept your help of bacon
hot, quite hot, by the fire. And the teapot is under the cozy.”

“Thank you, dear mother,” the young lady answered, careless of words,
if deeds were in her favour, and too clever to argue the question. “I
suppose there is no kind of news this morning to reward one for getting
up so early.”

“Nothing whatever for you, Miss Lizzie,” said her father, as soon as he
had kissed her. “But the paper is full of the prospects of war, and the
extent of the preparations. If we are driven to fight again, we shall do
it in earnest, and not spare ourselves.”

“Nor our enemies either, I do hope with all my heart. How long are we to
be afraid of them? We have always invaded the French till now. And for
them to talk of invading us! There is not a bit of spirit left in this
island, except in the heart of Lord Nelson.”

“What a hot little patriot this child is!” said the father, with a quiet
smile at her. “What would she say to an Englishman, who was more French
than English, and would only write French letters? And yet it might be
possible to find such people.”

“If such a wretch existed,” cried Miss Twemlow, “I should like to
crunch him as I crunch this toast. For a Frenchman I can make all fair
allowance, because he cannot help his birth. But for an Englishman to
turn Frenchman--”

“However reluctant we may be to allow it,” the candid rector argued,
“they are the foremost nation in the world, just now, for energy,
valour, decision, discipline, and I fear I must add patriotism. The
most wonderful man who has appeared in the world for centuries is their
leader, and by land his success has been almost unbroken. If we must
have war again, as I fear we must, and very speedily, our chief hope
must be that the Lord will support His cause against the scoffer and the
infidel, the libertine and the assassin.”

“You see how beautifully your father puts it, Eliza; but he never abuses
people. That is a habit in which, I am sorry to say, you indulge too
freely. You show no good feeling to anybody who differs from you in
opinion, and you talk as if Frenchmen had no religion, no principles,
and no humanity. And what do you know about them, pray? Have you ever
spoken to a Frenchman? Have you ever even seen one? Would you know one
if you even set eyes upon him?”

“Well, I am not at all sure that I should,” the young lady replied,
being thoroughly truthful; “and I have no wish for the opportunity. But
I have seen a French woman, mother; and that is quite enough for me. If
they are so, what must the men be?”

“There is a name for this process of feminine reasoning, this cumulative
and syncopetic process of the mind, entirely feminine (but regarded by
itself as rational), a name which I used to know well in the days when I
had the ten Fallacies at my fingers' ends, more tenaciously perhaps
than the Decalogue. Strange to say, the name is gone from my memory;
but--but--”

“But then you had better go after it, my dear,” his wife suggested with
authority. “If your only impulse when you hear reason is to search after
hard names for it, you are safer outside of its sphere altogether.”

“I am struck with the truth of that remark,” observed the rector; “and
the more so because I descry a male member of our race approaching, with
a hat--at once the emblem and the crown of sound reason. Away with all
fallacies; it is Church-warden Cheeseman!”



CHAPTER XIV

A HORRIBLE SUGGESTION


“Can you guess what has brought me down here in this hurry?” Lord
Nelson asked Admiral Darling, having jumped like a boy from his yellow
post-chaise, and shaken his old friend's broad right hand with his
slender but strenuous left one, even as a big bell is swung by a thin
rope. “I have no time to spare--not a day, not an hour; but I made up my
mind to see you before I start. I cannot expect to come home alive, and,
except for one reason, I should not wish it.”

“Nonsense!” said the Admiral, who was sauntering near his upper gate,
and enjoying the world this fine spring morning; “you are always in
such a confounded hurry! When you come to my time of life, you will know
better. What is it this time? The Channel fleet again?”

“No, no; Billy Blue keeps that, thank God! I hate looking after a school
of herring-boats. The Mediterranean for me, my friend. I received the
order yesterday, and shall be at sea by the twentieth.”

“I am very glad to hear it, for your sake. If ever there was a restless
fellow--in the good old times we were not like that. Come up to the
house and talk about it; at least they must take the horses out. They
are not like you; they can't work forever.”

“And they don't get knocked about like me; though one of them has lost
his starboard eye, and he sails and steers all the better for it. Let
them go up to the stable, Darling, while you come down to the beach with
me. I want to show you something.”

“What crotchet is in his too active brain now?” the elder and stronger
man asked himself, as he found himself hooked by the right arm, and led
down a track through the trees scarcely known to himself, and quite
out of sight from the village. “Why, this is not the way to the beach!
However, it is never any good to oppose him. He gets his own way so
because of his fame. Or perhaps that's the way he got his fame. But to
show me about over my own land! But let him go on, let him go on.”

“You are wondering, I dare say, what I am about,” cried Nelson, stopping
suddenly, and fixing his sound eye--which was wonderfully keen, though
he was always in a fright about it--upon the large and peaceful blinkers
of his ancient commander; “but now I shall be able to convince you,
though I am not a land-surveyor, nor even a general of land-forces. If
God Almighty prolongs my life--which is not very likely--it will be that
I may meet that scoundrel, Napoleon Bonaparte, on dry land. I hear
that he is eager to encounter me on the waves, himself commanding a
line-of-battle ship. I should send him to the devil in a quarter of an
hour. And ashore I could astonish him, I think, a little, if I had a
good army to back me up. Remember what I did at Bastia, in the land that
produced this monster, and where I was called the Brigadier; and again,
upon the coast of Italy, I showed that I understood all their dry-ground
business. Tush! I can beat him, ashore and afloat; and I shall, if I
live long enough. But this time the villain is in earnest, I believe,
with his trumpery invasion; and as soon as he hears that I am gone,
he will make sure of having his own way. We know, of course, there are
fifty men as good as myself to stop him, including you, my dear Darling;
but everything goes by reputation--the noise of the people--praise-puff.
That's all I get; while the luckier fellows, like Cathcart, get the
prize-money. But I don't want to grumble. Now what do you see?”

“Well, I see you, for one thing,” the Admiral answered, at his leisure,
being quite inured to his friend's quick fire, “and wearing a coat that
would be a disgrace to any other man in the navy. And further on I see
some land that I never shall get my rent for; and beyond that nothing
but the sea, with a few fishing-craft inshore, and in the offing a sail,
an outward-bound East Indiaman--some fool who wouldn't wait for convoy,
with war as good as proclaimed again.”

“Nothing but the sea, indeed? The sweep of the land, and the shelter
of the bay, the shoaling of the shore without a rock to break it, the
headland that shuts out both wind and waves; and outside the headland,
off Pebbleridge, deep water for a fleet of line-of-battle ships to
anchor and command the land approaches--moreover, a stream of the purest
water from deep and never-failing springs--Darling, the place of all
places in England for the French to land is opposite to your front
door.”

“I am truly obliged to you for predicting, and to them for doing it, if
ever they attempt such impudence. If they find out that you are away,
they can also find out that I am here, as commander of the sea defences,
from Dungeness to Selsey-Bill.”

“That will make it all the more delightful to land at your front door,
my friend; and all the easier to do it. My own plan is to strike with
all force at the head-quarters of the enemy, because the most likely to
be unprepared. About a year ago, when I was down here, a little before
my dear father's death, without your commission I took command of your
fishing-craft coming home for their Sunday, and showed them how to
take the beach, partly to confirm my own suspicions. There is no other
landing on all the south coast, this side of Hayling Island, fit to be
compared with it for the use of flat-bottomed craft, such as most of
Boney's are. And remember the set of the tide, which makes the fortunes
of your fishermen. To be sure, he knows nothing of that himself; but he
has sharp rogues about him. If they once made good their landing here,
it would be difficult to dislodge them. It must all be done from the
land side then, for even a 42-gun frigate could scarcely come near
enough to pepper them. They love shoal water, the skulks--and that has
enabled them to baffle me so often. Not that they would conquer the
country--all brag--but still it would be a nasty predicament, and scare
the poor cockneys like the very devil.”

“But remember the distance from Boulogne, Hurry. If they cannot cross
twenty-five miles of channel in the teeth of our ships, what chance
would they have when the distance is nearer eighty?”

“A much better chance, if they knew how to do it. All our cruisers would
be to the eastward. One afternoon perhaps, when a haze is on, they make
a feint with light craft toward the Scheldt--every British ship crowds
sail after them. Then, at dusk, the main body of the expedition slips
with the first of the ebb to the westward; they meet the flood tide in
mid-channel, and using their long sweeps are in Springhaven, or at any
rate the lightest of them, by the top of that tide, just when you
are shaving. You laugh at such a thought of mine. I tell you, my dear
friend, that with skill and good luck it is easy; and do it they should,
if they were under my command.”

If anybody else had even talked of such a plan as within the bounds of
likelihood, Admiral Darling would have been almost enraged. But now he
looked doubtfully, first at the sea (as if it might be thick with prames
already), and then at the land--which was his own--as if the rent might
go into a Frenchman's pocket, and then at his old and admired friend,
who had ruined his sleep for the summer.

“Happily they are not under your command, and they have no man to
compare with you;” he spoke rather nervously; while Nelson smiled,
for he loved the praise which he had so well earned; “and if it were
possible for you to talk nonsense, I should say that you had done it
now. But two things surely you have overlooked. In the first place, the
French can have no idea of the special opportunities this place affords.
And again, if they had, they could do nothing, without a pilot well
acquainted with the spot. Though the landing is so easy, there are
shoals outside, very intricate and dangerous, and known to none except
the natives of the place, who are jealous to the last degree about their
knowledge.”

“That is true enough; and even I should want a pilot here, though I
know every spit of sand eastward. But away fly both your difficulties if
there should happen to be a local traitor.”

“A traitor at Springhaven! Such a thing is quite impossible. You would
laugh at yourself, if you only knew the character of our people. There
never has been, and there never will be, a Springhaven man capable of
treachery.”

“That is good news, ay, and strange news too,” the visitor answered,
with his left hand on his sword, for he was now in full though rather
shabby uniform. “There are not many traitors in England, I believe; but
they are as likely to be found in one place as another, according to my
experience. Well, well, I am very glad you have no such scoundrels here.
I won't say a single word against your people, who are as fine a lot
as any in the south of England, and as obstinate as any I could wish to
see. Of an obstinate man I can always make good; with a limp one I can
do nothing. But bear in mind every word you have heard me say, because I
came down on purpose about it; and I generally penetrate the devices of
the enemy, though they lead me on a wild-goose-chase sometimes, but only
when our own folk back them up, either by lies or stupidity. Now look
once more, for you are slower as well as a great deal wiser than I am.
You see how this land-locked bight of Springhaven seems made by the
Almighty for flat-bottomed craft, if once they can find their way into
it; while the trend of the coast towards Pebbleridge is equally suited
for the covering fleet, unless a gale from southwest comes on, in
which case they must run for it. And you see that the landed force, by
crowning the hill above your house and across the valley, might defy
our noble Volunteers, and all that could be brought against them, till a
hundred thousand cutthroats were established here. And Boney would make
his head-quarters at the Hall, with a French cook in your kitchen, and
a German butler in your cellar, and my pretty godchild to wait upon him,
for the rogue loves pretty maidens.”

“That will do. That is quite enough. No wonder you have written poems,
Nelson, as you told us the last time you were here. If my son had only
got your imagination--but perhaps you know something more than you have
told me. Perhaps you have been told--”

“Never mind about that,” the great sea-captain answered, turning away
as if on springs; “it is high time for me to be off again, and my chaise
has springs on her cables.”

“Not she. I have ordered her to be docked. Dine with us you shall this
day, if we have to dine two hours earlier, and though Mother Cloam rage
furiously. How much longer do you suppose you can carry on at this pace?
Look at me. I have double your bodily substance; but if I went on as
you do--you remember the twenty-four-pounder old Hotcoppers put into the
launch, and fired it, in spite of all I could say to him? Well, you are
just the same. You have not got the scantling for the metal you carry
and are always working. You will either blow up, or else scuttle
yourself. Look here, how your seams are opening!” Here Admiral Darling
thrust his thumb through the ravelled seam of his old friend's coat,
which made him jump back, for he loved his old coat. “Yes, and you will
go in the very same way. I wonder how any coat lasts so much as a month,
with you inside it.”

“This coat,” said Nelson, who was most sweet-tempered with any one he
loved, though hot as pepper when stirred up by strangers--“this coat is
the one I wore at Copenhagen, and a sounder and kinder coat never came
on a man's back. Charles Darling, you have made a bad hit this time.
If I am no more worn out than this coat is, I am fit to go to sea for a
number of years yet. And I hope to show it to a good many Frenchmen, and
take as many ships, every time they show fight, as there are buttons on
it.”

“Then you will double all your captures at the Nile;” such a series of
buttons had this coat, though mostly loose upon their moorings, for his
guardian angel was not “domestic”; “but you may be trusted not to let
them drift so. You have given me a lesson in coast-defence, and now you
shall be boarded by the ladies. You possess some gifts of the tongue,
my friend, as well as great gifts of hand and eye; but I will back my
daughters to beat you there. Come up to the house. No turning of tail.”

“I spoke very well in the House of Lords,” said Nelson, in his simple
way, “in reply to the speech of his Majesty, and again about the
Commissioner's Bill; or at least everybody tells me so. But in the House
of Ladies I hold my tongue, because there is abundance without it.”

This, however, he failed to do when the matter came to the issue; for
his godchild Horatia, more commonly called Dolly, happened to be in the
mood for taking outrageous liberties with him. She possessed very little
of that gift--most precious among women--the sense of veneration; and to
her a hero was only a man heroic in acts of utility. “He shall do it,”
 she said to Faith, when she heard that he was come again; “if I have to
kiss him, he shall do it; and I don't like kissing those old men.”

“Hush!” said her elder sister. “Dolly, you do say things so recklessly.
One would think that you liked to kiss younger men! But I am sure that
is not your meaning. I would rather kiss Lord Nelson than all the young
men in the kingdom.”

“Well done, Faith! All the young men in the kingdom! How recklessly you
do say things! And you can't kiss him--he is MY godfather. But just see
how I get round him, if you have wits enough to understand it.”

So these two joined in their kind endeavour to make the visitor useful,
the object being so good that doubtful means might be excused for it.
In different ways and for divers reasons, each of these young ladies now
had taken to like Blyth Scudamore. Faith, by power of pity first, and of
grief for her own misfortunes, and of admiration for his goodness to his
widowed mother--which made his best breeches shine hard at the knees;
and Dolly, because of his shy adoration, and dauntless defence of her
against a cow (whose calf was on the road to terminate in veal), as well
as his special skill with his pocket-knife in cutting out figures that
could dance, and almost sing; also his great gifts, when the tide was
out, of making rare creatures run after him. What avails to explore
female reason precisely?--their minds were made up that he must be a
captain, if Nelson had to build the ship with his one hand for him.

“After that, there is nothing more to be said,” confessed the vanquished
warrior; “but the daughters of an Admiral should know that no man can be
posted until he has served his time as lieutenant; and this young hero
of yours has never even held the King's commission yet. But as he has
seen some service, and is beyond the age of a middy, in the present
rush he might get appointed as junior lieutenant, if he had any stout
seconders. Your father is the man, he is always at hand, and can watch
his opportunity. He knows more big-wigs than I do, and he has not given
offence where I have. Get your father, my dears, to attend to it.”

But the ladies were not to be so put off, for they understood the
difference of character. Lord Nelson was as sure to do a thing as
Admiral Darling was to drop it if it grew too heavy. Hence it came
to pass that Blyth Scudamore, though failing of the Victory and
Amphion--which he would have chosen, if the choice were his--received
with that cheerful philosophy (which had made him so dear to the
school-boys, and was largely required among them) his appointment as
junior lieutenant to the 38-gun frigate Leda, attached to the Channel
fleet under Cornwallis, whose business it was to deal with the French
flotilla of invasion.



CHAPTER XV

ORDEAL OF AUDIT


England saw the growing danger, and prepared, with an even mind and
well-girt body, to confront it. As yet stood up no other country to help
or even comfort her, so cowed was all the Continent by the lash, and
spur of an upstart. Alone, encumbered with the pack of Ireland, pinched
with hunger and dearth of victuals, and cramped with the colic of
Whiggery, she set her strong shoulder to the wheel of fortune, and so
kept it till the hill was behind her. Some nations (which owe their
existence to her) have forgotten these things conveniently; an
Englishman hates to speak of them, through his unjust abhorrence of
self-praise; and so does a Frenchman, by virtue of motives equally
respectable.

But now the especial danger lay in the special strength of England.
Scarcely any man along the coast, who had ever come across a Frenchman,
could be led (by quotations from history or even from newspapers) to
believe that there was any sense in this menace of his to come and
conquer us. Even if he landed, which was not likely--for none of them
could box the compass--the only thing he took would be a jolly good
thrashing, and a few pills of lead for his garlic. This lofty contempt
on the part of the seafaring men had been enhanced by Nelson, and throve
with stoutest vigour in the enlightened breasts of Springhaven.

Yet military men thought otherwise, and so did the owners of crops and
ricks, and so did the dealers in bacon and eggs and crockery, and even
hardware. Mr. Cheeseman, for instance, who left nothing unsold that he
could turn a penny by, was anything but easy in his mind, and dreamed
such dreams as he could not impart to his wife--on account of her
tendency to hysterics--but told with much power to his daughter Polly,
now the recognised belle of Springhaven. This vigilant grocer and
butterman, tea, coffee, tobacco, and snuffman, hosier also, and general
provider for the outer as well as the inner man, had much of that
enterprise in his nature which the country believes to come from London.
His possession of this was ascribed by all persons of a thoughtful turn
to his ownership of that well-built schooner the London Trader. Sailing
as she did, when the weather was fine, nearly every other week, for
London, and returning with equal frequency, to the women who had never
been ten miles from home she was a mystery and a watchword. Not one of
them would allow lad of hers to join this romantic galleon, and tempt
the black cloud of the distance; neither did Mr. Cheeseman yearn (for
reasons of his own about city prices) to navigate this good ship with
natives. Moreover, it was absurd, as he said, with a keen sense of his
own cheapness, to suppose that he could find the funds to buy and ply
such a ship as that!

Truth is a fugitive creature, even when she deigns to be visible, or
even to exist. The truth of Mr. Cheeseman's statement had existed, but
was long since flown. Such was his worth that he could now afford to buy
the London Trader three times over, and pay ready money every time. But
when he first invested hard cash in her--against the solid tears of his
prudent wife--true enough it was that he could only scrape together one
quarter of the sum required. Mrs. Cheeseman, who was then in a condition
of absorbing interest with Polly, made it her last request in this
world--for she never expected to get over it--that Jemmy should not
run in debt on a goose-chase, and fetch her poor spirit from its grave
again. James Cheeseman was compelled--as the noblest man may be--to
dissemble and even deny his intentions until the blessed period of
caudle-cup, when, the weather being pleasant and the wind along the
shore, he found himself encouraged to put up the window gently. The
tide was coming in with a long seesaw, and upon it, like the baby in the
cradle full of sleep, lay rocking another little stranger, or rather a
very big one, to the lady's conception.

Let bygones be bygones. There were some reproaches; but the weaker
vessel, Mrs. Cheeseman, at last struck flag, without sinking, as she
threatened to do. And when little Polly went for her first airing, the
London Trader had accomplished her first voyage, and was sailing in
triumphantly with a box of “tops and bottoms” from the ancient firm in
Threadneedle Street, which has saved so many infants from the power that
cuts the thread. After that, everything went as it should go, including
this addition to the commercial strength of Britain, which the lady was
enabled soon to talk of as “our ship,” and to cite when any question
rose of the latest London fashion. But even now, when a score of years,
save one, had made their score and gone, Mrs. Cheeseman only guessed and
doubted as to the purchase of her ship. James Cheeseman knew the value
of his own counsel, and so kept it; and was patted on both shoulders by
the world, while he patted his own butter.

He wore an apron of the purest white, with shoulder-straps of linen
tape, and upon his counter he had a desk, with a carved oak rail in
front of it and returned at either end. The joy of his life was here to
stand, with goodly shirt sleeves shining, his bright cheeks also shining
in the sun, unless it were hot enough to hurt his goods. He was not a
great man, but a good one--in the opinion of all who owed him nothing,
and even in his own estimate, though he owed so much to himself. It was
enough to make any one who possessed a shilling hungry to see him so
clean, so ready, and ruddy among the many good things which his looks
and manner, as well as his words, commended. And as soon as he began
to smack his rosy lips, which nature had fitted up on purpose, over a
rasher, or a cut of gammon, or a keg of best Aylesbury, or a fine red
herring, no customer having a penny in his pocket might struggle hard
enough to keep it there. For the half-hearted policy of fingering
one's money, and asking a price theoretically, would recoil upon the
constitution of the strongest man, unless he could detach from all
cooperation the congenial researches of his eyes and nose. When the
weather was cool and the air full of appetite, and a fine smack of salt
from the sea was sparkling on the margin of the plate of expectation,
there was Mr. Cheeseman, with a knife and fork, amid a presence of
hungrifying goods that beat the weak efforts of imagination. Hams of
the first rank and highest education, springs of pork sweeter than the
purest spring of poetry, pats of butter fragrant as the most delicious
flattery, chicks with breast too ample to require to be broken, and
sometimes prawns from round the headland, fresh enough to saw one
another's heads off, but for being boiled already.

Memory fails to record one-tenth of all the good things gathered there.
And why? Because hope was the power aroused, and how seldom can memory
endorse it! Even in the case of Mr. Cheeseman's wares there were people
who said, after making short work with them, that short weight had
enabled them to do so. And every one living in the village was surprised
to find his own scales require balancing again every time he sent his
little girl to Cheeseman's.

This upright tradesman was attending to his business one cold day in
May, 1803, soon after Nelson sailed from Portsmouth, and he stood with
his beloved pounds of farm-house butter, bladders of lard, and new-laid
eggs, and squares of cream-cheese behind him, with a broad butter-spathe
of white wood in his hand, a long goose-pen tucked over his left ear,
and the great copper scales hanging handy. So strict was his style,
though he was not above a joke, that only his own hands might serve
forth an ounce of best butter to the public. And whenever this was
weighed, and the beam adjusted handsomely to the satisfaction of the
purchaser, down went the butter to be packed upon a shelf uninvaded by
the public eye. Persons too scantily endowed with the greatest of all
Christian virtues had the hardihood to say that Mr. Cheeseman here
indulged in a process of high art discovered by himself. Discoursing
of the weather, or the crops, or perhaps the war, and mourning the
dishonesty of statesmen nowadays, by dexterous undersweep of keen steel
blade, from the bottom of the round, or pat, or roll, he would have away
a thin slice, and with that motion jerk it into the barrel which he kept
beneath his desk.

“Is this, then, the establishment of the illustrious Mr. Cheeseman?”
 The time was yet early, and the gentleman who put this question was in
riding dress. The worthy tradesman looked at him, and the rosy hue upon
his cheeks was marbled with a paler tint.

“This is the shop of the 'umble James Cheeseman,” he answered, but not
with the alacrity of business. “All things good that are in season, and
nothing kept unseasonable. With what can I have the honor of serving
you, sir?”

“With a little talk.” The stranger's manner was not unpleasantly
contemptuous, but lofty, and such as the English shopman loves, and
calls “aristocratic.”

“To talk with a gentleman is a pleasure as well as an honour,” said
Cheeseman.

“But not in this public establishment.” The visitor waved both hands as
he spoke, in a style not then common with Englishmen--though they are
learning eloquent gesticulation now. “It is fine, Mr. Cheeseman; but it
is not--bah, I forget your English words.”

“It is fine, sir, as you are good enough to observe”--the humble James
Cheeseman was proud of his shop--“but not, as you remarked, altogether
private. That can hardly be expected, where business is conducted to
suit universal requirements. Polly, my dear, if your mother can spare
you, come and take my place at the desk a few minutes. I have business
inside with this gentleman. You may sell almost anything, except butter.
If any one wants that, they must wait till I come back.”

A very pretty damsel, with a cap of foreign lace both adorning and
adorned by her beautiful bright hair, came shyly from a little door
behind the counter, receiving with a quick blush the stranger's earnest
gaze, and returning with a curtsey the courteous flourish of his
looped-up riding-hat. “What a handsome gentleman!” said Polly to
herself; “but there is something very sad and very wild in his
appearance.” Her father's conclusion was the same, and his heart misgave
him as he led in this unexpected guest.

“There is no cause for apologies. This place is a very good one,”
 the stranger replied, laying down his heavy whip on the table of a
stone-floored room, to which he had been shown. “You are a man of
business, and I am come upon dry business. You can conjecture--is it not
so?--who I am by this time, although I am told that I do not bear any
strong resemblance to my father.”

He took off his hat as he spoke, shook back his long black hair, and
fixed his jet-black eyes upon Cheeseman. That upright dealer had not
recovered his usual self-possession yet, but managed to look up--for he
was shorter by a head than his visitor--with a doubtful and enquiring
smile.

“I am Caryl Carne, of Carne Castle, as you are pleased to call it. I
have not been in England these many years; from the death of my father I
have been afar; and now, for causes of my own, I am returned, with hope
of collecting the fragments of the property of my ancestors. It appears
to have been their custom to scatter, but not gather up again. My
intention is to make a sheaf of the relics spread by squanderers, and
snapped up by scoundrels.”

“To be sure, to be sure,” cried the general dealer; “this is vastly to
your credit, sir, and I wish you all success, sir, and so will all who
have so long respected your ancient and honourable family, sir. Take a
chair, sir--please to take a chair.”

“I find very little to my credit,” Mr. Carne said, dryly, as he took the
offered chair, but kept his eyes still upon Cheeseman's; “but among that
little is a bond from you, given nearly twenty years agone, and of which
you will retain, no doubt, a vivid recollection.”

“A bond, sir--a bond!” exclaimed the other, with his bright eyes
twinkling, as in some business enterprise. “I never signed a bond in all
my life, sir. Why, a bond requires sureties, and nobody ever went surety
for me.”

“Bond may not be the proper legal term. It is possible. I know nothing
of the English law. But a document it is, under hand and seal, and your
signature is witnessed, Mr. Cheeseman.”

“Ah well! Let me consider. I begin to remember something. But my memory
is not as it used to be, and twenty years makes a great hole in it. Will
you kindly allow me to see this paper, if you have it with you, sir?”

“It is not a paper; it is written upon parchment, and I have not brought
it with me. But I have written down the intention of it, and it is as
follows:

“'This indenture made between James Cheeseman (with a long description),
of the one part, and Montagu Carne (treated likewise), of the other
part, after a long account of some arrangement made between them,
witnesseth that in consideration of the sum of 300 pounds well and truly
paid by the said Montagu Carne to Cheeseman, he, the said Cheeseman,
doth assign, transfer, set over, and so on, to the said Carne, etc., one
equal undivided moiety and one half part of the other moiety of and in a
certain vessel, ship, trading-craft, and so forth, known or thenceforth
to be known as the London Trader, of Springhaven, in the county of
Sussex, by way of security for the interest at the rate of five per
cent. per annum, payable half-yearly, as well as for the principal sum
of 300 pounds, so advanced as aforesaid.'”

“If it should prove, sir, that money is owing,” Mr. Cheeseman said, with
that exalted candour which made a weak customer condemn his own eyes and
nose, “no effort on my part shall be wanting, bad as the times are,
to procure it and discharge it. In every commercial transaction I
have found, and my experience is now considerable, that confidence, as
between man and man, is the only true footing to go upon. And how can
true confidence exist, unless--”

“Unless a man shows some honesty. And a man who keeps books such as
these,” pursued the visitor, suggesting a small kick to a pile of
ledgers, “can hardly help knowing whether he owes a large sum or whether
he has paid it. But that is not the only question now. In continuation
of that document I find a condition, a clause provisional, that it
shall be at the option of the aforesaid Montagu Carne, and his
representatives, either to receive the interest at the rate before
mentioned and thereby secured, or, if he or they should so prefer, to
take for their own benefit absolutely three-fourths of the net profits,
proceeds, or other increment realised by the trading ventures, or other
employment from time to time, of the said London Trader. Also there is a
covenant for the insurance of the said vessel, and a power of sale, and
some other provisions about access to trading books, etc., with which
you have, no doubt, a good acquaintance, Mr. Cheeseman.”

That enterprising merchant, importer of commodities, and wholesale and
retail dealer was fond of assuring his numerous friends that “nothing
ever came amiss to him.” But some of them now would have doubted about
this if they had watched his face as carefully as Caryl Carne was
watching it. Mr. Cheeseman could look a hundred people in the face, and
with great vigour too, when a small account was running. But the
sad, contemptuous, and piercing gaze--as if he were hardly worth
penetrating--and the twirl of the black tuft above the lip, and the firm
conviction on the broad white forehead that it was confronting a rogue
too common and shallow to be worth frowning at--all these, and the facts
that were under them, came amiss to the true James Cheeseman.

“I scarcely see how to take this,” he said, being clever enough to
suppose that a dash of candour might sweeten the embroilment. “I will
not deny that I was under obligation to your highly respected
father, who was greatly beloved for his good-will to his neighbours.
'Cheeseman,' he used to say, 'I will stand by you. You are the only man
of enterprise in these here parts. Whatever you do is for the good of
Springhaven, which belonged to my family for centuries before those
new-fangled Darlings came. And, Cheeseman, you may trust to the honour
of the Carnes not to grind down a poor man who has his way to make.'
Them were his words, sir; how well I recollect them!”

“Too well almost,” replied the young man, coldly, “considering how
scanty was your memory just now. But it may save time, and painful
efforts of your memory, if I tell you at once that I am not concerned in
any way with the sentiments of my father. I owe him very little, as you
must be well aware; and the matter betwixt you and me is strictly one
of business. The position in which I am left is such that I must press
every legal claim to the extremest. And having the option under this
good document, I have determined to insist upon three-quarters of the
clear proceeds of this trading-ship, from the date of the purchase until
the present day, as well as the capital sum invested on this security.”

“Very well, sir, if you do, there is only one course left me--to go into
the Court of Bankruptcy, see all my little stock in trade sold up, and
start in life again at the age of fifty-seven, with a curse upon all old
families.”

“Your curse, my good friend, will not add sixpence to your credit. And
the heat you exhibit is not well adapted for calculations commercial.
There is one other course which I am able to propose, though I will not
give a promise yet to do so--a course which would relieve me from taking
possession of this noble ship which has made your fortune, and perhaps
from enforcing the strict examination of your trading-books, to which I
am entitled. But before I propose any such concession, which will be
a grand abdication of rights, one or two things become necessary.
For example, I must have some acquaintance with your character, some
certitude that you can keep your own counsel, and not divulge everything
that arrives within your knowledge; also that you have some courage,
some freedom of mind from small insular sentiments, some desire to
promote the true interests of mankind, and the destruction of national
prejudices.”

“Certainly, sir; all of those I can approve of. They are very glorious
things,” cried Cheeseman--a man of fine liberal vein, whenever two
half-crowns were as good as a crown. “We are cramped and trampled and
down-trodden by the airs big people give themselves, and the longing of
such of us as thinks is to speak our minds about it. Upon that point
of freedom, sir, I can heartily go with you, and every stick upon my
premises is well insured.”

“Including, I hope, the London Trader, according to your covenant. And
that reminds me of another question--is it well-found, well-manned, and
a good rapid ship to make the voyage? No falsehood, if you please, about
this matter.”

“She is the fastest sailer on the English coast, built at Dunkirk, and
as sound as a bell. She could show her taffrail, in light weather, to
any British cruiser in the Channel. She could run a fine cargo of French
cognac and foreign laces any day.”

“It is not my desire,” Caryl Carne replied, “to cheat the British
Revenue. For that purpose exist already plenty of British tradesmen. For
the present I impress upon you one thing only, that you shall observe
silence, a sacred silence, regarding this conversation. For your own
sake you will be inclined to do so, and that is the only sake a man pays
much attention to. But how much for your own sake you are obliged to
keep your counsel, you will very soon find out if you betray it.”



CHAPTER XVI

FOX-HILL


When it was known in this fine old village that young Squire Carne from
foreign parts was come back to live in the ancient castle, there was
much larger outlay (both of words and thoughts) about that than about
any French invasion. “Let them land if they can,” said the able-bodied
men, in discussion of the latter question; “they won't find it so easy
to get away again as they seem to put into their reckoning. But the
plague of it all is the damage to the fishing.”

Not that the squadron of Captain Tugwell was shorn as yet of its number,
though all the young men were under notice to hold themselves ready as
“Sea-Fencibles.” The injury to their trade lay rather in the difficulty
of getting to their fishing-grounds, and in the disturbance of these by
cruisers, with little respect for their nets and lines. Again, as the
tidings of French preparation waxed more and more outrageous, Zebedee
had as much as he could do to keep all his young hands loyal. All their
solid interest lay (as he told them every morning) in sticking to
the Springhaven flag--a pair of soles couchant, herring salient,
and mackerel regardant, all upon a bright sea-green--rather than in
hankering after roll of drum and Union-Jack. What could come of these
but hardship, want of victuals, wounds, and death; or else to stump
about on one leg, and hold out a hat for a penny with one arm? They felt
that it was true; they had seen enough of that; it had happened in all
their own families.

Yet such is the love of the native land and the yearning to stand in
front of it, and such is the hate of being triumphed over by fellows who
kiss one another and weep, and such is the tingling of the knuckles for
a blow when the body has been kicked in sore places, that the heart
will at last get the better of the head--or at least it used to be so
in England. Wherefore Charley Bowles was in arms already against his
country's enemies; and Harry Shanks waited for little except a clear
proclamation of prize-money; and even young Daniel was tearing at his
kedge like a lively craft riding in a brisk sea-way. He had seen Lord
Nelson, and had spoken to Lord Nelson, and that great man would have
patted him on the head--so patriotic were his sentiments--if the great
man had been a little taller.

But the one thing that kept Dan Tugwell firm to his moorings at
Springhaven was the deep hold of his steadfast heart in a love which it
knew to be hopeless. To die for his country might become a stern duty,
about which he would rather not be hurried; but to die for Miss Dolly
would be a wild delight; and how could he do it unless he were at hand?
And now there were so many young officers again, landing in boats,
coming in post-chaises, or charging down the road on horseback, that
Daniel, while touching up the finish of his boat with paint and varnish
and Venetian Red, was not so happy as an artist should be who knows how
to place the whole. Sometimes, with the paint stirred up and creaming,
and the ooze of the brush trimmed warily, through the rushes and ragwort
and sea-willow his keen, unconquerable eyes would spy the only figure
that quelled them, faraway, shown against the shining water, or shadowed
upon the flat mirror of the sand. But, alas! there was always another
figure near it, bigger, bulkier, framed with ugly angles, jerking about
with the elbow sticking out, instead of gliding gracefully. Likely
enough the lovely form, brought nearer to the eyes and heart by love,
would flit about beautifully for two sweet moments, filling with rapture
all the flashes of the sea and calm of the evening sky beyond; and then
the third moment would be hideous. For the figure of the ungainly foe
would stride across the delicious vision, huge against the waves like
Cyclops, and like him gesticulant, but unhappily not so single-eyed that
the slippery fair might despise him. Then away would fly all sense of
art and joy in the touch of perfection, and a very nasty feeling would
ensue, as if nothing were worth living for, and nobody could be believed
in.

That plaguesome Polypheme was Captain Stubbard, begirt with a wife,
and endowed with a family almost in excess of benediction, and dancing
attendance upon Miss Dolly, too stoutly for his own comfort, in the hope
of procuring for his own Penates something to eat and to sit upon. Some
evil genius had whispered, or rather trumpeted, into his ear--for he
had but one left, and that worked very seldom, through alarm about the
bullet which had carried off its fellow--that if he desired, as he did
with heart and stomach, to get a clear widening by 200 pounds of his
strait ways and restricted means, through Admiral Darling it might
be done, and Miss Dolly was the proper one to make him do it. For the
Inspectorship of Sea-Fencibles from Selsea-Bill to Dungeness was worth
all that money in hard cash yearly; and the late Inspector having
quitted this life--through pork boiled in a copper kettle--the situation
was naturally vacant; and the Admiral being the man for whose check the
Inspectorship was appointed, it is needless to say that (in the spirit
of fair play) the appointment was vested in the Admiral.

The opinion of all who knew him was that Captain Stubbard was fairly
entitled to look for something higher. And he shared that opinion,
taking loftier aim than figures could be made to square with, till the
latter prevailed, as they generally do, because they can work without
victuals. For although the brave Captain had lost three ribs--or at any
rate more than he could spare of them (not being a pig)--in the service
of his country, he required as much as ever to put inside them; and
his children, not having inherited that loss as scientifically as
they should have done, were hard to bring up upon the 15 pounds yearly
allowed by Great Britain for each of the gone bones. From the ear that
was gone he derived no income, having rashly compounded for 25 pounds.

In the nature of things, which the names have followed, the father is
the feeder; and the world is full of remarks unless he becomes a good
clothier also. But everything went against this father, with nine little
Stubbards running after him, and no ninepence in any of his pockets,
because he was shelfed upon half-pay, on account of the depression of
the times and of his ribs. But Miss Dolly Darling was resolved to see
him righted, for she hated all national meanness.

“What is the use of having any influence,” she asked her good father,
“unless you employ it for your own friends? I should be quite ashamed
to have it said of me, or thought, that I could get a good thing for any
one I was fond of, and was mean enough not to do it, for fear of paltry
jealousy. Mean is much too weak a word; it is downright dishonest, and
what is much worse, cowardly. What is the government meant for, unless
it is to do good to people?”

“Certainly, my dear child, certainly. To the people at large, that is to
say, and the higher interests of the country.”

“Can there be any people more at large than Captain Stubbard and his
wife and children? Their elbows are coming out of their clothes, and
they have scarcely got a bed to sleep upon. My income is not enough to
stop to count, even when I get it paid punctually. But every farthing I
receive shall go--that is to say, if it ever does come--into the lap of
Mrs. Stubbard, anonymously and respectfully.”

“Pay your bills, first,” said the Admiral, taking the weather-gage of
the discussion: “a little bird tells me that you owe a good trifle, even
in Springhaven.”

“Then the little bird has got a false bill,” replied Dolly, who was not
very easy to fluster. “Who is there to spend sixpence with in a little
hole of this kind? I am not a customer for tea, coffee, tobacco, snuff,
or pepper, nor even for whiting, soles, or conger. Old Cheeseman imports
all the fashions, as he says; but I go by my own judgment. And trumpery
as my income is, very little of it goes into his till. But I should like
to know who told you such a wicked story, father?”

“Things are mentioned in confidence, and I put them together,” said the
Admiral. “Don't say another word, or look as if you would be happier if
you had something to cry about. Your dear mother used to do it; and it
beats me always. I have long had my eye upon Captain Stubbard, and I
remember well that gallant action when his three ribs flew away. We
called him Adam, because of his wife coming just when his middle rib
went, and his name was Adam Stubbard, sure enough. Such men, in the
prime of their life, should be promoted, instead of being disabled, for
a scratch like that. Why, he walks every bit as well as I do, and
his watch-ribbon covers it. And nine children! Lord bless my heart! I
scarcely know which way to turn, with only four!”

Within a short fortnight Captain Stubbard was appointed, with an
office established at the house of Widow Shanks--though his real office
naturally was at the public-house--and Royal Proclamations aroused the
valour of nearly everybody who could read them. Nine little Stubbards
soon were rigged too smart to know themselves, as the style is of all
dandies; and even Mrs. Stubbard had a new belt made to go round her,
when the weather was elastic.

“These are the things that prove the eye of an All-wise Providence over
us,” said the Captain to the Admiral, pointing out six pairs of short
legs, galligaskined from one roll of cloth; “these are the things that
make one feel the force of the words of David.”

“Certainly, yes, to be sure!” replied the gallant senior officer, all
at sea as to the passage suggested. “Good legs they have got, and no
mistake; like the polished corners of the temple. Let them go and dip
them in the sea, while you give the benefit of your opinion here. Not
here, I mean, but upon Fox-hill yonder; if Mrs. Stubbard will spare you
for a couple of hours, most kindly.”

Of the heights that look down with a breezy air upon the snug nest of
Springhaven, the fairest to see from a distance, and to tread with brisk
foot, is Fox-hill. For the downs, which are channelled with the springs
that form the brook, keep this for their own last spring into the air,
before bathing in the vigorous composure of the sea. All the other hills
fall back a little, to let Fox-hill have the first choice of aspect--or
bear the first brunt, as itself would state the matter. And to anybody
coming up, and ten times to a stranger, this resolute foreland offers
more invitation to go home again, than to come visiting. For the bulge
of the breast is steep, and ribbed with hoops coming up in denial,
concrete with chalk, muricated with flint, and thornily crested with
good stout furze. And the forefront of the head, when gained, is stiff
with brambles, and stubbed with sloes, and mitred with a choice band of
stanch sting-nettles.

“It would take a better Frenchman,” said the Admiral, with that brevity
which is the happy result of stoutness up steep hill, “than any of 'they
flat-bottoms,' as Swipes, my gardener, calls them, to get through
these prickles, Stubbard, without Sark-blewing. Such a wonderfully
thin-skinned lot they are! Did I ever tell you the story of our
boatswain's mate? But that takes a better sailing breeze than I've got
now. You see where we are, don't you?”

“Certainly, Admiral,” replied Captain Stubbard, disdaining to lay hand
to his injured side, painfully as it yearned for pressure; “we have had
a long pull, and we get a fine outlook over the country for leagues, and
the Channel. How close at hand everything looks! I suppose we shall have
rain, and we want it. I could thump that old castle among the trees into
smash, and your church looks as if I could put a shot with a rifle-gun
into the bell-chamber.”

“And so you could. What I want to show you is that very point, and
the importance of it. With a battery of long twenty-fours up here, the
landing, the bay, and all the roads are at our mercy. My dear old friend
Nelson drew my attention to it.”

“It is plain as a pikestaff to Tom, Dick, or Harry:” Captain Stubbard
was a frank, straightforward man, and much as he owed to the Admiral's
aid, not a farthing would he pay in flattery. “But why should we want to
command this spot? There is nothing to protect but a few common houses,
and some half-score of fishing-craft, and a schooner that trades to
London, and yonder old church, and--oh yes, to be sure, your own house
and property, Admiral.”

“Those must take their chance, like others. I hope I know better than to
think of them in comparison with the good of the country. But if we fail
to occupy this important post, the enemy might take us by surprise, and
do so.”

“Possible, but most improbable. This little place lies, by the trend of
the coast, quite out of their course from Boulogne to London; and what
is there here to tempt them? No rich town to sack, no great commerce to
rob, no valuable shipping to lay hands on.”

“No; but there's my house and my two girls; and I don't want my old
roof burned, and my daughters put to wait on Boney. But to think of
self-interest is below contempt, with our country going through such
trials. Neither should we add any needless expense to a treasury already
overburdened.”

“Certainly not. It would be absolutely wicked. We have a long and costly
war before us, and not a shilling should be spent except in case of
clear necessity.”

“I am very glad indeed to find your opinion so decided, so untainted
with petty self-interest.” As Admiral Darling spoke he closed a little
silver telescope, with which he had been gazing through the wooded
coronet of the hill. “I thought it my duty to consult you, Stubbard,
before despatching this letter, which, being backed by Nelson's opinion,
would probably have received attention. If a strong battery were thrown
up here, as it would be in a fortnight from the receipt of this bit of
foolscap, the appointment of commandant would rest with me, and I could
appoint nobody but your good self, because of your well-known experience
in earthworks. The appointment would have doubled your present pay,
which, though better than nothing, is far below your merits. But your
opinion settles the question otherwise, and I must burn my letter. Let
us lose no more time. Mrs. Stubbard will call me a savage, for keeping
you away so long.”

“Important business,” replied the Captain, “will not wait even for
ladies, or, rather, they must try to wait for it, and give way to more
reasonable urgency. Some time is required for considering this matter,
and deciding what is most for the interest of the nation. Oblige me with
your spy-glass, Admiral. There is one side on which I have neglected
to look out, and that may of all be the most important. A conclusion
arrived at by yourself and Nelson is not to be hastily set aside. Your
knowledge of the country is so far beyond mine, though I may have
had more to do with land-works. We ought to think twice, sir, if the
government will pay for it, about a valuable job of this kind.”

With these words Captain Stubbard began to use the telescope carefully,
forming his opinion through it, and wisely shaking his head, now and
then, with a longer and longer focus. Then he closed the glass, and his
own lips firmly--whereby a man announces that no other should open his
against them--and sternly striding the yard exact, took measurement for
the battery. The hill was crowned with a ring of Scotch firs, casting
a quiet shade upon the warlike haste of the Captain. If Admiral Darling
smiled, it was to the landscape and the offing, for he knew that
Stubbard was of rather touchy fibre, and relished no jokes unless of
home production. His slow, solid face was enough to show this, and the
squareness of his outline, and the forward thrust of his knees as he
walked, and the larkspur impress of his lingering heels. And he seldom
said much, without something to say.

“Well,” cried the Admiral, growing tired of sitting so long upon a
fallen trunk, “what conclusion do you feel inclined to come to? 'Tis
a fine breezy place to clear the brain, and a briny air to sharpen the
judgment.”

“Only one tree need come down--this crooked one at the southeast
corner.” Captain Stubbard began to swing his arms about, like a windmill
uncertain of the wind. “All gentlemen hate to have a tree cut down,
all blackguards delight in the process. Admiral, we will not hurt
your trees. They will add to our strength, by masking it. Six long
twenty-fours of the new make, here in front, and two eighteens upon
either flank, and I should like to see the whole of the Boulogne
flotilla try to take yonder shore by daylight. That is to say, of
course, if I commanded, with good old salts to second m

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