Mary Anerley : a Yorkshire Tale Part 50

"Then she ought to have fallen in love with Robin Lyth, the most famous man in all this neighborhood."

"Dr. Upround, you say things on purpose to provoke me when my remarks are unanswerable. Robin Lyth indeed! A sailor, a smuggler, a common working-man! And under that terrible accusation!"

"An objectionable party altogether; not even desirable as a grandson.

Therefore say nothing more of Janetta and Sir Duncan."

"Sometimes, my dear, the chief object of your existence seems to be to irritate me. What can poor Robin have to do with Sir Duncan Yordas?"

"Simply this. He is his only son. The proofs were completed, and deposited with me for safe custody, last night, by that very active man of business, Geoffrey Mordacks, of York city."

"Well!" cried Mrs. Upround, with both hands lifted, and a high color flowing into her unwrinkled cheeks; "from this day forth I shall never have any confidence in you again. How long--if I may dare to put any sort of question--have you been getting into all this very secret knowledge? And why have I never heard a word of it till now? And not even now, I do believe, through any proper urgency of conscience on your part, but only because I insisted upon knowing. Oh, Dr. Upround, for shame! for shame!"

"My dear, you have no one but yourself to blame," her husband replied, with a sweet and placid smile. "Three times I have told you things that were to go no further, and all three of them went twenty miles within three days. I do not complain of it; far less of you. You may have felt it quite as much your duty to spread knowledge as I felt it mine to restrict it. And I never should have let you get all this out of me now, if it had been at all inc.u.mbent upon me to keep it quiet."

"That means that I have never got it out of you at all. I have taken all this trouble for nothing."

"No, my dear, not at all. You have worked well, and have promised not to say a word about it. You might not have known it for a week at least, except for my confidence in you."

"Much of it I thank you for. But don't be cross, my dear, because you have behaved so atrociously. You have not answered half of my questions yet."

"Well, there were so many, that I scarcely can remember them. Let me see: I have told you who the great man is, and the reason that brought him to Flamborough. Then about the dangerous chill he has taken; it came through a bitter ride from Scarborough; and if Dr. Stirbacks came, he would probably make it still more dangerous. At least so Mordacks says; and the patient is in his hands, and out of mine; so that Stirbacks can not be aggrieved with us. On the other hand, as to the milkman from Sewerby. I really do not know why he shook his head. Perhaps he found the big pump frozen. He is not of my parish, and may shake his head without asking my permission. Now I think that I have answered nearly all your questions."

"Not at all; I have not had time to ask them yet, because I feel so much above them. But if the milkman meant nothing, because of his not belonging to our parish, the butcher does, and he can have no excuse.

He says that Mr. Mordacks takes all the best meanings of a mutton-sheep every other day to Burlington."

"I know he does. And it ought to put us to the blush that a stranger should have to do so. Mordacks is finding clothes, food, and firing for all the little creatures poor Carroway left, and even for his widow, who has got a wandering mind. Without him there would not have been one left. The poor mother locked in all her little ones, and starved them, to save them from some quite imaginary foe. The neighbors began to think of interfering, and might have begun to do it when it was all over.

Happily, Mordacks arrived just in time. His prompt.i.tude, skill, and generosity saved them. Never say a word against that man again."

"My dear, I will not," Mrs. Upround answered, with tears coming into her kindly eyes. "I never heard of anything more pitiful. I had no idea Mr. Mordacks was so good. He looks more like an evil spirit. I always regarded him as an evil spirit; and his name sounds like it, and he jumps about so. But he ought to have gone to the rector of the parish."

"It is a happy thing that he can jump about. The rector of the parish can not do so, as you know; and he lives two miles away from them, and had never even heard of it. People always talk about the rector of a parish as if he could be everywhere and see to everything. And few of them come near him in their prosperous times. Have you any other questions to put to me, my dear?"

"Yes, a quant.i.ty of things which I can not think of now. How it was that little boy--I remember it like yesterday--came ash.o.r.e here, and turned out to be Robin Lyth; or at least to be no Robin Lyth at all, but the son of Sir Duncan Yordas. And what happened to the poor man in Bempton Warren."

"The poor man died a most miserable death, but I trust sincerely penitent. He had led a sad, unG.o.dly life, and he died at last of wooden legs. He was hunted to his grave, he told us, by these wooden legs; and he recognized in them Divine retribution, for the sin of his life was committed in timber. No sooner did any of those legs appear--and the poor fellow said they were always coming--than his heart began to patter, and his own legs failed him, and he tried to stop his ears, but his conscience would not let him."

"Now there!" cried Mrs. Upround; "what the power of conscience is! He had stolen choice timber, perhaps ready-made legs."

"A great deal worse than that, my dear; he had knocked out a knot as large as my shovel-hat from the side of a s.h.i.+p home bound from India, because he was going to be tried for mutiny upon their arrival at Leith, it was, I think. He and his partners had been in irons, but unluckily they were just released. The weather was magnificent, a lovely summer's night, soft fair breeze, and every one rejoicing in the certainty of home within a few short hours. And they found home that night, but it was in a better world."

"You have made me creep all over. And you mean to say that a wretch like that has any hope of heaven! How did he get away himself?"

"Very easily. A little boat was towing at the side. There were only three men upon deck, through the beauty of the weather, and two of those were asleep. They bound and gagged the waking one, lashed the wheel, and made off in the boat wholly unperceived. There was Rickon Goold, the ringleader, and four others, and they brought away a little boy who was lying fast asleep, because one of them had been in the service of his father, and because of the value of his Indian clothes, which his ayah made him wear now in his little cot for warmth. The scoundrels took good care that none should get away to tell the tale. They saw the poor Golconda sink with every soul on board, including the captain's wife and babies; then they made for land, and in the morning fog were carried by the tide toward our North Landing. One of them knew the coast as well as need be; but they durst not land until their story was concocted, and everything fitted in to suit it. The sight of the rising sun, scattering the fog, frightened them, as it well might do; and they pulled into the cave, from which I always said, as you may now remember, Robin must have come--the cave which already bears his name.

"Here they remained all day, considering a plausible tale to account for themselves, without making mention of any lost s.h.i.+p, and trying to remove every trace of ident.i.ty from the boat they had stolen. They had brought with them food enough to last three days, and an anker of rum from the steward's stores; and as they grew weary of their long confinement, they indulged more freely than wisely in the consumption of that cordial. In a word, they became so tipsy that they frightened the little helpless boy; and when they began to fight about his gold b.u.t.tons, which were claimed by the fellow who had saved his life, he scrambled from the side of the boat upon the rock, and got along a narrow ledge, where none of them could follow him. They tried to coax him back; but he stamped his feet, and swore at them, being sadly taught bad language by the native servants, I dare say. Rickon Goold wanted to shoot him, for they had got a gun with them, and he feared to leave him there. But Sir Duncan's former boatman would not allow it; and at dark they went away and left him there. And the poor little fellow, in his dark despair, must have been led by the hand of the Lord through crannies too narrow for a man to pa.s.s. There is a well-known land pa.s.sage out of that cave; but he must have crawled out by a smaller one, unknown even to our fishermen, slanting up the hill, and having outlet in the thicket near the place where the boats draw up. And so he was found by Robin c.o.c.kscroft in the morning. They had fed the child with biscuit soaked in rum, which accounts for his heavy sleep and wonderful exertions, and may have predisposed him for a contraband career."

"And perhaps for the very bad language which he used," said Mrs.

Upround, thoughtfully. "It is an extraordinary tale, my dear. But I suppose there can be no doubt of it. But such a clever child should have known his own name. Why did he call himself 'Izunsabe'?"

"That is another link in the certainty of proof. On board that unfortunate s.h.i.+p, and perhaps even before he left India, he was always called the 'Young Sahib,' and he used, having proud little ways of his own, to shout, if anybody durst provoke him, 'I'se young Sahib, I'se young Sahib;' which we rendered into 'Izunsabe.' But his true name is Wilton Bart Yordas, I believe, and the initials can be made out upon his gold beads, Mr. Mordacks tells me, among heathen texts."

"That seems rather shocking to good principles, my dear. I trust that Sir Duncan is a Christian at least; or he shall never set foot in this house."

"My dear, I can not tell. How should I know? He may have lapsed, of course, as a good many of them do, from the heat of the climate, and bad surroundings. But that happens mostly from their marrying native women.

And this gentleman never has done that, I do believe."

"They tell me that he is a very handsome man, and of most commanding aspect--the very thing Janetta likes so much. But what became of those unhappy sadly tipsy sailors?"

"Well, they managed very cleverly, and made success of tipsiness. As soon as it was dark that night, and before the child had crawled away, they pushed out of the cave, and let the flood-tide take them round the Head. They meant to have landed at Bridlington Quay, with a tale of escape from a Frenchman; but they found no necessity for going so far. A short-handed collier was lying in the roads; and the skipper, perceiving that they were in liquor, thought it a fine chance, and took some trouble to secure them. They told him that they had been trying to run goods, and were chased by a revenue boat, and so on. He was only too glad to be enabled to make sail, and by dawn they were under way for the Thames; and that was the end of the Golconda."

"What an awful crime! But you never mean to tell me that the Lord let those men live and prosper?"

"That subject is beyond our view, my dear. There were five of them, and Rickon Goold believed himself the last of them. But being very penitent, he might have exaggerated. He said that one was swallowed by a shark, at least his head was, and one was hanged for stealing sheep, and one for a bad sixpence; but the fate of the other (too terrible to tell you) brought this man down here, to be looking at the place, and to divide his time between fasting, and drinking, and poaching, and discoursing to the thoughtless. The women flocked to hear him preach, when the pa.s.sion was upon him; and he used to hint at awful sins of his own, which made him earnest. I hope that he was so, and I do believe it. But the wooden-legged sailors, old Joe and his son, who seem to have been employed by Mordacks, took him at his own word for a 'miserable sinner'--which, as they told their master, no respectable man would call himself--and in the most business-like manner they set to to remove him to a better world; and now they have succeeded."

"Poor man! After all, one must be rather sorry for him. If old Joe came stumping after me for half an hour, I should have no interest in this life left."

"My dear, they stumped after him the whole day long, and at night they danced a hornpipe outside his hut. He became convinced that the Prince of Evil was come, in that naval style, to fetch him; and he drank everything he could lay hands on, to fortify him for the contest. The end, as you know, was extremely sad for him, but highly satisfactory to them, I fear. They have signified their resolution to attend his funeral; and Mordacks has said, with unbecoming levity, that if they never were drunk before--which seems to me an almost romantic supposition--that night they shall be drunk, and no mistake."

"All these things, my dear," replied Mrs. Upround, who was gifted with a fine vein of moral reflection, "are not as we might wish if we ordered them ourselves. But still there is this to be said in their favor, that they have a large tendency toward righteousness."

CHAPTER XLVII

A TANGLE OF VEINS

Human resolution, energy, experience, and reason in its loftiest form may fight against the doctor; but he beats them all, maintains at least his own vitality, and a.s.serts his guineas. Two more resolute men than Mr. Mordacks and Sir Duncan Yordas could scarcely be found in those resolute times. They sternly resolved to have no sort of doctor; and yet within three days they did have one; and, more than that, the very one they had positively vowed to abstain from.

Dr. Stirbacks let everybody know that he never cared two flips of his thumb for anybody. If anybody wanted him, they must come and seek him, and be thankful if he could find time to hear their nonsense. For he understood not the system only, but also the nature of mankind. The people at the Thornwick did not want him. Very good, so much the better for him and for them; because the more they wanted him, the less would he go near them. Tut! tut! tut! he said; what did he want with crack-brained patients?

All this compelled him, with a very strong reluctance, to be dragged into that very place the very same day; and he saw that he was not come an hour too soon. Sir Duncan was lying in a bitterly cold room, with the fire gone out, and the spark of his life not very far from following it.

Mr. Mordacks was gone for the day upon business, after leaving strict orders that a good fire must be kept, and many other things attended to.

But the chimney took to smoking, and the patient to coughing, and the landlady opened the window wide, and the fire took flight into the upper air. Sir Duncan hated nothing more than any fuss about himself. He had sent a man to Scarborough for a little chest of clothes, for his saddle-kit was exhausted; and having promised Mordacks that he would not quit the house, he had nothing to do except to meditate and s.h.i.+ver.

Gil Beilby's wife Nell, coming up to take orders for dinner, "got a dreadful turn" from what she saw, and ran down exclaiming that the very best customer that ever drew their latch was dead. Without waiting to think, the landlord sent a most urgent message for Dr. Stirbacks.

That learned man happened to be round the corner, although he lived at Bempton; he met the messenger, cast to the winds all sense of wrong, and rushed to the succor of humanity.

That night, when the general factor returned, with the hunger excited by feeding the hungry, he was met at the door by Dr. Stirbacks, saying, "Hush, my good sir," before he had time to think of speaking. "You!"

cried Mr. Mordacks, having met this gentleman when Rickon Goold was near his last. "You! Then it must be bad indeed!"

"It is bad, and it must have been all over, sir, but for my being providentially at the cheese shop. I say nothing to wound any gentleman's feelings who thinks that he understands everything; but our poor patient, with the very best meaning, no doubt, has been all but murdered."

"Dr. Stirbacks, you have got him now, and of course you will make the best of him. Don't let him slip through your fingers, doctor; he is much too good for that."

"He shall not slip through my fingers," said the little doctor, with a twinkle of self-preservation. "I have got him, sir, and I shall keep him, sir; and you ought to have put him in my hands long ago."

The sequel of this needs no detail. Dr. Stirbacks came three times a day; and without any disrespect to the profession, it must be admitted that he earned his fees. For Sir Duncan's case was a very strange one, and beyond the best wisdom of the laity. If that chill had struck upon him when his spirit was as usual, he might have cast it off, and gone on upon his business. But coming as it did, when the temperature of his heart was lowered by nip of disappointment, it went into him, as water on a duck's back is not cast away when his rump gland is out of order.