Mary Anerley : a Yorkshire Tale Part 57

When he heard what it was, it liked him well; for he bore a fine grudge against Lancelot for setting the dogs at him three years ago, when he came (as an agent for adjoining property) to the house of Yordas, and when Mr. Jellicorse scorned to meet an illegal meddler with legal matters. If Mordacks had any fault--and he must have had some, in spite of his resolute conviction to the contrary--it was that he did not altogether scorn revenge.

Lives there man, or even woman, capable of describing now the miseries, the hards.h.i.+ps, the afflictions beyond groaning, which, like electric hail, came down upon the sacred head of Pet? He was in the grasp of three strong men--his uncle, Mr. Bart, worst of all, that Mordacks--escape was impossible, lamentation met with laughter, and pa.s.sion led to punishment. Even stern Maunder was sorry for him, although he despised him for feeling it. The only beam of light, the only spark of pleasure, was his royal uniform; and to know that Insie's laugh thereat was hollow, and would melt away to weeping when he was out of sight, together with the sulky curiosity of Maunder, kept him up a little, in this time of bitter sacrifice.

Enough that he went off, at last, in the claws of that Roman hippogriff--as Mrs. Carnaby savagely called poor Mordacks--and the visitor's flag hung half-mast high, and Saracen and the other dogs made a howling dirge, with such fine hearts (as the poor mother said, between her sobs) that they got their dinners upon china plates.

Sir Duncan had left before this, and was back under Dr. Upround's hospitable roof. He had made up his mind to put his fortune, or rather his own value, to the test, in a place of deep interest to him now, the heart of the fair Janetta. He knew that, according to popular view, he was much too old for this young lady; but for popular view he cared not one doit, if her own had the courage and the will to go against it. For years he had sternly resisted all temptation of second marriage, toward which shrewd mothers and nice maidens had labored in vain to lead him.

But the bitter disappointment about his son, and that long illness, and the tender nursing (added to the tenderness of his own sides, from lying upon them, with a hard dry cough), had opened some parts of his const.i.tution to matrimonial propensities. Miss Upround was of a playful nature, and teased everybody she cared about; and although Sir Duncan was a great hero to her, she treated him sometimes as if he were her doll. Being a grave man, he liked this, within the bounds of good taste and manners; and the young lady always knew where to stop. From being amused with her, he began to like her; and from liking her, he went on to miss her; and from missing her to wanting her was no long step.

However, Sir Duncan was not at all inclined to make a fool of himself herein. He liked the lady very much, and saw that she would suit him, and help him well in the life to which he was thinking of returning. For within the last fortnight a very high post at Calcutta had been offered to him by the powers in Leadenhall Street, upon condition of sailing at once, and foregoing the residue of his leave. If matters had been to his liking in England, he certainly would have declined it; but after his sad disappointment, and the serious blow to his health, he resolved to accept it, and set forth speedily. The time was an interlude of the war, and s.h.i.+ps need not wait for convoy.

This had induced him to take his Yorks.h.i.+re affairs (which Mordacks had been forced to intermit during his Derbys.h.i.+re campaign) into his own hands, and speed the issue, as above related. And part of his plan was to quit all claim to present possession of Scargate; that if the young lady should accept his suit, it might not in any way be for the sake of the landed interest. As it happened, he had gone much further than this, and cast away his claim entirely, to save his sister from disgrace and the family property from lawyers. And now having sought Dr. Upround's leave (which used to be thought the proper thing to do), he asked Janetta whether she would have him, and she said, "No, but he might have her." Upon this he begged permission to set the many drawbacks before her, and she nodded her head, and told him to begin.

"I am of a Yorks.h.i.+re family. But, I am sorry to say that their temper is bad, and they must have their own way too much."

"But, that suits me; and I understand it. Because I must have my own way too."

"But, I have parted with my inheritance, and have no place in this country now."

"But, I am very glad of that. Because I shall be able to go about."

"But, India is a dreadfully hot country; many creatures tease you, and you get tired of almost everything."

"But, that will make it all the more refres.h.i.+ng not to be tired of you, perhaps."

"But, I have a son as old as you, or older."

"But, you scarcely suppose that I can help that!"

"But, my hair is growing gray, and I have great crow's-feet, and everybody will begin to say--"

"But, I don't believe a word of it, and I won't have it; and I don't care a pin's head what all the world says put together, so long as you don't belong to it."

CHAPTER LIV

TRUE LOVE

About a month after Sir Duncan's marriage, when he and his bride were in London, with the lady's parents come to help, in the misery of outfit, a little boy ran through a field of wheat, early in the afternoon, and hid himself in a blackthorn hedge to see what was going on at Anerley.

Nothing escaped him, for his eyes were sharp, being of true Danish breed. He saw Captain Anerley trudging up the hill, with a pipe in his mouth, to the bean field, where three or four men were enjoying the air, without any of the greedy gulps produced by too great exertion of the muscles; then he saw the mistress of the house throw wide a lattice, and shake out a cloth for the birds, who skipped down from the thatch by the dozen instantly; and then he saw Mary, with a basket and a wooden measure, going round the corner of the house, and clucking for the fowls to rally from their scratching-places. These came zealously, with speed of leg and wing, from straw-rick, thres.h.i.+ng-floor, double hedge, or mixen; and following their tails, the boy slipped through the rick-yard, and tossed a note to Mary with a truly Flamburian delivery.

Although it was only a small-sized boy, no other than the heir of the "Cod-fish," a brighter rose flew into Mary's cheeks than the master-c.o.c.k of all the yard could show upon comb or wattle. Contemptuous of twopence, which Mary felt for, the boy disappeared like a rabbit; and the fowls came and helped themselves to the tail-wheat, while their mistress was thinking of her letter. It was short and sweet--at least in promise--being no more than these few words: "Darling, the dike where first we met, an hour after sunset."

Mary never doubted that her duty was to go; and at the time appointed she was there, with firm knowledge of her own mind, being now a loving and reasonable woman. It was just a year since she had saved the life of Robin; and patience, and loneliness, and opposition, had enlarged and enn.o.bled her true and simple heart. No lord in the land need have looked for a purer or sweeter example of maidenhood than this daughter of a Yorks.h.i.+re farmer was, in her simple dress, and with the dignity of love.

The glen was beginning to bestrew itself with want of light, instead of shadows; and bushy places thickened with the imperceptible growth of night. Mary went on, with excitement deepening, while sunset deepened into dusk; and the color of her clear face flushed and fleeted under the anxious touch of love, as the tint of a delicate finger-nail, with any pressure, varies. But not very long was she left in doubt.

"How long you have been! And oh, where have you been? And how much longer will you be?" Among many other words and doings she insisted chiefly on these points.

"I am a true-blue, as you may see, and a warrant-officer already," he said, with his old way of smiling at himself. "When the war begins again (as it must--please G.o.d!--before many weeks are over), I shall very soon get my commission, and go up. I am quite fit already to command a frigate."

Mary was astonished at his modesty; she thought that he ought to be an admiral at least, and so she told him; however, he knew better.

"You must bear in mind," he replied, with a kindly desire to spare her feelings, "that until a change for the better comes, I am under disadvantages. Not only as an outlaw--which has been upon the whole a comfort--but as a suspected criminal, with warrant against him, and reward upon him. Of course I am innocent; and everybody knows it, or at least I hope so, except the one who should have known it best."

"I am the person who should know it best of all," his true love answered, with some jealousy. "Explain yourself, Robin, if you please."

"No Robin, so please you, but Mr. James Blyth, captain of the foretop, then c.o.c.kswain of the barge, and now master's mate of H. M. s.h.i.+p of the line Belleisle. But the one who should have trusted me, next to my own love, is my father, Sir Duncan Yordas."

"How you are talking! You have such a reckless way. A warrant-officer, an arrant criminal! And your father, Sir Duncan Yordas, that very strange gentleman, who could never get warm! Oh, Robin, you always did talk nonsense, when--whenever I would let you. But you should not try to make my head go round."

"Every word of it is true," the young sailor answered, applying a prompt remedy for vertigo. "It had been clearly proved to his knowledge, long before the great fact was vouchsafed to me, that I am the only son of Sir Duncan Yordas, or, at any rate, his only son for the present. The discovery gratified him so little, that he took speedy measures to supplant me."

"The very rich gentleman from India," said Mary, "that married Miss Upround lately; and her dress was all made of spun diamonds, they say, as bright as the dew in the morning. Oh, then you will have to give me up; Robin, you must give up me!"

Clasping her hands, she looked up at him with courage, keeping down all sign of tears. She felt that her heart would not hold out long, and yet she was prouder than to turn away. "Speak," she said; "it is better to speak plainly; you know that it must be so."

"Do I? why?" Robin Lyth asked, calmly, being well contented to prolong her doubts, that he might get the benefit thereafter.

"Because you belong to great people, and I am just a farmer's daughter, and no more, and quite satisfied to remain so. Such things never answer."

"A little while ago you were above me, weren't you? When I was n.o.body's son, and only a castaway, with a nickname."

"That has nothing to do with it. We must take things exactly as we find them at the time."

"And you took me as you found me at the time; only that you made me out so much better. Mary, I am not worthy of you. What has birth to do with it? And so far as that goes, yours is better, though mine may seem the brighter. In every other way you are above me. You are good, and I am wicked. You are pure, and I am careless. You are sweet, and I am violent. In truth alone can I ever vie with you; and I must be a pitiful scoundrel, Mary, if I did not even try to do that, after all that you have done for me."

"But," said Mary, with her lovely eyes gleaming with the glittering shade of tears, "I like you very much to do it--but not exactly as a duty, Robin."

"You look at me like that, and you talk of duty! Duty, duty; this is my duty. I should like to be discharging it forever and a day."

"I did not come here for ideas of this kind," said Mary, with her lips as red as pyracanthine berries; "free trade was bad enough, but the Royal Navy worse, it seems. Now, Robin dear, be sensible, and tell me what I am to do."

"To listen to me, and then say whether I deserve what my father has done to me. He came back from India--as you must understand--with no other object in life, that I can hear of (for he had any quant.i.ty of money), than to find out me, his only child, and the child of the only wife he ever could put up with. For twenty years he had believed me to be drowned, when the s.h.i.+p he sent me home in to be educated was supposed to have foundered, with all hands. But something made him fancy that I might have escaped; and as he could not leave India then, he employed a gentleman of York, named Mordacks, to hunt out all about it. Mordacks, who seems to be a wonderful man, and most kind-hearted to everybody, as poor Widow Carroway says of him with tears, and as he testifies of himself--he set to work, and found out in no time all about me and my ear-rings, and my crawling from the cave that will bear my name, they say, and more things than I have time to tell. He appointed a meeting with Sir Duncan Yordas here at Flamborough, and would have brought me to him, and everything might have been quite happy. But in the mean while that horrible murder of poor Carroway came to pa.s.s, and I was obliged to go into hiding, as no one knows better than you, my dear. My father (as I suppose I must call him) being bound, as it seems that they all are, to fall out with their children, took a hasty turn against me at once.

Mordacks, whom I saw last week, trusting myself to his honor, tells me that Sir Duncan would not have cared twopence about my free-trade work, and so on, or even about my having killed the officer in fair conflict, for he is used to that. But he never will forgive me for absconding, and leaving my fellows, as he puts it, to bear the brunt. He says that I am a dastard and a skulk, and unworthy to bear the name of Yordas."

"What a wicked, unnatural man he must be!" cried Mary. "He deserves to have no children."

"No; I am told that he is a very good man, but stiff-necked and disdainful. He regards me with scorn, because he knows no better. He may know our laws, but he knows nothing of our ways, to suppose that my men were in any danger. If I had been caught while the stir was on, a gibbet on the cliff would have been set up, even before my trial--such is the reward of eminence--but no Yorks.h.i.+re jury would turn round in the box, with those poor fellows before them. 'Not guilty, my lord,' was on their tongues, before he had finished charging them."

"Oh, I am so glad! They have been acquitted, and you were there to see it!"

"To be sure. I was in the court, as Harry Ombler's father. Mr. Mordacks got it up; and it told on the jury even more than could have been expected. Even the judge wiped his eyes as he looked at me, for they say he has a scapegrace son; and Harry was the only one of all the six in danger, according to the turn of the evidence. My poor eyes have scarcely come round yet from the quant.i.ty of sobbing that I had to do, and the horrible glare of my goggles. And then I had a crutch that I stumped with as I sighed, so that all the court could hear me; and whenever I did it, all the women sighed too, and even the hardest hearts were moved. Mr. Mordacks says that it was capital."

"Oh, but, Robin, how shocking, though you make me laugh! If the verdict had been otherwise--oh, what then?"

"Well, then, Harry Ombler had a paper in his hand, done in printing letters by myself, because he is a very tidy scholar, and signed by me; the which he was to read before receiving sentence, saying that Robin Lyth himself was in York town, and would surrender to that court upon condition that mercy should be warranted to the prisoners."

"And you would have given yourself up? And without consulting me about it!"