Mary Anerley by Richard Doddridge Blackmore (new ebook reader .TXT) 📕

it was to get quite out of sight. Such fools the young people of the age were now!

While his thoughts were such, or scarcely any better, his partner in life came down the walk, with a heap of little things which she thought needful for the preservation of the tanner, and she waddled a little and turned her toes out, for she as well was roundish.

"Ah, you ought to have Sue. Where is Sue?" said Master Popplewell. "Now come you in out of the way of the wind, Debby; you know how your back-sinew ached with the darning before last wash."

Mrs. Popplewell grumbled, but obeyed; for she saw that her lord had his reasons. So Mary and Robin were left outside, quite as if they were nothing to any but themselves. Mary was aware of all this manoeuvring, and it brought a little frown upon her pretty forehead, as if she were cast before the feet of Robin Lyth; but her gentleness prevailed, because they meant her well. Under the weeping-ash there was a little seat, and the beauty of it was that it would not hold two people. She sat down upon it, and became absorbed in the clouds that were busy with the sunset.

These were very beautiful, as they so often are in the broken weather of the autumn; but sailors would rather see fair sky, and Robin's fair heaven was in Mary's eyes. At these he gazed with a natural desire to learn what the symptoms of the weather were; but it seemed as if little could be made out there, because everything seemed so lofty: perhaps Mary had forgotten his existence.

Could any lad of wax put up with this, least of all a daring mariner? He resolved to run the cargo of his heart right in, at the risk of all breakers and drawn cutlasses; and to make a good beginning he came up and took her hand. The tanner in the bower gave approval with a cough, like Cupid with a sneeze; then he turned it to a snore.

"Mary, why do you carry on like this?" the smuggler inquired, in a very gentle voice. "I have done nothing to offend you, have I? That would be the last thing I would ever do."

"Captain Lyth, you are always very good; you never should think such things of me. I am just looking at a particular cloud. And who ever said that you might call me 'Mary'?"

"Perhaps the particular cloud said so; but you must have been the cloud yourself, for you told me only yesterday."

"Then I will never say another word about it; but people should not take advantage."

"Who are people? How you talk! quite as if I were somebody you never saw before. I should like you just to look round now, and let me see why you are so different from yourself."

Mary Anerley looked round; for she always did what people liked, without good reason otherwise; and if her mind was full of clouds, her eyes had little sign of them.

"You look as lovely as you always do," said the smuggler, growing bolder as she looked at something else. "You know long ago what my opinion of you is, and yet you seem to take no notice. Now I must be off, as you know, to-night; not for any reason of my own, as I told you yesterday, but to carry out a contract. I may not see you for many months again; and you may fall in love with a Preventive man."

"I never fall in love with anybody. Why should I go from one extreme to the other? Captain Carroway has seven children, as well as a very active wife."

"I am not afraid of Carroway, in love or in war. He is an honest fellow, with no more brains than this ash-tree over us. I mean the dashing captains who come in with their cutters, and would carry you off as soon as look."

"Captain Lyth, you are not at all considering what you say: those officers do not want me--they want you."

"Then they shall get neither; they may trust me for that. But, Mary, do tell me how your heart is; you know well how mine has been for ever such a time. I tell you downright that I have thought of girls before--"

"Oh, I was not at all aware of that; surely you had better go on with thinking of them."

"You have not heard me out. I have only thought of them; nothing more than thinking, in a foolish sort of way. But of you I do not think; I seem to feel you all through me."

"What sort of a sensation do I seem to be? A foolish one, I suppose, like all those many others."

"No, not at all. A very wise one; a regular knowledge that I can not live without you; a certainty that I could only mope about a little--"

"And not run any more cargoes on the coast?"

"Not a single tub, nor a quarter bale of silk; except, of course, what is under contract now; and, if you should tell me that you can not care about me--"

"Hush! I am almost sure that I hear footsteps. Listen, just a moment."

"No, I will not listen to any one in the world but you. I beg you not to try to put me off. Think of the winter, and the long time coming; say if you will think of me. I must allow that I am not, like you, of a respectable old family. The Lord alone knows where I came from, or where I may go to. My business is a random and up-and-down one, but no one can call it disreputable; and if you went against it, I would throw it up. There are plenty of trades that I can turn my hand to; and I will turn it to anything you please, if you will only put yours inside it. Mary, only let me have your hand; and you need not say anything unless you like."

"But I always do like to say something, when things are brought before me so. I have to consider my father, and my mother, and others belonging to me. It is not as if I were all alone, and could do exactly as I pleased. My father bears an ill-will toward free trade; and my mother has made bad bargains, when she felt sure of very good ones."

"I know that there are rogues about," Robin answered, with a judicial frown; "but foul play never should hurt fair play; and we haul them through the water when we catch them. Your father is terribly particular, I know, and that is the worst thing there can be; but I do not care a groat for all objections, Mary, unless the objection begins with you. I am sure by your eyes, and your pretty lips and forehead, that you are not the one to change. If once any lucky fellow wins your heart, he will have it--unless he is a fool--forever. I can do most things, but not that, or you never would be thinking about the other people. What would anybody be to me in comparison with you, if I only had the chance? I would kick them all to Jericho. Can you see it in that way? can you get hot every time you think of me?"

"Really," said Mary, looking very gently at him, because of his serious excitement, "you are very good, and very brave, and have done wonders for me; but why should I get hot?"

"No, I suppose it is not to be expected. When I am in great peril I grow hot, and tingle, and am alive all over. Men of a loftier courage grow cold; it depends upon the constitution; but I enjoy it more than they do, and I can see things ten times quicker. Oh, how I wish I was Nelson! how he must enjoy himself!"

"But if you have love of continual danger, and eagerness to be always at it," said Mary, with wide Yorkshire sense, much as she admired this heroic type, "the proper thing for you to do is to lead a single life. You might be enjoying all the danger very much; but what would your wife at home be doing? Only to knit, and sigh, and lie awake."

Mary made a bad hit here. This picture was not at all deterrent; so daring are young men, and so selfish.

"Nothing of that sort should ever come to pass," cried Robin, with the gaze of the head of a household, "supposing only that my wife was you. I would be home regularly every night before the kitchen clock struck eight. I would always come home with an appetite, and kiss you, and do both my feet upon the scraper. I would ask how the baby was, and carry him about, and go 'one, two, three,' as the nurses do, I would quite leave the government to put on taxes, and pay them--if I could--without a word of grumble. I would keep every rope about the house in order, as only a sailor knows how to do, and fettle my own mending, and carry out my orders, and never meddle with the kitchen, at least unless my opinion was sought for concerning any little thing that might happen to be meant for me."

"Well," exclaimed Mary, "you quite take my breath away. I had no idea that you were so clever. In return for all these wonders, what should poor I have to do?"

"Poor I would only have to say just once, 'Robin, I will have you, and begin to try to love you.'"

"I am afraid that it has been done long ago; and the thing that I ought to do is to try and help it."

What happened upon this it would be needless to report, and not only needless, but a vast deal worse--shabby, interloping, meddlesome and mean, undignified, unmanly, and disreputably low; for even the tanner and his wife (who must have had right to come forward, if anybody had) felt that their right was a shadow, and kept back as if they were a hundred miles away, and took one another by the hand and nodded, as much as to say: "You remember how we did it; better than that, my dear. Here is your good health."

This being so, and the time so sacred to the higher emotions, even the boldest intruder should endeavor to check his ardor for intrusion. Without any inkling of Preventive Force, Robin and Mary, having once done away with all that stood between them, found it very difficult to be too near together; because of all the many things that each had for to say. They seemed to get into an unwise condition of longing to know matters that surely could not matter. When did each of them first feel sure of being meant only for the other nobler one? At first sight, of course, and with a perfect gift of seeing how much loftier each was than the other; and what an extraordinary fact it was that in everything imaginable they were quite alike, except in the palpable certainty possessed by each of the betterness of the other. What an age it seemed since first they met, positively without thinking, and in the very middle of a skirmish, yet with a remarkable drawing out of perceptions one anotherward! Did Mary feel this, when she acted so cleverly, and led away those vile pursuers? and did Robin, when his