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

shake to it; for such, is the habit of the navy. Father, return thanks; make a leg--no man can do it better. Master Mordacks, you shall have our utmost duty; but a little brass in hand would be convenient."

"You shall have a fortnight in advance; after that you must go every Saturday night to a place I will appoint for you. Now keep your own counsel; watch that fellow; by no means scare him at first, unless you see signs of his making off; but rather let him think that you know nothing of his crime. Labor hard to make him drink again; then terrify him like Davy Jones himself; and get every particular out of him, especially how he himself escaped, where he landed, and who was with him. I want to learn all about a little boy (at least, he may be a big man now), who was on board the ship Golconda, under the captain's special charge. I can not help thinking that the child escaped; and I got a little trace of something connected with him at Flamborough. I durst not make much inquiry there, because I am ordered to keep things quiet. Still, I did enough to convince me almost that my suspicion was an error; for Widow Precious--"

"Pay you no heed, Sir, to any manoeuvring of Widow Precious. We find her no worse than the other women; but not a blamed bit better."

"I think highly of the female race; at least, in comparison with the male one. I have always found reason to believe that a woman, put upon her mettle by a secret, will find it out, or perish."

"Your honor, everybody knows as much as that; but it doth not follow that she tells it on again, without she was ordered not to do so."

"Bob, you have not been round the world for nothing. I see my blot, and you have hit it; you deserve to know all about the matter now. Match me that button, and you shall have ten guineas."

The two sailors stared at the bead of Indian gold which Mordacks pulled out of his pocket. Buttons are a subject for nautical contempt and condemnation; perhaps because there is nobody to sew them on at sea; while ear-rings, being altogether useless, are held in good esteem and honor.

"I have seen a brace of ear-rings like it," said old Joe, wading through deep thought. "Bob, you knows who was a-wearing of 'em."

"A score of them fishermen, like enough," cautious Bob answered; for he knew what his father meant, but would not speak of the great free-trader; for Master Mordacks might even be connected with the revenue. "What use to go on about such gear? His honor wanteth to hear of buttons, regulation buttons by the look of it, and good enough for Lord Nelson. Will you let us take the scantle, and the rig of it, your honor?"

"By all means, if you can do so, my friend; but what have you to do it with?"

"Hold on a bit, Sir, and you shall see." With these words Bob clapped a piece of soft York bread into the hollow of his broad brown palm, moistened it with sugary dregs of ale, such as that good city loves, and kneading it firmly with some rapid flits of thumb, tempered and enriched it nobly with the mellow juice of quid. Treated thus, it took consistence, plastic, docile, and retentive pulp; and the color was something like that of gold which had passed, according to its fate, through a large number of unclean hands.

"Now the pattern, your honor," said Bob, with a grin; "I could do it from memory, but better from the thing." He took the bauble, and set it on the foot of a rummer which stood on the table; and in half a minute he had the counterpart in size, shape, and line; but without the inscription. "A sample of them in the hollow will do, and good enough for the nigger-body words--heathen writing, to my mind." With lofty British intolerance, he felt that it might be a sinful thing to make such marks; nevertheless he impressed one side, whereon the characters were boldest, into the corresponding groove of his paste model; then he scooped up the model on the broad blade of his knife, and set it in the oven of the little fire-place, in a part where the heat was moderate.

"Well done, indeed!" cried Mr. Mordacks; "you will have a better likeness of it than good Mother Precious. Robert, I admire your ingenuity. But all sailors are ingenious."

"At sea, in the trades, or in a calm, Sir, what have we to do but to twiddle our thumbs, and practice fiddling with them? A lively tune is what I like, and a-serving of the guns red-hot; a man must act according to what nature puts upon him. And nature hath taken one of my legs from me with a cannon-shot from the French line-of-battle ship--Rights of Mankind the name of her."


CHAPTER XXVII


THE PROPER WAY TO ARGUE

Alas, how seldom is anything done in proper time and season! Either too fast, or too slow, is the clock of all human dealings; and what is the law of them, when the sun (the regulator of works and ways) has to be allowed for very often on his own meridian? With the best intention every man sets forth to do his duty, and to talk of it; and he makes quite sure that he has done it, and to his privy circle boasts, or lets them do it better for him; but before his lips are dry, his ears apprise him that he was a stroke too late.

So happened it with Master Mordacks, who of all born men was foremost, with his wiry fingers spread, to pass them through the scattery forelock of that mettlesome horse, old Time. The old horse galloped by him unawares, and left him standing still, to hearken the swish of the tail, and the clatter of the hoofs, and the spirited nostrils neighing for a race, on the wide breezy down at the end of the lane. But Geoffrey Mordacks was not to blame. His instructions were to move slowly, until he was sure of something worth moving for. And of this he had no surety yet, and was only too likely to lose it altogether by any headlong action. Therefore, instead of making any instant rush, or belting on his pistols, and hiring the sagacious quadruped that understood his character, content he was to advance deliberately upon one foot and three artificial legs.

Meanwhile, at Anerley Farm, the usual fatness of full garners, and bright comfort of the evening hearth, the glow of peace, which labor kindles in the mind that has earned its rest, and the pleasant laziness of heart which comes where family love lies careless, confident, and unassailed--the pleasure also of pitying the people who never can get in their wheat, and the hot benevolence of boiling down the bones for the man who has tumbled off one's own rick--all these blisses, large and little, were not in their usual prime.

The master of the house was stern and silent, heavy and careless of his customary victuals, neglectful also of his customary jokes. He disliked the worse side of a bargain as much as in his most happy moments; and the meditation (which is generally supposed to be going on where speech is scarce) was not of such loftiness as to overlook the time a man stopped round the corner. As a horse settles down to strong collar-work better when the gloss of the stable takes the ruffle of the air, so this man worked at his business all the harder, with the brightness of the home joys fading. But it went very hard with him more than once, when he made a good stroke of salesmanship, to have to put the money in the bottom of his pocket, without even rubbing a bright half crown, and saying to himself, "I have a'most a mind to give this to Mary."

Now if this settled and steadfast man (with three-quarters of his life gone over him, and less and less time every year for considering soft subjects), in spite of all that, was put out of his way by not being looked at as usual--though for that matter, perhaps, himself failed to look in search of those looks as usual--what, on the other hand, was likely to remain of mirth and light-heartedness in a weaker quarter? Mary, who used to be as happy as a bird where worms abound and cats are scarce, was now in a grievous plight of mind, restless, lonely, troubled in her heart, and doubtful of her conscience. Her mother had certainly shown kind feeling, and even a readiness to take her part, which surprised the maiden, after all her words; and once or twice they had had a cry together, clearing and strengthening their intellects desirably. For the more Mistress Anerley began to think about it, the more she was almost sure that something could be said on both sides. She never had altogether approved of the farmer's volunteering, which took him away to drill at places where ladies came to look at him; and where he slept out of his own bed, and got things to eat that she had never heard of; and he never was the better afterward. If that was the thing which set his mind against free trade so bitterly, it went far to show that free trade was good, and it made all the difference of a blanket. And more than that, she had always said from the very first, and had even told the same thing to Captain Carroway, in spite of his position, that nobody knew what Robin Lyth might not turn out in the end to be. He had spoken most highly of her, as Mary had not feared to mention; and she felt obliged to him for doing so, though of course he could not do otherwise. Still, there were people who would not have done that, and it proved that he was a very promising young man.

Mary was pleased with this conclusion, and glad to have some one who did not condemn her; hopeful, moreover, that her mother's influence might have some effect by-and-by. But for the present it seemed to do more harm than good; because the farmer, having quite as much jealousy as justice, took it into silent dudgeon that the mother of his daughter, who regularly used to be hard upon her for next to nothing, should now turn round and take her part, from downright womanism, in the teeth of all reason, and of her own husband! Brave as he was, he did not put it to his wife in so strong a way as that; but he argued it so to himself, and would let it fly forth, without thinking twice about it, if they went on in that style much longer, quite as if he were nobody, and they could do better without him. Little he knew, in this hurt state of mind--for which he should really have been too old--how the heart of his child was slow and chill, stupid with the strangeness he had made, waiting for him to take the lead, or open some door for entrance, and watching for the humors of the elder body, as the young of past generations did. And sometimes, faithful as she was to plighted truth and tenderness, one coaxing word would have brought her home to the arms that used to carry her.

But while such things were waiting to be done till they