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

to set the many drawbacks before her, and she nodded her head, and told him to begin.

"I am of a Yorkshire 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 refreshing 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, threshing-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-cock 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 ennobled 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 Yorkshire 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 God!--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 cockswain of the barge, and now master's mate of H. M. ship 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 nobody'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 quantity 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 ship 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 pass, 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 Yorkshire 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