A PLEASANT INTERVIEW
Cumbered as he was of body, and burdened with some cares of mind, the
general factor ploughed his way with his usual resolution. A scowl of
dark vapor came over the headlands, and under-ran the solid snow-clouds
with a scud, like bonfire smoke. The keen wind following the curves of
land, and shaking the fringe of every white-clad bush, piped (like a
boy through a comb) wherever stock or stub divided it. It turned all
the coat of the horse the wrong way, and frizzed up the hair of Mr.
Mordacks, which was as short as a soldier's, and tossed up his heavy
riding cape, and got into him all up the small of his back. Being fond
of strong language, he indulged in much; but none of it warmed him, and
the wind whistled over his shoulders, and whirled the words out of his
mouth.
When he came to the dip of the road, where it crosses the Dane's
Dike, he pulled up his horse for a minute, in the shelter of shivering
fir-trees. “What a cursed bleak country! My fish is frozen stiff, and my
legs are as dead as the mutton in the saddle-bags. Geoffrey, you are a
fool,” he said. “Charity is very fine, and business even better; but a
good coal fire is the best of all. But in for a penny of it, in for a
pound. Hark! I hear some fellow-fool equally determined to be frozen.
I'll go at once and hail him; perhaps the sight of him will warm me.”
He turned his horse down a little lane upon the left, where snow lay
deep, with laden bushes overhanging it, and a rill of water bridged
with bearded ice ran dark in the hedge-trough. And here he found a
stout lusty man, with shining red cheeks and keen blue eyes, hacking and
hewing in a mighty maze of brambles.
“My friend, you seem busy. I admire your vast industry,” Mr. Mordacks
exclaimed, as the man looked at him, but ceased not from swinging his
long hedge-hook. “Happy is the land that owns such men.”
“The land dothn't own me; I own the land. I shall be pleased to learn
what your business is upon it.”
Farmer Anerley hated chaff, as a good agriculturist should do. Moreover,
he was vexed by many little griefs to-day, and had not been out long
enough to work them off. He guessed pretty shrewdly that this sworded
man was “Moreducks”--as the leading wags of Flamborough were gradually
calling him--and the sight of a sword upon his farm (unless of an
officer bound to it) was already some disquietude to an English farmer's
heart. That was a trifle; for fools would be fools, and might think it a
grand thing to go about with tools they were never born to the handling
of; but a fellow who was come to take up Robin Lyth's case, and strive
to get him out of his abominable crime, had better go back to the
rogue's highway, instead of coming down the private road to Anerley.
“Upon my word I do believe,” cried Mordacks, with a sprightly joy, “that
I have the pleasure of meeting at last the well-known Captain Anerley!
My dear sir, I can not help commending your prudence in guarding the
entrance to your manor; but not in this employment of a bill-hook. From
all that I hear, it is a Paradise indeed. What a haven in such weather
as the present! Now, Captain Anerley, I entreat you to consider whether
it is wise to take the thorn so from the rose. If I had so sweet a
place, I would plant brambles, briers, blackthorn, furze, crataegus,
every kind of spinous growth, inside my gates, and never let anybody lop
them. Captain, you are too hospitable.”
Farmer Anerley gazed with wonder at this man, who could talk so fast for
the first time of seeing a body. Then feeling as if his hospitality were
challenged, and desiring more leisure for reflection, “You better come
down the lane, sir,” he said.
“Am I to understand that you invite me to your house, or only to the
gate where the dogs come out? Excuse me: I always am a most plain-spoken
man.”
“Our dogs never bite nobody but rogues.”
“In that case, Captain Anerley, I may trust their moral estimate. I knew
a farmer once who was a thorough thief in hay; a man who farmed his own
land, and trimmed his own hedges; a thoroughly respectable and solid
agriculturist. But his trusses of hay were always six pounds short, and
if ever anybody brought a sample truss to steelyard, he had got a little
dog, just seven pounds weight, who slipped into the core of it, being
just a good hay-color. He always delivered his hay in the twilight, and
when it swung the beam, he used to say, 'Come, now, I must charge you
for overweight.' Now, captain, have you got such an honest dog as that?”
“I would have claimed him, that I would, if such a clever dog were
weighed to me. But, sir, you have got the better of me. What a man for
stories you be, for sure! Come in to our fire-place.” Farmer Anerley was
conquered by this tale, which he told fifty times every year he lived
thereafter, never failing to finish with, “What rogues they be, up York
way!”
Master Mordacks was delighted with this piece of luck on his side.
Many times he had been longing to get in at Anerley, not only from the
reputation of good cheer there, but also from kind curiosity to see the
charming Mary, who was now becoming an important element of business.
Since Robin had given him the slip so sadly--a thing it was impossible
to guard against--the best chance of hearing what became of him would be
to get into the good graces of his sweetheart.
“We have been very sadly for a long time now,” said the farmer, as he
knocked at his own porch door with the handle of his bill-hook. “There
used to be one as was always welcome here; and a pleasure it was to see
him make himself so pleasant, sir. But ever since the Lord took him home
from his family, without a good-by, as a man might say, my wife hath
taken to bar the doors whiles I am away and out of sight.” Stephen
Anerley knocked harder, as he thus explained the need of it; for it
grieved him to have his house shut up.
“Very wise of them all to bar out such weather,” said Mordacks, who read
the farmer's thoughts like print, “Don't relax your rules, sir, until
the weather changes. Ah, that was a very sad thing about the captain. As
gallant an officer, and as single-minded, as ever killed a Frenchman in
the best days of our navy.”
“Single-minded is the very word to give him, sir. I sought about for it
ever since I heard of him coming to an end like that, and doing of his
duty in the thick of it. If I could only get a gentleman to tell me, or
an officer's wife would be better still, what the manners is when a poor
lady gets her husband shot, I'll be blest if I wouldn't go straight
and see her, though they make such a distance betwixt us and the
regulars.--Oh, then, ye've come at last! No thief, no thief.”
“Father,” cried Mary, bravely opening all the door, of which the
ruffian wind made wrong by casting her figure in high relief--and yet a
pardonable wrong--“father, you are quite wise to come home, before your
dear nose is quite cut off.--Oh, I beg your pardon, sir; I never saw
you.”
“My fate in life is to be overlooked,” Mr. Mordacks answered, with
a martial stride; “but not always, young lady, with such exquisite
revenge. What I look at pays fiftyfold for being overlooked.”
“You are an impudent, conceited man,” thought Mary to herself, with
gross injustice; but she only blushed and said, “I beg your pardon,
sir.”
“You see, sir,” quoth the farmer, with some severity, tempered, however,
with a smile of pride, “my daughter, Mary Anerley.”
“And I take off my hat,” replied audacious Mordacks, among whose faults
was no false shame, “not only to salute a lady, sir, but also to have a
better look.”
“Well, well,” said the farmer, as Mary ran away; “your city ways are
high polite, no doubt, but my little lass is strange to them. And I like
her better so, than to answer pert with pertness. Now come you in, and
warm your feet a bit. None of us are younger than we used to be.”
This was not Master Anerley's general style of welcoming a guest, but he
hated new-fangled Frenchified manners, as he told his good wife, when
he boasted by-and-by how finely he had put that old coxcomb down. “You
never should have done it,” was all the praise he got. “Mr. Mordacks is
a business man, and business men always must relieve their minds.” For
no sooner now was the general factor introduced to Mistress Anerley
than she perceived clearly that the object of his visit was not to make
speeches to young chits of girls, but to seek the advice of a sensible
person, who ought to have been consulted a hundred times for once that
she even had been allowed to open her mouth fairly. Sitting by the fire,
he convinced her that the whole of the mischief had been caused by sheer
neglect of her opinion. Everything she said was so exactly to the point
that he could not conceive how it should have been so slighted, and she
for her part begged him to stay and partake of their simple dinner.
“Dear madam, it can not be,” he replied; “alas! I must not think of it.
My conscience reproaches me for indulging, as I have done, in what
is far sweeter than even one of your dinners--a most sensible lady's
society. I have a long bitter ride before me, to comfort the fatherless
and the widow. My two legs of mutton will be thawed by this time in the
genial warmth of your stable. I also am thawed, warmed, feasted I may
say, by happy approximation to a mind so bright and congenial. Captain
Anerley, madam, has shown true kindness in allowing me the privilege of
exclusive speech with you. Little did I hope for such a piece of luck
this morning. You have put so many things in a new and brilliant light,
that my road becomes clear before me. Justice must be done; and you feel
quite sure that Robin Lyth committed this atrocious murder because poor
Carroway surprised him so when making clandestine love, at your brother
Squire Popplewell's, to a beautiful young lady who shall be nameless.
And deeply as you grieve for the loss of such a neighbor, the bravest
officer of the British navy, who leaped from a strictly immeasurable
height into a French ship, and scattered all her crew, and has since had
a baby about three months old, as well as innumerable children, you
feel that you have reason to be thankful sometimes that the young man's
character has been so clearly shown, before he contrived to make his way
into the bosom of respectable families in the neighborhood.”
“I never thought it out quite so clear as that, sir; for I feel so sorry
for everybody, and especially those who have brought him up, and those
he has made away with.”
“Quite so, my dear madam; such are your fine feelings, springing from
the goodness of your nature. Pardon my saying that you could have no
other, according to my experience of a most benevolent countenance. Part
of my duty, and in such a case as yours, one of the pleasantest parts of
it, is to study the expression of a truly benevolent--”
“I am not that old, sir, asking of your pardon, to pretend to be
benevolent. All that I lay claim to is to look at things sensible.”
“Certainly, yet with a tincture of high feeling. Now if it should happen
that this poor young man were of very high birth, perhaps the highest in
the county, and the heir to very large landed property, and a title,
and all that sort of nonsense, you would look at him from the very same
point of view?”
“That I would, sir, that I would. So long as he was proclaimed for
hanging. But naturally bound, of course, to be more sorry for him.”
“Yes, from sense of all the good things he must lose. There seems,
however, to be strong ground for believing--as I may tell you, in
confidence, Dr. Upround does--that he had no more to do with it than you
or I, ma'am. At first I concluded as you have done. I am going to see
Mrs. Carroway now. Till then I suspend my judgment.”
“Now that is what nobody should do, Mr. Mordacks. I have tried, but
never found good come of it. To change your mind is two words against
yourself; and you go wrong both ways, before and after.”
“Undoubtedly you do, ma'am. I never thought of that before. But you
must remember that we have not the gift of hitting--I might say of
making--the truth with a flash or a dash, as you ladies have. May I be
allowed to come again?”
“To tell you the truth, sir, I am heartily sorry that you are going away
at all. I could have talked to you all the afternoon; and how seldom I
get the chance now, Lord knows. There is that in your conversation which
makes one feel quite sure of being understood; not so much in what you
say, sir--if you understand my meaning--as in the way you look, quite as
if my meaning was not at all too quick for you. My good husband is of a
greater mind than I am, being nine-and-forty inches round the chest;
but his mind seems somehow to come after mine, the same as the ducks do,
going down to our pond.”
“Mistress Anerley, how thankful you should be! What a picture of
conjugal felicity! But I thought that the drake always led the way?”
“Never upon our farm, sir. When he doth, it is a proof of his being
crossed with wild-ducks. The same as they be round Flamborough.”
“Oh, now I see the truth. How slow I am! It improves their flavor, at
the expense of their behavior. But seriously, madam, you are fit to take
the lead. What a pleasant visit I have had! I must brace myself up for a
very sad one now--a poor lady, with none to walk behind her.”
“Yes, to be sure! It is very fine of me to talk. But if I was left
without my husband, I should only care to walk after him. Please to give
her my kind love, sir; though I have only seen her once. And if there is
anything that we can do--”
“If there is anything that we can do,” said the farmer, coming out
of his corn-chamber, “we won't talk about it, but we'll do it, Mr.
Moreducks.”
The factor quietly dispersed this rebuke, by waving his hand at his two
legs of mutton and the cod, which had thawed in the stable. “I knew that
I should be too late,” he said; “her house will be full of such little
things as these, so warm is the feeling of the neighborhood. I guessed
as much, and arranged with my butcher to take them back in that case;
and he said they would eat all the better for the ride. But as for
the cod, perhaps you will accept him. I could never take him back to
Flamborough.”
“Ride away, sir, ride away,” said the farmer, who had better not have
measured swords with Mordacks. “I were thinking of sending a cart over
there, so soon as the weather should be opening of the roads up. But
the children might be hankerin' after meat, the worse for all the
snow-time.”
“It is almost impossible to imagine such a thing. Universally respected,
suddenly cut off, enormous family with hereditary hunger, all the
neighbors well aware of straitened circumstances, the kindest-hearted
county in Great Britain--sorrow and abundance must have cloyed their
appetites, as at a wealthy man's funeral. What a fool I must have been
not to foresee all that!”
“Better see than foresee,” replied the farmer, who was crusty from
remembering that he had done nothing. “Neighbors likes to wait for
neighbors to go in; same as two cows staring at a new-mown meadow.”