Transcriber’s Note
In this transcription, italic text is denoted by _underscores_. Small
capitals in the original text have been replaced by ALL CAPITALS.
See the end of this document for details of corrections and other
changes.
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JOAN, THE CURATE
BY
FLORENCE WARDEN
AUTHOR OF
“THE HOUSE ON THE MARSH,” “THE INN BY THE SHORE,” ETC.
[Illustration]
TORONTO
GEORGE J. McLEOD
PUBLISHER
Copyright, 1899
BY
F. M. BUCKLES & COMPANY
_Joan, the Curate_
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The New Broom 7
II. A Startling Incident 25
III. An Ally at Last 36
IV. Fresh Outrages 52
V. A Load of Hay 65
VI. A Collision 84
VII. An Ugly Customer 94
VIII. Rede Hall 106
IX. Traitress or Friend? 126
X. The Mystery of the Gray Barn 143
XI. In The Lion’s Mouth 155
XII. Settling Accounts 174
XIII. A Late Visitor 187
XIV. A Perilous Ride 203
XV. The Smugglers’ Ship 218
XVI. A Traitress 233
XVII. An Innocent Rival 250
XVIII. A Prisoner 265
XIX. A Very Woman 280
XX. The Free-Traders’ Farewell 297
JOAN, THE CURATE.
———————
CHAPTER I.
THE NEW BROOM.
It was soon after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, had put an
inglorious end to an inglorious war, that the Government of the day
began to give serious attention to an evil which had been suffered to
grow while public attention was absorbed by battles abroad and the
doings of the press-gang at home.
This was the practise of plundering wrecked vessels, which had been
carried on in combination with the smuggler’s daring and dangerous
trade, particularly on the wild marsh coast south of Kent, and the
equally lonely Sussex cliffs beyond.
So audacious had the doings of these “free-traders” become, that a
brigade of cavalry was sent down into the old town of Rye, for the
purpose of overawing them, while, at the same time, a smart revenue
cutter, under the command of a young lieutenant of noted courage and
efficiency, was despatched to cruise about the coast, to act in concert
with the soldiers.
It was on a windy night in early autumn, when the sea was roaring
sullenly as it dashed against the sandstone cliffs, and echoed in the
caves and hollows worn by the waves, that a sharp knocking at the door
of Hurst Parsonage, a mile or two from the sea-coast, made Parson
Langney look up from the writing of his Sunday sermon, and glance
inquiringly at his daughter.
“Now, who will that be, Joan?” said he as he tilted his wig on to one
side of his head, and pursed up his jolly, round, red face with an air
of some anxiety.
“Nay, father, you have as many visitors that come for the ills of
the body as for the health of the soul!” cried Joan. “I can but hope
you han’t another long trudge across the marsh before you, like your
journey of a week back.”
At that moment there came another thundering knock at the little front
door, and a handful of stones and earth was flung against the window,
followed the next moment by a rattling of the panes.
Father and daughter, genial, portly parson, and creamy-skinned,
black-eyed maiden, sprang to their feet, and looked once at each other.
There were wild folk in these parts, and lonesome errands to be run
sometimes by Parson Langney, who had begun life as a surgeon, and who
had been lucky enough to be pitch-forked into a living which exactly
suited his adventurous habits, his love of fox-hunting, and his liking
for good wine and well-hung game.
Before the importunate summons could be repeated, Parson Langney had
come out of the little dining-parlor, and drawn the bolt of the front
door.
For Nance, the solitary housemaid of the modest establishment, was
getting into years, and inclined to regard a late visitor as a person
to be thwarted by being kept as long as possible waiting at the door.
“Hast no better manners than to do thy best to drive the glass from out
the panes?” asked he, as soon as he found himself face to face with
the intruder, who proved to be a sailor, in open jacket, loose shirt
and slops, and flat, three-cornered hat.
“Oons, sir, ’tis a matter of life and death!” said the man, as he
saluted the parson with becoming respect, and then pointed quickly back
in the direction of the sea, which could be seen faintly glistening in
the murky light of a clouded moon. “I’m from the revenue cutter in the
offing yonder, where one of my mates lies with a bullet in’s back, sent
there by one of those rascally smugglers in a fray we’ve had with them
but now. I’ve been in the village for help, but they say there’s no
doctor here but yourself. So I beg your honor’ll come with me, and do
what you can for him. And could you tell me of a woman that would watch
by him? For we’ve all got our hands full, and he’ll be wandering from
his wits ere morning.”
The parson, without a moment’s delay, had begun, by the help of his
daughter, to get into a rough brown riding-coat that hung from a nail
on the whitewashed wall.
“Why, there you have me out,” said he, as he buttoned himself up to
the chin, and put a round, broad-brimmed black hat, with a bow and a
twisted band of black cloth, tightly on to his somewhat rusty, grizzled
bob-wig. “For there’s none in these parts to nurse the sick as well as
my daughter Joan.”
“And sure I’m ready to go, father!” cried the girl, who, with the
nimbleness of a fawn, had darted back into the parlor and brought out
her father’s case of surgical instruments, as well as a diminutive
portable chest, containing such drugs and medicines as were in use at
the time.
“I’ll have on my hood in a tick of the clock.”
And by the time these words were uttered she had flown up the steep,
narrow staircase and disappeared round the bend at the top. The sailor,
who had stepped inside the porch, out of the wind and a drizzling rain
which had now begun to fall, was full of admiration and astonishment.
“Oons, sir, but ’twill be rough work for the young mistress!” said he.
“The water’s washing over the boat yonder, and we shan’t be able to
push off without getting wet up to the waist.”
“The lass is used to rough weather,” said Parson Langney, proudly.
“She’ll tell you herself that where her father can go she goes.”
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when Joan, wrapped in a rough
peasant’s cloak, and wearing a loose hood, came tripping down the
stairs.
Not a moment was lost. With a word to Nance, who had put in a tardy
appearance, the parson, with his daughter on one side and the sailor on
the other, started for the shore.
The wind was at its worst on the top of the hill where the Parsonage
stood. A very few minutes’ sharp walking brought them all to a lower
level, and within the shelter of a wild straggling growth of bushes and
small trees, which extended in patches from the village almost to the
edge of the crumbling cliffs.
Here they struck into a rough track made by the feet of the fishermen
and less inoffensive characters, and before they had gone far they saw
the hulk of the cutter, tossing like a little drifting spar amid the
foam of the waves, and showing dark against the leaden, faint moonlight
on the sea beyond. The parson asked a few questions, and elicited the
usual story—a contraband cargo was being run in a little creek just
where the cliffs broke off and the marsh began, when the lookout man on
the cutter spied the smugglers, and a boat was sent out to give chase.
There had been a smart brush, almost half in and half out of the water,
between the smugglers on the one side and the cutter’s men on the
other. But, on the whole, as the narrator was forced ruefully to admit,
the smugglers had got the best of it, as they all got away, leaving not
so much as a keg behind them, while one of the cutter’s men had had to
be carried off seriously wounded.
“Zoons, and it was main odd they did get off so well!” went on the
sailor, as if in some perplexity; “for the lieutenant himself landed
a bullet in the leg of one of the rascals, that should have brought
him down, if he hadn’t had the devil himself—saving your presence,
mistress—to help him.”
In the momentary pause which followed the man’s words, a sound suddenly
came to the ears of them all, above the whining of the wind in the
trees and bushes. It made Joan stop short for the space of a second,
and turn her eyes hastily and furtively in the direction of a little
dell on their left, where the bracken grew high about the trunks of a
knot of beeches.
“Eh!” cried the sailor, stopping short, also to listen. “What was that?
’Twas like the groan of a man.”
As he turned his head to listen, the parson and his daughter quickly
exchanged a glance expressive both of alarm and of warning. Then the
former seized the sailor by the arm, pushing onward towards the shore
at a better pace than ever.
“Sure,” said he, in a deep, strong, resonant voice that would have
drowned any fainter sound in the ears of his listener; “’tis but the
screech of a hawk. This woody ground’s alive with the creatures.”
The man cast at him a rather suspicious look, but said nothing, and
allowed himself to be led forward. So they hurried on, increasing their
pace when the ground began to dip again, until they followed the course
of a narrow and dark ravine, which cut its way through the cliffs to
the seashore. Here they had to pick their way over the stones and
bits of broken cliff, through which a brook, swollen by recent rains,
gurgled noisily on its way to the sea. The tide was going down, and
the thunder of the waves, as they beat upon the cliff’s base and echoed
in its hollows, grew fainter as they went. It was an easier matter
than they had expected to get into the boat which was waiting to take
them to the cutter; and though the tiny craft rose like a nutshell on
the crest of the waves, and sank into deep dells of dark water, they
reached the cutter safely, and scrambled, not without difficulty, up
the side of the little vessel, which was anchored not far from the land.
A man’s voice, full, clear, musical, a voice used to command, hailed
them from the deck—
“Ho, there! Hast brought a doctor?”
“Ay, capt’n, and a parson to boot!” answered the sailor who had been
despatched on this errand. “And a nurse that it would cure a sick man
to look at.”
It was at that moment that Joan, who was as agile as a kitten, stepped
on deck, and into the light of the lantern which the lieutenant himself
was holding. The young man saluted her, with surprise in his eyes, and
a thrill of some warmer feeling in his gallant heart. Joan curtsied,
holding on to the nearest rope the while.
“You are welcome on board, madam.”
“I thank you, sir.”
And the young people exchanged looks.
What he saw was a most fair maiden, tall and straight, graceful with
the ease and freedom of nature and good breeding, with sparkling brown
eyes, even white teeth, and a merry gleam belying the demureness of her
formal words.
What she saw was a young man only a little above the middle height,
stalwart and handsome, with quick eyes gray as the winter sea, and
a straight, clean-cut mouth, that closed with a look of indomitable
courage and determination.
“And yet, madam,” the lieutenant went on, leaving his subordinates to
help Parson Langney, who was portly, and less agile than his daughter,
up on to the deck, “they should not have brought you. For, in truth, we
are in no state to receive a lady on board. There has been ugly work to
do with those rascally smugglers.”
“I come not as a fine lady, sir,” retorted Joan, promptly; “but as a
nurse for a sick man. There is no state needed by a woman when she
comes but to do her duty.”
“Well said, madam; but I thank God your care will not be needed. The
poor fellow who was shot by those ruffians has taken a turn for the
better, and if the gentleman, whom I take to be your father, can but
perform a simple operation for him——”
“My father, sir, is a most skilled surgeon, and can perform any
operation,” answered Joan, interrupting him proudly.
Her look was so full of fire, the carriage of her head, in its graceful
hood, so superb, as she uttered the ingenuous words, that Lieutenant
Tregenna smiled a little as he saluted her and turned to the parson,
who, panting and in some disorder, had at length reached the deck.
The young man introduced himself, and they saluted each other, the
parson with some difficulty, since the continual motion of the vessel
was somewhat trying to his landsman’s legs. Then they went below, and
in a few minutes the young man returned alone.
Joan had been accommodated with a seat by the tiller, and protected
from wind and water by a tarpaulin, out of which her bonny face peeped
white in the moonlight.
“You have no work for me, sir?” she asked, as the lieutenant came up.
“None, madam; and even less for your good father than we feared might
be the case. He has found the bullet, and ’twill be an easy matter to
extract it, so he says; and after that, ’tis a mere matter of a few
days’ quiet to set the poor fellow on his legs again. So the rascals
escaped murder this time; not that one crime more or less would sit
hard on the conscience of such villains!”
For a moment Joan said nothing. Then she hazarded, in a very dry,
demure voice—
“But, sir, by what I heard, your side went as near committing murder as
the other. The man who brought us hither spoke of a bullet in the leg
of one of the fishermen.”
“Fishermen! Odds my life, madam, but that’s a very pretty way of
putting it! I hope you han’t the same kindness for the rascals that
seems to be strong among the country-folk here! Nay, I won’t do you
the injustice to suppose you could hold their villainies in aught but
abhorrence.”
“Whatever is villainous I hope I abhor very properly,” answered Joan
with spirit. “And the shooting down of one’s fellow-men I do hold one
of the greatest villainies of all.”
“When ’tis done by smugglers and plunderers of wrecks, no doubt you
mean,” retorted the lieutenant tartly.
“Plunderers of wrecks we have none in these parts, or at least none
that do the vile things that were done in times past,” said she
quickly. “And if you and the soldiers that are come to Rye had had
but the punishment of murderers and wreckers in your eye, you would
have met with more sympathy than is like to be the case if you mean to
repress what they call in these parts free-trade.”
“Well, madam, ’tis in truth the repression of ‘free-trade’ that we
have in our minds, and that we intend to carry out by the strength of
our arms. And I own I’m amazed to hear a gentlewoman of your sense
and spirit speak so leniently of a pack of thievish persons that live
by robbing his Majesty, and, indeed, the whole nation to which they
belong. I can but trust you speak in more ignorance than you imagine,
and that the doings of such ruffians as one Jem Bax, and another wretch
called Gardener Tom, of Long Jack and Bill Plunder, Robin Cursemother
and Ben the Blast have never come to your ears.”
Lieutenant Tregenna uttered each of these names very clearly, and with
solemn emphasis, standing so that he could see the expression of the
girl’s face as he mentioned them. To his great disgust, he perceived
that, though she kept her eyes down as if to conceal her feelings, she
was well acquainted with all these men, and appeared somewhat startled
to learn that he knew them so well.
“You have heard of these men?” he asked sharply.
“Yes, I’ve—I’ve heard of them.”
“You know them, perhaps?”
A moment’s pause.
“Ye—es, I know them.”
“I won’t affront you by asking whether you have any sympathy with them
and their methods. With men that live by defrauding the revenue, and
that scruple not to commit the most violent deeds in the exercise of
their unlawful calling?”
The lieutenant’s tone was harsh and arrogant as he asked these
questions. Miss Joan still sat with her eyelids down, giving him a new
view of her beauty, unconsciously proving to him that her face was
as handsome in repose, with the black eyelashes sweeping her rounded
cheeks, as it was when her features were animated with the excitement
of conversation. She was silent at first, and the lieutenant repeated
his last question somewhat impatiently. There was another slight pause,
however, and then a ponderous footstep was heard creeping up the
companion-ladder.
“There’s my father!” cried Joan, as she started up, in evident relief
at the opportune interruption.
Parson Langney, holding on valiantly to such support as came in his
way, staggered towards them, and ended by hurling himself against the
lieutenant with so much force that it was only by a most dexterous
movement that the younger and slimmer man escaped being flung into the
sea.
“I ask your pardon, captain,” cried the jolly parson, in good-humored
apology, as, with the assistance of the young folk, he reached a place
of safety. “Remember, you’re on your element, but I’m not on mine! Come
and dine with my daughter and me to-morrow, and you shall see that my
feet carry me well enough on the dry land.”
“I thank you, sir, and I would most willingly have accepted your kind
offer, but I’m engaged to dine with one who is, I believe, a neighbor
of yours—Squire Waldron, of Hurst Court.”
“Why, God bless my soul, so am I!” cried the parson, in amazement at
his own momentary lapse of memory. “Then, sir, I shall be happy to meet
you there; and I warrant you’ll be happy too, for the squire’s port
wine, let me tell you, is a tipple not to be despised by his Majesty
himself.”
“Ay, sir, and there at any rate I shall feel comfortable in the thought
that the wine has paid duty, which, I give you my word, is what I have
not felt in any other house in the neighborhood, public or private,
since I arrived here.”
But at these words a sudden and singular alteration had occurred in the
parson’s features. He seemed to remember the office of the person to
whom he was speaking, and to become more reserved.
“Ay, sir, certainly,” was all he said.
The lieutenant went on, with a return to the bitterness he had shown
while discussing the subject of smugglers with Miss Joan.
“And as the squire is a justice of the peace, whose duty it is to
punish evil-doers, I may at last hope, under his roof, to meet with
some sympathy with the objects of justice, such as one expects from all
right-thinking people.”
“Why, sir, certainly,” said Parson Langney again, somewhat more dryly
than before. And then, turning to his daughter, he added briskly,
“Come, Joan, we must be returning. The lad below will do very well now,
sir, with quiet, and the physic I have left for him. And I’ll pay him
another visit in a day or two.”
As he addressed these last words to the lieutenant, the parson was
already preparing to lower himself into the boat which had brought him.
He seemed in haste to be gone.
Lieutenant Tregenna then helped the young lady down into the boat,
giving her as he did so a somewhat piqued and resentful glance, which,
however, she demurely refused to meet with a return look from her own
black eyes until she was safely in the little boat beside her father.
Then, as the small craft was tossing amidst the spray from the larger
one, she did look up, with the struggling moonlight full upon her face,
at the handsome young commander, on whom a touch of youthful arrogance
sat not unbecomingly.
And Lieutenant Tregenna, as he saluted and watched the little boat,
and in particular its fair occupant, was irritated and incensed beyond
measure by what he took for an expression of merry defiance in her
bright eyes.