A STARTLING INCIDENT.
Hurst Court, where Lieutenant Tregenna presented himself next day,
by Squire Waldron’s most obliging and pressing invitation, was an
ugly Georgian house just outside the village of Hurst, standing in an
extensive but little-cultivated park, much of which was in a primitive
condition of gorse and tangle and unclipped, undersized trees.
The mansion itself was not in the heart of the park, but was built near
the road, with nothing but a little stretch of grass and a wooden fence
between.
A great baying of hounds and noise of disputing men-servants were the
sounds which greeted the lieutenant when he arrived at the house.
Even before entering, he had formed, both from this circumstance and
from the extent of the stables, some idea of the sort of rollicking,
happy-go-lucky, rough country household he was to expect; and he had
scarcely set foot inside the wide and lofty hall when the onrush of
half a dozen barking dogs, the crowding into the hall of three or
four gawky men-servants, and the entrance of the squire himself, in
a scarlet coat, with a loud and hearty greeting on his lips, fully
confirmed this impression.
“Welcome, welcome to Hurst Court, lieutenant!” cried his host, seizing
him by the hand with a grip like a blacksmith’s, and promptly leading
him in the direction of the music-room, across a floor where a couple
of stag-hounds were lying lazily stretched out, and between walls laden
with antlers and the grinning pates of three or four score foxes.
“You should have come a couple of hours sooner; for the ladies have
a mind to show you their Dutch garden, and to regale you with some
music before we dine. I know not, sir, whether such diversions are
to your taste, or whether your liking runs more in the direction of
fox-hunting and the shooting of game, as mine does? I have no taste,
myself, for your finicking London modes; but I’m told that the young
bucks nowadays pride themselves more on cutting a fine figure in the
ladies’ drawing-rooms than in sitting a horse well and riding straight
to hounds.”
“Nay, squire, it will give me vast pleasure to hear the ladies’ music,”
said Lieutenant Tregenna, when his host’s volubility allowed him the
chance of answering. “’Tis a diversion one can enjoy but seldom so far
from town.”
“Nay, we have better diversions here than those,” said the squire
disparagingly. “But my wife and daughters will be prodigious pleased
that you are not of my way of thinking. For a stranger in these parts
is a mighty welcome arrival, I assure you, and like to be made much of.”
Indeed, it was quite perceptible to the lieutenant that there was a
flutter of excitement going on in the music-room up to the very moment
of his entrance; and the welcome he got from the squire’s wife and two
daughters was quite as sincere, though not so tempestuous, as that of
the host himself.
For Mrs. Waldron and the two young misses, her daughters, were quite as
much in love with the pleasures of the town as the husband and father
was with those of the country. And in dress, manner, conversation,
and tone they marked the difference between themselves and him as
ostentatiously as possible.
Thus, while the squire wore the old-fashioned Ramillies wig, with
its bush of powdered hair at the sides, and long pigtail tied at the
top and bottom with black ribbon, and the loosely-fitting scarlet
coat which he had worn for any number of years, his good wife and two
round-faced, simpering daughters were all attired in the latest modes
of the town.
They all three wore the loose sacque or _negligee_, which was then the
height of fashion; they tottered about in slim-heeled shoes, under huge
hoops which swayed as they walked; while their hair was all dressed in
the same way—knotted up tightly under the smallest and closest of caps,
making their heads look singularly small and mean, when compared with
the enormous width of their distended skirts.
They all seemed the most amiable of living creatures; and Lieutenant
Tregenna found at last the sympathy he wanted when he expressed that
horror and hatred of smugglers which was at present the ruling passion
of his mind. The squire had left him with the ladies, and he had been
entertaining them with an account of the adventure of the preceding
night.
“And I can assure you, madam,” he said to his hostess, when they had
hung attentively on his words, and cried, “Wretch!” “Villains!” “How
monstrous shocking!” at appropriate intervals, “that so deep-rooted has
this evil become, that even the parson and his young daughter appeared
to grieve more for the smuggler whom I wounded than they did for the
poor fellow whom the ruffians shot!”
“His daughter! Oh, do you mean Mistress Joan?” said Mrs. Waldron,
pursing her mouth a little. “Sure, sir, what would you expect from a
country-bred wench like that, who tramps the villages and moors with
her father like a man, and is almost as much among these fearsome
wretches, the smugglers, as if she were their own kin?”
“Oh, la, sir; you must know they call her ‘the curate,’” cried one of
the young ladies, tittering, and looking languishingly at the visitor
out of her little pink-rimmed eyes with the whitish eyelashes; “for
she’s quite as useful in his parish as he is.”
“And I’m sure ’tis a very rational diversion for a girl of her tastes,”
said her sister. “You must know, sir, that she has never seen a play,
nor any of the diversions of the town, and that she fills up her time
twittering on a dulcimer to her father, and has barely so much as heard
of the harpsichord.”
“I don’t wonder you was affronted by her Gothic behavior,” went on Mrs.
Waldron; “but sure ’tis very excusable in a girl who has no polish, no
refinement, and who takes no more care of her complexion than if she
was a dairymaid.”
Tregenna felt considerable surprise at the storm of reprobation which
he had brought down on the head of poor Joan. For he could not know
that the young men of the neighborhood, and even Bertram, the squire’s
son, all showed a most boorish preference for handsome, straight-limbed
Joan, with her free bearing and her ready tongue, over the fine ladies
of Hurst Court; and that, at the Hastings assemblies, and at such routs
as were given in the neighborhood, Joan had more partners than any one
else, though her gown was seldom of the latest mode, and her only fan
was one which had belonged to her grandmother.
“Nay; I honor and admire her for helping her father,” said the
lieutenant, hastily. “I did but grieve that a young lady of so much
spirit should take so wrong-headed a view of the matter.”
“Your consideration is wasted upon her, sir, indeed,” said Mrs.
Waldron. “But hush! here comes her father with the squire.”
There was no possibility of mistaking the loud, deep, cheery voice
of Parson Langney, which could be heard even above the barking of
the hounds, which was the first greeting given to every visitor. The
next moment the door opened, and Parson Langney, the squire, and his
son Bertram, entered, to be joined a few minutes later by a couple of
country gentlemen more clownish than their host.
Bertram Waldron was an unhappy cross between the country breeding of
his father and the town airs and graces of the ladies. For while he
affected the modish cut of the town in his clothes, swore the latest
oaths, and swaggered about with a great assumption of the manners of
the beau, his rusticity peeped out every moment in his gait, and in
his strong provincial accent.
When they all trooped into the dining-parlor, where a huge sirloin
was placed smoking on the table, it was not long before the stranger
perceived that the sympathy he had met with from the ladies was not
shared by the gentlemen.
Not only did they express but faint interest in his collision with
the smugglers, and profess the greatest incredulity as to the alleged
magnitude of their operations, but by the time the ladies had retired,
it began to be hinted to him pretty freely, as the decanters passed
round, that the less zeal he showed in the prosecution of his raids
against the “free-traders,” the more his discretion would be respected.
“Gad, sir; I don’t say theirs is an honest trade,” said the squire,
whose face assumed a purplish and apoplectic tint as the meal wore
on; “but I say that ’tis best to let sleeping dogs lie; and that your
soldiers will do a monstrous sight more harm than good by driving the
trade into wilder parts, where the fellows can be more daring and
more dangerous. And what I say to you, who are but a young man, and
hot with zeal, is this: that the easier you take things, the easier
things will take you. And if you won’t trust the advice of a man of my
experience—why, ask the parson there, and take his.”
“Gad’s my life, sir; but I can take no man’s advice who bids me do
aught but what seems to me my duty!” cried the young lieutenant with
fire. He was incensed at the laxity of morals, which he now perceived
to have permeated to every class of society in the neighborhood. “I’m
here, under the orders of his Majesty—the stringent orders—to put down
smuggling and the wrecking connected with it. And what I’m sent to do,
I’ll do, please God, no matter what the difficulties in my way may be,
nor what the dangers!”
His words were followed by a dead, an ominous silence.
The day was dying now, and the red fire that glowed and flickered
in the wide hearth showed strange lights and shadows on the painted
ceiling, the painted and paneled walls, the long spindle-legged
sideboard, where more wine was waiting for the jovial band at the
table.
The country gentleman, one and all, looked up at the ceiling during the
pause.
Before any one spoke, there came to the ears of all a sound which was
easily distinguished as the gallop of horses, accompanied by the loud
shouts of men, the cracking of whips, the creaking of heavy wheels.
Lieutenant Tregenna who was near the window, jumped up, and looked out,
as a wagon, piled high with kegs, and surrounded by a band of half a
dozen armed men on horseback, dashed past the house and up the hill
towards the village.
“Smugglers, as I live!” cried Tregenna, much excited, and turning to
attract the attention of the rest.
But not a man of them moved; not one so much as turned his head in the
direction of the window.
The blood flew to the young man’s brain. “Gentlemen!” cried he, as he
dashed across the room to the door; “you will excuse me. You, squire,
are a justice of the peace; and I must do my best to bring some of
these rascals before you, when, I doubt not, you will do your duty
towards them—and towards the king!”
With that he swung out of the heated room, seized his hat and his
heavy riding-coat which lay in the hall, and dashed down the lawn
cutting across to the left, just as a party of soldiers came riding
fast up the hill in full pursuit of the smugglers.
“A d——d coxcombical puppy!” cried one of the husky squires, as he
watched the stalwart figure of the young lieutenant making his way
rapidly past the window. “What does he want setting up his joodgment
against ours, and presuming for to think he’s a better subject of his
Majesty than what we be?”
“Let ’un be! Let ’un be!” said the third squire, grimly. “There’s no
need to worrit ourselves about him. If he doesn’t get a bullet in his
head before many days be over, why, you may eat me for a Frenchman, and
bury my bones at the cross-roads.”
And the rest of the company, with only one protesting voice, that of
Parson Langney, who said the lad had no fault but youth, and he hoped
he would come to no hurt, filled up their glasses and smacked their
lips over the famous port, and never asked themselves whether it had
paid duty; for, indeed, there was no mystery about that.