AN ALLY AT LAST.
The soldiers were rattling on in pursuit of the smugglers at such a
good pace that Lieutenant Tregenna only reached the road in time to see
them turn the next corner and disappear.
He followed, however, at the best pace he could, hoping to be of use
in finding out the direction the smugglers had taken. He had not yet
had time to become acquainted with the inland part of the neighborhood,
or he would have known that, by dashing across the park in a northerly
direction, he could have reached the village before the soldiers, who
had to follow the windings of the road.
As it was, when he reached the first of the straggling cottages of the
picturesque Sussex village, the horsemen were out of sight; and the
women and children of the neighborhood seemed to be all at their doors
and windows, evidently discussing the recent invasion with boisterous
mirth.
As Tregenna was not in uniform, he flattered himself that he might go
up the village unrecognized, and perhaps obtain some scraps of valuable
information; but whether they were better posted up than he supposed,
or whether the mere sight of a stranger awoke suspicion in the shrewd
women-folk, it was certain that as soon as they caught sight of him
they checked their volubility, and stood, with their hands on their
hips, staring at him with broad amusement still on their faces, or else
dropped a curtsey with demure and sudden respectfulness, which was in
itself somewhat suspicious.
However, he thought he would make at least an attempt to obtain some
information. So he addressed himself to a coarse-featured woman who
might have been any age between twenty-five and forty-five, who stood
wiping her hands on her apron at the door of one of the cottages, and
who, by the curtsey she dropped and the good-humored expression of her
face, seemed to promise that she would at least give a civil answer.
“Was that a troop of soldiers I caught sight of coming into the
village?” asked he, as indifferently as possible, when he had returned
her salutation with deferential courtesy.
“Maybe it were, sir,” replied the woman promptly, with demure
cheerfulness; “but I doan’t rightly know. I were out at back yonder
when I heard the noise.” She glanced out of the corners of her eyes at
an older woman outside the door of the next cottage. “Old Jenny yonder
can tell ye more’n me, sir,” added she slyly; “she’s been there all the
toime.”
Tregenna, concealing the mortification he felt, turned to Jenny.
But her stolid face offered little hope of success.
“Ay,” said she, in a voice like a man’s, “I’ve been sittin’ an’
standin’ about here, I ’ave, all mornin’; but I han’t seen naught.”
“You haven’t seen a wagon full of smugglers, maybe, coming through at
full gallop?” cried Tregenna, losing all patience with the mendacious
females. “Nor a troop of soldiers after them?”
But the sarcasm was lost upon the good lady, who was chewing a quid of
tobacco, which he well knew to be contraband.
“Noa, I han’t seen aught o’ that,” she replied imperturbably, looking
him steadily in the eyes the while. “Maybe I were in a dose, sir, or
had the sun in my eyes as they passed.”
He did not trust himself to speak to her again, but went on up the
village, between the groups of straggling red cottages with their
thatched roofs overgrown with moss or lichen, noting everywhere the
sidelong looks cast at him by such of the women as did not shut
themselves in their cottages at his approach.
The very urchins, chubby boys of eight and nine, grinned at him
maliciously, and helped to give him confirmation of the fact that he
was in an enemy’s country.
When the ground began to rise again, at the end of the village, he came
to a point where three roads met, and where the high hedges and another
patch of wooded ground made it impossible to see far in any direction.
As all three roads were in a most villainous condition, with deep ruts
and pools and furrows of caked mud, and as all three bore marks of
horses’ hoofs the lieutenant knew that it was useless to go further.
So he returned through the village in a highly irritated state of mind.
The excitement had subsided a little by this time, and most of the
gossips had resumed their household occupations. There was a group of
suspicious-looking loafers about the door of each of the two inns; but
although it seemed to Tregenna that the word smuggler was writ large
across the bloated features of every one, there was nothing to be done
but to look as if he ignored their existence.
Thus, in the very worst of humors, he again reached the entrance of the
village, and, after a moment’s hesitation, struck up to the left in the
direction of the Parsonage, at the garden gate of which he saw handsome
Mistress Joan in conversation with another woman.
He was still ostensibly bound on a mission of inquiry, yet it is
doubtful whether he hoped to get much information from Joan, who had
clearly shown herself to be one of the enemy. Still he strode up
the hill with a resolute step, and saluted her in the most abrupt,
business-like, and even somewhat offended manner.
“Your pardon, Mistress Joan, for intruding. But ’tis in the
performance of my duty. Can you inform me whither the smugglers be gone
that rode by just now with the soldiers after them?”
“How should I be able to tell you that, sir? Do you take me for a
smuggler myself?” asked Joan, demurely.
He did not at once answer. The girl looked even handsomer, so it seemed
to him, in the dying light of day than she had done by the light of
moon and lantern on the preceding evening. The creamy tints of her
skin melted into bright carnation on her cheeks; and he thought, with
a flash of amusement, of the strictures of the powdered and painted
ladies of Hurst Court upon her rustic complexion. Her dress, too,
pleased his taste better than theirs had done. She wore neither hood
nor cap, and her abundant brown hair was rolled back from her forehead
in a style which was at that period somewhat old-fashioned, but which
gave infinitely more dignity to the head than the tightly screwed-up
knot of the fashionable ladies. She wore no hoop or next to none, and
her full skirt, of some sort of gray homespun, fell in graceful folds
around her. A long fine white apron reached to the hem of her dress,
and her bodice was adorned with a frilled kerchief of soft white
muslin, and with full gathers of muslin just below the elbow. The dress
was neat, simple, eminently fresh and becoming.
Perhaps Tregenna’s masculine eye did not take in all these details; but
he was conscious that the whole effect was pleasing beyond anything
feminine he had ever seen, and vastly superior to the modish charms of
the Hurst Court ladies. He gave himself, however, little time for these
reflections before a glance at the house behind her suggested to him a
thought which he immediately put into the most matter-of-fact words.
“You stand high here, madam; that tower to the east of your house will
give you a view over many miles. Will you favor me with your permission
to go up thither for a few minutes, that I may take a reconnaissance of
the country?”
By the startled look which instantly came into Joan’s gray eyes, by
the crimson flush which mounted to her forehead, Tregenna saw, to his
intense annoyance, another proof that her sympathy with his foes went
beyond the passive stage.
“Oh, you can’t go into the tower, sir; at least——” She hesitated a
moment, evidently looking for an excuse, and then went on—“at least,
in my father’s absence. If you will come hither to-morrow, or—or——”
Tregenna noticed that at this point she sought the eyes of the woman
with whom she had been talking, and who had withdrawn respectfully to a
distance of some paces on his approach. “Or the day after. ’Tis a fair
view, certainly, when there’s no mist on the marshes; but hardly worth
the trouble of climbing our staircase, which is encumbered by much
lumber of my father’s,” she ended somewhat lamely, but recovering her
composure.
Tregenna did not at once answer, but he glanced at the house with a
scrutinizing eye. The western portion of the building, which was most
modest in dimensions, had been the banqueting-hall of a mansion as far
back as the time of King John. It had since that time gone through many
vicissitudes, and was now divided into small chambers, with the ancient
king-post of the banqueting-hall spreading its wide beams through the
upper story. On the east side of the dwelling an addition had been
made, taller than the more ancient portion, and crowned by a gabled
roof of red tiles.
Over the whole house there hung a rich mantle of glossy dark ivy, which
had grown into a massive tree over the more ancient part, and stretched
its twining branches as far as the higher roof of the newer portion,
leaving little to be seen of the structure but the windows, the knotted
panes of which glistened like huge dewdrops in the setting sun.
Tregenna drew himself up. He took it for granted she did not intend
him to use the Parsonage as a watch-tower, to descry the course the
smugglers had taken.
“You are afraid, I suppose,” said he sharply, “that I might find out
the direction in which lie the haunts of ‘free-trade?’”
Joan drew herself up in her turn. “Nay, sir,” said she quietly, “those
haunts are reached by now, I doubt not; and your friends the soldiers
will ere long be returning.”
“May be with a few of _your_ friends, the free-traders, at their
saddle-bow, madam,” retorted the lieutenant hotly.
“Sir, you are insulting,” said Joan.
“Nay, madam, there is no inference to be drawn from your speech and
behavior in this matter but the one I draw.”
“I wish you a good evening, sir,” replied Joan, as, flashing upon him
one look of indignant pride from her great brown eyes, she made him a
most stately curtsey, with her arms folded across and her head erect,
and sailed back into the house between the holly-bushes and the clipped
yews.
There was nothing for Tregenna to do but to retire, after having
returned her curtsey with a deep bow of corresponding stiffness. As
he turned to descend the hill, he had to pass the woman who had been
talking with Joan, and who had made way for him to converse with the
young lady. He glanced at her in passing, but noted only that she was
apparently of the small-farmer class, youngish rather than young, with
a quiet, stolid country face, and sinewy, rustic hands and arms.
Her dress was that of her class, consisting of a thick dark stuff skirt
drawn through the placket-holes, a coarse white apron, frilled white
cap, a kerchief knotted on the breast, and long close mittens. She wore
buckled shoes with stout heels, and carried a big basket on her arm.
There was altogether nothing more remarkable about her than an air of
extreme cleanliness, neatness, and dignified respectability.
She dropped a curtsey to the gentleman as he went by, which he returned
with a touch of the hat and a curt “Good evening.” He was in no mood
for any unnecessary exchange of civilities; for he judged by the
glance Joan had thrown in the direction of this woman that, demurely
respectable as she looked, she shared the universal sympathy with the
wrong-doers whom it was his mission to root out of the land.
He had scarcely reached the bottom of the hill by the lane which
formed an acute angle with the village street, when the soldiers,
with the brigadier at their head, came trooping slowly through the
village on their return journey. Alas! they had no captured outlaws
at their bridle; they looked tired, hot, dispirited; their commander
was swearing lustily, after the military fashion of the times; and the
women of the village, keen-witted enough to guess that the squadron
would be in an ill-humor, kept within doors, and satisfied their
curiosity by furtive peeps from behind the drapery of their windows.
The brigadier perceived the lieutenant, called “Halt,” in a guttural
voice, to his men, and proceeded to unfold his grievances, with a
plentiful interlarding of strange oaths.
It was the old story that Tregenna knew so well: nobody had seen the
smugglers; nobody had heard them; nobody had the least idea that there
were such people about, or could give a suggestion as to the way they
had gone.
“Ods my life, sir, we got to the river through following what I took
for their trail; but there was no bridge, and I knew no means of
getting across it, since the water appeared to be high and the stream
swift. So, sir, the d——d rascals may e’en be at t’other end of the
county by this, and curse me if I see how they’re to be got at, when
every wench and every child in the place is on their side—damme!”
While he thus railed on, Tregenna became suddenly aware that he had an
attentive listener in the person of the respectable-looking woman with
the basket, who had evidently followed the lieutenant down the hill,
and who now stood close to the bridle of the brigadier’s charger, whose
nose she presently began to caress with her broad brown hand.
The brigadier, incensed by what he considered a piece of gross
impertinence on the part of one of the country-folk, drew back his
horse with a jerk, and uttered an oath, bursting the next moment into a
not very refined reproof for her temerity. The woman remained however
entirely unmoved by it, and as the horse retreated, she followed him
up, until she again stood close to the bit he was champing.
“May I make so bold as give him a drink of water, sir?” asked she, in
a pleasant, deep voice, with less of the rough country accent than one
would have expected from her. “Sure you’ve had a long, hard ride, and
one should be merciful to one’s beast.”
Tregenna glanced at her with more interest than before. When she spoke,
there was a certain quiet authority about her, most proper to the
mistress of a farmhouse; and he perceived that she was younger by some
years than he had supposed, not more than eight and twenty perhaps,
and that her features, though not handsome, had a homely attraction of
their own when animated by the action of speaking.
The brigadier, who, true to his profession, looked upon himself as a
rake of the first water, cocked his hat, put his hand to his side,
and leered at her with a roguish air, which was, in truth, not so
fascinating in a gentleman of his portly build and purplish complexion
as he fancied.
“You wenches in these parts are kinder to the beasts than to their
riders, egad!” said he, with a shake of the head that set his bob-wig
wagging merrily. “You don’t offer me a drink; and if I was to beg such
a favor of you as a word to tell me where to find the smugglers, I’ll
be sworn you’d give me a stare like the rest of ’em, and vow you’d
never heard of the creatures!”
The woman listened to him with modest gravity, her face quite stolid,
her eyes on the horse. Then she said, in a quiet, even tone, without
either prudery or coquetry, but with an air of being much interested by
what he said—
“Well, sir, I’m not going to tell you that. I know to my cost the
things that go on in these parts, and that there’s many a man ruined
for an honest calling by being drawn in with these folks. You see,
sir, it be in the air, and they breathe it in from childhood up, so to
speak.”
“That’s it; that’s it, my good woman!” cried the brigadier
enthusiastically. “Egad, my lass, you’re the first person I’ve met in
these parts to admit even so much. Now tell me, think you not ’twould
be better for you all if this thing, this free-trade, as they falsely
call it, was rooted out?”
“Ay, sir, I do think so,” said the woman earnestly. “And if I thought
you’d do your work without too rough a hand, I’d lead you to their
haunts myself.”
“You would? You would?” cried the brigadier, with great eagerness.
“Well, then, you may rely on me. If you’ll but take me to the spot
where they harbor, I’ll be as gentle as a lamb with the ruff—I should
say, with the poor misguided fellows.”
“Come, sir, then, with me,” said the woman, as she at once began to
lead the way back through the village at a smart pace.
The brigadier turned his horse, and commanded his men to follow, and in
a few minutes every horseman was again lost to sight at the bend of the
road.
Lieutenant Tregenna, who had heard this colloquy, had been inclined to
think, from the woman’s manner, that in her indeed they had got hold of
a decent-minded person who had no sympathy with the thieves.
But happening to glance up at the latticed window under the eaves
of the nearest cottage he caught sight of two faces, a man’s and a
woman’s, in convulsions of laughter. A cursory examination of such
other windows as were near enough for him to see revealed similar
phenomena.
And the question darted into his mind: Was the respectable-looking
woman a friend of the smugglers? And was it her intention to lead the
soldiers into an ambuscade?