THE SMUGGLERS’ SHIP.
Tregenna must have been harder than stone if he had not been stirred to
the depths of his being by the courage and devotion shown on his behalf
by the parson’s beautiful daughter.
From the first moment of meeting her, when he had seen her winsome
face and sparkling eyes in the moonlight, on board his own vessel, he
had been struck with admiration for her person, her modest, unaffected
manners, her spirit, and her devotion. This feeling had grown with
every meeting. So it was not wonderful that, on this evening, when she
had braved such perils on his behalf, Joan should have inspired him
with a passion exalted on the one hand, strong on the other, such as he
had never believed it possible that he could feel for any woman.
All the greater, therefore, was his mortification, his sudden
revulsion of feeling to despair, when she replied to his stammering
attempt at thanks with mocking words, and a chilling laugh.
It was some minutes before he recovered himself sufficiently to speak.
By that time they had reached the lane that led from the end of the
village street up to the Parsonage. As soon as the glimmering light
in the ivied window caught his eye, he said, in a tone which he tried
to make as indifferent as her own, but in which it was easy to detect
traces of the emotion from which he was suffering—
“You will not suffer me to thank you for your goodness on my behalf. I
trust your father may be more complaisant.”
“My father, sir, will make as much light of it as I do,” replied Joan,
as she relaxed her hold on her companion’s belt, and alighted in the
mud of the lane.
Parson Langney’s voice, hearty, cheery, but not without a touch of
anxiety, rang out pleasantly, at this moment, upon their ears.
“Hey, Miss Madcap, is’t you? By what Nance told me, I had begun to fear
your wild expedition had turned out ill!”
“Nay, father, it has turned out very well!” cried she; “for I have
carried off Mr. Tregenna from those that would have harmed him, and
have thereby made him vastly civil!”
“Nay, sir, Miss Joan will not suffer my civility or my gratitude. She,
who is so proud herself, will not allow me to acquit my own debt to her
even by a word of thanks.”
“Tut-tut, there is no need!” said the parson.
“And the less, sir,” put in Joan, quickly, “since I own I had some
hand in bringing about your discomfiture before, at the hands of
the—h’m—‘free-traders.’ Father,” she went on quickly, turning to the
vicar, “I’ll never do aught for Ann or her friends again! ’Twas she put
them on our track; and they had a mind to murder Mr. Tregenna, I verily
believe!”
She was speaking very quickly, with a certain frivolous air which
was new in her, and less becoming than her usual straightforward
simplicity. Tregenna, who was too inexperienced in the ways of women to
understand the cause of this change in her, was hurt and grieved by it.
He could not understand how strong her anxiety must be to try to efface
from his mind the remembrance of her action in so boldly declaring to
the smugglers that it was for love she protected him.
Chagrined on the one hand, yet still shaken to the very depths by the
adoration he felt for the beautiful girl whose touch he seemed still
to feel on his breast, Tregenna stammered out again some hesitating
words of thanks, as he held out his hand to Parson Langney, with a shy
sidelong glance at his daughter.
“I must hasten back to my ship,” said he. “And in the morning I shall
hope to pay my respects to you, and to induce Miss Joan to give me a
better hearing than she will grant to-night.”
At these words, Joan, who had been moving restlessly from the horse to
her father and back again, apparently unable to keep still one moment
now that the tension of the evening’s events was over, became suddenly
as motionless as a statue. Then, in a voice which was as earnest as a
moment before it had been affectedly gay, she said quickly—
“Father, bid Mr. Tregenna stay here till the morning. These fellows may
still be on the watch for him.”
“Sh-sh!” said her father, raising his hand to enforce silence.
In the pause which followed, both Joan and Tregenna were aware of a
loud, rumbling noise in the village street below, coming gradually
nearer. And in a few minutes, during which they all stood silent and
wondering, without exchanging a word, they perceived a huge black mass,
dim, shadowy, like some mammoth beast whose bulk makes rapid motion
impossible, creeping slowly by in the obscurity of the trees at the
bottom of the hill.
Slow, phantom-like, it crept along with no sound but the rumbling and
creaking that had at first arrested the vicar’s attention.
Tregenna, on the alert at once, would have descended the hill to find
out what the monster was. But at a sign from his daughter, Parson
Langney laid a restraining hand upon the young man’s arm.
“What can you do—alone?” said he, warningly. “Keep your heart in your
breast for to-night, at least. In the morning—why, you must do your
duty. Come, a tankard will do you no harm. You shall drink ‘confusion
to free-traders’ if you will. And, egad, I’m inclined, after what I’ve
heard, to drink the same toast myself!”
Tregenna agreed, anxious for another chance of a word with Joan. But
he saw no more of her that night. Even while the vicar was giving
this invitation, his daughter had slipped quietly into the house, and
disappeared for the night.
This left Tregenna free to tell his host, over the nut-brown ale
which the vicar poured out with loving hands, the whole story of the
adventures of the evening. Astounded, enthralled, marveling at his
daughter’s courage, and furious at the smugglers’ daring outrage, the
vicar listened with all his ears.
And when the young man’s tone grew lower, his eyes more passionate, as
he declared his love and admiration for the girl who had risked so much
for him, Parson Langney listened sympathetically, and with tears in his
eyes, to the tale he had often indeed heard before, but never from such
eager lips.
“Ay, ay, she’s a good girl, a good girl, my bonnie Joan!” said he, in a
tremulous voice, when Tregenna paused. “You’re not the first that has
come to me with this tale, sir, though you’re the first she’s shown
such kindness to as she’s shown to you. But reckon not too much on
that, I warn you. She’s not your ordinary lass, that minces and mouths,
like the girls at Hurst Court we’re going to dine with to-morrow.”
Tregenna made a mental note of this fact, and determined that he would
be invited too. “And what she did and what she said she’d have done
and said for any other man in such a plight as yours, I doubt not! But
we’ll see, we’ll see. I’m in no hurry to lose my Joan, I promise you,
sir. The day must come when she’ll go forth from me as a bride; but
there’s time enough for that, time enough for that! And I would not
have you hope too much, though I do not bid you despair.”
Tregenna was forced to be content with this vague encouragement, and
with the comfort of having unburdened his heart to a sympathetic ear.
It was not long before he took his leave, and having followed the
vicar’s advice to concern himself for that night with nothing but his
own safety, reached the boat in the creek without accident, and was
soon on board the _Sea-Gull_.
Next morning he was early astir. He had already, on arriving on board,
sent a trusty messenger to Rye, to beg the brigadier to lose no time
in making a second expedition against Rede Hall; he promised to meet
him there, and to put him in possession of some facts he had learnt
concerning its hiding-places.
But although it was no later than nine o’clock in the morning when he
and General Hambledon met at the farmyard gates, they found that the
smugglers had been beforehand with them.
Not a man or a woman was to be found on the premises; not a cow or a
horse; not a pig or a hen. And though the trap-door to the cellar had
been flung wide to assist them in their search, it was in vain they
sought for the bales among which Tregenna had stood on the previous
night.
Not a keg or a bale was there in the whole place, though they searched
it from garret to cellar!
The brigadier was ferociously facetious, tauntingly jocose.
“Hey-day, Tregenna, I fear they gave thee too much of their contraband
_aqua vitæ_, and that it has bred visions in thy brain!” said he, with
an ugly smile on his red face, and a vicious look in his eyes. He was
in no very good humor with the young man for having outrun himself in
zeal, and was at heart rather pleased that this expedition, designed by
his rival, should have been as complete a failure as the last.
“Well, at any rate, you see, General, that there was something wrong
with the place, for them all to have deserted it like this,” said the
lieutenant, reasonably enough.
“More like they have deserted it from fear of quarter-day!” retorted
the brigadier. “’Tis a common thing enough a flitting like to this, at
such seasons!”
“A least,” said Tregenna, who was hot and furious at this fresh rebuff,
“you will find the ship under the barn-floor!”
But even as he uttered the words, a chill seized him as he remembered,
in a fresh light, a mysterious incident of the previous evening. He
was, therefore, more disgusted than surprised when, in searching the
barn, the soldiers discovered that the flooring was indeed loose, as
he had said, and that there was a crypt beneath: but that though there
were traces of the cradle in which the smugglers’ boat had been hauled
up and down, and some tools lying about in dark corners with logs and
screws, ropes and mallets, the vessel itself had disappeared.
Tregenna took almost in silence the taunts with which the brigadier now
saluted him. Leaving the soldiers to return to Rye, the young man, with
a shrewd suspicion that the mammoth beast he had dimly seen crawling
through the village in the dark on the previous evening was the
smugglers’ boat, resolved to try to track it to its new resting-place.
Such a weighty thing as the unfinished vessel, and the wagon or wagons
on which it must have been removed, could not, he argued, but have left
its mark on the roads it traversed.
And so it proved. Following the deep wheelmarks which were easily
discernible even now in the mire of the Hurst road, he arrived at that
village, went through it, still tracing the wheelmarks; and finally, to
his consternation, tracked the wagons to the stables of Hurst Court.
It was a disconcerting discovery enough, but Tregenna, furious at the
conspiracy thus formed against the representatives of law and order,
did not scruple to follow it up. It was evident that the hiding-place
they had found for their vessel had been looked upon by the smugglers
as safe and sacred, for no steps had been taken to guard it. Tregenna
opened the wide door of the coach-house; and inside, as he had
expected, he saw the hull of the unfinished boat.
Without a moment’s loss of time he went straight up to the house, where
he fancied that the butler who admitted him looked at him askance, as
if with some suspicion of his errand.
The squire himself, however, while affecting the greatest astonishment
and indignation on hearing that the smugglers’ boat had been placed in
his stables, was evidently in a state of extreme trepidation as to the
course Tregenna meant to pursue with regard to himself.
The lieutenant, however, thought it better to receive his assurances of
innocence as if he believed them, thinking that this would be a lesson
strong enough to cure the squire of complicity with the smugglers.
Squire Waldron was, of course, particularly civil to his unwelcome
guest, pressing him to stay to dinner; an invitation which Tregenna
accepted at once, in the hope of meeting Joan.
Then the squire made haste to rid himself of his guest by presenting
him to the ladies in the music-room, who again, as on a previous
occasion, loaded him with hypocritical expressions of horror at the
smugglers and their conduct. Certain rumors of the adventures of the
previous evening had reached their ears from the Parsonage, and they
all endeavored to worm out of Tregenna the exact details of his visit
to Rede Hall, and of Joan’s late ride.
“They do say, you must know, dear Mr. Tregenna,” lisped one young lady,
with a prim little ghost of a malicious smile, “that Joan Langney was
so afraid you were gone to make love to Ann Price, who is reckoned a
great beauty in these parts (though I am sure I ha’n’t a notion why),
that she cantered after you on horseback!”
“The forward thing!” cried Miss Lucy.
“But maybe ’tis not true!” said Mrs. Waldron inquisitively.
“Do, pray, tell us how ’twas, sir,” went on Miss Alathea, playing
affectedly with her fan. “’Tis no breach of confidence; for you and
she were seen to return to the Parsonage together, late in the
evening. So ’twill make the best of a bad business to let us know the
circumstances!”
“A bad business!” echoed Tregenna hotly. “Nay, madam, ’twas a very good
business for me! Since, if Miss Joan had not been good enough, knowing
I was going thither, to ride to Rede Hall and release me from what was
practically imprisonment at the hands of the scoundrels who infest that
place, I should scarce have got hither alive!”
The young ladies both went off into a series of little twittering
shrieks, raising their hands and turning up their eyes towards the
painted ceiling, with every mild expression of horror and affright.
“So she _knew_ you was going thither!” chirped Miss Lucy presently.
“You are great friends at the Parsonage then, Mr. Tregenna?”
“I hope I am, madam,” returned Tregenna promptly. “For there’s no
friendship in the world I value more than that of Miss Joan and her
father.”
This prompt declaration seemed rather to damp the spirits of the
two little pink-eyed girls, and they desisted from their attacks in
this direction; and having obtained his assurance that music was his
passion, they proceeded to the harpsichord and warbled monotonous
little duets to him until the arrival of Parson Langney and his
daughter brought a welcome relief from the infliction.
Poor Tregenna, however, rather regretted that he had been so prompt
in accepting the squire’s invitation, when he found how very frigid
Miss Joan was to him. She made him a stately curtsey, with her eyelids
lowered, and without taking any notice of his proffered hand. And when
the parson, who had heard already of the doings of the morning, twitted
Tregenna about the escape of the smugglers, Joan joined heartily in his
ironical comments while the squire was not long in adding his taunts;
so that the young man found himself assailed on all sides with no ally
save the chirruping young Waldron ladies, whose advocacy irritated him
more than did the attacks of Joan.
So mortified was he, indeed, that when the ladies withdrew from the
table, he felt that he could not bear the society of the other three
gentlemen—his host, Bertram Waldron, and the parson—any longer. He
therefore made the excuse of his duties calling him away, and left
them to their wine.
Just as he was taking his three-cornered hat from the peg in the hall
where it hung, he caught sight of one of the maids of the house, in
her smart frilled cap and neat muslin kerchief and apron, in a corner
of the hall. On seeing him she started and turned to go back and this
action arrested his attention, and caused him to look at her again.
The first look made him start; the second made him stare; the third
caused him to run lightly across the hall, and to seize her by the
apron as she tried to escape into one of the rooms.
“Ann Price—masquerading as a housemaid, by all that’s audacious!” cried
he, as they came face to face.