AN INNOCENT RIVAL.
Now, although Harry Tregenna was in a state of mind more nearly
approaching perfect bliss than he had ever been before, with the
knowledge that Joan Langney loved him fresh upon him, he could not
but feel an uncanny chill when Ann Price uttered her mocking words of
warning.
“The game’s not played out yet!”
He would have followed her, questioned her. But she knew every turn in
the park much better than he; and after a few moments spent in looking
for her, he gave up the search as an idle one.
After all, what could she do? Desperate and vindictive as he
knew her to be, she could hardly go the length of trying to harm
generous-hearted Joan. And as for what she might choose to attempt on
his own person, Tregenna was ready to take the risks of war, which,
indeed, could hardly be greater in the future than they had been in the
past.
So he presently dismissed all thought of her, and gave himself up,
heart and soul, to joyful thoughts of the beautiful, brave girl he had
won. He lingered about for a little while, to give her time to break
the news to her father, as she had herself wished to do. And when he
thought they must have reached home, he turned his steps also in the
direction of the Parsonage.
By the wistful look of emotion on Parson Langney’s rugged, kindly face,
by the moisture in his eyes, the young man guessed that he had already
been made aware that he was threatened with the loss of his fair
daughter: and the first words he uttered, as he held out a shaking hand
in welcome, confirmed this impression:
“So you’re going to take her away from me! Well, well, ’tis the way of
all flesh!”
Tregenna assured him that they were in no hurry, that he was ready
to wait any reasonable time: a week, a month, any period they might
choose. He further assured the vicar that he would leave the service,
and promised to settle down with his wife at no very great distance
from Hurst Parsonage.
And although Parson Langney shook his head very lugubriously, and
grumbled at the folly of a woman’s marrying before she was thirty,
his jolly face soon grew brighter when Joan came in, and, putting her
arms round his neck under her lover’s very nose, assured him that he
was the nicest and handsomest man in the whole world, and that, if she
were driven to get married, it should only be on compulsion, and on
receiving her future husband’s assurance that she was her father’s girl
still, and might be with him as much as she liked.
So they had a happy evening together, and when the young lieutenant
bade them good night, and started on his way back to his boat, it was
with never a thought of smugglers, or wreckers, builders of secret
boats, or treacherous farmers’ daughters, to damp his spirits.
There was a lull in the contraband traffic after these events, and
Tregenna and the brigadier began to flatter themselves that their
energy had at last awed the smugglers into submission, when one day the
news was brought to the lieutenant that the same sloop which had been
in sight on the occasion of the last raid, was hovering about in the
distance.
A sharp lookout was accordingly kept that night, but nothing happened
to justify their suspicions. On the following day, however, a light
mist sprang up, and not long afterwards they were able to discover
that, under cover of it, there was a boat making at a great rate for
the beach at Hastings.
The smugglers—for Tregenna had little doubt of the nature of the boat’s
errand—had a good start of the cutter’s men; but the latter gave chase
at once in one of their own boats, and were soon justified in their
surmise; for, on grounding their craft as soon as they could on the
pebbly shore, the occupants of the pursued boat deliberately emptied
it of its contents in sight of their pursuers, and leaving it to its
fate, ran up the beach towards the narrow streets of the old town, each
with a couple of kegs slung round him, the one in front, and the other
behind.
They did not fail, as they went, to bid a graceful adieu to Tregenna
and his men, waving their rough knitted caps and shouting “Good-by” as
they disappeared through the openings between the houses.
Straining every nerve, the cutter’s men grounded their own boat in
an incredibly short time; and, profiting by the precious moments
the smugglers had lost in emptying their cargo, they raced up the
stony beach in pursuit, believing that, encumbered as they were, the
“free-traders” would find it impossible to keep ahead of them long.
But alas! they had reckoned without their host; for while they, the
representatives of law and order, were fighting alone and unaided, the
smugglers had each a brother or a mother, a sister or a sweetheart,
in one or other of the mean, picturesque little hovels that nestled
together in the shelter of the tall cliffs beneath the castle, and
lined the narrow, tortuous streets of the ancient town.
No sooner had the first of the revenue-men turned the corner into the
High Street, up which the smugglers were making their way towards some
chosen haunt of their own, than the hindermost of the rascals, who
alone carried no burden, gave a peculiar kind of shrill whistle.
This was evidently the recognized method of giving an alarm to the
rest, and was also the signal for the inhabitants of the squalid little
houses to be on the alert.
Already every door was standing open, showing, to the exasperation of
the king’s men, a group of eager, grinning faces, intent on the sport.
The moment the whistle sounded, the smugglers who carried the kegs
divested themselves each of one of his burdens, and rolled it towards
the nearest open cottage-door. The moment the keg was safe inside, the
door closed.
The smuggler, having thus got rid of one of his kegs, went on at a
quicker pace for a few steps, and then, on the sounding of a second
whistle, got rid of the remaining one in the same way.
Well used to this maneuver, which was a common one at the time, those
of the cottage-folk who had not received one of the contraband kegs,
closed their doors also; so that Tregenna and his men, on reaching
the point in the street where this trick had been played, found it
impossible to identify any particular house as one of those which had
lent the use of its portal to the smugglers.
A few half frightened, half mocking children stood about in the road;
but at the windows not a single face was to be seen.
Tregenna, who was at the head of the pursuing force, saw, to his
chagrin, that it was now impossible for him to hope to come up with the
smugglers. Lightened of their burdens, and already well ahead of their
pursuers, they flew like the wind up the steep street towards the old
church, without so much as looking behind them to give the cutter’s men
a chance of seeing and remembering their faces.
At this point in the route, however, they all somewhat abruptly
disappeared, with the exception of the one who had given the signal.
From his limping gait, Tregenna had long since recognized him as
“Gardener Tom,” and he felt at the first moment rather sorry that this
man, the only one of the “free-traders” for whom he felt the slightest
kindness, should be the only one to fall into his hands.
It was not until he had reached the queer little irregular group of
nestling houses clustering round the church, that Tom suddenly turned,
put his back against the steep wall which banked up the houses on one
side of the roadway, folded his arms, and waited for Tregenna to come
up to him.
The lieutenant, expecting that Tom had a pistol ready for him, put his
hand to one of his own. The smuggler, however, shook his head, and held
up his hands.
“Where are the rest?” cried Tregenna, more by instinct than because he
expected a useful answer.
Tom, whose handsome, open face was flushed with his exertions, smiled
mockingly at him.
“Wheer? Wheer?” asked he, with a shake of the head. “Nay, master, look
round, and see if ’twill be easy for you to light upon ’em now!”
Tregenna did look round. He saw the close-packed cottages, some prim
and neat, with a sort of look about them as if no creature within
had ever heard of so terrible a thing as a smuggler: some dirty and
neglected, and capable of anything: but all shut up, and without a
human face at any window. One mean-looking little alehouse at the
corner did certainly bear a sort of rakish, contraband look. But a
peep within its doors showed that the landlord and one old man had it,
to all appearances, to themselves.
Tregenna sighed, and frowned.
“Well, I must arrest you, Tom, and carry you off at least,” said he.
“I be smuggling naught, master!” objected Tom, quite mildly.
“You were signalman to the others,” answered Tregenna. “You’re one of
the gang.”
Tom took this very quietly.
“All roight, take me if you will,” said he. “’Twas you, sir, that gave
me the hurt makes me too lame to get away!” said he.
Tregenna frowned, and looked uneasily round at his own men, who,
deeming him quite able to cope with this, the only one of the ruffians
whom they had in their power, had dispersed in various directions,
engaged in the rather hopeless task of ferreting out their lost enemies.
“I’d sooner have caught any one of the others, Tom,” said Tregenna,
“than laid hands on thee.”
“And I,” replied Tom, with a glance round in his tone, and a lowering
of the voice, “I’d sooner I was caught by you, sir, than as any of the
others was! For I’ve summat for to say to you, sir, summat for to arst
you!”
And over Tom’s open ruddy face there passed an expression of deep
anxiety.
“To ask me, Tom? Well?”
“Oons, sir you’d tell me the truth, wouldn’t you? You’d be above
telling lies to a poor fellow loike me!” went on the young man,
wistfully.
Tregenna looked amazed, as well he might, at this most unexpected
speech.
“I hope, Tom,” said he, “I’m above telling lies to any one.”
“Well, sir, it’s loike to this ’ere: you han’t forgot, sir, that noight
as you came to Rede Hall, have you?”
“No, I’m not likely to forget that quickly!”
“You’ll moind, sir, how ’twas Ann Price sent us after thee, in a
passion.”
“Ay, I’m not like to forget that either, Tom, nor your treatment of me
when you came up with me!”
Tom looked down, reddening.
“Oons, sir,” said he, gruffly, “we’re rough customers, I know. But we
had more than one account to settle with you, sir; and you see, you’d
found out a bit too much to be let off loight! We had to turn out of
the place where we’d met together for years, all along of you and your
findings. And that wasn’t all neither!”
And a significant frown puckered his brows once more.
“Why, what other harm have I done you, than what I had to do in the
course of my duty?” asked Tregenna.
“You’d gotten the roight side of Ann!” growled Ann’s lover, angrily.
“The right side! Nay, then I know not what getting the wrong side
would be like!” retorted Tregenna, lightly. “For there’s no sort of
ill treatment, short of actual murder, that I have not received at
her hands, and I own I never meet her without watching her hands, to
be sure she holds not a knife concealed in some fold of her dress,
wherewith to stab me!”
“Ay, that’s Ann all over!” said her lover, admiringly. “She’s got such
a spirit, has Ann! But it’s just them ways of hers with you that makes
me know she looks upon you with too koind an eye, sir. She loikes you,
and she hates herself for loiking a king’s man, that’s what it is!”
“Indeed!” said the young lieutenant, with a laugh. “Then I assure you,
Tom, she’s vastly welcome to transfer her liking to some one else; for
it’s wasted on me!”
Tom scanned the speaker’s face narrowly, and then drew a long breath of
relief.
“You speak as if it was truth,” said he, at last, in a muttering tone.
“Then, maybe, sir,” he went on, with deep earnestness, still keeping an
anxious gaze upon Tregenna’s face, “maybe you don’t know where she is
now?”
He seemed to wait with breathless eagerness for the answer.
“Most surely I do not,” replied Tregenna, promptly, “if she be not at
Hurst Court, where I saw her near ten days ago.”
Tom shook his head.
“She ben’t there now, sir. Nobody hereabouts has a notion where she’s
got to; so I thought as maybe it was you had spirited her away.”
“God forbid!” said Tregenna, heartily. “My good fellow, set your mind
at rest. If there’s one man in the world less likely than another to
spirit away your friend Ann Price, or indeed to have aught to do with
her, ’gad, ’tis I!”
Tom passed his hand over his chin reflectively: he did not yet seem
satisfied.
“Faith, man, what further assurance do you want?” said Tregenna, amused
at the fellow’s persistency. “Dost still think I’m in love with thy
fair friend the amazon?”
“Nay, sir that I do not,” replied Tom, slowly. “But ’tis her that’s in
love with thee! And, sure, she’s more loike to have her way with thee,
than ever thou wouldst ha’ been to make way with her, if so be it had
been t’other way round!”
“Make yourself easy on that point also,” answered Tregenna, now
laughing heartily at the young man’s fears. “Mistress Ann would get no
soft words from me, no loving looks, and no fond embraces, were I the
only man left on the earth, and she the only woman!”
“Sir,” said Tom, not a bit relieved by the assurance, “I do believe
you mean what you say. But she’s no common woman, isn’t Ann; and since
she’s sworn she’ll have your kisses within the month, why, I do surely
believe she’ll get them, whether you will or no.”
“Sworn to have my kisses!” echoed the lieutenant, in amazement. “Egad,
then, she’ll be forsworn. Fear not, man; thy fair one has no charms
for me, and truly she hath never met a man less like to bestow his
kisses upon her. Where she is gone I know not: and if I were in thy
shoes, I should be thankful she’d disappeared, and I should look about
for something softer, something more like a woman, to whom to give my
kindness!”
“Sir, one cannot give love where one will!” said poor Tom, rather
ruefully. “If I do know why I love her, ’tis on account of her not
being loike to every other lass in the parish; to her being so
different from herself, as from all other women, that one never knows
how she’s going for to be two hours together! So it ain’t no good of
talking, sir; for, oons! I’ve loved her too long to go trapesing after
another now!”
At that moment Tregenna caught sight of the first of his own men
returning from a fruitless search for the rest of the smugglers. He
turned quickly to Tom.
“Tom,” said he, “I cannot deal harshly with thee; get away with thee
ere it be too late. For these fellows of mine dare not show so much
leniency as I am doing.”
Tom took the hint. He was artful enough to make a feint of striking
the lieutenant, making a movement which caused the latter to take an
instinctive step backward, as if he had really been pushed aside. Tom
then made a dash for the nearest opening between the houses; and being
still wonderfully active when he chose to exert himself, he was lost to
the sight of the cutter’s men in a few seconds.