CHAPTER IX.

CLOSE OF A BRIEF STORY.

Gertrude had long ago told Christian that he must visit Saardam again,

some day, and see Master Peter. Christian was as little disposed to

forget Gertrude's promises as Gertrude herself; and he repeatedly

reminded her of this one. The invitation to Saardam was renewed with all

earnestness, but Gertrude would now no longer answer for Master Peter

being visible there. She would not say that he was gone; but neither

would she engage that Christian should ever see him again: and her

reserve on the subject perplexed her little friend. He found he must

wait for light upon the matter till he reached Saardam; if that day

should ever come.

That day came; and the drooping, worn-out boy found himself, after much

toil and many restings by the way, once more placed within view of his

favourite prospect, with the beams of the declining sun glistering on

the heaving surface of the sound, and the nearer dock-yards chequered

with long shadows from the timber-stacks and half-built vessels. It did

not diminish the interest of the view that about a furlong of the dyke

came within its range, with its trains of passengers hastening to and

fro, and all the bustle taking place upon it which Luc and Roselyn

thought much better worth attending to than the regular labours of the

dock-yard. Christian cast an occasional glance that way while the

children were looking out, the afternoon after the arrival of Gertrude

and Christian from the north. The rest of the party had been settled

some days; but Christian and his nurse had stopped to rest at the abode

of the good dame who had offered her hospitality, in case of the invalid

passing her way. This old woman had infused a further spirit of

thankfulness into the suffering boy; so that, though he felt himself

declining daily, he grew more patient as he had more need of patience.

The pastor was now sitting by his side, speaking little, and keeping his

eye fixed on the gleaming sea.

"O, look, look!" cried Christian, pointing in the direction of the road.

"One, two, four teams of dogs! and the carts piled as high as they can

bear. They must be going to the fair.--O, how tired I am!" he continued,

languidly. "Here I lie, while that stream of people passes on, on,

on,--all busy, all expecting something, and thinking only of being as

busy always."

"You are not the only one, Christian, that feels this," said the pastor.

"Some who are as strong as the strongest of yon traffickers and

pleasure-seekers feel, like you, that the hand of God is upon them, to

fix them apart while the world passes on. It is not you alone, my boy."

"I know whom you mean," said Christian, in a low voice. "Christ stood on

the mount and on the shore, and saw all the people going up to the

feast."

"He did," replied the pastor, speaking in a manner which convinced

Christian that he had not met his friend's thought.

"Would you have been busier in France than you are here," he asked, "if

the French king had not sent you away?"

"Perhaps I might; but God appoints his servants their station; and I am

content. I am content to be the minister of his grace, and bless him for

lightening the hearts of others. He will strengthen me to bear the

burden of my own."

After a moment's thought on the peculiar sadness of the pastor's tone,

Christian laid his arm on his friend's shoulder, and whispered,

"_I_ love Gertrude very much too; and I always thought----I was so

surprised when she told me----"

"Say no more about it, my boy. Talk rather of my country, or of my

kindred, or of anything else that I have lost."

"I cannot talk at all," said the boy, whose tears were fast flowing for

the pastor, though it was some time since he had shed any for himself.

He lay quietly listening to the pastor's consolations, till his mother

appeared to say that Master Peter had come to see him. She was evidently

wishing to tell something more, if Master Peter had not followed at her

heels. The pastor hastened to disengage himself from Christian, that he

might rise and make a profound obeisance. Christian, who had never seen

his friend offer so low a reverence, especially to a carpenter in his

workman's dress, laughed aloud. Mrs. Snoek, much alarmed at this

ill-timed mirth, uttered at once what she had been wanting to say;--that

Master Peter was a very different Peter from what they had imagined,--no

other than the Keiser of all the Russias.

While Christian looked wistfully in Peter's face to learn if this was

true, the Emperor lifted him gently from his couch, and held him in his

arms as he had done on the first day of their acquaintance, assuring him

that, as he would not allow his fellow-workmen to treat him differently

now that they knew who he was, he should be very sorry if Christian grew

afraid of him. As he spoke, he looked with a smile towards the opposite

side of the room, where Luc had backed into a corner, and Roselyn was

peeping from behind her mother's ample skirt.

"Luc looks afraid of you," said Christian; "and I might be afraid, if I

were Luc. But, sir, I am just going where a great Keiser is no more than

a pastor; and I dare say not so much. If I see you there very soon, you

will not be a Keiser, and I shall be no more afraid of you than when you

were only Master Peter."

"Very soon, Christian? I hope we shall not meet there very soon."

"O, yes: ask the pastor," said the boy, eagerly. "He will tell you that

I am going very, very soon."

This the pastor unhesitatingly confirmed; but added that the Keiser had,

he trusted, a long work to achieve before he was called into the

presence of the King of Kings.

"O, yes," said Christian, "how busy you are all going to be; and you,

Master Peter, the busiest of all. You are learning to build fleets and

cities;--at least, I heard them say so about the Keiser;--and you are

getting wise men to teach you all that they know; while I am going to a

place where there is no device nor knowledge."

The pastor suggested that this probably applied only to the place where

his body would be laid. This hint sufficed to excite the boy to pour out

upon the Emperor a torrent of perplexing questions about what he thought

would become of the spirit. The readiest answer was,--(what was true

enough,)--that Christian was completely exhausted, and must not talk any

more at present. Peter would come in at the end of his day's work, and

tell him about the fleet he intended to build, to ride in the harbour of

his new city. Meanwhile, he desired Christian not to think he was going

to die so very soon. It was not at all likely. He would send for his

best physician from Russia, and tell him to restore Christian, so that

the boy should visit him in his new capital, some time or other, when

the cough should be gone, and the mysterious pain cured, and life a very

different thing to Christian from what he had ever felt it yet.

The upright pastor could not silently let pass any observations of this

nature. He reminded the Keiser that, though placed by the hand of God in

a position of absolute dominion over multitudes of men,--over their

lives and worldly lot,--he was no more the Lord of Life, in a higher

sense, than the meanest of his serfs. It was not for him to say that the

bowl should not be broken, or the silver cord loosed, when neither was

given into his hand.

The mischief,--or what the pastor considered mischief,--was however

done. After Peter had left the apartment, Christian employed himself in

speaking when he could, and musing when he could not speak, on what he

should see, and hear, and learn, and do, if he recovered enough to visit

the new capital of all the Russias. He gave notice, from time to time,

that he did not at all expect that this would ever happen; it was

unlikely that his pain should ever go away entirely, and that Peter

should remember him when he should be the great Keiser again. Yet, as

his strength ebbed away, minute by minute, his convictions that he was

not going to die just yet grew more vigorous. Observing him unable to

finish something he wished to say, his mother feared that his pain was

coming.

"No, I do not think it will come. No! no pain--" Yet his face expressed

terror of an approaching paroxysm.

"I wish the Keiser had not come, or had not spoken presumptuously, as

the potentates of this world do ever," said Gertrude, more moved to

displeasure than was common to her gentle nature.

"The Keiser wishes it too," said Peter, who had entered the room softly,

and saw at a glance that Christian's short day of life was likely to

close nearly as soon as his own day's work, at the end of which he had

promised to entertain the boy with stories that could have no charm for

a dying ear. "My poor boy, I deceived you. I have tainted your dying

hours. Can you forgive me?"

Christian's now rigid countenance relaxed into the radiant smile which

betokened his highest mood of faith. The movement, whether of body or

spirit, summoned his pain; but its very first touch released him. He

left the greatest of this world's potentates treasuring up the

forgiveness of a feeble child, and wondering, as at a new thought, that

one who had power over millions of lives should have no more interest

than others with the supreme Lord of Life.

_Summary of Principles illustrated in this Volume._

Nations exchange commodities, as individuals do, for mutual

accommodation; each imparting of its superfluity to obtain that in which

it is deficient.

The imparting is therefore only a means of obtaining. Exportation is the

means of obtaining importation,--the end for which the traffic is

instituted.

The importation of money into a country where money is deficient is

desirable on the same principle which renders desirable the supply of

any deficient commodity.

The importation of money into a country where money is not deficient is

no more desirable than it is to create an excess of any other commodity.

That money is the commodity most generally bought and sold is no reason

for its being a more desirable article of importation than commodities

which are as much wanted in the country which imports it.

That money is the commodity most generally bought and sold is a reason

for its being the commodity fixed upon for measuring the relative

amounts of other articles of national interchange.

Money bearing different denominations in the different trading

countries, a computation of the relative values of these denominations

was made in the infancy of commerce, and the result expressed in terms

which are retained through all changes in the value of these

denominations.

The term by which in each country the original equal proportion was

expressed is adopted as the fixed point of measurement called the par of

exchange; and any variation in the relative amount of the total money

debts of trading nations is called a variation from par.

This variation is of two kinds, nominal and real.

The nominal variation from par is caused by an alteration in the value

of the currency of any country, which, of course, destroys the relative

proportion of its denominations to the denominations of the currency of

other countries. But it does not affect the amount of commodities

exchanged.

The real variation from par takes place when any two countries import

respectively more money and less of other commodities, or less money and

more of other commodities.

This kind of variation is sure to correct itself, since the country

which receives the larger proportion of money will return it for other

commodities when it becomes a superfluity; and the country which

receives the smaller proportion of money will gladly import more as it

becomes deficient.

The real variation from par can never therefore exceed a certain limit.

This limit is determined by the cost of substituting for each other

metal money and one of its representatives,--viz., that species of paper

currency which is called Bills of Exchange.

When this representative becomes scarce in proportion to commodities,

and thereby mounts up to a higher value than the represented metal

money, with the cost of transmission added; metal money is transmitted

as a substitute for Bills of Exchange, and the course of Exchange is

reversed and restored to par.

Even the range of variation above described is much contracted by the

operations of dealers in bills of exchange, who equalize their value by

transmitting those of all countries from places where they are abundant

to places where they are scarce.

A self-balancing power being thus inherent in the entire system of

commercial exchange, all apprehensions about the results of its

unimpeded operation are absurd.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

ILLUSTRATIONS

OF

POLITICAL ECONOMY.

-----------------------

No. XVII.

THE

LOOM AND THE LUGGER.

PART I.

=A Tale.=

BY HARRIET MARTINEAU.

-----------------------

LONDON:

CHARLES FOX, 67, PATERNOSTER-ROW.

---

833.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES,

Stamford Street.

THE

LOOM AND THE LUGGER.

PART I.

=A Tale.=

BY

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

------------------

LONDON:

CHARLES FOX, 67, PATERNOSTER-ROW.

---

833.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

1. Taking an Order 1

2. Giving an Order 16

3. Dumb Duty 26

4. An Afternoon Trip 45

5. Morning Walks 63

6. A Night Watch 92

7. Hear the News! 113

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE

LOOM AND THE LUGGER.

PART I.

------------------

CHAPTER I.

TAKING AN ORDER.

Mr. Culver, the silk-manufacturer, arrived at home later than the usual

dinner hour, one dark winter day. He had been attending a meeting at the

Mansion-house, held on the behalf of the Spitalfields weavers, whose

deplorable distress in the middle of the season caused fearful

anticipations of what their condition might be before a warmer season

and a brisker state of trade should arrive. Mr. Culver's thoughts were

occupied, during his slow and sad walk from the Mansion-house to his

abode in the neighbourhood of Devonshire-square, by doubts whether a

time of activity would ever arrive; or, if it did, how long it would

last. Year after year, since he had entered business, had he been

flattered with hopes that permanent prosperity would come; that the

ladies of England would continue to prize silk fabrics as the most

beautiful material for dress; and would grow conscientious enough to

refuse smuggled goods, when every conceivable variety could be had from

the looms of their own country. These had been Mr. Culver's hopes till

of late. Now he began almost to despair, and to acknowledge himself

tired out by the alternate perverseness of customers and workmen. As

soon as a new fashion was fairly established, and orders abounded, there

was sure to follow a strike among the men for wages; they invariably

urging that a protected manufacture must be able to yield good wages to

the operatives employed in it. As soon as their demands were yielded to,

and the price of goods therefore enhanced, the market was deluged with

smuggled silks; and while traffic was busy in the shops, the

manufacturer was left to sigh over his ruinous stock when the fashion of

the season had passed away. Being thus the sport, as he said, of three

parties,--the encroaching weavers, the capricious public, and the

smuggling shopkeepers,--the manufacturer declared that he stood no

chance of prosperity, however ready the taxed millions of his countrymen

might be to tell him that they were made to suffer that he might

flourish, and that he had no right to complain while so many paid for

the protection granted to his manufacture. Mr. Culver found it difficult

to be grateful for the vaunted protection which did him no good; and was

strongly disposed to resign the favour and his business together. He

wished he had done it ten years before, when he might have withdrawn

from the manufacture a richer man than now. At present, all the

manufactures of the kingdom were in so depressed a state that there was

little encouragement to invest his remaining capital in any other

concern; and it would, if unemployed, barely suffice for the maintenance

of his family--his motherless young family--whose interests depended on

himself alone. His chief doubt about leaving off business immediately

arose from something that he had heard at the Mansion-house this day, in

confirmation of rumours previously afloat,--that it was the intention of

government to introduce some important changes into the silk-trade,--to

authorize a restricted importation of foreign silks. The rumour had

created a prodigious outcry at the meeting, and caused such a contest

between certain shopkeepers and manufacturers, such a splitting into two

parties, as made it seem probable that the interests of the starving

weavers--the objects of the meeting--would be forgotten between them.

Mr. Culver was one who wished for the removal of the existing

prohibition, seeing and feeling as he did that nothing could be worse

than the present state of the trade in England, and believing that the

rage for foreign fabrics might subside when they could be easily had,

and that it must be a good thing to try a new footing for a manufacture

which was at present carried on to the injury of all the parties

concerned. If he continued to manufacture, it would be with the hope of

this change; but he ended with a doubt whether he ought to play the

speculator much longer, and whether there was not something in the

nature of the business which would for ever prevent its being in a

permanently flourishing state.

When he approached his own house, he saw his girls looking over the

blind, as if waiting for him; and, in the background, nurse's high cap,

always white, as if by miracle, considering the locality.

"O, papa!" cried Charlotte, "we thought you never would have come."

"I dare say dinner will be overdone, my dear; but never mind. If cook is

not vexed, I shall not care."

"But the Bremes' footboy has brought a note for you; and he has called

twice since for an answer; and he was obliged to go home without one,

after all."

"Such an ugly footboy, papa!" observed Lucy. "Nurse says that when they

set up a footboy, they might as well have got one that had not a snub

nose just like his master's."

"And such a ridiculous livery, papa! It is so odd to see such a little

fellow with knee-breeches, and with buttons on his big coat as large as

my doll's saucers! Nurse says----"

"Hold your tongue, my dear. I want to read this note; and when we go to

dinner, I have something to talk to you about that signifies more than

Mr. Breme's footboy's coat-buttons."

While the note was being read, nurse, who was a privileged person, did

not leave the room, but muttered her wonder where the change came from

that made shopkeepers now so different from what shopkeepers used to be.

She remembered the time when the Bremes would no more have thought of

having a footboy than of living in the king's palace. And if

shopkeepers' children learned to dance in her young days, they were

satisfied with plain white frocks, instead of flaunting in silks and

gauze ribbons, like the Miss Bremes. There lay the secret, however. It

was of the silks that all the rest came. Every body knew that the Bremes

lived by breaking the laws;--that old Breme's shop in town, and his

son's at Brighton, were full of unlawful goods.

"And so they will be, nurse," said her master, "as long as the great

folks at court, and all the fine ladies who imitate them, buy French

goods as fast as they can be smuggled.--Charlotte, see if dinner is

coming. I am in a hurry. I have to go out again directly."

"O, papa!" said Lucy, "I thought you had something very particular to

tell us; and now you say you are going out directly."

"It must do when I come back to-night, or in the morning. It is nothing

very entertaining; but almost anything is better worth telling than all

the faults you have to find with what the Bremes say and do. How can it

possibly signify to you and me whether their footboy has a snub nose or

a sharp one?"

"No, but, papa, it is such a very wicked thing of Mr. Breme to smuggle

half the things in his shop, when the poor weavers close by are

starving, and he knows it. Nurse says----O, here is the boiled beef! but

I can go on telling you while you are helping the others. Nurse

says----"

"Nurse," said Mr. Culver, "it is a pity you should stay to cut the

child's food. Charlotte will attend to her."

Nurse unwillingly withdrew. Perhaps she would have attempted to stand

her ground, if she had known what her master was planning against her.

He was at this moment thinking that he must, by some means, put a stop

to all this gossip about their neighbours; gossip which, in the case of

the Bremes, was strongly tinctured with the malice which it was once

thought nurse Nicholas could not bear towards any human being. It would

be difficult, he feared, to separate nurse in any degree from those whom

she would always consider her charge, even if she should live to see

them all grown up; but her influence must be lessened, if he did not

mean the girls to grow up the greatest gossips in the neighbourhood. He

thought that the return of their brothers from school in the approaching

holydays (brothers both older than Charlotte, the eldest girl) would

afford a good opportunity for breaking the habit of nurse being in the

parlour all day long during his absence. He now began the change by

sending her away before dinner, instead of immediately after.

"Old Short has been telling nurse," continued Lucy,--"you know old

Short, papa?"

"My dear, he used to weave for me before you were born."

"Well; old Short tells nurse that there is not a loom at work in all

Crispin-street, nor has been all this month, while silk pelisses are

more the fashion than ever they were. The Bremes had such beautiful

pelisses last Sunday at church! You saw them, papa?"

"Not I, my dear. I do not go to church to look at people's pelisses."

"O, well! they are made Paris fashion; and of French silk too. Your

silks are not good enough for such high and mighty young ladies, nurse

says."

"There will soon be an end of that," observed Charlotte, who attributed

her father's gravity to the fact of his manufacture being slighted.

"There will soon be an end of all that; and nurse's son is going to help

to put an end to it."

"Yes, papa," cried Lucy. "Only think! He is going into the Pretence

Service."

"La, Lucy! you mean the Preventive Service," cried Charlotte.

"To _prevent_ prohibited goods being brought on shore; to _prevent_

smugglers' boats from landing. Now you will understand, Lucy, what the

Preventive Service means. So Nicholas is to be one of the Coast Guard! I

suppose nurse is pleased."

"I hardly know," replied Charlotte. "He says it is very hard service in

these times; and I believe she thinks her son fit to be an admiral. He

has to guard the Sussex coast; and nurse says there are more smugglers

there than any where."

Lucy was of opinion that he should have somebody to help him. He could

hardly manage, she thought, to prevent boats landing, if several chose

to come together. He must be a very brave man indeed, she thought, to

judge by what had been given him to do. No wonder nurse was proud of

him! Nicholas sank much in her estimation when she heard that he was not

alone to guard the whole Sussex coast, but had companions within sight

by day, and within hail by night.

"But do they all earn wages, like Nicholas?" inquired Lucy. "They pay

him wages, besides letting him have his pension still, that was given

him for being wounded in a battle. I wish old Short, and some of the

other poor people he was telling nurse about, could be made guards too.

But who pays them?"

"Who do you think pays them? Try and find out."

Charlotte thought that her father and the other manufacturers were the

most likely people to pay for the prevention of smuggling, especially as

some shopkeepers and the public had no objection to smuggling. But when

she remembered how many guards there must be, if they were in sight of

one another all along the coast where smuggling went on, she began to

think that it must be an expense which would be hardly worth the

manufacturers' while. Lucy supposed that if each manufacturer kept one,

it might be easily managed. She asked which would cost most,--a

Preventive servant or a footboy?

"You think, I suppose," said her father, "that as the Preventive men do

not prevent smuggling, after all, we might as well have a footboy, and

be as grand as the Bremes. But, do you know, Lucy, I think the Bremes

would have much more reason to laugh at us then, than you have now for

ridiculing them. I believe Mr. Breme is growing rich; and he must know

very well that I am growing poor."

Charlotte asked again about the Coast Guard. She would have been pleased

just now to learn that her father had any kind of man-servant in his

pay, besides those in the warehouse of whom she knew already. When,

however, she was told the annual expense of keeping a guard against

smugglers on the coast and at sea, she believed that the cost was beyond

the means of all the manufacturers together that she had ever heard of.

It was above four hundred thousand pounds a-year,--a sum of which she

could as little realize the idea as of so many millions.

"Yes, my dear," said her father, "four hundred thousand pounds are paid

every year for _not_ preventing smuggling; for we see that smuggling

still goes on."

"How can it be?" asked Lucy. "Do the men go to sleep, so that they do

not see the boats coming? Or are they lazy? or are they cowardly? I do

not think there will be any more smuggling in Sussex, now that Nicholas

is there."

Her father laughed, and told her it would require a much greater man

than Nicholas to put a stop to smuggling in Sussex; and that if the

Coast Guard could keep their eyes wide open all the twenty-four hours

round, and were as active as race-horses, and as brave as lions, they

could not prevent smuggling, as long as people liked French goods better

than English; and that such would be people's taste as long as French

goods were to be had better for the same money than any that were made

in England.

Why the English should be so foolish as to make their fabrics less good

and less cheap than the French, Mr. Culver could not now stay to

explain. He despatched his cheese, tossed off his port, recommended the

girls to learn as much as they pleased from nurse about the Preventive

Service, and as little as they could about the Bremes' misdeeds, and was

off, to see the very man against whom nurse's eloquent tongue had been

employed.

Mr. Breme appeared to have something of consequence to display to Mr.

Culver, as he turned on the gas in his back-room to an unusual

brightness when his friend entered. (They still called themselves

friends, though provocations were daily arising in matters of business

which impaired their good will, and threatened to substitute downright

enmity for it in time.)

"Here, my dear sir," said Breme; "just look----but I wish you had come

by daylight: you can't conceive the lustre by daylight;--just look at

this piece of goods, and tell me if you ever manufactured anything like

it."

Mr. Culver unrolled one end of the piece of silk, ran his finger-tips

over the surface, furled and unfurled its breadth, contemplated its

pattern, and acknowledged that it was a very superior fabric indeed. He

had hardly ever seen such an one from the Lyons looms, and he was sure

neither Macclesfield nor Spitalfields had produced it.

"Can Spitalfields produce such an one, or one nearly resembling it?"

asked Breme. "That is the question I wanted to ask you, my dear sir.

Bring me a specimen which shall pass for French, and you shall have a

larger order than has left this house for a twelvemonth past;--provided

always that you can furnish it without delay."

There need be no delay, Culver answered; for there were more looms

unemployed in Spitalfields than could be set to work by any order that a

single house could give. But the inferiority of the British manufacture

was the impediment;--an inferiority which seemed almost hopeless. There

was not a child of ten years old, dressing her doll in her mamma's odds

and ends of silk, that could not tell French from English at a glance.

Ay; put her into a dark room, and she would know the difference by the

feel.

"You should get rid of this inferiority, my dear sir," said Breme, with

an encouraging smile, "and then we shall be most happy to deal

exclusively with you. We prefer dealing with neighbours, _cœteris

paribus_, I assure you. You should get rid of this inferiority, and

then----"

"Get rid of it! I should like to know how, while our weavers insist on

the wages which they fancy can be spared from a protected trade, and

will not believe that their prosperity has anything to do with the

quality of their work. As long as they fancy their manufacture by law

established, they will take no pains to improve it. There is no stimulus

to improvement like fair competition."

"Well! your men's wages will soon be no longer by law established; that

will be one step gained. You will then compete with Macclesfield and

Paisley, which you could not do while your Spitalfields Act was in

force. Bestir yourselves, I advise you, or the foreigners will cut you

out in every way."

"I shall bestir myself to get our protection removed," observed Culver.

"This is our only hope: but in this endeavour you will not join me,

Breme. Contraband goods have too many charms for your customers, and

bring too much profit to you, to allow you to wish that the trade should

be open. Beware, however, that you are not caught some day."

Breme begged to be trusted to take care of himself. As to his fondness

for a stock of contraband goods, he would just mention, in confidence, a

circumstance which would prove his disposition to encourage the home

manufacture.

"When I was last in Paris," said he, "a manufacturer there offered to

supply me with any quantity of silk goods, to be deposited in any part

of London that I might point out, upon the payment of an insurance of

ten per cent. This tempting offer I declined, sir."

"Because you knew you could as easily get the goods without paying the

insurance. Very meritorious, indeed, Mr. Breme! However, I am not one to

talk about the patriotism, and the loyalty, and all that, involved in

the case: for I hold the frequent and unpunished breach of a law to be a

sufficient proof that the law is a bad one; and that the true social

duty in such transactions is to buy where things are cheapest, and sell

where they are dearest; thus relieving those who want to sell, and

accommodating those who wish to buy. I am not going to quarrel with you,

sir, for buying your silks abroad, if you will only join hands in

getting your neighbours freed for a fair competition with France."

"Very liberal, indeed, my dear sir! Very handsome, indeed! It will give

me great pleasure if you can accept the order which I have just given

you a hint of. By the way, were you at the last India sale?"

"Of course."

"How did the bandanas go?"

"You probably know as well as I. I am no exporter of bandanas."

"Do you mean to insinuate that I am? Retail dealers have something else

to do, I assure you."

"O yes;--to sell them when they come back again. But you must know how

they are disposed of at the India House, and how much it costs to carry

them over to Guernsey, and bring them in again, in spite of the Pretence

Service (as my little girl calls it), before you can tell whether to

sell them at seven or eight shillings apiece in your back shop."

"Upon my word, sir, you are very wise," said Breme, laughing.

"One learns such wisdom at a dear cost," replied Culver. "Let me see.

About 1,000,000 bandanas have been sold at the India House this year, at

four shillings apiece. Of these, full 800,000 come back to be sold at

seven or eight shillings each; so that the users of bandanas pay a

bounty of 800,000 times three shillings a-year to speculators and

smugglers, besides their share of the expense of the Blockade and Coast

Guard which is employed to prevent their getting their handkerchiefs. It

is a beautiful system, truly!"

"Let it work quietly, till those concerned begin to see into it,"

replied Breme. "You ought not to complain, you know. It is all done to

protect your craft."

"If government would please to protect the consumers' money," observed

Culver, "they would have more to spend on the produce of my looms. All I

ask is that the people's purses may be protected, and we manufacturers

left to take care of ourselves. Government has been so long killing us

with kindness that I doubt whether we shall ever get over it. However,

cut me a pattern of your silk, and I will consult with my cleverest

workman, and let you know what we can do."

"Certainly:--that is,--I am sure I may trust your honour."

"My interest, if not my honour. You must know very well that our books

are not so full of orders just now as to make us willing to throw a

chance one into other hands."

"True, true! But a rival house----"

"Will not interfere with you while you agree to fair terms. I will be

off to my _factotum_, as I call him, in my business matters. I hope Mrs.

Breme is well, and the young ladies?"

"The children are well enough; but my wife has not got over the autumn

fogs yet. She would not be persuaded to leave Brighton till the royal

party had removed; and the consequence is just what I expected. Her

chest is so delicate that I doubt whether she will get across the doors

this winter. It is really a very animated, an extremely fascinating

scene, you know, when the royal household are at hand. Your young folks

are flourishing, I hope?"

"Quite so. Good evening. My best respects to your lady."

"Good evening. O, Mr. Culver, just one thing more! You said something

about your stock. Have you a good assortment that one might select a few

pieces from,--of grave colours,--at moderate prices?"

"O yes. Will you come and see?"

"I think I will," replied Breme, looking round for his hat. "And a good

many blacks?"

"Of course; but you had better view them by daylight. You are not

thinking of choosing colours to-night?"

"Certainly; but I can examine your prices, and bring home a piece or two

of blacks. Here, Smith! Send Johnson after me directly to Mr. Culver's

warehouse with his bag. As to these bandanas, Mr. Culver----"

Culver turned quick round upon him with the question,

"Is the King dead?"

"Lord bless my soul, what an idea! His Majesty dead! No, not that I have

heard; nor even ill, for anything I know."

Mr. Culver was not quite satisfied; so remarkable was Breme's method of

inquiring after his stock of blacks--at the tail of their conversation,

and yet with an evident design of immediately possessing himself of some

pieces. He was not altogether mistaken. Breme had received private

intelligence of the inevitable occurrence of a slight general mourning,

and was anxious to have his assortment of black silks ready at once, and

the fabric in imitation of his French pattern prepared against the

expiration of the short mourning.

Culver was enough on his guard to avoid selling any of his stock quite

so low as he might have done if no suspicion had crossed him. When the

transaction was concluded, he stepped into Crispin-street, to consult

the best skilled of his workmen on the matter of the new order.

CHAPTER II.

GIVING AN ORDER.

Mr. Culver was not unaccustomed to visit his work-people in their

abodes, and knew very well what sights to expect on opening the door;

but he had never chanced to look in upon any one of them on an evening

of January,--a dull month for trade, and almost the dreariest as to

weather. He did not anticipate much that was comfortless in the aspect

of Cooper's abode; for Cooper was so good a workman as to be always

employed while any business at all was doing. His wife was a more tidy

body than many weavers are blessed with; and her baby was far from

resembling the miserable little creatures who may be seen in any street

in London, with peaked chins, blue lips, and red noses, their ribs bent

in with uncouth nursing, and legs bowed from having been made untimely

to bear the weight of the swollen body. Mrs. Cooper's baby smiled a

smile that was not ghastly, and danced in its father's arms when he had

time to play with it, instead of wearing his heart with its cries when

he should be sleeping the sleep which follows a day of hard labour.

Knowing all this, Mr. Culver was rather surprised by the first view of

Cooper's apartment this night. Its atmosphere was apparently made up of

the remains of the orange fog of the morning, the smoke from the chimney

which could not make its way into the upper air, that which proceeded

from the pipe of the old man who cowered over the dull fire, and that

which curled magnificently from the dipped candles on either side the

loom:--which candles seemed to yield one-tenth part light, and the rest

to be made up of yellow tallow, wick growing into perpetual

cauliflowers, and smoke. The loom was going, with its eternal smack and

tick, serving, in co-operation with the gap under the door, for as

admirable a ventilator as could have been wished for on the hottest day

in August. Mrs. Cooper was discharging many offices in her own person;

being engaged now in snuffing the rapidly-wasting candles, now in giving

a fresh impulse to the rocking cradle, but chiefly in tying the threads

of her husband's work, while he was intent, with foot, hands, and eye,

on the complicated operations of his craft.

It seemed a somewhat unequal division of labour that these two should

have so many tasks upon their hands, while a third was sitting lazily

smoking by the fire, who might as well have been tending the baby. But

old Short had another occupation, which was vastly important in his own

eyes, although it would sometimes have been gladly dispensed with by

everybody about him. Old Short was always grumbling. This being an

avocation that he had ever found time for in his busiest days, it was

not to be supposed that he would neglect it now that he had nothing else

to do; and accordingly his voice of complaint arose in all the intervals

of Cooper's loom music, and formed a perpetual accompaniment to its

softer sounds.

It was matter of some surprise to Mr. Culver, who believed that Cooper

and his wife were justified in living comfortably if they chose, that

they should continue to give a place at their fireside to a cross old

man, to whom they were bound neither by relationship nor friendship. On

the present occasion, his first remark, offered in an under-tone, was,

"So you have the old gentleman with you still! He does not grow more

pleased with the times, I suppose?"

Cooper winked, and his wife smiled.

"Have you any expectations from him? Or what can induce you to give him

house-room? He is very well able to take care of himself, as far as I

see."

"Very well, indeed, sir. He is as capable, as to his work, as ever, when

he gets any: and it is trying sometimes to hear him talk; but he is not

the only person to feel the hardship of the times, sir; and one must put

up with a fault or two, for the sake of having a respectable lodger."

"He pays us fairly the little we ask for his share of our fire and our

meals," observed the wife; "and we are getting used to that tone of his

by degrees;--except, indeed, the baby. One would think baby knew what

Short was talking about by its fidgeting and crying when he begins on a

fresh complaint."

Short was all this time listening to himself too intently to be aware

what was said on the other side of the room. He missed Mr. Culver's

expression of concern at Cooper's being obliged to add to his resources

by having a boarder, but was roused by the exhibition of the pattern of

French silk. He felt too much contempt for it, however, to look closely

at it, when he heard what it was. He supposed it was one of the

new-fangled fashions people had taken to since the Spitalfields weavers

had had their just wages held back from them. He had said what would

happen when his brother weavers consented to take less wages than the

Act gave them. The manufacture deserved to go down----

"I am quite of your opinion," observed Mr. Culver. "We deserve to go

down if we do not mend our methods. Look at the lustre of this pattern,

and only feel its substance. We deserve not to prosper if we do not

improve our fabrics, with such an example as this before us of what may

be done."

"Leave the French to mind their own matters," replied the old man, "and

let the English wear what is English, as they should."

"You will find that rather difficult to manage, friend, if they like the

French fabric better."

"Never tell me, sir! It is a fancy, and a wicked fancy, that of liking

French goods. Why, for wear, there is nothing like our brocades, that

there was such a demand for when I was young. There was variety enough,

too, in all conscience. There was the double and treble striped, and the

strawberry-spotted, and----"

"O yes, I remember, Mr. Short. The first waistcoat I danced a cotillon

in was such a strawberry-spotted thing as you describe. Nothing like it

for wear, as you say. Down came my little Lucy in it, the other day, to

make us laugh; and, to be sure, the colours are as bright as ever. But

then, there is nothing like those brocades for price either."

Short hated to hear such grumbling about the prices of things as was

always to be heard now that the French had got a footing in the country.

In old times, those that could afford to wear silk did not grudge a good

price for it.

"Very true; but many more people wear silk now; and they are of a class

to whom it is of consequence to pay no more than is necessary."

"Ay; and to please them, you have wrought your web thinner and thinner,

till you have made it too thin for even the cheapeners; and now you must

learn from the French to give your fabric more substance."

"I am afraid we cannot do that for the same money; hey, Cooper?" said

Mr. Culver, watching for the sentence which the weaver should pronounce

when he should remove his magnifying glass from his eye, and give

judgment on the pattern.

"I think we may do it, sir," pronounced Cooper. "I believe I see the

principle of the thing; and I could make a fair imitation, I think. Not

with the same body, of course. We cannot afford to put in equal material

for the money; but a slighter fabric of the same pattern might sell, I

have no doubt."

"If I might put in my word," said Mrs. Cooper, "I should recommend a

higher price instead of a slighter fabric. It is more for the substance

than the pattern that the French silks are preferred, I have heard say."

"My dear," said her husband, "I cannot pretend to rival a French weaver,

if you give me leave to use all the silk that ever passed through a

foreigner's loom. That is a point above me. So we had better content

ourselves with a likeness as to figure and price.--I cannot conceive,"

he continued, as he turned the pattern over and over, and held it in

various lights, "how the foreigners can afford their silks at such a

price as to tempt our shopkeepers to the risk of the contraband trade."

"Never tell me!" cried Short again. "You do not really think that the

French sell at the rate our shopkeepers say they do! It is all a trick

of the people at home, to spite those they have been jealous of so long.

They may starve us; but the law will be too strong for them, sooner or

later."

"I rather hope that they may be too strong for the law," replied Mr.

Culver. "If we can but get the law altered, our day of prosperity may

come again. We might have learned by this time that all our hopes of

selling our silks abroad are at an end, unless we improve like our

neighbours, instead of wrapping ourselves up in the idea that nobody can

ever equal us."

"Ay, I suppose it was under the notion that it was a fine thing to

export, that we were forbidden to import silks," observed Cooper; "but

if they had only let us have a little free conversation with the French

about their manufacture, we might by this time have had something as

good as they to sell abroad."

"Or if not silks, something instead, which would have been produced out

of what we should have saved from our expensive manufacture. If I had

but the capital which is wasted in following our inferior methods, what

fine things I would do with it for my family, and, in some sort, for my

country!"

"I cannot imagine," Cooper again observed, "how the French afford their

goods at the price they do. Whether it is that they have food cheaper,

and therefore wages are lower, or whether it is that they have better

machinery, I should like to come to a fair trial with them. If we can

get upon an equality with them, well and good; there will be buyers at

hand for all that we can make. If we cannot compete with them, better

know it at once, and turn to something else, than be supplanted by means

of a contraband trade, while our masters' money is spent in guarding the

coast to no purpose."

"Never tell me!" interposed old Short. "You grumblers always grudge

every farthing that is not spent upon yourselves."

"O, yes," replied Cooper, smiling; "we grumblers grudge every half-crown

that is laid out on French silks in our neighbourhood; and no wonder,

friend."

"It is the Coast Guard I was thinking of," replied the old man. "There

is Mrs. Nicholas's son just well settled in the Preventive Service; and

now you are for doing away the whole thing. What is to become of the

poor lad, I wonder?"

"Cooper will teach him to weave," said Mr. Culver, laughing. "So many

more people would wear silks, if we had fair play, that we might make a

weaver of a coast guardsman here and there."

Cooper feared it would be a somewhat difficult task to impart his skill

to Nicholas, who was not over-bright in learning; but he would attempt

more difficult things if they brought any chance of relief from the

present unhappy state of affairs. He was as little given to despond as

any man; and was more secure than many of his neighbours of being

employed as long as there was occupation to be had; but it did make him

tremble to look forward, when he reflected how his earnings grew less,

quarter by quarter.

"Ay; that is the way," muttered Short. "You let the masters off their

bargain about wages, and then you complain that your earnings are small.

People's folly is a mystery to me."

"As great a mystery as the black dye,--hey, Mr. Short?" said Mrs.

Cooper.

The old man smiled with an air of condescension when Mr. Culver asked,

"What of the black dye?"

"Only that Mr. Rose was complaining of seldom having his goods dyed

exact to pattern, sir: and the dyer made an excuse about the air;--some

stuff that I forget, about the air being seldom two days alike at that

time of year. As if the air had anything to do with black dye! No,

no,--never tell me!"

"As great a mystery as the mishap with the steam-boat, perhaps, Mr.

Short?"

"Why, ay; there is another piece of nonsense, sir. I happened to be at

hand when the little steam-boat blew up, five years ago. I saw the

planks and things blown clean on shore, sir; and they would have had me

believe that it was steam that did it. 'Never tell me,' said I, 'that

steam did all that.'"

"How did it happen, then, do you suppose?"

"What is that to me? They might blow it up with gunpowder for anything

that I cared. But about the dye,--that is a different matter altogether;

and so is the affair of the wages, since our bread depends on the one

and the other. And as for throwing open our trade to those French

rascals, never tell me that you are not all idiots if you wish for such

a thing. I have woven my last piece, sir, if you prevail to bring in a

Frenchman to supplant me. Mark my words, sir, I have woven my last

piece."

"I hope not, Short. I hope you will weave many another piece before you

die, however we may arrange matters with the French. Meantime, if Cooper

discovers the secret of yonder pattern, as I think he will, you must

find a place for your loom at the other end of the room, and be ready

for your share of the work."

Short muttered that new-fangled patterns did not suit old eyes and hands

like his. He must starve with the starving, since he could not take his

chance with those who were fond of change.--The mention of the starving

left the parties no spirits for further conversation on other subjects;

and Mr. Culver departed, while Cooper stepped back into his loom, and

the old man resumed his pipe, full of contempt for all masters that were

caught by a new pattern, and of all workmen that would have anything to

say to such innovations. He only wished they would come first to him

with their new schemes. He should enjoy bidding them weave for

themselves, if they must have new fancies.

CHAPTER III.

DUMB DUTY.

Cooper had good reason for doubting his capability of teaching Nicholas

to weave, and for thinking such a task the worst consequence that could

result to him from the abolition or reduction of the Coast Guard. There

were, indeed, few things that Nicholas could learn to do, and it was

therefore a happy circumstance for himself and his mother that his

present appointment had been obtained for him. He had good eyes, and a

set of strong limbs, so that he stood as fair a chance as a brighter man

of seeing a boat on the waves, and of sustaining his six hours' watch to

the satisfaction of his officer, in ordinary times. How he might conduct

himself at any crisis,--whether he would do what he ought on seeing a

suspicious vessel near the coast, or whether any human power could

prevail with him to alter the periods or the mode of his watch without

deranging all his faculties,--was another question: but no emergency

having arrived since his appointment, Nicholas was, as yet, in very good

repute with everybody about him. Lieutenant Storey had never found fault

with him; and Mrs. Storey had more than once bestowed a word and a smile

on him, in answer to his reverential salutation, and the open-mouthed

admiration with which he was perceived to regard his officer's young

bride. His mates let him alone except at those lounging times when one

person did as well as another to make remarks to about the state of the

weather and the water, and the prospects of the fishing below. As for

the villagers, they were, from some cause or other, more civil to

Nicholas than they usually were to men of his calling; so that he

determined, at least once a day, that he was a favourite of fortune, and

had uncommon reason to be grateful to Providence. At least once a

day;--for so often did he usually rest his knee against a certain big

stone on the beach, and look seaward through his telescope: on the first

occasion of doing which, it had entered his mind that his mother admired

him very much, and that everybody was very kind to him. Each time

afterwards that he used the same action, he thought that everybody was

very kind to him, and that his mother admired him very much; and he grew

fond of this stone, and of using his telescope in that particular place.

By a sort of instinct, he rose from his knee, and shot his instrument

into its case, as soon as any annoyance was suspected to be approaching;

so that he was pretty sure of keeping his periodical mood in its

primitive state.

This method of his,--of having a particular time and place fixed in

which to enjoy, and another in which to endure,--was vexatious to those

who delighted in teasing. The children of the village could never fix

Nicholas to his stone; and when he was upon his watch he would bear

anything. This being considered a settled matter, they left off

attacking him at such times, leaving it to the wind and rain to

overthrow his tranquillity if they could. Nicholas was not destined,

however, to be always so favoured above his more irritable companions,

as he found one bitter February day, when the hardships of the watch

were quite enough of themselves for an ordinary stock of patience.

A dense fog hung so low that there was no use in keeping watch on the

heights, and the Coast Guard were therefore stationed along the margin,

in the exact position for being drenched by the spray, nipped by the

wind, and stifled by the fog, as they looked with anxious gaze over the

dull sea, which appeared more like a heaving expanse of oil than a

congregation of waters. There was small use in peering abroad; for the

mist hung like a curtain till within a furlong of the beach. As little

comfort was there in looking inland. The near cliffs of Beachy Head

seemed icy, and the sea-birds that dwelt there appeared to be cowering

in their holes from the cold. The fishermen's huts bore the comfortless

aspect that wooden houses always do when their roofs are loaded with

snow; and even the station-house, perched on the highest point of the

cliffs, seemed deprived for the time of its air of cleanliness and

comfort. Just at the moment when the fog fell most chilly, and the spray

flew most searchingly, and the rattle of the waves on the shingle

sounded most dreary, a troop of children came wandering by, some of the

little ones threatening to cry with cold, but the elder ones not having

had the spirit of mischief yet starved out of them. They were pupils of

Mr. Pim, the village schoolmaster, and were on their way to their

several homes from his well-warmed school-room. One of the troop, a

brown, handsome, roguish-looking boy, ran up to Nicholas with--

"I say, Mister, sir, what's your name?--what's o'clock?"

Of course, Nicholas made no answer; and the question was put in all

forms which could be expected to provoke a reply,--all to no purpose.

"I say, master, let me hold your spy-glass while you blow upon your

fingers; you can't hold it. There! bang it goes! Lord! look, there it

goes again! He can't hold his spy-glass no more than a baby."

The joke now was to twitch his coat-tail, or otherwise startle Nicholas,

so as to cause him to drop his glass as often as his benumbed fingers

raised it to the level of his eye.

"Look, look! if his eyes be not running over every time the wind blows.

Look! how he blinks away from the fog, every puff that comes! A pretty

watch he makes! I say, what is that black thing yonder, sir? It is a

boat, as sure as I am alive. You had better look sharp, sir."

"No, not that way," said another; "more to the right, near to that

cliff. No, no; this way, to the left. Why, man, you have lost your

eyes!"

The rogues were delighted to see that, though Nicholas made no reply,

his head wagged from right to left, and from left to right, as they

chose to turn it. When he had gazed till the fog had drawn closer round

the nearer headlands, and when he wiped his eyes in the cutting wind

with his coat-sleeve, till they watered faster than ever, the joke was

improved upon. The children crowded together in a sheltered corner, and

invited Nicholas to come too, and be comfortable, instead of standing to

be buffeted like a sea-gull that knew no better. They tantalized him

with accounts of what they were going to do at home,--with mention of

hot broth and potatoes, of fire, of shelter, and of everything

comfortable that he was not likely to have for nearly six hours to come.

Nicholas was immoveable; and when they were tired of plaguing him, and

ran off with expressions of insulting pity, he paced his allotted walk

without any sign of anger or discontent. His first token of emotion of

any kind was a vehement laugh, when he saw what next befel the little

brown boy who had begun the attack on him.

The boy's companions had warned him of the uselessness of trying to

provoke Nicholas, and had recommended Brady in preference,--Brady, the

Irishman, who was known to find it necessary to keep the thought of

punishment before him, in order to hold his tongue when jeered by those

who would take advantage of his not being able to answer. About Brady,

therefore, gathered the small fry; and they pestered him till he turned

suddenly round, seized Uriah Faa, the gipsy boy, and laid him sprawling,

just in advance of a ninth wave, as it was rolling on. The boy yelled,

Brady resumed his walk, the other children scampered off, full of fear

and wrath, and Nicholas laughed aloud.

"Really now, I call that very cruel," said a sweet voice behind him. "I

would not do such a thing as that for the world; and I should be very

sorry to laugh at it. Would not you, Elizabeth?"

"O, yes; but what can you expect from a set of creatures like this Coast

Guard, that are put here to plague the people?" replied Elizabeth.

Overwhelmed with grief and shame stood Nicholas, tongue-tied under a

charge which wounded him keenly. Elizabeth's contempt did not trouble

him very much, though a stranger might have pronounced her a more

particular-looking lady than her companion, from her being more gaily

dressed, and carrying more grandeur in her air. His grief was that the

tender-hearted, sweet-spoken little lady, who never bore ill-will to

anybody, should think him cruel. It was his duty to seem to take no

notice, and to go on looking out for vessels; but Nicholas could not so

play the hypocrite when Mrs. Storey was in question. An observer might

have been amused at the look of misery with which he seemed about to ask

leave to go down on his knees on the wet shingle, and must have been

convinced that no thought of contraband traders was in his mind as he

turned to watch the ladies proceeding on their bleak way. Nicholas's

only resource was to resolve to speak in defence of his comrade and

himself, as soon as his watch should be ended.

In a very short time, it appeared as if the lady's words, as well as the

boy's cries, had made themselves heard up the country. From one recess

or another of the cliffs dropped picturesque forms, in gipsy guise, all

directing their steps towards that part of the beach where Brady and

Nicholas were stationed on the margin of the tide. A fisherman or two

looked out lazily from the cottages; and their more active wives drew

their cloaks about them, and hastened down to see what would ensue on

the ducking of a mischievous boy.

"Goodness, Matilda!" cried Elizabeth, "they are coming this way. Mercy!

they are going to speak to us. Which way shall we run? What shall we

do?"

And without waiting for an answer to her questions, the lady took to

flight, and scudded towards the cliff path as fast as her trembling

limbs would carry her, screaming by the way, as often as any one person

came nearer to her than another. Matilda, not quite foolish enough to

follow at the same rate, but very much alarmed, was immediately

surrounded by gipsies, vociferating in a language which she did not

understand, and pointing so angrily towards the guard, that it was plain

she would be safer without their protection than with it. The state of

affairs was not improved by the junction of the fishermen's wives.

"O, Mrs. Alexander," cried the lady, addressing the best known face

among the latter, "what do these people want with me? What are they

going to do?"

"They want you to bear witness, my lady, how the boy Uriah has been used

by these cruel-hearted, thieving rogues, that don't care what mischief

they do with their hands, while they have never a tongue in their heads,

but creep about like spies."

"Perhaps it is very well that the tongues are all on one side," said the

trembling lady; "there is no saying how quarrels might otherwise issue,

Mrs. Alexander."

"Bless us! how you shake with cold, my lady! Only think what it must be

to be laid flat in the water, as Uriah was by yon villain's hands. If

they had been frozen off by the wrists, it would only have served him

right. One would think you had been in the water too, Ma'am, by your

shaking."

"I am in hot water just now," declared Matilda, half laughing. "Cannot

you call off these rude people, and prevent their pressing round me? You

seem to know them."

"O yes, sure, Ma'am; and you would know them too, if you had been a

little longer in this place. It is only old Faa, the gipsy, and his

tribe, that come here every winter. The lady that was with you just now

knows very well who they are, and where they live, for all her running

away so fast."

"I wish she would come back then, for I cannot tell what in the world to

say to them. Mr. Faa! Which is Mr. Faa?"

A grisly-looking old gipsy stepped forward.

"You do not suspect me of having caused your boy to be dipped, I hope?"

All bowed, and vociferated their horror at such an idea.

"Neither must you expect me to bid you duck those men. It is a very cold

day; and I am so sorry to have witnessed one ducking, that I should be

very unwilling to see anybody else laid under water."

This was perhaps the most foolish speech she could have made, as it put

into their heads the idea of summary vengeance. She saw her mistake in

the increased rage of the people, and the look of defiance that Brady

put on. There was little use now in saying that there might have been

fault on both sides, and that it was best to forgive and forget. There

was no use in offering to tell the Lieutenant what had happened, and in

answering for it that such an offence should not happen again; the

people were determined to make the most of having the officer's lady on

their side, and of the present opportunity of gratifying their hatred of

the Coast Guard. All the ungracious acts ever committed there by a coast

guard rushed into their remembrance; how one neighbour had been stopped

and searched on the beach, and the fire of another put out on the cliff,

under the suspicion of its being a signal; how the boat of a third could

never come home without being entered by these spies; and how, once upon

a time, a person had been shot by a choleric member of the Preventive

Force. All these sins seemed likely to be now visited on the heads of

Brady and Nicholas, when a mediator appeared in the shape of Pim, the

schoolmaster, the most potent personage between the martello towers and

Parson Darby's Hole,--a so-called cavern in the cliffs of Beachy Head.

Mr. Pim owed his influence, not to any physical force, though he was the

tallest and stoutest man within five miles; nor to wealth, for he

professed to have nothing but his village day-school to support his

family upon; nor to any connexion with the great, for he was a bluff,

homely personage, who did not want or care for anybody's favours; nor to

his own superior wit, for no one was aware of his being remarkably

endowed in this way. It was partly that he had given to his neighbours

all the book-learning that they could boast of, and the little religion

that they professed. It was yet more that he had been a long resident

with his family, after having early buried his wife among them. But,

above all, it was his merry heart, making itself understood by a voice

mighty enough to out-bellow the waves at Beachy Head, that was the charm

of Mr. Pim. He liked to be told that he should have been a preacher,

with such a voice as his, and would forthwith enact the reverend

gentleman for a minute or two; but he could never make his splendid

voice bring out any thing but little jokes with small wit in them; for

the good reason that his brain would supply nothing else. Nothing more

was necessary, however, to constitute him the most popular man within

his sphere.

"Hi, hi! what is all this about?" was the question that came travelling

through the air, as soon as his tall form became visible, approaching

from the houses. "What are you buzzing about here for, when your young

one is toasting at home, as dry as the cod-sounds that hang over his

head? Toasting! aye, at my fire. I met him dripping like a duck, and he

would have slunk away; but it was up with him this way;" and he seized

upon a boy standing near, and threw him across his shoulder, twisting

him about with one hand as if he had been a doll. "This way I carried

him home, unwilling enough, to my Rebecca. 'Here, Beck,' says I, 'take

him and toast him till I come back to give him a flogging.' And now he

is expecting me, so I must be off, as soon as you will please to give

over quarrelling, and march home. Flog him! ay, to be sure, for

disturbing these men at their duty. It is a fine thing, you gipsy

gentlemen, to have put your young folks under the rod; and it would be a

thousand pities not to use it. You can't get the impish spirit out of

them all in a day."

"But has the boy done wrong?" inquired Mrs. Storey. "Even if he has, he

has surely been punished enough."

"Not while ill blood is left, my lady. I never leave off punishing my

boys till they laugh with me, and it is all right again. If Mr. Faa will

undertake to make his boy laugh as much as he cried half an hour ago, he

is welcome to go and fetch him away. But then there must be an end of

this silly business. You, sir," to Brady, "thrust your pistol into your

pocket, or I will help you to chuck it deeper into the sea than you can

go to fetch it."

Brady looked as angry now as the gipsies had done when they heard that

Uriah was to be flogged; but neither party could long withstand Pim's

authoritative style of good humour. He ended with making everybody

laugh, turning the attention of the guard seawards, dispersing the group

of complainers in different directions, and adjourning the quarrel, if

he could not dissolve it. As he attended the lady to the station-house,

he explained to her the little hope there was of establishing a good

understanding between the Coast Guard and the country people.

"I pity the poor fellows down below, with all my heart," said he,

turning from the first point of the ascent to observe the guard, now

again loitering along the margin. "Not so much for being out in the

cold, though they slap themselves with their swinging arms like yon flag

in a high wind. It is not for the cold I pity them, since a young lady

keeps them company in it."

"I seldom stay within all day, especially when Miss Storey is with me,"

replied Matilda; "but I would not promise to bear this cold for six

hours; and I do pity those poor men very much."

"So do I, madam, because they moreover meet cold looks at every turn;

which you, not being a spy, will never do."

"But these men are spies only upon those who break the laws. You do not

mean that the innocent are not glad to be watched?"

Pim looked sly while he said he knew but of one innocent in all the

neighbourhood, and he happened to be among the spies, and so was very

popular. Mrs. Storey would go deeper than the pun, however, and asked

whether the neighbours generally had need to fear the enforcement of the

law.

"I bring up all my scholars so religious, it would do your heart good to

see them," replied Pim. "They know the Bible all through, and understand

the whole of the Church Catechism, as you will find, if you will give us

the honour of a visit some day."

"I will, to morrow, Mr. Pim."

"Suppose we say the end of the week, ma'am, when they are furbished up

for the parson. You will be more sure of being pleased towards the end

of the week. I make my scholars very moral."

"Then they have no reason to fear spies, I should think."

"Why, as to that, ma'am, it all depends on people's notions of what it

is to be moral; and when there is so much difference of opinion on that,

it seems natural enough that each party should settle the point as seems

most agreeable. I wonder, now, what you think of the gentlefolks that

come to Hastings and Brighton, and all the bathing places along this

coast."

"I suppose they are much like other gentlefolks, are they not? How do

their morals affect those of your scholars?"

"Why, just this way. If ladies in their walks make acquaintance with the

fishermen's children, and use that as a pretence for calling on their

mothers, and letting drop that they would be glad of a lot of gloves or

silk hose from over beyond there, is not it natural for the

cottage-girls to think the bargain a very pretty and proper one, when

they see the goods brought out of the cupboard? And if gentlemen drop in

here and there, as they saunter about, to taste French brandy, or pocket

a few cigars, is it not likely that the lads hereabouts, who are fond of

adventure at all times, will take the hint, and try their luck at sea on

dark nights?"

"But are such practices common among visiters to the coast?"

"Are they not?--And those who do not care to step across a poor man's

threshold themselves are ready enough to buy of such as will; of the

shop-keepers at Brighton, and others that import largely. Now all this

is what the law calls immoral, while the people see no reason to think

so."

"And which side do you take,--you who make your scholars so moral?"

"I take neither side in my teaching, but leave the matter to be settled

according as the children have friends among the cottagers, or in the

coast guard, or the law, or the custom-house. But there is one thing I

do try to teach them,--not to quarrel with other people about the right

and the wrong, nor to hate anybody, but let the whole thing go on

quietly. God knows, it is hard work enough; but I do try. It is hard

work; for they hate each of those watchers as if he had cloven feet and

a long tail."

"How do you set about making the guard beloved?"

"Nay, nay, that is too much to try. And it is doubly difficult to me

from my having a son in the custom-house; which exposes me to be called

partial; but I always say, 'Hate them in your hearts as much as you

will; but you owe it to your king and country not to show it. Be as

civil to the king's servants as you would to his majesty himself.'"

"I am afraid you do not always succeed; I should as soon think of

telling a man that he need not mind having a fever; but he must take

particular care that his hands be not hot."

"Where we cannot do every thing, ma'am, we must do what we can. How

should I prevent the guard being unpopular, when they act as spies every

hour of the day and night? And would you have me declare them always in

the right when it is their very business to prevent people getting the

goods that they want and will have? As long as people will drink brandy,

and smoke tobacco, and wear silks and laces, I see no use in preaching

to them to buy dear when they can buy cheap. All I pretend to is to make

as little harm come of it as possible; to persuade the people to sell

their spirits instead of drinking them, and avoid brawls with the enemy

they must submit to have set over them."

"With my husband and his men," said Mrs. Storey, smiling at the idea of

her husband's being any man's enemy. The notion was almost as absurd (in

a different way) in relation to him as to Nicholas.

"You see, ma'am, it is not only that this Coast Guard is a terrible

spoil-sport; it is a very expensive thing. When the people pay their

taxes, and when they look at the nearest Custom-house,--aye, every time

a Preventive officer has a new coat, they remember that they pay for

keeping spies over themselves. This is provoking, you will allow; and

many's the time they throw it in my teeth,--I having a son in the

Custom-house, as I said."

"Why do you not tell them that, if there were no duties, they would lose

their trade at the same time that they got rid of their enemies? Do not

they see that fishermen would no longer be employed in fetching silks

and spirits, if there were no laws to hinder merchants from doing it as

cheaply? I should like to see how your neighbours would look if every

custom-house was pulled down throughout the country, and every man in

the Preventive Service sent about other business."

"Why, then, I suppose, fishermen would be simply fishermen, and my son

must come and help me to keep school,--if any school remained for me to

keep."

"How would such an arrangement interfere with your school?"

Mr. Pim mysteriously gave the lady to understand that fishermen cannot

commonly afford schooling for their children, unless they have some

resource beyond their boats and nets. Nobody knew how much of the money

circulating in this neighbourhood came through the breach of the laws

which some of it was employed to maintain. He went on,--

"It would be some comfort that there would be fewer taxes for us to pay;

and if government kept up reasonable duties (which would be but fair)

the burden would fall lightly upon all. Government would not be cheated;

we should not be insulted with useless taxes and with spies, and----"

"And some of you would have your pockets lightened of much ill-gotten

money, and your hearts of much hatred that it is shocking to think of,"

replied the lady.

"Moreover, we should see less of the gipsies," observed Mr. Pim.

"Whether this would be a good or an evil, is a point that some of us

might differ upon; but it is certain that they would not settle in bleak

places like this in winter, if there were not something likely to happen

in the long nights to repay them for the bitterness of the short days.

They would not like our bare sandy levels and our cold caverns better

than a snug London alley, if there were not good things to be had here

that do not fall in their way there."

"You would lose a scholar or two if the gipsies kept away. I cannot

think how you persuaded such people to send their children to school."

Pim laughed heartily, but gave no explanation. As they drew near the

turf-fence of the station-house, he stopped to contemplate the place,

and observed that it was a neat, tight little dwelling, and pleasanter,

he should think, for a lady to live in than the martello towers farther

on. There was something dreary-looking in those towers, as if they must

be cold in winter and hot in summer, perched upon the bare sands, and

made up of thick walls with few windows. Whereas, the white

station-house seemed just the place which might suitably have plants

trained against it now that a lady's fine taste reigned within

(supposing the wind would let them grow); and as for its winter evening

comforts,--when he saw gleams from the window piercing the darkness,

like a lesser beacon, he could only be sorry for the Lieutenant that it

was ever necessary to leave such a fire-side as there must be within, to

go out amidst scenes where--where--

"Where he is much less welcome," replied Matilda, smiling. "I dare say

your people,--fishermen, gipsies, schoolmasters, and all,--would

strongly recommend my husband staying where he is comfortable, let what

will be doing on the beach."

"And I am sure you should, my lady, as a good wife. If you knew----"

"Do not tell me," replied Matilda, hastily. "I will hear of those things

from nobody but my husband himself."

While Mr. Pim was inwardly saying that the lady would scarcely hear from

the Lieutenant the worst that could be told, Miss Storey came running to

the gate, full of wonder whether all was safe, and what the gipsies had

done to Matilda, and how her sister-in-law had prospered since she

herself had so valiantly left her side. Matilda did not trouble herself

to reply with more civility than Elizabeth deserved; but bestowed all

the overplus on the schoolmaster, whom she invited in to enjoy the

comforts of shelter and fire.

Mr. Pim could not stay to do more than compliment the lady on her

endurance of the sharp cold of the sea-shore. He concluded she would

scarcely pass her doors again till milder weather should come.

"O yes, I shall," replied Matilda. "Be the weather what it may, I shall

come and visit your daughter, and see how you make your scholars moral,

gipsies and all."

The gipsies were the most moral people in the world, to judge by the

punctuality and liberality of their payments, Mr. Pim declared; and when

the imp was whipped out of them, they made very good scholars. With this

explanation, and something between a bow and a nod, the rosy

schoolmaster took his leave, and, with his hands behind him, and

beginning to whistle before the ladies had turned their backs, shuffled

briskly down the slope to the sea-shore.

CHAPTER IV.

AN AFTERNOON TRIP.

Matilda could not imagine why Elizabeth had not gone home, instead of

waiting all this time at the station-house. It must be past Mrs.

Storey's dinner hour, and there seemed some reason to fear that

Elizabeth meant to stay for the rest of the day. If she did, however,

she must invite herself, Matilda resolved; for it was far from being her

own inclination to have any guest on this particular occasion;--the day

of her husband's return after an absence of half a week,--the terrible

first absence after a marriage of six weeks. They had met only for one

hour in the forenoon; dinner-time would soon bring him home, and it

would be too provoking to have a third person to intrude, especially if

that third person were Elizabeth, of whom the Lieutenant was more fond

than his wife could at all account for. Elizabeth might see, if she

chose, that she was unwelcome; for Matilda had no intention of

concealing the fact. She neither sat down, nor asked Elizabeth to do so;

but, throwing off her bonnet, and stirring the fire, employed herself

next in rectifying the time-piece by her own watch.

"My dear," Elizabeth began, strenuously warming herself.

"I wish she would not call me 'my dear,'" thought Matilda; "it is so old

maidish." But Matilda might have known that a wife of twenty is very

naturally called 'my dear' by a sister-in-law of thirty-five.

"My dear," resumed Elizabeth, "you talked of going to see Mr. Pim's

school. We may as well go together. Fix your time."

Matilda could not fix any time at present. Her husband had been absent,

and her engagements must depend on his for some days to come.

"Very well. I know he is always out between ten and one o'clock; and

that will be your time. I shall expect you some morning soon, between

ten and twelve, as the school breaks up at noon. It lies straight past

our door; but if you wish me to call you, I can easily come up."

"O, by no means, thank you. But we shall meet before the end of the

week, and can fix all about it. Mr. Pim wishes us not to go till the end

of the week, when the children will have their catechism at their

tongues' ends."

"As to meeting, I do not know," replied Elizabeth. "I am going to be

very busy for some days. And indeed it is time I was at home now; for I

promised my mother to cut out a cap for her before dark." And Elizabeth

extended her hand to take her muff.

"Indeed!" cried Matilda, briskly. "Let me walk part of the way home with

you. And you must allow me to help you with your work. You know I have

nothing to do, and----"

"So it seems, indeed," replied Elizabeth, looking round with a

supercilious smile, upon the bare work-table, the perfectly-arranged

book shelves, and the closed piano, which collectively presented a

picture of a most bride-like lack of occupation.

"If you are inclined to send up your mother's handkerchiefs," said

Matilda, coldly, "it will give me great pleasure to make them."

"Not for the world," Elizabeth declared. So fond as her brother was of

Matilda's music, and so much as they were to read together, Matilda

could have no time for anybody's affairs but her own;--a decision which

Matilda submitted to in silence. Elizabeth proceeded to deliver a dozen

messages from her mother to the young housekeeper, about the butcher,

and the milkman, and their own, dear, favourite fisherman, who supplied

them so much better than the one Matilda patronized. She must positively

begin to buy her fish of him directly, though they would not for the

world interfere with her little domestic plans; but she might not know

that George liked above all things----

Matilda sprang to the window, seeing something through the gathering

dusk like the skirt of a coat. It was only the sentinel, however, and

she drew back disappointed, and applied herself to examine whether her

hyacinths were duly supplied with water.

"Just one thing more," Elizabeth said. "You will excuse my mother

observing (but indeed we could not help it) the plaiting of George's

shirts. It is impossible you should know all his ways yet,--indeed how

should you?--so, I will just mention that he has been used----"

"How very dark it is growing!" observed Matilda, once more peering out

into the dusk. "O no, it is not so bad out of doors," she added, when

she had thrown up the sash. "It is impossible to tell what the weather

is like, the windows being double, and such a state as they are always

in with the damp from the sea. I wish, with all your management,

Elizabeth, you would teach one how to keep one's windows clear and

bright by the sea-side. It spoils half the pleasure of working or

reading in this window-seat. In the summer time, however, when one can

sit with the window open, it will be delightful. But it really is

getting dark."

"I am going," said Elizabeth, quietly. "You shall have your husband all

to yourself to-day, my dear. By the way, do you mean to tell him of that

little affair down below this morning?"

"Do I mean to tell him?" cried Matilda, astonished. "To be sure. I tell

him everything."

"O, very well. I would only just give a hint that that plan may not

always be prudent, my dear: that is all. You are in a very responsible

situation, you should remember; such ticklish terms as your husband and

his men are on with the people about you. A little indiscretion on your

part,--perfectly natural at your age,--may bring on bloodshed, you are

aware. Do you know, my dear, I would not be in your place for the

world."

"Would not you?" replied Matilda, with astonishing tranquillity.

"Why, only think of the incident of this day. How do we know what may

arise out of it, if you repeat it to George? He must take notice of it,

when otherwise it might pass over."

"Without his hearing how you shrieked and ran away," thought Matilda;

and she was strongly tempted to say it, but refrained: and when

Elizabeth at length found that she really must be going if she meant to

be at home before dark, the sisters by marriage parted on friendly

terms.

The Lieutenant looked somewhat graver than usual when he came in to

dinner, and little disposed to talk while a third person was present.

Moreover, he had the air of listening in the intervals between the

clattering of plates and knives, and the creaking of the servant's

shoes. Before drawing to the fire, when the door was at length closed

behind table-cloth and cheese, he went to the window to look out,--the

dull window which allowed little to be seen through its salted panes. He

was about to repair to an upper window, but Matilda wrapped her head in

a shawl, and threw up the sash.

"You would have me believe," she said, in answer to her husband's fears,

"that I am not fit to live in this place: but I scorn both wind and fog.

If you should wish to set a watch in Parson Darby's hole, I believe I

should serve your purpose as well as any body;--as long, I mean, as no

fighting was required."

"Let us see what you will make of it to-night, without going to Parson

Darby's hole. If your eyes and ears are better than mine, I may be glad

of them presently."

"What am I to look and listen for? This booming sea is enough to prevent

our hearing anything else, unless it be two of your gruff men talking

close by the window. What else do you expect me to hear?"

"Possibly a whistle, which may be heard among all conceivable

combinations of hoarse sounds."

"But your own men whistle."

"Not to-night. They have orders to the contrary."

"Mr. Pim whistles perpetually, when he is not mimicking a whining,

whipped scholar, or waiting the explosion of some practical joke. What

is to be done with poor Mr. Pim, if he is caught in the fact?"

"He will take care to be caught in no fact that will do him any harm.

Only tell me if you hear a whistle; that is all. And point out any

signal you may see;--but, I dare say, you do not know how to look for

one."

"I wish you would take me out, and teach me."

"What, now? This bitter evening? My love, you could scarcely keep your

footing in this wind. And it is so dark----"

"So much the better for a first lesson. If you are really going

yourself, do take me with you."

In two minutes Matilda was ready, laughing at the appearance she made

with her head swathed in a shawl, and the rest of her person in a cloak,

to save the annoyance which her usual out-of-doors dress would have been

in a high wind. Clinging to her husband, making many a false step, and

invariably laughing as she recovered her footing, she gained the ridge

of the cliff, and stood amidst all the sublimity of a gusty night on the

wild sea-shore. The blast took away her breath, as fast as she gained

it, and her husband's voice was almost lost in the roar and dash from

beneath, while the lightest of her shriller tones made itself heard

through the commotion.

"Now show me how to look for a signal," she said. "They do not surely

light fires on the headlands?"

"If they wished it, they must ask leave of the wind," replied her

husband, "as well as of us; and they know they will have no leave of the

one or the other, to-night. No: they make their fires in the clefts and

caverns, and----"

"I see one! I see one!" cried Matilda, eagerly pointing to a gleam which

came and went, like a bright speck on the horizon.

"That, my love!" cried her husband, laughing. "They must be bold

smugglers who would run in to such a light as that. That is the light on

Belltoot, made to look distant by the fog. You should turn eastwards;

and seek rather for indications of a light, than for the light itself.

If you see a dull red streak, or the least glimmer upon the passing fog,

show it me. It will tell that there is a fire in a chalk pit or a

cavern."

After looking for some time in vain, Matilda inquired whether there was

reason to suppose that the smugglers were particularly busy this night.

Not knowing who might be near in the darkness, her husband pressed her

arm in token that questions of this nature would be better answered at

home.

They walked on till they fell in with one of the sentinels, who was of

opinion that nothing out of the common way would be done to-night, as

the storm was rising to such a height as would make it too hazardous for

even the most daring smugglers to run in at Birling Gap, or at any other

place on the neighbouring coast.

"You hear, Matilda," said the Lieutenant. "Now, have you seen all that

you wish to see?"

"By no means," she replied, laughing: "but it does not seem likely that

we should gain anything by staying; so you had better go down and finish

your wine, and we can come again to-morrow night."

The sudden calm and quiet of the little parlour made the Lieutenant rub

his hands under the sense of comfort, while Matilda put back her lank

hair from over her eyes, and prepared to tell the story of the morning.

The Lieutenant had however already heard it. Matilda was glad of this,

and went on to ask if any harm could possibly arise from telling her

husband every thing that happened to her, and all that she observed. No

harm in the world, but possibly a great deal of good. It might put her

on her guard against doing and saying things which were perfectly

innocent and amiable in themselves, but which might be imprudent under

certain circumstances;--such as showing herself indignant on seeing a

gipsy boy ducked, when the neighbours were already quite angry enough on

his account. The Lieutenant loved to see her ardour in such causes; but

he was sorry to say it did not consist with the prudence necessary to be

observed by any one connected with him, in his present office. This was

enough to make Matilda vituperate the office, till she remembered that

by its means her husband was detained by her side, instead of being

dispatched to the other end of the world. It required this and many

other comforting considerations to reconcile the Lieutenant himself to

this service, uncongenial as it was to the spirit of an active and

enterprising officer, who had no particular pleasure in playing the spy

on a grand scale, and who found it galling to a kindly temper to live

among a host of enemies. He had hesitated long about accepting the

appointment, entertaining, in addition to his disinclination, a fear

that it would be an effectual bar to further promotion. If it had not

been that his mother and sister depended mainly on him for support, and

that, having waited till forty, he wished to marry, he would hardly have

bartered the hope of professional eminence for pecuniary advantage; but,

circumstanced as he was, he thought it right to accept an appointment

which allowed him to enjoy the fruits of former service while gaining

more by present duty. Though satisfied that he had done right, and fully

sensible of the blessing of having a home always about him, he had no

objection to hear the Preventive Service found fault with in a quiet way

by his own fireside, and foreign service exalted at its expense.

"What could put it into your head, Matilda, that harm could come of your

telling me every thing? The prudence I speak of relates to your reserve

with our neighbours, not with me. What could have put such an idea into

your head?"

"Elizabeth thought that I had better not tell you every thing. But if I

really have a difficult part to act, I shall be miserable without your

help. I never could act for myself in my life."

"Never?" asked her husband, with a smile, "I think you can boast of one

act of remarkable decision, my love."

"Half the merit, at least, was yours," replied Matilda, laughing. "And

as for guiding myself without you, it is out of the question. So I must

tell you all that happens, and you must teach me how to behave to our

neighbours."

Her husband paused for a moment to reflect what a pity it was that, when

Matilda's natural behaviour was all that was charming, she should be put

under restraint by the position she filled. It was a hard task to have

to teach her to suspect her neighbours, and to frame her conduct by her

suspicions.

"_You_ have no reason for trying to manage me by reserves," said he.

"Elizabeth has, no doubt, her own little mysteries."

Matilda looked up surprised. She had never before heard the Lieutenant

speak of his sister but with fondness and confidence.

"I mean no reproach," he continued. "Elizabeth is a good creature, and

the best of sisters to me. I only mean that she has her womanish tastes,

which, like other women, she must gratify; and she knows it is the

properest and kindest thing to let me know nothing of her confidential

visits to the fishermen's wives. I cannot prevent her doing what every

body else does; and it is better that I should not be obliged to take

any notice."

"What _do_ you mean?" cried Matilda. "Is it possible that Elizabeth has

anything to do with smugglers? that----"

"Ah, now you have started upon a new scent, my dear; and let us see what

you can make of it before you get home again.--Now you are fancying

Elizabeth out at sea at night in the lugger we are looking for, or

helping to land the goods; and the first day that passes without your

seeing her, you will fancy she has taken a trip to Guernsey. Do not you

begin to see how a thousand little mysterious circumstances are now

explained? Cannot you account for----"

Matilda held up her hand as petitioning to be heard, while her fond

husband delighted himself with her signs of impatience under his

raillery.--She protested that she knew perfectly well what his charge

against Elizabeth amounted to; that she contrived to buy articles of

dress better and cheaper by the seaside than these could be procured in

shops. She only wished to say, that she desired to acquit Elizabeth as

far as her testimony would go. She had no reason to suppose, from

anything that she had seen, that Elizabeth was given to such practices.

"It may be some time before she takes you into her confidence in these

matters, my dear. Meantime, do not let us talk of 'charge' and

'acquittal,' as if Elizabeth had committed a crime. If I thought so, I

would not have credited the fact on any testimony whatever."

"How then can you be what you are?" exclaimed Matilda. "If you think

smuggling is no crime, why do you engage to spend your days in

suspicion, and your nights in watching, and even to spill human blood,

if necessary, to prevent contraband trading?"

"My office springs out of a set of arbitrary regulations which may

possibly be necessary to the general good of society. At any rate, they

subsist, and they must be maintained as long as the nation does not

decide that they shall be abolished. This is all we Preventive officers

have any concern with. It does not follow that we must condemn a lady

for preferring one sort of lace or silk stockings to another, or for

trying to get them, when she knows government has failed in the attempt

to keep them out of the country."

"You say this just because Elizabeth is in question," replied Matilda.

"Suppose I were to report it to the Admiralty, or the Board of

Trade--how would it look upon paper?"

"I dare say you would not find a man at the Admiralty, or any where

else,--a sensible man,--who would declare a taste for foreign

commodities,--for as large a variety of commodities as possible, of the

best kinds, to be anything but a good. No man of sense wishes the

society in which he lives to be in that state of apathy which does not

desire what is best, but only to be saved trouble. Neither does he

recommend that the desire of that which is best should be gratified at

the greatest possible expense and trouble."

"Certainly, one would rather see one's neighbours wishing for French

silks, than being content with skins of beasts; and, if they must have

silks, one would rather get the material from Italy and India than have

establishments for silkworms at home at a vast expense."

"To be sure. And we might as well at once wish for English beet-root

sugar, or for claret made from hot-house grapes, as condemn Elizabeth

for desiring to have foreign lace. As for our countrymen liking to have

tobacco duty-free, when the duty amounts to a thousand per cent. on the

prime cost,--there is nothing to be wondered at in that. Moreover, the

desire of foreign commodities is the cause of a great saving. These

goods are not permanently desired because they are foreign. Their having

acquired a reputation as foreign must arise from their being better or

cheaper than our own. Our own productions of the same kind are either

improved through the competition thus caused, or they give way in favour

of other productions which we can in turn offer to foreigners better and

cheaper than their own. If nobody cared for claret and tobacco,

thousands of our people, who are busy in preparing that which is given

in exchange for these articles, would be idle; and if we were bent upon

growing our own tobacco, and forcing vines instead of buying of our

neighbours, the expense would be tremendous, and would answer no good

purpose on earth that I can see. So Elizabeth is as much at liberty to

wish for Brussels lace, if she prefers it to Honiton, as I feel myself

to fill my glass with this good Port in preference to my mother's

gooseberry."

"I should think nobody doubts all this about wine, and sugar, and

tobacco," said Matilda. "But when it comes to the question of

manufactures that really can maintain a rivalship,--then is the time, I

suppose, when it is said to be wrong to wish for foreign goods. As long

as really good silks, and really beautiful laces are made in England, at

a moderate price, is there any occasion to buy of foreigners?"

"Whether there is occasion, is soon proved by the fact of our looking or

not looking abroad. As I said before, if these articles are to be had as

good at home, we shall not look abroad; if not, it is a waste of money

and trouble to be making them, when we might be making something which

foreigners would be glad to take in exchange for their laces and silks.

If the rival manufactures are a match for each other, let them fight it

out, and the nations will be sure not to be charged more than is

necessary for their purchases. If they are not a match for each other,

it is sheer waste to uphold the weakest; and the taste for foreign goods

is of use as it points out infallibly when the weakness lies at home."

"I have heard all this allowed as to necessary articles; such as brandy

and sugar, which are never made in England. But I have had many a

lecture against buying luxuries anywhere but at home; and really it

seems a very small sacrifice to be content with home-made luxuries

instead of foreign."

"Those who so lectured you, love, were more intent upon fitting you to

be the wife of a Preventive officer, than upon teaching you plain sense.

They did not tell you that this is a sort of sacrifice which (like many

other arbitrary sacrifices) hurts all parties. They did not point out to

you that every purchase of a foreign luxury presupposes something made

at home with which the purchase is effected. The French fan you played

with so prettily the first time----"

"O, do you remember that fan? that evening?"

"Remember the first ball at which I danced with you, love! It would be

strange if I forgot it."

And the Lieutenant lost the thread of his argument for a while.

"Well!" said Matilda, at length; "what clumsy, home-made thing do you

think I gave for that fan?"

"_You_ probably gave nothing more clumsy than a bright golden guinea, or

a flimsy banknote: but, having got to the bottom of the money exchanges,

we should find that some yards of cotton, or a few pairs of scissors had

been exchanged for that fan, with a profit to the manufacturer of either

article that it might happen to be. Thus, every purchase of a foreign

article, be it a necessary or a luxury, presupposes some domestic

production for which we thereby obtain a sale."

"And the same must be the case with the French fan-makers. They, or

their neighbours, procure cotton gowns or scissors for their wives which

they must have paid more for at home. So there is an advantage to each,

unless my fan could have been as well made in England."

"In which case, there would have been a fan made instead of so many

pairs of scissors; that is all; and you would have been just as well

pleased with an English fan."

"Would you?" inquired Matilda, smiling.

"I never saw a fan I liked so well," replied the Lieutenant: "but there

is no saying what I might have thought of any other fan under the same

circumstances."

"Well, I shall tell Elizabeth, if she lets me into her confidence, that

she may come here dressed in French fabrics, without any fear of

displeasing you?"

"I shall not take upon myself to be displeased about the matter, while

those who have more concern in it than I are not strict. If French silks

rustle in the royal presence, and bandanas are flourished by law-makers

in full assembly, I do not see why the officers of government should

embarrass themselves with scruples. My business is to prevent contraband

goods from being landed hereabouts, and not to find out who has the

benefit of them when they are once on shore."