Читать книгу The Admiral's Daughter - Margaret Stuart Lane - Страница 11

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There is something of peculiar brightness in the dawn of the day following an evening of good news. Old folk and young alike confess to the drowsy joy of that hour, and when the person in question is a girl of seventeen, who has never even crossed the county border, and is now bound for London and moreover lives in an age when to travel thither from Cornwall is as great an adventure as a journey to the East Indies would be some half dozen generations later, then truly there is an unearthly radiance in that first morrow's dawn.

Marion turned lazily on her pillow, dimly aware that something unusual had happened. For a few seconds she lay inert, then heaved a great sigh of content. She remembered. She threw her arms out on the coverlet and smiled. Springing out of bed, she drew back the window curtains and opened the lattice.

A short time later a figure in a white cotton gown, with blue ribbons in her hair, stole lightly downstairs.

It was Marion's loved duty to make the toast for her father's morning tankard. A confused sound of voices came from the kitchen as she crossed the hall, and ceased suddenly as she opened the kitchen door. Two of the serving girls and a milking maid were there; it was easy for Marion to see from their faces that she had been the subject of their chatter.

'Marnin', Mistress Marion!' came in chorus. The girls stood and stared in a stupid sort of way, their great rosy hands wedged on their hips, sleeves and petticoats tucked up for work.

'Us 'as just heard, Mistress Marion, as you be a-gooin' away to London,' said one of them, after a pause. They stared afresh.

'Us ain't niver zeen afore a lady as wor a-gooin' to London, Mistress,' respectfully remarked the milking maid.

A ripple of laughter ran over Marion's face as she stood, her back to the girls, cutting a piece of bread at the trencher. Evidently she was to be a nine days' wonder. For that matter, she had the promise of being a nine days' wonder to herself. 'Is it I?' ran her thoughts. 'Is it really I?' And if the domestics stared now, what would they do when she came back with new gowns and laces, and her hair dressed in a new way; and, she hoped, that indefinable something in her manner that had made them gape at Mistress Keziah, and peep out of doorways at her, their fingers on their lips?

Until her going was decided on, she did not know how much her aunt's talk had awakened a desire to see the world of men and women. Now she was going to see it, as Elise had said—plays, music, the Court. She smiled as she trimmed her piece of bread. Then the voice of one of the wenches roused her to a forgotten sense of duty.

'A bain't niver——'

'Zora,' said Marion, swinging round, 'it is past five o'clock. I can hear Spotty now calling to be milked. You must remember that the cows don't know I'm going to London.'

'Ees fay, so un do sure, Mistress Marion. A told Spotty meself. First thing a did, Mistress. I says to she, I says: "Do ee know Mistress Marion be a-goin' to London?" And her kind of said: "'Er bain't, now, sure!" her did. I allus tells Spotty. A told un when Simon Jibber come a-court——'

'Zora, go at once to your work! Millie and Sue, if you haven't anything to do, I must inquire of Mrs. Curnow of your duties.'

There were no hearers left for the end of Marion's sentence, and it was fortunate for them, for with her last words in came the housekeeper from the dairy, carrying a great bowl of clotted cream.

Her father's toast made, her own breakfast of bread and milk partaken of, Marion set herself to the little duties of the day. Elise, she learned from the housekeeper, was in the throes of one of her periodic headaches, concerning which, it must be confessed, our fair Marion was rather unsympathetic. The young mistress of Garth had never known what it was to be ailing. For all her delicate cheeks, she was as healthy and robust as Zora herself. She got slightly impatient about Elise's migraine, and when the sufferer emerged from her retirement, full of the petulance that generally succeeded her attacks, Marion, in her mental poise of perfect health, did not find it easy to make allowances. Indeed, the only quarrels that rose between them, the only swift, straight-out blows Marion had ever been known to give, seemed to be reserved for these occasions.

Marion went dutifully to her friend's room, and talked with her a few minutes, feeling as usual her impatience arise at Elise's martyr-like tones. Presently, saying she must confer with the housekeeper about the dinner, she went below again.

Dinner was at twelve o'clock, as was the custom of the day, and supper came at five or six. At nine o'clock the household was abed, for it was considered a shameful thing not to be up with the sun. These two meals being the sole fare for the day, were of a generous order, and Marion thought it nothing unusual when the housekeeper told off on her fingers the items for dinner: a dish of prawns, a marrow-bone pie (and the good things that went into that pie!), a pair of fat fowls, a fore-quarter of lamb, and a sirloin of beef; a spiced pudding with brandy sauce, a gooseberry pie, and some little tarts made with conserve, that Victoire had introduced to the household.

Having satisfied herself that the cooking was in a satisfactory way, Marion went into the still-room, to see to the straining of her gooseberry wine. About ten o'clock she mounted to her own chamber and shut the door. A serious business was now afoot. The early joy of the morning had subsided to an under-current of secret pleasure, but even that bade fair to be destroyed when she turned out the contents of her clothes chest. Her going had been settled by the Admiral for Thursday. To-day was Tuesday. There was no time even for Victoire's skilful fingers—and Victoire was better than most sempstresses or tailors—to make her another gown. Marion turned over the laces that had been her mother's, the ribbons that were her sole ornament. Her best embroidered bodice she looked at with a dissatisfied air, and then sought her father, who was casting up accounts at his desk.

'Father,' she said somewhat ruefully, 'I had no idea what a great many things I haven't got. I don't know what Aunt Constance will think of such a niece.'

The Admiral considered his daughter at length. ''Tis certainly a problem, but I should not mind laying long odds Aunt Constance will find her niece fair to middling. For the rest, her father is taking her, and he has a purse heavy enow to stand a new gown, I trow. Now take your hat and come across to the far pasture with me. I hear Sukey's got a fine calf.'

Dinner time passed, and still Elise did not leave her chamber. Marion went again to her door, and finding she was asleep sought her own room. She seated herself at her chamber window, a piece of lace and a mending needle in her hand.

It had been an eventful week, a week unequalled in her simple life; it had opened with the bustle of her Aunt Keziah's departure; a prodigious bustle that, for the lady had elected to travel in state, with six horses to her coach, a couple of out-riders and her page on the step. Marion and Zacchary had ridden on either side the chariot as far as Lostwithiel, and Marion felt she would always have an affectionate memory of the fine old head thrust from the coach as she had turned her chestnut homeward. Coming back, the house had seemed for the first time somewhat lacking. Wearisome as her demands on her niece's liberty had been, the old lady had nevertheless brought an added interest to the girl's quiet life, and, as she had intended, successfully sown the seeds of unrest.

The next day Marion had met Roger on the headland, and later saved him from the folly of championing Jack Poole. Then had come the letter, the dazzling, bewildering prospect of her aunt's house in far-away London opening inviting doors to her. How Roger had scoffed at the idea! Marion smiled and sighed in the same breath. She felt great uneasiness at the thought of leaving Roger, so headstrong and foolish, to act as he chose, to mix himself up with all the rebel factions of the county if the fancy pleased him.

She stitched away at her lace, a look of unusual gravity on her face. Her thoughts had now wandered to Elise; and in spite of the kindly feelings Elise's later behaviour had evoked in her, she could not dispel the sense of foreboding her words at supper had aroused. Nor could she quite forgive her. Roger had been the playmate and sole companion of her childhood for many years before Elise came to Garth. The bond of the boy-and-girl intimacy was of a far stronger nature than the tie of friendship between herself and Elise. In fact, if Roger had not gone away to school and left her sorrowing and lonely, it is probable that the friendship between herself and the French girl would never have ripened at all.

Memories of her childhood days with Roger came up from the early years; the thought of his unswerving loyalty, when she had done things he did not like and he had taken the blame himself; of the boats they had builded together and sailed on the duck-pond; of the hours he had sat by her in the window seat, when she was learning her stitches, and talked and told her stories—always of the sea; of the battles they had had concerning the riding of the colts—'You see, Mawfy,'—she could see him now, a clumsy, thick-set figure of a boy, his sturdy legs planted apart—'you haven't got a brother except me, and your father's no good at riding now, poor old man, so I've got to look after you. And I shan't let you ride Starlight till I've tried him better. If he's going to throw somebody—and he looks like it—I'd rather he threw me than you. I know just how to fall on a place where it doesn't hurt. And you don't. It's no good saying you do, or anything of that sort. I just shan't let you ride Starlight.'

Then, when she had argued and sulked: 'You look much nicer when you're smiling, Mawfy. You've got such a funny face.'

'My hair lies down, any way!' was her unfailing retort on personal questions, 'and I don't look like a heathen black-a-moor.'

Marion laid down her needle, with tears not far from the smile in her eyes as she remembered. In Roger's black thatch of hair there had always been a lock somewhere about the crown stiff as a broom handle, which defied all efforts at persuasion on the fond mother's part. One day Marion had taken a piece of dough from Curnow's kneading-pan, and plastered it in a thick cake over the unruly patch. The dough had hardened and refused to be removed, and Roger had gone about many days wearing this tonsure. In the end (the day being Saturday, and the question of church arising) Marion had worked at the stiff cake and brought it off, plentifully set with hairs, at the sight of which her own tears had dropped.

'Never mind, Mawfy,' Roger had said, between his yells, 'I don't really mind. And perhaps you'll be pretty some day. But I don't care if all my hair stands up. I knew a sailor who wore all his hair standing up. Harder than mine.'

'Oh, Roger, Roger!' said Marion softly, her needle suspended as she stared out over the garden. 'What a dear child you were!'

Then, uncomfortable fact, Roger had grown up. Each time he had come back from Blundell's he had been different: rougher, noisier, not knowing what to do with his strength that was coming on him, given to saying and doing awkward things; with a loudly voiced scorn for girls (in Elise's presence) that disappeared when the two were together; for Marion was Marion, and, like his mother (and no other) set apart in his boyish thoughts.

And all through his growing youth, toughening every year just as an ivy stem toughens and becomes a tree trunk, ran that one desire to be a sailor. Thwarted, it had merely bent another way, and grown stouter for the opposition. That the thwarting was not good for the boy, Marion knew instinctively, as her father knew from experience, and failed not to say so to Mrs. Trevannion. 'You're wrong, Ma'am,' he had said, striking the stones of the Manor porch with his stick. 'Roger's got a sailor's blood, and he'll go to sea. If you won't let him go, he'll run away.'

'No,' said the lady quietly, 'he won't do that. He has promised.'

The old Salt Eagle glared under his pent-house brows. 'Women are queer folk. To make a lad promise that, and continually bid him to wait, knowing all the time you have not the slightest intention of ever letting him go! You will have only yourself to thank if he flings himself hot-headed, in desperation, into some political bother. We live in sorry times, and the country's seething underneath like one of yonder Dartmoor bogs beneath its cap of green slime. And a boy who is discontented is easily drawn into trouble. And now I'll bid you good day, Ma'am.'

And so the old sailor had stumped off, with sorrow in his heart under his rage. He had never had a son, but had fate been kinder to him, he would have been proud of a boy like Roger Trevannion.

Her father's fears were Marion's also, and in the light of experience had been amply justified. That 'miserable rising,' as the Admiral described the Monmouth Rebellion, had stirred the green smooth surface of the bog of unrest, and the black depths still bubbled. The Lord Chief-Justice Jeffreys had come out to the West to hold his 'Bloody Assize,' the punishment meted out by Kirke's Lambs after the battle of Sedgemoor not being deemed sufficient. Jeffreys, doing his work of extermination of the rebels, with one ear listening to the desires of his own foul heart, and the other bent on distant Whitehall, whence James II. smiled approval and murmured encouragement, saw to it that his work was well done. His spies were everywhere, from the White Horse of the Danes in the Mendips to the fishing coves of Land's End. And the net he cast in this way was of the finest mesh. Cornwall was mainly Protestant, and it was more on the grounds of dislike for a monarch who insisted on the observance of the Catholic religion, than allegiance to the youth who led the Protestant rebellion against him, that some of their numbers flocked to Monmouth's standard. The Westerners had had ample cause to rue the day before ever Judge Jeffreys set out on his tour of death. The rebellion had failed, their young lads dying with it in the marshes of Sedgemoor; and Monmouth, their hero and hope, had fled for a coward, and earned the reward of his deeds. And now their lusty cries of: 'God bless the Protestant Duke!' had given way to the silence of unreasoning fear. The country folk had not time to dry their eyes for their sons who would never return, before they were opened wide in horror at this new danger for those who were left. The danger menaced (and touched) high and low alike. Men talking in taverns or at the cross roads on the events of the rising, talking, as they thought, with friends, were haled up the next day and hanged, for the love they bore to Monmouth. It was not necessary even, in some cases, that they should speak the word that showed they were against the Catholic king; a look sufficed; they hanged just the same. Here and there a man who was suspected was found rich enough to pay the Lord Chief-Justice the price of his life. But not many were so fortuned; and before the assize in the West was over, men had learned to distrust their lifelong friends, and to be afraid, going home at night, of their own shadows; and women stilled their crying children with the merest whisper of Jeffreys' name.

Jeffreys had returned to London with his triumphant tale of some hundreds hanged, and many more sold as slaves to the Plantations, and for such loyal service to the Crown had been made the Lord High Chancellor of England.

It had been mainly owing to the Admiral's influence and well-known loyalist views that Garth had escaped suspicion; escaped, that is to say, with the exception of Jack Poole, who, working in a shipwright's yard at Lyme when Monmouth landed, and with plenty of enthusiasm to spare for any cause, such as smuggling or rioting, that ran against authority, joined the lads of Lyme, was taken (not in action) by the loyalists, clapped into jail at Bodmin, and now, in Bodmin again, was awaiting his trial.

Roger had taken no part at all in the rebellion, but his sense of loyalty to his friends would always outride his discretion, as Marion had proved. And she might not always be there to stay his folly.

She sighed, and was laying her work aside, when a quick step sounded on the terrace, and there was a ringing hail.

'Marion, are you there? Curnow said she thought you were above.'

Marion looked out at her casement. Roger was standing just below looking out at the moment on the shrubbery where two of the stable dogs were trespassing. The youth was, as usual, hatless, and the black head was in reach of Marion's fingers as she leaned out. Roger was aware of a sudden tug near the crown of his head.

'Aie! Aie!' he said, swinging round. 'I thought you'd forgotten that. It still stands up—always will.' The brown eyes looked up affectionately. 'Do you remember that dough cake?'

'I had just been thinking of it, and how I cried when the hair came out. It certainly looks queer, Roger. Let us hope you will begin to grow bald just there first.'

'Most probably I shall grow bald all round it, and leave it upstanding. Never mind. I say, Mawfy, I've——'

'Don't speak so loudly,' said Marion in sudden contrition. 'I had forgotten, Elise has a headache.'

Roger made a slight grimace. 'Put on your habit, and come for a ride,' he said softly. ''Tis my last chance. I hear you are going Thursday. And to-morrow I must go down country about some sheep.'

'Good,' said Marion. 'I will only be five minutes. Will you ask Zacchary to saddle the grey?'

As they rode out of the courtyard and turned their horses towards the downs, Marion gave one of her sudden chuckles. 'Do you remember Starlight,' she said, 'and the fights we used to have about my riding him?'

'I remember. He was a vicious brute. I was always glad I bullied you on that score. What has made you remember Starlight?'

'I had a thinking fit this afternoon,' said Marion, 'and all sorts of things came back to me. Things we did when we were children.'

'Ay,' said Roger. 'Do you remember——' And the two went off together on a journey of reminiscences that lasted them, with breathless intervals when the ground tempted a gallop, for close on an hour. The memory of that ride lived long with Marion; in talking of their childhood they had become children again.

On a windy ridge some dozen miles from the house they paused to breathe their horses. Marion looked across the land, all touched with tender green, to the distant Channel.

'I wish Aunt Constance had asked me to visit her at any time but the spring,' she said suddenly. 'And I can't conceive how I shall endure many weeks without the smell of the sea.'

It was the first mention of her approaching journey. The merry, boyish look went out of Roger's face. 'I hate the idea of your going,' he said moodily. 'Who is going to look after you in London, and see that you don't ride Starlight?' A smile came and went, but there was a lingering sadness in his eyes.

'There won't be any chance of riding, I suppose,' said Marion.

'And I hate London, too,' added the young countryman. 'All the troubles in England are brewed first of all in Whitehall.' He looked hard at his companion for a moment, and then back to the distant sea. 'How long are you going to stay?' he asked abruptly.

'I don't know,' said Marion lightly. 'A long time—years perhaps.'

Roger's brows drew together. 'And you have never seen your Aunt Constance. What is Sir John Fairfax like? Who is going to look after you?' he said again.

'I don't know—Roger!' Marion turned in her saddle to face him. 'The point is much more: who is going to look after you!'

Roger smiled. 'I do need leading strings and a pinafore, of course.'

Marion's glance ran affectionately over the young giant. 'But really, you know, Roger, I have been rather unhappy about you since the other day at Poole's cottage. If it hadn't been for me, you'd have been in Bodmin gaol now.'

'As well there as anywhere,' replied the youth, his gaze out to sea.

'The nearest road to a vessel of your own lies not through Bodmin gaol. See, Roger, will you promise me to—to be careful?'

The brown eyes looked steadily into the grey ones.

'Careful of what?'

'Why—not to get mixed up in some foolish affair for which you really care nothing.'

Roger roused himself with a laugh. 'I think you have got from the Admiral that trick of turning the tables. Here I was just going to ask you the same thing.'

'I'm not likely to bestir myself about political affairs, sir.'

'I hope not. But seriously, Mawfy, I do not like the whole affair—your going, I mean. Your father cannot stay long with you, and then you will be with strangers. Will you promise to let me know if you should be in any need?'

Marion smiled indulgently, then sobered, and looked broodingly across the land again. 'Oh Roger!' she cried impulsively, not thinking at all of herself, only conscious of the little boy grown big at her side. 'I could wish it were all over, and I were back again. I'm afraid for you. Something is going to happen. For days I've had a foreboding. I always know when a storm is coming, and in the same way I know now——'

She pulled herself up. It was not her way to talk at random of her innermost feelings.

'Nonsense, nonsense!' said Roger briskly. 'Nothing ever happens unless you let it. You had a foreboding when I went to Blundell's. And what happened? Nothing! Oh yes—Elise came.'

They looked at each other in silence. Then Roger smiled. 'Come, Mawfy, 'tis my last half hour.'

He gathered his reins. 'I'll race you to the first pasture.'