Читать книгу The Admiral's Daughter - Margaret Stuart Lane - Страница 7

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The little fishing village of Garth had two chief points of pride: its harbour and the family of Penrock. And it was not the way of the villagers to hide their light under a bushel. They wore their honours with a flourish and imposed them on the public eye. Let a fishing vessel manned by Devon men (the natural and first-hand enemies of the Cornish) be driven before a sudden gale to take shelter in Garth harbour, and her crew by so much as a glance doubt the superiority of that harbour, then those unhappy sailors would find that the rocks without the river mouth had been a kinder refuge. And no one knew better than the fishing folk of Garth how the fortunes of the village had for generations been linked with those of the grey, gabled house nestling in its combe a mile up the valley.

They might rail at the 'Admur'l' as they liked; it was an affectionate raillery. That lean, wooden-legged figure stumping about the terrace at Garth House was their hearts' lord. Like the king, he could do no wrong. Whether his eyes twinkled with merriment or took on that round, unwinking stare which was a sign of anger, it was all one to the villagers. They could as ill have spared sun and wind as the Admiral, were he cross or hearty. In fact, if a week went by without a sight of him 'down along,' they grew uneasy; and when his rosy face, with its overhanging brows and huge nose, looking like that of a benevolent eagle, peered in at their casements, and a deep voice—as of the sea heard through a fog—boomed out a greeting, all would be well again. His clumping tread heard on the cobblestones would bring the children from the farther cottages with their fingers tugging their forelocks, and crying, ''Ere be the Admur'l, Mother. Marnin', Admur'l'; and down on the quay, 'Will 'ee be telling us now, Admur'l, what so be's wrong with they ropes? Un don't knot like as they belong to do.'

Had the Admiral by some miracle been able to change the flagstones of his terrace for the decks of a ship, all Garth would have flocked to his standard. But the Admiral's fighting days were over. He had seen his last shot fired in an engagement with the Dutch, twenty years earlier, and few Garth seamen had cared to enlist in another's service. Fishing was now the villagers' daily employment, fighting roving French Channel pirates their recreation. And if sometimes their little craft ran up the river with cargoes of a more mysterious nature than the harvest of the sea, the wise Admiral was sure to know nothing about it.

For that matter, in these days he had ample for his employment. There were the affairs of the parish over which, with Parson Stowe at his elbow as chancellor, he cast an imperial eye. He was a county magistrate, and since the Restoration that had been no easy office. There were the lands and farming of Garth to supervise. Moreover, since the death of my lady, now ten years ago, he had been father, mother, and tutor to his little daughter Marion.

The Admiral had always been a headstrong, self-willed man, hard to move except (as his wife knew) by love, or (as his servants knew) by laughter. And when my lady died—leaving him harder stricken by the blow than folk knew—he would consider no plans but his own for the upbringing of his little daughter. The two were constantly together; the child, with her solemn white little face which could suddenly break into heartening laughter—a trick inherited from her father—running backwards and forwards from the length of his hand as they walked about the garden or watched the men busy in the fields; the child sitting at a high chair by her father's place at table, struggling with the food he piled on her plate at dinner, or at supper eating her bread and milk from the silver bowl that bore her mother's name. Every night the Admiral stumped upstairs to kiss her face on the pillow and draw the curtains close, his 'good-night' booming on the stairs after he had closed the door with something of the thunder of the tides on the headlands below.

The first few months after my lady's death passed thus. Then the relatives of the Admiral begged to be allowed—as they thought—to come to the rescue. First the Admiral's two sisters, then various cousins, offered to come to Garth and mother the motherless maid for him. The Admiral made short work of it, answering each with a blank refusal. The refusal sufficed for all except one: Mistress Keziah Penrock, a maiden lady living at Exeter in a great rambling house that had been built by an eccentric maternal grandfather in the shadow of old Rougemont Castle. A correspondence lasting for some months ran between the pair, the lady holding up the prospect of 'civilisation' in the Cathedral town in contrast with the savage state of a remote Cornish village. In the end, Mistress Keziah, losing her temper, wrote a letter which the wise Admiral left unanswered, knowing that in no way would the last word be said quite so effectively as in silence. Meantime half a year had run on and little Marion was still untended.

The parson, hearing rumour of this from Mrs. Curnow, the housekeeper, ventured to come up and argue the point with his patron over a game of piquet. But the Admiral listened only to the first few words.

'Let her be brought up well or ill,' he said, laying down his cards and fixing the parson with an unwinking, parrot-like stare, 'she bides here alone with me. The matter is settled. The housekeeper can teach her her needle. There's Mistress Trevannion yonder who, I'll wager, will know when she wants a new petticoat. You and I will see to her books.'

And that, Mr. Stowe found, was the end of the argument; but the Admiral, roused (though he would not have confessed it) to the sense of his child's needs, bestirred himself.

The carrier brought down from a book-stall at the sign of the Three Bibles on London Bridge, a box of school books, French and Latin. On these volumes, which the small pupil turned over in unfeigned dislike, the parson nodded approval. 'Must I learn all these?' asked Marion, her mouth down at the corners. 'I had far rather play with you, Father.'

'And my daughter be brought up as unlearned as a kitchen-wench?' retorted the Admiral.

The child pondered. 'Did my mother know all these books?' she asked.

'She did,' said the Admiral, his great voice breaking. 'She was wiser than your father.'

Here the parson bethought himself. 'But the English reading, sir,' he said. 'There's nothing here but foreign tongues.'

His patron pointed to the two volumes that constituted his own library: Hakluyt's Voyages and Plutarch's Lives. 'And there is the Bible and Master Shakespeare's works in her mother's room above,' he said. 'If she thrives not on these she thrives not at all.'

The lessons began, and brought with them a new and secret joy for the Admiral. He had never been much of a school man, and his knowledge of Latin and French grammar was slight. True, he spoke the French language with ease, and failed not to hector the parson on the subject of accent; but he soon found that in grammar he must needs be a pupil instead of tutor, as he had originally stated to Mr. Stowe. The Admiral and Marion, sitting side by side, conned their declensions together, the seaman's double bass and the child's pipe blended. In this duet the slender clear notes were so often drowned that the parson plucked up courage to remonstrate.

'Sir,' he said, 'if you will not be silent, how can I hear the child construe?'

The Admiral regarding him, his face growing purple with merriment, left the table to splutter at his ease on the terrace. Certainly, whatever the result might be for Marion, schooling was good for her father, seeing that, in the pages of his grammar, and under the parson's solemn eye, he found again the laughter he had lost.

Other matters went apace. With the help of the housekeeper and Mistress Trevannion of the Manor House, the little girl learned not only to hem her sheets, but to make those numerous 'stitches' in embroidery that were her teacher's delight. Concerning this branch of her industry, it being beyond his ken, the Admiral was disposed to be critical. Secretly proud as he was of the little maid's skill, he became nevertheless uneasy about the hours she must needs bend over her silks. To the housekeeper's argument that all young ladies spent their time thus he paid no heed save to 'Pish!' and 'Pshaw.' And one day when Mistress Trevannion, thinking to win his approval, counted on her fingers the stitches Marion had already learned—cross-stitch, tent-stitch, long and short stitch, crewel and feather-stitch, tent-on-the-finger, tent-on-the-frame, gold-stitch, fern-stitch, satin-stitch, and rosemary stitch—the Admiral cried for mercy and vowed his brain was reeling.

'Enough,' he said, striking with his stick on the stone flags of the hall. 'Let be. There are hangings and quilts and cushions in the house to last my grandsons. And the child has already wrought me three night-caps in such a device I dare not sleep in them for fear of dreams. Let be. She may stitch, if stitch she must, at that satin sheet you have just set in her frame. 'Twill last her, on and off, a lifetime. But she shall do it when she pleases.'

Mrs. Trevannion was aghast at this heresy, but the Admiral had his way. The work-stand holding Marion's 'wrought sheet'—a crimson quilt embroidered with a pattern of flowers—was placed by the great chimney in the hall, and the young lady took up her silks and laid them down as she willed. Much more to her taste were her rides with Zacchary the groom and Roger Trevannion, who from childhood days had been her constant playfellow; the long mornings she and Roger spent with their bows and arrows, shooting at targets set by the Admiral; her days in Jack Poole's boat on the river, the fishing expeditions in Bob Tregarthen's cutter; her afternoons spent in the garden on a pretence of reading with her father. Once a week a tutor rode out from Bodmin to teach her dancing and music. Next to the archery practice, in which sport she was becoming unusually skilled, these lessons were Marion's special delight, and were shared by Roger until he went to school at Blundell's in Tiverton.

With Roger and her father, and kind Mistress Trevannion in the background, Marion's life had been a happy one. Roger's going was a sore blow, and would have saddened the autumn for her, had not fate put up a finger to turn her thoughts in another direction.

Coming up from the village one morning, she found the house in a commotion, the great travelling coach with its four horses out in the courtyard, and Zacchary ready, as outrider, with the chestnut mare.

'Here a be!' called one of the stable boys to some one within, 'here be Mistress Marion.'

Forthwith Marion was hastily summoned to her father's room, where Peter, his man, was dressing him in his best clothes. A travelling cloak and a couple of pistols lay on the bed.

'Father!' cried Marion, 'where are you going?'

Then the Admiral put Peter to the door, saying he would do very well now, and took the maid upon his knee, pressing a kiss upon her troubled face.

'It means this, sweetheart,' he said. 'I'm going to London. Yes, to London, to bring some one back. A playmate for you, little one.'

He stroked her waving hair as he spoke, and kissed her again, the child, as was her way, taking it very quietly, but opening her grey eyes wide.

'You remember what I told you about poor de Delauret?'

Marion nodded. More than once her father had related the incident of his friendship for the French gentleman whom he had met on an expedition to the Indies. They had begun as enemies and crossed swords; they had ended by being sworn friends. De Delauret had nursed the Admiral through a vile fever; the Englishman later on had saved his friend from death at the hand of a rascal, who was for having his purse and jewelled rapier. During the years of the Admiral's fighting life the two had kept up a constant intercourse. Once the Admiral had gone to visit de Delauret in his home in Brittany, and found the Frenchman in sore trouble. His wife had just died and left him with an infant daughter, and he himself was ailing.

'What shall I do,' says he, 'about the little one, should I die? My Elise may be a great heiress through her mother's house. She will be sought after, taken to Court. And, saving the King's Majesty, you know what the Court of Louis is.'

The Admiral took the sick man's hand in his great one.

'You're not going to die,' says he. 'But, if you do, s'death, man! I'll take your child, and my wife shall bring her up at Garth.'

So the compact was settled. M. de Delauret did not die. But he was never again strong enough to travel, the Admiral later on was invalided; so the two lost sight of each other, and the great friendship was expressed only in occasional letters.

'And now poor de Delauret's gone,' said the Admiral, 'and wrote me a letter before he died, reminding me of my promise. Three months the letter has been in coming. Elise and her woman are in London. I must hasten and fetch her at once. And I must see my lawyer in London so that he can arrange the poor child's affairs with de Delauret's attorney in Paris. That is the story, little one. Kiss me and let me go.'

Presently with a great bustle the Admiral was gone, Marion watching the coach from the terrace and waving her handkerchief as the horses took the corner by the church. Then she flung herself on the grass and burst into tears.

'I shall hate her,' she said. 'I hate her now.'

But when the Admiral came back, a fortnight later, with the sallow, frightened-looking little girl who was a year younger than Marion, she was so much interested that she forgot all about the hating. Only when there was another girl in the house did Marion realise how lonely it had been before. Elise's gowns and cloaks, too, her boxes full of finery, woke in Marion an instinct that had been sleeping. Nothing would serve but the tailor must be ordered from Plymouth to make Marion some new gowns. Marion's halting French and Elise's lisped English joined to make a commotion in the house, just as Elise's maid, Victoire, conspired with Mrs. Curnow the housekeeper to make the servants' quarters unusually lively. The two children, adaptable as only the very young are, soon learned each other's ways and became great friends.

'One thing is certain,' mused the Admiral, who, in truth, was the one to be pitied, as he dragged his wooden leg in solitude about the garden, 'times are changed. Whether for good or ill we shall see.'

After a while, the Admiral concluded that 'good or ill' was beside the mark. The results of the coming of his ward could not be so easily assessed. The French girl brought a certain quality into the house which was for Marion's improvement: racial touches, the stories of her own land and coast, a new string of interests about which Marion's thoughts began to twine themselves. On the other hand, there were points in Elise's character that made the Admiral uneasy for his daughter's sake. The French girl seemed to be lacking in the sense of honour which, fully developed in Marion, was her father's pride. She was not above petty deceptions; there ran a strain of secrecy through her doings which her guardian, appearing not to notice, thoroughly condemned. 'Any one would think she had something to hide,' he mused.

Had the Admiral been aware of the stories growing in the village and the gossip in the servants' hall when Victoire was absent, he would have been more uneasy still. But nothing came to his ears.

The household, if not greatly liking the French girl, tolerated her. But there was one person in whom she inspired a profound distrust, and that was Roger Trevannion. Roger took the innovation with bad grace when he came home for his first holidays and found the Admiral's ward installed at Garth, and was scarce better minded on the second (when he brought his school friend, Dick Hooper, with him), thereby making himself the object of much raillery from Marion. Dick Hooper, a fair-faced, fair-haired youth, was the son of the Squire of St. Brennion. Marion found the company of the two boys agreeably diverting after the quieter life she had been leading with Elise. Her old headlong rides were resumed in their company, Elise on these occasions absenting herself, to the undisguised relief of two of the party. Bows and arrows came out once more, and Roger forgave Marion for beating him by a yard because Hooper was watching; and Roger's pride in Marion was unbounded.

As time went on, the Admiral could deceive himself no longer. He was disappointed in the daughter of his friend. Many times he considered whether it would not be wise to separate the two girls for a time, sending one or the other on a round of visits among his kinsfolk. Then he saw how untouched Marion was, how proof her nature was against any contact, what a pleasant intercourse seemed to obtain between the two, and he put the matter from him.

So months drifted into years. Marion grew up a tall, supple girl, but without the promise of her mother's perfect beauty. 'Her'll never be so lovely as my lady,' said the village. 'Wait,' said the mistress of the Manor. 'Hair gold to russet. Her mother's poise of head and her mother's neck and throat. A skin like curds. Her father's grey eyes and the Penrock look. Wait.'

Not until the girl was nearly seventeen did the Admiral suddenly wake up to realise that his 'little maid' was dangerously near womanhood. Also, he could not hide from himself the fact that Elise, now the heiress of a considerable estate in France (governed by Delauret's attorney) could not for ever stay hidden in a Cornish village. Hazy ideas of the future began to float about his mind, of his duty to these two young ladies in his care. But with Marion's seventeenth birthday came the landing of Monmouth at Lyme. The Admiral ceased to be a father and became a loyalist magistrate.

With the spring of the following year, however, Mistress Keziah Penrock came down with her coach and servants from Bath, and before she left, did more than find holes in the guest chamber hangings. Time, and the lady's curiosity about her niece, had healed the breach between brother and sister. Thus, for the first time for twelve years, Mistress Keziah visited the home of her childhood. In Marion she scarcely recognised the little one she had seen before; but during her stay the shrewd eyes had glimpses of depths of resolution and hardihood under the girl's gentle demeanour that made the old woman grave. 'She'll go her own way,' she mused. 'And whether 'tis a bid for sorrow or happiness 'twill be just the same. Her mother's given her that sweetness, but she's a Penrock.'

One night when 'the child,' as the Admiral persisted in calling his daughter, was abed, Mistress Keziah hazarded to her brother a plan she had conceived concerning her niece's future. A slight disappointment had preceded the making of this plan. She had hoped Marion would be affectionately inclined towards her and consent to coming to Exeter awhile. But the lady, not realising in time that Marion was no longer a child—indeed being the age when most girls in that period were either married or embroidering their wedding clothes—had weighed a little too heavily on her authority. She had said, 'Do this, my child,' where it had been wiser to say 'Will you, my dear?' She was keen-sighted enough to see that the girl would not come to her for her pleasure, and being sincerely attached to her, decided to try other means of wresting her from that beleaguered garrison which she was pleased to consider Garth had become. Deciding the moment was good, she opened fire on the Admiral.

'Let Marion go up to Constance a spell, or get Constance to come here. A beautiful girl like that should not be married off-hand to a country squire.'

'Married!' said the Admiral, aghast. 'Who's talking of marriage, pray? Not the child herself?'

'Marion has never even thought of it,' said the lady quietly. 'That is the way you have brought her up.'

'All the better,' replied the Admiral with a look of content. Then the heavy brows drew down at an unaccustomed idea. 'Beautiful? Marion beautiful? Nonsense!'

'It were just as well Marion did not hear you say so, or the men fishing in the Channel for that matter,' icily remarked the lady.

The thought was new to the Admiral, who had long ago settled his mind to the fact that however adorable his child might be, beauty was not her lot.

'Her chin is a trifle long,' mused the lady, 'her nose a trifle short. But somehow each makes the other right. 'Tis a straight little nose. She has no colouring, it is true, and her hair is rather spoiled, bleached in parts, through exposure to the sun. But she has the Penrock eyes and air.' The lady drew herself up. She had been a noted beauty in her youth.

The Admiral pish'd and pshaw'd at regular intervals during his sister's recital. 'Why, even Elise says——' he began gravely, watching her.

'Elise!' cries Mistress Keziah, fanning herself with great energy. 'I pray you, brother, do not mention that young person to me just now. I have more to say about her anon. And now, sir,' rising and dropping a state curtsey, 'I will bid you good night.'

And so the old lady swept off to her room.

Between Mistress Keziah and Elise there had been war from the beginning, and only Marion's tact had saved an open breach before her aunt's visit came to an end. The Admiral, watching the sparring of his sister and his ward, and noting how shrewdly the young girl delivered her blows, had been greatly entertained and amused. But the night before she left, Mistress Keziah was closeted a long time with her brother, and when she sought her own chamber the man's chuckles had ceased.

For a long time he sat smoking over the dying logs. Then as he rose and knocked out his pipe, he looked at the portrait of his wife, hanging above the mantelshelf.

'If thou hadst not gone, sweetheart,' he said, the grim old face sorrowful, 'all this had been changed long ago.'