“Now when the situation comes to this,” said the farmer at last, being heartily pleased with the style of their feeding and laughing, “his Majesty hath made an officer of me, though void of his own writing. Mounted Fencibles, Filey Briggers, called in the foreign parts ‘Brigadiers.’ Not that I stand upon sermonry about it, except in the matter of his Majesty’s health, as never is due without ardent spirits. But my wife hath a right to her own way, and never yet I knowed her go away from it.”
“Not so, by any means,” the mistress said, and said it so quietly that some believed her; “I never was so much for that. Captain, you are a married man. But reason is reason, in the middle of us all, and what else should I say to my husband? Mary lass, Mary lof, wherever is your duty? The captain hath the best pot empty!”
With a bright blush Mary sprang up to do her duty. In those days no girl was ashamed to blush; and the bloodless cheek savored of small-pox.
“Hold up your head, my lof,” her father said aloud, with a smile of tidy pride, and a pat upon her back; “no call to look at all ashamed, my dear. To my mind, captain, though I may be wrong, however, but to my mind, this little maid may stan’ upright in the presence of downright any one.”
“There lies the very thing that never should be said. Captain, you have seven children, or it may be eight of them justly. And the pride of life—Mary, you be off!”
Mary was glad to run away, for she liked not to be among so many men. But her father would not have her triumphed over.
“Speak for yourself, good wife,” he said. “I know what you have got behind, as well as rooks know plough-tail. Captain, you never heard me say that the lass were any booty, but the very same as God hath made her, and thankful for straight legs and eyes. Howsoever, there might be worse-favored maidens, without running out of the Riding.”
“You may ride all the way to the city of London,” the captain exclaimed, with a clinch of his fist, “or even to Portsmouth, where my wife came from, and never find a maid fit to hold a candle for Mary to curl her hair by.”
The farmer was so pleased that he whispered something; but Carroway put his hand before his mouth, and said, “Never, no, never in the morning!” But in spite of that, Master Anerley felt in his pocket for a key, and departed.
“Wicked, wicked, is the word I use,” protested Mrs. Anerley, “for all this fribble about rooks and looks, and holding of candles, and curling of hair. When I was Mary’s age—oh dear! It may not be so for your daughters, captain; but evil for mine was the day that invented those proud swinging-glasses.”
“That you may pronounce, ma’am, and I will say Amen. Why, my eldest daughter, in her tenth year now—”
“Come, Captain Carroway,” broke in the farmer, returning softly with a square old bottle, “how goes the fighting with the Crappos now? Put your legs up, and light your pipe, and tell us all the news.”
“Cadman, and Ellis, and Dick Hackerbody,” the lieutenant of the coast-guard shouted, “you have fed well. Be off, men; no more neglect of duty! Place an outpost at fork of the Sewerby road, and strictly observe the enemy, while I hold a council of war with my brother officer, Captain Anerley. Half a crown for you, if you catch the rogue, half a crown each, and promotion of twopence. Attention, eyes right, make yourselves scarce! Well, now the rogues are gone, let us make ourselves at home. Anerley, your question is a dry one. A dry one; but this is uncommonly fine stuff! How the devil has it slipped through our fingers? Never mind that, inter amicos—Sir, I was at school at Shrewsbury—but as to the war, Sir, the service is going to the devil, for the want of pure principle.”
The farmer nodded; and his looks declared that to some extent he felt it. He had got the worst side of some bargains that week; but his wife had another way of thinking.
“Why, Captain Carroway, whatever could be purer? When you were at sea, had you ever a man of the downright principles of Nelson?”
“Nelson has done very well in his way; but he is a man who has risen too fast, as other men rise too slowly. Nothing in him; no substance, madam; I knew him as a youngster, and I could have tossed him on a marling-spike. And instead of feeding well, Sir, he quite wore himself away. To my firm knowledge, he would scarcely turn the scale upon a good Frenchman of half of the peas. Every man should work his own way up, unless his father did it for him. In my time we had fifty men as good, and made no fuss about them.”
“And you not the last of them, captain, I dare say. Though I do love to hear of the Lord’s Lord Nelson, as the people call him. If ever a man fought his own way up—”
“Madam, I know him, and respect him well. He would walk up to the devil, with a sword between his teeth, and a boarder’s pistol in each hand. Madam, I leaped, in that condition, a depth of six fathoms and a half into the starboard mizzen-chains of the French line-of-battle ship Peace and Thunder.”
“Oh, Captain Carroway, how dreadful! What had you to lay hold with?”
“At such times a man must not lay hold. My business was to lay about; and I did it to some purpose. This little slash, across my eyes struck fire, and it does the same now by moonlight.”
One of the last men in the world to brag was Lieutenant Carroway. Nothing but the great thirst of this morning, and strong necessity of quenching it, could ever have led him to speak about himself, and remember his own little exploits. But the farmer was pleased, and said, “Tell us some more, Sir.”
“Mistress Anerley,” the captain answered, shutting up the scar, which he was able to expand by means of a muscle of excitement, “you know that a man should drop these subjects when he has got a large family. I have been in the Army and the Navy, madam, and now I am in the Revenue; but my duty is first to my own house.”
“Do take care, Sir; I beg you to be careful. Those free-traders now are come to such a pitch that any day or night they may shoot you.”
“Not they, madam. No, they are not murderers. In a hand-to-hand conflict they might do it, as I might do the same to them. This very morning my men shot at the captain of all smugglers, Robin Lyth, of Flamborough, with a hundred guineas upon his head. It was no wish of mine; but my breath was short to stop them, and a man with a family like mine can never despise a hundred guineas.”
“Why, Sophy,” said the farmer, thinking slowly, with a frown, “that must have been the noise come in at window, when I were getting up this morning. I said, ‘Why, there’s some poacher fellow popping at the conies!’ and out I went straight to the warren to see. Three gun-shots, or might ‘a been four. How many men was you shooting at?”
“The force under my command was in pursuit of one notorious criminal—that well-known villain, Robin Lyth.”
“Captain, your duty is to do your duty. But without your own word for it, I never would believe that you brought four gun muzzles down upon one man.”
“The force under my command carried three guns only. It was not in their power to shoot off four.”
“Captain, I never would have done it in your place. I call it no better than unmanly. Now go you not for to stir yourself amiss. To look thunder at me is what I laugh at. But many things are done in a hurry, Captain Carroway, and I take it that this was one of them.”
“As to that, no! I will not have it. All was in thorough good order. I was never so much as a cable’s length behind, though the devil, some years ago, split my heel up, like his own, Sir.”
“Captain, I see it, and I ask your pardon. Your men were out of reach of hollering. At our time of life the wind dies quick, from want of blowing oftener.”
“Stuff!” cried the captain. “Who was the freshest that came to your hospitable door, Sir? I will foot it with any man for six leagues, but not for half a mile, ma’am. I depart from nothing. I said, ‘Fire!’ and fire they did, and they shall again. What do Volunteers know of the service?”
“Stephen, you shall not say a single other word;” Mistress Anerley