Joan, The Curate/Chapter 1
JOAN, THE CURATE.
It was soon after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, had put an inglorious end to an inglorious war, that the Government of the day began to give serious attention to an evil which had been suffered to grow while public attention was absorbed by battles abroad and the doings of the press-gang at home.
This was the practise of plundering wrecked vessels, which had been carried on in combination with the smuggler's daring and dangerous trade, particularly on the wild marsh coast south of Kent, and the equally lonely Sussex cliffs beyond.
So audacious had the doings of these "free-traders" become, that a brigade of cavalry was sent down into the old town of Rye, for the purpose of overawing them, while, at the same time, a smart revenue cutter, under the command of a young lieutenant of noted courage and efficiency, was despatched to cruise about the coast, to act in concert with the soldiers.
It was on a windy night in early autumn, when the sea was roaring sullenly as it dashed against the sandstone cliffs, and echoed in the caves and hollows worn by the waves, that a sharp knocking at the door of Hurst Parsonage, a mile or two from the sea-coast, made Parson Langney look up from the writing of his Sunday sermon, and glance inquiringly at his daughter.
"Now, who will that be, Joan?" said he as he tilted his wig on to one side of his head, and pursed up his jolly, round, red face with an air of some anxiety.
"Nay, father, you have as many visitors that come for the ills of the body as for the health of the soul!" cried Joan. "I can but hope you han't another long trudge across the marsh before you, like your journey of a week back."
At that moment there came another thundering knock at the little front door, and a handful of stones and earth was flung against the window, followed the next moment by a rattling of the panes.
Father and daughter, genial, portly parson, and creamy-skinned, black-eyed maiden, sprang to their feet, and looked once at each other.
There were wild folk in these parts, and lonesome errands to be run sometimes by Parson Langney, who had begun life as a surgeon, and who had been lucky enough to be pitch-forked into a living which exactly suited his adventurous habits, his love of fox-hunting, and his liking for good wine and well-hung game.
Before the importunate summons could be repeated, Parson Langney had come out of the little dining-parlor, and drawn the bolt of the front door.
For Nance, the solitary housemaid of the modest establishment, was getting into years, and inclined to regard a late visitor as a person to be thwarted by being kept as long as possible waiting at the door.
"Hast no better manners than to do thy best to drive the glass from out the panes?" asked he, as soon as he found himself face to face with the intruder, who proved to be a sailor, in open jacket, loose shirt and slops, and flat, three-cornered hat.
"Oons, sir, 'tis a matter of life and death!" said the man, as he saluted the parson with becoming respect, and then pointed quickly back in the direction of the sea, which could be seen faintly glistening in the murky light of a clouded moon. "I'm from the revenue cutter in the offing yonder, where one of my mates lies with a bullet in's back, sent there by one of those rascally smugglers in a fray we've had with them but now. I've been in the village for help, but they say there's no doctor here but yourself. So I beg your honor'll come with me, and do what you can for him. And could you tell me of a woman that would watch by him? For we've all got our hands full, and he'll be wandering from his wits ere morning."
The parson, without a moment's delay, had begun, by the help of his daughter, to get into a rough brown riding-coat that hung from a nail on the whitewashed wall.
"Why, there you have me out," said he, as he buttoned himself up to the chin, and put a round, broad-brimmed black hat, with a bow and a twisted band of black cloth, tightly on to his somewhat rusty, grizzled bob-wig. "For there's none in these parts to nurse the sick as well as my daughter Joan."
"And sure I'm ready to go, father!" cried the girl, who, with the nimbleness of a fawn, had darted back into the parlor and brought out her father's case of surgical instruments, as well as a diminutive portable chest, containing such drugs and medicines as were in use at the time.
"I'll have on my hood in a tick of the clock."
And by the time these words were uttered she had flown up the steep, narrow staircase and disappeared round the bend at the top. The sailor, who had stepped inside the porch, out of the wind and a drizzling rain which had now begun to fall, was full of admiration and astonishment.
"Oons, sir, but 'twill be rough work for the young mistress!" said he. "The water's washing over the boat yonder, and we shan't be able to push off without getting wet up to the waist."
"The lass is used to rough weather," said Parson Langney, proudly. "She'll tell you herself that where her father can go she goes."
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when Joan, wrapped in a rough peasant's cloak, and wearing a loose hood, came tripping down the stairs.
Not a moment was lost. With a word to Nance, who had put in a tardy appearance, the parson, with his daughter on one side and the sailor on the other, started for the shore.
The wind was at its worst on the top of the hill where the Parsonage stood. A very few minutes' sharp walking brought them all to a lower level, and within the shelter of a wild straggling growth of bushes and small trees, which extended in patches from the village almost to the edge of the crumbling cliffs.
Here they struck into a rough track made by the feet of the fishermen and less inoffensive characters, and before they had gone far they saw the hulk of the cutter, tossing like a little drifting spar amid the foam of the waves, and showing dark against the leaden, faint moonlight on the sea beyond. The parson asked a few questions, and elicited the usual story—a contraband cargo was being run in a little creek just where the cliffs broke off and the marsh began, when the lookout man on the cutter spied the smugglers, and a boat was sent out to give chase. There had been a smart brush, almost half in and half out of the water, between the smugglers on the one side and the cutter's men on the other. But, on the whole, as the narrator was forced ruefully to admit, the smugglers had got the best of it, as they all got away, leaving not so much as a keg behind them, while one of the cutter's men had had to be carried off seriously wounded.
"Zoons, and it was main odd they did get off so well!" went on the sailor, as if in some perplexity; "for the lieutenant himself landed a bullet in the leg of one of the rascals, that should have brought him down, if he hadn't had the devil himself—saving your presence, mistress—to help him."
In the momentary pause which followed the man's words, a sound suddenly came to the ears of them all, above the whining of the wind in the trees and bushes. It made Joan stop short for the space of a second, and turn her eyes hastily and furtively in the direction of a little dell on their left, where the bracken grew high about the trunks of a knot of beeches.
"Eh!" cried the sailor, stopping short, also to listen. "What was that? 'Twas like the groan of a man."
As he turned his head to listen, the parson and his daughter quickly exchanged a glance expressive both of alarm and of warning. Then the former seized the sailor by the arm, pushing onward towards the shore at a better pace than ever.
"Sure," said he, in a deep, strong, resonant voice that would have drowned any fainter sound in the ears of his listener; "'tis but the screech of a hawk. This woody ground's alive with the creatures."
The man cast at him a rather suspicious look, but said nothing, and allowed himself to be led forward. So they hurried on, increasing their pace when the ground began to dip again, until they followed the course of a narrow and dark ravine, which cut its way through the cliffs to the seashore. Here they had to pick their way over the stones and bits of broken cliff, through which a brook, swollen by recent rains, gurgled noisily on its way to the sea. The tide was going down, and the thunder of the waves, as they beat upon the cliff's base and echoed in its hollows, grew fainter as they went. It was an easier matter than they had expected to get into the boat which was waiting to take them to the cutter; and though the tiny craft rose like a nutshell on the crest of the waves, and sank into deep dells of dark water, they reached the cutter safely, and scrambled, not without difficulty, up the side of the little vessel, which was anchored not far from the land.
A man's voice, full, clear, musical, a voice used to command, hailed them from the deck—
"Ho, there! Hast brought a doctor?"
"Ay, capt'n, and a parson to boot!" answered the sailor who had been despatched on this errand. "And a nurse that it would cure a sick man to look at."
It was at that moment that Joan, who was as agile as a kitten, stepped on deck, and into the light of the lantern which the lieutenant himself was holding. The young man saluted her, with surprise in his eyes, and a thrill of some warmer feeling in his gallant heart. Joan curtsied, holding on to the nearest rope the while.
"You are welcome on board, madam."
"I thank you, sir."
And the young people exchanged looks.
What he saw was a most fair maiden, tall and straight, graceful with the ease and freedom of nature and good breeding, with sparkling brown eyes, even white teeth, and a merry gleam belying the demureness of her formal words.
What she saw was a young man only a little above the middle height, stalwart and handsome, with quick eyes gray as the winter sea, and a straight, clean-cut mouth, that closed with a look of indomitable courage and determination.
"And yet, madam," the lieutenant went on, leaving his subordinates to help Parson Langney, who was portly, and less agile than his daughter, up on to the deck, "they should not have brought you. For, in truth, we are in no state to receive a lady on board. There has been ugly work to do with those rascally smugglers."
"I come not as a fine lady, sir," retorted Joan, promptly; "but as a nurse for a sick man. There is no state needed by a woman when she comes but to do her duty."
"Well said, madam; but I thank God your care will not be needed. The poor fellow who was shot by those ruffians has taken a turn for the better, and if the gentleman, whom I take to be your father, can but perform a simple operation for him"
"My father, sir, is a most skilled surgeon, and can perform any operation," answered Joan, interrupting him proudly.
Her look was so full of fire, the carriage of her head, in its graceful hood, so superb, as she uttered the ingenuous words, that Lieutenant Tregenna smiled a little as he saluted her and turned to the parson, who, panting and in some disorder, had at length reached the deck.
The young man introduced himself, and they saluted each other, the parson with some difficulty, since the continual motion of the vessel was somewhat trying to his landsman's legs. Then they went below, and in a few minutes the young man returned alone.
Joan had been accommodated with a seat by the tiller, and protected from wind and water by a tarpaulin, out of which her bonny face peeped white in the moonlight.
"You have no work for me, sir?" she asked, as the lieutenant came up.
"None, madam; and even less for your good father than we feared might be the case. He has found the bullet, and 'twill be an easy matter to extract it, so he says; and after that, 'tis a mere matter of a few days' quiet to set the poor fellow on his legs again. So the rascals escaped murder this time; not that one crime more or less would sit hard on the conscience of such villains!"
For a moment Joan said nothing. Then she hazarded, in a very dry, demure voice—
"But, sir, by what I heard, your side went as near committing murder as the other. The man who brought us hither spoke of a bullet in the leg of one of the fishermen."
"Fishermen! Odds my life, madam, but that's a very pretty way of putting it! I hope you han't the same kindness for the rascals that seems to be strong among the country-folk here! Nay, I won't do you the injustice to suppose you could hold their villainies in aught but abhorrence."
"Whatever is villainous I hope I abhor very properly," answered Joan with spirit. "And the shooting down of one's fellow-men I do hold one of the greatest villainies of all."
"When 'tis done by smugglers and plunderers of wrecks, no doubt you mean," retorted the lieutenant tartly.
"Plunderers of wrecks we have none in these parts, or at least none that do the vile things that were done in times past," said she quickly. "And if you and the soldiers that are come to Rye had had but the punishment of murderers and wreckers in your eye, you would have met with more sympathy than is like to be the case if you mean to repress what they call in these parts free-trade."
"Well, madam, 'tis in truth the repression of 'free-trade' that we have in our minds, and that we intend to carry out by the strength of our arms. And I own I'm amazed to hear a gentlewoman of your sense and spirit speak so leniently of a pack of thievish persons that live by robbing his Majesty, and, indeed, the whole nation to which they belong. I can but trust you speak in more ignorance than you imagine, and that the doings of such ruffians as one Jem Bax, and another wretch called Gardener Tom, of Long Jack and Bill Plunder, Robin Cursemother and Ben the Blast have never come to your ears."
Lieutenant Tregenna uttered each of these names very clearly, and with solemn emphasis, standing so that he could see the expression of the girl's face as he mentioned them. To his great disgust, he perceived that, though she kept her eyes down as if to conceal her feelings, she was well acquainted with all these men, and appeared somewhat startled to learn that he knew them so well.
"You have heard of these men?" he asked sharply.
"Yes, I've—I've heard of them."
"You know them, perhaps?"
A moment's pause.
"Ye—es, I know them."
"I won't affront you by asking whether you have any sympathy with them and their methods. With men that live by defrauding the revenue, and that scruple not to commit the most violent deeds in the exercise of their unlawful calling?"
The lieutenant's tone was harsh and arrogant as he asked these questions. Miss Joan still sat with her eyelids down, giving him a new view of her beauty, unconsciously proving to him that her face was as handsome in repose, with the black eyelashes sweeping her rounded cheeks, as it was when her features were animated with the excitement of conversation. She was silent at first, and the lieutenant repeated his last question somewhat impatiently. There was another slight pause, however, and then a ponderous footstep was heard creeping up the companion-ladder.
"There's my father!" cried Joan, as she started up, in evident relief at the opportune interruption.
Parson Langney, holding on valiantly to such support as came in his way, staggered towards them, and ended by hurling himself against the lieutenant with so much force that it was only by a most dexterous movement that the younger and slimmer man escaped being flung into the sea.
"I ask your pardon, captain," cried the jolly parson, in good-humored apology, as, with the assistance of the young folk, he reached a place of safety. "Remember, you're on your element, but I'm not on mine! Come and dine with my daughter and me to-morrow, and you shall see that my feet carry me well enough on the dry land."
"I thank you, sir, and I would most willingly have accepted your kind offer, but I'm engaged to dine with one who is, I believe, a neighbor of yours—Squire Waldron, of Hurst Court."
"Why, God bless my soul, so am I!" cried the parson, in amazement at his own momentary lapse of memory. "Then, sir, I shall be happy to meet you there; and I warrant you'll be happy too, for the squire's port wine, let me tell you, is a tipple not to be despised by his Majesty himself."
"Ay, sir, and there at any rate I shall feel comfortable in the thought that the wine has paid duty, which, I give you my word, is what I have not felt in any other house in the neighborhood, public or private, since I arrived here."
But at these words a sudden and singular alteration had occurred in the parson's features. He seemed to remember the office of the person to whom he was speaking, and to become more reserved.
"Ay, sir, certainly," was all he said.
The lieutenant went on, with a return to the bitterness he had shown while discussing the subject of smugglers with Miss Joan.
"And as the squire is a justice of the peace, whose duty it is to punish evil-doers, I may at last hope, under his roof, to meet with some sympathy with the objects of justice, such as one expects from all right-thinking people."
"Why, sir, certainly," said Parson Langney again, somewhat more dryly than before. And then, turning to his daughter, he added briskly, "Come, Joan, we must be returning. The lad below will do very well now, sir, with quiet, and the physic I have left for him. And I'll pay him another visit in a day or two."
As he addressed these last words to the lieutenant, the parson was already preparing to lower himself into the boat which had brought him. He seemed in haste to be gone.
Lieutenant Tregenna then helped the young lady down into the boat, giving her as he did so a somewhat piqued and resentful glance, which, however, she demurely refused to meet with a return look from her own black eyes until she was safely in the little boat beside her father.
Then, as the small craft was tossing amidst the spray from the larger one, she did look up, with the struggling moonlight full upon her face, at the handsome young commander, on whom a touch of youthful arrogance sat not unbecomingly.
And Lieutenant Tregenna, as he saluted and watched the little boat, and in particular its fair occupant, was irritated and incensed beyond measure by what he took for an expression of merry defiance in her bright eyes.