Joan, The Curate/Chapter 3
The soldiers were rattling on in pursuit of the smugglers at such a good pace that Lieutenant Tregenna only reached the road in time to see them turn the next corner and disappear.
He followed, however, at the best pace he could, hoping to be of use in finding out the direction the smugglers had taken. He had not yet had time to become acquainted with the inland part of the neighborhood, or he would have known that, by dashing across the park in a northerly direction, he could have reached the village before the soldiers, who had to follow the windings of the road.
As it was, when he reached the first of the straggling cottages of the picturesque Sussex village, the horsemen were out of sight; and the women and children of the neighborhood seemed to be all at their doors and windows, evidently discussing the recent invasion with boisterous mirth.
As Tregenna was not in uniform, he flattered himself that he might go up the village unrecognized, and perhaps obtain some scraps of valuable information; but whether they were better posted up than he supposed, or whether the mere sight of a stranger awoke suspicion in the shrewd women-folk, it was certain that as soon as they caught sight of him they checked their volubility, and stood, with their hands on their hips, staring at him with broad amusement still on their faces, or else dropped a curtsey with demure and sudden respectfulness, which was in itself somewhat suspicious.
However, he thought he would make at least an attempt to obtain some information. So he addressed himself to a coarse-featured woman who might have been any age between twenty-five and forty-five, who stood wiping her hands on her apron at the door of one of the cottages, and who, by the curtsey she dropped and the good-humored expression of her face, seemed to promise that she would at least give a civil answer.
"Was that a troop of soldiers I caught sight of coming into the village?" asked he, as indifferently as possible, when he had returned her salutation with deferential courtesy.
"Maybe it were, sir," replied the woman promptly, with demure cheerfulness; "but I doan't rightly know. I were out at back yonder when I heard the noise." She glanced out of the corners of her eyes at an older woman outside the door of the next cottage. "Old Jenny yonder can tell ye more 'n me, sir," added she slyly; "she's been there all the toime."
Tregenna, concealing the mortification he felt, turned to Jenny.
But her stolid face offered little hope of success.
"Ay," said she, in a voice like a man's, "I've been sittin' an' standin' about here, I 'ave, all mornin'; but I han't seen naught."
"You haven't seen a wagon full of smugglers, maybe, coming through at full gallop?" cried Tregenna, losing all patience with the mendacious females. "Nor a troop of soldiers after them?"
But the sarcasm was lost upon the good lady, who was chewing a quid of tobacco, which he well knew to be contraband.
"Noa, I han't seen aught o' that," she replied imperturbably, looking him steadily in the eyes the while. "Maybe I were in a dose, sir, or had the sun in my eyes as they passed."
He did not trust himself to speak to her again, but went on up the village, between the groups of straggling red cottages with their thatched roofs overgrown with moss or lichen, noting everywhere the sidelong looks cast at him by such of the women as did not shut themselves in their cottages at his approach.
The very urchins, chubby boys of eight and nine, grinned at him maliciously, and helped to give him confirmation of the fact that he was in an enemy's country.
When the ground began to rise again, at the end of the village, he came to a point where three roads met, and where the high hedges and another patch of wooded ground made it impossible to see far in any direction. As all three roads were in a most villainous condition, with deep ruts and pools and furrows of caked mud, and as all three bore marks of horses' hoofs the lieutenant knew that it was useless to go further. So he returned through the village in a highly irritated state of mind.
The excitement had subsided a little by this time, and most of the gossips had resumed their household occupations. There was a group of suspicious-looking loafers about the door of each of the two inns; but although it seemed to Tregenna that the word smuggler was writ large across the bloated features of every one, there was nothing to be done but to look as if he ignored their existence.
Thus, in the very worst of humors, he again reached the entrance of the village, and, after a moment's hesitation, struck up to the left in the direction of the Parsonage, at the garden gate of which he saw handsome Mistress Joan in conversation with another woman.
He was still ostensibly bound on a mission of inquiry, yet it is doubtful whether he hoped to get much information from Joan, who had clearly shown herself to be one of the enemy. Still he strode up the hill with a resolute step, and saluted her in the most abrupt, business-like, and even somewhat offended manner.
"Your pardon, Mistress Joan, for intruding. But 'tis in the performance of my duty. Can you inform me whither the smugglers be gone that rode by just now with the soldiers after them?"
"How should I be able to tell you that, sir? Do you take me for a smuggler myself?" asked Joan, demurely.
He did not at once answer. The girl looked even handsomer, so it seemed to him, in the dying light of day than she had done by the light of moon and lantern on the preceding evening. The creamy tints of her skin melted into bright carnation on her cheeks; and he thought, with a flash of amusement, of the strictures of the powdered and painted ladies of Hurst Court upon her rustic complexion. Her dress, too, pleased his taste better than theirs had done. She wore neither hood nor cap, and her abundant brown hair was rolled back from her forehead in a style which was at that period somewhat old-fashioned, but which gave infinitely more dignity to the head than the tightly screwed-up knot of the fashionable ladies. She wore no hoop or next to none, and her full skirt, of some sort of gray homespun, fell in graceful folds around her. A long fine white apron reached to the hem of her dress, and her bodice was adorned with a frilled kerchief of soft white muslin, and with full gathers of muslin just below the elbow. The dress was neat, simple, eminently fresh and becoming.
Perhaps Tregenna's masculine eye did not take in all these details; but he was conscious that the whole effect was pleasing beyond anything feminine he had ever seen, and vastly superior to the modish charms of the Hurst Court ladies. He gave himself, however, little time for these reflections before a glance at the house behind her suggested to him a thought which he immediately put into the most matter-of-fact words.
"You stand high here, madam; that tower to the east of your house will give you a view over many miles. Will you favor me with your permission to go up thither for a few minutes, that I may take a reconnaissance of the country?"
By the startled look which instantly came into Joan's gray eyes, by the crimson flush which mounted to her forehead, Tregenna saw, to his intense annoyance, another proof that her sympathy with his foes went beyond the passive stage.
"Oh, you can't go into the tower, sir; at least" She hesitated a moment, evidently looking for an excuse, and then went on—"at least, in my father's absence. If you will come hither to-morrow, or—or" Tregenna noticed that at this point she sought the eyes of the woman with whom she had been talking, and who had withdrawn respectfully to a distance of some paces on his approach. "Or the day after. 'Tis a fair view, certainly, when there's no mist on the marshes; but hardly worth the trouble of climbing our staircase, which is encumbered by much lumber of my father's," she ended somewhat lamely, but recovering her composure.
Tregenna did not at once answer, but he glanced at the house with a scrutinizing eye. The western portion of the building, which was most modest in dimensions, had been the banqueting-hall of a mansion as far back as the time of King John. It had since that time gone through many vicissitudes, and was now divided into small chambers, with the ancient king-post of the banqueting-hall spreading its wide beams through the upper story. On the east side of the dwelling an addition had been made, taller than the more ancient portion, and crowned by a gabled roof of red tiles.
Over the whole house there hung a rich mantle of glossy dark ivy, which had grown into a massive tree over the more ancient part, and stretched its twining branches as far as the higher roof of the newer portion, leaving little to be seen of the structure but the windows, the knotted panes of which glistened like huge dewdrops in the setting sun.
Tregenna drew himself up. He took it for granted she did not intend him to use the Parsonage as a watch-tower, to descry the course the smugglers had taken.
"You are afraid, I suppose," said he sharply, "that I might find out the direction in which lie the haunts of 'free-trade?'"
Joan drew herself up in her turn. "Nay, sir," said she quietly, "those haunts are reached by now, I doubt not; and your friends the soldiers will ere long be returning."
"May be with a few of your friends, the free-traders, at their saddle-bow, madam," retorted the lieutenant hotly.
"Sir, you are insulting," said Joan.
"Nay, madam, there is no inference to be drawn from your speech and behavior in this matter but the one I draw."
"I wish you a good evening, sir," replied Joan, as, flashing upon him one look of indignant pride from her great brown eyes, she made him a most stately curtsey, with her arms folded across and her head erect, and sailed back into the house between the holly-bushes and the clipped yews.
There was nothing for Tregenna to do but to retire, after having returned her curtsey with a deep bow of corresponding stiffness. As he turned to descend the hill, he had to pass the woman who had been talking with Joan, and who had made way for him to converse with the young lady. He glanced at her in passing, but noted only that she was apparently of the small-farmer class, youngish rather than young, with a quiet, stolid country face, and sinewy, rustic hands and arms.
Her dress was that of her class, consisting of a thick dark stuff skirt drawn through the placket-holes, a coarse white apron, frilled white cap, a kerchief knotted on the breast, and long close mittens. She wore buckled shoes with stout heels, and carried a big basket on her arm.
There was altogether nothing more remarkable about her than an air of extreme cleanliness, neatness, and dignified respectability.
She dropped a curtsey to the gentleman as he went by, which he returned with a touch of the hat and a curt "Good evening." He was in no mood for any unnecessary exchange of civilities; for he judged by the glance Joan had thrown in the direction of this woman that, demurely respectable as she looked, she shared the universal sympathy with the wrong-doers whom it was his mission to root out of the land.
He had scarcely reached the bottom of the hill by the lane which formed an acute angle with the village street, when the soldiers, with the brigadier at their head, came trooping slowly through the village on their return journey. Alas! they had no captured outlaws at their bridle; they looked tired, hot, dispirited; their commander was swearing lustily, after the military fashion of the times; and the women of the village, keen-witted enough to guess that the squadron would be in an ill-humor, kept within doors, and satisfied their curiosity by furtive peeps from behind the drapery of their windows.
The brigadier perceived the lieutenant, called "Halt," in a guttural voice, to his men, and proceeded to unfold his grievances, with a plentiful interlarding of strange oaths.
It was the old story that Tregenna knew so well: nobody had seen the smugglers; nobody had heard them; nobody had the least idea that there were such people about, or could give a suggestion as to the way they had gone.
"Ods my life, sir, we got to the river through following what I took for their trail; but there was no bridge, and I knew no means of getting across it, since the water appeared to be high and the stream swift. So, sir, the dd rascals may e'en be at t'other end of the county by this, and curse me if I see how they're to be got at, when every wench and every child in the place is on their side—damme!"
While he thus railed on, Tregenna became suddenly aware that he had an attentive listener in the person of the respectable-looking woman with the basket, who had evidently followed the lieutenant down the hill, and who now stood close to the bridle of the brigadier's charger, whose nose she presently began to caress with her broad brown hand.
The brigadier, incensed by what he considered a piece of gross impertinence on the part of one of the country-folk, drew back his horse with a jerk, and uttered an oath, bursting the next moment into a not very refined reproof for her temerity. The woman remained however entirely unmoved by it, and as the horse retreated, she followed him up, until she again stood close to the bit he was champing.
"May I make so bold as give him a drink of water, sir?" asked she, in a pleasant, deep voice, with less of the rough country accent than one would have expected from her. "Sure you've had a long, hard ride, and one should be merciful to one's beast."
Tregenna glanced at her with more interest than before. When she spoke, there was a certain quiet authority about her, most proper to the mistress of a farmhouse; and he perceived that she was younger by some years than he had supposed, not more than eight and twenty perhaps, and that her features, though not handsome, had a homely attraction of their own when animated by the action of speaking.
The brigadier, who, true to his profession, looked upon himself as a rake of the first water, cocked his hat, put his hand to his side, and leered at her with a roguish air, which was, in truth, not so fascinating in a gentleman of his portly build and purplish complexion as he fancied.
"You wenches in these parts are kinder to the beasts than to their riders, egad!" said he, with a shake of the head that set his bob-wig wagging merrily. "You don't offer me a drink; and if I was to beg such a favor of you as a word to tell me where to find the smugglers, I'll be sworn you'd give me a stare like the rest of 'em, and vow you'd never heard of the creatures!"
The woman listened to him with modest gravity, her face quite stolid, her eyes on the horse. Then she said, in a quiet, even tone, without either prudery or coquetry, but with an air of being much interested by what he said—
"Well, sir, I'm not going to tell you that. I know to my cost the things that go on in these parts, and that there's many a man ruined for an honest calling by being drawn in with these folks. You see, sir, it be in the air, and they breathe it in from childhood up, so to speak."
"That's it; that's it, my good woman!" cried the brigadier enthusiastically. "Egad, my lass, you're the first person I've met in these parts to admit even so much. Now tell me, think you not 'twould be better for you all if this thing, this free-trade, as they falsely call it, was rooted out?"
"Ay, sir, I do think so," said the woman earnestly. "And if I thought you'd do your work without too rough a hand, I'd lead you to their haunts myself."
"You would? You would?" cried the brigadier, with great eagerness. "Well, then, you may rely on me. If you'll but take me to the spot where they harbor, I'll be as gentle as a lamb with the ruff—I should say, with the poor misguided fellows."
"Come, sir, then, with me," said the woman, as she at once began to lead the way back through the village at a smart pace.
The brigadier turned his horse, and commanded his men to follow, and in a few minutes every horseman was again lost to sight at the bend of the road.
Lieutenant Tregenna, who had heard this colloquy, had been inclined to think, from the woman's manner, that in her indeed they had got hold of a decent-minded person who had no sympathy with the thieves.
But happening to glance up at the latticed window under the eaves of the nearest cottage he caught sight of two faces, a man's and a woman's, in convulsions of laughter. A cursory examination of such other windows as were near enough for him to see revealed similar phenomena.
And the question darted into his mind: Was the respectable-looking woman a friend of the smugglers? And was it her intention to lead the soldiers into an ambuscade?