Joan, The Curate/Chapter 4
Tregenna debated with himself whether he should run after the brigadier and put him on his guard. But a moment's reflection convinced him that a word of warning from a young man like himself would be received with resentment rather than with gratitude by the old soldier. After all, the soldiers were well armed, and were presumably prepared for emergencies.
So he turned his back on the village, and made his way over the cliffs to the creek where the gig was lying to take him to the cutter.
It was at the mouth of the little ravine down which Parson Langney and his daughter had gone on the preceding evening.
It was dark in this cleft between the sandstone hills, dark and cool, with a breeze that rushed through from the sea and whistled in the scrubby pines and through the arching briers of the blackberry bushes. The stream which flowed swiftly down, making little trickling waterfalls from rock to rock, was swollen by recent rains, and made little patches of morass and mire at every few steps. The lieutenant found the water over his ankles half a dozen times on his way down. He had just come in sight of the opening where the gig lay when, drawing his right foot out of a mossy swamp that squelched under his tread, he saw, with a sudden chill, that his boot was dyed a deep, murky red.
Scenting another outrage, he uttered an exclamation, and looked about him. Trickling down the side of the ravine into the mud and water of the little patch of swamp was a dark red stream—and the stream was blood.
He uttered a cry, a call; no one answered. The next moment he was scrambling up the side of the ravine.
At the top, lying in a patch of gorse that fringed the edge of the broken cliff, was the body of a coastguardsman, his head nearly severed from his body, and with the blood still oozing from the ghastly wound which had killed him.
The poor fellow's hands and limbs were ice cold; he had been dead some time. A sheath-knife, such as sailors use, apparently the weapon with which the murder had been effected, lay among the bushes a few paces off.
The lieutenant ground his teeth. Not thieves alone, but murderers, were these wretches with whom the whole country-side was in league. He picked up the knife, with the dried blood upon it; there was a name scratched roughly on the blade, "Ben Bax." It was a name new to Tregenna, and strong as the clue seemed, it inspired him with but faint hopes of bringing the murderer to punishment. The whole neighborhood would conspire to shield the author of the outrage; the very fact of the knife, with the name on it, having been left behind, showed with what cynical impunity the wretches went about their work.
However, here was at last a deed which not even Squire Waldron could excuse, not even Joan Langney could palliate. The man was dead; there was nothing to be done for him. But information must be given of the murder without delay.
Tregenna was near enough to the gig to hail the men in charge of it, and these hurried up to the spot without delay.
They knew of the raid, but not of the murder. During the lieutenant's absence a suspicious-looking sloop had been sighted at anchor some little distance away. A watch had been kept upon her from the cutter, and a boat seen to push off and make for the marshes.
The cutter's crew had manned a boat and given chase, only to find that they had been drawn off in pursuit of a decoy craft, containing nothing contraband, while the men remaining on the cutter had the mortification to see a second boat, piled high with kegs and full of smugglers armed to the teeth, row up the creek, land crew and cargo, and then return to the sloop, exchanging shots with the cutter's men, without effect on either side.
The cutter's men, however, had seen nothing of the murder, for the irregularities of the ground and the scrubby undergrowth of gorse and bramble had hidden the struggle from their sight, though, but for this circumstance, the spot would have been within the range of their telescopes.
Lieutenant Tregenna lost not a moment in returning to Hurst, to report the outrage to Squire Waldron, whose lenity could not afford to excuse such a barbarous act as this on the part of his free-traders.
He went by the shortest way this time, taking the foot-track over the hills, by which Parson Langney and his daughter had come on the previous night.
Perhaps the ghastly sight he had just witnessed had sharpened his faculties; for before he had gone far over the worn grass of the path he caught sight of some marks which arrested his attention. Stooping to look at them, and then kneeling on the short turf, peering closely at the ground, he soon satisfied himself that the marks were bloodstains, and that they followed the course he was taking.
Feeling sure that he was on the track of another piece of the free-traders' sanguinary work, he went back on his steps, and traced the bloodstains to a thicket by the side of the footpath, where there were traces, in broken branches and down-trodden bracken, of the wounded creature, whether man or animal, having hidden or rested.
And then it flashed suddenly across his mind that it was near this spot that the smuggler must have stood at whom he himself had, on the previous evening, fired with what he had believed at the time to be good effect.
If this were so, and if this were the trail of the wounded man, he might be able, by following it up, to find at least one of the guilty fraternity, and bring him to justice.
Fired with this belief, which was like a ray of golden hope in the black despair which had been settling on him, he turned again, and following the track of the bloodstains, which were dry, although evidently recent, he went steadily on in the direction of Hurst, looking always on the ground, and not noticing at first whither the track was leading him.
It was with a start and a sudden chill that he presently recognized, on raising his head when the ground began to rise, that it was to the Parsonage that the marks led.
To the Parsonage—where he had stood talking to Joan Langney that afternoon! For a moment he felt sick, and faltered in his purpose. He did not want to bring shame, disgrace, upon that house of all others. Yet what was to be done? If she and her father were indeed harboring one of the ferocious pack with whom he and his men had been in conflict on the preceding night, why should he hesitate to accuse them of the fact, and to demand that the rascal should be handed over to justice?
He was sorry to have to do it, almost passionately sorry; for even Joan's prevarication, her defense of the outlaws, her defiance of himself, had not availed to destroy the admiration he felt for the handsome, fearless maiden who was her father's right hand, and who was ready to dare all dangers in the cause of what she considered her duty.
But, then, there was his own duty to be considered. And that demanded that he should seize the smallest clue to the authors of the outrages which followed one another thick and fast, and showed an almost inconceivable audacity on the part of the smugglers.
He marched, therefore, after a few minutes' hesitation, boldly upwards, and following the track of the bloodstains still, found himself, in a few minutes, not at the front of the house, where he had been that morning, but at a garden-gate at the back.
He lifted the latch and entered. The bloodstains were faintly visible in the dusk, on the gravel of the path that took him up to the back door of the house.
And there, on the very doorstep, was a keg of contraband brandy.
The sight of this gave Tregenna fresh nerve; and he knocked with his cane loudly at the door.
It was opened by Joan herself.
It was almost dark by this time; but he saw the look of horror and dismay which flashed across her face when she saw who her visitor was. Her glance passed quickly to the keg on the step below, but only for a moment. Then, without appearing to notice that very suspicious article, she addressed Tregenna, not discourteously, but with decided coldness.
"What is your pleasure, sir? Are you come to see my father? He is not yet returned."
"I am not come to see your father, madam, but another person who is harboring beneath this roof; the smuggler who is taking refuge here from the consequences of his ill deeds."
She was taken by surprise, and the look which crossed her candid face betrayed her.
"'Tis in vain for you to deny it, madam," pursued Tregenna, boldly, "for I have proof of what I say."
There was a short pause, and then Joan said steadily—
"I do not deny it."
Certain as he had felt of the truth of his surmise, Tregenna felt that his breath was taken away for a moment by this cool confession. He was shocked, grieved, through all the triumph he felt at having, as he thought, at last run his prey to earth.
"You deny not, madam," he went on, in an altered voice, "that you have beneath your roof a thief, and if not a murderer, at least an associate and accomplice of murderers?"
"A murderer! No, I will not believe that," cried Joan, warmly.
"Well a smuggler, if that name please you better, though in truth there's mighty little difference between them. I am come, then, madam, to see this smuggler, and to endeavor to find out whether he is the man that cruelly stabbed to death a poor coastguardsman but a couple or so of hours ago."
"It was not he," said Joan, hastily. "He hath been here since last night."
"Ah! then he was engaged in the fight with us last night; and 'twas he, doubtless, whom I shot in the leg as he got away."
"And is not the wound, think you, sir, a sufficient injury to have inflicted on him, that you must relentlessly track him down for fresh punishment?"
"Madam, 'tis no matter of personal feeling; 'tis in the king's name, and on the king's behalf, I charge you to give him up to justice."
"Then, in the name of justice and of humanity, I refuse!" said Joan, passionately, as she threw her handsome head back, and fixed upon him a look of proud defiance. "The man who takes shelter in my father's house, should be safe there, were he the greatest criminal on earth; and how much more when he comes bleeding from a wound inflicted by the men who should be our protectors!"
Exasperated as Tregenna was by the difficulties which she put in his way, he could not help admiring her spirit. He answered more mildly than he would have done had her defiant speech been uttered by another mouth—
"Nay, madam, you will not suffer us to protect you from the wrong-doers and their works; you side with them, against us and the law!"
"Who is that talks of the law?" cried a cheery voice from the narrow hall behind Joan.
And Parson Langney, in a very genial mood, having but just returned from Hurst Court and the merrymakers there, presented himself at the doorway where his daughter made way for him.
"You have a smuggler here, sir, whom I beg you to give up to justice," said Tregenna. "I can prove that he hath taken a foremost part in a raid and a fight with my men; and sure Miss Joan may rest satisfied with what you have done for him, and let justice take its course now."
The parson glanced at his daughter with a change of countenance—
"Well," said he, "the soldiers are at Hurst Court; bring them hither, and make a search of my house, if you please. You will find but a poor fellow that lies sick with a wound in his leg. I fear me poor Tom will never live to take his trial if he be moved from where he lies with the fever that is on him now."
"He shall be used with all gentleness, sir, I promise you. And sorry am I to have to intrude upon you and your kind charity in this manner. But you are aware, sir, that I must do my duty."
"Ay, sir, as we do ours," replied the parson, sturdily. "We ask not what a man has done when he comes to us for help. We ask but what we can do for him, be he friend or be he foe."
"I know it, sir. I have experienced your kindness—and Mistress Joan's."
The young lady now stood a little in the background, looking anxious and perturbed. She hardly glanced at him when he uttered her name.
"You will pardon me, sir, for being forced to incommode you thus."
"You must do your duty, sir," retorted Parson Langney, dryly.
"And you will admit us when we come with a warrant?"
"Ay, sir."
Tregenna bowed and withdrew. Halfway down the garden path he heard a noise behind him, and turned. Parson Langney was busy rolling the keg of brandy into his house. On meeting the lieutenant's eyes, the parson, hardly pausing in his labor, sang out with much simplicity—
"Tis but the physician's fee, sir. And sure, the laborer is worthy of his hire!"
And with that, he gave the keg a final roll, got it within doors, and drew the bolt.