CHAPTER VIII.
We must now leave the party of Harbury Park for a short period; ay! and the party at the manor-house also, and go to a somewhat humbler scene, though not without its comforts and even elegances. We must also go back in point of time for somewhat more than one day, and yet not quite two, and ask the gentle reader to accompany us to a small but neat white stone house, situated among the woods, which we have mentioned as crowning the summits of the high cliffs that guarded the seashore. The house was perched upon the top of one of the highest of these, which overhung the group of small fishermen's cottages, in which the brother of good John Hailes dwelt, and at the distance of about a mile from John's own abode. Through the wood and down to the shore was practised a small, well-trimmed path, from the gate of the little garden over the face of the cliff, guarded in the precipitous parts by neat wooden balustrades, from which a pleasant scene of ocean and seacoast was visible at various points to the walker who chose to pause, and, leaning his folded arms upon the railing, gaze over at the view below.
There was no carriage-way through the wood up to the house, and for about a quarter of a mile there did not appear even a cart-road; but there was an excellent, well-beaten footpath, wide enough for a horse or two abreast, which led out into the way made for the wood-carts, and thence to a small by-road, by which the fishermen sent up their fish to the county town. Those were not days when everything on earth went to London.
The house itself was neat, the garden kept in beautiful order, and, in a warm situation upon a genial coast, was prolific of every kind of flower that had been at that time introduced into England; but although these were signs of a landsman's tastes, there were not wanting indications of nautical habits and associations. There was a tall pole, with a vane at the top, carried sufficiently high above the neighbouring trees to indicate truly what wind was blowing at the time. A difficulty having been found in carrying this pole up to the proper height in one piece, it had been managed as a mast, with a step and sort of topmast; and, to make the whole sure, various stays and braces had been carried down and made fast to the roof of the house; so that, seen over the tops of the trees, it appeared exactly like the mast of a ship rising out of the wood. In the garden was seen a little summer-house, formed from a large boat sawn in two; and at the other end of the house, opposite to the mast, was raised a flagstaff, with a block and pulley, for running up and down a flag upon occasion.
As far as description goes, this will be enough; and we will now immediately proceed to the dwellers in that house, and those with whom they were in communication about six-and-thirty hours previously to the period at which we last left Charles Tyrrell.
The evening sunshine was at that time bright over the world; but it reached not the house or the gardens around it, the trees throwing them at that period into shadow. The door, however, was open, and leaning against one of the doorposts was a stout, elderly man, strong in limb, rather bulky in size, and with a form apparently better adapted for the exertion of slow but vigorous efforts, than for anything like grace or activity. His features were good, though somewhat heavy; except, indeed, the eyes, which were keen and even sharp in expression. His complexion was of that dark brown hue which is generally called weather-beaten, and his hair was gray and rather short, except, indeed, behind, where it was gathered into an enormously long, thin queue, as was not uncommon among seamen at that time. This queue was bound tightly up with black riband, and in colour, form, and length resembled very much a lady's riding-whip of the present day.
He was raised upon the step of the door, and was, consequently, looking down upon another person, whom he spoke to, standing on the little gravel semicircle before the house, and who was also somewhat shorter than himself. His companion, however, was apparently not less endowed with corporeal vigour, and though not a young man by any means, was two or three years younger than the master of the house. He was broadly built, with large, strong limbs, a rough, hale countenance, and a frank, clear blue eye. There were one or two deep scars upon his face, which somewhat disfigured him; but in every other respect his countenance was good and pleasing, though there was about it, at the moment, a sort of thoughtfulness and sternness which betokened occupation with matters of importance and moment.
While talking to the other, he remained with his large brawny hands behind his back, looking up in the face of his companion with the queue, and the subject they spoke upon was marked as one of considerable interest, more by the pauses for reflection which took place between every sentence and its rejoinder, than by any great changes of expression called up in the speakers' countenances. They evidently understood each other perfectly, so that whatever was to be said was only, in fact, half expressed, and that in a particular slang of their own, eked out by a shrug of the shoulders, a lifting up of the eyebrows, or an occasional ejection of tobacco-juice from the mouth, which seemed to be looked upon as very expressive.
"Well, good-night, Master Longly," said the shorter of the two, taking a step back from the door and shaking hands with the other: "I'll do as you think fit, you know; but I think myself--the sooner gone the better."
"So do I, so do I," answered the other. "Good-night, old Will."
But, though they mutually wished each other good-night, they by no means parted, nor, indeed, seemed to have the slightest idea that they were going to part; for Master Longly, or, as the people about the country used generally to call him, Captain Long, descended from his doorway as the other turned away, and sauntered after him through the garden; while Old Will, as he termed him, perfectly sure that the other was following, continued his observations in rejoinder to what had taken place at the door.
Thus they walked on, putting one slow step before another till they reached the top of the cliff, where they again came to a pause and another discussion, and then breaking off again, old Will began to descend the zigzag towards the shore, while Longly, after taking two or three steps farther, leaned over the railing as he had done forty times before in the same circumstances, and continued talking with the other till he was half way down. Then came the quicker and final good-night, and Captain Long took his way back with a somewhat more rapid step.
The history of Captain Long, or, as he is more accurately described in some of his official papers, Mr. Thomas Longly, Master Mariner, is soon told: and it was a history then very common among the inhabitants of the seacoast of England. He had been a somewhat wildish youth in the nearest seaport town; had received a good plain education; but, smitten with a love of adventure, had volunteered on board a king's ship; for which his father, who was a dealer in marine stores, had instantly disinherited him, and declared he would cut him off with a shilling, in imitation of his betters. The boy was clever and active, bold and enterprising, but by no means fond of any kind of restraint, and with a strong spice of obstinacy in his nature, which, notwithstanding the subordination of a ship of war, made him set out with resisting and attempting to run as soon as he found that his majesty's service was not quite so easy and joyous a life as he had expected. He was not easily broken of such bad propensities; but the cat-o'nine-tails was applied, and not in vain, the youth soon finding that it was less disagreeable to obey and exert himself, than to make in effectual efforts at resistance and be flogged for his pains.
His commander was a smart officer, but a just man. Occasions of difficulty and danger soon presented themselves, for England was then in the midst of a hot war; and the boy proving active as a squirrel and bold as a lion, gained attention and distinction; was noticed by the captain, and after a few years' service turned out one of the best seamen in the ship. After a certain period of time, when he was returning to England from the West Indies, and it was supposed the crew were to be paid off, he was suddenly raised to the rank of a warrant officer, probably with a view of keeping him in the service.
On returning to his native town, however, he found his father at the point of death; a point at which men are not fond of executing all that they have threatened against their refractory children. The consequence was, as might have been expected, a full share of the worthy dealer's money came to his son Thomas; and, with a capital of a few thousand pounds, he thought it would be much better to set up in command of a ship of his own, than to continue any longer in the king's service when there was no war going on. He therefore bought shares in a large cutter, with the understanding that he was to command her, and set out as a trader, in which capacity, to say the truth, he was not particularly fortunate. He did not lose, indeed, but his gains at the end of four or five years had only been sufficient to enable him, in conjunction with the other shareholders, to abandon the cutter, and buy a handsome, well-built schooner.
Just about the same time, however, a fresh war broke out. Longly applied for letters of marque, mounted some handsome brass guns on the deck of his schooner, with some heavy caronades for close quarter, and set sail from the port with the determination of doing the enemy's commerce as much harm as possible. This sort of trade he understood much better than the other, and, consequently, he was far more fortunate. Captain Long became known upon the whole coast of France and England; and while the traders of Bourdeaux looked out with considerable apprehension for fear of meeting Captain Long on the high seas, the corsairs of St. Malo despatched some of their gallant skimmers of the ocean to look out for him, with the vain hope of bringing Captain Long into the French port. It is true, they caught him; but they formed, in their hunt for Captain Long, a strong resemblance to the old story in regard to catching a Tartar; for in one instance he sunk his adversary with every soul on board, and in another he brought his pursuer into the nearest English port.
He thus acquired a very comfortable little independence; but, at the same time, acquired habits of a somewhat marauding nature, mixing up in a strange compound the ideas of the merchant, and, with reverence be it spoken, the ideas of the pirate.
Two things, however, occurred to sober him at about the age of fifty; one was, a very severe fall, which left him stiff and less active for the rest of his life, and the other was the death of his wife, whom he loved as well as he could love anything, except his daughter. These circumstances induced him to give up the sea; and having nothing farther to care about or to provide for, he retired to the spot where we have introduced him to the reader, built the house that we have described, and gave himself up to rural life, with occasional little indications of his former habits and propensities breaking out, of a more serious kind indeed than his fondness for looking over the sea with a telescope, or having his own boat upon the shore below. He was very much loved and liked by all the neighbouring fishermen; and though he was a great man in their estimation, and not a little one in his own, yet he was too frank, and free, and open-hearted, to treat his neighbours as anything but messmates.
Leaving him, then, to return to his own dwelling, we shall take leave to walk into the little neat parlour thereof, and see who and what it contained. It was nicely and tastefully fitted up, with two or three detestably bad portraits of persons who might be Captain and Mrs. Longly in their best clothes, or any other person on earth that the spectator might choose to imagine; and besides these was a neat, small pianoforte, with a number of books, pretty little jars for flowers, various curiosities brought over by Longly himself from foreign countries in which he had carried on his various occupations, together with a number of minor objects, denoting taste and refinement.
The living beings whom Longly had left behind when he walked down with old Will, were three in number, the first of which lay upon the hearth-rug in the form of an immense tabby cat. The next that we shall specify was a remarkably pretty girl of about eighteen years of age, upon whose character, naturally wild, lively, and sportive, but sincere, affectionate, and generous, a couple of years spent at a boarding-school had grafted a certain degree of coquetry and affectation which certainly did not improve her, but which spoiled her less than might be imagined. This is very nearly enough of the character of Hannah Longly. She was, as we have said, remarkably pretty, full of grace and warm colouring, with dark eyes much larger than her father's, and deep brown hair, slightly approaching to auburn. She had in most things a natural good taste, and, notwithstanding having been at school, was not in reality vulgar, except inasmuch as the least approach to affectation of any kind is vulgar in itself.
The third person in the room is one whom we may have quitted rather too long, and who, on many accounts, deserved more particular and constant attention; this was no other than Everard Morrison, the old school companion of Charles Tyrrell. He was now sitting with Hannah Longly, well dressed, improved in health, and by no means a bad-looking young man, though still short, and apparently not very robust. He was just out of his articles as a lawyer's clerk, and in partnership with his father, and it was in his legal capacity that he had made acquaintance with Captain Longly, who, about a year before, had, by some unpleasant mistake, become embroiled with the officers of his majesty's customs. So confident were those officers that Longly had been engaged in some of the smuggling transactions which took place so frequently in the good old times, when no such thing as a coastguard was known, and which have somewhat decreased since its adoption, that nothing would prevent them from proceeding against him at law, and he was obliged to have recourse to Messrs. Morrison to do the best they could in his defence. Young Morrison exerted himself strenuously, and two or three times visited Captain Longly at his own dwelling. His visits there seemed even to increase his zeal; and the result was, that the captain was carried through triumphantly, vowing that it was entirely young Morrison's doing, and that there was one honest lawyer in the world.
Such a feeling naturally produced an inclination to see more of the young lawyer, and for some reason young Morrison very frequently availed himself of the old sailor's frank invitation, called upon him in the morning, dined with him if he had time, and even on one or two occasions slept in the house.
Hannah Longly was not sorry to have such a companion, and, to say the truth, was not sorry to be made love to in a quiet way. Though she was really a good girl, and neither fretted nor murmured, she did feel that the place where her father had fixed his abode was very lonely, and shut her off from any sort of society she could have enjoyed. She did also feel that, unless by some miracle not to be expected, a young man equal to herself in taste and feelings were suddenly brought and dropped down like an aerolite in the neighbourhood, the only alternative before her was living on in single blessedness, or marrying the richest fisherman she could find. Some of the officers who had known Longly at a former period came to see him from time to time, it is true, and one old gentleman, a post-captain in the navy, who had been lieutenant of Longly's first ship, fell desperately in love with her at the age of sixty-five, and offered to marry her, holding out the prospect of her becoming, at some future time, Mrs. Admiral Jackson; but Hannah's ambition was not of that kind, and she refused decidedly and at once. She had occasionally seen others, too, at her father's house, with whom the ambition of the heart might have been satisfied; but they either only strayed for a brief call at the house of the well-known old sailor, or showed themselves merely disposed to trifle with pretty Hannah Longly as an inferior. To this she was not disposed to submit, feeling that the way by which a woman should be won does not begin in insult, even though the shade be light.
She was well pleased, then, upon all occasions, to see Everard Morrison. She esteemed him highly, she liked him much, and he was daily making progress in her regard; so that, at the time we speak of, though he had not asked her and she had not consented, all things bade fair to make her very soon the wife of a thriving young lawyer in a country town.
The fact of Captain Longly having gone out to speak with old Will, as he was called, left young Morrison a favourable opportunity for telling his tale and exchanging vows with Hannah Longly, an opportunity which few men would have let slip, especially when, from the spot in which he was seated, he saw the old gentleman saunter away with his companion towards the seacoast.
But Everard Morrison was a phenomenon in many respects. He was modest notwithstanding his profession, and he could not make up his mind to speak words which, though they might render Hannah Longly his wife, might, at the same time, deprive him of the pleasure he enjoyed from time to time in her society. He wished to speak, he longed to speak; but yet he could not make up his mind to do it: perhaps Hannah herself expected it; and certain it is that nothing which Everard said upon any other subject was either very applicable or very agreeable.
The matter was becoming awkward, and young Morrison was upon the very eve of putting an end to it by a bold effort of resolution, when her father appeared again beyond the rails of the garden, and at the very same moment a loud voice was heard shouting, "Ship, ahoy! hollah, Captain Long! Captain Long! pigtail! Hie! bring-to, bring-to!"
Captain Longly immediately halted in his advance, and turned to see who it was that thus hailed him; and Everard Morrison could see through the window a young man come up, dressed in a sailor's jacket and trousers, with a stick over his shoulder and a bundle on the hook of the stick, and certainly not giving more indications of being a gentleman by his dress than he had done by his salutation. But yet there was something in his manner and carriage, in his personal appearance altogether, we may say, which stamped upon him the mint mark of a higher station than that which he assumed; and Everard was not at all surprised when he heard Longly exclaim, "Why, master lieutenant, is that you? Who would suppose it in such a rig as that. Why, you look like a smart coxswain. Why, I haven't seen you, sir, since you got your rank. I hope it has sobered you."
Let it be noted, that in all the speeches of Captain Long were interspersed sundry expletives of a high flavour, which we have not thought it fit to repeat, and shall leave to the imagination of our readers.
"Ay, ay, captain," replied the lieutenant, "I have my own reasons for what I am about. I have been sobered enough by one thing or another, and what I want of you now is to know whether you will give me a bed and a dinner for a day or two."
"That I will, that I will," replied Longly; "I'll give you that, and more too, if you want it, for old acquaintance' sake; but come in, and we'll see about it."
"I sha'n't tire you out by staying too long," answered the other, and he followed Longly through the garden towards the house.
Everard Morrison was mortified and disappointed in every way. He was vexed with himself for not having seized the opportunity of proposing to Hannah which had been afforded to him. He was disappointed at another person, and that person a stranger, being obtruded upon them, and he was sufficiently in love to be apprehensive without a cause. He was not one of those, however, who suffer the emotions of the heart to appear very much on the countenance, and, therefore, remained calmly till Longly brought in the stranger, whom the young lawyer examined carefully from head to foot, concluding that, notwithstanding the worst that envy could say to disparage him, he was a very handsome man indeed, of about thirty years of age.
When all the little preliminaries had been settled, such as introducing Hannah Longly and Lieutenant Hargrave to each other, Everard Morrison put in his quiet word, saying, "I think, Mr. Longly, I shall go and get my horse and go home, for it is growing late, and I have some way to go, you know."
"Why, I thought you were going to stay all night, Master Everard," answered Longly. "Never mind the lieutenant; we've plenty of room; we'll stow him away in the back room, where the hammock swings."
"Not to-night, Master Longly," replied Everard; "I must go home to-night; but the day after to-morrow perhaps, I shall come and see you again;" and shaking hands with Hannah, with a slight pressure as he did so, just sufficient to make the colour mount a little higher in her cheeks, he left the room with a good-night to Longly and a bow to their new companion, somewhat stiff and stately indeed, and, finding his horse, was soon after seen riding away.
"Who the devil is that?" demanded Lieutenant Hargrave. "He seems mighty stately. Is that Sir Francis Tyrrell's son that I have heard so much talk about?"
"Oh, bless ye, no!" replied Longly. "Why, compared with young Tyrrell, that's but a sloop compared to a seventy-four. He's a wonderful nice young fellow though, that Everard Morrison. If it hadn't been for him, d--n me if I shouldn't have been in prison now, and, most likely, a bankrupt. He is young Everard Morrison, the lawyer's son, at Winsby."
"A lawyer!" cried the young officer. "Oh, curse the young shark! I wonder you let him into your doors. Don't look so angry, pretty Miss Hannah. What! I suppose this lawyer's a lover of yours. Never mind that, we'll make him walk a plank, and I'll console you."
"Come, come, no nonsense, Master Hargrave," rejoined Captain Long, seeing his daughter both vexed and angry at the young sailor's unceremonious familiarity. "That young Morrison is as fine a fellow as ever stepped, and brave though he's modest. Didn't I see him outface a dozen of the lawyers at least, and swear he would not have me wronged if there was law in the land. D--n me if it wasn't like a single ship fighting a whole fleet of the enemy. But he beat 'em all. And now, Mr. Hargrave, let's see what we can do to make you comfortable. Have you had any dinner?"
Lieutenant Hargrave acknowledged that he had had none; and anything that Longly and his daughter chose to do to make him comfortable, he took with the greatest coolness, without ever seeming to feel that he might be giving trouble. All that could be obtained of any kind he appeared very willing to receive; asked without ceremony, and made use of without any great apparent thankfulness. In fact, there was a sort of habitual selfishness sufficiently apparent in his whole demeanour to have been remarked by probably any other person than Longly himself, and which, for the first half hour or so, struck Hannah Longly considerably.
When he had made himself as comfortable as he could be, Lieutenant Hargrave thought that it might not be amiss to spend an hour or so in flirting with his host's pretty daughter, and he applied himself with diligence, and with success but too common in this life, to remove, by attention and flattery, any unfavourable impression he had made at first, and to rouse up a different feeling in its place. Although Longly seemed to treat him with such little ceremony, and, to say the truth, did look down upon him in various respects, inasmuch as he had known him as a youngster of a wild, thoughtless disposition in different scenes and times; had heard of his contracting large debts here and large debts there, and paying nobody; and, moreover, knew that, as a young man, he had committed a good many actions which had delayed his promotion, and deprived him of the esteem of his superior officers, yet Lieutenant Hargrave, by his rank in the service, by being the son of a person in a superior station, and by the good education which he had received and thrown away, conceived himself to be sufficiently above Captain Long and his daughter to treat them with perfect familiarity and ease.
When he found that Hannah however, was more inclined to give her attention to him when he spoke in a higher and more gentlemanly tone than that which he had assumed at first in order to make his conversation suit his company, as he thought, he changed that tone almost entirely, resumed the demeanour of a gentleman and a man of cultivated mind, talked to her on matters where it gave her pleasure to display her little store of knowledge, made her sing and play, and declared that, although he had heard all the first performers that the theatres of London, Paris, and Naples could produce, he had never heard a voice so sweet, an ear so just, or a taste so exquisite. Poor Hannah listened, and coloured, and believed, if not the whole, a considerable part; and, before the hour for retiring to rest, Lieutenant Hargrave was high in her good graces, and they were talking sentiment in very rapid career.
Arthur Hargrave retired to his room and laughed. He was a good deal struck, it is true, with Hannah Longly's beauty; but he had other objects in view at the time, and only thought of her as of one whose society might serve very pleasantly to pass the time that was not otherwise occupied. There were worse thoughts, perhaps more evil purposes, in his bosom; but they were at present vague, and to be contingent upon the degree of weakness which he found in his entertainer's child, though he smiled even now at the simple vanity which had been so easily beguiled, and doubted not that, with a little art, patience, and perseverance, that vanity and that simplicity might be used to lead her to anything that he pleased.
Hannah Longly, on her part, retired to rest, first thinking a good deal more than necessary of Arthur Hargrave; but with cooler reflection came the thoughts of Everard Morrison, and she began to feel sorry for what she had done, and more sorry for what she had felt. If there had been anybody near to reproach her with her conduct, she was just in the state of mind to pout and throw the blame upon him, saying, "Stupid fellow, why didn't he propose when he had an opportunity, then?" But nobody said a word except her own heart; and it went on reasoning the matter with her in so severe though calm a manner, that she could not sleep for a long while.
Old Longly himself was differently affected. "He's a bad one," he thought, as his mind turned to Arthur Hargrave; "he's a bad one, I've a notion. At all events, he's running ahead somewhat too fast with our Hannah. He sha'n't stay here long, I'll take care of that. However, one can't well turn him out before a day or two are over. But I must keep a good lookout ahead. That would never do. I'd rather she married Jim Wilson, the fisherman; but she'll never think of him, I dare say, though she seemed to haul her wind a little, too."
Early in the morning, as was his invariable custom, Longly was down in his garden, not exactly working therein, but rather enjoying; for there was not a little of the love for what is beautiful and graceful in the old sailor's mind; and the fresh, sparkling light of morning among the green shrubs and sweet flowers which his own hand had planted, was one of his chief delights.
After looking at this plant, however, and that plant, for about half an hour, he found himself insensibly approaching the garden gate, and his habitual impulse carried him through it and along the walk to the top of the cliff, He could not have sat down to his breakfast comfortably without his morning look at the sea; and there might be other feelings, too, a little concerned, with which we have nothing to do at this moment, as the only indications thereof, in the walk he took at present, were to be found in a slight deviation from the well-worn path which he usually followed. As soon as he had come within sight of the shore, then, he turned to the right for about two hundred yards along the top of the cliff, and paused at a spot where a projecting part of the crag formed a little nook or recess below, not big enough, indeed, to deserve the name of a bay, and never reached by the water but at times when spring tides were accompanied by high southwesterly winds.
Above that spot he paused, and suffering the telescope, his almost invariable companion, to drop by his side, gazed down upon a large mass of stones and seaweed on the shore. He was suddenly startled, however, by the sound of a footstep, and instantly the telescope went up to his eye, and was pointed towards a small vessel out at sea.
"Well, captain," cried the voice of young Hargrave, "good-morning to you. I could find no one in the house but the maid and the cook, and so, after giving each of them a kiss for good luck, I came out for a cruise; and so here you are."
"You had better mind where you cruise, though," muttered Captain Longly, in a low and angry voice, the tones of which were too indistinct for the other to hear; and seeing the old sailor still looking through his glass, the lieutenant asked, "Can you make her out?"
"The revenue cutter, I think," answered Longly; and, without more words, he turned back to the house.
Captain Long was evidently surly from some cause; and after doing all that he could during breakfast to make Hannah Longly in love with him, Arthur Hargrave announced that he was going out for a long walk up into the country on business, and would not be back till late.
Captain Long seemed not a little rejoiced to see him go, and even lent him a couple of guineas, which the other asked, with perfect confidence; but the old sailor added to his farewell a notice that he closed his doors at ten o'clock at night, and opened them again for nobody less than King George.