Kindly hands had welcomed him. An old fisherman and his wife, without children or relations of their own, had loved and cherished the boy to manhood. But they were dead and gone, and for years since he had lived his life alone, till Arabella Bond, the beauty of the village, had been won by the very grace and refinement which had made him alien and outcast from the other villagers.
Indeed, with the single exception of the couple who had reared him, Arabella had been his first and only friend. Three or four years older than himself, she had, as a child, taken him under her special protection, comforting him in all his troubles, and waging incessant war with the lads of the village on his behalf. Her strong motherly instincts, fired as time went on by a warm passion of love, had gone out in pity to the youth who had been flung, alien and isolated, among a world of strangers. And her devotion never wavered. Even now her feeling towards him was rather that of the mother than the wife, and, but for her, his prayer would have been that the sea might yet reclaim its gift of life. Nameless and unknown, he was from the first an object of suspicion to the villagers. Add to which, he had been cast up by the sea, and the awe which clings round such a one, and the peril that it foreshadows to his preservers, were for ever present in their minds.
With a race of men animated by their traditions King Arthur himself, if he had been cast upon their shore, would never have gained their confidence. And with Ned’s growth in years the feeling against him had only become stronger and more accentuated. A high regard for honour—honour in every word and deed—was the dominant characteristic of his life, shown in nothing more conspicuously than in his scrupulous honesty respecting all property recovered from the sea. Such views were in hopeless antagonism to all the traditions of the neighbourhood, where the villagers, whose ancestors may have smuggled a little in the days gone by, held a rooted belief that the sea was their property, placed where it was by a beneficent Providence to afford them a livelihood, and sometimes, though not half so often as they wished, to present them with an unearned increment in the shape of a wreck and the perquisites that followed from it.
And, most unfortunately for Ned, no one held this faith with stronger persistence than Arabella’s mother. To discover, if possible, the owner of such property, or to report it to the recognised authorities would have been judged by her a superlative act of folly, a wanton flying in the face of Providence, which sent them such windfalls, as it did the mackerel and the herrings—only with less regularity. It may be, I fancy, that the northern nations, from whom Ned inherited his birthright, are as punctilious in the practice of honour as southerners are in the profession of it.
Anyhow, Ned and his folly were perpetual irritants to Arabella’s mother. And matters were in no wise improved when he became a suitor for her daughter’s hand. Even his personal appearance and his love-locks, “clustering o’er his fair forehead like a girl’s,” came in for her abuse. “A fine gen’elman you be,” she would say, “to teach us all our duties, and make out as how we be thieves an’ liars. Why, you bain’t no better nor a gal—an’ a poor ’un at that—wi’ all your long hair a-danglin’ about your forehead, an’ no strength in ye to pull an oar or gi’ a hand to the fishin’-tackle or the lobster-pots. Blest if I can tell what Arabella sees in ye. But there—there’s no accountin’ for tastes. ’Twas sommat liker to a man that would ha’ suited I, when I was lookin’ round me for a husband.”
Then Arabella would heal the wound and say: “Never ’e mind, Ned. ’Tis because ye be so much better than they that they hates ye so cruel. Wi’ yer fine language and looks that shames ’em all every time they meets ye, no wonder they can’t stomach ye. Not but what you be learnin’ a lot of our talk now along, and ye clips yer words fine, same a’ most as we does. May be they’ll think the better of ye by and bye, when you gets a bit liker to ’em. Not that I wishes it, my dear, never think it. ’Tisn’t I that would have loved ye so fondly if ye hadn’t been better an’ cleverer an’ handsomer than all the rest of ’m.”
But to-day all past animosities were forgotten, and the company who had been called to the festivities could only bethink themselves of the arrangements provided for their comfort.
CHAPTER XIV
“’Tis a rare sight this, granfer, for a weddin’. I only wish as how my old mother what’s bedridden upstairs—her’s ninety, come Thursday—could crawl down along and glad her aged eyes wi’ it. But that’s more a’most than we can claim o’ the Almighty, seein’ she’s kept her bed now for nigh on five years. Not but what she’s rare and hearty still, and can eat her bread an’ cheese and drain a pot of beer most as well as I can. ’Tis a wonderful strong and lusty constitution, to be sure. Her eyesight don’t fail her—only her limbs ain’t so strong as once they was. And no wonder, what wi’ lyin’ a-bed all this ’ere time, which she thinks more comferable and gives less trouble. Wi’ her pipe, too, most allus a goin’, and some day there’ll be the ’ouse o’ fire along o’ it, I’m afeard. And how cleverly she do hid’ en, to be sure—right under piller or blanket ’e goes, smokin’ hot—soon as ever she hears passon’s footstep on the stairs. Talk of good ’bacca hurtin’ a man. They Lunnon doctors should come and ha’ a look at she, and they’ll see an ole woman what’s smoked her ounce of shag a day for twenty years to my sure and sartain knowledge.”
“Aye, ’tis a grand sight truly this ’ere weddin’, and a credit to the village and yerself, Michael. Such a company o’ rare young maids and lusty young fellows I don’t know as ever I see’d congregated together in one room. And the beer and the sperrits you’ve provided for ’em! I’ve been into that there wash-house of yourn, and made glad my eyes wi’ as rare a cask of strong beer—none of your fourpenny ale, I allow—and as neat a keg o’ sperrits as ever I cast eyes on. The wenches to-night need have comeliness and grace to tempt the young fellows out o’ that there shed. For ale and sperrits is better nor beauty, Michael; ’tis so at least when men be gettin’ in the vale, the likes o’ you and I. And what’s more, I’ll go and sample it, just that I may tell the others what ’tis like, ’fore as ever the dancin’ begins. Not but what I likes a funeral better nor a weddin’. ’Tis quieter and more sober-like, and you takes your vittles more peaceable. None of this ’ere het an’ dust an’ potheration what comes o’ the dancin’. No, gi’ I a funeral for comfort, specially when ye be a bit aged. Not but what ’tis disperitin’, and craves a mortal lot of stimmilent to carry one thro’ wi’ it. An’ some there be what doesn’t hold wi’ feastin’ on the dead. But ’tis mostly they of a savin’ sullen nature, what grudges the vittles, an’ finds no comfort in thanksgivin’ an’ the voice o’ merriment.”