"And I'd dance all night with both," he answered, "to be sure of a kind word from one of them in the morning. Do you really care to know what brought me here to-day, Mistress Nelly, and will you promise not to be hard on me if I tell you the truth?"
There was something ludicrous in the contrast of his rough exterior and timid manner while he spoke. He was a thick, square-made man, built for strength rather than activity, with a coarse though comely face, bearing the traces of a hard out-of-door life, not without occasional excesses in feasting and conviviality. His short grizzled hair made him look more than his age, but in spite of his clumsy figure, there was a lightness in his step, an activity in his gestures, such as seldom outlasts the turning point of forty. He was dressed in a full-skirted riding coat, an ample waistcoat that had once been black, soiled leather breeches, and rusty boots, garnished with a pair of well-cleaned spurs. Even on foot and up to his ankles in shingle, the man looked like a good rider, and a daring resolute fellow in all matters of bodily effort or peril, not without a certain reckless good humour that often accompanies laxity of principle and habits of self-indulgence. Many women would have seen something attractive even now in his burly strength and manly bearing; would have thought it worth while, perhaps, to wean him from his game-cocks and his boon companions, to tempt him back into the paths of sobriety, good government, and moderation. Among such reformers he would fain have counted Nelly Carew.
"You must tell it me in the house then," said she, rising hastily, and looking up at the sky, as if in dread of a coming shower. "It's time I was back with grandfather to give him his posset—I left it simmering on the hob more than an hour ago. Poor grandfather! He never complains, but I fear he frets if I keep away from him long. It must be dull for him sure, after the life he led once, dukes and princes and counts of the empire and what not—why, his very snuff-box belonged to Prince Eugene; and now he has nobody to speak to but me! Come in, Mr. Gale, and welcome; it will freshen him up a bit to see a new face, for I think he seems poorly this morning; you may walk straight into the parlour; you know your way well enough—while I go and look after supper. You'll eat a morsel with us, won't you, before your ride across the moor?"
Thus staving off any further explanation of the parson's hints, Nelly Carew led the way to the pretty and commodious cottage she called her home, stopping at the door to prune a broken twig from the myrtle that flourished by the porch as luxuriously as though North Devon were the South of France. Parson Gale, noting the trim garden, the well-ordered flower-beds, the newly-thatched roof, and general air of cleanliness and decency that pervaded the establishment, could not repress a strong desire to own the treasure thus comfortably bestowed. There was the casket. Would he ever succeed in carrying off its jewel to make the light of his own hearth the ornament on his own breast?
It seemed but yesterday she came here a smiling little lass of nine or ten, the darling of that worn-out soldier, whose life had commenced so eventfully, to dribble out its remaining sands in so quiet and obscure a retreat. Of old Carew's history he only knew thus much, that the veteran had passed a wild unbridled youth, a stormy and reckless manhood; that he had been tried for rebellion in '15, and risked his head, already grey, once more in '45, escaping imprisonment and even death on both occasions by the interposition of powerful friends and in consideration of his services on the Continent during the war. Even John, Duke of Marlborough, spoke out for the man he had seen at Malplaquet, holding his own with a pike against three of the Black Musketeers, and who carried his weapon in a cool salute to his commander the instant he had beaten them off. But Carew never prospered, despite his dauntless courage and undoubted military skill. Now some fatal duel, now some wild outrage on discipline and propriety brought him into disgrace with the authorities, and men who were unborn when he first smelt powder, commanded regiments and brigades, while he remained a simple lieutenant, with a slender income, a handsome person, and a reputation for daring alone.
Such characters marry hastily and improvidently. Carew's wife died when her first child was born, a handsome little rogue, who grew to man's estate the very counterpart in person and disposition of his graceless sire. He, too, married early and in defiance of prudential considerations, gambled, drank, quarrelled with his father, and lost his life in a duel before they had made friends. Old Carew's hair turned grey, and his proud form began to stoop soon after his son's death, for he loved the boy dearly, none the less perhaps because of those very qualities he thought it right to reprove. Then he took the widow and her little girl to live with him at a small freehold he inherited near Porlock; but young Mistress Carew did not long survive her husband, and the old man found himself at threescore years and ten the sole companion of a demure little damsel not yet in her teens, whose every look, word, and gesture reminded him cruelly of the son he had loved and lost.
These two became inseparable. The child's mother had imparted to her a few simple accomplishments—needlework, house-keeping, a little singing, a little music, the French language—as she had herself acquired it in a convent abroad; above all, those womanly ways that not one woman in ten really possesses, and that make the charm of what is called society no less than the happiness of home.
Little Nelly was still in her black frock when, taking a Sunday walk hand-in-hand with her grandfather, she looked up in his face, and thus accosted him:—