The Admiral's Daughter

by Margaret Stuart Lane

'No, Roger, no,' came Marion's whisper on the slope above, almost in earshot of the group in the lane. 'No.' Both her hands, white at the knuckles, gripped his sleeve, the boy dragging away from her. At that moment the leader of the soldiers caught sight of the two above. The young man's attitude and desire were clear to his eyes. A few low words passed between the men. One set his horse at the slope and was recalled; some urgency bade the group go on their way: one of the swift decisions that serve to toss a straw into the balance of fate. They turned their horses, the sailor running at the stirrup of his captor.

But the leader looked again, a searching look, at the motionless youth on the slope. And as he cantered off, Marion dropped the arm she held and stared after him, shivering slightly.

'I shall know him if I see him again, anyhow,' said Roger, smiling. 'Come, Mawfy, there's old Mother Poole sorely in need of comfort now.'

CHAPTER II

GARTH HOUSE

The little fishing village of Garth had two chief points of pride: its harbour and the family of Penrock. And it was not the way of the villagers to hide their light under a bushel. They wore their honours with a flourish and imposed them on the public eye. Let a fishing vessel manned by Devon men (the natural and first-hand enemies of the Cornish) be driven before a sudden gale to take shelter in Garth harbour, and her crew by so much as a glance doubt the superiority of that harbour, then those unhappy sailors would find that the rocks without the river mouth had been a kinder refuge. And no one knew better than the fishing folk of Garth how the fortunes of the village had for generations been linked with those of the grey, gabled house nestling in its combe a mile up the valley.

They might rail at the 'Admur'l' as they liked; it was an affectionate raillery. That lean, wooden-legged figure stumping about the terrace at Garth House was their hearts' lord. Like the king, he could do no wrong. Whether his eyes twinkled with merriment or took on that round, unwinking stare which was a sign of anger, it was all one to the villagers. They could as ill have spared sun and wind as the Admiral, were he cross or hearty. In fact, if a week went by without a sight of him 'down along,' they grew uneasy; and when his rosy face, with its overhanging brows and huge nose, looking like that of a benevolent eagle, peered in at their casements, and a deep voice—as of the sea heard through a fog—boomed out a greeting, all would be well again. His clumping tread heard on the cobblestones would bring the children from the farther cottages with their fingers tugging their forelocks, and crying, ''Ere be the Admur'l, Mother. Marnin', Admur'l'; and down on the quay, 'Will 'ee be telling us now, Admur'l, what so be's wrong with they ropes? Un don't knot like as they belong to do.'

Had the Admiral by some miracle been able to change the flagstones of his terrace for the decks of a ship, all Garth would have flocked to his standard. But the Admiral's fighting days were over. He had seen his last shot fired in an engagement with the Dutch, twenty years earlier, and few Garth seamen had cared to enlist in another's service. Fishing was now the villagers' daily employment, fighting roving French Channel pirates their recreation. And if sometimes their little craft ran up the river with cargoes of a more mysterious nature than the harvest of the sea, the wise Admiral was sure to know nothing about it.

For that matter, in these days he had ample for his employment. There were the affairs of the parish over which, with Parson Stowe at his elbow as chancellor, he cast an imperial eye. He was a county magistrate, and since the Restoration that had been no easy office. There were the lands and farming of Garth to supervise. Moreover, since the death of my lady, now ten years ago, he had been father, mother, and tutor to his little daughter Marion.

The Admiral had always been a headstrong, self-willed man, hard to move except (as his wife knew) by love, or (as his servants knew) by laughter. And when my lady died—leaving him harder stricken by the blow than folk knew—he would consider no plans but his own for the upbringing of his little daughter. The two were constantly together; the child, with her solemn white little face which could suddenly break into heartening laughter—a trick inherited from her father—running backwards and forwards from the length of his hand as they walked about the garden or watched the men busy in the fields; the child sitting at a high chair by her father's place at table, struggling with the food he piled on her plate at dinner, or at supper eating her bread and milk from the silver bowl that bore her mother's name. Every night the Admiral stumped upstairs to kiss her face on the pillow and draw the curtains close, his 'good-night' booming on the stairs after he had closed the door with something of the thunder of the tides on the headlands below.