Mary Anerley by Richard Doddridge Blackmore (fun to read .txt) 📖

and well content with having done all that man could do, they set sail again in the dusk of the night, and forged their way against a strong ebb-tide toward the softer waters of Bridlington, and the warmer comfort of their humble homes.


CHAPTER XVII


DELICATE INQUIRIES

A genuine summer day pays a visit nearly once in the season to Flamborough; and when it does come, it has a wonderful effect. Often the sun shines brightly there, and often the air broods hot with thunder; but the sun owes his brightness to sweep of the wind, which sweeps away his warmth as well; while, on the other hand, the thunder-clouds, like heavy smoke capping the headland, may oppress the air with heat, but are not of sweet summer's beauty.

For once, however, the fine day came, and the natives made haste to revile it. Before it was three hours old they had found a hundred and fifty faults with it. Most of the men truly wanted a good sleep, after being lively all the night upon the waves, and the heat and the yellow light came in upon their eyes, and set the flies buzzing all about them. And even the women, who had slept out their time, and talked quietly, like the clock ticking, were vexed with the sun, which kept their kettles from good boiling, and wrote upon their faces the years of their life. But each made allowance for her neighbor's appearance, on the strength of the troubles she had been through. For the matter of that, the sun cared not the selvage of a shadow what was thought of him, but went his bright way with a scattering of clouds and a tossing of vapors anywhere. Upon the few fishermen who gave up hope of sleep, and came to stand dazed in their doorways, the glare of white walls and chalky stones, and dusty roads, produced the same effect as if they had put on their fathers' goggles. Therefore they yawned their way back to their room, and poked up the fire, without which, at Flamborough, no hot weather would be half hot enough.

The children, however, were wide-awake, and so were the washer-women, whose turn it had been to sleep last night for the labors of the morning. These were plying hand and tongue in a little field by the three cross-roads, where gaffers and gammers of by-gone time had set up troughs of proven wood, and the bilge of a long storm-beaten boat, near a pool of softish water. Stout brown arms were roped with curd, and wedding rings looked slippery things, and thumb-nails bordered with inveterate black, like broad beans ripe for planting, shone through a hubbub of snowy froth; while sluicing and wringing and rinsing went on over the bubbled and lathery turf; and every handy bush or stub, and every tump of wiry grass, was sheeted with white, like a ship in full sail, and shining in the sun-glare.

From time to time these active women glanced back at their cottages, to see that the hearth was still alive, or at their little daughters squatting under the low wall which kept them from the road, where they had got all the babies to nurse, and their toes and other members to compare, and dandelion chains to make. But from their washing ground the women could not see the hill that brings to the bottom of the village the crooked road from Sewerby. Down that hill came a horseman slowly, with nobody to notice him, though himself on the watch for everybody; and there in the bottom below the first cottage he allowed his horse to turn aside and cool hot feet and leathery lips, in a brown pool spread by Providence for the comfort of wayworn roadsters.

The horse looked as if he had labored far, while his rider was calmly resting; for the cross-felled sutures of his flank were crusted with gray perspiration, and the runnels of his shoulders were dabbled; and now it behooved him to be careful how he sucked the earthy-flavored water, so as to keep time with the heaving of his barrel. In a word, he was drinking as if he would burst--as his hostler at home often told him--but the clever old roadster knew better than that, and timing it well between snorts and coughs, was tightening his girths with deep pleasure.

"Enough, my friend, is as good as a feast," said his rider to him, gently, yet strongly pulling up the far-stretched head, "and too much is worse than a famine."

The horse, though he did not belong to this gentleman, but was hired by him only yesterday, had already discovered that, with him on his back, his own judgment must lie dormant, so that he quietly whisked his tail and glanced with regret at the waste of his drip, and then, with a roundabout step, to prolong the pleasure of this little wade, sadly but steadily out he walked, and, after the necessary shake, began his first invasion of the village. His rider said nothing, but kept a sharp look-out.

Now this was Master Geoffrey Mordacks, of the ancient city of York, a general factor and land agent. What a "general factor" is, or is not, none but himself can pretend to say, even in these days of definition, and far less in times when thought was loose; and perhaps Mr. Mordacks would rather have it so. But any one who paid him well could trust him, according to the ancient state of things. To look at him, nobody would even dare to think that money could be a consideration to him, or the name of it other than an insult. So lofty and steadfast his whole appearance was, and he put back his shoulders so manfully. Upright, stiff, and well appointed with a Roman nose, he rode with the seat of a soldier and the decision of a tax-collector. From his long steel spurs to his hard coned hat not a soft line was there, nor a feeble curve. Stern honesty and strict purpose stamped every open piece of him so strictly that a man in a hedge-row fostering devious principles, and resolved to try them, could do no more than run away, and be thankful for the chance of it.

But in those rough and dangerous times, when thousands of people were starving, the view of a pistol-butt went further than sternest aspect of strong eyes. Geoffrey Mordacks well knew this, and did not neglect his knowledge. The brown walnut stock of a heavy pistol shone above either holster, and a cavalry sword in a leathern scabbard hung within easy reach of hand. Altogether this gentleman seemed not one to be rashly attacked by daylight.

No man had ever dreamed as yet of coming to this outlandish place for pleasure of the prospect. So that when this lonely rider was descried from the washing field over the low wall of the lane, the women made up their minds at once that it must be a justice of the peace, or some great rider of the Revenue, on his way to see Dr. Upandown, or at the least a high constable concerned with some great sheep-stealing. Not that any such crime was known in the village itself of Flamborough, which confined its operations to the sea; but in the outer world of land that malady was rife just now, and a Flamborough man, too fond of mutton, had farmed some sheep on the downs, and lost them, which was considered a judgment on him for willfully quitting ancestral ways.

But instead of turning at the corner where the rector was trying to grow some trees, the stranger kept on along the rugged highway, and between the straggling cottages, so that the women rinsed their arms, and turned round to take a good look at him, over the brambles and furze, and the wall of chalky flint and rubble.

"This is just what I wanted," thought Geoffrey Mordacks: "skill makes luck, and I am always lucky. Now, first of all, to recruit the inner man."

At this time Mrs. Theophila Precious, generally called "Tapsy," the widow of a man who had been lost at sea, kept the "Cod with a Hook in his Gills," the only hostelry in Flamborough village, although there was another toward the Landing. The cod had been painted from life--or death--by a clever old fisherman who understood him, and he looked so firm, and stiff, and hard, that a healthy man, with purse enough to tire of butcher's-meat, might grow in appetite by gazing. Mr. Mordacks pulled up, and fixed steadfast eyes upon this noble fish, the while a score of sharp eyes from the green and white meadow were fixed steadfastly on him.

"How he shines with salt-water! How firm he looks, and his gills as bright as a rose in June! I have never yet tasted a cod at first hand. It is early in the day, but the air is hungry. My expenses are paid, and I mean to live well, for a strong mind will be required. I will have a cut out of that fish, to begin with."

Inditing of this, and of matters even better, the rider turned into the yard of the inn, where an old boat (as usual) stood for a horse-trough, and sea-tubs served as buckets. Strong sunshine glared upon the oversaling tiles, and white buckled walls, and cracky lintels; but nothing showed life, except an old yellow cat, and a pair of house-martins, who had scarcely time to breathe, such a number of little heads flipped out with a white flap under the beak of each, demanding momentous victualling. At these the yellow cat winked with dreamy joyfulness, well aware how fat they would be when they came to tumble out.

"What a place of vile laziness!" grumbled Mr. Mordacks, as he got off his horse, after vainly shouting "Hostler!" and led him to the byre, which did duty for a stable. "York is a lazy hole enough, but the further you go from it, the lazier they get. No energy, no movement, no ambition, anywhere. What a country! what a people! I shall have to go back and enlist the washer-women."

A Yorkshireman might have answered this complaint, if he thought it deserving of an answer, by requesting Master Mordacks not to be so overquick, but to bide a wee bit longer before he made so sure of the vast superiority of his own wit, for the long heads might prove better than the sharp ones in the end of it. However, the general factor thought that he could not have come to a better place to get all that he wanted out of everybody. He put away his saddle, and the saddlebags and sword, in a rough old sea-chest with a padlock to it, and having a sprinkle of chaff at the bottom. Then he calmly took the key, as if the place were his, gave his horse a rackful of long-cut grass, and presented himself, with a lordly aspect, at the front door of the silent inn. Here he made noise enough to stir the dead; and at the conclusion of a reasonable time, during which she had finished a pleasant dream to the simmering of the kitchen pot, the landlady showed herself in the distance, feeling for her keys with one hand, and rubbing her eyes with the other. This was the head-woman of the village, but seldom tyrannical, unless ill-treated, Widow Precious, tall and square, and of no mean capacity.

"Young mon," with a deep voice she said, "what is tha' deein' wi' aw that clatter?"

"Alas, my dear madam, I am not a young man; and therefore time is