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

going to see Mrs. Carroway now. Till then I suspend my judgment."

"Now that is what nobody should do, Mr. Mordacks. I have tried, but never found good come of it. To change your mind is two words against yourself; and you go wrong both ways, before and after."

"Undoubtedly you do, ma'am. I never thought of that before. But you must remember that we have not the gift of hitting--I might say of making--the truth with a flash or a dash, as you ladies have. May I be allowed to come again?"

"To tell you the truth, sir, I am heartily sorry that you are going away at all. I could have talked to you all the afternoon; and how seldom I get the chance now, Lord knows. There is that in your conversation which makes one feel quite sure of being understood; not so much in what you say, sir--if you understand my meaning--as in the way you look, quite as if my meaning was not at all too quick for you. My good husband is of a greater mind than I am, being nine-and-forty inches round the chest; but his mind seems somehow to come after mine, the same as the ducks do, going down to our pond."

"Mistress Anerley, how thankful you should be! What a picture of conjugal felicity! But I thought that the drake always led the way?"

"Never upon our farm, sir. When he doth, it is a proof of his being crossed with wild-ducks. The same as they be round Flamborough."

"Oh, now I see the truth. How slow I am! It improves their flavor, at the expense of their behavior. But seriously, madam, you are fit to take the lead. What a pleasant visit I have had! I must brace myself up for a very sad one now--a poor lady, with none to walk behind her."

"Yes, to be sure! It is very fine of me to talk. But if I was left without my husband, I should only care to walk after him. Please to give her my kind love, sir; though I have only seen her once. And if there is anything that we can do--"

"If there is anything that we can do," said the farmer, coming out of his corn-chamber, "we won't talk about it, but we'll do it, Mr. Moreducks."

The factor quietly dispersed this rebuke, by waving his hand at his two legs of mutton and the cod, which had thawed in the stable. "I knew that I should be too late," he said; "her house will be full of such little things as these, so warm is the feeling of the neighborhood. I guessed as much, and arranged with my butcher to take them back in that case; and he said they would eat all the better for the ride. But as for the cod, perhaps you will accept him. I could never take him back to Flamborough."

"Ride away, sir, ride away," said the farmer, who had better not have measured swords with Mordacks. "I were thinking of sending a cart over there, so soon as the weather should be opening of the roads up. But the children might be hankerin' after meat, the worse for all the snow-time."

"It is almost impossible to imagine such a thing. Universally respected, suddenly cut off, enormous family with hereditary hunger, all the neighbors well aware of straitened circumstances, the kindest-hearted county in Great Britain--sorrow and abundance must have cloyed their appetites, as at a wealthy man's funeral. What a fool I must have been not to foresee all that!"

"Better see than foresee," replied the farmer, who was crusty from remembering that he had done nothing. "Neighbors likes to wait for neighbors to go in; same as two cows staring at a new-mown meadow."


CHAPTER XLIV


THE WAY OF THE WORLD

Cliffs snow-mantled, and storm-ploughed sands, and dark gray billows frilled with white, rolling and roaring to the shrill east wind, made the bay of Bridlington a very different sight from the smooth fair scene of August. Scarcely could the staggering colliers, anchored under Flamborough Head (which they gladly would have rounded if they could), hold their own against wind and sea, although the outer spit of sand tempered as yet the full violence of waves.

But if everything looked cold and dreary, rough, and hard, and bare of beauty, the cottage of the late lieutenant, standing on the shallow bluff, beaten by the wind, and blinded of its windows from within, of all things looked the most forlorn, most desolate, and freezing. The windward side was piled with snow, on the crest of which foam pellets lay, looking yellow by comparison, and melting small holes with their brine. At the door no foot-mark broke the drift; and against the vaporous sky no warmer vapor tufted the chimney-pots.

"I am pretty nearly frozen again," said Mordacks; "but that place sends another shiver down my back. All the poor little devils must be icicles at least."

After peeping through a blind, he turned pale betwixt his blueness, and galloped to the public-house abutting on the quay. Here he marched into the parlor, and stamped about, till a merry-looking landlord came to him. "Have a glass of hot, sir; how blue your nose is!" the genial master said to him. The reply of the factor can not be written down in these days of noble language. Enough that it was a terse malediction of the landlord, the glass of hot, and even his own nose. Boniface was no Yorkshireman, else would he have given as much as he got, at least in lingual currency. As it was, he considered it no affair of his if a guest expressed his nationality. "You must have better orders than that to give, I hope, sir."

"Yes, sir, I have. And you have got the better of me; which has happened to me three times this day already, because of the freezing of my wits, young man. Now you go in to your best locker, and bring me your very best bottle of Cognac--none of your government stuff, you know, but a sample of your finest bit of smuggling. Why did I swear at a glass of hot? Why, because you are all such a set of scoundrels. I want a glass of hot as much as man ever did. But how can I drink it, when women and children are dying--perhaps dead, for all I know--for want of warmth and victuals? Your next-door neighbors almost, and a woman, whose husband has just been murdered! And here you are swizzling, and rattling your coppers. Good God, sir! The Almighty from heaven would send orders to have His own commandment broken."

Mr. Mordacks was excited, and the landlord saw no cause for it. "What makes you carry on like this?" he said; "it was only last night we was talking in the tap-room of getting a subscription up, downright liberal. I said I was good for a crown, and take it out of the tick they owes me. And when you come to think of these hard times--"

"Take that, and then tell me if you find them softer." Suiting the action to the word, the universal factor did something omitted on his card in the list of his comprehensive functions. As the fat host turned away, to rub his hands, with a phosphoric feeling of his future generosity, a set of highly energetic toes, prefixed with the toughest York leather, and tingling for exercise, made him their example. The landlord flew up among his own pots and glasses, his head struck the ceiling, which declined too long a taste of him, and anon a silvery ring announced his return to his own timbers.

"Accept that neighborly subscription, my dear friend, and acknowledge its promptitude," said Mr. Mordacks; "and now be quick about your orders, peradventure a second flight might be less agreeable. Now don't show any airs; you have been well treated, and should be thankful for the facilities you have to offer. I know a poor man without any legs at all, who would be only too glad if he could do what you have done."

"Then his taste must be a queer one," the landlord replied, as he illustrated sadly the discovery reserved for a riper age--that human fingers have attained their present flexibility, form, and skill by habit of assuaging, for some millions of ages, the woes of the human body.

"Now don't waste my time like that," cried Mordacks; and seeing him draw near again, his host became right active. "Benevolence must be inculcated," continued the factor, following strictly in pursuit. "I have done you a world of good, my dear friend; and reflection will compel you to heap every blessing on me."

"I don't know about that," replied the landlord. It is certain, however, that this exhibition of philanthropic vigor had a fine effect. In five minutes all the resources of the house were at the disposal of this rapid agent, who gave his orders right and left, clapped down a bag of cash, and took it up again, and said, "Now just you mind my horse, twice as well as you mind your fellow-creatures. Take a leg of mutton out, and set it roasting. Have your biggest bed hot for a lot of frozen children. By the Lord, if you don't look alive, I'll have you up for murder." As he spoke, a stout fish-woman came in from the quay; and he beckoned to her, and took her with him.

"You can't come in," said a little weak voice, when Mr. Mordacks, having knocked in vain, began to prise open the cottage door. "Mother is so poorly; and you mustn't think of coming in. Oh, whatever shall I do, if you won't stop when I tell you?"

"Where are all the rest of you? Oh, in the kitchen, are they? You poor little atomy, how many of you are dead?"

"None of us dead, sir; without it is the baby;" here Geraldine burst into a wailing storm of tears. "I gave them every bit," she sobbed--"every bit, sir, but the rush-lights; and them they wouldn't eat, sir, or I never would have touched them. But mother is gone off her head, and baby wouldn't eat it."

"You are a little heroine," said Mordacks, looking at her--the pinched face, and the hollow eyes, and the tottering blue legs of her. "You are greater than a queen. No queen forgets herself in that way."

"Please, sir, no; I ate almost a box of rush-lights, and they were only done last night. Oh, if baby would have took to them!"

"Hot bread and milk in this bottle; pour it out; feed her first, Molly," Mr. Mordacks ordered. "The world can't spare such girls as this. Oh, you won't eat first! Very well; then the others shall not have a morsel till your mouth is full. And they seem to want it bad enough. Where is the dead baby?"

In the kitchen, where now they stood, not a spark of fire was lingering, but some wood-ash still retained a feeble memory of warmth; and three little children (blest with small advance from babyhood) were huddling around, with hands, and faces, and sharp grimy knees poking in for lukewarm corners; while two rather senior young Carroways were lying fast asleep, with a jack-towel over them. But Tommy was not there; that gallant Tommy, who had ridden all the way to Filey after dark, and brought his poor father to the fatal place.

Mordacks, with his short, bitter-sweet smile, considered all these little ones. They were not beautiful, nor even pretty; one of them was