CHAPTER XXXI
SORE TEMPTATION
When a man's spirit and heart are low, and the world seems turnedagainst him, he had better stop both ears than hearken to the sound ofthe sad sea waves at night. Even if he can see their movement, with themoon behind them, drawing paths of rippled light, and boats (with whitesails pluming shadow, or thin oars that dive for gems), and perhaps amerry crew with music, coming home not all sea-sick--well, even so, inthe summer sparkle, the long low fall of the waves is sad. But how muchmore on a winter night, when the moon is away below the sea, and wearywaters roll unseen from a vast profundity of gloom, fall unreckoned, andare no more than a wistful moan, as man is!
The tide was at quarter-ebb, and a dismal haze lay thick on shore andsea. It was not enough to be called a fog, or even a mist, but quiteenough to deaden the gray light, always flowing along the boundary ofsky and sea. But over the wet sand and the white frill of the gentlygurgling waves more of faint light, or rather perhaps, less of heavynight, prevailed. But Dan had keen eyes, and was well accustomed to thetricks of darkness; and he came to take his leave forever of thefishing squadron, with a certainty of knowing all the five, as if bydaylight--for now there were only five again.
As the tide withdrew, the fishing-smacks (which had scarcely earnedtheir name of late) were compelled to make the best of the world untilthe tide came back again. To judge by creakings, strainings, groanings,and even grindings of timber millstones [if there yet lives in Irelandthe good-will for a loan to us], all these little craft were makingdreadful hardship of the abandonment which man and nature inflicted onthem every thirteenth hour. But all things do make more noise atnight, when they get the chance (perhaps in order to assert their ownprerogative), and they seem to know that noise goes further, and assumesa higher character, when men have left off making it.
The poor young fisherman's back was getting very sore by this time, andhe began to look about for the white side-streak which he had paintedalong the water-line of that new boat, to distract the meddlesome gazeof rivals from the peculiar curve below, which even Admiral Darlinghad not noticed, when he passed her on the beach; but Nelson would havespied it out in half a second, and known all about it in the other half.Dan knew that he should find a very fair berth there, with a roll or twoof stuff to lay his back on, and a piece of tarpauling to draw over hislegs. In the faint light that hovered from the breaking of the waveletshe soon found his boat, and saw a tall man standing by her.
"Daniel," said the tall man, without moving, "my sight is very bad atnight, but unless it is worse than usual, you are my admired friendDaniel. A young man in a thousand--one who dares to think."
"Yes, Squire Carne," the admired friend replied, with a touch of hatprotesting against any claim to friendship: "Dan Tugwell, at yourservice. And I have thought too much, and been paid out for it."
"You see me in a melancholy attitude, and among melancholysurroundings." Caryl Carne offered his hand as he spoke, and Dan tookit with great reverence. "The truth is, that anger at a gross injustice,which has just come to my knowledge, drove me from my books and sadfamily papers, in the room beneath the roof of our good Widow Shanks.And I needs must come down here, to think beside the sea, which seems tobe the only free thing in England. But I little expected to see you."
"And I little expected to be here, Squire Carne. But if not making toobold to ask--was it anybody that was beaten?"
"Beaten is not the right word for it, Dan; cruelly flogged and lashed,a dear young friend of mine has been, as fine a young fellow as everlived--and now he has not got a sound place on his back. And why?Because he was poor, and dared to lift his eyes to a rich young lady."
"But he was not flogged by his own father?" asked Dan, deeply interestedin this romance, and rubbing his back, as the pain increased withsympathy.
"Not quite so bad as that," replied the other; "such a thing would beimpossible, even in England. No; his father took his part, as any fatherin the world would do; even if the great man, the young lady's father,should happen to be his own landlord."
A very black suspicion crossed the mind of Dan, for Carne possessed theart of suggesting vile suspicions: might Admiral Darling have discoveredsomething, and requested Dan's father to correct him? It was certainthat the Admiral, so kind of heart, would never have desired suchseverity; but he might have told Captain Tugwell, with whom he had atalk almost every time they met, that his eldest son wanted a littlediscipline; and the Club might have served as a pretext for this, whenthe true crime must not be declared, by reason of its enormity. Danclosed his teeth, and English air grew bitter in his mouth, as thisbelief ran through him.
"Good-night, my young friend; I am beginning to recover," Carnecontinued, briskly, for he knew that a nail snaps in good oak, when thehammer falls too heavily. "What is a little bit of outrage, after all?When I have been in England a few years more, I shall laugh at myselffor having loved fair play and self-respect, in this innocent youngfreshness. We must wag as the world does; and you know the proverb, Whatmakes the world wag, but the weight of the bag?"
"But if you were more in earnest, sir--or at least--I mean, if you werenot bound here by property and business, and an ancient family, andthings you could not get away from, and if you wanted only to be allowedfair play, and treated as a man by other men, and be able to keep yourown money when you earned it, or at least to buy your own victuals withit--what would you try to do, or what part of the country would youthink best to go to?"
"Dan, you must belong to a very clever family. It is useless toshake your head--you must; or you never could put such questions, soimpossible to answer. In all this blessed island, there is no spot yetdiscovered, where such absurd visions can be realized. Nay, nay, myromantic friend; be content with more than the average blessings ofthis land. You are not starved, you are not imprisoned, you are not evenbeaten; and if you are not allowed to think, what harm of that? If youthought all day, you would never dare to act upon your thoughts, andso you are better without them. Tush! an Englishman was never born forfreedom. Good-night."
"But, sir, Squire Carne," cried Dan, pursuing him, "there is onething which you do not seem to know. I am driven away from this placeto-night; and it would have been so kind of you to advise me where to goto."
"Driven away!" exclaimed Carne, with amazement. "The pride of thevillage driven out of it! You may be driving yourself away, Tugwell,through some scrape, or love affair; but when that blows over you willsoon come back. What would Springhaven do without you? And your deargood father would never let you go."
"I am not the pride, but the shame, of the village." Dan forgot all hishome-pride at last. "And my dear good father is the man who has done it.He has leathered me worse than the gentleman you spoke of, and withouthalf so much to be said against him. For nothing but going to the Clubto-night, where I am sure we drank King George's health, my father haslashed me so, that I am ashamed to tell it. And I am sure that I nevermeant to tell it, until your kindness, in a way of speaking, almostdrove it out of me."
"Daniel Tugwell," Carne answered, with solemnity, "this is beyondbelief, even in England. You must have fallen asleep, Dan, in the middleof large thoughts, and dreamed this great impossibility."
"My back knows whether it has been a dream, sir. I never heard of dreamsas left one-and-twenty lines behind them. But whether it be one, orwhether it be twenty, makes no odds of value. The disgrace it is thatdrives me out."
"Is there no way of healing this sad breach?" Carne asked, in a tone ofdeep compassion; "if your father could be brought to beg your pardon, oreven to say that he was sorry--"
"He, sir! If such a thing was put before him, his answer would be justto do it again, if I were fool enough to go near him. You are too mildof nature, sir, to understand what father is."
"It is indeed horrible, too horrible to think of"--the voice of thiskind gentleman betrayed that he was shuddering. "If a Frenchman did sucha thing, he would be torn to pieces. But no French father would everdream of
such atrocity. He would rather flog himself within an inch ofhis own life."
"Are they so much better, then, and kinder, than us Englishmen?" Inspite of all his pain and grief, Dan could not help smiling at thethought of his father ropesending himself. "So superior to us, sir, inevery way?"
"In almost every way, I am sorry to confess. I fear, indeed, inevery way, except bodily strength, and obstinate, ignorant endurance,miscalled 'courage,' and those rough qualities--whatever they maybe--which seem needful for the making of a seaman. But in good manners,justice, the sense of what is due from one man to another, in dignity,equality, temperance, benevolence, largeness of feeling, and quicknessof mind, and above all in love of freedom, they are very, very sadly farbeyond us. And indeed I have been led to think from some of your finerperceptions, Dan, that you must have a share of French blood in yourveins."
"Me, sir!" cried Dan, jumping back, in a style which showed the distancebetween faith and argument; "no, sir, thank God there was never noneof that; but all English, with some of the Romans, who was pretty nearequal to us, from what I hear. I suppose, Squire Carne, you thoughtthat low of me because I made a fuss about being larruped, the same asa Frenchman I pulled out of the water did about my doing of it, as if Icould have helped it. No Englishman would have said much about that;but they seem to make more fuss than we do. And I dare say it wasFrench-like of me, to go on about my hiding."
"Daniel," answered Caryl Carne, in alarm at this British sentiment; "asa man of self-respect, you have only one course left, if your fatherrefuses to apologise. You must cast off his tyranny; you must proveyourself a man; you must begin life upon your own account. No moreof this drudgery, and slavery for others, who allow you no rights inreturn. But a nobler employment among free people, with a chance ofasserting your courage and manhood, and a certainty that no man willthink you his bondslave because you were born upon his land, or in hishouse. My father behaved to me--well, it does not matter. He might haverepented of it, if he had lived longer; and I feel ashamed to speak ofit, after such a case as yours. But behold, how greatly it has beenfor my advantage! Without that, I might now have been a true and simpleEnglishman!"
Carne (who had taken most kindly to the fortune which made him anuntrue Englishman) clapped his breast with both hands; not proudly, asa Frenchman does, nor yet with that abashment and contempt ofdemonstration which make a true Briton very clumsy in such doings; whileDaniel Tugwell, being very solid, and by no means "emotional"--as peoplecall it nowadays--was looking at him, to the utmost of his power (whichwould have been greater by daylight), with gratitude, and wonder, andconsideration, and some hesitation about his foreign sentiments.
"Well, sir," said Dan, with the usual impulse of the British workman,"is there any sort of work as you could find for me, to earn my ownliving, and be able to think afterwards?"
"There is work of a noble kind, such as any man of high nature may beproud to share in, to which it is possible that I might get an entrancefor you, if there should be a vacancy; work of high character, such asadmits of no higgling and haggling, and splitting of halfpence, but anindependent feeling, and a sense of advancing the liberty of mankind,without risking a penny, but putting many guineas into one's own pocket,and so becoming fitted for a loftier line of life."
"Is it smuggling, sir?" Daniel asked, with sore misgivings, for he hadbeen brought up to be very shy of that. "Many folk consider that quitehonest; but father calls it roguery--though I never shall hear any moreof his opinions now."
"Sigh not, friend Daniel; sigh not so heavily at your own emancipation."Carne never could resist the chance of a little bit of sarcasm, thoughit often injured his own plots. "Smuggling is a very fine pursuit, nodoubt, but petty in comparison with large affairs like ours. No, DanTugwell, I am not a smuggler, but a high politician, and a polisher ofmankind. How soon do you think of leaving this outrageous hole?"
Despite the stupid outrage upon himself, Dan was too loyal and generousof nature to be pleased with this description of his native place. ButCarne, too quick of temper for a really fine intriguer, cut short hisexpostulations.
"Call it what you please," he said; "only make your mind up quickly. Ifyou wish to remain here, do so: a man of no spirit is useless to me.But if you resolve to push your fortunes among brave and lofty comrades,stirring scenes, and brisk adventures, meet me at six to-morrow evening,at the place where you chopped down my rails. All you want will beprovided, and your course of promotion begins at once. But remember,all must be honour bright. No shilly-shallying, no lukewarmness, noindifference to a noble cause. Faint heart never won fair lady."
The waning moon had risen, and now shone upon Carne's face, lighting upall its gloomy beauty, and strange power of sadness. Dan seemed to losehis clear keen sight beneath the dark influence of the other's gaze; andhis will, though not a weak one, dropped before a larger and stronger."He knows all about me and Miss Dolly," said the poor young fisherman tohimself; "I thought so before, and I am certain of it now. And, forsome reason beyond my knowledge, he wishes to encourage it. Oh, perhapsbecause the Carnes have always been against the Darlings! I neverthought of that before."
This was a bitter reflection to him, and might have inclined him theright way, if time had allowed him to work it out. But no such time wasafforded; and in the confusion and gratitude of the moment, he answered,"Sir, I shall be always at your service, and do my very best inevery way to please you." Caryl Carne smiled; and the church clock ofSpringhaven solemnly struck midnight.
Springhaven: A Tale of the Great War Page 31