by Joan Smith
"I am a fool,” I replied. “And will be a very cold fool Monday morning with the window open all night. Never mind, go on with you. I'll open the window before I leave. Can I give you a ride home, Jem? No—we'd better not be seen together,” I decided. Already my mind was turning devious on me.
"You're awake on all suits, miss. We'll be frowning daggers at each other anytime we meet, but we thank ye kindly."
He went off home on foot, and I let him get well away before I left the school myself. Being an accessory before the fact was a larger, more serious crime than merely letting on I had not seen the boys, and it bothered my conscience more. All weekend I worried about it. Worried whether they would get caught, whether they would remember to leave the window open to kill the smell, wondered whether I could trust them. But their word was as good as a bond, and on that score I was fairly easy. It was a weighty business for me.
It was weightily recompensed. On Monday morning I went early to my school to air it out if the gentlemen had neglected to do so. They had not neglected. There was no smell but the cheery, warm odor of hickory logs burning in the stove. They had been here before me, closed the windows and lit my fire for me. When I went to my desk to take out my attendance ledger, five golden guineas were placed neatly beneath it. I felt criminal indeed as I scooped them up and put them in the bottom of my reticule, carefully knotted into a handkerchief.
Never did money burn such a hole in anyone's pocket as those five guineas burned my reticule. What was I to do with them? One guinea can be spent up and the traces covered, but to buy five guineas’ worth of new supplies for the school would be remarked upon. I put them in the bottom drawer of my bureau, hidden beneath my petticoats, and said nothing.
Andrew returned after having taken holy orders, a full-fledged minister now, but alas no more interested in the world than he had been when he left. I hesitated to intimate to him my wish that Edna remain with us, for while he scarcely notices the time of day, he does notice a strange body in the room, and dislikes it. He is one of those unsociable persons who is never so happy as when guests leave, and he can stop feeling guilty at not having paid the least attention to them while they were there. It turned out I had forgotten something that had apparently been on my brother's mind since the moment he left. It was the organ, sitting new, shiny and unplayed in the gallery of the church.
"Well, as you have Miss Halka to bear you company, Mab, I think I shall just run up to the loft and see how the organ is liking the nasty cold weather."
I don't know how the organ liked it, but it did not deter Andrew from spending his every spare second in the loft. Eerie squeals and squeaks resounded from the walls of the church, sounding at times like an infant howling, at other times like caterwauling. Another time the tones were lower, like a foghorn or an angry boar. Then he decided he needed lessons, and for three consecutive evenings he sat beside me at the piano in our living room, learning the most basic rudiments of reading music. The nature of his organ work changed after that, the trick now being for Edna and myself to try to figure out what “tune” he was playing. But it was all well worthwhile, for it was a perfect excuse for Edna to go on living with us. Andrew suggested it himself after a couple of hints.
Two weeks later, Millie Hessler, a sweet little six-year-old sister of Jemmie and Mark, toddled up to me before leaving school. Dame Aldridge was back, so that there was little privacy. “Jemmie says to tell you it's going to be a hot night, and you should leave the window open,” she said, with a smile of pure innocence that sent a shiver down my spine. They needed the school again!
"What's that you say, Millie?” Dame Aldridge asked, coming up behind us.
Before the child should utter her senseless-sounding message again, I patted her head and said, “Very well, dear. I understand."
"He said to be sure you don't forget,” she added, then mercifully walked away.
"What's all this about?” my employer asked.
"Mrs. Hessler wants me to stop off on the way home. Mark wants to study more arithmetic on his own, and I offered to give him a book."
"Hmph,” she said. “He'll be wanting to figure out how much profit he's made on his smuggling, the bounder. We should encourage the ex-students, to be sure, but you don't want to have much to do with that lot, Mabel. They are not our sort."
Miss Aldridge had her own gig. I remained behind a little in case she should take the idea of going to the Hesslers’ with me. I required privacy with Jem. He was at home, and looked astonished to see me. “You shouldn't have come, miss!” he exclaimed.
"Jemmie, this won't do. Dame Aldridge is back at school now. If she notices the fire on Monday morning and sees the money..."
"We'll slip back at six Monday morning and close the window, and not light the fire. The place will he aired out by then, and as to the money, you can take it now."
"No, I don't want any money."
"Don't be daft, miss. Why should you not? Lord Aiken takes his share."
I could not have been more surprised had he said Lord Liverpool, the Prime Minister. Lord Aiken was an earl, an extremely wealthy and influential gentleman who associated with ministers and bishops. “Very well, I will,” I said, and was handed my golden guineas.
I suppose rationalization is the proper word for the thinking I did on my way home. Talking myself into doing what was not right. But where was the harm in it? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you—that was the golden rule, and I could not see that I was bending it. Still, I decided to talk it over with Andrew, who is an incurably honest man. It would be done by indirection, of course, not revealing why I had developed this sudden and unlikely interest in theology.
"Andrew, what do you think of the gentlemen?” I asked over dinner, as we gnawed our way through a leg of rubber beef. With Andrew and myself both working, we had lost our heads and hired a woman to cook and clean. She cleaned better than she cooked, and she was no great shakes with a bar of soap, but she needed the job.
"Society has become badly depraved,” he told me.
"I meant the smugglers, Andrew."
"Ah, those gentlemen. Why, they are criminals.” My heart sank. I too was a criminal then.
"Yes, the foolish laws have made criminals of honest men,” he rambled on, giving me a rush of hope.
"It is a foolish law, is it not?” I urged him on.
"It is a criminal law, if I may be permitted to indulge in a paradoxical statement.” I permitted him to indulge in as many as he wanted, if I understood his meaning. We discussed the matter with enthusiasm all through the elastic beef and concrete sponge cake our cook had served up. Andrew will occasionally unbend to orate on an abstraction, but when I tried to take him a buttonhole lower to actual cases, he began turning his views around to conclude, “Of course, everyone ought to obey the laws of the land, or we would have chaos."
"Even the bad laws?” I asked.
"Laws are not generally bad. They are made to protect society."
"Yes, but suppose, for instance, the law decreed that one man should kill another."
"It does so decree. We execute criminals, yet the commandment states Thou shalt not kill. There are extenuating circumstances, however. When a man puts himself beyond the law, then he must be punished."
"Oh, but surely God's law must come first."
"God's law is sometimes contradictory. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Then surely by extrapolation, a life for a life."
"Men are executed for no less than stealing a little something. That is not an eye for an eye, but a life for a loaf."
Andrew considered this, while I considered that I had got badly off the point. I returned to it. I wanted his approbation. He was older, better educated and to be perfectly frank, more upright than myself.
Round and round we went, but the best I could get out of him was that in certain undesignated circumstances, a man might be right to break a law. I dared not make the circumstances in which I was interested too explici
t, so I had to be satisfied with this sort of possible exculpation.
Andrew never took port. The minute dinner was over, he disappeared out the side door, which meant he was flying to the rafters again to wrestle with the organ. Had he not gone there, he would have immersed himself in Latin in his study. The trouble was, Andrew did not really live in the world to any significant extent. With him it was all abstraction and hypothesis. The physical facts, ignored by him, were that poor people were trying to make a living in a way that hurt no one so far as I could see, so I took counsel with my own soul, and permitted myself to break the bad law.
Chapter Three
I quite simply adored being a smuggler. It lent a spice to that long, dull, hard winter that had been sorely lacking before. A young lady ought to have been finding her excitement in suitors; I had none. You'd be surprised how quickly your wealthy friends drop you once it is learned you are poor. Any mother with an eligible son was at pains to direct his attention elsewhere.
Much I cared! There was not a really handsome or dashing gentleman on the whole coast, or that part of the coast which I frequented, in any case. I began to think in terms of spending a summer perhaps with my aunt, to see what sort of male specimens they grow in Devonshire. Already by April I had saved eighty guineas for the trip, for it was a busy winter. Winter is the prime time for smuggling. A little of it goes on year round, and moon round too here at Salford, but winter with a new moon is the ideal time. “The dark” the gentlemen call that short period of the lunar month when the moon is no more than a sliver in the sky. The nights are long, and the weather nippy enough that the revenueman is likely to stop in at the tavern to warm his toes, while our good friend the tapster pours him a tipple on the house, to slow him down.
I learned all the little tricks of the trade. Knew to the last wrinkle the families that would tolerate having a couple of kegs concealed in their applelofts, ricks and stables. Took a keener interest in every hollow tree along my route, the culverts, faggot ricks, hedgerows and rainwater butts. To prevent being caught, a cesspool might be used, but the stuff was not recoverable after that step.
Jem suggested I buy a share in a load, to increase my profit. The gentlemen were each entitled to do this—take a barrel home and decant it for small local trade, but of course in my position it was impossible. The bulk of the load went straight to London on the wagons of Will Phillips, the tranter. Will has six wagons and does all the hauling for the area. He moves households, grain, fish, farm produce or just about anything that is too large to go on the coach. The gentlemen kept three of his wagons fairly busy. He would usually put a layer of something else on top of the barrels for the purpose of concealment.
I was only a silent partner in the business, my secret known to none but Jemmie and his family. Jemmie, though he was as sharp as a needle, was only a boy, and certainly not the chief of the operation. Naturally I wondered who the boss could be. I asked him more than once, my own guess being Lord Aiken, but in this I was mistaken.
"Lord no, we only used Aiken's place once in an emergency. He caught us dead to rights, but took his share and kept mum. He wasn't interested in getting into it regular,” Jem told me.
"Do you bring it in at his place? He has a nice quiet stretch of beach there, and he is often away too."
"Nay, he cautioned us not to."
"Do you bring it in at the Eyrie?” was my next question.
I found myself becoming quite engrossed, and wishing to know more about it.
"They do say it was used by the Sizewell Gap Gang in the old days, but we've never tackled the Eyrie."
The Eyrie is a highly romanticized ruin. Driving past it on the road, you could take it for a little fairy castle, sitting atop one of the highest points of the cliffs. A closer inspection will show you that what looked like weathered stone is in fact waterlogged shingles. The building is rapidly tumbling into decay, but its reputation is in no way marred by these details. It is associated by legend with smuggling, but its height so much above sea level inclines one to think this is mere romanticism, unless the smugglers were seagulls.
This meeting took place at school at the end of April. Jem often made an excuse to drop by, bringing some item supposedly forgotten by Millie, which he gave to me. He knew I would be found out in the yard at recess, for with Dame Aldridge getting old and gouty, she never went out herself. I could not discover from him who the chief was, but he did ask me if I'd like to watch a load being landed. “On the sly, like,” he added with a knowing wink.
I was extremely curious, and made an arrangement to sneak off with him next time a lugger was coming in. Two days later Millie told me Jemmie was going to a party that night at the cove.
"Did he ask you to tell me?” I inquired politely.
"Yes, miss, but he said there's nothing but men going, and if a woman was to go, she must wear trousers or she'd not be let in."
"That sounds a highly irregular party,” I answered, smiling.
"'Tis that,” she agreed. “And it doesn't start till midnight. Jemmie said to tell you so, but I told him you wouldn't be interested at all."
"You tell your brother I expect a written invitation,” I told her, hoping to give him the hint I wanted a confirmation in writing.
"He said to tell you they never write anything about the parties, lest strangers get hold of it,” she replied, smiling sweetly, but with a face not so innocent as it had been last year. “He means Crites,” she added in a confidential tone, then bounced away. She knew the whole, the minx. And what a crafty helper she was at seven years, knew enough to come to me with her message when I was well away from Miss Aldridge. I shook my head ruefully.
The party was a great success. I wore an old pair of Andrew's dark trousers, his jacket and boots, with my curls stuffed up under his hat. I could have swum in his clothing. I rode Babe down the road in the direction of the cove. Exhilaration kept me from being frightened. Jem was waiting for me just at the edge of the village. He handed me a mask and donned one himself.
"Just in case,” he explained briefly.
I put on my disguise.
"You'd best tether your nag to a tree,” he suggested. “You never take a white animal poaching or smuggling, miss. And if you're wise, you don't take one that's known to the whole village either."
"What about Lady?” I queried, for his dog was at his heels.
"Oh, she's wearing her disguise as well,” he answered.
Glancing back, I had difficulty spotting her. “She has a mud bath an hour before we go, to hide her white fur,” he explained.
"If she were ever caught, your secret would be out."
"My Lady wouldn't be stopped, except by a bullet,” was his answer.
There was a fingernail of moon hanging low in the sky; the breeze was chilly. Till we were actually at the sea's edge, the sails of the ship could not be seen, nor did she show any lights. We stayed apart from the men, concealed in the shadows. The ship was not large; she had four-cornered sails set fore and aft.
"Is it safe to work so openly? What of Crites?” I whispered.
"He's on the other side of town. We were burnt off there earlier."
"What do you mean?"
"We settle always on three sites beforehand. If Crites is around, we give a signal with the torch from a spot where he can't see us, and the lugger goes along to the next spot, letting on it don't plan to stop at all. Crites is still at Harbour Bay. We have a few of the lads there keeping him amused by leaping about the rocks a bit."
"Won't he see the lugger stop?” was my next question.
"She won't be pulling in tonight. The stuff is put on a smaller pair of boats—lowered overboard on the far side from the shore. Our lads know their job. Crites will be busy enough chasing them over the rocks that he'll not see the little boats coming in. Mind we must move hasty, for he won't be too long in tumbling to our ruse."
Move hastily they did. Not even a donkey to help them! Each man had two barrels slung over his should
ers, one resting on his back and one on his chest. It must have been a fearful burden, yet they moved quickly along the shore, to disappear into the night.
"They'll never make it all the way to the school, Jem."
"Nay, only beyond the roadway into the fields, where the mules are waiting. We use the cart trails; they're more private, like."
We went along to the schoolhouse to watch the rest of the operation, I hiding behind the corner like a truant while Jem went forward to speak to them. How strange it looked, to see my prim classroom full of kegs of brandy, with the desks all shoved off to one side, piled on top of each other, with the chairs on top of that. I trembled to think what might happen if Crites should come in, but the lads kept him busy, I assumed, for he never came near us. Jem offered to “breach a barrel” for me to try the brew, after the men had left. “We always breach one to test her,” he informed me.
He produced an awl and hammer, pushed up a metal hoop to make his hole in the barrel there, where it could be concealed from the purchaser. “You never want to use a gimlet, miss, for the sawdust might get in and give the show away. You take the tub betwixt your knees so, and give the heads a squeeze,” he said, doing just as he explained. The brandy flowed freely as from a tap, to be caught in my teacup, then with his finger he stopped the hole and handed the cup to me. It was powerfully strong stuff. My eyes watered with it, but it had a satisfying warm aftertaste. I could feel it burn down to my stomach.
I handed the cup to Jem. “She's a fair brew,” he allowed. Then he asked for water, and with his finger still in the hole, he tipped the barrel on its side with the hole up, produced a funnel, and poured water into the barrel till it was full again. “She gets to swishing on you if you leave her not quite full,” he explained. “I don't know the swishing harms the stuff, but it do make a noise, like. Phillips don't like it.” How careful they were at every step. The hole was plugged with a wooden peg, the ring lowered over it, and we were off.