The Distracted Preacher (5 page)

The estrangement between them was not complete, but it was sufficient to keep them out of each other's company. Once during the day he met her in the garden path, and said, turning a reproachful eye upon her, “Do you promise, Lizzy?” But she did not reply. The evening drew on, and he knew well enough that Lizzy would repeat her excursion at night—her half-offended manner had shown that she had not the slightest intention of altering her plans at present. He did not wish to repeat his own share of the adventure; but, act as he would, his uneasiness on her account increased with the decline of day. Supposing that an accident should befall her, he would never forgive himself for not being there to help, much as he disliked the idea of seeming to countenance such unlawful escapades.

As he had expected, she left the house at the same hour at night, this time passing his door without stealth, as if she knew very well that he would be watching, and were resolved to brave his displeasure. He was quite ready, opened the door quickly, and reached the back door almost as soon as she.

“Then you will go, Lizzy?” he said, as he stood on the step beside her, who now again appeared as a little man with a face altogether unsuited to his clothes.

“I must,” she said, repressed by his stern manner.

“Then I shall go too,” said he.

“And I am sure you will enjoy it!” she exclaimed, in more buoyant tones. “Everybody does who tries it.”

“God forbid that I should,” he said. “But I must look after you.”

They opened the wicket and went up the road abreast of each other, but at some distance apart, scarcely a word passing between them. The evening was rather less favorable to smuggling enterprise than the last had been, the wind being lower, and the sky somewhat clear towards the north.

“It is rather lighter,” said Stockdale.

“'Tis, unfortunately,” said she. “But it is only from those few stars over there. The moon was new to-day at four o'clock, and I expected clouds. I hope we shall be able to do it this dark, for when we have to sink 'em for long it makes the stuff taste bleachy, and folks don't like it so well.”

Her course was different from that of the preceding night, branching off to the left over Lord's Barrow as soon as they had got out of the lane and crossed the highway. By the time they reached Chaldon Down, Stockdale, who had been in perplexed thought as to what he should say to her, decided that he would not attempt expostulation now, while she was excited by the adventure, but wait till it was over, and endeavor to keep her from such practices in future. It occurred to him once or twice, as they rambled on, that should they be surprised by the excisemen, his situation would be more awkward than hers, for it would be difficult to prove his true motive in coming to the spot; but the risk was a slight consideration beside his wish to be with her.

They now arrived at a ravine which lay on the outskirts of Chaldon, a village two miles on their way towards the point of the shore they sought. Lizzy broke the silence this time: “I have to wait here to meet the carriers. I don't know if they have come yet. As I told you, we go to Lullstead to-night, and it is two miles farther than Ringsworth.”

It turned out that the men had already come; for while she spoke two or three dozen heads broke the line of the slope, and a company of men at once descended from the bushes where they had been lying in wait. These carriers were men whom Lizzy and other proprietors regularly employed to bring the tubs from the boat to a hiding-place inland. They were all young fellows of Nether-Moynton, Chaldon, and the neighborhood, quiet and inoffensive persons, who simply engaged to carry the cargo for Lizzy and her cousin Owlett, as they would have engaged in any other labor for which they were fairly well paid.

At a word from her, they closed in together. “You had better take it now,” she said to them, and handed to each a packet. It contained six shillings, their remuneration for the night's undertaking, which was paid beforehand without reference to success or failure; but, besides this, they had the privilege of selling as agents when the run was successfully made. As soon as it was done, she said to them, “The place is the old one near Lullstead;” the men till that moment not having been told whither they were bound, for obvious reasons. “Owlett will meet you there,” added Lizzy. “I shall follow behind, to see that we are not watched.”

The carriers went on, and Stockdale and Mrs. Newberry followed at a distance of a stone's-throw. “What do these men do by day?” he said.

“Twelve or fourteen of them are laboring men. Some are brickmakers, some carpenters, some masons, some thatchers. They are all known to me very well. Nine of 'em are of your own congregation.”

“I can't help that,” said Stockdale.

“Oh, I know you can't. I only told you. The others are more church-inclined, because they supply the pa'son with all the spirits he requires, and they don't wish to show unfriendliness to a customer.”

“How do you choose them?” said Stockdale.

“We choose 'em for their closeness, and because they are strong and sure-footed, and able to carry a heavy load a long way without being tired.” Stockdale sighed as she enumerated each particular, for it proved how far involved in the business a woman must be who was so well acquainted with its conditions and needs. And yet he felt more tenderly towards her at this moment than he had felt all the foregoing day. Perhaps it was that her experienced manner and hold indifference stirred his admiration in spite of himself.

“Take my arm, Lizzy,” he murmured.

“I don't want it,” she said. “Besides, we may never be to each other again what we once have been.”

“That depends upon you,” said he, and they went on again as before.

The hired carriers paced along over Chaldon Down with as little hesitation as if it had been day, avoiding the cart-way, and leaving the village of East Chaldon on the left, so as to reach the crest of the hill at a lonely trackless place not far from the ancient earthwork called Round Pound. An hour's brisk walking brought them within sound of the sea, not many hundred yards from Lullstead Cove. Here they paused, and Lizzy and Stockdale came up with them, when they went on together to the verge of the cliff. One of the men now produced an iron bar, which he drove firmly into the soil a yard from the edge, and attached to it a rope that he had uncoiled from his body. They all began to descend, partly stepping, partly sliding down the incline, as the rope slipped through their hands.

“You will not go to the bottom, Lizzy?” said Stockdale, anxiously.

“No; I stay here to watch,” she said. “Owlett is down there.”

The men remained quite silent when they reached the shore; and the next thing audible to the two at the top was the dip of heavy oars, and the dashing of waves against a boat's bow. In a moment the keel gently touched the shingle, and Stockdale heard the footsteps of the thirty-six carriers running forward over the pebbles towards the point of landing.

There was a sousing in the water as of a brood of ducks plunging in, showing that the men had not been particular about keeping their legs, or even their waists, dry from the brine; but it was impossible to see what they were doing, and in a few minutes the shingle was trampled again. The iron bar sustaining the rope, on which Stockdale's hand rested, began to swerve a little, and the carriers one by one appeared climbing up the sloping cliff, dripping audibly as they came, and sustaining themselves by the guide-rope. Each man on reaching the top was seen to be carrying a pair of tubs, one on his back and one on his chest, the two being slung together by cords passing round the chine hoops, and resting on the carrier's shoulders. Some of the stronger men carried three by putting an extra one on the top behind, but the customary load was a pair, these being quite weighty enough to give their bearer the sensation of having chest and backbone in contact after a walk of four or five miles.

“Where is Owlett?” said Lizzy to one of them.

“He will not come up this way,” said the carrier. “He's to bide on shore till we be safe off.” Then, without waiting for the rest, the foremost men plunged across the down; and when the last had ascended, Lizzy pulled up the rope, wound it round her arm, wriggled the bar from the sod, and turned to follow the carriers.

“You are very anxious about Owlett's safety,” said the minister.

“Was there ever such a man!” said Lizzy. “Why, isn't he my cousin?”

“Yes. Well, it is a bad night's work,” said Stockdale, heavily. “But I'll carry the bar and rope for you.”

“Thank God, the tubs have got so far all right,” said she.

Stockdale shook his head, and, taking the bar, walked by her side towards the down, and the moan of the sea was heard no more.

“Is this what you meant the other day when you spoke of having business with Owlett?” the young man asked.

“This is it,” she replied. “I never see him on any other matter.”

“A partnership of that kind with a young man is very odd.”

“It was begun by my father and his, who were brother-laws.”

Her companion could not blind himself to the fact that where tastes and pursuits were so akin as Lizzy's and Owlett's, and where risks were shared, as with them, in every undertaking, there would be a peculiar appropriateness in her answering Owlett's standing question on matrimony in the affirmative. This did not soothe Stockdale, its tendency being rather to stimulate in him an effort to make the pair as inappropriate as possible, and win her away from this nocturnal crew to correctness of conduct and a minister's parlor in some far-removed inland county.

They had been walking near enough to the file of carriers for Stockdale to perceive that, when they got into the road to the village, they split up into two companies of unequal size, each of which made off in a direction of its own. One company, the smaller of the two, went towards the church, and by the time that Lizzy and Stockdale reached their own house these men had scaled the church-yard wall, and were proceeding noiselessly over the grass within.

“I see that Owlett has arranged for one batch to be put in the church again,” observed Lizzy. “Do you remember my taking you there the first night you came?”

“Yes, of course,” said Stockdale. “No wonder you had permission to broach the tubs—they were his, I suppose?”

“No, they were not—they were mine; I had permission from myself. The day after that they went several miles inland in a wagon-load of manure, and sold very well.”

At this moment the group of men who had made off to the left some time before began leaping one by one from the hedge opposite Lizzy's house, and the first man, who had no tubs upon his shoulders, came forward.

“Mrs. Newberry, isn't it?” he said, hastily.

“Yes, Jim,” said she. “What's the matter?”

“I find that we can't put any in Badger's Clump to-night, Lizzy,” said Owlett. “The place is watched. We must sling the apple-tree in the orchet if there's time. We can't put any more under the church lumber than I have sent on there, and my mixen hev already more in en than is safe.”

“Very well,” she said. “Be quick about it—that's all. What can I do?”

“Nothing at all, please. Ah, it is the minister!—you two that can't do anything had better get in-doors and not be seed.”

While Owlett thus conversed, in a tone so full of contraband anxiety and so free from lover's jealousy, the men who followed him had been descending one by one from the hedge; and it unfortunately happened that when the hindmost took his leap, the cord which sustained his tubs slipped; the result was that both the kegs fell into the road, one of them being stove in by the blow.

“'Od drown it all!” said Owlett, rushing back.

“It is worth a good deal, I suppose?” said Stockdale.

“Oh no—about two guineas and half to us now,” said Lizzy, excitedly. “It isn't that—it is the smell! It is so blazing strong before it has been lowered by water that it smells dreadfully when spilled in the road like that! I do hope Latimer won't pass by till it is gone off.”

Owlett and one or two others picked up the burst tub and began to scrape and trample over the spot, to disperse the liquor as much as possible; and then they all entered the gate of Owlett's orchard, which adjoined Lizzy's garden on the right. Stockdale did not care to follow them, for several on recognizing him had looked wonderingly at his presence, though they said nothing. Lizzy left his side and went to the bottom of the garden, looking over the hedge into the orchard, where the men could be dimly seen bustling about, and apparently hiding the tubs. All was done noiselessly, and without a light; and when it was over they dispersed in different directions, those who had taken their cargoes to the church having already gone off to their homes.

Lizzy returned to the garden gate, over which Stockdale was still abstractedly leaning. “It is all finished: I am going in-doors now,” she said, gently. “I will leave the door ajar for you.”

“Oh no, you needn't,” said Stockdale; “I am coming too.”

But before either of them had moved, the faint clatter of horses' hoofs broke upon the ear, and it seemed to come from the point where the track across the down joined the hard road.

“They are just too late!” cried Lizzy, exultingly.

“Who?” said Stockdale.

“Latimer, the riding-officer, and some assistant of his. We had better go in-doors.”

They entered the house, and Lizzy bolted the door. “Please don't get a light, Mr. Stockdale,” she said.

“Of course I will not,” said he.

“I thought you might be on the side of the King,” said Lizzy, with faintest sarcasm.

“I am,” said Stockdale. “But, Lizzy Newberry, I love you, and you know it perfectly well; and you ought to know, if you do not, what I have suffered in my conscience on your account these last few days!”

“I guess very well,” she said, hurriedly. “Yet I don't see why. Ah, you are better than I!”

The trotting of the horses seemed to have again died away, and the pair of listeners touched each other's fingers in the cold “good-night” of those whom something seriously divided. They were on the landing, but before they had taken three steps apart the tramp of the horsemen suddenly revived, almost close to the house. Lizzy turned to the staircase window, opened the casement about an inch, and put her face close to the aperture. “Yes, one of 'em is Latimer,” she whispered. “He always rides a white horse. One would think it was the last color for a man in that line.”