CHAPTER IV--AT THE TIME OF THE NEW MOON
The following Thursday was changeable, damp, and gloomy; and the
night threatened to be windy and unpleasant. Stockdale had gone
away to Knollsea in the morning, to be present at some commemoration
service there, and on his return he was met by the attractive Lizzy
in the passage. Whether influenced by the tide of cheerfulness
which had attended him that day, or by the drive through the open
air, or whether from a natural disposition to let bygones alone, he
allowed himself to be fascinated into forgetfulness of the greatcoat
incident, and upon the whole passed a pleasant evening; not so much
in her society as within sound of her voice, as she sat talking in
the back parlour to her mother, till the latter went to bed.
Shortly after this Mrs. Newberry retired, and then Stockdale
prepared to go upstairs himself. But before he left the room he
remained standing by the dying embers awhile, thinking long of one
thing and another; and was only aroused by the flickering of his
candle in the socket as it suddenly declined and went out. Knowing
that there were a tinder-box, matches, and another candle in his
bedroom, he felt his way upstairs without a light. On reaching his
chamber he laid his hand on every possible ledge and corner for the
tinderbox, but for a long time in vain. Discovering it at length,
Stockdale produced a spark, and was kindling the brimstone, when he
fancied that he heard a movement in the passage. He blew harder at
the lint, the match flared up, and looking by aid of the blue light
through the door, which had been standing open all this time, he was
surprised to see a male figure vanishing round the top of the
staircase with the evident intention of escaping unobserved. The
personage wore the clothes which Lizzy had been brushing, and
something in the outline and gait suggested to the minister that the
wearer was Lizzy herself.
But he was not sure of this; and, greatly excited, Stockdale
determined to investigate the mystery, and to adopt his own way for
doing it. He blew out the match without lighting the candle, went
into the passage, and proceeded on tiptoe towards Lizzy's room. A
faint grey square of light in the direction of the chamber-window as
he approached told him that the door was open, and at once suggested
that the occupant was gone. He turned and brought down his fist
upon the handrail of the staircase: 'It was she; in her late
husband's coat and hat!'
Somewhat relieved to find that there was no intruder in the case,
yet none the less surprised, the minister crept down the stairs,
softly put on his boots, overcoat, and hat, and tried the front
door. It was fastened as usual: he went to the back door, found
this unlocked, and emerged into the garden. The night was mild and
moonless, and rain had lately been falling, though for the present
it had ceased. There was a sudden dropping from the trees and
bushes every now and then, as each passing wind shook their boughs.
Among these sounds Stockdale heard the faint fall of feet upon the
road outside, and he guessed from the step that it was Lizzy's. He
followed the sound, and, helped by the circumstance of the wind
blowing from the direction in which the pedestrian moved, he got
nearly close to her, and kept there, without risk of being
overheard. While he thus followed her up the street or lane, as it
might indifferently be called, there being more hedge than houses on
either side, a figure came forward to her from one of the cottage
doors. Lizzy stopped; the minister stepped upon the grass and
stopped also.
'Is that Mrs. Newberry?' said the man who had come out, whose voice
Stockdale recognized as that of one of the most devout members of
his congregation.
'It is,' said Lizzy.
'I be quite ready--I've been here this quarter-hour.'
'Ah, John,' said she, 'I have bad news; there is danger to-night for
our venture.'
'And d'ye tell o't! I dreamed there might be.'
'Yes,' she said hurriedly; 'and you must go at once round to where
the chaps are waiting, and tell them they will not be wanted till
to-morrow night at the same time. I go to burn the lugger off.'
'I will,' he said; and instantly went off through a gate, Lizzy
continuing her way.
On she tripped at a quickening pace till the lane turned into the
turnpike-road, which she crossed, and got into the track for
Ringsworth. Here she ascended the hill without the least
hesitation, passed the lonely hamlet of Holworth, and went down the
vale on the other side. Stockdale had never taken any extensive
walks in this direction, but he was aware that if she persisted in
her course much longer she would draw near to the coast, which was
here between two and three miles distant from Nether-Moynton; and as
it had been about a quarter-past eleven o'clock when they set out,
her intention seemed to be to reach the shore about midnight.
Lizzy soon ascended a small mound, which Stockdale at the same time
adroitly skirted on the left; and a dull monotonous roar burst upon
his ear. The hillock was about fifty yards from the top of the
cliffs, and by day it apparently commanded a full view of the bay.
There was light enough in the sky to show her disguised figure
against it when she reached the top, where she paused, and
afterwards sat down. Stockdale, not wishing on any account to alarm
her at this moment, yet desirous of being near her, sank upon his
hands and knees, crept a little higher up, and there stayed still.
The wind was chilly, the ground damp, and his position one in which
he did not care to remain long. However, before he had decided to
leave it, the young man heard voices behind him. What they
signified he did not know; but, fearing that Lizzy was in danger, he
was about to run forward and warn her that she might be seen, when
she crept to the shelter of a little bush which maintained a
precarious existence in that exposed spot; and her form was absorbed
in its dark and stunted outline as if she had become part of it.
She had evidently heard the men as well as he. They passed near
him, talking in loud and careless tones, which could be heard above
the uninterrupted washings of the sea, and which suggested that they
were not engaged in any business at their own risk. This proved to
be the fact: some of their words floated across to him, and caused
him to forget at once the coldness of his situation.
'What's the vessel?'
'A lugger, about fifty tons.'
'From Cherbourg, I suppose?'
'Yes, 'a b'lieve.'
'But it don't all belong to Owlett?'
'O no. He's only got a share. There's another or two in it--a
farmer and such like, but the names I don't know.'
The voices died away, and the heads and shoulders of the men
diminished towards the cliff, and dropped out of sight.
'My darling has been tempted to buy a share by that unbeliever
Owlett,' groaned the minister, his honest affection for Lizzy having
quickened to its intensest point during these moments of risk to her
person and name. 'That's why she's here,' he said to himself. 'O,
it will be the ruin of her!'
His perturbation was interrupted by the sudden bursting out of a
bright and increasing light from the spot where Lizzy was in hiding.
A few seconds later, and before it had reached the height of a
blaze, he heard her rush past him down the hollow like a stone from
a sling, in the direction of home. The light now flared high and
wide, and showed its position clearly. She had kindled a bough of
furze and stuck it into the bush under which she had been crouching;
the wind fanned the flame, which crackled fiercely, and threatened
to consume the bush as well as the bough. Stockdale paused just
long enough to notice thus much, and then followed rapidly the route
taken by the young woman. His intention was to overtake her, and
reveal himself as a friend; but run as he would he could see nothing
of her. Thus he flew across the open country about Holworth,
twisting his legs and ankles in unexpected fissures and descents,
till, on coming to the gate between the downs and the road, he was
forced to pause to get breath. There was no audible movement either
in front or behind him, and he now concluded that she had not outrun
him, but that, hearing him at her heels, and believing him one of
the excise party, she had hidden herself somewhere on the way, and
let him pass by.
He went on at a more leisurely pace towards the village. On
reaching the house he found his surmise to be correct, for the gate
was on the latch, and the door unfastened, just as he had left them.
Stockdale closed the door behind him, and waited silently in the
passage. In about ten minutes he heard the same light footstep that
he had heard in going out; it paused at the gate, which opened and
shut softly, and then the door-latch was lifted, and Lizzy came in.
Stockdale went forward and said at once, 'Lizzy, don't be
frightened. I have been waiting up for you.'
She started, though she had recognized the voice. 'It is Mr.
Stockdale, isn't it?' she said.
'Yes,' he answered, becoming angry now that she was safe indoors,
and not alarmed. 'And a nice game I've found you out in to-night.
You are in man's clothes, and I am ashamed of you!'
Lizzy could hardly find a voice to answer this unexpected reproach.
'I am only partly in man's clothes,' she faltered, shrinking back to
the wall. 'It is only his greatcoat and hat and breeches that I've
got on, which is no harm, as he was my own husband; and I do it only
because a cloak blows about so, and you can't use your arms. I have
got my own dress under just the same--it is only tucked in! Will
you go away upstairs and let me pass? I didn't want you to see me
at such a time as this!'
'But I have a right to see you! How do you think there can be
anything between us now?' Lizzy was silent. 'You are a smuggler,'
he continued sadly.
'I have only a share in the run,' she said.
'That makes no difference. Whatever did you engage in such a trade
as that for, and keep it such a secret from me all this time?'
'I don't do it always. I only do it in winter-time when 'tis new
moon.'
'Well, I suppose that's because it can't be done anywhen else . . .
You have regularly upset me, Lizzy.'
'I am sorry for that,' Lizzy meekly replied.
'Well now,' said he more tenderly, 'no harm is done as yet. Won't
you for the sake of me give up this blamable and dangerous practice
altogether?'
'I must do my best to save this run,' said she, getting rather husky
in the throat. 'I don't want to give you up--you know that; but I
don't want to lose my venture. I don't know what to do now! Why I
have kept it so secret from you is that I was afraid you would be
angry if you knew.'
'I should think so! I suppose if I had married you without finding
this out you'd have gone on with it just the same?'
'I don't know. I did not think so far ahead. I only went to-night
to burn the folks off, because we found that the excisemen knew
where the tubs were to be landed.'
'It is a pretty mess to be in altogether, is this,' said the
distracted young minister. 'Well, what will you do now?'
Lizzy slowly murmured the particulars of their plan, the chief of
which were that they meant to try their luck at some other point of
the shore the next night; that three landing-places were always
agreed upon before the run was attempted, with the understanding
that, if the vessel was 'burnt off' from the first point, which was
Ringsworth, as it had been by her to-night, the crew should attempt
to make the second, which was Lulstead Cove, on the second night;
and if there, too, danger threatened, they should on the third night
try the third place, which was behind a headland further west.
'Suppose the officers hinder them landing there too?' he said, his
attention to this interesting programme displacing for a moment his
concern at her share in it.
'Then we shan't try anywhere else all this dark--that's what we call
the time between moon and moon--and perhaps they'll string the tubs
to a stray-line, and sink 'em a little-ways from shore, and take the
bearings; and then when they have a chance they'll go to creep for
'em.'
'What's that?'
'O, they'll go out in a boat and drag a creeper--that's a grapnel--
along the bottom till it catch hold of the stray-line.'
The minister stood thinking; and there was no sound within doors but
the tick of the clock on the stairs, and the quick breathing of
Lizzy, partly from her walk and partly from agitation, as she stood
close to the wall, not in such complete darkness but that he could
discern against its whitewashed surface the greatcoat and broad hat
which covered her.
'Lizzy, all this is very wrong,' he said. 'Don't you remember the
lesson of the tribute-money? "Render unto Caesar the things that
are Caesar's." Surely you have heard that read times enough in your
growing up?'
'He's dead,' she pouted.
'But the spirit of the text is in force just the same.'
'My father did it, and so did my grandfather, and almost everybody
in Nether-Moynton lives by it, and life would be so dull if it
wasn't for that, that I should not care to live at all.'
'I am nothing to live for, of course,' he replied bitterly. 'You
would not think it worth while to give up this wild business and
live for me alone?'
'I have never looked at it like that.'
'And you won't promise and wait till I am ready?'
'I cannot give you my word to-night.' And, looking thoughtfully
down, she gradually moved and moved away, going into the adjoining
room, and closing the door between them. She remained there in the
dark till he was tired of waiting, and had gone up to his own
chamber.
Poor Stockdale was dreadfully depressed all the next day by the
discoveries of the night before. Lizzy was unmistakably a
fascinating young woman, but as a minister's wife she was hardly to
be contemplated. 'If I had only stuck to father's little grocery
business, instead of going in for the ministry, she would have
suited me beautifully!' he said sadly, until he remembered that in
that case he would never have come from his distant home to Nether-
Moynton, and never have known her.
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.
