Endure My Heart (23 page)

Unfortunately, when the story subsequently appeared on page one of the
Chronicle,
it featured my name in large black letters: SCHOOLMISTRESS ANDERSON TEACHES PRESIDENT A LESSON was the banner, with the next line saying Miss Anderson in Battle with Board of Trade. They carried on this campaign for four days, till the Board was forced to relent and give Rose Marie her money. Quite a
cause célèbre
it was, till a couple of M.P.’s became involved in a duel and pushed us back to page three.

Aunt Harvey wrote me the stiffest note you ever saw, calling me to task for my forwardness and mentioning not a word about Sir Stamford Wicklow and Lady Lucy. The note came from London, which explained her seeing the journals so quickly, and perhaps also explained the lack of an answer to my earlier letters, which had been directed to Devonshire.

Meanwhile, before we knew Rose Marie was to get the money, Merrill finally got up off his haunches and arranged for the cargo to be shipped up to the Felixstone customs house. If it were to be necessary for us to reclaim it, the reclaiming would be accomplished much more easily here at Salford, with all my men at hand. Anyone in the town who was not a smuggler was as angry as a hornet to see Felixstone carts and drivers being hired for the trip, while our own men stood by idle.

Carts being used by the Customs Department were always marked in chalk with broad arrows commonly called pitchforks, to identify them as being on official business. It was an appropriate symbol, for they had a devilish time getting their cargo on the road. They had the poor sense to commence the operation at a fairly late hour in the afternoon—after three it was.

When I drove past on my way home from school (well after four) they had not yet proceeded a yard. We had been busy to ensure there was not a horse or a mule fully shod. While the haulers took their meal at the inn, Jemmie and company attended to it. The blacksmith, whose broad back has been known to carry three barrels upon occasion, was laid low with a bellyache. He did not wish to have a cold, that would require more than one afternoon away from his forge.

They would no sooner get a cart loaded than the linchpins would fall out of the arms, and the wheels roll by the wayside. Harnesses snapped, nags (their mash liberally laced with laudanum) keeled over in the middle of the road. It was better than a circus, to observe the revenuemen in disarray. Crites was running around like a chicken with its head off, making notes of it all for future revenge; Merrill blamed it on Crites, and

Wicklow just stood there, looking all around, wondering from where the attack would come, and wishing he had his army behind him, I bet. At last he had the brandy put back in the stables for safekeeping before darkness fell, just as we hoped he would.

We waited till night had fallen before we went after our cargo. With so much confusion in the middle of the main street of the town, Phillips’ wagons rolled right along the old sheepwalk, which runs parallel with the main road, a couple of hundred yards behind it. His wagons held empty barrels, which were toted in the concealing darkness to the back of the inn stable, there to replace the full ones.

Jem had arranged to loosen the slats of the back wall of the stable, so that it could be done from the outside, at least till the guards had imbibed enough liquor to be sleepy. Jemmie told me later that night that Wicklow came to the stable door twice a minute, to look over the barrels, count them, then return nervously into the street, scanning the darkness for trouble. It was like taking candy from a baby. We left them the front row of barrels—ten—and made off with ninety.

When the reward came through the next day, our captured load proved the most profitable one ever brought in. The government appeared so ridiculous by this time that they managed to suppress the story entirely in their own press. Mr. Hunter ran a couple of articles in the
Chronicle,
writing the whole thing up as a farce, and so it was too. He did it as an analogy of the wedding feast at Cana, where the water was turned to wine. I thought it was very clever, but Andrew said he should be excommunicated for comparing Miss Sage to Jesus Christ.

There were new advertisements pasted up at the post office, removing that expensive “or” and substituting “and.” Wicklow was in the boughs about the whole affair. He didn’t come to play the organ for a week. He also missed a choir recital to show me a lesson, but as it was the night Mr. Hunter from the
Chronicle
was down from London, his presence was not missed in the least.

My moment of glory was somewhat marred by the worry that I had to find another spot for landing my cargo next trip. To abandon it at the height of the season was unthinkable. I had already been way off schedule with the last cargo, and heard about it from Mr. Pettigrew. He would be looking for another supplier if our supply became too erratic. It was desirable to move our landing spot either up or down the inlet, but we were severely restricted. The Felixstone boys would not like it if we invaded their territory, and there was another group hemming us in at the other side. Like flower-mongers, we gentlemen each have a territory, and invade another’s at risk of reprisals.

The third lively happening of that busy period involved my imaginary win of the London lottery, and it also involved to a small extent the solution to my problem of a new landing spot. I deemed the time judicious for announcing my win while the town was alive with the story of Rose Marie’s reward, to lessen the questions that might arise. Holding in my hands a letter I had written myself and Pettigrew’s envelope from London, I said to Andrew over breakfast, “Andrew, you’ll never guess what!”

“Mmmm?” he mumbled, his mouth full of toast.

“I have won a lottery in London.”

“Mmmm?”, slightly louder and more interested. He drew his eyes from Virgil long enough to pose a mute question by raising his brows.

I explained the history I had composed to account for this windfall, and awaited chastisement from him. What must the gudgeon do but say, “That will make a nice dowry for you, Mab.”

“Dowry? Andrew—you cannot think it proper for me to
keep
the money!”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Why—gambling! It would not do for me to keep it.”

“Papa lost such a lot in the same fashion, it seems like Fate to me,” he replied. I really feared Andrew’s morality was slipping. Had I led him on to these erring ways with my sophistry on smuggling?

“No harm done,” he insisted, weighing in his mind the pros and cons. “I don’t think there is any vice in it. It might be better if you not indulge again, but as you have won, I shan’t suggest you refuse the prize.”

“Refuse it! I don’t intend to. I thought I would use it for charity.”

“Charity begins at home,” he pointed out, in a rare fit practicality.

I had to awaken him as to what he wanted me to do with it, and spoke on in a modest voice as to the richness prevailing in
our
home as opposed to that of certain non-smuggling families in the town.

“We are not half so fashionable as the Trebars,” he said, then turned as pink as a rose, and hastened on to explain he had only been speaking to Mr. Trebar about some official parish business. Mr. Trebar was not the reason for that blush, however. Sally had certainly got her hands on him, succeeded far enough to have lured him into her parlor. “It would be magnanimous of you to give it to the poor. Very magnanimous. I am proud of you, Mabel, but I think you’d do better to keep it for a dowry.”

If Sally had not been hinting to move into the rectory, it was more than I counted on. She wanted me out, and apparently considered I would require a fat dowry to win a husband. I was so annoyed I did not notice for a moment that I had got approval from Andrew to dissipate my fortune on the poor. When the story was issued to our first caller for repetition in the streets, it was to the effect that Andrew was displeased with me, and like a dutiful sister, I had agreed to give the sum up to charity. I had various ends already in mind—an outright gift to the poor, to help them shore up their homes, wardrobes or diets as they saw fit.

It was ironic that Sir Stamford Wicklow should be the one to show me a more useful way to spend the money. Like Andrew, he thought if I had a brain at all I would keep it. “A thousand pounds is not an easy sum to come by,” he said, a little wistfully, which called to mind his home, Oakvale, denuded of furnishings.

In the end, he was complimentary of my decision to give it all up. “If you are determined to give it away, why not invest it in something that will bring in a regular income for the poor?” he asked.

“I would be happy to, but the funds pay only five percent, and fifty pounds a year is not much to help so many families.”

“No, no, I did not mean the funds. Invest it in a fishing boat, and let the poor work it.”

The non-fishing uses to which a good stout boat could be put were not long in occurring to me. “What an excellent idea! It will give work to a dozen men—provide a half-decent income for years to come.” And provide a very useful tool for Miss Sage when it is not being used for fishing!

I had determined to be very aloof with Wicklow, to keep him at arm’s length, but as he was better educated and sharper than the local men, he was the natural one to drive a good bargain in the acquisition of our ship.

“I’ll get you into my whisky at last,” he congratulated himself. “Felixstone is the place to look. I’ll go up myself first and scout out something, then we shall drive up together, for you to make the final decision.”

Wicklow had as well as given up being a shopkeeper since his secret was out. He was seen everywhere but at Owens’ establishment, where he had hired a clerk for the occasional customer that still went in. The men were determined not to give any business to a customs man, and the girls could not feel Chubby Monk, the new clerk, worth the trip.

Wicklow roamed the roads on his mount, with a paper in his pocket allowing him entry wherever he wished to go. He was busily and futilely searching barns, hayricks, stables, woods, everywhere for traces of contraband cargo, or a clue to the identity of Miss Sage. On Thursday he went to Felixstone to look for a ship. On Friday after school he waited for me at home in the saloon.

“I have found a tidy little vessel that the owner is willing to let go for a thousand even. She is worth a good two hundred more, I think, but he is eager to sell, and I knocked him down to a thousand, as it is a charity venture. She is called
Seamew.”

“Very good. When can I see her?”

“You don’t work tomorrow. Let us go then.”

I tried to vary the day of shipment as much as possible, but the French who delivered it had something to say in the matter. I was stuck with Friday again, a day whose significance was surely known to Wicklow. He would not accept Edna’s invitation to remain to dinner, but hotfooted it down to the inn, to see if anyone might he in his cups and utter an indiscreet word. This was about the only way he was likely to hear anything of interest, for no man would help him if he could avoid it. An earlier colloquy with Jemmie had seen arise the decision to dump the load tonight, at a distance not too far from shore. It was to be done just at twilight, before our revenuemen began their patrols. The barrels would be let over the side of the lugger at a predetermined point, all of them attached to a line. They would take hearings as well, of course, but I rather think that so far as my men were concerned, it was Tobin’s big red barn up on the hill that told them precisely where to go looking. This meant Williams and Crites (still active) would spend an uncomfortable and fruitless night scouting the coast, while my men slept soundly.

In the early hours of the dawn, when our weary revenuers gave up and went home, the barrels would be retrieved. This is accomplished by a process known as “going to creep for them.” Men go out in a boat that need not be large (Mr. Morrisey’s old fishing smack-cum-barge is the common vessel used in these parts), but it is used for so many other things as well that it does not fall under great suspicion. A weighted grapnel is dragged along the sea’s bottom till it catches the line, and the load is hauled in, very carefully and slowly, by a bunch of men ostensibly wading for seafood or floating logs (which can be dried and burned for fuel).

When Mark determines the coast is clear, the barrels are rolled ashore and concealed in any spot available. Strung over a stretch of a couple of miles, with each pair of men in charge of a set number of barrels, it is not at all easy to find the load. Our tranter, Phillips, dislikes having to make so many stops, but likes well enough that he gets an extra sum for doing it.

The proceedings went off without a hitch. While Sir Stamford and myself enjoyed a rather cool drive up to Felixstone, my boys secreted the stuff in various caves, holes and hollow trees known to them as intimately as the nooks and crannies of their own homes.

Though I was raised on the coast, I have no great familiarity with ships. A few cruises on Lord Aiken’s vessel were about the extent of my nautical life. I took Sir Stamford’s word for it the ship we went to examine was a snug little vessel, seaworthy and all such terms, with which he seemed very much at home, for an Army man. It is an odd fact that men seem to know either everything, or nothing. Those who are sharp in business, like Ganner, are the same ones who can discern the points of a good animal, or ship or carriage, or a good dinner for that matter. I have heard Sir Elwood give a fair analysis of
King Lear,
then turn around and speak fluent French to a relative of his wife who was visiting.

I wrote out a check for the thousand pounds, and the owner agreed he would sail her down to Salford for us the next day—Sunday. Unlike land travel, sea travel is permitted on the Sabbath. Indeed it is about the busiest day for pleasure sailing in these parts. It was an enjoyable day, the peak of it not the purchase of
Seamew,
but a meeting with Miss Simpson, outside the draper shop in Felixstone, where I make no doubt she had been having her waist measured up. She came frisking up to Sir Stamford in that playful way she has, like an ill-bred puppy, then stopped short when she saw me at his side.