and then you and Miss Pim can have your talk comfortably by yourselves.
I am sure the Jenkinsons will make room for us on their bench."
The Jenkinsons made room, and it was immediately discovered that Adèle came to learn to dance; upon hearing which, Lucy fell into a reverie which lasted till a twang of the fiddle called her up for her first quadrille.
Rebecca could not help breaking off her answers to nurse's questions to wonder at Lucy's dancing, and admire the height of her jumps, which, however, did not seem to please Mr. Brown quite so well.
"Gently, gently, Miss Lucy," said he. "There may be too much activity, ma'am, as well as too little. We are not at a leaping-match, ma'am."
Lucy blushed and smiled, and still went on, sometimes nearly losing her balance, and having already lost any grace she might have been accustomed to display. She threw out her feet, sometimes heel foremost, stuck her elbows in her sides to give herself more concentrated power for a jump, and over-reached her mark in crossing, till she nearly pulled her partner down. Mr. Brown declared, at last, that he must send for a neighbouring builder to ascertain whether the room was strong enough to bear Miss Lucy's dancing.
"Poor thing!" exclaimed Rebecca, "why should not they let her dance as merrily as she likes? I will never stint my scholars in their jumps."
Nurse thought that on the sea-shore, or on the green, it was different from the present occasion. Miss Lucy came to learn to dance, not to practise leaping. She could not imagine what possessed the child to-day to dance as she did. Lucy was not strong, and there was trouble enough sometimes in getting her to do more than merely shuffle her feet.
"She just makes up when she is in spirits for what she can't do at other times," was Rebecca's good-natured excuse, as she smiled at the happy-looking fluttered Lucy.
Nurse beckoned the offender across the room to receive a rebuke, as soon as the quadrille was finished; and Lucy came smiling, panting, and fanning herself, and went away again, not at all disheartened by nurse's lecture on manners. She was observed, as she took her seat, to look up at Mademoiselle and Adèle, as much as to say, "What do you think of my dancing?" Mademoiselle smiled, and Adèle looked indifferent.
"Well, ma'am," said nurse, "so the Lieutenant's lady was very sorry for my poor son. I remember he said something of her once in a letter or a message."
"Said something of her! Why, well he might. He seemed to think of little but pleasing or displeasing her; and she was kind to him accordingly. I used to think he would never put his hat on again, when he had taken it off to be spoken to by the ladies from the station-house."
"Aye, there is another lady too. Was she kind to my poor son also?"
"All very well: but Miss Storey had always more partiality for our people than for the Preventive men. Poor father said,--one of the last jokes I have heard him make,--that he saw nothing for it but Miss Elizabeth taking to drinking or smoking, as she is so partial to smuggling and all that sort of thing, and as she must now get what she used to have so in other ways."
"But gloves come over against the law still, do not they?"
"Very few, high as the duty is. They are not sought after as they were a while ago, for they say the English gloves are nearly as good and as cheap now, and there are many more made. They say at the Custom-house that near twice as many skins come into the country as there were a few years ago; and so there is no occasion to smuggle so many French."
"So Miss Storey does not go down to the poor people's cottages as she used to do, my son told me, stealing out of sight of the guard?"
"Not she. She walks quite disconsolate along the beach to the east, instead of going in and out, above and below, among the downs, as she used to do when she had something to go out for."
"And the Lieutenant's lady too; does she go out as formerly?"
"As much as ever; but then she has something to do that makes it worth while. She gets one of the Preventive people to carry a little light table and her portfolio; and she paints,--never minding the wind or the sun, or anything. If it blows much, she pins her paper down at the corners, and puts her hair back, and paints away: and if the sun is hot, up goes her large umbrella, and still she paints away."
"Dear me! What does she paint? I wonder whether she ever painted my poor son."
"I think she hardly began after her marriage till the spring weather came on, and----" "Ah! it was March when he came by his end. The 3d of March, at half-past one in the morning, they tell me, ma'am."
"The lady has painted a good many of the guard, though," continued Rebecca, wishing to change the subject. "She has a number of pictures of them, some drawing water at the wells on the downs, or sitting polishing their arms in the martello towers, or feeding their pigs at the station-house. We used to hear strangers call those towers very ugly things; but she has made a world of pretty pictures of them, looking as different as if they were not the same places."
"She must be a clever lady, then; for there is nothing to my mind so dull and uniform as those towers. They are worse than the houses I saw last year in the Regent's Park,--all alike, except such little differences as don't signify."
"Mrs. Storey would make even them look different, I fancy: for, as to these towers,--some are white, standing on a yellow sand, with a dark blue sky behind, and the sea a darker blue still,--which you know it is sometimes. And then she makes a shadow from a cloud come over the tower, and the sea all streaked with different colours; and then it is the turn of the sails at sea to be white,--and a bird, perhaps, hovering over the dark parts. Once she went out when the moon was near the full, the Lieutenant himself carrying her cloak and her sketch-book that time, and she wanting nothing besides but her case of pencils. From that sketch she made a beautiful picture of a grey sea, with the foam white in the moonlight; and in that case, the tower was quite black on the side of the shadow, and so was the guard on watch, as you saw him between you and the surf."
"I wish she had painted my poor boy, ma'am; or that he had lived to carry her table. It would have made him so proud! But you say she was sorry for what happened to him?"
"Everybody was sorry. Father, for one, has never got over it. But the lady was on the beach when--when----" "I know what you mean, my dear. Go on."
"Well; she looked so,--you can't think. Father was quite pale when he came out from among the crowd of children that had got about the mouth of the cavern; but he was nothing to her, in the comparison."
"O! so white, and so grieved, more than frightened. She beckoned father to her, to settle what to do till some of the guard could come; and then she called the children after her, and went away, to take them away, though she could hardly walk."
"Dear me!" was all that escaped from nurse, who could not prevent its being seen through her emotion that she was flattered by this tale: and she did not attempt to conceal her gratification at hearing what a crowd attended the funeral, and how the people gathered to read and hear read the proclamation of reward for the detection of the murderers. And all this interest was about her son! Nothing could ever make up to her, she told Rebecca, for his body being hidden for a time, as it was. It would have been such a consolation to her to know that he made as beautiful a corpse as she had often said he would. Those who had seen how her boy looked when he was asleep might be sure that he would look better when he was dead than ever he did when he was alive.
While Rebecca was meditating what she could say by way of consolation for Nicholas not having made so beautiful a corpse as might have been expected from him, certain sounds from the other side of the room attracted her attention, and half diverted poor nurse's.
"So the Lieutenant said of him...O! no need to start, ma'am, at Mr.
Brown's rapping his fiddle. He is never really in a passion, though he pretends anger, to keep the young folks in order."
"But they have done something to make him angry. Hark! what a rattling in the fiddle!"
"But look at the corners of Mr. Brown's mouth. He does not know how to help laughing all the time."
"As the children find out," observed Rebecca, seeing how the boys peeped over one another's shoulders to see the effect of the old joke of putting pease into a violin.
"And the girls are all huddled together, not a bit like young ladies," added nurse, moving solemnly towards her charge, patting their backs, chucking their chins, and ascertaining that their feet were in the first position. Alas! they were in none of the five lawful positions.
"Let us see what Adèle will make of her positions," whispered Lucy, as she saw the little French girl led out, to take, as was supposed, her first lesson. "She does not seem to mind it; but she will when she finds she cannot keep her balance in the curtsey at the last."
She was surprised that Mr. Brown tuned his violin. Music was not wanted for teaching the positions. Mr. Brown must be in an absent fit; and Adèle must be very conceited to smile and look at her ease, on such an occasion. When she should have learned two years, and be able to dance the same quadrilles as Lucy, she might look at ease, and welcome: but already---- Already Adèle showed that she knew one position at least. Before the words "Point the toe, ma'am," had passed the dancing-master's lips, the toe was pointed as if the whole foot was made of something as flexible as the thin sole of the little shoe.
"I do believe Adèle can dance," burst from Lucy's lips, as the fiddle-bow gave its last flourish before making music. There was no further room for doubt, though much for wonder. Adèle sped away,--much as if she was winged: round and round,--hither and thither,--up and down and across, not half so much out of breath with the exertion as Lucy was with witnessing it, and with some thoughts which came into her mind.
"What a silly, stupid, vain thing I have been! I hope Adèle and Mademoiselle did not find out that I wanted to show off to them. How very bad Adèle must think my dancing, to be sure! I did hear the windows rattle once, when I had jumped very high; and Adele comes down as light as a feather. I wish we could get back to two o'clock again. If I could make them all forget this last hour, I would never show off again; at least, not till I was sure that I could do a thing better than other people." And Lucy held her fan to her chin to watch the rest of Adèle's performance in mute admiration.
"Look, now, at that child of mine, with her fan at her chin, of all places!" observed nurse, a-hemming to catch Lucy's attention, and then bridling, and placing her knitting-needles (for nurse carried her knitting everywhere but to church, and there fell asleep for want of it) in the position in which she thought a fan ought to be held. Lucy, vexed to be interrupted in her scrutiny, and so often chidden, tossed her fan into her sister's lap, and turned to Mademoiselle to talk, and thereby avoid the necessity of perceiving nurse's signs.
"Ay, that's the way children do," said nurse; "that was just as my poor boy used to turn and get away from me, when I had been whipping him, all for his good, as I used to tell him, and to make a great man of him. He never liked it, nor saw what a great man he might be some day, guarding his country on the top of those cliffs, and dying, and all."
"And all for nothing," added the matter-of-fact Rebecca; "which must make it the more hurting to you. Nay, now, do not look so offended, as if I had said that Nicholas did not do his duty. He did what he could; but it always seems to me a great fuss about nothing."
"About nothing, ma'am? Is smuggling nothing?"
"That Coast Guard can't prevent smuggling, after all; and if they could, is not it a much cheaper way of preventing it, to make smuggling not worth while? Here, with all their spying, and searching, and seizing, they can lay their hands on only 5000_l._ worth of smuggled silk in a year, while we all know that fifty times that much comes to be worn. Is not it a great fuss about nothing to risk men's lives for a little matter like that? And they get no more in proportion of tobacco or spirits, or anything else; so, as father says, they might as well put smuggling out of our thoughts at once, or let us do it in peace and quiet. Father has had no peace and quiet this long while, nor ever will have till we find him something to do; and that is hard to find. There is my brother out of the Custom-house, too, being no longer wanted now they are reducing the business and the salaries, and even talking of shutting up the Custom-house."
"You ought to be sorry, then, that people smuggle less than they did,--as sorry as I fancy your father is, my dear."
"Why, as for that, it is very well to be in the Custom-house, to collect the dues the government ought to have; but, for my part, I never liked my brother's having to look to the seized goods, which sometimes happened to be what he would rather have seen anywhere else. If he had at once set himself to something else----" "You had better send him here; my master wants more hands."
"With all my heart. If he had set himself to supply people's demands at home, instead of preventing their being supplied from abroad, it would have been all very well. But he liked better to marry, and live upon my father, (supposing father to be rich,) than to work at a new business; and now I must keep school, and do what I can for them all. Dear me!
what a pretty dance that is! I do not know what I am to do, if the parents expect my girls to dance in that manner. I forgot to look at Miss Lucy this time. Oh, ma'am, what can be the matter with her? Do look how she is crying. Bless her poor heart! how the tears run down!"
Lucy did, at this moment, exhibit a somewhat extraordinary spectacle,--weeping and cutting capers, sobbing and attitudinizing, and looking dolorously in the face of her partner (one of the Master Bremes) whenever the turns of the dance obliged them to regard each other. If she would have given any rational excuse for her emotion, she would have been excused from dancing in tears; but she was mute, and must therefore take her turn with her companions. The fact was, that, while standing up and waiting for the signal to begin, Lucy had chanced to turn her eyes on a mirror that hung opposite, and to see a young gentleman behind her wriggling in imitation of her earlier exploits of this day; and, what was worse, she saw that Mr. Brown indulged in a broad grin at the joke.
Not all her attempts to think of something pleasant,--of her new frock, Mademoiselle's museum, and the kitten promised by Adèle,--could enable her to keep down her tears. They only came the faster the more she struggled against them; and all hope of concealing them was over before Rebecca's kind heart became moved by her sorrow, and Adèle squeezed in sympathy the hand which she encountered in the course of the figure.
This sympathy only aggravated the evil: it caused a long, crowing sob to resound through the room, moving the boys to laughter, and everybody else to pity. It was a lost case, and the credit of the day,--of Adele's first day at the dancing-school,--was irretrievable.
Mademoiselle removed to a seat next nurse, to inquire what could have been the matter with Lucy all this day; and when told that she had been well and in high spirits up to the moment of entering the room, she was anxious to be allowed to feel her pulse, and ascertain whether there was fever in the case,--nothing short of fever being, in her opinion, sufficient to account for her alternate boisterousness and melancholy.
Lucy being surrendered to Mademoiselle, presently began to grow calm.
The scarlet flush which had spread over her neck faded, and the sobs subsided, as she assured her friend that she was not at all ill: it was all her own fault. This mystery was received in respectful silence, and a long pause ensued, at the end of which Lucy looked up through her tears to say,-- "How beautifully Adèle dances!"
"Yes, she dances prettily; but she wants practice, and does not take exercise enough; and that is the reason why we have brought her to learn again. Adèle is a lazy girl in some things: are you not, Adèle?"
"But where did she learn to dance? I never saw such dancing. I do not believe anybody here will ever dance so well. There's Nancy Breme: her feet go well enough, but she pokes; and her sister carries her head high enough,--mighty high,--like the proud that are going to have a fall, nurse says; but she turns in the left foot, as Mr. Brown is for ever telling her. And there is----" "Well, well; we will not dispute Adèle's dancing better than any body here."
"O, but I was going to say myself too. I meant to find fault with my own dancing, and Charlotte's."
"No occasion, my dear. I have heard what Mr. Brown has to say about it, you know; and he is a better judge than either of us. Perhaps you will go with us to Lyons, some day, and see where Adèle used to dance, under the chestnuts by the river-side. Or, if you must have boards to dance on, you shall go, to M. Carillon's country-house, where you may waltz in his summer saloon, with roses hanging in at the window."
"Is that the M. Carillon who sent you those beautiful shells? And is his great new present come for your museum?"
"It is on its way, and we may hear of its arrival any day. You shall come and see it when it is unpacked and in its place. Now, do you think you can dance again? Mr. Brown looks as if he wanted a partner for that merry boy."
"O, I cannot dance with him," exclaimed Lucy. "Yes, I will, though he did laugh at me. I find fault with other people, I know, so I suppose it is fair that they should with me."
And she started up, and offered herself to dance; and a sign from the good-natured Mr. Brown forbade any one from staring at her red eyes.
"Well, ma'am," said Rebecca to nurse, "and now that I have seen Miss Lucy comfortable again, I must go. I'm sure if you know of any delicate children, or others that do not want a finer education than we can give them, you will think of dame and I."
"Yes, indeed, my dear, for the sake of my poor son. Thank you, I'm sure, for all you have told me about him; and if your father should happen to come, so as to give me a call, I think he might manage to remember a little more. And give my respects to the Lieutenant's lady, and tell her that I consider my son honoured by her preference; and tell----" "I have been thinking, Mrs. Nicholas, whether you could not come down among us. You will be sure to see Mrs. Story yourself then; and we would make you heartily welcome in our way."
"What! to see the very place? The cliffs, and the beach, and the very cave and all! O, my dear! Well, we will see; and many thanks to you."
Rebecca thought it right to advertise her intended school in every possible manner, and therefore made an effort to mention her plan to Mr.
Brown, observing that he was probably in the way of hearing of children who wanted sea-air and nursing; and that they would be well taken care of, though she could not pretend to have them taught such dancing as she had seen that day.
Mr. Brown smirked, said something about reviving breezes, native elasticity, natural grace, and the hand of art, and bowed her out with an emphatic screech of his instrument, just at the moment that she was declaring him very kind.
The remainder of the lesson was passed in silence by the higher powers, as nurse could not bring herself to speak of the subject uppermost in her thoughts,--her poor son,--to a French woman, whom, as being French, she considered as in some sort, concerned in his murder.
CHAPTER V.
HATE AND HAND-BILLS.
When Mademoiselle returned to her own drawing-room, she found her brother there,--an unexpected visitor at this time of day, when he was usually engaged in his counting-house. He was standing at the window, with his eyes fixed upon a newspaper, which he might or might not be reading, so completely was his attitude one of meditation.
"I have waited for you," he said; "I wished to see you before I went out again. Are you ready to go back to France?"
"To France! Is there to be a war?"
"Only that war which wars of arms bring on,--war against classes and individuals, arising out of national jealousy. No, thank God! the slaughter of tens of thousands is at an end; and what matters the ruin of one insignificant Frenchman?"
"Ruin! Are they going to ruin you?" asked his sister, her eyes flashing.
"No anger, my dear," said M. Gaubion. "Judge not these English people by the example of our happier countrymen. They have been trained for centuries to suspicions like this;--(handing the newspaper to his sister, and pointing out a paragraph.) "I was aware of this training, and I ought not to have come. It is for the Frenchmen of two centuries hence to be the brethren of Englishmen."
"But you can disprove this charge," urged Mademoiselle; "or, as the duty of proof rests with your enemies, you can dare them to the proof. Let them show, if they can, that you carry on your business as a cloak to hidden practices. Let them lay a finger on a single article smuggled by you. They cannot; and this is a mere calumny,--a newspaper calumny."
M. Gaubion pointed out that the charge was contained in a report of some significance, and was not one of the common paragraphs which no wise man thinks it worth while to be vexed at. Its appearance in such a mode indicated a hostility in persons interested in the silk trade, which would probably end in sending a peaceably-disposed man home again.
"I have been trying to make myself an English woman ever since I came," observed Mademoiselle, "but I will cease the endeavour; it is better to be French."
"Nay, France may blush for similar follies. How long was it before we had men wise enough to discover, that if France received cottons, it must be in return for something that France had produced! When some few perceived this, what cries issued from our work-shops! What certainty did some feel that the total disorganization of society would ensue! How others rehearsed the dirge which must presently be sung over the tomb of French industry! And who knows but that a Manchester man might then have been torn in pieces by the prejudiced operatives of France?"
"But did you not say just now that the English are peculiarly prejudiced on this matter?"
"They have been made so by their national circumstances. Their manufacturers and merchants have had a greater voice in the government than is allowed in many other countries; and this voice has for ever cried out, 'Protect us!'--'Encourage us!' Then of course followed the cry of other classes, 'Be impartial!'--'Protect us also.'"
"Ah! the difficulty is to stop. Each new protection raises clamour for more; and some are left dissatisfied after all is done that can be done.
It becomes a scramble which class can cost the country most; how each article can be made dearest, and therefore how the people may be soonest impoverished at home, and prevented from selling abroad on equal terms with their neighbours. So it would be if protection were universal; but surely it cannot be so in England, or any where else?"
"Not altogether; but her rulers have found themselves perplexed by her land-owners and tillers being jealous of the manufacturers; and the ship-owners, of the agricultural class; and the labourers, most justly, of all these. There will be no peace till the just plea is admitted, that the interest of those who consume is the paramount interest; and that the rule of commerce at home and abroad, therefore, is that all shall be left free to buy where they can buy cheapest. The observance of this rule would soon quench the desire for protection, as the protected would have no customers but those from whose pockets their bounties are yielded. Yet this rule is the last which the ministries of England have till now regarded."
"Strange! since the consumers are so much more considerable a body than any class of the protected."
"Nothing is strange when there is a want of money. Does not a minor make over his property to sharpers for his debts before he has enjoyed it? Do not the besieged in a city revel in food and wine while starvation impends? If so, why should not a government, involved in ruinous wars and other extravagance, stake the commerce of the country for an immediate supply of money? When new taxes must be imposed, submission has been bought by new protections. The example once set, other restrictions have followed, till those who possess nothing but the fruits of their own labour bear the whole burden. They pay to the landlords, that bread may be dear; they pay to the India House, that tea may be rendered a blameable luxury to them, and that what is woven in eastern looms may be out of their reach; they paid for the wars which occasioned the restraints which they now pay to keep up."
"But why do they thus pay? And is not all this a reason why they should welcome you, instead of desiring a continuance of their bondage?"
"Slaves often hug their chains as ornaments, and the ignorant mistake custom for right. My enemies are not aware how they have suffered from the long custom of restriction; and it was my folly to expect a welcome from the poor, who have ever been taught, that what a foreigner gains an Englishman must lose; or from masters who have been cradled in fear, not by the generous nurse,--competition, but by the jealous demon,--monopoly."
"Truly," exclaimed Mademoiselle, "the lark is likely to be hooted and clawed if she ventures among the owls. You are right, brother; there is nothing for it but fleeing away."
"These owls being even now transforming into day-birds, and the lark having once been an owl herself, both should have patience with each other," replied her brother, laughing. "But though the hooting may be borne for awhile, the tearing to pieces is hardly to be awaited in patience. I have been growing more unpopular every day, my dear; I see it in many faces, whenever I look beyond my own people. They like me, I believe; but they will soon be threatened out of working for me. They will also seize on this imputation, that I make use of them as a screen for practices which take work out of the hands of their brethren. After they have learned--only through my zeal overcoming their reluctance--to rival us in the niceties of our art, they will drive us away as if we had done them an injury."
"And yet you will not let me reproach them."
"If you must blame, blame the selfish monarchs, the temporising ministers, the barbarous aristocracies, the vain-glorious generations of the people that have passed away,--rather than the descendants on whom they have entailed the consequences of their mutual follies. The spirit of barbarism lingers about its mortal remains. Barbaric wars are hushed, the dead having buried their dead;--Barbaric shows are fading in splendour, and are as much mocked at as admired;--Barbaric usurpations are being resisted and supplanted day by day; but the infatuation which upheld them so long is not altogether dispelled; and if we rashly suppose that it is, we deserve to suffer for coming within its reach. I was wrong to settle among a people who invited us to a contraband trade, were driven by their own vicissitudes to offer us, with much reluctance, a lawful one; and now, through the hardness of their own terms, suspect us wrongfully, and make a great crime of that which they themselves have taught us."
"They seem to forget that we are on equal terms of obligation; that we French take as much of the produce of their industry as they take of ours."
"I shall urge this on our jealous neighbours, and will go as an equal to a brother manufacturer for counsel," observed M. Gaubion. "Culver knows little of me, but he holds many of my principles, and to him will I now go. If he thinks this charge of importance, I will deal with it as he advises; if not, I will strive to think so too."
Whether the charge was of importance was decided before Mr. Culver could be appealed to. As M. Gaubion pursued his way through the streets, hand-bills met his eye at every turn, in which was contained the newspaper paragraph that had troubled him, accompanied by unfriendly comments, and hints that the Treasury was well aware of the nature of the Frenchman's establishment, and of the means by which it was supported. He saw knots of people gathered round the windows where this hand-bill was stuck up, and showing it to one another in the alleys. He would fain have got possession of one to put into Culver's hands, but did not choose to run the risk of being discovered by making the request in a foreign accent. He could see nobody who appeared to be employed in distributing them, or who had two copies. At length he passed a little shop, where a boy was leaning over the counter, apparently spelling out the contents of the bill, while another copy hung in the window. M.
Gaubion marched straight in, took the bill from the window, pointing to the one on the counter, and walked out again, the boy crying after him-- "Stop, sir--stop; we can't spare it. You can get one by asking at the----" The rest was lost upon the escaped stranger, who walked on unobserved, and meeting no one whom he knew till he arrived opposite Cooper's door.
At Cooper's door was a knife-grinder, grinding Mrs. Cooper's scissors as she stood by, and making sparks at such a rate as to delight master Ichabod, who stood, now holding by his mother's gown and winking, and now clapping his hands in delight. As soon as Mrs. Cooper perceived M.
Gaubion at some distance on the other side of the street, she pulled her gown from the child's grasp, ran in, and instantly returned, followed presently by her husband, who pretended to be talking to the knife-grinder, but was evidently watching the approach of the gentleman.
When M. Gaubion was near enough to be saluted, Cooper offered him a shy, uncertain bow, but seemed very ready to speak when the gentleman crossed over to ask him if he knew how long this hand-bill had been in circulation.
"We were just wondering, sir, my wife and I, whether you had seen it. I hope you don't mind it, sir; that is, I hope you have no reason to mind it."
"Why, Cooper, you do not believe this bill?"
Cooper believed that many people did not think what mischief they were about in smuggling. The Spitalfields men had reason enough to know this; but it had been so long the custom to drive a profitable contraband trade, without being thought the worse of, that if some people did it still, it was no great wonder; though he must think it a sin and a shame.
"But such is not my trade, Cooper; I have not smuggled a single piece."
"Well, it is very lucky if you can say so, sir, for there is nothing the masters and men are so jealous of now. If you had profited by a contraband trade, you would not have been the only person in the present company that must take to something less profitable."
The gipsy knife-grinder looked up saucily, and jabbered a few words of what might, by an acute discerner, be detected for French;--such French as might be picked up by means of half an hour's talk with a Guernsey person, four times a year.--On being asked how he relished the change from making moonlight trips and fighting midnight battles to tinkering and grinding among the abodes of men; he answered that if his profits were smaller than they had been, they were better than he had expected when he chose this neighbourhood for the scene of his operations. A few years before, all the knives and scissors were at the pawnbroker's; it did not signify whether pans and kettles were battered or whole, as there was nothing to put into them; and there was little employment in chair-mending, as the people sat on the floor, or ate their crust standing. Now that there was smoke in almost every chimney, and that little men,--nodding to Ichabod,--were allowed to pull rushen seats to pieces, a gipsy's occupation was a better one than he had once known it.
"'Twould be a thousand pities you should have to change your trade, sir," said Cooper; "and if, as you say, there is no truth in what is said about the smuggling...But are you sure you are right in coming abroad this evening, sir? I don't like saying disagreeable things; but that is better than leaving you, without warning, to suffer them. From what I see and hear,--and my wife too,--I should be afraid you might be roughly spoken to. 'Tis the best kindness to all parties to keep out of sight when any are disposed to mischief.--Do I know how long this has been brewing? Why, no. There has been whispering, to my knowledge, for weeks; and it is four days since my child called us to see the boys acting the Frenchman under the windows; and the grown-up folks said some rough words then. But I, for one, never saw the bill till this day."
Cooper now spoke a few words to his wife, which seemed to dismay her much. She pulled his arm, twitched his coat, and looked miserable while he proceeded to say, "If I might take the liberty of so offering, sir, I would propose to step with you, wherever you are going. I would say 'behind' you, but that it would not answer the purpose so well. I am pretty well known as a sound English master's man, and----" "Prejudice on every side!" exclaimed the Frenchman, in his heart. "This man evidently believes the charge, or part of it, and he offers me his protection, on the ground that he is known not to like me and my doings!"
Cooper's courtesy was coolly declined, and M. Gaubion walked on to ascertain elsewhere the origin of the calumny.
Mr. Culver recommended his keeping quiet, and, if there was no foundation for the report, it would soon blow over. "_If_ there was no foundation!" The same doubt appeared on every hand.
"Just tell me," asked Gaubion, "why I should drive a contraband trade, when I might legally import, if I chose?"
"The duty is high enough still, sir, to induce smuggling in certain favourable cases. I was an advocate for the trade being thrown open; and being so, I am now for such a duty as shall put us on a par with your countrymen. I think a duty of twelve or fifteen per cent. would do this, and leave no temptation to cheat us out of our market. I should have advised a higher duty some time ago; but smuggling is made easier now by so much silk being brought in legally; and I think we should be better protected by the lower duty than the higher."
"I see," observed the Frenchman, "that in this case, as in others, some of those who are the very parties supposed to be protected are the most willing to resign the protection. It is declared to be a difficult thing