# Joan, The Curate/Chapter 17

Now, although Harry Tregenna was in a state of mind more nearly approaching perfect bliss than he had ever been before, with the knowledge that Joan Langney loved him fresh upon him, he could not but feel an uncanny chill when Ann Price uttered her mocking words of warning.
"The game's not played out yet!"
He would have followed her, questioned her. But she knew every turn in the park much better than he; and after a few moments spent in looking for her, he gave up the search as an idle one.
After all, what could she do? Desperate and vindictive as he knew her to be, she could hardly go the length of trying to harm generous-hearted Joan. And as for what she might choose to attempt on his own person, ​Tregenna was ready to take the risks of war, which, indeed, could hardly be greater in the future than they had been in the past.
So he presently dismissed all thought of her, and gave himself up, heart and soul, to joyful thoughts of the beautiful, brave girl he had won. He lingered about for a little while, to give her time to break the news to her father, as she had herself wished to do. And when he thought they must have reached home, he turned his steps also in the direction of the Parsonage.
By the wistful look of emotion on Parson Langney's rugged, kindly face, by the moisture in his eyes, the young man guessed that he had already been made aware that he was threatened with the loss of his fair daughter: and the first words he uttered, as he held out a shaking hand in welcome, confirmed this impression:
"So you're going to take her away from me! Well, well, 'tis the way of all flesh!"
Tregenna assured him that they were in no hurry, that he was ready to wait any reasonable time: a week, a month, any period they might choose. He further assured the vicar that he ​would leave the service, and promised to settle down with his wife at no very great distance from Hurst Parsonage.
And although Parson Langney shook his head very lugubriously, and grumbled at the folly of a woman's marrying before she was thirty, his jolly face soon grew brighter when Joan came in, and, putting her arms round his neck under her lover's very nose, assured him that he was the nicest and handsomest man in the whole world, and that, if she were driven to get married, it should only be on compulsion, and on receiving her future husband's assurance that she was her father's girl still, and might be with him as much as she liked.
So they had a happy evening together, and when the young lieutenant bade them good night, and started on his way back to his boat, it was with never a thought of smugglers, or wreckers, builders of secret boats, or treacherous farmers' daughters, to damp his spirits.
There was a lull in the contraband traffic after these events, and Tregenna and the brigadier began to flatter themselves that their energy had at last awed the smugglers into submission, when one day the news was ​brought to the lieutenant that the same sloop which had been in sight on the occasion of the last raid, was hovering about in the distance.
A sharp lookout was accordingly kept that night, but nothing happened to justify their suspicions. On the following day, however, a light mist sprang up, and not long afterwards they were able to discover that, under cover of it, there was a boat making at a great rate for the beach at Hastings.
The smugglers—for Tregenna had little doubt of the nature of the boat's errand—had a good start of the cutter's men; but the latter gave chase at once in one of their own boats, and were soon justified in their surmise; for, on grounding their craft as soon as they could on the pebbly shore, the occupants of the pursued boat deliberately emptied it of its contents in sight of their pursuers, and leaving it to its fate, ran up the beach towards the narrow streets of the old town, each with a couple of kegs slung round him, the one in front, and the other behind.
They did not fail, as they went, to bid a graceful adieu to Tregenna and his men, waving their rough knitted caps and shouting ​"Good-by" as they disappeared through the openings between the houses.
Straining every nerve, the cutter's men grounded their own boat in an incredibly short time; and, profiting by the precious moments the smugglers had lost in emptying their cargo, they raced up the stony beach in pursuit, believing that, encumbered as they were, the "free-traders" would find it impossible to keep ahead of them long.
But alas! they had reckoned without their host; for while they, the representatives of law and order, were fighting alone and unaided, the smugglers had each a brother or a mother, a sister or a sweetheart, in one or other of the mean, picturesque little hovels that nestled together in the shelter of the tall cliffs beneath the castle, and lined the narrow, tortuous streets of the ancient town.
No sooner had the first of the revenue-men turned the corner into the High Street, up which the smugglers were making their way towards some chosen haunt of their own, than the hindermost of the rascals, who alone carried no burden, gave a peculiar kind of shrill whistle.
​This was evidently the recognized method of giving an alarm to the rest, and was also the signal for the inhabitants of the squalid little houses to be on the alert.
Already every door was standing open, showing, to the exasperation of the king's men, a group of eager, grinning faces, intent on the sport.
The moment the whistle sounded, the smugglers who carried the kegs divested themselves each of one of his burdens, and rolled it towards the nearest open cottage-door. The moment the keg was safe inside, the door closed.
The smuggler, having thus got rid of one of his kegs, went on at a quicker pace for a few steps, and then, on the sounding of a second whistle, got rid of the remaining one in the same way.
Well used to this maneuver, which was a common one at the time, those of the cottage-folk who had not received one of the contraband kegs, closed their doors also; so that Tregenna and his men, on reaching the point in the street where this trick had been played, found it impossible to identify any particular ​house as one of those which had lent the use of its portal to the smugglers.
A few half frightened, half mocking children stood about in the road; but at the windows not a single face was to be seen.
Tregenna, who was at the head of the pursuing force, saw, to his chagrin, that it was now impossible for him to hope to come up with the smugglers. Lightened of their burdens, and already well ahead of their pursuers, they flew like the wind up the steep street towards the old church, without so much as looking behind them to give the cutter's men a chance of seeing and remembering their faces.
At this point in the route, however, they all somewhat abruptly disappeared, with the exception of the one who had given the signal.
From his limping gait, Tregenna had long since recognized him as "Gardener Tom," and he felt at the first moment rather sorry that this man, the only one of the "free-traders" for whom he felt the slightest kindness, should be the only one to fall into his hands.
It was not until he had reached the queer little irregular group of nestling houses clustering round the church, that Tom suddenly ​turned, put his back against the steep wall which banked up the houses on one side of the roadway, folded his arms, and waited for Tregenna to come up to him.
The lieutenant, expecting that Tom had a pistol ready for him, put his hand to one of his own. The smuggler, however, shook his head, and held up his hands.
"Where are the rest?" cried Tregenna, more by instinct than because he expected a useful answer.
Tom, whose handsome, open face was flushed with his exertions, smiled mockingly at him.
"Wheer? Wheer?" asked he, with a shake of the head. "Nay, master, look round, and see if 'twill be easy for you to light upon 'em now!"
Tregenna did look round. He saw the close-packed cottages, some prim and neat, with a sort of look about them as if no creature within had ever heard of so terrible a thing as a smuggler: some dirty and neglected, and capable of anything: but all shut up, and without a human face at any window. One mean-looking little alehouse at the corner did certainly bear a sort of rakish, contraband look. ​But a peep within its doors showed that the landlord and one old man had it, to all appearances, to themselves.
Tregenna sighed, and frowned.
"Well, I must arrest you, Tom, and carry you off at least," said he.
"I be smuggling naught, master!" objected Tom, quite mildly.
"You were signalman to the others," answered Tregenna. "You're one of the gang."
Tom took this very quietly.
"All roight, take me if you will," said he. "'Twas you, sir, that gave me the hurt makes me too lame to get away!" said he.
Tregenna frowned, and looked uneasily round at his own men, who, deeming him quite able to cope with this, the only one of the ruffians whom they had in their power, had dispersed in various directions, engaged in the rather hopeless task of ferreting out their lost enemies.
"I'd sooner have caught any one of the others, Tom," said Tregenna, "than laid hands on thee."
"And I," replied Tom, with a glance round in his tone, and a lowering of the voice, "I'd sooner I was caught by you, sir, than as any of ​the others was! For I've summat for to say to you, sir, summat for to arst you!"
And over Tom's open ruddy face there passed an expression of deep anxiety.
"To ask me, Tom? Well?"
"Oons, sir you'd tell me the truth, wouldn't you? You'd be above telling lies to a poor fellow loike me!" went on the young man, wistfully.
Tregenna looked amazed, as well he might, at this most unexpected speech.
"I hope, Tom," said he, "I'm above telling lies to any one."
"Well, sir, it's loike to this 'ere: you han't forgot, sir, that noight as you came to Rede Hall, have you?"
"No, I'm not likely to forget that quickly!"
"You'll moind, sir, how 'twas Ann Price sent us after thee, in a passion."
"Ay, I'm not like to forget that either, Tom, nor your treatment of me when you came up with me!"
Tom looked down, reddening.
"Oons, sir," said he, gruffly, "we're rough customers, I know. But we had more than one account to settle with you, sir; and you ​see, you'd found out a bit too much to be let off loight! We had to turn out of the place where we'd met together for years, all along of you and your findings. And that wasn't all neither!"
And a significant frown puckered his brows once more.
"Why, what other harm have I done you, than what I had to do in the course of my duty?" asked Tregenna.
"You'd gotten the roight side of Ann!" growled Ann's lover, angrily.
"The right side! Nay, then I know not what getting the wrong side would be like!" retorted Tregenna, lightly. "For there's no sort of ill treatment, short of actual murder, that I have not received at her hands, and I own I never meet her without watching her hands, to be sure she holds not a knife concealed in some fold of her dress, wherewith to stab me!"
"Ay, that's Ann all over!" said her lover, admiringly. "She's got such a spirit, has Ann! But it's just them ways of hers with you that makes me know she looks upon you with too koind an eye, sir. She loikes you, and she ​hates herself for loiking a king's man, that's what it is!"
"Indeed!" said the young lieutenant, with a laugh. Then I assure you, Tom, she's vastly welcome to transfer her liking to some one else; for it's wasted on me!"
Tom scanned the speaker's face narrowly, and then drew a long breath of relief.
"You speak as if it was truth," said he, at last, in a muttering tone. "Then, maybe, sir," he went on, with deep earnestness, still keeping an anxious gaze upon Tregenna's face, "maybe you don't know where she is now?"
He seemed to wait with breathless eagerness for the answer.
"Most surely I do not," replied Tregenna, promptly, "if she be not at Hurst Court, where I saw her near ten days ago."
Tom shook his head.
"She ben't there now, sir. Nobody hereabouts has a notion where she's got to; so I thought as maybe it was you had spirited her away."
"God forbid!" said Tregenna, heartily. "My good fellow, set your mind at rest. If ​there's one man in the world less likely than another to spirit away your friend Ann Price, or indeed to have aught to do with her, 'gad, 'tis I!"
Tom passed his hand over his chin reflectively: he did not yet seem satisfied.
"Faith, man, what further assurance do you want?" said Tregenna, amused at the fellow's persistency. "Dost still think I'm in love with thy fair friend the amazon?"
"Nay, sir that I do not," replied Tom, slowly. "But 'tis her that's in love with thee! And, sure, she's more loike to have her way with thee, than ever thou wouldst ha' been to make way with her, if so be it had been t'other way round!"
"Make yourself easy on that point also," answered Tregenna, now laughing heartily at the young man's fears. "Mistress Ann would get no soft words from me, no loving looks, and no fond embraces, were I the only man left on the earth, and she the only woman!"
"Sir," said Tom, not a bit relieved by the assurance, "I do believe you mean what you say. But she's no common woman, isn't Ann; and since she's sworn she'll have your kisses ​within the month, why, I do surely believe she'll get them, whether you will or no."
"Sworn to have my kisses!" echoed the lieutenant, in amazement. "Egad, then, she'll be forsworn. Fear not, man; thy fair one has no charms for me, and truly she hath never met a man less like to bestow his kisses upon her. Where she is gone I know not: and if I were in thy shoes, I should be thankful she'd disappeared, and I should look about for something softer, something more like a woman, to whom to give my kindness!"
"Sir, one cannot give love where one will!" said poor Tom, rather ruefully. "If I do know why I love her, 'tis on account of her not being loike to every other lass in the parish; to her being so different from herself, as from all other women, that one never knows how she's going for to be two hours together! So it ain't no good of talking, sir; for, oons! I've loved her too long to go trapesing after another now!"
At that moment Tregenna caught sight of the first of his own men returning from a fruitless search for the rest of the smugglers. He turned quickly to Tom.
​"Tom," said he, "I cannot deal harshly with thee; get away with thee ere it be too late. For these fellows of mine dare not show so much leniency as I am doing."
Tom took the hint. He was artful enough to make a feint of striking the lieutenant, making a movement which caused the latter to take an instinctive step backward, as if he had really been pushed aside. Tom then made a dash for the nearest opening between the houses; and being still wonderfully active when he chose to exert himself, he was lost to the sight of the cutter's men in a few seconds.