Bruce Alexander - Smuggler's Moon

As we stepped inside, Sir John sought to correct her: ”Well, madame, I quite agree with you that she is lovely, fine, and intelligent. Clarissa is, however, not my daughter.”

“Truly not?” said she. ”And I even thought that she looked a bit like you! And are you going to tell me that this fine lad is also not of your blood?”

“Alas no, and Lady Fielding and I are the poorer for it. Clarissa and Jeremy are the family we have-and they do quite nicely for us. We could not want for better.”

“Come back to the kitchen and see. I’ve got her mixing dough for the dainties for this evening’s dinner.” She led the way down the long hall.

“Ah,” said Sir John, ”I can hardly wait.”

She-turned back to me. ”You, young man, you’ll be taking her for a walk round Deal, or so I heard from her. Be sure to take her out the pier, and show her the castle. You’ve not been to Deal unless you’ve seen the castle.”

“Oh, I’ve seen it.”

“Well, she hasn’t. And when you’ve done seeing the sights, you might take her to the tearoom in High Street, just at Broad.”

“Yes, ma’am.” She’d planned a complete itinerary for us, had she not? I would gladly remain, so that I might be privy to the plan Sir John was hatching with Mr. Sarton and his unnamed informant.

“There’s a widow lady who runs it,” she continued, ”a Mrs. Keen. Just tell her Molly sent you, and she’ll treat you right-if she knows what’s good for her!”

She had a somewhat rowdy manner but was altogether direct and quite good-natured. I liked her-as evidently Clarissa did also. I had not seen Miss Roundtree smile so brightly since we went out a-walking that day in Bath. It was evident that Mr. Sarton had not made her interrogation a difficult ordeal.

She greeted us most happily and ran off to wash the dough and. flour from her hands.

“Has she been with you long here in the kitchen?” Sir John asked.

“About the quarter part of an hour,” Mrs. Sarton responded.

“Then the mysterious visitor should be coming along soon.”

“That I wouldn’t know, sir. I do the cookin’ and the cleanin’ and leave the magistratin’ to him.” She cocked her head then in an attitude of listening. ”But unless I’m mistaken, I hear Berty moving round where he keeps his papers upstairs. He went up to find something for you, sir.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, he should be down soon.”

Clarissa came back, wiping her hands upon a towel, announcing that she was ready to be taken for a tour of the town. Well, as her guide, I took my leave of Sir John, and in company with Clarissa, allowed myself to be taken back down the hall to the door by which we had entered. Mrs. Sarton insisted on letting us out that she might again turn the locks from the inside.

As we departed the house, she waved us an enthusiastic goodbye. ”The town’s got itself a bad name from all the smuggling done here. But there’s much pleasure to be had in Deal. Enjoy yourselves, both of you.”

Then did she shut the door behind us, turn the key, and throw the bolt.

“Isn’t she wonderful?” said Clarissa to me.

“Why yes, I suppose she is,” said I. ”You certainly seem to have come to know her well in a very short time.”

“That’s the sort of person she is. I feel as if I had known her all my life.”

“Hmmm, well, I see.”

“Why, oh why, must you be so … so … tepid ?” said she in utter exasperation.

And I? Well, I shrugged in answer, indicating, I suppose, that I did not know why, nor did I think it a matter of great import that I did not know. We had reached an impasse of sorts, one which had far more to do with the differences in our personalities than with anything of a material nature. It was often so with us.

We had walked but a short distance and were near to the corner of King Street. A man who looked quite familiar came round the corner. I studied his face as I tried to decide where it was I had seen it before. Then, of a sudden, I knew: he was Dick Dickens, to whom I had been introduced by Mr. Perkins; Dick Dickens, the smuggler turned customs officer. He passed us with no more than a wise nod. I, not knowing how else to respond, nodded back to him. What was he doing here? To me, it seemed quite evident that he was on his way to a meeting with Albert Sarton and Sir John Fielding. Dickens, it was, who had become the source of information about the owling trade. Could he be trusted? Though I had my doubts, Mr. Perkins seemed to take him as he presented himself. Well, I had in a sense been invited to stay away from their meeting with him. Let them do without me and my misgivings, thought I.

“Don’t you want to hear about her?” asked Clarissa.

“About who?”

“Why, about Mrs. Sarton-about Molly. Who did you suppose I meant?”

“Certainly, I’d like to hear more, if there’s more to know. I fear my mind was elsewhere.”

“Obviously,” said she. ”But now that I have your attention, I’ll tell you a thing or two that you don’t know. First of all, Molly was cook at the house of Sir Simon Grenville until that arrogant fellow Jacques came over from France and robbed her of her position. Lady Grenville insisted that she must have a French cook, and so there it was, practically a condition of the marriage. She would brook no argument in the matter.”

“When did all this come about?” I asked, interested now, almost in spite of myself.

“A little over a year ago. That was when Sir Simon wed the beauteous Marie-Hélène, and it was also about the time that Mr. Sarton came to Deal as the new magistrate. That was how they happened to get married.”

“I don’t follow you,” I said, ”not at all.”

“Well, it’s simple enough. Cut loose as she was, with nowhere else to go, she presented herself to the new magistrate and asked if he needed a cook. Well, she knew very well that he did-for he himself, being a man, knew not the first thing about cookery, of course. But Mr. Sarton-‘Berty,’ she calls him-was quite smitten by her, red hair and all, and so he hired her on the moment. Six months later they were to be married-and that caused a great many problems.”

“Of what sort? I’d not heard of any of this.”

“Didn’t I tell you it would all be new to you?” said she smugly. ”Well, there was trouble on his side because his father and mother had hoped and expected he might marry the daughter of a rich man, who would herself bring a considerable fortune into the marriage, money that might be used to provide him with an entry into genteel society.”

“Well, there’d be little chance of that, I suppose.”

“Little chance indeed! She’d been living under the same roof with him as his cook. That was cause for scandal.”

“But they hadn’t actually been … that is …”

“Well, she didn’t go into that-but after all, they were in love, weren’t they? But it did bring them down a bit round town. A magistrate simply does not go about marrying his cook, you know. The bishop was reluctant to let them be married in St. George’s, which is, of course, where the magistrate of the town should be married. And of course Sir Simon could not play host to them.”

“But why not? He was more or less Mr. Sarton’s sponsor here in Deal.”

“He and Lady Grenville could hardly set a table for their former cook, could they?”

“I suppose not,” said I as I thought about it for a moment. ”It does account for a lot, does it not? They did eventually marry, though?”

“The wedding was held in a little side chapel and snubbed by all the best people in Deal.” Clarissa sighed. ”Isn’t it a beautiful story, Jeremy? Love conquers all! I do believe I shall use it as the plot for my first novel. I wonder if she would mind?”