Chapter 57

MARY LYTH

Conquests, triumphs, and slaughterous glory are not very nice till they have ceased to drip. After that extinction of the war upon the waves, the nation which had won the fight went into general mourning. Sorrow, as deep as a maiden's is at the death of her lover, spread over the land; and people who had married their romance away, and fathered off their enthusiasm, abandoned themselves to even deeper anguish at the insecurity of property. So deeply had England's faith been anchored into the tenacity of Nelson. The fall of the funds when the victory was announced outspoke a thousand monuments.

From sires and grandsires Englishmen have learned the mood into which their country fell. To have fought under Nelson in his last fight was a password to the right hands of men, and into the hearts of women. Even a man who had never been known to change his mind began to condemn other people for being obstinate. Farmer Anerley went to church in his Fencible accoutrements, with a sash of heavy crape, upon the first day of the Christian year. To prove the largeness of his mind, he harnessed the white-nosed horse, and drove his family away from his own parish, to St. Oswald's Church at Flamborough, where Dr. Upround was to preach upon the death of Nelson. This sermon was of the noblest order, eloquent, spirited, theological, and yet so thoroughly practical, that seven Flamborough boys set off on Monday to destroy French ships of war. Mary did her very utmost not to cry--for she wanted so particularly to watch her father--but nature and the doctor were too many for her. And when he came to speak of the distinguished part played (under Providence) by a gallant son of Flamborough, who, after enduring with manly silence evil report and unprecious balms, stood forward in the breach, like Phineas, and, with the sword of Gideon, defied Philistia to enter the British ark; and when he went on to say that but for Flamborough's prowess on that day, and the valor of the adjoining parish (which had also supplied a hero), England might be mourning her foremost [Greek word], her very greatest fighter in the van, without the consolation of burying him, and embalming him in a nation's tears--for the French might have fired the magazine--and when he proceeded to ask who it was that (under the guiding of a gracious hand) had shattered the devices of the enemy, up stood Robin Cockscroft, with a score of equally ancient captains, and remembering where they were, touched their forelocks, and answered--"Robin Lyth, sir!"

Then Mary permitted the pride of her heart, which had long been painful with the tight control, to escape in a sob, which her mother had foreseen; and pulling out the stopper from her smelling-bottle, Mistress Anerley looked at her husband as if he were Bonaparte himself. He, though aware that it was inconsistent of her, felt (as he said afterward) as if he had been a Frenchman; and looked for his hat, and