Читать книгу: «Furze the Cruel», страница 13

The invalids replied untruthfully that they did, while Peter stated that Master had done him good already.

"They be growing there, and 'tis the growing that gripes ye. Du'ye understand that?" continued Master.

Peter ventured to ask how much growth might be looked for.

"They grows six foot and more, if they bain't stopped," said Master ominously.

"How be us to stop 'em?" wailed Mary.

"I'll tell ye," said Master. "Yew mun get home and bide quiet, and not drink. Then mebbe the peas will wilt off and die wi'out taking root."

"Shall us dig up the pills and tak' some?" Suggested Peter.

"Best let 'em bide. They be doing the ground good," said Master. "It bain't nothing serious, varmer," he went on. "Yew and Mary will be well again to-morrow. Don't ye drink and 'twill be all right. The peas will die of what us calls instantaneous combustion. If yew was to swallow anything to pizen 'em 'twould pizen yew tu. Aw now, you might rub a little ammonia on your bellies just to mak' 'em feel uneasy-like. I'll get ye a drop in a bottle. Nothing's no trouble, varmer."

"It taketh a scholard to understand it," said Mary. "When he putched a-telling I couldn't sense 'en, but I knows now it bain't serious. A brave larned man be Master. There bain't many like 'en."

The invalids were pretty well by that evening. Their pains were departing, and Mary was able to hunt again for Old Sal and bewail her lost groceries, while Peter turned his attention towards establishing electric light into the two hut-circles. He had brought back from Tavistock two little bottles with taps, hairpins, and bits of rope complete, also mystic circles made of china, which, he had been informed, were used for securing the completed article to the roof, and nearly a mile of thin wire, which he had picked up very cheaply, as it was getting rusty.

The wire had excited Mary's amazement, but Peter refused to give her any information concerning it. He had enjoyed an instructive conversation with the man in the shop, who perceived that Peter was a savage, but did not on that account refuse to sell him the required articles. Peter asked how the light was made, and the answer "with water," or words to that effect, so stunned him that he heard nothing for the next few moments. If it could be true that fire and heat were made out of water he was prepared to believe anything. The man seemed to be serious and not trying to make a fool of him; for he went on to explain that the light was conveyed from the water by a wire which communicated with the little bottles – he showed Peter that what he had mistaken for a piece of rope was in reality twisted wires – over any distance, although more power would be required if the house to be lighted was far from the water. The word "power" was explained to Peter's satisfaction as meaning a strong current, preferably a waterfall. The entire art of electrical engineering became clear to Peter at once. He remembered how the ignorant little girl in the lodging-house had mentioned the telegraph wires which had been put about the house. The child could not be expected to understand what the wires were for – Peter had not much tolerance for such stupidity – but it was evident, after the shopman's explanation, that those wires communicated with the Tavy and brought the light into the lodging-house from its waters. If the river at Tavistock, which is wide and shallow, could give forth light of such excellent quality, what might not be expected from the rushing torrent of Tavy Cleave? Peter perceived that every difficulty had been smoothed away.

"Best tak' they old lamps to the village and sell 'em," he said, with vast contempt for old and faithful servants. "Us ha' done wi' they. Us will ha' lights in our bottles avore to-night." He had hung them up already, one in his own hut, the other in Mary's, and they looked splendid hanging from the beams. "Like a duke's palace," according to the electrician.

"Aw ees, I'll sell 'em," said Mary, getting out a bit of sacking to wrap the old lamps in. "Us won't be mazed wi' paraffin and wicks and busted glasses. I'll tak' 'em' to Mother Cobley, and see if her will give us two or dree shilluns for 'em."

Mary went off with the lamps, which Peter's science was about to render superfluous, while the little man took up his bundles of wire and stumbled down the cleave, to put the hidden radiance of the Tavy into communication with their humble dwellings.

It was very pleasant down by the river that crisp October afternoon; the rich autumnal sun upon the rocks, the bracken in every wonderful tint of brown and gold, the scarlet seed-clumps of bog asphodel, and the trailing red ropes of bramble sprinkled with jetty berries, full of crimson blood like Thomasine's cheeks. It was nearly a month past Barnstaple Fair, and yet the devil had not put his foot upon the blackberries. The devil is supposed to attend Barnstaple Fair in state and tread on brambles as he goes home; which is merely the pleasant Devonshire way of saying that there is generally a frost about Barnstaple Fair week which spoils the fruit. The fairy cult was much prettier than all this demonology, but when education killed the little people there was only the devil to fall back upon; and though education will no doubt kill him in due time it has not done so yet.

Peter trampled among the brambles and swore at them because they caught his legs. He saw nothing beautiful in their foliage. It was too common for him to admire. The colours had been like that the year before; they would be the same the year after. Peter appreciated bluebells and primroses because they were soft to walk upon; but the blood-red "brimmles" only pricked his legs and made him stumble; and the golden bracken was only of use in the cow-shed, or in his hut as a floor-litter; and the gracious heather was only good for stuffing mattresses; and the guinea-gold gorse would have been an encumbrance upon the side of the moor had it not been so useful as a thatch for his hut, and a fence for his garden, and a mud-scraper for his boots. Peter, though very much below the ordinary moorman, was artistically like them all – insensible to beauty which is not of the flesh. Not a Dartmoor commoner would pause a moment to regard the sun setting and glowing in a mist upon the tors. Yet a Cornish fisherman would; and a Norman peasant perhaps would take off his hat and cross himself, not so much with a sense of religion, as because there is something in his mind which can respond to the beauty and poetry and romance of the sun in a mist. Possibly, with the Dartmoor commoner, it is his religion which is to blame. His faith is as dark and ugly as the bottom of a well. The Cornish fisherman has his Cymric blood, his instincts, his knowledge of folklore, to help him through. The Norman peasant has the daily help of gleaming vestments, glowing candles, clouds of sun-tinted incense – pretty follies perhaps, but still pretty – the ritual of his mass, and the Angelus bell. But the Dartmoor commoner has little but his hell-fire.

In the midst of all the splendour of Tavy Cleave on fire with autumn, Peter the ridiculous unwound a portion of the first roll of wire, and pondered deeply. It seemed absurd even to him to place the end into the water and leave Nature to do the rest; but he couldn't think of any other method. The shopman had distinctly mentioned wire and waterfalls, and both were ready to hand. As Peter went on to consider the matter it became clearer in his mind. The ways of Nature are incomprehensible. There were lightning-conductors, for instance. They were just bits of wire sticking aimlessly into the air, and apparently they caught the lightning, though Peter was not sure what they did with it. To put a piece of wire into a waterfall to attract light could not be more absurd than to erect a bit of wire into space to catch lightning. It was amazing certainly, but Peter had nothing to do with marvels, except to turn them to practical account. Once, when he was ill, a doctor had come to visit him armed with a little instrument which he had put against his chest and had then looked right inside him. Peter knew the doctor had looked inside him, because he was able to describe all that he saw. That was another marvellous thing, almost as wonderful as extracting light and heat from cold water.

There was a waterfall lower down, and below it a pool fringed with fern and boiling with foam. It was an ideal spot, thought Peter, so he went there, and after fastening his wire to a stone, dropped it into the pool at the foot of the falls. The silver foam and the coloured bubbles laughed at him, and had Peter been blessed with anything in the form of an imagination, he might have supposed they were inviting him to play with them, and the sunlight made a rainbow out of flying foam. The scene was so full of radiance that Peter easily believed how brilliantly the hairpins in the bottles would presently be glowing.

It was a lengthy business laying the wire up the side of the cleave among the boulders, fern, and brambles, and the task was not finished until twilight. The wire was rotten stuff, breaking continually, and had to be fastened together in a score of places.

Peter reached the top of the cleave at last, and discovered Mary waiting to inform him in an angry way how Mother Cobley had given her only a shilling for the two lamps, and that only under pressure, because they were old and worn out. Mary wanted light in her bottle at once, as she had to mix the bread and make the goose-feed. "That Old Sal be a proper little brute. He bain't come home, and I can't hear nothing of 'en," she concluded.

Peter replied that he would not be able to introduce the light into both huts that evening. Mary would have to wait for hers, for it did not occur to him that it would be possible to illumine Mary's hut before his own.

"How be I to work in dimsies?" said Mary.

"Can't ye mix bread in my house?" replied Peter.

Mary admitted the thing was possible, so she stalked off for the bread-pan, while Peter completed the installation by running the wire through his door, along the roof, and twisting it about the "bit o' rope" holding the little bottle which he fondly imagined would soon be radiant.

"Bain't a first-class job, but I'll finish him proper to-morrow," he said.

"Turn thikky tap!" cried excited Mary. "Aw, Peter, wun't the volks look yaller when they sees 'en?"

The folks were not destined to look yellow, but Peter and Mary were soon looking blue when repeated turning of the tap failed to lighten their darkness. It was not such a simple matter as tapping a cask of cider after all. They turned and twisted until the hut was dark and dreary, but not a farthing's worth of rush-light was produced.

"Mebbe the wire's been and broke," suggested Peter hopefully.

He lighted his lantern, and they tramped together down the cleave, following the wire all the way to the river and finding it intact. Presumably it was the waterfall which was not doing its duty.

They returned to their gloomy huts, the one sorrowful, the other angry. "You'm a gurt dafty-headed ole vule! That's what yew be!" cried the angry one, when they reached the top of the cleave.

Peter received this opinion with unwonted humility; and replied as meekly as any Christian martyr: "He be gone wrong somehow. I'll put 'en right to-morrow."

"Put 'en right, will ye?" cried Mary scornfully. "How be I to mix bread' and get supper? You'm a proper old horniwink, and I hopes the dogs 'll have ye."

These curses aroused Peter. He spat upon the ground, and drew mystic figures with his boot between Mary and himself. Having done what he could to avert the evil, he turned upon Mary and threatened her with the lantern. She continued her insults, having lost her temper completely, not so much because Peter had failed in his electrical engineering, as because she had an idea he had been making a fool of her. They were both ignorant, but one did not know it and was brazen, while the other was aware of it and was sensitive. She went on calling him weird names, and hoping the whist hounds would hunt him, until he lost his temper too. They had never quarrelled so violently before, but Peter was helpless in spite of his big threats, for Mary could have tackled and beaten two men as strong as her little brother. When he came to close quarters she picked him up, lantern and all, cuffed him, carried him into her hut, and snatching up her bulging umbrella whacked him well over the head with it.

Peter was immediately overwhelmed, not merely by the umbrella, but with packages which tumbled upon his shoulders, then to the floor, and were revealed to Mary's eyes by the dull gleam of the lantern, which was giving a very different light from that which had been anticipated from what had been the little glass globe hanging from the roof – had been and was not, for Mary had utterly demolished it with an upward sweep of her immense umbrella.

"Lord love us all!" she cried, her good-humour returning at once. "If there hain't the tea, and sugar, and t'other things what I bought to Goosie Vair, and thought the piskies had been and took!"

CHAPTER XIII
ABOUT VARIOUS EMOTIONS

Pendoggat stood beneath the penthouse of his peat linhay, looking at a newspaper. The issue was dated Friday, and it contained the news of the week; not the news of the world, which was of no local interest, but a condensed account of the great things begun, attempted, and accomplished in the rural districts of Devon. The name of the parish was printed in big letters, and under it appeared the wonder of the week: how little Willie Whidden, while tramping to school, had picked a ripe strawberry from the hedge; or how poor old Daniel Ashplant had been summoned for drunkenness – P.C. Copplestone stating that defendant had behaved like a madman – and fined half-a-crown, despite his solemn oath and covenant that he had never tasted liquor in his life. Unimportant items, such as the meeting of Imperial Parliament, and a great railway disaster, served as stop-gaps in cases where advertisements just failed to fill the column.

Pendoggat was looking for something. The testimony of a Wesleyan minister after twenty years of faithful service, accompanied by his photograph, caught his eye, and he thought he had found what he was searching for. He was astonished to learn that friend and pastor Pezzack was so popular; but when he read on he discovered it was only an advertisement for a nerve tonic. He turned over a page, and at last came upon the heading which he required. The title was that of a small sub-parish north of the moor, celebrated for a recent pronouncement of the curate-in-charge, who had congratulated the inhabitants upon their greatly increased sobriety, as during the late year only forty-seven persons, out of a total population of seventy-two, had been guilty of drunkenness. Printers had blundered and mixed things up rather. A hedge-builder had in the course of his duties come across a hole containing a rabbit, a hedgehog, and a rat; and in the same paragraph the Reverend Eli Pezzack had been safely married to Miss Jeconiah Sampson, with a good deal of bell-ringing, local excitement – the bride being well known in the neighbourhood for her untiring zeal in the matter of chapel teas – and an exhibition of such numerous and costly presents as a pair of brass candlesticks, an American clock, a set of neat doyleys, and an artistic pin-tray.

It was one of Pendoggat's peculiarities that he did not smile. His idea of expressing pleasure was to hurt something; just as a boy in moments of excitement may slash at anything with his stick. Pendoggat dropped the paper suddenly, ran at a goose which was waddling across his court, captured the big strong bird, and wrung its neck. He flung the writhing body on the stones and kicked it in his joy. The minister could not side against him now. He had burdened himself with a wife, and there would soon be the additional burden of a child. Pezzack was a free man no longer, and had become dependent upon Pendoggat for food and home and boots. He would have to obey his master and be his faithful dog, have to keep his mouth shut when he discovered that the nickel-mine was a fraud, for his home's sake and his wife's sake. Pendoggat could strip him naked at a stroke.

Annie Crocker crossed the court towards the well with a crock in her hand. Pendoggat noticed that her hair was growing grey, and that she was getting slovenly.

"Who killed that old goose?" she said, standing and staring at the big white body.

"I did," muttered Pendoggat.

"You'll have to pay," she said shrilly. "That be Mary Tavy's Old Sal, what she thinks the world of. Killed him, have ye? I wouldn't be you, Farmer Pendoggat, when Mary comes to hear on't. Mary's as good a man as you."

"Shut your noise," he growled. "Who's to tell her?"

"Who? What's my tongue for? The first time you lift your hand to me Mary knows."

Annie carried her crock to the well and lowered the bucket, muttering to herself, and keeping a watchful eye upon the man who kept her; while Pendoggat took the bird by the neck and dragged it towards the furze-brake. He was afraid when he learnt that it was Mary's Old Sal, for Mary was a creature whom he could not tackle. She seemed to him more a power of Nature than a strong hermaphrodite; something like the wind, or the torrential rain, or the storm-cloud. No commoner in his heart disbelieves in witchcraft; and even the girls, who twist a bridal veil across their faces when they are going to be married, know that the face-covering is not an adornment, but a fetish or protection against the "fascination" of the Evil Eye.

"Going to bury him!" sneered Annie. "Aye, he bain't the only one in there. Bury him in the vuzz till Judgment, if ye can. The Lord will send fire from heaven one day to consume that vuzz, and all that be hidden shall be revealed. Drag him in by the neck, du'ye? Maybe they'll be dragging you to a hole in the ground avore long."

She staggered across the court, splashing water like curses from the crock, and slammed the house door violently. Pendoggat said nothing. He bore with Anne because he was used to her, and because she knew too much about him; but he felt he would murder her some day if he didn't get away. He pushed the dead body of Old Sal as far into the furze as he could with the pole that propped up the washing-line, then went into the linhay, sat down upon the peat, and muttered hoarsely to the spiders in the roof.

Two things he required: the return of Pezzack, and winter. He had received through the minister nearly two hundred pounds from the retired grocer and his friends, and he hoped to get more; but Pezzack the secretary was a miserable correspondent without Pendoggat's assistance, and nothing could be done until he came back to resume the duties which were being interfered with by the honeymoon. Frost and snow were also essential for his plans, because the fussy grocer, to whom had been thrown the sop of chairman of the company – a jobbing printer had prepared an ill-spelt prospectus, and the grocer never moved a yard without a pocketful – was continually writing to know how things were going, and Pendoggat wanted snow as an excuse for deferring mining operations until spring. He would have left Dartmoor before then. He was going to take Thomasine with him, and enjoy her youth until his passion for her cooled; and then she could look after herself; and as for Annie, the parish would look after her. He had reckoned on getting five hundred pounds out of the visionary mine, only those respectable people of Bromley were so chary of parting with their money, even though they had Pezzack's unquestioned morality and good character to rely upon. His only fear was lest the grocer should take fright and get it into his head that the mine was a wild-cat scheme. It was hardly likely, as Dartmoor is to Bromley minds an unknown and almost legendary district.

"I gave him five pounds of his uncle's money to get married on," Pendoggat muttered, without a trace of humour. "For the next few weeks I'll give him fifteen shillings to live on, and then he may smash, if he can't preach his pockets full."

He was more afraid of Annie than any one else. The suspicious nature of women is one of their most animal-like characteristics. There had never lived a man better able to keep a secret than Pendoggat; and yet Annie knew there was something brewing, although he did not guess that she knew. It was a matter of instinct, the same instinct which compels a dog to be restless when, his master is about to go away. The animal knows before his master begins to make any preparation for departure; and by the same faculty Annie knew, or perhaps only guessed, that Pendoggat was meditating how he could leave her. She was in the miserable position of the woman who has lived for the best part of her life with a man without being married to him, having no claim except a sentimental one upon him, but compelled to cling to him for the sake of food and shelter, and because he has taken everything from her whatever of charm and beauty she might have possessed, and left her without the means of attracting an honest man. She had passed as Mrs. Pendoggat for nearly twenty years. Every one in the neighbourhood supposed she was married to her master. Only he and she knew the truth: that her marriage-ring was a lie. Pendoggat was a preacher, and a good one, people said. He was severe upon human frailties. He preached the doctrine of eternal punishment, and would have been the first to condemn those who straightened a boundary wall or led a maid astray. He could not have maintained his position had it been known that she who passed as his wife was actually a spinster. Pendoggat did not know the truth about himself. When in the pulpit religious zeal seized hold upon him, and he spoke from his heart, meaning all that he said, believing it, and trying to impress it upon the minds of his listeners. Outside the chapel his tempestuous passions overwhelmed him. Inside the chapel he could not feel the Dartmoor winds, although he could hear them; but the stone walls shielded him from them. Outside they smote upon him, and there was nothing to protect him. He was a man who lived two lives, and thought he was only living one. His most strongly-marked characteristic, his inherent and incessant cruelty, he overlooked entirely, not seeing it, not even knowing it was there. He could steal a fowl from his neighbour's yard, and quote Scripture while doing it; and the impression which would have remained in his mind was that he had quoted Scripture, not that he had stolen the fowl. When he thought of his conduct towards Pezzack he saw no cruelty in it. The only thought which occurred to him was that the minister was a good man and did his best, but that he, Pendoggat, was the better preacher of the two.

It was Thursday; Thomasine's evening out, and her master's day to get drunk. Farmer Chegwidden was regular in his habits. Every Thursday, and sometimes on Saturdays, he went to one of the villages, drank himself stupid, and galloped home like a madman. It was a matter of custom rather than a pleasure. He had buried his father, mother, and sister, on different Thursdays; and it was probably the carousal which followed each of these events which had fixed Thursday in his mind as a day for drowning sorrow.

Mrs. Chegwidden was one of the minor mysteries of human life. People supposed that she lived in some shadowy kind of way, and they asked after her health, and wondered what she was like by then; but nobody seemed to have any clear notion concerning her. She was never visible in the court of Town Rising, or in the garden, and yet she must have been there sometimes. She never went to chapel, or to any other amusement. She was like a mouse, coming out timidly when nobody was about, and scuttling into some secret place at the sound of a footfall. She passed her life among pots and pickle-jars, or, when she wanted a change, among bottles and cider-casks, not drinking, or even tasting, but brewing, preserving, pickling all the time. Chegwidden did not talk about her. He always replied, "Her be lusty," if inquiries were made. The invisible lady had no home talk. She was competent to remark upon the weather, and in an occasional burst of eloquence would observe that she was troubled with rheumatism. There are strange lives dragged out in lonely places. No doubt Mrs. Chegwidden had been conceited once; and perhaps the principal cause of her retirement into the dark ways and corners of Town Rising might have been traced to the fact that she was bald. A woman with no hair on her head is a grotesque object. Thomasine was really the mistress of the house, and she did the work well just because she was stupid. She worked mechanically, doing the same thing every day at the same time. Stupid women make the best housekeepers. Thomasine was a useful willing girl, who deserved to be well treated. Her master had not meddled with her.

Young Pugsley had been round to the kitchen door after dark since Goose Fair, and had urged Thomasine to wear a ring. The poor girl was willing, but she could not accept the offer, for more than one reason. Young Pugsley was not a bad fellow; not the sort to go about with a revolver in his pocket and an intention to use it if his young woman proved fickle. His wages were rising, and he thought he could get a cottage if Thomasine would let him court her. He admitted he was giving his company to another girl, and should go on with his attentions if Thomasine would not have him. The girl went back into the kitchen and began to cry; and Pugsley shuffled after her in a docile manner and sought to embrace her in the dark; but she pushed him off, with the saying: "I bain't good enough for yew, Will." Pugsley felt the age of chivalry echoing within him as he replied that he was only an everyday young chap, but if he was willing to take her it wasn't for her to have opinions about herself; only he couldn't hang on for ever, and she must make up her mind one way or the other, as he was doing well, getting fourteen shillings now, and with all that money it was his duty to get married, and if he didn't he might get into the way of spending his evenings in the pot-house. Thomasine only cried the more, until at last she managed to find the words of a confession which sent him from her company for ever. On that occasion it was fortunate for the girl that she could not think, because the faculty of reason could have done nothing beyond suggesting to her that the opportunity of leading a respectable life had gone from her, like her sweetheart, never to return.

She dressed herself in her best, and went to the old tumble-down linhay on the moor where Brightly had taken shelter after his unfortunate meeting with Pendoggat. She had been told to go there after dark and wait. She did not know whether she was going to be murdered, but she hoped not. She mended her gloves, put on her hat, twisted a feather boa round her neck, though it would be almost as great a nuisance in the wind as Mary's umbrella, but she had nothing else, gave a few tidying touches to the kitchen, and stepped out. It was very dark, and the sharp breeze pricked her hot face and made it smart.

She reached the linhay and waited. The place smelt unpleasantly, because beasts driven from the high moor by bad weather had taken shelter there. A ladder led up to a small loft half filled with dry fern except in places where moisture dripped through the roof. It was very lonely, standing on the brow of the hill where the wind howled. A couple of owls were hooting pleasantly at one another. No drearier spot would be found on all Dartmoor. Thomasine felt horror creeping over her, and her warm flesh kept on shuddering. She would not be able to wait there alone for long. Terror would make her disobedient. She wished she had been walking along the sheltered road by Tavy station, with young Pugsley's arm about her waist. It was not an evening to enjoy that bald stretch of moor with its wild wind and gaping wheals.

A horse galloped up. The sound of its iron shoes suggested frost, and so did the girl's breathing. She was wondering what her father was doing. He was a village cobbler, and a strict Methodist, fairly straight himself, and without sympathy for sinners. She moved, trod on some filth, and cried out. A man's voice answered and told her roughly to be quiet. Then Pendoggat groped his way in and felt towards her.

He had come in an angry mood, prepared to punish the girl, and to make her suffer, for having dared to flaunt with young Pugsley before his eyes in Tavistock. He had brought his whip into the linhay, with some notion of using it, and of drawing the girl's blood, as he had drawn it with the sprig of gorse at the beginning of his courtship. But inside the dreary foul-smelling place his feelings changed. Possibly it was because he was out of the wild wind, sheltered from it by the cracked cob walls, or perhaps he felt himself in chapel; for when he took hold of Thomasine and pulled her to him he felt nothing but tenderness, and the desire in him then was not to punish, nor even to rebuke her, but to preach, to tell her something of the love of God, to point out to her how wicked she had been to yield to him, and how certain was the doom which would come upon her for doing so. These feelings also passed when he had the girl in his arms, feeling her soft neck, her big lips, her hot blood-filled cheeks, and her knees trembling against his. For the time passion went away and Pendoggat was a lover; a weak and foolish being, intoxicated by that which has always been to mankind, and always must be, what the fragrance of the lime-blossom is to the bee. Even Pendoggat had that something in him which theologians say was made in heaven, or at least outside this earth; and he was to know in that dirty linhay, with moisture around and dung below, the best and tenderest moments of his life. He was to enter, if only for once, that wonderful land of perennial spring flowers where Boodles and Aubrey wandered, reading their fairy-tales in each other's eyes.