Читать книгу: «Furze the Cruel», страница 24

"My dear, you cannot, you must not, live here alone," she said, shivering at the idea, and the atmosphere. "It would drive me mad. The loneliness, the wind, and the horrible black moor."

"I have got to put up with it. I have no friends," said Boodles at once. "I don't know whether I shall pull through, as the worst time is ahead, but I must try. You can't think what it is when the wind is really high. Sometimes in the evenings I run about the place, and they chase me from one room to another."

"Not men?" cried the lady in horror.

"Things, thoughts, I don't know what they are. The horrors that come when one is always alone. Some nights I scream loud enough for you to hear in Tavistock. I don't know why it should be a relief to scream, but it is."

"You must get away from here," said Mrs. Bellamie decidedly. "We will arrange something for you. Would you take a position as governess, companion to a lady – "

"No," cried Boodles, as if the visitor had insulted her. "I am not going to prison. I would rather lose my senses here than become a servant. If I was companion to a lady I should take the dear old thing by the shoulders and knock her head against the wall every time she ordered me about. Why should I give up my liberty? You wouldn't. I have got a home of my own, and with lodgers all summer I can keep going."

"You cannot do it. You cannot possibly do it," said Mrs. Bellamie. "Will you come and spend Christmas with us?" she asked impulsively. It was a sudden quiver of the girl's mouth that compelled her to give the invitation.

"Oh, I should love it," cried Boodles. Then she added: "Does Mr. Bellamie wish it?"

The lady became confused, hesitated, and finally had to admit that her husband had not authorised her to speak in his name.

"Then I cannot come. It would have been a great pleasure to me, but of course I couldn't come if he does not want me, and I shouldn't enjoy myself in the least if I thought he had asked me out of charity," she added rather scornfully.

Mrs. Bellamie only smiled and murmured: "Proud little cat."

"Well, I suppose I must be," said Boodles. "Poverty and loneliness sharpen one's feelings, you know. If I was a rich lady I would come and stay at your house, whether Mr. Bellamie wanted me or not. I shouldn't care. But as I am, poor and lonely, and pretty miserable too, I feel I should want to bite and scratch if any one came to do me a favour. Aubrey is not coming home for Christmas then?" she added quickly, and the next instant was scolding herself for alluding to him again. "I mean you wouldn't ask me if he was coming home."

The lady asked abruptly for another cup of tea, not because she desired it or intended to drink it, but because her son was the one subject she wanted to avoid. That was the second time Boodles had made mention of him, and the first time the lady had been worried by a pain in her knee, and now she was haunted by the voice which had spoken so lovingly of the little girl when it declared: "I will never give her up." That little girl was standing with the lamplight on her hair, which was as radiant as ever, and with a longing look in her eyes, which had become sad and dreamy and altogether different from the eyes of fun and laughter which she had worn on Goose Fair Day.

"Oh, Mrs. Bellamie, do say something," Boodles whispered.

The lady began to choke. What could she say that the child would like to hear?

"You know I have given him up, at least my tongue has," the girl went on. "But I want to know if he is going to give me up?"

"I cannot tell you, my dear," the lady murmured, glancing at the clock.

"I think you must know, for he told me he was going to speak to you and his father. My life is quite miserable enough, and I don't want it made worse. It will be much worse if he comes to see me when he returns, and says he is the same as ever, and you are the same as ever. I promise I won't see him again, if he leaves me alone, and I won't marry him without your consent. Does he really love me, Mrs. Bellamie?"

"Yes, my dear," the lady whispered. "Do you think that is the carriage?"

"It is only the wind. Well, I know he does, but I wanted to hear you say it. What am I to do when he comes home? He will ask me to meet him, and if I refuse he will come up here and want to kiss me. What am I to do? I love him. I have loved him since I was a small child. I am not going to tell him I don't love him to please you or any one. I have done a good deal. I will not do that."

"We will beg him not to come and trouble you," said the lady.

"But if he does come?"

"I think, my dear, it will be best for all of us if you ask him not to come again."

That was too much for the little girl. She could hardly be expected to enter into an alliance with Aubrey's parents against herself. She began to breathe quickly, and there was plenty of colour in her cheeks as she replied: "I shall do nothing of the kind. How can you expect me to tell him to go away, and leave me, when I love him? I have got little enough, and only one thing that makes me happy, and you want me to deprive myself of that one thing. If you can deprive me of it you may. But I am not going to torture myself. I have made my promise, and that is all that can be expected from me. Were you never in love when you were eighteen?"

The lady rather thought that at the susceptible age mentioned she fell in love with every one, though the disease was only taken in a mild form and was never dangerous. She had a distinct recollection of falling violently in love with a choir boy, who sang like an angel and looked like one, but she had never spoken to him because he was only the baker's son. She had been rather more than twenty when Mr. Bellamie had fallen in love with her blood, and she had been advised to fall in love with his. She had been quite happy, she loved her husband in a restful kind of way, but of the intense passion which lights up the whole universe with one face and form she knew nothing; she hardly believed that such love existed outside fairy-tales; and in her heart she thought it scarcely decent. She had never kissed her husband before marrying him, and she was very much shocked to think that her son had been kissing Boodles. She would have been still more shocked had she seen them together. She would have regarded their conduct as grossly immoral, when it was actually the purest thing on earth. There is nothing cleaner than a flame of fire.

Mrs. Bellamie tried to turn the conversation from her son. She was uncomfortable and depressed. The surroundings and the atmosphere pinched her, and she felt she would not have a proper sympathy for Boodles until she was back in her luxurious drawing-room with a fire roaring shillings and pence away up the chimney. She would feel inclined to cry for the girl then, but at the present time, surrounded by winds and Weevil furniture, she felt somewhat out of patience with her.

"I came to see if I could do anything for you," she said. "But you are so independent. If I found you a comfortable – "

"Situation," suggested Boodles, when she hesitated.

"I suppose you wouldn't accept it?"

"I should not," said the girl, holding her head up. "The old man who is dead spoilt me for being trodden on. Most girls who go into situations have to grin and pretend they like it, but I should flare up. Thank you all the same," she added stiffly.

Mrs. Bellamie looked at the little rebel again and wished she would be more reasonable. It was a very different Boodles from the merry girl who had come to tea with her in Tavistock. The girl looked years older, and the babyish expression had gone for ever. Every month of that lonely life would leave its mark upon her. December had written itself beneath her eyes, and before long January would be signed upon her forehead, and February perhaps would write upon her mind. Mrs. Bellamie saw the little ring of forget-me-nots, and guessed who had given it her; and then she began to wonder whether it was worth while fighting against Nature. Why not let youth and love have their own sweet way, why not ignore the accident of birth, which had made her a Courtenay and Boodles a blank, why let pride straddle across the way to stop the youngsters from getting into the happy land? Little could be gained from preventing happiness, and much might be lost. That was the influence of the coals, burning again, although the fire was dying lower; and then the influence of prosperity and a restful life did their work, and suggested Boodles in her drawing-room as Aubrey's wife, a pretty sight, a graceful ornament; and outside the people talking, as they can talk when they smell the carrion of scandal.

"Have you no one to look after you?" she asked. "No guardians? Did your – did Mr. Weevil leave no will?"

"He left nothing, except the story of my birth," said Boodles. "I don't know if he left any relations, but if there are any they are entitled to what he left, as I am no connection of his. It would be dreadful for me if there is any one, and they hear of his death."

"You know the story of your birth then now?" Mrs. Bellamie suggested.

"Yes," said Boodles; "I do."

She tossed her head and stood defiant. She was losing her temper, and had already said what she had not intended to say. Having made up her mind "not to stand it," she had prepared a simple story to tell to Aubrey if he asked for it. Old Weevil had really been her grandfather, and her parents had been obscure people of no better station than himself. She was going to tell a lie, one thorough lie, and then be good for ever. She was going to make herself legitimate, that and nothing more, not a very serious crime, she was merely going to supply herself with a couple of parents and a wedding-service, so that she should not be in the position of Brightly and suffer for the sins of others. But the sight of that cold lady was making Boodles mad. She did not know that Mrs. Bellamie had really a tender feeling for her, and it was only her artistic nature which prevented her from showing it. Boodles did not understand the art which strives to repress all emotion. She did not care about anything just then, being persuaded that both the Bellamies were her enemies, and the lady had come with the idea of trying to make her understand what a miserable little wretch she was, fitted for nothing better than a situation where she would be trampled on. She felt she wanted to disturb that tranquil surface, make the placid lady jump and look frightened. Possibly her mind was not as sound as it should have been. The solitude and the "windy organ," added to her own sorrows, had already made a little mark. One of the first symptoms of insanity is a desire to frighten others. So Boodles put her head back, and laughed a little, and said rather scornfully: "I came upon some diaries that he kept, and they told me all about myself. I will tell you, if you care to hear."

"I should like to know," said Mrs. Bellamie. "But I think that must be the carriage."

"It is," said Boodles, glancing out of the window and seeing unaccustomed lights. "What I have to tell you won't take two minutes. Mine is a very short story. Here it is. One night, eighteen years ago, Mr. Weevil was sitting in this room when he heard a noise at the door. He went out. Nobody was there, but at his feet he found a big bundle of dry bracken. Inside it was a baby, and round its neck was a label on which he read: 'Please take me in, or I shall be drowned to-morrow.' What is the matter, Mrs. Bellamie?"

Boodles had her wish. The lady was regarding her already with fear and horror.

"Don't tell me you were that child," she gasped.

"Why, of course I was. I told you my story was a short one. I have told it you already, for that is all I know about myself, and all Mr. Weevil ever knew about me. But he always thought my father must have been a gentleman."

"The carriage is there, I think?"

"So you see I am what is known as a bastard," Boodles went on, with a laugh. "I don't know the names of my parents. I was thrown out because they didn't want me, and if Mr. Weevil had not taken me in I should have been treated like a kitten or a rat. I am sorry that he did take me in, as I am alone in the world now."

Mrs. Bellamie stood in the doorway, trembling and agitated, her face white and her eyes furious. The coals would not trouble her again. Good Courtenay blood had washed them, and made them as white as her own cheeks.

"You let me kiss you," she murmured.

"Probably I've poisoned you," said the poor child, almost raving.

"My son has made love to you, kissed you, given you a ring."

There was a light in the girl's eyes, unnaturally bright. "If you tried to take this ring from me I would kill you." She was guarding it with a shivering hand. "I know what I am, Mrs. Bellamie. I knew before that look in your eyes told me. I know what a beastly little creature I am, to have a gentleman for a father and some housemaid for a mother. I know it was all my own fault. It must have been the wicked soul in me that made them do what was wrong. I know I deserve to be punished for daring to live. I am young, but I have learnt all that; and now you are teaching me more – you are teaching me that if I had been left at your door you would have sent me to my proper place."

Mrs. Bellamie was outside, and the driver was assisting her towards the carriage, as it was too dark for her to see. Then the wheels jolted away over the rough road, and down the long hill towards luxury and respectability; and the unlit night pressed heavily upon the moor; and Boodles was lying upon her bed, talking to the things unseen.

CHAPTER XXIII
ABOUT A HOUSE ON THE HIDDEN LANES

Thomasine was sitting in the stone kitchen of Town Rising sewing and trying to think; but the little skeletons of thought that did present themselves were like bad dreams. She had given notice to the Chegwiddens and would be leaving in a few days, not because she wanted to go, but because it had become necessary. Town Rising was a moral place, where nothing lower than drunkenness was permitted, and Thomasine was able to comprehend how much better it was to resign than to be turned out. Pendoggat had found a place for her, not a permanent one as he explained, a place where she would receive no wages, where indeed a premium would be required; there she would pay a certain debt to Nature, and then he would come and take her away.

Thomasine was making garments which she smuggled away when any one came to the door. They were ridiculous garments which she could not possibly have worn herself, but perhaps she was making doll's clothes for a charity bazaar, although girls like Thomasine are not usually interested in such things; or she might have been preparing a complete outfit for a certain little person who had benefited her. Pixies of the Tavy are famed for their generosity to servant maids who do their work properly; and the girls have been known to make garments for their benefactors, and spread them out in the kitchen before going to bed, so that the little person could put them on in the night. But the clothes, small though they were, would have been a few sizes too large for pixies, and somewhat too roomy for dolls. Thomasine seemed to be wasting her time and materials; and as a matter of fact she was, although she did not know it because she knew nothing, except that she was not particularly happy.

She was trying to think of matrimony while she sewed. All that she knew about it was that the clergyman mentioned a couple by name publicly three Sundays running, and then they went to church, the girl in her fair-clothes, and the man with a white tie which wouldn't fit his collar, and the clergyman read something which made the man grin and the girl respectable. Time was getting on, it was the dull month of February, and the burden of maternity seemed to be much nearer than the responsibilities of matrimony. Thomasine knew nothing of the place she was going into except that her duties would be light, merely to look after an old woman who would in return render her certain services at a critical time. She did not even know where the place was, for Pendoggat was not going to tell her until the last moment. She had seen young Pugsley the previous Sunday, in a hard hat and a suit of new clothes, the trousers turned up twice in order that a double portion of respectability might rest upon him, with close-cropped head, and a bundle of primroses pinned to his coat. He had stepped up, shaken her by the hand in a friendly way, and told her he was going to be married at Easter. He had got the promise of a cottage, and the ceremony would take place early on Easter Monday, and they were going for their honeymoon to St. Thomas's Fair. Thomasine went back crying, because Pugsley was a good sort of young fellow, and it seemed to her she had missed something, though it was not her fault. She had always wanted to be respectable Mrs. Pugsley, only she had been taken away from the young man, and told not to see him again, and farm-maids have to be obedient.

Thomasine spent the remainder of her time sewing when she was not occupied with household duties, and then the day came when she was to leave. One of the farm-hands drove her to the station, with her box in the cart behind, and her wages in her pocket. She knew by then where she was going; into the loneliness of mid-Devon. She would much rather have gone home, but that was impossible, for the pious cobbler, her father, would have taken her by the shoulders, placed her outside the door, and have turned the key upon her.

If a map be taken, and one leg of a compass placed on the village of Witheridge, the other leg may be extended to a circumference six miles distant, and a wide circle be swept without encountering a railway or cutting more than half-a-dozen good roads, and inside that circle there is not a single town. It is almost unexplored territory, there are no means of transit, and the inhabitants are rough and primitive. Distances there seem great, for the miles are very long ones, and when a call is made to some lonely house the visitor will often be pressed to stay the night, as he would be in Canada or Australia. The map is well sprinkled with names which suggest that the country is thickly populated, but it is not. Many of the names are delusions, more suggestive of the past than the present. A century ago hamlets occupied the sites now covered by a name, but there is nothing left of them to-day except dreary ruins of cob standing in a thicket of brambles or in what was once an apple-orchard. What was formerly the name of a good-sized village is now the title of a farm-house, or one small cottage which would not pay for repairing and must therefore be destroyed when it becomes uninhabitable. It is a sad land to wander through. It suggests a country at the end of its tether which has almost abandoned the struggle for existence, a poverty-stricken country which cannot face the strong-blooded flow of food importations from foreign lands. Even the goods sold in the village shops are of alien manufacture. A hundred little hamlets have given up the struggle in the same number of years, and been wiped, not off the map, but off the land. The country of Devon is like a rosy-cheeked apple which is rotten inside.

This region within the circle is densely wooded, and in parts fertile, though the soil is the heavy dun clay which is difficult to work. It is well-watered, and is only dying because there are no markets for its produce and no railways to carry it. It is a country of lanes, so narrow that only two persons can walk abreast along them, so dirty and ill-kept as to be almost impassable in winter, so dark that it is sometimes difficult to see, and so stuffy and filled with flies in hot weather that any open space comes as a relief. These lanes twist everywhere, and out of them branch more lanes of the same dirtiness and width; and if they are followed a gate is sure to be reached; and there, in a dark atmosphere, may be seen a low white house with a gloomy orchard on each side, and behind a wilderness of garden, and in front a court containing crumbling barns of cob and a foul pond; and on the other side of the court the lane goes on into more gloomy depths, towards some other dull and lonely dwelling-place in the rotten heart of Devon.

The country would be less sad without these dreary houses which suggest tragedies. Sometimes stories dealing with young women and very young girls reach the newspapers, but not often; the lanes are so dark and twisting, and the houses are so entirely hidden. It is possible to walk along the lanes for miles and to see no human beings; only the ruins of where they lived once, and the decaying houses where they live now. It is like walking through a country of the past.

Along one of these lanes Thomasine was taken in a rickety cart ploughing through glue-like mud, and at one of the gates she alighted. There had been a hamlet once where the brambles spread, and its name, which had become the name of the one small house remaining, was Ashland, though the map calls it something else. The tenant was an elderly woman who appeared to find the greatest difficulty in suiting herself with a servant, as she was changing them constantly. She was always having a fresh one, all young girls, and they invariably looked ill when they went away, which was a sure sign that the house was not healthy, and that Mrs. Fuzzey's temper was a vile one. The woman had no near neighbours, though there were, of course, people scattered round about, but they saw nothing suspicious in the coming and going of so many maids. No girl could be expected to stand more than a month or two of Mrs. Fuzzey and her lonely house, especially as some of the girls she engaged were rather smart and well dressed. No one suspected that the mistress of dark little Ashland of the hidden lanes was there solely in the way of business.

"How be ye, my dear?" said the lady in an amiable fashion to her new servant, client, or patient, or whatever she chose to regard her as, when the driver after his customary joke: "Here's one that will stop vor a month likely," had been dismissed. "You'm a lusty maid what won't give much trouble, I reckon. You'm safe enough wi' me, my dear. Seems you ha' come a bit early like. Well, most of 'em du. They get that scared of it showing. Not this month wi' yew, I reckon. Be it early next?"

"Ees," said Thomasine.

"Well, my dear, I'll be a proper mother to ye. 'Twill du ye good to get abroad a bit. Run out and pick up the eggs, and us will ha' tea. Yonder's the hen-roost."

Mrs. Fuzzey seemed a pleasant body, but it was all in the way of business. She was a stout woman, with a big florid face, and crisp black hair which suggested foreign extraction. She reared poultry successfully, and was quite broken-hearted when a young chicken met an evil fate and perished, which indicated the presence of a vein of tenderness somewhere, in the region of the pocket probably, as she was usually insensible to the suffering of human beings. Still she did not look the sort of woman who might reasonably be expected to end her life upon the scaffold, if success in business made her careless, or if any of her patrons or clients ventured to risk their own safety by giving information against her.

Thomasine was not accustomed to stately interiors and fine furniture, and yet she was astonished at the bareness of the interior of Ashland. Had everything in the place been put up to auction less than five pounds would possibly have bought the lot. There was nothing in the way of luxury, not an article that was unnecessary, except the curtains that hung across the windows for respectability's sake. It was not a home, but a place of business. The mistress had the sense to know she might require to leave in a hurry some day without being allowed time to pack anything, and she saw no advantage in investing her savings in furniture which she would have to leave behind.

The garden was at the back, a dark garden, shadowed and gloomy, like an Eastern cemetery. It made a sort of quadrangle, with the house at one end, a jungle-like coppice with bracken and bramble undergrowth at the other, and an orchard on each side; as an additional protection there was a stone hedge round the three sides. There was only one entry and that was from the house. There had been another, a gate leading in from one of the orchards, but Mrs. Fuzzey had closed it up. She did not want people trespassing in her garden.

Near the hedge at the back, and in front of the dense coppice, was an old well which had not been used for a long time as the water was supposed to be polluted. It had been practically closed up when Mrs. Fuzzey came into residence, but she had opened it for her own purposes. The water supply of the house came from a well in the court, which was fed either by a spring or by the river Yeo which passed close by. The old well was very deep and contained a good deal of water with a scum on it which fortunately could not be seen, and a smell to it which in hot weather became rather pronounced, as it had not been cleared out for ages and was filled with dead bodies of rats – and other things. But the miasma carried no distance, and there was nobody to complain about it except Mrs. Fuzzey, who didn't mind. Ashland was almost as much out of the way as a farm upon the back blocks of Australia. Nobody ever entered the garden except herself and her maid for the time being. It was in a land where the sanitary inspector ceases from troubling. She did her own gardening, planting her potatoes and onions, being a strong woman well able to wield a spade. She had piled a lot of rocks about the well and made quite a pleasant flower garden there. She was fond of flowers, and in the warm weather would take out a chair and sit beside the well, admiring the beauty of the various saxifrages, creepers, and trailing plants which her efforts had induced to grow. She called it the Grotto. She had penny novelettes sent her regularly, and would devour them greedily as she sat in her garden, being very much addicted to romance and sentiment when it was strong enough; and sometimes she thought it would be agreeable to retire from business and have a husband and family of her own. It was so very dull at Ashland though she was making money. There never had been a Mr. Fuzzey, although she always gave herself the courtesy title of Mrs.

Thomasine got on very well with Mrs. Fuzzey and almost liked her. The girl was taken round the garden and the Grotto was pointed out to her with pride, although there was nothing to be seen except wet rocks, sodden plants, and decayed woodwork; but she was informed it would be a place of great beauty in the spring. Indoors there was cleaning to be done, with cooking, dairy-work, and egg-packing. A tradesman's visit was rare, and when one did come it was on foot along the narrow muddy lane, his cart being left far behind at the corner of some road or bigger lane. The evenings would have been fearfully dreary had Mrs. Fuzzey been less entertaining. The lady made and drank sloe-gin in some quantity; and she gave Thomasine a taste for it, with the result that sometimes they laughed a good deal without apparent cause, and the elderly lady became sentimental and embraced Thomasine, and declared that she loved young women, which was natural enough seeing that she made her living out of them. Then she would read selected portions from her latest novelette and weep with emotion.

"If ever I come to change my business I'll write bukes," she said one night. "I'd like to sot down every day, and write about young volks making love. I feels cruel soft to think on't. Lord love ye, my dear, there bain't nothing like love. Volks may say what 'em likes, but 'tis the only thing worth living vor. I've never had none, my dear, and I'd like it cruel. You'm had plenty, I reckon. Most o' the maids what comes here ha' had a proper butiful plenty on't, and some of 'em ha' talked about it till my eyes was fair drapping. I cries easy," said Mrs. Fuzzey.

Thomasine admitted she had received her share, and rather more than she had wanted.

"Yew can't ha' tu much when it comes the way yew wants it," said the lady. "I'm wonderful fond o' these little bukes 'cause 'em gives yew the real thing. I can't abide 'em when they talks about butiful country, and moons a shining, and such like, but when they gets their arms around each other and starts smacking, then I sots down tight to 'en. I can tak' plenty o' that trade. Sets me all of a quiver it du. I ses to myself: 'Amelia' – that's me, my dear – 'just think what some maids get and yew don't.' Then I starts crying, my dear. I be a cruel tender woman."

The conversation was entirely one-sided, because Thomasine had never learnt to talk.

"If ever I got to write one o' these, I'd mind what the maids ha' told me. I'd start wi' love, and I'd end wi' love. I'd ha' nought else. I'd set 'em kissing on the first line, and I'd end 'em, my dear, I'd end 'em proper, fair hugging, my dear," hiccupped Mrs. Fuzzey. The bottle of sloe-gin was getting low, and her spirits were proportionally high. She kissed Thomasine, breathed gin down her back, and lifted up her voice again —

"I loves maids, I du, I loves 'em proper. I loves children tu, innocent little children. I loves 'em all, 'cept when they scream, and then I can't abide 'em. I reckon, my dear, you wouldn't find a tenderer woman than me anywheres. I tells myself sometimes I be tu soft, but I can't help it, my dear."

The old swine slobbered over the girl, half-drunk and half-acting, giving her loud-sounding kisses; and Thomasine did not know that most of the girls who had been placed under Mrs. Fuzzey's protection had been used in the same way as long as they would stand it. People have many peculiar ways of easing the conscience; some confess to a priest, some perform charitable works; others, like Mrs. Fuzzey, assume they are rather too good, though they may be vile. The old harridan posed as a tender-hearted being in love with every living creature; and she had read so many ridiculous love-tales and wept over them, and drunk so many bottles of sloe-gin and wept over them, and listened with lamentations to so many amatory details from the young women who had placed themselves under her charge, that she had pretty well persuaded herself she was a paragon of loving-kindness. Thomasine thought she was; but then Thomasine knew nothing.