Читать книгу: «Furze the Cruel», страница 27

"I never done it. I never put the match to 'en."

"Aw, my dear, what have ye done?"

"I am swaling. Did you ever see such a blaze?" cried innocent Boodles.

"Her don't know," screamed Annie. Then she staggered into the court and fell fainting.

"The man's in the vuzz," Mary shouted.

All the sounds had ceased, and already the great flames were going out, leaving a red smoulder of ashes and big scarlet stems. It seemed to be getting very dark. Boodles did not realise what she had done, and Mary said no more; but Peter shuffled round, understanding it all perfectly, though not in the least ashamed.

"'Twas just the mommet," he explained. "Her had to du it 'cause her couldn't help it."

Presently they trod over the fiery ground and dragged the body out, without clothes, without hair, without sight; without money also, for the roll of notes had melted away in one touch of those terrible flames. He looked dead, but, like the furze which seemed to be annihilated, he lived. The heart was beating in the man's body, and the roots were alive in the glowing soil. Both would rise again, the one into a fierce prickly shrub; the other into a man destined for the charity of others, scarred, maimed, and blind. There was to be no escape for Pendoggat, no new life for him. Boodles of the fiery head had fulfilled her destiny; had burnt out one malignant moorland growth which had caught so many in its thorns; and had rendered it harmless for ever.

CHAPTER XXVI
ABOUT 'DUPPENCE'

Down the hill from St. Mary Tavy to Brentor came Brightly, most irrepressible of unwanted things, his basket on his arm, feeding on air and sunshine. It was early spring, there were pleasant odours and a fine blue sky, all good and gratuitous. Brightly had been discharged from prison as a man of no reputation, to be avoided by some and trampled on by others. His one idea was to get back to business; rabbit-skins ought to have accumulated, he thought, during' the months of his confinement; there would be a rich harvest awaiting him, which might mean the pony and cart at last, with prosperity and a potato-patch to cheer his closing days. He went for his basket, and it was not until it was slung upon his arm and he had bent himself into the old half-hoop shape to carry it over the moor, that he comprehended its emptiness. Formerly his stomach was empty and the basket was full; now both were empty; and the crushing difficulty of starting afresh without capital was with him again.

Brightly determined to subsist for a little on charity, but he soon made the discovery that Samaritanism was no longer included among the Christian virtues. People refused to do business with him on a benevolent basis. They slammed the doors in his face, and called him unpleasant names. They reminded him he had been in prison, as if he had forgotten it; and some of them added an opinion that he had got off far too cheaply. Others said if he came there again they would set the dog on him. Brightly soon became very hungry, and almost longed for the comforts of prison. It had been no easy matter to make a sort of living during those days when he thought himself honest. Now that he knew he was a criminal it appeared impossible.

Brightly was in danger of becoming an atheist. He stopped his hymn-singing; verses descriptive of the wonderful dairy were no longer found in his mouth, nor did he use the jingling refrain which concludes: "Jesu, Master, us belongs to yew." What was the use of belonging to some one who did nothing for him? Wise men have puzzled over that question, so it was not surprising if it bewildered poor foolish Brightly. He had been told in the prison that if he prayed for anything it would be granted; and his informer had added it was obviously his duty to pray for honesty. Brightly did nothing of the kind; he prayed for the pony and cart, throwing himself heart and soul into the business, as he had plenty of time. Instead of being a purveyor of rabbit-skins he became a praying machine. He considered that if there was any truth in the theory that prayers are answered, he ought to find the pony and cart awaiting him at the door of the prison. He did see one as he came out, but it could not have been intended for him, as the name upon the board was not A. Brightly, and near it was a man looking like a sweep who would probably have resisted Brightly's claims with every prospect of success. His teacher would have said the prayer was not answered because it was not a proper one, but that would not have helped Brightly in the least.

The little man went down the hill sniffing at the sweet wind, but conscious that it was not invigorating as it used to be. The truth of the matter was he was getting tired of life. He had become feeble, his cough was worse, and his eyes troubled him so much that he had to stop often, take off his spectacles, and rub them. But he couldn't rub the darkness away. The eyes were getting bigger than ever because he strained them so, trying to find the road. Sometimes he found himself sinking in a bog; his eyes had never played him such a trick before he became a criminal. As he walked he would look back and whistle or say: "Us will pitch presently." He was always forgetting that Ju had ceased to exist; and when he sat down to rest he would talk to her or stroke the heather beside him.

He entered the village of Brentor, but trade remained "cruel dull," so he gave it up and tramped along the road towards the church on the tor. As he went an idea came to him. He must give up the old stretch and try a new one. He might take the eastern side of the moor, Moreton to Ashburton, with the villages between, taking in Widdecombe where the devil dwelt. His old road had been dominated in a sense by St. Michael's Church upon its mount, but the connection had proved of no service to him, and the devil might be a better patron. He could get across to the other side in two days, and perhaps he would find there some one who would give him half-a-crown and set him up in business again.

Brightly was not entirely without capital, for Boodles had given him twopence with his basket, saying she was sorry it was so little, but she too was poor. That was another blow to Brightly; the angel had her limitations, and seemed to have lost her power of working wonders for the time. She too looked ill and miserable, and when celestial beings suffered what chance was there for him? Brightly was not going to invest that twopence in the rabbit-skin business, nor did he regard it as the nucleus round which the fund for his pony and cart would gather. He wrapped it up in many changes of paper, vowing not to touch it until he should require food. The time had almost come, he thought, when he should want food, not to stimulate his body, but to cease its action entirely. The twopence was set aside for his funeral as it were, or rather for the rat-poison which would make the funeral necessary. It amused Brightly to think that people would have to spend money upon him when he was dead, though they refused to give him anything while he was living.

He left Brentor behind and went along the winding road; and the sun came out so pleasantly he wondered if the gods or human beings would be offended if he whistled. He decided to remain silent, as the constable might be in hiding behind one of the furze-bushes, and he would be sent back to prison for making obscene noises. He knew every yard of the country, though he could see so little of it. Higher up was a big slab of granite, flat and smooth like an altar-tomb, upon which he had often sat and watched the tower of St. Michael's juggling with the big ball of the setting sun. He went up there, and it was not until his boot touched the flat stone that he discovered it was already occupied. A woman was sitting on it. Brightly apologised most humbly for his intrusion, for walking along the road, and for cumbering the face of the earth. He was always meeting people, and he felt he had no right to do so.

"You'm welcome," said the woman.

Then Brightly opened his nearly useless eyes wider and found that she was Thomasine, the young woman who had been so good to him and Ju, and had fed them when they were starving, and helped them on the way to Tavistock. He had always associated Thomasine with a well-stocked kitchen and food in abundance. She had become mixed up in his mind with Jerusalem, and he had thought of her as presiding over the milk and honey, and ladling them out in large quantities at the back door to hungry men and dogs. And there she was sitting on the big stone looking miserable, with her clothes bedraggled and boots muddy. Brightly began to think hard and to reason with himself. He was not the only miserable creature after all; there were other human things belonging to the neuter gender besides himself. Even the angel was miserable and had confessed to poverty; and not a scrap of food surrounded the former Lady Bountiful of Town Rising. Brightly was in Thomasine's debt, and he was prepared to pay what he owed as well as he could. He was willing to share his twopence with Thomasine; she should have an equal portion of the rat-poison if she was hungry for it; and they could wash the meal down with sweet water from the moor. As for Thomasine, the little dried-up fragment which had once represented a mind responded to Brightly's presence and she recognised a friend.

"I be in trouble," she said.

Brightly was glad to hear it, though he did not say so. It was good to find a partner who would enter into an alliance with him against the fat constable, the Bench of Magistrates, and all the wigs and ermine of oppression. Here was another Ju, a human being this time, and perhaps she too had been sentenced to be destroyed because she was savage, and was trying to hide from the constable and the crowd. Brightly was prepared to show her all sorts of secret places where she would be safe.

"Be yew a criminal tu?" he asked.

Thomasine was not sure, but thought she must be.

"I be one. I be the worst criminal on Dartmoor," said Brightly, trying to draw himself up and look conceited. He had never done any good in his business, but as a criminal he was entitled to regard himself as a complete success.

"I ain't got no friends. My volks wun't ha' me to home, and I've lost my character," said Thomasine.

"I never had no friends, nor volks, nor yet character," said Brightly.

"You'm the man what went to prison for robbing Varmer Chegwidden," she said, using her memory with some success.

"Dree months wi' hard labour," said Brightly proudly.

"Yew never done it. I know who done it. 'Twas Varmer Pendoggat," she said.

"I thought mebbe I might ha' done it and never knowed," explained Brightly. "Why didn't 'em tak' he then?"

"No one knows 'cept me, and I only guesses. He was wi' I just avore I heard master galloping over the moor, and he mun ha' passed master lying in the road. 'Twas no good me speaking. They wouldn't ha' took my word, and he'd ha' killed I if I'd spoke. 'Tis through he I be here now."

Adversity had sharpened Thomasine's tongue. She could not remember when she had last made such a lengthy speech.

"Where be yew going?" asked Brightly.

"Nowheres," said the girl. "Where be yew?"

"Anywhere," said Brightly, which meant the same thing. "Shall us get on?" he added.

Thomasine accepted the invitation, rose from the stone, and they walked on, up the road and the steep tor, and came out at last beside the church with its tiny burying-place of granite and its weather-beaten gravestones. They sat down to rest upon the edge of the precipice, and Thomasine wanted to know why they had come there.

"I wun't never be here again. I used to come up here to whistle and sing, and now I be come to look out for the last time," said Brightly. "I reckon I'll try t'other side o' the moor. Mebbe volks bain't so cruel wicked there."

"I reckon 'em be," said Thomasine.

"Du ye reckon they'll know I be a criminal?"

"Sure 'nuff. Policeman will tell 'em."

"My cough be cruel bad got, and I can't hardly see. If I can't mak' a living what be I to du?" asked Brightly.

This was much too difficult a question for Thomasine, and she did not attempt to answer it.

"B'est hungry?" she asked.

"I've ha' been hungry for years and years, 'cept when I was in prison, and then I was hungry for air," said Brightly.

"Got any money?"

"Duppence."

"I ain't got nothing," she said.

"Shall us get on?" said the restless little man. He felt business calling him, though he could do nothing with his empty basket.

They went back the way they had come, through Brentor village, and towards Lydford, Brightly walking on one side of the road and Thomasine upon the other. The only remark the girl made was: "This bain't the way to Plymouth;" and Brightly replied: "It bain't the place for yew." He had some knowledge of the world, and knew that it could not be well for a girl without home or friends or character to walk about the streets of a big town.

They stopped at Lydford, and Thomasine went to a cottage where people dwelt whom she had known in the days of respectability, and they gave her food which she brought out and shared with her companion. They went to the foot of the cascade in the gorge and ate their meal to the subdued murmur of the long white veil of water sliding down the face of the precipice. They were alone in the gorge, where the Gubbingses had once dwelt, as the place is deserted during the early months of the year.

"Have ye got a home?" asked Thomasine.

"Ees, a proper old cave to Belstone Cleave."

"What be I to du?" she murmured.

"Come wi' I," said Brightly gallantly. "I be going home."

The girl tried to think, but soon gave up in despair. She was barely twenty-three, and her life seemed done already. Her parents had shut the door upon her, and erased her name from the book of life – the family Bible which retained the record of those who were respectable – not so much because she had done wrong as because the man who had led her astray would not marry her. It was quaint logic, but the world reasons that way. She was ready to go with Brightly because he was friendly and she required friendship badly; she hardly looked upon him as a man; he was such a poor incomplete thing; if a man, without the power of sinning like a man. She would go with him to the cave in the cleave, and cook for him, if there was anything to be cooked, with the old frying-pan with a bottom like a sieve.

"Ees, I've got a butiful home," muttered ridiculous Brightly with pride.

He was regarding Thomasine as the reincarnation of Ju. The little dog had come back to him in the form of a woman. He could talk to her, tell her trade was dull, and he was hungry; could whistle, and sing for her amusement, and pat her gently when she rested upon the heather. She could reply to him in a manner that was better than tail-wagging. Ju had come to the cave gladly and found it homelike, so why not Thomasine? He would not be called on to pay seven-and-sixpence a year for her; but on the other hand she was so big, larger than himself in fact, and he was afraid she would want a lot of food. Brightly became prouder every minute. He had a woman of his own and "duppence" wrapped up in bits of paper. He would not touch his hat to the next man he met on the road. He would stare him in the face and say: "How be ye?" just as if he had been a man himself.

"Shall us get on?" he said again.

They went on and reached windy Bridestowe that night. Brightly, who knew every building upon that part of the moor, found a shelter for Thomasine in a peat-linhay, and a resting-place for himself in a farmyard. They started off early in the morning, and Brightly produced eggs with the half-apologetic and half-proud explanation: "Us be criminals." He had stolen them. Up to the time of his conviction he had never been a thief, but since leaving prison he had felt it was necessary to live up to his reputation as a desperate character, and so he took anything he could find. Under the oil-cloth of his basket was a feathered fowl, and Thomasine was informed there would be a good supper for her that evening.

"Yew stoled 'en?" exclaimed the girl.

"Volks wun't give I nothing," said Brightly. "They ses 'you'm a thief,' and 'tis no use being called a thief if yew bain't. Yew fed me and Ju when us was starving, and now I be going to feed yew."

They reached the cave, and Brightly produced all his possessions with pride, explaining to his housekeeper that a fire must not be lighted until after dark lest the commoners should see the smoke. The girl shivered at the wretched prospect, but resigned herself; and that night she told Brightly her story, and he told her all about his ambitions, and about the pony and cart which would not come in spite of the vain repetitions which he called prayers.

Miserable days followed. The spell of fine weather ceased and frost returned; with it a biting wind which swept across the moor and got into the cave, the outside of which became a pretty piece of architecture with icicles hanging from the rock to the ground like bars of cold steel through which the prisoners gazed into the depths of the gorge. Brightly had become a real criminal at last; and the basket, which had been the symbol of honesty, was then a receiver of stolen goods. He sallied out every day to rob fowl-houses and dairies; to gather articles of clothing from hedges and furze-bushes where they had been put out to dry. His eyes had been opened by necessity and justice; dishonesty was the only way in business; had he practised it from the start he would have obtained all those good things which he had always desired; the cottage and potato-patch, the pony and cart; perhaps his asthma and blindness would have been stayed as well. It would have been better for Brightly had he died in prison; he was living too long, and had become a moral failure, a complete failure now in every sense.

One Sunday evening they crept out of their hole in the gorge and went to Sticklepath. Thomasine wanted to hear the pure gospel preached again, and she persuaded Brightly to come with her to the big chapel in the middle of the village that he might have his frosted soul warmed by listening to a realistic account of the place "down under" towards which he was hurrying. A strange preacher arose in the pulpit, an old white-bearded man near the end of his days, and he preached from the text: "I have been young, and now am old, and yet saw I never the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread." He seemed a pious old man, although he could not have been observant, or perhaps he had gone about with his eyes shut, as the psalmist must have done; but he was eloquent, and his words thundered upon the congregation like Dartmoor rain upon a tin roof.

When they left the chapel Thomasine was weeping, and Brightly seemed to have become quite blind. Still he could not understand things. He had been righteous, as he had comprehended it, slipping into a church or chapel as often as he dared, and singing "Jerusalem the Golden" at every opportunity. Yet he had been forsaken and had begged his bread; Ju had been taken from him; he had been cast into prison. Who could explain these things? Perhaps he had not endured long enough; if he had held out another year the pony and cart might have been brought to him driven by the angel; but he could not hold out when people would not permit him to do business, and when he was starving. It was too late then to go back and tread the old road, for he had fallen at last, become dishonest in act; and if he went on in his wicked ways the policeman would run him down again; and if he reverted to honesty the poorhouse would claim him. There was only one way out. He must buy a ticket for Jerusalem. It would only cost twopence.

They returned to the cave, and Thomasine went on crying. She said she could stand it no longer. The moor was black with storm clouds, a thaw had set in, and water was trickling everywhere. Brightly sat huddled up and moaning. His eyes were nearly useless, and rheumatism racked his poor limbs. He knew that the decree had been given against him, he had been found guilty in the higher court, judgment had been signed against "A. Brightly. Rabbit-skin merchant. Abode Nowhere."

"Us mun get on," he said firmly.

"I can't bide here," sobbed Thomasine.

"Us will walk to-morrow," said Brightly.

"I'll go to Plymouth," she said.

"Live honest;" he begged. "Don't ye go to the dirty trade."

"I wun't," she cried. "I'll live clean if they'll let me. No one knows me there, and I'll get some job mebbe."

"I ha' been young, and now I be getting old," said Brightly. "I ha' been righteous tu, and I ha' begged, and I ha' prayed, and got nought."

"What be yew going to du?" she asked.

"I be coming wi' yew as far as Okehampton. I'll set ye on the road to Plymouth."

"Wun't ye come tu?"

"'Twould kill me," said Brightly. "I be that blind I'd get run over, and my asthma be got so cruel bad I wouldn't be able to breathe. I reckon I'll stop on Dartmoor."

"You'll live honest?" she said.

"I wun't tak' what bain't mine no more," Brightly promised.

In the morning they set out. It was raining, but they did not notice that. They crossed the Taw river, passed through Belstone, and struck into the lane which would bring them down to the Okehampton road. They had not gone far before they came upon a pony and cart fastened to a gate, belonging to the washerwoman, but the cart was empty and there was no one in sight. It carried a lamp, and a board was at the side revealing the owner's name, and the bottom was covered with fern. Brightly brought his pinched face near the cart, stopped to regard this revelation of his life-long dream, and then he succumbed to the great temptation. He unfastened the pony, climbed into the cart, and drove in majesty up the lane.

"What be yew doing?" cried Thomasine in great fear. "It bain't yourn."

Brightly did not hear her. He knew at last what it was like to jog along the lane in a little pony-cart, and for five precious minutes he was in dreamland. In that short space of time he completed the allotted span of human existence. He was returning to the littlie cottage in the midst of the potato-patch, after a day of successful work. The cart behind was piled high with rabbit-skins, and in her own little corner Ju was sitting, fat and content. Brightly put up his ridiculous head and whistled "Jerusalem the Golden" for the last time. Then he got down, tied up the pony to another gatepost, and tramped through the mud with Thomasine.

In the town they passed a window where a notice was displayed: "Men wanted," and the girl drew his attention to it, but Brightly only coughed. The dream had faded and he had returned to realism. Men were wanted to dig foundations, build houses, work in stone, hairy-armed men who could lift granite, not a poor creeping thing who had hardly the strength to strangle a fluttering fowl.

They went through the town, up the long hill on the other side, and near a quarry of red stone they stopped.

"It be the way to Plymouth," Brightly said.

"Thankye kindly," said Thomasine. "Be yew going back?"

"Ees; I be going back," he answered.

"Be yew going far?"

"A bit o' the way towards Meldon."

"Yew ha' got no money," she said pityingly.

"I ha' got duppence," he reminded her.

"You'll live honest?" she said again.

"It wun't be long. I ha' a sort o' choking feeling," he said, putting a raw hand to his throat.

"Be ye going down under?" Thomasine was looking over the hedge and between the bare trees. Some way below, beside the river, she could just see the workhouse.

"I be a going to walk towards Meldon, and sot by the river. If the pains get bad I'll fall in mebbe."

"No," she cried. "Don't ye du that."

"Us mun get on," said Brightly, mindful of business. "I wish ye good-bye."

They shook hands, and Thomasine began to cry again. She did not like the idea of walking along a lonely road all the way to distant Plymouth. "Thankye kindly," she sobbed.

"You'm welcome," said Brightly.

They parted, and the little man shuffled back to the town. Upon the bridge which spans the Okement he stopped, and took out the little packet which contained the "duppence." It was a wonderful sum of money, after all, if it would procure for him admission to the celestial dairy, where he could feast, and listen to, an organ playing, and see people dancing; and perhaps Ju would be sitting at his feet, wagging her tail, looking up, and enjoying it all too. It would be better than the wet cave, better than the workhouse, better than going back to prison. He would have to be quick, or they might discover how he had attempted to steal the pony and cart. He seemed to have become quite blind suddenly, and his heart was thumping against his side. He had to feel his way along towards the chemist's, which was the ticket office where he could obtain his twopenny pass into Palestine. There would be no stop on the journey, and they would be certain to let him in. Already he seemed to hear some one like Boodles saying: "Please to step inside, Mr. Brightly. Have a drop o' milk, will ye?" And there was another Boodles coming towards him with the pleasant words: "Be this your little dog, mister? Her's been whining vor ye cruel."

Brightly held the precious "duppence" for his fare tightly in his raw hand. He was smiling as he entered the chemist's shop.