“I dare you to do it.”
“Ban’t no use flustering yourself, my old dear. Every human man’s got one kick in him. An’ kick I’m gwaine to this instant moment.”
He turned and left her with great agility, while she—the foundations of her married life suddenly shaken by this earthquake—stood and stared and gasped up at heaven.
Joseph quickly vanished into the dusk, and soon stood once more before the new vicar. Mr. Budd thereupon raised his eyes from his desk and asked a question without words.
“Well, your honour, ’tis like this here: I’ll go back to church again very next Sunday as falls in.”
“Ah! But I thought that Joseph would be in bondage to no man?”
“Nor no woman neither,” said Mr. Hannaford.
A TRAVELLER’S TALE
“He’m a monkey that hath seen the world, no doubt,” said Merryweather Chugg, the water-bailiff.
“Yes—an’ brought back some nuts wi’ gold kernels, by all accounts,” answered Noah Sage; “though he ban’t going to crack none here, I reckon, for the chap’s only come to have a look at the home of his youth; then he’m off again to foreign parts.”
The two old men sat in the parlour of the “Bellaford” Inn at Postbridge, and about them gathered other labouring folk. All were inhabitants of the Dartmoor district, and most had been born and bred in the valley of East Dart or upon adjacent farms. This village, of which the pride and glory is an old bridge that spans the river, shall be found upon the shaggy breast of the Moor, like an oasis in the desert; for here much land has been snatched from the hungry heath, groves of beech and sycamore lie in the bosom of these undulating wastes, and close at hand are certain snug tenement farms whereon men have dwelt and wrestled with the wild land from time immemorial.
To-day a native had returned to his home; and as a vacant room at the “Bellaford” Inn well served his purpose, Mr. Robert Bates secured it for a fortnight, that he might wander again about his boyhood’s haunts and shine a little in the eyes of those who still remembered him. That night he had promised to relate his experiences in the public bar; he had also let it be known that upon this great occasion beer and spirits would flow free of all cost for old friends and new.
“He’ll have to address a overflowed meeting, like a Member of Parliament,” said Michael French, the Moor-man, “for be blessed if us can all get in your bar, Mrs. Capern.”
“Lots of room yet,” she said, “if you’d only turn some of they boys out-of-doors. They won’t drink nought, so I’d rather have their room than their company.”
“I should think you was oncommon excited to see this chap, ban’t you?” asked Noah Sage of a very ancient patriarch in the corner. “It was up to Hartland Farm, when you was head man there, that Bob Bates comed as a ’pretence from Moreton Poorhouse, if I can remember.”
“Ess fay, ’tis so,” said the other. “You ax un if the thrashings I used to give un every other day for wasting his time weern’t the makin’ of un; an’ if he ban’t a liar, he’ll say ’twas so. If he owes thanks to any man, ’tis to old Jacob Pearn—though I say it myself.”
“That’s the truth, an’ I’ll allow every word of it, Jacob; an’ I’m terrible glad you ban’t dead, for you were the first I meant to see come to-morrow.”
Mr. Bates himself spoke. He was a small, wiry man of fifty or thereabout. His clothes were well cut, and he wore a gold watch-chain. His face and hands were tanned a deep brown; his hair was grizzled, and his beard was also growing grey at the sides. His eyes shone genially as he grasped a dozen hands in turn, and in turn answered twice a dozen salutations.
Robert Bates had run away from the heavy hand of Gaffer Pearn some five and thirty years before the present time, and he looked round him now and saw but one familiar face; for the old men had passed from their labours, the middle-aged had taken their places, his former mates were growing grey and he could not recognise them.
“I’ll tell you the whole tale if you’m minded,” he said. “’Tis thirty years long, but give two minutes to each of they years an’ I’ll finish in a hour. An’ meantime, Mrs. Capern—as was Nancy Bassett, an’ wouldn’t walk out Sundays with me last time I seed ’e—be so good as to let every gen’leman present have what he wants to drink, for I be going to leave ten pounds in Postbridge, an’ I’d so soon you had it as anybody.”
Great applause greeted this liberal determination.
“You’m an open-handed chap, wherever you’ve comed from,” said Merryweather Chugg, “an’ us all drinks long life an’ good health to you an’ yours, if so be you’m a family man.”
“I’ll come to that,” answered Mr. Bates. “Let me sit by the fire, will ’e? I do love the smell of the peat, an’ where I come from, us don’t trouble about fires, I assure ’e, for a body can catch heat from the sun all the year round.”
“You was always finger-cold in winter,” said Mr. Pearn. “I mind as a boy your colour never altered from blue in frosty weather, an’ you had a chilblain wheresoever a chilblain could find room for itself.”
“’Tis so; an’ when I runned away to mend my fortune, ’twas the knowledge that a certain ship were sailing down to the line into hot weather as made me go for a sailor. To Plymouth docks I went when I ran off, an’ there met a man at the Barbican as axed me to come for cabin-boy; an’ when he said they was going where the cocoanuts comed from, I said I’d go.”
“My dear life!” murmured Mrs. Capern,—“to think what little things do make or mar a fortune!”
“’Tis so;—a drop of rum cold, mother, then I’ll start on my tale. An’ I may as well say that every word be true, for Providence have so dealt by me that to tell a falsehood is the last thing ever I would do.”
“Not but what you used to lie something terrible when you was young, Bob,” said Mr. Pearn, from the corner.
“I know it, Jacob,” answered the traveller; “an’ hard though you hit, you never hit hard enough to cure me of lying. ’Tis a damned vice, an’ I never yet told a fib as paid for telling. But ’twasn’t you cured me; ’twas a man by the name of Mistley, the bo’sun of the ship I sailed in. I told un a stramming gert lie, an’ he found it out, an’—well, if you want to know what a proper dressing-down be, you ax a seafaring man to lay it on. In them days they didn’t reckon they’d begun till they’d drawed blood out of ’e; an’ so often as not they’d give ’e a bucket of salt water down your back arter, just so as you shouldn’t forget where they’d been busy. One such hiding I got from Mistley, an’ never wanted another. I’d so soon have told that man a second lie as I’d told God one to His shining face. An’ long after, to show I don’t bear no malice, when I fell on my feet, I went down to the port when my old ship comed in again two years later, an’ in my pocket was five golden pounds for Mistley. Only he’d gone an’ died o’ yellow jack in the meantime down to the Plate, so he never got it. An’ you boys there, remember what I say, an’ never tell no lies if you want to get on an’ pocket good wages come presently. ’Tis more than thirty years ago, an’ the man that did it dust; yet I wriggles my shoulders an’ feels the flesh crawl on my spine to this day when I thinks of it.
“But I’m gwaine too fast, for I haven’t sailed from Plymouth yet. Us went off in due course, an’ I seed the wonders of the deep, an’ I can’t say I took to ’em; but there—I’d gone for a sailor, an’ a sailor I thought ’twould have to be. Us got to a place by name of Barbados in the West Indies presently—Bim for short. A flat pancake of an island, with not much to tell about ’cept that there’s only a bit of brown paper between it an’ a billet I hope none of us won’t never go to. Hot as—as need be, no doubt; but there was better to come, for presently we ups anchor an’ away to St. Vincent—a place as might make you think heaven couldn’t be better; an’ then down to Grenada, another island so lovely as a fairy story; an’ then Trinidad—where the Angostura bitters comes from, Mrs. Capern—an’ then a bit of a place by name of Tobago, as you could put down on Dartymoor a’most an’ leave some to double up all round. Yet, ’pon that island, neighbours, I’ve lived my life, an’ done my duty, I hope, an’ got well thought upon by black, white an’ brindled; for in them islands I should tell you the people be most every shade you could name but green. Butter-coloured, treacle-coloured, putty-coloured, saffron-coloured, peat-coloured, an’ every colour; an’ sometimes, though a chap may have the face of a nigger—lips an’ nose an’ wool an’ all—yet he’ll be so white as a dog’s tooth; an’ you know there’s blood from Europe hid in him somewheres. They’m a mongrel people; yet they’ve got souls—just as much as they Irish-Americans; an’ God He knows if they’ve got souls, there’s hope for everything—down to a scorpion. My own wife, as I’ve left out in Tobago with my family—well, I wouldn’t go for to call her black; an’ for that matter I knocked a white man off the wharf to Scarborough in Tobago, who did say so; but you folks to home—I dare swear you’d think her was a thought nigger-like, owing to a touch of the tar-brush, as we call it, long ways back in her family history. But as good a woman—wife an’ mother—as ever feared God an’ washed linen. A laundress, neighbours—lower than me by her birth, so my master said; then I laughed in his face, an’ told un I was a workhouse boy as couldn’t name no father but God A’mighty. A nice little bungy, round-about woman, wi’ butivul black eyes, an’ so straight in her vartue as a princess. Never a man had no better wife, an’ her’d have come to see old Dartymoor along with me but for my family, as be large an’ all sizes.
“Well, to Tobago it was that, lending a hand to help lade a Royal Mail Steam Packet as comed in—just to make a shilling or two while we was idle, I got struck down. Loading wi’ cocoanuts an’ turtle her was; an’ ’twould make you die o’ laughin’, souls, to have seen them reptiles hoisted aboard by their flippers. No laughing matter for them though, poor twoads, because, once they’m catched by moonlight ’pon the sandy beaches there, ’tis a very poor come-along-of-it for ’em. Not a bit more food do they have, but just be shipped off home in turtle-troughs an’ make the best weather they can. Us had a stormy journey back last fortnight, an’ I knowed by the turtle-soup o’ nights that the creatures were dying rapid an’ somebody had made a bad bargain. But if you gets the varmints home alive, they be worth a Jew’s eye.
“Suddenly, helping in a shore barge, I went down as if somebody had fetched me a clout ’pon top the head; an’, when I came to, there was doctor from shore an’ the dowl to pay. ’Twas days afore I could get about, an’ my ship couldn’t wait, an’ no work for me nowhere ’cept odd jobs. Then they told me I was a D.B.S., which means a Distressed British Seaman, an’ I found as I’d have to wait for next steamer that comed to ship me off. But I weren’t very down-daunted ’bout it, for, since I’d seen the size of the earth, I’d growed bigger in the mind a bit, an’ I ate my food an’ smoked my pipe an’ thanked God that I was alive to try again.
“Then, trapesing about one afternoon, footsore like and tired of trying to get something to do on the sugar estates, I climbed over a wall into a bit of shade, an’ sat me down under some cocoa trees to rest. I confess I did get over a wall, which is a thing you can’t often do without making trouble except on old Dartymoor. An’ there I was with the mountains around—all covered to their topmost spurs wi’ wonnerful forest, and the Caribbean Sea stretched blue as blue underneath. Such a jungle of trees an’ palms laced together with flowering vines as you’ve never dreamed of. Trumpet flowers, an’ fire-red flamboyants, an’ huge cactuses, an’ here an’ there a lightning-blasted, gert tree towering stark white above all the living green. An’ king-birds an’ humming-birds twinkling about in the air like women’s rings an’ brooches, an’ lizards so big as squirrels a-scampering upon the ground, an’ tree-frogs in the trees, an’ fireflies spangling the velvet-black nights. An’ no dimpsy light, neither at dawn nor even, for the moment sun be down ’tis night, an’ moment he be up again ’tis morning. You can see un climb straight out o’ the sea as if he was rolling up a ladder.
“I sat there in the shade, an’ at my very hand what should I find but a ripe pomegranate? ’Tis a fruit as you folks haven’t met with outside the Bible, I reckon, yet a real thing, an’ very nice to them as like it. Packed tight wi’ seeds, the colour of the heather, wi’ a bitter-sweet taste to it as be very refreshing to the throat. Such a fruit I picked without ‘by your leave,’ an’ chewed at un, an’ looked at the butivul blue sea down-under, an’ talked to myself out loud, as my manner always was.
“‘Well, Bob Bates,’ I sez, ‘you be most tired o’ caddling about doing nought, ban’t you? Still, you’m a lucky chap, whether or no; for a live D.B.S. be a sight better’n a dead cabin-boy. ’Twill larn ’e to treat the sun less civil. Don’t do for to cap to him in these parts. But you keep up your heart an’ trust in the Lord, as Mistley told ’e. He’ll look to ’e for sartain in His own time.’
“Then I heard a curious ristling alongside in the bush, an’ catched sight of a pair o’ cat-like eyes on me. ’Course I knowed there wasn’t no savage beasts there, but I didn’t know as there mightn’t be savage men, an’ I was going to get back over thicky wall an’ run for it. But too late. They was human eyes, wi’ a human nose atop an’ a human moustache under, but a very comical fashion of face an’ a queerer than ever I’d seen afore or have since.
“’Tis hard for me to call home exactly what Matthew Damian looked like then, for ’tis above thirty year ago, an’ that man filled my eye every day, winter an’ summer, for twenty years. Yet, though he looks different now, with all I know behind my mind’s eye as I see him, then he ’peared mighty strange, wild an’ shaggy. A face like a round shot he had, but a terrible deep jaw under the ear. A little chin, round eyes—grey-green—an’ ears standing sharp off a close-cropped head, wi’ hair pepper-an’-salt colour. A huge, tall man, an’ his beard was cut to his chin, an’ his moustache stuck out like a bush five inches to port an’ starboard. Well, I was mortal feared, for I’d never seen nothing like un outside a nightmare; yet his voice was so thin as a boy’s, an’ piped like a reed in his thick throat. He had the nigger whine, too—as I dare say you may mark on my tongue now, after my ears have soaked in it so long.
“He stared an’ I stared. Then he spoke. ‘You come along with me,’ he said in a Frenchy sort of English.
“‘Why for?’ I said; then I thought I seed his eyes ’pon the pomegranate. ‘Very sorry, sir, if this here be yours,’ I said; ‘but I’m baggered if a chap can tell what be wild an’ what ban’t on this here ridicklous island. ’Tis like a gentleman’s hothouse broke loose,’ I said to un.
“‘No matter about that,’ he said.
“‘I can give ’e my knife,’ I told un, ‘if you must have payment; but that be all I’ve got in the world ’cept the things I stand up in, an’ I’d a deal rather keep it.’
“‘I do not want your knife,’ he answers. ‘I want you.’
“‘Well, I’m going cheap, I do assure ’e,’ I said, thinking I’d try how a light heart would serve me. But I weren’t comfortable by a long way, ’cause there’s a lot of madness in them islands, an’ I thought as this chap might be three-halfpence short of a shilling, as we say. However, he was too busy thinking to laugh at my poor fun, an’ for that matter, as I found after, he never laughed easy,—nor talked easy for that matter. Now he fell silent, an’ I walked by him. Then, after a stretch through a reg’lar Garden of Eden, wi’out our first parents, us comed upon a lovely house, whitewashed home to the roof—like snow in all that butivul green. ’Pon sight of it the man spoke again.
“‘I want you to talk to my mother,’ he said suddenly. ‘You’ll just talk and talk in an easy way, as you was talking to yourself when I found you.’
“‘I be only a sailor-man, wi’ nought to say to a lady,’ I told him.
“‘No matter for that,’ he said. ‘Just talk straight on. It do not signify a bit what you say, so you speak natural. In fact, talk to my mother as if madame was your own mother.’
“So then, of course, I reckoned the cat-faced chap was out of his mind—as who wouldn’t have?
“To a great verandah we comed, all crawled over with the butivulest white flowers the sun draws the scent from; an’ there, in a cane chair, sat an ancient lady—lady, I say, though you might have reckoned she was an old brown lizard by the look of her. Old ban’t the word for her. Time’s self would have looked a boy alongside her, if the picture-books be true. A great sunbonnet was over her head, an’ a frill under, an’ just a scanty thread or two of white hair peeping from that. A face all deep lines where the years had run over it; bright eyes peeping from behind great gold spectacles, an’ hands—my word! like joints of an old apple tree. Her was that homely too! A dandy-go-risset gown her wore, an’ a bit of knitting was in her hands, an’ a good book, wi’ very large print, ’pon a table beside her, an’ a li’l nigger gal waved a fan to keep the flies away.
“I took my hat off an’ made a leg; then her son spoke: ‘Sit down there beside her and talk loud, and pretend with yourself that Madame Damian is your grandmother. Don’t try to use fine words; and remember this: if you do rightly as I bid you, you shall never repent this day as long as you live.’
“I was all in a maze, I do assure ’e; but I just reckoned obedience was best, an’ went at her with one eye on my gentleman, for fear as he should change his mind.
“‘Well, my old dear,’ I said, ‘I be very pleased to meet ’e, an’ I do like to have a tell with ’e very much, if you’ll pardon a rough sailor-man. An’ I hopes you’ll put in a word with this here big gen’leman for me, ’cause I’ve eat one of his pomegranates unbeknownst-like, though I’m shot if I’d have touched un come I’d known ’twasn’t wild. An’ to tell ’e gospel, I be in a jakes of a mess as ’tis—far from my home an’ not a friend in the world that I know of.’
“Dallybuttons! To see that ancient woman! When I beginned to talk, her dropped her knitting, as if there was a spider in it, an’ sat up an’ stared out of her bead-black eyes. Though ’twas a fiery day, I went so cold as a frog all down my spine to see her glaze so keen.
“‘Go on,’ she said in a funny old voice, ‘go on, young man, will ’e? Tell about where you comed from, please.’
“There! it did sound mighty familiar to hear her, an’ no mistake!
“‘My heart! You’m West Country too!’ I cried out.
“Her nodded, but her couldn’t speak another word.
“‘Go on, go on talking to her,’ the man said.
“So I sailed on.
“‘You must know I runned off to sea, ma’am, from a farm down Dartymoor way. ’Tis a terrible coorious sort of a place, an’ calls for hard work if you wants to thrive there. Roots will do if you’m generous with stable stuff an’ lime, but corn be cruel shy, except oats. I was a lazy boy, I’m afraid, an’ got weary of being hit about like a foot-ball, though I deserved it; an’ I thought to mend my life by running away. The things I’ve seed! Lor’-amercy! ’tis a wonnerful world, sure enough, ma’am.’
“‘So it be,’ she said, very soft, ‘an’ a wonnerful God made it, my dear. Go on, go on about the Dartymoors, will ’e?’
“‘Well,’ I said, ‘’tis a gert, lonesome land, all broke up wi’ rocky tors, as we call ’em, an’ clitters o’ granite where the foxes breed, an’ gashly bogs, in which you’m like to be stogged if you don’t know no better. An’ the cots be scattered over the face of it, an’ the little farms do lie here an’ there in the lew corners, wi’ their new-take fields around about. There’s a smell o’ peat in the air most times, an’ it do rise up very blue into the morning light. An’ the great marshes glimmer, an’ the plovers call in spring; an’ the ponies, wi’ their little ragged foals, go galloping unshod over the Moor. Then the rivers an’ rills twinkle every way, like silver an’ gold threads stretching miles an’ miles; an’ come summer the heather blows an’ the great hills shine out rosylike an’ butivul; an’—oh, my old dear—oh, ma’am—’ I says, breaking off, ‘doan’t ’e—doan’t ’e sob so—doan’t ’e take on like that, for I wouldn’t bring a wisht thought to ’e for money.’
“This I said ’cause the old ancient’s lips shook, an’ her bright eyes fell a-blinking, an’ great tears rolled down. Then she put her hands over her face an’ bowed over ’em.
“‘My God!’ said the chap, half to hisself, ‘this is the first time my mother have wept to my sight; an’ I am sixty years old!’
“But of course a Devonshire woman wouldn’t cry afore a Frenchman, even if he was her son.
“Come presently she cheered up. ‘Do ’e knaw a place by the name of Postbridge, my boy?’ she says.
“‘I did ought to, ma’am,’ I sez; ‘’twas from Hartland Farm I runned.’
“She sighed a gert sigh. ‘Hartland!’ she says, as if the word was a whole hymn tune to her.
“‘There’s a church, an’ a public, there now,’ I said.
“‘An’ the gert men of renown? Parson Mason, an’ Mr. Slack, an’ Judge Buller, an’ Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt?’ she axed me.
“‘Never heard tell of none of them,’ I said.
“‘Course not,’ old lady answers. ‘Why—why, I forgot I be ninety-four. They heroes was all dead afore your faither an’ mother were born.’
“‘As to them,’ I tells her—‘as to my faither an’ mother, ma’am, there’s a manner of grave doubt, for I’m a workhouse boy, wi’out any havage that be known.’
“But her had fallen to dreaming.
“‘Tell about the in-country,’ she said all of a sudden. ‘My mother comed from down Totnes way.’
“So I tells about the South Hams, an’ the farms, an’ the butivul apple-blooth, as creams out over the orchards in spring, an’ all the rest of it.
“There, I talked myself dry an’ no mistake; an’ she nodded an’ nodded an’ laughed once; an’ it set her off coughing, an’ ’frighted her son terrible.
“Then, after I’d been chittering for a month of Sundays, as it seemed to me, the day ended and it comed on dark, an’ she got up to go.
“‘Keep un here,’ she says to the man. ‘For God’s love doan’t ’e let un go. Pay un anything he axes for to stop.’
“She went off very slow, wi’ a nigger to support her at each elbow, an’ a fine young brown woman to look after her. An’ I was took in the kitchen, an’ had such a bellyful of meat an’ drink as minded me of Christmas up to Hartland Farm in the old days.
“Then the chap—he lets me into the riddle of it all. You see his mother was Farmer Blake’s darter—the first as ever saved land in these parts, an’ rented from the Duchy more’n a hundred years agone now. An’ when Princetown was made for a prison to hold the French us catched in the wars, there comed a Monseer Damian among the prisoners. Him an’ many other gents the authorities let out on parole, as they say; an’ he made friends with Farmer Blake, an’ falled in love with Margery Blake. An’ when war was done, if he didn’t marry her all correct an’ snatch her away to foreign parts! Martinique was left to the French, an’ he took her to that island first, then to Trinidad, which be ours, then to Tobago, which be also ours. There the man prospered, an’ growed sugar, an’ did very flourishing, an’ comed to be first an’ richest party in the island. But smallpox took him in middle life, an’ it took all his children but his eldest son, Matthew Damian. He bided with his mother, an’ married a French woman from Guadeloupe.
“An’ ’twas old lady’s hope an’ prayer for seventy year to hear good Devon spoke again some day. Her only got to hunger terrible for the old country when her childer an’ her husband died, by which time she was too old to travel home again. An’ the Postbridge Blakes had all gone dead ages afore; an’ in truth there couldn’t have been a soul on Dartymoor as remembered her. Of course her son knowed the sound of the speech, from hearing his mother, as never lost it; an’ when he catched me telling to myself, his first thought was for her.
“’Twas meat an’ drink to her, sure enough; an’ meat an’ drink to me too, for that matter, because I never left the Man-o’-War Bay Sugar Estate no more. Very little work I done at first, for old Mrs. Damian would have me keep on ’bout home every afternoon in the verandah; but six months after I comed there she died, happy as a bird; an’ if I wasn’t down for fifty pound in her will!
“Richest people in Tobago, they was; an’ then I settled to work for Matthew Damian, an’ when he died, seventeen year after, the head man was pensioned off, an’ I got the billet under Matthew Damian’s son, who be my master now. An’ there I’ll work to the end, an’ my childern after me, please the Lord.”
“’Tis a very fine tale, Mr. Bates, if I may speak for the company,” said Merryweather Chugg; “an’ it do show what a blessing it be to come out of Devonshire. If you’d been a foreigner, now, none of these good things would have happened to ’e.”
“I mind my faither telling about Farmer Blake an’ how he helped to carry his coffin to Widecombe soon after I was born,” said Gaffer Pearn.
“For my part,” declared the landlady, “my mind be all ’pon that poor old blid, as went away from these parts in her maiden days. To think, after seventy years of waiting, that she should hear a Devonshire tongue again! I lay it helped her to pass in peace.”
“It did so,” declared the returned native. “She went out of life easy as a babby; for her appeared to see all her own folks very clear just afore she died, an’ she was steadfast sure as there’d be a West-Country welcome waitin’ up-along. Fill your glasses, my dears; an’ give they boys some ginger-beer, ma’am, will ’e?”
THE TWO WIDOWS
CHAPTER I
Upon the great main road that crosses Dartmoor from Moretonhampstead to Plymouth, and distant but half a mile from the little hamlet of Postbridge, near the eastern arm of Dart, there stand two cottages. Here slopes the broad bosom of Merripit Hill upon the heart of the wilderness, and the cots, that appear on each side of the way, are built exactly alike—of yellow bricks and blue slates. They have doors of the same green shade and window blinds of white chintz; their woodwork is painted brown, and their chimney-pots are red. In every respect these habitations seem outwardly identical, save that one faces north, while the other, over against it, looks southerly. Their gardens are of equal proportion, and contain the same class of cabbage, similar rows of tall scarlet-runner beans sprout from each little plot in summer, and patches of red lettuce, dusted over with soot to keep away the slugs, appear in both during springtime. Once two men dwelt in these abodes, and they were wiser than their wives and maintained an amiable acquaintance, but avoided hot friendship.
When Abel Haycraft and his newly married mate arrived at the northern-facing cottage, Henry Mogridge, the water-bailiff, who dwelt in the cottage that looked south, paid him a visit and put the position briefly and forcibly:—
“’Tis like this, Mr. Haycraft,” he said. “I be very glad to have you for a neighbour, an’ I hope you’ll like Dartymoor, an’ prosper up here, an’ make good money at Vitifer Mine, where I’m told you be going to work; but this I’ll say, don’t let’s be too friendly—nor our women-folk neither. Out of friendship I say it.”
“What a word!” said Mr. Haycraft, who was only twenty-one and of a sanguine nature, “Why, I wants to be friends with everybody, if so be as they’ll let me. An’ my missis too.”
“That’s a very silly idea; but you’m young yet and will larn better come by an’ by. I mean this: you an’ me live a gert deal too close together to get too thick. We’m only human beings, an’ so sure as we get too trustful an’ too fond of listening to each other’s business, so sure us will end by having a mortal row. ’Tis a thing so common as berries in a hedge. I ban’t saying a word against my old woman, mind you. She’s so truthful as light, an’ a Christian to the marrow in her bones. Nor yet be I hinting anything disrespectful of Mrs. Haycraft. Far from it. But human creatures is mostly jerry-built in parts, an’ the best have their weak spots. There’s nought more dangerous on earth than a gert friendship struck up between folks who live close together ’pon opposite sides of the road. I’ve seed the whole story more than once, an’ I know what I say be true.”
Abel Haycraft considered this statement for a moment. Then he spoke:—
“I suppose you’m right. An’ if by bad chance they was to fall out—I mean the women—us would have to take sides as a matter of duty. A husband—well, there ’tis.”
“So us would; but God forbid as our wives should have any quarrel, or you an’ me either; so we’ll just bide friendly with your leave; but not too friendly.”
“’Tis a very good plan, I’m sure,” answered the younger; and that evening he told his wife about it after they had gone to bed.
Mrs. Haycraft felt great interest and enlarged Abel’s vision.
“Do ’e know what that means? It means as his good lady can’t be trusted, an’ the old man well knows it. I lay she’m the sort as makes mischief. Well, don’t you fear. I’ll take care to keep her at arm’s length. I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“She’m a kind enough creature so far, I’m sure,” answered Abel. “A motherly fashion of woman, an’ not so old as her husband by twenty years, I should judge.”
“’Twas his way of giving us a warning, nevertheless,” declared Honor Haycraft. “Or,” she added, “seeing as I was a red-haired woman, and thinking maybe that I had a short temper, she may have reckoned that—”
“Not at all, not at all,” interrupted the husband, hastily. “Do ’e think I’d have stood any such idea? God’s my judge, I’d have hit the man in the mouth if he’d said a word against you or your butivul colour.”
“If I thought she’d taken a dislike to me, because I was red, I’d never look at the woman,” said Honor. “For that matter, I’m comelier far than her, though I say so.”
“An’ comelier than any other woman at Postbridge, or on all Dartymoor either,” declared Abel, devoutly.
“I’ll be civil to her, then, but no more. An’ I wish her hadn’t brought over that gert dish of Irish stew the day us comed in an’ were sinking for a morsel to eat; for us ate it, an’ licked the bones, an’ now she’ve got a hold on us.”
“Not at all,” said the larger-minded man. “’Tis a poor spirit as can’t stomach a kindness without worriting to pay it back. Us’ll have a chance of doing her a good turn for sartain, living at her door same as we do. Just let things go their own way, an’ they’ll go right. We’m all Christian creatures, thank God, an’ there’s no reason because we live in a outlandish sort of place like this here that we should forget it.”
“All the same,” declared his plump, red girl, pouting, “I could wish as Mr. Mogridge hadn’t spoke them words. He’ve hurt my pride. I wasn’t going to jump down their throats. I’m not that sort.”
“’Twas a bit chilly like, perhaps; but he’m older than us, an’ wiser, an’ he meant well.”
“He’m not wiser than you be, anyway. I believe, if us knowed, you’d find you made better money than what he do.”
“Us’ll leave it at that, then; an’ now us’ll go to sleep, if you please.”
CHAPTER II
Within a month Honor Haycraft and Avisa Mogridge were the closest of friends, for, despite the water-bailiff’s caution and the younger man’s attempt to profit by it, their wives took the matter into their own hands. Both husbands were away all day at work; their cottages stood half a mile distant from any others, and the two lonely women soon struck up a close and intimate relation. Mrs. Mogridge was honourable, truthful, warm-hearted and affectionate; she had two young children, both girls; she loved her elderly husband dearly; she knew the life-history of every man and woman in Postbridge; and she related the affairs of the village with full detail for the benefit of Honor, who was an Exeter girl, and did not know the people of the Moor.
“I can talk straight to ’e,” said Mrs. Mogridge, “for you come without one particle of feeling against anybody or for anybody. So I’ll tell you what they all be like down-along, an’ who you can trust an’ who you can’t trust, so far as I know ’em. You’ll go your own way, but ’tis never any harm to hear another opinion.”
Thus Mrs. Haycraft, instead of forming independent conclusions from experience, took her view of the new neighbours and environment from another woman; and this was a happier circumstance than might be guessed, because Avisa Mogridge possessed plenty of good sense and a kindly heart, whereas, though the red girl’s heart was warm enough, her head was rather weak, and of sense, or patience, or knowledge of human nature she had none to name. She was a superstitious woman, full of old saws and sayings. If she met a single magpie, she went in fear for a week. Her husband tried to laugh her out of such folly, but he never succeeded.
And so the friendship ripened and the men looked on. In secret Henry Mogridge prophesied a catastrophe, as sure as women were women all the world over; while Abel Haycraft listened and nodded, but hoped the water-bailiff might be mistaken.
Avisa and Honor worked side by side at the same wash-tub when their husbands were away, compared notes, listened to each other’s wisdom and opinions. Honor petted her friend’s little girls, and made sugar-plums and cakes for them; Avisa took the deepest interest in Honor’s approaching motherhood.
A boy was born to the young wife—a flaxen, Saxon atom, with a first crop of hair the colour of straw, blue eyes, a flat nose like his father’s, red cheeks, and very fat limbs.
Then came winter, and Henry Mogridge, catching a chill in the night watches by the river, passed away, a victim to his duty beside Dart.
Honor comforted her friend as much as might be, and Postbridge showed sympathy also, until it was announced that Mrs. Mogridge had been left with £40 a year. Thereupon, feeling that commiseration would be wasted, the village turned to more interesting matters.
Time sped, and when her child was a year old, Honor Haycraft followed Avisa into the state of widowhood. An accident at Vitifer Mine ended the burly Abel’s life; and with him there also perished another man and a boy.
CHAPTER III
The two widows, united in tribulation, became greater friends than before. Neither married again, and the one lived for her little maidens, the other for her son. Such close amity proved a strain at times, however, and as each knew all that there was to know about the other, each, conscious of the other’s imperfections, secretly regretted them in the friendliest spirit. Then came a little difference of opinion over the children; and then, from a personal attitude of irritation not divulged to anybody, Avisa, smarting somewhat at a pin-prick from Honor Haycraft touching her eldest little girl, spoke in overt fashion to a common friend at Postbridge.
“She’s a very good woman,” said Mrs. Mogridge, while she drank a dish of tea with Mrs. Bloom. “A pattern wife her was, an’ steady as time since her man was called, an’ a pattern mother, though her goose is a swan, as one might expect, an’ she thinks her ugly, li’l fat boy is a cherub, poor dear. Well, ’tis natural so to do. I wouldn’t blame her; we mothers be all alike there. But I could wish she had more brains, an’ didn’t believe such a lot of rummage an’ nonsense. To credit all that dead an’ gone stuff about pixies, an’ the heath-hounds, an’ the use of herbs picked in moonlight, an’ the planting of seeds ’pon a Good Friday—why, ’tis onbecoming in a growed-up woman as went to Sunday-school; an’ I wish she’d drop it.”
That was all that Avisa said to Mrs. Bloom, the washerwoman; but a fortnight afterward it happened that by evil chance Mrs. Bloom fell out bitterly with the water-bailiff’s widow, and told Mrs. Mogridge that she was a cat, and that ’twas well known her husband never died of a chill at all, but from his wife’s unkindness and cruelty. She said a great many other things of a nature not necessary to set down; and, as a result, Mrs. Mogridge felt it impossible longer to affect the society of Mrs. Bloom.
Then did Mrs. Bloom ask Honor Haycraft to a cup of tea; and Honor, smarting with indignation at the treatment her dearest friend had received from the washerwoman’s venomous tongue, accepted the invitation. Her purpose was loyal to the other widow. She intended to glean further particulars concerning Mrs. Bloom’s abominable opinions and assertions touching Avisa. Because a man in the village had told them that Mrs. Bloom’s statements were in the nature of a libel, and might even put her into prison.
Hoping to catch Mrs. Bloom in some outrageous utterance, and so assist her friend to crush the washerwoman, Honor Haycraft appeared in a cottage that always reeked of soap and steam.
Mrs. Bloom immediately came to personalities; and then Honor’s freckles stood out brown upon her red skin; she grew hot from her heart outward; the tea lost its savour, and the toast its charm.
“Sorry am I to quarrel with any living thing—man, woman or mouse—but one has one’s pride,” said Mrs. Bloom. “Ess, one has one’s pride; an’ if there’s a thing I do pride myself upon, after my gift of washing, ’tis my gift of silence. It don’t come easy to any healthy-minded woman in a village this size to keep her mouth shut; an’ I confess that it didn’t come easy to me; but I larned how to do it, an’ I’ve been a faithful friend to a gert many people, an’ never quarrelled with a living soul, gentle or simple, till Avisa Mogridge broke with me.”
“She’s got a proper grudge against you,” said Honor, cautiously. “An’ I’m on her side, I warn you.”
“No doubt: you’ve heard her tale. I’m not going to say anything about it to you, because you are her particular friend, an’ blessed are the peacemakers. But this I’ll say, though far be it from me to set friends against friends: I would advise you to take care. She’s a fire as a very little spark will set on light,—a very critical woman,—always was so. It’s a fault where there’s no judgement. Her can’t help it. Her criticises other folks’ ways, an’ their habits, an’ their ideas, an’ even their children. Now, if there is a dangerous trick on God’s earth, ’tis to criticise other folks’ children.”
“She’s a right to her opinions, however.”
“Most surely she have; an’ she’ve a right to the air she breathes, an’ the water she drinks. She’ve a right to her ideas; but she’s no right to utter ’em where they might do harm. You an’ me be the best friends possible, thank God, an’ she’s no right to say an unkind word of you to me, any more than I’d have a right to say an unkind word of her to you; because you an’ she be the best friends possible likewise. An’ not a word against her would ever pass my lips to you; because you’m a woman as feels very deeply, an’ I should make mischief, which God forbid.”
“Her never said a word against me, that I’ll swear to,” said Honor, hotly; “an’ if an angel from heaven told me her did, I wouldn’t believe it.”
“An’ quite right you’d be,” said Mrs. Bloom. “You put it like a true friend. True friendship be a-thought blind always; an’ ’tis well it is so, for where there’s clear seeing between any two human beings, old or young, man or woman, perfect friendship can’t be. That’s why I’ve always kept my mouth shut so close all my life; and I ban’t going to begin to open it now I’m turned forty-five—not even to you, my dear.”
“Not a word would I believe—not a syllable,” repeated Honor.
“An’ not a word would you hear from me—good or bad. What she said was kindly meant—very kindly meant indeed. It only showed that no two humans look at life from the same point of view. We knowed that afore. For my own part I’ve always declared that ’twas weak of you to believe all they stories of ghosts an’ goblins, an’ dancing stones an’ the like. As a deep-thinking an’ true Christian I feel it. But the difference between me an’ her is that I say it to your face; she blames you behind your back.”
“Avisa Mogridge has laughed at me often enough about it. That’s nothing,” said Honor. “I know ’tis nonsense really, but I can’t help believing the things.”
“I’m very glad you’ve got the sense to see it so. ‘No,’ I said, ‘no, Mrs. Mogridge, whatever Honor Haycraft may be, she’s not a fool. Her father told her about these solemn things in her youth, an’ many an old ancient man hereabouts do still believe in ’em, though of course the Bible is short an’ sharp with witches an’ such like.’”
“She didn’t say I was a fool?”
“Well, since you ax me, I must be honest, for my own soul’s sake. Trouble I won’t make, an’ you’m far too sensible to think of it again. ‘Fool’ was not the word she used, but she wished you had more brains. That may be the same thing, or it may not. I up rather sharp an’ denied you had any lack of intellects; but she said she was in the right. ‘Prove it,’ I said. ‘Prove it you can’t, Avisa Mogridge. She’m a sensible, clever, good girl,’ I said, ‘an’ her head’s screwed on the right way.’
“She bided silent a moment. Then she said, ‘Honor reckons her goose is a swan, an’ thinks that her ugly, li’l fat boy is a cherub.’ I stared at her till my eyes bulged out; I couldn’t believe my own ears. She meant it, of course; but no call for you to grow so red, my dear, she didn’t mean it a bit unkindly. ’Twas just her honest opinion that your little angel be too fat an’ too ugly for anything. ‘If you think that,’ I answered her, ‘you’d better not mention it.’”
“She said my li’l boy was ugly?”
“She thinks so. She’s positive of it. She’s a very honest woman, mind you. With all her many faults, she’s honest. She wouldn’t have said it if she hadn’t really believed it. She’m dead certain of it.”
“My Billy ugly! Did ’e ever set eyes on a finer babby, tell me that?”
“Me? I never seed such a purty child in all my life. He’m a like a li’l blue-eyed Love off a valentine. But she—”
“A woman who could say my child was ugly could only say it for malice,” declared the red-haired mother, with a rising breast.
“Don’t think that. Her own maidens be very homely, you see. ’Tis a little natural jealousy, be-like.”
“’Tis a lie, Jane Bloom, an’ I’ll never believe she said it—never.”
“You’ll be sorry for that word, Honor Haycraft. Ax her, then. Ax her if her didn’t tell me your little boy was fat an’ ugly. She’s never been catched out in a lie yet, ’tis said. See what she’ll answer you. An’ when you’ve heard her speak, I shall expect you to say you’m sorry to me. I never yet willingly uttered an unkind word against any living soul, an’ never will. If you want to live in a fool’s paradise, that’s your lookout. But it shall never be said I didn’t do my duty to my neighbour according to the Prayer Book ordinance.”
With this vague but masterly speech Mrs. Bloom rose from her tea and held the cottage door open. Her guest took the hint, and in ten minutes was at home again.
Then she crossed the road, and seeing Avisa Mogridge in her garden with the little girls and the infant Billy, who had been left in trust with her, Honor spoke:
“Just one word, an’ only one, afore I go down to the village an’ give that old cat-a-mountain, Jane Bloom, the lie to her crooked face.”
“Ah! What have she said, then?” asked the other. Mrs. Mogridge rose from pulling up weeds, and lifted her shoulders to ease her back.
“She’ve told me as you told her that my child was fat an’ ugly. I answered in one word that she was a wicked liar. An’ she answered back that I’d better ax you, for you’d never been known to tell a falsehood in all your born days. Did you say it or didn’t you, Avisa? I only want your word. Then I’ll go back-along and give her what for.”
Mrs. Mogridge paused with a bit of groundsel in her hand. The children frolicked beside her, and she bade them be silent, sharply. Then she dropped the groundsel and turned and spoke.
“I told you that you was wrong to go an’ speak to her. I warned you against it. Now, I suppose, the fat’s in the fire. You’d made me cross a fortnight agone, when you said that my Minnie’s second teeth would never come right. An’ I got talking like a fool just afterward, an’ I certainly said to Mrs. Bloom that your goose was a swan—same as it is with all of us mothers—an’ I said that your little, dear boy was—was ugly. ’Twasn’t a right or a kind thing to say, an’ I’m very—”
“You said it! An’ like enough you’ve said it a thousand times. You’m a wicked traitor; an’ I’ll never speak to you again, so help me God; an’ if your beastly childer cross my threshold any more, or so much as touch my garden palings, I’ll throw boiling water over ’em, so now you know, you evil-minded, jealous devil!”
Mrs. Haycraft spoke no more, and waited for no answer. She snatched up her child, rushed into her own house, banged the door and was soon sobbing over her fat-nosed Billy.
CHAPTER IV
When Jane Bloom’s husband took his lady out of Postbridge, so that she might live down a connubial scandal and pursue her cleansing occupation elsewhere, it was supposed that the deadly and famous quarrel between Avisa and Honor would be healed. The gossips of Postbridge all prophesied a speedy return to friendship between the two widows, and not a few well-meaning women set to work to play peacemaker. But their efforts met no response. Both Avisa and Honor made it clear that arbitration must be in vain, since this tragic matter went deeper than plummet of peacemaker could ever sound. Neither woman would make the first move; but Mrs. Mogridge was prepared to welcome any overture from the other. She accepted the inevitable with considerable philosophy; rightly appreciated the significance of the position; perceived how the idlest, least malignant word may sometimes fall like a scourge upon the back of the careless speaker. She held herself punished, and quite deservedly punished, for a very foolish error. She mourned the event, and with secret tears recalled the wisdom of her dead partner. Mrs. Haycraft, on the other hand, nursed her wrath and kept it warm. Her little boy justified the bygone criticism, and he grew less and less personable. But how could she know that? To her eyes he was beautiful above the children of men. Daily he grew more like his father; daily his little weak eyes reflected more of the blue of the sky.
Then he fell very sick and died.
A night of agony hid Honor, and in that darkness her tears descended like winter rain. Hopeless, helpless, red-eyed, she sat by the small body; and women came to comfort her, but she cursed both God and them, and bade them depart and leave her alone with grief greater than daughter of man had yet suffered.
The day before the funeral the mother took no food, and entered upon that nervous, neurotic period common to the time. She never sat down. She roamed for miles in the narrow space of the house and garden. She arranged and rearranged the flowers on the coffin; she magnified small griefs and temporary inconveniences. She quarrelled bitterly with the undertaker that the lining of the little box was cheaper than she had directed. She found a small flaw also upon the lid. This was concealed with putty, and Honor called down the wrath of the Everlasting upon the carpenter who had made it.
A master sorrow in the minor sort now fell upon her. There is a belief on Dartmoor that if a little boy dies, he should be carried to his grave by little girls, and when a small maid passes it is thought good if boys are her bearers. Honor hugged this tradition as a precious and seemly observance; but it chanced that of small girls in Postbridge there were then but four, and the task she desired to set them would need six pairs of hands. The misfortune swiftly mounted into a tragedy when viewed from her distracted standpoint. Her unrestrained grief grew voluble; she mourned her lot to any who would listen. From the first storm of weeping and the first desire for peace and loneliness she became talkative, and, in a condition of sustained incoherence, chattered, light-headed, from morning until night. She was rude to the clergyman when he came to see her. Her friends suggested that two more little girls should be obtained from Princetown, or some neighbouring hamlet; but the poor soul explained that this rite allowed of no such deviation. The children must be those who had known her dead baby, and actually played with him. Others would not answer the proper purpose.
Upon the night before the funeral the undertaker went home a shattered man, for the matter of this tiny corpse had troubled him, and such failure to satisfy the parent hurt his professional feelings.
“There wasn’t half the difficulties when us laid by His Honour, Lord Champernowne, Peer of the Realm and J.P., an’ ten coaches, an’ a letter of thanks after from the steward,” he grumbled to his wife. But she comforted him.
“The woman’s stark, staring mad, my dear. Don’t think no more about her. If you’d lined the casket with shining gold, her’d have grumbled because there weren’t no diamonds in it. An’ all for two pound, ten. ’Twas like your big heart to use elm, when any other man would have made deal do very nice.”
Meantime, at the hour of gloaming, as Dartmoor vanished fold upon fold into the purple of night, did Avisa Mogridge pluck heart, and cross the high road, and enter her neighbour’s house. She did not knock, but lifted the latch boldly, walked in and stood before Honor, where the unhappy mother sat and worked upon a black bonnet by candle-light.
“You! You to come! You, as may be a witch an’ overlooked my li’l darling, for all I know!” she cried, leaping to her feet.
“Yes, ’tis me, Mrs. Haycraft; but no witch. Only a woman as have seed sorrow too—though no sorrow like your sorrow just now. I’ve come to tell ’e I love ’e still, an’ I can’t bide away from ’e no more, an’ I won’t. You shan’t drive me off.”
Honor breathed hard.
“Everything do happen all to once,” she said.
“Maybe I didn’t ought to have intruded; but I’m older than you, an’ I thought—”
“You be safe. I’m too weak to bear malice against you. My darling’s screwed down now. If you’d seed him yesterday, you’d have called back your wicked word, Avisa Mogridge. He weren’t ugly after he died—he—oh, God, an’ not one sound of his little noise in the house. It’s killing me.”
“To be frank with you, Honor, you must marry again. You’m only twenty-three. Yes, I know you be. An’ ’twas my little girls put them flowers ’pon your window-sill last June on your birthday morning. They done it afore daybreak. An’—an’—oh, woman, I be broken-hearted for ’e; God’s my judge if I ban’t.”
Mrs. Haycraft was rocking herself backward and forward, and crying.
Suddenly she rose up.
“Come an’ see the coffin,” she said. “Several of the gentry have sent greenhouse flowers to me. There’s a butivul smell to ’em.”
“I will come; an’ I want to say this. My girls—do ’e let ’em help with the thing you want. They’d make six with t’other children. Do ’e let ’em, Honor.”
“’Tis too late; they can’t get black now.”
“You forget my old mother died last Christmas.”
“Ah! so her did—that’s lucky,” said Mrs. Haycraft.
After the funeral the widows walked together. They left their friends at Postbridge, then returned home side by side.
As they ascended the hill, with Avisa’s two little girls marching together behind them, a robin suddenly sang out sharp and clear.
“Thank the Lord I’ve heard that,” said Honor, very earnestly, alluding to an ancient fable.
Her reconciled friend nodded.
“I be very glad also,” she said. “To hear redbreast singing after a child is buried do mean the little one’s safe in Heaven; though, all the same, God only knows where the babbies should go to, if not to Him.”
WITH BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE
CHAPTER I
On a frosty night, when George III was King, certain men, for the most part familiar customers, sat in the bar of the “Golden Anchor,” Daleham; and amongst them appeared that welcome addition to the usual throng: a stranger. For his benefit old tales were told anew and ancient memories ransacked; because this West country fishing village enjoyed rich encrustation of legend and romance, and boasted a roll call of great names and great deeds. Here dwelt the spirits of bygone free-traders, visible by night in the theatre of their lawless enterprises; and here even more notable stories, touching more notable phantoms, might also be gleaned from ancient intelligencers at the time of evening drinking.
The newcomer listened grimly to matters now much exercising Daleham. He was a hard-faced man with a blue chin and black eyes, whose short, double-breasted jacket, wide breeches, glazed hat and pigtail marked a seafarer.
“As for ghostes,” he said, “can’t swear I’ve ever seed one, but no sailor-man, as have witnessed the Lord’s wonders in the deep, would dare to doubt ’em.”
“Just picture a whole throng, my dear!”
John Cramphorn spoke. He was an ancient fisher, and his face might have stood for the Apostle Peter’s; but it quite gave the lie to his character, for this venerable man was hand in glove with the smugglers, had himself been a free-trader of renown, and now very gladly placed his wit and experience at the command of the younger generation. No word was ever whispered against him openly, and yet the rumour ran that Johnny had his share of every cargo successfully run upon these coasts, and that he was the guiding spirit ashore, while “Merry Jonathan,” or Jonathan Godbeer of Daleham, captained on the water that obscure body known as the Daleham free-traders.
With such a sailor as Jonathan afloat and such a wise-head as Mr. Cramphorn at home, the local smugglers earned a measure of fame that reached even to the Revenue. Indeed, at the moment of this story’s opening, the little fishing village, with uneasy pride, was aware that a Preventive Officer had been appointed for its especial chastisement and control; but none feared the issue. Every woman and child at Daleham knew that it would task men of uncommon metal with hard heads and thick skulls to lay their local champions by the heels.
“Ess,” said the white-bearded Cramphorn, “ghostes of men an’ ghostes of hosses tu. Ban’t many parishes as can shaw ’e such a brave turnout of holy phantoms, I lay. You might have seed that ruin in the fir trees ’pon top of the cliff as you comed down the hill p’raps? Wheer the fishermen’s gardens be. Well, ’twas a famous mansion in the old days, though now sinked to a mere landmark for mackerel boats. But the Stapledons lived theer in times agone, an’ lorded it awver all the land so far as Dartymouth, ’tis thought. Of course they died like theer neighbours, an’ many a brave funeral passed out-along wheer I grow my bit of kale to-day. Yet no account taken till theer comed the terrible business of Lady Emma Stapledon—poor soul. Her was ordered by her cold-hearted faither to marry a Lunnon man for his money—a gay young youth of gert renown, an’ as big a rip as ever you see, an’ a very evil character, but thousands of pounds in the bank to soften people’s minds. Her wouldn’t take him, however, an’ peaked an’ pined, till at last—two nights afore the marriage-day—her went out alone along that dangerous edge of cliff what be named the Devil’s Tight-rope. In charity us’ll say the poor maiden’s foot slipped, though if it did, why for should her funeral walk ever since when January comes round? Anyway it shows her had Christian burial no doubt, an’ the funeral can be seen evermore—hosses an’ men, hearse an’ coffin. Every moony night in January it may be marked stealin’ like a fog awver the tilth by the old road from the ruined gates; an’ to see it only axes a pinch of faith in the beholder. I’ve watched it scores o’ dozens o’ times—all so black as sin an’ silent as the grave. My sweat falled like rain fust time I seed it, but I minded how the Lord looks arter His awn. Of course an honest, church-going man’s out o’ the reach o’ ghostes.”
Mr. Cramphorn stopped and buried his beautiful Roman nose in some rum and water. Then Mrs. Pearn, mistress of the “Golden Anchor,” mended the fire, and a man, sitting in the ingle, asked a question.
“Where’s Jenifer to? ’Tis late for her to be out alone.”
The old woman answered:—
“Gone up the hill for green stuff. Her laughs at all you silly men. I told her how ’twas the time for Lady Emma’s death-coach; but her said so long as they didn’t want her to get in an’ sit along wi’ she, her’d not mind no death-coaches, nor ghostes neither.”
“’Tis very unseemly for a maid to talk so,” declared the stranger, gravely. “Them as flout spirits often have to pay an ugly reckoning.”
Others were also of this mind and Mr. Cramphorn gave instances.
“My stars! You’m makin’ me cream with fear, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Pearn, after supping full on their horrid recollections; “best to go up the hill, Jonathan Godbeer, an’ find the wench. ’Tis your work, seeing you’m tokened to her.”
The stranger started and cast a sharp glance where sat the man addressed. Merry Jonathan was a tall and square-built sailor with a curly head and an eye that looked all people squarely in the face. A crisp beard served to hide his true expression, and the cloak of a smile, usually to be found upon his lips, concealed the tremendous determination of his countenance. Indeed he habitually hid behind a mask of loud and somewhat senseless laughter. But those who served him at his secret work and in times of peril, knew a different Jonathan, not to be described as “Merry.” Now the man rose and grinned at the stranger amiably until his grey eyes were quite lost in rays of crinkled skin. He out-stared the other seafarer, as he made it a rule to out-stare all men; then he prepared to obey his future mother-in-law.
“Mustn’t let my sweetheart be drove daft by—” he began, when the inn door opened and a girl, with her hair fallen down her back and a terrified white face, appeared and almost dropped into Godbeer’s arms. “Gude powers! What’s the matter, my dear maid?” he cried. “Who’ve hurt ’e? Who’ve dared? Tell your Jonathan an’ he’ll smash the man like eggshells—if ’tis a man.”
Jenifer clung to him hysterically and her teeth chattered. They took her to the fire and her mother brought a tumbler of spirits and water at Mr. Cramphorn’s direction.
“Oh my God, I knawed how ’twould be,” wailed the old woman. “Her’ve seed what her didn’t ought, an’ now her’ll suffer for it!”
Jenifer was on her lover’s lap by the fire and tears at last came to her eyes. Then she wept bitterly and found her tongue.
“Put your arm around me,” she said; “close—close—Jonathan. I’ve seed it—Lady Emma’s death-coach—creeping awver the frozen ground up-along. It passed wi’in ten yards of where I was cutting cabbages, an’ never such cold I felt. It have got to my heart an’ I’ll die—I knaw it.”
“You might have been mistook, young woman,” said the blue-muzzled man, civilly; but she shook her head.
“A gert hearse wi’ feathers an’ a tall man in front, an’ four hosses all blacker’n the fir-wood they comed from. An’ the moonlight shone through ’em where they moved away to the churchyard; an’ I fainted, I reckon, then come to an’ sped away afore they returned.”
“They’d have been there again in an hour or two,” declared old Cramphorn. “That’s the way of it. Ten o’clock or so they sets out, an’ back they come by midnight or thereabouts.”
Then the stranger rose to retire, but before doing so he declared his identity.
“I may tell you, neighbours, that I be the Preventive Officer sent to work along with the cutter from Dartmouth. My name be Robert Bluett, an’ I’m an old man-o’-war’s man an’ a West countryman likewise. An’ I look to every honest chap amongst ’e to help me in the King’s name against lawbreakers. So all’s said.”
A murmur ran through the company.
“Question is what be honest an’ what ban’t. Things ban’t dishonest ’cause Parliament says so,” growled a long-faced, sour man. “Free tradin’s the right answer to wrongful laws, an’ ’tis for them up-along to mend Justice, not rob us.”
Jonathan Godbeer, however, stoutly applauded Mr. Bluett.
“I be just a simple fisherman myself,” he said; “but what I can do against they French rascals I will do. You may count upon me.”
Mr. Bluett regarded Johnny Cramphorn and saw that the patriarch’s eyes were fixed on Godbeer and full of amazement.
“You to say that!” he murmured, “you—when us all knows—but ban’t no business of mine, thank the Lord. At least you may count upon an old man to stand by the King and his lawful laws, same as I always have and always will so long as I be spared.”
Riotous laughter greeted these noble sentiments, and Bluett, vaguely aware that the company laughed as much with the ancient as at him, departed to bed. He was staying at the “Golden Anchor” until his lodgment at Daleham should be ready for him.