Furze the Cruel Part 21

Outside they smote upon him, and there was nothing to protect him. He was a man who lived two lives, and thought he was only living one. His most strongly-marked characteristic, his inherent and incessant cruelty, he overlooked entirely, not seeing it, not even knowing it was there. He could steal a fowl from his neighbour's yard, and quote Scripture while doing it; and the impression which would have remained in his mind was that he had quoted Scripture, not that he had stolen the fowl. When he thought of his conduct towards Pezzack he saw no cruelty in it. The only thought which occurred to him was that the minister was a good man and did his best, but that he, Pendoggat, was the better preacher of the two.

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

Mrs. Chegwidden was one of the minor mysteries of human life. People supposed that she lived in some shadowy kind of way, and they asked after her health, and wondered what she was like by then; but n.o.body seemed to have any clear notion concerning her. She was never visible in the court of Town Rising, or in the garden, and yet she must have been there sometimes. She never went to chapel, or to any other amus.e.m.e.nt.

She was like a mouse, coming out timidly when n.o.body was about, and scuttling into some secret place at the sound of a footfall. She pa.s.sed her life among pots and pickle-jars, or, when she wanted a change, among bottles and cider-casks, not drinking, or even tasting, but brewing, preserving, pickling all the time. Chegwidden did not talk about her. He always replied, "Her be l.u.s.ty," if inquiries were made. The invisible lady had no home talk. She was competent to remark upon the weather, and in an occasional burst of eloquence would observe that she was troubled with rheumatism. There are strange lives dragged out in lonely places.

No doubt Mrs. Chegwidden had been conceited once; and perhaps the princ.i.p.al cause of her retirement into the dark ways and corners of Town Rising might have been traced to the fact that she was bald. A woman with no hair on her head is a grotesque object. Thomasine was really the mistress of the house, and she did the work well just because she was stupid. She worked mechanically, doing the same thing every day at the same time. Stupid women make the best housekeepers. Thomasine was a useful willing girl, who deserved to be well treated. Her master had not meddled with her.

Young Pugsley had been round to the kitchen door after dark since Goose Fair, and had urged Thomasine to wear a ring. The poor girl was willing, but she could not accept the offer, for more than one reason. Young Pugsley was not a bad fellow; not the sort to go about with a revolver in his pocket and an intention to use it if his young woman proved fickle. His wages were rising, and he thought he could get a cottage if Thomasine would let him court her. He admitted he was giving his company to another girl, and should go on with his attentions if Thomasine would not have him. The girl went back into the kitchen and began to cry; and Pugsley shuffled after her in a docile manner and sought to embrace her in the dark; but she pushed him off, with the saying: "I bain't good enough for yew, Will." Pugsley felt the age of chivalry echoing within him as he replied that he was only an everyday young chap, but if he was willing to take her it wasn't for her to have opinions about herself; only he couldn't hang on for ever, and she must make up her mind one way or the other, as he was doing well, getting fourteen s.h.i.+llings now, and with all that money it was his duty to get married, and if he didn't he might get into the way of spending his evenings in the pot-house.

Thomasine only cried the more, until at last she managed to find the words of a confession which sent him from her company for ever. On that occasion it was fortunate for the girl that she could not think, because the faculty of reason could have done nothing beyond suggesting to her that the opportunity of leading a respectable life had gone from her, like her sweetheart, never to return.

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

She reached the linhay and waited. The place smelt unpleasantly, because beasts driven from the high moor by bad weather had taken shelter there.

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

A horse galloped up. The sound of its iron shoes suggested frost, and so did the girl's breathing. She was wondering what her father was doing.

He was a village cobbler, and a strict Methodist, fairly straight himself, and without sympathy for sinners. She moved, trod on some filth, and cried out. A man's voice answered and told her roughly to be quiet. Then Pendoggat groped his way in and felt towards her.

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

"Been here long, my jewel?" he said, caressing her.

Thomasine could see nothing except a sort of suggestion of cobwebby breath and the outline of a man's head; but she could hear and feel; and these faculties were sharpened by the absence of vision. She did not know who the man was. Pendoggat had galloped up to the linhay, Pendoggat had entered and seized her, and then had disappeared to make way for some one else. He had, as it were, pushed young Pugsley into her arms and left them alone together, only her old sweetheart had never caressed her in that way, with a devotional fondness and a kind of religious touch. Pugsley's courts.h.i.+p had been more in the nature of a duty. If she had been his G.o.ddess he had wors.h.i.+pped her in a Protestant manner, with rather the att.i.tude of an agnostic going to church because it was right and proper; but now she was receiving the full Catholic ritual of love, the flowers, incense, and religious warmth. This was all new to Thomasine, and it seemed to awaken something in her, some chord of tenderness which had never been aroused before, some vague desire to give a life of attention and devotion to some one, to any one, who would reward her by holding her like that.

"Who be ye?" she murmured.

"The man who loves you, who has loved you ever since he put his eyes upon you," he answered. "I was angry with you, my beautiful strong girl.

You went off with that young fellow at the fair when I'd told you not to. He's not for you, my precious. You are mine, and I am going to have you, and keep you, and bite the life out of you if you torment me. Your mouth's as hot as fire, and your body p.r.i.c.ks me like a furze-bush. Throw your arms around me and hold on--hold on as tight as the devil holds us, and let me love you like G.o.d loves."

He buried his lips in her neck, and bit her like a dog playing with a rabbit.

"I waited on the bridge all day," faltered Thomasine, merely making the statement, not venturing a reproof. She wanted to go on, and explain how young Pugsley had forced himself upon her and compelled her to go with him, only she could not find the words.

"I couldn't get away from Annie. She stuck to me like a pin," he muttered. "I'm going to get away from her this winter, leave her, go off with you somewhere, anywhere, get off Dartmoor and go where you like.

Heaven or h.e.l.l, it's the same to me, if I've got you."

This was all strange language to Thomasine. Pa.s.sion she comprehended, but the poetry and romance of love, even in the wild and distorted form in which it was being presented, were beyond her. She could not understand the real meaning of the awakening of that tenderness in her, which was the womanhood trying to respond, and to make her, like Boodles, a creature of love, but failing because it could not get through the ma.s.s of flesh and ignorance, just as the seed too deeply planted can only struggle, but must fail, to grow into the light. She felt it would be pleasant to go away with Pendoggat if he was going to love her like that. She would be something of a lady; have a servant under her, perhaps. Thomasine was actually thinking. She would have a parlour to keep locked up; be the equal of the Chegwiddens; far above the village cobbler her father, and nearly as good as the idol-maker of Birmingham. That Pendoggat loved her was certain. He would not have lost his senses and behaved as he had done if he did not love her. Thomasine, like most young women, believed as much as she wanted to, believed that men are as good as their word, and that love and brute pa.s.sion are synonymous terms. Once upon a time she had been taught how to read, write, and reckon; and she had forgotten most of that. She had not been taught that love is like the flower of the Agave: rare, and not always once in a lifetime; that pa.s.sion is a wayside weed everywhere. Perhaps if she had been taught that she would not have forgotten.

"We'll go away soon, my jewel," Pendoggat whispered. "Annie is not my wife--you know that. I can leave her any day. My time at the Barton is up in March, but we'll go before then."

"Don't this old place smell mucky?" was all Thomasine had to say.

They climbed up the ladder, and sat on the musty fern, which had made a bed for Brightly and his b.i.t.c.h, and Pendoggat continued his pleasant ways. He was in a curious state of happiness, still believing he was with the woman that he loved. The walls of the linhay continued to be the walls of Ebenezer and a shelter against the wind. They embraced and sang a hymn, but softly, lest any chance pa.s.ser-by should overhear and discover them. Pendoggat knelt upon the fern and prayed aloud for their future happiness, speaking from his heart and meaning what he said.

Thomasine was as happy as the fatted calf which knows nothing of its fate. It was on the whole the most successful of her evenings out. She was going to be a respectable married woman after all. Pendoggat had sworn it in his prayer. He could do as he liked with her after that, now that she was his in the sight of Heaven. The dirty linhay was a chapel, and a place of love where they were married in word and deed.

Farmer Chegwidden came thundering home from Brentor, flung across his horse like a sack of meal, and almost as helpless. He crossed the railway by the bridge, and his horse began to plunge over the boggy slope of the moor. It was darker, the clouds were hurrying, and the wind was a gale upon the rider's side as he galloped for the abandoned mines, clinging tighter. His horse knew what Thursday-night duty meant. He knew he had to gallop direct for Town Rising with a drunken man upon his back, and that he must not stumble more than he could help. There was no question as to which was the finer animal of the two. They crossed Gibbet Hill, down towards the road above St. Mary Tavy about two hundred yards above the linhay; and there the more intelligent animal swerved to the right, to avoid some posts and a gravel-pit which he could not see but knew were there; but as they came down the lower animal struck his superior savagely upon the ear to a.s.sert his manhood, and the horse, in starting aside, stumbled upon a ridge of peat, came to his knees, and Farmer Chegwidden dived across the road with a flourish that an acrobat might have envied.

These gymnastics were no new thing, but the farmer had been lucky hitherto and had generally alighted upon his hands. On this occasion his shoulder and the side of his head were the first to touch ground, and he was stunned. The horse, seeing that he could do nothing more, sensibly trotted off towards his stable, and Farmer Chegwidden lay in a heap upon the road after the manner of the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves.

There was no good Samaritan about that part of Dartmoor; or, if there was one, he was not taking a walk abroad with the idea of practising his virtues. There was, indeed, no reason why any one should pa.s.s that way before morning, as people who live in lonely places require no curfew to send them under cover, and the night was wild with the first big wind of autumn. Still some one did come that way, not a Levite to cross over to the other side, but Peter, to take a keen interest in the prostrate form. Peter had been into the village, like a foolish virgin, to seek oil, and new lamps to put it in. All attempts to install the electric light had continued to prove that there was still something in the science which he had failed to master; and as the evenings were getting long, and the light afforded by the lantern was quite inadequate, Mary had sent him into the village to buy their old lamps back. Mother Cobley the shopwoman said she had sold them, which was not true, but she naturally desired to make Peter purchase new lamps. He had done so under compulsion, and was returning with a lamp under each arm and a bottle of oil in his pocket, somewhat late, as an important engagement at the inn had detained him, when he stumbled across Farmer Chegwidden. He placed his purchases upon the road, then drew near to examine the body closely.

"He'm a dead corpse sure 'nuff," said Peter. "Who be ye?" he shouted.

As there was neither reply nor movement the only course was to apply a test to ascertain whether the man was living or dead. The method which suggested itself to Peter was to apply his boot, and this he did, with considerable energy, but without success. Then he reviled the body; but that too was useless.

"Get up, man! Why don't ye get up?" he shouted.

There was no response, so Peter began to kick again; and when the figure refused to be reanimated by such treatment he lost his temper at so much obstinacy and went on shouting: "Get up, man! Wun't ye get up? To h.e.l.l, man! Why don't ye get up?"

It did not appear to occur to Peter that the man could not get up.

The next course was the very obvious one of securing those good things which the G.o.ds had provided. Farmer Chegwidden had not much money left in his pockets, but Peter discovered it was almost enough to pay for the new lamps. Mary had advanced the money for them, so what Peter gained through the farmer's misfortune was all profit. Then he picked up his lamps, and hurried back to the village to lodge the information of the "dead corpse lying up on Dartmoor" in the proper quarter.

He had not been gone long when Pendoggat rode up. Thomasine had hurried back to Town Rising by the "lower town," afraid to cross by the moor in that wind. He too discovered the farmer, or rather his horse did; and he too refused to pa.s.s by on the other side. Dismounting, he knelt and struck a match. The wind blew it out at once, but the sudden flash showed him the man's face. Chegwidden was breathing heavily, a fact which Peter had omitted to notice.

"Dead drunk! He can bide there," muttered Pendoggat.

He got upon his horse and rode on. As he crossed the brow, and reached a point where there was nothing to break the strength of the wind, he pulled his horse round, hesitated a moment, then cantered back. The wind was in his lungs and in his nostrils, and he was himself again, a strong man, not a weak creature in love with a farm-wench, not a singer of hymns nor a preacher of sermons, but a hungry animal to whom power had been given over weak and lesser beings of the earth.

He knelt at Chegwidden's side, and tore the clothes off him until he had stripped him naked. He dragged the body to the side of the road and toppled it into the gorse. The clothes he rolled up, took with him, and higher up flung into an old mine-shaft. Then he rode on his way, shouting, fighting with the wind.

CHAPTER XIV

ABOUT A STRUGGLE AT THE GATE OF FAIRYLAND

Old Weevil walked about the moor, because there was no room in the cottage or garden, and whispered to the sun: "I wish she wasn't so happy, I wish she wouldn't laugh so, I wish she wouldn't talk about that boy." A good many other things he wished for. Mr. Bellamie had written to present his compliments to Abel Cain Weevil, Esquire--though the old man was not used to that t.i.tle--and to announce that he proposed giving himself the pleasure of calling at Lewside Cottage and enjoying a little conversation with its tenant. Weevil guessed how he would blunder through that interview in his simple beetle-hearted way; and then he would have to break his little girl's heart as carefully as he could.

After all she was very young, and hearts broken early can be put together again. Plants broken off in the spring grow up as well as ever.

It is when they are broken in the late summer that there is no chance, and no time, to mend.

"She will feel it--like a butcher's knife," he whispered. "I was wrong to pick her up that night. I ought to have left her. It would have been all over long ago, and she would have been spared the knife. But no, she is too nice, too good. She will do it! She will fight her way through!

You'll see, Abel-Cain. You watch her, my old dear! She will beat the Brute yet." He chuckled, snapped his fingers at the sun, waved his hand at Ger Tor, and trotted back to the cottage.

Weevil talked in parables with the eccentricity, not of genius, but of habit. His life had been spoilt by "the Brute." He had done what he could to fight the monster until he had realised his utter helplessness.

And now his little maid's life was to be spoilt by the Brute, but he thought she would succeed better than he had done, and fight her way out into a more serene atmosphere. Old Weevil's Brute was simply cruelty, the ugly thing that encompa.s.sed him.

He was a silly old man in many ways. People with an intense kindness for animals are probably freaks of Nature, who has tried to teach them to be cruel, only they have rejected her teaching. Love for animals is, strictly speaking, no part of the accepted religion. Hebrew literature, so far from teaching kindness to animals, as the Koran does, recommends the opposite; and the founder of Christianity in his dealings with animals destroyed them. Fondness for animals began probably when men first admitted beasts into their homes as members of the family, as the Bedouin Arab treated his horse. Such animals developed new traits and advanced towards a far higher state of evolution than they would have attained under natural conditions. With higher intelligence came also a greater sensitiveness to pain. Those animals, such as the horse and dog, who have been brought up with men, and acquired so much from them, have an equal right to be protected by the laws which protect men. Such were some of Weevil's arguments, but perhaps he was mistaken. He had failed signally to impart the doctrine of kindness to animals to his neighbours. He went too far, a common fault among men who are obsessed with a single idea. He attacked the rabbit-trap violently, which was manifestly absurd, and only convinced people that he was mad. He declared that the rabbit, caught and held in the iron jaws of the trap to perish miserably hour by hour, must suffer agonies. He had himself put his finger into such a trap, and was unable to bear the pain more than ten minutes. Naturally people laughed at him. What a fool he must be to put his finger in a trap! It had always been the custom to capture rabbits in that savage way, and if it had been cruel the clergy would have preached against it and the law would have prohibited it. But when Weevil went on to a.s.sert that the rabbits had feelings he got beyond them entirely, and they could only shake their heads at him, and feel sorry for his insanity, and despise him for being such a bad sportsman.

Even the village constable felt he must draw the line somewhere, and objected to paying any tribute of respect to a dafty old man who went about telling people that rabbits could feel pain. When he met Weevil he grinned, and looked the other way to avoid saluting him.

Weevil spent much of his time drafting pet.i.tions to Parliament for the abolition of various instruments of torture, but of course n.o.body would sign them; and he indited lengthy screeds to humane societies upon the same subject, and these were always courteously acknowledged and placed on file for future reference, which was another way of saying that they would not be looked at again. He was himself a member of one society, and some years back had induced it to prosecute a huntsman who had been guilty of gross cruelty to a cat; but as the man was popular, and the master of the hounds was upon the Bench in the company of other sportsmen, the prosecution failed, although the offence was not denied; and old Weevil had his windows broken the next day. After that he quieted down, acknowledging that victory must remain with the strong. He went on preparing his indictments, writing his letters, and drafting his useless pet.i.tions; and whenever he discovered a rabbit-trap in his walks he promptly sprung it; and if the river happened to be handy, and n.o.body was about, that trap disappeared for ever.

It was unfortunate for Weevil that he was more eccentric in appearance than in habits. He had a comic face and a nervous smile. The more in earnest he was the more he grinned; and that helped to convince people of his insanity. Then he was a loose character, and had evidently enjoyed a lurid past. People were not going to be lectured by a wicked old fellow, with a face like a rag-doll and a foolish smile, who lived in a small cottage with an illegitimate daughter. Weevil had never openly denied the paternity; he did not want it to be known that Boodles was a child of shame for her own sake; and he was in his heart rather proud to think people believed he was the father of such a radiant little maid.

"You must do it," he said, as he trotted into the cottage. "You must prepare the child, Abel-Cain. Don't be a fool now."

The little sitting-room was very neat. Boodles was not there, but visible tokens of her industry were everywhere. A big bowl of late heather from the moor, with rowan and dogwood berries from Tavy woods, stood upon the table. A little stocking, rather plentifully darned, was being darned again. A blotting-book was open, and a sheet of paper was upon it, and all that was written on the sheet was the beginning of a letter: "My dearest Boy," that and nothing more. It would have been a pretty little room had it not been for that sheet of paper. The silly old man bent over it, and a very good imitation of a tear splashed upon the "dearest Boy" and blotted it out. "You must not be such an old fool, Abel-Cain," he said, in his kindly scolding voice.