Mockery Gap (5 page)

I
T
was the first of May. The Mockery cliff was white with the daisies that the
ignorant
and simple-minded will always admire—leaving the Roddites unnoticed.

Though the sun had shone sometimes since Miss Ogle had visited the village, soft rain-clouds had, more often than the sun, covered Mockery in a sweet warm garment that now gave a fine greenness to the grass and opened the daisies.

Mrs. Pattimore was so taken with the
morning
and with the pleasant thought that cowslips were abroad, that she couldn't help looking into the dining-room—where Mr. Pattimore always wrote his sermons in order to be near to the Dean—to see how busy he was, as she often used to.

He was busy, for his text‚ written large upon a page of foolscap—‘But this I say, brethren, the time is short; it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none'—would, she felt, as she closed the door again without speaking, keep him so for many an hour. Mrs. Pattimore went out with a sigh.

Mrs. Pattimore wore a grey knitted coat, and when she stood in front of the Mockery vicarage—a pretty creature who longed for her mate—she felt the sun warm and press her like a god on fire. In the lane the sun was
still warmer. Mrs. Pattimore looked over a gate at Farmer Cheney's barns and meadows.

A white cock with shining, fluttering wings, intent upon amorous adventure, chased a pretty black hen; and a bull and a ram in the same field were both busy and playful.

Mrs. Pattimore knelt upon the soft grass of the bank and smelt a daisy. She wished that she had never been taken out of the laurel bush in Norfolk and had continued all her life thinking about the frog. She now knew that she couldn't dream any more, but could only long.

All Mockery was there, and all Mockery was intent upon doing something or other.

James Pring, the mender of the Mockery roads, was standing with his spade over his shoulder before his cottage door. He was looking at the address upon an envelope that he had taken out of his pocket, evidently intending to carry the letter to its proper destination, though not at once, for he put it into his pocket again.

There came a scream from Mr. Cheney's rick-yard, and Rebecca Pring, the girl who worked as a daily servant at the vicarage, ran round one haystack and then round another, followed by the gay Simon, whose coat fluttered and shone like the cock's wing in the sun.

Dorcas Pattimore saw all Mockery happy and gay, and she couldn't help trembling, because she wished so much to be happy too.

The larks sang, the magpies chattered, and the little wrens hopped about in the ivy
without
saying a word about the nest hidden in that very bank.

Mary Gulliver came by with her father's lunch; she was exactly the proper fair, pretty maid to be there—‘and no doubt Simon runs after her too,' thought Mrs. Pattimore, ‘and Mr. Caddy had mentioned a petticoat, and Mary wore white stockings.' There was plenty of roundness about Mary, plenty of young
girlhood
to take hold of in the sight of the sun. Mary wore no hat, and the sun lit up her hair that tended to gold, so that Mrs. Pattimore, with her heart so dreadfully set on fire, wished that she were either Mary Gulliver or at the worst a ewe or a hen. And Mr. Caddy had told her nothing.

Mary passed demurely. She knew as much as Mrs. Pattimore did about the attic, the wedding bed deserted by the stern man, and about the little garments in the wardrobe.

Mary looked at Mrs. Pattimore with pity as she went by.

Others came by too—the Mockery children out to play; they were chasing the rooks, that fortunately were out of their reach, and were shouting as they went by, ‘The Nellie-bird do live in fisherman's hut; 'e be a-come; thik nasty thing be a-come!'

The heart of Dorcas beat violently, partly
because of the rude noise that the children were making, and partly because she had meant that very morning to go down to the sea.

She started to go a little hesitatingly, not knowing what the children had meant by their strange shout, and remembering too how Miss Pink had spoken about the beast and the Nellie-bird.

Going beside Mrs. Pottle's cottage—the nearest way to the sea—Mrs. Pattimore saw that lady surrounded by a litter of kittens, who raised their blind heads and squirmed in the path while Mrs. Pottle stood over them like a fierce giant.

The mother cat had escaped the children who had chased it some days before, and had safely produced its young that Mrs. Pottle had now strewed in the path after shutting up the mother in her wood-shed.

The blind kittens raised their heads in order to ask pity from a world that to them was a mere place of murder, with the murderess Mrs. Pottle standing above and ready to beat them to death with a great stick.

‘You be Mrs. Pring,' she shouted,
beginning
to lay about her with the stick. And when she hit a kitten she yelled the louder—for Mrs. Pring's cottage was so near—‘You be Mrs. Pring that I be killing.'

As soon as Mrs. Pottle had killed them all,
she smiled at Mrs. Pattimore, who had looked on horrified at the slaughter. Mrs. Pottle's smile—a reddened one, for the blood of a kitten had spotted her cheek—was but meant to hold Mrs. Pattimore a moment.

Dorcas looked at her in horror when she said in a loud, angry tone, ‘Bain't we got a marble clock wi' hands that go round and round after they figures?'

Mrs. Pottle looked across at the Prings' cottage with the scorn of one who has a
possession
worth all her enemies.

‘What have they Prings got?' she shouted, looking fiercely at Dorcas, who was trembling again.

Mrs. Pattimore, who was cowed by the woman, really thought that she wished to know; and so she replied, harmlessly enough: ‘Mrs. Pring has a lame cow, a few black hens, and a pig that has some—' Mrs. Pattimore hesitated and blushed—‘little baby ones.'

Mrs. Pottle looked down at the path. ‘Bain't we got cats and kittens?' she
exclaimed
angrily.

Mrs. Pattimore looked at the kittens; there was a little life still in one of them, that Mrs. Pottle was now kind enough to squash out of it with her heavy heel. ‘One of they Prings,' she said as she did so.

A
S
soon as Mrs. Pattimore left Mrs. Pottle’s cottage gate, inside of which the dead kittens lay, she walked quickly, and, hardly noticing where she was going, she went down the lane towards the sea.

‘I know I shouldn’t do this‚’ she said to herself, ‘and I should go home.’ She caught a mind’s glimpse in a moment of time of Rebecca Pring.

Rebecca was a pleasant and friendly creature with nice manners, and with feelings that loved all men, and especially clergymen. Though, because Mr. Pattimore would say so little to her, she had learned to look more than she should perhaps have done at the portrait of the Dean.

Rebecca would often declare that gaiters were very becoming to a man; and that she had taken service with Mr. Pattimore—a daily service—only because she had heard of the portrait and its fine legs.

Rebecca, the vicar’s lady knew, would be now more likely watching at the back door for God Simon, a proper one to mention the clergy to, than watching the behaviour of the mutton in the oven.

But that could not be helped now, for Dorcas Pattimore had peeped over a stile and
had seen cowslips that grew all along the path to the seashore. The Mockery brook, too, that bubbled over the clean white pebbles, went the same road, and beside it there were primroses.

Mrs. Pattimore paused beside the stile for one moment. Shouts of ‘The Nellie-bird be come!’ came from the village.

Mrs. Pattimore climbed over the stile. Nearly every one, and certainly a pretty lady who feels warm May longings flutter within her, catches a kind of wanton excitement as she approaches the sea. Even though her home be but half a mile away, the feeling of the sea, the great and little fishes, the seaweed, the rocks, the white foam, and the ships poised upon its naked spaces, all raise in the human heart the excitement and expectation of love.

The wide waste of waters sings and cries to all, making the heart beat faster, as though something at least will be seen or heard of down there that will inspire all life with a fine hope and joyfulness.

The cowslips led Mrs. Pattimore; she couldn’t hold back with so many flowers
wishing
her to come. All lovely things met her; she opened her arms, and the soft wind laden with delicious scent embraced her. She felt rich and fruitful; the kind wind had pressed and crept about her, and she knew the joy of conception.

She reached a green bank that was almost beside the sea, where large cowslips grew upon long, firm stalks. She looked down upon them with eyes moist and ready for love, and the cowslips returned her look with yellow wavings.

’Even the flowers want me to lie down,’ thought Mrs. Pattimore, who now lay down upon the green bank that was so pleasantly warmed by the May sunshine.

Mrs. Pattimore had never seen the sea in the same way as the people of Mockery regarded it, as a moving field, not so pleasant as Mr. Gulliver’s, and certainly not so safe to look at. But their fears, with that shout of ‘the Nellie-bird,’ had at least got to her and frightened her. She was alone amid the tall cowslips, and she didn’t like to look at the sea.

Instead of looking, she lay with her hands in her lap allowing the hot sun to soak into her. ‘Had God Simon’—and she had more than once thought of his simple manners as godlike—‘ever brought Dinah Pottle’—Mrs Pattimore saw her then—‘just to
that spot where she now lay so ready for love?’ Dinah as round as an orange and as ripe, and such a girl! She was so much of a girl that even Mr. Cheney’s bull would wander after her in all friendliness, mistaking her apparently for another Europa. Even Mr. Pattimore when Dinah passed him would be forced to clench his teeth and think of the Dean’s gaiters in
order to prevent himself from making a sound like a neigh.

Dinah, of course, was very willing to be with God Simon, ‘changing even gates and hurdles and rough faggots into bedsteads’; so Mr. Caddy would inform his ducks, and saying, ‘Well, there, she be so rounded that she don’t feel nothing.’

‘Oh, but I am alone‚’ whispered Mrs. Pattimore to herself, picking a tall cowslip with a firm stalk, ‘and I wish this cowslip were my dear husband—but oh, that Dean!’

Forgetting her fears in her wish, Mrs. Pattimore looked at the sea. She sat up, though she still leaned against the bank, and she stretched out her arms to the sea.
Something
was singing in the sea.

Her fancy and excitement were so alive that she fancied the song must be about her, and that a young man was singing, or perhaps the Nellie-bird.

Mrs. Pattimore trembled. ‘There were large fishes in the sea, mermen perhaps?’ she thought, ‘and of course they were fine singers. It couldn’t be that horrid beast that Miss Pink talked about; no, the singing was strong and full—a man’s.’

She listened entranced.

Her father had read to her, when she was a little girl and had hardly learned the way into the laurel bush, out of an old brown and
worm-
eaten
book that told how a swan had once loved a maiden.

‘Perhaps that swan was also a kind of Nellie-bird—but the voice must be a man’s, it was so full and joyous.’

Mrs. Pattimore started; she had allowed one of her hands to rest upon the warm grass, and she now took it hurriedly away. A snake had moved under her hand. The snake crawled into the grass; it hadn’t bitten her. Mrs. Pattimore didn’t jump up at once; although it had frightened her, she didn’t seem to mind this snake; and now that it had crawled away into the grass without hurting her, she rather liked the idea of it.

But what were those cows of Mr. Gulliver’s looking at?—a boat? Yes, and more than a boat, for there was a man in it.

A man—Mrs. Pattimore looked at him longingly; he was standing in the boat
holding
to the mast, and letting the boat drift with the tide; he looked free and happy.

Mrs. Pattimore knew the man from the children’s description of him; he was the new fisherman—the Nellie-bird.

T
HE
adventurous fisherman named John Dobbin who had once tried to do business with the Mockery seas had failed. He had built a small hut in a low and sheltered corner, in in which he lived within a yard or two of the creeping ripples of the high tides.

John Dobbin who had once been a simple gardener and worked for Mr. Tarr, who, wishing perhaps to get rid of the man, had told him of all the mackerel, crabs, prawns, and whiting—enough to make any man rich—that swam or crawled in the bay of Mockery Gap. John soon discovered the sea to be a very rude and unmanageable garden, with waves that broke his lobster-pots, near drowned himself, and beat in all one side of his new boat. And so he took the few things that he
possessed
, together with one live creature that had come to him out of the sea, and, leaving the boat behind and the hut, for Mr. Gulliver’s light spring waggon couldn’t carry them, Mr. Dobbin returned to Maidenbridge and
obtained
work at the cemetery, an employment that soothed his troubled mind.

No fisherman had come to Mockery since Mr. Dobbin until he whom Mrs. Pattimore now watched drifting past her and going
towards the little hollow in the low cliffs where the hut was.

Mrs. Pattimore ate him with her eyes. He was tall, and his hair, curly and light-coloured, glistened like yellow guineas. His beard, yellow too, and finely coloured—and Mrs. Pattimore never even wondered why he hadn’t a cap—expressed a fine and idle recklessness that accorded well with the way that he drifted and sang his song. The man’s strength showed plainly enough in his fine limbs, and the careless manner of his standing told of one who cared more for life than for meat, and more for the body than for raiment.

The boat drifted near to the hut, and the fisherman with a careless thrust of an oar sent her to land. As he leapt out in a light manner, the sun shone so upon his yellow hair that it appeared to Mrs. Pattimore to be a crown of gold.

The excitement of Mrs. Pattimore’s feelings had prevented her from noticing that others watched too—Mr. Gulliver’s cows. These cows were standing quite near to her, and were watching the boat with the same interest as herself.

Mrs. Pattimore went a little aside and climbed a soft, grassy mound. Around her and sprouting out from the ground was a forest of mare’s-tail. These minutely-made trees, that bear so strong a resemblance to real
ones, Mrs. Pattimore seemed to notice for the first time in her life, and she supposed that they, like herself, had been surprised by the exciting vision of the new fisherman.

But she couldn’t stand there for ever, even though the sun and the cowslips might wish to keep her; for as it was Rebecca and not Dinah that Master Simon the fine young god of Mockery was after that day, the mutton would grow black in the oven while Rebecca … Mrs. Pattimore had once noticed something odd happening in the corner of the vicarage garden. And also—Mrs. Pattimore didn’t dare to look at the sea again—something must have happened to the time of day too, as well as—which was very likely—to the vicarage cooking. For coming towards her was Mary Gulliver, walking fast as though she were late, to fetch up the cows.

Mrs. Pattimore hurried to the stile. But even with her fears for the dinner she had to stop there, because she heard Mr. Pink and Farmer Cheney talking in the lane, and she didn’t wish to rudely interrupt them by her presence—and so Dorcas waited.

The two men were standing under the shade of a tall elm tree in the lane, and Farmer Cheney, with his unbuttoned beard shaking, was looking up into the meek, wide face of Mr. Pink, whose old straw hat was perched like a queer bird at the extreme back of his
head, and saying angrily, ‘You allow all the thieves in the world to come to Mockery; there’s the schoolmistress who’s always spying about in my fields, and now there’s this fisherman, who will want to know what I be looking for when I do dig in Cliff mound.’

‘But what are you digging for?’ replied Mr. Pink, trying to turn away Mr. Cheney’s wrath with a mild question.

‘Rabbits,’ said Mr. Cheney.

Mrs. Pattimore blushed; she didn’t like to listen, and yet she couldn’t climb over the stile, for, besides the rudeness of breaking in upon the men, they might watch her climbing!

‘And there’s Gulliver,’ called out the farmer loudly, ‘who you allow to go on year after year without paying his rent, and who talks only of monsters; he’s little better than a thief to landlord.’

‘Mr. Gulliver,’ said Mr. Pink, in the tone of voice that he used when any one’s faults were mentioned—‘Mr. Gulliver is interested in geography.’

‘So ’e mid be,’ exclaimed the farmer. ‘And suppose new fisherman be interested in maidens, me boy Simon, that I’ve a-worked all me life for together wi’ ’is own mother, will kick and scream in’s bed for sadness.’

‘But there are quite a number of young women in Mockery, and there’s Mrs….’

Mrs. Pattimore climbed over the stile.
Farmer Cheney turned away, and Mr. Pink met her with his usual question, ‘Had she noticed Mrs. Moggs going to the sea?’

Mrs. Pattimore blushed, and replied that she hadn’t.

‘What can I give,’ asked Mr. Pink, ‘to poor Mrs. Moggs, whose bells only ring when she’s happy, and who’s never seen the sea? Isn’t there any pretty thing that I can give her? for one lovely thing, Mrs. Pattimore, you know, leads to another.’

Mrs. Pattimore wanted to go, but she liked Mr. Pink, and she wished to say something; a tiny mouse rustled the ivy in the hedge and darted up the bank.

‘I used to keep white mice when I was a girl,’ she said.

Mr. Pink rubbed his hands joyfully.

‘The very thing Mr. Tarr advised,’ he said.

Mrs. Pattimore entered the vicarage by the front door at almost the same moment that Rebecca Pring entered, coming from her favourite corner of the garden, at the back.

Rebecca blushingly met her mistress and rang the dinner-bell.