Mockery Gap (6 page)

W
E
fancy ourselves as wise as the old gentleman who holds up his hands and points to heaven and its amusements that await the good.

We hold out our hands too and show the world Mockery Gap, and point out that there are pretty pebbles to pick up along the
seashore
.

Pebbles, that from the point of view of the Author of all things—and bow to Him we had better, or we may rue the omission—may as well be looked at as anything else that He has made. All life is but a looking, so why not stare at Mr. Roddy? and if gentility is a little dull sometimes, there is Dinah Pottle only now gone in under those fine trees of Mockery wood, where a church once used to be, the oldest in the country.

This wood—the very one where the hermit prayed, the same who rowed out to save the ancient mariner when the young fisher-boy went out of his wits—goes down to the sea, or at least as near to the sea as it can conveniently get without being uprooted by the waves.

God Simon, that fine bird, had followed pretty Dinah—‘an’ thik wood be she’s bed,’ as Mr. Caddy had often informed Mary
Gulliver, adding too that the green mound upon Mockery cliff was as soft as they fir cones, not to mention the sunny side of a garden hedge or a straw stack—the one near the vicarage—where Master Simon would meet Rebecca.

Mr. Gulliver, whose eyes were always
searching
for strange monsters, often looked at the Mockery wood, and sometimes saw two figures go in and only one come out, for it was Simon Cheney’s custom to at once return home after an adventure in order to brag to his parents how finely he had used the girl.

Every one in this pretty world wishes to put every one else right in his doings, whether good or ill.

For even Mrs. Topple would look upon herself as upon another person, and would hunt for her prize of a large clover with a fine zeal in order to cure this other person of her lameness.

Mr. Pink, of course, believed—and he would now go about and inquire of every one, ‘Who sold white mice?’—that if Mrs. Moggs went once to the sea, she would not only be saved herself, but the whole world would be saved in her salvation.

‘Her soul must feel sorrowful,’ Mr. Pink would remark to his sister, whose little nose appeared to be growing smaller than ever; ‘it must long to get away at least for an hour
or two from so many balls of string and
pen-wipers
.’

Mr. Pink liked to go to the Mockery shop, stepping carefully upon the stone path to avoid the cracks, and he would say, after
paying
for the stamps, which he always remembered to do, ‘You ought to go and look at the
beautiful
sea, Mrs. Moggs.’

‘Oh, it’s quite enough for me,’ Mrs. Moggs would reply, ringing her bells happily, ‘to hear the waves roar, so I have no wish to go and look at them.’

Sometimes Mr. Pink, every inch of his wide face glowing with hope for Mrs. Moggs’ salvation, would describe the Mockery sea. ‘It’s as beautiful as the blue sky,’ he would say; ‘its colours are as deep and wonderful as itself, and are like’—and Mr. Pink would look excitedly around him—‘those pretty sweets on your top shelf, Mrs. Moggs.’

‘But it’s a long way to the sea,’ and the postmistress would sigh.

‘Only half a mile,’ Mr. Pink would reply.

‘But then Mr. Hunt might find some one in the shop taking the postal orders,’ and Mrs. Moggs’ bells would stop ringing and she would look very sad.

Nearly every day, except when the rude brats the Mockery children clamoured for sweets, Mrs. Moggs’ kindly face would glow with content; but a day would come
some
times
when she looked timid and careworn, and this always happened when Mr. Hunt, the postmaster from the town, rudely pushed open the shop door and came in with his questions. His questions were always about the money, and he would look hard at Mrs. Moggs as he questioned her, as though he were sure that she had done something with the stamps or the orders that she shouldn’t have done.

‘If ever you allow any one to owe you for a stamp you’ll get yourself into trouble,’ Mr. Hunt the postmaster would say crossly.

Mrs. Moggs would look timidly into the face of her inquisitor, as if she fully expected him to tell her the very next moment to go to the workhouse, a place that was in Mrs. Moggs’ idea the very nearest thing in England to a torture chamber.

Sometimes when Mr. Hunt had brought Mrs. Moggs almost to tears, and the happy ringing of her bells to a sad silence, the postmaster would ask in a fine breezy way, copied exactly from Mr. James Tarr, as he stretched out his stockinged legs in imitation of the same personage, ‘How far off was the sea?’

‘Oh, Mr. Pink is always talking about the sea,’ Mrs. Moggs would reply nervously, ‘but I have never been there, you know.’

Whenever Mrs. Moggs had a bad dream it would always take the form of some loss or
other connected with the stamps or the postal orders. And in the winter nights, when the wind shook the ivy outside the window, or when in autumn the great red harvest moon peeped through her curtains, she would wake in terror hearing Mr. Hunt, in the grand
bullying
voice that he always used to inferiors, telling her, who was the kindest old woman in the world, that she was a thief and a liar.

She didn’t mind the thief much, for she remembered one, although Mr. Pattimore had never said much about him, who once died in God’s company with a sure promise of
Paradise
; but she couldn’t bear the thought of being called a liar.

Mr. Hunt would always shout out that word so loudly in her dream, that Mrs. Moggs would awake all trembling, and she would be forced to think of all the fine things Mr. Pink had said about the sea in order to compose herself to sleep again.

And it wasn’t only Mrs. Moggs who didn’t like Mr. Hunt and his ways, for James Pring, who, together with his lame cow, his wife and family, was hated by Mrs. Pottle, couldn’t speak of Mr. Hunt except with disapproval, and he was always glad to remember that Mr. Caddy, the story-teller of Mockery, disliked Mr. Hunt too.

And here we must pause for a moment, and with willing eyes look at pretty Esther Pottle,
who, with her hair that hung black all over her, lay naughtily upon the bank to let simple Mr. Pink see her, who, being short-sighted, fancied that she was Mrs. Pattimore, blushed, and went by.

But Mr. Pattimore coming by too, having all the hatred in his heart for the summer manners of rock flies and young ladies, looked and cried out, ‘Why, Esther!’

Esther kicked up her legs.

‘Esther!’ said Mr. Pattimore again, and Esther ran off calling out that the Nellie-bird had come and that Mr. Pattimore wasn’t a man at all but an ‘old silly.’

Mr. Pattimore shut his eyes.

He thought of his wife. ‘Dorcas,’ he said sternly as if to pull himself up, in case his legs wished to run after Esther—‘Dorcas.’

B
EFORE
he peeped into the laurel bush and carried off the young creature who became his wife, together with the picture of the Dean that filled all his mind with high hopes, Mr. Pattimore had lived in Mockery some
twenty-five
years, with Mrs. Topple, who afterwards became the schoolmistress, as his housekeeper.

All that twenty-five years Mr. Pattimore had studied carefully the philosophy of names. And wishing to make this same study a
practical
help and use to the world, he had, by the simple means of becoming godfather to them all, named the babies of Mockery Gap.

Mr. Pattimore believed in Bible names, ‘that cast,’ he would say, ‘a fine odour of sanctity over the bearers; and, though sinners as we all are, what Peter, Paul, or Simon ever died in his sins?’

Amongst all whom he had stood godfather to, Mr. Pattimore was the most interested in Simon Cheney. He had watched the young man’s behaviour from a child. In his study, when Mr. Pattimore wasn’t looking at the Dean, and thinking of himself as one, he would look out of either of the two large windows, that showed different views. He would watch for Simon, and he would sometimes see him; he would watch too for Rebecca, for Dinah,
and for Mary. Mary wasn’t plain Mary to Mr. Pattimore: she was ‘the other Mary,’ because Mr. Pattimore liked a mystery, and the other Mary surrounds herself with one. Besides, he had named two Marys already after the more important ones in the Bible, but both these had the good or ill fortune—as one likes to take it—of dying of
whooping-cough
.

He preached about Mr. Gulliver’s daughter the Sunday of her christening, explaining that though we hear very little about the other Mary in the Holy Book, she must have been very good and very plain. ‘This little one will not be beautiful, but she will be good,’ said Mr. Pattimore.

As soon as Mary Gulliver could run, the Mockery children, a sad and naughty crew, would run after her and call out, ‘You bain’t nothing, you be only t’ other maiden.’

Mr. Pattimore had faith in his Simon, who of course was Peter too, the first name of the Keeper of the Keys being to Mr. Pattimore the best to be called by.

When he looked out of the window—he would turn away if Mrs. Pattimore passed by—Mr. Pattimore would sometimes see Rebecca running round the vicarage garden or Mr. Cheney’s rick-yard that was near by, having left the vicarage kitchen for a minute or two, and being followed by Simon.

What happened behind the hedge if Simon caught her Mr. Pattimore wished the Dean would tell, but the Dean would only look sternly out of his frame at the half-written sermon upon the gentleman’s table.

From the same window, too, Mr. Pattimore would sometimes notice of an evening a spot of colour upon or near to the green mound of Mockery cliff. This colour would reveal itself to Mr. Pattimore as the other Mary. But sometimes she would appear to be
overshadowed
by something more drab and common than her own pretty frock could ever be, and Mr. Pattimore would soon notice a figure near to her that appeared to be Master Simon’s.

And again, too, at the other window, from which the Mockery wood could be seen as well as the sea, Dinah might be noticed going to the wood for sticks, as she often did—but not always alone, for Dinah’s nature was both free and loving, and even Mrs. Topple would rise up from her knees in the field where she had been looking and not praying, and watch for her return; for Dinah would sometimes run out of the wood laughing.

Having seen so much and so far, Mr. Pattimore, the very afternoon of the day when his wife had been led down to the sea by the pretty cowslips and had watched the fisherman near to Mr. Gulliver’s cows, decided to go to the Cheneys and at least to ask, not perhaps
what heavenly doors Master Simon had been unlocking with his keys, but at least whether he was as good a boy as his name should have made him.

Mr. Pattimore approached the Cheney abode with quick steps. The house, a fine tall one, four hundred years old, and the ancient manor of the Roddys when the family lived upon their own lands, stood in the midst of the Mockery valley among its barns and out-buildings.

Mr. Pattimore never looked at what he walked upon. Flowers he supposed grew in Mockery as well as grass and babies. He had named the babies, and they should all have grown up as good as their names.

‘Dinah!’ Yes, but then the Bible maiden had gone into no wood with Simon Peter; though even she hadn’t been altogether good.

A pleasant path it was that Mr. Pattimore walked in, a pleasant path, with the afternoon sun and the fair haze of summer warming all things about him. But he, with the fine idea of being akin to a Dean, and of even taking his place one day though he hadn’t an aunt in a king’s palace, brought and kept for ever these thoughts of grander things than mere buttercups.

But even he with such fine thoughts decided that he couldn’t stay for all the rest of his life at Mr. Cheney’s front door, which, after the proper habit and custom of all farmhouses, was securely bolted, and the ringing of the bell
was of no more use than would have been the pulling at the ivy that hung beside the door, except perhaps to shake out the earwigs.

Mr. Pattimore looked at his watch—it had been his father’s; he rang the bell at regular intervals for a quarter of an hour, and then, seeing that the door was as firmly bolted as ever, he walked along beside the wall to find another entrance.

The side wall of Mockery Manor had been warmed all the afternoon by the summer sun; but it was neither the warmth of the wall nor the delightful feeling of summer happiness that clings to old country-houses that caused Mr. Pattimore to stop in the path, but simply the mention from inside a window of his own name.

‘Caddy do say’—and the voice appeared to be none other than Simon’s own—‘that Mr. Pattimore bain’t no good at bedtime.’

Mr. Pattimore didn’t wish to listen, and yet he waited. A moment had come to him, one of those moments when even a good man doesn’t know what he ought to do; for he couldn’t help noticing, because he had eyes, that Mr. Cheney, with his wife, a wizened, unlovely creature, just behind him, was
crossing
the fields and going in the direction of the Mockery cliff with pickaxe and spade.

Mr. Pattimore hadn’t named them; if he had, perhaps they would have been less likely to listen to Mr. James Tarr. But he had
named Simon, and so he couldn’t help thinking it right and proper, considering how long he had rung the bell, to wait a little where he was.

Mr. Pattimore touched the wall; he found that it was warm.

For some odd reason that we cannot explain Mr. Pattimore wished that the wall was an iceberg.

‘’Tain’t we maidens that do want what Mr. Caddy do talk of; ’tis poor Mrs. Pattimore.’

The voice and the laugh were Dinah’s. ‘
Rebecca
be the one to know what wold Caddy do tell they ducks about,’ and Dinah laughed loudly.

Mr. Pattimore leant against the wall, but, try as he would to imagine it cold, he couldn’t help feeling fully conscious that the wall was warm. He looked down at the pebbles in the path. They had been brought from the sea, and he supposed that they were warm too.

Mr. Pattimore looked towards the sea; the sun was hot upon it, and the waters afar off glittered and shone.

In the Mockery bay a boat was sailing amid the shining happiness of the waves; the boat shone too, as painted a thing as ever a poet wrote of in prose or song.

At a little distance from the sea a lonely figure was bending over the earth—Mrs. Topple. From the village a cry came, as unreal to a human ear as any summer cry could be—‘The Nellie-bird, the Nellie-bird!’

‘I must not stay a moment longer,’ thought Mr. Pattimore; ‘but perhaps it’s only that Rebecca has come to tell Simon and her friends about the picture of the Dean.’

And so she had.

‘’Tain’t from Simon’—Rebecca’s voice grew serious—‘that do practice ’is funny games wi’ we maids, that I’ve learned so much, nor ’tain’t from Mr. Caddy’s talking to ’is ducks; but ’tis the picture of Dean Ashbourne that do tell of things.’

Mr. Pattimore made a slight sound in his throat. He listened intently.

‘Sure ’e don’t come out of picture frame to cuddle ’ee,’ exclaimed Mary, ‘when ’ee be doing fire-grate?’

‘No, ’e don’t never come out,’ replied Rebecca; ‘but all same I do look up at ’e and ask questions.’

‘And what do they gaiters tell of?’ asked Simon, sniggering.

‘More than ever they ducks of Mr. Caddy do listen to,’ replied Rebecca, amid general laughter.

‘His legs be plimmed out with
wickedness
,’ remarked Dinah, who had stared hard at the portrait during the last work-party at the vicarage.

‘They bain’t made for trousers,’ said Rebecca mysteriously. ‘’E did tell I about they gaiters, and ’e do like to talk too of a maiden’s clothes, for they clergy do know.’

Sounds now came through the window, and reached the sun-heated wall against which Mr. Pattimore leaned, which showed that Simon,
however
saintly his name, could cause amusement.

The queer sound in Mr. Pattimore’s throat burst; he coughed….

A moment later all that he had heard faded and went. Mockery Manor became a warmed summer silence. A girl, demure and modest—Rebecca—walked from the farm with a milk-jug in her hand, stepping in the same path by which Mr. Pattimore had arrived, and going towards the vicarage with the
evening
supply of milk.

A moment later Mary Gulliver, with the hay-knife that she had borrowed from the farm, climbed the stile and disappeared into the lane that led to her home. Mr. Pattimore looked away from her and towards the wood. Dinah was there, walking gladly in under the dark trees and carrying the bag that she usually brought for stick gathering.

Mr. Pattimore peeped into the window from whence the voices had issued.

The room was empty.

Again Mr. Pattimore raised his eyes and looked at the sea and at the wood. Some one followed Dinah in under the trees. This was Simon, the pet god of the Mockery girls.

Mr. Pattimore returned home sadly; he wished to ask Dean Ashbourne a question too.