Mockery Gap (16 page)

S
QUIRE
R
ODDY
, the far-famed discoverer of the little shells named Roddites, lived at High Hall, near Weyminster.

He possessed a collection of ancient
monsters
that with immense care and skill he had dug out of the earth, with the assistance of his three gardeners.

Besides the monsters, that Mr. Gulliver would certainly have recognised as being near of kin to those portrayed in his map, Mr. Roddy had scattered in his front drive so many of the little shells, that have brought him so much honour, that he was saved the trouble and expense of buying gravel.

When any visitor to Mr. Roddy’s mansion had walked about until he almost wished the Roddites on the downs again and the monsters in the clay, Mr. Roddy would show him, who would fain have an easy-chair and something nice to drink, the very earthenware pot in which the poison had been placed that took the life away, beginning with his feet first, of the wise Socrates.

The visitor, after having looked so long and stared so hard, often wished that the cup were full.

Although Mr. Roddy’s estate was a pretty
good one, for nearly all Mockery Gap was his, yet if anything happened to be given away in the neighbourhood of Weyminster, such as a free gift of the greenest and most succulent of turnip tops, that a farmer might well wish to have removed, for fear his lambs should scour, Mr. Roddy would send his men to collect some sacksful for consumption in High Hall, or else to use in the garden as manure.

Amongst his other worldly possessions, Mr. Roddy owned a small yacht, and sometimes he would sail in it a little way, and visit any little cove where a new fossil might perhaps be
discovered
that he could give a new name to.

Mr. Roddy’s wife, a gentle and amiable creature, had the wisdom when her husband went a-sailing to remain at home. For Mrs. Roddy feared that the new maid, culled from the workhouse, might in a fit of recklessness or fear cast out of the window the bones of some long-extinct monster, that would soon be trampled into the dust of the road.

But there was something besides stones that had always interested Mr. Roddy since the days when he was a little boy at school. This was a wreck at sea. Mr. Roddy had often dreamed that he was there upon the seashore to pick up what the sailors—a set of extravagant rascals—had cast overboard.

At breakfast one morning—the month of September was well in—Mr. Roddy read in
the
Times
that a small vessel had run in a fog upon the Blind Cow Rock in the Mockery bay, and that the captain had been obliged to cast overboard some of the cargo, which consisted of cases of tea; though he wished he hadn’t, for in a very little while after doing so the ship was pulled off by the Weyminster tugboat.

As soon as Mr. Roddy read of this event, he said to his wife: ‘A case of that tea would be just the thing for the servants.’

Mrs. Roddy smiled as sweetly as she always did when he made any kind of suggestion, and replied that she hoped the new maid would work better for it.

‘And if,’ said Mr. Roddy, warming to the pleasant theme, ‘Miss Ogle were to call we might give her some too; you can’t imagine how thirstily she always glares at the poison jar.’

‘I will invite my friends for a sail,’ said Mr. Roddy.

It was always a glad and happy day when the field club, of which Miss Ogle had now become a firm and established member, went upon its expeditions, generally by car.

But sometimes—and this is what Mr. Roddy now contemplated—a picked number of the members would be asked to go for a sail in the yacht. And so it now came about that Mr. James Tarr, Miss Ogle, and Mr. Gollop were invited by Mr. Roddy to take part in a sea trip
to discover the spilt cases of tea, or, if not that, at least to find a new hunting-ground for bones, so that when the other members came they would merely have to step right into a stratum of monsters as into another world.

When the day came, and the yacht was upon the point of starting, with Mr. Roddy at the tiller, and Mr. James Tarr, who alone
understood
and alone managed the sails, to deal with them as if they were window blinds—a packet of letters was thrust into the squire’s hands by the little maid, who knew the way to the quay because the same road led to the workhouse.

These letters each bore an American stamp, and were addressed to J. Roddy, Esq., the famous discoverer of the Roddites.

Mr. Roddy looked proudly at the packet, but as it was important to catch the little wind that was blowing, in order to make way as fast as possible to Mockery bay, he thrust the letters into his pocket until a more suitable moment came to open them.

The start had already been delayed for some hours, because Mr. Gollop had a funeral to take at three; and so it was not until four in the afternoon that the boat got away from its moorings and sailed out into the bay.

It was then, with the yacht about the same distance from Mockery as from Weyminster, that the wind in a September fit of idleness entirely failed to blow. And it was only
dis
covered
at this juncture that the oars, that rightfully should have been there, had been taken from the boat by some thief or other; so that, as there was no wind at all, the yacht was now entirely in the hands of the sea waves, at whose mercy it was likely to remain for many an hour.

T
HE
Saturday before Mr. Roddy had invited his friends to go for a sail, the fisherman
delivered
a basket of fish, freshly caught, at the Mockery vicarage. Rebecca had taken them in, fried them for breakfast, and placed them upon the table, near a dish of tomatoes.

The fisherman had lingered for a few moments beside the garden gate, the small one by which Mr. Pattimore had stood when he heard the countrywomen talking.

Rebecca, looking out of the kitchen window, saw him there, and saw him make a gesture with his arms as if to cast a net over the vicarage.

When breakfast was ready and Mr.
Pattimore
had eaten of the fish, in a fit of
absentmindedness
, really wishing to help himself to another without looking at his wife, he took the pepper-pot in his hand and going to the dining-room window he looked out. He saw the fisherman.

He came back to his chair again, put the pepper-pot down, but instead of helping
himself
to a fish from the sideboard he touched Mrs. Pattimore.

He leant over her and said, ‘Nellie.’

Mrs. Pattimore started, her breath came and went in quick gasps, and she put her head back a little as if to receive a kiss that might be
coming. But Mr. Pattimore caught the Dean’s eye, and so, instead of kissing his wife, he helped himself to a fine tomato and ate of it, as though surprised that it wasn’t a fish.

The following morning, before he opened his Bible, Mr. Pattimore put out his tongue at the Dean.

His text had been—and he was almost on the point of going to church—from Romans; but he now looked so hard at a verse in another book, that when in the pulpit the latter one was the only thing he could remember, and so he spoke these words: ‘Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages. Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth; there will I give thee my loves.’

Mrs. Pattimore hardly dared to lift her head all the while the sermon was being preached. And when at the last, after having described all the fair and pleasant ways of love, and going even so far as to commend all naked delights in grassy places, where the Church seeketh for its spouse and findeth her always willing to be loved, he concluded by saying:

‘I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet-smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.’

As soon as ever the sermon was ended,
Mrs. Pottle, who happened to be in church, hurried down the aisle and went along the lane to find Mr. Caddy.

‘’Twouldn’t be fit for they poor ducks to hear,’ exclaimed Mrs. Pottle, ‘so thee best let they swim in pond without repeating what I do tell ’ee. And what poor ’oman however wold will be safe in Mockery now parson do begin to talk?’

Mr. Caddy shook his head.

‘’Tis thik fisherman,’ he said mournfully. ‘An’ ’tis a fine pity that postmaster didn’t ride over ’e instead of killing poor Mrs. Topple in lane.’

‘She never fell down from high bank, then?’

‘No, no,’ said Mr. Caddy, loud enough for the ducks to hear, ‘Mrs. Topple were murdered….’

The excitement of preaching such a sermon carried Mr. Pattimore on with wide wings that even Mr. Tarr’s Nellie-bird would not have despised. He was carried through the
Sunday
night in an ecstasy of longing and of love. He wanted to shout out ‘Nellie!’ to the fond stars that looked in upon him all that night.

On Monday he said very little, but whenever he looked at his wife, at meal times—and she couldn’t help blushing when he looked—he saw her as a woman young and pleasing, with a woman’s longing calling for a man all about her, and wishing so much, in every gesture that she
made, to yield up all to him again, as she had yielded herself, more wickedly than Mr.
Pattimore
had then thought quite proper, in the hollow of the cliff.

She didn’t look at him when she went
upstairs
to bed, but she did turn a little when she opened the door, with the candle in her hand, that gave a new loveliness to her body that appeared then to be panting with hope.

Mr. Pattimore would have taken her at that moment, as a lion a lamb, only he felt that other eyes were upon him—and he saw the Dean.

Dean Ashbourne looked as sternly as a dean who had taken three wives to his bed, and all merry ones, could look at any one who, like poor Mr. Pattimore, was hesitating on the brink of perdition.

Mr. Pattimore climbed the attic stairs as if the cold grey eyes were after him looking damnation.

But the very bed, alas!—as though it joined with the Song of Songs to prove that the Church was no better than she should be, or perhaps having wished to help Mr. Caddy to a story—proved to be harder than ever.

All the night long Mr. Pattimore tossed and groaned. He looked out at the stars, which during that mad Sunday night had reminded him, by shining so wantonly, of all that had happened after he touched her first in the
green bush until that day when the cold, painted eyes—who had already begun to look at another maid when his second lady was in a consumption—told him that if he wished to attain to earthly glory and heavenly bliss he must take to himself, as another bride, hard chastity.

Mr. Pattimore sat up; his longing and excitement were become only pain.

There were no stars.

He threw back the bedclothes, and said ‘Nellie!’

This was the second night that he had not slept, but now, having said ‘Nellie,’ he could stand the loneliness no more.

Mr. Pattimore descended the attic stairs.

The hall clock struck four.

He now stood like a thief upon the soft carpet of the landing where his wife’s bedroom was.

He was a robber with a mind to steal his own back again; to steal the lamb with all the fury of those long years of abstinence from thieving; to steal her as a lion would steal. Mr.
Pattimore’s
teeth chattered; he hadn’t trembled so since he had stood naked beside all that soft whiteness that hid its eyes from seeing him upon the cliff.

But now he intended that all his anger, restraint, rage against the fisherman, hope of preferment, youth, age, hot summer and cold
winter, should rend and tear her in the
fierceness
of his longing.

Mr. Pattimore held up his candle and looked at her bedroom door.

He hadn’t expected to see it open; ‘but perhaps,’ he thought, ‘she might have felt the late summer night a little close.’

Mr. Pattimore blew out his candle; he wished to take and eat all of her in the darkness.

He hadn’t been into her room since he had looked for the kite and had received the shock of seeing that white frock again. He knew her night garment—for he had once helped her to choose one, such a dainty one!—would be as soft.

He felt the bed. It was empty. Mr.
Pattimore
found the matches and struck a light. Her bedclothes were turned back, and she was not there. Near to the pillow was the baby’s gown that she had been sewing.

Mr. Pattimore’s excitement was very great; he fancied for a moment, because he saw the very bed garment that he knew, that was thrown carelessly down, that she was gone out naked in the night to meet the fisherman.

But ideas and suspicions that are as wild as the wind and as unreasonable change quickly. And Mr. Pattimore now fancied—for he knew that since that day upon the hill she hadn’t even spoken to the fisherman, except perhaps merely to inquire about the freshness of the
crabs that he sold—that she had gone down before the dawn came to pray beside the Dean’s picture for her husband’s necessary salvation.

‘She must be gone down to pray,’ he said.

Mr. Pattimore returned to his attic. He dressed himself slowly; there was no hurry, he would dress himself quietly and go down to her and join her in asking for strength. He knew a kneeling woman in the cool dawn, below the portrait of a man of God, couldn’t be a temptation. He would go to her and ask to be forgiven for all the wicked thoughts of the past two days.

But instead of going straight into the
dining-room
, where he hoped to find her kneeling, Mr. Pattimore went—for his other suspicion, though he had put it behind him for a moment, was wide enough awake—to see if the front door, that he remembered fastening before he went to bed, was still locked.

He found the door open.

‘The fisherman!’ gasped Mr. Pattimore. ‘The Nellie-bird!—and I might have been loving her for all these years! Damnation seize Dean Ashbourne!’

Wishing perhaps to hurry on with, or at least to illustrate, the most sensible way that God could deal with him when He got hold of the Dean, Mr. Pattimore, choosing an oak stick that he used when walking, entered the
dining-room and struck the portrait full in the face. The glass was shivered to atoms, and the picture fell with a loud crash.

‘It was all owing to you,’ shouted Mr. Pattimore, ‘that I ever left my Nellie!’

Mr. Pattimore leant over the table and wept.

‘Of course, how could he have expected her, a woman who liked love, and who must have always been thinking of it even when she dreamed of a frog in the green bush—how could he have expected her who lived so longingly, and sewed all her hopes into tiny garments with tiny stitches, to live for ever without a companion to console her heart and to breathe together, with her breath and his, in the net
of love?’ But then—and rage stayed his tears—how could she have left even his cold-heartedness that had called her Dorcas, to go out to one who did little more than idle about the village lanes in the hot sunshine?

Mr. Pattimore held his stick firmly and went out of the front door.

It was the hour before dawn, and a warm fog like the softest woollen blanket covered Mockery.

Mr. Pattimore stood for a moment and listened, and a muffled sound, dulled and softened by the fog, came to him—the breaking of the waves of the sea.

Mr. Pattimore strode down the lane,
feeling
his way cautiously, and, finding by good
luck the stile, he climbed into Mr. Gulliver’s meadow.

The first thing he did there, still following the sound, was to fall over one of Mr. Gulliver’s cows.

The cow rose, and Mr. Pattimore, though a little unsteadied by the encounter, went on.

Mr. Pattimore was now aware that
something
else, some other sound, soft and
consciously
human, came to him as well as the splash of the waves.

In the tiny copse of withy bushes that grew near to the sea some one was sobbing.

Mr. Pattimore had always been interested in these beds of withy that grew so near to the shore. He had fancied once that the willow should only grow in marshy places inland where baskets were made.

He now remembered noticing that the new fisherman was one day busy making a
lobster-pot
, and so he supposed that his wife was with the man there, who, early astir, had gone to the copse for wood.

Only a few days ago he had heard of a legend that told how Jesus had been whipped with a withy by His mother’s aunt, an old lady who used to say there was no good in the boy, and so the willow always grew in watery places because Jesus shed tears when He was whipped. And in Mockery, as affirmed by Mrs. Pottle,
and proved sometimes too, a maid or wife who wasn’t loved would go down to the withy bed to cry, feeling, perhaps, that love, acting this time as an old aunt instead of a pretty boy, was whipping her so that she had to weep too as Jesus had done.

Mr. Pattimore found her there, but alone; and after he had kissed her tears away, exactly as the aunt, who really was very fond of Him, did those of Jesus, and called her Nellie, three times, he bethought him that he had been
unjust
to the fisherman.

‘You only came here to cry,’ he said.

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she answered. ‘The night was so warm and I was unhappy, because after hearing you preach the sermon I hoped for so many things.’

‘We will find the Nellie-bird,’ said Mr. Pattimore.

She clung to him in the mist, and they found their way out of the copse and to the sands, where they nearly walked into the fisherman, who was standing, in one of his sad moods, and watching the waves.

‘You are going to fish?’ inquired Mr.
Pattimore
, who, as he had risen so early, was
beginning
to feel in want of some food.

The fisherman stretched out his hand and pointed to a dim light that appeared to be just visible out at sea.

‘I wish to beg your pardon,’ said Mr.
Patti
more
, and would have said more, only a crash interrupted him.

After the crash there was silence again, except that through the dense fog, and from the direction of the Blind Cow Rock, a
surprised
voice came that said: ‘If only I had given the candle to Miss Ogle to hold, instead of taking it to read my letters with, she would have seen the rock and we shouldn’t have run into it.’

At the same moment that the crash came, a wind that arrived with the first light of day drove the mist off, and the Blind Cow Rock was plainly visible, though no boat nor any sign of life was to be seen.