Mockery Gap (10 page)

W
HEN
an untoward calamity falls upon the head of a meek one, its heavy stroke is often softened and turned, and the dread thing cheated of its blow, provided that a chance occurs to explain it away in a simple manner.

Miss Pink was one of those who, though fearing all things beforehand, take the most simple line of thought when anything terrible is said to have happened, for she would entirely disbelieve it. And although Mary Gulliver, who was in the field with her cows, had seen with her own eyes Mr. Pink walk into the sea and never return again to the shore, yet Miss Pink was just as sure that her brother had only gone for a sail with the
fisherman
—perhaps to the islands?

This idea of Miss Pink’s was certainly strengthened because the day after Mr. Pink’s disappearance the fisherman wasn’t seen either.

This day was the first of July and high summer. The sky above Mockery was coloured at dawn like the inner petals of a splendid rose, and the small birds sang their early songs of praise to the wonderful founder of all summer days.

Had a wise one, whose wisdom might exceed in a small measure that of Mr. James Tarr, expected to see—and such a one is never
disappointed—that the dwellers in the pretty gap upon this summer’s day wore leopard-wise the same spots in their coats as ever, he would merely have remarked that Mr. Pink had gone as his colour foretold and invited him, and that the others would follow as their merry, mad, or sad destiny directed.

Mr. Pink, as Miss Ogle remarked in a letter to Mr. Roddy, should have taken a more practical view of his master’s interest. He should have turned Mr. Gulliver out of his farm and let it to Mr. Cheney, who had a fine aptitude in adding house to house and field to field. ‘And now’—and Miss Ogle invited herself to become Mr. Roddy’s agent because Mr. Pink was gone—‘here’s a fine business,’ she wrote, ‘and under the wicked labour laws who’s to drown him?—there’s this fisherman settled in a cottage, an idler who catches crabs just when he wishes, and who lives without any character, and, as far as Mr. Pattimore can tell, without a name either.’

‘Who is to tell,’ Miss Ogle added, ‘that the wicked life of this new fisherman might not prevent Mr. Cheney from following Mr. Tarr’s wisely given hint and discovering those golden earrings under the green mound?’ And so Miss Ogle ended her letter to Mr. Roddy.

There was something in this July day—for colour calls out sound sometimes—that caused
Mrs. Pring to rattle her pail more than she used to do on dismal and dull days; and she even stopped while scrubbing her doorstep to stare at the sea as if she expected the poor drowned body of Mr. Pink to step out of it and bow to her.

There is nothing like a July day—and this one happened to be a Saturday, too—to make all children born of the earth riotous with a spirit of naughtiness that is not unmixed with a merry malice. And so the Mockery brats, after rolling in the dust of the lane to sharpen their wits, began to follow Esther Pottle—who was now grown old enough to feel her own prettiness and so was growing more modest—who they supposed was out looking for the Nellie-bird.

But the fisherman not being in the way, the pack bethought them of Mr. Caddy, who had so often informed his ducks exactly—taking every detail of the adventure into
consideration
—how he would use a young and willing girl if she rested for a short five minutes upon the green clover near to his gate.

‘Let’s drive she to wold Caddy,’ they cried. And so they did, and Esther, hot and flushed with running, fell almost into Mr. Caddy’s arms, who was regarding with the wise, leisurely thoughts of a philosopher the green pond-weeds, now fully in flower, where the ducks were swimming.

Once safely there into the goat’s mouth, Mockery, as represented by its children, crawled under a hedge that was near by and peered through the bushes. They hoped that Mr. Caddy, whose wife—or ‘wold ’oman,’ as they called her—was gone that day to Weyminster, would greet Esther’s hot
panting
—for since the arrival of the fisherman she had bloomed and sprouted—with an indelicate gesture; and so they crawled nearer to watch. But—who would have thought it?—here was Mr. Caddy, a man known far and wide for his stories, an old idler who talked to his ducks, and now in a pretty corner garlanded and near covered by green bushes with a girl, more willing than a painted
butterfly
, and asking her whether she happened to have at home a brown ribbon suitable for his Sunday hat!

‘I bain’t one of they who despise
churchgoing
,’ said Mr. Caddy gravely, as though church thoughts had been occupying his mind all that happy day. ‘Though Mr. Pattimore be always talking of God an’ ’is naughty ways. An’ I do like to go tidy, an’ a new ribbon to me hat will show that poor Caddy bain’t all a bag stuffed wi’ wickedness.’

Mockery peeped through the hedge, the little girls getting the nearest to the fun, and, whispering to the boys that the merriment would soon begin, they watched breathlessly.
Their expectations were indeed heightened and encouraged when Esther, raising her clothes a little, placed a very firm and nicely rounded leg upon the second bar of Mr. Caddy’s gate; but strange to say, Mr. Caddy, who certainly at that moment should have looked at the girl, turned away and nodded at the ducks.

And then when Esther, with so much of her own warmth in it, showed him her garter, inquiring whether that was about the width he wished the ribbon to be, Mr. Caddy, to whom the garter appeared to be of no more importance than a lady’s hair-ribbon, replied that it might be a little wider.

‘I want they bad choir girls,’ said Mr. Caddy with emphasis, ‘to see that I be dressed.’

Esther fastened her garter again, this time resting upon the grassy bank.

The two might have been alone in Eden, for no voice or footstep was near. Esther lay right out, in the manner that she liked best to lie, on the cool grass, and looked up through the green bushes with her eyes half closed.

Mockery watched Mr. Caddy.

‘Mrs. Moggs do sell hat ribbon, don’t she?’ inquired Mr. Caddy, looking at Esther as though she were a log of green wood cast at the wayside ‘And wi’ thik shilling,’ he said, putting the coin upon the gate, ‘that I did
take for ducks’ eggs, thee mid buy what I do require.’

Esther jumped up, ready enough for the errand now the money was come, and walked away quickly, tossing her head.

Mr. Caddy looked at the drake that was swimming in the pond. ‘You an’ I be different birds now,’ he said composedly.

Mr. Caddy leant against his gate and waited; he hoped that there would be enough change out of his shilling to buy a mackerel for dinner, if the fisherman, who hadn’t been seen all that morning, landed upon the Mockery beach with his basket.

Mockery crept away disappointed.

E
VERY ONE
—and no person in Mockery was a stranger to this hope—desires that one day something will happen that will exalt him above his neighbour in the eyes of the world.

This hope knits together the hearts of all people, though by means of this very desire each hopes to be grandly separate.

Every heart has this desire, and every man, woman, and child watches anxiously for
something
to happen that will fulfil it.

Death, that comes to all, gives a fillip to this hope. For although in life one may be scarcely noticed, in death, to be alone and so quiet, is in a village at least an honour that should never be underrated.

To only disappear, as Mr. Pink had done, provided perhaps a little talk as to whether the agent had sailed out with the fisherman and gone to America, but had given nothing grander than that.

Mrs. Moggs missed him, because she had always liked the way that he had come to her begging her to go to the beautiful sea.

Miss Pink, of course, missed him too, but she believed that the kind fisherman would one day tell her where her brother was, if not row her there too, and so she, though her sickness increased, was contented.

A July afternoon with the sun on high is God’s kind blessing, for then all the tiny gnats can sing to Him tunefully with their wings, forgetting for the moment the hungry swallows in the hot sleepy air that surrounds them.

The scent of the warm wind, where green leaves and flowers are, and haply the sea, is sweet and lively with the divine love of the Lord of life, whose ways are eternal.

Every one in Mockery who had seen the new fisherman felt that he was the right being for such a day, and missed him; and as Esther said to Mrs. Moggs, when she bought Mr. Caddy his hat ribbon, that ‘they mackerel be nice,’ others thought so too.

Mr. Pattimore was one of them. For this afternoon, for no better reason than merely to look at the sky, he got away from the
dining-room
and from the Dean and stood in the garden. Mr. Pattimore looked upward, and there the sky was, sure enough, looking
pleasantly
mottled and in colour like the leg of a child who has been paddling in cold water.

Mr. Pattimore distinguished it from other skies as being a mackerel one; and
remembering
well enough how Rebecca had burnt the early-dinner potatoes, having run off after Simon about the time that they should have been taken up, Mr. Pattimore thought feelingly, his chaste ideas permitting it, that a fresh mackerel, corresponding in look to the pretty
sky, would be pleasant for the late vicarage tea.

‘Where is the fisherman?’ inquired Mr. Pattimore of his wife, who was sitting in a garden chair and sewing.

Mrs. Pattimore leant over her work,
perhaps
to hide the tiny garment she was sewing, or else her own blushes.

‘No one has seen him to-day,’ Mrs.
Pattimore
replied, covering over what was in her lap with a very homely-looking stocking of her husband’s.

Mr. Pattimore looked again at the sky, that was marked so like a fine fresh mackerel. Mr. Pattimore sighed.

When any one is missed from a useful employment—poor Mr. Pink, being a mere servant of the great, does not count here—every one looks round to consider what has happened to him. Mrs. Pottle and Mrs. Pring—Mrs. Topple never looked up now—had noticed as well as their pastor the mackerel sky.

Mrs. Pottle expected mackerel not to fall like manna, but to be brought along in the fisherman’s basket and to be sold to her, for so fine would the catch be at the surprisingly cheap rate of six for sixpence.

But her dinner-time, when the fish should have been set a-frying, was now past, and Mr. Pottle, unnoticed and almost
unnoticeable
, had come in from his garden and sniffed
near to the fire as if he thought that something should have been frying there. But it was left to Mr. Gulliver, who being placed high upon his haystack could see things afar off, to notice—and with his world peopled with monsters he was ready enough to do so—a something strangely coloured upon the Mockery cliff.

Seeing Mr. Gulliver pause in his work and look towards some distant object that appeared to interest him, for he called to Mary, who began to look too, Mrs. Pottle allowed her eyes to go in the same direction to the Mockery cliff, where something coloured like a nosegay was resting.

‘Do ’ee go and see who ’tis,’ Mrs. Pottle called out to Esther, who was busy breaking some sticks that Dinah had fetched from the wood. ‘Do ’ee go and see who ’tis, for I do believe ’tis thik Nellie-bird.’

Mrs. Pottle spoke the last word loudly and excitedly, and the pack of Mockery children, roving in search of mischief to do, caught it up and shouted, ‘The Nellie-bird!’

Mr. Pattimore watched from his garden. ‘Why,’ he wondered, ‘should those children that he had so carefully named, being all Peters or Pauls or Deborahs, run down from the hill as soon as they had climbed it, as though they had seen something that should never have been there?’

The children had climbed up there fast enough, and after staring for a moment at something upon the mound had scrambled down again, rolling over one another in heaps.

Mary Gulliver was the first to hear what they said as soon as they raced one another into the village, for she caught at once at the shouted words ‘monkey’ and ‘naked,’ and looked ashamed.

And now the children, who all called out in exactly the same voice, all the village over, ‘that a naked ape all dressed in flowers was upon the cliff,’ were heard by Mr. Pattimore, who looked too. What he saw determined him, for who but he, the pastor, should direct affairs now that something really wicked had come to Mockery? And who but he, when the evil appearance was defeated, should receive the reward—high preferment—a deanery?

So simply had event followed event at Mockery Gap, as generation followed
generation
, that nothing had ever occurred that caused so great an excitement as this new appearance.

Even those visitors who had come at the beginning of the hot and amorous summer weather had caused no such sensation of this dreadful kind. Mr. Tarr had but shaken, as he always liked to do, the everyday life by pointing out that the shadow was better than the substance, and so had brought Mrs. Topple to her knees and Miss Pink to her fears.

That was all well and proper, and set in the natural latitude of decorum, as Mr. Pink’s disappearance, which could have happened to any one.

But here—and the children’s yells were hushed as Mr. Pattimore strode out of his gate, taking the lane to the cliff—was another matter, a rare and wicked one, a strange beast.

Here in Mockery, as Mary Gulliver
explained
to Dinah and Rebecca, as they
proceeded
to the hill in the immediate wake of the minister, all nakedness should be covered, though not by summer flowers. ‘If so be ’tis a man monkey,’ the other Mary said, ‘’e can’t hide all of ’es self in honeysuckle, and they bad children did come down from hill calling out that Nellie-bird be the same as wold Caddy do tell ’is ducks of, that be one of Gulliver’s demons.’

‘Poor Simon won’t fancy we a-watching,’ said Dinah.

‘Children bain’t always right,’ said
Rebecca
; ‘they bain’t Deans.’

‘No,’ said Mary, ‘and a Dean be a man who bain’t always like a monkey.’

Mr. Cheney walked with his son at a little distance from the others, as became a large farmer and a searcher for golden earrings. Miss Pink, who though she heard the cries, didn’t go to see who it was, because she felt more than ever sure now that an answer would
soon come to her letter, though perhaps not from Mr. Gulliver. So Miss Pink stayed at home, and dusted her front room, and prepared a dinner, in the fond hope that her brother might return from the islands, where she
believed
him gone with the fisherman, or that the answer to her letter might come before she died.

Mr. Gulliver walked near to Mrs. Cheney, who feared that one of her best cows, the one who supplied so much pocket-money for pretty God Simon, had been caught in a bush, like the ram in Genesis, by the horns.

Mr. Gulliver carried his map in his hand; every now and again he consulted it, supposing that it was the Great Cham of China, as yellow as an evening primrose, that had settled upon Mockery cliff.

The mound was indeed occupied, though by no yellow potentate, but merely by a large ape, who, feeling in a happy and joyous mood that afternoon, having escaped from his master at Maidenbridge, Mr. Dobbin, had come to Mockery and climbed the hill. And there he hung himself with honeysuckle and bryony and sat happy in the sun.

Mr. Pattimore, who let his black gown now fall to its full length—he had gathered it up a little when he climbed the hill—approached the mound.

‘I believe your name should be Satan,’ said Mr. Pattimore, looking up at the monkey,
whose hair shone yellow in the sun, and whose body was covered by leaves and flowers.

The monkey grinned.

‘Traitor, heady, high-minded, lover of pleasure,’ called out Mr. Pattimore,
remembering
his last sermon; ‘without natural
affection
, covetous, boaster, proud, blasphemous, fierce, incontinent, laden with sins.’

The monkey grinned again.

Around him quivered the burning glory of the sun. The whole heat of the heavens rested upon him, only to be delicately cooled when it touched the green leaves and the flowers.

Mr. Pattimore’s words had little or no effect upon the creature who sat upon the mound, and so might have sat until the darkness of the night came; only, the rude Mockery children, after collecting many little heaps of Roddites, began to cast them up at him.

Mr. Pattimore would have turned away, leaving the matter to them, though their
intention
wasn’t as righteous as he supposed, for the unseemly brats hoped the monkey would shake off the flowers in avoiding the shells. But as he was on the point of turning away, Mrs. Pattimore, who had been watching the scene with eyes downcast in modest manner, now left her husband, and climbing the mound stood in front of the creature as if to protect him from the shells and little stones.

Mr. Pattimore’s first thought when he saw
her go from him was fierce anger; his second, humiliation; his third, a wish that he had left her in the laurels, taken away Dean
Ashbourne’s
picture from his friend by force—and married Miss Ogle.

After his thoughts had run so far, jealousy, that fine parlour companion, entered into him, and showed him his wedded lady as he had not seen her for years, as a lovely woman.

And there she was, with her summer frock that appeared to be near as thin as the monkey’s flowers, so near to the beast that she might have touched him or he her.

Mr. Pattimore was upon the point of climbing the mound in order to separate them by force, when a diversion occurred that drew off for a moment the interest of the onlookers, so that the ape in one leap descended from the mound and was gone. The new excitement was caused by the tumultuous screams of Esther Pottle, whom Master Simon Cheney had discovered hiding behind, and indeed entangled in, a gorse bush, very much as Mrs. Cheney had expected her cow to be. Simon, finding her there, had at once begun to carry her off to an even more private place; while Esther, for some strange cause that the future must alone disclose, resisted.

Simon, it seems, as well as Mr. Pattimore, had taken that very afternoon the first step in the tortuous path of jealousy; for having gently
suggested to each of the three older maids that they might one or all retire with him down a leafy lane that was near by, each had replied that she wished to remain looking at the pretty flowers upon the monkey. Simon turned with displeasure, and bidding them go to hell, which wasn’t particularly polite of him, he wandered amongst the green bushes and discovered Esther.

The pack of children no sooner saw that the ape was gone and a girl running, than they contented themselves with the final excitement of chasing her home, with their usual mocking calls about the Nellie-bird, and what she and he did together when they met.

Mr. Pattimore followed slowly in their steps, looking down at the ground.

Mrs. Pattimore walked behind.

When all was still upon the downs, the fisherman, who had gone early that morning to
buy a new net, appeared from behind the mound and descended into the green lane and so to the summer sea, to prepare his nets and lines for a night’s fishing.