Mockery Gap (11 page)

I
N
order to discover how the yellow monkey escaped and got to dancing upon Mockery cliff, so raising a strange jealousy in the heart of Mr. Pattimore, and a certainty in Mr. Gulliver’s heart that his map was a true one, we must go back a few months to Mr. Dobbin.

After the stormy night, when the waves had reached so high that they broke Mr. Dobbin’s boat that he had dragged up the shore as far as he was able, Mr. Dobbin as soon as it was light left the snug shelter of his hut to look at the angry waves.

Although Mr. Dobbin had never read those wonderful tales called the Arabian Nights, he was certainly as superstitious and as willing to accept an omen as any fisher of the River Tigris.

The evil genius of the sea had broken his boat, given him but a sorry living, and often near drowned him. Mr. Dobbin looked at the sea and wondered if any sign would come to bid him leave it for ever.

The very high tide that had broken his boat had now carried the sea a long way from the shore. The waves roared in the same
uncomfortable
manner as they had done in the night, but they were retired to some little distance. Mr. Dobbin looked at the Blind Cow Rock;
he could if he chose walk to it along a path of seaweed.

Upon the rock there was a yellow ape, that amused itself by pulling pieces of seaweed from the sides of the rock to dress itself.

The sea, thought Mr. Dobbin, had at last given him something, but it was a present that decided Mr. Dobbin that he must leave at once. The ape must have leapt from a passing ship.

Mr. Dobbin knew the character of the Mockery children; once when he had caught a few fish they had rushed upon him and upset his basket. If they met the monkey they would stone it to death. Mr. Dobbin was friendly to beasts and birds. He recollected a few remarks of a Mockery boy, Master Toby, about the owls in the tall trees near to the church. ‘They should all be killed,’ Toby had remarked, looking up at an owl upon a branch. ‘Why, what hurt do they do?’ inquired Mr. Dobbin. Toby put both hands to his mouth in the manner of a king’s trumpeter and shouted through them; he was calling the pack. ‘Owls do no harm,’ said Mr. Dobbin. ‘They do peck holes in the trees, and should all be killed,’ shouted Toby, picking up a stone and throwing it into the tree. Mr. Dobbin said no more….

He now went to the ape, who allowed itself to be led with a string to the fisherman’s hut.

Mr. Dobbin departed that night, and Mr.
Gulliver, who took him to Maidenbridge in his light waggon, asked no questions as to what he carried in it.

Mr. Dobbin, who had been imbued while at Mockery with certain ideas of Mr.
Pattimore
, named his monkey Paul.

He hired a small room in the town, fed Paul upon a basin of bread-and-milk, and slept
contentedly
because the sea was so far away.

The next day Mr. Dobbin went forth into the town to look for work.

Mr. Dobbin walked through the town gardens; he wondered whether he should visit Mr. Tarr, whose house was near to them. Mr. Dobbin shuddered; he thought he wouldn’t go to him, for hadn’t Mr. Tarr sent him out of his garden and advised him to go a-fishing!

The town gardens were quiet enough, but the streets were busy.

One of the chief faults that Mr. Dobbin always had to find with the sea was the noise it made; it hardly ever seemed, even upon a moderately calm day, to be quite still and quiet. Once away from it, with Paul, he expected to find quiet behaviour everywhere. But Mr. Dobbin was disappointed. Unfortunately, he had chosen a market-day to look for work and to find a new master. The noise in the main street of Maidenbridge was as ill-mannered as the noise of the sea. Everywhere there was
confusion and shouting. Dealers called their wares from their stalls in the street, cheap-jacks shouted, and dogs barked. As soon as Mr. Dobbin found himself in the midst of all the clamour, a large bull broke loose from the market and charged up the street, its mouth foaming and its eyes gleaming with red fury. Mr. Dobbin had never at its worst seen the sea look so mad and furious. The bull was
followed
by a mild policeman, who waved a handkerchief that was, alas! a red one. The bull turned and gored the policeman to death. After so doing it charged of its own accord into the slaughter-house.

As soon as the bull was gone, Mr. Dobbin found himself standing outside the corn
exchange
. Two farmers were disputing about the quality of a sample of barley. They both grew as angry as the bull. One threw the sample in the face of the other, who replied with a stout blow. Mr. Dobbin passed just at the moment, and received the blow in his chest.

Mr. Dobbin turned and tried to walk upon the pavement, hoping still to find some one that he might ask for employment.

A crowd of young women, who were
shouting
, singing, and laughing, were rushing along the pavement after a young man almost as wildly as the bull had rushed at the policeman with the red handkerchief. They pushed Mr. Dobbin rudely into the road.

A large car came by and knocked him back upon the pavement again. Mr. Dobbin sought refuge in a narrow blind alley that reminded him a little of a cave that he had once sheltered in beside the Mockery sea.

He had always wished for a master to control the sea, and now he wished for one to control Maidenbridge upon a market-day. He would gladly work for such a master if he could be found. Here was turbulence and noise, worse than he had been used to, worse than the turbulence of the sea. He was glad that he had shut his room door upon Paul and so left him safe and away from the noise.

Mr. Dobbin peeped out from his shelter.

Every one in the town seemed to be guided by the same rude and unmannerly forces that had guided the waves that Mr. Dobbin had felt so strong against him when he went
a-fishing
. Everywhere there was noise and
confusion
, nowhere was there calm and quiet. Certainly here was no place for Mr. Dobbin to find the right master.

From his retreat, Mr. Dobbin now noticed that a little further down the street there was a pause in the clamour. A few people were standing in groups and watching a house in silence. Mr. Dobbin joined them. Before the door of the house a hearse was waiting. In a little while a coffin was borne out of the house and placed silently in the hearse. Mr.
Dobbin watched gratefully. He saw order and quiet come at last amongst all the noise and shouting. The hearse was driven slowly to the cemetery, and Mr. Dobbin followed it cheerfully. Within the walls of the cemetery all was harmony and quiet. The manager of the town burial board was there to watch; he was a little gentleman in a frock-coat, with a bald head, who liked funerals.

When all was over, Mr. Dobbin addressed himself to Mr. Best, the manager, in a low tone that became the place. The manager drew him to one side, so that they might not
interrupt
a lady, the only daughter of her father, who was kneeling beside the new grave and praying.

‘You seem to serve the best of masters here, sir,’ said Mr. Dobbin, ‘a master who is even better than Mr. James Tarr; would you be so kind as to tell me his name so that I may ask him for work?’

‘Death is our master,’ replied Mr. Best, ‘and I allow no loud talking.’

‘You never allow children in here, who throw stones or shout?’ inquired Mr. Dobbin, who wished to make sure that the work there would suit him.

The manager held up his hands in
astonishment
. ‘The children who come here,’ he said, ‘when there’s scarlet fever in the town, never throw stones.’

Mr. Best regarded Mr. Dobbin for some moments in silence. Mr. Dobbin liked Mr. Best; he liked the quiet way he looked at everything.

‘We have just buried our under gardener,’ said Mr. Best, ‘who was a very silent man.’

Mr. Dobbin explained that he had once worked in that capacity for Mr. Tarr.

‘You may have our under gardener’s place if you choose,’ said Mr. Best, taking off his hat and holding it in both his hands as the lady, rising from her knees, walked by weeping.

‘I hope to give satisfaction,’ whispered Mr. Dobbin.

‘I hope you will,’ replied Mr. Best. ‘And be so good as to remember, Dobbin, that no dog or boy or anything that disturbs our quiet is permitted to enter here.’

Mr. Dobbin bowed; he must, he decided, keep Paul very close in his room.

‘And now,’ said Mr. Best, ‘I will show you our pleasure-grounds.’

Mr. Best led Mr. Dobbin around the
cemetery
; he led him with pride. Nothing was out of place or untidy; the little worms in the grass were silent, all was trim and neat.

After going around the paths, Mr. Best stood upon the chapel steps and surveyed the scene.

‘Nothing disturbs our peace here,’ said Mr.
Best; ‘our guests are all silent ones, and whatever noise they made before they came, they are quiet now.’

‘Perhaps,’ inquired Mr. Best of Mr. Dobbin, ‘you have seen a country churchyard?’

Mr. Dobbin replied that he had.

‘But you may not know,’ said the manager archly, ‘that people, whenever they can afford our fees and the doctors, come into the town to die.’

‘I can well believe it, sir,’ said Mr. Dobbin.

Mr. Dobbin left the cemetery in company with Mr. Best, who advised him the nearest way by a quiet back street to his room.

For a while all went well, and no one was happier in his employment than Mr. Dobbin. But however quietly a man may live and labour, and however good a master he may serve, nothing can prevent ill luck, if such be his destiny, from following his steps. Alas! for now we come to why the yellow ape was seen at Mockery again, and consistently haunted the village until at last by a sad fatality Paul was drowned.

The matter happened like this. Toby, the Mockery boy who blamed the owls for pecking holes in the trees, wished to find Mr. Dobbin, who had, it appeared, taken the part of the owls, in order to tell him that he and the other rude children had stoned three of them to death. Master Toby having gone
to Maidenbridge with the Norbury carrier to visit his grandmother, inquired after Mr. Dobbin and discovered his room.

He found the door locked, but unfortunately Mr. Dobbin, who had felt more than usually pleased that day, because the head gardener had died and he was to have his place, had left the key in the door.

Toby unlocked and opened the door, saw the monkey, and ran away….

No one took a greater pride in the funerals that occurred at the Maidenbridge cemetery than Mr. Best. And so one can well suppose that when the head gardener’s coffin was carried to the new-dug grave, Mr. Best felt that a hideous indignity was offered to him and his because a large ape had jumped upon the coffin and was being carried too—and some one laughed.

Mr. Best, losing his temper for the first time in his life, attacked the offender with his umbrella. Paul danced away over the tombs. Mr. Best followed. The clergyman smiled. The monkey ran to Mr. Dobbin, who was trimming a grave. Mr. Best demanded of Mr. Dobbin whether the beast was his.

Mr. Dobbin looked at the graves around him. He couldn’t bear to leave them; he couldn’t bear to be sent away.

He said he knew not the ape.

Mr. Best struck at Paul with his umbrella,
and together with stones and blows he and Mr. Dobbin drove it from the cemetery.

Mr. Dobbin went home sadly; he grieved for Paul; he couldn’t forgive himself for denying him. In a few months’ time Mr. Best advertised for a new head gardener—Mr. Dobbin was dead.

When he was beaten from the cemetery poor Paul bethought him of his first home and fled to Mockery.

A
T
the tea-table the evening after Mr. Dobbin’s ape was discovered upon Mockery cliff, Mr. Pattimore stared hard at the fine and full-length portrait, dressed in all his grandeur, of Dean Ashbourne. He stared so hard that a piece of bread-and-butter that he was taking to his mouth touched his nose. This error occurred because the Dean that he looked at had suddenly become a blushing lady guarding an ape.

Mr. Pattimore felt that in order to forgive the fisherman, whom he blamed for the monkey’s presence in the village, he must give the fisherman a name. What should the fisherman be called? The rude children called him the Nellie-bird, a strange creature whose existence had been noted in the natural history of the world; but that was little better than a pagan title, and utterly unsuited to one whom Mr. Pattimore hoped to both name and preach into chastity.

Mr. Pattimore doubted very much whether the fisherman had ever been baptized. He could hardly believe that he had been. The taking himself away when he should have been fishing had but aggravated the usual lazy behaviour of the man. But with a name, a pretty and a proper one, the fisherman would
no doubt fulfil his vocation in going down to the sea to fish instead of bringing apes to the hills to awake a husband’s jealousy.

Whenever he chose a name for any child who was going to be christened, Mr. Pattimore would slyly visit Mr. Pring, the church clerk and sexton, and ask him to so deal with the parents, by means of a simple present of a
half-crown
, that they would allow one of the names to be a Bible one, which would ensure—Mr. Pattimore felt certain of it—at least a little more than the usual attention from above.

It was Mr. Pattimore’s custom to say his prayers before he retired to rest in the
dining-room
. He would pray, looking up at the Dean, to follow in his steps; and this evening he asked God to be kind enough to tell him—if
convenient
—the best name to call the fisherman.

Mr. Pattimore never liked to go to bed. His nature, that he had beaten down with the heavy hammer of St. Paul’s doctrine, had originally been, before his ambitions had coveted a dean’s honours, a mild and soft one. And even now the flesh, hammered as he had hammered it, and flattened out and shamed into quietude, kicked at times.

He couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable when he passed his wife’s bedroom door, before climbing the steeper stairs to his attic.

He never dared to peep in upon her, but however quietly he went by she always heard
him, and her good-night couldn’t fail to remind him of something. This
remembrance
would meet him upon the landing where her door was and look at him; or rather, he would look at it, as upon a picture that he had to see.

A tiny hollow in a grassy cliff, and Nellie—for she had been Nellie until the honeymoon was over—Nellie looking up at him.

He wore his clerical garments, but she was in white.

The little blue butterflies were merry that day and the grasshoppers. Mr. Pattimore had looked at her. She hid her eyes from his and pouted. Mr. Pattimore took off his coat! She should have said ‘No,’ she should have pointed out to him the ship in the bay, she should have called out that there was a rabbit in the grass, instead of breaking off the green seed-pod of a yellow-horn poppy and throwing it at him….

Mr. Pattimore would hurry by the landing, but the good-night and the vision of the poppy, the blue butterflies and the white wantonness, all Nellie then, always met him.

He reached the attic at last, though with his heart quivering, and lay in his bed.

And now, whichever way he turned, and even though his eyes were tightly shut, he saw the ape dressed in flowers and his wife standing beside him.

Although his eyes were shut, Mr. Pattimore felt sure that the devil by some means or other was entering into him.

The summer night was very still, and the stars seen through the widely open attic window shone warm.

There was a sound somewhere. Was it by means of that sound that the devil had got him?

He ought, he felt, to have prayed longer in the dining-room, then God might have filled his mind with a wide circle of Bible names out of which he could choose one for the fisherman.

Mr. Pattimore listened. Had the vision, that he always saw near where her room was, followed him up his steep stairs?

Mr. Pattimore sat up. He heard the
midnight
sea, the wicked one, the beautiful, the inspirer of a huge wickedness; he heard the sea. However much he had shut out from him all the gentle longings of his loving lady, this sound would come in. It came from the dark places of love, out of the bottom of the sea.

It came naked, it stood before him as he had stood before her, as Milton’s Adam new learned in love, in that pretty corner of the cliff where the blue butterflies were.

He saw it as she must have seen him, through her fingers—all the male nakedness of the sea.

Dark movements were upon it, that came
into him with the sound. Dark movements, the purple blossoms of the deep making their music.

The sound rose and fell, and Mr. Pattimore listened.

The ground swell splashed upon the Blind Cow Rock.

Mr. Pattimore bit his finger to keep the noise away. He turned over and slept.