Vintage Vampire Stories (9 page)

Next Sunday she did not come to church. This made me very uncomfortable. I like to have the even tenor of neither my agricultural nor my matrimonial pursuits disturbed. I had been keeping company with Margaret Palmer for seven or eight months, and I had begun to hope that in the course of a twelvemonth, if things progressed, I might make a declaration of my sentiments, and that after the lapse of some three r four years more we might begin to think of getting married. This little outburst of temper was distasteful to me; I knew exactly what it meant. It showed an undue precipitancy, an eagerness to drive matters to a conclusion, which repelled me. My sentiments are my own, drawn from my own heart, as my cider is from my own apples. I will not allow anyone to go to the tap of the latter and draw off what he likes; and I will not allow anyone to turn the key of my bosom and draw off the sentiments that are therein. On the third Sunday, I did not go to church, but I sent my hind, and he reported to me that Margaret Palmer had been there. I knew she would be there, expecting to find me ripe and soft to the pitch of a declaration. By my absence I showed her that I could be offended as well as she. That next week there came a revivalist preacher tot eh chapel; he was a black man, and went by the name of “Go-on-all-fours-to-glory Jumbo.' I heard that Margaret Pamer had been converted by him. The week after there came a quack female dentist to Tavistock, and I went to her and had one of my back teeth out. Margaret Palmer learned a lesson by that. I let her understand that if she chose to be revived by Methodies, I'd have my teeth drawn by quacks. I'd stand none of her nonsense. My plan answered. Margaret Palmer came round, and was as meek as a sheep and as mild as buttermilk after that. Next Sunday I went as near a declaration as ever a man did without actually falling over the edge into matrimony. Brinsabatch is a property of 356 acres 2 roods 3 poles, and it won't allow a proprietor to marry much under fifty; my father did not marry till he was fifty-three, and my grandfather not till he was sixty.Young wives are expensive luxuries, and long families ruin a small property. One son to inherit the estate, and a daughter to keep house for him till he marries, then to be pensioned off on 80l a year, that is the Rosedhu system. Now you can understand why I object to being hurried. Brinsabath will not allow me to marry for twenty-seven years to come. But women are impatient cattle.They are like Dartmoor sheep; where you don't want them to go, there they go; and when you set up hurdles to keep them in, they take them at a leap. I've known these Dartmoors climb a pile of rocks on the top of which is nothing to be got, and from which it is impossible to descent, just because the Almighty set up those rocks for the cheep not to climb. To my mind, courting is the happiest time of life, for then the maiden is on her best behaviour. She knows that there is many a slip between the cup and the lip, and she regulates her conduct accordingly. I've heard that in Turkey females are real angels; they never nag, they never peck, they never give themselves airs. And the reason is, that Turkish husband can always turn his wife our of the house and sell he in the slave market. With us it is otherwise; when a woman is a wife she has her husband at her feet in chains to trample on as she pleases. He cannot break away. He cannot send her off. She knows that, and it is more than a woman can bear to be placed in a position of unassailable security. As long as a man is courting, he holds the rod, and the woman is the fish hooked at the end; but when they are married, the positions are reversed.

Well, to return to my story.We made up our quarrel and were like two doves. Then came the event I am about to relate, which disturbed our relations.

I had been the custom on Christmas Eve from time immemorial for the sexton and two others to climb Brentor, and ring a peal on the three bells in the church tower at midnight. On a still Christmas night the sound of these bells is carried to a great distance over the moors. I dare say in ancient times there may have been a service in the church at midnight, but there has been none for time out of mind, and the custom being unmeaning would have fallen into disuse were it not that a benefaction is connected with it—a field is held by feofees in trust to pay the rent to the sexton and the ringers, on condition that the bells are rung at midnight on Christmas Eve. Of late years there has been some difficulty in getting men together for the job. Wages are so high that laboring men will not turn out of a winter's night to climb a tor to earn a few shillings. Besides, the sexton has been accused of disseminating a preposterous, idle tale of hobgoblins and bogies to frighten others from assisting him, so that he may pocket the entire sum himself.

Be this as it may, it is certain that on the Christmas Eve that followed the quarrel I have spoken of, no additional ringers were forthcoming. The sexton, who was also clerk, Solomon Davy, worked for me and occupied one of my cottages. I beg, parenthetically, to observe that the cottages that belonged to me would do credit to any owner. My maxim is, look to your men and horses and cows that they be well fed and well hosed, and they are worth the money. Solomon Davy was an old man. His work was not worth his wages, but I kept him on because he had been on the farm all his life, and had married late in life. During the afternoon of Christmas Eve, Solomon Davy sent for me. He was taken ill with rheumatism and could not leave his cottage.

“I've ventured on the liberty of asking you to step in, sir,” said he, when I entered his door, “because I've been took across the back cruel bad, and I can't crawl across the room.”

“Sorry to hear it, Solomon. Who will do the clerking for you tomorrow?”

“I'm not troubled about that, master, as Farmer Palmer do the responses in a big voice. That which vexes me is about the ringing bells this night.”

“It can't be done,” said I.

“But, sir, meaning offence, it must be done, or I don't get the money.The feofees won't pay a farthing unless Christmas be rung in.”

“You must send somebody else to do it.”

Solomon shook his head. “Then that person pockets the money, and I get naught.” He remained silent awhile, and then added, “Besides, who'd go?

“Make it worth a man's while, and he'll do anything,” said I.

Again he shook his head, and this time he said, “There's Margery of Quether.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, flushing. “What has Miss Palmer to do with the bells? Oh, I understand; she likes to hear the peal, and you would not disappoint her.”

Solomon looked up at my slyly. “I didn't mean she.”

“Then who the deuce do you mean?”

“Her as never dies.”

“Solomon, the lumbago has got into your brains. I'll tell you what I'll do. I will ring the bells for you, and you shall draw the fee for having done it. That, I hope, will content you, my good man.”

“Now that be like you, master, the nest and kindest of your good old stock,” exclaimed Solomon. “I never heard of a master as was of such right good stuff as you.You don't turn off an old man because he is past work, nor grudge him a bit of best garden ground, took out of one of your fields, nor deny him skimmed milk because you want it for the pigs and calves, nor refuse him turnips and pertatees out of the fields as many as he can eat.” So he went on. I do not hesitate to repeat what he said, because he confined himself strictly within the bounds of truth. I flatter myself I always have been a good master, and just, even generous, to my men. I have been more, I have been considerate and kind. Lights were not made to be put under bushels, and I am not one of those who would distort or suppress the truth, even when it concerns myself. I know my own merits, and as for my faults, if I light on any at any time, I shall not scruple to publish them.

The old sexton jumped at my offer—I mean metaphorically, for his lumbago would not allow him to jump literally. I had made the offer out of consideration for him, but without considering myself, and I repented having made it almost as soon as the words had left my lips. However, I am a man of my word, and when I say a thing I stick to it.

“Where is the key?” I asked.

“Her be hanging up on thicky [that] nail behind the door,” answered the old man.

As I took down the great church key, Soloman said, in a hesitating, timid voice, “If you should chance to meet wi' Margery o' Quether, you won't mind.”

“I do not in the least expect ot see her,” I said, getting red, and hot, and annoyed.

“No—meb-be not, but her has been seen afore on Christmas Eve.”

“Margaret on the tor at midnight!” I exclaimed; then, highly incensed at the idea of the old man poking fun at me, and even alluding to my weakness for Margaret Palmer—love is a weakness—I said testily, as I walked out swinging the key on my forefinger, “Solomon, I object to Miss Palmer's name being brought in in this flippant and impertinent manner.What with the Glad-stone-Chamberlain general-topsy-turvyism of the Government, the working classes are forgetting the respect due to their superiors, and allow themselves liberties of speech which their forefathers would have turned green to think of.”

If I was regular in my devotions every Lord's Day, a laboring man in one's employ earning eleven shillings a week had no right to suppose that I did not ascend Brentor from the purest motives of personal piety. It is a duty of one in his position to think so. His insolence jarred my feelings, and I already regretted the offer I had made. It is a mistake to be good-natured. It is lowering in the eyes of inferiors; it is taken for weakness. The man who is universally respected, and obtains ready attention and exact obedience, is he who cares for nobody but himself, is loud, exacting, and self-asserting. The good-natured involves a man in endless troubles. I had undertaken to ring the bells at midnight in mid-winter in the windiest, most elevated steeple in England; I had to ascend a giddy peak on which one false step would precipitate me over the rocks, and dash every bone in my body to pieces. I am not on to shrink from danger, or to shirk a responsibility, freely in inconsiderately undertaken. I have already said that I would frankly admit my faults when I noticed them; and now the opportunity arises. I admit without scruple that I am too prone to do kind acts. This is a fault. A man out to consider himself. Charity begins at home. In this instance I did not think of myself, of the discomfort and danger involved in ascending Brentor at midnight.

I took a stiff glass of hot rum and water about half-past ten or quarter to eleven, and then turned out.

There was no snow on the ground; we are not likely to have seasonable weather so long as this Gladstone-Chamberlain-Radical topsy-turvy Government remain in power. Our sheep get cawed with the wet, the potatoes get the disease, the bullocks get foot-and-moth complaint, and the rain won't let us farmers get in our harvest. If only we had Beaconsfield back! But there, politics have nothing to do with my story.

The evening was not cold, it was raw, and the night was black as pitch. I had a lanthorn with me (I spell the spell the substantive advisedly in the old way, lanthorn and not lantern, for mine had horn, not glass, sides). I knew my road perfectly. The lane is stony, wet, and overhung. Stony it must be, for it is worn down to the rock, and the rock breaks up as it likes and stones itself, just the coats of the stomach renew themselves. Wet it is, because it serves as main drain to the fields on either side. Overhung it is, because tress row on either side. If the trees were not there, it would not be overhung.You understand me. I like to be explicit. Some intelligences are not satisfied with a hint, everything must be described and explained to them to the minutest particular.

By the lanthorn light I could see the beautiful ferns and mosses in the hedge, and the water oozing out of the sides, and the dribble that ran down the centre of the lane and then spread all over it, then accumulated on one side, and then took a fancy to run over to the other side. I notice that a stream in going down a hill zigzags just as a horse does in ascending a hill, and as a woman does in the aiming at anything. The road rises steeply from my backyard gate to the church porch. When I say road, I mean way. For after one comes out on the moor, there is not even a track.

I knew my direction well enough, so I went straight over the heath to the old volcano, and as I ascended the peak I thought to myself, if an y traveler were on Hearthfield to-night, what a tale he would make up of the Jack-o'-lanthorn seen dancing in and out among the rocks, and winding its way up the height, till at last it hopped in at the church door of S. Michael on the Rock, and then a faint glimmer was visible issuing from all its windows. Probably he would suspect some witches' frolic was going on there such as Tam o' Shanter saw on All Hallowe'en, when Kirk Alloway seem'd in a bleeze, though the ‘bleeze' could not be bright that issued from my tallow candle in a lanthorn.

The sky was overcast. Not a star was visible; only in the S. W. was a little faint light, and a thread of it ran round the horizon. The simile is not poetical, but it is to the purpose, when I say that the earth seemed under a dish-cover which didn't quite fit.

I reached the church in safety, dark as the night was; the few gravestones lit up with a ghastly smile as the lanthorn and I went by them in the little yard. I set down the clickering article on the stone seat in the porch, turned the key, resumed my lanthorn and went into the tower.

The church was not in first-rate repair. I believe the Duke of Bedford, who owns all Heathfield, did intend to do something to the church. He brought an architect there, and the architect said he must pull down the old church that dates from the thirteenth century, and build a sort of Norman Gothic cathedral in its place.You see the architect thought only of the Duke's pocket from which to draw; he gets five per cent on the outlay. But when the parson heard that, and I too, being churchwarden, we put our foot down and said, No! We loved the little old church; it was seen by Drake and Raleigh as they sailed into Plymouth Sound, just the same as we see it today, and we would not have a stone changed of the carcase. They might do what they liked with the vitals inside, that we conceded. Since that day we have heard nothing more of the restoration of Brentor church. Consequently, the sacred edifice has been getting more and more out of repair.