Mockery Gap (14 page)

Mrs. Cheney leant over her son, sobbing too.

Simon sat up.

‘They be all after thik b … fisherman,’ he said fiercely. ‘There bain’t no maiden for I these days; ’tis to fisherman they do go.’

‘And me son Simon did only follow the Nellie-bird,’ groaned Mrs. Cheney.

‘And did climb tree, and did only bring down a blasted wold kite,’ moaned the god.

Mr. Pattimore now saw his kite, that was lying in shreds at his feet, having been
destroyed
by the anger of the god when the three maids in the wood refused to allow him to go with them.

Mr. Pattimore tried to rise; he wished to tell God Simon that if he would only listen to Dean Ashbourne he would need no maidens to solace him in woods or fields.

In trying to rise he gave his foot a twist and hurt it more than ever.

Mr. Pattimore fainted.

A
LTHOUGH
death often leaves old women alone for a long time, he sometimes pounces upon them two or three at a time and takes them off with him.

Old women, and especially those who have little or no money—Miss Pink, since the strange disappearance of her brother, lived upon the charity of a good Roddy, who, although he collected stones, had a heart of flesh—are not always unwilling to die. But there are some old women who don’t want to go.

Earlier in the summer, Mr. Caddy, though this must have cost him an effort, left the bed out of the story when he happened to meet Mrs. Pring by the church gate, and merely told her that the doctor had been to see Miss Pink, and had put on his gloves slowly and had shaken his head before he started his car that he always drove so carefully.

‘’E don’t shake ’is head for nothing,’ said Mr. Caddy.

‘Were she in front room or upstairs?’
inquired
Mrs. Pring, expecting the usual word from Mr. Caddy.

Mr. Caddy looked at a gravestone and never replied.

In Mockery every one notices which way a
person takes who leaves a cottage to go for a little walk.

Up till the day of the doctor’s visit, Miss Pink would usually take the lane that went by the churchyard, and going a few hundred yards further she would turn when she reached Farmer Cheney’s old barn and come home by the same way.

But now she always went in the opposite direction.

Besides this sign of a certain difference in Miss Pink’s ways, she had begun to do
something
else a little while after her brother went, that the people of Mockery couldn’t in the least understand.

For Miss Pink had taken to visiting her poorer neighbours.

When a morning knock was heard at any cottage door, there would be Miss Pink with her large shawl, her little nose looking smaller than ever, and her eyes looking afraid—‘ as if,’ Mrs. Pottle said, ‘something nasty were running after she.’

Miss Pink would, of course, be shown into the front room, and would take the best chair, and sigh heavily, and look up at the clock—when she called at Mrs. Pottle’s—
without
speaking. She would stay looking for half an hour, and then go out into the lane again.

Mr. Caddy couldn’t help — seeing how
things were with Miss Pink—making a remark or two to his ducks about her.

‘’Twill be t’ other turning for she soon,’ Mr. Caddy would say, nodding to the ducks in the pond, whenever Miss Pink came out of her cottage and went up the lane.

‘An’ bed thik wold maid be a-going to be a silent one.’

Miss Pink was now worse; indeed, her pain rarely left her. But she still kept her front room as tidy as she could, and waited for her expected visitor.

Summer weather, though our joys are heightened by the clear and plenteous shining of the sun, cannot lift the dark shadow of the cloud of death when it is near; but rather the summer darkens the horror by the very beauty of its shining.

The beast—Miss Pink had known for some while now what he was—horned and fearful, was coming up out of the sea to take her away.

But now she was smiling; this wasn’t
because
her pain had stopped for a moment, but merely because her front room, the morning after the children had come out of the Mockery wood singing, looked so neat and tidy, and Miss Pink felt sure that if ever she were going to receive an answer to her letter she would receive it now.

And there—for Miss Pink had peeped out of the window—was Mr. Pring, that faithful
messenger, picking up a piece of paper in the road.

A message from—no, not from Mr. Gulliver; she had long given him up—but from some other one who wanted her at His wedding.

Miss Pink’s heart beat fast; she watched Mr. Pring.

He took an envelope out of his trousers pocket, looked at it, and put it back into his pocket again.

He then folded the paper that he had picked up, and walked slowly and thoughtfully towards Miss Pink’s cottage, muttering to himself.

Miss Pink waited, waited in excited
expectation
for her letter—was he bringing it to her? Yes, Mr. Pring was even then
murmuring
words by her little gate: ‘Pring be the one to carry a message; wold Pring don’t never lose a letter.’ The next thing he did was to drop the folded paper with careful deliberation into the road again, and go back to his work still muttering how good he was at carrying a letter.

‘It’s my letter,’ said Miss Pink; ‘my brother always said I would have it one day.’

Her pain came again; it had only left her for a moment so as to gather strength for a new attack. And now it came and told her that the beast was very near.

Miss Pink stepped from her gate, found the
paper, and read the message. It was merely a page that had fluttered from Mr.
Pattimore’s
Bible on his way to church. Some words were underlined. Miss Pink read them: ‘Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.’

And Miss Pink went out into the Mockery lanes to find her lover.

M
ISS
P
INK
waited in the lanes; she felt unable to find her lover unless some one, other than the summer day, guided her to Him. Who this might be Miss Pink did not know, but she waited.

Miss Pink waited, and looked towards Mrs. Moggs’ shop.

Mrs. Moggs had awakened that morning very hopeful and happy. The evening before, for some reason or other, the Mockery children hadn’t come in to worry her, and also she felt sure that when she came downstairs and peeped into a certain drawer she would find little baby mice.

But these were not the only reasons why Mrs. Moggs was more than usually happy that day. There was another, and that was, that the town postmaster, Mr. Hunt, had
apparently
forgotten the village.

‘Perhaps,’ thought Mrs. Moggs, ringing her bells, and showing in her thought the innocence of her nature—‘perhaps he will never come again.’

Mrs. Moggs had dressed herself slowly, and stood for a while before her glass to make her bells ring.

When she was downstairs and looked into the drawer to see how many mice were born,
she counted five. She was so glad to see them that she hardly noticed that the mice had bitten a hole into the other drawer where the stamps and postal orders were kept. But when she wiped her glasses and looked more closely at the nest she saw that it was made up of little coloured bits of paper.

Mrs. Moggs trembled. She had only a moment before looked out of the window and seen Miss Pink standing in the lane; and now a large motor car was drawn up at her door, and a man was stepping out of it.

Mrs. Moggs turned very pale as Mr. Hunt in his noisiest manner came into the shop and at once demanded of her an exact account of the stamps and orders that she had sold.

While Mrs. Moggs looked for her books, Esther Pottle opened the door and, holding out some pence in her hand, said: ‘These are for the stamps that mother owes you for.’

Mr. Hunt looked so fiercely at Esther that she dropped all her pennies.

‘Yes, I see,’ said Mr. Hunt, who had glanced at the figures; ‘and now bring to me all the orders that you have in stock, please.’

‘But where are the rest of them?’ asked Mr. Hunt, after counting carefully all that Mrs. Moggs brought to him.

‘The mice,’ said Mrs. Moggs, trembling, ‘the white mice.’

‘You’re a liar!’ shouted Mr. Hunt.

Mrs. Moggs couldn’t see Mr. Hunt now, but she knew that from somewhere or other, perhaps from those islands that he had gone to, Mr. Pink was telling her about the beautiful sea. The shop faded too, and Mr. Hunt went as a bad dream goes, while before her she saw the beautiful sea—only the sea.

Mr. Hunt was gone, and Esther picked up the pennies and laid them upon the counter.

Mrs. Moggs fetched her bonnet and cloak. In the lane she met Miss Pink, who appeared to have been waiting for her.

‘I am going to the beautiful sea,’ said Mrs. Moggs, nodding her head, while her bells rang merrily.

‘And I will go with you,’ said Miss Pink.

Miss Pink helped Mrs. Moggs over the stile; they walked in the meadows together.

Since she had received her letter, Miss Pink saw all her life as pointing one way—to her lover. Mr. Gulliver who had not replied to her, her brother leaving her with no word, her illness and her ever-recurring pain—all this trouble she felt was soon to be completed and soon to be changed to joy. She was aware, however, that perhaps her lover might wish her to do some kind last act; to love an enemy, an enemy whom she had always dreaded, before he took her to Himself.

Miss Pink had never dared to go and look at the sea ever since Mr. Tarr had told her that
the beast would come out of it. But now, having had her letter, she cared not what she saw, and she even felt brave enough to save the beast from drowning if such a strange chance occurred. Suppose she were to see the beast trying to get up out of the sea, she would now even dare to help it. Miss Pink felt as she walked that she should have been kinder in her thoughts to the horrid creature.

‘What have I done,’ said Miss Pink,
thinking
her thoughts aloud, ‘to help or save any one? When I have seen Mrs. Pottle beating her kittens to death and calling them Prings, that she used to do every time the poor cat had its family, I never laid down in the path and told her to beat me instead and to call me Mrs. Pring. And when I once saw Simon Cheney treating poor Dinah cruelly and in a very wicked way, I never offered to allow him to do his worst with me instead.’

‘We are going to the beautiful sea,’ said Mrs. Moggs, interrupting Miss Pink’s thoughts.

The two women walked down to the beach together; they held each other by the hand. They stepped cautiously over the shining pebbles that were warmed in the sun.

The sea was very still; during all the time that poor Mr. Dobbin had lived there it had never once been so still. In the distance there was a haze that comes only upon a sultry summer’s day. But the tide was very high.

‘So this is the beautiful sea,’ said Mrs. Moggs a little disappointedly.

When there was a high tide the sea almost covered the Blind Cow Rock. A small portion of the rock was now only just above the water.

Miss Pink uttered a cry of fear.

Upon the rock that now and again a little gentle wave would wash, there was standing in an attitude of extreme distress Mr. Dobbin’s monkey.

‘It’s the dreadful beast,’ said Miss Pink, and shuddered.

Mrs. Moggs looked at the beast too, and then at her carefully blacked Sunday shoes, that seemed to have led her to a very strange church that day, and all because she wanted so much to escape from the horrid words of Mr. Hunt the postmaster.

‘It’s the dreadful beast that Mr. Tarr spoke of, though it hasn’t the horns,’ said Miss Pink in a voice of terror; ‘and he’s coming to drown us all.’

‘He looks very unhappy,’ remarked Mrs. Moggs, ‘and I think he is afraid of being drowned himself.’

The tide was still rising.

Certain words that Miss Pink remembered reading somewhere—words spoken by the grand Lover of mankind—came into her mind: ‘But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you——’

‘I will save the poor beast from drowning,’ said Miss Pink, and without a thought as to what might happen to herself she stepped into the sea. She sank at once like a stone. Mrs. Moggs looked for the monkey; he was gone too.

In a few moments Mrs. Moggs saw Miss Pink’s shawl floating upon the water. ‘Miss Pink must be under her shawl,’ said Mrs. Moggs, ‘and I mustn’t go home and leave her in the beautiful sea.’

Mrs. Moggs regarded Miss Pink’s shawl thoughtfully; she looked down at her own shoes: so far she had not wetted them.

‘Mr. Caddy says,’ remarked Mrs. Moggs, looking into the sea, as if she expected Miss Pink to hear what she said, ‘that the sea never likes old women enough to want to hurt them. He says ’tis the young girls the waves be after. Miss Pink,’ said Mrs. Moggs loudly, ‘don’t go too far down.’

Mrs. Moggs stepped into the sea.

An hour later, when the fisherman was
passing
, he found Paul’s body washed up by the sea. He buried him deeply in the sands.

M
R.
C
ADDY
, when he advised Mrs. Topple to look for clover in the road, had an even kinder thought for her than had Mr. Tarr when he advised her in the interest of healing all her pains to hunt for the magic leaf.

Mr. Caddy had grown thoughtful and silent when Mr. Hunt—who never even came back to say he was sorry for what he had done—rode over his best duck and deprived her of life. It was then, in the innocence of Mr. Caddy’s heart, who fancied that the wicked are
sometimes
punished, that he decided that could Mr. Hunt be persuaded to drive over a human being he might get hanged for it.

When a child, Mr. Caddy had known the Maidenbridge hangman and had liked him.

‘’Twouldn’t hurt poor Mrs. Topple to die all of a sudden,’ Mr. Caddy had wisely
informed
his friends in the pond, ‘for ’tain’t here upon earth that she mid find thik fine clover; ’tis in they golden fields of heaven.’

With this praiseworthy desire to get Mrs. Topple, as soon as convenient to the angels, to the upper meadows where all the clover has four leaves, he advised the lady to look in the road for what she wanted, knowing how fast Mr. Hunt drove his car round the worst corners.

If any one person in the Mockery world was believed by all, that person was Mr. Caddy. For he who knows all the ins and outs of
everything
, all the bedtime manners, all the happy courting in the woods and meadows, all the many and merry ways of country matters that are used in the shaping of a man—how could such a one be ever doubted when he gave advice?

Mrs. Topple believed that Mr. Caddy had pointed out to her, as he had done to so many a Mockery maiden, the way to be happy, and so as soon as the holidays were come she began to hunt in the lanes as he had advised her to do. And she had just knelt beside a bank that had itself crept a little too far into the road for safety, to pick the very thing that she had searched so diligently for all that warm summer, a four-leaf clover, when Mr. Hunt, who was in a hurry to send the Dodder policeman after Mrs. Moggs—for ever since he had seen her happy curls he had wished her in prison—ran into her.

Mr. Hunt’s car was a heavy one, and the bonnet struck Mrs. Topple’s head, and took from her all thought of her happiness by rendering her utterly unconscious of anything at all.

Mr. Hunt rushed on, and soon discovered the Dodder policeman, who was talking to a girl in the road, and sent him off to Mockery
to arrest Mrs. Moggs, and also to look to a woman who had had a seizure in the lane, after falling down a high bank, to the immediate danger of any poor motorist who might want to pass.

The policeman found Mrs. Topple dead with the clover in her hand.