Kitabı oku: «Furze the Cruel», sayfa 10

CHAPTER X
ABOUT THE VIGIL OF ST. GOOSE

Mary's greatest possession was her umbrella, which was no ordinary article, and would have been of little service to the orthodox woman, because she would have lacked strength to raise it aloft in a breeze. When unfurled it covered about as much ground as a military tent, and cast a shade like an oak-tree. Not that Mary often unfurled it. The umbrella was far too precious to be used. She carried it about on those rare occasions when she went abroad, as a sort of symbol of the state of civilisation to which she had attained. It was with her very much what the pastoral staff is to a bishop; a thing unused, but exhibited. Umbrellas are useless things upon Dartmoor, because the wind makes wreckage of them at once. The Marian gamp was a monstrous creation, very old and patched, possibly had been used once as a carriage umbrella, and it was more baggy than its mistress's bloomers. Its stock was made of holly, not from a branch, but a good-sized stem, and a yard of twine was fastened about it to keep the ribs from flapping. Mary carried it usually beneath her arm, and found it always terribly in the way.

Grandfather was tacitly admitted to be Peter's property. He had no proprietary interest in the umbrella. Mary never ventured to touch Grandfather, and Peter had not been known to place his hands upon the umbrella. Primitive people like to take their possessions about with them, that they may show others how well off they are. A little servant girl goes out to the revel smothered with all her wearing apparel, winter things on top of summer things, regardless of season, and with all the cut glass in rolled-gold settings stuck about her that she can lay her hands on. Two sisters are able to present a fine show by going out in turn. Annie ventures forth clad with all the property in common, while Bessie stays at home, not much better draped than a Greek statue. Mary took her umbrella about, not because she wanted it, but to convince strangers that she owned something to be proud of. Nobody was jealous. She could have left the umbrella anywhere, and not a soul would have touched it. Peter would have taken Grandfather about with him had it been possible; but as the clock was twice Peter's size, and could not be attached to a brass chain and slung in his waistcoat pocket, it had to remain in Number One, Hut-Circles, and wheeze away the hours in solitude.

There was suppressed excitement in New Gubbings Land. Peter was more absent-minded than ever, and Mary was quite foolish. She served up before her brother the barley-meal which her geese did eat, after scattering their own dinner to the birds. It was all because they were going on a long journey. Peter had remained quiescent for years; and, like most men who have travelled much, he felt at last the call of the outer world and the desire to be again in motion. Mary had the same feeling, which was the more strange as she had never travelled. It was the fault of the concert. Since that festival Mary had become unsettled. It had taught her there were experiences which she had not enjoyed. Mary thought she had done a good deal, but as a matter of fact she had never been in a train, nor had she slept a night out of the parish. When Peter said he meant to travel again, Mary declared she was coming too. Peter tried to discourage her, explaining that travelling was expensive, and dangerous also. A hardened wanderer like himself was able to face the risks, but she would not be equal to the strain. It was a terrifying experience to be carried swiftly along the railway, and had frightened him badly the first time. He advised Mary to walk, and let him have the money she would otherwise have squandered. Arguments were useless. Comic songs had ruined Mary's contentment. She was sorry she had not travelled before, and declared she was going to take her umbrella and begin. So they decided to venture to Tavistock to keep the festival of St. Goose.

Mary had been to Goose Fair before, walking there and back; and for Peter the experience was nothing. Peter had trodden the streets of Plymouth, and had been long ago to Winkleigh Revel, although he could recall little of that expedition – the morning after the event he remembered nothing – but the certainty that he had made the great journey into the wilds of mid-Devon remained, and there was proof in the presence of a large mug with a tin handle upon the mantelshelf, bearing the touching inscription, "Tak' a drop o' gin, old dear," in quaint lettering, which mug, Peter declared, had come with him from Winkleigh Revel, although any one curious enough to have turned it upside down might have discovered "Manor Hotel, Lydford," stamped underneath.

Peter had always felt superior to his sister, apart from the sublime fact of his manhood. He was not only highly educated, but he had travelled, and he feared that if Mary travelled too her eyes would be opened, and she might consider herself his equal. Therefore he had a distinct motive in begging her to bide at home, although his eloquence was in vain, for Mary was going to travel. She stated her intention of walking across the moor to Lydford and catching the train there, which was needless expense, as she might have gone down to St. Mary Tavy station; but she desired to make a great journey, something to boast of in days to come.

A vigil suggests sleeplessness, a watching through the night which precedes the day of the feast; and Mary observed the vigil more thoroughly than any nun. Plenty of girls were equally devout at the same time; keeping awake, not because they wanted to, but because excitement rendered sleep impossible. Thomasine observed the vigil, and even Boodles watched and wished the dark gone. It was a long night all over Dartmoor. Even Siberian Princetown was aroused; and those who were being punished for their sins had the additional mortification of knowing that they would be behind prison bars on the day when the greatest saint in the calendar according to the use of Dartmoor, the blatant and waddling St. Goose, was to be honoured by a special service of excursion trains and various instruments of music.

Dawn impelled every maid to glance at the chair beside her bed, to be sure that the pixies had not run away with her fair-clothes. Thomasine looked for her completed petticoat, Boodles for her boy's photograph, Mary for her umbrella. There had been no pixy-pranks, and the day came in with a promise of sunshine. There were no lie-a-beds that morning. Even Peter had been restless, and Grandfather possibly noticed that the little man had not snored so regularly as usual.

To the dweller in the wilds there is no getting away from fair-day, the great country holiday of the year. Those who would wish to abolish such festivals should remember that country-folk have few pleasures, and the fair is about the last, and is certainly one of the greatest, inducements to keep them on the land. To a large number it is the single outing of the year; a thing to talk about for months before and afterwards; the day of family reunion, when a girl expects to see her parents, the young man meets his brother, and the old folk keep associations going. The fair is to country-folk very much what Christmas is to the better classes. And as for the pleasures they are nothing like so lurid as have been represented. Individuals are vicious; a pleasure-seeking crowd is not. There is a vast deal of drunkenness, and this is by far the worst feature, and one which cannot be eliminated except by compulsory closing of all houses of refreshment, which would be only possible under a Saturnian régime. As evening approaches there is also much of that unpleasantness which is associated with drunkenness, and is described in police-reports as obscene language. The fair-ground is not the best place for highly respectable people. It is the dancing-place of the lower classes; and as such the fair is a success and practically harmless. The girls are out for fun, and when they see a good-looking young man are not above making advances; and the stranger who steps up and introduces himself is sure of a welcome on his face value. It is all free and natural. Nearly every one is the better, and very few are the worse, for the holiday. Liquor is the principal cause of what evils there are. Tavistock Goose Fair after dark is far more respectable than Hyde Park at midnight.

Peter and Mary set forth on their walk across the moor to Lydford station, both of them attired in the festive garments which had been last assumed for the concert, Mary's large right hand clutching the umbrella by its ribs, Peter smoking industriously. They made a bee-line for their destination, heedless of mossy bogs, which were fairly firm at that time of the year. There were no rocks to hinder them. It is a bald stretch of moor between St. Mary Tavy and Lydford. Mary was breathing furiously from sheer excitement and nervousness, being dreadfully afraid they would miss the train. There was the station "down under," not more than half-a-mile away, and the train was not due for an hour, but Mary continued on the double. She did not understand mathematics and timetables. Peter trudged behind in a state of phlegmatic calm, natural to an old traveller, who had been to Plymouth by the sea and to Winkleigh on the hill.

For some time they had the platform to themselves. Then the moor began to give forth its living: young men and maidens, old men and wives, all going a-fairing, some treating the matter irreverently with unmusical laughter, others regarding the occasion as meet for an austere countenance. Peter was among those who cackled, while Mary was on the side of the anxious. She had to remind herself continually that she was enjoying life, although she would much rather have been at home chasing Old Sal among the furze-bushes. When the signals fell, and the bell rang, and the station began to rumble as the train approached, she clutched Peter and suggested they should return home. "Don't ye get mazed," said Peter crossly. "Come along wi' I."

Mary endeavoured to do so, but lost her head entirely when the train drew up, and went on to behave very much like a dog at a fair. She lost sight of her brother, scurried up and down the platform looking for him, and became still more confused when the cry, "Take your seats, please," sounded in her ears. The guard, who was used to queer passengers, took her by the arm with the idea of putting her into a carriage, but Mary defended herself against his designs with her umbrella, and breaking loose endeavoured to join the engine-driver. Meeting with no encouragement there she turned back, and was seized by Peter, who told her plainly she was acting foolishly, and again commanded her to come along with him. Mary obeyed, and everything was going favourably, and they were just about to enter a compartment when the umbrella slipped oat of her nervous hand, bumped upon the edge of the platform, and slid beneath the train.

Mary resumed her normal condition at once, caring no longer for train, crowd, or fair, while the fear of travelling ceased to trouble when she perceived that the umbrella had departed from her. She stood upon the platform, and declared with an oath that the system of the railway should work no more until the umbrella had been restored to her hands. Time was of no account to Mary. She refused to enter the train without her umbrella; neither should the train proceed, for she would hold on to it. Peter upheld his sister. The umbrella was a family heirloom. The station-master and guard urged and blasphemed in vain. The homely epithets of the porter were received with contempt and the response, "Us bain't a-going. Us be going to bide."

Passengers in the adjoining compartment were perturbed, because it was rumoured among them that the poor woman had dropped a baby beneath the train, and they believed that the officials were contending that there was nothing in the regulations about ordinary humanity, and it was therefore their duty to let the child remain there. The guard and station-master became unpopular. The passengers were in no great hurry to proceed, as they were out for a day's enjoyment; and as for Mary, great was her lamentation for the lost umbrella.

"'Tis a little gal, name of Ella," explained a stout commoner with his head out of the window, for the benefit of others in the carriage.

"Sounded to me like Bella," replied his wife, differing from him merely as a matter of principle.

"There's no telling. They give 'em such fancy names now-a-days," said another excursionist.

"Her be screaming cruel," said the stout commoner.

"I don't hear 'en," declared his wife. They got along very well together, those two, and made conversation easily, one by offering a statement, the other by differing.

"I du," said a young woman in a white frock, which was already showing about the waist some finger-impressions of her young man, who sat beside her. "She'm right underneath the carriage. Don't ye hear she, Ben?"

Ben gave a nervous smile, gulped, arranged his tie, which would keep slipping up to his chin, moistened his lips, then parted them to utter the monosyllable which was required. He heard the child screaming distinctly. Having stated as much, he proceeded to record his fingerprints accurately upon the young woman's waist.

A farmer from Inwardleigh, who had entered the train at Okehampton, and had slept peacefully ever since, woke up at that moment, looked out, saw the bare moor, remarked in a decided voice that he wouldn't live on Dartmoor for a thousand pounds, and went to sleep again. The stout commoner took up his parable and said —

"There be a little man got out now, and he'm poking about wi' a stick, trying to get the baby out. Did ever hear of trying to get a baby up wi' an ash-stick, woman?"

His wife replied that she had never heard of a baby getting underneath a train before, and she thought people ought to be ashamed of themselves getting drunk so early in the morning.

"Babies oughtn't to be took to the vair," said the young woman in the white frock. "I shan't tak' mine when I has 'em."

This remark caused young man Ben to smile nervously again.

The Inwardleigh farmer opened his eyes and wanted to know why the train was motionless. He was getting so thirsty that he could sleep no more. "Us might sing a hymn," he suggested; and proceeded forthwith to make a noise like a chaff-cutting machine, preparatory to describing himself in song as a pure and spotless being whose sins had been entirely washed away. Had he given his face and hands the attention which, according to his own statement, his soul had received, he would have been a more presentable object. The young woman in the white frock knew the hymn, and joined in vigorously, claiming for her soul a whiteness which her dress could not equal. The farmer was so delighted with her singing that he leaned forward and kissed the damsel rapturously. The unhappy Ben dared not remonstrate with his elders and betters, but merely sat and gulped. By this time Peter had dropped his stick beneath the train, where it reposed side by side with the umbrella.

"They'm going to run the train back," said the stout commoner.

"The baby 'll be dead," remarked his wife cheerfully. She was not going to be depressed upon a holiday.

Peter and Mary stood upon the platform, a statuesque, obstinate pair, determined to give the railway company no mercy. It was nothing to them that the train was being delayed. Their property was underneath it, and all the Gubbings blood in them rebelled.

"I'll bide till I gets my umbrella. Tak' your mucky old train off 'en," said Mary, wagging her big hand at the men in authority; while Peter added that his intention was also to bide until his ash-stick should be returned to him.

Finally the train was backed, the umbrella and stick were recovered, and the savages permitted themselves to be bundled into the first compartment handy, amid laughter from the heads at the windows and profanity from the mouths of the officials. The train drew out of the station, and Mary subsided into a corner and held on tightly, shouting to her brother, "Shet the window, Peter, du'ye. Us may be falling out."

Peter tried to explain that would not be easy, but Mary was unable to listen. Her former fears had returned. She clutched her umbrella, trembled, and prayed to the gods of Brentor and the gods of Ebenezer – Mary's religion was a misty affair – for a safe deliverance from the perils of the railway. She had a feeling as if she was about to part with her breakfast. She had also a distinct admiration just then for all those who went down to the towns in trains, and for her brother, who sat calmly upon the cushions – it was a first-class compartment which they had invaded – and spat contentedly upon the carpet. The speed of the train exceeded thirty miles an hour, and poor Mary's bullet head was rolling upon her shoulders.

"Aw, my dear life!" she moaned. "I feels as if my belly were running back to home again. Where be us, Peter?"

"On the railway," her brother answered, with truth, but without brilliance. The remark was reassuring to Mary, however. She thought the train had got upon the moor somehow and was speeding furiously down a steep place towards destruction upon the rocks. A glance from the window gave no comfort. It was terrible to see the big tors tumbling past like a lot of drunken giants.

"Mind what I told ye," observed Peter. "Yew wun't like travelling, I ses. 'Tis easy when yew begins young, but yew be too old to begin."

"Us ha' got legs, and us was meant to use 'em. Us was never meant to run abroad on wheels," said Mary. "If ever I gets home, I'll bide."

Peter refilled his pipe, and began to boast of his experiences upon sea and land; how he had ventured upon the ocean and penetrated to a far country. Mary had heard it all before, but she had never been so impressed as she was then by her brother's account of his famous crossing of the Hamoaze in a fishing-boat, and his alighting upon the distant shore of Torpoint to stand upon Cornish soil. But while Peter was describing how he had been rocked "cruel and proper" upon the waves of what it pleased him to style the Atlantic, brakes fell heavily upon the wheels, a whistle sounded, and the train dragged itself gradually to a standstill. There was no station in sight. The moor heaved on both sides of the line. Even Peter was at a loss to explain the sudden stoppage for a moment.

"The train be broke," said Mary, who was bold now that she had ceased from travelling. "They've run 'en over a nail, and us mun bide till 'em blows the wheels out again."

Mary comprehended bicycles, and had contemplated tourists, who were so foolish as to bring their machines upon Dartmoor, pumping away at punctured tyres. Peter did not contradict because he was perturbed. He understood that the train had not broken down; but he believed that an accident was impending. Out of his worldly wisdom he spoke: "It be a collusion, I reckon."

Suspiciously Mary demanded an explanation.

"'Tis when two trains hit one into t'other," explained Peter, striking his left fist into his right palm. "That be a collusion. Same as if yew was to run into a wall in the dark," he added.

The meaning of these words did not dawn upon Mary for some moments. When she did grasp them she made for the door, with the intention of abandoning the railway forthwith; but the train gave a sudden jerk, which threw her upon the seat, and then began to glide back. Peter thrust his head out of the window and perceived they were making for a siding. He and his sister had delayed the train so long that an express which was due to follow had almost caught them up, and had made it necessary for the local train, which has to wait for everything, to get off the main line. Peter did not understand that. Even old travellers make mistakes sometimes. He considered that the situation was desperate.

"They'm trying to get away, trying cruel hard," he said drearily.

"What be 'em getting away from?" gasped Mary.

"T'other train," her brother answered.

"Aw, Peter, will 'em du it?"

"Bain't hardly likely," said Peter dolefully.

"Be t'other train going to run into we?"

Peter admitted that it was so, adding: "I told ye to bide to home."

"Will us get hurt?" moaned Mary.

"Smashed to bits. They newspapers will tell us was cut to pieces," said Peter, in his gloomiest fashion. "How much have ye got in the money-box?" he asked.

With prophetic insight Peter perceived that he would be spared. Mary would be destroyed, together with all the other passengers, and Peter naturally was anxious to know the amount of hard cash he was likely to inherit.

But Mary gave no heed to the avaricious question. She groaned and rubbed her eyes with the umbrella. It was the umbrella she was thinking of rather than herself. Somehow she could not imagine her own body mangled upon the line; but a melancholy picture of the wrecked umbrella was clear before her eyes.

In the next compartment the farmer was still singing hymns, accompanied by a chorus. Mary thought they were praying. This was travelling, enjoying life, a day's pleasure, St. Goose's Day! Mary wished with all her heart she had never left her geese and her hut-circle. In the meantime Peter was keeping her well informed.

"They be running the train off on Dartmoor," he explained. "There's a gurt cleave down under, and they be going to run us down that. Us mun get smashed either way."

"Why don't us get out and run away?" suggested frightened Mary.

As she spoke the train stopped. It was safe in the siding, although the savages did not know that. They supposed that the motive power had failed, or the engine-driver had come to realise that escape was hopeless, and had abandoned the train to secure his own safety. Peter saw a man running along the line. He was only a harmless pointsman going about his business, but Peter supposed him to be the base engine-driver flying for his life, and he told Mary as much. Even Peter's nerve was somewhat shaken by this time. Mary said plainly she should follow the example of the engine-driver. "My legs be as good as his," she cried. "I hain't a-going to bide here and be broke up like an old goosie's egg. I be a-going out."

"They'll fine ye," cried Peter. "There be a notice yonder. For trampesing on the line a sum not exceeding forty shilluns – "

"Bain't that better than getting smashed to pieces?" shouted Mary.

Peter was not sure. He could not translate the phrase "not exceeding," but he had a clear notion that it meant considerably more than forty shillings.

Mary was struggling with the door. In another moment she would have opened it, but a terrific interruption occurred. There sounded a wild whistling, and a roar which stunned her, and caused her to fall back upon the seat to prepare hurriedly for her doom, to recall various religious memories and family associations, and to mutter fervently such disjointed scraps of sun-worship and Christianity as: "Our Vaither, hollered be the name, kingdom come. Angels and piskies, long-stones and crosses, glory to 'em all. Amen."

Then the express thundered past, shaking everything horribly. The tragedy was soon over, and Peter emerged into the light with worm-like wrigglings. For all his courage and experience he had dived beneath the seat, conscious somehow that any change of position would be better than no change. Everything seemed to have become very quiet all at once. They could hear the wind whistling gently over the moor, and the water splashing below. Mary had no idea what had happened, but she quite believed that Peter's worst fears had been realised, and that the "collusion" had actually occurred. So she groaned, and did not venture to move, and muttered feebly: "I be cut to pieces."

"No, you bain't," said Peter cheerfully. "Us got away after all."

With a little more encouragement Mary stretched herself, discovered that she and the umbrella were both intact, and from that moment the joy of life was hers again. They had escaped somehow. The express had missed them, and Peter assured her it was not likely to return. He admitted they had gone through a terrifying experience, which was as novel to him as to Mary; and his conclusion of the whole matter was that the engine-driver had undoubtedly saved their lives by cool and daring courage in the presence of fearful danger.

"He saw t'other train coming, and got us out o' the way just in time. Yew saw how near t'other train was. Only just missed us," explained Peter.

"He'm a cruel larned man," declared Mary. "He ought to be given something. Ought to be fined forty shilluns." Poor Mary was anxious to learn the English language; but when she made use of strange words she betrayed her ignorance.

"You means rewarded," Peter corrected out of the depths of his education.

"Aw ees," said Mary. "Us will reward 'en wi' a shillun."

Peter did not see the necessity. As they were perfectly safe, and as no further advantage could possibly accrue to them from the engine-driver's heroism, he thought they might as well keep the shilling. The train drew out of the siding, continued its journey, and Mary became quite comfortable, even venturing to lean forward and look out of the window, though the telegraph-poles and bridges frightened her at first. They looked as if they were going to run into her, she said.

Nothing else eventful happened until they reached Tavistock, although there was a good deal of human nature at work in the adjoining compartment, where the Inwardleigh farmer had exchanged hymn-singing for amorous suggestions, and had proceeded to appropriate the unfortunate Ben's white-frocked young woman to himself. It was especially hard upon the poor young clown, as he had paid for the railway tickets; but he had only a couple of shillings for fairing, and the Inwardleigh farmer had gold in his fob, so the girl naturally preferred to spend the day with the man of well-filled pockets. Weak-minded young bumpkins sometimes murder their sweethearts, and it is not very surprising. Even degenerates get weary of playing the singularly uninteresting part of the worm that is trampled on.

"Tavistock! Good Lord!" exclaimed Mary, with great relief, as the train entered the station.

She and Peter tumbled out. Such people always tumble out of railway carriages. They merely bang the door open, fall forward, and find their feet somehow. It is easy to tell whether a person is well-bred or not by the way he or she leaves a railway carriage. A young lady comes forth after the manner of a butterfly settling on a flower. The country maid emerges like a falling sack of wheat. Peter and Mary tumbled out, and were considerably astonished not to find a procession of grateful passengers advancing towards the engine to thank the driver for the courage he had displayed in saving their lives. Every one seemed anxious to quit the platform as soon as possible. Peter was shocked to discover so much ingratitude. It was ignorance perhaps, indifference possibly, but to Peter and Mary it seemed utter callousness. They felt themselves capable of something better. So they pushed through the crowd, reached the engine, and insisted upon shaking hands, not only with the driver, but with the fireman also, and thanked them very much for bringing them safely into Tavistock, and for having; avoided the "collusion," which they, the speakers, confessed had at one time appeared to them as inevitable. Peter invited them to come and have a drop of gin, and Mary asked sympathetically after the "volks to home."

The men enjoyed the joke immensely. They thought that the quaint couple were thanking them for having backed the train at Lydford in order that Mary might recover her umbrella and Peter his ash-stick. They chaffed them in a subtle fashion, and after a minute's complete mutual misunderstanding bade them farewell with the ironical hope they might some day save them again.

Mary was overflowing with generosity. As she and her brother turned away she produced two shillings and instructed Peter to reward the heroes suitably. Peter slipped the shillings unobtrusively into his own pocket. With all his faults he was a strict man of business.