ABOUT VARIOUS EMOTIONS
Pendoggat stood beneath the penthouse of his peat linhay, looking at a newspaper. The issue was dated Friday, and it contained the news of the week; not the news of the world, which was of no local interest, but a condensed account of the great things begun, attempted, and accomplished in the rural districts of Devon. The name of the parish was printed in big letters, and under it appeared the wonder of the week: how little Willie Whidden, while tramping to school, had picked a ripe strawberry from the hedge; or how poor old Daniel Ashplant had been summoned for drunkenness—P.C. Copplestone stating that defendant had behaved like a madman—and fined half-a-crown, despite his solemn oath and covenant that he had never tasted liquor in his life. Unimportant items, such as the meeting of Imperial Parliament, and a great railway disaster, served as stop-gaps in cases where advertisements just failed to fill the column.
Pendoggat was looking for something. The testimony of a Wesleyan minister after twenty years of faithful service, accompanied by his photograph, caught his eye, and he thought he had found what he was searching for. He was astonished to learn that friend and pastor Pezzack was so popular; but when he read on he discovered it was only an advertisement for a nerve tonic. He turned over a page, and at last came upon the heading which he required. The title was that of a small sub-parish north of the moor, celebrated for a recent pronouncement of the curate-in-charge, who had congratulated the inhabitants upon their greatly increased sobriety, as during the late year only forty-seven persons, out of a total population of seventy-two, had been guilty of drunkenness. Printers had blundered and mixed things up rather. A hedge-builder had in the course of his duties come across a hole containing a rabbit, a hedgehog, and a rat; and in the same paragraph the Reverend Eli Pezzack had been safely married to Miss Jeconiah Sampson, with a good deal of bell-ringing, local excitement—the bride being well known in the neighbourhood for her untiring zeal in the matter of chapel teas—and an exhibition of such numerous and costly presents as a pair of brass candlesticks, an American clock, a set of neat doyleys, and an artistic pin-tray.
It was one of Pendoggat's peculiarities that he did not smile. His idea of expressing pleasure was to hurt something; just as a boy in moments of excitement may slash at anything with his stick. Pendoggat dropped the paper suddenly, ran at a goose which was waddling across his court, captured the big strong bird, and wrung its neck. He flung the writhing body on the stones and kicked it in his joy. The minister could not side against him now. He had burdened himself with a wife, and there would soon be the additional burden of a child. Pezzack was a free man no longer, and had become dependent upon Pendoggat for food and home and boots. He would have to obey his master and be his faithful dog, have to keep his mouth shut when he discovered that the nickel-mine was a fraud, for his home's sake and his wife's sake. Pendoggat could strip him naked at a stroke.
Annie Crocker crossed the court towards the well with a crock in her hand. Pendoggat noticed that her hair was growing grey, and that she was getting slovenly.
"Who killed that old goose?" she said, standing and staring at the big white body.
"I did," muttered Pendoggat.
"You'll have to pay," she said shrilly. "That be Mary Tavy's Old Sal, what she thinks the world of. Killed him, have ye? I wouldn't be you, Farmer Pendoggat, when Mary comes to hear on't. Mary's as good a man as you."
"Shut your noise," he growled. "Who's to tell her?"
"Who? What's my tongue for? The first time you lift your hand to me Mary knows."
Annie carried her crock to the well and lowered the bucket, muttering to herself, and keeping a watchful eye upon the man who kept her; while Pendoggat took the bird by the neck and dragged it towards the furze-brake. He was afraid when he learnt that it was Mary's Old Sal, for Mary was a creature whom he could not tackle. She seemed to him more a power of Nature than a strong hermaphrodite; something like the wind, or the torrential rain, or the storm-cloud. No commoner in his heart disbelieves in witchcraft; and even the girls, who twist a bridal veil across their faces when they are going to be married, know that the face-covering is not an adornment, but a fetish or protection against the "fascination" of the Evil Eye.
"Going to bury him!" sneered Annie. "Aye, he bain't the only one in there. Bury him in the vuzz till Judgment, if ye can. The Lord will send fire from heaven one day to consume that vuzz, and all that be hidden shall be revealed. Drag him in by the neck, du'ye? Maybe they'll be dragging you to a hole in the ground avore long."
She staggered across the court, splashing water like curses from the crock, and slammed the house door violently. Pendoggat said nothing. He bore with Anne because he was used to her, and because she knew too much about him; but he felt he would murder her some day if he didn't get away. He pushed the dead body of Old Sal as far into the furze as he could with the pole that propped up the washing-line, then went into the linhay, sat down upon the peat, and muttered hoarsely to the spiders in the roof.
Two things he required: the return of Pezzack, and winter. He had received through the minister nearly two hundred pounds from the retired grocer and his friends, and he hoped to get more; but Pezzack the secretary was a miserable correspondent without Pendoggat's assistance, and nothing could be done until he came back to resume the duties which were being interfered with by the honeymoon. Frost and snow were also essential for his plans, because the fussy grocer, to whom had been thrown the sop of chairman of the company—a jobbing printer had prepared an ill-spelt prospectus, and the grocer never moved a yard without a pocketful—was continually writing to know how things were going, and Pendoggat wanted snow as an excuse for deferring mining operations until spring. He would have left Dartmoor before then. He was going to take Thomasine with him, and enjoy her youth until his passion for her cooled; and then she could look after herself; and as for Annie, the parish would look after her. He had reckoned on getting five hundred pounds out of the visionary mine, only those respectable people of Bromley were so chary of parting with their money, even though they had Pezzack's unquestioned morality and good character to rely upon. His only fear was lest the grocer should take fright and get it into his head that the mine was a wild-cat scheme. It was hardly likely, as Dartmoor is to Bromley minds an unknown and almost legendary district.
"I gave him five pounds of his uncle's money to get married on," Pendoggat muttered, without a trace of humour. "For the next few weeks I'll give him fifteen shillings to live on, and then he may smash, if he can't preach his pockets full."
He was more afraid of Annie than any one else. The suspicious nature of women is one of their most animal-like characteristics. There had never lived a man better able to keep a secret than Pendoggat; and yet Annie knew there was something brewing, although he did not guess that she knew. It was a matter of instinct, the same instinct which compels a dog to be restless when, his master is about to go away. The animal knows before his master begins to make any preparation for departure; and by the same faculty Annie knew, or perhaps only guessed, that Pendoggat was meditating how he could leave her. She was in the miserable position of the woman who has lived for the best part of her life with a man without being married to him, having no claim except a sentimental one upon him, but compelled to cling to him for the sake of food and shelter, and because he has taken everything from her whatever of charm and beauty she might have possessed, and left her without the means of attracting an honest man. She had passed as Mrs. Pendoggat for nearly twenty years. Every one in the neighbourhood supposed she was married to her master. Only he and she knew the truth: that her marriage-ring was a lie. Pendoggat was a preacher, and a good one, people said. He was severe upon human frailties. He preached the doctrine of eternal punishment, and would have been the first to condemn those who straightened a boundary wall or led a maid astray. He could not have maintained his position had it been known that she who passed as his wife was actually a spinster. Pendoggat did not know the truth about himself. When in the pulpit religious zeal seized hold upon him, and he spoke from his heart, meaning all that he said, believing it, and trying to impress it upon the minds of his listeners. Outside the chapel his tempestuous passions overwhelmed him. Inside the chapel he could not feel the Dartmoor winds, although he could hear them; but the stone walls shielded him from them. Outside they smote upon him, and there was nothing to protect him. He was a man who lived two lives, and thought he was only living one. His most strongly-marked characteristic, his inherent and incessant cruelty, he overlooked entirely, not seeing it, not even knowing it was there. He could steal a fowl from his neighbour's yard, and quote Scripture while doing it; and the impression which would have remained in his mind was that he had quoted Scripture, not that he had stolen the fowl. When he thought of his conduct towards Pezzack he saw no cruelty in it. The only thought which occurred to him was that the minister was a good man and did his best, but that he, Pendoggat, was the better preacher of the two.
It was Thursday; Thomasine's evening out, and her master's day to get drunk. Farmer Chegwidden was regular in his habits. Every Thursday, and sometimes on Saturdays, he went to one of the villages, drank himself stupid, and galloped home like a madman. It was a matter of custom rather than a pleasure. He had buried his father, mother, and sister, on different Thursdays; and it was probably the carousal which followed each of these events which had fixed Thursday in his mind as a day for drowning sorrow.
Mrs. Chegwidden was one of the minor mysteries of human life. People supposed that she lived in some shadowy kind of way, and they asked after her health, and wondered what she was like by then; but nobody seemed to have any clear notion concerning her. She was never visible in the court of Town Rising, or in the garden, and yet she must have been there sometimes. She never went to chapel, or to any other amusement. She was like a mouse, coming out timidly when nobody was about, and scuttling into some secret place at the sound of a footfall. She passed her life among pots and pickle-jars, or, when she wanted a change, among bottles and cider-casks, not drinking, or even tasting, but brewing, preserving, pickling all the time. Chegwidden did not talk about her. He always replied, "Her be lusty," if inquiries were made. The invisible lady had no home talk. She was competent to remark upon the weather, and in an occasional burst of eloquence would observe that she was troubled with rheumatism. There are strange lives dragged out in lonely places. No doubt Mrs. Chegwidden had been conceited once; and perhaps the principal cause of her retirement into the dark ways and corners of Town Rising might have been traced to the fact that she was bald. A woman with no hair on her head is a grotesque object. Thomasine was really the mistress of the house, and she did the work well just because she was stupid. She worked mechanically, doing the same thing every day at the same time. Stupid women make the best housekeepers. Thomasine was a useful willing girl, who deserved to be well treated. Her master had not meddled with her.
Young Pugsley had been round to the kitchen door after dark since Goose Fair, and had urged Thomasine to wear a ring. The poor girl was willing, but she could not accept the offer, for more than one reason. Young Pugsley was not a bad fellow; not the sort to go about with a revolver in his pocket and an intention to use it if his young woman proved fickle. His wages were rising, and he thought he could get a cottage if Thomasine would let him court her. He admitted he was giving his company to another girl, and should go on with his attentions if Thomasine would not have him. The girl went back into the kitchen and began to cry; and Pugsley shuffled after her in a docile manner and sought to embrace her in the dark; but she pushed him off, with the saying: "I bain't good enough for yew, Will." Pugsley felt the age of chivalry echoing within him as he replied that he was only an everyday young chap, but if he was willing to take her it wasn't for her to have opinions about herself; only he couldn't hang on for ever, and she must make up her mind one way or the other, as he was doing well, getting fourteen shillings now, and with all that money it was his duty to get married, and if he didn't he might get into the way of spending his evenings in the pot-house. Thomasine only cried the more, until at last she managed to find the words of a confession which sent him from her company for ever. On that occasion it was fortunate for the girl that she could not think, because the faculty of reason could have done nothing beyond suggesting to her that the opportunity of leading a respectable life had gone from her, like her sweetheart, never to return.
She dressed herself in her best, and went to the old tumble-down linhay on the moor where Brightly had taken shelter after his unfortunate meeting with Pendoggat. She had been told to go there after dark and wait. She did not know whether she was going to be murdered, but she hoped not. She mended her gloves, put on her hat, twisted a feather boa round her neck, though it would be almost as great a nuisance in the wind as Mary's umbrella, but she had nothing else, gave a few tidying touches to the kitchen, and stepped out. It was very dark, and the sharp breeze pricked her hot face and made it smart.
She reached the linhay and waited. The place smelt unpleasantly, because beasts driven from the high moor by bad weather had taken shelter there. A ladder led up to a small loft half filled with dry fern except in places where moisture dripped through the roof. It was very lonely, standing on the brow of the hill where the wind howled. A couple of owls were hooting pleasantly at one another. No drearier spot would be found on all Dartmoor. Thomasine felt horror creeping over her, and her warm flesh kept on shuddering. She would not be able to wait there alone for long. Terror would make her disobedient. She wished she had been walking along the sheltered road by Tavy station, with young Pugsley's arm about her waist. It was not an evening to enjoy that bald stretch of moor with its wild wind and gaping wheals.
A horse galloped up. The sound of its iron shoes suggested frost, and so did the girl's breathing. She was wondering what her father was doing. He was a village cobbler, and a strict Methodist, fairly straight himself, and without sympathy for sinners. She moved, trod on some filth, and cried out. A man's voice answered and told her roughly to be quiet. Then Pendoggat groped his way in and felt towards her.
He had come in an angry mood, prepared to punish the girl, and to make her suffer, for having dared to flaunt with young Pugsley before his eyes in Tavistock. He had brought his whip into the linhay, with some notion of using it, and of drawing the girl's blood, as he had drawn it with the sprig of gorse at the beginning of his courtship. But inside the dreary foul-smelling place his feelings changed. Possibly it was because he was out of the wild wind, sheltered from it by the cracked cob walls, or perhaps he felt himself in chapel; for when he took hold of Thomasine and pulled her to him he felt nothing but tenderness, and the desire in him then was not to punish, nor even to rebuke her, but to preach, to tell her something of the love of God, to point out to her how wicked she had been to yield to him, and how certain was the doom which would come upon her for doing so. These feelings also passed when he had the girl in his arms, feeling her soft neck, her big lips, her hot blood-filled cheeks, and her knees trembling against his. For the time passion went away and Pendoggat was a lover; a weak and foolish being, intoxicated by that which has always been to mankind, and always must be, what the fragrance of the lime-blossom is to the bee. Even Pendoggat had that something in him which theologians say was made in heaven, or at least outside this earth; and he was to know in that dirty linhay, with moisture around and dung below, the best and tenderest moments of his life. He was to enter, if only for once, that wonderful land of perennial spring flowers where Boodles and Aubrey wandered, reading their fairy-tales in each other's eyes.
"Been here long, my jewel?" he said, caressing her.
Thomasine could see nothing except a sort of suggestion of cobwebby breath and the outline of a man's head; but she could hear and feel; and these faculties were sharpened by the absence of vision. She did not know who the man was. Pendoggat had galloped up to the linhay, Pendoggat had entered and seized her, and then had disappeared to make way for some one else. He had, as it were, pushed young Pugsley into her arms and left them alone together, only her old sweetheart had never caressed her in that way, with a devotional fondness and a kind of religious touch. Pugsley's courtship had been more in the nature of a duty. If she had been his goddess he had worshipped her in a Protestant manner, with rather the attitude of an agnostic going to church because it was right and proper; but now she was receiving the full Catholic ritual of love, the flowers, incense, and religious warmth. This was all new to Thomasine, and it seemed to awaken something in her, some chord of tenderness which had never been aroused before, some vague desire to give a life of attention and devotion to some one, to any one, who would reward her by holding her like that.
"Who be ye?" she murmured.
"The man who loves you, who has loved you ever since he put his eyes upon you," he answered. "I was angry with you, my beautiful strong girl. You went off with that young fellow at the fair when I'd told you not to. He's not for you, my precious. You are mine, and I am going to have you, and keep you, and bite the life out of you if you torment me. Your mouth's as hot as fire, and your body pricks me like a furze-bush. Throw your arms around me and hold on—hold on as tight as the devil holds us, and let me love you like God loves."
He buried his lips in her neck, and bit her like a dog playing with a rabbit.
"I waited on the bridge all day," faltered Thomasine, merely making the statement, not venturing a reproof. She wanted to go on, and explain how young Pugsley had forced himself upon her and compelled her to go with him, only she could not find the words.
"I couldn't get away from Annie. She stuck to me like a pin," he muttered. "I'm going to get away from her this winter, leave her, go off with you somewhere, anywhere, get off Dartmoor and go where you like. Heaven or hell, it's the same to me, if I've got you."
This was all strange language to Thomasine. Passion she comprehended, but the poetry and romance of love, even in the wild and distorted form in which it was being presented, were beyond her. She could not understand the real meaning of the awakening of that tenderness in her, which was the womanhood trying to respond, and to make her, like Boodles, a creature of love, but failing because it could not get through the mass of flesh and ignorance, just as the seed too deeply planted can only struggle, but must fail, to grow into the light. She felt it would be pleasant to go away with Pendoggat if he was going to love her like that. She would be something of a lady; have a servant under her, perhaps. Thomasine was actually thinking. She would have a parlour to keep locked up; be the equal of the Chegwiddens; far above the village cobbler her father, and nearly as good as the idol-maker of Birmingham. That Pendoggat loved her was certain. He would not have lost his senses and behaved as he had done if he did not love her. Thomasine, like most young women, believed as much as she wanted to, believed that men are as good as their word, and that love and brute passion are synonymous terms. Once upon a time she had been taught how to read, write, and reckon; and she had forgotten most of that. She had not been taught that love is like the flower of the Agave: rare, and not always once in a lifetime; that passion is a wayside weed everywhere. Perhaps if she had been taught that she would not have forgotten.
"We'll go away soon, my jewel," Pendoggat whispered. "Annie is not my wife—you know that. I can leave her any day. My time at the Barton is up in March, but we'll go before then."
"Don't this old place smell mucky?" was all Thomasine had to say.
They climbed up the ladder, and sat on the musty fern, which had made a bed for Brightly and his bitch, and Pendoggat continued his pleasant ways. He was in a curious state of happiness, still believing he was with the woman that he loved. The walls of the linhay continued to be the walls of Ebenezer and a shelter against the wind. They embraced and sang a hymn, but softly, lest any chance passer-by should overhear and discover them. Pendoggat knelt upon the fern and prayed aloud for their future happiness, speaking from his heart and meaning what he said. Thomasine was as happy as the fatted calf which knows nothing of its fate. It was on the whole the most successful of her evenings out. She was going to be a respectable married woman after all. Pendoggat had sworn it in his prayer. He could do as he liked with her after that, now that she was his in the sight of Heaven. The dirty linhay was a chapel, and a place of love where they were married in word and deed.
Farmer Chegwidden came thundering home from Brentor, flung across his horse like a sack of meal, and almost as helpless. He crossed the railway by the bridge, and his horse began to plunge over the boggy slope of the moor. It was darker, the clouds were hurrying, and the wind was a gale upon the rider's side as he galloped for the abandoned mines, clinging tighter. His horse knew what Thursday-night duty meant. He knew he had to gallop direct for Town Rising with a drunken man upon his back, and that he must not stumble more than he could help. There was no question as to which was the finer animal of the two. They crossed Gibbet Hill, down towards the road above St. Mary Tavy about two hundred yards above the linhay; and there the more intelligent animal swerved to the right, to avoid some posts and a gravel-pit which he could not see but knew were there; but as they came down the lower animal struck his superior savagely upon the ear to assert his manhood, and the horse, in starting aside, stumbled upon a ridge of peat, came to his knees, and Farmer Chegwidden dived across the road with a flourish that an acrobat might have envied.
These gymnastics were no new thing, but the farmer had been lucky hitherto and had generally alighted upon his hands. On this occasion his shoulder and the side of his head were the first to touch ground, and he was stunned. The horse, seeing that he could do nothing more, sensibly trotted off towards his stable, and Farmer Chegwidden lay in a heap upon the road after the manner of the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves.
There was no good Samaritan about that part of Dartmoor; or, if there was one, he was not taking a walk abroad with the idea of practising his virtues. There was, indeed, no reason why any one should pass that way before morning, as people who live in lonely places require no curfew to send them under cover, and the night was wild with the first big wind of autumn. Still some one did come that way, not a Levite to cross over to the other side, but Peter, to take a keen interest in the prostrate form. Peter had been into the village, like a foolish virgin, to seek oil, and new lamps to put it in. All attempts to install the electric light had continued to prove that there was still something in the science which he had failed to master; and as the evenings were getting long, and the light afforded by the lantern was quite inadequate, Mary had sent him into the village to buy their old lamps back. Mother Cobley the shopwoman said she had sold them, which was not true, but she naturally desired to make Peter purchase new lamps. He had done so under compulsion, and was returning with a lamp under each arm and a bottle of oil in his pocket, somewhat late, as an important engagement at the inn had detained him, when he stumbled across Farmer Chegwidden. He placed his purchases upon the road, then drew near to examine the body closely.
"He'm a dead corpse sure 'nuff," said Peter. "Who be ye?" he shouted.
As there was neither reply nor movement the only course was to apply a test to ascertain whether the man was living or dead. The method which suggested itself to Peter was to apply his boot, and this he did, with considerable energy, but without success. Then he reviled the body; but that too was useless.
"Get up, man! Why don't ye get up?" he shouted.
There was no response, so Peter began to kick again; and when the figure refused to be reanimated by such treatment he lost his temper at so much obstinacy and went on shouting: "Get up, man! Wun't ye get up? To hell, man! Why don't ye get up?"
It did not appear to occur to Peter that the man could not get up.
The next course was the very obvious one of securing those good things which the gods had provided. Farmer Chegwidden had not much money left in his pockets, but Peter discovered it was almost enough to pay for the new lamps. Mary had advanced the money for them, so what Peter gained through the farmer's misfortune was all profit. Then he picked up his lamps, and hurried back to the village to lodge the information of the "dead corpse lying up on Dartmoor" in the proper quarter.
He had not been gone long when Pendoggat rode up. Thomasine had hurried back to Town Rising by the "lower town," afraid to cross by the moor in that wind. He too discovered the farmer, or rather his horse did; and he too refused to pass by on the other side. Dismounting, he knelt and struck a match. The wind blew it out at once, but the sudden flash showed him the man's face. Chegwidden was breathing heavily, a fact which Peter had omitted to notice.
"Dead drunk! He can bide there," muttered Pendoggat.
He got upon his horse and rode on. As he crossed the brow, and reached a point where there was nothing to break the strength of the wind, he pulled his horse round, hesitated a moment, then cantered back. The wind was in his lungs and in his nostrils, and he was himself again, a strong man, not a weak creature in love with a farm-wench, not a singer of hymns nor a preacher of sermons, but a hungry animal to whom power had been given over weak and lesser beings of the earth.
He knelt at Chegwidden's side, and tore the clothes off him until he had stripped him naked. He dragged the body to the side of the road and toppled it into the gorse. The clothes he rolled up, took with him, and higher up flung into an old mine-shaft. Then he rode on his way, shouting, fighting with the wind.