“You have heard tell about the Lady?”
I had. The Lady is a little piece of white feldspar in a cliff that rises out of the sea, with a shelf before it, and this piece of quartz or feldspar bears a singular resemblance to the shape of a woman draped in white. Whenever the fishermen return with their trawls, they cast a few of the mackerel or herring they have caught on to the shelf before the White Lady, and, unless this be done, this oblation made, ill-luck will attend the fishermen on their next expedition; their nets will be caught and torn as by invisible hands in the deep, or no fish will enter the seines, or, worse still, the boat will capsize and possibly the fishermen on board will be drowned. The Dead Man’s Rock is another portion of cliff nearly horizontal, sometimes washed by the waves, and on this lies a mass of the same white spar, bearing something approaching the form of a corpse. But it demands more fancy to distinguish the corpse than the Lady.
“I will tell you the whole story, sir,” said Mary. “My husband, Thomas Trembath, was a fine standing-up man as you’d see anywhere. He was a fisherman, and a daring fellow. I don’t say he did not do a bit of smuggling now and then, but, lor’, sir! they all did, and if they didn’t, more shame to them, with their opportunities. Well, sir, I don’t say he was a Free-thinker, because he wasn’t, but he was a sort of no-thinker—no ways, if you can understand me. Well then, one day, as they was coming in after there had been a shoal, there was a lot of boats out that day, and as the boats went by, all the cap’ns threw a few whiting on to the ledge afore the Lady. But my Thomas he was a daring unconsiderate chap, and they’d caught a young dog-fish that day—the fishermen sometimes bring ’em home and gets a few pence by showing ’em, for they’re terrible mischievous beasts, and eat a lot of mackerel and whiting and just anything they can. Well, sir, will you believe it, when Thomas comes alongside of the Lady Rock, what did he do, in a fit o’ daring, but heave the dog-fish on to the shelf afore her!”
Mary paused and looked at me, expecting me to appear aghast at such an outrage.
“The other men, they was astounded and afraid after that—no man would go in the boat with him. And next time he wanted to go, they shook their heads, and said they weren’t going to court ill-luck. So Thomas—he was that reckless and regardless—he said he would go alone. And go alone he did. There was no wind and the sea was smooth—but he never came back. I reckon he alone couldn’t manage the boat and something went wrong. What it was I can’t tell—but he never came back. That’s what followed chucking of a dog-fish at the White Lady.”
After her husband’s death, Mary took to peddling. She was a middle-aged woman when I knew her, stoutly built, broad shouldered, with a hale and ruddy face; she wore short skirts, a man’s long greatcoat over her back, and a man’s hat on her head. Slung across her shoulder by a strap was a case that contained needles, thread, pins, and tape. She carried a staff, some four feet long, in her hand, not of bamboo but of ash, and she strode along the roads faster than a horse could walk.
There was not a farm, not a cottage within miles around, in which Mary was not known, and where she did not do business.
How she picked up a living on the things she sold was a marvel to me. The profits on each item can have been only small, and the amount of country she travelled over to sell these little articles was so great, that she must have worn out much shoe-leather.
She was abroad in all weathers and at all hours.
I said to her one day: “Why, Mary, are not you afraid in the lone lanes, at night?”