Читать книгу The Mystery of Fell Castle - Arthur Gask - Страница 3

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UP to the very early years of this century, of all places in England, the little inland villages had been least affected by the noisy march of progress. Along the preceding hundred years the habits of their inhabitants had changed very slowly and their ways and customs crept on with leaden feet. The villagers took life easily and for the most part remained rooted to the places where they had been born.

They travelled little, and with most of them their horizon was bounded by the neighbouring market town. Strangely enough, whole districts in many parts of the straggling county of Essex, whose western borders creep up close to the smoke and grime of the great metropolis, were remaining more primitive than districts much farther away.

Even living as close as twenty and thirty miles of London as the crow fifes, in those days many old people could be found there who had never been up to the city, and many, many more of them who had never seen the sea. As for countries abroad and even nearby France, they thought of them only as places they had learnt about in their geography lesson at the village school, and as being almost as remote as if they had no real existence at all.

Except for the ponderous steam-roller, not many mechanically impelled contrivances were seen then upon any but the main roads, for the private motor-car was only just coming to be regarded as something more than a luxury of the wealthy classes, and pleasure travelling motorists avoided the by-roads because of their execrable quality and being either ankle deep in dust or mud, according to the season.

So private motor-cars were still a novelty in the outlying villages; public ones were as yet quite unknown, except for a few motor omnibuses, running only in big cities, where they were still an object of ridicule and derision because of their continual breaking down.

Picture palaces had not come into existence, and generally speaking there was not much inducement for the village folks to travel into towns. From one generation to another, therefore, their interests were centred all about where they lived.

Children were born in the same old cottages where their fathers and grandfathers had been born before them, and their little feet trod the same paths and narrow lanes as their forbears—whose dust now lay in the village churchyard—had done. Upon the same stiles where their parents had sat and courted, they sat and kissed, too, with their love-stories no doubt every bit as wonderful as any of those of their ancestors had been.

In the main, the dwellers in these little villages were quite contented with their lot for, if they earned little, their money yet went quite a long way. A two-pound loaf could be bought for tuppence-ha'penny, excellent tea was a shilling a pound, a pint of good strong ale cost tuppence, and tobacco was from threepence to fourpence an ounce.

The children, too, shared in the general cheapness of everything, and at the village little general shop, of such happy-smelling memory in after years, sweets could be bought by the farthing's worth, or two long, fat sugar-sticks or sixteen big, luscious-looking brandy balls obtained for a penny.

With these conditions prevailing, the labouring man upon eighteen or nineteen shillings a week could live quite comfortably. The rent of the cottage was probably only eighteen-pence a week and, with the produce of his little garden, plus a bit of poaching, he could bring up a family of ten or eleven children, sturdy, strong-looking boys and rosy-cheeked, plump, full-bosomed girls.

One such village as I am picturing, White Easter, lay in the Essex Rodings, in the heart of a district enclosed by the towns of Chipping Ongar, Great Dunmow and Chelmsford. It was seven miles from a railway station and contained only one good-sized house, the Vicarage. The church was nearly eight hundred years old and the living, as so often happens even in the smaller country villages, was a good one, being worth nearly £700 a year. The Vicar was an absent-minded old gentleman well over seventy. He had been an Oxford Don and the living had been presented to him as a reward for long services to his University.

White Easter had a population of about a hundred and sixty, with all the men being either hands on neighbouring farms or working on the roads. Living in such conditions, their outlook on things generally was necessarily a very constricted one. Everyone knew everyone else's business and the main topics of conversation were what their neighbours were doing, the price of pigs and cows, and the begetting of all forms of life. Insignificant little happenings interested them hugely.

For example, one Sunday the Vicar was very surprised at the large congregation at one of the services. It was only an ordinary service to be followed by a christening, but to his great gratification all the village appeared to be present. He referred to it that night at supper to his elderly and rather sour-looking maiden sister who kept house for him, remarking that he should certainly write to the Bishop and tell him it seemed a great revival in religion was coming.

"Don't you do anything so foolish," snapped his sister. "I'm sure one day you'll be making yourself ridiculous." Her eyes flashed. "I think all those people being there this afternoon was simply scandalous!"

"My dear, my dear," exclaimed the Vicar, most astonished at her outburst, "how can a good attendance at church be scandalous?"

"Well, it was this time," she went on acidly. "Don't you realise that they came only for the christening of that Tomkin woman's baby?" She spoke scathingly. "If you hadn't such a shocking memory, Augustine, you would have remembered you had only married the parents of the child a bare three months ago."

"So I did, so I did!" exclaimed the old Vicar, looking very crestfallen. "I had forgotten that."

"Yes," added his sister, "and you made things much worse by what you said to them. You held them up as an example for following the Scriptural injunction of being fruitful and multiplying." She nodded viciously. "I saw several people tittering and they won't get any coal, because of it, at Christmas."

With this lively interest in all the happenings of their little world, it can be readily understood what a thrill went through the village when it was found out that Ben Martin and his wife, Jane, had got a stranger, a young woman, staying with them on their farm and were, apparently, not wanting to tell anyone about her.

Ben's farm was quite a good-sized one for the district, comprising as it did, about a hundred and fifty acres, and it lay a mile and more distant from the village. He worked it ail himself and never employed any labour. A childless elderly couple, and of a decidedly superior class to the ordinary villagers, the Martins had come to White Easter some seven or eight years previously but, keeping themselves very much to themselves, very little was known of their histories or private affairs.

It was rumoured, however, though no one knew how the rumour had first arisen, that Mrs. Martin in her younger days had been in the service of some noble family and it was from a legacy which had been left her that her husband had been able to establish himself upon such a good farm.

The villagers were most annoyed they did not know when the stranger had arrived, and were certain she must have come secretly, because no one had noticed Martin's dog-cart, his only conveyance, passing down the village road. So she must have come either late at night, when everyone was in bed, or else have been brought by way of some of the by-roads, quite a couple of miles farther round from any of the railway stations.

It was the postwoman who caught sight of her first. She was delivering one of the rare letters the Martins received and, walking up the short path which led to the house, was surprised to catch sight of someone she did not know. It was quite a young woman she saw in the little garden by the side of the house. She called out "good morning," but the stranger took no notice of her greeting and disappeared quickly out of sight round the back of the house.

She did not get a good view of her face, but described her later in the village as being tall, elegant-looking and smartly dressed. Everyone wondered whom she could be, as the Martins, in all the years they had been there, had never been known to have a visitor before.

The next person to see her was Teddy Nicholls, a lout of a young fellow in the late teens, who had gone after a straying cow in one of the by-lanes. His description of her was that she looked "a toff." As with the postwoman, though he passed close by her and she returned his "good day," he did not see much of her face, because she was wearing a dark veil.

It was some days before Mrs. Martin came into the village, and then the woman who kept the little shop, knowing everyone would be expecting her to find out all she could, ventured to remark:

"So you've got a visitor staying with you, Mrs. Martin?"

Mrs. Martin nodded. "Yes, a niece of mine. She's just recovered from a bad illness and has come to me for perfect quiet and rest until she's quite strong again."

In the ensuing weeks several people caught sight of the stranger, but nearly always in the distance upon the fields of Martin's farm, as she never took her walks anywhere near the village. One day, however, Sarah Bates, whose husband worked on the roads, came face to face with her in a little lane by the Martins' farm. Sarah was thrilled, though the encounter in a way was a most unsatisfactory one. Again, hardly anything of the woman's face could be seen because of the veil, but she returned Sarah's "good afternoon" in what the latter said was a swell voice. She was reported as wearing a very pretty hat, a loose coat of good material and very expensive-looking tan shoes with high heels.

"She's no relation of Janet Martin," scoffed Sarah that night to her cronies. "She's a real lady, she is, and what she's doing up there I don't know. What she'd got on must have cost a pretty penny and though she spoke to me quite pleasant-like, you could tell she thought she was somebody."

So Mrs. Martin's visitor became known as the mysterious lady and any news about her was good gossip. Everyone was most disappointed she received no letters, as they had all been hoping to learn her name in that way.

The Vicar's sister heard about her through one of the maids and thought it her duty to call upon Mrs. Martin and see if she could be of any help. She came away, however, very disgusted, and most annoyed that Mrs. Martin was not one of those who received coal at Christmas so that it could be cut out.

She had not been allowed to meet the stranger and, more than that, had been told quite curtly that the latter would not be able to see her later on. By doctor's orders she was to have no visitors at all.

All this, by way of the Vicarage maids, went round the village and, as can be easily imagined, the interest in the Martins' guest lost nothing in consequence. That there was some mystery, everyone was certain.

So things went on for several months and then, suddenly, light came and the village was smacking its lips over one of the tastiest little bits of scandal that in all its history it had ever picked up.

The discovery came in this way.

One Sunday Tom Butters, a middle-aged farm-hand of decidedly bibulous propensities, when he was able to rattle a few coppers in his pocket in the little village inn, was engaged in his usual Sabbath morning occupation of trying to poach a nice fat rabbit. He was trespassing on the property of Squire Bannister of the adjoining Parish of Black Easter.

The squire's land ended in a small coppice of trees circling the top of a small disused lime quarry which was on Ben Martin's land. Tommy felt pretty safe he would not be caught, because the squire was a regular attendant at church and not likely to be anywhere about at that time of a Sunday morning.

For all that, however, he had brought one of his boys with him and posted him just outside the coppice to give notice of anyone's approach. Then, taking a vicious-looking ferret out of his pocket and three or four nets out of another, he proceeded to business. Almost at once he had good luck, for two nice rabbits came bolting into the nets.

They were all Tom wanted, for he could not stow away more than two upon his person and pass inspection if by any chance he met the village constable, when going home. So the ferret and nets were returned to their respective pockets and, with the rabbits buttoned up tightly under his jacket, he was all ready to get out of danger.

Walking, however, through the small trees to get back to his waiting son, he came quite close to the top of the quarry and, happening to look down over the side, to his great astonishment saw there was a strange woman there. She was evidently an artist, for she was standing before a small canvas resting upon an easel. She must, he thought, be painting a gnarled willow by the quarryside. She was tall and very good-looking, and, though not exactly a girl, was yet he reckoned well under thirty.

For a few moments he did not realise his good fortune, but then, with a gasp of astonishment, he flattened himself down so that he should not be seen.

He, Tom Butters, was having a close up view of the mysterious lady of Ben Martin's farm!

With his breath coming quickly, he watched her. Oh, what a story to tell his wife! What a feather in his cap it would be that he had seen her without her veil! Then suddenly he gave a low whistle and a broad grin spread over his face. He would have more to tell than that he had seen the stranger!

Returning to his cottage with all haste, after telling Maggy, his wife, what had happened, he whispered something more in her ear. It was not so much because certain of his nine children were of tender age and supposed to be ignorant of the great secret of life that he whispered, but just because he wanted to accentuate the importance of the information he was imparting.

He was not disappointed. His wife was thrilled. "My," she exclaimed delightedly, "and we none of us thought of that!"

"And so she's a Mrs," he nodded, "and not a Miss as we all imagined."

She looked at him scornfully. "But you be a great gaby, Tom," she said. "She be a Miss right enough, and that's what she came down here for, all on the quiet and so that no one should see her."

Within half an hour all the village had heard the news and Maggy Butters's little bit of front garden was thronged with visitors. Later, quite a number of middle-aged and elderly women took an unaccustomed Sunday afternoon's walk up and down the lanes in the vicinity of Ben Martin's farm. They met with no reward, however, and Tom's triumph continued to be an undiluted one. When the village inn opened that evening he was the hero of the hour until closing time, and over and over again was called upon to relate what he had seen. His wife, too, was entertaining in their little cottage until quite a late and unaccustomed hour.

Maggy Butters, in her way, was a shrewd woman and, tasting popularity for the first time, was not minded it should wane. So, telling herself that if the Martins' mysterious visitor had gone to paint in the quarry on that Sunday morning, then it was highly probable she would go there again, perhaps every day, so she hit upon a plan to keep the fires of excitement burning. She thought at once of a cousin in London, a boot repairer in Shoreditch who in his spare time took snapshots with his camera.

So the next day she wrote to him to come down on his bicycle early the following Sunday morning and bring the camera with him. She promised a couple of nice rabbits or perhaps even a plump partridge as his reward.

The cousin duly arrived, and being told he was to hide above the quarry and take a snap of the artist below, delightedly entered into the spirit of the adventure.

"I'll get half a dozen snaps," he grinned, "so that one of them at least will show us what we want."

To Tom's great sorrow, he was not able to go with him as he had ricked his ankle and was having to lay up for a day or two. His boy, however, would show the cousin where to go. The latter was thrilled that he would be trespassing upon some "rich toff's" land and boasted what a fierce fight he would put up if anyone, squire or no squire, tried to lay hands upon him.

He was not, however, interfered with and apparently his mission was quite successful. He saw the woman with her easel and got six good snaps.

"But I was lucky," he said upon his return to the cottage. "Another two minutes and I should have missed her, as she'd evidently just finished painting and come to take away her things, a big box, an easel and a deck-chair. They looked a good load, I can tell you."

"She's a fine-looking gal, ain't she?" grinned Tom.

"Not bad," replied the cousin, "but not as young or tasty as I thought from what you said she would be." He winked knowingly. "But things are as you thought they were. There's no doubt about that."

The coming of the snaps was awaited eagerly and when they arrived towards the end of the week Maggy Butters's hands trembled so violently that she could hardly open the envelope. Then, when she took out the snaps, she received a terrible shock, for instead of them being of some good-looking and aristocratic lady, they were those of Janet Martin! 'Plain Janet' Martin with her homely features and a form as flat as a washing board! Poor Maggy wept tears of vexation.

Time went on and the summer passed to its height, but all the villagers now saw of the Martins' visitor was a figure in the distance. Evidently, they thought, she knew she was attracting attention and so never took her walks in the lanes.

Then one day the village received a dreadful blow. Mrs. Martin was in the little village shop and the woman there enquired after the health of the visitor.

"Oh, my niece!" exclaimed Mrs. Martin. "Thank you, but she's quite well again now. She went home about three weeks ago," and the shopwoman was so bewildered and upset that she was sure afterwards she had charged her customer several pence less than she should have done.