Читать книгу Kitty Alone - Baring-Gould Sabine - Страница 6

Table of Contents

Pasco Pepperill was a man slow, heavy, and apparently phlegmatic, and he was married to a woman full of energy, and excitable.

Pasco had inherited Coombe Cellars from his father; he had been looked upon as the greatest catch among the young men of the neighbourhood. It was expected that he would marry well. He had married well, but not exactly in the manner anticipated. Coombe Cellars was a centre of many activities; it was a sort of inn--at all events a place to which water parties came to picnic; it was a farm and a place of merchandise. Pasco had chosen as his wife Zerah Quarm, a publican’s daughter, with, indeed, a small sum of money of her own, but with what was to him of far more advantage, a clear, organising head. She was a scrupulously tidy woman, a woman who did everything by system, who had her own interest or that of the house ever in view, and would never waste a farthing.

Had the threads of the business been placed in Zerah’s hands, she would have managed all, made money in every department, and kept the affairs of each to itself in her own orderly brain.

But Pepperill did not trust her with the management of his wool, coal, grain, straw and hay business. “Feed the pigs, keep poultry, attend to the guests, make tea, boil cockles--that’s what you are here for, Zerah,” said Pepperill; “all the rest is my affair, and with that you do not meddle.”

The pigs became fat, the poultry laid eggs, visitors came in quantities; Zerah’s rashers, tea, cockles were relished and were paid for. Zerah had always a profit to show for her small outlay and much labour.

She resented that she was not allowed an insight into her husband’s business; he kept his books to himself, and she mistrusted his ability to balance his accounts. When she discovered that he had disposed of the greater portion of his land, then her indignation was unbounded. It was but too clear that he was going on the high road to ruin, by undertaking businesses for which he was not naturally competent; that by having too many irons in the fire he was spoiling all.

Zerah waited, in bitterness of heart, expecting her husband to explain to her his motives for parting with his land; he had not even deigned to inform her that he had sold it.

She flew at him, at length, with all the vehemence of her character, and poured forth a torrent of angry recrimination. Pasco put his hands into his pockets, looked wonderingly at her out of his great water-blue eyes, spun round like a teetotum, and left the house.

Zerah became conscious, as she cooled, that she had gone too far, that she had used expressions that were irritating and insulting, and which were unjustifiable. On the other hand, Pasco was conscious that he had not behaved rightly towards his wife, not only in not consulting her about the sale, but in not even telling her of it when it was accomplished.

Neither would confess wrong, but after this outbreak Zerah became gentle, and Pasco allowed some sort of self-justification to escape him. He had met with a severe loss, and was obliged to find ready money. Moreover, the farm and the business could not well be carried on simultaneously, one detracted from the other. Henceforth his whole attention would be devoted to commercial transactions.

To some extent the sharpness of Zerah’s indignation was blunted by the consciousness that her own brother, Jason, was Pasco’s most trusted adviser; that if he had met with losses, it was due to the injudicious speculations into which he had been thrust by Jason.

The governing feature of Pasco was inordinate self-esteem. He believed himself to be intellectually superior to everyone else in the parish, and affected to despise the farmers, because they did not mix with the world, had not their fingers on its arteries like the commercial man. He was proud of his position, proud of his means, and proud of the respect with which he was treated, and which he demanded of everyone. He valued his wife’s good qualities, and bragged of them. According to him, his business was extensive, and conducted with the most brilliant success. For many years one great object of pride with him had been his only child--a daughter, Wilmot. As a baby, no child had ever before been born with so much hair. No infant was ever known to cut its teeth with greater ease. No little girl was more amiable, more beautiful; the intelligence the child exhibited was preternatural. When, in course of time, Wilmot grew into a really pretty girl, with very taking if somewhat forward manners, the exultation of the father knew no bounds. Nor was her mother, Zerah, less devoted to the child; and for a long period Wilmot was the bond between husband and wife, the one topic on which they thought alike, the one object over which they were equally hopeful, ambitious, and proud. Jason, left a widower with one daughter, Katherine, had placed the child with his sister. He had a cottage of his own, small, rarely occupied, as he rambled over the country, looking out for opportunities of picking up money. He had not married again, he had engaged no housekeeper; his daughter was an encumbrance, and had, therefore, been sent to Coombe Cellars, where she was brought up as a companion and foil to Wilmot. Suddenly the beloved child of the Pepperills died, and the hearts of the parents were desolate. That of Zerah became bitter and resentful. Pasco veiled his grief under his phlegm, and made of the funeral a demonstration that might solace his pride. After that he spoke of the numbers who had attended, of the great emotion displayed, of the cost of the funeral, of the entertainment given to the mourners, of the number of black gloves paid for, as something for which he could be thankful and proud. It really was worth having had a daughter whose funeral had cost sixty pounds, and at which the church of Coombe-in-Teignhead had been crammed.

The great link that for fifteen years had held Zerah and Pasco together was broken. They had never really become one, though over their child they had almost become so. The loss of the one object on whom Zerah had set her heart made her more sensitive to annoyance, more inclined to find fault with her husband. Yet it cannot be said that they did not strive to be one in heart; each avoided much that was certain to annoy the other, refrained from doing before the other what was distasteful to the consort; indeed, each went somewhat out of the way to oblige the other, but always with a clumsiness and lack of grace which robbed the transaction of its worth.

Kate had been set back whilst her cousin lived. Nominally the companion, the playfellow of Wilmot, she had actually been her slave, her plaything. Whatever Wilmot had done was regarded as right by her father and mother, and in any difference that took place between the cousins, Kate was invariably pronounced to have been in the wrong, and was forced to yield to Wilmot. The child soon found that no remonstrances of hers were listened to, even when addressed to her father. He had other matters to occupy him than settling differences between children. It was not his place to interfere between the niece and her aunt, for, if the aunt refused to be troubled with her, what could he do with Kate, where dispose her?

Kate had not been long out of the room before her father and uncle also left, that they might talk at their ease, without the intervention of Zerah.

Kate had gone with her knitting to the little stage above the water, and was seated on the wall looking down on the flowing tide that now filled the estuary. Hither also came the two men, and seated themselves at the table, without taking any notice of her.

Kate had been studying the water as it flowed in, covering the mud flats, rising inch by inch over the refuse mass below the platform, and was now washing the roots of the herbage that fringed the bank.

So full was her mind, full, as though in it also the tide had been rising, that, contrary to her wont, she broke silence when the men appeared, and said, “Father! uncle! what makes the tide come and go?”

“The tide comes to bring up the coal-barges, and to carry ’em away with straw,” answered Pasco.

“But, uncle, why does it come and go?”

Pepperill shrugged his shoulders, and vouchsafed no further answer.

“Look there,” said Jason, pointing to an orchard that stretched along the margin of the flood, and which was dense with daffodils. “Look there, Pasco, there is an opportunity let slide.”

“I couldn’t help it. I sold that orchard. I wanted to concentrate--concentrate efforts,” said Pasco.

“I don’t allude to that,” said Quarm. “But as I’ve been through the lanes this March, looking at the orchards and meadows a-blazing with Lent lilies, I’ve had a notion come to me.”

“Them darned daffodils are good for naught.”

“There you are wrong, Pasco. Nothing is good for naught. What we fellows with heads have to do is to find how we may make money out of what to stupids is good for naught.”

“They are beastly things. The cattle won’t touch ’em.”

“But Christians will, and will pay for them. I know that you can sell daffodils in London or Birmingham or Bristol, at a penny a piece.”

“That’s right enough, but London, Birmingham, and Bristol are a long way off.”

“You are right there, and as long as this blundering atmospheric line runs we can do nothing. But wait a bit, Pasco, and we shall have steam-power on our South Devon line, and we must be prepared to seize the occasion. I have been reckoning we could pack two hundred and fifty daffodils easily without crushing in a maund. Say the cost of picking be a penny a hundred, and the wear and tear of the hamper another penny, and the carriage come to ninepence, and the profits to the sellers one and eleven-pence ha’penny, that makes three shillings; sold at a penny apiece it is twenty shillings--profit, seventeen and ten; strike off ten for damaged daffies as won’t sell. How many thousand daffodils do you suppose you could get out of that orchard and one or two more nests of these flowers? Twenty-five thousand? A profit of seventeen shillings on two hundred and fifty makes sixty-eight shillings a thousand. Twenty times that is sixty-eight pounds--all got out of daffodils--beastly daffies.”

“Of course,” said Pasco, “I was speaking of them as they are, not as what they might be.”

“Look there,” said Jason, pointing over the glittering flood, “look at the gulls, tens of hundreds of ’em, and no one gives them a thought.”

“They ain’t fit to eat,” observed Pasco. “Dirty creeturs.”

“No, they ain’t, and so no one shoots them. Wait a bit. Trust me. I’ll go up to London and talk it over with a great milliner or dressmaker, and have a fashion brought in. Waistcoats for ladies in winter of gulls’ breasts. They will be more beautiful than satin and warmer than sealskin. It is only for the fashion to be put on wheels and it will run of itself. There is reason, there is convenience, there is beauty in it. How many gulls can we kill? I reckon we can sweep the mouth of the Teign clear of them, and get ten thousand, and if we sell their breasts at five shillings apiece, that is, twenty-five pounds a hundred, and ten thousand makes just two thousand five hundred pounds out of gulls--dirty creeturs!”

“Of course, I said that at present they are no good; not fit to eat. What they may become is another matter.”

Quarm said nothing for a while. His restless eye wandered over the landscape, already green, though the month was March, for the rich red soil under the soft airs from the sea, laden with moisture, grows grass throughout the year. No frosts parch that herbage whose brilliance is set forth by contrast with the Indian-red rocks and soil. The sky was of translucent blue, and in the evening light the inflowing sea, with the slant rays piercing it, was of emerald hue.

“Dear! dear! dear!” sighed Quarm; “will the time ever come, think you, old fellow, that we shall be able to make some use of the sea and sky--capitalise ’em, eh? Squeeze the blue out of the firmament, and extract the green out of the ocean, and use ’em as patent dyes. Wouldn’t there be a run on the colours for ladies’ dresses! What’s the good of all that amount of dye in both where they are? Sheer waste! sheer waste! Now, if we could turn them into money, there’d be some good in them.”

Jason stood up, stretched his arms, and straightened, as far as possible, his crippled leg. Then he hobbled over to the low wall on which his daughter was seated, looking away at the emerald sea, the banks of green shot with golden daffodil, and overarched with the intense blue of the sky, clapped her on the back, and when with a start she turned--

“Hallo, Kate! What, tears! why crying?”

“Oh, father! I hate money.”

“Money! what else is worth living for?”

“Oh, father, will you mow down the daffodils, and shoot down the gulls, and take everything beautiful out of sea and sky? I hate money--you will spoil everything for that.”

“You little fool, Kitty Alone. Not love money? Alone in that among all men and women. A fool in that as in all else, Kitty Alone.”

Then up came Zerah in excitement, and said in loud, harsh tones, “Who is to go after Jan Pooke? Where is Gale? The train is due in ten minutes.”

“I have sent Roger Gale after some hides,” said Pasco.

“We have undertaken to ferry Jan Pooke across, and he arrives by the train just due. Who is to go?”

“Not I,” said Pepperill. “I’m busy, Zerah, engaged on commercial matters with Quarm. Besides, I’m too big a man, of too much consequence to ferry a fare. I keep a boat, but am not a boatman.”

“Then Kate must go for him. Kate, look smart; ferry across at once, and wait at the hard till Jan Pooke arrives by the 6.10. He has been to Exeter, and I promised that the boat should meet him on his return at the Bishop’s Teignton landing.”

The girl rose without a word.

“She is not quite up to that?” said her father, with question in his tone.

“Bless you, she’s done it scores of times. We don’t keep her here to eat, and dress, and be idle.”

“But suppose--and the wind is bitter cold.”

“Some one must go,” said Zerah. “Look sharp, Kate.”

“Alone?”

“Of course. The man is away. She can row. Kitty must go alone.”