Читать книгу Furze the Cruel - Trevena John - Страница 6

Table of Contents

"Coop, coop!" called Mary Tavy. "Cooey, cooey! Aw now, du'ye come, my dear. He be proper contrairy when he'm minded to," she cried to Farmer Chegwidden as she shook a gorse-bush, which was her shepherd's staff, towards a big goose waddling ahead of her in the path of its own selection, and spluttering and hissing like a damp firework.

"Did ever see such a goosie?" said Mary. "When I wants 'en to go one way he goes t'other. There he goes, down under, to Helmen Barton. If he lays his egg there they'll keep 'en, and say one of their fowls dropped 'en. He wun't come home till sundown. Contrairiest bird on Dartmoor be Old Sal."

"I don't hold wi' old geese," said Farmer Chegwidden. "They'm more trouble than they'm worth. When they gets old they'm artful."

"So be volks," said Mary. "Goosies be cruel human. Old Sal knows as much as we. He'm twenty-two years old. He lays an egg every month. He'm the best mother on Dartmoor, and Peter says he shan't die till he've a mind to." By her continued use of the masculine gender any one might have thought Mary was not quite convinced herself as to her goose's sex; but it was not so really. There is nothing feminine on Dartmoor except tom-cats.

Mary lived with brother Peter close to the edge of Tavy Cleave, a little way beyond Wapsworthy. There was a rough road from the village of St. Peter Tavy, passing round the foot of Lynch Tor, and ending in a bog half-a-mile further on. Ger Cottage—so named because the most prominent feature of the landscape was Ger, or Gurt, Tor—which was the home of the Tavys, the man and the woman, not the river, nor the cleave, nor the stannary town, nor the two villages of that ilk, appeared amid boulders and furze between the rough road and the gorge cut by the river. The cottage, or to be strictly accurate, the cottages, for Peter and Mary had separate apartments, which was quite right and proper, was, or were, in a situation which a house-agent would have been justified in describing as entirely detached. There was no other dwelling-place within a considerable distance. The windows looked out upon romantic scenery, which has been described in somewhat inflated language, six-syllabled adjectives, and mixed metaphors, as something absolute and unassailable; and has been compared to the Himalayas and Andes by excitable young people under commission to write a certain number of words for cheap guide-book purposes. However, the ravine of the Tavy is perhaps the finest thing of its kind on Dartmoor; and "gentle readers" who go abroad every winter have some reason to feel ashamed of themselves if they have not seen it.

When the New Zealander comes to explore England, he will, perhaps—if he is interested in such things—write letters to such newspapers as may have survived concerning the source of the Tavy. He will probably claim to have discovered some new source which the ignorant and vanished race of Anglo-Saxons never happened on. Most people will say that the Tavy rises at the south side of Cut Hill. Others, who do not wish to commit themselves, will make the safe statement that its source is upon Cranmere. As a matter of fact the Tavy would be a very wise river if it knew its own head. By the time it has assumed any individuality of its own and received its first titled tributary, which is the Rattle Brook, it has come through so many changes, and escaped from such a complicated maze of crevasses, that it would have to be provided with an Ariadne's clue to retrace its windings to its source. In the face of general opinion it seems likely that the Tavy begins its existence rather more than two miles north of its accredited source, at a spot close to Cranmere Pool, and almost within a stone's cast of the Dart. It would be impossible, however, to indicate any one particular fissure, with its sides of mud and dribble of slimy water, and declare that and none other was the river of Tavy in extreme and gurgling infancy.

There is no doubt about the Tavy by the time it has swallowed the Rattle Brook and a few streams of lesser importance, and has entered the cleave which it has carved through the granite by its own endless erosion. It is an exceedingly self-assertive river; passing down with a satisfied chuckle in the hot months, when the slabs of granite are like the floors of so many bakers' ovens; and in the winter roaring at Ger Tor, as though it would say, "I have cut through a thousand feet of granite since I began to trickle. I will cut through a thousand more before the sun gets cold." It is a noble little river, this shallow mountain stream, the proudest of all Dartmoor rivers. More romance has gathered around the Tavy than about all the other rivers in England put together, leaving out the Tamar. The sluggish Thames has no romance to compare with that of the Tavy. The Thames represents materialism with its pleasure-boats and glitter of wealth. It suggests big waistcoats and massive watch-chains. The Tavy stands for the spiritual side. Were the god of wine to stir the waters of each, the Thames would flow with beer; good beer possibly, but nothing better; while the Tavy would flow with champagne. The Tavy is the Rhine of England. It was beside the Tavy that fern-seed could be gathered, or the ointment obtained, which opened the eyes of mortals to the wonders of fairyland. It was on the banks of the Tavy that the pixies rewarded girls who behaved themselves—and pinched and nipped those who didn't. Beside the Tavy has grown the herb forget-me-not, which not only restored sight to the blind, but life also to the dead; and the marigold which, when touched early on certain mornings by the bare foot of the pure-minded, gave an understanding of the language of birds. Many legends current upon the big Rhine occur also beside the shallow Tavy. There are mining romances; tales of success, struggles, and failures, from the time of the Phoenicians; tales of battles for precious tin; tales of misery and torture and human agony. That is the dark side of the Tavy—the Tavy when it roars, and its waters are black and white, and there are glaciers down Ger Tor. The tiny Lyd runs near the Rattle Brook, the bloody little Lyd in which the torturers of the stannary prison cleansed their horrible hands. The Rattle Brook knew all about it, and took the story and some of the blood down to Father Tavy; and the Tavy roared on with the evidence, and dashed it upon the walls of Tavistock Abbey, where the monks were chanting psalms so noisily they couldn't possibly hear anything else. That was the way of the monks. Stannary Laws and Tavistock Abbey have gone, and nobody could wish for them back; but the Tavy goes on in the same old way. It is no longer polluted with the blood of tin-streamers, but merely with the unromantic and discarded boots of tramps. The copper-mines are a heap of "deads"; and Wheal Betsey lies in ruin; but the Tavy still brings trout to Tavistock, although there are no more monks to bother about Fridays; and it carries away battered saucepans and crockery for which the inhabitants have no further use. This attention on the part of the townsfolk is not respectful, when it is remembered that the Tavy brought their town into being, named it, and has supplied it always with pure water. It is like throwing refuse at one's godfather.

The Tavy is unhappily named, so is its brother the Taw—both being sons of Mother Cranmere—if it is true their names are derived the one from the Gaelic tav, the other from the Welsh taw. The root word is tam, which appears appropriately enough in Thames, and means placid and spreading. The Tavy and the Taw are anything but that. They are never placid, not even in the dog-days. They brawl more noisily than all the other rivers in Devon. Perhaps they were so named on the lucus a non lucendo principle; because it is so obvious they are not placid. The river Tavy has a good deal of property. Wherever it winds it has bestowed its name. The family of Tavy is a very ancient one. It was rich and important once, possessing a number of rights, many valuable mines, much romance, to say nothing of towns abbeys, and castles; but, like most old families, it has decayed, and its property is not worth much now. It possesses Tavy Cleave; the villages of St. Peter and St. Mary (they were twins, exceedingly healthy in their youth, but growing feeble now); Mount Tavy, which is of no importance; Tavystoc, the fortified place upon the Tavy, which has been turned into Tavistock and has become famous, not for its Abbey, nor for its great men, but solely and simply for its Goose Fair; and Mary and Peter Tavy, who were not made of cob, or granite, or water, or tin, or any of those other things which made the fortune of the Tavy family, but were two simple animals of the human race, children of the river out of that portion of Dartmoor which it owns, two ignorant beings who took life seriously enough and were like the heather and gorse which surrounded them. Evolution has accomplished such marvels that Peter and Mary may possibly have been lineally descended from antediluvian heather and gorse; or perhaps Nature had intended them for heather and gorse, and while making them had come across a couple of shop-soiled souls which were not of much use, and had stirred them into the mixture which, after a certain treatment only to be explained by a good deal of medical dog-Latin, resulted in Mary and Peter being brought forth as divine images upon the edge of Tavy Cleave.

Peter and Mary were savages, although they would have used strange language had any one called them so. They did not display their genealogical tree upon their cottage wall. Had they done so it would have shown, had it been accurate, that they were descended from the Gubbingses, who, as every man knows, were as disreputable a set of savages as have ever lived. This pedigree would have shown that a certain young Gubbings had once run away with a certain Miss Gubbings to whom he was attached, and with whom he was probably related more or less intimately. Fearing capture, as they had conveyed from the gorge of the Lyd as much of the portable property of their connections as they could conveniently handle, the young couple assumed the name of Tavy from the river beside which they settled. They had a number of little Tavies, who, it was said, founded the villages of Peter Tavy and Mary Tavy, which good Christians subsequently canonised; and who, by intermarriage without much respect for the tie of consanguinity, or for such a form of religious superstition as a marriage service—if, indeed, they had ever heard of such a thing—became in time a rival band of Scythians almost as formidable to law-abiding commoners as their relations in Gubbings Land. Peter and Mary were direct descendants of these pleasant people. They didn't know it, however. It was just as well they were in ignorance, because knowledge of the truth might have turned their heads. The chief of the Gubbings was a king in his own land; therefore Peter and Mary would certainly have boasted that they were of royal blood; and Peter would assuredly have told his neighbours that if every man had his rights he would be occupying the throne of England. He would have gone on acquiring knowledge concerning those things which appertain unto ancient families, and no doubt would have conferred upon himself, although not upon Mary, a coat-of-arms such as a sheep in one quarter, a bullock in another, a bag of gold in the third, and in the fourth a peaceful commoner's head duly decollated, with the motto: "My wealth is in other men's goods." Peter would have become an intolerable nuisance had he known of his royal ancestry.

Mary was quite a foot taller than her brother. Peter was like a gnome. He was not much more than four feet in height, with a beard like a furze-bush, a nose like a clothes-peg, and a pair of eyes which had probably been intended for a boar, but had got into Peter by mistake. His teeth were much broken and were very irregular; here a tooth like a tor, there a gap like a cleave. In that respect he resembled his neighbours. Dartmoor folk have singularly bad teeth, and none of them submit to dentistry. They appear to think that defective teeth are necessary and incurable evils. When they are ill they send for the doctor at once; but when they have toothache they grin and bear it. Perhaps they know that dentists are mercenary folk, who expect to be paid for their labours; whereas the doctor who has any claim to respectability works solely for the love of his profession, and is not to be insulted by any proposal of payment. A doctor is a sort of wandering boon-companion, according to the Dartmoor mind. There is nothing he enjoys so much as being called from his bed on a bitter winter's night, to drive some miles across the moor that he may have a pleasant chat with some commoner who feels dull. He will be invited to sit by a smouldering peat-fire, and the proposal, "Have a drop o' cider? you'm welcome," will fall gratefully upon his ears. He will be encouraged to talk about certain ailments, and to suggest remedies for the same. Then he will be pressed to finish the crock of cider, and be permitted to depart. After such hospitality he would be a base-minded man if he made any suggestion of a fee. Peter had often consulted a doctor, but he could not remember ever parting with cash in return for advice. The doctor could not remember it either.

Peter generally wore a big leather apron, which began somewhere about the region of his neck and finished at his boots. He had taken it, in a fit of absent-mindedness, out of the blacksmith of Bridestowe's smithy some years ago. He was a bit of a traveller in those days. Peter often boasted of his wanderings. That expedition to Bridestowe was one of them. It would have been six miles across the moor from Tavy Cleave, and yet Peter had made light of it. He had done much greater things. He had put to silence one of those objectionable, well-washed, soft-handed, expensively-dressed creatures who call themselves gentlemen. One of these had described to Peter his wanderings about the world, mentioning such fabulous countries as India, China, Mexico, and Peru. Peter listened in an attitude which expressed nothing if not contempt. He allowed the traveller to go oh some time before crushing him. "I've travelled tu," he said at last. Then, with the manner of one dropping a brick upon a butterfly, he added, "I've been to Plymouth." Peter often mentioned that the traveller had nothing more to say.

Peter had been absent-minded when he procured the blacksmith's apron, somewhat after the manner of his early ancestors who had inhabited Lyd Gorge or Gubbings Land. He was liable to such fits. They were generally brought on by beer. One evening Mary had sent him to a farm—or rather he had permitted her to send him—with a can and a string-bag in order that he might receive payment of a debt in the form of ducks' eggs and buttermilk. On the way Peter became absent-minded. The attack was fully developed by the time he reached the farm. He forced the eggs into the can and poured the buttermilk into the string-bag.

Mary also must have been made during a fit of Nature's temporary insanity. She had been started as a man; almost finished as one; then something had gone wrong—Nature had poured the buttermilk into the string-bag, so to speak, and Mary became a female to a certain extent. She had a man's face and a man's feet. Larger feet had never scrambled down Tavy Cleave since mastodons had gone out of fashion. The impression of Mary's bare foot in the snow would have shocked a scientist. She was stronger than most men. To see Mary forking fern, carrying furze-reek, or cutting peat was a revelation in female strength. She wore stout bloomers under a short ragged skirt; not much else, except a brown jersey. The skirt was discarded sometimes in moments of emergency. She was flat-chested, and had never worn stays. She was as innocent concerning ordinary female underwear as Peter; more so, perhaps, for Peter was not blind to frills. Mary would probably have worn her brother's trousers sometimes, had it not been for that muddle-headed act of Nature, which had turned her out a woman at the last moment. Besides, Peter was a foot shorter than his sister, and his legs were merely a couple of pegs.

Somewhere in his head Peter despised Mary. He did not tell her so, or she might have beaten him with a furze-bush. He was far superior to her. Peter could read, write, and reckon with a dangerous facility. He was also an orator, and had been known to speak for five minutes at a stretch in the bar-room. He had repeated himself certainly, but every orator does that. Peter was a savage who knew just enough to look civilised. Mary was a savage who knew nothing and was therefore humorous. It was education which gave Peter the upper hand, Mary could not assert her superiority over one who read the newspapers, spoke in a bar-room, and described characters on a piece of paper which would convey a meaning to some one far away.

Ger Cottage, or the twin huts occupied by the Tavys, had been once hut-circles, belonging to the aboriginal inhabitants of Dartmoor. They were side by side, semi-detached as it were, and the one was Peter's freehold, while the other belonged to Mary. They had the same legal rights to their property as rabbits enjoy in their burrows. Legal rights are not referred to on Dartmoor, unless a foreigner intervenes with a view to squatting. "What I have I hold" is every man's motto. The hut-circles had been restored out of all recognition. They had been enlarged, the walls had been built up, chimneys made, and roofs covered with furze and held in place by lumps of granite had been erected. Peter and Mary were quite independent. Peter was the best housewife, just as Mary was the best farmer. Peter also called himself a handy man, which was merely another way of saying that he was no good at anything. He would undertake all kinds of jobs, ask for a little on account, then postpone the work for a few years. He never completed anything. Mary was the money-maker, and he was really her business-manager. Mary was so ignorant that she never wondered how Peter got his money. It was perfectly simple. Peter would sell a twelve-pound goose at eightpence a pound. When he collected the money it naturally amounted to eight shillings. When he paid it over to Mary it had dwindled to five shillings. "Twelve times eight be sixty," Peter would explain. "Sixty pence be five shilluns." Mary knew no better. Then Peter always asked for a shilling as his commission, and Mary had to give it him. Peter had studied ordinary business methods with some success; or perhaps it came to him naturally. He had some ponies also. There is plenty of money in pony-breeding as Peter practised it. He would go out upon the moor, find a young pony which had not been branded, drive it home without any ostentation, and shut it-up in his linhay. After a time he would set his own brand upon it and let it run loose. When the annual pony-drift came round he would claim it, subsequently selling it at Lydford market for five pounds. Sometimes he would remove a brand, and obliterate all traces of it by searing his own upon the same spot; but he never went to this extreme unless he was hard pressed for money, because Peter had certain religious convictions, and he always felt when he removed a brand that he was performing a dishonest action.

The only other member of the Tavy family was Grandfather. He was the reprobate. Peter and Mary had morals of their own, not many, but sufficient for their needs; but Grandfather had none. He was utterly bad; a wheezing, worn-out, asthmatic old sinner, who had never been known to tell the truth. Grandfather was always in Peter's hut. Mary had often begged for him to keep her company at nights, but Peter steadfastly refused to let the old rascal leave his quarters. So Grandfather lived with Peter, and spent his time standing with his back to the wall, wheezing and chuckling and making all sorts of unpleasant noises, as if there was some obstruction on his chest which he was trying always to remove.

Grandfather's hands were very loose and shaky, and his face was dreadfully dirty. Peter washed it sometimes, while the old fellow wheezed and groaned. Sometimes Peter opened his chest and examined Grandfather's organs, which he declared were in a perfectly healthy condition. There appeared to be no excuse for Grandfather's mendacious habits. He had got into the way of lying years back, and could not shake it off. Grandfather was well over a hundred years old, and he was not the slightest use except as a companion. Some people would have been afraid of him, because of his unpleasant noises, but Peter and Mary loved him like dutiful grandchildren. They recognised in Grandfather the true Gubbings spirit. He was a weak, sinful creature like themselves.

Grandfather had commenced life as a clock, but he had soon given up that kind of work, or something had occurred to turn him from a useful career; just as Peter had been meant for some sort of quadruped, and Mary had been a man up to the last possible moment. Some evil spirit must have entered into Grandfather; a malicious impet from the Tavy river perhaps; or possibly the wild wind of Dartmoor had passed down the cleave one day, to enter Grandfather's chest and intoxicate him for ever. The fact remained that Grandfather was hopelessly bad; he was a regular misanthrope; his ticks were so many curses, his strikings were oaths. He did his best to mislead the two grandchildren, although it didn't matter much, because time is of no account on Dartmoor. "He'm a proper old brute, Gran'vaither," Peter would say sometimes, but never in the old clock's hearing.

Mary's mission in life was to breed geese. She had been sent into the world for the express purpose of supplying folk with savoury meat stuffed with sage and onions at Christmas time. She succeeded admirably. She was the best goosewoman on Dartmoor, and her birds were always in demand. One year Peter had obtained a shilling a pound for three unusually fine young birds; but Mary didn't know that. She fattened her geese, and incidentally Peter also.

"They'm contrairy birds," observed Farmer Chegwidden, while he smoked and rested himself upon a boulder, watching Mary's efforts to collect her flock. "Never goes the way us want 'em to. Like volks," he added, with philosophic calm. He might have been assisting Mary, only he didn't believe in violent exercise which would not be suitably rewarded.

"Volks calls 'en vulish, but they bain't. They'm just vull o' human vices," said Mary, flopping to and fro and waving her furze-bush.

"They'm vulish to look at," explained Farmer Chegwidden.

"'Tis their artful way. Peter looks vulish tu, and he knows plenty. More'n any of they goosies, I reckon. Coop, coop! Drat the toad! I'll scat 'en."

The leader of the feathered choir was off again. Chegwidden could have headed it off, only he had finished his day's work. He managed to summon up the energy to remark, "They gets over the ground surprising, wi' their wings spread."

"He'm a proper little brute. I wun't waste no more time over 'en," said Mary, as she wiped her forehead with a bunch of fern. "He'll come home when he've a mind to, and lay his egg in the linny likely, where Peter'll tread on 'en in the morning. Peter be cruel clumsy wi' his boots. Will ye please to step inside, Varmer Chegwidden?"

"I mun get home. Got the bullocks to feed."

"Fine bullocks tu. I seed 'em down cleave last night. Cooey, cooey! Come along home, my purty angels. Wish ye good-night, Varmer Chegwidden."

"Why du'ye call 'em angels?" asked the farmer, making strange sounds of laughter behind his hand.

"Aw now, I'll tell ye. There was a lady down along, a dafty lady what painted, and her come to Peter, and her ses, 'I wants they goosies to paint.' Well, us wouldn't have it. Us thought her wanted to paint 'em, one of 'em red, 'nother green likely, 'nother yellow maybe, and it might be bad for their bellies. But us found her wanted to put 'em on a picture. Her had got a mazed notion about the cleave and resurrection, wi' angels flapping over, and her wanted my goosies for angels. Peter ses he didn't know goosies were like angels. Knows a lot, Peter du."

"Angels be like gals," declared Chegwidden. "Like them gals to Tavistock what pulls the beer, wi' pert faces and vuzzy hair. That's what angels be like. I've seed the pictures in a Bible."

"Aw now. Us couldn't make she out," went on Mary. "The lady said 'twas just the wings her wanted. Her said angels ha' got goosies' wings, and us couldn't say 'em hasn't, 'cause us ain't seed any. Her knew all about it. So Peter druve the goosies down cleave, and her painted 'em for angels sure 'nuff. Us never knew angels has goosies' wings, but the lady knew. Her was sure on't."

Mary stalked towards the hut-circles at the head of her row of geese, grave, waddling, self-important, and blissfully unconscious of anything in the nature of sage and onions. There was a touch of humour about the procession. It was not altogether unlike the spectacle to be witnessed in certain country boroughs of the mayor and corporation walking into church.

"Goosies be cruel human," said Mary.