Mockery Gap (3 page)

T
HE
hill, or Mockery cliff as it was usually called by those who lived near, might have smiled, could a hill smile, at the fine visitors who had peopled it and then departed, leaving only their wheel-marks, and a scented
handkerchief
dropped by Miss Ogle, behind them.

Mockery lay below, and showed from this point of vantage, if carefully looked down upon—for one often misses a building or two when the land and the cottages grow into one another—a farmhouse, a smaller one, a white lane and a green, fields that almost touch the sea, and here and there the glitter of a tiny stream, and also a pleasant wood. The
vicarage
and church had settled meekly in the folds of the valley as hardly to be noticed, and even when seen they only appeared to point to Mr. Pink’s stone house that stood by the church lane, and to say that ‘it shouldn’t have been there.’

Mockery cliff must have found the noise of the waves tiresome in past years, and so moved itself complacently backwards little by little, allowing the pretty meadows to be formed, proud of their cowslips; and the lanes and houses; and of course man.

In its backward proceeding the cliff had risen to a fine height, so that John Wesley,
who found the people hereabouts as gentle as lambs, called it a mountain. It may have been—in this matter of moving mountains—the faith of Mr. Gulliver’s great-grandfather, who always said that the small-holding of the family should be larger, which it now was.

For if it is easy by faith to cast a mountain into the sea, it should be just as easy, and better for the sheep—and the movement wasn’t expected to happen in one second of human time, but rather in one of God’s moments—to get the mountain, or any mountain, out of the sea and to push it by faith inland.

The mere daytime of prettiness departed with the town visitors, and now that they were gone the true look of the land, that had been hidden from them, came forth again to be seen by those who have eyes to see. The
blind-cow
rock, that alone of all natural objects had never been beguiled by the sunbeams into looking pretty, now took upon it as the sun declined, giving the true bass note to the colours of the evening, the blackness of despair. The blind cow now began to spread out her influence further than herself, the waves that struck the rock became intense and living. Its dead state, as the abodes of the dead will sometimes do, reached out hands to form, to grave, and to portray, and to cast over Mockery the feelings and the fears of the night.

Clouds that earlier in the day had been but shining vapour, now became real and yet more real and grew sensibly darker. The cliff, the fields below, the church that waited for the night, even the tiny shining of the little
water-brooks
, were beginning to express the supreme loveliness of lonely silence—of the beauty that dies.

Shadows, born of the shadow of the blind cow, began to creep here and there like
monstrous
toads and thick vipers. The shadows became more and more monstrous as the sun dropped, while some amongst them now showed a likeness to him that is called Man, a dweller upon the earth.

And now the sea, more than any other emanation of eternal truth, changed its face. The sea darkened, the dainty spaces above the waters where the light was began to take up the shadows of the deep and to wear them as a garment, while the tumulus upon the cliff watched as if glad that the evening was come.

This green mound, about which the spirit of an ancient and buried king still hovered, was the same from whence, when the company were departed, Miss Ogle had addressed the seagulls. It was also the grave within which, as Mr. Tarr had informed the Mockery farmer, golden
earrings
were buried.

Ever since the people of Mockery had raised the mound over the bones of their king, who
had died about the time of the great flood, the king’s spirit had brooded there, and had watched the inhabitants of the village of Mockery.

He liked Mr. Caddy, who hadn’t for some years now taken the trouble to work for a living, for Mrs. Caddy did the work while Mr. Caddy told the stories; all of which contained night-time or, as Mr. Caddy would have said, bedtime matters.

And Mr. Caddy wouldn’t always confine himself to such simple subjects, for he would sometimes—and the heathen ghost liked to hear him—mention his betters.

‘They do say,’ Mr. Caddy had been heard to remark, ‘that wold God be everywhere—but ’E bain’t where I be, and that I do know. Parson do a-preach of, an’ even Mr. Pink ’ave a-named ’E; and some do tell that ’twere God who made the wide roaring sea, and the more fool ’E to make en, so I do say. But I do believe,’ and here Mr. Caddy would wink slyly, ‘that ’E did a-make each pretty maiden.’

Even though the one who rested in the mound for ever liked Mr. Caddy, he had no love for Mr. James Tarr, and so he decided, did Farmer Cheney come to dig there, he would be greeted with some accident or trouble or ever he found the golden earrings.

A
PPARENTLY
Mr. James Tarr paid no heed to the young women that he met when about his grandmother's business; for old Mrs. Tarr had always said that people should have an interest in life.

Had he done so, he could hardly have failed to notice Mary Gulliver, who was gathering sticks in the hedge when he gave her father the map he had promised him some days before. Mary had noticed Mr. Tarr and had wished he had spoken to her, because men were the kind of creatures that Mary liked far better than cows or sheep if they came near to her.

When Mary was very young, and her blushes were so many that they were become her true complexion, she had permitted Simon Cheney, the young man who was most sought after by the Mockery girls, to take her up to the green mound.

Simon did so, as Mary wished, who felt as he kissed her that she really was a girl in petticoats.

Soon after young Simon had first kissed Mary, her mother had, for no reason unless she was grown tired of making butter, walked one May morning into the sea. Some said that she did so because Mr. Tarr, in whose service she had been before she was
married, advised her more than once to be very careful to keep her husband at home because of his name. ‘Mrs. Gulliver feared to lose him, and so she went first,' was how Miss Pink saw the matter.

As soon as Mrs. Gulliver's body was laid under the corner elm in the Mockery
churchyard
, to the great entertainment of the pack of Mockery children who had watched the
proceedings
, the Rev. John Pattimore returned with the bereaved family to their cottage, and, sitting in a straight-backed chair with a look that plainly showed he had come there to give a serious warning, he explained to Mr. Gulliver and to Mary all the subtle ways by which a young girl could be led into sin. Mary stared hard at him as if he were addressing her and her father in the Greek tongue, while Mr. Gulliver listened with an eager interest, as though in each corner of the room he was aware that a door to hell was being opened.

‘Now that your wife is gone,' said Mr. Pattimore, ‘you must guard your daughter with the greatest care; you must prevent her from wandering for too long a time near to the sea; and beware of all nakedness.'

‘You don't think, do you,' asked Mr.
Gulliver
with a scared look, ‘that anything might come up to she naked out of they waters?'

‘I hope not,' replied Mr. Pattimore, ‘but it's best to be careful.'

‘And you must never allow her on Sundays to wander in the dark lanes after the evening service, for the lion roars in them …'

Mr. Gulliver was an easy-tempered and lovable countryman, who believed everything; and now, after being told that something might come up out of the sea at any moment, or else a lion might roar in the lane, he looked at Mary as though she were the magnet that could draw out of holes in the earth and the deep places in the sea horrid naked monsters.

Mary, whose mind was as simple as her father's, when she heard that, wished to find Simon Cheney and to tell him about the lion; or else, if he wasn't ready to go to the hill with her, she might first find Rebecca Pring or Dinah Pottle and tell them. ‘It's a nice and a dreadful thing,' thought Mary, ‘that there are beasts that go about in the earth and sea that can hurt a girl.'

Mr. Pattimore held up his hand and looked at Mary. ‘Remember,' he said, ‘don't stray.'

Mr. Gulliver's farmhouse, the lesser one in Mockery village, was but a cottage drooping and crestfallen, next to which was a stable that the farmer's old horses found suited to their winter need, and a cow stall that pleased the cows in a like manner. These abodes of wood and mud built so long ago and still remaining as a shelter to man and to cattle most surely proved that it's the spirit of man that holds
up the house, and that all home-made things last the longest when left to themselves. Whenever one walks in any new place,
entering
perhaps with Mr. James Tarr and his friends, it is proper to greet each wayside post, each Mrs. Pottle and Mrs. Pring, each Dean and attic bed, as we come to them, in exact sequence. For events fierce or simple should lead us, rather than we them; for if we wish to know what our neighbours are doing, their little dogs, or the sound of their carpets being beaten, can tell us, if we are but willing to wait a moment or two, all the news.

Sometimes a village—and this, a week after the visit of the field club, appeared to be true about Mockery—entirely hides its inhabitants. The rude children who usually rushed the lanes in pursuit of all naughtiness were hidden in school, and the March sun, a fine, splendid thing in its early glory, noticed only that Mary Gulliver was abroad.

Mary indeed felt herself, as she always did, as prettily clothed; but as no one looked upon her as she came out of her door and gazed inquisitively about, she felt in that sudden solitude—for even Mrs. Pring wasn't beside her gate—a sense of the danger that Mr. Pattimore predicted would lie in wait for her after her mother died.

‘Something be about,' thought Mary, ‘and that I do know.'

She stood uncertainly upon the green, hoping to see a friendly figure or two moving or loitering, but no one was there.

Mary hesitated; should she go and wake her father, who was asleep in his chair after his morning ploughing, and tell him that ‘there must be something else about if there wasn't no people'?

The mysterious presence of some hidden danger, that the intuitive feeling of a girl recognises ‘as being about,' has a way of adding excitedly to her interest in herself—an interest that can only come by means of fear.

Mary Gulliver's interest in herself—she felt it first in her toes until it crept all over her body—began, not as one would have thought with young Simon Cheney's discoveries, but with the visit of Mr. Pattimore after her mother's funeral. Mary began to think then of herself as something, a collection of all sorts of wishes and hopes, that shouldn't be looked at all over. And so, when she went to bed at night or rose in the morning out of the heavy sleep that her bedroom gave her with its tightly-closed windows, she would cleverly manage that one garment at least always covered her. When Mary washed she did it by halves, for it was always the whole of her, and not as Lear in the play saw the matter, naming one half of a woman as the devil's, that she feared. Mary's look at the world, as the look at herself would
have been had the garment fallen, was one of utter astonishment and fear at its nakedness when unclothed. And to Mary the world's best and only clothing was—humankind.

Mary's ‘Oh' that she gave now because she saw all Mockery as naked about her, was her usual exclamation with which she met anything that astonished her.

To-day, as there was no skirt or coat to cover the earth, Mary walked a little nervously to the pasture beside the sea where the cows were.

The sea, and especially when she could espy no ship or boat sailing upon it, appeared in her eyes as something very improper in its nakedness.

The land had its trees and gateposts and beasts too, that gave it a sort of covering even though no man or woman was about. But the sea with its wide masculine spaces and the wicked dancing of its waves always made modest Mary blush when she looked upon it, and fancy that one day a naked man, rather than Miss Pink's beast, would come out of it.

Near to the field where Mr. Gulliver's cows were feeding was a deserted fisherman's hut, the last residence of poor Mr. Dobbin who wasn't lucky enough to earn a living by fishing. The hut still had a chimney, and Mary, who didn't like to look at the sea because of its mannish ways as explained by Mr. Caddy,
gazed at the hut chimney when she walked across to the corner of the field where the cows were. When she was quite near to the hut Mary was startled to see a puff of white smoke come from the chimney. Mary stood still and trembled. Her simple mind was reasoning with itself: ‘There couldn't be smoke,' she decided, ‘without fire,' and ‘there couldn't be fire unless some one collected sticks and set a light to them.'

‘Oh,' gasped Mary, ‘I be sure that some one be about,' and she began to drive the cows home.

As Mary milked she couldn't help hoping that Simon Cheney would meet her upon the hill when she led Dick there: Dick being Mr. Gulliver's oldest horse, who wasn't always needed at home, and who was granted the privilege of spending the greater number of his days in calm contentment upon the inland cliff.

Mr. Gulliver, who had been studying for more than one evening now the queer picture, or map rather, that Mr. Tarr had given him, said to Mary as he opened the barton gate for her and the horse:

‘Do 'ee mind and run home if anything do meet 'ee in lanes.'

‘Children,' said Mary, ‘do speak of a
Nellie-bird
, a nasty naked thing that gentleman 'ave told of.'

Mr. Gulliver looked very grave.

‘And there be‚' said Mary, who loved to drink up fear till she gasped, ‘Miss Pink's wicked beast wi' 'is horns an' tail.'

‘And that bain't all,' said Mr. Gulliver, ‘for there be elephants and apes in India.'

‘Oh, I do hope Simon will meet I,' said Mary. Her father nodded and hoped so too.

Mary was glad, for now the nasty nakedness of the land that had troubled her so when she went out for the cows was covered, for Mr. Caddy, the favourite of the buried king of Mockery, stood by his cottage gate that was a new one. Mr. Caddy was leaning against the gatepost and was watching with a friendly eye his ducks in the pond. Mr. Caddy walked a few steps and came to Mary.

‘She do tell I,' he said, referring to his wife and speaking of the ducks, ‘that they ducks be a-working while wold Caddy don't do nothing—but ducks do all know that I do lean and talk.'

Mr. Caddy used to lean, having evidently entered into a covenant with his garden gate to hold him up for ever. He talked, too; for no lady, not even Mrs. Pattimore or mild and plain Miss Pink, could pass Mr. Caddy
without
exchanging a word or two.

The horse, as was natural, stopped beside Mr. Caddy, and Mary stopped too. It was fortunate that she did so at that moment, for
the Mockery children scampered by, led by Esther, a love-child planted by the war and now given house-room by her aunt, Mrs. Pottle.

‘'Tis said,' said Mr. Caddy to Mary when the noise was gone by, ‘that they be children; an' that all thik noise be a-called up by bedtime doings.'

‘Oh,' said Mary, ‘oh, Mr. Caddy, you do talk about things that you shouldn't.'

Mr. Caddy nodded; he was pleased with such praise. He now watched with a knowing and interested look Mary's horse feeding upon the rich spring clover that grew beside the way.

‘You bain't never been down to the sea, 'ave 'ee?' asked Mr. Caddy, who wished to retain Mary a little longer because he liked her.

‘No,' replied Mary, ‘an' I shouldn't like to, for I don't fancy they nasty waves that do rise up and fall upon any one.'

‘True, they bain't proper, they waves bain't, for a poor maiden to see,' said Mr. Caddy, who entirely agreed with Mary's attitude towards rude nature; ‘an' they bain't covered by no other blanket than darkness at night-time, them waves that do so swell and break.'

Mary looked inquiringly at Mr. Caddy, for he was always the one to give information about the sea to any one.

‘Do thik sea,' asked Mary, ‘that do bide there beyond fisherman's hut, where chimney do smoke of itself, go on a-swelling for ever,
or do 'e but cover the bottom sky, same as clouds do sometimes hide what be up above?'

‘No, no, bain't always there,' replied Mr. Caddy with conviction; ‘seas do run off
sometimes
when they be minded; they do run down roads far off, shouting out, “The Nellie-bird be a-coming,” same as children do shout—'tis a strong, happy boy, thik sea be, that do rise and watch for a maiden.'

Mr. Caddy chanced at this moment to look up at the green mound upon the cliff; he saw a figure standing there who wasn't the ancient king.

Mary laughed; she began to lead the horse along the lane that led to the cliff. As she went along she heard Mr. Caddy talking, for want of any better company, to his ducks; he was advising them in many wise terms never to go down to the sea. The ducks had come out of the ditch and were looking up at Mr. Caddy, quacking with excitement as if they quite understood what he was saying and were wide awake to it.

Mr. Caddy having been seen, had in a kind of way clothed the earth for Mary, and now there was Simon Cheney upon the hill, who would be sure to help to hide the
nakedness
that nature so improperly exposed. But she had to get to Simon, and Mary looked timidly up at the sky as she walked along the lane leading the horse.

The evening light shone, wonderful in its clearness; there was no cloud. The clear colours burned and cut with the sharp sword of beauty.

Mary couldn't help looking up, because the sky was a great deal too much like the sea in her idea, and she feared that she might behold something in it that she didn't wish to see.

Mary sighed; she looked from the sky to the clear dark line of the Mockery cliff. She shuddered, all was so naked. The cliff, she felt, should be wearing a coat, while the bare sky should at least have the decency to clothe itself in a chemise with pink ribbons.

The elm trees by the lane Mary looked at too a little doubtfully; she hoped they would soon have their summer garments again. She always felt a little nervous going under those bare boughs in the winter time, and now that the spring was come she was glad to see the beginnings of proper clothing.

Every wanderer's walk, whether for business or for pleasure, is an adventure in Mockery; for who can tell what is going to happen or who one will see when the home gate is closed behind and we are out and moving in the lanes? There may be a little white pig running that's escaped from a neighbour's sty; or a waggon of loaded corn part overturned, with the corn sacks lying huge and heavy in the mud of the road; or else an old boot or a child's ribbon—
for one never knows what one's luck will be here upon earth.