Mockery Gap (9 page)

Mr. Pring, who disliked the thought of art magic, was willing enough to account for the sudden change in Mr. Pink’s look by the natural fact that the sun had broken through the darkness of the cloud and shone upon the cliff side.

And when Mr. Pink sat down upon the grass with the fisherman beside him, Pring was the first to speak, for he considered himself as good as they, and wished to show it.

‘’Tis thik fisherman,’ he remarked
reassuringly
, ‘that they children do shout after.’

The fact that the children could shout after him strengthened at once—as he mentioned it—Mr. Pring’s opinion of himself and properly lowered the fisherman.

‘The Nellie-bird, they do call ’ee. And thee be come from they islands, bain’t ’ee? and islands be t’ other side of sea?’

The fisherman nodded.

‘Mrs. Pottle,’ said Pring, who, after the manner of all people the world over, liked to get in the first blow at an enemy—‘Mrs. Pottle
do walk about telling folk that in they islands thee ’ve left three maidens in trouble.’

The fisherman laughed lightly and happily.

Mr. Pring hadn’t expected a laugh at all, but had counted upon a sour look from the fisherman directed against the absent lady.

If the laugh took Mr. Pring by surprise, it certainly had the same effect upon the dark cloud, through which the sunbeam had broken, for the cloud now entirely disappeared and the heavens were blue. Mr. Pring looked up
distrustfully
, wondering perhaps whether ‘she,’ the weather, was in any way related to the new fisherman that the bad children of Mockery called after. The sun had shone out more readily than usual when so heavy a cloud was in the heavens.

John Pring felt uneasy.

But then here was the fisherman sitting upon the bank beside Mr. Pink who was as common in Mockery as any gatepost that is seen each day.

Mr. Pring now felt that he must do a further honour to the village convention—scandal. ‘Mr. Caddy were telling ’is ducks a story yesterday,’ said Mr. Pring, addressing himself again to the stones. ‘And they wise ducks do swim about pond, though they be runners, and quack when ’e do talk.

‘Mr. Caddy were telling the ducks how the new fisherman, who bain’t got no name only
Nellie-bird, did spy Esther Pottle lying out amongst the bluebells in meadow.’

Mr. Pring hesitated and shook his head sadly; evidently the idea of Esther lying in that way troubled him, for he continued dolefully: ‘The sun were burning down upon she, and there the maiden did lie—an’ mother at home do say she don’t dress proper—and did hide she’s face all in they blue flowers. No, no, ’twasn’t Simon that did find her laid out; ’twas ’e, so ’tis said.’

Mr. Pring nodded at the fisherman, who rested happily beside Mr. Pink upon the warm bank.

‘Esther and I were happy,’ said the
fisherman
.

Mr. Pring hadn’t expected a remark that so confessed to everything, and so he returned dolefully to the ducks again.

‘Kissing be only a little thing to a girl, Caddy did say to the runners, an’ maiden were lying out straight and laughing amongst the bluebells, but when Mr. Pattimore came into field Esther did cry out and run off. An’ she be a bad woon, though ’twere only kisses thik day that ducks do know of.’

Mr. Pring had told his story to the stones, and had not looked up while he was telling it. And now that he looked up to see what effect his recital of the facts had upon the chief actor, he was surprised and a little crestfallen too to
perceive that the female wanton of his story, the naughty Esther herself, was listening. And not listening alone, but lying out in her usual happy and free fashion, as though pink flesh was more pretty than clothes, beside the fisherman, with her moist hand in his.

But odd happenings have a way of
continuing
chapter after chapter when once the preface is over, and now like wolfish dogs the whole pack of the Mockery children burst upon the simple group upon the hillside, calling out the sort of noisy things that are usually said when any one leaves the herd to seek a lover in the wilderness.

The fisherman, upon whose account and Esther’s all the clamour was raised, now stood up; and he still holding the girl’s hand, while Mr. Pink, being invited to follow, walked upon the other side, the three went slowly down the hill, followed by the children, who made the most of their usual cry of derision—‘The Nellie-bird!’

Mr. Pring being left alone, began slowly to shovel up the loose stones, which he placed in little heaps by the side of the road.

After doing so, the roadman leant against a post that in distant times had held up a rail, and looked down to and over the village of Mockery. When so many strange things were happening that hadn’t in the least to do with him, Mr. Pring began thoughtfully to
doubt his own importance in a place where scandal as soon as mentioned now became reality.

He slowly took out of his pocket the letter that Miss Pink had given him. He had carried the letter for fifteen years, for
whenever
he looked at it he always felt his
importance
as a messenger. He spelt the name, ‘Mr. Gulliver,’ and put the letter back into his pocket.

‘I bain’t nothing,’ said Mr. Pring, and looked grimly at the village below him; ‘for I be better than postman.’

The sun shone graciously with its true summer heat, swifts flashed by with a hiss of wings, blue butterflies toyed wantonly, and little brown spiders crept amongst the warmed grass. Mr. Pring looked at all this and
expressed
in words his own ideas. ‘’Tis a pity thik fisherman don’t drown ’isself,’ he said.

A
LL
things that happened at Mockery
contributed
to the fierce flame of anger that burnt up the hearts of the Prings and the Pottles. Even when Mr. Pring let his cap fall into a grave that he was digging, and had no mind to dig it out again, his complaints about the loss were overheard by Mrs. Pottle and raised a storm.

‘Folks,’ called out Mrs. Pottle from over the hedge, ‘mid be allowed to bury anything these days; and to think that poor Cousin Hilda should be seen wearing thik dirty cap of Pring’s on Judgment Day, dying as she did out at service; ’twill damn the poor maid to be seen in en.’

Mrs. Pring came out to the fray.

‘’Twould be well,’ she shouted,’ if thee’s Hilda did wear a man’s cap on last day, for they wise elders and beasts who do stare so mid fancy that she did ’ave woon husband, instead of a dozen chaps after her, although it wasn’t a cap that she did fancy the most.’

‘What were it then,’ hissed Mrs. Pottle, ‘that poor Hilda did fancy?’

‘Sunday trousers,’ replied Mrs. Pring quietly.

Though she held no sword in her hand,
Mrs. Pottle had an egg that she had just taken out of a nest under the hedge. She threw the egg at Mrs. Pring.

The egg burst upon the cottage wall.

Mrs. Pring went indoors laughing.

Mrs. Pottle went in too to look at her clock. This clock had always entered into the grand quarrel as one of the best known and most used of Mrs. Pottle’s household gods. It ranked in its possessor’s eyes as something that stood in the front rank to withstand any attempt that the Prings might make to boast of their pigs or their lame cow.

The clock had suffered in one of the enemy’s charges, for once when Mrs. Pottle was in the back garden, and unthinkingly left the door open, Mrs. Pring had taken this chance to throw a stone, with so good an aim that it broke the face of the clock and knocked out the hour hand.

But this treatment, that gave to
the clock a kind of martyr’s crown, and also left with it a daily doubt as to what the hour was, made it appear even more valuable and important in the eyes of its owners.

When Mrs. Pring put a large padlock upon the garden well that Mrs. Pottle used to dip in for water by the right of custom, Mrs. Pottle looked at the spoilt face of her clock for advice. She had to wash clothes to-day, and the nearest water was Mr. Caddy’s pond.

Whenever Mrs. Pottle went forth upon any errand there was always a chance that she might meet some one whom she could turn by a wise word or two into as fierce an enemy of the Prings as she herself was.

Beside the pond, lying idly with his feet in the sun and his head shaded, was the new fisherman. He lay upon the soft moss and clover in indulgent ease, looking now at Mr. Caddy’s ducks and now upwards through the sweetest and most delightful of rich green leaves. Mrs. Pottle had never spoken to the fisherman before; at least she had never gone beyond the usual conversation of a lady who wishes to buy something as cheaply as she can, and knows meanwhile that she is being listened to by her neighbour. She was away from home now and she could say what she chose. Although Mrs. Pottle had always blamed the fisherman for idling away his time instead of going off in his boat, and also for selling what fish he did catch so cheaply to the Prings, she now hoped to enlist him upon her side. To do this, she knew that the first thing was to obtain a proper respect towards herself from the fisherman, for no one in Mockery ever fought upon a losing side if he could help it.

‘’Tain’t every one who do know the right time of day,’ she said impressively. ‘An’ a good clock, though ’tis me own’—Mrs. Pottle
looked down modestly—‘be worth some money.’

The fisherman smiled at the ducks.

Mrs. Pottle had evidently impressed him; she thought it now proper, according to the usual Mockery convention, to take another line to compliment him.

‘’Tisn’t every one,’ she said with a little cough, ‘who do rush and go, here now and there now, always a-doing, who be the hardest worker.’

Mrs. Pottle filled her bucket, set it down in the lane, and looked at Mr. Caddy’s ducks.

The fisherman moved lazily; he was
evidently
enjoying a time of entire contentment and rest. He seemed pleased to see Mrs. Pottle there, and pleased to see the ducks.

‘’Tis nice to think,’ said Mrs. Pottle, ‘that green grass be useful to some folk, and no doubt God did mean thik to be laid upon. ’Twas a pity that poor Mr. Dobbin didn’t use ’imself to such holy comforts, for what sense were it for ’e to go a-fishing and all to give away a crab to they Prings?’

Mrs. Pottle leant over her bucket and touched the handle; in this posture she still continued to talk. ‘Mrs. Pring be the woon to insult folk who be givers, and she do hate a fisherman, and there be some one that she do tell of called the Nellie-bird, who she do say ’ave a-got only one jersey to wear both
week
days
and Sundays. A good clock be better than a lame cow.’

The fisherman, though not roused to words, appeared to be listening.

Mrs. Pottle raised her bucket and stood with it in her hand.

‘Mrs. Pring do often talk of Dobbin,’ she said, with a gesture as if she threw her thoughts back to times gone by. She turned sharply to the fisherman: ‘But Pring do say that poor Dobbin weren’t nothing such a lazy, lousy beggar as thee be.’

The fisherman lay silent; he slept.

In a few moments Mrs. Pottle was back again in her garden.

Mrs. Pring was turning the key in the new padlock upon the well cover; she had just been drawing water.

‘One of thee’s friends,’ Mrs. Pottle shouted, ‘who do give away ’is stinking fish to ’ee, be waiting to cuddle thee’s maid down by Caddy’s pond, and what be she to cuddle but only a servant?’

Mrs. Pring pointed pleasantly to the road that was but a few yards away.

The fisherman was walking by, as one who is idle walks upon a warm summer’s day. He was smiling.

P
EOPLE
, although they may believe in God, often think very differently about Him. Mr. Pattimore believed in His Name, which Name he surrounded with attributes as cold as ice. In his own attic bed that resembled God’s Name in its coldness he hoped to harden himself and become fit to be a dean, though so far in his life he had not even had a call to become a canon.

Mr. Gulliver didn’t take God in the least as Mr. Pattimore took Him, but rather fancied Him as a humorous gentleman, a little like Mr. James Tarr, and able, indeed willing, to supply the world with a good store of monsters and to bring the Nellie-bird to Mockery Gap as a stray fisherman.

If Mrs. Topple had been asked where she supposed God might be found, she would have replied that when she had once found the clover with four leaves God would be standing near by in the shape of an all-wise doctor.

Mr. Pink saw God as a vast sea of
ever-changing
colour, a sea that is beyond human vision, though the blessed may pass over there to a country that is very fair and is called Eternity….

Mr. Pink was at work at his desk, and the
summer sun, as inquisitive as great people always are, peeped in upon him.

Mr. Pink had been asked in a letter to try to discover—‘It’s Miss Ogle who thought something ought to be done,’ Mr. Roddy had said—the arrears of rent that Mr. Gulliver owed to the Roddy estate.

He was now trying to decide a point that interested him more than the additional sum: that was, how much he ought to take off from the bill, because Gulliver had made at his own expense a new gate for Mr. Caddy’s cottage that went with the farm.

He was upon the point of taking away
£
1, 15s. 6d., the supposed value of the gate that Mr. Caddy liked so much to lean upon when he talked to the ducks, from Mr. Gulliver’s debt of
£
789, 14s. 3½d., when Miss Pink put her head into the door and said that a basket had been left by the fisherman for Mrs. Moggs, that he wished Mr. Pink to give to her.

‘I believe they ’re white mice,’ said Miss Pink, who had, it must be owned, peeped in to see.

Mr. Pink closed his ledger. He decided as the heavy book shut that he had better pay to Mr. Gulliver the
£
1, 15s. 6d. that the estate owed him, which would save the trouble of an extra sum.

Mr. Pink peeped at the mice too.

‘Mr. James Tarr said they would save her life and prevent her being lonely,’ he said, looking with admiration at the mice.

‘Will you take them to her now?’ asked Miss Pink, lifting one of the mice up in her hand and kissing it.

‘Perhaps I had better,’ replied Mr. Pink.

Miss Pink looked out of the door and watched him go. She stood upon the
doorstep
wrapped in her shawl, and she hoped, as she always did when she watched him go even to the nearest cottage to look at some repairs being done, that nothing would happen to him.

When Mr. Pink turned the corner to go to the shop, Miss Pink turned her eyes to the sea.

The sun—for the summer of our story was an unusually fine one—shone above in all
happiness
, and the only doleful object that Miss Pink could see to remind her of her fears was the Blind Cow Rock, that looked a dead black.

Miss Pink entered the house again and began to dust the front room.

Although it was summer, she filled the lamp with oil and trimmed the wick, and then, standing beside the table, Miss Pink looked at the front-room chair and began to wonder about the visitor she expected.

It wasn’t Mr. Gulliver now; her letter must have been given to him; Mr. Pring
the good messenger could never have taken fifteen years to deliver it.

She had thought certainly that he would have come, and she would have found him, bowed in by Mr. Pink—for no man in the world was so gentle and polite as her brother—and sitting in that best chair! The white mice had reminded her—of course he would have brought her a tiny baby rabbit for a gift.

But now what was Miss Pink thinking of, and whom was she expecting as she looked at the plush-covered chair?

She had never told her brother, but still she had told herself that she didn’t want to go.

‘I don’t want to go,’ said Miss Pink, her tiny nose almost disappearing into her shawl; ‘I don’t want to go, because I love my dear brother, and I don’t like the rude way the sexton shovels the rough earth down upon one. I know it must hurt, and besides for a long time I have known, ever since my pain began, that the horrid beast that Mr. Tarr told us about—is death.’

Miss Pink straightened the sofa cushion, she dusted the window and looked out.

The black rock was there….

Mr. Pink carried the basket carefully, for although the mice were covered with a cloth he feared that they might escape, and every now and again he peeped in to see if they were safe.

Mrs. Moggs was standing behind her counter when Mr. Pink entered her shop. She was telling Esther Pottle, who for some unexplained reason had now learned to stand quiet and good, about all the rude things that the postmaster had said to her; and Esther looked at her, hoping all the time that Mrs. Moggs talked that the bells would begin to ring.

Mr. Pink sighed as he placed the basket upon the counter, because he had almost wished as he stepped along the stone path in the sun that the mice were for him.

‘The fisherman——’

‘You mean the Nellie-bird, Mr. Pink,’ said Esther.

Mr. Pink nodded. ‘The fisherman thought you would like to play with them when you feel lonely, though they ’re nowhere near as beautiful as the sea.’

‘I’m sure the sea ’s nothing like so pretty,’ replied Mrs. Moggs, nodding and ringing both her bells at the same moment. ‘I’ll let them sleep here’—Mrs. Moggs opened a drawer—‘and they can’t hurt the postal orders, because they ’re all in the next one.’

Mr. Pink leaned over the counter. ‘The sea ’s still there,’ he whispered, ‘and I beg you to go down to it. I believe you could pray there better than in any church you know. There is some one who isn’t well, Mrs. Moggs, that I want you to pray for.’

Mrs. Moggs looked at Mr. Pink and her bells hung silent.

‘I know,’ she said.

‘You will come one day?’

‘Yes, one day,’ Mrs. Moggs replied….

Mr. Pink had turned to wave his hand, as he used to do whenever he went two hundred yards away from her, when he left his sister standing upon their cottage steps. But he couldn’t return at that moment to see the difference. The difference, that he always noticed now when he came in to her, the
growing
look of fear in her eyes, as though
something
hidden was dragging her, hour by hour and day by day, nearer and yet nearer to the dreadful darkness.

‘Perhaps the sea might help, or the
fisherman
. I can’t bear to see her in pain,’ said Mr. Pink.

Mr. Pink walked down the lane and stepped upon the soft warm grass of the meadow that led to the sea.

Mockery was out to play that afternoon; cries came to him from the children, who were chasing Esther and calling after her rude country words about the Nellie-bird being her lover.

Mrs. Topple was wandering in the fields, and looking sadly about her because she had been so long wandering and had found nothing.

Dinah Pottle was lying in the wood upon the very moss-covered stump where the hermit of old used to pray, hoping Simon would come; but God Simon was upon the hill with the other Mary, while Rebecca watched them from the vicarage window.

Mrs. Pattimore was dusting the Dean.

Caddy was telling his ducks a new story; and Mr. Gulliver was remarking to the hay as he turned it over—for perhaps he had looked up to the hill as well as Rebecca—that if anything ever happened to his daughter Mary while she was yet unwedded, he would renounce her for ever and cast her out from his home.

Standing upon those yellow sands, Mr. Pink wished that he had been able to persuade Mrs. Moggs to come and look at the sea.

The sea was so still and clear, that Mr. Pink could notice the little fish that were swimmimg in it, and even the coloured shining stones that were at the bottom.

‘If only she would come,’ said Mr. Pink, ‘I feel sure that her soul would leap and cry out for eternity.’

He looked further away, to where the sea and the sky met one another.

‘Her soul would not stay as far as her eyes can see, but it would rush on until the glory of God is reached.’

Mr. Pink hadn’t noticed it before, but he now saw that a boat was sailing by. Hardly
sailing, perhaps, because there was almost a dead calm, but leisurely gliding, and
appearing
as if it were a part of the summer sky and the sea.

The fisherman was asleep in the stern. Mr. Pink had come there on purpose to ask the fisherman about his sister; he must know of something, he felt sure—some seaweed,
perhaps
—that would ease the continuous pain that she suffered. Mr. Pink called, but the
fisherman
didn’t awake.

‘The new fisherman is wonderful,’ said Mr. Pink. ‘Esther, who used to be so rude, is a good girl now because she loves him; he found those white mice for Mrs. Moggs; and even Mrs. Pattimore begins to sing in her garden; and one day he will show Mrs. Topple where the precious clover grows.’

Mr. Pink stood upon the sands and held out his arms towards the fisherman.

He called out again.

The boat remained still as if painted into a picture of the sea, and the fisherman still slept.

When anxious agony possesses the human mind, even the sea, wide and watery as it is, appears sometimes to the trembling and
tormented
one to be indeed only a picture of waters and no real thing.

At that moment, with only one idea in his heart, and that idea to obtain help for his sister
from the only one that Mr. Pink believed was able to give it, Mr. Roddy’s agent fancied the wide sea to be a green highway that led to the sleeping fisherman. For—and in great
distress
one hardly knows what one does—Mr. Pink walked with his arms outstretched into the sea.

The boat had seemed so near, and the sea green and so like a firm carpet, that it certainly appeared natural to suppose that one
could walk out to the boat and touch the fisherman’s arm that lay so idly over the stern.

But history, that so often repeats itself, now, alas! did so again; for although he was not blind like the cow, yet when the waters flowed around him, and the boat that he sought disappeared behind the dark rock, Mr. Pink sank out of sight too, and was never seen again on the Mockery shore.