ABOUT WINTER IN REAL LIFE
Old moormen said it was one of the worst winters they could remember,
not on account of the cold, but because of the gales and persistent
snow. The first fall soon melted, but not entirely; a big splash of
white remained on Ger Tor until a second fall came; and when that melted
the splash remained, asking for more, and in due time receiving it.
People found it hard to get about; some parts of the moor were
inaccessible; and the roads were deep in slush when they were not heaped
with drifts. It was a bad winter for men and animals; and it made many
of the old folk so disgusted with life that they took the opportunity
offered them by severe colds to get rid of it altogether.
The villages above the Tavy appeared to be deserted during that dreary
time. It was a wonder how people hid themselves, for the street was
empty day after day, and a real human being crossing from one side to
the other was a sight to bring faces to the windows. One face was often
at a certain window, a frightened little white face, which had forgotten
how to laugh even when some old woman slipped up in the slush, and its
eyes would look first on one side, then on the other, generally without
seeing anything except the bare moor, which was sometimes black, and
sometimes white, and always dreary. Boodles was alone in Lewside
Cottage, her only companions the mice which she hated, and the eternal
winds which made her shiver and had plucked the roses from her cheeks
until hardly a pink petal remained. Boodles was feeling as much alone
without old Weevil as Brightly was feeling without Ju. Sometimes she
thought she might soon have to go out and tramp a portion of the world
like him, and claim her share of open air and space, which was all the
inheritance to which she was entitled.
To lead a lonely life on Dartmoor is unwholesome at any age; and when
one is eighteen and a girl it is a punishment altogether too severe.
Boodles had got through the first days fairly well because she was
stunned, but when she began to wake up and comprehend how she was placed
the horror bred of loneliness and wild winds took hold upon her. The
first evil symptom was restlessness. She wandered about the cottage, not
doing anything, but feeling she must keep on the move to prevent herself
from screaming. She began to talk to herself, softly during the day as
if she was rather afraid some one might be listening, and towards
evening loudly, partly to assure herself she was safe, partly to drown
the tempestuous noises of the wind. Then she fell into the trick of
shuddering, of casting quick glances behind, and sometimes she would run
into a corner and hide her face, because there were queer shadows in the
room, and strange sounds upon the stairs, and the doors shook so, and
she seemed to hear a familiar shuffling and a tender voice murmuring:
"Boodle-oodle," and she would cover up all the mirrors, dreadfully
afraid of seeing a comic old face in them. Sometimes when the wind was
roaring its loudest over the moor she would rush up to her bedroom, lock
the door, and scream. These were foolish actions, but then she was only
eighteen.
It was getting on towards Christmas, and at last there was another
moonlit night, full of wind and motion; and soon after Boodles had gone
to bed she heard other sounds which frightened her so much she could not
scream. She crept out of bed, got to the window, and looked out. A man
was trying the door, and when he found it secure he went to the windows.
The moonlight fell upon Pendoggat's head and shoulders. Boodles did not
know of a rumour suggesting that old Weevil had been a miser, and had
saved up a lot of money which was hidden in the cottage, but Pendoggat
had heard it. She got back to her bed and fainted with terror, but the
man failed to get in. The next day she went to see Mary, and told her
what had happened. Mary spat on her hands, which was one of her
primitive ways when she felt a desire to chastise any one, and picked up
her big stick, "I'll break every bone in his body," she shouted.
Boodles comprehended what a friend and champion she had in this
creature, who had much of a woman's tenderness, and all of a man's
strength. To some it might have appeared ridiculous to hear Mary's
threats, but it was not so. She was fully as strong as Pendoggat, and
there was no cowardice in her.
"Aw, my dear," she went on, "yew bain't the little maid what used to
come up for eggs and butter. Yew would come up over wi' red cheeks and
laughing cruel, and saying to I: 'One egg for luck, Mary,' and I'd give
it ye, my dear. If you'd asked I for two or dree I'd ha' given 'em.
You'm a white little maid, and as thin getting as thikky stick. Don't ye
ha' the decline, my dear. Aw now, don't ye. What will the butiful young
gentleman say when he sees you white and thin getting?"
"Don't, Mary," cried Boodles, almost passionately; for she dared not
think of Aubrey as a lover. Their love-days had become so impossible and
unreal. She had written to him, but had said nothing of Weevil's death,
afraid he might think she was appealing to him for help; neither had she
signed herself Titania Lascelles, nor told him of her aristocratic
relations. The story had appeared unreal somehow the morning after, and
the old man's manner and audible whispers had aroused her suspicions.
She thought it would be best to wait a little before telling Aubrey.
"What be yew going to du?" asked Mary, busy as ever, punching the dough
in her bread-pan.
"I am going to try and hang on till spring, and then see if I can't make
a living by taking in boarders," said the child seriously. "Mr. Weevil
left a little money, and I have a tiny bit saved up. There will be just
enough to pay rent, and keep me, if I am very careful."
"Butter and eggs and such ain't going to cost yew nought," said Mary
cheerily, though Peter would have groaned to hear her.
"Oh, thank you, dear old Mary," said Boodles, her eyes glistening; while
the bread-maker went at the dough as if she hated it. "I shall do
splendidly," Boodles went on. "I have seen the landlord, and he will let
me stay on. Directly the fine weather comes I shall put a card in the
window, and I expect I shall get heaps of lodgers. I can cook quite
well, and I'm a good manager. I ought to be able to make enough one half
of the year to keep me the other half. Of course I shall only take
ladies."
"Aw ees, don't ye tak' men, my dear. They'm all alike, and you'm a main
cruel purty maid, though yew ha' got white and thin. If that young
gentleman wi' the butiful face don't come and tak' ye, dalled if I wun't
be after 'en wi' my gurt stick," cried Mary, pummelling the dough again.
"I asked you not to mention him," said Boodles miserably.
"I bain't to talk about 'en," cried Mary scornfully. "And yew bain't to
think about 'en, I reckon. Aw, my dear, I've a gotten the heart of a
woman, and I knows fine what yew thinks about all day, and half the
night, though I mun't talk about it. I knows how yew puts out your arms
and cries for 'en. Yew don't want a gurt big house like rectory, and yew
don't want servants and railway travelling, but yew wants he, yew wants
to hold on to 'en, and know he'm yourn, and shut your purty eyes and
feel yew bain't lonesome--"
"Oh, Mary!" the child broke in, with something like a scream.
Mary left her pan and came and whitened the little girl's head with her
doughy fingers, lending the bright hair a premature greyness.
"It's the loneliness," cried Boodles. "I thought it would not be so bad
when I got used to it, but it's worse every day. I have to run on the
moor, and make believe there is some one waiting for me when I get home.
It's dreadful to feel the solitude when I go in, to find things just as
I left them, to hear nothing except mice nibbling under the stairs; and
then I have to go and turn on my windy organ, and try and believe I am
amusing myself."
"Aw, my dear, yew mustn't talk to I so larned like. You'm as larned as
Master," complained Mary.
"I'll tell you about my windy organ," Boodles went on, trying to force a
little sunshine through what threatened to be steady rain. "With the
wind, doors, and windows, I can play all sorts of marches. With my
bedroom window open, and the door shut, the wind plays sad music, a
funeral march; but when I shut my window, and open the one in the next
room, it is loud and lively, like a military march. If I open the
sitting-room window, and the one in the passage up-stairs, and shut all
the doors, it is splendid, Mary, a coronation march. I hear the
procession sweeping up-stairs, and the clapping of hands, and the crowd
going to and fro, murmuring ah-ah-ah. But the best of all is when I open
what was old daddy's bedroom window, and sit in my own room with the
door shut, for the wind plays a wedding-march then, and I can make it
loud or soft by opening and shutting my window. That is the march I play
every evening till I get the shivers."
"She'm dafty getting," muttered Mary, understanding nothing of the
musical principle of the little girl's amusement. "Don't ye du it, my
dear," she went on. "'Twill just be making you mazed, and us will find
ye jumping at the walls like a bumbledor on a window."
"I'll try and keep sensible, but there is Christmas, and January, and
February. Oh, Mary, I shall never do it," cried Boodles. "I shall be mad
before March, which is the proper time for madness."
"Get another maid to come and bide wi' ye," Mary suggested.
"How can I?"
"Mebbe some old dame, who wants a home--" began Mary.
"She would be an expense, and she might get drunk, rob me, beat me,
perhaps."
"Her wouldn't," declared Mary, with a glance at her big stick.
"I must go on being alone and making believe," said Boodles.
"Won't the butiful young gentleman come and live wi' ye?" said poor
Mary, quite thinking she had found a splendid way out of the difficulty.
"Silly old thing," sighed Boodles, actually smiling. Then she rose to
go, and Mary tramped heavily to her dairy. "Tak' eggs and butter wi'
ye," she called. "Aw, my dear, yew mun't starve, or you'll get decline.
'Tis cruel to go abroad on an empty stomach."
"I'm not a snake," said Boodles; and at that moment Peter appeared in
search of thoughts, heard the conversation, agreed that it was indeed
cruel to go abroad on an empty stomach, and went to record the statement
in his diary, adding for the sake of a light touch the observation of
Boodles that she was not a snake, though Peter could not see the joke.
Mary was a busy creature, but she found time that evening to stalk
across the moor and down to Helmen Barton, where she banged at the door
like the good champion Ethelred, hero of the Mad Trist, until the noise
of her stick upon the door "alarummed and reverberated" throughout the
hollow. When Annie appeared she was bidden to inform her master that if
he ventured again near Lewside Cottage, or dared to frighten "my little
maid," she, Mary, would come again with the stick in her hands, and use
his body as she had just used his door. When Mary had spoken she turned
to go, but the friendless woman called her, feeling perhaps that she too
needed a champion, and Mary turned back.
"Come inside," said Annie in a strange voice, and Mary went, with the
statement that she could not remain as the cows were waiting to be
milked.
"Been to Lewside Cottage, has he? He'm crazed for money. He'd rob the
little maid of her last penny, and pray for her whiles he was doing it,"
said Annie bitterly.
Mary said nothing, but her anger rose, and she spat noisily upon her
hands to get a good grip of the stick.
"I've been wi' 'en twenty years, and don't know 'en yet I thought once
he was a man, but I know he bain't. If yew was to shake your fingers at
'en he'd run."
"Yew ha' been drinking, woman," said Mary.
"Ah, I've had a drop. There's nought else to live vor. Twenty years,
Mary Tavy, he've had me body and soul, twenty years I've been a slave to
'en, and now he've done wi' me."
"What's that, woman?" cried Mary, lifting her long stick, and poking at
Annie's left hand and the gold ring worn upon it.
"That!" cried Annie furiously. "It be a dirty thing, what any man can
buy, and any vule of a woman will wear. Ask 'en what it cost, Mary Tavy.
A few shilluns, I reckon, the price of a joint o' meat, the price of a
pair o' boots. And it ha' bought me for twenty years."
"You'm drunk, woman."
"Ah, purty fine. Wimmin du main dafty things when they'm drunk. Your
brother ha' made a mommet of 'en, and like a vule he went and broke it
for a bit o' dirty money."
"It bain't broke," said Mary. "Peter made a new mommet, and broke that."
"Glory be to God," cried Annie wildly, plucking out some grey hairs that
were falling upon her eyes. "I'll tell 'en. 'Twill work, Mary Tavy. The
devil who passed over last month will see to it. He never passed the
Barton. He didn't want his own. I never knowed a mommet fail when 'twas
made right."
"Du'ye say he bain't your husband?" Mary muttered, looking at the grey
hairs in the woman's hand.
"See beyond!" screamed Annie, losing all self-control, pulling Mary to
the kitchen window, pointing out. It was a dark cold kitchen, built of
granite, with concrete floor. There was nothing to be seen but the big
brake of furze, black and tangled, swaying slightly. It was a mighty
brake, twenty years untouched, and there were no flowers upon it. The
interior was a choked mass of dead growth.
"Why don't ye burn 'en, woman?"
"Ask 'en. It ain't going to be burnt yet--not yet, Mary Tavy." Annie's
voice had fallen to a hoarse whisper. She was half-drunk and half-mad.
Those twenty years were like twenty mountains piled upon her. "Look at
my white hairs, Mary Tavy. I'm getting a bit old like, and I'm for the
poorhouse, my dear. Annie Crocker, spinster--that's me. Twenty years
I've watched that vuzz before this window rocking to and fro, like a
cradle, my dear, rocking 'em to sleep. Yew know what 'tis to live wi' a
man. You'm a fool to first, and a vule always I reckon, but such a vule
to first that yew don't know' how to stop 'em coming. Yew think of love,
Mary Tavy, and you don't care--and there 'em be, my dear, two of 'em, in
the middle o' the vuzz."
"Did'st du it?" muttered Mary, standing like a wooden image.
"Me! I was young then, and I loved 'em. He took 'em from me when I was
weak and mazed. I had to go through it here alone, twice my dear, alone
wi' him, and he said they was dead, but I heard 'em cry, twice, my dear,
only I was that weak I couldn't move. 'Twas winter both times, and I lay
up over, and heard 'en walking on the stones of the court, and heard 'en
let the bucket down, and heard 'en dra' it up--and then I heard 'en
cursing o' the vuzz 'cause it pricked 'en, and his hands and face was
bloody wi' scratches when he come up. I mind it all, though I was
mazed--and I loved 'em, my dear."
"Preaches in chapel tu," said Mary, a sense of inconsistency occurring
to her. "You'm a vule, woman, to tell to me like this."
"I've ha' bitten my tongue for twenty years, and I'd ha' bitten it
another twenty if he'd used me right. Didn't your brother find 'en wi'
Chegwidden's maid? Don't I know he's been wi' she for months, and used
she as he've used me? Don't I know he wants to have she here, and turn
me out--and spend the price of a pair o' boots on a ring same as this,
and buy she wi' that for twenty years?"
Mary turned away. It was already dark, the cows were not milked, and
would be lowing for her to ease their udders. Annie was beside herself.
The barrier of restraint had fallen, and the pent-up feelings of a
generation roared out, like the Tavy with its melted snow, sweeping away
everything which was not founded upon a rock.
"Burn it down, woman," said Mary as she went.
"Not till the mommet ha' done its work," screamed Annie. Then she
lighted the lantern, and went to the linhay for more cider.
When lonely little Boodles got home she saw at once that the cottage had
been entered. The sitting-room window had been forced open, and its
catch was broken; but Pendoggat had got nothing for his pains. She had
hidden the money-box so cunningly that he had failed to find it; and she
was glad then that she had seen him prowling about the cottage the night
before. She got some screws and made the window fast. Then she cried and
had her supper. After that she went to her bed and sobbed again until
her head ached, and then she sat up and scolded herself severely; and as
the wind was blowing nicely she turned on the wedding march, and while
listening to it prattled to herself--
"You mustn't break down, Boodles. It is much too early to do that, for
things have not begun to go really badly for you yet. There's enough
money to keep things going till summer, if you do without any new
clothes, and by the way you mustn't walk too much or you'll wear your
boots out, and next summer you will have a nice lot of old maids here
for their health, and make plenty of money out of them for your health.
I know you are only crying because it is so lonely, but still you
mustn't do it, for it makes you thin and white. You had better go and
study the cookery-book, and think of all the nice things you will make
for the old maids when you have caught them."
Boodles never allowed herself to speak upon the subject which was always
in her mind, and she tried to persuade herself she was not thinking of
Aubrey and Weevil's wild story, although she did nothing else. While she
was talking of her prospects she was thinking of Aubrey, though she
would not admit it. She had tried once to put six puppies into a small
cupboard, but as often as she opened the door to put another puppy in
those already inside tumbled out. That was exactly the state her mind
was in. When she opened it to think of her prospects, Aubrey, Weevil's
story, and her unhappy origin, fell out sprawling at once, and were all
over the place before she could catch them again; and when she had
caught them she couldn't shut them up.
It was absolutely necessary to find something to do, as regulating the
volume and sound of the wind by opening or shutting various windows and
doors, and turning on what sounded to her like marriage or martial
marches, was an unwholesome as well as a monotonous amusement. The child
roamed about the cottage with a lamp in her hand, trying to get away
from something which was not following. She could not sit down to sew,
for her eyes were aching, and she kept starting and pricking her finger.
She wandered at last with an idea into what had been Weevil's bedroom.
There was an old writing-table there, and she had lately discovered a
key with a label attached informing her that it would open the drawers
of that table. Boodles locked herself in, lighted two lamps, which was
an act of extravagance, but she felt protected somehow by a strong
light, and began to dig up the dust and ashes of the old man's early
life.
Many people have literary stuff they are ashamed of hiding away under
lock and key, which they do not want, and yet do not destroy. Every one
has a secret drawer in which incriminating rubbish is preserved,
although it may be of an entirely innocent character. They are always
going to make a clean sweep, but go on putting it off until death can
wait no longer; and sorrowing relations open the drawer, glance at its
contents, and mutter hurriedly: "Burn it, and say nothing." To know the
real man it is only necessary to turn out his secret drawer when he is
dead.
There was not much stored away in the old writing-table. Apparently
Weevil had destroyed all that was recent, and kept much that was old.
There was sufficient to show Boodles the truth; that the old man had
always been Weevil, that his story to her had been a series of lame
lies, that his origin had been a humble one. There were letters from
friends of his youth, queer missives suggesting jaunts to the Welsh
Harp, Hampstead, or Rosherville, and signed: "your old pal, George," or
"yours to the mustard-pot. Art." They were humorous letters, written in
slang, and they amused Boodles; but after reading them she could not
suppose that Weevil had been ever what one would call a gentleman. A
mass of such stuff she put aside for the kitchen fire; and then she came
upon another bundle, tightly fastened with string, which she cut, and
drawing a letter from the packet she opened it and read--
* * * * *
"My own Dearest.
I was so very glad to get your letter and I know you are looking
forward to have one from me but I am so sorry Dearest you have had
such a bad cold. My Dear I hope to sit on your knees and have my
arm around your neck some day. I do love you you are my only
sweetheart now and I hope I am only yours. Many thanks for sending
me your photo which I should be very sorry to part with it. It
makes me feel delighted as I am looking forward to be in your Dear
arms some day. I am waiting for the time to pass so we shall be
together for ever. I sit by the fire cold nights and have my
thoughts in you my Dearest. I knit lace when I have no sewing to
do. It was very miserable last Sunday but I went to church in the
evening but I much rather would like to have been with you. I wish
I could reach you to give you a nice kiss. I am always dreaming
about you my Love and it is such miserable weather now I will stop
in haste with my best love and kisses to my Dear Boy from your
loving and true Minnie."
* * * * *
There was a fat bundle of such letters, written by the same illiterate
hand nearly fifty years before, and the foolish old man had kept the
rubbish, which had no doubt a sort of wild-flower fragrance once, and
had left them at his death. Minnie was evidently a servant girl, hardly
Miss Fitzalan of the amazing story, and if the young Weevil of those
days had meant it, and had not been indulging in a little back-stairs
flirtation, his birth was more humble than Boodles had supposed. He must
have meant it, she reasoned, or he would hardly have kept that
sentimental rubbish all his life.
Another drawer came open, and the child breathed quickly. It was filled
with a parcel of books, and a label upon the topmost one bore the word
"Boodles." The truth was in that secret drawer, there could be no
romancing there, the question of her birth was to be settled once and
for all, she could read it in those books, then go and tell Mr. Bellamie
who she was. The girl's sad eyes softened when she perceived that the
heap of diaries was well thumbed. She did not know that the old man had
often read himself to sleep with one of them.
The straw, by which she had been, mentally at least, supporting herself
since Weevil's death, was quickly snatched away. She saw then, what Mr.
Bellamie had seen at once, how that the simple old creature had sought
to secure her happiness with lies. The story of the diaries told her
little more. It was true she was a bastard; that she had been wrapped in
fern, and placed in the porch of the cottage, with a label round her
neck like a parcel from the grocer's; that the old man had known as much
about her parents as she knew herself. "She cannot be a commoner's
child," was written in one of the diaries. "I think she must be the
daughter of some domestic servant and a man of gentle birth. She would
not be what she is had her father been a labourer or a farmer."
Then followed a list of the girls whom Weevil had suspected; but that
was of no interest to Boodles. The old man had nursed her himself. There
was a little book, _Hints to Mothers_, in the pile, and at the bottom of
the drawer was a scrap of the fern in which she had been wrapped, and
the horrible label which had been round her baby neck. She gazed,
dry-eyed and fascinated, forgetting her loneliness, her sorrow,
forgetting everything except that one overmastering thing, the awful
injury which had been done to her innocent little self. Now that she
knew the truth she would face it. The wind was playing a funeral march
just then.
"I am an illegitimate child," said Boodles. She stepped before the
glass, uncovered it, screamed because she thought she had seen that
grotesque old face which servant girl Minnie had longed to kiss fifty
years back, recovered herself, and looked. "He said I should be perfect
if I had a name," she muttered. She was getting a fierce little
tiger-cat, and beginning to show her pretty teeth. "Why am I not a
humpback, or diseased in some way, or hideous, if I am an illegitimate
child? I am as good as any girl. People in Tavistock turn to look at me,
and I know they say: 'What a pretty girl!' Am I to say to every one: 'I
am an illegitimate child, and therefore I am as black as the devil
himself?' Why is a girl as black as the devil just because no clergyman
has jabbered some rubbish at her parents? Oh, Boodles, you pretty
love-child, don't stand it," she cried.
She flung the towel over the glass, turned to the window, and cast it
open to receive the wind. "I am not frightened now. I am wild. Let us
have the coronation march, and let me go by while they shout at me,
'bastard.' What have I done? I know that the sins of the parents are
visited upon the children, but why should the children stand it? Must
they, poor little fools? They must endure disease, but not dishonour. I
am not going to stand it. I would go into God's presence, and clench my
fists, and say I will not stand it. He allowed me to be born. If
matrimony is what people say it is, a sort of sacrament, how is it that
children can be born without it?"
The wind rushed into the room so violently that she had to shut the
window. The lamp-flames were leaping up the glasses. A different tune
began and made the tortured little girl less fierce.
"I won't be wild any more," she said; but an idea had entered her brain,
and she gave it expression by murmuring again and again: "Nobody knows,
nobody knows. Only he knew, and he is dead."
That was true enough. Only Weevil and her mother knew the truth about
her shameful origin. The mother had not been seen that night placing the
bundle of fern in the porch. She could not have been seen, as nobody in
the neighbourhood knew where Boodles really came from, and the fact that
the stories which they had invented about her were entirely false proved
their ignorance. Probably nobody knew that her mother had given birth to
a child. Boodles thought of that as she walked to and fro murmuring,
"Nobody knows." Old Weevil's death might prove to be a blessing in
disguise.
"I will not stand it," she kept on saying. "I will not bear the
punishment of my father's sin. I will be a liar too--just once, and then
I will be truthful for ever. I will make up my own story, and it won't
be wild like his. I understand it all now. In this funny old world of
sheep-people one follows another, not because the one in front knows
anything, but just because he is in front; and when the leader laughs
the ones behind laugh too, and when the leader says 'how vile,' the ones
behind say 'how vile' too. I suppose we are all sheep-people, and I am
only different because I have black wool, and I am on the wrong side of
the hedge and can't get among the respectable white baa-baas. I won't
harm any of them. I will be wicked once, in self-defence, to get this
black wool off, and then I'll be a very good white respectable
sheep-person ever after. The truth is there," she said, nodding at the
little heap of books, "and the truth is going to be burnt."
She gathered up the pile and cremated the lot in the kitchen fire. Then
she went to bed with a kind of happiness, because she knew that her
doubts were cleared away, and that her future depended upon her ability
to fight for herself. Her eyes were fully opened by this time because
she had left fairyland and got well out into the lane of real life. She
knew that "sheep-people" like the most excellent Bellamies, neatly bound
and edged in the very best style of respectability, must regard little
bastards as a sort of vermin, which it was only kind to tread upon or
sweep decorously out of the way. "I am only going to wriggle in
self-defence because they are hurting me," she murmured. "If they will
be nice to me I will stop wriggling at once and be good for ever. I
wouldn't make an effort if I was ugly or humpbacked. I would curl up and
die like a horrid spider. But I know I am really a nice girl and a
pretty girl; and if they will only give me the chance I will be a good
girl--wicked once, and then good, so very good. I expect you are much
better than most girls, Boodles, and you mustn't let them call you
beastly names," she said; and went off to sleep in quite a conceited
state of mind.
In the morning there was a letter from Mr. Bellamie, not for Boodles,
but for the old man who was dead, and the girl opened it, not knowing
who it was from, and learnt a little more of the truth about herself. It
was lucky for old Weevil that he was well out of the way. He would
probably just as soon have been dead as called upon to answer that
letter, though it was kindly enough and delicately expressed and full of
artistic touches. Mr. Bellamie adopted a gentle cynicism which would
have been too subtle for Weevil's comprehension. He slapped him on the
shoulder as it were, chaffing him, reproving him mildly, and saying in
effect: "You old rogue, to think that you could fool me with your
fairy-tales." He professed to regard the matter as a joke, and then
becoming serious, suggested that Weevil would surely see the necessity
of keeping Boodles and Aubrey apart in the future. He didn't believe in
young men, and Aubrey was a mere boy, entangling themselves with an
engagement, and altogether apart from that Boodles, though a pretty and
charming girl, was not the partner that he would wish his son to choose.
Writing still more plainly, if Aubrey insisted upon marrying the girl it
would have to be without his consent. He could not receive Boodles at
his house while the mystery of her birth remained unexplained. There was
a mystery, he knew, as he had made inquiries. He did not credit what he
had been told, but the fact remained that Weevil had increased his
suspicions by withholding what he knew. The whole affair was
unsatisfactory, and the only satisfactory way out of it would be to keep
the young people definitely apart until they had found other interests.
Mr. Bellamie concluded by hoping that Weevil was not being troubled by
the wild weather and tempestuous winds.
It would have been better for Boodles if she had not opened that letter.
For her it was the end of all things. Hardly knowing what she was doing,
she put on her hat, went out, down to the Tavy, and into the woods. It
was not "our walk," but the place where it had been. The big explosion
had cleared the walk away; and there was nothing except December damps
and mists, sodden ferns, and piles of half-melted snow. The once upon a
time stage was very far away then. It was the end of the story, and
there was no happy ever after, no merry dance of fairies to the tune of
a wedding march, no flowers nor sunshine. All the pleasant things had
gone to sleep, and those things which could not sleep were weeping.
Boodles fastened her arms about the trunk of a tree which she
recognised, and cried upon it; then she lay upon the fern which carried
a few memories and cried upon that; and felt her way to the river and
cried into that. She could not increase the moisture. The whole wood was
dripping and far more tear-productive than herself. The rivers and ferns
could not tell her that it was not the end of the story, but only the
end of a chapter; for she was merely eighteen, and the big desert of
life was beyond with a green oasis here and there. But fairyland was
closed. A big fence of brambles ran all round it, and there was a notice
board erected to the effect that Boodles would be prosecuted for
trespassing if she went inside, though all other children would be
welcome. There was the beech-tree where Aubrey and she had once spent an
afternoon carving two hearts skewered upon an arrow, though the hearts
looked rather like dumplings and the arrow resembled a spade. They had
done their best and made a failure. They had tried to tell a story, and
had muddled it all up just because they had been interrupted so often.
Why couldn't ogres leave them alone so that they could finish the story
properly?
Boodles got back somehow to her home in the wintry solitude, and wrote
what she thought was a callous little note to Mr. Bellamie. Perhaps it
did not sound so very callous. Short compositions appeal as long ones
seldom do.
* * * * *
"Mr. Weevil is dead, and has been buried some time, and I am quite
alone. I am sorry I opened your letter. Please forgive me. I did not
know who it was from. I am going to try and make a living by letting
lodgings when the fine weather comes, and I shall be very grateful if
Mrs. Bellamie and you will recommend me. I am a good cook, and could
make people comfortable. Perhaps you had better not say I am only
eighteen, as people might not like to trust me. It is very cold up here,
and the wind is dreadful. I hope you and Mrs. Bellamie are quite well. I
promise you I will not write to Aubrey again."