ABOUT A HOUSE ON THE HIDDEN LANES
Thomasine was sitting in the stone kitchen of Town Rising sewing and
trying to think; but the little skeletons of thought that did present
themselves were like bad dreams. She had given notice to the Chegwiddens
and would be leaving in a few days, not because she wanted to go, but
because it had become necessary. Town Rising was a moral place, where
nothing lower than drunkenness was permitted, and Thomasine was able to
comprehend how much better it was to resign than to be turned out.
Pendoggat had found a place for her, not a permanent one as he
explained, a place where she would receive no wages, where indeed a
premium would be required; there she would pay a certain debt to Nature,
and then he would come and take her away.
Thomasine was making garments which she smuggled away when any one came
to the door. They were ridiculous garments which she could not possibly
have worn herself, but perhaps she was making doll's clothes for a
charity bazaar, although girls like Thomasine are not usually interested
in such things; or she might have been preparing a complete outfit for a
certain little person who had benefited her. Pixies of the Tavy are
famed for their generosity to servant maids who do their work properly;
and the girls have been known to make garments for their benefactors,
and spread them out in the kitchen before going to bed, so that the
little person could put them on in the night. But the clothes, small
though they were, would have been a few sizes too large for pixies, and
somewhat too roomy for dolls. Thomasine seemed to be wasting her time
and materials; and as a matter of fact she was, although she did not
know it because she knew nothing, except that she was not particularly
happy.
She was trying to think of matrimony while she sewed. All that she knew
about it was that the clergyman mentioned a couple by name publicly
three Sundays running, and then they went to church, the girl in her
fair-clothes, and the man with a white tie which wouldn't fit his
collar, and the clergyman read something which made the man grin and the
girl respectable. Time was getting on, it was the dull month of
February, and the burden of maternity seemed to be much nearer than the
responsibilities of matrimony. Thomasine knew nothing of the place she
was going into except that her duties would be light, merely to look
after an old woman who would in return render her certain services at a
critical time. She did not even know where the place was, for Pendoggat
was not going to tell her until the last moment. She had seen young
Pugsley the previous Sunday, in a hard hat and a suit of new clothes,
the trousers turned up twice in order that a double portion of
respectability might rest upon him, with close-cropped head, and a
bundle of primroses pinned to his coat. He had stepped up, shaken her by
the hand in a friendly way, and told her he was going to be married at
Easter. He had got the promise of a cottage, and the ceremony would take
place early on Easter Monday, and they were going for their honeymoon to
St. Thomas's Fair. Thomasine went back crying, because Pugsley was a
good sort of young fellow, and it seemed to her she had missed
something, though it was not her fault. She had always wanted to be
respectable Mrs. Pugsley, only she had been taken away from the young
man, and told not to see him again, and farm-maids have to be obedient.
Thomasine spent the remainder of her time sewing when she was not
occupied with household duties, and then the day came when she was to
leave. One of the farm-hands drove her to the station, with her box in
the cart behind, and her wages in her pocket. She knew by then where she
was going; into the loneliness of mid-Devon. She would much rather have
gone home, but that was impossible, for the pious cobbler, her father,
would have taken her by the shoulders, placed her outside the door, and
have turned the key upon her.
If a map be taken, and one leg of a compass placed on the village of
Witheridge, the other leg may be extended to a circumference six miles
distant, and a wide circle be swept without encountering a railway or
cutting more than half-a-dozen good roads, and inside that circle there
is not a single town. It is almost unexplored territory, there are no
means of transit, and the inhabitants are rough and primitive. Distances
there seem great, for the miles are very long ones, and when a call is
made to some lonely house the visitor will often be pressed to stay the
night, as he would be in Canada or Australia. The map is well sprinkled
with names which suggest that the country is thickly populated, but it
is not. Many of the names are delusions, more suggestive of the past
than the present. A century ago hamlets occupied the sites now covered
by a name, but there is nothing left of them to-day except dreary ruins
of cob standing in a thicket of brambles or in what was once an
apple-orchard. What was formerly the name of a good-sized village is now
the title of a farm-house, or one small cottage which would not pay for
repairing and must therefore be destroyed when it becomes uninhabitable.
It is a sad land to wander through. It suggests a country at the end of
its tether which has almost abandoned the struggle for existence, a
poverty-stricken country which cannot face the strong-blooded flow of
food importations from foreign lands. Even the goods sold in the village
shops are of alien manufacture. A hundred little hamlets have given up
the struggle in the same number of years, and been wiped, not off the
map, but off the land. The country of Devon is like a rosy-cheeked apple
which is rotten inside.
This region within the circle is densely wooded, and in parts fertile,
though the soil is the heavy dun clay which is difficult to work. It is
well-watered, and is only dying because there are no markets for its
produce and no railways to carry it. It is a country of lanes, so narrow
that only two persons can walk abreast along them, so dirty and ill-kept
as to be almost impassable in winter, so dark that it is sometimes
difficult to see, and so stuffy and filled with flies in hot weather
that any open space comes as a relief. These lanes twist everywhere, and
out of them branch more lanes of the same dirtiness and width; and if
they are followed a gate is sure to be reached; and there, in a dark
atmosphere, may be seen a low white house with a gloomy orchard on each
side, and behind a wilderness of garden, and in front a court containing
crumbling barns of cob and a foul pond; and on the other side of the
court the lane goes on into more gloomy depths, towards some other dull
and lonely dwelling-place in the rotten heart of Devon.
The country would be less sad without these dreary houses which suggest
tragedies. Sometimes stories dealing with young women and very young
girls reach the newspapers, but not often; the lanes are so dark and
twisting, and the houses are so entirely hidden. It is possible to walk
along the lanes for miles and to see no human beings; only the ruins of
where they lived once, and the decaying houses where they live now. It
is like walking through a country of the past.
Along one of these lanes Thomasine was taken in a rickety cart ploughing
through glue-like mud, and at one of the gates she alighted. There had
been a hamlet once where the brambles spread, and its name, which had
become the name of the one small house remaining, was Ashland, though
the map calls it something else. The tenant was an elderly woman who
appeared to find the greatest difficulty in suiting herself with a
servant, as she was changing them constantly. She was always having a
fresh one, all young girls, and they invariably looked ill when they
went away, which was a sure sign that the house was not healthy, and
that Mrs. Fuzzey's temper was a vile one. The woman had no near
neighbours, though there were, of course, people scattered round about,
but they saw nothing suspicious in the coming and going of so many
maids. No girl could be expected to stand more than a month or two of
Mrs. Fuzzey and her lonely house, especially as some of the girls she
engaged were rather smart and well dressed. No one suspected that the
mistress of dark little Ashland of the hidden lanes was there solely in
the way of business.
"How be ye, my dear?" said the lady in an amiable fashion to her new
servant, client, or patient, or whatever she chose to regard her as,
when the driver after his customary joke: "Here's one that will stop vor
a month likely," had been dismissed. "You'm a lusty maid what won't give
much trouble, I reckon. You'm safe enough wi' me, my dear. Seems you ha'
come a bit early like. Well, most of 'em du. They get that scared of it
showing. Not this month wi' yew, I reckon. Be it early next?"
"Ees," said Thomasine.
"Well, my dear, I'll be a proper mother to ye. 'Twill du ye good to get
abroad a bit. Run out and pick up the eggs, and us will ha' tea.
Yonder's the hen-roost."
Mrs. Fuzzey seemed a pleasant body, but it was all in the way of
business. She was a stout woman, with a big florid face, and crisp black
hair which suggested foreign extraction. She reared poultry
successfully, and was quite broken-hearted when a young chicken met an
evil fate and perished, which indicated the presence of a vein of
tenderness somewhere, in the region of the pocket probably, as she was
usually insensible to the suffering of human beings. Still she did not
look the sort of woman who might reasonably be expected to end her life
upon the scaffold, if success in business made her careless, or if any
of her patrons or clients ventured to risk their own safety by giving
information against her.
Thomasine was not accustomed to stately interiors and fine furniture,
and yet she was astonished at the bareness of the interior of Ashland.
Had everything in the place been put up to auction less than five pounds
would possibly have bought the lot. There was nothing in the way of
luxury, not an article that was unnecessary, except the curtains that
hung across the windows for respectability's sake. It was not a home,
but a place of business. The mistress had the sense to know she might
require to leave in a hurry some day without being allowed time to pack
anything, and she saw no advantage in investing her savings in furniture
which she would have to leave behind.
The garden was at the back, a dark garden, shadowed and gloomy, like an
Eastern cemetery. It made a sort of quadrangle, with the house at one
end, a jungle-like coppice with bracken and bramble undergrowth at the
other, and an orchard on each side; as an additional protection there
was a stone hedge round the three sides. There was only one entry and
that was from the house. There had been another, a gate leading in from
one of the orchards, but Mrs. Fuzzey had closed it up. She did not want
people trespassing in her garden.
Near the hedge at the back, and in front of the dense coppice, was an
old well which had not been used for a long time as the water was
supposed to be polluted. It had been practically closed up when Mrs.
Fuzzey came into residence, but she had opened it for her own purposes.
The water supply of the house came from a well in the court, which was
fed either by a spring or by the river Yeo which passed close by. The
old well was very deep and contained a good deal of water with a scum on
it which fortunately could not be seen, and a smell to it which in hot
weather became rather pronounced, as it had not been cleared out for
ages and was filled with dead bodies of rats--and other things. But the
miasma carried no distance, and there was nobody to complain about it
except Mrs. Fuzzey, who didn't mind. Ashland was almost as much out of
the way as a farm upon the back blocks of Australia. Nobody ever entered
the garden except herself and her maid for the time being. It was in a
land where the sanitary inspector ceases from troubling. She did her own
gardening, planting her potatoes and onions, being a strong woman well
able to wield a spade. She had piled a lot of rocks about the well and
made quite a pleasant flower garden there. She was fond of flowers, and
in the warm weather would take out a chair and sit beside the well,
admiring the beauty of the various saxifrages, creepers, and trailing
plants which her efforts had induced to grow. She called it the Grotto.
She had penny novelettes sent her regularly, and would devour them
greedily as she sat in her garden, being very much addicted to romance
and sentiment when it was strong enough; and sometimes she thought it
would be agreeable to retire from business and have a husband and family
of her own. It was so very dull at Ashland though she was making money.
There never had been a Mr. Fuzzey, although she always gave herself the
courtesy title of Mrs.
Thomasine got on very well with Mrs. Fuzzey and almost liked her. The
girl was taken round the garden and the Grotto was pointed out to her
with pride, although there was nothing to be seen except wet rocks,
sodden plants, and decayed woodwork; but she was informed it would be a
place of great beauty in the spring. Indoors there was cleaning to be
done, with cooking, dairy-work, and egg-packing. A tradesman's visit was
rare, and when one did come it was on foot along the narrow muddy lane,
his cart being left far behind at the corner of some road or bigger
lane. The evenings would have been fearfully dreary had Mrs. Fuzzey been
less entertaining. The lady made and drank sloe-gin in some quantity;
and she gave Thomasine a taste for it, with the result that sometimes
they laughed a good deal without apparent cause, and the elderly lady
became sentimental and embraced Thomasine, and declared that she loved
young women, which was natural enough seeing that she made her living
out of them. Then she would read selected portions from her latest
novelette and weep with emotion.
"If ever I come to change my business I'll write bukes," she said one
night. "I'd like to sot down every day, and write about young volks
making love. I feels cruel soft to think on't. Lord love ye, my dear,
there bain't nothing like love. Volks may say what 'em likes, but 'tis
the only thing worth living vor. I've never had none, my dear, and I'd
like it cruel. You'm had plenty, I reckon. Most o' the maids what comes
here ha' had a proper butiful plenty on't, and some of 'em ha' talked
about it till my eyes was fair drapping. I cries easy," said Mrs.
Fuzzey.
Thomasine admitted she had received her share, and rather more than she
had wanted.
"Yew can't ha' tu much when it comes the way yew wants it," said the
lady. "I'm wonderful fond o' these little bukes 'cause 'em gives yew the
real thing. I can't abide 'em when they talks about butiful country, and
moons a shining, and such like, but when they gets their arms around
each other and starts smacking, then I sots down tight to 'en. I can
tak' plenty o' that trade. Sets me all of a quiver it du. I ses to
myself: 'Amelia'--that's me, my dear--'just think what some maids get
and yew don't.' Then I starts crying, my dear. I be a cruel tender
woman."
The conversation was entirely one-sided, because Thomasine had never
learnt to talk.
"If ever I got to write one o' these, I'd mind what the maids ha' told
me. I'd start wi' love, and I'd end wi' love. I'd ha' nought else. I'd
set 'em kissing on the first line, and I'd end 'em, my dear, I'd end 'em
proper, fair hugging, my dear," hiccupped Mrs. Fuzzey. The bottle of
sloe-gin was getting low, and her spirits were proportionally high. She
kissed Thomasine, breathed gin down her back, and lifted up her voice
again--
"I loves maids, I du, I loves 'em proper. I loves children tu, innocent
little children. I loves 'em all, 'cept when they scream, and then I
can't abide 'em. I reckon, my dear, you wouldn't find a tenderer woman
than me anywheres. I tells myself sometimes I be tu soft, but I can't
help it, my dear."
The old swine slobbered over the girl, half-drunk and half-acting,
giving her loud-sounding kisses; and Thomasine did not know that most of
the girls who had been placed under Mrs. Fuzzey's protection had been
used in the same way as long as they would stand it. People have many
peculiar ways of easing the conscience; some confess to a priest, some
perform charitable works; others, like Mrs. Fuzzey, assume they are
rather too good, though they may be vile. The old harridan posed as a
tender-hearted being in love with every living creature; and she had
read so many ridiculous love-tales and wept over them, and drunk so many
bottles of sloe-gin and wept over them, and listened with lamentations
to so many amatory details from the young women who had placed
themselves under her charge, that she had pretty well persuaded herself
she was a paragon of loving-kindness. Thomasine thought she was; but
then Thomasine knew nothing.
It was rare to see a human being cross the court in front of Ashland. If
more than one person passed in a day it was a thing to talk about, and
sometimes a whole week went by bringing nobody. The policeman who was
supposed to patrol the district had possibly never heard of the place,
and had he been told to go there would have wanted a guide. Ashland was
more isolated at that time than most of the dead hamlets, because the
two farm-houses that stood nearest were empty and dropping to pieces.
About half-a-mile beyond the court another dark little lane branched
off, and presently it divided into two dark little lanes like rivers of
mud flowing between deep banks. They were like the dark corridors of a
haunted house; and one of them led to the dead hamlet of Black Hound,
now one cob farm-house until lately occupied by Farmer Hookaway who had
shot himself the previous autumn; and the other finished up at the dead
hamlet of Yeast-beer, which was also one cob farm-house with the thatch
sliding off its roof, and this had been tenanted by Farmer Venhay, who
had not shot himself but had drowned his bankrupt body in the Yeo. It
was a pretty neighbourhood in summer, for the foxgloves were gorgeous,
so were the ferns, and the meadow-sweet, irises, ragged-robins and
orchids in the marshy fields; but it was sad somehow. It wanted
populating. There were too many ruins about, too many abandoned orchards
overrun with brambles, too many jagged walls of cob which represented a
name upon the map. Once upon a time the folk of Merry England had danced
and revelled there. Their few descendants took life tragically, and
sometimes put it off in the same way. There was no music for them to
dance to.
The time passed quickly enough for Thomasine, too quickly because she
was frightened. She quite understood why she had become Mrs. Fuzzey's
assistant for the time being. She comprehended that it is the duty of
every girl to remain respectable, and in a vague way she had grasped the
code of morality as it is practised in certain places. It was necessary
for girls in her condition to go away and hide themselves, either at
home, if her parents would permit it, or if not in lodgings provided for
the purpose. She would never be seen, and would not have the doctor,
because it was not anything serious, generally measles, or a stubborn
cold. When everything was over she could appear again, and get strong
and well by taking outdoor exercise; and nobody ever knew what had
happened, unless the child, which was always born dead, had been
disposed of in a particularly clumsy fashion.
As time went on Mrs. Fuzzey became irritable. She said Thomasine would
have to pay something extra if she was not quick about her business. Her
own affairs were by no means prospering, as she had not received any
applications to fill the position of general help when Thomasine had
vacated it. The truth of the matter was, as she explained bitterly,
girls in country districts were becoming enlightened and imbued with the
immoral spirit of the towns, which displayed articles of convenience in
the windows of shops professing to be hygienic and surgical drug stores.
These things had penetrated to the country, and a knowledge of them had
reached even the most out of the way districts. Every small chemist did
a large back-room business in such things, and many a girl was taking
the precaution of carrying one about in her handkerchief, or when going
to church between the leaves of her prayer-book. Mrs. Fuzzey had no
hesitation in denouncing the entire system as immoral, and one which
conduced towards the destruction of her business which she had built up
with so much care and secrecy. The lady had been finding her novelettes
dull reading lately. The love interest had not been nearly strong enough
for her taste, and she felt that her imagination could have supplied
many details that were wanting. In the meantime flowers were springing
in the garden, which was on low ground and entirely sheltered from every
wind; and one morning Mrs. Fuzzey came in to announce that the Grotto
would soon be beautiful, as the white arabis and purple aubrietia were
smothered with buds.
Soon after that it happened with Thomasine after the manner of women,
and she gave birth to twins, both girls. Mrs. Fuzzey was kindness itself
while she attended the girl, but when the first had been followed by the
second she began to grumble and said she should require another
sovereign. She couldn't work for nothing, and she echoed Brightly's
frequently expressed complaint that trade was cruel dull. The infants
were removed, and then Thomasine gave birth to a third, a boy this time.
Mrs. Fuzzey became really angry, and wanted to know if this sort of
thing was likely to continue. She knew all about the legend current
around Chulmleigh, of the Countess of Devon who met a labourer carrying
a basketful of seven infants, which his wife had just given birth to,
down to the river that he might dispose of them like kittens, and she
thought it possible that Thomasine might be about to emulate that
woman's example. Mrs. Fuzzey was not prepared to deal with infants in
such quantity, and she stated she should require an additional five
pounds to cover extra work and risk.
"Have ye purty nigh done?" she asked at length.
"Ees," muttered Thomasine faintly.
"About time, I reckon. Well, I'll step under and ha' a drop just to
quiet my nerves like."
Mrs. Fuzzey had her drop, then attended to her professional duties,
which did not detain her long, had another drop, which kept her engaged
some time, and finally returned and asked the girl how she did.
"Proper bad. I reckon I be dying," said Thomasine.
Mrs. Fuzzey laughed her to scorn. "You'm as fresh as a trout. Come
through it fine, my dear. You can't say I bain't a tender woman," she
went on, the various "drops," and the knowledge that the unpleasant part
of her work was over, having rendered her amiable. "I know the trade, I
du, and I be so soft and gentle that you didn't feel hardly anything.
'Twas lucky for yew, my dear, they sent yew to me. Any old doctor might
ha' killed ye. I reckon I'm just about the handiest at the trade a
living, and cruel tender tu. Done a lot o' good in my time, I ha'. Saved
many a maid just like I've saved yew."
Mrs. Fuzzey talked as if she regarded herself eminently qualified for
decorations and a pension.
"'Tis a pity yew can't claim the bounty," she went on. "But there, it
bain't much, only a pound or two, though a little bit be a lot for poor
wimmin like yew and me, my dear. 'Twould help yew to pay me, for I can't
du all this extra work for nought, wi' times so bad, and maids not
coming reg'lar. I can't du it, my dear. Well, I reckon I'll go under and
ha' a drop."
Mrs. Fuzzey lived on sloe-gin during such days, feeling she required it
to strengthen her nerve, or possibly to ease her abnormal conscience.
She finished the bottle before she appeared again.
It remained as peaceful as ever about Ashland. Nobody passed that day,
or the day after; and the dark little lanes hidden away like caves were
full of mud and water as they always were at that season of the year.
When Thomasine felt better she asked for the infants, and Mrs. Fuzzey,
who could not walk without lurching from side to side, cast up her eyes
and her hands, and wondered whatever the girl was talking about.
"Having dree of 'em and thinking they'm alive, the purty little lambs.
They was proper booties, my dear. I could ha' kissed 'em I loved 'em so
cruel. I never did see babies I loved so much. I'd like to ha' nursed
the purty dears, given 'em baths, dressed 'em, made 'em look fine. But
what can ye du wi' dead babies, my dear, 'cept get 'em out o' the way?"
"I heard 'em cry," said Thomasine.
"Lord love ye, my dear, you'm that mazed yew could fancy anything. 'Twas
just the door creaking as I carried 'em out."
"Where be 'em?" asked Thomasine.
"Safe in the Grotto, my dear. There be a bit o' warm sunshine, and 'tis
butiful."
"Was 'em all born dead?"
"All dree," hiccupped Mrs. Fuzzey with the utmost cheerfulness. "'Tis a
good thing for yew. What would an unmarried girl du wi' dree babies?"
Thomasine had not considered that point. She could not know that every
girl who had occupied that bed before her had asked much the same
questions, and had received exactly the same answers. She admitted that
it was a good thing, although she had to murmur: "I'd ha' liked to
cuddle 'em just once," which was a long speech for Thomasine.
She was thankful her ordeal was over, though she wondered what Pendoggat
would say when he heard the children were dead. He had often told her
how he should love any child that was theirs. Still he could not refuse
to marry her now. She would have to get strong again as soon as she
could, because she knew he would be waiting for her.
The next day Mrs. Fuzzey entered in excellent spirits and half-sober.
The sun was shining, she said, and the arabis and aubrietia were in
flower among the rocks, and "The Grotto be looking just butiful, my
dear."