A little girl came rushing into the gate of the vicarage at Postbridge,
Dartmoor, and it chanced that she met the minister himself as he bent in
his garden and scattered lime around upspringing seeds.
“These slugs would try the patience of a saint,” he said, hearing
footsteps, and not looking up. “They have eaten off nearly all my young
larkspurs. How can one fight them?”
Then a small, breathless voice broke in upon him.
“Please, sir, mother sent me, an’ I’ve runned a’most all the way from our
cottage wi’out stopping once. ’Tis old Mr. Mundy, please. He’m dying—so
he told mother when her fetched him his milk this morning—an’ he says
he’ve got something very special to tell anybody as’ll care to come an’
listen to it. But nobody don’t want to hear his secrets in the village;
so mother said ’twas your job, please, an’ sent me for your honor.”
“My job—yes, so it is, little maid. I’ll come at once. An’ they’d
better send for the doctor. It isn’t his regular visiting day until
Thursday, but probably it’s his job, too.”
“Mother axed the old man that; an’ he said as he didn’t want no doctor,
nor his traade [medicine] neither. He says h’m nearly a hundred years
old, an’ he won’t be messed about with at his time of life, but just die
easy an’ comfortable.”
In twenty minutes the clergyman had walked a mile and crossed a strip of
the wilderness that stretched round about the little hamlet on Dartmoor
where he labored. A single cottage separated from the rest by wide
tracts of furze and heather stood here, and near it lay a neglected
garden. But “Gaffer” Mundy had long ceased to fight the moor or care for
his plot of land. His patch of the reclaimed earth returned fast to
primitive savagery. Brake fern sprouted in the potato bed; rush, heather
and briar choked the currant bushes; fearless rabbits nibbled every green
thing.
“Come in, whoever you may be,” said an ancient voice. So the visitor
obeyed and entered, to find the sufferer, fully dressed, sitting by a
fire of peat. Noah Mundy was once very tall, but now his height had
vanished and he had been long bent under his burden of years. A bald,
yellow skull rose above his countenance, and infinite age marked his
face. As the earth through centuries of cooling has wrinkled into
mountains and flattened into ocean beds between them, so these aged
features, stamped and torn with the fret and fever of long life, had
become as a book whereon time had written many things for those who could
read them. Very weak was the man, and very thin. He was toothless and
almost hairless; the scanty beard that fell from his chin was white,
while his mustache had long been dyed with snuff to a lively yellow. His
eyes remained alive, though one was filmed over with an opaline haze.
But from the other he saw clearly enough for all his needs. He made it a
boast that he could not write, and he could not read. There was no book
in his house.
“’Tis you, eh? I could have wished for a man out of your trade, but it
won’t matter. I’ve got a thing worth telling; but mark this, I don’t
care a button what you think of it, an’ I don’t want none of your bunkum
an’ lies after I have told it. Sit down in that thicky chair an’ smoke
your pipe an’ keep cool. Ban’t no use getting excited now, for what I be
going to tell ’e happened more’n sixty years ago—afore you was born or
thought about.”
“My smoke won’t trouble you?”
“Bah! I’ve smoked and chewed an’ snuffed for more’n half a century. I’m
baccy through and through—soaked in it, as you might say. An’ as for
smoke, if what you tell to church be true, I shall have smoke, an’ fire
too, afore long. But hell’s only a joke to frighten females. I don’t
set no store by it.”
“Better leave that, Mr. Mundy. If you really believe your end is near,
let us be serious. Yes, I’ll smoke my pipe. And you must feel very,
very sure, that what you tell me is absolutely sacred, unless you wish it
otherwise.”
“Nought sacred about it, I reckon—all t’ other way. An’ as for telling,
you can go an’ shout it from top of Bellever Tor you’m minded to. I
don’t care a farden curse who knows it now. Wait till I’m out of it;
then do as you please.”
He drank a little milk, remained silent a moment with his eyes upon the
fire, and presently began to tell his life’s strange tale.
“Me an’ my brother was the only children our parents ever had; an’ my
brother was five years older’n me. My father, Jonas Mundy, got money
through a will, an’ he brought it to Dartymoor, like a fool, an’ rented a
bit of moor from the Duchy of Cornwall, an’ built a farm upon it, an’ set
to work to reclaim the land. At first he prospered, an’ Aller Bottom
Farm, as my father called it, was a promising place, so long as sweat of
man poured out there without ceasing. You can see the ruins of it yet,
for when Jonas Mundy died an’ it falled to me, I left it an’ comed up
here; an the chap as took it off my hands—he went bankrupt inside three
year. ’Tis all falled to pieces now, for none tried again.
“But that’s to overrun the matter. When I was fifteen an’ my brother,
John James, was twenty, us both failed in love with the same maid. You
stare; but though fifteen in years, I was twenty-five in understanding,
an’ a very oncoming youth where women were concerned. Nelly Baker had
turned seventeen, an’ more than once I told her that though a boy of
fifteen couldn’t wed a maid of her age without making folks laugh, even
if he could get a parson to hitch them, yet a chap of three-an’-twenty
might very properly take a girl of five-an’-twenty without the deed
calling for any question. An’ her loved me truly enough; for though you
only see a worn-out scarecrow afore you now, yet seventy year agone I
filled the eye of more maidens than one, and was a bowerly youth to look
upon—tall, straight, tough, wi’ hair so black as a crow.
“John James he never knowed that I cared a button for Nelly. I never
showed it to a living soul but her by word or look; an’ she kept
quiet—for fear of being laughed at, no doubt. Her folks were dead on the
match with John James, an’ he pressed her so hard that she’d have took
him but for me. He was a pretty fellow too—the Mundys were very
personable as a family. Quite different, though, from me. Fair polled,
wi’ flaxen hair, an terrible strong was John James, an’ the best wrastler
on Dartymoor in them days.
“Me an’ her met by appointment a week afore she’d got to give him a final
‘yes’ or ‘no.’ I mind it very well to this hour; an’ yet ’tis
seventy-odd years agone. On Hartland Tor us sat in the heather unseen,
an’ I put my arms around her an’ loved her, an’ promised to make her a
happy woman. Then I told her what she’d got to do. First I made her
prick her finger wi’ a thorn of the furze, an’ draw blood, an’ swear
afore the Living God she’d marry me as soon as I could make her mistress
of a farm.
“She was for joking about the matter at first, but I soon forced her to
grow serious. She done what I told her, an’ since she believed in the
Living God, I reckoned her oath would bind her fast enough. As for me, I
laughed out of sight, for I never believed in nothing but myself—not even
when I was a boy under twenty years old. Next I bade her fall out with
John James. I put words in her mouth to say to him. ‘I know the fashion
of man he be—short an’ fiery in his temper,’ I told her. ‘Be hot an’
quick with him. Tell him he’s not your sort, an’ never will be—quarrel
with his color, if you like. Tell him he’m too pink an’ white for ’e.
Say ’tis enough that your own eyes be blue, an’ that you’d never wed a
blue-eyed man. Make him angry—you ban’t a woman if you don’t know how to
do that. Then the rest be easy enough. He’ll flare an’ flae like a tar
barrel on Guy Fawkes Night. But he’ll trouble you no more, for he’m so
proud as Satan.’
“Nelly Baker took in all I said; an’ inside a week she’d dropped my
brother. But ’twas what he done after that startled folks, for without a
word to any living soul, he vanished, like the dew of the morning,
four-an’-twenty hours after she’d flinged him over. I was the last that
seed him. We were working together out ’pon the land; an’ he was sour
an’ crusty wi’ his trouble, an’ hadn’t a word to fling at me. Dimpsy
light fell, an’ I went in a tool shed to don my jacket an’ go home.
’Twas autumn, an’ us had been spreading manure upon the meadow.
“‘Be you coming, John James?’ I said.
“‘You go to hell,’ he answered. ‘I’ll come when I’ve a mind to, an’
maybe I won’t come at all!’
“So home I walked wi’out another word; an’ he never comed; an’ nobody
ever heard a whisper about him again from that day to this. For a
soldier he went, ’twas thought; but the after history of un never reached
nobody at Postbridge; an’ whether he was shot or whether he gathered
glory in foreign parts none ’pon Dartymoor can tell you.
“A nine days’ wonder it was, an’ it killed my mother; for John James was
the apple of her eye. Her never cared a button for me, ’cause I was the
living likeness of her brother—my uncle, Silas Bond. They sent him to
Botany Bay for burning down wheat stacks. A bad lot he was, no doubt;
an’ a fool to boot, which is worse. For he got catched an’ punished.
An’ he deserved all he got—for letting ’em catch him.
“With John James out of the way, I comed to be a bit more important in
the house, an’ when my mother died, father got to trust me with his
money. I was old for my years, you see. As for Nelly, she kept so true
to me as the bird to her nest—for five years; an’ then I’d got to be
twenty, an’ had saved over three hundred pound for her; an’ she was
twenty-two. A good many chaps wanted to marry her; but she kept our
secret close, an’ said ‘nay’ to some very snug men, an’ just waited for
me an’ Aller Bottom Farm.
“Then, when I’d reckoned to name the day an’ take her so soon as I comed
of age, Oliver Honeywell turned up from down country an’ rented that old
tenement farm what be called Merripit. So good land as any ’pon all
Dartymoor goes with it. An’ he comed wi’ a flourish of trumpets an’
plenty of money. He was going to larn us all how to farm, an’ how to
make money ’pon weekdays, an’ how to get to heaven Sundays.
“Rot the devil! I see him now—a smug, sleek, fat, handsome, prosperous
man, with the insolence of a spoilt cat! He’d preach in the open air of
a Sunday, for there was no parson nor church here in them days. Strong
as a horse,—a, very practical man,—always right. Did plenty of good, as
the saying goes, an’ went about like a procession, as if he expected
angels from heaven to be waiting for him at every street corner with a
golden crown. His right hand was generous, but he took very good care
his left hand knowed it. He didn’t do his good in secret, nor yet hide
his light under a bushel.
“He was a black-haired man, wi’ scholarship an’ money behind him. He
knew the better-most folk. They called upon him, I believe, an’ axed him
to their houses, it was said. He hunted, and paid money to help three
different packs o’ hounds. An old mother kept house for him. He tried
to patronize the whole of Postbridge an’ play the squire an’ vicar rolled
into one. Men as owed him nought an’ thanked him for nought pulled their
hair to him. But there be some fools who will always touch their hats to
a pair o’ horses. There comed to be an idea in people’s minds that
Honeywell was a Godsend, though if you axed them why, they generally
couldn’t tell you.
“An’ my Nelly falled in love with him.
“At least she said so; though Heaven knows that the pompous fool, for all
his fine linen, weren’t a patch on what I was at twenty-one. Anyway, he
comed courting her, for ’twas not known yet that me an’ Nelly was more’n
friends; an’ then when he heard how we had been secretly tokened for no
less than six years, he comed to see me with a long-winded lie in his
mouth. An’ the lie was larded wi’ texts from scripture. Nelly Baker had
misunderstood her feelings about me, he said; her had never knowed what
true love was till she met him; an’ he hoped I’d behave as honestly as he
had—an’ all the rest of it. In fact, she’d throwed me over for him an’
his money an’ his high position; an’ he comed to let me down gently with
bits from the Bible. As for her, she always lusted after money and
property.
“Us fought hand to hand, for I flew at him, man, like a dog, an’ I’d have
strangled him an’ tored the liver out of him, but some chaps heard him
howling an’ runned along, an’ pulled me off his throat in time.
“He didn’t have the law of me; but Nelly Baker kept out of my way
afterwards, like as if I was the plague; an’ then six months passed an’
they was axed out in marriage so grand as you please at Widecombe Church.
“I only seed her once more; but after lying in wait for her, weeks an’
weeks, like a fox for a rabbit, it chanced at last that I met her one
evening going home across the moor above Aller Bottom Farm ’pon the edge
of the last of our fields. Then us had a bit of a tell. ’Twas only a
fortnight afore she was going to marry Mr. Oliver Honeywell.
“I axed her to change her mind; I spoke to her so gentle as a dove
croons; but she was ice all through—cold an’ hard an’ wicked to me. Then
I growed savage. I noticed how mincing her’d growed in her speech since
Honeywell had took her up. She was changed from a good Devon maid into a
town miss, full o’ airs an’ graces that made me sick to see. He’d
poisoned her.
“‘Do try an’ be sensible,’ she said. ‘We were silly children all them
years, you know, Mr. Mundy. You’ll find somebody much better suited to
you than I am—really you will. Have you ever thought of Mary Reep, now?
She’s prettier than I am—I am sure she is.’
“Her named the darter of William Reep, a common laborer as worked on
Honeywell’s farm at ten shilling a week. The devil in me broke loose,
an’ quite right too.
“‘We’ve gone up in the world of late then? ’Twas always your hope and
prayer to come by a bit of property. But ’tis a coorious thing,’ I said.
‘Do you know that you’m standing just where my brother, John James, stood
last time ever he was seed by mortal eyes?’
“‘What’s that to me?’ she said. ‘Let me go by, please, Mr. Mundy. I’m
late, as it is.’
“‘He was never seed again,’ I told her. ‘’Tis a coorious thing to me, as
you be stand’—on the same spot at the same time—just as he did, in the
first shadow of night. His going, you see, made me my father’s heir, an’
rich enough to give you a good home some day.’
“Then her growed a thought pale an’ tried to pass me.
“I went home presently; but from that hour Nelly Baker was seen no more.
None ever knowed I’d been the last to speak with her; an’ none ever
pitied me. But there was a rare fuss made over Oliver Honeywell. He
wore black for her; an’ lived a bachelor for five year. Then he married
a widow; but not till his mother died.
“An’ that’s the story I thought would interest some folks.”
The minister tapped his pipe on the hob, and knocked the ashes out. He
cleared his throat and spoke. He had learned nothing that was new to
him.
“It is a strange story indeed, Mr. Mundy, and I am interested to have
heard it from your own lips. Rumor has not lied, for once. The tale, as
you tell it, is substantially the same that has been handed down in this
village for two generations. But no one knows that you were the last to
see Nelly Baker. Did you ever guess what happened?”
The old man smiled, and showed his empty gums.
“No—I didn’t guess, because I knowed very well without guessing,” he
said. “All the same I should have thought that you, with your mighty
fine knowledge of human nature, would have guessed very quick. ’Twas I
killed my brother—broke in the back of his head wi’ a pickax when he was
down on one knee tying his bootlace. An’ me only fifteen year old! An’
I killed Nelly Baker—how, it don’t matter. You’ll find the dust of ’em
side by side in one of them old ‘money pits’ ’pon Bellever Tor. ’Tis a
place that looks due east, an’ there’s a ring of stones a hundred yards
away from it. The ‘old men’ buried their dead there once, I’ve heard
tell. Break down a gert flat slab o’ granite alongside a white thorn
tree, an’ you’ll find what’s left of ’em in a deep hole behind. So she
never comed by any property after all.”
The ancient sinner’s head fell forward, but his eyes were still open.
“Good God! After all these years! Man, man, make your peace! Confess
your awful crime!” cried the clergyman.
The other answered:
“None of that—none of that rot! I’d do the same this minute; an’ if
there was anything that comed after—if I meet that damned witch in hell
tomorrow I’d kill her over again, if her still had a body I could shake
the life out of. Now get you gone, an’ let me pass in peace.”
The reverend gentleman departed at his best speed, but presently
returned, bringing soups and cordials. With him there came a cottage
woman who performed services for the sick. But when Mrs. Badger saw Noah
Mundy, she knew that little remained to do.
“He’s gone,” she said, “soft an’ sweet as a baby falls to sleep. Some
soap an’ water an’ a coffin be all he wants now, your honor; not this
here beautiful broth, nor brandy neither. So you had best go back along,
Sir, an’ send Old Mother Dawe up to help me, if you please.”
_Eden Phillpotts_.