The first boy was born in 1754 and was followed in 1756 by another. They
christened the eldest Ortho, a family name, and the second Eli.
When his younger son was three months old John died. He got wet,
extricating a horse from a bog-hole, and took no heed, having been wet
through a hundred times before. A chill seized him; he still took no
notice. The chill developed into pneumonia, but he struggled on, saying
nothing. Then Bohenna found him prostrate in the muck of the stable; he
had been trying to yoke the oxen with the intention of going out to
plow.
Bohenna carried him, protesting, up to bed. Only when he was dying would
he admit he was ill. He was puzzled and angry. Why should he be sick now
who had never felt a qualm before? What was a wetting, i’ faith! For
forty odd winters he had seldom been dry. It was ridiculous! He tried to
lift himself, exhorting the splendid, loyal body that had never yet
failed him to have done with this folly and bear him outside to the
sunshine and the day’s work. It did not respond; might have been so much
lead. He fell back, betrayed, helpless, frightened, and went off into a
delirium. The end was close. He came to his senses once again about ten
o’clock at night and saw Teresa bending over him, the new son in her
arms. She was crying and had a tender look in her tear-bright eyes he
had never seen before. He tried to smile at her. Nothing to cry about.
He’d be all right in the morning—after a night’s sleep—go
plowing—everything came right in the morning. Towards midnight Martha,
who was watching, set up a dreadful screech. It was all over. As if
awaiting the signal came a hooting from the woods about the house,
“Too-whee-wha-ho-oo-oo!”—the Bosula owls lamenting the passing of its
master.
* * * * *
Fate, in cutting down John Penhale in his prime, did him no disservice.
He went into oblivion knowing Teresa only as a thing of beauty, half
magical, wholly adorable. He was spared the years of disillusionment
which would have pained him sorely, for he was a sensitive man.
Teresa mourned for her husband with a passion which was natural to her
and which was very highly considered in the neighborhood. At the funeral
she flung herself on the coffin, and refused to be loosened from it for
a quarter of an hour, moaning and tearing at the lid with her fingers.
Venerable dames who had attended every local interment for half a
century wagged their bonnets and admitted they had never seen a widow
display a prettier spirit.
Teresa was quite genuine in her way. John had treated her with a
gentleness and generosity she had not suspected was to be found on this
earth, and now this kindly cornucopia had been snatched from her—and
just when she had made so sure of him too! She blubbered in good
earnest. But after the lawyer’s business was over she cheered up.
In the first flush of becoming a father, John had ridden into Penzance
and made a will, but since Eli’s birth he had made no second; there was
plenty of time, he thought, years and years of it. Consequently
everything fell to Ortho when he came of age, and in the meanwhile
Teresa was sole guardian. That meant she was mistress of Bosula and had
the handling of the hundred and twenty pounds invested income, to say
nothing of the Tregors rents, fifty pounds per annum. One hundred and
seventy pounds a year to spend! The sum staggered her. She had hardly
made that amount of money in her whole life. She sat up that night, long
after the rest of the household had gone to bed, wrapped in delicious
dreams of how she would spend that annual fortune. She soon began to
learn. Martha hinted that, in a lady of her station, the wearing of
black was considered proper as a tribute to the memory of the deceased,
so, finding nothing dark in the chests, she mounted a horse behind
Bohenna and jogged into town.
A raw farmer’s wife, clutching a bag of silver and demanding only to be
dressed in black, is a gift to any shopman. The Penzance draper called
up his seamstresses, took Teresa’s measure for a silk dress—nothing but
silk would be fitting, he averred; the greater the cost the greater the
tribute—added every somber accessory that he could think of, separated
her from £13.6.4 of her hoard and bowed her out, promising to send the
articles by carrier within three days. Teresa went through the ordeal
like one in a trance, too awed to protest or speak even. On the way home
she sought to console herself with the thought that her extravagance was
on John’s, dear John’s behalf. Still thirteen pounds, six shillings and
fourpence!—more than Bohenna’s wages for a year gone in a finger snap!
Ruin stared her in the face.
The black dress, cap, flounced petticoat, stiff stays, stockings, apron,
cloak of Spanish cloth and high-heeled shoes arrived to date and set the
household agog. Teresa, its devastating price forgotten, peacocked round
the house and yard all day, swelling with pride, the rustle of the silk
atoning for the agony she was suffering from the stays and shoes. As the
sensation died down she yearned for fresh conquests, so mounting the
pillion afresh, made a tour through the parish, paying special attention
to Gwithian Church-town and Monks Cove.
The tour was a triumph. Women rushed to their cottage doors and stared
after her, goggling. At Pridden a party of hedgers left work and raced
across a field to see her go by. Near Tregadgwith a farmer fell off his
horse from sheer astonishment. She was the sole topic of the district
for a week or more. John’s memory was duly honored.
In a month Teresa was tired of the black dress; her fancy did not run to
black. The crisp and shining new silk had given her a distaste for the
old silks, the soiled and tattered salvage of wrecks. She stuffed the
motley rags back in the chests and slammed the lids on them. She had
seen some breath-taking rolls of material in that shop in
Penzance—orange, emerald, turquoise, coral and lilac. She shut her eyes
and imagined herself in a flowing furbelowed dress of each of these
colors in turn—or one combining a little of everything—oh, rapture!
She consulted Martha in the matter. Martha was shocked. It was unheard
of. She must continue to wear black in public for a year at least. This
intelligence depressed Teresa, but she was determined to be correct, as
she had now a position to maintain, was next thing to a lady. Eleven
months more to wait, heigh-ho!
Then, drawn by the magnet of the shops, she went into Penzance again.
Penzance had become something more than a mere tin and pilchard port;
visitors attracted by its mild climate came in by every packet; there
was a good inn, “The Ship and Castle,” and in 1752 a coffee house had
been opened and the road to Land’s End made possible for carriages. Many
fine ladies were to be seen fanning themselves at windows in Chapel
Street or strolling on the Green, and Teresa wanted to study their
costumes with a view to her own.
She dismounted at the Market Cross, moved about among the booths and
peeped furtively in at the shops. They were most attractive, displaying
glorious things to wear and marvelous things to eat—tarts, cakes, Dutch
biscuits, ginger-breads shaped like animals, oranges, plum and sugar
candy. Sly old women wheedled her to buy, enlarging ecstatically on the
excellence and cheapness of their wares. Teresa wavered and reflected
that though she might not be able to buy a new dress for a year there
was no law against her purchasing other things. The bag of silver burnt
her fingers and she fell. She bought some gingerbread animals at four
for a farthing, tasted them, thought them ambrosia and bought
sixpennorth to take with her, also lollipops. She went home trembling at
her extravagance, but when she came to count up what she had spent it
seemed to have made no impression on the bag of silver. In six weeks she
went in again, bought a basketful of edibles and replaced her brass
earrings with large gold half-moons. When these were paid for the bag
was badly drained. Teresa took fright and visited town no more for the
year—but as a matter of fact she had spent less than twenty pounds in
all. But she had got in the way of spending now.
The tin works in which John’s money was invested paid up at the end of
the year (one hundred and twenty-six pounds, seventeen shillings and
eight-pence on this occasion), and Tregors rent came in on the same day.
It seemed to Teresa that the heavens had opened up and showered
uncounted gold upon her.
She went into Penzance next morning as fast as the bay mare could carry
her and ordered a dress bordered with real lace and combining all the
hues of the rainbow. She was off. Never having had any money she had not
the slightest idea of its value and was mulcted accordingly. In the
third year of widowhood she spent the last penny of her income.
The farm she left to Bohenna, the house to Martha, the children to look
after themselves, and rode in to Penzance market and all over the
hundred, to parish feasts, races and hurling matches, a notable figure
with her flaming dresses, raven hair and huge earrings, laying the odds,
singing songs and standing drinks in ale houses like any squire.
When John died she was at her zenith. The early bloom of her race began
to fade soon after, accelerated by gross living. She still ate
enormously, as though the hunger of twenty-two lean years was not yet
appeased. She was like an animal at table, seizing bones in her hands
and tearing the meat off with her teeth, grunting the while like a
famished dog, or stuffing the pastries she bought in Penzance into her
mouth two at a time. She hastened from girlish to buxom, from buxom to
stout. The bay mare began to feel the increasing weight on the pillion.
Bohenna was left at home and Teresa rode alone, sitting sideways on a
pad, or a-straddle when no one was looking. Yet she was still comely in
a large way and had admirers aplenty. Sundry impecunious gentlemen,
hoping to mend their fortunes, paid court to the lavish widow, but
Teresa saw through their blandishments, and after getting all possible
sport out of them sent them packing.
With the curate-in-charge of St. Gwithian it was the other way about.
Teresa made the running. She went to church in the first place because
it struck her as an opportunity to flaunt her superior finery in public
and make other women feel sick. She went a second time to gaze at the
parson. This gentleman was an anemic young man with fair hair, pale blue
eyes, long hands and a face refined through partial starvation. (The
absentee beneficiary allowed him eighteen pounds a year.) Obeying the
law of opposites, the heavy dark gypsy woman was vaguely attracted by
him at once and the attraction strengthened.
He was something quite new to her. Among the clumsy-limbed country folk
he appeared so slim, so delicate, almost ethereal. Also, unable to read
or write herself and surrounded by people as ignorant as she, his easy
familiarity with books and the verbose phrasing of his sermons filled
her with admiration. On Easter Sunday he delivered himself of a
particularly flowery effort. Teresa understood not a word of it, but,
nevertheless, thought it beautiful and wept audibly. She thought the
preacher looked beautiful too, with his clear skin, veined temples and
blue eyes. A shaft of sunlight pierced the south window and fell upon
his fair head as though an expression of divine benediction. Teresa
thought he looked like a saint. Perhaps he was a saint.
She rode home slowly, so wrapped in meditation that she was late for
dinner, an unprecedented occurrence. She would marry that young man. If
she were going to marry again it must be to some one she could handle,
since the law would make him master of herself and her possessions. The
curate would serve admirably; he would make a pretty pet and no more. He
could keep her accounts too. She was always in a muddle with money. The
method she had devised of keeping tally by means of notched sticks was
most untrustworthy. And, incidentally, if he really were a saint her
hereafter was assured. God could never condemn the wedded wife of a
saint and clergyman to Hell; it wouldn’t be decent. She would marry that
young man.
She began the assault next day by paying her overdue tithes and throwing
in a duck as makeweight. Two days later she was up again with a gift of
a goose, and on the following Sunday she presented the astonished clerk
with eightpennorth of gingerbreads. Since eating was the occupation
nearest to the widow’s heart she sought to touch the curate’s by
showering food upon him. Something edible went to the Deanery at least
twice a week, occasionally by a hind, but more often Teresa took it
herself. A fortnight before Whitsuntide Teresa, in chasing an errant
boar out of the yard, kicked too violently, snapped her leg and was laid
up for three months. Temporarily unable to reduce the curate by her
personal charms she determined to let her gifts speak for her, doubled
the offerings, and eggs, fowls, butter, cheese and hams passed from the
farm to the Deanery in a constant stream. Lying in bed with nothing to
do, the invalid’s thoughts ran largely upon the clerk. She remembered
him standing in the pulpit that Easter Sunday, uttering lovely, if
unintelligible words, slim and delicate, the benedictory beam on his
flaxen poll; the more she pictured him the more ethereally beautiful did
he become. He would make a charming toy.
As soon as she could hobble about she put on her best dress (cherry
satin), and, taking the bull by the horns, invited her intended to
dinner. She would settle matters without further ado. The young man
obeyed the summons with feelings divided between fear and determination;
he knew perfectly well what he was in for. Nobody but an utter fool
could have mistaken the meaning of the sighs and glances the big widow
had thrown when visiting him before her accident. There was no finesse
about Teresa. She wanted to marry him, and prudence told him to let her.
Two farms and four hundred pounds a year—so rumor had it—the catch of
the district and he only a poor clerk. He was sick of poverty—Teresa’s
bounty had shown him what it was to live well—and he dreaded returning
to the old way of things. Moreover he admired her, she was so bold, so
luscious, so darkly handsome, possessed of every physical quality he
lacked. But he was afraid of her for all that—if she ever got really
angry with him, good Lord!
It took every ounce of determination he owned to drive his feet down the
hill to Bosula; twice he stopped and turned to go back. He was a timid
young man. His procrastination made him late for dinner. When he reached
the farm, the meal had already been served. His hostess was hard at
work; she would not have delayed five minutes for King George himself.
She had a mutton bone in her hands when the curate entered. She did not
notice him for the moment, so engrossed was she, but tore off the last
shred of meat, scrunched the bone with her teeth and bit out the marrow.
The curate reeled against the door post, emitting an involuntary groan.
Teresa glanced up and stared at him, her black eyebrows meeting.
Who was this stranger wabbling about in her doorway, his watery eyes
popping out of his podgy face, his fleshy knees knocking together, his
dingy coat stretched tightly across his protruding stomach? A lost
inn-keeper? A strayed tallow chandler? No, by his cloth he was a clerk.
Slowly she recognized him. He was _her_ curate, ecod! Her pretty toy!
Her slim, transparent saint developed into this corpulent earthling!
_Fat_, ye Gods! She hurled the bone at his head—which was unreasonable,
seeing it was she had fattened him.
The metamorphosed curate turned and bolted out of the house, through the
yard and back up the hill for home.
“My God,” he panted as he ran, “biting bones up with her teeth, with her
teeth—my God, it might have been _me_!”
That was the end of that.