“ARCADIA--MORE OR LESS”
[I]
MR. WRIGHT made sure, with a quick look, that the shop door leading
back to the parlour, was closed. Then he leant across the counter to
Ursula, and in low confidential tones, scornfully tolerant, enlightened
her as to the true character of St. Miniot, its inhabitants and its
history. Mr. Wright kept the general shop which was not also the post
office, in opposition to Mr. Sampson’s general shop--which was.
Mr. Wright was not a native of the place; he was indeed a very superior
man, preoccupied with care lest a stranger, such as Ursula, should
not take note of this superiority within the first five minutes’
intercourse. He had a short pointed beard and wise eyes; he spoke
consciously good English; he had once kept a store in Sydney, and he
behaved entirely as though life were a delicate mission entrusted to
him by a celestial Diplomatic Service, who had selected him for his
special gifts of tact, suavity and discretion.
He was a materialist and an agnostic--so he informed Ursula; but she,
who was quick to recognize little boys at their games, knew him at once
for a romantic who could only make existence bearable by such pretences
as: “I _think_ if you’ll give me time I can put that through for
you, Mrs. Barrison,” when she asked for a pound of castor sugar, “but
you’ll understand, I know, that I’ve good reason for asking you to
keep the matter quiet. There are some people here”--with a significant
nod at the door--“who’d do neither of us any good if it came round to
them. And I needn’t tell _you_ that in a little place like this
things _do_ get round in an astonishing way. I mention no names,
mind you”--bending still further forward until his beard almost touched
Ursula’s chin--“but I heard only yesterday that you were thinking of
entering into negotiations for a house down here. Now I wouldn’t go
so far as to say I know of one that might suit you--it’s best not to
commit oneself in a place like this”--a shrug of the shoulders and a
short embittered laugh every time he mentioned “the folks down here” or
“a place like this”--“but there’d be no harm in my asking you if you
had happened to notice--_and_ a ball of string, Mrs. Barrison?
Thank you very much, I’ll send it along with the other parcels.”
The sudden swerve into ordinary professional tones was for the
hoodwinking of a small child who came in for some washing soda. “Now
then, Lizzie, what is it? Oh, all right. Run along home, now, your
mother’ll be wanting this in a hurry.”
The bell clanged behind Lizzie ... and the low diplomatic tones were
resumed: “Those children, they gossip worse than their parents,
sometimes, and _that’s_ saying a good deal, in a place like
this. Lizzie’s dumb, poor little soul, but still, it’s best to be on
the safe side, and her grandmother on her father’s side, Mrs. Arthur
Endellion, that would be--is related to Mr. Wenn that I was just going
to tell you about. A sister, in fact.”
“But I thought Lizzie was the old postman’s granddaughter.”
Mr. Wright smiled enigmatically. “Ah, poor old Danny Mawgan--he made
the mistake of his life there. Ten pounds was what the Endellions
offered him to adopt the baby for good and all; it seemed a great lot
to him at the time, he’s not too bright, you may have noticed. But now,
of course, the money’s gone, and the child isn’t, so to speak.”
Mr. Wright was very pleased with the delicate way he had manoeuvred
the story into Ursula’s consciousness, without having done anything so
commonplace as actually talking village scandal. “About that house,
now----”
The door-bell tinkled again, and Doug strode in, wearing very old, very
baggy, shaggy tweeds, full of loose ends and string and knots, and very
woolly stockings. Ursula introduced Mr. Wright: “He says perhaps he
can put us into communication with somebody who knows some one who has
heard”--sinking her voice to a careful whisper, for Mr. Wright’s manner
was infectious--“about a house, Doug.”
“Good egg!” cried Doug exuberantly. “Where is this house? Let’s go and
have a look at it.”
Mr. Wright coughed, and on the pretext of re-arranging some tins, came
round the counter and closed the door which Doug had left wide open.
“You won’t think me interfering, Mr. Barrison, if I ask you first
for just how long you’ve taken Parc Gooth? Don’t tell me unless it’s
convenient. I’m one that can mind his own business, thank God. And
you’ll find out they’re not many of them in this place who can.”
“No, I suppose not. Did you choose to settle down here on spec, or
because you’d heard about it?”
“_If_ I’d heard about it, Mr. Barrison, I would not have chosen to
settle down here!” His expressive beard recorded satisfaction at having
scored a neat point in cynical repartee.
“Oh come--I’d call it quite a good spot for a man to end his days!”
“He’d certainly end them quicker here than anywhere else, Mr.
Barrison.” And the beard found it hard to control its jubilance. “How
long did you say they’d bound you to at Parc Gooth?”
“Only three months, and furnished, of course. I thought we’d be sure to
have landed something permanent by then.”
“Ah.... You want to stay here permanently?”
“Rather. I mean to farm.”
“Ah....” Mr. Wright concealed knowledge of the conflicting rumours, but
all alike sinister, which were afloat in St. Miniot, to account for the
Barrisons’ arrival among them:
That he (or she) was a dipsomaniac.
That he (or she) was a criminal, either escaped to St. Miniot, or paid
to keep out of the way by the family he (or she, or both) had disgraced.
That he (or she) was a spy in the pay of some foreign power.
That he (or she) was an incurable victim to drugs.
The idea that they had removed far from the world’s hum merely because
they could not (or would not) be conventionally married, was only
entertained when bracketed with one of the other conjectures. Otherwise
it was too much of a commonplace at St. Miniot to find favour. Mere
bankruptcy was also too mild for a thrill. Besides, “foreigners” who
came to St. Miniot were usually not bankrupt--beforehand.
“Ah.... Then you’ll be wanting a house with plenty of land?”
“Not for a year or two. I’m out for practical experience first.... I’ll
go as a labourer to any prosperous farmer in the neighbourhood who’ll
teach me the job in return. I’ve all my life in front of me, Sampson,
and unless you shove all your guts into an enterprise, you might as
well leave it alone. Don’t you agree?”
Mr. Wright might have agreed more heartily if he had not just been
addressed as Sampson. It proved that Doug had been patronizing the
other stores.
“The house I’m thinking of,” he began--“but I’d rather you just gave
me your authority for making inquiries about it, and leave it at that
for the moment. Between ourselves, Mr. Barrison, it’s the property of
Isaac Wenn, who keeps the Temperance Hotel up to Polpinnock. That’s
a local expression, of course--‘up to’ anywhere. I’ve been here so
long now that I’m sorry to say I’m falling into their habits. Have you
heard Wenn spoken of? No? Ah--they’re afraid to, for the most part.
Wenn’s hard--he’d skin a louse for its hide and tallow.” He waggled
a gratified beard in acknowledgement of Ursula’s chuckle. “He was
landlord of the King’s Arms, near Newquay, when he was younger. Made
a pile out of liquor, Wenn did. And now he’s making a pile out of
temperance.”
Ursula’s chuckle broke into a laugh: “I think I shall like Mr. Wenn. He
sounds broad-minded.”
“I’ll crash over and see him about the house at once,” Doug said. “Only
a mile or two to Polpinnock, isn’t it?”
Mr. Wright advised him to wait: “And I’ll make a few careful inquiries
first and then let you know.... Let me see--perhaps if you were to call
in here Thursday about eleven.... And if I’ve customers in the shop, if
you wouldn’t mind making out you wanted some trifle----”
“Right-o! I’ll buy a ball of string.”
“Well--no”--Mr. Wright considered the proposition carefully--“because
Lizzie Mawgan heard me selling Mrs. Barrison a ball of string a few
minutes ago; and it might get about and look funny, if it happened
again within a week. They’re dreadful scandalmongers down here--poor
ignorant souls, they’ve nothing better to do, most of them. But I
shouldn’t care for Wenn to get suspicious. Just in confidence, Mr.
Barrison, don’t trust him too far. He’s a sharp business man and needs
watching. But it might do me harm for him to hear it repeated that I’d
make mischief----”
Three ladies in black, gentry, not villagers, came in for groceries;
and Mr. Wright served them with that manner of respectful independence
by which he accentuated his equal contempt for familiarity or
obsequiousness.
“If it comes to being done by landlords,” Doug broke out, “I’d back
that jolly old pair of ruffians, the Abbotts, against your Mr. Wenn any
day!”
“They let me Parc Gooth, you know,” he continued, unabashed by Mr.
Wright’s visible anguish at the fourteen indiscretions committed by
that one speech. “Rum old couple. They told me _you_ weren’t
straight, among other things; but as it turned out a sort of obsession
with them that nobody was straight, I didn’t bother.”
“Indeed, sir. Thank you, Mrs. Rowe; thank you, Miss Tregunter. I’m
sorry I haven’t that size needles, but I’ll try and put it through for
you, if you’ll leave it in my hands. Good morning....”
Alone with the Barrisons again, Mr. Wright was in a quandary. He badly
wanted to talk about the Abbotts; in fact, he had inside information
about Parc Gooth; but he felt also that Doug ought to be brought to
realize he had committed grave errors of policy. So that his reply was
stiff and shaded with reproach.
“I’m not surprised Mr. Abbott should not be feeling friendly towards
me, sir. I was rather disposed to be reserved and cautious in my
dealings with him. He was too fond of calling everybody a rogue, to
be altogether an honest man himself. Now Miss Gregson, who built Parc
Gooth, she was of good family, there was no mistaking it; she wore her
hair short like a man’s, and had a deep bullying voice, and her clothes
might have been fished out of the bottom of a ditch when the winter
floods went down. But for all that, so soft-hearted and believing, that
any one could have made a fool of her, and most people did, hereabouts.
And then she married a pretty fellow, an Italian circus-rider, they
said he was, and that was the end of her as far as St. Miniot was
concerned. And that was where Mr. and Mrs. Abbott came in. You took the
house direct from the Laceys, I suppose?”
“Without seeing them, yes. But when we got there, we found a
respectable old granny and grandfather camping in the wash-house, and
they smiled at us and said they were the Abbotts and we weren’t to
trust the Laceys because the house was really not theirs for letting.
We tried to work it out, and they treated us to an excellent supper
they had ordered in at our expense, and ate some oatmeal biscuits and
onions themselves, and we discussed Bocaccio.... Mrs. Abbott had a sort
of thin brittle titter as though you were treading on dry leaves, which
rather upset me, and the old chap reminded me of a discontented Mr.
Pickwick....”
“Quite so, sir,” put in Mr. Wright, to show that he had read Dickens.
Ursula lifted the description away from Doug: “And at eleven o’clock
or thereabouts, they began packing up all their things in filthy old
bags and bottles and biscuit-tins and bits of carpet and torn sacking;
and hung them in bundles round a crazy pony-cart, with the harness all
tied up with string and rags; and then they told us that the pony had
once been Mr. Abbott’s polo mount and had won many cups; and would we
drop them a card c/o the Gullick post-office at any time we’re away
for a week-end, as they enjoyed coming over to camp at Parc Gooth;
and could we lend them fivepence for lump sugar which was healthier
than any meat, and a perusal of ‘Timon of Athens’ would enlighten us
as to the characters of all the hypocrites and parasites who swarmed
in St. Miniot.... And so saying, Mrs. Abbott lit a red lantern, and
hopped into the cart and they drove away, rattling and bumping up the
dark lane. I couldn’t help wondering----” but she remembered that
Mr. Wright had his limitations, and kept to herself the appeal which
the lawless homeless Abbotts had made to her imagination. Young,
roystering, rollicking adventurers, here today, on the road tomorrow,
ready for flight at any moment, picking up a precarious living by their
wits--_Young_ rogues and adventurers were not uncommon nor to be
pitied. But Mr. and Mrs. Abbott were well over sixty--and, it might
seem, too old to live defiantly. They ought to have settled down long
ago to days of pious security, fussed over by kindly grandchildren, and
quite certain of the same chair in the same place until they peacefully
died.
“Oh well, we haven’t come to the end of the Abbotts yet--but I’d watch
him if I were you, sir. There’s a lot more I could tell you.... It’s a
house of ill luck, Parc Gooth is, for all that it’s not yet built four
years. I’ll let you know about what I said before, when I said I would.
Thank you, Mr. Barrison. Good-day, madam.”
[II]
ONCE outside Mr. Wright’s stuffy little shop, Ursula said doubtfully:
“These rustics, they’re awfully quaint, aren’t they, Doug?”
“Thumping good fellows, all of them,” replied her husband, in vigorous
remonstrance of her uneasiness.
“I wonder why they all tell us to watch each other.... D’you remember
what the Abbotts told us about Wright?”
“I think old Abbott means well--he’s one of us, of course, and sees
our point of view ... what was it he said about Wenn of the Temperance
Hotel?”
“Said he was the most dangerous thief in the neighbourhood.... M’yes.
That’s our future landlord, isn’t it?”
Their eyes met--and they laughed.
“Arcadia ...” said Ursula.
“More or less.”
“I wonder if the Laceys _are_ paying over our rent to Miss Gregson
and her circus-rider, or to the Abbotts.”
“Or keeping it themselves,” suggested Doug, vaulting a gate. “How
unmarried you look, Teddy,” as she followed him over, with that
sedate air which she wore like a fichu and dorothy-bag. “It’s hardly
respectable.”
“Young, do you mean?”
“Yes ... not quite----” His meaning slipped elusively away, and he
stifled her in a warm tweed hug. “It’s splendid having you all day long
like this, isn’t it? though that’ll have to stop directly I start work.
I fixed it up with Mrs. Thomas this morning, before I met you. She
was a bit astonished that I wanted to work like an ordinary farmhand,
and consulted her two sons about it ... snobbish young cubs who were
officers in the war. They said I could clean out the shippons on
Saturday mornings, if I tipped the man who usually does it.”
“It sounds a good arrangement--for somebody. Doug, did _they_ say
anything about Parc Gooth and who we weren’t to trust?”
“The Laceys,” promptly. “They’re thieves and swindlers and never paid
up their rent at all, so they’ve no right to ours; the Gregsons have,
but they’ve sub-let to the Abbotts, who drove away the Todys who are
coming back tomorrow; and Mrs. Thomas says we can trust _them_.
Mrs. Tody’s her sister.”
Ursula collapsed on to a flat stone, overwhelmed by the sweet wholesome
primitive state of affairs into which their flight from complex London
had landed them.
Doug had followed their post-Doreen conversation in the boarding house,
by an impetuous day on which he handed in his immediate resignation to
the Knapsack Club, bought a _Devon and Morcar Post_, and broke it
to his mother--or rather smashed it over her--that he and Ursula had
decided to emigrate to the remote West Country, and become farmers.
The Knapsack Club subscribed to present him with a silver-topped
walking-stick; his mother had a heart-attack; and in the _Post_
they found Parc Gooth advertised as “To Let furnished.”
Doug had some money of his own, not very much, but sufficient to keep
them both for a couple of years or so, until he had learned farming.
So the Barrisons corresponded with the Laceys, who apparently lived in
Nottingham; and liking the sound of Parc Gooth, they took it for three
months. They sent the Laceys half their rent in advance, who in reply
hoped they would find everything comfortable, including a handy man and
his equally handy wife, Mr. and Mrs. Tody, attached to the house since
its infancy, who would be upon the premises when Mr. and Mrs. Barrison
arrived, to be used as convenient.
“Directly we’ve got our sea-legs, we can sling ’em out,” said Doug.
“Their name’s a bit ominous.”
“Oh, people are never like their names, really....”
But anyhow, on arrival, they found Mr. and Mrs. Tody had retired in a
temper to relations in Gullick; and instead, they were warmly welcomed
by the mysterious Abbotts, who, with their onions and biscuit-boxes,
were camping in the kitchen; and, with a lazy proprietorial air,
re-painting the front door. The Abbotts told them that they had
rented Parc Gooth for seven years from their dear friend Miss Gregson
who built it, but had to leave it because St. Miniot passionately
rejected her nice new Italian-Circus husband who jumped through hoops.
The Abbotts sub-let it for three years, complete with Todys, to the
Laceys. Tody, apparently, had been St. Miniot’s cobbler, but ever
since eccentric and lovable Miss Gregson had built Parc Gooth, he had
renounced cobbling, and devoted himself to the house.
After expensively re-decorating the house, and doing their utmost to
efface some of the blatant rigid hideousness of its exterior, Mr.
Lacey suddenly took an urgent dislike to the house, and returned with
his wife to Nottingham. The rumour crept about, as it always did on
these occasions, that they were ruined. The Abbotts told Doug that they
had never received any rent from the Laceys, and therefore the Laceys
had no right to the rent which Doug had paid.
“Abbott’s your landlord, not Lacey,” was the situation’s paraphrase
on the immortal Codlin. To which the Laceys retorted, by letter, that
they had paid their rent, due to the Abbotts, direct to Miss Gregson,
because they did not trust the Abbotts and nor did Tody!...
“Then did our rent, via the Laceys, also go to Miss Gregson?” wondered
Ursula, as she and Doug, sitting side by side on a piece of granite
stone on the moors, tried to grasp the intricacies of Parc Gooth.
“And do the Abbotts also pay Miss Gregson for their seven years? And
supposing Miss Gregson doesn’t exist at all?”
“I dunno,” said Doug, gloomily, stretched at her feet. “We’ll see if
Tody says we may trust old Wright. Parc Gooth is rather like a musical
comedy, isn’t it? composed by--libretto by--lyrics by--additional
lyrics--and entirely new costumes and scenery in Act II. I say, we’re
half-way to Polpinnock Head. Let’s go on, and have a drink with Wenn
and see about his cottage to let. I’m fed up with Parc Gooth.”
“Wright said we were to leave it to him to open discreet negotiations
without mentioning names.”
“Well, I can negotiate as discreetly as a small village shopkeeper, I
suppose ...” and Doug marched up to a man standing in the doorway of
the one hotel at Polpinnock, with a bluff: “Good day. Are you Wenn?
Wright of St. Miniot tells me you’ve got a house to let. What about
letting it to us, eh?... My name’s Barrison.”
Ursula, in the background, smiled--and adored him.
Mr. Wenn said eagerly that he had indeed a house to let, a beautiful
house, a gentleman’s house--but--hastily amending his eagerness--he
did not at all want to let it. In fact, he intended to live in it
himself....
“A villain so transparent as to be lovable,” reflected Ursula, summing
him up. It was wonderful that with his naïve simplicity he should have
attained such a sway of terror in St. Miniot and Polpinnock.
Isaac Wenn was tall and ruddy, with a short black moustache. He wore
a lilac cotton tie; and he spoke of himself pathetically as an old
man, or nonchalantly as still a young one, adapted to opportunities of
gain. Frequently, too, he spoke of money, and always as “good money”;
the adjective was never omitted: “I paid good money to get my boys
educated,” he would say, with a tinge of regret in his voice.
Now, hearing that Doug was in search of a house, he became blatantly
the spider who has sighted a fat fly:
“Who was it, did you say, sir, told you I’d a house to let?”
“I don’t know,” stammered Doug, suddenly remembering that he was under
pledge to be wary and not mention the name of Wright, and forgetting
that he had already done so.
“Ah. You’m stayin’ up to Parc Gooth.”
“Yes,” and the Barrisons waited apprehensively for warnings against the
Abbotts, the Todys or the Laceys, according to the direction of Mr.
Wenn’s prejudice.
“I never got on with Miss Gregson,” said Wenn unexpectedly, taking the
cigarette Doug offered him; “Thank you, sir--nor with Wright of St.
Miniot neither. They’m not teetotallers, none of ’em--and when a man
takes a glass too much, why he takes two or three glasses, d’you see,
sir? throwing good money down their throats, ’stead of putting it by.
And then they get tu talking. They’m all too fond of drink and talk,
up tu St. Miniot. The one gentleman o’ the lot’s Mr. Abbott. Many’s
the friendly glass o’ lemonade him and me have had together, sittin’
here at this table. You can trust he, same as you can trust me, being
neither of us drinkers,” concluded Wenn of the Temperance Hotel, whose
truculent speech and red face were unfortunate legacies from his
former career as landlord of the King’s Arms, Newquay.
“Now about this house. What rent was ee prepared to pay, Mr. Barrison?”
“I’m a poor man,” Doug began, doing a little rudimentary diplomacy on
his own.
Mr. Wenn laughed with forced geniality.
“Oh, come. Oh, that’s good. You don’t expect me to believe that. Wish I
had what you had, Mr. Barrison!”
“I wish you had,” replied Doug; “I mean I wish I had what you wished
you had if I had it....”
It struck Ursula that they were both more pathetic than comic, with
their elaborate show of tactics and bluff. More little boys at their
games ... they might just as well sit down side by side with their feet
turned in, and say: “I’m going to do you!” “Yes, an’ I’m goin’ to do
you too!”
Finally, they were taken to look at the house. It stood in a clump
with the Vicarage, the doctor’s house and the butcher’s house. The
latter was the most palatial of the three, but Mr. Wenn’s house was
approached by a carriage-drive which was his special pride: “This is a
_gentleman’s_ residence,” he said; and pointed out some artificial
swirls and markings which covered the light shiny wood of the front
door: “That there graining, I did every bit of it myself. It costs good
money to have done, graining does.”
“It’s a _horrible_ house,” whispered Ursula to Doug, who nodded
agreement.
But sycophantically they praised it to the complacent Wenn, who, sure
now of his tenants, began to bluster afresh that his intention in
getting rid of the former occupants, was to dwell himself, with his
wife and family, at Bella Vista.
“Then have you anything else to let, Mr. Wenn?”
“Only a cottage; nearer St. Miniot; about a couple o’ miles from here
back along by the moor. I’ll have the jingle out--no trouble at all,
Mrs. Barrison.” He was anxious to show them the cottage, to emphasize
in tantalizing contrast the superiority of Bella Vista.
While he harnessed the pony to the jingle, Ursula strolled down on to
the Polpinnock sands, much valued by families, because they were “so
safe,” and by sightseers, because they contained the famous Drummer’s
Cave. Returning to Wenn’s Temperance Hotel, which stood on a small
outjutting headland west of the cove, she noticed on a similar headland
east of the cove, the torn and jagged framework of a ruined house,
looking rather like the mouth of a Jew after treatment from King John.
A dejected signboard still flapped over a non-existent frontage, and on
it Ursula was able to decipher the words “Polpinnock Arms.” From which
she gathered the significant truth, that this dilapidated tumble of
masonry had once been the rival establishment to Mr. Wenn’s hotel.
Perhaps, after all, rumour might be correct in saying that Wenn was a
hard man....
She was silent on the drive, studying the stolid red of his nape, and
wishing one might adopt the simple course of asking a swindler straight
out whether he were a swindler or not.
The cottage stood on the empty edge of cliff between rough moor and
sea. It was a defiantly plain squat little building of grey stone,
seeming to emphasize the fact that what with winter storms and so
forth, it had no time for mere prinking prettiness. The gorse and
bramble grew almost up to the doors, without any compromise of
garden; and there was no carriage drive. Obviously not a “gentleman’s
residence.”
Yet Ursula and Doug both knew at once that, in the jargon of
house-agents, they were suited.
“We might as well look inside,” said Ursula in disparaging tones. For
she was beginning to know Mr. Wenn.
The entrance faced the moors; and so did the two windows of the large
living-room kitchen; West was a fair-sized scullery kitchen. Behind
the living-room was a much smaller one, with gorse-bushes choking the
view.... “These’ll have to be rooted up and cleared away,” said Doug.
Mr. Wenn glanced at him sharply: “The sort I let it tu won’t object
tu a bit o’ stiffish digging. It’s only fit for labourers. Not for
gentlefolk, o’ course.”
Doug and Ursula said nothing. They went upstairs. A large double
bedroom looked onto the moors; leading from it was a roomy box-room
over the scullery--“My dressing-room,” murmured Doug. Along the short
passage ... a door flung open....
[III]
A SMALL room with irregular corners, a dipping roof, and two stark
windows full of the sea. Ursula’s heart gave a queer sort of twist when
she saw it. It was her own room, of which she had been robbed years
and years ago--her own room; only with the outlook metamorphosed from
a blank wall, to the tumbling shining enchantment of space and green
water beyond, and sunshine which slipped about the bare floor. Once
again she was whipped by the old feeling of high secret expectation....
In here something significant was to happen to her--to her alone.
In the room ... her room ... loving it, she took possession.
[IV]
“----for a spare-room, in case we want to put somebody up for a few
nights,” finished Doug.
Wenn had followed them up the stairs: “I’m a blunt man, sir, and when
there’s business to be talked, I like to be plain and straightforward
about it, and get it over. That’s my way. I don’t mind saying that I
like you, and if you was really thinking of settling down at Bella
Vista----”
“We mean to settle down here,” said Ursula, breaking it to him.
He could not understand it, and he would not accept it without
understanding. Bella Vista was a gentleman’s residence with grained
doors, entrance hall and glasshouse, inside sanitation and every
convenience. This grey stone cottage had absolutely nothing to
recommend it; even accepting the fact that gentry and foreigners were
often “queer”--it was mostly only the queer ones who came to live
any longer space of time than just the summer holidays at St. Miniot
or Polpinnock--even they, surely, must recognize the overwhelming
superiority of Bella Vista? Wenn argued and argued, with bulging
eyes, and his tie an angrier lilac against his deep-coloured face.
He disparaged his cottage with a zest that would have astonished the
former tenants. He pointed out the fact that it was lonely, and liable
to sudden night attacks: that the soil was too poor even to grow
potatoes; that all water had to be pumped up from the well outside;
that the beamed ceilings were low, the windows draughty, and the
roof unreliable; no carts or cars could drive up to it, moreover,
as the only access was by a looping footpath across the moor. Wenn
himself was a poor man, but he could never bring himself to live in
such a rough sort of a hole nor yet to bring his missus to live in
it. Mr. Barrison--with stolid contempt he eliminated Ursula from
negotiation--Mr. Barrison had better reconsider his joke, for o’ course
it was only a joke, and take Bella Vista on a three years’ lease. “And
I’ll tell ee what I’ll do, sir; I’ll rent it to you for fifty-five
pounds a year, and that’s ten pounds good money less than I meant to
ask for” ... he had meant to ask forty-eight pounds, but the discussion
had made him thirsty, and thirst is as little pleasure to a temperance
landlord who has once been an honest drinker, as sunset to a blind man
who has once had his sight.
Finally, as the Barrisons could not be persuaded to return to Bella
Vista and be charmed by a more detailed inspection of the graining;
and as Wenn simply could not believe it possible that any one actually
in his senses could _prefer_ the cottage--“It isn’t a question of
rent at all,” Doug remarked rashly--they agreed to let the matter stand
over for reflection and further counsels. And Wenn charged them heavily
both for the hire of his jingle, and for driving it in person.
[V]
MANY times during the week which followed, Ursula caught sight of Wenn
and Wright, the lilac tie and the sagacious beard, standing together in
confidential attitudes about the lanes, or in the doorway of Wright’s
garden, or in the evening shadow of a fuchsia-bush. And afterwards
Wright would remark, à propos of nothing, that Wenn was just having a
look at his early cabbages which were coming up earlier than any on
record.... “And”--in an undertone over the counter--“I’m attending to
that little affair of you-know-what, sir. I hope to be able to put
it through for you. But you’ll understand I’m in a delicate position
and”--Mr. Wright came round the counter and closed the shop-door--“I
wouldn’t altogether trust Wenn.... He needs watching.”...
At the end of the week, after one more attempt to cajole Doug into
taking over Bella Vista, Wenn gave it up as hopeless, and realizing
that a tenant of the grey stone cottage was better than no tenant at
all, suddenly abandoned his former policy, and began to boast of its
many excellencies which he had the week before depreciated, such as the
pure spring of well-water (how much wholesomer than water from pipes);
the soothing distance from any road, so that no rumble should profane
the quiet (“It cost me good money to get that quiet laid on” was the
unspoken parenthesis in Wenn language). Likewise he drew unblushing
attention to the stability of the roof, the tightness of the windows in
their frames, and the richness of the surrounding soil!
The Barrisons took the cottage. They called it Grey Stone, because
they did not want to call it Sea View, and grey stone and a sea view
were the only obvious facts about it. Wenn, who enjoyed such succulent
adjuncts to business as leases, lawyers, clauses, seals and so forth,
as other men enjoyed women and wine, promised jubilantly to give
instructions to his lawyer, and drive them himself into Gullick, the
nearest town, when the formalities were ready. Meanwhile, they still
had several weeks at Parc Gooth--and the Todys had returned.
Mrs. Tody was a respectful shadow in poor health who cooked well. Her
husband, whose official position at Parc Gooth seemed to be a sort of
Morcarian Beefeater, greeted his new master and mistress with a long
glib speech of welcome, addressed not to them directly but to some
impersonal lady and gentleman standing beside them. He also referred
constantly, and in terms of deep admiration, to one Tody.... The
Barrisons were puzzled as to the identity of this Tody, who might quite
well have been Tody himself, but who seemed also to have the distinct
identity of a third person.
“... Tody is very pleased to see the lady and gentleman. If the
gentleman acts fair by Tody, then ’e won’t have nothing to complain
of. But when they swindling Abbotts as don’t belong to set foot in
Parc Gooth, walk in with their tales of Mr. and Mrs. Lacey who are a
generous lady and gentleman which they Abbotts are neither one nor
t’other, why, then Tody remembers he was engaged by Miss Gregson and no
one else, and ’e packs up and ’e goes....”
To Doug and Ursula the whole Parc Gooth narrative was by now a
confusion, in which irrelevant names and grotesque sinister persons
bobbed up and vanished as in an unreasonable dream. Ursula did not
attempt any more to untwist the rights and wrongs of it all; but,
dwelling in the house with her was an uneasiness that swelled almost
to fear ... after all, they were “foreigners” among the natives of
Arcadia; and the matter-of-fact natives told strange legends about
other “foreigners” who had settled down in the locality, perhaps
seeking for peace or healing or burial ... and they had all been
ruined; sold up; shot themselves; the least among them were labelled
“freaks.” Such as, for instance, Mrs. Fawcett, whose little house in
the village was stifled with ivy, and a-swarm with cats: a frowsy
temple dedicated to cat-worship; some of them sick, and some slow with
kittens. And young Fawcett, her son, grey for his forty years and
“queerish,” still remembered that he had years ago been a journalist,
and still wrote “topical” articles for the papers; but news was stale
before it reached St. Miniot; and more stale before the article was
laboriously conceived, written and sent off. Once on sight of Ursula
and Doug, he had leapt a stile and rushed towards them across three
fields. “Excuse me, but _have_ you read ‘Pendennis’?” he panted
“Oh, you have? I’m so glad. Good day” ... and rushed off again.
Doug roared with laughter, but Ursula shuddered, and for an instant
hated the bright glinting sea and hard-coloured gorse. Was this the
result of living in Arcadia?
[VI]
MR. WENN, shortly afterwards, drove them into Gullick to sign the lease
at his lawyer’s; and beguiled the eleven miles of monotonous road
by anecdotes of his many successes in “doing” people, with the same
ingenuous charm as an executioner might display towards his victims in
a tumbril, by entertaining them with sunny accounts of his prowess with
the axe.
“This lawyer chap of yours,” asked Doug with a not unnatural misgiving,
“is he a decent sort?”
“Oh, Roberts? He’m a gentleman’s lawyer, Mr. Barrison,” and Wenn
produced his famous straight-between-the-eyes look. “They call un
Gentleman Roberts hereabout, and that’s the truth. Mitch”--to a grey,
bent henchman whom he had brought along in the jingle to lead the horse
up the hills, and--obviously--to corroborate his statements--“what do
they call Mr. Roberts hereabouts?”
“Gentleman Roberts,” responded Joshua Mitch, promptly.
Gentleman Roberts had drawn up a lease most marvellously in favour of
Isaac Wenn and to the disadvantage of Douglas Barrison. He lost his
temper every time Doug questioned a clause, and threw his inkpot down
and stamped about the floor. Finally, Doug and Wenn both pressed their
thumbs solemnly upon a seal and repeated an oath, and the “foreigner”
was charged five guineas.
“Five guineas was rather a lot to plank down for a simple job like
that, surely?” remarked Ursula, as, once more in the jingle, they
jolted home along eleven miles of dark and chilly road.
“Usual price, Mrs. Barrison.” Wenn was in a rubicund state of good
humour, in contrast to the Barrisons’ slight moodiness. “You wouldn’t
find Gentleman Roberts’d do a fly. Five guineas is what I pay for a
lease whenever I can afford to buy a bit o’ property. Mitch, what price
did ee pay for lease when you took Trewoofa?”
“Five guineas,” droned the well-trained Joshua Mitch, from where he
trudged at the horse’s head.
Ursula longed to ask whether he also took a small percentage of the
day’s easy gains; or if Wenn and Gentleman Roberts, with many chuckles,
divided the five guineas equally, and Mitch backed them up merely
because he was a humble minion in their power? But she refrained,
because the road was long and chilly and very dark ... and on either
side was a ditch.
“You’ve got a rare bargain in renting that there cottage o’ mine,” Wenn
continued, turning up the collar of his overcoat. “Why, the tenant
afore you--one o’ the Endellions, moved away to St. Pol now, he made
twelve pounds, two summers back, out o’ growin’ potatoes alone. Mitch,
what did William Endellion make out o’ potatoes up tu my cottage, two
summers back?”
“Twelve pounds,” said Joshua Mitch.
The next morning, Wenn appeared suddenly in the doorway of Parc Gooth,
his hands full of early cauliflowers which he had brought the Barrisons
as a spontaneous gift from his own garden at Polpinnock. Most gifts
are made in a spirit of either generosity or remorse; Wenn was not by
nature generous.
“_Timeo Danaos_....” murmured Ursula.
[VII]
THE doors of Wright’s General Stores were closed and heavily barred,
when the Barrisons went round to him with an account of the sinister
cauliflowers; after repeated noisy rappings from Doug’s specially
knotted and gnarled blackthorn, a reconnoitering beard was thrust
through a flap--“One minute, sir, if you don’t mind,” bars were drawn
back, keys turned, and the lower part of the door creaked cautiously
open, admitting Ursula and Doug, and was hastily closed again behind
them. “It’s my travellers’ day,” explained Mr. Wright, breathing very
hard. “You won’t mind waiting a few minutes?”
Two sad-faced men with bags of samples were sitting by the counter,
and Mr. Wright proceeded to impress his spectators by doing tremendous
deals in St. Miniot rock, a pink sugar-stick with the name of the
village running through in green. At last the travellers were let out
conspiratorially by a back door; and Mr. Wright, with the air of a
Minister who, by an effort, dismisses an international crisis from his
mind and switches it instead on to a minor question of drains, asked
Mr. and Mrs. Barrison how he could help them?
“Ah!” he wagged his beard suspiciously at the incident of the doings
at Gullick, and said that certain people, mentioning no names, needed
watching all the time.
“You’ll be going to St. Pol, no doubt, for your furniture? You’ll find
some dishonest dealers up there, that charge high prices for rotten
stuff. Now I could give you an introduction----”
Doug and Ursula stood outside Mr. Wright’s shop, gazing at the window
display: dusty bottles of Condy’s fluid; a heap of faded red, white and
blue Coronation whistles, and some tin kettles.
“I don’t think that his ideas of decoration and ours are quite the
same,” said Doug. “We’ll go and rummage round in St. Pol on our own,
Teddy.”
Ursula, gazing silently at the window, was again clutched by
apprehension.... Wright had not always lived at St. Miniot; he had
travelled, dwelt in big cities, seen the shop-windows of great stores;
why, then, did he not devote one morning’s energy and initiative into
transforming his dreary and out-of-date frontage into bright new order,
inviting customers. Was it that it did not matter--here?
“Is it true, Mrs. Barrison, that you’ve taken Wenn’s cottage on the
moor? They told me so, at Endellion’s cart”--Endellion, one of a
large family, was the butcher who lived in the big mansion opposite
the Vicarage. His cart, hung with joints, a welter of opaque pink and
thick white, stood in his carriage-drive twice a week; and he, on the
steps of his own front door, condescended affably to the humble stream
of visitors and natives who trooped up to him with their dishes and
baskets. “Endellion is so very disobliging,” Mrs. Fawcett went on, half
crying. “He won’t let me have calves’ liver for my darlings, simply
because Miss Tregunter at Penallen Lodge is so fond of liver, she takes
all he’s got. You’ll want a cat directly you move in, won’t you, Mrs.
Barrison? I can let you have the dearest little ginger tom--it’ll break
my heart to let him go.” She was half crying still from her encounter
with Endellion over the liver. “Dear me, I suppose you’ll be with us
for good, now. Fancy that. But I’m sorry Wenn is your landlord--I
wouldn’t be in his clutches for anything. Don’t trust him, Mrs.
Barrison.... Poor Frankie Davis, who lived at Jermyn Street--wasn’t
that an odd name for him to call his house down here?--he shot himself
after two years.”
“Was Wenn his landlord, then?”
“Oh no, but still”--vaguely--“one must be careful. Poor Frankie--he had
one of my sweetest cats, and it came back to me after the tragedy, and
I save it an extra saucer of chicken broth whenever I can, because it
has seemed so queer ever since.... They know, you see, better than we
do, often. Frankie Davis had a wonderful marble staircase,” she rumbled
on, “and he had a gang of workmen all the way down from London to move
it four times and set it up in different parts of the house, to see
where it looked best. And then he went bankrupt and was sold up....
So many of them do down here. Well, it was all very exciting and we
mustn’t think about it. Oh, good day, Mr. Wenn”--Mrs. Fawcett scurried
into her cat-temple, which was next door to Wright’s shop.
“I been digging you a cess-pit, Mr. Barrison,” said Wenn.
Doug thanked him.
“An’ your pump wasn’t workin’,” he continued, with a touch of grievance
in his voice--for obviously since the lease was signed, Doug was now
responsible for the pump; “so I had to send my son--Henry, the middle
one--down your well to find out where the stoppage was. More’n fifty
foot deep it was ... lucky thing Henry went down, too, because if I’d
hired a man to put on a dangerous job like that, I’d have had to pay
good money to insure his life. But I won’t charge ee more’n I can help,
Mr. Barrison. I only want to make you comfortable in the place.”
Doug thanked him again, and Ursula amused herself by raising serious
childish eyes to meet Wenn’s squarely, with the question: “They say
you’re a hard man, Mr. Wenn? Is it true?” It was a trick which she had
discovered, to disconcert him completely.
“I’d like to know them as say it, Mrs. Barrison.”
“_I_ believe in you absolutely, Mr. Wenn. I _know_ you
wouldn’t cheat us” ... she wondered whether she dare slip a trustful
little hand into his palm.
[VIII]
IT became apparent during the last three or four weeks of the
Barrisons’ tenancy at Parc Gooth, that all its various landlords
and sub-landlords were pulling cross-strings at the question of its
future. The Abbotts jingled up to the back door, late one evening, and
suavely begged for a night’s shelter, as they had business to transact
at dawn. Ursula, from her bedroom window, watched them untying from
the burdened harness their usual paraphernalia of sacks and parcels,
bottles and cans and blankets; Mr. Abbott was a large goblin outline
in the sinister yellow flicker of their lantern; she heard and hated
Mrs. Abbott’s thin rustling laugh, in reply to some pleasantry of Doug,
genial and commonplace in a rough, brown dressing-gown--the type of
dressing-gown that proclaimed its owner had no use for effeminate men.
Very early in the morning, the Abbotts were reported to have been in
profound conference with Wenn, of all people in Arcadia! and seemingly
satisfied, rattled away again before the hostile Todys appeared from
their cottage. And after that, Wenn frequently stood immovable at the
gate of Parc Gooth, staring at it, as one who had a right to stare....
And a whisper went round that Wright, of the General Stores, was in
communication with Miss Gregson, who was in Scotland--at least, so the
postman’s sister said--(“An’ she du belong to know!”)
Then whom was he betraying? his old crony, Wenn? Whose interests did
he watchfully guard? Tody confided in Ursula his disgusted suspicions:
“If aught’s been done that shouldn’t be, Tody’ll know what to do. The
lady and gentleman, who was here before the lady and gentleman, they
put their trust in Tody and nobody else, and if they have to be written
to about goings-on over this house, it’s Tody ought to do it, as it
wouldn’t be pleasant for the lady to be mixed up in it.”
“He’s going to write to Lacey,” Doug decided, when Ursula brought him
this speech for elucidation.
Ursula wriggled, as though she felt the meshes of a net--“I believe
this beastly house has a curse on it.”
“Can’t have,” replied Doug cheerfully. “It isn’t old. Why, it’s almost
new.”
“That’s just it. An almost new house with a curse on it is uncannier
than an old one, where you expect it more. And we’re in the thick of
it. And whispers crawling about like spiders. I wish--I wish we were
already at Grey Stone.”
“Jove, so do I! I want to knock up a lot of shelves in my cabin.”
Wild rumours were flying now from St. Miniot to Polpinnock Cove, and
from Churchtown and Polpinnock back to St. Miniot, regarding the
destiny of Parc Gooth. The Abbotts came no more at night, but they were
frequently “seen about” in their restless jingle; Wenn was reported to
have given an unsolicited penny to an urchin who had fallen down and
was crying; pregnant sign of good temper! Tody bought a bottle of ink
and a pen at Sampson’s shop--noticeably not at Wright’s. And Wright
received the Barrisons with a grave face, and formally attended to
them from behind the counter. Only once did he relax sufficiently to
say: “If any one should call to see over the house, sir, I’d make very
careful inquiries as to who sent him, before you give your consent.
It’s your responsibility, you see....”
In Arcadia, things quickly swell out of their right proportions....
Ursula thought of the silly house and the silly affairs, and the
silly gossip surrounding it, as though it were really vital.
She was interested in any fresh development in the accumulating
scandal--morbidly worried over the hints to be careful, dropped from
first one direction and then another. Her sense of amusement was
being nagged away by the humourless pre-occupations of Arcadia, and
fear obsessed and suffocated her.... Suddenly, she felt indeed a
foreigner, and as such, apologetic and timorous. After all, they were
going to settle down in this place, perhaps never to leave it, so it
mattered that the natives should not hate them; it was important to
twist and wriggle and force your viewpoint to the same alien angle as
theirs--“you have made your bed and you must lie on it!” For the moment
Ursula was helplessly victim to this fallacy. Then a telegram was
delivered at Parc Gooth by a sloe-eyed, grinning youngster so agog to
spread its contents that he practically threw it over the garden wall.
It was signed “Gregson,” and said curtly: “Allow no one to inspect
house. Arriving shortly.” Half an hour later, Major Allingham-Jones, a
cross little inquisitive yellowish man and his large pink wife, stood
clamouring at the front door, with the Laceys’ written authority to be
shown over Parc Gooth. Doug was happily employed up at the cottage,
wrenching at the roots of gorse and bramble which obscured the window
of his cabin, so Ursula had to refuse the couple admittance, on her
own initiative; she thought on the whole she would rather offend the
Laceys, who lived at Nottingham, than the near-pressing tradesmen
of St. Miniot and Polpinnock, in whose power they lay for shelter,
sustenance, warmth and society. Oh, the hateful propitiating dependence
of life lived moderately close to nature! Oh, the humility of not being
able to change your butcher or threaten the only person in the district
who hires out jingles and cars.
Tody was sulky with Ursula all the rest of the day, having had private
information by post from Mr. and Mrs. Lacey that the Allingham-Joneses
were to be graciously received at Parc Gooth, as they would pay a good
rent for such a house, and good wages to Tody. He hinted menacingly
that if Wright imagined by writing lies to Miss Gregson he could
do Tody out of a job, then Tody, who was prepared to act fairly by
everybody, would have to tell the lady and gentleman an item of news
that hitherto he had kept to Tody for fear of upsetting the lady who
had so far treated him fairly....
[IX]
URSULA went forth from beleaguerment to a sale in the neighbourhood
of Polpinnock. With her last remnants of idealism, she hoped to be
able to bid successfully for “good” pieces of old furniture for Grey
Stone, against an innocent throng unaware of their value. The ruined
family were as usual impulsive “foreigners” who had settled down four
years earlier, hoping to prosper body and soul, at the expense of the
unsophisticated natives ... who mysteriously, never came to grief in
the same inevitable fashion, but were always able to crowd to the sales
and make profitable purchases for their own homes speculating the while
with stolid excitement on the exact disasters which has led to the
hammer’s triple fall.
Wenn was there, bearing himself like a man who can see through the
auctioneer’s humbug, and calculate the worth of things for himself.
If his vulture eye happened to see some old flowerpots, beansticks or
potato-peelings going cheap, he might bargain for them, but he warned
Ursula against throwing away good money: “You’ve got dealers running
up prices against ee all the time. There’s several of ’em here talking
about roots and barley to make believe they’re farmers from up-along.
Look, Mrs. Barrison, there’s something I want to tell ee if you’ll step
with me where tes quiet!”
They pushed their way through the groups in the trampled yard and
garden with its forlorn furniture piled up in lots; and in a corner
of the field where the auctioneer’s monotonously jocund voice only
reached them faintly, Wenn announced that he had bought the remainder
of Abbott’s seven-year lease of Parc Gooth, and had already found a
good tenant, an American who was staying at his hotel, and wished to be
shown over the house very shortly.
“But....” Ursula stopped short, in desperate perplexity. Wenn was their
landlord at Grey Stone ... supposing she offended him, and the well
went wrong, and he refused to send down Henry, his middle son (because
it was too dangerous a job on which to risk a hired man). Supposing....
Yes, but that wire from Miss Gregson ... and the Allingham-Joneses,
backed up by Tody, calling nearly every day....
Without replying to Wenn, she went quickly back to where the sale was
active and already slightly dissipated and hysterical. Queer, unlikely
bits of rubbish, such as a stuffed hawk, a pair of ornate vases,
battered tin pails, some old boots and a roll of linoleum fetched
abnormal prices, far larger than their new equivalents in a shop. It
seemed every now and again, as though the bodiless voices from the
crowd--voices that were alternately defiant or timid--simply could
not stop themselves from bidding higher and higher.... The scene was
watched by the quondam owners of “The Mount”: Mr. Gregory Loftus,
his son and three middle-aged daughters, with cynical smiles. They
were ruined, and it was--according to popular opinion--indescribably
indecent of them to be present at all, witnesses of their own disgrace;
but Ursula envied them ... and was frightened because she envied them:
“They’ve lost their property and their money--yes, but they’ve got
away! they’ve escaped!...”
“One poun’-fifteen-an-six I am bid.--One-poun’-sixteen shall I make it?”
She brought nothing home from the sale except weariness and an inferior
copper kettle with an unexpected hole in the bottom.
Waiting for her at Parc Gooth was a letter from Miss Roberts--“Gums” of
her schoolroom days, and now installed with Grace and Stanley Watson
at “Merlin’s Isle” (late “The Kopje”)--to be governess to Honor Rose,
aged eleven, and to Honor Rose’s three little sisters, Lucy Ann, Freda
and Belphoebe, nine, seven and five years old respectively, their ages
diminishing with as compact a fit as a nest of tables, one within the
other. The letter was full of chirpy gossip, such as: “Lottie has been
staying with us for a fortnight; she is such a good auntie to the
little girls and so helpful; I think Lottie has a beautiful character.”
And: “Your mother and Aunt Lavvy went up to London last Saturday to
have tea with Hal in his new chambers. I think that quite soon we shall
have some interesting news to tell you about that young man!”
She looked with bright bird-like eyes upon Ursula’s affairs, determined
to find them very good: “How lovely for you, Ursula dear, to be living
a peaceful rural life with your husband. I am sure it is healthy; after
all, what could be more invigorating than Nature. We are all expecting
cream and butter and eggs from you as soon as they begin to lay well.
The society of the quaint rustics must make you long to write a book
about them. Don’t be proud, dear, but go about among them and share
their joys and sorrows as though you were one of themselves; teach
them--tactfully, of course--all you can about hygiene and the first
care of babies; and I am sure that in time you will learn to love these
simple folk....”
Ursula’s smile held more irony than genuine merriment.
There would always be trustful, credulous people like Doug and
herself, like Miss Roberts, like the late Frankie Davis and the
Allingham-Joneses and Mr. Gregory Loftus and his daughters, who left
the gritty evil of towns behind them, intending to nestle closer to
Nature, in the uncomplicated country amongst those quaint rustics....
Those same rustics who, a few years later, watching the broken,
penniless procession wending their way back again to the towns, might
murmur perhaps, with kindly, if contemptuous affection: “One learns to
love these simple folk....”
[X]
JUNE 24th ended their tenancy at Parc Gooth; and the problem of its
disposal was still unsettled the day before the Barrisons moved their
belongings into Grey Stone, preparatory to moving in themselves the
following morning. They had spent a day at St. Pol buying furniture;
and the motor-van duly arrived on the morning of the 23rd, and halted
a quarter of a mile away from the cottage, which was as near as the
highway touched. Doug had collected two serfs to help him carry the
pieces from the van across the rough ground to the house; Henry
Endellion, a burly, grizzled gardener-fisherman, with a perpetual
smile puckering his good-tempered features; and Jo Percy Jeyne,
fisherman-gardener, and sexton and water-carrier in his spare time,
a solemn anxious little old man, gnarled with the years. The van-men
unloaded at the cross-roads, but refused to do any carrying; and the
rain striped heavily on the comically absorbed trio, Doug and Endellion
and Jo Percy Jeyne, who, with sacking over their shoulders, and
maintaining exactly the same pace and regular distance one from the
other, strode and trudged and trotted in Indian file to and fro between
the van and Grey Stone. Ursula and Mrs. Endellion--Harry’s wife--stood
ready to receive the articles as they were brought in, and to direct
their destination; but Doug’s briefly Napoleonic: “My cabin” occurred
so often that Ursula gave up her mild attempt to divert the flow of
all that was most useful and precious into the small ground-floor room
behind the big living-room. After a couple of hours steady work, the
empty van drove away, the last splashed and dripping chair was carried
in; the rain stopped; and the stolid children from the cove who had
been lurking all the morning among the bushes near the house, some
hiding, some claiming bold-eyed their right to satisfy curiosity, now
scampered back to St. Miniot to report to their mothers exactly what
the Barrisons had bought at St. Pol, and how many rugs, mattresses,
saucepans and teacups they possessed.
“Thank you, my men!” said Doug, dismissing his serfs in what Ursula
termed his most hearty “leggings-and-landowner” voice. “Here’s
something to drink my health in!”
To which Endellion and Jo Percy Jeyne, to remain strictly in character,
ought to have responded with: “Three cheers fur t’squoire!” and danced
off left and right, to the ivied inn. Reality, however, prompted them
to remain, and separately and argumentatively point out that five
shillings was not enough pay for a full morning’s heavy work....
“I’m enjoying this,” Doug remarked, sitting on a packing-case and
biting at a cold pasty Mrs. Endellion had brought him. “Aren’t you,
Teddy?”
“No. Not a bit. I feel like somebody in _Funny Chips_....
Presently you’ll try and hang a picture up, and hit your thumb.”
“Why, my dear old kid, I once chopped half a finger off, rigging up a
store-hut in a blizzard!” Doug laughed boisterously at the recollection.
“I’m sure you did.... I’ve got a sort of creepy suspicion that the
Abbotts are going to turn up at Parc Gooth for the night.”
“What if they do? Abbott’s a plausible old rogue--simply dripping with
humbug. I like him awfully.”
“Do you think he had a right to sell his lease to Wenn? Or ought we to
have let the Allingham-Joneses look over the place?--but then there was
Miss Gregson’s telegram....” Ursula’s eyes brooded in deep shadow. “And
Wright said.... Oh, I hate it all!”
“Nothing to do with us. Why should you hate it? Women----”
“Doug, a woman is _never_ just women----”
“----always get cross, moving,” finished Doug, who, never cross or
snappish or irritable himself, presented a surface like the wrong sort
of matchbox on which these special qualities would not effectively
strike. “Come on, Teddy, be a sport, and help me with my cabin,” he
concluded, at his last mouthful of pasty. He leaped to his feet, and
jumped over an oak chest and part of a dresser, which happened to be
blocking his way.
By tea-time, his cabin was in beautiful order and ready for occupation.
“Do you think we might spare a few minutes now for the other rooms?”
Ursula suggested petulantly.
But Doug was occupied in lining the drawers of his desk with paper;
he announced, absently, that the job would take him some time, and
after that, of course, he must give his tools a rub up before stowing
them away in the oak chest which he was going to bring down from their
bedroom after all....
“Yes,” said Ursula. “I’m going home.”
He nodded, absorbed, breathing very hard; his hair was tousled and his
bare knees dirty and bruised. Ursula told Mrs. Endellion to rouse him
in a couple of hours, to lock up; and went.
[XI]
A SEA fog had crept up after the sting of hot sunshine which followed
the rain, and stifled it. When Ursula had walked a few paces from
Grey Stone, the solid world was melted to clammy vapour. The siren at
Polpinnock Head was emitting at regular intervals a sound comparable
to that of a wolf in Northern Canada who, after four months’ winter
starvation, smells faintly his first caribou, and then discovers he
has a stiff leg. Ursula slipped along, huddling her mind against the
wraiths of dreariness and fear. The invisible sea fell back from the
rocks below with a sulky gurgle and suck.
Nearing the village, she heard occasional steps around her, and once or
twice a foolish laugh ... and all the while, like a forlorn child, she
was repeating to herself, “I want to run away--oh, I _do_ want to
run away,” till the very rhythm of the phrase soothed her.
Parc Gooth seemed full of angry people. The Abbotts’ jingle stood
outside; and within, the Abbotts were backing the claims of a
melancholy veteran with a long beard and an American accent, against
Tody, whose mysterious other Todys were rapidly multiplying in his
speech. The Allingham-Joneses had penetrated to upstairs, and were
critically investigating the bedrooms. And two telegrams addressed to
Barrison, and signed Lacey, announced that Major Allingham-Jones was by
signed agreement the next in succession at Parc Gooth, after June 24th.
Bewildered by the sudden clamour and rivalry, on top of her silent
walk from Grey Stone, Ursula went into the kitchen, where Mrs. Tody
respectfully murmured: “I can’t get tea till Mr. Wenn comes out o’ the
pantry, please madam, if you don’t mind!”
“Are they here yet?” stammered Wenn in answer to Ursula’s mocking
inquiries.
“Quite a lot of people are here. Can I send anybody to interview you?
The bearded gentleman, for instance----”
“That’s Mr. Van Lou, what I’m letting this place to,” Wenn explained
truculently. “No”--with a cautious drop in his tone--“it’s Miss Gregson
and her Eye-talian that I don’t want to see. They were up tu Wright’s
at noon--tes all over the village that they’m back again. And I don’t
like ’em, Mrs. Barrison.”
Ursula shrugged her shoulders. Then, as her ear caught an unfamiliar
note in the added hubbub in the hall, she suggested mischievously:
“Come out and tell them so. Here they are, back in their old home....”
Wenn shrank limply against the wall. His knees gave. “It’s none o’ my
business, letting this house. You’ll tell them so, Mrs. Barrison? If
Abbott sells his lease to me, then Abbott’s my landlord, and there’s
no need for me to talk to any one else about it. I’m best where I am,
minding my own business without interfering....”
“You’re a blustering coward without even the courage of your own
villainies,” Ursula sweetly informed him, losing in that one minute all
dread of Wenn as a sinister personage. “If any one asks me, I shall say
you’re hiding in the pantry.” And she left him.
In the hall, a broad-shouldered woman with cropped grey hair and sturdy
features was abusing Mrs. Abbott, whose frequent titters were eerily at
variance with her wizened miserable expression. A supple, olive-skinned
man lounged gracefully against the balustrade beside them. His vague
sweet smile embraced all humanity.
“How do you do, Mrs----” Ursula stopped short, for though she had
constantly heard the pair referred to, like a performing troupe, as
“Miss Gregson and her Eye-talian,” she had no idea of Miss Gregson’s
married name.
“How do you do. You, of course, are Mrs. Barrison. Whose house is this?”
“Mine.” Miss Gregson triumphantly answered her own question before
Ursula or Mrs. Abbott had time to offer an opinion.
“Most kindly,” interposed Mr. Abbott, “we took it off your hands on a
seven years’ lease, when--ah--an unpopular marriage decided you to
quit the neighbourhood.”
The Eye-talian beamed.
“I didn’t decide. We were kicked out,” Miss Gregson said bluntly. “I’ve
not had any rent from you yet--that’s my trouble.”
“And _I_ have not had any rent from the Laceys, to whom I sub-let
it for three years, because, owing to alien interference, they sent
the rent straight to you, to whom it was not due ... I’m mentioning no
names,” finished Mrs. Abbott with a sardonic salute to the absent Mr.
Wright.
“And pray, to whom did _you_ pay the rent?” the Oliver-Cromwellian
lady demanded of Ursula, who bowed her small gold head reverently and
replied: “To God ...” and then ran with swift step upstairs, pursued
by Abbott’s fat chuckle. She found Major Allingham-Jones minutely
interested in the furnishings of her bedroom.
“Are those duns downstairs?” he snapped inquisitively. “D’you owe ’em
money? Can’t you get rid of ’em? Who’s the fat fellow? Who’s the Dago
draped over the balustrade? Who’s----”
“They are all, more or less, landlords of this house. Perhaps, if you
still feel inclined to rent it, you’d do well to consult some of them.”
“But--bless me--my dear young woman--I _have_ rented it. Came to
an agreement with Lacey about it, by post, only yesterday. He said he’d
wire you. I say, where does your husband keep his clothes, if you
stuff up all this chest of drawers with yours? And why his brushes on
top? But before you tell me, I’ll just come downstairs and turn these
impostors out.”
“Do.” Ursula led the way. Mrs. Allingham-Jones drifted out of Tody’s
bedroom, and joined them.
The tide of battle seemed to have rolled out on to the front lawn,
where, dim legendary figures swirled about with fog, Tody argued with
the American:
“I’m going to live right here, and I’m going to be buried right
_here_,” the American stated firmly, indicating his future grave
by driving his stick into a portion of the sod directly blocking the
entrance to Parc Gooth. And he walked away towards the vegetable
garden; Tody, black with grievances, at his heels; Miss Gregson
and her Eye-talian, the Abbotts, and Ursula with Major and Mrs.
Allingham-Jones, following Tody.
“Tody has his duty to do towards the lady and gentleman, and if aught
goes wrong wi’ things it’s Tody’s fault. Tody has nothing against the
gentleman, nothing at all, he may be a very nice gentleman, but when
Tody’s orders are to let the house to no one but under Mr. Lacey’s
written orders, and the gentleman and lady arrive with the letter in
their pockets, it isn’t that Tody favours the gentleman and lady any
more than this gentleman, but fair’s fair and a promise a promise,
leastways when Tody promises----”
“I’ve just taken a fancy to this place.” The American passed like
a weary steamroller over Tody’s eloquence and crushed it. “And I’m
tired of moving about; I’m going to stay here an’ live here and not
shift away from here, and be buried right _here_ ... and again he
selected a portion of ground and drove his stick among the lettuces.
“Now,” glaring defiantly at the surrounding company, “if any one would
care to see my bank-book, or my cheque-book, my letters of credit, and
the first half-year’s rent, whatever you like to make it, _down_
in notes, why, I’ve got the lot on me right now.” It was easy to see
what had fascinated Wenn in this prospective tenant. “Where’s the guy
who’s let me this house? he came here with me, but I haven’t seen his
face round, lately.”
“Mr. Wenn is hiding in the pantry,” said Ursula.
“Wenn!” Miss Gregson now became excited. “Wenn’s an old enemy of mine.
How did he come to be letting my house?”
“Forgive me--mine,” contradicted Mr. Abbott, flushed but caressingly
gentle. “For the next five and a half years, mine.”
Ursula rather admired the old outlaw playing his wits against the
multitude. He was not unromantic, in spite of his dingy felt hat pushed
to the back of his head, and his wary, mischievous eyes behind their
round spectacles. Young dark-bearded captains may have sailed for the
Spanish Main with the same spirit of contempt for safe conformity
as the Abbotts clambered into their creaking precarious jingle.
Thus musing, Ursula missed Miss Gregson’s answering speech, which
was a pity, as it summed up in brisk sentences the whole of her past
relations with the Abbotts, material and moral, including an account of
what she had believed them to be, and what she had since discovered in
their overwhelming disfavour.
Suddenly a young Endellion--the village swarmed with them--popped like
a goblin from a hole in the fog, handed Ursula yet another telegram,
and disappeared again. She read it aloud:
“Allingham-Jones has my authority to occupy Parc Gooth from tomorrow.
“LACEY.”
Silence ... and then a hubbub of mingled expostulation and jubilance
broke out. Ursula darted away from conflict, into the house, into the
pantry, and seized the cowering Wenn by the arm:
“You’ve got to come out and face it.”
“I--I--ted’n no business of mine.”
“Yes, it is. Your tenant is burying himself all over the garden. Come
out.” He stood petrified, but she dragged him along with her....
Nobody in the garden. No human voice. The white mist was clotted
densely where Tody and the Major, Miss Gregson and her Eye-talian,
the Abbotts and the mournful American, had stood disputing in all
languages, three minutes before. All gone. A spell might have broken
loose from ancient Cornish magic, and, drifting that way, enchanted
them into bramble-bushes. Only the siren at Polpinnock Head still
hooted dolorously, and at the high bend of the invisible road, a
ghostly jingle rattled on its way.
Wenn sighed with relief: “I’ll be getting along home,” he said, “these
damp fogs, they gnaw into my bones.... We fixed that matter up all
right, Mrs. Barrison--I like to be friends with everybody....” And he,
too, departed.
[XII]
HALF an hour later, Doug returned from Grey Stone.
“My cabin looks top-hole,” he began enthusiastically. “I say, who
d’you think’s here? Miss Gregson and her Eye-talian. They’re in the
bar-parlour of the ‘Dog and Pilchard,’ lapping up hot whisky as pally
as anything with those Allingham-Jones people and a fellow with a long
beard and an American twang. I dropped in for a drink on my way home
from Grey Stone. This infernal fog--it’s like breathing damp wool--I
expect they’ll all be rolling up here presently. I say, Teddy, you
should see my cabin now----”
“We’ve got to get away from here,” said Ursula, speaking quietly, but
with a steady taut unreason which was her form of hysteria. “I don’t
care where we go or what we leave behind, but I’m not going to settle
down. Things grow over us ... here. Parc Gooth--I’ve got Parc Gooth on
the brain. Stuck there like a burr. Let’s go tonight, Doug--please....
Oh, _please_ let’s go tonight.”
“My dear old kid,” Doug began. Then: “You’re tired out. Moving’s the
devil. I’m going to carry you upstairs and put you to bed! And if you
want a good cry, you shall have it.” He advanced towards her, large and
ruddy and cheerful, his arms outstretched. Ursula shrank.
“I’m not going to be put to bed, and I’m nowhere near a good cry.
Don’t you understand, Doug, that we’re in danger--deadly danger. I’m
not just being womanish. We were wrong to come here. At least, it was
my fault--I was wrong. I’m owning it. We’re too young to live in the
country where it’s peaceful ... where it isn’t peaceful, and only
looks it. At first I thought everybody rather quaint and amusing, with
their quaint, rigid little prejudices. But I’m frightened of them now;
they’re not our _kind_ of people, down in the country. They’ll
never grow like us, but we might grow like them ... we’d have to
pretend to, to start with, because they’re here first, and they won’t
budge in the way they think and behave. Can’t and won’t. But we’re
too tolerant and broad-minded and we have such a sense of humour....
Oh, yes, we can afford to pretend and to adjust ourselves and to be
flexible--it’s fatally easy. Doug, I’m just now more interested than
in anything else in the world, to hear what Jeyne of the ‘Dog and
Pilchard’ will probably tell his brother-in-law, Harry Endellion,
about what Miss Gregson said to the Allingham-Joneses, and whether it
was Wright who warned her to come down, and why and what he gets out of
it. Doesn’t that prove to you it’s serious and that we _must_ go?”
Doug had one fixed conviction, and he brought it forth now:
“My dear old kid, you’ll feel different in the morning.”
“I know I will. More settled down. That’s just it--that’s just
it--that’s why we’ve got to go now, while I’ve still got the desire,
and before I begin to feel different....”
“Don’t be absurd, Teddy.” Her husband walked up and down the verandah
with truculent strides. “Go? Run away? Give up Grey Stone and
everything? When my cabin looks so jolly?”
Ursula was fighting hard ... and she saw that Doug had not even
realized why and for what she was fighting. Subtlety prompted her to
take a line which she knew would make a powerful appeal to him.
“You’re not the sort of man to be held down by furniture, Doug. Just
because we moved into a house today--that’s no reason why we shouldn’t
up stakes tomorrow. Furniture means comfort ... and deep down in our
hearts we’re buccaneers!”
Doug wavered.... Had it not been for the memory of some jolly little
contrivances he had that afternoon fixed up in his cabin--a hammock,
for instance, ingeniously slung to a stout beam by cords, so that he
could haul it up to the ceiling and out of the way when not in use--oh,
and a ship’s bell, rusty but with a throat of sonorous silver, had it
not been for these, he might have been tempted by the idea of behaving
so like a buccaneer, a roystering, stouthearted, easy-come-and-easy-go
sort of fellow, as to quit harbour the very day of anchoring. But that
hammock--and the bell--it would be a shame not to use them. He had not
told Ursula about them, meaning to surprise her. But now he poured out
a full description: “... And the point is, Teddy, it’s a dinkum naval
hammock--the genuine thing--canvas, you know. They’re not easy to get,
but a chap I once knew in the merchant service had a brother who was
ships-chandler on the quay at St. Pol ... I remembered, and slipped off
there while you were bargaining for that gate-legged table. And he sold
me the bell, too--a real beauty--about ten bobs’ worth of silver in it.
Nothing much to look at, of course. You’ll see; I’m not going to have
any clocks at all at Grey Stone, but sound the four bells and eight
bells--dong--dong--dong--dong--‘All’s ... well!’”
And Ursula, defeated by the sheer stupefying force of little boys at
their games, laid her head down on her arms and laughed and cried and
cried; knowing well that now she would have to surrender and remain in
Arcadia; knowing well that if you make your bed and do not want to lie
on it, you need not; but if it be a double bed, and you have made it,
and your partner will not stir, you must lie on it too. It was she,
and not Doug, who had proposed their present sharp severance from Town
and the Knapsack Club and all the other ties. And now they would never
escape, never.... Nor again might she sufficiently want to escape.
“Teddy, Teddy darling, don’t cry. It’s only a mood--I’ve had ’em
myself.... That damned hooter at Polpinnock! I’ll hot you up a toddy
of rum and milk--a chap I knew at the Knapsack smuggled me through a
demi-john of the real stuff from Jamaica. And honestly, you’ll feel
different in the morning....”
[XIII]
AND in the morning Ursula did feel different. So different that she
went up to Mr. Wright’s shop, on the pretext of buying matches and
soap and a bucket; and there heard the secret history of the evening
before. Mr. Wright’s beard was very knowing and triumphant over it all;
and he was able to enlighten Ursula as to the mysterious vanishings
after she had run into the house to fetch out Wenn from the pantry.
Miss Gregson’s Eye-talian, it appeared, had coughed, and she, fearing
for his Southern lungs exposed to the sea-mists, had hurried him to
the “Dog and Pilchard” for a fiery drink; whereupon the American had
invited the rest of the company likewise to come down into the warm
bar-parlour, and there further to negotiate the matter of Parc Gooth
over glasses of hot whisky. The Allingham-Joneses had accepted; but
old Abbott and his wife, possibly realizing that--in melodramatic
parlance--their game was up, had silently detached themselves from the
others, and driven off in their jingle.... The voice of Tody, however,
penetrated at intervals from the public bar, beyond the glass door, in
disjointed confidences to Jeyne the landlord--“the lady and gentleman”
occurred frequently in his narration, and “Tody” and Tody and Tody and
Tody....
“And what’s the upshot?” Ursula asked. “Who’s going to have Parc Gooth?”
It was one of the glowing moments which made Mr. Wright’s drab life
worth the living:
“I don’t think Major Allingham-Jones will live there, Mrs. Barrison,”
mysteriously.
“The American, then? Wenn’s man?”
The grocer shook his head ... took down some boxes from the shelf and
put them back again; opened the door which separated his parlour from
the shop, and called to his daughter: “Alice, have you gone yet?... Oh,
she has. Yes. Well, Mrs. Barrison, I’ll tell you this, knowing it’ll
go no further, for the people here are so ignorant that they believe a
man’s always pushing his own trade interests when he simply wants to
befriend some one; and it would be awkward for me if my name was to be
mixed up in this. Very awkward. I’m in a difficult position, you see,
not being a native of the place. And they’re already saying it must
have been somebody who wrote to Miss Gregson putting her on her guard.
And though I remind them, carelessly, if you follow me, that the Vicar
had her address as well as myself----”
George Sampson hobbled into the shop. Recognizing Ursula, he
saluted her, his wistful, threadbare look holding no malice for her
patronage of the rival stores. “Good day to ’ee, Mrs. Barrison. Fine
weather after the fog. Wright, is it true what they’m sayin’ down tu
Cove?--that Miss Gregson and her Eye-talian are comin’ back for good to
live at Parc Gooth?”
“Oh!” Ursula cried in amazement.
Mr. Wright stood with rigidly guarded countenance, examining his stock
of gingham aprons.
“I can’t help being sorry, in a way, that the American gentleman’s not
going to live there,” Sampson went on. “Heaps o’ money ’e has, heaps;
an’ he told me he was goin’ to divide his custom fair between you an’
me----”
But Wright still said nothing. All Miss Gregson’s custom went to him.
Ursula ought to have been up at Grey Stone by now, but she lingered on
in the shop, absorbed, anxious to hear more....