A Child of Misfortune
Mavis and Merle were brimming over with curiosity about Bevis and about
several other affairs in Chagmouth, but they had to keep their questions
to themselves, for Dr. Tremayne considered that narrow Devon roads in
the gathering darkness required his whole attention, and that
conversation might mean an accident.
"You're requested not to speak to the man at the wheel," he replied, in
answer to Merle's first eager inquiry; "it takes me all my time to
drive."
So the girls subsided into quiet, and did not even speak to one another,
but sat watching the glare of the headlights on the road and the dark
outlines of the high hedges and banks above. They made up for their
silence, though, after supper, for they found Jessop in the pantry, and,
offering to wipe the silver for her as an excuse for their presence,
they began a brisk catechism.
Jessop was a kindly old gossip, a native of Chagmouth, and had all the
affairs of the little town at her fingers' ends. She was nothing loath
to discuss its inhabitants while she washed up the supper things.
"To begin with, who is Bevis?" asked Mavis eagerly. "We can't make him
out at all. He speaks and looks like a gentleman, and yet he talked
about working in the fields. Does he live at Grimbal's Farm? What
relation is he to Mr. and Mrs. Penruddock?"
"He called Mrs. Penruddock 'Mother'," added Merle, "but he doesn't look
the least bit like her son. Is he or not?"
"Yes and no," said Jessop, wielding her dish-cloth as she talked. "Mrs.
Penruddock has been a good mother to him for a matter of over fourteen
years now, but his own mother lies in Chagmouth churchyard. She must
have been a handsome woman from all accounts, though I never saw her
myself. It was my cousin, Mary, who was barmaid at the 'King's Arms' at
the time, who told me. It's a long story. There are many in Chagmouth
besides you who've asked themselves if Bevis isn't a gentleman born. But
nobody has ever been able to answer the question."
"Why? Oh, do tell us!"
"We want so immensely to know."
Jessop wrung out her dish-cloth with rather irritating slowness, then
hung it to dry on a nail. She seemed turning matters over in her mind,
and her mental processes were apparently no swifter than her actions.
"I don't see why I shouldn't. There's nothing you oughtn't to hear,"
she replied at last, as if coming to a conclusion. "Everybody in
Chagmouth knows about Bevis, and if I don't tell you somebody else will.
It's nothing to the lad's discredit, I'm sure. I always say I've a soft
corner for Bevis. Such a fine boy he always was, and he'll make a fine
man yet--he's worth two of young Williams at The Warren in my opinion.
But some folks are born with silver spoons in their mouths and others
aren't. Bevis isn't one of the lucky ones, poor lad! Providence always
seems to be taking him up and throwing him down again. What'll be the
end of him goodness only knows!"
The story which Jessop told to the girls, while she polished the silver
in the pantry, was lengthy and interspersed with many comments and
reflections of her own, and many quotations from what other people had
said, but the main facts of the case, as related to Mavis and Merle,
were briefly as follows.
Rather more than fourteen years ago, on a stormy afternoon in late
autumn, such inhabitants of Chagmouth as happened to be standing on
their doorsteps, or looking out of their windows, noticed a closed
conveyance from Kilvan station drive along the main street. The
occurrence was sufficiently unusual to arouse comment. Except in the
summer season tourists rarely came to Chagmouth, and if any stranger
made his appearance during the quiet months of the year the villagers
were naturally inquisitive as to his errand. In a small place every item
of news is of interest, and those who saw the conveyance pass at once
began to speculate whether the Rector's sister had come to pay him a
visit, or whether old Mrs. Greaves's sailor son had returned home on
leave. The bystanders near the market square had the opportunity of
satisfying their curiosity, for the carriage stopped at the King's Arms
Hotel, and from it stepped a lady, young, handsome, and well-dressed,
and carrying a little child in her arms. She interrogated the landlord,
who had come to the door at the sound of wheels, paid and dismissed the
driver, gave one hasty glance round the square, then entered the hotel.
Those inhabitants of Chagmouth who witnessed her arrival agreed
afterwards that she was "a dark-eyed, smart-looking sort of person, with
an air of London fashions about her", but their glimpse was a brief one,
for next moment she and her child and her travelling-bag had disappeared
inside the doorway of the little hotel, and the conveyance was toiling
up the hill on its way back to Kilvan station.
Inside the "King's Arms" the lady gave her name as Mrs. Hunter, and
engaged a private sitting-room and a bedroom, explaining that she had
heard of the mild climate of Chagmouth and wished to try the benefit of
its sea air. With the help of the chambermaid she bathed her little boy
and put him to bed. Later she was served with dinner. At about nine
o'clock she rang the bell violently, and the servant, who came in
response to her summons, found her huddled in an armchair, half fainting
and fighting for breath.
"My heart," she panted. "It's one of my heart attacks. Can you fetch a
doctor? Oh, I am dying!"
The terrified girl ran for the landlord, who hurried in with brandy. In
the midst of the general panic someone was dispatched for the village
nurse, and the ostler mounted a bicycle and rode away to Durracombe to
summon Dr. Tremayne. The people at the "King's Arms" did their ignorant
best. They laid the patient on the sofa, rubbed her hands, bathed her
head, and tried to force brandy between her blue lips; but long before
any medical aid could reach her, she gave one last shuddering gasp, and
passed away beyond reach of human help. Dr. Tremayne had been paying a
night visit to a farm on the moors. It was not possible for him to
arrive at Chagmouth until the following morning. He found the place all
agog about the tragic event that had happened. Mrs. Jarvis, the village
nurse, had performed the last offices. Mr. Tingcomb, the landlord, had
solemnly collected the poor lady's possessions and had locked them up in
his safe, and his wife and the barmaid between them were trying to still
the wails of the little, dark-eyed boy, who did not take readily to
strangers and refused all their well-meant offers of comfort.
Such a case had never been known in the neighbourhood, for not only had
the stranger succumbed within a few hours of her arrival at Chagmouth,
but the news soon leaked out that it was impossible to identify her.
There were no papers of any kind either in her pockets or in her
travelling-bag. Her purse contained six pounds in gold and a little
silver, but no card or address to mark its owner. The police, called in
to investigate matters, could obtain no clue. On hearing all the
evidence they ventured the opinion that the lady had probably given a
false name. London newspapers published an account of the romantic
happening, and for perhaps a week the public wondered over it, then
other and more important matters cropped up and it was forgotten.
Meanwhile, in the absence of any information as to who she was or whence
she had come, the stranger had been laid to rest in the little
churchyard on the hill, and the rector, in charity, presuming her to be
one of his flock, read Christian burial-service over her. Whatever her
errand in Chagmouth her earthly body found its last home there, and most
of the villagers, some in kindly sympathy and some in mere curiosity,
attended the funeral and left flowers upon her grave.
Naturally, amid the whole of the sad and perplexing business, the great
centre of interest was the dark-eyed baby who was toddling about the
passages of the "King's Arms". He had made friends with Mrs. Tingcomb
and the barmaid, but resented being kissed by the dozens of women who
came to see him and gossip over him. He was a bonny, sturdy, little
fellow, possibly about two years old, who could walk, but beyond a few
words had not mastered even the elements of speech. The chambermaid, who
helped at his first bath, remembered that his mother had called him
Bevis. The possession of his Christian name was felt to be something,
though all other information about him was painfully lacking. For
several weeks the police did their best to trace his relations, and Mr.
Tingcomb lived in hourly expectation that somebody would arrive suddenly
in a station conveyance to claim him and take him away. But nobody came.
The excitement died down, and presently even the local newspapers ceased
to refer to the case. People began to shake their heads and say it was
plain the poor lamb wasn't wanted, or his friends would have turned up
from somewhere to find him. Mrs. Tingcomb, very much occupied with her
house and the bar, began to complain to her neighbours of the burden of
her charge. It was nobody's business at the "King's Arms" to look after
a lively boy whose toddling feet led him into every mischief. She even
hinted that she considered the time had arrived when she could
conscientiously hand him over to the Poor Law Guardians at the "Union",
whose obvious duty it was to provide for him.
At this point of the proceedings Mr. and Mrs. Penruddock had stepped
into the breach. Eight years before they had lost their only child, a
boy of three, and they now proposed to adopt little Bevis to fill up the
empty gap in their household. They were kind, homely people, without
much education, but thoroughly respected in the village, and everybody
at once agreed that their offer solved the difficult problem. To save
the child from the stigma of being brought up at the Union was
everything. Even the poorest fisherman's home would have been preferable
to that. So little Bevis, with the approval of the whole of Chagmouth,
was formally adopted and transferred to Grimbal's Farm, where he grew
apace and learnt to call Mr. and Mrs. Penruddock Father and Mother. If
gossiping tongues could only have kept silent he might have continued to
believe they were his parents, but one day, when he was about seven
years old, he came back from school crying as if his heart was broken.
Some of the boys had teased him and told him the story, with several
exaggerations, of how he had been left at the "King's Arms" and never
claimed. Mrs. Penruddock comforted him as best she could, but she
acknowledged to her neighbours that he was never the same child
afterwards. The knowledge had shattered his Paradise. He was a very
proud, sensitive boy, and the taunts of his schoolfellows rankled.
Henceforward he felt a sense of difference between himself and other
children. He was quick to catch any allusions to his position, and a
word or a glance was enough to bring the colour flooding into his
cheeks. He fought many battles at school on this score, for he was hot
tempered as well as proud, and for a year or two he was somewhat of an
Ishmael, shunning his companions and hurrying home to the haven of
Grimbal's Farm directly lessons were over.
Then the fates, who seemed to use the boy as a shuttlecock, brought him
an unexpected turn of good fortune. A lady, who was a summer visitor at
the farm, took an interest in him, and was much touched by the romance
of his story. She was well off, and she offered to pay for his education
at a high-class school. So Bevis went as a boarder to Shelton College,
where nobody knew anything about his antecedents, and he held his own
among other boys, and only came back to Grimbal's Farm for holidays, and
grew up so different from the fisher children of Chagmouth that he was
less inclined than ever to make friends with them, and was a source of
much gratification to Mr. and Mrs. Penruddock, who marvelled at his
learning and his manners, and were as proud of him as a pair of robins
who have hatched a young cuckoo.
Mrs. Martin, the lady who had provided for Bevis's education, threw out
hints of Cambridge, and of training him for one of the professions, a
goal which had spurred his ambition and caused him to work his hardest.
He was making most satisfactory progress at Shelton College, and was
already beginning to look forward to choosing a career, when fickle fate
again interfered, and toppled over all his castles in the air. Mrs.
Martin died suddenly and left no will. Her heirs-at-law took over her
estate, and paid any outstanding debts, but they saw no necessity for
continuing her charities. Bevis's schooldays, therefore, came to a brief
end, and he returned to Grimbal's Farm with no prospect of ever
realizing the hopes that tantalizing Fortune had dangled before his
longing eyes.
"I do say it's hard on him," finished Jessop, as she told the tale to
Mavis and Merle in the pantry. "He's been educated a gentleman as much
as young Williams at The Warren--and my cousin, Mary, who saw her,
sticks to it his mother was a lady born!--yet there he is, working on
the farm like any labourer, and it's not his job. A head-piece like his
was meant for book learning and college."
"Can't Mr. and Mrs. Penruddock send him back to school?" asked Mavis.
"No; the farm's not been doing over well lately. They want his help on
the land, too, and, fair play to the lad, he's giving them of his best.
It's a poor look-out for him, though, just to carry on at the farm. The
doctor has been teaching him to dispense, but that's only a step towards
medicine, and won't do much for him in the long run, I'm afraid. Some
say it was foolish kindness of Mrs. Martin, and his schooling will have
done him more harm than good, but you know how folks talk. They're all a
bit jealous of him really, down Chagmouth way, if the truth be told.
He's a fine lad, and he sticks to his foster-parents right loyally, but
you've only to look at him to see he was made for something different
from farm life, and if ever he gets the chance he'll be off and away, or
I'm greatly mistaken. There, I've told you all about Bevis, and a little
too much perhaps, though there's no harm in your knowing, that I can
see."
"Thank you!" said Mavis. "We're so glad to know. It explains so very
much that we thought queer about him. I understand it all now. Poor
Bevis!"
"Yes, poor Bevis, indeed!" echoed Merle. "We'd no idea he had all that
romantic story behind him when we walked down the cliffs with him this
afternoon. What you say is just right--he's different altogether from
other people, and you wonder how it is until you really know the reason
why."