Blackthorn Bower
As a direct consequence of sitting on the damp moor in the mist Mavis
caught one of her bad bronchial colds and was put to bed and cosseted by
Aunt Nellie, and was fussed over by Jessop, and was visited by Uncle
David, and had flowers sent her by Tom, and for a few days was the
centre of the entire household. She was such a dear gentle little
patient, and her blue eyes and dull-gold hair always looked so effective
against the background of a pillow, that she invariably received much
petting and spoiling when she was ill. Merle, who went through some
stormy scenes when left to her own devices at school, declared that
Mavis was "a lucker", and that it paid to be an invalid. She did her
share of the spoiling, however; for though she might sometimes affect to
be jealous, no one was more thoroughly devoted to her sister than
herself. It was characteristic of Merle that she would not go to
Chagmouth alone.
"I'll wait till Mavis is better and then we'll go together, thanks,
Uncle David," she said decidedly, in response to all tempting offers of
a run in the car.
Mavis pulled round much faster at Durracombe than she would have done at
Whinburn, and, though several weeks saw the doctor set off alone for
Chagmouth, one Saturday arrived when he started with a pale and a rosy
face beside him, and two wagging tongues keeping up an excited
chatteration. The girls felt as if they had been away from the village
for years. The short time of their absence had made changes, for the red
pyrus japonica was in blossom on some of the houses, and daffodils and
wallflowers were blooming instead of snowdrops and crocuses in the
cottage gardens. It was a glorious heavenly day, one of those blue March
days that are linked in our memories with young lambs and violets. They
had caught the wind coming across the moor, but the Cove of Chagmouth
was sheltered from it, and was calm and warm as summer.
"Just the very weather for Mavis to be out-of-doors," said Dr. Tremayne.
"If Bevis can spare the time we'll ask him to take you a walk. You ought
to go and see Pixies' Cave--that's the place I was telling you about the
other day, where the Antiquarian Society excavated and found so many
prehistoric weapons. Bevis was there helping them. He's got one or two
of the things, I believe. He must show them to you. It's only about a
mile and a half to the cave if you go along the cliffs. You can manage
that, Mavis?"
"Rather. I'm not a scrap ill now, and ready for anything."
Bevis had completely forgiven the girls for deserting him on the former
occasion. Moreover, he had kept his promise, and had made them a
miniature grindstone upon which to sharpen their penknives. It turned
with a handle, and was quite a neat little piece of workmanship. They
welcomed it with much admiration.
"It's absolutely dinky! How could you ever manage to do it?" they asked.
"Oh, it was quite easy!" replied Bevis airily, looking gratified all the
same.
He agreed at once to escort them to the cave, and directly lunch was
over they started forth. This time they went in the opposite direction
to the sanatorium. They climbed above the village, and struck a footpath
among woods that overhung the cliffs. On this sunny March day it was
like a peep of fairyland. The trees were still bare, but between the
network of branches showed the brilliant blue-green of the sea below; an
aspect of the scene not possible in leafy summer. The ground was
spangled with little tufts of primroses, peeping from among the grass
and dead leaves, as the pre-Raphaelite artists so loved to paint them in
their masterpieces. Mosses, lichens, and hardy Polypody ferns grew
thickly on the trees, so that grey and green were mingled with the tones
of brown and gold into one soft harmony of rich colour. The air was
soft, and yet had an invigorating sparkle of spring in it. Everything
seemed to hold the thrill of awakening life, and the magnetic atmosphere
was that of an old-time folk-tale when the world was young and all its
objects were sources of wonder and worship.
The girls caught the spirit of the place and ran about like dryads in a
rapture of delight, picking flowers, gazing up into the tracery of the
bare branches, or peeping over edges of cliff at the waves dashing
below. They were so enthralled with the wood that it was difficult to
drag them any farther. Yet it was finer still when they had left the
trees and walked out to the open headland. This was the grandest side of
Chagmouth, and the view of steep jagged rocks and wide waters was
sublime. There is a spiritual exaltation in being on the heights, else
why have the greatest souls ever born ascended into mountains for their
periods of meditation and transfiguration?
Bevis was a most satisfactory person to act guide, for he appreciated
everything so much himself. He invariably stopped at exactly the right
places and said, "There!" The boy was a keen naturalist, and was always
watching the birds, poking about for nests, picking up snail shells, or
making a dash after some insect specimen that he wanted. His pockets
were generally full of miscellaneous objects, and he had a growing
collection put by in boxes inside the tool-shed. He had been much with
Mr. Barnes, the local antiquary, and had acquired a smattering of
archaeological lore, enough to make him take a wild interest in the
excavations which were carried on by a learned society from Port Sennen.
He had himself helped to dig and to sift the gravel, and had been lucky
enough to light upon quite a good find. The best of his discoveries had
been sent to the County Institute, but a few objects had been private
treasure trove, and lived in the museum of his pockets.
The point to which he was taking the girls was a little grassy plateau
that jutted out from the sloping cliff. Nature must have designed it
specially for her early children, as it was sheltered from the
prevailing winds and faced the sun. Moreover, it was the outer courtyard
of a large cave which shelved into the hill-side. Many thousands of
years ago successive generations of the old prehistoric race, who once
inhabited these islands, had lived there, and had hunted the mammoth and
elk. No one would have known anything about them had they not left
behind them their rude weapons and the bones that remained over from
their feasts.
It was from these relics, buried under yards of gravel, that
antiquarians had pieced together some idea of the life in those ancient
times.
The cave was dark, and, so the girls declared, decidedly "spooky", but
Bevis had brought a piece of candle and a box of matches; so they were
able to explore its recesses. There was really not much to see except
rugged bits of rock, and heaps of gravel, over which they stumbled in
the dim flicker of their solitary candle. They were both extremely
relieved when they stepped outside again into the sunshine.
"Ugh! Shouldn't have liked that for a home, thank you!" declared Merle.
"I'd have lived outside if I'd been a prehistoric woman."
"How about wild beasts catching you?" asked Bevis. "You'd have been glad
to fence yourself safely into the cave at night."
He was turning out the miscellaneous collection in his pockets, and now
proudly produced the specimens he had found in the cave--some flint
arrow-heads, a skin-scraper, and two bone needles.
"I often wish they could talk," he said, "and tell me who owned them,
and what animals they killed, and what hides they scraped and sewed
together into clothes. They must have seemed such treasures to the
people who first made them. Mr. Barnes is going to dig again here this
summer. Perhaps we shall find something more. Last June I helped him to
open a mound in the field over there."
"Did you find arrow-heads and bone needles?"
"No, it belonged to the Bronze Age, and a chief was buried there. His
wife was lying by his side. The skeletons were quite perfect, and their
hands were clasped together. She had a little baby in her other arm.
There was a necklace round her throat, and a torque on his head. They
must have been grand people when they were alive. I'll show you the
mound if you like to come."
Of course the girls wanted to come, and they scrambled up a steep place
on to a yet more beautiful part of the headland. The tumulus stood in
the midst of a rough field, like the green grassy hillock of a fairy
legend. Below, with a hedge between, lay a tiny quarry, where blackthorn
was breaking into blossom, and ivy trailed over the remains of an old
wall. This seemed a suitable spot to sit down and eat the slices of
home-baked cake that Mrs. Penruddock had sent with them. They settled
themselves happily for their picnic. From the vantage-point of the wall
they could see spread out before them the whole grand panorama of the
Bay of Chagmouth. Away on the farther side of the harbour lay The
Warren, half-hidden in woods, and higher up gleamed the slated roof and
many windows of the Sanatorium.
"We're monarchs of all we survey here," laughed Merle.
"I should think this is No Man's Land on the top of the cliffs," said
Mavis.
"As a matter of fact it's part of the estate that goes with The Warren,"
said Bevis. "Mr. Barnes had to get permission before he might excavate
in the mound. And an absurd fuss they made about it, too, between Mr.
Glyn Williams and the agent. They said at first he would have to write
to General Talland in the West Indies."
"It seems funny to live in the West Indies when you've got all this
beautiful place belonging to you here."
"Ah, I only wish it were mine! You bet I wouldn't be an absentee
landlord," broke out Bevis bitterly. "It seems to me the limit that
people should own things and care nothing about them. The old General
hasn't been at Chagmouth for fifteen years. I don't suppose he remembers
there's such a beauty spot as this where we're sitting now, even if he
ever saw it. He's turned the property over to the Glyn Williams, and all
the value _they'd_ put on this scrap of hill-side would be its worth for
the shooting. It's hard that things should go so unequally. There's a
lot of injustice in this world. The people who care for the things ought
to own them."
"Don't you think in a sense they do?" Mavis spoke slowly and
hesitatingly. "What I mean is that all beautiful things belong in a way
to the people who love them: old castles, and pictures, and landscapes,
and everything of that sort. If you appreciate them they're yours, and
nothing can ever take them away from you. This little quarry, and the
sloe blossom, and the primroses, and the view over the water, are ours.
They can't belong to people who've never seen them. I'm going to call it
'Blackthorn Bower', and take possession. I feel as if we'd a right to
it."
"Cheerio! Here are your title deeds, 'Lady of the Bower'!" laughed
Bevis, peeling a piece of bark off a tree and handing it to her as if it
had been a manuscript, "if there's any dispute with the old General
we'll go to law about it, and prove that we're the lineal descendants of
the mound dwellers or the cave folk, and have a prior claim on the
property."
"The land for the people," quoted Merle. "This patch of land certainly.
The Lady of the Bower has proved it's ours. She's a regular Portia at
arguing, and there isn't a Shylock who could stand against her."
"It's our joint estate then, and belongs to us three. We'll call
ourselves The Triumvirate!" proclaimed Mavis. "Have you a penny in your
pocket, Bevis? Merle, give me one too! Now, we'll bury these three
pennies in the ground, like the Romans used to do before they began a
building, and that'll mark the spot ours for ever more."
"I wish we _had_ a building here," said Merle, producing her penny.
"Oh, so do I! A sort of ancient British hut, made of boughs and turf.
Wouldn't it be priceless? We could almost imagine ourselves mound
dwellers, and feel as if we were living in the Bronze Age."
"Would you really like it?" asked Bevis quickly.
"Rather!"
"Well, we'll see what can be done. No, I can't exactly promise anything;
but look here! if you care to come here again next Saturday afternoon
perhaps I might have a surprise ready for you. No, I shan't tell you
anything about it, or it wouldn't be a surprise. You must wait and see!"
"Do whisper just a teeny-weeny hint," begged Mavis coaxingly, but Bevis
was adamant.
"I don't know myself yet! Wait till next Saturday. Give me your pennies,
and I'll dig a hole. Here's a foundation at any rate. Good luck to
Blackthorn Bower."
Having solemnly interred the three coins, the young people regretfully
remembered the time, and turned away from the lovely spot to go back to
Chagmouth. For the sake of variety they went by another path, which led
over the top of the headland and down on to an inland road. In the deep
sheltered green lane early violets were blooming, and presently, on the
banks of a little pond, they spied the first kingcups of the year. They
were growing in a rather swampy place, and it would have been prudent of
the girls to have let Bevis gather them for them; instead of which they
both insisted upon venturing on to some very spongy ground, with the
result that Mavis made a false step and plunged suddenly, well over her
knees, into water. She splashed out again immediately, but the damage
was done. Here was a pretty business--Mavis, newly recovered from a bad
attack of bronchitis, was wet through and shivering already.
"Oh, she'll get cold!" cried Merle. "What _are_ we to do?"
"I feel like a dr-r-r-owned r-r-r-at!" said Mavis through her chattering
teeth.
"Mrs. Jarvis lives close by. She'd dry her things," suggested Bevis.
"Oh, do let us go there at once then!"
Where Mavis's health was concerned, Merle, through sad experience, was
an anxious little mother. The Triumvirate hurried off post-haste in the
direction of a white-washed cottage whose chimney peeped above the hedge
on the opposite side of the road.
Mrs. Jarvis was a short, wizened, elderly widow woman, who had
suffered badly in the battle of life and had come off with many scars.
Fourteen years ago she had been the village nurse, and had been sent for
on that tragic evening when poor Mrs. Hunter, helpless and speechless,
lay gasping with fluttering breath on the sofa in the parlour of the
King's Arms. It was Mrs. Jarvis who had performed the last offices, who
had supplied what information she could to the doctor and the coroner,
and had indeed been one of the principal witnesses at the inquest. It is
said that misfortunes never come singly, and on the day when all
Chagmouth had flocked to the churchyard to watch the stranger's funeral,
Mrs. Jarvis had been overwhelmed with a trouble of her own. Her one
child, a wilful headstrong lad of thirteen, had run away, and had taken
with him the few savings that she had kept stored inside an old tea-pot
in the cupboard. All search for him had been in vain, and it was
generally supposed in the neighbourhood that he had walked to Port
Sennen and gone to sea as a cabin boy in one of the many vessels that
lay in the busy harbour. Certainly from that day to this his mother had
had no further news of him. This grief had been the bitter culmination
of many black years, and it had preyed on the poor woman's mind to such
an extent that she was often strange in her manner, and indeed for a
time had been an inmate of the County Asylum. She was perfectly
harmless, and though she could no longer be trusted as a nurse, she
fulfilled the duties of an extra postwoman and delivered letters at
outlying farms. She had one unreasoning obsession. She was certain that
Jerry, her boy, might come back at any moment. A little table in her
kitchen was always set out ready for him, with clean cloth, tea-pot, and
knife and fork. Every evening at dusk she lighted a candle, and placed
it in a window to guide him home by the short cut he had been wont to
take over the cliffs from the village. She was brisk and cheerful, and
would talk eagerly of the lad whom she daily expected, oblivious of the
fact that nearly fifteen years must have changed him almost out of
recognition. People humoured her on this point, and treated her with
that kindly consideration which is often meted out in country places to
those who are labelled "daft".
Amongst her other work Mrs. Jarvis went weekly to scrub floors at
Grimbal's Farm, so Bevis knew her well, and had no hesitation in taking
Mavis to be dried at her fire. The door of the small fuchsia-covered
cottage was open, and the postwoman, still in her uniform, was newly
returned from her upland tramp, and was blowing sticks into a blaze
under her kettle. She took the advent of a drenched visitor with the
utmost calm.
"Well, Bevis! Who'd have thought of seeing you. The young lady wet!
Yes, yes! Nasty thing to be wet! Very nice fire! The kettle's just on
the boil! Take her things off? Yes, missy. Come with me and I'll take
wet clothes off. Very dangerous to sit in wet clothes."
Poor Mrs. Jarvis might be half-crazy, but she collected her scattered
wits sufficiently to usher Mavis into her tiny bedroom, to lend her some
dry garments, and to make her a steaming cup of hot tea.
"I can't give her _his_ place," she murmured, glancing in doubt at the
table set ready for Jerry, and beginning to twist her hands in the
nervous fashion that accompanied any distress in her mind.
"No, no! She's better here by the fire," said Bevis soothingly. "I'll go
out and find you some fresh wood, and then you can make a regular
blazer. Don't you begin to worry! I know you're glad to do anything for
Dr. Tremayne's niece, aren't you?"
"Yes, indeed! A nice gentleman--Dr. Tremayne. Very kind always when my
head's bad. A very nice gentleman and all!"
By the aid of a perfect bonfire of sticks and brushwood, which Bevis
foraged out of the fields, Mavis's clothes were dried at last, and the
little party were able to start off on their way back to Chagmouth. They
hurried along, being afraid lest Uncle David should have returned from
the Sanatorium and be waiting to set off in the car for Durracombe. As
they clattered down the steep steps that led from the footpath into the
village, they almost ran into Gwen and Babbie Williams, who, looking
charming in white serge coats and little ermine caps, were going to post
letters in the pillar-box. Gwen stood still and stared in utter
amazement, first at Mavis's mud-stained garments and then at Bevis. The
latter raised his cap, but Gwen did not acknowledge the courtesy, and
remained gazing as if absolutely petrified, while the Triumvirate,
conscious of intense disapproval, scurried past in the direction of the
farm.
"Why do we _always_ happen to meet the Glyn Williams just when we're not
tidy. It really _is_ too bad," groaned Mavis.
"There's fate about it I think. I've only to lose my hair ribbon, or
forget my gloves, or dirty my boots, and Gwen turns up round the corner
as neat as if she'd stepped out of a bandbox. It's most fearfully
aggravating. I wish to goodness they'd stay at The Warren instead of
acting fashion plates in the village. I'm thoroughly cross," grunted
Merle.
Bevis said nothing, though he might have added that it was not pleasant
to have your civility acknowledged only with a stare. There was a
curious stubborn look on the lad's dark face, such as the girls had
noticed there on that first afternoon when they had been obliged to put
off their appointment with him in the tool-shed. He turned abruptly into
the stackyard when they reached the farm, and though, afterwards, they
hunted about for him to say good-bye, they could not find him anywhere.