Furze the Cruel

It was getting on towards Christmas, and at last there was another moonlit night, full of wind and motion; and soon after Boodles had gone to bed she heard other sounds which frightened her so much she could not scream. She crept out of bed, got to the window, and looked out. A man was trying the door, and when he found it secure he went to the windows. The moonlight fell upon Pendoggat's head and shoulders. Boodles did not know of a rumour suggesting that old Weevil had been a miser, and had saved up a lot of money which was hidden in the cottage, but Pendoggat had heard it. She got back to her bed and fainted with terror, but the man failed to get in. The next day she went to see Mary, and told her what had happened. Mary spat on her hands, which was one of her primitive ways when she felt a desire to chastise any one, and picked up her big stick, "I'll break every bone in his body," she shouted.

Boodles comprehended what a friend and champion she had in this creature, who had much of a woman's tenderness, and all of a man's strength. To some it might have appeared ridiculous to hear Mary's threats, but it was not so. She was fully as strong as Pendoggat, and there was no cowardice in her.

"Aw, my dear," she went on, "yew bain't the little maid what used to come up for eggs and butter. Yew would come up over wi' red cheeks and laughing cruel, and saying to I: 'One egg for luck, Mary,' and I'd give it ye, my dear. If you'd asked I for two or dree I'd ha' given 'em. You'm a white little maid, and as thin getting as thikky stick. Don't ye ha' the decline, my dear. Aw now, don't ye. What will the butiful young gentleman say when he sees you white and thin getting?"

"Don't, Mary," cried Boodles, almost passionately; for she dared not think of Aubrey as a lover. Their love-days had become so impossible and unreal. She had written to him, but had said nothing of Weevil's death, afraid he might think she was appealing to him for help; neither had she signed herself Titania Lascelles, nor told him of her aristocratic relations. The story had appeared unreal somehow the morning after, and the old man's manner and audible whispers had aroused her suspicions. She thought it would be best to wait a little before telling Aubrey.

"What be yew going to du?" asked Mary, busy as ever, punching the dough in her bread-pan.

"I am going to try and hang on till spring, and then see if I can't make a living by taking in boarders," said the child seriously. "Mr. Weevil left a little money, and I have a tiny bit saved up. There will be just enough to pay rent, and keep me, if I am very careful."

"Butter and eggs and such ain't going to cost yew nought," said Mary cheerily, though Peter would have groaned to hear her.

"Oh, thank you, dear old Mary," said Boodles, her eyes glistening; while the bread-maker went at the dough as if she hated it. "I shall do splendidly," Boodles went on. "I have seen the landlord, and he will let me stay on. Directly the fine weather comes I shall put a card in the window, and I expect I shall get heaps of lodgers. I can cook quite well, and I'm a good manager. I ought to be able to make enough one half of the year to keep me the other half. Of course I shall only take ladies."

"Aw ees, don't ye tak' men, my dear. They'm all alike, and you'm a main cruel purty maid, though yew ha' got white and thin. If that young gentleman wi' the butiful face don't come and tak' ye, dalled if I wun't be after 'en wi' my gurt stick," cried Mary, pummelling the dough again.

"I asked you not to mention him," said Boodles miserably.

"I bain't to talk about 'en," cried Mary scornfully. "And yew bain't to think about 'en, I reckon. Aw, my dear, I've a gotten the heart of a woman, and I knows fine what yew thinks about all day, and half the night, though I mun't talk about it. I knows how yew puts out your arms and cries for 'en. Yew don't want a gurt big house like rectory, and yew don't want servants and railway travelling, but yew wants he, yew wants to hold on to 'en, and know he'm yourn, and shut your purty eyes and feel yew bain't lonesome – "

"Oh, Mary!" the child broke in, with something like a scream.

Mary left her pan and came and whitened the little girl's head with her doughy fingers, lending the bright hair a premature greyness.

"It's the loneliness," cried Boodles. "I thought it would not be so bad when I got used to it, but it's worse every day. I have to run on the moor, and make believe there is some one waiting for me when I get home. It's dreadful to feel the solitude when I go in, to find things just as I left them, to hear nothing except mice nibbling under the stairs; and then I have to go and turn on my windy organ, and try and believe I am amusing myself."

"Aw, my dear, yew mustn't talk to I so larned like. You'm as larned as Master," complained Mary.

"I'll tell you about my windy organ," Boodles went on, trying to force a little sunshine through what threatened to be steady rain. "With the wind, doors, and windows, I can play all sorts of marches. With my bedroom window open, and the door shut, the wind plays sad music, a funeral march; but when I shut my window, and open the one in the next room, it is loud and lively, like a military march. If I open the sitting-room window, and the one in the passage up-stairs, and shut all the doors, it is splendid, Mary, a coronation march. I hear the procession sweeping up-stairs, and the clapping of hands, and the crowd going to and fro, murmuring ah-ah-ah. But the best of all is when I open what was old daddy's bedroom window, and sit in my own room with the door shut, for the wind plays a wedding-march then, and I can make it loud or soft by opening and shutting my window. That is the march I play every evening till I get the shivers."

"She'm dafty getting," muttered Mary, understanding nothing of the musical principle of the little girl's amusement. "Don't ye du it, my dear," she went on. "'Twill just be making you mazed, and us will find ye jumping at the walls like a bumbledor on a window."

"I'll try and keep sensible, but there is Christmas, and January, and February. Oh, Mary, I shall never do it," cried Boodles. "I shall be mad before March, which is the proper time for madness."

"Get another maid to come and bide wi' ye," Mary suggested.

"How can I?"

"Mebbe some old dame, who wants a home – " began Mary.

"She would be an expense, and she might get drunk, rob me, beat me, perhaps."

"Her wouldn't," declared Mary, with a glance at her big stick.

"I must go on being alone and making believe," said Boodles.

"Won't the butiful young gentleman come and live wi' ye?" said poor Mary, quite thinking she had found a splendid way out of the difficulty.

"Silly old thing," sighed Boodles, actually smiling. Then she rose to go, and Mary tramped heavily to her dairy. "Tak' eggs and butter wi' ye," she called. "Aw, my dear, yew mun't starve, or you'll get decline. 'Tis cruel to go abroad on an empty stomach."

"I'm not a snake," said Boodles; and at that moment Peter appeared in search of thoughts, heard the conversation, agreed that it was indeed cruel to go abroad on an empty stomach, and went to record the statement in his diary, adding for the sake of a light touch the observation of Boodles that she was not a snake, though Peter could not see the joke.

Mary was a busy creature, but she found time that evening to stalk across the moor and down to Helmen Barton, where she banged at the door like the good champion Ethelred, hero of the Mad Trist, until the noise of her stick upon the door "alarummed and reverberated" throughout the hollow. When Annie appeared she was bidden to inform her master that if he ventured again near Lewside Cottage, or dared to frighten "my little maid," she, Mary, would come again with the stick in her hands, and use his body as she had just used his door. When Mary had spoken she turned to go, but the friendless woman called her, feeling perhaps that she too needed a champion, and Mary turned back.

"Come inside," said Annie in a strange voice, and Mary went, with the statement that she could not remain as the cows were waiting to be milked.

"Been to Lewside Cottage, has he? He'm crazed for money. He'd rob the little maid of her last penny, and pray for her whiles he was doing it," said Annie bitterly.

Mary said nothing, but her anger rose, and she spat noisily upon her hands to get a good grip of the stick.

"I've been wi' 'en twenty years, and don't know 'en yet I thought once he was a man, but I know he bain't. If yew was to shake your fingers at 'en he'd run."

"Yew ha' been drinking, woman," said Mary.

"Ah, I've had a drop. There's nought else to live vor. Twenty years, Mary Tavy, he've had me body and soul, twenty years I've been a slave to 'en, and now he've done wi' me."

"What's that, woman?" cried Mary, lifting her long stick, and poking at Annie's left hand and the gold ring worn upon it.

"That!" cried Annie furiously. "It be a dirty thing, what any man can buy, and any vule of a woman will wear. Ask 'en what it cost, Mary Tavy. A few shilluns, I reckon, the price of a joint o' meat, the price of a pair o' boots. And it ha' bought me for twenty years."

"You'm drunk, woman."

"Ah, purty fine. Wimmin du main dafty things when they'm drunk. Your brother ha' made a mommet of 'en, and like a vule he went and broke it for a bit o' dirty money."

"It bain't broke," said Mary. "Peter made a new mommet, and broke that."

"Glory be to God," cried Annie wildly, plucking out some grey hairs that were falling upon her eyes. "I'll tell 'en. 'Twill work, Mary Tavy. The devil who passed over last month will see to it. He never passed the Barton. He didn't want his own. I never knowed a mommet fail when 'twas made right."

"Du'ye say he bain't your husband?" Mary muttered, looking at the grey hairs in the woman's hand.

"See beyond!" screamed Annie, losing all self-control, pulling Mary to the kitchen window, pointing out. It was a dark cold kitchen, built of granite, with concrete floor. There was nothing to be seen but the big brake of furze, black and tangled, swaying slightly. It was a mighty brake, twenty years untouched, and there were no flowers upon it. The interior was a choked mass of dead growth.

"Why don't ye burn 'en, woman?"

"Ask 'en. It ain't going to be burnt yet – not yet, Mary Tavy." Annie's voice had fallen to a hoarse whisper. She was half-drunk and half-mad. Those twenty years were like twenty mountains piled upon her. "Look at my white hairs, Mary Tavy. I'm getting a bit old like, and I'm for the poorhouse, my dear. Annie Crocker, spinster – that's me. Twenty years I've watched that vuzz before this window rocking to and fro, like a cradle, my dear, rocking 'em to sleep. Yew know what 'tis to live wi' a man. You'm a fool to first, and a vule always I reckon, but such a vule to first that yew don't know' how to stop 'em coming. Yew think of love, Mary Tavy, and you don't care – and there 'em be, my dear, two of 'em, in the middle o' the vuzz."

"Did'st du it?" muttered Mary, standing like a wooden image.

"Me! I was young then, and I loved 'em. He took 'em from me when I was weak and mazed. I had to go through it here alone, twice my dear, alone wi' him, and he said they was dead, but I heard 'em cry, twice, my dear, only I was that weak I couldn't move. 'Twas winter both times, and I lay up over, and heard 'en walking on the stones of the court, and heard 'en let the bucket down, and heard 'en dra' it up – and then I heard 'en cursing o' the vuzz 'cause it pricked 'en, and his hands and face was bloody wi' scratches when he come up. I mind it all, though I was mazed – and I loved 'em, my dear."

"Preaches in chapel tu," said Mary, a sense of inconsistency occurring to her. "You'm a vule, woman, to tell to me like this."

"I've ha' bitten my tongue for twenty years, and I'd ha' bitten it another twenty if he'd used me right. Didn't your brother find 'en wi' Chegwidden's maid? Don't I know he's been wi' she for months, and used she as he've used me? Don't I know he wants to have she here, and turn me out – and spend the price of a pair o' boots on a ring same as this, and buy she wi' that for twenty years?"

Mary turned away. It was already dark, the cows were not milked, and would be lowing for her to ease their udders. Annie was beside herself. The barrier of restraint had fallen, and the pent-up feelings of a generation roared out, like the Tavy with its melted snow, sweeping away everything which was not founded upon a rock.

"Burn it down, woman," said Mary as she went.

"Not till the mommet ha' done its work," screamed Annie. Then she lighted the lantern, and went to the linhay for more cider.

When lonely little Boodles got home she saw at once that the cottage had been entered. The sitting-room window had been forced open, and its catch was broken; but Pendoggat had got nothing for his pains. She had hidden the money-box so cunningly that he had failed to find it; and she was glad then that she had seen him prowling about the cottage the night before. She got some screws and made the window fast. Then she cried and had her supper. After that she went to her bed and sobbed again until her head ached, and then she sat up and scolded herself severely; and as the wind was blowing nicely she turned on the wedding march, and while listening to it prattled to herself —

"You mustn't break down, Boodles. It is much too early to do that, for things have not begun to go really badly for you yet. There's enough money to keep things going till summer, if you do without any new clothes, and by the way you mustn't walk too much or you'll wear your boots out, and next summer you will have a nice lot of old maids here for their health, and make plenty of money out of them for your health. I know you are only crying because it is so lonely, but still you mustn't do it, for it makes you thin and white. You had better go and study the cookery-book, and think of all the nice things you will make for the old maids when you have caught them."

Boodles never allowed herself to speak upon the subject which was always in her mind, and she tried to persuade herself she was not thinking of Aubrey and Weevil's wild story, although she did nothing else. While she was talking of her prospects she was thinking of Aubrey, though she would not admit it. She had tried once to put six puppies into a small cupboard, but as often as she opened the door to put another puppy in those already inside tumbled out. That was exactly the state her mind was in. When she opened it to think of her prospects, Aubrey, Weevil's story, and her unhappy origin, fell out sprawling at once, and were all over the place before she could catch them again; and when she had caught them she couldn't shut them up.

It was absolutely necessary to find something to do, as regulating the volume and sound of the wind by opening or shutting various windows and doors, and turning on what sounded to her like marriage or martial marches, was an unwholesome as well as a monotonous amusement. The child roamed about the cottage with a lamp in her hand, trying to get away from something which was not following. She could not sit down to sew, for her eyes were aching, and she kept starting and pricking her finger. She wandered at last with an idea into what had been Weevil's bedroom. There was an old writing-table there, and she had lately discovered a key with a label attached informing her that it would open the drawers of that table. Boodles locked herself in, lighted two lamps, which was an act of extravagance, but she felt protected somehow by a strong light, and began to dig up the dust and ashes of the old man's early life.

Many people have literary stuff they are ashamed of hiding away under lock and key, which they do not want, and yet do not destroy. Every one has a secret drawer in which incriminating rubbish is preserved, although it may be of an entirely innocent character. They are always going to make a clean sweep, but go on putting it off until death can wait no longer; and sorrowing relations open the drawer, glance at its contents, and mutter hurriedly: "Burn it, and say nothing." To know the real man it is only necessary to turn out his secret drawer when he is dead.

There was not much stored away in the old writing-table. Apparently Weevil had destroyed all that was recent, and kept much that was old. There was sufficient to show Boodles the truth; that the old man had always been Weevil, that his story to her had been a series of lame lies, that his origin had been a humble one. There were letters from friends of his youth, queer missives suggesting jaunts to the Welsh Harp, Hampstead, or Rosherville, and signed: "your old pal, George," or "yours to the mustard-pot. Art." They were humorous letters, written in slang, and they amused Boodles; but after reading them she could not suppose that Weevil had been ever what one would call a gentleman. A mass of such stuff she put aside for the kitchen fire; and then she came upon another bundle, tightly fastened with string, which she cut, and drawing a letter from the packet she opened it and read —

"My own Dearest.

I was so very glad to get your letter and I know you are looking forward to have one from me but I am so sorry Dearest you have had such a bad cold. My Dear I hope to sit on your knees and have my arm around your neck some day. I do love you you are my only sweetheart now and I hope I am only yours. Many thanks for sending me your photo which I should be very sorry to part with it. It makes me feel delighted as I am looking forward to be in your Dear arms some day. I am waiting for the time to pass so we shall be together for ever. I sit by the fire cold nights and have my thoughts in you my Dearest. I knit lace when I have no sewing to do. It was very miserable last Sunday but I went to church in the evening but I much rather would like to have been with you. I wish I could reach you to give you a nice kiss. I am always dreaming about you my Love and it is such miserable weather now I will stop in haste with my best love and kisses to my Dear Boy from your loving and true Minnie."

There was a fat bundle of such letters, written by the same illiterate hand nearly fifty years before, and the foolish old man had kept the rubbish, which had no doubt a sort of wild-flower fragrance once, and had left them at his death. Minnie was evidently a servant girl, hardly Miss Fitzalan of the amazing story, and if the young Weevil of those days had meant it, and had not been indulging in a little back-stairs flirtation, his birth was more humble than Boodles had supposed. He must have meant it, she reasoned, or he would hardly have kept that sentimental rubbish all his life.

Another drawer came open, and the child breathed quickly. It was filled with a parcel of books, and a label upon the topmost one bore the word "Boodles." The truth was in that secret drawer, there could be no romancing there, the question of her birth was to be settled once and for all, she could read it in those books, then go and tell Mr. Bellamie who she was. The girl's sad eyes softened when she perceived that the heap of diaries was well thumbed. She did not know that the old man had often read himself to sleep with one of them.

The straw, by which she had been, mentally at least, supporting herself since Weevil's death, was quickly snatched away. She saw then, what Mr. Bellamie had seen at once, how that the simple old creature had sought to secure her happiness with lies. The story of the diaries told her little more. It was true she was a bastard; that she had been wrapped in fern, and placed in the porch of the cottage, with a label round her neck like a parcel from the grocer's; that the old man had known as much about her parents as she knew herself. "She cannot be a commoner's child," was written in one of the diaries. "I think she must be the daughter of some domestic servant and a man of gentle birth. She would not be what she is had her father been a labourer or a farmer."

Then followed a list of the girls whom Weevil had suspected; but that was of no interest to Boodles. The old man had nursed her himself. There was a little book, Hints to Mothers, in the pile, and at the bottom of the drawer was a scrap of the fern in which she had been wrapped, and the horrible label which had been round her baby neck. She gazed, dry-eyed and fascinated, forgetting her loneliness, her sorrow, forgetting everything except that one overmastering thing, the awful injury which had been done to her innocent little self. Now that she knew the truth she would face it. The wind was playing a funeral march just then.

"I am an illegitimate child," said Boodles. She stepped before the glass, uncovered it, screamed because she thought she had seen that grotesque old face which servant girl Minnie had longed to kiss fifty years back, recovered herself, and looked. "He said I should be perfect if I had a name," she muttered. She was getting a fierce little tiger-cat, and beginning to show her pretty teeth. "Why am I not a humpback, or diseased in some way, or hideous, if I am an illegitimate child? I am as good as any girl. People in Tavistock turn to look at me, and I know they say: 'What a pretty girl!' Am I to say to every one: 'I am an illegitimate child, and therefore I am as black as the devil himself?' Why is a girl as black as the devil just because no clergyman has jabbered some rubbish at her parents? Oh, Boodles, you pretty love-child, don't stand it," she cried.

She flung the towel over the glass, turned to the window, and cast it open to receive the wind. "I am not frightened now. I am wild. Let us have the coronation march, and let me go by while they shout at me, 'bastard.' What have I done? I know that the sins of the parents are visited upon the children, but why should the children stand it? Must they, poor little fools? They must endure disease, but not dishonour. I am not going to stand it. I would go into God's presence, and clench my fists, and say I will not stand it. He allowed me to be born. If matrimony is what people say it is, a sort of sacrament, how is it that children can be born without it?"

The wind rushed into the room so violently that she had to shut the window. The lamp-flames were leaping up the glasses. A different tune began and made the tortured little girl less fierce.

"I won't be wild any more," she said; but an idea had entered her brain, and she gave it expression by murmuring again and again: "Nobody knows, nobody knows. Only he knew, and he is dead."

That was true enough. Only Weevil and her mother knew the truth about her shameful origin. The mother had not been seen that night placing the bundle of fern in the porch. She could not have been seen, as nobody in the neighbourhood knew where Boodles really came from, and the fact that the stories which they had invented about her were entirely false proved their ignorance. Probably nobody knew that her mother had given birth to a child. Boodles thought of that as she walked to and fro murmuring, "Nobody knows." Old Weevil's death might prove to be a blessing in disguise.

"I will not stand it," she kept on saying. "I will not bear the punishment of my father's sin. I will be a liar too – just once, and then I will be truthful for ever. I will make up my own story, and it won't be wild like his. I understand it all now. In this funny old world of sheep-people one follows another, not because the one in front knows anything, but just because he is in front; and when the leader laughs the ones behind laugh too, and when the leader says 'how vile,' the ones behind say 'how vile' too. I suppose we are all sheep-people, and I am only different because I have black wool, and I am on the wrong side of the hedge and can't get among the respectable white baa-baas. I won't harm any of them. I will be wicked once, in self-defence, to get this black wool off, and then I'll be a very good white respectable sheep-person ever after. The truth is there," she said, nodding at the little heap of books, "and the truth is going to be burnt."

She gathered up the pile and cremated the lot in the kitchen fire. Then she went to bed with a kind of happiness, because she knew that her doubts were cleared away, and that her future depended upon her ability to fight for herself. Her eyes were fully opened by this time because she had left fairyland and got well out into the lane of real life. She knew that "sheep-people" like the most excellent Bellamies, neatly bound and edged in the very best style of respectability, must regard little bastards as a sort of vermin, which it was only kind to tread upon or sweep decorously out of the way. "I am only going to wriggle in self-defence because they are hurting me," she murmured. "If they will be nice to me I will stop wriggling at once and be good for ever. I wouldn't make an effort if I was ugly or humpbacked. I would curl up and die like a horrid spider. But I know I am really a nice girl and a pretty girl; and if they will only give me the chance I will be a good girl – wicked once, and then good, so very good. I expect you are much better than most girls, Boodles, and you mustn't let them call you beastly names," she said; and went off to sleep in quite a conceited state of mind.