Mockery Gap (12 page)

M
R
. P
ATTIMORE
awoke early; he looked through the window at the sky.

The dawn had broken shyly, like a young dark-eyed girl who first thinks of love. So this summer dawn thought of the new day.

Mr. Pattimore saw that the sky was again spotted with little clouds, as it had been the afternoon before.

Mr. Pattimore awoke hungry, and the look of the sky reminded him at once of mackerel and the fisherman.

He rose from his bed, full of the idea of converting the fisherman and giving him a name. ‘If the fisherman,’ he thought, ‘is given a fitting name to suit his occupation, out of the Bible, then he would no more idle in the lanes, but would go out in his boat and catch the fish.’

A summer’s morning, although it gave that pretty writer Charles Lamb a headache, always pleased Mr. Pattimore. Its soft colours he could look at without fear, because these gentle colours were not upon his wife’s cheeks; and he could watch the flowers and the sweet airs of heaven kiss one another, in all chastity and godliness.

The early morning filled Mr. Pattimore’s heart with hope and happiness.

He saw Mockery—fair Mockery—coloured by his hope. All the meadows and lanes about him, and the wood, looked to him like the interior of the vast church where he as the principal figure walked with the gentle and easy gait of a monarch, and might if he wished rest upon any dewy and grassy bank as if it were a cushioned throne.

The early birds sang as well as any little boys in a choir, and the colours that Mr.
Pattimore
saw about him were as fine, or nearly so, as the decorated interior of any cathedral.

And best of all, to Mr. Pattimore’s senses came the feeling of chastity—the chaste dawn. He felt that this holy aspect of things seen would at least govern for many hours the
rudeness
of the day. Mr. Pattimore’s thoughts had soared, as well they might do upon such a morning, as high as the lark’s, and he let himself out of his own gate into the road with no other thoughts in his mind than chaste holiness.

But the earth isn’t heaven, and Mr.
Pattimore
hadn’t walked four paces before all his nice thoughts were shattered at a blow, and that a sudden one.

Upon a bank, at the entrance of a little lane, and under a fine spreading chestnut tree, God Simon was pressing Mary Gulliver—who was excitedly resisting him—wrathfully against the yellow flowers, and was complaining as he
held her pantingly—which complaint even Mr. Pattimore saw no call for—that all the Mockery maidens were forsaking him and were running after the fisherman.

Mr. Pattimore stood and shook with anger; the bubble that had been the dawn was now rudely burst, and the fair skies became to him a mere roof to a horrid kennel.

Simon turned, and, seeing Mr. Pattimore, released Mary, who went down the lane to fetch the cows, a little hot and tumbled, with a
parting
word to Simon that she would tell her father.

Simon had expected that, and so, in order to make things clearer to the clergyman and to excuse himself too, he remarked sulkily:

‘’Tis thik b … fisherman, that do set maidens against I; they be all after ’e now, and none of we can touch a hair of them, wi’out a father being named, or else fisherman.’

Mr. Pattimore remembered what he had come out to do.

‘But the fisherman has no name,’ he said.

‘’E bain’t nothing, only a Nellie-bird,’ replied Master Simon, going past the vicarage hoping to meet Rebecca, who would naturally be coming about that time to her work.

Mr. Pattimore took the path to Mr. Pring’s cottage. Though the chastity of the morning had been shattered by what he had seen, ‘yet perhaps if he named the fisherman wisely all might yet be well.’

‘It might be,’ thought Mr. Pattimore, ‘this fisherman with the pagan name that Mr. Tarr had so unthinkingly bestowed upon him,
according
to the accepted opinion of the village, who was perverting Mockery. That view of the fisherman as a wanton must have been the cause of his own lighting upon a sin at his very gates and in the eyes of the chaste dawn.’

Mr. Pattimore found Mr. Pring, who was an early riser, milking his lame cow in his little field that was shaded on one side by a high hedge and on the other by a pretty grove of larch trees. The pleasant morning had now healed Mr. Pattimore of his shock, and he approached Pring silently and spoke to him.

It was fortunate for Mr. Pring that he held firmly between his knees the bucket into which the milk was flowing, or else the fright of Mr. Pattimore’s sudden arrival, and the gentleman’s remarking so suddenly at six o’clock that he had come out in the hope of naming the new fisherman, might have caused the entire loss of the milk his cow had given him.

‘They children,’ said Mr. Pring, when he had recovered himself a little, ‘that do shout wild in village do name ’e the Nellie-bird.’

Mr. Pattimore moved back a pace or two and looked thoughtfully at the sea. The Blind Cow Rock, dark in all the sparkle and
shine of the water, reminded him of something—a whale.

‘I might call him Jonah,’ said Mr.
Pattimore
, coming nearer to Pring again.

‘Were ’e a fisherman?’ the road-mender asked.

‘Yes,’ replied Mr. Pattimore, ‘in a kind of way he was, though the fish devoured him.’

‘The poor man did bait hook wi’ ’is own self; but did thik fish ever get to shore?’

‘No, never,’ said Mr. Pattimore.

Mr. Pring rose from his stool; he placed the milk for safety at a little distance and began to rub his cow’s back with his hand. The cow lowered her head gratefully; she was pleased with this kind attention from her master.

A clatter of buckets came from the cottage; Mrs. Pring had come out of her door to feed the pigs.

Mr. Pattimore turned to the sea. The sun, whose kingdom is the earth, blessed his people. The sun broke through the little clouds and soaked Mockery in a bath of glory.

Mr. Pattimore and Pring both looked at the Blind Cow Rock at the same instant. A tall man stood upon the rock, who appeared about to cast a net into the sea.

‘’Tis Jonah,’ said Mr. Pring, ‘an’ ’tain’t no whale ’e do try to catch this morning, but a mackerel.’

Mr. Pattimore had awakened hungry, and
the early morning air, now that he was out in it, made him wish more than ever for a good breakfast. He could see even the Dean smiling from his frame when a fine fish, nicely fried by Rebecca, would be uncovered ready to taste; and then he wouldn’t want so much to look—poor man—at Mrs. Pattimore’s summer clothes.

Mr. Pattimore bid Mr. Pring good morning. He took the way to the sea. He walked excitedly, for perhaps—and who knows what a good God intends for His servants?—he might purchase a fish as well as name the fisher.

As Mr. Pattimore approached the waves, the same call of beauty and all loveliness that had attracted his wife earlier in the season now attracted him too. The flowers had led her, the summer sounds led him. The sunlight danced and quivered upon the moving surface of the sea, the ripple or the tiny summer waves made happy music, while a three-masted barque, as if it knew the eyes of man wished it to be there, traversed the cool morning waters, with wide sails spread. A white
seagull
flew so low that it almost touched the ripples with its wings.

Mr. Pattimore walked upon the cool yellow sands.

He was conscious as he walked that the sands were shining. He looked quickly up at the blue sky, but found it shining too.

Nothing—not all the deans in the world—could now prevent a truth overtaking his steps. He walked amid beauty—perfect beauty—and remembered that his wife had once been called Nellie. He clapped his hands to take his mind away from that word. ‘Dorcas,’ he called, ‘Dorcas.’

Mr. Pattimore looked into the sea: a great many tiny fishes were swimming in it; these were followed by a shoal of mackerel, that often in their hungry endeavour to get a little fish leaped out of the water.

Mr. Pattimore was so intent upon watching the deep blue of the sea, the shining pebbles, and the little fish, that he was near descending into it in order to become eternal beauty at one fling as Mr. Pink had done, when he
happened
to notice that near to him was the new fisherman, without his cap, with his hair and beard shining in the sun, pulling in his net.

Mr. Pattimore went at once to his aid, and they pulled together in all comradeship. The net was very heavy and near ready to break, for it was filled with shining and glittering fish.

At his earnest request the fisherman filled a basket full of fish for Mr. Pattimore—for a shilling. And what with one thing and another, what with the excitement of the nakedness of the morning, and the excitement of seeing so many fish taken, Mr. Pattimore
forgot that he had come down to the sea to name the fisherman.

And he also forgot ‘Dorcas.’ For as he went off with his filled basket he said happily, ‘Nellie will enjoy these for her breakfast.’

N
O
woman, even if we may take Dr. John Donne’s interpretation of them to be true, can change her face and show so great a depth of hidden cunning as the sea.

The sea is such a variable companion, when one goes down to it, that at certain times we are almost startled by the alterations in its countenance, that seem strangely to correspond to the quick and fretful changes in the human mind.

Under the shadow of a heavy thunder-cloud, it becomes the wine-dark deep as Homer saw it. But seen again with the afternoon sun upon it, it becomes a Victorian lady, until the tide creeps unnoticed around our feet, and we remember the days of Canute and his fine flatterers, that were, after all, exactly the same pretty gentlemen as the flatterers who live now. And when we have climbed out of the way of the water and are safely seated upon a higher ridge of pebbles, and look again at the sea, it isn’t the same. The sea is no recorder of history now; it has become pure emotion. The sea moans and weeps, shines and laughs, and tells as we gaze a little sadly at it a story of fair love passages: how a fair lady of noble presence stands upon the little rounded pebbles, and takes the hand of a bold fisherman who
steps on shore from his boat; and his rough outer garments blowing apart, there is revealed the golden shift of a king.

And then as the light of day wanes and the darkness gathers, and we behold the far reaches of the deep, we are led to contemplate the grand vista of eternity. Then the dark waters gather tumultuously about the golden gate of the grave, behind which stands the Name, spoken with holy dread by all
generations
of mankind.

Spoken with awe unfathomable. For
whatever
we may think of the injustice, the cruelty, the pain here upon earth, the Name, and the terror and love of it that hides so silent behind the tomb, must for ever hide, too, the ultimate truth. God, for ever and everlasting, life without end—God.

Mr. Caddy wasn’t of a jealous nature; he would stand beside his gate and tell the ducks that he didn’t mind how often the Mockery girls went out to amuse themselves. ‘All groves and meadows be box-beds wi’ they maidens,’ he would remark happily, knowing well enough that Simon or the girls would tell him all about it, and that he would have the pleasure of handing on all that they had said to the ducks.

However little the American nation may be able to agree here, I must be brave enough to venture the opinion that there is a type of
human creature, godlike in nature, who can become very important to his environment by doing nothing. Mr. Caddy had become so, and the importance that he had in Mockery was shared by his ducks.

Mr. Caddy was by nature friendly to the world, though one person resident in it, though not of Mockery, had incurred his displeasure. This was none other than the Mr. Hunt who so frightened Mrs. Moggs when he came to her, talking about money.

Coming by in his motor one day, Mr. Hunt had run over one of Mr. Caddy’s ducks that had become separated from the others and was quacking in the lane. Mr. Caddy did indeed walk as far as the duck and raise it pityingly, and it died in his arms.

The car was gone, and Mr. Hunt with it. Mr. Caddy carried the duck back to the pond and placed it gently upon the floating weeds.

And then he went back to his gate again and stared at the dead duck in the pond.

Mr. Hunt had made an enemy.

But little did the postmaster know how important Mr. Caddy was. Now listen. Mrs. Topple would always choose to pass Mr. Caddy’s cottage on her way to the fields, and now that July was so near to running into August she would inquire of him as from an expert in botany where he supposed she might be able to find the clover with four leaves.
Mr. Caddy advised her to let the fields alone, and to begin to search, as she had finished with the children’s lessons, by the roadside.

‘But do ’ee mind Mr. Hunt don’t kill ’ee,’ remarked Mr. Caddy.

Every one in Mockery always wished that God had invented a way to increase the souls to be saved without there having to be children.

‘I do often think,’ said Mr. Caddy, who, before he learned how pleasant his gate was to lean against, had in his extreme youth been a rabbit-catcher—‘I do often think that if they babies, that so soon be running children, had to bolt out of holes into rabbit netting, ’twould be better for all.’

‘But dogs mid have they,’ said Mrs. Pottle, who was passing down the lane, ‘or else they ferrets Simon Cheney do keep in ’s bag.’

‘If they did,’ said Mr. Caddy, after turning over in his mind the hard problem and looking at it from another angle—‘if they did, ’twouldn’t be noticed.’

As though they arose because Mr. Caddy had mentioned them, the children, the very worst among them—indeed, they might well have lived in those cities of the plain—
surrounded
Mr. Caddy and shouted to him that if he didn’t say where the Nellie-bird had gone to they would stone his ducks to death, as surely and certainly as Mr. Hunt had killed the one he ran over.

‘The fisherman,’ said Mr. Caddy,
addressing
not the bad children but his good ducks, ‘be where Esther Pottle do bide.’

The children with this news in their ears at once broke and ran, nearly overturning their teacher, who, following Mr. Caddy’s advice, was already beginning to search the roadside for clover to heal her wound.

They ran here and there, that fair summer morning, for their holidays were begun, and they had nothing to do that day, save mischief.

Near to Mr. Gulliver’s cottage they saw Esther. Mr. Gulliver was telling her how he had in the spring-time—and he had never
forgotten
it—seen an odd monster in the wood—a demon, he called it—who had in a moment of time, a miraculous moment, changed into her cousin Dinah and Master Simon Cheney.

Mr. Gulliver stood aside when the children ran by, and Esther, being unable to turn back and go to her home, fled to the sea.

But of all places to run to in the wide world, when one is being chased by the little
sharp-toothed
wolves, the sea is least likely to be a preserver; unless one means to dive after the precious pearl of eternity like Mr. Pink.

But Esther’s faith in the fisherman was so strong, that had his boat been a mile from land instead of a yard or two she would have felt she was saved.

As it was, the fleeing Esther, near blinded by
her own hair, a pretty thing in the sun, with her frock unfastened by running, cast herself into the boat, and the fisherman pushed off.

Mockery perceiving this act of escape, gave the cries that dogs do when a doe rabbit, whose soft fur they had hoped to get their teeth into, has run into a deep hole in the ground that is beyond their reach.

The pack of Mockery had one voice, and their cries were accompanied by stones, that dropped into the sea about the boat, safe within which Esther had sunk exhausted upon the fisherman’s nets.

‘Wold Caddy do tell ’is ducks,’ shouted the rude children, ‘that every fisherman’s boat wi’ a maiden in en be a fine feather-bed.’

‘Bad Esther, whose mother bain’t married, be in thee’s boat,’ they shouted again, hoping to raise enough virtue in the heart of the
fisherman
to give him cause for throwing Esther into the sea.

‘And mind blind cow don’t watch ’ee.’

The fisherman stood beside his mast and smiled upon the children, while Esther, whose eyes matched the darkest deeps in colour, though a little dimmed now by love, looked up at the fisherman with all the faith and affection of a happy child.

The summer wind, that had ruffled the waters a little now, sank entirely into a dead calm. The boat’s sail flapped or else hung
limp, the tiny waves splashed upon the pebbles, and the children wandered away from the shore, crying out every now and again, in order to make their path the easier, ‘The Nellie-bird!—the Nellie-bird!’