John Trevena

“ There was much for Mary to avenge. Pendoggat had beaten her brother, had terrified Boodles, to say nothing of his attempt to rob her, and now Mary knew he had killed the old goose. She had never ceased to mourn for Old Sal; and Pendoggat had destroyed the leader of her flock out of sheer malice and cruelty. The spirit of the lawless Gubbings entered into Mary as she picked up her staff and made for the door, while Peter shambled after her, a philosopher no longer, but a savage like herself. ”

“ They could not have been making love to their wives all their spare time. There must have been something to take the place of the beer-house, the chapel tea, the sing-songs, the rough-and-ready carnival. If tradition does not exactly speak it gives an echo. We listen to that echo, we put against it our knowledge of human nature, which does not change, and to that we add our experience of the desires, customs, and pastimes of the men who have passed into their places and live upon what was their ground; and then we get near the truth, possibly at the very heart of it. ”

“ Peter left the hut-circles last, securing both doors, and dropping the keys in his baggy pocket. Then they set forth, the smoke over them, the fires on each side, and the white frost like snow upon the ground.
Pendoggat gave a sigh of relief as he descended into the hollow of the Barton and saw nobody, and heard nothing except the crackling of the flames and the furze screaming as the fire rushed through it; for the furze screams when it is burnt like a creature in torment. ”

“ She was part of the exaggeration of Dartmoor, which exaggerates everything; adding fierceness to fierceness, colour to colour, strength to strength; just as its rain is fiercer than that of the valleys, and its wind mightier. Thomasine was of the Tavy family, but not of the romantic branch. Not of the folklore side like Boodles, but of the Ger Tor family, the strong mountain branch which knows nothing and cannot think for itself, and only feels the river wearing it away, and the frost rotting it, and the wind beating it. ”

“ The magic mist of bluebells has given way to the blue steel of the railroad, and wooden battleships, their task over, float upon its waters instead of fern-fronds. Not a fairy-tale is to be told, nor any pretty fancy to be weaved there. The pictures go into galleries, and win fame, perhaps; but the river of Tavy chuckles over his rocks, and knows he is not there.
It is a river of atmosphere. Only a dream can produce the Tavy; not the written word, nor the painted picture. Unpleasant dreams some of them, like nightmares, but human thought produces them ”

“ Mary—it rains!
Brightly knew all about that rain. He had often played the Seal upon that wild road, and had felt the water trickling down his back and making reservoirs of his boots; while people would stand at their windows and laugh at him. Nobody had ever asked him to come in and take shelter. Such an idea would never have occurred to them. Ponies and bullocks were out upon the moor in all weathers, and every winter some died from exposure. Brightly was nothing like so valuable as a pony or bullock, and if he were to die of exposure nobody would be out of pocket. ”

“ Boodles who was constant like the gorse, which is in flower all the year round.
No one would call the ordinary Dartmoor postman an angel—his appearance is too much against him—but he does an angel's work. Perhaps there is nothing which quickens the heart of any lonely dweller on the moor so perceptibly as the heavy tread of that red-faced and beer-tainted companion of the goddess of dawn. He leaves curses as well as blessings. He pushes love-letters and bills into the box together. Sometimes he is an hour late, and the miserable watcher frets about the house. Sometimes the wind holds him back. ”

“ The fairy-tale was getting on. Ogre time had come. Boodles was to go and drink tea with her boy's parents.
"Perhaps we can go our walk later on."
"It won't be a real day if we don't," said she.
"Our walk" was beside the Tavy, where they had kissed as babies, and loved to wander now that they were children. They thought they were grown up, but that was absurd. People who are in love remain as they were, and never grow up until some one opens the window and lets the cold wind in. "Our walk" was fairyland; a strange and pleasant place after goose dinner and Goose Fair. ”

“ Aubrey loved her still, that gave her everything, and while his love lasted she was still on the green oasis, and could shut her eyes to the desert, scarred with the bodies of those who had tried to cross it and had fallen in the attempt, the bare desert of life without any sweet water of love, which she would have to try and cross without a guide when he came back and she had told him plainly what she was. She thought it would kill her, for love cannot be removed without altering the entire universe; for with love the sun goes, and the flowers go, and all the pleasant nooks ”

“ She had started as a lodging-house keeper; then she had become quite a young girl; from that to the fairy stage was only one step; and then at a single bound she became the goddess of flowers; and she went along "our walk" with sunshine for hair, and wind-flowers for eyes, and primroses for skin; and the world seemed very sweet and fresh as if the wonderful work of creation had only been finished that morning at nine o'clock punctually, and Boodles was just going through to see that the gardener had done his work properly.
Life at eighteen is glorious and imaginative ”

“ She was a fresh and fragrant child, with no unhealthy fancies; loving everything that was clean and pretty; loathing spiders, and creeping things, and filth in general; and longing ardently already to win for herself a name and a soul a little higher than the beetles. They were presumptuous longings for a child of passion, who did not know her parents, or anything about her origin beyond the fact that she had been thrown out in a bundle of fern, and taken in and cared for by Abel Cain Weevil.
At the tender age of fourteen Boodles received her love-wound. ”

“ Such people always tumble out of railway carriages. They merely bang the door open, fall forward, and find their feet somehow. It is easy to tell whether a person is well-bred or not by the way he or she leaves a railway carriage. A young lady comes forth after the manner of a butterfly settling on a flower. The country maid emerges like a falling sack of wheat. Peter and Mary tumbled out, and were considerably astonished not to find a procession of grateful passengers advancing towards the engine to thank the driver for the courage he had displayed in saving their lives. ”

“ Swaling-time had come, red patches of fire flickered every night on Dartmoor, and the furze-prickles crackled in the flames. The annual war between man and the prickly shrub was being waged, and the atmosphere was always clouded and tainted with bitter smoke. Every one seemed to be infected with the idea of furze destruction, from the granite-cracker who as he went to his labours would push the match with which he had just lighted his pipe into some thick brake, to the small boys who begged or stole boxes of matches and went out after dark to make the moor fiery. ”

“ She would be something of a lady; have a servant under her, perhaps. Thomasine was actually thinking. She would have a parlour to keep locked up; be the equal of the Chegwiddens; far above the village cobbler her father, and nearly as good as the idol-maker of Birmingham. That Pendoggat loved her was certain. He would not have lost his senses and behaved as he had done if he did not love her. Thomasine, like most young women, believed as much as she wanted to, believed that men are as good as their word, and that love and brute passion are synonymous terms. ”

“ She looked at everything through Aubrey's eyes; and Aubrey was only a boy who could hardly know his own mind. A boy does not care whether his sweetheart's father is a tinker or a rake; but a man, and an only son, who has reached an age when he can understand what his family and society and his profession demand of him, cares a great deal. There comes a time for every young person when he or she must leave fairyland and go into the world; and the pity of it is they cannot return. They look back, but the gate is shut. It is a gate which opens only one way—to exclude. ”

“ Mary, her friend and protector, was a wild beast of the moor, the savage principle of the cruel Nature which was crushing her. The red light of the fire fell upon her radiant head, which resembled it, as if she had been intended to punish Pendoggat, and not Mary, because her head was like fire just as his nature was like furze. All the time she could hear Annie's furious laughter and her mocking voice: "Why don't ye stand up to she, man? Tak' your stick and hit she on the head till she'm mazed. Hit she on the ear, man, same as you hit me. Yew twisted the old goosie's neck easy enough. ”

“ There is no winter for the little people, just as there is no winter for the flowers; and flowers and fairies are one and the same thing. They go to sleep until the sun comes to wake them up, and tell them it is time to dance and blossom as they did last year. There is a winter, only they know nothing of it. That is why the little people are so much happier than the big ones. When sorrow comes they simply go to sleep. Bigger people are not allowed to do that.
"You are going away, Aubrey," said Boodles. ”

“ Bellamie saw the little ring of forget-me-nots, and guessed who had given it her; and then she began to wonder whether it was worth while fighting against Nature. Why not let youth and love have their own sweet way, why not ignore the accident of birth, which had made her a Courtenay and Boodles a blank, why let pride straddle across the way to stop the youngsters from getting into the happy land? ”

“ He looked dead, but, like the furze which seemed to be annihilated, he lived. The heart was beating in the man's body, and the roots were alive in the glowing soil. Both would rise again, the one into a fierce prickly shrub; the other into a man destined for the charity of others, scarred, maimed, and blind. There was to be no escape for Pendoggat, no new life for him. Boodles of the fiery head had fulfilled her destiny ”

“ 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. ”

“ That was my baby-name. I am Tita. And the others—Katherine, Mary—what are the rest?"
"I don't know, dear. I will try and think to-morrow."
"I won't tease you, but there is so much I want to know. Poor great big old grand-daddy-man, you look quite dead."
He shuffled towards her, put his arms round her, and began to make noises as if he was in pain. "I am tired and weak. That is all, darling, and the rabbit in the trap made me sick. I am weak and old and very tired, and I know I have done no good in my life. Shut it out, my maid—shut it out." ”

“ Bellamie and ask him for his pedigree, and turn up my nose when I saw it, and say I was very sorry, but I must really look for something better than his son, though he has got a girl's face and is much prettier than I am. Oh, Aubrey," she cried, with a sudden new passion. "You have always meant it? You will be true to your little maid of the radiant head? I don't doubt you, but love is another of the queer puzzles, all flaming one time, all dead another, and only a little white dust to show for all the flame. ”

“ Pugsley, having saved a little money, desired to spend it upon matrimony, and as he could not have Thomasine he was going about looking for another maid. One would serve his purpose as well as another, so long as she had plenty of blood in her.
Such a thing as love without lust was unknown to Pendoggat. His only idea of the great passion was to catch hold of a woman, maul her, enjoy her flesh, and her warmth, and the texture of her clothes; the coarse, crude passion which makes a man ruin himself, and destroy the life of another, for the pleasure of a moment's madness ”

“ When Mary came in to call him to supper she found Peter sitting in a kind of trance before the hearthstone, and following his gaze she saw the quaint clay doll sitting upright in the centre of the fire, with the red peat gathered into a fiery little hell around it on every side.
"Aw, Peter!" she gasped in a tremulous whisper, falling on her knees at his side. "Who be the mommet, Peter? Who be the mommet?"
"Varmer Pendoggat," said Peter. ”

“ Peter entered with a huge lantern, the time being winter, and the evening dark—the night rather, for the Dartmoor day in winter is well over by five o'clock—flapped up the aisle with goose-like steps, tumbled into a seat breathing heavily, and making as much noise with his boots as a horse upon cobblestones, banged the lantern down, and gazed about the building with an air of proprietorship. ”

“ It is possible to walk along the lanes for miles and to see no human beings; only the ruins of where they lived once, and the decaying houses where they live now. It is like walking through a country of the past.
Along one of these lanes Thomasine was taken in a rickety cart ploughing through glue-like mud, and at one of the gates she alighted. There had been a hamlet once where the brambles spread, and its name, which had become the name of the one small house remaining, was Ashland, though the map calls it something else. ”

“ Elementary forces of nature, like Pendoggat, might be cruel, but Weevil was not a force, neither was he cruel. He was only an eccentric old man, and he wanted it to be well with the child. She would have her eyes opened soon enough. She would discover that innocents thrust out on the moor to perish cannot by the great law of propriety take that place in life which beauty and goodness deserve. They must go back; like Undine, coming out with brave love to seek a soul, succeeding at first, but failing in the end, and going back at last to the state that was hers. Poor little bastard Boodles! ”

“ They splashed on, bent under the arch of the cave, and entered the womb of the moor. Hundreds of feet of solid granite roofed them in. They were out of the wind and moonlight. Pendoggat guided the minister in front of him, keeping him close to the wall of rock to avoid the deep water in the centre. About twenty paces from the entry was a shaft cut at right angles. They went along it until they had to stoop again.
"Be'old, Mr. Pendoggat!" cried Eli, with amazed admiration. "Be'old the colours! I have never seen anything so beautiful in my life. What is it? Jewels, Mr. Pendoggat? ”

“ They reached the edge of the cleave, and stopped while Pendoggat lighted his lantern. They had to make their way across a wilderness of clatters. The moonlight was deceptive and crossed with black shadows. The wind seemed to make the boulders quiver. Eli looked upon the wild scene, heard the rushing of the river, saw the rugged range of tors, and felt excited. He too felt himself an inheritor of the kingdom of Tavy and a son of Dartmoor. He was going to be wealthy perhaps; marry and rebuild his chapel; do many things for the glory of God. ”

“ I knew only one man I could really trust, and that man is you."
"It is very generous of you, Mr. Pendoggat," said the buttered Eli.
They had reached the railway bridge, and there stopped, being upon the edge of the moor. Beneath them was Brentor station gone to sleep; beyond, in its cutting, that of Mary Tavy. The lines of two rival companies ran needlessly side by side, silently proclaiming to the still Dartmoor night the fact that railway companies are quite human and hate each other like individuals. Pendoggat was looking down as usual, therefore his eyes were fixed upon the rival lines. ”

“ Bellamie only smiled and murmured: "Proud little cat."
"Well, I suppose I must be," said Boodles. "Poverty and loneliness sharpen one's feelings, you know. If I was a rich lady I would come and stay at your house, whether Mr. Bellamie wanted me or not. I shouldn't care. But as I am, poor and lonely, and pretty miserable too, I feel I should want to bite and scratch if any one came to do me a favour. Aubrey is not coming home for Christmas then?" ”