Furze the Cruel. Trevena John

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СКАЧАТЬ time standing with his back to the wall, wheezing and chuckling and making all sorts of unpleasant noises, as if there was some obstruction on his chest which he was trying always to remove.

      Grandfather's hands were very loose and shaky, and his face was dreadfully dirty. Peter washed it sometimes, while the old fellow wheezed and groaned. Sometimes Peter opened his chest and examined Grandfather's organs, which he declared were in a perfectly healthy condition. There appeared to be no excuse for Grandfather's mendacious habits. He had got into the way of lying years back, and could not shake it off. Grandfather was well over a hundred years old, and he was not the slightest use except as a companion. Some people would have been afraid of him, because of his unpleasant noises, but Peter and Mary loved him like dutiful grandchildren. They recognised in Grandfather the true Gubbings spirit. He was a weak, sinful creature like themselves.

      Grandfather had commenced life as a clock, but he had soon given up that kind of work, or something had occurred to turn him from a useful career; just as Peter had been meant for some sort of quadruped, and Mary had been a man up to the last possible moment. Some evil spirit must have entered into Grandfather; a malicious impet from the Tavy river perhaps; or possibly the wild wind of Dartmoor had passed down the cleave one day, to enter Grandfather's chest and intoxicate him for ever. The fact remained that Grandfather was hopelessly bad; he was a regular misanthrope; his ticks were so many curses, his strikings were oaths. He did his best to mislead the two grandchildren, although it didn't matter much, because time is of no account on Dartmoor. "He'm a proper old brute, Gran'vaither," Peter would say sometimes, but never in the old clock's hearing.

      Mary's mission in life was to breed geese. She had been sent into the world for the express purpose of supplying folk with savoury meat stuffed with sage and onions at Christmas time. She succeeded admirably. She was the best goosewoman on Dartmoor, and her birds were always in demand. One year Peter had obtained a shilling a pound for three unusually fine young birds; but Mary didn't know that. She fattened her geese, and incidentally Peter also.

      "They'm contrairy birds," observed Farmer Chegwidden, while he smoked and rested himself upon a boulder, watching Mary's efforts to collect her flock. "Never goes the way us want 'em to. Like volks," he added, with philosophic calm. He might have been assisting Mary, only he didn't believe in violent exercise which would not be suitably rewarded.

      "Volks calls 'en vulish, but they bain't. They'm just vull o' human vices," said Mary, flopping to and fro and waving her furze-bush.

      "They'm vulish to look at," explained Farmer Chegwidden.

      "'Tis their artful way. Peter looks vulish tu, and he knows plenty. More'n any of they goosies, I reckon. Coop, coop! Drat the toad! I'll scat 'en."

      The leader of the feathered choir was off again. Chegwidden could have headed it off, only he had finished his day's work. He managed to summon up the energy to remark, "They gets over the ground surprising, wi' their wings spread."

      "He'm a proper little brute. I wun't waste no more time over 'en," said Mary, as she wiped her forehead with a bunch of fern. "He'll come home when he've a mind to, and lay his egg in the linny likely, where Peter'll tread on 'en in the morning. Peter be cruel clumsy wi' his boots. Will ye please to step inside, Varmer Chegwidden?"

      "I mun get home. Got the bullocks to feed."

      "Fine bullocks tu. I seed 'em down cleave last night. Cooey, cooey! Come along home, my purty angels. Wish ye good-night, Varmer Chegwidden."

      "Why du'ye call 'em angels?" asked the farmer, making strange sounds of laughter behind his hand.

      "Aw now, I'll tell ye. There was a lady down along, a dafty lady what painted, and her come to Peter, and her ses, 'I wants they goosies to paint.' Well, us wouldn't have it. Us thought her wanted to paint 'em, one of 'em red, 'nother green likely, 'nother yellow maybe, and it might be bad for their bellies. But us found her wanted to put 'em on a picture. Her had got a mazed notion about the cleave and resurrection, wi' angels flapping over, and her wanted my goosies for angels. Peter ses he didn't know goosies were like angels. Knows a lot, Peter du."

      "Angels be like gals," declared Chegwidden. "Like them gals to Tavistock what pulls the beer, wi' pert faces and vuzzy hair. That's what angels be like. I've seed the pictures in a Bible."

      "Aw now. Us couldn't make she out," went on Mary. "The lady said 'twas just the wings her wanted. Her said angels ha' got goosies' wings, and us couldn't say 'em hasn't, 'cause us ain't seed any. Her knew all about it. So Peter druve the goosies down cleave, and her painted 'em for angels sure 'nuff. Us never knew angels has goosies' wings, but the lady knew. Her was sure on't."

      Mary stalked towards the hut-circles at the head of her row of geese, grave, waddling, self-important, and blissfully unconscious of anything in the nature of sage and onions. There was a touch of humour about the procession. It was not altogether unlike the spectacle to be witnessed in certain country boroughs of the mayor and corporation walking into church.

      "Goosies be cruel human," said Mary.

      CHAPTER II

      ABOUT BRIGHTLY

      Up the road from Brentor to St. Mary Tavy came Brightly, his basket dragging on his arm. He was very tired, but there was nothing unusual in that. He was tired to the point of exhaustion every day. He was very hungry, but he was used to that too. He was thinking of bread and cheese and cider; new bread and soft cheese, and cider with a rough edge to it. He licked his lips, and tried to believe he was tasting them. Then he began to cough. It was a long, heaving cough, something like that of a Dartmoor pony. He had to put his basket down and lean over it, and tap at his thin chest with a long raw hand.

      Nobody wanted Brightly, because he was not of the least importance. He hadn't got a home, or a vote, or any of those things which make the world desire the presence of people. He was only a nuisance, who worried desirable folk that he might exist, though the people whom he worried did not ask him to live. Brightly was a purveyor of rabbit-skins. He dealt in rubbish, possibly because he was rubbish himself. He tramped about Dartmoor, between Okehampton and Tavistock, collecting rabbit-skins. When he was given them for nothing he was grateful, but his stock of gratitude was not drawn upon to any large extent. It is not the way of Dartmoor folk to part with even rubbish for nothing. To obtain his rabbit-skins Brightly had to dip his raw hand beneath the scrap of oilcloth which covered his basket, and produce a horrible little red and yellow vase which any decent-minded person would have destroyed at sight. Brightly bore most things fairly well, but when, on one occasion while climbing over the rocks, he had dropped the basket and all the red and yellow vases were smashed to atoms, he had cried. He had been tired and hungry as usual, and knew he had lost the capital without which a man cannot do business. The dropping of that basket meant bankruptcy to Brightly.

      The dealer in rabbit-skins was not alone in the world. He had a dog, which was rubbish like its master. The animal was of no recognised breed, although in a dim light it called itself a fox-terrier. She could not have been an intelligent dog, or she would not have remained constant to Brightly. Her name was Ju, which was an abbreviation of Jerusalem. One Sunday evening Brightly had slipped inside a church, and somewhat to his surprise had been allowed to remain, although a sidesman was told off to keep an eye upon him and see that he did not break open the empty poor-box. A hymn was sung about Jerusalem the golden, a piece of pagan doggerel concerning the future state, where happy souls were indulging in bacchanalian revels, and over-eating themselves in a sort of glorified dairy filled with milk and honey. The hymn enraptured Brightly, who was, of course, tired and famished; and when he had left the warm church, although without any of the promised milk and honey, he kept on murmuring the lines and trying to recall the music. He could think of nothing but Jerusalem for some days. He went into the public library at Tavistock and looked it up in a map of the world, discovered it was in a country called Palestine, and wondered how СКАЧАТЬ