OFTEN in the country a young farmer’s son, whose parents are rich, is so fattened and reddened by praise and good living that he becomes a sort of man-god, spruce and verdant, and worshipped by all.
Young Simon Cheney, though possessed of quite a large share of unpleasant maxims and manners, was certainly set up in Mockery—his red, youthful face puffed and plumed with gross conceit, his light-coloured hair brushed and curled by his hard-worked mother, who continued even when the boy was twenty to tend him at bedtime—as a fine Phallic symbol for the young ladies to admire and for Mr. Caddy to talk about.
Such a god, whose business was pleasure, and whose pleasure was a girl, had waited for Mary upon the hill; and now, when she had let the horse go and went mildly to Simon, he, who had waited a little impatiently for her, having watched her loitering in the lane, at once threw her down upon the grass near to the green mound all amongst the Roddites.
Had Mr. Roddy been watching he would indeed have been sadly disturbed at such a shameless despising of his grand discovery. But Mary not being Mr. Roddy, had only one fear in her mind, and that was that she might see the nakedness of the sky; otherwise she was pleasantly smiling and was never more happy. She shut her eyes, for this garment of darkness can at any moment—and Mary had used it before—become a shield safe against all the elemental nakedness of sea, sky, or man.
‘Oh,’ gasped Mary, when she was a little recovered from her excitement because of having been thrown down so rudely amongst the Roddites—‘Oh, ’tis well the sun be sunk down, for ’e do stare so in daytime.’
God Simon rose lazily from the grass and threw a white chalk stone at the horse who was feeding near by and taking, which was wise of him, no notice of the grassy happenings.
Mary sat up and looked down upon Mockery; she saw all nature—after a little shaking of herself and brushing that she hurriedly completed with fast, ready fingers—there below her now as completely clothed.
It wasn’t our pretty god’s habit to loiter beside a girl after having amused himself with her, as more ordinary folk would do, leading this aftermath of maidenhood with whispered promises home to her cottage. But Simon, when he had entertained himself for a few moments with stoning the horse, left Mary and strode home along the lane thinking of Dinah Pottle.
Mary didn’t mind his going, she was used to that; and she hung up Dick’s halter upon the gate, and looked up at the sky with less timidity now because a decent small cloud in shape like a loin-cloth had crept over it.
Mary, who was blushing and happy, followed Simon Cheney down the lane and watched him enter the large gate and go towards his father’s house that stood up finely, beside the large trees that looked sombre and mighty under the darkening sky.
As the milk-cans behind her cottage were nicely garnished and set in a row, Mary Gulliver supposed that her father was resting in his armchair looking, as he always did now of an evening, at the map of the world that had been given to him by Mr. James Tarr.
Mr. Gulliver’s ideas of virtue, and the awfulness of any outbreak into nakedness or naked happenings, such as a child that is born to the unmarried, were certainly as strong as his daughter Mary’s.
‘If anything ever happened,’ he would tell her, ‘if thee ever did do any of they wicked things that parson did tell we of, ’tis best to drown thee self.’
But though he had such ideas, Mr. Gulliver was born of the softest kind of the Mockery mould. He was one whose feelings were friendly to mild wet days, to lowly cottages, and to mangel-wurzel when snugly housed in the dark end of an old barn.
Mr. Gulliver walked through the days of his life in a friendly manner, nodding at the mealtime hours as if they knew him and nodded back; and he would look at all living and dead things with an affectionate misunderstanding.
Mr. Gulliver had his own notions about great men and great matters. Mr. Cheney he thought too grasping; he honoured Mr. Pattimore; but Mr. Roddy’s agent, Mr. Pink, was the man that he really admired.
If Mr. Gulliver ever wondered about the sea, and he used to wonder sometimes, he would go to Mr. Caddy’s gate where Mr. Caddy always leaned and ask for information. There he would listen carefully to Mr. Caddy, who would inquire in his turn of the ducks, and the ducks would be sure to quack loud enough—being runners—for Mr. Caddy to explain what they meant.
The wisdom of the ducks would usually show the sea as a very large green beast with a voice, so Mr. Caddy would explain, that exactly resembled that of Farmer Cheney’s black bull.
‘’Tis best to keep out of ’is way, so thik drake do tell I,’ Mr. Caddy would remark; ‘though of course there be Mr. Pink to go to when the sea do break into the land.’
This allusion to Mr. Pink referred to the kindly habits of the agent, whose mediation in every matter between Mr. Roddy and his tenants was always successful.
Gulliver, though as mild as a Mockery worm, had once turned unexpectedly when Caddy, letting the sea alone for the moment, had spoken of Mary, hinting harmlessly enough that the newest kind of bed, ‘where blankets be all green and don’t need no making, could be found upon the cliff where wold horse be led to.’
Something then boiled up in Mr. Gulliver, whose daughter’s honour was his dearest possession, and who, though most anxious to hear all her merry tales from her own lips—for all tales were far separate from the real in his mind—could never bear the least discrediting hint to come from another.
Mr. Caddy noticed the changed look, and when he knew that Gulliver’s fist was waiting pleasantly about an inch from his nose he looked discreetly at the ducks.
‘If anything did happen to she, there ’d be a killing,’ shouted Mr. Gulliver, waving both his fists around Mr. Caddy as if they were wheels.
Caddy bowed his head. ‘They ducks do know,’ he said meekly, ‘that I never meant no harm….’
When his tea was prepared, Mary went to her father’s chair, leaned over him, and looked at the map too. The map was an early picture of the world, drawn in the fine fancy of those ancient times, when the earth was excitingly alive with monsters and devils, that were outside instead of inside folks’ minds as they are to-day.
Mr. Gulliver moved his finger over the map and pointed out to Mary a large monster flying over the northern lands.
Mary looked, and carried away by the excitement of the evening she said: ‘Something were a-flying over Mockery cliff, where horse were led to, and did flop down upon I, and ’tis most likely ’twere thik, for me eyes were shut.’
‘They things oughtn’t to be allowed about,’ said Mr. Gulliver decidedly.
‘Something did throw I down,’ continued Mary, who was grown a little paler, perhaps by thinking of such a monster—‘something did throw I down, and when I did open my eyes to see who ’twere, there weren’t no one, only Simon Cheney who were throwing chalk stones about.’
Mr. Gulliver looked upon his daughter with horror; he believed that something horrible, something depicted in his map, had visited Mary.
‘Miss Pink,’ he said, ‘that do keep lamp burning in she’s front room, do tell that a horrible beast out of the wide seas be expected each night-time.’
‘Oh,’ gasped Mary, ‘and that bain’t all, for the children do shout and call about the Nellie-bird.’
‘You haven’t seen nothing more, ’ave ’ee?’ asked Mr. Gulliver, looking first at Mary’s wide-open eyes and parted lips and then at the map, as if to search for another horror. ‘You never see’d nothing else, did ’ee?’
‘They wide skies did look at I,’ replied Mary, trembling.
‘’Tain’t likely thee did look out to sea, when cows were drove up?’
‘Something did rush along dried grass like rats a-running, and then’—and Mary shivered as if the cold horror of it all held her tight—‘I did see smoke that rose up out of fisherman’s chimney where no one do bide.’
‘’Tis best we do make hay of thik field,’ remarked Mr. Gulliver in a low tone, looking at the window. ‘For a field bain’t safe for cows where there be fire-drakes.’
Mr. Gulliver slowly moved his finger over his map and pointed out the monster he had named for Mary to see.
‘’Twouldn’t be proper for a poor cow to meet thik,’ said Mr. Gulliver.