Chapter II Cherry Grepe’s Sins
Where Honor’s head lay upon her pillow by night, a distance of scarcely one yard separated it from the famous cherry tree of Endicott’s. This year, owing to a prevalence of cold wind, the crop, though excellent, had been unusually late, and it happened that the thrushes and blackbirds paid exceptional attention to the fruit. Once, in a moment of annoyance at sight of her shining berries mutilated by sharp bills, and pecked to the purple-stained stones, Honor had issued an impatient mandate to the first servant who chanced to meet her after discovery of the birds’ theft. Henry Collins it was, and his round eyes grew into dark moons as she bid him shoot a few of the robbers and hang their corpses Haman-high as a dreadful lesson to the rest.
For a fortnight after this stern decree Collins, full of private anxieties, paid no heed to his mistress’s command, and Honor herself dismissed the matter and forgot her order as completely as she forgot those moments of irritation that were responsible for it; but anon Henry recollected the circumstance, borrowed Jonah Cramphorn’s gun, rose betimes, and marched into the garden on a morning soon after the rainstorm. A flutter of wings in the cherry tree attracted him, and firing against the side of the house he brought down a fine cock blackbird in a huddled heap of ebony feathers now streaked with crimson, his orange bill all stained with juice from the last cherry that he would spoil. The shot echoed and re-echoed through the grey stillness of dawn, and Myles, already rising, hastened to the window, while Honor opened her eyes, for the report had roused her.
“It’s Collins!” exclaimed her husband, staring into the dusk of day; “and the brute has shot a blackbird! Is he mad? How did he dare to come into the private garden with his gun? And now you’ll most probably have a headache—being startled out of sleep like that. Besides, the cruelty of it.”
“What a storm in a teacup, my dear! The man is only doing as I ordered him. The birds are a nuisance. They’ve eaten all my cherries again this year. I bid Collins thin them a little.”
“You told him to shoot them? Honor!”
“Oh, don’t put on that Sunday-school-story look, my dearest and best. There are plenty of blackbirds and thrushes. The garden is still my province, at any rate.”
“The birds do more good than harm, and, really, a handful of sour cherries——”
“They’re not sour!” she cried passionately, flaming over a trifle and glad of any excuse to enjoy an emotion almost forgotten. “My father loved them; my great-grandfather set the tree there. It’s a sacred thing to me, and I’ll have every bird that settles in it shot, if I please.”
“Honor!”
“And hung up afterwards to frighten the rest.”
“I’m surprised.”
“I don’t care if you are. You’ll be more surprised yet. ‘Sour’! They’re better cherries than ever you tasted at Tavistock, I know.”
“Collins——”
“Collins must do what I tell him. You’re master—but I’m mistress. If the house is going to be divided against itself——”
“God forbid! What in heaven’s name are you dreaming of? This is terrible!”
“Then let Collins kill the thrushes and blackbirds. I wish it. I hate them. If you say a word I’ll turn the man off.”
But two go to a quarrel. Myles, much alarmed and mystified by this ebullition, vowed that Collins might shoot every bird in the county for him; then he departed; and his lady, only regretful that the paltry little quarrel had endured so short a time, arose much refreshed by it. The sluggish monotony of well-balanced reciprocal relations made her spirits stagnant, while pulses of opposition, like sweet breezes, seemed always a necessity of health to invigorate and brighten it. Stapledon appeared at breakfast with anxious eye and a wrinkle between his brows; his attitude towards Honor was almost servile, and his demeanour to the household more reserved than common; but the mistress had obviously leapt from her couch into sunshine. She chatted cheerfully to all, granted Sally a morning away from work, when that maiden begged for some leisure; and herself, after breakfast, announced a determination to go afield and see whether the recent rain had improved the fishing. Myles offered to make holiday also, but, with the old ripple in her voice and between two kisses, she refused him.
“No, dear heart. ’Tis my whim to go alone. I’m feeling a good girl to-day, and that’s so rare that I don’t want to spoil the sensation. So I mean catching some trout for your supper and Uncle Mark’s. Don’t come. A day alone on the Moor will blow away some cobwebs and make me better company for my dear, good husband.”
Presently she tramped off to northern Teign, where it tumbles by slides and rocky falls through steep valley under Watern’s shoulder; and as she left the men at the garden, Mr. Endicott turned his blind eyes upon Myles with a sort of inquiry in them.
“What’s come over her to-day? Fresh as a daisy seemingly, and happy as a lark. Got a new ring or bracelet out of you? The old note, that I’ve missed of late and sorrowed to miss. But I can name it now, because it’s come back. What’s the reason?”
“I can’t tell you. You hurt me a good deal when you say you’ve missed any indication of happiness in her. As a matter of fact we had a brief passage of words this morning. Nothing serious of course. That wasn’t it at any rate.”
Mr. Endicott chuckled.
“But it was though, for certain! You set a current flowing. You’ve done her a power of good by crossing her. I don’t want any details, but a word to the wise is enough. Labour keeps your life sweet; she wants something else. Some women must have a little healthy opposition. I wager she loves you better for denying some wish or issuing some order.”
“Not at all. Since we’re on this incident I may mention that I gave way completely. But ’twas a paltry thing.”
“Then if a breeze that ends tamely, by her getting her will, can shake her into such brave spirits, think how it would be if you’d forbid her and had your way! Learn from it—that’s all. Some natures can’t stand eternal adoration. They sicken on it. There’s no good thing, but common-sense, you can’t have too much of. So don’t be—what’s the word?”
“Uxorious,” said Myles Stapledon drearily.
“Yes. Don’t pamper her with love. You’re all the world to her and she to you; but take a lesson from her and hide more than you show. Man and woman’s built for stormy weather, and as calm seas and snug harbours breed grass and barnacles on a ship’s bottom, so you can reckon it with sheltered souls. I’ve seen whole families rot away and vanish from this sort of self-indulgence. It saps strength and sucks the iron out of a man. There’s metal in you both. Don’t try and stand between her and the weather of life.”
“I understand you, uncle. I’m only waiting for trouble to come. I know all this happiness isn’t entirely healthy. But it’s natural I should wish to shield her.”
“Right, my son. Only remember she’s a hardy plant and won’t stand greenhouse coddling. How would you like it yourself?”
They parted, the younger impressed with a new idea; yet, as the day wore on, he began to think of Honor, and presently strolled up the hill to meet her. Once he laughed to himself as he tramped to the heights; but it was a gloomy laugh. This idea of quarrelling as a counter-irritant, of coming nearer to her by going further off, he little appreciated.
Myles wandered to the circle of Scor Hill and mused there. Here she had denied him in snow, offered herself to him in springtime. Honor he did not see, but another woman met his gaze. She was aged and bent, and she passed painfully along under a weight of sticks gathered in the valley. He spoke from his seat on a stone.
“I should not carry so much at one load, Cherry; you’ll hurt yourself.”
Gammer Grepe, thus accosted, flung her sticks to the ground and turned to Myles eagerly.
“’Tis a gude chance I find ’e alone,” she said, “for I’m very much wantin’ to have a tell with ’e if I may make so bold.”
“Sit down and rest,” he answered.
Then the gammer began with tearful eagerness.
“’Tis this way. For years an’ years the folks have been used to look sideways ’pon me an’ spit awver theer shoulders arter I’d passed by. An’ I won’t say the dark things my mother knawed be hid from me. But I never could abear the deeds I’ve been forced into, an’ was allus better pleased doin’ gude than harm. God’s my judge of that. But I’ve so fair a right to live as my neighbours, an’ I’ve done many an’ many a ugly thing for money, an’ I shall again, onless them as can will come forrard and help me. Eighty-four I be—I’ll take my oath of it; an’ that’s a age when a lone woman did ought be thinkin’ of the next world—not doin’ dark deeds in this.”
Myles had seen his wife far off and caught the flutter of her dress in the valley a mile distant. She was still fishing as her tardy progress testified, but where she stood the river was hidden under a tumble of rocky ledges. He turned in some surprise to the old woman.
“D’you mean that here, now, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy-one, folks still ask you for your help to do right or wrong and seriously think you can serve them?”
“Ess fay; an’ I do serve them; an’ ’tis that I’m weary of. But, seein’ theer’s nought betwixt me an’ the Union Workhouse but theer custom, I go on. Theer’s cures come fust—cures for childern’s hurts an’ the plagues of beasts.”
“That’s not doing harm, though it’s not doin’ good either.”
“Listen, caan’t ‘e? Ban’t all. I killed a man last year for ten shillin’! An’ it do lie heavy upon me yet. An’ the mischief is, that my heart be so hard that I’d do the same to-morrow for the same money. I must live, an’ if I caan’t get honest dole at my time of life, I must make wicked money.”
Stapledon inwardly decided that the sooner this old-time survival was within the sheltering arm of the poor-house the better. He suspected that she was growing anile.
“You mustn’t talk this nonsense, mother. Surely you know it is out of your power to do any such thing as ‘ill-wish,’ or ‘overlook,’ let alone destroy anybody?”
“That’s all you knaw! Us o’ the dark side o’ life be so auld as Scripture. The things we’m taught was never in no books, so they’m livin’ still. Print a thing and it dies. We’m like the woman as drawed up Samuel against Saul. We can do more’n we think we can here an’ theer. I killed a man other end of the world so sure’s if I’d shot un through the heart; for them as seed my deed, which I offered up for ten shillin’ o’ money, has ears so long as from here to hell-fire; an’ they sent a snake. I drawed a circle against Christopher Yeoland, an’ picked him, like a bullace, afore he was ripe. An’, along o’ poverty, I’d do the same against anybody in the land—‘cepting awnly the Lard’s anointed Queen—so theer! That’s the black state o’ wickedness I be in; an’ ’tis for you at Bear Down to give me gude money an’ a regular bit weekly, else theer’ll be more mischief. Yet ’tis a horrible thing as I should have to say it—me so auld as I be, wi’ wan foot in the graave.”
“So it is horrible,” said Myles sternly, “and if you were not so old I should say the ancient remedy of a ducking in a horse-pond would be the best way to treat you. To wish evil to that harmless man! Surely you are not such a malignant old fool as to think you destroyed him?”
“Me! Gude Lard A’mighty, I wouldn’t hurt a long-cripple or a crawling eft. ’Twas awnly to earn bread. Who paid me I caan’t tell ’e, for we has our pride; but I was awnly the servant. Us larns a deal ’bout the inner wickedness of unforgiving sawls in my calling.”
“It must have been a strange sort of brute who would wish to hurt Christopher Yeoland; but you needn’t be concerned, old woman. Be sure your tomfoolery didn’t send death to him.”
Cherry reddened under her wrinkles.
“’Tis you’m the fule!” she cried. “I knaw what I knaw; an’ I knaw what power be in me very well, same as my mother afore me. An’ best give heed or you might be sorry you spoke so scornful. I’m a wise woman; an’ wise I was years an’ years afore your faither ever got you. I doan’t ax for no opinions on that. I ax for money, so I shall give up these things an’ die inside the fold of Jesus—not outside it. Because my manner of life be like to end in an oncomfortable plaace, an’ I’d give it up to-morrow if I could live without it.”
“You’re a very wicked woman, Charity Grepe!” flamed Stapledon, “and a disgrace to the countryside and all who allow themselves to have any dealings with you. I thought you only charmed warts and such nonsense. But, here at the end of your life, you deal in these disgusting superstitions and apparently gull intelligent human beings with your tricks. Be sure a stop shall be put to that if I can bring it about. The hands at Endicott’s at least won’t patronise you any more. You might be locked up if half this was known.”
“Then you won’t help me to a higher way of living an’ regular wages?”
“You must reform first. I can promise nothing.”
Cherry, in doubt whether to bless or curse, but disposed towards the latter expression of her emotions, rose and eyed Stapledon suspiciously. He too rose, helped her with her bundle, and again assured her that she must promise reformation before he could undertake any practical assistance. So she hobbled away, uneasy and angered. Actual wounded feeling was at the bottom of her resentment. Whatever her real age, she was human, and therefore not too old to be vain. Since the death of Christopher Yeoland, Gammer Grepe had taken herself very seriously and been much impressed with the nature of her own powers.
Ten minutes later husband and wife met, and Stapledon spoke of his recent experience.
“Scor Hill Circle seems destined to be the theatre of all my strangest accidents.”
“And most terrible, perhaps?”
“And most precious. But this last is grim enough. Just now that old hag Cherry Grepe was here begging and threatening in a breath. Think of it: she says she killed Christopher Yeoland!”
Time is like a Moor mist and weaves curtains of a density very uncertain, very apt to part and vanish in those moments when they look most impenetrable. Moods will often roll away the years until memory reveals past days again, and temperaments there are that possess such unhappy power in this sort that they can rend the curtain, defy time, and stand face to face at will with the full proportions of a bygone grief, though kindly years stretch out between to dim vision and soften the edges of remembrance.
Honor often thought of her old lover, and during this day, alone with her mind and the face of the Moor, she had occupied herself about him. She had a rare faculty for leaving the past alone, but, seeing that he was now dead, and that she believed in eternity, Honor pictured that state, and wondered if a friendship, impossible between two men and a woman, would be practicable for the three when all were ghosts. An existence purely spiritual was a pleasant image in her esteem, and to-day, while all unknowing she hovered on the brink of incidents inseparably entwined with flesh and womanhood, she bent her thoughts upon radiant pictures and dreamed strange dreams of an eternal conscious existence clothed only with light.
The crude announcement of Gammer Grepe’s confession came inharmoniously upon her thoughts from one direction, yet chimed therewith at the standpoint of the supernatural. She shivered, yet laughed; she declared that Cherry and her cottage should be conveyed entirely to Exeter Museum as a fascinating relic of old times; yet recollected with a sort of discomfort the old woman’s predictions concerning herself when, as a girl, and in jest, she had sought to hear her fortune.