Furze the Cruel Part 48

"No one knows 'cept me, and I only guesses. He was wi' I just avore I heard master galloping over the moor, and he mun ha' pa.s.sed master lying in the road. 'Twas no good me speaking. They wouldn't ha' took my word, and he'd ha' killed I if I'd spoke. 'Tis through he I be here now."

Adversity had sharpened Thomasine's tongue. She could not remember when she had last made such a lengthy speech.

"Where be yew going?" asked Brightly.

"Nowheres," said the girl. "Where be yew?"

"Anywhere," said Brightly, which meant the same thing. "Shall us get on?" he added.

Thomasine accepted the invitation, rose from the stone, and they walked on, up the road and the steep tor, and came out at last beside the church with its tiny burying-place of granite and its weather-beaten gravestones. They sat down to rest upon the edge of the precipice, and Thomasine wanted to know why they had come there.

"I wun't never be here again. I used to come up here to whistle and sing, and now I be come to look out for the last time," said Brightly.

"I reckon I'll try t'other side o' the moor. Mebbe volks bain't so cruel wicked there."

"I reckon 'em be," said Thomasine.

"Du ye reckon they'll know I be a criminal?"

"Sure 'nuff. Policeman will tell 'em."

"My cough be cruel bad got, and I can't hardly see. If I can't mak' a living what be I to du?" asked Brightly.

This was much too difficult a question for Thomasine, and she did not attempt to answer it.

"B'est hungry?" she asked.

"I've ha' been hungry for years and years, 'cept when I was in prison, and then I was hungry for air," said Brightly.

"Got any money?"

"Duppence."

"I ain't got nothing," she said.

"Shall us get on?" said the restless little man. He felt business calling him, though he could do nothing with his empty basket.

They went back the way they had come, through Brentor village, and towards Lydford, Brightly walking on one side of the road and Thomasine upon the other. The only remark the girl made was: "This bain't the way to Plymouth;" and Brightly replied: "It bain't the place for yew." He had some knowledge of the world, and knew that it could not be well for a girl without home or friends or character to walk about the streets of a big town.

They stopped at Lydford, and Thomasine went to a cottage where people dwelt whom she had known in the days of respectability, and they gave her food which she brought out and shared with her companion. They went to the foot of the cascade in the gorge and ate their meal to the subdued murmur of the long white veil of water sliding down the face of the precipice. They were alone in the gorge, where the Gubbingses had once dwelt, as the place is deserted during the early months of the year.

"Have ye got a home?" asked Thomasine.

"Ees, a proper old cave to Belstone Cleave."

"What be I to du?" she murmured.

"Come wi' I," said Brightly gallantly. "I be going home."

The girl tried to think, but soon gave up in despair. She was barely twenty-three, and her life seemed done already. Her parents had shut the door upon her, and erased her name from the book of life--the family Bible which retained the record of those who were respectable--not so much because she had done wrong as because the man who had led her astray would not marry her. It was quaint logic, but the world reasons that way. She was ready to go with Brightly because he was friendly and she required friendship badly; she hardly looked upon him as a man; he was such a poor incomplete thing; if a man, without the power of sinning like a man. She would go with him to the cave in the cleave, and cook for him, if there was anything to be cooked, with the old frying-pan with a bottom like a sieve.

"Ees, I've got a butiful home," muttered ridiculous Brightly with pride.

He was regarding Thomasine as the reincarnation of Ju. The little dog had come back to him in the form of a woman. He could talk to her, tell her trade was dull, and he was hungry; could whistle, and sing for her amus.e.m.e.nt, and pat her gently when she rested upon the heather. She could reply to him in a manner that was better than tail-wagging. Ju had come to the cave gladly and found it homelike, so why not Thomasine? He would not be called on to pay seven-and-sixpence a year for her; but on the other hand she was so big, larger than himself in fact, and he was afraid she would want a lot of food. Brightly became prouder every minute. He had a woman of his own and "duppence" wrapped up in bits of paper. He would not touch his hat to the next man he met on the road. He would stare him in the face and say: "How be ye?" just as if he had been a man himself.

"Shall us get on?" he said again.

They went on and reached windy Bridestowe that night. Brightly, who knew every building upon that part of the moor, found a shelter for Thomasine in a peat-linhay, and a resting-place for himself in a farmyard. They started off early in the morning, and Brightly produced eggs with the half-apologetic and half-proud explanation: "Us be criminals." He had stolen them. Up to the time of his conviction he had never been a thief, but since leaving prison he had felt it was necessary to live up to his reputation as a desperate character, and so he took anything he could find. Under the oil-cloth of his basket was a feathered fowl, and Thomasine was informed there would be a good supper for her that evening.

"Yew stoled 'en?" exclaimed the girl.

"Volks wun't give I nothing," said Brightly. "They ses 'you'm a thief,'

and 'tis no use being called a thief if yew bain't. Yew fed me and Ju when us was starving, and now I be going to feed yew."

They reached the cave, and Brightly produced all his possessions with pride, explaining to his housekeeper that a fire must not be lighted until after dark lest the commoners should see the smoke. The girl shivered at the wretched prospect, but resigned herself; and that night she told Brightly her story, and he told her all about his ambitions, and about the pony and cart which would not come in spite of the vain repet.i.tions which he called prayers.

Miserable days followed. The spell of fine weather ceased and frost returned; with it a biting wind which swept across the moor and got into the cave, the outside of which became a pretty piece of architecture with icicles hanging from the rock to the ground like bars of cold steel through which the prisoners gazed into the depths of the gorge. Brightly had become a real criminal at last; and the basket, which had been the symbol of honesty, was then a receiver of stolen goods. He sallied out every day to rob fowl-houses and dairies; to gather articles of clothing from hedges and furze-bushes where they had been put out to dry. His eyes had been opened by necessity and justice; dishonesty was the only way in business; had he practised it from the start he would have obtained all those good things which he had always desired; the cottage and potato-patch, the pony and cart; perhaps his asthma and blindness would have been stayed as well. It would have been better for Brightly had he died in prison; he was living too long, and had become a moral failure, a complete failure now in every sense.

One Sunday evening they crept out of their hole in the gorge and went to Sticklepath. Thomasine wanted to hear the pure gospel preached again, and she persuaded Brightly to come with her to the big chapel in the middle of the village that he might have his frosted soul warmed by listening to a realistic account of the place "down under" towards which he was hurrying. A strange preacher arose in the pulpit, an old white-bearded man near the end of his days, and he preached from the text: "I have been young, and now am old, and yet saw I never the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread." He seemed a pious old man, although he could not have been observant, or perhaps he had gone about with his eyes shut, as the psalmist must have done; but he was eloquent, and his words thundered upon the congregation like Dartmoor rain upon a tin roof.

When they left the chapel Thomasine was weeping, and Brightly seemed to have become quite blind. Still he could not understand things. He had been righteous, as he had comprehended it, slipping into a church or chapel as often as he dared, and singing "Jerusalem the Golden" at every opportunity. Yet he had been forsaken and had begged his bread; Ju had been taken from him; he had been cast into prison. Who could explain these things? Perhaps he had not endured long enough; if he had held out another year the pony and cart might have been brought to him driven by the angel; but he could not hold out when people would not permit him to do business, and when he was starving. It was too late then to go back and tread the old road, for he had fallen at last, become dishonest in act; and if he went on in his wicked ways the policeman would run him down again; and if he reverted to honesty the poorhouse would claim him.

There was only one way out. He must buy a ticket for Jerusalem. It would only cost twopence.

They returned to the cave, and Thomasine went on crying. She said she could stand it no longer. The moor was black with storm clouds, a thaw had set in, and water was trickling everywhere. Brightly sat huddled up and moaning. His eyes were nearly useless, and rheumatism racked his poor limbs. He knew that the decree had been given against him, he had been found guilty in the higher court, judgment had been signed against "A. Brightly. Rabbit-skin merchant. Abode Nowhere."

"Us mun get on," he said firmly.

"I can't bide here," sobbed Thomasine.

"Us will walk to-morrow," said Brightly.

"I'll go to Plymouth," she said.

"Live honest;" he begged. "Don't ye go to the dirty trade."

"I wun't," she cried. "I'll live clean if they'll let me. No one knows me there, and I'll get some job mebbe."

"I ha' been young, and now I be getting old," said Brightly. "I ha' been righteous tu, and I ha' begged, and I ha' prayed, and got nought."

"What be yew going to du?" she asked.

"I be coming wi' yew as far as Okehampton. I'll set ye on the road to Plymouth."

"Wun't ye come tu?"

"'Twould kill me," said Brightly. "I be that blind I'd get run over, and my asthma be got so cruel bad I wouldn't be able to breathe. I reckon I'll stop on Dartmoor."

"You'll live honest?" she said.