Mockery Gap by T. F. Powys Read Free Book Online Page A

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 excitinglyalive 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