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

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.

Chapter 7
A T RUE N ELLIE
    N O ONE can walk down any pretty lane, that is hung perhaps with garlands of old-man’s-beard , without discovering himself after a mile or two in some village or other where fear, that hidden, creeping thing, has sucked out the heart’s blood of more than one simple and timid human creature.
    Very few villages indeed have escaped Mr. Tarr, whose enterprise and courage even on rainy days would carry him, with or without Miss Ogle and the others, into the most secluded valley, where he would be sure to start many a meek being into looking for impossible wonders, or else trying to prepare themselves for some dread appearance.
    Miss Martha Pink, whose brother, with his large wondering face bent over Mr. Roddy’s rent books, showed that he wished to do his duty, though his beliefs were elsewhere—Miss Pink, with her tiny nose and her lamp that always burned after sunset in the parlour though she never sat there, was exactly the very appearance for fear to annoy.
    Martha Pink, being more timid than wise, had lived her life until Mr. Tarr came with but two thoughts in it, her brother’s dinner and her parlour lamp, that showed by its light that she needed a lover.
    Mockery understood Miss Pink, for even before Mr. Tarr’s visit the extreme restlessness and excitement of the rude children had foretold by their dreadful shouting in the lanes that something was expected.
    And now Miss Pink feared the worst. Besides fear, that dread horror, there was also in Mockery the love longing, a matter that when kept silent or buried deep always breaks out in midnight wakefulness, sighs, and aching tears, and which also—for waters must find their level—bubbles up sometimes under pillows and in hidden cupboards.
    Perhaps it was partly because of the portrait of the Dean, her relative, the picture that she carried with her to Mockery, that Mr. Pattimore , aged then about fifty-five, married his wife Nellie—or Dorcas, as he re-named her after the honeymoon.
    He had taken a holiday in Norfolk, at a rectory where, besides the picture of the Dean, and his old friend the rector and his wife, there was something else too. This was neither the windmill nor the goose green, but a young girl of twenty, the daughter of his friend.
    It was on a day when the August sun, heavy with love, covered the green lands with its glory, that Mr. Pattimore pulled her, who was to be his wife, out from the laurel bush.
    She had been about the house, as the younglady must needs be because it was her home, but the portrait of the Dean had been there too, and that—a clear vision of the fine gaiters that his calling might lead him to—had taken all Mr. Pattimore’s indoor attention. But this August day, Mr. Pattimore in strolling by noticed something white in the laurel bush beside the drive.
    Mr. Pattimore, who knew no more about birds than he did about women—for all his thoughts were with the Apostles—supposed that an owl might be resting there or a white rook, and so he moved the leaves a