CHAPTER XV
The Squatters
On the next day but one after Nicky Nan Night, Mavis and Merle hadreturned from school, and were walking in the garden on the terracedpath that overlooked the river. It was a vantage-point which gave themas good a view across the bridge and along the high road as any mediaevalmaidens might have had from a castle turret, and they gazed at allcomers with interest not unmixed with curiosity. There were certainly noSir Lancelots or Sir Percivales riding into the town clad in goldenarmour, and carrying silken banners, only modern motor-cars andbicycles, creaking country wagons and homely foot passengers. Butpresently there was a sound of hoofs, and a smart well-groomed littlehorse came trotting along from the south. Mavis put up her hand to shadeher eyes from the sun, and took an inspection of the rider as he crossedthe bridge. Something in the fair, rather delicate face seemed instantlyfamiliar.
"I verily believe it's Tudor Williams," she said.
It was undoubtedly Tudor, and he was evidently coming to Bridge House.He rode round into the stable yard, called to Tom to take his horse,dismounted, and went to the surgery entrance. In the course of a fewminutes he came out again, walked briskly on to the terrace, and greetedthe girls.
"Your aunt sent me to find you. She's asked me to stay for tea. I cameto see Dr. Tremayne, but he's out at a case, so I'm going to wait tillhe comes back. I say! You've got a nice old garden here, haven't you?I've never been in it before. It's ripping overlooking the river."
Suddenly placed in the position of hostesses Mavis and Merle did thehonours graciously. Tudor seemed in a very amiable frame of mind, andwas inclined to make himself agreeable. He chatted about theneighbourhood, the weather, some theatres he had visited in town, toldthem one or two school episodes, and discussed the prospects of the newDurracombe golf club. Mavis, who had discovered his pleasanter side atThe Warren, was soon talking quite eagerly, and even Merle, who had adeep prejudice against him, put in a remark now and then. Tea was quitea jovial affair. Aunt Nelly liked to be amused by young people, so theyall made jokes and related adventures, and sat on enjoying the fun tillthe car returned and they heard Uncle David's footstep in the hall.While the Doctor interviewed his patient the two girls ran out to thestable to look at "Armorelle", the lovely satin-coated little horse thatsnuggled a soft nose against Merle's shoulder, and ate sugar fromMavis's hand. They stood by in much approval of her beauty as Tom ledher forth for her master to mount.
"I'd change all the cars in the world for her, sir," said Tom, strokingthe glossy neck caressingly. "You don't know what it's been to me tolose my horses. It was like losing children. It's been a pleasure tohave her in the stable, sir. It's minded me of old times."
"She's a spoilt darling, and she ate three lumps of sugar," said Mavis."What a glorious ride you'll have home. I love that road to Chagmouth."
"You must come and see us again at The Warren! And you too" (nodding toMerle). "Are you keen on tennis? So am I. We've a cinder court that weplay on in spring. Just drop in some Saturday when you're over with youruncle. Mother and the girls will be pleased to see you, I'm sure. We'regenerally, some of us, about the place."
Tudor rode away, leaving a much more favourable impression behind himthan the girls would have believed possible on their first encounter inthe lane above Grimbal's Farm. That unpleasant episode was beginning tofade from their memories. Jim, the fox terrier, ran up to them now infriendly fashion if they chanced to meet him in Chagmouth, thoughMavis's skirt, beautifully darned by Jessop, still retained traces ofhis teeth. It is no use keeping up ill-will against boy or animal, andthe Ramsays were quite ready to let bygones be bygones. They even beganto decide that they rather liked Tudor, though of course not nearly somuch as Bevis. When they went to Grimbal's Farm as usual on Saturdaythey could not help pouring out to their friend an account of thisreconciliation.
"Tom let me climb on Armorelle's back in the stable. Oh, how I'd love toride her!"
"There's a topping cinder court at The Warren. We're going to bring ourrackets with us sometime. Mrs. Glyn Williams has sent a message to AuntNellie to say we must go there whenever we like and play tennis."
Bevis was sitting on a hurdle in the stackyard, untwisting a piece ofrope while he listened. He bent his head down over his work. They couldnot see his face at all.
"You won't want to come walks with _me_ now you've made friends at TheWarren," he said in a low, strained voice. "I quite understand. I neverthought you'd care to go about with a fellow like me. It wasn't to beexpected. It's all right!"
When Bevis, in that strangled tone, said "it's all right", it wasinvariably a sign that matters were all wrong. The girls, aghast attheir own lack of tact, hastened to set things straight, and to reassurehim that they would not miss their walk with him that afternoon forworlds.
"You promised us a surprise at Blackthorn Bower!"
"We've been looking forward to it the whole week, and counting thedays."
"It's really nothing worth taking you up there for." (Bevis's voice wasstill gloomy.) "If you'd rather go to The Warren, please go. It's allright."
"Look here, don't be absurd," urged Merle. "We want to see the Boweragain, and we're going there this afternoon. You can please yourselfwhether you come with us or not."
"But I don't think we _quite_ remember the way," added Mavis artfully."It would be so very tiresome if we were to lose ourselves."
Of course that settled it. Bevis was bound to offer himself as guide,and by the time they started he appeared to be in a smoother temper. Hewhistled quite cheerily as he slung a shooting-bag over his back. Hegave the girls three guesses each as to its contents, but would not tellthem whether they were right or wrong.
"You'll see when you get there," he replied, and went on whistlingsoftly to himself.
By mutual but unacknowledged consent they walked by an upper way acrossthe fields. It was a little longer, but it avoided all possibility ofmeeting the Glyn Williams anywhere in the village. To run up againstthem would have been most embarrassing. As it was, nobody mentioned eventheir names. The girls, having once "put their foot in it", werecautious, and avoided all reference to The Warren.
Fortunately their backs were turned in that direction, as they walkedtowards the headland.
When they reached Blackthorn Bower they found an immense surpriseawaiting them. Bevis must have been very busy during the time which hadintervened since their last visit. He had taken some of the stones fromthe old wall, and some sods and some branches, and had constructed akind of beehive hut, such as must have been used by the primitivedwellers in these islands.
"It's just the sort of thing they lived in in the Bronze Age," heexplained. "I borrowed one of Mr. Barnes's books, _Antiquities ofDevonshire_, and it gave a fancy picture of what some of the prehistoricvillages probably looked like. The only bit I altered was the doorway. Imade it big, so that we could see out of it; and of course they had lowholes that they crawled through, and blocked with a stone."
Mavis and Merle were delighted with the structure raised in theirhonour. They had been keen on history at Whinburn High School, and hadstudied the Stone and Bronze Ages under an interesting teacher, so thatit was particularly fascinating to find what seemed as good as a reallive specimen of a house of the period actually before their eyes. Theywent inside at once and took possession. There were some logs for seats,and a big stone for a table placed in the middle of the hut. While theywere examining these, Bevis slung his shooting-bag carefully from hisshoulder and began to unpack it. Then he produced what he evidentlyconsidered his masterpiece.
There was a small quarry near Chagmouth whence China clay was shipped.He had begged a big lump of this, kneaded it and moulded it intohandleless cups, and had baked them in the oven at the farm. They were,of course, roughly made, but they much resembled prehistoric pottery,even to the willow-withe markings which he had put on them. They werestained on the outside, one red, one blue, and one yellow.
"So that we shall each know our own," he explai
ned, handing the blue toMavis and the red to Merle.
It was undoubtedly an anachronism that Bevis had brought a thermos flaskin his shooting-bag, and offered his friends tea in their home-bakedcups, but they were not disposed to quarrel with such a mixture ofancient and modern. They sat on their log seats, eating cake and sippingthe modern beverage in defiance of historic accuracy.
"I feel as if the Bronze Age people who were buried in the mound oughtto rise up and come and turn us out and say it was their shanty,"laughed Merle.
"What did they do with the skeletons that were found there?" asked Mavissuddenly.
"Took them to the County Museum," answered Bevis. "I didn't like theidea myself. I think it was hateful to put the poor things' bones in aglass case. They ought to have left them where they were buried, withtheir hands still clasped and the little baby in the woman's arm. Theymust have been fond of each other thousands of years ago."
"Perhaps he built her a hut like this and made her clay pottery,"speculated Mavis.
"I've no doubt he did."
"But she didn't drink tea out of it anyway," snorted Merle. "Don't besentimental over the Bronze Age people, you two. I'd rather call thetumulus a pixie mound, and imagine the wee folk coming tumbling out ofit some moonlight night, and dancing on the grass. Don't Chagmouthpeople tell any stories about pixies?"
"They wouldn't be Devon folk unless they did. Yes, there are heaps ofpixie tales. They say an old man from Groves Cottage was once pixie-ledon the moor. He wandered round and round in a circle, and couldn't findhis way home till he turned his coat inside out, and that broke thespell. There was an old woman over by Tangoran who used to tell awonderful tale about a fairy."
"Oh, what was that?"
"It's a weird sort of story. There was once a lad named WillKilligarth, who lived at Horndon, up on the moor. There was a witch inthe village, and she told him that if he would go on Hallowe'en and diginside one of the ancient stone circles that he would find treasure,only he must go at midnight, and go alone. He was rather frightened ofthe business, but he took his father's spade and went. It was heavy workdigging, but at last he struck something, and drew out a bowl of roughpottery, all full of gold pieces. He was just picking this up when heheard a cry, and in the moonlight he saw a most lovely girl withstreaming yellow hair stretching out her hands imploringly to him. Shesaid she was the guardian of the gold, and begged him to bury it againwhere it was in the circle. He said he would do so if she would marryhim, and after thinking awhile she said yes. So he buried the treasureand took the girl home to the village and married her. She lived withhim just a year, and then on the next Hallowe'en she vanished, and henever saw her again. He hunted for the stone circle where he had dugbefore, but he never could find the right one again. There are so manyof them up on the moor. So he lost both the treasure and the girl."
"Did they actually _believe_ these stories?" asked Mavis, knitting herbrows.
"Oh yes, in the old days they believed them, just as they believed inwitches and charms and all the rest of it. Mr. Barnes calls all the oldtales folk-history. He says the pixies were the prehistoric Stone Age orBronze Age people who lived on into historic times, and hid themselvesin the mounds or caves or wild places on the moor. The stories of thepixies' habits and haunts read just like accounts of very primitivepeople. Bronze Age or Stone Age folk would be sure to come at night andsteal things from the Celtic tribes who had settled in Devon, and theywould bury their treasures inside their huts. The stone circles on themoor are the ruined walls of their huts."
"But surely the Stone Age folk didn't go living on till about theseventeenth century?" asked Mavis, still puzzled.
"No, but you know how people like to bring a story up to date. Theyoften tell you a thing happened to themselves when you know it must havehappened to their great-grandfather. The old Celtic accounts of thelittle men on the moor would keep being handed down, and each generationwould fit the story with fresh names, and a few extra details."
"Miss Donald told us a lot about that at Whinburn High. She said thedragons of old folk-tales were probably prehistoric animals that hadlingered on in lonely places--very likely pterodactyls."
"I dare say they were. To judge from the fossils that have been foundthe old monsters must have been pretty common in Devon. You should askMr. Barnes. He's great on all this kind of thing, always poking aboutand digging, and measuring hut circles and all the rest of it."
"It's awfully fascinating," said Mavis.
"Ye-es, but just a trifle spooky," admitted Merle. "Honestly I shouldn'tlike to spend a night up here camping out in this shanty. I'd be scaredto death of the mound dwellers. What are we to do with our prehistoriccups, Bevis? Leave them here or take them back?"
It was decided to wash the cups in a pool of water close by, and leavethem inside the hut to be ready for some future picnic. That domesticduty finished, the Triumvirate wended their way back in the direction ofChagmouth. This time they climbed by a pathway down the cliffs on to thebeach, in order to go home along the shore. It was low tide, so theycould walk on the firm sands at the edge of the high-water mark. Littlegentle waves were rippling in over the rocks, cormorants were diving forfish, and the inevitable seagulls were wheeling and screaming, orsettling down in the pools to hunt for tit-bits. At the corner of thecove, built on the solid rock barely above the level of winter storms,stood the little old, old church of St. Gervan's, disused now, exceptfor an annual service. Before the building of Chagmouth church in theeighteenth century it had served a wide district, and there were talesthat its bell had often proved a signal for ships in a fog, and hadwarned them off the rocks. There were other and wilder stories, ofsmugglers who had hidden their contraband goods inside the pews, of thepress-gang who had waylaid the fishermen as they returned from serviceand had carried them off to serve in His Majesty's navy, and of a wickedparson, foremost among a gang of wreckers, whose uneasy ghost stillhaunted the beach on moonlight nights.
Bevis, who knew all the legends of the village, poured out these talesfor the girls' benefit, and of course they naturally wanted to take alook at the place. So they climbed the eighty-seven rough stone stepsthat led up from the shore, and scrambled over the wall into the littlechurchyard. It was a neglected spot, but all the more picturesque onthat account. Long grass grew over the graves, and moss had almostobliterated the names on the fallen stones, the framework of the doorwayhad sunk at one end, and the tower had lost some of its coping in thelast gale. The great pieces lay strewn about the path. The windowslooked cobwebby, but one of them was open, and, with some difficulty,Bevis hoisted the girls up to peep inside. The poor little church, flungaside now like a cast-off ecclesiastical garment, nevertheless showedsigns of its former glories, when worshippers had given of their best todeck it forth. Its pre-reformation rood-screen, one of the very few toescape the commissioners' hatchets or Puritan whitewash, was carved withquaint figures of saints, and still showed traces of colouring in redand blue and gold. The oak benches, grey for want of oil or polish, werealso carved, and in the chancel there was a splendid pew with a woodencanopy embossed and painted like the rood-screen, though plainly of alater date. The whole was mouldy and ill-kept, but at least had beensaved from the ruthless hand of that foe to all antiquarian lore, thenineteenth-century restorer, who would probably have stripped it ofrood-screen and carved benches, and have replaced them with pitch pine.
"I'd like to sit in that gorgeous pew," said Mavis, dropping down fromher perch, and examining her grazed hands tenderly.
"That belongs to the Tallands. It goes with The Warren. There's an oldmonument down the nave to some of the family. You couldn't see itproperly from that window," explained Bevis.
"Don't they ever clean the place up?" asked Merle.
"They do once a year, before the festival."
"When is the festival?"
"Late in May. They always have kept it at Chagmouth, and they make muchmore of it now because they have the war-memorial service at the sametime, and ev
erybody goes to that. The cross is up there, just at the topof the churchyard."
The people from the several places which the tiny church had originallyserved had joined together in erecting a memorial to their brave boyswho had fallen in the Great War--a plain Celtic cross of granite, placedon a platform of rock above the church, where it could be very plainlyseen by all the vessels that passed by in or out of the harbour. It wasa magnificent situation for it, far more romantic than any in the town,and to judge from the wreaths and bunches of flowers laid at its foot,it was the goal of an easy walk along the cliffs on Sundays. Mavis, whostopped to read the roll of honour, took the violets from herbutton-hole and laid them with the rest of the floral tributes.
"I like this wee church much better than St. John's," she remarked."Although it's so dirty and cobwebby and dilapidated, it seems to havemore of the old spirit of Chagmouth about it somehow. It takes one backto Drake and Raleigh, almost to the days of King Arthur. I'm so gladMerle and I are Devon folk on Mother's side at any rate. We'retremendously proud of it."
Bevis was looking beyond the ancient walls to where the little town layalongside its harbour at the edge of the grey sea.
"The boys over there have always taunted me that I don't belong toChagmouth, but I've got the spirit of the place in me all the same," hesaid. "I don't believe there's one of them that cares for it like I do.As for the Glyn Williamses they'd modernize it to-morrow if they wereallowed. I hope to goodness General Talland will never sell them theproperty, or they'd sweep away every picturesque corner in it, and widenthe street so as to bring cars down. They've not a scrap of taste. Thatnew Institute may be all right for lectures and theatricals and the restof it, but I should think they chose the most hideous plan that thearchitects submitted. It's a perfect eyesore standing just where itdoes. You should hear Mr. Barnes hold forth about it. He got his way atany rate about the war memorial though, and insisted on a Celtic cross.Mr. Glyn Williams wanted a sort of 'Cleopatra's needle' and nearlycarried the committee. Think of planting an ancient Egyptian monument onthe cliff here. It would have been ridiculous. The Glyn Williamses maylook down upon me and call me a 'nobody', but I've better taste thanthey have, and know more about old things too. I can't see that havingpots of money gives people the right to ride rough-shod over the wholetown."
The boy spoke hotly, almost furiously. Evidently the subject was a soreone.
"You're not called a nobody," said Mavis.
"I _am_ a nobody, and no one knows that better than myself. If I'd eventhe slightest clue, I'd be off and away to hunt out my own relations. Iwouldn't stay here only I'm needed so on the farm. I sometimes thinkI'll----" but here Bevis stopped and looked rather ashamed.
"Don't take any notice of me," he continued more quietly. "I don't oftenbreak out like this. Why should I bother you with my troubles? They'renothing to you!"
"Yes they are," said Mavis gently. "We're very interested indeed."
"And very sorry," added Merle.
They had the good sense, however, to change the subject, and Bevis,though at first his answers were rather short, gradually recoveredhimself. By the time they reached the farm he was chatting just asusual, and telling more stories of Devonshire pixies. He went into thesurgery and helped Dr. Tremayne to dispense some medicines, and as thegirls were starting home in the car they saw him in the orchard cuttingdown an apple tree, chopping away with most terrific energy.
"I guess he's working off steam," said Merle waving her hand.
"Yes, I didn't know what a volcano he was covering up till he let someof it bubble out this afternoon. Uncle David! What's going to become ofBevis? Will he always stay on the farm? He's so clever!"
"Yes, poor lad, he's worthy of better things, and would make a namefor himself some day if he got the chance. He ought to be back atschool. It's hard luck on him to have his education broken off just whenhe was beginning to do so brilliantly. A nice lad too--a very nicelad--one of the nicest lads I know," muttered the old doctor, half tohimself, as the car sped up the hill, and the sound of Bevis's blows onthe apple tree grew fainter and fainter, then died away behind them.