The Truant Spirit (21 page)

Come, butter, come.

Come, butter, come.

Peter stands at the gate Waiting for a buttered cake.

Come, butter, come!

“ ’Tes a churning rhyme,” he explained when she asked him. “My grandma used to make proper butter.”

“Do you remember your grandmother, Willie?” she asked, but his face immediately clouded.

“Nay. My auntie’s all I’ve ever knowd. Mebbe I’m a foundling,” he answered vaguely, and Sabina thought of that other unkind little rhyme made up by the jeering village children.

“No,” she said gently. “You’re kind Willie Washer who knows

a lot more than those silly children in the village.” “That’s right,” he said cheerfully and smiled at her with great sweetness. “You’m a proper little maid, yourself, missy.”

He suddenly sprang in the air and chanted hoarsely:
Underneath this hazelin mote.

There’s a braggarty worm with speckled throat; Nine double is he ...

“ ’Tes for snakebite, see? They be adders up on t’moor. You be careful, missy.”

“Oh, I will. How does it go on?”

“I forget,” he said, suddenly losing interest. It was usually the same. The curious couplets sounded even stranger recited in his broad Cornish accent, and so often they broke off temptingly, leaving Sabina tantalised and eager for more.

Sometimes she taught him the rhymes she remembered herself from the days when curious spells and jingles were all she had to while away the hours when she was left alone in a hotel bedroom and told not to make a noise. He liked best the rhymes which depended on numbers, like his own charm against snakebite.
The Twelve Days of Christmas
delighted him and Sabina’s own favourite which began with the twelve apostles and finished with the one left all alone, but he could never memorise them and she often wondered why his simple mind should have retained the half-remembered verses of his own.

Discussing him with Bunny she was touched by the older woman’s concern for the boy.

“I worry about him, sometimes,” she said. “The present rector has been saying for a long time that he should be put away.”

“Oh, but why?” exclaimed Sabina indignantly. He's only simple, and that’s quite different, surely. Willie wouldn’t hurt a fly. The only time he gets violent is if he hears that hateful jingle.”

“He’s safe enough so far,” Bunny replied with reserve, “but there’s nobody really to look after him. That old aunt he lives with is a slatternly lazy woman and that dark little shop of hers is no place for a feeble-minded boy.

“But you wouldn’t—” began Sabina, her clear, wide-spaced eyes stretched with disbelief, and Bunny touched the young face affectionately.

“No, of course not, dear. It’s not in my power for one thing, although Mr. Weymouth could make the necessary arrangements if he wished.

“And he does wish, the hateful man! I think he’s just like Willie’s braggarty worm!”

“Hush, dear; that is needlessly extravagant, Bunny reproved. “The rector, after all, must do the best he can for his parishioners, whether they are good, or evil-doers, or just naturals, like poor Willie.”

“Naturals?”

“It’s a country word and so kindly, I always think, tor however we are born we are God s creatures.

“Yes ...” said Sabina slowly. “And there’s a pattern, isn’t there? There must be a pattern.”

“Of course. You’ll find yours.”

“Me?”

“Well, wasn’t that what you were thinking of? Brock will find his too—in fact I think he’s found it.”

“Oh!” Sabina said, her lowered lashes forming crescents of withdrawal. “I always think Brock’s pattern is complete. He knows what he wants, and others must conform.”

Bunny looked at her with the same kindly tolerance she showed to Willie.

“Do you think so?” she said. “But you have so much to learn yet, my dear. No pattern is complete until ...”

“Until what?”

“Well, perhaps none of us really know. But don’t be misled, Sabina. Brock is a great deal older than you and has led a very different life. I have always thought that he has missed the simple things. You may be an essential part of the pattern.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Naturally. Why else, do you suppose, does he want to marry you?”

“I don’t know,” Sabina said doubtfully. “M. Bergerac after all, would have married me for a house.”

Bunny looked suddenly a little tired.

“Yes,” she said, “but that need not concern you now need it? In a little while everything will be clearer.”

Clearer? To Sabina it was a foolish remark. Brock had made things clear in one respect before he left but there was so much to doubt, now that he had gone, so many facets that were not clear at all.

Bunny sighed.

“I’ve always hoped—” she began, then thought better of what she had been going to say. “Don’t puzzle your head with needless matters now. Brock will be back very soon, and if in the meantime time hangs heavily, go and play with Willie. You are good for him, I think, because you are young.

You should take it as a compliment, Sabina. He doesn’t say his rhymes to everyone.”

Sabina was grateful that someone should afford her special consideration, even if it was only poor simple Willie Washer. There had been few times in her life when she had been the focus of attention, and since she had come to Truan she had discovered slowly that she might merit importance of a kind; to Willie, who accepted her as the playmate he had never had, to Bunny, because perhaps her heart had never grown away from the young she used to teach, and to Brock—well, for him it might be more complex. He wanted her, yes, but could she ever measure up to those half understood standards, or meet his demands with a maturity that would match his own?

The days went on and Sabina began to watch for the post, not for a letter from Brock, but for that expected angry reply from Tante.

“I do not think you will hear for a while,” Bunny said, and Sabina was again conscious that both the governess and Brock had knowledge which she herself did not share.

“She’s more likely to come herself to reason with me,” she said ruefully, but Bunny shook her head.

“Bunny—” Sabina said impulsively, “you know more than you will tell me, don’t you? Why are you always so sure of Tante’s reactions?”

“I’m not sure,” replied Bunny a little repressively, “and I know nothing that is my business to pass on. A governess learns very early not to betray a confidence or repeat gossip, if she wants to keep her job.”

“But you aren’t a governess any more, and I’ve always known the old gossip about Tante. She makes no secret of her affair with old Bergerac.”

“Very likely. Lucille Faivre was always a vain woman, but these things were long ago and do not concern me now.”

“Now! Then Tante hurt you at some time or other?”

“Only indirectly. We will not discuss Mrs. Lamb’s affairs, or Brock’s till he returns, dear child.”

Sabina sighed. Bunny could be firm enough when she chose, and whatever her knowledge, she was clearly not prepared to share it.

Despite the many occupations with which Bunny filled her days, Sabina began to grow impatient. Brock was gone she knew not where and there was still no news from Tante. The days were mild and spring-like and carried an air of expectancy, whether of the approaching season or the dictates of her own blossoming spirit, she did not know, but she had a desire to visit Penruthan once more and wander again, for perhaps the last time, through the deserted rooms.

Bunny she knew, would not permit a walk across the moor after that first alarming experience and she went out to the garden to find Willie and try to persuade him to take her.

He was amongst the graves, as usual, and she saw him bend lovingly over a clump of primroses, his rough hair the same colour as the flowers. She sat on a tombstone and watched his clumsy fingers dealing so tenderly with the choked roots of the plant, and he smiled at her over his shoulder and went on working in silence.

She was used to these silences of Willie’s now. It was not one of his sullen days, and his face as he bent over the primroses was blank and childlike. Around them the graves lay, quiet and peaceful in the pale sunshine, and Sabina had come to understand the boy’s strange liking for the churchyard.

“Willie,” she said softly, “will you do something for me?” “Mebbe,” he replied with his usual caution.

“Will you show me the way over the moor to Penruthan?”

He sat back on his heels in the grass and shook his head violently.

“Nay,” he said as once before; “I’ll not go there. ’Tes ’aunted.”

“Nonsense!” Sabina reproved. “It’s just a great old empty house, but there are no ghosts.”

“ ’Tes ’aunted,” he repeated, and she regarded him thoughtfully, her head on one side.

“And if it were,” she said. “I’m surprised at you, Willie, being afraid of a poor ghost when you’ll spend all day in the graveyard.”

“The daid don’t ’aunt—they lies quiet,” he said stubbornly. “I likes they daid ’uns—they’m powerful kind.”

“Poor Willie,” she said gently; “aren’t people kind to you?” His mild eyes clouded for a moment.

“Mis’ Fennell and Maister Brock be kind, and you too, missy—you’m a proper little maid.”

“Then you wouldn’t like me to get lost, like I did before, would you?” she coaxed, but he suddenly jumped to his feet, flapping his arms at a flock of starlings which had swooped on the churchyard.

“Git away, git away, you noisy varmints!” he cried and Sabina was reminded of the garden boy in
Prunella
chanting:
Oh, you naughty birds, now, will you

Come into my garden and I’ll kill you . . .

“Don’t you like birds?” she asked.

Nay, they’m always cluttering. This be a place for quiet—quiet and sleep.”

She remembered Brock saying once that there was a natural poetry in the feeble-minded and she remembered his gentleness when he spoke to the boy and the patience that was no foreign to his nature.

“You’re fond of Mr. Brock, aren’t you?” she said, wanting to talk about him even to someone who was simple.

“He be gone abroad now,” he said sadly.

“Abroad?” Then she remembered that this was only another west-country expression not to be taken literally. “But he’s coming back very soon.”

Willie dropped on his knees again, still shaking his head. “Next year mebbe, but ’tes no manner of use,” he said.

“No, soon—at the end of the week, very likely. Perhaps he’ll bring you a present, Willie.”

He gave a slow grin at that, for presents were an unfailing delight to Willie.

“If you show me the way to Penruthan, I’ll give you a present, too,” Sabina said quickly.

“What’ll ’e be?”

“You shall choose. My aunt sent Mrs. Fennell some money for me last week. You shall have whatever you like.”

She anxiously watched the struggle in his face. It had now become absurdly important to her to visit Penruthan, and if Willie would not take her she must go the long weary way by the road.

“I’ll show ’e the way, then,” he said suddenly, “because you’m kind to poor Willie, but I’ll not set foot in the house, mind. I’ll come no nearer than gate in wall.”

“Oh, thank you!” she cried gratefully. “I’ll go and ask Mrs. Fennell if she will spare you.”

Bunny was not enthusiastic, but if Willie Washer had consented to go as well, she said, she would have no objection.

“But follow him, and don’t be tempted to choose your own path,” she warned. “Willie may be simple but he knows every inch of the moor and you’ll come to no harm with him.”

They set off after an early luncheon. Willie shambled ahead, sure-footed as any of the moorland ponies, for all his ungainliness, and Sabina followed, the light breeze sweet on her face, while the early springtide drew forth fresh beauty

from the moor. Now they were crossing the stream into which she had fallen on the day she had run away from Brock, and there were the hollowed boulders where they had sat and he had asked her to marry him. How life had changed for her since she had come to Truan, she thought, and laughed aloud as she remembered her fear of him that night of their first strange meeting.

Hearing her, Willie laughed too, the gentle, vacant laugh of a child who does not know why it is happy, and presently he began to sing in a queer cracked voice which had a certain sweetness, and Sabina joined in, humming a melody she thought she recognised. It was a strange, lightheaded passage across the moor. Presently the high walls of Penruthan rose to meet them over the next rise and Willie drew back.

“Be ’e going in?” he asked, still doubting her folly, and she laughed.

“Of course. You wait here, Willie. I’ll give a shout when I’m ready to go back.”

She left him standing there, and pushed open the broken door in the wall, remembering that snowy night when she had come upon it unawares. Now she could see the neglect into which the place had fallen. A wilderness of vegetation lay before her, and the house itself, without its concealing shroud of snow, spoke mutely of decay and the long neglect of years.