CRAZY JANE

In Sussex a great bank of chalk downs stands up as if set as a natural sea-wall against the encroachments of the waves. Nothing can be conceived more barren, more dreary than this bank on its seaward slope. On the east coast of England, in Essex, in Lincoln, in Suffolk and Norfolk, the energy of man has reclaimed tracts of low-lying land from the sea, and has held back the tide by erecting sea-walls that have a long gradually-declining escarpment towards the water. Against these the waves fling themselves, are broken, run up them, lose their force, and sneak back discomfited. On the land side these walls have an abrupt fall. Now the south coast of Sussex seems by nature to have been thus constructed as a great type after which men should build and recover land. About three or four miles inland—perhaps a little more—begins what is called the Weald, a flat, rich, and beautiful land, well wooded, full of sweet villages and gentle pastures, with here and there an undulation, like a fold in green velvet, and here and there a pond occupying a deserted iron quarry. From this Wealden district rises to the south the abrupt scar of the South Downs, a mighty rampart of chalk, tilted up with its long easy slope seawards.

Did that mighty primeval ocean rage against the coast where now stand Brighton, Worthing, and Shoreham? Did that great natural sea-wall of chalk restrain its waves and protect the Weald from inundation? We cannot say.

At one point in the summit of the chalk barrier is a trench cut deep through the soft white rock, and this is called the Devil’s Dyke. The story told of it is that the enemy of mankind, looking down on the fertile Weald, envied its beauty and richness, and set to work one night to dig through the barrier, so as to let the ocean in, to submerge the fair district. But he could do this only in one night. His power to work evil was limited. If he could make his canal before cock-crow, well; but he might on no account resume the work if left incomplete in one night. Now there was a cottage on the height, and in it lived an old Goodie, who was roused by the sound of digging and delving in the night. The night was dark, dark as Erebus; she opened her casement and peeped forth. Nothing was visible, but the earth quaked under the efforts made by Mephistopheles. Then the Goodie, being an old fool, lit a candle, held it outside the window and screamed out, “Who’s there? What are you a-doing?” Now a cock saw the candle, and thinking it was the first glimmer of dawn, began to crow. Then the evil one threw away his spade and fled in a rage. And, lo! there in the dyke, is shown the half-finished work and the unejected shovelful of earth.

Such is the legend. In reality, no doubt, the dyke is a very ancient aboriginal fortification.

Now mark a wonderful provision of nature. All the rain that falls along the range of chalk hills sinks in, soaks down, and might sink away to—goodness knows where, but that, beneath the chalk lies a bed of very dense clay, through which the water cannot descend, and between the chalk and the clay is strewn a narrow film of gravel, called the greensand, there hardly thicker than your hand. When the water has percolated through the chalk hills and is stopped by the clay, out it runs, on the inland scarp, through the greensand, in a thousand crystal-cool and beautiful springs, thoroughly purified by this perfect natural filter.

On the inland flank of the South Downs, in a little coomb or valley scooped out of the chalk, gushed nine of these springs and fed a tarn or lake, not natural, but formed by an embankment thrown up to form a reservoir for a mill. Above this lake set in the lap of the Downs were clumps of Scotch pines, and a wood of beech, in spring full of the purple and the white scented wood orchis; on the Downs about grew the quaintly beautiful bee-orchis, rare elsewhere save on chalk.

In a solitary cottage under the hill, in a shady spot where the sun rarely came, lived a widow and her daughter. The widow was very infirm, crippled with rheumatism, and was allowed eighteenpence a week and a loaf by the parish. She was too weak and helpless to earn anything for herself, and she could not have subsisted, she and her child, on eighteenpence and one loaf, had it not been for certain means of acquiring money that the neighbourhood afforded. The South Down chalk hills abound in hedgehogs. They are to be found in burrows in great numbers, and at evening, when the dew is falling, the side of the down may be seen alive with these little creatures scampering about seeking their prey. The widow’s girl, Jane, a young girl uncouth in form, with low brow and dull unintelligent eyes, was clever in finding hedgehogs, and these she carried about coiled up in a basket, and sold them to people who were troubled with slugs and snails in their gardens, or with cockroaches and black-beetles in their kitchens. She got a shilling for each hedgehog, and could, had the demand required it, have found a hedgehog per diem, which would have brought her in 365 shillings in the year, or £18, 5s. 0d.—a handsome income. But, unfortunately, the public were not athirst for hedgehogs; and the market was soon glutted. Consequently Jane had to seek other means of earning money. She found dormice in the woods, and as there were two large schools for boys, Hurstpierpoint and Lancing, within a walk, and in schools for boys the passion for the acquisition of dormice is insatiable, “Crazy Jane,” as the dull-witted girl was called, found that she could sell at 4d. each as many dormice as she could find. But then the dormice were only to be caught when hybernating. In summer they were too wide-awake to allow themselves to be captured.

Another source of revenue was offered by the orchis plants on the Downs. Crazy Jane dug up the roots, collected bunches of the flowers, and trudged with them to Worthing or Brighton, where she was able to dispose of her flowers and of her tubers. Thus, the widow and her daughter had not merely eighteenpence and a loaf to live on, but they lived also on dormice, hedgehogs, and orchis bulbs. She had long distances to go to dispose of her goods had Crazy Jane, but what mattered that to her? She was sturdily built, strong as a horse, and disregarded all kinds of bad weather. Jane had had no schooling. She had been forced to attend the National School, but had been unable to acquire her letters; she could not write a pot-hook on the slate, or do any calculations apart from hedgehogs, dormice, and bulbs. In all particulars relative to her business she was keen, keen in exacting every penny, able to reckon up her gains; but apart from hedgehogs, dormice, and bulbs she could not count and sum. So she had been dismissed her school as mentally incapable of acquiring knowledge. This permission to her to withdraw was a great relief to Jane, for she had been the butt of ridicule to the scholars. Every dunce could crow over Jane as more stupid than himself. The witty or would-be wags poked fun at her, the malicious tortured and irritated her. Jane was usually good-natured, but when angered flew into paroxysms of mad fury that occasioned merriment to the ill-conditioned, and often provoked the interference of the master. Jane would have come off worse than she did at school had it not been for Jim Thacker, the miller’s son at Ninewells, who constituted himself her protector, and thrashed the insolent boys who tormented Crazy Jane, and screened her from their gibes.

This protection he afforded her awoke on the poor dull-witted girl’s part the liveliest devotion, a devotion that was irksome to the boy, for she followed him like a dog, shrank behind him at the least threat of annoyance, clung to him when in trouble, and was uneasy when he was out of her sight. This attracted notice in the school, and provoked merriment. She was called Jim Thacker’s dog. And like a dog she seemed—faithful, regardful, a little too demonstrative of affection, but exacting nothing for this fidelity but an occasional nod and word. It was a relief to Jim when Crazy Jane was excused school as mentally deficient; and it was a relief to her, because thenceforth she could wander unrestrained over the Downs, hunting hedgehogs and dormice, and picking flowers.

One day—it was in spring—Jim Thacker was walking near the mill pond, when he heard screams of terror and pain, apparently, and saw Crazy Jane pursued and attacked by the male swan of a pair that lived in the pond. In her search for orchis bulbs she had approached too near where the female swan was sitting on her eggs, and the male in wild fury had flown to the protection of its mate, and considering Jane as an enemy threatening his mate and eggs, had rushed at her with flapping wings and outstretched beak. An excited swan is not a foe to laugh at, the strength of its wings is so great that a blow of them has been known to break the leg of a horse; moreover, with its great beak it can nip and hurt. The flap of the great wings, the discordant notes that issued from the long neck, the menacing bill, had paralysed Jane, and in trying to flee she had stumbled over a root and fallen.

Jim snatched up a pronged stick and ran to her aid, calling to the swan. He reached her as the bird was driving at her with his bill, and thrusting the fork adroitly under the neck, held the angry bird back.

“Now Jane,” said he, “get up and run away whilst I keep the swan at bay.”

But she was so bewildered with her fright that it was some time before she could understand what to do, and when, finally, she did scramble away, she had not the strength and breath to go far, but sank among the old leaves at a little distance from the pool, sobbing, trembling, with her black hair scattered about her shoulders and face.

Jim came to her and helped her to her feet, brought her to the mill, and there his mother soothed the fears of the frightened girl, gave her milk and bread and honey, and finally dismissed her with a sixpence in her pocket.

After this, Crazy Jane became somewhat of a nuisance again, as she had been at the school. She had come to regard Jim with a veneration that almost reached adoration. He was the only person who had ever stood up for her and defended her against enemies. He had never laughed at her, played tricks with her, teased her; but had ever been ready to come to her aid when powerless to protect herself. She hung about the mill, not for milk and bread and honey, not for a sixpence, but only that she might get a sight of Jim, and receive a kind and cheery word from him. She would have overwhelmed him with hedgehogs had he been willing to have one, would have filled his boxes with dormice had he expressed the desire to have them. There was nothing she would not to do for him to show her gratitude and regard. And Jim’s mother, Mrs. Thacker, made use of the girl now and then to take messages or do commissions for her to Steyning, or to Hurst, or to Brighton, or Worthing—commissions which she executed with fidelity, and for which she doggedly, even sullenly, refused payment. It was reward enough to her to be allowed to see Jim, and to hear him say, “What an active girl you are, Jane!”

On Sundays, when Jim went to church, Jane was always to be seen hanging about in the neighbourhood of the mill, waiting to follow him. She was in her ragged, dingy week-day dress, for she had no change of attire. And when he started, with his book under his arm, she followed at a distance, and when he entered the sacred building she remained outside, hidden behind one of the gravestones, for she dared not stay seated on the churchyard wall, lest she should be teased, and perhaps pulled off, and have stones thrown at her by those boys and young men who congregate about churchyard gates, and do not enter the church.

When service was over, and Jim returned home, then, from her hiding-place, rose the crazy girl also, and followed him back, never getting very near, always maintaining a respectful distance, but never allowing him to get out of her sight.

This, naturally, provoked comment, and caused Jim annoyance. He spoke to Jane about it, remonstrated, and forbade her to pursue him in this manner. This made her cry, but not abandon the practice, and he was finally obliged to endure what could not be altered, hoping that in course of time she would herself tire of the dog-like pursuit.

But he was mistaken. For her dull mind this allegiance to Jim, expressed so uncouthly, had become a sort of religion that bound her, and years passed, and her conduct remained the same; she neither pressed further on his attention nor wearied of her devotion. The habit of following him, of hanging about the mill, had become part of her life, with which she could not break. So time passed. Jim had grown from boyhood to manhood, and had become miller in the room of his father, deceased; and there had been changes in the cottage also; the widow was dead, and Jane remained there lonely, but content, pursuing her usual avocations, and obtaining a small allowance from the parish. She had grown from girlhood into womanhood, but without any mental development. She was as dull-witted as ever, and in addition had acquired a jerky motion of her head and shoulders whenever spoken to—a nervous agitation which was but St. Vitus’ dance. A quiet harmless girl she remained. There was a talk about removing her to the workhouse, but the project fortunately for her was never carried out. She would have pined and died under the restraints and routine of the Union.

In due time Jim Thacker was married. He had fallen in love with a bright, sharp, pretty girl, the daughter of a farmer. There was no impediment on either side, and they were married. Few were better pleased than Crazy Jane, who went to the church, but did not enter it, and looked on, laughing and clapping her hands from behind a gravestone, when the bridal party left the church.

“Oh fine! fine!” exclaimed Jane. “Now Jim Thacker has got a pretty wife. Fine! fine! fine!”

And when Jim sent her some of the wedding feast, cake and oranges and pie, she capered and laughed and cried alternately, and then, all at once, sat herself down in the wood, and a mood of sulkiness and sadness came over her, she knew not wherefore, and she threw up the old brown beech leaves over her head, and let them rain about her, as though she were burying herself under the fallen leaves.

This mood lasted for a day only, and then passed. She remained as before, good-natured, following Jim as a dog, but never intruding herself on him and his young wife.

The latter did not take kindly to Jane. She was annoyed at the persistent haunting of the neighbourhood of the mill, by her animal-like devotion to Jim, and remonstrated with her husband.

“What can I do?” he asked; “the poor crazy creature does no harm.”

“It is absurd, it is scandalous,” said the young wife petulantly. “It makes you an object of ridicule throughout the country.”

Jim’s mother, and after her death, Jim himself, had often sent broken meat, a blanket, some little comfort, perhaps a few bushels of coal to Crazy Jane; but the new mistress at the mill forbade these charities. “Let her be starved out,” she said. “The creature is a nuisance. Who can be confident with a mad woman so near? She may set fire to the mill, she may murder me, if I go alone into the woods. And”—she pouted—“I should not be surprised if she were to attempt it, as she is jealous of me. She has hitherto engrossed so much of Jim’s attention, and now thinks I rob her of what should be hers.”

“How can you talk such trash?” said Jim, annoyed.

So Crazy Jane was the occasion of the first little disagreement between Jim and his wife.

It is a satisfaction to some natures to have an opportunity for grumbling, an excuse for venting their vexation. Mrs. Thacker had a fretful, irritable temper, and the presence of Crazy Jane furnished her with an occasion for giving tongue to her annoyance, and scolding and finding fault with her husband. She knew perfectly that she had no real grounds for her jealousy, and the fact that she knew this excused her in her own mind for her fretfulness towards her husband on the subject. Some women regard their ebullitions of ill-temper and jealousy as justified by the fact that they are unreasonable. Jim was so good-natured that he did not become angry, and his good-nature provoked his wife.

So time passed, and Mrs. Thacker bore her husband a little daughter; and the child grew, and as it grew became an object of intense, affectionate regard to Crazy Jane. Indeed, it seemed as though her devotion to Jim had been transferred to the child. She hovered about the mill as before, but now, so that she might watch the child, not the father, and seemed quite pleased when she could offer the little girl a bunch of wild strawberries, or a posy of lilies of the valley.

This also gave annoyance to Mrs. Thacker. She did not like her child to be near the mad girl—or woman—she was a girl no longer. “Who can say what she might do? She might carry her off, as the gipsies do?”

“But where could she carry her to?”

“I don’t like her to touch the child; she is not clean.”

Time advanced. It seemed to stand still only with Crazy Jane, who had settled into one fixed type of face and figure that never altered; and no one looking at her could guess her age. Her face was childlike, so simple; but her figure was too formed for that of a child. Her black hair showed no trace of change. In spite of the many vexations occasioned her by Mrs. Thacker, she remained in the cottage. The miller’s wife went to the parish guardians to complain, and urge that the creature should be removed to the Union. She went to the police, to complain that the girl was a menace to herself and the child. She visited the village doctor, to insist that Jane was mad, and ought to be in an asylum; she endeavoured to incite the rector to take steps to get her put into some charitable institution; she had repeated squabbles with her husband—all in vain.

Time advanced, and when little Mabel, his child, was twelve years old, Crazy Jane was still in the cottage unmolested. One winter’s day, Mabel had been sent over the downs, a walk of three miles, to her grandmother’s house, the mother of Mrs. Thacker. It was the old lady’s birthday, and the child had gone with congratulations and a present from the miller’s wife.

The day had been warm and fine, but towards afternoon there ensued a sudden change, and unexpectedly the wind shifted to the north-east, with black and threatening clouds, and there fell a blinding, dense snow.

A little uneasiness was felt by James and his wife about the child, but not much, for they concluded that Mabel had been detained by her grandmother. “Surely,” said Mrs. Thacker, “my mother would never let the child start when there was a threat of a change.”

“But the threat came with the change, at once; no one could have looked for it.”

“If that be the case, you or some one had better go to my mother’s and inquire.”

Jim Thacker thought so as well. He drew on his thick coat, tied a kerchief over his head to hold on his cap, for the wind on the downs blew a gale, and started.

Three hours later he returned, covered with snow.

“Is Mabel home?” he inquired as he entered the room.

“No—had she left?” Mrs. Thacker was near on fainting. She saw by her husband’s face that he was alarmed.

“Yes,” he answered gravely. “She left her grandmother’s before the change.”

“O Jim! Jim!” The poor mother could say no more, but burst into tears, and sank with her head on the table.

There was no time to be wasted in lamentations. Jim called to his man. A lantern was lighted, and the two with sticks went forth again into the storm. Meantime the darkness had become complete. The wind raged, the snow fell in huge flakes against the windows like dabs of plaster. It covered roof, ground, walls. Mrs. Thacker was left alone in the house with a maid only. Her agitation, her alarm, were great. She loved her child passionately. How could a child struggle through such a storm and beat a way through the snow? Every road was deep buried, the landmarks obscured. The child would stray on the Downs, perhaps sink with weariness, and sleep the fatal sleep of death; perhaps in its wanderings come, blinded with snow, to the edge of a chalk quarry, fall over, and be dashed to pieces.

The night wore on. The father, with his man, had gone over the ground again between the farmhouse where lived the mother of his wife and his own mill, but had discovered no traces of his little one. He called up men from a cottage or two that he passed. He got help from the farm to which the child had gone. As the hours passed he became more hopeless. He expected one thing only—to find his child’s body, for he deemed it impossible for her to be alive under the circumstances. If she had strayed on the Wold, there was no house on the Downs into which she could have been received.

The condition of mind of Mrs. Thacker was worse than that of her husband. He was battling with the storm, searching; she was condemned to inactivity, could only bow and pray, have hot water ready, bricks heated, in the event of her child’s return, to bathe her, to place against her body to restore heat.

Once she was frightened. She heard a crash against the front door, a blow that near beat it in, and then all was still. What was it? Dare she open? Then she supposed there had been a fall of a mass of snow from the roof, and that this had produced the sound. Ten minutes later she heard voices—her husband and the men returning—and she ran to the door to throw it open, and ask news. As she did so, something—a great heap of snow, but something tender, something on which the snow had heaped itself, fell inwards.

A cry! Mrs. Thacker stooped, Jim ran up with the lantern. It was Crazy Jane, with the child in her arms. The child asleep, and Jane—dead.

How and where the silly girl had found Mabel was never known. All the child could remember was, that Jane had discovered her as she rambled about in the snow, and that Jane had carried her till she fell asleep. How far Jane had wandered, how far borne the heavy burden, could not be told, but it must have been far, for she had died of over-exhaustion at the very moment when she had reached the door of the house, the outside of which she had watched for many years, the inside of which she had not been allowed for long to enter.

And so—faithful to the last—the poor dull-minded creature had repaid in good measure, pressed down and running over, the little acts of kindness shown her in years gone by, by Jim at school, and Jim by the pool, and Jim at home, defending her from children, from the swan, and last, but not least, from his wife.

THE END

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