MARY TREMBATH

This is a sketch—no more—of a woman who was to me, and is still, a problem for a casuist to solve. How so, you shall hear in the sequel. But, to begin, you must know her life’s story.

Mary was, when a young married woman in a Cornish fishing-village, occupying a cottage at some little distance from the harbour. She must have been a fine woman then, she is fine in her old age.

“Ah!” said she, “you have been to Maker? Did you go about in a boat there?”

“Yes.” I had boated whilst staying in the place.

“And did you see the Lady Rock?”

“Yes, it was pointed out to me.”

“And the Dead Man’s Rock?”

“I think so.”

“Well, it is all along of the Lady Rock that I was a widow.”

“How so?”

“You have heard tell about the Lady?”

I had. The Lady is a little piece of white feldspar in a cliff that rises out of the sea, with a shelf before it, and this piece of quartz or feldspar bears a singular resemblance to the shape of a woman draped in white. Whenever the fishermen return with their trawls, they cast a few of the mackerel or herring they have caught on to the shelf before the White Lady, and, unless this be done, this oblation made, ill-luck will attend the fishermen on their next expedition; their nets will be caught and torn as by invisible hands in the deep, or no fish will enter the seines, or, worse still, the boat will capsize and possibly the fishermen on board will be drowned. The Dead Man’s Rock is another portion of cliff nearly horizontal, sometimes washed by the waves, and on this lies a mass of the same white spar, bearing something approaching the form of a corpse. But it demands more fancy to distinguish the corpse than the Lady.

“I will tell you the whole story, sir,” said Mary. “My husband, Thomas Trembath, was a fine standing-up man as you’d see anywhere. He was a fisherman, and a daring fellow. I don’t say he did not do a bit of smuggling now and then, but, lor’, sir! they all did, and if they didn’t, more shame to them, with their opportunities. Well, sir, I don’t say he was a Free-thinker, because he wasn’t, but he was a sort of no-thinker—no ways, if you can understand me. Well then, one day, as they was coming in after there had been a shoal, there was a lot of boats out that day, and as the boats went by, all the cap’ns threw a few whiting on to the ledge afore the Lady. But my Thomas he was a daring unconsiderate chap, and they’d caught a young dog-fish that day—the fishermen sometimes bring ’em home and gets a few pence by showing ’em, for they’re terrible mischievous beasts, and eat a lot of mackerel and whiting and just anything they can. Well, sir, will you believe it, when Thomas comes alongside of the Lady Rock, what did he do, in a fit o’ daring, but heave the dog-fish on to the shelf afore her!”

Mary paused and looked at me, expecting me to appear aghast at such an outrage.

“The other men, they was astounded and afraid after that—no man would go in the boat with him. And next time he wanted to go, they shook their heads, and said they weren’t going to court ill-luck. So Thomas—he was that reckless and regardless—he said he would go alone. And go alone he did. There was no wind and the sea was smooth—but he never came back. I reckon he alone couldn’t manage the boat and something went wrong. What it was I can’t tell—but he never came back. That’s what followed chucking of a dog-fish at the White Lady.”

After her husband’s death, Mary took to peddling. She was a middle-aged woman when I knew her, stoutly built, broad shouldered, with a hale and ruddy face; she wore short skirts, a man’s long greatcoat over her back, and a man’s hat on her head. Slung across her shoulder by a strap was a case that contained needles, thread, pins, and tape. She carried a staff, some four feet long, in her hand, not of bamboo but of ash, and she strode along the roads faster than a horse could walk.

There was not a farm, not a cottage within miles around, in which Mary was not known, and where she did not do business.

How she picked up a living on the things she sold was a marvel to me. The profits on each item can have been only small, and the amount of country she travelled over to sell these little articles was so great, that she must have worn out much shoe-leather.

She was abroad in all weathers and at all hours.

I said to her one day: “Why, Mary, are not you afraid in the lone lanes, at night?”

“Lor’, sir, not I. If there were a man as were imperent, I’d lay my stick across him, and he’d bite the dust. And as to spirits, I never meddles with them, and so they don’t meddle with me.”

“Spirits! Why, you never have the chance of interfering with their little games.”

She shook her head. “I won’t say that, sir,” she answered. “There’s queer things about at night, but I always gives ’em a good word and a text of Scriptur’, and they don’t hurt me.”

It used to be thought that a comet presaged war, that its tail tickled all the elements of irritation in the world and sent nations and kingdoms flying at one another. But this human comet, Mary Trembath, revolving in her elliptical orbits through the country, left peace and goodwill after her. She was an inveterate gossip, a chatterbox. She loved, when she had sold a paper of pins or a knot of tape, to sit and have a dish of tea and a bit of cake and talk, but never, so far as I am aware, did evil spring from what she said; on the contrary, she left those she had been with better disposed towards one another than they had been before.

A somewhat singular instance of this occurs to my memory.

There were two old ladies, spinsters both, who lived within a mile and a half of each other. One was the housekeeper to her brother, a farmer, who was a widower, and the other resided in a pleasant cottage of her own, surrounded by trees, smothered in laurels and snowberries that cut off sun and air, and made garden and house smell of mildew and moth. Now this old lady had a sharp tongue and a lively imagination, and had the credit of being a mischief-maker.

All at once a tremendous feud broke out between these spinsters. It involved more than themselves, their relations, their acquaintances also, in the village. Miss Spindle had said something very nasty and galling of Miss Shank that was absolutely untrue, but so injurious that Miss Shank vowed she would have the law of her.

Hearing of this, and finding the entire village agitated by the controversy, I tried to discover the truth—whether Miss Spindle really had spoken such cruel things of Miss Shank. I tracked the story from one to another, and found that gradually every objectionable expression and statement fell off en route as an assertion, and that what had actually been said was entirely harmless, for it was not said of Miss Shank at all, but of the shank-bone of mutton on which Miss Spindle had been making her meal. In fact, all this good lady had said was, that the shank had been served so often that it was becoming high and discoloured, and had best be hashed. Out of this a mountain of malignant insinuation and defamatory assertion had been evolved.

When I had got to the bottom of the story, I rushed off to Miss Shank to explain that the whole thing was a misunderstanding, and ought to be put aside, and peace made. But the lady was furious; she turned on me as a mischief-maker and a meddlesome person for having dared to interfere. She knew that what Miss Spindle meant was to cast slurs at her, and she employed the mutton-bone as a subterfuge so as to avoid prosecution. There it was, worse than ever. I was out with one. I went to Miss Spindle. She was exasperated because Miss Shank had dared to believe that what she had spoken about the mutton applied to her, and she broke into a torrent of abuse of me for interfering in the matter.

There it was; I was out with the other.

As I retired disconsolately, I ran across Mary Trembath, and somehow, for my heart was full, I told her of my ill success.

“Leave it to me,” said Mary.

What was my amazement next Sunday to see Miss Spindle and Miss Shank embracing in the churchyard after service, and walking off arm-in-arm and chatting affectionately together!

How had this transformation in the women, this change in the situation, been brought about? Only with difficulty did I get at the bottom of it. Mary, whilst selling a hank of coloured wool to Miss Spindle, had contrived to hint to her that Farmer Shank, the widower, was terribly concerned over the quarrel, as he was actually much enamoured of the fair spinster who lived in the bower of laurels.

Then, Mary Trembath had gone to the farm of the Shanks, and had let out in confidence that Miss Spindle’s conscience so pained her over the mischief done, that she was sending for the lawyer to alter her will and make over Laurel Cottage and her few hundreds in the Three per Cents. to the woman she had so grievously injured.

When I learned this, I thought I would have it out with Mary. She pulled a face as I reproached her.

“Please, sir, I didn’t say it was so; I merely hinted such a thing might be. They jumped at the conclusion, and turned what might be into it is so.”

“But, Mary, it was not true.”

“How do you know that, sir?—all things are possible.”

That was Mary Trembath’s secret way of making smooth water wherever she went. She was not a deliberate liar, even for a good purpose; but she managed somehow to create impressions that served to bring quarrels to an end, to make people once indifferent to each other become fast friends, and to dispel pretty nearly every cloud that hung over a parish in which she peddled.

And now you will see how it is that, as I said, she provided me with a problem only a casuist can solve. Of course, it is never right to speak an untruth even for a good end. Mary was too conscientious to say straight out what was false, but she had a clever, subtle manner of bewildering people through her hints and suggestions, till she induced them to deceive themselves, and that always with a good object in view.

She was a peacemaker, eminently a peacemaker, but was she justified in the method she employed to make peace?