The first boy was born in 1754 and was followed in 1756 by another. They christened the eldest Ortho, a family name, and the second Eli. When his younger son was three months old John died. He got wet, extricating a horse from a bog-hole, and took no heed, having been wet through a hundred times before. A chill seized him; he still took no notice. The chill developed into pneumonia, but he struggled on, saying nothing. Then Bohenna found him prostrate in the muck of the stable; he had been trying to yoke the oxen with the intention of going out to plow.
Bohenna carried him, protesting, up to bed. Only when he was dying would he admit he was ill. He was puzzled and angry. Why should he be sick now who had never felt a qualm before? What was a wetting, i’ faith! For forty odd winters he had seldom been dry. It was ridiculous! He tried to lift himself, exhorting the splendid, loyal body that had never yet failed him to have done with this folly and bear him outside to the sunshine and the day’s work. It did not respond; might have been so much lead. He fell back, betrayed, helpless, frightened, and went off into a delirium. The end was close. He came to his senses once again about ten o’clock at night and saw Teresa bending over him, the new son in her arms. She was crying and had a tender look in her tear-bright eyes he had never seen before. He tried to smile at her. Nothing to cry about. He’d be all right in the morning—after a night’s sleep—go plowing—everything came right in the morning. Towards midnight Martha, who was watching, set up a dreadful screech. It was all over. As if awaiting the signal came a hooting from the woods about the house, “Too-whee-wha-ho-oo-oo!”—the Bosula owls lamenting the passing of its master.
Fate, in cutting down John Penhale in his prime, did him no disservice. He went into oblivion knowing Teresa only as a thing of beauty, half magical, wholly adorable. He was spared the years of disillusionment which would have pained him sorely, for he was a sensitive man.
Teresa mourned for her husband with a passion which was natural to her and which was very highly considered in the neighborhood. At the funeral she flung herself on the coffin, and refused to be loosened from it for a quarter of an hour, moaning and tearing at the lid with her fingers. Venerable dames who had attended every local interment for half a century wagged their bonnets and admitted they had never seen a widow display a prettier spirit.
Teresa was quite genuine in her way. John had treated her with a gentleness and generosity she had not suspected was to be found on this earth, and now this kindly cornucopia had been snatched from her—and just when she had made so sure of him too! She blubbered in good earnest. But after the lawyer’s business was over she cheered up.
In the first flush of becoming a father, John had ridden into Penzance and made a will, but since Eli’s birth he had made no second; there was plenty of time, he thought, years and years of it. Consequently everything fell to Ortho when he came of age, and in the meanwhile Teresa was sole guardian. That meant she was mistress of Bosula and had the handling of the hundred and twenty pounds invested income, to say nothing of the Tregors rents, fifty pounds per annum. One hundred and seventy pounds a year to spend! The sum staggered her. She had hardly made that amount of money in her whole life. She sat up that night, long after the rest of the household had gone to bed, wrapped in delicious dreams of how she would spend that annual fortune. She soon began to learn. Martha hinted that, in a lady of her station, the wearing of black was considered proper as a tribute to the memory of the deceased, so, finding nothing dark in the chests, she mounted a horse behind Bohenna and jogged into town.
A raw farmer’s wife, clutching a bag of silver and demanding only to be dressed in black, is a gift to any shopman. The Penzance draper called up his seamstresses, took Teresa’s measure for a silk dress—nothing but silk would be fitting, he averred; the greater the cost the greater the tribute—added every somber accessory that he could think of, separated her from ￡13.6.4 of her hoard and bowed her out, promising to send the articles by carrier within three days. Teresa went through the ordeal like one in a trance, too awed to protest or speak even. On the way home she sought to console herself with the thought that her extravagance was on John’s, dear John’s behalf. Still thirteen pounds, six shillings and fourpence!—more than Bohenna’s wages for a year gone in a finger snap! Ruin stared her in the face.
The black dress, cap, flounced petticoat, stiff stays, stockings, apron, cloak of Spanish cloth and high-heeled shoes arrived to date and set the household agog. Teresa, its devastating price forgotten, peacocked round the house and yard all day, swelling with pride, the rustle of the silk atoning for the agony she was suffering from the stays and shoes. As the sensation died down she yearned for fresh conquests, so mounting the pillion afresh, made a tour through the parish, paying special attention to Gwithian Church-town and Monks Cove.
The tour was a triumph. Women rushed to their cottage doors and stared after her, goggling. At Pridden a party of hedgers left work and raced across a field to see her go by. Near Tregadgwith a farmer fell off his horse from sheer astonishment. She was the sole topic of the district for a week or more. John’s memory was duly honored.
In a month Teresa was tired of the black dress; her fancy did not run to black. The crisp and shining new silk had given her a distaste for the old silks, the soiled and tattered salvage of wrecks. She stuffed the motley rags back in the chests and slammed the lids on them. She had seen some breath-taking rolls of material in that shop in Penzance—orange, emerald, turquoise, coral and lilac. She shut her eyes and imagined herself in a flowing furbelowed dress of each of these colors in turn—or one combining a little of everything—oh, rapture!
She consulted Martha in the matter. Martha was shocked. It was unheard of. She must continue to wear black in public for a year at least. This intelligence depressed Teresa, but she was determined to be correct, as she had now a position to maintain, was next thing to a lady. Eleven months more to wait, heigh-ho!
Then, drawn by the magnet of the shops, she went into Penzance again. Penzance had become something more than a mere tin and pilchard port; visitors attracted by its mild climate came in by every packet; there was a good inn, “The Ship and Castle,” and in 1752 a coffee house had been opened and the road to Land’s End made possible for carriages. Many fine ladies were to be seen fanning themselves at windows in Chapel Street or strolling on the Green, and Teresa wanted to study their costumes with a view to her own.
She dismounted at the Market Cross, moved about among the booths and peeped furtively in at the shops. They were most attractive, displaying glorious things to wear and marvelous things to eat—tarts, cakes, Dutch biscuits, ginger-breads shaped like animals, oranges, plum and sugar candy. Sly old women wheedled her to buy, enlarging ecstatically on the excellence and cheapness of their wares. Teresa wavered and reflected that though she might not be able to buy a new dress for a year there was no law against her purchasing other things. The bag of silver burnt her fingers and she fell. She bought some gingerbread animals at four for a farthing, tasted them, thought them ambrosia and bought sixpennorth to take with her, also lollipops. She went home trembling at her extravagance, but when she came to count up what she had spent it seemed to have made no impression on the bag of silver. In six weeks she went in again, bought a basketful of edibles and replaced her brass earrings with large gold half-moons. When these were paid for the bag was badly drained. Teresa took fright and visited town no more for the year—but as a matter of fact she had spent less than twenty pounds in all. But she had got in the way of spending now.
The tin works in which John’s money was invested paid up at the end of the year (one hundred and twenty-six pounds, seventeen shillings and eight-pence on this occasion), and Tregors rent came in on the same day. It seemed to Teresa that the heavens had opened up and showered uncounted gold upon her.
She went into Penzance next morning as fast as the bay mare could carry her and ordered a dress bordered with real lace and combining all the hues of the rainbow. She was off. Never having had any money she had not the slightest idea of its value and was mulcted accordingly. In the third year of widowhood she spent the last penny of her income.
The farm she left to Bohenna, the house to Martha, the children to look after themselves, and rode in to Penzance market and all over the hundred, to parish feasts, races and hurling matches, a notable figure with her flaming dresses, raven hair and huge earrings, laying the odds, singing songs and standing drinks in ale houses like any squire.
When John died she was at her zenith. The early bloom of her race began to fade soon after, accelerated by gross living. She still ate enormously, as though the hunger of twenty-two lean years was not yet appeased. She was like an animal at table, seizing bones in her hands and tearing the meat off with her teeth, grunting the while like a famished dog, or stuffing the pastries she bought in Penzance into her mouth two at a time. She hastened from girlish to buxom, from buxom to stout. The bay mare began to feel the increasing weight on the pillion. Bohenna was left at home and Teresa rode alone, sitting sideways on a pad, or a-straddle when no one was looking. Yet she was still comely in a large way and had admirers aplenty. Sundry impecunious gentlemen, hoping to mend their fortunes, paid court to the lavish widow, but Teresa saw through their blandishments, and after getting all possible sport out of them sent them packing.
With the curate-in-charge of St. Gwithian it was the other way about. Teresa made the running. She went to church in the first place because it struck her as an opportunity to flaunt her superior finery in public and make other women feel sick. She went a second time to gaze at the parson. This gentleman was an anemic young man with fair hair, pale blue eyes, long hands and a face refined through partial starvation. (The absentee beneficiary allowed him eighteen pounds a year.) Obeying the law of opposites, the heavy dark gypsy woman was vaguely attracted by him at once and the attraction strengthened.
He was something quite new to her. Among the clumsy-limbed country folk he appeared so slim, so delicate, almost ethereal. Also, unable to read or write herself and surrounded by people as ignorant as she, his easy familiarity with books and the verbose phrasing of his sermons filled her with admiration. On Easter Sunday he delivered himself of a particularly flowery effort. Teresa understood not a word of it, but, nevertheless, thought it beautiful and wept audibly. She thought the preacher looked beautiful too, with his clear skin, veined temples and blue eyes. A shaft of sunlight pierced the south window and fell upon his fair head as though an expression of divine benediction. Teresa thought he looked like a saint. Perhaps he was a saint.
She rode home slowly, so wrapped in meditation that she was late for dinner, an unprecedented occurrence. She would marry that young man. If she were going to marry again it must be to some one she could handle, since the law would make him master of herself and her possessions. The curate would serve admirably; he would make a pretty pet and no more. He could keep her accounts too. She was always in a muddle with money. The method she had devised of keeping tally by means of notched sticks was most untrustworthy. And, incidentally, if he really were a saint her hereafter was assured. God could never condemn the wedded wife of a saint and clergyman to Hell; it wouldn’t be decent. She would marry that young man.
She began the assault next day by paying her overdue tithes and throwing in a duck as makeweight. Two days later she was up again with a gift of a goose, and on the following Sunday she presented the astonished clerk with eightpennorth of gingerbreads. Since eating was the occupation nearest to the widow’s heart she sought to touch the curate’s by showering food upon him. Something edible went to the Deanery at least twice a week, occasionally by a hind, but more often Teresa took it herself. A fortnight before Whitsuntide Teresa, in chasing an errant boar out of the yard, kicked too violently, snapped her leg and was laid up for three months. Temporarily unable to reduce the curate by her personal charms she determined to let her gifts speak for her, doubled the offerings, and eggs, fowls, butter, cheese and hams passed from the farm to the Deanery in a constant stream. Lying in bed with nothing to do, the invalid’s thoughts ran largely upon the clerk. She remembered him standing in the pulpit that Easter Sunday, uttering lovely, if unintelligible words, slim and delicate, the benedictory beam on his flaxen poll; the more she pictured him the more ethereally beautiful did he become. He would make a charming toy.
As soon as she could hobble about she put on her best dress (cherry satin), and, taking the bull by the horns, invited her intended to dinner. She would settle matters without further ado. The young man obeyed the summons with feelings divided between fear and determination; he knew perfectly well what he was in for. Nobody but an utter fool could have mistaken the meaning of the sighs and glances the big widow had thrown when visiting him before her accident. There was no finesse about Teresa. She wanted to marry him, and prudence told him to let her. Two farms and four hundred pounds a year—so rumor had it—the catch of the district and he only a poor clerk. He was sick of poverty—Teresa’s bounty had shown him what it was to live well—and he dreaded returning to the old way of things. Moreover he admired her, she was so bold, so luscious, so darkly handsome, possessed of every physical quality he lacked. But he was afraid of her for all that—if she ever got really angry with him, good Lord!
It took every ounce of determination he owned to drive his feet down the hill to Bosula; twice he stopped and turned to go back. He was a timid young man. His procrastination made him late for dinner. When he reached the farm, the meal had already been served. His hostess was hard at work; she would not have delayed five minutes for King George himself. She had a mutton bone in her hands when the curate entered. She did not notice him for the moment, so engrossed was she, but tore off the last shred of meat, scrunched the bone with her teeth and bit out the marrow. The curate reeled against the door post, emitting an involuntary groan. Teresa glanced up and stared at him, her black eyebrows meeting.
Who was this stranger wabbling about in her doorway, his watery eyes popping out of his podgy face, his fleshy knees knocking together, his dingy coat stretched tightly across his protruding stomach? A lost inn-keeper? A strayed tallow chandler? No, by his cloth he was a clerk. Slowly she recognized him. He was her curate, ecod! Her pretty toy! Her slim, transparent saint developed into this corpulent earthling! Fat, ye Gods! She hurled the bone at his head—which was unreasonable, seeing it was she had fattened him.
The metamorphosed curate turned and bolted out of the house, through the yard and back up the hill for home.
“My God,” he panted as he ran, “biting bones up with her teeth, with her teeth—my God, it might have been me!”
That was the end of that.