The Torch and Other Tales | Page 9

there's
no doubt, though a much younger woman, Mary Cobley had a sort of
feeling for Jane; and there was Milly Boon also--Jane's orphan niece,
who lived along with her and kept house for her. She was a good friend
too.
The adventure began, you may say, when a returned native came back
to Little Silver, and 'twas Mary Cobley's son Jack who did so.
He'd gone to sea when he was fifteen, but kept in touch with his folk
and left the sea and found work in the West Indies and bided there for
five-and-twenty years. And now he came back, brown as a berry and
ugly as need be. At forty you might say Jack Cobley couldn't be beat
for plainness; and yet, after all, I've seen better-looking men that was

uglier, if you understand me, because, though his countenance put you
in mind of an old church gargoyle, yet it was kindly and benevolent in
its hideousness, and he had good, trustful eyes; and, to the thinking
mind, a man's expression matters more than the shape of his mouth or
the cut of his nose.
Jack hadn't much to say about his adventures, for he was a very quiet
man and better liked to list than talk; but he didn't make no splash when
he came back and he was content to settle with his mother and till her
little vegetable patch.
He'd stand a drink at the 'Man and Horse' public-house and, if he felt
himself among friends, he'd open out a bit and tell stories of the land
where he had lived and worked; but he proved to be the retiring sort
and hadn't got anything to say about money. In fact, it didn't seem to be
a subject that interested him over much and there was nothing in his
apparel, or manner of life, or general outlook that seemed to show as
he'd done very well in foreign parts.
So the people came to the natural conclusion that if he'd made any sort
of pile, it was a small one, while some folk went to extremes and
reckoned that Jack had come back to his mother without a bean, and
was content to live on her and share her annuity. Because Mrs. Cobley,
though her husband left little beyond his cottage, which was his own,
took one hundred and fifty pounds per annum for life under the will of
the last lady of the Manor of Little Silver.
Mary had served her ladyship as maid for fifteen years before she took
Cobley, and she was a tower of strength to that important woman and
had come to be generously remembered according.
So Jack was a mystery, in a manner of speaking. He bought himself a
horse, and a good one, and was very fond of riding round about over
the moor and joining in a meet of foxhounds sometimes; but that was
his only pleasure; and his mother, when a woman here and there asked
if her son was minded to wed, would answer that she'd never heard him
unfold his feelings on that matter, and reckoned he'd got no intentions
towards the women.

"He's so much impressed by his own ugliness," Mary Cobley would tell
them, "that he never would rise to the thought of axing a female to take
him; though I tell the man that the better sort of woman ain't prone to
pick a husband, like a bird picks a cherry, for the outside."
Which was true, of course, for modesty might be said to be Jack's
strong suit, and he couldn't abear the thought of inflicting his ugly mug
on a nice young woman, which was the only sort of woman he felt he'd
got any use for.
Then, after he'd been home six months, he found his parent in tears one
night, and she explained the fatal situation that had arose with respect
to her neighbour, Mrs. Pedlar.
"Poor Jane be up against it," she said. "Things have come to a climax in
that quarter at last and, by all accounts, she's got to leave her lifelong
home. And God judge Nicholas Bewes, for he's doing a thing that will
put him on the wrong side of the Books."
Well, Jack had called on Mrs. Pedlar, of course, her being his mother's
friend; but, like most other people, he'd found the poor woman parlous
uninteresting. Her niece, however, was different, for in Milly Boon the
folk granted you could find nought but beauty and good temper, and
remarkable patience for a young woman. She was a lovely piece, with
pretty gold hair and high complexion, and grey, bright eyes. Her mouth
was rose-red and tolerable small, but always ready for a smile, and she
was a slim, active creature, a