The Torch and Other Tales | Page 9

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 towser for work, yet full of the joy of life and ready enough for a mite of pleasure if it came her way.
A good few courted her, but she had no eye for 'em, though civil to all; but now a desperate man was in the market, and he showed such a lot of determination over her and was so cruel set upon Milly that folk said he'd be bound to have his way--and why not?
'Twas Farmer Bewes--his son Richard--who wanted afore all else to have Milly to wife, and it looked right and reasonable, because he was the handsomest man in Little Silver, or ten miles round for that