Tommy Tregennis. Mary Elizabeth Phillips
to the days when Tommy, and even Tommy’s father, had not yet come into her life.
She was just Ellen in those days; Ellen Pertwee really, but no one seemed to remember that she had a second name more than once a year when it was all written in full in her Sunday School prize. For four years Ellen had been a willing little servant-maid at Tomses the draper’s, but when she was eighteen there was a great change in her life, for she went to the doctor’s as house-parlour-maid, and her wages were twelve pounds a year. She was very hazy at the time as to the meaning of her grand new title; but the money was very real, and she remembered even now how dazzled she was at the thought of so much gold.
With her first month’s wages, ten years ago, she had bought the cloth for her new green coat. It had cost her much deliberation and several sleepless nights, but at last she had gone back to Tomses on her fortnightly night-out, and made the important purchase. Night after night she had cut and shaped and pinned and stitched, much as she was cutting and shaping now. At last the coat was finished (all sewn by hand, too, for Ellen had no machine in those days) and she wore it in Church on her next Sunday out.
It was after Church that very night that Tom Tregennis, much to her surprise, asked her to walk out with him, and——. Well, now the new green coat was the old green coat, and was being made into trousers for little Tommy Tregennis to wear!
CHAPTER III
SO far Draeth is comparatively unknown, for it lies a little off the beaten track and hurrying tourists do not find it easily. The Limited Express does not pull up at Scard, the junction, but hurries on, through beautiful country, from Plymouth to Falmouth without a stop. Visitors to Draeth, therefore, travel by a slower train from Mill Bay and leave the main line at Scard. Here, seizing their own hand-luggage (for the porters, like the express, are limited, and unlike the express are slow), they cross the line by the bridge, and pass along a bit of dusty road, following the direction indicated by a painted hand under which is written “To the Draeth and Scard Branch Railway.”
The independence of the branch line is emphasized by the fact that the Draeth train remains just outside the station until all the passengers are in line upon the platform. It then steams up alongside with much unnecessary fuss. When at last it starts it runs very slowly and the line is single, but as a precaution against possible accidents an iron bar passes across the window of each compartment. Thus, if a traveller wishes to look out at the narrow East Draeth river, at the willows and alders on its banks, and at the clumps of Rose Bay and Willowherb that give rich colour to the line, he rubs his nose on the dusty bar while he knocks his forehead on the window-frame above.
So steep is the gradient from Scard to Draeth that half-way there the train stops, and the engine steams away alone. Returning it is coupled at the rear and now pulls the train backward at first doubling on its track. Those who cannot travel facing the engine change places with those who cannot sit with their backs in the direction in which they are going. By the time these changes are effected the narrow East Draeth river expands into a wide sheet of water if the tide is up, or into a series of mud flats when the tide is low. Five minutes later the train enters what is surely the prettiest of all Cornish stations, and the journey is at an end.
There was a man once who lived in Draeth who made many plans for beautifying and improving the town. He built the Frying Pan Pier, and it was he, too, who opened up the Pentafore Estate. The branch railway also owes its existence to him. He dreamed of a modern sea-front all asphalt and glittering lights, of a grand Hydro, too, which was to front the sea on a commanding bit of cliff-coast less than a mile eastward of the town. But he died and his plans came to naught, and Draeth is still just Draeth!
Beyond the station the East and West rivers join and together run out to sea, dividing East Draeth from West Draeth and forming a safe harbour for the fishing smacks that have safely weathered so many storms. Lately the fishing has been poor in Draeth because the steam-trawlers have driven away the fish, and in winter there is much poverty in the town.
It was dread of the winter that led the Tregennises to give up their three-roomed cottage and move into a house that had eight windows in the front and rose three stories high. The change was made in April so that all might be in readiness for the summer and the visitors the summer brought.
The new home was only a stone’s throw from the old one, and there was much running backwards and forwards between the two houses, much fetching and carrying, until the last moments in the old home came, and nothing remained but to lock the door and give up the key to the landlord. Then Mrs. Tregennis leaned up against the kitchen sink and cried, while Tommy, not in the least understanding why, cried, too.
“Mammy,” he wailed, “Oh, Mammy, what’ve I done to ee?” “Done, ma lamb, done?” Mrs. Tregennis spoke breathlessly between her sobs. “Why, nothin’, ma handsome; you’re just the best little boy as ever I had.”
Then, having wiped Tommy’s eyes and her own with a large red-bordered handkerchief, Mrs. Tregennis ran upstairs for the last time, took one more look at the empty rooms and, with set mouth and without a backward glance, came slowly down the stairs. She took Tommy’s hand in hers, and silently and tearfully mother and son passed through the open door, locked it behind them and crossed the cobble-stone alley to the imposing double-fronted house which was henceforth to be home.
Much more furniture was wanted in the three-storied house than in the forsaken cottage, and for some months past the Tregennis family, Daddy, Mammy and Tommy had attended all the neighbouring sales. They were almost too nervous to bid when the articles they wished to buy were put up for auction; when shame-facedly they had made their nod they were held upon the tenterhooks of despair while some one else, who could not possibly want the goods as much as they did, bid against them and so raised the price.
Now the furnishing was complete. The kitchen and one bedroom held the old things, but in the other four rooms Mrs. Tregennis arranged with pride the bargains collected at the sales, and the new things sent out from a Plymouth shop.
It was all so grand and wonderful that she could scarcely realize that the rooms were her very own. Morning after morning, for many weeks, as soon as she was dressed, she opened the door of the tiny sitting-room on the first floor and looked round almost with awe on its beauty and newness. On tiptoe she then advanced into the room, picked a piece of cotton off the gay Brussels carpet, dusted an imaginary fleck from the green art-serge tablecloth, and stroked out the fringe of the plush mantel-border. Then, having slightly altered the position of one of the velvet upholstered chairs, she passed out with a sigh of contentment, and gently closed the door behind her.
The final act of preparation in the new house was to hang up, in the lower sitting-room window, a long narrow card bearing in gold letters the word “Apartments.” After this the Tregennis family settled down and waited.
June was a blank month for Draeth that year. It was unusually wet and cold, and very few visitors came to the little fishing-town, and none at all to the double-fronted house. Whenever a stranger walked up the alley Mrs. Tregennis’s hopes rose high, but not until July did anyone knock at her door and ask about the price of rooms. Outwardly Mrs. Tregennis was very calm but her inward agitation was great. She displayed her rooms with pride, they were taken, and after that with one party and another she was busy until the end of August.
Early in September, towards the end of the afternoon, she was interrupted in her dressing by the rapping of knuckles on the door. She buttoned her bodice as she came downstairs, shook out her skirts and hurriedly put on an apron before she opened it. “We wondered if you could take us in just for the night,” said the taller of two ladies who stood on the step. “We are on a cycling tour and are going on further to-morrow.”
“Please come in,” said Mrs. Tregennis, and they passed into the downstairs sitting-room, which was just on the left-hand side of the door.
“We’ve tried so many places,” said the lady who had already spoken, “and no one can take us.”