The Dragon in the Cliff

by Sheila Cole

  I was surprised by the casualness with which he had dropped this piece of information. “Where did you see it?” I asked. He told me that he went with Dr. Carpenter to visit the collection of a Mr. South who had taken lodgings in Charmouth in order to collect fossils from the Lias. “There it was, displayed along with all of his other fossils just as if it was rightfully his and not stolen. It is the centerpiece of his collection.”

  “How did Mr. South come to have the jaw?” I asked, wondering if he was the gentlemen that Jim Greengrass had sold it to.

  Henry seemed surprised by my question. “I couldn’t very well inquire if he did not offer the information. That would not be proper. You do not accuse a gentleman of theft.”

  “Asking him where he bought it or found it is not an accusation,” I retorted.

  “But it has that undertone, does it not?” I could see that he was annoyed at me for being insistent. “A gentleman does not need to explain himself, and so I did not ask nor did he offer any information. What does it matter where he bought it? He has it now.”

  I had to admit that he was right. In one sense, Henry’s sense, it did not matter how Mr. South came to have the crocodile jaw; it only mattered that it existed and was available for study. For a moment I felt small for caring. But the more I thought about it, the angrier I became. It did matter, for me at least. The bread on our table is purchased with the money I earn from such finds. Only Henry’s wealth could make him so removed from the cares and thoughts of others and so blind to my situation.

  “It is spectacular,” he continued, not noticing that I had fallen silent. “South says it was not a crocodile, but it was some kind of lizard. The joint between the lower jaw and the skull is different from a crocodile’s.”

  How distant we are. I realized that it would never be the same again, not just because of the talk in town. The differences between us are too great to overcome—he is, after all, an educated young man who has a considerable fortune, and I am penniless, a cabinetmaker’s daughter. But still I am sad, more than sad, desolate. He is the only other person my age I know who cares about the same things I do. Despite our differences, I admire him, I loved him (though it is painful to write it, even now), and consider him a friend, which I always will. Yet feeling as I do, I have separated myself from others and made myself miserable. It is, as I have put down here, all because of the fossils. They have led me into these places, places where I have no business being.

  Unfortunately, wishing things had been different does not make them so. A stain on one’s reputation is not soon erased. My neighbors and the members of our meeting strongly disapproved of my relations with Henry de la Beche and saw them in the worst possible light. They thought I was being wild and willful in refusing to listen to Mama. They were relieved when Henry went away, thinking that I had narrowly escaped ruin. They hoped that with him no longer there to lead me astray, I would eventually come to my senses.

  It is no wonder then that all eyes were on us when Henry and I went out together to Golden Cap that day. Not knowing anything about the change in our relations, our friends and neighbors were certain that we were taking up where we had left off. This time, they decided, if Mama was too weak to stop me, they would. Mrs. Gleed took it upon herself to talk to me.

  I was in my shop, working on a fossil the day after our excursion, when the bell on the door rang. I looked up to see Mrs. Gleed entering the shop. I greeted her, telling her that Mama was not in.

  “I know that she is not in, and that is why I have come now. I do not wish to upset your poor, dear mama. She already has enough to bear. I wish to speak to you alone, Mary,” she said.

  I immediately guessed why she had come, and my face reddened with shame and anger. I tried to gain control of my feelings as I got up from the workbench saying, “Please come upstairs, Mrs. Gleed. It would be more comfortable for us to talk in the house.”

  She refused, saying that she preferred to remain where she was.

  I offered her a stool to sit on.

  “Trying to be polite now will not deter me, Mary,” she said, placing herself at the end of my workbench and staring at me with eyes like daggers. “What I have to say to you can be said standing; I do not wish to spend much time in the company of a girl whose honor is in question.”

  Though I had expected Mrs. Gleed to scold me, I was not prepared for so direct an attack. “My honor? What, what …?” I stammered.

  “Your honor, Mary. Your behavior has given others cause to talk.”

  “But I have done nothing wrong,” I began, in an attempt to defend myself.

  She cut me off, “Giving others cause to talk is wrong. Your behavior is unseemly. You have been observed walking on the beach alone with young de la Beche. You have been with him many times. Your mama tried to talk to you, but you would not listen. You tried to hide behind the curiosities. You even had your mama convinced that you were no longer seeing him. But I have it on good authority that you continued to meet him on the beach in secluded places until he went to London.”

  “We did nothing wrong. We were hunting curiosities,” I said. “He pays me for what we find. It is my livelihood.”

  She sniffed. “Is that what he pays you for, miss?”

  “You know that is so!” I cried out. “How could you even suggest otherwise?”

  “You dare to ask me how I can say such a thing? Look to your own conduct. It is your behavior that leads me and others to think such things. If you had not given us cause, there would be no such talk. You are being wicked and willful just as I warned your mother you would be if you were not curbed. And your poor mother has not been up to the task of breaking your will. So it falls on others to do it for her,” she said with a sigh.

  I had disliked Mrs. Gleed since the day she had come to talk to Mama about sending me to the chapel school. Now her self-righteous sigh made me defiant. “Did you talk to Mama? Did Mama ask you to talk to me?” I demanded, the tears running down my cheeks. “Her food is bought with the money de la Beche and others like him pay me.”

  Mrs. Gleed continued without answering me. “I am speaking on behalf of our meeting and those who care for your mother and the memory of your father. On their behalf I am warning you. You are bringing shame down upon your family. You must no longer see this young gentleman. It is for your own good that I am telling you this, Mary.”

  My eyes held hers as I struggled to regain my self-control. “You are telling me for my own good what others say. What do they know about hunting curiosities or of making a living doing so? Nothing! They know nothing of what I do, except to talk maliciously about it and about me. It is not fair! They would be happy to see me fail, to see us thrown upon the parish. I tell you that I did nothing wrong in going curiosity hunting with Mr. de la Beche.”

  “It is not a pleasant task to come here to reason with you, miss,” she said, returning my gaze. “I might just as easily let you slide into sin if it were not for your mama and her good name. If you do not want to be shunned by your friends and neighbors you must no longer be seen with him.”

  “But what of my livelihood? I am paid to take him curiosity hunting. Am I to stop earning a living just because of some idle talk?” I demanded angrily. And then, realizing that my anger would only make things worse, I softened. “We did nothing wrong, I tell you. Nothing!”

  “I can see there is no talking to you, miss,” she snapped. “You are determined to continue being willful and wicked and will not repent. But do not say that you have not been warned.” With that, she turned on her heel, and picking her way through the clutter of the shop with exaggerated care, she opened the door and left.

  For a fleeting instant I thought, It isn’t fair to punish me so, not now, not after he is lost to me. Perhaps I should have confessed to Mrs. Gleed that things had changed between Henry and me. Our relations were now purely professional. She could be assured that nothing unseemly would ever happen between us. But immediately I rejected the thought, knowing that such a c
onfession would not have helped me. I was glad that I had not stooped so low. Mrs. Gleed would not have believed me no matter what I said. She was determined in her bad opinion of me as long as I went fossil hunting.

  It was with some bitterness that I realized that I would never be accepted by our neighbors and belong among them unless I gave up the curiosities altogether. I wish I could give them up. I wish I had never laid eyes on them. I wish Papa had listened to Mama when she objected to my going with him. Then I would be like Lizzie, like the others, and life would be simple and clear.

  A DEMEANING FIRST MEETING

  Other things happened to make me think that I have taken a wrong turn and am lost in a lonely wilderness from which I must find a way out.

  When I was out with Mr. Johnson, who comes from Bristol to Lyme to collect every year, I found a paddle that I thought belonged to the crocodile. If it does indeed belong to the crocodile (which it seems to), it is one more piece of evidence that the fossil differed from modern-day crocodiles, which do not have paddles for swimming, but legs. My find attracted the attention of many people, including the Reverend Buckland, who was in Lyme to collect fossils for Oxford University. I am told that he has started to give lectures there on geology.

  The Reverend Buckland stopped by the shop when I was out, leaving a message asking me to send all the pieces of the crocodile I have in my possession to his lodgings early the next morning for examination. I found it an odd and inconvenient request. But since he is a collector and collectors are my best customers, I did my best to comply.

  When I arrived at his lodgings on Broad Street, I and the boy who was helping me were admitted by a girl about my age who, upon seeing the box of fossils, grumbled, “More bones. How am I supposed to keep his room tidy? He hasn’t even enough room left to turn around in.”

  I realized that I was not the first fossilist to visit the Reverend Buckland. I was curious about what the others had brought and whether they had anything as interesting as I had.

  She led me up the stairs to a dark hallway with a closed door at the end. “Wait here,” she ordered, and turned around and went back downstairs. She came back several minutes later carrying a breakfast tray that she took into the room, still leaving me and the boy standing outside in the dark hallway holding the heavy box of fossils. Through the closed door I heard the tinkle of china as the table was laid. Then there was silence, which was suddenly shattered by a shout, “Idiot! I told you to send her up immediately.” The door opened, and the girl stuck her head out into the hall and said, “He wants to see you.”

  Taking the box of fossils from the boy, I entered a large room with floor-to-ceiling windows at one end. The Reverend Buckland, a big, balding man, was sitting at the breakfast table with a napkin tucked into his shirt front like a bib. He said, “Mary.” I nodded my head in his direction, that being the best I could do with the box of fossils in my hands. He did not get up, nor did he introduce himself. He lifted his coffee cup to his lips and eyed me over the rim as he drank. He put his cup down and asked, “Have you brought the paddle along?”

  I told him that I no longer had it, Mr. Johnson did. “He was with me when it was found, and he paid me for it,” I explained.

  “Oh, I see,” the Reverend Buckland said, and I could see that he was disappointed. Reaching for a bun, he asked, “Are you the one who collects the fossils?”

  “Yes, sir,” I replied.

  He stopped and peered at me from under his brows. “A young girl like you on the beach and out on those ledges?”

  Again I responded affirmatively, and he continued questioning me. He asked how I find fossils and how I extract them from the surrounding rock. He wanted to know whether it is I who clean and develop them or if someone else does it for me. It was evident that he found it surprising that I did these things. As little as a year ago I would have been delighted by his questions and his surprise at finding a female fossilist. Now his surprise made me feel as if I was doing something not only unexpected, but odd and strange—as if I was peculiar.

  Having satisfied himself that I actually am a fossilist, he asked if I took people out on fossil-hunting expeditions. I told him that I did, and he said, “Well then, I shall have to go fossil hunting with you soon. It seems that is the only way to obtain the things I wish to collect.”

  “At your convenience, sir,” I replied.

  Finally, he noticed the very heavy box I had been struggling with all the while and asked what I brought. When I told him that they were crocodile bones, he corrected me and told me that it was not a crocodile, but some other creature whose nature was being determined by scientists. I knew this, of course, but called the fossil a crocodile for want of a better name. But I did not say anything. I could see that he believed that I did not know anything about the fossils except how to obtain them.

  He got up from the table, eager to see what I had. I looked for some place to put the box so that I could take the bones out, but every place I looked was littered with rocks, fossils, books, letters, newspapers, silver tea things, muffins, rolls, butter, jam, papers, bags of dirt, and every other thing imaginable. I could see why the girl complained when she saw my box. The only clear space was a patch of the floor and I bent down and put the box there. The Reverend Buckland was immediately down on his hands and knees beside the box. He examined the bones carefully, especially the vertebrae and ribs, turning them over and over, but saying little, except “By Jove, wait till I write to Home about this,” or “What an idiot the man is!” which I could not make sense of. I did not yet know what he was going to write to Home or even who Home was.

  Having made a preliminary examination of the bones, Buckland got to his feet, brushed off his trousers, and asked if he might keep the fossils for a while.

  I said, “Yes, of course you may, sir,” though he had not made an offer to buy the bones. While he had them I could not sell them to anyone else.

  Walking home afterward I regretted allowing the Reverend Buckland to keep the bones. I wished I had let him know that I was not the simple girl he thought I was. I wished I had been able to show him that I knew a thing or two about fossils. In other words, I wished that I had not been as silent, submissive, and subservient as I had been. Not because I wanted him to think better of me. I know people like him do not have it in them to give people of the lower classes their due. We are all little more than beasts placed on earth to serve the likes of him, or so they often seem to think. No, it is not that I wanted him to think better of me, but that I did not want him to make me feel as if I am what he thinks I am and nothing more. I am not just a hunting guide, a pointer who discovers fossils, instead of pheasants.

  OTHERS GET THE CREDIT

  A few days after my call on the Reverend Buckland, Miss Philpot dropped by the shop with the news that there was a description of the crocodile in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society by a Sir Everard Home. “I have only just heard about it from Dr. Carpenter, who says that Buckland told him about it,” she told me excitedly. “He says that Buckland told him that Sir Home is a comparative anatomist, just the kind of man we have been hoping would get his hands on the fossil. Now we can find out for certain what kind of animal it was.”

  Pulling out a stool and sitting down at the workbench, Miss Philpot continued, “Dr. Carpenter told me that Buckland has a copy of the paper, which he promised to lend him as soon as he is finished with it. Dr. Carpenter said that as soon as he has read it and passed it around among the other geological gentlemen of Lyme, he plans to have a little party so that they can discuss what this Sir Home wrote.”

  “Please tell me what they say, Miss Philpot,” I said. “I am most eager to know everything.”

  “I would, dear, but I cannot. I have not been invited; it will only be gentlemen, so we shall both have to depend on Dr. Carpenter’s report.”

  I was about to protest that she knew more about the crocodile than the other gentlemen, but before I could, she explained, “Dr. Carpenter
says that if he invited the ladies it would change the nature of the discussion because they do not understand science, with the exception of me, of course. But, I can well see that he cannot invite me and no other ladies, so it will be gentlemen only.”

  “And you are to be excluded,” I remarked, thinking it natural that I be excluded from such company.

  “Yes, yes,” she said with a smile. “But, Mary, my dear, I do not intend to remain ignorant, I promise you that. I will obtain a copy of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and when I do you shall see it.”

  Miss Philpot was as good as her word. A week or so later she stopped by the shop with the volume in hand. “How did you manage to get your hands on it?” I asked, eyeing it hungrily.

  She laughed. “Simple, everything is simple when you have something others want. The Reverend Buckland has heard that I have interesting fossils in my cabinet. He was eager to see them. I told Dr. Carpenter to tell Buckland that he could come and spend as long as he liked examining my collection if I could borrow his copy of the Transactions. He came with the copy. I must say I think that the Reverend Buckland got the better part of the deal. I am somewhat disappointed. This Home fellow …” She sighed. “I do not know what to say. I think it’s better for you to read and form your own opinion.”

  I began reading “Some account of the fossil remains of an animal more nearly allied to Fishes than any of the other classes of animals” as soon as the door closed behind Miss Philpot. I turned first to look at the beautifully done engravings of the fossil. After examining them carefully I turned to the text, which begins with the statement,

  “The study of comparative anatomy is not confined to the animals that at present inhabit the earth, but extends to the remains of such as existed in the most remote periods of antiquity; among these may be classed the specimen which forms the subject of the present Paper.”

  It seems that this Sir Home believes that the crocodile, as we have been calling it, is extinct. He states this simply as if it is evident to all reasonable people.