So far things had gone nicely, but so soon as the granite had been hewn into orthodox shape troubles began. It was over the wording of the inscription that the quarrel arose. “Under this stone lies the body of William Cobbledick,” was a sufficient opening; but a difficulty occurred over the spelling. Eastaway declared stone should be spelt stune. Willum, whose opinion on such matters was usually final, amended it to stoane. While the man who had hewn it took his oath the word should be spelt starne. A search in the churchyard brought no enlightenment, as all the memorials there commenced with the words “Sacred to the memory of.” Willum appealed to his guide-book, and finally announced that, although stoane was undoubtedly the usual form, there was sufficient authority to justify the use of the older and practically obsolete rendering, stone. He recommended its adoption in this instance as being shorter and thus cheaper.
The next stumbling-block was the word William. Eastaway was for spelling it in the orthodox form, but when this was explained to Ann her wrath was great.
“He warn’t Willyam,” she cried at the stone-merchant. “He wur Willum. He wur born Willum, and he died Willum, and he be Willum in heaven. His father’s name wur Willum, and my son be Willum, and his son’ll be Willum. If I’d called my man Willyam he wouldn’t have answered.”
Willum the scholar corroborated, and Eastaway had to give way.
The worthy Cobbledick having been curtly dismissed, the monosyllable Ann was cut large and deep upon the stone, for the admiration of posterity in general and the living lady in particular. At this point Eastaway was given an idea by meeting a brother stone-merchant who made a speciality of head-stones. This man suggested that the line following should run, “Relict of the above.” Eastaway communicated the idea to the party interested; and Mrs. Cobbledick went at once in search of Willum.
“I be a relic o’ father, old dear,” she announced.
“So be I,” said Willum, seeing that he was expected to say something, and speaking more truly than he was aware of.
“What du it mean?” asked the widow.
The scholar looked profound. He was leaning as usual against a wall, smoking industriously.
“I’ll tell ye presently. It wants thinking over,” he said.
The widow went to milk her cow, and Willum sauntered to the Vicarage. He interviewed “old Y.” with satisfactory results, and in due course returned to his angle in the wall.
“It be a thing kept in a box,” he began vaguely, when his mother reminded him of his promise.
“What sort of thing?” Ann demanded.
“Something holy kept in a box, and worshipped by folk what believe in idols,” Willum went on, struggling to recall detached fragments of the Vicar’s halting phrases. “Kept in a golden box sometimes, and they call it a bit of an apostle,” he said eloquently. “They don’t know really if it be or bain’t, but they worships it all the same. They kneels down and worships it.”
A little more conversation convinced mother and son that Eastaway had been trying to make game of them; so they went off and told him what they thought of his conduct. It was useless for the poor man to protest his innocence. Ann declared he was “agin her ’cause o’ the butter,” and stated that the village would never have been discovered by visitors had it not been for the intellectual attainments of her son.
After this a deadlock was reached. Eastaway flatly declined to record Ann’s fame as a butter-maker upon the stone, and the widow in return refused to pay for work done. As a matter of fact it had never been her intention to pay for it. She argued it was absurd to pay for anything which could be of no use to her during her lifetime. She thought it quite probable that Willum would be too poor to pay for it after her decease; but, seeing that it had been spoilt for any other purpose, she reckoned upon Eastaway making her a present of it when she was upon her deathbed.
The tombstone controversy was then in its fourth year. The granite-merchant would not part with it, and Ann resolutely refused to pay for it. Had it been possible to purloin the slab Ann would have done so long ago. As matters were she was content to say, “Let ’en bide.”
“I want my breakfast,” cried Beatrice. “I feel perfectly hollow. What’s the time, Mrs. Cobbledick?”
“Willum knows,” said the widow, who was quite unable to read clock or watch for herself.
Before the scholar could collect his wits sufficiently to answer, the postman rode up with the letters. There were none for Beatrice. She received those for her aunt, and ran indoors with them.
“Willum,” said the widow, directly the girl had disappeared. “She wur with Mr. Burrough last night.”
“I knows. I saw ’en,” said the scholar.
“They wur walking in the lane, and ’twas dark,” the old gossip went on. “And she hadn’t got no hat on.”
This partial nudity on Beatrice’s part caused them to shake their heads violently.
“She came back alone,” Ann went on. “She wur out o’ breath and hurrying. Why didn’t he come back wi’ her, if all was honest? Did ye hear anything, old dear?”
“I heard ’en laugh,” said the scholar gloomily.
“Did ye hear any kissing?” Ann whispered. “But there! Ye be such an old innocent ye wouldn’t know if ye did hear any.”
“I wouldn’t say what I heard,” said Willum darkly.
That was what Ann wanted. The scandal was established. Burrough had stumbled at last, and the widow felt she would be perfectly justified in assuring the villagers that Beatrice had passed the evening alone with him in his cottage. She decided there would be just time to run down, and tell the post-mistress, before getting the breakfast ready.
Burrough reached the secret nook early. He proceeded in his methodical manner to make the place tidy, just as he would have tidied a room. He hid the sheep’s carcase beneath the bracken; he dusted the granite arm-chair; he cleared away the cigarette-ends and half-burnt matches. Then he made a little causeway of stones along the edge of the bog. This was for Beatrice to walk upon. He could not bear the idea of those little shoes being made muddy.
His next move was to the kitchen, a heap of rocks which no doubt had been once upon a time the abode of some Dartmoor freeholder. The original hearth had disappeared; but four stones made an excellent substitute. In the space thus enclosed Burrough placed some dry gorse, a few sticks, and some scraps of peat. His spirits rose as he worked. There was a wild charm in this outdoor life. He began to whistle; and finally burst into song—
“O, she is dead and gone!
She’s dead and gone!
And at her head a green grass turf,
And at her heels a stone.”
This was a pill to purge melancholy; for there is a joy in feigning sadness when one is happy. Burrough flung another piece of peat on the hearthstone, and went on singing—
“And will she ne’er come again?
Will she ne’er come again?
Ah, no, she’s dead, and laid in her grave,
For ever to remain.”
“Not she,” laughed a voice.
Burrough started from his knees. There was Beatrice on the top of an ivy-clad boulder, with a little basket upon her arm.
“Here’s the stone at my heels,” she cried, dancing lightly upon it. “But I’m still uppermost.”
“How did you come?” asked Burrough.
“On these,” said Beatrice, drawing back her short skirts and showing him the tiniest feet in the west country.
“But how did you cross the bog? I never saw you—never heard you. Have you dropped out of heaven?”
“Out of the sun, I do assure you,” she laughed. “Why, I came my usual way, and whistling all the time; but you were so busy chanting dirges you did not hear.”
“Your shoes are quite clean.”
“So are my hands. Look.”
“But there’s no way here except through the bog.”
“There is. Come and see. First of all put my basket in the larder.”
Beatrice jumped down and led the way beside the river. At the bend she dived into a hole among the rocks, and pointed out to Burrough a strip of firm ground, which, she declared, wound away among the furze-bushes to a line of rocks, by means of which the bog could be circumvented dry-shod.
“It’s a roundabout way, and nobody knows it except me,” she said. “I found it out when I was about two feet high. I came here with my sister—she’s in heaven now, poor dear!—and we were looking for the osmunda. We found thickets. I think there were more then than there are now. We used to dig up the little ones, but the roots of the big ones go down to New Zealand. We used to take them home and sell them to friends at one shilling each, and have a spree with the money. We were only kids, you know. How did you get to know of the place?”
“I found it by chance,” Burrough said. “I waded up the river one afternoon, trying to get a maidenhair fern which I saw growing in a cleft. When I landed I found myself here.”
“How did you escape?”
“I crossed the rocks and found some stones at the narrowest part of the bog. Beyond are some tussocks, which are firm, though they don’t look it. The rest of the bog will bear my weight to the foot of the hill.”
“That’s a dirty way,” cried Beatrice. “Never mind; show it me. I’ve shown you mine. We must name these crossings,” she rattled on, as they worked their way to the other end of the secret nook. “I shall call mine—what?”
“Queensway,” Burrough suggested, flushing a little.
“And yours Kingsway? Too high-flown. Let’s have something ridiculous. Go on; you’ve got brains.”
Burrough’s brains were fully occupied just then. They were entangled in the web of Beatrice’s dark-brown hair. Humbly he prayed her to be sponsor of their kingdom by the river. Immediately she was filled with suggestions and strange words.
“Then I shall call my path the Apron String,” she said. “It’s not my own invention, as there’s a neck of stones near Kynance Cove called that. The path is like a string, and it connects this corner with the apron, which is the firm ground beyond the bog. And your path—but where is it?”
“There,” said Burrough, pointing to a couple of partly submerged stones at the edge of the vivid-green bog. “Those are the grass tussocks, and that bed of scarlet moss will bear, though it quakes horribly.”
“My shoes and stockings!” Beatrice exclaimed; “what a slushy way! I should have nigger feet after going through that.”
“It’s not nearly so bad as it looks,” said Burrough, encouragingly.
“I won’t try it,” said Beatrice, decidedly. “I won’t make casts of my feet in mud-of-Dartmoor. But what shall we call this? It must be some slippery-slushing-sliding-soozling sort of name. I know! We’ll call it Skelywidden.”
“Now for the hut circle, the devil’s kitchen, and tea!” said Burrough.
“There’s this lovely little place,” she murmured, “known only to you and me. It’s ours—entirely ours.”
“Yours by right of discovery,” Burrough reminded her.
“Yours by annexation,” she said. “The Prince of Wales would claim it as Duke of Cornwall if he knew of it; but he shan’t have it, not if he comes with twenty thousand men. We’d know the reason why! I would hold the Apron String, and you would stand at bay upon Skelywidden. We would die for our country, wouldn’t we?”
She laughed merrily at her nonsense, and Burrough lost his reserve and laughed too.
“Well, it must have a name,” Beatrice declared. “A really nice name; something that would look pretty upon a map. It’s your turn to suggest something.”
“New Paradise,” Burrough suggested, somewhat lamely; and, in reply to her wondering glance, added boldly, “the vision of Danté—Beatrice.”
“Danté went to hell,” replied the girl. “I’m not a ghostly Beatrice, and I won’t have the place called Paradise, new or old. You can’t talk about Paradise without thinking of purgatory and getting shivers. Also, it’s too personal. Likewise, as you ought to know, Paradise is only used as a name for the very slummiest of slums. Now what do you say to Half-and-half Corner? Yours and mine, you know.”
“Too long,” he objected. “What do you say to Ourland?”
“Nuffin’,” lisped Beatrice, “except that it would be another injustice to poor old Oireland.”
“Then I have done,” said Burrough.
“I haven’t,” she cried. “You’re not a bit of good as a godfather. There’s a place in my native country called Blisland. It was once Blastland, which sounds sweary. I think Blisland is rather a pretty name.”
“With one ‘s’?” he asked.
“Only one there,” she said.
“We will have two here.”
“Now let’s go into the hut circle and be prehistoric people,” laughed Beatrice.
They scrambled over the rocks, and Beatrice, diving into the kitchen, began to arrange the fire, chatting frivolously all the time.
“Gugh! it’s clamp and dammy down here, and this is a silly little half-bred fireplace. Have you forgotten the matches? My s’ars—if you have! What did they do for matches when they were prehistoric? Never let the fire go out, of course. But what a business! Fancy getting up in the middle of the night! ‘My dear, you must, or the fire will go out.’ And they couldn’t go away for a week-end because of their precious fire. Where are the devil’s kettle and pans? Mr. Burrough, there’s no water in the devil’s kettle.”
“I believe it is my kettle,” said the young man gravely.
“Not now,” cried Beatrice. “This is the devil’s kitchen. People are so fond of the dear old devil. They name everything after him. They say God made the country, but they make the devil its patron. I expect they think it’s just as well to propitiate him. I wish I had the devil’s bellows, as this fire won’t burn. Oh, Tregony and Tregolls!”
“Anything the matter?” called Burrough, peering through the smoke.
“I’ve cremated myself,” wailed Beatrice. “Get an urn quick, and put me in. I shall soon be a pinch of dust, and you can use me for snuff or plate-powder. However did they live here in the days of Adam—he, she, baby, and fireplace? She would not have been bothered with frock and frills—lucky girl.”
Burrough had stooped to enter the hut circle, but dared not. He would have been too close to Beatrice, and he knew he could not trust himself. If they had bent together over the fire, their hands touching, that maddening little face close to his—it might become the devil’s kitchen indeed.”
“I believe I’m out of danger,” she sang out. “But half-a-yard of lace has gone to heaven. I hope I didn’t startle you. When I swear I always use Cornish names. They sound nicer than the usual swear-words, and you can make them mean just the same. This is a rotten fire-place. I think you had better come and be prehistoric instead of me.”
With that she came forth, sucking a scorched finger in a distracting manner, so that Burrough very wisely diverted his eyes, and began to collect bits of dry gorse. Then he descended to the hearthstone, while Beatrice lolled in the granite arm-chair and made frivolous remarks.
“They will think we are swaling,” she cried cheerily, when Burrough’s labours became rewarded by smoke and flame. “We shall be dragged before the Stannary Court upon Crockern Tor, for burning the moor in summer, and thrown into Lydford dungeon. Why did they throw people into prison? They might just as well have put them in gently. This is our own territory, so we can do what we like. Are you listening there below? If so, what is your name?”
“John,” replied a nervous voice out of the smoke.
“King John! Then we must have a Magna Charta. You must go upon the island and sign it. There is to be no tyranny in Blissland. If you try it I will appeal to the Pope. By the way, how do you write to the Pope? I should begin, ‘My dear Pope, I hope you are well. How are your gardens looking? I should love to see them, but I suppose if I come I should have to kneel and kiss your big toe, and really I couldn’t do that. What an idea!’ she rattled on; ‘expecting a girl to kiss an old man’s big toe.’ Don’t you think we ought to build a palace? I am sure we could do it. Firstly, we should dig a hole; secondly put a stone in, then another on top, and another on top of that; thirdly, make two holes, one for door, and another for window; and to conclude put the roof on. It would be quite easy.”
“The theory of palace-building is simplicity itself,” Burrough agreed. “The decoration of the interior, and the furnishing of the same, present difficulties.”
“Which appear insurmountable,” added Beatrice precisely. “Now we are two dictionaries. As for decoration we should stick ferns about, and cover the floor with bracken. As for furniture that is a needless luxury. I could furnish the place quite nicely with a few slabs of granite and some bundles of heather.”
“Slabs of granite,” repeated Burrough wonderingly. “For beds?” he asked innocently.
“No,” she said crossly. “Chairs and tables, of course. Then we should have slaves. It’s no use having a kingdom if you don’t keep slaves. When anything went wrong we should cut their heads off. The kettle is spitting! Quick! And I haven’t put out the devil’s cups and saucers. And where, oh, where, is the devil’s teapot?”
Burrough rushed to the kitchen, and brought out the kettle, bubbling and seething.
“We don’t want a teapot,” he explained. “We just shovel the tea into the kettle.”
“Gugh! how messy!” said Beatrice. “What a mad tea-party. I think,” she went on sweetly, “one pound of tea would be quite enough.”
“I have put in rather a lot,” said Burrough. “I like it strong.”
“It would appear so. I will prescribe for myself, thank you. One part essence of tea to twenty parts water. Add milk and sugar, and stir thoroughly. The mixture to be served hot.”
“I have forgotten the sugar,” said Burrough penitently. “I do not take it myself. I am exceedingly sorry.”
“I must curse you,” said Beatrice. “It is very sad, but I must. You shall have a nightmare, and be beaten with sugar-canes, and suffocated beneath a mountain of brown Demerara. Now don’t say sugar is unnecessary in my case. I can see you are going to; but it is very necessary. I feel a wild longing to have my system impregnated with it. I want to lie down and roll in it.”
Burrough persuaded her to taste the tea, and see how much nicer it was without sugar. She did so, and made a wry face; declared it was like medicine; that she would as soon drink vinegar; that it set her teeth on edge and made her miserable. Then she forgot her troubles, and turned out the contents of her basket.
“If I were a dishonest person I would say I made this saffron cake,” she rattled on. “Being as clear as the noon-day, I will own that Auntie was the architect. Auntie is very Cornish. Her pasties are works of art and her saffron cakes are symphonies. Her dutiful niece does not take after her much. When she tries to make saffron cake it’s as likely as not that a Christmas plum-pudding is the result.”
The sun had worked its way round the precipice of bog, and as the girl finished speaking a long ray flashed into Blissland and made a glory of her dark-brown head.
“How long are you staying here?” Burrough asked suddenly.
“Until I have eaten some more bread-and-butter, two pixy cakes, and smoked one cigarette,” said she.
“I mean in the village—in Lew,” he went on, with an earnestness he could not conceal.
“Ages I expect. Until the bracken turns golden. We shall go with the swallows. When you see Auntie and me on the wall beside Mrs. Cobbledick’s, twittering and arranging our feathers, you will know we are about to fly away. Don’t you find it dreary here in the winter?”
“It is,” he said, with more emphasis than he intended.
“Mud and mist?” she suggested.
“Silence and desolation,” he continued.
“Why do you… ?” she asked, with a slight hesitation, regarding him for the first time with some seriousness.
“Because I must,” he answered, looking down. “I cannot keep in good health anywhere else.”
“Never mind,” said Beatrice sweetly. “If you live here a little longer you will get strong enough to live anywhere. The villagers here would live as long as they liked if they didn’t drink so. How do you pass the evenings in winter?”
“Thinking, smoking, dreaming,” he answered with a smile.
“Always alone?”
“With Peter, my cat.”
“And you talk to Peter?”
“I tell him everything.”
Beatrice hummed softly. Then she settled herself snugly in the granite chair, and begged a cigarette. When it was lighted, she said, in child-like tones, “Please tell me a story.”
Burrough hesitated. He felt he was approaching dangerous ground.
“Go on,” she said impatiently. “A fairy-story.”
“You know them all,” he said. “You are a Cornish girl.”
“Tell me something new, pretty, and a wee bit sentimental, while I’m serious,” she commanded.
Thus adjured Burrough commenced—
“Once upon a time there was a princess, who was so beautiful that it was considered there was no man in the world worthy to be her husband——”
“Did she think so herself?”
“I do not know,” he answered. “She was a Cornish princess, and therefore she could not help being beautiful.”
“Skip all that, and come to her best boy,” said Beatrice, with signs of returning frivolity.
“She had three lovers, all kings, of course,” Burrough went on. “There was the king of Biggletubben, who was very rich; the king of Amalebria, who was very learned; and the king of Trevalyor, who was neither rich nor powerful, and his kingdom was very small and very poor.”
“So she told him to run away home, and promised to send him a picture post-card at Christmas,” said irreverent Beatrice.
“She couldn’t do that. He might have declared war upon her,” Burrough went on. Trevalyor was not a Cornish prince. His kingdom was in Devonshire, and it was poor, because it consisted of rocks and bogs.”
Beatrice hummed again. “I must be careful what I say about the king of Trevalyor,” she thought.
“The king of Biggletubben promised the princess all the finest jewels in the world, and everything else that her heart could desire. The king of Amalebria promised to make posterity remember her by writing a poem upon her beauty. But the king of Trevalyor could do nothing, except love her passionately.”
“Didn’t the others love her?”
“Yes, in their way. But one was so wrapped up in his wealth, and the other in his learning, that it was impossible for them to love her whole-heartedly, as the king of Trevalyor did. He could think of nothing else but the princess, and his only desire was to devote himself and his whole life to her and to her happiness.”
“Well,” said Beatrice, with a fine colour. “Which of them did she take?”
“The princess could not make up her mind. She thought she would like the king of Biggletubben’s wealth, but she did not like him, because he was fat and ugly. The king of Amalebria was pale and serious, and there were deep lines of thought beneath his eyes. As for the king of Trevalyor, his kingdom was a poor and miserable one, and his palace was not much better than a hovel, and it stood right in the middle of a bog.”
“She ought to have chucked the lot and advertised,” commented the flippant voice.
“She went to see a white witch, and the witch told her if she would go to Cranmere pool and drink a little of the water, saying aloud three times the name of the king she desired to marry, she would find herself at once in love with that king, even if he were fat and ugly, like the king of Biggletubben.”
“I don’t see why the witch should have sent her to Dartmoor,” Beatrice objected, “and to Cranmere. What a beast of a witch!”
“She went,” Burrough continued. “And on the way she stopped to visit the king of Trevalyor. His kingdom was quite near Cranmere, and she had tea with him.”
“And he forgot the sugar,” murmured Beatrice to herself.
“He was the last of the three kings that she saw, and she went on to Cranmere thinking of him, and remembering the love in his eyes. She reached the pool, and gathered up some of the water in her hand.”
“I know it: Dirty slimy stuff, full of wriggling black things.”
“There she stood, making up her mind. She had only to say three times the name of King Biggletubben to be in love with him—ugliness, obesity, little pig’s eyes, and all.”
“Did she?” cried Beatrice eagerly. “Did she go in for the diamonds?”
“Unfortunately the end of the story has not come down to us,” Burrough answered. “You see it was written upon a calf-skin during the reign of King Arthur. One day the king wanted a strip of hide to fasten the Virginian creeper against the wall of his palace, so he cut off the bottom of the calf-skin. It was the part which contained the end of the story. After that nobody knew how it ended, or whether the Cornish princess chose the king of Biggletubben.”
“I ’spect she did,” Beatrice murmured. “You see, she would have been in love with him after drinking the water of Cranmere, and though I dare say the king of Trevalyor was very nice, he had only a rotten little kingdom. After a year with him she would have grown very tired of canvas petticoats and hob-nailed boots. Biggletubben would have given her silks and laces, muslins, and purple, and fine linen, and she needn’t have broken it off altogether with Trevalyor. She could have dropped him a line now and again, ‘Meet me in the middle of your kingdom, and we’ll have tea again.’ Just a platonic tea-party, of course.”
“That would not have suited Trevalyor,” Burrough said.
“Of course not. He would have wanted to live happily with her ever afterwards. But he would have to be thankful for small mercies. Do you know what I should have said to Trevalyor? I should have said, make war upon Biggletubben and Amalebria. If you can conquer them, you will have their kingdoms, and then you will be rich and powerful. If they conquer you, well—you haven’t much to lose.”
“There was no chance,” said Burrough gloomily. “Trevalyor had no means and no influence. He could not even restore his palace, and there was nothing to be had out of his boggy kingdom.”
“Then he didn’t marry no Cornish princesses,” said Beatrice. “He had to put up with Molly, the milkmaid. She wouldn’t have objected to canvas petticoats and hob-nailed boots.”
“Perhaps they didn’t wear boots,” Burrough suggested.
“My s’ars!” cried Beatrice. “No tan shoes? What horny tootsies the poor girls must have had! No use tickling their soles. They would never have felt it. And how their feet must have spread! What an age to live in: Fancy cutting a hole in the bottom of a sack, popping your head through, and saying, ‘Now I’m dressed for dinner!’ ”
“Perhaps the end of the story will be discovered some day,” Burrough went on. “The strip of hide, which Arthur used to nail up the Virginian creeper, may be found in the ruins of Tintagel, and then we shall know. It is quite possible that the princess did become the queen of Trevalyor after all.”
Beatrice had no reply to this; but the rose-colour came into her cheek again.
“Don’t you think it was possible?” he urged.
“Trewidden, Trewinnard, Trewint!” Beatrice hooted saucily.
It was time to go. A shadow was creeping across Blissland, and the clouds were beginning to blush above Yes Tor. The girl packed every little bit of paper into her basket, with a wicked glance at her companion, as though she would say, “Who is the sinner now?” Burrough extinguished the glowing peat in the devil’s kitchen. He plucked a handful of asphodel, and spread it over the loose paper in the basket. Beatrice smiled and nodded. Then his heart bounded. She had taken a sprig and fastened it to her waist. As they walked on Burrough felt something upon his left side, clawing and struggling, like a bird trying to escape. How much more lovely she was, he thought, wearing the river asphodel than the pale and sickly syringa.
Yet she was not lovely, not even pretty, as beauty goes. Only distracting. Mere beauty Burrough would have gazed at delightedly. It was torment to gaze upon Beatrice, and not touch her. Beauty appeals to the eye. Beatrice appealed to the five senses. He followed her, placing his feet where her tiny shoes had pressed. Once she slipped back upon him. She recovered first, and hurried on. They returned by way of the Apron String.
“We never visited the island,” she said, as they came up the hill.
“We will—the next time,” Burrough replied. “When will that be? I won’t forget the sugar.”
“I shall bring a pocketful. The next time: Oh, I shall be there next Furry-day.”
“Friday?” he queried.
“No, the eighth day of the week—Furry-day.”
“I know,” he said. “That is the Cornish feur—the Floralia, the survival of the Roman occupation. Don’t they dance hand-in-hand through the streets, carrying branches and flowers?”
“Yes. I’ve danced too, and I can sing the Furry-tune,” Beatrice gasped; for the hill was very steep.
“But it may be any day,” he said appealingly.
“It may,” she replied pitilessly, “any day of the week between Sunday and Saturday. Furry-day must be a fine day.”
“Then if it rains to-morrow… ?” he began.
“There will be no Furry-tune.”
“If it is fine,” he went on.
“The sun will shine,” she laughed.
They parted upon the high moor at the top of the village.
“I think,” said Beatrice charmingly, as she held out her little hand, “we have enjoyed our poor lives this afternoon.”
Burrough thought he knew what Beatrice meant when she mentioned the advice she would have given to the king of Trevalyor. Cast everything aside, and work. That was her advice. She had thrown back his allegory in his teeth. He had Biggletubben the world, and Amalebria the flesh, to fight.
Very early the next morning Burrough went out upon the moor. Peter stretched himself, yawned, and followed. Both had a somewhat dissipated appearance. The man was unshaven and only half-dressed; the cat had spent the night within the kitchen hearth. Burrough sat upon a rock. Peter took up his position hard by and blinked at the sun.
“King o’ the Cats,” said Burrough moodily. “I wish I was not a classical scholar. I wish I was a successful lady novelist.”
Peter glanced at his master, as though he would say, “That’s two wishes. You have only one more.”
“There are three ways of making money with the pen,” Burrough proceeded. “The first is to write a successful play; the second to produce a novel which everyone reads; and the third to tickle the palate of the public with highly-seasoned serials in halfpenny journals. Number one catches society; number two the middle-class; and number three the ‘mostly fools’ mentioned by Carlyle. Now, Father Confessor, I can write neither play, novel, nor slush, as I believe the spicy serial is called. I can read Greek, and make Latin verses with a pitiful facility, but these accomplishments are not marketable. I can write good English, but there’s no money in that. Most editors seem to prefer ‘that’s him’ to ‘that’s he.’ Can’t you give me an idea for a novel? Isn’t there something left to write about, some new passion, some fresh phase? I feel alive this morning, King Peter; full of new life and old ideas. This is just the time a new idea ought to come—if there’s one left. I could sit down and write a sonnet. I could throw off an essay; but sonnets and essays are things of the past. You could not sell a dozen sonnets now for the price of two fresh herrings. Your countenance grows animated, my dear cat. Shall we write a play together? Act One, the moor. Scene, a hovel. Enter the king of Trevalyor and his cat!”
Burrough would spend hours talking such nonsense as this to his dumb companion.
He drew himself higher up the rock, embraced his knees, and smiled unhappily at the rugged prospect. Just then he was trying to forget Beatrice. It was the last time he made the attempt. Her vision was before him, as she stood short-skirted on the mass of granite, surrounded by the gorse, heather and bracken of their tiny territory of Blissland.
“You and I are not wanted, King Peter, and that’s a fact,” Burrough went on. “If I were to hang you, and shoot myself, nobody would benefit. We shouldn’t make room for anyone. I don’t fill any position. I’m not even the village reprobate. The simple life, my dear cat, is excellent in theory, but in practice it is abominably unpleasant. It is an existence of clods and dirt, of gritty food, and black-rimmed finger-nails. It is a life of peat-smoke and mountain mist. I wade through bogs; I bark my shins against spurs of granite; I fall into a crevasse, and cover my skin with gorse-prickles. That is the simple life. Inside I listen to the wind; I play with my shadow; I watch the lamp-light for some hours nightly. This is to be in touch with Nature. From the artistic point of view it is no doubt an ideal state. From the mental and moral standpoint it is a colossal failure. I would give all these grey tors, every gorse-bush, the heath, the bracken, and throw in the view and the cloudscape, for a nice little row of jerry-built stucco villas along the edge of the gorge.”
There came a magpie sailing down the cleave, and then another. After them appeared a short figure, walking at its ease, armed with a gun, accoutred with a canvas bag, and accompanied by two spaniels.
“Let us consider these omens,” observed Burrough. “Two magot-pies. That’s for mirth. Afterwards cometh Willum, head of the house of Cobbledick. He has begun his loafing early. He will be exhausted by noon, and have to lean against a wall till sunset. Let him trot by. But soft! he carries letters, he brings good tidings. Glorious news, my dear Peter! The Essayists are victorious—the armies of the foul rebel Slush have been defeated. The public has become enlightened, editors are marrying poetesses, essayists are allying themselves to publishers’ daughters. That’s the message of the magpies. I shall be produced in fair parchment covers, tied with green ribbons like prize beef, and beauteous ladies will dim my pages with their tears. And as for you, King o’ the Cats, you shall have the choicest cut from a Derby-winner for your supper.”
Peter paused in his ablutions, and with paw uplifted regarded the approaching shapes. Evidently his impressions were unfavourable; so he stepped forward, ready to curse and smite the first of the careless spaniels which should venture within range.
William Cobbledick sometimes assisted the local postman by carrying letters to the outlying parts. His reward was a pot of beer. Other benefits accruing to him were a sense of dignity in being as it were an official of state, and the right to call upon Burrough and a few others upon Boxing Day to wish them the compliments of the season. There was also the right to read postcards; and the privilege of publishing any information thus acquired, after thorough and unscrupulous editing by Ann.
“Marning, sir,” said Willum, as he handed Burrough a newspaper and one letter. “I’ve got five puppies, sir,” he went on, like an eager schoolboy. “Born last night.”
“Really,” said Burrough. “I hope you and the puppies are doing well.”
Willum looked puzzled, his sense of humour not being keen.
“Yes, sir, this warm weather suits me wonderful. They pups be out of a prize bitch—least she would have taken a prize if I’d shown her. Fifteen shillun each, sir. Will ye take one? I warrant ’en for a good nose.”
“Being neither sportsman nor poacher,” Burrough answered, “I have no use for fifteen-shilling spaniels with highly developed organs of smell. What sort of nose will you guarantee—bottle, Roman, or pug?”
“Well, sir,” said the scholar, completely mystified, “I reckon ’twould be a bit of each. There’s surprising blood in they pups. There be the father, sir.”
At that moment a wild howl uprose, and the proud father could be seen scurrying for shelter, with one eye picturesquely closed; while Peter, who in vulgar parlance had dowsed his glim, licked his chops and tried very hard to grin.
“I warrant the Cheshire Pet for a good claw,” said Burrough. “Here is a little arithmetical problem for you. If five puppies collectively are worth three pound, fifteen, what is the value of a cat which has defeated the father of said puppies?”
“Cats be vermin,” said Willum bitterly.
Burrough laughed, and tore open his letter. A glance at it, and his face clouded. Most distinctly it was not a letter to glaze and hang in a frame. It did not announce that the day of sonneteer and essayist had returned. It was not an invitation from a publisher to submit great thoughts, which might be bound within parchment covers and tied with green ribbon, for the delectation of ladies with pink and white complexions. It was simply, “a remittance by return will greatly oblige.”
“As we are on the subject of problems, here is another—a domestic problem,” went on the cynic. “How does a man live, when money goes out faster than it comes in?”
“On credit,” said Willum. He knew the answer to that well enough.
“Now we have a social problem,” the young man went on. “Here is a radical newspaper, which addresses me ‘John Burrough, Esquire.’ And here an obsequious conservative tradesman, who bids me be content with plain Mr. Burrough. What do you make of that?”
“It don’t mean nuthing,” replied the scholar contemptuously. “When I writes to a gentleman I puts Mister on one side and Squire on t’other. When I writes to a parson I puts Revellent as well. They likes that.”
“I should be inclined to doubt it,” muttered Burrough. “But on the main question you are right. It means nothing. If I write to a Government department to announce my inflexible will is to pay no more taxes, I receive in return a threatening letter which concludes, ‘I am, Sir, your most obedient, humble servant.’ How do you finish off your letters, Willum?”
“Always the same—yours truly,” replied Willum.
“That’s the safest way. But how many e’s are there in truly?”
“You don’t catch me,” said the scholar grinning. “There’s only one.”
“Your education seems complete,” said the cynic.
“I larnt myself. ’Tis what you call natural gift. I be just a man of born intellect,” said Willum modestly. “If I hadn’t been consumptuous,” he went on, tapping his brawny chest, “I’d a been a preacher. Sometimes I preach to mother at home. Makes her cry, I du.”
“I sympathise with Mrs. Cobbledick,” Burrough replied.
“I mun shoot a rabbut for dinner,” went on Willum shifting his antiquated gun. “If I shoots a couple, will ye take one?”
“With pleasure,” came the answer. “If it be young, tender, and gratuitous.”
“I don’t shoot ’em when they be gratuitous,” said the scholar, making a bold and bad guess at the meaning of the word. “Some du, but I don’t. I only shoots the buck rabbuts this time o’ year.”
“I don’t think I’ll trouble you to shoot me a buck rabbut. My cat supplies me, and makes no charge. And now I must cook my morning rasher and settle down to work. Have you ever written anything?”
“Nuthing,” replied the loafer.
“What! You, a scholar! you, who lean against walls thinking, and roam the moor dreaming—you have written nothing.”
“I be an artist mostly,” said Willum in self-defence. “I takes photographs.”
“And anything you can lay your hands on,” the other muttered. “Do you read much, Willum?”
“Winter evenings I reads the Bible to mother. Makes her cry, it du.”
“Mrs. Cobbledick appears to be a somewhat lachrymose personage. What makes her cry?”
“ ’Tis my voice. It ain’t so much what I reads, as the way I reads it.”
“The explanation is entirely satisfactory,” observed the cynic.
“Then I reads to mother out of the Black Book,” Willum went on.
“Crockford’s Clerical Directory, I believe?” said Burrough, who knew all about this local celebrity’s two-volumed library. “Does that make mother cry?”
“No, she don’t cry over that. I reads it more spirited like. When any parson comes here I allus looks ’en up in the Black Book to find out his pedigree. Sometimes he’s there. Sometimes he ain’t. If he ain’t in, us don’t trust ’en. Mother says, ‘Look ’en up in the Black Book, Willum.’ If he ain’t there she wun’t let ’en have cream and butter wi’out the money down.”
Rather hard on the younger clergy, thought Burrough, knowing as he did that the directory in question was quite a decade out of date.
“You should study, Willum,” he said impressively. “You should read, and improve your mind, that mind which has been lying fallow for so long. You should pore over histories, and acquire languages. A little learning—you know the old saw, Willum? It’s a dangerous thing.”
“True, sir, me and you knows that. There be Mrs. Cann to the Post Office. Her don’t know much, but her thinks she du, and her tongue goes like the old saw you was talking about. They ain’t no scholars here. Just me and you, and Mr. Yeoland—he knew a lot ’fore he got dafty.”
“Come inside and look at my books,” Burrough said, as he slipped off the rock. His fellow-scholar followed, looking somewhat unhappy. They passed in, and Burrough ushered the many-sided genius into the study, and nodded towards the long rows of books. Willum’s spirit grew faint within him.
“Here,” said Burrough wickedly, as he pulled out a handsomely-bound Thucydides, “we have the most famous example of vicious rhetoric——”
“I knows ’en,” muttered Willum, his pale-blue eyes staring frightfully. “Vicious ain’t hardly the word. Ain’t fit for wimmin. I couldn’t read ’en to mother.”
“I believe you,” came the guileless answer. “This is more your line—the tragedies of Sophocles.”
“I knows ’en,” said Willum again. “So does Mr. Yeoland. Talked of ’en many a time us has. Mr. Yeoland buried Sophocles down to Cornwall, Porthleven way.” He pronounced the poet’s name so that it might have rhymed with cockles.
“Really that is most interesting,” said the tormentor. “Evidently you have been given access to information of which I have been unable to avail myself. Herodotus of course you know?” he added carelessly.
“Him what cut off John Baptist’s head?” Willum suggested, feeling that here at least he was on safe ground.
“His younger brother,” replied Burrough, with utmost gravity.
“That’s him,” exclaimed the scholar. “They calls ’en Herod Antifat in the Bible.”
“Because he was a very thin man, I suppose?”
“That’s it, sir, that’s it,” cried Willum, in high delight. “Me and you gets on fine!”
“I am going to make a slight addition to your library,” Burrough said, as he picked out a couple of unwanted books—a cheap Greek testament and a small Sanskrit dictionary—and held them out to the local celebrity. “They will be a source of interest to you during winter evenings to come. I will not insult you by describing them. The dictionary is fairly ample in spite of its smallness. When in doubt of a word you can look it up here—and I hope you will find it,” he concluded heartily.
The scholar’s gratitude, if partly simulated, was expressed so ardently that Burrough nearly felt ashamed of himself. There was no doubt a spice of cruelty in his nature, that inborn cruelty common to all living things in Nature—to the sundew which sucked the flies, and to King Peter who played with a baby rabbit. Burrough felt a certain spiteful enjoyment in thus playing with Willum, because he had an idea that at least upon one occasion during the day preceding Beatrice had been, not wilfully cruel perhaps, but a little bit lacking in proper sympathy for the king of Trevalyor.
Beatrice could not be like Peter, who tormented the baby rabbit out of sheer wickedness. That was impossible, because Beatrice was divine. Two days before she had been a girl, only a girl with tiny feet. Already she was a goddess. Promotion was never more rapid. But, Burrough pondered, the sundew did not catch and suck the fly out of wilful cruelty. It destroyed the fly simply because it was its nature so to do.
Then Burrough went off to cook the rasher for his long-postponed breakfast; while Willum, after shooting a rabbit, loafed home to astonish his doting mother by exhibiting his new literary treasures, which he explained as “A Chinese Bible, and a book to show how ’twas done.”
“Auntie,” said Beatrice, moodily, “I’ve got the blooming hump. I am going for a walk on the blasted moor.”
“My dear, you should not,” Miss Pentreath quavered gently. “You must not use such language.”
“Is it naughty?” her niece enquired. “Shall she suck her finger and look penitent? Well, she ain’t a going to. She’s afflicted with the blues, on account of the vagaries of this Dartmoor climate. She has a melancholy, splenetic, and acrimonious humour. She’s got the megrims. She’s dumpish, mumpish, and sulkish, on account of the rain. There, auntie! see the possibilities of the Anglo-American language, and choose the expression you like best.”
“I can’t think where you pick it up,” Miss Pentreath protested.
“The educational value of the present-day novel is great,” said Beatrice.
“You read the most improper books.”
“You read them too, my dear, or you wouldn’t know,” the girl replied.
“But I’ve not been married, never engaged even,” complained Miss Pentreath. “I am entitled to a little mild excitement.”
Beatrice shrieked with laughter. “What a wicked little old woman it was,” she cried. “Never mind, Auntie. We are all wicked, so why be humbugs?”
“I am not wicked,” objected Miss Pentreath. “I have had no chance. I go to church on Sundays, and I read a sermon every evening. If only they would write interesting sermons I would read more of them.”
“You paint—you’re a rouge dragon,” cried lively Beatrice.
“Art is beautiful, age is not,” sighed Miss Pentreath.
“False teeth, false hair, false complexion, and—naughtiest of all—false bosom,” Beatrice indicted.
“Do leave me alone,” sighed Miss Pentreath. “You’ll be like it yourself some day.”
“Anyhow I’ll have grandchildren to tease me, not nieces. It’s stopped raining, and I’m going out—to the blasted moor aforesaid. Now I’ll tuck you up, give you lollies to suck, and you can read a sermon while you make nice cobwebby point lace to deck my garments withal.”
Miss Pentreath was a harmlessly wanton little lady. She dressed in the style of a young girl, with flowers and ribbons, saucy frocks, laced petticoats, baby hats, and other allurements which it was her weakness to exhibit when crossing a muddy road. Her face was decidedly not her own: her soft tresses and fringe were equally exotic. Her efforts to secure a husband would have been of some humour had they not been pathetic. A few years before she had made her last stake, and been within sight of the goal. An elderly and short-sighted clergyman became entangled. On an evil day he escorted Miss Pentreath to a circus and travelling menagerie. There was a cageful of monkeys, and the coquettish lady stood before it, and poked playfully at the progenitors of her species with a beribboned parasol. Suddenly an ape seized the ferrule, and drew her close to the cage. Instantly a dozen paws shot forth, hat and hair vanished, while a general disrobing process went on below. The short-sighted clergyman became very properly aghast at the appearance of the lay-figure, which continued to undergo the throes of transformation—a sort of rough rehearsal of what he might expect the night after “The voice that breathed o’er Eden,” had been sung for his benefit. Modesty and dismay impelled him to retire. Miss Pentreath’s hat and hair were rent to shreds; while her gloves and handkerchief were with some difficulty recovered from the cheek-pouch of a baboon.
The bachelor-lady, as she was fond of styling herself—having a not unreasonable hatred for the ugly word spinster—was the slave of her niece. Beatrice was quite independent. She was of age, and possessed means of her own. She was the only surviving child of a defunct Cornish vicar who had been Miss Pentreath’s favourite brother. The little painted lady was terribly afraid lest her niece should run away, and leave her to old-maidish loneliness which her soul abhorred. So she pandered to the girl’s tastes, refrained from crossing her wishes, and behaved generally just as that wayward young person desired. She did not want Beatrice to marry, having a very shrewd idea that no future nephew-by-marriage would permit such a very draggled and washed-out butterfly as herself to flit about his house.
Evading Mrs. Cobbledick, who would have detained her with fine rambling phrases concerning butter and tombstones and the gradual wasting-away of Willum, Beatrice emerged into the village street, hatless and charming. She had made up her mind which direction to take while she was putting her shoes on. She had said something about “a little crooked house” while she laced them. And she had laughed to herself, “Good-morrow, Jack! poor Jack!” while she tied them.
The early promise of the day had not been fulfilled. Rain had followed sunshine, and Beatrice knew that Blissland would be “clamp and dammy,” as she expressed it. Twilight was threatening, as she left the rush-thatched cottage where successive generations of Cobbledicks had sinned, and faced the moor where a fresh breeze was drying the heather and bracken. There was hardly a sign of the recent summer rain upon the rough track; and the peaty moorland was dry already. It was one of those evenings when the atmosphere seems to tickle young folk, making them long to laugh and jump and scream.
“I’ll do it,” said Beatrice. “It’s shocking, but I’m not going to be lonesome.”
She jumped over a gorse-bush, and pricked her ankles, which made her squeal. A couple of moormen, whom she had not perceived, stopped and stared in the hope she would jump again. She did not, but proceeded quite demurely, until she reached the little cottage with the tin roof at the end of the gorge. There was nobody in sight. She did not see Peter lying on his favourite rock, replete with young rabbit; but Peter saw her, and drew his own conclusions.
Beatrice knocked at the door. She heard a sound within, as of a pile of books falling heavily. She pushed the door open, and called saucily, “Please, I’m the boy from the grocer. I’ve brought the sugar.”
The next instant Burrough stood before her, lacking coat and collar, his face flushed, his manner nervous, as shy as a child. Willum at that moment was mightily avenged. It was a different Burrough from the superior creature who had persecuted the scholar. He could hardly believe his eyes. Beatrice alone upon his humble threshold!
“Is this ‘the Rising Sun,’ ‘the Setting Moon,’ ‘the Twinkling Star,’ or anything beery of that sort?” Beatrice rattled away at once. “Because I’ve brought a little thirst with me; quite a young one, but it’s growing fast.”
“Will you come in?” Burrough invited nervously.
“Not to-day, thank you. It wouldn’t do to be found upon unlicensed premises. Will you give me a glass of milk?”
“Do come in,” he went on, in a somewhat dazed fashion.
“I wun’t,” she said. “If you refuse me a drink I must go on to the next house.”
At that he hurried away, and brought her a glass of milk. She accepted delicately, then suggested that he might go and “dress himself” while she drank. When he returned he discovered that Beatrice had employed her leisure by inscribing upon his door with a chalky stone the two doggerel lines—
“John Burrough lives here,
He sells brandy and beer.”
The twilight had come. He thought her face looked more distracting than ever.
“What was’t ye’ doing man?” she inquired playfully, in the dialect of the moor.
“I was working,” he answered her gravely. “Trying to, rather.”
“Come on out! Let’s go swaling,” said Beatrice.
“It’s too late in the year.”
“We shall get off under the First Offenders’ Act,” Beatrice reminded him. “Go and get two boxes of matches.”
Burrough obeyed. It was delightful to be ordered about his own premises by the maid of the tiny feet. When he appeared with the matches, Beatrice pointed to a deep cleft on the side of the moor across the river, and remarked, “That’s a good place. We’ll start there.”
“There are vipers in that gorge,” warned Burrough.
“We’ll burn ’em out,” cried vicious Beatrice.
They hurried down, through the gathering gloom and the mist which was rolling up the cleave. A herd of ponies stampeded before them, and Beatrice shouted to make them run faster. She jumped from rock to rock, bounded over tufts of heather, furrowed her way through bracken, jumped the gorse-patches. It was as good as a dance. Her blood was fired by that mad scamper through the evening air and the shadows. She was intoxicated with the freedom of the wild moor. She bounded into a bog, and screamed, “I’m a-stugged!” She was out again, with brown shoes blacked, and stockings stained. Burrough was panting after her, short of breath already. The girl went so fast. They reached the edge of the foaming river, and searched for a crossing.
“Come on,” cried the maid of the mist. “Here be a gurt stoane! One-tew-dree.” She jumped, reached the stone with a light toe, and turned laughing. “Here’s anudder.” She jumped again, shrieking with mirth when she heard a splash behind. Burrough had missed the stone, and was in over his knees. Beatrice went across like a water-wagtail, and Burrough came floundering after.
“More bogs,” cried an excited voice. “Gugh! ain’t it messy? Lucky I’ve got old clo’ on—if anyone does pick up a garter in the mud they may think just what they like,” she murmured to herself. “I know I’ve lost it, and the mud is pulling my stocking down, and on the whole it’s as well that the shades of night are falling fast.”
“Are you all right?” sang out her companion.
“Bog-trotting nicely thanks. Where’s the gorge?”
“More to the left. I can hear the water rushing down it.”
“My feet are like coal-barges. They’m mucky twoads. Oh Tregony! Here’s a pincushion. I’ve walked right into it. Matches—quick before the mist swallows us. I’m in the middle of the gorse.”
“Let me,” cried Burrough, groping up over the slippery stones. “You will prick your hands.”
“They are pricked,” gasped Beatrice, excitedly. “Like fretful porcupines. Come on! Stick it in here.”
She was on her knees, making a hole in the bleached tangle of grass, below the furze where the rain had not penetrated. Burrough lighted several matches with shaking, awkward fingers. The wind blew them out. Beatrice swore softly in Cornish. At last the flame touched the grass. It spluttered, a gentle hissing began, the dry gorse-prickles caught. A moment later a furious crackling commenced, and then a wide yellow sheet of flame darted up, waving like a revolutionary flag.
“Now it will go like blue blazes,” cried Beatrice. “Hear it whine! There it goes again.”
The burning gorse gave forth a sharp, plaintive sound, something between a whistle and a moan, which lasted for some seconds before dying away in a shrill staccato gasp.
“I can’t help it. I must scream too,” cried Beatrice. “Oh, there’s nothing so good as swaling. Let’s light both sides of the gorge. There it rips! Heather, gorse, and grass, in an everlasting bonfire. Isn’t the smell delicious?”
They lighted the gorse in a dozen different places. They worked like stokers. The gorge became a glowing furnace. The flames roared below; the wind howled above. The foaming river beneath was blood-red. Showers of sparks rained in, and went out hissing.
“Lucky there’s been rain to-day,” gasped Burrough, as he stumbled by with a burning brand.
“Lucky? It’s a pity,” protested Beatrice. “We’d have burnt the moor to Cranmere.”
An equally excited neighing went up on either side of the gorge; and out of the smoke came the shaggy heads and flowing manes of a score of ponies, drawn thither by the fragrance of burning gorse. Normally wild and frightened when near human beings, their shyness became forgotten when there was a prospect of a warm and comforting supper upon charred green gorse. Soon they came up in numbers, almost stepping into the flames in their eagerness to secure the blackened shoots.
“Keep it up,” Beatrice shouted, when her companion showed signs of flagging.
“I expect we are destroying nests of young birds,” he answered.
“Poor dears!” she panted. “Never mind. They won’t suffer much. It will be soon over. One whiff of flame, and they’ll be grilled. And the parents will be so pleased. They won’t have to bring them worms and things.”
The reason Burrough had stayed his destroying hand was that he might watch Beatrice. She had never appeared so fascinating. Her hair was tumbling upon her shoulders, partly singed, entirely crumpled. Her heated face was smudged distractingly. Her hands were blackened, scratched, and bleeding. She was like a lovely witch in that fierce light. Beneath her short skirt, and over her muddy shoe, he could perceive from time to time a loose roll of brown silk. All around her roared the flames of the swaling-fires. The ponies poked their hungry muzzles in between.
“The gorse is full of blossom here,” a voice observed, with a tinge of regret, “bunches of golden bloom, shrivelling, going brown, and black. We’ve done enough,” Beatrice exclaimed. “My matches are finished, and I’m tired.”
She stood for a moment, watching the waving line of fire, her hands upon her hips, then sank upon a moss-covered boulder, and mopped her face with a small handkerchief. Gradually she slipped from the rock, which afforded a poor resting place, and dived feet first into the thick heather. She stretched herself out luxuriously, as upon a fragrant yielding bed, lowered her head languorously with little squirms of pleasure, and half closed her eyes against the fierce light of the fires. As he approached Burrough could perceive her tightly-fitting grey jersey rising and falling with her quick breath.
“I’m tired, heavenly tired,” she murmured. “This is reaction. Oh!” she cried, with sudden nervousness. “Don’t let the ponies trample on me.”
“There are no ponies here,” her companion said. He too was panting, and his body was at fever heat, and the thrilling reaction was over him too. He seated himself on the edge of her springy bed, and dared to lean slightly over so that he could look down upon her face. In the meantime the wind carried the swaling fires onward and away. The weird light still flickered around the heather bed.
“It’s getting late,” Beatrice said sleepily. “Auntie will be waiting supper for me. It’s like a dream. I can feel the wind rocking the heather. How warm and red the fire is! This is the seventh heaven. There!” She gave a big gasp. “Now my breath has come back.”
“You are sweet, Beatrice; you are sweet,” thought Burrough; and he compressed his lips to keep the words from issuing.
“Was that the fire, or the wind? Or did you speak?” asked she.
“You look lovely lying there,” he said, after a pause, in a hard voice.
“I can’t help it,” she replied, with a little smile. “And I’m too tired to care.”
“Oh, very lovely,” he said, more calmly and precisely.
“Trewidden, Trewinnard, Trewint!” murmured Beatrice.
Burrough was by nature a shy man, and a modest. He turned his head away. Had he not done so, he would have fallen beside her and kissed her on the neck.
“What a funny idea!” half whispered Beatrice, as though confiding to herself. “A girl with a little crooked nose, also a little crooked mouth, likewise two little crooked eyes, not forgetting various black smudges, singes, and burns, distributed about the small features hereinbefore mentioned, and described as aforesaid,—lovely! My stars!”
“Your face is not burnt,” muttered Burrough, in a sudden passion of love.
“My hand be—burnt horrid.”
Instantly he seized the hand, which was resting on a tuft of heather and swaying with the breeze. But Beatrice began to whimper like a fretful child.
“You hurt. Doan’t ye be cruel! Doan’t ye, now!”
He released the hand from pressure at once, and let it lie resting upon his, just as it had rested a moment before upon the heather.
“It’s a pincushion,” she explained, “cram-jam wi’ prickles from the gorse. You squeezed the prickles in. You can’t see them. They’re too wee.”
“But they hurt you?” he said, in a voice unmistakably tender.
“Cruel! There’s one in the top of my little finger, and it’s a beast of a prickle.”
“Let me take it out.”
“I won’t be hurt,” she declared.
“There’s only one way of getting out these gorse prickles.”
“Well?” said Beatrice resignedly.
He lifted her hand, found the tiny speck on the top of the little finger by the light of the fires, and proceeded to extract it with his teeth. Beatrice laughed a little, protested, murmured, then sighed, and finally composed herself with half-closed eyes and quivering mouth. The prickle was taken out, but there were others, and one particularly in the soft pink palm which it was very difficult to get at. The little hand was hot and grimy. It was scented with smoke and the wild fragrance of the moor. It trembled like an imprisoned bird. Some of the scratches had bled.
The fires began to die down. They had reached bogs higher up, and the night settled gradually upon the bed of heather where Beatrice reposed, sighing, and sometimes giving little moans and wriggles, when the process of extraction hurt her nerves. She did not speak until the fires within had burnt out, as those above were doing, and she began to feel that the wind was chilly and her bed damp. Then she shivered and sat up.
“My feet are so cold,” she said. “I had forgotten they were wet.”
Looking down, she suddenly became ashamed. “I didn’t know it was like that,” she murmured. “I’m a wild, careless little devil, and I lost a garter in that bog. Why shouldn’t I say so? I’m a sensible Cornish girl. I’m not a prude.” Then she looked up at Burrough winningly, but there was not much fun left in her. “Aren’t you drefful tired and stiff? I am.”
“I will take you back to the village,” Burrough replied. “I know this bit of moor, and I can steer you clear of bogs. I am so sorry about—what you have lost, and if I can help you——”
“You see, this skirt is so short. And people say such beastly things.”
Burrough was wearing knickerbockers and stout woollen stockings. He bent as he spoke, and a moment later held out a strap taken from his own leg, saying, “If this is of any use to you——”
Beatrice glanced up delightedly, with the old mischief on her face.
“Thank you very much, Sir John Burrough, K.G. Now will you please go away, mutter a Paternoster, and then come back to take me home?”