The next morning a letter reached Burrough containing an offer to take his cottage for the next two months at a weekly rental of three guineas. The letter came from an agent in Exeter. A few weeks back he would have jumped at the offer; but since discovering the footprint in the sand his desires had changed. He knew he could not go away.
He argued with himself concerning the offer, although he knew he should end by refusing it. The money meant much to him. Idleness was playing havoc with his prospects. Since that first meeting with Beatrice he had done nothing except to write a few sonnets which in the inevitable order of things would find a last resting-place in some waste-paper basket. His work upon the stone remains of Dartmoor had come to a standstill. The Queen of Blissland had put a stop to that, as to all other serious undertakings. Burrough was dancing the dance of fools, and living in their paradise.
“I wish I had a friend,” he muttered, “someone to talk over things with, who would kick me when I am foolish, and prop me up when I can’t stand alone. I love the girl, and she knows it; but I can’t tell her. I know I shall never tell her. If I could only get rid of my pride! It might be well for me if I could lose my self-restraint for a few moments. I nearly did last night. My boy, you should have some courage. Write and accept this offer, run into Cornwall and hide until the summer is over, then return with the mud and mists, and crawl back into your shell to work and forget.”
Down he went at his table, seized pen and paper, and began to scribble.
“It’s sheer madness to suppose she would come here,” he went on. “A girl who is her own mistress, who is fascinating enough to bring anyone to her feet here! As well expect to find sunshine at the bottom of a mine. Beatrice making her clothes here! Beatrice walking on a stone floor beneath a tin roof! Beatrice cooking, bed-making, washing up! She gave me her answer when I told her about the three kings. It should have been plain. The highest bidder wins. Well, I’ve made up my mind. I’ll go away.”
Another thought occurred to him, and he leaned back to bring his mind to bear upon it.
“She wouldn’t object to this place in the summer,” he said. “Girls like roughing it in summer-time. They will live anywhere then, and pretend to enjoy this simple life, which is so unutterably drab and dirty in reality. It’s the winter she wouldn’t stand. What girl would live on top of Dartmoor during winter? I’ll get me away far off. I will never see Beatrice again. The King of Trevalyor must put up with Molly the milkmaid.”
He scratched away at the letter, and pushed it quickly into an envelope, because he was too ashamed to read it. Various circumstances, he explained, had caused him to alter his mind, and he did not intend to let his cottage that summer.
Obviously, the next thing was to get as close to Beatrice as possible; and with that end in view Burrough set forth in the direction of Blissland. It was a very fine morning, too hot for climbing and tumbling. Even the rivers were listless. The highest tor had no cap of cloud. It would be wicked, Burrough thought, to waste such glorious hours. It was an ideal Furry-day—the eighth day of the week, the day which could not be wasted by idle, amorous mortals, simply because it was an extra bit of life, an added slice of time, a sort of thirty-first of June, a little bonus paid by summer to those who would observe Floralia. It was a day to carry flowers and branches, and to dance hand-in-hand.
It was a considerable distance from the edge of the gorge to the nook at the bend of the river; but Burrough accomplished it within half-an-hour, which, it may be surmised, meant a certain amount of running. He was not perceptibly troubled by the heat.
He entered the secret nook by the way across the bog which Beatrice had named Skelywidden. There was no sign of her ladyship. Burrough began to be sorry he had come. Peering over the rocks, he saw nothing that was interesting; but as he made his moody way towards the river, along the path which his own feet had worn, he saw a cleft stick set upright in the peat, supporting a scrap of paper, which he pounced upon, opened, and read, “To all whom it may concern. Please go to the Apron String.”
Burrough chuckled. Beatrice had guessed he would come, and that he would arrive by Skelywidden. She was, no doubt, taking her ease at the other end of the bend.
But when he got there he saw only another piece of paper. It was impaled upon a gorse-bush, and upon it was written, “You are requested not to burn the gorse. If you will be so good as to follow the thread, you will arrive at the summit of Be Lovely Beacon. N.B.—There is a fine view.”
“The mad girl!” exclaimed Burrough.
A glance at the gorse-bush showed him a piece of red thread tied to a bunch of prickles. Picking it up, Burrough was guided to the pile of rocks at the edge of the bog. He looked up, but there was no Beatrice. The thread went up from rock to rock, so he followed until he stood upon the highest point. He did not stop to look at the view, because the first thing he saw was another piece of paper, lying upon the summit, with a stone upon it to keep it in place. Evidently Beatrice was in rare Furry-day humour; but, better than that, she had expected him, and was waiting for him, and had most ingeniously hidden herself away from him. Upon this piece of paper she had written, “This is Be Lovely Beacon. So sorry to trouble you, but, now that you have marched up the hill, you had better march down again. I wonder if you will be able to find the Menacuddle. That is your next stopping-place. N.B.—Do admire the view.”
There was no particular view to admire, as the bog precipice rose on the other side of the river, and the trees upon the eyot blotted out the prospect in front. For the rest, there was nothing but the bog of sundews. Burrough shrewdly guessed that the invitation to admire the view was a key to the next discovery. He was right, for directly he looked out from the top of the Beacon his eye was attracted by something white in the seat of the granite chair beside the river. It did not take him long to get down and across. This piece of paper was crumpled into a ball, and there was something inside it. As he pulled it open his garter fell out, and on smoothing the paper he read—
“For this relief much thanks. This is the place which is called Menacuddle. Your wanderings are now over. Do sit down! Sorry not to see you before my departure. I have gone to Cumberland. Good-bye.”
The day became dark, and the sunshine was so much chilly moonlight that instant. Beatrice had gone away! And to the other end of England! She had taken her fascinations to the dark and distant north, and her dainty feet would leave their small, unseen impressions upon the sand and gravel of a Cumberland fell. And he was left to wander alone in Blissland, and to be pixy-led upon the “deysarts of Dertymore.” The eclipse was total.
Burrough lowered himself into the granite chair which the fanciful girl had dignified with the title of Menacuddle and tried to think. Beatrice had been with him until late—it was disgracefully late—the preceding evening, and she had then said nothing about going away. It was obvious she had been to the secret nook that morning. She could not have spared two hours just to play him this trick if she had been making preparations for a journey which would necessitate her departure by the earliest train. He decided she was at her pranks again. Probably she had seen him coming along the sky-line. She would have been given ample time to make these arrangements for his mystification.
Good heaven! another piece of paper! It was lying near his feet beside a clump of bracken. It was a tiny scrap, and the writing upon it was microscopic. Burrough held the missive close to his eyes, and presently mastered the directions.
“Mixed bathing is not allowed along the Cumberland coast. They are unco’ reeleegious bodies there. It will be time enough for you to gang north when the owls begin to toot. Mind the mountains in the Lake District. They are slithery with dew. And don’t—please don’t—tread upon London, or there will be a revolutionary upheaval, and you’ll get bitten.—I am, Sir, your most disobedient servant,
“The Zawn Pyg.”
This was mere midsummer madness, and Burrough could make nothing of it except the one thing which was of supreme importance—Beatrice was near. Probably she was in hiding quite near, enjoying his perplexity. The thought that she might be watching him with mischievous eyes stirred his self-respect into activity. He would show her he did not care; that he would not have missed her had she really gone to Cumberland. So he lolled back in the Menacuddle, permitting himself thoughts of what that name suggested, lighted a cigarette, and tried to look indolent and unconcerned. Still he could not refrain from glancing now to the right, now to the left, in the hope of sighting his tormentor, who was also queen and goddess of the place.
The cigarette was nearly consumed before an amateurish owl hooted, “Trewoofe!”
Burrough returned an answering cry, and the unfeathered fowl obligingly rehooted in Cornish.
The puzzle was to find the bird. At length the ornithologist determined it must be perched somewhere within the eyot. He set forth in that direction, and was nearing the water’s edge, when he perceived a miniature signpost, consisting of a short stick with a slip of paper fastened into a cleft and pointing towards the eyot. It bore the information, “To Cumberland.”
Burrough scrambled over the rocks and squirmed through the dense undergrowth between the two noisy currents. He was soon at the other end of the eyot, upon the open space near the thicket of osmunda, where he had discovered the tiny footprint in the sand. There were duplicates of that footprint everywhere, but the girl who had caused them was invisible. A line of red thread was fastened to a couple of rowans, and upon the thread two handkerchiefs were drying. Yet another piece of paper was fastened round the thread and secured by a hairpin.
“She is carrying the joke too far,” Burrough said, moodily. “It’s not fair to lead me this dance just because she knows all the ins and outs of this place so thoroughly. Why, I declare she must have been bathing!”
Fortified by the assurance that Beatrice was near and would be with him presently, if for no other reason than to secure her “towels,” he unfastened the half-sheet of notepaper and read—
“Well, here you are again. I was ordered a change of air, and had to leave Cumberland at once. There wasn’t even time to wait for my washing to be sent home. My address until one o’clock will be ‘Top of Cleave Tor, Under the Second Gorse-bush where you turn to the right from the Whortleberry Clump, which lies beneath the Shadow of the Rock, where the Iceland Moss grows.’ Got that? I hope you’ll call if you’re passing; and, if it’s not troubling you too much, would you bring my washing? So sorry to have missed you, but I heard the piper and had to dance. I’m one of the Merry Maidens, so at noon I must dance on and away.”
“Cleave Tor is a mile from here,” Burrough muttered, not entering in the least into the spirit of the game.
He guessed how Beatrice had evaded him. She must have crossed the river, jumping from one crag to another, and escaped by some way known to her through the bog forest. It was no use trying to find her while in that mad holiday humour, since she knew every foot of that secret nook, and if pursued could hide from him with ease. There was nothing for it but to cross the bog of sundews and climb to the summit of Cleave Tor.
Burrough was disgusted with himself. Here was a fine morning utterly wasted. He would have been much better employed at his writing-table. Even if he had failed to turn out anything he would have felt he had done his best. He made up his mind to return at once and make a profitable use of what remained of the morning; but this was merely a roundabout way of determining to hurry up Cleave Tor as hard as he could, still hopeful of catching the Merry Maiden before she danced home to lunch.
The thought occurred that Beatrice might be avoiding him on account of his action the evening before when the swaling fires were burning. That fear did not distress him for long. She had not been displeased then. Neither was she offended with him now. Her gay messages proclaimed as much. She was merely amusing herself. Had it not been for that “crooked little nose” Burrough might have given up the pursuit and gone home to work. As things were, because that nose was crooked, Burrough would have followed his tormentor across every bog and tor upon Dartmoor. Tenderly he removed the wet handkerchiefs, examined them carefully, gloated over the “B” worked in white silk upon each, felt them, pressed them, and quite possibly kissed them, then folded them neatly, and consigned them tenderly to the breast-pocket of his coat, which was already a sort of museum of consecrated relics: half-sheets of notepaper scribbled on by Beatrice, pieces of red thread that must have belonged to Beatrice, bits of stick which Beatrice had handled and cut, and hairpins still fragrant of Beatrice’s dark brown hair.
There was very little wind upon the moor that day, and Burrough felt the want of it as he clambered up the steep hill from the bog. Progress was necessarily slow because the gorse grew thickly there and rocks were everywhere. At length he reached a point where the flat summit of Cleave Tor could be seen outlined against the intense blue of the sky. There was no gracious figure standing there, as he had hoped. There was no waving handkerchief. But he knew Beatrice was there, and that she had seen him; for while he stood to regain breath a light cloud of smoke uprose from the top of the tor and circled lazily in the sluggish air. Beatrice was evidently burning a small gorse-bush as a signal to him, just as Cornishmen of old—and Cornishwomen too—would light fires on stormy nights to attract ships beating for harbour; but that was an unfortunate comparison, because they were wreckers, and the Merry Maiden was no descendant of theirs. All the same Burrough was wrecked upon that occasion. Breathless and perspiring, he gained the summit, to discover the fire a mass of warm grey dust, and the inevitable scrap of paper which denoted that Beatrice had gone again.
“It was the most unfortunate thing,” he read. “I had just settled myself when a pixy jumped out of the heather, and shouted, ‘Ho and away for lunch!’ You know when a pixy says that you have to go. It was no use my saying I expected the man with my washing. This afternoon I am thinking of taking my tea to the blacksmith’s, only I can’t carry a kettle. Can you suggest any solution of that difficulty? If you can I should be prepared to discuss the matter seriously. Can’t stop. Blue Peter is hoisted. I must dance back to my circle, and be turned into stone; for I am, now as ever, yours most terpsichorally,
“One of the Nine Maidens.”
Burrough was not going to be made a fool of again. Upon that point his mind was perfectly clear. He did not intend to pursue the elusive vision of Beatrice across the moor and be made the butt of her holiday humour. What was the good, he argued, of going to the blacksmith’s? Probably she would not be there. He might only be making himself more ridiculous than ever. His course was clear—he must go for a walk in the opposite direction. This conclusion having been arrived at, he cleaned his little kettle, packed it into a basket, and went with quite unnecessary haste towards the blacksmith’s.
The spot selected by Beatrice was hardly as civilised as its name suggested. It was nothing but a stone ruin beside the river Taw, encircled by solitude and clatters of moss-covered granite. According to tradition, a blacksmith had lived there once amid the silent shadows of the grey rocks, but it was not known what employment had come to him in that moorland fastness so far from the haunts of men. He could have had neither horse to shoe nor implement to forge. Perhaps he was an elfin blacksmith, enjoying the royal patronage of the king of the pixies, who, as every wise man’s son knew well, held court upon Cranmere. There was a delightfully smooth stretch of turf in front of the ruin. His Majesty played bowls with his favourite courtiers there “under the cold and chaste light of the moon.” His playthings were big spheres of granite. No doubt the blacksmith made them, breaking the rough blocks off the tors with his iron bar, and shaping them in his forge with chisel and hammer.
Beatrice was there! She was sitting beside the river near the bowling-green, looking very proper and demure. She was dressed in white from head to toe, wearing a hat to shield her from the sun. It was a big hat, somewhat suggestive of a lamp shade, and composed of many delicate articles such as infants are swathed in. Her little shoes were white, and so were her stockings. Burrough had come prepared to be dignified and a trifle cold, that she might perceive he was annoyed at her late treatment of him; but one glance caused him to forget all that. He felt he would struggle gladly through all the bogs of Dartmoor, if at the end of the journey he might be allowed to kiss one of those maddening little ankles.
“Where’s my washing?” was Beatrice’s first remark.
Burrough dived into his pocket and produced the handkerchiefs. He had dried them at his kitchen fire. He had been tempted to retain one, and to suggest that it had been mislaid, but his courage failed him, as it did always when the pinch came. So he had folded them neatly, and tied them up in tissue paper with a piece of pink tape.
“You were bathing,” he said, as he gave her the little packet.
“Sort of bathing,” she admitted. “The water was rather cold, and now I’m hoarse. Perhaps the owl overhooted.”
“Did you see me?”
“Lots of times,” she laughed. “I saw you coming across the moor. I wondered why you were running. I saw you wandering from place to place, collecting my written injunctions. You nearly caught me on the desert island. I had to rush and leave my towels behind. And I saw you from the top of Cleave Tor. I hope you have profited by your lesson in geography. Do you know where Cumberland is now?”
“Do explain,” he pleaded.
This was not the reproof which he had prepared; but just then he was in no mood either to argue or to scold. He only wanted to hear her talk, to sit still and listen, and to watch the movements of her dainty body in its soft and silky whiteness.
“Have you lived and walked in Blissland all this time without discovering that the eyot is a perfect model of England?” she went on. “Why, I saw that when I was a small kid. Every part of England and gallant little Wales is reproduced in miniature. My sister and I added a few details which were wanting. We stuck a few mountains about, and we burnt out a patch for the Black Country—it’s green again now—and we dug out some bays and made some rivers. We learnt all our geography that way. You entered the island this morning somewhere about Falmouth. The first step landed you on Exmoor; the second took you across the Bristol Channel; and then you came north through Shropshire and Cheese-and-catshire; and I believe you slipped into the Mersey, though you didn’t know it, but I thought I heard you blowing bubbles, also making remarks about the mountains in the Lake District which should have been instantly suppressed—the remarks, I mean, not the mountains. I warned you they were slithery. And then you were in Cumberland; while I had jumped upon the Isle of Man, and across to old Ireland, where the bogs come from. Then I got stugged again. My washing-bill this week will be enormous.”
“You told me not to tread upon London, or I might get bitten,” Burrough said.
“I did get bitten,” Beatrice rattled on. “I went by the East End, and two horrid little Socialists nipped me on the ankle. I’ve done nothing but scratch and embrocate ever since. Didn’t you see that big ant-hill near the mouth of the Thames? That’s London.”
Then the girl became active. She opened her little basket and tumbled out a tea-cloth, various cakes, and sundry packets. She ordered Burrough to prepare a fire, and demanded to know what he had brought, “because,” she said, “I have eatables, tea and sugar,” with the accent upon the sugar, “a bottle of milk, and three cups.”
“Why three cups?”
“Auntie said she might come. I don’t expect she will, but she may, if she can finish her painting in time.”
“I did not know Miss Pentreath painted,” said Burrough politely.
“We’re both artists,” said Beatrice. “I paint landscapes, and Auntie paints portraits.”
He could tell by the mischief in her eyes that she was quizzing him; but not having to his knowledge seen Miss Pentreath, he did not know how to take her.
“She paints for pleasure, I suppose?” he remarked.
“It used to be for profit,” said Beatrice, who had no delicacy of feeling regarding her aunt’s obvious weakness. “I think now it has become a duty. Like most painters, Auntie sets an ideal before her, and aims at it with a steadfastness of purpose which in one of her age is truly remarkable,” she went on wickedly. “It has always been her object to achieve a real work of art, and her failure to do so has cast a gloom upon her life.”
“I know you are chaffing me,” said Burrough, looking with boldness into her laughing eyes. “I suppose the truth is, your aunt does not take her painting seriously.”
“It’s about the only thing she does take seriously,” Beatrice cried delightedly. “She has hitherto failed to paint a really good portrait, because she is short-sighted, and therefore she exaggerates. What could look worse than a blob of scarlet where nature intended a soft and interesting pink?”
“Evidently I am fated to say the wrong thing,” observed Burrough. “As your aunt is a portrait-painter, I presume she uses oils?”
“Ask her,” cried Beatrice, with a little shriek of laughter. “I know they come from a place in Bond Street in a fancy box, but they don’t smell oily.”
“I can’t think of anything else to say except, does she exhibit?”
“Frequently when the weather is fine and dry,” the girl replied. “She objects to rain and mist, because moisture is so injurious to the delicate work which she particularly affects. She always did prefer to exhibit in a half-light, and to keep the picture with its back towards the window.”
Then she made the elfin blacksmith’s shop ring with laughter, in which Burrough for the first time joined.
“You must have thought me very dense,” he said. “I have lived so much out of the world lately. I had forgotten how ladies repair the ravages made by smoky towns with the appliances of art.”
“That’s enough of Auntie,” said Beatrice. “If she comes presently she is sure to bring her latest masterpiece. Only don’t criticise unless she invites you.” She went on severely, “How do you suppose we are going to have tea, when the kettle is empty and the fire is not made? Give me the kettle,” she commanded. “I will fill it while you get some sticks and stuff for the fire.”
She took the kettle, and drawing the white skirts round her, went and stood upon a stone, leaning gracefully towards the foaming river. Burrough tried to collect sticks and watch her at the same time, with the result that he fell over a rock. She laughed, and he felt angry, because he did not like to appear clumsy in her eyes. There was plenty of dry gorse which had been burnt the previous spring. He gathered an armful and returned to the pixies’ bowling-green, where Beatrice was regarding ruefully her tiny white shoes, over which she had been careless enough to spill some water. She was also scolding herself sharply.
“You’m a mucky twoad! That’s what you be. What’s the use of giving you nice things to wear, if you can’t keep out of mud and water? Yesterday evening you went swaling, and you tore all that pretty lace your poor auntie made for you, and you turned a nice little pair of tan shoes into pulp, and you muddied your stockings to your knees. Then this morning you scrambled through that boggy wood and spoilt another lot of nice things. And now, when you have dressed yourself rather sweetly, you must go and slop a dirty kettle all over yourself—you little beast!—just like a silly kid when nurse isn’t looking. You ought to be dressed in sackcloth or linoleum or tarpaulin, which would scrape and scratch you. You’m a twoad! You be!”
“Aren’t you rather hard upon her?” said Burrough, looking up from his fire-making.
“Not a bit. She’s a perfect little horror with her clothes. She was always like it. When she was a toddler she was always in the mud, and got smacked for it, but it made her no better. When she was a schoolgirl she was never happy unless she was tearing something. And now she’s an old maid, she always pulls her things off anyhow when she undresses and chucks them all about the floor. What is amusing you now?”
“The definition of yourself,” he answered.
“Old maid? Well, I celebrated my fifth birthday two years ago. By the time I am ten I shall be old and grey-headed. At fifteen I shall become a portrait-painter, and at twenty I shall fade peacefully away. I was born, you see, on the twenty-ninth of February. Now I’ll tell you something more interesting. You see that pile of rocks which you are smothering with your smoke? Well, that’s a grave, a kistvaen. There was a very old woman who was alive here when I was a kid, and she was a witch. Are you listening?”
“Yes,” said Burrough, poking his head out of the smoke. “There was an old woman, and she was a witch.”
“She was over ninety,” Beatrice went on. “And she remembered looking in that grave and seeing the skellington, as she called it. A real dead Gubbins was buried there. There were savages, you know, who if they caught anyone on the moor would skin ’em alive-oh. The bones have gone long ago. This old woman taught me some spells, and I was qualifying rapidly for my witch’s degree when the stupid old thing died.”
“So you never became a witch after all?”
“I never became a full-blown black witch.”
“Was she a black witch?” he asked rather sharply.
“Well, yes, she was a black witch,” said Beatrice, with some hesitation. “She didn’t ride on a broomstick, though,” she added with a laugh. “Why, I thought you would be amused at what I am telling you.”
“Witchcraft is not an amusing subject,” said Burrough quietly. “When I lived in London I might have laughed at it, but not now, not after living alone upon the moor.”
“Oh well,” said Beatrice, “let’s talk about something else, and forget the nonsense I have been saying.”
It was not likely that Burrough would forget. He had never before seen Beatrice really grave, and the change was so great that he could hardly recognise her. He knew she did not think she had been talking nonsense, and the knowledge made him uncomfortable. It was not pleasant to consider that she might have been corrupted in the age of innocence by some horrible old woman who simply lived to hate her species. There were a few such remaining, he knew, in mid-Devon and about Cornwall, and death by drowning was not too bad for them.
“Do ye boil, kettle,” pleaded Beatrice, in her usual lively mood, as she poked a stick into the fire. “Last time we had tea together we were devils,” she prattled. “We used the devils’ kitchen. And now we’re pixies. This is one of the pixies’ meeting places. They dance here in the moonlight, and on a windy night you can hear the blacksmith whanging away with his hammer. We’re getting on, aren’t we? We’ll soon be angels. Come along with the tea! The pixy-kettle is bubbling and spitting; and, by all that is lovely and sacred in art, here comes my pixy aunt!”
Burrough looked up. He saw a slight girlish figure picking its way among the rocks, and advancing towards them with mincing steps. At that distance Miss Pentreath might have been Beatrice’s younger sister; but as she approached the faults of the picture were exposed pitilessly by the sunlight and clear moorland air. The little made-up lady looked entirely out of place amid that wild scenery. Surrounded by the granite and gorse, the heather and bracken, of Dartmoor, she presented as incongruous an appearance, with her paint and girlish ribbons, as a fisherman clad in oilskins would have done in a West End drawing-room.
“Well trotted, Auntie,” cried Beatrice. “I was afraid the journey might be too great for you. This is Mr. Burrough, about whom you have heard from Ann. He’s the man who writes very big works in a very small house where the stormy winds do blow.”
Miss Pentreath made a fluttering bow, then seated herself upon a flat stone, and combed her chestnut locks with carefully manicured fingers. She could not see Burrough distinctly, owing to her steadfast refusal to wear glasses; but she was aware of a well-built figure and a fresh clean-shaven countenance which gave her a favourable impression.
“I am most pleased to meet you,” she said, in her little complaining voice. She had been unconsciously querulous ever since that unfortunate incident of the monkey-cage. “My niece tells me you have escorted her about the moor, and have pointed out to her many objects of interest which she would not have discovered by herself.”
“Quite true,” remarked a voice.
“I was not aware of it,” muttered Burrough, wishing with all his heart that the painted lady was at the bottom of Plymouth Sound.
“Yes,” said a mischievous voice—“Skelywidden, King Trevalyor’s country, and Swaling Night.”
“The air is so soft, so beautiful,” complained Miss Pentreath. “I really think I may venture to remove my hat.”
“I wouldn’t, Auntie,” warned Beatrice. “It might come on to rain.”
“Don’t say that. I don’t see any black clouds about. Do you, Mr. Burrough?”
“Oh, lots,” said Beatrice, with a sly look. “They are black as ink above Steeperton.”
“My niece is such a tease,” said Miss Pentreath when Burrough had assured her there was no immediate danger of a storm. “I hate rain,” she went on, smiling as archly as her enamel would permit. “It ruins one’s clothes entirely.”
“Not so much as bogs,” said irrepressible Beatrice.
“Well, my dear, I am a little older than you, and I prefer to keep myself neat. I do not believe in wading through bogs and gorse-bushes, and jumping about rocks.”
“Which is a nasty dig at me,” said Miss Beatrice. “But, you see, Auntie, I was born in Leap Year.”
“Don’t make atrocious puns,” said Miss Pentreath severely. “They are silly and unfashionable.”
“My stars! This propriety is for your benefit, Mr. Burrough. If you weren’t here Auntie would want to pull off her stockings and paddle.”
“I do not deny that my niece and I have paddled in this river,” said Miss Pentreath, stirring the cup of tea which Burrough had just handed her. “But I am not strong like she is. She would pull me about, and push me, until my paddle became something like a bathe. I am too small and weak to play with such a strong girl. Then the great disadvantage of paddling is the subsequent drying of one’s feet, for which a lady’s handkerchief is not particularly well adapted.”
“I love paddling,” said Beatrice. “I like to feel the soft sand tickling my feet and squeezing in between my toes.”
“Do be quiet, Beatrice,” said her aunt. “Ladies’ toes are not included among the subjects which may be discussed at a tea-party where a gentleman is present.”
“Why not, if they’re nice toes? Anyhow I wasn’t talking about them. I was only saying how jolly it is to walk with bare feet. But if that’s naughty we’ll change the subject. Tell us whom you met on your way here.”
“Only a few visitors, whose faces were not known to me,” replied Miss Pentreath. “Mr. Yeoland was standing as usual at his gate, and tried to get me to stop and talk. The poor old gentleman wants looking after sadly. Then I passed a few of the villagers——”
“I’ll give you a list of them,” Beatrice broke in: “Willum, who won’t work, and Dufty, who can’t look straight; Griffey, who preaches, and Veale, who boozes; Muzzlewhite, who can’t read, and Kentisbeer, who can’t write; Kellaway, with the wall-eye, and Wollacott, with the game leg; old Ruddle, who’s never been in a train, and old Wannell, who’s never been in a bath. Auntie talks to everyone and everything,” she went on, addressing Burrough, who had become unusually silent. “She speaks to every dog and cat in the place. One day I heard her talking to a pony about the weather.”
“Never mind my weaknesses,” said Miss Pentreath, as she produced her cigarette case. “Mr. Burrough, are you certain it is not going to rain? I am a very long way from shelter.”
“There’s the blacksmith’s chimney,” Beatrice reminded her.
“It is quite clear towards Cranmere—where the storms come from,” Burrough answered.
“Have you ever been to Cranmere?” asked a voice.
“I started one morning, but lost my way, and gave it up,” he said.
“I know the way.”
“Beatrice knows Cranmere well,” her aunt remarked. “She has been there every summer since she was a child.”
“Next time you go will you let me accompany you?” Burrough asked, avoiding her eyes, and feeling his heart beating rapidly.
“You would have to start early,” he heard Miss Pentreath saying, “some day when the artillery are not firing.”
So far Beatrice had not given her consent. She was lying upon the pixies’ bowling-green, her chin propped upon her hand, and her eyes fixed upon the foaming river. An expedition to Cranmere was a very different matter from an afternoon’s ramble in Blissland. He and she would be alone together for the day. Nothing but a vast solitude would surround them from morning till night. And Cranmere Pool was the centre of witchcraft and pixy pranks.
Suddenly Beatrice turned her head.
“We shall want lots of grub,” she said in her merry way. “And you must bring plenty to drink, for I won’t follow the example of the Cornish Princess in your fairy story and swallow mud and slime. The guns won’t be firing next Monday. Shall we go then?”
It was high noon, and the day was the first of the week. Willum Cobbledick walked out of the church and into the “Plume of Feathers.” He was wearing an old cassock, short in front and dragging behind, like a maid-of-all-work’s frock; and upon his bristling hair rested at a military angle a distinctly clerical hat. Willum always exchanged church for alehouse at the earliest opportunity, not so much because sawdust and beer-barrels were preferable to harmonium and lectern as because in the “Plume of Feathers” he could feel himself an instructor of the villagers who were wont to foregather there as often as the law allowed. Willum was a churchwarden. He was also organist, bell-ringer in moderation, and sexton. He collected the offertory and read the lessons. He intoned the psalms and sang the hymns. He was in effect the spiritual pastor and master of the village, as the vicar was too infirm and witless to perform his duty, and had almost lost the faculty of intelligent speech. Everybody who came to Lew went to hear Willum read the lessons. He rendered them in broad dialect, disregarding stops, gasping for breath in the middle of a word, sometimes turning over two pages and reading on unconscious of his error; while Mrs. Cobbledick listened with tearful pride and would have applauded had she dared. Service over, Willum would hurry to the “Plume of Feathers” for his well-earned beer. His fellow-villagers patronised the local Zion, which offered no attraction in the morning, nor indeed at any time when the house of good cheer was open. They recognised Willum as a superior. He was the local representative of learning. When an election was impending it was Willum who controlled the votes. When the rural dean made his visitation it was Willum who appeared armed with registers and misstatements. “Willum be the sinecure of all eyes,” Mrs. Cobbledick frequently explained to newly-arrived visitors.
Griffey, the preacher, sat on a bench, clutching a blue and white mug. Upon the table by his side sat his favourite disciple, Wollacott of the game leg, who was too miserly to buy refreshments for himself, and so far had not been offered any. Other worthies lounged in picturesque attitudes about the room. They were listening to Griffey, who had been discoursing upon the uncertainty of life, and the necessity of doing good to one’s neighbours. As the preacher confined his attentions to his neighbours by removing the boundary stone of one and diverting the water supply of another, his remarks were not received with that attention which the subject deserved.
“Us be like sparrows,” Griffey shouted as Willum entered.
“Like what?” asked old Wannell, who had never been in a bath, and was, on that account perhaps, somewhat hard of hearing.
“Like sparrows,” Griffey repeated.
“Us be,” agreed old Wannell, looking round to see if anyone was prepared to deny it, “like sparrows that sitteth alone on the house-top, and withereth afore they be plucked up.”
“That ain’t it at all,” broke in the amateur divine. “ ’Tis grass what withers. Sparrows fall to the ground.”
“And the Lord careth for ’en,” said the preacher, as he lowered his head reverently over his mug.
“Beautiful the beer smells,” said Wollacott of the game leg.
“It’s a wonder to me where you gets the learning from,” said Kellaway the wall-eyed.
“Ah!” said Willum profoundly, as he produced two books and a pipe from the pocket of his cassock.
“You don’t get it from your father,” observed old Ruddle, who had never been in a train.
“I never got it from he,” Willum agreed.
“You can’t account for learning,” said Dufty, who couldn’t look straight.
“It grows,” said Eastaway, the publican. “It’s just like warts; some have ’em, some don’t.”
“It don’t grow unless you helps it a lot,” said Willum modestly.
“I says reading’s a waste o’ time; that’s what I says,” commented Muzzlewhite, who had failed to master the accomplishment.
“So be writing,” added Kentisbeer, whose talent in that direction was equally undeveloped.
“Them be half-dafty notions,” said Willum.
Griffey, the preacher, opened his mouth to agree; but remembering suddenly that it was against his principles to agree with anyone, closed it again.
At this point Veale, the village toper, who had for some time felt sleep approaching, composed himself for a quiet nap beneath the trestle-table.
“What be they books, Willum? Full o’ learning, I reckon?” said the publican.
This was the moment for which the scholar had been waiting. He had held the books ostentatiously, confident that such a question would be asked before long. As a matter of fact, it was the publican that he desired particularly to impress. Eastaway was the financial magnate of Lew. He was the village banker. He was also keeper of the Cobbledick tombstone. Eastaway was practically the only employer of labour in the neighbourhood apart from the mines, where work was precarious, and received poor pay. By a stroke of genius worthy of a higher intellect, he had combined the business of granite merchant with that of beer-seller. He held the only licence in the village. His stoneyard was not a dozen yards away from the door which had painted upon it the laconic announcement “Bar.” While the men worked in the hot sun they could see the seductive interior, and smell the aroma of malt and hops, which, as old Veale had pathetically observed, made the place “so homelike.” Eastaway paid his men each Saturday at noon. During the week the greater part of his money came back to him through that process, which might have been described as an effect of machinery upon wages.
Willum opened the Greek Testament tenderly, and after gazing at the pages with a rapt expression, passed the book upside down into the rough and beery hands of the publican. The scholar’s face shone with idiocy, which the spectators mistook for wisdom, as he laconically and lyingly remarked, “Fifteen pounds!”
“Be a lot of money for a book; such a little ’un, too,” remarked the gentleman of the game leg.
“Mun have cost a lot to print ’en,” said Eastaway. “Do all they little things mean English words, Willum?” he went on incredulously.
“You turns ’em into English words—us do as knows how,” the scholar answered.
“What be ’en?” the preacher demanded.
“Chinese,” said Willum. “Chinese Bible.”
“Show us the bit about the sparrows,” said the preacher.
Catching a familiar word, the village toper beneath the table began to murmur a little ditty concerning a bird of that species, which sat upon a spout while a thunderstorm was impending.
“There be nought about sparrows here. They don’t have none in China,” Willum explained.
Old Veale proceeded to show how the storm broke, and forcibly expelled the sparrow from its coign of vantage.
“Then it bain’t a Bible,” said Griffey triumphantly.
“You gurt fool,” cried Willum, in anger at such stupidity. “Didn’t I tell ye ’twas Chinese?”
“What they chaps read as be slaves in Africa, where my cousin Bill Conybeare died o’ fever fighting wi’ the Boers,” explained Kellaway, the wall-eyed.
“They bain’t slaves,” shouted Willum, hotly. “It be a wicked lie. They works for their living same as us.”
“Order, please,” shouted Eastaway. “No politics here. What be t’other book, Willum?”
The scholar resumed his bland smile, as he handed over the torn and shabby Sanskrit dictionary, upon which he commented thus: “Only two others like it. One of ’em in the British Museum to Oxford, Mr. Burrough told me, and t’other be lost somewhere.”
“Be it Chinese too?” asked the gentleman who couldn’t read.
Willum replied in the affirmative, while Veale beneath the table murmured his joyous conviction that Chinamen never would be slaves. Probably he meant Britons, but the conversation had confused him.
“One of these books tells ye about t’other,” the scholar announced.
“Which tells ye about what?” asked Eastaway, blankly.
This question muddled Willum. After some hesitation he explained that when in doubt as to a word in the dictionary it was necessary to turn to the Testament for enlightenment. The publican, who was a practical man, requested Willum to translate a passage into fluent English. It was then the scholar discovered he had floundered; but a little sleight of hand, which resulted in a sort of reshuffling of the books, glossed over his error. Then relying upon memory and impudence, he pointed to a passage, and quoted a sentence which had occurred in the first lesson that morning.
“Ain’t nothing like that in our Bible,” said Eastaway decidedly.
“Well, I dunno,” said Griffey the preacher. “Seems somehow familiar.”
Willum considered that his scholarly reputation would be enhanced by remaining silent.
“Where did ye get they books from?” asked the publican.
Willum became at once mysterious. Under pressure he told a rambling tale of an old house in Cornwall, which had been long deserted and was gradually falling into decay. At length it was decided to pull it down, and the books were discovered in a box bricked up in a chimney. The gentleman into whose hands they came had sent them to him, Willum, for his opinion.
“How did ye know they was Chinese?” interrupted wall-eyed Kellaway, who mistrusted Willum.
“What’s the use of being a scholar if ye can’t find out things?” retorted Willum.
“That bain’t no answer,” replied the wall-eyed gentleman. “What be the signs and tokens?”
“What be the signs and tokens that the sun be shining?” shouted Willum.
“I can see ’en,” replied Kellaway.
“I can see them books be Chinese,” came the answer, which everybody present considered decidedly crushing.
“ ’Tis easy to see you be no scholar, Joe,” said Muzzlewhite, who was himself no better.
“What I wants to know is how he got they books,” went on Kellaway. “If they were worth a lot of money how did the gentleman come to part wi’ ’em?”
“I bought ’em,” said Willum. “The gentleman didn’t know how valuable they was, and I wasn’t fool enough to tell ’en. I offered ’en a fair price, and he took it, and I kept the books.”
“Same way as I sold they sick ponies,” muttered the preacher thoughtfully.
Wall-eyed Kellaway gave way grumbling. To ask how Willum came by the money was too delicate a question. It was common knowledge that his efforts to obtain control over the offertory had failed. The vicar might be a dotard, but he had sense enough to retain the bag. Willum was fond of referring to sums which he lavished upon various articles; and somehow or other the villagers had fallen into the habit of believing him.
“Seems to me you might pay for that tombstone next time you has a few shilluns handy,” Eastaway remarked blandly.
“That be mother’s business, not mine,” Willum retorted. He had the feeling that he was being baited, and he did not like it. “Mother ordered ’en, and mother must pay for ’en. ’Tis to go above she and father, and it can bide till she be dead.”
“Be ye going to drink that beer?” said Wollacott suggestively.
“I be,” replied the scholar, hastily guarding his mug with two huge hands.
“It bain’t right to let your father lie wi’out a stoane at his head,” said old Ruddle, whose travelling had been confined to horse-drawn vehicles. “He was a good man. Hit I on the face one ’lection time. Us was proud o’ he.”
“He warn’t a scholar same as Willum,” said Eastaway, who was hoping to get an offer for the tombstone.
“Could use his hands,” said Ruddle.
“Willum uses his brains,” said the publican.
“Us don’t want brains. Us can live wi’out ’em,” said wall-eyed Kellaway, returning to the attack. “You can’t cut peat and crack stones wi’ brains. ’Tis only men what don’t work as wants brains to tell ’em how to pass the time. Us knows what to du for a living, and us don’t want to be bothered wi’ brains.”
This was a distinct challenge to Willum. He could not disregard it without a distinct loss of reputation. He drained his mug, wiped his sandy moustache, and with a look of malevolence in his foxy eyes advanced to the centre of the room, faced his opponent, and was just about to commence a denunciation when an interruption occurred. The door opened noisily, and a couple of artillery officers entered.
The villagers became as silent as mice. Military visitations from the artillery camp on the moor were frequent: but it was not often that officers deigned to enter the little alehouse. As they walked to the counter, after a curt “good-morning” to the men, a few well-aimed kicks in the ribs fully aroused old Veale, who becoming conscious of uniforms shambled from beneath the table and, bespattered with sawdust, lurched for the door. Tumbling down the steps, he cuffed the urchins who were holding the officers’ horses, and drove them off blubbering with disappointment. Horse-holding for officers was a salaried position held for life by the toper. It was a monopoly enjoyed by him. The salary came from tips. No gentleman in uniform ever gave less than sixpence. Old Veale managed to pass the curb-reins round his arm, then supporting himself between the horses resumed the blameless slumbers which had been so rudely interrupted.
While the publican was producing the bottled ale, which he assured his aristocratic visitors was stocked especially for their benefit, the officers could not fail to perceive the books, left incautiously by Willum, lying open upon the counter. The younger of the two exclaimed at once—
“I say! Here’s a thing to pitch upon in a Dartmoor pub! Look here! this will remind you of your time in India.”
“A Sanskrit dictionary, by Jove!” said the other. “And what’s this? A Greek Testament. Landlord! is this the sort of reading you indulge in?”
“Well, Captain, us don’t read ’em,” replied Eastaway. “But Willum does. He be a scholar. There be Willum.” He nodded blandly towards the object in the clerical hat and disreputable cassock, while the officers exchanged smiles.
“So, my man, you read Greek and Sanskrit?” said the senior officer.
“Beg pardon, Captain,” broke in Kellaway, with an exultant grin. “Willum says they be Chinese Bibles.”
At that moment Willum, who still occupied the centre of the floor, looked as though he were experiencing that sensation in the palate and throat which is a premonitory symptom of nausea.
“I dare say it’s Chinese to him,” said the officer, with a good-humoured smile. “This book is the New Testament in Greek. And this is a Sanskrit dictionary. Sanskrit, as Willum may have told you, is the early language of India.”
“Willum never told us that,” said Kellaway.
“What would they books be worth, sir?” added the wall-eyed one, as Eastaway with a most deferential manner and obsequious smile set two foam-topped glasses before his patrons.
Willum made a remark about mother waiting dinner for him.
“What do you mean?” asked the officer as he lifted his glass.
“The chap has been fooling them,” the other muttered with a soft laugh.
“What would they be worth to buy? A lot of money, I s’pose, sir?”
“Lord no! They are old second-hand affairs. I suppose you picked them up at some bookstall for a few coppers?” said the officer, turning to the scholar.
“I bought them of a gentleman, Captain,” said Willum brazenly.
“And he had you!”
The two officers burst out laughing, and the one who had last spoken picked up the books and handed them to Willum, who was already preparing an indictment upon the ignorance of army-officers in general, and these two in particular, to be delivered as soon as they had departed.
Kellaway had still another question; and he lost no time in putting it.
“Would one o’ they books, sir, help ye to read the other?”
“Of course not,” came the answer. “They are two different languages.”
“Willum,” said the younger officer solemnly, “go home, my lad, and stick to halfpenny newspapers in the future.”
They laughed again, then paid their reckoning, and clattered outside to find fresh amusement in the somnolent horse-holder; but so soon as they had ridden away Willum lifted up his voice in denunciation and exclaimed, “They be nice men to be officers in the British Army. They don’t know Chinese when they sees it.”
The villagers laughed somewhat in scorn, and wall-eyed Kellaway laughed louder than the others. The majority were unwilling to believe that Willum was a fraud and a delusion. Willum was in his way an institution; someone they could be proud of, whom they could point out to visitors. But their faith in his wisdom had been seriously disturbed by the words of the officers.
“They be gurt fools and gurt liars,” thundered Willum.
“Why didn’t ye tell ’em so?” sneered Kellaway.
Beatrice had promised to meet Burrough at the moor gate on Monday morning, that they might start for Cranmere. The weather was gloriously fine. There was scarcely any breeze. A better morning could not have fallen to their lot. Burrough felt curiously elate while he made his preparations for wandering into the wilderness. He talked all the time to the lineal descendant of the great Grimalkin, who occupies the same position among the feline race of the West Country as is held by King Arthur in the minds of men.
“This is a great day, King o’ the Cats. A day to be noted by red letters and marked with a white stone. I’m going a roaming across rivers and rocks, through bogs and quags; and she is coming too. The Queen of Trevalyor is coming, Peterkin. She likes me a little—she must, or she wouldn’t be alone with me all day. I’m not too old after all. What’s thirty-five when you feel strong and well, and look it too? I’m young, my brindled monarch. I’m still a boy. No wrinkles yet, no grey hairs. I am not yet old enough to make my own living. If that is not a sign of infancy, what is? Out of the way, or I shall tread upon your royal tail. It pleases us to be merry to-day, for we have issued our decree commanding our loving subjects to make holiday. Don’t you hear the pixies scampering up and down the gorge? They are crying as loud as they can, ‘Ho and away for Cranmere Pool.’ ”
Peter jerked his tail and stalked outside, perhaps considering that, if there were any basis of truth for this statement, a plump pixy would make a pleasant change of diet. Burrough stuffed his knapsack with provisions for the journey, and hurried outside to find his ashplant which was to serve him for alpenstock.
Burrough’s private idea was that the great plateau, which Beatrice and he proposed reaching that day, was not strictly speaking in England at all, because Dartmoor had neither been conquered nor legally annexed. The inhabitants had a perfect right to raise the flag of a republic and proclaim Dartmoor as a sort of English San Marino. Dartmoor was still Little Britain. Although it was attacked often by the Saxons it remained impregnable. The Celtic inhabitants of the moor retained their language until near the dawn of modern England, until long after the county which surrounded it had been incorporated within the western realm. As an independent and unconquered state it passed into the jurisdiction of the Duchy of Cornwall, although the Duchy obtained no legal title to it. Legally Dartmoor was not in Devonshire; politically it was not in England. If an adventurer were to seize the moor, and proclaim himself First Emperor, none except the commoners would have a legal right to evict him.
Once upon a time Dartmoor was an immense mountain of granite. The ladies and gentlemen of that period probably wore hair and tails, and had not progressed far enough to talk scandal or to be troubled by politics. That mountain is now ruined. Nothing but the stump remains. It has been worn away by the winds and rain of ages. It may have taken a hundred years to wear away a few grains of that tough granite which still cannot be cut by any tool. Frost, storm, and showers wore that huge mountain away. The softer portions went first, and the rivers following the line of least resistance cut and scraped and hollowed as they ran unceasingly, until the defiles, cleaves, and gorges were made, to be a delight to quite a new race of beings, who had abandoned the fashion of wearing tails, and instead of hair cumbered their bodies with a vast amount of superfluous clothing. The harder portions naturally resisted the action of the elements longer, and they appear now as the hills and ranges of the moor, capped each one by unusually tough masses of granite which are called tors. Some of these masses look as if they had been built by some Permian or Damnonian corvée; others take upon themselves the shapes of giants or monstrous beasts; others in pure playfulness will log or rock upon persuasion.
Where one would expect to find hills there is only a plateau. The big hills are upon the borders of the moor; the central part is a more or less flat-topped surface, broken by small hillocks having each its distinctive tor, named usually after the form it is supposed to represent. Between stretch the peat bogs, springy in summer, spongy in winter. The peat when cut in its dry state is as soft and lovely a brown as a woman’s hair. Here the shaggy cattle wander, the wild ponies frisk, and the horned sheep browse. The wildness is extreme, the solitude intense. There are no trees upon the moor, nothing but the stone clatters, the bogs and rivers, the heather, whortleberry, and gorse. The greater gorse blooms during winter and spring; the smaller species flowers in summer and autumn; thus all the year round the fairies’ gold is lying upon the moor.
It is the rivers which are the pride and glory of the little republic of Dartmoor. Broadly it may be said that all have their origin upon the most inaccessible, the loneliest, most solemn and dreary, and the highest of all Dartmoor plateaus—the Mother of Rivers, Cranmere. Dart and Teign are the fairest rivers in the world. To walk by the Teign in the bluebell season is to be in fairyland. To trace the windings of the Dart is to become the central figure of a dream. There is also the Okement, river of ferns—it was this which flowed through Beatrice’s Blissland—and the noisy river Taw; and many another, with rattling brooks innumerable, all streaming from the breasts of Mother Cranmere to irrigate the green valleys of Devon, which was once a part of heaven, but broke off one day and fell to earth.
These rivers of Dartmoor have a beauty and romance all their own, as they dash their cold, sweet water to the western towns, where England’s commercial prosperity was built up, and whence her sailors pushed away to conquer Spain. There is one beauty of the Alps, and another of English hills; one beauty of the Rhine, and another of the Dart. Nothing is big, and nothing little, when referred to its proper scale. Cramping smallness is usually more lovely, if less sublime, than oppressive largeness. The crystal rivers of the moor run down between brown banks of peat decked with ferns and asphodel. Here they flow into wizard pools; there they thrill from one rocky ledge to another in a succession of sparkling stickles or little falls. They are always bright, always laughing, and possess a wondrous freshness. Sometimes these rivers forget they have risen upon Cranmere, and are destined to flow through merely terrestrial scenes. They revert sometimes to their former state, when Devon was a part of the heavenly country; or they lose their way, as it were, to find themselves, somewhere about the month of May, passing through some land that never was. Thus one reach of the Tavy passes through Arcady; one reach of the Teign through fairyland; one reach of the Dart through dreamland. And the dreams of that land are good!
Not many legends of the wild Cymric imagination remain. Arthurian legend has become forgotten. Board-schools have killed the pixies. Only the more vulgar fancies remain. One of them is connected with the Dart, which was originally not so much a river bringing water to the people as a god who demanded tribute from them. That tribute was a human heart each year—one year the heart of a maid, the next that of a man, and so on for ever.
In the vast and wild solitude of the moor it is curious to consider that here was once the Birmingham of England. Beside the rivers appear grass-grown mounds which betray the former working places of the tin-streamers. Here and there may be seen the ruins of their huts and homes. Their bridges across the rivers—huge slabs of granite known as clappers—are in use to-day probably in very much the same condition as they were a thousand years ago. During the Bronze Age the demand for tin was about equal to the present demand for steel, and the tin of “Dertymore” was famous before the Roman empire had declined. Upon Crockern Tor, an equal distance from the Stannary Towns, the Tinners’ Parliament was held in the open air. Offenders against its laws were sentenced to death and torture in its horrible dungeon of Lydford, more foul a prison than any devised by the intelligence and cruelty of the Spanish Inquisitors.
Cranmere is the practical summing-up of all that is wild and weird upon Dartmoor, and of all that is lonely and drear. It is a great watershed up among the clouds, the roof, as it were, of the moor. The so-called Pool in its centre may be reached by any active pedestrian during the summer months on those days when the gunners of the British artillery are not sending their shells across its boggy surface. In winter it is practically inaccessible alike to man and beast. There is danger then. Wool-like mists may encircle the wanderer suddenly, or the driving snowstorm spring up.
In every part the peaty soil has been rent into fissures. These crevasses present the most striking feature of the region. They are innumerable, and some are deep, while all are treacherous. The traveller jumps one to find himself balancing insecurely upon the brink of another in every respect identical with that he has just crossed. Their angular crookedness is amazing. They curve and zigzag into all manner of snaky shapes. Their crumbling edges are often hidden by tufts of bleached grass or knotted heather, and a false step may mean a sudden descent into slime and mud. One would imagine that the entire region had been tortured by earthquake, or that some Titan had fallen in frenzy upon the plateau and rent it with his hands and teeth.
Each of these crevasses is, in its humble way, a water-course. Each is a vein which does its part in the great act of river-making. During the summer months the mud with which they are choked is of a glue-like consistency. As autumn approaches the mass loosens and becomes oil-like, until in winter the mud vanishes and water begins to flow. Rivers have humble origins; they are not born great, but they have greatness thrust upon them. The source of any particular river can hardly be discovered. It is merely a muddy crevasse amid a hundred others. But the hundred are destined finally to feed the one, until the river casts its slough and appears fresh.
While the maze is penetrated, by means of jumps and scrambles, there are pools—small ragged patches of black and sullen water fringed by cotton-grass and bleached sedges. The water is so thick that the wind hardly ruffles it. Probably these pools are crowded with invisible insect life, but to the eye they might be poison-pits, so dead are they and so black. One cannot wonder if the Celtic moormen should have peopled this desolate region of crevasse and tarn with the souls of sinners. Here was once the site of purgatory. There was a time when the West-Welsh inhabitants of Dartmoor feared to climb upon the great plateau because of the piteous cries issuing from the crevasses. Nothing could be more suggestive of souls in agony than the groaning of the wind across Cranmere. With the sun “sinking in its roaring home,” with the wind sounding like grated doors heavily creaking, and the dripping clouds of mist around; with the fissures and the tarns below, the desolate peat-wastes, the deep black sheets of mud; with the solitude and lifelessness on every side, the imaginative Celt might well have hastened to find an easier way by which to escape from that haunted region to his home.
In the centre of this saturated waste was once a pool of some size. There are moormen who remember the sedge-choked sheet of black water. It was surrounded by beds of rushes. The rushes have gone, and the pool which nurtured them has gone too, drained by the turve-cutters. The finest peat in the world is cut upon the edge of Cranmere. What was the Pool is now an almost oval depression in the surface. The spongy bank of peat slopes gradually, and a cairn appears made of turves and marble-like stones, and topped by a sad post, to which from time to time a flag has been fastened, only to be torn to fragments and utterly demolished by the furious winter gales. Two tin boxes are pushed into a hole at the side of the cairn. The one contains a book to receive names and addresses of visitors who succeed in conquering Cranmere: the other is a post-box. They who reach the Pool leave letters and postcards to various friends and relations. The next arrival takes these missives, and upon returning to civilisation posts them without delay. Letters posted at Cranmere do not often miscarry, even though they may not reach their destination until many months later.
There is little to be seen upon Cranmere. Nature is naked and unrelieved. She is cold, hard and fierce. She is there not the Nature which smiles and is kind. She is the Nature which is exceedingly cruel. All the epithets usually applied to tragedy may be applied to Cranmere. Yet peace, and not sorrow, is the dominant note. On a calm day—and there are few perfectly calm at so great an altitude—the stillness is weird. It is unnatural. Perhaps there is not a region in all the world more silent than Cranmere. There is no life; all around there is death. But by one of Nature’s little ironies, Cranmere is the centre of life and the source of it. For she is the mother of nearly all the rivers in Devon.
Burrough had not long to wait beside the moor gate, for Beatrice was punctual. He went forward to meet her as she tripped along, fresh and sparkling like a part of the morning. She was attired like the practical Cornish girl she could be when she liked. She wore a short grey skirt which did not reach her ankles, and a tight-fitting jersey of white wool, over which was slung a little satchel, which she declared contained everything that could possibly be required for the expedition from a packet of pins to a white elephant. Her little feet were shod with two absurd miniatures of men’s Dartmoor boots—thick-soled and hob-nailed. Her head was uncovered, and so were her hands.
“Since it’s necessary to commence with the weather,” she cried, “what a day!”
“Ready to start?” asked Burrough.
“Ay, ready,” cried Beatrice.
The moor gate banged behind, and they were off.
“It’s up, everlasting up,” she said. “It’s drag, climb, and jump, henceforth and for ever, and we mustn’t talk too much. I’ll tell you why,” she rattled on, anxious to ignore her own advice. “Once I made this trip alone. I hope you’re impressed. I went to Cranmere alone, and I wondered why I was so little tired when I got back. It was because I had no talking or laughing to do. Talking and laughing are very exhausting.”
“We cannot walk like mutes,” he objected.
“The thing is difficult, but not impossible. We might make signs. Point, gesticulate, raise our eyebrows, shrug our shoulders. Do you know the deaf and dumb alphabet? But that wouldn’t do. It’s eyes on your feet hereabouts, or great is the fall. Now this is a breathless bit. We won’t talk for ten minutes.”
She compressed her lips firmly and looked down. They began to ascend, winding among the big blocks of granite. Beatrice kept glancing up with a smile, and a saucy gesture apropos of nothing. Presently she pointed at the sun, then patted her hair. Burrough nodded, and wiped his forehead, tacitly acknowledging the heat. Beatrice with difficulty restrained a titter. Then Burrough held up one finger and shook his head sadly. Beatrice nodded with equal gravity, and Burrough held up two fingers, looking pleased and happy. The girl nodded again, although she was entirely bewildered, and immediately held up three pink fingers, which looked almost transparent in that clear light. Burrough shook his head quite savagely.
“I must speak, or I shall burst,” cried Beatrice. “What ever do you mean?”
“When I held up one finger, I meant to signify that during my previous walks here I have been alone,” he answered. “Then I held up two, to show how glad I was to have you for a companion; and when you held up three, I took it that you meant there should be someone else with us.”
“That was much too deep for me,” said Beatrice. “I put up three fingers just to beat your two. I couldn’t imagine what you were driving at. So you thought I meant you ought to have a chaperon?”
He laughed at her wilful perversion, while she with a quick glance went on, “We open-air Cornish girls can look after ourselves. We are not hot-house plants by any manner of means. You’re an open-air person, aren’t you?”
“Altogether,” Burrough answered, “through necessity, not from choice.”
“But you are all right now?” Beatrice suggested quickly.
“Quite well, so long as I am here,” he said.
“I’ve been always awfully strong,” Beatrice went on. “At home my bedroom looks out upon the sea. I have the window open winter and summer, in storm and fine weather, and my bed is close beside it. I won’t have blind or curtains. I like to feel the salt breeze on my face. I can lie and watch the moon rising out of the sea, or the lightning flashing upon it, and I can watch the fishing boats sailing by. Sometimes I get my pillows soaked with rain, or the spray which dashes over the cliff. And after a stormy night my bed is in such a mess. Dry leaves and dust, and bits of stick, and my hair is simply filled with wreckage. Beetles and moths and bats come to visit me, and more than once a bird has been flung in by the wind. I get up in the morning feeling that I must dance and sing.”