From his position in the chimney upon the remains of last night’s fire Burrough could look upon the corner where he and Beatrice had spent those happy hours. He could see her bed of heather. The pony had trampled upon it and defiled it, but it was still the place where she had rested. He could see the exact spot where her head had been. He thought of the wild evening—the whirling mists, the savage wind, the pitiless rain; of Beatrice sitting upon the heather, toasting her damp feet, full of her west-country folk-lore; of himself full of his passion for her. He saw her saucy face, her mocking eyes, her wilfully lisping lips, sometimes quivering over the woes of Tregeagle, sometimes laughing at them. He thought of his own words, “You witch-girl! You gipsy!” Of his kisses not refused. Of his wild promises apparently accepted. Of her sweet murmurs which might have meant everything, or little, or nothing—just her everyday nonsense, but softer, sweeter, sillier than ever before.
Folk-lore and passion in the white mists and weird wind of Dartmoor had given place to sheer commonplace day with the horrible reality of its war-game.
“If I were to be killed here, what a haunted ruin this would be!” said Burrough. “Every night a poor lonely ghost, bending over an imaginary fire, kneeling to take off imaginary boots—but very real to the ghost—listening to a fairy-tale, then rushing out with yells. The gunners would be requested to sweep the place off the face of the moor.”
Burrough had neglected to wind his watch the preceding evening, and the next time he looked at it he found it was not going; but by the position of the sun he guessed it was not far off noon. The firing would therefore not continue much longer, and before it would be renewed he could easily place himself in a position of perfect safety. As the shells were bursting at a considerable distance he left the chimney, and sitting upon a rock watched the whirling clouds and the fountain of peat and stones flung upward. Then he heard a weird hissing, and rushed back to his place of shelter. A shell exploded beside the river, just above the old bridge, and some stones fell on the very spot where Burrough had been standing. The ruin trembled, and dust rained down the chimney.
After that there was peace. Burrough sat huddled upon the hearthstone, not venturing to stir outside for close upon half-an-hour, but not another shot was fired. At length he came out and waited several minutes in the open. Then he shouted at the top of his voice, and ran out of the ruin, like a boy released from school with a half-holiday to spend.
His shortest way back was along the range, across the field of battle where the dummy corpses were lying grievously wounded. One at least had survived. Burrough saw the grey shape leaning upon the crest of the hill as he came up. He walked straight towards it; and he was about two hundred yards away, and still some little distance below, when that catastrophe occurred which shivered the dummy soldier into fragments. It was the last shot and a well-aimed one. The wooden splinters were hurled in all directions; and where the dummy had stood appeared a dark hole in the peat.
One of the splinters caught Burrough just above the right eye. He staggered, spun round, then fell upon his back and lay still upon the heather.
When Miss Pentreath came down to breakfast she beheld her niece sitting in the open window, stroking Floss Cobbledick, the cottage cat. Beatrice looked as fresh as if she had been in bed and asleep all night. She had washed and done her hair becomingly, and had changed her clothes; she was clad in white and fine laces; and she appeared satisfied with the world and her saucy self.
“Have you enjoyed yourself, dear?” asked her Aunt, peering anxiously into the mantle-glass to assure herself she was artistic.
“Very well, Auntie,” came the answer. “I got back about two hours ago. We ran into the mists, and had to put up in a ruin on the moor. We made fires, and told ghost stories, and played games.”
“I ought to be shocked,” Miss Pentreath sighed. “In fact I am shocked. I wish it were myself I had to be shocked at. You do enjoy yourself, Beatrice. You are so attractive, and you have a lovely complexion, and you have pretty ways—and you’re a little beast!” she snapped smilingly. “I have tried so hard to be attractive. I must have spent years trying. I used to go out into the rain, and sleep with my head hanging out of the window. It was no use. I went on getting uglier. You have no idea how jealous I am of you, wretched child. Many a time I could have bitten your nose off just to make you ugly. I suppose if I had it would only have grown again, and probably prettier than ever, just to spite me.”
“That will do,” said Beatrice. “Say your grace like a good little lady, and soople up your breakfus’.”
“I am not going to say a grace,” snapped Miss Pentreath like a peevish child. “I have nothing whatever to be thankful for, and I won’t be.”
Beatrice was accustomed to these tantrums. She rather enjoyed them, although she was sincerely sorry for her made-up raddled relative, to whom nature had been unreasonably unkind. Miss Pentreath had often said, “I was born to be wicked, and I have to be good.” To all outward appearance she was a most devout lady with a weakness for false complexions. She was the lady bountiful of her village, with a special kindness and sympathy for young women “near their time,” whether married or single. She supported her clergyman and the church. She had a kindly heart, but there was a wanton spot upon it. Had she been born into the labouring class she would very soon have acquired an equivocal reputation. She had the maternal instinct strongly developed, but had been denied the woman’s primitive right and raison d’être of existence, and she had never been able to get over it. She made a kind of potpourri of religion, inclination, and intention. She read an old-fashioned sermon every evening, but followed it up as likely as not with a selected tale from Boccaccio. She had three shelves to her library; one for classical works, another for religion—and a top-shelf. She was often explosive after one of Miss Beatrice’s escapades.
“Now I’m off,” said the girl, directly she had finished her breakfast. “I’m going down to the river to pick asphodel.”
“I can’t think what you’re made of,” said her Aunt complainingly. “Jumping and climbing all yesterday, up during the night, and now off again. There’s one consolation—you’ll get bony and tanned and old-looking; and then I shall like you much better.”
“Toad!” laughed Beatrice. “I’ve soaked my complexion so thoroughly in air and sunshine that it can stand anything, and as for my bones they’re beautiful. I’ve been walking, running, jumping, ever since I got off my hands and knees. I’ve never been long away from moor and sea, and when I do I choke and gasp till I’m back. Now don’t call me names. I’m a little beast of course, but I’m a healthy beast——”
“Go away, you horrid thing,” cried Miss Pentreath.
“I’se going,” said Beatrice. “We’ll go for a stroll after lunch, and then prattle till tea-time.”
The girl went away by herself upon the moor, not to the river to pick asphodel, but to a favourite seat looking down into the cleave, and upon the river roaring gently over its granite. Having settled herself among the lichens and stonecrop she began to think. She wondered if she would be happy as a poor man’s wife, or indeed as the wife of any man. Marriage did not mean much to her. She was a strong healthy young animal, and she had no desire to find herself in a cage gilded or otherwise. There was nothing of the wanton about Beatrice. She had her passionate periods, and while these lasted she was prepared to love, not wisely nor moderately; but they passed and left her cold. In that state she really loved only the moor and the sea. She knew she would marry some day, “to find out what it was like.” She knew also that the moor and the sea would call her always. She could not leave her open-air. She must have her gorse, heather and bracken, and the salt breezes of her wild Cornish coast. Love and marriage she regarded as interludes between the acts. Her husband would be the hero of only a few scenes in her life. During those scenes she would take a passionate interest in him and his work; and she would be as sentimental as any man could desire. But the chief things in life would be her splendid health and strength, and her love for moor and sea.
At home she would pretend to mine for tin and copper, and to make water-works in the wild Cornish combes. She had played at such things as a child, and she had not yet put her toys away. She would search out places on the moor, name and annex them, and consider how she would build stone huts, and make tiny settlements, and occupy them with people of her own selection, who would wear costumes that she had designed, and obey laws which she had made. She had always been filled with such fantastic notions. Whenever she saw an old-fashioned village between the moor and the sea she longed to possess it, to encircle it with a wall, and establish a little kingdom of her own. She would have men attired as knights and children as pixies; and have lived in an atmosphere of romance and legend.
“I should make an agreement with my husband before marrying him,” she said softly, with her eyes fixed upon the sunlight rippling in the cleave. “And if he departed from it I should pack up and go. There would be no fuss and no nonsense. I should just leave him. I should make a good wife and a nice companion, if my wishes were respected. I would not be a junior partner and I would not be a slave. I should make allowances for any kink in my husband’s character, and should expect him to make allowances for any kink in mine—and there is one, I admit. The idea of husband and wife being one is very pretty, and equally impossible while human nature remains as it is. One and one make two, however you like to argue. There would be so much more happiness in the world if people would only agree to differ.
“I wonder how much happiness has been spoilt by convention,” she murmured. “I suppose the time will never come when it will not be considered positively indecent for a girl to tell a man she would like to marry him. A girl with money for instance—the man she wants is just the sort who would be too shy and proud to ask her. So she marries a rascal, who spends her money and goes off with another woman. I should not be afraid to ask,” Beatrice went on, flicking her handkerchief at a passing butterfly. “But whatever happens I must be free. To be in a town, in a street, in a house staring at other houses—that would make me mad. I must have my wild life, my heather and bracken, and my window open upon the sea.
“Last night,” she murmured softly. “It seems a long time ago. I promised nothing after all.”
When Beatrice got back to the village she heard a feeble voice calling, and, on looking round, perceived Mr. Yeoland grinning and beckoning over his garden gate. She went up to the poor old vicar, whose time of sense and sensibility was spent—she had liked him in those days—and the vicar seized her arm, pinched it with amorous and quivering fingers, and chuckled delightedly, “You’ve been at it again. You naughty girl! You stay out all night, you wicked girl, you!”
“I have not been out all night,” said Beatrice, crossly.
“Yes, you have,” he chuckled. “What time did you get in this morning?”
“Oh, well,” she said, resignedly. “I’ll plead guilty. Who saw me come home?”
“Willum,” said the vicar, expelling the word from the corner of his mouth with a wink of sheer delight.
Beatrice muttered something concerning Willum which would not have pleased the worthy scholar.
“Tell me all about it,” said the vicar.
“I won’t,” she laughed. “The beastly people! I suppose they are talking themselves hoarse about me. And you’re as bad as any of them,” she concluded.
“I like a bit of fun. Tell me about it. Go on.”
“We made a fire, and sat by it, and told stories,” said Beatrice.
“We?” chuckled old Y. “You didn’t want me there?”
“We did not,” she said.
“You told stories. I know them,” he muttered. “Funny stories.”
“The sort that will be told of you some day,” said Beatrice. “You will be like the wicked old clergyman who lived here more than a hundred years ago. For years afterwards he used to toddle about the place and make himself a nuisance.”
“He’s gone now. They laid his ghost in a beer-barrel,” said old Y.
“It was an empty bottle of Hollands,” Beatrice laughed. “And the bottle is bricked up in the wall of your study. You will find the account of it in that oak-chest in your dining-room. I know it’s there, because I saw it years ago, but I suppose you’ve forgotten all about it. The ghost was laid by a moorman named Yeo. He was sent for on purpose because he was a famous ghost-layer. He locked himself into the study and drank Hollands till midnight, and then the reverend ghost appeared. ‘Well, Yeo, how b’est ye?’ said the old vicar. ‘Wonderful well, thank ye,’ said Yeo. ‘And how’s yeself, sir?’ ‘I’m very well indeed,’ said the ghost. ‘I never heard ye come in. How did’st manage, sir?’ asked Yeo. ‘Through the keyhole,’ said the ghost. ‘Now, sir, that won’t du,’ the moorman said. ‘You can’t make me believe that a gurt big gentleman like you came through thikky keyhole.’ ‘Won’t ye believe it? Well, I did. I got through easy as easy,’ the vicar declared. ‘Well, then, sir,’ said Yeo, uncorking the bottle, ‘if you can come through the keyhole you can get into this bottle. But I knows you can’t.’ ‘Lawks!’ said the vicar. ‘I could do it easy.’ ‘That’s talking, sir. I don’t believe ye,’ said Yeo. ‘Then I’ll do it,’ said the ghost. ‘Here goes. There’s many worse places than a gin bottle.’ Into the Hollands he went, and Yeo corked him up. That’s the sort of thing that will happen to you some day,” cried Beatrice.
“I wouldn’t be such a fool. I wouldn’t go in,” the vicar chuckled. “You weren’t telling that sort of story last night.”
“Yes, I was. And if you say anything nasty about me I’ll knock down the wall in your study, and find the bottle, and let his reverence out.”
“Come in and do it,” chuckled old Y. “You’d look nice sitting in my arm-chair.”
“No, thanks. I look quite nice enough standing out here,” replied Beatrice.
“If I were forty years younger you’d come in fast enough,” he ogled. “Girls are all the same when it comes to a nice young man.”
“Which you are not, and never were,” she said. “Perhaps I’ll send Auntie to sit in your arm-chair. How would you like that?”
“Let her come,” said old Y. “My heart is as big as my arm-chair. There’s a place in it for the young, and a place for the middle-aged, and a place for the old.”
“I’d rather be in the gin bottle,” said Beatrice rudely. Then she left the old man, shaking with foolish laughter at what he considered a choice specimen of humour, and hurried home to luncheon.
Miss Pentreath was in a very querulous mood. She had been strolling along the moor road and had seen various young people, to say nothing of those somewhat past that state, engaged in what she regarded as the very laudable practice of love-making. They may have been mere summer flirtations, but at a distance it looked like the real thing. Miss Pentreath felt not merely that she was out of the running, but that she had never been in it, which was far more galling. People had no right to lock hands and link arms in public—and as for that connection between a male arm and a maid’s waist it was sufficient to shock the mind or make the mouth water, according to the inclination of the watcher. They would even embrace on the bold naked side of the moor. The little lady was quite positive she had seen a young couple kissing, with the aid of a powerful pair of field-glasses. It was her own fault entirely. She had taken out the glasses and swept the high moor with them for no other purpose.
“No, my dear, I am not,” she replied, in answer to Beatrice’s question whether she wanted to go out again. “I felt this morning like that poor man in the old story—what was his name? Not Dives. What was that thing called your dear father used to keep his whisky in?”
“Tantalus,” said Beatrice.
“That’s the man. He had nice things brought to him, and when he tried to take them they were snatched away.”
“But he was in hell,” said Beatrice.
“Well, so am I—sometimes,” declared Miss Pentreath.
This made Beatrice shriek with laughter, in which the little lady joined feebly.
“You little cat,” she called at her niece. “It’s easy for you to laugh, because you’re pretty, and fresh, and attractive.”
“Auntie,” broke in Beatrice, “I’m not pretty.”
“Well, then, the kind of ugliness that makes everyone want to bite you. I expect that poor lonely Mr. Burrough would walk across Dartmoor to kiss your foot.”
“He’s done it—both feet,” murmured Beatrice.
“That’s the sort of ugliness I want,” continued Miss Pentreath, without hearing her. “Who would walk across the room to kiss my foot?”
“Old Y. might toddle down here to do it,” Beatrice suggested. “I really think, Auntie, if you’re agreeable I might make a match for you there.”
It was Miss Pentreath’s turn to laugh, and she did so as fully as her complexion would allow.
“I have my self-respect left,” she said. “I want a husband, and I’ve always wanted one, but I should certainly decline to clasp in my arms an old man who is distinctly unpleasant in his ways, and has one foot in the grave and the other in the lunatic asylum.”
“Auntie!” exclaimed frivolous Beatrice. “Have you ever been kissed?”
“Once,” Miss Pentreath replied. “I was a girl then. I gave the boy sixpence,” she added.
“Oh, bribery!” the girl exclaimed. “You don’t know what it’s really like. Where did he kiss you?”
“On the mouth. I bargained for that.”
“Kissing is an over-rated pleasure,” Beatrice went on. “I like it best either on the back of my neck or on the sole of my foot. It’s a kiss and a tickle at the same time.”
“Be quiet,” said Miss Pentreath. “Mrs. Cobbledick may be at the keyhole.”
“She has already invested me with the order of the black sheep. She knows I was kept out last night—only she wouldn’t put it that way,” Beatrice replied.
“Are you going to tell me what happened last night?” her Aunt inquired rather wistfully.
“There’s nothing much to tell,” laughed Beatrice. “It’s the old story.”
“But you’re not going to? You didn’t promise? You won’t leave me, darling?”
“Darling might,” said the girl. “Darling didn’t promise, but she likes him rather.”
“How nice to be able to pick and choose,” sighed Miss Pentreath. “It’s a wicked world that won’t give a poor woman a husband. The women will rise one day like those people in history. Who were they? Not the Samaritans?”
“The Sabines. You’re muddled, Auntie,” replied Beatrice. “It was the Romans who raped the Sabine women.”
“The next time history repeats itself in that connection the women will run off with the men,” declared Miss Pentreath. “There was a country, I believe, which once made a law that prisoners should be released to marry the women who could not otherwise obtain husbands.”
“They preferred to stop in prison,” Beatrice murmured.
“Seriously though, you’re not thinking of marrying?” said Miss Pentreath appealingly.
“Isn’t a girl always thinking of marrying, whatever she may say or think to the contrary, unless she’s been and done it? When a girl gets her chance she thinks she’ll try it anyhow. The worse of it is she must go on trying it to the end of the story. Most girls don’t worry themselves about that, but I do. I’d take Mr. Burrough on a five years lease if the law allowed; but marriage as it is—it finishes off one’s life so.”
“Then don’t do it,” cried Miss Pentreath cheerfully. “You and I, Trixie, can enjoy ourselves as two jolly bachelors.”
“That would be all right if I had to,” said the girl. “There are lots of little fishes in my pool,” she laughed.
“Even when you were in short frocks, and had your hair down, they wanted to nibble,” said Miss Pentreath. “There was a silly young curate, who used to bicycle ten miles every day that he might watch you over the hedge.”
“St. Anthony, as I called him, because he was so unlike that gentleman,” cried Beatrice. “But he was keen. He used to beg me to untie my shoe-laces so that he might tie them up. And when I allowed him one day to take my shoe off, and put it on again after a pontifical kiss, I am sure he felt as if he had been appointed to a bishopric. When I told him he was neglecting his duty, he replied that love was the first duty of a minister; and when I asked him what it had to do with tying a girl’s shoe-laces, he said that was the practical side of love which was necessary as a stimulus to the spiritual part. That curate could quote scripture to his purpose.”
“Never mind the flames that have gone out. What about the one that is burning now?” besought Miss Pentreath.
“He would make a nice summer husband,” mused Beatrice. “He’s boyish, clever, and nice-looking. He’s like me in a good many ways. We were both quite mad when we went swaling. We should pull together all right for the summer, but in the winter I should want my long vacation. I can’t stop out of Cornwall for the dead months. I should pine to death for Zennor and Carbis Bay, and dear old fishy St. Ives.”
“If you leave me, Beatrice, I shall pine away too,” stated Miss Pentreath.
Before the girl could reply to this there sounded the alarums of Mrs. Cobbledick’s voice, accompanied by the excursions of Willum’s boots. These tempestuous noises increased, the door was opened without ceremony, and the lady of the house became revealed, with the sandy-haired scholar behind; the one overcome by the burden of her tongue, the other oppressed by a sense of his dignity and weighty matters of the moment.
“The gentleman what lives alone on Dartmoor—him what went wi’ ye to Cranmere yesterday—he’m all to pieces, and there ain’t nuthing of ’en left,” gasped Ann, with the pride and delight of one who was in the position to harrow the feelings of others.
“Shut thee noise, woman,” exclaimed her son, with much excitement, forcing his mother into the background, and turning to address the ladies. “Us have heard Mr. Burrough have been shot,” he went on, not without a certain amount of that relish he had lately deprecated.
“Don’t ye talk to I, Willum,” screamed Ann. “He be all to bits. Charlie what drives Eastaway’s granite cart said he saw the bits. Head as ’t might be here, and a boot as ’t might be there, and an arm as ’t might be under the chair where Miss Pentreath be sitting——”
“Be quiet, Mrs. Cobbledick,” interrupted Miss Pentreath sharply. “Darling, give me my snuff-box.”
Beatrice passed her Aunt the silver article which contained the fragrant dust, found by the little lady more refreshing and stimulating than the more modern vinaigrette. While she was making the connection between finger and nostrils, Willum again suppressed his mother, and commenced to give details.
“He were on the range, and a shell dropped on ’en and killed ’en instantedly. He went over dead like a shot rabbut. There was a balloon over the camp, and the officer in it sent down a message that a pony had been shot. They sent out a sergeant and two men, and they found Mr. Burrough. They picked ’en up and carried ’en away.”
“He were all in bits,” repeated the irrepressible Mrs. Cobbledick.
“He warn’t,” retorted Willum. “ ’Twas just his head taken off; that was all. The body warn’t touched.”
“Us’ll never hear the truth of it. They won’t tell us,” grumbled Ann. “They’ll bury ’en quiet, and say ’twas an accident, and nobody won’t know.”
Beatrice had been standing perfectly still while the birds of ill omen were croaking. Whatever her feelings might have been, she was quite able to suppress them. Having with some difficulty removed the Cobbledicks, she closed the door, and going to her aunt’s side, took the little lady by the hand and murmured—
“Auntie, I’m sorry. It was my fault.”
Miss Pentreath dipped two nervous fingers into her snuff-box and adorned her nose with a brown smudge.
“I think I’ll run over to Mr. Burrough’s cottage,” the girl went on hastily. “There might be someone about who can talk sensibly, or I might come across one of the artillerymen. I won’t be gone long.”
Just as she was Beatrice hurried through the village, collecting information as she went. From illiterate Kentisbeer she learnt that the Cobbledicks’ report had been slightly exaggerated. Burrough had not been blown to pieces, although it was true he had been killed, as Willum had endeavoured to explain, instantaneously. Later she met cross-eyed Dufty, who informed her that Burrough had not been dead when the soldiers picked him up, but he had passed away as they carried him home. A few minutes later she encountered the unwashed Wannell, who professed to have the latest information upon the subject. It appeared that Burrough was still actually breathing, although entirely unconscious, and it was impossible for him to live through the night.
Finally Beatrice reached the cottage, and learnt from an orderly, who was awaiting instructions from the army surgeon who was inside, that Burrough was not in the slightest danger of losing his life.
It was two weeks after Burrough and the dummy had been bowled over by the same projectile. The remains of the wooden man had gone to feed camp fires; those of the other were receiving the attentions of the War Office. An army doctor attended Burrough daily, and an army nurse permanently. And Beatrice came to visit him very often. She would hold his hand, and prattle her nonsense, and frisk about the bed like a kitten at play.
A splinter from the dummy had struck Burrough just above the right eye, but had luckily glanced off without penetrating. To what extent the eye itself was injured he did not know, and the surgeon had not told him. “Just a nasty scratch! You’ll soon be about again,” said that cheery optimist. In the meantime much correspondence took place between the secretary of the colonel commanding the artillery camp and the War Office concerning the effect of a certain class of projectile upon a wooden dummy and a human being, thereinafter called “B.,” situate in a straight line some two hundred yards in its rear.
It was Sunday evening. The nurse had gone out, and Beatrice was in charge. Burrough was sitting up quite in a cheerful mood, because the doctor had informed him that morning he was going on very well indeed and would not require professional attendance much longer. The couple were discussing a matter of great importance, the question whether Burrough should, or should not, apply for compensation.
“It seems rather mean after all they have done for me,” Burrough said.
“You can’t be mean to a Government,” Beatrice declared. “Nobody wants to cheat a private individual, but if one can travel first-class upon a third-class ticket one does.”
“I had no right to be on that part of the moor at all,” he said.
“You couldn’t help it. The range-clearers ought to have found you. They are employed to see that all living creatures are off the moor before firing begins. A master is responsible for any injury arising from the negligence of his servants.”
“Who told you that?”
“There’s a lawyer stopping opposite Mother Ann’s. He said he was sure you were entitled to compensation. Of course you are,” she rattled on. “Can’t you imagine yourself as a pensioner? You will tell people you were gloriously wounded in the service of your country while performing an act of heroism without parallel in the annals of war. That’s a sentence I picked up the other day in a life of someone. You will describe how your comrade—that’s the dummy—was blown to pieces, but you survived to receive the reward of an admiring and grateful country, and then you will show your scars, and they will pass the hat round for you, and say what a gallant hero you are, and how they’ll never see your like again.”
“Has the doctor told you I shall be scarred?” asked Burrough anxiously. “That is what is bothering me,” he added.
“Really you mustn’t expect to stop shells with your head without getting beauty spots,” she laughed. “Now you must strike while the iron is hot, and before the incident has ceased to be regrettable. Shall I write a nice letter for you to the War Office, like this—let me consider deeply—‘Dear Mr. Secretary of State for War,—I dare say you are aware that some of your chaps are playing at soldiers on Dartmoor, and t’other day some of ’em shot a shell plump into my right eye’?”
“That won’t do,” exclaimed the patient.
“If they can’t appreciate frivolity in a Government office, where is it to be appreciated?” cried Beatrice. “Well, we’ll try another style, the whining won’t-work and won’t-wash mendicant style: ‘Excuse me, your honour, but can you help a poor fellow who’s out of work owing to an unfortunate collision with a projectile fired by one of your gunners?’ Won’t that do, either? Then I’ll try the heavy style.” Springing up, she ran across the room, and returning with the Life of Johnson, whipped over its pages until she came to what she wanted. “Listen,” she cried. “This is what you want: ‘To interrupt your Lordship with my petty difficulties is improper and unseasonable; but your knowledge of the world has long since taught you that every man’s affairs, however little, are important to himself. Every man hopes that he shall escape neglect; and with reason may every man, whose vices do not preclude his claim, expect favour from your beneficence, which I trust, my Lord, will be extended to your Lordship’s most obliged and most humble servant, John Burrough.’ That’s the sort of thing,” said merry Beatrice.
“I shall not apply,” said Burrough with determination. “If they like to pension me they can, and I hope they will. But I won’t ask for it.”
“Then you won’t get anything,” said Beatrice.
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you,” Burrough went on. “I was thinking about it when that dummy was crumpled up, and I with it.”
“Double-dummy,” she whispered.
“It is this,” said Burrough. “Why did you go away that morning without me?”
“Well,” said Beatrice, flushing a little, “there were reasons, all good ones. When I make up my mind to leave a place I go. That’s one. Then I hadn’t the heart to interrupt your innocent slumbers. That’s two.”
“Both bad ones.”
“A pixy called me to the river,” she continued. “When I got there, another called me along the cleave, and another to the marsh, and so on until I found I was nearly home. Now let’s talk about something else.”
On account of his bandages, Burrough could not see her very clearly, but he perceived she was withholding the actual reason for her flight. The truth was, Beatrice had been afraid on awaking in the light of day and finding herself alone with him. The dawn had stirred her blood. She had been enervated by the soft influence of the early morning; and, like the first woman in the garden, she was ashamed, so went and hid herself.
“Do you believe in the pixies?” he asked her, rather to hear what she had to say than as a serious question.
“There’s a question to ask a Cornish girl!” she cried. “Believe in the wee-winikin people? I have a bed of tulips at home, and the pixies put their babies to bed in the flowers every evening and sing them to sleep. I hear the little lullabies as I lie in bed by my open window. And at dawn they come back, and I can hear them kissing their kiddies. Then on the side of the moor above the sea I can hear them dancing hand-in-hand round and round the furze-reek before it has been carried away.”
“What is the furze-reek?” Burrough asked.
“Don’t you know that? And you living on Dartmoor and going swaling! Even Willum could tell you that. It’s the furze after it has been burnt. It’s the firewood of poor Cornish folk, and they collect it in the autumn. Most of the places in Cornwall are named after pixies. And here’s another story. Somewhere beside the Tavy a herb grows, and it will cure any wound. Only it must be gathered at night, and by a pixy.”
“Couldn’t you get a pixy-trap and catch me one?” he asked.
“The tiny people are vindictive,” she said. “If you were to catch one, his screams would bring all his relations up, and they would pinch you purple. I like to get the old women of Zennor to tell me tales about the pixies of Trendreen Hill, and I like to believe in them. Oh, and you should see Trendreen Hill in swaling time! They can see the flames in Scilly. The furze-reek there is big and fine. The boys used to get off many a flogging after swaling in summer—it’s not allowed then—by saying that the pixies had done it. But that excuse is no good now. I wish I had lived a hundred years ago. There were lots of pixies then. Now, am I tiring you?”
“You could never do that,” he answered, pressing the hand which he had annexed and was holding between his.
“I’ve just remembered a story which will appeal to you,” she went on. “One day three men were blasting at the copper mine near Botallack, and, the charge going off prematurely, one of the men was blown to pieces. The other two were not much damaged. One of them stooped over all that remained of his comrade and called, ‘Dear old Jim! Thee bain’t hurt, aw ’ee?’ ”
Beatrice told her story with ridiculous gravity, then went off suddenly into a shriek. When she had recovered she continued: “I can tell you something else now I am in a remembering mood. It’s not funny, not even very remarkable, but still it sounds queer. When I was a kid I used to go and see a very old man who lived in Zennor. It was he who gave me the true version of the story of Tregeagle, and I never forgot it. Well, this old man’s grandfather was one of those who welcomed home Bishop Trelawny after his acquittal in 1688.”
“That’s impossible, surely,” cried Burrough.
“It’s quite true. I read the dates in the most curious old Bible you ever saw. The grandfather married for the third time very late in life, and had a son who was the father of my old man. Not one of the three old men ever went out of Cornwall. There, I think I’ve told you enough funny stories for one evening. I must go now, for I see your grim and awful nurse stalking across the moor with slow and stately stalks. Good-night and good-bye. I’ll come to-morrow.”
She pressed his fingers lightly. He kissed hers. And she went away laughing.
The next day was wet. Beatrice appeared in a mackintosh and her nailed boots, with a woollen wrapper about her head and a letter in her hand. “It’s come,” she cried directly she entered the invalid’s room, “your letter from Cranmere, post-marked Lydford.”
“And I’ve got yours,” he answered.
“I came round early to save it from your clutches if it were possible,” she admitted. “I would have torn it up. I couldn’t know you’d get it when you were lying blown up. Give it me.”
“No,” he said firmly. “It is my first letter from you.” Then he read aloud: “There’s an oak on the Dart which will drop the acorn that will grow the wood to make the cradle to rock the child who’ll become the man to marry me.”
“It refers to my next incarnation,” said Beatrice. “But if mine is folly, what is yours? Yours is mere midsummer-mad poetry.” Then she read aloud in her turn—
“Upon my trouth, I sey yow feithfully
That ye ben of my liffe and deth the quene,
For with my deth the trouth shal be sene.
Your two eyn.”
“It’s wild and primitive and plaintive. It suits Cranmere somehow,” she commented.
“I couldn’t think of anything else,” he pleaded. “Those lines were running in my head. They are from the only known ballad of Chaucer. He knew Dertymore and the Dart, and very likely stood upon Cranmere.”
“You have given me a new exclamation,” Beatrice cried. “Instead of saying, ‘my stars!’ I shall say, ‘my two eyn!’ ”
“Beatrice,” exclaimed the invalid, suddenly passionate, “will you marry me?”
“My two eyn! It comes in useful at once,” she laughed. “That was just as sudden and frightful as the shell which played skittles with dummy and you. Why, the acorn hasn’t dropped from the tree yet——”
“Be serious for one minute, five seconds, and say yes,” he pleaded.
“I will be serious,” she said. She went down upon a stool and took his hand. “I thought something was going to happen,” she went on, “because I had a dream last night, and it was the most remarkable and unpleasant dream that has ever come to me. I thought I had done something wicked or foolish—I don’t know what it was—and after doing it I walked out on the side of the moor beside our house, and there I saw something growing among the furze-reek. I can’t tell you what it was or what it was like, because I do not know, but it frightened me. I knew it was the consequence of what I had done. That evening I went out again, and the thing had grown larger. All that night I could see it in the moonlight from my window, growing and growing. It became more and more dreadful, and I felt that a time would come when I should not even be able to look at it. That time, I thought, did come, and I awoke in a fright.”
“It was nothing but a new version of an old nightmare,” he said softly.
“Suppose we made a mistake, and some horrible thing did grow between us, like that thing among the furze-reek?”
“What could come between us? I should always love you. Mine would not be an ordinary love,” he urged.
She hung down her head and said nothing. He went on pressing her.
“Suppose,” she whispered, “suppose that thing has begun to grow already!”
“So there is something,” said Burrough miserably. “What is it, Beatrice?”
“I can’t tell you,” she said. “It’s horrid of me, but I can’t help it. Shall I go away and write it?”
“No; tell me.”
“You would let me have my own way?” she went on; “you would let me be as free as ever?”
He gave the promise at once, then went on urging her.
“Well, then, I must,” she said. “I know how you feel towards me,” she added quickly; “but I don’t feel like that towards you—except, perhaps, just for a minute or two occasionally.”
“How could you?” he replied. “I thought I should never dare to ask you until that night in the ruin when you were telling me the story of Tregeagle. Then I began to understand that love and loneliness conquer everything, even poverty and pride. The little god of love himself is poor, Beatrice. He has nothing but his arrows, and can only pay his debts with kisses.”
“I like you,” she said. “Ever since we were together in our little kingdom by the river I have liked you. I have never known a nicer companion than you. We should be happy, I think, on the moor together. You don’t understand the moor as I do; it doesn’t call to you, and you don’t see under the furze and the griglans like I do, because you haven’t got my Cymrian blood. You would not be always my companion. You can come swaling with me, but you can’t come with me to see the little people. I know they don’t exist, yet I can find them when the wind comes moaning through the mist, just as all the West Welsh people have found them always.”
“Is that your difficulty—only that?” said Burrough eagerly.
“No, it is that accident,” she answered boldly. “Can’t you guess?”
“You are afraid I shall be disfigured?” he said, in a low voice.
“I am so fond of beauty,” she went on resolutely, “and disfigurement in any form is a horror to me. A fisherman with a wooden leg used to live near us when I was a child, and whenever I saw him I would scream and run away. It’s constitutional, I suppose, just as some people can’t bear to see a spider or come near a cat. I cannot help it. There! I have told you,” she cried, as merrily as she dared, but without looking at him.
“The doctor will be coming presently; I will ask him,” said Burrough, rather shakily.
“It may be all right,” Beatrice went on.
“It will not be all right,” he answered sadly. “There must be a scar.”
“I wouldn’t mind that—not an honest scar—if the eye was all right. But a dreadful blank eye like the one Kellaway has——”
She broke off, and he felt her shudder.
“I wish the doctor would come,” was all that Burrough could say.
“What do you think of me now?” said Beatrice wistfully.
“The same as ever,” he replied. “Beatrice, you will answer, will you not? Perhaps I shall not be so very dreadful to you when the bandages come off. If I don’t frighten you then, if you think you can bear with me, if I am not likely to grow into the horrible thing of your dream, will you?”
“Oh, in that case,” laughed she, “I really think I might be inclined to give the matter my serious consideration.”
“Beatrice,” he pleaded, “no frivolity! If I am not disfigured, what will you say?”
She looked up then, full of laughter and nonsense, and called, “Oh, yes, and that’s one time; oh, yes, and that’s two times; oh, yes, and that’s the third and last time.”
She was kneeling beside him, and he held her firmly in his arms.
“You see,” he cried exultingly, “I am not mutilated; there’s no weakness.”
Then, holding her, he bent low and murmured into her ear some of the nonsense she had taught him.
It was late when the doctor came riding over the moor. Burrough had been employing the time in trying to extract information from his nurse, but that austere person remained as uncommunicative and mysterious as Peter himself, who had fallen under the ban of his master’s displeasure by glancing up with a disdainful expression and licking his paws in reply to questions. Directly the surgeon came in, with a brisk step and cheery remark, the invalid attacked him with the query which had been on and off his tongue since Beatrice’s departure.
“What is the extent of your injuries?” hummed and hawed the surgeon, who was a typical army man, kind and easy-going. “My dear chap, don’t worry yourself; you’re doing fine. I’m going to turn you out for a walk to-morrow, and send the nurse away, and knock you off the sick-list.”
“I know all about that. What I want you to tell me is, how am I going to look when these bandages are off?” Burrough interrupted, with more excitement than was good for him.
“How do you want to look, you young angel,” replied the surgeon, standing in front of the glass and arranging his moustache—“like Narcissus—pink cheeks, snowy forehead, hyacinthine locks, and all that sort of thing? Anyone would think you were a society beauty or a chorus-girl. Here you go stumbling into an exploding shell, which would have killed you if it had been made properly, and, instead of being grateful because you aren’t in your grave, you bother me about your complexion.”
“Look here, doctor, I’m going to know the truth,” said Burrough earnestly. “If you won’t tell me, I shall take these bandages off when you’re gone and look at myself in the glass.”
“That’s going to be your next move, is it?” said the other, with a short laugh. “Well, my lad, let’s have it over. I may as well tell you to-day as next week. That was a confounded nasty smack you had in the eye, and it’s a bit of luck for you that the splinter didn’t penetrate, as in nine cases out of ten it would have done. The whole affair was unlucky, of course; but, seeing that it did happen, you have more to put on the credit side than on the other. You’re going to retain your health and strength, and if you’re not thankful for that you ought to be strapped up and horsewhipped.”
“Thanks for breaking it gently,” said Burrough grimly.
“Well, the right temple is pretty badly knocked about; and as for the eye, plenty of good fellows have managed with one, from Polyphemus to Dr. Johnson. Now don’t worry yourself. You must fascinate the girls in future by your brilliance instead of with your beauty. You’ll do it with practice.”
“I shall look perfectly repulsive, then?” Burrough faltered, after a short silence.
“Yes, people will scream and take to their heels when they see you,” said the other sarcastically. “My dear chap, you must have been prepared for this. Not many men who get in the way of an exploding shell escape at all. You won’t look much worse than that wall-eyed fellow in the village who helps to clear the ranges, and who ought, by the way, to have cleared you off that morning.”
“Not much worse!” muttered Burrough, sarcastic in his turn.
“Lord bless you,” said the cheery surgeon, “this little business may be as useful to you as the death of a maiden aunt. The War Office ought to come down handsome, as it’s a clear case of negligence on the part of its servants. Most of the Tommies would ask to be planed and pruned if it meant a few shillings a week pension for them. Cheer up, my lad! It’s a stroke of good luck, if you will look at it in the right way.”
For all these words of consolation, Burrough felt himself clinging as it were to the edge of the world, and longing to release his grip and drop into space. When the surgeon had gone he sat beside the open window and watched the sunshine on the moor.
Only a few hours before he had kissed Beatrice’s warm fingers. Her mouth he could not ask to kiss with his head swathed in bandages. Had that kiss been the last? An engraving of the Bathos by Hogarth was hanging beside his chair. It was the end of all things: dead Time, with his broken scythe and shivered hour-glass; the broom worn to the stump, the cracked bell, the unstrung bow, and the wrecked ship; the sun dead and the moon on the wane; the withered tree, the empty purse, the clock run down; and the painter’s palette broken. The horror of the last was upon Burrough then.
“King of Cats, come and talk to me,” he said, extending a hand towards his wholly unsympathetic companion. “My day is over and the night has come, the night of bats and owls and everything that loves the dark. I’m a creature of the night now, a monster, an abnormity, a one-eyed abortion. If I were to present myself at the court of King Love I should be cast out headlong. The fairy-tale is over, King Peter. I thought I was the Prince, and I’m only the Ogre. I am the evil knight who has tried to carry off the Princess, and my eye has been poked out for my pains.”
He could understand Beatrice’s horror of any permanent physical blemish, such as a lost limb or an empty eye-socket. She was herself so perfect in health and strength; her mind looked for perfection in the things about her. The environment of folk-lore, with which she was fond of surrounding herself, contributed to this love of what was beautiful and complete.
Burrough remembered that the doctor had given him permission to go out. He decided to walk in the direction of the village, thinking he might meet Beatrice, who would be anxious to hear the sentence that had been passed upon him. So he crawled out of the cottage for the first time since his accident, and walked slowly upon the moor, while Peter trotted beside him with tail erect.
It was a beautiful evening and the moor was at its best, but Burrough was in no mood to enjoy peace and beauty then. He would almost have preferred a storm; thunder crashing upon the tors, lightning blasting them, and wind to make them reel. He would have liked the clouds to fall and a mist to cover him. If only the old stories were true, and there was a herb which would restore his battered features! How diligently he would search the moor, inch by inch, until he had found it. It was too easy to dwell in the atmosphere of romance; too difficult to face the realities of life.
Burrough had seated himself upon a rock hardly more than a stone’s throw from his cottage, feeling already tired out; while Peter was following the scent of a young rabbit in blissful anticipation of savoury meat. Burrough tried to comfort himself with the assurance that he could see as well as ever. He looked across the gorge of the river, and followed the heaving sky-line of the moor opposite. He could see the sparkling bog-water upon the slopes, and the vivid green patches of grass which decked the dangerous spots. He could detect also the lurid brilliancy of the flowering mosses, the crimson golden and grey sponges, which grew upon the bogs. He tried to persuade himself his single eye could actually make out the sundews and bog-violets lying upon the quaking surfaces beyond the gorge. Then he allowed his eye to wander along the sky-line, until it reached a rounded hill the sight of which sent a shiver through him. That hill was one of the frontiers of Cranmere, the high and barren region of river-heads which had been the indirect cause of all his suffering.
Although evening was drawing on, the guns of the artillery were still thundering. Burrough could hear the furious hissing and sullen explosions of shells across the desolate waste, and he could see wisps of smoke floating or whirling between the tors. The sides of these tors were covered with white scars made by sundered granite, and some of Eastaway’s men, as small as dolls, were working there getting the last load of granite for the day, their crowbars ringing upon the blocks and striking wild mountain music. A fine sweet breeze was coming up the gorge of the river chasing a few low-lying clouds through the sunlight.
There were hut circles upon the slopes opposite. Burrough knew where to look for them, as he had been there often, examining, measuring, and forming unsatisfactory theories regarding the race of beings who had occupied them. He knew as much about these savages as most people; and that was nothing. But he fell thinking, as he had often done, about them and their dwelling-places upon the treeless waste. What made them live upon the barren moor, exposed to storm and wind, when the fertile valleys were so near? Perhaps it was because they regarded the moor as a god and believed themselves to be his children. A primitive people would naturally consider that the god of the hills was more powerful than the god of the valleys. Yet how did they live? The moor gave them nothing but stones for their rude homes and peat for their hearths. It gave them no corn. It caught their cattle in its bogs. They did not leave the moor; they were born upon it; they were buried on it. They were horrible in their lives, these moorland savages, but magnificent in their funerals. They had tombstones of royal granite and the entire breadth of Dartmoor for burying-place. That was all the moor ever did for them. It starved them during their lifetime, but protected them when they were dead.
“Which is exactly what the world does to us now,” muttered Burrough cynically.
Hearing the clicking of horse-shoes he rose with the intention of returning to his cottage, because he was afraid to be seen by anyone. He had only made a few steps when the rider appeared, and he perceived it was a girl. He also perceived it was the only girl that the world possessed. It was Beatrice astride a grey horse, bare-headed and ungloved as usual, and laughing delightfully.
“Don’t run, poor wounded soldier,” she called. “I saw you a long way off, and I shouted, but you took no heed. Did you think I was a moorman rounding up cattle?”
“I wasn’t looking that way,” Burrough replied.
His voice and manner told her there was something wrong.
“I’ve always ridden man-fashion,” she went on lightly, as she reined in close beside him. “It’s so much more natural and comfortable. And over this rough country it’s safer. I’m not going to get off, because it’s rather a nuisance mounting in this divided habit, and I can talk to you just as well up here. Now I want to hear all the news. Has the doctor been? And has he been saying nice kind things and making you purr?”
Burrough could not answer her with the truth. He had been ready with the confession before she came; but to look at her then with hair ruffled and loosening, her face flushed with the breeze, her eyes sparkling, and the distracting mouth half-open, questioning and eager, was to be unmanned at once. He could not lose her. Impelled by love and the thought of his loneliness, and careless of the consequence, he said, “There will be a mark.”
“Little or big?” said she.
“He doesn’t know yet how it will heal,” Burrough floundered on.
“But the eye? How will that be? Will it be dotted?” she laughed.
“Not badly. I am sure there won’t be much of a mark—just a scar, a small scar, and even that may wear away as time goes on. You see the splinter struck above the eye, never really touching it at all, and glanced off without making a deep wound. I’m not so badly knocked about as you think. When the bandages come off you won’t see any very great difference. I am certain you won’t. Just a red line across my forehead, and that’s all.”
Burrough spoke quickly, almost incoherently, and stammered more than once. He was on his trial, pleading for his happiness at the Court of Love. He forgot how foolishly he was speaking, how that the time would come for him to remove the bandage, and reveal his battered features. Words would not avail him then. A glance would tell her he had been lying. Her affection for him, and even her sympathy, might well be alienated by his deceit.
His one idea was to keep her, to have her with him, to enjoy the right of holding her hand and kissing her fingers. If he could only keep her for another week he felt he would not have lied in vain. She would be his until the bandages were taken off, and then it would be time enough to think of going to the end of the world and dropping off into space.
“Because I laugh you musn’t think I don’t care,” Beatrice said. “It’s no use being tragic over things, and I’m sure you’re serious enough for two. I’m really dreadful sorry. I just wandered away that morning because I wanted to be alone on the moor. I was sure you would wake up and follow me. But you lay a-thinking, and a-dreaming, and a-playing at targets. As I was your guardian I shouldn’t have left you. It was partly my fault you were damaged, and I’m sorry, and to show you I’m sorry I promise I won’t mind that scar.”
“You mean it, Beatrice?” he whispered eagerly, clasping the little foot which was resting in the stirrup nearest him. “You are not laughing now?”
“I have promised,” said the girl seriously. “No, don’t—don’t kiss my boot. It’s horrid, and people may see. You are silly this evening. That splinter must have gone into your brain after all. What are you doing? Please don’t eat the lace off my petticoat. Well, if you must kiss something here’s my hand, only let me have it back again.”
Burrough had lost his senses just then and was behaving unwisely. The little god of Hope, who had departed with the surgeon, came back with a great fluttering of wings and settled once more upon the roof of the cottage.
There was a chance after all, if he could accustom Beatrice gradually to the change in him. She was prepared to tolerate a certain amount of disfigurement. She was ready to meet him half-way. She had admitted she was partly to blame for the catastrophe. He would not have admitted it, but was very glad she had done so. Leaning against the horse, with her foot in one hand, and her fingers in the other, he could only murmur again and again those words he had so often inwardly expressed—“You are sweet, Beatrice. You are sweet.”
“When I was a child, such as you are now, I used to be told it was bad manners to speak with my mouth full,” said the girl. “If you would take my hand out of your mouth…”
“That night we were in the ruin…” he began; but she resisted feebly.
“My hand is not a relic, neither is my foot. They are not necessary as incentives to devotion.”
“I have a reliquary in my bedroom,” he said with unrestrained boyish ardour. “It contains hairpins, buttons, withered flowers, cigarette-ends.”
“And folly and madness,” she finished. “Do you want my precious toes too for your reliquary? You shall not have them.”
“But they are mine, all the perfect ten of them.”
“Nine,” she murmured with a gasp of mirth. “I’ve had an accident with one—don’t pinch! Not on that foot.”
“That’s a disfigurement,” he said exultingly. “It is, Beatrice.”
“No, it’s only the nail, and that’s growing again. It will soon be perfect, and nicer than ever—brand new. There is not a mark upon me, not even a freckle. I’m a lamb without blemish. There! let me ride on.”
“Not yet,” he prayed. “What was I going to say? I forget when I look at you.”
“With its one poor eye,” said she.
“But the other is there,” he cried painfully. “It’s only hidden. Wait until it heals, and you will say I am no worse. Beatrice! don’t go. I hate to see you go. You might not come back.”
“And then there would be the dull thud of a falling body in the gorge and a notice, ‘Cottage to let.’ Certainly I must go, and as certainly I will return. I swear it by all the little saints of Cornwall, St. Piran, St. Issey, and St. Ive, though I don’t suppose they were much better than you and I. I will come to-morrow, sun, mist or mud. It’s all the same to me. It’s only a question of boots or shoes.”
“I know what I was going to say. That night in the ruin, when you were telling me about Tregeagle.”
“And you were wondering what my ear was made of.”
“I found a key—the key of Paradise.”
“How nice for you. May I come too?”
“To-day I felt it slip out of my hand. I lost it,” he went on, in the same excited voice. “I thought it was gone for ever. And then you came along, and picked it up, and gave it back to me.”
“Take care of it, my child,” said she. “Hang it on your watch-chain.”
“It is safe in my heart,” he whispered.
“You’re hopeless quite.”
“I can’t lose it now.”
“There is going to be a moon to-night, a great round white moon,” said Beatrice. “I charge you not to go walking in its light. Else you may stumble over the granite, and fall on your face, and instead of being one-eye you will be no-eye; and then it will be no use my coming to-morrow as you wouldn’t see me. And now, having spoken out of our wisdom and loving-kindness we will depart.”
“To-morrow we will go down to Blissland,” he said, with the warmth and eagerness which had not been allowed time to die down. “We will sit in the granite chair which you called the Menacuddle. Why did you call it Menacuddle?”
“On the same principle that my parents followed when they decided to call me Beatrice. They thought it would suit me. You couldn’t imagine me by any other name?”
“Not by any under heaven except Beatrice,” he replied fervently.
“Menacuddle is really the name of a well near St. Austell, and it means the hawk’s stone. It was your wicked mind which added the sentiment.”
“And yours which named it,” he said triumphantly.
“Don’t you see I’m going? My horse is moving. Good-night.”
“To-morrow we go to Blissland. I’m quite strong. I can easily walk there. And then we can have a long rest.”
“Let go! Good-night again. There! Now let me have my poor foot. Not Blissland to-morrow. It’s too soon. Not until the bandages come off.”
He let her go then, and she trotted off gaily waving a farewell. Burrough turned towards his cottage with the sound which was to become haunting in his ears, the sound of horse-shoes clicking upon granite. And as he entered the door the little god of Hope, who had been perched upon the roof, shook himself, and spread his wings, and flew away in the direction of the clicking horse-shoes.
The first beauty of the moor is young bracken, gorse is the second, and the third and best is heather. It was out at last, the pink heather, making the slopes rosy; so Beatrice proposed an expedition. They would climb up the great wet mountain called Cawsand, and search for white heather.
Burrough was quite strong again. He could walk any distance. He was no longer an invalid; the nurse had gone, and the doctor’s visits were few and far between. But he still wore the bandage, not because it was necessary, but because he did not dare to remove it. He had looked into the glass and seen the extent of his disfigurement, and straightway the last hope had gone. What would Beatrice say, Beatrice who had fled in terror from the fisherman with the wooden leg? And yet he could not tell her. He must keep her as long as he could. He continued his deceit, telling her the bandage was still necessary, promising it should come off soon, assuring her that the injury was only slight. He declared that his eye was not yet strong enough to bear the light.
“It’s no use keeping your head wrapped up,” the surgeon had said. “You want to get the sun and air upon your face, but I suppose it’s no good talking. You’re too jolly conceited to go about and show yourself. Talk about the vanity of women! Why, I believe some of our chaps spend half their time before the looking-glass, and I know from experience what a business there is if one gets a scratch on the face. They’ll take a body wound gladly, and ask for more—but a scar on the face, even if you want a magnifying glass to see it, knocks ’em over at once. They think they are spoilt for the girls, though they wouldn’t admit it under torture. We don’t confess our weaknesses to one another; but the truth of the matter is we’re always thinking of the girls, and they’re always thinking of us, and that’s the way of the world and always will be.”
Burrough had a good many troubles just then. His pen had been idle since his first meeting with Beatrice, and his bank account was dwindling at an unpleasant speed. He was not in a position to afford a summer of idleness. His love affair had not stimulated his brain, nor had it stirred his mind. On the contrary, it had acted as a drug. It had sent him into a blissful slumber, which had been rudely dispelled by the explosion of the shell and the destruction of his personal attractions.
Beatrice did not appear to be in a very good humour when they started upon their tramp. She was becoming suspicious, although he did not know it. She wanted him to bring his face from its state of partial eclipse that she might behold the full light of his countenance. His unwillingness to do so, even for a moment, was not satisfactory. Her aunt had instilled a certain amount of distrust into her mind. There was also a good deal of gossip in the village concerning Burrough. The drift of it was that the unfortunate gentleman could not be expected to uncover his face, as it was certain a considerable portion had been shot away. How did they know? It was common talk among the artillerymen. The sergeants had told them, and the officers had told the sergeants, and the doctor had told the officers. Miss Pentreath was not Burrough’s ally. She would have married him herself gladly, but she did not want Beatrice to do so. He was not good enough for Beatrice, who could pick and choose; and she had a horror of the girl going away and leaving her to wither into the last stage of discontent. Beatrice liked her aunt, and to a certain extent was influenced by her. She knew no reliance could be placed upon the utterances of Mrs. Cobbledick and Son; and yet their talk made an impression upon her. It was insistent, and any rumour which is repeated constantly without being satisfactorily disproved comes at last to bear a decided impress of truth.
They went down the gorge and crossed the river by means of the boulders in its bed, and began to climb over the masses of rock beyond. The heather covered the slopes above them with a soft pink mantle, the nap of which was ruffled by the breeze.
“You are unusually silent,” Burrough said presently, as they worked their way round a bog.
“I am thinking,” said Beatrice. “I am thinking and climbing, and I can’t do more than two things at the same time.”
“I like to hear you talk and laugh,” he replied, in the somewhat dull voice which he had adopted lately.
“Well, then, I will. I’ll tell you something, and stop thinking. We are going away in two weeks. This day fortnight we shall be packed and making for home, for my Cornish cliffs and cleaves, and Dartmoor will see us no more for another year.”
Burrough did not like her tone. There was a suggestion of detachment from himself, a sort of hint that she was free to come and go as she pleased, and that his claim upon her was a matter of slight importance. He braced himself to reply.
“You will let me come—before long?”
Beatrice picked up a stone, flung it into the mossy bog, and watched it slowly disappear. Then she turned, seated herself upon a block of granite, and looked up.
“We’ve had a jolly time together,” she said. “You entered so thoroughly into my moods from the first, though you may have thought them stupid and childish, and I liked you for it. Somehow I never thought you were going to fall in love with me. I wanted you to treat me as a boy. But you wouldn’t. You would remember I am a girl. And I got to like it—I do like it. We’ve been like lovers, and really I haven’t been flirting—worse than usual,” she added, with the old laugh. “I like you better than any man I have ever known.”
“Beatrice, why are you telling me this? You are preparing me for something?” he said moodily.
“Yes, I don’t want things to go too far. I am disappointed,” she hurried on. “You have promised me day after day to take off that ugly bandage, and you don’t do it. That is not fair upon me. I’m going to keep to my word. I don’t disbelieve you, of course I don’t, but still you cannot know what affects me, and though the mark upon your face may not be very much, as you say it isn’t, it may be more than I can bear. Just one glance would tell me, I expect, whether I could get used to it or not. Now, don’t think me very horrid. I could not get over my repugnance for anything really ugly and unpleasant. Even that bandage worries me more than you can think. You remember that dream of mine? The ugly thing that kept on growing and growing until I couldn’t bear to look at it. Now, then, let’s run on and find the white heather,” she said, with a complete change of tone and manner. “That’s sermon enough, only remember you mustn’t say ‘to-morrow’ any more.”
She jumped off the rock, and from that moment was her bright, frivolous self again. Burrough followed without speaking. The quest of the white heather had lost its charm. For a moment he contemplated removing the bandage and finishing the story; but he could not. Not in that strong pitiless sunshine which would exaggerate every detail. He must choose a subdued light. While Beatrice was still with him he could not give up hope. She had not begun to pity him yet. When she had been given time to realise the loneliness of his life and his love for her she might find herself able to contemplate that disfigurement for which she was to a certain extent responsible.