HOW BURROUGH VISITED BEDLAM.
Like everybody else Burrough was affected by the weather, but unlike
most he appreciated wind and rain. When in London he revelled in a
fog. Upon Dartmoor he felt himself exhilarated by a thick mountain
mist. Sunshine he delighted in, of course, but the enjoyment was
usually alloyed with sadness, because on those bright days, when
Nature was at her best, he felt outside all the happiness. He knew
that he ought to be having what is called a good time. He had neither
means nor opportunities so to do. When it rained, or there was a close
pall of mist over the high moor, he had the idea that he was as happy
as most people.
It was a glorious morning, and as a consequence Burrough was somewhat
low-spirited. He was almost sorry Beatrice had come into his life. His
love was only a dream, which would pass away and never come again. He
would be left to his loneliness with the memory of her. She would go;
and he be left. The winter would return.
He prepared his breakfast, swept out the sitting-room, tidied the
kitchen while he smoked a pipe, then looked out over the moor. A few
rough ponies were the only living creatures in sight. Peter finished
his milk, and emerged, licking his lips like a toper leaving an
alehouse. He said plainly enough that he didn’t know what his master
intended doing that morning; but so far as he was concerned there was
a comfortable shelf of granite a little higher up on the moor where he
contemplated basking all day. He shook his paw and marched off,
treading gingerly because of the gorse-prickles.
“Leave the lizards alone, Pete,” his master called.
The cat looked round, and appeared to wink. “You mind your own
business,” he seemed to say. “Sit down and work, will ye, and keep a
warm roof over us. As for the lizards, it’s no use catching them,
because you never will eat them.”
“You can bring me a young rabbit, son of Anak,” shouted Burrough.
Peter swished his tail, which was his way of terminating an interview,
and continued his delicate career towards the warm rocks.
Burrough went into his study, forced himself into a chair, seized a
pen, and addressed himself thus: “Now, my friend, you shall sit here
until noon, whether you are idle or industrious. Therefore I should
advise you to be industrious.”
Palæolithic Remains! An admirable subject on a sensuous summer’s
morning for a man in love. He had reached the chapter entitled Hut
Circles. For some minutes he remained engrossed, presumably upon his
opening sentence, then he said gently, “I wonder why she uses those
bright hairpins.”
He applied himself seriously to that problem. Had he brought the same
amount of intelligence to bear upon the subject of Hut Circles he
might possibly have evolved a new theory. Precisely this idea
occurred, and he struggled to turn his thoughts into the palæolithic
channel. He was so far successful that he soon found himself
considering that the stone, which stood at the edge of the river in
the secret nook and which he believed was a tolmen, would do very
nicely for boiling the kettle on that afternoon.
“Perhaps she won’t come,” he muttered dolefully.
The distracting vision of Beatrice remained in the foreground,
although Burrough firmly persuaded himself he was working. That work,
could he have presented it to an honest critic, would have received
the kind of verdict which Miss Pentreath had passed upon her niece’s
picture of the setting sun. “Stone remains! Hut Circles! Why, my dear
fellow, there is nothing here but a girl.”
“This won’t do,” Burrough cried, bringing his hand down upon the
table. “In the words of Samuel Johnson, this won’t do at all. I have
done nothing for the last three days. Idleness and infatuation will
lure me into the mad-house, or the poor-house, or the charnel-house,
or some other horrible kind of house. I must practise concentration. I
will not allow my mind to wander. I will not let her face come between
me and my work again. Now where was I?.… ‘This stone was probably used
by the occupant of the hut to stand upon during his morning devotions
to the sun, and… it was here’”… But the association of feet with
stones suggested nothing that was neolithic. He saw tiny tan shoes,
brown silk stockings, and lace-trimmed petticoat; and it was Beatrice
who stood upon the stone, not a hairy and uninteresting prehistoric
man.
So he began to wonder what she was doing just then. Probably escorting
her maiden Aunt from one fixed point to another. He felt he was
wasting his time, as indeed he was; but what he meant was that he
might have been out watching her from a respectful distance, instead
of sitting in that chair thinking of her. He wondered how she was
dressed. Was there any analogy between the foam of the sea, out of
which Venus rose at her birth, and the foam of underclothing worn by
twentieth-century maidens? What was the use of the Church denouncing
a general laxity in the moral tone, while the law permitted girls to
walk abroad clad as it were in foam o’ the sea, and had nothing to say
against pictorial advertisements of the same sea foam appearing week
by week in fashion papers? He wondered whether Turkish breeches and
yashmak would depress the matrimonial mart. But what had these matters
of life, love, and passion to do with cold, grey, lichen-covered
granite?
It was no use. Burrough felt that his brain was on fire. He was raving
mad. He had been bitten by the tarantula. He might write a love-story,
but not a sermon upon stones. The eyes of Beatrice had done his
business. For life or for death he was hers.
Decidedly she was no prim maid; no Jane-Austen virgin, prone to
excessive bouts of weeping or fainting-fits. Did she, he wondered,
incline just a little towards the opposite scale? Was she, in short, a
flirt? Was she a mere incendiary, who would kindle a fire, and then
run away, not daring to look at the consequences? She had been free
and easy with him, but then he had almost forced himself upon her in
the first instance. Besides, she had known who he was. She knew him to
be a gentleman. The affair with Mr. Yeoland was nothing. Most of the
girls allowed that amorous old personage a certain amount of licence.
He remembered Beatrice would not even permit the dotard to pull her
hair. Why shouldn’t she be free and friendly with himself? Burrough
pulled himself upright, and regarded his face in the glass of the
over-mantel. He was not a bad-looking fellow, and he was in the prime
of life.
All this had nothing to do with stone-remains; but the young man was
just then past praying for.
What passionate pilgrim will confess honestly to every foolish action
before his sacred fire has been quenched by marriage? Probably the
country bumpkin is the only really sensible lover. He has a good
resounding kiss, and goes back to his plough, and thinks no more of
Polly until he sees her again. Burrough was a scholar, and therefore a
fool in love. The greater a man’s knowledge the fiercer his passion. A
young woman with her first baby is bad enough; but a scholar with his
sweetheart is worse. How many would confess to the initials they had
carved on beech-trees? To the nonsense they had scrawled upon the
sands? To the doggerel they had penned, or the mad phrases they had
mouthed? Every wise man is a Bedlamite for a few hours of his life.
Burrough took up his pen, and began to scratch on the sheet, which by
that time of day should have been covered with hieroglyphics
concerning the stone age. He wrote the one word “Beatrice.” This was
not only foolish but unnecessary, as he was in no danger of forgetting
it. Besides, it rendered the paper unfit for literary purposes. He
added the monosyllable “John.” Then he enclosed the two words within a
bracket, and made noises of gratification like a baby nuzzling its
bottle.
Burrough had often seen a servant-girl and her swain embracing upon a
bench, and engaged with each other’s lips like bees on clover. He had
questioned the propriety of these aphrodisiac courtships; yet he had
admitted there was something pretty and poetic about such a couple,
wandering down a lane clasped together. It suggested the indissoluble
bond of love as nothing else could suggest it. Merely the desire to be
together; with nothing to talk about; but to step together, think
together, cling together. The man who buys love ready-made would have
no sympathy with that poetry of motion, where hands and waists are
clasped, and the feet move in harmony with the heart-beats. It must
have been very early in time that some cave-dweller--and this
distinctly referred to Burrough’s work on stone-remains--discovered
that it was a sweet and pleasant thing to have his arm around the
probably undraped waist of some other cave-dweller’s daughter. No
doubt it was a great deal later when some fair damsel--it would have
been a feminine discovery--found a fearful joy in bestowing shy and
tender bites upon the loved one. Naturally he would have been impelled
by gallantry to return the salutation, and so love-bites came into
fashion; until the time arrived when some warrior, who had lost his
teeth in a brawl, was compelled to use his lips, thus inaugurating a
new fashion in the best hut-circle society. Finally some tender
creature of the _bon ton_ conceived the idea of thus biting the lips
which had bitten her, and in this manner created the kiss of modern
society. There was something delightfully sweet and tender, Burrough
thought, about primitive courtship. What could be more tender--and
more idiotic--than a dove billing and cooing to its mate? It was
delightful just because it was idiotic. There was something
enthralling about the illiterate cooing of lovers, about the
nonsense-verses, the baby-talk, the mispronounced and misspelt
words--the first fruits of the intoxicating madness of pubescence.
The scholar ceased his thinking, and proceeded to action. In a bold
round hand he wrote upon the paper, “My dere letele angel.”
This was pretty good for a man who had taken honours. Had he been a
clodhopper he would have scratched his head and aspired to the
grandiose. Being a scholar he found it a delight to coo the part of
the idiotic dove.
The door was wide open. In stalked Peter, bearing a ridiculous rabbit,
not so large as the rat he had captured the previous night. He went
through his usual performance of presenting the offering and purring
his own triumph; while Burrough blushed, actually blushed, to be
caught at such egregious folly by his cat, and to discover that the
animal had made better use of the morning than he had. He caught up
the sheet, tore it into fragments, and tried to be sane again.
“Another small soul despatched into limbo,” he said lightly, bending
to stroke the cat. “What a rapacious beast you are! You bring lizards
and rats to grace my table, and when I refuse to have my palate thus
tickled, and charge you to bring me instead young rabbits, you proceed
to tear an innocent babe from its mother’s breast. In a few short
hours, my Herod, you have made some poor rat a widow, broken up a
previously happy lizard home, and left some poor Rachel of a rabbit
weeping for her children.”
Peter went forth, with his tail at the perpendicular, and his mind set
upon more slaughter.
It was noon at last. Still too early to cook the mid-day chop; and
much too early to get ready the kettle, the packet of tea, and flask
of milk. What was Beatrice doing? What a fool he had been to fret away
the morning when he might have gone out, seen her, perhaps spoken,
touched her hand, felt her eyes, and above all, been thrilled by the
momentary flicker of her frock against his legs!
“I must read,” he cried, springing towards his books. “Read hard for
an hour, since I cannot work. The solitude is getting on my brain.”
He chose the Andromache of Euripides. It was no use reading English
while in that mood. It was necessary to have something which would
compel him to concentrate his thoughts; and he chose the Andromache
because it was the tragedy of that particular dramatist with which he
was least familiar. For a time he read with resolution. He had
banished Beatrice more or less into the background. It was not for
long. The Greek poet had a message for him. The voice from the remote
past was soon ringing into his ears the two tremendous lines:--
“If he be passionate, he shall meet with passion,
And receive deeds for deeds.”