HOW BURROUGH CHATTED WITH A FELLOW-SCHOLAR.
Burrough thought he knew what Beatrice meant when she mentioned the
advice she would have given to the king of Trevalyor. Cast everything
aside, and work. That was her advice. She had thrown back his allegory
in his teeth. He had Biggletubben the world, and Amalebria the flesh,
to fight.
Very early the next morning Burrough went out upon the moor. Peter
stretched himself, yawned, and followed. Both had a somewhat
dissipated appearance. The man was unshaven and only half-dressed; the
cat had spent the night within the kitchen hearth. Burrough sat upon
a rock. Peter took up his position hard by and blinked at the sun.
“King o’ the Cats,” said Burrough moodily. “I wish I was not a
classical scholar. I wish I was a successful lady novelist.”
Peter glanced at his master, as though he would say, “That’s two
wishes. You have only one more.”
“There are three ways of making money with the pen,” Burrough
proceeded. “The first is to write a successful play; the second to
produce a novel which everyone reads; and the third to tickle the
palate of the public with highly-seasoned serials in halfpenny
journals. Number one catches society; number two the middle-class; and
number three the ‘mostly fools’ mentioned by Carlyle. Now, Father
Confessor, I can write neither play, novel, nor slush, as I believe
the spicy serial is called. I can read Greek, and make Latin verses
with a pitiful facility, but these accomplishments are not marketable.
I can write good English, but there’s no money in that. Most editors
seem to prefer ‘that’s him’ to ‘that’s he.’ Can’t you give me an idea
for a novel? Isn’t there something left to write about, some new
passion, some fresh phase? I feel alive this morning, King Peter; full
of new life and old ideas. This is just the time a new idea ought to
come--if there’s one left. I could sit down and write a sonnet. I
could throw off an essay; but sonnets and essays are things of the
past. You could not sell a dozen sonnets now for the price of two
fresh herrings. Your countenance grows animated, my dear cat. Shall we
write a play together? Act One, the moor. Scene, a hovel. Enter the
king of Trevalyor and his cat!”
Burrough would spend hours talking such nonsense as this to his dumb
companion.
He drew himself higher up the rock, embraced his knees, and smiled
unhappily at the rugged prospect. Just then he was trying to forget
Beatrice. It was the last time he made the attempt. Her vision was
before him, as she stood short-skirted on the mass of granite,
surrounded by the gorse, heather and bracken of their tiny territory
of Blissland.
“You and I are not wanted, King Peter, and that’s a fact,” Burrough
went on. “If I were to hang you, and shoot myself, nobody would
benefit. We shouldn’t make room for anyone. I don’t fill any position.
I’m not even the village reprobate. The simple life, my dear cat, is
excellent in theory, but in practice it is abominably unpleasant. It
is an existence of clods and dirt, of gritty food, and black-rimmed
finger-nails. It is a life of peat-smoke and mountain mist. I wade
through bogs; I bark my shins against spurs of granite; I fall into a
crevasse, and cover my skin with gorse-prickles. That is the simple
life. Inside I listen to the wind; I play with my shadow; I watch the
lamp-light for some hours nightly. This is to be in touch with Nature.
From the artistic point of view it is no doubt an ideal state. From
the mental and moral standpoint it is a colossal failure. I would give
all these grey tors, every gorse-bush, the heath, the bracken, and
throw in the view and the cloudscape, for a nice little row of
jerry-built stucco villas along the edge of the gorge.”
There came a magpie sailing down the cleave, and then another. After
them appeared a short figure, walking at its ease, armed with a gun,
accoutred with a canvas bag, and accompanied by two spaniels.
“Let us consider these omens,” observed Burrough. “Two magot-pies.
That’s for mirth. Afterwards cometh Willum, head of the house of
Cobbledick. He has begun his loafing early. He will be exhausted by
noon, and have to lean against a wall till sunset. Let him trot by.
But soft! he carries letters, he brings good tidings. Glorious news,
my dear Peter! The Essayists are victorious--the armies of the foul
rebel Slush have been defeated. The public has become enlightened,
editors are marrying poetesses, essayists are allying themselves to
publishers’ daughters. That’s the message of the magpies. I shall be
produced in fair parchment covers, tied with green ribbons like prize
beef, and beauteous ladies will dim my pages with their tears. And as
for you, King o’ the Cats, you shall have the choicest cut from a
Derby-winner for your supper.”
Peter paused in his ablutions, and with paw uplifted regarded the
approaching shapes. Evidently his impressions were unfavourable; so he
stepped forward, ready to curse and smite the first of the careless
spaniels which should venture within range.
William Cobbledick sometimes assisted the local postman by carrying
letters to the outlying parts. His reward was a pot of beer. Other
benefits accruing to him were a sense of dignity in being as it were
an official of state, and the right to call upon Burrough and a few
others upon Boxing Day to wish them the compliments of the season.
There was also the right to read postcards; and the privilege of
publishing any information thus acquired, after thorough and
unscrupulous editing by Ann.
“Marning, sir,” said Willum, as he handed Burrough a newspaper and one
letter. “I’ve got five puppies, sir,” he went on, like an eager
schoolboy. “Born last night.”
“Really,” said Burrough. “I hope you and the puppies are doing well.”
Willum looked puzzled, his sense of humour not being keen.
“Yes, sir, this warm weather suits me wonderful. They pups be out of a
prize bitch--least she would have taken a prize if I’d shown her.
Fifteen shillun each, sir. Will ye take one? I warrant ’en for a good
nose.”
“Being neither sportsman nor poacher,” Burrough answered, “I have no
use for fifteen-shilling spaniels with highly developed organs of
smell. What sort of nose will you guarantee--bottle, Roman, or pug?”
“Well, sir,” said the scholar, completely mystified, “I reckon ’twould
be a bit of each. There’s surprising blood in they pups. There be the
father, sir.”
At that moment a wild howl uprose, and the proud father could be seen
scurrying for shelter, with one eye picturesquely closed; while Peter,
who in vulgar parlance had dowsed his glim, licked his chops and tried
very hard to grin.
“I warrant the Cheshire Pet for a good claw,” said Burrough. “Here is
a little arithmetical problem for you. If five puppies collectively
are worth three pound, fifteen, what is the value of a cat which has
defeated the father of said puppies?”
“Cats be vermin,” said Willum bitterly.
Burrough laughed, and tore open his letter. A glance at it, and his
face clouded. Most distinctly it was not a letter to glaze and hang in
a frame. It did not announce that the day of sonneteer and essayist
had returned. It was not an invitation from a publisher to submit
great thoughts, which might be bound within parchment covers and tied
with green ribbon, for the delectation of ladies with pink and white
complexions. It was simply, “a remittance by return will greatly
oblige.”
“As we are on the subject of problems, here is another--a domestic
problem,” went on the cynic. “How does a man live, when money goes out
faster than it comes in?”
“On credit,” said Willum. He knew the answer to that well enough.
“Now we have a social problem,” the young man went on. “Here is a
radical newspaper, which addresses me ‘John Burrough, Esquire.’ And
here an obsequious conservative tradesman, who bids me be content with
plain Mr. Burrough. What do you make of that?”
“It don’t mean nuthing,” replied the scholar contemptuously. “When I
writes to a gentleman I puts Mister on one side and Squire on t’other.
When I writes to a parson I puts Revellent as well. They likes that.”
“I should be inclined to doubt it,” muttered Burrough. “But on the
main question you are right. It means nothing. If I write to a
Government department to announce my inflexible will is to pay no more
taxes, I receive in return a threatening letter which concludes, ‘I
am, Sir, your most obedient, humble servant.’ How do you finish off
your letters, Willum?”
“Always the same--yours truly,” replied Willum.
“That’s the safest way. But how many e’s are there in truly?”
“You don’t catch me,” said the scholar grinning. “There’s only one.”
“Your education seems complete,” said the cynic.
“I larnt myself. ’Tis what you call natural gift. I be just a man of
born intellect,” said Willum modestly. “If I hadn’t been
consumptuous,” he went on, tapping his brawny chest, “I’d a been a
preacher. Sometimes I preach to mother at home. Makes her cry, I du.”
“I sympathise with Mrs. Cobbledick,” Burrough replied.
“I mun shoot a rabbut for dinner,” went on Willum shifting his
antiquated gun. “If I shoots a couple, will ye take one?”
“With pleasure,” came the answer. “If it be young, tender, and
gratuitous.”
“I don’t shoot ’em when they be gratuitous,” said the scholar, making
a bold and bad guess at the meaning of the word. “Some du, but I
don’t. I only shoots the buck rabbuts this time o’ year.”
“I don’t think I’ll trouble you to shoot me a buck rabbut. My cat
supplies me, and makes no charge. And now I must cook my morning
rasher and settle down to work. Have you ever written anything?”
“Nuthing,” replied the loafer.
“What! You, a scholar! you, who lean against walls thinking, and roam
the moor dreaming--you have written nothing.”
“I be an artist mostly,” said Willum in self-defence. “I takes
photographs.”
“And anything you can lay your hands on,” the other muttered. “Do you
read much, Willum?”
“Winter evenings I reads the Bible to mother. Makes her cry, it du.”
“Mrs. Cobbledick appears to be a somewhat lachrymose personage. What
makes her cry?”
“’Tis my voice. It ain’t so much what I reads, as the way I reads it.”
“The explanation is entirely satisfactory,” observed the cynic.
“Then I reads to mother out of the Black Book,” Willum went on.
“Crockford’s Clerical Directory, I believe?” said Burrough, who knew
all about this local celebrity’s two-volumed library. “Does that make
mother cry?”
“No, she don’t cry over that. I reads it more spirited like. When any
parson comes here I allus looks ’en up in the Black Book to find out
his pedigree. Sometimes he’s there. Sometimes he ain’t. If he ain’t
in, us don’t trust ’en. Mother says, ‘Look ’en up in the Black Book,
Willum.’ If he ain’t there she wun’t let ’en have cream and butter
wi’out the money down.”
Rather hard on the younger clergy, thought Burrough, knowing as he did
that the directory in question was quite a decade out of date.
“You should study, Willum,” he said impressively. “You should read,
and improve your mind, that mind which has been lying fallow for so
long. You should pore over histories, and acquire languages. A little
learning--you know the old saw, Willum? It’s a dangerous thing.”
“True, sir, me and you knows that. There be Mrs. Cann to the Post
Office. Her don’t know much, but her thinks she du, and her tongue
goes like the old saw you was talking about. They ain’t no scholars
here. Just me and you, and Mr. Yeoland--he knew a lot ’fore he got
dafty.”
“Come inside and look at my books,” Burrough said, as he slipped off
the rock. His fellow-scholar followed, looking somewhat unhappy. They
passed in, and Burrough ushered the many-sided genius into the study,
and nodded towards the long rows of books. Willum’s spirit grew faint
within him.
“Here,” said Burrough wickedly, as he pulled out a handsomely-bound
Thucydides, “we have the most famous example of vicious rhetoric----”
“I knows ’en,” muttered Willum, his pale-blue eyes staring
frightfully. “Vicious ain’t hardly the word. Ain’t fit for wimmin. I
couldn’t read ’en to mother.”
“I believe you,” came the guileless answer. “This is more your
line--the tragedies of Sophocles.”
“I knows ’en,” said Willum again. “So does Mr. Yeoland. Talked of ’en
many a time us has. Mr. Yeoland buried Sophocles down to Cornwall,
Porthleven way.” He pronounced the poet’s name so that it might have
rhymed with cockles.
“Really that is most interesting,” said the tormentor. “Evidently you
have been given access to information of which I have been unable to
avail myself. Herodotus of course you know?” he added carelessly.
“Him what cut off John Baptist’s head?” Willum suggested, feeling that
here at least he was on safe ground.
“His younger brother,” replied Burrough, with utmost gravity.
“That’s him,” exclaimed the scholar. “They calls ’en Herod Antifat in
the Bible.”
“Because he was a very thin man, I suppose?”
“That’s it, sir, that’s it,” cried Willum, in high delight. “Me and
you gets on fine!”
“I am going to make a slight addition to your library,” Burrough said,
as he picked out a couple of unwanted books--a cheap Greek testament
and a small Sanskrit dictionary--and held them out to the local
celebrity. “They will be a source of interest to you during winter
evenings to come. I will not insult you by describing them. The
dictionary is fairly ample in spite of its smallness. When in doubt of
a word you can look it up here--and I hope you will find it,” he
concluded heartily.
The scholar’s gratitude, if partly simulated, was expressed so
ardently that Burrough nearly felt ashamed of himself. There was no
doubt a spice of cruelty in his nature, that inborn cruelty common to
all living things in Nature--to the sundew which sucked the flies, and
to King Peter who played with a baby rabbit. Burrough felt a certain
spiteful enjoyment in thus playing with Willum, because he had an idea
that at least upon one occasion during the day preceding Beatrice had
been, not wilfully cruel perhaps, but a little bit lacking in proper
sympathy for the king of Trevalyor.
Beatrice could not be like Peter, who tormented the baby rabbit out of
sheer wickedness. That was impossible, because Beatrice was divine.
Two days before she had been a girl, only a girl with tiny feet.
Already she was a goddess. Promotion was never more rapid. But,
Burrough pondered, the sundew did not catch and suck the fly out of
wilful cruelty. It destroyed the fly simply because it was its nature
so to do.
Then Burrough went off to cook the rasher for his long-postponed
breakfast; while Willum, after shooting a rabbit, loafed home to
astonish his doting mother by exhibiting his new literary treasures,
which he explained as “A Chinese Bible, and a book to show how ’twas
done.”