HOW THEY STOOD UPON CRANMERE.
“Now we’re getting into the land of pixies,” quoth Beatrice, as she
tried to lift a big shell which was lying sideways against a clump of
heather. “This is the sixth. It must be from one of the new guns. My
s’ars! it is heavy. I wonder what sort of a charge it takes to hurl a
thing like this four or five miles?”
They had reached the side of Steeperton Cleave. There was not a living
thing in sight. All around the peaty soil had been torn into pits and
jagged fissures by projectiles. It was impossible to walk more than a
few paces without seeing one of the ugly iron cylinders. A spectral
figure stood near in the pose of a scarecrow. It was a dummy man. A
well-aimed shell had pierced its wooden chest.
“One summer a man came along here, and he saw a nice bright shell,”
said Beatrice, who had become frivolous again. “Men like nice bright
things as much as children--at least this man did. He thought to
himself, ‘This is a very pretty thing: I’ll take it home and play with
it.’ But when he picked it up and saw that it was all alive-o, he was
so drefful startled that he dropped it on his big toe.”
She made as though she would kick another shell, but changing her
mind, jumped over it instead.
“Well, what happened?” said Burrough.
“I left it to your imagination. He dropped the shell, and went
to--heaven. To drop a live shell is a good way of obliterating
oneself. It’s warranted to leave no mark. Now you see me! Now you
don’t! That’s the sort of thing. Look down there.”
Burrough followed her pointing finger, and saw, on a grassy ledge some
way below, a crumbling ruin just above the river. Evidently it had
been a dwelling-house once. Part of the walls still stood, and even at
that distance a big fireplace was visible.
“That’s the domiciliary edifice erected by John,” said Beatrice,
roguishly.
“Shall we go down and look at it?” he suggested.
“We shall not,” she replied. “We have quite enough in front of us.
Besides, we will come back that way, following the river. It’s a jolly
sentimental sort of a ruin. I should like to paint it, only if I did
try it would be sure to come out a cathedral or a town hall.”
“It must have been built by the Tinners,” said Burrough.
“Oh, no,” she declared. “Nothing of the kind whatever. It was built by
the pixies, with the kind assistance of the Cranmere witches. The
style of architecture is distinctly Pre-Adamite, as you will observe
if you examine it closely. It was formerly the palace of the king. The
last king of the pixies was Tom-tit-tot the Sixth, and he allowed the
place to fall out of repair. He knew the pixies were going to become
extinct, so he didn’t bother. And now we must keep right on the top of
the hill, or we shall be stugged in the mire.”
They tramped on resolutely, with the sun almost straight above their
heads. Presently Beatrice went upon her knees, and began to eat
whortleberries. “They’m lovely whorts up here,” she explained, “big,
blue, and juicy. Come and have some. Gugh! Bluggy thing,” she
exclaimed, as an over-ripe berry broke between her fingers and stained
them scarlet. “I suppose you didn’t bring a toothbrush with you? It’s
wanted after eating these squashy things.”
“I thought you had brought everything you could possibly require,” he
said.
“Everything except a toothbrush, I think I said. I forgot it at the
last moment. Do have some more whorts.”
“There are none,” said Burrough. “These are not ripe.”
“Sour things are nice when you’re thirsty,” said Beatrice. “But we
must go on. Away and away! To the decayed peat-waste of a past age,
silent, dreary, lifeless, without bird or animal, and to the pool
where Bingie lives.”
“Where did you get that from?” he asked.
“Part guide-book, part my own invention. What stupid people write
guide-books--sort of Willums in high life, I should think! And how
wild they are upon churches--I mean sacred edifices. Wherever you go
there’s sure to be a sacred edifice which isn’t a bit like any other
sacred edifice all the world over, though if you do go and see it you
don’t see anything at all different from any other sacred edifice.
There’s one or two mouldy monuments, of course, but who ever wants to
look at them? Another thing they’re wild upon is stones. Any old heap
of stones is good enough for them. They always call them Druidical
remains, though I expect they were only put there for mending the
road. It’s rather disappointing to read in a guide-book about
precipices, cascades, and gorges; and when you get to the place to
find only a rock, and a stickle, and a crack in a mud-bank.”
“Guide-books are intended to be advertisements,” reminded her
companion.
“Like the advertisement of a patent medicine, which cures everything
from old-age to a broken leg,” chattered Beatrice. “Oh, but seaside
places! They are the worst. They knock out the guide-book, and leave
the patent-pill cold and stiff. Every seaside place suits invalids
much better than any other place. It has a warmer temperature than any
other, and publishes figures to prove it. Every seaside place is the
only one which never has fog or snow. It has more sunshine than any
other place. It has flowers which absolutely refuse to bloom anywhere
else. Lord! what liars we are.”
“We can’t help that,” said Burrough philosophically. “Lying has become
quite a venial sin. Society demands lies from us. A few generations
hence no one will be able to narrate a bare fact without perversion or
distortion. It has become almost impossible now.”
“Here is something the guide-book would not mention,” cried Beatrice,
pointing to what might have been a piece of white marble, wrinkled
with black veins, and lodged in a mud-cleft. “There are a lot of those
stones about. When I become a millionairess I shall have them
collected and a house built with them. I know! I’ll restore
Tom-tit-tot’s palace with them, and live there all summer.”
“And a shell would fall and blow it to pieces,” added Burrough.
“Bother the shells! I should buy some big guns and fire back. Yes, I
would raise an army, and proclaim myself Empress of Dartmoor.”
“Would you include me among your ministers?”
“Why, yes! I would give you a cocked hat, and make you Field Marshal.”
“I think I should prefer a post of equal honour and less danger.”
“Wouldn’t you like to fall like a hero?” she cried, reproachfully.
“I would rather live like a gentleman,” he said.
“Since you are not romantic, you shall be First Lord of the Treasury.”
“That will suit me very well. May I kiss hands on my appointment?”
“Certainly not,” she laughed. “How do you buy guns? Suppose I went
into the stores, and said, ‘I want some artillery, please,’ what would
they say?”
“They would regret exceedingly that they were quite out of the
article, and then detain you until a doctor from the nearest asylum
could arrive.”
“But not if I told them I was a real Empress?”
“Then they would send for two doctors.”
“What a vile world!” said she. “But I wouldn’t be an Empress unless I
could do as I liked. For instance, if Mrs. Cobbledick were to be late
in bringing up my morning cup of tea, I should want to ring the bell
for a soldier, and say, ‘Take her away, and cut off her head, please.’
I should hate it, if he replied, ‘Beg pard’n, mum. You’ll have to get
an Act of Parliament for thikky little job.’”
Beatrice was still laughing over her autocratic longings, when her
laugh became a scream, and she vanished promptly from sight. A patch
of heather had given way beneath her, and a crevasse had swallowed her
up.
“It’s all right,” came a smothered voice. “I’m not lost, but gone
before. I’ve fallen into lovely soft mud, so nothing is broken. I’m
jammed! You’ll have to extract me with a corkscrew.”
Burrough parted the heather, and immediately a somewhat grimy little
hand was extended. He seized it and tugged, and up came Beatrice on
her knees. “Just as good as ever, reasonable wear and tear excepted,”
she gasped. “Serves me right for not poking that clump of heather with
my six-foot pole.”
“There are any number of fissures ahead,” cried Burrough, who was
standing upon an elevation just above.
“We are on the borders of Cranmere,” she said. “And I’m dirty already.
If there was only one crevasse upon Cranmere, and one bog upon
Dartmoor, I should be dead certain to tumble into the one, and get
stugged in the other. Oh, boots! boots!” she wailed tragically, “you
were lovely and pleasant when I started, and now you’m mucky twoads.”
The serious part of the journey commenced with their arrival upon the
broken ground. Burrough negotiated the crevasses by sliding down one
side, crossing by means of the tussocks, and scrambling up the muddy
walls opposite. Beatrice took little runs and jumped them. Presently
they got upon the plateau, and felt the keen breeze, and saw the
stagnant pools. At every step the water oozed up and covered their
boots.
“We’re atop!” cried Beatrice. “It’s only one o’clock. There is Fur Tor
in the midst of wild nature in her remotest fastness. That’s
guide-book again. Now for the Pool. We must keep to the left. You are
also requested to keep to the path.”
The last remark was for the benefit of her companion, who had
floundered into a patch of deceptive mud and was sinking rapidly to
his knees.
“Wallop!” mimicked Beatrice, as one boot came out with a sound like a
pop-gun. “Your boots are worse than mine now.”
“You can jump!” Burrough exclaimed admiringly, as he watched the girl
leaping from one tussock to another.
“I’ve been jumping all my life,” she said. “My primitive ancestor must
have been a frog, instead of an ape. With short skirts I can jump a
hurdle.”
“How do you know which way to go?” he asked. “When I came here before
I simply wandered in circles and became hopelessly lost. I couldn’t
even find the way back until it was nearly dark.”
“I’ve been here so often that I can go straight to the Pool,” she
answered. “There isn’t a guide on Dartmoor who can get there more
quickly than I,” she went on proudly. “Why, I put a guide right one
day. He was ‘pixy-led summat fearful’ he told me, and the people with
him were looking ‘summat fearful’ too. I led them to the Pool, made my
best bow, and vanished. I expect they thought I was a wandering
spirit--Bingie’s wife perhaps, or the White Witch of Cranmere--because
it was a windy day and my hair had blown down, and I had fastened it
round my waist. That is the only time I have ever met people up here.”
They went on jumping, wading, and scrambling across the desolate
plateau, until Beatrice cried out in triumph, and pointed out to her
companion the top of a post just visible against the dark background
of saturated peat. A minute later progress became easier, a slight
descent began, and almost immediately they saw the bed of the dried-up
Pool, and the rough cairn of turves and stones, and the almost level
stretch of deep-brown peat upon which the water had once spread and
the rushes had flourished. There was not a sound. Even the breeze
which shook the bleached sedges failed to disturb the silence.
However, Beatrice very soon broke it. With a cry of, “We’re in the
middle of Cranmere, and I’m the only perfectly dry thing upon it,” she
went down upon the edge of the Pool and began to unpack her knapsack.
While she was thus engaged Burrough made for the cairn and extracted
the two tin boxes. He came back with the visitors’ book and several
postcards, the sight of which caused Beatrice to exclaim, “Any letters
for me, postman?”
“Nothing to-day, miss,” he replied.
“Well then, we’ll lunch,” she cried. “We can attend to our
correspondence afterwards. Here is a girl with two packets of
sandwiches and a bottle of milk. She’s willing to swop one packet for
any particular dainty in the satchel of the man, all muddy and damp,
who lives on the moor, at the edge of a gorge, in the little tin house
that Jack built.”
“You won’t covet my home-made dainties when you see them,” said
Burrough grimly, as he drew out a bulky parcel and exhibited a
shapeless mass of bread.
“What’s that?” she screamed delightedly.
“A poor thing, but my own make,” said Burrough humbly. “’Tis yclept a
sandwich.”
“S’ars o’ mine! A sandwich! B’est going to yet en?”
“Ah, I be,” replied Burrough, in the same dialect.
“Well, I be wholly bate! What a nice new idea! Receipt for _Sandwitche
à la célibataire_--take a pound of beefsteak and the largest loaf
obtainable. That’s the raw material. Divide the loaf into two equal
portions, add a tin of mustard and two pounds of butter, place the
steak into position, then jam the loaf together, and secure with
seccotine or iron rivets according to taste. Pack the finished article
in a sack, and serve when starving.”
“There’s another in the bag,” said Burrough, giving her a glimpse at a
second bulky parcel.
“What’s that for? In case the first doesn’t prove effectual? Like the
man who was determined to kill himself, so first took poison and then
shot himself. But this is sheer frivolity, and we’re at Cranmere Pool,
which, in the words of the guide-book----”
“No more guide-book,” he implored. “Let me have your own opinion.”
“Ain’t got none,” said Beatrice. “I only know we ought to be solemn
and sad. We ought to think of our sins, and of the shortness of this
our mortal life. We ought to make a resolution to live more soberly,
and to put the past behind us, and to keep the future in front of us,
and to let the present stop just where it is. Ah, dearly-beloved, what
a great and wonderful thought this is. It is not yesterday, nor yet
to-morrow, but it is, my friends, it is to-day. We know that spring is
over. We realise--how I cannot tell you--that this is summer. By some
marvellous process we believe that autumn will come again. Let this
thought sink into your hearts, as our nice clean boots sink into the
bogs of Cranmere. There! That’s a specimen of old Y.’s pulpit
oratory.”
“Much too lucid and well-connected for him,” laughed Burrough.
“Don’t you say anything against old Y,” Beatrice went on. “He can
boast of having preached the shortest sermon on record. It was on a
Sunday evening. He toddled into the pulpit, mumbled a text which
nobody heard, and said, ‘Be good. Hymn number sixteen.’ Then he
toddled down again. I see that sandwich is fading away gradually. I’ve
eaten about a dozen. Now I must write my postcards. How many are you
going to post?”
“I have no one to write to,” said Burrough. “I have brought one
stamped envelope, but I don’t know what address to put upon it.”
“Well, you may put mine if you like,” said Beatrice, kindly.
“And will you address one to me?” he asked eagerly.
“All right. I’ll put some nonsense inside. Nonsense-talking is my
strong point, as you may have observed. Then we must stand up and
wish, observing at that moment a terrible solemnity and a grim
silence. The witch allows us three wishes, and they are sure to be
granted if we’re good.”
“What are you going to wish for?” he said.
“But I mustn’t say,” cried Beatrice. “Bingie would be angry, and my
wishes would go scat.”
“I think I know. The first, health. The second, happiness----”
“And the third, three wishes more, if you don’t mind,” she laughed.
“You’re all wrong. I shouldn’t wish for health, because I have it; nor
for happiness, because I’m fairly middling that way already. Everyone
wishes for wealth as a matter of course. Some people say if you wish
long enough, it’s sure to come. You must mutter ‘money’ by day, and
murmur ‘money’ by night. They call that concentration. Auntie used to
believe in that. She concentrated upon beauty, but as it didn’t come
she exchanged concentration for art, which was more successful. I must
warn you that Bingie is not quite infallible,” she added
confidentially. “Last time I was here one of my wishes was for a nice
tender undercut of sirloin for supper. The reality was a shoulder of
mutton as tough as indiarubber.”
“It was too trivial a wish,” Burrough suggested.
“Tender beef is not a trivial matter at all. It is one of the seven
joys of life.”
“Are you writing to me? May I see?” he asked eagerly.
“‘Trewidden, Trewinnard, Trewint!’” cooed Beatrice softly.
Their correspondence being completed, they turned their attention to
the visitors’ book, which was nearly half full. Beatrice whipped the
pages over until she found her entry the previous summer. She
indicated her scrawl with a pink finger, and the remark, “It’s like my
painting--wants a Daniel to interpret it. There’s my unoriginal
remark, ‘Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.’ I did once
though,” she chattered. “It was a blazing hot day, and my throat felt
full of sand. I made a kind of bubbly noise every time I breathed. So
I laid me down and sucked up saturated peat, green slime, and all
manner of creeping things. Who was here last? Why the Reverend Mr.
Legge. He’s got more than two. He brought a lot of little Legges--like
a spider. Here’s some more over the page. Why the man’s a centipede!
And Daddy Longlegs has written, ‘This is to be alone; this, this is
solitude.’ Oh dearly-beloved! And he goes on, ‘We owe great thanks to
our excellent guide.’ I expect he owed the poor man his half-guinea as
well. Here’s a silly man who pretends he can’t write, and has made his
mark. What a pity there isn’t a tree or a bench here, so that he might
have cut his initials. Here’s one who wants to know why they don’t
drain Cranmere, and another who offers to exchange his private fortune
for a bottle of pale-ale. Here’s a party of three jolly
Irishmen--Patherick of Dublin, bedad--and one’s a bit of an artist,
for he’s drawn a barometer and signed his name opposite ‘dry.’ One of
his friends has signed opposite ‘very dry,’ and the other opposite
‘great drought.’ In fact,” criticised Beatrice severely, “this book is
a striking instance of the hold which liquor has obtained over the
minds of men.”
Burrough was sitting on a tussock which was more or less dry, smoking
his pipe, and watching the girl with ardent eyes as she chattered her
nonsense. He was not in the least inclined to talk. It was much
pleasanter listening to her; and her store of remarks was apparently
inexhaustible.
“It’s getting chilly,” cried Beatrice suddenly. “The sun has gone, and
I felt something that might have been a spot of rain. Gugh! ‘this,
this is solitude,’ as the parson says. Why, I declare there’s a mist!”
Burrough removed his gaze from her, and looked in the direction she
indicated. He saw white fleecy clouds rolling slowly down the plateau.
“It’s only a passing cloud,” he said reassuringly. “When it has gone
the sun will come out again. The weather changes up here every few
minutes.”
“It’s not very nice,” said Beatrice. “There! Did you hear that? I
heard a sort of a humming, kind o’. It’s going to rain and blow like
blue blazes. Here! take the pencil and write quickly.”
The wind began to sob and groan, and the wool-like mist thickened.
Rain began to fall smartly. Every crevasse and tarn about them seemed
to be suddenly occupied by invisible beings and creeping sounds.
“The morning was much too fine,” said Beatrice, shivering a little.
“Well, we must face it. There’s no shelter nearer than Tom-tit-tot’s
palace, and I expect the bad weather will have passed away before we
can get there. Let’s get off Cranmere as soon as we can. It will be a
little bit more sheltered at Taw Head.”
Burrough fastened up the two boxes and restored them to the hole in
the side of the cairn. Then he called, “I’m going to wish.”
“For goodness sake wish for fine weather,” cried Beatrice, as she
slung on her satchel. “Throw a little water over your left shoulder
and wish hard for favourable signs and tokens in the heavens. My poor
little life!” she murmured. “It’s going to rain and blow, and you’ve
got a man under your guidance; and it seems to me you will never see
your dear old home to-night.”