HOW TONGUES WENT WAGGING IN THE VILLAGE.
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.