HOW BURROUGH SPOKE FOOLISHLY.
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.