HOW BURROUGH RECEIVED VISITORS.
To Burrough’s surprise and delight, another little note came in
Beatrice’s quaint handwriting--each word was like a long-legged
spider--the envelope postmarked Sennen, as before. Certainly the girl
was not a complete letter-writer. Her fun, daintiness, and nonsense
seemed to desert her directly she took a pen into her hand. It was a
most precise note, telling him she had just spent a night
lance-spearing in the sands, though she did not mention the name of
the sands. Her aunt was not at all well, and was grumbling a great
deal. She was having some photographs printed of herself in
fisher-girl’s costume--long boots, oilskins, and jersey--and would
send him one if he cared to have it. And she remained “his old pal,
Bill.” It was a most unfeminine epistle, not even containing a
postscript; but it convinced Burrough that he was remembered.
The omens for his success had been lately more favourable. The slight
operation had been performed with considerable success, the false eye
had been fitted, he had become accustomed to the new sensation which
it caused and the new expression which it gave, and he was able to
agree with the enthusiastic surgeon that the result was a triumph of
surgical art. His appearance was altered very strikingly for the
better now that the principal cause of disfigurement had been removed.
He was no longer unpleasant to gaze upon. The false eye certainly
changed his expression. It made him look alert and businesslike, and
it also added a suggestion of cunning to his face which he did not
like.
Acting on a friendly suggestion made to him privately at the camp,
Burrough wrote to the War Office withdrawing his claim. He was assured
that by so doing he would prevent much unpleasantness, on the one side
of giving, and on the other of receiving, an unfavourable reply. It
was pointed out that a great deal had been done for him, that he was
in very much the same position then as before the accident, with
health and powers of working practically unaffected, and that he was
to blame for having exposed himself to danger, being a commoner
perfectly well acquainted with the ranges used by the artillery and
the times of firing, and not an ignorant visitor who had strayed upon
that part of the moor by chance. So Burrough climbed down gracefully,
and expressed himself well satisfied with the care and attention which
had been bestowed upon him. The camp broke up, and the moor was
abandoned to its winter solitude and dreariness. And the owner of the
cottage by the gorge, conscious that he would have to rely upon his
own efforts entirely, settled earnestly to work, his pipe his sole
companion, now that poor Peter had passed away for ever.
At last he wrote to Beatrice, unable to bear the sense of separation
any longer. Merely a few lines reminding her she had not sent him her
address, begging her to do so, and promising he would not come down
without her permission, and that he would be obedient in all things.
He commenced the letter, “My dear Bill,” and concluded it, “Yours
always, Jack”; and he enclosed it, carefully sealed, in an envelope
addressed to the post-mistress of Sennen, and containing a polite
request that she would give the enclosed to Poltesco, the fisherman,
if she did not wish to add Beatrice’s address herself.
A few days later there came an answer in quite a different style--
“So you went to Sennen, and you made kind inquiries about me, and you
moralised at the Land’s End, did you? I heard all about the poor old
soldier who had lost his eye in the wars. But why did you? In the note
I left for you with the Cobbledicks I charged you not to search
diligently for me. I was afraid you might want to forget that my name
is Bill, the fisherman of the hamlet of Blank, in the parish of Blank,
in the kingdom of West Wales. You might have written every day and run
to and fro. I judged you quite accurately. Well, now, as Bill, I
should like to see you; but as Beatrice I ought not to. That is why I
don’t give geographical particulars concerning my hut circle. Of
course I shall see you again, and as two wild boys we’ll ramble in
Blissland, and go swaling, and walk to Cranmere. We’ll do it all over
again next summer. By that time we shall have become more settled in
our minds. Apart altogether from the results of that horrid
accident--though I do hear they have patched you up and made a
first-rate job--I’m not the sort of fisherman to meet a girl on
Monday, want her to say ‘Yes’ on Tuesday, and to wear a wedding-ring
on Wednesday. You know what I mean. I’ll give you Poltesco’s address,
and you may write to me through him once a month. Just ‘Dear Bill.’
You understand. No endearments and no diminutives. Do you want a
successor to King Peter? If so, I’ll send you one in a basket. He’s a
little prince, but not royal, and he laps milk like a cherub. He’s
doing his little traedjawg--worse than gorse-prickles--on my knee as I
write. I’m working hard on my native moor. I’m actually doing a little
independent tin-streaming. You may write when you get this.
“Your old pal,
“Bill.
“P.S.--I’m certain I am right in keeping you in the dark about my
address. After a little you will think me a perfect toad.”
It was a red-letter day for Burrough. Beatrice was herself again. That
was very different from the two precise notes he had already received.
She could put her fun and nonsense upon paper after all, and the mere
fact that she had done so on this occasion convinced him that his
cause was not hopeless. His message had reached her and had done its
work. Evidently she did consider it possible that she might bear with
his false eye and scar now that the really unpleasant details had been
removed. She was right not to commit herself. She was right to
withhold her address. He knew how weak he was, and how his loneliness
affected him. Had she given him her address he would have gone to her
during one of his irresistible outbursts of feeling--such as that
which had taken him to Sennen--in spite of all the promises he might
make. She knew that too, and had taken the wiser course of keeping him
from her until, as she had said, they should become more settled in
their minds.
The literary business that engrossed Burrough for that day, and much
of the ensuing night, was a letter of ten thousand words. He had never
written at such length or so readily before. When about to write
professionally he had to take himself by the shoulders, as it were,
force himself into his chair, and condemn himself to be seated for a
fixed period. No such tyrannical methods were required that day. He
did not revise the lengthy screed, but packed it up in a long envelope
and sent it off to the faithful Poltesco.
Soon he received the formal announcement--
“Dear Sir,--Your manuscript has reached us safely. We will write you
our opinion regarding it as soon as possible.
“We are, yours faithfully,
“Bill & Co.
“At the sign of the ‘Stormy Petrel,’ n’Importe Ou.”
No opinion came, and the days drifted on, making a week, a second, and
a third, until Burrough grew restless and impatient. At length there
came a break in the monotony.
It was the first day of winter--the weather of winter, if not yet the
season. A thick haze was hanging upon the moor, blotting out tor and
cleave, and there came continually a stinging shower of sleet, slanted
by the wind into the faces of those who were unfortunate enough to be
abroad. Mrs. Cobbledick’s meteorological statement, that it was “a
full day with a tremenjus frisk,” was admirably descriptive of the
prevailing conditions.
Burrough worked steadily through the morning. During the afternoon a
knock came upon his door. He hurried to open it and discovered a
shivering Frenchman, bearing a pole on which were slung long strings
of onions. He was one of the Bretons who cross twice each year to
Plymouth, and from that point wander through the west to hawk the
produce of their fields. High Dartmoor was a savage place to that
quaking man after his smiling Brittany.
Burrough invited him in, and gave him a stool beside the glowing peat.
The onion-seller accepted gratefully, and his eyes shone when he heard
himself addressed in his native tongue. As for Burrough, he was glad
of any sort of companion just then. He would have welcomed an escaped
convict. So he pressed the man to stay and talk for an hour or so in
his lonely hut. He gave the Breton tobacco and tea. He bought the
longest of his strings of onions. He talked of the wild moors and of
smiling Brittany, and compared them unpatriotically. He made a great
fire, as though he had determined to have the man broiled and
garnished with his own onions. And the Breton cooked his toes, and
thawed his cheeks, and worshipped the Englishman in a devout manner.
Burrough looked at the man’s thin face and sallow skin tanned by
climate and sea air, his small restless eyes, thin lips, and slight
wisp of black moustache. Here was a man who worked much harder than he
and was not so well off. A newspaper column written off in a couple of
hours was of more value than all those strings of onions. Was the man
married? But yes, m’sieur. And children? Three, m’sieur. How did he
manage? How in the name of the age of miracles did he manage? Ah, that
was where Our Lady and the blessed saints came in. Burrough, neither
more nor less sceptical than most scholars, smiled cynically.
Then the man rose. He had far to go. He had shelter to seek, and the
“tremenjus frisk” was still beating outside. He was only an incident,
and yet Burrough was sorry to lose him; and when he had departed after
more worshipping the lonely man was half inclined to call him back. He
wanted to find a solution of the social problem--how could a man
maintain a home, wife, and three children by crossing the channel and
selling a few strings of onions? And if it were possible what was the
equivalent for the strings of onions which would enable the educated
man of gentle birth to obtain such luxuries?
Burrough was unsettled. He had received a visitor. Such a thing had
not happened since Beatrice’s departure. He had seen a
fellow-creature; had spoken well-nigh forgotten French; had
entertained a man at his fireside--a fact to be recorded and
remembered.
The short day closed in, and Burrough longed intensely for the divine
pleasures of matrimonial tea. He imagined the lamps lighted, himself
on the hearthrug beside the glowing fire, “the curtains drawn and
flickering gently,” Beatrice tea-making, while the “tremenjus frisk”
was beating upon the windows and the water thundered down the gorge.
And he thought again of the Breton out upon the wild moor with the
strings of onions, and envied the man because he had solved the social
problem and remained respectable.
Presently the showers of sleet ceased and there was a calm. The sky
cleared a little, and a few stormy-looking stars peeped out between
the wet clouds. Burrough had not been outside all day. He determined
to go for a walk towards the village. He might see some more men and
hear the human voice again. The visit of the onion-seller had been a
dissipation, and he wanted more of it. He resolved to persevere in it
for the rest of the evening.
It was dark and gloomy when he looked out, regular Dartmoor weather,
and there were groups of ponies huddled for shelter under the side of
the moor beside his cottage with their tails towards the wind. The
baffling mist lent strange shapes to the ragged gorse, and the breezes
were laden with vapour. The physical conditions of Dartmoor would not
be endurable until the four gloomy months ahead had come and gone, and
the sunshine of spring had converted the bleak and uncomfortable
surroundings into a garden of ferns and flower.
Not a single specimen of the biped _homo vulgaris_ was sighted by
Burrough as he tramped towards the village, nor was there a genial
vision of anyone in petticoats--something in dark serge, with a
suspicion of red flannel underneath, and a suggestion of Beatrice
about the ankles would have done his heart good. Even some moorman’s
wife--called wickedly by Beatrice moorhens--would have cheered his
lonely spirits, although there was practically nothing feminine about
them, apart from anatomy and clothing. Men and women were as extinct
as dodos and great auks so far as the rough moorland track was
concerned. Even the village at a slight distance resembled a sort of
disinterred Pompeii without light, sound, or motion.
The illusion was disturbed when Burrough came into the centre of
things. He heard a scream suggestive rather of insanity, but
nevertheless a human sound, and on that account not unwelcome. He saw
a light through the mist, a sort of jack o’ lanthorn jerking from side
to side, moving very gradually beside the high wall surrounding the
Vicarage garden. He associated the scream with the presence of that
light. Within the dark tumbledown vicarage the housekeeper was
indulging in those revelries observed by all devout worshippers of
Bacchus. The lantern bearer without the wall was old Yeoland. He had
been driven out by the woman and did not dare to return. He would walk
up and down, mumbling and trembling, until the bottle-imp inside had
ceased to trouble the evening air with her exclamations. The screams
were intermittent, and every time one came the lantern perceptibly
wobbled. In the sycamores by the church a pair of owls were hooting in
B flat. On the whole it was somewhat weird.
Burrough had some genuine sympathy for old Yeoland. He distrusted
common report which declared that the Vicar was a moral, as well as an
intellectual, failure; that he was not so much under the thumb of his
riotous housekeeper as was supposed; that he was in short bound to her
by a tie which for his own peace of mind and his reputation he did not
dare to break. This was the sort of talk dear to Mrs. Cobbledick, and
much indulged in even by those who were opposed to her in the matter
of butter-making. Solitude had played havoc with old Yeoland. That,
and the keen mountain air, had created in him the desire for tippling,
and he had not drawn the line until it was too late. He was absolutely
alone in the world. He had bought the living as a young man. It
brought him in a miserable pittance, and he could not give it up,
although unable to perform the duties connected with it. To do so
would have meant exchanging the damp half-ruined thatched cottage
which constituted the vicarage for the comparative comfort of the
workhouse. During the summer evenings he basked at his gate, ogling
the girls as they passed. The winter evenings he spent in his
arm-chair, half asleep, or sobbing like a frightened child, afraid of
the solitude, except on those occasions when he had to wander through
mist and mud with his lantern, listening to the owls in the sycamores
and the screaming in the house.
Burrough went up and greeted the old man. With his big stable lantern
in one hand, a thick stick in the other, he shuffled along very
slowly, rather like a toad dragging itself over a gravel path. He was
delighted to see Burrough, although as a rule he avoided him, because
solitude and the partial loss of his five wits had made him shrink
from every man.
“Don’t talk about the weather,” mumbled old Yeoland directly he
recognised Burrough.
“I won’t,” said the young man, “I wasn’t going to.”
“Don’t talk of noises,” the Vicar went on. “The owls are screaming all
round, all over Dartmoor.”
“In your house and garden,” added Burrough.
“Never mind. They’ll stop presently. Make a joke. Go on! Say something
to make me laugh.”
“I’m afraid I can’t joke to order. Why are you out so late?”
“To get the air,” said old Yeoland. “I come out all weathers--when it
pours with rain. I get soaked through, wet to the skin--does me good,
makes me young again. Were you at the university? Are you a scholar?”
“I took classical honours,” said Burrough.
“Well done,” said the Vicar, shuffling back as though the announcement
frightened him. “Have you got a paper for me? Can’t you give me a
funny paper with pictures?”
“I might have one at home,” Burrough answered, “but my cottage is a
long way off upon the moor.”
“I’m coming to see you some day. Get the paper. Go on! Winter’s
coming. I want something to make me laugh.”
“All right. I’ll go and get it.”
With that Burrough turned and left him. Old Y.’s conversation was not
the sort of dissipation he had come out to find; and he felt a sudden
desire to return and work. He knew that the old man would forget all
about him and the “funny paper” in less than ten minutes. He hurried
back over the wild moor, whistling loudly, and trying to imagine he
was in sympathy with the lonely life of wind and vapour that had
fallen to his lot.
Beside his cottage he was troubled with an uncomfortable sensation. He
seemed to feel the near presence of a human being. He thought he had
seen a figure swaying through the mist, and he made a few steps up the
moor to satisfy himself that the motion was caused by a big gorse-bush
troubled by the wind. The ponies stamped and squealed beside the door.
Burrough stampeded them, then as he turned the handle he hesitated.
Suppose he should find someone inside, some abortion, a creature of
the moors, or a murderous convict escaped from Princetown. Even while
he hesitated the gorse-bush in the mist shook again like a swaying
human figure, and somehow he could not turn his back upon it. He
smiled at his folly. The meeting with old Y. had unhinged him. Of
course there could be no one there. The people of the village would be
going to bed. Pixies were extinct--besides that figure of his
imagination was no little person, but a giant, a Corineus. And as for
convicts the only ones to escape rifle-shot had been accounted for by
the bogs. No convict could make that dreaded “crossing” in winter
without a guide.
The next minute Burrough was inside, searching for matches by the glow
of peat upon the hearthstone. The lamp lighted, and its beams
streaming across the moor from the uncurtained window--that window was
called the lighthouse by the villagers--he felt easier in his mind,
and wondered what had made him such a fool. Unable to work or read, or
indeed to do anything but dream, he flung himself upon the lounge,
watching the smoke drifting, listening to the ponies stamping outside.
Only a wall of granite blocks separated him from the sheltering
animals and the swaying gorse-bushes. When a shaggy pony bumped or
scratched itself upon the rough wall he became aware of it; and he
thought he could hear the prickles of the gorse scraping against the
stones.
Then the onion-seller became an enemy. It was the visit of that Breton
which had upset Burrough in the first instance, and his going away had
left him hopelessly unsettled. Through his means Burrough was
transported into smiling scenery. He left Dartmoor winds and vapours,
to roam in warm valleys, amid white flowers, between blue hills
covered with grape-vines. A face began to reveal itself and a figure
clad in oilskins, a fisher-girl going down to the boats with a stable
lantern in her hand and strings of onions upon her shoulder. It seemed
to Burrough he was gazing out from his window and the scene was in
Brittany, although surrounded by Cornish cliffs. And near him upon a
boulder the fisher-girl was sitting, and he looked, and it was
Beatrice with Breton onions, Cornish oil-skins, and old Y.’s stable
lantern. Then Dartmoor vapours rolled down, the sunshine disappeared,
the wind howled, the water roared for a moment in the gorge--and then
he fancied himself walking with Beatrice hand in hand, just as he had
walked with her a few months before along the Apron String, and into
their fanciful little kingdom of Blissland by the river of ferns.
This picturesque dream was interrupted by what would have been prosaic
enough in most places, but there was romantic, even terrifying, and
causing in Burrough a reflex of feeling that swallowed up imagination
and left him, not so much in amazement, as a state of terror. He was
aroused by a knock upon the door.
At last he went to receive the ghostly visitor. He dragged the door
open desperately, prepared to see the outline of a Brittany
onion-seller, or a Devonshire pixy, or a Cornish giant. It appeared to
be the latter. A tall upright figure stood there, and a pleasant
musical voice apologised for troubling the gentleman, but would he
direct him towards the nearest station. The mists had caught him upon
the moor and he had lost his way.
In wild places every human habitation is an inn. During his wanderings
Burrough had frequently received the invitation, “Do ye come in and
pitch.” In English more classical he repeated the customary formula,
and the stranger at once bent his head and entered.
“Good heaven! Another Frenchman.” Such was Burrough’s mental
exclamation. First a Breton onion-seller, and now a Norman fisherman.
Were the western moors overrun by the French peasantry? Had they
conquered and seized West Wales as Beatrice fondly called her dear
land, and was this white-haired Barbarossa quartered upon him as a
punishment for his sins? Certainly the stranger’s face was Norman; but
as assuredly his speech was Cornish. Burrough remembered that the
types are similar. But a second visitor--that was the amazing
incident--a second visitor that day!
A finer specimen of a man he had never seen. Tall, upright, and
somewhat thin; his face would have been attractive anywhere, and have
arrested the attention of anyone given to ethnological inquiry--it was
weather beaten, sharp-lined, and wonderfully free from wrinkles,
although the man must have been more than sixty; that fact was
proclaimed by the crisp white hair. It was a beautiful face, a Sir
Galahad type of face, and its smile was gentle, maternal rather than
masculine, and even sweet if such an epithet could be applied to the
smile of any man. He was in fisherman’s costume; long boots well above
the knees, corded breeches, thick ribbed jersey half concealed by a
rough jacket, and around his neck was a snowy muffler, and upon his
head was an oilskin hat shaped exactly like the barber’s basin sported
by the knight of La Mancha as the helmet of Mambrino.
“This is different from your Cornish weather,” said Burrough, when he
had persuaded the man to be seated.
“It’s cold there too,” said the fisherman. “And windy, sir, beside the
sea.”
“I know you are from Cornwall. Your speech betrays you. So does your
face. I am wondering what brings you upon Dartmoor,” Burrough went on,
while he stirred the peat and put on some sticks to make a blaze.
“Yes, sir, us Cornish folk don’t travel much. I’m up to see a friend
to Chagford. Walking across the moor I lost my bearings.”
“You are perfectly right. You are making straight for the station,”
said Burrough. “But if you crossed from Chagford you have done a
wonderful thing. I couldn’t do it this time of year and I know the
moor. I see by your boots you escaped the bogs. How did you manage
it?”
“I came a bit round, sir,” explained the fisherman, with his
singularly pleasant smile.
Burrough knew that the man was not telling him the truth. Making for
the Cornish line from Chagford he would certainly pass that way, if he
struck across the moor. That he had not done so was obvious by the
state of his boots, which ought to have been plastered with bog-mud,
but were perfectly clean. Several thoughts occurred to Burrough, all
strange ones. He noticed whenever he looked up that the fisherman
withdrew his gaze hurriedly. He noticed also the woollen wrapper round
the man’s neck. That had not been made by his wife or daughter; and he
would scarcely have bought anything so dainty. The last time he had
seen such a wrapper was when Beatrice was walking in the rain; and the
wrapper was lying upon her dark brown hair. He smiled to himself with
a kind of triumph.
“I must be getting on, sir. Thank’ye kindly,” said the old man with
simple dignity.
“Fill your pipe before you go,” said Burrough, handing over his
tobacco jar. “What would you like to drink--a glass of beer?”
“Thank’ye kindly,” said the fisherman again, with the smile which
seemed to convey a blessing with it.
Burrough brought the beer and the fisherman accepted it with a
courteous gesture. The young man for reasons of his own made it his
business to keep as much as possible away from the light. He tried to
appear at his best before the old fisherman. He talked brightly and
laughed continually, and did all else that was possible to make a
favourable impression. The gentle old fellow laughed too, and was
obviously well pleased at his reception, and quite satisfied with his
host; but for all that he declared he must be getting on his way.
“You cannot get home to-night,” said Burrough.
“I’m going to Plymouth, sir. I have friends to Torpoint. Is it far to
the station, sir?”
“I’ll show you the shortest way if you wait until I put on my boots.”
Burrough was soon back ready to start, but first he had a question for
the old fisherman. He asked him what he thought of Chagford. The
visitor replied he didn’t think much of the place, which was right and
proper, as he was a Cornishman, and therefore possessed of hereditary
hatred for everything that appertained unto Devonshire.
“But a very fine town,” argued Burrough. “Splendid buildings. Of
course you saw the town-hall? Didn’t you admire that?”
“Yes, sir, a very fine building,” admitted the fisherman.
“And the big park with the pavilion and bandstand. You’ve nothing like
that in Cornwall.”
“Yes, sir, a very fine park,” agreed the fisherman.
“And the theatre. As big as anything in Plymouth,” continued Burrough
relentlessly.
“Yes, sir, a very fine theatre,” came the monotonous reply.
Burrough turned to lower the lamp, and the knightly old fisherman
walked towards the door. The young man was greatly excited. So this
visit was Beatrice’s answer to his long letter. And this man, who had
probably never been out of Cornwall before; who professed to have
walked over the moor from Chagford without getting mud on his boots;
who knew so much about the moorland village as to agree when he heard
it described as a town with parks, fine buildings, and theatres; who
asked moreover to be directed to the station from whence he had only
recently proceeded for the express purpose of subjecting Burrough to a
close scrutiny--who was this man, if he were not Poltesco, the
faithful fisherman of St. Sennen Church-Town?