Chapter X

HOW THEY SAT UPON THE PIXIES’ BOWLING-GREEN.

Burrough was not going to be made a fool of again. Upon that point his mind was perfectly clear. He did not intend to pursue the elusive vision of Beatrice across the moor and be made the butt of her holiday humour. What was the good, he argued, of going to the blacksmith’s? Probably she would not be there. He might only be making himself more ridiculous than ever. His course was clear--he must go for a walk in the opposite direction. This conclusion having been arrived at, he cleaned his little kettle, packed it into a basket, and went with quite unnecessary haste towards the blacksmith’s.

The spot selected by Beatrice was hardly as civilised as its name suggested. It was nothing but a stone ruin beside the river Taw, encircled by solitude and clatters of moss-covered granite. According to tradition, a blacksmith had lived there once amid the silent shadows of the grey rocks, but it was not known what employment had come to him in that moorland fastness so far from the haunts of men. He could have had neither horse to shoe nor implement to forge. Perhaps he was an elfin blacksmith, enjoying the royal patronage of the king of the pixies, who, as every wise man’s son knew well, held court upon Cranmere. There was a delightfully smooth stretch of turf in front of the ruin. His Majesty played bowls with his favourite courtiers there “under the cold and chaste light of the moon.” His playthings were big spheres of granite. No doubt the blacksmith made them, breaking the rough blocks off the tors with his iron bar, and shaping them in his forge with chisel and hammer.

Beatrice was there! She was sitting beside the river near the bowling-green, looking very proper and demure. She was dressed in white from head to toe, wearing a hat to shield her from the sun. It was a big hat, somewhat suggestive of a lamp shade, and composed of many delicate articles such as infants are swathed in. Her little shoes were white, and so were her stockings. Burrough had come prepared to be dignified and a trifle cold, that she might perceive he was annoyed at her late treatment of him; but one glance caused him to forget all that. He felt he would struggle gladly through all the bogs of Dartmoor, if at the end of the journey he might be allowed to kiss one of those maddening little ankles.

“Where’s my washing?” was Beatrice’s first remark.

Burrough dived into his pocket and produced the handkerchiefs. He had dried them at his kitchen fire. He had been tempted to retain one, and to suggest that it had been mislaid, but his courage failed him, as it did always when the pinch came. So he had folded them neatly, and tied them up in tissue paper with a piece of pink tape.

“You were bathing,” he said, as he gave her the little packet.

“Sort of bathing,” she admitted. “The water was rather cold, and now I’m hoarse. Perhaps the owl overhooted.”

“Did you see me?”

“Lots of times,” she laughed. “I saw you coming across the moor. I wondered why you were running. I saw you wandering from place to place, collecting my written injunctions. You nearly caught me on the desert island. I had to rush and leave my towels behind. And I saw you from the top of Cleave Tor. I hope you have profited by your lesson in geography. Do you know where Cumberland is now?”

“Do explain,” he pleaded.

This was not the reproof which he had prepared; but just then he was in no mood either to argue or to scold. He only wanted to hear her talk, to sit still and listen, and to watch the movements of her dainty body in its soft and silky whiteness.

“Have you lived and walked in Blissland all this time without discovering that the eyot is a perfect model of England?” she went on. “Why, I saw that when I was a small kid. Every part of England and gallant little Wales is reproduced in miniature. My sister and I added a few details which were wanting. We stuck a few mountains about, and we burnt out a patch for the Black Country--it’s green again now--and we dug out some bays and made some rivers. We learnt all our geography that way. You entered the island this morning somewhere about Falmouth. The first step landed you on Exmoor; the second took you across the Bristol Channel; and then you came north through Shropshire and Cheese-and-catshire; and I believe you slipped into the Mersey, though you didn’t know it, but I thought I heard you blowing bubbles, also making remarks about the mountains in the Lake District which should have been instantly suppressed--the remarks, I mean, not the mountains. I warned you they were slithery. And then you were in Cumberland; while I had jumped upon the Isle of Man, and across to old Ireland, where the bogs come from. Then I got stugged again. My washing-bill this week will be enormous.”

“You told me not to tread upon London, or I might get bitten,” Burrough said.

“I did get bitten,” Beatrice rattled on. “I went by the East End, and two horrid little Socialists nipped me on the ankle. I’ve done nothing but scratch and embrocate ever since. Didn’t you see that big ant-hill near the mouth of the Thames? That’s London.”

Then the girl became active. She opened her little basket and tumbled out a tea-cloth, various cakes, and sundry packets. She ordered Burrough to prepare a fire, and demanded to know what he had brought, “because,” she said, “I have eatables, tea and sugar,” with the accent upon the sugar, “a bottle of milk, and three cups.”

“Why three cups?”

“Auntie said she might come. I don’t expect she will, but she may, if she can finish her painting in time.”

“I did not know Miss Pentreath painted,” said Burrough politely.

“We’re both artists,” said Beatrice. “I paint landscapes, and Auntie paints portraits.”

He could tell by the mischief in her eyes that she was quizzing him; but not having to his knowledge seen Miss Pentreath, he did not know how to take her.

“She paints for pleasure, I suppose?” he remarked.

“It used to be for profit,” said Beatrice, who had no delicacy of feeling regarding her aunt’s obvious weakness. “I think now it has become a duty. Like most painters, Auntie sets an ideal before her, and aims at it with a steadfastness of purpose which in one of her age is truly remarkable,” she went on wickedly. “It has always been her object to achieve a real work of art, and her failure to do so has cast a gloom upon her life.”

“I know you are chaffing me,” said Burrough, looking with boldness into her laughing eyes. “I suppose the truth is, your aunt does not take her painting seriously.”

“It’s about the only thing she does take seriously,” Beatrice cried delightedly. “She has hitherto failed to paint a really good portrait, because she is short-sighted, and therefore she exaggerates. What could look worse than a blob of scarlet where nature intended a soft and interesting pink?”

“Evidently I am fated to say the wrong thing,” observed Burrough. “As your aunt is a portrait-painter, I presume she uses oils?”

“Ask her,” cried Beatrice, with a little shriek of laughter. “I know they come from a place in Bond Street in a fancy box, but they don’t smell oily.”

“I can’t think of anything else to say except, does she exhibit?”

“Frequently when the weather is fine and dry,” the girl replied. “She objects to rain and mist, because moisture is so injurious to the delicate work which she particularly affects. She always did prefer to exhibit in a half-light, and to keep the picture with its back towards the window.”

Then she made the elfin blacksmith’s shop ring with laughter, in which Burrough for the first time joined.

“You must have thought me very dense,” he said. “I have lived so much out of the world lately. I had forgotten how ladies repair the ravages made by smoky towns with the appliances of art.”

“That’s enough of Auntie,” said Beatrice. “If she comes presently she is sure to bring her latest masterpiece. Only don’t criticise unless she invites you.” She went on severely, “How do you suppose we are going to have tea, when the kettle is empty and the fire is not made? Give me the kettle,” she commanded. “I will fill it while you get some sticks and stuff for the fire.”

She took the kettle, and drawing the white skirts round her, went and stood upon a stone, leaning gracefully towards the foaming river. Burrough tried to collect sticks and watch her at the same time, with the result that he fell over a rock. She laughed, and he felt angry, because he did not like to appear clumsy in her eyes. There was plenty of dry gorse which had been burnt the previous spring. He gathered an armful and returned to the pixies’ bowling-green, where Beatrice was regarding ruefully her tiny white shoes, over which she had been careless enough to spill some water. She was also scolding herself sharply.

“You’m a mucky twoad! That’s what you be. What’s the use of giving you nice things to wear, if you can’t keep out of mud and water? Yesterday evening you went swaling, and you tore all that pretty lace your poor auntie made for you, and you turned a nice little pair of tan shoes into pulp, and you muddied your stockings to your knees. Then this morning you scrambled through that boggy wood and spoilt another lot of nice things. And now, when you have dressed yourself rather sweetly, you must go and slop a dirty kettle all over yourself--you little beast!--just like a silly kid when nurse isn’t looking. You ought to be dressed in sackcloth or linoleum or tarpaulin, which would scrape and scratch you. You’m a twoad! You be!”

“Aren’t you rather hard upon her?” said Burrough, looking up from his fire-making.

“Not a bit. She’s a perfect little horror with her clothes. She was always like it. When she was a toddler she was always in the mud, and got smacked for it, but it made her no better. When she was a schoolgirl she was never happy unless she was tearing something. And now she’s an old maid, she always pulls her things off anyhow when she undresses and chucks them all about the floor. What is amusing you now?”

“The definition of yourself,” he answered.

“Old maid? Well, I celebrated my fifth birthday two years ago. By the time I am ten I shall be old and grey-headed. At fifteen I shall become a portrait-painter, and at twenty I shall fade peacefully away. I was born, you see, on the twenty-ninth of February. Now I’ll tell you something more interesting. You see that pile of rocks which you are smothering with your smoke? Well, that’s a grave, a kistvaen. There was a very old woman who was alive here when I was a kid, and she was a witch. Are you listening?”

“Yes,” said Burrough, poking his head out of the smoke. “There was an old woman, and she was a witch.”

“She was over ninety,” Beatrice went on. “And she remembered looking in that grave and seeing the skellington, as she called it. A real dead Gubbins was buried there. There were savages, you know, who if they caught anyone on the moor would skin ’em alive-oh. The bones have gone long ago. This old woman taught me some spells, and I was qualifying rapidly for my witch’s degree when the stupid old thing died.”

“So you never became a witch after all?”

“I never became a full-blown black witch.”

“Was she a black witch?” he asked rather sharply.

“Well, yes, she was a black witch,” said Beatrice, with some hesitation. “She didn’t ride on a broomstick, though,” she added with a laugh. “Why, I thought you would be amused at what I am telling you.”

“Witchcraft is not an amusing subject,” said Burrough quietly. “When I lived in London I might have laughed at it, but not now, not after living alone upon the moor.”

“Oh well,” said Beatrice, “let’s talk about something else, and forget the nonsense I have been saying.”

It was not likely that Burrough would forget. He had never before seen Beatrice really grave, and the change was so great that he could hardly recognise her. He knew she did not think she had been talking nonsense, and the knowledge made him uncomfortable. It was not pleasant to consider that she might have been corrupted in the age of innocence by some horrible old woman who simply lived to hate her species. There were a few such remaining, he knew, in mid-Devon and about Cornwall, and death by drowning was not too bad for them.

“Do ye boil, kettle,” pleaded Beatrice, in her usual lively mood, as she poked a stick into the fire. “Last time we had tea together we were devils,” she prattled. “We used the devils’ kitchen. And now we’re pixies. This is one of the pixies’ meeting places. They dance here in the moonlight, and on a windy night you can hear the blacksmith whanging away with his hammer. We’re getting on, aren’t we? We’ll soon be angels. Come along with the tea! The pixy-kettle is bubbling and spitting; and, by all that is lovely and sacred in art, here comes my pixy aunt!”

Burrough looked up. He saw a slight girlish figure picking its way among the rocks, and advancing towards them with mincing steps. At that distance Miss Pentreath might have been Beatrice’s younger sister; but as she approached the faults of the picture were exposed pitilessly by the sunlight and clear moorland air. The little made-up lady looked entirely out of place amid that wild scenery. Surrounded by the granite and gorse, the heather and bracken, of Dartmoor, she presented as incongruous an appearance, with her paint and girlish ribbons, as a fisherman clad in oilskins would have done in a West End drawing-room.

“Well trotted, Auntie,” cried Beatrice. “I was afraid the journey might be too great for you. This is Mr. Burrough, about whom you have heard from Ann. He’s the man who writes very big works in a very small house where the stormy winds do blow.”

Miss Pentreath made a fluttering bow, then seated herself upon a flat stone, and combed her chestnut locks with carefully manicured fingers. She could not see Burrough distinctly, owing to her steadfast refusal to wear glasses; but she was aware of a well-built figure and a fresh clean-shaven countenance which gave her a favourable impression.

“I am most pleased to meet you,” she said, in her little complaining voice. She had been unconsciously querulous ever since that unfortunate incident of the monkey-cage. “My niece tells me you have escorted her about the moor, and have pointed out to her many objects of interest which she would not have discovered by herself.”

“Quite true,” remarked a voice.

“I was not aware of it,” muttered Burrough, wishing with all his heart that the painted lady was at the bottom of Plymouth Sound.

“Yes,” said a mischievous voice--“Skelywidden, King Trevalyor’s country, and Swaling Night.”

“The air is so soft, so beautiful,” complained Miss Pentreath. “I really think I may venture to remove my hat.”

“I wouldn’t, Auntie,” warned Beatrice. “It might come on to rain.”

“Don’t say that. I don’t see any black clouds about. Do you, Mr. Burrough?”

“Oh, lots,” said Beatrice, with a sly look. “They are black as ink above Steeperton.”

“My niece is such a tease,” said Miss Pentreath when Burrough had assured her there was no immediate danger of a storm. “I hate rain,” she went on, smiling as archly as her enamel would permit. “It ruins one’s clothes entirely.”

“Not so much as bogs,” said irrepressible Beatrice.

“Well, my dear, I am a little older than you, and I prefer to keep myself neat. I do not believe in wading through bogs and gorse-bushes, and jumping about rocks.”

“Which is a nasty dig at me,” said Miss Beatrice. “But, you see, Auntie, I was born in Leap Year.”

“Don’t make atrocious puns,” said Miss Pentreath severely. “They are silly and unfashionable.”

“My stars! This propriety is for your benefit, Mr. Burrough. If you weren’t here Auntie would want to pull off her stockings and paddle.”

“I do not deny that my niece and I have paddled in this river,” said Miss Pentreath, stirring the cup of tea which Burrough had just handed her. “But I am not strong like she is. She would pull me about, and push me, until my paddle became something like a bathe. I am too small and weak to play with such a strong girl. Then the great disadvantage of paddling is the subsequent drying of one’s feet, for which a lady’s handkerchief is not particularly well adapted.”

“I love paddling,” said Beatrice. “I like to feel the soft sand tickling my feet and squeezing in between my toes.”

“Do be quiet, Beatrice,” said her aunt. “Ladies’ toes are not included among the subjects which may be discussed at a tea-party where a gentleman is present.”

“Why not, if they’re nice toes? Anyhow I wasn’t talking about them. I was only saying how jolly it is to walk with bare feet. But if that’s naughty we’ll change the subject. Tell us whom you met on your way here.”

“Only a few visitors, whose faces were not known to me,” replied Miss Pentreath. “Mr. Yeoland was standing as usual at his gate, and tried to get me to stop and talk. The poor old gentleman wants looking after sadly. Then I passed a few of the villagers----”

“I’ll give you a list of them,” Beatrice broke in: “Willum, who won’t work, and Dufty, who can’t look straight; Griffey, who preaches, and Veale, who boozes; Muzzlewhite, who can’t read, and Kentisbeer, who can’t write; Kellaway, with the wall-eye, and Wollacott, with the game leg; old Ruddle, who’s never been in a train, and old Wannell, who’s never been in a bath. Auntie talks to everyone and everything,” she went on, addressing Burrough, who had become unusually silent. “She speaks to every dog and cat in the place. One day I heard her talking to a pony about the weather.”

“Never mind my weaknesses,” said Miss Pentreath, as she produced her cigarette case. “Mr. Burrough, are you certain it is not going to rain? I am a very long way from shelter.”

“There’s the blacksmith’s chimney,” Beatrice reminded her.

“It is quite clear towards Cranmere--where the storms come from,” Burrough answered.

“Have you ever been to Cranmere?” asked a voice.

“I started one morning, but lost my way, and gave it up,” he said.

“I know the way.”

“Beatrice knows Cranmere well,” her aunt remarked. “She has been there every summer since she was a child.”

“Next time you go will you let me accompany you?” Burrough asked, avoiding her eyes, and feeling his heart beating rapidly.

“You would have to start early,” he heard Miss Pentreath saying, “some day when the artillery are not firing.”

So far Beatrice had not given her consent. She was lying upon the pixies’ bowling-green, her chin propped upon her hand, and her eyes fixed upon the foaming river. An expedition to Cranmere was a very different matter from an afternoon’s ramble in Blissland. He and she would be alone together for the day. Nothing but a vast solitude would surround them from morning till night. And Cranmere Pool was the centre of witchcraft and pixy pranks.

Suddenly Beatrice turned her head.

“We shall want lots of grub,” she said in her merry way. “And you must bring plenty to drink, for I won’t follow the example of the Cornish Princess in your fairy story and swallow mud and slime. The guns won’t be firing next Monday. Shall we go then?”