Chapter XIII: 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.”