Chapter XVII: 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.