Chapter XVIII: How Beatrice Forgot to Be Frivolous

It was two weeks after Burrough and the dummy had been bowled over by the same projectile. The remains of the wooden man had gone to feed camp fires; those of the other were receiving the attentions of the War Office. An army doctor attended Burrough daily, and an army nurse permanently. And Beatrice came to visit him very often. She would hold his hand, and prattle her nonsense, and frisk about the bed like a kitten at play.

A splinter from the dummy had struck Burrough just above the right eye, but had luckily glanced off without penetrating. To what extent the eye itself was injured he did not know, and the surgeon had not told him. “Just a nasty scratch! You’ll soon be about again,” said that cheery optimist. In the meantime much correspondence took place between the secretary of the colonel commanding the artillery camp and the War Office concerning the effect of a certain class of projectile upon a wooden dummy and a human being, thereinafter called “B.,” situate in a straight line some two hundred yards in its rear.

It was Sunday evening. The nurse had gone out, and Beatrice was in charge. Burrough was sitting up quite in a cheerful mood, because the doctor had informed him that morning he was going on very well indeed and would not require professional attendance much longer. The couple were discussing a matter of great importance, the question whether Burrough should, or should not, apply for compensation.

“It seems rather mean after all they have done for me,” Burrough said.

“You can’t be mean to a Government,” Beatrice declared. “Nobody wants to cheat a private individual, but if one can travel first-class upon a third-class ticket one does.”

“I had no right to be on that part of the moor at all,” he said.

“You couldn’t help it. The range-clearers ought to have found you. They are employed to see that all living creatures are off the moor before firing begins. A master is responsible for any injury arising from the negligence of his servants.”

“Who told you that?”

“There’s a lawyer stopping opposite Mother Ann’s. He said he was sure you were entitled to compensation. Of course you are,” she rattled on. “Can’t you imagine yourself as a pensioner? You will tell people you were gloriously wounded in the service of your country while performing an act of heroism without parallel in the annals of war. That’s a sentence I picked up the other day in a life of someone. You will describe how your comrade--that’s the dummy--was blown to pieces, but you survived to receive the reward of an admiring and grateful country, and then you will show your scars, and they will pass the hat round for you, and say what a gallant hero you are, and how they’ll never see your like again.”

“Has the doctor told you I shall be scarred?” asked Burrough anxiously. “That is what is bothering me,” he added.

“Really you mustn’t expect to stop shells with your head without getting beauty spots,” she laughed. “Now you must strike while the iron is hot, and before the incident has ceased to be regrettable. Shall I write a nice letter for you to the War Office, like this--let me consider deeply--‘Dear Mr. Secretary of State for War,--I dare say you are aware that some of your chaps are playing at soldiers on Dartmoor, and t’other day some of ’em shot a shell plump into my right eye’?”

“That won’t do,” exclaimed the patient.

“If they can’t appreciate frivolity in a Government office, where is it to be appreciated?” cried Beatrice. “Well, we’ll try another style, the whining won’t-work and won’t-wash mendicant style: ‘Excuse me, your honour, but can you help a poor fellow who’s out of work owing to an unfortunate collision with a projectile fired by one of your gunners?’ Won’t that do, either? Then I’ll try the heavy style.” Springing up, she ran across the room, and returning with the Life of Johnson, whipped over its pages until she came to what she wanted. “Listen,” she cried. “This is what you want: ‘To interrupt your Lordship with my petty difficulties is improper and unseasonable; but your knowledge of the world has long since taught you that every man’s affairs, however little, are important to himself. Every man hopes that he shall escape neglect; and with reason may every man, whose vices do not preclude his claim, expect favour from your beneficence, which I trust, my Lord, will be extended to your Lordship’s most obliged and most humble servant, John Burrough.’ That’s the sort of thing,” said merry Beatrice.

“I shall not apply,” said Burrough with determination. “If they like to pension me they can, and I hope they will. But I won’t ask for it.”

“Then you won’t get anything,” said Beatrice.

“There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you,” Burrough went on. “I was thinking about it when that dummy was crumpled up, and I with it.”

“Double-dummy,” she whispered.

“It is this,” said Burrough. “Why did you go away that morning without me?”

“Well,” said Beatrice, flushing a little, “there were reasons, all good ones. When I make up my mind to leave a place I go. That’s one. Then I hadn’t the heart to interrupt your innocent slumbers. That’s two.”

“Both bad ones.”

“A pixy called me to the river,” she continued. “When I got there, another called me along the cleave, and another to the marsh, and so on until I found I was nearly home. Now let’s talk about something else.”

On account of his bandages, Burrough could not see her very clearly, but he perceived she was withholding the actual reason for her flight. The truth was, Beatrice had been afraid on awaking in the light of day and finding herself alone with him. The dawn had stirred her blood. She had been enervated by the soft influence of the early morning; and, like the first woman in the garden, she was ashamed, so went and hid herself.

“Do you believe in the pixies?” he asked her, rather to hear what she had to say than as a serious question.

“There’s a question to ask a Cornish girl!” she cried. “Believe in the wee-winikin people? I have a bed of tulips at home, and the pixies put their babies to bed in the flowers every evening and sing them to sleep. I hear the little lullabies as I lie in bed by my open window. And at dawn they come back, and I can hear them kissing their kiddies. Then on the side of the moor above the sea I can hear them dancing hand-in-hand round and round the furze-reek before it has been carried away.”

“What is the furze-reek?” Burrough asked.

“Don’t you know that? And you living on Dartmoor and going swaling! Even Willum could tell you that. It’s the furze after it has been burnt. It’s the firewood of poor Cornish folk, and they collect it in the autumn. Most of the places in Cornwall are named after pixies. And here’s another story. Somewhere beside the Tavy a herb grows, and it will cure any wound. Only it must be gathered at night, and by a pixy.”

“Couldn’t you get a pixy-trap and catch me one?” he asked.

“The tiny people are vindictive,” she said. “If you were to catch one, his screams would bring all his relations up, and they would pinch you purple. I like to get the old women of Zennor to tell me tales about the pixies of Trendreen Hill, and I like to believe in them. Oh, and you should see Trendreen Hill in swaling time! They can see the flames in Scilly. The furze-reek there is big and fine. The boys used to get off many a flogging after swaling in summer--it’s not allowed then--by saying that the pixies had done it. But that excuse is no good now. I wish I had lived a hundred years ago. There were lots of pixies then. Now, am I tiring you?”

“You could never do that,” he answered, pressing the hand which he had annexed and was holding between his.

“I’ve just remembered a story which will appeal to you,” she went on. “One day three men were blasting at the copper mine near Botallack, and, the charge going off prematurely, one of the men was blown to pieces. The other two were not much damaged. One of them stooped over all that remained of his comrade and called, ‘Dear old Jim! Thee bain’t hurt, aw ’ee?’”

Beatrice told her story with ridiculous gravity, then went off suddenly into a shriek. When she had recovered she continued: “I can tell you something else now I am in a remembering mood. It’s not funny, not even very remarkable, but still it sounds queer. When I was a kid I used to go and see a very old man who lived in Zennor. It was he who gave me the true version of the story of Tregeagle, and I never forgot it. Well, this old man’s grandfather was one of those who welcomed home Bishop Trelawny after his acquittal in 1688.”

“That’s impossible, surely,” cried Burrough.

“It’s quite true. I read the dates in the most curious old Bible you ever saw. The grandfather married for the third time very late in life, and had a son who was the father of my old man. Not one of the three old men ever went out of Cornwall. There, I think I’ve told you enough funny stories for one evening. I must go now, for I see your grim and awful nurse stalking across the moor with slow and stately stalks. Good-night and good-bye. I’ll come to-morrow.”

She pressed his fingers lightly. He kissed hers. And she went away laughing.

The next day was wet. Beatrice appeared in a mackintosh and her nailed boots, with a woollen wrapper about her head and a letter in her hand. “It’s come,” she cried directly she entered the invalid’s room, “your letter from Cranmere, post-marked Lydford.”

“And I’ve got yours,” he answered.

“I came round early to save it from your clutches if it were possible,” she admitted. “I would have torn it up. I couldn’t know you’d get it when you were lying blown up. Give it me.”

“No,” he said firmly. “It is my first letter from you.” Then he read aloud: “There’s an oak on the Dart which will drop the acorn that will grow the wood to make the cradle to rock the child who’ll become the man to marry me.”

“It refers to my next incarnation,” said Beatrice. “But if mine is folly, what is yours? Yours is mere midsummer-mad poetry.” Then she read aloud in her turn--

“Upon my trouth, I sey yow feithfully That ye ben of my liffe and deth the quene, For with my deth the trouth shal be sene. Your two eyn.”

“It’s wild and primitive and plaintive. It suits Cranmere somehow,” she commented.

“I couldn’t think of anything else,” he pleaded. “Those lines were running in my head. They are from the only known ballad of Chaucer. He knew Dertymore and the Dart, and very likely stood upon Cranmere.”

“You have given me a new exclamation,” Beatrice cried. “Instead of saying, ‘my stars!’ I shall say, ‘my two eyn!’”

“Beatrice,” exclaimed the invalid, suddenly passionate, “will you marry me?”

“My two eyn! It comes in useful at once,” she laughed. “That was just as sudden and frightful as the shell which played skittles with dummy and you. Why, the acorn hasn’t dropped from the tree yet----”

“Be serious for one minute, five seconds, and say yes,” he pleaded.

“I will be serious,” she said. She went down upon a stool and took his hand. “I thought something was going to happen,” she went on, “because I had a dream last night, and it was the most remarkable and unpleasant dream that has ever come to me. I thought I had done something wicked or foolish--I don’t know what it was--and after doing it I walked out on the side of the moor beside our house, and there I saw something growing among the furze-reek. I can’t tell you what it was or what it was like, because I do not know, but it frightened me. I knew it was the consequence of what I had done. That evening I went out again, and the thing had grown larger. All that night I could see it in the moonlight from my window, growing and growing. It became more and more dreadful, and I felt that a time would come when I should not even be able to look at it. That time, I thought, did come, and I awoke in a fright.”

“It was nothing but a new version of an old nightmare,” he said softly.

“Suppose we made a mistake, and some horrible thing did grow between us, like that thing among the furze-reek?”

“What could come between us? I should always love you. Mine would not be an ordinary love,” he urged.

She hung down her head and said nothing. He went on pressing her.

“Suppose,” she whispered, “suppose that thing has begun to grow already!”

“So there is something,” said Burrough miserably. “What is it, Beatrice?”

“I can’t tell you,” she said. “It’s horrid of me, but I can’t help it. Shall I go away and write it?”

“No; tell me.”

“You would let me have my own way?” she went on; “you would let me be as free as ever?”

He gave the promise at once, then went on urging her.

“Well, then, I must,” she said. “I know how you feel towards me,” she added quickly; “but I don’t feel like that towards you--except, perhaps, just for a minute or two occasionally.”

“How could you?” he replied. “I thought I should never dare to ask you until that night in the ruin when you were telling me the story of Tregeagle. Then I began to understand that love and loneliness conquer everything, even poverty and pride. The little god of love himself is poor, Beatrice. He has nothing but his arrows, and can only pay his debts with kisses.”

“I like you,” she said. “Ever since we were together in our little kingdom by the river I have liked you. I have never known a nicer companion than you. We should be happy, I think, on the moor together. You don’t understand the moor as I do; it doesn’t call to you, and you don’t see under the furze and the griglans like I do, because you haven’t got my Cymrian blood. You would not be always my companion. You can come swaling with me, but you can’t come with me to see the little people. I know they don’t exist, yet I can find them when the wind comes moaning through the mist, just as all the West Welsh people have found them always.”

“Is that your difficulty--only that?” said Burrough eagerly.

“No, it is that accident,” she answered boldly. “Can’t you guess?”

“You are afraid I shall be disfigured?” he said, in a low voice.

“I am so fond of beauty,” she went on resolutely, “and disfigurement in any form is a horror to me. A fisherman with a wooden leg used to live near us when I was a child, and whenever I saw him I would scream and run away. It’s constitutional, I suppose, just as some people can’t bear to see a spider or come near a cat. I cannot help it. There! I have told you,” she cried, as merrily as she dared, but without looking at him.

“The doctor will be coming presently; I will ask him,” said Burrough, rather shakily.

“It may be all right,” Beatrice went on.

“It will not be all right,” he answered sadly. “There must be a scar.”

“I wouldn’t mind that--not an honest scar--if the eye was all right. But a dreadful blank eye like the one Kellaway has----”

She broke off, and he felt her shudder.

“I wish the doctor would come,” was all that Burrough could say.

“What do you think of me now?” said Beatrice wistfully.

“The same as ever,” he replied. “Beatrice, you will answer, will you not? Perhaps I shall not be so very dreadful to you when the bandages come off. If I don’t frighten you then, if you think you can bear with me, if I am not likely to grow into the horrible thing of your dream, will you?”

“Oh, in that case,” laughed she, “I really think I might be inclined to give the matter my serious consideration.”

“Beatrice,” he pleaded, “no frivolity! If I am not disfigured, what will you say?”

She looked up then, full of laughter and nonsense, and called, “Oh, yes, and that’s one time; oh, yes, and that’s two times; oh, yes, and that’s the third and last time.”

She was kneeling beside him, and he held her firmly in his arms.

“You see,” he cried exultingly, “I am not mutilated; there’s no weakness.”

Then, holding her, he bent low and murmured into her ear some of the nonsense she had taught him.