Chapter XIX: How Burrough Spoke Foolishly

It was late when the doctor came riding over the moor. Burrough had been employing the time in trying to extract information from his nurse, but that austere person remained as uncommunicative and mysterious as Peter himself, who had fallen under the ban of his master’s displeasure by glancing up with a disdainful expression and licking his paws in reply to questions. Directly the surgeon came in, with a brisk step and cheery remark, the invalid attacked him with the query which had been on and off his tongue since Beatrice’s departure.

“What is the extent of your injuries?” hummed and hawed the surgeon, who was a typical army man, kind and easy-going. “My dear chap, don’t worry yourself; you’re doing fine. I’m going to turn you out for a walk to-morrow, and send the nurse away, and knock you off the sick-list.”

“I know all about that. What I want you to tell me is, how am I going to look when these bandages are off?” Burrough interrupted, with more excitement than was good for him.

“How do you want to look, you young angel,” replied the surgeon, standing in front of the glass and arranging his moustache--“like Narcissus--pink cheeks, snowy forehead, hyacinthine locks, and all that sort of thing? Anyone would think you were a society beauty or a chorus-girl. Here you go stumbling into an exploding shell, which would have killed you if it had been made properly, and, instead of being grateful because you aren’t in your grave, you bother me about your complexion.”

“Look here, doctor, I’m going to know the truth,” said Burrough earnestly. “If you won’t tell me, I shall take these bandages off when you’re gone and look at myself in the glass.”

“That’s going to be your next move, is it?” said the other, with a short laugh. “Well, my lad, let’s have it over. I may as well tell you to-day as next week. That was a confounded nasty smack you had in the eye, and it’s a bit of luck for you that the splinter didn’t penetrate, as in nine cases out of ten it would have done. The whole affair was unlucky, of course; but, seeing that it did happen, you have more to put on the credit side than on the other. You’re going to retain your health and strength, and if you’re not thankful for that you ought to be strapped up and horsewhipped.”

“Thanks for breaking it gently,” said Burrough grimly.

“Well, the right temple is pretty badly knocked about; and as for the eye, plenty of good fellows have managed with one, from Polyphemus to Dr. Johnson. Now don’t worry yourself. You must fascinate the girls in future by your brilliance instead of with your beauty. You’ll do it with practice.”

“I shall look perfectly repulsive, then?” Burrough faltered, after a short silence.

“Yes, people will scream and take to their heels when they see you,” said the other sarcastically. “My dear chap, you must have been prepared for this. Not many men who get in the way of an exploding shell escape at all. You won’t look much worse than that wall-eyed fellow in the village who helps to clear the ranges, and who ought, by the way, to have cleared you off that morning.”

“Not much worse!” muttered Burrough, sarcastic in his turn.

“Lord bless you,” said the cheery surgeon, “this little business may be as useful to you as the death of a maiden aunt. The War Office ought to come down handsome, as it’s a clear case of negligence on the part of its servants. Most of the Tommies would ask to be planed and pruned if it meant a few shillings a week pension for them. Cheer up, my lad! It’s a stroke of good luck, if you will look at it in the right way.”

For all these words of consolation, Burrough felt himself clinging as it were to the edge of the world, and longing to release his grip and drop into space. When the surgeon had gone he sat beside the open window and watched the sunshine on the moor.

Only a few hours before he had kissed Beatrice’s warm fingers. Her mouth he could not ask to kiss with his head swathed in bandages. Had that kiss been the last? An engraving of the Bathos by Hogarth was hanging beside his chair. It was the end of all things: dead Time, with his broken scythe and shivered hour-glass; the broom worn to the stump, the cracked bell, the unstrung bow, and the wrecked ship; the sun dead and the moon on the wane; the withered tree, the empty purse, the clock run down; and the painter’s palette broken. The horror of the last was upon Burrough then.

“King of Cats, come and talk to me,” he said, extending a hand towards his wholly unsympathetic companion. “My day is over and the night has come, the night of bats and owls and everything that loves the dark. I’m a creature of the night now, a monster, an abnormity, a one-eyed abortion. If I were to present myself at the court of King Love I should be cast out headlong. The fairy-tale is over, King Peter. I thought I was the Prince, and I’m only the Ogre. I am the evil knight who has tried to carry off the Princess, and my eye has been poked out for my pains.”

He could understand Beatrice’s horror of any permanent physical blemish, such as a lost limb or an empty eye-socket. She was herself so perfect in health and strength; her mind looked for perfection in the things about her. The environment of folk-lore, with which she was fond of surrounding herself, contributed to this love of what was beautiful and complete.

Burrough remembered that the doctor had given him permission to go out. He decided to walk in the direction of the village, thinking he might meet Beatrice, who would be anxious to hear the sentence that had been passed upon him. So he crawled out of the cottage for the first time since his accident, and walked slowly upon the moor, while Peter trotted beside him with tail erect.

It was a beautiful evening and the moor was at its best, but Burrough was in no mood to enjoy peace and beauty then. He would almost have preferred a storm; thunder crashing upon the tors, lightning blasting them, and wind to make them reel. He would have liked the clouds to fall and a mist to cover him. If only the old stories were true, and there was a herb which would restore his battered features! How diligently he would search the moor, inch by inch, until he had found it. It was too easy to dwell in the atmosphere of romance; too difficult to face the realities of life.

Burrough had seated himself upon a rock hardly more than a stone’s throw from his cottage, feeling already tired out; while Peter was following the scent of a young rabbit in blissful anticipation of savoury meat. Burrough tried to comfort himself with the assurance that he could see as well as ever. He looked across the gorge of the river, and followed the heaving sky-line of the moor opposite. He could see the sparkling bog-water upon the slopes, and the vivid green patches of grass which decked the dangerous spots. He could detect also the lurid brilliancy of the flowering mosses, the crimson golden and grey sponges, which grew upon the bogs. He tried to persuade himself his single eye could actually make out the sundews and bog-violets lying upon the quaking surfaces beyond the gorge. Then he allowed his eye to wander along the sky-line, until it reached a rounded hill the sight of which sent a shiver through him. That hill was one of the frontiers of Cranmere, the high and barren region of river-heads which had been the indirect cause of all his suffering.

Although evening was drawing on, the guns of the artillery were still thundering. Burrough could hear the furious hissing and sullen explosions of shells across the desolate waste, and he could see wisps of smoke floating or whirling between the tors. The sides of these tors were covered with white scars made by sundered granite, and some of Eastaway’s men, as small as dolls, were working there getting the last load of granite for the day, their crowbars ringing upon the blocks and striking wild mountain music. A fine sweet breeze was coming up the gorge of the river chasing a few low-lying clouds through the sunlight.

There were hut circles upon the slopes opposite. Burrough knew where to look for them, as he had been there often, examining, measuring, and forming unsatisfactory theories regarding the race of beings who had occupied them. He knew as much about these savages as most people; and that was nothing. But he fell thinking, as he had often done, about them and their dwelling-places upon the treeless waste. What made them live upon the barren moor, exposed to storm and wind, when the fertile valleys were so near? Perhaps it was because they regarded the moor as a god and believed themselves to be his children. A primitive people would naturally consider that the god of the hills was more powerful than the god of the valleys. Yet how did they live? The moor gave them nothing but stones for their rude homes and peat for their hearths. It gave them no corn. It caught their cattle in its bogs. They did not leave the moor; they were born upon it; they were buried on it. They were horrible in their lives, these moorland savages, but magnificent in their funerals. They had tombstones of royal granite and the entire breadth of Dartmoor for burying-place. That was all the moor ever did for them. It starved them during their lifetime, but protected them when they were dead.

“Which is exactly what the world does to us now,” muttered Burrough cynically.

Hearing the clicking of horse-shoes he rose with the intention of returning to his cottage, because he was afraid to be seen by anyone. He had only made a few steps when the rider appeared, and he perceived it was a girl. He also perceived it was the only girl that the world possessed. It was Beatrice astride a grey horse, bare-headed and ungloved as usual, and laughing delightfully.

“Don’t run, poor wounded soldier,” she called. “I saw you a long way off, and I shouted, but you took no heed. Did you think I was a moorman rounding up cattle?”

“I wasn’t looking that way,” Burrough replied.

His voice and manner told her there was something wrong.

“I’ve always ridden man-fashion,” she went on lightly, as she reined in close beside him. “It’s so much more natural and comfortable. And over this rough country it’s safer. I’m not going to get off, because it’s rather a nuisance mounting in this divided habit, and I can talk to you just as well up here. Now I want to hear all the news. Has the doctor been? And has he been saying nice kind things and making you purr?”

Burrough could not answer her with the truth. He had been ready with the confession before she came; but to look at her then with hair ruffled and loosening, her face flushed with the breeze, her eyes sparkling, and the distracting mouth half-open, questioning and eager, was to be unmanned at once. He could not lose her. Impelled by love and the thought of his loneliness, and careless of the consequence, he said, “There will be a mark.”

“Little or big?” said she.

“He doesn’t know yet how it will heal,” Burrough floundered on.

“But the eye? How will that be? Will it be dotted?” she laughed.

“Not badly. I am sure there won’t be much of a mark--just a scar, a small scar, and even that may wear away as time goes on. You see the splinter struck above the eye, never really touching it at all, and glanced off without making a deep wound. I’m not so badly knocked about as you think. When the bandages come off you won’t see any very great difference. I am certain you won’t. Just a red line across my forehead, and that’s all.”

Burrough spoke quickly, almost incoherently, and stammered more than once. He was on his trial, pleading for his happiness at the Court of Love. He forgot how foolishly he was speaking, how that the time would come for him to remove the bandage, and reveal his battered features. Words would not avail him then. A glance would tell her he had been lying. Her affection for him, and even her sympathy, might well be alienated by his deceit.

His one idea was to keep her, to have her with him, to enjoy the right of holding her hand and kissing her fingers. If he could only keep her for another week he felt he would not have lied in vain. She would be his until the bandages were taken off, and then it would be time enough to think of going to the end of the world and dropping off into space.

“Because I laugh you musn’t think I don’t care,” Beatrice said. “It’s no use being tragic over things, and I’m sure you’re serious enough for two. I’m really dreadful sorry. I just wandered away that morning because I wanted to be alone on the moor. I was sure you would wake up and follow me. But you lay a-thinking, and a-dreaming, and a-playing at targets. As I was your guardian I shouldn’t have left you. It was partly my fault you were damaged, and I’m sorry, and to show you I’m sorry I promise I won’t mind that scar.”

“You mean it, Beatrice?” he whispered eagerly, clasping the little foot which was resting in the stirrup nearest him. “You are not laughing now?”

“I have promised,” said the girl seriously. “No, don’t--don’t kiss my boot. It’s horrid, and people may see. You are silly this evening. That splinter must have gone into your brain after all. What are you doing? Please don’t eat the lace off my petticoat. Well, if you must kiss something here’s my hand, only let me have it back again.”

Burrough had lost his senses just then and was behaving unwisely. The little god of Hope, who had departed with the surgeon, came back with a great fluttering of wings and settled once more upon the roof of the cottage.

There was a chance after all, if he could accustom Beatrice gradually to the change in him. She was prepared to tolerate a certain amount of disfigurement. She was ready to meet him half-way. She had admitted she was partly to blame for the catastrophe. He would not have admitted it, but was very glad she had done so. Leaning against the horse, with her foot in one hand, and her fingers in the other, he could only murmur again and again those words he had so often inwardly expressed--“You are sweet, Beatrice. You are sweet.”

“When I was a child, such as you are now, I used to be told it was bad manners to speak with my mouth full,” said the girl. “If you would take my hand out of your mouth…”

“That night we were in the ruin…” he began; but she resisted feebly.

“My hand is not a relic, neither is my foot. They are not necessary as incentives to devotion.”

“I have a reliquary in my bedroom,” he said with unrestrained boyish ardour. “It contains hairpins, buttons, withered flowers, cigarette-ends.”

“And folly and madness,” she finished. “Do you want my precious toes too for your reliquary? You shall not have them.”

“But they are mine, all the perfect ten of them.”

“Nine,” she murmured with a gasp of mirth. “I’ve had an accident with one--don’t pinch! Not on that foot.”

“That’s a disfigurement,” he said exultingly. “It is, Beatrice.”

“No, it’s only the nail, and that’s growing again. It will soon be perfect, and nicer than ever--brand new. There is not a mark upon me, not even a freckle. I’m a lamb without blemish. There! let me ride on.”

“Not yet,” he prayed. “What was I going to say? I forget when I look at you.”

“With its one poor eye,” said she.

“But the other is there,” he cried painfully. “It’s only hidden. Wait until it heals, and you will say I am no worse. Beatrice! don’t go. I hate to see you go. You might not come back.”

“And then there would be the dull thud of a falling body in the gorge and a notice, ‘Cottage to let.’ Certainly I must go, and as certainly I will return. I swear it by all the little saints of Cornwall, St. Piran, St. Issey, and St. Ive, though I don’t suppose they were much better than you and I. I will come to-morrow, sun, mist or mud. It’s all the same to me. It’s only a question of boots or shoes.”

“I know what I was going to say. That night in the ruin, when you were telling me about Tregeagle.”

“And you were wondering what my ear was made of.”

“I found a key--the key of Paradise.”

“How nice for you. May I come too?”

“To-day I felt it slip out of my hand. I lost it,” he went on, in the same excited voice. “I thought it was gone for ever. And then you came along, and picked it up, and gave it back to me.”

“Take care of it, my child,” said she. “Hang it on your watch-chain.”

“It is safe in my heart,” he whispered.

“You’re hopeless quite.”

“I can’t lose it now.”

“There is going to be a moon to-night, a great round white moon,” said Beatrice. “I charge you not to go walking in its light. Else you may stumble over the granite, and fall on your face, and instead of being one-eye you will be no-eye; and then it will be no use my coming to-morrow as you wouldn’t see me. And now, having spoken out of our wisdom and loving-kindness we will depart.”

“To-morrow we will go down to Blissland,” he said, with the warmth and eagerness which had not been allowed time to die down. “We will sit in the granite chair which you called the Menacuddle. Why did you call it Menacuddle?”

“On the same principle that my parents followed when they decided to call me Beatrice. They thought it would suit me. You couldn’t imagine me by any other name?”

“Not by any under heaven except Beatrice,” he replied fervently.

“Menacuddle is really the name of a well near St. Austell, and it means the hawk’s stone. It was your wicked mind which added the sentiment.”

“And yours which named it,” he said triumphantly.

“Don’t you see I’m going? My horse is moving. Good-night.”

“To-morrow we go to Blissland. I’m quite strong. I can easily walk there. And then we can have a long rest.”

“Let go! Good-night again. There! Now let me have my poor foot. Not Blissland to-morrow. It’s too soon. Not until the bandages come off.”

He let her go then, and she trotted off gaily waving a farewell. Burrough turned towards his cottage with the sound which was to become haunting in his ears, the sound of horse-shoes clicking upon granite. And as he entered the door the little god of Hope, who had been perched upon the roof, shook himself, and spread his wings, and flew away in the direction of the clicking horse-shoes.