Chapter XXI: How They Went Into the Copse

When Burrough came into his lonely cottage the first thing that struck him was the silence. Usually the wind was sighing and moaning; the water was roaring down the gorge beneath his windows. Inside two clocks were ticking and chattering like a pair of magpies; and Peter Grimalkin, Crown Prince of Cats, was purring upon the lounge. But there was not a sound that evening. There was not even a breeze upon the moor, not enough to make a moan. There was scarcely any water coming down the gorge, certainly far too little to raise a roar. The clocks had stopped, which was only natural, as Burrough had forgotten to wind them. Peter, generally over-punctual to meals, was absent, having left the impression of his body upon a cushion as a sort of hint he would return anon. The silence and loneliness were together more than Burrough could endure. He went out, leaned against his favourite rock, and presently began to offer serious advice to that portion of his personality which was inclined to break out into revolt. “Now, look here, old chap,” he said, addressing the top of his boot. “You’ve been making a fool of yourself lately, and you’ve been knocked out. No more weakness. Sit up straight and take your punishment like a little man. Beatrice is not for you. She’s been very kind and nice--I won’t say she hasn’t flirted a bit, but that’s her way--and she’s given you more happiness than you deserved; and now--well, now she’s going away, and you’ve got to stop here and make a living. I warned you right along you had no chance. There’s all the difference in the world between a gentleman on granite and a gentleman on clover. You’re on the granite, and always will be, and she’s on the clover. If you hadn’t been broken up by that shell it would have been just the same. You were a miserable creature to try and deceive her, and of course she’s angry, and would naturally hate you, even if you weren’t more than twice as ugly as wall-eyed Kellaway. You’ll get over this all right, and settle down the same as ever. It’s only a weak fool who permits his life to be spoilt by a love affair. You must remember that love, matrimony, companionship, are merely incidents of life. What a man does, his work, his actions, his influence--those make up his life.”

This was very sound philosophy, and suited Burrough’s case admirably. He went on to assure himself that if Beatrice were to become his they would soon grow tired of one another; they might even quarrel, and separate in mutual disgust. Of course he wanted her, but that was not so much because he loved her, as because she was beyond him. He was so convinced that Beatrice had not been intended for him in any case, that he searched for Peter to impart the information to that indifferent creature. Peter, however, was in none of his usual haunts.

Burrough decided he might feel lonely presently. There was always his work, which he had neglected for so long. He would devote himself in earnest to that, now that he had burst all the bubbles of pleasure within reach. He had finished the frivolous chapter of his life. The next chapter was to be solid work. There is nothing a man cannot accomplish by hard work. To-morrow--_Avanti!_ Stones and sermons. The granite of Dartmoor should yield gold. The primitive structures of the moor should be dealt with as they had never been before. He would run up the gamut of stone-age architecture from menhir and dolmen to the beehive hut. And the answer of a gratified public would be the answer of the commoner, who was accused of destroying a cromlech to make the wall of his new-take. “What’s the good of ’en? The Almighty put they stoanes there for use. So I cracked ’en up and used ’en.” That commoner was a member of the public. He had no reverence for cromlech or hut circle. He had the practical side of life to attend to, so he “cracked ’en up and used ’en.” The public in general have a sentimental side, but stone-memorials do not enter into it. They would say of Burrough’s book, more elegantly, perhaps, but none the less shrewdly, “What’s the good of ’en?”

Burrough felt proud of himself. He was displaying courage, self-restraint, and determination. He had made up his mind to forget Beatrice, and had no doubt he would succeed. Still he felt lonely; so he walked about the furze-bushes and stone-clatters, calling for Peter; and receiving no answer he went indoors, lighted his stove, wound up his clocks, and reflected that “making happy” was the literal meaning of the name Beatrice.

Evening came at last, warm and cloudy. A silvery light above the tors hinted at the presence of the moon behind the canopy. The heather ceased to blush, and the bloom of the gorse became misty. A nightjar down the gorge appeared to imagine itself a blacksmith, and made horrible noises accordingly. The last cartload of peat had jolted in from bogland. The stone-yard was silent, and the workers were gathered together in Eastaway’s bar-room to sing ballads with the moormen. Burrough heard them singing as he made his way towards Brynamoor.

There was pure white mountain mist hanging along the cleave. The lonely watcher could see the undulating lines of the high moor on one side, and on the other portions of the tors like mediæval castles lying in ruins. It was hard to believe that misty fabric was composed of immense granite blocks piled one above the other. Those blocks were faint pencillings upon the sky. The upper part of the moor was a cloud, a creation of moist air--but a breeze passed, the mist was shaken out like the folds of a robe, then settled into a filmy sheet, blending substance with shadow, melting the granite masses into ghost-clouds. As Burrough walked on, another change occurred. The moon appeared, and in a moment nothing that was indefinite remained. The village sycamores cast lace-like shadows. The lines became sharp, the rugged outlines of ruined tors were clear-cut. There was no sense of mystery. The mist had been poetical, the silvery glow sentimental; but there was something cold and pitiless about the moonlight.

Two figures wandered upon Brynamoor. Beatrice had brought her aunt, for which kindly act the little lady was grateful. She enjoyed being with her niece. It made her feel young; also it made her feel wicked. “I shall have to bail you out of the police-court some day,” Beatrice had said to her relative, during an evening’s diversion in London, when the little lady, conscious that no one knew her, had announced her intention “to persevere in dissipation for the rest of the night.”

Beatrice was pale, frightened, unhappy, when she saw Burrough approaching. She had already forgiven his deceit, which was in a manner complimentary to her. She admired his courage when she perceived that he had at last removed his bandage. But one glance at his terribly disfigured features was sufficient. It was worse even than she had feared. He made a terrifying spectacle in the moonlight. That light which idealised her own bizarre face added deformity to his. She felt the same kind of shrinking dread which the one-legged fisherman had inspired her with as a child.

“That Mr. Burrough! How shocking!” Miss Pentreath whispered.

Burrough came up and joined them. He saw Beatrice shrink slightly, and avert her eyes when she greeted him, so he turned the brim of his hat to conceal his damages, and placed himself at her right hand; while Miss Pentreath simpered something about the moonlight, and said she wished very much she could recall some poetry she had learnt in her--at least a year or so ago.

“Shall we go into the copse?” Beatrice suggested, nodding in the direction of a gate set within the stone hedge.

“Certainly not. There are snakes, and things that creep, jump, and bite,” cried Miss Pentreath. “Besides, it’s muddy, and I have on my thin shoes and lace stockings.”

“I want to go and pick flowers. I like picking them by moonlight,” the girl went on. “They are all alike by this light; you can only distinguish them by smell. Don’t you like the smell of wild flowers?” she asked Burrough, but without looking up at him.

“They smell of the open air,” she cried when he had answered in the affirmative. “I hate the smell of cultivated flowers; they smell of disinfectants and hospitals.”

“This girl runs wild when she finds the first primrose,” said Miss Pentreath.

“It’s the first sign of spring,” Beatrice explained. “Every winter I have a horrible dread lest by some terrible accident there should be no spring or summer. When I see the first primrose I know we’re all right; so I pounce upon it and eat it.”

“Why do you eat it?” asked Burrough in his grave, low voice.

“Primitive instinct, I suppose. It’s my way of expressing supreme satisfaction. If you will wait here five minutes,” Beatrice went on, pinching her aunt’s arm slily, “Mr. Burrough and I will go into the copse, as I must and will have a handful of the white orchids, which, if gathered by moonlight, are a sure protection against evil-eye, convulsions, change of weather, and a host of other things--a sort of pixy patent-medicine, in fact. Sit you here, auntie, and think of your sins, while I go to secure the means of rendering myself proof against the spells and enchantments of all the black witches between Tamar and Sennen Cove.”

“But I don’t like stopping here by myself,” protested the little lady.

“Bogey won’t run away with you,” laughed Beatrice. “I shan’t be gone more than five minutes--which may mean a quarter of an hour. If you see or hear anything frightful, light the furze. When I see the glow I will run.”

“Suppose I’m bitten by a viper?”

“Bite him back, dear,” cried Beatrice, and ran to join Burrough, who was pacing moodily towards the hedge with its mantle of ferns and stonecrop.

He swung open the gate. Beatrice slipped through, and, lifting her short skirts, hurried across the rough ground as though she desired to escape from him. When he turned from the gate she was a dozen yards in front. He hurried after her, and, with a laugh, she began to run. She jumped a water-course and sped on, and was actually gaining upon him, when she stopped short, made some strange movements, and then began to hop with one foot off the ground.

“I’m beaten,” she called. “What chance have we who run in skirts? I’ve been and kicked my foot through the flounce of my petticoat.”

There was a gnarled oak close by, so she hopped thrice, and, leaning against it, disengaged her foot. Some inches of flimsy white material fluttered about the grass, and she tried to tear it off, but failed; so, looking up with a laughing face, she begged for a knife.

As Burrough approached she put out her hands suddenly.

“I must say it at once--I’m sorry, so sorry,” she said, softly. “I know why you didn’t tell me now. You thought it might turn out better than it has done. I am so sorry. I can’t think of anything else to say. But we shouldn’t have blended, perhaps. Here, lend me your knife, please. It’s all right, isn’t it? I’m not Beatrice--I was only Beatrice for a little--the evening we went swaling and that night in the ruin. The rest of the time I was Bill. I wanted to be Bill always, only you wouldn’t let me. I am Bill now, and you are Jack. We were at school together, you know. Don’t you remember how we used to cheek the masters?”

Burrough’s single eye was fixed upon the torn flounce. He did not dare to look at her lest he should see her shiver again when she saw his disfigurement. He drew the brim of his hat still more down.

“What are you doing?” cried she. “No, you must not cut it off; you might forget I am just Bill--your old pal, Billy P. Please let me do it; you forget. It’s just a silly trick of mine, this masquerading in frills and flounces. I’m really--yes, a horrid, beery fisherman, and I chew tobacco, and I swear and beat my wife, and I’ve got a little fishing-smack at St. Sennen--the ‘Stormy Petrel,’ by Bill Pentreath--and they call me ‘cap’n’ down there. I wonder you know such people.”

“It’s all right, Bill; I don’t forget,” said Burrough bravely.

“Gi’e us yer knife then, Jack. I wants to trim these ’ere duds o’ mine,” said Beatrice delightedly.

“She doesn’t care,” he thought. “It is nothing to her.”

“Let me do it, Bill,” he pleaded.

“Ah, well,” said she, with a distinctly feminine sigh.

But when Burrough was upon his knees at those tiny feet, the fragrant petticoat in his hands, his knuckles against the warm, strong ankle, he lost, not all, but a part of his self-restraint; and this fact was communicated to him less through his senses than by means of Beatrice’s voice saying reproachfully, although more softly than she had intended--

“Jack, thee’rt a gurt fool!”

“It’s done--it’s off!” he cried, somewhat hoarsely, perhaps, but still strongly, holding the pretty scented trifle out.

“I’ll get the missis to sew it on,” laughed she; but there were tears in her eyes had he known it. She admired his courage and his strength the more; his courage in that he had not been yet weaker, his strength in conquering what weakness there was. Those kisses were warm upon her pretty ankle.

“Jack, we mustn’t stop,” she hurried on. “There’s auntie waiting, and she’s nervous by herself. I thought it would be wise to bring her, and then--well, you know. You’ve been a good boy, Jack, very good; and Bill’s proud of you. Now look--look down into the copse!”

Burrough turned slowly and stupidly. He saw hundreds of white spikes springing from the lush grass below. They were orchid blooms nodding sleepily in the enchanted moonlight.

“I must have some,” she said, and went down into the lush grass, which reached her knees, regardless of wet feet and damaged lace; for she was careless of her pretty clothes, and perhaps she wanted to cool that burning ankle in the swamp.

“Come and help,” she called. “We must hurry; there are clouds coming up over the moon, and if it’s dark on Brynamoor auntie will scream.”

Burrough went down and helped, keeping some distance from her. He was thankful when a gauzy veil was drawn across the moon, making Beatrice a ghostly figure and concealing his deformity from her. He could hardly see the white spikes of the orchids; they were confused with the cotton sedge.

In the meantime the girl was chattering:

“Shine, bright moon, or you’ll break the spell. There are drunkards here. They ought to have done flowering by now. They are very late drunkards.” She was referring to a few marsh-marigolds which displayed their yellow cups at the edge of the swamp. “It is a shame to call them drunkards, even if they are always drinking. They only drink water, but perhaps bog-water is rather rich and heady. And here! Are these ghastly little things forget-me-nots? Yes, they are.”

As she spoke a glow of red light came across the copse. Light clouds drifted overhead, there was a noisy crackling, and the air became full of sparks.

“Auntie has fired Brynamoor,” cried Beatrice. “There she sits upon her rock, singing as she watches the world burning. She thinks the five minutes are up.”

They came up from the copse. Burrough tried to hang back, because he felt there was much he would like to say, if he could find the words, and the courage to utter them; but Beatrice pressed on towards the gate, obviously anxious to bring the scene to a close.

“Peter has gone,” he exclaimed at last. “I am alone now.”

“Gone!” said Beatrice. “Hoisted Blue Peter? Weighed his little anchor? Walked his own chalks, without a last paw-shake, or a valedictory mew?”

“I have not seen him all day. He never came in this evening. He has always been punctual to his meals.”

“I knew how it would be,” said Beatrice. “A messenger came last night to tell him that the old king his father had passed away, and that he was king of all the cats. Of course he would have to go at once, or some pretender might have seized the crown. He won’t forget you. He’ll send you the Crown Prince to bring up. Some morning you’ll find a fine black kitten lost among the heather by your door. You can take him in and call him Moses.”

“Peter was my only companion,” he went on sadly.

“He will come back,” said Beatrice. “Of course he will. Cats are fearful profligates. They go away for sprees of a week, then sneak home like prodigal sons to be fed up and pampered.”

They were at the gate. The stone hedge concealed them from Miss Pentreath, who was strutting nervously beside the glowing furze. Burrough stopped with his hand upon the catch, and turned suddenly to face the girl with a fond whisper of her name.

“Your bad memory,” she laughed. “Not Beatrice, but Bill. Remember me as Bill. Write to me as Bill--and like me as Bill.”

After that he could do nothing. There was no doubt that was her final answer. The moon was out again, and he stood revealed; and Miss Pentreath had sighted her niece and was coming towards them with quite unreasonable haste.

When Burrough returned to his cottage beside the gorge Peter had not returned. He went almost immediately to bed, reminding himself again that love and matrimony, and even the disappearance of a favourite cat, were merely incidents of life. He consoled himself with the thought that he would see Beatrice for another two weeks, listen to her chatter, visit with her their little kingdom by the river, and feel the enchantment of her presence. During the fourteen days much might happen. She liked him, and therefore she might accustom herself to his disfigurement. She might cease to be Bill of the copse, and become again Beatrice of Blissland, Beatrice of the tiny footprint and the golden hairpin.

The next morning Willum came up the cleave with gun and dogs and the letter-bag. He was very late, and his temper was bad. He explained these facts by informing Burrough, whom he met among the rocks searching for Peter, that the two ladies had cut short their visit, and had upset his mother by ordering an early breakfast, and annoyed himself by sending him out still earlier to order the carriage so that they might catch the first west-bound train.