Chapter XXIII: How Burrough Longed to Enter Lyonesse

More than a month passed before Burrough heard anything of Beatrice. During that time he worked as hard as he could. His days were singularly monotonous. The morning he occupied at his writing-table, trying to project himself into the stone age. He walked in the afternoon upon the moor, or to little Blissland, or through the copse where the flowers were beginning to fail. Beside the river the pink seed-pods of the asphodels announced autumn, and the red sundews were sinking in the bogs. The early evening he spent with prehistoric men in their hut circles; and then he sat by a peat fire, pipe in mouth, and thinking hard.

Peter had never come back. He had been seen returning, weak and thin, from a hunting expedition by Willum; and the scholar, recognising Burrough’s only companion, had put up his gun with a malicious twinkle in his foxy eyes and destroyed poor Peter. Burrough saw nobody except the moorman’s wife, who came in twice a week to clean up; and he was thinking seriously of disposing of her upon economic grounds. He had interviewed the doctor with a view to ascertaining whether his state of health would justify a return to London life, and the answer had been discouraging. For another two years at least it would be advisable for him to remain and harden upon the moor.

The note left by Beatrice with Mrs. Cobbledick had not been forwarded. Willum took care of that, and Burrough felt that he would only be making himself ridiculous by going to demand it with threats. The retort that it had been lost was unanswerable. He knew also it would be useless to apply to Ann for Beatrice’s address. Burrough had made a mistake in refusing to subscribe towards the tombstone, although he knew that the money collected by Willum had not been devoted to settling Eastaway’s claim, but had been expended by the rascally scholar in a trip to Plymouth. The only other person likely to be of use was Old Y. Burrough called upon the poor old man, to find him half-insane with dread at the thought of the approaching winter. The Vicar knew that Beatrice lived in Cornwall, near the Land’s End, he thought, but that was all the information he could give.

“Fine girl,” he mumbled. “Nice girl. Wish I was a young man. Find out where she lives. Go down there. I’ll come too.”

Then he collapsed into his chair and sobbed pitifully. He had not walked more than a hundred yards from his gate that summer, and he could not remember how long it was since he had been a railway journey.

“Don’t ye find it dull out there?” said Mrs. Eastaway, who was standing at her door as the young man passed on his way back to the gorge.

“Yes, very dull,” he replied; adding quickly with a touch of pride, “but it’s good for my health.”

“You should get another gentleman to come and live with you,” the woman went on. “My husband often says when he comes down with the granite it must be cruel lonely for you up there on Dartmoor among the winds and mists.”

“No one would stop with me,” said Burrough with a smile. “It’s too dull. People live in towns now, or within reach of them. They must have their pleasures every day.”

Mrs. Eastaway could not follow him there, as she had lived all her life upon the heights of the moor. The doctrine of perpetual pleasure was therefore beyond her understanding. Her next remark was one that any woman would have made.

“You ought to get married, sir. Is it true you are engaged to young Miss Pentreath? They say so in the village.”

Burrough shook his head, and raised a hand suggestively to his face while making a step forward, because that question made him anxious to get away into the mist which he could see coming up the cleave.

“Why, that’s nothing,” cried Mrs. Eastaway after him. “No young lady, as is a young lady, would notice that. Besides, sir, it’s getting better every time I see you. You’ll be looking the same as ever before long. Many a young man would change faces with you, I tell ye, sir.”

Burrough walked away rapidly. Reaching his cottage he hurried into his bedroom, and gazed intently into the glass. Certainly he was improving. The pure air and sunshine had done wonders for him: the forehead had practically healed, and the scar, if somewhat conspicuous, was at least not repulsive. But the eye-socket was. If the eye had only been spared everything might have been well with him.

As the Artillery Camp had not yet been disbanded, Burrough tramped across the moor upon the following day, and asked to see the surgeon. He was referred to the mess-house, and going there found the man he was seeking, an altogether different type from the doctor who had attended him after the accident. He was fussy, verbose, and optimistic. He knew all about Burrough’s case, of course, but gave him no chance to speak when he had once obtained a hint as to the object of his visit. A false eye? Certainly, it was the simplest thing in the world. And it was very effective, almost as good as the real thing. He might say quite as good. In some cases really an improvement upon Nature. Surgical art could repair ravages caused by time or accident in a marvellous manner. One got quite a poor opinion of Nature after a long course of operations. Science and art in combination were able to accomplish marvels, positive marvels. Such a little matter as teeth now--where was Nature? Nowhere in comparison with art. He strongly advised everyone to have their teeth out, the wretched teeth with which Nature had provided them, and an excellent set substituted by art. But in this case it was an eye--a new eye for an old. It would match the other? Yes, that was quite practicable, quite easy. He couldn’t wink at the girls, otherwise the false eye would look positively better than the other. Couldn’t see with it, of course. That was a pity, but art hadn’t quite attained to that pitch of excellence. He would see to it--delighted. The War Office would pay the expense, no doubt. Wouldn’t he sit down and have a brandy and soda, and _talk_ about it? As a result of the subsequent monologue, for it could hardly have been called a conversation, Burrough received definite assurance that his personal appearance could be in some measure restored. The chatty surgeon was interested in the case, and said so at great length. Burrough went away in better spirits than he had enjoyed for weeks.

Then, at last, a note came from Beatrice. It was not a letter, merely a dozen lines on a small sheet of notepaper, inquiring after his health, hoping that his work was progressing, commenting upon the weather, but telling him nothing about herself. Everything connected with the note was a disappointment. It was badly written; the girl’s handwriting was neither tidy nor pretty; it was entirely unsympathetic, although she subscribed herself “your old pal, Bill.” It was just the sort of communication that might have been sent by one schoolboy to another.

No address was given. That was the unkindest cut. Perhaps she had forgotten. More probably she desired to conceal it. Possibly she had given it in the note left with the Cobbledicks, and was a little cold with “Jack” because he had not acknowledged that note. During their walks she had mentioned half the villages in Western Cornwall, but Burrough had never discovered which was the actual village where she lived.

The envelope was postmarked Sennen, which, as Burrough knew, was the usual abbreviation for St. Sennen Church-Town, the last village in England. He felt sure Beatrice did not live there. She was probably upon a visit with her wayward aunt. The thought at once occurred that he might go down there. He put it away from him, but it recurred with added force; and when that evening he was sitting alone in the lamplight, the wind upon the moor and the water in the gorge seemed to him to be singing in unison, and calling, “Go down!” He rose and shut the window, then drew the curtains close; but the wind and the water went on calling, “Go down!”

“I have not been away for more than a year,” he reflected. “A short trip would do me a lot of good. A sentimental journey into Cornwall would freshen me up and might furnish me with new ideas. And it may be my only chance of seeing Beatrice. If she gave me her address in the note she left behind, she must be thinking I have made up my mind not to correspond. She has written to me twice and I have not been able to answer. It is hardly likely she will write again.” It was then about nine o’clock. Burrough looked out and discovered a perfect night, although the wind was rushing down the cleave with its customary sad music. It was fairly light upon the moor; the stars were very bright; and he could just see the white water foaming in the gorge. It was too good a night to sleep through, he thought.

Then the vulgar nightjar lifted up his voice, and said in his coarse way that, if he wanted to be in St. Sennen Church-Town, he wouldn’t tuck his head under his wing, but he would just flap there right away, blow him tight if he wouldn’t. Burrough appreciated the statement. Why go to bed and dream unpleasantly? Why not go upon the open moor and flap his way towards the Land’s End? The westbound mail stopped at Okehampton before midnight. He could tumble a few things into a bag and walk across the moor, cross the river at Culliver’s Steps, strike up into the military road, which would be showing clearly in the starlight, pass over the Blackabrook by the military bridge, skirt the artillery camp, and so down to the station just in time to catch the mail.

Half-an-hour later the cottage was locked up and deserted. The wind and the water roared down the gorge, and the nightjar in the cleave continued his coarse observations upon things in general, much to the disturbance of decent birds trying to get some sleep. There was plenty of company for the nightjar: owls drifted about the tors; the gorge was filled with flying beetles: and the cleave was white with ghost-moths.

Burrough caught the mail and passed rapidly from the north of Dartmoor, through its Stannary Town on the Tavy, and down to its western boundary of Plymouth. The journey into Cornwall could not commence until some hours later; so he tramped through the silent streets, and coming out upon the starlit Hoe settled himself upon a seat which was not already occupied by waifs and strays. He felt singularly self-satisfied now that he had reached the west country London, where he could fancy himself a citizen of the world again. It was delightful to be away for a time from the moorland heights; to find himself surrounded by apparently endless streets of houses and yet to breathe sea air; to see the lights and hear the subdued noises, and at the same time to discern dimly the outline of rocks and the hulls of battleships. It was a pleasant change from the eternal gorse, heather, and bracken of his desolate home.

Altogether that was a happy and eventful night. Shortly before five o’clock the express drew out of North Road station, and crossing the Hamoaze at Saltash, conveyed the sentimental traveller for the first time in his life into Cornwall, and so to Liskeard in chilly lamplight and damp morning mist.

The sun was rising as the train drew into Truro, and the City of the Three Streets was bathed in a rosy light, which softened the granite buildings exactly as the mist had softened the granite tors when Burrough had set out to Brynamoor to find Beatrice that last time.

At Truro the garden-of-England scenery came to an end. Up to that point the country was richly wooded, and there was luxuriance in the ferns and hedgerows. There were orchards crowded with apple-trees. There should have been vineyards as in the old days. The green valleys of Lostwithiel, the smiling hills of St. Austell, were unlike anything else in the west country. England was left at Truro. Even the people were not English. The fishermen had the faces and the courtly manners of King Arthur’s knights, and the heavy yokel of English districts did not exist.

When the traveller saw the sun shining on the treeless district of the mines at Chacewater, he realised that it had been dark during his journey through the beautiful country. He had missed it all. And now it was light, so that he could see once more the rough heather and granite, the great bare stretches of country with its unworked tin-mines and patches of stunted pine. It looked very bare and desolate. The occasional cottages were squalid, and the stained granite churches seemed to be weary of withstanding the heavy storms which battered them so often. The scene grew wilder as the train swept on; trees and hedges were left behind; there were no more cornfields, nor cottages with bright flower gardens; the end was approaching, the Land’s End; and soon there would be nothing, except the granite and stunted gorse, and the foaming waste of sea. It was like a beautiful woman growing old; South Devon her youth; Eastern Cornwall her early married life; then at Truro middle age; and so on into the desolation and decay of old age. Burrough wondered whether he too had left behind the trees and flowers; whether he too had passed through the flowering woods and the luxuriant lanes; whether he might be coming, in more senses than one, to the untrodden wastes; to end at length among the cruel rocks and the stormy sea.

It was a waste which was not all a waste. Upon the magnesian soil grew the flesh-coloured Cornish heather, which no art short of witchcraft could induce to grow east of Truro. In the villages down below, accustomed to the roar of the sea, were semi-tropical plants; and the hydrangeas were bushes and the fuschias were trees. The wide sweeps of treeless land were still beautiful, and so was the air. It was the air after all that was the best. It was fresh and pure, and so soft that to breathe it into tender lungs made all the wide difference between pleasure and pain.

Respectable people had not breakfasted when Burrough reached Penzance. He found it difficult to believe that when the hands of the clock had last stood at half-past seven he had been in his cottage by the gorge, and had no idea of setting out upon a pilgrimage. But the shrine was still some miles away. He had no money to waste upon conveyances, so he struck into the good main road, and walked the eight miles to St. Sennen Church-Town with hardly a stop by the wayside.

It was not until reaching the village that he felt he had done foolishly. Nervous at the best of times, he felt doubly so when he walked in the crooked street, glancing half-defiantly at the villagers, and feeling extremely helpless and unwilling to accost any of them. There were a few visitors about the place. He saw an artist with a huge white umbrella; a mild-looking clergyman attempting to add the leaven of respectability to a rather noisy party; an elderly over-dresssd lady with a young and obviously persecuted companion; two youths with cheap cigars and ready-made clothes; and a regiment of very well-drilled children, officered by a nurse with the figure of a Falstaff and the face of a dragoon, including even the moustache. These and other curious objects of the Land’s End presented themselves to Burrough’s vision; but he saw nobody resembling Beatrice and her aunt.

The post-office being the information bureau of all villages, the traveller went thither. The woman in charge looked with suspicion at the nervous young man, who was wearing a rather unsightly patch over his right eye, but she answered his questions readily enough. “Yes, she knew Miss Beatrice Pentreath. Everyone in Western Cornwall knew her. No, she was not at Sennen, and had not been there all the year.”

“But I had a letter from her yesterday with the Sennen postmark,” said Burrough.

“I know you did,” said the woman. “Poltesco posted it. He were Miss Pentreath’s nurse, and he’m a fisherman and lives here,” she explained.

Seeing the wonder on his face, she went on, “Miss Pentreath warn’t like other young ladies, and her warn’t brought up like ’em. Her wouldn’t have a woman nurse, and as her were always out of doors they got Poltesco to nurse she. Her’s very fond of Poltesco, and he’d do anything for she.”

“Could I see him?” Burrough asked.

“He went out wi’ the fishing boats last night,” the woman answered.

“Well, then, if you don’t mind,” said Burrough awkwardly, “perhaps you would tell me where Miss Pentreath lives.”

This the woman refused to do in simple apologetic language, and Burrough could only admit that she was in the right. Evidently Beatrice did not want him to know where she lived. She was afraid he would come down and worry her, and she too was in the right, for that was exactly what he was trying to do then.

Suddenly a thought occurred to him. He was certain that the woman would tell Poltesco of his visit so soon as the fisherman returned, and would, moreover, describe his appearance, and record every word that he had said. He might communicate with Beatrice after all, and might, moreover, have the very message conveyed that he had come to deliver in person.

“You are quite right,” he said to the woman, making a step aside and pretending to adjust the patch. “Poltesco might not like it if you gave me Miss Pentreath’s address. You see I have had an accident. I have had the misfortune to lose an eye.”

“Dear life! There’s a cruel pity!” exclaimed the woman.

“It is nothing like so serious as was feared at first,” Burrough went on, still arranging the patch as an excuse for his remarks. “The wound has healed almost entirely, and I am about to have a false eye fitted. When that has been done, my appearance will be very much as it was before the accident. At least, so I am assured by the surgeon who is to perform the operation.”

Upon leaving the post-office Burrough felt his journey had not been made in vain. “Those gossiping tongues will convey the message for me,” he said. “And as it is only because of my appearance that Beatrice has cut me off from her, there is still a chance she may consent to see me again. Now for the Land’s End, some lunch, and a soliloquy upon the rocks. Then for Penzance and a train home again.”

At the little hostelry above the sea, where the land narrows into a mass of rocks and sea-foam, Burrough obtained food and drink. Afterwards he roamed to the end of Penwith and saw its wonders, from the natural tunnel and the amazing sea-scape, to the Armed Knight and Dr. Johnson’s Head enveloped in a whimsical wig.

As he stood there alone Burrough felt that he ought to say many fine things. None, however, occurred to him. He felt much confused and somewhat drowsy. Nothing suggests the end of the world, and the end of all things, quite so distinctly as the fag end of Cornwall when the outline of Scilly is not apparent. All the headland is of granite, but shattered and splintered, and bristling like a crocodile’s jaws. There are plenty of black and grey lichens, and sometimes little sprigs of heather pushing hopefully from sheltered nooks; and there is always the roar of the sea, which never stops. It is not deep; would that it were for the sake of ships. A country with palaces and fair gardens, and one hundred and forty churches, lies just beneath the surface. It is the lost land of Lyonesse, submerged with all its cities and towers and its dreams of fair women; and yonder, in the vague cloud mists which never shift, is the island valley of Avillion where Arthur lies with his three queens, being healed of his grievous wound.

The sea and the wind were calm that day, but there was nevertheless a roaring as of imprisoned lions beneath the cliff. Each blackened rock rising out of the water had a ring of white foam at its base; and the waves went leaping up, embracing the crags, streaming back unwillingly in streaks as of molten silver; or like the white arms of a loving wife withdrawn reluctantly from her husband’s neck. The sea-mews soared screaming, and cormorants skimmed over the waves. It was peaceful there, but with all its quietness haunted by ghosts and tales of shipwreck. Here vessels had been cast away by those wasteful waters before the Romans came tin hunting; and bodies in thousands had been hurled landwards with the contemptuous, “Earth, take thine earth,” of the wind-tossed waves; from a stern bearded Phœnician to a beautiful pale girl in her frilled nightdress with a string of pearls about her neck.

It was the romantic thought of the lost land--for the actual end was certainly in Scilly once--which was the charm of the place to Burrough, who, with all his faults, and perhaps because of them, had a powerful imagination. He rested upon a sun-warmed slab of granite and looked out upon Lethowsow, the sea which flows across Lyonesse. As the sound of the roaring came up from below he imagined the land rising in all its glory out of the sea. There were castles embattled with huge archways and dark towers glistening in the sun. Warders paced the turrets, and the old Seneschal stood with keys beside the gate. Beyond was a garden of green arbours of red roses and white lilies; and there a noble dame was teaching her damsels to make silken work and cloth of gold; and there were long-haired knights playing bowls in the cool alleys. There were meats and wines prepared for them in a rich pavilion; and some were feasting, and some lying upon the grass amid the flowers, listening to the birds; and some whispering to mistresses, bright as blossoms on the whitethorn, a tale that was old even in that young world.

Then an old man came forth, and all forsook their tasks or pleasures to flock about him. He was clad in a deep yellow robe, his white beard swept his chest, a chaplet was upon his head, and his harp gleamed before him. He was the minstrel king, the schoolmaster and historian of the time, and he sang the history of his country and of the deeds of its heroes.

Outside the royal palace a herdsman had gathered a crowd to tell them of some notable adventure which had befallen him in the enchanted forest; and while he was speaking a lovely lady rode past, her robe gathered close that she might display her wondrous figure; a jewel in her hair worth a Saxon Kingdom; her white palfrey ambling proudly; her falcon upon her wrist, and two white greyhounds running at her side. She paused to listen to the herdsman’s story, not doubting it, because the world was enchanted then, and she had spoken with Lancelot, the maiden knight who had seen the Holy Grail covered with red samite, in that wonderful night when he had arrived “afore a castle on the backe side, which was rich and faire, and there was a posterne that opened toward the sea, and was open without any keeping, save two lions kept the entrie, and the moone shined cleare.”

A glorious land was that old Lyonesse of romance. Every story was sure to end happily there. It was a land where women were always beautiful, and good as beautiful, and the knights, however tried and persecuted, were saints, half poets and half priests. Nothing is left of that kingdom now, except love. The poetry and chivalry of that lost land have gone. Even the dreams of it, say hard-headed men, are dangerous. They are but flashes of lightning out of a cloud, beautiful always, rarely harmful. Every time a true-hearted man kisses a virtuous maid in pure love they enter together, though it may be only for a moment, the sweet lost land of Lyonesse.

Burrough stirred from his rocky seat. He thought he had heard a distant murmur of voices. Time was pressing and he had far to go that day. It was a ridiculous descent from the land of romance to the railway timetable; but it was necessary that he should catch the early evening train from Penzance. He moved a step forward, looked over the edge into the dip of the cliff, and saw, not stunted gorse, nor wind-blown heather, nor even ragged granite--but a boy and girl clasped together in the first frenzy of love.

And they had found Lyonesse. They did not discover Burrough. They clung together, breast to breast and mouth to mouth; and the only sound they made was a passionate sigh as they inhaled each other’s breath. Every romance was dry as dust compared to that. Their young faces were seaward. Their features were bathed in the warm red sunshine--to them it was sunrise, such as had never been before, such as would never come again.