Chapter XXIV: How Burrough Received Visitors

To Burrough’s surprise and delight, another little note came in Beatrice’s quaint handwriting--each word was like a long-legged spider--the envelope postmarked Sennen, as before. Certainly the girl was not a complete letter-writer. Her fun, daintiness, and nonsense seemed to desert her directly she took a pen into her hand. It was a most precise note, telling him she had just spent a night lance-spearing in the sands, though she did not mention the name of the sands. Her aunt was not at all well, and was grumbling a great deal. She was having some photographs printed of herself in fisher-girl’s costume--long boots, oilskins, and jersey--and would send him one if he cared to have it. And she remained “his old pal, Bill.” It was a most unfeminine epistle, not even containing a postscript; but it convinced Burrough that he was remembered.

The omens for his success had been lately more favourable. The slight operation had been performed with considerable success, the false eye had been fitted, he had become accustomed to the new sensation which it caused and the new expression which it gave, and he was able to agree with the enthusiastic surgeon that the result was a triumph of surgical art. His appearance was altered very strikingly for the better now that the principal cause of disfigurement had been removed. He was no longer unpleasant to gaze upon. The false eye certainly changed his expression. It made him look alert and businesslike, and it also added a suggestion of cunning to his face which he did not like.

Acting on a friendly suggestion made to him privately at the camp, Burrough wrote to the War Office withdrawing his claim. He was assured that by so doing he would prevent much unpleasantness, on the one side of giving, and on the other of receiving, an unfavourable reply. It was pointed out that a great deal had been done for him, that he was in very much the same position then as before the accident, with health and powers of working practically unaffected, and that he was to blame for having exposed himself to danger, being a commoner perfectly well acquainted with the ranges used by the artillery and the times of firing, and not an ignorant visitor who had strayed upon that part of the moor by chance. So Burrough climbed down gracefully, and expressed himself well satisfied with the care and attention which had been bestowed upon him. The camp broke up, and the moor was abandoned to its winter solitude and dreariness. And the owner of the cottage by the gorge, conscious that he would have to rely upon his own efforts entirely, settled earnestly to work, his pipe his sole companion, now that poor Peter had passed away for ever.

At last he wrote to Beatrice, unable to bear the sense of separation any longer. Merely a few lines reminding her she had not sent him her address, begging her to do so, and promising he would not come down without her permission, and that he would be obedient in all things. He commenced the letter, “My dear Bill,” and concluded it, “Yours always, Jack”; and he enclosed it, carefully sealed, in an envelope addressed to the post-mistress of Sennen, and containing a polite request that she would give the enclosed to Poltesco, the fisherman, if she did not wish to add Beatrice’s address herself.

A few days later there came an answer in quite a different style--

“So you went to Sennen, and you made kind inquiries about me, and you moralised at the Land’s End, did you? I heard all about the poor old soldier who had lost his eye in the wars. But why did you? In the note I left for you with the Cobbledicks I charged you not to search diligently for me. I was afraid you might want to forget that my name is Bill, the fisherman of the hamlet of Blank, in the parish of Blank, in the kingdom of West Wales. You might have written every day and run to and fro. I judged you quite accurately. Well, now, as Bill, I should like to see you; but as Beatrice I ought not to. That is why I don’t give geographical particulars concerning my hut circle. Of course I shall see you again, and as two wild boys we’ll ramble in Blissland, and go swaling, and walk to Cranmere. We’ll do it all over again next summer. By that time we shall have become more settled in our minds. Apart altogether from the results of that horrid accident--though I do hear they have patched you up and made a first-rate job--I’m not the sort of fisherman to meet a girl on Monday, want her to say ‘Yes’ on Tuesday, and to wear a wedding-ring on Wednesday. You know what I mean. I’ll give you Poltesco’s address, and you may write to me through him once a month. Just ‘Dear Bill.’ You understand. No endearments and no diminutives. Do you want a successor to King Peter? If so, I’ll send you one in a basket. He’s a little prince, but not royal, and he laps milk like a cherub. He’s doing his little traedjawg--worse than gorse-prickles--on my knee as I write. I’m working hard on my native moor. I’m actually doing a little independent tin-streaming. You may write when you get this.

“Your old pal,
“Bill.

“P.S.--I’m certain I am right in keeping you in the dark about my address. After a little you will think me a perfect toad.”

It was a red-letter day for Burrough. Beatrice was herself again. That was very different from the two precise notes he had already received. She could put her fun and nonsense upon paper after all, and the mere fact that she had done so on this occasion convinced him that his cause was not hopeless. His message had reached her and had done its work. Evidently she did consider it possible that she might bear with his false eye and scar now that the really unpleasant details had been removed. She was right not to commit herself. She was right to withhold her address. He knew how weak he was, and how his loneliness affected him. Had she given him her address he would have gone to her during one of his irresistible outbursts of feeling--such as that which had taken him to Sennen--in spite of all the promises he might make. She knew that too, and had taken the wiser course of keeping him from her until, as she had said, they should become more settled in their minds.

The literary business that engrossed Burrough for that day, and much of the ensuing night, was a letter of ten thousand words. He had never written at such length or so readily before. When about to write professionally he had to take himself by the shoulders, as it were, force himself into his chair, and condemn himself to be seated for a fixed period. No such tyrannical methods were required that day. He did not revise the lengthy screed, but packed it up in a long envelope and sent it off to the faithful Poltesco.

Soon he received the formal announcement--

“Dear Sir,--Your manuscript has reached us safely. We will write you our opinion regarding it as soon as possible.

“We are, yours faithfully,
“Bill & Co.

“At the sign of the ‘Stormy Petrel,’ n’Importe Ou.”

No opinion came, and the days drifted on, making a week, a second, and a third, until Burrough grew restless and impatient. At length there came a break in the monotony.

It was the first day of winter--the weather of winter, if not yet the season. A thick haze was hanging upon the moor, blotting out tor and cleave, and there came continually a stinging shower of sleet, slanted by the wind into the faces of those who were unfortunate enough to be abroad. Mrs. Cobbledick’s meteorological statement, that it was “a full day with a tremenjus frisk,” was admirably descriptive of the prevailing conditions.

Burrough worked steadily through the morning. During the afternoon a knock came upon his door. He hurried to open it and discovered a shivering Frenchman, bearing a pole on which were slung long strings of onions. He was one of the Bretons who cross twice each year to Plymouth, and from that point wander through the west to hawk the produce of their fields. High Dartmoor was a savage place to that quaking man after his smiling Brittany.

Burrough invited him in, and gave him a stool beside the glowing peat. The onion-seller accepted gratefully, and his eyes shone when he heard himself addressed in his native tongue. As for Burrough, he was glad of any sort of companion just then. He would have welcomed an escaped convict. So he pressed the man to stay and talk for an hour or so in his lonely hut. He gave the Breton tobacco and tea. He bought the longest of his strings of onions. He talked of the wild moors and of smiling Brittany, and compared them unpatriotically. He made a great fire, as though he had determined to have the man broiled and garnished with his own onions. And the Breton cooked his toes, and thawed his cheeks, and worshipped the Englishman in a devout manner.

Burrough looked at the man’s thin face and sallow skin tanned by climate and sea air, his small restless eyes, thin lips, and slight wisp of black moustache. Here was a man who worked much harder than he and was not so well off. A newspaper column written off in a couple of hours was of more value than all those strings of onions. Was the man married? But yes, m’sieur. And children? Three, m’sieur. How did he manage? How in the name of the age of miracles did he manage? Ah, that was where Our Lady and the blessed saints came in. Burrough, neither more nor less sceptical than most scholars, smiled cynically.

Then the man rose. He had far to go. He had shelter to seek, and the “tremenjus frisk” was still beating outside. He was only an incident, and yet Burrough was sorry to lose him; and when he had departed after more worshipping the lonely man was half inclined to call him back. He wanted to find a solution of the social problem--how could a man maintain a home, wife, and three children by crossing the channel and selling a few strings of onions? And if it were possible what was the equivalent for the strings of onions which would enable the educated man of gentle birth to obtain such luxuries?

Burrough was unsettled. He had received a visitor. Such a thing had not happened since Beatrice’s departure. He had seen a fellow-creature; had spoken well-nigh forgotten French; had entertained a man at his fireside--a fact to be recorded and remembered.

The short day closed in, and Burrough longed intensely for the divine pleasures of matrimonial tea. He imagined the lamps lighted, himself on the hearthrug beside the glowing fire, “the curtains drawn and flickering gently,” Beatrice tea-making, while the “tremenjus frisk” was beating upon the windows and the water thundered down the gorge. And he thought again of the Breton out upon the wild moor with the strings of onions, and envied the man because he had solved the social problem and remained respectable.

Presently the showers of sleet ceased and there was a calm. The sky cleared a little, and a few stormy-looking stars peeped out between the wet clouds. Burrough had not been outside all day. He determined to go for a walk towards the village. He might see some more men and hear the human voice again. The visit of the onion-seller had been a dissipation, and he wanted more of it. He resolved to persevere in it for the rest of the evening.

It was dark and gloomy when he looked out, regular Dartmoor weather, and there were groups of ponies huddled for shelter under the side of the moor beside his cottage with their tails towards the wind. The baffling mist lent strange shapes to the ragged gorse, and the breezes were laden with vapour. The physical conditions of Dartmoor would not be endurable until the four gloomy months ahead had come and gone, and the sunshine of spring had converted the bleak and uncomfortable surroundings into a garden of ferns and flower.

Not a single specimen of the biped _homo vulgaris_ was sighted by Burrough as he tramped towards the village, nor was there a genial vision of anyone in petticoats--something in dark serge, with a suspicion of red flannel underneath, and a suggestion of Beatrice about the ankles would have done his heart good. Even some moorman’s wife--called wickedly by Beatrice moorhens--would have cheered his lonely spirits, although there was practically nothing feminine about them, apart from anatomy and clothing. Men and women were as extinct as dodos and great auks so far as the rough moorland track was concerned. Even the village at a slight distance resembled a sort of disinterred Pompeii without light, sound, or motion.

The illusion was disturbed when Burrough came into the centre of things. He heard a scream suggestive rather of insanity, but nevertheless a human sound, and on that account not unwelcome. He saw a light through the mist, a sort of jack o’ lanthorn jerking from side to side, moving very gradually beside the high wall surrounding the Vicarage garden. He associated the scream with the presence of that light. Within the dark tumbledown vicarage the housekeeper was indulging in those revelries observed by all devout worshippers of Bacchus. The lantern bearer without the wall was old Yeoland. He had been driven out by the woman and did not dare to return. He would walk up and down, mumbling and trembling, until the bottle-imp inside had ceased to trouble the evening air with her exclamations. The screams were intermittent, and every time one came the lantern perceptibly wobbled. In the sycamores by the church a pair of owls were hooting in B flat. On the whole it was somewhat weird.

Burrough had some genuine sympathy for old Yeoland. He distrusted common report which declared that the Vicar was a moral, as well as an intellectual, failure; that he was not so much under the thumb of his riotous housekeeper as was supposed; that he was in short bound to her by a tie which for his own peace of mind and his reputation he did not dare to break. This was the sort of talk dear to Mrs. Cobbledick, and much indulged in even by those who were opposed to her in the matter of butter-making. Solitude had played havoc with old Yeoland. That, and the keen mountain air, had created in him the desire for tippling, and he had not drawn the line until it was too late. He was absolutely alone in the world. He had bought the living as a young man. It brought him in a miserable pittance, and he could not give it up, although unable to perform the duties connected with it. To do so would have meant exchanging the damp half-ruined thatched cottage which constituted the vicarage for the comparative comfort of the workhouse. During the summer evenings he basked at his gate, ogling the girls as they passed. The winter evenings he spent in his arm-chair, half asleep, or sobbing like a frightened child, afraid of the solitude, except on those occasions when he had to wander through mist and mud with his lantern, listening to the owls in the sycamores and the screaming in the house.

Burrough went up and greeted the old man. With his big stable lantern in one hand, a thick stick in the other, he shuffled along very slowly, rather like a toad dragging itself over a gravel path. He was delighted to see Burrough, although as a rule he avoided him, because solitude and the partial loss of his five wits had made him shrink from every man.

“Don’t talk about the weather,” mumbled old Yeoland directly he recognised Burrough.

“I won’t,” said the young man, “I wasn’t going to.”

“Don’t talk of noises,” the Vicar went on. “The owls are screaming all round, all over Dartmoor.”

“In your house and garden,” added Burrough.

“Never mind. They’ll stop presently. Make a joke. Go on! Say something to make me laugh.”

“I’m afraid I can’t joke to order. Why are you out so late?”

“To get the air,” said old Yeoland. “I come out all weathers--when it pours with rain. I get soaked through, wet to the skin--does me good, makes me young again. Were you at the university? Are you a scholar?”

“I took classical honours,” said Burrough.

“Well done,” said the Vicar, shuffling back as though the announcement frightened him. “Have you got a paper for me? Can’t you give me a funny paper with pictures?”

“I might have one at home,” Burrough answered, “but my cottage is a long way off upon the moor.”

“I’m coming to see you some day. Get the paper. Go on! Winter’s coming. I want something to make me laugh.”

“All right. I’ll go and get it.”

With that Burrough turned and left him. Old Y.’s conversation was not the sort of dissipation he had come out to find; and he felt a sudden desire to return and work. He knew that the old man would forget all about him and the “funny paper” in less than ten minutes. He hurried back over the wild moor, whistling loudly, and trying to imagine he was in sympathy with the lonely life of wind and vapour that had fallen to his lot.

Beside his cottage he was troubled with an uncomfortable sensation. He seemed to feel the near presence of a human being. He thought he had seen a figure swaying through the mist, and he made a few steps up the moor to satisfy himself that the motion was caused by a big gorse-bush troubled by the wind. The ponies stamped and squealed beside the door. Burrough stampeded them, then as he turned the handle he hesitated. Suppose he should find someone inside, some abortion, a creature of the moors, or a murderous convict escaped from Princetown. Even while he hesitated the gorse-bush in the mist shook again like a swaying human figure, and somehow he could not turn his back upon it. He smiled at his folly. The meeting with old Y. had unhinged him. Of course there could be no one there. The people of the village would be going to bed. Pixies were extinct--besides that figure of his imagination was no little person, but a giant, a Corineus. And as for convicts the only ones to escape rifle-shot had been accounted for by the bogs. No convict could make that dreaded “crossing” in winter without a guide.

The next minute Burrough was inside, searching for matches by the glow of peat upon the hearthstone. The lamp lighted, and its beams streaming across the moor from the uncurtained window--that window was called the lighthouse by the villagers--he felt easier in his mind, and wondered what had made him such a fool. Unable to work or read, or indeed to do anything but dream, he flung himself upon the lounge, watching the smoke drifting, listening to the ponies stamping outside. Only a wall of granite blocks separated him from the sheltering animals and the swaying gorse-bushes. When a shaggy pony bumped or scratched itself upon the rough wall he became aware of it; and he thought he could hear the prickles of the gorse scraping against the stones.

Then the onion-seller became an enemy. It was the visit of that Breton which had upset Burrough in the first instance, and his going away had left him hopelessly unsettled. Through his means Burrough was transported into smiling scenery. He left Dartmoor winds and vapours, to roam in warm valleys, amid white flowers, between blue hills covered with grape-vines. A face began to reveal itself and a figure clad in oilskins, a fisher-girl going down to the boats with a stable lantern in her hand and strings of onions upon her shoulder. It seemed to Burrough he was gazing out from his window and the scene was in Brittany, although surrounded by Cornish cliffs. And near him upon a boulder the fisher-girl was sitting, and he looked, and it was Beatrice with Breton onions, Cornish oil-skins, and old Y.’s stable lantern. Then Dartmoor vapours rolled down, the sunshine disappeared, the wind howled, the water roared for a moment in the gorge--and then he fancied himself walking with Beatrice hand in hand, just as he had walked with her a few months before along the Apron String, and into their fanciful little kingdom of Blissland by the river of ferns.

This picturesque dream was interrupted by what would have been prosaic enough in most places, but there was romantic, even terrifying, and causing in Burrough a reflex of feeling that swallowed up imagination and left him, not so much in amazement, as a state of terror. He was aroused by a knock upon the door.

At last he went to receive the ghostly visitor. He dragged the door open desperately, prepared to see the outline of a Brittany onion-seller, or a Devonshire pixy, or a Cornish giant. It appeared to be the latter. A tall upright figure stood there, and a pleasant musical voice apologised for troubling the gentleman, but would he direct him towards the nearest station. The mists had caught him upon the moor and he had lost his way.

In wild places every human habitation is an inn. During his wanderings Burrough had frequently received the invitation, “Do ye come in and pitch.” In English more classical he repeated the customary formula, and the stranger at once bent his head and entered.

“Good heaven! Another Frenchman.” Such was Burrough’s mental exclamation. First a Breton onion-seller, and now a Norman fisherman. Were the western moors overrun by the French peasantry? Had they conquered and seized West Wales as Beatrice fondly called her dear land, and was this white-haired Barbarossa quartered upon him as a punishment for his sins? Certainly the stranger’s face was Norman; but as assuredly his speech was Cornish. Burrough remembered that the types are similar. But a second visitor--that was the amazing incident--a second visitor that day!

A finer specimen of a man he had never seen. Tall, upright, and somewhat thin; his face would have been attractive anywhere, and have arrested the attention of anyone given to ethnological inquiry--it was weather beaten, sharp-lined, and wonderfully free from wrinkles, although the man must have been more than sixty; that fact was proclaimed by the crisp white hair. It was a beautiful face, a Sir Galahad type of face, and its smile was gentle, maternal rather than masculine, and even sweet if such an epithet could be applied to the smile of any man. He was in fisherman’s costume; long boots well above the knees, corded breeches, thick ribbed jersey half concealed by a rough jacket, and around his neck was a snowy muffler, and upon his head was an oilskin hat shaped exactly like the barber’s basin sported by the knight of La Mancha as the helmet of Mambrino.

“This is different from your Cornish weather,” said Burrough, when he had persuaded the man to be seated.

“It’s cold there too,” said the fisherman. “And windy, sir, beside the sea.”

“I know you are from Cornwall. Your speech betrays you. So does your face. I am wondering what brings you upon Dartmoor,” Burrough went on, while he stirred the peat and put on some sticks to make a blaze.

“Yes, sir, us Cornish folk don’t travel much. I’m up to see a friend to Chagford. Walking across the moor I lost my bearings.”

“You are perfectly right. You are making straight for the station,” said Burrough. “But if you crossed from Chagford you have done a wonderful thing. I couldn’t do it this time of year and I know the moor. I see by your boots you escaped the bogs. How did you manage it?”

“I came a bit round, sir,” explained the fisherman, with his singularly pleasant smile.

Burrough knew that the man was not telling him the truth. Making for the Cornish line from Chagford he would certainly pass that way, if he struck across the moor. That he had not done so was obvious by the state of his boots, which ought to have been plastered with bog-mud, but were perfectly clean. Several thoughts occurred to Burrough, all strange ones. He noticed whenever he looked up that the fisherman withdrew his gaze hurriedly. He noticed also the woollen wrapper round the man’s neck. That had not been made by his wife or daughter; and he would scarcely have bought anything so dainty. The last time he had seen such a wrapper was when Beatrice was walking in the rain; and the wrapper was lying upon her dark brown hair. He smiled to himself with a kind of triumph.

“I must be getting on, sir. Thank’ye kindly,” said the old man with simple dignity.

“Fill your pipe before you go,” said Burrough, handing over his tobacco jar. “What would you like to drink--a glass of beer?”

“Thank’ye kindly,” said the fisherman again, with the smile which seemed to convey a blessing with it.

Burrough brought the beer and the fisherman accepted it with a courteous gesture. The young man for reasons of his own made it his business to keep as much as possible away from the light. He tried to appear at his best before the old fisherman. He talked brightly and laughed continually, and did all else that was possible to make a favourable impression. The gentle old fellow laughed too, and was obviously well pleased at his reception, and quite satisfied with his host; but for all that he declared he must be getting on his way.

“You cannot get home to-night,” said Burrough.

“I’m going to Plymouth, sir. I have friends to Torpoint. Is it far to the station, sir?”

“I’ll show you the shortest way if you wait until I put on my boots.”

Burrough was soon back ready to start, but first he had a question for the old fisherman. He asked him what he thought of Chagford. The visitor replied he didn’t think much of the place, which was right and proper, as he was a Cornishman, and therefore possessed of hereditary hatred for everything that appertained unto Devonshire.

“But a very fine town,” argued Burrough. “Splendid buildings. Of course you saw the town-hall? Didn’t you admire that?”

“Yes, sir, a very fine building,” admitted the fisherman.

“And the big park with the pavilion and bandstand. You’ve nothing like that in Cornwall.”

“Yes, sir, a very fine park,” agreed the fisherman.

“And the theatre. As big as anything in Plymouth,” continued Burrough relentlessly.

“Yes, sir, a very fine theatre,” came the monotonous reply.

Burrough turned to lower the lamp, and the knightly old fisherman walked towards the door. The young man was greatly excited. So this visit was Beatrice’s answer to his long letter. And this man, who had probably never been out of Cornwall before; who professed to have walked over the moor from Chagford without getting mud on his boots; who knew so much about the moorland village as to agree when he heard it described as a town with parks, fine buildings, and theatres; who asked moreover to be directed to the station from whence he had only recently proceeded for the express purpose of subjecting Burrough to a close scrutiny--who was this man, if he were not Poltesco, the faithful fisherman of St. Sennen Church-Town?