Chapter VII

HOW BURROUGH CHATTED WITH A FELLOW-SCHOLAR.

Burrough thought he knew what Beatrice meant when she mentioned the advice she would have given to the king of Trevalyor. Cast everything aside, and work. That was her advice. She had thrown back his allegory in his teeth. He had Biggletubben the world, and Amalebria the flesh, to fight.

Very early the next morning Burrough went out upon the moor. Peter stretched himself, yawned, and followed. Both had a somewhat dissipated appearance. The man was unshaven and only half-dressed; the cat had spent the night within the kitchen hearth. Burrough sat upon a rock. Peter took up his position hard by and blinked at the sun.

“King o’ the Cats,” said Burrough moodily. “I wish I was not a classical scholar. I wish I was a successful lady novelist.”

Peter glanced at his master, as though he would say, “That’s two wishes. You have only one more.”

“There are three ways of making money with the pen,” Burrough proceeded. “The first is to write a successful play; the second to produce a novel which everyone reads; and the third to tickle the palate of the public with highly-seasoned serials in halfpenny journals. Number one catches society; number two the middle-class; and number three the ‘mostly fools’ mentioned by Carlyle. Now, Father Confessor, I can write neither play, novel, nor slush, as I believe the spicy serial is called. I can read Greek, and make Latin verses with a pitiful facility, but these accomplishments are not marketable. I can write good English, but there’s no money in that. Most editors seem to prefer ‘that’s him’ to ‘that’s he.’ Can’t you give me an idea for a novel? Isn’t there something left to write about, some new passion, some fresh phase? I feel alive this morning, King Peter; full of new life and old ideas. This is just the time a new idea ought to come--if there’s one left. I could sit down and write a sonnet. I could throw off an essay; but sonnets and essays are things of the past. You could not sell a dozen sonnets now for the price of two fresh herrings. Your countenance grows animated, my dear cat. Shall we write a play together? Act One, the moor. Scene, a hovel. Enter the king of Trevalyor and his cat!”

Burrough would spend hours talking such nonsense as this to his dumb companion.

He drew himself higher up the rock, embraced his knees, and smiled unhappily at the rugged prospect. Just then he was trying to forget Beatrice. It was the last time he made the attempt. Her vision was before him, as she stood short-skirted on the mass of granite, surrounded by the gorse, heather and bracken of their tiny territory of Blissland.

“You and I are not wanted, King Peter, and that’s a fact,” Burrough went on. “If I were to hang you, and shoot myself, nobody would benefit. We shouldn’t make room for anyone. I don’t fill any position. I’m not even the village reprobate. The simple life, my dear cat, is excellent in theory, but in practice it is abominably unpleasant. It is an existence of clods and dirt, of gritty food, and black-rimmed finger-nails. It is a life of peat-smoke and mountain mist. I wade through bogs; I bark my shins against spurs of granite; I fall into a crevasse, and cover my skin with gorse-prickles. That is the simple life. Inside I listen to the wind; I play with my shadow; I watch the lamp-light for some hours nightly. This is to be in touch with Nature. From the artistic point of view it is no doubt an ideal state. From the mental and moral standpoint it is a colossal failure. I would give all these grey tors, every gorse-bush, the heath, the bracken, and throw in the view and the cloudscape, for a nice little row of jerry-built stucco villas along the edge of the gorge.”

There came a magpie sailing down the cleave, and then another. After them appeared a short figure, walking at its ease, armed with a gun, accoutred with a canvas bag, and accompanied by two spaniels.

“Let us consider these omens,” observed Burrough. “Two magot-pies. That’s for mirth. Afterwards cometh Willum, head of the house of Cobbledick. He has begun his loafing early. He will be exhausted by noon, and have to lean against a wall till sunset. Let him trot by. But soft! he carries letters, he brings good tidings. Glorious news, my dear Peter! The Essayists are victorious--the armies of the foul rebel Slush have been defeated. The public has become enlightened, editors are marrying poetesses, essayists are allying themselves to publishers’ daughters. That’s the message of the magpies. I shall be produced in fair parchment covers, tied with green ribbons like prize beef, and beauteous ladies will dim my pages with their tears. And as for you, King o’ the Cats, you shall have the choicest cut from a Derby-winner for your supper.”

Peter paused in his ablutions, and with paw uplifted regarded the approaching shapes. Evidently his impressions were unfavourable; so he stepped forward, ready to curse and smite the first of the careless spaniels which should venture within range.

William Cobbledick sometimes assisted the local postman by carrying letters to the outlying parts. His reward was a pot of beer. Other benefits accruing to him were a sense of dignity in being as it were an official of state, and the right to call upon Burrough and a few others upon Boxing Day to wish them the compliments of the season. There was also the right to read postcards; and the privilege of publishing any information thus acquired, after thorough and unscrupulous editing by Ann.

“Marning, sir,” said Willum, as he handed Burrough a newspaper and one letter. “I’ve got five puppies, sir,” he went on, like an eager schoolboy. “Born last night.”

“Really,” said Burrough. “I hope you and the puppies are doing well.”

Willum looked puzzled, his sense of humour not being keen.

“Yes, sir, this warm weather suits me wonderful. They pups be out of a prize bitch--least she would have taken a prize if I’d shown her. Fifteen shillun each, sir. Will ye take one? I warrant ’en for a good nose.”

“Being neither sportsman nor poacher,” Burrough answered, “I have no use for fifteen-shilling spaniels with highly developed organs of smell. What sort of nose will you guarantee--bottle, Roman, or pug?”

“Well, sir,” said the scholar, completely mystified, “I reckon ’twould be a bit of each. There’s surprising blood in they pups. There be the father, sir.”

At that moment a wild howl uprose, and the proud father could be seen scurrying for shelter, with one eye picturesquely closed; while Peter, who in vulgar parlance had dowsed his glim, licked his chops and tried very hard to grin.

“I warrant the Cheshire Pet for a good claw,” said Burrough. “Here is a little arithmetical problem for you. If five puppies collectively are worth three pound, fifteen, what is the value of a cat which has defeated the father of said puppies?”

“Cats be vermin,” said Willum bitterly.

Burrough laughed, and tore open his letter. A glance at it, and his face clouded. Most distinctly it was not a letter to glaze and hang in a frame. It did not announce that the day of sonneteer and essayist had returned. It was not an invitation from a publisher to submit great thoughts, which might be bound within parchment covers and tied with green ribbon, for the delectation of ladies with pink and white complexions. It was simply, “a remittance by return will greatly oblige.”

“As we are on the subject of problems, here is another--a domestic problem,” went on the cynic. “How does a man live, when money goes out faster than it comes in?”

“On credit,” said Willum. He knew the answer to that well enough.

“Now we have a social problem,” the young man went on. “Here is a radical newspaper, which addresses me ‘John Burrough, Esquire.’ And here an obsequious conservative tradesman, who bids me be content with plain Mr. Burrough. What do you make of that?”

“It don’t mean nuthing,” replied the scholar contemptuously. “When I writes to a gentleman I puts Mister on one side and Squire on t’other. When I writes to a parson I puts Revellent as well. They likes that.”

“I should be inclined to doubt it,” muttered Burrough. “But on the main question you are right. It means nothing. If I write to a Government department to announce my inflexible will is to pay no more taxes, I receive in return a threatening letter which concludes, ‘I am, Sir, your most obedient, humble servant.’ How do you finish off your letters, Willum?”

“Always the same--yours truly,” replied Willum.

“That’s the safest way. But how many e’s are there in truly?”

“You don’t catch me,” said the scholar grinning. “There’s only one.”

“Your education seems complete,” said the cynic.

“I larnt myself. ’Tis what you call natural gift. I be just a man of born intellect,” said Willum modestly. “If I hadn’t been consumptuous,” he went on, tapping his brawny chest, “I’d a been a preacher. Sometimes I preach to mother at home. Makes her cry, I du.”

“I sympathise with Mrs. Cobbledick,” Burrough replied.

“I mun shoot a rabbut for dinner,” went on Willum shifting his antiquated gun. “If I shoots a couple, will ye take one?”

“With pleasure,” came the answer. “If it be young, tender, and gratuitous.”

“I don’t shoot ’em when they be gratuitous,” said the scholar, making a bold and bad guess at the meaning of the word. “Some du, but I don’t. I only shoots the buck rabbuts this time o’ year.”

“I don’t think I’ll trouble you to shoot me a buck rabbut. My cat supplies me, and makes no charge. And now I must cook my morning rasher and settle down to work. Have you ever written anything?”

“Nuthing,” replied the loafer.

“What! You, a scholar! you, who lean against walls thinking, and roam the moor dreaming--you have written nothing.”

“I be an artist mostly,” said Willum in self-defence. “I takes photographs.”

“And anything you can lay your hands on,” the other muttered. “Do you read much, Willum?”

“Winter evenings I reads the Bible to mother. Makes her cry, it du.”

“Mrs. Cobbledick appears to be a somewhat lachrymose personage. What makes her cry?”

“’Tis my voice. It ain’t so much what I reads, as the way I reads it.”

“The explanation is entirely satisfactory,” observed the cynic.

“Then I reads to mother out of the Black Book,” Willum went on.

“Crockford’s Clerical Directory, I believe?” said Burrough, who knew all about this local celebrity’s two-volumed library. “Does that make mother cry?”

“No, she don’t cry over that. I reads it more spirited like. When any parson comes here I allus looks ’en up in the Black Book to find out his pedigree. Sometimes he’s there. Sometimes he ain’t. If he ain’t in, us don’t trust ’en. Mother says, ‘Look ’en up in the Black Book, Willum.’ If he ain’t there she wun’t let ’en have cream and butter wi’out the money down.”

Rather hard on the younger clergy, thought Burrough, knowing as he did that the directory in question was quite a decade out of date.

“You should study, Willum,” he said impressively. “You should read, and improve your mind, that mind which has been lying fallow for so long. You should pore over histories, and acquire languages. A little learning--you know the old saw, Willum? It’s a dangerous thing.”

“True, sir, me and you knows that. There be Mrs. Cann to the Post Office. Her don’t know much, but her thinks she du, and her tongue goes like the old saw you was talking about. They ain’t no scholars here. Just me and you, and Mr. Yeoland--he knew a lot ’fore he got dafty.”

“Come inside and look at my books,” Burrough said, as he slipped off the rock. His fellow-scholar followed, looking somewhat unhappy. They passed in, and Burrough ushered the many-sided genius into the study, and nodded towards the long rows of books. Willum’s spirit grew faint within him.

“Here,” said Burrough wickedly, as he pulled out a handsomely-bound Thucydides, “we have the most famous example of vicious rhetoric----”

“I knows ’en,” muttered Willum, his pale-blue eyes staring frightfully. “Vicious ain’t hardly the word. Ain’t fit for wimmin. I couldn’t read ’en to mother.”

“I believe you,” came the guileless answer. “This is more your line--the tragedies of Sophocles.”

“I knows ’en,” said Willum again. “So does Mr. Yeoland. Talked of ’en many a time us has. Mr. Yeoland buried Sophocles down to Cornwall, Porthleven way.” He pronounced the poet’s name so that it might have rhymed with cockles.

“Really that is most interesting,” said the tormentor. “Evidently you have been given access to information of which I have been unable to avail myself. Herodotus of course you know?” he added carelessly.

“Him what cut off John Baptist’s head?” Willum suggested, feeling that here at least he was on safe ground.

“His younger brother,” replied Burrough, with utmost gravity.

“That’s him,” exclaimed the scholar. “They calls ’en Herod Antifat in the Bible.”

“Because he was a very thin man, I suppose?”

“That’s it, sir, that’s it,” cried Willum, in high delight. “Me and you gets on fine!”

“I am going to make a slight addition to your library,” Burrough said, as he picked out a couple of unwanted books--a cheap Greek testament and a small Sanskrit dictionary--and held them out to the local celebrity. “They will be a source of interest to you during winter evenings to come. I will not insult you by describing them. The dictionary is fairly ample in spite of its smallness. When in doubt of a word you can look it up here--and I hope you will find it,” he concluded heartily.

The scholar’s gratitude, if partly simulated, was expressed so ardently that Burrough nearly felt ashamed of himself. There was no doubt a spice of cruelty in his nature, that inborn cruelty common to all living things in Nature--to the sundew which sucked the flies, and to King Peter who played with a baby rabbit. Burrough felt a certain spiteful enjoyment in thus playing with Willum, because he had an idea that at least upon one occasion during the day preceding Beatrice had been, not wilfully cruel perhaps, but a little bit lacking in proper sympathy for the king of Trevalyor.

Beatrice could not be like Peter, who tormented the baby rabbit out of sheer wickedness. That was impossible, because Beatrice was divine. Two days before she had been a girl, only a girl with tiny feet. Already she was a goddess. Promotion was never more rapid. But, Burrough pondered, the sundew did not catch and suck the fly out of wilful cruelty. It destroyed the fly simply because it was its nature so to do.

Then Burrough went off to cook the rasher for his long-postponed breakfast; while Willum, after shooting a rabbit, loafed home to astonish his doting mother by exhibiting his new literary treasures, which he explained as “A Chinese Bible, and a book to show how ’twas done.”