Chapter IX: How They Played at Hide-And-Seek

The next morning a letter reached Burrough containing an offer to take his cottage for the next two months at a weekly rental of three guineas. The letter came from an agent in Exeter. A few weeks back he would have jumped at the offer; but since discovering the footprint in the sand his desires had changed. He knew he could not go away.

He argued with himself concerning the offer, although he knew he should end by refusing it. The money meant much to him. Idleness was playing havoc with his prospects. Since that first meeting with Beatrice he had done nothing except to write a few sonnets which in the inevitable order of things would find a last resting-place in some waste-paper basket. His work upon the stone remains of Dartmoor had come to a standstill. The Queen of Blissland had put a stop to that, as to all other serious undertakings. Burrough was dancing the dance of fools, and living in their paradise.

“I wish I had a friend,” he muttered, “someone to talk over things with, who would kick me when I am foolish, and prop me up when I can’t stand alone. I love the girl, and she knows it; but I can’t tell her. I know I shall never tell her. If I could only get rid of my pride! It might be well for me if I could lose my self-restraint for a few moments. I nearly did last night. My boy, you should have some courage. Write and accept this offer, run into Cornwall and hide until the summer is over, then return with the mud and mists, and crawl back into your shell to work and forget.”

Down he went at his table, seized pen and paper, and began to scribble.

“It’s sheer madness to suppose she would come here,” he went on. “A girl who is her own mistress, who is fascinating enough to bring anyone to her feet here! As well expect to find sunshine at the bottom of a mine. Beatrice making her clothes here! Beatrice walking on a stone floor beneath a tin roof! Beatrice cooking, bed-making, washing up! She gave me her answer when I told her about the three kings. It should have been plain. The highest bidder wins. Well, I’ve made up my mind. I’ll go away.”

Another thought occurred to him, and he leaned back to bring his mind to bear upon it.

“She wouldn’t object to this place in the summer,” he said. “Girls like roughing it in summer-time. They will live anywhere then, and pretend to enjoy this simple life, which is so unutterably drab and dirty in reality. It’s the winter she wouldn’t stand. What girl would live on top of Dartmoor during winter? I’ll get me away far off. I will never see Beatrice again. The King of Trevalyor must put up with Molly the milkmaid.”

He scratched away at the letter, and pushed it quickly into an envelope, because he was too ashamed to read it. Various circumstances, he explained, had caused him to alter his mind, and he did not intend to let his cottage that summer.

Obviously, the next thing was to get as close to Beatrice as possible; and with that end in view Burrough set forth in the direction of Blissland. It was a very fine morning, too hot for climbing and tumbling. Even the rivers were listless. The highest tor had no cap of cloud. It would be wicked, Burrough thought, to waste such glorious hours. It was an ideal Furry-day--the eighth day of the week, the day which could not be wasted by idle, amorous mortals, simply because it was an extra bit of life, an added slice of time, a sort of thirty-first of June, a little bonus paid by summer to those who would observe Floralia. It was a day to carry flowers and branches, and to dance hand-in-hand.

It was a considerable distance from the edge of the gorge to the nook at the bend of the river; but Burrough accomplished it within half-an-hour, which, it may be surmised, meant a certain amount of running. He was not perceptibly troubled by the heat.

He entered the secret nook by the way across the bog which Beatrice had named Skelywidden. There was no sign of her ladyship. Burrough began to be sorry he had come. Peering over the rocks, he saw nothing that was interesting; but as he made his moody way towards the river, along the path which his own feet had worn, he saw a cleft stick set upright in the peat, supporting a scrap of paper, which he pounced upon, opened, and read, “To all whom it may concern. Please go to the Apron String.”

Burrough chuckled. Beatrice had guessed he would come, and that he would arrive by Skelywidden. She was, no doubt, taking her ease at the other end of the bend.

But when he got there he saw only another piece of paper. It was impaled upon a gorse-bush, and upon it was written, “You are requested not to burn the gorse. If you will be so good as to follow the thread, you will arrive at the summit of Be Lovely Beacon. N.B.--There is a fine view.”

“The mad girl!” exclaimed Burrough.

A glance at the gorse-bush showed him a piece of red thread tied to a bunch of prickles. Picking it up, Burrough was guided to the pile of rocks at the edge of the bog. He looked up, but there was no Beatrice. The thread went up from rock to rock, so he followed until he stood upon the highest point. He did not stop to look at the view, because the first thing he saw was another piece of paper, lying upon the summit, with a stone upon it to keep it in place. Evidently Beatrice was in rare Furry-day humour; but, better than that, she had expected him, and was waiting for him, and had most ingeniously hidden herself away from him. Upon this piece of paper she had written, “This is Be Lovely Beacon. So sorry to trouble you, but, now that you have marched up the hill, you had better march down again. I wonder if you will be able to find the Menacuddle. That is your next stopping-place. N.B.--_Do_ admire the view.”

There was no particular view to admire, as the bog precipice rose on the other side of the river, and the trees upon the eyot blotted out the prospect in front. For the rest, there was nothing but the bog of sundews. Burrough shrewdly guessed that the invitation to admire the view was a key to the next discovery. He was right, for directly he looked out from the top of the Beacon his eye was attracted by something white in the seat of the granite chair beside the river. It did not take him long to get down and across. This piece of paper was crumpled into a ball, and there was something inside it. As he pulled it open his garter fell out, and on smoothing the paper he read--

“For this relief much thanks. This is the place which is called Menacuddle. Your wanderings are now over. Do sit down! Sorry not to see you before my departure. I have gone to Cumberland. Good-bye.”

The day became dark, and the sunshine was so much chilly moonlight that instant. Beatrice had gone away! And to the other end of England! She had taken her fascinations to the dark and distant north, and her dainty feet would leave their small, unseen impressions upon the sand and gravel of a Cumberland fell. And he was left to wander alone in Blissland, and to be pixy-led upon the “deysarts of Dertymore.” The eclipse was total.

Burrough lowered himself into the granite chair which the fanciful girl had dignified with the title of Menacuddle and tried to think. Beatrice had been with him until late--it was disgracefully late--the preceding evening, and she had then said nothing about going away. It was obvious she had been to the secret nook that morning. She could not have spared two hours just to play him this trick if she had been making preparations for a journey which would necessitate her departure by the earliest train. He decided she was at her pranks again. Probably she had seen him coming along the sky-line. She would have been given ample time to make these arrangements for his mystification.

Good heaven! another piece of paper! It was lying near his feet beside a clump of bracken. It was a tiny scrap, and the writing upon it was microscopic. Burrough held the missive close to his eyes, and presently mastered the directions.

“Mixed bathing is not allowed along the Cumberland coast. They are unco’ reeleegious bodies there. It will be time enough for you to gang north when the owls begin to toot. Mind the mountains in the Lake District. They are slithery with dew. And don’t--please don’t--tread upon London, or there will be a revolutionary upheaval, and you’ll get bitten.--I am, Sir, your most disobedient servant,

“The Zawn Pyg.”

This was mere midsummer madness, and Burrough could make nothing of it except the one thing which was of supreme importance--Beatrice was near. Probably she was in hiding quite near, enjoying his perplexity. The thought that she might be watching him with mischievous eyes stirred his self-respect into activity. He would show her he did not care; that he would not have missed her had she really gone to Cumberland. So he lolled back in the Menacuddle, permitting himself thoughts of what that name suggested, lighted a cigarette, and tried to look indolent and unconcerned. Still he could not refrain from glancing now to the right, now to the left, in the hope of sighting his tormentor, who was also queen and goddess of the place.

The cigarette was nearly consumed before an amateurish owl hooted, “Trewoofe!”

Burrough returned an answering cry, and the unfeathered fowl obligingly rehooted in Cornish.

The puzzle was to find the bird. At length the ornithologist determined it must be perched somewhere within the eyot. He set forth in that direction, and was nearing the water’s edge, when he perceived a miniature signpost, consisting of a short stick with a slip of paper fastened into a cleft and pointing towards the eyot. It bore the information, “To Cumberland.”

Burrough scrambled over the rocks and squirmed through the dense undergrowth between the two noisy currents. He was soon at the other end of the eyot, upon the open space near the thicket of osmunda, where he had discovered the tiny footprint in the sand. There were duplicates of that footprint everywhere, but the girl who had caused them was invisible. A line of red thread was fastened to a couple of rowans, and upon the thread two handkerchiefs were drying. Yet another piece of paper was fastened round the thread and secured by a hairpin.

“She is carrying the joke too far,” Burrough said, moodily. “It’s not fair to lead me this dance just because she knows all the ins and outs of this place so thoroughly. Why, I declare she must have been bathing!”

Fortified by the assurance that Beatrice was near and would be with him presently, if for no other reason than to secure her “towels,” he unfastened the half-sheet of notepaper and read--

“Well, here you are again. I was ordered a change of air, and had to leave Cumberland at once. There wasn’t even time to wait for my washing to be sent home. My address until one o’clock will be ‘Top of Cleave Tor, Under the Second Gorse-bush where you turn to the right from the Whortleberry Clump, which lies beneath the Shadow of the Rock, where the Iceland Moss grows.’ Got that? I hope you’ll call if you’re passing; and, if it’s not troubling you too much, would you bring my washing? So sorry to have missed you, but I heard the piper and had to dance. I’m one of the Merry Maidens, so at noon I must dance on and away.”

“Cleave Tor is a mile from here,” Burrough muttered, not entering in the least into the spirit of the game.

He guessed how Beatrice had evaded him. She must have crossed the river, jumping from one crag to another, and escaped by some way known to her through the bog forest. It was no use trying to find her while in that mad holiday humour, since she knew every foot of that secret nook, and if pursued could hide from him with ease. There was nothing for it but to cross the bog of sundews and climb to the summit of Cleave Tor.

Burrough was disgusted with himself. Here was a fine morning utterly wasted. He would have been much better employed at his writing-table. Even if he had failed to turn out anything he would have felt he had done his best. He made up his mind to return at once and make a profitable use of what remained of the morning; but this was merely a roundabout way of determining to hurry up Cleave Tor as hard as he could, still hopeful of catching the Merry Maiden before she danced home to lunch.

The thought occurred that Beatrice might be avoiding him on account of his action the evening before when the swaling fires were burning. That fear did not distress him for long. She had not been displeased then. Neither was she offended with him now. Her gay messages proclaimed as much. She was merely amusing herself. Had it not been for that “crooked little nose” Burrough might have given up the pursuit and gone home to work. As things were, because that nose was crooked, Burrough would have followed his tormentor across every bog and tor upon Dartmoor. Tenderly he removed the wet handkerchiefs, examined them carefully, gloated over the “B” worked in white silk upon each, felt them, pressed them, and quite possibly kissed them, then folded them neatly, and consigned them tenderly to the breast-pocket of his coat, which was already a sort of museum of consecrated relics: half-sheets of notepaper scribbled on by Beatrice, pieces of red thread that must have belonged to Beatrice, bits of stick which Beatrice had handled and cut, and hairpins still fragrant of Beatrice’s dark brown hair.

There was very little wind upon the moor that day, and Burrough felt the want of it as he clambered up the steep hill from the bog. Progress was necessarily slow because the gorse grew thickly there and rocks were everywhere. At length he reached a point where the flat summit of Cleave Tor could be seen outlined against the intense blue of the sky. There was no gracious figure standing there, as he had hoped. There was no waving handkerchief. But he knew Beatrice was there, and that she had seen him; for while he stood to regain breath a light cloud of smoke uprose from the top of the tor and circled lazily in the sluggish air. Beatrice was evidently burning a small gorse-bush as a signal to him, just as Cornishmen of old--and Cornishwomen too--would light fires on stormy nights to attract ships beating for harbour; but that was an unfortunate comparison, because they were wreckers, and the Merry Maiden was no descendant of theirs. All the same Burrough was wrecked upon that occasion. Breathless and perspiring, he gained the summit, to discover the fire a mass of warm grey dust, and the inevitable scrap of paper which denoted that Beatrice had gone again.

“It was the most unfortunate thing,” he read. “I had just settled myself when a pixy jumped out of the heather, and shouted, ‘Ho and away for lunch!’ You know when a pixy says that you have to go. It was no use my saying I expected the man with my washing. This afternoon I am thinking of taking my tea to the blacksmith’s, only I can’t carry a kettle. Can you suggest any solution of that difficulty? If you can I should be prepared to discuss the matter seriously. Can’t stop. Blue Peter is hoisted. I must dance back to my circle, and be turned into stone; for I am, now as ever, yours most terpsichorally,

“One of the Nine Maidens.”