WHERE ENGLAND SETS
 HER FEET

 A ROMANCE

 BY
 BERNARD CAPES

  ‘Whate’er the bans the wind may waft her,
  England’s true men are we and Pope’s men after.’



 LONDON: 48 PALL MALL
 W. COLLINS SONS & CO, LTD.
 GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND




 COPYRIGHT.

 First Impression March 1918
 Second Impression April 1918




 [DEDICATION.]

 OCTOBER 1917
 TO
 GARETH WILFRID CAPES
 LIEUT. HAMPSHIRE REGT. IN PALESTINE
 THIS EARLIER STORY OF
 ‘ENGLAND’S TRUE MEN’




 CONTENTS.

 I. THE PRETTY PLEDGE
 II. THE PLEDGE REDEEMED
 III. THE JOURNEY WEST
 IV. THE END OF THE JOURNEY
 V. THE HOUSE BY THE MOOR
 VI. SOME NEW FRIENDS
 VII. THE OLD WELL HOUSE
 VIII. THE APPARITION
 IX. TRANSFORMATION
 X. CONFIDENCES
 XI. TWO’S COMPANY
 XII. IL PENSEROSO
 XIII. DESOLATION
 XIV. AN EMOTION AND A DISCOVERY
 XV. THE RETURN OF THE WANDERERS
 XVI. THE TRUTH AT LAST
 XVII. CERTAIN VISITORS
 XVIII. HOPE DEFERRED
 XIX. MARKING TIME
 XX. MISTRESS JOAN MEDLEY
 XXI. THE DECOY
 XXII. A POIGNANT INTERVIEW
 XXIII. HOME AGAIN
 XXIV. COMMITTED
 XXV. THE FUGITIVE
 XXVI. AN INCUBUS
 XXVII. THE VOYAGE
 XXVIII. THE TAKING OF THE CARACK
 XXIX. THE VIPER ON THE HEARTH
 XXX. L’ALLEGRO
 XXXI. ‘BACK TO A WORLD OF DEATH’
 XXXII. RETRIBUTION
 XXXIII. BEREAVEMENT
 XXXIV. A LAST DISCOVERY




 CHAPTER I.
 THE PRETTY PLEDGE

When, in the second year of Elizabeth, the Act of Supremacy was
passed, there were found only some two hundred in all of the clergy
bold enough to dissent from it. Many, it is true, who conformed, did
so without sincerity, fearing to lose their livings, and of these was
Mr Robert Angell, Vicar of Clapham, or Clappenham village in Surrey,
which was in the advowson of the lords of Larkhall and a very good
cure. This Mr Angell, a worthy but weak divine, gained nothing,
however, by his accommodation, for being suspected, whether rightly or
wrongly, of Romanist sympathies, he was shortly deprived of his
benefice, and forced to look elsewhere than to the Establishment for a
means to subsistence. In this pass he bethought himself to set up a
little private school, or palestra, for the sons of such of his
neighbours as were well disposed towards him; and this he did, and
with fair success, many coming to receive of him their early grounding
in the A.B.C.-darius, Lily’s grammar, the _Sententiæ Pueriles_, and
so on by way of Erasmus’s Colloquies to Cæsar and the Georgics, so
that they were well ripe for College and University when their time
came. For the Vicar was a sound scholar no less than an amiable man,
and ruled by love without much authority, being little addicted to the
harsh methods which obtained, and indeed were expected, in his day. He
had a dame, a stupid woman but as benevolent as himself, and two or
three little children, who tumbled up anyhow and were for ever in hot
water, save when they most needed it.

Now to these was presently added another, a stranger, who came to
board and lodge with the household when he was no more than a babe in
years. His name was Brion Middleton, and he was brought in person, by
one Mr Justice Bagott of the Queen’s Bench, thenceforth to be and
remain a member of the Angel curriculum until otherwise notified, and
eke to form an item of the Angell family--a minute ‘paying guest’, as
we should now describe him. He had no parents to speak of; nor did the
overbearing Justice deem it necessary to speak of them, imposing the
lovely brat, without any leave asked or given, on the clergyman, over
whom, it seemed, he possessed a certain hold. For so he asserted that,
having professional cognizance of those Papish proclivities which had
already broken the poor man, he could very well use it, if he chose,
to bring about his utter destruction; which claim might or might not
be true, yet in any event was supererogatory, seeing that the divine
was far too meek a soul ever to question into, much less reject, the
service so truculently demanded of him. Indeed, of his charity, no
less than for his potential profit, he welcomed it; observing which
the manner of the visitor changed, and, abating much of his
imperiousness, which he found uncalled for, he proceeded forthwith in
gentler speech to discuss the terms and provisions of the
accommodation he desired for this derelict infant ‘ward’ of his.
Planned on no grudging scale, these were to imply a virtual, if
indefinite adoption by the couple, who were to do their best by their
charge, make no curious inquiries regarding him, and expect no
communications whatever save such as turned upon the periodic
remittances for his keep, which would arrive duly dated from the
Judge’s own office in Gray’s Inn. For the rest the boy was to be
brought up as one of the Vicar’s own family, and in all respects given
the dues of gentle birth. Having pronounced which ultimatum the
visitor, casting not one look on the little wide-eyed whimpering
infant, departed, as he had come, by night.

‘Poor curst imp of destiny!’ cried the clergyman, in a burst of
emotion, when the other was gone.

‘Thou pretty, pretty pledge of a misguided love!’ cried his admiring
lady, gazing on the babe. And then they looked at one another
guiltily.

‘This,’ says he, ‘is already to break the spirit of the compact.
Henceforth, silence--if for no other reason, Dame, because he hath us
in his toils.’

She sighed, and caught the child to her bosom. ‘These be my toils,’
said she. ‘I will hold my tongue, lest by loosing it I loose them.’

This happened in the year 1560, and thereafter for the space of
thirteen summers, his numbering but two when he arrived, Brion abode
and throve sweetly under that friendly roof.




 CHAPTER II.
 THE PLEDGE REDEEMED

And for thirteen years the silence imposed upon that complaisant
couple was faithfully observed by them. They adhered to the letter of
their bond, neither seeking nor desiring information as to their
charge, content, and soon for his own sake, to accept him, and love
him, and contrive for him to the utmost extent of their ability. And
he, for his part, repaid their devotion, growing a shapely slip in
their midst, and developing as he grew a disposition as endearing as
his form was attractive and his mind alert. He was a bright child,
with a power of observance behind a staid manner, and a suspicion of
humour twinkling under a gravity that seemed always to measure before
it spoke. He had a respect for his foster-parents, as one may call
them, tempered in the lady’s case with an inclination to laughter, and
for both of them a well-deserved affection. And they, being under no
directions but to treat him as one of their own progeny, were fain,
nevertheless, to observe towards him a certain deference in their
manner, due, as it were, to the entertainment of a mystery, and to
concede to him as by right of birth a preference over their offspring,
which were three in number, namely Gregory, Richard, and the little
Alse the youngest. With these he grew from childhood, being regarded
by them as an orphan of some unknown distinction, which, however,
after the ways of youth, he was very ready to waive and they to
disregard. They were all good comrades together, whether in school or
sport, and shared, at least as regarded the boys, a fine spirit of
adventure.

Now, during all this period, never, save once, was the ban of
excommunication, as regarded the outside world, lifted; and then only
for a brief moment; but faithfully to each quarter-day arrived a
messenger from Gray’s Inn, bearing in a leathern bag the fourth of the
allowance agreed upon for the child’s accommodation. That was ample,
rather than sufficient, for his needs, which were to include in all
respects the furniture of a gentleman, while leaving to his adopters a
generous margin of profit. But, indeed, good souls, they took small
advantage of the concession, barely, of their love, recouping
themselves for the expenses to which they were put on his behalf, whom
they were resolute to regard as naturally entitled to a style and
consideration superior to their own. Wherefore the little Brion always
went arrayed like a noble, while Gregory and the others must be
content with the simpler dress of their condition, a fact which had
alone sufficed to appoint him their leader, even were his boldness and
quickness of invention less than they were.

And so he lived and learned, being trained without severity and
indulged without hurt, a mystery and object of curiosity to the
neighbours, with whom, nevertheless, scandal could get no hold, seeing
that the Vicar himself, even had he been inveigled into telling, had
nothing to tell. The child had been brought by an uncommunicative
stranger, was there, and that was all. For the rest, the business was
a lawyer’s business.

Now, it was somewhere about the boy’s sixth year when occurred that
momentary lifting and dropping of the veil referred to; and by then
whatever memories of a brief past he had brought with him into exile
had long flickered into extinction. For all that survived to his mind
he might have drawn his first breath in the house to which destiny had
consigned him.

This house stood a little off the great west road by which the Queen’s
Majesty would sometimes travel from Westminster to her Palace of
Richmond in Surrey. It was a reasonably modest building, meet to the
circumstances of an unbeneficed cleric, but with a pleasant garden
croft attached, as well as an orchard, and a paddock which served for
a playground. A bridle-track went from it down to the road, where was
a swing-gate; and it was here that Brion, returning alone from an
errand voluntarily run for his good-natured foster-mother--in whose
unmethodicalness and forgetfulness he took, even thus early, a
chuckling amusement--came for the first time upon the man who brought,
though the boy did not know it, the periodic instalments of pieces to
pay for his keep. Seeing him, he stopped, and the two looked at one
another.

They looked, and the man’s face took on a queer expression, arrested
and questioning. His eyes were light jellies, with pupils that somehow
reminded Brion of the black staring pits in the frog-spawn he was used
to fish out of the ponds. He was extraordinarily lank and bony, though
with a suggestion of sinewy swagger about him that was quite
impressive until one examined his features; and then conviction
halted. They seemed to betray an odd mixture of impudence and
weakness, the two seeming epitomised, as it were, in the near
conjunction of a slack mouth and an inverted moustache brushed boldly
up from it to meet the nostrils of a long down-drooping nose. He wore
a black bonnet with a short feather in it, and hose, breeches, and
curtmanteau all black, as befitted a lawyer’s deputy. On his body was
a peascod breastplate, more dull than polished, a short sword hung at
his thigh, and he bestrode a heavy Flanders horse, plainly
caparisoned. He had been in the act of dismounting at the moment of
the boy’s appearance, but, seeing him, subsided again into his saddle
and sat staring.

Suddenly, as if to some instinct, he pulled off his cap and louted to
the little fellow, who responded with a grave ‘Good-morrow, stranger.’

‘Good-morrow, my brave little master,’ answered the man, and bent over
as if to signify his desire for a closer confidence (his voice, Brion
noticed, had a queer high huskiness in it, like a rusty hinge with an
intermittent squeak). ‘A word in your ear,’ says he, behind his hand,
and in a forced whisper. ‘’Tis one Master Robert Angell that I seek.
You’ll not know, perchance, where he inhabits?’

Brion smiled, and pointed up the bridle path. The stranger sat up,
drawing back his shoulders and stiffening his neck, like one happily
confirmed in a surmise. ‘Ha!’ said he, and stooped again. ‘I should
like a word with him.’

‘I’ll tell him,’ said the boy. ‘I live there myself, you know.’

The stranger was amazed and gratified. ‘Who,’ he said, ‘would have
laid on such a leap-frog chance now! I take a back at random, and lo,
’tis a back-friend!’ All the time he spoke his spots of pupils never
ceased to probe the face beneath him. He observed its eyes--to which
the sight of lethal weapons were as yet little familiar--fix
themselves curiously on his sword. ‘Ah!’ he said; ‘you are there, are
you?’ and slapped the hilt with his gauntleted hand. ‘Mayst have as
good a friend thyself one day, little master.’

‘I will have a rapier,’ said Brion, ‘and a baselard with a sheath of
red to hang at my waist.’

‘And so thou shalt, by token of thy gentility,’ cried the stranger.
‘Of scarlet cuirbouilli shall it be, and on it a device of bears with
rubies set for eyes.’

‘How has your sword been a friend to you?’ asked Brion.

‘How!’ cried the other. ‘Why, as friends go--a champion at need, true
as steel, quick to interpose between myself and danger.’ He whisked
out the blade, so as to make it hiss. ‘Hearest?’ he demanded. ‘“What
is toward?” it whispers--“some lurking knave, a damsel in distress, an
insult to avenge? Slid! but I’ll answer for you and to the point.” It
is a friend, I say; a watchdog with a tooth that it hath whetted on a
twenty-score of rib-bones in its time. Mark you its edge.’

‘It is a clean edge,’ said Brion. ‘From its newness it might have been
bought yesterday.’

The stranger looked a trifle disconcerted.

‘Not so,’ he answered. ‘It is its temper--ha! I tell you, young
master, it hath drunk blood like six-shilling beer, and knocked on
more breast-bones----’

His voice went out of him with a chuckle. There at the gate, come
unnoticed over the grass, stood the ex-Vicar, weak astonishment in his
eyes.

‘Master Clerivault!’ quoth he. ‘What brings you here, and, out of your
wont, by day?’

He had on a black cassock, but green with age; his shoes were tied
with string; one flap of his bonnet stood up, the other down; his
pale, mild head, like a calf’s, lay on his ruff as it were on an
unwashed platter. Good Mrs Angell, the blowzed and ineffectual, would
rebuke him for his untidiness, as she straightened her own tumbled
coiffure, or appeared with her kirtle on the wrong side before. It was
that sort of thing which tickled little Brion hugely.

The stranger, first re-sheathing his blade, blew a kiss from his
finger tips, half affable, half mocking.

‘I will acquaint you, worthy Master Angell,’ he answered: ‘only--I
prithee; there’s a proverb anent the ears of little pitchers. _Acta
exteriora_, as we say in the law, _indicant interiora secreta_. You
smoke me?’

‘Child,’ said the puzzled pedagogue, turning to Brion, ‘your message
lingers while you wait.’

He waved his hand, and the boy went on to the house. ‘_What_ hidden
secrets?’ thought the youngster, for at six one, in Eliza’s time,
could translate Latin. Something, some ghost of a mystery concerning
himself, which would haunt his subconscious perceptives even now
occasionally, seemed to rise within him. It brought with it a confused
memory of other things and other places, but too unreal to be
localised, and dissipated almost as soon as felt. So also faded his
momentary perplexity over the stranger’s pretence of asking his way,
when all the time, it appeared, he and his foster-father were well
acquainted. It was the sword which remained in his mind. He would have
liked to ask more questions about that and its sanguinary adventures.

The Dame, hot and overcome from battling with malapert kitchen
wenches, met him with uplifted hands: ‘Why, loveling! and as I am a
sinner there was no need to despatch thee, seeing as I never lended
Mrs Dapper the recipe after all, but found it in the cupboard where it
wont to lie. Come hither, that we measure lips, poor lamb; and so
forgive me.’

In the meanwhile, down by the gate, the stranger had stated his
business, and the divine acquiesced in it, much as it bewildered that
honest old head.

‘It shall be done, Master Clerivault,’ he said, ‘even as you direct.
The child shall be there; though for the why or the wherefore I am in
no sort to concern myself.’

‘Spoken wisely,’ said the stranger, ‘and in good earnest of the trust
which, from the first, hath well reposed itself in thee. Discretion is
long life; what thou seest see, but draw no conclusion from it, lest,
like the fool’s fen-candle, it lure thee in the mire. _Dictum
sapienti_: I have said. A brave child, master, and a fair credit to
his guardians. Farewell.’

He kissed his glove, with a very Malvolio simper, turned his horse’s
head for London, and rode away.

Now it was announced by the pedagogue on the following morning that
her Majesty was to travel that day by road for Richmond; wherefore all
were to don of their best, and, standing together by the wayside,
salute her Grace in proper respect as she passed with her train. It
was an occasion not the first of its kind, and, like an earlier one,
full of excitement and expectancy. Great preparation there was, the
little scholars all arriving in their smartest; and indeed when
collected they made a pretty group. Only one was wanting, and that was
Brion. As the time for the Queen’s coming approached, Mr Angell,
taking the boy aside, had bade him follow him by a private path which
discharged them into the highway at a point some quarter of a mile
westward of the house, and, from its position, well out of range of
any chance espial. And this they did, and stood waiting, the elder in
some agitation, the younger much marvelling in his baby mind that he
was separated from his comrades, and allotted a distinction he could
well have done without. However, he was of a philosophical
temperament, and averse from denying a meaning to things because he
did not understand them.

It was the month of June, and a sweet merry day, with a wind like
laughter blowing among the roadside flowers. And of a keeping with its
cheeriness was the child, gay under all his sleek sobriety. His
doublet was of white satin, puffed at the shoulders as if they were
budding into wings, and so were his breeches, all being seamed with
black velvet having a marvellous pattern in gold thread embroidered on
it. His little cloak was of black velvet lined with white; white were
his hose, and white his shoe-roses of lace with a gold thread in it;
and in his _copotain_ hat was a white feather which the wind ruffled
like froth. He was fair and pale, without insipidity--a delicate
picture.

Now the two had not long to wait before there came to them a sound of
distant shrill acclamation; by which they knew that her Majesty was
arrived and that the little scholars were cheering her as she passed.
And indeed within a minute or so there hove into sight along the road
the first of the procession that accompanied her, being a cavalcade of
gentlemen of the Queen’s guard, handsome in buff and steel, curiously
adorned, in that martial connexion, with ribbons and tassels of gold.
Upon whom followed such a miscellaneous company of knights and ladies
as it is impossible to discriminate; nor can one describe the gorgeous
flood of them in that narrow way, save as a river discharged from the
very vats of Tyre, and staining its whole course with a thousand dyes.
So, all mounted, they sparkled by, flashing and chattering; and many
remarked the little boy, and blew him smiling kisses. Palanquins there
were, bearing high ladies; and falconers, and hounds running in leash,
and a solemn jester riding an ass; and all along, enclosing the
concourse, went a double file of pikemen--and then at once, the Queen.

Her Majesty, who loved to exhibit herself to her people, travelled in
an open horse litter, the gilded poles of which were borne by four red
Galloways, near stifled under their housings of cloth of gold, and led
each one at his bridle by a golden groom. The roof over her head,
supported on shining rods, was emblazoned with an intricate device of
lions caught in roses, the sheen whereof struck down upon her hair,
which was very fine and thin, and made of it a misty flame. In the
entering sunlight her face, so pale was it, looked like tinted silver,
the eyes of staring agate, as if she were some carried idol; but the
high vivacity of her glance, on nearer seeing, dispelled that
illusion. She was in her thirty-first year at this time, and all grace
and ingratiation; but resolved to play the Queen no less in her
outward trappings than in her inward conscience. Wherefore she outdid
all in the magnificence and extravagance of her costume, being so
cased and bombasted in costly materials of all sorts, and so roped and
sewn with gems, that she bore no resemblance to the human form, but
appeared, as she would have desired, a shape apart, a star unique and
without peer. By her side rode four or five of the great lords,
waiting on what words she chose to speak, and in her royal wake
followed first her led barb, in case she were minded to mount, and
afterwards a repetition of the former silken concourse, a Company of
the guards closing all. So she shone into view of four bedazzled eyes,
and cast a ray of her graciousness, with a nod and smile, on the
little standing boy.

Brion never forgot that smile, nor the strange episode, so startling
by contrast, which succeeded. The procession went by, and passed, and
taking a bend of the road was lost to sight; and then, gazing up in
his master’s face, he assumed dumbly that they were to return home.
But the pedagogue, answering the look nervously, told him to tarry yet
a little while, lest perchance some late stragglers should follow and
be missed by them. And so, indeed, it turned out; for there appeared
presently, coming unhasted along the road, a gentleman and his lady,
who, it seemed, had lagged behind the stream, or so far failed to join
it. They rode leisurely, looking about them, until, espying the couple
standing there, the lady, it seemed, gave a little start, and,
speaking to her companion, the two came on and drew rein, as if
carelessly, close over against the waiting pair. Brion could have
thought some sign of intelligence passed between the gentleman and Mr
Angell; but his attention was immediately drawn to the lady, who was
dwelling on him with a very strange expression. She was pale and sad
to look at, like chastened youth, but of so sweet a cast of features
that he loved her then and there. In years she might have numbered
some six less than her cavalier--who was a man of thirty-three
thereabouts--as surely as in attractiveness she exceeded him; for
though he was a bold and handsome man, and carried the splendour of
his apparel with a great air, there was such a look of craft and
hardness in his eyes as discounted all the rest. He sat impatiently,
as if unwillingly conceding something to a weakness; but he too stared
at the boy, and with strange unfriendly vision, which yet seemed to
find something whimsical in their object.

The lady leaned from her saddle, murmuring:--

‘A very flower to greet us by the way. Hast seen the sweet Queen pass
by, my babe?’

The word seemed to linger on her lips. She gazed at Brion as if she
would have devoured him.

He answered: ‘Yes, Madam; but thou art the prettier.’

She put her finger to her lips, while the gentleman laughed.

‘Hush!’ she said. ‘Talk’st treason, my pretty one. Shall I be thy
first lover, then? Mount hither, while I buss thee.’

Mr Angell put his hands under the child’s armpits, and lifted him up.

‘Set thy little foot in the stirrup,’ said the lady, and she wound an
arm about him, and, holding him tightly, first searched him in the
face, then pressed her lips to his. ‘Art happy?’ she whispered in his
ear, and something seemed to trickle down his cheek. ‘Yes, Madam,’ he
answered in likewise low, for in his heart he felt this to be a
confidence. ‘That is well,’ she whispered back; and at that moment
there was a sound of returning hoofs on the road, and a varlet came
spurring towards them and drew up close beside.

‘My Lord of Leicester,’ said the man: ‘the Queen’s Majesty asks for
you.’

The gentleman held a riding switch in his hand: he put heel to his
horse, approached the messenger, and slashed the thong with a vicious
oath across his face. His teeth showed, and the wings of his nose
lifted like a cat’s. The fellow swayed, almost blinded, and near lost
his seat.

‘That is to learn thee discretion,’ quoth his master; and turned to
the lady. ‘Hearest? Drop that brat and give rein.’

She complied hurriedly, returning Brion to his guardian. The boy was
pale, and his lip quivered. His young looks spoke hatred of the cruel
act.

‘What!’ cried the gentleman, quite smoothly and pleasantly, noting
that expression: ‘wouldst dare me, by-slip?’

‘No, no,’ said the lady: ‘he meant it not. Take him away, good Sir.
There, we be going.’

She put her horse between, and smiled, with difficulty, in the face of
her comrade. He, for his part, laughed, shrugging contemptuous
shoulders; then, before he went, turned with one look on the
pedagogue.

‘_Cave ursum_,’ said he, and no more, but, with a threatening and
comprehensive gesture of his hand, imposed silence on those trembling
lips. And with that they departed all three, the lady not once looking
round, and in a little were lost to view.

‘Who were they, Sir?’ says Brion, his baby breast still full to tears
with the agitation of it all. But the other put the question away
hurriedly.

‘I know not, child; we are not to consider; forget it all and dismiss
the matter from thy mind and memory.’

But that Brion could not altogether do, though, being a reserved and
somewhat silent boy, he never spoke of the incident, not even to his
kind stupid foster-mother, but kept the thought of it to himself,
locked in his little breast. And there it lay, like a flower in a
secret cabinet, fading and withering till it was little more than a
faint sweet memory, suggesting something infinitely tender but
forgotten; and the face of the beautiful pale lady receded in his mind
to a distant dream.

He saw the Queen after this, and more than once, travelling with her
Court to Richmond--latterly in a great chariot, like a catafalque on
wheels, only then first coming into use--but at these times he stood
among the other scholars, and, though at first he would look for the
lady, never again did he mark her; and gradually, absorbed more and
more into the interests of boyhood, he forgot all about the episode.

So the years passed with him until he was fifteen; and never grew boy
to that age in a happier atmosphere. He was loved by his preceptor,
petted by his lady, popular with their children and the others, in
himself interested in everything, of a bold and adventurous spirit,
yet constitutionally quiet and reasonable. There was a great waste
common, south of the village, and consisting largely of morass, which
lent itself gloriously to the exploration of youth. This place was
much infested by Egyptians, and teemed moreover with small savage life
in infinite profusion, being consequently irresistibly attractive to
such as Brion and his playmates. Many were the adventures they
experienced in this wild, in hunting and trapping, in extemporising
rafts for the countless ponds, and thereon pushing to unknown shores,
in penetrating thickets in search of animal surprises, and all in the
delicious fear of kidnappings and lurking ambuscades. It was a good
education for the spirit, fostering courage and self-reliance, and
physically a wholesome counteraction to the Greek and Latin their
minds absorbed. The cultured sportsman is ever the soundest product of
civilization.

And then, all in a moment, and without a word of warning, the good
life ended. It happened on a memorable evening in March, when one, who
had been there once before, came a second time to visit the school.

He was a big man, with a heavy bloated face and dark restless eyes. He
had been handsome in his time; but years of passion and
self-indulgence had impaired the symmetry of features once comely in
their strength. Some sickness of soul, moreover, would seem to have
cowed an arrogance formidable enough in its day. His looks were
furtive, his manner propitiatory, as he stood up before the pedagogue
and stated his business. In fact, Mr Justice Bagott was a disgraced
and fallen man. He had been disbenched for that obliquity which in a
few decades time was to bring to the ground a far greater lawyer than
he. In accepting a heavy bribe from a litigant he had dishonoured
himself and disgraced his profession. And it had been no amelioration
of the offence that the litigant in question was a Papist. The
scandal, which might well have cost the Justice his head, had been
notorious enough to penetrate into the by-ways, along which it had
even come to reach the ears of Brion’s guardian himself. It had
agitated that simple soul, even into some fatalistic premonition of
what had actually come to pass. And now the blow had fallen: his
charge was demanded of him.

He went out of the room to seek the child--the pleasant parlour, with
its wainscotted walls and low timbered ceiling, which would always
thenceforth be associated in Brion’s mind with a dream of peace and
security--and returned in a little, downcast and sorrowful, holding
him by the hand. He had evidently, in that brief interval, broken the
fatal news. The boy seemed dazed and stunned; but he lifted his head
manfully to look the stranger in the face. He did not recall him: how
could he, who had seen him but once before? yet he read enough there
to recognise the finality of his sentence. And Bagott, for his part,
perceived a girlish-faced youngster, slim and tall for his age, with
fair hair and mouse-coloured eyebrows and lashes--personable material,
but giving so far no indication of the sort of spirit which informed
it. The boy was very pale, but whether by nature or through agitation
he could not tell.

‘Dost know me, child?’ he said--not unkindly, though his voice was
harsh.

Brion shook his head. ‘No, Sir.’

‘Troth,’ said the visitor, ‘eleven years may well wipe out
deeper-graven memories than that. I am thy uncle, Quentin Bagott,
child, who brought thee here, and am now to take thee hence. Wilt go
with me?’

The boy had to bite his lip to restrain his tears; yet he kept them
proudly back; and that the other noticed. For all at once he sighed,
raising his head and bowing it; and when he spoke his voice was
grievous.

‘Brion,’ said he; ‘of all of ours, we are the only two left to one
another.’

There spoke the broken soul, grasping in its fall at a child’s hand
where it would have flung away a man’s. And, in some rare way, the lad
understood. For he came forward, holding his head erect; and said he:
‘I will go with you.’

Bagott took the young face between his palms, and gazed searchingly
into the gray eyes.

‘Ay,’ said he--‘ay, she’s there----’ and, looking over his head, ‘a
tall slip, minister,’ says he, ‘and as fair informed within, I trow,
as his looks are telling. He credits you, i’faith.’

‘Sir,’ said the pedagogue, ‘we claim to have done naught by him but
after our nature and the terms of the bond, for which he hath repaid
us, in his love and duty, a thousandfold. For the rest I have asked no
questions and sought no knowledge--no, not even of your relationship,
which appears to me now for the first time; no, not even of why, on
that first evening, you demanded of my fear what my humanity would not
have dreamed to deny you. Take him; he deserves the best; I can say no
more--save that we shall miss him sorely. What day will it please you
that he leaves us?’

‘Here and now, thou most faithful steward,’ said Bagott, reddening
under that mild rebuke. ‘And as to that my first policy, I took the
short way, as I thought it, using the means to my hand at once to gag
and bind thee, lest thou shouldst prove refractory. Well, I say not
but that suaver methods might have served, and meekness lessoned
pride. Who makes a god of overbearing shall himself be overborne.
Enough, I have horses without, and the occasion is pressing. For the
boy’s baggage, it can follow.’

Then, indeed, was shock and lamentation; but, for all his urbanity,
the visitor was inexorable. So Brion must go to make his last adieux
of the house and people that for thirteen years had sheltered and
loved him, while his uncle and foster-father were at discussion to
close the account embracing all that ministering tenderness. It is
idle to dwell on the sad, fond scene, the more so as the spirit of
youth is elastic, and easily extended to new interests, so that, even
at the worst, there was a measure of consolation to be foreseen in the
prospect of unknown adventuring. But presently they all came out into
the road; and there in the blown evening was a man standing, and three
horses held by him in a group; at sight of whom some spark of ancient
memory glowed in the boy, and the name Clerivault sprang out of
nowhere into his mind. It was indeed that very cavalier who had made
his sword hiss from its scabbard like a snake on the day preceding
that of the beautiful lady’s appearance; and in an instant all that
forgotten episode came back into Brion’s mind, so that his heart
leaped to this comfort of one whom, in his great forlornness, he might
cling to as a friend.

Now the question rose of his knowledge to manage a horse; but he had
learnt that lesson, and learnt it well, of friendly neighbours, and so
was to be trusted. And in a moment he was astride, and, the others
following, turned, even with some pride of place in him, to cry his
last farewells. Whereafter they all rode away, the boy’s parting
vision being of good Mrs Angell, her face puffed and blowzed with
grief, the caul on her head awry, a napkin stuffed into her mouth, or
taken out of it to wave, and the little Alse, all tearful, clinging to
her skirts.

And so into the night and the unknown went Brion Middleton.




 CHAPTER III.
 THE JOURNEY WEST

The speed of the little party was the speed of Brion, but they made
what haste they could, for dusk was closing down, and the road none
too free of dangers. At first Bagott would have the boy to ride with
him, part for kindness’ sake, and part to draw from him the
particulars of his past life; but soon his questions lapsed into
vagueness, and he sunk into a preoccupation which lost account of
everything but its own dark melancholy. So Brion rode alone, Master
Clerivault lacking any invitation to join him, and indulged his own
unhappy fancies--which the cold wind and the gloomy road did nothing
to assuage--to the limit of their bent. To be uprooted in a moment
from that kindly soil, delivered to a relative of whose existence he
had never even guessed hitherto, haled out into the night and the
world, with an unknown future before him--it needed the utmost of his
young resolution to bear up under such a battery of strokes.
Sometimes, seizing him in gusts and spasms, his fate would seem to be
monstrous, impossible, a nightmare from which he would waken in a
little to hear Gregory breathing placidly in his bed by the window
that overlooked the quiet garden; sometimes, realising the truth, he
would be almost irresistibly moved to turn his horse’s head, and
gallop desperately back the way he had come. But he had a high spirit
to conquer, and a reason effectively to dismiss, such vain impulses.
Yet, though he rode stiff, his chin up, his heart was full of misery
and his soul of longing.

He was all at sea, too, as to the meaning of things. He had been wont
to gather, from the attitude of his playmates, and from the little
which, in his quiet observant way, he had managed to piece together,
that he was an orphan and alone in the world--though why alone, and
for what reason adopted, some instinct of pride in him forbade his
inquiring. He had understood that his treatment was in a manner
preferential, and may have childishly to himself debated the why and
the wherefore; but since the facts, as his intelligence could not but
comprehend, were designedly withheld from him, he would not seem to
seek what it was not wanted to tell. Indeed, from hints let fall, he
believed that his foster-parents knew really little more concerning
him than he knew himself; and, in that, for whatever they might
secretly surmise, he thought right; nor was the incident recorded as
happening on a day of poignant memory allowed by them to affect their
determination to close their minds to any conjecture or speculation
whatever as to the possible truth. And so had Brion grown in content
of ignorance, regarding his adoption as permanent, and never dreaming
that there existed one on whose favour he continued, and to whom he
owed duty and obedience as the solitary kinsman surviving to him, it
seemed, in all the world. Out of the amazing dark had this figure
risen, to claim and appropriate him--a great man, a Judge, as Mr
Angell, though with some seeming reluctance and agitation, had
whispered when he came to fetch him--and henceforth through this
apparition was he to approach so much nearer the mystery of his own
being. Well, there was attraction in that, but not so absorbing for
the moment as to assuage the anguish of this sudden severance from all
to which he was attached by the living ligaments of custom and
affection. He felt very lost and very lonely.

They got down to Lambeth after dark, joining by the road a party
happily met and agreed to combine against footpads, and took the
horse-ferry, close by the Palace gates, to cross the river into the
Honour of Westminster. And thence they wended their way through a maze
of narrow crowded streets, with dim lights hanging overhead like
ships’ lanterns suspended in shrouds, and presently, passing by the
Abbey, and the walls and ruined towers of the old deserted
Palace--vast cliffs of stone that loomed through the obscurity--turned
into the yard of the _Cock_ tavern and dismounted.

Now, so spent with cold and emotion was the boy that his brain was
insensible to any impressions save those of his own weariness;
wherefore he took but little notice of the novel matters about him,
but only obeyed blindly when he was directed up a flight of stairs
into a comfortable chamber, where a meal lay ready spread on a table,
and a good sea-coal fire burned in the hearth. He ate and drank as he
was told, asking no questions and being put none, while Master
Clerivault, appearing after attending to the horses, waited on him and
his uncle. There seemed a mystery and a silence about everything--the
place, the hour, the company he was in--and those, combining with the
warmth and animal comfort, so operated upon his senses that in the
midst of the meal he fell fast asleep, and thereafter remembered
nothing more till he awoke to sunlight in a little room. He sat up in
his bed, dazed for a moment, and then recollection rushed upon him in
a flood, and he sank back again overwhelmed; when, lying so, with his
eyes closed, presently he heard a footstep enter the room, and,
without moving, raised his lids just so as to peer under them at the
intruder. It was Master Clerivault, come in with a pile of clothes,
which it seemed he had been brushing and folding, and these he
proceeded to lay out ready, glancing in the act at the sleeper, as he
thought him, and afterwards going soft-footed about the room, to open
the casement and prepare the ewer for washing.

Now curiosity, ever the main tonic of youth, began to stir powerfully
in the boy, stimulated, no doubt, by the fresh sunlight, and the
unwonted sights and sounds about him; for with the opening of the
window had risen a noise of cheery gossip and the stamping of horses
from the yard below. So, widening his eyes, he took interested stock
of this individual, who had so unexpectedly returned upon him out of
the past. That past had been nine years ago, and without question the
mental enlargement of the interval spoke in his new observation; for
Master Clerivault did not seem to him at all what he had thought he
remembered him to be. It was not that he looked older, for in fact he
did not by a day; it was a question of the moral impression. The pale
staring eyes appeared now a little mad; the grotesque weakness of the
face, with its hanging underlip and its long nose dividing the
sardonic moustache, was its definite feature; what had figured for
martial in him suggested somehow the showy fustian of the stage. And
yet, through all, his aspect was likeable, and such as seemed to
invite confidences without fear of a rebuff. Watching him a moment,
Brion spoke:--

‘Where am I, Master Clerivault?’

The intruder started, turned round, advanced with a mincing step, and
leaning gracefully against the bedpost, one arm akimbo, answered in
that queer rusty hinge voice of his:--

‘In a room of the _Cock_ tavern, Sir, in Westminster town.’

Brion looked about him. He lay in his shift in a comfortable bed, the
appointments of the room were plain and clean, fresh rushes strewed
the floor, and there was a great bunch of rosemary on the window-sill.
Moreover, it was the morning of the day as of his own young life, and,
pay what dole he would to sorrow, a sense of exhilaration would rise
in him, to paint his fancy with bright anticipation. After all, a
beard and a gruff voice came early to the stripling in Elizabeth’s
time, and, though they were not yet for him, he was near enough to
manhood, as they read it, to hear, in his mind’s ear, its distant
shout to enterprise and glory. Suddenly he wanted to be up and afoot;
but there was some curiosity to feed first.

‘I remember not my passage hither,’ he said.

‘Sense and memory were out of thee,’ replied the other, tapping his
head twice. ‘Might have fired a great culverin in thy ear, and not
awakened thee. I carried thee--ha! in these arms.’

‘Master Clerivault,’ said the boy, ‘will it please you to tell me?’

‘Anything,’ was the answer, ‘that my reason and my honour permits.’

‘Who and what art thou, then?’

‘Who but Harlequin Clerivault, please your Grace, some time gentleman
of fortune, and since confidant and right-hand man to thine Uncle. He
hangs on me, ha!’

‘His confidant, say you? In what way of speaking, Master Clerivault?’

‘In the law’s way of speaking, Sir, which is to say that, being a
Judge, he hath judged most excellently of a paragon.’

‘Yourself, to wit?’

‘Thou hast said it, not I.’

‘What is it to be a paragon?’

‘It is to be the best of one’s kind, Sir, as a king most kingly, as a
knight most knightly, as a retainer the most capable and to be
trusted; to which mental graces those of the body should figure, as it
were, in apposition, whereby a straight leg should express honesty, an
arched brow love, or attachment, a chin slightly receding forbearance,
and a fine shape signify proportion in all. Possessing the sum of
which endowments, a man may call himself superlative, which is to be a
paragon.’

His lids half closed; he pointed his moustache with an inimitable air.
The corners of Brion’s mouth flickered.

‘I understand,’ he said. ‘And of all that my uncle was the judge? I
think he must be a great Judge, Master Clerivault.’

‘Great in judgment,’ answered the paragon, ‘but, alack, no longer a
great Judge or a Judge at all.’

‘Not a Judge?’

‘We have resigned, Sir, our Commission. Let it rest at that. The
question drops--in Law, _cadit quæstio_.’

Brion felt a momentary stupefaction; yet, after all, the news told him
nothing where he knew nothing. After a brief consideration, he
continued:--

‘Why do we stay here, Master Clerivault? Has not my uncle a house?’

The man coughed before answering:--

‘Ay, and to which we are wending.’

‘In London?’

‘Not so; but westwards in Devon--where his family was used to dwell.
’Tis called the Moated Grange.’

The boy sat with wide eyes. This was strange and bewildering enough,
to be sure, and not less so for the obvious reserve with which it was
all said. He thought again a little, then spoke out candidly:--

‘I see I can expect little satisfaction for my questions. Yet I am not
very happy, Master Clerivault, and I think you might know it.’

The poor fellow looked at him kindly; there was the suggestion of a
moist blink in his eyes.

‘Nay,’ he said: ‘all is well for thee; there is no need for
unhappiness, but caution is the keynote of the legal mind. _Mutiana
cautio._ What I may answer thee I will answer. Ask, in God’s name.’

‘Well,’ said Brion, ‘I would fain know why my uncle, after this long
abandoning of me to ignorance of his very existence, hath come at this
late hour to claim me for his own?’

‘Ha!’ cried the other: ‘I can satisfy thee there. It is sentiment,
Sir--pure sentiment; the desire of a man made lonely, and something
occupationless, to fasten to the only tie of kinship left remaining to
him.’

The boy did not speak again for a while. There was something moving in
his heart, some wonderful new sense of a warmth and meaning underlying
the chill enigma of these happenings. That to _him_, for some mystic
reason, this great overshadowing figure, with its dark preoccupations,
could be looking for solace and affection, seemed pathetically
incredible; yet the paragon spoke like one who knew, and he could not
misdoubt him. I think from that moment all dread of his strange
kinsman left him, and was supplanted by a shy confidence in his own
tender ability to play the part desired of him. They were alone in the
world, it appeared--just they two. The thought clung suddenly to him,
as his arms already in spirit clung about the desolate man. Presently
he sighed, and looked up.

‘What is to be done with me?’ said he. ‘May you tell me that?’

‘What duty and fondness may conspire,’ answered Clerivault, ‘and love
repay. Learning thou hast, and swordmanship shalt have, to beat the
brains of the world with a double edge. It is a fine place, the world,
in these days, Sir. There is a greatness come into it for anyone to
seize that hath the spirit and the courage. Dismiss what is lost with
a snap of the fingers. What is office but confinement--to live in a
Court when one might possess infinity. The horizons of the dawn arch
upwards, revealing new prospects: there is a wind blows in under them,
freighted with strange messages from gods and peoples never known
before. The matrix of this sweet motherland of ours heaves with birth
imminent: that great Triton of the sea that wed with her prepares a
glory for his sons. There shall be wings--ha! to sweep the stars
withal, or white as swans upon the waters, skimming down the moonlit
levels. Enlargement is in the air, and our English lungs expand to it.
Shall we not adventure with the rest, you and I? Here’s but a
necessary interval, till we come, like mewing hawks, to burst our bars
and rise to heaven.’

His wild eyes gleamed exultant; his voice squeaked and cracked; he
flung one hand aloft, as if to point the upward way. And Brion sat
regarding him, a little amazed, but still more curious. Presently he
said:--

‘_Are_ you English, Master Clerivault? I had not thought it.’

The effect of that simple question startled him. Harlequin skipped as
if a whip had lashed him. His eyebrows rose, his teeth set, incoherent
maledictions came reverberating over his palate down his nose. It was
moments before he could master his emotion.

‘Why?’ said he. There was actually moisture on his forehead.

‘I know not,’ said Brion, somewhat alarmed. ‘It was thy name, perhaps.
What ails thee at my question? If there was hurt in it, my ignorance,
not my will, was to blame.’

‘Fool, fool!’ muttered Clerivault, slapping his brow. ‘To quarrel with
the lamb because it bleats!’ He passed a trembling hand across his
mouth; his features stiffened into a mirthless smile. ‘God assoil
thee,’ he said: ‘but never ask me so again. _I_ not English! Then
England exists not save for curs and hybrids. Will it please you to
rise, Sir?’

His voice sunk from high protest to the civility of a servitor; and
indeed Brion knew not what he was nor how to treat him, his office
seemed so menial yet his soul so great. He tumbled out of bed,
however, and washed himself in cold water, with a ha’pennyworth of
mottled soap, and, while dressing, peeped often and curiously from the
window into the yard of the inn, where were ostlers rubbing down
horses, and maids flitting--clean girls with unconfined necks as white
as their aprons, and skirts close to their hips, which Brion thought
ever so much prettier than the full kirtles worn by the quality--and
here and there a blowzy carter staring owlishly over a mug of beer.
When he was ready, his attendant conducted him to a little timbered
room on the floor below, where he found Mr Bagott seated over a round
of cold beef and a stoup of ale on which he was breakfasting. He
nodded to the boy, and bade him be seated and fall to, for he had a
long journey before him.

So Brion obeyed, conscious that the dark gloomy eyes were appraising
him from under their heavy brows, yet feeling in some way secure and
not put out of countenance. And presently, Clerivault being out of the
room, his uncle spoke in a quick sudden manner:--

‘Hast slept sound, boy?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ he answered, looking the other straight and frank in the
face.

‘And favoured thine attendant?’

‘He is strange, Sir; but I favoured him.’

‘Ay, and questioned him, moreover?’

‘I have asked him many questions.’

‘Instance?’

‘Why, who and what he was himself for one.’

‘And his answer?’

‘That he was thy confidant and right-hand man--in his sort a paragon;
which was to say the best of his kind.’

A smile, like a tiny spasm, twitched the moody features.

‘Well, there’s no degree in him like best, since he’s himself alone.
What next?’

‘He said you were no more a Judge, and I asked him why, and he
answered you had resigned your Commission.’

He saw the eyes, as he spoke, blaze into an instant fire.

‘He said!’ cried Bagott. ‘A prating magpie, lacking tact and sense! No
more a Judge, quotha? I’ll bridle him, by God!’ He fumed and rocked,
muttering incoherences. ‘What further?’ he said presently.

The boy faced the question steadily.

‘Only that you would love me,’ said he, ‘if I would love you--as I
will.’

The other put his knife from him, leaning back in his chair. A
wonderful new softness had come to his face.

‘Thou wilt?’ said he. ‘Then that’s a bargain with us. Shall we be done
henceforth with subterfuge? I like thy trusty eyes. They are
thy--heart, but we’ll be friends! What if I am no longer Judge? You’ll
love me none the less?’

‘No, Sir.’

‘That’s sweet and well. What other question put and answered? Whither
we go?’

‘He told me ’twas to a house, the Moated Grange, where you was used to
dwell in Devon.’

‘A fair country, Brion, where we may live in peace and comfort,
forgetting all the plots and hateful toils that stretch to snare men’s
feet in these cursed warrens of the town. Harlequin is to take you.’

‘Harlequin?’

‘And I’ll follow betimes.’

‘Uncle?’

‘Well, boy?’

‘Is not Master Clerivault mad?’

‘How, mad?’ The black eyes conned him whimsically.

‘I know not,’ answered Brion. ‘His speech is so strange; and when I
misdoubted his English blood, he skipped and sweat with fury.’

Bagott nodded, smiling.

‘He did? He would, child: ’tis to touch him on the quick. Whatever
hybrid he, call him but out of his imagined birthright, and you put a
match to tow. England is not only all the world, but all the stars and
all the heavens to him. But, mad?’--the humour left his face; his
brows bent down--‘If madness is in devotion, then is he mad; if
madness is in incorruptible fidelity, then is he mad. And so,
perchance, would Reason call him, but not I his master, who saved him
from the gallows.’

Brion’s eyes and red lips opened together.

‘O, how?’ he said. ‘Poor Clerivault.’

‘Poor Clerivault!’ echoed the other. ‘A mad fool, maybe, for that he
held chivalry before self-interest. He was implicated in Ket’s rising
against the gentry in ’49, and brought up at Norwich assizes to stand
his trial. He would have been hanged, a mere tool of others, but that
I won him off; and since he hath given me the devotion of a dog.
Twenty years ago,’--his voice fell to rapt and wondering, as if he had
forgotten his audience--‘through bright fortune and sour, and he hath
never swerved from his allegiance. He hath learnt law; he is my
liegeman, clerk and bodyguard in one. One third coxcomb, one
gentleman, and one most rare poet and romantic--he dreams, and so
lives in his dreams that he half believes them true. Vain as a
peacock, simple as a child, sapient in vision--you must like poor
Harlequin.’

‘I like him very well, Sir’ said Brion--‘if I but knew how to bear
myself towards him. “One time gentleman of fortune,” quotha--’twas so
he called himself.’

‘God knows what he was!’ exclaimed Bagott. ‘His conceit will make him
twenty titles in a day, and not one to be believed. Only through all
there’s the sound core to him, like the good white heart in a
flaunting cabbage. He had a monkish schooling, that I know; and
thereby came his fall; for to the houseless friars who fomented that
rebellion he ought his foolish part in it. Well, he’s a fool i’faith.’

His eyes suddenly fixed his nephew’s in an unmoving stare; then he
rose from his seat, walked to the door, came back, and bade the boy,
with a commanding gesture, to stand up before him, when he regarded
the young face hardly.

‘What,’ said he in a deep low voice, ‘hath surprised me into this
confidence with a child? Small talk forsooth; yet, mark well, what I
trust to thy ear, howsoever little, keep in trust.’

He lifted the soft chin with his forefinger, and searched the fearless
eyes that did not flinch before his.

‘On my faith, Uncle,’ said Brion.

He answered, ‘That is well,’ and, waiting so a few moments, ‘Remain
here till Harlequin comes; then follow his directions,’ he said, and
turned, and left the room.

Brion would have liked to ask more questions, hinting at the mystery
of his own past; but he might not dare, with those fierce looks
probing him. Still, the sense of his being already in a measure
privileged gave him confidence, and he felt as cheerful as this sudden
transplanting of all his customs and affections to a new soil would
let him be, so that he awaited Master Clerivault’s reappearance even
with impatience.

The paragon returned in no long time, booted and cloaked for the
journey, and bringing the stirring information that they were to set
out within the hour from the inn yard, whence Mr Baggott had arranged
for them to join in with a company of traders and bagmen, all well
mounted and armed, which was to proceed by reasonable stages into the
West country, and was already gathering for its start. So down they
went, the boy being warmly clad against the cold, and found their
horses ready waiting with the saddle-bags on them, and a good party
assembled, most of them at their stirrup-cups, and all preparing,
inside and out, for a quick departure.

It was a wonderful time, so full of novelty and excitement for Brion
that there was no room in him for brooding or apprehension; but, when
they rode forth, his eyes were for twenty things at once, and least
for his own company, who were in truth as safe and sober-sided a set
of gravities as ever combined to make a prose of venturing. For which
reason Brion soon forgot them for the livelier interests about him. He
observed much, putting few questions to his companion--for that was
not his way, except he had a definite purpose in asking--but measuring
and marking in silence. The great buildings took him with wonder--and
most, naturally, the congregated cluster of the Abbey, with its fair
eastern chapel only then recently finished, and Margaret’s church, and
the half-ruined royal palace and hall, approached through a gateway
with octagonal towers which led into a mighty quadrangle with the
river shining beyond. But more he liked to note the people, and the
tumult and the multiformity of the crowds through which he passed. The
jolly sellers at their booths (each hung over with its insignia, like
the Cathedral stall of a knight-banneret), and their eternal chaunt of
“What d’ye lack”; the ballad singers bawling their wares, and the
loaded oyster-wenches dragging theirs; the gingerbread wife, the
fiddler at a street corner--no commonplace of them all but figured as
a very _lusus naturae_ to these young emancipated eyes. Once and again
a knight in armour, with his scarf at his shoulder and a plume in his
velvet cap, would come riding over the cobbles, scattering the crowd
right and left; and that to Brion was the finest sight of all. But
there was a funnier, which made him presently stare, and then go off
into a fit of giggling which he tried vainly to repress. For suddenly
he saw coming towards them the oddest figure of a woman he had ever
seen. She was old and pinched and raddled, with a great ruff round her
neck, and a high-crowned hat set askew on a wig as red as rhubarb. Her
stomacher stuck a foot below her waist, supporting an oval frame, over
which was draped a padded farthingale like a great swinging bell that
ended at her ankles; and thence projected a pair of gilt and painted
shanks, which were like nothing in the world so much as a couple of
enormous marrow-bones. It was only on her near approach that Brion
perceived these to be a sort of fantastic clogs, half a yard in
height, which she wore to the soles of her embroidered slippers, over
which they were strapped; but so little gravity did they afford to the
poor body that she needed the prop of a walking cane on the one side,
and on the other of a sweet ape of fashion in a French doublet, who
was her cicisbeo, to hold her up; in despite of which buttresses, she
had a hard ado to keep her equilibrium as she passed, smirking and
ogling.

‘Ay,’ said Clerivault, with an answering smile, hearing the boy unable
to suppress his merriment. ‘Only laugh small, if thou must laugh. When
oldest age mates with youngest fashion, she rightly bears derision for
her pains. Yet, for the fashion itself, it finds favour in exalted
quarters.’

‘What,’ said Brion: ‘those painted clogs?’

‘Not clogs, my young master, but chopines so called--a fashion brought
from Venice. You will see them once and again and mark their
indication. She was a small lady, that, yet a great lady.’

‘How, great, do you mean?’

‘Why, by the altitude of her chopine, Sir, which was as much higher
than a patten as her ladyship was above a fishwife. The measure of
that folly is the measure of its wearer’s rank.’

‘And does the Queen wear them?’

‘God forbid! She would have to go on stilts by the token. But when I
spoke of fashion, I meant these new-found farthingales, which, by’r
lady, are the very nadir of inelegance. Well, there is virtue in them,
they say; and what are we to carp at virtue, though in a fantastic
form. Let our maids go ugly, so they go chaste.’

Brion was puzzled, but he said no more; and other distractions quickly
engaged him. They were soon out of Westminster, going by the north
bank of the river, and, making in a little the village of
Chelsea--dear to bathers for its clear water and pleasant
meadows--rode through it and in no long while after reached the ferry
at Putney, where, at the cost of a halfpenny a head, they crossed the
river into the Manor of Wimbledon, seeing some men net and haul in a
brace of great salmon by the way. For the river here yielded not only
that excellent fish, but eke much smelt, and an occasional sturgeon or
porpoise, for which reason its waters were exceedingly prized by
anglers. Thence, going over an extended heath in close order, they
reached the royal town of Kingston, where, passing by the
church--whose great paschal candle, once kept perpetually burning
through the halfpennies of the faithful, the Reformation had at last
extinguished--Brion saw the very stone on which the Anglo-Saxon Kings
were wont to sit to receive their crowns, and was properly impressed
though not excited thereby. And here, at the _Castle_ inn, they dined
on calvered salmon and a huge baron of beef, with ale and sack to wash
them down, after which the young gentleman rode so sleepily in his
saddle that for miles he offered but a glazed eye to his surroundings,
and only looked forward to bed and the journey’s end.

They lay that night at Farnborough, whence they were to journey by way
of Salisbury and Dorchester to Bridport, and there take boat for the
Devon coast, crossing Lyme Bay to a little fishing village named
Torquay, which was the point nearest to their destination on the
moors. And all that they did, nor am I going to recount the details of
the journey, which was sufficiently tedious and without event. But
here one of their party would leave them, and there another, making
for the big towns, until from Dorchester they two issued alone, and
were so together till the end was reached. The weather all this time
was fine but cold, and Brion took his destiny manfully, though
sometimes his heart would fail him a little over the weariness of it
all. But whatever he might think or feel, there was the paragon always
at hand to hearten and entertain him, to paint the future in roseate
colours or improve the present with tales of his own past prowess and
extraordinary experiences.

So at the end of four days they came into Devon, and found themselves
towards a still bright evening riding into the little town of
Ashburton, some three miles north of which lay the Moated Grange.




 CHAPTER IV.
 THE END OF THE JOURNEY

At the _Golden Lion_ by the bull-ring the two halted to drink a
sack-posset, for the boy was very spent and weary. Good fifteen miles
had they ridden that last day, with three yet to cover to reach their
journey’s end; yet his fatigue was as much of the mind as the body.
The spirit which had sustained him throughout this long wayfaring
seemed now, in the near achievement of its objective, to falter and
lose heart. He realised all at once, as he had never yet done, his
abysmal severance from the old familiar life. The thought came upon
him with a force which certainly owed nothing to the dreariness or
inhospitability of the country he was in, for it was a fair and
friendly country, but to the felt unattainableness of his own. He was
like a sleep-walker, who wakes to find himself naked and alone in
spaces of impenetrable darkness, with his bed become a vague
remoteness, a warm refuge impossible for his distraught mind ever
again to locate or recover.

This reaction from a more expectant, or a more stoic, mood was due to
many things--physical exhaustion, that sentiment of isolation, more
than all, perhaps, to a doubt which had been slowly forming in his
mind as to the reality of the prospect he had pictured for himself.
That doubt had not until latterly come to haunt and disturb him; there
had been no room for it to germinate in the fullness and novelty of
the preceding days. He had found the greater world, on this his first
excursion into it, wonderful enough, but wonderful more by reason of
its spiritual renaissance than its material features. He did not, of
course, put it in that way, or realise that the spirit abroad was in
any sense other than the spirit he might have expected to encounter.
But in fact it was different, and he himself was unconsciously
infected by it. There was something stirring throughout the land which
had not been there before, a mental enlargement, a broadening view, a
sense of the wider aspects of nationality. It was like the wind that
comes with the turn of the ebb tide, the waking breath of a dreamer
who has been far and seen strange things, the burden of a rumour that
the world was vaster than men had supposed, and that men were freer
than they had supposed to explore it. Expansion was in the air, a
throb of drums and ring of enterprise, a vision as of a new dawn
breaking over the still smoking ruins of feudalism and intolerance.
And of this sense of shining spaciousness, having England for its
vivid nucleus, was somehow the prevalent atmosphere, into which Brion
had entered to feel without knowing it its buoyancy and inspiration.
He had ridden in it day by day; it had exalted his young spirit, and
painted for him in befitting colours the goal for which they made.
That he had always pictured to himself as something stately and
important, meet dwelling for the dignified leisure of one who had been
great but had done with greatness, a family seat in the ample sense.
In vision, even, he had seen it as a mystic castle on a hill, with
himself, a knight in silvery armour, riding up to its portcullis.

And now, with their near approach to their destination, had crept in
this doubt, this depression, which was like a premonition of
disillusionment. Was it, indeed, all to be as he had fancied, or
something very notably and very sombrely different? He had questioned
Clerivault as to the house and its life and surroundings, and it only
now occurred to him for the first time that the answers he had
received had been habitually reserved and evasive, general rather than
specific. Had there been an intention to hide some ugly truth from
him, or was it merely a lack of the descriptive faculty in his
companion which gave his statements such an air of foreboding?
Something, moreover, in the country itself seemed to deepen his
impression of loneliness and melancholy. It was not that it was not
beautiful, but that as they rode on they appeared to recede more and
more from the signs of human occupation, and to penetrate ever deeper
into the grip of a great solitariness. There was a sense of wild
desolate spaces at hand, of inhospitable emptinesses, unpeopled and
unexplored. The stretched resilience of his mind, like a released
catapult, flew back to the extreme of laxity; and he feared the worst.

The fact and the comfort of the little town reassured him somewhat.
Here was an oasis in the desert, and but three miles after all from
the Grange. There might, too, be other dwellings between. Then the
good drink warmed the cockles of his heart, and gave him renewed
vigour and courage. But he was allowed no more than time to consume
it, for evening was closing in, and his escort was nervous for the
road. There was some curiosity about them, news of their coming having
got abroad; but Clerivault refused to be drawn by the landlord or any
other, and in a few minutes they were on their way again.

They rode out due north, following up the course of the little river
Ashburn, which here was used to turn the wheels of a colony of
fulling-mills; and presently came out into rising country, very wild
and open. Nor was there any further sign of human habitation; but only
a great still sky, and a waste of rolling land heaved under it. The
sense of desolation increased; there was a call of strange birds from
the shadows; no spark of light or welcome greeted them from ahead; but
always the stark track went under, growing fainter and fainter.
Presently Brion, with a little quiver in his voice, put a question:--

‘Are we near arrived, Clerivault?’

‘In a little,’ was the short answer.

The boy was silent for a while; then opened desperately on the subject
in his mind:--

‘It must stand very lonely.’

The other cleared his throat.

‘Solitude, says the proverb, is often the best company.’

Brion felt a little shiver go over him.

‘Methinks I prefer the company to the proverb. Is solitude to be our
only one?’

‘Nay; but the best.’

‘And what for the second-best?’

‘There will be your Uncle, when he comes.’

‘And till he comes?’

‘There’s Clerivault.’

‘No more?’

‘Cry you mercy, Sir! I’m what God made me. If I could be a host in
myself, I would be it to please you.’

The boy was too worn and mind-weary to seek for words to mend his
meaning; but others broke from him in an impulse of despair:--

‘I think I shall fall and die if the end is not soon.’

The cry went to the good fellow’s heart. He brought his horse close
alongside, and put out a reassuring hand.

‘Nay,’ said he, ‘nay. Keep a brave spirit, sweetheart. ’Tis but a
short effort, and the goal is won. There have been others gone before
to prepare for us--Phineas cook, and young William scullion, not to
speak of great Nol the porter, who follows presently with his Honour,
and Gammer Harlock which hath rooted in the house so long that, like
the mandrake, she would shriek to be torn from it. God so! but we will
have gay company, with lights to greet us, and warmth and rich fare.’

He stooped to the boy’s bridle as he spoke, and, fetching away from
the little stream, whose course they had followed till now, swerved a
point or two to the north-east. Brion stiffened his neck, and sought
with his weary eyes to penetrate the gathered glooms, which as yet
yielded no sign of cheer or welcome. Only, at some indefinite point
ahead, they seemed to heap themselves into a blur of blackness, like a
stain of ink on wet gray blotting paper. The track beneath them was
hardly now to be distinguished; the irregular ground called for wary
riding, and their progress was slow. He looked up and thought he saw a
star falling in the sky; but it was a light crossing his brain. Then
he seemed to reel, and clutching at the saddle bow, ‘Clerivault!’ he
cried.

A cheery shout answered him: ‘The Moated Grange--ha!’ and in the same
moment his rein was caught by his companion, and they stopped. He
might scarcely give a sigh of joy, though discerning with his dim eyes
only shadow and confusion, when the other leapt to the ground, and he
heard the furious battering of his sword-hilt on echoing wood. Then
after an interval came a great flare of light, and a sense of figures
gesticulating in a swirl of red smoke, and of voices in deep
altercation. Whereafter he remembered nothing more, but only a sigh of
yielding and collapse, followed by a stillness which at first seemed
the rest of heaven, until things began to move in it, and faces to
appear, and inarticulate voices to babble and rage. He wearied to
escape them, to get deep down underground where he would find peace
and utter silence; but they came between, and forced him to stay and
listen. Then suddenly he was raised, for all that he felt himself
turned to a stone figure, heavy and enormous, with nothing alive in
him but his brain, and a gush of molten fire went down his throat,
setting him all ablaze. Sparks poured from his eyes; he could hear his
whole being crackling within like a burning gorse-bush--faster and
faster, while he whirled about in a mad frenzy. At the height, a flood
of warm water was flung, which extinguished the flames in a moment,
and, released and blissful, he sank away into an oblivion as sweet as
death.




 CHAPTER V.
 THE HOUSE BY THE MOOR

With a snore like the grinding on shingle of a boat’s nose which has
been run ashore at the end of a long smooth journey, Brion opened his
eyes from a period of the profoundest repose he had ever enjoyed in
his life. All the fever and the weariness were gone from him, though a
strange sense of lightness and giddiness had succeeded, so that he lay
blinking and yawning, incurious about his situation, and contentedly
waiting for it to develop itself as it listed.

There is a self-healing balm in the ‘liquid dew of youth’ whose
essence is a short memory, for when an evil is forgotten it is over.
Yesterday’s fret and exhaustion were no more to the boy now than the
bed on which his body rested--a pretext to luxuriate; and he remained
as he was until the balance between pleasure and curiosity insensibly
inclining the latter’s way spoiled the blissful equilibrium, when he
sat up, all at once actively interested in his surroundings.

The room in which he found himself was small and, as he assumed, high
up, for the low broad casement commanded from his position an unbroken
oblong of grey cloud. Its walls were panelled in dark oak, and the
ceiling was beautifully groined, with the cusps picked out in gold
leaf. Bed, press and the two chairs were all of the same rich wood,
carved and elaborated, and over the head of the first was a tester,
with hangings of purple damask having a gold border. A prince could
not have asked for more; and, if the rest of the house were in
keeping, he had reason enough to congratulate himself at least on the
quality of his exile. He slid to the floor, and ran to look from the
window.

His room was an eyrie, sure enough, and commanding a wild bird’s view.
He saw beneath him a space of bewildered land, bounded by dense low
trees, and thence and thereover, as far as his sight could reach, fold
upon fold of heathery country, like a great ground-swell breaking on
the horizon in a line of light, or revealing, as waves reveal in their
troughs, deep mysteries of sunken forests, and streaming rocks, and
clusters of upstanding birches that might have been the masts of
foundered ships. Once, twice, above the swell rose a mightier crest
crowned with stone, and a level cold sky roofed all. But, though wide
and liberal, it was desolate--no chimney or rising smoke to be seen
above the green anywhere.

Brion opened the casement, and looked down. The click of the latch
caught the attention of a man standing on a sward below, and their
eyes met.

‘Clerivault!’ cried the boy.

The paragon clapped his hands, exultant.

‘Wait,’ he cried, ‘while I come to you--’ and disappeared into the
house.

Brion hung out. He could make little of his position, save that it was
somewhere aloft in a medley of building, of which a projecting gable
cut off all but a narrow section. But to his right, where the house
ended, stretched a wide garden, less reassuring in its aspect than the
room in which he stood. For it was very tangled and overgrown, and so
run to a waste of weed that its flower and vegetable parts could no
longer be distinguished from one another; but all rioted in a dank
disorder, made more melancholy by the gloom of encircling trees, which
for ages, it seemed, had not been topped or pruned.

As he gazed, feeling a doubt creep over him, he heard a step climbing
the wooden stairs, and turned to greet his good comrade.

Clerivault’s eyes shone bright as he entered the room.

‘Ha!’ said he: ‘all’s well if thou art well.’

‘Well, but something giddy,’ said Brion.

‘’Tis food thou needest,’ said the other, taking him by the shoulders
and looking fondly in his face. ‘’Slid, but you frightened us, with
your tossing and babbling, There was witch Harlock would ha’ set a
poultice of black hellebore to thy midriff, to draw out the devil in
possession; but I would have none of it, and she cursed me for a fool.
“A must sweat or die,” quoth she: and, “My life for his,” I answered.
It was thy brain sought rest, poor wight; and what for that like good
burnt sack, mulled hot? And so we gave you, Phineas and I, and saw the
blessed dew come forth, even as you raved, and all thereafter peace.
God’s ’slid! but I was thankful. And did I overtax my trust,
sweetheart? Go to! you missed a rare supper. That Phineas knows his
part. But I could eat none of it till my heart was eased.’ His hands
moved on the young shoulders; he withdrew one of them to pass its back
across his wild eyes. ‘Come,’ he continued, in a husky voice: ‘the
morn is well advanced, and the board waits. There be arrears, ha! to
make up. Despatch, despatch!’

‘He loves me,’ thought Brion. ‘Poor Clerivault!’

A true tenderness was growing in his heart for this strange creature.
It was a comfort to think of their reciprocal attachment, binding them
comrades, in whatever trials might be in store for him. He dressed
quickly, eager, now the fact was achieved, to make the acquaintance of
the house. He would ask no questions, trusting better the witness of
his eyes, and came out of his room prepared for anything.

His general impression of what he saw, then and thereafter, may be
described as a mournful rather than a dejected one. It was of a queer
rambling place, tossed together without much system or coherence, as
if each succeeding owner had brought his own section with him to tack
on to the rest. The stairs and passages were labyrinthine; the rooms
for the most part mean though including a fine dining hall and ample
kitchens. Indeed the offices seemed disproportionately capacious, as
pointing to an original design on a larger scale. And as was this
structural incongruity, so was it with the furniture. The kitchens
were nobly provided; the living rooms for the greater part empty and
forlorn. The fire in the former burned in a huge range, the draught
from which turned a windmill which turned the spit; in the latter was
no accommodation for warmth whatever, save what braziers might afford.
Only in the great hall was a hearth, meet to its capacities; and only
there, and in one or two of the rooms, including his own bedchamber,
did Brion discover any signs of suggested occupation, such as chairs,
tables, cabinets and the like; and, in the hall, some hangings of
tapestry. The whole feeling the place gave him was one of quiet
sadness, of a wild and rather sweet desolation; and this from the
position and aspect of the house, when he came to be familiar with
them, no less than from the loneliness of its deserted chambers.

This Moated Grange was situated some three miles N. by E. of
Ashburton, in the midst of a lonely pasture, whose western limit
touched the moor. There was no house nearer than the last house of the
town. It stood on a tiny tributary of the Ashburn, which supplied the
moat surrounding it with water; but both sluice and ditch, long years
neglected, were choked with moss and growth, and the water slept
stagnant, black between its islands of duckweed, and overshadowed
throughout its whole compass by a rank luxuriance of bush and tree,
whose lower branches dipped in liquid slime. From the inner circle of
this moat--provision in long past days against the depredations of
wolves--the ground rose somewhat to the wall, scarce seen for foliage,
which ringed the whole estate; and here and there in its circumference
great masses of ilex had gathered and flourished, building a darkness
against the sky. Only in one spot was the fence of thicket broken, and
that was where the bridle track, branching from the main road, crossed
the moat by a stone bridge of a single span, and green with lichen, to
the great entrance gate of the court. This gate was set in a tall
rectangular turret of three sections, the uppermost plain, with a good
window, the middle ornamented with crosses and lozenges in timber, its
window square and small, the lowest containing the door, strong oak in
a massive frame and studded with iron nuts. A low peaked roof, crested
with a weathercock, surmounted this tower, which was moreover
supported on its right by a building in which were the stables, and on
its left by a shallow lean to, which served both as a buttress and for
the porter’s lodge. Thence on both sides ran the containing wall of
the property, whose whole aspect, in truth, suggested melancholy and
decay. Between the outer gate and the house itself--the latter a
heterogeneous congeries of parts, gabled and timbered--there was no
stone in the narrow court but was green with moss, no broken shard
which had fallen from a roof but had dulled its sharp edges against a
generation of rain. Grass grew in the crannies of the walls, in the
stone mullions of the windows, in the joints of the semi-circular
steps before the main door. A strange still place, very remote in its
sorrowful isolation from the picture the boy’s fancy had painted; yet,
to the explorative soul of youth, not altogether without its uneasy
charm.

Brion, wondering a good deal, after his first curious inspection of
the home which was henceforth to be his for good fortune or ill, put a
wistful question or two to Clerivault, who had been playing the silent
cicerone to his charge, furtively watchful the while of the impression
things made on him:--

‘Is it to be just you, and me, and Phineas, and William, and old
Harlock and Uncle Quentin--only us, always, living alone here
together?’

‘And Nol porter,’ cried Clerivault cheerily: ‘Art forgetting him--the
jolliest he of us all, and thrice the man in bulk of any other.’

The boy was silent awhile. Perhaps he was thinking of kind Mrs Angell,
and of Alse, and of what sort of substitute the old witch woman would
make for those gentle ministrants.

‘Yes,’ he said presently, ‘I shall like to see Nol porter,’ and was
quiet again, turning over something in his mind. ‘Clerivault,’ he said
then, ‘was what is in the house, my--my bed, I mean, and the rest of
the things, here before we and the others came?’

‘Narry one, Sir,’ was the answer. ‘The place was as naked as my hand.
What thou seest was sent down from his Honour’s house in London. Think
not but there’ll be more despatched anon. We’ll have a cosy nest
before we’re finished.’

It came to be as he said, indeed, a great cargo of furniture,
including many pictures and a quantity of valuable plate and
knicknacks, arriving presently by convoy; yet there was never enough,
all told, to make more than a scanty show about the house, and to the
last the majority of the rooms remained as when Brion first saw them,
vacant of everything but dust and spiders.

‘What makes you to ask?’ questioned Clerivault, a little curiously.

‘I was thinking,’ said Brion, ‘of him that lived here before us.’

The man’s countenance fell.

‘Who told you of him?’

‘It was Gammer Harlock.’

‘A murrain on her withered tongue!’ exclaimed the other irritably.
‘Lived, lived! Why, what is a house but to live in!’

‘She told me his name,’ said Brion. ‘It was Matthew Fulk, and he was a
sad miser. He has been dead a year and more now; but all during the
latter half of his dwelling here she lived with him alone as his
servant--only she and none other. This house had been his for twenty
years, maybe; and in the first of that time there was a young maid,
his niece, that abode with him. But her he murdered, and cast her body
down the well in the well-house, and gave out that she had gone off
with one of the rebel troopers that marched to the siege of Exeter in
the time of the great riots.’

‘And why should she not have?’ The pupils of Clerivault’s eyes stared
like a cat’s.

‘Because,’ said Brion, ‘after his death they would cleanse the well of
its foulness, seeing the water had rotted there undrawn since the maid
was lost; and in its slime were found bones--human bones, Clerivault.’

‘More liker some dog’s or sheep’s,’ said the other scornfully. ‘Why
should he murder her?’

‘Because the devil whom he served asked a sacrifice of him.’

Clerivault snorted.

‘Ah, hold your peace! This is the very lunacy of superstition. I knew
the man, Sir--was here with him on legal business four, or it may be
five years ago, and plumbed his very soul. A gripping, sour-lidded
curmudgeon: but murder! He feared the law too much. These be old
wives’ tales, and she who utters them a potion-brewing witch. Give her
no credit, I entreat you.’

Brion did not answer, pursuing his own train of thought.

‘Clerivault,’ said he in a little, ‘it must be long since my Uncle
dwelt here.’

‘How?’ asked the other.

‘Why, if this Fulk was twenty years a tenant?’

‘Was he? Well, we’ll not quarrel to a hair. But ’tis long as thou
sayest--since he was a boy, in truth.’

‘A boy!’ Brion actually laughed. It seemed so impossible that that
tremendous being could ever have been a boy--like himself.

‘The Bagotts,’ went on Clerivault, ‘were big people here in the past,
portreeves, and lords of the Stannary Court in Ashburton. They owned
mines, and prospered. But, on one cause or another, they were for ever
at litigation, and in the end that cracked them. The law was in their
blood, i’faith, and imposthumated, as it were, in thine Uncle--came to
a great head, and burst, imperilling his life. It was time for him to
withdraw from it.’

‘Was his life imperilled?’

‘Say his reason, at least.’

‘Had he never brothers or sisters, Clerivault?’

The man glanced quickly at the boy before answering.

‘One sister,’ said he, in a restrained voice; ‘but she died. Art his
sole kin in all the world, young master. Be thankful for it. Love him
and he’ll repay thy love. To those he trusts he’s ever gentle and
considerate, fierce and proud though he profess in the world’s eye. Do
we not know him--Phineas a master cook, and the boy William, and
honest Nol and myself? Else should we, brilliant children of our
parts, have been content to follow him into this exile, to sink our
gifts in solitude, to serve him in sour misfortune as in prosperity?
He has the trick of attachment, like some men with animals.’

‘What misfortune?’ asked the boy wonderingly.

Clerivault bit his lip.

‘Did I not tell thee?’ said he. ‘The law, taken in excess, like wine
affects the reason, and he was too full of it for health--it impaired
his judgments. Wherefore his decision to resign, and to seek amid
these scenes of peace the restoration of his faculties. Misfortune
enough--ha! to be reduced, in plenitude of one’s power, to a sick
nonentity.’

Brion, though marvelling a little that it should have been deemed
necessary to hide so simple an explanation from him, was satisfied
with it now it had come. He understood at last the meaning of their
withdrawal into these country seclusions, and was both sorry and proud
for this great-souled relative of his, who had so nobly resolved to
put conscience before self-interest.

The two walked on a little; and then said Clerivault, breaking a
silence between them: ‘This place consorts not with your dreams,
mayhap, of what was to be; yet shall you come to be as happy as the
day in it. We are few, but the moor is big. It is a wild free life
thou shalt lead, and content and lustihood shalt thou draw from it.
Now mount with me, I prithee, to thy chamber once again, and I will
show thee things.’

So they went up together, and there found Gammer Harlock busy
bed-making. She was an old woman, bent and bony, but with an amazing
vigour in her attenuated frame. Her face was of the hatchet shape,
with an aquiline nose and slow projecting eyes, and the compressed
austerity of her mouth so drooped at the corners as to make her chin
appear a separate attachment, moving on a pivot as in a mask. But she
was scrupulously neat, no rent in her cloth of frieze gown, no stain
on her close linen coif or the partlet about her withered neck. She
showed no knowledge of their presence, but went on with her work.

Clerivault sniffed and scowled.

‘Better employed in making his bed, Gammer,’ said he, ‘than in
poisoning his mind.’

‘Eh, jackanapes!’ she answered; ‘are ye there, and talking?’

She did not turn her head. Her voice was like a low whine, harsh yet
thin.

‘Talk and hang,’ said he, ‘you old devil. Will you tell me this: Why,
if Fulk committed murder and you knew it, you shouldn’t be broke for
an accessory after the fact?’

Her eyes turned on him like a crab’s.

‘Because he was dead when I knew it, ye fine lawyer.’

‘And being dead,’ said Clerivault, ‘you think it safe to asperse his
character, which is slander and defamation. Art on the horns of a
dilemma, old witch.’

She made a sound of thin derision.

‘Call his character to witness, and call again. Ye’ll get no answer,
for he had none.’ She turned on him with some repressed fury. ‘Attend
you to your business and leave me to mine. Nine year come Pentecost
have I lived and served in this house; doing by it what was never
asked in the bond; sweeping and garnishing throughout, though Fulk he
lived in no more than two of its rooms; and all for a scant pittance
and less meat. Do I know its every rat and shadow, think you, ay and
its ghosts that walk and its voices that whisper, to be told by a
niddipol lawyer’s clerk, that hath scarce set foot in these silences,
what to make of them but scorn and mockery. There are eyes for those
that can see and ears for those that can hear: but it is aye the fool
that misdoubts others, and the wise man himself.’

‘Misdoubts what?’ said Clerivault. ‘These maggots of a flyblown brain?
Well, God quit you of your “shadows”; but not by way of my charge
here, who looks to a homely home, and beings of flesh and blood for
company, and not the fancied wraiths of fancied crimes. To call a
house possessed is an offence at law; and when the house is a judge’s
house--take heed, gossip, take heed, I warn you. His Honour is not the
man to suffer the corruption of his kin or the branding of his
property.’

He ended harshly, and turned to Brion, leaving the old woman
muttering.

The boy had heard his comrade, half shocked and half amused. The
castigation seemed to him to exceed the transgression. After all,
though he had been fascinated and thrilled by the tale she had told
him, he had not been frightened. He was a level-headed youngster, and
not easily scared. Clerivault pointed from the open casement.

‘See yonder,’ said he, signifying a hill some mile and a half
north-west of the Grange: ‘Rippon Tor, they call it, that hath its
logging-stone; and, farther north, that’s Hey Tor, with its mighty
crown of rock. We’ll climb it together, and get a view will do you
good. Out west there stands Buckland Beacon, that we may yet live to
see fired, and south of it the waters of the Dart, where they bend
about Holne Chase. That’s a sweet and noble demesne, owned by the
lords of Buckland, but the house let now to Sir John Medley, a rich
City Knight and rogue from London, that hath a fair young daughter,
Mistress Joan yclept, his sole child and heiress.’

So he continued, expatiating on the beauties of the moor, and planning
expeditions here and there to gorge, or glen, or hidden hamlet, where
draughts of golden cider were to reward the sweet and happy toil of
adventure. He was eager to dwell on the near approach of the long warm
days, eager not only to reconcile the boy to his lot, but to kindle in
him an enthusiasm for it. And Brion, in face of those fervent
adjurations, was not slow to catch fire, or to forget, in bright
anticipation of long walks and rides, and hawkings, perhaps, and
fishings in the clear tumbling streams, the sadness of his home
surroundings.

As presently they turned from the window, a thought occurred to him,
not for the first time.

‘Clerivault,’ he said, ‘why is this my room so fair above all others
in the house?’

‘Well, it was a chapel in the old days,’ answered the man, but after a
moment’s pause, and with, it would seem, a certain reluctance.




 CHAPTER VI.
 SOME NEW FRIENDS

Days passed, and largely in the glamour of those expeditions which
were to breed in the boy something more than a reconcilement with his
destiny. And indeed, what with vigorous exercise, health, a mighty
appetite and fine weather, Brion was soon in the mind to welcome
solitude, though in a desolate mansion, as a condition as admirable as
any which could have befallen him. He and Clerivault, his constant
companion, were for ever on foot or on horseback, galloping over the
moors, penetrating to town or village, or scrambling over rock and
fell in search, pedantically, of the picturesque. They climbed the
great tors, and swung the famous logging-stone; they explored the
loveliest ravines, and overhung, from the rocky salient guarding Holne
Chase, the waters of one of the fairest rivers in England. They
fished--with small success, and shot--with none, at fowl of sorts,
using for the latter purpose Clerivault’s pistols, which were short
Italian ‘daggs,’ so called, heavy weapons with wheel-locks, and the
last to prove effective against nimble game. Then in the early evening
they would return, fagged and happy, to a great delectable meal,
served up in Phineas cook’s most incomparable manner.

This Phineas, like the true artist he was, never condescended to be
less than himself, though in such minor matters as the gratifying of a
green palate. He had been long with the Judge--who, in the business of
the table, was something of an epicure--and, like the other three
lealties, was sufficiently his devoted henchman to be ready to follow
his fortunes into virtual exile. He was a little long-faced man, with
a pointed scrap of beard, and a serene conceit of himself so equable
as to be impervious to provocation. His hands were very white and
capable, and he habitually wore round his neck the gold chain with
which the Lord Chancellor had decorated him on the occasion of a
famous banquet given by his master to the Benchers of Gray’s Inn. A
cook by profession, he was a genius by intuition, and handled his
tools, as a supreme painter his brushes, with the unerring vision
which in a few touches will give form and distinction to another’s
mediocre design. An ordinary recipe became with him one of those
plagiarisms which transcend their originals. In matters of sauce he
was a rigid purist, holding that selection was the keynote of
efficiency, and greatly abominating those indiscriminate jumbles of
ingredients with which lesser cooks sought to cover up their ignorance
and achieve a chance applause. As every soul was said to have its
affinity in the world, so every dish, in his creed, had its certain
complement, and it was no more right or moral to introduce a fifty
different herbs and other garnishes into the pot, in the hope of the
right one being there, than it would be to furnish a man who wanted a
wife with a harem to seek amongst. Such Apician miscellanies as
‘lovage, coriander, mint, rue, anchovies, pepper, pine-nuts, raisins,
wine, sweet cheese and oil,’ as a relish to boiled goose, he regarded
as enormities, and to be counted only with the filthy potions brewed
by Mrs Harlock and her like; but the cook who aspired to the term
master should aim rather at the perfect sympathy of meat and
seasoning, whereby each, like a loving partner, should prove its own
value by emphasising the virtues of the other. To this end simplicity
was the first and surest of means, combined with a perfect instinct
for the hypostatic union of flavours, and for that psychologic moment
reached by the revolving spit when ‘done to a turn’ was inaudibly
announced from its well-basted burden. There was none could make plain
roast and boiled more delectable than Phineas; as indeed Brion and his
companion had good reason to know. He loved to have a hearty appetite
to operate on, and would stand and expound his views to the boy, much
entertaining that young gentleman, while watching his vigorous
enjoyment of the good things provided for him. He liked the youngster,
as indeed all associated with him came to do, at first for the
master’s sake, but soon enough for his own. He was a prepossessing
stripling, in truth, comely in appearance, but attractive more by
reason of his gentleness and native urbanity than his looks. And at
the same time he had a courageous spirit, to which Phineas loved to
supply the animal fuel. There was no stint of that, at least, at the
Grange. The bills of fare comprised haunch of venison, wild boar’s
cheek, boiled leg of pork, salt buttock of beef (outside cut), sheep’s
head (served with an electuary of unknown composition, but
entertaining honey), oyster of veal, and other such goodly pièces de
resistance. There was a certain ‘Karum’ pie, hoarding in its ambrosial
depths treasure of beccaficoes and savoury jellies, to which Brion was
mightily partial; and fish there was in plenty, turbots and soles and
lobsters from the coasts, and lampreys from the rivers; while, for
game, they had moorland partridges, and knots and godwits and hares.
To enumerate the delicacies would be idle, though mention must be made
of a peculiarly appetising broth with a boned duck floating in it, of
a thoughtful hash of calves’ feet, and of a ragout of cocks’-combs
with savoury balls which had to be eaten to be understood. But these
were kickshaws, and, in Phineas’s philosophy, less illustrative of the
culinary art than the plain joint made beautiful. His crowning
achievement in their respect was a particular cream sauce, which, like
the relish invented by the Marquis de Béchamel, was of that
seductiveness that it could have made a mother-in-law, with all her
bitterness, ‘go down.’

One might imagine that, with all this gastronomic petting, Brion would
end by thinking too much of his food; but, indeed, in his healthy
young mind, he regarded it only as he regarded sleep, a need of nature
the better for being sound. And that was Phineas’s own view.

‘A dinner remembered,’ said he, ‘is a dinner discredited, and that
forgotten as soon as eaten does best honour to the cook. For it is
honour to be the begetter of generous thoughts, which spring from good
digestion; and a man if he be fed well, and as a proper cook should
desire him, ponders not on that he hath consumed, but rather on the
great visions which arise from his content and satisfaction. Whereas,
should the food itself linger in his mind, it is odds but what he will
presently have cause to wish both it and himself at the devil. All
human functions are tolerable only to the moment when one is conscious
of them: and that is digestion, to which your cook is physician in
trust, as it were, to prevent what the others seek to cure.’

‘Methinks,’ said Brion, ‘the best physician is plainness and
frugality. The Spartans lived on black broth alone, and were brave
soldiers and healthy men.’

‘Anan?’ said Phineas.

‘They were a race,’ answered the boy; and added, with a twinkle:
‘other than that one who, tasting their broth, declared he no longer
wondered over their indifference to death, seeing that this was all
they had to live for. Good Master Angell, too, was wont to say that
Heaven blesses a simple appetite.’

Phineas struck his nose with his forefinger three several times.

‘These Churchmen,’ said he--‘they will dogmatise. What mandate had he
from Heaven to speak for it? I could say that Heaven loves to
encourage good eating; and could give you book for it too.’

‘Give it,’ said Brion.

‘Hast heard of St Patrick,’ answered Phineas--‘the apostle of the
Kerns? Well, God quit him for that--he was a good and holy man, for
all he had his moments of weakness. One came to him on a fast day,
when the sight of two fat pork chops on a platter was too much for his
resolution. But he had no sooner helped himself thereto than, his
conscience smiting him, with a prayer to Heaven for forgiveness he
cast them from him into a pail of water standing by, whereon they were
instantly converted, by God’s grace, into a brace of lusty trout.
Nothing less, look you--no red herrings from Heaven. And what, I would
ask you, of Cana its feast? Was it your black broth Christ changed the
water into? Go to, for your plainness and frugality--and with your
mouth full of my veal pasty!’

Brion laughed: ‘If it had been that to tempt St Patrick!’

He was popular with them all, as said: but with none so much as
Clerivault, who regarded him as his especial trust and intimate, and
was jealous of any fancied encroachment by another on his preserves.
He taught the boy the use of arms, and practised him in sword play,
against the time when he should have a ‘rapier and a baselard with a
sheath of red’ of his own to hang at his side. That was a reminiscence
not unreferred to, you may be sure. Brion, as he grew in confidence
with this comrade, would open his sedate young heart to him, and ever
a little and a little less shyly; until once he ventured on a direct
question:--

‘I have often wondered and wanted to ask you, Clerivault. You remember
that day, so long ago, when we first met?’

‘Ay,’ answered the other curtly, and with a watchful manner, as if he
foresaw what was coming and prepared himself with his guard.

‘You would know of me, would you not,’ said Brion, ‘where Master
Angell lived?’

‘Ay,’ was the short answer again.

‘Yet you had no need to learn.’

‘Had I not? Your reason, an it please you?’

‘Because you knew already; else had Master Angell not asked astonied
what brought you there, and, out of your wont, by day.’

Clerivault made an acrid face.

‘A certain Grecian was heard to remark,’ said he, ‘that he detested a
boon-companion with a memory. Are my sins, then, to find me out, and
in the name of friendship?’

‘So you own you meant to deceive me?’

‘It would seem so.’

‘Why, Clerivault?’

‘I will tell you, like an honest man. It was not in his Honour’s then
design to confess your relationship, and I, who acted as his
purse-bearer, judged it advisable to give your sharp infancy no chance
scent to nose on. Wherefore, though I had been there many times
before, I appeared ignorant.’

‘And you came, out of your wont, by day? Why?’

‘These whys are like house-flies. Brush one away and another settles.
I came, if you would know, to bring a message. There’s a simple answer
to a simple question.’

Brion pondered awhile, his clear eyes fixed on the other’s conscious
face.

‘Had the message aught to do, I marvel,’ said he suddenly, ‘with two
that accosted me at the Queen’s passing the next day? They were the
Lord of Leicester for one, and with him a sweet lady.’

Clerivault gave a little gasp, and looked up, and down again.

‘God’s ’slid!’ he exclaimed; and bit his lip. ‘What mad question is
this?’

‘Is it mad?’ said the boy. ‘Well, then, it is mad. Yet there were the
two, riding alone and seeming to look for my master and me, where we
stood, by his directing, apart from the others. And when they espied
us they drew rein, and the lady bade me to put foot in her stirrup;
and she held me, and, as she held, she kissed my lips and whispered if
I was happy.’

Clerivault cleared his throat, yet answered as if something still
obstructed it:--

‘A mere casual impulse, Sir--take my word on’t. Something moved her in
thy baby face: perchance she had lost a child. And, as to this
Leicester, as you call him----’

‘Not I. It was one spake him so, riding back with a message from the
Queen. And the lord was wrathful to be so confessed, and struck the
man with his whip across the face, so that I could have struck him in
his turn.’

Clerivault, with his mouth forming an answer, stared as if petrified.
He had never yet seen such fire in this discreet dove’s eyes, and it
opened his own.

‘In law, hearsay is no evidence,’ he began, muttering; but the dove
stooped upon him with flaming vision:--

‘Do you dare to question my word?’

Clerivault started back.

‘Cry you mercy, Sir! Not for the wide world. I but spoke by instinct
the fashion of the trade. Well, I see that blood will out. I must mind
for the future my p’s and q’s.’

The boy was still incensed. There was, in truth, a little devil of
pride in him, not often to be provoked, but, when it flared,
significant of a thing or two. It was a lesson to Clerivault, in whose
manner thenceforth some little show of patronage was exchanged for a
greater deference.

‘It was the Lord of Leicester, I say,’ said Brion.

‘It was the Lord of Leicester, since you declare it,’ answered the
other, with a downcast look.

‘Why do you not answer my question, then?’

‘What question, please your grace? My memory is consumed in this
fire.’

‘What connection there might be between the message you brought and
the appearance of those two on the road?’

Clerivault’s brow went down and his lower lip up. Desperation was
making him sulky.

‘The message was not mine,’ he said, in a tone of chill civility. ‘As
well ask the conduit what message it bears from the river to the
fountain.’

Brion flung away. He was in a passion, and he had let his passion
defeat his particular purpose. He had meant this question to
Clerivault to serve as prelude to another even more curious and
intimate; and now he could never put it. His pride would prevent him.

But reason soon reasserted itself, and with it came shame that he
could have treated his so faithful henchman and comrade with such
unkindness. And so, no sooner was his heat departed, but he sought out
the poor fellow, and very sweetly asked forgiveness for his rudeness,
saying that the fault was his own to have tempted an abuse of
confidence, and that, in refusing him, Clerivault had not only
vindicated his own honour, but had taught him a lesson in faith which
he would not be quick to forget. All of which he said very feelingly,
but with a stately manner, as though bestowing his own punishment on
himself; but it so wrought on his hearer as quite to overcome him with
emotion.

‘Thou dear soul!’ he cried. ‘If I might seek thy confidence without
hurt to my trust!’

But Brion stayed him, with the action of a young prince.

‘It would hurt my honour more than thy trust. Say no more on it, I
beseech you. I _wish_ no more, and that is enow.’

And they were friends again, but at changed angles; the boy was a
little more the patron and the man the client.

Yet it is never to be supposed that these sober and dignified
relations represented the all of their comradeship. There was another
side to it, which, if less sedate, was infinitely more humorous.

If Clerivault was for one part in three a rational and incorruptible
sobriety, he was for the other two a fantastic braggart, and a liar of
that splendid order which soars easily above the possibilities, and
will not be baulked in its romances for the insignificant reason that
the evidences of their untruth are there for anyone who likes to
consult them. And as to making himself the hero of his own imaginings,
after all, if one _is_ inventing, it would be the merest quixotry to
allot to another the brightest part in one’s extravaganzas. He was, in
fact, exactly as his master had described him, a tridimensional
mixture of gentleman, rhapsodist, and coxcomb, the whole being held
together like a bunch of wind-giddy feathers in a jackanapes’ cap, by
the steadfast jewel of fidelity.

Brion came very early to see into what was in truth a quite lovable
transparency in his comrade, and, while measuring him leniently, to
take a rather wicked pleasure in drawing him out and on, withal with a
due consideration for his feelings. He was careful, for one thing, not
again to offend that super-patriotism which was such a fervid quality
in the dear fantastic--on the principle, possibly, that your convert
is ever your ultra dogmatist. But, however that might be--and
trustworthy evidence on his own part was not to be hoped of Harlequin;
perhaps he himself was ignorant of his origin--love of his England
glowed like a fierce fire in his bosom. He often rhapsodised on the
great vague things he and Brion were destined in good time to
accomplish for their country; he would rant and hyperbolise in mystic
terms, touched with real vision, on her mighty destiny. The boy would
mark him, with a whimsical gravity, and wonder what great place he
supposed Fate had assigned him in her scheme of things. He hardly
appeared the sort of instrument she would choose for carving a way to
new dominion: even, soldierly, Brion had already a secret suspicion
that he was not quite the shrewd swordsman he professed, since he
himself, for all his inexperience, could sometimes better him at the
foils. But certainly he was full of gas; and that might exalt him. The
young rascal delighted to supply the fuel for that expansion.

‘Clerivault,’ he said once, ‘it would seem that my Uncle, from what he
let fall to me, holds you in great esteem.’

He could venture on so much, while remembering the Judge’s warning. He
would have liked to hear Clerivault’s own version of the dramatic
happenings which had first outlawed, then inlawed him, so to speak, on
the principle, one might assume, of setting a thief to catch a thief;
but he could not admit a knowledge of the facts without betraying the
great man’s confidence.

The other smoothed his chin, with an ineffably complacent expression.

‘Ha!’ said he. ‘He might admit he has reason.’

‘I know,’ said the boy, nodding his head soberly. ‘It is not every
man’s good fortune to be gifted with a paragon.’

‘Nathless I would not grudge it him,’ said Clerivault; ‘for in truth
no man deserves it better, or could more appreciate its moral and
corporeal value. Yet was it good fortune, as thou sayest, to light on
this fallen star, hung never in the constellation of the scales, but
shed like a glittering gem from Mars his fiery breast. I had not been
a lawyer but for love of one man.’

‘He found you fallen, you say, Clerivault? How?’

‘No matter. Kings fall: I have Kings’ blood in my veins, ha! He who
hath commanded knows how to serve. I have served and do serve like a
King. To the greater light the lesser is but a shadow; and yet it is a
light. I am myself, Kingly; and yet I am no King. But when all men
shall be Kings and all Kings men, then shall the world open its eyes
and see the Millennium. And in the meantime I serve, Kingly.’

Brion opened _his_ eyes to this astonishing rodomontade. Laughter
quivered in him, though he dared not yield to it.

‘In what way Kingly?’ said he.

‘As one who leads, Sir,’ answered Clerivault, ‘while feigning but to
follow.’

‘And do you lead my Uncle, while so feigning?’

‘Soft, in your ear, now! Gray’s Inn might tell a tale.’

‘Gray’s Inn?’

‘Ha! You know not. ’Twas there we had our dwelling--no chambers nobler
or more noted; and he who occupied them a fitting brilliant to such
setting. Ancient, barrister, bencher--he had stood to reach the
highest honour, that of duplex reader, but that sour Fortune tripped
him. He shone, Sir; and, if like the carbuncle, which, being exposed
to the sun, and thereafter set in darkness, repays the light it
borrows, still--he shone. I say no more.’

He need not. The implication was plain to demonstration.

‘Wert thou the sun, Clerivault,’ said Brion, with a little gasp, ‘that
made this carbuncle so to shine?’

The paragon coughed.

‘No sun, Sir, by your favour--I know my limitations--yet mayhap with
some power to illuminate. He might consult me--I do not say--there
have been judgments passed for his, which--but it ill becomes a man to
praise his own wares. You have never heard speak of our “mootings”?’

‘No. What were they?’

‘Disputations, Sir, convened in the Great Hall to argue moot points of
law. There would be a counterfeit case stated, and counsel appointed
to represent both plaintiff and defendant. Then was the cream of legal
subtleness displayed, and not least in the devising of new theses for
discussion. I could tell of one that possessed a happy adroitness in
such contrivings, though he might not appear in person to claim the
credit of his own inventions. But, like the puppet-master who, himself
unseen, pulls the strings that set his dolls a-dancing, he was the
known originator of some debates most admired in their subjects. So
with our masques and revels, wherein, were some great fresh device
apparent, one would be named for its certain author who shall not be
named by me. No, not rack nor the strappado should wring divulgement
from these lips.’

So he would ‘gas,’ in the modern term, and to the infinite tickling of
his young hearer, who, nevertheless, found his affection for the queer
creature increased rather than diminished by this knowledge of his
weakness. Ingenuous vanity is ever the most forgivable.

In the meantime the days went on, and passed into weeks, and still the
master of the house delayed to appear. Brion wondered, and would
sometimes put his wonder into words, seeking the reason of Clerivault.
But it was so apparent that the man either knew of none, or, if he
knew, meant to keep his own counsel in the matter, that soon the boy
desisted, and resolved philosophically upon making the best of the
situation as he found it, and leaving all conjecture for present
content. And that was the wise course to take, however sudden the turn
which brought it to an end.




 CHAPTER VII.
 THE OLD WELL HOUSE

One night Brion woke suddenly from a disturbed sleep, and sat up in
the dark, his heart thumping. He had been dreaming, and in his dreams
it had seemed to him that something shadowy and noiseless had entered
by the door, and come and bent above his bed, its features a white
blur in a pall of blackness. So strong was his sense of a presence
even then in the room, or only recently gone from it, that he held his
breath to hearken for any indication of its whereabouts; and so
sitting, a little fearful, was presently reassured by the sound of the
great door in the hall below being undisguisedly barred and bolted.
Whereat, concluding that it was earlier than he had supposed, and that
the household was only now making secure for the night, he lay down
again, convinced he had been dreaming, and was soon deep in the waters
of oblivion.

But the waking morning brought disquiet with it. No Clerivault
appeared from the neighbouring closet where he was used to sleep, to
attend, as was his wont, upon his young charge, and Brion, after a
period of restless waiting, was fain to dress himself, which he did
with all speed and in a growing uneasiness. Leaving his room at the
end, and going by Clerivault’s door, he found it opened, and old
Harlock within, feigning to busy herself over the unused bed. But she
was there, it was evident by her pretence of answering a question that
was not put, to invite comment.

‘Eh?’ she whined. ‘What sayest? I’m slow to hear.’

‘I did not speak,’ said Brion. ‘Where is Clerivault?’

‘Where?’ she answered. ‘Ask his master for that. I’m ne’er in the
goodman’s confidence.’

‘His master!’

‘Ay, his master and ours--bondslaves to his will. A may come and go,
and do with us as a lists. Be his purpose dark or light, in blindness
are we sworn to him, to see naught and follow at his call.’

‘May come--my Uncle!’ exclaimed the boy, all astounded: ‘has he been
here, then?’

‘Been and gone,’ answered the old woman. ‘Came like a thief in the
night, to steal nothing but away again.’

‘And took Clerivault with him?’

‘Took feather-head--ay, as a man in love with Folly might pluck and
put a pasque-flower behind his ear. They’re long ridden off together.’

Brion heard in dismay. His superstitious tremors of the night had
owed, then, to woefuller presage than any imagined hauntings. To lose
his friend, thus, without warning, without a word! it was grievous.
Something swelled in his breast. How could Clerivault have left him
so? And yet he might have had no choice. Who was he to cross the will
of that dark masterful spirit who controlled his destinies? It must
have been his Uncle, the boy was now convinced, who had come into his
room in the night, and looked down upon him. The thought thrilled him,
half awfully, half glowingly. He pictured his own unconscious face,
and that other, white and austere, bent above it--and the silent entry
and the silent withdrawal. Why? Why had his Uncle arrived thus in the
night, and as obscurely vanished, leaving no trace of his visit but
that dreaming memory? And yet it was a memory he would not be without.
He stood staring at the old woman.

‘I am in the dark,’ he said.

Her eyes, like two round stones, were set fixedly on his.

‘Thou art not the first in this house to be,’ she said. ‘Secrets and
mysteries before thy time have encompassed those that dwelt herein.
Their shadows yet linger in the rooms and walk upon the stairs. Thou
art not the first to feel the darkness and unrest. There is always
coming and going here; ay, even when it is emptiest of mortal
life--always something to see, though thou seest it not. This is the
place where plots are laid in darkness and fulfilled in silence.’

To say that Brion, hearing her, was conscious of a passing chill is
not to underrate his healthy young sanity. He believed the old
creature crazy: yet there is an eeriness, after all, in crazy company.
What she said might have no significance, but somehow it assorted
drearily with the lonely and desolate house and with the strange
movements of its inmates. His physical shiver converted itself,
however, in shame of its own weakness, into a shrug of irritable
dissent.

‘I am not afeard of your plots and shadows, old mother,’ said he, with
petulant scorn. ‘It is enough shadow for me that my friend hath left
me, without a word.’

She nodded her head grimly, thinning her lips.

‘Brave spirit,’ she said. ‘It shall need all of itself, maybe, in the
days to come.’

He turned from her, with an impatient exclamation, and began to
descend the stairs. Half way down he met the boy William, mounting
hot-faced towards him. This was a buxom swain, on the near side of
manhood, rosy and bucolic. His face was round as a gooseberry; an
incipient corn-gold beard frizzled on the spit of his chin. He pulled
up, and twitched his forelock with a breathless grimace.

‘Was comin’, Mars Brion, to help ee to dress,’ he said, panting. ‘Mars
Phineas a bade me humbly to tender myself.’

‘William,’ said the boy, ‘did Clerivault--did my Uncle say when they
would be back again?’

The scullion shook his noddle soberly.

‘Mars Clerivault a’ bade me to tell ee to be of good heart and not to
forget him. Mars Bagott was in a main hurry to be gone. A mounted to
thy chamber with a taper while the cattle were a-baiting, and was off
as soon as down.’

‘Whence did he come and whither ride, William--dost know?’

But William knew nothing--only that the Judge had arrived unexpectedly
by night, big Nol attending, and, after the briefest stay, had left
again, taking the porter and Clerivault with him. Neither had Phineas,
when presently questioned, any more definite information to give. They
both, it was evident, felt for the boy, and wished to do all in their
power to make up to him for the loss he had suffered, and to
ameliorate the loneliness of his lot. But a sense of grievance was on
Brion, and his response was neither grateful nor gracious. He felt
betrayed, in this committal of him to virtual solitude and neglect,
where he had been led by his comrade to count upon cheerfulness and
bright company. It was cruel, he thought, so to have inveigled him on
false pretences from a loved and happy home, and he could not be
induced, in that first sharpness of his affliction, to practise the
philosophy which after all was native to his young temperament, or to
look upon his desertion in any light other than that of deliberate
treachery. He would touch no breakfast that morning, much to the
master-cook’s concern, and generally seemed inclined to prepare
himself in the perversest possible way for the anchoretic ordeal which
lay before him.

And in truth that ordeal proved itself, as its character developed, a
sufficiently depressing affair--something comparable with that of an
eaglet, say, let loose, with a clipped wing, in an empty fowl run. For
the liberty that rode on horseback was for one thing denied Brion, his
nag having been taken away by the visitors for a spare mount; and so
was he deprived of one great incitement to forgetfulness in exercise.

No alternative was his but dreary wanderings alone, or in the company,
if he would, of a bashful clown like William. Phineas was all very
well for material pabulum, and could eke moralise humorously enough on
his craft; but he was hardly the comrade for a rambling day on the
moors. On the whole Brion preferred to be left to himself, that he
might indulge, half in rancour, half in real heartache, the dejection
of his mood.

And so he did, and experienced no soon reaction from it. In all the
long weeks to follow unrelieved on his Uncle’s visit, no word of
explanation or reassurance was to reach him; but he was left to
formulate his own ideas as to the meaning of things, and to get
through the weary days as best he could. At first, so miserable was
he, he had no spirit to continue the open life of the hills and moors;
but he would mope about the desolate house, vainly seeking distraction
in its few familiar objects, or haunt the wildered grounds about it,
kicking his cheerless heels among the tangled vegetation with which it
was overrun.

One day, when he was so idly disposed, trying to trace out the
original contour of the beds in what had been the garden, now a
confused waste of weed and vegetable matter, he made a discovery. He
had covered, in his aimless dawdlings, the inner circuit of the
estate, stopping now and again to look over the boundary wall into the
dead stagnation of the moat, or to watch the oily scum on its surface
open and shut like a mouth whenever he pitched a stone to it to gulp
and swallow. Coming round, then, by way of the porter’s lodge, he
ascended for the dozenth time, and in default of any brighter
suggestion, to the empty rooms above the gate, only, for the dozenth
time, to gaze with lacklustre eyes from their vacant windows, and to
descend again as objectless as he had mounted. Eastward of the
gatehouse were ranged the empty stables, the empty byres, the empty
pig-pens and barns--for the Grange had farmed its own produce in days
gone by--and beyond these, in a bastion of the wall, stood the
columbarium, or circular dovecote built of stone, which contained
within it a revolving ladder, like a cheval-de-frise on end, used for
reaching the birds where they might rest in any of the rows of little
cells with which the whole surface of the interior was chambered.
There were no pigeons there now, nor had been for an age; but there
was some mild excitement to be borrowed from mounting and spinning on
the ladder; and Brion was contemplating that distraction, when his eye
fell on the well in the courtyard which supplied the house with water.
It was a familiar enough object, but never till this moment regarded
by him in the light of a particular association. Was it, could it have
been the very well down which the miser had cast the body of his
victim those long years ago? Tingling, on tiptoe, he went to it and
looked over. The hatch was closed; the bucket, the slack of its rope
looped to the windlass, stood on the wall rim. And then a thought
occurred to him. This well was sunk in the open for all to see, and
the old woman had distinctly spoken of a well-house. Where?

Suddenly, with the birth of an idea, a thrill went through him, and he
started walking. He went past the stables, past the byres, past the
columbarium, and so into the wild ground beyond, where he kept along
the wall for a distance of fifty yards or so until he came to a dense
clump of ilexes, and there stopped, his heart going a little
excitedly. He had often noted and passed by this place, but had never
before, for some unexplainable reason, been moved to push into it. The
trees had built themselves up in a gloomy thicket high above the wall
and over it, and, bridging the moat, were continued in a twin clump on
the farther side. They were so grown down to the ground, so grappled
to it by the long grasses which had woven themselves into the bases of
the mass, as to appear impenetrable. Only a wrinkle, or suture, in the
hill of sombre green seemed to betray to the sharp eyes of the boy the
existence of some former passage between the foliage, now long closed
in and hidden.

Brion stood and hesitated. Somehow the place awed him--its gloom, its
silence, its distance from the house. There was a brooding stillness
about it which seemed to breathe of death and mystery. Then,
characteristically enough, he seized his determination in hand, and
made the plunge. He was of those whose instinct is always rather to
challenge a terror than by flying to call it after them.

Now, he had no sooner parted the boughs than he saw his suspicion
confirmed. Very faint, very blurred, yet still distinguishable, the
mark of a half-obliterated path ran under the trees. With just one
sigh, a little shaken, he entered and let the green covert close
behind him. And then he felt a shock of relief. It was not near so
dark within the great thicket as its exterior would have led him to
suppose. A thousand threads of gray light, rained down from overhead
like the jets in a shower-bath, made melancholy visible there. He went
forward a few steps, turned the trunk of a tree, and saw a low
building before him.

It was just a stone belvedere, moss grown, green with age and neglect,
but still whole and unbroken. Its area might have measured four yards
square; it stood some ten feet from the ground to the spring of the
roof, which was low-peaked and tiled with plates of rough-hewn stone.
Its front was open for two thirds of its width, and through the
aperture Brion caught sight of the low parapet of a well projecting
from the floor. Tingling all through, he stole forward and looked in.

There was light enough, at least, to distinguish things by, and to
stimulate both his curiosity and his fear. Here was the deadly spot,
without a question, and the sense of it was like stinging nettles in
his veins. He dared not go farther, but held to the doorpost and stood
staring in, on the prick of flight. He was looking into a dark and
death-cold little chamber, empty save for the well, sunk in the middle
of the flagged floor, and for one other rather wickedly suggestive
thing. This was a huge drum wheel, ten feet in diameter, and attached
by a short axle to one of the side walls. It was built of heavy wood
and was shaped like a round box-lid, the open side outermost. The boy
had no idea what was its purpose; but his day was the day of Holy
Inquisitions and their terrific legends, and there was something in
the appearance of this sinister engine to suggest a thought of racking
and mangled limbs. He was peering at it fascinated, his lips parted,
when something happened. From the depths of the well, in the utter
stillness, rose a little clucking noise, like a gobble of low
laughter. Human endurance had reached its limit. He turned and fled,
and bursting, panting and white faced, into the open, almost fell over
a figure that seemed to advance upon him at the moment.

But, even as he cried out--lo! it was Gammer Harlock. She had a basket
on her arm, and was poking here and there among the weedy tangle in
search of the simples she needed for her drugs and potions.

‘Eh!’ she said, never turning from her search to regard the pale lad
standing beside her. ‘So it’s you, is it--the young heart that fears
nor plot nor shadow! What ailed that cry, then, and this sound of near
running, like dead leaves blown along a wintry road?’

‘It is my breath shaking in me,’ said Brion. ‘I am winded, mother.’

He answered stoutly, but he was finely scared. He had never so
welcomed the company of this joyless old hag, or had so clung to it
for human solace and reassurance. She answered, stooping as she
spoke:--

‘Never blown lungs so rattled, I trow, save when the heart was in the
throat, like a pea in a whistle.’

He ‘owned up,’ with a little trembling laugh:--

‘I was frightened--there, I confess it. I had never before guessed it
was there, and, when I did, I went in. Mother, is it _the_ well?’

For the first time she rose erect, and looked him in the face.

‘A fool is a fool,’ she said, ‘be he ne’er so brave. Bear that in mind
when next you go to look into the dark places. So ye dared? And what
frighted ye?’

‘It was a sound came up from the well. I thought it laughed.’

‘And might it not laugh, hugging its secret all these years? Mayhap it
was that laugh killed Fulk. A was found dead there, his head hanging
over the well-rim. There were things in his eyes--things seen in the
black under water as he lay gasping out his soul. God give him mercy!’

Brion stood silent a minute. Curiosity, enough to hold him to the
spot, still fought in him for mastery over his fears.

‘Did he, Fulk, use it, _as_ a well?’ he asked.

The old woman shook her head.

‘That in the court,’ she said, ‘had already been sunk before his time.
’Tis an old, old pit, this--Roman. I’ve heard it called. It was there
before the moat itself. Never bucket nor windlass has it had in my
day. Like enow they were removed to the other.’

‘And what is that great wheel, mother, fastened to the wall?’

He spoke with a shiver, for in some way the evil spirit of the place
seemed concentrated to him in that diabolical mill. But the gammer did
not know. ‘Some wicked contrivance of Fulk’s,’ she supposed; but for
what purpose it was impossible to say. It was there when she came: and
that was all she knew about it.

She bent to her simples again, and, while she sought and plucked,
Brion lingered near her. If she knew the reason well enough, she was
flattered by the boy’s dependence on her. There was a soft place for
him in even her dark old heart. He was a bold beautiful child, so to
have dared the terrors of that mystery which to her was an article of
superstitious faith; and his flying to her in the last resort had
touched her to the quick.

That night, as he was finishing his supper in the great gloomy hall,
she came in to him with a handful of early daisies.

‘Lay these under thy pillow, and know sweet dreams,’ said she: and for
some reason Brion did not laugh, but took the little blossoms from her
with a wistful look into her eyes.




 CHAPTER VIII.
 THE APPARITION

Thenceforth Brion avoided the neighbourhood of the old well-house;
he kept that dark cloud of ilex trees at a nervous distance, and did
not even care to let his glance wander their way. This mood of
superstitious fear haunted him for some time, and then began to
weaken, or to change in its constitution. The eternal spirit of
curiosity crept back, like a scared sheep, to examine the cause of its
own panic. He was ashamed of himself for having yielded so abjectly to
a portent existing, perhaps, only in his imagination: he longed to
find it _in_ himself to re-essay the test, and was angry because he
could not at once rise to it. But the thought of the place fascinated
him, and gradually, a little and a little more, drew him to venture
foot again within the radius of its influence. That laugh he had heard
was the laugh of Parthenope to his bewitched senses. It sickened yet
it drew him. He had a feverish lust to fathom its source, and to
grapple with whatever nameless horror it might reveal. That was his
nature. He would come to be a tenacious fighter in his day patient to
the fine limit of forbearance, but difficult to shake from his grasp,
when once fastened on. Yet for long he could not bring his mind to
face the great decision.

Parthenope! the siren of that black pit! What, he wondered, had been
her name in life--the poor unhappy young creature who had been so
foully done to death by her master the miser? Clerivault professed to
scorn the whole story; but then Clerivault was obviously a sceptic
from policy. Pity at last came to alter the quality of Brion’s
feelings; and then he was very near the resolution he uneasily
desired.

But at first, he thought, he would approach it by way of a compromise.
He went out one morning, when a pale mist of sunlight was charming all
the earth with beauty, and, passing through the main gate, crossed the
small bridge and turned to make the circuit of the moat from the
outside. That would bring him presently to the thicket of ilex trees
where it was continued over against the well-house, and would enable
him to view the object of his unquiet infatuation from the rear, and
with the moat between. Somewhere he had heard that ghosts could not
cross running water, and it was a comfort to him to believe that the
water of the moat, fed by the little stream, did, however
imperceptibly, move.

The clump, frowning gigantic in the mist, loomed up before him as he
took an angle of the ditch. The trees here, at least on the outskirts,
were less closely massed than on the other side, and one could
distinguish swords and spars of glimmering light between their trunks.
As he approached in the fair morning, his courage rose with his
spirits, and he began to whistle: and then in an instant all the soul
went out of him like a wind. He had caught sight of a woman’s figure
flitting and vanishing among the shadows.

He stood a full minute, his heart pulsing like the balance spring of a
watch. For a moment he felt quite sick; and then, in the reaction,
furious. A sense of outrage flooded his brain. That he should be
taunted and held up like this before an intangible fancy--a spectrum,
a nothing! He would endure it no longer. Strung to actual passion, he
started running and, desperate, without a thought for consequences,
plunged in among the trees. As their gloom came about him, half
blinding his eyes, he caught glimpse of the apparition, and followed
in pursuit. It fled before him, a diaphanous indistinct shape, silent
and elusive. But his blood was up, and instinct told him that for the
sake of his own sanity he must now persist to the end. If reason could
not explain a horror, it could master by facing it.

In and about the trees went the ghostly chase: one and the other,
phantom and mortal, they took either side of a writhed trunk and met
beyond. With a savage cry, Brion flung out his arms, and something
dropped beneath them. He stooped, and his hands touched warm and
throbbing flesh.

‘God’s ’slid!’ said the boy, taking his oath from Clerivault: ‘Say
what art thou!’

He was panting, with set teeth: in the gloom and the wild flurry of
his mood he could distinguish nothing clearly. Yet the thing under him
moved and seemed material.

‘I have you,’ he said. ‘I shall not let you go till you tell me who
you are. Spirit or goblin, wait while I see your face.’

He flung the hair from his eyes, and bent, and glared down. Nothing
but the obscure crown of a little hat met his vision. His hands still
gripped what they had caught. He thrust the right one into a nest of
warmth, and, feeling a chin, forced it upwards. It brought into view a
face, very white and, in that dimness, spiritual. Its eyes stared
palely into his. He said, but in a tone into which doubt had crept,
with some amazement:--

‘Speak, if mortal speech be thine.’

He was answered, and breathlessly, though not as he expected.

‘And mortal feeling. Will you hurt me so? I am only a girl.’

Brion, releasing his hold, stepped back a pace. This voice was human
to sweetness.

‘Art thou not a spirit?’ he stammered.

‘O! what spirit?’ said the voice.

‘Of her,’ he said, ‘that lies long ages murdered in the well yonder.’

The figure seemed to listen.

‘My shoulders should convince you,’ she said suddenly and plaintively.
‘I thought I felt a wild beast at them.’

He put his hands to his head.

‘Have I done so foul a thing? I took you for a ghost. Alack, what
savage must you think me!’ He held out his arms, entreating: ‘I
prithee let me raise thee’--but she would not accept his help, and got
to her feet unaided. She trembled a little, leaning against the tree,
and held one hand to her bosom. He could see her now quite clearly--a
young girl, something less than his own age.

‘O!’ she said: ‘Methinks I shall faint!’

He was ill with remorse. In the half light her feminine frailty was
even exaggerated to him. She seemed a thing of china a rough touch
might have broken, and he had treated her with barbarous violence.

‘What have I done!’ he cried. ‘Will you ever forgive me!’

He darted forward, and, though she resisted weakly, put an arm about
her.

‘Nay, you will fall else,’ he said.

Still she struggled, panting to free herself.

‘Nay!’ he pleaded.

‘I am well again. It has passed. I entreat you, release me. Are you
all wild men here?’

‘I took you for a ghost, I say.’

‘Mayhap I am one.’

‘Not with this warmth and softness.’

She tore herself free, and backed from him. A ray of the growing
sunlight had found a passage through the green and fastened with its
lips upon her face. It was a very pretty one, sweet as tinted wax; and
the mouth was blushing to that kiss. Gazing on it, some sense,
hitherto unfelt, unknown, opened to life in Brion like a delivered
bud.

‘Boy!’ said the girl, with disdain: ‘Boy!’

‘I shall be a man betimes,’ said Brion; ‘and before you are a woman.’

She opened her lips as if to retort, found nothing to say, and moved
to go. Her manner was all at once stately and self-possessed. She
walked like a proud little lady, and, turning her head over her
shoulder, bade her assailant a stiff good-morrow.

‘May I not see you from the dark wood?’ said Brion; and ‘I forbid you
to come with me,’ she answered, and walked on.

Nevertheless, he followed her at a distance; when, nearing the fringe
of the copse on its east side, what was his surprise to see her
already mounted and riding away upon a little ass, which had
apparently been tethered there awaiting her return all the time. She
never once looked round, but, skirting the moat, vanished in the
direction of the moor.




 CHAPTER IX.
 TRANSFORMATION

A wonderful brief episode, as poignant as it had been evanescent!
Who was she? The dolefuller spirit was all forgotten by Brion for the
time being in the glamour engendered of that soft and radiant
apparition. So were forgotten the loneliness, the desolation, the
dreary emptiness of his existence. He dreamt of her by day and he
dreamt of her by night. Would he ever see the dear subject of his
dreams again? His longing was so great he could not but believe it
must be assuaged. He had thought he had taken but light stock of his
vision when in its presence; now, apart from it, he remembered its
every tone and feature. Perhaps he exaggerated its beauty. She was a
pretty girl, a little of the slumberous type, with a soft white skin
as faintly flushed at the cheeks as if a rose had flicked them; but
nothing transcendent--only warmly human. She lacked, if anything, on
the side of animation; even when pursued, she had not fled like a
willing doe, feeling a joy in motion; she had been easily captured.
But there were the eyebrows, straight umber pencillings, so many
shades darker than the hair where it winged loosely back under the
shadow of the little broad-brimmed hat, with its roll of gray-green
taffeta; and there were the eyes that sheltered under them, blue
sleepy children full of love. They were enough in memory for Brion,
upon whom they had wrought the transformation which ends the rough and
tumble pantomime of boyhood. He was harlequin henceforth, and she the
elusive passion-flower of his pursuit.

Judge him with gravity. Not yet sixteen--perhaps, but for his reserved
disposition and solitary life, the transformation had been longer
delayed, and had burned with a less romantic intensity when it
arrived. But this vision had come upon him at an emotional pass, when
to the melancholy of his days was added the depression of a morbid
superstition. It had been the revelation of a sweet humanness, opening
like a flower in the midst of that dark enigma, which had taken him
like health out of sickness.

Whence had she come, and why been attracted to that haunted spot?
Thinking of her, shadowy and indistinct in her gray cloak and kirtle,
he did not wonder that, accepting the association of the place, she
had appeared to him a spirit until her voice had dispelled the
illusion. It had been a soft voice, which no excitement could lift to
unmusicalness. What would he give to hear it once more and addressed
in kindness to himself?

Now, one instantly healthy effect this awakening had on him was to
send him abroad again hawking over the moors. Thither had she gone,
and there, presumably, was to be sought. He had a confidence that
somehow he would alight on her again, and without seeking, however
cautiously, to identify and run her to earth. As to that he was
jealous, too, of making his quest a public matter: it would dilute the
heady romance of the situation, and deprive it of its most intimate
charm. So he breathed no word of his secret to living soul, but
carried it in his breast, like an anachronous electric torch, himself
alone aware of the light which dwelt within him, awaiting on his touch
either to flash into being or to vanish.

He took to wandering far afield in these days, even affecting to
himself a topical interest in his explorations, while his eyes were
unceasingly alert for some sign or token of their real objective. But
enough pride remained to him to make him feign a nonchalance he was
remote from feeling. He returned to angling, as it were to give some
colour to his persistent haunting of the moors, and, recalling
Clerivault’s instructions, dabbed and dibbled assiduously in the becks
and streams, but without much success. However, as it happened, this
pretext did actually at last lead him to the attainment of the company
he coveted.

He had pushed, one glowing afternoon in May, to a point on the moor,
where a couple of little sturdy brooks, running separately in their
valleys, came together, like two romping dogs, and headed straight in
one course for the Dart. South of him lay Holne Chase, where the rich
City Knight dwelt--a beautiful domain contained within an arm of the
river, here sunk in a rocky ravine whose heights were thick with
foliage. Northward, rising above the heave and tumble of green, stood
Buckland Tor, the beacon planted on its summit like a great red tulip
waiting to flower; and at his feet bubbled the pretty rivulet,
swirling and eddying, and in places returning upon itself to linger in
still pools very inviting for a fisherman’s purpose.

Brion, hiding behind a convenient bush, got ready his tackle. This
consisted of a twelve-foot fir rod, painted of a pale green with
verdigris and linseed oil; of a line contrived of horse-hairs, in
lengths tapering from a couple at the hook to seven at the base, and
dyed of a glass colour in a concoction of October ale, soot, walnut
tree juice and alum, and, finally, of a box of natural stone-flies,
hatched out from the caddis worms then swarming in great quantities in
the brooks and burns. Now of these flies he took a brace, and,
spitting them on the hook, head to tail, cautiously projected his rod,
himself concealed, over a likely pool, and let the bait bob gently up
and down near the surface of the water--in the process called
indifferently daping or dibbing or dippling, which is to imitate the
action of a fly dancing--when, to his delight, after his scarce
beginning, he felt a jerk and pull at his rod top; and there were the
flies gone under in the midst of an oily ring of water, and a lively
weight tugging at his hold of them. He was so excited for the moment
as quite to forget his heartache; but all his thoughts were
concentrated on the glory of his capture, and whether, having no net,
he would be able to land it without his line snapping. Holding himself
cool, however, and biding his time, as Clerivault had taught him, he
presently felt the efforts of the fish to slacken; when, with a steady
lift, he raised it clear of the pool and swung it swiftly to the bank,
where it lay kicking and gasping, a grayling good fifteen inches long.
Surveying his prize with rapture, he stooped to release it from the
hook, when, glancing up as he knelt, he saw something which on the
instant struck him motionless.

The side of the hill on which he looked sloped down to the glen, and
was much confused with bush and foliage for two-thirds of its height;
but above and beyond it broke into open spaces, which were multiplied
continuously until a summit of bare grass was reached; and on this
ridge, silhouetted against the sky, cropt a little donkey.

Brion waited, while the shock of tingling blood in his veins subsided:
then very hurriedly he rose, and, discarding fish and flies and
tackle, began to climb the hill in as straight a line as he could make
for the small dusk object perched up aloft. Picking his way by bush
and boulder, he soon enough lost sight of it; but the open ground once
reached would enable him to correct his course, and it was for that he
was striving when a little suppressed cough, uttered from somewhere
close at hand, brought him to a stop as instant as though he had
answered to a ‘stand and deliver.’

He stood at the moment beside a great rock, clothed in a plush of
lichen, which stuck from the hillside in a leafy place, and it seemed
that the sound had come from behind that covert. Listening, and
hearing no more, he turned and, wading in a sea of green, doubled the
corner of the promontory--and saw her. She sat cross-legged like a
Turk, her hands clasped about her knees, in a little mossy alcove so
formed for a natural bower that nothing could have been prettier or
more secure. There was a fence about it of the silver-birch sapling;
its floor was level grass; hidden from all else, she could yet command
through the trees a view of the lovely glen, with the shining river
looping through it. Brion, standing waist-deep in bush, looked up at
his goddess, like a young Leander rising from the sea; and she, for
her part, returned his look--it seemed without apprehension.

So they remained, both speechless, till something happened: two little
tell-tale dimples suddenly appeared at the wings of the girl’s short
nose and flickered there. They meant--a characteristic feature which
Brion came to love--that she must break the spell or laugh.

‘I am not going to laugh,’ she said, instantly and haughtily, to
Brion’s expectant eyes. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Is it a private seat?’ answered the boy. ‘I had not known it.’

‘If I choose to make it private----’ began the girl.

‘You should not cough,’ he said.

‘If I happen to have a cold----’

‘You do not look as if you had.’

‘Thank you for the rudeness. It is only such as I should expect from
you.’

‘You remember me, then?’

‘Alack! I have good reason.’

‘I prithee forgive me, mistress. You would, if you knew how I had
suffered in my mind. I thanked you for that cough!’

‘Did you think it was uttered to attract you?’

‘If I dared to hope so!’

‘Insolence! Well, it was.’

‘It was!’ He cried it in rapture. ‘Then you wanted to speak to me--to
forgive me?’

‘I will hear your story first.’ So the inquisitive jade confessed
herself.

‘O, O! May I come up beside you?’

She regarded him from under superior lids; and then the little dimples
flickered again. Leaning back against the rock, she patted the turf
beside her.

‘Come.’

He was by her side in a moment. He could hardly believe in his
happiness. She was the prettiest flower of a maid he had ever
seen--hat and garb all the gray dove of his memory.

‘If you knew,’ he said; ‘if you knew!’

‘What, please?’

‘How I have dreamt of this meeting. Ever since that day I have been
looking and longing for you.’

‘Methinks I should not let you so speak to me. Besides, I am little
enough to look at.’

‘I think you are my Heaven, Mistress.’

‘You speak bold for a boy, Master Middleton.’

‘What! You know my name?’

‘Is it a secret, then? Who does not know whose name on these moors?’

‘I know not yours.’

‘Would you know it?’

‘_Would_ I!’

‘I think I shall not tell you.’

‘Then I will ask none other than yourself, lest coarser lips should
desecrate it.’

‘You are old for your years. What are they?’

‘Yet I am old for them! Will you tell me your name, and I will
answer?’

‘What fashion of name likes you in a woman?’

‘Yours.’

‘Well, I have allowed you too long. I must go.’

‘O! not yet!’

‘This moment. What brought you up the hill?’

‘I saw a donkey browsing, and hoped it might be yours.’

‘It was my Gritty: she loves me like a dog, and bears me--like an
angel. If it were not for her----’

‘Why do you stop?’

‘I think I should put a milestone round my neck and drown.’

Brion wondered. What tragedy spoke here--apart from the verbal
accident? The young face was suddenly clouded; the voice spoke in
dejection. But he had had already, in little Alse, some experience of
the small tragedies of girlhood, and was not inclined to attach too
much importance to their manifestations.

‘Is it like that?’ he said sympathetically. ‘Then, if one donkey can
save you, two might make you happy.’

‘Yourself?’ she said, her eyebrows lifted at him. ‘So you are a donkey
for wishing to know me?’

‘Ay, if losing me, you will promise to drown yourself.’

She looked at him, the sleepy merriment come back to her eyes; then
got to her feet, and he with her.

‘That is another matter,’ she said. ‘I have heard a proverb that two
proud men cannot ride one ass, and, by the token, one woman cannot
ride two asses. I wish you good-even, Sir.’

‘O! You are not going?’

‘Indeed, yes.’

‘You have neither forgiven me nor heard my story.’

‘Both will keep.’

‘Then you will let me come again--to this pretty bower?’

‘Why not?’

‘And meet you here?’

‘Nay, I said not that. What was the fish you caught?’

‘It was a grayling.’

‘They say the stream here is full of them. Good luck to your further
fishing, Sir. I must away.’

‘At least let me put you on your Gritty.’

‘In good earnest, no.’ She looked genuinely alarmed.

‘Why not?’

‘Because, if you would know, the hill-top where she grazes is bare,
and open to the scrutiny of eyes.’

‘What eyes?’

‘Some in the Chase yonder, perchance.’

‘Holne Chase!’ Brion opened _his_ eyes in wonderment. ‘Do you come
from there?’

The girl, hanging her head, gave ever so little a nod with it.

‘Mistress,’ cried Brion, at a wild venture: ‘I think Joan the sweetest
name in all the world.’

She glanced at him askance: ‘Have you guessed my secret?’ and, putting
her finger rosily to her lips, bade him stay where he was, and not
attempt to follow her. And with that she vanished round the rock,
leaving the boy standing as if stupefied.

Joan, sole child and heiress of the wealthy Knight! and he, a
penniless dependent on a kinsman’s bounty! What would come of it? What
could?

With a sigh he turned to the rock, and tracing on it in invisible
characters the name Joan Medley, put his lips to it as if it were a
face.




 CHAPTER X.
 CONFIDENCES

So began the idyll of a boy and girl. Their preliminary fencing with
one another had been all a make-believe: they had been born to meet,
and Fate had no real equivocations for them. Frank, affectionate, and
without self-consciousness, the tie between them naturally formed
itself into an innocent love-knot, and through it was transmitted a
mutual confidence which asked no account of whys and wherefores.

The very next day, at the same hour, Brion returned to the glen, and
climbed the hill to the hidden bower. Somehow he believed that he
would find his lady ensconced there: and there he found her. She
essayed only a brief pretence of surprise--and she was looking
prettier than ever. He admired all the points in her which a man would
have admired; but with better than a man’s eyes. The pink and white,
the little tapering fingers and shapely arms, the cup of her throat,
the soft provocation of her lips and rounded chin--they moved him not
to the beatitude of passion but of reverence. If he had coveted to
kiss anything of her, it would have been, holily and fearfully, her
cheek.

‘You again?’ she said. She was seated exactly in her former posture.

‘Did you not expect me?’ asked Brion.

‘Think you I should have come here, an I had?’

‘I hope so: I believe so.’

‘_You believe!_’ In the face of her professed astonishment he saw the
dimples flicker, and felt safe.

‘I am coming up,’ he said. ‘Prithee make room for me, Joan.’

She opened her eyes.

‘No room for insolence’--she shifted ever so little--‘and when I
cannot retort upon it.’

‘You do not know my name? It is Brion. Will you speak it, that I may
learn to love its sound?’ He sat by her side, leaning upon his hand.

‘I have not your effrontery. Brion--there!’

‘Joan, I am your true knight for evermore. Shall we be sweet friends?’

‘I trow you have enough without me.’

‘Nay, I am a lonely boy, and not very happy.’

She glanced quickly at him, and down. A flush had come to her cheek.

‘Nor I, Brion,’ she said low.

Here was revelation. The heiress, presumably spoilt, of all that
wealth, and unhappy!

‘Why----’ he began; but she turned suddenly and put a finger on his
lips.

‘If we are to be friends, do not ask me. Let this be something apart
from the rest--our own, with none other to share in and mar it. Will
you?’

‘Will I?’ His tone was assurance enough.

She gave a little sigh; and looked whimsically and tenderly at him. He
dared to steal her hand to his; and so they sat.

‘We ought not, mayhap,’ said she: ‘but indeed I ache for a friend; and
your gentle looks assure me, though your actions may sometimes belie
them.’

‘You mean that day? What brought you to the haunted copse, Joan?’

‘Is it really haunted, then? I wanted to see the well.’

‘You were on the wrong side of the wall for that.’

She thrilled, moving a thought closer to him.

‘Tell me about it. I have heard a tale.’

He told her all he knew, including a shuddering description of his own
visit to the well-house.

‘I would you would take me there,’ she whispered at the end.

‘What! you would dare?’ he asked, amazed.

‘With you to fend me.’

Here was a quandary. He could not afford to show the lesser moral
courage; and yet----

‘We should be seen,’ he said.

‘O!’ she answered resignedly. ‘Very well.’

‘Unless I could devise a plan,’ he added, stung by her tone.

‘Will you, Brion?’ she asked eagerly; and he took his first lesson in
woman’s incomprehensibility.

‘Leave it to me,’ he said, frowning. ‘Yet I marvel at your wish to
return where you suffered such rudeness.’

‘Did you take me for the poor maid’s ghost? I wonder would _she_ have
laughed to have her chin so tickled.’

‘Hush!’ said Brion, horrified. ‘It is not good to talk of the
unhallowed dead so lightly.’

The girl assumed a gravity.

‘I will not, then. Yet be sure I feared you more than any sucking-bear
or cockatricks.’

His solemnity broke in a sputter of laughter.

‘O, Joan!’ he cried.

‘What have I said?’

‘Did you mean succuba and cockatrice?’

‘Well, if I did? Whatever they may be, they could not have behaved
worse than you did.’

‘Joan, you are a sweet dear.’

‘Brion, I hoped we should meet to-day: that is the truth. Did you come
a-fishing?’

‘Yes, for love. I did not need a rod for that.’

‘No, the rod comes after.’

‘I prithee talk not so. It is not natural, I am sure, to your lips.’

‘Well, I will not,’ She leaned towards him irresistibly, and he stole
an arm about hers. It was all quite natural, harmless, and pretty.
‘Now tell me of yourself,’ she said, ‘and why you are unhappy.’

He gave her his story--after a little thought--concealing nothing from
her. His rather staid reserve yielded to this endearing comrade as it
had never done to any other in his life before. And she listened in
silence, making no comment until he had finished. Then she said, her
eyes fixed reflectively on his:--

‘I much marvel who the pale lady was?’

It was that incident which had dwelt in her mind above the rest. Why?
Because of the intuitive woman in her, conscious and suspectful.

‘Some chance stranger,’ answered Brion.

‘Yes,’ she responded, but without conviction, and sat quiet a little
while, looking in his face and abstractedly stroking his sleeve.
‘Brion,’ she said suddenly, ‘what is a bustard?’

‘Why, a bird,’ answered the boy, somewhat surprised.

‘O!’ she said. ‘But I don’t see--quite--you can’t be a bird.’

‘_I!_’

‘Sir John--I heard him once--called you the Bagott bustard.’

‘Called _me_?’ he exclaimed, confounded. ‘Why should he speak of me at
all? He does not know me, nor I him.’

‘O! he knows about you--and about your Uncle, too. I tell you all the
people on the moors know about one another.’

‘Well, what have they--what has Sir John to say against my Uncle?’

‘Why _against_, Brion? That was not my word.’

‘But it should have been. I see that plain enough.’

There was silence between them for a spell, while the boy looked
straight before him, frowning and a little white. Presently his
companion spoke, caressingly and almost timidly:--

‘You are not angry with me, Brion, are you?’

‘Why should I be angry?’

‘Dear’--she leant a thought nearer to him--‘I don’t mind if you _are_
a bustard.’

He nodded his head, setting his teeth:--

‘Gramercy for that! You mean very well--though I will not ask you what
you mean. What I desire to know is Sir John’s charge against my
Uncle.’

‘No charge, bless the boy--only a conjuncture.’

‘What--conjuncture?’--his lips twitched, though he kept his frown.

‘I’m afraid to tell that face. Make it kinder, Brion, or I dare not.’

‘There!’

‘That he hath gone into hiding, fearing an impeachment.’

‘An impeachment? For what?’

‘Nay, I know not.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Only that he is whispered to be a Papist at heart, and to have been
disbenched for favouring a Papish suitor.’

The boy considered; then said quietly:--

‘It may be. Withal, I see no disgrace in that.’

‘No, Brion,’ was the meek answer.

‘Do you, Joan?’

‘I am going to borrow your eyes from this time, Brion. Let me look
into them. They are very kind and true, i’faith--a little sober for
me, but they will be good to smile to in the glass. Well, I see now
there is no harm in being a Papist.’

‘Of course there is not--though I am none myself. How quick and
jestingly you answer; yet methinks your activity is most in your
tongue.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Are you fond of exercise, Joan?’

‘Not very.’

‘So I should have guessed. You remind me of a white rabbit I once
had--warm and soft and cuddlesome. It liked to lie in my arms.’

‘You are an outrageous boy--and very insulting. I think I shall have
to hate you.’

‘That is a pity, because I wanted you to love me.’

‘Did you, i’faith? In any case we are over-young to love.’

‘It is good practice to begin young. Will you be my white rabbit,
Joan?’

‘By my troth, no. How my back aches, sitting thus upright.’

‘Is that better?’

‘Ye--yes. Brion, will you always love me?’

‘O, Joan, till I die!’

‘Yet you know not what you love.’

‘I am content. I will not ask, since you put a seal upon my lips.
Shall we meet here every day?’

‘Not for worlds! Well, you must keep it a secret.’

‘Marry, will I! How do you come?’

‘The way you came; or, when I ride Gritty, over the hill. We are much
in company, sweet dear, and much alone together.’

‘You found this bower by chance?’

‘Yes, by chance. What brought you here?’

‘Why, you.’

‘Silly! how could you know?’

‘Like a diviner, by the rod, I suppose. That is one of the rewards of
fishing.’

‘You speak from knowledge? Ah, you are but a willy-wisp, I fear me.’

‘So God mend me, I am not, Joan. Thou are the first love of mine, as
thou shalt be the last.’

‘Not omitting Alse?’

‘Alse!’ (scornfully) ‘She was but a baby.’

‘Well, I will believe you.’

She sighed, thrilling him all through. ‘Joan,’ he whispered; ‘when an
oath is taken on the book, one puts one’s lips to it. I swear for
evermore to be your most true knight and devout lover.’

The girl did not answer; but presently, without a word, she let her
head droop a little away, so that the soft curve of her cheek was
surrendered to him. And rapturously, reverently, while the birds sang
about, and the chiming of the water came up to them in their warm high
covert, he set the signature of his fealty on that lovely tablet.

It was the ecstatic moment of Brion’s life, never forgotten and never
surpassed--innocence fulfilling beauty and beauty innocence,
trustfully, confidingly. So to such sexless kisses angels love--the
flowers that ask no fruit.

Now they sat on in silence, shy, since the pledge had been sought and
yielded. Yet there seemed no thought of strangeness in it all, nor did
it appear to them odd that they should be so intimate on such short
acquaintance. Why should it? Do lambs meeting in the same meadow seek
introductions? Reserve only comes with the consciousness of sex; and
with that the happy friendliness of youth is forborne for ever.

Presently they parted, with due precautions taken against chance
detection. It was not, with Brion, that he was actuated in this by any
sentiment of shame or guilt, for he felt none; but that he feared for
a rude end being put to his idyll. Whatever the circumstances of his
pretty lady’s life--and, being faithful to his promise, he would not
inquire into them, much as he longed to comfort her implied
unhappiness--he could not suppose for a moment that his acquaintance
with her would, if discovered, be anything but wrathfully
discountenanced by her father? And the reference to his Uncle had not
helped to reassure him in that respect. It troubled him; but his pride
as much as his love. Something in his blood was already resenting this
assumed arrogance of superiority by a rich City parvenu over a man of
his Uncle’s distinction. And this Sir John, moreover, according to
Clerivault, was a rogue: an indubitable rogue he must be, indeed, to
treat his own child so. Well, he, Brion, need have no scruples about
circumventing such a man. He told himself so, swelling over a
grievance which had become suddenly personal. If it was to be war
between the families, Sir John should come to learn, maybe, the value
of hostages in a question of accommodation. The state of dictatorial
righteousness into which the young bashaw worked himself was
sufficiently diverting.

But it quickly yielded to another sentiment. After all, Joan was the
rogue-knight’s daughter--which must seem to argue that the father
could not be wholly base. How came it that so coarse a stock could
yield so sweet a blossom? What a darling she was, and how great his
good fortune in having lighted on her in his dreary life. She had
transformed all that, converting his desert at a touch into a garden
of Eden. Now the very loneliness of the place was beautiful, since it
ensured their uninterrupted converse. As he went over the hill, his
brain seeming wrapt in a luminous mist, he felt very happy, with a
pure good happiness. Only one thing lingered in his mind to shadow and
disturb it. Why had Sir John likened him to that bird?




 CHAPTER XI.
 TWO’S COMPANY

Motionless as the trunk against which he leaned, Brion stood waiting
in the ilex grove. It was a still misty morning, with a blurr of sun
in the East, like a lamp burning behind a ground glass window, and for
every reason he felt it more reassuring to address his face doggedly
in that direction than towards the glooms which lay behind his back.
It was gratifying to know that his resolution, a puissant force
impelling it, had conquered those glooms, and to practical effect;
still, the point gained, there seemed no present reason for presuming
on the providence which had so far favoured him. He preferred to wait,
facing the light, near the fringe of the wood for the appointment
which had brought him there.

But, as the hour struck and passed, some nervous irritation would
affect him. He was strung to the adventure, but he wanted it grappled
and done with. Why did she not come? All girls and women seemed to
regard time as a jest. It had been the same with Mrs Angell: he had
never known her once in all his life punctual to an engagement.

At last, a quarter of an hour late, she appeared. He heard the soft
patter of Gritty’s hoofs on the turf outside, and the pair drew into
sight. Even seen so, her figure dusk against the light, his mistress
brought to Brion’s heart the thrill of delighted surprise she for ever
conveyed. He never saw her afresh but she seemed a new thing to him,
lovelier and more winsome than when last encountered. And now she was
new in fact, at least as regarded her habit. Like the young spirit of
the Spring she came to him all in tender green, an orchard sweetness
in her face, and her eyes were the first speedwells of the year. A
hood fell loosely back from her fair head, as its sheath slips from a
blossom, and her feet gave life to the barren carpet of dead leaves,
greening it where they fell. So she came to him, moving with the
unhurried gladness that was her way, and he had a hard ado to temper
his welcome with even the show of severity her lateness called for. He
had not, for precaution’s sake, gone to meet her, but had waited while
she tethered the little ass to a branch on the outskirts of the grove;
and now he stood erect, as she greeted him in her soft voice, and with
half eager, half fearful eyes:--

‘Have you in truth found a way, Brion?’

‘Mayhap a way,’ he answered, ‘if we are left to take it. The sun will
be through in a little, enough to reveal our meeting should any chance
to be looking.’

Struck by something in his tone, and perhaps by his apparent failure
to observe her half proffered hands, she moved a little back, her lips
parted, her eyes full of a questioning wonder.

‘Was this mist, then, of thy bespeaking,’ she said, ‘and engaged to us
up to a certain hour? You speak as if I should have remembered that.’

‘I speak like one keeping an appointment,’ he answered.

She searched his face for humour, but discovered none.

‘Brion,’ she said suddenly, ‘am I late to our tryst?’

‘A man might consider so,’ he replied stiffly.

‘But only by a few minutes?’

‘Say fifteen, Mistress--nothing to a lady that holds the terrors of
this wood at naught.’

Her face was lifted to his. The dimples threatened a moment, but she
controlled them.

‘I had not thought of that. It must have been dreadful for you waiting
here alone.’

‘You do not think so, I can see.’

‘Brion, don’t be cross with me.’

Her tone, her attitude were so sweet and coaxing, he could resist no
longer. He put his hands on her shoulders.

‘You want to laugh, Joan. Well, laugh, a’God’s name, since it is like
birds in sunlight to see and hear you.’

‘Well, I will not, lest it hurt you.’

‘Why, thou art laughing now. Has this place, indeed, no fears for
you?’

‘Why should it? I have done no evil in it.’

‘That is true, Joan, and a truth that shames me. Conscience should
fear no spectres but its own. What made you late?’

‘Nothing but the mist itself: I must needs pick my way at first. So,
if the mist was part of your plan and procuring, you are the one to
blame.’

‘Well, you are here--and like Chloris in a green kirtle. I love you in
it.’

‘Alack! and when it is wore out you will love me no more.’

‘Then it shall last you a lifetime.’

‘God advise me, if I am to choose between that and your love. But my
comfort is after a year or two you would learn to hate me in it.’

‘To hate you, Joan! You can find comfort in that?’

‘Nay, comfort in a new gown. Yet it glads me that it likes you, dear
my lord. I will wear green to my wedding and green till my bedding
under the green turf. It was to make myself inconspicious against the
green grass that I put it on. Yet there is no grass in here, Brion.’

‘No, by my faith. You speak “conspiciously” well. We are not so deep
in but we may be seen. How merry you are.’

‘Am I? Mayhap it is to hide something.’

‘What! Are you growing afraid?’

‘Afraid? By my troth, no. If you could hear my conscience singing! It
is a carol all quavers.’

‘Come, then, while I show you.’ He put an arm unresisted, about her,
and they turned to the dark essay. ‘’Tis by here, the way,’ he
whispered--‘the only one for secrecy. But I doubt you will dare it
when you see.’

She leaned close to him, not answering. For all her professed
assurance, the influence of the place was beginning to tell upon her a
little. As they pushed deeper into the thicket, the light saddened and
grew obscure, and an intense silence gathered about them; the snaky
branches seemed to writhe, involving their path in noiseless folds,
and a smell of poisonous water came to their nostrils.

‘It is a horrible place,’ whispered the girl suddenly; and she
stopped.

‘You are frightened, Joan. We will go back.’

‘No. Give me one moment. Look, is that the moat, and the body of a
great serpent stretching across it?’

‘It is the moat; but the serpent is only a limb of that big tree
before us, sleek and mottled like a green worm. It bridges the ditch
and rests upon the wall beyond; and it is over that we must go, if go
we must.’

‘How did you discover it, Brion--this way, I mean?’

‘Why, I came to look. I had promised you I would contrive a plan; and
here was my contrivance, all ready provided for us. I take no credit
for it.’

‘Nay, but you shall have it, since it was credit enough to seek into
these glooms you feared. And you dared it just for my idle word,
Brion?’

‘I should be no true knight, Joan, if I refused to descend into the
very pit for my lady’s sake.’

He looked, smiling, down on her, and she up at him. Some sense of an
indefinable pressure, of a helpless entreaty caught at his heart with
a shock. And the next moment he had bent his head lower, and kissed
her lips.

The instant he had done so, the awful rapture of that profanation
smote him scarlet. He thought he must have alienated her beyond
forgiveness.

‘O, Joan!’ he said--‘I was mad.’

She broke from him, he supposed to leave the copse and his presence
without another word. But, to his wonder and relief, she seemed as if
unconscious of the offence. Only, had it been light, he might have
seen how the rose of pudency had flushed suddenly to the very nape of
her neck.

‘Come,’ she said, in a voice that was hardly audible.

He could scarce believe his ears; but his every vein was throbbing
with the ecstasy of a new revelation. He followed her, and in a moment
they came down to the big tree, and stood together by the side of the
moat.

The tree was like a monstrous devil-fish, throwing out a swarm of
tentacles, smooth and sinuous, which were heavily interlaced with
others projected from the farther bank, so that altogether they formed
with their sombre foliage a dense dark canopy shrouding in the black
water. Of these tentacles, one, the biggest, reared itself across the
moat and over the wall beyond, on which it rested, forming a sloping
bridge, with at least a reasonable foothold for a passenger supporting
himself by certain minor branches which could be used as handrails. It
was a quite feasible way, though uninviting, and the boy waited for
his companion’s verdict on it.

‘Well?’ he whispered presently.

She had been silent, because it was her own voice she feared after
that conscious contact; but now she rallied her self-possession.

‘I am going across, Brion. Where is the well-house?’

‘Cannot you see it--there, among the trees? It is only its back, of
course; but the leaves so hide it, it might be part of the wall. To
reach the front we shall have to cross by this, and drop down on the
other side. It is really quite easy, if you are not afraid.’

‘I am going over.’

‘You mean it, Joan?’

She laughed, as they had been talking, low and thrillingly, and the
next moment was on the branch.

‘Wait, while I stand by you,’ he said, all a’quiver. ‘Hold firm, Joan.
God a’ mercy, if you should slip and fall into the foul slime!’

She laughed again: that was a practical contingency, with nothing
supernatural about it, and the fear of it helped her to steadiness.
But they won across easily enough; and, as to Brion, he took the
branch like a squirrel, and, once over the wall, jumped down and held
up his arms to help his lady alight. And in another moment they stood
together, hand in hand, before the open portal of the well-house.

‘Joan! You are not going in?’

‘Why not?’

‘Does it not make your marrow crawl? I would I had your courage.’

‘Brion, I will tell you the truth. It is not courage but curiosity. I
think for that a woman would dare to call up the devil. Is it there,
indeed, where the poor pitiful maid was cast?’

‘So old Harlock says.’

‘It may not be true. What was that?’

‘O, Joan, in God’s name, come away! Did you hear it? It was the
horrible laugh again.’

‘Well, I am going to look.’

He clutched at her, but she eluded him, and, slipping into the
chamber, bent over the well-rim.

‘Joan! What are you doing? Are you quite mad?’

‘Come and look down, Brion. You can see the water, miles below, like a
little dim moon.’

He stood behind her, having put that force upon himself; but he
sweated with apprehension. Suddenly she stooped, picked up a fragment
of broken stone from the floor, and, before he could stop her, dropped
it down the well. There was an interval of silence, and then a distant
plop, followed once more by an exacerbated chuckling. And then, as
Brion’s hair seemed to rise on his head, the girl turned on him,
merrily clapping her hands.

‘Didn’t it gobble like a turkey! I know now what it is: it is the
water clucking in some deep-down vent connected with the moat. I saw
the bubbles rising when we crossed the tree.’

Was that, indeed, the wonderful explanation? Brion felt as if a flood
of sunlight had suddenly broken into the chamber, softening and
diluting its terror.

‘Joan!’ he cried amazedly, a spring of damp on his forehead. ‘Is it
so, in good sooth? I believe you may be right; I believe----’

He was interrupted by his companion:--

‘O, look at that great wheel on the wall! There is just such another
in the royal Castle of Carisbrook, where once I was taken. Do you know
what it is for, Brion?’

‘Do you, Joan?’

‘To be sure I do. It is to wind up the bucket from the well. They put
a donkey inside, and he walks and turns the wheel. Only the rope is
gone from this, but not the pulley. There it is, up in the roof above
our heads.’

It was there, true enough. The engine of mysterious torture was
resolved into a homely vehicle for an ass’s plodding. This practical
little mind had dispelled at a word the last glooms of the terrific
place.

They went to examine the wheel together. It hung upon the wall like a
huge clock which had lost its hands. Its lowest segment was sunk a
foot below the pavement in an oblong hole cut to accommodate it. The
sun had by now broken through the mist, and a melancholy light
filtered down through the trees into the stone chamber. The great
cylinder was still sound in balance and structure, and they got into
it, and, working it like mice in a revolving cage, made it move. It
turned slowly, groaning and sighing to be so awakened from its long
slumber, but it did turn, and the easier as they continued. Presently
Brion started, with a ‘Hush!’

‘The well again?’ whispered his companion.

‘No. Methought I heard a footstep in the garden outside. Supposing old
Harlock were to come in and find us?’

‘We must not be found. If my father were to hear of our meetings!’

‘Keep still. Do not move the wheel again for your life. Now! Step out
without a sound. We must go back the way we came, and you must ride
off, while I lie hid in the wood.’

They moved like cats. There was no difficulty about regaining the
branch from the banked-up ground against the wall, and in a minute
they were across, and had slipped into the covert of the trees on the
farther side. And there they stood to part.

‘Fare thee well, dear Brion.’

‘Is that all, dear Joan?’

‘Why, what can I have more to say but to thank thee?’

‘Thanks are for lips; yet the sweetest are without words. For what
thou hast taught me I owe thee a thousand kisses.’

‘Nay, the saving grace of an error is in the teaching one not to
repeat it. If I know my peril, and avoid it, will you, who love me,
lead me into it again? That is not to be my knight.’

‘Dear Joan, forgive me.’

‘Yes, Brion.’

They parted, with a sweet gravity. Were they not lovely serious, the
pretty things, and did they not deserve the best a kind Fate could
allot them?




 CHAPTER XII.
 IL PENSEROSO

Once more the two sat together in the high bower overlooking the
glen. No churlish weather had, in all the short course of their idyll,
marred its perfection, and still the sun shone and the air breathed
honied upon their happy meetings. But on this occasion the girl was
pensive and quiet as Brion had never known her to be before, and for
some reason the fact disturbed him. She was never anything but
physically tranquil--a pretty pacific creature whose graces were all
on the side of soft rounded ease and caressing movements; yet her
young brain lacked nothing in bright activity, and it was her present
failure to respond in kind to his livelier mood which filled the boy
with an inexplicable feeling like foreboding. He was made so uneasy at
last by her unresponsiveness that he was driven to rally her upon
it:--

‘What ails you, Joan, that you are so silent?’

She did not answer for a moment, but sat looking down sidelong, idly
plucking at the blades of grass.

‘Joan?’ he persisted.

She just raised her lids in a swift glance at him, then drooped them
again, and a flush came to her cheek.

‘We have been good friends, have we not, Brion?’ she said, her face
still half averted from him.

‘Have been, Joan! Why not are, and will be?’

Her fingers grew busier at their plucking.

‘How can I tell? Maids must come to marry.’

He started and sat quite rigid, as if some paralysing thing had stung
him. His lips repeated the word mechanically, as he stared before
him:--

‘To marry?’

‘It is the common lot, you know,’ she murmured.

He made a desperate effort to steady his wits and his voice.

‘But you are so young.’

She gave a great sigh: ‘Heigho! it is age that lacks suitors.’

‘You have a suitor, Joan?’

‘My father says so.’

‘And you?’

‘What is there for me to say?’

He turned on her with a sudden violence. A heat had sprung to his
face. ‘And you never told me? Is this to be the end between us, then?’

Her hand at the grass was busier than ever.

‘That is not for me to answer.’

‘For whom is it?’ he cried. And his passion went out of him, and he
spoke in sad measured tones: ‘I had not once dreamed of this; I had
lived in our friendship, seeing no end to it. You don’t know what you
have been to me, Joan. Well, here is the end. I might have foreseen it
but for my blind folly. How could I dream for one moment that the
daughter of the rich City knight would take aught but a passing
interest in this young portionless neighbour of hers. It should be my
full content to know that she hath deigned to use me to kill some idle
hours. God be with you, Mistress Medley’--and he jumped to his feet.

‘Brion,’ said the girl, ‘you are very cruel. And you may sneer in your
pride at my father for his riches; but it is they bestow power and
authority. What he bids me do I must do, since he may command the life
he gave me; yet, despite your wounding words, I would rather die than
do that bidding of his which made me false to you.’

She turned away, as he stared at her; but there was a sign of that in
her eyes which he had never seen there yet, and which went to his very
heart. Impulsively he flung himself on his knees beside her, and put
an arm about her shoulders.

‘No, you are cruel,’ she said, resisting him.

But he would not be denied. ‘Dear Joan; I love you so. Think what it
must have meant to me to hear you. Tell me only one thing. I will not
ask you who it is. I know naught about your private matters, nor, by
my troth, seek to know. This privacy of ours is passing sweet, and it
is enough for me. But one thing only: tell me you do not favour this
same suitor.’

She was easily coaxed. She had no real will to repel him, but allowed
herself to be drawn back into his arms, where he won a lovely smile
from wet eyes.

‘Become _his_ wife!’ she said, with a little catch in her breath, ‘I
would liefer be a wild man’s squawk.’

Brion did not respond: for all his tragic mood, an irresistible spasm
seized him.

‘What is the matter?’ she asked, surprised. ‘Are you laughing?’

He shook all through as he held her; and suddenly he gasped.

‘O, God a’ mercy, Joan--that word! Where did you learn it?’

‘From a Mr Richard Grenville, a Border Captain, that lay once at the
Chase. He spake much of savage lands across the seas, and of those
that inhabit there. The wives are so called, Brion: i’faith I know
they are.’

‘O! Very well, if you know.’

‘He told, too, of many strange things he had seen, both men and
beasts; amongst others of a bird called a pelican that hath seventeen
stomachs, and will feed its young, when they are starving, on its own
hump.’

‘Hump! A bird with a hump!’

‘It is true, Brion; really it is.’

‘I am sure it is, Joan; and I call that an unlucky bird; for methinks
it might seldom happen that all the seventeen were in one agreement,
unless for pain. But let that pass; and, as to the wives, why I say
you shall be no wild man’s squawk, though I have to marry you myself.’

‘Will you marry me, Brion?’

‘O, Joan, you are an artless darling! What shall I say; what can I
do!’ He clutched at his young forehead. ‘I may not ask: my tongue is
tied: I will not know; yet, not knowing, how can I answer? “Maids must
come to marry,” quotha! But whom, whom? Not a wild man’s loathed
alternative? Whom did you mean, Joan? And must it be he or death? Ah,
that we two were of an age to wed!’

‘Well, I will wait for you, an you ask me.’

‘Will you wait? Will you dare? May he not force you?’

‘He will not--no, never. I will throw myself from the _Lover’s Leap_
first.’

This was a great sheer crag on the Buckland side of Holne Chase, and
known by name and sight to Brion.

‘Will you, Joan?’ he said. The threat was wild and tragic, yet he
could not associate this loveling, so gentle-soft, with such a deed.
Nor could she herself, it seemed, in grim earnest; for she added:--

‘But he will not force me--his way is colder. It will be, at the
worst, “Take him, or never see my face again. I parley with no wilful
child.” Then, an he drive me from his door, I will come to you.’

‘He could not be so base! The hard oak would refuse to close upon you;
the skies would weep a flood to cast you back.’

The girl laughed, a little tearfully; and Brion laughed ruefully in
response.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘he is your father, and, such as he appears, no
figure of my conjuring. I have asked no questions of you, Joan, have
I?’

‘No, Brion.’

‘Nor must, of that other, that villain suitor, I suppose?’

‘Nay, do not, I prithee. It were my shame to clepe him.’

The boy sighed:--

‘Well, we are together yet!’ And so for long time they sat in silence,
their arms linked about one another, innocence in their caresses,
since a common emotion had broken down the last reserves between them.
Presently Joan spoke:--

‘You will always be my true knight, Brion?’

‘On my soul, Joan.’

‘Then, whatever may part us now, we shall keep one in love and faith?’

‘Why do you talk of parting? You are not going to leave me?’

‘Alack! the end comes always--even to summer days. I have heard talk
of London; but I know not--only fear. Brion, will you never forget
me?’

‘I live only for you, Joan, and ever shall. Your very name is music to
my ears.’

She bent her head down, not answering for awhile.

‘Would you--would you love me even as now, if----’

‘If what?’

‘If you came to find me in some sort other than the blameless maid of
your fancy?’

‘To be blameless is, methinks, to be insipid. I do not want you
blameless, Joan, but only to be my loving dear.’

‘I shall always be that, Brion, if I live to a hundred.’

They were loath to part; but clung to one another and to these last
moments, as if in some indefinite way they felt in them the running
out of the golden sands. But the end had to come, and when at last
they rose, each to go its road, in a passionate impulse the boy flung
his arms about his comrade’s neck, and set his lips to hers in a long
kiss which this time she made no effort to resist or to withdraw from.

  _Alas, how easily things go wrong!_
  _A sigh too much, or a kiss too long,_
  _And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,_
  _And life is never the same again._

‘Farewell, dear Joan--till to-morrow!’

‘Till to-morrow, dear Brion!’

It sounded in his ears like an empty echo.




 CHAPTER XIII.
 DESOLATION

O, the mist and the weeping rain! They were there in good earnest
when Brion opened his eyes the next morning to a disenchanted world.
In the night great sea fogs had trooped in from the south-west, and
sponged out the landscape as a fresco might be blotted from a wall,
leaving only faint indications here and there of the original design.
It was drearily ominous of change, of the effacing of halcyon days,
and of the blankness which follows Youth’s first realisation that it
is not immune from the common heritage of loss and sorrow. Sad is
loneliness, but sadder still the loneliness which bright company has
found and forsaken. There was a time before the boy which, in moods
and spasms, he was to feel almost unendurable.

He did not, of course, wake at once to any desolate conviction of an
end; but, while something faintly premonitory of it whispered in his
heart, rose and went about his business, pretending to himself a
confidence he did not really feel. Hope was not dead because the
weather was bad. He had a tryst to keep, and keep it he would, though
the heavens fell.

Yet he did not keep it--and for the sufficient reason that he could
not. He had had no experience so far of a Dartmoor mist, nor guessed
the nature of its baffling density. A very little venturing, however,
was enough to convince him that he had no more chance of winning to
the bower in that sodden blinding cloud than he had of finding his
mistress, unless by some miracle, awaiting him there. And to that
conclusion Phineas, who had discovered him on the point of issuing
forth, helped him.

‘Whither away, an it please you?’ said he, his brows lifted.

‘To the moors,’ answered Brion.

‘And to your death on them, mayhap,’ said the cook. ‘Dost know what
thou venturest? Be warned, young master.’

‘What death?’ said the boy scornfully.

‘The death of rocks and water, of falls and blind wanderings, of cold
and exhaustion. Thou must not go, indeed.’

‘Must not, master cook! That is no word for me. Now, stand aside, I
prithee.’

‘What shall I say to his honour, when he comes to call my account?’

‘Say that you did your best, but could not prevail with a proud and
wilful boy. I prithee, good Phineas.’

‘Now, God help both me and you! Will you do it?’

Brion pushed by, with no answer other than a laugh, and ran out into
the mist. He found, with some difficulty, the wicket in the big outer
gate, opened it, stepped through, and passed over the bridge. And the
fog swallowed him.

An hour later he came back. Phineas heard and ran out, to find him
sitting, white and dripping, in the hall. He threw up his arms, with a
great sigh of joy and relief:--

‘_Gratias agamus Domino Deo nostro!_’

‘That is Church Latin,’ said Brion weakly.

The other hung his head.

‘Old habits will cling. ’Tis all one for the language of the heart.’

‘Well, you were right, Phineas, and I was wrong. I was lost as soon as
started. Only good chance brought me presently back to the gate, and
to the near fracture of my skull against it. In the interval I have
followed spectres, I have had falls, I have soaked in water enough
that if you wrung me in the moat it would overflow. I prithee give me
something hot before I perish.’

‘Now, get you, if you can, rid of your clothes and into dry duds. I
will bring you up with my own hands a stoup of broth and such mulled
sack as shall persuade you half way into a tippler’--and he hurried
off to his task, grunting relief and jubilance by the way. He was very
much concerned, was Phineas--not only over this last piece of
obstinacy, but over certain wayward moods which had preceded it. It
had been patent to all the small household, and particularly to him
through his profession, that matters had not been latterly as they
should be with the boy. To put it as a case, Brion had eaten well when
he was most repining, and ill when he was most elated, which,
gastronomically, was all wrong. After Clerivault’s going, he had been
sad with a glad appetite, and, later, glad with a bad appetite. What
was the reason, and why had he, who for so long had hung disconsolate
about the house, suddenly taken to being hardly ever at home? There
must _be_ a reason, and cogitating it, the wise cook shook his head.
There seemed to him only one plausible explanation of the
phenomenon--an intrigue with some moorland pottlepot.

Well, such eventualities had to be counted on, and, if it was the
case, he could do nothing. But it should have restored all his
theories of fitness, when, as came shortly to occur, Brion fell
definitely into a state of being sad with a bad appetite.

Now, the damning mist and drizzle lasted for three days; and what the
boy suffered in that time only his own passionate prematurity could
tell. It was not simply that he was temporarily shut off, fettered and
helpless, from his earthly paradise, but that he was tortured with
anxiety as to what might be happening behind the veil. Then that sense
of dark premonition would reassert itself, and paint the future for
him in blackest colours. What if he were to find their worst
apprehensions realised, and Joan torn from him in the very moment of
their perfect understanding? No, Fate could not be so cruel!

But Fate was just so cruel, and a little more, since that was exactly
what had happened. On the very day following that of the last meeting
in the bower Sir John Medley had saddled up and departed for London,
taking the whole of his household with him. Brion heard the news from
William as a mere piece of local gossip, and bore it unflinching.

‘And Mars Phineas says as they du say,’ added William, ‘that Sir John
he be a-leaving the Chase for good, and not intending to come back to
it never again no more.’

So the worst was not the worst, after all, and the tragedy not so
complete but that Fate must provide an anticlimax to it. She was gone
from him, and that was not enough: she must be lost to him for ever
and ever. Any miserable hope he might have entertained of another
season renewing the rapture of this must be forgone and stoically
renounced. The end of all things had come.

He thought so, indeed, poor lad, and wisdom shall have no smile for
his delusion. If this was, after all, but a boy and girl romance, to
magnify the importance of which were to misuse one’s sense of
proportion, it was a thing as intensely felt, and far more purely,
than many an older passion. His life, his loneliness, his own reserved
temperament had made of Brion a boy with something of a man’s heart,
and it was as a man rather than as a boy he suffered.

But it was as a boy that, when at last the bitter delayed sun made his
appearance through the clouds, he climbed to the empty bower, and wept
and wept childish tears to know his sweet love gone from it. What
would be her fate, so ravished beyond the reach of his influence,
besieged and persecuted, perhaps, to force her into compliance with an
unnatural demand? How he hated that unknown suitor; how he despised
and scorned the commercial-souled parent who could stoop to barter his
own flesh and blood (for to that unwarrantable conclusion he had
jumped) against some worldly consideration. In alternations of mood he
would sorrow dumbly, or burst into wild imprecations over the inhuman
destiny which had uplifted him only to cast him down. At first, in
spite of a fact stated and verified, he would cherish some mad hope
that the family had not really departed--at least that _she_ had been
left behind, and that he would go to the bower one day and find her
awaiting him with shining eyes and soft enamoured looks. But that
dream was of brief duration: it could not survive the testimony of
witnesses who knew the truth and could have no object in distorting
it. And so, reconvinced of its emptiness, he would to his ravings
again.

Well, the tumultuous time passed, and was succeeded in due course by a
sad and settled resignation. The habit of sorrow comes, like other
habits, to fit the more easily the longer it is worn. There was
reached a day of half sweet, half melancholy reveries, when past joys
began to assume an air of dim peacefulness, more of regret than of
anguish. Old looks, old tones took on a mystic glamour, like happy
things remembered from a dream. Most of all, queerly enough, there
lingered in the boy’s mind a thought, humorously pathetic, of those
quaint misterms which had issued so funnily from the girl’s lips. He
put them down, young learned clerk that he was, to a faulty education;
but he would not have his memory of his Joan without them. They seemed
an essential part of the sweet thing she was.

And so, for what she had been and remained, he locked his dream away
in his breast, only to be taken out and sorrowed over in rare relapses
on emotion, but otherwise quietly possessed as a gift of ancient
beauty. Always it abode with him, and was not the less there because
other interests and desires, fruit of his growing life, appeared to
absorb him. But he never forgot his early love, or forgot that he had
dedicated his service, true knight and champion, to her honour and
renown. That consciousness, though it ceased in time to be insistent,
kept him brave and pure.




 CHAPTER XIV.
 AN EMOTION AND A DISCOVERY

It happened timely that there arrived from London at this pass that
great consignment of goods and furniture before referred to. The
unloading and distribution of the stuff, for all the boy’s professed
repudiation of any interest in it, came presently, however,
irresistibly to engage his curiosity, and he won a certain wintry
distraction from his own thoughts by directing the placing of the
multifarious items in the spots most fancied by his sense of fitness
or caprice. He showed a good deal of captiousness in the matter, being
in no mood to consider other people’s feelings when his own had been
so rasped and wounded; but his obedient henchmen, influenced,
perhaps--at least in the Cook’s case--by their sympathy with something
loosely approximating the truth, submitted meekly to his tyranny, and
lugged heavy objects at his bidding into all sorts of inconvenient
nooks and eyries. And, not until every piece was disposed to their
young despot’s liking, were they permitted to relax their efforts and
conclude their task fulfilled; when he thanked and praised them so
sweetly, with a hint of remorse for his own inconsiderateness, that
they forgave him offhand, and withdrew luminously to submit their
bruised thumbs and abraded fingers to the ministrations of Mrs
Harlock.

Brion wondered, and without any great excitement, if this arrival
might portend the return of his Uncle and Clerivault to the Grange. He
did not seem to care much, one way or the other; but certainly the
practical business of thus preparing for them was useful in keeping
his mind occupied with something other than its own unhappiness.
Especially was he pleased with the books--of which there was a
considerable number--and with the promise they held out to him of a
temporary forgetfulness in their absorption. He took much time and
thought over their classification and shelving, and was gratified to
discover amongst them some old friends, together with others he had
heard of whose acquaintance he was interested to make. For he had
always been a reader, appreciative and discriminative above his years,
and in that respect owed to his good old preceptor, who had done much
to direct his tastes.

Now amongst the volumes familiar to him through knowledge or repute he
counted to his satisfaction the following items:--

_A Christian exhortacion unto customable swearers_: by Miles Coverdale
(A more or less recent tract whose title tickled him).

_Cooper’s Chronicle_, of the Kings’ Successions, ‘wyth divers
profitable Histories’ (Also recent, as brought up to date to the
seventh year of the Queen’s Majesty’s reign).

Chaucer’s _Canterbury Tales_, with the Caxton imprint.

Sir Thomas More’s _Utopia_ (done into English by Robynson, with the
date 1551, though, if in the original Latin, it had possessed small
difficulties for him).

_The Bayte and Snare of Fortune_: by Roger Bieston (a highly moral
discourse, ‘treated in a Dialogue betwene man and money,’ and printed
‘At the signe of the Sunne over against the conduite in Fletestrete’).

_The obedyence of a Chrysten Man_: by William Tyndale, translator of
the Bible--

And some others. There were also a good many books, contentious or
expository, on Romish theology, and quite a number of illuminated
Vulgates, Psalters, Passionales, Lectionariums, Graduals, Breviaries
and Books of Hours, most of which were of extreme value and beauty.
All these gave him great satisfaction in prospect, as, with one
possible exception, they most certainly would not do to a Brion of
to-day; but the small reading of 1574, excluding such levities as the
_Decamerone_ and the impossible extravagances of Sir John Mandeville,
to be seemly had to be dull. Even the unprecedented Knight of la
Mancha had not yet stalked into print; and Gulliver and Robinson
Crusoe were decades away.

The boy was browsing one afternoon among these illuminated volumes,
enjoying the beauty of their convoluted designs and
brilliantly-pictured legends, when he saw something which sent the
blood back upon his heart in a curious little shock. He had taken down
a Book of Hours, _Horae Beatae Virginis Mariae ad Usum Romanum, cum
Calendario_--a fair little volume in Roman letter with splendid
wood-cuts--when, in turning over the leaves he discovered a name upon
the title page--_Jane Middleton Baggott: her booke:_ 1554: _at Gray’s
Inne_.

He was squatting on the floor. Gently he put the little volume down in
his lap, and turned his head to gaze out of the great west window,
which looked into the Court. It was very still; a light brooding mist
filled the air; there were swallows skimming and diving under the
eaves. But he saw nothing material: only the softness and quietude of
things seemed consonant with the wistful abstraction his eyes
expressed.

‘One sister; but she died.’ Clerivault’s unwilling words came back to
his mind--and again others spoken by his Uncle, when he had taken his
face between his hands and read some likeness there. Jane
Middleton--had that been her name; and was it the memory of that dead
sister which had seemed to move the brother so deeply when gazing into
his eyes? Middleton! and he himself was so called--why? A queer
unforgotten word once uttered by his lost love recurred to him--not
for the first time. Was here the clue to the long riddle? Some shadowy
suspicion of the truth had already flitted through his soul--from ages
ago--from the day when the pale pretty lady had stopped her horse to
speak to him. He felt again her kiss upon his baby lips; he felt----

Suddenly his eyes were hot with tears: they had come unexpected, from
out of nowhere, and had taken him by surprise. He sat very still,
battling with his emotion; and in a little he had quite mastered it.
Then he took up the Book of Hours, and rose to return it to its place;
but first, in a quick impulse, he bent and kissed the name upon the
title.

‘She called herself my first lover,’ he whispered--‘I remember it now
so well--and her pretty one, and her babe. She was sad and beautiful;
and I hated him that rode with her.’

And now in thought he hated the handsome sinister cavalier more than
ever--hated him with the hatred of a child’s rebellion against misused
authority and immitigable wrong.

All the rest of that day Brion went very quiet. He seemed preoccupied;
he was grateful for little ordinary services; almost submissive to
those who rendered them. It was as if some shock to his young pride
had humbled him to the dust. But his mind was restlessly busy. He had
never seen his Uncle since he parted from him in the _Cock_ tavern; he
had felt some anticipatory awe over their re-meeting; now he wanted
him to return, that he might face him with a direct question. He meant
to put that question; whencesoever he derived it, he had an imperious
spirit.

There was another associated matter, too, which gave him food for
uneasy reflection, especially in the light of certain remarks once
made by his girl love--and that was the Romish savour of much of the
Judge’s literature. Was this Uncle of his really at heart, or had
been, a Papist? It was a dangerous thing to be suspect of such
sympathies in these days. Yet there was that story of his disgrace,
which might not be calumny, and there were these pious evidences,
which might, after all, be no more than the evidences of an
enthusiastic book-lover. It would seem at least that the little
‘_Horae Beatae_’ had been personal to the devotions of Jane Middleton,
for the marks of frequent use were visible on its pages. He thought of
the slender fingers turning the leaves, of the wistful face bent above
them, with a strange indulgent feeling that was like protection. Well,
she anyhow was dead, and beyond the reach of persecution. He felt the
tears very near his eyes again.

So the books had taught him something which he had never looked to
find in them. They could not, alas! teach him how to forget, but
rather, through this discovery, had aggravated his memory. Was it to
be his fate always to be forsaken of his womankind? For a time again
the anguish of his recent loss drove him to desperation. He wandered
incessantly abroad, visiting, with melancholy iteration, every spot
connected with his lost love’s presence--the glen, the copse, the old
well-house. That place held no terrors for him at last. If he had felt
any hesitation about re-entering it, he had savagely turned on himself
for suspecting what was for ever now made lovable through her
association with it. It was the sanctum where, recalling her sweetness
and her endearingness, he could most let his emotions free. His own
sad spirit haunted it in a way, with a force, to overbear and
extinguish all lesser ghosts.

He was in there, one day, leaning against the rim of the big wheel and
indulging his most twilight mood, when something occurred of a
sufficient interest to afford his mind at least a temporary surcease
from its dejection. He had been recalling, for the hundredth time,
that unforgettable morning of the adventure, and how resolute she had
been, the darling, and how clear-headed; and how her bright temerity
had been innocent of all moral-pointing, when she might have despised
him for his cowardice. Would the contempt come now, he thought, if she
could know him for what he was? Or did she already know--or guess?
There must have been some half-conscious purpose in her assurance to
him, so quaintly expressed, of her indifference to the name given him
by her father. Pondering it all, he fell into a fit of profound
musing, from which he was suddenly startled by the sound of the well
laughing.

He gave a violent start--not of panic, for he was long familiar now
with that weird throaty chuckle and its cause, but of mere nervous
repercussion--and, coming erect, found himself caught at the back.
Some part of his dress had hitched in a projection of the wood-work,
and held him prisoner. He pulled, and the object, whatever it was,
appeared to come away. Suddenly it yielded, and fell heavily at his
heels. He turned to see what it was, and discovered that he had drawn
out from the circumference of the wheel one of the short boards or
panels of which it was composed.

For the moment, stooping to lift the thing, he imagined that its
detachment was due to mere accident or decay; but suddenly, as he idly
handled it, his fingers touched on something which set him oddly
thinking. This was a notch or groove on the _underside_ of the
board--representing the _outside_ of the wheel--which had been
intentionally cut there, it would seem, to facilitate its removal. But
for what purpose? A little excited, he made a quick examination of the
gap exposed, and saw at once that chance had led him on a curious
discovery. The board, a stout one, some eighteen inches in width, was
furnished with a tongue on each side, the two being formed to slide
into corresponding grooves cut in the adjacent sections, in the manner
of a ‘match-joint,’ and it was fitted on its outer edge, like a
box-lid, with a flange which, when the panel was pushed home, came up
flush with the wheel-rim. Brion tried it in and out, and found that it
ran quite easily. But why was it there, and what was the meaning of
the notch?

Now the lowest segment of the wheel, as already said, turned, for a
foot or more below the surface, in a little oblong pit cut to receive
it in the pavement, as if some miscalculation of the diameter had
necessitated that stratagem. Brion had always so looked upon it as a
makeshift, but now he began to wonder. After a minute of thrilling
reflection, he slid out the panel, laid it aside, and, turning the
wheel until the gap in it came over the pit, steadied the slowly
rotating monster and looked down. And instantly, with a little shock
of the blood, he understood. The pit was no shallow depression made to
receive the wheel, but the entrance to an underground chamber of
unknown depth and significance.

For some moments he leaned over, staring, his heart going like an
excited bird’s. In that dim and melancholy twilight he could not make
out much, but quite unmistakably the outline of rough stone steps
descending. Still he did not quite understand. It was obvious now that
the notch was for the use of anyone hidden below and desirous of
emerging; yet the position of that sunken part of the wheel would
preclude the possibility of the panel being pushed outward. How was it
managed? There was nothing for it but to go down and see. Only he must
have a light. He shivered with impatience: he could hardly command it
to hurry away, and make for the house, and, as privately as he could,
procure tinder and taper. But he did it, and got back unobserved.

The aperture left by the dislodged board was not great, yet it was
more than sufficient for an ordinary person to pass. Brion descending
through it, in a state far too wrought up for perturbation, easily
gained the upper step; and there he crouched, to look for the first
solution of the puzzle. It was simple enough, after all. There was a
slot cut in the side of the pit into which the panel could be run,
and, when there, it anchored the wheel in place. The boy, elate with
his discovery, came out and put the device to an immediate test. He
turned the wheel, slipped in the panel, brought it over the hole, and,
manipulating it from the upper side, found the slot and slid the board
in. The whole thing, it seemed to him, had the virtues of
extraordinary simplicity combined with absolute secrecy. Who would
dream that the wheel, an engine of everyday use, covered the entrance
to a subterranean hiding-place? He would never have discovered it
himself but for that accident of his jerkin hooking itself on a tough
splinter.

But now there faced him the deeper essay. He did not hesitate over it
a moment, but, entering and descending with his light, found himself,
at some three yards down, in a little stone-lined chamber excavated
out of the soil. It might have measured a cubic nine feet or so, and
was quite empty. Its walls were dank, there was a smell of the
unopened vault about it, and that was all. There appeared to be no
egress from it in any direction but up the steps. Probably it had been
devised for a hiding-place in the days so far back as the Wars of the
Roses, when it was convenient for all militant gentry to possess a
handy burrow.

Satisfied that he had seen all that was to be seen, Brion ascended
again to the light, pushed the panel into place, revolved the wheel a
little so as to shuffle, as it were, the cards, and retired, rich in
the possession of the second of two secrets with which that Spring had
endowed him. True, there seemed small object in reserving this latest
to himself; yet one never knew.




 CHAPTER XV.
 THE RETURN OF THE WANDERERS

It was late in July when Brion, returning one noon from a visit to
the Glen--where, against his better sentiments, he had found an
irresistible attraction in watching the trout and grayling blowing
rings in the water--was conscious, as he approached the Moated Grange,
of something in its atmosphere which had not been there when he left
it. A livelier smoke seemed to rise from the kitchen chimney: there
were signs of hoofmarks in the dust about the bridge. With a beating
heart he pushed open the wicket; there was a shout, and the next
moment he was in Clerivault’s arms.

‘Marry come up!’ cried that dear paragon. ‘Is not here a gallant
guerdon for my toils! Nay, hold away, while my hungry eyes make a
feast of thee!’

His lids blinked; he looked gaunter, more fantastic than ever; for all
his cherished grudge against him it warmed Brion’s heart to hear again
the high husky voice with its intermittent squeak. He had nothing to
give his friend for the moment but smiles and welcome.

‘Have you really come back, Clerivault,’ he said--‘and for good?’

‘For good, sweetheart? Ay, for no harm, at least.’

A vast hulk of a man, standing at the door of the porter’s lodge,
laughed out like a jovial bassoon:--

‘There’s a rare wit for you, Master,’ said he.

He was enormous, like a tree--a great lusty fellow in a buff jerkin
and hip-high boots, with a falling band about his throat. Each of his
ruddy cheeks might have sufficed a moderate man for his whole
countenance; and his fist would have served a giant for his Sunday
joint. Clerivault flicked him under the chin with his glove.

‘Speak when you’re spoken to, little Nol,’ said he; ‘and then to
better effect than to point out the obvious. Lout, man, lout to your
betters, nor stand there beaming like the sun in a red hazel bush.’

The huge creature ducked to Brion, who responded by holding out his
hand.

‘Is this Nol porter?’ he said, with a smile. ‘On my troth, a fit
attendant on a Judge of Assize!’

The giant, grasping the slim hand abashed, gaped doubtful a moment,
then went into a second boom of laughter. Here was another quip patent
to his perceptives. It was to be his rare fortune, it seemed, to serve
under a second wit, matching Clerivault’s own.

That gentleman interposed, a little starchily. He was jealous for the
boy’s sole attention.

‘A Judge,’ said he, ‘is not needed in a matter beyond dispute. This
creature’s hugeness hits the eye like a battering-ram. He hath
evidenced, and may be dismissed. Hence, porter--ha! and ruminate, like
a vast ox, on the condescension shown thee.’

He led Brion away, while the other backed, bobbing and grinning, into
the lodge. ‘Now,’ said he, stopping once more to look admiringly in
the boy’s face, ‘let me gaze on thee my fill. Art grown, I swear, and
to an aspect something graver than thy wont. Hast taken sadness in
this interval to be thy housemate?’

‘Is it cheering, think you,’ said Brion, levelling his voice, ‘to have
cherished a friend, and to have been forsaken by him without a word?’

The other did not answer for a moment.

‘Nay,’ he said softly, ‘I left a message for thee to be of good heart,
and to keep a corner in it for me. An William gave it thee not, I will
break his head for him.’

‘Spare thy bluster. Hurt to another would not mend mine. Besides he
gave me thy message.’

‘What then, sweetling? I had to go.’

‘And I to be deserted.’

‘The occasion was peremptory. No choice was left to me.’

‘Save to wake me and say good-bye.’

‘O!’ cried Clerivault, apostrophising Fate in a voice of grief and
despair: ‘what coil is this! _I_ wake thee to that message! If I have
sinned, I have sinned in good faith, and my reward is my love is
rejected.’

‘I said not that,’ said Brion, relenting. ‘But, indeed, Clerivault, it
wounded me to the heart to find you gone.’

‘Did it? did it?’ cried the other, in a rapture of emotion. ‘Then
happy, happy Harlequin for all his racking! If thou but knewest, my
blessed one--if thou but knewest, thou wouldst sure forgive me. But
the peril--if peril it was--is laid at last, and henceforth, by God’s
countenance, we shall live together in security, and never more be
disparted. When we rode away that night----’

‘Nay,’ said the boy, stopping him, a flush on his face--‘whither or on
what urgency I will not know. If I might not hear the exordium, I will
not hear the peroration. We were separated and we have rejoined, like
the sides of a wound. That should be enough for us. The interval of
pain it is well to forget, as if it had never been. I prithee speak no
word of it more. Is my Uncle returned with you?’

‘He is within,’ answered Clerivault. He was comforted but perplexed.
There was some change apparent here which he could not quite unriddle.
It was like a new birth, a detachment, as when a clinging tuber has
separated itself from its parent stock and declared for an independent
existence. There was a pride in it of conscious power; the old sweet
pliancy might be there, but its backbone had strengthened. Was he
become a man indeed in this short space? It would almost seem so.
There was a shadow on his lip; a knowledge, even a sadness, in his
eyes which had not been there before. Whence and how had they come?
The thought which had been Phineas’s thought just crossed his mind.
Well, he did not know whether to be glad or sorry for this
development; only thank God they were together again, and reconciled,
and friends as of old.

‘I will go to him,’ said Brion, and they walked on and entered the
house. The Justice was in his private closet off the hall--a room
selected for his use by Clerivault before his departure. It was a
small oak-panelled chamber, sombre but comfortable. The one
diamond-paned window, jewelled in its upper lights with heraldic
devices, threw a pattern like trellised moonshine on the carpet of
blue cloth--the only one in the house. An escritoire had been set
there by Brion’s directions, and the smaller bookcase, into which he
had gathered the best of the illuminated missals. They knocked, and
being bid to enter, Brion saw his Uncle again.

He was seated by a table, on which stood a jug of sack and a silver
tankard from which he had drunk copiously. He was just come off the
road, and was soiled and weary. Yet there was that in his expression
somehow more significant of mental than of physical exhaustion. The
dark moody features seemed bitten with a deeper consciousness of their
own fall from grace and beauty; into the large congested eyes had
grown a hunted listening look, pathetic in its implication of strength
harried and demoralised. His hands were tremulous when the boy came
in: it had needed but that little unexpected sound upon the door to
unnerve and shake him. But he greeted his nephew kindly, and with a
light come into his face which shone straight into Brion’s heart. He
beckoned, with a smile, to the boy, and, when he came, stood him
between his knees, and asked him many questions--as to his life since
they had parted, and the way he had employed his time, and his
opinion--a little wistfully this--as to the house and its surroundings
and his feelings regarding them.

‘I shall be happy now you have come,’ was the brave answer.

He seemed much affected. ‘What! You love me still?’ said he.

‘Yes, indeed, Sir.’

‘That’s well and good. Methinks, child, I could not do without your
love.’

‘Will you live here always now, Uncle Quentin?’

‘Ay, so they will leave me in peace.’

He said it wearily, his brow glooming a moment. But the shadow passed,
and he smiled again. ‘You ask no question,’ he said; ‘and that’s
discreet. Now, tell me: have you kept the trust I erst warned you? I
have not forgotten, you see.’

‘I have kept it on my honour.’

‘Well said. I like your honour as I like your face. I have been in
hiding, Brion. Are you curious to know why?’

‘No, Sir.’

‘Then, when you ask me, I shall tell you.’

‘I shall not ask you.’

‘Think, boy; to love me is to share my burden.’

‘I will take it all, Uncle, if you will, not seeking to know its
nature.’

The other did not answer for a little; but he heaved a great sigh,
gazing enrapt into his young kinsman’s face. Presently he said:--

‘Ay, sweet; this is love. Let it rest untaxed. It is enough to know
such confidence in store for me against a day when to bear my burden
longer alone were perchance to see me sink under it. So, you will be
happy? It is a brave and fair country, is it not? and, for the house,
Nol and our laughter shall mend its glooms. I lived here once, Brion.’

‘So Clerivault told me, Sir.’

‘He is a gossip, that. Dost love him too?’

‘I love him much, Uncle.’

‘A little mad, though--eh?’

‘I think a little madness spices life.’

The other laughed.

‘Heart! so it may. Well, he shall be answerable for thine outward
parts; act Chiron to thy Diomed; exercise thy limbs in sport and chase
and make a skilful swordsman of thee. For thine inner, I must account;
rub up my Greek and Latin; look to thine education. Wilt thou be a
creditable pupil?’

‘I will be a willing one.’

‘That’s sure. I see a life before us of full content--a happy round of
simple toils and sober pleasures, asking no more than health and a
quiet mind. What is vext Fortune but a gilded sore? A curse on the
lust for riches, which, like the fairy gold, turn to ashes in the
hands of him that grasps them with a covetous heart. I am gratefuller
being poor and lowly. Dost thou hear, child? I am poor at last. Will
it turn thee from me?’

For answer--for his heart was full--Brion made but a caressing
gesture. But it was enough.

‘God bless thee,’ said his kinsman in a broken voice. ‘Now leave
me’--and he put a hand before his eyes. But, as the boy went from the
room, too awed for the moment to put the question nearest his heart,
the hand was lowered to the half-emptied beaker.




 CHAPTER XVI.
 THE TRUTH AT LAST

So the parts were cast, and the new life begun in earnest. What was
over was prologue; the real business of the house dated from this
moment. Its members fell into their places; the weeds were gathered
from the Court; the giant in short time, putting his great back into
the job, brought order out of Chaos in the garden, and the whole place
began to assume an aspect of more homeliness than it had shown for
years. Not that on slender means it was to be reclaimed to the
prosperity it had once enjoyed; it was ever in Brion’s time a thin
estate, a half vacant building; but at least the worst of its
desolation was amended to a plausible patchwork, and the cheeriness
and devotion of its denizens made up in volume for the emptiness that
echoed them in unfurnished rooms.

At first the boy was restless under this transformation of
surroundings which, however dreary, had been associated with some
sweet times. A weight, moreover, was upon his mind, which, until he
could find occasion to shift it, must still oppress and agitate him.
If only he could put the question he longed to put, he would feel, he
thought, whatever the nature of the answer, a more resigned harmony
with his lot than ever he could attain to while that question was
pending. And at length the opportunity he sought came to him, and he
seized it.

Every morning he read with his uncle in the Classics--Livy’s History,
Isocrates’ Pleadings, Cicero on Friendship and Old Age, or the
Tragedies of Sophocles--showing a mind so well balanced and informed
that the tutor, finding himself in danger of being surpassed by his
pupil, fell more and more into the negative rôle of assenter rather
than proposer, until there came a day when he withdrew
unostentatiously from the partnership, leaving the boy to conduct his
own education after the manner he thought best.

There was another sentiment, however, associated with this
relinquishment which was neither so sagacious nor so humorous.
Despondency, combined with mental inquietude and the means he took to
allay them, were encouraging in Quentin Bagott at this time a habit of
moody solitariness, which from an indulgence was to become an
obsession, and which, in its extreme phases, only Brion could invade
with impunity. The truth was that, in spite of all he had acclaimed,
and wished to believe, to the contrary, an existence of pastoral
seclusion and inaction, after the busy forceful life he had led, was
impossible to the man, and had become only the more unendurable as his
mind was gradually relieved of its apprehensions regarding a possible
impeachment. A veritable _mal du pays_ ensuing, he had had recourse
for its alleviation to a remedy already only too familiar to him as a
begetter of dreams and oblivion. Pride, too, and the bitter chagrin of
a fallen power, conscious of his neighbours’ knowledge of his own
equivocal position, and of the means they were not slow to take to
enforce that knowledge on him, helped to aggravate the double evil,
and to drive him ever more upon himself and the means to
forgetfulness. He might profess to scorn, in his own self-contained
strength and the devoted efficiency of his household, the ‘slings and
arrows’ of extraneous malice: his professions could gain no
confirmation from his habits. Whatever the case, however, it became
soon enough patent to all about him that, of the great store of wine
and strong waters had over from the _Golden Lion_ in Ashburton, by far
too great a proportion found its way to the ex-Judge’s table or,
worse, into his private closet. And the effect was not long in
revealing itself, or in pointing its own miserable moral of
debasement. There is tragedy in the still smouldering ruins of a
house, but only squalor in them quenched and sodden.

But long before this evil had become a thing to whisper and remark on,
Brion had learned all that he was destined to learn about his own
history. He was with his Uncle one day, reading, at the table (to love
both books and sport is to be the admirable youth) from Melancthon’s
_Confession_, and looking up occasionally to ask the other, who sat in
his big chair by the escritoire, to expound for him some knotty
passage from the gentle Reformer, when suddenly a look came into his
eyes, and a thrill to his heart, with the knowledge that he had
reached the way. He rose, breathing hard, his eyes shining, to his
feet.

‘Uncle Quentin,’ he said.

‘Nephew,’ was the response.

‘May I ask you a question--a personal one?’--he just touched the
volume before him.

The heavy brows were bent upon him, suspicious, inquiring. ‘What
question?’

‘Are you of the Reformed Church?’

‘Why should you doubt it?’

‘I do not. It is only the evidence of so many of your books that
moiders me.’

‘It befits a Judge of law, child, to hear the evidence on both sides,
and it befits a judge of beauty to prize beauty above dogma. I am not
so stern a convert but I can allow some virtues to the faith I have
abandoned.’

‘You were once a Papist, then? And was Jane Middleton a convert too?’

He had said it, and boldly, stiffening his neck; yet he might have
hesitated, had he foreseen its effect upon the other. Quentin Bagott
rose with a staggering motion from his chair; his features worked
painfully; he stood breathing heavily, a hand to his throat.

‘Uncle!’ cried the boy, aghast.

‘What was that you said?’

‘Clerivault once told me you had a sister--but she died. Was she not
called so?’

‘What if she were?’

‘I meant no harm. But, O, Uncle, I am sick to know! I found her name
in the little Book of Hours: Jane Middleton Bagott, it was writ;
and--and my name is Brion Middleton.’

He leaned forward passionately, a sobbing flutter in his throat.
‘Uncle!’ he cried again.

And over his own clenched hand the other bowed his head, lower, lower,
and, holding it so, sank down into the chair from which he had risen.
At that the boy ran and flung himself on his knees before him,
pleading in a desperate voice:--

‘What have I said! I never thought to hurt you so.’

The hand unclasped itself to an impatient gesture.

‘Let out! You would know--what?’

The beat was going fast in the boy’s throat. He struggled with himself
to control it, but it yielded to an irresistible cry:--

‘If she was my mother.’

A long silence followed; and then suddenly Bagott lifted his head, and
looked straight and haggard into the eyes before him.

‘She was thy mother,’ he said.

The lad gave a little gasp; but he knelt up manly to receive the
stroke he felt was threatening. The other did not alter his fixed
gaze.

‘Who told you?’ he asked.

‘No one.’

‘Since when have you known--or guessed?’

‘I think, in my heart, from that day when she came and kissed me on
the road after the Queen had passed.’ He spoke up steadily, putting
force upon himself to do so.

‘What made you think that she that kissed you was your mother?’

‘I know not--some instinct. But the thought only grew to haunt me
after years had gone, when once there returned upon me a memory of
Clerivault’s message, and of how, in seeming response to it, my dear
master had taken me apart that day to see the Queen go by, and of what
had followed. And after, when I read the name in the book, and thought
of how I called you Uncle, it all seemed to piece together, so that in
a moment I felt the truth of it, and wept.’

‘Why should you weep?’ He said it harshly, with a sneer. ‘If she’s
dead, the nobler parent lives. Are you not curious to know about
him--your father?’

‘No; I hated him.’

‘Hated!’

‘He was an evil man. She feared him, sitting beside her. He looked at
me, too, as if he hated me.’

‘God!’ An amazed, half startled look came into his eyes. ‘Speak soft.
What it is to have so quick a wit! Thy father, that--was it? Do you
know, then, what you are?’

‘I know what he called me.’

‘What?’

‘I will not speak if of myself.’

The eyes were piercing him; and then, all in a moment, a film seemed
to come before them, and they were wonderfully dim and soft. An arm
was put about his neck; the voice dropped to a moving tenderness, full
of grief and pity.

‘I will not speak it of thee neither. A curse on him that made thee
so! Ah, that day! She would importune me--child, she would importune
me for a sight of thee--a little speech--one kiss, to ease her load of
shameful yearning. And I, though I feared the issue, consented; I sent
Clerivault to prepare the way. And he--that evil man--he looked on
thee with hate, did he? And well he might, to see such evidences of
his own villainy. She was ever sweet and trustful--nay, you shall hear
it all--my Jane, my little sister--and he a smooth-tongued liar. It
was at Mary’s Court they met, she a lady-in-waiting, and he, already a
wedded man, just out from the Tower--would to God he had shared his
father’s fate there--made Master of the Queen’s ordnance. A curse upon
his house! But she ever believed in him--she died believing in him. Ah
died, my girl! And we had been children here together--bred in the old
faith--in her heart she never abandoned it--she clung to where she
loved. It was that guided my choice of thy preceptor, thine adoptive
father--a good old man, but weakly recusant, known to me by name and
repute. A Protestant, forsooth? Neither that nor the other, but a
Catholic with views moderated by the Reform movement. So were we all:
so was the Queen herself, till Cecil drove her to intolerance: so
was--no, he was never but a plausible time-server--a perjurer and
false-swearer. Yet he gave thee life, Brion--he gave thee life.’

His voice broke: he had spoken spasmodically, and with great emotion,
and the effort seemed to have exhausted him. But to Brion’s young soul
the confession had brought a tragic resignation which was almost like
peace after storm. Long half-suspecting the truth, he knew now what he
was, and what he could never be. His brain was busy as he knelt. To
make a name or inherit one--which was the nobler? He could be anything
in the wide world but that one thing, and that one thing was the one
thing in the wide world no child of earth could ever achieve for
himself. There was no question of personal credit connected with it,
and he would be a poor moralist who should hold him to blame for
another man’s fault. So reasoned the sane young philosopher. He could
be all that he chose, except the one thing in which he had no choice,
and he was not debarred by that single exception from the best thing
of all, which was certainly self-respect. For his own sweet erring
mother he felt the tenderest love and pity; towards the instrument of
her undoing nothing but animosity. No ethical qualms moved him there;
bad was bad, by whatever name you called it.

‘He gave my mother to shame,’ he said, presently and quietly, in
answer to his Uncle’s last appeal: ‘and I shall ever hate him for it.’

‘Hush, boy!’ said Bagott, lifting his head. ‘You know not what you
say, or of whom you speak.’

‘Do I not, Uncle? His name was uttered that day by one that served
him, and whom he struck for revealing it.’

‘My God! was it so? Nathless you must not hate him. It is not for the
lamb to hate the bear--nay, the royal lion himself, as may come to
hap. Forget him, an thou canst do naught else. On thy life never
breathe his name in choler. The air is as full of ears as he of power.
Have I not reason to hate him too; yet for thy sake will I put him and
his misdeeds from my mind.’

Brion did not answer; but after a moment he rose to his feet, and
stood erect before the seated figure. He would keep his own proud
counsel thenceforth, in all matters affecting his honour and duty. His
head was lifted, his eyes shone; before their authority the other’s
blinked and were lowered.

‘Uncle,’ he said: ‘what for my sake thou mayst do I might not for my
own. Yet for what for my sake thou hast done, my love and gratitude
shall endeavour. Hast thou not been my better father, and from the
first?’

‘From the first, boy: I made thee my charge to sorrow and to silence.
Yet, though I planned to consign thee to oblivion, my thoughts pursued
thee. Thou wert the last of us--her child. I could not forget that nor
thee; and when curst Fortune made of my life a ruined waste--Ah, what
disgrace on thee like mine! ’Twas then in bitter self-scorn I first
claimed thee kinsman; for was I not done honour in the connexion?’

He spoke and bowed his head again. He had forgotten, in his emotion,
that to this child his retirement figured as a voluntary exile. But
Brion paid no heed, nor seemed to notice what he had said. His eyes
still shone.

‘Uncle,’ he said; ‘now it is confessed and done with, I ask one only
thing of thee--never to let word be uttered between us on this subject
again. From this moment I would begin a new life--my own. I will make
myself, who should be the best architect of mine own honour. Will
you?’

And the compact was made; and from that hour kept unbroken between
them.




 CHAPTER XVII.
 CERTAIN VISITORS

Somewhere in the late summer of ’77 there came to the Moated Grange
early one morning two visitors, of whom one was destined to exert a
considerable influence on Brion’s fortunes. These were Sir Richard
Grenville, and a young connexion of his named Walter Raleigh, both
West Border gentlemen of good family, and one of them, the elder,
holding some sort of official position as County Sheriff. This latter
was a strong, compact, saturnine man of thirty-seven, rough bearded
and voiced, and with a manner which halted, if at all, on the near
side of offence; in all of which characteristics he afforded as
complete a contrast as was possible with his companion, whose extreme
graces of courtesy and geniality, together with a handsome gallant
presence, made only more emphatic the coarse grain of the other. This
Mr Raleigh was but lately home, it seemed, from fighting in the Low
Countries, where he had played the part of a good soldier against the
King of Spain, and earned for himself a reputation which he was quite
prepared to stake against the most extravagant throws of Fortune. He
was a tallish young man of twenty-five, very shapely in the limbs,
with a white hand and a comely intellectual face, rather overhigh in
the forehead, but with noble brown eyes, which, at a tale of arms and
chivalry, would glow like living fires. His human weakness--if
weakness it were to treat so fine a body delicately--lay in a certain
over-gallantry of attire. He loved fine clothes, and knew how to wear
them to effect. Now, though he was by the road, and only country folk
to appraise him, he was dressed as though to attend a Queen’s
junketting--from embroidered bonnet to long Flemish boots of soft
leather a star of fashion. His little pointed beard was scented, as
were his cheveril gloves; he had jewels in his ears; his gilt spurs
‘rang the morris-dance.’ And yet to judge him effeminate would have
been to invite disaster. There is a form of foppishness about which it
does not do to assume that it lacks the courage of its opinions; and
here was a wrist as strong and supple as the wit behind it was virile.

The two gentlemen--the one in virtue of his office, the other of his
own engaging assurance, it seemed--appeared as uninvited guests; but
there was little doubt as to the purpose of their visit. Rumours, in
an unfriendly neighbourhood, had got abroad as to the supposed
Papistical tendencies of the master of the Grange, and the Sheriff
considered, or made, it his business to inquire into the matter. He
did so, to do him justice, frankly and at first hand, and would accept
no hospitality, for himself and his companion, until he was satisfied
as to the baselessness of the accusation. Convinced of which, he
consented for them to dine and lie the night at the Grange, and
Phineas was put to his mettle to provide a feast worthy of the
occasion.

Brion, having been early astir, with Clerivault, on the moors after
wild fowl, did not encounter the newcomers until he came in to dinner
at eleven o’clock. But his surprise on finding them there was so
graced by tact in his greeting as to appear more like gratification
than wonder.

He had developed in these three years into a prepossessing young man
of nineteen, lithe and well-proportioned, with a smooth rather pale
complexion, and the most winning gray eyes full of gravity and humour.
His fair hair had deepened a thought in tone, and even more so his
eyebrows and lashes, once described as mouse-coloured, but now a
well-marked umber, while a definite shadow pencilled his lip. Always
possessed of an attractive manner, though shy in its expression, his
earlier reserve had yielded to an unaffected friendliness which was as
sincere as it was captivating. Self-reliance and a certain beauty of
mind had wrought of this youngster a very maiden knight, whose sword
was as ready as his word to uphold that religion of honour which he
had made his own. What he owed to himself he paid in sweetness and
forbearance to others; yet there was a humour in him which saved him
very adequately from the saint. He could be ebullient sometimes, and
do things of which he repented. Yet among these was never to be
counted a lapse from one fixed ideal. Dedicated to his lady’s service,
he would be pure and chivalrous for her sake, nor, for her sake, would
he ever break his virgin plight, unless, by blessed fortune, it were
to achieve in her the desire of his heart. So he was resolved, vowing
it should be his Joan for him or none, and in the meantime what arms
and enterprise fell to him he would use to her sole renown, whereby he
would be constantly pledged to the nobility his birth denied him.

This firm resolution--the more inflexible, perhaps from the lack of
any temptation, in that masculine community, to reconsider it--had
lasted since the closing of that brief romance had left him, as he
thought, with a broken heart. It all seemed very far away now; such
episodes in the full years of youth fade quickly into the background
of dim memories. He could afford, perhaps, to smile at it, and at the
tragic intensity of the grief which had predicted for him an eternity
of unforgetting anguish. Yet, though that dear apparition might never
materialise for him again, the love it had engendered in his soul
still made itself a sanctuary there, and called to be revered and
honoured for the dream’s sake. It had no more to build on. In all
these years the family had never returned to the Chase, nor, hugging
that poignant secret to his heart, could he venture to seek
information as to its possible plans and movements. She was gone from
him, it seemed, never to return; and gone to what fate? For long he
had suffered intolerable torment, raging over her peril and his own
helplessness. But the impotence of his agony had proved its cure. He
had learned first despair from it and then resignation. At least they
had had those lovely moments together which had been all their own. No
power on earth could rob him of that possession, or spoil its
sweetness for him so long as he himself kept it spotless. And so he
had preserved his dream and become a knight of dreams.

That steadfast sentiment had been one factor in the forming of the
boy’s character, as his relations with his Uncle had proved another.
It is melancholy to record that the ex-Judge had at this date
degenerated into something little removed from an habitual sot. His
vice had steadily grown upon him under his nephew’s eyes, until, for
all his inexperience and reluctance to believe, Brion had been forced
into a recognition of the truth. He took it passionlessly, gravely,
and set about to adapt his conduct to the newly-realised conditions.
There could be no question of coercive or of remonstrant measures with
a spirit of that force and authority; instead, he devoted himself to
hedging about an evil which he could not remove, and so hiding its
worst manifestations from the world. The drunkard watched, with a
drunkard’s cunning, the nature of these means so privily taken to
safeguard his reputation, and was leeringly tickled or gloomily
affected by them according to his mood. But they had this inevitable
effect upon him, that he took to leaning more and more upon his
nephew’s resourcefulness and quiet strength of will, until in the end
it ensued that Brion became virtual master of the house, ordering its
affairs and attending to its accounts. And that was only to anticipate
events indefinitely, for he had long been made and legally attested
sole heir to all the little property, including house and messuage,
which his Uncle still possessed.

Clerivault knocked thrice on the sideboard with a rolling-pin, and the
company assembled to its dinner in the great hall. The meal consisted
of two courses, the items of which, for any who may care to consult
them, figured as follows:--

  First Course.

 Calves’ foot soup
 Poached eggs with hop-tops
 Roasted hare and forcemeat balls
 Fried hasty pudding
 Mushrooms done in batter
 Black-caps (or applejohns--baked apples served in custard).

  Second Course.

 Fried lampreys
 A mess of cocks’ combs
 Roasted crane
 Spiced vegetables with eggs
 A great pasty of boar’s head
 Radishes
 Flavons, or open cheesecakes

--with copious canary, malmsey, and flagons of strong October ale to
wash all down. The host, bareheaded, muttered for grace a brief
_Benedictus Benedicat_, to which all, save Grenville, removed their
hats--to put them on again to dine in.

‘I doff to no Latin,’ said the Sheriff, with a scowl.

Bagott moistened his unsteady lips with his tongue. He looked ill and
agitated. The unexpectedness of this visit, with the moral of
watchfulness and suspicion it implied, had sent his nerves by the
board. He was the mere delapidated ruin of his former self, bloated,
coarsened, discoloured. He could not control the twitching of his
features or the aphasia which muddled his speech. The signs of his
infirmity were too patent on him for any to mistake the cause. He only
stared, hearing the rebuke, as if at a loss for its provocation. But
Raleigh came to the rescue.

‘Unless to _caput aperio_,’ said he gaily. ‘For my part I would not be
so churlish to an old friend.’

‘No friend of mine,’ growled the other. ‘I always hated it--a Popish
crafty language. I was no College ape’ (Raleigh had been at Oriel) ‘to
learn to mince and lisp in tricked-up phrases. A dead language,
forsooth! Ay, and vampires they that feed on it. Give me full-blooded
English for my share.’

‘To bless the food, withal? An you spoke your fullest, we’d see it
blasted rather. I’ll say _Benedicat_ with all my heart, and see no
more craft in it than a short cut to the joint. Come, Dick: a pledge
to our host in better grace.’

Grenville drank it--surlily enough; but it warmed him to a reluctant
if temporary urbanity. He was one of those who cannot concede a thing
gracefully. He had suspected, perhaps wished to suspect, this man; his
suspicions allayed, he grudged himself his own convincement. But
already his civility was tempered with contempt when he saw the sort
of creature he had to deal with. He had no eyes for any tragedy in
this ruin; but only for the baseness of its material aspect; and when,
as the dinner proceeded, and the ex-Judge, stimulated by copious
libations, steadied, and ran a brief spasmodic stage of brilliancy,
only to slide unexpectedly into a condition of maudlin incoherence, he
shrugged his shoulders disdainfully, and, virtually turning them on
his host, addressed himself for the remainder of the meal to Brion.
Raleigh seemed to feel the young man’s discomfort, and to sympathise
with it; but he could do no more than endeavour to keep the
conversation on as natural a plane as possible.

‘This house?’ he asked once, interested in some chance allusion to the
place: ‘it is a rare and old one?’

Brion did not know; but Grenville, who was well posted in local
history, answered dogmatically for him:--

‘’Twas re-built in the Crookback’s reign, by one Miles Bagott, a
Yorkist franklin. That was always a family, cry you mercy, young
gentleman, to back the wrong horse.’

Bagott, some spark rekindling in his fuddled brain, looked the length
of the table, with glazed eyes and a tipsy leer.

‘The wrong horse,’ said he, in a thick disjointed voice--‘the wrong
horse may suttimes have the better tidle, and may hap to come to its
own in the end.’

All eyes were turned on the speaker.

‘The better title, master?’ asked Grenville, with a sneer. ‘What
better title? To the crown?’

The drunkard pursed his lips and nodded his head extravagantly. He had
said, his manner expressed, all he meant to say.

The two visitors exchanged a quick glance; and then Grenville
remarked, as if by design:--

‘Nathless I would not put Queen Mary of Scotland’s chance at a
copper-mite.’

Both he and Raleigh seemed to wait for an answer; but none coming,
save in more inebrious nods and chuckles, the former, with a ‘Bah!’
contemptuously uttered under his breath, turned again to Brion, who
sat quite at a loss for the meaning of this passage, and continued:--

‘Withal this family _hath_ been’--with a significant emphasis on the
‘hath’--‘more creditable in its members than always in its tenants.
You’ve heard of him that lived and died here before your day?’

‘Matthew Fulk the miser, Sir?’

‘So they called him. It might be. ’Twas the name of a bloody picaroon,
had sailed the seas and pillaged and murdered in his time. He was said
to have treasure hid here; and to have killed and pitched down the
well some young conveniency that lived with him, and that came to
learn too much. Wives’ tales, I doubt not. There was nothing found
after his death. I saw him once, an old sanctimonious buck-fitch, in
whose mouth butter had not melted.’

Brion listened, with open eyes. Here was a new garnish to an old tale
which greatly enhanced its savour. A pirate! And the poor maid had
found out his secret! At least that was a more plausible story than
the demoniac immolation imagined by Mother Harlock.

‘_I_ should like to sail the seas,’ said he, his eyes shining; ‘but
for a better purpose than robbery and murder.’

For the first time the grim Sheriff looked at him with interest.

‘What purpose?’ said he.

‘To carry England’s fame from land to land,’ answered the young man,
‘and, as doughty knighthood used, to uphold my mistress peerless
against all the world.’

‘God’s ’slid! and so she is!’ cried Clerivault, in a high ecstatic
voice. He had remained, a privileged attendant, when the meal was
over, to carry the wine about. The Sheriff bent astonished wrathful
brows on the daring interjector; but Raleigh regarded him with an
amused curiosity.

‘What’s that, Sir donzel?’ said he. ‘You love your England?’

It was to put spark to tow, and set it flaring unquenchably.
Clerivault forgot his duty, his company, his place, and broke
forthwith, his eyes glittering, into a wild rhapsodic paean on his
native land:--

‘Love her--ha! As the flower loves the sun, the parched soul water,
the woman her way, the kid its milky dam. To carry England’s fame?
Aye, thou dear gentle--through all the lands, like a sweet western
gale that rains life and health on the dearth it visits. She shall
make conquests, ha! but such as the liberal light makes of cramped
darkness. We’ll go together; teach the world to know her for what she
is; so sing her sweet and pastoral praises that whole peoples shall
lay down their arms for very love, and yield themselves her subjects
and her slaves. Earth shall surrender to her beauty, as willingly as
it yields its frozen winters to spring with her daffodils and
milk-white hawthorns. For where England sets her feet, does not the
primrose break? She brings the atmosphere of her free and equitable
fields into where’er she enters; and straight from that lovely
invasion are born the darling wind-flower that is Our Lady’s child,
and cowslips known for St Peter’s keys to Heaven, and wild hyacinth,
our own St George’s bells that fought and slew the beast, and radiant
mary-buds that cure most ills. These shall spring up, where’er we go,
like Thebes its towers, to our song, and win the soils we tread to
England. Or if we die, we die for England’s sake, and take possession
with our fruitful bodies. All lands where English blood is shed and
England’s sons lie buried are in part fiefs to England; for there each
grave becomes a plat of English mould, rich breeding-ground of truth
and chivalry, fair play, honour to the better man, forbearance in
strength--all qualities summed up in this, the heart to conquer and
the hate to pain. O, it is good to live for England, but sweeter still
to die and be her prolific dust! Peerless, in truth, our fair
mother--I take the word, sweet soul, from thee, as I would have thee
take me with thee in the sharing of thy quest.’

He ceased; his voice fell; but silence still seemed to ripple on his
lips, while the rapt exaltation in his eyes died slowly out. Raleigh
applauded, with a somewhat kindling vision:--

‘Well sung!’ he said: ‘Here is another as passionate lover of his
land.’

But the practical Sheriff snorted, finding little to understand in
these dithyrambics.

‘I know naught of your cowslips and wind-flowers,’ he grumbled. ‘A
general were best to take wheat and barley with him, where he foresees
a long besiegement, and sow them in the open ground. And as to
atmospheres, for all I’m a loyal Devon man, I’d liefer chance the
fortunes of another climate than take my own with me.’

Raleigh laughed out: ‘O, thou rare Dick!’ and Brion, fearing to follow
his example, rose, and went to Clerivault, and, gripping his hand,
looked in his face with a whispered word:--

‘It shall be share and share alike, friend, when the time comes.’

The dinner finished, and Clerivault left to care for his master, who
had fallen fast asleep with his head on the table, Brion went with his
guests into the open air, where, strolling in the Courtyard, they came
upon Nol porter at friendly trials of strength with Raleigh’s servant,
one Nicholas Wright, a bulky Yorkshireman. And them they provoked to a
wrestling bout on the sward, in which neither could best the other;
after which the Sheriff, in his turn, fell asleep on a bench and
snored in the sun. Then did this Mr Raleigh, with a very winning way
he had, inviting and giving confidence in one, slip his arm under the
young man’s, and ask him to come with him a little walk towards the
moors, for that he had something of moment for his private ear. And
Brion, foreseeing, perhaps, what was to follow, and naturally pleased,
as a boy, over the condescension of so superlative a gallant, very
willingly consented.

‘That is a rare fellow of thine, the patriot cup-bearer,’ said the
soldier, as, leaving the bridge, they walked on together. ‘It warmed
my heart to hear him.’

Brion smiled. ‘It was one Harlequin Clerivault, a creature as
fantastic as his name, but with a heart of gold. You touched him on
the quick, Sir. To start his brain on the subject of England is like
laying open an emmet heap with your foot. It is a house gone wild at a
blow.’

‘Well, I love him for it. Whence came the oddity?’

‘I know not; but the first of him for us was’--he paused, remembering
his bond, and his cheek reddened.

‘Nay,’ said the other, quietly observant, ‘no need for you to answer.
No need, mayhap, in the double sense, chancing I know already.’

‘You know?’

‘Why, what a tone? Think you it is no part of the duties of my friend
the Sheriff to acquire some knowledge of his neighbours’ antecedents?
Well, if this man of yours ought his peril to the monks he favoured,
and his neck to your Uncle, that was long days ago, and certes in
these he plays the part, with you, of a good Churchman. But why, lad,
does your kinsman, the ex-Judge, never worship with his nephew in St
Andrew’s Church in Ashburton?’

‘Because,’ began Brion--and stuck. He felt stupefied. This revelation
of a sort of furtive vehmgericht sitting on their conduct, the while
they had been living untroubled and unsuspecting, took him like a
blow. But Raleigh laughed good-humouredly:--

‘Judge me for no inquisitor: only, remembering things, and setting
this with that--you have never heard, mayhap, what put him out of
favour with the Court?’

‘I heed no gossips, Sir,’ said the boy proudly; and then, remembering
who had been his informant, blushed again, in grief at having so
belied his innocent dear.

‘Well,’ said the other; ‘I say no more--only that it were a small
wisdom on his part to condescend to bridle those same gossips by
attending the reformed service now and again. Yet he may say he knows
his own business better than I can tell him--and that’s the truth. For
me, who both come and give advice uninvited, it is reassurance enough
to have heard that passionist declaim. No schism worth the name in a
house where such sentiment could answer such sentiment as his answered
thine! That is the true orthodoxy for me--and eke shall be for my
kinsman Dick Grenville. Loves England, quotha! By God he does--by God
he does. And you’--he stopped in his walk, and looked Brion very
honestly in the face. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘I am going to be as frank with
you as I dare trust you will be with me; and I do entreat you to
believe in my well-meaning candour, the which is designed to no
insidious end, but wholly to serve one whom I am greatly inclined to
love, and who I desire shall accept me for a true friend--yourself.’

What young fellow in Brion’s case would not have been touched by such
a declaration from such a man? He answered, much moved, that his
friendship was Master Raleigh’s for the asking.

‘And confidence,’ said the other, ‘as between two brothers, the elder
of whom hath gained some wisdom in the world.’

‘And confidence,’ repeated Brion in a low voice.

‘Then,’ said Raleigh, ‘here’s at it. Your Uncle let fall but now at
dinner a remark somewhat pertinent to the matter which brought us
hither. You heard it, and Grenville’s answer. I’ll be open with you.
There are whispers of some plot toward to dethrone the Queen and put
Mary of Scotland in her place. You know nothing of it?’

‘Nothing--just Heaven!’

‘Nor your Uncle?’

Brion looked at him sadly.

‘You see what he is.’

‘I see,’ said the other, ‘and pity him and you. Then you think he is
not involved?’

‘Not possible. He receives no correspondence; sees nobody, unless
enforced; for years has held himself quite secluded.’

‘No midnight priests--no disguised emissaries of Spain?’

‘None. O!’ said the boy, ‘that I should have to say it. He hath become
the very nerveless ruin of a man, incapable of plotting, of resisting
even for one brief hour the enemy that kills him. If he had cunning in
those words at all, I trow it was the cunning of a lawyer’s brain,
haunted in its decay with old thoughts of deeds and titles.’

Raleigh, pondering the speaker, did not answer for some moments; then
he heaved a great sigh, as of relief, and, recapturing the boy’s arm,
the two resumed their stroll.

‘That’s like enow,’ said he--‘and so I’ll acquaint Grenville. ’Tis
happily resolved; and now we’ll talk of other things.’

And so he did, and charmingly. He was full of life and anecdote. He
was on his way to London shortly, where, he said, his pack of small
accomplishments would find their most profitable market. ‘For,’ said
he, ‘in all the world it is the little things gain great rewards,
since man, being little, judges by little. But greatness must be
content even with itself, since it cannot be content with little.’ He
urged Brion to come with him; to persuade his impossible kinsman to
let him go; to throw off the shackles of imagined duty which kept him
wasting his young life among boors in a rustic isolation, and take
that place in the world to which his gentle breeding and physical
graces entitled him. He was frankly complimentary: he had obviously
taken a fancy to the young fellow. He even hinted to him, though with
a subtle delicacy, that he might find his bar sinister _no_ bar to his
social advancement, but rather the contrary. And Brion understood
without resentment. He had long decided his own attitude towards that
question: for one thing to accept it as, virtually, an open secret;
for another, to refuse to suffer for it in any way to himself, since
honour was a matter of conscience, and not of arbitrary bestowal. But
he only thanked his new friend, and answered that, like that friend
himself, he must win his spurs before he took his reputation to
market.

‘And so thou shalt,’ said the other admiringly. ‘Thou shalt carry thy
quest knight-errantly, and strike for England’s name. Would I could go
with thee to bruit her virtues. But the time may come. I see a vision
in the West of a land great for adventure--the arena, it may hap,
where shall be fought to a final settlement our quarrel with
idolatrous Spain. Shall we leave all this and sail there together? Who
knows what may come to pass. But first--the spurs. Is England, I am
fain to ask, thine only love? A paladin so devout should wear a lady’s
sleeve about his helm.’

Brion gave a little gasp, and the blood rushed to his heart. He had
never yet spoken his secret to living soul. Should he break that
silence now? He was suddenly and irresistibly tempted, such surety of
earnest faith and sympathy he felt in this young soldier. Before he
could resolve, the words were out of him:--

‘Mayhap I do.’

‘That’s well,’ said Raleigh. ‘No such incitement to chivalry in all
the world. She’s sweet and fair, I know. Her name, that thy boon
comrade may hold it housed and honoured in his heart!’

The young man hesitated one moment, then turned and looked the other
glowingly in the eyes.

‘Joan Medley,’ he said.

‘Joan Medley!’ repeated Raleigh, and struck his breast: ‘There it lies
shrined.’

‘You know her--have heard of her, perchance?’ asked Brion, the blood
flushing his skin now that the murder was out. But the soldier shook
his head.

‘Is she of this side? My home is _Fardel_ in Cornwood, east of
Plymouth; and even so I am but late returned to it, having been long
in France and the Low Countries.’

And then Brion told him all his secret, for what was the use to
withhold the rest, when he had confessed so much. And as he spoke, the
glamour of that sweet time returned upon him, so that his voice grew
husky with passion and grief, and the recognition of that loss which
could never now be made good.

‘Nay,’ said his comforter at the end: ‘never’s no word for love. A
City knight, and I for London! I’ll get you news of her--contrive you
meet again. She’s not forgot thee--take my word on’t. That face would
linger in a maiden’s heart. Be of best cheer. Shalt hear from me
within the month.’

His bright confidence had its effect upon the lover. Hope, like a
blown-on-spark, began to glow and travel in his breast again. But
still he shook his head:--

‘What an he hath forced her to wed where she abhorred?’

‘What an he hath not?’ was the answer. ‘I detect a touch of self-will
in your lady. She would have her way on occasion. And she a spoilt and
only child. Come, brave heart! We’ll pledge a silent toast to your
re-meeting, at table this night.’

And they did so, their eyes encountering, while Brion thrilled all
through.

There was little talk at supper--from which the host was absent--save
for the young soldier’s recounting some of his experiences in the Low
Countries. And, of those, what most impressed itself on Brion’s mind
was a description of a certain engagement with the forces of Don John
of Austria, natural son to the Emperor, in which, the day being
sultry, the English--among whom was Raleigh--had flung off their
armour and hacketons, and fought in their shirts, with a fury that had
routed the enemy, though superior in numbers, and driven him to flight
and confusion. And that was to be Englishmen all over, bold and
reckless to folly, yet having confidence in nothing so much as the
clean sheer force of their English blood to carry them through.

The little company went to bed early; and early next morning the
gentlemen took their departure, Raleigh with many expressions of
affection and reassurance to his young host, and even Sir Richard,
gruffly unbending, with a word of what he meant to be courtly
acknowledgement of the hospitality vouchsafed them.

Brion, with a kindling heart, watched them ride away.




 CHAPTER XVIII.
 HOPE DEFERRED

A month passed, and still the promised communication from London
delayed to come. The interval was spent by Brion in alternations of
feverish hope and stoic resignation: now he would rise to heights of
glowing expectancy, crediting his intrepid friend, in whose vocabulary
the word impossible seemed to have no place, with an almost
supernatural sagacity, now lament that he had ever permitted those old
emotions, long precipitated and settled down, to be stirred up again
to his futile misery. It was and could be nothing but an idle dream.
Even were his lady, by any mad chance, as yet unwed, was it credible
that a life so full, so prosperous and so courted as hers must have
been during these years would have remained dedicate to that childish
memory, or have come to regard it--at best, perhaps, with a little
humorous tenderness--as anything but the half-forgotten idyll of a
summer’s day? No, it was not credible, and it was a bitter weakness in
him ever to have listened to that insidious tempter who had set
re-flaming in him a long subdued fire. Out with it; cold water it;
stamp it down, and this time for good and all!

And then straight the revulsion would follow, and he would bemoan
himself for a false knight, whose faith was not proof against the
first test of separation. Had she not vowed herself his for evermore,
chosen him her champion, pledged him to an eternal fidelity, declared
passionately that she would kill herself rather than be made untrue to
him? Base and craven, he was unworthy to be called her lover, who
could so misdoubt her, lacking a shred of evidence.

And so swung the pendulum, this way and that, until there came a
memorable day--but well into the second month--when the longed-for
despatch was actually delivered into his hands, and conveyed by him to
a private place, and there eagerly broken and read.

The young Captain wrote very pleasantly, in the Italian script then
growing into fashion with the cultured, and in that fluent graceful
style which presently came to make him notable among writers of note.
He was very much occupied, it appeared. He had made his début at
Court and been well received. He was full of engagements and plans and
ambitions, and he discoursed at some length on the flattering
attentions he had excited, seeming to linger a little complacently
over this opportunity to draw his own portrait for his own behoof.
Indeed, it was Raleigh, Raleigh most of the way, until the hasty
postscript, and in that he referred again to the advisability of his
young friend coming to enlarge his views of life in London, adding
last, for all the satisfaction of his reader, these words:--

‘Think not I have forgot my promise to serve you in a certain matter,
the will whereto, were I my own master, should bring it to a short
conclusion. The truth is, if I could turn to it, my worries were the
less, seeing I am so beset with divers claims and importunities that
scarce can I call a moment of my time my own. Yet, be patient:
patience proves oft the speedful suitor.’

Patience! To one on the rack! Brion read the missive through; and read
it through again; and turned it up and down for any hint of more; then
put it from him with a half whimsical sigh, and called himself a fool.
He had no belief from that moment in any power to help him. The shock
of disappointment had steadied his reason and brought him to himself
again. Perhaps that was as well. Had it not been a poor fibreless
love, he thought, that could engage a friend to contrive for it? Her
champion! and he had insulted her rather through that weak commission.
Never again. Henceforth his own sole resources should serve him,
whether to win or fail.

He went thus resolved about his customary duties, expecting no further
satisfaction from his friend, and receiving none. Alas! too instantly
successful in negotiating his ‘pack of small accomplishments,’ it is
to be feared that that brilliant soldier of fortune had already lost
conceit with those minor obligations which involved even a small
measure of self-sacrifice. He was too absorbed over his own affairs to
bestow a thought on another’s. Only once again, after a long interval,
did he write, and that once again, in almost the same words, though
carrying even less conviction, make his assurance of unforgetfulness.
And after that no further letter came from him: he was launched
full-flood on that prosperous and tragic tide which was to convey him
by darkening stages to Traitor’s Gate and the block. Brion heard of
him once as gone, in Lord Deputy Gray’s company, to Ireland, where he
made a fine name for himself, and was confirmed in his royal
mistress’s favour, by helping to put down the Earl of Desmond’s
rebellion. But long before the date of that event he had passed--save
as a picturesque memory, not untenderly recalled for all his
particular shortcoming--out of the young man’s mind, so that any
renewal of their intimacy was the last thing in the world expected by
the latter. And yet it was to come to happen, and on the Captain’s
return from that very expedition which was to add so greatly to his
fortune and renown.

In the meantime, Brion took up his life again as it had been before
that feverish interlude had come to disturb and excite it. He
recovered his philosophy, went resolutely about his business, and
extracted what enjoyment he could from his always ambiguous position.
That, because it kept him proudly aloof, both on his Uncle’s and his
own account, from contact with his neighbours, was the source in him
of an invincible self-reliance. As he matured in years, the spirit of
independence strengthened in him, as his body, habituated to incessant
physical exercise, toughened and grew compact. At twenty-three he was
a fine-looking young fellow, attractive of face, shapely of limb, and
as well-endowed mentally as he was skilful of his hands. He had a few
friends, but he sought none. Those who wanted him must seek him; and a
handful of kindred spirits did. But Clerivault remained always, and
first and foremost, his comrade. They rode, and went fishing or
hawking together--sometimes in young company--or made occasional
expeditions far afield, penetrating to Exeter, Tavistock, Plymouth, or
divers such places on the seabord as Brixham, Lyme and Bridport, where
they made acquaintance with ships and shipping, and now and then
chaffered with some local skipper for a run along the coast. At these
times they would be away not infrequently for nights together,
returning immensely pleased and instructed from their trips. Nor did
the Uncle oppose any objection to this practice of enterprise and
independence in his nephew. He was by now grown so submissive to the
younger will as virtually to defer to its quiet dictation in most
matters, even to the extent of moderating that particular
self-indulgence which had been destroying him--moderating, would it
could be said, to happy effect; but the evil was done. He had sown
that in his brain which could not be uprooted, and, for all he was
become more temperate, his grosser state was replaced in these days by
an unquiet melancholy and fancifulness, which bid fair to complete the
mental ruin the other had begun. Among their manifestations became
ever a little and a little more pronounced one which caused Brion no
small uneasiness; and that was a form of religious depression, in
which he brooded on his misfortunes as the direct judgment of Heaven
on him for his apostasy. It was no use arguing with him: the more one
desired to save him, the more resolute he was to be damned. So the
thing had to be humoured, and just left to its own possible cure.

Now, as to his relations with, or attitude towards, the other sex, a
word calls to be spoken for Brion. It is not to be supposed that so
sweet and débonnaire a youth could in all these years wholly escape
the regard of admiring eyes, or fail to arouse in amorous bosoms
sentiments to which the knowledge of a bar sinister might be counted a
provocation rather than a hindrance. Not only in the breast of rustic
Phillida, but in hers of the Hall or Manor, would sighs at times heave
up and tender thoughts be born, children of a vision of young
manliness not less caressingly encountered because some senseless ban
of Orthodoxy professed to hold it forbidden. There might be dreams on
pillows for Brion of which _he_ never dreamed; there might be looks in
chance meetings, swift offered and withdrawn, which had been eloquent
to a forwarder spirit. Perhaps he read them better than appeared. He
was no hypocrite to himself; and if he was a Joseph, it was from no
self-righteous prudery, but because, summarising all women in one, he
wished to hold the sex immaculate. It was not in the least that he was
insensible to its inherent fascinations--to its beauty, its softness,
and its lovableness; it was that truth was dearer to him than all
things, and that he had taken his oath and meant to keep it. His will
was stronger than his emotions: if it had been otherwise, he could
have found plenty to invite him to surrender it, in a way much more
unequivocal than might be expressed in blushes and covert glances. But
he kept his heart high, and his shield stainless.

For all his fond intimacy with Clerivault, he had never thought fit to
confide to that good friend a hint of his secret. It would have been
loyally kept, he knew, yet in some way cheapened in the sharing. Nor,
for any reason or none, had he ever spoken to him of that discovery of
his in the old well-house. Perhaps his reticence was due to that past
expressed determination of his to treat as closed and sealed the
wound, with all its details of pain and loneliness, caused by the
other’s desertion of him. In any case he kept his knowledge to
himself. But once in all this time had he descended again into the
secret chamber; and that was shortly after Master Grenville’s
revelations had set him thinking and wondering about the reputed
hidden treasure. He had had no fear of being watched or detected in
his visit: there was no one but himself in the house would have gone
near the place: it was shunned by all alike; and about the ilex
thicket which enclosed it Nol, in clearing the garden, had left a
neutral zone of waste ground, which none would have crossed though the
fiend were behind to urge him. But he discovered nothing new to reward
his curiosity. It was just the bare dank little chamber of his
knowledge, all lined with obdurate stone, and giving off when sounded
no hint of anything but impenetrable solidity. So he abandoned the
search, and henceforth thought no more upon the matter; nor did he
visit the place again until years had passed, and then on an errand
very different from that comprised in a hunt for buried gold.

 * * * * * *

It was in the late Autumn of ’81 that Raleigh appeared again. He came
riding by the London to Plymouth road, in company with his servant Nic
Wright and a small body of retainers, and turned apart from his way
for the express purpose of revisiting, and renewing his acquaintance
with, his young country friend, and perhaps, who knows, of impressing
him with a sight of his magnificence. He was become a great man in
these days, and in high report with the Queen, who had taken his side
in a dispute he had had with the Lord Deputy, following his recent
return from Ireland, and seemed disposed to admit him to her extremest
favour. No doubt her Majesty had ample reason for this condescension
to a soldier who had rendered her such fine and masterful service; yet
no question was but that good looks and a flattering tongue had their
part in the honours and emoluments which from this date came to be
lavished on the fortunate favourite. And indeed the man was built for
valiant success. He was of a bold and masterful disposition,
imaginative, and even chivalrous for an age in which romanticism, no
longer the purely spiritual force of earlier days, survived but as a
sort of working Utopianism, full of great visions of the unknown, but
regarding that in the light of material rather than of moral
possession. Then his intellect was as boundless as his ambition, and
as ready to take the whole world for its province; he had a silver
tongue for verse, when rhymers were as many and sweet as blackberries;
he was as full of curious inventiveness as was his near forerunner,
the Italian da Vinci, and not less in the graver articles of chemistry
and science than in those of gallantry; and most of all he was a
fierce patriot--one of those mighty Elizabethan Captains from whose
loins sprang that greater Britain which was offspring of their
passionate love for their country. ‘His naeve was,’ says old Aubrey,
‘that he was damnable proud.’ Well, he might be, being great among the
great, and he clothed his pride in splendour. The same Chronicler is
not wholly complimentary to his appearance, though he admits he was a
tall and handsome man. But he wrote from hearsay, and one may feel
assured that she, to whom masculine beauty was ever a first
recommendation to favour, saw something to admire in her new-found
votary besides character. At any rate Brion was aware of no ‘sour
eie-lidded’ deformity in this face, which, with its intellectuality
and vivacity, was always to him as attractive a face as any he was
acquainted with; and, as to that high-handed arrogance which was
reputed to bring the Captain into dislike with some, he only knew that
his manner to him was ever frank and courteous, while, as to the man’s
own servants, they loved their master to devotion.

He happened to be in the Courtyard when the little cavalcade rode up
and in, and advanced to meet his friend, with his eyes shining welcome
and a strange stirring at his heart. It was full four years since they
had parted, and each showed in his mien and manner the ripening touch
of Time. Where had been shyness was self-possession, and where had
been self-possession was authority. Raleigh dismounted, while Brion
held his stirrup, and, being on the ground, impulsively embraced that
courtly young esquire. He was all in meek gray, but bedizened like an
argus pheasant with eyes of jewelled enamel. The strap which carried
his sword was crusted with emeralds thick as dewdrops on grass, and he
wore a sapphire worth a county’s ransom in his cap.

‘’Fore God,’ he said, with fervour, holding the youngster from him by
the shoulders; ‘a proper man! ’Tis good to see the fruit where hung
the flower. How many years ago, dear lad?’

‘Four,’ answered Brion, with a smile. He bore this oblivious
correspondent no grudge. He had not, nor ever had, any real claim upon
him.

‘So many!’ said Raleigh. ‘I had not thought it. Time must turn up a
slow furrow in this land of thine. Would you not rather mount a horse
than plod behind it? Come, ride you with me--the way I pointed once
before--and leave this ding-dong life for one more like to living,
while youth and valour and hot blood are yours to spend and Time is in
his morning.’

Brion shook his head.

‘My life contents me well enough.’

The other regarded him humorously a moment.

‘Well, I’ll persuade you ere I leave,’ said he, and turned away,
signifying a bench where they might sit and talk. He could not stop
long, he said, nor crave any hospitality save a stoup of wine for
himself, and some ale, if might be, for his party. He was on his way
West to attend to some family business, and would be returning in a
few days, when he would call for his friend, and carry him along with
him to London. And when Brion set his lips, shaking his head a second
time, he only laughed, saying no more for that present. He inquired of
Uncle Quentin, his health and condition, but in an indifferent
inattentive way, caring only, it seemed, for the man’s presumptive
attitude towards a possible proposal to leave him by himself awhile;
and he showed some small curiosity as to the manner of his friend’s
life during the interval which had separated them, but without once
alluding to their correspondence or appearing to remember his own
failure to vindicate a certain promise given. Nor did Brion think it
worth while to remind him. When Sorrow is asleep, says the adage, wake
it not.

They drank together when the wine came, and pledged each the other
like good comrades. The soldier looked with real and constant
admiration on the stripling who sat beside him, whom he had left a boy
and taken up a man.

‘So,’ said he, ‘my knight-errant still lacks to cry his country’s fame
about the world; and, for all that high emprise, must make shift with
the spearing of eels in brooks, or to search the hills for coneys, or
to loose his tiercel at a trailing heron, or, for ladies’ favours, to
follow at the kissing-strings of country Moll? Is it this contents
him, lord of that glowing vision--to shut the door of the world, and
dream on tranquil swards of mighty venturings without, in which he
seeks no part? Go to! With that face and form, I’ll not believe it.
Too near the great sea waters not to have felt their far and
passionate lure!’

‘I have felt it,’ said Brion. ‘It is not lack of will, but of
opportunity.’

‘Opportunity!’ cried the other. ‘It shall be thine, perchance, for the
taking. Long have I had a vision--to plant our English standard in
that golden West where Drake has led the way; to take and sow some
grist of English manhood there, which, like a lusty crop, shall crowd
out the Spanish weed, and come to harvest in a greater England. Ah,
for such an expedition! It shapes for ever in my thoughts. Wilt thou
go with it--if not as colonist, as soldier, adventurer, knight-errant
if thou wilt? There shall be opportunity enow to spread thy mother’s
fame--ay, and in the most convincing way with sons like thee, right
slips to attach the new world to the old with very love-knots. Wilt
thou not follow where Drake has shown the way?’

‘I may follow, but not Drake’s way,’ said Brion, with a wry face. ‘I
would not foul _my_ fame by murdering of a dear friend and shipmate.’

He alluded--patently enough to Raleigh’s perceptives, for the deed had
been notorious--to the great Captain’s formal execution, in the course
of his famous expedition of three years earlier, of Thomas Doughty,
his lieutenant and once-admired comrade.

Raleigh, lolling back, protested, with a little amused chuckle: ‘Not
murdered.’

‘A scholar and a gentleman,’ cried the young man, ‘and he had loved
Drake like a brother.’

‘As Jacob loved Esau--and schemed to out-wit him.’ He sat up with a
laugh. ‘Where is thy dithyrambic patriot--thy dear fantastic
glib-gabbit?’

‘Clerivault?’

‘Ay, that was his name. Lives and declaims he still?’

‘He’s there, Master Walter. Seest him not--talking with thy servant
Nic Wright?’

‘Whistle him over. I would fain hear _his_ verdict on the deed.’

Brion called to Clerivault, who attended on his summons, and came and
stood before the two.

‘Master Clerivault,’ said the visitor, ‘was that Doughty you wot of
well served by his Captain or ill?’

Clerivault, sticking one arm akimbo, bent his brows on the speaker.

‘Cry you mercy, Sir,’ said he: ‘a lover of his country had no need to
ask.’

‘You think he was a traitor to his country?’

‘I think it.’

‘How?’

‘He played for the party that played for Spain to wreck the expedition
and render it abortive. Blackest of traitors, that--a professing
friend in the house he plots to ruin.’

‘He may have thought honestly he served England best by thwarting
Drake in his ambitions.’

‘What ambitions? God’s ’slid! For himself, or to drag his dear land
for ever from under the heel of arrogant Spain, where those, the
small-souled and timid, the dastards and time-servers, would have held
her prostrate for their own safety’s sake? Thank God for Drake, I say,
who let no claims of love or learning move him in his judgment on a
villain; who pierced through all specious arguments holding tolerance
of wrong and insult for the truer patriotism, and had the wit and
resolution to cut the canker out before it spread. Such men for me in
war; and England’s scorn on those who would keep her mean and safe!’

‘Well, I am well answered,’ said Brion, with a laugh; and he rose to
his feet, as Raleigh rose also to clap the enthusiast on the shoulder.

‘Well spoken,’ cried the soldier. ‘Art a rare fellow. When another
expedition haps, to follow in Drake’s footsteps and take thy master
with it, I shall look to see thee in his company’--and, with a smiling
nod to the patriot, he took Brion’s arm and walked the boy away.

‘We must to boot and saddle in a minute,’ said he. ‘But first a
whisper in thine ear--of that, which, like the lady’s postscript,
shall swallow all the text. You’ll come with me to London when I
return?’

Again Brion shook his head, with a smile over the man’s persistence.

‘Not at this time, Master Walter. I have much to occupy me.’

‘Then will I let fly my last, and hit thee standing. Here’s something
will prevail. Thy lady lives unwed--doubtless for thy sake.’

A shock like fire seemed to pass through Brion, as if an actual bolt
had struck him. He stood quite rigid.

‘Ah!’ said the other softly. ‘Hath that sped home? Methought ’twould
prove a killing shot.’

‘Joan--Joan Medley?’ whispered Brion, in a thick voice. He hardly
seemed to know that he spoke.

‘The same,’ said Raleigh. ‘The City Knight’s fair daughter, that erst
lived at the Chase. The father’s been dead these two years, it seems,
and she hath all his fortune. I could find it in my heart to envy
thee, thou rogue.’

‘How--in what way,’ began Brion--and stuck.

‘Looks she? comports herself?’ offered his companion. ‘I may not
answer for myself, never having seen her. But the facts are safe. I
had them from one, a certain popinjay, that calls himself my friend,
and that would go a’wooing for a fortune. He came to me for advice,
and laid an information where he asked one. I pricked up my ears--that
was a week ago--and thanked my heart it could acquit itself at last of
a debt too long unliquidated. Well, by your grace, every man’s Joan is
the one incorruptible; yet, looked at in the abstract, woman’s faith
is a tricky currency, and, were I you, I’d strike betimes. Such virgin
obduracy may stand a long clamorous siege; but the day will come when,
looking in the mirror----’

He paused significantly. Brion, pale to the eyes, as if he had been
running, made a gesture of despair:--

‘What hope could be for me, a nameless dependent!’

Raleigh cried out on him:--

‘What hope? And she, with a hundred suitors, still unwed! Come, while
there’s time! I’ll see her; contrive a meeting for thee, so sing thy
praises, all her heart shall melt upon the past and flow in one stream
of passion towards her olden lover.’

Brion shook his head; but there was a warmth come back to his cheeks
and a light to his eyes.

‘Bring me but to speech with her: I’ll ask no more.’

‘You’ll come, then?’

The boy broke into a shamefaced laugh.

‘It seems so.’

And thus was the surrender made. To London he had pledged himself, and
now there was nothing for it but to secure his Uncle’s compliance. And
that proved an easier matter than he had expected. It may have been
that Bagott saw in this separation a temporary relief from that
watchfulness which restricted his indulgences and embarrassed his
secret devotions--for by now he was quite reverted to his former
beliefs; or it may have been that he really wished his nephew to learn
to take his independent place in the world, and so to shift any
lingering responsibility for his welfare from his own shoulders. In
any case he opposed no objection to the trip, but on the contrary
expressed a desire to make it as full and pleasurable a one as
possible, supplying the young man with ample funds for the occasion,
and bidding him not hesitate to write for more should he come to need
it.

And so one day, a week later, it came to pass that Brion rode from the
Grange, with the great soldier and his retinue for company, and
Clerivault on a pack-horse jogging in his wake. It was the first time
he had taken that road since he had lolled along it, a weary boy,
eight years ago: and now, with what different feelings! His very heart
sang; for he was on his way to see Joan. He could hardly believe in
the reality of that stupendous prospect.




 CHAPTER XIX.
 MARKING TIME

Brion put up at that same _Cock_ tavern in Westminster where he had
slept on the first night of his journey westward. It was a well-served
hostelry in a good locality, and it was within convenient call of his
friend the Captain, who, by virtue of his appointment to the Queen’s
Guard, had been allocated quarters in the royal palace of Whitehall,
where her Majesty was now holding her Court. Moreover a certain
tenderness of association inclined him to the place, whose
reacquaintance, in the light of an enlarged vision, he was curious to
make. It stood the test very agreeably, and proved as comfortable a
headquarters for him and Clerivault as any more pretentious they might
have chanced on.

The paragon was, of course, an experienced Londoner, and it was under
his guidance that Brion made his first real acquaintance with the
Town. It seemed to him the most beautiful city that mind could
conceive. Perhaps that impression may have been partly due to his
regarding it, during these first days, through a luminous mist of
expectancy touching the person of her whose golden shrine it contained
hid somewhere in the depths of its labyrinthine mysteries. But indeed
it was a fair town; built up of colour and picturesqueness; beating
with a fierce and palpitating life; full of a sort of dashing
merriment which reminded Brion somehow of late-fallen raindrops on
eaves, dancing and sparkling and shaking off under a race of wind and
brave opened sky. Everybody seemed in a hurry--to sell, to buy, to
show off, to fight, to enjoy; as if each day were the last day of the
holidays, and the ultimate flavour and profit must be got out of it
before the Fair closed. To look down any street was to see its
perspective like a turning kaleidoscope, with colours and patterns
perpetually changing and forming into new bewildering complications.
And there were swinging signs and fluttering banners everywhere, with
jingle of harness and blast of horns, as if victory in the abstract
was always in the air, and rehearsals for its celebration were a
never-ending occurrence.

While he waited, as composedly as he could, news from Raleigh, the
youngster turned the time on his hands to the best account of
exploration he and Clerivault could contrive. They visited the Abbey,
and such parts of the ancient palace of Westminster as had survived
the disastrous fire of fifty years before--the Hall, the beautiful
Chapel, and the Star and Painted Chambers; they went to Charing
village to view the noble cross erected by the first Edward to the
memory of his dead Queen; and they pushed further, to the bar-gate
which led into the liberties of the City, a great timber barrier
mortised into the adjoining houses, and bearing on its roof a row of
iron spikes, some with dried and blackened heads on them, like a
grotesque sort of cocoanuts put up for any who listed to roll, bowl,
or pitch at. There was one, cocked askew, that seemed to leer at Brion
as he hurried beneath it, as if it speculated obscenely on the chances
of having him up there for a companion some day; and another that,
tilted back, appeared to be watching a flight of rooks winging
overhead. Ugly memento mori they were in such a feast of colour,
skulls and cross-bones on an emblazoned standard, yet not so dark a
blot on the City as its living profanities. For in St Paul’s Church,
which the two went to visit, they found the whole nave blocked with
unhallowed traffic. Here was a hiring fair for low class servants;
there a cheap-jack bawling his goods from a cart, the donkey that drew
it standing blinking in the shafts, while a merry-Andrew intervened
with coarse jests, or tumbled for the delectation of the gaping crowd.
There were groups of thieves and harlots squatted on the pavement
about the bases of the great columns, and drinking and quarrelling as
they sat. Cheats, gulls, copper-captains, flaunting women and
swaggering gallants; the hungry and the homeless; the fugitive and the
spy; the clerical parasite and the convicted bankrupt, gathered and
mingled here, whether for sanctuary or profit, and made of the Temple
one vast house of abomination. Nor might the Queen herself, acting
Heaven’s vicegerent, scourge the evil forth; for in spite of all her
severe edicts for cleansing the place, the swarm would perpetually
regather, like flies disturbed from carrion, the moment the
interruption was past.

Brion, though willing to be an unimpassioned philosopher, found
himself regarding the scene with a regret that the cleansing had not
come in a wholesale holocaust, when fire--here also--had, not so many
years before, consumed the lofty wooden spire and threatened the whole
building with destruction. It had been struck by lightning during a
great storm, and it seemed strange that the judgment of God should
have withheld itself something short of its complete execution. But,
perhaps, unlike Sodom, there had been found sufficient good men among
its Chapter to qualify, for the time being, the Divine chastisement.

The two had soon enough of watching the throng, and of listening to
its dull reverberating clamour. The sound, made up of countless
volubility and the tramp of innumerable feet, all rising into
inarticulate echoes, was like a roar of surf levelled by distance, or
the drone of bees in a gigantic hive. It thudded on the brain,
producing after a time a feeling of mental numbness, so that Brion was
glad to escape into the open, and to draw in air uncontaminated by the
foul breath of sacrilege. He had had enough of St Paul’s, and did not
want to go there again. But that was only one disillusionment in a
world of exciting novelties.

One day they went to see the house in Chancellor’s Lane where the
great Cardinal had lived in the Queen’s father’s time; and, being so
near, paid a visit to Gray’s Inn, where Clerivault pointed out to
Brion his Uncle’s former residence. And the boy looked on the place in
silence, a strange emotion at his heart; for were not those rooms
known to his mother too, since it was thence the little Book of Hours
had been dated? He had never once spoken to Clerivault on that
subject, though he was well enough aware that for that faithful soul,
being in his master’s confidence, it held no secrets. But he could not
bring his mind to discuss with any one, however sympathetic, a tragedy
so intimate and so sacred.

On another, and a memorable, day, they took boat at Westminster and
were rowed down the river, passing by the way between the royal
gardens of Whitehall and the Queen’s vineyards on the opposite shore,
and thence dropping leisurely, by a succession of stately
residences--themselves palaces in their degree, as the great lords who
inhabited them were only lesser Kings--to the _Three Cranes_ Stairs in
Southwark, where they went ashore, and saw a bear-baiting at the Ring
in Bankside, and afterwards dined nobly at the Falcon Inn, beloved of
wits and playwrights. Thence, returning by way of Blackfriars, they
made for the theatre, and saw the Earl of Leicester’s servants play in
a very tragic tragedy, called _Arden of Feversham_, by one Thomas
Kyd--a performance which affected Brion’s imagination as vividly as
the name of the company over-clouded it.

But it was not the only occasion on which a dark memory was to be
recalled to him. For so it happened that, walking one morning with
Clerivault in the precincts of Whitehall, they saw the Queen ride
forth, with a company of gentlemen, to go a’hawking in the great
guarded Chase which stretched away westwards from opposite the palace
front, and which came afterwards to be called the Park of St James’s.
Her Grace was all in green, very handsomely bedecked, and rode a white
barb, which stepped and arched its neck as proudly as though it were
conscious of the nature of its burden; but Brion had hardly eyes for
that pleasant vision, before he was struck aback by the sight of a
foremost member of the party who rode close at her Majesty’s left
hand.

Seventeen transforming years had passed since that face had last
appeared to him, yet he was as certain of it as though he again stood,
a wondering child, on the Richmond road, and saw the servant ride up,
and heard the vicious thwack across the blinded eyes. And, as then,
hate and indignation surged up in his heart, and cried it alien from
one so arrogant and so malignant. Splendour and daring were this
man’s, but gained at every sacrifice of truth and humanity. He had
grown in these years somewhat bald and portly, but the cold furtive
eye was unchanged, as were the impassive vindictiveness and the
measuring cruelty which underlay his whole expression. And yet women
could be found to sacrifice to such an idol, and to yield their all to
the wicked hypocrisy which, to the masculine observer, simply flaunted
itself on that countenance. Truly there must be a blind spot in their
psychology, which Love, for the benefit of his own villain sex, had
once set there with a kiss. Else how could they so often overlook the
obvious.

He passed so close to Brion that the young man could have touched him.
He shrank back rather, as from something noisome and unclean, and with
such a repellant frown on his face as it was fortunate, perhaps, the
great man failed to observe. But he was in close converse with the
Queen, and was as inattentive to the rabble about him as though they
had been sheep.

But the moment the little party was well gone by, Brion felt his arm
gripped by Clerivault. He looked, and saw the paragon’s face a sickly
yellow, while his eyes were alight with panic.

‘God’s ’slid!’ said he, in a hoarse whisper: ‘Why did you do
that--look like that? Come away, ere some flying rumour chance to
reach his ear!’

‘Let it,’ answered Brion fiercely. ‘I budge for no man’s humour.’

‘Budge, budge!’ cried the other, in a sweat of despair. ‘The rack will
make you budge a foot’s length ere you know it. Wist you not his name?
Come for my sake, if not your own.’

That argument prevailed, and the boy allowed himself to be led away.

‘Clerivault,’ he said presently, in a stiff strait voice, when they
were come into a quiet place; ‘you asked me but now if I knew him. I
knew and know him, Clerivault.’

He stopped, looking full into the other’s face, and said not another
word. But there had been that of significance in his tone which was
unmistakable. Clerivault dropped his eyes before that revelation of
understanding.

‘Well,’ he muttered lamely: ‘if you know him, you know what is better
avoided. Once a bad man is always a bad man--that is a legal dictum.
You will gain most by remembering it, and forgetting all the rest.’

But Brion, though he uttered no word further on the subject, did not
forget. The shadow of that encounter darkened all the sunny days which
had gone before, and made ominous even the delirious prospect which
had lured him from his far retreat. Henceforth he could never feel
himself secure from the chance of a meeting, to which accident, or his
own hot young blood, might give a sinister turn.




 CHAPTER XX.
 MISTRESS JOAN MEDLEY

‘Lucidus ordo!’ cried Raleigh. ‘I drink to the happy sequel!’

He was as good as his word, and in enthusiastic measure. He was come
at last, and sat with his young friend in a private room of the _Cock_
tavern, as brilliant a figure as that dark wainscotting had ever been
called on to enshrine. He lolled easily back, one leg crossed over the
other, and lifted his cup high, gazing benevolently at the excited
eager face of the boy, as it regarded him across the table. He had but
just been describing his tactics, conceived and developed--with a
rather unnecessary elaboration, Brion could not help but think--for
the most romantic reception of a lover by his mistress. The lover had
winced a little over the necessity of accepting any such outside
means, however devoted, to the attainment of an end so sensitively
personal; but he had to remember that it was he himself who, in the
first instance, had volunteered the confidence; and in any case the
enrapturing prospect silenced all scruples as to the methods of its
evoking. He was to see Joan again, and that was ecstasy enough.

Raleigh had explained how he had gone to work to lead up to this
ravishing consummation. He had got his friend, the ‘certain popinjay’
before mentioned, to carry him into Mistress Medley’s own presence, on
the score that he must satisfy himself as to the lady’s person and
manners before he could presume to give him advice, while repudiating
any suspicion the other might conceive as to his absolute
disinterestedness in the matter; and, having once procured that
introduction, had followed it up with a private visit to the heiress
on his own account, which, with his name and reputation, and the
glamour of the Court about him, was a thing very easily effected. And
then, no sooner was that interview secured, than he had opened with
all his arts upon his gentle hearer, first interesting, then exciting
her mind on the subject of a dear friend of his--one who for the
present must go nameless--who had seen her and been smitten to the
heart, whose cause he pleaded with all the passionate eloquence at his
command, and who craved, he said, but one brief meeting, that he might
press a suit which, lacking the romantic atmosphere of night and
secrecy, he must despair of ever urging with a hope to move her. In
short, he had sped his plea so well, and with such imaginative
enlargement of the case, making himself almost believe in his own
picture, that the lady, much moved, had consented, after a show of
reluctance, to see her unknown admirer that very night, and to admit
him, by a private way--position and hour defined--to a short interview
in the presence of a third party--which was the _lucidus ordo_
acclaimed.

Now, in this transporting statement there were, nevertheless, an
implication or so which jarred, just a thought, on its hearer’s
sensibilities. Brion did not, for one thing, quite see the necessity
for all this elaborate secrecy in a matter which had been much more
simply settled by the plain process of his friend’s furnishing him
with Joan’s address, after having paved the way,--if he so wished it,
and as he had at first proposed--by a melting invocation to the spirit
of a past and vanished passion. Still, that point he--suspecting,
perhaps, by this time, something of the Captain’s temperament, and
knowing how men of his romantic complexion valued a love affair only
in proportion as it was roundabout and complicated--was quite ready to
waive. Another which, only half consciously, disturbed him more, was
the thought of Joan, that artless child of his memory, permitting to
the ‘glamour of the Court’, like any vulgar cit, familiarities which,
in one of her own order, she might have resented; while yet a third
turned upon the unquestionable fact that she could make a tryst with a
gentleman who, for all she knew to the contrary, was utterly unknown
to her.

But he extinguished all these misgivings, as rapidly as they flickered
into his mind, and would have nothing of them, as disloyalties to his
love. Perhaps she guessed; perhaps, even, she had heard of his
friendship with Raleigh, and had formed her own conclusions as to the
meaning of the promise won from her. That was a wonderful inspiration.
He built upon it. He was to see his Joan again--there was the one
solid splendid fact--and possibly to discover that he himself was the
visitor she expected. And if his friend had brought this about by
means that seemed to him unduly fanciful, he would not carp and be
ungrateful if they were justified by such an end.

And in the meanwhile, time, place and procedure were all settled
things, and he had only to wait and prepare himself against the
blissful moment. It was arranged that Raleigh was to be at Westminster
Stairs, with a party of his own fellows and his private barge, at
seven o’clock that same evening, and that Brion was to embark with
them, and be pulled down the river to a certain point, where he was to
land and follow the directions given him, while the others watched out
his return by the waterside. He was very grateful for this arrangement
and said so; it was a real act of kindness and self-sacrifice on the
part of a friend so greatly in request as Master Walter; but why would
not that friend give him the address offhand, so that he might achieve
his own mission in his own way, without putting others to the trouble
and tedium of seeing him through with the business?

But Raleigh only laughed. He would tell him nothing about the house;
only that it was a merchant’s house in a mercantile quarter--a very
fine house, fitting to the position of such a civic dignitary as the
late Sir John Medley--and that it was situated somewhere between
Puddle Dock and London Bridge. Of course, said he, Master Middleton
might easily, if he liked, and if he were minded to discard the advice
of a friend, discover the house for himself, and present himself to
its inmate in the ordinary way of civility; only, in that case, he
would make bold to say, the enterprise would be robbed of all that
romantic mystery which was ever a leading fascination in ladies’ eyes,
and from poetry would be reduced to the dullest prose. Whereat Brion,
seeing they were on ticklish ground, very wisely withdrew the
suggestion, with the assurance that he had only made it from a desire
to save the other trouble, and that, convinced now of the truth, he
wholly deferred to a judgment which had all the shrewd experience of a
master in the art of philandering to back it.

‘To the happy sequel!’ responded he, with a great bright sigh; and
drained his own mug to the toast.

‘Is the patriot to be in the secret?’ asked Raleigh.

Brion shook his head. ‘He hath never heard our names coupled by me.
Thou art the only one who knows of her, Walter.’ He had been invited
to that familiarity by the companionable soldier.

Raleigh looked pleased. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘I’ll not say I’m flattered
till I’ve proved myself.’

‘Walter’--his eyes desperately coaxed: ‘you’ll not tell me anything, I
know.’

‘Not a word.’

‘Not of how she appeared to you?’

‘She appeared to me walking on two feet, like any other woman.’

‘Ah! but is she not beautiful?’

‘Beauty, my friend’--he was drinking again, as if to avoid a direct
encounter with the look which sought his--‘is in the eyes which
perceive it.’

‘Well, did not yours perceive it?’

‘I am not in love with her. From the child we find chief beauty in
those we love.’

‘How cold you are.’

‘Discreet.’

‘How spoke she?’

‘With her lips and tongue--in the English language.’

‘There you are wrong. It is love’s own music.’

‘It did not warble for me, i’faith.’

‘Alack, you mean?’

‘Alack, of course.’

‘Well, I will question you no more.’

‘I would not, for your mind’s peace, since you will get nothing. What!
appraise another man’s mistress to his face? Not I. She is Joan
Medley: it is all summed up in that.’

It was for Brion. He spent a restless time, after the other had gone,
waiting for the evening to come. He could settle to no occupation, but
dawdled out the slow hours, feeling their length unbearable. He had
informed Clerivault that he was for a jaunt with Captain Raleigh that
night, but had not explained what there was in the prospect to make
him so excited and impatient. His mood puzzled the good fellow; but
since there was a sign in it of that imperious temper to which it was
occasionally subject, he held his tongue, and obeyed all his
directions without comment.

At last evening fell, and the young gentleman with it to a
consideration of his toilet. He had never spent so much time and care
over that in his life before, but had out all his suits--the gray with
lace of silver tissue, the plum-colour slashed with white satin, the
black velvet, and the steel blue with miniver--and debated them,
deciding, after profound cogitation, upon the last, as the one in
which, most fancying himself, he would most honour the occasion. His
short hair then received his attention, and not less the short
mustachio on his lip. He hung his rapier at his thigh; disposed his
black velvet curtmanteau to the best effect on his left shoulder,
cocked his black velvet bonnet, with the blue jay’s feather and the
blue beryl in it, at a telling angle, and, so arrayed, strode forth to
conquer. And indeed he was a pretty figure, and one to mirror itself
very alluringly in bright eyes.

He was early at the rendezvous, of course, and had to wait some
minutes on the stairs before the barge appeared to take him off. But
at length it hove out of the shadows, and received him on board; and
the great thrilling adventure was launched. They dropped down with the
tide, so cautiously, for the night was cloudy and dark, that his
impatience could scarce brook the delay; but, since ‘all overs,’ as
the proverb saith, ‘are ill, but over the water,’ the happy end came
at last, and at the moment when Brion was abandoning hope of any end
at all. Raleigh gave a low order, and the men pulled in silently to a
point on the shore he indicated. Here ran a stone slip into the water,
descending from the gullet of a narrow lane where a dismal lantern
hung and blinked, like a corpse-candle drowzy with watching. The shore
was thick with a throng of houses, timbered and gabled, ghosts in the
dim-lit darkness--great buildings some, and redolent of civic
prosperity. Barges, piled with merchandise, slumbered at anchor in the
stream. The roar of the waters under London Bridge droned in their
ears, though the monster himself was invisible. It was a crowded,
huddled settlement, with veins of the leanest cut through its
substance to connect it with the great artery of Thames Street half a
furlong away. They grounded on the slip, and, while a fellow leaped
out to hold the boat’s nose secure, Raleigh and his young friend
disembarked, and climbed the slope to the level stones above.

‘Where are we?’ asked Brion, in a low voice.

‘Dowgate,’ answered the other--‘a rich and prolific quarter. Yonder’s
the Steel yard, stronghold of the Hanse League. A murrain on
them--German swine, crunching our good English acorns, in each of
which might sleep the cradle of a lusty ship! But we’ve ringed their
snouts of late, to limit their grubbing in our native soil, and give
our own merchant adventurers a chance. Better still were they all
packed neck and crop out of the country.’ He kicked at a barrel, an
outlying one of many that littered the wharf hard by. ‘We’ve let them
rob us,’ he growled, ‘the while our tolerant courtesy hath passed for
folly or weakness with these hogs it favoured; like as though some
petted guest brazenly repaid his host by bearing off the silver plate
he’d fed on, and was honoured for his treachery. God’s truth! we can
do our own trading, I hope, and farther, it may chance, than any
Hanseatic shark can follow us. When that expedition of ours is
launched----’

‘We shall be over with to-night’s business,’ put in Brion. He was near
dancing with impatience. What were all the sixty-six Hanse towns and
their confederates to this one present corner of his own.

A distant bell struck the three-quarters. Raleigh laughed and
exclaimed:--

‘Cry you mercy, poor lover! Do you perish while I prose? Well, we are
betimes, but not more than she in her impatience, I’ll warrant. Come,
now, and I’ll set thee on thy way.’

He led the young man to the opening of the lane--which appeared as a
mere channel furrowed through a field of houses--and, bidding him
traverse it some fifty yards, take the first turning to the right, and
knock at a door he should see on his dexter hand, where was carved a
rebus of a hotchpot, signifying a medley of good things. The password
was _speedwell_, said he; and so giving him his blessing, and urging
him to make the best of his opportunity, and not consider his friend,
who in such a cause was prepared to linger out the night by the water
if need be, he thrust the lantern into his hand, and, wishing him
God-speed, went back to the boat.

Brion, his heart beating high, his feet seeming to step on air,
entered the lane and walked on. Twenty yards in he heard a casement
opened overhead, and, to a shrill cry of ‘gardy-loo,’ a pail of slops
was emptied into the street. It fell behind, and only just missed him;
but it doused his mood of exaltation as effectually as if it had made
a foul wet clout of the blue and miniver. As he sped on, keeping as
near the middle of the way as practicable, he thought of nothing else
than a possible, and more catastrophic, repetition of the performance;
and he was still agitated by the memory of it, when he found the door
and took shelter under its overhanging penthouse.

But answer came soon enough to his cautious knock to ease his mind and
justify Master Raleigh in his prediction: and there in the doorway
stood a capacious dame, who seemed to regard him with curiosity before
she spoke.

‘How now, young man?’ she said at last, in a voice half stifled behind
walls of fat. ‘What is your business here, an it please you?’

Her eyes were moist and lushy; her face was like a great red ham, with
the little ruff about her neck for a frill to it; she leaned on a
gold-knobbed cane, and for support, for she was corpulent and
rheumatic.

‘What all business wishes--to speedwell,’ answered the youth, feeling,
despite himself, a little shame in this masquerading.

She put a finger to her lips instantly, and, nodding and leering, made
way for him to enter, and closed the door behind him.

‘Leave your lantern there,’ she whispered, and, waddling heavily
before, with a little sighing groan or two, led him down a panelled
passage into a room that opened from it, and, bidding him wait there
till her return, shut him in and disappeared. He heard her going
painfully and complainingly up the flight of stairs he had observed
before him on entering, and waited glowingly for the abounding vision
which was to signalize her return.

The room in which he found himself was bare and empty, but bore traces
of some honoured occupation in the past history of the house. Its
walls, though streaked and faded, had once been gilt, and on them rods
for tapestry still rusted in their sockets. There was a noble carved
stone fireplace, with a great hood roofing it, and dogs upon the
hearth; but only a brazier burned there now, as if for the makeshift
accommodation of some casual watcher. That and the single chair set
before it, the only article of furniture in the place, saving a couple
of tapers that flared in sconces on the wall, seemed to point to a
vigil just kept in expectation of this particular visit. But kept by
whom? Obviously by her who had answered to his knock, and who had been
stationed here for that very purpose. The thought thrilled him through
and through. For that very purpose! So, she had provided for the
meeting as anxiously, with as great an excitement of expectation, as
he had felt in speeding to it.

And almost with the thought he heard her coming. There was a sound of
footsteps on the stairs. ‘Joan!’ he breathed from his bursting
heart--and the door on the moment opened, and she entered.

She came in on the arm of her governante, the blown breathless old
lady with the stick. She gave one bashful glance towards the stranger,
then looked aside, with a little mincing shrug and wriggle of her
shoulders. There was a pause, quite painful in its intensity. And then
Brion opened his mouth and gasped out an inquiry:--

‘Mistress Joan Medley?’

‘The same, young man,’ panted the governante, her voice wheezy from
her exertions. ‘What, young man, what, you speak as though you
doubted! By’r lady, you should know her, it seems, better than she
knows you. Come, whatever thy petition, speed with it, for she hath
but a little time to spare thee.’

‘Trudy!’ murmured the young lady, in a tone of coquettish
remonstrance.

_Was_ she young? There was no telling. There are those--the fortunate
ones, perhaps--who, looking like wizened age in youth, in age come to
look youthful. What Brion saw before him was a little undersized
creature, with a sharp unhealthy face and ferrety eyelashes. She was
all hung and sown with gems, after the fashion of a royal model. Her
head-dress was as monstrous as was her farthingale, over which a
jewelled stomacher came down so deep as to give to her already short
lower limbs an aspect of quite grotesque stubbiness. The red heels to
her shoes were four inches in height; the vulgarity of tasteless
wealth marked her all over; as a figurine in a gallanty show she might
have passed, but as nothing akin to nature in all the world. She
glanced up from under her pale lashes, wreathing and unwreathing her
fingers, and so down again.

‘You wished to see me, Sir,’ she said, her shoulders always in a state
of convulsion. ‘I am willing to hear what you have to say. Such a
persuasive friend as you sent--O, dear, o’my conscience!’

Brion opened his mouth to speak; but not a word would come of it. He
felt as if trapped--fairly confounded in a snare of his own setting.
The old lady broke in impatiently:--

‘Hey-day! a backward gallant on my word. What, to press a suit quotha!
Here’s not enough of “night and secrecy” for him mayhap. Well, there’s
a form of eloquence with some grows bolder as the lights go out. Hark
ye, shy lover--there’s privacy enow down here to suit an Abbot. Go to!
I’ll leave ye to your billings, pretty things, and shut the door, and
hope to find your manners mended when I ope again.’

With a leer, and a little shake of her stick, she turned to put her
threat into execution. Desperate with terror, Brion came to his wits,
and took a quick step towards her.

‘Stay, I prithee,’ said he. ‘There--there is a mistake.’

At the sound of the word the old woman stopped, and the younger one,
her countenance changed, started and turned rigid.

‘A mistake!’ whispered she; and gave a little choke.

There was nothing for the unhappy young man but instant candour. He
plunged for it, his face going scarlet.

‘This is not the lady I expected.’

‘Eh!’ cried the governante violently--‘’Tis Mistress Joan Medley.’

‘I cannot help it,’ said Brion: ‘It is not she I thought. O, I am a
humbled wretch, craving absolution! How the misconception arose I dare
not think; some--some confusion in the name, belike; yet the blame
shall be mine alone, and the full contrition. If I had had but one
clue to the truth, I had not so come to shame myself, or insult an
honoured lady to whose gracious condescension alone I am indebted for
this interview. I entreat her to forgive me, and to permit me to
withdraw from the presence I have offended, with a thousand apologies
for a presumption which was never dreamed or purposed.’

The governante looked from one fallen face to the other, and an
ineffable leer came into her own.

‘Well, well,’ said she: ‘You’re here; and there she is who knew and
knows you not from Adam. What then? If a tree is sweet and fruitful,
it may be loved without a name. She’s content, if you are, to accept
you on your merits. Go to: Take what Fortune brings you, and make no
words about it. There’s many a cross scent followed ends in tastier
game than that that was first pursued and missed.’

Brion did not answer, but panic-struck he shook his head and made for
the door. He was halted by a sudden screech, followed by a torrent of
vituperation:--

‘Base and perfidious! How dare you, Trudy, how dare you, I say--to
deal with me thus, to answer for me thus, before a common rogue and
impostor, in whose face I had detected the low villainy even before he
spoke. Content! His merits! I’d sooner touch a toad.’ Her shred of a
body heaved and stormed, threatening to burst its laces; her face was
a very spectre of rageful spite. ‘And you--to encourage him, that lewd
and pernicious enormity--to let him to think I craved his base
attentions--a common groom--I, I, that could choose among a hundred of
his masters--I’ll have him followed and exposed. I’ll have him
scourged at the cart-tail, while _she_ looks on--the one he dared to
think me--the one----’

She was gasping hysterically to an end. It came in a wind of tears,
and she dropped into the chair by the hearth. Brion, appalled a
moment, the next took his discretion in hand and bolted. He found his
lantern yet burning, seized it, opened the door with agitated fingers,
and, leaping into the night, closed it behind him. And then he
ran--ran as if the devil were at his heels, and never stopped until he
had reached the barge and jumped aboard.

‘Put off, a God’s name!’ said he. ‘I’m winded.’

Raleigh, who had been sitting wrapped in his cloak and half asleep in
the sternsheets, greeted him with some surprise:--

‘So soon! Was not the lady kind?’

‘Hardly.’

‘Not kind?’

‘It was the wrong lady--that was all.’




 CHAPTER XXI.
 THE DECOY

‘Are there two Joan Medleys in the world; and both----’

Brion stopped, and fell into such a deep and frowning reverie that the
Captain would not venture to break into it for a while, but sat
sipping his mulled wine, and glancing from time to time, with a
curious amused expression, at the absorbed young figure. They were
back at the _Cock_, and drinking a _night-cap_ in company.

‘You do not,’ said Raleigh at last, seeing the other stir, ‘blame me
for this fiasco?’

Brion shook a disconsolate noddle.

‘I blame nobody. We are victims all, in different degree. But of what
or whom?’

Seeing him inclined to a fresh fit of abstraction, Raleigh put in
hastily:--

‘Well, now it is resolved, I will confess it seemed to me an
infatuation passing strange, and accountable to nothing, unless it
were the worship of a golden idol. But there I wronged thee, and do
ask thy pardon for it.’

‘What else could you think? Yet, thy romantic mystery, forsooth, and
poetry reduced to prose! O, God mend us all! Why would you not tell me
how she looked to you?’

‘Looks are like gospels, for each to construe according to his faith.
Had my interpretation differed from yours, you’d ha’ damned me for a
heretic.’

‘But to dream I could have thought _that_ beautiful!’

His expression was so dismayed that Raleigh, after a vain attempt to
control himself, went into a shout of laughter.

‘Well----’ began Brion; and his face quivered, and in a moment he was
shaking too.

‘This riddle,’ said the soldier presently, gasping himself into
sobriety--‘we must seek the clue to it.’

But on that Brion, returning to an instant seriousness, put a definite
veto.

‘No further,’ said he. ‘I prithee from this moment let the whole
question drop. I say it with all earnestness, and do entreat thee to
let it rest as final.’

The other nodded: ‘Well, if you wish it’--and at that moment
Clerivault, coming in with a faggot to lay on the embers, ended the
discussion.

‘Signor Clerivault,’ said Raleigh, ‘is not beauty, in your opinion, a
question of taste?’

Clerivault, depositing the log in its place, came frigidly upright.

‘I have no claim to a foreign title, Sir.’

‘I should have said Master.’

The paragon bowed stately:--

‘Sir, how taste?’

‘Why, thus. I call a woman beautiful: another shakes his head. His
eyes cannot see it; mine do. Therefore her beauty is not intrinsically
in her, but in mine eyes. There is no standard to judge by.’

‘There would be no beauty, Sir, if there were. Eternal conformation to
a rigid model would make very deformity desirable by contrast.’

‘Very true’--he showed an inclination to chuckle--‘I think some of us
feel that. It is human to like change--even to pursue it on occasion
to extremes. The loveliest of her sex will sometimes attach herself to
the most repulsive of ours--and vice versa, it may hap. Hast ever been
in love with a monstrosity yourself, Master Clerivault?’

‘Nay, not so far, Sir, not so far.’ He lifted his chin, handling his
throat as if he traced its contours luxuriously. ‘Yet I may have
felt--I do not say--the lure--what I may call the fascination of
abnormity.’

‘Instance, instance!’

‘Hem! It was in the days--but all’s one for that. My quarters--no
matter for what occasion--were at Dunster, one side the British
Channel; and hers on the opposite shore. She had a siren voice--I’ll
say so much--and sang me with it daily across the water.’

‘A siren fog-horn rather. Well, you took boat and back--daily?’

‘No, I swam.’

‘My God! Fifteen miles if a yard. And back, too. A very quintuple
Leander.’

‘Not back.’

‘O, not back! You disappoint me.’

‘Why, Clerivault!’ cried Brion, aghast over this enormous invention.
‘You cannot swim but a yard or two, and that with one foot on the
bottom. Have I not seen you floundering in the Dart?’

‘Fresh water, Sir, fresh water. There’s no comparison between fresh
water and salt. In certain seasons of the brine ’tis just to lie and
paddle.’

‘Or to lie and not paddle,’ said Raleigh.

He loved this creature, loved to _draw_ him, whether for vanity or
inspiration. It was all fruit, he saw, of the same quality of
imagination, and had within it for eternal condonation the living
kernel of truth and loyalty.

He spoke to him, chancing across him a day or two later, on the
subject of his young master’s obduracy in a certain matter. Raleigh
had urged his friend to make his début at Court under his aegis,
promising him a favourable reception. His youth and gallant bearing,
he said, would be his certain passports to notice and advancement. It
was a kind insistence, and generous on the part of one whose interests
were not in creating rival fetiches; but he had conceived a great
affection for the boy, and really wished him well.

But Brion had declined, with every courtesy, the proffered service. He
refused to give reasons; called it a question of sentiment; declared
he had no wish to be a Courtier, and was generally as obstinate as a
young mule, impervious to any persuasion but that of his own
inclinations. The Captain was a little hurt, and when he ran across
Clerivault, expatiated on the opportunity his master was deliberately
throwing away, and urged him to exert _his_ influence over him to
persuade him to a reconsideration of the proposal. But, to his
surprise, Clerivault supported the other in his resolution. He
declared, with emphasis, that he thought he had decided rightly, and
that he, for his part, would certainly do nothing to dissuade him from
his determination. And then, being pressed, he gave his reasons, only
developing the truth to one who was already in possession of the gist
of it:--

‘How accident,’ said he, ‘brought him to knowledge of his parentage is
a true story but a past one. Let it suffice, Sir, that he knows, and
eke is bitter hostile to one author of his invalidity, and that not
the dead one. His blood is proud and hot, and I should dread beyond
measure their meeting. No, he’s better from Court--’ and he told
Raleigh of the little contretemps the day the Queen went a’hawking,
and of Brion’s gesture of hate and repulsion, and of how he had been
in terror ever since of some evil befalling his charge.

The Captain bent his brows over the recital. It was true he had not
guessed of this knowledge of Brion’s, and it altered the case for him.
It might affect--perhaps he debated, if there were truth in the report
of his cordial relations with a certain great nobleman--his own
favoured position, and evoke animosity where had been friendship.

‘Well, on the whole,’ said he, ‘mayhap he is right, and thou,
excellent servitor’--and from that time he made no other attempt to
shake the young man’s resolution.

But the fear of some catastrophe still nervously abode with
Clerivault, in spite of that confidence now shared with a sympathetic
and influential friend, and he was never easy when the young man was
out of his sight. He would follow him like his shadow; impose himself
on him uninvited in a way that presently drove Brion to rebellion, and
later to exasperation. He had no need, he said, to go in
leading-strings to a male nurse; he had the wit to find his own way
about, and a preference, on occasion, for his own company above any
other that might attach itself to him. He was not always kind in the
way he vented his irritability on the poor fellow. But Clerivault
uttered no complaint; he took all rebuffs with a stoical
impassibility, indifferent to wounds received in what his duty told
him was an indispensable service. He had not, it is true, the clue to
one motive inclining his young master to fits of restless moodiness,
in which he desired to be, and wander, alone. Since the night of that
absurd but rather shattering escapade a sense of some disaster
threatening a long cherished ideal had haunted Brion’s mind like a
secret shadow. He would stoutly deride its menace, would refuse to
admit or analyse it, but it remained there all the time, and he could
not throw off the consciousness of its possession. His faith had been
shaken, and in a very unpalatable manner. That shrill and vulgar
little termagant seemed to have blown away at a blast all that
sentiment which had wafted him on wings of rapture towards an imagined
goal. The whole thing was cheapened and vulgarised. A sense of his own
credulous folly, of the necessity of eschewing for the future all such
illusive enthusiasms, and setting worldly wisdom in their place,
gripped and resolved him. He must rise from this time superior to the
rather exotic romanticism which for so long had affected his outlook,
and must become that independent and self-reliant entity which
practical manhood demanded. Hence his impatience of supervision.

‘No, my friend,’ he said one morning, turning on the faithful
watch-dog who was about to follow him out: ‘I need no escort, by your
leave.’

‘No question of need, Sir, but of sociability,’ answered Clerivault
sweetly. ‘You may favour your own company more than I do mine.’

‘I do for the nonce. I would be alone, my good fellow. You hear?’

‘With difficulty, Sir. I am dull o’ the lug this morning. I shall hear
better in the fresh air.’

‘Clerivault, I would not have us quarrel.’

‘God forbid!’

‘I say God forbid.’

‘May I not follow, even at a distance?’

‘To stick in my thoughts like a pursuing conscience! No, stay where
you are. I shall be back anon.’

The man looked after him wistfully as he disappeared; but Brion’s mood
had been so peremptory that he dared not disobey. He only groaned and
shook his head, as he turned back into the yard from which the other
had gone forth. As he did so, he was passed by a stranger who had
risen hastily from drinking a mug of ale at one of the tables hard by,
and who also vanished through the archway leading into the street.

Brion, loitering eastward, was aware of some excitement in the town. A
press of people, all moving his way, gathered volume as he advanced.
He asked the reason of a neighbour, and was told that Her Majesty was
to go that morning in state to Paul’s Cross to hear a notable Reformer
preach. He pushed on, and somewhere beyond the Palace gained a
position in the crowd whence, obscurely situated himself, he could see
the procession pass. He had no desire to risk a second meeting at
close quarters with the man from whom, of all souls in the teeming
city, he felt the most alienated and apart.

He had not long to wait before a vast blare of horns announced the
Queen’s coming. She was preceded by a great company of halberdiers, on
whose heels followed a band of drummers and trumpeters, a little army
in number, from whose hundreds of instruments arose--for Her Majesty
liked her music strong--a shattering din which tore the very air into
tatters. Thereafter appeared a company of morris dancers, men and
girls, in full beribboned panoply--Maid Marian, Morisco, Franciscan
friar and the lot--all reeling and capering and intertwining as they
flowed on with the procession, of which the very next instalment was
Her Grace herself, a gorgeous idol in a gorgeous palanquin, borne on
the shoulders of six high gentlemen of the Court, and smiling on her
good people as she passed. Before the litter walked my Lord Hunsdon,
carrying the sword of State, and beside and behind it thronged an
immense train of lords and ladies on foot, every one bareheaded and
resplendent in velvet and satin and flashing jewels. To these again
succeeded soldiers, a full thousand of them and divided into
companies, between which came rumbling behind their prancing teams no
less than ten great pieces of ordnance, whose purpose was peaceful
display, while, to finish all, a couple of great white bears in
shining collars, ten keepers holding by gilded chains to each collar,
shuffled out the climax, their heads hanging, their red tongues
lolling, their eyes smouldering helpless animosity.

It was a stupendous exhibition; yet Brion found himself wondering what
connexion it could possibly have with the pious object which had
evoked it. Perhaps the morris dancers might have found precedent in
the dance of David before the Ark; but what of the cannon and the
bears? There was nothing of ritual about them. He was forced to the
conclusion that when Her Majesty had a mind for an impressive display
of herself--which was not infrequently the case--the nearest pretext
was made to serve her purpose.

Well, he watched it all go by, and without distinguishing amid the
glittering mob the person of him he least desired to look on; and,
being satisfied with what he had seen, extricated himself from the
crowd, and turned into one of the side lanes which led down to the
river. He had hardly entered it, when he heard himself accosted from
behind, and turned to see a breathless stranger addressing him.

‘Master Middleton, if I may venture the surmise?’

He was sallow and lank-featured, with an air of such nervous hurry
about him that his voice shook in putting the question. He wore a dark
cloak huddled about his shoulders, as if he were cold, and the slouch
of his hat barely allowed his eyes to be seen. Brion bowed, wondering.

‘I carry a message from a friend of yours,’ said the stranger
quickly--‘one Clerivault. He wished me to say that he followed you,
despite your desire, and, having observed where you stood among the
crowd, was able to give me directions, together with a description of
your person, which led to this fortunate encounter. Your friend, I
regret to say, has met with a mishap, and asks you to come to him.’

The frown which, on Brion’s face, had greeted the first part of this
sentence, was changed to a look of pallor and alarm at the end.

‘Clerivault! Hurt!’ said he. ‘O! where is he?’

‘He has been carried into a house,’ said the stranger. ‘I will show
you where. It is not a stone’s throw away.’

They went off at a race together, down the very lane they were in. It
was a mere deserted wynd, sunk like a deep ravine in a hill of gloomy
stone. As he hurried on, the young man put an agitated question:--

‘How hurt? You did not say.’

‘A moment,’ said the stranger, stopping. ‘You will see for yourself in
a moment.’

They had come to an iron-studded door set in the blank wall of a great
building, and with a couple of steps leading up to it. The stranger
took the steps at a bound, and knocked on the door. It was opened
immediately, and he beckoned Brion to mount and follow. The boy, an
easy prey in his excitement and inexperience, complied, unsuspecting.
The moment he was in, the door slammed to behind him with a noise of
thunder, which seemed to reverberate through adjacent halls; and
darkness, profound after the sunshine of the streets, rushed upon him
like a blinding night. He stood paralysed a moment, and then, ‘Where
am I?’ he said aloud, groping out with his hands. And even in the act,
as if he had proffered those for manacling, they were seized on either
side in an iron grip, and he knew himself a prisoner to some unknown
power. He gave a little gasp--he was only a boy, after all--struggled
a little; and then, feeling the futility of his efforts, resigned
himself to what Fate might develop.

‘That’s wise,’ said a gruff low voice in his ear. ‘Twenty to one’s too
great odds for even a gentleman game cock, young master.’




 CHAPTER XXII.
 A POIGNANT INTERVIEW

Slowly, as in a theatre, when dark veils are lifted one by one to
simulate a gradual dawn, before Brion’s eyes, as they accustomed
themselves to the gloom, came into shadowy being the shapes and forms
about him. He stood, he saw, in a low vaulted chamber, a score of
armed men surrounding him and the two who held him captive. Narrow
shafts ran up into the groining of the roof, against one of which
lolled he who had spoken in his ear, and who appeared to be the
captain of the party. His conductor had disappeared--presumably to
notify some one of his seizure--and silence and stagnation prevailed,
pending, it seemed, the messenger’s return. The occasional clearing of
a throat or the shuffle of a foot on the stone flags were the only
sounds to break the dead stillness. Somewhere in front of him, and
above the level of his eyes, a vertical line of silver, the merest
thread, seemed to denote the presence of heavy curtains, shrouding the
way into the inner recesses of the house; and on that line he fixed
his attention.

He had made one attempt to break the silence, and had been roughly
bidden by the officer to hold his tongue or he would be incontinently
gagged. And so he stood mute, but raging in his heart over the
damnable treachery which had been used to draw him into this snare.
His one grain of comfort lay in Clerivault’s safety. Of that he was
now convinced: the story had been devised, he saw, merely to entrap
and secure him--how devised, with what intention and on what
information, it were idle to speculate. He knew enough of the man into
whose clutches, he never had a doubt, he had fallen, to know that he
never lacked for agents and abettors in any sinister business he had
on hand. But, for all that, it was nothing less than his own vanity
and headstrong will which were responsible for this trouble.
Clerivault had foreseen truly, and he had flouted in his conceit the
faithful seer. Like a child he had blundered into the trap, and now he
must pay the penalty for his obstinate folly--with what?

It was that thought which most maddened him--his real simplicity, and
the self-sufficiency which had made it vulnerable to a blatant
imposture. His passion rose with his sense of humiliation. Was no
course left to him but submission to the unknown force which held him
here imprisoned? Better the risk of a dash for freedom than a
surrender so spiritless.

The door by which he had entered was behind him. Barred and bolted,
there was no hope of escape that way. But--what the curtains hid--if
he could once gain the intricacies of the house beyond!

He had been standing so passive as to lull his guards into a sense of
false security, and the rigour of their hold on his arms had a little
relaxed itself in consequence. He was as lithe and muscular as a young
leopard. With a sudden leap and wrench he tore himself free and,
before they could recover from their surprise, was bounding for the
thread of light. He gained this small advantage, that in the dusk, and
the confusion of the general rush to recapture him, he had time,
before he was beset, to draw his sword; but he could do no more, since
an obstacle he had not foreseen, in the shape of a short flight of
steps leading to the curtains, baulked and brought him to bay. He laid
one fellow’s cheek open with his blade; but he had no play in the
crush for his sword arm, and could only shorten his weapon and stab
ineffectively, as, feeling for the steps with his heels, he essayed to
mount them backwards one by one. The noise was at its height--the
scuffle of feet, the clash of steel, the calling of the officer to his
men to take him alive o’ God’s name, and do him no hurt on peril of
their heads--when the curtains at Brion’s back parted, letting in a
faint gush of light, and with it the apparition of a white
panic-struck face. The boy glanced round, saw the beast who had
entrapped him, and, with a mighty effort and a cry of rage, leapt the
remaining step and fell tooth and nail upon his enemy. The man went
down under him with a yelp like a bitten dog’s, and lay writhing. But
the end was come. Before the youngster could seize his blade into
position, the whole party was upon him, and he was severed from his
prey and set, torn and dishevelled on his feet, his sword wrested from
him and his arms bound behind his back. And there he stood, panting
and scornful, jeering at the pitiful figure of the other, as they set
him too, shaking like a jelly, upright.

‘See the meal-faced pitcher-bawd,’ cried he, ‘how his valour fits with
his profession!’

There was a stifled laugh or two, and the man, casting a fell venomous
look about him, made a mute gesture to the others to follow, and went
on himself before. The curtain had been torn aside in the fracas,
revealing a narrow dim-lit passage down which the whole party made its
way, the prisoner held secure in its midst. But Brion had no further
thought to escape, and, breathed and defenceless as he was, allowed
himself to be carried along unresisting.

Deep into the bowels of the building, like the passage tunnelled in a
pyramid, ran the corridor, until at length it opened into a lofty
stone hall, octagonal in shape, and having a peaked timbered roof with
coats of arms emblazoned in its triangles, at whose apex an iron
lantern, caging rather than releasing the little daylight which sought
to enter and explore the glooms beneath, just enabled it to dilute
their melancholy, and to reveal in each of the eight sections of the
wall a heavy curtain hanging, denoting the presence of a room beyond.

Before one of these curtains the guard halted their prisoner, while
the decoy, cringing and fulsome, parted the folds and vanished within.
A muffled wrath of words followed, and presently the white face of the
creature reappeared, and he whispered, his breath fluttering, in the
Captain’s ear. That officer grunted, and gave an order to his men:--

‘Stand by till I call.’ He turned to Brion: ‘Now, young Sir’--and,
taking him by one of his bound arms, led him into the room. The
curtain closed behind them.

It was no great chamber--a spacious closet might describe it--but rich
beyond the wont in its appointments. There was a Turkey carpet on the
floor; another, inventoried by that name, on the table--‘of crimson
velvet, richly embroidered with my Lord’s posie, bears and ragged
staves of clothe of goulde and silver, garnished upon the seames and
aboute with goulde lace, fringed accordinglie, and lyned with crimson
taffeta sarsenett.’ And on it stood a flagon of hammered gold, from
which, it seemed, my Lord had just drunk. The walls were panelled, and
set in their darkness like a gem was a portrait of the Queen by
Zucchero. From the ceiling hung a brazen candelabrum, with many
branches. The chairs were upholstered in crimson velvet, and on one of
them, drawn up before the hearth, on which a fire of sea-coal burned,
sat the expected figure of him whom out of all the world Brion had
most wished to avoid, yet whom, it seemed, in some fateful way, he was
most destined to encounter. Yet, since it was his destiny, he set his
neck stiffly to it, and faced his captor with a look of proud
defiance.

The soldier, staying his convoy within some three yards distance of
this brooding figure, put his heels together with a click and saluted.
At the sound, my Lord brought his chair about, a little labouredly,
and setting his hands on his thighs, looked hard and curiously into
the face of the boy before him. Steady as a rock, Brion returned the
gaze. ‘I will know him, now I see him,’ he thought.

He was in his fiftieth year, burly, short-necked and nearly bald. His
complexion was colourless; his strong eyebrows, mustachio and full
spade beard were as black, whether from nature or artifice, as black
ink. He had a black velvet bonnet on his head, and the suit he wore
might have been the dark-man’s livery. He looked a figure cut out of
jet and ivory. Under the impassivity of his expression seemed to lurk
a fierce and watchful arrogance, in the wings of his aquiline nose, in
the pupils of his eyes, which were more often turned towards this ear
or the other than set forthright in their sockets. Like a suspicious
dog he appeared to listen with eyes and ears together, while his head
was held as stiff as pride. His voice came hoarse and ruttish,
rumbling in his throat, when he spoke at last:--

‘How now, boy! Are these your manners, being invited to my house to
fall upon my servants and beat and maltreat them?’

‘Such an invitation,’ answered Brion, ‘as the fowler lures his quarry
withal. For my manners, not being framed on falsehood and cozenage,
they were not made to please you.’

His boldness seemed to strike a very stillness in the room, so tense
that one could hear, as it were, the Captain’s skin pricking.
Leicester’s expression did not change or move, but his nostrils
flickered, and sudden lamps seemed turned up in his eyes.

‘So?’ he said softly: ‘a spirited retort; yet wise, in the
circumstances?--Well, we’ll question. Dost know me--who I am?’

‘Too well, indeed.’

‘Too well, yet not well enough, I’ll venture, or some thought of peril
might come to sing in you a milder note.’

‘I have that thought,’ said Brion. ‘I should be a fool not to.’

‘Ah! You have that thought--and, mayhap, the guilty conscience that
fathered it?’

‘I miss your meaning.’

‘I think not. Confess your design; make a clean breast of it; and
perchance--I’ll not say; but certain considerations may weigh with
me--your peril may be less.’

‘Will you tell me my design? I have known of none, but to avoid where
I could the very thought and sight of you.’

‘Wherefore you waited me in a public place, and dared, you young
presumptuous fool, to make public manifestation of your feelings.
What, you’d show your high displeasure, would you!’

He rocked a little, back and forth, his lip lifting.

‘I waited you not,’ answered Brion, undaunted. ‘That meeting--it was
the last from my desire. Methinks, had I foreseen it, I had never come
to London.’

‘Better for you, sirrah, an you had not, nor listened to the
flattering persuasions of a crafty counsellor: better had you stayed
in your rustic obscurity, satisfied, with that old besotted rogue,
your kinsman, to risk the penalties for recusancy, than run the
deadlier peril of a throw with me. Ah, that opens your eyes! You did
not guess, maybe, the range of my knowledge, when you complotted to
discredit me.’

‘With whom? But what is the use to ask. I have plotted with no
one--been guilty of no design against your credit. As to my feelings,
I cannot control my instincts, nor would not if I could. For my
kinsman, who loved and cherished me, when those who had owed me all
disclaimed their debt, he is no rogue--I throw the slander in your
teeth. It is worthy of one whose range of knowledge works through such
vile means and instruments as have been used to-day to trap an
unsuspecting boy. Belike it was he, that same lying reptile, that
informed you of how I fell away that morning on seeing you. The action
was of repulsion--in itself a convincing witness to any but a fawning
pickthank. A plotter, methinks, had concealed his feelings more than I
did.’

Again, in the silence that succeeded this hot outburst, it was as if
the Captain’s nerves vibrated audibly in his body. Awaiting the
certain consequences of such mad temerity, he stole a significant
glance at his lord, and saw in the intolerant face an expression which
both startled and perplexed him. There was some obstupefaction in it,
but not the fury he had expected. Instead, interest, curiosity, a
suggestion of some faint and hard-held emotion, seemed to battle there
for ascendancy or suppression. Yet the words that followed, though not
what he had looked for, were sneering enough:--

‘So innocent and yet so fearful! So guiltless a conscience, and yet
that thought of peril! They hardly consort, according to my mind.’

The boy gave a curt laugh.

‘Decoyed hither by a lie, fallen upon and bound, my weapon taken from
me; above all the character of him that holds me helpless in his
power--it were unnatural for me, were it not, to dream of any harm
designed me in such circumstances? Well, do your work. I understand so
much of it that I am not a pleasant reminder in your eyes.’

‘Ha! I will not ask of what.’

‘I would not.’

‘For your disarming, you brought it on yourself.’

‘Would I had killed thine informer first.’

‘And so, with thy bloody sword, on me!’

Brion looked steadily into the eyes of him that spoke it.

‘O!’ he said softly: ‘not upon _her_ son, but upon you, be charged
that black unnatural thought.’

Leicester started ever so slightly, moved uneasily in his seat, looked
away, and again at the upright figure before him.

‘Thou hast a bold spirit, boy,’ he said harshly.

‘Would I could trace it to a better source,’ answered Brion.

‘Thou----’ he looked for a moment as if he had received a blow; then
again his expression changed. ‘Unbind him, Granton,’ he said.

The soldier loosed the cord, setting the prisoner free. Leicester
pointed to the curtain. ‘Within call,’ said he. ‘I’ll trust him.’

Granton disappeared, and the two were left alone together. The moment
that was so, their eyes met in steady challenge.

‘I might answer,’ said my lord, in a low voice, ‘would I could trace
my better self therein.’ He seemed to ponder on the face before him in
a darkly brooding way. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you would not kill me?’

He received no answer but the same steadfast look, nor seemed to
expect one.

‘Nor,’ he added, ‘design me any evil?’

‘I have told you,’ was the reply, ‘my sole design is and ever has been
to forget you live.’

Again a silence ensued, until suddenly Leicester spoke again:--

‘What is your purpose, tell me, in seeking to be introduced at Court?’

‘I do not seek.’

‘What! it was not for that you were persuaded to leave your retreat?’

‘So far from it that the knowledge of your presence there had made me
reject such an offer though a thousand times more pressed.’

‘So, it was pressed?’

‘In a way--good-humouredly.’

‘By whom?’

‘By one that would do me a service--a friend.’

‘And me a dis-service, perchance?’

‘Your name was never mentioned between us, nor so much as thought on,
by him, I’ll swear.’

‘How know you what was in his heart?’

‘I know something of his heart. It is a fine and generous one,
incapable of perfidy. Besides, why should he think of you in this
connexion of his offer, or suspect the truth? Be sure I have not told
it him, nor any. I am not so enamoured of it. I protested I would not
be a courtier; and he was fain to let it rest at that, ceasing to
importune me when he saw I was resolved; implying I might be
right--that it was no great matter after all--as indeed it was not.’

Believing what he said, he spoke with obvious sincerity--enough to
convince even the dark suspicious nature of him that listened, and who
had put these questions--with what intent?

Was a corner of the veil here lifted? Hardly enough for Brion to
gather more than a faint surmise of what lay behind. Yet the whole
truth, if revealed, had seemed a pitiful enough thing to be clothed in
such a giant’s robe of artifice. It turned upon one, grown old as his
time judged age, and by reason of his years, perhaps, and their
disqualifying ravages, become sensible of a loosened hold on those
royal affections he had once commanded. It turned upon the thought of
an infidelity committed in long past days, and never suspected by her
who, thinking their then mutual faith inviolable, would bitterly
resent that lost illusion, and visit his deception on his head in
terms of final estrangement, finding therein a pretext for ridding
herself of what, one might suspect, already a little irked her. It
turned upon this pretty witness to his faithlessness--never, indeed,
lost wholly sight of--and how at a late day his sin had come home to
roost in him, and how it might be used by designing enemies to bring
about his ruin. It turned upon all such considerations far more than
upon any real suspicion that a vengeful spirit in this young victim of
his wrongdoing nursed designs upon his life; though that thought, too,
had been weighed and balanced. And now--was he reassured? He believed
so. The boy’s scornful repudiation of him was the best evidence in his
favour, and it was for that very reason that he had suffered his young
defiance and forgiven him his insolence. Had it been otherwise, had
his suspicion been in any way confirmed, he would have disposed of him
as ruthlessly and remorselessly as he would of any alien conspirator
snared into his hands. But now, being reassured, and at liberty to
consider him for himself, and not for his imagined designs, a certain
emotion, weak and obscure, strange even to himself, but quite genuine
in its nature, allowed itself a little room in his breast for play.
The eyes which had scorned him, the spirit which had defied, became
notes for admiration. They reflected credit on himself; he felt a
pride in them; he had a sudden wish to stand well with the boy.

And Brion? He neither guessed, nor was ever to know, the secret
motives which had underlain this interrogation. That this man
suspected him of scheming in some diabolical way against his life and
fortunes was the one apparent thing; and with that explanation of a
mystery he must rest content. He had no heart or wish, indeed, to
inquire further; he wanted only, as he had himself truthfully
declared, to put him for ever out of his mind.

A long time Leicester sat gazing into the young undaunted face, as if
striving to recall some memory from it. At length he sighed and
spoke:--

‘Shall I believe thee? Well, sith thy truth unflatters me, I will
believe it truth. Yet fain would I learn what brought thee to London,
and in that company?’

‘I shall not tell you what.’

‘Rash and headstrong! Bethink you what you say.’

‘I do, and say it. I shall not tell you. What brought me was no
thought of you, nor anything concerning you. Have I not said it? I am
not so proud of this connexion that I wish to vaunt it. To deny it,
rather, since I had no voice in it. Be assured of that. It shall never
be betrayed for me.’

‘Nor shall word to living soul of this interview--eh--an I let thee
free?’

‘That follows--though I give my promise, if you will.’

‘Ah!’ He put his hands on the elbow of his chair, preparing to rise.
‘Well, thou hast been in peril--believe me. That thou hast escaped it,
thank her whose trustful spirit looks from out thine eyes. For thy
rash insolence--I forgive it.’ He got heavily to his feet, went forth
and back once or twice in a narrow space, and stopped before the young
man.

‘Why will you hate me?’ he said.

‘Have I much reason to love?’ answered Brion, his voice yielding a
little.

‘So you do hate me?’

‘Hate connotes harm. I would not harm you, before God.’

‘Will you--for her sake--call me once by that name your duty owes me?’

The boy shook his head. Something rose in his throat, hard as he
struggled to resist it. ‘I could not,’ he whispered.

Leicester turned away, without a word. He stood looking down upon the
glowing hearth.

‘It may chance, boy,’ he said, in a voice so strange and moving in
such a man that it seemed to betray one secret of his influence over
impressionable hearts--‘that you judge me too harshly. That I risked
greatly where I loved may be no condonation of my fault, yet at least
it may testify to the wholeness of my devotion. For my wrong to thee,
I regret it. Since there is no remedy, I will say no more. I could
take pride in thee, but I may not. It is better we should never meet
again. Go, and for her sake remember me as kindly as thou mayst. Call
Granton hither.’

But Brion did not at once obey. Pride and emotion fought within him
for mastery; his breast heaved; a moisture had sprung to his eyes.
Suddenly, with an impulsive movement, he lifted the other’s
unresisting hand, and kissed it once gently, and gently put it from
him. Then he turned, and went hurriedly to the door, and beckoned to
the Captain, who stood with his men in the hall. The soldier strode to
the summons.

‘Granton,’ said his lord, without turning his head, ‘restore this
youth his sword, and let him free. He is my friend, Granton.’

And so it was that Brion, a man escaped from a deadly hazard, yet
keeping for ever in his mind the picture of that tragic hour, the
gloomy building and the room set like a lustrous shrine in its midst,
found himself once more in the free and open street, an exultation at
his heart, but also a wistful pain. That, in a measure, was never to
leave him; yet even so it was as balsam on an ancient wound, the
amelioration of one hurt by another. And, since it was so, his spirit
henceforth felt a certain peace which it had never yet quite known. If
he had lost something, he had gained no less in compensation.

He went straight back to his inn; and surely the sun had never shone
so bright to him nor the air breathed so sweet. He found Clerivault
pacing the yard, restless and uneasy, and was moved to remorse hearing
the enormous sigh of relief with which that good creature greeted his
return. It touched his humbled vanity to the quick. He answered to it,
his eyes shining:--

‘Hast thou so felt my truancy, then?’

‘No matter what I have felt, sir,’ was the reply, ‘since you are here
again. I would be no man’s pursuing conscience, I.’

‘You are; you were, Clerivault. The figure of you dogged my ungrateful
heels.’

‘On my honour, Sir, I have not moved from here, as you bade me.’

‘I know it, good heart. I spoke but metaphorically. I was a thankless
ingrate--for the last time, where thy love is in question, I do hope.
Forgive me, Clerivault.’

‘Forgive thee!’ The man lifted his arms and eyes to heaven as if in
mute ecstatic protest. ‘Forgive my balm, my solace, my one friend? Say
it again, sweetheart. I could kiss thy very shadow for that word!’




 CHAPTER XXIII.
 HOME AGAIN

Had his fears in any degree been justified? That disquieting
suspicion may have just entered Clerivault’s mind, seeking for the
clue to some connexion between his young master’s mental and material
conditions. Something, it was evident, had torn and dishevelled that
gentleman’s attire, as something had disturbed his moral equilibrium.
The good fellow’s uneasiness was so great that he could not forbear
significantly drawing Brion’s attention to the state of his clothes.
The youngster laughed.

‘A brawl, Clerivault,’ said he. ‘I lacked my Mentor for the occasion.
That is enough admitted, by your leave. Methinks, all said, I have had
sufficient of London for one time, and incline to our good Devon
again. What say you?’

What, indeed, but a most relieved acquiescence? He was glad to the
heart to find his charge so minded--so glad that he was content to let
the other question lapse in the joy of the near prospect of being rid
of its burdensome responsibility.

And Brion himself? In truth the novel interests which this enterprise
had brought him were small compensation for the emotional experiences
he had had to suffer in their course. London, for all her promise, had
given him but derision and disappointment--a hate, perhaps, dispelled,
but a bright illusion darkened; a new serenity won, but an old sorrow
made more sorrowful. Yes, he was better back among his moors and
streams and lonely hills.

One day before they left they rode over to Clapham to pay a visit,
which the young man reproached himself with having already delayed to
make too long. Yet that visit, too, when accomplished, proved a sorrow
and a disappointment. More than eight years had passed since he had
ridden, an anxious, unhappy boy, from the gates of the home which for
so long time had protected and sheltered him; and now reapproaching
it, and recalling its familiar environments, his heart was wonderfully
moved with the thought of all that that ancient affection had meant
for him. He had heard little of the family during the interval. A
letter or two, in the early days of the severance, had passed--one, a
little billet, in sedate language and misshapen script, from baby
Alse--but with the soon cessation of that small correspondence all
association with his former intimates seemed ended. He did not know
who was to blame: nobody, perhaps, but only circumstance, in a day of
difficult communications. But anyhow such was the case; and he was
riding now, with a feeling of strange emotion, to take up what severed
ties?

Alas! on the very threshold of his expectations a cruel rebuff awaited
him. The old school-house was in its place, but with other tenants,
and with all its most familiar features improved out of recognition.
He learned the facts from those who lived there. The good old untidy
Dame, so improvident yet so lovable, so busy yet so unbusinesslike,
was dead these many years; the boys, Gregory and Richard, were, the
one, in an attorney’s office at Bristol, the other, a clerk at Oxford;
the ex-Divine himself, burdened with years, and much reduced in
circumstances since his scholars had gradually deserted him with his
faculties, lived with his only daughter, now grown a comely young
woman, in a humble way in a small domicile near the church.

Sorry at heart, Brion sought and found them there. It was indeed a
modest tenement, but bright and clean--one of a little group standing
almost against the walls of the old church of which the poor man
himself had been at one time vicar. He hardly knew his former ward and
pupil; seemed lost in the little woes and selfishnesses of senility,
on which his daughter waited with a grave and patient motherliness
which was very pretty and touching. She had grown out of Brion’s
memory--not he out of hers. She seemed to measure him with her candid
gray eyes, shyly, but with no lack of self-possession. He thought he
read a quiet rebuke in them, read in her manner a pride of gentle
repulse of an interest which years of so long neglect made little
better than an effrontery. Such was his impression, though she may
have meant nothing of the sort. She took him, by his own wish, to see
her mother’s grave in the churchyard hard by, and watched him as he
plucked a rose from a brier and laid it, with a kiss to its petals,
under the headstone. And after that, when he spoke of old days, she
seemed to answer with a more responsive kindness. They went into the
church together, and he read once more the texts on the walls, which
had been painted there in accordance with the great Queen’s own
instructions, and on samples of which he had so often, as a child, put
his own infantine interpretation. There was the ‘Man doth not live by
bread alone,’ which on Sundays had always served him for a sort of
jubilant sanction of the chopping dinner to follow, and presented the
Deity as a jolly hospitable host, scorning half-measures; there was
the ‘Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upwards,’ which had
brought an unfailing picture of the village blacksmith, whose wife was
a notorious scold; there was the ‘Wizards that peep and that mutter,’
a cryptic and suspicious contribution--displayed near the pulpit,
too--which had afforded him many delicious thrills. He fell into a
smiling reverie, recalling them all and their associations, and only
roused from it with a sigh to hear the girl beside him speaking:--

‘Mother never forgot you, Master Middleton. You were in her mind to
the last.’

He looked wistfully in her face; then took her hand and led her from
the building. At the door he stopped, to point mutely to yet another
scroll upon the wall:--

‘I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous
forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.’

‘You will let me, Alse?’ he entreated outside. ‘I have the right and
the means to, notwithstanding all these years of separation.’

She understood him at once; but she shook her head, with a bright
smile:--

‘It is not so bad as that. We have enough, and to be independent and
happy on. When the time comes, my brothers will care for me.’

He felt he could not urge her further without discredit to himself and
insult to that brave young spirit. If, in her eyes, he had forfeited
his right to, in her eyes persistence would but blacken his case; and
that he would not risk. He went back with her to the house, where,
like a proper little hostess, she insisted upon serving him and
Clerivault with a stirrup-cup of sweet metheglin to warm them for
their homeward journey. He kissed his hand to her on starting.
‘Goodbye, dear Alse!’ he said. But she only dropped him a staid little
courtesy in response, with a ‘Fare thee well, Master Middleton.’

He was very silent as he rode back; might have felt even a deeper
preoccupation could he have guessed how those same sweet eyes would go
following his receding figure in imagination, on and on into the
night, until they parted with it in the land of dreams, where hopeless
Fancy yields itself to Oblivion.

‘A winsome little lady, Sir,’ said Clerivault, breaking into his
abstraction, with an odd side-glance. ‘A man might do worse than wive
with such.’

‘Worse!’ He turned on his comrade, with a sudden violence: ‘I tell you
no gentleman of honour and renown but might count it his rich fortune
to possess her--a gentleman--the best--nor such an one as, lapped in
self-sufficiency, forgets past benefits--old claims and affections--a
toad of ingratitude----’

He broke off with a choke, and spurring his horse in a quick fury,
sprang on ahead. The other thought it wise to trail behind and let the
subject be.

On the day following this visit Brion went to say good-bye to his
friend, the Captain of the Queen’s Guard. Raleigh came out to see him
at the postern-gate which lay near his quarters. He was splendidly
equipped, being just about to attend the Queen’s Majesty on some
ceremonial visit, and his manner in consequence was a little
abstracted and hurried, though smilingly genial.

‘Well,’ said he, ‘I should be the last to traverse that decision, who
lured thee hither with a bait so false. Acquit me of that. I am not of
those who would rather lose a friend than a jest. May the next
enterprise I draw thee on to be more fortunate. You’ll remember your
pledge to that?’

‘The expedition? Did I pledge myself?’

‘Or I thee, _for_ thyself. It shall take shape in no long time. ’Tis
such as thou I’ll need, dear lad. And the patriot--above all the
immense patriot.’

Brion laughed, and they parted. That same afternoon he and Clerivault
started on their long journey homeward.




 CHAPTER XXIV.
 COMMITTED

The three or four years immediately succeeding that of Brion’s first
visit to London were ominous years for England--a fact which she did
not fail to appreciate.

  ‘There was a listening fear in her regard,
  As if calamity had but begun;
  As if the vanward clouds of evil days
  Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear
  Was with its stored thunder labouring up.’

The Irish rebellion--that vanward cloud of Philip’s brewing, first
step towards the conquest of our little hated Island and the
extirpation of the Reformed religion--had been thrown back and
defeated, but only to swell the enormous reserves of fanaticism which
still accumulated behind, waiting to burst in the last devastating
tempest of the _Armada_. And in the meantime the preparations,
material and moral, went on. The dour King’s emissaries were busy
while his ships were building; his secret agents were everywhere,
spying, reporting, seeking to corrupt. But, as in more recent
days--one people’s psychology being incomprehensible by another, and
the disadvantage always lying to the race too dense in its blundering
vanity to grasp that simple proposition--many of the conclusions drawn
from evidence collected by these informers proved false, and, through
being thought true, helped to demoralize the very cause they were
designed to advance. Such, for instance, was the belief, common in
Spain, that the English Catholic nobility was, as a body, disaffected
towards the usurping ‘bastard’ calling herself its Queen, and was to
be depended on, in the event of an invasion, to join the enemy. It was
a belief having a curious parallel with one cherished, though in a
different direction, in our own time, and owed itself to exactly the
same inability on the part of an arrogant and humourless people,
thinking itself the salt of the earth, to understand that national
pride, when tested, is found a stronger thing than dogma, and will
combine to resist the imposition on it of any other people’s ideas,
whether religious or political. A few traitor exceptions there were,
no doubt--men who still nursed the hope of deposing Elizabeth,
establishing Scotch Mary on the throne, and restoring the true faith;
but these were never more than enough to ruffle the surface of the
steadfast deeps of popular opinion, and to keep pretty active and
alert the general resolve to fall on and stamp out such symptoms
wherever they were detected. Here and there, by misfortune, a patch of
the disease did escape discovery, and, a little spreading through its
immunity, came to imposthumate in an abortive rising like the
Babington conspiracy--another little ‘psychologic’ mistake of
Philip’s, since its only effects were to shock some waverers into
loyalty, and to hasten on the execution of the unhappy lady upon whom
he had founded his hopes. But, with these indifferent qualifications,
England remained England still, sound to the national core, and one in
its determination to resist dictation by any power, temporal or
spiritual.

Still, quite characteristically, the agents were not forborne, but in
proportion as the preparations advanced, became more daring and
insistent--but not more trustworthy in their reports. Allen, a
polemical Jesuit of Rheims, and the founder of the English College at
Douay, was responsible for the despatch to his native land of a number
of proselytising scouts, secret emissaries deputed to test popular
feeling, and sow wherever they could the seeds of disaffection. They
did little, however, but inflame the national obduracy; for by this
time the country was determinedly Protestant, and the knowledge of
these _agents provocateurs_ let loose in its midst only agitated and
angered it. Now and again one, being caught, would pay the penalty of
his temerity to the severe enactments passed against his kind; now and
again one would fall a victim to popular fury. But still they came,
and still misread and misreported--but not always, as the sequel will
show, in the pure interests of their mission. There was one, at least,
who, whatever his original motive, converted the opportunity given him
to some profitable dealing on his own account. But knavish methods
will ever attract knavish instruments, and undercut, in all the
history of trading, cut undercut.

In 1584, a Jesuit, having in his possession a plan for the invasion of
England and the destruction of its Queen, was captured at sea. The
news roused public indignation to boiling pitch, and led indirectly to
an association being formed, with Leicester at its head, to punish
with death any attempt upon the royal life, and to exclude from the
throne all who should authorize such an attempt, or design in any way
to profit by it--another big nail driven into poor Mary’s coffin.
Brion heard of this league, and was vaguely troubled--not because of
its object, but because of the temper it revealed and fomented, and to
which, in some possible local ebullition of itself, he dreaded his
Uncle might come to fall a victim. He knew that the neighbourhood had
long looked darkly askance upon the ex-judge as a backslider and
idolater, who practised, in secret, rites which might bring him to the
stake if avowed. He knew--but he knew also what rumour did not; that
it was a ruined and dethroned intellect which had reverted to its
ancient creed, not from re-established conviction, but from simple
loss of memory. To senility early impressions are the most remembered
things; and for Quentin Bagott--though senile only in the sense of one
beggared by his habits of life’s best maturity--the years of his
conversion were become a vague shadow, full of strange terrors and
menacing shapes. His conspiring was a myth; he had no power of will or
mind left in him to plot a sparrow’s downfall. Any sympathy he might
appear to show with designs subversive to the State was the mere
chuckling echo of long-forgotten moods, when his own dark destiny had
wrought in him the passions of a rebel. Yet all this, though true
enough, had no appeal in it for brute instincts, if once let loose in
the name of superstition; nor would the fact of the utter seclusion in
which the suspect buried himself, and with himself all indications of
his real thoughts and habits, save him from a predetermined fate.
Religion has hung more men on circumstantial evidence than all the lay
tribunals in the world.

However, this was in very truth a meeting of trouble half way, since
no sign whatever of threatened disturbance had arisen so far to
justify in Brion any particular apprehension. Moreover, there was the
extenuating fact to consider that he himself was locally popular
enough, and that he and the household of the Grange, its master
excepted, were regular in their orthodox observances. So he put the
thought from him as a mere bugbear of his fancy, and trusted to his
own unexceptionable attitude for public absolution.

His life during these, for him, uneventful years, had recorded little
of interest but the growth of will and tissue, the intelligent, and
often excited, watching of affairs, and the ever increasing desire to
take some part in the great happenings which were stirring men’s
imaginations the world over. As to those, he was at the last solemnly
bound and pledged to an enterprise of which he only awaited with
impatience the fruition to put his dreams into action. In the meantime
he observed with envious admiration how England, for all her
distractions, domestic and political, did not stand still, in scared
irresolution, before the storms which menaced her, but continued her
practices of daring and adventure over all the troubled waters of the
globe, even, after her way, snatching immense booty from the very
preparations being organised for her destruction. The names of Fox,
Cabot, Gilbert, Drake, Frobisher, and other stalwart rovers of the
main, rang in his, as in everybody’s ears, and fired him with an
enthusiasm to be up and doing, in his own little sphere, what they had
so magnificently ensampled in their greater. And he was sworn, as has
been said, to his part, if only the plans which were to give him scope
for action would come to a head; which at length, towards the close of
1584, they did.

Brion was then in London, with Clerivault, for the second time since
that visit first recorded. He was staying, as Raleigh’s guest, at
Durham House in the Strand--a former ‘Inn’ of the Bishops of Durham,
presented by the young Edward VI to his sweet ‘sister Temperance,’ and
afterwards by her to her much favoured courtier. It was an austere but
imposing building on the riverside, involving such expenditure in its
maintenance that, to enable its owner to live there in a state
befitting its character, his accommodating sovereign had conferred
upon him a patent to license the vending of wines throughout the
kingdom--a sinecure so rich in emoluments as to make him, with his
other properties, a wealthy man; though it may be said for him that he
spent his fortune magnificently, and often much of it in the public
interest. Yet still dissatisfied, it seemed, with these tokens of her
royal regard, her Majesty continued to heap benefits on that lucky
recipient, confirming his election as Knight of the Shire of Devon,
and further, about this time or a little later, appointing him
Seneschal of the Duchies of Cornwall and Exeter, and Lord Warden of
the Stannaries in Devon and Cornwall, besides bestowing upon him some
twelve thousand acres of forfeited land in Cork and Waterford, with
other signal marks of her attachment. So that, it would seem, the
‘pack of small accomplishments’ had been exploited to rare effect,
with the result that its owner had become one of the most envied and
courted men in the Kingdom.

Sir Walter’s good fortune, however, had not turned his head, nor in
the least diverted him from the main cherished ambition of his life,
which was to wrest the empire of the New World from the Spaniard, and
lay it, with all its potentialities for colonisation, at his brave
England’s feet. During the year before he had partly financed the
unfortunate expedition in which Sir Humphrey Gilbert perished; during
this he had associated himself with an enterprise for the discovery of
the North-West passage. In the meantime, having obtained from the
Queen a patent of liberty to discover and seize, if might be, ‘any
remote heathen and barbarous lands not actually possessed by any
Christian Prince, nor inhabited by Christian people,’ with licence to
inhabit and fortify the same, and leave to carry with him ‘such of our
subjects’ as, in short, cared to go, he set to preparing joyfully for
the venture so long projected, and at last come within the sphere of
practical policy. He first, however, despatched a provisional
expedition of two vessels, fitted at his own expense, which going and
returning in safety, and reporting favourably upon the country and
their reception therein, the main business was forthwith put
definitely in hand, and arrangements made for a fleet of seven sail to
start from Plymouth in the following April. And it was to this
expedition that Brion had positively committed himself, and to discuss
which he had accepted his friend’s invitation to a meeting in London.

He was sorry to discover at the outset that Raleigh himself--being too
greatly engaged over matters of divers import, and perhaps fearing
that his enemies might take advantage of his absence to bring about
his overthrow--was not to accompany his own enterprise; and still more
so to learn that the command thereof was to be entrusted to Sir
Richard Grenville, about whom he retained no very cordial memories,
and who, indeed, as he had heard, possessed the reputation for being a
rough and violent leader, much feared and hated by his own men.
However, he had given his undertaking, from which, as a gentleman, he
could not recede; and so he must make the best of it, and that was all
the matter. And, indeed, when he came, as he did, to renew at Durham
House the acquaintance of the obstreperous Sheriff, he found himself
in some measure called on to revise his estimate of him, so
inexplicably, if gruffly, genial did he find the great man to be with
him--an attitude for which he could find no explanation but in
Raleigh’s friendship, though in truth it was a testimony to the way in
which, on that first occasion, he had prepossessed the surly visitor
in his favour.

Some others destined to the expedition he also met on this occasion,
of whom one or two were captains and skilful mariners selected for the
sub-commands, a few assistants for counsel and direction in the
voyage, and others mere gentlemen adventurers like himself, whose
acquaintance thus happily begun he was as happily to renew in after
days. And with that the matter ended for him for the time being, and
he returned into the country.

He went, glowing with anticipation, and concerned only for the months
which still lay between him and action: he went, with some valedictory
words of Raleigh’s still sounding inspiringly in his brain:--

‘Press on! Would I could follow thee--I, a poor impositioned schoolboy
left at his task while all his shouting playmates go bounding for the
fields. To voyage--there’s a magic in the word: to quit inglorious
bondage, custom’s dull round, and be a man and free; to wake from mean
small cares to visions of great seas, and waves that lift us, as
nurses lift their charges, to spy over the tossing heads some wondrous
sight; to greet upon our faces sweetest-laden winds, breathing like
amorous sighs from lands that court their own rifling; to see strange
monsters, big as ships, rolling in their feather-beds of foam. O,
could I go, and share with thee the peril and the joy, and the joy in
peril--two wandering champions of our dear lady-land! But, since I
cannot, press on, press on, and if over the sheer cliff of the world,
the stars they hang beyond, bright shrouds to climb to topmast heaven
withal. That’s the way of Death, the happy way. Why do we for ever
paint him as a grim old man, that follows on our heels waiting his
chance to strike? He pursues us not, but bides to be discovered, a
laughing child hiding behind a bush. He is not age, but youth, eternal
youth; a beauteous boy, who smiles to close our eyes on years and
sorrow; who comes with oblivion in his hand, bidding us drink and
forget; who is the only friend that never fails us. Press on--take thy
life in thy hand like a tempered sword, and so thou use it knightly in
good cause, be careless whether it hold or break, thou hast made the
most of it in honour. This world! is it so worth thy soul’s
attachment?--a world where the great is ever at the mercy of the
little, the high the low; where nobility eternally wastes itself,
striving to kill the beast in man that cannot die; where beauty is but
painfully achieved one day to be despoiled the next--a grievous world,
a world so bad ’tis odds but any change from it must mean for better.
Yet as thou strivest in it so shall be thy qualification for another.
There’s its purpose. In truth it is but the jellied spawn of lovelier
spheres, the egg on the leaf, a transient bubble blown in thick
starlight, and jewelled with a thousand seeds of worlds to be. Make
light of it, then, press on in steadfast probity, and leave to Heaven
thine accompt.’




 CHAPTER XXV.
 THE FUGITIVE

It was March, 1585, and but a few weeks remained to Brion before
starting on the great adventure. All his and Clerivault’s preparations
were made, and they only awaited the signal to join the fleet at
Plymouth, and launch upon whatever destiny the unknown might have in
store for them. Some anxiety may have been his: misgivings, none. He
was now twenty-six--the age of fully matured strength and reason and
the fearless confidence that goes with both--and ripe manhood in him
peremptorily demanded its employment and enlargement in scenes of
vigorous action. His sole concern lay in thus temporarily abandoning
his Uncle to the possible perils of an agitated time; but, as to that,
having confessed his fears to Raleigh, he had found some reassurance
in his friend’s promise to have a watch kept on the district, and any
sinister symptoms appearing therein at once reported to him, when they
should be drastically dealt with. That undertaking, and the confidence
he felt in the stalwart fidelity of the household remaining, had to be
his sufficient guarantees in the question of the untoward coming to
threaten.

He would have liked, from that one point of view, to leave Clerivault
behind; only his pledge was given. Moreover, to insist, would have
wounded that excellent’s feelings beyond cure. Clerivault, while still
retaining his grateful attachment to, and sorrowful belief in, his old
master, had yet come to regard as the crowning expression of his
allegiance his devotion to the younger trust committed to him. He was
dedicated body and soul to the service of the nephew, and to be
separated from him, or considered inessential to his welfare in any
way, would have killed his very heart. Wherefore the outrage was not
even to be considered; and Nol porter must take his place in
personally attending on the recluse--a task for which at least that
great creature’s physical strength fitted him, inasmuch as his Honour,
the wreck of a great man himself, was often in need, owing to his
enfeebled capacities and shattered constitution, of the support and
assistance which only strong arms could afford him.

As to Quentin Bagott himself, he was little more than a cypher in the
business, wanting his nephew to go, and not wanting him; now dwelling
on the eternal loneliness to which he was condemned, now implying a
sort of furtive glee in the prospect of that loneliness being
intensified. He did not know his own mind--as, indeed, how should he,
that feeble remnant of the force that once had been, and, such as it
had become, devoted to fears and superstitions? No one looking upon
him in these days but must have felt the tragedy of that ruined
intellect. It mourned from the brilliant eyes, set in the wasted and
degraded features, about which the black hair that hung in neglected
strands was still without a touch of gray in it; it drooped in the
apathetic shoulders, yielded at last, and unresisting, to the burden
of fatality; it spoke in the blurred, disjointed voice, which was like
that of a sleeper only half awakened. Now and again, in instants of
rare provocation, a ray of the old brilliancy would flash out; but for
the most part the man’s faculties were hopelessly obscured, and he
would sit for long hours together in a blank preoccupation, staring,
as it might be, into a baffling fog, where moving shadows that never
materialized shrunk, and expanded, and intensified, and again faded
into nebulous blots.

If during these years, so inoperative, and so barren in their
prospect, a thought which seemed to tremble near the verge of treason
to himself had come now and again into Brion’s mind, who can wonder at
it. It was a thought of a little house in far-away Clapham, and of a
figure going always cheerfully and capably about its business there.
He had seen Alse once again during his second visit to London, and had
pleasantly renewed in her an impression as of something very wholesome
and fragrant, like a garden herb, and as such associating itself with
perfumed thoughts in homely ways. To uproot so sweet a plant from
under that old church wall, and transport it to these unproductive
solitudes--what a difference it might make, to him, to all, to the
whole atmosphere of the place! It was at least a pleasant fancy to
indulge; and could even be supported by some arguments--a little
specious. The girl would, he believed, be glad to come. Was he
justified, in that case, in sacrificing her happiness to a vain ideal?
Again, had he the moral right to waste himself on a profitless
abstraction? Every mortal man held his affections in trust for some
mortal woman, so that to maintain oneself celibate for a dream’s sake
was to rob not one but two natures of their just fulfilment. Supposing
he were to decide to be done, for once and for all, with that old dead
illusion, and to accept the living gift the gods had offered him? Let
him, for amusement’s sake, just consider that possibility. Clerivault,
he knew very well, would, for one, be delighted. But then Clerivault
knew nothing of the other----

The other--O, the other! Only to think of her was to banish every
lesser thought. Was this the value of his deathless fidelity? His,
yes; but what of hers? Ah, time enough to turn away from that dear
illusion when its falseness should be a proven thing!

He had reached, maybe, that period in his reflections when Raleigh’s
summons to London came; and at once everything else, comfortable
visions, specious arguments, soft and amorous fancies, were swept
aside and forgotten in the excitement of the approaching adventure.
His soul was too greatly occupied to be patient any longer of such
minor distractions.

Nor was it different when he returned. He lived for the coming voyage,
and was bent only on one purpose--to make, by constant vigorous
exercise, the interval between now and then appear as short as
possible.

One afternoon, in late February of the New Year, he had gone out
riding on the moors, rather to work off an excess of animal spirits
than for any attraction the day offered, for it was bleak and cold,
with a shrill wind blowing in from the sea. He was alone, and had
ridden eastward to within sight of Highweek church, standing up
solitary and austere from the folds of the shivering hills, when,
turning into a narrow gulch between two rocky slopes, he saw a
pedestrian coming towards him from the direction of Newton Bushel and
the head of the Teign estuary. The figure, the moment it sighted him,
stopped, and made a hurried movement as if to turn and retreat, but,
thinking better of it, or recognising the hopelessness of the attempt,
continued its advance, and slowly approached the spot where he had
reined in, waiting the explanation of so suspicious an action. As the
stranger drew near, walking, it seemed, with considerable difficulty,
Brion had leisure to study his aspect, and to wonder over certain
details of it. He appeared a man of about forty, of mean stature, but
blunt and strong, and he was dressed like a simple citizen in a suit
of plain black, with no more decoration about it than was exhibited in
a pair of epauletted shoulders. His close-cropt scalp was hatless, and
underneath appeared a serious, beardless face, possessed of a very
prim, dry, dogmatic expression, and, in odd contrast, curious hot
brown eyes, the pupils of which were not black but tawny, and ringed
at their circumferences with a brighter russet. But all this no more
than indicated itself, as it were, through a veil of disorder, for his
features were grim white and drawn with suffering, his clothes
streaked and soiled, and his whole appearance suggestive of some
recent conflict in which he had been violently worsted. Having made up
his mind, he came limping resolutely on, and never hesitated until he
reached the horseman, to whom, without an instant’s pause, he made his
desperate appeal:--

‘I am being hunted for my life, Sir: I have done no wrong: for God’s
sake, if you are a Christian man, help me to escape.’

A moment Brion sat looking at him: it was not in his heart to deny a
fellow-creature in such straits, and appearing so spent and broken. He
was not of those, moreover, who in an emergency argue before they act.
With a curt word he slipped his left foot out of the stirrup, and bent
over. ‘Mount behind,’ said he, and as the fugitive struggled
exhaustedly to heave himself to the horse’s crupper, fetched a strong
hand under his armpit and helped him into place. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘hold
on to my belt,’ and with a tap of his heel to his good steed’s belly,
they were off.

‘Whither?’ he said over his shoulder, presently slowing down; and the
breathless voice answered in his ear: ‘Whithersoever, so it lead to
where they cannot find me.’

‘You wish to hide?’

‘O! indeed I do.’

‘Listen to me,’ said Brion: ‘I can hide you, an you will, where none
will dream to look. But it is a drear uncanny place, and without
comfort to one in your condition.’

‘Will it not serve a broken man to die in? I ask but rest and peace.’

‘Well, hold on again. I will take you there.’

‘“But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was.” I can
say no more now, Sir, than God bless you. You shall hear all
presently.’

They sped on again, without another word between them. If Brion had a
suspicion, he kept it to himself. His present fierce joy lay in
circumventing brutality. Moreover he foresaw a certain distraction
here to help him through the weary time of waiting. He went a wild
roundabout way in order to avoid the chance of casual meetings, the
bitter weather aiding him, and struck the ilex copse without having
encountered a soul. Driving between the trees, he dismounted, first
bidding the other hold firm by the saddle, while he tethered his horse
to a branch, and afterwards helped him to the ground.

‘Now,’ said he, ‘if they, whoever they be, are after you, despatch
must be the word.’

The man stood very weak. Brion put an arm about him--observing as he
did so that his clothes were stiff and sodden, as if with half-dried
sea-water--and supported him through the wood. In all these years,
since that day of poignant memory, he had never once retraversed this
road to the old well-house. But Sentiment must yield to Urgency. The
natural bridge still spanned the moat, and they crossed it
together--painfully and with difficulty on the stranger’s part; but,
with his escort’s strong help, the journey was made at last, and the
well-house reached. Once within, Brion lost no time, but, by aid of
what daylight entered, found his way to the familiar contrivance, and
laid bare the subterranean opening. Descending, then, he helped the
other down after him, and, reaching the little stone-lined chamber,
laid his own riding-cloak on the ground and the wounded man on it.

‘Now,’ said he: ‘so far’s so well. But I must e’en shut you away and
leave you thus till I have withdrawn that evidence of my steed in the
copse. Which having done, I will return with due caution, and bring
you what comforts I can compass on the instant. Will that serve you?’

The strange eyes looked up at him in the wan twilight. They were full
of weary pain; but, even tempering it, a ghost of fathomless
curiosity.

‘I thank you from my heart,’ said their owner. ‘Will you first, in one
word, tell me where I am?’

‘You are in the old well-house of the Moated Grange, a manor belonging
to my uncle, Master Quentin Bagott. The secret of this chamber is
known only to me, who discovered it by chance. You are as safe here as
in a fortress--or safer, since ignorance and superstition hold it more
inviolate than would locks and bolts.’

And with that he went, unconscious of the emotion his words had
awakened in the stranger’s breast. He recrossed the moat, regained and
remounted his horse, and going round to the main entrance, rode into
the courtyard with as matter-of-fact an air as if nothing untoward lay
upon his mind.

Now his next business was to forage without attracting undue
observation. But, as to that, having a general way with him the least
tolerant of any inquisitiveness as to the motives of his actions, he
might appropriate whatever he pleased, and for whatever mysterious
purpose, without fear of exciting comment, other than such as might
privately turn upon another of the young master’s inscrutable fancies.
So, going very coolly about it, he provided himself with bread and
meat, a flagon of good Malmsey, a packet of tapers with materials for
making a fire, a heavy horse-cloth from the stable, and, from an
outhouse, with a spare brazier stuffed with lumps of charcoal: armed
with all of which commodities, he made his way into the garden,
leaving behind him an impression that he was bent on one of those
solitary gipsy picnics to which on fine evenings he had more than once
been drawn.

It was nearing dusk as Brion, loaded as he was, disappeared among the
ilexes.




 CHAPTER XXVI.
 AN INCUBUS

‘Thou hast bound up my wounds, and set me on thine own beast, and
brought me to an inn,’ said the stranger. ‘Blessed be thy living
witness to Christ’s parable.’

He had the inscrutable eyes of a hare. Say what he might, there was
always something at odds between them and the picked precision of his
speech. He sat propped against a pillow formed of Brion’s cloak; the
great horse-cloth was wrapped about his naked limbs; his clothes were
spread to dry near the glowing brazier; he had eaten little of the
food and drunk feverishly of the wine, and his tongue was loosened.

Brion nodded. ‘Let us have done with compliments. Am I to know your
name and business?’

‘I am a simple trader, an Englishman, by name John Melton.’

‘Well, we will return to that. And now, Master Melton, an it please
you, what brought a simple trader to such plight?’

‘Sir, I owe you the plain story; and here it is. In the darkness
before dawn this morning a hoy, standing off from the coast, was
driven ashore at Teignmouth by the fury of the wind and waves.
Something, I know not what, aroused in the rough folk who helped to
beach her a belief that there were Catholic emissaries from Picardy on
board, and in a moment the devil was ablaze in them. For some most
unjustifiable reason their suspicions fell on me, of whom their
fanatic hatred would have made an instant victim, casting me into a
fire of driftwood they prepared to build upon the shore, had I not
through God’s grace and the darkness succeeded in escaping from their
cruel hands. Battered and wounded, I fled at random, their shouts and
imprecations following me as I ran. By dawn I had gained the heights,
whence, hiding and observing, I could see the chase, now gathered in
volume, still furious on my tracks. Had they once scattered, I had
been lost, but they kept together, while I scurried on before, taking
advantage of every scrap of cover. Still they pressed on, like hounds
intent and inexorable, and to me, hurt and exhausted as I was, there
could have come but one end, had I not, through merciful Providence,
chanced, when near my last gasp, on a charitable stranger. That is all
my tale.’

Brion, regarding the speaker enigmatically, did not respond for a
moment.

‘So,’ said he at last, ‘you came in the boat?’

‘That is perfectly true.’

‘And from Picardy--where there are Jesuits?’

‘And traders.’

‘True; and pardoners among them, mayhap--vendors of spurious relics to
the credulous, pigs’ bones for saints,’ a feather of the cock that
crew St Peter into shame, and of other things no less false and
profitable--Papal indulgences, to wit, for any that would be traitors
to their country.’

‘It is not true.’

‘Why, I know you for a Papist, else would you ne’er have spoke of
“Catholic” emissaries.’

‘I deny it not. Denounce me for it, an you will. Wounded and in your
power, I shall not abjure my faith.’

‘Your necessity, as you should know, is your surest appeal to mine.’

‘Yet you can show so little Christian tolerance as to assume, without
proof, a certain vileness in me, and for no reason but just that I am
a Catholic. Tell me this, Sir: is Papistry, as you call it,
countenanced in your England?’

‘With reason, no.’

‘We’ll spare the reason. It is not countenanced, at least. Then, for
the convinced English Catholic there is no alternative to apostacy
but--Picardy, shall we say?’

‘God forbid I should quarrel with any man for his religion. Only for
yours, Picardy is a wholesomer climate than Devon.’

‘My hurts cry Amen to that.’

‘Why not have remained there, then?’

‘Is it so unusual for an exile to yearn towards the land of his
birth--especially an he envisage a prospect to combine some business
with pleasure there? But I see you do not believe me. Well, Sir,
bruised and battered though I be, I would sooner be put to lie out in
the fields than accept a bounty offered on such terms. Or would you be
the treacherous husbandman of the fable, with whom the poor driven fox
took shelter, and keep me here, to point out to the hunt my
hiding-place? It may ride up anon. Be sure those bloody miscreants
will rouse the neighbourhood, and there will be search for me. Well, I
am sick and friendless and at your mercy.’

He had spoken from the first in a voice weak and languid, though
always oddly preserving its dry particularity, and now sank back as if
exhausted, closing his eyes. But still Brion regarded him unmoved, it
seemed, by either his explanations or his taunts. Something, he felt,
rang false--he could not say what, but it certainly was not the man’s
physical hurts, which were very definite and serious. There was
reality enough in them to outweigh for the moment any thought of moral
deception. One in particular on the side, the result of a terrible
blow from a metal bar or stone, bore a sinister look. No rib, so far
as he could ascertain, was fractured, but he feared some bad internal
injury. He had done, and he did hereafter, all that he could to
alleviate the suffering caused by this injury, using what soft
compresses and tender balsams he could filch from Mother Harlock’s
preserves; but still the pain did not seem to mend, and its
persistence troubled him. Supposing the man were to die on his hands,
to what unresolvable difficulties would he not have committed himself?
However, the thing was done, and might God help him in having acted
humanely on impulse instead of discreetly on reflection.

‘I pass by your bitter words,’ he said, standing over the prone
figure, ‘which some might think had savoured of ingratitude, but which
I take for an ill man’s ravings. Be assured, I shall not betray you.
What is to the point is how not to make myself suspect. It can be
done, and safely, but only at the expense of my company. You must do
without my visiting you, save at daily intervals. I will bring you all
you need from time to time, food, and more comforts, and so will
continue till you are in a condition to be released and sped upon your
way. By that time, let us hope, the hue and cry will have died down
and yourself be forgotten. That dark dawn can have little familiarised
your persecutors with your features. For the brazier, I will bring
to-morrow the wherewithal to screen it; yet methinks, once warmed,
you’ll need but little artificial heat in this subterranean chamber.
It were wise to kindle no taper but on urgent need. For the rest, you
are buried here as inviolate as in a tomb. No one of the household nor
the near neighbourhood would so much as come near the place: it hath
an evil reputation with the foolish. But that need not concern you.
Are you willing that I leave you now?’

The eyes were opened and staring at him again--strange blots in the
dying glow; the lips whispered, it seemed, some inarticulate
thanksgiving. Brion, with a curt ‘good-night,’ turned and mounted the
steps. In the chamber above, having closed and spun the wheel, he
paused a moment to see if any tell-tale gleam issued from the edges of
the orifice; but detecting no least hint of such, he went, satisfied,
into the night.

Henceforth he kept to his word, visiting the fugitive once at least a
day, bringing him good sustenance and more comfortable stuff for his
bedding, and staying to converse awhile as he bandaged the inflamed
and aching flesh. Sometimes he would go by the garden and sometimes by
the wood: the little sport of secrecy and evasion tickled him for a
while; it was like a game, and he was still boy enough to enjoy a
game. Yet now and again it _would_ occur to him that a game
indefinitely prolonged might lose its point, and expose, through
constant use, its own machinery; and so far no period to the one he
was playing seemed suggested. An uncomfortable feeling dawned and
developed in him that he had burdened himself, and at a crucial time,
with an undetachable incubus. As the days went on, in proportion as
the invalid’s main injury seemed to heal superficially, the inner hurt
appeared to intensify. The fact threatened to confirm his first most
grave suspicions; but it did not help to solve his difficulties. He
began to foresee the ultimate necessity of taking somebody into his
confidence. What if matters should go from bad to worse? He was doing
his best for the man; but his best was after all only the best of
ignorance. Good intentions might very well make bad nurses, unless
reinforced by knowledge. Instead of curing he might be actually
helping to kill.

The patient, in fact, in defiance of all the young man’s
ministrations, continued to look ghastly; he seemed to speak with
difficulty; he complained of eternal pain and unrest. And no wonder,
buried, so injured, in that dank and gloomy crypt. One welcome change
there was: soft and open Spring weather had followed on that day of
cold and storm, mitigating the frigid atmosphere of the stone chamber.
Going down the garden on the morning after the encounter, Brion felt
his every pore expanding with delight. Balm was in the air; an incense
rose from the earth; the winter aconites had blinked the frost from
their golden eyes, and, with their ruffs starched and smart, were
smiling in holiday rows under the wall. Even a surviving snowdrop or
two--those sweet little acolytes of Candlemas, as Clerivault called
them--opened their hearts to the sun, and betrayed to it the tender
green thoughts they were used to guard so shyly.

Brion, descending to the patient, found him, a little to his surprise,
shifted from the position in which he had left him the night before to
one in an angle of the wall where the brazier had been formerly set.
They had exchanged places, in fact. Remarking on the transposition, he
was informed by the other, in that weak, precisely-measured voice of
his, that, growing chill in the small hours, he had bethought himself
to take advantage of the warmth reflected to the stones by the then
extinguished charcoal, and had so made shift to effect the change,
which he had with difficulty accomplished, lying with his body against
the hot wall. That, as a stratagem, was resourceful enough: the
perplexing thing to Brion was how one in so feeble a state could have
put it into practice. Yet, again, that state seemed indisputable. One
had only to look at the man to know he could not be malingering.

They talked a little together, desultorily. The stranger was curious
about the superstition which kept his hiding-place inviolate; and
Brion, seeing no reason for concealment, told him all about the legend
of the departed buccaneer, and the fate of the unfortunate young
relative who had got to know more about his affairs than was good for
his health or hers. The eyes always seemed to listen to him more than
the ears: they blinked no facts, and confessed no emotions--none in
the least over their owner’s contiguity to the place of that dark
reputed tragedy. He was evidently ‘insusceptible,’ in the
superstitious sense.

‘And was, Sir,’ he said, ‘this business of the wheel some of that
Fulke’s contriving?’

‘No,’ said Brion. ‘I understand it was here long before his time.’

‘It is a clever contrivance, whoever designed it. I have seen some in
my day, and none, I think, so well thought out. _Prudens
simplicitas._’

 * * * * * *

Day succeeded day, and week week, and still the patient showed no
signs of mending, but sat propped against the wall, with that eternal
aspect of weakness and suffering which had never changed since Brion
first brought him into the pit. The young fellow was at his wits’ end
to know what to do. Time was flying, and at any moment he might
receive his summons from Plymouth. At length he made up his mind, and
laid bare the whole truth to Clerivault--enormously, as may be
supposed, to that paragon’s astonishment.

‘I believe,’ said Brion, ‘the poor wretch is dying: and I cannot leave
him to die there. What am I to do?’

‘A secret chamber--in the old well-house!’ gasped Clerivault; ‘and to
discover it--God’s ’slid! thou must have dared alone the haunted
terrors of that place!’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Brion impatiently--‘and a fig for such bugbears. But
that is not the point. He must be brought out--brought here--put to
bed--old Harlock must see him--God o’ mercy! I shall go demented!’

He started striding forth and back, his fingers wound desperately in
his hair. Clerivault quieted him down:--

‘Ah, peace, my sweetheart! We will arrange it.’

‘But you do not know--my fears, my suspicions, my distractions. I will
not, for all the world, that mine Uncle and he be brought
together--nor so much as learn, each one, that the other is in the
house.’

‘No need to, if he is dying.’

‘He may not die, if at all, until after we are gone.’

‘H’mph!’

It was a problem, in truth, of which, on profound consideration, there
appeared only one solution. Nol and Phineas and William and Mrs
Harlock must be taken into one confidence on the subject, and form a
conspiracy to keep the fact of the stranger’s presence in the house a
secret equally from their lord and from the whole world. If the man
survived, he was to be packed quietly away on his recovery; if he
died, then the authorities must be informed, the plain explanation
being that the body was that of a poor stranger whom the young master
had found injured by the way, and had of his pity brought home to
tend. Nobody knew who he was or whence come, so nobody could say.

So Clerivault took it upon himself to inform and instruct the
household, and so it was settled. As to any risk of search at this
date, it was considered negligible. If the neighbourhood _had_ been
aroused, it had shown no disposition to suspect the Grange of
harbouring the fugitive. Some vague rumours of the Teignmouth affair
had come Clerivault’s way, but it did not appear from them how far the
pursuit had been pressed, or whether, even, it had been of that
determined character which perhaps the fears of the victim had
magnified. In all probability the whole affair was by now completely
forgotten.

Brion, to be sure, had no liking for the arrangement; but he was in a
desperate quandary, and, short of an inhumanity impossible to him,
could see no other way out of it. And then the summons to the voyage
came; and that clinched the matter.

On the evening of the day when he received it, he went to visit his
patient, and to impress upon him the necessity for his instant removal
to the house. Somewhat to his astonishment and displeasure, he
encountered an opposition where he had the least expected one.

‘You would rather remain where you are, Master Melton?’ said he,
haughtily surprised. ‘Then give me leave to tell you that you will
remain to perish, since, I being gone, none other could be found to
approach within a score yards of this thicket under which you lie
buried.’

‘Sir, my beneficent saviour,’ answered the other, with a low-voiced,
measured humility: ‘may it never be yours to suffer the hounding of
malignant foes, or, having escaped, broken and demoralised, from their
violence, be urged to tempt the Providence which has found you a
secure retreat by leaving it untimely for another.’

‘Untimely!’ cried Brion with impatience. ‘I tell you, man, I quit here
to-morrow: I shall be absent for many months. What would you do?’

‘With utmost deference, Sir, would it not be possible for you, ere you
go, to convey hither to me a moderate store of food and drink, and,
having so satisfied your hospitable conscience, dismiss from your mind
all question of further responsibility regarding my welfare? Then, if
at last forced by my condition to reveal myself, I could make shift to
emerge from this confinement, if only to beg of your people a corner
in which to die?’

The young man stood fairly astounded before this cool proposition.

‘_No_, Master Melton,’ said he, with emphasis: ‘it would not be
possible. If the worst were to come upon you--you force me to speak
plain--you would be in no state to make the effort you imply: in which
case--but I leave to your imagination the pleasant sequel. Come,
prepare yourself to shift. You shall be conveyed to a comfortable bed,
and your hurts tended by one of a better skill and knowledge than ever
I could pretend to. The household is pledged to secrecy: in the matter
of risk, I believe on my soul there is no shadow of any--you are long
forgotten by the very men who chased you. And the moment you are fit
to travel you shall be free to go. Come.’

The fugitive uttered a little sigh.

‘I yield all,’ said he, ‘to him to whom I owe all.’

He crawled painfully from under the cloth which covered him, and which
he fumbled back into the wall-corner where he had lain; and, supported
by Brion, laboriously climbed the steps into the chamber above.

‘Are you not going to close the wheel?’ said he, panting and pallid,
as they paused a moment, after emerging from the aperture.

‘Presently will serve,’ answered Brion: ‘when I have seen you into
safety.’

‘Now, Sir, now, let me entreat you! If any accident should happen--if
it should be overlooked--a clue----’

‘Peace, then!’ exclaimed the young man; and he hurriedly and rather
pettishly did as he was asked. Truly this most unconscionable invalid
was a trial to one’s patience.

Outside the ilex clump, Clerivault, white and grim, stood waiting in
the thunderous dusk. He had volunteered to dare the terrors of the
awful place; but Brion, seeing what the offer cost him, had laughingly
declined his company, saying he could manage much better by himself.
They took the stranger between them, and, without more ado, carried
rather than supported him to the house, and, smuggling him by a back
way to the upper chamber, remotest from Quentin Bagott’s quarters,
which had been prepared for him, put him to bed, and left him in the
hands of that old wintry bird of prey, Mother Harlock, who forthwith
proceeded to examine his hurts with the dark relish peculiar to her
kind. Coming to seek Brion presently, she gave him, in a muttered
whisper, the result of her diagnosis:--

‘The man’s sore smitten.’

‘Will he die?’

‘A hath a dog’s chance--given my vuln’ry water. ’Twere distilled from
the plantain in the year of its becoming a bird.’

‘Of what becoming a bird? The plantain? Does the plantain become a
bird?’

‘Every seventh year, and cries “cuckoo!” Did you not know it, child?’

‘On my faith, no.’

‘Ay. ’Tis the reason it lacks a nest of its own.’

‘But----’ he gave it up, bubbling with expressionless laughter. ‘You
had better go and get it,’ said he.

He had hoped for something more informative. As it was, her verdict
left him exactly where he had been. However, there was no help for it;
the man was there, and there he must now remain, until Destiny decided
one way or the other on the question of his disposal. In the meantime
the faithful souls who were to represent his authority during his
absence would see to it that his instructions were implicitly carried
out.

He parted from his Uncle that evening, as he and Clerivault had to be
on their way at an early hour the following morning. Going in to the
recluse, with a certain emotion at his heart, he found him
characteristically occupied between a Vulgate and a great tankard of
burnt sack plentifully laced with Nantes brandy. A thread of incense,
rising from a tiny chafing dish on the table, seemed designed, like a
pious kissing-comfit, to neutralise the pungent breath of that ungodly
mixture; while the mentality which could appropriate such material to
such a use appeared further illustrated in the faldstool, or
prie-Dieu, set before a bureau on which stood a laughing head in
bronze of a leaf-crowned Dionysus.

The ex-Judge looked up vacantly, as Brion entered, and motioned him
mechanically to a seat.

‘Not now,’ said the young man. ‘The time that remains to me here is
short. I have come to ask your blessing on my venture, Uncle Quentin.’

Staring a moment, the other shook his head.

‘What venture, nephew?’

‘Have you forgotten? To the New World.’

He seemed to listen and weigh; and then a sudden light went up in his
brain:--

‘To the New World? My blessing? A devil’s viaticum that! A curse from
my lips might speed thee better.’

‘Come, Uncle. You will not start me on such handicap, like the poor
scratch in the game. I of all should know what your blessing is worth
to one you love.’

Bagott passed his hand across his eyes.

‘Do you say so, boy? Yet you will leave me.’

‘Would you not have me go?’

‘To the New World? Ay.’ He seemed to muse, pondering some vision. ‘For
whither she hath gone should not her son follow?’ He stared and stared
before him, till his eyes ran with weak tears. ‘I loved your mother,
Brion,’ he sobbed: ‘I loved your mother.’

It was useless to prolong the scene. The young man knelt, and took the
shaking hands in his, and, kissing them, laid them on his own head.
They slipped down to imprison his face, to draw it towards the
dishonoured lips whose utterance had yet never meant to him aught but
truth and love.

By six o’clock the next day he and Clerivault and Nol porter were on
the Plymouth road, the latter riding with them to convey the baggage,
and to bring back the horses. Their way took them by Holne Chase and
the head of the Horse-shoe Glen. It was a fair April morning, blue and
white and gold. The birds were singing as they never sang but about
that lovely haunted spot. It seemed suddenly to Brion that the fetters
of long years were broken, and that he was riding forth to challenge
the vision not of what was to be, but of what had been and fled. Love
was on the heights, and it was the morning of an older day.




 CHAPTER XXVII.
 THE VOYAGE

  ‘The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
   Merrily did we drop
  Below the kirk, below the hill,
   Below the light-house top.’

A sky of liquid blue freighted with lazy argosies of clouds; the green
lift of the Hoe under, like England on its feet to cry them God speed;
drums and fiddles sounding on the quay; sunshine and merriment and
colour in infinite variety coming up from the water and going down to
it; beyond all, the ships themselves, resplendent painted craft,
beflagged and picture-sailed, webbed with glistening shrouds, their
fighting tops streaming blood-red pennons, like giant beacons alive
with tongues of flame, their prows and side galleries minutely carved
and frosted with gilding, coats of arms emblazoned on their poops,
eyes of excitement appearing even in their port-holes, where each gun
seemed to have thrust up its own little window to peep forth and see
what all the fun was about--so, to such views and accompaniments, was
brazen Adventure launched in Brion’s day, and so had been his. He had
found it all very right and inspiring. He could have seen no reason in
the world why serious business should go clothed in drab raiment, as
if it feared the issue. Colour had its definite value in the scheme of
things, and limbs were no less sturdy nor hearts strong because silk
and velvet covered them. There was tough oak under the gilding, as
there was invincible valour under the bright feathers and doublets,
the shining morions and breastplates. Enterprise, it was felt, lost
nothing in a brave send-off, nor would lose again, for all that the
ships which now weighed so gallantly should come staggering back to
their moorings, after long months of adventure, soiled, battered,
befouled, stripped to the very bedrock of their unconquerable
stubbornness.

So--ships and music and cheering crowds and dancing water and blue sky
and green hills--Brion had seen the picture, and gone down into it and
become part of it, until the world was suddenly moving before his
eyes, and he had discovered that it was not it that was leaving him
but he it. It sounds simple, but it was a wonderful discovery: so also
was that which shortly presented himself to himself as something
immeasurably small and insignificant, the result of a first experience
on the open sea. On land he had had his own little place, which he
could always shift at will: here his will was the will of the mutable
waters which bore him helpless on their surface. The feeling had a
little shocked him in its first realisation; but he had quickly come
to appreciate it at its better worth. He had nothing any longer to
fret or worry him, because it was quite useless to fret or feel
anxiety about anything. As an individual responsible to himself for
his actions he had ceased to count; the whole business of himself had
been taken over by Destiny. All sense of care seemed to slip away
wonderfully under that conviction, he felt in a manner the joy of one
suddenly disembodied.

They weighed and sailed on that bright morning of the 9th April, seven
of them in all, to wit the _Tiger_ of 140 tons, which was the
Admiral’s ship, the _Roebuck_, a fly-boat of like burden, but built
for speed and narrow waters, the _Lion_ of 100 tons, the _Elizabeth_
of 50, and a barque, the _Dorothy_, with a couple of small pinnaces
for light work. Strictly, it was Sir Walter’s most personal adventure,
he chiefly financing it and supplying the majority of the craft; but
for reasons already given he did not accompany his own enterprise,
though he was there to cheer it on its way. He had come down into that
part of the county to attend the wedding of the Mayor of Plymouth--no
less a man than the great Francis Drake himself, who had just seized
an interval in his abounding duties to marry, for his second wife, the
young Mistress Sydenham, heiress to a knightly Somersetshire
family--and had taken advantage of his proximity to Plymouth to kill
two birds with one stone. He had a great confidence in his
brother-in-law, Sir Richard Grenville, to whom he had deputed the
command of the expedition, and bade Brion observe him for his
excellences as a navigator and a leader of men combined, which made
him the ideal character for such an undertaking. All which Brion was
quite ready to believe, without unduly criticizing the qualities which
made a man what he was; and, indeed, if Sir Richard’s tongue was rough
to brutality, he kept the smooth side of it in a quite wonderful way
for the young man, for whom he seemed to entertain a curious liking,
the first of which he showed by nominating both him and Clerivault to
a berth on his own flag-ship, which was a roomy vessel for those days,
and well appointed, though lacking in much of the luxury which was an
ostentation with some of the famous captains of the time. Even the
incomparable Drake had not been guiltless of it, and the Admiral used
to inveigh with a fierce scorn against the silver-engraved plate, and
the demulcent lutes and violins, and the silken cushions and stifling
perfumes with which that mighty sailor had thought fit to furnish his
cabin in the _Pelican_. There were no perfumes on the _Tiger_, save of
burning gunpowder; but sharp claws and fierce colouring, as was
martial and fitting. She carried ten guns a side, and two on her upper
deck, and was ready for her spring at any time, though not an ounce of
silver adorned either her table or her musket-locks. Music there might
be in moderation, since you could not keep natural songsters from
singing; but Grenville would have none of it in his own quarters, not
even on the offer of young Anthony Russe, who was a gentleman
adventurer like Brion, and had a voice like a merry bird’s. He was a
captivating young fellow, was this Anthony, one of the few whom Brion
had already met in London, and the two soon attached themselves to one
another and became fast friends. Attachment, indeed, was a common
condition of that life, for what with the colonists, who numbered 108
males in all, and with the crews, and supervisors, and fighting men,
the vessels had all that they could pack, though the Admiral’s ship
was less crowded than the others. But, fortunately for comfort, the
voyage was destined to be, almost from start to finish, a prosperous
one, and the only sharp storm they encountered was early met with and
soon weathered. They caught it in the Bay of Portugal, which they had
reached in three days from the start with a fair following wind, and
Brion and Master Anthony were sick and sorry youths until they had
rendered unto Cæsar the things that were Cæsar’s, and emerged vacant
but happy from that chastening ordeal. Thereafter a smooth run of a
couple of days brought them to the Canaries, whence they shaped their
course south-west for the little Antilles and the island of Dominica,
which they made on the seventh of May, after a happy but eventless
passage across the Atlantic.

All this, the sights and sounds, the abounding freedom of the life,
the foreign ports and foreign people, was to Brion, after the somewhat
narrow restrictions of his custom, an incessant novelty and delight.
Only one thing so far was wanting to his and to the general
content--they had encountered no Spaniard with whom to pick a quarrel
on any or no terms, and plain sailing, though pleasant enough in
itself, was mere mariners’ satisfaction without that crowning grace to
spice it.

This shocking lack of trouble was a subject for discussion one evening
between the two young gentlemen, when the fleet had just sailed from
Dominica on a north-westerly course. They sat high on the poop-deck
where the great horn lanterns were, and in dolefully sarcastic vein
acclaimed the perfections of the peace which surrounded them. It was a
heavenly evening, indeed; born of the dreams of the south sea, whose
bosom, like the bosom of the sleeping beauty, placidly rose and fell
to her ‘tender-taken breath’: a dream of crystal air and golden water;
of a sun hanging like a bubble of blown amber above the Western
horizon; of a surface so still that the ships in their deep
reflections seemed as if melting and dissolving into the placid fire
which they rode, with scarce enough way on them to keep their
steersmen awake. Brion and Master Anthony had supped exuberantly, and,
after the way of youth under such circumstances, were in voluble mood.
They had come up on deck to escape the reek of the confined cabin,
where the Admiral’s company, professional and civilian, still hung
about the table over their wine. Anthony had his lute with him, and
thrummed it indifferently to extempore recitative or broken scraps of
song.

  ‘“In December” (sang he) “when the days draw to be short,
   After November, when the nights wax noisome and long;
  As I past by a place privily at a port,
   I saw one sit by himself making a song.”’

‘What about?’ said Brion.

‘About the beauties of a quiet life, to be sure,’ answered the
musician. ‘Do you not thank your stars for them? I met our general
this morning. “Sir,” says I, “we should be your grateful servants.”
“For what?” says he. “For taking us from the fighting turmoil of our
civil lives,” says I, “and showing us the blessings of a bloodless
tranquillity.”’

‘And what did he answer?’

‘Why, I blush for him. He said that if I was looking for trouble he
could accommodate me then and there. Poor little Tony!

  “His last talk of trifles, who told with his tongue
   That few were fast i’ the faith. I freyned that freak,
  Whether he wanted wit, or some had done him wrong.
   He said, he was little John Nobody, that durst not speak.”’

‘Well, are you not hard to please?’

‘Don’t ask me. I am little John Nobody that durst not speak.’

‘What is it you want?’

‘Never mind. I am little John Nobody that durst not speak.’

‘_Is_ it trouble?’

‘No, peace, of course. But then I am little John Nobody.

  “When Captains Courageous, whom death could not daunt,
  Did march to the siege of the City of Gaunt,
  They mustred their soldiers by two and by three,
  And the foremost in battle was Mary Ambree.”

But I durst not speak.’

A dark form came up the stairs, and stood lankly silhouetted against
the glowing sky.

‘Is that you, Master Clerivault?’ asked the singer. ‘Is not this peace
a lovely thing?’

‘A lovely thing, Sir.’

‘We are well rewarded in it for our enterprise?’

‘Very well rewarded, Sir.’

‘And, so it could last continually, we might count ourselves the very
blest of Providence?’

‘God’s ’slid, Sir--I think so.’

‘Look you, Master Clerivault! is not that a Spanish sail under the
sun?’

Clerivault spun round. Brion scrambled to his feet:--

‘Where, Tony--where, o’ God’s name?’

‘No, I was mistaken: it was a mosquito on my nose. But, how thankful
we should be!’

Brion threw himself upon him and the two struggled and rolled on the
deck together. Presently Tony emerged, and, sitting up dishevelled,
blew out an eldritch shriek, at the moment that a party, coming from
the cabin, set foot on the poop.

‘Who was that?’ said Grenville’s deep voice.

‘’Twas little Johnny Nobody,’ murmured the culprit.

‘O! it’s you, Master Russe,’ said the General. ‘Still looking for
trouble?’

‘No, he has just found it, Sir Richard,’ said Brion. ‘A mosquito hath
bit his nose.’

Grenville gave a gruff laugh:--

‘All that? By the token, a prick from a Spanish-pike should bring a
cry from him to split our mainsail.’

But he liked the boy well enough, and could appreciate at its worth
the spirit which chafed under such tame inaction.

Still the fine weather held, while they ran up the Leeward Islands
under a halcyon sky, making for St John’s, in the Virgin group, where
was reported to be a Spanish settlement. On the 10th May they dropped
anchor under the green shores of a little island called Cotesa, a
day’s run from St John’s, and there landed, rejoiced to stretch their
cramped limbs, and spent the day in rest and pleasant feasting;
whence, resuming their course on the 12th they reached St John’s
itself, and coming to anchor in a small bay of the island, called the
Bay of Mosquitos, at a falcon’s shot from the beach, prepared for the
first time for a show of business. Here the best part of the company,
going ashore, engaged to throw up a temporary fort, in view of any
possible mischief which might be designed them, seeing the nature of
their mission, and how the Spaniards, deeming themselves owners of the
New World, might desire to nip in the bud any such invasion of their
self-elected privileges. And here Brion got his first true estimate of
the forceful and tyrannical character of their commander; for Sir
Richard, the moment hard action was called for, neither spared nor
considered his men at anything less than the utmost which by oaths and
violence he could wring out of them. Despatch was necessary, and
despatch he would have, even to the exhaustion in such tropic heat of
many of the crew. But the result was he got his fort built
timely--though much of the wood for it had to be felled and fetched on
trucks from a point three miles and more inland--and all the while
till it was finished not a Spaniard showed his face. It was set
against the estuary of a shallow river which here ran into the sea,
and, having its back to the ocean, was encompassed on its two
remaining sides with thick woodland. And now, his fort once completed,
Sir Richard began to put into effect a design of his, which was to
fashion within its shelter yet a third pinnace out of the timber
brought down; which was done in something over ten days, and fitted
and launched.

During all this time, until the 24th of the month, on which day the
company departed from the island, only desultory acquaintance with the
Spanish settlers was made. On the 16th there appeared for the first
time a party of eight of them, horsemen, who rode out of the woods,
and halted at a quarter mile distance to survey the fort; but on ten
shot of the Admiral’s force being detached to approach them, they
wheeled and galloped away.

Six days later again a body numbering twenty mounted Spaniards
appeared on the other side of the river; seeing whom Sir Richard
despatched a score of footmen to oppose them, together with two
mounted on a couple of horses which had been found and seized on the
island. And these two were no other than our young gallants, to whom
had been deputed the glad task of leadership in a possible fray.

‘Look for trouble, but invite it not,’ were Sir Richard’s sole
directions; and the couple went off rejoicing, proud of the trust
committed to them, and so far resolved, within discretion, not to
abuse it. But at the very outset their hearts fell, for there were the
Spaniards already showing a flag of truce, and making signs for a
parley.

‘They will not fight,’ said Brion, ‘unless by our will.’

‘I am little Johnny Nobody, and in your hands,’ said Tony.

Two of the Spaniards rode out upon the sands, where the river ran thin
and scattered, and Brion and his companion pricked over to meet them.
They were typical Southerners, lean and hot-eyed as hawks, but lavish
in the sort of courtly ceremonial which precedes a duel to the death
with rapiers. One of them spoke quite good English, and it was he
addressed himself to the strangers. He opened with elaborate
salutations:--

‘Greetings, senores. We make you many welcome to St John’s.’

Brion thanked him, with a return of his courtesy.

‘We take your welcome in good part, Sir,’ said he.

‘Ah!’ said the Spaniard; ‘but not in the best part, since you come to
fortify against us in our own land.’

‘It is the mosquitos we wanted to keep out,’ said Brion politely.
‘They are very fierce in this island of yours, Sir.’

Young Russe could not repress a small explosion; but the Spaniard
remained as solemn as a church.

‘It is not well, senor,’ he said, ‘so to requite our hospitality.’

‘It is the first we have heard of it,’ said Brion. ‘May I ask, senor,
does it extend to supplying us with some things of which we stand in
need--fresh meat and water among others?’

‘If I say no, senor, you will seize these things by force, is it so?’

‘The answer, I am afraid, senor, is that we shall.’

The Spaniard considered gravely.

‘_Bien está_,’ he said at last. ‘We will supply you then all you
want, and without delaying. I go, senor, to make the instant
provision.’

He bowed profoundly, and drew on his rein.

‘Why wouldn’t the hidalgo fight?’ said Russe discontentedly as they
rode back.

‘I wouldn’t answer for him yet,’ said Brion.

The General received their report with a grumph, which might have
meant satisfaction or incredulity. He bided his time, it seemed. On
the following day the new pinnace was launched; and the day after,
having in the meanwhile heard or seen nothing of the Spaniards, he
marched a considerable company some four miles into the country, to
discover, if he might, the reason of the delay; when, failing to
obtain any sort of report or satisfaction, out of revenge for the bad
faith kept, he fired all the woods thereabouts--which Brion thought
privily a mean and senseless action--and so returned to the fort,
which he fired also, thereafter re-embarking all his force in
preparation to sail the next morning, which was done.

And now, as if in truth Honour gave into his hands the means by which
to retaliate on that abuse of her, about evening of the same day they
fell in with a Spanish frigate, which, having approached cautiously,
they discovered to be abandoned of her crew in a panic at the mere
sight of the English flotilla, so that she fell an easy prize to the
Admiral: and so was she scarce seized and manned when early in the
following morning a second frigate was seen and overtaken, and
surrendered without a blow, being found richly freighted, and with
some passengers of account in her, who were presently fain to pay
ransom in a good round sum for the privilege of their being set ashore
on St John’s. Sir Richard despatched these to the island, in one of
the new-taken vessels, under custody of Master Ralph Lane--who was the
Governor appointed for the forthcoming colony--with orders to this his
Lieutenant to proceed to Roxo Bay, on the south-west side, and thence
procure salt, of which the fleet stood in need. Which, under the
guidance of a Spanish pilot seized on the frigate, Master Lane
successfully accomplished, landing on the sands, with a party of
twenty men, and immediately entrenching himself about one of the
salt-hills, from which he took as much as he required. While so at
work a great troop of Spaniards, both horse and foot, came down above
the shore as if to dispute the appropriation. But it seemed they durst
not advance any further, but contented themselves with watching the
spoliation at a distance, and making menacing gestures which counted
for nothing. Yet were they in number more than two to one, and many of
them mounted, which set Brion, who had been allowed, on his own
earnest solicitation, to join this little subsidiary expedition,
thinking of what it was that constituted a conquering race. An
Englishman, he observed, dared in proportion as the odds were against
him, while a Spaniard would dare nothing unless the odds were
overwhelmingly in his favour.

He and his friend were by now in a state of high excitement over the
turn of events, and looked from this time to taking nothing less than
a ship a day. But in that, alas! they were doomed to disappointment;
for, so it happened, only once more in all the voyage were they
destined to encounter a Spanish vessel, and then to such sorrowful
result as regarded Brion’s happiness that he would have given all the
fortune of the past to avert this one blow, could he have foreseen it.

In the meantime, and lacking any signal adventure to recount, the
record of the voyage must be condensed. Generally, so far as
impressions were concerned, it was to the young traveller one glowing
panorama of hot fertile lands and strange races; of aromatic foliage
and splendid flowers and luscious fruits; of maize, millet, cassava,
plantains, cocoa-nuts, mangoes, yams and pineapples; of game and fish
in prodigious abundance; of tropical heats and the ugly sweltering
things engendered of them--scorpions, and great toads and lizards, and
the malignant mosquitos, which had signalised their departure from St
John’s with such an attack in force as had completely routed the
invaders, and sent them at the last flying for their ships as if the
fourth plague of Egypt were let loose on them.

On the first day of June they came to the great island of Hispaniola,
or Little Spain, and, coasting along its northern shore, cast anchor
off Isabella, which was the seat of the Spanish settlement, and sent
up courteously to notify the Governor of their arrival. Who, having
received flattering reports of the General’s chivalry and hospitality
to sundry of his countrymen who had been entertained by him,
presently, in a day or two, came down to the shore with a score of his
gentlemen, with their negroes and servants and a corpulent Spanish
priest, all being ready to exchange amenities with the strangers, and
to eschew as for the occasion the least thought of mistrust or
hostility. And if, on the Spaniard’s part, that was to make a virtue
of necessity, certainly they made it, and with a handsome grace and
dignity which were all their own, not even being impaired by the sight
of the prizes which lay off the shore in full view for any who might
to remark. But gentleman fraternised with gentleman, and fellow with
fellow, and harmony was the order of the day. The sailors built two
spacious bowers of green branches, and thereunder entertained the
Spaniards to the best the ships could afford; which the priest found
so well, indeed, that under the influence of a ben-bowse, as the
seamen called it, he offered to absolve every heretic of them all, and
afterwards fell asleep with his head in a dish of custard. After the
feast, the Spaniards, not to be outdone in civility, organised a hunt
for their visitors, mounting such as would on good horses, and having
a herd of white bulls driven down from the hills, from which they
selected three that offered good sport. These then they chased for a
space of three hours, when all were killed, whereafter the whole
company went to rest and wine, well satisfied. An exchange of gifts
followed, many handsome presents being bestowed on either side; and on
the following day ensued the more serious business of barter, the
Englishmen acquiring by way of truck or purchase a quantity of
live-stock, besides sugar, ginger, pearls, and some bales of the
tobacco then first coming into vogue.

So, with seeming goodwill, whatever secret passions underlay these
courtesies, the last compliments were paid, and on the seventh of the
month the fleet weighed and departed.

The next day nearly saw the end of the Admiral and some others, among
whom were Brion and young Russe, with him. For having rowed in one of
the pinnaces to a little island reported to contain seals, they were
capsized, trying to land, in the heavy surf, and only escaped through
the boat fortuitously righting itself at the critical moment. Thence,
still keeping a north-westerly course, they touched at Caicos in the
Bahamas, and afterwards at various small islands, until, on the 20th,
they fell in with the main of Florida. Sailing therefrom up the coast,
on the 23rd, the wind rising with a rough gray sea, they came to
within an ace of being wrecked on the point known as Cape Fear, but
more by good luck than good seamanship weathered the promontory, and
ran to smooth anchorage in a little harbour beyond, which was so full
of fish that the morning following, the wind and sea having abated in
the interval, as many were caught in one tide as would have supplied
all London for a week. And so, two days later, they sighted the land
of North Carolina, as it was presently to be called, and running up in
shoal water under slack sail to the island of Roanoke, which lay like
a long reef or rampart to the main, cast anchor off a place called
Wococon, and knew the first part of their business successfully
accomplished.

The rest, from Brion’s point of view, appeared all a grotesque
gallanty-show, in which the pieces and the action moved according to
some fantastic law having no known relation to a man’s normal
experiences. It was an absorbing, yet, somehow, an unearthly dream of
expeditions made in the ships’ boats up steaming rivers to barbarous
kraals miscalled towns; of oily brick-red skins clothed in hides like
chasubles; of beads and wampum; of mahogany-faced warriors, and squaws
with their long black hair bound in chaplets of white coral, and
carcanets of pearls, sometimes, hanging from the lobes of their ears;
of councils and calumets and pow-wows and tomtoms. The ostensible
object of all the palaver was to flatter the local monarch, one
Wingina, into suffering the settlement within his territory of a band
of foreign interlopers, and so consolidating a sort of provisional
agreement said to have been made with him by the Captains Amadas and
Barlowe who had conducted the expedition of the year before. It was an
early example, in fact, of the peaceful penetration which has not the
least intention of taking no for an answer, and was characterised by
all the blunders common to that state of mind. The force which was
resolved to insist had not the wit to disguise itself, and at the
first sign of opposition betrayed its real purpose. It happened in
this way. The expedition inland in the boats, which were four in
number, and all fully manned, armed, and victualled for a week’s trip,
came by the so-called towns of Pomeiok, Aquascogok and Secotan, and
was well entertained by the savages in all places. But it so happened
that, at the second-named, a silver cup belonging to the Admiral was
stolen by a redskin, and not being delivered to him, as he had
demanded, on his return, Sir Richard, in his swift, relentless way,
burned and spoiled the town and the crops standing about it, so that
the place was made a waste and all its people fled. Now the savages
had hitherto behaved with great forbearance and hospitality, so that
hardly a day passed but what they had brought for the fleet offerings
of fat bucks, conies, hares, fish, and divers gourds and fruits, and
this was their return. What could they think, then, of the true
meaning of this ‘peaceful penetration,’ but that it was the first
insidious step towards their own ousting and perhaps extermination?
The consequences were what any but a blunder-headed martinet might
have foreseen. So long as the show of force remained to overawe them,
the natives maintained an hypocritical attitude of friendliness and
conciliation; the moment the same was withdrawn, they vented their
spite and fury upon the colonists remaining, so starving and harassing
them that the poor men were glad to seize an opportunity to escape at
the end of a year, while some subsequent attempts by others to procure
a footing in the land met with even worse disaster, all engaged in
them being attacked by the savages and miserably slain, only their
bones remaining stark on the beach to witness to their fate.

Brion, who with his friend and Clerivault was present at that deed of
wanton destruction, had the sense and the humanity to deplore its
folly as much as its wickedness.

‘It is not so,’ he said, ‘that we shall establish our lady’s fame for
reason and sweet justice. He wrongs us as much as the land he
misrepresents.’

‘We shall leave but footprints of sorrow where we came with palms of
love,’ said Clerivault, in a melancholy voice. ‘May God forgive us!’

‘And these poor devils, the colonists,’ quoth Master Russe, ‘who will
have to reap what we have sown.’

However, the mischief was done, and no talking could mend it. Its
immediate effect, even, was to produce in the savages an increased
show of deference and propitiation, of the sort wholly to deceive so
poor a psychologist as the Admiral. He imagined them definitely cowed,
and on that supposition acted with an arrogance which hitherto he had
made shift to repress. The rest of the history of the expedition
consisted of establishing the colonists in the land, with the stores
and victuals brought for their accommodation; of cruisings and
explorations up and down the coast; of interviews with the king’s
brother, Grangino, and of one with Wingina himself, whom the Admiral,
taking a strong escort with him, travelled to see in his own savage
capital of Weapomeiok. Brion was not invited to this excursion; but he
had plenty otherwise to engage and interest him in the way of divers
sport on land and water, and of keenly observing and studying the
habits and customs of the strange people among whom a curious fate had
cast him.

So the time of their stay drew to an end, being from first to last two
whole months while they lay and cruised off the coast; and on the 25th
August the _Tiger_, much lightened, weighed anchor--the rest of the
fleet having been sent on some twenty days ahead--and set her sails
for home.




 CHAPTER XXVIII.
 THE TAKING OF THE CARACK

‘What ails thee, melancholy wight?’

Brion gazed, with that smiling question, into Clerivault’s eyes. The
ship was six days out on the broad Atlantic, running before a westerly
breeze in hazy weather, and they looked over the gray unpeopled waste
of waters and thought of home.

Clerivault heaved up his lean shoulders with a sort of renunciatory
sigh.

‘Nothing ails me, sweetheart--and yet nothing may be a sad complaint.’

‘I’faith you’re cryptic. How does this illness of nothing take you?’

‘In the heart, Sir. It is a void, a blankness, an unfulfilment. It is
the word for wasted opportunities, for frustrate hopes, for the thing
that should have been but was not. I have known it much infecting the
Law; and it may be I carried the seed of it in me to curse our high
emprise.’

‘What stuff is this?’

‘Is it stuff?’

‘Fustian, I doubt not. Come, sad soul’--he put a hand cheerily on the
poor fellow’s shoulder--‘be of good heart. These are empty humours,
that come of nothing. The seed in thee was never no man’s curse.’

Clerivault shook his head. For some days past he had been in a
curiously dejected mood, silent and low-spirited. Often Brion had
caught him with his eyes fixed upon him in a yearning wistful way, the
meaning of which he could in no wise interpret. But it made him
uneasy. Was the dear man sickening for something, he wondered? The
thought gave him a queer turn. He had never even put to himself what
the loss of Clerivault might, would mean to him; he had never so much
as associated the image of death with that tough, wiry constitution.
Nor would he now: merely to think of it seemed to bring the Impossible
within the bounds of startling Possibility.

‘You do not feel ill, do you,’ he asked anxiously--‘in body, I mean?’

‘Never sounder, Sir.’

‘Then, what sick fancy is this? Has our enterprise proved a failure?
Ask our Admiral what he thinks of it.’

The wild eyes opened at that, with a spark of fury in them.

‘Hark ye, Sir. His England is not my England. I’ll not take his word
for that success. What blows we have struck have been against, not
for, _my_ England. Will her gentle heart not hate me for it?’

‘O, Clerivault, my dear! I see what haunts your mind. Well, we took no
hand in those same felon blows.’

‘Should we not have rather--to counter and invalidate them?’

‘Ay, if we were resolved to meet with Master Doughty’s fate.’

‘So would our England at least have known us for her true lovers; so
would the professed passion of our hearts for her have been
vindicated. Now I return to her in shame, a discredited champion, whom
she will never wish to trust again.’

‘O, this is foolish! What could we do in reason but what we have done?
Treachery to our friends would not have sweetened England’s name.’

The paragon sighed profoundly.

‘That may be so,’ said he: ‘yet would I fain have struck one blow for
her in our own right way, though I died for it.’

‘No need to talk of dying.’

‘What; would you miss me, sweetheart?’

‘Peace, thou dear old croaker!’

‘And my good master would miss me. Sometimes I think we should never
have left him.’

Brion frowned. Those words touched a certain disquiet which had
already more than once come to darken his own mind.

‘Well,’ he said, a little fretfully, ‘not the Fates can make us walk
in our own footsteps backwards. If we have done wrong, we are speeding
to retrieve it.’

‘Nay’--the eyes softened lovingly--‘I meant no blame to thee,
sweetling. Yet that is a strange thought of thine. Is Death indeed
returning to that home of Time from which we started; and Hell,
perhaps, retracing all our sins in loathing of them?’

The look-out in the foretop shouted suddenly a sail. The two started
and turned to the loud cry: and there, forged unexpectedly out of the
mists on their larboard bow, rode a huge carack. She was so close,
within a mile or two, that it seemed she must have blundered
half-asleep into their ken; or perhaps, like some majestic leviathan,
had disdained to alter her course for such insignificant fry. She swam
as if deep-laden, flying the Spanish colours, and her burden was 300
tons, if an ounce.

In a moment the _Tiger’s_ deck was swarming, and the Admiral’s orders
issued sharp and violent. He grunted with satisfaction, rubbing his
hands. Here was amends for much inglorious trafficing for one who,
according to a contemporary chronicler, was ‘very unquiet in his mind,
and greatly affected to war,’ and who would always rather, in a
question of acquisition, plunder than barter. Nor were those he
commanded less excited over the prospect than himself. At a breath all
peevish humours were forgotten, all mortuary moods and talk of death
and failure. The light of battle sprang to Clerivault’s eyes; with a
silent clap of his hand on Brion’s shoulder, he hurried below to equip
himself for the coming fray. Russe passed him, hastening to his
friend’s side. ‘Good sooth, a monster!’ he said: ‘and with a double
row of teeth, like a shark. There will be some credit in capturing
_her_.’ He never doubted the issue. It was the spirit destined to
wrest from the Spaniard his long undisputed sovereignty of the seas.

They luffed and made for the stranger, overhauling her hand over hand.
In the light wind blowing they sailed two knots for her one. Every
soul on board stood at the prick of expectancy; each gunner waited at
his piece, linstock in hand. At long range they bore up and held away,
running parallel with, but a little abaft, the carack, which kept her
course, as if in stately indifference. At that distance she towered
above them, a very behemoth of the deep. Suddenly there was a double
flash from her sides, a slam, and a rending crash. A spout of
splinters went up from the _Tiger_, almost under Brion’s feet, it
seemed. A human scream or two, mingling horribly with the uproar, for
an instant rocked his heart; and then fury and fire, as if over some
damnable wickedness, blazed in his blood. He saw red, and screeched
with frenzied triumph as the _Tiger_, shooting abeam of the other, ran
up her blazing ensign, and simultaneously delivered her whole larboard
broadside into the quivering hull of the monster; then yawed, and,
letting the enemy forge ahead, passed under her stern, and gave her
the other broadside full through her cabin windows, raking her fore
and aft, and making her stagger as if she had struck on a rock.

And now was witnessed an example of the tactics which afterwards came
to be used to such profit in the English game of sea-war; the
nimble-heeled _Tiger_ manœuvring so deftly about her unwieldy
adversary as to allow her no breathing time for reflection, or power
to shift her range, so that most of her shots, sped wildly, flew over
her indefatigable tormentor, or, at best, smacked through her rigging,
while every broadside driven home into herself tore her vitals to
pieces. It was the game of the whale and sword-fish--seamanship versus
mere weight of wood and metal, and had the inevitable ending. In the
thick of the fury, when coming about for another swoop and stab, a
roaring cheer went up from the _Tiger_; and there was the Spaniard’s
ensign fluttering down, and the mighty prize was won.

As the noise subsided, the Admiral bade Master Thomas Candish, who was
his shipmaster, to put his helm up and slip under the quarter of the
carack; and thereat a lamentable discovery was made. For it appeared
that the very last shot which the enemy had fired had carried away the
best part of the _Tiger’s_ rudder, so that she would not answer to her
helm, and was become virtually unmanageable. Slowly, as the reek and
fume of the guns dissipated, the ships fell apart--_and the Tiger had
not a boat left to her name_. The Admiral stamped and swore like a
maniac. By God, he would not lose her, though every member of the crew
had to swim to take possession. He cursed in a very frenzy, striding
up and down the deck, like some maddened marooned thing, watching the
distance widen--when someone had an inspiration. Why not an extempore
raft? He jumped at the suggestion, roaring at the man who had spoken
to start and give effect to his idea, instead of gaping there like a
bran-stuffed quocker-wodger. In a moment planks and empty chests were
being hurried up, and lowered into the water, and bound into some
hasty semblance of a raft. It was a crazy insecure contrivance, but
enough for the temper of the moment. Before it was well finished Sir
Richard was on board, and Brion and Tony had tumbled down beside him.
A score of others followed, and the frail craft put off, urged on its
way by hurriedly improvised sweeps. The waves jeered at and buffeted
it, it laboured and wallowed; but still it made way. If the Spaniards
had had any evil left in them, they might have sunk it with a single
shot. But they had lost, it seemed, all stomach for the fight. The
ridiculous thing lobbed on, sluggish and scarce manageable. It began
to gape and cast its lashings--still it lobbed on. Its boards were
actually parting as it drifted, rather than was directed, against the
Spaniard’s side, and ropes and ladders were lowered for its crew to
board by. To such a right and chastened frame of mind had terror of
English guns and seamanship brought the once overbearing Don.

The prize proved to be the _Santa Anna_, homeward bound from
Hispaniola, with a full cargo of mahogany, dye-woods and cotton, and
carrying also a quantity of pearls and specie--altogether a very
valuable seizure. She was in a dreadful state from the guns--dead and
mangled bodies lying everywhere, and all the splendour of her interior
fabric knocked into blackened splinters. The sight revolted Brion, and
cured for the time being his battle-fever. But he was not allowed long
to be affected by it, for the Admiral sent him off in one of the
ship’s boats to desire Mr Candish to take command of the _Tiger_
during his absence, for that he himself purposed to remain on the
prize and navigate her into port. The young man was glad to escape,
and without stipulating that he should be permitted to return and
rejoin his leader on the _Santa Anna_. He preferred the thought of the
_Tiger_, even without the companionship of Anthony Russe.

He had boarded, and given his message to the shipmaster, when some one
came to him to say that Master Clerivault, who had been wounded in the
fight and lay below, was incessantly crying for him, and that if he
wished to see the man alive he had better come at once.

An instant hand of ice seemed laid on Brion’s heart. He stared as if
he were the victim of some shocking insult. In the fury of the contest
he had lost all sense of individuality or personal association: he had
not given one thought to Clerivault since that cry of the foretopman
had sent them apart to prepare for the crash. Since, if he had assumed
anything, it was that his old friend and comrade was somewhere near
him, following in his footsteps, sharing his blood-drunken enthusiasm.
And instead----

All the melancholy and foreboding of the last few days rushed back
upon him with overwhelming force. To this it had tended, then; thither
had the fatal finger, that he would not recognize, been pointing all
the time. With a long-drawn gasp, he motioned to his informant, and
the two hurried below together.

They had laid him on a table in the forecastle, near by where he had
received his injury. It had come with the first guns fired, and the
cry shocked from him had been one of those which had sickened Brion’s
senses. To think of it!--to think of it! And he had gone on his way
unheeding. A round shot had shattered all the poor creature’s lower
body, and only a little space of time remained to him. He had passed
long ago, but for the will in him to live to see his darling. He
greeted Brion’s appearance with a white and ghastly smile. They had
covered his lower limbs with a cloak: he was from the first beyond the
reach of their rough surgery.

With hot and burning eyes the young man stooped over his friend, and
took and pressed one chilling hand to his breast.

‘Clerivault!’ he whispered.

He would not ask him not to go and leave him, lest it should but add a
futile pang to that mortal passing. The blue lips moved, and he bent
to them.

‘Lower, sweetheart.’

‘Here, Clerivault.’

‘Lower--I had much to say--but there is only a moment--left. I must
use it--to confess.’

‘What, dear?’

‘Is it only you that hears? I have--lied to you.’

‘How?’

‘I am not really--of English blood--I have not a drop of it--in my
veins.’

‘Dear Clerivault; I knew. What then?’

‘You knew? And yet--would let me speak--for England--claim--to
represent her?’

‘O, Clerivault, Clerivault! Whatever your blood, you have an English
heart. You have loved England and died for her. Now are you for ever
more one of her dearest sons.’

A radiance came into the fading eyes; the dying man rose with a sudden
powerful effort from his pillow. ‘England!’ he cried hoarsely. A rush
of blood rumbled from his mouth, and he fell back dead.

 * * * * * *

They dropped him the next day into the blue sea, with a shot at his
feet. Brion looked on with tearless eyes and a numbed brain. It was
all right, he supposed, and they could do nothing else; but he wished
they had lashed them together first, and ended the whole business then
and there. He had a curious feeling of being half-dead himself, as if
a moiety of his vitality had been withdrawn with that dear inseparable
comrade. How could he ever care for life again without Clerivault? His
love, and now his friend? Surely Destiny had dealt with him unduly at
so early an age. He was sad and alone--no longer with any definite
object in the world.

So he thought in his unhappiness, poor soul. He had gone forth so
radiantly, and only, after all, to find Desolation. With that he was
returning to face the desolate house, his home; with that to vindicate
his desertion of a trust and duty. His dead comrade’s words returned
upon him with a pitiful force which shook his heart. Ought he to have
allowed himself to be tempted away? A fever was upon him all at once
to be back in England--in Devonshire; a mad longing to cancel the
intervening space which lay between him and surety.

So, in his loneliness and despair, there returned to him, and with a
wonderful new sense of restfulness, a thought which had already half
troubled, half bewitched his mind. He knew in what soft and gentle
bosom he could find, if he would, the welcome and the comradeship his
soul so longed for. Why not abandon the struggle, yield for once and
for all his scruples, and so turn the tables on the fate which had
thought finally to bereave him? The very reflection was balm out of
sickness. It steadied the agitation of his nerves and induced in him a
feeling of tranquil resignation. Thenceforth the turmoil in his mind
subsided, and he set himself to face with sober philosophy the weary
days of the voyage which yet lay before him. He was no longer in any
hurry to reach home; which testified to the rationality of his
resolve, if it did not to any compelling force of passion behind it.

Until the 10th September the _Tiger_ and the _Santa Anna_ ran in
company; when, foul weather intervening, they were cast apart, and the
lighter ship so gained on the other as quickly to lose sight of her in
the murk. Nor was she to see her again during the remainder of the
run, which for her part she completed some twelve days ahead of her
consort. Of this time there is nothing of interest to record; the
finish of the voyage was uneventful, and on the 6th of October the
_Tiger_ fell in with the Land’s End, and the same day cast anchor at
Falmouth, where Brion parted from her, and went ashore.

It was six months near to a day since he had left his native land; and
with what varied emotions he set foot again on her dear soil may be
imagined. He made no stay in the town--which indeed was little better
than a fishing colony--but took boat that afternoon for Plymouth,
where he was to put up for the night before completing the rest of his
journey, which he was resolved to do on the morrow. Only he did not.
Something intervened.




 CHAPTER XXIX.
 THE VIPER ON THE HEARTH

Whether or not the vulnerary water distilled from the plantain in
the year of its becoming a bird possessed the phœnix-like properties
attributed to it by its concoctor, certain it is that from the moment
of Mrs Harlock’s taking the stranger in hand the man’s hurts began to
mend; and within a month of his being received into the house he was
pronounced by his attendant in a fit state to take himself out of it.
He demurred over the verdict, protesting that only his own resolution
and desire to appear grateful were feigning a cure which in his inner
self he knew to be far from assured; but his precise plaints, after a
private consultation among the conspirators, were ignored, and he was
given definite notice that, as from the first day of May, he was to
consider them discharged of any further obligations regarding him, and
must make his plans accordingly. He submitted perforce, and, it is to
be assumed, took them at their word, for his plans, when he came to
develop them, showed a full appreciation of the independence of action
presented to him, and were very certainly his own. He went--but only
to return.

During those weeks of his convalescence no least hint of his presence
in the Grange had been allowed to percolate through to its master,
who, indeed, more than ever since his nephew’s departure, had shut
himself away in complete isolation from his household. Nor had a
whisper of the secret the place contained been let penetrate to the
outer world. Absolute loyalty to their service was, as Brion had very
well known, an assured asset with those faithful souls, and observance
to the letter of his instructions could be depended on. So rigidly,
indeed, had his directions been followed that from first to last the
invalid had been able to inform himself in no solitary particular of
the constitution of the household into which he had been admitted. He
knew from Brion the name of its head, and that was all. That, it may
be said, had conveyed something to him, but something which required
substantiation and consideration. The question was, how to bring
about, what he most desired, a personal interview. It was already, to
his mind, a sheer Providence which had brought him, though by way of
travail, to a house actually marked for early visitation on his list.
For there is need no longer to skirmish about the truth regarding
Master John Melton. He was in very fact one of those _agents
provocateurs_ already alluded to as being sent by the Jesuit Allen to
England to test popular feeling and sow sedition. Not in Orders
himself, he was possessed, nevertheless, of sufficient dogmatism to
qualify him for such a mission, his English blood further suiting him
for the task. He was, moreover, a dry and crafty creature, born for an
Inquisitor. Part of his business was to analyse the sources of
disaffection, and to involve such waverers as he could in the
conspiracy against the Queen’s life, which even then was germinating
in the breasts of certain Catholic extremists. Among such presumptive
confederates, it seemed, the name of Quentin Bagott figured as that of
one who had secretly recanted his heresy, and might be used as a local
agent for the insidious dissemination of treason. How the information
had been acquired is of little matter; it was of a piece with much
that jumped to certain conclusions from insufficient premises. In any
case a visit to the ex-Judge had been assigned a foremost place in the
itinerary mapped out for Allen’s emissary.

And here he was, by a very Providence, as has been said--inscrutably
severe in its methods though it might be--actually on the premises
which he might in vain have sought to enter lacking that Divine
castigation. It seemed incredible that his good fortune stood to be
stultified through the perversity of a party of fools, too obstinately
loyal to their instructions to give him the least tether for his
operations. Nor should it be--on that he was determined--whatever
close watch they kept over their tongues, or over his movements when
once he was in a condition to rise and creep about his room. He was
able to learn so much--that he owed this rigid supervision to the man
who had rescued him, and could form, perhaps, his own shrewd
conclusions as to some of Brion’s reasons for desiring to keep him and
his Uncle apart. For this Melton was as sharp as a ferret, and had
that sort of microscopic mental eye which can discover whole truths in
grains of unconsidered suggestion. So, when the time came, he went,
quite quietly and tamely, and his watchers breathed a sigh of relief
that their responsibility was at an end.

That same night Quentin Bagott was sitting in his chamber alone. A
solitary lamp burned over his head, diluting but not obliterating a
patch of moonlight which fell through the open casement upon the
floor. The window looked out upon the waste ground to the rear of the
Grange, and was flung wide, for the night was still and warm. He sat,
his eyes fixed on the carpet, on the patch of moonlight there,
drearily hypnotised by it. There was a criss-cross pattern in it which
seemed to entangle his brain. Wrenching himself once free from the
obsession, he turned to the table to drink, and again came round to
stare at the carpet. Something had happened to it. In the thick of the
moonlit lattice lay a folded scrap of paper which had not been there
before. It looked as if entangled in the meshes--or in his brain. He
sat staring at it, trying to think. Suddenly he rose unsteadily, and
stooped, and gained the thing, and unfolded it and read. He stood a
long time reading; then went softly and quickly to the window and bent
out.

‘_Lavabo inter innocentes manus meas_,’ he said low into the night.

A man came out of the shadows and approached the window.

‘_Et circumdabo altare tuum, Domine_,’ he responded, small and quiet.

‘Whence come you--and wherefore?’ asked Bagott in a fearful voice.

‘From Heaven--for your salvation,’ was the solemn answer.

So, by way of the main gate, and the tree across the moat, had Melton
achieved his purpose. He had simply ‘evacuated’ to order, had gone
straight round by the copse, and had lain hidden all day in the secret
place of which only he knew. Then at night he had emerged, and by good
fortune had reached his quarry.

He was never again to drop what he had seized until he had sucked it
dry. From that moment he had the sodden and bewildered brain at his
mercy. By what specious arts he had prevailed could never afterwards
be known; but somehow, working upon his victim’s superstitious fears,
he ended by establishing a complete control over him. He was to go
brazenly about it, too, never before witnesses so much as hinting at
the question of religion, but letting it be assumed that the tie
between him and Bagott was purely one of mutual liking and good-will.
In all this he was guided by a very definite purpose, which only
ultimately came to light. Whatever at the outset might have been the
singleness of his motives, temptation changed it into one of gripping
and savage cupidity. He had suddenly seen his way to the acquisition
of unexpected wealth, and the prospect was too much for his caution.
He dared to stake on the chance, and he came within an ace of
succeeding.

As to the tricked and jockeyed household, the knowledge of their
humiliation came soon enough to them. It synchronised with the arrival
before his master’s door of Nol porter, prepared to perform at the
usual hour his usual bedtime duties. He heard voices speaking within,
and stood stupefied to listen; then heaved away on creaking boot-tips
to call Phineas. The master-cook came. ‘Anan?’ said he.

‘Hist!’ whispered Nol: ‘Put thy ear hither, and tell me. Who is it?’

Phineas listened, and came about, his long face aghast.

‘John Melton,’ said he.

Nol stared a moment; then, his jaw set grim, opened the door and
walked into the room. His master sat facing him; the stranger stood by
the table, a thin, wintry, but wholly unperturbed smile upon his lips.

‘_Soyez le bienvenu!_’ he murmured, with an indrawn snigger.

Nol made an ugly gesture:--

‘Out of this you go!’ said he.

The stranger just glanced at his host. Bagott half rose in his chair,
his eyes red with fury:--

‘Away, thou dog, thou villain!’ he roared. ‘What; you’d so dare to my
guest, and before my face! I’ll requite thee, dog!’

He rocked and panted, mouthing like a mad thing.

‘’Twas Master Brion’s order,’ said Nol sulkily.

The Judge banged his fist on the table.

‘Who is master here, thou beast? Disobey me at thy peril. I have not
yet so abrogated my authority’--he made a sudden effort to command
himself; and went on in a quieter voice, which yet shook with
agitation: ‘Master Brion judged within the limits of his knowledge,
which was not all, nor near all. I have learned the whole truth from
this gentleman, who indeed was on his way to visit me when that
misfortune befell him. My nephew did well and prudently, acting for
the best; and you did well to follow his instructions. But that is
done. Henceforth this becomes _my_ guest, whom I commit to your duty
to serve and honour. Attend to it well.’

He sank back in his chair, waving the two from the room, and with
dismay at their hearts they left him. What was to be done? Nothing
that they could see. They were on the horns of as bitter a dilemma as
could have perplexed two honest, troubled heads. They could not act in
opposition to their lawful master: they dared not make a public
scandal of the business, lest its consequences should visit themselves
on that loved but dishonoured head. There was nothing, for their part,
but to continue to keep the fact of the stranger’s presence in the
house a secret from the world, and to abide whatever issue might
arise, pending their young lord’s return. How the man had succeeded in
procuring that interview was a mystery to them; but they had done
their part faithfully, and were not in any way to blame for the
miscarriage of their plans.

Thence ensued a strange glooming time, which, running into months, was
destined to culminate in nothing less than tragedy. The man remained
on, an accepted inmate of the house, and steadily assuming a position
of authority in it. Whatever moral hold he had acquired over the
haunted mind of its master he used with crafty effect to advantage
himself in the name of the Cause. He was served, as directed, but with
a sullenness and repressed hostility which he did not fail to note and
record. After all, he had the courage of his qualities, and was
playing a desperate game, whose success depended upon the audacity of
the ‘bluff’ he could bring to bear upon it.

Still time--being, in the commercial sense, of the essence of the
contract--had to be considered in the maturation of his designs. An
inopportune return of the nephew might upset all his calculations, and
what was to be done must be done unhurriedly but promptly. However he
went about his work, he went about it effectively, approaching his end
step by step. It became soon enough apparent that Quentin Bagott was
falling under the complete domination of this interloper, whom he had
taken to his heart and confidence. He deferred to him, clung to him,
gave it to be understood that he had delegated to him his own
authority in domestic matters, to issue what directions he thought
fit. The household accepted the situation, with a sort of mutinous
resignation to a state of things they could not help; but evil was in
their hearts. It seemed to them that their master was yielding the
last remains of his vitality to this sinister, thin-lipped
bloodsucker; that, under the dark influence to which he had succumbed,
he was waxing steadily in feebleness and dependence. There came a time
when he would hardly allow John Melton out of his sight, holding to
him as if upon him alone depended his own last hope of moral and
material safety. It was strange and pitiful; but worse was to follow.

One day Nol was called in by his master, and instructed by him to ride
into Ashburton with a note to a certain scrivener and attorney, much
in demand locally, requesting that gentleman to attend, with his
clerk, at the Grange at his early convenience. The two came, and had
been closeted with their client but a brief time, when Nol and Phineas
were ordered into the presence. They came, wondering, to find the men
of law standing at the table, their master sunk into the great chair
where he habitually sat, and Melton withdrawn into the window, where
he stood viewing the waste prospect, as if wholly absorbed in it.

Quentin Bagott regarded the newcomers, as they entered, from deep eyes
sunk in hollow sockets. He looked wasted and exhausted; but his voice,
when he spoke, measured out its words as if he had rehearsed them all
carefully beforehand. He held a document, which he lifted and tapped
in a slow feeble way.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I have sent for ye two to mark and digest the
substance of that which is in my hand. It is my last Will and
testament, drawn up by me, a lawyer, revoking all former Wills, duly
executed, and witnessed by these two in whose presence I have attached
my signature. Would ye, who cannot read, know what are its terms? They
are briefly stated. To my dear friend, John Melton, I give and
bequeath unconditionally all this messuage and dwelling-house known as
the Moated Grange, to do and devise with it, his heirs and assigns, as
shall be his pleasure from the date of my death thenceforth. And I ask
him, if he will, and so he survive me, to continue to employ and make
provision for such of my good and faithful retainers as shall be in my
service at the time.’

Mr Melton turned in his place at the window, and bent to a little dry
bow, silently acquiescing. No one might have guessed from his sober
manner the cold jubilation which was thrilling his breast. He had won
to the anteroom of that for which, during these long months, he had
been steadily scheming with all the craft and finesse at his command,
and it would be his own fault now if he failed in the final fruition
of his hopes. But poor rueful Nol cared nothing for that provision
affecting his own well-being. He stood all amazed, understanding only
enough of the legal jargon to gather that it deposed his young lord
from his full and equitable rights. Fairly blubbering, he threw
himself on his knees before the Judge, and bellowed out a protest:--

‘Don’t do it, Sir. Think of our poor young master!’

Bagott regarded the suppliant without animus. He even smiled
indulgently on him.

‘I have not forgotten him, good Nol,’ he said. ‘The residue of the
estate is his--of more independent value to a young man than this
hampering property ever would or could be. I have not forgotten him,
my good, faithful fellow.’

But Nol would not be comforted. ‘Wait till he returns, good master,’
he cried. ‘Think again once and twice before you do it.’

‘I have thought a thousand times,’ answered Bagott, still with a
strange mildness, ‘and always to the same end. None of you knows, none
of you can know, all that I owe to this my friend, since he came to
fill the vacant place caused by another’s secession.’

‘He hath corrupt your mind,’ cried Nol despairingly.

‘Harkee, good man,’ answered his master: ‘I bear with you because I
love you. I love you all, who have served me so long and singly; and
because of my love I would have you abet, not balk me in a step my
very conscience demands. Come, Nol, come Phineas, please your old
master by pleasing him who will one day take his place, it may be in
no great time.’

That set Nol howling; but it conquered him, poor simple soul. He
swore, and Phineas swore, that they would all, answering for the
others, try to act up to their lord’s wishes, and so they stumbled
out. When they were gone, Bagott produced wine, with which he regaled
the mildewed men of law--too accustomed, like undertakers, to the
laying-out and burying of human hopes to be in any way affected by the
grief they had witnessed, but flattered over their employment by so
great a lawyer--and, having presently got rid of them, turned to his
inseparable companion, and said pantingly, as he placed the Will in
his hands:--

‘In trust, then, Melton, for the future, when the true faith is
restored to our land, and the seminary we wot of shall form itself
within these desolate walls, and the Chapel be reconsecrated to the
service of the holy Mass.’

Significant words, betraying something of the trend of recent events.

‘I accept the trust,’ said Melton simply, as he received the
document--‘_in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti_.’ But the
thought beneath the words ran as thus: ‘Hot hands. He will be the
worse for this rally. How long? Will he last till the nephew’s return?
The worse for me: but even then, not failure. We must pile on the
fuel.’

‘Bagott,’ he said aloud; ‘this effort has been too much for you. You
must take means to restore the vital spark, or I will not answer for
the consequences.’

He poured liberally from a flask, while the other watched him with a
sort of dull, exhausted eagerness; and once, twice, thrice he poured
again--and so gained his end.

‘You drunken dog,’ he said to the insensible figure. ‘Will you never
die?’

Three weeks later Nol, being called in betimes to support his master
to his bedchamber, and having hard ado, despite his great strength, to
keep the almost inert form from slipping to the floor, paused at the
first landing to breathe himself before proceeding. As he stood for a
moment, with a sudden convulsive wrench Bagott stiffened his whole
body, tore free, and swaying one instant, before the other could
clutch at him, went down, and rolled crashing from the stair-head into
the hall. When they picked him up he was dead.




 CHAPTER XXX.
 L’ALLEGRO

To the market-place of Plymouth, up in the high town, twice a week
the country folk brought their produce, consisting of eggs and fresh
butter, great jars of scalded cream, fat ducks and capons, brawn in
marbled columns, apples by the barrel, and vegetables, such as were
grown, by the crate. These were laid out on trestles, with alleys
between, and thither flocked the housewives of every condition and
age, the sedate on business bent, and the frivolous on enjoyment. It
made an animated scene in the bright sunshine, to which Brion was
irresistibly drawn. He had not cast his melancholy; but he felt it
good to be among his own blossom-cheeked countrywomen again, and
indeed to be alive; for after all he was young, and Youth finds it
hard to resist the influences of jollity and fine weather. So he moved
among the stalls, forgetful and happy for the time being, and leaving
behind him, like a very human craft, a swell of soft bosoms and
following eyes, that dwelt tenderly on the passing of a form so
gallant and a face so manly attractive--but of all that he was
unconscious.

‘Come buy, come buy,’ cried a shrill buxom dame, presiding over a
counter of gingerbread, and speaking across the shoulder of a young
woman, who, busy with her purse, stood with her back to Brion.

‘Alack, I lack a ha’penny, mother,’ answered a soft voice, ‘to buy me
my gingerbread ship withal. So I must e’en go fasting for to-day.’

She _seemed_ a comely young woman, judging by what is not always to be
trusted, the human reverse. She had a quantity of bright hair,
insufficiently confined within a little staid Puritanical coif, which
released certain tendrils of it to nestle in the nape of a neck like
ivory. She wore a dress of plain stone blue, with a short white linen
tippet about her shoulders, and might have been a country wench, were
it not for the smooth delicacy of her skin, and some quality in her
voice which spoke of a better refinement. A small basket hung on her
arm, and she looked into it.

‘I’faith,’ she said, with a little crow, and producing the coin, ‘it
is here after all. I cried out, mother, before my chickens were
hatched.’

Brion gasped, and stood as if stricken. What was this wonder--this
delirious wonder? A sob--laughter--were in his throat together. As the
vendee, having received her gingerbread ship and placed it in her
basket, went off down the alley, he followed in pursuit, stumbling,
half blind. She passed out into the sunlight and he after. He had not
yet seen her face, but he looked for tell-tale characteristics,
agonised for them, and, identifying them, as he believed, felt a very
sickness of joy. She walked like one who _did not love violent
exercise_ for its own sake; there was a tranquil placidity in her
movements; he thought of the white rabbit he had once possessed, ‘warm
and soft and cuddlesome,’ and felt a thrill in his arms. She turned
into a quiet street, going down-hill towards the Hoe, and he was
closing on her. She seemed to become conscious of his pursuit, for her
steps suddenly faltered, hesitated and slowed down, as if to let him
pass. But he did not pass, and she turned, a shadow of apprehension in
her eyes; she turned--and stopped.

He uttered a little irresistible cry:--

‘Joan--Joan! O, after all these years!’

She stood looking wide-eyed at him, as if he were an apparition; but
she did not speak--a woman where had been a child; ripeness where had
been promise. Yet he would have laughed to scorn the thought of one
doubt possessing his heart. How could it, seeing that her image had
never ceased to dwell there?

‘Do you not know me?’ he pleaded. Drollery quivered in him. ‘One does
not cry out,’ he said, ‘before one’s chickens are hatched. The moment
I heard that, “Joan for a ducat!” says I; and without your turning I
knew you.’

He searched her face, grown in knowledge and in sweet
self-consciousness; but unchanged in its flower-like complexion, its
dear blue eyes, its straight level brows: he searched it, pleading for
recognition and remembrance, and, searching, there suddenly were the
little flickering betraying dimples at the wings of the short nose.

‘Ah! you do know me?’ he said, with a great jubilant sigh. ‘Say who I
am, Joan.’

‘Brion,’ she half whispered, and something seemed to throb in her
white throat.

‘Yes, Brion, Joan. How sweet it is to hear my name upon your lips
again! Is not this wonderful? Come where we can talk in quiet. We have
such thousands of things to tell one another. What are you doing with
gingerbread ships at your age?’

He laughed, and choked, and bantered, dancing with excitement.

‘I was going to eat it on the Hoe,’ she said. ‘I have eaten one near
every week since you sailed away in a ship. I used to eat men.’

‘What is that? How did you know I sailed?’

‘I was on the Quay. I saw you go down to the boat. I was sure it was
you; and then I heard one point to you by name.’

‘And you were so close, and I never guessed! Curst fortune, that; but
never mind, since I have found you. Six months ago it was, Joan, and
such things have happened to me, wonderful and sad. I am only this
moment returned--but yesterday. But we will speak of all that anon. It
is not the first, nor best nor worst, of what we have to say. Where
have you been all these long years? And did you in truth eat a
gingerbread ship every week in pretty pledge to me, you dear? My
thoughts and words tumble over one another. They all push to be first
out, because I am wild with such joy. Come where we can be quiet. Your
colour comes and goes. Are you as madly happy as I am? Joan, had you
never seen me once again since we parted, before that day of the
sailing?’

‘Never once, Brion.’

‘Nor heard of me?’

‘No, never.’

‘Nor I of you. It near broke my heart. Well, where were you?’

‘Here, in Plymouth.’

‘My God! Not all the time?’

‘Near all the time, indeed.’

‘O, monstrous and incredible fate! So near and yet so divorced! And to
think of all the suffering of these years! Who brought you here?’

‘’Twas a maiden sister of Sir John’s. She had me to live with her
after his death, and I am with her still. She ought that duty, she
believed, to him and me.’

‘And she loves you, Joan?’

‘Not greatly, Brion, I fear. She loves atonement.’

‘For what?’

The girl was silent, hanging her head a little.

‘Ah!’ said Brion. ‘Well, sit thee down.’

She was glad to do so, being more overcome than her looks confessed.
They had found a warm grassy hollow, overlooking the Sound, where they
could rest and talk without fear of interruption. Joan sat clasping
her hands about her knees--a characteristic position which Brion
observed with a laughing bliss. He flung himself beside her, and,
resting on his elbow, feasted and feasted his starved eyes on all that
recovered dearness.

‘You are not changed in the least,’ he said--‘only taller and a little
fuller. You are one of those, I think, Joan, who hang at lovely
ripeness all their lives.’

A faint pink mantled her cheek. She turned to him with a caressing
reproof:--

‘I am a woman now, Brion. It is not right you should speak to me so.
And you have grown too, and into a fine man. I think you very
handsome.’

‘Do you?’ He laughed. ‘Why don’t you eat your gingerbread?’

‘I don’t think I want it now.’

‘Let us share it together, and be shipmates.’

‘Very well.’

They broke and munched--or pretended to. They were both far too
agitated to eat. ‘I have seen squawks, real squawks, since last we
met,’ he said; and then suddenly, recalling the association the word
conveyed, his eyes filled with gravity.

‘Now, tell me, Joan,’ he said, ‘why does this lady not love you?’

He sought to take her hand in his, but she would not let him.

‘I would not meet their wishes,’ she said, in a low voice. ‘That is
one reason why.’

‘What wishes?’

She looked him full in the face without answering.

‘Ah!’ he cried: ‘the suitor failed?’

‘He was fat and mottled like a toad,’ she said pleadingly. ‘He was Sir
John’s, my father’s, shipping-agent.’

He conned her queerly, and a little sadly.

‘Your father’s, Joan? Do you still say so?’

‘Why should I not?’ she answered, wondering. ‘I don’t understand you.’

‘Joan, do you remember that first day we met in the beautiful glen?’

‘Yes, Brion.’

‘And you said, as we parted, that I had guessed your secret.’

‘Brion, I never did. I remember every word. I said “Have you guessed
my secret?” Which was not to say you had.’

‘That is but a quibble, after all. Why would you not be candid with
me?’

She dropped her lids, plucking at the blades of grass, in a way which
recalled, O, so pathetically, the sorrow of an earlier day.

‘I’faith and in truth I _am_ Joan, Brion,’ she said piteously.

‘What, two Joan Medleys?’

‘Yes, two Joans. I cannot help it if my mother named me so.’

‘Your mother? She would have two daughters named Joan?’

‘Nay, but one. It was my father had the two.’

She raised the blue eyes, with a line of appealing pain between them,
to his. O, _will_ you not understand? they said.

‘Joan!’ whispered Brion, in a voice of amazed comprehension: ‘are
you--are _you_ a “bustard” too?’

She did not answer, and he heaved himself a thought nearer her.

‘You poor dear! And I never thought or guessed, blockhead that I am.
Why, to be sure’--he laid a compassionate hand on her arm. ‘Did you
never know _her_, Joan?’

The girl shook her head.

‘Only in dreams. I think she died very young.’

‘Like mine. O, Joan! were we not guided by these two to meet one
another? I think we need not have feared the spirits of the ilex
grove. Tell me, dear’--he pressed closer, and laid his cheek coaxingly
against the soft shoulder; and she flushed, but suffered him--even
leaned a little, irresistibly, towards the caress. ‘I have been
longing, yet agonising, from the first to put one question to
you--just one. Joan--you are still unwed?’

Looking straight before her, she whispered yes--it stood to reason.

‘Why?’ he asked rapturously.

‘If you do not know, Brion, how can I tell you?’

Every nerve in his body thrilled with ecstasy.

‘You need not,’ he said. ‘I hide my eyes before such loving
constancy--I will, Joan, yes, I will, in your hair, in your neck. O,
how could I ever have doubted you, my own maid!’

‘Did you doubt me, Brion?’

‘The way of parting has been long, sweetheart, and sometimes unhappy;
but it finds me at the blissful end, as at the beginning, thy maiden
knight. Yet there have been moments when despair and loneliness--O,
Joan! will you forgive me, not that I broke my plight, but that ever I
thought I could?’

‘Poor boy! It is different with a man.’

‘You sweet! Then, sometimes, thinking you--what I thought you, it
seemed a mad presumption on my part--O, I have such a tale to tell
you, Joan! But now, two nameless things together----’

‘It was that, Brion, which made me afraid to set you right. I thought,
if you knew the truth, you would not want to love me any more.’

‘What has loving _you_ to do with titles? A man, save his veins were
arctic ice, could love and desire you for your own self, I think. Did
your father treat you kindly?’

‘He had not been unkind, I trow, unless for my lady sister, who liked
me not. He gave me my little Gritty. O, Brion, the day I had to go,
and could not keep my tryst! He was ever so in his decisions, sudden
and inexorable. I thought I should have wept myself to death.’

She turned to him, bewildered even with the memory: he held out
passionate arms, unable to contain himself longer.

‘Come to your true-mate, pretty bird--Nay, I will have you. O,
darling, after all these years--ten, if a day, Joan--and I have all
that hunger to make good!’

‘O, forbear, Brion! We shall be seen. O, I love you so.’ And then, all
rosy and ruffled, she looked up in his face, and said, as she had said
once before, so quaintly and trustingly: ‘Will you marry me, Brion?’

He laughed with joy.

‘How can such constancy live in such lovely kindness? Is it all for
me--all? If I said no, Joan, would you love me still?’

‘Yes, Brion.’

‘Did ever “yes” sigh so sweetly from troubled lips! Shall we go to the
church now?’

‘I would we might.’

‘Why not? I have friends of weight here. Hist, Joan--shall we, in good
sooth? Are we not ten years betrothed, to justify a little haste at
the end? Will you meet me again this afternoon?’

She whispered that she would, ashamed, now she had spoken, of her
forwardness. The poor child had suffered in these years, made the bait
and foil of a frigid and intolerant Pharisaism. The Mistress Medley
who had undertaken her charge had never ceased to point in her the
moral of ungodly appetites, or to hold her responsible, as it were,
for her father’s sin. She had led a dull, disregarded life--on a penny
a week pocket money--and could have suffered it only, as she told
Brion, on the sure conviction that he would return to her some day. In
that faith she had never wavered; it had kept her heart alive, and
supported her through every desolate tribulation.

And Brion, remembering his own errant thoughts, bowed ashamed before
that whole-hearted fidelity. He could not give his tender maid enough
love and fondling, but longed only for the moment when she should be
secured to him, with nothing but death ever again to part them. They
talked together yet awhile before they separated, for of what, in
simple volume, had they not to deliver their souls--explanation,
story, confession, all the crowded details of that long interval? Yet
the stupendous thing of all was that their idyll, begun in the
perfection of blossom, was about to consummate itself in the
perfection of fruit. None could look at them, lovely things, and doubt
it, and not envy either.

Brion sought and found an accommodating chaplain--a jolly fellow, whom
he had already met, the eve before his sailing, in Raleigh’s company.
The pleasant cleric, very willing to oblige the friend of so great a
friend, made no demur, was willing to take his handsome fee and eschew
ceremonial, and in fact bound the couple man and wife that very
afternoon in his own parlour. It was the merest formality, like
signing a deed of gift to one already in possession of the property:
and so, I think, the two regarded it. They had always been one.

Then Brion, resolute to finish the business offhand, took his young
bride to lodgings prepared for her, while he went alone to face the
old harpy, her kinswoman, with the deed they had done. He went, armed
with indignation and authority, to the handsome dwelling overlooking
Sutton Pool and the Catwater where the abhorrent spinster lived, and
saw her, and delivered himself. There was a scene. It seemed Mistress
Medley knew of the ex-Judge by name, and held him in loathing as a
reputed Papish recusant. She heaped terms of foulest abuse on Quentin
Bagott’s head and on his house, which was already, she was rejoiced to
know--if rumours which had been wafted across the moor were to be
trusted--approaching the retribution which its iniquities deserved,
and a choice example of which was to witness in this deed of infamy
wrought by one of its nameless scions. Seduction and defilement, she
was pleased to say, were natural to one bred in that atmosphere, and
the will to surrender to them as natural in a child of Shame. But, as
the girl had chosen her bed, so might she lie in it. For her part, she
had only to declare that from that moment she cast the graceless
bastard from her door, and desired never to see her face again.

And then Brion spoke, in his quiet level way, in which, however, he
could be pretty poisonous when he chose. He began by putting the lady
right on certain points. Seduction, he said, was always a jealous term
in the mouths of those whose unwomanliness had never had reason to
fear it, and whose spite, it seemed, could go so far as to apply it to
the very Sacrament of Wedlock. And as to children of shame, said he,
the shame was in those who made and kept them so, and the truer
justice in his opinion would be to disinherit the father who begot a
child unlawfully, and endow with his forfeited name that innocent
victim of his wrong-doing. ‘’Tis ever,’ he went on, ‘old loveless
virginity that most hates the child of love; but to do it in the name
of religion is a beastly Pharisaism. Go on thy knees to Heaven, old
woman, and pray it forgive thee for thy harsh and narrow persecution
of one entrusted by it to thee as an instrument of atonement for a
wickedness perpetrated. Remember, ’twas Fortune, not thine own virtue,
gave thee a name, else had thou stood a sorry chance of any. And now I
have but this to say. I shake, on my Joan’s behalf, the dust of this
cruel bondage from my feet. She leaves it joyously for one pledged
long years ago, and now confirmed by Heaven’s sanction. And with that
I end.’

He did, and gained the street unhurried, leaving behind him a picture
of such baffled and speechless venom as, when he came to recall it,
made him shake with laughter. For, the business once accomplished, he
had no mind to let its memory disturb him, but recaptured at once all
that mood of exultant rapture to which it had been but a brief
disagreeable interlude. It had left him all he sought and desired,
absolute independent possession of the sweetest wife in the world.
Only one thing remained to cloud his thoughts with some shadowy
disquiet--that triumphant allusion to disturbances threatening across
the moors. Was it true, and could it be possible they had the Grange
for their objective? Remembering his own uneasiness before he left,
and the precautions he had taken, he could not but feel a certain
inquietude. At the same time he trusted to Raleigh’s promise to nip
any such demonstrations, should they occur, in the bud. But he felt it
necessary to the setting of his mind at rest to go at once. He and
Joan must bid good-bye to Plymouth on the morrow.

And so, having resolved, he abandoned himself to the happiness of the
moment. It seemed too stupendously incredible that after all these
weary years of separation he and Joan were found, rejoined and wedded,
and all in one day. Yes, wedded--the mad, preposterous thing! He
chuckled in mere helpless ecstasy to think of it.




 CHAPTER XXXI.
 ‘BACK TO A WORLD OF DEATH’

They had taken horse for the moors all in the sweet sunrise, for
Brion had set his heart on going round by the Glen, which would mean a
thirty mile ride in all, and it was necessary for them to start with
the dawn. And sure no sweeter Eos than this young bride of a night
could have brought the morning over the hills, or given assurance of a
lovelier day to come. She wore the rose of shy fulfilment in her
cheek, and the heaven of happiness in her eyes; and Love went with
her, beating his golden fans against the streaming air, and the purple
blossom of the heather rose about her horse’s pasterns, trying to kiss
her feet. She had deserved all her rapture for her faith, and, better,
that test of womanliness, which was to prove her not only a thing for
man’s joy, but for his support and refuge in affliction.

They stopped mid-way to water at a little spring, and eat the fruit
and cakes they had brought with them; then pushed on and, gaining the
heavenly glen about mid-day, tethered their horses to a tree, and in
the soft October stillness climbed the side of the hill, and reached
the bower. And there, as he had predetermined, Brion knelt at his dear
love’s knee, and confessed, what he had hitherto withheld, the name of
his sore temptation.

And she held him to her, stroking his hair and temples, yielding
wholly to him the passion which the memories of that fragrant
isolation stirred beyond repression.

‘My king, my love,’ she whispered: ‘it is only for poor Alse I
sorrow--not thy thought. Could I grudge thee that, and not wrong her,
who after all had the first claim on thee? And that dear Clerivault
that so loved and desired her for thee. He knew what was right and
honourable. How can I of myself ever make good to thee that bitter
loss?’

‘My Joan,’ he said: ‘no loss to me in all the world could ever be like
to that of losing thee; and no recovery so perfect. I am resigned to
meeting Harlequin in Heaven: no Joan would have satisfied my endless
longing but Joan on earth.’

A while they dwelt there in the bliss of kisses and soft speech; and
then, at last, with a sigh, Brion rose and cried they must be going.

‘For home,’ he said--‘home with Joan: we are bringing our idyll home.
We know not what awaits us, girl; but what we carry with us in
ourselves, that must we find there. It will suffice us, whatever
haps.’

They climbed down hand in hand, and regaining their cropping steeds,
mounted and rode on. It took them no long while to cover the remaining
distance, and by two o’clock they were entering into the first of the
track which led towards the Moated Grange. As they drew near the point
where its chimneys would first come into sight, a flutter of emotions
arose in Brion’s breast. How was he returning, and to what, after six
months’ silence and separation from these old familiar scenes? And
with a wife no one of them knew or guessed? A sudden shyness of the
explanatory rôle he had to play, in the midst of welcome and
excitement, seized on him like a paralysis. Yet he felt no doubt as to
Joan’s reception: they would all love her for his sake, and not least
his Uncle, to whom her gentle winsome presence would appeal like
sunshine breaking out of long storm.

The afternoon was very still and hazy, with a curious vaporous
closeness in it, which seemed to meet their faces in hot whiffs, as
when one stands near a wind-swayed bonfire. Brion sniffed, raising his
head.

‘What is that?’ said he. ‘Are they burning heather? My faith, it is
sultry here; and the insects they so hum and drone, one might be in a
wood instead of the open. And yet ’tis not like insects neither.’

The murmur, or clamour, whatever it was, appeared all in front of
them, and to swell in volume as they advanced. They could see nothing
beyond the sloping track before them, and the trees which topped it.
As they reached these, Brion pulled on his rein, bidding his companion
stop.

‘Listen!’ he said.

The noise, with their reaching the level ground, had sensibly
increased, as when a swell is opened in an organ. Busy, multitudinous,
inarticulate, it seemed as if compounded of a confusion of human
voices, and cracking whips, and hissing kettles, their shrill
spasmodic utterance perpetually punctuating a dull booming roar which
never ceased; but all in a minor key, as though subdued by distance,
and the closeness of the high trees which here shut in the track.

‘What is it, Brion?’ whispered the girl fearfully.

Something caught the tail of his eye, and he looked up to see a drift
of what he could not mistake scudding over the tree-tops.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. His face was suddenly set like death. ‘Stay
where you are, Joan, while I go and see.’

He drove spurs into his horse, and, leaping forward, rushed the few
score yards to the bend where the Grange would come into view. He was
incredulous still: it would appear too impossible a devilry on the
part of Fate to have struck this blow, and struck it coincidently with
his return. Yet, even before he reached the bend, he knew that it was
true--was true. The red sparkle of it, like a cluster of hellish
jewels, blinked and snickered at him through the green leaves. And
then the next moment he had broken into the open, and pulling up so
sharply as almost to throw his horse back on its haunches, rose in his
stirrups and saw. From base to attic the house was one streaming robe
of flame.




 CHAPTER XXXII.
 RETRIBUTION

When the crowner, with his twelve good men and true--yokels, for the
most part, drawn from the neighbouring farms--came to sit on the body
of Quentin Bagott, Scrivener Harnett--he who had witnessed the
Will--was present, as representing the interests of the heir to the
estate. Evidence as to facts being incontestable, the jury, following
the plain lead of their officer--himself a friend of the
attorney--gave in their verdict to the effect that the deceased had
died by the visitation of God, being a very stout gentleman and
suspect of Popish inclinations; which rider, however, the crowner--at
Master Harnett’s instance--ruling to be irrelevant, it was omitted
from the record, and the simple verdict left to stand.

Melton, indeed, had every reason for desiring to suppress any linking
of the dead man’s name with the recusancy associated with it, wishing
it to be assumed that the intimacy between them, by which he had
himself come unexpectedly to profit, had been one of pure,
long-standing, social good-fellowship. The attorney, the inquest over,
took particular pains, on his behalf, to convey that impression
abroad, with the result that the situation, after serving for a local
nine days’ wonder, came generally to be accepted, and some hopes even
to be entertained that the Grange, under its new ownership, might
cease to be a focus for suspicion and mystery. It seemed a hardship on
the absent heir-presumptive; but, as to that, there was no telling,
since all had been an enigma which passed behind those drear-shut
walls; and for the rest the Law, which has made of Possession a fetish
to awe the stoutest scepticism, was there to support its own most
incontrovertible claims. So, all considered, it would be well,
perhaps, thought popular opinion, to resign to peaceful and undisputed
enjoyment of what he had gained, one, who, though a stranger, stood to
his rights in the sacred name of Property.

So far so well for the cunning creature’s schemes; but all this was
only preliminary to his drawing of a much wider net about the waters
in which he fished. In the meantime, planning to secure a greater
privacy for his operations, he had taken the second step contemplated
by him, and dismissed at a moment’s notice the whole household--with a
single exception. It was on the day of the funeral that he had done
this, after the mortal remains of the ex-Judge had been taken to
Ashburton, and put to rest for all time in a corner of the little old
graveyard of St Lawrence’s Chapel. The chaplain himself had come over
to preface the obsequies with a little traditional ceremony which,
under the circumstances, the good man thought advisable. He made no
reflections, he said, but, in view of rumours which could not be
altogether ignored, he judged it well, for the reconciling of his
office with his conscience, and for the hopefuller salvation of an
erring soul, to take the precaution. Wherefore, after seeing the
coffin lifted out, and placed upon the cart which was to carry it, he
stood before the house-door, and demanded in a loud voice to know if
any there was so charitable and so Christian as to take it upon
himself to _eat the sins of the deceased_, pawning his own soul, as it
were, for the ease and rest of the departed one. Whereat, after a
pregnant pause, had come forward honest Nol the porter, and flamingly
averred that he was prepared to undertake that pious task, saving the
presumption of putting his own soul and that of his dear master’s at a
common valuation; and down he had sat upon the stool, or cricket,
placed for him, and taking from the clergyman’s hands the groat
proffered him, and from Gammer Harlock’s the crust of bread and the
mazard-bowl of ale which were the symbols of the sacrifice, had then
and there stoically consumed the food, and, washing it securely home
in one great draught which emptied the bowl, had risen from the
ceremony a refreshed but somewhat haunted man. He went with the body
afterwards, with Phineas and William accompanying--Melton, for
sufficient reasons, remaining behind; and, after the burying, the
three, very sad and downcast, returned to the Grange, and were
immediately summoned, together with Mrs Harlock, to the presence of
him who was now their master. They obeyed, with a feeling of vague
foreboding.

John Melton sat in the room which had been erst his host’s and
benefactor’s. He looked at the four as they entered with a dry wintry
smile. Beside his chair stood the attorney, a figure no less frosty in
suggestion. There was not enough red blood between the two of them to
have stained a counter, only the lips of both, and the crafty, slit
eyelids of the attorney, showing a pale smear of red.

‘I have sent for ye,’ said Melton, in his arid, measured way, ‘to the
intent that ye shall know that from this moment your services are
dispensed with, and yourselves dismissed incontinent from the house,
your packs taken with you and your wages paid in full.’

A moment’s stupefaction fell upon the group at his words. It was not
that those were unexpected, or indeed unwelcome: only faith to their
promise had ever resigned them to the prospect of remaining on: but
the harsh abruptness and perfidy of the deed was what took their
breath away. Nol was the first to find his voice.

‘Is this your promise to his Honour, ye dommed faith-breaker!’ he
bellowed, his face reddening with fury.

‘There was no undertaking, save what was conditional on my will,’
answered Melton, concise and clear; ‘nor, since the subject was first
mooted, has my will gathered from ye any inducement to consider your
claims favourably. The head being gone, the body is best to follow.
Shortly, if ye question the legality of the act, here is Master
Harnett to answer to the law for it.’

The attorney bent, with a sound as if he creaked rustily at the waist.

‘Answer to the devil!’ cried Nol. ‘Dost think, man, we wished to serve
thee? ’Twas faith to his Honour bound us, as it binds not him that
hath been a curse to this house ever since his black shadow crossed
its threshold. But to dismiss us like this, and his Honour not an hour
in his grave! Well, we’ll go.’

‘Yes, you’ll go,’ answered the other imperturbably, ‘and not the
slower for your insolence. Dare me, you rascal, and I’ll bring the law
on you.’

He spoke quite quietly and wickedly, a thin line of teeth showing
between his lips. Nol stood staring at him a moment, inexpressible
emotions seething within his breast; then turned to the others:--

‘Come Phineas, come Willy--we were best away, to bide our young
master’s return, sith in his absence this house is no longer a place
for honest men.’

They were leaving the room, old Harlock following, when Melton called
upon her to stay. She had been standing all this while, a silent
inscrutable figure, somewhat apart, and now turned, hearing the
summons.

‘Ay. What is it, Melton?’

‘I did not mean to include you in this dismissal.’

‘Ay.’

‘Think you I have no bowels of gratitude to the one that nursed me in
my sickness and gave me back to health?’

‘What is it ye want of me?’

‘Your continuance in my service, that is all.’

‘To cook your victuals, and make your bed, and give you what comfort a
woman may?’

‘Something to that effect.’

‘And share your confidence, maybe?’

‘Not to abuse it, at least.’

She stood staring at him a long while--so keenly that her dark
piercing eyes seemed, like a burning-glass, to focus a spot of red
even on his sallow cheek. And at last she spoke:--

‘So be it, then. Of this house I have been, and am, and must ever be,
until I perish with it, mayhap, off the face of the earth. So be it.’

She turned with the word, and, pushing before the others, left the
room first. They shrunk from her, the dark old witch, holding that she
but vindicated her title in this betrayal, for self-interest, of a
trust. But she cared nothing for their opinions or their repulsion,
and, going before them, disappeared into her own quarters.

They delayed no long while after that about their leaving, but, their
goods collected and their wages paid--scrupulously, and beyond
contention, by the shrewd attorney--shouldered each his bundle and
started on foot for Ashburton.

And so another step was gained, and Melton by so much, as he believed,
nearer the achievement of his purpose. He had won at last the privacy
he desired, and in that virtual solitude could go leisurely and
deliberately about the maturation of his plans. Incontestably in legal
possession, he no longer dreaded the nephew’s return. If that should
happen, he had only to show his warrant.

Now, having so triumphed, he began to linger over this fruition of his
hopes, tasting its sweetness. Presently it began to occur to him
whether, in contradiction of his real original design, he need leave
the Grange at all, but instead settle down to a life of ease and
comfort on the spot he had secured so cunningly for his own. That was
a fatal thought to pet, inducing in him, as it did, a habit of
procrastination. He savoured his days, which that gaunt old
housekeeper helped to make curiously attractive to him. She cooked to
perfection; she made him comfortable; she kept him in comparative
luxury. And all the time he trusted to her stupidity to observe
nothing and nurse no suspicions. He had no opinion of her mental
faculties, which superstition, he opined, had credited with a
sharpness they did not really possess. He thought her, in fact, an old
melancholy fool, and it was merely for her usefulness that he had
retained her in his service, since he could not go altogether without
domestic help.

And the grim warlock herself? She had seen straight enough into his
reason for excepting her from the general clearance--and she was
content. She knew his true opinion of her--and she was content. Let
him trade upon it, cosset his delusions, and play her game. She, too,
could plot, as secretly, as craftily, as deadly as himself, only with
a brain less prone to the conceit of its own infallibility. Many wily
schemes had gone to shipwreck on that conceit; and yet another was
destined to go. He should see. When the time fell ripe, he should see.

It fell on a certain still close day in October, when a light stirless
mist hung all about the house. There was nothing in the quiet, the
loneliness, the glowing tranquillity of the place to presage the storm
which was even then marching to burst over it. As it lay so seemingly
secure in its green isolation, no hint of tramping footsteps, coming
from two directions at once, found even the faintest echo on its
walls. Yet the footsteps, or a section of them, were already beating
out their ominous rhythm in the fierce dark old heart of her to whose
long stealthy machinations, and final summons, they were conveying the
fruitful answer. Once, and once again, she mounted to the roof, and,
like Sister Ann, looked eastwards, towards Teignmouth and the sea, for
the little expected cloud of dust. And the third time, descending, she
went straight in to John Melton, where he sat in the great hall,
ruminating, as was his wont after dinner, over one of the dead man’s
cherished volumes. The remains of the meal, though long finished,
still lay upon the table. He looked up, something fretfully, as the
old woman entered.

‘You are late,’ he said. ‘Clear this truck away.’

‘Let it be,’ she answered. ‘Mayhap ye’ll need no trencher again, but
to lay with salt upon your breast. Have you said your grace, John
Melton? I’d add a prayer to it, if I were you.’

She stood, lean, hawk-eyed, something suddenly sinister and
formidable, gazing stilly at him, and, as motionless, he gazed up at
her. Yet, quiet as he seemed, his heart was in a tumult. What did she
mean? and had he been mistaken in her all this time--a viper, like
himself, waiting to bite the hand that cherished her? Some prescience,
shapeless but intolerable, seized on his nerves; and, before he could
command himself, panic had stormed his reason. He rose quickly, the
book crashing from his hands to the floor, and stood breathing like
one who had lost a race. His lips worked, his eyes had livid circles
about them; yet, when he spoke, very habit chilled his words.

‘You mad old fool. What crazy fancy is this? Take the things away.’

‘Never so mad,’ she cried, ‘as to accept your wage and do your service
for love of ye. What! would ye fit all souls to your own pattern of
treachery and ingratitude? That’s where ye erred, John Melton, and for
that ye’ll have to pay.’

He was so amazed, so overwhelmed, in this revelation of a hateful
terrific force, where he had looked for nothing but senility and lean
subservience, that he had not a word to answer. And she went on:--

‘A fool, was I? Yet not fool nor coward enough to stand unhelping by
and see my pretty boy robbed of his birthright. Ye did a bad day’s
work for yourself, when ye coerced that poor broken old man into the
act ye did; ye set one on your track, then, John Melton, that would
know no rest nor mercy till she had dragged ye down. Had ye so
forgotten the gleam of the wolves’ white teeth that chased ye hither
over the moors? ’Twas you the fool that took the wise woman to
housekeeper, thinking your hidden secret safe from her.’

He made a single spasmodic step forward.

‘No!’ he cried, as if very anguish had wrung the word from him.

‘Ay!’ she answered. ‘And what is your secret worth to ye now? Listen!’

A sudden murmur in the air; a confused tramp of many feet; voices;
sharp cries; a sense of contiguity to some great hostile presence--and
silence. Swaying, as if drunk, he staggered to the window and looked
out.

Fifty of them, if one--men such as those others--the same--rough
fanatic seamen, the most of them--savages without reason or pity--wild
cruel natures and inflamed with drink as with bigotry. They saw him,
the white staring, horror-struck face, and a sudden roar went up from
the crowd:--

‘There he be--the Papish devil! We have un at last! Throw un out to
us, Mother--throw un out!’

And in a moment there was frenzied tumult where had been whispering
and cautious footsteps. Some rushed for the window; some the door;
others scattered to invest the house and cut off all chance of escape;
fists beat on panels; arms stiffened through iron bars, tugging to
snap them. Yet through all there grew apparent one deadly purpose,
swiftly concentrating itself about a certain spot in the courtyard.
Thither hurried forms in quick succession, bearing great masses of
sticks and brushwood, heaps of straw, litter and fodder from the
stables. They came and came again, never satisfied with the swelling
sum, accumulating pile on pile, till a very hillock of fuel had risen
before their eyes. Fuel! Great God! It was for the long-delayed
holocaust; and the wretched man behind the window saw and understood.

The sill stood too far above their reach for easy gaining; the front
door could offer a tough resistance to their battering strokes; he had
yet some moments in which to think and act. Reeling back into the
room, he felt thin arms, tense as wire, flung about him: and he was
held.

‘You devil!’ he panted: ‘let me go!’

She clung on, and, her face half buried against his shoulder,
shrieked: ‘He’s here. Come and take him!’

Fighting like a madman, he forced her inch by inch towards the table,
freed, with a frantic wrench, his right arm, and, finding a knife,
gripped it and struck at her. A thin shrill whine issued from her
lips, her arms relaxed, and she fell from him with a thud upon the
floor.

Now! To think--to collect himself--to fight down this choking in his
throat! If he could only once gain the well-house--the
wheel--unobserved! His--Bagott’s closet! He was there--rushing for the
casement--and at the very moment blows came raining on it, and the
glass crashed. Staggering back, a very extremity of horror paralysed
his reason. No instinct remained to him but the last instinct of
despair--to escape upwards, upwards, from the earth that had betrayed
him. The stairs--on the stairs now--and always frantically mounting
them. The roof at last might give him safety.

And, even while he climbed, they were cutting off from beneath his
feet his final hope of escape: and, even while he climbed, his Nemesis
was toiling in his wake. She had heard him, and risen, ghastly and
bloody, to her feet, and followed, dropping her own crimson trail, on
his track.

It was the doom of both. For a cry had risen that the soldiers were
coming, and that the work that was to do must be done after a more
swift and comprehensive fashion than that designed, if the accursed
spy was not to slip through their hands. He had vanished from the
window: those few who had succeeded in forcing an entrance were still
hurrying aimlessly hither and thither, in vain search of their prey.
They were called out. Senseless, brutal in its destructive frenzy, the
mob gave no thought but to the securing of its purpose by any foul
reckless means; gave no thought to the safety of her, their own secret
confederate and informer, who was still alive somewhere within the
building. They formed a hasty cordon about the walls, and, carrying
their massed fuel to a dozen kindling points, flung it in heaps
through doors and windows and set fire to it.

And almost in a moment, incredible as it might seem, the place was
alight and roaring. It had been a hot summer, the house was dry to its
attics, and the old laths and timber caught like touchwood. In a few
minutes it was blazing like a gorse-thicket: the pools of flame, like
pools of quicksilver, touched and became one, which, involving the
whole in one furious conflagration, went rushing up in a single cone
of volcanic fire.

Soon the heat was so great that the crowd had to fall farther back to
contemplate its own handiwork. Some, taking refuge in the shelter of
the gateway, looked forth, half awed over the magnitude of their
achievement. And, as they watched, suddenly there was a little figure
on the roof, and it was throwing out its arms in a frantic appeal for
the help that no power on earth could any longer afford it.

A sort of gloating sigh took the upturned faces like a wind; a pale
fanatic creature screamed. The house by now was such a charred and
crumbling ruin within the furnace that consumed it, it seemed
impossible that any human being could find a foothold there. Was he
going to take a last desperate chance by leaping from its walls? Even
as they wondered, a second figure, a woman’s, was seen on the roof.
The other seemed to turn to it--to turn away--to make a movement to
spring. Too late. The next moment she had seized it in her arms and
dived with it into the roaring abyss of flame. A silence, as of riven
air after a thunderclap, fell upon the people.




 CHAPTER XXXIII.
 BEREAVEMENT

Stupefied, overwhelmed by the tragedy of the sight before him, Brion
sat motionless a moment. Then aware, down the vista of the track, of a
swarm of dark shapes issuing from the gate, with an oath he clapped
spurs to his horse, and in one wild rush covered the distance.

Hangdog, threatening, sullen, loweringly defiant now the deed was done
and themselves committed beyond recall, the mob stood to meet the
onset, and to counter-strike if need be. He pulled up before them, his
eyes blazing, his hands vicious on the reins.

‘Ye bloody devils!’ he roared. ‘What deed is this and wherefore?’ Then
anguish caught at his heart in a sick spasm. ‘My Uncle!’ he
cried--‘Where is he? What have ye done to him?’

They were coming out by twos and threes, while the flames still
crackled and reverberated behind them, tossing and devouring the last
blazing sticks of ruin; they were coming in a haste now to get away
before the soldiers arrived. Fear added to guilt sped their footsteps,
and they were in no temper to be delayed. Some one bade him, with an
ugly snarl, to stand away, whoever he was, if he valued his life.

‘At a dozen of yours,’ he cried, and swift as a flash his sword was in
his hand. They fell from him, scowling, while he faced them all. He
heard a sound behind him, and looked round.

‘Go back, Joan!’ he cried--‘Go back--do you hear?’

It was but an instant, but enough for their mood and purpose, and with
a dash they were upon him. Trying to get play with his blade, a
furious stroke from a cudgel broke it in his hand. His horse rearing
at the same moment, and plunging wildly, cleared a space about him;
but the next instant, slipping on a stone, it was down, and he with
it. And as he fell, unhurt but helpless, there came a thud of hoofs,
and the girl had pulled up between him and his assailants. Her cheek
was flushed; her breast heaved.

‘Dare, now!’ she cried. ‘I will know all your faces, and remember
them.’

‘Joan!’ he commanded. He had staggered to his feet, and was
tumultuously urging his horse to his. ‘Go back--go away--and leave
them to me!’

The mere shame of her womanhood had held them off for a moment: at
Brion’s words, with a deep growl of fury, they were beginning again to
close in, when a sudden shout brought them to an instant stop:--

‘The soldiers!’

And, even as they turned to scatter, there came wheeling with jingling
harness round the western wall, which, with the booming flames, had
muffled the sounds of their approach, a squad of stalwart troopers, a
very cool and lordly young Ancient riding at their head. He opened his
eyes with wonder on the scene before him, seemed to grasp in a measure
its import, and, halting his troop, rode up to the couple and, doffing
very courteously to the lady, expressed a hope that they two were not
personally affected by this calamity, which, unfortunately, too late
information had made it impossible on his part to prevent; but for
which full retribution, they might make very sure, would be exacted.

‘Indeed, Sir,’ answered Joan, a little wearily: ‘that is well; yet
while you talk they escape.’

He smiled superior. ‘As the mouse escapes the cat. A little “law,” as
we call it, Madam, and then to round them up in the open. Believe me,
if you have suffered at their hands----?’ he paused significantly.

‘Ask of my husband, Sir,’ said Joan, with a fine blush. ‘He hath but
late returned from sailing overseas with Sir Richard Grenville, and
to-day, but this moment, returning home, hath lighted on this
welcome.’

The Ancient exclaimed, between interest and commiseration:--

‘What, Master Middleton himself! This, Sir, is indeed a lamentable
homing for you!’

Brion bowed mechanically. His eyes were wild, distracted. ‘My Uncle?’
he said feverishly: ‘I must go seek him, find him. Mayhap he had
warning to escape.’

He was making for the now emptied archway, through which the crashing
embers of the fire shone as from a furnace door, when the young
officer detained him, leaning from his horse:--

‘Nay, do you not know?’

‘Know what, Sir?’

‘If ’tis of Master Bagott you speak, he is dead.’

‘Dead!’

‘Some weeks gone. He had an accident, falling from the stairs.’

Brion stood stupidly, as if he had not understood. The Ancient nodded,
and, some instinct of propriety in him judging it timely to withdraw,
wheeled sharply and called up his troop. They answered, and like a
clattering wind went past and disappeared round the eastern bend of
the wall.

Still the young man stood motionless.

‘Brion!’ whispered a soft entreating voice. She had slipped from her
saddle and come to him. He turned, with a sort of sob, and caught her
to him, and held her convulsively against his breast.

‘And you were so joyous, my own love,’ she said pitifully.

He held her fiercely, passionately, to him:--

‘And I am joyous still, Joan. Never think but that I am joyous still.
What is this loss’--he tossed his head to the glowing wreck behind
him--‘to the immeasurable rapture of my gain. He is gone, all his
weaknesses and his troubles at rest; and, for that, why should I, who
loved him, repine? Only, what does this all mean, and, if not directed
against him, against whom? Yet against whomsoever, the meaning is
plain for one. Ah, my girl, so single-hearted and so brave, who takest
the blow as all for me and none for thyself, who would have given thy
dear, dear life for mine, dost thou realise to what we are saved
together--the doom of poverty?’

‘Nay, all the riches I ever asked was Brion.’

He stood up, with a great breath, and, his arm encircling her, bade
her come with him and look upon their home. They went over the little
bridge and through the gateway together, and peering thence, not
venturing to push farther, saw the devastation. Flame and volumes of
smoke still poured upwards from the massed ruin, but through an empty
shaft of blackened walls and tottering chimneys. In all the burning
desolate place no corner remained to hang a memory on. He turned to
her with a wistful smile:--

‘Well, our love go with it, Joan. We must seek other lodgings for the
night. But why, why, why, girl; and where are all they I left
here--ah, to fear, to submit, and to make no fight to save it?’

It was a question so far unanswerable; yet not long before receiving a
certain illumination. They went and sat upon a bank, awaiting the
troop’s return, and, while sitting there together, talked low of
ancient days, and of the dead man, and of the future with its brave
resolves: and, as they talked, suddenly there were the soldiers riding
back, and a dozen of them with each a prisoner roped and running at
his saddle-bow. They came past, these captives, sick and lead-faced,
with all the evil knocked out of them, and, at the Ancient’s word,
were sent forward on the road to Ashburton, while he dismounted to
inform the two of his success.

‘We ran them down in the open,’ said he, wiping his hot brow with a
pretty cambric napkin--‘and caught them scattered--a good fifty in
all, vermin from the fishing ports. And some we thwacked, and the
worst we bagged, and they will be made to answer for it. There was
one, a pitiful, tallow-faced loon, that would turn Queen’s evidence to
save his skin.’

His eyes were all for Joan while he spoke--bold points of admiration.

‘What evidence?’ asked Brion quickly.

‘Why, that these dogs were secretly inflamed and invited to the deed
by one Warlock, or Harlock--an old hag, acting housekeeper, it seems,
to this Melton himself.’

‘Melton!’ exclaimed Brion in amazement.

‘Ay, Melton. That was the name of him that had lived here since the
Judge’s death, and alone, ’twas said, with her that betrayed him. They
both perished in the fire together.’

‘What!’ cried Brion--‘perished! my poor old Harlock perished?’

He was so confounded and bewildered by the whole affair, that Joan
begged the young officer to abandon the subject for the time being.
And he very amiably acquiesced, suggesting that the best course would
be for Brion to see and question the prisoner himself presently, and
obtain from him what further evidence he might. Having decided which,
he proposed that they should all ride for Ashburton together, to which
the others agreeing, they mounted and left the melancholy scene
without further delay.

The Ancient was garrulous by the way, opening out to Brion as being,
though indirectly, one of Raleigh’s men, like himself, and as such a
comrade in arms. He was particular in describing how he had received
directions from the Seneschal of the County of Exeter to keep a watch
on the district; and how he had obeyed his instructions to such good
effect, that the private news he had received had enabled him to ride
from that city almost coincidently with the starting of the
incendiaries from Teignmouth, when, could but a mile or two have been
deducted from the total of fifteen or so he had had to traverse, he
would have been able to forestall the catastrophe by a timely arrival.
He was full of regrets for that, but clearly attributed his failure to
the unreasonable distance, and not to any miscalculation of his own.
Having explained which, he turned to the subject of the voyage, in
which he was truthfully much more interested than in this paltry local
uprising, and asked Brion a thousand questions, which the poor fellow
made shift in his distraction to answer to the best satisfaction he
could.

As they neared Ashburton, they met many curious folks, who had got
late wind of the business, hurrying out to visit the scene of the
catastrophe; and the town itself, when they entered it, was seething
with excitement over the prisoners just brought in. Brion, being
recognised, evoked much wondering comment, and was glad when the inn
was reached, and he could help down Joan, to take refuge with him in a
private chamber. He was turning to enter, having delivered their
horses to the hostler, when a great fellow, bursting his way through
the onlookers, fell on his knees before him, and held up his clasped
hands in a very agony of emotion.

‘O, my young master!’ cried the man--‘O, my young master! To see you
home again, and to this!’

Brion looked at him, with hardly less emotion.

‘Why, Nol,’ he said--‘Nol! Methought you could not all have deserted
me.’

Then, conscious of the listening throng, he bade the poor good
creature to rise, and follow him into the house.

‘Now,’ said he, when they were all shut away into privacy: ‘here at
least is one witness that I need, and that will bring light to my
beclouded soul.’ Then, seeing the porter’s inflamed eyes fixed in
bewilderment on Joan: ‘Ay, lad,’ he said; ‘it is a dear bride I have
brought home with me, and had thought to commit to all your love and
service. But that is done.’

And that opened the floodgates.

‘God bless her sweet face!’ bellowed Nol; and then, in vociferous
outcry: ‘O, my pretty mistress, here be a home-coming indeed for ’ee!’

He had only just heard the news, it seemed, and had been about to run
all the way to the Grange to verify it, when he had caught sight of
his young master. And so, after a little, they reached the subject of
all, and Brion learned what there was to learn of the happenings of
the last six months--of his Uncle’s violent death, and of the
machinations which had preceded and followed it.

‘A was a villain rogue, that Melton,’ cried Nol, ‘so to corrupt his
Honour’s mind.’

‘To corrupt,’ said Brion sadly. ‘Ah, Nol! What were my orders?’

‘We obeyed them, master,’ cried the poor fellow eagerly, ‘we obeyed
them faithful and true we did, keeping watch on the man, and never
leaving him, day or night, while a lay a’mending. And the moment a was
fit to travel, out a was bundled. But a returned at night by some way
unknown to us, and found his way in to his Honour, and from that time
never left him.’

Some way unknown? Alas, could he not guess what way? Brion cried out
in his heart over his own folly and shortsightedness.

‘Why did you not drive him forth again?’ he groaned.

‘We went to do it, master, and his Honour turned on us like a mad
thing, and bade us henceforth treat the man as his guest, and serve
and honour him on peril of dismissal. And from that time a kept the
stranger always about him, and the devil came to possess him in his
shape, so that one day a sent for me and Phineas, and, before witness
of two lawyers a had summoned, told us a had bequeathed the Grange and
all in it to his dearest friend, John Melton, and hoped, did the man
survive him, a would continue to keep us all in his service. And that
Melton promised, and so did we to serve him, his Honour was that
pleading and gentle with us we had no heart to refuse. But, having
said it, we never thought to lose him so soon--alackaday, alackaday!’

He cut short a very howl to mop his eyes with the back of his hand.

‘Go on,’ said Brion sadly, mourning to recall all that fateful
premonition, which, in utmost caution’s despite, had yet come to
fulfil itself: and Nol continued, grievously snuffling:--

‘After his Honour was laid in the ground, and we, his loving servants,
had come home from the funeral, there was John Melton awaiting us, the
Will he had won in his hand, and his lawyer backer beside him. And he
dismissed us three then and there--me and Phineas and boy
William--making least whit of his promise. And the lawyer upheld un by
the law, so that we had naught for it but to obey, and out we
trundled, with our packs and our wages. But as to Gammer Harlock, a
axed her to stay on to keep house for him; and she consented, while we
cursed her for a runagate, knowing naught of the dark purpose she had
at heart--God rest her soul. Then Phineas and William they agreed that
there was nothing for it but to jog for Lunnon, and me, if I would,
with them. But that I would not, thinking what it would be to you to
come home unexpected, and find that devil in possession, and all of us
gone without a word to tell you why. So, while they went, I bided on
at Ashburton, getting work on a farm to keep me. And here have I been
ever since, Master Brion, which is the whole truth; and God forgive me
that it is wi’ such news I have to greet thy return--and this dear
lady at thy side.’

What was there to say, since the past could not be redeemed, unless
and until, after Clerivault’s thought, Death should come presently to
roll it up backwards, like a long stretched drugget, obliterating all
its dusty footprints? Brion put his hands on the shoulders of the
faithful servant, and, looking affectionately into his eyes, ‘Ah,
Nol!’ said he, ‘big as thy body is, thy great soul must find in it but
narrow house room. Now we are met, is it ever to part again?’

‘Never till death,’ cried the giant, in an explosion of love and
gratitude; and so the pact was made.

‘And now,’ said Brion, looking dearly at his love, ‘methinks, before
we rest, I should go see this same rascal attorney, that hath played
the petty devil to a greater rogue, and to whom Nol will conduct me.’

‘Ay--right joyously!’ cried the porter; ‘and eke return him some of
his own. Shall I take a cudgel, master?’

‘Thy little finger will serve,’ said Brion dryly.

Joan parted with him a little anxiously, urging diplomacy rather than
violence; but he reassured her, answering for himself as a model of
discretion.

And, indeed, Master Harnett, when found, discovered himself in too
abjectly disarming a mood to invite retaliation. Terrified by events,
and fawningly eager to propitiate, he was only too ready to curry
favour with the old heir by damning the pretensions of the new. The
man was burnt to ashes, he said, and with him the Will which had made
him master of the estate. His covetousness would never part with it,
and, with its destruction, there was an end of his title. If Captain
Middleton--as the rogue was pleased to call him--knew of another Will
assigning him heir to the estate, that Will would now hold good. At
the same time he would not have Captain Middleton assume an injustice
of his Uncle. The deceased, as he knew for a fact, had made him in the
later Will his residuary legatee--implying his succession to a sum
which, if inconsiderable, owing to the testator’s reckless habits, was
yet some earnest of his thoughtfulness--and would no doubt have left
him all, had not his mind been somewhat basely practised on. He hoped
Captain Middleton would remember that, and perhaps his own share in
venturing to suggest such a course to the testator.

He lied as to that, as Brion very well understood; but the information
was as balm to an aching wound. It had not been the thought of poverty
which had caused it, but of the estranged affection which could have
condemned him to it. And now he knew. He thought nothing of the
smallness of the bequest: the fact that it had been made at all was
solace enough.

He left the attorney, with an expression of formal obligation to him
so stiff and chill as almost to sound like an affront, and, being
obsequiously bowed into the street, turned his steps for St Lawrence’s
graveyard, before going home to life and love. For home was wherever
Joan was--that was a new and lovely thought.




 CHAPTER XXXIV.
 A LAST DISCOVERY

‘After the storm, calm,’ said Brion in a subdued level voice, his
eyes brooding on the melancholy scene about him.

They had ridden over early from Ashburton, and had wandered through
the desolate grounds, and seen the hopeless ruin of it all; and at the
end, going into the trampled garden, had sat themselves down on a
bench in a leafy corner, and turned to quiet discussion of the ways
and means of the life before them. The place was quite deserted.
Remote always, its loneliness, broken and death-smitten, had never
seemed so stark a thing as now. An acrid smell of burning still
lingered in the heavy Autumn air; no sound broke the stillness but the
periodic rustle and crash of débris pitching from the crumbling
walls.

‘O, love, dear love!’ sighed the girl: ‘if only you could feel it so!’

He put his arm about her as they sat, and held her close to him.

‘I can, I do, Joan. Now, listen to me. When I spoke of calm after
storm, it was of my Uncle I was thinking, as much as of this desolate
scene. Poor soul, it symbolizes him, gone down to peace and silence
out of turbulent fires. Could I wish him restored to all that torment?
No more, methinks, than I could wish these walls restored, to contain
my innocent bride. What if an evil fate was on this house, Joan?
Almost I come to believe so, with her the poor wretch that hath
perished under the ban she endowed it withal. A melancholy place hath
it ever been, and dedicate to Death not less spiritual than material.
For here have died hope and faith and will, which is a sadder decay
than that of the body. Now thinking how perchance its blight might
have come to fall upon my girl, it is better as it is, I cry in my
heart, and see in it a very Providence to save her. Should I not be
rejoiced thereat, since from this paltry holocaust rises my bird, my
phœnix on bright secured wings? Not a house, or a city, or a
continent, but a world against my Joan. Let it all go, sweet: I care
not one jot: and I can view the sacrifice calmly, as you see. What
were its wretched material worth, so it were held at my love’s peril?
If we have not enough beside to live on, I have great friends who will
help me to the means. Believe me, child, I speak from my soul. I am
glad that what is, is.’

She was so moved and gratified to find him in this happy mood of
resignation, that she could not forbear, what was unusual with Joan, a
little gush of tears. She clung to him, calling upon him by every
proud endearing name to witness how she would never cease to try to
vindicate his beautiful trust and love of her; and presently, a little
overwrought, she rested in his arms, and a long silence fell between
them. It was broken suddenly by Brion:--

‘Joan?’

‘My lord?’

‘I have been thinking and puzzling.’

‘Tell me.’

‘That doomed rogue--that Melton. What made him so anxious to possess
himself of the Grange?’

‘Why? Why not?’

‘He had no need, it seems, for the personal estate. It was the house
and grounds alone he coveted.’

‘And enough, i’faith.’

‘But--so barren and profitless. No, I cannot understand. I----’ a
sudden thought striking him, he uttered a little sharp exclamation:
‘Why, o’ my verity and in good sooth, I never told you.’

‘Told me what, Brion?’

‘Where I hid him.’

‘You said you hid him.’

‘Yes, but where. Come, Joan--come along. I have something to show
you.’

He communicated his sudden excitement to her, and she went with him,
her eyes wide and her heart fluttering. He led her across the garden.

‘What, to the old well-house, Brion?’

‘Yes, to the old well-house, Joan. Don’t you remember our visit, and
my fright and your discovery? Well, I made a discovery of my own there
later.’

‘What, Brion?’ She was all curiosity and eagerness--a child again.

‘I will show you. Come.’

He held the branches of the thicket apart for her, and she stole in,
wondering. It was all inviolate here, unapproached and unprofaned. No
one of the countless footprints that marked the recent havoc had
ventured within a score yards of the place. They entered, and the
green closed behind them. It gave Brion a thrill to think of his
latest visit. He hurried Joan through, into the stone belvedere, up to
the wheel, and, turning the great cylinder, found and lowered the
movable panel and slipped it into its socket in the wall.

‘Look down,’ he said, with the conscious smile of a conjurer.

‘O, Brion! What is it?’

‘It is steps, dear, leading down to a little stone chamber, quarried
deep under the floor.’

‘Who put it there?’

‘Nay, I know not. Not Fulke, I think: it must have been older than his
time. But, whoever put it, I discovered it. It was there I hid John
Melton, and therein he lay for three weeks before being removed to the
house.’

‘Let me go down and see. O, do!’

‘Why, you baby! Well, wait while I enter first and kindle a light, if
one remains. There should.’

He laughed to her, and, descending into the pit, sought about in the
gloom for the bracket on the wall which he himself had placed there,
and which he knew ought to contain every material for striking a fire.
It was there, and amply provided--even more so than he seemed to
remember--and it was no long while before he had a taper flaring in an
iron sconce. Then he turned, and looked about him--and stood looking.
What was there unfamiliar about this place, so intimately associated
with his last days at home? Something--something significant of an
occupation which did not wholly tally with his memories of the one he
had ended. He recalled very distinctly the look of the chamber as he
had last seen it--the mattress bed, the brazier, the heavy cloth
pushed back by the invalid himself into the corner where he had lain.
Now all three lay flung apart in a heap, and, where the first and last
had been, stood--what? Before he could stoop to examine, he heard
Joan’s voice entreating:--

‘Brion! How long you are!’

He hurried to the steps and up them, and half emerging: ‘Come
down--quick!’ he said. ‘There is something odd here.’

She obeyed, readily enough--negotiating the narrow opening with grace
but caution, while he stood below to guide her--and in another moment
was wondering beside him in the chamber.

‘It is not as I left it,’ he said. ‘Some one has been in here since
then.’

‘The stranger himself, mayhap,’ she murmured, gazing open-eyed about
her.

‘Yes, but why? He could not while he lay a’bed; and afterwards he had
no need. Was this brought by him?’

He strode a step, and lifted from the wall, against which it leaned, a
short heavy crowbar. But he had hardly raised the thing, when he flung
it down with an exclamation.

‘What is that against the wall there?’

It showed out in the now brilliant flare of the taper--a broken and
twisted slab of wood or metal, propped against the base of the wall in
that angle of it where the bed had once lain. Brion took a step or
two, and bent.

‘It is heavy as lead,’ he said. ‘Why, it _is_ lead!’--and, with a
heave or two, he trundled the thing away, and let it drop upon the
floor. In the place where it had stood was revealed an oblong opening,
forming the mouth to a cavity of unknown depth. With a shout of
excitement he thrust in his hand, and, finding a hold for it in an
iron stanchion affixed to some object, pulled with all his force. And,
with his pull, there came sliding easily into the light a thing of
very wonder.

Brion, rising erect, turned speechless to Joan, and she to him; and
then with a sudden impulse they held to one another and both looked
down. They saw a long wooden coffer of stout oak, measuring, it might
be, three feet by one, with a depth of eighteen inches, running
readily on little wheels, and full to the brim of gold and precious
stones. He gasped, and looked into her face.

‘The picaroon’s booty,’ he said, in an amazed, awestruck voice--and
could say no more. She brought him to his wits with a pull and
whisper:--

‘O, Brion!’

‘And O, Joan!’ he cried. ‘Do you see? It was this secret the poor
murdered maid unearthed; and, after her, Melton.’

Suddenly he broke from her, and darting for the slab, pulled it this
way and that.

‘I understand,’ he cried--‘I understand. Come here, Joan, while I show
you.’

And when she ran to him, she saw. What might have been taken for a
great stone at the base of the wall proved on examination to have been
a thick leaden slab, made to fit like a door into its place, and so
treated with roughcast on a heated and liquid surface as to be
rendered indistinguishable from the other stones about it. By what
device it had been made originally to open and disclose its inner
secrets did not appear, the whole thing having been so hacked and
wrenched to force it from its position as to destroy any clue that
might otherwise have been to the nature of its mechanism.

‘But _how_ did he discover it?’ said Brion; ‘since I know, from my own
experiments, that no sounding would be enough.’

That interest seemed to absorb him for the moment above any other. He
puzzled, clutching at his hair. Suddenly his face lit up:--

‘I have it!’ he cried jubilantly. ‘It was the brazier set against the
wall melted some of the lead and gave him the first of the clue. That
was why I found it moved, the second time I went down to see him, and
the bed put against the wall where it had been. ’Twas to hide from me
his discovery. And afterwards he must have gone to work on the lead,
and by degrees, melting and working a hole in it, learnt what was
within. Then, when once his hands were free and he was secure of the
house, he must have come back with that crowbar and finished what he
had begun. It is all as clear as daylight, and eke the reason why he
was so anxious, when I brought him forth, to see the clue to the
secret chamber shut away. He feared even then that some overbold
quidnunc might venture in, and, discovering the truth while he lay
helpless in the house, ruin his whole design.’

He rose erect, stretching his shoulders, and letting out a great
‘whoof’ of exhilaration. The girl clapped her hands delightedly.

‘His design!’ she cried. ‘Of course, Brion. It was to get sole
possession of the house, and then, at his leisure, remove his plunder,
thinking it could not be done with safety in any other way.’

‘To be sure--not with the risks of discovery he would run--and then,
likely, to carry it off by sea. O, Joan!’

As by one consent, they turned to the box again, and Brion, kneeling
beside it, plunged his hands, in a half fearful, half rapturous way,
among the heavy glittering store. For the moment, and in their excited
condition, only a cursory examination of the stuff was possible; but,
such as it was, it seemed to reveal the departed buccaneer as a
gentleman of fastidiously selective tastes. The mass of the treasure
was in coin, and, so far as could be ascertained, gold coin
exclusively. There were angels, broad-pieces, pieces of eight,
moidores, nobles and others, all in lavish profusion. Some loose gems
Brion turned up, sunk like sea-shells among the crevices of rocks, but
more, and of greater value, appeared set in rings, brooches, buckles
and the like ornaments. And never in the whole a gleam but of gold and
the prismatic spars of jewels.

Suddenly Brion, with a start and sigh, rose from his investigation,
and, seizing the stanchion, ran the chest back into its cache in the
wall, and heaved the slab over the aperture, closing it away.

‘Come, Joan,’ he said: ‘let us leave it for the nonce, and rise where
we can breathe.’

She wondered a little; but obeyed him without a word, climbing again
to the upper chamber, whither he followed her, after having
extinguished the light. He made the wheel then secure, and together
they threaded the thicket, and emerged once more into the light of
day.

The sun, while they had been gone, had penetrated the heavy mists, and
shone like a lifted Host high against the walls of Heaven. In that
still and golden light all the harsh acerbities of the scene stood
wonderfully softened, and a great peace and quietness possessed
everything. The two had walked but a little way, when Brion stopped,
and taking the sweet face between his palms, and looking earnestly
into the good blue eyes: ‘Tell me, Joan,’ said he: ‘shall we leave it
alone?’

‘The gold, Brion?’ she asked, wondering.

‘Yes, the gold, Joan. I think of the blood and cruelty that went to
its amassing; I think of the murder that secured it; I think of all
the lives that have been sacrificed to make it ours at the last, and
that a curse may be on it.’

‘I think of the dear Providence, Brion, that brought us together to
reach this very end, and of how it would be sin to cross its plain
intentions; I think of a thousand kind things done to extenuate a
thousand evils; and I think of my dear lord no longer wickedly
accusing himself of being a pauper husband--as if love, like
gingerbread ships, were the better for gilding--but rich as his love
for his loving maid. O!’--she slipped her arms about his neck, and
clung to him a little wildly--‘it is not avarice in me, Brion, but
only that--indeed, indeed it is. For a word of love a day I would
follow you in rags to the world’s end.’

‘My Joan!’ he said, in a full voice, and held her to him, whispering
and fondling. For a little there was silence between them.

‘Well,’ he said at last; ‘let it be, then. Ill-got shall be
well-spent, and the curse, mayhap, turned into a blessing.’

‘By us,’ she said happily. She looked up, a sudden pink on her cheek,
into his face. ‘I have thought of one thing, Brion. It is to help
those--in some way--l-love children--so many like ourselves, but,
unlike us, wretched and forsaken.’

‘Yes, Joan, you good child.’

‘Then--b-bustards they may call us, Brion, but cuckoos we will be.’

‘Why cuckoos, Joan?’

‘They are the birds, are they not, that look after other birds’
young?’

His eyes opened, and a premonitory spasm seemed to flutter his chest.

‘What is the matter, Brion?’

‘Nothing, Joan.’

‘O, I know you, i’faith! I have said something.’

‘Whatever it was, I would not have it unsaid for all Joan’s world.’

He kissed her, laughing against her very cheek; then turned instantly
sober, and, putting his arm about her, led her on.

‘So,’ said he, ‘it is settled, and let us forget it. What does it all
weigh against the treasure of our love? For its safe-conduct and
disposal, methinks I must take my friend the Ancient into my
confidence, and in the meantime where it lies it is secure. Look,
Joan--what gold a thousand times dearer greets thee!’

He had stopped her suddenly, pointing to a little flower at her very
shoe point. It was a solitary primrose blossom, late or early there
was no telling; but there it was, staring up at Joan. Brion lifted his
head, and challenging the full round sun, ‘Clerivault, Clerivault!’
cried he--‘Where England sets her feet! Look down and see the primrose
break!’

 [The End]




 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ apostacy/apostasy,
gallanty-show/gallanty show, etc.) have been preserved.

Alterations to the text:

Silently correct a few punctuation errors.

[Chapter II]

Change “a black bonnet with a short feather in _in_” to _it_.

[Chapter XII]

“His lips repeated the word _mechancially_” to _mechanically_.

[Chapter XIV]

“he parted from him in the Cock tavern” italicize _Cock_.

[Chapter XVII]

“for what was the use to _withold_ the rest” to _withhold_.

[Chapter XX]

“but _panicstruck_ he shook his head and made for” to _panic-struck_.

 [End of text]