ThenceforthBrion 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 itinhimself 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.
A wonderfulbrief 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?’
‘WouldI!’
‘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 openedhiseyes 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.
Sobegan 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 wouldshehave 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.’
‘Calledme?’ 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?’
‘Whyagainst, 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 youarea 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?
Motionlessas 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?
Oncemore 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.
‘Becomehiswife!’ 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 theLover’s Leapfirst.’
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.