First Course.Calves’ foot soupPoached eggs with hop-topsRoasted hare and forcemeat ballsFried hasty puddingMushrooms done in batterBlack-caps (or applejohns—baked apples served in custard).Second Course.Fried lampreysA mess of cocks’ combsRoasted craneSpiced vegetables with eggsA great pasty of boar’s headRadishesFlavons, or open cheesecakes
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 briefBenedictus 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 tocaput 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 sayBenedicatwith 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 familyhathbeen’—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.
‘Ishould 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 sinisternobar 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 isFardelin 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.
A monthpassed, 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 whichhenever 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 foulmyfame 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 hearhisverdict 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.
Brionput up at that sameCocktavern 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 theThree CranesStairs 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, calledArden 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.
‘Lucidusordo!’ 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 theCocktavern, 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 thelucidus ordoacclaimed.
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 wasspeedwell, 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.