‘There was a listening fear in her regard,As if calamity had but begun;As if the vanward clouds of evil daysHad spent their malice, and the sullen rearWas with its stored thunder labouring up.’
‘There was a listening fear in her regard,As if calamity had but begun;As if the vanward clouds of evil daysHad spent their malice, and the sullen rearWas with its stored thunder labouring up.’
‘There was a listening fear in her regard,
As if calamity had but begun;
As if the vanward clouds of evil days
Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear
Was with its stored thunder labouring up.’
The Irish rebellion—that vanward cloud of Philip’s brewing, first step towards the conquest of our little hated Island and the extirpation of the Reformed religion—had been thrown back and defeated, but only to swell the enormous reserves of fanaticism which still accumulated behind, waiting to burst in the last devastating tempest of theArmada. And in the meantime the preparations, material and moral, went on. The dour King’s emissaries were busy while his ships were building; his secret agents were everywhere, spying, reporting, seeking to corrupt. But, as in more recent days—one people’s psychology being incomprehensible by another, and the disadvantage always lying to the race too dense in its blundering vanity to grasp that simple proposition—many of the conclusions drawn from evidence collected by these informers proved false, and, through being thought true, helped to demoralize the very cause they were designed to advance. Such, for instance, was the belief, common in Spain, that the English Catholic nobility was, as a body, disaffected towards the usurping ‘bastard’ calling herself its Queen, and was to be depended on, in the event of an invasion, to join the enemy. It was a belief having a curious parallel with one cherished, though in a different direction, in our own time, and owed itself to exactly the same inability on the part of an arrogant and humourless people, thinking itself the salt of the earth, to understand that national pride, when tested, is found a stronger thing than dogma, and will combine to resist the imposition on it of any other people’s ideas, whether religious or political. A few traitor exceptions there were, no doubt—men who still nursed the hope of deposing Elizabeth, establishing Scotch Mary on the throne, and restoring the true faith; but these were never more than enough to ruffle the surface of the steadfast deeps of popular opinion, and to keep pretty active and alert the general resolve to fall on and stamp out such symptoms wherever they were detected. Here and there, by misfortune, a patch of the disease did escape discovery, and, a little spreading through its immunity, came to imposthumate in an abortive rising like the Babington conspiracy—another little ‘psychologic’ mistake of Philip’s, since its only effects were to shock some waverers into loyalty, and to hasten on the execution of the unhappy lady upon whom he had founded his hopes. But, with these indifferent qualifications, England remained England still, sound to the national core, and one in its determination to resist dictation by any power, temporal or spiritual.
Still, quite characteristically, the agents were not forborne, but in proportion as the preparations advanced, became more daring and insistent—but not more trustworthy in their reports. Allen, a polemical Jesuit of Rheims, and the founder of the English College at Douay, was responsible for the despatch to his native land of a number of proselytising scouts, secret emissaries deputed to test popular feeling, and sow wherever they could the seeds of disaffection. They did little, however, but inflame the national obduracy; for by this time the country was determinedly Protestant, and the knowledge of theseagents provocateurslet loose in its midst only agitated and angered it. Now and again one, being caught, would pay the penalty of his temerity to the severe enactments passed against his kind; now and again one would fall a victim to popular fury. But still they came, and still misread and misreported—but not always, as the sequel will show, in the pure interests of their mission. There was one, at least, who, whatever his original motive, converted the opportunity given him to some profitable dealing on his own account. But knavish methods will ever attract knavish instruments, and undercut, in all the history of trading, cut undercut.
In 1584, a Jesuit, having in his possession a plan for the invasion of England and the destruction of its Queen, was captured at sea. The news roused public indignation to boiling pitch, and led indirectly to an association being formed, with Leicester at its head, to punish with death any attempt upon the royal life, and to exclude from the throne all who should authorize such an attempt, or design in any way to profit by it—another big nail driven into poor Mary’s coffin. Brion heard of this league, and was vaguely troubled—not because of its object, but because of the temper it revealed and fomented, and to which, in some possible local ebullition of itself, he dreaded his Uncle might come to fall a victim. He knew that the neighbourhood had long looked darkly askance upon the ex-judge as a backslider and idolater, who practised, in secret, rites which might bring him to the stake if avowed. He knew—but he knew also what rumour did not; that it was a ruined and dethroned intellect which had reverted to its ancient creed, not from re-established conviction, but from simple loss of memory. To senility early impressions are the most remembered things; and for Quentin Bagott—though senile only in the sense of one beggared by his habits of life’s best maturity—the years of his conversion were become a vague shadow, full of strange terrors and menacing shapes. His conspiring was a myth; he had no power of will or mind left in him to plot a sparrow’s downfall. Any sympathy he might appear to show with designs subversive to the State was the mere chuckling echo of long-forgotten moods, when his own dark destiny had wrought in him the passions of a rebel. Yet all this, though true enough, had no appeal in it for brute instincts, if once let loose in the name of superstition; nor would the fact of the utter seclusion in which the suspect buried himself, and with himself all indications of his real thoughts and habits, save him from a predetermined fate. Religion has hung more men on circumstantial evidence than all the lay tribunals in the world.
However, this was in very truth a meeting of trouble half way, since no sign whatever of threatened disturbance had arisen so far to justify in Brion any particular apprehension. Moreover, there was the extenuating fact to consider that he himself was locally popular enough, and that he and the household of the Grange, its master excepted, were regular in their orthodox observances. So he put the thought from him as a mere bugbear of his fancy, and trusted to his own unexceptionable attitude for public absolution.
His life during these, for him, uneventful years, had recorded little of interest but the growth of will and tissue, the intelligent, and often excited, watching of affairs, and the ever increasing desire to take some part in the great happenings which were stirring men’s imaginations the world over. As to those, he was at the last solemnly bound and pledged to an enterprise of which he only awaited with impatience the fruition to put his dreams into action. In the meantime he observed with envious admiration how England, for all her distractions, domestic and political, did not stand still, in scared irresolution, before the storms which menaced her, but continued her practices of daring and adventure over all the troubled waters of the globe, even, after her way, snatching immense booty from the very preparations being organised for her destruction. The names of Fox, Cabot, Gilbert, Drake, Frobisher, and other stalwart rovers of the main, rang in his, as in everybody’s ears, and fired him with an enthusiasm to be up and doing, in his own little sphere, what they had so magnificently ensampled in their greater. And he was sworn, as has been said, to his part, if only the plans which were to give him scope for action would come to a head; which at length, towards the close of 1584, they did.
Brion was then in London, with Clerivault, for the second time since that visit first recorded. He was staying, as Raleigh’s guest, at Durham House in the Strand—a former ‘Inn’ of the Bishops of Durham, presented by the young Edward VI to his sweet ‘sister Temperance,’ and afterwards by her to her much favoured courtier. It was an austere but imposing building on the riverside, involving such expenditure in its maintenance that, to enable its owner to live there in a state befitting its character, his accommodating sovereign had conferred upon him a patent to license the vending of wines throughout the kingdom—a sinecure so rich in emoluments as to make him, with his other properties, a wealthy man; though it may be said for him that he spent his fortune magnificently, and often much of it in the public interest. Yet still dissatisfied, it seemed, with these tokens of her royal regard, her Majesty continued to heap benefits on that lucky recipient, confirming his election as Knight of the Shire of Devon, and further, about this time or a little later, appointing him Seneschal of the Duchies of Cornwall and Exeter, and Lord Warden of the Stannaries in Devon and Cornwall, besides bestowing upon him some twelve thousand acres of forfeited land in Cork and Waterford, with other signal marks of her attachment. So that, it would seem, the ‘pack of small accomplishments’ had been exploited to rare effect, with the result that its owner had become one of the most envied and courted men in the Kingdom.
Sir Walter’s good fortune, however, had not turned his head, nor in the least diverted him from the main cherished ambition of his life, which was to wrest the empire of the New World from the Spaniard, and lay it, with all its potentialities for colonisation, at his brave England’s feet. During the year before he had partly financed the unfortunate expedition in which Sir Humphrey Gilbert perished; during this he had associated himself with an enterprise for the discovery of the North-West passage. In the meantime, having obtained from the Queen a patent of liberty to discover and seize, if might be, ‘any remote heathen and barbarous lands not actually possessed by any Christian Prince, nor inhabited by Christian people,’ with licence to inhabit and fortify the same, and leave to carry with him ‘such of our subjects’ as, in short, cared to go, he set to preparing joyfully for the venture so long projected, and at last come within the sphere of practical policy. He first, however, despatched a provisional expedition of two vessels, fitted at his own expense, which going and returning in safety, and reporting favourably upon the country and their reception therein, the main business was forthwith put definitely in hand, and arrangements made for a fleet of seven sail to start from Plymouth in the following April. And it was to this expedition that Brion had positively committed himself, and to discuss which he had accepted his friend’s invitation to a meeting in London.
He was sorry to discover at the outset that Raleigh himself—being too greatly engaged over matters of divers import, and perhaps fearing that his enemies might take advantage of his absence to bring about his overthrow—was not to accompany his own enterprise; and still more so to learn that the command thereof was to be entrusted to Sir Richard Grenville, about whom he retained no very cordial memories, and who, indeed, as he had heard, possessed the reputation for being a rough and violent leader, much feared and hated by his own men. However, he had given his undertaking, from which, as a gentleman, he could not recede; and so he must make the best of it, and that was all the matter. And, indeed, when he came, as he did, to renew at Durham House the acquaintance of the obstreperous Sheriff, he found himself in some measure called on to revise his estimate of him, so inexplicably, if gruffly, genial did he find the great man to be with him—an attitude for which he could find no explanation but in Raleigh’s friendship, though in truth it was a testimony to the way in which, on that first occasion, he had prepossessed the surly visitor in his favour.
Some others destined to the expedition he also met on this occasion, of whom one or two were captains and skilful mariners selected for the sub-commands, a few assistants for counsel and direction in the voyage, and others mere gentlemen adventurers like himself, whose acquaintance thus happily begun he was as happily to renew in after days. And with that the matter ended for him for the time being, and he returned into the country.
He went, glowing with anticipation, and concerned only for the months which still lay between him and action: he went, with some valedictory words of Raleigh’s still sounding inspiringly in his brain:—
‘Press on! Would I could follow thee—I, a poor impositioned schoolboy left at his task while all his shouting playmates go bounding for the fields. To voyage—there’s a magic in the word: to quit inglorious bondage, custom’s dull round, and be a man and free; to wake from mean small cares to visions of great seas, and waves that lift us, as nurses lift their charges, to spy over the tossing heads some wondrous sight; to greet upon our faces sweetest-laden winds, breathing like amorous sighs from lands that court their own rifling; to see strange monsters, big as ships, rolling in their feather-beds of foam. O, could I go, and share with thee the peril and the joy, and the joy in peril—two wandering champions of our dear lady-land! But, since I cannot, press on, press on, and if over the sheer cliff of the world, the stars they hang beyond, bright shrouds to climb to topmast heaven withal. That’s the way of Death, the happy way. Why do we for ever paint him as a grim old man, that follows on our heels waiting his chance to strike? He pursues us not, but bides to be discovered, a laughing child hiding behind a bush. He is not age, but youth, eternal youth; a beauteous boy, who smiles to close our eyes on years and sorrow; who comes with oblivion in his hand, bidding us drink and forget; who is the only friend that never fails us. Press on—take thy life in thy hand like a tempered sword, and so thou use it knightly in good cause, be careless whether it hold or break, thou hast made the most of it in honour. This world! is it so worth thy soul’s attachment?—a world where the great is ever at the mercy of the little, the high the low; where nobility eternally wastes itself, striving to kill the beast in man that cannot die; where beauty is but painfully achieved one day to be despoiled the next—a grievous world, a world so bad ’tis odds but any change from it must mean for better. Yet as thou strivest in it so shall be thy qualification for another. There’s its purpose. In truth it is but the jellied spawn of lovelier spheres, the egg on the leaf, a transient bubble blown in thick starlight, and jewelled with a thousand seeds of worlds to be. Make light of it, then, press on in steadfast probity, and leave to Heaven thine accompt.’
Itwas March, 1585, and but a few weeks remained to Brion before starting on the great adventure. All his and Clerivault’s preparations were made, and they only awaited the signal to join the fleet at Plymouth, and launch upon whatever destiny the unknown might have in store for them. Some anxiety may have been his: misgivings, none. He was now twenty-six—the age of fully matured strength and reason and the fearless confidence that goes with both—and ripe manhood in him peremptorily demanded its employment and enlargement in scenes of vigorous action. His sole concern lay in thus temporarily abandoning his Uncle to the possible perils of an agitated time; but, as to that, having confessed his fears to Raleigh, he had found some reassurance in his friend’s promise to have a watch kept on the district, and any sinister symptoms appearing therein at once reported to him, when they should be drastically dealt with. That undertaking, and the confidence he felt in the stalwart fidelity of the household remaining, had to be his sufficient guarantees in the question of the untoward coming to threaten.
He would have liked, from that one point of view, to leave Clerivault behind; only his pledge was given. Moreover, to insist, would have wounded that excellent’s feelings beyond cure. Clerivault, while still retaining his grateful attachment to, and sorrowful belief in, his old master, had yet come to regard as the crowning expression of his allegiance his devotion to the younger trust committed to him. He was dedicated body and soul to the service of the nephew, and to be separated from him, or considered inessential to his welfare in any way, would have killed his very heart. Wherefore the outrage was not even to be considered; and Nol porter must take his place in personally attending on the recluse—a task for which at least that great creature’s physical strength fitted him, inasmuch as his Honour, the wreck of a great man himself, was often in need, owing to his enfeebled capacities and shattered constitution, of the support and assistance which only strong arms could afford him.
As to Quentin Bagott himself, he was little more than a cypher in the business, wanting his nephew to go, and not wanting him; now dwelling on the eternal loneliness to which he was condemned, now implying a sort of furtive glee in the prospect of that loneliness being intensified. He did not know his own mind—as, indeed, how should he, that feeble remnant of the force that once had been, and, such as it had become, devoted to fears and superstitions? No one looking upon him in these days but must have felt the tragedy of that ruined intellect. It mourned from the brilliant eyes, set in the wasted and degraded features, about which the black hair that hung in neglected strands was still without a touch of gray in it; it drooped in the apathetic shoulders, yielded at last, and unresisting, to the burden of fatality; it spoke in the blurred, disjointed voice, which was like that of a sleeper only half awakened. Now and again, in instants of rare provocation, a ray of the old brilliancy would flash out; but for the most part the man’s faculties were hopelessly obscured, and he would sit for long hours together in a blank preoccupation, staring, as it might be, into a baffling fog, where moving shadows that never materialized shrunk, and expanded, and intensified, and again faded into nebulous blots.
If during these years, so inoperative, and so barren in their prospect, a thought which seemed to tremble near the verge of treason to himself had come now and again into Brion’s mind, who can wonder at it. It was a thought of a little house in far-away Clapham, and of a figure going always cheerfully and capably about its business there. He had seen Alse once again during his second visit to London, and had pleasantly renewed in her an impression as of something very wholesome and fragrant, like a garden herb, and as such associating itself with perfumed thoughts in homely ways. To uproot so sweet a plant from under that old church wall, and transport it to these unproductive solitudes—what a difference it might make, to him, to all, to the whole atmosphere of the place! It was at least a pleasant fancy to indulge; and could even be supported by some arguments—a little specious. The girl would, he believed, be glad to come. Was he justified, in that case, in sacrificing her happiness to a vain ideal? Again, had he the moral right to waste himself on a profitless abstraction? Every mortal man held his affections in trust for some mortal woman, so that to maintain oneself celibate for a dream’s sake was to rob not one but two natures of their just fulfilment. Supposing he were to decide to be done, for once and for all, with that old dead illusion, and to accept the living gift the gods had offered him? Let him, for amusement’s sake, just consider that possibility. Clerivault, he knew very well, would, for one, be delighted. But then Clerivault knew nothing of the other——
The other—O, the other! Only to think of her was to banish every lesser thought. Was this the value of his deathless fidelity? His, yes; but what of hers? Ah, time enough to turn away from that dear illusion when its falseness should be a proven thing!
He had reached, maybe, that period in his reflections when Raleigh’s summons to London came; and at once everything else, comfortable visions, specious arguments, soft and amorous fancies, were swept aside and forgotten in the excitement of the approaching adventure. His soul was too greatly occupied to be patient any longer of such minor distractions.
Nor was it different when he returned. He lived for the coming voyage, and was bent only on one purpose—to make, by constant vigorous exercise, the interval between now and then appear as short as possible.
One afternoon, in late February of the New Year, he had gone out riding on the moors, rather to work off an excess of animal spirits than for any attraction the day offered, for it was bleak and cold, with a shrill wind blowing in from the sea. He was alone, and had ridden eastward to within sight of Highweek church, standing up solitary and austere from the folds of the shivering hills, when, turning into a narrow gulch between two rocky slopes, he saw a pedestrian coming towards him from the direction of Newton Bushel and the head of the Teign estuary. The figure, the moment it sighted him, stopped, and made a hurried movement as if to turn and retreat, but, thinking better of it, or recognising the hopelessness of the attempt, continued its advance, and slowly approached the spot where he had reined in, waiting the explanation of so suspicious an action. As the stranger drew near, walking, it seemed, with considerable difficulty, Brion had leisure to study his aspect, and to wonder over certain details of it. He appeared a man of about forty, of mean stature, but blunt and strong, and he was dressed like a simple citizen in a suit of plain black, with no more decoration about it than was exhibited in a pair of epauletted shoulders. His close-cropt scalp was hatless, and underneath appeared a serious, beardless face, possessed of a very prim, dry, dogmatic expression, and, in odd contrast, curious hot brown eyes, the pupils of which were not black but tawny, and ringed at their circumferences with a brighter russet. But all this no more than indicated itself, as it were, through a veil of disorder, for his features were grim white and drawn with suffering, his clothes streaked and soiled, and his whole appearance suggestive of some recent conflict in which he had been violently worsted. Having made up his mind, he came limping resolutely on, and never hesitated until he reached the horseman, to whom, without an instant’s pause, he made his desperate appeal:—
‘I am being hunted for my life, Sir: I have done no wrong: for God’s sake, if you are a Christian man, help me to escape.’
A moment Brion sat looking at him: it was not in his heart to deny a fellow-creature in such straits, and appearing so spent and broken. He was not of those, moreover, who in an emergency argue before they act. With a curt word he slipped his left foot out of the stirrup, and bent over. ‘Mount behind,’ said he, and as the fugitive struggled exhaustedly to heave himself to the horse’s crupper, fetched a strong hand under his armpit and helped him into place. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘hold on to my belt,’ and with a tap of his heel to his good steed’s belly, they were off.
‘Whither?’ he said over his shoulder, presently slowing down; and the breathless voice answered in his ear: ‘Whithersoever, so it lead to where they cannot find me.’
‘You wish to hide?’
‘O! indeed I do.’
‘Listen to me,’ said Brion: ‘I can hide you, an you will, where none will dream to look. But it is a drear uncanny place, and without comfort to one in your condition.’
‘Will it not serve a broken man to die in? I ask but rest and peace.’
‘Well, hold on again. I will take you there.’
‘“But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was.” I can say no more now, Sir, than God bless you. You shall hear all presently.’
They sped on again, without another word between them. If Brion had a suspicion, he kept it to himself. His present fierce joy lay in circumventing brutality. Moreover he foresaw a certain distraction here to help him through the weary time of waiting. He went a wild roundabout way in order to avoid the chance of casual meetings, the bitter weather aiding him, and struck the ilex copse without having encountered a soul. Driving between the trees, he dismounted, first bidding the other hold firm by the saddle, while he tethered his horse to a branch, and afterwards helped him to the ground.
‘Now,’ said he, ‘if they, whoever they be, are after you, despatch must be the word.’
The man stood very weak. Brion put an arm about him—observing as he did so that his clothes were stiff and sodden, as if with half-dried sea-water—and supported him through the wood. In all these years, since that day of poignant memory, he had never once retraversed this road to the old well-house. But Sentiment must yield to Urgency. The natural bridge still spanned the moat, and they crossed it together—painfully and with difficulty on the stranger’s part; but, with his escort’s strong help, the journey was made at last, and the well-house reached. Once within, Brion lost no time, but, by aid of what daylight entered, found his way to the familiar contrivance, and laid bare the subterranean opening. Descending, then, he helped the other down after him, and, reaching the little stone-lined chamber, laid his own riding-cloak on the ground and the wounded man on it.
‘Now,’ said he: ‘so far’s so well. But I must e’en shut you away and leave you thus till I have withdrawn that evidence of my steed in the copse. Which having done, I will return with due caution, and bring you what comforts I can compass on the instant. Will that serve you?’
The strange eyes looked up at him in the wan twilight. They were full of weary pain; but, even tempering it, a ghost of fathomless curiosity.
‘I thank you from my heart,’ said their owner. ‘Will you first, in one word, tell me where I am?’
‘You are in the old well-house of the Moated Grange, a manor belonging to my uncle, Master Quentin Bagott. The secret of this chamber is known only to me, who discovered it by chance. You are as safe here as in a fortress—or safer, since ignorance and superstition hold it more inviolate than would locks and bolts.’
And with that he went, unconscious of the emotion his words had awakened in the stranger’s breast. He recrossed the moat, regained and remounted his horse, and going round to the main entrance, rode into the courtyard with as matter-of-fact an air as if nothing untoward lay upon his mind.
Now his next business was to forage without attracting undue observation. But, as to that, having a general way with him the least tolerant of any inquisitiveness as to the motives of his actions, he might appropriate whatever he pleased, and for whatever mysterious purpose, without fear of exciting comment, other than such as might privately turn upon another of the young master’s inscrutable fancies. So, going very coolly about it, he provided himself with bread and meat, a flagon of good Malmsey, a packet of tapers with materials for making a fire, a heavy horse-cloth from the stable, and, from an outhouse, with a spare brazier stuffed with lumps of charcoal: armed with all of which commodities, he made his way into the garden, leaving behind him an impression that he was bent on one of those solitary gipsy picnics to which on fine evenings he had more than once been drawn.
It was nearing dusk as Brion, loaded as he was, disappeared among the ilexes.
‘Thouhast bound up my wounds, and set me on thine own beast, and brought me to an inn,’ said the stranger. ‘Blessed be thy living witness to Christ’s parable.’
He had the inscrutable eyes of a hare. Say what he might, there was always something at odds between them and the picked precision of his speech. He sat propped against a pillow formed of Brion’s cloak; the great horse-cloth was wrapped about his naked limbs; his clothes were spread to dry near the glowing brazier; he had eaten little of the food and drunk feverishly of the wine, and his tongue was loosened.
Brion nodded. ‘Let us have done with compliments. Am I to know your name and business?’
‘I am a simple trader, an Englishman, by name John Melton.’
‘Well, we will return to that. And now, Master Melton, an it please you, what brought a simple trader to such plight?’
‘Sir, I owe you the plain story; and here it is. In the darkness before dawn this morning a hoy, standing off from the coast, was driven ashore at Teignmouth by the fury of the wind and waves. Something, I know not what, aroused in the rough folk who helped to beach her a belief that there were Catholic emissaries from Picardy on board, and in a moment the devil was ablaze in them. For some most unjustifiable reason their suspicions fell on me, of whom their fanatic hatred would have made an instant victim, casting me into a fire of driftwood they prepared to build upon the shore, had I not through God’s grace and the darkness succeeded in escaping from their cruel hands. Battered and wounded, I fled at random, their shouts and imprecations following me as I ran. By dawn I had gained the heights, whence, hiding and observing, I could see the chase, now gathered in volume, still furious on my tracks. Had they once scattered, I had been lost, but they kept together, while I scurried on before, taking advantage of every scrap of cover. Still they pressed on, like hounds intent and inexorable, and to me, hurt and exhausted as I was, there could have come but one end, had I not, through merciful Providence, chanced, when near my last gasp, on a charitable stranger. That is all my tale.’
Brion, regarding the speaker enigmatically, did not respond for a moment.
‘So,’ said he at last, ‘you came in the boat?’
‘That is perfectly true.’
‘And from Picardy—where there are Jesuits?’
‘And traders.’
‘True; and pardoners among them, mayhap—vendors of spurious relics to the credulous, pigs’ bones for saints,’ a feather of the cock that crew St Peter into shame, and of other things no less false and profitable—Papal indulgences, to wit, for any that would be traitors to their country.’
‘It is not true.’
‘Why, I know you for a Papist, else would you ne’er have spoke of “Catholic” emissaries.’
‘I deny it not. Denounce me for it, an you will. Wounded and in your power, I shall not abjure my faith.’
‘Your necessity, as you should know, is your surest appeal to mine.’
‘Yet you can show so little Christian tolerance as to assume, without proof, a certain vileness in me, and for no reason but just that I am a Catholic. Tell me this, Sir: is Papistry, as you call it, countenanced in your England?’
‘With reason, no.’
‘We’ll spare the reason. It is not countenanced, at least. Then, for the convinced English Catholic there is no alternative to apostacy but—Picardy, shall we say?’
‘God forbid I should quarrel with any man for his religion. Only for yours, Picardy is a wholesomer climate than Devon.’
‘My hurts cry Amen to that.’
‘Why not have remained there, then?’
‘Is it so unusual for an exile to yearn towards the land of his birth—especially an he envisage a prospect to combine some business with pleasure there? But I see you do not believe me. Well, Sir, bruised and battered though I be, I would sooner be put to lie out in the fields than accept a bounty offered on such terms. Or would you be the treacherous husbandman of the fable, with whom the poor driven fox took shelter, and keep me here, to point out to the hunt my hiding-place? It may ride up anon. Be sure those bloody miscreants will rouse the neighbourhood, and there will be search for me. Well, I am sick and friendless and at your mercy.’
He had spoken from the first in a voice weak and languid, though always oddly preserving its dry particularity, and now sank back as if exhausted, closing his eyes. But still Brion regarded him unmoved, it seemed, by either his explanations or his taunts. Something, he felt, rang false—he could not say what, but it certainly was not the man’s physical hurts, which were very definite and serious. There was reality enough in them to outweigh for the moment any thought of moral deception. One in particular on the side, the result of a terrible blow from a metal bar or stone, bore a sinister look. No rib, so far as he could ascertain, was fractured, but he feared some bad internal injury. He had done, and he did hereafter, all that he could to alleviate the suffering caused by this injury, using what soft compresses and tender balsams he could filch from Mother Harlock’s preserves; but still the pain did not seem to mend, and its persistence troubled him. Supposing the man were to die on his hands, to what unresolvable difficulties would he not have committed himself? However, the thing was done, and might God help him in having acted humanely on impulse instead of discreetly on reflection.
‘I pass by your bitter words,’ he said, standing over the prone figure, ‘which some might think had savoured of ingratitude, but which I take for an ill man’s ravings. Be assured, I shall not betray you. What is to the point is how not to make myself suspect. It can be done, and safely, but only at the expense of my company. You must do without my visiting you, save at daily intervals. I will bring you all you need from time to time, food, and more comforts, and so will continue till you are in a condition to be released and sped upon your way. By that time, let us hope, the hue and cry will have died down and yourself be forgotten. That dark dawn can have little familiarised your persecutors with your features. For the brazier, I will bring to-morrow the wherewithal to screen it; yet methinks, once warmed, you’ll need but little artificial heat in this subterranean chamber. It were wise to kindle no taper but on urgent need. For the rest, you are buried here as inviolate as in a tomb. No one of the household nor the near neighbourhood would so much as come near the place: it hath an evil reputation with the foolish. But that need not concern you. Are you willing that I leave you now?’
The eyes were opened and staring at him again—strange blots in the dying glow; the lips whispered, it seemed, some inarticulate thanksgiving. Brion, with a curt ‘good-night,’ turned and mounted the steps. In the chamber above, having closed and spun the wheel, he paused a moment to see if any tell-tale gleam issued from the edges of the orifice; but detecting no least hint of such, he went, satisfied, into the night.
Henceforth he kept to his word, visiting the fugitive once at least a day, bringing him good sustenance and more comfortable stuff for his bedding, and staying to converse awhile as he bandaged the inflamed and aching flesh. Sometimes he would go by the garden and sometimes by the wood: the little sport of secrecy and evasion tickled him for a while; it was like a game, and he was still boy enough to enjoy a game. Yet now and again itwouldoccur to him that a game indefinitely prolonged might lose its point, and expose, through constant use, its own machinery; and so far no period to the one he was playing seemed suggested. An uncomfortable feeling dawned and developed in him that he had burdened himself, and at a crucial time, with an undetachable incubus. As the days went on, in proportion as the invalid’s main injury seemed to heal superficially, the inner hurt appeared to intensify. The fact threatened to confirm his first most grave suspicions; but it did not help to solve his difficulties. He began to foresee the ultimate necessity of taking somebody into his confidence. What if matters should go from bad to worse? He was doing his best for the man; but his best was after all only the best of ignorance. Good intentions might very well make bad nurses, unless reinforced by knowledge. Instead of curing he might be actually helping to kill.
The patient, in fact, in defiance of all the young man’s ministrations, continued to look ghastly; he seemed to speak with difficulty; he complained of eternal pain and unrest. And no wonder, buried, so injured, in that dank and gloomy crypt. One welcome change there was: soft and open Spring weather had followed on that day of cold and storm, mitigating the frigid atmosphere of the stone chamber. Going down the garden on the morning after the encounter, Brion felt his every pore expanding with delight. Balm was in the air; an incense rose from the earth; the winter aconites had blinked the frost from their golden eyes, and, with their ruffs starched and smart, were smiling in holiday rows under the wall. Even a surviving snowdrop or two—those sweet little acolytes of Candlemas, as Clerivault called them—opened their hearts to the sun, and betrayed to it the tender green thoughts they were used to guard so shyly.
Brion, descending to the patient, found him, a little to his surprise, shifted from the position in which he had left him the night before to one in an angle of the wall where the brazier had been formerly set. They had exchanged places, in fact. Remarking on the transposition, he was informed by the other, in that weak, precisely-measured voice of his, that, growing chill in the small hours, he had bethought himself to take advantage of the warmth reflected to the stones by the then extinguished charcoal, and had so made shift to effect the change, which he had with difficulty accomplished, lying with his body against the hot wall. That, as a stratagem, was resourceful enough: the perplexing thing to Brion was how one in so feeble a state could have put it into practice. Yet, again, that state seemed indisputable. One had only to look at the man to know he could not be malingering.
They talked a little together, desultorily. The stranger was curious about the superstition which kept his hiding-place inviolate; and Brion, seeing no reason for concealment, told him all about the legend of the departed buccaneer, and the fate of the unfortunate young relative who had got to know more about his affairs than was good for his health or hers. The eyes always seemed to listen to him more than the ears: they blinked no facts, and confessed no emotions—none in the least over their owner’s contiguity to the place of that dark reputed tragedy. He was evidently ‘insusceptible,’ in the superstitious sense.
‘And was, Sir,’ he said, ‘this business of the wheel some of that Fulke’s contriving?’
‘No,’ said Brion. ‘I understand it was here long before his time.’
‘It is a clever contrivance, whoever designed it. I have seen some in my day, and none, I think, so well thought out.Prudens simplicitas.’
* * * * * *
Day succeeded day, and week week, and still the patient showed no signs of mending, but sat propped against the wall, with that eternal aspect of weakness and suffering which had never changed since Brion first brought him into the pit. The young fellow was at his wits’ end to know what to do. Time was flying, and at any moment he might receive his summons from Plymouth. At length he made up his mind, and laid bare the whole truth to Clerivault—enormously, as may be supposed, to that paragon’s astonishment.
‘I believe,’ said Brion, ‘the poor wretch is dying: and I cannot leave him to die there. What am I to do?’
‘A secret chamber—in the old well-house!’ gasped Clerivault; ‘and to discover it—God’s ’slid! thou must have dared alone the haunted terrors of that place!’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Brion impatiently—‘and a fig for such bugbears. But that is not the point. He must be brought out—brought here—put to bed—old Harlock must see him—God o’ mercy! I shall go demented!’
He started striding forth and back, his fingers wound desperately in his hair. Clerivault quieted him down:—
‘Ah, peace, my sweetheart! We will arrange it.’
‘But you do not know—my fears, my suspicions, my distractions. I will not, for all the world, that mine Uncle and he be brought together—nor so much as learn, each one, that the other is in the house.’
‘No need to, if he is dying.’
‘He may not die, if at all, until after we are gone.’
‘H’mph!’
It was a problem, in truth, of which, on profound consideration, there appeared only one solution. Nol and Phineas and William and Mrs Harlock must be taken into one confidence on the subject, and form a conspiracy to keep the fact of the stranger’s presence in the house a secret equally from their lord and from the whole world. If the man survived, he was to be packed quietly away on his recovery; if he died, then the authorities must be informed, the plain explanation being that the body was that of a poor stranger whom the young master had found injured by the way, and had of his pity brought home to tend. Nobody knew who he was or whence come, so nobody could say.
So Clerivault took it upon himself to inform and instruct the household, and so it was settled. As to any risk of search at this date, it was considered negligible. If the neighbourhoodhadbeen aroused, it had shown no disposition to suspect the Grange of harbouring the fugitive. Some vague rumours of the Teignmouth affair had come Clerivault’s way, but it did not appear from them how far the pursuit had been pressed, or whether, even, it had been of that determined character which perhaps the fears of the victim had magnified. In all probability the whole affair was by now completely forgotten.
Brion, to be sure, had no liking for the arrangement; but he was in a desperate quandary, and, short of an inhumanity impossible to him, could see no other way out of it. And then the summons to the voyage came; and that clinched the matter.
On the evening of the day when he received it, he went to visit his patient, and to impress upon him the necessity for his instant removal to the house. Somewhat to his astonishment and displeasure, he encountered an opposition where he had the least expected one.
‘You would rather remain where you are, Master Melton?’ said he, haughtily surprised. ‘Then give me leave to tell you that you will remain to perish, since, I being gone, none other could be found to approach within a score yards of this thicket under which you lie buried.’
‘Sir, my beneficent saviour,’ answered the other, with a low-voiced, measured humility: ‘may it never be yours to suffer the hounding of malignant foes, or, having escaped, broken and demoralised, from their violence, be urged to tempt the Providence which has found you a secure retreat by leaving it untimely for another.’
‘Untimely!’ cried Brion with impatience. ‘I tell you, man, I quit here to-morrow: I shall be absent for many months. What would you do?’
‘With utmost deference, Sir, would it not be possible for you, ere you go, to convey hither to me a moderate store of food and drink, and, having so satisfied your hospitable conscience, dismiss from your mind all question of further responsibility regarding my welfare? Then, if at last forced by my condition to reveal myself, I could make shift to emerge from this confinement, if only to beg of your people a corner in which to die?’
The young man stood fairly astounded before this cool proposition.
‘No, Master Melton,’ said he, with emphasis: ‘it would not be possible. If the worst were to come upon you—you force me to speak plain—you would be in no state to make the effort you imply: in which case—but I leave to your imagination the pleasant sequel. Come, prepare yourself to shift. You shall be conveyed to a comfortable bed, and your hurts tended by one of a better skill and knowledge than ever I could pretend to. The household is pledged to secrecy: in the matter of risk, I believe on my soul there is no shadow of any—you are long forgotten by the very men who chased you. And the moment you are fit to travel you shall be free to go. Come.’
The fugitive uttered a little sigh.
‘I yield all,’ said he, ‘to him to whom I owe all.’
He crawled painfully from under the cloth which covered him, and which he fumbled back into the wall-corner where he had lain; and, supported by Brion, laboriously climbed the steps into the chamber above.
‘Are you not going to close the wheel?’ said he, panting and pallid, as they paused a moment, after emerging from the aperture.
‘Presently will serve,’ answered Brion: ‘when I have seen you into safety.’
‘Now, Sir, now, let me entreat you! If any accident should happen—if it should be overlooked—a clue——’
‘Peace, then!’ exclaimed the young man; and he hurriedly and rather pettishly did as he was asked. Truly this most unconscionable invalid was a trial to one’s patience.
Outside the ilex clump, Clerivault, white and grim, stood waiting in the thunderous dusk. He had volunteered to dare the terrors of the awful place; but Brion, seeing what the offer cost him, had laughingly declined his company, saying he could manage much better by himself. They took the stranger between them, and, without more ado, carried rather than supported him to the house, and, smuggling him by a back way to the upper chamber, remotest from Quentin Bagott’s quarters, which had been prepared for him, put him to bed, and left him in the hands of that old wintry bird of prey, Mother Harlock, who forthwith proceeded to examine his hurts with the dark relish peculiar to her kind. Coming to seek Brion presently, she gave him, in a muttered whisper, the result of her diagnosis:—
‘The man’s sore smitten.’
‘Will he die?’
‘A hath a dog’s chance—given my vuln’ry water. ’Twere distilled from the plantain in the year of its becoming a bird.’
‘Of what becoming a bird? The plantain? Does the plantain become a bird?’
‘Every seventh year, and cries “cuckoo!” Did you not know it, child?’
‘On my faith, no.’
‘Ay. ’Tis the reason it lacks a nest of its own.’
‘But——’ he gave it up, bubbling with expressionless laughter. ‘You had better go and get it,’ said he.
He had hoped for something more informative. As it was, her verdict left him exactly where he had been. However, there was no help for it; the man was there, and there he must now remain, until Destiny decided one way or the other on the question of his disposal. In the meantime the faithful souls who were to represent his authority during his absence would see to it that his instructions were implicitly carried out.
He parted from his Uncle that evening, as he and Clerivault had to be on their way at an early hour the following morning. Going in to the recluse, with a certain emotion at his heart, he found him characteristically occupied between a Vulgate and a great tankard of burnt sack plentifully laced with Nantes brandy. A thread of incense, rising from a tiny chafing dish on the table, seemed designed, like a pious kissing-comfit, to neutralise the pungent breath of that ungodly mixture; while the mentality which could appropriate such material to such a use appeared further illustrated in the faldstool, or prie-Dieu, set before a bureau on which stood a laughing head in bronze of a leaf-crowned Dionysus.
The ex-Judge looked up vacantly, as Brion entered, and motioned him mechanically to a seat.
‘Not now,’ said the young man. ‘The time that remains to me here is short. I have come to ask your blessing on my venture, Uncle Quentin.’
Staring a moment, the other shook his head.
‘What venture, nephew?’
‘Have you forgotten? To the New World.’
He seemed to listen and weigh; and then a sudden light went up in his brain:—
‘To the New World? My blessing? A devil’s viaticum that! A curse from my lips might speed thee better.’
‘Come, Uncle. You will not start me on such handicap, like the poor scratch in the game. I of all should know what your blessing is worth to one you love.’
Bagott passed his hand across his eyes.
‘Do you say so, boy? Yet you will leave me.’
‘Would you not have me go?’
‘To the New World? Ay.’ He seemed to muse, pondering some vision. ‘For whither she hath gone should not her son follow?’ He stared and stared before him, till his eyes ran with weak tears. ‘I loved your mother, Brion,’ he sobbed: ‘I loved your mother.’
It was useless to prolong the scene. The young man knelt, and took the shaking hands in his, and, kissing them, laid them on his own head. They slipped down to imprison his face, to draw it towards the dishonoured lips whose utterance had yet never meant to him aught but truth and love.
By six o’clock the next day he and Clerivault and Nol porter were on the Plymouth road, the latter riding with them to convey the baggage, and to bring back the horses. Their way took them by Holne Chase and the head of the Horse-shoe Glen. It was a fair April morning, blue and white and gold. The birds were singing as they never sang but about that lovely haunted spot. It seemed suddenly to Brion that the fetters of long years were broken, and that he was riding forth to challenge the vision not of what was to be, but of what had been and fled. Love was on the heights, and it was the morning of an older day.