‘Afterthe storm, calm,’ said Brion in a subdued level voice, his eyes brooding on the melancholy scene about him.
They had ridden over early from Ashburton, and had wandered through the desolate grounds, and seen the hopeless ruin of it all; and at the end, going into the trampled garden, had sat themselves down on a bench in a leafy corner, and turned to quiet discussion of the ways and means of the life before them. The place was quite deserted. Remote always, its loneliness, broken and death-smitten, had never seemed so stark a thing as now. An acrid smell of burning still lingered in the heavy Autumn air; no sound broke the stillness but the periodic rustle and crash of débris pitching from the crumbling walls.
‘O, love, dear love!’ sighed the girl: ‘if only you could feel it so!’
He put his arm about her as they sat, and held her close to him.
‘I can, I do, Joan. Now, listen to me. When I spoke of calm after storm, it was of my Uncle I was thinking, as much as of this desolate scene. Poor soul, it symbolizes him, gone down to peace and silence out of turbulent fires. Could I wish him restored to all that torment? No more, methinks, than I could wish these walls restored, to contain my innocent bride. What if an evil fate was on this house, Joan? Almost I come to believe so, with her the poor wretch that hath perished under the ban she endowed it withal. A melancholy place hath it ever been, and dedicate to Death not less spiritual than material. For here have died hope and faith and will, which is a sadder decay than that of the body. Now thinking how perchance its blight might have come to fall upon my girl, it is better as it is, I cry in my heart, and see in it a very Providence to save her. Should I not be rejoiced thereat, since from this paltry holocaust rises my bird, my phœnix on bright secured wings? Not a house, or a city, or a continent, but a world against my Joan. Let it all go, sweet: I care not one jot: and I can view the sacrifice calmly, as you see. What were its wretched material worth, so it were held at my love’s peril? If we have not enough beside to live on, I have great friends who will help me to the means. Believe me, child, I speak from my soul. I am glad that what is, is.’
She was so moved and gratified to find him in this happy mood of resignation, that she could not forbear, what was unusual with Joan, a little gush of tears. She clung to him, calling upon him by every proud endearing name to witness how she would never cease to try to vindicate his beautiful trust and love of her; and presently, a little overwrought, she rested in his arms, and a long silence fell between them. It was broken suddenly by Brion:—
‘Joan?’
‘My lord?’
‘I have been thinking and puzzling.’
‘Tell me.’
‘That doomed rogue—that Melton. What made him so anxious to possess himself of the Grange?’
‘Why? Why not?’
‘He had no need, it seems, for the personal estate. It was the house and grounds alone he coveted.’
‘And enough, i’faith.’
‘But—so barren and profitless. No, I cannot understand. I——’ a sudden thought striking him, he uttered a little sharp exclamation: ‘Why, o’ my verity and in good sooth, I never told you.’
‘Told me what, Brion?’
‘Where I hid him.’
‘You said you hid him.’
‘Yes, but where. Come, Joan—come along. I have something to show you.’
He communicated his sudden excitement to her, and she went with him, her eyes wide and her heart fluttering. He led her across the garden.
‘What, to the old well-house, Brion?’
‘Yes, to the old well-house, Joan. Don’t you remember our visit, and my fright and your discovery? Well, I made a discovery of my own there later.’
‘What, Brion?’ She was all curiosity and eagerness—a child again.
‘I will show you. Come.’
He held the branches of the thicket apart for her, and she stole in, wondering. It was all inviolate here, unapproached and unprofaned. No one of the countless footprints that marked the recent havoc had ventured within a score yards of the place. They entered, and the green closed behind them. It gave Brion a thrill to think of his latest visit. He hurried Joan through, into the stone belvedere, up to the wheel, and, turning the great cylinder, found and lowered the movable panel and slipped it into its socket in the wall.
‘Look down,’ he said, with the conscious smile of a conjurer.
‘O, Brion! What is it?’
‘It is steps, dear, leading down to a little stone chamber, quarried deep under the floor.’
‘Who put it there?’
‘Nay, I know not. Not Fulke, I think: it must have been older than his time. But, whoever put it, I discovered it. It was there I hid John Melton, and therein he lay for three weeks before being removed to the house.’
‘Let me go down and see. O, do!’
‘Why, you baby! Well, wait while I enter first and kindle a light, if one remains. There should.’
He laughed to her, and, descending into the pit, sought about in the gloom for the bracket on the wall which he himself had placed there, and which he knew ought to contain every material for striking a fire. It was there, and amply provided—even more so than he seemed to remember—and it was no long while before he had a taper flaring in an iron sconce. Then he turned, and looked about him—and stood looking. What was there unfamiliar about this place, so intimately associated with his last days at home? Something—something significant of an occupation which did not wholly tally with his memories of the one he had ended. He recalled very distinctly the look of the chamber as he had last seen it—the mattress bed, the brazier, the heavy cloth pushed back by the invalid himself into the corner where he had lain. Now all three lay flung apart in a heap, and, where the first and last had been, stood—what? Before he could stoop to examine, he heard Joan’s voice entreating:—
‘Brion! How long you are!’
He hurried to the steps and up them, and half emerging: ‘Come down—quick!’ he said. ‘There is something odd here.’
She obeyed, readily enough—negotiating the narrow opening with grace but caution, while he stood below to guide her—and in another moment was wondering beside him in the chamber.
‘It is not as I left it,’ he said. ‘Some one has been in here since then.’
‘The stranger himself, mayhap,’ she murmured, gazing open-eyed about her.
‘Yes, but why? He could not while he lay a’bed; and afterwards he had no need. Was this brought by him?’
He strode a step, and lifted from the wall, against which it leaned, a short heavy crowbar. But he had hardly raised the thing, when he flung it down with an exclamation.
‘What is that against the wall there?’
It showed out in the now brilliant flare of the taper—a broken and twisted slab of wood or metal, propped against the base of the wall in that angle of it where the bed had once lain. Brion took a step or two, and bent.
‘It is heavy as lead,’ he said. ‘Why, itislead!’—and, with a heave or two, he trundled the thing away, and let it drop upon the floor. In the place where it had stood was revealed an oblong opening, forming the mouth to a cavity of unknown depth. With a shout of excitement he thrust in his hand, and, finding a hold for it in an iron stanchion affixed to some object, pulled with all his force. And, with his pull, there came sliding easily into the light a thing of very wonder.
Brion, rising erect, turned speechless to Joan, and she to him; and then with a sudden impulse they held to one another and both looked down. They saw a long wooden coffer of stout oak, measuring, it might be, three feet by one, with a depth of eighteen inches, running readily on little wheels, and full to the brim of gold and precious stones. He gasped, and looked into her face.
‘The picaroon’s booty,’ he said, in an amazed, awestruck voice—and could say no more. She brought him to his wits with a pull and whisper:—
‘O, Brion!’
‘And O, Joan!’ he cried. ‘Do you see? It was this secret the poor murdered maid unearthed; and, after her, Melton.’
Suddenly he broke from her, and darting for the slab, pulled it this way and that.
‘I understand,’ he cried—‘I understand. Come here, Joan, while I show you.’
And when she ran to him, she saw. What might have been taken for a great stone at the base of the wall proved on examination to have been a thick leaden slab, made to fit like a door into its place, and so treated with roughcast on a heated and liquid surface as to be rendered indistinguishable from the other stones about it. By what device it had been made originally to open and disclose its inner secrets did not appear, the whole thing having been so hacked and wrenched to force it from its position as to destroy any clue that might otherwise have been to the nature of its mechanism.
‘Buthowdid he discover it?’ said Brion; ‘since I know, from my own experiments, that no sounding would be enough.’
That interest seemed to absorb him for the moment above any other. He puzzled, clutching at his hair. Suddenly his face lit up:—
‘I have it!’ he cried jubilantly. ‘It was the brazier set against the wall melted some of the lead and gave him the first of the clue. That was why I found it moved, the second time I went down to see him, and the bed put against the wall where it had been. ’Twas to hide from me his discovery. And afterwards he must have gone to work on the lead, and by degrees, melting and working a hole in it, learnt what was within. Then, when once his hands were free and he was secure of the house, he must have come back with that crowbar and finished what he had begun. It is all as clear as daylight, and eke the reason why he was so anxious, when I brought him forth, to see the clue to the secret chamber shut away. He feared even then that some overbold quidnunc might venture in, and, discovering the truth while he lay helpless in the house, ruin his whole design.’
He rose erect, stretching his shoulders, and letting out a great ‘whoof’ of exhilaration. The girl clapped her hands delightedly.
‘His design!’ she cried. ‘Of course, Brion. It was to get sole possession of the house, and then, at his leisure, remove his plunder, thinking it could not be done with safety in any other way.’
‘To be sure—not with the risks of discovery he would run—and then, likely, to carry it off by sea. O, Joan!’
As by one consent, they turned to the box again, and Brion, kneeling beside it, plunged his hands, in a half fearful, half rapturous way, among the heavy glittering store. For the moment, and in their excited condition, only a cursory examination of the stuff was possible; but, such as it was, it seemed to reveal the departed buccaneer as a gentleman of fastidiously selective tastes. The mass of the treasure was in coin, and, so far as could be ascertained, gold coin exclusively. There were angels, broad-pieces, pieces of eight, moidores, nobles and others, all in lavish profusion. Some loose gems Brion turned up, sunk like sea-shells among the crevices of rocks, but more, and of greater value, appeared set in rings, brooches, buckles and the like ornaments. And never in the whole a gleam but of gold and the prismatic spars of jewels.
Suddenly Brion, with a start and sigh, rose from his investigation, and, seizing the stanchion, ran the chest back into its cache in the wall, and heaved the slab over the aperture, closing it away.
‘Come, Joan,’ he said: ‘let us leave it for the nonce, and rise where we can breathe.’
She wondered a little; but obeyed him without a word, climbing again to the upper chamber, whither he followed her, after having extinguished the light. He made the wheel then secure, and together they threaded the thicket, and emerged once more into the light of day.
The sun, while they had been gone, had penetrated the heavy mists, and shone like a lifted Host high against the walls of Heaven. In that still and golden light all the harsh acerbities of the scene stood wonderfully softened, and a great peace and quietness possessed everything. The two had walked but a little way, when Brion stopped, and taking the sweet face between his palms, and looking earnestly into the good blue eyes: ‘Tell me, Joan,’ said he: ‘shall we leave it alone?’
‘The gold, Brion?’ she asked, wondering.
‘Yes, the gold, Joan. I think of the blood and cruelty that went to its amassing; I think of the murder that secured it; I think of all the lives that have been sacrificed to make it ours at the last, and that a curse may be on it.’
‘I think of the dear Providence, Brion, that brought us together to reach this very end, and of how it would be sin to cross its plain intentions; I think of a thousand kind things done to extenuate a thousand evils; and I think of my dear lord no longer wickedly accusing himself of being a pauper husband—as if love, like gingerbread ships, were the better for gilding—but rich as his love for his loving maid. O!’—she slipped her arms about his neck, and clung to him a little wildly—‘it is not avarice in me, Brion, but only that—indeed, indeed it is. For a word of love a day I would follow you in rags to the world’s end.’
‘My Joan!’ he said, in a full voice, and held her to him, whispering and fondling. For a little there was silence between them.
‘Well,’ he said at last; ‘let it be, then. Ill-got shall be well-spent, and the curse, mayhap, turned into a blessing.’
‘By us,’ she said happily. She looked up, a sudden pink on her cheek, into his face. ‘I have thought of one thing, Brion. It is to help those—in some way—l-love children—so many like ourselves, but, unlike us, wretched and forsaken.’
‘Yes, Joan, you good child.’
‘Then—b-bustards they may call us, Brion, but cuckoos we will be.’
‘Why cuckoos, Joan?’
‘They are the birds, are they not, that look after other birds’ young?’
His eyes opened, and a premonitory spasm seemed to flutter his chest.
‘What is the matter, Brion?’
‘Nothing, Joan.’
‘O, I know you, i’faith! I have said something.’
‘Whatever it was, I would not have it unsaid for all Joan’s world.’
He kissed her, laughing against her very cheek; then turned instantly sober, and, putting his arm about her, led her on.
‘So,’ said he, ‘it is settled, and let us forget it. What does it all weigh against the treasure of our love? For its safe-conduct and disposal, methinks I must take my friend the Ancient into my confidence, and in the meantime where it lies it is secure. Look, Joan—what gold a thousand times dearer greets thee!’
He had stopped her suddenly, pointing to a little flower at her very shoe point. It was a solitary primrose blossom, late or early there was no telling; but there it was, staring up at Joan. Brion lifted his head, and challenging the full round sun, ‘Clerivault, Clerivault!’ cried he—‘Where England sets her feet! Look down and see the primrose break!’
[The End]
Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g.apostacy/apostasy, gallanty-show/gallanty show, etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Silently correct a few punctuation errors.
[Chapter II]
Change “a black bonnet with a short feather inin” toit.
[Chapter XII]
“His lips repeated the wordmechancially” tomechanically.
[Chapter XIV]
“he parted from him in the Cock tavern” italicizeCock.
[Chapter XVII]
“for what was the use towitholdthe rest” towithhold.
[Chapter XX]
“butpanicstruckhe shook his head and made for” topanic-struck.
[End of text]