WHERE ENGLAND SETS
HER FEET

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER II.
THE PLEDGE REDEEMED

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The stranger looked a trifle disconcerted.

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

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

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

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

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

‘I will acquaint you, worthy Master Angell,’ he answered: ‘only—I prithee; there’s a proverb anent the ears of little pitchers. Acta exteriora, as we say in the law, indicant interiora secreta. You smoke me?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The lady leaned from her saddle, murmuring:—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brion shook his head. ‘No, Sir.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER III.
THE JOURNEY WEST

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

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

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

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

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

‘Where am I, Master Clerivault?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Who and what art thou, then?’

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

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

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

‘Yourself, to wit?’

‘Thou hast said it, not I.’

‘What is it to be a paragon?’

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

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

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

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

‘Not a Judge?’

‘We have resigned, Sir, our Commission. Let it rest at that. The question drops—in Law, cadit quæstio.’

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

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

The man coughed before answering:—

‘Ay, and to which we are wending.’

‘In London?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Hast slept sound, boy?’

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

‘And favoured thine attendant?’

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

‘Ay, and questioned him, moreover?’

‘I have asked him many questions.’

‘Instance?’

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

‘And his answer?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

The boy faced the question steadily.

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

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

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

‘No, Sir.’

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

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

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

‘Harlequin?’

‘And I’ll follow betimes.’

‘Uncle?’

‘Well, boy?’

‘Is not Master Clerivault mad?’

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

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

Bagott nodded, smiling.

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

Brion’s eyes and red lips opened together.

‘O, how?’ he said. ‘Poor Clerivault.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘On my faith, Uncle,’ said Brion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘How, great, do you mean?’

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

‘And does the Queen wear them?’

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER IV.
THE END OF THE JOURNEY

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

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

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

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

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

‘Are we near arrived, Clerivault?’

‘In a little,’ was the short answer.

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

‘It must stand very lonely.’

The other cleared his throat.

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

Brion felt a little shiver go over him.

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

‘Nay; but the best.’

‘And what for the second-best?’

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

‘And till he comes?’

‘There’s Clerivault.’

‘No more?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER V.
THE HOUSE BY THE MOOR

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

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

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

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

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

‘Clerivault!’ cried the boy.

The paragon clapped his hands, exultant.

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

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

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

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

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

‘Well, but something giddy,’ said Brion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The man’s countenance fell.

‘Who told you of him?’

‘It was Gammer Harlock.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clerivault snorted.

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

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

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

‘How?’ asked the other.

Where England sets her feet: a romance

WHERE ENGLAND SETSHER FEET

COPYRIGHT.

[DEDICATION.]

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.THE PRETTY PLEDGE

CHAPTER II.THE PLEDGE REDEEMED

CHAPTER III.THE JOURNEY WEST

CHAPTER IV.THE END OF THE JOURNEY

CHAPTER V.THE HOUSE BY THE MOOR

WHERE ENGLAND SETS
HER FEET

CHAPTER I.
THE PRETTY PLEDGE

CHAPTER II.
THE PLEDGE REDEEMED

CHAPTER III.
THE JOURNEY WEST

CHAPTER IV.
THE END OF THE JOURNEY

CHAPTER V.
THE HOUSE BY THE MOOR