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.
‘Why, if this Fulk was twenty years a tenant?’
‘Was he? Well, we’ll not quarrel to a hair. But ’tis long as thou sayest—since he was a boy, in truth.’
‘A boy!’ Brion actually laughed. It seemed so impossible that that tremendous being could ever have been a boy—like himself.
‘The Bagotts,’ went on Clerivault, ‘were big people here in the past, portreeves, and lords of the Stannary Court in Ashburton. They owned mines, and prospered. But, on one cause or another, they were for ever at litigation, and in the end that cracked them. The law was in their blood, i’faith, and imposthumated, as it were, in thine Uncle—came to a great head, and burst, imperilling his life. It was time for him to withdraw from it.’
‘Was his life imperilled?’
‘Say his reason, at least.’
‘Had he never brothers or sisters, Clerivault?’
The man glanced quickly at the boy before answering.
‘One sister,’ said he, in a restrained voice; ‘but she died. Art his sole kin in all the world, young master. Be thankful for it. Love him and he’ll repay thy love. To those he trusts he’s ever gentle and considerate, fierce and proud though he profess in the world’s eye. Do we not know him—Phineas a master cook, and the boy William, and honest Nol and myself? Else should we, brilliant children of our parts, have been content to follow him into this exile, to sink our gifts in solitude, to serve him in sour misfortune as in prosperity? He has the trick of attachment, like some men with animals.’
‘What misfortune?’ asked the boy wonderingly.
Clerivault bit his lip.
‘Did I not tell thee?’ said he. ‘The law, taken in excess, like wine affects the reason, and he was too full of it for health—it impaired his judgments. Wherefore his decision to resign, and to seek amid these scenes of peace the restoration of his faculties. Misfortune enough—ha! to be reduced, in plenitude of one’s power, to a sick nonentity.’
Brion, though marvelling a little that it should have been deemed necessary to hide so simple an explanation from him, was satisfied with it now it had come. He understood at last the meaning of their withdrawal into these country seclusions, and was both sorry and proud for this great-souled relative of his, who had so nobly resolved to put conscience before self-interest.
The two walked on a little; and then said Clerivault, breaking a silence between them: ‘This place consorts not with your dreams, mayhap, of what was to be; yet shall you come to be as happy as the day in it. We are few, but the moor is big. It is a wild free life thou shalt lead, and content and lustihood shalt thou draw from it. Now mount with me, I prithee, to thy chamber once again, and I will show thee things.’
So they went up together, and there found Gammer Harlock busy bed-making. She was an old woman, bent and bony, but with an amazing vigour in her attenuated frame. Her face was of the hatchet shape, with an aquiline nose and slow projecting eyes, and the compressed austerity of her mouth so drooped at the corners as to make her chin appear a separate attachment, moving on a pivot as in a mask. But she was scrupulously neat, no rent in her cloth of frieze gown, no stain on her close linen coif or the partlet about her withered neck. She showed no knowledge of their presence, but went on with her work.
Clerivault sniffed and scowled.
‘Better employed in making his bed, Gammer,’ said he, ‘than in poisoning his mind.’
‘Eh, jackanapes!’ she answered; ‘are ye there, and talking?’
She did not turn her head. Her voice was like a low whine, harsh yet thin.
‘Talk and hang,’ said he, ‘you old devil. Will you tell me this: Why, if Fulk committed murder and you knew it, you shouldn’t be broke for an accessory after the fact?’
Her eyes turned on him like a crab’s.
‘Because he was dead when I knew it, ye fine lawyer.’
‘And being dead,’ said Clerivault, ‘you think it safe to asperse his character, which is slander and defamation. Art on the horns of a dilemma, old witch.’
She made a sound of thin derision.
‘Call his character to witness, and call again. Ye’ll get no answer, for he had none.’ She turned on him with some repressed fury. ‘Attend you to your business and leave me to mine. Nine year come Pentecost have I lived and served in this house; doing by it what was never asked in the bond; sweeping and garnishing throughout, though Fulk he lived in no more than two of its rooms; and all for a scant pittance and less meat. Do I know its every rat and shadow, think you, ay and its ghosts that walk and its voices that whisper, to be told by a niddipol lawyer’s clerk, that hath scarce set foot in these silences, what to make of them but scorn and mockery. There are eyes for those that can see and ears for those that can hear: but it is aye the fool that misdoubts others, and the wise man himself.’
‘Misdoubts what?’ said Clerivault. ‘These maggots of a flyblown brain? Well, God quit you of your “shadows”; but not by way of my charge here, who looks to a homely home, and beings of flesh and blood for company, and not the fancied wraiths of fancied crimes. To call a house possessed is an offence at law; and when the house is a judge’s house—take heed, gossip, take heed, I warn you. His Honour is not the man to suffer the corruption of his kin or the branding of his property.’
He ended harshly, and turned to Brion, leaving the old woman muttering.
The boy had heard his comrade, half shocked and half amused. The castigation seemed to him to exceed the transgression. After all, though he had been fascinated and thrilled by the tale she had told him, he had not been frightened. He was a level-headed youngster, and not easily scared. Clerivault pointed from the open casement.
‘See yonder,’ said he, signifying a hill some mile and a half north-west of the Grange: ‘Rippon Tor, they call it, that hath its logging-stone; and, farther north, that’s Hey Tor, with its mighty crown of rock. We’ll climb it together, and get a view will do you good. Out west there stands Buckland Beacon, that we may yet live to see fired, and south of it the waters of the Dart, where they bend about Holne Chase. That’s a sweet and noble demesne, owned by the lords of Buckland, but the house let now to Sir John Medley, a rich City Knight and rogue from London, that hath a fair young daughter, Mistress Joan yclept, his sole child and heiress.’
So he continued, expatiating on the beauties of the moor, and planning expeditions here and there to gorge, or glen, or hidden hamlet, where draughts of golden cider were to reward the sweet and happy toil of adventure. He was eager to dwell on the near approach of the long warm days, eager not only to reconcile the boy to his lot, but to kindle in him an enthusiasm for it. And Brion, in face of those fervent adjurations, was not slow to catch fire, or to forget, in bright anticipation of long walks and rides, and hawkings, perhaps, and fishings in the clear tumbling streams, the sadness of his home surroundings.
As presently they turned from the window, a thought occurred to him, not for the first time.
‘Clerivault,’ he said, ‘why is this my room so fair above all others in the house?’
‘Well, it was a chapel in the old days,’ answered the man, but after a moment’s pause, and with, it would seem, a certain reluctance.
CHAPTER VI.
SOME NEW FRIENDS
Days passed, and largely in the glamour of those expeditions which were to breed in the boy something more than a reconcilement with his destiny. And indeed, what with vigorous exercise, health, a mighty appetite and fine weather, Brion was soon in the mind to welcome solitude, though in a desolate mansion, as a condition as admirable as any which could have befallen him. He and Clerivault, his constant companion, were for ever on foot or on horseback, galloping over the moors, penetrating to town or village, or scrambling over rock and fell in search, pedantically, of the picturesque. They climbed the great tors, and swung the famous logging-stone; they explored the loveliest ravines, and overhung, from the rocky salient guarding Holne Chase, the waters of one of the fairest rivers in England. They fished—with small success, and shot—with none, at fowl of sorts, using for the latter purpose Clerivault’s pistols, which were short Italian ‘daggs,’ so called, heavy weapons with wheel-locks, and the last to prove effective against nimble game. Then in the early evening they would return, fagged and happy, to a great delectable meal, served up in Phineas cook’s most incomparable manner.
This Phineas, like the true artist he was, never condescended to be less than himself, though in such minor matters as the gratifying of a green palate. He had been long with the Judge—who, in the business of the table, was something of an epicure—and, like the other three lealties, was sufficiently his devoted henchman to be ready to follow his fortunes into virtual exile. He was a little long-faced man, with a pointed scrap of beard, and a serene conceit of himself so equable as to be impervious to provocation. His hands were very white and capable, and he habitually wore round his neck the gold chain with which the Lord Chancellor had decorated him on the occasion of a famous banquet given by his master to the Benchers of Gray’s Inn. A cook by profession, he was a genius by intuition, and handled his tools, as a supreme painter his brushes, with the unerring vision which in a few touches will give form and distinction to another’s mediocre design. An ordinary recipe became with him one of those plagiarisms which transcend their originals. In matters of sauce he was a rigid purist, holding that selection was the keynote of efficiency, and greatly abominating those indiscriminate jumbles of ingredients with which lesser cooks sought to cover up their ignorance and achieve a chance applause. As every soul was said to have its affinity in the world, so every dish, in his creed, had its certain complement, and it was no more right or moral to introduce a fifty different herbs and other garnishes into the pot, in the hope of the right one being there, than it would be to furnish a man who wanted a wife with a harem to seek amongst. Such Apician miscellanies as ‘lovage, coriander, mint, rue, anchovies, pepper, pine-nuts, raisins, wine, sweet cheese and oil,’ as a relish to boiled goose, he regarded as enormities, and to be counted only with the filthy potions brewed by Mrs Harlock and her like; but the cook who aspired to the term master should aim rather at the perfect sympathy of meat and seasoning, whereby each, like a loving partner, should prove its own value by emphasising the virtues of the other. To this end simplicity was the first and surest of means, combined with a perfect instinct for the hypostatic union of flavours, and for that psychologic moment reached by the revolving spit when ‘done to a turn’ was inaudibly announced from its well-basted burden. There was none could make plain roast and boiled more delectable than Phineas; as indeed Brion and his companion had good reason to know. He loved to have a hearty appetite to operate on, and would stand and expound his views to the boy, much entertaining that young gentleman, while watching his vigorous enjoyment of the good things provided for him. He liked the youngster, as indeed all associated with him came to do, at first for the master’s sake, but soon enough for his own. He was a prepossessing stripling, in truth, comely in appearance, but attractive more by reason of his gentleness and native urbanity than his looks. And at the same time he had a courageous spirit, to which Phineas loved to supply the animal fuel. There was no stint of that, at least, at the Grange. The bills of fare comprised haunch of venison, wild boar’s cheek, boiled leg of pork, salt buttock of beef (outside cut), sheep’s head (served with an electuary of unknown composition, but entertaining honey), oyster of veal, and other such goodly pièces de resistance. There was a certain ‘Karum’ pie, hoarding in its ambrosial depths treasure of beccaficoes and savoury jellies, to which Brion was mightily partial; and fish there was in plenty, turbots and soles and lobsters from the coasts, and lampreys from the rivers; while, for game, they had moorland partridges, and knots and godwits and hares. To enumerate the delicacies would be idle, though mention must be made of a peculiarly appetising broth with a boned duck floating in it, of a thoughtful hash of calves’ feet, and of a ragout of cocks’-combs with savoury balls which had to be eaten to be understood. But these were kickshaws, and, in Phineas’s philosophy, less illustrative of the culinary art than the plain joint made beautiful. His crowning achievement in their respect was a particular cream sauce, which, like the relish invented by the Marquis de Béchamel, was of that seductiveness that it could have made a mother-in-law, with all her bitterness, ‘go down.’
One might imagine that, with all this gastronomic petting, Brion would end by thinking too much of his food; but, indeed, in his healthy young mind, he regarded it only as he regarded sleep, a need of nature the better for being sound. And that was Phineas’s own view.
‘A dinner remembered,’ said he, ‘is a dinner discredited, and that forgotten as soon as eaten does best honour to the cook. For it is honour to be the begetter of generous thoughts, which spring from good digestion; and a man if he be fed well, and as a proper cook should desire him, ponders not on that he hath consumed, but rather on the great visions which arise from his content and satisfaction. Whereas, should the food itself linger in his mind, it is odds but what he will presently have cause to wish both it and himself at the devil. All human functions are tolerable only to the moment when one is conscious of them: and that is digestion, to which your cook is physician in trust, as it were, to prevent what the others seek to cure.’
‘Methinks,’ said Brion, ‘the best physician is plainness and frugality. The Spartans lived on black broth alone, and were brave soldiers and healthy men.’
‘Anan?’ said Phineas.
‘They were a race,’ answered the boy; and added, with a twinkle: ‘other than that one who, tasting their broth, declared he no longer wondered over their indifference to death, seeing that this was all they had to live for. Good Master Angell, too, was wont to say that Heaven blesses a simple appetite.’
Phineas struck his nose with his forefinger three several times.
‘These Churchmen,’ said he—‘they will dogmatise. What mandate had he from Heaven to speak for it? I could say that Heaven loves to encourage good eating; and could give you book for it too.’
‘Give it,’ said Brion.
‘Hast heard of St Patrick,’ answered Phineas—‘the apostle of the Kerns? Well, God quit him for that—he was a good and holy man, for all he had his moments of weakness. One came to him on a fast day, when the sight of two fat pork chops on a platter was too much for his resolution. But he had no sooner helped himself thereto than, his conscience smiting him, with a prayer to Heaven for forgiveness he cast them from him into a pail of water standing by, whereon they were instantly converted, by God’s grace, into a brace of lusty trout. Nothing less, look you—no red herrings from Heaven. And what, I would ask you, of Cana its feast? Was it your black broth Christ changed the water into? Go to, for your plainness and frugality—and with your mouth full of my veal pasty!’
Brion laughed: ‘If it had been that to tempt St Patrick!’
He was popular with them all, as said: but with none so much as Clerivault, who regarded him as his especial trust and intimate, and was jealous of any fancied encroachment by another on his preserves. He taught the boy the use of arms, and practised him in sword play, against the time when he should have a ‘rapier and a baselard with a sheath of red’ of his own to hang at his side. That was a reminiscence not unreferred to, you may be sure. Brion, as he grew in confidence with this comrade, would open his sedate young heart to him, and ever a little and a little less shyly; until once he ventured on a direct question:—
‘I have often wondered and wanted to ask you, Clerivault. You remember that day, so long ago, when we first met?’
‘Ay,’ answered the other curtly, and with a watchful manner, as if he foresaw what was coming and prepared himself with his guard.
‘You would know of me, would you not,’ said Brion, ‘where Master Angell lived?’
‘Ay,’ was the short answer again.
‘Yet you had no need to learn.’
‘Had I not? Your reason, an it please you?’
‘Because you knew already; else had Master Angell not asked astonied what brought you there, and, out of your wont, by day.’
Clerivault made an acrid face.
‘A certain Grecian was heard to remark,’ said he, ‘that he detested a boon-companion with a memory. Are my sins, then, to find me out, and in the name of friendship?’
‘So you own you meant to deceive me?’
‘It would seem so.’
‘Why, Clerivault?’
‘I will tell you, like an honest man. It was not in his Honour’s then design to confess your relationship, and I, who acted as his purse-bearer, judged it advisable to give your sharp infancy no chance scent to nose on. Wherefore, though I had been there many times before, I appeared ignorant.’
‘And you came, out of your wont, by day? Why?’
‘These whys are like house-flies. Brush one away and another settles. I came, if you would know, to bring a message. There’s a simple answer to a simple question.’
Brion pondered awhile, his clear eyes fixed on the other’s conscious face.
‘Had the message aught to do, I marvel,’ said he suddenly, ‘with two that accosted me at the Queen’s passing the next day? They were the Lord of Leicester for one, and with him a sweet lady.’
Clerivault gave a little gasp, and looked up, and down again.
‘God’s ’slid!’ he exclaimed; and bit his lip. ‘What mad question is this?’
‘Is it mad?’ said the boy. ‘Well, then, it is mad. Yet there were the two, riding alone and seeming to look for my master and me, where we stood, by his directing, apart from the others. And when they espied us they drew rein, and the lady bade me to put foot in her stirrup; and she held me, and, as she held, she kissed my lips and whispered if I was happy.’
Clerivault cleared his throat, yet answered as if something still obstructed it:—
‘A mere casual impulse, Sir—take my word on’t. Something moved her in thy baby face: perchance she had lost a child. And, as to this Leicester, as you call him——’
‘Not I. It was one spake him so, riding back with a message from the Queen. And the lord was wrathful to be so confessed, and struck the man with his whip across the face, so that I could have struck him in his turn.’
Clerivault, with his mouth forming an answer, stared as if petrified. He had never yet seen such fire in this discreet dove’s eyes, and it opened his own.
‘In law, hearsay is no evidence,’ he began, muttering; but the dove stooped upon him with flaming vision:—
‘Do you dare to question my word?’
Clerivault started back.
‘Cry you mercy, Sir! Not for the wide world. I but spoke by instinct the fashion of the trade. Well, I see that blood will out. I must mind for the future my p’s and q’s.’
The boy was still incensed. There was, in truth, a little devil of pride in him, not often to be provoked, but, when it flared, significant of a thing or two. It was a lesson to Clerivault, in whose manner thenceforth some little show of patronage was exchanged for a greater deference.
‘It was the Lord of Leicester, I say,’ said Brion.
‘It was the Lord of Leicester, since you declare it,’ answered the other, with a downcast look.
‘Why do you not answer my question, then?’
‘What question, please your grace? My memory is consumed in this fire.’
‘What connection there might be between the message you brought and the appearance of those two on the road?’
Clerivault’s brow went down and his lower lip up. Desperation was making him sulky.
‘The message was not mine,’ he said, in a tone of chill civility. ‘As well ask the conduit what message it bears from the river to the fountain.’
Brion flung away. He was in a passion, and he had let his passion defeat his particular purpose. He had meant this question to Clerivault to serve as prelude to another even more curious and intimate; and now he could never put it. His pride would prevent him.
But reason soon reasserted itself, and with it came shame that he could have treated his so faithful henchman and comrade with such unkindness. And so, no sooner was his heat departed, but he sought out the poor fellow, and very sweetly asked forgiveness for his rudeness, saying that the fault was his own to have tempted an abuse of confidence, and that, in refusing him, Clerivault had not only vindicated his own honour, but had taught him a lesson in faith which he would not be quick to forget. All of which he said very feelingly, but with a stately manner, as though bestowing his own punishment on himself; but it so wrought on his hearer as quite to overcome him with emotion.
‘Thou dear soul!’ he cried. ‘If I might seek thy confidence without hurt to my trust!’
But Brion stayed him, with the action of a young prince.
‘It would hurt my honour more than thy trust. Say no more on it, I beseech you. I wish no more, and that is enow.’
And they were friends again, but at changed angles; the boy was a little more the patron and the man the client.
Yet it is never to be supposed that these sober and dignified relations represented the all of their comradeship. There was another side to it, which, if less sedate, was infinitely more humorous.
If Clerivault was for one part in three a rational and incorruptible sobriety, he was for the other two a fantastic braggart, and a liar of that splendid order which soars easily above the possibilities, and will not be baulked in its romances for the insignificant reason that the evidences of their untruth are there for anyone who likes to consult them. And as to making himself the hero of his own imaginings, after all, if one is inventing, it would be the merest quixotry to allot to another the brightest part in one’s extravaganzas. He was, in fact, exactly as his master had described him, a tridimensional mixture of gentleman, rhapsodist, and coxcomb, the whole being held together like a bunch of wind-giddy feathers in a jackanapes’ cap, by the steadfast jewel of fidelity.
Brion came very early to see into what was in truth a quite lovable transparency in his comrade, and, while measuring him leniently, to take a rather wicked pleasure in drawing him out and on, withal with a due consideration for his feelings. He was careful, for one thing, not again to offend that super-patriotism which was such a fervid quality in the dear fantastic—on the principle, possibly, that your convert is ever your ultra dogmatist. But, however that might be—and trustworthy evidence on his own part was not to be hoped of Harlequin; perhaps he himself was ignorant of his origin—love of his England glowed like a fierce fire in his bosom. He often rhapsodised on the great vague things he and Brion were destined in good time to accomplish for their country; he would rant and hyperbolise in mystic terms, touched with real vision, on her mighty destiny. The boy would mark him, with a whimsical gravity, and wonder what great place he supposed Fate had assigned him in her scheme of things. He hardly appeared the sort of instrument she would choose for carving a way to new dominion: even, soldierly, Brion had already a secret suspicion that he was not quite the shrewd swordsman he professed, since he himself, for all his inexperience, could sometimes better him at the foils. But certainly he was full of gas; and that might exalt him. The young rascal delighted to supply the fuel for that expansion.
‘Clerivault,’ he said once, ‘it would seem that my Uncle, from what he let fall to me, holds you in great esteem.’
He could venture on so much, while remembering the Judge’s warning. He would have liked to hear Clerivault’s own version of the dramatic happenings which had first outlawed, then inlawed him, so to speak, on the principle, one might assume, of setting a thief to catch a thief; but he could not admit a knowledge of the facts without betraying the great man’s confidence.
The other smoothed his chin, with an ineffably complacent expression.
‘Ha!’ said he. ‘He might admit he has reason.’
‘I know,’ said the boy, nodding his head soberly. ‘It is not every man’s good fortune to be gifted with a paragon.’
‘Nathless I would not grudge it him,’ said Clerivault; ‘for in truth no man deserves it better, or could more appreciate its moral and corporeal value. Yet was it good fortune, as thou sayest, to light on this fallen star, hung never in the constellation of the scales, but shed like a glittering gem from Mars his fiery breast. I had not been a lawyer but for love of one man.’
‘He found you fallen, you say, Clerivault? How?’
‘No matter. Kings fall: I have Kings’ blood in my veins, ha! He who hath commanded knows how to serve. I have served and do serve like a King. To the greater light the lesser is but a shadow; and yet it is a light. I am myself, Kingly; and yet I am no King. But when all men shall be Kings and all Kings men, then shall the world open its eyes and see the Millennium. And in the meantime I serve, Kingly.’
Brion opened his eyes to this astonishing rodomontade. Laughter quivered in him, though he dared not yield to it.
‘In what way Kingly?’ said he.
‘As one who leads, Sir,’ answered Clerivault, ‘while feigning but to follow.’
‘And do you lead my Uncle, while so feigning?’
‘Soft, in your ear, now! Gray’s Inn might tell a tale.’
‘Gray’s Inn?’
‘Ha! You know not. ’Twas there we had our dwelling—no chambers nobler or more noted; and he who occupied them a fitting brilliant to such setting. Ancient, barrister, bencher—he had stood to reach the highest honour, that of duplex reader, but that sour Fortune tripped him. He shone, Sir; and, if like the carbuncle, which, being exposed to the sun, and thereafter set in darkness, repays the light it borrows, still—he shone. I say no more.’
He need not. The implication was plain to demonstration.
‘Wert thou the sun, Clerivault,’ said Brion, with a little gasp, ‘that made this carbuncle so to shine?’
The paragon coughed.
‘No sun, Sir, by your favour—I know my limitations—yet mayhap with some power to illuminate. He might consult me—I do not say—there have been judgments passed for his, which—but it ill becomes a man to praise his own wares. You have never heard speak of our “mootings”?’
‘No. What were they?’
‘Disputations, Sir, convened in the Great Hall to argue moot points of law. There would be a counterfeit case stated, and counsel appointed to represent both plaintiff and defendant. Then was the cream of legal subtleness displayed, and not least in the devising of new theses for discussion. I could tell of one that possessed a happy adroitness in such contrivings, though he might not appear in person to claim the credit of his own inventions. But, like the puppet-master who, himself unseen, pulls the strings that set his dolls a-dancing, he was the known originator of some debates most admired in their subjects. So with our masques and revels, wherein, were some great fresh device apparent, one would be named for its certain author who shall not be named by me. No, not rack nor the strappado should wring divulgement from these lips.’
So he would ‘gas,’ in the modern term, and to the infinite tickling of his young hearer, who, nevertheless, found his affection for the queer creature increased rather than diminished by this knowledge of his weakness. Ingenuous vanity is ever the most forgivable.
In the meantime the days went on, and passed into weeks, and still the master of the house delayed to appear. Brion wondered, and would sometimes put his wonder into words, seeking the reason of Clerivault. But it was so apparent that the man either knew of none, or, if he knew, meant to keep his own counsel in the matter, that soon the boy desisted, and resolved philosophically upon making the best of the situation as he found it, and leaving all conjecture for present content. And that was the wise course to take, however sudden the turn which brought it to an end.
CHAPTER VII.
THE OLD WELL HOUSE
One night Brion woke suddenly from a disturbed sleep, and sat up in the dark, his heart thumping. He had been dreaming, and in his dreams it had seemed to him that something shadowy and noiseless had entered by the door, and come and bent above his bed, its features a white blur in a pall of blackness. So strong was his sense of a presence even then in the room, or only recently gone from it, that he held his breath to hearken for any indication of its whereabouts; and so sitting, a little fearful, was presently reassured by the sound of the great door in the hall below being undisguisedly barred and bolted. Whereat, concluding that it was earlier than he had supposed, and that the household was only now making secure for the night, he lay down again, convinced he had been dreaming, and was soon deep in the waters of oblivion.
But the waking morning brought disquiet with it. No Clerivault appeared from the neighbouring closet where he was used to sleep, to attend, as was his wont, upon his young charge, and Brion, after a period of restless waiting, was fain to dress himself, which he did with all speed and in a growing uneasiness. Leaving his room at the end, and going by Clerivault’s door, he found it opened, and old Harlock within, feigning to busy herself over the unused bed. But she was there, it was evident by her pretence of answering a question that was not put, to invite comment.
‘Eh?’ she whined. ‘What sayest? I’m slow to hear.’
‘I did not speak,’ said Brion. ‘Where is Clerivault?’
‘Where?’ she answered. ‘Ask his master for that. I’m ne’er in the goodman’s confidence.’
‘His master!’
‘Ay, his master and ours—bondslaves to his will. A may come and go, and do with us as a lists. Be his purpose dark or light, in blindness are we sworn to him, to see naught and follow at his call.’
‘May come—my Uncle!’ exclaimed the boy, all astounded: ‘has he been here, then?’
‘Been and gone,’ answered the old woman. ‘Came like a thief in the night, to steal nothing but away again.’
‘And took Clerivault with him?’
‘Took feather-head—ay, as a man in love with Folly might pluck and put a pasque-flower behind his ear. They’re long ridden off together.’
Brion heard in dismay. His superstitious tremors of the night had owed, then, to woefuller presage than any imagined hauntings. To lose his friend, thus, without warning, without a word! it was grievous. Something swelled in his breast. How could Clerivault have left him so? And yet he might have had no choice. Who was he to cross the will of that dark masterful spirit who controlled his destinies? It must have been his Uncle, the boy was now convinced, who had come into his room in the night, and looked down upon him. The thought thrilled him, half awfully, half glowingly. He pictured his own unconscious face, and that other, white and austere, bent above it—and the silent entry and the silent withdrawal. Why? Why had his Uncle arrived thus in the night, and as obscurely vanished, leaving no trace of his visit but that dreaming memory? And yet it was a memory he would not be without. He stood staring at the old woman.
‘I am in the dark,’ he said.
Her eyes, like two round stones, were set fixedly on his.
‘Thou art not the first in this house to be,’ she said. ‘Secrets and mysteries before thy time have encompassed those that dwelt herein. Their shadows yet linger in the rooms and walk upon the stairs. Thou art not the first to feel the darkness and unrest. There is always coming and going here; ay, even when it is emptiest of mortal life—always something to see, though thou seest it not. This is the place where plots are laid in darkness and fulfilled in silence.’
To say that Brion, hearing her, was conscious of a passing chill is not to underrate his healthy young sanity. He believed the old creature crazy: yet there is an eeriness, after all, in crazy company. What she said might have no significance, but somehow it assorted drearily with the lonely and desolate house and with the strange movements of its inmates. His physical shiver converted itself, however, in shame of its own weakness, into a shrug of irritable dissent.
‘I am not afeard of your plots and shadows, old mother,’ said he, with petulant scorn. ‘It is enough shadow for me that my friend hath left me, without a word.’
She nodded her head grimly, thinning her lips.
‘Brave spirit,’ she said. ‘It shall need all of itself, maybe, in the days to come.’
He turned from her, with an impatient exclamation, and began to descend the stairs. Half way down he met the boy William, mounting hot-faced towards him. This was a buxom swain, on the near side of manhood, rosy and bucolic. His face was round as a gooseberry; an incipient corn-gold beard frizzled on the spit of his chin. He pulled up, and twitched his forelock with a breathless grimace.
‘Was comin’, Mars Brion, to help ee to dress,’ he said, panting. ‘Mars Phineas a bade me humbly to tender myself.’
‘William,’ said the boy, ‘did Clerivault—did my Uncle say when they would be back again?’
The scullion shook his noddle soberly.
‘Mars Clerivault a’ bade me to tell ee to be of good heart and not to forget him. Mars Bagott was in a main hurry to be gone. A mounted to thy chamber with a taper while the cattle were a-baiting, and was off as soon as down.’
‘Whence did he come and whither ride, William—dost know?’
But William knew nothing—only that the Judge had arrived unexpectedly by night, big Nol attending, and, after the briefest stay, had left again, taking the porter and Clerivault with him. Neither had Phineas, when presently questioned, any more definite information to give. They both, it was evident, felt for the boy, and wished to do all in their power to make up to him for the loss he had suffered, and to ameliorate the loneliness of his lot. But a sense of grievance was on Brion, and his response was neither grateful nor gracious. He felt betrayed, in this committal of him to virtual solitude and neglect, where he had been led by his comrade to count upon cheerfulness and bright company. It was cruel, he thought, so to have inveigled him on false pretences from a loved and happy home, and he could not be induced, in that first sharpness of his affliction, to practise the philosophy which after all was native to his young temperament, or to look upon his desertion in any light other than that of deliberate treachery. He would touch no breakfast that morning, much to the master-cook’s concern, and generally seemed inclined to prepare himself in the perversest possible way for the anchoretic ordeal which lay before him.
And in truth that ordeal proved itself, as its character developed, a sufficiently depressing affair—something comparable with that of an eaglet, say, let loose, with a clipped wing, in an empty fowl run. For the liberty that rode on horseback was for one thing denied Brion, his nag having been taken away by the visitors for a spare mount; and so was he deprived of one great incitement to forgetfulness in exercise.
No alternative was his but dreary wanderings alone, or in the company, if he would, of a bashful clown like William. Phineas was all very well for material pabulum, and could eke moralise humorously enough on his craft; but he was hardly the comrade for a rambling day on the moors. On the whole Brion preferred to be left to himself, that he might indulge, half in rancour, half in real heartache, the dejection of his mood.
And so he did, and experienced no soon reaction from it. In all the long weeks to follow unrelieved on his Uncle’s visit, no word of explanation or reassurance was to reach him; but he was left to formulate his own ideas as to the meaning of things, and to get through the weary days as best he could. At first, so miserable was he, he had no spirit to continue the open life of the hills and moors; but he would mope about the desolate house, vainly seeking distraction in its few familiar objects, or haunt the wildered grounds about it, kicking his cheerless heels among the tangled vegetation with which it was overrun.
One day, when he was so idly disposed, trying to trace out the original contour of the beds in what had been the garden, now a confused waste of weed and vegetable matter, he made a discovery. He had covered, in his aimless dawdlings, the inner circuit of the estate, stopping now and again to look over the boundary wall into the dead stagnation of the moat, or to watch the oily scum on its surface open and shut like a mouth whenever he pitched a stone to it to gulp and swallow. Coming round, then, by way of the porter’s lodge, he ascended for the dozenth time, and in default of any brighter suggestion, to the empty rooms above the gate, only, for the dozenth time, to gaze with lacklustre eyes from their vacant windows, and to descend again as objectless as he had mounted. Eastward of the gatehouse were ranged the empty stables, the empty byres, the empty pig-pens and barns—for the Grange had farmed its own produce in days gone by—and beyond these, in a bastion of the wall, stood the columbarium, or circular dovecote built of stone, which contained within it a revolving ladder, like a cheval-de-frise on end, used for reaching the birds where they might rest in any of the rows of little cells with which the whole surface of the interior was chambered. There were no pigeons there now, nor had been for an age; but there was some mild excitement to be borrowed from mounting and spinning on the ladder; and Brion was contemplating that distraction, when his eye fell on the well in the courtyard which supplied the house with water. It was a familiar enough object, but never till this moment regarded by him in the light of a particular association. Was it, could it have been the very well down which the miser had cast the body of his victim those long years ago? Tingling, on tiptoe, he went to it and looked over. The hatch was closed; the bucket, the slack of its rope looped to the windlass, stood on the wall rim. And then a thought occurred to him. This well was sunk in the open for all to see, and the old woman had distinctly spoken of a well-house. Where?
Suddenly, with the birth of an idea, a thrill went through him, and he started walking. He went past the stables, past the byres, past the columbarium, and so into the wild ground beyond, where he kept along the wall for a distance of fifty yards or so until he came to a dense clump of ilexes, and there stopped, his heart going a little excitedly. He had often noted and passed by this place, but had never before, for some unexplainable reason, been moved to push into it. The trees had built themselves up in a gloomy thicket high above the wall and over it, and, bridging the moat, were continued in a twin clump on the farther side. They were so grown down to the ground, so grappled to it by the long grasses which had woven themselves into the bases of the mass, as to appear impenetrable. Only a wrinkle, or suture, in the hill of sombre green seemed to betray to the sharp eyes of the boy the existence of some former passage between the foliage, now long closed in and hidden.
Brion stood and hesitated. Somehow the place awed him—its gloom, its silence, its distance from the house. There was a brooding stillness about it which seemed to breathe of death and mystery. Then, characteristically enough, he seized his determination in hand, and made the plunge. He was of those whose instinct is always rather to challenge a terror than by flying to call it after them.
Now, he had no sooner parted the boughs than he saw his suspicion confirmed. Very faint, very blurred, yet still distinguishable, the mark of a half-obliterated path ran under the trees. With just one sigh, a little shaken, he entered and let the green covert close behind him. And then he felt a shock of relief. It was not near so dark within the great thicket as its exterior would have led him to suppose. A thousand threads of gray light, rained down from overhead like the jets in a shower-bath, made melancholy visible there. He went forward a few steps, turned the trunk of a tree, and saw a low building before him.
It was just a stone belvedere, moss grown, green with age and neglect, but still whole and unbroken. Its area might have measured four yards square; it stood some ten feet from the ground to the spring of the roof, which was low-peaked and tiled with plates of rough-hewn stone. Its front was open for two thirds of its width, and through the aperture Brion caught sight of the low parapet of a well projecting from the floor. Tingling all through, he stole forward and looked in.
There was light enough, at least, to distinguish things by, and to stimulate both his curiosity and his fear. Here was the deadly spot, without a question, and the sense of it was like stinging nettles in his veins. He dared not go farther, but held to the doorpost and stood staring in, on the prick of flight. He was looking into a dark and death-cold little chamber, empty save for the well, sunk in the middle of the flagged floor, and for one other rather wickedly suggestive thing. This was a huge drum wheel, ten feet in diameter, and attached by a short axle to one of the side walls. It was built of heavy wood and was shaped like a round box-lid, the open side outermost. The boy had no idea what was its purpose; but his day was the day of Holy Inquisitions and their terrific legends, and there was something in the appearance of this sinister engine to suggest a thought of racking and mangled limbs. He was peering at it fascinated, his lips parted, when something happened. From the depths of the well, in the utter stillness, rose a little clucking noise, like a gobble of low laughter. Human endurance had reached its limit. He turned and fled, and bursting, panting and white faced, into the open, almost fell over a figure that seemed to advance upon him at the moment.
But, even as he cried out—lo! it was Gammer Harlock. She had a basket on her arm, and was poking here and there among the weedy tangle in search of the simples she needed for her drugs and potions.
‘Eh!’ she said, never turning from her search to regard the pale lad standing beside her. ‘So it’s you, is it—the young heart that fears nor plot nor shadow! What ailed that cry, then, and this sound of near running, like dead leaves blown along a wintry road?’
‘It is my breath shaking in me,’ said Brion. ‘I am winded, mother.’
He answered stoutly, but he was finely scared. He had never so welcomed the company of this joyless old hag, or had so clung to it for human solace and reassurance. She answered, stooping as she spoke:—
‘Never blown lungs so rattled, I trow, save when the heart was in the throat, like a pea in a whistle.’
He ‘owned up,’ with a little trembling laugh:—
‘I was frightened—there, I confess it. I had never before guessed it was there, and, when I did, I went in. Mother, is it the well?’
For the first time she rose erect, and looked him in the face.
‘A fool is a fool,’ she said, ‘be he ne’er so brave. Bear that in mind when next you go to look into the dark places. So ye dared? And what frighted ye?’
‘It was a sound came up from the well. I thought it laughed.’
‘And might it not laugh, hugging its secret all these years? Mayhap it was that laugh killed Fulk. A was found dead there, his head hanging over the well-rim. There were things in his eyes—things seen in the black under water as he lay gasping out his soul. God give him mercy!’
Brion stood silent a minute. Curiosity, enough to hold him to the spot, still fought in him for mastery over his fears.
‘Did he, Fulk, use it, as a well?’ he asked.
The old woman shook her head.
‘That in the court,’ she said, ‘had already been sunk before his time. ’Tis an old, old pit, this—Roman. I’ve heard it called. It was there before the moat itself. Never bucket nor windlass has it had in my day. Like enow they were removed to the other.’
‘And what is that great wheel, mother, fastened to the wall?’
He spoke with a shiver, for in some way the evil spirit of the place seemed concentrated to him in that diabolical mill. But the gammer did not know. ‘Some wicked contrivance of Fulk’s,’ she supposed; but for what purpose it was impossible to say. It was there when she came: and that was all she knew about it.
She bent to her simples again, and, while she sought and plucked, Brion lingered near her. If she knew the reason well enough, she was flattered by the boy’s dependence on her. There was a soft place for him in even her dark old heart. He was a bold beautiful child, so to have dared the terrors of that mystery which to her was an article of superstitious faith; and his flying to her in the last resort had touched her to the quick.
That night, as he was finishing his supper in the great gloomy hall, she came in to him with a handful of early daisies.
‘Lay these under thy pillow, and know sweet dreams,’ said she: and for some reason Brion did not laugh, but took the little blossoms from her with a wistful look into her eyes.