To the market-place of Plymouth, up in the high town, twice a week the country folk brought their produce, consisting of eggs and fresh butter, great jars of scalded cream, fat ducks and capons, brawn in marbled columns, apples by the barrel, and vegetables, such as were grown, by the crate. These were laid out on trestles, with alleys between, and thither flocked the housewives of every condition and age, the sedate on business bent, and the frivolous on enjoyment. It made an animated scene in the bright sunshine, to which Brion was irresistibly drawn. He had not cast his melancholy; but he felt it good to be among his own blossom-cheeked countrywomen again, and indeed to be alive; for after all he was young, and Youth finds it hard to resist the influences of jollity and fine weather. So he moved among the stalls, forgetful and happy for the time being, and leaving behind him, like a very human craft, a swell of soft bosoms and following eyes, that dwelt tenderly on the passing of a form so gallant and a face so manly attractive—but of all that he was unconscious.
‘Come buy, come buy,’ cried a shrill buxom dame, presiding over a counter of gingerbread, and speaking across the shoulder of a young woman, who, busy with her purse, stood with her back to Brion.
‘Alack, I lack a ha’penny, mother,’ answered a soft voice, ‘to buy me my gingerbread ship withal. So I must e’en go fasting for to-day.’
She seemed a comely young woman, judging by what is not always to be trusted, the human reverse. She had a quantity of bright hair, insufficiently confined within a little staid Puritanical coif, which released certain tendrils of it to nestle in the nape of a neck like ivory. She wore a dress of plain stone blue, with a short white linen tippet about her shoulders, and might have been a country wench, were it not for the smooth delicacy of her skin, and some quality in her voice which spoke of a better refinement. A small basket hung on her arm, and she looked into it.
‘I’faith,’ she said, with a little crow, and producing the coin, ‘it is here after all. I cried out, mother, before my chickens were hatched.’
Brion gasped, and stood as if stricken. What was this wonder—this delirious wonder? A sob—laughter—were in his throat together. As the vendee, having received her gingerbread ship and placed it in her basket, went off down the alley, he followed in pursuit, stumbling, half blind. She passed out into the sunlight and he after. He had not yet seen her face, but he looked for tell-tale characteristics, agonised for them, and, identifying them, as he believed, felt a very sickness of joy. She walked like one who did not love violent exercise for its own sake; there was a tranquil placidity in her movements; he thought of the white rabbit he had once possessed, ‘warm and soft and cuddlesome,’ and felt a thrill in his arms. She turned into a quiet street, going down-hill towards the Hoe, and he was closing on her. She seemed to become conscious of his pursuit, for her steps suddenly faltered, hesitated and slowed down, as if to let him pass. But he did not pass, and she turned, a shadow of apprehension in her eyes; she turned—and stopped.
He uttered a little irresistible cry:—
‘Joan—Joan! O, after all these years!’
She stood looking wide-eyed at him, as if he were an apparition; but she did not speak—a woman where had been a child; ripeness where had been promise. Yet he would have laughed to scorn the thought of one doubt possessing his heart. How could it, seeing that her image had never ceased to dwell there?
‘Do you not know me?’ he pleaded. Drollery quivered in him. ‘One does not cry out,’ he said, ‘before one’s chickens are hatched. The moment I heard that, “Joan for a ducat!” says I; and without your turning I knew you.’
He searched her face, grown in knowledge and in sweet self-consciousness; but unchanged in its flower-like complexion, its dear blue eyes, its straight level brows: he searched it, pleading for recognition and remembrance, and, searching, there suddenly were the little flickering betraying dimples at the wings of the short nose.
‘Ah! you do know me?’ he said, with a great jubilant sigh. ‘Say who I am, Joan.’
‘Brion,’ she half whispered, and something seemed to throb in her white throat.
‘Yes, Brion, Joan. How sweet it is to hear my name upon your lips again! Is not this wonderful? Come where we can talk in quiet. We have such thousands of things to tell one another. What are you doing with gingerbread ships at your age?’
He laughed, and choked, and bantered, dancing with excitement.
‘I was going to eat it on the Hoe,’ she said. ‘I have eaten one near every week since you sailed away in a ship. I used to eat men.’
‘What is that? How did you know I sailed?’
‘I was on the Quay. I saw you go down to the boat. I was sure it was you; and then I heard one point to you by name.’
‘And you were so close, and I never guessed! Curst fortune, that; but never mind, since I have found you. Six months ago it was, Joan, and such things have happened to me, wonderful and sad. I am only this moment returned—but yesterday. But we will speak of all that anon. It is not the first, nor best nor worst, of what we have to say. Where have you been all these long years? And did you in truth eat a gingerbread ship every week in pretty pledge to me, you dear? My thoughts and words tumble over one another. They all push to be first out, because I am wild with such joy. Come where we can be quiet. Your colour comes and goes. Are you as madly happy as I am? Joan, had you never seen me once again since we parted, before that day of the sailing?’
‘Never once, Brion.’
‘Nor heard of me?’
‘No, never.’
‘Nor I of you. It near broke my heart. Well, where were you?’
‘Here, in Plymouth.’
‘My God! Not all the time?’
‘Near all the time, indeed.’
‘O, monstrous and incredible fate! So near and yet so divorced! And to think of all the suffering of these years! Who brought you here?’
‘’Twas a maiden sister of Sir John’s. She had me to live with her after his death, and I am with her still. She ought that duty, she believed, to him and me.’
‘And she loves you, Joan?’
‘Not greatly, Brion, I fear. She loves atonement.’
‘For what?’
The girl was silent, hanging her head a little.
‘Ah!’ said Brion. ‘Well, sit thee down.’
She was glad to do so, being more overcome than her looks confessed. They had found a warm grassy hollow, overlooking the Sound, where they could rest and talk without fear of interruption. Joan sat clasping her hands about her knees—a characteristic position which Brion observed with a laughing bliss. He flung himself beside her, and, resting on his elbow, feasted and feasted his starved eyes on all that recovered dearness.
‘You are not changed in the least,’ he said—‘only taller and a little fuller. You are one of those, I think, Joan, who hang at lovely ripeness all their lives.’
A faint pink mantled her cheek. She turned to him with a caressing reproof:—
‘I am a woman now, Brion. It is not right you should speak to me so. And you have grown too, and into a fine man. I think you very handsome.’
‘Do you?’ He laughed. ‘Why don’t you eat your gingerbread?’
‘I don’t think I want it now.’
‘Let us share it together, and be shipmates.’
‘Very well.’
They broke and munched—or pretended to. They were both far too agitated to eat. ‘I have seen squawks, real squawks, since last we met,’ he said; and then suddenly, recalling the association the word conveyed, his eyes filled with gravity.
‘Now, tell me, Joan,’ he said, ‘why does this lady not love you?’
He sought to take her hand in his, but she would not let him.
‘I would not meet their wishes,’ she said, in a low voice. ‘That is one reason why.’
‘What wishes?’
She looked him full in the face without answering.
‘Ah!’ he cried: ‘the suitor failed?’
‘He was fat and mottled like a toad,’ she said pleadingly. ‘He was Sir John’s, my father’s, shipping-agent.’
He conned her queerly, and a little sadly.
‘Your father’s, Joan? Do you still say so?’
‘Why should I not?’ she answered, wondering. ‘I don’t understand you.’
‘Joan, do you remember that first day we met in the beautiful glen?’
‘Yes, Brion.’
‘And you said, as we parted, that I had guessed your secret.’
‘Brion, I never did. I remember every word. I said “Have you guessed my secret?” Which was not to say you had.’
‘That is but a quibble, after all. Why would you not be candid with me?’
She dropped her lids, plucking at the blades of grass, in a way which recalled, O, so pathetically, the sorrow of an earlier day.
‘I’faith and in truth I am Joan, Brion,’ she said piteously.
‘What, two Joan Medleys?’
‘Yes, two Joans. I cannot help it if my mother named me so.’
‘Your mother? She would have two daughters named Joan?’
‘Nay, but one. It was my father had the two.’
She raised the blue eyes, with a line of appealing pain between them, to his. O, will you not understand? they said.
‘Joan!’ whispered Brion, in a voice of amazed comprehension: ‘are you—are you a “bustard” too?’
She did not answer, and he heaved himself a thought nearer her.
‘You poor dear! And I never thought or guessed, blockhead that I am. Why, to be sure’—he laid a compassionate hand on her arm. ‘Did you never know her, Joan?’
The girl shook her head.
‘Only in dreams. I think she died very young.’
‘Like mine. O, Joan! were we not guided by these two to meet one another? I think we need not have feared the spirits of the ilex grove. Tell me, dear’—he pressed closer, and laid his cheek coaxingly against the soft shoulder; and she flushed, but suffered him—even leaned a little, irresistibly, towards the caress. ‘I have been longing, yet agonising, from the first to put one question to you—just one. Joan—you are still unwed?’
Looking straight before her, she whispered yes—it stood to reason.
‘Why?’ he asked rapturously.
‘If you do not know, Brion, how can I tell you?’
Every nerve in his body thrilled with ecstasy.
‘You need not,’ he said. ‘I hide my eyes before such loving constancy—I will, Joan, yes, I will, in your hair, in your neck. O, how could I ever have doubted you, my own maid!’
‘Did you doubt me, Brion?’
‘The way of parting has been long, sweetheart, and sometimes unhappy; but it finds me at the blissful end, as at the beginning, thy maiden knight. Yet there have been moments when despair and loneliness—O, Joan! will you forgive me, not that I broke my plight, but that ever I thought I could?’
‘Poor boy! It is different with a man.’
‘You sweet! Then, sometimes, thinking you—what I thought you, it seemed a mad presumption on my part—O, I have such a tale to tell you, Joan! But now, two nameless things together——’
‘It was that, Brion, which made me afraid to set you right. I thought, if you knew the truth, you would not want to love me any more.’
‘What has loving you to do with titles? A man, save his veins were arctic ice, could love and desire you for your own self, I think. Did your father treat you kindly?’
‘He had not been unkind, I trow, unless for my lady sister, who liked me not. He gave me my little Gritty. O, Brion, the day I had to go, and could not keep my tryst! He was ever so in his decisions, sudden and inexorable. I thought I should have wept myself to death.’
She turned to him, bewildered even with the memory: he held out passionate arms, unable to contain himself longer.
‘Come to your true-mate, pretty bird—Nay, I will have you. O, darling, after all these years—ten, if a day, Joan—and I have all that hunger to make good!’
‘O, forbear, Brion! We shall be seen. O, I love you so.’ And then, all rosy and ruffled, she looked up in his face, and said, as she had said once before, so quaintly and trustingly: ‘Will you marry me, Brion?’
He laughed with joy.
‘How can such constancy live in such lovely kindness? Is it all for me—all? If I said no, Joan, would you love me still?’
‘Yes, Brion.’
‘Did ever “yes” sigh so sweetly from troubled lips! Shall we go to the church now?’
‘I would we might.’
‘Why not? I have friends of weight here. Hist, Joan—shall we, in good sooth? Are we not ten years betrothed, to justify a little haste at the end? Will you meet me again this afternoon?’
She whispered that she would, ashamed, now she had spoken, of her forwardness. The poor child had suffered in these years, made the bait and foil of a frigid and intolerant Pharisaism. The Mistress Medley who had undertaken her charge had never ceased to point in her the moral of ungodly appetites, or to hold her responsible, as it were, for her father’s sin. She had led a dull, disregarded life—on a penny a week pocket money—and could have suffered it only, as she told Brion, on the sure conviction that he would return to her some day. In that faith she had never wavered; it had kept her heart alive, and supported her through every desolate tribulation.
And Brion, remembering his own errant thoughts, bowed ashamed before that whole-hearted fidelity. He could not give his tender maid enough love and fondling, but longed only for the moment when she should be secured to him, with nothing but death ever again to part them. They talked together yet awhile before they separated, for of what, in simple volume, had they not to deliver their souls—explanation, story, confession, all the crowded details of that long interval? Yet the stupendous thing of all was that their idyll, begun in the perfection of blossom, was about to consummate itself in the perfection of fruit. None could look at them, lovely things, and doubt it, and not envy either.
Brion sought and found an accommodating chaplain—a jolly fellow, whom he had already met, the eve before his sailing, in Raleigh’s company. The pleasant cleric, very willing to oblige the friend of so great a friend, made no demur, was willing to take his handsome fee and eschew ceremonial, and in fact bound the couple man and wife that very afternoon in his own parlour. It was the merest formality, like signing a deed of gift to one already in possession of the property: and so, I think, the two regarded it. They had always been one.
Then Brion, resolute to finish the business offhand, took his young bride to lodgings prepared for her, while he went alone to face the old harpy, her kinswoman, with the deed they had done. He went, armed with indignation and authority, to the handsome dwelling overlooking Sutton Pool and the Catwater where the abhorrent spinster lived, and saw her, and delivered himself. There was a scene. It seemed Mistress Medley knew of the ex-Judge by name, and held him in loathing as a reputed Papish recusant. She heaped terms of foulest abuse on Quentin Bagott’s head and on his house, which was already, she was rejoiced to know—if rumours which had been wafted across the moor were to be trusted—approaching the retribution which its iniquities deserved, and a choice example of which was to witness in this deed of infamy wrought by one of its nameless scions. Seduction and defilement, she was pleased to say, were natural to one bred in that atmosphere, and the will to surrender to them as natural in a child of Shame. But, as the girl had chosen her bed, so might she lie in it. For her part, she had only to declare that from that moment she cast the graceless bastard from her door, and desired never to see her face again.
And then Brion spoke, in his quiet level way, in which, however, he could be pretty poisonous when he chose. He began by putting the lady right on certain points. Seduction, he said, was always a jealous term in the mouths of those whose unwomanliness had never had reason to fear it, and whose spite, it seemed, could go so far as to apply it to the very Sacrament of Wedlock. And as to children of shame, said he, the shame was in those who made and kept them so, and the truer justice in his opinion would be to disinherit the father who begot a child unlawfully, and endow with his forfeited name that innocent victim of his wrong-doing. ‘’Tis ever,’ he went on, ‘old loveless virginity that most hates the child of love; but to do it in the name of religion is a beastly Pharisaism. Go on thy knees to Heaven, old woman, and pray it forgive thee for thy harsh and narrow persecution of one entrusted by it to thee as an instrument of atonement for a wickedness perpetrated. Remember, ’twas Fortune, not thine own virtue, gave thee a name, else had thou stood a sorry chance of any. And now I have but this to say. I shake, on my Joan’s behalf, the dust of this cruel bondage from my feet. She leaves it joyously for one pledged long years ago, and now confirmed by Heaven’s sanction. And with that I end.’
He did, and gained the street unhurried, leaving behind him a picture of such baffled and speechless venom as, when he came to recall it, made him shake with laughter. For, the business once accomplished, he had no mind to let its memory disturb him, but recaptured at once all that mood of exultant rapture to which it had been but a brief disagreeable interlude. It had left him all he sought and desired, absolute independent possession of the sweetest wife in the world. Only one thing remained to cloud his thoughts with some shadowy disquiet—that triumphant allusion to disturbances threatening across the moors. Was it true, and could it be possible they had the Grange for their objective? Remembering his own uneasiness before he left, and the precautions he had taken, he could not but feel a certain inquietude. At the same time he trusted to Raleigh’s promise to nip any such demonstrations, should they occur, in the bud. But he felt it necessary to the setting of his mind at rest to go at once. He and Joan must bid good-bye to Plymouth on the morrow.
And so, having resolved, he abandoned himself to the happiness of the moment. It seemed too stupendously incredible that after all these weary years of separation he and Joan were found, rejoined and wedded, and all in one day. Yes, wedded—the mad, preposterous thing! He chuckled in mere helpless ecstasy to think of it.
They had taken horse for the moors all in the sweet sunrise, for Brion had set his heart on going round by the Glen, which would mean a thirty mile ride in all, and it was necessary for them to start with the dawn. And sure no sweeter Eos than this young bride of a night could have brought the morning over the hills, or given assurance of a lovelier day to come. She wore the rose of shy fulfilment in her cheek, and the heaven of happiness in her eyes; and Love went with her, beating his golden fans against the streaming air, and the purple blossom of the heather rose about her horse’s pasterns, trying to kiss her feet. She had deserved all her rapture for her faith, and, better, that test of womanliness, which was to prove her not only a thing for man’s joy, but for his support and refuge in affliction.
They stopped mid-way to water at a little spring, and eat the fruit and cakes they had brought with them; then pushed on and, gaining the heavenly glen about mid-day, tethered their horses to a tree, and in the soft October stillness climbed the side of the hill, and reached the bower. And there, as he had predetermined, Brion knelt at his dear love’s knee, and confessed, what he had hitherto withheld, the name of his sore temptation.
And she held him to her, stroking his hair and temples, yielding wholly to him the passion which the memories of that fragrant isolation stirred beyond repression.
‘My king, my love,’ she whispered: ‘it is only for poor Alse I sorrow—not thy thought. Could I grudge thee that, and not wrong her, who after all had the first claim on thee? And that dear Clerivault that so loved and desired her for thee. He knew what was right and honourable. How can I of myself ever make good to thee that bitter loss?’
‘My Joan,’ he said: ‘no loss to me in all the world could ever be like to that of losing thee; and no recovery so perfect. I am resigned to meeting Harlequin in Heaven: no Joan would have satisfied my endless longing but Joan on earth.’
A while they dwelt there in the bliss of kisses and soft speech; and then, at last, with a sigh, Brion rose and cried they must be going.
‘For home,’ he said—‘home with Joan: we are bringing our idyll home. We know not what awaits us, girl; but what we carry with us in ourselves, that must we find there. It will suffice us, whatever haps.’
They climbed down hand in hand, and regaining their cropping steeds, mounted and rode on. It took them no long while to cover the remaining distance, and by two o’clock they were entering into the first of the track which led towards the Moated Grange. As they drew near the point where its chimneys would first come into sight, a flutter of emotions arose in Brion’s breast. How was he returning, and to what, after six months’ silence and separation from these old familiar scenes? And with a wife no one of them knew or guessed? A sudden shyness of the explanatory rôle he had to play, in the midst of welcome and excitement, seized on him like a paralysis. Yet he felt no doubt as to Joan’s reception: they would all love her for his sake, and not least his Uncle, to whom her gentle winsome presence would appeal like sunshine breaking out of long storm.
The afternoon was very still and hazy, with a curious vaporous closeness in it, which seemed to meet their faces in hot whiffs, as when one stands near a wind-swayed bonfire. Brion sniffed, raising his head.
‘What is that?’ said he. ‘Are they burning heather? My faith, it is sultry here; and the insects they so hum and drone, one might be in a wood instead of the open. And yet ’tis not like insects neither.’
The murmur, or clamour, whatever it was, appeared all in front of them, and to swell in volume as they advanced. They could see nothing beyond the sloping track before them, and the trees which topped it. As they reached these, Brion pulled on his rein, bidding his companion stop.
‘Listen!’ he said.
The noise, with their reaching the level ground, had sensibly increased, as when a swell is opened in an organ. Busy, multitudinous, inarticulate, it seemed as if compounded of a confusion of human voices, and cracking whips, and hissing kettles, their shrill spasmodic utterance perpetually punctuating a dull booming roar which never ceased; but all in a minor key, as though subdued by distance, and the closeness of the high trees which here shut in the track.
‘What is it, Brion?’ whispered the girl fearfully.
Something caught the tail of his eye, and he looked up to see a drift of what he could not mistake scudding over the tree-tops.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. His face was suddenly set like death. ‘Stay where you are, Joan, while I go and see.’
He drove spurs into his horse, and, leaping forward, rushed the few score yards to the bend where the Grange would come into view. He was incredulous still: it would appear too impossible a devilry on the part of Fate to have struck this blow, and struck it coincidently with his return. Yet, even before he reached the bend, he knew that it was true—was true. The red sparkle of it, like a cluster of hellish jewels, blinked and snickered at him through the green leaves. And then the next moment he had broken into the open, and pulling up so sharply as almost to throw his horse back on its haunches, rose in his stirrups and saw. From base to attic the house was one streaming robe of flame.
When the crowner, with his twelve good men and true—yokels, for the most part, drawn from the neighbouring farms—came to sit on the body of Quentin Bagott, Scrivener Harnett—he who had witnessed the Will—was present, as representing the interests of the heir to the estate. Evidence as to facts being incontestable, the jury, following the plain lead of their officer—himself a friend of the attorney—gave in their verdict to the effect that the deceased had died by the visitation of God, being a very stout gentleman and suspect of Popish inclinations; which rider, however, the crowner—at Master Harnett’s instance—ruling to be irrelevant, it was omitted from the record, and the simple verdict left to stand.
Melton, indeed, had every reason for desiring to suppress any linking of the dead man’s name with the recusancy associated with it, wishing it to be assumed that the intimacy between them, by which he had himself come unexpectedly to profit, had been one of pure, long-standing, social good-fellowship. The attorney, the inquest over, took particular pains, on his behalf, to convey that impression abroad, with the result that the situation, after serving for a local nine days’ wonder, came generally to be accepted, and some hopes even to be entertained that the Grange, under its new ownership, might cease to be a focus for suspicion and mystery. It seemed a hardship on the absent heir-presumptive; but, as to that, there was no telling, since all had been an enigma which passed behind those drear-shut walls; and for the rest the Law, which has made of Possession a fetish to awe the stoutest scepticism, was there to support its own most incontrovertible claims. So, all considered, it would be well, perhaps, thought popular opinion, to resign to peaceful and undisputed enjoyment of what he had gained, one, who, though a stranger, stood to his rights in the sacred name of Property.
So far so well for the cunning creature’s schemes; but all this was only preliminary to his drawing of a much wider net about the waters in which he fished. In the meantime, planning to secure a greater privacy for his operations, he had taken the second step contemplated by him, and dismissed at a moment’s notice the whole household—with a single exception. It was on the day of the funeral that he had done this, after the mortal remains of the ex-Judge had been taken to Ashburton, and put to rest for all time in a corner of the little old graveyard of St Lawrence’s Chapel. The chaplain himself had come over to preface the obsequies with a little traditional ceremony which, under the circumstances, the good man thought advisable. He made no reflections, he said, but, in view of rumours which could not be altogether ignored, he judged it well, for the reconciling of his office with his conscience, and for the hopefuller salvation of an erring soul, to take the precaution. Wherefore, after seeing the coffin lifted out, and placed upon the cart which was to carry it, he stood before the house-door, and demanded in a loud voice to know if any there was so charitable and so Christian as to take it upon himself to eat the sins of the deceased, pawning his own soul, as it were, for the ease and rest of the departed one. Whereat, after a pregnant pause, had come forward honest Nol the porter, and flamingly averred that he was prepared to undertake that pious task, saving the presumption of putting his own soul and that of his dear master’s at a common valuation; and down he had sat upon the stool, or cricket, placed for him, and taking from the clergyman’s hands the groat proffered him, and from Gammer Harlock’s the crust of bread and the mazard-bowl of ale which were the symbols of the sacrifice, had then and there stoically consumed the food, and, washing it securely home in one great draught which emptied the bowl, had risen from the ceremony a refreshed but somewhat haunted man. He went with the body afterwards, with Phineas and William accompanying—Melton, for sufficient reasons, remaining behind; and, after the burying, the three, very sad and downcast, returned to the Grange, and were immediately summoned, together with Mrs Harlock, to the presence of him who was now their master. They obeyed, with a feeling of vague foreboding.
John Melton sat in the room which had been erst his host’s and benefactor’s. He looked at the four as they entered with a dry wintry smile. Beside his chair stood the attorney, a figure no less frosty in suggestion. There was not enough red blood between the two of them to have stained a counter, only the lips of both, and the crafty, slit eyelids of the attorney, showing a pale smear of red.
‘I have sent for ye,’ said Melton, in his arid, measured way, ‘to the intent that ye shall know that from this moment your services are dispensed with, and yourselves dismissed incontinent from the house, your packs taken with you and your wages paid in full.’
A moment’s stupefaction fell upon the group at his words. It was not that those were unexpected, or indeed unwelcome: only faith to their promise had ever resigned them to the prospect of remaining on: but the harsh abruptness and perfidy of the deed was what took their breath away. Nol was the first to find his voice.
‘Is this your promise to his Honour, ye dommed faith-breaker!’ he bellowed, his face reddening with fury.
‘There was no undertaking, save what was conditional on my will,’ answered Melton, concise and clear; ‘nor, since the subject was first mooted, has my will gathered from ye any inducement to consider your claims favourably. The head being gone, the body is best to follow. Shortly, if ye question the legality of the act, here is Master Harnett to answer to the law for it.’
The attorney bent, with a sound as if he creaked rustily at the waist.
‘Answer to the devil!’ cried Nol. ‘Dost think, man, we wished to serve thee? ’Twas faith to his Honour bound us, as it binds not him that hath been a curse to this house ever since his black shadow crossed its threshold. But to dismiss us like this, and his Honour not an hour in his grave! Well, we’ll go.’
‘Yes, you’ll go,’ answered the other imperturbably, ‘and not the slower for your insolence. Dare me, you rascal, and I’ll bring the law on you.’
He spoke quite quietly and wickedly, a thin line of teeth showing between his lips. Nol stood staring at him a moment, inexpressible emotions seething within his breast; then turned to the others:—
‘Come Phineas, come Willy—we were best away, to bide our young master’s return, sith in his absence this house is no longer a place for honest men.’
They were leaving the room, old Harlock following, when Melton called upon her to stay. She had been standing all this while, a silent inscrutable figure, somewhat apart, and now turned, hearing the summons.
‘Ay. What is it, Melton?’
‘I did not mean to include you in this dismissal.’
‘Ay.’
‘Think you I have no bowels of gratitude to the one that nursed me in my sickness and gave me back to health?’
‘What is it ye want of me?’
‘Your continuance in my service, that is all.’
‘To cook your victuals, and make your bed, and give you what comfort a woman may?’
‘Something to that effect.’
‘And share your confidence, maybe?’
‘Not to abuse it, at least.’
She stood staring at him a long while—so keenly that her dark piercing eyes seemed, like a burning-glass, to focus a spot of red even on his sallow cheek. And at last she spoke:—
‘So be it, then. Of this house I have been, and am, and must ever be, until I perish with it, mayhap, off the face of the earth. So be it.’
She turned with the word, and, pushing before the others, left the room first. They shrunk from her, the dark old witch, holding that she but vindicated her title in this betrayal, for self-interest, of a trust. But she cared nothing for their opinions or their repulsion, and, going before them, disappeared into her own quarters.
They delayed no long while after that about their leaving, but, their goods collected and their wages paid—scrupulously, and beyond contention, by the shrewd attorney—shouldered each his bundle and started on foot for Ashburton.
And so another step was gained, and Melton by so much, as he believed, nearer the achievement of his purpose. He had won at last the privacy he desired, and in that virtual solitude could go leisurely and deliberately about the maturation of his plans. Incontestably in legal possession, he no longer dreaded the nephew’s return. If that should happen, he had only to show his warrant.
Now, having so triumphed, he began to linger over this fruition of his hopes, tasting its sweetness. Presently it began to occur to him whether, in contradiction of his real original design, he need leave the Grange at all, but instead settle down to a life of ease and comfort on the spot he had secured so cunningly for his own. That was a fatal thought to pet, inducing in him, as it did, a habit of procrastination. He savoured his days, which that gaunt old housekeeper helped to make curiously attractive to him. She cooked to perfection; she made him comfortable; she kept him in comparative luxury. And all the time he trusted to her stupidity to observe nothing and nurse no suspicions. He had no opinion of her mental faculties, which superstition, he opined, had credited with a sharpness they did not really possess. He thought her, in fact, an old melancholy fool, and it was merely for her usefulness that he had retained her in his service, since he could not go altogether without domestic help.
And the grim warlock herself? She had seen straight enough into his reason for excepting her from the general clearance—and she was content. She knew his true opinion of her—and she was content. Let him trade upon it, cosset his delusions, and play her game. She, too, could plot, as secretly, as craftily, as deadly as himself, only with a brain less prone to the conceit of its own infallibility. Many wily schemes had gone to shipwreck on that conceit; and yet another was destined to go. He should see. When the time fell ripe, he should see.
It fell on a certain still close day in October, when a light stirless mist hung all about the house. There was nothing in the quiet, the loneliness, the glowing tranquillity of the place to presage the storm which was even then marching to burst over it. As it lay so seemingly secure in its green isolation, no hint of tramping footsteps, coming from two directions at once, found even the faintest echo on its walls. Yet the footsteps, or a section of them, were already beating out their ominous rhythm in the fierce dark old heart of her to whose long stealthy machinations, and final summons, they were conveying the fruitful answer. Once, and once again, she mounted to the roof, and, like Sister Ann, looked eastwards, towards Teignmouth and the sea, for the little expected cloud of dust. And the third time, descending, she went straight in to John Melton, where he sat in the great hall, ruminating, as was his wont after dinner, over one of the dead man’s cherished volumes. The remains of the meal, though long finished, still lay upon the table. He looked up, something fretfully, as the old woman entered.
‘You are late,’ he said. ‘Clear this truck away.’
‘Let it be,’ she answered. ‘Mayhap ye’ll need no trencher again, but to lay with salt upon your breast. Have you said your grace, John Melton? I’d add a prayer to it, if I were you.’
She stood, lean, hawk-eyed, something suddenly sinister and formidable, gazing stilly at him, and, as motionless, he gazed up at her. Yet, quiet as he seemed, his heart was in a tumult. What did she mean? and had he been mistaken in her all this time—a viper, like himself, waiting to bite the hand that cherished her? Some prescience, shapeless but intolerable, seized on his nerves; and, before he could command himself, panic had stormed his reason. He rose quickly, the book crashing from his hands to the floor, and stood breathing like one who had lost a race. His lips worked, his eyes had livid circles about them; yet, when he spoke, very habit chilled his words.
‘You mad old fool. What crazy fancy is this? Take the things away.’
‘Never so mad,’ she cried, ‘as to accept your wage and do your service for love of ye. What! would ye fit all souls to your own pattern of treachery and ingratitude? That’s where ye erred, John Melton, and for that ye’ll have to pay.’
He was so amazed, so overwhelmed, in this revelation of a hateful terrific force, where he had looked for nothing but senility and lean subservience, that he had not a word to answer. And she went on:—
‘A fool, was I? Yet not fool nor coward enough to stand unhelping by and see my pretty boy robbed of his birthright. Ye did a bad day’s work for yourself, when ye coerced that poor broken old man into the act ye did; ye set one on your track, then, John Melton, that would know no rest nor mercy till she had dragged ye down. Had ye so forgotten the gleam of the wolves’ white teeth that chased ye hither over the moors? ’Twas you the fool that took the wise woman to housekeeper, thinking your hidden secret safe from her.’
He made a single spasmodic step forward.
‘No!’ he cried, as if very anguish had wrung the word from him.
‘Ay!’ she answered. ‘And what is your secret worth to ye now? Listen!’
A sudden murmur in the air; a confused tramp of many feet; voices; sharp cries; a sense of contiguity to some great hostile presence—and silence. Swaying, as if drunk, he staggered to the window and looked out.
Fifty of them, if one—men such as those others—the same—rough fanatic seamen, the most of them—savages without reason or pity—wild cruel natures and inflamed with drink as with bigotry. They saw him, the white staring, horror-struck face, and a sudden roar went up from the crowd:—
‘There he be—the Papish devil! We have un at last! Throw un out to us, Mother—throw un out!’
And in a moment there was frenzied tumult where had been whispering and cautious footsteps. Some rushed for the window; some the door; others scattered to invest the house and cut off all chance of escape; fists beat on panels; arms stiffened through iron bars, tugging to snap them. Yet through all there grew apparent one deadly purpose, swiftly concentrating itself about a certain spot in the courtyard. Thither hurried forms in quick succession, bearing great masses of sticks and brushwood, heaps of straw, litter and fodder from the stables. They came and came again, never satisfied with the swelling sum, accumulating pile on pile, till a very hillock of fuel had risen before their eyes. Fuel! Great God! It was for the long-delayed holocaust; and the wretched man behind the window saw and understood.
The sill stood too far above their reach for easy gaining; the front door could offer a tough resistance to their battering strokes; he had yet some moments in which to think and act. Reeling back into the room, he felt thin arms, tense as wire, flung about him: and he was held.
‘You devil!’ he panted: ‘let me go!’
She clung on, and, her face half buried against his shoulder, shrieked: ‘He’s here. Come and take him!’
Fighting like a madman, he forced her inch by inch towards the table, freed, with a frantic wrench, his right arm, and, finding a knife, gripped it and struck at her. A thin shrill whine issued from her lips, her arms relaxed, and she fell from him with a thud upon the floor.
Now! To think—to collect himself—to fight down this choking in his throat! If he could only once gain the well-house—the wheel—unobserved! His—Bagott’s closet! He was there—rushing for the casement—and at the very moment blows came raining on it, and the glass crashed. Staggering back, a very extremity of horror paralysed his reason. No instinct remained to him but the last instinct of despair—to escape upwards, upwards, from the earth that had betrayed him. The stairs—on the stairs now—and always frantically mounting them. The roof at last might give him safety.
And, even while he climbed, they were cutting off from beneath his feet his final hope of escape: and, even while he climbed, his Nemesis was toiling in his wake. She had heard him, and risen, ghastly and bloody, to her feet, and followed, dropping her own crimson trail, on his track.
It was the doom of both. For a cry had risen that the soldiers were coming, and that the work that was to do must be done after a more swift and comprehensive fashion than that designed, if the accursed spy was not to slip through their hands. He had vanished from the window: those few who had succeeded in forcing an entrance were still hurrying aimlessly hither and thither, in vain search of their prey. They were called out. Senseless, brutal in its destructive frenzy, the mob gave no thought but to the securing of its purpose by any foul reckless means; gave no thought to the safety of her, their own secret confederate and informer, who was still alive somewhere within the building. They formed a hasty cordon about the walls, and, carrying their massed fuel to a dozen kindling points, flung it in heaps through doors and windows and set fire to it.
And almost in a moment, incredible as it might seem, the place was alight and roaring. It had been a hot summer, the house was dry to its attics, and the old laths and timber caught like touchwood. In a few minutes it was blazing like a gorse-thicket: the pools of flame, like pools of quicksilver, touched and became one, which, involving the whole in one furious conflagration, went rushing up in a single cone of volcanic fire.
Soon the heat was so great that the crowd had to fall farther back to contemplate its own handiwork. Some, taking refuge in the shelter of the gateway, looked forth, half awed over the magnitude of their achievement. And, as they watched, suddenly there was a little figure on the roof, and it was throwing out its arms in a frantic appeal for the help that no power on earth could any longer afford it.
A sort of gloating sigh took the upturned faces like a wind; a pale fanatic creature screamed. The house by now was such a charred and crumbling ruin within the furnace that consumed it, it seemed impossible that any human being could find a foothold there. Was he going to take a last desperate chance by leaping from its walls? Even as they wondered, a second figure, a woman’s, was seen on the roof. The other seemed to turn to it—to turn away—to make a movement to spring. Too late. The next moment she had seized it in her arms and dived with it into the roaring abyss of flame. A silence, as of riven air after a thunderclap, fell upon the people.
Stupefied, overwhelmed by the tragedy of the sight before him, Brion sat motionless a moment. Then aware, down the vista of the track, of a swarm of dark shapes issuing from the gate, with an oath he clapped spurs to his horse, and in one wild rush covered the distance.
Hangdog, threatening, sullen, loweringly defiant now the deed was done and themselves committed beyond recall, the mob stood to meet the onset, and to counter-strike if need be. He pulled up before them, his eyes blazing, his hands vicious on the reins.
‘Ye bloody devils!’ he roared. ‘What deed is this and wherefore?’ Then anguish caught at his heart in a sick spasm. ‘My Uncle!’ he cried—‘Where is he? What have ye done to him?’
They were coming out by twos and threes, while the flames still crackled and reverberated behind them, tossing and devouring the last blazing sticks of ruin; they were coming in a haste now to get away before the soldiers arrived. Fear added to guilt sped their footsteps, and they were in no temper to be delayed. Some one bade him, with an ugly snarl, to stand away, whoever he was, if he valued his life.
‘At a dozen of yours,’ he cried, and swift as a flash his sword was in his hand. They fell from him, scowling, while he faced them all. He heard a sound behind him, and looked round.
‘Go back, Joan!’ he cried—‘Go back—do you hear?’
It was but an instant, but enough for their mood and purpose, and with a dash they were upon him. Trying to get play with his blade, a furious stroke from a cudgel broke it in his hand. His horse rearing at the same moment, and plunging wildly, cleared a space about him; but the next instant, slipping on a stone, it was down, and he with it. And as he fell, unhurt but helpless, there came a thud of hoofs, and the girl had pulled up between him and his assailants. Her cheek was flushed; her breast heaved.
‘Dare, now!’ she cried. ‘I will know all your faces, and remember them.’
‘Joan!’ he commanded. He had staggered to his feet, and was tumultuously urging his horse to his. ‘Go back—go away—and leave them to me!’
The mere shame of her womanhood had held them off for a moment: at Brion’s words, with a deep growl of fury, they were beginning again to close in, when a sudden shout brought them to an instant stop:—
‘The soldiers!’
And, even as they turned to scatter, there came wheeling with jingling harness round the western wall, which, with the booming flames, had muffled the sounds of their approach, a squad of stalwart troopers, a very cool and lordly young Ancient riding at their head. He opened his eyes with wonder on the scene before him, seemed to grasp in a measure its import, and, halting his troop, rode up to the couple and, doffing very courteously to the lady, expressed a hope that they two were not personally affected by this calamity, which, unfortunately, too late information had made it impossible on his part to prevent; but for which full retribution, they might make very sure, would be exacted.
‘Indeed, Sir,’ answered Joan, a little wearily: ‘that is well; yet while you talk they escape.’
He smiled superior. ‘As the mouse escapes the cat. A little “law,” as we call it, Madam, and then to round them up in the open. Believe me, if you have suffered at their hands——?’ he paused significantly.
‘Ask of my husband, Sir,’ said Joan, with a fine blush. ‘He hath but late returned from sailing overseas with Sir Richard Grenville, and to-day, but this moment, returning home, hath lighted on this welcome.’
The Ancient exclaimed, between interest and commiseration:—
‘What, Master Middleton himself! This, Sir, is indeed a lamentable homing for you!’
Brion bowed mechanically. His eyes were wild, distracted. ‘My Uncle?’ he said feverishly: ‘I must go seek him, find him. Mayhap he had warning to escape.’
He was making for the now emptied archway, through which the crashing embers of the fire shone as from a furnace door, when the young officer detained him, leaning from his horse:—
‘Nay, do you not know?’
‘Know what, Sir?’
‘If ’tis of Master Bagott you speak, he is dead.’
‘Dead!’
‘Some weeks gone. He had an accident, falling from the stairs.’
Brion stood stupidly, as if he had not understood. The Ancient nodded, and, some instinct of propriety in him judging it timely to withdraw, wheeled sharply and called up his troop. They answered, and like a clattering wind went past and disappeared round the eastern bend of the wall.
Still the young man stood motionless.
‘Brion!’ whispered a soft entreating voice. She had slipped from her saddle and come to him. He turned, with a sort of sob, and caught her to him, and held her convulsively against his breast.
‘And you were so joyous, my own love,’ she said pitifully.
He held her fiercely, passionately, to him:—
‘And I am joyous still, Joan. Never think but that I am joyous still. What is this loss’—he tossed his head to the glowing wreck behind him—‘to the immeasurable rapture of my gain. He is gone, all his weaknesses and his troubles at rest; and, for that, why should I, who loved him, repine? Only, what does this all mean, and, if not directed against him, against whom? Yet against whomsoever, the meaning is plain for one. Ah, my girl, so single-hearted and so brave, who takest the blow as all for me and none for thyself, who would have given thy dear, dear life for mine, dost thou realise to what we are saved together—the doom of poverty?’
‘Nay, all the riches I ever asked was Brion.’
He stood up, with a great breath, and, his arm encircling her, bade her come with him and look upon their home. They went over the little bridge and through the gateway together, and peering thence, not venturing to push farther, saw the devastation. Flame and volumes of smoke still poured upwards from the massed ruin, but through an empty shaft of blackened walls and tottering chimneys. In all the burning desolate place no corner remained to hang a memory on. He turned to her with a wistful smile:—
‘Well, our love go with it, Joan. We must seek other lodgings for the night. But why, why, why, girl; and where are all they I left here—ah, to fear, to submit, and to make no fight to save it?’
It was a question so far unanswerable; yet not long before receiving a certain illumination. They went and sat upon a bank, awaiting the troop’s return, and, while sitting there together, talked low of ancient days, and of the dead man, and of the future with its brave resolves: and, as they talked, suddenly there were the soldiers riding back, and a dozen of them with each a prisoner roped and running at his saddle-bow. They came past, these captives, sick and lead-faced, with all the evil knocked out of them, and, at the Ancient’s word, were sent forward on the road to Ashburton, while he dismounted to inform the two of his success.
‘We ran them down in the open,’ said he, wiping his hot brow with a pretty cambric napkin—‘and caught them scattered—a good fifty in all, vermin from the fishing ports. And some we thwacked, and the worst we bagged, and they will be made to answer for it. There was one, a pitiful, tallow-faced loon, that would turn Queen’s evidence to save his skin.’
His eyes were all for Joan while he spoke—bold points of admiration.
‘What evidence?’ asked Brion quickly.
‘Why, that these dogs were secretly inflamed and invited to the deed by one Warlock, or Harlock—an old hag, acting housekeeper, it seems, to this Melton himself.’
‘Melton!’ exclaimed Brion in amazement.
‘Ay, Melton. That was the name of him that had lived here since the Judge’s death, and alone, ’twas said, with her that betrayed him. They both perished in the fire together.’
‘What!’ cried Brion—‘perished! my poor old Harlock perished?’
He was so confounded and bewildered by the whole affair, that Joan begged the young officer to abandon the subject for the time being. And he very amiably acquiesced, suggesting that the best course would be for Brion to see and question the prisoner himself presently, and obtain from him what further evidence he might. Having decided which, he proposed that they should all ride for Ashburton together, to which the others agreeing, they mounted and left the melancholy scene without further delay.
The Ancient was garrulous by the way, opening out to Brion as being, though indirectly, one of Raleigh’s men, like himself, and as such a comrade in arms. He was particular in describing how he had received directions from the Seneschal of the County of Exeter to keep a watch on the district; and how he had obeyed his instructions to such good effect, that the private news he had received had enabled him to ride from that city almost coincidently with the starting of the incendiaries from Teignmouth, when, could but a mile or two have been deducted from the total of fifteen or so he had had to traverse, he would have been able to forestall the catastrophe by a timely arrival. He was full of regrets for that, but clearly attributed his failure to the unreasonable distance, and not to any miscalculation of his own. Having explained which, he turned to the subject of the voyage, in which he was truthfully much more interested than in this paltry local uprising, and asked Brion a thousand questions, which the poor fellow made shift in his distraction to answer to the best satisfaction he could.
As they neared Ashburton, they met many curious folks, who had got late wind of the business, hurrying out to visit the scene of the catastrophe; and the town itself, when they entered it, was seething with excitement over the prisoners just brought in. Brion, being recognised, evoked much wondering comment, and was glad when the inn was reached, and he could help down Joan, to take refuge with him in a private chamber. He was turning to enter, having delivered their horses to the hostler, when a great fellow, bursting his way through the onlookers, fell on his knees before him, and held up his clasped hands in a very agony of emotion.
‘O, my young master!’ cried the man—‘O, my young master! To see you home again, and to this!’
Brion looked at him, with hardly less emotion.
‘Why, Nol,’ he said—‘Nol! Methought you could not all have deserted me.’
Then, conscious of the listening throng, he bade the poor good creature to rise, and follow him into the house.
‘Now,’ said he, when they were all shut away into privacy: ‘here at least is one witness that I need, and that will bring light to my beclouded soul.’ Then, seeing the porter’s inflamed eyes fixed in bewilderment on Joan: ‘Ay, lad,’ he said; ‘it is a dear bride I have brought home with me, and had thought to commit to all your love and service. But that is done.’
And that opened the floodgates.
‘God bless her sweet face!’ bellowed Nol; and then, in vociferous outcry: ‘O, my pretty mistress, here be a home-coming indeed for ’ee!’
He had only just heard the news, it seemed, and had been about to run all the way to the Grange to verify it, when he had caught sight of his young master. And so, after a little, they reached the subject of all, and Brion learned what there was to learn of the happenings of the last six months—of his Uncle’s violent death, and of the machinations which had preceded and followed it.
‘A was a villain rogue, that Melton,’ cried Nol, ‘so to corrupt his Honour’s mind.’
‘To corrupt,’ said Brion sadly. ‘Ah, Nol! What were my orders?’
‘We obeyed them, master,’ cried the poor fellow eagerly, ‘we obeyed them faithful and true we did, keeping watch on the man, and never leaving him, day or night, while a lay a’mending. And the moment a was fit to travel, out a was bundled. But a returned at night by some way unknown to us, and found his way in to his Honour, and from that time never left him.’
Some way unknown? Alas, could he not guess what way? Brion cried out in his heart over his own folly and shortsightedness.
‘Why did you not drive him forth again?’ he groaned.
‘We went to do it, master, and his Honour turned on us like a mad thing, and bade us henceforth treat the man as his guest, and serve and honour him on peril of dismissal. And from that time a kept the stranger always about him, and the devil came to possess him in his shape, so that one day a sent for me and Phineas, and, before witness of two lawyers a had summoned, told us a had bequeathed the Grange and all in it to his dearest friend, John Melton, and hoped, did the man survive him, a would continue to keep us all in his service. And that Melton promised, and so did we to serve him, his Honour was that pleading and gentle with us we had no heart to refuse. But, having said it, we never thought to lose him so soon—alackaday, alackaday!’
He cut short a very howl to mop his eyes with the back of his hand.
‘Go on,’ said Brion sadly, mourning to recall all that fateful premonition, which, in utmost caution’s despite, had yet come to fulfil itself: and Nol continued, grievously snuffling:—
‘After his Honour was laid in the ground, and we, his loving servants, had come home from the funeral, there was John Melton awaiting us, the Will he had won in his hand, and his lawyer backer beside him. And he dismissed us three then and there—me and Phineas and boy William—making least whit of his promise. And the lawyer upheld un by the law, so that we had naught for it but to obey, and out we trundled, with our packs and our wages. But as to Gammer Harlock, a axed her to stay on to keep house for him; and she consented, while we cursed her for a runagate, knowing naught of the dark purpose she had at heart—God rest her soul. Then Phineas and William they agreed that there was nothing for it but to jog for Lunnon, and me, if I would, with them. But that I would not, thinking what it would be to you to come home unexpected, and find that devil in possession, and all of us gone without a word to tell you why. So, while they went, I bided on at Ashburton, getting work on a farm to keep me. And here have I been ever since, Master Brion, which is the whole truth; and God forgive me that it is wi’ such news I have to greet thy return—and this dear lady at thy side.’
What was there to say, since the past could not be redeemed, unless and until, after Clerivault’s thought, Death should come presently to roll it up backwards, like a long stretched drugget, obliterating all its dusty footprints? Brion put his hands on the shoulders of the faithful servant, and, looking affectionately into his eyes, ‘Ah, Nol!’ said he, ‘big as thy body is, thy great soul must find in it but narrow house room. Now we are met, is it ever to part again?’
‘Never till death,’ cried the giant, in an explosion of love and gratitude; and so the pact was made.
‘And now,’ said Brion, looking dearly at his love, ‘methinks, before we rest, I should go see this same rascal attorney, that hath played the petty devil to a greater rogue, and to whom Nol will conduct me.’
‘Ay—right joyously!’ cried the porter; ‘and eke return him some of his own. Shall I take a cudgel, master?’
‘Thy little finger will serve,’ said Brion dryly.
Joan parted with him a little anxiously, urging diplomacy rather than violence; but he reassured her, answering for himself as a model of discretion.
And, indeed, Master Harnett, when found, discovered himself in too abjectly disarming a mood to invite retaliation. Terrified by events, and fawningly eager to propitiate, he was only too ready to curry favour with the old heir by damning the pretensions of the new. The man was burnt to ashes, he said, and with him the Will which had made him master of the estate. His covetousness would never part with it, and, with its destruction, there was an end of his title. If Captain Middleton—as the rogue was pleased to call him—knew of another Will assigning him heir to the estate, that Will would now hold good. At the same time he would not have Captain Middleton assume an injustice of his Uncle. The deceased, as he knew for a fact, had made him in the later Will his residuary legatee—implying his succession to a sum which, if inconsiderable, owing to the testator’s reckless habits, was yet some earnest of his thoughtfulness—and would no doubt have left him all, had not his mind been somewhat basely practised on. He hoped Captain Middleton would remember that, and perhaps his own share in venturing to suggest such a course to the testator.
He lied as to that, as Brion very well understood; but the information was as balm to an aching wound. It had not been the thought of poverty which had caused it, but of the estranged affection which could have condemned him to it. And now he knew. He thought nothing of the smallness of the bequest: the fact that it had been made at all was solace enough.
He left the attorney, with an expression of formal obligation to him so stiff and chill as almost to sound like an affront, and, being obsequiously bowed into the street, turned his steps for St Lawrence’s graveyard, before going home to life and love. For home was wherever Joan was—that was a new and lovely thought.