Walter a Cleeve did not arrive at the Court by the front entrance, but by
a door which admitted to his mother's wing of the house, through the
eastern garden secluded and reserved for her use. This was his way.
From childhood he and his mother had lived in a sort of conspiracy--
intending no guile, be it understood. She was a Roman Catholic.
Her husband, good easy man, held to the Church of England, in which he had
been bred; but held to it without bigotry, and supposed heaven within the
reach of all who went through life cleanly and honourably. By consequence
the lady had her way, and reared the boy in her own faith. She had
delicate health, too--a weapon which makes a woman all but invincible when
pitted against a man of delicate feeling.
The Squire, though shy, was affectionate. He sincerely loved his boy, and
there was really no good reason why he and Walter should not open their
hearts to one another. But somehow the religious barrier, which he did
his best to ignore, had gradually risen like an impalpable fence about
him, and kept him a dignified exile in his own house. For years all the
indoor servants, chosen by Mrs. a Cleeve, had been Roman Catholics.
In his own sphere--in the management of the estate--he did as he wished;
in hers he was less often consulted than Father Halloran, and had ceased
to resent this, having stifled his first angry feelings and told himself
that it did not become a man to wrangle with women and priests. He found
it less tolerable that Walter and his mother laid their plans together
before coming to him. Why? Good Heavens! (he reflected testily) the boy
might come and ask for anything in reason, and welcome! To give, even
after grumbling a bit, is one of a father's dearest privileges. But no:
when Walter wanted anything--which was seldom--he must go to his mother
and tell her, and his mother promised to "manage it." In his secret heart
the Squire loathed this roundabout management, and tried to wean Walter by
consulting him frankly on the daily business of the estate. But no again:
Walter seemingly cared little for these confidences: and again, although
he learned to shoot and was a fair horseman, he put no heart into his
sports. His religion debarred him from a public school; or, rather--in
Mrs. a Cleeve's view--it made all the public schools undesirable.
When she first suggested Dinan (and in a way which convinced the Squire
that she and Father Halloran had made up their minds months before), for a
moment he feared indignantly that they meant to make a priest of his boy.
But Mrs. a Cleeve resigned that prospect with a sigh. Walter must marry
and continue the family. Nevertheless, when Great Britain formally
renounced the Peace of Amiens, and Master Walter found himself among the
_detenus_, his mother sighed again to think that, had he been designed for
the priesthood, he would have escaped molestation; while his father no
less ruefully cursed the folly which had brought him within Bonaparte's
clutches.
Mrs. a Cleeve sat by her boudoir fire embroidering an altar frontal for
the private chapel. At the sound of a footstep in the passage she stopped
her work with a sharp contraction of the heart: even the clattering wooden
shoes could not wholly disguise that footstep for her. She was rising
from her deep chair as Walter opened the door; but sank back trembling,
and put a hand over her white face.
"Mother!"
It was he. He was kneeling: she felt his hands go about her waist and his
head sink in her lap.
"Oh, Walter! Oh, my son!"
"Mother!" he repeated with a sob. She bent her face and kissed him.
"Those horrible clothes--you have suffered! But you have escaped!
Tell me--"
In broken sentences he began to tell her.
"You have seen your father?" she asked, interrupting him.
"Not yet. I have seen nobody: I came straight to you."
"He is greatly aged."
There came a knock at the door, and Father Halloran stood on the threshold
confounded.
The priest was a tall and handsome Irishman, white-haired, with a genial
laughing eye, and a touch of grave wisdom behind his geniality.
"Walter, dear lad! For the love of the saints tell us--how does this
happen?"
Walter began his story again. The mother gazed into his face in a
rapture. But the priest's brow, at first jolly, little by little
contracted with a puzzled frown.
"I don't altogether understand," he said. "They scarcely watched you at
all, it seems?"
"Thank God for their carelessness!" put in Mrs. a Cleeve fervently.
"And you escaped. There was nothing to prevent? They hadn't exacted any
sort of parole?"
"Well, there was a sort of promise,"--the boy flushed hotly--"not what
you'd call a real promise. The fellow--a sort of prefect in a tricolour
sash--had us up in a room before him, and gabbled through some form of
words that not one of us rightly understood. I heard afterwards some
pretty stories of this gentleman. He had been a contractor to the late
Republic, in horse-forage, and had swindled the Government (people said)
to the tune of some millions of francs. Marengo finished him: he had been
speculating against it on the sly, which lost his plunder and the most of
his credit. On the remains of it he had managed to scrape into this
prefecture. A nice sort of man to administer oaths!"
Father Halloran turned impatiently to the window, and, leaning a
hand on one of the stone mullions, gazed out upon the small garden.
Daylight was failing, and the dusk out there on the few autumn flowers
seemed one with the chill shadow touching his hopes and robbing them of
colour. He shivered: and as with a small shiver men sometimes greet a
deadly sickness, so Father Halloran's shiver presaged the doom of a life's
hope. He had been Walter's tutor, and had built much on the boy: he had
read warnings from time to time, and tried at once to obey them and
persuade himself that they were not serious--that his anxiety magnified
them. If honour could be inherited, it surely ran in Walter's blood; in
honour--the priest could assert with a good conscience--he had been
instructed. And yet--
The lad had turned to his mother, and went on with a kind of sullen
eagerness: "There were sixteen of us, including an English clergyman, his
wife and two young children, and a young couple travelling on their
honeymoon. It wasn't as if they had taken our word and let us go: they
marched us off at once to special quarters--billeted us all in one house,
over a greengrocer's shop, with a Government _concierge_ below stairs to
keep watch on our going and coming. A roll was called every night at
eight--you see, there was no liberty about it. The whole thing was a
fraud. Father Halloran may say what he likes, but there are two sides to
a bargain; and if one party breaks faith, what becomes of the other's
promise?"
Mrs. a Cleeve cast a pitiful glance at Father Halloran's back. The priest
neither answered nor turned.
"Besides, they stole my money. All that father sent passed through the
prefect's hands and again through the _concierge's_; yes, and was handled
by half a dozen other rascals, perhaps, before ever it reached me.
They didn't even trouble themselves to hide the cheat. One week I might
be lucky and pick up a whole louis; the next I'd be handed five francs and
an odd sou or two, with a grin."
"And all the while your father was sending out your allowance as usual--
twenty pounds to reach you on the first of every month--and Dickinson's
agents in Paris sending back assurances that it would be transmitted and
reach you as surely as if France and England were at peace!"
Father Halloran caught the note of anxious justification in Mrs. a
Cleeve's voice, and knew that it was meant for him. He turned now with a
half audible "Pish!" but controlled his features--superfluously, since he
stood now with his back to the waning light.
"Have you seen him?" he asked abruptly.
"Seen whom?"
"Your father."
"I came around by the east door, meaning to surprise mother. I only
arrived here two minutes before you knocked."
"For God's sake answer me 'yes' or 'no,' like a man!" thundered Father
Halloran, suddenly giving vent to his anger: as suddenly checking it with
a tight curb, he addressed Mrs. a Cleeve. "Your pardon!" said he.
The woman almost whimpered. She could not use upon her confessor the card
of weak nerves she would have played at once and unhesitatingly upon her
husband. "I think you are horribly unjust," she said. "God knows how I
have looked forward to this moment: and you are spoiling all! One would
say you are not glad to see our boy back!"
The priest ignored the querulous words. "You must see your father at
once," he said gravely. "At once," he repeated, noting how Walter's eyes
sought his mother's.
"Of course, if you think it wise--" she began.
"I cannot say if it be wise--in your meaning. It is his duty."
"We can go with him--"
"No."
"But we might help to explain?"
Father Halloran looked at her with pity. "I think we have done that too
often," he answered; and to himself he added: "She is afraid of him. Upon
my soul, I am half afraid of him myself."
"You think his father will understand?" she asked, clutching at comfort.
"It depends upon what you mean by 'understanding.' It is better that
Walter should go: afterwards I will speak to him." The priest seemed to
hesitate before adding, "He loves the boy. By the way, Walter, you might
tell us exactly how you escaped."
"The greengrocer's wife helped me," said Walter sullenly. "She had taken
a sort of fancy to me, and--she understood the injustice of it better than
Father Halloran seems to. She agreed that there was no wrong in escaping.
She had a friend at Yvignac, and it was agreed that I should walk out
there early one morning and find a change of clothes ready. The master of
the house earned his living by travelling the country with a small waggon
of earthenware, and that night he carried me, hidden in the hay among his
pitchers and flower-pots, as far as Lamballe. I meant to strike the coast
westward, for the road to St. Malo would be searched at once as soon as
the _concierge_ reported me missing. From Lamballe I trudged through
St. Brisac to Guingamp, hiding by day and walking by night, and at
Guingamp called at the house of an onion-merchant, to whom I had been
directed. At this season he works his business by hiring gangs of boys of
all ages from fourteen to twenty, marching them down to Pampol or Morlaix,
and shipping them up the coast to sell his onions along the Seine valley,
or by another route southward from Etaples and Boulogne. I joined a party
of six bound for Morlaix, and tramped all the way in these shoes with a
dozen strings of onions slung on a stick across my shoulders. At Morlaix
I shipped on a small trader, or so the skipper called it: he was bound, in
fact, for Guernsey, and laden down to the bulwarks with kegs of brandy,
and at St. Peter's Port he handed me over to the captain of a Cawsand
boat, with whom he did business. I'm giving you just the outline, you
understand. I have been through some rough adventures in the last two
weeks,"--the lad paused and shivered--"but I don't ask you to think of
that. The Cawsand skipper sunk his cargo last night about a mile outside
the Rame, and just before daybreak set me ashore in Cawsand village.
I have been walking ever since."
Father Halloran stepped to the bell-rope.
"Shall I ring? The boy should drink a glass of wine, I think, and then go
to his father without delay."