THE JOURNEY WEST
The speed of the little party was the speed of Brion, but they made
what haste they could, for dusk was closing down, and the road none
too free of dangers. At first Bagott would have the boy to ride with
him, part for kindness’ sake, and part to draw from him the
particulars of his past life; but soon his questions lapsed into
vagueness, and he sunk into a preoccupation which lost account of
everything but its own dark melancholy. So Brion rode alone, Master
Clerivault lacking any invitation to join him, and indulged his own
unhappy fancies--which the cold wind and the gloomy road did nothing
to assuage--to the limit of their bent. To be uprooted in a moment
from that kindly soil, delivered to a relative of whose existence he
had never even guessed hitherto, haled out into the night and the
world, with an unknown future before him--it needed the utmost of his
young resolution to bear up under such a battery of strokes.
Sometimes, seizing him in gusts and spasms, his fate would seem to be
monstrous, impossible, a nightmare from which he would waken in a
little to hear Gregory breathing placidly in his bed by the window
that overlooked the quiet garden; sometimes, realising the truth, he
would be almost irresistibly moved to turn his horse’s head, and
gallop desperately back the way he had come. But he had a high spirit
to conquer, and a reason effectively to dismiss, such vain impulses.
Yet, though he rode stiff, his chin up, his heart was full of misery
and his soul of longing.
He was all at sea, too, as to the meaning of things. He had been wont
to gather, from the attitude of his playmates, and from the little
which, in his quiet observant way, he had managed to piece together,
that he was an orphan and alone in the world--though why alone, and
for what reason adopted, some instinct of pride in him forbade his
inquiring. He had understood that his treatment was in a manner
preferential, and may have childishly to himself debated the why and
the wherefore; but since the facts, as his intelligence could not but
comprehend, were designedly withheld from him, he would not seem to
seek what it was not wanted to tell. Indeed, from hints let fall, he
believed that his foster-parents knew really little more concerning
him than he knew himself; and, in that, for whatever they might
secretly surmise, he thought right; nor was the incident recorded as
happening on a day of poignant memory allowed by them to affect their
determination to close their minds to any conjecture or speculation
whatever as to the possible truth. And so had Brion grown in content
of ignorance, regarding his adoption as permanent, and never dreaming
that there existed one on whose favour he continued, and to whom he
owed duty and obedience as the solitary kinsman surviving to him, it
seemed, in all the world. Out of the amazing dark had this figure
risen, to claim and appropriate him--a great man, a Judge, as Mr
Angell, though with some seeming reluctance and agitation, had
whispered when he came to fetch him--and henceforth through this
apparition was he to approach so much nearer the mystery of his own
being. Well, there was attraction in that, but not so absorbing for
the moment as to assuage the anguish of this sudden severance from all
to which he was attached by the living ligaments of custom and
affection. He felt very lost and very lonely.
They got down to Lambeth after dark, joining by the road a party
happily met and agreed to combine against footpads, and took the
horse-ferry, close by the Palace gates, to cross the river into the
Honour of Westminster. And thence they wended their way through a maze
of narrow crowded streets, with dim lights hanging overhead like
ships’ lanterns suspended in shrouds, and presently, passing by the
Abbey, and the walls and ruined towers of the old deserted
Palace--vast cliffs of stone that loomed through the obscurity--turned
into the yard of the _Cock_ tavern and dismounted.
Now, so spent with cold and emotion was the boy that his brain was
insensible to any impressions save those of his own weariness;
wherefore he took but little notice of the novel matters about him,
but only obeyed blindly when he was directed up a flight of stairs
into a comfortable chamber, where a meal lay ready spread on a table,
and a good sea-coal fire burned in the hearth. He ate and drank as he
was told, asking no questions and being put none, while Master
Clerivault, appearing after attending to the horses, waited on him and
his uncle. There seemed a mystery and a silence about everything--the
place, the hour, the company he was in--and those, combining with the
warmth and animal comfort, so operated upon his senses that in the
midst of the meal he fell fast asleep, and thereafter remembered
nothing more till he awoke to sunlight in a little room. He sat up in
his bed, dazed for a moment, and then recollection rushed upon him in
a flood, and he sank back again overwhelmed; when, lying so, with his
eyes closed, presently he heard a footstep enter the room, and,
without moving, raised his lids just so as to peer under them at the
intruder. It was Master Clerivault, come in with a pile of clothes,
which it seemed he had been brushing and folding, and these he
proceeded to lay out ready, glancing in the act at the sleeper, as he
thought him, and afterwards going soft-footed about the room, to open
the casement and prepare the ewer for washing.
Now curiosity, ever the main tonic of youth, began to stir powerfully
in the boy, stimulated, no doubt, by the fresh sunlight, and the
unwonted sights and sounds about him; for with the opening of the
window had risen a noise of cheery gossip and the stamping of horses
from the yard below. So, widening his eyes, he took interested stock
of this individual, who had so unexpectedly returned upon him out of
the past. That past had been nine years ago, and without question the
mental enlargement of the interval spoke in his new observation; for
Master Clerivault did not seem to him at all what he had thought he
remembered him to be. It was not that he looked older, for in fact he
did not by a day; it was a question of the moral impression. The pale
staring eyes appeared now a little mad; the grotesque weakness of the
face, with its hanging underlip and its long nose dividing the
sardonic moustache, was its definite feature; what had figured for
martial in him suggested somehow the showy fustian of the stage. And
yet, through all, his aspect was likeable, and such as seemed to
invite confidences without fear of a rebuff. Watching him a moment,
Brion spoke:--
‘Where am I, Master Clerivault?’
The intruder started, turned round, advanced with a mincing step, and
leaning gracefully against the bedpost, one arm akimbo, answered in
that queer rusty hinge voice of his:--
‘In a room of the _Cock_ tavern, Sir, in Westminster town.’
Brion looked about him. He lay in his shift in a comfortable bed, the
appointments of the room were plain and clean, fresh rushes strewed
the floor, and there was a great bunch of rosemary on the window-sill.
Moreover, it was the morning of the day as of his own young life, and,
pay what dole he would to sorrow, a sense of exhilaration would rise
in him, to paint his fancy with bright anticipation. After all, a
beard and a gruff voice came early to the stripling in Elizabeth’s
time, and, though they were not yet for him, he was near enough to
manhood, as they read it, to hear, in his mind’s ear, its distant
shout to enterprise and glory. Suddenly he wanted to be up and afoot;
but there was some curiosity to feed first.
‘I remember not my passage hither,’ he said.
‘Sense and memory were out of thee,’ replied the other, tapping his
head twice. ‘Might have fired a great culverin in thy ear, and not
awakened thee. I carried thee--ha! in these arms.’
‘Master Clerivault,’ said the boy, ‘will it please you to tell me?’
‘Anything,’ was the answer, ‘that my reason and my honour permits.’
‘Who and what art thou, then?’
‘Who but Harlequin Clerivault, please your Grace, some time gentleman
of fortune, and since confidant and right-hand man to thine Uncle. He
hangs on me, ha!’
‘His confidant, say you? In what way of speaking, Master Clerivault?’
‘In the law’s way of speaking, Sir, which is to say that, being a
Judge, he hath judged most excellently of a paragon.’
‘Yourself, to wit?’
‘Thou hast said it, not I.’
‘What is it to be a paragon?’
‘It is to be the best of one’s kind, Sir, as a king most kingly, as a
knight most knightly, as a retainer the most capable and to be
trusted; to which mental graces those of the body should figure, as it
were, in apposition, whereby a straight leg should express honesty, an
arched brow love, or attachment, a chin slightly receding forbearance,
and a fine shape signify proportion in all. Possessing the sum of
which endowments, a man may call himself superlative, which is to be a
paragon.’
His lids half closed; he pointed his moustache with an inimitable air.
The corners of Brion’s mouth flickered.
‘I understand,’ he said. ‘And of all that my uncle was the judge? I
think he must be a great Judge, Master Clerivault.’
‘Great in judgment,’ answered the paragon, ‘but, alack, no longer a
great Judge or a Judge at all.’
‘Not a Judge?’
‘We have resigned, Sir, our Commission. Let it rest at that. The
question drops--in Law, _cadit quæstio_.’
Brion felt a momentary stupefaction; yet, after all, the news told him
nothing where he knew nothing. After a brief consideration, he
continued:--
‘Why do we stay here, Master Clerivault? Has not my uncle a house?’
The man coughed before answering:--
‘Ay, and to which we are wending.’
‘In London?’
‘Not so; but westwards in Devon--where his family was used to dwell.
’Tis called the Moated Grange.’
The boy sat with wide eyes. This was strange and bewildering enough,
to be sure, and not less so for the obvious reserve with which it was
all said. He thought again a little, then spoke out candidly:--
‘I see I can expect little satisfaction for my questions. Yet I am not
very happy, Master Clerivault, and I think you might know it.’
The poor fellow looked at him kindly; there was the suggestion of a
moist blink in his eyes.
‘Nay,’ he said: ‘all is well for thee; there is no need for
unhappiness, but caution is the keynote of the legal mind. _Mutiana
cautio._ What I may answer thee I will answer. Ask, in God’s name.’
‘Well,’ said Brion, ‘I would fain know why my uncle, after this long
abandoning of me to ignorance of his very existence, hath come at this
late hour to claim me for his own?’
‘Ha!’ cried the other: ‘I can satisfy thee there. It is sentiment,
Sir--pure sentiment; the desire of a man made lonely, and something
occupationless, to fasten to the only tie of kinship left remaining to
him.’
The boy did not speak again for a while. There was something moving in
his heart, some wonderful new sense of a warmth and meaning underlying
the chill enigma of these happenings. That to _him_, for some mystic
reason, this great overshadowing figure, with its dark preoccupations,
could be looking for solace and affection, seemed pathetically
incredible; yet the paragon spoke like one who knew, and he could not
misdoubt him. I think from that moment all dread of his strange
kinsman left him, and was supplanted by a shy confidence in his own
tender ability to play the part desired of him. They were alone in the
world, it appeared--just they two. The thought clung suddenly to him,
as his arms already in spirit clung about the desolate man. Presently
he sighed, and looked up.
‘What is to be done with me?’ said he. ‘May you tell me that?’
‘What duty and fondness may conspire,’ answered Clerivault, ‘and love
repay. Learning thou hast, and swordmanship shalt have, to beat the
brains of the world with a double edge. It is a fine place, the world,
in these days, Sir. There is a greatness come into it for anyone to
seize that hath the spirit and the courage. Dismiss what is lost with
a snap of the fingers. What is office but confinement--to live in a
Court when one might possess infinity. The horizons of the dawn arch
upwards, revealing new prospects: there is a wind blows in under them,
freighted with strange messages from gods and peoples never known
before. The matrix of this sweet motherland of ours heaves with birth
imminent: that great Triton of the sea that wed with her prepares a
glory for his sons. There shall be wings--ha! to sweep the stars
withal, or white as swans upon the waters, skimming down the moonlit
levels. Enlargement is in the air, and our English lungs expand to it.
Shall we not adventure with the rest, you and I? Here’s but a
necessary interval, till we come, like mewing hawks, to burst our bars
and rise to heaven.’
His wild eyes gleamed exultant; his voice squeaked and cracked; he
flung one hand aloft, as if to point the upward way. And Brion sat
regarding him, a little amazed, but still more curious. Presently he
said:--
‘_Are_ you English, Master Clerivault? I had not thought it.’
The effect of that simple question startled him. Harlequin skipped as
if a whip had lashed him. His eyebrows rose, his teeth set, incoherent
maledictions came reverberating over his palate down his nose. It was
moments before he could master his emotion.
‘Why?’ said he. There was actually moisture on his forehead.
‘I know not,’ said Brion, somewhat alarmed. ‘It was thy name, perhaps.
What ails thee at my question? If there was hurt in it, my ignorance,
not my will, was to blame.’
‘Fool, fool!’ muttered Clerivault, slapping his brow. ‘To quarrel with
the lamb because it bleats!’ He passed a trembling hand across his
mouth; his features stiffened into a mirthless smile. ‘God assoil
thee,’ he said: ‘but never ask me so again. _I_ not English! Then
England exists not save for curs and hybrids. Will it please you to
rise, Sir?’
His voice sunk from high protest to the civility of a servitor; and
indeed Brion knew not what he was nor how to treat him, his office
seemed so menial yet his soul so great. He tumbled out of bed,
however, and washed himself in cold water, with a ha’pennyworth of
mottled soap, and, while dressing, peeped often and curiously from the
window into the yard of the inn, where were ostlers rubbing down
horses, and maids flitting--clean girls with unconfined necks as white
as their aprons, and skirts close to their hips, which Brion thought
ever so much prettier than the full kirtles worn by the quality--and
here and there a blowzy carter staring owlishly over a mug of beer.
When he was ready, his attendant conducted him to a little timbered
room on the floor below, where he found Mr Bagott seated over a round
of cold beef and a stoup of ale on which he was breakfasting. He
nodded to the boy, and bade him be seated and fall to, for he had a
long journey before him.
So Brion obeyed, conscious that the dark gloomy eyes were appraising
him from under their heavy brows, yet feeling in some way secure and
not put out of countenance. And presently, Clerivault being out of the
room, his uncle spoke in a quick sudden manner:--
‘Hast slept sound, boy?’
‘Yes, Sir,’ he answered, looking the other straight and frank in the
face.
‘And favoured thine attendant?’
‘He is strange, Sir; but I favoured him.’
‘Ay, and questioned him, moreover?’
‘I have asked him many questions.’
‘Instance?’
‘Why, who and what he was himself for one.’
‘And his answer?’
‘That he was thy confidant and right-hand man--in his sort a paragon;
which was to say the best of his kind.’
A smile, like a tiny spasm, twitched the moody features.
‘Well, there’s no degree in him like best, since he’s himself alone.
What next?’
‘He said you were no more a Judge, and I asked him why, and he
answered you had resigned your Commission.’
He saw the eyes, as he spoke, blaze into an instant fire.
‘He said!’ cried Bagott. ‘A prating magpie, lacking tact and sense! No
more a Judge, quotha? I’ll bridle him, by God!’ He fumed and rocked,
muttering incoherences. ‘What further?’ he said presently.
The boy faced the question steadily.
‘Only that you would love me,’ said he, ‘if I would love you--as I
will.’
The other put his knife from him, leaning back in his chair. A
wonderful new softness had come to his face.
‘Thou wilt?’ said he. ‘Then that’s a bargain with us. Shall we be done
henceforth with subterfuge? I like thy trusty eyes. They are
thy--heart, but we’ll be friends! What if I am no longer Judge? You’ll
love me none the less?’
‘No, Sir.’
‘That’s sweet and well. What other question put and answered? Whither
we go?’
‘He told me ’twas to a house, the Moated Grange, where you was used to
dwell in Devon.’
‘A fair country, Brion, where we may live in peace and comfort,
forgetting all the plots and hateful toils that stretch to snare men’s
feet in these cursed warrens of the town. Harlequin is to take you.’
‘Harlequin?’
‘And I’ll follow betimes.’
‘Uncle?’
‘Well, boy?’
‘Is not Master Clerivault mad?’
‘How, mad?’ The black eyes conned him whimsically.
‘I know not,’ answered Brion. ‘His speech is so strange; and when I
misdoubted his English blood, he skipped and sweat with fury.’
Bagott nodded, smiling.
‘He did? He would, child: ’tis to touch him on the quick. Whatever
hybrid he, call him but out of his imagined birthright, and you put a
match to tow. England is not only all the world, but all the stars and
all the heavens to him. But, mad?’--the humour left his face; his
brows bent down--‘If madness is in devotion, then is he mad; if
madness is in incorruptible fidelity, then is he mad. And so,
perchance, would Reason call him, but not I his master, who saved him
from the gallows.’
Brion’s eyes and red lips opened together.
‘O, how?’ he said. ‘Poor Clerivault.’
‘Poor Clerivault!’ echoed the other. ‘A mad fool, maybe, for that he
held chivalry before self-interest. He was implicated in Ket’s rising
against the gentry in ’49, and brought up at Norwich assizes to stand
his trial. He would have been hanged, a mere tool of others, but that
I won him off; and since he hath given me the devotion of a dog.
Twenty years ago,’--his voice fell to rapt and wondering, as if he had
forgotten his audience--‘through bright fortune and sour, and he hath
never swerved from his allegiance. He hath learnt law; he is my
liegeman, clerk and bodyguard in one. One third coxcomb, one
gentleman, and one most rare poet and romantic--he dreams, and so
lives in his dreams that he half believes them true. Vain as a
peacock, simple as a child, sapient in vision--you must like poor
Harlequin.’
‘I like him very well, Sir’ said Brion--‘if I but knew how to bear
myself towards him. “One time gentleman of fortune,” quotha--’twas so
he called himself.’
‘God knows what he was!’ exclaimed Bagott. ‘His conceit will make him
twenty titles in a day, and not one to be believed. Only through all
there’s the sound core to him, like the good white heart in a
flaunting cabbage. He had a monkish schooling, that I know; and
thereby came his fall; for to the houseless friars who fomented that
rebellion he ought his foolish part in it. Well, he’s a fool i’faith.’
His eyes suddenly fixed his nephew’s in an unmoving stare; then he
rose from his seat, walked to the door, came back, and bade the boy,
with a commanding gesture, to stand up before him, when he regarded
the young face hardly.
‘What,’ said he in a deep low voice, ‘hath surprised me into this
confidence with a child? Small talk forsooth; yet, mark well, what I
trust to thy ear, howsoever little, keep in trust.’
He lifted the soft chin with his forefinger, and searched the fearless
eyes that did not flinch before his.
‘On my faith, Uncle,’ said Brion.
He answered, ‘That is well,’ and, waiting so a few moments, ‘Remain
here till Harlequin comes; then follow his directions,’ he said, and
turned, and left the room.
Brion would have liked to ask more questions, hinting at the mystery
of his own past; but he might not dare, with those fierce looks
probing him. Still, the sense of his being already in a measure
privileged gave him confidence, and he felt as cheerful as this sudden
transplanting of all his customs and affections to a new soil would
let him be, so that he awaited Master Clerivault’s reappearance even
with impatience.
The paragon returned in no long time, booted and cloaked for the
journey, and bringing the stirring information that they were to set
out within the hour from the inn yard, whence Mr Baggott had arranged
for them to join in with a company of traders and bagmen, all well
mounted and armed, which was to proceed by reasonable stages into the
West country, and was already gathering for its start. So down they
went, the boy being warmly clad against the cold, and found their
horses ready waiting with the saddle-bags on them, and a good party
assembled, most of them at their stirrup-cups, and all preparing,
inside and out, for a quick departure.
It was a wonderful time, so full of novelty and excitement for Brion
that there was no room in him for brooding or apprehension; but, when
they rode forth, his eyes were for twenty things at once, and least
for his own company, who were in truth as safe and sober-sided a set
of gravities as ever combined to make a prose of venturing. For which
reason Brion soon forgot them for the livelier interests about him. He
observed much, putting few questions to his companion--for that was
not his way, except he had a definite purpose in asking--but measuring
and marking in silence. The great buildings took him with wonder--and
most, naturally, the congregated cluster of the Abbey, with its fair
eastern chapel only then recently finished, and Margaret’s church, and
the half-ruined royal palace and hall, approached through a gateway
with octagonal towers which led into a mighty quadrangle with the
river shining beyond. But more he liked to note the people, and the
tumult and the multiformity of the crowds through which he passed. The
jolly sellers at their booths (each hung over with its insignia, like
the Cathedral stall of a knight-banneret), and their eternal chaunt of
“What d’ye lack”; the ballad singers bawling their wares, and the
loaded oyster-wenches dragging theirs; the gingerbread wife, the
fiddler at a street corner--no commonplace of them all but figured as
a very _lusus naturae_ to these young emancipated eyes. Once and again
a knight in armour, with his scarf at his shoulder and a plume in his
velvet cap, would come riding over the cobbles, scattering the crowd
right and left; and that to Brion was the finest sight of all. But
there was a funnier, which made him presently stare, and then go off
into a fit of giggling which he tried vainly to repress. For suddenly
he saw coming towards them the oddest figure of a woman he had ever
seen. She was old and pinched and raddled, with a great ruff round her
neck, and a high-crowned hat set askew on a wig as red as rhubarb. Her
stomacher stuck a foot below her waist, supporting an oval frame, over
which was draped a padded farthingale like a great swinging bell that
ended at her ankles; and thence projected a pair of gilt and painted
shanks, which were like nothing in the world so much as a couple of
enormous marrow-bones. It was only on her near approach that Brion
perceived these to be a sort of fantastic clogs, half a yard in
height, which she wore to the soles of her embroidered slippers, over
which they were strapped; but so little gravity did they afford to the
poor body that she needed the prop of a walking cane on the one side,
and on the other of a sweet ape of fashion in a French doublet, who
was her cicisbeo, to hold her up; in despite of which buttresses, she
had a hard ado to keep her equilibrium as she passed, smirking and
ogling.
‘Ay,’ said Clerivault, with an answering smile, hearing the boy unable
to suppress his merriment. ‘Only laugh small, if thou must laugh. When
oldest age mates with youngest fashion, she rightly bears derision for
her pains. Yet, for the fashion itself, it finds favour in exalted
quarters.’
‘What,’ said Brion: ‘those painted clogs?’
‘Not clogs, my young master, but chopines so called--a fashion brought
from Venice. You will see them once and again and mark their
indication. She was a small lady, that, yet a great lady.’
‘How, great, do you mean?’
‘Why, by the altitude of her chopine, Sir, which was as much higher
than a patten as her ladyship was above a fishwife. The measure of
that folly is the measure of its wearer’s rank.’
‘And does the Queen wear them?’
‘God forbid! She would have to go on stilts by the token. But when I
spoke of fashion, I meant these new-found farthingales, which, by’r
lady, are the very nadir of inelegance. Well, there is virtue in them,
they say; and what are we to carp at virtue, though in a fantastic
form. Let our maids go ugly, so they go chaste.’
Brion was puzzled, but he said no more; and other distractions quickly
engaged him. They were soon out of Westminster, going by the north
bank of the river, and, making in a little the village of
Chelsea--dear to bathers for its clear water and pleasant
meadows--rode through it and in no long while after reached the ferry
at Putney, where, at the cost of a halfpenny a head, they crossed the
river into the Manor of Wimbledon, seeing some men net and haul in a
brace of great salmon by the way. For the river here yielded not only
that excellent fish, but eke much smelt, and an occasional sturgeon or
porpoise, for which reason its waters were exceedingly prized by
anglers. Thence, going over an extended heath in close order, they
reached the royal town of Kingston, where, passing by the
church--whose great paschal candle, once kept perpetually burning
through the halfpennies of the faithful, the Reformation had at last
extinguished--Brion saw the very stone on which the Anglo-Saxon Kings
were wont to sit to receive their crowns, and was properly impressed
though not excited thereby. And here, at the _Castle_ inn, they dined
on calvered salmon and a huge baron of beef, with ale and sack to wash
them down, after which the young gentleman rode so sleepily in his
saddle that for miles he offered but a glazed eye to his surroundings,
and only looked forward to bed and the journey’s end.
They lay that night at Farnborough, whence they were to journey by way
of Salisbury and Dorchester to Bridport, and there take boat for the
Devon coast, crossing Lyme Bay to a little fishing village named
Torquay, which was the point nearest to their destination on the
moors. And all that they did, nor am I going to recount the details of
the journey, which was sufficiently tedious and without event. But
here one of their party would leave them, and there another, making
for the big towns, until from Dorchester they two issued alone, and
were so together till the end was reached. The weather all this time
was fine but cold, and Brion took his destiny manfully, though
sometimes his heart would fail him a little over the weariness of it
all. But whatever he might think or feel, there was the paragon always
at hand to hearten and entertain him, to paint the future in roseate
colours or improve the present with tales of his own past prowess and
extraordinary experiences.
So at the end of four days they came into Devon, and found themselves
towards a still bright evening riding into the little town of
Ashburton, some three miles north of which lay the Moated Grange.