CERTAIN VISITORS
Somewhere in the late summer of ’77 there came to the Moated Grange
early one morning two visitors, of whom one was destined to exert a
considerable influence on Brion’s fortunes. These were Sir Richard
Grenville, and a young connexion of his named Walter Raleigh, both
West Border gentlemen of good family, and one of them, the elder,
holding some sort of official position as County Sheriff. This latter
was a strong, compact, saturnine man of thirty-seven, rough bearded
and voiced, and with a manner which halted, if at all, on the near
side of offence; in all of which characteristics he afforded as
complete a contrast as was possible with his companion, whose extreme
graces of courtesy and geniality, together with a handsome gallant
presence, made only more emphatic the coarse grain of the other. This
Mr Raleigh was but lately home, it seemed, from fighting in the Low
Countries, where he had played the part of a good soldier against the
King of Spain, and earned for himself a reputation which he was quite
prepared to stake against the most extravagant throws of Fortune. He
was a tallish young man of twenty-five, very shapely in the limbs,
with a white hand and a comely intellectual face, rather overhigh in
the forehead, but with noble brown eyes, which, at a tale of arms and
chivalry, would glow like living fires. His human weakness--if
weakness it were to treat so fine a body delicately--lay in a certain
over-gallantry of attire. He loved fine clothes, and knew how to wear
them to effect. Now, though he was by the road, and only country folk
to appraise him, he was dressed as though to attend a Queen’s
junketting--from embroidered bonnet to long Flemish boots of soft
leather a star of fashion. His little pointed beard was scented, as
were his cheveril gloves; he had jewels in his ears; his gilt spurs
‘rang the morris-dance.’ And yet to judge him effeminate would have
been to invite disaster. There is a form of foppishness about which it
does not do to assume that it lacks the courage of its opinions; and
here was a wrist as strong and supple as the wit behind it was virile.
The two gentlemen--the one in virtue of his office, the other of his
own engaging assurance, it seemed--appeared as uninvited guests; but
there was little doubt as to the purpose of their visit. Rumours, in
an unfriendly neighbourhood, had got abroad as to the supposed
Papistical tendencies of the master of the Grange, and the Sheriff
considered, or made, it his business to inquire into the matter. He
did so, to do him justice, frankly and at first hand, and would accept
no hospitality, for himself and his companion, until he was satisfied
as to the baselessness of the accusation. Convinced of which, he
consented for them to dine and lie the night at the Grange, and
Phineas was put to his mettle to provide a feast worthy of the
occasion.
Brion, having been early astir, with Clerivault, on the moors after
wild fowl, did not encounter the newcomers until he came in to dinner
at eleven o’clock. But his surprise on finding them there was so
graced by tact in his greeting as to appear more like gratification
than wonder.
He had developed in these three years into a prepossessing young man
of nineteen, lithe and well-proportioned, with a smooth rather pale
complexion, and the most winning gray eyes full of gravity and humour.
His fair hair had deepened a thought in tone, and even more so his
eyebrows and lashes, once described as mouse-coloured, but now a
well-marked umber, while a definite shadow pencilled his lip. Always
possessed of an attractive manner, though shy in its expression, his
earlier reserve had yielded to an unaffected friendliness which was as
sincere as it was captivating. Self-reliance and a certain beauty of
mind had wrought of this youngster a very maiden knight, whose sword
was as ready as his word to uphold that religion of honour which he
had made his own. What he owed to himself he paid in sweetness and
forbearance to others; yet there was a humour in him which saved him
very adequately from the saint. He could be ebullient sometimes, and
do things of which he repented. Yet among these was never to be
counted a lapse from one fixed ideal. Dedicated to his lady’s service,
he would be pure and chivalrous for her sake, nor, for her sake, would
he ever break his virgin plight, unless, by blessed fortune, it were
to achieve in her the desire of his heart. So he was resolved, vowing
it should be his Joan for him or none, and in the meantime what arms
and enterprise fell to him he would use to her sole renown, whereby he
would be constantly pledged to the nobility his birth denied him.
This firm resolution--the more inflexible, perhaps from the lack of
any temptation, in that masculine community, to reconsider it--had
lasted since the closing of that brief romance had left him, as he
thought, with a broken heart. It all seemed very far away now; such
episodes in the full years of youth fade quickly into the background
of dim memories. He could afford, perhaps, to smile at it, and at the
tragic intensity of the grief which had predicted for him an eternity
of unforgetting anguish. Yet, though that dear apparition might never
materialise for him again, the love it had engendered in his soul
still made itself a sanctuary there, and called to be revered and
honoured for the dream’s sake. It had no more to build on. In all
these years the family had never returned to the Chase, nor, hugging
that poignant secret to his heart, could he venture to seek
information as to its possible plans and movements. She was gone from
him, it seemed, never to return; and gone to what fate? For long he
had suffered intolerable torment, raging over her peril and his own
helplessness. But the impotence of his agony had proved its cure. He
had learned first despair from it and then resignation. At least they
had had those lovely moments together which had been all their own. No
power on earth could rob him of that possession, or spoil its
sweetness for him so long as he himself kept it spotless. And so he
had preserved his dream and become a knight of dreams.
That steadfast sentiment had been one factor in the forming of the
boy’s character, as his relations with his Uncle had proved another.
It is melancholy to record that the ex-Judge had at this date
degenerated into something little removed from an habitual sot. His
vice had steadily grown upon him under his nephew’s eyes, until, for
all his inexperience and reluctance to believe, Brion had been forced
into a recognition of the truth. He took it passionlessly, gravely,
and set about to adapt his conduct to the newly-realised conditions.
There could be no question of coercive or of remonstrant measures with
a spirit of that force and authority; instead, he devoted himself to
hedging about an evil which he could not remove, and so hiding its
worst manifestations from the world. The drunkard watched, with a
drunkard’s cunning, the nature of these means so privily taken to
safeguard his reputation, and was leeringly tickled or gloomily
affected by them according to his mood. But they had this inevitable
effect upon him, that he took to leaning more and more upon his
nephew’s resourcefulness and quiet strength of will, until in the end
it ensued that Brion became virtual master of the house, ordering its
affairs and attending to its accounts. And that was only to anticipate
events indefinitely, for he had long been made and legally attested
sole heir to all the little property, including house and messuage,
which his Uncle still possessed.
Clerivault knocked thrice on the sideboard with a rolling-pin, and the
company assembled to its dinner in the great hall. The meal consisted
of two courses, the items of which, for any who may care to consult
them, figured as follows:--
First Course.
Calves’ foot soup
Poached eggs with hop-tops
Roasted hare and forcemeat balls
Fried hasty pudding
Mushrooms done in batter
Black-caps (or applejohns--baked apples served in custard).
Second Course.
Fried lampreys
A mess of cocks’ combs
Roasted crane
Spiced vegetables with eggs
A great pasty of boar’s head
Radishes
Flavons, or open cheesecakes
--with copious canary, malmsey, and flagons of strong October ale to
wash all down. The host, bareheaded, muttered for grace a brief
_Benedictus Benedicat_, to which all, save Grenville, removed their
hats--to put them on again to dine in.
‘I doff to no Latin,’ said the Sheriff, with a scowl.
Bagott moistened his unsteady lips with his tongue. He looked ill and
agitated. The unexpectedness of this visit, with the moral of
watchfulness and suspicion it implied, had sent his nerves by the
board. He was the mere delapidated ruin of his former self, bloated,
coarsened, discoloured. He could not control the twitching of his
features or the aphasia which muddled his speech. The signs of his
infirmity were too patent on him for any to mistake the cause. He only
stared, hearing the rebuke, as if at a loss for its provocation. But
Raleigh came to the rescue.
‘Unless to _caput aperio_,’ said he gaily. ‘For my part I would not be
so churlish to an old friend.’
‘No friend of mine,’ growled the other. ‘I always hated it--a Popish
crafty language. I was no College ape’ (Raleigh had been at Oriel) ‘to
learn to mince and lisp in tricked-up phrases. A dead language,
forsooth! Ay, and vampires they that feed on it. Give me full-blooded
English for my share.’
‘To bless the food, withal? An you spoke your fullest, we’d see it
blasted rather. I’ll say _Benedicat_ with all my heart, and see no
more craft in it than a short cut to the joint. Come, Dick: a pledge
to our host in better grace.’
Grenville drank it--surlily enough; but it warmed him to a reluctant
if temporary urbanity. He was one of those who cannot concede a thing
gracefully. He had suspected, perhaps wished to suspect, this man; his
suspicions allayed, he grudged himself his own convincement. But
already his civility was tempered with contempt when he saw the sort
of creature he had to deal with. He had no eyes for any tragedy in
this ruin; but only for the baseness of its material aspect; and when,
as the dinner proceeded, and the ex-Judge, stimulated by copious
libations, steadied, and ran a brief spasmodic stage of brilliancy,
only to slide unexpectedly into a condition of maudlin incoherence, he
shrugged his shoulders disdainfully, and, virtually turning them on
his host, addressed himself for the remainder of the meal to Brion.
Raleigh seemed to feel the young man’s discomfort, and to sympathise
with it; but he could do no more than endeavour to keep the
conversation on as natural a plane as possible.
‘This house?’ he asked once, interested in some chance allusion to the
place: ‘it is a rare and old one?’
Brion did not know; but Grenville, who was well posted in local
history, answered dogmatically for him:--
‘’Twas re-built in the Crookback’s reign, by one Miles Bagott, a
Yorkist franklin. That was always a family, cry you mercy, young
gentleman, to back the wrong horse.’
Bagott, some spark rekindling in his fuddled brain, looked the length
of the table, with glazed eyes and a tipsy leer.
‘The wrong horse,’ said he, in a thick disjointed voice--‘the wrong
horse may suttimes have the better tidle, and may hap to come to its
own in the end.’
All eyes were turned on the speaker.
‘The better title, master?’ asked Grenville, with a sneer. ‘What
better title? To the crown?’
The drunkard pursed his lips and nodded his head extravagantly. He had
said, his manner expressed, all he meant to say.
The two visitors exchanged a quick glance; and then Grenville
remarked, as if by design:--
‘Nathless I would not put Queen Mary of Scotland’s chance at a
copper-mite.’
Both he and Raleigh seemed to wait for an answer; but none coming,
save in more inebrious nods and chuckles, the former, with a ‘Bah!’
contemptuously uttered under his breath, turned again to Brion, who
sat quite at a loss for the meaning of this passage, and continued:--
‘Withal this family _hath_ been’--with a significant emphasis on the
‘hath’--‘more creditable in its members than always in its tenants.
You’ve heard of him that lived and died here before your day?’
‘Matthew Fulk the miser, Sir?’
‘So they called him. It might be. ’Twas the name of a bloody picaroon,
had sailed the seas and pillaged and murdered in his time. He was said
to have treasure hid here; and to have killed and pitched down the
well some young conveniency that lived with him, and that came to
learn too much. Wives’ tales, I doubt not. There was nothing found
after his death. I saw him once, an old sanctimonious buck-fitch, in
whose mouth butter had not melted.’
Brion listened, with open eyes. Here was a new garnish to an old tale
which greatly enhanced its savour. A pirate! And the poor maid had
found out his secret! At least that was a more plausible story than
the demoniac immolation imagined by Mother Harlock.
‘_I_ should like to sail the seas,’ said he, his eyes shining; ‘but
for a better purpose than robbery and murder.’
For the first time the grim Sheriff looked at him with interest.
‘What purpose?’ said he.
‘To carry England’s fame from land to land,’ answered the young man,
‘and, as doughty knighthood used, to uphold my mistress peerless
against all the world.’
‘God’s ’slid! and so she is!’ cried Clerivault, in a high ecstatic
voice. He had remained, a privileged attendant, when the meal was
over, to carry the wine about. The Sheriff bent astonished wrathful
brows on the daring interjector; but Raleigh regarded him with an
amused curiosity.
‘What’s that, Sir donzel?’ said he. ‘You love your England?’
It was to put spark to tow, and set it flaring unquenchably.
Clerivault forgot his duty, his company, his place, and broke
forthwith, his eyes glittering, into a wild rhapsodic paean on his
native land:--
‘Love her--ha! As the flower loves the sun, the parched soul water,
the woman her way, the kid its milky dam. To carry England’s fame?
Aye, thou dear gentle--through all the lands, like a sweet western
gale that rains life and health on the dearth it visits. She shall
make conquests, ha! but such as the liberal light makes of cramped
darkness. We’ll go together; teach the world to know her for what she
is; so sing her sweet and pastoral praises that whole peoples shall
lay down their arms for very love, and yield themselves her subjects
and her slaves. Earth shall surrender to her beauty, as willingly as
it yields its frozen winters to spring with her daffodils and
milk-white hawthorns. For where England sets her feet, does not the
primrose break? She brings the atmosphere of her free and equitable
fields into where’er she enters; and straight from that lovely
invasion are born the darling wind-flower that is Our Lady’s child,
and cowslips known for St Peter’s keys to Heaven, and wild hyacinth,
our own St George’s bells that fought and slew the beast, and radiant
mary-buds that cure most ills. These shall spring up, where’er we go,
like Thebes its towers, to our song, and win the soils we tread to
England. Or if we die, we die for England’s sake, and take possession
with our fruitful bodies. All lands where English blood is shed and
England’s sons lie buried are in part fiefs to England; for there each
grave becomes a plat of English mould, rich breeding-ground of truth
and chivalry, fair play, honour to the better man, forbearance in
strength--all qualities summed up in this, the heart to conquer and
the hate to pain. O, it is good to live for England, but sweeter still
to die and be her prolific dust! Peerless, in truth, our fair
mother--I take the word, sweet soul, from thee, as I would have thee
take me with thee in the sharing of thy quest.’
He ceased; his voice fell; but silence still seemed to ripple on his
lips, while the rapt exaltation in his eyes died slowly out. Raleigh
applauded, with a somewhat kindling vision:--
‘Well sung!’ he said: ‘Here is another as passionate lover of his
land.’
But the practical Sheriff snorted, finding little to understand in
these dithyrambics.
‘I know naught of your cowslips and wind-flowers,’ he grumbled. ‘A
general were best to take wheat and barley with him, where he foresees
a long besiegement, and sow them in the open ground. And as to
atmospheres, for all I’m a loyal Devon man, I’d liefer chance the
fortunes of another climate than take my own with me.’
Raleigh laughed out: ‘O, thou rare Dick!’ and Brion, fearing to follow
his example, rose, and went to Clerivault, and, gripping his hand,
looked in his face with a whispered word:--
‘It shall be share and share alike, friend, when the time comes.’
The dinner finished, and Clerivault left to care for his master, who
had fallen fast asleep with his head on the table, Brion went with his
guests into the open air, where, strolling in the Courtyard, they came
upon Nol porter at friendly trials of strength with Raleigh’s servant,
one Nicholas Wright, a bulky Yorkshireman. And them they provoked to a
wrestling bout on the sward, in which neither could best the other;
after which the Sheriff, in his turn, fell asleep on a bench and
snored in the sun. Then did this Mr Raleigh, with a very winning way
he had, inviting and giving confidence in one, slip his arm under the
young man’s, and ask him to come with him a little walk towards the
moors, for that he had something of moment for his private ear. And
Brion, foreseeing, perhaps, what was to follow, and naturally pleased,
as a boy, over the condescension of so superlative a gallant, very
willingly consented.
‘That is a rare fellow of thine, the patriot cup-bearer,’ said the
soldier, as, leaving the bridge, they walked on together. ‘It warmed
my heart to hear him.’
Brion smiled. ‘It was one Harlequin Clerivault, a creature as
fantastic as his name, but with a heart of gold. You touched him on
the quick, Sir. To start his brain on the subject of England is like
laying open an emmet heap with your foot. It is a house gone wild at a
blow.’
‘Well, I love him for it. Whence came the oddity?’
‘I know not; but the first of him for us was’--he paused, remembering
his bond, and his cheek reddened.
‘Nay,’ said the other, quietly observant, ‘no need for you to answer.
No need, mayhap, in the double sense, chancing I know already.’
‘You know?’
‘Why, what a tone? Think you it is no part of the duties of my friend
the Sheriff to acquire some knowledge of his neighbours’ antecedents?
Well, if this man of yours ought his peril to the monks he favoured,
and his neck to your Uncle, that was long days ago, and certes in
these he plays the part, with you, of a good Churchman. But why, lad,
does your kinsman, the ex-Judge, never worship with his nephew in St
Andrew’s Church in Ashburton?’
‘Because,’ began Brion--and stuck. He felt stupefied. This revelation
of a sort of furtive vehmgericht sitting on their conduct, the while
they had been living untroubled and unsuspecting, took him like a
blow. But Raleigh laughed good-humouredly:--
‘Judge me for no inquisitor: only, remembering things, and setting
this with that--you have never heard, mayhap, what put him out of
favour with the Court?’
‘I heed no gossips, Sir,’ said the boy proudly; and then, remembering
who had been his informant, blushed again, in grief at having so
belied his innocent dear.
‘Well,’ said the other; ‘I say no more--only that it were a small
wisdom on his part to condescend to bridle those same gossips by
attending the reformed service now and again. Yet he may say he knows
his own business better than I can tell him--and that’s the truth. For
me, who both come and give advice uninvited, it is reassurance enough
to have heard that passionist declaim. No schism worth the name in a
house where such sentiment could answer such sentiment as his answered
thine! That is the true orthodoxy for me--and eke shall be for my
kinsman Dick Grenville. Loves England, quotha! By God he does--by God
he does. And you’--he stopped in his walk, and looked Brion very
honestly in the face. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘I am going to be as frank with
you as I dare trust you will be with me; and I do entreat you to
believe in my well-meaning candour, the which is designed to no
insidious end, but wholly to serve one whom I am greatly inclined to
love, and who I desire shall accept me for a true friend--yourself.’
What young fellow in Brion’s case would not have been touched by such
a declaration from such a man? He answered, much moved, that his
friendship was Master Raleigh’s for the asking.
‘And confidence,’ said the other, ‘as between two brothers, the elder
of whom hath gained some wisdom in the world.’
‘And confidence,’ repeated Brion in a low voice.
‘Then,’ said Raleigh, ‘here’s at it. Your Uncle let fall but now at
dinner a remark somewhat pertinent to the matter which brought us
hither. You heard it, and Grenville’s answer. I’ll be open with you.
There are whispers of some plot toward to dethrone the Queen and put
Mary of Scotland in her place. You know nothing of it?’
‘Nothing--just Heaven!’
‘Nor your Uncle?’
Brion looked at him sadly.
‘You see what he is.’
‘I see,’ said the other, ‘and pity him and you. Then you think he is
not involved?’
‘Not possible. He receives no correspondence; sees nobody, unless
enforced; for years has held himself quite secluded.’
‘No midnight priests--no disguised emissaries of Spain?’
‘None. O!’ said the boy, ‘that I should have to say it. He hath become
the very nerveless ruin of a man, incapable of plotting, of resisting
even for one brief hour the enemy that kills him. If he had cunning in
those words at all, I trow it was the cunning of a lawyer’s brain,
haunted in its decay with old thoughts of deeds and titles.’
Raleigh, pondering the speaker, did not answer for some moments; then
he heaved a great sigh, as of relief, and, recapturing the boy’s arm,
the two resumed their stroll.
‘That’s like enow,’ said he--‘and so I’ll acquaint Grenville. ’Tis
happily resolved; and now we’ll talk of other things.’
And so he did, and charmingly. He was full of life and anecdote. He
was on his way to London shortly, where, he said, his pack of small
accomplishments would find their most profitable market. ‘For,’ said
he, ‘in all the world it is the little things gain great rewards,
since man, being little, judges by little. But greatness must be
content even with itself, since it cannot be content with little.’ He
urged Brion to come with him; to persuade his impossible kinsman to
let him go; to throw off the shackles of imagined duty which kept him
wasting his young life among boors in a rustic isolation, and take
that place in the world to which his gentle breeding and physical
graces entitled him. He was frankly complimentary: he had obviously
taken a fancy to the young fellow. He even hinted to him, though with
a subtle delicacy, that he might find his bar sinister _no_ bar to his
social advancement, but rather the contrary. And Brion understood
without resentment. He had long decided his own attitude towards that
question: for one thing to accept it as, virtually, an open secret;
for another, to refuse to suffer for it in any way to himself, since
honour was a matter of conscience, and not of arbitrary bestowal. But
he only thanked his new friend, and answered that, like that friend
himself, he must win his spurs before he took his reputation to
market.
‘And so thou shalt,’ said the other admiringly. ‘Thou shalt carry thy
quest knight-errantly, and strike for England’s name. Would I could go
with thee to bruit her virtues. But the time may come. I see a vision
in the West of a land great for adventure--the arena, it may hap,
where shall be fought to a final settlement our quarrel with
idolatrous Spain. Shall we leave all this and sail there together? Who
knows what may come to pass. But first--the spurs. Is England, I am
fain to ask, thine only love? A paladin so devout should wear a lady’s
sleeve about his helm.’
Brion gave a little gasp, and the blood rushed to his heart. He had
never yet spoken his secret to living soul. Should he break that
silence now? He was suddenly and irresistibly tempted, such surety of
earnest faith and sympathy he felt in this young soldier. Before he
could resolve, the words were out of him:--
‘Mayhap I do.’
‘That’s well,’ said Raleigh. ‘No such incitement to chivalry in all
the world. She’s sweet and fair, I know. Her name, that thy boon
comrade may hold it housed and honoured in his heart!’
The young man hesitated one moment, then turned and looked the other
glowingly in the eyes.
‘Joan Medley,’ he said.
‘Joan Medley!’ repeated Raleigh, and struck his breast: ‘There it lies
shrined.’
‘You know her--have heard of her, perchance?’ asked Brion, the blood
flushing his skin now that the murder was out. But the soldier shook
his head.
‘Is she of this side? My home is _Fardel_ in Cornwood, east of
Plymouth; and even so I am but late returned to it, having been long
in France and the Low Countries.’
And then Brion told him all his secret, for what was the use to
withhold the rest, when he had confessed so much. And as he spoke, the
glamour of that sweet time returned upon him, so that his voice grew
husky with passion and grief, and the recognition of that loss which
could never now be made good.
‘Nay,’ said his comforter at the end: ‘never’s no word for love. A
City knight, and I for London! I’ll get you news of her--contrive you
meet again. She’s not forgot thee--take my word on’t. That face would
linger in a maiden’s heart. Be of best cheer. Shalt hear from me
within the month.’
His bright confidence had its effect upon the lover. Hope, like a
blown-on-spark, began to glow and travel in his breast again. But
still he shook his head:--
‘What an he hath forced her to wed where she abhorred?’
‘What an he hath not?’ was the answer. ‘I detect a touch of self-will
in your lady. She would have her way on occasion. And she a spoilt and
only child. Come, brave heart! We’ll pledge a silent toast to your
re-meeting, at table this night.’
And they did so, their eyes encountering, while Brion thrilled all
through.
There was little talk at supper--from which the host was absent--save
for the young soldier’s recounting some of his experiences in the Low
Countries. And, of those, what most impressed itself on Brion’s mind
was a description of a certain engagement with the forces of Don John
of Austria, natural son to the Emperor, in which, the day being
sultry, the English--among whom was Raleigh--had flung off their
armour and hacketons, and fought in their shirts, with a fury that had
routed the enemy, though superior in numbers, and driven him to flight
and confusion. And that was to be Englishmen all over, bold and
reckless to folly, yet having confidence in nothing so much as the
clean sheer force of their English blood to carry them through.
The little company went to bed early; and early next morning the
gentlemen took their departure, Raleigh with many expressions of
affection and reassurance to his young host, and even Sir Richard,
gruffly unbending, with a word of what he meant to be courtly
acknowledgement of the hospitality vouchsafed them.
Brion, with a kindling heart, watched them ride away.