A POIGNANT INTERVIEW
Slowly, as in a theatre, when dark veils are lifted one by one to
simulate a gradual dawn, before Brion’s eyes, as they accustomed
themselves to the gloom, came into shadowy being the shapes and forms
about him. He stood, he saw, in a low vaulted chamber, a score of
armed men surrounding him and the two who held him captive. Narrow
shafts ran up into the groining of the roof, against one of which
lolled he who had spoken in his ear, and who appeared to be the
captain of the party. His conductor had disappeared--presumably to
notify some one of his seizure--and silence and stagnation prevailed,
pending, it seemed, the messenger’s return. The occasional clearing of
a throat or the shuffle of a foot on the stone flags were the only
sounds to break the dead stillness. Somewhere in front of him, and
above the level of his eyes, a vertical line of silver, the merest
thread, seemed to denote the presence of heavy curtains, shrouding the
way into the inner recesses of the house; and on that line he fixed
his attention.
He had made one attempt to break the silence, and had been roughly
bidden by the officer to hold his tongue or he would be incontinently
gagged. And so he stood mute, but raging in his heart over the
damnable treachery which had been used to draw him into this snare.
His one grain of comfort lay in Clerivault’s safety. Of that he was
now convinced: the story had been devised, he saw, merely to entrap
and secure him--how devised, with what intention and on what
information, it were idle to speculate. He knew enough of the man into
whose clutches, he never had a doubt, he had fallen, to know that he
never lacked for agents and abettors in any sinister business he had
on hand. But, for all that, it was nothing less than his own vanity
and headstrong will which were responsible for this trouble.
Clerivault had foreseen truly, and he had flouted in his conceit the
faithful seer. Like a child he had blundered into the trap, and now he
must pay the penalty for his obstinate folly--with what?
It was that thought which most maddened him--his real simplicity, and
the self-sufficiency which had made it vulnerable to a blatant
imposture. His passion rose with his sense of humiliation. Was no
course left to him but submission to the unknown force which held him
here imprisoned? Better the risk of a dash for freedom than a
surrender so spiritless.
The door by which he had entered was behind him. Barred and bolted,
there was no hope of escape that way. But--what the curtains hid--if
he could once gain the intricacies of the house beyond!
He had been standing so passive as to lull his guards into a sense of
false security, and the rigour of their hold on his arms had a little
relaxed itself in consequence. He was as lithe and muscular as a young
leopard. With a sudden leap and wrench he tore himself free and,
before they could recover from their surprise, was bounding for the
thread of light. He gained this small advantage, that in the dusk, and
the confusion of the general rush to recapture him, he had time,
before he was beset, to draw his sword; but he could do no more, since
an obstacle he had not foreseen, in the shape of a short flight of
steps leading to the curtains, baulked and brought him to bay. He laid
one fellow’s cheek open with his blade; but he had no play in the
crush for his sword arm, and could only shorten his weapon and stab
ineffectively, as, feeling for the steps with his heels, he essayed to
mount them backwards one by one. The noise was at its height--the
scuffle of feet, the clash of steel, the calling of the officer to his
men to take him alive o’ God’s name, and do him no hurt on peril of
their heads--when the curtains at Brion’s back parted, letting in a
faint gush of light, and with it the apparition of a white
panic-struck face. The boy glanced round, saw the beast who had
entrapped him, and, with a mighty effort and a cry of rage, leapt the
remaining step and fell tooth and nail upon his enemy. The man went
down under him with a yelp like a bitten dog’s, and lay writhing. But
the end was come. Before the youngster could seize his blade into
position, the whole party was upon him, and he was severed from his
prey and set, torn and dishevelled on his feet, his sword wrested from
him and his arms bound behind his back. And there he stood, panting
and scornful, jeering at the pitiful figure of the other, as they set
him too, shaking like a jelly, upright.
‘See the meal-faced pitcher-bawd,’ cried he, ‘how his valour fits with
his profession!’
There was a stifled laugh or two, and the man, casting a fell venomous
look about him, made a mute gesture to the others to follow, and went
on himself before. The curtain had been torn aside in the fracas,
revealing a narrow dim-lit passage down which the whole party made its
way, the prisoner held secure in its midst. But Brion had no further
thought to escape, and, breathed and defenceless as he was, allowed
himself to be carried along unresisting.
Deep into the bowels of the building, like the passage tunnelled in a
pyramid, ran the corridor, until at length it opened into a lofty
stone hall, octagonal in shape, and having a peaked timbered roof with
coats of arms emblazoned in its triangles, at whose apex an iron
lantern, caging rather than releasing the little daylight which sought
to enter and explore the glooms beneath, just enabled it to dilute
their melancholy, and to reveal in each of the eight sections of the
wall a heavy curtain hanging, denoting the presence of a room beyond.
Before one of these curtains the guard halted their prisoner, while
the decoy, cringing and fulsome, parted the folds and vanished within.
A muffled wrath of words followed, and presently the white face of the
creature reappeared, and he whispered, his breath fluttering, in the
Captain’s ear. That officer grunted, and gave an order to his men:--
‘Stand by till I call.’ He turned to Brion: ‘Now, young Sir’--and,
taking him by one of his bound arms, led him into the room. The
curtain closed behind them.
It was no great chamber--a spacious closet might describe it--but rich
beyond the wont in its appointments. There was a Turkey carpet on the
floor; another, inventoried by that name, on the table--‘of crimson
velvet, richly embroidered with my Lord’s posie, bears and ragged
staves of clothe of goulde and silver, garnished upon the seames and
aboute with goulde lace, fringed accordinglie, and lyned with crimson
taffeta sarsenett.’ And on it stood a flagon of hammered gold, from
which, it seemed, my Lord had just drunk. The walls were panelled, and
set in their darkness like a gem was a portrait of the Queen by
Zucchero. From the ceiling hung a brazen candelabrum, with many
branches. The chairs were upholstered in crimson velvet, and on one of
them, drawn up before the hearth, on which a fire of sea-coal burned,
sat the expected figure of him whom out of all the world Brion had
most wished to avoid, yet whom, it seemed, in some fateful way, he was
most destined to encounter. Yet, since it was his destiny, he set his
neck stiffly to it, and faced his captor with a look of proud
defiance.
The soldier, staying his convoy within some three yards distance of
this brooding figure, put his heels together with a click and saluted.
At the sound, my Lord brought his chair about, a little labouredly,
and setting his hands on his thighs, looked hard and curiously into
the face of the boy before him. Steady as a rock, Brion returned the
gaze. ‘I will know him, now I see him,’ he thought.
He was in his fiftieth year, burly, short-necked and nearly bald. His
complexion was colourless; his strong eyebrows, mustachio and full
spade beard were as black, whether from nature or artifice, as black
ink. He had a black velvet bonnet on his head, and the suit he wore
might have been the dark-man’s livery. He looked a figure cut out of
jet and ivory. Under the impassivity of his expression seemed to lurk
a fierce and watchful arrogance, in the wings of his aquiline nose, in
the pupils of his eyes, which were more often turned towards this ear
or the other than set forthright in their sockets. Like a suspicious
dog he appeared to listen with eyes and ears together, while his head
was held as stiff as pride. His voice came hoarse and ruttish,
rumbling in his throat, when he spoke at last:--
‘How now, boy! Are these your manners, being invited to my house to
fall upon my servants and beat and maltreat them?’
‘Such an invitation,’ answered Brion, ‘as the fowler lures his quarry
withal. For my manners, not being framed on falsehood and cozenage,
they were not made to please you.’
His boldness seemed to strike a very stillness in the room, so tense
that one could hear, as it were, the Captain’s skin pricking.
Leicester’s expression did not change or move, but his nostrils
flickered, and sudden lamps seemed turned up in his eyes.
‘So?’ he said softly: ‘a spirited retort; yet wise, in the
circumstances?--Well, we’ll question. Dost know me--who I am?’
‘Too well, indeed.’
‘Too well, yet not well enough, I’ll venture, or some thought of peril
might come to sing in you a milder note.’
‘I have that thought,’ said Brion. ‘I should be a fool not to.’
‘Ah! You have that thought--and, mayhap, the guilty conscience that
fathered it?’
‘I miss your meaning.’
‘I think not. Confess your design; make a clean breast of it; and
perchance--I’ll not say; but certain considerations may weigh with
me--your peril may be less.’
‘Will you tell me my design? I have known of none, but to avoid where
I could the very thought and sight of you.’
‘Wherefore you waited me in a public place, and dared, you young
presumptuous fool, to make public manifestation of your feelings.
What, you’d show your high displeasure, would you!’
He rocked a little, back and forth, his lip lifting.
‘I waited you not,’ answered Brion, undaunted. ‘That meeting--it was
the last from my desire. Methinks, had I foreseen it, I had never come
to London.’
‘Better for you, sirrah, an you had not, nor listened to the
flattering persuasions of a crafty counsellor: better had you stayed
in your rustic obscurity, satisfied, with that old besotted rogue,
your kinsman, to risk the penalties for recusancy, than run the
deadlier peril of a throw with me. Ah, that opens your eyes! You did
not guess, maybe, the range of my knowledge, when you complotted to
discredit me.’
‘With whom? But what is the use to ask. I have plotted with no
one--been guilty of no design against your credit. As to my feelings,
I cannot control my instincts, nor would not if I could. For my
kinsman, who loved and cherished me, when those who had owed me all
disclaimed their debt, he is no rogue--I throw the slander in your
teeth. It is worthy of one whose range of knowledge works through such
vile means and instruments as have been used to-day to trap an
unsuspecting boy. Belike it was he, that same lying reptile, that
informed you of how I fell away that morning on seeing you. The action
was of repulsion--in itself a convincing witness to any but a fawning
pickthank. A plotter, methinks, had concealed his feelings more than I
did.’
Again, in the silence that succeeded this hot outburst, it was as if
the Captain’s nerves vibrated audibly in his body. Awaiting the
certain consequences of such mad temerity, he stole a significant
glance at his lord, and saw in the intolerant face an expression which
both startled and perplexed him. There was some obstupefaction in it,
but not the fury he had expected. Instead, interest, curiosity, a
suggestion of some faint and hard-held emotion, seemed to battle there
for ascendancy or suppression. Yet the words that followed, though not
what he had looked for, were sneering enough:--
‘So innocent and yet so fearful! So guiltless a conscience, and yet
that thought of peril! They hardly consort, according to my mind.’
The boy gave a curt laugh.
‘Decoyed hither by a lie, fallen upon and bound, my weapon taken from
me; above all the character of him that holds me helpless in his
power--it were unnatural for me, were it not, to dream of any harm
designed me in such circumstances? Well, do your work. I understand so
much of it that I am not a pleasant reminder in your eyes.’
‘Ha! I will not ask of what.’
‘I would not.’
‘For your disarming, you brought it on yourself.’
‘Would I had killed thine informer first.’
‘And so, with thy bloody sword, on me!’
Brion looked steadily into the eyes of him that spoke it.
‘O!’ he said softly: ‘not upon _her_ son, but upon you, be charged
that black unnatural thought.’
Leicester started ever so slightly, moved uneasily in his seat, looked
away, and again at the upright figure before him.
‘Thou hast a bold spirit, boy,’ he said harshly.
‘Would I could trace it to a better source,’ answered Brion.
‘Thou----’ he looked for a moment as if he had received a blow; then
again his expression changed. ‘Unbind him, Granton,’ he said.
The soldier loosed the cord, setting the prisoner free. Leicester
pointed to the curtain. ‘Within call,’ said he. ‘I’ll trust him.’
Granton disappeared, and the two were left alone together. The moment
that was so, their eyes met in steady challenge.
‘I might answer,’ said my lord, in a low voice, ‘would I could trace
my better self therein.’ He seemed to ponder on the face before him in
a darkly brooding way. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you would not kill me?’
He received no answer but the same steadfast look, nor seemed to
expect one.
‘Nor,’ he added, ‘design me any evil?’
‘I have told you,’ was the reply, ‘my sole design is and ever has been
to forget you live.’
Again a silence ensued, until suddenly Leicester spoke again:--
‘What is your purpose, tell me, in seeking to be introduced at Court?’
‘I do not seek.’
‘What! it was not for that you were persuaded to leave your retreat?’
‘So far from it that the knowledge of your presence there had made me
reject such an offer though a thousand times more pressed.’
‘So, it was pressed?’
‘In a way--good-humouredly.’
‘By whom?’
‘By one that would do me a service--a friend.’
‘And me a dis-service, perchance?’
‘Your name was never mentioned between us, nor so much as thought on,
by him, I’ll swear.’
‘How know you what was in his heart?’
‘I know something of his heart. It is a fine and generous one,
incapable of perfidy. Besides, why should he think of you in this
connexion of his offer, or suspect the truth? Be sure I have not told
it him, nor any. I am not so enamoured of it. I protested I would not
be a courtier; and he was fain to let it rest at that, ceasing to
importune me when he saw I was resolved; implying I might be
right--that it was no great matter after all--as indeed it was not.’
Believing what he said, he spoke with obvious sincerity--enough to
convince even the dark suspicious nature of him that listened, and who
had put these questions--with what intent?
Was a corner of the veil here lifted? Hardly enough for Brion to
gather more than a faint surmise of what lay behind. Yet the whole
truth, if revealed, had seemed a pitiful enough thing to be clothed in
such a giant’s robe of artifice. It turned upon one, grown old as his
time judged age, and by reason of his years, perhaps, and their
disqualifying ravages, become sensible of a loosened hold on those
royal affections he had once commanded. It turned upon the thought of
an infidelity committed in long past days, and never suspected by her
who, thinking their then mutual faith inviolable, would bitterly
resent that lost illusion, and visit his deception on his head in
terms of final estrangement, finding therein a pretext for ridding
herself of what, one might suspect, already a little irked her. It
turned upon this pretty witness to his faithlessness--never, indeed,
lost wholly sight of--and how at a late day his sin had come home to
roost in him, and how it might be used by designing enemies to bring
about his ruin. It turned upon all such considerations far more than
upon any real suspicion that a vengeful spirit in this young victim of
his wrongdoing nursed designs upon his life; though that thought, too,
had been weighed and balanced. And now--was he reassured? He believed
so. The boy’s scornful repudiation of him was the best evidence in his
favour, and it was for that very reason that he had suffered his young
defiance and forgiven him his insolence. Had it been otherwise, had
his suspicion been in any way confirmed, he would have disposed of him
as ruthlessly and remorselessly as he would of any alien conspirator
snared into his hands. But now, being reassured, and at liberty to
consider him for himself, and not for his imagined designs, a certain
emotion, weak and obscure, strange even to himself, but quite genuine
in its nature, allowed itself a little room in his breast for play.
The eyes which had scorned him, the spirit which had defied, became
notes for admiration. They reflected credit on himself; he felt a
pride in them; he had a sudden wish to stand well with the boy.
And Brion? He neither guessed, nor was ever to know, the secret
motives which had underlain this interrogation. That this man
suspected him of scheming in some diabolical way against his life and
fortunes was the one apparent thing; and with that explanation of a
mystery he must rest content. He had no heart or wish, indeed, to
inquire further; he wanted only, as he had himself truthfully
declared, to put him for ever out of his mind.
A long time Leicester sat gazing into the young undaunted face, as if
striving to recall some memory from it. At length he sighed and
spoke:--
‘Shall I believe thee? Well, sith thy truth unflatters me, I will
believe it truth. Yet fain would I learn what brought thee to London,
and in that company?’
‘I shall not tell you what.’
‘Rash and headstrong! Bethink you what you say.’
‘I do, and say it. I shall not tell you. What brought me was no
thought of you, nor anything concerning you. Have I not said it? I am
not so proud of this connexion that I wish to vaunt it. To deny it,
rather, since I had no voice in it. Be assured of that. It shall never
be betrayed for me.’
‘Nor shall word to living soul of this interview--eh--an I let thee
free?’
‘That follows--though I give my promise, if you will.’
‘Ah!’ He put his hands on the elbow of his chair, preparing to rise.
‘Well, thou hast been in peril--believe me. That thou hast escaped it,
thank her whose trustful spirit looks from out thine eyes. For thy
rash insolence--I forgive it.’ He got heavily to his feet, went forth
and back once or twice in a narrow space, and stopped before the young
man.
‘Why will you hate me?’ he said.
‘Have I much reason to love?’ answered Brion, his voice yielding a
little.
‘So you do hate me?’
‘Hate connotes harm. I would not harm you, before God.’
‘Will you--for her sake--call me once by that name your duty owes me?’
The boy shook his head. Something rose in his throat, hard as he
struggled to resist it. ‘I could not,’ he whispered.
Leicester turned away, without a word. He stood looking down upon the
glowing hearth.
‘It may chance, boy,’ he said, in a voice so strange and moving in
such a man that it seemed to betray one secret of his influence over
impressionable hearts--‘that you judge me too harshly. That I risked
greatly where I loved may be no condonation of my fault, yet at least
it may testify to the wholeness of my devotion. For my wrong to thee,
I regret it. Since there is no remedy, I will say no more. I could
take pride in thee, but I may not. It is better we should never meet
again. Go, and for her sake remember me as kindly as thou mayst. Call
Granton hither.’
But Brion did not at once obey. Pride and emotion fought within him
for mastery; his breast heaved; a moisture had sprung to his eyes.
Suddenly, with an impulsive movement, he lifted the other’s
unresisting hand, and kissed it once gently, and gently put it from
him. Then he turned, and went hurriedly to the door, and beckoned to
the Captain, who stood with his men in the hall. The soldier strode to
the summons.
‘Granton,’ said his lord, without turning his head, ‘restore this
youth his sword, and let him free. He is my friend, Granton.’
And so it was that Brion, a man escaped from a deadly hazard, yet
keeping for ever in his mind the picture of that tragic hour, the
gloomy building and the room set like a lustrous shrine in its midst,
found himself once more in the free and open street, an exultation at
his heart, but also a wistful pain. That, in a measure, was never to
leave him; yet even so it was as balsam on an ancient wound, the
amelioration of one hurt by another. And, since it was so, his spirit
henceforth felt a certain peace which it had never yet quite known. If
he had lost something, he had gained no less in compensation.
He went straight back to his inn; and surely the sun had never shone
so bright to him nor the air breathed so sweet. He found Clerivault
pacing the yard, restless and uneasy, and was moved to remorse hearing
the enormous sigh of relief with which that good creature greeted his
return. It touched his humbled vanity to the quick. He answered to it,
his eyes shining:--
‘Hast thou so felt my truancy, then?’
‘No matter what I have felt, sir,’ was the reply, ‘since you are here
again. I would be no man’s pursuing conscience, I.’
‘You are; you were, Clerivault. The figure of you dogged my ungrateful
heels.’
‘On my honour, Sir, I have not moved from here, as you bade me.’
‘I know it, good heart. I spoke but metaphorically. I was a thankless
ingrate--for the last time, where thy love is in question, I do hope.
Forgive me, Clerivault.’
‘Forgive thee!’ The man lifted his arms and eyes to heaven as if in
mute ecstatic protest. ‘Forgive my balm, my solace, my one friend? Say
it again, sweetheart. I could kiss thy very shadow for that word!’