HOME AGAIN
Had his fears in any degree been justified? That disquieting
suspicion may have just entered Clerivault’s mind, seeking for the
clue to some connexion between his young master’s mental and material
conditions. Something, it was evident, had torn and dishevelled that
gentleman’s attire, as something had disturbed his moral equilibrium.
The good fellow’s uneasiness was so great that he could not forbear
significantly drawing Brion’s attention to the state of his clothes.
The youngster laughed.
‘A brawl, Clerivault,’ said he. ‘I lacked my Mentor for the occasion.
That is enough admitted, by your leave. Methinks, all said, I have had
sufficient of London for one time, and incline to our good Devon
again. What say you?’
What, indeed, but a most relieved acquiescence? He was glad to the
heart to find his charge so minded--so glad that he was content to let
the other question lapse in the joy of the near prospect of being rid
of its burdensome responsibility.
And Brion himself? In truth the novel interests which this enterprise
had brought him were small compensation for the emotional experiences
he had had to suffer in their course. London, for all her promise, had
given him but derision and disappointment--a hate, perhaps, dispelled,
but a bright illusion darkened; a new serenity won, but an old sorrow
made more sorrowful. Yes, he was better back among his moors and
streams and lonely hills.
One day before they left they rode over to Clapham to pay a visit,
which the young man reproached himself with having already delayed to
make too long. Yet that visit, too, when accomplished, proved a sorrow
and a disappointment. More than eight years had passed since he had
ridden, an anxious, unhappy boy, from the gates of the home which for
so long time had protected and sheltered him; and now reapproaching
it, and recalling its familiar environments, his heart was wonderfully
moved with the thought of all that that ancient affection had meant
for him. He had heard little of the family during the interval. A
letter or two, in the early days of the severance, had passed--one, a
little billet, in sedate language and misshapen script, from baby
Alse--but with the soon cessation of that small correspondence all
association with his former intimates seemed ended. He did not know
who was to blame: nobody, perhaps, but only circumstance, in a day of
difficult communications. But anyhow such was the case; and he was
riding now, with a feeling of strange emotion, to take up what severed
ties?
Alas! on the very threshold of his expectations a cruel rebuff awaited
him. The old school-house was in its place, but with other tenants,
and with all its most familiar features improved out of recognition.
He learned the facts from those who lived there. The good old untidy
Dame, so improvident yet so lovable, so busy yet so unbusinesslike,
was dead these many years; the boys, Gregory and Richard, were, the
one, in an attorney’s office at Bristol, the other, a clerk at Oxford;
the ex-Divine himself, burdened with years, and much reduced in
circumstances since his scholars had gradually deserted him with his
faculties, lived with his only daughter, now grown a comely young
woman, in a humble way in a small domicile near the church.
Sorry at heart, Brion sought and found them there. It was indeed a
modest tenement, but bright and clean--one of a little group standing
almost against the walls of the old church of which the poor man
himself had been at one time vicar. He hardly knew his former ward and
pupil; seemed lost in the little woes and selfishnesses of senility,
on which his daughter waited with a grave and patient motherliness
which was very pretty and touching. She had grown out of Brion’s
memory--not he out of hers. She seemed to measure him with her candid
gray eyes, shyly, but with no lack of self-possession. He thought he
read a quiet rebuke in them, read in her manner a pride of gentle
repulse of an interest which years of so long neglect made little
better than an effrontery. Such was his impression, though she may
have meant nothing of the sort. She took him, by his own wish, to see
her mother’s grave in the churchyard hard by, and watched him as he
plucked a rose from a brier and laid it, with a kiss to its petals,
under the headstone. And after that, when he spoke of old days, she
seemed to answer with a more responsive kindness. They went into the
church together, and he read once more the texts on the walls, which
had been painted there in accordance with the great Queen’s own
instructions, and on samples of which he had so often, as a child, put
his own infantine interpretation. There was the ‘Man doth not live by
bread alone,’ which on Sundays had always served him for a sort of
jubilant sanction of the chopping dinner to follow, and presented the
Deity as a jolly hospitable host, scorning half-measures; there was
the ‘Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upwards,’ which had
brought an unfailing picture of the village blacksmith, whose wife was
a notorious scold; there was the ‘Wizards that peep and that mutter,’
a cryptic and suspicious contribution--displayed near the pulpit,
too--which had afforded him many delicious thrills. He fell into a
smiling reverie, recalling them all and their associations, and only
roused from it with a sigh to hear the girl beside him speaking:--
‘Mother never forgot you, Master Middleton. You were in her mind to
the last.’
He looked wistfully in her face; then took her hand and led her from
the building. At the door he stopped, to point mutely to yet another
scroll upon the wall:--
‘I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous
forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.’
‘You will let me, Alse?’ he entreated outside. ‘I have the right and
the means to, notwithstanding all these years of separation.’
She understood him at once; but she shook her head, with a bright
smile:--
‘It is not so bad as that. We have enough, and to be independent and
happy on. When the time comes, my brothers will care for me.’
He felt he could not urge her further without discredit to himself and
insult to that brave young spirit. If, in her eyes, he had forfeited
his right to, in her eyes persistence would but blacken his case; and
that he would not risk. He went back with her to the house, where,
like a proper little hostess, she insisted upon serving him and
Clerivault with a stirrup-cup of sweet metheglin to warm them for
their homeward journey. He kissed his hand to her on starting.
‘Goodbye, dear Alse!’ he said. But she only dropped him a staid little
courtesy in response, with a ‘Fare thee well, Master Middleton.’
He was very silent as he rode back; might have felt even a deeper
preoccupation could he have guessed how those same sweet eyes would go
following his receding figure in imagination, on and on into the
night, until they parted with it in the land of dreams, where hopeless
Fancy yields itself to Oblivion.
‘A winsome little lady, Sir,’ said Clerivault, breaking into his
abstraction, with an odd side-glance. ‘A man might do worse than wive
with such.’
‘Worse!’ He turned on his comrade, with a sudden violence: ‘I tell you
no gentleman of honour and renown but might count it his rich fortune
to possess her--a gentleman--the best--nor such an one as, lapped in
self-sufficiency, forgets past benefits--old claims and affections--a
toad of ingratitude----’
He broke off with a choke, and spurring his horse in a quick fury,
sprang on ahead. The other thought it wise to trail behind and let the
subject be.
On the day following this visit Brion went to say good-bye to his
friend, the Captain of the Queen’s Guard. Raleigh came out to see him
at the postern-gate which lay near his quarters. He was splendidly
equipped, being just about to attend the Queen’s Majesty on some
ceremonial visit, and his manner in consequence was a little
abstracted and hurried, though smilingly genial.
‘Well,’ said he, ‘I should be the last to traverse that decision, who
lured thee hither with a bait so false. Acquit me of that. I am not of
those who would rather lose a friend than a jest. May the next
enterprise I draw thee on to be more fortunate. You’ll remember your
pledge to that?’
‘The expedition? Did I pledge myself?’
‘Or I thee, _for_ thyself. It shall take shape in no long time. ’Tis
such as thou I’ll need, dear lad. And the patriot--above all the
immense patriot.’
Brion laughed, and they parted. That same afternoon he and Clerivault
started on their long journey homeward.