COMMITTED
The three or four years immediately succeeding that of Brion’s first
visit to London were ominous years for England--a fact which she did
not fail to appreciate.
‘There was a listening fear in her regard,
As if calamity had but begun;
As if the vanward clouds of evil days
Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear
Was with its stored thunder labouring up.’
The Irish rebellion--that vanward cloud of Philip’s brewing, first
step towards the conquest of our little hated Island and the
extirpation of the Reformed religion--had been thrown back and
defeated, but only to swell the enormous reserves of fanaticism which
still accumulated behind, waiting to burst in the last devastating
tempest of the _Armada_. And in the meantime the preparations,
material and moral, went on. The dour King’s emissaries were busy
while his ships were building; his secret agents were everywhere,
spying, reporting, seeking to corrupt. But, as in more recent
days--one people’s psychology being incomprehensible by another, and
the disadvantage always lying to the race too dense in its blundering
vanity to grasp that simple proposition--many of the conclusions drawn
from evidence collected by these informers proved false, and, through
being thought true, helped to demoralize the very cause they were
designed to advance. Such, for instance, was the belief, common in
Spain, that the English Catholic nobility was, as a body, disaffected
towards the usurping ‘bastard’ calling herself its Queen, and was to
be depended on, in the event of an invasion, to join the enemy. It was
a belief having a curious parallel with one cherished, though in a
different direction, in our own time, and owed itself to exactly the
same inability on the part of an arrogant and humourless people,
thinking itself the salt of the earth, to understand that national
pride, when tested, is found a stronger thing than dogma, and will
combine to resist the imposition on it of any other people’s ideas,
whether religious or political. A few traitor exceptions there were,
no doubt--men who still nursed the hope of deposing Elizabeth,
establishing Scotch Mary on the throne, and restoring the true faith;
but these were never more than enough to ruffle the surface of the
steadfast deeps of popular opinion, and to keep pretty active and
alert the general resolve to fall on and stamp out such symptoms
wherever they were detected. Here and there, by misfortune, a patch of
the disease did escape discovery, and, a little spreading through its
immunity, came to imposthumate in an abortive rising like the
Babington conspiracy--another little ‘psychologic’ mistake of
Philip’s, since its only effects were to shock some waverers into
loyalty, and to hasten on the execution of the unhappy lady upon whom
he had founded his hopes. But, with these indifferent qualifications,
England remained England still, sound to the national core, and one in
its determination to resist dictation by any power, temporal or
spiritual.
Still, quite characteristically, the agents were not forborne, but in
proportion as the preparations advanced, became more daring and
insistent--but not more trustworthy in their reports. Allen, a
polemical Jesuit of Rheims, and the founder of the English College at
Douay, was responsible for the despatch to his native land of a number
of proselytising scouts, secret emissaries deputed to test popular
feeling, and sow wherever they could the seeds of disaffection. They
did little, however, but inflame the national obduracy; for by this
time the country was determinedly Protestant, and the knowledge of
these _agents provocateurs_ let loose in its midst only agitated and
angered it. Now and again one, being caught, would pay the penalty of
his temerity to the severe enactments passed against his kind; now and
again one would fall a victim to popular fury. But still they came,
and still misread and misreported--but not always, as the sequel will
show, in the pure interests of their mission. There was one, at least,
who, whatever his original motive, converted the opportunity given him
to some profitable dealing on his own account. But knavish methods
will ever attract knavish instruments, and undercut, in all the
history of trading, cut undercut.
In 1584, a Jesuit, having in his possession a plan for the invasion of
England and the destruction of its Queen, was captured at sea. The
news roused public indignation to boiling pitch, and led indirectly to
an association being formed, with Leicester at its head, to punish
with death any attempt upon the royal life, and to exclude from the
throne all who should authorize such an attempt, or design in any way
to profit by it--another big nail driven into poor Mary’s coffin.
Brion heard of this league, and was vaguely troubled--not because of
its object, but because of the temper it revealed and fomented, and to
which, in some possible local ebullition of itself, he dreaded his
Uncle might come to fall a victim. He knew that the neighbourhood had
long looked darkly askance upon the ex-judge as a backslider and
idolater, who practised, in secret, rites which might bring him to the
stake if avowed. He knew--but he knew also what rumour did not; that
it was a ruined and dethroned intellect which had reverted to its
ancient creed, not from re-established conviction, but from simple
loss of memory. To senility early impressions are the most remembered
things; and for Quentin Bagott--though senile only in the sense of one
beggared by his habits of life’s best maturity--the years of his
conversion were become a vague shadow, full of strange terrors and
menacing shapes. His conspiring was a myth; he had no power of will or
mind left in him to plot a sparrow’s downfall. Any sympathy he might
appear to show with designs subversive to the State was the mere
chuckling echo of long-forgotten moods, when his own dark destiny had
wrought in him the passions of a rebel. Yet all this, though true
enough, had no appeal in it for brute instincts, if once let loose in
the name of superstition; nor would the fact of the utter seclusion in
which the suspect buried himself, and with himself all indications of
his real thoughts and habits, save him from a predetermined fate.
Religion has hung more men on circumstantial evidence than all the lay
tribunals in the world.
However, this was in very truth a meeting of trouble half way, since
no sign whatever of threatened disturbance had arisen so far to
justify in Brion any particular apprehension. Moreover, there was the
extenuating fact to consider that he himself was locally popular
enough, and that he and the household of the Grange, its master
excepted, were regular in their orthodox observances. So he put the
thought from him as a mere bugbear of his fancy, and trusted to his
own unexceptionable attitude for public absolution.
His life during these, for him, uneventful years, had recorded little
of interest but the growth of will and tissue, the intelligent, and
often excited, watching of affairs, and the ever increasing desire to
take some part in the great happenings which were stirring men’s
imaginations the world over. As to those, he was at the last solemnly
bound and pledged to an enterprise of which he only awaited with
impatience the fruition to put his dreams into action. In the meantime
he observed with envious admiration how England, for all her
distractions, domestic and political, did not stand still, in scared
irresolution, before the storms which menaced her, but continued her
practices of daring and adventure over all the troubled waters of the
globe, even, after her way, snatching immense booty from the very
preparations being organised for her destruction. The names of Fox,
Cabot, Gilbert, Drake, Frobisher, and other stalwart rovers of the
main, rang in his, as in everybody’s ears, and fired him with an
enthusiasm to be up and doing, in his own little sphere, what they had
so magnificently ensampled in their greater. And he was sworn, as has
been said, to his part, if only the plans which were to give him scope
for action would come to a head; which at length, towards the close of
1584, they did.
Brion was then in London, with Clerivault, for the second time since
that visit first recorded. He was staying, as Raleigh’s guest, at
Durham House in the Strand--a former ‘Inn’ of the Bishops of Durham,
presented by the young Edward VI to his sweet ‘sister Temperance,’ and
afterwards by her to her much favoured courtier. It was an austere but
imposing building on the riverside, involving such expenditure in its
maintenance that, to enable its owner to live there in a state
befitting its character, his accommodating sovereign had conferred
upon him a patent to license the vending of wines throughout the
kingdom--a sinecure so rich in emoluments as to make him, with his
other properties, a wealthy man; though it may be said for him that he
spent his fortune magnificently, and often much of it in the public
interest. Yet still dissatisfied, it seemed, with these tokens of her
royal regard, her Majesty continued to heap benefits on that lucky
recipient, confirming his election as Knight of the Shire of Devon,
and further, about this time or a little later, appointing him
Seneschal of the Duchies of Cornwall and Exeter, and Lord Warden of
the Stannaries in Devon and Cornwall, besides bestowing upon him some
twelve thousand acres of forfeited land in Cork and Waterford, with
other signal marks of her attachment. So that, it would seem, the
‘pack of small accomplishments’ had been exploited to rare effect,
with the result that its owner had become one of the most envied and
courted men in the Kingdom.
Sir Walter’s good fortune, however, had not turned his head, nor in
the least diverted him from the main cherished ambition of his life,
which was to wrest the empire of the New World from the Spaniard, and
lay it, with all its potentialities for colonisation, at his brave
England’s feet. During the year before he had partly financed the
unfortunate expedition in which Sir Humphrey Gilbert perished; during
this he had associated himself with an enterprise for the discovery of
the North-West passage. In the meantime, having obtained from the
Queen a patent of liberty to discover and seize, if might be, ‘any
remote heathen and barbarous lands not actually possessed by any
Christian Prince, nor inhabited by Christian people,’ with licence to
inhabit and fortify the same, and leave to carry with him ‘such of our
subjects’ as, in short, cared to go, he set to preparing joyfully for
the venture so long projected, and at last come within the sphere of
practical policy. He first, however, despatched a provisional
expedition of two vessels, fitted at his own expense, which going and
returning in safety, and reporting favourably upon the country and
their reception therein, the main business was forthwith put
definitely in hand, and arrangements made for a fleet of seven sail to
start from Plymouth in the following April. And it was to this
expedition that Brion had positively committed himself, and to discuss
which he had accepted his friend’s invitation to a meeting in London.
He was sorry to discover at the outset that Raleigh himself--being too
greatly engaged over matters of divers import, and perhaps fearing
that his enemies might take advantage of his absence to bring about
his overthrow--was not to accompany his own enterprise; and still more
so to learn that the command thereof was to be entrusted to Sir
Richard Grenville, about whom he retained no very cordial memories,
and who, indeed, as he had heard, possessed the reputation for being a
rough and violent leader, much feared and hated by his own men.
However, he had given his undertaking, from which, as a gentleman, he
could not recede; and so he must make the best of it, and that was all
the matter. And, indeed, when he came, as he did, to renew at Durham
House the acquaintance of the obstreperous Sheriff, he found himself
in some measure called on to revise his estimate of him, so
inexplicably, if gruffly, genial did he find the great man to be with
him--an attitude for which he could find no explanation but in
Raleigh’s friendship, though in truth it was a testimony to the way in
which, on that first occasion, he had prepossessed the surly visitor
in his favour.
Some others destined to the expedition he also met on this occasion,
of whom one or two were captains and skilful mariners selected for the
sub-commands, a few assistants for counsel and direction in the
voyage, and others mere gentlemen adventurers like himself, whose
acquaintance thus happily begun he was as happily to renew in after
days. And with that the matter ended for him for the time being, and
he returned into the country.
He went, glowing with anticipation, and concerned only for the months
which still lay between him and action: he went, with some valedictory
words of Raleigh’s still sounding inspiringly in his brain:--
‘Press on! Would I could follow thee--I, a poor impositioned schoolboy
left at his task while all his shouting playmates go bounding for the
fields. To voyage--there’s a magic in the word: to quit inglorious
bondage, custom’s dull round, and be a man and free; to wake from mean
small cares to visions of great seas, and waves that lift us, as
nurses lift their charges, to spy over the tossing heads some wondrous
sight; to greet upon our faces sweetest-laden winds, breathing like
amorous sighs from lands that court their own rifling; to see strange
monsters, big as ships, rolling in their feather-beds of foam. O,
could I go, and share with thee the peril and the joy, and the joy in
peril--two wandering champions of our dear lady-land! But, since I
cannot, press on, press on, and if over the sheer cliff of the world,
the stars they hang beyond, bright shrouds to climb to topmast heaven
withal. That’s the way of Death, the happy way. Why do we for ever
paint him as a grim old man, that follows on our heels waiting his
chance to strike? He pursues us not, but bides to be discovered, a
laughing child hiding behind a bush. He is not age, but youth, eternal
youth; a beauteous boy, who smiles to close our eyes on years and
sorrow; who comes with oblivion in his hand, bidding us drink and
forget; who is the only friend that never fails us. Press on--take thy
life in thy hand like a tempered sword, and so thou use it knightly in
good cause, be careless whether it hold or break, thou hast made the
most of it in honour. This world! is it so worth thy soul’s
attachment?--a world where the great is ever at the mercy of the
little, the high the low; where nobility eternally wastes itself,
striving to kill the beast in man that cannot die; where beauty is but
painfully achieved one day to be despoiled the next--a grievous world,
a world so bad ’tis odds but any change from it must mean for better.
Yet as thou strivest in it so shall be thy qualification for another.
There’s its purpose. In truth it is but the jellied spawn of lovelier
spheres, the egg on the leaf, a transient bubble blown in thick
starlight, and jewelled with a thousand seeds of worlds to be. Make
light of it, then, press on in steadfast probity, and leave to Heaven
thine accompt.’