APPLEGARTH.
When I fell asleep the sun was just climbing above the shoulder of
Skiddaw; when I waked again, it was down very close above the Isle of
Man, so that I could see the surf flash in a line of gold as it broke
against the rocks. Tash had brought with him some cheese and a loaf of
bread; and being hard set with my long fast, I spent no great while
over grace, but fell to and moistened the food with the sweetest water
that ever I drank, fetching it from a little stream which bubbled by
through the grass a few yards away. Tash pointed me out a valley which
cleft the mountains westwards a little to our left and made a right
angle with the ridge on which we lay. At the end of the valley I saw
the corner of a lake. The valley, he told me, was called Gillerthwaite
and the lake Ennerdale Water. Mr. Curwen's house was built upon the
banks of the Water, but was invisible to us, since it lay in a kind of
bay to the north behind some projecting cliffs of a reddish stone.
"But we will wait here till nightfall," he said; and nothing loth I
turned over on my back and fell to resolving, so well as I could, the
perplexities in which I was coiled. I now saw very clearly that
Rookley's plot had not, as I had imagined, been aimed against myself,
but rather against Anthony Herbert; and my new knowledge that my
worthy cousin was a Government spy gave me some light to conjecture of
a cause. For I reflected that Herbert had come suddenly to Keswick at
the very time when rebellion was a-brewing in these parts; that he had
made Lord Derwentwater's acquaintance and had painted his lady's
portrait; that upon my coming to Blackladies, Lord Derwentwater had
put me into relations with the man; and that I too had commissioned a
portrait of him. Now Lord Derwentwater was suspected of favouring the
Stuart claims, and certainly Rookley knew that I not merely favoured
them but was working to further them. It would be, then, a natural
suspicion for Rookley to draw that we were all three implicated in the
same business, and that Herbert was merely using his skill as a
concealment of his genuine purpose. Moreover, I thought of a sudden,
there was that medal in Mr. Herbert's apartment. True, I had seen him
lock it up. But he must bring it out again to copy it, and he was not
of that orderliness which would ensure his replacing it. What if
Rookley had seen the medal in Herbert's lodging? Joined to his
suspicions, that one certain fact would change those suspicions to
convictions. Rookley would believe, and would have reason to believe,
that Herbert was a Jacobite agent. Granted that presumption, and
Rookley's conduct became clear. He was marking time with King George
and stepping forward with King James. He would lay Herbert by the
heels in the one interest and leave me untouched in the other, so long
as it was doubtful which way the wind was setting. I found an
additional reason to credit this hypothesis in this, that it was
plainly Rookley's intention to bring about Herbert's arrest secretly,
or at all events without my knowledge.
"I had thought to find you in the garden," Herbert had said; the words
came back to me in a flash. I sprang to my feet in some excitement.
Tash in a flurry asked me what it was I saw; but I moved away without
answering him, certain that I had a hold upon the key of the plot,
fearful lest I should lose it.
"I had thought to find you in the garden"--and the soldiers were in
the garden. Moreover, there was but one man who could have led Mr.
Herbert to believe that he would find us in the garden--Jervas
Rookley. And Jervas Rookley had every reason in the world to feel
assured that neither Mrs. Herbert nor myself would be discovered
there.
I had no longer a shadow of doubt. Anthony Herbert had been beguiled
to Blackladies that his arrest might be brought about with secrecy.
Only Jervas Rookley had made one mistake: he had presumed in his
victim the same cunning and concealment of which he was master
himself. Mr. Herbert had defeated the secrecy of the plan by his
outburst in his lodging; but for that outburst, the arrest would have
been effected with all the secrecy which Rookley desired.
From that point in my speculations I went forward to a resolve. I knew
Herbert to be in no way concerned with our plans and hopes. Indeed, I
doubted whether he cared a straw which King occupied the throne, so
long as he could continue in the exercise of his art. But, on the
other hand, there was the medal in his possession, and I distrusted
the impartiality of justice in a matter where passions were so
inflamed. My resolve, then, was no more than this: that if by any
means a man could, I would secure Mr. Herbert's enlargement, if only
as an act of reparation, and if it cost me my life. But to tell the
truth, my life at this moment had not the least savour of sweetness,
and to let it go seemed the easiest thing in the world.
The question, however, which weighed on me was how I should accomplish
his enlargement; for I did not know and had no means of knowing
whither he had been taken. They might have carried him to London,
there to be examined. Suppose that was true and I went down into the
valley and gave myself up? Why, I had not sufficient trust in the
authorities to be certain that Herbert would get the benefit of my
evidence. I could prove that the medal belonged to me; but should I be
allowed to tender that proof on Herbert's behalf? I might lie in
prison the while he was brought to his trial. No, before I gave myself
up I must know whither Anthony Herbert had been taken. And as far as I
could tell, there was but one man who could give me the information.
Could I force it from Jervas Rookley? I asked myself, and even in the
asking laughed. For here was the darkness coming up out of the sea and
wrapping the mountains about, and here was I hiding in the midst of
them, a hunted outlaw. Tash called to me that it was time for us to
set out, and we started down the hillside into Gillerthwaite, he
leading as before, I as before following him, but no longer in the
daze and stupor of yesternight. Rather, on the contrary, I walked with
eyes needlessly alert and with feet over-timorous and careful. For if
I got no other profit from my reflections, I had drawn from them this
one conviction, and I was sensible of it as of a sheer necessity: I
must be ready, I thought--since I knew so little, I must be ready to
seize any occasion of Mr. Herbert's enlargement, at the instant of its
discovery. So that as we scrambled down the slope with the mist
gathering around us, I came to fear a slip with an extraordinary
apprehension; where the grass steepened, I straightway imagined a
fatal precipice; and when a stone slid beneath my heel, I felt all the
blood drain from my heart and leave me shaking in a panic. The night
in consequence had completely fallen by the time we came to a
pony-track in the bed of the valley. I remember that I asked
carelessly whither it led from Ennerdale, and Tash told me that it
passed into the valley called Newlands, which runs parallel with
Derwentwater, and is only separated from the lake by that line of
hills along which we had walked during the night.
"Then," said I carelessly, "it is a path by which one may travel to
Keswick."
"Ay," he replied; and for the moment I thought no more of the matter.
Before we had come to the head of Ennerdale Water, the moon was up and
shining fitfully through a wrack of clouds. The valley, however, was
clear of mist, so that I was able to distinguish the house of
Applegarth, while I was as yet at some distance from its doors. It was
a long, plain building, which promised comfort within by its very lack
of ornamentation without, built in a single story and painted a white
colour. But it seemed to me, even in that uncertain light, to bear the
marks of neglect and decay. There was a little garden in front of the
house separated from the lake-shores by an unkempt hedge, and planted
only with a few fuchsia bushes; the walls of the house were here and
there discoloured, and once or twice as I passed up the garden-path I
stepped upon a broken tile.
A woman-servant opened the door and I asked for Mr. Curwen. She looked
me over for a second.
"And what may be your business with Mr. Curwen?"
"That I can hardly tell you," said I with a laugh.
"Ah, but you must," said she. She was a woman of some bulk, and she
stood with her arms akimbo, filling the doorway. "Is it his last few
guineas you might be wanting?" she asked with a slow sarcasm.
"Why, goodwife," I answered impatiently, "do you look for gentlemen of
the road in Ennerdale?"
"Goodwife!" she said with a toss of the head. "Goodwife to a
ninny-hammer!" and she looked me over again. Indeed, I doubt not but
we cut sufficiently disreputable figures. "Not I! And you'll just tell
me your business. There are others besides gentlemen of the road who
put their fingers into pockets which don't belong to them."
"Hold your noise, Mary Tyson!" said Tash, behind my shoulder. "Do you
know me?"
"Oh," said she with a start, "it's William Tash from----"
"That'll do," he broke in; "no need to speak names. Show the gentleman
to Mr. Curwen."
Mary Tyson stood aside from the door. I stepped into the hall.
"You'll find him in the room," she said with a curt nod towards a door
facing me.
I crossed to it and rapped on the panels, but got no answer
whatsoever. It is true I could hear a voice within, but the voice
seemed to be declaiming a speech. I rapped again.
"Oh, the dainty knuckles!" cried Mary; and pushing roughly past me she
banged upon the door with a great fist like a ham and threw it open
without further ceremony. The voice ceased from its declamation. I
entered the room. It was very dark, being panelled all about with
book-cases and the ceiling very low. A single lamp glimmered on a
table in the centre of the carpet An old gentleman rose from before a
great folio spread out upon the table.
"What is it, Mary?" he asked in a tone of gentle annoyance. "You
interrupt me."
"A visitor, he says," replied Mary, "though----"
The hostility of her eyes and a great heave of her shoulders filled up
the gap.
"A visitor!" said the old gentleman, his voice changing on the instant
to an eager politeness. "A visitor is always welcome at Applegarth at
whatever hour he comes."
I heard not so much a sigh as a snort behind me, and the door was
slammed. The old gentleman advanced a few steps towards me and then
came to a sudden stop. I was neither hurt nor surprised at his evident
disappointment and perplexity, for Mary's behaviour had shown me
pretty clearly what sort of a picture I made.
"It is not a visitor, Mr. Curwen," said I, "but a fugitive;" and I
handed to him Lord Derwentwater's letter.
"Indeed?" said he, all his suavity rekindling. "A fugitive!" and he
spoke as though to be a fugitive was a very fine and enviable thing.
"You will take a chair, Mr.----"
"Clavering," I added.
"Of Blackladies?" he inquired
"Of Blackladies," said I.
"You are very welcome, Mr. Clavering," said he, and he broke open the
seal and read the letter through, with many interruptions of "Shield
us!" and "To be sure!" and with many a glance over his spectacles at
me. He was a tall man, though his shoulders stooped as if he spent
many an evening over his folio, and I should say of sixty years and
more. He wore his own white hair, which was very long and fine, making
a silver frame to as beautiful a face, except one, as it has ever been
my lot to see. The features, it may be, were over-delicately
chiselled, the cheeks too bloodless, the eyes too large, if you looked
for a man of dominating activity. It was the face of a dreamer, no
doubt, but there would be nothing ignoble in the dreams.
"You are yet more welcome, Mr. Clavering," said he as he folded up the
letter; "shelter indeed you shall have, and such comfort as we can add
thereto, for so long as you will be pleased to stay with us. Nay,"
said he, checking me, "I know what you would say, but we are solitary
people here and the debt will be with us."
"That can hardly be," said I, "since I bring danger to you by my
presence."
"Some while ago," he replied, "I would not have denied it, though I
should have welcomed you no less. But since my fortunes have declined
and I have grown into years, I have taken little part in politics and
keep much within my doors. They will not come here, I think, to look
for you. It is a consolation for my poverty," said he with the
simplest dignity, "that I can therefore offer you a safer harbourage.
But indeed it is with you that the times have gone hard. We are not so
solitary but that now and again a scrap of news will float to us, and
we have heard of you. You were much at one time in Paris?" And his
voice of a sudden took on a pleasant eagerness.
"Yes," I replied, "though I saw little of the town."
"Ah," said he with a nod of the head, "to gain and lose Blackladies in
so short a space--it is a hard case, Mr. Clavering."
In the hurry and stress of these last two days I had given no thought
to what the loss Blackladies meant, but the meaning rushed in upon me
winged with his words.
"Ay," I answered, and my voice trembled as I spoke, so that the old
man came over to me and laid a hand upon my shoulder, "for it is the
King who loses it, and through my folly, for I might have known."
I felt his hand patting me with a helpless consolation. "So we all
say, after the event. It is a hard thing to bear, but philosophy will
help us. You must study philosophy while you are here, Mr. Clavering.
I have books"--and he glanced round the room and then came to an
abrupt pause--"I have books," he repeated in a lame fashion, "which
you may find profit in studying;" and as he spoke, the music of a song
quivered up from the next room like a bird on the wing. I understood
that "we," which had much perplexed me in his talk; I remembered where
and when I had heard of Applegarth before. You may talk, if you will,
of Cuzzoni and Faustina and the rest of the Italian women who have
filled Heidegger's pockets; doubtless they made more noise, but not
one of them, I'll be sworn, had a tenth of the sweetness and purity of
the voice which sang this song. Give to a lark a human soul and then
maybe you will hear it. For it was more than a voice that sang; it was
as though the wings of a soul beat and throbbed in the singer's
throat. I lack words to describe the effect it wrought on me. All the
shame I had been sensible of during the long hours since that pistol
rang out in the garden of Blackladies, came back to me massed within
the compass of a second, and on that shame, more and ever more. I know
that I buried my face in my hands to hide the anguish of my spirit
from Mr. Curwen; and sitting there with my fingers pressed upon my
eyes I listened. The words came clearly to my ears through the doorway
behind my chair; the voice carried my thoughts back to Paris, was the
crystal wherein I saw pitilessly plain all the dreams I had fashioned
of what I would do, had I but liberty and the power to do it; then
carried me again to England, and showed me the miserable contrast
between those airy dreams and the solid truth. I saw myself now riding
to Lorraine; now lingering in Mr. Herbert's apartment. And the words of
that song pointed my remorse--how bitterly! Even now, after this
interval of thirty-five years, the humiliation and pain I endured
return to me with so poignant a force that I can hardly bring myself
to write of them. I could not indeed at all, but for this faded yellow
sheet of paper which I take up in my hands. It was given to me upon an
occasion notable within my memory, and the words of this very song are
inscribed upon it, blurred and well-nigh indecipherable, but I do not
need the writing to help me to remember them. The song was called "The
Honest Lover," and I set it down here since here it was that I first
heard it.
"THE HONEST LOVER."[1]
"Would any doubting maid discover
What's he that is a worthy lover:
His is no fine fantastic breath,
But lowly mien and steadfast faith.
For he that so would move her,
By simple art,
And humble heart,
Why, he's the honest lover.
"His is a heart that never played
The light-o'-love to wife or maid,
But reverenced all womankind
Before he found one to his mind.
For he that so would move her
By simple art,
And humble heart,
Why, he's the honest lover.
"And if he quake to meet her eyes,
Stammer and blush whene'er he tries
His worship'd lady to address,
Be sure she'll love him none the less,
For he that so would move her
By simple art,
And humble heart,
Why, he's the honest lover."
Footnote 1: The song is written by Harold Child, Esq., to whom the
author is indebted for it.
This was the song to which I listened as I sat--the dishonest outlaw
in the dark library of Applegarth.
"It is my daughter Dorothy," said Mr. Curwen, with a smile. "In
talking of our youngest martyr I had forgotten her;" and he took a
step towards the door. But at his first movement the youngest
martyr--Heaven save the mark!--had risen from his chair with a foolish
abruptness.
"Nay, Mr. Curwen," he cried in disorder; and then he stopped, for the
truth is, he shrank in very shame from standing face to face with the
singer of that song.
"But," and I seized the first excuse, "I have this long while been
wandering on the fells, and am in no way fitted for the company of
ladies. Your servant even would have no truck with me, and I think you
too were taken aback." I looked down at my garments as I spoke.
"My servant," he began, and he looked towards the other door through
which I had entered with a timorous air, as though he would fain see
whether or no she was listening on the far side of it, "Mary Tyson,"
he said, lowering his voice, "is a strange and unaccountable person. A
good servant, but----" and very wisely he tapped his forehead. "For
myself," he continued, his voice softening with a great wistfulness,
"it was something very different from the stains of your journey that
gave me pause. Lord Derwentwater may have told you that I had once a
son. He was much of your height and figure, and the room is dim, and
old men are fanciful."
I bowed my head, for whenever he made mention of his misfortunes, he
spoke with so brave and simple a dignity that any word of sympathy
became the merest impertinence. For a moment he stood looking down at
me and revolving some question in his mind.
"Yes," said he, and more to himself than to me, "I will speak to her
and give her the order. Why should I not?" He walked slowly halfway to
the bell and stopped, "Yes," he repeated, "I will speak to her;" and
with a word of excuse to me and a certain bracing of the shoulders, he
went out of the room.
I had no doubt that it was with Mary Tyson that he wished to speak. I
remained, half-hoping, half-afraid that the chords of the spinet would
wake to the touch again, and the voice again ring out, sprinkling its
melody through the room like so much perfume from a philtre. But there
was no recurrence of the music. I walked idly to the table, and my
eyes fell upon that great tome in which Mr. Curwen had been so
absorbed at the moment of my interruption. In wonderment I bent more
closely over it. I had expected to see some laborious monument of
philosophy gemmed with unintelligible terms. Unintelligible terms
there were, in truth, but not of the philosopher's kind. They were
curious old terms of chivalry.
I remembered how Mr. Curwen had hesitated over the mention of his
books, and I took the lamp from the table, and glanced about the
book-shelves. The books were all of a-piece with that great folio on
the table--romaunts, and histories of crusades, and suchlike matters.
I wondered whether "Don Quixote de la Mancha" had found a place
amongst them, and with an impertinent smile I began to glance along
the letterings in search of it, but very soon I stopped, and stood
staring at a couple of volumes which faced me, and bore upon their
backs the title of the "Morte D'Arthur."
I set the lamp again upon the table. The old man was right, I thought
sadly. There was in that room philosophy which it would indeed profit
me to study.
Mr. Curwen returned, rubbing his long, delicate hands one against the
other in a flush of triumph.
"I have given orders," he said, and with a gentle accent of conscious
pride he repeated the phrase--"I have given orders, Mr. Clavering. You
will sleep in my boy's room, and since you are, as I say, very like to
him in size----" But his voice trembled, and he turned away and lifted
the lamp from the table.
"I will show you the room," he said.
I followed him into the hall, up the staircase, and down a long
passage to the very end of the house.
A door stood open. Mr. Curwen led me through it. The room was warmly
furnished, and hung with curtains of a dark green, while a newly-lit
fire was crackling in the hearth. A couple of candles were burning on
the mantelpiece, and Mary Tyson was arranging the bed. She took no
notice of me whatever as I entered, being busy with the bed, as I
thought.
"You can go, Mary," said Mr. Curwen, with a timid friendliness plainly
intended to appease.
Mary sniffed for an answer, and as she turned to go I saw that she had
been crying.
"She was Harry's nurse, poor woman," explained Mr. Curwen. "You must
forgive her, Mr. Clavering." And then, "He died at Malplaquet."
He crossed over to the bed, and stood looking down at it silently in a
very fixed attitude. Then he took up from it a white silk stocking. I
approached him, and saw that a suit of white satin was neatly folded
upon the white counterpane.
"It is a fortunate thing," he said, with a smile all the more sad for
its effort at cheerfulness, "that you and he are alike;" and he drew
the stocking slowly through his fingers. "He died at Malplaquet, and
Marlborough--the Marlborough of Malplaquet--spoke to him as he died."
His voice broke on the words, and laying the stocking down, he turned
towards a japan toilette with a "Even a father has no right to ask
for more than that." But Harry's shoe-buckles were laid upon the
chintz-coverlid, and he took them in his hands one after the other,
repeating, "He died at Malplaquet. I have given you this room," he
said, "for a reason. See! These two windows point down the valley, and
are set high above the ground. But this"--and he crossed over to a
smaller window set in the wall near the fireplace--"this looks on to
the hillside, and since the ground rises against the house, a man may
drop from it and come to no harm. To the left are the stables, or what
serves us for stables. We lock no doors at Applegarth, Mr. Clavering,
fearing no robbers. You will find a horse in the stables, should there
be need for you to flee."
It was some while after Mr. Curwen had left me, before I could make up
my mind to don these clothes. I might be like to what Harry Curwen was
in size and figure, but there the likeness ended, and the sharpest
contrast in the world set in. I unfolded the suit, and spread it out
upon the bed. The coat was of white velvet, the waistcoat and breeches
of white satin, and all richly laced with an embroidery of silver. A
fragrant scent of lavender, which breathed from the dress, coupled
with its freshness as of a suit worn but once or twice and so laid
aside, lent an added sadness to the thought of young Harry Curwen. I
imagined him stripping off these fine clothes in a fumbling excitement
one night, in this very room, kicking from his feet those lacquered
shoes--these with their soles and red-heels upturned now to the fire
for the guest who was so like him! I imagined him pulling on his
boots, and riding off from Applegarth with, I know not what, martial
visions in his eyes, and hardly a glance, maybe, for the old man and
the sister standing in the light of the porch, to join his troop and
perish on the plains of Flanders. Well, he had died at Malplaquet,
and the great Marlborough--not the huckstering time-server whom we
knew--the Marlborough of Malplaquet had spoken to him as he lay
a-dying, and no father had a right to look for more than that. I
picked up the stockings, and drew them through my fingers as the
father had done.
At that, however, I bethought me that the father and his daughter were
awaiting me downstairs, and so dressed in a hurry, and combing out my
peruke to such neatness as I could, I got me down into the hall.
Supper was already laid out in the dining-room, and Mr. Curwen
waiting. In a little I heard a light step upon the stair and the
rustle of a dress. Instinctively I turned my face towards the
window-curtains, my back to the door. I heard the door open, but I did
not hear it shut again.
"Mr. Clavering," said the old man.
I was forced to turn. His daughter stood in the doorway, her lips
parted, her eyes startled.
"Mr. Clavering--my daughter Dorothy."
I bowed to her. She drew in her breath, then advanced to me frankly,
and held out her hand.
"My father told me you were like," she said, "but since your back was
turned, I almost thought I saw him."
I took the hand by the finger-tips.
"He was very dear to you?"
"Very."
"Miss Curwen," said I, gravely, "I would, with all my heart, that you
had seen him, and that I had died in his place at Malplaquet."
Her face clouded for an instant, and she drew her hand quickly away,
taking my speech, no doubt, for nothing more than an awkward and
ill-timed compliment. But compliment it was not, being, indeed, the
truth and summary of my recent thoughts quickened into speech against
my will. She was of a slender figure, with a rosebud face, delicate as
her father's. Her hair was drawn simply back from a broad, white
forehead, and in colour was nut-brown, gleaming where it took the
light as though powdered with gold-dust. She was dressed in the
simplest gown of white, set off here and there with a warm ribbon. But
I took little note of her dress, beyond remarking that no other could
so well become her. From the pure oval of her face, her eyes big and
grey looked out at me, each like a quiet pool with a lanthorn lighted
somewhere in its depths, and she seemed to me her voice incarnate. She
was unlike to her father in the proportion of her height, for she was
not tall--and like to him again in a certain wilfulness which the set
of her lips betokened, and again unlike in the masterful firmness of
her rounded chin; so that she could put off and on, with the quickest
change of humours, the gravity of a woman and the sunny petulance of a
child.
"It is our homely fashion," said Mr. Curwen, "to wait upon ourselves."
And we sat down to the table.
It was a fashion, however, which the guest, much to his discomfort,
was not that night allowed to follow. For father and daughter alike
joined to show him courtesy. The daughter would have waited on me,
even as Lady Derwentwater had done, and began, like her, to fill my
glass. But this time I could not permit it.
"Madam," I cried hoarsely, "you must not Your kindness hurts me."
"Hurts you?" she asked, and from her tone I knew it was she who was
hurt.
"You do not know. If you did, your kindness would turn to the
bitterest contempt."
I spoke without thought and barely with knowledge of what I said, but
in a passion of self-reproach.
"Mr. Clavering," she replied very gently, "you are overwrought, and I
do not wonder. Else would you know that it must honour any woman to
serve any man who has so served his King."
I dropped my head into my hands. My very soul rose against this
praise.
"If I had served my King," I exclaimed in a despairing remorse, "I
should have been in France this many a week back."
"France!" repeated Mr. Curwen, suddenly looking up. "You take the
delay too much to heart. For it need be nothing more than a delay, and
a brief one besides." He spoke with some significance in his tone.
"Lord Derwentwater mentioned in his letter that he would discover a
means to set you across in France, but perhaps"--and his voice became
almost sly--"perhaps we may find a more expeditious way." He checked
himself abruptly, like one that has said too much, and shot a timid
glance towards his daughter. I noticed that her face grew a trifle
grave, but she did not explain or comment on his words, and Mr. Curwen
diverted his talk to indifferent topics. I fear me that I must have
proved the dullest auditor, for I gave little heed to what he said, my
thoughts being occupied in a quite other fashion. For since his
daughter sat over against me at the table, since each time that I
lifted my eyes, they must needs encounter hers; since each time that
she spoke, the mere sound of her voice was as a stern rebuke; I fell
from depth to depth of shame and humiliation. I was sheltering there
under the same roof with her, to all seeming an honourable refugee, in
very truth an impostor, and bound, moreover, to continue in his
imposition. The very clothes which I was wearing forced the truth upon
me. I had, indeed, but one thought wherewith to comfort me, and though
the comfort was of the coldest, I yet clung to it as my only solace.
The thought was this: that I had already determined, at whatsoever
cost to me, whether of liberty or life, to repair, so far as a man
could, the consequence of my misdoing. It was not that I took any
credit from the resolve--I was not, thank God, so far fallen as
that--but what comforted me was that I had come to the resolve up
there on the hillside between Brandreth and Grey Knotts before I had
descended into Ennerdale, before I had set foot within Applegarth;
before, in a word, I had heard Dorothy Curwen sing or looked into her
eyes. I did not explain to myself the comfort which the thought gave
me; I was merely sensible of it. "It was before," I said to myself;
and over and over again I gladly repeated the thought.
However, a word which Mr. Curwen spoke, finally aroused my attention,
for he made mention of the garden of Blackladies. I suppose that I
must by some movement have shown my distaste for the subject, and--
"You do not admire it," he said.
"It is very quaint and ingenious, no doubt," I replied, "but the
ingenuity seems misplaced there."
Miss Curwen nodded.
"It is like a fine French ribbon on a homespun gown," said she.
I remembered on the instant something which Lord Derwentwater had said
to me concerning Dorothy Curwen.
"You know Blackladies?" I inquired, and perhaps with some anxiety.
"Very well," said she, with a smile of amusement.
"So I thought," said I.
"Yes," she continued, "my father was very familiar with Sir John
Rookley;" and her eyes rested quietly upon mine.
"A hard man, people said, Mr. Clavering," interrupted Mr. Curwen, "but
a just man and to my liking. If he was hard, God knows he had enough
in Jervas to make him so."
I glanced at the daughter. She was regarding the beams which roofed
the room, with supreme unconsciousness, but the very moment that I
looked at her she dropped her eyes to the level of mine.
"You lack something, Mr. Clavering," said she with great politeness.
"Indeed!" said my host, rising from his chair in the excess of his
hospitality.
"Indeed, sir, no; I beg of you!" I replied in confusion. And Dorothy
Curwen laughed.
"A strange man was Jervas Rookley," continued Mr. Curwen, and there
could be no doubt whatever about the sincerity of his unconsciousness.
"He came warped from his cradle. But you will have heard of him, I
doubt not, more than we know, though at one time he honoured us not
infrequently with his company. But that was before I knew of his
transgression in the matter of the wad-mines."
"Oh," said I, "I thought that that was not generally known."
"Nor is it," replied Mr. Curwen. "I had the story from Sir John's
lips. He was a very just man, and since Jervas came to visit me
frequently, he thought that I ought to know."
Again my eyes went to the daughter's face. But this time she was
already looking at me.
"I am sure, Mr. Clavering, that you need something," said she very
anxiously.
"Indeed, no!" I replied in confusion.
And she smiled with the pleasantest air of contentment in the world.
Mr. Curwen did not on this occasion rise to satisfy my imaginary
needs, but remained absorbed in thought.
"I suppose," he said dreamily, "that Jervas Rookley was a fairy's
changeling."
I started at the words; they were not spoken in jest. I looked at him;
he was seriously revolving the question in his mind.
"What do you think?" he asked of me.
His daughter bent forwards across the table with something of appeal
in her eyes.
"The theory," said I, "would most easily explain him;" and the appeal
in her eyes changed to gratitude.
This was not the only strange remark he made to me that night, for he
accompanied me up to my bedroom and closed the door carefully behind
him.
"By this time you should have been in France?" he asked, lowering his
voice.
"Yes," said I, doubtfully. For since his Most Christian Majesty was at
death's door, and all thought of a rising abandoned for the moment,
there was no longer any call for me to hurry to Lorraine with the
information I had gathered; while, on the other hand, there was the
greatest need that I should remain in England, since once out of
England I was powerless even to attempt anything towards Anthony
Herbert's liberation.
"I spoke at supper," he continued in a yet more secret voice, "of a
more expeditious way than Lord Derwentwater's." He glanced around him
and came nearer to me. "It was no idle boast," he said with a little
chuckle, "but I have a ship," and he nodded in a sort of childish
guilefulness. "I have a ship." He went tip-toeing to the door as
though already he had stayed too long. "Snug's the word," he whispered
with a finger on his lip; and in the sweetest tone of encouragement,
again, "I have a ship." And so he went gently from the room and
descended the stairs.
His manner no less than his words somewhat bewildered me. I thought
it, in truth, a very unlikely thing that he should possess a ship,
seeing that he had made no concealment of his poverty, and that if
indeed he did, his ship would be a very unlikely thing for a man to
put to sea in. But in this I made a great mistake, since his ship not
merely existed, but had a very considerable share in the issue from
those misfortunes which were so soon to befall us. At the time,
however, I was not greatly troubled with the matter one way or the
other, for while Mr. Curwen had been speaking, I had been standing at
the open window. The slope of the hillside was in front of me, a
corner of the stable-roof was just visible to my left; but most
clearly of all I saw as in a vision the picture of a woman seated in a
lonely lodging at Keswick with a crumpled paper spread before her,
whereon was scribbled one single line: "He is not dead." I shall not
be particular to account for the reason why that vision should now of
a sudden stand fixed within my sight, though I could give a very
definite opinion concerning it I will only state that it was there, so
vivid and distinct that I could read the paper she so sadly fingered;
and reading it, the one line written thereon called on me for a
supplement and explanation.
I opened the door and hurried quietly along the passage. I heard Mr.
Curwen's step in the hall below, and holding my candle in my hand
leaned over the balusters.
"Mr. Curwen," I said in a breathless whisper, "you told me of a horse
which stood ready in your stables, should my safety call for it."
"Yes," said he looking up at me.
"There is the greatest need in the world that I should make use of
your kindness this night. It is a need that imperils my safety, but my
honour is concerned, or rather, that poor remnant of my honour which I
have left to me. When I fled from Blackladies, there remained
something to be done and to be done by me, and it remains undone. Some
small part of the omission I may haply repair to-night."
He answered me, as I knew he would, with the strangeness gone from his
manner and replaced with a kindly gravity. He was the truest of
gentlemen, with all a gentleman's simple code of faith.
"Mr. Clavering," he said, "so long as you are my guest I am the
trustee of your safety. But there are things of greater value than a
man's safety, of which you have mentioned one. I shall look to seeing
you in the morning."
He asked no questions; that word "honour" was enough for him; it
stamped my purpose in his eyes with a holy seal. He came up the stairs
towards me and shook me by the hand, and so passed on to his own
chamber.