Chapter X: Confidences

So began the idyll of a boy and girl. Their preliminary fencing with one another had been all a make-believe: they had been born to meet, and Fate had no real equivocations for them. Frank, affectionate, and without self-consciousness, the tie between them naturally formed itself into an innocent love-knot, and through it was transmitted a mutual confidence which asked no account of whys and wherefores.

The very next day, at the same hour, Brion returned to the glen, and climbed the hill to the hidden bower. Somehow he believed that he would find his lady ensconced there: and there he found her. She essayed only a brief pretence of surprise--and she was looking prettier than ever. He admired all the points in her which a man would have admired; but with better than a man’s eyes. The pink and white, the little tapering fingers and shapely arms, the cup of her throat, the soft provocation of her lips and rounded chin--they moved him not to the beatitude of passion but of reverence. If he had coveted to kiss anything of her, it would have been, holily and fearfully, her cheek.

‘You again?’ she said. She was seated exactly in her former posture.

‘Did you not expect me?’ asked Brion.

‘Think you I should have come here, an I had?’

‘I hope so: I believe so.’

‘_You believe!_’ In the face of her professed astonishment he saw the dimples flicker, and felt safe.

‘I am coming up,’ he said. ‘Prithee make room for me, Joan.’

She opened her eyes.

‘No room for insolence’--she shifted ever so little--‘and when I cannot retort upon it.’

‘You do not know my name? It is Brion. Will you speak it, that I may learn to love its sound?’ He sat by her side, leaning upon his hand.

‘I have not your effrontery. Brion--there!’

‘Joan, I am your true knight for evermore. Shall we be sweet friends?’

‘I trow you have enough without me.’

‘Nay, I am a lonely boy, and not very happy.’

She glanced quickly at him, and down. A flush had come to her cheek.

‘Nor I, Brion,’ she said low.

Here was revelation. The heiress, presumably spoilt, of all that wealth, and unhappy!

‘Why----’ he began; but she turned suddenly and put a finger on his lips.

‘If we are to be friends, do not ask me. Let this be something apart from the rest--our own, with none other to share in and mar it. Will you?’

‘Will I?’ His tone was assurance enough.

She gave a little sigh; and looked whimsically and tenderly at him. He dared to steal her hand to his; and so they sat.

‘We ought not, mayhap,’ said she: ‘but indeed I ache for a friend; and your gentle looks assure me, though your actions may sometimes belie them.’

‘You mean that day? What brought you to the haunted copse, Joan?’

‘Is it really haunted, then? I wanted to see the well.’

‘You were on the wrong side of the wall for that.’

She thrilled, moving a thought closer to him.

‘Tell me about it. I have heard a tale.’

He told her all he knew, including a shuddering description of his own visit to the well-house.

‘I would you would take me there,’ she whispered at the end.

‘What! you would dare?’ he asked, amazed.

‘With you to fend me.’

Here was a quandary. He could not afford to show the lesser moral courage; and yet----

‘We should be seen,’ he said.

‘O!’ she answered resignedly. ‘Very well.’

‘Unless I could devise a plan,’ he added, stung by her tone.

‘Will you, Brion?’ she asked eagerly; and he took his first lesson in woman’s incomprehensibility.

‘Leave it to me,’ he said, frowning. ‘Yet I marvel at your wish to return where you suffered such rudeness.’

‘Did you take me for the poor maid’s ghost? I wonder would _she_ have laughed to have her chin so tickled.’

‘Hush!’ said Brion, horrified. ‘It is not good to talk of the unhallowed dead so lightly.’

The girl assumed a gravity.

‘I will not, then. Yet be sure I feared you more than any sucking-bear or cockatricks.’

His solemnity broke in a sputter of laughter.

‘O, Joan!’ he cried.

‘What have I said?’

‘Did you mean succuba and cockatrice?’

‘Well, if I did? Whatever they may be, they could not have behaved worse than you did.’

‘Joan, you are a sweet dear.’

‘Brion, I hoped we should meet to-day: that is the truth. Did you come a-fishing?’

‘Yes, for love. I did not need a rod for that.’

‘No, the rod comes after.’

‘I prithee talk not so. It is not natural, I am sure, to your lips.’

‘Well, I will not,’ She leaned towards him irresistibly, and he stole an arm about hers. It was all quite natural, harmless, and pretty. ‘Now tell me of yourself,’ she said, ‘and why you are unhappy.’

He gave her his story--after a little thought--concealing nothing from her. His rather staid reserve yielded to this endearing comrade as it had never done to any other in his life before. And she listened in silence, making no comment until he had finished. Then she said, her eyes fixed reflectively on his:--

‘I much marvel who the pale lady was?’

It was that incident which had dwelt in her mind above the rest. Why? Because of the intuitive woman in her, conscious and suspectful.

‘Some chance stranger,’ answered Brion.

‘Yes,’ she responded, but without conviction, and sat quiet a little while, looking in his face and abstractedly stroking his sleeve. ‘Brion,’ she said suddenly, ‘what is a bustard?’

‘Why, a bird,’ answered the boy, somewhat surprised.

‘O!’ she said. ‘But I don’t see--quite--you can’t be a bird.’

‘_I!_’

‘Sir John--I heard him once--called you the Bagott bustard.’

‘Called _me_?’ he exclaimed, confounded. ‘Why should he speak of me at all? He does not know me, nor I him.’

‘O! he knows about you--and about your Uncle, too. I tell you all the people on the moors know about one another.’

‘Well, what have they--what has Sir John to say against my Uncle?’

‘Why _against_, Brion? That was not my word.’

‘But it should have been. I see that plain enough.’

There was silence between them for a spell, while the boy looked straight before him, frowning and a little white. Presently his companion spoke, caressingly and almost timidly:--

‘You are not angry with me, Brion, are you?’

‘Why should I be angry?’

‘Dear’--she leant a thought nearer to him--‘I don’t mind if you _are_ a bustard.’

He nodded his head, setting his teeth:--

‘Gramercy for that! You mean very well--though I will not ask you what you mean. What I desire to know is Sir John’s charge against my Uncle.’

‘No charge, bless the boy--only a conjuncture.’

‘What--conjuncture?’--his lips twitched, though he kept his frown.

‘I’m afraid to tell that face. Make it kinder, Brion, or I dare not.’

‘There!’

‘That he hath gone into hiding, fearing an impeachment.’

‘An impeachment? For what?’

‘Nay, I know not.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Only that he is whispered to be a Papist at heart, and to have been disbenched for favouring a Papish suitor.’

The boy considered; then said quietly:--

‘It may be. Withal, I see no disgrace in that.’

‘No, Brion,’ was the meek answer.

‘Do you, Joan?’

‘I am going to borrow your eyes from this time, Brion. Let me look into them. They are very kind and true, i’faith--a little sober for me, but they will be good to smile to in the glass. Well, I see now there is no harm in being a Papist.’

‘Of course there is not--though I am none myself. How quick and jestingly you answer; yet methinks your activity is most in your tongue.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Are you fond of exercise, Joan?’

‘Not very.’

‘So I should have guessed. You remind me of a white rabbit I once had--warm and soft and cuddlesome. It liked to lie in my arms.’

‘You are an outrageous boy--and very insulting. I think I shall have to hate you.’

‘That is a pity, because I wanted you to love me.’

‘Did you, i’faith? In any case we are over-young to love.’

‘It is good practice to begin young. Will you be my white rabbit, Joan?’

‘By my troth, no. How my back aches, sitting thus upright.’

‘Is that better?’

‘Ye--yes. Brion, will you always love me?’

‘O, Joan, till I die!’

‘Yet you know not what you love.’

‘I am content. I will not ask, since you put a seal upon my lips. Shall we meet here every day?’

‘Not for worlds! Well, you must keep it a secret.’

‘Marry, will I! How do you come?’

‘The way you came; or, when I ride Gritty, over the hill. We are much in company, sweet dear, and much alone together.’

‘You found this bower by chance?’

‘Yes, by chance. What brought you here?’

‘Why, you.’

‘Silly! how could you know?’

‘Like a diviner, by the rod, I suppose. That is one of the rewards of fishing.’

‘You speak from knowledge? Ah, you are but a willy-wisp, I fear me.’

‘So God mend me, I am not, Joan. Thou are the first love of mine, as thou shalt be the last.’

‘Not omitting Alse?’

‘Alse!’ (scornfully) ‘She was but a baby.’

‘Well, I will believe you.’

She sighed, thrilling him all through. ‘Joan,’ he whispered; ‘when an oath is taken on the book, one puts one’s lips to it. I swear for evermore to be your most true knight and devout lover.’

The girl did not answer; but presently, without a word, she let her head droop a little away, so that the soft curve of her cheek was surrendered to him. And rapturously, reverently, while the birds sang about, and the chiming of the water came up to them in their warm high covert, he set the signature of his fealty on that lovely tablet.

It was the ecstatic moment of Brion’s life, never forgotten and never surpassed--innocence fulfilling beauty and beauty innocence, trustfully, confidingly. So to such sexless kisses angels love--the flowers that ask no fruit.

Now they sat on in silence, shy, since the pledge had been sought and yielded. Yet there seemed no thought of strangeness in it all, nor did it appear to them odd that they should be so intimate on such short acquaintance. Why should it? Do lambs meeting in the same meadow seek introductions? Reserve only comes with the consciousness of sex; and with that the happy friendliness of youth is forborne for ever.

Presently they parted, with due precautions taken against chance detection. It was not, with Brion, that he was actuated in this by any sentiment of shame or guilt, for he felt none; but that he feared for a rude end being put to his idyll. Whatever the circumstances of his pretty lady’s life--and, being faithful to his promise, he would not inquire into them, much as he longed to comfort her implied unhappiness--he could not suppose for a moment that his acquaintance with her would, if discovered, be anything but wrathfully discountenanced by her father? And the reference to his Uncle had not helped to reassure him in that respect. It troubled him; but his pride as much as his love. Something in his blood was already resenting this assumed arrogance of superiority by a rich City parvenu over a man of his Uncle’s distinction. And this Sir John, moreover, according to Clerivault, was a rogue: an indubitable rogue he must be, indeed, to treat his own child so. Well, he, Brion, need have no scruples about circumventing such a man. He told himself so, swelling over a grievance which had become suddenly personal. If it was to be war between the families, Sir John should come to learn, maybe, the value of hostages in a question of accommodation. The state of dictatorial righteousness into which the young bashaw worked himself was sufficiently diverting.

But it quickly yielded to another sentiment. After all, Joan was the rogue-knight’s daughter--which must seem to argue that the father could not be wholly base. How came it that so coarse a stock could yield so sweet a blossom? What a darling she was, and how great his good fortune in having lighted on her in his dreary life. She had transformed all that, converting his desert at a touch into a garden of Eden. Now the very loneliness of the place was beautiful, since it ensured their uninterrupted converse. As he went over the hill, his brain seeming wrapt in a luminous mist, he felt very happy, with a pure good happiness. Only one thing lingered in his mind to shadow and disturb it. Why had Sir John likened him to that bird?