Chapter XI: Two’s Company

Motionless as the trunk against which he leaned, Brion stood waiting in the ilex grove. It was a still misty morning, with a blurr of sun in the East, like a lamp burning behind a ground glass window, and for every reason he felt it more reassuring to address his face doggedly in that direction than towards the glooms which lay behind his back. It was gratifying to know that his resolution, a puissant force impelling it, had conquered those glooms, and to practical effect; still, the point gained, there seemed no present reason for presuming on the providence which had so far favoured him. He preferred to wait, facing the light, near the fringe of the wood for the appointment which had brought him there.

But, as the hour struck and passed, some nervous irritation would affect him. He was strung to the adventure, but he wanted it grappled and done with. Why did she not come? All girls and women seemed to regard time as a jest. It had been the same with Mrs Angell: he had never known her once in all his life punctual to an engagement.

At last, a quarter of an hour late, she appeared. He heard the soft patter of Gritty’s hoofs on the turf outside, and the pair drew into sight. Even seen so, her figure dusk against the light, his mistress brought to Brion’s heart the thrill of delighted surprise she for ever conveyed. He never saw her afresh but she seemed a new thing to him, lovelier and more winsome than when last encountered. And now she was new in fact, at least as regarded her habit. Like the young spirit of the Spring she came to him all in tender green, an orchard sweetness in her face, and her eyes were the first speedwells of the year. A hood fell loosely back from her fair head, as its sheath slips from a blossom, and her feet gave life to the barren carpet of dead leaves, greening it where they fell. So she came to him, moving with the unhurried gladness that was her way, and he had a hard ado to temper his welcome with even the show of severity her lateness called for. He had not, for precaution’s sake, gone to meet her, but had waited while she tethered the little ass to a branch on the outskirts of the grove; and now he stood erect, as she greeted him in her soft voice, and with half eager, half fearful eyes:--

‘Have you in truth found a way, Brion?’

‘Mayhap a way,’ he answered, ‘if we are left to take it. The sun will be through in a little, enough to reveal our meeting should any chance to be looking.’

Struck by something in his tone, and perhaps by his apparent failure to observe her half proffered hands, she moved a little back, her lips parted, her eyes full of a questioning wonder.

‘Was this mist, then, of thy bespeaking,’ she said, ‘and engaged to us up to a certain hour? You speak as if I should have remembered that.’

‘I speak like one keeping an appointment,’ he answered.

She searched his face for humour, but discovered none.

‘Brion,’ she said suddenly, ‘am I late to our tryst?’

‘A man might consider so,’ he replied stiffly.

‘But only by a few minutes?’

‘Say fifteen, Mistress--nothing to a lady that holds the terrors of this wood at naught.’

Her face was lifted to his. The dimples threatened a moment, but she controlled them.

‘I had not thought of that. It must have been dreadful for you waiting here alone.’

‘You do not think so, I can see.’

‘Brion, don’t be cross with me.’

Her tone, her attitude were so sweet and coaxing, he could resist no longer. He put his hands on her shoulders.

‘You want to laugh, Joan. Well, laugh, a’God’s name, since it is like birds in sunlight to see and hear you.’

‘Well, I will not, lest it hurt you.’

‘Why, thou art laughing now. Has this place, indeed, no fears for you?’

‘Why should it? I have done no evil in it.’

‘That is true, Joan, and a truth that shames me. Conscience should fear no spectres but its own. What made you late?’

‘Nothing but the mist itself: I must needs pick my way at first. So, if the mist was part of your plan and procuring, you are the one to blame.’

‘Well, you are here--and like Chloris in a green kirtle. I love you in it.’

‘Alack! and when it is wore out you will love me no more.’

‘Then it shall last you a lifetime.’

‘God advise me, if I am to choose between that and your love. But my comfort is after a year or two you would learn to hate me in it.’

‘To hate you, Joan! You can find comfort in that?’

‘Nay, comfort in a new gown. Yet it glads me that it likes you, dear my lord. I will wear green to my wedding and green till my bedding under the green turf. It was to make myself inconspicious against the green grass that I put it on. Yet there is no grass in here, Brion.’

‘No, by my faith. You speak “conspiciously” well. We are not so deep in but we may be seen. How merry you are.’

‘Am I? Mayhap it is to hide something.’

‘What! Are you growing afraid?’

‘Afraid? By my troth, no. If you could hear my conscience singing! It is a carol all quavers.’

‘Come, then, while I show you.’ He put an arm unresisted, about her, and they turned to the dark essay. ‘’Tis by here, the way,’ he whispered--‘the only one for secrecy. But I doubt you will dare it when you see.’

She leaned close to him, not answering. For all her professed assurance, the influence of the place was beginning to tell upon her a little. As they pushed deeper into the thicket, the light saddened and grew obscure, and an intense silence gathered about them; the snaky branches seemed to writhe, involving their path in noiseless folds, and a smell of poisonous water came to their nostrils.

‘It is a horrible place,’ whispered the girl suddenly; and she stopped.

‘You are frightened, Joan. We will go back.’

‘No. Give me one moment. Look, is that the moat, and the body of a great serpent stretching across it?’

‘It is the moat; but the serpent is only a limb of that big tree before us, sleek and mottled like a green worm. It bridges the ditch and rests upon the wall beyond; and it is over that we must go, if go we must.’

‘How did you discover it, Brion--this way, I mean?’

‘Why, I came to look. I had promised you I would contrive a plan; and here was my contrivance, all ready provided for us. I take no credit for it.’

‘Nay, but you shall have it, since it was credit enough to seek into these glooms you feared. And you dared it just for my idle word, Brion?’

‘I should be no true knight, Joan, if I refused to descend into the very pit for my lady’s sake.’

He looked, smiling, down on her, and she up at him. Some sense of an indefinable pressure, of a helpless entreaty caught at his heart with a shock. And the next moment he had bent his head lower, and kissed her lips.

The instant he had done so, the awful rapture of that profanation smote him scarlet. He thought he must have alienated her beyond forgiveness.

‘O, Joan!’ he said--‘I was mad.’

She broke from him, he supposed to leave the copse and his presence without another word. But, to his wonder and relief, she seemed as if unconscious of the offence. Only, had it been light, he might have seen how the rose of pudency had flushed suddenly to the very nape of her neck.

‘Come,’ she said, in a voice that was hardly audible.

He could scarce believe his ears; but his every vein was throbbing with the ecstasy of a new revelation. He followed her, and in a moment they came down to the big tree, and stood together by the side of the moat.

The tree was like a monstrous devil-fish, throwing out a swarm of tentacles, smooth and sinuous, which were heavily interlaced with others projected from the farther bank, so that altogether they formed with their sombre foliage a dense dark canopy shrouding in the black water. Of these tentacles, one, the biggest, reared itself across the moat and over the wall beyond, on which it rested, forming a sloping bridge, with at least a reasonable foothold for a passenger supporting himself by certain minor branches which could be used as handrails. It was a quite feasible way, though uninviting, and the boy waited for his companion’s verdict on it.

‘Well?’ he whispered presently.

She had been silent, because it was her own voice she feared after that conscious contact; but now she rallied her self-possession.

‘I am going across, Brion. Where is the well-house?’

‘Cannot you see it--there, among the trees? It is only its back, of course; but the leaves so hide it, it might be part of the wall. To reach the front we shall have to cross by this, and drop down on the other side. It is really quite easy, if you are not afraid.’

‘I am going over.’

‘You mean it, Joan?’

She laughed, as they had been talking, low and thrillingly, and the next moment was on the branch.

‘Wait, while I stand by you,’ he said, all a’quiver. ‘Hold firm, Joan. God a’ mercy, if you should slip and fall into the foul slime!’

She laughed again: that was a practical contingency, with nothing supernatural about it, and the fear of it helped her to steadiness. But they won across easily enough; and, as to Brion, he took the branch like a squirrel, and, once over the wall, jumped down and held up his arms to help his lady alight. And in another moment they stood together, hand in hand, before the open portal of the well-house.

‘Joan! You are not going in?’

‘Why not?’

‘Does it not make your marrow crawl? I would I had your courage.’

‘Brion, I will tell you the truth. It is not courage but curiosity. I think for that a woman would dare to call up the devil. Is it there, indeed, where the poor pitiful maid was cast?’

‘So old Harlock says.’

‘It may not be true. What was that?’

‘O, Joan, in God’s name, come away! Did you hear it? It was the horrible laugh again.’

‘Well, I am going to look.’

He clutched at her, but she eluded him, and, slipping into the chamber, bent over the well-rim.

‘Joan! What are you doing? Are you quite mad?’

‘Come and look down, Brion. You can see the water, miles below, like a little dim moon.’

He stood behind her, having put that force upon himself; but he sweated with apprehension. Suddenly she stooped, picked up a fragment of broken stone from the floor, and, before he could stop her, dropped it down the well. There was an interval of silence, and then a distant plop, followed once more by an exacerbated chuckling. And then, as Brion’s hair seemed to rise on his head, the girl turned on him, merrily clapping her hands.

‘Didn’t it gobble like a turkey! I know now what it is: it is the water clucking in some deep-down vent connected with the moat. I saw the bubbles rising when we crossed the tree.’

Was that, indeed, the wonderful explanation? Brion felt as if a flood of sunlight had suddenly broken into the chamber, softening and diluting its terror.

‘Joan!’ he cried amazedly, a spring of damp on his forehead. ‘Is it so, in good sooth? I believe you may be right; I believe----’

He was interrupted by his companion:--

‘O, look at that great wheel on the wall! There is just such another in the royal Castle of Carisbrook, where once I was taken. Do you know what it is for, Brion?’

‘Do you, Joan?’

‘To be sure I do. It is to wind up the bucket from the well. They put a donkey inside, and he walks and turns the wheel. Only the rope is gone from this, but not the pulley. There it is, up in the roof above our heads.’

It was there, true enough. The engine of mysterious torture was resolved into a homely vehicle for an ass’s plodding. This practical little mind had dispelled at a word the last glooms of the terrific place.

They went to examine the wheel together. It hung upon the wall like a huge clock which had lost its hands. Its lowest segment was sunk a foot below the pavement in an oblong hole cut to accommodate it. The sun had by now broken through the mist, and a melancholy light filtered down through the trees into the stone chamber. The great cylinder was still sound in balance and structure, and they got into it, and, working it like mice in a revolving cage, made it move. It turned slowly, groaning and sighing to be so awakened from its long slumber, but it did turn, and the easier as they continued. Presently Brion started, with a ‘Hush!’

‘The well again?’ whispered his companion.

‘No. Methought I heard a footstep in the garden outside. Supposing old Harlock were to come in and find us?’

‘We must not be found. If my father were to hear of our meetings!’

‘Keep still. Do not move the wheel again for your life. Now! Step out without a sound. We must go back the way we came, and you must ride off, while I lie hid in the wood.’

They moved like cats. There was no difficulty about regaining the branch from the banked-up ground against the wall, and in a minute they were across, and had slipped into the covert of the trees on the farther side. And there they stood to part.

‘Fare thee well, dear Brion.’

‘Is that all, dear Joan?’

‘Why, what can I have more to say but to thank thee?’

‘Thanks are for lips; yet the sweetest are without words. For what thou hast taught me I owe thee a thousand kisses.’

‘Nay, the saving grace of an error is in the teaching one not to repeat it. If I know my peril, and avoid it, will you, who love me, lead me into it again? That is not to be my knight.’

‘Dear Joan, forgive me.’

‘Yes, Brion.’

They parted, with a sweet gravity. Were they not lovely serious, the pretty things, and did they not deserve the best a kind Fate could allot them?