Chapter XV: The Return of the Wanderers

It was late in July when Brion, returning one noon from a visit to the Glen--where, against his better sentiments, he had found an irresistible attraction in watching the trout and grayling blowing rings in the water--was conscious, as he approached the Moated Grange, of something in its atmosphere which had not been there when he left it. A livelier smoke seemed to rise from the kitchen chimney: there were signs of hoofmarks in the dust about the bridge. With a beating heart he pushed open the wicket; there was a shout, and the next moment he was in Clerivault’s arms.

‘Marry come up!’ cried that dear paragon. ‘Is not here a gallant guerdon for my toils! Nay, hold away, while my hungry eyes make a feast of thee!’

His lids blinked; he looked gaunter, more fantastic than ever; for all his cherished grudge against him it warmed Brion’s heart to hear again the high husky voice with its intermittent squeak. He had nothing to give his friend for the moment but smiles and welcome.

‘Have you really come back, Clerivault,’ he said--‘and for good?’

‘For good, sweetheart? Ay, for no harm, at least.’

A vast hulk of a man, standing at the door of the porter’s lodge, laughed out like a jovial bassoon:--

‘There’s a rare wit for you, Master,’ said he.

He was enormous, like a tree--a great lusty fellow in a buff jerkin and hip-high boots, with a falling band about his throat. Each of his ruddy cheeks might have sufficed a moderate man for his whole countenance; and his fist would have served a giant for his Sunday joint. Clerivault flicked him under the chin with his glove.

‘Speak when you’re spoken to, little Nol,’ said he; ‘and then to better effect than to point out the obvious. Lout, man, lout to your betters, nor stand there beaming like the sun in a red hazel bush.’

The huge creature ducked to Brion, who responded by holding out his hand.

‘Is this Nol porter?’ he said, with a smile. ‘On my troth, a fit attendant on a Judge of Assize!’

The giant, grasping the slim hand abashed, gaped doubtful a moment, then went into a second boom of laughter. Here was another quip patent to his perceptives. It was to be his rare fortune, it seemed, to serve under a second wit, matching Clerivault’s own.

That gentleman interposed, a little starchily. He was jealous for the boy’s sole attention.

‘A Judge,’ said he, ‘is not needed in a matter beyond dispute. This creature’s hugeness hits the eye like a battering-ram. He hath evidenced, and may be dismissed. Hence, porter--ha! and ruminate, like a vast ox, on the condescension shown thee.’

He led Brion away, while the other backed, bobbing and grinning, into the lodge. ‘Now,’ said he, stopping once more to look admiringly in the boy’s face, ‘let me gaze on thee my fill. Art grown, I swear, and to an aspect something graver than thy wont. Hast taken sadness in this interval to be thy housemate?’

‘Is it cheering, think you,’ said Brion, levelling his voice, ‘to have cherished a friend, and to have been forsaken by him without a word?’

The other did not answer for a moment.

‘Nay,’ he said softly, ‘I left a message for thee to be of good heart, and to keep a corner in it for me. An William gave it thee not, I will break his head for him.’

‘Spare thy bluster. Hurt to another would not mend mine. Besides he gave me thy message.’

‘What then, sweetling? I had to go.’

‘And I to be deserted.’

‘The occasion was peremptory. No choice was left to me.’

‘Save to wake me and say good-bye.’

‘O!’ cried Clerivault, apostrophising Fate in a voice of grief and despair: ‘what coil is this! _I_ wake thee to that message! If I have sinned, I have sinned in good faith, and my reward is my love is rejected.’

‘I said not that,’ said Brion, relenting. ‘But, indeed, Clerivault, it wounded me to the heart to find you gone.’

‘Did it? did it?’ cried the other, in a rapture of emotion. ‘Then happy, happy Harlequin for all his racking! If thou but knewest, my blessed one--if thou but knewest, thou wouldst sure forgive me. But the peril--if peril it was--is laid at last, and henceforth, by God’s countenance, we shall live together in security, and never more be disparted. When we rode away that night----’

‘Nay,’ said the boy, stopping him, a flush on his face--‘whither or on what urgency I will not know. If I might not hear the exordium, I will not hear the peroration. We were separated and we have rejoined, like the sides of a wound. That should be enough for us. The interval of pain it is well to forget, as if it had never been. I prithee speak no word of it more. Is my Uncle returned with you?’

‘He is within,’ answered Clerivault. He was comforted but perplexed. There was some change apparent here which he could not quite unriddle. It was like a new birth, a detachment, as when a clinging tuber has separated itself from its parent stock and declared for an independent existence. There was a pride in it of conscious power; the old sweet pliancy might be there, but its backbone had strengthened. Was he become a man indeed in this short space? It would almost seem so. There was a shadow on his lip; a knowledge, even a sadness, in his eyes which had not been there before. Whence and how had they come? The thought which had been Phineas’s thought just crossed his mind. Well, he did not know whether to be glad or sorry for this development; only thank God they were together again, and reconciled, and friends as of old.

‘I will go to him,’ said Brion, and they walked on and entered the house. The Justice was in his private closet off the hall--a room selected for his use by Clerivault before his departure. It was a small oak-panelled chamber, sombre but comfortable. The one diamond-paned window, jewelled in its upper lights with heraldic devices, threw a pattern like trellised moonshine on the carpet of blue cloth--the only one in the house. An escritoire had been set there by Brion’s directions, and the smaller bookcase, into which he had gathered the best of the illuminated missals. They knocked, and being bid to enter, Brion saw his Uncle again.

He was seated by a table, on which stood a jug of sack and a silver tankard from which he had drunk copiously. He was just come off the road, and was soiled and weary. Yet there was that in his expression somehow more significant of mental than of physical exhaustion. The dark moody features seemed bitten with a deeper consciousness of their own fall from grace and beauty; into the large congested eyes had grown a hunted listening look, pathetic in its implication of strength harried and demoralised. His hands were tremulous when the boy came in: it had needed but that little unexpected sound upon the door to unnerve and shake him. But he greeted his nephew kindly, and with a light come into his face which shone straight into Brion’s heart. He beckoned, with a smile, to the boy, and, when he came, stood him between his knees, and asked him many questions--as to his life since they had parted, and the way he had employed his time, and his opinion--a little wistfully this--as to the house and its surroundings and his feelings regarding them.

‘I shall be happy now you have come,’ was the brave answer.

He seemed much affected. ‘What! You love me still?’ said he.

‘Yes, indeed, Sir.’

‘That’s well and good. Methinks, child, I could not do without your love.’

‘Will you live here always now, Uncle Quentin?’

‘Ay, so they will leave me in peace.’

He said it wearily, his brow glooming a moment. But the shadow passed, and he smiled again. ‘You ask no question,’ he said; ‘and that’s discreet. Now, tell me: have you kept the trust I erst warned you? I have not forgotten, you see.’

‘I have kept it on my honour.’

‘Well said. I like your honour as I like your face. I have been in hiding, Brion. Are you curious to know why?’

‘No, Sir.’

‘Then, when you ask me, I shall tell you.’

‘I shall not ask you.’

‘Think, boy; to love me is to share my burden.’

‘I will take it all, Uncle, if you will, not seeking to know its nature.’

The other did not answer for a little; but he heaved a great sigh, gazing enrapt into his young kinsman’s face. Presently he said:--

‘Ay, sweet; this is love. Let it rest untaxed. It is enough to know such confidence in store for me against a day when to bear my burden longer alone were perchance to see me sink under it. So, you will be happy? It is a brave and fair country, is it not? and, for the house, Nol and our laughter shall mend its glooms. I lived here once, Brion.’

‘So Clerivault told me, Sir.’

‘He is a gossip, that. Dost love him too?’

‘I love him much, Uncle.’

‘A little mad, though--eh?’

‘I think a little madness spices life.’

The other laughed.

‘Heart! so it may. Well, he shall be answerable for thine outward parts; act Chiron to thy Diomed; exercise thy limbs in sport and chase and make a skilful swordsman of thee. For thine inner, I must account; rub up my Greek and Latin; look to thine education. Wilt thou be a creditable pupil?’

‘I will be a willing one.’

‘That’s sure. I see a life before us of full content--a happy round of simple toils and sober pleasures, asking no more than health and a quiet mind. What is vext Fortune but a gilded sore? A curse on the lust for riches, which, like the fairy gold, turn to ashes in the hands of him that grasps them with a covetous heart. I am gratefuller being poor and lowly. Dost thou hear, child? I am poor at last. Will it turn thee from me?’

For answer--for his heart was full--Brion made but a caressing gesture. But it was enough.

‘God bless thee,’ said his kinsman in a broken voice. ‘Now leave me’--and he put a hand before his eyes. But, as the boy went from the room, too awed for the moment to put the question nearest his heart, the hand was lowered to the half-emptied beaker.