Chapter XVIII: Hope Deferred

A month passed, and still the promised communication from London delayed to come. The interval was spent by Brion in alternations of feverish hope and stoic resignation: now he would rise to heights of glowing expectancy, crediting his intrepid friend, in whose vocabulary the word impossible seemed to have no place, with an almost supernatural sagacity, now lament that he had ever permitted those old emotions, long precipitated and settled down, to be stirred up again to his futile misery. It was and could be nothing but an idle dream. Even were his lady, by any mad chance, as yet unwed, was it credible that a life so full, so prosperous and so courted as hers must have been during these years would have remained dedicate to that childish memory, or have come to regard it--at best, perhaps, with a little humorous tenderness--as anything but the half-forgotten idyll of a summer’s day? No, it was not credible, and it was a bitter weakness in him ever to have listened to that insidious tempter who had set re-flaming in him a long subdued fire. Out with it; cold water it; stamp it down, and this time for good and all!

And then straight the revulsion would follow, and he would bemoan himself for a false knight, whose faith was not proof against the first test of separation. Had she not vowed herself his for evermore, chosen him her champion, pledged him to an eternal fidelity, declared passionately that she would kill herself rather than be made untrue to him? Base and craven, he was unworthy to be called her lover, who could so misdoubt her, lacking a shred of evidence.

And so swung the pendulum, this way and that, until there came a memorable day--but well into the second month--when the longed-for despatch was actually delivered into his hands, and conveyed by him to a private place, and there eagerly broken and read.

The young Captain wrote very pleasantly, in the Italian script then growing into fashion with the cultured, and in that fluent graceful style which presently came to make him notable among writers of note. He was very much occupied, it appeared. He had made his début at Court and been well received. He was full of engagements and plans and ambitions, and he discoursed at some length on the flattering attentions he had excited, seeming to linger a little complacently over this opportunity to draw his own portrait for his own behoof. Indeed, it was Raleigh, Raleigh most of the way, until the hasty postscript, and in that he referred again to the advisability of his young friend coming to enlarge his views of life in London, adding last, for all the satisfaction of his reader, these words:--

‘Think not I have forgot my promise to serve you in a certain matter, the will whereto, were I my own master, should bring it to a short conclusion. The truth is, if I could turn to it, my worries were the less, seeing I am so beset with divers claims and importunities that scarce can I call a moment of my time my own. Yet, be patient: patience proves oft the speedful suitor.’

Patience! To one on the rack! Brion read the missive through; and read it through again; and turned it up and down for any hint of more; then put it from him with a half whimsical sigh, and called himself a fool. He had no belief from that moment in any power to help him. The shock of disappointment had steadied his reason and brought him to himself again. Perhaps that was as well. Had it not been a poor fibreless love, he thought, that could engage a friend to contrive for it? Her champion! and he had insulted her rather through that weak commission. Never again. Henceforth his own sole resources should serve him, whether to win or fail.

He went thus resolved about his customary duties, expecting no further satisfaction from his friend, and receiving none. Alas! too instantly successful in negotiating his ‘pack of small accomplishments,’ it is to be feared that that brilliant soldier of fortune had already lost conceit with those minor obligations which involved even a small measure of self-sacrifice. He was too absorbed over his own affairs to bestow a thought on another’s. Only once again, after a long interval, did he write, and that once again, in almost the same words, though carrying even less conviction, make his assurance of unforgetfulness. And after that no further letter came from him: he was launched full-flood on that prosperous and tragic tide which was to convey him by darkening stages to Traitor’s Gate and the block. Brion heard of him once as gone, in Lord Deputy Gray’s company, to Ireland, where he made a fine name for himself, and was confirmed in his royal mistress’s favour, by helping to put down the Earl of Desmond’s rebellion. But long before the date of that event he had passed--save as a picturesque memory, not untenderly recalled for all his particular shortcoming--out of the young man’s mind, so that any renewal of their intimacy was the last thing in the world expected by the latter. And yet it was to come to happen, and on the Captain’s return from that very expedition which was to add so greatly to his fortune and renown.

In the meantime, Brion took up his life again as it had been before that feverish interlude had come to disturb and excite it. He recovered his philosophy, went resolutely about his business, and extracted what enjoyment he could from his always ambiguous position. That, because it kept him proudly aloof, both on his Uncle’s and his own account, from contact with his neighbours, was the source in him of an invincible self-reliance. As he matured in years, the spirit of independence strengthened in him, as his body, habituated to incessant physical exercise, toughened and grew compact. At twenty-three he was a fine-looking young fellow, attractive of face, shapely of limb, and as well-endowed mentally as he was skilful of his hands. He had a few friends, but he sought none. Those who wanted him must seek him; and a handful of kindred spirits did. But Clerivault remained always, and first and foremost, his comrade. They rode, and went fishing or hawking together--sometimes in young company--or made occasional expeditions far afield, penetrating to Exeter, Tavistock, Plymouth, or divers such places on the seabord as Brixham, Lyme and Bridport, where they made acquaintance with ships and shipping, and now and then chaffered with some local skipper for a run along the coast. At these times they would be away not infrequently for nights together, returning immensely pleased and instructed from their trips. Nor did the Uncle oppose any objection to this practice of enterprise and independence in his nephew. He was by now grown so submissive to the younger will as virtually to defer to its quiet dictation in most matters, even to the extent of moderating that particular self-indulgence which had been destroying him--moderating, would it could be said, to happy effect; but the evil was done. He had sown that in his brain which could not be uprooted, and, for all he was become more temperate, his grosser state was replaced in these days by an unquiet melancholy and fancifulness, which bid fair to complete the mental ruin the other had begun. Among their manifestations became ever a little and a little more pronounced one which caused Brion no small uneasiness; and that was a form of religious depression, in which he brooded on his misfortunes as the direct judgment of Heaven on him for his apostasy. It was no use arguing with him: the more one desired to save him, the more resolute he was to be damned. So the thing had to be humoured, and just left to its own possible cure.

Now, as to his relations with, or attitude towards, the other sex, a word calls to be spoken for Brion. It is not to be supposed that so sweet and débonnaire a youth could in all these years wholly escape the regard of admiring eyes, or fail to arouse in amorous bosoms sentiments to which the knowledge of a bar sinister might be counted a provocation rather than a hindrance. Not only in the breast of rustic Phillida, but in hers of the Hall or Manor, would sighs at times heave up and tender thoughts be born, children of a vision of young manliness not less caressingly encountered because some senseless ban of Orthodoxy professed to hold it forbidden. There might be dreams on pillows for Brion of which _he_ never dreamed; there might be looks in chance meetings, swift offered and withdrawn, which had been eloquent to a forwarder spirit. Perhaps he read them better than appeared. He was no hypocrite to himself; and if he was a Joseph, it was from no self-righteous prudery, but because, summarising all women in one, he wished to hold the sex immaculate. It was not in the least that he was insensible to its inherent fascinations--to its beauty, its softness, and its lovableness; it was that truth was dearer to him than all things, and that he had taken his oath and meant to keep it. His will was stronger than his emotions: if it had been otherwise, he could have found plenty to invite him to surrender it, in a way much more unequivocal than might be expressed in blushes and covert glances. But he kept his heart high, and his shield stainless.

For all his fond intimacy with Clerivault, he had never thought fit to confide to that good friend a hint of his secret. It would have been loyally kept, he knew, yet in some way cheapened in the sharing. Nor, for any reason or none, had he ever spoken to him of that discovery of his in the old well-house. Perhaps his reticence was due to that past expressed determination of his to treat as closed and sealed the wound, with all its details of pain and loneliness, caused by the other’s desertion of him. In any case he kept his knowledge to himself. But once in all this time had he descended again into the secret chamber; and that was shortly after Master Grenville’s revelations had set him thinking and wondering about the reputed hidden treasure. He had had no fear of being watched or detected in his visit: there was no one but himself in the house would have gone near the place: it was shunned by all alike; and about the ilex thicket which enclosed it Nol, in clearing the garden, had left a neutral zone of waste ground, which none would have crossed though the fiend were behind to urge him. But he discovered nothing new to reward his curiosity. It was just the bare dank little chamber of his knowledge, all lined with obdurate stone, and giving off when sounded no hint of anything but impenetrable solidity. So he abandoned the search, and henceforth thought no more upon the matter; nor did he visit the place again until years had passed, and then on an errand very different from that comprised in a hunt for buried gold.

* * * * * *

It was in the late Autumn of ’81 that Raleigh appeared again. He came riding by the London to Plymouth road, in company with his servant Nic Wright and a small body of retainers, and turned apart from his way for the express purpose of revisiting, and renewing his acquaintance with, his young country friend, and perhaps, who knows, of impressing him with a sight of his magnificence. He was become a great man in these days, and in high report with the Queen, who had taken his side in a dispute he had had with the Lord Deputy, following his recent return from Ireland, and seemed disposed to admit him to her extremest favour. No doubt her Majesty had ample reason for this condescension to a soldier who had rendered her such fine and masterful service; yet no question was but that good looks and a flattering tongue had their part in the honours and emoluments which from this date came to be lavished on the fortunate favourite. And indeed the man was built for valiant success. He was of a bold and masterful disposition, imaginative, and even chivalrous for an age in which romanticism, no longer the purely spiritual force of earlier days, survived but as a sort of working Utopianism, full of great visions of the unknown, but regarding that in the light of material rather than of moral possession. Then his intellect was as boundless as his ambition, and as ready to take the whole world for its province; he had a silver tongue for verse, when rhymers were as many and sweet as blackberries; he was as full of curious inventiveness as was his near forerunner, the Italian da Vinci, and not less in the graver articles of chemistry and science than in those of gallantry; and most of all he was a fierce patriot--one of those mighty Elizabethan Captains from whose loins sprang that greater Britain which was offspring of their passionate love for their country. ‘His naeve was,’ says old Aubrey, ‘that he was damnable proud.’ Well, he might be, being great among the great, and he clothed his pride in splendour. The same Chronicler is not wholly complimentary to his appearance, though he admits he was a tall and handsome man. But he wrote from hearsay, and one may feel assured that she, to whom masculine beauty was ever a first recommendation to favour, saw something to admire in her new-found votary besides character. At any rate Brion was aware of no ‘sour eie-lidded’ deformity in this face, which, with its intellectuality and vivacity, was always to him as attractive a face as any he was acquainted with; and, as to that high-handed arrogance which was reputed to bring the Captain into dislike with some, he only knew that his manner to him was ever frank and courteous, while, as to the man’s own servants, they loved their master to devotion.

He happened to be in the Courtyard when the little cavalcade rode up and in, and advanced to meet his friend, with his eyes shining welcome and a strange stirring at his heart. It was full four years since they had parted, and each showed in his mien and manner the ripening touch of Time. Where had been shyness was self-possession, and where had been self-possession was authority. Raleigh dismounted, while Brion held his stirrup, and, being on the ground, impulsively embraced that courtly young esquire. He was all in meek gray, but bedizened like an argus pheasant with eyes of jewelled enamel. The strap which carried his sword was crusted with emeralds thick as dewdrops on grass, and he wore a sapphire worth a county’s ransom in his cap.

‘’Fore God,’ he said, with fervour, holding the youngster from him by the shoulders; ‘a proper man! ’Tis good to see the fruit where hung the flower. How many years ago, dear lad?’

‘Four,’ answered Brion, with a smile. He bore this oblivious correspondent no grudge. He had not, nor ever had, any real claim upon him.

‘So many!’ said Raleigh. ‘I had not thought it. Time must turn up a slow furrow in this land of thine. Would you not rather mount a horse than plod behind it? Come, ride you with me--the way I pointed once before--and leave this ding-dong life for one more like to living, while youth and valour and hot blood are yours to spend and Time is in his morning.’

Brion shook his head.

‘My life contents me well enough.’

The other regarded him humorously a moment.

‘Well, I’ll persuade you ere I leave,’ said he, and turned away, signifying a bench where they might sit and talk. He could not stop long, he said, nor crave any hospitality save a stoup of wine for himself, and some ale, if might be, for his party. He was on his way West to attend to some family business, and would be returning in a few days, when he would call for his friend, and carry him along with him to London. And when Brion set his lips, shaking his head a second time, he only laughed, saying no more for that present. He inquired of Uncle Quentin, his health and condition, but in an indifferent inattentive way, caring only, it seemed, for the man’s presumptive attitude towards a possible proposal to leave him by himself awhile; and he showed some small curiosity as to the manner of his friend’s life during the interval which had separated them, but without once alluding to their correspondence or appearing to remember his own failure to vindicate a certain promise given. Nor did Brion think it worth while to remind him. When Sorrow is asleep, says the adage, wake it not.

They drank together when the wine came, and pledged each the other like good comrades. The soldier looked with real and constant admiration on the stripling who sat beside him, whom he had left a boy and taken up a man.

‘So,’ said he, ‘my knight-errant still lacks to cry his country’s fame about the world; and, for all that high emprise, must make shift with the spearing of eels in brooks, or to search the hills for coneys, or to loose his tiercel at a trailing heron, or, for ladies’ favours, to follow at the kissing-strings of country Moll? Is it this contents him, lord of that glowing vision--to shut the door of the world, and dream on tranquil swards of mighty venturings without, in which he seeks no part? Go to! With that face and form, I’ll not believe it. Too near the great sea waters not to have felt their far and passionate lure!’

‘I have felt it,’ said Brion. ‘It is not lack of will, but of opportunity.’

‘Opportunity!’ cried the other. ‘It shall be thine, perchance, for the taking. Long have I had a vision--to plant our English standard in that golden West where Drake has led the way; to take and sow some grist of English manhood there, which, like a lusty crop, shall crowd out the Spanish weed, and come to harvest in a greater England. Ah, for such an expedition! It shapes for ever in my thoughts. Wilt thou go with it--if not as colonist, as soldier, adventurer, knight-errant if thou wilt? There shall be opportunity enow to spread thy mother’s fame--ay, and in the most convincing way with sons like thee, right slips to attach the new world to the old with very love-knots. Wilt thou not follow where Drake has shown the way?’

‘I may follow, but not Drake’s way,’ said Brion, with a wry face. ‘I would not foul _my_ fame by murdering of a dear friend and shipmate.’

He alluded--patently enough to Raleigh’s perceptives, for the deed had been notorious--to the great Captain’s formal execution, in the course of his famous expedition of three years earlier, of Thomas Doughty, his lieutenant and once-admired comrade.

Raleigh, lolling back, protested, with a little amused chuckle: ‘Not murdered.’

‘A scholar and a gentleman,’ cried the young man, ‘and he had loved Drake like a brother.’

‘As Jacob loved Esau--and schemed to out-wit him.’ He sat up with a laugh. ‘Where is thy dithyrambic patriot--thy dear fantastic glib-gabbit?’

‘Clerivault?’

‘Ay, that was his name. Lives and declaims he still?’

‘He’s there, Master Walter. Seest him not--talking with thy servant Nic Wright?’

‘Whistle him over. I would fain hear _his_ verdict on the deed.’

Brion called to Clerivault, who attended on his summons, and came and stood before the two.

‘Master Clerivault,’ said the visitor, ‘was that Doughty you wot of well served by his Captain or ill?’

Clerivault, sticking one arm akimbo, bent his brows on the speaker.

‘Cry you mercy, Sir,’ said he: ‘a lover of his country had no need to ask.’

‘You think he was a traitor to his country?’

‘I think it.’

‘How?’

‘He played for the party that played for Spain to wreck the expedition and render it abortive. Blackest of traitors, that--a professing friend in the house he plots to ruin.’

‘He may have thought honestly he served England best by thwarting Drake in his ambitions.’

‘What ambitions? God’s ’slid! For himself, or to drag his dear land for ever from under the heel of arrogant Spain, where those, the small-souled and timid, the dastards and time-servers, would have held her prostrate for their own safety’s sake? Thank God for Drake, I say, who let no claims of love or learning move him in his judgment on a villain; who pierced through all specious arguments holding tolerance of wrong and insult for the truer patriotism, and had the wit and resolution to cut the canker out before it spread. Such men for me in war; and England’s scorn on those who would keep her mean and safe!’

‘Well, I am well answered,’ said Brion, with a laugh; and he rose to his feet, as Raleigh rose also to clap the enthusiast on the shoulder.

‘Well spoken,’ cried the soldier. ‘Art a rare fellow. When another expedition haps, to follow in Drake’s footsteps and take thy master with it, I shall look to see thee in his company’--and, with a smiling nod to the patriot, he took Brion’s arm and walked the boy away.

‘We must to boot and saddle in a minute,’ said he. ‘But first a whisper in thine ear--of that, which, like the lady’s postscript, shall swallow all the text. You’ll come with me to London when I return?’

Again Brion shook his head, with a smile over the man’s persistence.

‘Not at this time, Master Walter. I have much to occupy me.’

‘Then will I let fly my last, and hit thee standing. Here’s something will prevail. Thy lady lives unwed--doubtless for thy sake.’

A shock like fire seemed to pass through Brion, as if an actual bolt had struck him. He stood quite rigid.

‘Ah!’ said the other softly. ‘Hath that sped home? Methought ’twould prove a killing shot.’

‘Joan--Joan Medley?’ whispered Brion, in a thick voice. He hardly seemed to know that he spoke.

‘The same,’ said Raleigh. ‘The City Knight’s fair daughter, that erst lived at the Chase. The father’s been dead these two years, it seems, and she hath all his fortune. I could find it in my heart to envy thee, thou rogue.’

‘How--in what way,’ began Brion--and stuck.

‘Looks she? comports herself?’ offered his companion. ‘I may not answer for myself, never having seen her. But the facts are safe. I had them from one, a certain popinjay, that calls himself my friend, and that would go a’wooing for a fortune. He came to me for advice, and laid an information where he asked one. I pricked up my ears--that was a week ago--and thanked my heart it could acquit itself at last of a debt too long unliquidated. Well, by your grace, every man’s Joan is the one incorruptible; yet, looked at in the abstract, woman’s faith is a tricky currency, and, were I you, I’d strike betimes. Such virgin obduracy may stand a long clamorous siege; but the day will come when, looking in the mirror----’

He paused significantly. Brion, pale to the eyes, as if he had been running, made a gesture of despair:--

‘What hope could be for me, a nameless dependent!’

Raleigh cried out on him:--

‘What hope? And she, with a hundred suitors, still unwed! Come, while there’s time! I’ll see her; contrive a meeting for thee, so sing thy praises, all her heart shall melt upon the past and flow in one stream of passion towards her olden lover.’

Brion shook his head; but there was a warmth come back to his cheeks and a light to his eyes.

‘Bring me but to speech with her: I’ll ask no more.’

‘You’ll come, then?’

The boy broke into a shamefaced laugh.

‘It seems so.’

And thus was the surrender made. To London he had pledged himself, and now there was nothing for it but to secure his Uncle’s compliance. And that proved an easier matter than he had expected. It may have been that Bagott saw in this separation a temporary relief from that watchfulness which restricted his indulgences and embarrassed his secret devotions--for by now he was quite reverted to his former beliefs; or it may have been that he really wished his nephew to learn to take his independent place in the world, and so to shift any lingering responsibility for his welfare from his own shoulders. In any case he opposed no objection to the trip, but on the contrary expressed a desire to make it as full and pleasurable a one as possible, supplying the young man with ample funds for the occasion, and bidding him not hesitate to write for more should he come to need it.

And so one day, a week later, it came to pass that Brion rode from the Grange, with the great soldier and his retinue for company, and Clerivault on a pack-horse jogging in his wake. It was the first time he had taken that road since he had lolled along it, a weary boy, eight years ago: and now, with what different feelings! His very heart sang; for he was on his way to see Joan. He could hardly believe in the reality of that stupendous prospect.