Chapter XXI: The Decoy

‘Are there two Joan Medleys in the world; and both----’

Brion stopped, and fell into such a deep and frowning reverie that the Captain would not venture to break into it for a while, but sat sipping his mulled wine, and glancing from time to time, with a curious amused expression, at the absorbed young figure. They were back at the _Cock_, and drinking a _night-cap_ in company.

‘You do not,’ said Raleigh at last, seeing the other stir, ‘blame me for this fiasco?’

Brion shook a disconsolate noddle.

‘I blame nobody. We are victims all, in different degree. But of what or whom?’

Seeing him inclined to a fresh fit of abstraction, Raleigh put in hastily:--

‘Well, now it is resolved, I will confess it seemed to me an infatuation passing strange, and accountable to nothing, unless it were the worship of a golden idol. But there I wronged thee, and do ask thy pardon for it.’

‘What else could you think? Yet, thy romantic mystery, forsooth, and poetry reduced to prose! O, God mend us all! Why would you not tell me how she looked to you?’

‘Looks are like gospels, for each to construe according to his faith. Had my interpretation differed from yours, you’d ha’ damned me for a heretic.’

‘But to dream I could have thought _that_ beautiful!’

His expression was so dismayed that Raleigh, after a vain attempt to control himself, went into a shout of laughter.

‘Well----’ began Brion; and his face quivered, and in a moment he was shaking too.

‘This riddle,’ said the soldier presently, gasping himself into sobriety--‘we must seek the clue to it.’

But on that Brion, returning to an instant seriousness, put a definite veto.

‘No further,’ said he. ‘I prithee from this moment let the whole question drop. I say it with all earnestness, and do entreat thee to let it rest as final.’

The other nodded: ‘Well, if you wish it’--and at that moment Clerivault, coming in with a faggot to lay on the embers, ended the discussion.

‘Signor Clerivault,’ said Raleigh, ‘is not beauty, in your opinion, a question of taste?’

Clerivault, depositing the log in its place, came frigidly upright.

‘I have no claim to a foreign title, Sir.’

‘I should have said Master.’

The paragon bowed stately:--

‘Sir, how taste?’

‘Why, thus. I call a woman beautiful: another shakes his head. His eyes cannot see it; mine do. Therefore her beauty is not intrinsically in her, but in mine eyes. There is no standard to judge by.’

‘There would be no beauty, Sir, if there were. Eternal conformation to a rigid model would make very deformity desirable by contrast.’

‘Very true’--he showed an inclination to chuckle--‘I think some of us feel that. It is human to like change--even to pursue it on occasion to extremes. The loveliest of her sex will sometimes attach herself to the most repulsive of ours--and vice versa, it may hap. Hast ever been in love with a monstrosity yourself, Master Clerivault?’

‘Nay, not so far, Sir, not so far.’ He lifted his chin, handling his throat as if he traced its contours luxuriously. ‘Yet I may have felt--I do not say--the lure--what I may call the fascination of abnormity.’

‘Instance, instance!’

‘Hem! It was in the days--but all’s one for that. My quarters--no matter for what occasion--were at Dunster, one side the British Channel; and hers on the opposite shore. She had a siren voice--I’ll say so much--and sang me with it daily across the water.’

‘A siren fog-horn rather. Well, you took boat and back--daily?’

‘No, I swam.’

‘My God! Fifteen miles if a yard. And back, too. A very quintuple Leander.’

‘Not back.’

‘O, not back! You disappoint me.’

‘Why, Clerivault!’ cried Brion, aghast over this enormous invention. ‘You cannot swim but a yard or two, and that with one foot on the bottom. Have I not seen you floundering in the Dart?’

‘Fresh water, Sir, fresh water. There’s no comparison between fresh water and salt. In certain seasons of the brine ’tis just to lie and paddle.’

‘Or to lie and not paddle,’ said Raleigh.

He loved this creature, loved to _draw_ him, whether for vanity or inspiration. It was all fruit, he saw, of the same quality of imagination, and had within it for eternal condonation the living kernel of truth and loyalty.

He spoke to him, chancing across him a day or two later, on the subject of his young master’s obduracy in a certain matter. Raleigh had urged his friend to make his début at Court under his aegis, promising him a favourable reception. His youth and gallant bearing, he said, would be his certain passports to notice and advancement. It was a kind insistence, and generous on the part of one whose interests were not in creating rival fetiches; but he had conceived a great affection for the boy, and really wished him well.

But Brion had declined, with every courtesy, the proffered service. He refused to give reasons; called it a question of sentiment; declared he had no wish to be a Courtier, and was generally as obstinate as a young mule, impervious to any persuasion but that of his own inclinations. The Captain was a little hurt, and when he ran across Clerivault, expatiated on the opportunity his master was deliberately throwing away, and urged him to exert _his_ influence over him to persuade him to a reconsideration of the proposal. But, to his surprise, Clerivault supported the other in his resolution. He declared, with emphasis, that he thought he had decided rightly, and that he, for his part, would certainly do nothing to dissuade him from his determination. And then, being pressed, he gave his reasons, only developing the truth to one who was already in possession of the gist of it:--

‘How accident,’ said he, ‘brought him to knowledge of his parentage is a true story but a past one. Let it suffice, Sir, that he knows, and eke is bitter hostile to one author of his invalidity, and that not the dead one. His blood is proud and hot, and I should dread beyond measure their meeting. No, he’s better from Court--’ and he told Raleigh of the little contretemps the day the Queen went a’hawking, and of Brion’s gesture of hate and repulsion, and of how he had been in terror ever since of some evil befalling his charge.

The Captain bent his brows over the recital. It was true he had not guessed of this knowledge of Brion’s, and it altered the case for him. It might affect--perhaps he debated, if there were truth in the report of his cordial relations with a certain great nobleman--his own favoured position, and evoke animosity where had been friendship.

‘Well, on the whole,’ said he, ‘mayhap he is right, and thou, excellent servitor’--and from that time he made no other attempt to shake the young man’s resolution.

But the fear of some catastrophe still nervously abode with Clerivault, in spite of that confidence now shared with a sympathetic and influential friend, and he was never easy when the young man was out of his sight. He would follow him like his shadow; impose himself on him uninvited in a way that presently drove Brion to rebellion, and later to exasperation. He had no need, he said, to go in leading-strings to a male nurse; he had the wit to find his own way about, and a preference, on occasion, for his own company above any other that might attach itself to him. He was not always kind in the way he vented his irritability on the poor fellow. But Clerivault uttered no complaint; he took all rebuffs with a stoical impassibility, indifferent to wounds received in what his duty told him was an indispensable service. He had not, it is true, the clue to one motive inclining his young master to fits of restless moodiness, in which he desired to be, and wander, alone. Since the night of that absurd but rather shattering escapade a sense of some disaster threatening a long cherished ideal had haunted Brion’s mind like a secret shadow. He would stoutly deride its menace, would refuse to admit or analyse it, but it remained there all the time, and he could not throw off the consciousness of its possession. His faith had been shaken, and in a very unpalatable manner. That shrill and vulgar little termagant seemed to have blown away at a blast all that sentiment which had wafted him on wings of rapture towards an imagined goal. The whole thing was cheapened and vulgarised. A sense of his own credulous folly, of the necessity of eschewing for the future all such illusive enthusiasms, and setting worldly wisdom in their place, gripped and resolved him. He must rise from this time superior to the rather exotic romanticism which for so long had affected his outlook, and must become that independent and self-reliant entity which practical manhood demanded. Hence his impatience of supervision.

‘No, my friend,’ he said one morning, turning on the faithful watch-dog who was about to follow him out: ‘I need no escort, by your leave.’

‘No question of need, Sir, but of sociability,’ answered Clerivault sweetly. ‘You may favour your own company more than I do mine.’

‘I do for the nonce. I would be alone, my good fellow. You hear?’

‘With difficulty, Sir. I am dull o’ the lug this morning. I shall hear better in the fresh air.’

‘Clerivault, I would not have us quarrel.’

‘God forbid!’

‘I say God forbid.’

‘May I not follow, even at a distance?’

‘To stick in my thoughts like a pursuing conscience! No, stay where you are. I shall be back anon.’

The man looked after him wistfully as he disappeared; but Brion’s mood had been so peremptory that he dared not disobey. He only groaned and shook his head, as he turned back into the yard from which the other had gone forth. As he did so, he was passed by a stranger who had risen hastily from drinking a mug of ale at one of the tables hard by, and who also vanished through the archway leading into the street.

Brion, loitering eastward, was aware of some excitement in the town. A press of people, all moving his way, gathered volume as he advanced. He asked the reason of a neighbour, and was told that Her Majesty was to go that morning in state to Paul’s Cross to hear a notable Reformer preach. He pushed on, and somewhere beyond the Palace gained a position in the crowd whence, obscurely situated himself, he could see the procession pass. He had no desire to risk a second meeting at close quarters with the man from whom, of all souls in the teeming city, he felt the most alienated and apart.

He had not long to wait before a vast blare of horns announced the Queen’s coming. She was preceded by a great company of halberdiers, on whose heels followed a band of drummers and trumpeters, a little army in number, from whose hundreds of instruments arose--for Her Majesty liked her music strong--a shattering din which tore the very air into tatters. Thereafter appeared a company of morris dancers, men and girls, in full beribboned panoply--Maid Marian, Morisco, Franciscan friar and the lot--all reeling and capering and intertwining as they flowed on with the procession, of which the very next instalment was Her Grace herself, a gorgeous idol in a gorgeous palanquin, borne on the shoulders of six high gentlemen of the Court, and smiling on her good people as she passed. Before the litter walked my Lord Hunsdon, carrying the sword of State, and beside and behind it thronged an immense train of lords and ladies on foot, every one bareheaded and resplendent in velvet and satin and flashing jewels. To these again succeeded soldiers, a full thousand of them and divided into companies, between which came rumbling behind their prancing teams no less than ten great pieces of ordnance, whose purpose was peaceful display, while, to finish all, a couple of great white bears in shining collars, ten keepers holding by gilded chains to each collar, shuffled out the climax, their heads hanging, their red tongues lolling, their eyes smouldering helpless animosity.

It was a stupendous exhibition; yet Brion found himself wondering what connexion it could possibly have with the pious object which had evoked it. Perhaps the morris dancers might have found precedent in the dance of David before the Ark; but what of the cannon and the bears? There was nothing of ritual about them. He was forced to the conclusion that when Her Majesty had a mind for an impressive display of herself--which was not infrequently the case--the nearest pretext was made to serve her purpose.

Well, he watched it all go by, and without distinguishing amid the glittering mob the person of him he least desired to look on; and, being satisfied with what he had seen, extricated himself from the crowd, and turned into one of the side lanes which led down to the river. He had hardly entered it, when he heard himself accosted from behind, and turned to see a breathless stranger addressing him.

‘Master Middleton, if I may venture the surmise?’

He was sallow and lank-featured, with an air of such nervous hurry about him that his voice shook in putting the question. He wore a dark cloak huddled about his shoulders, as if he were cold, and the slouch of his hat barely allowed his eyes to be seen. Brion bowed, wondering.

‘I carry a message from a friend of yours,’ said the stranger quickly--‘one Clerivault. He wished me to say that he followed you, despite your desire, and, having observed where you stood among the crowd, was able to give me directions, together with a description of your person, which led to this fortunate encounter. Your friend, I regret to say, has met with a mishap, and asks you to come to him.’

The frown which, on Brion’s face, had greeted the first part of this sentence, was changed to a look of pallor and alarm at the end.

‘Clerivault! Hurt!’ said he. ‘O! where is he?’

‘He has been carried into a house,’ said the stranger. ‘I will show you where. It is not a stone’s throw away.’

They went off at a race together, down the very lane they were in. It was a mere deserted wynd, sunk like a deep ravine in a hill of gloomy stone. As he hurried on, the young man put an agitated question:--

‘How hurt? You did not say.’

‘A moment,’ said the stranger, stopping. ‘You will see for yourself in a moment.’

They had come to an iron-studded door set in the blank wall of a great building, and with a couple of steps leading up to it. The stranger took the steps at a bound, and knocked on the door. It was opened immediately, and he beckoned Brion to mount and follow. The boy, an easy prey in his excitement and inexperience, complied, unsuspecting. The moment he was in, the door slammed to behind him with a noise of thunder, which seemed to reverberate through adjacent halls; and darkness, profound after the sunshine of the streets, rushed upon him like a blinding night. He stood paralysed a moment, and then, ‘Where am I?’ he said aloud, groping out with his hands. And even in the act, as if he had proffered those for manacling, they were seized on either side in an iron grip, and he knew himself a prisoner to some unknown power. He gave a little gasp--he was only a boy, after all--struggled a little; and then, feeling the futility of his efforts, resigned himself to what Fate might develop.

‘That’s wise,’ said a gruff low voice in his ear. ‘Twenty to one’s too great odds for even a gentleman game cock, young master.’