Chapter XXII: A Poignant Interview

Slowly, as in a theatre, when dark veils are lifted one by one to simulate a gradual dawn, before Brion’s eyes, as they accustomed themselves to the gloom, came into shadowy being the shapes and forms about him. He stood, he saw, in a low vaulted chamber, a score of armed men surrounding him and the two who held him captive. Narrow shafts ran up into the groining of the roof, against one of which lolled he who had spoken in his ear, and who appeared to be the captain of the party. His conductor had disappeared--presumably to notify some one of his seizure--and silence and stagnation prevailed, pending, it seemed, the messenger’s return. The occasional clearing of a throat or the shuffle of a foot on the stone flags were the only sounds to break the dead stillness. Somewhere in front of him, and above the level of his eyes, a vertical line of silver, the merest thread, seemed to denote the presence of heavy curtains, shrouding the way into the inner recesses of the house; and on that line he fixed his attention.

He had made one attempt to break the silence, and had been roughly bidden by the officer to hold his tongue or he would be incontinently gagged. And so he stood mute, but raging in his heart over the damnable treachery which had been used to draw him into this snare. His one grain of comfort lay in Clerivault’s safety. Of that he was now convinced: the story had been devised, he saw, merely to entrap and secure him--how devised, with what intention and on what information, it were idle to speculate. He knew enough of the man into whose clutches, he never had a doubt, he had fallen, to know that he never lacked for agents and abettors in any sinister business he had on hand. But, for all that, it was nothing less than his own vanity and headstrong will which were responsible for this trouble. Clerivault had foreseen truly, and he had flouted in his conceit the faithful seer. Like a child he had blundered into the trap, and now he must pay the penalty for his obstinate folly--with what?

It was that thought which most maddened him--his real simplicity, and the self-sufficiency which had made it vulnerable to a blatant imposture. His passion rose with his sense of humiliation. Was no course left to him but submission to the unknown force which held him here imprisoned? Better the risk of a dash for freedom than a surrender so spiritless.

The door by which he had entered was behind him. Barred and bolted, there was no hope of escape that way. But--what the curtains hid--if he could once gain the intricacies of the house beyond!

He had been standing so passive as to lull his guards into a sense of false security, and the rigour of their hold on his arms had a little relaxed itself in consequence. He was as lithe and muscular as a young leopard. With a sudden leap and wrench he tore himself free and, before they could recover from their surprise, was bounding for the thread of light. He gained this small advantage, that in the dusk, and the confusion of the general rush to recapture him, he had time, before he was beset, to draw his sword; but he could do no more, since an obstacle he had not foreseen, in the shape of a short flight of steps leading to the curtains, baulked and brought him to bay. He laid one fellow’s cheek open with his blade; but he had no play in the crush for his sword arm, and could only shorten his weapon and stab ineffectively, as, feeling for the steps with his heels, he essayed to mount them backwards one by one. The noise was at its height--the scuffle of feet, the clash of steel, the calling of the officer to his men to take him alive o’ God’s name, and do him no hurt on peril of their heads--when the curtains at Brion’s back parted, letting in a faint gush of light, and with it the apparition of a white panic-struck face. The boy glanced round, saw the beast who had entrapped him, and, with a mighty effort and a cry of rage, leapt the remaining step and fell tooth and nail upon his enemy. The man went down under him with a yelp like a bitten dog’s, and lay writhing. But the end was come. Before the youngster could seize his blade into position, the whole party was upon him, and he was severed from his prey and set, torn and dishevelled on his feet, his sword wrested from him and his arms bound behind his back. And there he stood, panting and scornful, jeering at the pitiful figure of the other, as they set him too, shaking like a jelly, upright.

‘See the meal-faced pitcher-bawd,’ cried he, ‘how his valour fits with his profession!’

There was a stifled laugh or two, and the man, casting a fell venomous look about him, made a mute gesture to the others to follow, and went on himself before. The curtain had been torn aside in the fracas, revealing a narrow dim-lit passage down which the whole party made its way, the prisoner held secure in its midst. But Brion had no further thought to escape, and, breathed and defenceless as he was, allowed himself to be carried along unresisting.

Deep into the bowels of the building, like the passage tunnelled in a pyramid, ran the corridor, until at length it opened into a lofty stone hall, octagonal in shape, and having a peaked timbered roof with coats of arms emblazoned in its triangles, at whose apex an iron lantern, caging rather than releasing the little daylight which sought to enter and explore the glooms beneath, just enabled it to dilute their melancholy, and to reveal in each of the eight sections of the wall a heavy curtain hanging, denoting the presence of a room beyond.

Before one of these curtains the guard halted their prisoner, while the decoy, cringing and fulsome, parted the folds and vanished within. A muffled wrath of words followed, and presently the white face of the creature reappeared, and he whispered, his breath fluttering, in the Captain’s ear. That officer grunted, and gave an order to his men:--

‘Stand by till I call.’ He turned to Brion: ‘Now, young Sir’--and, taking him by one of his bound arms, led him into the room. The curtain closed behind them.

It was no great chamber--a spacious closet might describe it--but rich beyond the wont in its appointments. There was a Turkey carpet on the floor; another, inventoried by that name, on the table--‘of crimson velvet, richly embroidered with my Lord’s posie, bears and ragged staves of clothe of goulde and silver, garnished upon the seames and aboute with goulde lace, fringed accordinglie, and lyned with crimson taffeta sarsenett.’ And on it stood a flagon of hammered gold, from which, it seemed, my Lord had just drunk. The walls were panelled, and set in their darkness like a gem was a portrait of the Queen by Zucchero. From the ceiling hung a brazen candelabrum, with many branches. The chairs were upholstered in crimson velvet, and on one of them, drawn up before the hearth, on which a fire of sea-coal burned, sat the expected figure of him whom out of all the world Brion had most wished to avoid, yet whom, it seemed, in some fateful way, he was most destined to encounter. Yet, since it was his destiny, he set his neck stiffly to it, and faced his captor with a look of proud defiance.

The soldier, staying his convoy within some three yards distance of this brooding figure, put his heels together with a click and saluted. At the sound, my Lord brought his chair about, a little labouredly, and setting his hands on his thighs, looked hard and curiously into the face of the boy before him. Steady as a rock, Brion returned the gaze. ‘I will know him, now I see him,’ he thought.

He was in his fiftieth year, burly, short-necked and nearly bald. His complexion was colourless; his strong eyebrows, mustachio and full spade beard were as black, whether from nature or artifice, as black ink. He had a black velvet bonnet on his head, and the suit he wore might have been the dark-man’s livery. He looked a figure cut out of jet and ivory. Under the impassivity of his expression seemed to lurk a fierce and watchful arrogance, in the wings of his aquiline nose, in the pupils of his eyes, which were more often turned towards this ear or the other than set forthright in their sockets. Like a suspicious dog he appeared to listen with eyes and ears together, while his head was held as stiff as pride. His voice came hoarse and ruttish, rumbling in his throat, when he spoke at last:--

‘How now, boy! Are these your manners, being invited to my house to fall upon my servants and beat and maltreat them?’

‘Such an invitation,’ answered Brion, ‘as the fowler lures his quarry withal. For my manners, not being framed on falsehood and cozenage, they were not made to please you.’

His boldness seemed to strike a very stillness in the room, so tense that one could hear, as it were, the Captain’s skin pricking. Leicester’s expression did not change or move, but his nostrils flickered, and sudden lamps seemed turned up in his eyes.

‘So?’ he said softly: ‘a spirited retort; yet wise, in the circumstances?--Well, we’ll question. Dost know me--who I am?’

‘Too well, indeed.’

‘Too well, yet not well enough, I’ll venture, or some thought of peril might come to sing in you a milder note.’

‘I have that thought,’ said Brion. ‘I should be a fool not to.’

‘Ah! You have that thought--and, mayhap, the guilty conscience that fathered it?’

‘I miss your meaning.’

‘I think not. Confess your design; make a clean breast of it; and perchance--I’ll not say; but certain considerations may weigh with me--your peril may be less.’

‘Will you tell me my design? I have known of none, but to avoid where I could the very thought and sight of you.’

‘Wherefore you waited me in a public place, and dared, you young presumptuous fool, to make public manifestation of your feelings. What, you’d show your high displeasure, would you!’

He rocked a little, back and forth, his lip lifting.

‘I waited you not,’ answered Brion, undaunted. ‘That meeting--it was the last from my desire. Methinks, had I foreseen it, I had never come to London.’

‘Better for you, sirrah, an you had not, nor listened to the flattering persuasions of a crafty counsellor: better had you stayed in your rustic obscurity, satisfied, with that old besotted rogue, your kinsman, to risk the penalties for recusancy, than run the deadlier peril of a throw with me. Ah, that opens your eyes! You did not guess, maybe, the range of my knowledge, when you complotted to discredit me.’

‘With whom? But what is the use to ask. I have plotted with no one--been guilty of no design against your credit. As to my feelings, I cannot control my instincts, nor would not if I could. For my kinsman, who loved and cherished me, when those who had owed me all disclaimed their debt, he is no rogue--I throw the slander in your teeth. It is worthy of one whose range of knowledge works through such vile means and instruments as have been used to-day to trap an unsuspecting boy. Belike it was he, that same lying reptile, that informed you of how I fell away that morning on seeing you. The action was of repulsion--in itself a convincing witness to any but a fawning pickthank. A plotter, methinks, had concealed his feelings more than I did.’

Again, in the silence that succeeded this hot outburst, it was as if the Captain’s nerves vibrated audibly in his body. Awaiting the certain consequences of such mad temerity, he stole a significant glance at his lord, and saw in the intolerant face an expression which both startled and perplexed him. There was some obstupefaction in it, but not the fury he had expected. Instead, interest, curiosity, a suggestion of some faint and hard-held emotion, seemed to battle there for ascendancy or suppression. Yet the words that followed, though not what he had looked for, were sneering enough:--

‘So innocent and yet so fearful! So guiltless a conscience, and yet that thought of peril! They hardly consort, according to my mind.’

The boy gave a curt laugh.

‘Decoyed hither by a lie, fallen upon and bound, my weapon taken from me; above all the character of him that holds me helpless in his power--it were unnatural for me, were it not, to dream of any harm designed me in such circumstances? Well, do your work. I understand so much of it that I am not a pleasant reminder in your eyes.’

‘Ha! I will not ask of what.’

‘I would not.’

‘For your disarming, you brought it on yourself.’

‘Would I had killed thine informer first.’

‘And so, with thy bloody sword, on me!’

Brion looked steadily into the eyes of him that spoke it.

‘O!’ he said softly: ‘not upon _her_ son, but upon you, be charged that black unnatural thought.’

Leicester started ever so slightly, moved uneasily in his seat, looked away, and again at the upright figure before him.

‘Thou hast a bold spirit, boy,’ he said harshly.

‘Would I could trace it to a better source,’ answered Brion.

‘Thou----’ he looked for a moment as if he had received a blow; then again his expression changed. ‘Unbind him, Granton,’ he said.

The soldier loosed the cord, setting the prisoner free. Leicester pointed to the curtain. ‘Within call,’ said he. ‘I’ll trust him.’

Granton disappeared, and the two were left alone together. The moment that was so, their eyes met in steady challenge.

‘I might answer,’ said my lord, in a low voice, ‘would I could trace my better self therein.’ He seemed to ponder on the face before him in a darkly brooding way. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you would not kill me?’

He received no answer but the same steadfast look, nor seemed to expect one.

‘Nor,’ he added, ‘design me any evil?’

‘I have told you,’ was the reply, ‘my sole design is and ever has been to forget you live.’

Again a silence ensued, until suddenly Leicester spoke again:--

‘What is your purpose, tell me, in seeking to be introduced at Court?’

‘I do not seek.’

‘What! it was not for that you were persuaded to leave your retreat?’

‘So far from it that the knowledge of your presence there had made me reject such an offer though a thousand times more pressed.’

‘So, it was pressed?’

‘In a way--good-humouredly.’

‘By whom?’

‘By one that would do me a service--a friend.’

‘And me a dis-service, perchance?’

‘Your name was never mentioned between us, nor so much as thought on, by him, I’ll swear.’

‘How know you what was in his heart?’

‘I know something of his heart. It is a fine and generous one, incapable of perfidy. Besides, why should he think of you in this connexion of his offer, or suspect the truth? Be sure I have not told it him, nor any. I am not so enamoured of it. I protested I would not be a courtier; and he was fain to let it rest at that, ceasing to importune me when he saw I was resolved; implying I might be right--that it was no great matter after all--as indeed it was not.’

Believing what he said, he spoke with obvious sincerity--enough to convince even the dark suspicious nature of him that listened, and who had put these questions--with what intent?

Was a corner of the veil here lifted? Hardly enough for Brion to gather more than a faint surmise of what lay behind. Yet the whole truth, if revealed, had seemed a pitiful enough thing to be clothed in such a giant’s robe of artifice. It turned upon one, grown old as his time judged age, and by reason of his years, perhaps, and their disqualifying ravages, become sensible of a loosened hold on those royal affections he had once commanded. It turned upon the thought of an infidelity committed in long past days, and never suspected by her who, thinking their then mutual faith inviolable, would bitterly resent that lost illusion, and visit his deception on his head in terms of final estrangement, finding therein a pretext for ridding herself of what, one might suspect, already a little irked her. It turned upon this pretty witness to his faithlessness--never, indeed, lost wholly sight of--and how at a late day his sin had come home to roost in him, and how it might be used by designing enemies to bring about his ruin. It turned upon all such considerations far more than upon any real suspicion that a vengeful spirit in this young victim of his wrongdoing nursed designs upon his life; though that thought, too, had been weighed and balanced. And now--was he reassured? He believed so. The boy’s scornful repudiation of him was the best evidence in his favour, and it was for that very reason that he had suffered his young defiance and forgiven him his insolence. Had it been otherwise, had his suspicion been in any way confirmed, he would have disposed of him as ruthlessly and remorselessly as he would of any alien conspirator snared into his hands. But now, being reassured, and at liberty to consider him for himself, and not for his imagined designs, a certain emotion, weak and obscure, strange even to himself, but quite genuine in its nature, allowed itself a little room in his breast for play. The eyes which had scorned him, the spirit which had defied, became notes for admiration. They reflected credit on himself; he felt a pride in them; he had a sudden wish to stand well with the boy.

And Brion? He neither guessed, nor was ever to know, the secret motives which had underlain this interrogation. That this man suspected him of scheming in some diabolical way against his life and fortunes was the one apparent thing; and with that explanation of a mystery he must rest content. He had no heart or wish, indeed, to inquire further; he wanted only, as he had himself truthfully declared, to put him for ever out of his mind.

A long time Leicester sat gazing into the young undaunted face, as if striving to recall some memory from it. At length he sighed and spoke:--

‘Shall I believe thee? Well, sith thy truth unflatters me, I will believe it truth. Yet fain would I learn what brought thee to London, and in that company?’

‘I shall not tell you what.’

‘Rash and headstrong! Bethink you what you say.’

‘I do, and say it. I shall not tell you. What brought me was no thought of you, nor anything concerning you. Have I not said it? I am not so proud of this connexion that I wish to vaunt it. To deny it, rather, since I had no voice in it. Be assured of that. It shall never be betrayed for me.’

‘Nor shall word to living soul of this interview--eh--an I let thee free?’

‘That follows--though I give my promise, if you will.’

‘Ah!’ He put his hands on the elbow of his chair, preparing to rise. ‘Well, thou hast been in peril--believe me. That thou hast escaped it, thank her whose trustful spirit looks from out thine eyes. For thy rash insolence--I forgive it.’ He got heavily to his feet, went forth and back once or twice in a narrow space, and stopped before the young man.

‘Why will you hate me?’ he said.

‘Have I much reason to love?’ answered Brion, his voice yielding a little.

‘So you do hate me?’

‘Hate connotes harm. I would not harm you, before God.’

‘Will you--for her sake--call me once by that name your duty owes me?’

The boy shook his head. Something rose in his throat, hard as he struggled to resist it. ‘I could not,’ he whispered.

Leicester turned away, without a word. He stood looking down upon the glowing hearth.

‘It may chance, boy,’ he said, in a voice so strange and moving in such a man that it seemed to betray one secret of his influence over impressionable hearts--‘that you judge me too harshly. That I risked greatly where I loved may be no condonation of my fault, yet at least it may testify to the wholeness of my devotion. For my wrong to thee, I regret it. Since there is no remedy, I will say no more. I could take pride in thee, but I may not. It is better we should never meet again. Go, and for her sake remember me as kindly as thou mayst. Call Granton hither.’

But Brion did not at once obey. Pride and emotion fought within him for mastery; his breast heaved; a moisture had sprung to his eyes. Suddenly, with an impulsive movement, he lifted the other’s unresisting hand, and kissed it once gently, and gently put it from him. Then he turned, and went hurriedly to the door, and beckoned to the Captain, who stood with his men in the hall. The soldier strode to the summons.

‘Granton,’ said his lord, without turning his head, ‘restore this youth his sword, and let him free. He is my friend, Granton.’

And so it was that Brion, a man escaped from a deadly hazard, yet keeping for ever in his mind the picture of that tragic hour, the gloomy building and the room set like a lustrous shrine in its midst, found himself once more in the free and open street, an exultation at his heart, but also a wistful pain. That, in a measure, was never to leave him; yet even so it was as balsam on an ancient wound, the amelioration of one hurt by another. And, since it was so, his spirit henceforth felt a certain peace which it had never yet quite known. If he had lost something, he had gained no less in compensation.

He went straight back to his inn; and surely the sun had never shone so bright to him nor the air breathed so sweet. He found Clerivault pacing the yard, restless and uneasy, and was moved to remorse hearing the enormous sigh of relief with which that good creature greeted his return. It touched his humbled vanity to the quick. He answered to it, his eyes shining:--

‘Hast thou so felt my truancy, then?’

‘No matter what I have felt, sir,’ was the reply, ‘since you are here again. I would be no man’s pursuing conscience, I.’

‘You are; you were, Clerivault. The figure of you dogged my ungrateful heels.’

‘On my honour, Sir, I have not moved from here, as you bade me.’

‘I know it, good heart. I spoke but metaphorically. I was a thankless ingrate--for the last time, where thy love is in question, I do hope. Forgive me, Clerivault.’

‘Forgive thee!’ The man lifted his arms and eyes to heaven as if in mute ecstatic protest. ‘Forgive my balm, my solace, my one friend? Say it again, sweetheart. I could kiss thy very shadow for that word!’