Chapter XXIII: Home Again

Had his fears in any degree been justified? That disquieting suspicion may have just entered Clerivault’s mind, seeking for the clue to some connexion between his young master’s mental and material conditions. Something, it was evident, had torn and dishevelled that gentleman’s attire, as something had disturbed his moral equilibrium. The good fellow’s uneasiness was so great that he could not forbear significantly drawing Brion’s attention to the state of his clothes. The youngster laughed.

‘A brawl, Clerivault,’ said he. ‘I lacked my Mentor for the occasion. That is enough admitted, by your leave. Methinks, all said, I have had sufficient of London for one time, and incline to our good Devon again. What say you?’

What, indeed, but a most relieved acquiescence? He was glad to the heart to find his charge so minded--so glad that he was content to let the other question lapse in the joy of the near prospect of being rid of its burdensome responsibility.

And Brion himself? In truth the novel interests which this enterprise had brought him were small compensation for the emotional experiences he had had to suffer in their course. London, for all her promise, had given him but derision and disappointment--a hate, perhaps, dispelled, but a bright illusion darkened; a new serenity won, but an old sorrow made more sorrowful. Yes, he was better back among his moors and streams and lonely hills.

One day before they left they rode over to Clapham to pay a visit, which the young man reproached himself with having already delayed to make too long. Yet that visit, too, when accomplished, proved a sorrow and a disappointment. More than eight years had passed since he had ridden, an anxious, unhappy boy, from the gates of the home which for so long time had protected and sheltered him; and now reapproaching it, and recalling its familiar environments, his heart was wonderfully moved with the thought of all that that ancient affection had meant for him. He had heard little of the family during the interval. A letter or two, in the early days of the severance, had passed--one, a little billet, in sedate language and misshapen script, from baby Alse--but with the soon cessation of that small correspondence all association with his former intimates seemed ended. He did not know who was to blame: nobody, perhaps, but only circumstance, in a day of difficult communications. But anyhow such was the case; and he was riding now, with a feeling of strange emotion, to take up what severed ties?

Alas! on the very threshold of his expectations a cruel rebuff awaited him. The old school-house was in its place, but with other tenants, and with all its most familiar features improved out of recognition. He learned the facts from those who lived there. The good old untidy Dame, so improvident yet so lovable, so busy yet so unbusinesslike, was dead these many years; the boys, Gregory and Richard, were, the one, in an attorney’s office at Bristol, the other, a clerk at Oxford; the ex-Divine himself, burdened with years, and much reduced in circumstances since his scholars had gradually deserted him with his faculties, lived with his only daughter, now grown a comely young woman, in a humble way in a small domicile near the church.

Sorry at heart, Brion sought and found them there. It was indeed a modest tenement, but bright and clean--one of a little group standing almost against the walls of the old church of which the poor man himself had been at one time vicar. He hardly knew his former ward and pupil; seemed lost in the little woes and selfishnesses of senility, on which his daughter waited with a grave and patient motherliness which was very pretty and touching. She had grown out of Brion’s memory--not he out of hers. She seemed to measure him with her candid gray eyes, shyly, but with no lack of self-possession. He thought he read a quiet rebuke in them, read in her manner a pride of gentle repulse of an interest which years of so long neglect made little better than an effrontery. Such was his impression, though she may have meant nothing of the sort. She took him, by his own wish, to see her mother’s grave in the churchyard hard by, and watched him as he plucked a rose from a brier and laid it, with a kiss to its petals, under the headstone. And after that, when he spoke of old days, she seemed to answer with a more responsive kindness. They went into the church together, and he read once more the texts on the walls, which had been painted there in accordance with the great Queen’s own instructions, and on samples of which he had so often, as a child, put his own infantine interpretation. There was the ‘Man doth not live by bread alone,’ which on Sundays had always served him for a sort of jubilant sanction of the chopping dinner to follow, and presented the Deity as a jolly hospitable host, scorning half-measures; there was the ‘Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upwards,’ which had brought an unfailing picture of the village blacksmith, whose wife was a notorious scold; there was the ‘Wizards that peep and that mutter,’ a cryptic and suspicious contribution--displayed near the pulpit, too--which had afforded him many delicious thrills. He fell into a smiling reverie, recalling them all and their associations, and only roused from it with a sigh to hear the girl beside him speaking:--

‘Mother never forgot you, Master Middleton. You were in her mind to the last.’

He looked wistfully in her face; then took her hand and led her from the building. At the door he stopped, to point mutely to yet another scroll upon the wall:--

‘I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.’

‘You will let me, Alse?’ he entreated outside. ‘I have the right and the means to, notwithstanding all these years of separation.’

She understood him at once; but she shook her head, with a bright smile:--

‘It is not so bad as that. We have enough, and to be independent and happy on. When the time comes, my brothers will care for me.’

He felt he could not urge her further without discredit to himself and insult to that brave young spirit. If, in her eyes, he had forfeited his right to, in her eyes persistence would but blacken his case; and that he would not risk. He went back with her to the house, where, like a proper little hostess, she insisted upon serving him and Clerivault with a stirrup-cup of sweet metheglin to warm them for their homeward journey. He kissed his hand to her on starting. ‘Goodbye, dear Alse!’ he said. But she only dropped him a staid little courtesy in response, with a ‘Fare thee well, Master Middleton.’

He was very silent as he rode back; might have felt even a deeper preoccupation could he have guessed how those same sweet eyes would go following his receding figure in imagination, on and on into the night, until they parted with it in the land of dreams, where hopeless Fancy yields itself to Oblivion.

‘A winsome little lady, Sir,’ said Clerivault, breaking into his abstraction, with an odd side-glance. ‘A man might do worse than wive with such.’

‘Worse!’ He turned on his comrade, with a sudden violence: ‘I tell you no gentleman of honour and renown but might count it his rich fortune to possess her--a gentleman--the best--nor such an one as, lapped in self-sufficiency, forgets past benefits--old claims and affections--a toad of ingratitude----’

He broke off with a choke, and spurring his horse in a quick fury, sprang on ahead. The other thought it wise to trail behind and let the subject be.

On the day following this visit Brion went to say good-bye to his friend, the Captain of the Queen’s Guard. Raleigh came out to see him at the postern-gate which lay near his quarters. He was splendidly equipped, being just about to attend the Queen’s Majesty on some ceremonial visit, and his manner in consequence was a little abstracted and hurried, though smilingly genial.

‘Well,’ said he, ‘I should be the last to traverse that decision, who lured thee hither with a bait so false. Acquit me of that. I am not of those who would rather lose a friend than a jest. May the next enterprise I draw thee on to be more fortunate. You’ll remember your pledge to that?’

‘The expedition? Did I pledge myself?’

‘Or I thee, _for_ thyself. It shall take shape in no long time. ’Tis such as thou I’ll need, dear lad. And the patriot--above all the immense patriot.’

Brion laughed, and they parted. That same afternoon he and Clerivault started on their long journey homeward.