Chapter IV: The End of the Journey

At the _Golden Lion_ by the bull-ring the two halted to drink a sack-posset, for the boy was very spent and weary. Good fifteen miles had they ridden that last day, with three yet to cover to reach their journey’s end; yet his fatigue was as much of the mind as the body. The spirit which had sustained him throughout this long wayfaring seemed now, in the near achievement of its objective, to falter and lose heart. He realised all at once, as he had never yet done, his abysmal severance from the old familiar life. The thought came upon him with a force which certainly owed nothing to the dreariness or inhospitability of the country he was in, for it was a fair and friendly country, but to the felt unattainableness of his own. He was like a sleep-walker, who wakes to find himself naked and alone in spaces of impenetrable darkness, with his bed become a vague remoteness, a warm refuge impossible for his distraught mind ever again to locate or recover.

This reaction from a more expectant, or a more stoic, mood was due to many things--physical exhaustion, that sentiment of isolation, more than all, perhaps, to a doubt which had been slowly forming in his mind as to the reality of the prospect he had pictured for himself. That doubt had not until latterly come to haunt and disturb him; there had been no room for it to germinate in the fullness and novelty of the preceding days. He had found the greater world, on this his first excursion into it, wonderful enough, but wonderful more by reason of its spiritual renaissance than its material features. He did not, of course, put it in that way, or realise that the spirit abroad was in any sense other than the spirit he might have expected to encounter. But in fact it was different, and he himself was unconsciously infected by it. There was something stirring throughout the land which had not been there before, a mental enlargement, a broadening view, a sense of the wider aspects of nationality. It was like the wind that comes with the turn of the ebb tide, the waking breath of a dreamer who has been far and seen strange things, the burden of a rumour that the world was vaster than men had supposed, and that men were freer than they had supposed to explore it. Expansion was in the air, a throb of drums and ring of enterprise, a vision as of a new dawn breaking over the still smoking ruins of feudalism and intolerance. And of this sense of shining spaciousness, having England for its vivid nucleus, was somehow the prevalent atmosphere, into which Brion had entered to feel without knowing it its buoyancy and inspiration. He had ridden in it day by day; it had exalted his young spirit, and painted for him in befitting colours the goal for which they made. That he had always pictured to himself as something stately and important, meet dwelling for the dignified leisure of one who had been great but had done with greatness, a family seat in the ample sense. In vision, even, he had seen it as a mystic castle on a hill, with himself, a knight in silvery armour, riding up to its portcullis.

And now, with their near approach to their destination, had crept in this doubt, this depression, which was like a premonition of disillusionment. Was it, indeed, all to be as he had fancied, or something very notably and very sombrely different? He had questioned Clerivault as to the house and its life and surroundings, and it only now occurred to him for the first time that the answers he had received had been habitually reserved and evasive, general rather than specific. Had there been an intention to hide some ugly truth from him, or was it merely a lack of the descriptive faculty in his companion which gave his statements such an air of foreboding? Something, moreover, in the country itself seemed to deepen his impression of loneliness and melancholy. It was not that it was not beautiful, but that as they rode on they appeared to recede more and more from the signs of human occupation, and to penetrate ever deeper into the grip of a great solitariness. There was a sense of wild desolate spaces at hand, of inhospitable emptinesses, unpeopled and unexplored. The stretched resilience of his mind, like a released catapult, flew back to the extreme of laxity; and he feared the worst.

The fact and the comfort of the little town reassured him somewhat. Here was an oasis in the desert, and but three miles after all from the Grange. There might, too, be other dwellings between. Then the good drink warmed the cockles of his heart, and gave him renewed vigour and courage. But he was allowed no more than time to consume it, for evening was closing in, and his escort was nervous for the road. There was some curiosity about them, news of their coming having got abroad; but Clerivault refused to be drawn by the landlord or any other, and in a few minutes they were on their way again.

They rode out due north, following up the course of the little river Ashburn, which here was used to turn the wheels of a colony of fulling-mills; and presently came out into rising country, very wild and open. Nor was there any further sign of human habitation; but only a great still sky, and a waste of rolling land heaved under it. The sense of desolation increased; there was a call of strange birds from the shadows; no spark of light or welcome greeted them from ahead; but always the stark track went under, growing fainter and fainter. Presently Brion, with a little quiver in his voice, put a question:--

‘Are we near arrived, Clerivault?’

‘In a little,’ was the short answer.

The boy was silent for a while; then opened desperately on the subject in his mind:--

‘It must stand very lonely.’

The other cleared his throat.

‘Solitude, says the proverb, is often the best company.’

Brion felt a little shiver go over him.

‘Methinks I prefer the company to the proverb. Is solitude to be our only one?’

‘Nay; but the best.’

‘And what for the second-best?’

‘There will be your Uncle, when he comes.’

‘And till he comes?’

‘There’s Clerivault.’

‘No more?’

‘Cry you mercy, Sir! I’m what God made me. If I could be a host in myself, I would be it to please you.’

The boy was too worn and mind-weary to seek for words to mend his meaning; but others broke from him in an impulse of despair:--

‘I think I shall fall and die if the end is not soon.’

The cry went to the good fellow’s heart. He brought his horse close alongside, and put out a reassuring hand.

‘Nay,’ said he, ‘nay. Keep a brave spirit, sweetheart. ’Tis but a short effort, and the goal is won. There have been others gone before to prepare for us--Phineas cook, and young William scullion, not to speak of great Nol the porter, who follows presently with his Honour, and Gammer Harlock which hath rooted in the house so long that, like the mandrake, she would shriek to be torn from it. God so! but we will have gay company, with lights to greet us, and warmth and rich fare.’

He stooped to the boy’s bridle as he spoke, and, fetching away from the little stream, whose course they had followed till now, swerved a point or two to the north-east. Brion stiffened his neck, and sought with his weary eyes to penetrate the gathered glooms, which as yet yielded no sign of cheer or welcome. Only, at some indefinite point ahead, they seemed to heap themselves into a blur of blackness, like a stain of ink on wet gray blotting paper. The track beneath them was hardly now to be distinguished; the irregular ground called for wary riding, and their progress was slow. He looked up and thought he saw a star falling in the sky; but it was a light crossing his brain. Then he seemed to reel, and clutching at the saddle bow, ‘Clerivault!’ he cried.

A cheery shout answered him: ‘The Moated Grange--ha!’ and in the same moment his rein was caught by his companion, and they stopped. He might scarcely give a sigh of joy, though discerning with his dim eyes only shadow and confusion, when the other leapt to the ground, and he heard the furious battering of his sword-hilt on echoing wood. Then after an interval came a great flare of light, and a sense of figures gesticulating in a swirl of red smoke, and of voices in deep altercation. Whereafter he remembered nothing more, but only a sigh of yielding and collapse, followed by a stillness which at first seemed the rest of heaven, until things began to move in it, and faces to appear, and inarticulate voices to babble and rage. He wearied to escape them, to get deep down underground where he would find peace and utter silence; but they came between, and forced him to stay and listen. Then suddenly he was raised, for all that he felt himself turned to a stone figure, heavy and enormous, with nothing alive in him but his brain, and a gush of molten fire went down his throat, setting him all ablaze. Sparks poured from his eyes; he could hear his whole being crackling within like a burning gorse-bush--faster and faster, while he whirled about in a mad frenzy. At the height, a flood of warm water was flung, which extinguished the flames in a moment, and, released and blissful, he sank away into an oblivion as sweet as death.