CHAPTER XVII.
CERTAIN VISITORS
Somewhere in the late summer of ’77 there came to the Moated Grange early one morning two visitors, of whom one was destined to exert a considerable influence on Brion’s fortunes. These were Sir Richard Grenville, and a young connexion of his named Walter Raleigh, both West Border gentlemen of good family, and one of them, the elder, holding some sort of official position as County Sheriff. This latter was a strong, compact, saturnine man of thirty-seven, rough bearded and voiced, and with a manner which halted, if at all, on the near side of offence; in all of which characteristics he afforded as complete a contrast as was possible with his companion, whose extreme graces of courtesy and geniality, together with a handsome gallant presence, made only more emphatic the coarse grain of the other. This Mr Raleigh was but lately home, it seemed, from fighting in the Low Countries, where he had played the part of a good soldier against the King of Spain, and earned for himself a reputation which he was quite prepared to stake against the most extravagant throws of Fortune. He was a tallish young man of twenty-five, very shapely in the limbs, with a white hand and a comely intellectual face, rather overhigh in the forehead, but with noble brown eyes, which, at a tale of arms and chivalry, would glow like living fires. His human weakness—if weakness it were to treat so fine a body delicately—lay in a certain over-gallantry of attire. He loved fine clothes, and knew how to wear them to effect. Now, though he was by the road, and only country folk to appraise him, he was dressed as though to attend a Queen’s junketting—from embroidered bonnet to long Flemish boots of soft leather a star of fashion. His little pointed beard was scented, as were his cheveril gloves; he had jewels in his ears; his gilt spurs ‘rang the morris-dance.’ And yet to judge him effeminate would have been to invite disaster. There is a form of foppishness about which it does not do to assume that it lacks the courage of its opinions; and here was a wrist as strong and supple as the wit behind it was virile.
The two gentlemen—the one in virtue of his office, the other of his own engaging assurance, it seemed—appeared as uninvited guests; but there was little doubt as to the purpose of their visit. Rumours, in an unfriendly neighbourhood, had got abroad as to the supposed Papistical tendencies of the master of the Grange, and the Sheriff considered, or made, it his business to inquire into the matter. He did so, to do him justice, frankly and at first hand, and would accept no hospitality, for himself and his companion, until he was satisfied as to the baselessness of the accusation. Convinced of which, he consented for them to dine and lie the night at the Grange, and Phineas was put to his mettle to provide a feast worthy of the occasion.
Brion, having been early astir, with Clerivault, on the moors after wild fowl, did not encounter the newcomers until he came in to dinner at eleven o’clock. But his surprise on finding them there was so graced by tact in his greeting as to appear more like gratification than wonder.
He had developed in these three years into a prepossessing young man of nineteen, lithe and well-proportioned, with a smooth rather pale complexion, and the most winning gray eyes full of gravity and humour. His fair hair had deepened a thought in tone, and even more so his eyebrows and lashes, once described as mouse-coloured, but now a well-marked umber, while a definite shadow pencilled his lip. Always possessed of an attractive manner, though shy in its expression, his earlier reserve had yielded to an unaffected friendliness which was as sincere as it was captivating. Self-reliance and a certain beauty of mind had wrought of this youngster a very maiden knight, whose sword was as ready as his word to uphold that religion of honour which he had made his own. What he owed to himself he paid in sweetness and forbearance to others; yet there was a humour in him which saved him very adequately from the saint. He could be ebullient sometimes, and do things of which he repented. Yet among these was never to be counted a lapse from one fixed ideal. Dedicated to his lady’s service, he would be pure and chivalrous for her sake, nor, for her sake, would he ever break his virgin plight, unless, by blessed fortune, it were to achieve in her the desire of his heart. So he was resolved, vowing it should be his Joan for him or none, and in the meantime what arms and enterprise fell to him he would use to her sole renown, whereby he would be constantly pledged to the nobility his birth denied him.
This firm resolution—the more inflexible, perhaps from the lack of any temptation, in that masculine community, to reconsider it—had lasted since the closing of that brief romance had left him, as he thought, with a broken heart. It all seemed very far away now; such episodes in the full years of youth fade quickly into the background of dim memories. He could afford, perhaps, to smile at it, and at the tragic intensity of the grief which had predicted for him an eternity of unforgetting anguish. Yet, though that dear apparition might never materialise for him again, the love it had engendered in his soul still made itself a sanctuary there, and called to be revered and honoured for the dream’s sake. It had no more to build on. In all these years the family had never returned to the Chase, nor, hugging that poignant secret to his heart, could he venture to seek information as to its possible plans and movements. She was gone from him, it seemed, never to return; and gone to what fate? For long he had suffered intolerable torment, raging over her peril and his own helplessness. But the impotence of his agony had proved its cure. He had learned first despair from it and then resignation. At least they had had those lovely moments together which had been all their own. No power on earth could rob him of that possession, or spoil its sweetness for him so long as he himself kept it spotless. And so he had preserved his dream and become a knight of dreams.
That steadfast sentiment had been one factor in the forming of the boy’s character, as his relations with his Uncle had proved another. It is melancholy to record that the ex-Judge had at this date degenerated into something little removed from an habitual sot. His vice had steadily grown upon him under his nephew’s eyes, until, for all his inexperience and reluctance to believe, Brion had been forced into a recognition of the truth. He took it passionlessly, gravely, and set about to adapt his conduct to the newly-realised conditions. There could be no question of coercive or of remonstrant measures with a spirit of that force and authority; instead, he devoted himself to hedging about an evil which he could not remove, and so hiding its worst manifestations from the world. The drunkard watched, with a drunkard’s cunning, the nature of these means so privily taken to safeguard his reputation, and was leeringly tickled or gloomily affected by them according to his mood. But they had this inevitable effect upon him, that he took to leaning more and more upon his nephew’s resourcefulness and quiet strength of will, until in the end it ensued that Brion became virtual master of the house, ordering its affairs and attending to its accounts. And that was only to anticipate events indefinitely, for he had long been made and legally attested sole heir to all the little property, including house and messuage, which his Uncle still possessed.
Clerivault knocked thrice on the sideboard with a rolling-pin, and the company assembled to its dinner in the great hall. The meal consisted of two courses, the items of which, for any who may care to consult them, figured as follows:—
First Course.
Calves’ foot soup