‘So many!’ said Raleigh. ‘I had not thought it. Time must turn up a slow furrow in this land of thine. Would you not rather mount a horse than plod behind it? Come, ride you with me—the way I pointed once before—and leave this ding-dong life for one more like to living, while youth and valour and hot blood are yours to spend and Time is in his morning.’
Brion shook his head.
‘My life contents me well enough.’
The other regarded him humorously a moment.
‘Well, I’ll persuade you ere I leave,’ said he, and turned away, signifying a bench where they might sit and talk. He could not stop long, he said, nor crave any hospitality save a stoup of wine for himself, and some ale, if might be, for his party. He was on his way West to attend to some family business, and would be returning in a few days, when he would call for his friend, and carry him along with him to London. And when Brion set his lips, shaking his head a second time, he only laughed, saying no more for that present. He inquired of Uncle Quentin, his health and condition, but in an indifferent inattentive way, caring only, it seemed, for the man’s presumptive attitude towards a possible proposal to leave him by himself awhile; and he showed some small curiosity as to the manner of his friend’s life during the interval which had separated them, but without once alluding to their correspondence or appearing to remember his own failure to vindicate a certain promise given. Nor did Brion think it worth while to remind him. When Sorrow is asleep, says the adage, wake it not.
They drank together when the wine came, and pledged each the other like good comrades. The soldier looked with real and constant admiration on the stripling who sat beside him, whom he had left a boy and taken up a man.
‘So,’ said he, ‘my knight-errant still lacks to cry his country’s fame about the world; and, for all that high emprise, must make shift with the spearing of eels in brooks, or to search the hills for coneys, or to loose his tiercel at a trailing heron, or, for ladies’ favours, to follow at the kissing-strings of country Moll? Is it this contents him, lord of that glowing vision—to shut the door of the world, and dream on tranquil swards of mighty venturings without, in which he seeks no part? Go to! With that face and form, I’ll not believe it. Too near the great sea waters not to have felt their far and passionate lure!’
‘I have felt it,’ said Brion. ‘It is not lack of will, but of opportunity.’
‘Opportunity!’ cried the other. ‘It shall be thine, perchance, for the taking. Long have I had a vision—to plant our English standard in that golden West where Drake has led the way; to take and sow some grist of English manhood there, which, like a lusty crop, shall crowd out the Spanish weed, and come to harvest in a greater England. Ah, for such an expedition! It shapes for ever in my thoughts. Wilt thou go with it—if not as colonist, as soldier, adventurer, knight-errant if thou wilt? There shall be opportunity enow to spread thy mother’s fame—ay, and in the most convincing way with sons like thee, right slips to attach the new world to the old with very love-knots. Wilt thou not follow where Drake has shown the way?’
‘I may follow, but not Drake’s way,’ said Brion, with a wry face. ‘I would not foul my fame by murdering of a dear friend and shipmate.’