And then, all in a moment, and without a word of warning, the good life ended. It happened on a memorable evening in March, when one, who had been there once before, came a second time to visit the school.
He was a big man, with a heavy bloated face and dark restless eyes. He had been handsome in his time; but years of passion and self-indulgence had impaired the symmetry of features once comely in their strength. Some sickness of soul, moreover, would seem to have cowed an arrogance formidable enough in its day. His looks were furtive, his manner propitiatory, as he stood up before the pedagogue and stated his business. In fact, Mr Justice Bagott was a disgraced and fallen man. He had been disbenched for that obliquity which in a few decades time was to bring to the ground a far greater lawyer than he. In accepting a heavy bribe from a litigant he had dishonoured himself and disgraced his profession. And it had been no amelioration of the offence that the litigant in question was a Papist. The scandal, which might well have cost the Justice his head, had been notorious enough to penetrate into the by-ways, along which it had even come to reach the ears of Brion’s guardian himself. It had agitated that simple soul, even into some fatalistic premonition of what had actually come to pass. And now the blow had fallen: his charge was demanded of him.
He went out of the room to seek the child—the pleasant parlour, with its wainscotted walls and low timbered ceiling, which would always thenceforth be associated in Brion’s mind with a dream of peace and security—and returned in a little, downcast and sorrowful, holding him by the hand. He had evidently, in that brief interval, broken the fatal news. The boy seemed dazed and stunned; but he lifted his head manfully to look the stranger in the face. He did not recall him: how could he, who had seen him but once before? yet he read enough there to recognise the finality of his sentence. And Bagott, for his part, perceived a girlish-faced youngster, slim and tall for his age, with fair hair and mouse-coloured eyebrows and lashes—personable material, but giving so far no indication of the sort of spirit which informed it. The boy was very pale, but whether by nature or through agitation he could not tell.
‘Dost know me, child?’ he said—not unkindly, though his voice was harsh.
Brion shook his head. ‘No, Sir.’
‘Troth,’ said the visitor, ‘eleven years may well wipe out deeper-graven memories than that. I am thy uncle, Quentin Bagott, child, who brought thee here, and am now to take thee hence. Wilt go with me?’
The boy had to bite his lip to restrain his tears; yet he kept them proudly back; and that the other noticed. For all at once he sighed, raising his head and bowing it; and when he spoke his voice was grievous.
‘Brion,’ said he; ‘of all of ours, we are the only two left to one another.’
There spoke the broken soul, grasping in its fall at a child’s hand where it would have flung away a man’s. And, in some rare way, the lad understood. For he came forward, holding his head erect; and said he: ‘I will go with you.’
Bagott took the young face between his palms, and gazed searchingly into the gray eyes.