Clerivault bit his lip.
‘Did I not tell thee?’ said he. ‘The law, taken in excess, like wine affects the reason, and he was too full of it for health—it impaired his judgments. Wherefore his decision to resign, and to seek amid these scenes of peace the restoration of his faculties. Misfortune enough—ha! to be reduced, in plenitude of one’s power, to a sick nonentity.’
Brion, though marvelling a little that it should have been deemed necessary to hide so simple an explanation from him, was satisfied with it now it had come. He understood at last the meaning of their withdrawal into these country seclusions, and was both sorry and proud for this great-souled relative of his, who had so nobly resolved to put conscience before self-interest.
The two walked on a little; and then said Clerivault, breaking a silence between them: ‘This place consorts not with your dreams, mayhap, of what was to be; yet shall you come to be as happy as the day in it. We are few, but the moor is big. It is a wild free life thou shalt lead, and content and lustihood shalt thou draw from it. Now mount with me, I prithee, to thy chamber once again, and I will show thee things.’
So they went up together, and there found Gammer Harlock busy bed-making. She was an old woman, bent and bony, but with an amazing vigour in her attenuated frame. Her face was of the hatchet shape, with an aquiline nose and slow projecting eyes, and the compressed austerity of her mouth so drooped at the corners as to make her chin appear a separate attachment, moving on a pivot as in a mask. But she was scrupulously neat, no rent in her cloth of frieze gown, no stain on her close linen coif or the partlet about her withered neck. She showed no knowledge of their presence, but went on with her work.
Clerivault sniffed and scowled.
‘Better employed in making his bed, Gammer,’ said he, ‘than in poisoning his mind.’
‘Eh, jackanapes!’ she answered; ‘are ye there, and talking?’
She did not turn her head. Her voice was like a low whine, harsh yet thin.
‘Talk and hang,’ said he, ‘you old devil. Will you tell me this: Why, if Fulk committed murder and you knew it, you shouldn’t be broke for an accessory after the fact?’