Her eyes turned on him like a crab’s.
‘Because he was dead when I knew it, ye fine lawyer.’
‘And being dead,’ said Clerivault, ‘you think it safe to asperse his character, which is slander and defamation. Art on the horns of a dilemma, old witch.’
She made a sound of thin derision.
‘Call his character to witness, and call again. Ye’ll get no answer, for he had none.’ She turned on him with some repressed fury. ‘Attend you to your business and leave me to mine. Nine year come Pentecost have I lived and served in this house; doing by it what was never asked in the bond; sweeping and garnishing throughout, though Fulk he lived in no more than two of its rooms; and all for a scant pittance and less meat. Do I know its every rat and shadow, think you, ay and its ghosts that walk and its voices that whisper, to be told by a niddipol lawyer’s clerk, that hath scarce set foot in these silences, what to make of them but scorn and mockery. There are eyes for those that can see and ears for those that can hear: but it is aye the fool that misdoubts others, and the wise man himself.’
‘Misdoubts what?’ said Clerivault. ‘These maggots of a flyblown brain? Well, God quit you of your “shadows”; but not by way of my charge here, who looks to a homely home, and beings of flesh and blood for company, and not the fancied wraiths of fancied crimes. To call a house possessed is an offence at law; and when the house is a judge’s house—take heed, gossip, take heed, I warn you. His Honour is not the man to suffer the corruption of his kin or the branding of his property.’
He ended harshly, and turned to Brion, leaving the old woman muttering.
The boy had heard his comrade, half shocked and half amused. The castigation seemed to him to exceed the transgression. After all, though he had been fascinated and thrilled by the tale she had told him, he had not been frightened. He was a level-headed youngster, and not easily scared. Clerivault pointed from the open casement.
‘See yonder,’ said he, signifying a hill some mile and a half north-west of the Grange: ‘Rippon Tor, they call it, that hath its logging-stone; and, farther north, that’s Hey Tor, with its mighty crown of rock. We’ll climb it together, and get a view will do you good. Out west there stands Buckland Beacon, that we may yet live to see fired, and south of it the waters of the Dart, where they bend about Holne Chase. That’s a sweet and noble demesne, owned by the lords of Buckland, but the house let now to Sir John Medley, a rich City Knight and rogue from London, that hath a fair young daughter, Mistress Joan yclept, his sole child and heiress.’
So he continued, expatiating on the beauties of the moor, and planning expeditions here and there to gorge, or glen, or hidden hamlet, where draughts of golden cider were to reward the sweet and happy toil of adventure. He was eager to dwell on the near approach of the long warm days, eager not only to reconcile the boy to his lot, but to kindle in him an enthusiasm for it. And Brion, in face of those fervent adjurations, was not slow to catch fire, or to forget, in bright anticipation of long walks and rides, and hawkings, perhaps, and fishings in the clear tumbling streams, the sadness of his home surroundings.