Where England sets her feet: a romance

by Bernard Capes

‘Whence did he come and whither ride, William—dost know?’

But William knew nothing—only that the Judge had arrived unexpectedly by night, big Nol attending, and, after the briefest stay, had left again, taking the porter and Clerivault with him. Neither had Phineas, when presently questioned, any more definite information to give. They both, it was evident, felt for the boy, and wished to do all in their power to make up to him for the loss he had suffered, and to ameliorate the loneliness of his lot. But a sense of grievance was on Brion, and his response was neither grateful nor gracious. He felt betrayed, in this committal of him to virtual solitude and neglect, where he had been led by his comrade to count upon cheerfulness and bright company. It was cruel, he thought, so to have inveigled him on false pretences from a loved and happy home, and he could not be induced, in that first sharpness of his affliction, to practise the philosophy which after all was native to his young temperament, or to look upon his desertion in any light other than that of deliberate treachery. He would touch no breakfast that morning, much to the master-cook’s concern, and generally seemed inclined to prepare himself in the perversest possible way for the anchoretic ordeal which lay before him.

And in truth that ordeal proved itself, as its character developed, a sufficiently depressing affair—something comparable with that of an eaglet, say, let loose, with a clipped wing, in an empty fowl run. For the liberty that rode on horseback was for one thing denied Brion, his nag having been taken away by the visitors for a spare mount; and so was he deprived of one great incitement to forgetfulness in exercise.

No alternative was his but dreary wanderings alone, or in the company, if he would, of a bashful clown like William. Phineas was all very well for material pabulum, and could eke moralise humorously enough on his craft; but he was hardly the comrade for a rambling day on the moors. On the whole Brion preferred to be left to himself, that he might indulge, half in rancour, half in real heartache, the dejection of his mood.

And so he did, and experienced no soon reaction from it. In all the long weeks to follow unrelieved on his Uncle’s visit, no word of explanation or reassurance was to reach him; but he was left to formulate his own ideas as to the meaning of things, and to get through the weary days as best he could. At first, so miserable was he, he had no spirit to continue the open life of the hills and moors; but he would mope about the desolate house, vainly seeking distraction in its few familiar objects, or haunt the wildered grounds about it, kicking his cheerless heels among the tangled vegetation with which it was overrun.

One day, when he was so idly disposed, trying to trace out the original contour of the beds in what had been the garden, now a confused waste of weed and vegetable matter, he made a discovery. He had covered, in his aimless dawdlings, the inner circuit of the estate, stopping now and again to look over the boundary wall into the dead stagnation of the moat, or to watch the oily scum on its surface open and shut like a mouth whenever he pitched a stone to it to gulp and swallow. Coming round, then, by way of the porter’s lodge, he ascended for the dozenth time, and in default of any brighter suggestion, to the empty rooms above the gate, only, for the dozenth time, to gaze with lacklustre eyes from their vacant windows, and to descend again as objectless as he had mounted. Eastward of the gatehouse were ranged the empty stables, the empty byres, the empty pig-pens and barns—for the Grange had farmed its own produce in days gone by—and beyond these, in a bastion of the wall, stood the columbarium, or circular dovecote built of stone, which contained within it a revolving ladder, like a cheval-de-frise on end, used for reaching the birds where they might rest in any of the rows of little cells with which the whole surface of the interior was chambered. There were no pigeons there now, nor had been for an age; but there was some mild excitement to be borrowed from mounting and spinning on the ladder; and Brion was contemplating that distraction, when his eye fell on the well in the courtyard which supplied the house with water. It was a familiar enough object, but never till this moment regarded by him in the light of a particular association. Was it, could it have been the very well down which the miser had cast the body of his victim those long years ago? Tingling, on tiptoe, he went to it and looked over. The hatch was closed; the bucket, the slack of its rope looped to the windlass, stood on the wall rim. And then a thought occurred to him. This well was sunk in the open for all to see, and the old woman had distinctly spoken of a well-house. Where?

Suddenly, with the birth of an idea, a thrill went through him, and he started walking. He went past the stables, past the byres, past the columbarium, and so into the wild ground beyond, where he kept along the wall for a distance of fifty yards or so until he came to a dense clump of ilexes, and there stopped, his heart going a little excitedly. He had often noted and passed by this place, but had never before, for some unexplainable reason, been moved to push into it. The trees had built themselves up in a gloomy thicket high above the wall and over it, and, bridging the moat, were continued in a twin clump on the farther side. They were so grown down to the ground, so grappled to it by the long grasses which had woven themselves into the bases of the mass, as to appear impenetrable. Only a wrinkle, or suture, in the hill of sombre green seemed to betray to the sharp eyes of the boy the existence of some former passage between the foliage, now long closed in and hidden.

Brion stood and hesitated. Somehow the place awed him—its gloom, its silence, its distance from the house. There was a brooding stillness about it which seemed to breathe of death and mystery. Then, characteristically enough, he seized his determination in hand, and made the plunge. He was of those whose instinct is always rather to challenge a terror than by flying to call it after them.

Now, he had no sooner parted the boughs than he saw his suspicion confirmed. Very faint, very blurred, yet still distinguishable, the mark of a half-obliterated path ran under the trees. With just one sigh, a little shaken, he entered and let the green covert close behind him. And then he felt a shock of relief. It was not near so dark within the great thicket as its exterior would have led him to suppose. A thousand threads of gray light, rained down from overhead like the jets in a shower-bath, made melancholy visible there. He went forward a few steps, turned the trunk of a tree, and saw a low building before him.

It was just a stone belvedere, moss grown, green with age and neglect, but still whole and unbroken. Its area might have measured four yards square; it stood some ten feet from the ground to the spring of the roof, which was low-peaked and tiled with plates of rough-hewn stone. Its front was open for two thirds of its width, and through the aperture Brion caught sight of the low parapet of a well projecting from the floor. Tingling all through, he stole forward and looked in.