‘Did it? did it?’ cried the other, in a rapture of emotion. ‘Then happy, happy Harlequin for all his racking! If thou but knewest, my blessed one—if thou but knewest, thou wouldst sure forgive me. But the peril—if peril it was—is laid at last, and henceforth, by God’s countenance, we shall live together in security, and never more be disparted. When we rode away that night——’
‘Nay,’ said the boy, stopping him, a flush on his face—‘whither or on what urgency I will not know. If I might not hear the exordium, I will not hear the peroration. We were separated and we have rejoined, like the sides of a wound. That should be enough for us. The interval of pain it is well to forget, as if it had never been. I prithee speak no word of it more. Is my Uncle returned with you?’
‘He is within,’ answered Clerivault. He was comforted but perplexed. There was some change apparent here which he could not quite unriddle. It was like a new birth, a detachment, as when a clinging tuber has separated itself from its parent stock and declared for an independent existence. There was a pride in it of conscious power; the old sweet pliancy might be there, but its backbone had strengthened. Was he become a man indeed in this short space? It would almost seem so. There was a shadow on his lip; a knowledge, even a sadness, in his eyes which had not been there before. Whence and how had they come? The thought which had been Phineas’s thought just crossed his mind. Well, he did not know whether to be glad or sorry for this development; only thank God they were together again, and reconciled, and friends as of old.
‘I will go to him,’ said Brion, and they walked on and entered the house. The Justice was in his private closet off the hall—a room selected for his use by Clerivault before his departure. It was a small oak-panelled chamber, sombre but comfortable. The one diamond-paned window, jewelled in its upper lights with heraldic devices, threw a pattern like trellised moonshine on the carpet of blue cloth—the only one in the house. An escritoire had been set there by Brion’s directions, and the smaller bookcase, into which he had gathered the best of the illuminated missals. They knocked, and being bid to enter, Brion saw his Uncle again.
He was seated by a table, on which stood a jug of sack and a silver tankard from which he had drunk copiously. He was just come off the road, and was soiled and weary. Yet there was that in his expression somehow more significant of mental than of physical exhaustion. The dark moody features seemed bitten with a deeper consciousness of their own fall from grace and beauty; into the large congested eyes had grown a hunted listening look, pathetic in its implication of strength harried and demoralised. His hands were tremulous when the boy came in: it had needed but that little unexpected sound upon the door to unnerve and shake him. But he greeted his nephew kindly, and with a light come into his face which shone straight into Brion’s heart. He beckoned, with a smile, to the boy, and, when he came, stood him between his knees, and asked him many questions—as to his life since they had parted, and the way he had employed his time, and his opinion—a little wistfully this—as to the house and its surroundings and his feelings regarding them.
‘I shall be happy now you have come,’ was the brave answer.
He seemed much affected. ‘What! You love me still?’ said he.
‘Yes, indeed, Sir.’
‘That’s well and good. Methinks, child, I could not do without your love.’
‘Will you live here always now, Uncle Quentin?’