Lawrence Clavering Part 22

"Why, goodwife," I answered impatiently, "do you look for gentlemen of the road in Ennerdale?"

"Goodwife!" she said with a toss of the head. "Goodwife to a ninny-hammer!" and she looked me over again. Indeed, I doubt not but we cut sufficiently disreputable figures. "Not I! And you'll just tell me your business. There are others besides gentlemen of the road who put their fingers into pockets which don't belong to them."

"Hold your noise, Mary Tyson!" said Tash, behind my shoulder. "Do you know me?"

"Oh," said she with a start, "it's William Tash from----"

"That'll do," he broke in; "no need to speak names. Show the gentleman to Mr. Curwen."

Mary Tyson stood aside from the door. I stepped into the hall.

"You'll find him in the room," she said with a curt nod towards a door facing me.

I crossed to it and rapped on the panels, but got no answer whatsoever. It is true I could hear a voice within, but the voice seemed to be declaiming a speech. I rapped again.

"Oh, the dainty knuckles!" cried Mary; and pus.h.i.+ng roughly past me she banged upon the door with a great fist like a ham and threw it open without further ceremony. The voice ceased from its declamation. I entered the room. It was very dark, being panelled all about with book-cases and the ceiling very low. A single lamp glimmered on a table in the centre of the carpet An old gentleman rose from before a great folio spread out upon the table.

"What is it, Mary?" he asked in a tone of gentle annoyance. "You interrupt me."

"A visitor, he says," replied Mary, "though----"

The hostility of her eyes and a great heave of her shoulders filled up the gap.

"A visitor!" said the old gentleman, his voice changing on the instant to an eager politeness. "A visitor is always welcome at Applegarth at whatever hour he comes."

I heard not so much a sigh as a snort behind me, and the door was slammed. The old gentleman advanced a few steps towards me and then came to a sudden stop. I was neither hurt nor surprised at his evident disappointment and perplexity, for Mary's behaviour had shown me pretty clearly what sort of a picture I made.

"It is not a visitor, Mr. Curwen," said I, "but a fugitive;" and I handed to him Lord Derwent.w.a.ter's letter.

"Indeed?" said he, all his suavity rekindling. "A fugitive!" and he spoke as though to be a fugitive was a very fine and enviable thing.

"You will take a chair, Mr.----"

"Clavering," I added.

"Of Blackladies?" he inquired

"Of Blackladies," said I.

"You are very welcome, Mr. Clavering," said he, and he broke open the seal and read the letter through, with many interruptions of "s.h.i.+eld us!" and "To be sure!" and with many a glance over his spectacles at me. He was a tall man, though his shoulders stooped as if he spent many an evening over his folio, and I should say of sixty years and more. He wore his own white hair, which was very long and fine, making a silver frame to as beautiful a face, except one, as it has ever been my lot to see. The features, it may be, were over-delicately chiselled, the cheeks too bloodless, the eyes too large, if you looked for a man of dominating activity. It was the face of a dreamer, no doubt, but there would be nothing ign.o.ble in the dreams.

"You are yet more welcome, Mr. Clavering," said he as he folded up the letter; "shelter indeed you shall have, and such comfort as we can add thereto, for so long as you will be pleased to stay with us. Nay,"

said he, checking me, "I know what you would say, but we are solitary people here and the debt will be with us."

"That can hardly be," said I, "since I bring danger to you by my presence."

"Some while ago," he replied, "I would not have denied it, though I should have welcomed you no less. But since my fortunes have declined and I have grown into years, I have taken little part in politics and keep much within my doors. They will not come here, I think, to look for you. It is a consolation for my poverty," said he with the simplest dignity, "that I can therefore offer you a safer harbourage.

But indeed it is with you that the times have gone hard. We are not so solitary but that now and again a sc.r.a.p of news will float to us, and we have heard of you. You were much at one time in Paris?" And his voice of a sudden took on a pleasant eagerness.

"Yes," I replied, "though I saw little of the town."

"Ah," said he with a nod of the head, "to gain and lose Blackladies in so short a s.p.a.ce--it is a hard case, Mr. Clavering."

In the hurry and stress of these last two days I had given no thought to what the loss Blackladies meant, but the meaning rushed in upon me winged with his words.

"Ay," I answered, and my voice trembled as I spoke, so that the old man came over to me and laid a hand upon my shoulder, "for it is the King who loses it, and through my folly, for I might have known."

I felt his hand patting me with a helpless consolation. "So we all say, after the event. It is a hard thing to bear, but philosophy will help us. You must study philosophy while you are here, Mr. Clavering.

I have books"--and he glanced round the room and then came to an abrupt pause--"I have books," he repeated in a lame fas.h.i.+on, "which you may find profit in studying;" and as he spoke, the music of a song quivered up from the next room like a bird on the wing. I understood that "we," which had much perplexed me in his talk; I remembered where and when I had heard of Applegarth before. You may talk, if you will, of Cuzzoni and Faustina and the rest of the Italian women who have filled Heidegger's pockets; doubtless they made more noise, but not one of them, I'll be sworn, had a tenth of the sweetness and purity of the voice which sang this song. Give to a lark a human soul and then maybe you will hear it. For it was more than a voice that sang; it was as though the wings of a soul beat and throbbed in the singer's throat. I lack words to describe the effect it wrought on me. All the shame I had been sensible of during the long hours since that pistol rang out in the garden of Blackladies, came back to me ma.s.sed within the compa.s.s of a second, and on that shame, more and ever more. I know that I buried my face in my hands to hide the anguish of my spirit from Mr. Curwen; and sitting there with my fingers pressed upon my eyes I listened. The words came clearly to my ears through the doorway behind my chair; the voice carried my thoughts back to Paris, was the crystal wherein I saw pitilessly plain all the dreams I had fas.h.i.+oned of what I would do, had I but liberty and the power to do it; then carried me again to England, and showed me the miserable contrast between those airy dreams and the solid truth. I saw myself now riding to Lorraine; now lingering in Mr. Herbert's apartment And the words of that song pointed my remorse--how bitterly! Even now, after this interval of thirty-five years, the humiliation and pain I endured return to me with so poignant a force that I can hardly bring myself to write of them. I could not indeed at all, but for this faded yellow sheet of paper which I take up in my hands. It was given to me upon an occasion notable within my memory, and the words of this very song are inscribed upon it, blurred and well-nigh indecipherable, but I do not need the writing to help me to remember them. The song was called "The Honest Lover," and I set it down here since here it was that I first heard it.

"THE HONEST LOVER."[1]

"Would any doubting maid discover What's he that is a worthy lover: His is no fine fantastic breath, But lowly mien and steadfast faith.

For he that so would move her, By simple art, And humble heart, Why, he's the honest lover.

"His is a heart that never played The light-o'-love to wife or maid, But reverenced all womankind Before he found one to his mind.

For he that so would move her By simple art, And humble heart, Why, he's the honest lover.

"And if he quake to meet her eyes, Stammer and blush whene'er he tries His wors.h.i.+p'd lady to address, Be sure she'll love him none the less, For he that so would move her By simple art, And humble heart, Why, he's the honest lover."

Footnote 1: The song is written by Harold Child, Esq., to whom the author is indebted for it.

This was the song to which I listened as I sat--the dishonest outlaw in the dark library of Applegarth.

"It is my daughter Dorothy," said Mr. Curwen, with a smile. "In talking of our youngest martyr I had forgotten her;" and he took a step towards the door. But at his first movement the youngest martyr--Heaven save the mark!--had risen from his chair with a foolish abruptness.

"Nay, Mr. Curwen," he cried in disorder; and then he stopped, for the truth is, he shrank in very shame from standing face to face with the singer of that song.

"But," and I seized the first excuse, "I have this long while been wandering on the fells, and am in no way fitted for the company of ladies. Your servant even would have no truck with me, and I think you too were taken aback." I looked down at my garments as I spoke.

"My servant," he began, and he looked towards the other door through which I had entered with a timorous air, as though he would fain see whether or no she was listening on the far side of it, "Mary Tyson,"

he said, lowering his voice, "is a strange and unaccountable person. A good servant, but----" and very wisely he tapped his forehead. "For myself," he continued, his voice softening with a great wistfulness, "it was something very different from the stains of your journey that gave me pause. Lord Derwent.w.a.ter may have told you that I had once a son. He was much of your height and figure, and the room is dim, and old men are fanciful."

I bowed my head, for whenever he made mention of his misfortunes, he spoke with so brave and simple a dignity that any word of sympathy became the merest impertinence. For a moment he stood looking down at me and revolving some question in his mind.

"Yes," said he, and more to himself than to me, "I will speak to her and give her the order. Why should I not?" He walked slowly halfway to the bell and stopped, "Yes," he repeated, "I will speak to her;" and with a word of excuse to me and a certain bracing of the shoulders, he went out of the room.

I had no doubt that it was with Mary Tyson that he wished to speak. I remained, half-hoping, half-afraid that the chords of the spinet would wake to the touch again, and the voice again ring out, sprinkling its melody through the room like so much perfume from a philtre. But there was no recurrence of the music. I walked idly to the table, and my eyes fell upon that great tome in which Mr. Curwen had been so absorbed at the moment of my interruption. In wonderment I bent more closely over it. I had expected to see some laborious monument of philosophy gemmed with unintelligible terms. Unintelligible terms there were, in truth, but not of the philosopher's kind. They were curious old terms of chivalry.

I remembered how Mr. Curwen had hesitated over the mention of his books, and I took the lamp from the table, and glanced about the book-shelves. The books were all of a-piece with that great folio on the table--romaunts, and histories of crusades, and suchlike matters.

I wondered whether "Don Quixote de la Mancha" had found a place amongst them, and with an impertinent smile I began to glance along the letterings in search of it, but very soon I stopped, and stood staring at a couple of volumes which faced me, and bore upon their backs the t.i.tle of the "Morte D'Arthur."