Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

Of a sudden his horse gave a startled plunge and broke away from him. It ran past me, and, leaning over as it passed, I caught it by the bridle and so held it.

  “Come!” said I. “There will be many days on which I can see the sunset from Coldbarrow Fell.”

  There was no escape for Ashlock except by a direct refusal, and that he did not venture. So with a very ill grace he plumped down on his knees upon the heather and grumbled out his oath.

  “Now,” said I, “we will ride down to Blackladies;” and I descended the track mightily pleased with myself at the high way in which I had carried it. But my elation was short-lived, for so engaged was I in pluming myself, that I took little care of how my horse set his feet, and in a short while he slips on a stone, shies of one side, and I — I was lying with all the breath knocked out of my body on the grass.

  I picked myself up on to my knees; I saw Ashlock sitting on his horse in front of me, and he held my horse by the bridle. I remained on my knees for a moment, recovering my breath and my wits. Then of a sudden I realised that here was I kneeling before Ashlock as but a minute since he had knelt before me; and here was Ashlock sitting his horse and holding mine by the bridle, precisely as I had sat and held his. In a word, we had just changed places, by the purest accident, no doubt, but I had set such great store upon bringing about that earlier position and relationship, that this complete reversal of it within the space of a few moments filled me with the keenest humiliation. And mingled with that humiliation was a certain fear that ran through my veins, chilling my blood. I felt that the man mocked at me. I looked into his face, expecting to discover on it a supercilious smile. But there was no trace of such a thing.

  “You are hurt, sir?” he asked gravely, and dismounted.

  “No,” said I, rising to my feet

  Ashlock moved a few steps from me, and stooped down, parting the grass with his hands.

  “What is it?” I asked, setting a foot in the stirrup.

  “Something, sir, that you dropped when you fell It is too big for a coin.”

  He was standing with his back to me, turning that something over in his palms. I clapped my hand into my fob.

  “It is mine, yes!” I cried, and I ran towards him. “Give it to me at once;” and I made as though I would take it from him.

  “You asked me what it was,” said Ashlock, and he placed in my hands the medal the King had given me. I looked it over carefully, noticing certain scratches upon the King’s face, and seeking to rub them out I saw Ashlock looking at me shrewdly.

  “I know,” said I in a fluster; “but it has memories for me, and I would not lose it;” and with that we got again to our horses, and so down to the Blackladies.

  The rest of that day I spent in examining the many corridors and galleries of the house, and in particular the garden, which had greatly whetted my curiosity. It had been laid out, Ashlock informed me, by Sir John Rookley’s father, and with a taste so fantastic as would have gladdened Sir William Temple himself. There were three terraces linked to each other by three stone staircases — one at each of the two ends, and the third in the centre, and at the top of each of these last flights were heavy iron gates. From the bottom of these steps the parterre spread out, and beyond the parterre was a space of meadow-land, fringed by a grove of trees which they called the wilderness. The strangest device of all, however, was a sort of labyrinth beyond the trees at the extreme end of the garden. The labyrinth, in fact, was a number of little gardens, each with a tiny plot of grass, and flowers planted about it, like so many rows of buttons. These gardens were shut in by hedges of quickset ten feet or more in height, and led from one to the other by such a perplexing diversity of paths, that once you had entered deep among them it was as much as you could do to find your way out of them again. Even Ashlock, who guided me amongst them, ended by losing his way, so nearly alike was one to the other; and I, not stopping to consider that where he failed, I, a stranger, was little likely to succeed, must needs separate from him and go a-searching on my own account, with this very natural result — that I got more and more enmeshed in the labyrinth, and was parted from Ashlock into the bargain.

  “Ashlock!” I shouted, and again and again, with never a reply, for the space of half an hour or more. At last, by the merest chance, I happened upon the right path, and so came out upon that meadow-like space they called the wilderness.

  “Ashlock!” I called again, and again there was no answer. Had he got himself free, I wondered, and gone quietly about his business, leaving me there? I walked up the steps in an ill enough humour at the slight, and passed through the parlour into the hall.

  It was of a great size and height, with long, painted windows from the ceiling to the ground; its roof, indeed, was the roof of the house, and somehow it struck upon me as very empty and desolate.

  “Ashlock!” I cried, and I heard my voice reverberating and dying away down the corridors. Then came the sound of a man running from the inner part of the house.

  “Ashlock!” I repeated, and a servant appeared. He was a tall, spare man, past the middle age, I should say, and was called Jonnage Aron. I sent him to look for the steward, but it was evening before he found him.

  “I thought, sir, that you had hit upon the path before I did,” Ashlock explained.

  “But you heard me shouting?”

  “No, sir,” said he. “I found the way out a few minutes after you had parted from me, and thought that I was following you.”

  I bade him show me to his office and give me some account of the estate, which he did, laying considerable stress upon the wad-mines, from which some part of the revenue was derived.

  “Sir John’s attorney,” said I, when he had finished, “lives at Keswick. It will be well that I should see him to-morrow.”

  “It is but nine miles from here to Keswick,” he assented, “and the road is good.”

  “Then send a servant early in the morning to fetch him here.” Ashlock shot a quick glance at me. “We will go over these matters again,” I continued, “with his help — the three of us together.”

  Ashlock bent his head down upon the papers.

  “Very well,” he said, and seemed diligently to peruse them. Indeed, he held one in his hand so long that I believed he must be learning it by heart. “Very well,” he repeated, in a tone of much thought.

  But during the night I changed my mind, reasoning in this way. I recognised clearly enough that the advice which King James had given me — I mean that I should not disclose myself as a Jacobite — was due to the promptings of Lord Bolingbroke, and those promptings in their turn took their origin from a regard for my safety, rather than for the King’s interest I was, therefore, inclined to look upon the recommendation as a piece of advice to be followed or not, as occasion pointed, rather than as a command. On the whole, I believed that it would be best, considering the ends I had in view, to express myself moderately as favouring the Stuart claims. Moderately, I say, because I could not avow myself an emissary of King James without stating the special business on which I had come, and that I was forbidden to do. At the same time, I had to carry that business to an issue, and with as little delay as might be. Now, it was evident to me that I should get little knowledge of the Jacobite resources, and less of their genuine thoughts, if I were to sit down at Blackladies in this nook of Borrowdale. I must go abroad to do that, and if I was to excite no suspicion, I must have a simple and definite excuse. The attorney at Keswick would, for the outset, at all events, serve my turn very well.

  So the next morning I countermanded the order I had given to Ashlock, and rode in past Castle Crag and Rosthwaite to Keswick. And this I did on many a succeeding day, to the great perturbation of the little attorney, who had never been so honoured before by the courtesy of his clients. Also, I made it my business to attend the otter-hunts, coursing matches, fairs, and wrestling-bouts, of which there were many here and there about the countryside; so that in a short while I became acquainted with the principal gentry, and
got some insight, moreover, into the dispositions of the ruder country folk.

  Now amongst the gentry with whom I fell in, was my Lord Derwentwater and his lady, who were then living in their great house upon Lord’s island of that lake, and from them I received great courtesy when they came to know of my religion and yet more after that I had made avowal of my politics; so that often I was rowed across and dined with them.

  Upon one such occasion, some three weeks after I had come to Blackladies, that is to say, about midway through August, Lord Derwentwater showed to me a portrait of his wife, newly painted and but that day brought to the house. I was much struck by the delicacy of the craftsmanship, and stooped to examine the signature.

  “You will not know the name,” said Lord Derwentwater. “The man is young and, as yet, of no repute — Anthony Herbert.”

  “Anthony Herbert,” I repeated. “No, I have never heard the name, though, were he better known, I should doubtless be as ignorant. For this long while I have lived in France.”

  “It is very careful work,” said I, looking closely at the picture.

  “Indeed, it errs through excess of care,” replied he, “for one’s attention is fixed thereby upon the details separately.”

  “One need have no fear of that,” said I, with a bow to Lady Derwentwater, “when such details are so faithfully represented.”

  The pair smiled at one another, and she laid her hand upon her husband’s arm in the prettiest way imaginable.

  “The man is staying at Keswick,” Lord Derwentwater continued. “That is how I chanced on him. He came hither in the spring for the sake of the landscapes.”

  “Oh,” said I, “at Keswick? Is he, indeed?” and I spoke with something of a start. For a new idea had been brought to me from his words. For, having come clean to the end of my business with the attorney, I had been casting about during the last few days for some fresh cloak and pretext to cover my diurnal journeys from Blackladies, and here, it seemed to me, was as good a solution of the difficulty as a man could wish. It may be that I set too much stress on the need for such a pretext; it may be that I could have ridden hither and thither about the country without any one turning aside to busy himself about my errand. But, in the first place, I was the youngest scholar of conspiracy certainly in experience, if not quite in years, and I was on that account inclined to exaggerate the value of a mysterious secrecy. I took my responsibilities au plus grand sérieux, shrouding them from gaze with an elaborate care, when no one suspected so much as their existence. Moreover, it was the habit of the people in those parts to stay much within their native boundaries; they rarely went afield; indeed, I have heard a dalesman of Howray, by Keswick, confidently assert that at Seatoller, a little village not two miles from Blackladies, the sun never shone between the months of September and March owing to the height of the circumjacent mountains. In a word, those fells which these countrymen saw close before their eyes each morning that they rose, enclosed their country; what lay beyond was foreign land, wherein they had no manner of concern. And this same habit of mind was repeated in their betters, though in a less rude degree. Therefore I thought it did behove me to practise some dissimulation lest either my friends or my enemies should get the wind of my business. So again I said —

  “The painter stays at Keswick. And where does he lodge?”

  “In the High Street,” said Lady Derwentwater; and she named the house.

  “But, Mr. Clavering,” added the husband, with a laugh, “the painter has a wife, very young and not ill-looking; and he is very jealous. I would warn you to pay no such compliments to her as you have paid to Lady Derwentwater.” And he clapped me on the back, and so we went in to dinner.

  He was silent through the first courses, and his wife rallied him on his reserve.

  “I was thinking,” said he, and he roused himself suddenly. “I was thinking,” and then he stopped with a whimsical glance at me. “But perhaps I am forestalled.”

  Lady Derwentwater clapped her hands and gave a little laugh of delight.

  “I know,” she said, and turned to me. “My husband is the most inveterate match-maker in the kingdom, Mr. Clavering. He is like any old maid that sits by the window planning matrimony for every couple that passes in the streets. I should like to dress him up in a gown of linsey-woolsey and lappets of bone-lace.”

  “That’s unfair,” he returned “For there is this difference between the old maid and me — she is a match-maker by theory, I through experience.”

  He spoke lightly, as befitted him in the presence of an acquaintance, but his eyes were upon his wife’s face, and her eyes met his. She reddened ever so little, and looked at her plate. Then she sent a shyish glance towards me, another to her husband — and all her heart was pulsing in that — and so again to her plate, with a ripple of happy laughter. I seemed to be trespassing upon the intimacy of a couple but half an hour married — and there were children asleep in their cots upstairs. A pang of genuine envy shot through me, the which Lady Derwentwater remarked, though she misunderstood it For —

  “James,” she said, turning reproachfully to her husband, “there is Mr. Clavering absolutely disconcerted, and no wonder. Darby and Joan may be well enough by themselves, but with a guest they are the most impertinent people in the world.”

  “True,” said he, “and if Mr. Clavering patronises Herbert, he will have enough of Darby and Joan to sicken him for his lifetime, though it is a Darby and Joan in the April rather than the autumn of their years,” he added, with a smile.

  “Nay,” I interrupted, “to tell the truth, I was thinking of the big, empty galleries of Blackladies.”

  “There!” he exclaimed, triumphantly, “Mr. Clavering justifies my match-making. Out of his own mouth he justifies me. We must marry him. Now, to whom?” and once or twice he patted the table with the flat of his hand in a weighty deliberation.

  His wife broke into a ringing laugh.

  “James, you are incorrigible,” says she,

  “There is Miss Burthwaite,” says he.

  “Impossible,” says I. “I have met her. She says nothing but ‘O La!’ and ‘Well, there!’ and shakes her curls, and giggles.”

  “Her vocabulary is limited,” he allowed “But there’s the widow at Portinscales.”

  “She swears,” I objected.

  “Only when she’s coursing,” he corrected. “But, no matter, there’s — —”

  “Nay,” said I, interrupting his list “This is no time, I take it, for a man to think of marrying. For who knows but what the country may be ablaze from sea to sea before we are three months older.”

  With that a sudden silence fell upon as all, and I sat inwardly cursing myself for the heedlessness which had prompted so inopportune a saying. Looking back upon that evening now, it seems to me as though all the disaster with which that year of 1715 was heavy, and near its time, for her, for him — ay, and for me, too, projected its shadow over our heads. I looked into their faces, grown at once grave and predestinate; the shadow was there, a cloud upon their brows, a veil across the brightness of their eyes. And then very solemnly my Lord Derwentwater rose from his chair, and lifted up his glass. The light from candle and lamp flashed upon the goblet, turning the wine to a ruby fire.

  “The King!” he said simply, without passion, without heat. But the simplicity had in it something august We also rose to our feet.

  “The King!” he said again, his eyes fixed and steady upon the dark panels over against him, as though there he read the picture of his destiny. And so he drained his glass, pledging his life and his home in that wine he drank, making it sacramental.

  We followed his example, and so sat ourselves down again. But, as you may think, there was little talk of any kind between us after that Lord Derwentwater made no effort at all that way, but remained engrossed in silence, with all his thoughts turned inwards. Once or twice his wife sought to break through the spell with some trivial word about the country-side, but ever her eyes turned w
ith concern towards her husband’s face, and ever the words flickered out upon her lips. And for my part, being sensible that my indiscretion had brought about this melancholy cloud, I seconded her but ill. At last, and just as I was intending to rise up and take my leave, Lord Derwentwater starts forward in his chair.

  “I have it!” he cried triumphantly, bringing his fist smack upon the table.

  “Well?” asked his wife, leaning forward.

  “I have it!” he repeated, turning to me.

  “What?” I asked anxiously.

  “There’s Dorothy Curwen, of Applegarth,” said he, laying a finger on my arm; and at that we all fell to laughing like children, as though the unexpected rejoinder had been the wittiest sally in the world. “It would be very appropriate, too,” he continued, with a laugh, “for it was rumoured that Mr. Jervas Rookley was paying his attentions in that quarter at one time, and the girl deserves a better fate.”

  “Jervas Rookley?” said I, curiously. “You knew him, of course. What sort of a man was he?”

  For a moment there was a pause.

  “The honestest man in the world,” replied Lord Derwentwater— “to look at But there it ends. His honesty, Mr. Clavering, is all on the outside of him, like the virtues of a cinnamon tree. He should have been a sailor. It was ever his wish, and maybe the hindrance to its fulfilment warped him.”

  How that evening lives again in my memories! Indeed, enough happened not so long after its event to keep it for ever green within my thoughts. I recalled Lord Derwentwater’s solemn toasting of the King, when, no later than the next February, he went, with the King’s name upon his tongue, to the block on Tower Hill. I recalled his wife’s loving glance and happy laugh — with what pity! — when, dressed as a fishwife, she crept to Temple Bar and bribed the guardians of that gate to drop into her apron his head fixed there on the spikes. And more — that evening was a finger-post to me, pointing the road; but, alas! a finger-post that I passed unheeding, and only remembered after that I had gone astray into a slough.