Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  “A bit o’ practice, that’s all your Lordship wants,” said Wates. “Come out alone along o’ me for a fortnight, my Lord—” he wheedled and shrugged his shoulders with a “Well, no doubt your Lordship knows best,” when Julian shook his head.

  They ate sandwiches together under a hedge and shared a bottle of Burgundy, and Wates cheered up a little.

  “There be some wild duck down in the Low Pool and your Lordship should try your hand at ’em,” he said. “I’ll take you to a piece of good cover on the bank, then I’ll walk round and put ’em up.”

  “Let’s go!” cried Julian.

  Wates loaded the gun with a vast deal of care.

  “You’ll get but the one shot, my Lord, and you’ll have to be quick. They come up out of the water with a clatter as if all the shutters in the house were being slammed and they’ll be off much quicker than they look to be. So choose your bird at once, and swing your gun right through from his tail to an inch or so beyond his long beak and fire on the swing.”

  He led Julian carefully to a clump of bushes at the edge of the pool, talking only in whispers and left him there. Towards the end of the pool the rushes were thick and Julian could see the ducks swimming, their backs a burnished blue in the sunlight. Wates was out of sight now, but he reappeared in a little while on the high ground beyond the rushes. The ducks began to swim towards Julian’s hiding-place and as Wates came down to the shore, they streamed into the air like a cloud. Julian’s heart was in his mouth, but he chose his bird and swung his gun as he had been told and to his delight he saw one duck close its wings, swoop out of the sky and plop into the pool like a stone. Julian had heard that noise before — yes, once, when a pair of handcuffs had been flung into the Grand Canal. Even after these months, he shivered as he thought of the Leads which roofed the Ducal Palace. There, but for the grace of God and the courage of Columba Tadino, he might be eating his heart out now.

  The best of the day was gone. As they walked back towards the house, Wates stopped at the stables.

  “There’s an old friend of yours here, my Lord,” he said and held open the gate of the stable yard.

  As Julian’s heavy shoes rang upon the stones, an old grey pony pushed his head out of the upper opening of a loose box, looked at him and whinnied. Julian ran to it and stroked the pony’s neck and the pony rubbed its forehead up and down its owner’s waistcoat.

  “That wasn’t fair, Wates,” he said with a break in his voice which he could not check. “Old Morley,” that was the pony’s name, for it was born on Morley’s Farm, — and he fondled the warm skin under its thick mane and smoothed gently the velvet nostrils. “It wasn’t fair,” Julian repeated as he turned away and the tears were in his throat and stinging his eyes.

  “Well,” Wates answered with a grunt. “We reckoned, Gurton and me, that if Old Morley couldn’t keep your Lordship in your own home where you ought to be, nothing that we could say would do it.”

  Julian handed him back the gun.

  “You make it difficult, Wates,” he said as he shook hands with the keeper. “God knows, I’ve been tempted enough to-day.”

  He walked round to the east side of the house where the parish church stood, on a little knoll in the park, not fifty yards away. The door was unlocked. He pushed it open and going up the short aisle sat himself down in his proper place in the big pew facing the chancel steps.

  It was very still. The walls of the chancel were lined with the marble tablets of Scobles, dead and buried beneath the stones. High up hung that of Philip Challoner Scoble, first Viscount Terceira, who had sailed with Drake to the Azores. Julian would have liked one day to bear that old sailor company, but it was not to be. His own place was in the Protestant corner of the Campo Santo at Naples, and he must keep it.

  The shadows were beginning to creep into the small church when Julian shut the door behind him. The warmth had gone out of the sun although it still lay mellow on lawn and path. Julian’s day was almost done.

  He went to his room and dressed with care. He was in his own house, entertaining his friends, and seemliness was demanded. He awaited them in the big drawing-room. They dined in state, Sir James Elliot upon Julian’s right, Brute Bellingham upon his left, and Julian at the head of the table. A fire was burning, the curtains drawn, the candles lit in the sconces, and the talk friendly and familiar. Julian made a good story of his first attempt to “shoot flying” and of his wild duck. But after the port had passed round the table twice, he said:

  “Brute, you have some papers of mine?”

  Bellingham had brought them into the room and laid them upon the sideboard. He fetched them now to the table, but sat with his hands holding them down, as if he feared they would fly away.

  “Publish them, boy!” he cried. “Say you came back and killed the rogue upstairs. Plead your clergy and stay at Grest. For, God’s wounds! you’re the best Linchcombe of the lot.”

  “I should be the worst if I obeyed you,” said Julian. “Give!”

  He gently took those confessions of Domenico and Ferrer, the Traettas and Fabricio Menico the attorney, all the evidence and proofs of the crime of Henry Scoble and his wife Frances from under Bellingham’s hand. He walked with them to the fireplace and dropped them into the fire and stood over them, treading them down with his shoe, whilst the parchment curled over and grew brown and changed from brown to black. Not until they were nothing but flakes of white ashes scattered amongst the burning logs, did he turn away. Then he held out a hand to each of his friends.

  “I shall be gone to-morrow before either of you is awake. But carry me, both of you, for a little while in your hearts.”

  And both of them, just before the day broke, heard the wheels of his chaise as it rolled away up the hill from the house.

  XXXI. A HAVEN OF A SORT

  FROM TIME TO time during the next ten years, Sir James Elliot heard of the Marelli’s progress through Europe. The singer never returned to England, but at Berlin and Hanover, at Vienna and Dresden, he was as familiar a figure and a voice as magnetic as in the cities of Italy. He passed three years in Russia, where he was said to have amassed a large fortune, a year after those between Florence, Milan, Naples and Turin; and then his voice was heard no more. Sir James Elliot understood from Julian’s last words at Grest that he wished to cut himself off from all the memories and associations of his boyhood as utterly as he could; and with a melancholy submission accepted the separation. But Sir James was himself growing old. He was finding it more pleasant now to sit by his own fireside with his recollections, than to endure the long, dusty, lurching journeys and the vile inns of the Continent. The mode of the times, too, influenced him. The turgid librettos built upon ancient legends were fast losing their hold upon the sympathies of the public. Goldoni had pointed out a better way, and music was expectant of that great genius so soon to sweep the old style into oblivion, Amadeus Wolfgang Mozart. But Sir James wondered often what had become of Julian. He had loved the boy dearly and read his character well, and he could not easily imagine him retiring to some estate in Saxony or Northern Italy, or where you will, to enjoy his wealth in an idle seclusion.

  Accident — or was it that the copy of the old pattern was not yet completely woven? — solved his problem.

  Sir James roused himself with many reproaches from his lethargy five years after Julian had ceased to sing. He would make one last tour. He would go and hear these new Gods who were chasing from their thrones, Hasse and the Scarlattis, Jommelli and Porpora. Travelling southwards from Milan, he broke his journey, at Lutria, the capital of a Duchy of some importance in those days. There was a church there, notable for its architecture, and an Opera House which burst into a short but brilliant season during the Carnival. It was early summer, however, when Elliot reached the town and the Opera House was closed. He put up at the Inn of the Lobster and called during the next morning upon the Maestro di Capella, one Orsino Romagno. Signor Romagno received the Baronet with great civility, showed him with pr
ide his musical scores, his books on Church music and the organ in the church itself.

  “All who love music know of your work in Lutria,” said the Baronet, pompously, politely and not very truthfully.

  Signor Romagno purred. But he must not take all the credit — oh no! A little perhaps was due to enthusiasm rather than to his talents which were no greater than those of other maestros.

  I have, besides, every assistance that I ask for from the Chancellor of the Duchy,” he added.

  “He has a love of music?” asked Sir James.

  Signor Romagno pondered.

  “I cannot say that. What I ask for, I get. But I think that he has a grudge against music. But you will no doubt judge for yourself.”

  Sir James shook his head.

  “I have not the honour of knowing him,” he said and the maestro looked at him with surprise.

  “His Excellency Giovanni Ferrer?” cried Signor Romagno, and Sir James jumped as if an early bee had stung him in the neck.

  “Giovanni Ferrer?” —

  “The Marelli,” replied Romagno. “He sang years ago during several carnivals. The Duke entertained him first as a singer, then as a friend. They talked affairs as well as music. Then the Duke persuaded him to take a place on his State Council and finally made him his Chancellor.”

  There had been such cases before. Stefani, the diplomat, had sung in Germany before he became the chief consultant of a great Prince. Was not Farinelli himself supposed to have exercised so much power in the policies of Spain that grandees humbly sought his favour? Elliot was glad that a like career had fallen to the lot of Julian. The ageing of a singer was at its best a melancholy business; and to one who had a grudge against music — Elliot thanked the maestro for the phrase — it would be a miserable one.

  “And as a Chancellor?” Elliot asked, only half daring to put the question.

  “He has all our votes,” replied the maestro with a smile. “He is of a fair and liberal mind with a will of his own. There have been difficult hours in our little history, but His Excellency has not spared himself. He and His Grace are agreed and the State prospers.”

  Sir James walked back to the Inn of the Lobster, noting the comfortable aspect of the citizens with something of the pleasure he would have felt, had he been responsible for it himself. Over his solitary dinner the desire to renew his knowledge of Julian in his new dispensation got the better of his reserve. He persuaded himself without much difficulty that his manners would be faultier than a baronet’s should be, if he did not pay his respects and announce his presence in the town. He seized paper and pen and wrote a letter. He made it easy for Julian to avoid him, if he would, by declaring that he was leaving for Florence in the morning. Then he sent the letter by hand to the Chancellery and waited, in a fever, for an answer. It came back by the same hand. Would Sir James take supper with him at ten at his private house?

  Sir James made sure of the house before the light fell. It stood in the main square, a house of size and dignity with a big walled garden behind it.

  At ten o’clock Julian made his apologies to Elliot for the lateness of the hour. He was now a man of thirty-five, his hair under its powder — for he still wore his own hair — was flecked at the temples and ears with grey and his face lined at the forehead and the mouth. But Elliot felt that some degree of contentment had smoothed out his life.

  “I had to make the hour late,” he said with the tone of one who had parted with Elliot the night before. “You see, here we are jammed in between Piedmont and the Papal States, so we are often in trouble. Do you remember the desolation of Ferrara, Sir James?”

  He took Elliot into the dining-room and so once more the pair sat down at the table together.

  “I have shot a good many wild duck since I saw you last,” said Julian with the grin which Elliot remembered. But he talked only of his little State and the life there. Elliot was careful to follow him with enquiries and comments. Grest was never mentioned by either of them until the moment of Elliot’s departure. They stood together in the porch. A link-boy with a lighted torch was waiting in the square. The town was asleep. For the first time there was a note of constraint in Julian’s voice.

  “So it’s good-bye, old friend,” he said. “You go to-morrow,” and he laid his hand on Elliot’s arm. “I thank you for not talking to-night about the things of which we both were thinking. It was kind, and I shall ask from you another kindness.” He spoke very gently, knowing that his words would hurt. But for his own salvation they had got to be spoken. “I shan’t sleep to-night. Old Admiral Timbertoes will stump the Italian garden at Grest with his wife on his arm and scold his children for the noise they make and be laughed at by them for his pains, until the morning breaks. So when you come back North, will you, please, pass Lutria by? I don’t want to find — do you remember that old song I sang as a boy? — a pillow wet with my tears.”

  Elliot could not speak. He followed the link-boy with the flaming torch. At the corner of the square, he turned. He saw the figure of Julian relieved against the lights of the hall. Then the door slowly closed.

  THE END

  SUNDAY, September 21st, 1941

  The Shorter Fiction

  Mason graduated from Trinity College, Oxford, in 1888.

  Ensign Knightley: And Other Stories (1901)

  CONTENTS

  ENSIGN KNIGHTLEY.

  THE MAN OF WHEELS.

  MR. MITCHELBOURNE’S LAST ESCAPADE.

  THE COWARD.

  THE DESERTER.

  THE CROSSED GLOVES.

  THE SHUTTERED HOUSE.

  KEEPER OF THE BISHOP.

  THE CRUISE OF THE “WILLING MIND.”

  HOW BARRINGTON RETURNED TO JOHANNESBURG.

  HATTERAS.

  THE PRINCESS JOCELIANDE.

  A LIBERAL EDUCATION.

  THE TWENTY-KRONER STORY.

  THE FIFTH PICTURE.

  The first edition’s title page

  ENSIGN KNIGHTLEY.

  IT WAS ELEVEN o’clock at night when Surgeon Wyley of His Majesty’s ship Bonetta washed his hands, drew on his coat, and walked from the hospital up the narrow cobbled street of Tangier to the Main-Guard by the Catherine Port. In the upper room of the Main-Guard he found Major Shackleton of the Tangier Foot taking a hand at bassette with Lieutenant Scrope of Trelawney’s Regiment and young Captain Tessin of the King’s Battalion. There were three other officers in the room, and to them Surgeon Wyley began to talk in a prosy, medical strain. Two of his audience listened in an uninterested stolidity for just so long as the remnant of manners, which still survived in Tangier, commanded, and then strolling through the open window on to the balcony, lit their pipes.

  Overhead the stars blazed in the rich sky of Morocco; the riding-lights of Admiral Herbert’s fleet sprinkled the bay; and below them rose the hum of an unquiet town. It was the night of May 13th, 1680, and the life of every Christian in Tangier hung in the balance. The Moors had burst through the outposts to the west, and were now entrenched beneath the walls. The Henrietta Redoubt had fallen that day; to-morrow the little fort at Devil’s Drop, built on the edge of the sand where the sea rippled up to the palisades, must fall; and Charles Fort, to the southwest, was hardly in a better case. However, a sortie had been commanded at daybreak as a last effort to relieve Charles Fort, and the two officers on the balcony speculated over their pipes on the chances of success.

  Meanwhile, inside the room Surgeon Wyley lectured to his remaining auditor, who, too tired to remonstrate, tilted his chair against the wall and dozed.

  “A concussion of the brain,” Wyley went on, “has this curious effect, that after recovery the patient will have lost from his consciousness a period of time which immediately preceded the injury. Thus a man may walk down a street here in Tangier; four, five, six hours afterwards, he mounts his horse, is thrown on to his head. When he wakes again to his senses, the last thing he remembers is — what? A sign, perhaps, over a shop in the street he walked down, or a leper
pestering him for alms. The intervening hours are lost to him, and forever. It is no question of an abeyance of memory. There is a gap in the continuity of his experience, and that gap he will never fill up.”

  “Except by hearsay?”

  The correction came from Lieutenant Scrope at the bassette table. It was quite carelessly uttered while the Lieutenant was picking up his cards. Surgeon Wyley shifted his chair towards the table, and accepted the correction.

  “Except, of course, by hearsay.”

  Wyley was a new-comer to Tangier, having sailed into the bay less than a week back; but he had been long enough in the town to find in Scrope a subject at once of interest and perplexity. Scrope was in years nearer forty than thirty, dark of complexion, aquiline of feature, and though a trifle below the middle height he redeemed his stature by the litheness of his figure. What interested Wyley was that he seemed a man in whom strong passions were always desperately at war with a strong will. He wore habitually a mask of reserve; behind it, Wyley was aware of sleeping fires. He spoke habitually in a quiet, decided voice, like one that has the soundings of his nature; beneath it, Wyley detected, continually recurring, continually subdued, a note of turbulence. Here, in a word, was a man whose hand was against the world but who would not strike at random. What perplexed Wyley, on the other hand, was Scrope’s subordinate rank of lieutenant in a garrison where, from the frequency of death, promotion was of the quickest. He sat there at the table, a lieutenant; a boy of twenty-four faced him, and the boy was a captain and his superior.

  It was to the Lieutenant, however, that Wyley resumed his discourse.