Lawrence Clavering Part 9

"You will not know the name," said Lord Derwent.w.a.ter. "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 Derwent.w.a.ter, "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 Derwent.w.a.ter 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 serieux_, 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 a.s.sert 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 circ.u.mjacent 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 Derwent.w.a.ter; 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 Derwent.w.a.ter." 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 Derwent.w.a.ter 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 pa.s.ses 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 trespa.s.sing 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 Derwent.w.a.ter 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 Derwent.w.a.ter rose from his chair, and lifted up his gla.s.s. The light from candle and lamp flashed upon the goblet, turning the wine to a ruby fire.

"The King!" he said simply, without pa.s.sion, 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 gla.s.s, 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 Derwent.w.a.ter 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 with 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 Derwent.w.a.ter 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 Derwent.w.a.ter--"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 Derwent.w.a.ter'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 ap.r.o.n 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 pa.s.sed unheeding, and only remembered after that I had gone astray into a slough.

For that device of a picture was fixed firmly in my mind, and I acted in the consequence of the thought. I rode home to Blackladies that night, and pa.s.sed at once into the great hall. A fire of logs was burning on the hearth--for even in August I felt at times the nights fall chilly there--and the glow of the flames played upon the portraits of the Rookleys, dancing them into frowns and smiles and glances, as though the faces lived. Father and son, master and heir, they were ranged orderly about the walls in a double row, the father above the heir, who in his turn figured painted anew as the master. I turned to the lackey, a roughish fellow named Luke Blacket who had admitted me.

"Is Mr. Ashlock still up?"

"He is in the office, sir, I think," he answered in some doubt or hesitation. "I will go and see."

"I will go myself." And I crossed the hall.

A man was sitting at the table with his wig off, and his head was bald. His back was towards me, and he did not hear me enter, so engrossed was he about his papers. His pen scratched and scratched as if all time was against him. It was doubtless a fancy, but it seemed to me to run ever quicker and quicker as I stood in the doorway.

Behind me the house was very dark and silent; only this pen was scratching across the paper nimble like a live thing. I stepped forward; I heard a startled cry, and Jonnage Aron stood facing me, with his mouth dropping and a look of terror in his eyes.

I waited for him to speak, comprehending neither his fear nor his business in my factor's office. At last in a jerky, trembling voice, resting one hand upon the table to steady him, he asked wherein he could serve me.