Lawrence Clavering

Chapter VI

Mr. Herbert

A.E.W. Mason


IT WAS eleven of the forenoon when I stopped at Mr. Herbert’s door, and the long incline of the street was empty. At the bottom of the hill, beyond the little bridge, there was a shimmer of green trees, and beyond the trees a flashing corner of the lake. Through a gap in the houses on my left, I caught a glimpse of the woods of Brandelaw, and the brown slope of Catbells rising from the midst of them. A shadowless August morning bent over the country, cradling it to sleep with all its drowsy murmurings, so that contentment was like a perfume in the air. And it was with a contentment untroubled by any presage that I tied up my horse and knocked at the door.

Mr. Herbert’s lodging was on the first floor, and as I mounted the stairs the noise of an altercation came to me from behind the closed door. The woman who led me up shrugged her shoulders and stopped.

“One of the April showers,” I thought, recalling Lord Derwentwater’s words.

“Will you go up?” she asked doubtfully.

“Yes,” said I. “For I take it that if I deferred the visit till to-morrow, to-morrow might be own brother of to-day.”

She knocked at the door twice and got no answer. I heard a man’s voice exclaim acrimoniously:

“It was the worst mistake man ever made,” and a woman cry in a passion—

“Or woman either. Deary me, I wish I were dead!”

And “Deary me, I wish it too,” said my attendant, and impatiently she turned the handle and opened the door. A man sprang forwards. He was young, I noticed, of a delicate face, with a dark, bilious complexion.

“Mr. Anthony Herbert, I suppose,” I said, taking off my hat, and I stepped into the room. The next moment I regretted nothing so much as that I had not taken the landlady’s advice, for a woman sat at the table, with her face couched upon her arms, crying.

“Your business?” asked Mr. Herbert, abruptly, getting between myself and the table.

I turned my back to the room and looked out of the window, making as though I had not seen his wife.

“Lord Derwentwater showed me yesterday a picture of his wife painted by you,” I said; and I unfolded the purport of my visit slowly. In the midst of my speech I heard the rustle of a dress and a door cautiously open and shut A second or two later I turned back into the room; it was empty. The artist accepted the commission, and I arranged with him that he should set to work next day.

“I am afraid,” he said awkwardly, as he bowed me from the room, “that you caught me at an inopportune moment”

“Did I?” I returned, playing surprise. “Ah yes, you are not dressed,” for he was wearing a dressinggown. “But it is my fault in that I came too early.”

And he closed the door.

“Thank you!”

The words were breathed in a whisper from the landing above that on which I stood. I looked up; the staircase was ill-lighted and panelled with a dark mahogany, so that I saw nothing but the outline of a head bent over the balustrade; and even as I looked that outline was withdrawn.

“Not at all,” I replied to the empty air.

The door behind me was thrown open.

“What is it, Mr. Clavering?” asked Herbert, and he glanced suspiciously up the stairs.

I, on the contrary, stared down them.

“It is,” I answered, “that your staircase is cursedly dark.”

“True,” says he, and steps to my side. “One cannot see an inch further than is needful; “and he looked down them too.

“One cannot even see so far,” says I, and I peered upwards.

“One might break one’s neck if one were careless,” he continued in a musing tone.

“Oh, I did not stretch it out enough for that,” I replied, thinking of something totally different

Herbert looked at me with a puzzled expression.

“It occurs to me, Mr. Clavering,” he resumed, “that if it would please you better I could fetch my easel over to Blackladies.”

“There is no manner of occasion for that,” I replied hastily, and I got me into the street with as little difficulty as if there had been a window to every step of the stairs.

Thus, then, I had my excuse. I rode back to Blackladies that afternoon, and bade Luke Blacket carry such clothes as I required to Mr. Herbert’s lodging.

“Very well, sir,” he said, but did not go. For just as it was getting dusk I saw from the library window Ashlock—for so I still called him, even or perhaps more particularly to myself—ride down the drive with the package upon his saddle-bow. I was as much surprised now at this voluntary exposure of himself as I had been previously at his sedulous concealments. But I bethought me in time that it would be dark long before Ashlock reached the village of Keswick, and as to his doings—well, I deemed it wisest to busy myself as little as possible on that head. For I was never certain from one minute to the next but what I might stumble upon some proof which I could not disregard. Consequently neither then, nor when he returned, did I utter a single word

But on the next morning I followed my clothes to Mr. Herbert’s lodging, sat to him for an hour or so, and then went about my business. And this I did day after day, visiting the gentry about, and attending the fairs and markets until I had acquired as complete a knowledge of what the district intended as would have satisfied my Lord Bolingbroke in person. That there were a great many, not merely of the gentry, but of the smallest statesmen and even peasants who favoured King James, I was rejoiced to perceive. But against this disposition I had to set a deplorable lack of arms and all munitions of war. Here and there, indeed, one came across a gentleman, like Mr. Richard Salkeld, of Whitehall, in Cumberland, who had carefully collected and stored away any weapon that he could lay his hands on, and I remember that in Patterdale, one Mr. John Burtham, a man very advanced in years, led me with tottering steps down to his cellar and showed me with the greatest glee a pile of antique musketoons and a couple of barrels of gunpowder, which his grandfather had hidden there for the service of King Charles L, but had discovered no use for after Marstoon Moor. For the most part, however, such as took the field I saw would take it with no more effectual armament than scythes and sickles and beaten-out ploughshares; and, indeed, I am not sure but what I would rather have so armed myself than with the musketoons and gunpowder of Mr. Burtham. One necessary condition, however, or rather I should say, one necessary preliminary of a rising, all with whom I had speech required and in a unanimous voice—I mean that his Most Christian Majesty should land twenty thousand troops in England and with them money for their subsistence. On the other hand, I knew that the French King, howbeit disposed to the utmost friendliness, was yet anxious, befor he violated the peace of Utrecht, to ascertain which way the wind blew in England, and whether it was a steady breeze or no more than a flickering gust. It was about this time, too, that news was brought to me of the Duke of Ormond’s flight to Paris, and I did not need the letter of Lord Bolingbroke which conveyed the news, to assure me how great a discouragement that flight must be to our friends in France. This, then, was the posture of affairs: France waited upon the Jacobites in England, and they in their turn waited upon France.

“There is but one hope,” said Lord Derwentwater, when we were discussing the uncertainty wherein we lived—“there is but one hope of precipitating the matter to an issue, and that hope lies in the activity of the English Government. The Commons have suspended the Act of Habeas Corpus until next January, in the case of all persons suspected of conspiracy; Papists and Non-jurors are banished from the cities of Westminster and London and for ten miles round; the laws against them are to be put into the strictest execution. I do not know but what the rigour of these proceedings may goad the Jacobites to an extremity. But therein lies the one hope. And how goes it with Darby and Joan?” he broke off in a laugh. “I saw the portrait but yesterday, and it will do no discredit to the young Master of Blackladies.”

But the young Master of Blackladies turned his face awkwardly to the window, and felt the blood rush to his cheeks, but never a word of answer to his lips. For, alas! what before had been the pretext and excuse was now become the real object of my journeyings. I had garnered my information—and the picture was still a-painting and little more than halfway to completion. I cannot even after this long interval of years think of that period without a lurking sense of shame—though I paid for the wrong—yes, to the uttermost farthing, and thank God in all humility that it was given me to repair it. For this, indeed, is true: the wrong went not beyond the possibility of reparation.

It was on the third occasion of my coming to the artist’s apartment that I first met Mrs. Herbert face to face. She entered the room by chance, as it seemed, in the search for some embroidery. Mr. Herbert, for a wonder, was in a great good-humour that morning and presented me to her.

“This is Mr. Clavering, of Blackladies,” he said with a wave of the hand, and so went on with his work. I rose from my chair and bowed to her. But with a quick impulsive movement she came forward and held out her hand to me, reddening, I must think, with some remembrance of the occasion whereon I had first seen her. And then—

“Tony,” she cried reproachfully, with a glance about the room. Indeed, it had something of a slatternly appearance, which seemed to me to accord very ill with the woman who dwelled in it. The poor remains of breakfast—a dish of clammy fish, a crumbled oatmeal cake, and a plate of butter soft and oily—were spread upon a stained table-cloth. But the stains were only upon one side, and I chose to think it was there the man had sat.

“Well,” says he, looking up in a flash of irritation, “what is it? What is it?” And then following the direction of her gaze, “We can afford nothing better,” he snapped out

“That is no reason,” she replied, “why it should drag here till midday;” and she rang a little bell upon a side-table. He shrugged his shoulders and returned to his picture. She stood looking at him for a second, as though she expected him to speak, but he did not.

“Then, Mr. Clavering,” she said, turning to me with a flush of anger upon her face, “I must needs undertake my husband’s duty and make you his apologies.”

Herbert started up from his seat, throwing the brush which he held petulantly on to the floor.

“Nay,” I answered in some distress, for this apology was the last thing I expected or desired, “madam, there is no manner of need that such consideration should be shown me. Mr. Herbert honours me sufficiently by painting my portrait”

“That is very courteous of you,” she answered with a little bow, “and I expected nothing less. But” and she drew herself up again and faced her husband, “it is not fitting we should receive our patrons with so little regard.”

“Madam,” I blurted out in the greatest confusion, “I beseech you. It would cause me the greatest distress to think that I had proved a trouble betwixt your husband and yourself.”

It was not the discreetest phrase I could have chosen, but it served its turn, for it brought them both to a stop, and in a little Mrs. Herbert left us alone. Thereupon I put my hand in my pocket and drew out the medal of which I have spoken.

“Mr. Herbert,” I said, “I have an ornament here, which I would fain have you add to the portrait;” and I held it out to him.

“Very well,” said he, taking it “If you will leave it here, I will paint it in at my leisure.”

“But,” said I, “it would not be wise to let it lie open to the gaze of any chance-comer.”

He turned it over in his hands and glanced at it.

“For myself,” said he, “I do not meddle in politics one way or the other. I will keep it locked See!” And he placed it in a little iron box, and locking it put the key in his pocket.

On the next day that I came, the room was all tidied and newly swept, though the improvement brought no more peace than did its previous disorder. For, this time Mr. Herbert could find nothing that he wanted—even his brushes and colours had been tidied out of sight; so that he was forced to call in his wife to help him in the search for them, and seeing her thus engaged somehow fell ungratefully to rating her. The which she listened to with a patience which I could not but greatly admire; and after all it was she who discovered the brushes. Then very quietly she said:

“I will be no party to a quarrel before Mr. Clavering. It might perchance savour of ill-breeding;” and so she departed with the pleasantest smile, leaving Herbert in a speechless exasperation. For my part I wished intensely that she had not dragged my name into the business.

Herbert turned from the door to me, and from me again to the door; his mouth opened and shut; he spread out his hands in despair, as though the whole world was a riddle to be given up. Then he looked at the brushes in his hand.

“She hid them,” he cried. “Damme but she hid them.”

I felt inclined to rise from my chair and determine my visits there and then. I changed my mind, however, bethinking me that the couple were poor, and that if I acted on the inclination, I should be punishing not merely the husband but the wife as well.

To drive the notion finally from my head I needed nothing more than that by accident I should chance upon Mrs. Herbert on the stairs. For she spoke to that very point as I wished her good day.

“It will be good-bye you mean, Mr. Clavering,” she answered, with something of a sigh for the loss which would befall them, since the defection of a client thus prematurely could not but damage his reputation in those parts.

“It will be good-bye if you wish it,” I returned with a laugh, “but not otherwise.”

Mrs. Herbert gave a start and looked across my shoulder. I turned sharply and saw Mr. Herbert himself standing in the doorway above me. He must have heard the words, I knew, but he stood quite still, his face passionless as stone, and for that reason, maybe, I did not at the time consider the construction he would be likely to put on them.

“Speaking for myself,” I continued, “I shall not easily part from Mr. Herbert until the picture is finished and in my safe keeping.”

So I spake with a polite bow to the painter, little thinking in how strange and hazardous a fashion I was destined to fulfil my words.

It must not, however, be thought that the pair were ever a-seething in this pot of quarrels. The sun shone betwixt the thunderclaps and with no dubious rays. At times, for instance, Mrs. Herbert would bring a book of plays into the room and read them aloud whilst her husband worked, and I—I, alas I watched the changes of her face. Once I remember she read in this way Mr. Congreve’s “Love for Love,” with a decent slurring of some passages and a romantical declaiming of others, at which Mr. Herbert would break into languishments and sighs, and Mr. Lawrence Clavering would feel himself the most awkward intruder in the world.

It was in the midst of this particular reading that Anthony Herbert was called downstairs upon some business, and she and I were left for a little to our devices. Mrs. Herbert continued to read with her eyes glued upon the pages, but gradually I could not but notice that a certain constraint and awkwardness crept into her voice. At last she stumbled over a passage and stopped. I rose from my chair, and, sensible that a like awkwardness was stealing over me, went and gazed at the picture. I made the mistake, however, of praising it, and of praising it, perhaps, with some extravagance, for the encomium naturally enough being couched in that vein, brought the artist’s wife across the room to consider of it too.

‘’In truth,” says she, looking from the portrait to myself, “he has caught your features, Mr. Clavering, even to the eyes and the curve of the chin.”

“Yes! “I replied. “It needs no connoisseur to foretell how much Mr. Herbert will achieve.”

She did not answer, but kept looking at me curiously, and I continued, in an unaccountable flurry:

“Sir Godfrey Kneller ages; one hears of no one who can fitly claim his place. The honour of it should fall to Mr. Herbert—nay, must fall to him, I think—and it is no barren honour. He has an estate at Witton, Lord Derwentwater tells me. He sits as Justice of the Peace there, and he is even now painting his tenth monarch. It is no barren honour.”

I spoke with all the earnestness I could command, but of a sudden, from the corner of my eye, I saw her lips part in a queer smile. I felt my voice shake, and covered the shaking with a feeble laugh.

“So an obscure country gentleman,” I continued, “has reason to count himself lucky in getting his picture done by Mr. Herbert before the sovereigns of Europe engross his art;” and at that, for sheer want of assistance, I faltered to a stop. The silence crept about us, insidious, laden with danger, and every second that passed made it yet more dangerous to speak. The woman at my side stood motionless as a statue. I did not dare to glance at her; I stared at the portrait and saw nothing of it. It was as though my face had faded from the canvas in a mist I was conscious only of the tall figure at my side. I tried to speak, but no thoughts came to me—nothing but a tumult of unconsidered words—words which I had never spoken before, and of which even now I did not apprehend the meaning. They whirled up within me and beat against my teeth for passage, I locked my mouth to keep them in, and then I began to be afraid; I began to tremble, too, lest the woman should move. At last I conned over a sentence in my mind, and repeated it and repeated it, silently, until I was sure that I could utter it without a trip.

“It must be a noble thing to be the wife of so great an artist,” and as I spoke the words I was able to move away.

She gave a little quiet laugh, and answered—

“With, besides, the prospect of being wife to a Justice of the Peace at Witton.”

For speaking that word I almost felt that I hated her.

“Oh, why won’t yon help?” I cried In a veritable despair, stretching out my arms to her.

She turned on me suddenly with her face aflame and a cry half uttered on her lips. What would have been the upshot I cannot tell, but the door opened or ever she could articulate a word, and Mr. Herbert returned to put an end to our talk. For a week after that I mounted the stairs with uncertain steps, each footfall accusing me for that I came. However, during that week I saw her no more, and was beginning to acquire some confidence in my powers of self-mastery. Indeed, I went further, and became even vaingloriously anxious that I might chance upon her in order to put those powers to the test.

The opportunity came, and this is what I made of it There had been some dispute that morning over a trivial domestic matter, and Mr. Herbert sat glooming before his easel, when his wife entered the room with a certain air of defiance and took her customary seat She held a book in her hand, bound in old leather, with gold lettering upon the back, so that I was able to read the title. It was Sir Thomas Malory’s Book of the Morte d’Arthur, and in a very deliberate voice she read out of the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, and much emphasis she laid on the temperate gentleness of King Arthur and his unreadiness to believe in any misdoings either of his wife or his companions. But her words fell vainly upon deaf ears, for Herbert took no heed of any word she read or any accent of her voice; the which she came to see, and losing all her defiant dignity in a little, shut the book with a bang and ran out of the room.

For my part I had listened to the story in the greatest disorder of spirit, and was very glad to be quit of it, and of Mr. Herbert too, for that day at all events, in spite of the supremacy of his genius.

But the staircase, as I have said, was very dark, and particularly so at one corner where it turned sharply two flights below the doorway and made an angle in the wall. Now as I passed this angle, something moved in it I stopped, wondering what it was, and then a voice came to me in a whisper—

“Lancelot!”

Instinctively I drew back and threw out my hands. They touched—they held another pair of hands—for the fraction of a second.

“No,” said I with an attempt at a laugh, hollow as the clatter of an empty mug, “the name does not fit me, for at all events Lancelot could fight, and I have not learnt even so much skill as that”

Unconsciously I raised my voice as I spoke, and a second after the door creaked gently above us. She drew back into the corner all a-tremble, like a chided dog, and the movement touched me with a pity that made my heart sicken. The angle I knew could not be seen from the stair-head. I slipped purposely on a step, and swore a little not over-quietly.

“What is it?” asked Mr. Herbert

“An ill-lighted staircase is the devil,” said I; and I grumbled my way to the street-door. But I heard Mr. Herbert’s door shut before I left the house.

Whither I went after leaving the house I was in that perturbation of mind I cannot tell. It was my habit to stable my horse at the Lamb and Flag, opposite, and subsequently I was told that I entered the courtyard and wandered out of it again like one blind. A fire burned in my blood, and the aspect of the world was fiery to my vision. I went whither my footsteps guided me, and all places they led me to were alike. Afterwards it came upon me like the memory of a dream, that I had stood for some while with the sheen of water beneath my eyes, and the lapping of water in my ears, and that hereafter I had climbed for long hours up a wearisome green slope; and indeed my insteps and knees ached for days to come, so it may be that I went down to Derwentwater and thence toiled up some part of Skiddaw. But of all this I knew nothing at the time; I only knew that I came again to the possession of my wits in Keswick Street about ten o’clock of the night, very hungry and very tired. I entered the inn and bade the landlord get me some supper before I started homewards. And this he did, laying a table for me in the best parlour of the house a long room on the first floor, with window-seats, from which one commanded the street. The landlord prepared the table for me at the inner end of the apartment and set the lamp there; so that as the light was but dim, and I rested myself in the window until such time as supper should be brought, I was well-nigh in the actual dark.

Now while I was seated there, a man came down the street towards me. I should not, I think, have noticed him at all but for the caution of his movements. For he kept very close to the houses and stepped lightly upon his toes; and when for all his care his spurs clinked or his foot rolled on a loose stone, he paused and looked behind and about him. So he walked until he came in front of Mr. Herbert’s house. Then he stopped, and it came upon me that there was something familiar in his appearance.

I drew back into the curtains. He gazed up and down the street and then to the windows of the Lamb and Flag. A heavy tramp sounded on the cobbles some yards away, very loud and unexpected, so that it startled me little less than it did the man I watched. I drew yet farther into the curtains; he slunk into a cavity between two of the houses, and that action of his flashed of a sudden a plan into my mind; I remembered that dark angle on the staircase. The footfalls grew louder, a dalesman passed along the centre of the roadway, his steps died away up the hill. My man crept from his hiding-place, and whistled softly under Mr. Herbert’s windows. The blind was pushed aside from the window an inch or so, and I saw a head against the light pressed upon the window-pane. Then the window creaked and opened. The head was thrust out and a few words were interchanged, but in so low a tone that I could catch nothing of their purport. Then the window was shut and the man advanced to the door. One thing was clear to me from these proceedings, that whosoever he might be, and I had little doubts upon that score, this was by no means his first visit to Mr. Anthony Herbert

I set that piece of knowledge aside, however, for the present. There was a further point which concerned me more particularly just then. Was the street-door on the latch? Or must Mr. Herbert descend to give his visitor entrance?

The visitor turned the handle, opened the door, and closed it again behind him. I waited until I saw his shadow on the blind. He had taken off his hat and his cloak, and his profile was figured upon it in a silhouette.

I ran down the stairs and across the street without so much as picking up my hat I opened Mr. Herbert’s door, and crept up the staircase until I came to the angle which I had reason to know so well There I hid myself and waited in the dark. And how dark it was and how intolerably still! Very rarely a burst of laughter, or a voice louder than the usual, would filter up to me from the back part of the house. But from the studio above, nothing not the tread of a foot, not the whisper of a voice, not the shuffle of a chair.

What were they debating in such secrecy? I asked myself and then, “Perhaps I had been.mistaken after all?” I clung to the possibility, though I had little faith in it. At all events, this night I should make sure—one way or another I should make sure.

After the weariest span, the door was opened. I could not see it because of the turn of the staircase. I stood, in fact, just under the door; but I could see on the wall facing me, at the point where the stairs turned a bright disk of light suddenly appear, such as a lamp will throw. The visitor would pass by that disk; he would intercept the rays of the lamp; those rays would burn upon his face. I leaned forward, holding my breath; the steps above me cracked as a man descended them. I heard a short “good night,” but it was Mr. Herbert who spoke; and then the door was closed again and the disk vanished from the wall I could have cursed aloud, so bent was I upon discovering this visitor; but the footsteps descended towards me in the dark, and I drew myself back into my corner.

As they passed me I felt a sudden flap of wind across my face, as though the man was moving his hands in the air to guide him, and I reckoned that the hand was waved within an inch of my nose. A few seconds later and the street-door opened. The sound brought home to me all the folly of my mistake. If I had only waited outside, in that alley, say, where he himself had crept, I should have seen him—I should have known him! Now I must needs wait where I stood until he was clean out of reach, I counted a hundred, a hundred and fifty, two hundred and then in my turn I slipped down the stairs and out of the house. The night was not over-clear, and I could perceive no one in the street. I strained my ears until they ached, and it seemed to me that I heard a light tip-toe tread very faint, diminishing up the hill I ran in its direction with as little noise as I might. But I heard my spurs clink-clinking even as his had done, only ten times louder.

I stooped and loosed them from my feet. Then I ran on again; it seemed to me that the footsteps grew louder. I turned the corner at the head of the street. In front of me there was a blur of light; the blur defined itself into four moving points of flame as I approached, and, or ever I was aware of it, I had plumped full into my Lord Derwentwater, who was walking homewards behind his torch-bearers to the lake.

“Come, my man,” said he, “what manners are these?”

“The manners of a man in a desperate hurry,” says I, “and so good night to you, my lord;” and I moved on one side.

“Lawrence Clavering!” he cried out and caught me by the arm. “The very man I would be speaking with.”

“But to-morrow, my lord—to-morrow.”

“Nay, to-night. You come so pat upon my wish that I must needs believe God sent you;” and the deep gravity of his tone was the very counterpart of his words. I stopped, undecided, and listened. But I could no longer hear the faintest echo of those stealthy footsteps.

“Then there is something new afoot,” said I.

“Something new, indeed,” says he, “though I take it, it concerns no one but you.” And he bade his footmen go forward. “A minute ago a man passed me on this road, his cloak was drawn about his face, his hat thrust down upon his ears, but the light of my torches flickered into his eyes, and I knew the man.”

“It was doubtless my steward,” I blurted out. “He was in Keswick to-day.”

“Your steward?” he asked in wonderment “Your steward? No, I should not pester you with news about your steward. It was young Jervas Rookley.”

“Well,” said I, “what of him, my lord? I have nothing to fear from Jervas Rookley.”

“You think that?”

“I know it,” I answered, a trifle unsteadily. “At all events, there is solid reason why I should have no grounds for fear.” For I bethought me that I had loyally kept faith with him.

Lord Derwentwater stood for a moment silent.

“Walk a step with me,” he said, and holding my arm he continued, “I would not meddle in your private concerns, Mr. Clavering, but I know Jervas Rookley, and it will be a very ill day for you when you hear his step across the threshold of Blackladies.”

I felt a chill slip into my veins, for if he spoke truth and his words fitted so aptly with my suspicions that I could not disbelieve them—why, that day was long become irrevocable. However, I sought to laugh the matter off.

“A very ill day indeed, for on that day I lose Blackladies to the Crown.”

“The danger will come from Jervas Rookley himself.”

“Then it will be man to man.”

We were now come within a few paces of the footmen, so that the flare of their torches lighted up our faces fitfully. My companion stopped.

“I have known men, Lawrence,” he said, “who went down to their graves in the winter of their years—children—all the more lovable for that, maybe,” for an instant his grip tightened abput my arm, “but none the less children, and I have known others who were greybeards in their teens.”

He paused and looked at me doubtfully, as though he would say more.

“You will be wary of this man. He can have little friendliness for you and it will be no common motive that can bring him back to these parts. You will be wary of him, Lawrence?”

So much I readily promised, and again he stood shifting from one foot to the other, balanced, uneasily, betwixt speech and silence. But all he said was, again

“You will be wary of him, Lawrence,” and so with a grasp of the hand moved off.

I watched him going, and as the torches dwindled to candle-flames and, from candle-flames to sparks, a great desire grew in me to run after him and disclose all that I knew of Jervas Rookley. The desire grew almost to a passion. Had I spoken then, doubtless he would have spoken then, and so, much would have been saved me. But I had given my word to hold this estate in trust, and ignorance or the assumption of ignorance was the condition of my keeping it The torches vanished in the darkness. I walked back to the inn and mounted my horse. As I rode out of the courtyard, I saw, far away down the street and close to the lake’s edge, four stars, as it were, burning. There was still time. I turned my horse; but I had given my word, and I spurred him to a gallop up the Castle Hill and rode down Borrowdale to Blackladies.


Lawrence Clavering - Contents    |     Chapter VII - A Dispute and Its Consequences


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