Lawrence Clavering

Chapter V

Blackladies

A.E.W. Mason


I WASTED no long time in London, you may be sure, but leaving Ashlock at the Hercules’ Pillars in Piccadilly, went down with my letter to Richmond. On my return I supplied myself with a wardrobe better suited to my present state and set out for the north.

The mansion of Blackladies lies off Borrowdale upon the flank of Green Comb. I got my first view of it from the top of Coldbarrow Fell; for on coming to Grasmere, Ashlock had informed me of a bridle-path leading by Harrop Tarn and Watendlath, which would greatly shorten the journey, and since my impatience had grown hotter with every mile we had traversed, I despatched my baggage by the roundabout high-road through Keswick, and myself took horse in company with Ashlock.

It was noonday when we came to the ridge of the fell, and the valley lay beneath us shimmering in a blue haze, very lonely and very quiet. Now and again the thin sharp cry of a pee-wit came to our ears. Now and again our voices waked a sleepy echo. A little hamlet of white cottages—Stonethwaite they called it—was clustered within view, and towards the centre of Borrowdale, but so small was it and so still that it seemed not so much a living village as a group of huts upon some remote island which a captain, putting in by chance for water, may discover, long since built by castaways long since perished.

“Look, sir! “cried Ashlock, pointing downwards with his whip. “That is your house of Blackladies.”

It lay in the hollow at my feet, fronting Langstrath and endwise to me; so that I only saw the face of it obliquely, and got no very clear idea of that beyond that it was pierced with an infinity of windows, for a score of mimic suns were ablaze in the panes. It was a long house with many irregular gables, built in three stories, of grey stone, though this I could hardly make sure of at the time, for the purple bloom of a wisteria draped the walls close and clambered about the roof. What attracted my eyes, however, far more than the house, was the garden, of which I had the plainest view, since it was built up from the slope at the east end of Blackladies, and not so much on account of its beauty as because of the laborious care which had been bestowed upon it. It was laid out in the artificial fashion of half a century ago, with terraces and stone staircases, and the lawns cut into quincunces and etoiles, and I know not what geometrical figures. The box-trees, too, were fashioned into the likeness of animals; here and there were statues. I could see the spray of a fountain sparkling in the sun, and on the level below the first terrace, a great white grotto and an embroidered parterre like a fine lady’s petticoat. Nature sprawls naked hereabouts; only at this one point had it been trimmed and dressed, and that with so quaint an extravagance as to make me conjecture whether I had not been suddenly translated within sight of some fairy pleasaunce of the Arabian Nights.

I sat in my saddle, gazing at the house silently, and bethinking me of what service it might prove in the enterprise on which I was embarked.

“It is a handsome property, sir,” said Ashlock, from just behind my elbow, and he spoke in a tone of anxious inquiry, as though he would fain discovei what effect the glimpse of it had wrought in me.

“With a handsome rent-roll to match?” I asked no less eagerly, as I looked downwards.

A shadow fell sharply along the neck of my horse. I turned and saw Ashlock’s face stretched forward, and peering into mine with startled eyes.

“A very handsome rent-roll, sir,” he replied; “so handsome that a plain man finds it difficult to understand how the heir could sacrifice it for any cause.” He dropped the words very slowly one after the other.

I understood the fellow’s suspicion, and I swung my horse round with a jerk, so as to look him squarely between the eyes. He drew himself straight on the instant, and it seemed to me that his hand tightened insolently upon his whip.

“Ashlock!” I exclaimed, “before we go down to Blackladies, I will say a word to you. In Paris you showed me a way by which I could hold this estate fairly and honourably.”

“It was at your own wish, sir, that I spoke,” he interrupted hurriedly, “and because I saw that you meant to refuse it.”

“Yes, yes,” I went on. “But I thanked you then for the readiness of your wits, and there was an end of your concern in the matter. I hold Blackladies in trust for this cousin of mine, Mr. Jervas Rookley. I have said so, and I need no mentor at my elbow to remind me of a pledge I gave to myself. Least of all will I permit my servant”—and in my heat I threw an ungenerous scorn into the term—“to take that office on himself. If he does, his first word sends him packing.”

The man bent his head so that I could no longer see his face, and replied with all the confidence gone from his voice and manner.

“I came to Paris with no thought but of serving you as faithfully as I endeavoured to serve Sir John before you. But it was your reluctance that put the thought of Mr. Jervas into my head; and once it was there, it stayed and grew; for I loved Mr. Jervas, sir. It was Mr. Jervas I served in my heart, and not Sir John.”

The fellow spoke with such evident contrition, and a devotion so seemingly sincere, that I felt reproved for the severity I had used, and I began to admire what sort of man my cousin must be who could leave so clear an image of himself in the hearts of his dependents. I was for saying something of the sort, when a movement which Ashlock made arrested me. It was an insignificant movement—just the reaching out of his hand to the snaffle of his bridle—but it woke all my distrust of him; for I noted the quick play of his long, sinuous fingers, and I recalled his stealthy advance from the tiller of the pinnace to the bows, and the hovering of his hands above my chest

“Get down from your horse!” I cried suddenly.

He looked in surprise at me, as well he might I repeated the order; he obeyed it

“Are you Catholic or Protestant?” I asked.

Ashlock’s surprise increased.

“Catholic, sir,” he answered.

“Good! Now, understand this. Of the journey to Bar-le-Duc, of the passage from Dunkirk, you must never speak, you must never think. So much hangs on your silence and mine as you can have no notion of. You came to Paris, and from Paris I returned with you. That is all you know. Of the rest, whisper so much as a hint to the deafest yokel in the valley, and it will go very ill with you.”

“I promise,” he answered.

“But I need more than a promise; I need an oath. You are Catholic, you say, so there’s better chance of your keeping it. Down on your knees here, and swear to me that not a word, whatever you know, whatever you believe, shall escape your lips.”

Ashlock started back, looking about him, as though he would find some diversion or excuse. But the blue, sunlit sky was above us, the brown fells about us, and never a living soul beside us two.

“Come! “said I, insisting. “Swear it! Swear it by the Cross; swear it by the Holy Virgin.”

“I swear,” he began, holding up his hand

“Nay,” I broke in upon him. “On your knees! on your knees!”

Again he looked about him, and then to my face. But I kept my eyes stubbornly upon him. I would have him swear that oath, and I gathered all my strength into the resolution, that I might compel him; for I felt, in some strange way, that we were pitted in a contest for the mastery of Blackladies, and I was minded to settle that contest before I set foot across its door. I looked upon this oath that he would swear before me on his knees chiefly as an emblem of his submission. I might be to him a vicarious master; still, his master I would be, not having that confidence in him that I could allow him to harbour doubts upon the score.

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 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 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 bettet 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.

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 passed 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.

“It was Mr. Ashlock I needed,” I replied.

“He is not here, sir,” faltered Aron, looking about him like a trapped beast

“I can see that for myself, Where is he?”

“I don’t know, sir,” and his confusion increased, “in bed, maybe. Shall I send him to you?”

He made a hasty movement as though he would escape from further questioning.

“No,” said I, “stay where you are,” and I stepped forward to the table. I took up the last paper he had been writing; the ink was still wet upon it, and I saw that it was a letter to one of my tenants in Johnny Wood concerning some improvements of which I had spoken to Ashlock.

“You do the work I pay my steward for,” I said. “And how comes that about?”

“Very seldom, sir,” he babbled out; “once or twice only, when Mr. Ashlock has been busy. It is not well done,” and he made as though he would take the paper from my hands, “for I am no clerk, but he told me the letter was not of the first importance.”

I looked at the sharp, precise characters of the letter.

“I’ll tell you what is not well done, Aron,” I cried in some heat, “and that is your excuse. The handwriting here tells of practice, and I see that you thrust your pen behind your ear.”

Aron’s yellow face flushed a dull red. He gave a start and plucked the pen from behind his ear; and the impulsive movement ludicrously betrayed his sense of detection.

“Ahl” said I with a sneer. “You had best ask Mr. Ashlock in the future to provide you with the excuse at the same time that he provides you with the work.”

I bent over the table to examine the other papers which were littered upon it I had just time to remark that they were all in Aron’s handwriting when a sharp click sounded through the silent house, not loud, but very clear, like the cocking of a trigger. The door was open; I stepped into the passage and peered along it Aron moved uneasily in the room at my side, and his movement brought him betwixt me and the lamp, so that a shadow fell across my face and on the passage wall. I realized that I had been standing visible and distinct in a panel of light that was thrown from the open doorway. Aron moved again out of the light I took a couple of paces into the dark, and again stretched forward, peering in front of me. I could see well nigh the length of the house. The corridor in which I stood ran straight to the hall. On the far side of the hall, opposite to me, there opened a wide gallery, which was closed at the end by a parlour, and this parlour lay at the east end of the house, and gave on to the topmost terrace of the garden. The door of the parlour stood open, so that I saw right through it to the moonlight shining white upon the window-panes. But I saw more than this. I saw the window opening—it was the catch of the window which I had heard—and a man, with his hat pulled down upon his brows and a heavy cloak about him, stealing in. I was the more astonished at the sight because Ashlock had informed me that there was no outlet from the garden at all; and that I had considered to be true, since on one side a cliff rose sheer above it, while on the other side and at the end it was enclosed with a sunk fence of stone. The intruder closed the window and came a-tiptoe down the passage. I drew close against the wall and held my breath. He passed by me insensible of my presence and walked into the room, and as he came into the light I saw that he was holding the ends of his peruke in his mouth. I did not, however, on that account fail to recognise that the new-comer was my steward. I followed very softly close upon his heels.

“Ashlock!” he began, and would have said more, but Aron held up a finger to his lips and grimaced at him.

I closed the door behind me with a bang and leaned against its panels. The steward swung round abruptly.

“And what stress of business keeps Mr. Ashlock so late from his bed?” I asked; and added pleasantly, “By the way, which of you is Mr. Ashlock?”

Seldom have I seen a man so completely taken aback, as my steward was then, and I was in the mind to profit by his confusion.

“And which of you is Mr. ——” I continued, and came all at once to a dead stop. For the strangest suspicion flashed into my mind.

“I rode over to the farmer of Johnny Wood,” explained the steward, and Aron’s brows went up into his forehead, as well they might, “thinking that a word with him would expedite the business.”

“It was a pity then,” I returned, “that you kept Aron up so late writing a letter on that very subject”

I picked up the paper from the table and placed it in his hands. His face puckered for a second and then smoothed again. He read it through from beginning to end with the completest nonchalance.

“It will do very well,” he said easily to Aron, and then turned to me with a smile. “The letter, of course, is a usual formality.”

“Surely an unnecessary one,” I insisted.

“Men of business,” he returned suavely, “will hold it the reverse. I presume, sir, that you have some urgent need of me.”

I recovered myself with a laugh.

“Not urgent,” I replied, “but since you are here——” I took up the lamp from the table and went into the passage. The steward followed me, and after him, though at some distance, Aron stumbled in the dark. So we came into the hall. I held up the lamp above my head. At one point, in the lower row of pictures, there was a gap; the oak panels made as it were a black hollow amongst the bright colours of the figures, and the hollow was just beneath the portrait of Sir John.

I pointed an arm to it

“It is the one vacant space left in the hall.”

Ashlock glanced sharply at me.

“Mr. Jervas Rookley’s picture should have hung there,” he replied in a rising tone, which claimed the prerogative of that space still for Mr. Jervas Rookley.

“But it did not,” I replied. “The space is vacant, and since it is the fashion of the house that the master’s portrait should hang in the hall, why, I will take my predecessors for my example.”

Ashlock took a quick step forward as though pushed by some instinct to get between me and the wall, and turned upon me such a look of perplexity and distrust, that for a moment I was well-nigh dissuaded from the project.

I heard a step behind me. It was Jonnage Aron drawing nearer. I turned and gave the lamp to him to hold, bidding him stand further off, and I said with a careless laugh, though I fixed my eyes significantly upon Ashlock—

“My successor has full licence from me to displace it when his time comes to inherit, but for the present my picture will hang there.”

Ashlock looked me steadily In the eyes. The distrust faded out of his face, but the perplexity remained and deepened.

“Your picture, sir?” he asked in a wondering tone, as though he would be asking what in the devil’s name I needed with a picture at all.

“Yes, Mr. Ashlock,” said I with a swaggering air, which I doubt not was vilely overdone, “my picture. And why not, if you please?”

“It must needs be painted first,” he said.

“That is very true,” I replied. “I had even thought of that myself, and so apt an occasion has presented itself, that it would be folly to disregard it For a painter has but lately come to Keswick. My Lord Derwentwater spoke of him to me, and indeed showed me some signal evidence of his skill.”

“Lord Derwentwater?” exclaimed Ashlock, In a curious change of tone. The perplexity in its turn began to die off his face, and it was succeeded by an eager curiosity. It seemed as though the name gave to him a glimmering of comprehension. Though what it was that he comprehended I could not tell.

“Yes, Lord Derwentwater told me of the man,” I repeated, anxious to colour my pretext with all the plausibility of which it was capable. “Mr. Anthony Herbert——”

“Mr. Anthony Herbert?” questioned Ashlock, slowly.

“It is the painter’s name,” said I, and he seemed to be, as it were, savouring it in his mind. “You will not have heard it before. Mr. Herbert has painted a portrait of Lady Derwentwater,” and I turned away and got me to my room, with Aron to light the way. I left Ashlock standing in the hall, and as I mounted the lower steps of the staircase, I heard him murmur to himself in a tone of reflection—

“Mr. Anthony Herbert!”—and he shook his head and moved away.

Now, some half an hour afterwards, as I was lying in bed, a thought occurred to me. I got me to the door and opened it The house was still as a pool. I took my candle in my hand and crept to the stairhead. The moonlight pouring through the tall windows, lay in great silver stripes upon the floor. I stood for a little and listened. Once or twice a board of the staircase cracked; once or twice an ember spurted into flame and chattered on the hearth, but that was all. I stole downstairs, not without a queer shame that I should be creeping about my own house. At the bottom I lighted my candle, and shading it with my hand, crossed swiftly to the vacant space among the portraits. I held the light close against the panels. Yes, there were the splintered holes where the nails had been driven in. I lowered the candle till it was level with the lowest rim of the picture-frames on either side of the space. Yes, there was a dimming of the oak, like breath upon a window-pane, where the edge of a picture had rubbed and rested against it I rose upright, blew the candle out, and stood in the dark, thinking. “Mr. Jervas Rookley’s portrait should have hung there,” he had said. It had hung there—not a doubt of it. Was it destroyed, I wondered? Was it in some lumber-room, hidden away? And I remembered a room in the upper part of the house which I had found locked, and was told the key was lost. Why had the picture been removed? Was it so that I might not recognize it? Well, it did not matter so long as I never stumbled across it. I groped my way up the staircase, repeating to myself one sentence from the will, “I must not knowingly support Mr. Jervas Rookley. ” I did not know, I said to myself. I might suspect, I might believe, but I had no proof; I did not know. I clutched the phrase to my very heart. I could keep my trust—the estate need not enrich the Hanoverian—Jervas Rookley should come to his own, if God willed it, in his own time. For I did not know. My steward was my steward—no more. What if he was ever out of sight when a visitor reined in his horse at the door? He might be busy in his office. What if another wrote his letters? There was work enough for the steward, and who should blame him for that he lightened his labours, so long as his work was done? I did not know. Yet how the man must hate me, I thought, as I recalled that hour on the ridge of Coldbarrow Fell.


Lawrence Clavering - Contents    |     Chapter VI - Mr. Herbert


Back    |    Words Home    |    A.E.W. Mason Home    |    Site Info.    |    Feedback