WHERE ENGLAND SETS HER FEET

A ROMANCE

BY BERNARD CAPES

‘Whate’er the bans the wind may waft her,

England’s true men are we and Pope’s men after.’

LONDON: 48 PALL MALL W. COLLINS SONS & CO, LTD. GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND

COPYRIGHT.

First Impression March 1918 Second Impression April 1918

[DEDICATION.]

OCTOBER 1917 TO GARETH WILFRID CAPES LIEUT. HAMPSHIRE REGT. IN PALESTINE THIS EARLIER STORY OF ‘ENGLAND’S TRUE MEN’

CONTENTS.

I. THE PRETTY PLEDGE

II. THE PLEDGE REDEEMED

III. THE JOURNEY WEST

IV. THE END OF THE JOURNEY

V. THE HOUSE BY THE MOOR

VI. SOME NEW FRIENDS

VII. THE OLD WELL HOUSE

VIII. THE APPARITION

IX. TRANSFORMATION

X. CONFIDENCES

XI. TWO’S COMPANY

XII. IL PENSEROSO

XIII. DESOLATION

XIV. AN EMOTION AND A DISCOVERY

XV. THE RETURN OF THE WANDERERS

XVI. THE TRUTH AT LAST

XVII. CERTAIN VISITORS

XVIII. HOPE DEFERRED

XIX. MARKING TIME

XX. MISTRESS JOAN MEDLEY

XXI. THE DECOY

XXII. A POIGNANT INTERVIEW

XXIII. HOME AGAIN

XXIV. COMMITTED

XXV. THE FUGITIVE

XXVI. AN INCUBUS

XXVII. THE VOYAGE

XXVIII. THE TAKING OF THE CARACK

XXIX. THE VIPER ON THE HEARTH

XXX. L’ALLEGRO

XXXI. ‘BACK TO A WORLD OF DEATH’

XXXII. RETRIBUTION

XXXIII. BEREAVEMENT

XXXIV. A LAST DISCOVERY

CHAPTER I. THE PRETTY PLEDGE

When, in the second year of Elizabeth, the Act of Supremacy was passed, there were found only some two hundred in all of the clergy bold enough to dissent from it. Many, it is true, who conformed, did so without sincerity, fearing to lose their livings, and of these was Mr Robert Angell, Vicar of Clapham, or Clappenham village in Surrey, which was in the advowson of the lords of Larkhall and a very good cure. This Mr Angell, a worthy but weak divine, gained nothing, however, by his accommodation, for being suspected, whether rightly or wrongly, of Romanist sympathies, he was shortly deprived of his benefice, and forced to look elsewhere than to the Establishment for a means to subsistence. In this pass he bethought himself to set up a little private school, or palestra, for the sons of such of his neighbours as were well disposed towards him; and this he did, and with fair success, many coming to receive of him their early grounding in the A.B.C.-darius, Lily’s grammar, the Sententiæ Pueriles, and so on by way of Erasmus’s Colloquies to Cæsar and the Georgics, so

that they were well ripe for College and University when their time came. For the Vicar was a sound scholar no less than an amiable man, and ruled by love without much authority, being little addicted to the harsh methods which obtained, and indeed were expected, in his day. He had a dame, a stupid woman but as benevolent as himself, and two or three little children, who tumbled up anyhow and were for ever in hot water, save when they most needed it.

Now to these was presently added another, a stranger, who came to board and lodge with the household when he was no more than a babe in years. His name was Brion Middleton, and he was brought in person, by one Mr Justice Bagott of the Queen’s Bench, thenceforth to be and remain a member of the Angel curriculum until otherwise notified, and eke to form an item of the Angell family—a minute ‘paying guest’, as we should now describe him. He had no parents to speak of; nor did the overbearing Justice deem it necessary to speak of them, imposing the lovely brat, without any leave asked or given, on the clergyman, over whom, it seemed, he possessed a certain hold. For so he asserted that, having professional cognizance of those Papish proclivities which had already broken the poor man, he could very well use it, if he chose, to bring about his utter destruction; which claim might or might not be true, yet in any event was supererogatory, seeing that the divine was far too meek a soul ever to question into, much less reject, the

service so truculently demanded of him. Indeed, of his charity, no less than for his potential profit, he welcomed it; observing which the manner of the visitor changed, and, abating much of his imperiousness, which he found uncalled for, he proceeded forthwith in gentler speech to discuss the terms and provisions of the accommodation he desired for this derelict infant ‘ward’ of his. Planned on no grudging scale, these were to imply a virtual, if indefinite adoption by the couple, who were to do their best by their charge, make no curious inquiries regarding him, and expect no communications whatever save such as turned upon the periodic remittances for his keep, which would arrive duly dated from the Judge’s own office in Gray’s Inn. For the rest the boy was to be brought up as one of the Vicar’s own family, and in all respects given the dues of gentle birth. Having pronounced which ultimatum the visitor, casting not one look on the little wide-eyed whimpering infant, departed, as he had come, by night.

‘Poor curst imp of destiny!’ cried the clergyman, in a burst of emotion, when the other was gone.

‘Thou pretty, pretty pledge of a misguided love!’ cried his admiring lady, gazing on the babe. And then they looked at one another guiltily.

‘This,’ says he, ‘is already to break the spirit of the compact. Henceforth, silence—if for no other reason, Dame, because he hath us in his toils.’

She sighed, and caught the child to her bosom. ‘These be my toils,’ said she. ‘I will hold my tongue, lest by loosing it I loose them.’

This happened in the year 1560, and thereafter for the space of thirteen summers, his numbering but two when he arrived, Brion abode and throve sweetly under that friendly roof.

CHAPTER II. THE PLEDGE REDEEMED

And for thirteen years the silence imposed upon that complaisant couple was faithfully observed by them. They adhered to the letter of their bond, neither seeking nor desiring information as to their charge, content, and soon for his own sake, to accept him, and love him, and contrive for him to the utmost extent of their ability. And he, for his part, repaid their devotion, growing a shapely slip in their midst, and developing as he grew a disposition as endearing as his form was attractive and his mind alert. He was a bright child, with a power of observance behind a staid manner, and a suspicion of humour twinkling under a gravity that seemed always to measure before it spoke. He had a respect for his foster-parents, as one may call them, tempered in the lady’s case with an inclination to laughter, and for both of them a well-deserved affection. And they, being under no directions but to treat him as one of their own progeny, were fain, nevertheless, to observe towards him a certain deference in their manner, due, as it were, to the entertainment of a mystery, and to

concede to him as by right of birth a preference over their offspring, which were three in number, namely Gregory, Richard, and the little Alse the youngest. With these he grew from childhood, being regarded by them as an orphan of some unknown distinction, which, however, after the ways of youth, he was very ready to waive and they to disregard. They were all good comrades together, whether in school or sport, and shared, at least as regarded the boys, a fine spirit of adventure.

Now, during all this period, never, save once, was the ban of excommunication, as regarded the outside world, lifted; and then only for a brief moment; but faithfully to each quarter-day arrived a messenger from Gray’s Inn, bearing in a leathern bag the fourth of the allowance agreed upon for the child’s accommodation. That was ample, rather than sufficient, for his needs, which were to include in all respects the furniture of a gentleman, while leaving to his adopters a generous margin of profit. But, indeed, good souls, they took small advantage of the concession, barely, of their love, recouping themselves for the expenses to which they were put on his behalf, whom they were resolute to regard as naturally entitled to a style and consideration superior to their own. Wherefore the little Brion always went arrayed like a noble, while Gregory and the others must be content with the simpler dress of their condition, a fact which had alone sufficed to appoint him their leader, even were his boldness and quickness of invention less than they were.

And so he lived and learned, being trained without severity and indulged without hurt, a mystery and object of curiosity to the neighbours, with whom, nevertheless, scandal could get no hold, seeing that the Vicar himself, even had he been inveigled into telling, had nothing to tell. The child had been brought by an uncommunicative stranger, was there, and that was all. For the rest, the business was a lawyer’s business.

Now, it was somewhere about the boy’s sixth year when occurred that momentary lifting and dropping of the veil referred to; and by then whatever memories of a brief past he had brought with him into exile had long flickered into extinction. For all that survived to his mind he might have drawn his first breath in the house to which destiny had consigned him.

This house stood a little off the great west road by which the Queen’s Majesty would sometimes travel from Westminster to her Palace of Richmond in Surrey. It was a reasonably modest building, meet to the circumstances of an unbeneficed cleric, but with a pleasant garden croft attached, as well as an orchard, and a paddock which served for a playground. A bridle-track went from it down to the road, where was a swing-gate; and it was here that Brion, returning alone from an errand voluntarily run for his good-natured foster-mother—in whose unmethodicalness and forgetfulness he took, even thus early, a chuckling amusement—came for the first time upon the man who brought, though the boy did not know it, the periodic instalments of pieces to pay for his keep. Seeing him, he stopped, and the two looked at one another.

They looked, and the man’s face took on a queer expression, arrested and questioning. His eyes were light jellies, with pupils that somehow reminded Brion of the black staring pits in the frog-spawn he was used to fish out of the ponds. He was extraordinarily lank and bony, though with a suggestion of sinewy swagger about him that was quite impressive until one examined his features; and then conviction halted. They seemed to betray an odd mixture of impudence and weakness, the two seeming epitomised, as it were, in the near conjunction of a slack mouth and an inverted moustache brushed boldly up from it to meet the nostrils of a long down-drooping nose. He wore a black bonnet with a short feather in it, and hose, breeches, and curtmanteau all black, as befitted a lawyer’s deputy. On his body was a peascod breastplate, more dull than polished, a short sword hung at his thigh, and he bestrode a heavy Flanders horse, plainly caparisoned. He had been in the act of dismounting at the moment of the boy’s appearance, but, seeing him, subsided again into his saddle and sat staring.

Suddenly, as if to some instinct, he pulled off his cap and louted to the little fellow, who responded with a grave ‘Good-morrow, stranger.’

‘Good-morrow, my brave little master,’ answered the man, and bent over as if to signify his desire for a closer confidence (his voice, Brion noticed, had a queer high huskiness in it, like a rusty hinge with an intermittent squeak). ‘A word in your ear,’ says he, behind his hand, and in a forced whisper. ‘’Tis one Master Robert Angell that I seek. You’ll not know, perchance, where he inhabits?’

Brion smiled, and pointed up the bridle path. The stranger sat up, drawing back his shoulders and stiffening his neck, like one happily confirmed in a surmise. ‘Ha!’ said he, and stooped again. ‘I should like a word with him.’

‘I’ll tell him,’ said the boy. ‘I live there myself, you know.’

The stranger was amazed and gratified. ‘Who,’ he said, ‘would have laid on such a leap-frog chance now! I take a back at random, and lo, ’tis a back-friend!’ All the time he spoke his spots of pupils never ceased to probe the face beneath him. He observed its eyes—to which the sight of lethal weapons were as yet little familiar—fix themselves curiously on his sword. ‘Ah!’ he said; ‘you are there, are you?’ and slapped the hilt with his gauntleted hand. ‘Mayst have as good a friend thyself one day, little master.’

‘I will have a rapier,’ said Brion, ‘and a baselard with a sheath of red to hang at my waist.’

‘And so thou shalt, by token of thy gentility,’ cried the stranger. ‘Of scarlet cuirbouilli shall it be, and on it a device of bears with rubies set for eyes.’

‘How has your sword been a friend to you?’ asked Brion.

‘How!’ cried the other. ‘Why, as friends go—a champion at need, true as steel, quick to interpose between myself and danger.’ He whisked out the blade, so as to make it hiss. ‘Hearest?’ he demanded. ‘“What is toward?” it whispers—“some lurking knave, a damsel in distress, an insult to avenge? Slid! but I’ll answer for you and to the point.” It is a friend, I say; a watchdog with a tooth that it hath whetted on a twenty-score of rib-bones in its time. Mark you its edge.’

‘It is a clean edge,’ said Brion. ‘From its newness it might have been bought yesterday.’

The stranger looked a trifle disconcerted.

‘Not so,’ he answered. ‘It is its temper—ha! I tell you, young master, it hath drunk blood like six-shilling beer, and knocked on more breast-bones——’

His voice went out of him with a chuckle. There at the gate, come unnoticed over the grass, stood the ex-Vicar, weak astonishment in his eyes.

‘Master Clerivault!’ quoth he. ‘What brings you here, and, out of your wont, by day?’

He had on a black cassock, but green with age; his shoes were tied with string; one flap of his bonnet stood up, the other down; his pale, mild head, like a calf’s, lay on his ruff as it were on an unwashed platter. Good Mrs Angell, the blowzed and ineffectual, would rebuke him for his untidiness, as she straightened her own tumbled coiffure, or appeared with her kirtle on the wrong side before. It was that sort of thing which tickled little Brion hugely.

The stranger, first re-sheathing his blade, blew a kiss from his finger tips, half affable, half mocking.

‘I will acquaint you, worthy Master Angell,’ he answered: ‘only—I prithee; there’s a proverb anent the ears of little pitchers. Acta exteriora, as we say in the law, indicant interiora secreta. You smoke me?’

‘Child,’ said the puzzled pedagogue, turning to Brion, ‘your message lingers while you wait.’

He waved his hand, and the boy went on to the house. ‘What hidden secrets?’ thought the youngster, for at six one, in Eliza’s time, could translate Latin. Something, some ghost of a mystery concerning himself, which would haunt his subconscious perceptives even now occasionally, seemed to rise within him. It brought with it a confused memory of other things and other places, but too unreal to be localised, and dissipated almost as soon as felt. So also faded his momentary perplexity over the stranger’s pretence of asking his way, when all the time, it appeared, he and his foster-father were well acquainted. It was the sword which remained in his mind. He would have liked to ask more questions about that and its sanguinary adventures.

The Dame, hot and overcome from battling with malapert kitchen wenches, met him with uplifted hands: ‘Why, loveling! and as I am a sinner there was no need to despatch thee, seeing as I never lended Mrs Dapper the recipe after all, but found it in the cupboard where it wont to lie. Come hither, that we measure lips, poor lamb; and so forgive me.’

In the meanwhile, down by the gate, the stranger had stated his business, and the divine acquiesced in it, much as it bewildered that honest old head.

‘It shall be done, Master Clerivault,’ he said, ‘even as you direct. The child shall be there; though for the why or the wherefore I am in no sort to concern myself.’

‘Spoken wisely,’ said the stranger, ‘and in good earnest of the trust which, from the first, hath well reposed itself in thee. Discretion is long life; what thou seest see, but draw no conclusion from it, lest, like the fool’s fen-candle, it lure thee in the mire. Dictum sapienti: I have said. A brave child, master, and a fair credit to his guardians. Farewell.’

He kissed his glove, with a very Malvolio simper, turned his horse’s head for London, and rode away.

Now it was announced by the pedagogue on the following morning that her Majesty was to travel that day by road for Richmond; wherefore all were to don of their best, and, standing together by the wayside, salute her Grace in proper respect as she passed with her train. It was an occasion not the first of its kind, and, like an earlier one, full of excitement and expectancy. Great preparation there was, the little scholars all arriving in their smartest; and indeed when collected they made a pretty group. Only one was wanting, and that was Brion. As the time for the Queen’s coming approached, Mr Angell, taking the boy aside, had bade him follow him by a private path which discharged them into the highway at a point some quarter of a mile westward of the house, and, from its position, well out of range of any chance espial. And this they did, and stood waiting, the elder in some agitation, the younger much marvelling in his baby mind that he was separated from his comrades, and allotted a distinction he could well have done without. However, he was of a philosophical

temperament, and averse from denying a meaning to things because he did not understand them.

It was the month of June, and a sweet merry day, with a wind like laughter blowing among the roadside flowers. And of a keeping with its cheeriness was the child, gay under all his sleek sobriety. His doublet was of white satin, puffed at the shoulders as if they were budding into wings, and so were his breeches, all being seamed with black velvet having a marvellous pattern in gold thread embroidered on it. His little cloak was of black velvet lined with white; white were his hose, and white his shoe-roses of lace with a gold thread in it; and in his copotain hat was a white feather which the wind ruffled like froth. He was fair and pale, without insipidity—a delicate picture.

Now the two had not long to wait before there came to them a sound of distant shrill acclamation; by which they knew that her Majesty was arrived and that the little scholars were cheering her as she passed. And indeed within a minute or so there hove into sight along the road the first of the procession that accompanied her, being a cavalcade of gentlemen of the Queen’s guard, handsome in buff and steel, curiously adorned, in that martial connexion, with ribbons and tassels of gold. Upon whom followed such a miscellaneous company of knights and ladies as it is impossible to discriminate; nor can one describe the gorgeous flood of them in that narrow way, save as a river discharged from the very vats of Tyre, and staining its whole course with a thousand dyes. So, all mounted, they sparkled by, flashing and chattering; and many remarked the little boy, and blew him smiling kisses. Palanquins there were, bearing high ladies; and falconers, and hounds running in leash, and a solemn jester riding an ass; and all along, enclosing the

concourse, went a double file of pikemen—and then at once, the Queen.