Katherine Christine E-Book

Hugh Walpole

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Nicholas Harris, his father, and Rosamund Harris, his mother, looked at him with love and pride. Nicholas, a huge man, was 1603 fifty-nine years old this year, and his wife thirty-seven. They were in their own house in Westminster, and everything was fine with them. Robert, their only child, was three years old. He was wide and well-built, but not tall, his strong legs lay firmly on the ground, his round head sat well on his thick neck, his eyes were steady and piercing. He was still a child, but already had self-confidence and independence. Now he was a serious child: he only laughed when his father was at hand.

Leseprobe

Contents

PART I

THE KING OF STUTTERS

NICHOLAS HERRIES IN HIS HOME

THE MAGICIAN AND HIS LITTLE DAUGHTER

MUSTER OF HERRIES

KATHERINE: BIRTHDAY REMINISCENCE

TWO HALVES OF THE POISONED APPLE

THE LAKE

‘THE PEACOCK HAS FLOWN’

BIRTH OF AN IMPORTANT MEMBER OF THE HERRIES FAMILY

PART II

DEDICATION OF THE HEART

THIS MY MASTER

THE FLAMES ARE HIDDEN

PORTRAIT OF THE KING

KATHERINE AT SEDDON

PETER AND HIS CONFESSION

LUCY IN CUMBERLAND

THE MOON IS DARKENED

NICHOLAS SEES THE SUN

PART III

KINSMEN AT WAR

THE BETRAYAL

THE BETRAYED

THE ROCKS

CROMWELL: FLAME AND CLOUD

BRAVE BANNERS AT MALLORY

PART I

THE KING OF STUTTERS

NICHOLAS HERRIES IN HIS HOME

Robert Herries looked up, staggered to his feet and, chuckling, started across the floor towards his father.

Nicholas Herries, his father, and Rosamund Herries, his mother, looked at him with love and pride. Nicholas, a vast man, was in this year 1603 fifty-nine years of age and his wife thirty-seven.

They were in their own house at Westminster and all was very well with them. Robert, their only child, was now three years of age. In build he was broad and well-formed but short, his sturdy legs strong on the ground, his round head well set on his thick neck, his eyes steady and piercing.

He was still a baby but already he had self-confidence and independence. He was a grave baby now: he chuckled only when his father was at hand. Everything that was told to him, the rhymes that his mother sang to him, the cautions and admonitions that Mrs. Margit, his nurse, gave to him–all these he took in and remembered.

Already it was facts that he liked the best; his mind wandered at fairy-stories. Any tale that he was told must be well substantiated. That was perhaps the reason that his father meant more to him than any other in his world, for there was no doubt or question about his father, so large was he and solid, so strong in the arm, and when he held his son against his breast the thumping of his heart was like the reassurance of a great beating drum.

Already Robert felt safe against any sort of peril if his father were there. But he was not in any case a nervous baby and he had already a firm preponderance of the Herries matter-of-fact common sense. Facts indeed were facts and it was already his rule of life to go by what you could see, feel, hold and even seize. And what he seized he held. At this present he was holding what was just then his favourite possession–a Fool with silver bells, a red cap and a great hooked nose. As he crossed the shining parlour floor to his father he held the Fool tightly in his chubby fist and the bells carolled gaily.

Nicholas had been almost asleep, for he had had a hard day that had included a visit to the Queen. Then the fire was blazing finely in the open hearth, throwing its erratic lights on the colours of dark green, gold, and brilliant blue that Rosamund was working into her tapestry.

Nicholas had been almost dreaming–dreaming about his long life and the principal scenes in it, of the girl Catherine he had loved who had given her life for him, of his dear brother Robin who had been tortured to his death in the Tower, and after that of England that he loved so dearly. He had come to full awareness with a start, crying: “England is a lovely place: I would have no other.’ And then, realizing his son, he had stretched out his great arms: “Come, Robin–come!’

At once Robin had started across the floor. They had given him this pet name after his beloved uncle, but he did not hesitate, as his uncle would have done, seeing both sides of the argument. He saw only one–that he liked above all things his father’s arms, their warmth and strength and perfect safety.

So he started at once across the floor, the red-capped Fool, with his proud nose, held captive in his fist.

Nicholas picked him up, carried him to his mother who kissed him, then he took him from the room high on his shoulder.

Later Nicholas returned and stood, his legs spread, warming his back before the fire. Rosamund asked him about the Queen.

“She can live but a little time. Indeed she is already dead. That old woman, seated on the floor rolling her head from side to side, is nothing. Her greatness has flown to the skies where it belongs for all time.’

“And so it will be James of Scotland.’

“Yes. They say strange things of him. He is a scholar, a great Latinist, but has superstitions like an old dame of the village. He is resolute and unresolute. Avaricious and generous. And his moralities–’

“His moralities?’ she asked, laughing up at him.

“Are not for ladies’ ears.’

She gathered up her tapestry.

“I must go to Robin.’ As she passed him she kissed his cheek–”Ladies’ ears have a wider compass than men can fancy. I have heard–this and that.’

In the early morning of March 24th, he was lying in the big four-poster with his wife and very fast asleep. He woke as though someone had tapped him on the shoulder. Rosamund’s hand was lightly on his left breast and, very gently, he removed it. What had disturbed him? Moving his big body with great care lest he should rouse her, he sat up and listened.

There was no sound except the wind teasing outside the window. He stayed there, bothered by the little worrying thoughts that come to every wakeful man in the middle of the night–thoughts about Mallory, a new gardener he had who was one of these Puritans, always preaching to the other servants and rebuking them for pleasures that seemed to Nicholas most natural and wholesome, thoughts about moneys and whether he should buy those two new fields towards the far paddock–but thoughts especially about the plague. There were signs already that it would be returning this summer and, if a hot summer, it would be a bad case. Had he better now, before April, move with Rosamund and Robin to Mallory? There was nothing to keep him in the town, and although he loved his Westminster house, he loved Mallory yet more. He thought of a play that he had seen three nights back by that bawdy fellow Ben Jonson, and then, with that, the bore that a week ago at dinner Lord Henry Howard had been with his long-drawn-out complaint against the fellow because Jonson had struck one of his servants.

He stretched his arms and yawned. He scratched his chest. None of these was the real matter. There was something further. He dropped his naked feet on to the floor, stood up and moved gingerly to where was his furred gown. He turned and listened. Rosamund slept sweetly. Moving with great gentleness for so vast a man, yawning again and scratching his head, he unlatched the door and crossed into the little room where he kept his large globe and his maps. Like every gentleman of his time he was deeply interested in the foreign adventures of his countrymen. There had been a time when, with Armstrong, he had thought to be one of those adventurers. He stood there, his fur gown caught closely about him, for it was chill, lit a candle on a silver candlestick and stayed, twisting the globe with his finger. What was it that had brought him out of his bed? Then he was aware, or thought that he was aware, of a keener chill than the March air could provide. He put his hand inside the fur and closed it on his breast. He felt a quite frantic beating of his heart and the flesh within his hand was dank with a sweat.

It could not be that he was afraid, he who had never been afraid in his life save once when he had struck Armstrong in the face. And yet beneath his gown he felt that his knees were trembling. He stared beyond the globe that was golden in the wavering candle-light, out to the latticed window. The curtains were not drawn and he could see the clouds racing across the sky. Clouds swollen and black, and one of them that seemed to stay opposite the window had the face of an angry pig.

His heart hammered and stopped. His nails gritted on the wooden surface of the globe, for there was a shadow steadily gathering before the window, a shadow so thin that it was like a man’s breath. His gown slipped behind his neck leaving the top part of his back bare, but he did not put his hand to it. He was held where he stood, for, in the uncertain light of the candle, it seemed to him that the vaporous air was forming a figure. Staring, his mind running ahead of belief, he saw the figure gather. Very, very thin it was, and the window and the night clouds could be clearly seen behind it, but all the body could be traced, the slim shoulders, the haunches, the thighs, and then the face–the face that he so dearly loved, that he thought of so many times, and about it he would say to Rosamund: “Do you remember how his eyes were, how beautiful they were, and his mouth when he smiled...?’

It seemed to him that that mouth smiled now. His gown fell off him and lay about his feet but he did not know it. He said one word: “Robin!’ He waited. Then he repeated: “Robin! Oh, dear Robin!’ He heard, very thinly but in the old beloved tone:

“Nick–the Queen is dead. The Queen is dead, Nick!’

“Stay–Robin...’ He moved forward, his legs catching in the tumbled gown. He was no longer afraid, love had killed fear.

But there was nothing to be seen–only the window and the black cold clouds.

He bent down and picked up the gown, wrapping it about him. He did not know whether it was Robin that he had seen, but he did know, beyond any kind of doubt, that the Queen was dead.

It was true enough, and on the next morning Nicholas, as did the whole country with him, relaxed.

Elizabeth had been a grand experience for her countrymen, who, however, had never known from one day to another what the next event might be. She had been always unexpected. The only two sure expectations concerning her–that she would be either assassinated or married–had both been disappointed. Through these expectations, however, the thought of her had always been interesting. Now there were no expectations any more!

Nicholas, walking through Whitehall that morning, felt quite suddenly that he himself had become a trifle dull. The vision of his brother, hallucination or no, had moved him extraordinarily, and it appeared to him now, in the cold March air, that with the withdrawal of Elizabeth part of himself had also been withdrawn and that Robin had wished to tell him that.

It was as though Robin had said to him: “Nothing stays still. Your Queen is dead and your life as an active participant is over. You have now a duller rôle to play.’

He felt dull. He went to play tennis with Monteagle who had curious, amusing, very bawdy tales to tell about the new King. He told him also some interesting things about the Gowrie Plot of three years earlier. Here Nicholas had a family excitement, for a cousin of his, Sir Hugh Herries, had been in the room–one of a crowd of Scottish gentlemen. It had been considered that young Ruthven had fathered the Queen’s, Anne of Denmark’s, children–or one of them at the least. And that James had rid himself of the brothers with this Pot of Gold imbroglio. At any rate, Monteagle avowed, James had never felt any passion for any woman.

“It is a pity, Herries,’ Monteagle said, laughing and looking at Nicholas’ superb figure in his playing-shirt and tight drawers, “that you are not thirty years younger. There would be a fine place at Court for you.’

And Nicholas, like any other Elizabethan gentleman, thinking little of such matters, hit the ball lustily and swore a grotesque oath.

Nicholas was present with the crowd at Theobalds the night before King James entered London.

It was a superb sight. All the nobility of England and Scotland were there, riding into the First Great Court. Here all dismounted save the King. Then four nobles stepped to his horse, two before, two behind, and brought him forward into the Second Great Court. Then he himself (and very clumsily as Nicholas saw) dismounted. A young man presented a petition which the King graciously received. Then he came forward into the heart of the Court and there were the great men of England ready to receive him. Here was his real reception as King of England. Here were Chancellor Egerton, Treasurer Buckhurst, and Nicholas’ boring and malicious, spiteful friend Henry Howard, Privy Seal.

But the man who caught the eye was none of these but rather Secretary Robert Cecil, master of that house and indeed of all England.

Nicholas had often seen Cecil before and always marvelled at the power and presence there was in that deformed little body. There was something terrifying about Cecil. How men shouted and cheered at that meeting of Cecil and the King! It signified the reality of the bond between Scotland and England. Nicholas himself made a tremendous noise and there were tears in his eyes, for he was a sentimental man and easily moved.

They passed into the house and very odd they looked–the deformed Cecil and the loutish awkward King.

Nicholas had, with good fortune, been standing near to them and he saw the King look at him, for, with his great height and breadth of shoulder, he towered above the rest. Nicholas was a loyalist of the loyalists and would always be, but he could not deny that a strange stale odour came from the King as of manure and mice and straw. Nicholas did not give bodily odours an especial thought–many ladies he had loved had smelt strongly–but this odour of the King’s was something peculiar and he was never to forget it. For the rest he got a good notion of the King’s physical properties. Middle height and perhaps well-set, inclining to stoutness, but this was difficult to say because of the famous quilted doublet and stuffed breeches that he wore for fear of a dagger-thrust.

When he ambled in with Cecil he waddled like a duck and his stuffed behind stuck backwards like a separate entity. Nevertheless the face was not that of a fool nor was it unpleasant: he had large prominent blue eyes and they stared at the person with whom he talked as though he would read all the secrets. His cheeks were high-coloured and healthy, his hair brown and his beard thin and scattered. Nicholas had the impression that he would see into men’s hearts and minds more ably than they would see into his. Strangest of all, he reminded him, at the last, of his tragic and all-daring mother. While the trumpets blew and the nobles cheered, Nicholas remembered a moment when he had seen Mary on the steps of Chartley waiting for her horse to be brought. This King had both his mother and his weak father, Darnley, in his blood.

At the beginning of May, Nicholas went down to Mallory with his wife and child that they might avoid the plague.

Once again in his beloved place his energies returned. He was soon seeing to the cattle and the pigs and the garden and the fields and the labourers and the household servants as though he were yet twenty. And Gilbert Armstrong worked beside him as though he were his brother.

Now he gave himself heart and soul to the training of his young son. He was half a century older, there was no escaping from that. And it was of no comfort to tell himself that he had the powers to beget a million children more could he find women to bear them. It was of no use to talk of a million children; here was the matter of one, young Robert Herries. He had first all the surprise of discovering that his son promised in no way to resemble himself, a surprise very common to fathers. To begin with the physical side, Young Robert was short and sturdy and would never be tall. His eyes were steady, unlighted by anger or astonishment. When his father held him naked in his arms the body was strong and well-shaped, but it was not an athlete’s body, as his own had been from the beginning. Nor was it the body of a poet as his uncle Robin’s had been. You could tell these things from the start.

When Nicholas held him thus young Robin did not start nor wriggle. He lay quite still watching his father with his steady eyes. When Nicholas plunged him suddenly into cold water he neither screamed nor cried.

Mrs. Margit, an ugly old woman with bent shoulders and a double chin, but immaculately starched, wearing a high white ruff and a tall white cap, said that Robin was the steadiest child she had ever governed.

“He’s no trouble and no blessing as you might say, Master. If I’m gone or come it makes no odds to him.’

But he loved his father and mother and Armstrong, and above all his father–and yet Nicholas could not but feel that he was something of a joke to him. As the months passed and then 1604 arrived, and then Michaelmas and Christmas, young Robin became ever more baffling. He learned quickly to talk but he did not speak unless he intended. Whether in London or at Mallory he amused himself.

He seemed not to know fear nor any passion violently save one–that of possession. And yet he was not cold-hearted. He loved to walk with his father, Nicholas bending his height, Robin’s tiny hand in his father’s vast one. He would hold on to his mother as though he were terrified that he would lose her.

Yet it seemed to Nicholas that his plans, those that he made privately in his mind, were apart from all of them.

Nicholas taught him all about nature–flowers, the farm, the reason for this and that.

“One day they will be mine,’ Robin said, looking at fine and handsome cows and a bull that pawed angrily the ground but did not frighten him.

“First I must die,’ Nicholas said, and he felt a strange tremor shake the little body although the child said nothing.

After a while Nicholas longed for the child to lose control as he, in his childhood, had so often done.

One day he took out of Robin’s hand the old Fool with the red cap and the silver bells. It was battered now, the cap torn, the nose broken. Robin loved it above all his things.

“This is broken,’ Nicholas said; “you are weary of it. Christmas is coming and you shall have better things.’

He had taken it out of the chubby hand and made as though he would throw it into the fountain. Robin, his legs planted, made no movement, only he drew a deep breath and watched his father closely.

Nicholas was certain that the child knew that he would not destroy it. But he continued to tease him.

“See–I will throw it away. It is old and dirty and perhaps has the plague. His nose is broken and his cap torn.’

Robin said quite simply: “It is mine’–as though he would say: “You know that it is. You are a just man. You have never done me a wrong, nor will you do me one now.’

This argument was irresistible. Nicholas returned it to him and the fat fingers closed round it as though they were lock and key.

He could laugh and play like other children and hug his father and mother with kisses. He was indeed entirely normal.

On his fifth birthday he was in London and children were invited to a party. Like all children at all times they over-ate and were sick, wished for things that were not theirs and screamed to have them, struck their relations in temper and tore their clothes.

Robin was the quite perfect host. He had been given by his father’s cousin, Alicia Turner, a box made like a cock’s head to hold money. This was his best present, and when the other children took it to examine it he watched them with grave intensity until it was given back to him again. He wore a new very handsome suit of cerise and silver and carried a baby sword at his side, but he showed no silly pride in his clothes. They had for entertainment a conjurer dressed as a Turk. Robin watched him intently and on occasion nodded his head as though he had discovered the trick. When they were all gone and he was in bed he took with him his money-box, but when his great father knelt down by the bed, put his arms around him and asked him whether he were happy, he laid his cheek against his father’s and sighed: “When I am grown,’ he said, “I too will be a magician, for people are easy to deceive.’ He said the word “people’ with so grown an air that Nicholas also sighed. His baby was no longer a baby.

Towards the end of that famous year 1605 Nicholas experienced an odd connection with the most famous event in it. The incident was to have a later influence on his own affairs and so on all the fortunes of his house.

Once in his life when he had been drinking at a party in his Uncle Henry’s London house he had seen a strange hallucination in a mirror and out of that mirror had come the greatest servant and friend he was ever to have, Gilbert Armstrong. Now, in the dank shadows of a cellar he was to see another’s face also like an hallucination and it would not be thus seen for the last time....

The whole affair began when on Saturday evening, October 26th of this year 1605, he took dinner with his friend Lord Monteagle in his house at Hoxton. It was a pleasant house, the party was intimate and family. Nicholas was altogether at his ease, seven o’clock had but just echoed in silver tones from the clock picturing Venus rising from the ocean at the foot of the stairs. They were about to sit down to supper, when a footman approached Monteagle and presented a letter.

“What is this?’ Monteagle asked. The ladies had already gone into the dining-room. Monteagle, Mr. Ward, a gentleman in his family, and Nicholas were still gathered in the hall.

Monteagle undid the letter but his eyes were not too strong.

“Where did you get this?’ he asked the footman.

“A man, my lord, at the door: there is a great wind and his cloak was blown about his face. He said that this was for your lordship and that you must have it instantly. At once he was gone.’

“There! You read it,’ Monteagle said, pushing it into Mr. Ward’s hand. The three stood close together. Mr. Ward said: “A secret business this. Even when opened it is still sealed.’ He read the letter:

My Lord–Out of the love I bear to some of your friends, I have a care of your preservation; therefore I would advise you, as you tender your life, to devise some excuse to shift off your attendance at this Parliament; for God and man have concurred to punish the wickedness of this time. And think not slightly of this advertizement but retire yourself into your country, where you may expect the event in safety. For though there be no appearance of any stir, yet I say they shall receive a terrible blow this Parliament, and yet they shall not see who hurts them. This counsel is not to be contemned, because it may do you good, and can do you no harm: for the danger is past as soon as you have burnt the letter: and I hope God will give you the grace to make a good use of it, to Whose holy protection I commend you.

“And what make you of that, Nicholas, my friend?’ Monteagle asked slowly.

Nicholas held the letter toward the lustred candelabra that he might read it the better.

He repeated slowly in his deep rich tones the sentences: “For though there be no appearance of any stir, yet I say they shall receive a terrible blow this Parliament, and yet they shall not see who hurts them’–and–”for the danger is past as soon as you have burnt the letter.’ He repeated this last–”Now what may that mean?’

For a moment they all drew closer together: the night was wild: shutters clamped and doors banged. The candles blew in the candelabra and the lustres swung.

Two ladies stood in the door laughing: “Now–are we to wait for ever?’

By a curious chance he was concerned in the sequel, for he was passing into his house in Whitehall before midnight on November 4th when he, the wind bewildering him, ran slap into a small band of men and found at the head of them an acquaintance, the pompous and pursy Sir Thomas Knivett, a magistrate for Westminster. Knivett seemed quite delighted to encounter him and Nicholas soon found that the whole party was in a state of anxious nervousness.

Knivett took him aside and seemed to find the greatest comfort in his brawn and breadth, for he, as it were, sheltered under him and almost laid his head on his chest. It appeared that Monteagle had taken the letter to the King and the King had been assured that the meaning of it was gunpowder with which to blow up the Houses of Parliament. So a search had been made in a cellar belonging to one Whinyard who had let it to Thomas Percy with the adjoining house. Monteagle, who conducted this first investigation, seeing a man standing in the corner, asked who he was and was told that this was the man left in charge of the cellar by his master. Monteagle carelessly remarked to this man that his master was well provided by his large stocks of fuel against the blasts of winter. They made no further search but returned to the King. The King was not satisfied, having this gunpowder certainly in his head, and bade them return and search the faggots.

It was this that they were now about to do. Knivett caught Nicholas’ arm as though he loved him–”Come with us, Mr. Herries–you are strong as any man in London and will see order enforced if need be. That there is gunpowder I cannot doubt, and a spark set to it–’

So Nicholas went with them.

Whinyard, the Keeper of the Wardrobe, was with them. It was he, in fact, who was the disguise, for he was to pretend that they were come in search of some hangings that he needed.

Outside the door of the cellar they all paused and even Nicholas discovered that he was not as brave as he had once been, for the thought of being blown to pieces and its discomfort came to him, whereas twenty years before he would never have considered it.

However, in they went, Knivett looking as important as he might. At once there was an event, for just inside the doorway they discovered the man whom they had interrogated on the other visit, but now booted, with his travelling cloak, as though about to set off on a journey.

Knivett for once showed presence of mind, for he instantly had the man apprehended and told the others to remove the wood and coals. This man at first made no resistance but stood very haughtily looking on. Nicholas did not look at him at this time, being eagerly interested in the men who were clearing away the logs and coal. With a shout they came on a barrel of gunpowder and soon no fewer than thirty-six barrels were discovered. Everyone realized that a kingdom-shaking event (that might have been a Parliament-shaking event) had occurred, and Knivett and Whinyard were amusing to watch, for they were all mixed up with this importance, the glory that would accrue to them, the danger that King and Parliament had escaped, and still more the danger that they had escaped. Knivett indeed was in such a condition of excitement that he was literally dancing on his heels and he threw himself on the dark man, crying out in childish treble: “Search him! Search him!... Have him searched! For God’s sake and the King’s search him!’ He himself tore off the man’s cloak and with his own fingers began to scrabble at his tunic and waist-band, crying: “Ah, you wicked fellow! You would destroy the King’s Majesty, would you!’ When their hands were all about his body this man, who was Fawkes, began to struggle. There were at least half a dozen upon him and he was bent back almost double, his black-haired chest bare and torn, his hose pulled about his heels so that he was shamefully naked. He fought like a devil and it was now that Nicholas, feeling a kind of pity although he was a devil, moved forward to prevent their shaming him further. Fawkes swung round, throwing two men off as the bear throws the dogs. His furious gaze met Nicholas: his mouth was drawn with rage, blood poured down one cheek, but it was the eyes, dark, full, eloquent, that Nicholas was to remember. For they were the eyes of his old lifelong enemy, Philip Irvine, of the man who had tortured his brother, whom he himself had finally slain in the wilds of Eskdale in Cumberland.

It was as though Irvine looking through those eyes cried out to Nicholas: “I am not dead, you see! You are not finished with me yet!’ At last Fawkes, three-quarters naked, his arms trussed behind him, his hair wild about his forehead, was held on his knees a prisoner. All he said between his teeth was: “Had I been within the cellar instead of by the door I would have fired the train and blown you all to hell.’

They found matches on him and in a corner a dark lantern. But what most excited their curiosity was a small pocket watch in his possession which he had had to know the exact moment for firing the train. Such pocket watches at that time were very rare.

It was not to be, however, for another two years that Nicholas Herries’ new history properly began. These two years were in many ways the most unhappy of his life. There comes to many men, after they have reached fifty, a sense of disappointment. They realize that there is possibly no great portion of life remaining to them. They look back over what has been and feel an acute chagrin. Is this all that life has been intended for? Birth, marriage, and later, death. Nothing achieved that marks them out from other men. The moments of acute pleasure have faded: the body is beginning to weaken, and beside the body, what is there?

Unlike his brother, spiritual things had never mattered greatly to Nicholas. He had been a man of his hands. All his delights had been physical. No, not all. He had loved passionately two persons–his brother and Catherine, the witch’s daughter. But he had not been able to save his brother from a shameful death, and the revenge that he had taken for that death seemed now to have something poor and pitiful in it. Catherine he had never possessed.

It was true that he loved his wife and that she was the best companion a man could desire–but passion had never been there, as she herself well knew.

During those years he felt a penetrating and incurable loneliness. It was not only in himself but in the state of his beloved England that he felt it. The beat of the country, the rhythm of its life was slackening. All men were aware of it.

This Scottish man was not truly their King as Elizabeth had been their Queen. His oddities, amusing at first, began very soon to have something humiliating about them. Nicholas had never worried his head overmuch about religious affairs but now he was forced to attend to them. At the very beginning of the new reign some leading clergymen of the Church of England had asked for certain mild laxities of ceremonial and observance inside their Church. This was to assist the new Puritanism. But James had been altogether intolerant. “A Scottish Presbytery,’ he had cried, “agrees as well with a monarchy as God with the Devil.... Then Jack, Tom, and Dick shall meet and at their pleasure censure me and my Council.’ After the failure of the Hampton Court Conference three hundred Puritan clergy were ejected from their livings. The clergyman at Mallory had been one of those. Nicholas had liked and admired him. He was an old man with flowing white hair and a fiery eye: he was a good man with much kindliness towards the sick and needy. On the day that he left Mallory all the people had been there weeping and asking for his blessing. The blacksmith, an old friend of Nicholas, had said in his ear: “This is the way to raise the Devil. Mr. Symons goes and in his place worse will come.’

On the other side the Roman Catholics suffered a desperate moral blow from the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. Every ordinary Englishman felt that all that had ever been said against Jesuit influence in England was now utterly justified. From that fatal November 5th the anti-Roman passion in England was a lively never-ceasing factor in English politics.

From the start of the reign the Navy began to decline and was soon woefully neglected. The many stories that came from the Court were anything but handsome. This stuttering, stammering, awkward man with his Scottish accent, his familiarities with his handsome young men, his sudden access of royalty and his equally sudden humiliating abandonment of it–these and many more became known to all men, and the almost mystical worship of the Crown that had been everywhere in Elizabeth’s time was quickly falling into vapour.

Nicholas was a passionate loyalist. It had always seemed to him that the Queen or King appointed was there by Divine Right. But could it be by Divine Right that this oddity was on the throne? So his spirit withered, he became lethargic. Only his wife and Armstrong could rouse him to his old energy and they too often failed. Then came a day, in the spring of 1607, when his life began again.

The post brought him a letter. He saw that it was from his cousin, Tobias Garland, who lived in Cumberland. Tobias was a stout jolly man, a few years his junior, whom he greatly liked. He had married Barbara, the daughter of his uncle Henry and sister of his cousins Edward and Sidney. By her Tobias had three children, Rashleigh, Lucy, and Peter. They lived in a house above Seascale, a little village on the Cumbrian coast. He had not seen any of them for many a day.

He did not at once open his letter. He was sitting, the warm sun on his face, in the pleached garden near the fountain. While he sat there, the letter on his lap, Rosamund his wife stole up behind him, put her fingers in front of his eyes and whispered in his ear, “Who is it?’

He kissed her hands and drew her on to the seat beside him. Rosamund was a plain woman but she adored her husband and lived only for him and her child, and had humour sufficient to know that she had been her husband’s second choice and yet have a happy life in spite of that.

“Weeping, Nicholas?’

He turned on her indignantly, then drew her close to him and kissed her, then sighed a deep portentous sigh, then said:

“What ails me? Cure me–for only you in all the world can.’

She looked at him most lovingly. He seemed to her often more her child than young Robin.

“What ails you,’ she said, “is that you have had for too many years now too many blessings and no danger. Go. Make love to some woman in London who refuses you, fight with an enemy, sell Mallory...’

“Sell Mallory!’ He was aghast. “You would be happy again if you, I and Robin begged our way on a broken-backed horse to the North–the North!’

She clapped her hands. “You and Armstrong shall ride to Cumberland again. It is five years since you were there. The ghost of...’ She hesitated. “Do you mind if I speak of it? All ghosts are laid now. Go and prove it so.’

“The North!’ he said. “There is an omen in that. For here on my lap is a letter from Tobias.’ But he did not open it. Instead he shook his head. “Why should I go back? I am too old to begin again.’

“We begin nothing again,’ Rosamund said. She knelt on the warm grass at his feet, folding her hands on his knee.

“Dear Nicholas. You don’t know, for you are not made to think of such things, what fortune I feel it and have always felt it to be married to you. Since I was a very ugly little girl I loved you and no man else. But I never had any hope for you. And then the first time you asked me I refused although I was longing to have you–and you know why–and the second time I said yes because I knew you could never have her. I was second-best, but what did that matter to me when you were my first, the only desire of my life?

“We have been very happy until of late. I know that you love me but I know too that I am not one to create new life in you although I have created new life out of you.’

She knelt closer to him. He put his arm around her.

“You are still haunted by the past, Nicholas. You saw Robin the night the Queen died. You saw Philip’s eyes in the man Fawkes. You will not go to the North because you are afraid of ghosts. Ride north! Ride north and challenge them. Make a new world for yourself.’

“It is easy to make a new world when you are young. That first day I challenged Irvine north of Keswick I was young in a young world. But the world has lost its spring. At the Court the Queen is neglected for fancy boys. They lie drunk on the decks in Portsmouth harbour. The New Puritans fight the Old Catholics. You say that I am to make a new world–but I am an old man. An old man with a young son!’

He got up, standing away from her. His voice had a bitterness that she had never heard from him before.

“I tell you, wife,’ he said, his voice muffled, “Philip Irvine is even now not finished with me.’

For a moment she who was as brave as any woman in England was frightened. In the still spring air it was as though it were not his voice at all. “Then,’ she cried, “go north and challenge him again as you did before. You are not a man, Nick, to be frightened with ghosts.’ He swung round.

“No, by God, I am not!’ he cried.

The letter had fallen on to the grass. He bent down to pick it up, broke the seal and read it.

“Gilbert and I ride north to-morrow,’ he cried.

THE MAGICIAN AND HIS LITTLE DAUGHTER

Nicholas Herries drew up his horse and stopped. Directly in front of him on the road was a pool of rain-water mirroring a ragged cloud like a furred tongue. On his right the sea rolled in like unfolding oilcloth. Behind him was the heavy pile of Black Combe stretching out to the ocean.

It was at this moment that he met the ghost that had been haunting him for so many years. He was a man of common sense and of no great imagination. But he believed in ghosts. He had seen one in Fawkes’ eyes. Had he not watched Fawkes fighting in that cellar that November night he would not be here, in all probability, now. He had come here to lay that ghost. In the quick passage through life one thing leads to another–as doors close behind you as you pass swiftly through the rooms of a house. Was a door to close now?

There was no sound. This northern world often held itself still and steady–as it was doing now. The shining pool with the cloud was still in front of the horse’s hooves. Gilbert Armstrong was still on his horse. Only the sea hissed and lisped beyond the low sand-dunes. Nicholas sat looking in front of him. They were on the sea road between Ravenglass and Seascale. Nicholas was staring but he saw more than could be seen with the physical eye. For he knew every detail of this country. It had been here, in the Eskdale wilds, not far from this spot, that in the one day he had lost the love of his whole life and killed his enemy.

This was the wildest piece of country in all England, all its wildness packed into a tiny compass, and yet within half an hour you could be lost in it, lost for days and nights. Within walking distance was the Kendal road, the Kendal road that was now a pack-horse route but had once been a Roman road, and following that you would come to Hard Knott Hause, where even now as Nicholas breathed he could hear the old proud Romans moving about him, the Romans, the only power that had subdued the savage North, setting up a fortress as here, so strong that the skeleton of it would last for ever, so deep that the stones sink into the centre of the earth, so beautiful because all around it are the greatest mountains of Cumberland–Great End and the Pikes and Scafell. Here, over this Roman land, the clouds pile in great bastions, and the light travels in bands of gold, in flaming red, from rock to rock, from flying cornice to deep-hewn cleft. Under the clouds the Romans move and you hear the clang of their harness and a bugle blows over Harter Fell.

But Nicholas’ gaze pierced on beyond Hard Knott into the heart of that glorious wilderness. Here, within a ten-mile circle, you pass out of time and away from the life of man. There is no other piece of wild country in all England like it. Over the Ure Gap to Langstrath, or, turning left, into the heart of the great inner valley, the valley walled in by the crags of Scafell, the Pikes, Great End. Yes, Nicholas knew all this country. He had ridden and hunted over it many a day when his centre had been his brother’s house at Rosthwaite in Borrowdale. He would be gone a week, a fortnight maybe, with Armstrong his only companion. Best of all he loved the Sprinkling Tarn and the Angle Tarn. These had always seemed to him the fairy waters of the world, thinking of them in London streets or even, traitor that he was, when his nose was stuck into the hearts of the dark roses of Mallory. These tarns are perched on watershed ridges; Nicholas and Gilbert had bathed in them naked on a sun-scorching day, but best of all was it when the clouds swung up like waterspouts into the sky and the light spread from behind the cloud edges, teasing with its rays the soft vaporous snow-piles on the heads of the mountains, and then turning those mountain sides into fire. On such a day the water of Angle Tarn was still like glass, then leapt to the light and seemed to turn on its side, blazing with fire as though it would inflame the bog and peat and grass below it. The whole of Eskdale, proud in its own untouched rough solitude, would flame as the mountains grew dark. Then in a sky blue as an eggshell the evening stars would shine and across it birds wing their way home.

Nicholas knew all this. He knew that this place was the desire of his soul but that he had avoided it because of his lover and his enemy. Would they come to meet him now? He challenged them. He sat his horse, and his soul cried: “Catherine! Catherine!... Irvine! Irvine!...’

The burden fell off his back as it had once done from Christian’s. His horse splashed through the rain-pool. He turned round to Armstrong and his brown face under the feathered hat was merry again, as it used to be.

“Seascale is only a mile or two,’ he cried. “I’ll race you for it.’

Their horses pounded down the road, Ned Laxham, the boy, following on the pack-horse with the luggage more slowly.

Seascale was little more than a hamlet, a cluster of cottages gathered above the broad shining sands, while the Isle of Man hung like a large burnished blackberry on the horizon. To the right above the sands was the Hall, the property of the Senhouse family. In a field near by was a marvellous circle of stones, earlier, people said, than the Druids.

Tobias Garland’s place, Little Garston, was on a rise of ground about a mile from the sea. A dark drive of trees led to an open court and a neat Elizabethan house. There was a fountain of Neptune and some dolphins in the middle of the court, and as Nicholas and Armstrong rode out of the avenue, they saw the sea across the fields blood-red while a host of yellow clouds like ducklings played in the faint blue sky. Behind the house the shoulder of Black Combe was dark and straight, before them the range of Lakeland hills lay like giants resting their chins on their hands watching the sunset.

Before they had time to dismount the family was upon them. Someone must have seen them from a window. There they were, Tobias, stout and sturdy, fifty-seven years of age, Barbara, pinched face, bony, anxious-eyed, fifty-nine, and their lovely, lovely children, Rashleigh nineteen, Lucy seventeen, and Peter sixteen. Those were their ages in 1607, when Nicholas saw them on this sunset evening, the first time perhaps that he ever did really see them, for they had been too young on the last occasion to claim a real existence. He would never, for the rest of his life, forget them as he saw them from his horse’s back with the blood-red sea behind him, standing on the stone steps in front of the house, the three of them, Rashleigh with his arm around Lucy, and Peter a little apart.

It was Lucy who at that instant began his second life for him, Lucy who taught him a new kind of love. With Catherine Hodstetter he had known the physical, with Rosamund his wife, the domestic, with his mother the love of the spirit, with Gilbert Armstrong the love of comrade. Now with Lucy he was to realize the all-consuming, all-sacrificing paternal.

He would never forget either how they were dressed. Rashleigh was in the new fashion. He wore a large lace-edged collar and cuffs on his maroon coat that fitted loosely to his slim figure. Round the waist were silken laces fastened to his full breeches, which were also maroon. His dark chestnut hair was long and flowing, framing his lovely oval-shaped face, the long eyelashes, the noble forehead, and aristocratic haughty mouth. He was perhaps the most handsome boy that Nicholas had ever seen. Peter, who was plump and fair, and clothed in black with white lace collar and cuffs, had his hair cropped. He was very fair, with bright blue eyes and a smiling mouth. But Lucy–his Lucy, who came at that moment, as it seemed, through intervening space straight into his arms–wore a dress of dark green and gold braid. She had the figure of a girl, beginning to be a woman, her round small breasts almost revealed above the green velvet. Her skirt was drawn back to show a pale embroidered petticoat. She wore a muslin and lace collar. Her dark hair was drawn off her laughing, eager, friendly face into a knot behind, and the side pieces fell in ringlets on to her bare shoulders.

No, he knew then, as he looked at them, that here was a picture painted at that instant on his brain, never to be erased. And Lucy told him later that he had seemed to her in that sunset light like a god, seated on his great horse, a giant in carriage and strength, motionless like someone descended from heaven....

Blessed days followed. He knew that life was beginning for him freshly. This was a new world for himself and his country. His rôle, as Robin had tried to tell him on the night that the Queen died, would now be different. He was no longer the centre of his own stage. The lives of others would make his own life.

Another thing that he realized was that he was everywhere now recognized as the head of the Family. For the first time in its history the Family was a Family. Tobias and Barbara both considered the various branches of the Family with real seriousness. There were three main branches–the Garlands, the Turners, and the Roger Herries. The Garlands were the Garlands and through Toby’s marriage to Barbara belonged to the centre, descended directly from old Geoffrey Herries who had founded the family (this branch of the Herries-Howard stock) by buying the manor of Hurdicotes, in Cumberland, near Cockermouth, in 1420. The Turners also came into the family through the female, Ralph Turner of Edgecumbe marrying Alicia, daughter of Lucy, daughter of Gilbert, son of Gilbert who married Alice Walpole, the Walpoles themselves being distantly related to the Howards and the Scotch Herries.

The Roger Herries were always called the Roger Herries because Roger II, from whom they came, was such a character, a wild brigand in the wars of the barons, fighting always for his own hand and amassing wealth and a castle.

They had always been Bohemian, the Roger Herries, although they had married into decent families like the Camperdowns and the Pickets–Rosamund’s father, Nicholas’ father-in-law, was a jolly old Bohemian at this very moment, a painter and a wanderer in the sight of the Lord. In any case, as Nicholas discovered, they all, Garlands and Turners and Courthopes and Camperdown cousins, looked upon himself as the King of the Herries Castle. He had not realized it until he came to pay this visit, and that was another thing that made him feel apart and different.

The three children–Lucy, Rashleigh, and Peter–all loved him from the first glimpse of him. They had been too young when they had seen him before to realize him sufficiently, but now, worshipping his size and strength, his horse-riding, his brilliance with a rapier, the strength of his hands, he was like someone from another world. And the boys, bathing with him, watching him walk upside-down, naked, on his hands, gazing astounded at his neck and chest and arms and thighs, could scarcely speak for wonder. When, added to all this, they discovered the simplicity and natural kindliness of his nature, their conquest was completed.

He, on his side, gathered them all three into his heart with a longing desiring love and a poignancy as though he would barricade them against the troubles that were to come.

In this he was in no way disloyal to his wife and child. Rosamund and Robin were part of himself–his heart, his lungs, his secret parts. He loved them as he loved himself–without consideration. Where he was they were.

But Lucy and Rashleigh and Peter were creative in him, they were what he had been needing ever since his brother and Catherine died. He very soon discovered their natures. They were very different. Rashleigh was like a knight of old days, his only thought was for serving King and country. He was shortly to have a place at Court, and when Nicholas heard this he was anxious. “For looks,’ he said to Tobias, “he is handsomer than any boy of his age I have ever seen. And this new Court is no place for handsome boys.’

But fat Tobias with something solemn in his face said:

“Nought can touch Rashleigh. He has no sin.’

There was truth in that. Not that Rashleigh was a prig or a virtuous moralist. But he had a dedicated air. He was a man born for one purpose, and one only. Peter was very different. He was Puritan by taste, although he was merry and had a warm loving heart. But in spirit he was of a deep seriousness: had he and Rashleigh not loved one another, they would have been always at odds, for they thought differently about everything. Peter was all for government by the people: he did not believe in Divine Right nor in King’s Prerogative. In religion he was Protestant, and if he hated anything in this world it was a Jesuit. But because he was by nature mild and kindly and would not hurt any man, he was as yet no fanatic. It might be that he would grow into one, Nicholas sometimes thought.

And Lucy? At the present she loved simply to be alive. She was too happy to think steadily, too full of adoration of life to be vexed or chagrined by anything or anybody. She was still a child, impetuous, violently impulsive, reckless, fearless. But when trouble would come, as trouble must, there would be deep strong character there.

Tobias Garland, although he was fat, jolly, and had his purse well filled, was no fool. He had always been the kind of man who believed no further than he could see. He had made a fortune in Manchester, building and furthering the fashion in those new coaches that were now everywhere becoming the rage. Henry Herries, his father-in-law, had been in trade. No Herries had, either now or later, any dislike to trade–they were English middle class and were, in fact, frightened of anything higher. The Garlands had been prepared to be frightened of Nicholas, with his visits to the Court and his fine place at Mallory. Barbara, Tobias’ wife, was something of a social snob–she had learned that from her valetudinarian mother and had been proud that her half-sister Sylvia had married so grand a man as Philip Irvine–but Tobias had never taken any pride in connections with the Court and had pitied his poor little sister-in-law for her most unhappy marriage. He had joked his Babs out of her longing for the life of the Court. At first she had protested with all her power against coming to live in so remote a place as Seascale. Manchester had seemed to her a poor enough little town, but here, on the edge of such barbarous country, no town within thirty miles, on the border of a sullen and reluctant sea...

Her adoration of her family and her real devotion to Tobias had saved her. She worshipped her children and thought there were no three like them in England. Sylvia’s tragedy had warned her against the ambitions of a Court life, and on the other hand her adored Rashleigh would shortly be beginning his Court life in the household of Lord Monteagle, so that she would have it happily at second hand. She foresaw, through Rashleigh, a fine Court marriage for Lucy later, and now there was this amazing Cousin Nicholas, of whom she had been always afraid because of his size and the scandal about his brother’s religion and illicit passion for Sylvia.

But now Nicholas had taken them all to his heart and would further the boys’ fortunes,–so that his visit was indeed for the best, and she was not in the very slightest afraid of him.

Besides all this she had come to appreciate her position as country lady. Later, when the boys had made their way and Lucy had brought off a successful marriage, would be time enough for her London living. Her boys were the only males in their immediate branch of the Herries, her brother Sidney being dead and her other older brother Edward having only two girls, Janet and Martha. Rashleigh, she often thought, was destined to be the head of the family when Nicholas was gone.

She was not indeed in error when she thought him the handsomest young man in all England. Even Robert Carr (who at that very moment was hurting himself at a tournament and so arousing the tender solicitude of his monarch) was not so handsome.

Last of all, Barbara Garland, although she was something of a silly woman–her brothers and sister had always thought her so, and until she had married Tobias, she had mostly lived under a Welsh mountain with her great-aunt Clyde–yet she had poetry and imagination enough in her to find something in this country where her home now was that she must love and boast of.

She forgot that Cousin Nicholas had been often in these parts and spoke to him always as though he had never known them before.

“When you have lived here awhile, Cousin, and ridden on an expedition to the Wastwater lake under Gavel–’ she would begin, and Toby would interrupt–”Stuff, stuff, madam–when will you learn sense? Nick has lived outside Keswick many a day and knows these parts like his hand–’ and then he would stop too, for it was with his brother Robin that Nicholas had stayed in Borrowdale, and that was a tragedy never to be mentioned.

But with Tobias Nicholas soon became intimate. These spring days were warm and the house was sheltered by its trees. It was open only on the courtyard side looking out to the sea.

A day came of a soft gold hazy light when the sea had no motion and the stones of the courtyard were hot to the hand. Nicholas and Tobias sat under the wall of his house talking–no sound save the birds and the fall of the fountain.

Tobias was telling of a trouble there had been in Seascale a month or so earlier.

“Have you heard of the new Puritans, Nick?’

Nicholas at once thought of his old, long-dead enemy Phineas Thatcher.

“Yes–if you mean a hypocritical God-be-with-you scoundrel! I knew one...’ He stayed–that world was dead.

“Well, then,’ continued Toby Garland, “if you know the animal you’ll be grieved to hear ’tis on the increase. There is a pestilential fellow pitched his tent between Gosforth village and Seascale and goes about preaching in the fields, on the shore, wherever he can collect some silly girls or open-mouthed lads. His name is Isaiah Holden.’