Читать книгу Katherine Christian - Hugh Walpole - Страница 5

Table of Contents

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.’

Toby Garland’s stout, good-natured face was puffing with indignation—‘They haven’t so many followers as yet, but I fear that ’tis on the increase. They are set to make trouble against King and country wherever they may. They are against any dancing, gaming, drinking, wenching—any human pleasure of the body.’ His round eyes stared, angry and puzzled, at the sea. ‘They have always the name of God in their mouths. Wherever they go they are pelted with dirt and vegetables and this gives them the air of martyrs. This Isaiah is as thin as a rake and can talk. Lord! how he can talk! ... But ’tis always that everything to do with the body is sinful. He would stop the propagation of children if he could, in so far as there is pleasure in it—aye, and even our daily motions. In any case, it happened a month back that they had a Maypole dance in the centre of the Stone Ring by the Hall there. It was a most pleasant evening and they came from Gosforth, Drigg, Ravenglass even. This Holden and some men with him broke in upon the gathering and carried off the Maypole. Then Holden stood on one of the stones and preached those that remained a sermon....’ Toby sighed. ‘This is a new thing and dangerous, Cousin Nick.’

But Nicholas laughed.

‘It is neither new nor dangerous, my Cousin Toby. There have always been fanatics of religion in the English blood. And in all countries. And not on one side only.... What about Bartholomew? I remember well how your brother-in-law, young then, made my hot blood freeze telling of the things he had seen. And he, poor lad, was never the same again after it.’

But Toby still shook his head.

‘This is another matter—or it is as I see it. We had a Queen who, whatever she did or thought or ordered, was our glory. While she lived the throne in England was secure. And now we have a King. He has reigned four years and the Crown is already in the mud. When it was arranged that Rashleigh should go into Monteagle’s service I rejoiced. But now ... I don’t know ... I am hesitant. Not for the boy himself, for he is beyond contamination, but because for him the King is divine—and he will see with his own eyes—what will he see?—a waddling stutterer with his fingers in young men’s pockets.’ A new kind of eloquence was shining in Toby’s eyes. ‘What did we feel, Cousin Nick, about England while the Queen lived? England was in mighty danger but she was safe ... even in ’88 we were not afraid for her. But now! what are they doing, or not doing, to our ships? Where is our trade? And the Court.... What does it do but drink and whore and worse ...?’

Toby’s fingers were trembling. ‘There is much truth in the things that our Peter says. See, Cousin Nick, the cleavage that there is even in our own family. Those two boys love one another, but concerning the country and its governance they are altogether divided. Peter says he owes no obeisance to such a king, and Rashleigh, if he were of another family, would fight him for that. Peter says that this Scotch king, because he is Scotch, thinks that our Parliament must be subservient to the Privy Council, and he says that the day is coming when the Parliament will be subservient to no Privy Council, but will obey only the orders of the People who have put it there. And Rashleigh, when he hears this, goes from the room, but I will hear him afterwards to his mother that the King is there by God’s will and by God’s will he shall rule, and calling the Parliament “dirty, sweating num-skulls” and “fat-tailed rumps” and the like. But yet the two boys love one another—and so always shall, whatever politics may do. But I tell you, Cousin Nick, I tell you, that with such a Court and such a King there is sorrow coming to this country....’

Sorrow! The word rang no response in Nicholas’ brain. He had scarcely heard what Tobias had been saying, for he had been lost in the golden, hazy air. ‘This,’ he might have been thinking, ‘is my happiest hour for many a day past. I am beginning life anew. I will make my life again with my own little son and these three dear children, helping them in any way that I can. At last the past is truly behind me and a new life comes marching forward.’ Even as he thought this a new life was approaching, for round the bend of the avenue, out from the darkness of the trees, came a strange little coloured procession. First came a tall man wearing a red cloak and on his head a peaked hat in alternate red and white colours.

Behind him marched a girl, a mere child, beating a small drum with one hand and leading a donkey with the other. Behind her marched a boy with a hump, carrying a table that also was coloured in red and white.

They marched grandly, the man bearing himself as though he were King of Egypt. The beating of the drum was very thin and intermittent. Behind the three was a huddle of men, girls, boys, laughing, chattering, and then, at sight of Nicholas and Garland on their wooden seat, suddenly silent.

In the quiet that followed, the tall man in the peaked hat marched across the court with great dignity, his red cloak swinging behind him.

When he came close Nicholas saw that he was a very curious fellow. His head was broad under his hat and then ran to a sharp peak, his chin being long and thin. His nose was outrageously large and was coloured, as was all his face, a dead white. His left cheek was pock-marked. His hair was black and fell over the dirty collar of his cloak. His most remarkable features were his eyes, which were veiled as though they were half closed, lidded, and sleepy. His doublet and hose under his cloak were red and white like his hat. He wore a number of flashing rings on his rather dirty fingers. Nicholas judged him a young man of about twenty-six, and he seemed to have a fine and alert body. He moved with great ease and with a queer, springy step.

When he approached the two gentlemen he took off his hat and bowed. Then he said, in a soft, rich, and musical voice:

‘Sirs, I am travelling with my daughter’ (he made a gesture at the child, who stood, her tiny hand on the donkey’s ragged coat) ‘to Scotland, and we pay our way as we go. I am a magician.’

He said this so simply and with so boyish an air that both Nicholas and Toby laughed. ‘There are many sorts of magicians,’ Nicholas said. ‘Moreover, magic is against the King’s law.’

‘My magic does no harm,’ the man answered. ‘For example, good sir, you will find in your sword-pocket an egg coloured blue and a twist of rosemary——’

Nicholas felt at the pouch by his small rapier and produced from it a stone egg coloured blue and a twist of rosemary. Now the man had been standing at a distance from him. Nicholas stood up, looking at these things in his hand with amused wonderment. Toby Garland loved any sort of a game or a show and he clapped his hands delightedly.

‘Show us another!’ he cried.

At that same moment Lucy, Rashleigh, and Peter came together round the corner of the house from the garden. Lucy went to her father and kissed him.

‘What have you found, Father? Whose are those ...?’ Then she saw the child. With a little cry she went across to her. For in fact, as they all now saw, the child was beautiful. In age she could not be more than six or seven, but she held her head high, and stood as though on guard, fiercely. She had great black eyes, a proud mouth, and a body that the tawdry dress of orange and tinsel could not disguise. Her black hair fell on either side of her haughty, baby face. When Lucy approached her she did not move back. Only she raised her head a little higher. ‘Oh, you baby!’ Lucy cried. ‘Look, Peter—such a baby!’

‘Do not touch my donkey!’ she called out, as though she were challenging the world, and when some of the crowd, who had by this time come closer, laughed, she turned as though she would spit at them. Nicholas, laughing, called out: ‘Lucy! Lucy! See what I have! An egg and some rosemary!’

Peter had joined Lucy, looking at the child, who now was staring at the man as though she expected an order.

‘What is your name?’ Lucy asked her.

‘Katherine Teresa Sibylla Christian,’ she answered.

‘What a pocket of names!’ Lucy said, laughing, and touched her. Her whole body shrank. But she turned to Peter.

‘Please, sir, my father needs me.’

It seemed that he did, for preparations had been forwarding. The hunch-back boy had brought the table to the front of the court near the wooden seat. He had produced from somewhere a box with silver bands, a horn cup, and a stiff white cone. The child, as though she had been executing these movements from birth, went to the table, bowed to the gentlemen with the utmost solemnity, and then stood rigidly at attention. The young magician seemed to have complete confidence—indeed, beneath his half-closed eyes he was almost impertinent. He spread his arms and began a long rigmarole in his deep, beautiful voice. He repeated his words as though he had said them a great many times before: he appeared to Nicholas to be infinitely bored. The small child stood at attention looking straight in front of her: she and her father were nothing but automata.

The human member of the company was the boy with the hump. His thin face was pale and freckled: he had the anxious, half-deprecatory look of one who has been deformed from childhood but his eyes never left his master’s face. And there was more in them than obedience—there was devotion.

The magician said that his name was Dom Ferdinand Christian, that he was directly descended from the Queen of Sheba and that five of his ancestors had been kings. He said, moreover, that he had been born in Egypt in the tomb of one of the Egyptian kings, that his mother had been an Egyptian princess and his uncle a great Egyptian seer. From him he had learned the three great secrets—the immortality of not only the soul but also the body, the transmutation of metals into gold, and the elixir of enduring love....

Why, thought Nicholas, does he attempt all this nonsense upon us? But he could not seriously answer such a question, for he was bathed in such perfect happiness. He floated in this honeyed air which had a thick roughness as though its light were pollened with gold dust. He saw things as in a dream. Turning his head he could discern over the tree-tops the heavy shoulders of Black Combe, wine-darkened, and before him the sea sparkled with a sunlight so fresh that his body was invigorated as though he bathed in it. Behind was the house, and behind the house the line of mountains. The two young men stood scornfully near their father, and Lucy, her eyes staring and her mouth a little open, had her hand on Nicholas’ shoulder.

He liked to feel the pressure of her hand: his heart rose to meet it. He had been denied until now a daughter, and this protective paternity, this love that had nothing in it but purity and loving-kindness, was a wonderful new emotion.

He sat there, looking like a king, with his brown face, grey hair, and attitude of command. He was, at this moment, supremely happy. He remembered afterwards that it was at this moment when he realized his own happiness that everything changed. The magician, with his white pock-marked face and huge nose, was busy above the table. He held high his hand, opened his palm, and from it there dropped some white powder. The powder fell into the stiff-shaped cone. The magician uttered a cry and from the cone flew two white doves. The remarkable thing was that they did not, as is customary with the doves of conjurers, settle down to be caught up and put away and used for the next performance—rather they flew, with steady beat of wings, against the white-blue sky into the dark secrecy of the trees of the avenue and disappeared. Nicholas thought to himself, ‘This is no ordinary conjurer,’ and perhaps the more because now the magician fixed him, Nicholas, with his sleepy half-lidded gaze.

It seemed to him that the magician travelled with him to some very different place—to rough and stony ground where snow was falling and a strong wind blowing. Nicholas had his sword out, and, defending himself, while he uttered short gasps of exhaustion, was that thin dark man, his enemy, Irvine.

Nicholas had him in his arms, he raised him, pressing him to his chest, and, with a great cry, he threw him over and down ... he threw him over and down ... ‘How did you know this?’ he asked the magician.

‘I was there.’

‘But you were not there. Only Irvine and myself.’

‘I was there because I am here. It is happening now. It is for ever. It can never end because time can never end....’

He heard Lucy’s voice in his ear:

‘Cousin Nicholas, wake up! See what he is doing now! He must have the aid of the Devil, I think.’

He awoke with a start, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.

For now the magician was not looking at him any longer, but was rather drawing from the cone a medley of flowers, marjoram and thyme and rose and carnation—flowers of all seasons. His hands were full of them, and then, as his fingers opened, they fell, colouring the air, but before they reached the table they were gone.

A long-drawn ‘Oh!’ of wonder came from the crowd who had now drawn close to the table. Nicholas then saw the magician do a very strange thing, for he turned his head aside a little, put up his hand, and executed a large voluptuous yawn! His mouth was so open, from where Nicholas was sitting, that he could see all the strong white teeth and the very red tongue. But the yawn was prodigious and expressed an infinite and tragic boredom.

Now the small child was to be used. She stood on the table, her beautiful large black eyes staring out to the mountains. It seemed that she was in a trance. The magician ordered her to stand tiptoe.

Nicholas stared at her and it may be that he was dazzled by the sun, for it was now low in the sky. It seemed to him that this sky darkened and that the sea was silver—wrinkled like a snake’s skin. Against this background the child grew. Her body sprang up until it was mature and the eyes that looked into those of Nicholas were a woman’s, scornful, arrogant, and mocking. Above her, like gigantic birds, hovered the hands of the magician....

He came to himself at the sound of a voice, harsh and imperative.

‘In the name of the Lord,’ the voice cried. Nicholas saw now everything with clear reality, for the table was there, the child standing on it, the magician half-turned toward the crowd. The air and sea were golden as they had been all afternoon. In the front of the crowd was standing a long thin man, dressed entirely in black, his head bare and his hair cropped. This man had the nervous posture and the tight thin lips of a fanatic. That much Nicholas could see.

‘In the Lord’s name,’ he cried again, ‘let this mockery cease. What hath the Lord said? “Thou shalt not bow to Ammon nor set up altars to the golden calf.”’

But it was Toby Garland who was angry. He had jumped from the seat and strode across the court. Nicholas followed him.

‘I don’t know what the Lord has said,’ he cried to the thin man in black, ‘but this I do know, that this is my house and these are the grounds thereof—and the privacy of the place is mine.’

The thin man was in no wise taken aback. ‘You should know, Mr. Garland, that this earth is the Lord’s and He has declared against all magic and necromancy and weaving of spells wherever they may be—and I tell you, Mr. Garland, I am here on the Lord’s work.’

‘And I tell you, Mr. Isaiah Holden, that the earth is the Lord’s and that I have paid moneys—plenty of moneys—to keep this portion of it for my own retiring-place and the giving of hospitality.’

At that point someone threw a stone at the magician, who was sitting, with apparent indifference, on the balustrade of the steps, swinging his legs. Nicholas had noticed the stone-thrower—a thick-set country lad—before this, and with a stride he was into the crowd, had the yokel swinging by his breeches and screeching for mercy.

The crowd was laughing, but not Isaiah Holden. Quickly and in a voice that seemed to be intended for Toby Garland’s ear, he said: ‘The time is not yet ripe, but the day is coming when the Lord will cry to His soldiers “Fall on and spare not!” Then on that day the sound of their horses’ hooves will be as the clashing of thunder and the swords of the righteous will flash in the brightness of the sun and little rivers shall run with the blood of God’s enemies.... Mark me, Tobias Garland, and see that neither you nor your sons be among them. As to that mountebank’—his eyes flashed across the court—‘his time is not yet, but he shall watch with darkening eyes the pouring forth of his own bowels.’ With this pretty prophecy he had ended, for he turned down the avenue. The crowd slowly followed, looking back some of them, but knowing that the entertainment was ended.

It was so.

Garland gave the magician some money. He jingled the coins in his pocket. He looked at Nicholas with admiration.

‘I have a place here for so strong a man with his hands, if you care to travel with us.’ His voice was half admiration, half impertinence.

Nicholas answered laughing: ‘Your flowers are of air, your woman that you make from a child is a fancy, your sky is not truly dark. I travel in more absolute company.’

Dom Ferdinand Christian stroked his great nose.

‘Who may tell what is absolute? I could convert that Puritan jack-in-the-pulpit into a squirrel—or you would say that I did.’

He turned round to find his daughter. She had found Peter Garland. She was standing, her little hand in his, while he asked her laughing questions. She was such a baby and such a woman too. Hard life had made her this last. He was teasing her. She pulled at one of the silver buttons on his sleeve, his only ornament.

‘Give me one.’

‘Yes, for a kiss.’

At once she held up her mouth. The boy caught her in his arms and lifted her in the air. She did not struggle but threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. He put her down and with his silver knife cut off a silver button.

‘There!’ She took it, looked at him shyly, and ran at once to the donkey.

The little party made a procession into the trees as they had come—the magician swinging his red cloak, the child with the donkey, the humpbacked boy with the table.