Sir Christopher: A Romance of a Maryland Manor in 1644

Mary Brent's lips drew themselves into a tight, straight line.

"Now, Sir Christopher, will you tell the court something we are most urgent to know, – did you, or did you not, return from that search agitated and distraught in bearing, with garments torn and stained with blood?"

"I did."

There was an ominous pause, during which one could well nigh count heart-beats.

"Christopher Neville, do you know this knife?"

"Yea; 'tis mine own."

"Ay, and found in the folds of the priest's garments, and fitting with fatal exactness the wound in the breast. Now, one more question: when you came in that night did you, or did you not, crave blessing and absolution from Father White?"

"No – not absolution!"

"A mere quibble! You confessed to him that you had sinned, and you begged his blessing. Not one of these points do you deny; and, indeed, denial were worse than useless, for, as you well know, I have witnesses enough at hand to prove them all. The explanations in your written statement, which lies before me and which I have examined, your silly tales of the wild animal, the brush and briar, do credit neither to your mind nor your conscience. Rather I beg of you while there is yet time make a clean breast of it here before God, before me, and before this assembled household of St. Gabriel's." Here Brent's voice took a tone almost of pleading, strangely at variance with his magisterial manner at the beginning.

"We all know," he went on, "that the priest had the cause of the Church so much at heart that he might have been tempted to use words to a heretic hard for hot blood to brook. Tell us all that happened, and there may be circumstances making for leniency if not for justification."

"I did not kill the priest."

The dulness of the speaker's tone might be the result of the reaction from strong excitement, or the apathy of guilt. It angered Brent.

"Neville, I would like to stand your friend; but the Governor of the Palatinate of Maryland declines to be a compounder of felony. I ask once more, have you any confession to make?"

"None."

"Gentlemen, are you ready for the test?"

Councillor Neale and Cornwaleys bowed assent.

"Mistress Brent, do you, as lady of the manor, approve the aforesaid test that Christopher Neville be commanded to lay his hand upon the breast of Father Mohl yonder and take oath before God that he knoweth naught of how the dead man came by his death?"

"I approve it," said Mary Brent, rising in her place, "and I do command all those here present to draw near the bier and keep watch upon the face of the dead while the oath proceeds."

Slowly and solemnly the assembled household drew together in a circle about the corpse. Neville placed his right hand upon the breast of the dead man. For an instant he stood silent so, then raising the hand to heaven he said slowly, calmly, distinctly: "I swear to God I am innocent of this man's death, and I know naught touching it."

Why did all present suddenly shrink back as if a leper stood among them? The dead priest lay rigid as ever, the folded hands had not stirred, the inscrutable smile had not wavered on the lips or given any hint of its meaning. Surely there was no accusation in those still eyelids. Neville himself looked round in some bewilderment, till he caught his sister's murmur of horror, —

"Kit! oh, Kit! – YOUR HAND!"

Yes, as he turned it he saw for himself, a drop or two of blood trickling from a tiny wound in the palm, made by a rough place on the crucifix as he drew his hand from the corpse. A scratch so slight that it yielded no sensation to one in his tense, nervous state.

"Ay," he said coolly, but bitterly enough, "that ends it, I reckon. Such testimony as that closes the case against me; yet, before God – "

"Hush! no more blasphemy!" It was Giles Brent's voice that spoke, and all echo of friendliness was gone out of it. "Guards, remove your prisoner to the tobacco-house and keep him close. Gentlemen, the inquest is ended."

CHAPTER XI

THE GREATER LOVE

The guards turned, one holding Neville by the wrist, the other marching behind, and thus he walked down the hall between the rows of unfriendly faces. As he passed Elinor she looked up timidly, but met a glance of freezing contempt.

So she read the language of his eyes, and he knew not that they spoke any such thing. Instead he had but a vague consciousness that among the dull ranks of meaningless faces his eyes suddenly fell upon a glory, a brilliancy of sunny tresses straying over cheeks of a luminous pallor.

That was Elinor Calvert. Oh, yes! he knew that very well. Who else had that bearing, with its strange blending of a dignity too unconscious to be majestic, with a simplicity too dignified to be wholly simple? And those purple eyes, why were they so sad? Ah, because he was guilty. He had forgotten that; but Giles Brent had said so, and all these hostile faces confirmed the verdict. At any rate, since she thought so, it mattered little whether the verdict were true or false.

Suddenly there came to him a vision of a new circle in the Inferno, a circle where one forever questioned the eyes he loved and dared not read the answer written therein.

"My son, harden not thine heart; but rather submit thyself in penitence and humility to the sentence of justice."

It was Father White who spoke. The words brought Neville back to the present with a shock. He shook off the kind priest's hand rudely.

"Judgment, not justice!" he answered, with haughtiness, and moved on with a smile on his face. Pride is the fox that the Spartan carries under his cloak, smiling while it eats his heart.

Father White drew back, but so full was Neville's mind that he noted not the movement, nor indeed aught else, till he was aware of a yellow head at his elbow and a pair of short legs striding to keep the pace with his own long ones.

Cecil had crept from his mother's side, and joining Neville was now seeking to slip his little hand into the close-clenched one beside him.

"I've brought thomething for you," he whispered, putting his other hand to the breast of his jerkin as they came to the door.

Neville answered by a dreary smile.

"It's a knife to take the place of the one you lost."

The guard shook his head reprovingly.

"No knives for prisoners, Cecil," said Neville.

"Well, you shall have thomething, because you are my friend. I mean that you shall be my tenant at Robin Hood's Barn yet, and I don't think you killed the priest. Mother does; but men must think for themselves."

Neville bit his lip till the blood came.

"See," said Cecil, "here is a picture of Mother done on ivory. She gave it to me the morning I was lord of the manor. I asked if I could give it to you. She smiled and said it would be time enough to think of that when you asked for it, and I promised never to offer it to you till you did; but it ith a pretty picture, and you would like it to look at in the tobacco-house, and you could sell it for bread if you escape" – this in a lower whisper. "Now, do you ask for it?"

Neville grew white to the lips. He looked at the picture as a starving man looks at bread. After an instant's hesitation he shut his teeth and drew himself up.

"No!" he cried.

Then wrenching his wrist from the jailer's clasp, he lifted Cecil in his arms, kissed him, and set him down again.

"But I do thank thee from the bottom of a sad heart," he said, and added, "God bless thee and reward thee!"

Inside the hall, with the dignity and formality of which neither fewness of numbers nor bareness of surroundings could rob our forefathers, the court filed down the room, Mistress Brent on her brother's arm.

"Now, Giles," said his sister, "art thou satisfied at last who is the guilty man?"

"I fear there can be no doubt."

"I should say not, indeed. Even Margaret must needs give over her hot defence and admit that the voice of the Lord hath spoken."

"I wish it would tell me what were good to do."

"It does, Giles. It says, 'Be firm! Let not ill-timed tenderness protect the criminal! Blood guiltiness must be wiped out in blood.'"

"That is not a gospel of love, Mary."

"'Tis the gospel of justice. I feel a sense of guilt in myself that Holy Church hath suffered such outrage in the bosom of my household, and this guilt can only be purged away when we withdraw fellowship and sympathy from the evil-doer and deliver him up to justice. To-morrow, Giles, thou must go to St. Mary's and – "

"Softly, Mary! In this matter we must move slowly and with caution."

"Thy friendship for this man makes thee weak."

"Come, come, Mary!" said her brother, testily; "'tis time we discovered whether this province is to be ruled by men or women. Elinor calls me hard of heart for persecuting Christopher Neville; Margaret calls me a fool for suspecting him; now you will have me a weakling for not hanging him out of hand. I tell thee I will have no more meddling in this case; when I see my duty clear before me, I will do it. Till then I bid thee hold thy peace."

Brent's last words were overheard by the worthy Masters Neale and Cornwaleys, who followed close after them.

"The Governor is nigh distraught over this wretched business," said Neale, meditatively stroking the tuft on his chin.

"And well he may be," replied Cornwaleys. "It needs but a small torch to light such a flame of religious dissension here in Maryland as a century shall not suffice to extinguish."

"Yet you would not have the guilty escape?"

"Why not Neville as well as Ingle? Better that than set the province afire. Besides, so many innocent must needs suffer with the guilty. Look at that little sister of Neville's! Yesterday she was gay as a lark; to-day she can scarce lift her swollen eyelids. Poor child! I would I could help her."

Another man in the hall shared the wish of Captain Cornwaleys. As Peggy passed Huntoon she felt her hand grasped, and held in a strong, heartening clasp. "Courage!" Romney whispered. "We are not yet at the end. Much may still come to pass in our favor." Peggy's heart rose at the word "our."

"But the blood," she murmured. "I believe it was the priest's revenge for the quarrel he had with Kit." The girl shared the superstition of the age, and it seemed to her that some supernatural and malign agency was working against Christopher.

"Nay," answered Romney, "else how account for this?" and he held up his own hand scarred from joint to the joining of the wrist. "'Twas from the same edge of the crucifix I got the scratch as I watched by the corpse last night, and leaned over to set the candles at the head straighter in their sockets. No, no, Peggy! it will not do to lose heart now. We must think of nothing but how we can help your brother, – clear him if we can; save him if we cannot clear him."

The contagion of hopefulness spread to Peggy's sorrowing little soul, and with it came a blessed sense of having a firm support at hand to lean upon, let the winds of adversity blow as they would. The firm arm and brave heart and ready, resourceful wit were all hers for the asking; nay, were themselves pleading with her to be allowed to spend their life in her service, and she had flouted them and their owner but three days since, – yes, and answered the proffer of honest love by a slap in the face from an evergreen bough!

It would seem by all the laws of psychology that this angry humility and consciousness of her own errors should have made pretty Peggy more tolerant of the mistakes and shortcomings of others; but by a strange revulsion, as she drew near the corner where Elinor Calvert sat gazing into vacancy as if turned to stone by the sight of the gorgon's head, her anger swiftly changed its object. Slowly and somewhat scornfully Peggy looked her over from head to foot.

"Do you believe this calumny?" she asked.

No answer from lips or eyes.

"Oh, shame!" cried the girl. "I can bear it for the rest; but that you, who have known him half his life, you whom he loved, nay worshipped, putting you well nigh in the place of God above, that you should condemn him – oh, it is too much! Thank God he still has me to love and cling to him!"

Slowly the stony face relaxed, the fixed eyes began to see things once more, but the voice was still dim and distant as Elinor answered, —

"Cease, child! – prate no more of what you feel for Christopher Neville! You say you love too much to doubt him. What is your love to mine? I know him guilty, and yet, God help me, I love him still!"

CHAPTER XII

HOW LOVERS ARE CONVINCED

Nothing is more impossible than to predict what one's emotions will be in any given crisis. If any one had told Christopher Neville that lying in a shed under accusation of murder, believed guilty by his lady love, cast off by his friend, his most acute sensation would be envy of the tobacco which the sentry was smoking outside the door, he would have laughed the prophet to scorn; yet so it was.

The nervous strain, added to the cold of the tobacco-house, was more than he could bear, and beyond any spiritual help he craved physical stimulant, something to make "a man of him" again, to give him back that courage and coolness which had never yet deserted him, but which he felt now slipping away fast.

At length he felt shame at such loss of manhood, and began to take himself to task.

"Come, now, Christopher Neville, thou sourfaced son of ill fortune!" he said aloud, as if talking to another person, "state thy woes, one by one, and I will combat them with what heart I may. Begin then! – What first?"

"I am in prison."

"Where many a better man has been before thee. In a palace thou mightst be in worse company."

"I am cold."

"Walk about!"

"I am hungry."

"Pull down yonder tobacco-leaf and chew it."

"My friends have forsaken me."

"So did Job's."

"My sweetheart has turned the cold shoulder to me."

"Then do thou turn thy back full to her. Use thy reason, man alive! Hast thou lived to nigh forty years, to be hurt like a boy by a woman's inconstancy? Laugh at her, revile her if thou wilt, rip out round oaths; but, an thou be not quite demented, put not thy courage beneath the foot of her scorn!"

"But I love her."

"Ah, poor fool! There thou hast me. Thou knowst well I have no balm in my box to medicine that hurt. Yet what can't be cured, may be forgot, for a while at least. Wine would do it. Perchance tobacco may – Curse that guard! How good his pipe smells! – I would I had one."

Neville had never yet failed of a benefit for lack of asking, so now he set up a tattoo with his fists on the wall.

"What's wanted within there?" came gruffly from the guard.

"What would you want if you'd been shut up in this cold hole for a night and a day?"

"I might want ortolans and pheasants and a bottle of old Madeira; but if I was a murderer, and as good as a dead man myself, I shouldn't look to get them – not in this world."

Neville kept his temper. It was all he had left.

"Maybe not; but if you saw a fellow outside, with a pipe in his mouth and a tobacco pouch in his pocket, and another pipe bulging out at the breast of his jerkin, it's likely you'd count on his taking pity on the poor devil locked up inside, and giving him a bit smoke."

The guard weakened visibly. Neville could see through the crack that he half turned and put his hand irresolutely to his pocket. Then he straightened himself more rigidly.

"How do I know but you want to set the tobacco-house afire? And then off you'd be, and 'tis I must answer for you to the Governor – a just man, but hard on one that fails in his duty."

"Come, then," called Neville more cheerfully, feeling his point half won; "why not come in and smoke with me? Then you can keep an eye on me and the tobacco together, and it will be a comfort to me to have speech of a fellow mortal instead of being tormented by my cursed unpleasant thoughts."

Truth to tell, the guard was nearly as weary of solitude as his prisoner. This walking up and down in the dusk from one pine-tree to another was not lively work, and besides, there was a compelling magnetism in Neville's voice that had charmed stronger men than the guard, Philpotts.

Slowly, and with a certain reluctance to yield characteristic of Englishmen, and quite independent of the value of the thing conceded, he drew the heavy bolt and entered.

The interior of the shed, for it was scarcely more, was dismal enough in the half light. The long tobacco leaves hanging from the beams suggested mourner's weeds, and waved ominously in the wind as the door was opened. Daylight still peeped in through the chinks. By its help Neville studied the heavy outlines of the guard's figure clad in a sad colored campaign coat lined with blue and surmounted by a montero cap which shaded a pock-marked face, a typical English face, square cut, obstinate, with persistence and loyalty writ large all over it.

"Pardon my not rising," said Neville, as if he were receiving a courtier. "The cold and dampness of this place have given me the rheum to such extent that each bone in my body hath its own particular pain. If I kneel my knees ache, if I sit my hips ache, if I bend my back aches."

"Marry," interrupted the jailer, with a coarse laugh; "'tis well you are to try hanging, which will rest them all."

"You have a very pretty wit, jailer, and so keen one would say it had been sharpened on an English whetstone. The French have no gift for such rapier thrusts."

"Oh, to Hell with the French!"

"Hell must be crammed full of foreigners. We English are always sending them there."

"No doubt you'll know soon."

"Very likely. If I do, I'll send you word – and by the way, so that I may not forget, what is your name?"

"Philpotts."

"Ah! Related to Robert Philpot of Kent?"

"No; no such fine folk in our line. Besides, my name is Philpotts."

"One l and two t's?"

"That same," replied the guard laconically, having no mind to be drawn into too friendly intercourse.

"A droll name!"

"None too droll for many an honest man to bear it."

"Pardon me, I doubt not the honesty; but I question whether there be many Philpottses floating round the world. I never knew but one, and he lived in Somerset."

"Somerset?"

"Ay, in a little village on the coast between the Mendip hills and the river Axe."

A look of recollection stole into the dull gray eyes, but still the shrewd self-restraint lingered.

"How did the village lie, and what is its name?"

"Its name is Regis, and it lies like a baby in a cradle, snugly tucked away in the dip of the hills; and there is a brook close beside it that comes tumbling over the rocks to lose itself in the Axe."

Philpotts nodded unconscious assent.

"Oh," continued Neville, "but I would like to see that river Axe once more! I do remember a famous pool where the fish leaped to the hook in the spring in a fashion to make a man's blood sing."

"Did ye know Philpotts, then?"

"Ay."

"What mought his first name ha' been?"

"James – James Philpotts. He had a farm of my father, and he and I were wont to go a-fishing together in the Axe, and one cold day he fell in. He couldn't swim, if I remember; and how like a drowned rat he did look when he got out!"

At the memory, in spite of all his troubles, Neville laughed aloud. Philpotts slowly laid down his pipe, and propped it against a board, determined, before yielding to emotion, to attend to the safety of the tobacco-house. Then striding over to Neville he seized his hand in his own two brawny ones with a grip that made the other man wince.

"Swim? no, that he couldn't, and it's his life and all he owes to you, sir, and he bade me look out for you in the New World and pay back the service an ever I got the chance; but 'twas the name misled me, – 'Jack Neville,' says my brother; 'Christopher Neville,' says the Governor in the manor-house yesterday."

"Ay, my name is Christopher; but as I had a cousin who bore the same, and who was often at Frome for months at a time, the family were wont to call me 'Jack,' after my father."

"So – thou – art – the son of Master John Neville of Frome House?"

The words came hard, as if forced out.

Philpotts stood looking at the prisoner till slowly the mouth began to work, two tears slipped out from his eyelids and slid down his nose. He put up the sleeve of his jerkin to wipe them off, and then, fairly overcome, leaned against his arm on the post in the corner and fell to sobbing aloud.

"Forgive me blubbering, sir; but, oh, to see you in this sorry case, and me a-guarding you that should be helping you to escape. Shame on them that shut up an innocent man and planned his ruin!"

"An innocent man?" queried Neville; "why, 'tis not five minutes since that I was a murderer unfit to share an honest man's pipe."

"God ha' mercy on my blind stupidity! I see not how I could ha' looked in your face and not seen that 'twas na' in those eyes to look on a man to murder him nor in that mouth to swear falsely."

"Not so fast, Philpotts! Many a saint has had the ill luck to look like a pirate, and I was thrown in with a man in Algiers that I would have shared my last crust with, and he stole my wallet and made off with it in the night."

"Well, mebbe it's because I'm not of the quality and have no book learning, but when I feel things in my bones I don't question of them; and now my eyes are open and I see you're innocent, I'm going to help you out of this hole."

"But the danger – "

"To Hell with the danger! There never was a Philpotts yet was a coward."

"But your farm is well started here."

"Let it go to seed, then. It's little good there is for a Protestant in this Papist province, anyhow, and I'd not be sorry to be off to Virginia. I've a boat on the river below. So you see there's nothing between you and freedom."

"Yes, there is one thing."

"An' what's that, pray?"

As if in answer to the question came a rapid knock at the door outside. The guard grasped his musket and marched once or twice up and down the barn to recover his severe military bearing before he drew the door a crack open.

"Who goes there?"

"It is I, Mistress Calvert, cousin to Governor Brent."

Neville's heart felt as if it were an anvil, and some unseen power were laying on the hammer-strokes thick and fast. The blood surged to his face, and then fell back again leaving it white. She had come. Was he glad or sorry? Pride said, "You are sorry." Love whispered, "You are glad – do not deny it." Pride answered, "Yes, glad of the chance to make her sorry."

"I know not how to deny you, Mistress Calvert," came from without in Philpotts' voice, "but my commands are that none should enter save by the Governor's orders."

"Uncivil fellow!" Neville instinctively felt for his sword, and would have made a trial of his strength without it, but that on the instant he heard that voice, the voice that could make little shivers run from head to foot.

"You are in the right, as usual, good Master Philpotts, and foreseeing that you could not be swayed without the Governor's order, the Governor's order I have brought for a half-hour's talk with the prisoner, you meanwhile to be within call, but not within hearing. See! is't not writ as I have said?" she asked, holding the paper toward him.

"I am not such a churl as to dispute a lady's word," said Philpotts, glad in this chivalrous manner to evade a too severe strain on his powers of reading a written document. "The Governor's order shall be obeyed," and swinging back the door he closed it again behind him and resumed his march from the green pine-tree to the brown one, and from the brown tree back again to the green, watching the yellow sun set behind the distant hills. His taciturnity yielded at last to the extent of one exclamation, "By the Lord Harry, what a coil!"

As Elinor Calvert entered she threw back her sable hood, and her pale, beautiful face, surrounded by its golden hair, shone like the moon against the dark setting of the tobacco-hung rafters. Her only ornament was the diamond crescent at her throat, which glistened as a ray of the setting sun struck upon it. Her eyes were full of unshed tears, and her lips trembled so that she could scarcely control them enough to utter the words she had come to speak. Her hands were clenched tightly, as if by that force alone she held to her resolution.