Briony

“ And rapturously, reverently, while the birds sang about, and the chiming of the water came up to them in their warm high covert, he set the signature of his fealty on that lovely tablet.
It was the ecstatic moment of Brion’s life, never forgotten and never surpassed—innocence fulfilling beauty and beauty innocence, trustfully, confidingly. So to such sexless kisses angels love—the flowers that ask no fruit. ”

“ The very next day, at the same hour, Brion returned to the glen, and climbed the hill to the hidden bower. Somehow he believed that he would find his lady ensconced there: and there he found her. She essayed only a brief pretence of surprise—and she was looking prettier than ever. He admired all the points in her which a man would have admired; but with better than a man’s eyes. The pink and white, the little tapering fingers and shapely arms, the cup of her throat, the soft provocation of her lips and rounded chin—they moved him not to the beatitude of passion but of reverence. ”

“ And Brion understood without resentment. He had long decided his own attitude towards that question: for one thing to accept it as, virtually, an open secret; for another, to refuse to suffer for it in any way to himself, since honour was a matter of conscience, and not of arbitrary bestowal. But he only thanked his new friend, and answered that, like that friend himself, he must win his spurs before he took his reputation to market.
‘And so thou shalt,’ said the other admiringly. ‘Thou shalt carry thy quest knight-errantly, and strike for England’s name. ”

“ March o'er your plains and trample down your land?
[Pg 170] Let Brian, son of Brian, out of Brefney,
Beware the sweetness of their honeyed tongue,
Their greed and need, their indigence and riches,
Two-handed spoil from Ireland's sons have wrung.
Let Brian, son of Brian, son of Eoghan,
Ponder if one man ever came away,—
Who put his trust in England's perjured honour,—
Unscathed by guile, unharmed by treachery?
As waters rising 'neath the snows of winter,
As hamlets flaming from one secret spark,
So shall the chiefs of Erinn rally round him,
When Brian's star arises on the dark. ”

“ There are those—the fortunate ones, perhaps—who, looking like wizened age in youth, in age come to look youthful. What Brion saw before him was a little undersized creature, with a sharp unhealthy face and ferrety eyelashes. She was all hung and sown with gems, after the fashion of a royal model. Her head-dress was as monstrous as was her farthingale, over which a jewelled stomacher came down so deep as to give to her already short lower limbs an aspect of quite grotesque stubbiness. ”

“ But long before this evil had become a thing to whisper and remark on, Brion had learned all that he was destined to learn about his own history. He was with his Uncle one day, reading, at the table (to love both books and sport is to be the admirable youth) from Melancthon’s Confession, and looking up occasionally to ask the other, who sat in his big chair by the escritoire, to expound for him some knotty passage from the gentle Reformer, when suddenly a look came into his eyes, and a thrill to his heart, with the knowledge that he had reached the way. ”

“ And so had Brion grown in content of ignorance, regarding his adoption as permanent, and never dreaming that there existed one on whose favour he continued, and to whom he owed duty and obedience as the solitary kinsman surviving to him, it seemed, in all the world. Out of the amazing dark had this figure risen, to claim and appropriate him—a great man, a Judge, as Mr Angell, though with some seeming reluctance and agitation, had whispered when he came to fetch him—and henceforth through this apparition was he to approach so much nearer the mystery of his own being. ”

“ The stranger was curious about the superstition which kept his hiding-place inviolate; and Brion, seeing no reason for concealment, told him all about the legend of the departed buccaneer, and the fate of the unfortunate young relative who had got to know more about his affairs than was good for his health or hers. The eyes always seemed to listen to him more than the ears: they blinked no facts, and confessed no emotions—none in the least over their owner’s contiguity to the place of that dark reputed tragedy. ”

“ If reason could not explain a horror, it could master by facing it.
In and about the trees went the ghostly chase: one and the other, phantom and mortal, they took either side of a writhed trunk and met beyond. With a savage cry, Brion flung out his arms, and something dropped beneath them. He stooped, and his hands touched warm and throbbing flesh.
‘God’s ’slid!’ said the boy, taking his oath from Clerivault: ‘Say what art thou!’
He was panting, with set teeth: in the gloom and the wild flurry of his mood he could distinguish nothing clearly. ”

“ The words were louder and this time Brion recognized the voice. "I have brought you to the city as I told you I would. Have you done as you said you would?"
"I am doing it—but I need your help, Ulv. It is your life that needs saving and you must do your part—"
"What is truth?" Ulv interrupted. "All I hear is difference. The magter have done well though they live the wrong way. I myself have had bronze from them and there is water just for going. Now they tell us they are getting a different world for us all from the sky people and that is good, too. ”

“ This creature’s hugeness hits the eye like a battering-ram. He hath evidenced, and may be dismissed. Hence, porter—ha! and ruminate, like a vast ox, on the condescension shown thee.’
He led Brion away, while the other backed, bobbing and grinning, into the lodge. ‘Now,’ said he, stopping once more to look admiringly in the boy’s face, ‘let me gaze on thee my fill. Art grown, I swear, and to an aspect something graver than thy wont. ”

“ Brion gasped, and stood as if stricken. What was this wonder—this delirious wonder? A sob—laughter—were in his throat together. As the vendee, having received her gingerbread ship and placed it in her basket, went off down the alley, he followed in pursuit, stumbling, half blind. She passed out into the sunlight and he after. He had not yet seen her face, but he looked for tell-tale characteristics, agonised for them, and, identifying them, as he believed, felt a very sickness of joy. She walked like one who did not love violent exercise for its own sake ”

“ Byron, the hero of romance, whose pistols were his constant companions, and whose amorous adventures were as famous as his verse; Byron, the aristocrat, with the title which he valued so highly, but which makes little impression on a generation that recognises no aristocracy but that of the intellect. And our practical age has, moreover, a distinct contempt for what Byron sometimes imagined his honour required him to be, and sometimes really was—the dilettante. ”

“ The governante looked from one fallen face to the other, and an ineffable leer came into her own.
‘Well, well,’ said she: ‘You’re here; and there she is who knew and knows you not from Adam. What then? If a tree is sweet and fruitful, it may be loved without a name. She’s content, if you are, to accept you on your merits. Go to: Take what Fortune brings you, and make no words about it. There’s many a cross scent followed ends in tastier game than that that was first pursued and missed.’
Brion did not answer, but panic-struck he shook his head and made for the door. ”

“ They were going forward, walking at times, and at times riding, till they came to a spring that there was by the side of the road. ‘Now, Brian,’ said the fox, ‘unless thou dost strike off my head with one blow of the White Glaive of Light into this spring, I will strike off thine.’
‘S’tia,’ said Brian, ‘a man is kind to his own life.’
And he swept the head off him with one blow, and it fell into the well. And in the wink of an eye what should rise up out of the well but the son of the king that was father to the Sun Goddess. ”

“ I could find it in my heart to envy thee, thou rogue.’
‘How—in what way,’ began Brion—and stuck.
‘Looks she? comports herself?’ offered his companion. ‘I may not answer for myself, never having seen her. But the facts are safe. I had them from one, a certain popinjay, that calls himself my friend, and that would go a’wooing for a fortune. ”

“ Brignan de Brignan, though certainly amused, kept his mirth within bounds, and replied:
"Faith. I know not any young lady in your part of France who has a right to glory in my personal appearance, even if I were an Apollo,—who, by the way, is not represented with moustaches. But I believe I know who this girl may be,—I have met such a one in Paris, and avoided her as a pert little minx. ”

“ Brion smiled. ‘It was one Harlequin Clerivault, a creature as fantastic as his name, but with a heart of gold. You touched him on the quick, Sir. To start his brain on the subject of England is like laying open an emmet heap with your foot. It is a house gone wild at a blow.’
‘Well, I love him for it. ”

“ I have done no wrong: for God’s sake, if you are a Christian man, help me to escape.’
A moment Brion sat looking at him: it was not in his heart to deny a fellow-creature in such straits, and appearing so spent and broken. He was not of those, moreover, who in an emergency argue before they act. With a curt word he slipped his left foot out of the stirrup, and bent over. ‘Mount behind,’ said he, and as the fugitive struggled exhaustedly to heave himself to the horse’s crupper, fetched a strong hand under his armpit and helped him into place. ”

“ He learned the facts from those who lived there. The good old untidy Dame, so improvident yet so lovable, so busy yet so unbusinesslike, was dead these many years; the boys, Gregory and Richard, were, the one, in an attorney’s office at Bristol, the other, a clerk at Oxford; the ex-Divine himself, burdened with years, and much reduced in circumstances since his scholars had gradually deserted him with his faculties, lived with his only daughter, now grown a comely young woman, in a humble way in a small domicile near the church.
Sorry at heart, Brion sought and found them there. ”

“ Among their manifestations became ever a little and a little more pronounced one which caused Brion no small uneasiness; and that was a form of religious depression, in which he brooded on his misfortunes as the direct judgment of Heaven on him for his apostasy. It was no use arguing with him: the more one desired to save him, the more resolute he was to be damned. ”

“ That, as a stratagem, was resourceful enough: the perplexing thing to Brion was how one in so feeble a state could have put it into practice. Yet, again, that state seemed indisputable. One had only to look at the man to know he could not be malingering. ”

“ Everything happened as arranged and foreseen by the demon, but Briónes did not wish to let go his hold of the tail, and he said:—
“Well devised, sir, but four dollars are a ransom unworthy of you, of me, and of the service that we have undertaken. Find some method of showing yourself more generous. To do this will give you honour in the world, where, pardon my frankness, you do not enjoy the best of characters.”
“Would that I could get rid of you!” said the demon to himself, “but I am so weak and so numbed that I am not able to go alone. I must have patience! that which men call a virtue. ”

“ THE APPARITION Thenceforth Brion avoided the neighbourhood of the old well-house; he kept that dark cloud of ilex trees at a nervous distance, and did not even care to let his glance wander their way. This mood of superstitious fear haunted him for some time, and then began to weaken, or to change in its constitution. The eternal spirit of curiosity crept back, like a scared sheep, to examine the cause of its own panic. ”

“ It was only on her near approach that Brion perceived these to be a sort of fantastic clogs, half a yard in height, which she wore to the soles of her embroidered slippers, over which they were strapped; but so little gravity did they afford to the poor body that she needed the prop of a walking cane on the one side, and on the other of a sweet ape of fashion in a French doublet, who was her cicisbeo, to hold her up; in despite of which buttresses, she had a hard ado to keep her equilibrium as she passed, smirking and ogling. ”

“ Just to show what your Brignan really amounts to, and whether I mean to be a monk, and what a reader of books can do when he likes, I have made up my mind to go to Paris; and there I will find your Brignan, and show my scorn of such an illiterate bravo, and cut off his famous moustaches, and bring them back to you for proof! ”

“ He was full of regrets for that, but clearly attributed his failure to the unreasonable distance, and not to any miscalculation of his own. Having explained which, he turned to the subject of the voyage, in which he was truthfully much more interested than in this paltry local uprising, and asked Brion a thousand questions, which the poor fellow made shift in his distraction to answer to the best satisfaction he could. ”

“ They took him by the breeches, and they hurled him into ditches,
⁠And they pushed him under waterfalls, and this is what they said:
⁠"You are Sir Brian—don't laugh,
⁠You are Sir Brian—don't cry;
⁠You are Sir Brian, as bold as a lion—
⁠Sir Brian, the lion, good-bye!"
Sir Brian struggled home again, and chopped up his battleaxe,
⁠Sir Brian took his fighting boots, and threw them in the fire.
He is quite a different person now he hasn't got his spurs on,
⁠And he goes about the village as B. Botany, Esquire.
⁠"I am Sir Brian? Oh, no!
⁠I am Sir Brian? Who's he? ”

“ I'm inclined to think That with the reigning taste 't is vain to quarrel, And Burns might teach his votaries to drink, And Byron never meant to make them moral. You yet have lovers true, who will not shrink From lauding you and giving you the laurel; The Germans too, those men of blood and iron, Of all our poets chiefly swear by Byron. ”