The Great House Part 4

He might have said a word to cheer her. But he did not know that she was suffering, and he said no word. She came near to hating him for his stolidity and his silence. He was inhuman! A block!

She peered through the misty gla.s.s, striving to see what was before them. But she could make out no more than the dark limbs of trees, and now and then a trunk, which shone as the light of the lamp slipped over it, and as quickly vanished. Suddenly they shot from turf to hard road, pa.s.sed through an open gateway, for an instant the lamp on her side showed a grotesque pillar--they wheeled, they stopped. Within a few feet of her a door stood open, and in the doorway a girl held a lantern aloft in one hand, and with the other screened her eyes from the light.

CHAPTER VII.

MR. JOHN AUDLEY.

An hour later Ba.s.set was seated on one side of a wide hearth, on the other John Audley faced him. The library in which they sat was the room which Ba.s.set loved best in the world. It was a room of silence and large s.p.a.ces, and except where four windows, tall and narrow, broke one wall, it was lined high with the companions of silence--books. The ceiling was of black oak, adorned at the crossings of the joists and beams with emblems, b.u.t.terflies, and Stafford knots and the like, once bright with color, and still soberly rich. A five-sided bay enlarged each of the two inner corners of the room and broke the outlines. One of these bays shrined a window, four-mullioned, the other a spiral staircase. An air of comfort and stateliness pervaded the whole; here the great scutcheon over the mantel, there the smaller coats on the chair-backs blended their or and gules with the hues of old rugs and the dun bindings of old folios. There were books on the four or five tables, and books on the Cromwell chairs; and charts and deeds, antique weapons and silver pieces, all the tools and toys of the antiquary, lay broadcast. Against the door hung a blazoned pedigree of the Audleys of Beaudelays. It was six feet long and dull with age.

But Ba.s.set, as he faced his companion, was not thinking of the room, or of the pursuits with which it was connected in his mind, and which, more than affection and habit, bound him to John Audley. He moved restlessly in his chair, then stretched his legs to meet the glow of the wood fire. "All the same," he said, "I think you would have done well to see her to-night, sir."

"Pooh! pooh!" John Audley answered with lazy good humor. "Why? It doesn't matter what I think of her or she thinks of me. It's what Peter thinks of Mary and Mary thinks of Peter that matters. That's what matters!" He chuckled as he marked the other's annoyance. "She is a beauty, is she?"

"I didn't say so."

"But you think it. You don't deceive me at this time of day. And stand-off, is she? That's for the marines and innocent young fellows like you who think women angels. I'll be bound that she's her mother's daughter, and knows her value and will see that she fetches it! Trading blood will out!"

To the eye that looked and glanced away John Audley, lolling in his chair, in a quilted dressing-gown with silk facings, was a plump and pleasant figure. His face was fresh-colored, and would have been comely if the cheeks had not been a little pendulous. His hair was fine and white and he wore it long, and his hands were shapely and well cared for. As he said his last word he poured a little brandy into a gla.s.s and filled it up with water. "Here's to the wooing that's not long adoing!" he said, his eyes twinkling. He seemed to take a pleasure in annoying the other.

He was so far successful that Ba.s.set swore softly. "It's silly to talk like that," he said, "when I have hardly known the girl twenty-four hours and have scarcely said ten times as many words to her."

"But you're going to say a good many more words to her!" Audley retorted, grinning. "Sweet, pretty words, my boy! But there, there," he continued, veering between an elfish desire to tease and a desire equally strong to bring the other to his way of thinking. "I'm only joking. I know you'll never let that devil have his way! You'll never leave the course open for him! I know that. But there's no hurry! There's no hurry. Though, lord, how I sweated when I read his letter! I had never a wink of sleep the night after."

"I don't suppose that he's given a thought to her in that way," Ba.s.set answered. "Why should he?"

John Audley leant forward, and his face underwent a remarkable change. It became a pale, heavy mask, out of which his eyes gleamed, small and malevolent. "Don't talk like a fool!" he said harshly. "Of course he means it. And if she's fool enough all my plans, all my pains, all my rights--and once you come to your senses and help me I shall have my rights--all, all, all will go for nothing. For nothing!" He sank back in his chair. "There! now you've excited me. You've excited me, and you know that I can't bear excitement!" His hand groped feebly for his gla.s.s, and he raised it to his lips. He gasped once or twice. The color came back to his face.

"I am sorry," Ba.s.set said.

"Ay, ay. But be a good lad. Be a good lad. Make up your mind to help me at the Great House."

Ba.s.set shook his head.

"To help me, and twenty-four hours--only twenty-four hours, man--may make all the difference! All the difference in the world to me."

"I have told you my views about it," Ba.s.set said doggedly. He s.h.i.+fted uneasily in his chair. "I cannot do it, sir, and I won't."

John Audley groaned. "Well, well!" he answered. "I'll say no more now. I'll say no more now. When you and she have made it up"--in vain Ba.s.set shook his head--"you'll see the question in another light. Ay, believe me, you will. It'll be your business then, and your interest, and nothing venture, nothing win! You'll see it differently. You'll help the old man to his rights then."

Ba.s.set shrugged his shoulders, but thought it useless to protest. The other sighed once or twice and was silent also. At length, "You never told me that you had heard from her," Ba.s.set said.

"That I'd----" John Audley broke off. "What is it, Toft?" he asked over his shoulder.

A man-servant, tall, thin, lantern-jawed, had entered unseen. "I came to see if you wanted anything more, sir?" he said.

"Nothing, nothing, Toft. Good-night!" He spoke impatiently, and he watched the man out before he went on. Then, "Perhaps I heard from her, perhaps I didn't," he said. "It's some time ago. What of it?"

"She was in great distress when she wrote."

John Audley raised his eyebrows. "What of it!" he repeated. "She was that woman's daughter. When Peter married a tradesman's daughter--married a----" He did not continue. His thoughts trickled away into silence. The matter was not worthy of his attention.

But by and by he roused himself. "You've ridiculous scruples," he said. "Absurd scruples. But," briskly, "there's that much of good in this girl that I think she'll put an end to them. You must brighten up, my lad, and spark it a little! You're too grave."

"d.a.m.n!" said Ba.s.set. "For G.o.d's sake, don't begin it all again. I've told you that I've not the least intention----"

"She'll see to that if she's what I think her," John Audley retorted cheerfully. "If she's her mother's daughter! But very well, very well! We'll change the subject. I've been working at the Feathers--the Prince's Feathers."

"Have you gone any farther?" Ba.s.set asked, forcing an interest which would have been ready enough at another time.

"I might have, but I had a visitor."

Visitors were rare at the Gatehouse, and Ba.s.set wondered. "Who was it?" he asked.

"Bagenal the maltster from Riddsley. He came about some political rubbish. Some trouble they are having with Mottisfont. D--n Mottisfont! What do I care about him? They think he isn't running straight--that he's going in for corn-law repeal. And Bagenal and the other fools think that that will be the ruin of the town."

"But Mottisfont is a Tory," Ba.s.set objected.

"So is Peel. They are both in Bagenal's bad books. Bagenal is sure that Peel is going back to the cotton people he came from. Spinning Jenny spinning round again!"

"I see."

"I asked him," Audley continued, rubbing his knees with sly enjoyment, "what Stubbs the lawyer was doing about it. He's the party manager. Why didn't he come to me?"

Ba.s.set smiled. "What did he say to that?"

"Hummed and hawed. At last he said that owing to Stubbs's connection with--you know who--it was thought that he was not the right person to come to me. So I asked him what Stubbs's employer was going to do about it."

"Ah!"

"He didn't know what to say to that, the a.s.s! Thought I should go the other way, you see. So I told him"--John Audley laughed maliciously as he spoke--"that, for the landed interest, the law had taken away my land, and, for politics, I would not give a d--n for either party in a country where men did not get their rights! Lord! how he looked!"

"Well, you didn't hide your feelings."

"Why should I?" John Audley asked cheerfully. "What will they do for me? Nothing. Will they move a finger to right me? No. Then a plague on both their houses!" He snapped his fingers in schoolboy fas.h.i.+on and rose to his feet. He lit a candle, taking a light from the fire with a spill. "I am going to bed now, Peter. Unless----" he paused, the candlestick in his hand, and gazed fixedly at his companion. "Lord, man, what we could do in two or three hours! In two or three hours. This very night!"

"I've told you that I will have nothing to do with it!" Ba.s.set repeated.

John Audley sighed, and removing his eyes, poked the wick of the candle with the snuffers. "Well," he said, "good-night. We must look to bright eyes and red lips to convert you. What a man won't do for another he will do for himself, Peter. Good-night."

Left alone, Ba.s.set stared fretfully at the fire. It was not the first time by scores that John Audley had tried him and driven him almost beyond bearing. But habit is a strong tie, and a common taste is a bond even stronger. In this room, and from the elder man, Ba.s.set had learned to trace a genealogy, to read a coat, to know a bar from a bend, to discourse of badges and collars under the guidance of the learned Anstie or the ingenious Le Neve. There he had spent hours flitting from book to book and chart to chart in the pursuit, as thrilling while it lasted as any fox-chase, of some family link, the origin of this, the end of that, a thing of value only to those who sought it, but to them all-important. He could recall many a day so spent while rain lashed the tall mullioned windows or sunlight flooded the window-seat in the bay; and these days had endeared to him every nook in the library from the folio shelves in the shadowy corner under the staircase to the cosey table near the hearth which was called "Mr. Ba.s.set's," and enshrined in a long drawer a tree of the Ba.s.sets of Blore.

For he as well as Audley came of an ancient and shrunken stock. He also could count among his forbears men who had fought at Blore Heath and Towton, or had escaped by a neck from the ruin of the Gunpowder Plot. So he had fallen early under the spell of the elder man's pursuits, and, still young, had learned from him to live in the past. Later the romantic solitude of the Gatehouse, where he had spent more of the last six years than in his own house at Blore, had confirmed him in the habit.

Under the surface, however, the two men remained singularly unlike. While a fixed idea had narrowed John Audley's vision to the inhuman, the younger man, under a dry and reserved exterior--he was shy, and his undrained acres, his twelve hundred a year, poorly supported an ancient name--was not only human, but in his way was something of an idealist. He dreamed dreams, he had his secret aspirations, at times ambition of the higher kind stirred in him, he planned plans and another life than this. But always--this was a thing inbred in him--he put forward the commonplace, as the cuttle-fish sheds ink, and hid nothing so shyly as the visions which he had done nothing to make real. On those about him he made no deep impression, though from one border of Staffords.h.i.+re to the other his birth won respect. Politics viewed as a game, and a selfish game, had no attraction for him. Quarter Sessions and the Bench struck no spark from him. At the Races and the County Ball richer men outshone him. But given something to touch his heart and fire his ambition, he had qualities. He might still show himself in another light.

Something of this, for no reason that he could imagine, some feeling of regret for past opportunities, pa.s.sed through his mind as he sat fretting over John Audley's folly. But after a time he roused himself and became aware that he was tired; and he rose and lit a candle. He pushed back the smouldering logs and slowly and methodically he put out the lights. He gave a last thought to John Audley. "There was always one maggot in his head," he muttered, "now there's a second. What I would not do to please him, he thinks I shall do to please another! Well, he does not know her yet!"

He went to bed.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE GATEHOUSE.

It is within the bounds of imagination that death may make no greater change in our inner selves than is wrought at times by a new mood or another outlook. When Mary, an hour before the world was astir on the morning after her arrival, let herself out of the Gatehouse, and from its threshold as from a ledge saw the broad valley of the Trent stretched before her in all the beauty of a May morning, her alarm of the past night seemed incredible. At her feet a sharp slope, clothed in gorse and shrub, fell away to meet the plain. It sank no more than a couple of hundred feet, but this was enough to enable her to follow the silver streak of the river winding afar between park and coppice and under many a church tower. Away to the right she could see the three graceful spires of Lichfield, and southward, where an opal haze closed the prospect, she could imagine the fringe of the Black Country, made beautiful by distance.

In sober fact few parts of England are less inviting than the low lands of Staffords.h.i.+re, when the spring floods cover them or the fogs of autumn cling to the cold soil. But in spring, when larks soar above them and tall, lop-sided elms outline the fields, they have their beauty; and Mary gazed long at the fair prospect before she turned her back on it and looked at the house that was fated to be her home.

It was what its name signified, a gatehouse; yet by turns it could be a sombre and a charming thing. Some Audley of n.o.ble ideas, a man long dead, had built it to be the entrance to his demesne. The park wall, overhung by trees, still ran right and left from it, but the road which had once pa.s.sed through the archway now slid humbly aside and entered the park by a field gate. A wide-latticed Tudor tower, rising two stories above the arch and turreted at the four corners, formed the middle. It was b.u.t.tressed on either hand by a lower building, flush with it and of about the same width. The tower was of yellowish stone, the wings were faced with stained stucco. Right and left of the whole a plot of shrubs masked on the one hand the stables, on the other the kitchens--modern blocks set back to such a distance that each touched the old part at a corner only.

He who had planned the building had set it cunningly on the brow of the Great Chase, so that, viewed from the vale, it rose against the skyline. On dark days it broke the fringe of woodland and stood up, gloomy and forbidding, the portal of a Doubting Castle. On bright days, with its hundred diamond panes a-glitter in the suns.h.i.+ne, it seemed to be the porch of a fairy palace, the silent home of some Sleeping Beauty. At all times it imposed itself upon men below and spoke of something beyond, something unseen, greater, mysterious.

To Mary Audley, who saw it at its best, the very stains of the plaster glorified by the morning light, it was a thing of joy. She fancied that to live behind those ancient mullioned windows, to look out morning and evening on that s.p.a.cious landscape, to feel the bustle of the world so remote, must in itself be happiness. For a time she could not turn from it.

But presently the desire to explore her new surroundings seized her and she re-entered the house. A glance at the groined roof of the hall--many a gallant horseman had ridden under it in his time--proved that it was merely the archway closed and fitted with a small door and window at either end. She unlocked the farther door and pa.s.sed into a paved court, in which the gra.s.s grew between the worn flags. In the stables on the left a dog whined. The kitchens were on the other hand, and before her an opening flanked by tall heraldic beasts broke a low wall, built of moss-grown brick. She ventured through it and uttered a cry of delight.

Near at hand, under cover of a vast chestnut tree, were traces of domestic labor: a grindstone, a saw-pit, a woodpile, coops with clucking hens. But beyond these the sward, faintly lined at first with ruts, stretched away into forest glades, bordered here by giant oaks brown in bud, there by the yellowish-green of beech trees. In the foreground lay patches of gorse, and in places an ancient thorn, riven and half prostrate, crowned the russet of last year's bracken with a splash of cream. Heedless of the spectator, rabbits sat making their toilet, and from every brake birds filled the air with a riot of song.

To one who had seen little but the streets of Paris, more sordid then than now, the scene was charming. Mary's eyes filled, her heart swelled. Ah, what a home was here! She had espied on her journey many a nook and sheltered dell, but nothing that could vie with this! Heedless of her thin shoes, with no more than a handkerchief on her head, she strayed on and on. By and by a track, faintly marked, led her to the left. A little farther, and old trees fell into line on either hand, as if in days long gone, before age thinned their ranks, they had formed an avenue.

For a time she sat musing on a fallen trunk, then the hawthorn that a few paces away perfumed the spring air moved her to gather an armful of it. She forgot that time was pa.s.sing, almost she forgot that she had not breakfasted, and she might have been nearly a mile from the Gatehouse when she was startled by a faint hail that seemed to come from behind her. She looked back and saw Ba.s.set coming after her.

He, too, was hatless--he had set off in haste--and he was out of breath. She turned with concern to meet him. "Am I very late, Mr. Ba.s.set?" she asked, her conscience p.r.i.c.king her. What if this first morning she had broken the rules?

"Oh no," he said. And then, "You've not been farther than this?"

"No. I am afraid my uncle is waiting?"

"Oh no. He breakfasts in his own room. But Etruria told me that you had gone this way, and I followed. I see that you are not empty-handed."

"No." And she thrust the great bunch of may under his nose--who would not have been gay, who would not have lost her reserve in such a scene, on such a morning? "Isn't it fresh? Isn't it delicious?"

As he stooped to the flowers his eyes met hers smiling through the hawthorn sprays, and he saw her as he had not seen her before. Her gravity had left her. Spring laughed in her eyes, youth fluttered in the tendrils of her hair, she was the soul of May. And what she had found of beauty in the woodland, of music in the larks' songs, of perfume in the blossoms, of freshness in the morning, the man found in her; and a shock, never to be forgotten, ran through him. He did not speak. He smelled the hawthorn in silence.

But a few seconds later--as men reckon time--he took note of his feelings, and he was startled. He had not been prepared to like her, we know; many things had armed him against her. But before the witchery of her morning face, the challenge of her laughing eyes, he awoke to the fact that he was in danger. He had to own that if he must live beside her day by day and would maintain his indifference, he must steel himself. He must keep his first impressions of her always before him, and be careful. And be very careful--if even that might avail.

For a hundred paces he walked at her side, listening without knowing what she said. Then his coolness returned, and when she asked him why he had come after her without his hat he was ready.

"I had better tell you," he answered, "this path is little used. It leads to the Great House, and your uncle, owing to his quarrel with Lord Audley, does not like any one to go farther in that direction than the Yew Tree Walk. You can see the Walk from here--the yews mark the entrance to the gardens. I thought that it would be unfortunate if you began by displeasing him, and I came after you."

"It was very good of you," she said. Her face was not gay now. "Does Lord Audley live there--when he is at home?"

"No one lives there," he explained soberly. "No one has lived there for three generations. It's a ruin--I was going to say, a nightmare. The greater part of the house was burnt down in a carouse held to celebrate the accession of George the Third. The Audley of that day rebuilt it on a great scale, but before it was finished he gave a housewarming, at which his only son quarrelled with a guest. The two fought at daybreak, and the son was killed beside the old b.u.t.terfly in the Yew Walk--you will see the spot some day. The father sent away the builders and never looked up again. He diverted much of his property, and a cousin came into the remainder and the t.i.tle, but the house was never finished, the windows in the new part were never glazed. In the old part some furniture and tapestry decay; in the new are only bats and dust and owls. So it has stood for eighty years, vacant in the midst of neglected gardens. In the sunlight it is one of the most dreary things you can imagine. By moonlight it is better, but unspeakably melancholy."

"How dreadful," she said in a low voice. "I almost wish, Mr. Ba.s.set, that you had not told me. They say in France that if you see the dead without touching them, you dream of them. I feel like that about the house."

It crossed his mind that she was talking for effect. "It is only a house after all," he said.

"But our house," with a touch of pride. Then, "What are those?" she asked, pointing to the gray shapeless beasts, time-worn and weather-stained, that flanked the entrance to the courtyard.

"They are, or once were, b.u.t.terflies, the badge of the Audleys. These hold s.h.i.+elds. You will see the b.u.t.terflies in many places in the Gatehouse. You will find them with men's faces and sometimes with a fret on the wings. Your uncle says that they are not b.u.t.terflies, but moths, that have eaten the Audley fortunes."

It was a thought that matched the picture he had drawn of the deserted house, and Mary felt that the morning had lost its brightness. But not for long. Ba.s.set led her into a room on the right of the hall, and the sight drew from her a cry of pleasure. On three sides the dark wainscot rose eight feet from the floor; above, the walls were whitewashed to the ceiling and broken by dim portraits, on stretchers and without frames. On the fourth side where the panelling divided the room from a serving-room, once part of it, it rose to the ceiling. The stone hearth, the iron dogs, the matted floor, the heavy chairs and oak table, all were dark and plain and increased the austerity of the room.

At the end of the table places were laid for three, and Toft, who had set on the breakfast, was fixing the kettle amid the burning logs.

"Is Mr. Audley coming down?" Ba.s.set asked.

"He bade me lay for him," Toft replied dryly. "I doubt if he will come. You had better begin, sir. The young lady," with a searching look at her, "must want her breakfast."

"I am afraid I do," Mary confessed.

"Yes, we will begin," Ba.s.set said. He invited her to make the tea.

When they were seated, "You like the room?"

"I love it," she answered.

"So do I," he rejoined, more soberly. "The panelling is linen--pattern of the fifteenth century--you see the folds? It was saved from the old house. I am glad you like it."

"I love it," she said again. But after that she grew thoughtful, and during the rest of the meal she said little. She was thinking of what was before her; of the unknown uncle, whose bread she was eating, and upon whom she was going to be dependent. What would he be like? How would he receive her? And why was every one so reticent about him--so reticent that he was beginning to be something of an ogre to her? When Toft presently appeared and said that Mr. Audley was in the library and would see her when she was ready, she lost color. But she answered the man with self-possession, asked quietly where the library was, and had not Ba.s.set's eyes been on her face he would have had no notion that she was troubled.

As it was, he waited for her to avow her misgiving--he was prepared to encourage her. But she said nothing.

None the less, at the last moment, with her hand on the door of the library, she hesitated. It was not so much fear of the unknown relative whom she was going to see that drove the blood from her cheek, as the knowledge that for her everything depended upon him. Her new home, its peace, its age, its woodland surroundings, fascinated her. It promised her not only content, but happiness. But as her stay in it hung upon John Audley's will, so her pleasure in it, and her enjoyment of it, depended upon the relations between them. What would they be? How would he receive her? What would he be like? At last she called up her courage, turned the handle, and entered the library.

For a moment she saw no one. The great room, with its distances and its harmonious litter, appeared to be empty. Then, "Mary, my dear," said a pleasant voice, "welcome to the Gatehouse!" And John Audley rose from his seat at a distant table and came towards her.

The notion which she had formed of him vanished in a twinkling, and with it her fears. She saw before her an elderly gentleman, plump and kindly, who walked with a short tripping step, and wore the swallow-tailed coat with gilt b.u.t.tons which the frock-coat had displaced. He took her hand with a smile, kissed her on the forehead, and led her to a chair placed beside his own. He sat for a moment holding her hand and looking at her.

"Yes, I see the likeness," he said, after a moment's contemplation. "But, my dear, how is this? There are tears in your eyes, and you tremble."

"I think," she said, "I was a little afraid of you, sir."