Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  So much was changed for her! She had wondered more than once what would happen to her, if her uncle died. That fear was put from her. Toft — she had been vexed with Toft. How small a matter that seemed now! And Peter Basset? He had been kind to her, and a pang did pierce her heart on his account. But he had recovered very quickly, she reflected. He had shown himself cold enough and distant enough at his last visit! And then she smiled as she thought how differently her new lover had assailed her, with what force, what arrogance, what insistence — and yet with a force and arrogance and insistence to which it was pleasant to yield.

  She did not with all this forget that she would be Lady Audley, she, whose past had been so precarious, whose prospects had been so dark, whose fate it might have been to travel through life an obscure teacher! She had not been woman if she had not thought of this; nor if she had failed, when she thought of it, to breathe a prayer for the gallant lover who had found her and saved her, and had held it enough that she was an Audley. He might have chosen far and wide. He had chosen her.

  No wonder that Mrs. Toft saw a change in her. “Law, Miss,” she remarked, when she came in to remove the breakfast. “One would think a ten-mile walk was the making of you! It’s put a color into your cheeks that would shame a June rose! And to be sure,” with a glance at the young lady’s plate, “not much eaten either!”

  “I am not hungry, Mrs. Toft,” Mary said meekly. “I drove back to the foot of the hill.”

  “And I’d like to sort Toft for it! Ifs he who should have gone! He’s upstairs now, keeping out of my way, and that grim and gray you’d think he’d seen a ghost! And ‘Truria, silly girl, she’s all of a quiver this morning. It’s ‘Mother, let me do this!’ and ‘Mother, I’ll do that!’ all because her reverend — not, as I tell her, that aught will ever come of it — has got a roof over his head at last.”

  “But that’s good news! Has Mr. Colet got some work?”

  “Not he, the silly man! Nor likely! There’s mighty little work for them as go against the gentry. For what he’s got he’s to thank Mr. Basset.”

  “Mr. Basset.”

  “To be sure,” Mrs. Toft answered, with a covert glance at the girl, “why not, Miss? Some talk and the wind goes by. There’s plenty of those. And some say naught but do — and that’s Mr. Basset. He’s took in Mr. Colet till he can find a church. Etruria’s that up about it, I tell her, smile before breakfast and sweat before night. And so she’ll find it, I warrant!”

  “It is very good of Mr. Basset,” Mary said gravely. And then, “Is that some one knocking, Mrs. Toft?”

  “It’s well to have young ears!” Mrs. Toft took out the tray, and returned with a letter. “It’s for you, Miss,” she said. “The postman’s late this morning, but cheap’s a slow traveller. When a letter was a letter and cost ninepence it came to hand like a gentleman!”

  Mary waited to hear no more. She knew the handwriting, and as quickly as she could she escaped from the room. No one with any claim to taste used an envelope in those days, and to open a letter so that no rent might mar its fairness called for a care which she could not exercise in public.

  Alone, in her room, she opened it, and her eyes grew serious as they travelled down the page, which bore signs of haste.

  “Sweetheart,” it began, and she thought that charming, “I do not ask if you reached the Gatehouse safely, for I listened and I must have heard, if harm befel you. I drove home as happy as a king, and grieved only that I had not had that of you which I had a right to have — damn that carter! This troubles me the more as I shall not see you again for a time, and if this does not disappoint you too, you’re a deceiver! My plans are altered by to-day’s news that Peel returns to office. In any event, I had to go to Seabourne’s for Christmas, now I must be there for a meeting to-morrow and go from there to London on the same business. You would not have me desert my post, I am sure? Heaven knows how long I may be kept, possibly a fortnight, possibly more. But the moment I can I shall be with you.

  “Write to me at the Brunswick Hôtel, Dover Street. Sweetheart, I am yours, as you, my darling, are

  “Philip’s.

  “P. S. — I must put off any communication to your uncle till I can see him. So for the moment, mum!”

  Mary read the letter twice; the first time with eager eyes, the second time more calmly. Nothing was more natural, she told herself, than that her spirits should sink — Philip was gone. The walk with him, the talk which was to bring them nearer, and to make them better known to one another, stood over. The day that was to be so bright was clouded.

  But beyond this the letter itself fell a little, a very little, short of her expectations. The beginning was charming! But after that — was it her fancy, or was her lover’s tone a little flippant, a little free, a little too easy? Did it lack that tender note of reassurance, that chivalrous thought for her, which she had a right to expect in a first letter? She was not sure.

  And as to her uncle. She must, of course, be guided by her lover, his will must be her law now; and it was reasonable that in John Audley’s state of health the mode of communication should be carefully weighed. But she longed to be candid, she longed to be open; and in regard to one person she would be open. Basset had let her see that her treatment had cured him. At their last meeting he had been cold, almost unkind; he had left her to deal with Toft as she could. Still she owed him, if any one, the truth, and, were it only to set herself right in her own eyes, she must tell him. If the news did nothing else it would open the way for his return to the Gatehouse, and the telling would enable her to make the amende.

  The letter was not written on that day nor the next. But on the fourth day after Audley’s departure it arrived at Blore, and lay for an hour on the dusty hall table amid spuds and powder-flasks and old itineraries. There Mr. Colet found it and another letter, and removed the two for safety to the parlor, where litter of a similar kind struggled for the upper hand with piles of books and dog’s-eared Quarterlies. The decay of the Bassets dated farther back than the decline of the Audleys, and the gabled house under the shadow of Weaver was little better, if something larger, than a farm-house. There had been a library, but Basset had taken the best books to the Gatehouse. And there were in the closed drawing-room, and in some of the bedrooms, old family portraits, bad for the most part; the best lay in marble in Blore Church. But in the parlor, which was the living-room, hung only paintings of fat oxen and prize sheep; and the garden which ran up to the walls of the house, and in summer was a flood of color, lay in these days dank and lifeless, ebbing away from bee-skips and chicken-coops. The park had been ploughed during the great war, and now pined in thin pasture. The whole of the valley was still Basset land, but undrained in the bottom and light on the slopes, it made no figure in a rent-roll. The present owner had husbanded the place, and paid off charges, and cleared the estate, but he had been able to do no more. The place was a poor man’s place, though for miles round men spoke to the owner bareheaded. He was “Basset of Blore,” as much a part of Staffordshire as Burton Bridge or the Barbeacon. The memories of the illiterate are long.

  He had been walking the hill that morning with a dog and a gun, and between yearnings for the woman he loved, and longings for some plan of life, some object, some aim, he was in a most unhappy mood. At one moment he saw himself growing old, without the energy to help himself or others, still toying with trifles, the last and feeblest of his blood. At another he thought of Mary, and saw her smiling through the flowering hawthorn, or bending over a book with the firelight on her hair. Or again, stung by the lash of her reproaches he tried to harden himself to do something. Should he take the land into his own hands, and drain and fence and breed stock and be of use, were it only as a struggling farmer in his own district? Or should he make that plunge into public life to which Colonel Mottisfont had urged him and from which he shrank as a shivering man shrinks from an icy bath?

  For there was the rub. Mary was right. He was a dreamer, a weakling, one in
whom the strong pulse that had borne his forbears to the front beat but feebly. He was not equal to the hard facts of life. With what ease had Audley, whenever they had stood foot to foot, put him in the second place, got the better of him, outshone him!

  Old Don pointed in vain. His master shot nothing, for he walked for the most part with his eyes on the turf. If he raised them it was to gaze at the hamlet lying below him in the valley, the old house, the ring of buildings and cottages, the church that he loved — and that like the woman he loved, reproached him with his inaction.

  About two o’clock he turned homewards. How many more days would he will and not will, and end night by night where he had begun? In the main he was of even temper, but of late small things tried him, and when he entered the parlor and Colet rose at his entrance, he could not check his irritation.

  “For heaven’s sake, man, sit still!” he cried. “And don’t get up every time I come in! And don’t look at me like a dog! And don’t ask me if I want the book you are reading!”

  The curate stared, and muttered an apology. It was true that he did not wear the chain of obligation with grace.

  “No, it is I who am sorry!” Basset replied, quickly repenting. “I am a churlish ass! Get up when you like, and say what you like! But if you can, make yourself at home!”

  Then he saw the two letters lying on the table. He knew Mary’s writing at a glance, and he let it lie, his face twitching. He took up the other, made as if he would open it, then he threw it back again, and took Mary’s to the window, where he could read it unwatched.

  It was short.

  “Dear Mr. Basset,” she wrote, “I should be paying you a poor compliment if I pretended that what I am writing will not pain you. But I hope, and since our last meeting, I have reason to believe that that pain will not be lasting.

  “My cousin, Lord Audley, has asked me to marry him, and I have consented. Nothing beyond this is fixed, and no announcement will be made until my uncle has recovered his strength. But I feel that I owe it to you to let you know this at once.

  “I owe you something more. You crowned your kindness by doing me a great honor. I could not reply in substance otherwise than I did, but for the foolish criticisms of an inexperienced girl, I ask you to believe that I feel deep regret.

  “When we meet I hope that we may meet as friends. If I can believe this it will add something to the happiness of my engagement. My uncle is better, but little stronger than when you saw him.

  “I am, truly yours,

  “Mary Audley.”

  He stood looking at it for a long time, and only by an effort could he control the emotion that strove to master him. Then his thoughts travelled to the other, the man who had won her, the man who had got the better of him from the first, who had played the Jacob from the moment of their meeting on the steamer; and a passion of jealousy swept him away. He swore aloud.

  Mr. Colet leapt in his chair. “Mr. Basset!” he cried. And then, in a different tone, “You have bad news, I fear?”

  The other laughed bitterly. “Bad news?” he repeated, and Colet saw that his face was white and that the letter shook in his hand. “The Government’s out, and that’s bad news. The pig’s ill, and that’s bad news. Your mother’s dead, and that’s bad news!”

  “Swearing makes no news better,” Colet said mildly.

  “Not even the pig? If your — if Etruria died, and some one told you that she was dead, you wouldn’t swear? You wouldn’t curse God?”

  “God forbid!” the clergyman cried in horror.

  “What would you do then?”

  “Try so to live, Mr. Basset, that we might meet again!”

  “Rubbish, man!” Basset retorted rudely. “Try instead not to be a prig!”

  “If I could be of use?”

  “You cannot, nor any one else,” Basset answered. “There, say no more. The worst is over. We’ve played our little part and — what’s the odds how we played it?”

  “Much when the curtain falls,” the poor clergyman ventured.

  “Well, I’ll go and eat something. Hunger is one more grief!” And Basset went out.

  He came back ten minutes later, pale but quiet. “Sorry, Colet,” he said. “Very rude, I am afraid! I had bad news, but I am right now. Wasn’t there another letter for me?”

  He found the letter and read it listlessly. He tossed it across the table to his guest. “News is plentiful to-day,” he said.

  Colet took the letter and read it. It was from a Mr. Hatton, better known to him than to Basset, and the owner of one of the two small factories in Riddsley. It was an invitation to contest the borough in opposition to young Mottisfont.

  “If it were a question, respected sir,” Hatton wrote, “of Whigs and Tories we should not approach you. But as the result must depend upon the proportions in which the Tory party splits for and against Sir Robert Peel upon the Corn Laws, we, who are in favor of repeal, recognize the advantage of being represented by a moderate Tory. The adherence to Sir Robert of Sir James Graham in the North and of Lord Lincoln in the Midlands proves that there are landowners who place their country before their rents, and it is in the hope that you, sir, are of the number that we invite you to give us that assistance which your ancient name must afford.

  “We are empowered to promise you the support of the Whig party in the borough, conditioned only upon your support of the repeal of the Corn Laws, leaving you free on other points. The Audley influence has been hitherto paramount, but we believe that the time has come to free the borough from the last remnant of the Feudal system.

  “A deputation will wait upon you to give you such assurances as you may desire. But as Parliament meets on an early date, and the present member may at once apply for the Chiltern Hundreds, we shall be glad to have your answer before the New Year.”

  “Well?” Basset asked. “What do you think?”

  “It opens a wide door.”

  “If you wish to have your finger pinched,” Basset replied, flippantly, “it does. I don’t know that it is an opening to anything else.” And as Colet refrained from speaking, “You don’t think,” he went on, “that it’s a way into Parliament? A repealer has as much chance of getting in for Riddsley against the Audley interest as you have of being an archdeacon! Of course the Radicals want a fight if they can find a man fool enough to spend his money. But as for winning, they don’t dream of it.”

  “It is better to lose in some causes than to win in others.”

  Basset laughed. “Do you know why they have come to me? They think that I shall carry John Audley with me and divide the Audley interest. There’s nothing in it, but that’s the notion.”

  “Why look at the seamy side?” Colet objected. “I suppose there always is one, but I don’t think that it was at that side Sir Robert looked when he made up his mind to put the country first and his party second! I don’t think that it was at that side he looked when he determined to eat his words and pocket his pride, rather than be responsible for famine in Ireland! Believe me, Mr. Basset,” the clergyman continued earnestly, “it was no easy change of opinion. Before he came to that resolution, proud, cold man as I am told he is, many a sight and sound must have knocked at the door of his mind; a scene of poverty he passed in his carriage, a passage in some report, a speech through which he seemed to sleep, a begging letter — one by one they pressed the door inwards, till at last, with — it may be with misery, he came to see what he must do!”

  “Possibly.”

  “The call came, he had to answer it. Here is a call to you.”

  “And do you think,” the other retorted, “that I can answer it more cheaply than Sir Robert? So far as I have thought it out, I am with him. But do you think I could do this,” he tapped the letter, “without misery — of a different kind it may be? I am not a public man, I have served no apprenticeship to it, I’ve not addressed a meeting three times in my life, I don’t know what I should say or how I should say it. And for Hatton and his friends, they would rub me
up a dozen times a day.”

  “Non sine pulvere!” Mr. Colet murmured.

  “Dust enough there’ll be! I don’t doubt that. And dirt. But there’s another thing.” He paused, and turning, knocked the fire together. He was nearly a minute about it, while the other waited. “There’s another thing,” he repeated. “I am not going into this business to pay out a private grudge, and I want to be clear that I am not doing that. And I’m not going into this simply for what I can get out of it. Ambition is a poor stayer with me, a washy chestnut. It would not carry me through, Colet. If I go into this, it will be because I believe in it. It seems as if I were preaching,” he continued awkwardly. “But there’s nothing but belief will carry me through, and unless I am clear — I’ll not start. I’ll not start, although I want to make a fresh start badly! Devilish badly, if you’ll excuse me!”

  “And how will you — —”

  “Make certain? I don’t know. I must fight it out by myself — go up on the hill and think it out. I must believe in the thing, or I must leave it alone!”

  “Just so,” said Mr. Colet. And prudent for once he said no more.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  AN AGENT OF THE OLD SCHOOL

  It is doubtful if even the great Reform Bill of ‘32, which shifted the base of power from the upper to the middle class, awoke more bitter feelings that did the volte face of Peel in the winter of ‘45. Since the days of Pitt no statesman had enjoyed the popularity or wielded the power which had been Sir Robert’s when he had taken office four years before. He had been more than the leader of the Tory party; he had been its re-creator. He had been more than the leader of the landed interest; he had been its pride. Men who believed that upon the welfare of that interest rested the stability of the constitution, men with historic names had walked on his right hand and on his left, had borne his train and carried his messages. All things, his origin, his formality, his pride, his quiet domestic life, even his moderation, had been forgiven in the man who had guided the Tories through the bad days, had led them at last to power, and still stood between them and the mutterings of this new industrial England, that hydra-like threatened and perplexed them.