Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  She is very clever, he thought, or she is — good. But for the moment he steeled himself against the latter opinion.

  No other travellers alighted at Penkridge, and he went away to claim the baggage, while she waited, cold and depressed, on the little platform which, lit by a single oil lamp, looked down on a dim churchyard. Dusk was passing into night, and the wind, sweeping across the flat, whipped her skirts and chilled her blood. Her courage sank. A light or two betrayed the nearness of the town, but in every other direction dull lines of willows or pale stretches of water ran into the night.

  Five minutes before she had resented Basset’s company, now she was glad to see him return. He led the way to the road in silence. “The carriage is late,” he muttered, but even as he spoke the quick tramp of a pair of horses pushed to speed broke on them, lights appeared, a moment later a fly pulled up beside them and turned. “You are late,” Basset said.

  “There!” the man replied. “Minutes might be guineas since trains came in, dang ‘em! Give me the days when five minutes made neither man nor mouse, and gentry kept their own time.”

  “Well, let us get off now.”

  “I ask no better, Squire. Please yourself and you’ll please me.”

  When they were shut in, Basset laughed. “Stafford manners!” he said. “You’ll become used to them!”

  “Is this my uncle’s carriage?” she asked.

  “No,” he replied, smiling in the darkness. “He does not keep one.”

  She said no more. Though she could not see him, her shoulder touched his, and his nearness and the darkness in which they sat troubled her, though she was not timid. They rode thus for a minute or two, then trundled through a narrow street, dimly lit by shop windows; again they were in the dark and the country. Presently the pace dropped to a walk as they began to ascend.

  She fancied, peering out on her side, that they were winding up through woods. Branches swept the sides of the carriage. They jolted into ruts and jolted out of them. By and by they were clear of the trees and the road seemed to be better. The moon, newly risen, showed her a dreary upland, bare and endless, here dotted with the dark stumps of trees, there of a deeper black as if fire had swept over it and scarred it. They met no one, saw no sign of habitation. To the girl, accustomed all her life to streets and towns, the place seemed infinitely desolate — a place of solitude and witches and terror and midnight murder.

  “What is this?” she asked, shivering.

  “This is the Great Chase,” he said. “Riddsley, on the farther side, is our nearest town, but since the railway was opened we use Penkridge Station.”

  His practical tone steadied her, but she was tired, and the loneliness which she had felt while she waited on the bleak platform weighed heavily on her. To what was she going? How would her uncle receive her? This dreary landscape, the gaunt signpost that looked like a gibbet and might have been one, the skeleton trees that raised bare arms to heaven, the scream of a dying rabbit, all added to the depression of the moment. She was glad when at last the carriage stopped at a gate. Basset alighted and opened the gate. He stepped in again, they went on. There were now shadowy trees about them, sparsely set. They jolted unevenly over turf.

  “Are we there?” she asked, a tremor in her voice.

  “Very nearly,” he said. “Another mile and we shall be there. This is Beaudelays Park.”

  She called pride to her aid, and he did not guess — for all day he had marked her self-possession — that she was trembling. Vainly she told herself that she was foolish, that nothing could happen to her, nothing that mattered. What, after all, was a cold reception, what was her uncle’s frown beside the poverty and the hazards from which she had escaped? Vainly she reassured herself; she could not still the rapid beating of her heart.

  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 glass, 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, passed 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 Basset 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 Basset loved best in the world. It was a room of silence and large spaces, 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, butterflies, 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 Basset, 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 glass 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 Basset 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,” Basset answered. “Why should h
e?”

  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 glass, and he raised it to his lips. He gasped once or twice. The color came back to his face.

  “I am sorry,” Basset said.

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

  Basset 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,” Basset said doggedly. He shifted 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 Basset 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.”

  Basset 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,” Basset 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.”

  “Damn!” said Basset. “For God’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?” Basset 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 Basset 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,” Basset 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?”

  Basset 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 ass! 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 fashion 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!” Basset 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, Basset 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, Basset 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. Basset’s,” and enshrined in a long drawer a tree of the Bassets 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 Staffordshire 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 somet
hing 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, passed 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.