A moment later she went into Etruria’s room to learn how she was, and caught the girl rising from her knees. “Oh, Miss,” she said, coloring as she met Mary’s eyes, “if we had not been there!”
“And yet — you won’t marry him, you foolish girl?”
“Oh no, no!”
“Although you love him!”
“Love him!” Etruria murmured, her face burning. “It is because I love him, Miss, that I will never, never marry him.”
Mary wondered. “And yet you love him?” she said, raising the candle so that its light fell on the other’s face.
Etruria looked this way and that way, but there was no escape. In a very small voice she said,
“Love seeketh not itself to please
Nor for itself hath any care!”
She covered her hot cheeks with her hands. But Mary took away the hands and kissed her.
“Oh, Miss!” Etruria exclaimed.
Mary went out then, but on the threshold of her own room she paused to snuff her candle. “So that is love,” she thought. “It’s very interesting, and — and rather beautiful!”
CHAPTER XII
THE YEW WALK
Basset had been absent the greater part of the day, and returning at sunset had learned that Miss Audley had not come back from Brown Heath. The servant had hinted alarm — the Chase was lonely, the hour late; and Basset had hurried off without more, not doubting that John Audley was in the house.
Now he was sure that John Audley had been abroad at the time, and he suspected that Toft had known it, and had kept it from him. He stood for a moment in thought, then he crossed the court to Toft’s house. Mrs. Toft was cooking something savory in a bonnet before the fire, and the contrast between her warm cheerful kitchen and the stillness of the house from which he came struck him painfully. He told her that her daughter had received a blow on the head, and that Miss Audley needed supper — she had better attend to them.
Mrs. Toft was a stout woman, set by a placid and even temper above small surprises. She looked at the clock, a fork in her hand. “I can’t hurry it, Mr. Basset,” she said. “You may be Sir Robert Peel himself, but meat’s your master and will have its time. A knock on the head?” she continued, with a faint stirring of anxiety. “You don’t say so? Lor, Mr. Basset, who’d go to touch Etruria?”
“You’d better go and see.”
“But where’s Toft?”
Basset’s temper gave way at that. “God knows!” he said. “He ought to be here — and he’s not!” He went out.
Mrs. Toft stared after him, and by and by she let down her skirt and prepared to go into the house. “On the head?” she ruminated. “Well, ‘Truria’s a tidy lot of hair! And I will say this, if there’s few points a man gives a woman, hair’s one of them.”
Meanwhile Basset had struck across the court and taken in the darkness the track which led in the direction of the Great House. The breeze, light but of an autumn coldness, swept the upland, whispering through the dying fern, and rustling in the clumps of trees by which he steered his course. He listened more than once, hoping that he might hear approaching footsteps, but he heard none, and presently he came to the yew-trees that masked the entrance to the gardens.
The trees formed a wall of blackness exceeding that of the darkest night, and Basset hesitated before he plunged into it. The growth of a century had long trespassed on the walk, a hundred and fifty yards long, which led through the yew-wood, and had been in its time a stately avenue trimmed to the neatness of a bowling green. Now it was little better than a tunnel, dark even at noon, and at night bristling with a hundred perils. Basset peered into the blackness, listened, hesitated. But he was honestly anxious on John Audley’s account, and contenting himself with exclaiming that the man was mad, he began to grope his way along the path.
It was no pleasant task. If he swerved from his course he stumbled over roots, branches swept his cheek, jagged points threatened his eyes, and more than once he found himself in the hedge. Half-way through the wood he came to a circular clearing, some twenty yards across; and here a glimmer of light enabled him to avoid the crumbling stone Butterfly that crouched on its mouldering base in the centre of the clearing — much as a spider crouches in its web. It seemed in that dim light to be the demon of this underworld, a monster, a thing of evil.
The same gleam, however, disclosed the opposite opening, and for another seventy yards he groped his way onward, longing to be clear of the stifling air, and the brooding fancies that dwelt in it, longing to plant his feet on something more solid than this carpet of rotting yew. At last he came to the tall, strait gate, wrought of old iron, that admitted to the pleasance. It was ajar. He passed through it, and with relief he felt the hard walk under his feet, the fresh air on his face. He crossed the walk, and stepping on to the neglected lawn, he halted.
The Great House loomed before him, a hundred yards away. The moon had not risen, but the brightness which goes before its rising lightened the sky behind the monstrous building. It outlined the roof but left the bulk in gloom. No light showed in any part, and it was only the watcher’s memory that pictured the quaint casements of the north wing, or filled in the bald rows of unglazed windows, which made of the new portion a death-mask. In that north wing just eighty years before, in a room hung with old Cordovan leather, the fatal house-warming had been held. The duel had been fought at sunrise within a pace or two of the moss-grown Butterfly that Basset had passed; and through the gate of ironwork, wood-smelted and wrought with the arms of Audley, which had opened at his touch, they had carried the dead heir back to his father. Tradition had it that the servant who bore in the old lord’s morning draught of cool ale had borne also the tragic news to his bedside.
Basset remembered that the hinges of the gate, seldom as it was used, had not creaked, and he felt sure that he was on the right track. He scanned the dark house, and tried to sift from the soughing of the wind any sound that might inform him.
Presently he moved forward and scrutinized with care the north wing, which abutted on the yew-wood. There lay between the two only a strip of formal garden, once set with rows of birds and beasts cut in yew. Time had turned these to monsters, huge, amorphous, menacing, amidst which rank grass rioted and elder pushed. Even in daylight it seemed as if the ancient trees stretched out arms to embrace and strangle the deserted house.
But the north wing remained as dark as the bulk of the house, and Basset uttered a sigh of relief. Ill-humor began to take the place of misgiving. He called himself a fool for his pains and anticipated with distaste a return through the yew-walk. However, the sooner he undertook the passage the sooner it would be over, and he was turning on his heel when somewhere between him and the old wing a stick snapped.
Under a foot, he fancied; and he waited. In two or three minutes the moon would rise.
Again he caught a faint sound. It resembled the stealthy tread of some one approaching from the north wing, and Basset, peering that way, was striving to probe the darkness, when a gleam of light shot across his eyes. He turned and saw in the main building a bright spark. It vanished. He waited to see it again, and while he waited a second stick snapped. This time the sound was behind him, and near the iron gate.
He had been outflanked, and he had now to choose which he would stalk, the footstep or the light. He chose the latter, the rather as while he stood with his eyes fixed on the house the upper edge of a rising moon peeped above the roof.
He stepped back to the gate, and in the shadow of the trees he waited. Two or three minutes passed. The moon rose clear of the roof, outlining the stately chimneys and gables and flooding with cold light the lower part of the lawn. With the rising of the moon the air grew more chilly. He shivered.
At length a dull sound reached him — the sound of a closing door or a shutter cast back. A minute later he heard the footsteps of some one moving along the walk towards him. The man trod with care, but once he stumbled.
Basset advanced. “Is that
you, sir?” he asked.
“D — n!” John Audley replied out of the darkness. He halted, breathing quickly.
“I say d — n, too!” Basset replied. As a rule he was patient with the old man, but to-night his temper failed him.
The other came on. “Why did you follow me?” he asked. “What is the use? What is the use? If you are willing to help me, good! But if not, why do you follow me?”
“To see that you don’t come to harm,” Basset retorted. “As you certainly will one of these nights if you come here alone.”
“Well, I haven’t come to harm to-night! On the contrary —— But there, there, man, let us get back.”
“The sooner the better,” Basset replied. “I nearly put out an eye as I came.”
John Audley laughed. “Did you come through the yews in the dark?” he asked.
“Didn’t you?”
“No, I brought a lantern.” He removed as he spoke the cap of a small bull’s-eye lantern and threw its light on the path. “Who’s the fool now?”
“Let us get home,” Basset snapped.
John Audley locked the iron gate behind them and they started. The light removed their worst difficulties and they reached the open park without mishap. But long before they gained the house the elder man’s strength failed, and he was glad to lean on Basset’s arm. On that a sense of weakness on the one side and of pity on the other closed their differences. “After all,” Audley said wearily, “I don’t know what I should have done if you had not come.”
“You’d have stayed there!”
“And that would have been — Heavens, what a pity that would have been!” Audley paused and struck his stick on the ground. “I must take care of myself, I must take care of myself! You don’t know, Basset, what I — —”
“And I don’t want to know — here!” Basset replied. “When you are safe at home, you may tell me what you like.”
In the courtyard they came on Toft, who was looking out for them with a lantern. “Thank God, you’re safe, sir,” he said. “I was growing alarmed about you.”
“Where were you,” Basset asked sharply, “when I came in?” John Audley was too tired to speak.
“I had stepped out at the front to look for the master,” Toft replied. “I fancied that he had gone out that way.”
Basset did not believe him, but he could not refute the story. “Well, get the brandy,” he said, “and bring it to the library. Mr. Audley has been out too long and is tired.”
They went into the library and Toft pulled off his master’s boots and brought his slippers and the spirit-tray. That done, he lingered, and Basset thought that he was trying to divine from the old man’s looks whether the journey had been fruitful.
In the end, however, the man had to go, and Audley leant forward to speak.
“Wait!” Basset muttered. “He is coming back.”
“How do you know?”
Basset raised his hand. The door opened. Toft came in. “I forgot to take your boots, sir,” he said.
“Well, take them now,” his master replied peevishly. When the man had again withdrawn, “How did you know?” he asked, frowning at the fire.
“I saw him go to take your boots — and leave them.”
Audley was silent for a time, then “Well,” he said, “he has been with me many years and I think he is faithful.”
“To his own interests. He dogged you to-night.”
“So did you!”
“Yes, but I did not hide! And he did, and hid from me, too, and lied about it. How long he had been watching you, I cannot say, but if you think that you can break through all your habits, sir, and be missing for two hours at night and a man as shrewd as Toft suspect nothing, you are mistaken. Of course he wonders. The next time he thinks it over. The third time he follows you. Presently whatever you know he will know.”
“Confound him!” Audley turned to the table and jerked some brandy into a glass. Then, “You haven’t asked yet,” he said, “what I’ve done.”
“If I am to choose,” Basset replied, “I would rather not know. You know my views.”
“I know that you didn’t think I should do it? Well, I’ve done it!”
“Do you mean that — you’ve found the evidence?”
“Is it likely?” the other replied petulantly. “No, but I’ve been in the Muniment Room. It is fifty years since I heard my father describe its position, but I could have gone to it blindfold! I was a boy then, and the name — he was telling a story of the old lord — took my fancy. I listened. In time the thing faded, but one day when I was at the lawyer’s and some one mentioned the Muniment Room, the story came back to me so clearly, that I could almost repeat my father’s words.”
“And you’ve been in the room?”
“I’ve been in it. Why not? A door two inches thick and studded with iron, and a lock that one out of any dozen big keys would open!” He rubbed his calves in his satisfaction. “In twenty minutes I was inside.”
“And it was empty?”
“It was empty,” the other agreed, with a cunning smile. “As bare as a board. A little whitewashed room, just as my father described it!”
“They had removed the papers?”
“To the bank, or to London, or to Stubbs’s. The place was as clean as a platter! Not a length of green tape or an end of parchment was left!”
“Then what have you gained?” Basset asked.
Audley looked slyly at him, his head on one side. “Ay, what?” he said. “But I’ll tell you my father’s story. At one time the part of the room under the stairs was crumbling and the rats got in. The steward told the old lord and he went to see it. ‘Brick it up!’ he said. The steward objected that there would not be room — the place was full; there were boxes everywhere, some under the stairs. The old lord tapped one of the boxes with his gold-headed cane. ‘What’s in these!’ he asked. ‘Old papers,’ the steward explained. ‘Of no use, my lord, but curious; old leases for lives, and terriers.’ ‘Terriers?’ cried the old lord. ‘Then, by G — d, brick ‘em up with the rats!’ And that day at dinner he told my father the story and chuckled over it.”
“And that’s what you’ve had in your mind all this time?” Basset said. “Do you think it was done?”
“The old lord bricked up many a pipe of port, and I think that he would do it for the jest’s sake. And” — John Audley turned and looked in his companion’s face— “the part under the stairs is bricked up, and the room is as square and as flush as the family vault — and very like it. The old lord,” he added sardonically, “knows what it is to be bricked up himself now.”
“And still there may be nothing there to help you.”
Audley rose from his chair. “Don’t say it!” he cried passionately. “Or I’ll say that there’s no right in the world, no law, no providence, no God! Don’t dare to say it!” he continued, his cheeks trembling with excitement. “If I believed that I should go mad! But it is there! It is there! Do you think that it was for naught I heard that story? That it was for naught I remembered it, for naught I’ve carried the story in my mind all these years? No, they are there, the papers that will give me mine and give it to Mary after me! They are there! And you must help me to get them.”
“I cannot do it, sir,” Basset replied firmly. “I don’t think that you understand what you ask. To break into Audley’s house like any common burglar, to dig down his wall, to steal his deeds — —”
John Audley shook his fist in the young man’s face. “His house!” he shrieked. “His wall! His deeds! No, fool, but my house, my wall, my deeds! my deeds! If the papers are there all’s mine! All! And I am but taking my own! Can’t you see that? Can’t you see it? Have I no right to take what is my own?”
“But if the papers are not there?” Basset replied gravely. “No, sir, if you will take my advice you will tell your story, apply to the court, and let the court examine the documents. That’s the straightforward course.”
John Audley flung out his a
rms. “Man!” he cried. “Don’t you know that as long as he is in possession he can sit on his deeds, and no power on earth can force him to show them?”
Basset drew in his breath. “If that is so,” he said, “it is hard. Very hard! But to go by night and break into his house — sticks in my gizzard, sir. I’m sorry, but that is the way I look at it. The man’s here too. I saw him this evening. The fancy might have taken him to visit the house, and he might have found you there?”
Audley’s color faded, he seemed to shrink into himself. “Where did you see him?” he faltered.
Basset told the story. “I don’t suppose that the girls were really in danger,” he continued, “but they thought so, and Audley came to the rescue and brought them as far as the park gap.”
The other took out his silk handkerchief and wiped his brow. “As near as that,” he muttered.
“Ay, and if he had found you at the house, he might have guessed your purpose.”
John Audley held out a hand trembling with passion. “I would have killed him!” he cried. “I would have killed him — before he should have had what is there!”
“Exactly,” Basset replied. “And that is why I will have nothing to do with the matter! It’s too risky, sir. If you take my advice you will give it up.”
Audley did not answer. He sat awhile, his shoulders bowed, his eyes fixed on the hearth, while the other wondered for the hundredth time if he were sane. At length, “What is he doing here?” the old man asked in a lifeless tone. The passion had died out of him.
“Shooting, I suppose. But there was some talk in Riddsley of his coming down to stir up old Mottisfont.”
“What about?”
“Against the corn-law repeal, I suppose.”
Audley nodded. But after a while, “That’s a pretext,” he said. “And so is the shooting. He has followed the girl.”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 586