Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

“No,” she said.

  “But I do ask!” he retorted with a passion which surprised and alarmed her; he was no longer the despondent lover of five minutes before, but a man demanding his rights. “Have you no heart? Have you no feeling for me? Do you not consider what this is to me?”

  “I consider,” Mary replied with a warmth almost equal to his own, “that if I answered your question I should humiliate myself. No one, no one has a right, sir, to ask that question. And least of all you!”

  “And I am to be cast aside, I am to be discarded without a reason?”

  That word “discarded” seemed so unjust, and so uncalled for, seeing that she had given him no encouragement, that it stung her to anger. “Without a reason?” she retorted. “I have given you a reason — I do not return your love. That is the only reason that you have a right to know. But if you press me, I will tell you why what you propose is impossible. Because, if I ever love a man I hope, Mr. Basset, that it will be one who has some work in the world, something to do that shall be worth the doing, a man with ambitions above mere trifling, mere groping in the dust of the past for facts that, when known, make no man happier, and no man better, and scarce a man wiser! Do you ever think,” she continued, carried away by the remembrance of Mr. Colet’s zeal, “of the sorrow and pain that are in the world? Of the vast riddles that are to be solved? Of the work that awaits the wisest and the strongest, and at which all in their degree can help? My uncle is an old man, it is well he should play with the past. I am a girl, it may serve for me. But what do you here?” She pointed to his table, laden with open folios and calf-bound volumes. “You spend a week in proving a Bohun marriage that is nothing to any one. Another, in raking up a blot that is better forgotten! A third in tracing to its source some ancient tag! You move a thousand books — to make one knight! Is that a man’s work?”

  “At least,” he said huskily, “I do no harm.”

  “No harm?” Mary replied, swept away by her feelings. “Is that enough? Because in this quiet corner, which is home to my uncle and a refuge to me, no call reaches you, is it enough that you do no harm? Is there no good to be done? Think, Mr. Basset! I am ignorant, a woman. But I know that to-day there are great questions calling for an answer, wrongs clamoring to be righted, a people in travail that pleads for ease! I know that there is work in England for men, for all! Work, that if there be any virtue left in ancient blood should summon you as with a trumpet call!”

  He did not answer. Twice, early in her attack he had moved as if he would defend himself. Then he had let his chin fall and he had listened with his eyes on the table. And — but she had not seen it — he had more than once shivered under her words as under a lash. For he loved her and she scourged him. He loved her, he desired her, he had put her on a pedestal, and all the time she had been viewing him with the clear merciless eyes of youth, trying him by the standard of her dreams, probing his small pretensions, finding him a potterer in a library — he who in his vanity had raised his eyes to her and sought to be her hero!

  It was a cruel lesson, cruelly given; and it wounded him to the heart. So that she, seeing too late that he made no reply, seeing the grayness of his face, and that he did not raise his eyes, had a too-late perception of what she had done, of how cruel she had been, of how much more she had said than she had meant to say. She stood conscience-stricken, remorseful, ashamed.

  And then, “Oh, I am sorry!” she cried. “I am sorry! I should not have said that! You meant to honor me and I have hurt you.”

  He looked up then, but neither the shadow nor the grayness left his face. “Perhaps it was best,” he said dully. “I am sure that you meant well.”

  “I did,” she cried. “I did! But I was wrong. Utterly wrong!”

  “No,” he said, “you were not wrong. The truth was best.”

  “But perhaps it was not the truth,” she replied, anxious at once, miserably anxious to undo what she had done, to unsay what she had said, to tell him that she was conceited, foolish, a mere girl! “I am no judge — after all what do I know of these things? What have I done that I should say anything?”

  “I am afraid that what is said is said,” he replied. “I have always known that I was no knight-errant. I have never been bold until to-day — and it has not answered,” with a sickly smile. “But we understand one another now — and I relieve you.”

  He passed her on his way to the door, and she thought that he was going to hold it open for her to go out. But when he reached the door he fumbled for the handle, found it as a blind man might find it, and went out himself, without turning his head.

  CHAPTER XIV

  THE MANCHESTER MEN

  Basset knew every path that crossed the Chase, and had traversed them at all seasons, and in all weathers. But when, some hours later, he halted on a scarred and blackened waste that stretched to the horizon on every side, he would have been hard put to it to say how he came to be there. He wore his hat, he carried his stick, but he could not remember how he had become possessed of either.

  For a time the shock of disappointment, the numbing sense of loss had dulled his mind. He had walked as in a dream, repeating over and over again that that was what she thought of him — and he had loved her. It was possible that in the interval he had sworn at fate, or shrieked against the curlews, or cursed the inhuman sky that mocked him with its sameness. But he did not think that he had. He felt the life in him too low for such outbursts. He told himself that he was a poor creature, a broken thing, a failure. He loved her, and — and that was what she thought of him.

  He sat on the stump of an ancient thorn-tree that had been a landmark on the burnt heath longer than the oldest man could remember, and he began to put together what she had said. He was trifling away his life, picking stray finds from the dust-heap of the past, making no man wiser and no man better, doing nothing for any one! Was she right? The Bohun pedigree, at which he had worked so long? He had been proud of his knowledge of Norman descents, proud of the research which had won that knowledge, proud of his taste for following up recondite facts. Were the knowledge, the research, the taste, all things for which he ought to blush? Certainly, tried by the test, cui bono? they came off but poorly. And perhaps, to sit down at his age, content with such employments, might seem unworthy and beneath him, if there were other calls upon him. But were there other calls?

  Time had been when his family had played a great part, not in Staffordshire only but in England; and then doubtless public service had been a tradition with them. But the tradition had waned with their fortunes. In these days he was only a small squire, a little more regarded than the new men about him; but with no ability to push his way in a crowd, no mastery among his fellow-men, one whom character and position alike cast for a silent part.

  Of course she knew none of these things, but with the enthusiasm of youth she looked to find in every man the qualities of the leading role. He who seldom raised his voice at Quarter Sessions or on the Grand Jury — to which his birth rather than his possessions called him — she would have had him figure among the great, lead causes, champion the oppressed! It was pitiful, if it had not been absurd!

  He walked on by and by, dwelling on the pity of it, a very unhappy man. He thought of the evenings in the library when she had looked over his shoulder, and one lamp had lighted them; of the mornings when the sun had gilded her hair as she bent over the task she was even then criticizing; of afternoons when the spirit of the chase had been theirs, and the sunshine and the flowers had had no charm strong enough to draw them from the pursuit of — alas! something that could make no man better or wiser. He had lost her; and if aught mattered apart from that, she had for ever poisoned the springs of content, muddied the wells of his ordered life.

  Beyond doubt she loved the other, for had she not, she would have viewed things differently. Beyond doubt in her love for the other lay the bias that weighted her strictures. And yet, making all allowance for that, there was so much of truth in what she had said, so much
that hit the mark, that he could never be the same again, never give himself with pleasure to his former pursuits, never find the old life a thing to satisfy!

  And still, like the tolling of a death bell above the city’s life, two thoughts beat on his mind again and again, and gave him intolerable pain. That was what she thought of him! And he had lost her! That was what she thought of him! And he had lost her! Her slender gracious figure, her smiling eyes, the glint in her hair, her goodness, her very self — all were for another! All were lost to him!

  Presently the day began to draw in, and fagged and hopeless he turned and began to make his way back. His road lay through Brown Heath, the mining village, where in all the taverns and low-browed shops they were beginning to light their candles. He crossed the Triangle, and made his way along the lane, deep in coal-dust and foul with drains, that ran upwards to the Chase. A pit, near at hand, had just turned out its shift, and in the dusk tired men, swinging tins in their hands, were moving by twos and threes along the track. With his bent shoulders and weary gait he was lost among them, he walked one with them; yet here and there an older man espied the difference, recognized him, and greeted him with rough respect. Presently the current slackened; something, he could not see what, dammed the stream. A shrewish voice rose in the darkness before him, and other voices, angry, clamant, protesting, struck in. A few of the men pushed by the trouble, others stood, here and there a man added a taunt to the brawl. In his turn Basset came abreast of the quarrel. He halted.

  A farm cart blocked the roadway. Over the tail hung three or four wailing children; into it a couple of sturdy men were trying to lift an old woman, seated in a chair. A dingy beadle and a constable, who formed the escort and looked ill at ease, stood beside the cart, and round it half a score of slatternly women pushed and shrieked and gesticulated. On the group and the whole dreary scene nightfall cast a pallid light.

  “What is it?” Basset asked.

  “They’re shifting Nan Oates to the poorhouse,” a man answered. “Her son died of the fever, and there’s none to keep her or the little uns. She’ve done till now, but they’ll not give her bite nor sup out of the House — that’s the law now’t seems. So the House it be!”

  “Her’d rather die than go!” cried a girl.

  “D — n them and their Bastilles!” exclaimed a younger man. “Are we free men, or are we not?”

  “Free men?” shrieked a woman, who had seized the horse’s rein and was loudest in her outcry. “No, nor Staffordshire men, nor Englishmen, nor men at all, if you let an old woman that’s always lived decent go to their stone jug this way. Give me Stafford Gaol— ’tis miles afore it!”

  “Ay, you’re at home there, Bet!” a voice in the crowd struck in, and the laugh that followed lightened matters.

  Basset looked with pity at the old woman. Her head sunk upon her breast, her thin shawl tucked about her shoulders, her gray hair in wisps on her cheeks, she gazed in tearless grief upon the hovel which had been home to her. “Who’s to support her,” he asked, “if she stays?”

  “For the bite and sup there’s neighbors,” a man answered. “Reverend Colet he said he might do something. But he’s been lammed. And there’s the rent. The boy’s ten, and he made four shilling a week in the pit, but the new law’s stopped the young uns working.”

  “Ay, d — n all new laws!” cried another. “Poor laws and pit laws we’re none but the worse for them!”

  The men were preparing to move the cart. The woman who held the rein clung to it. “Now, Bet, have a care!” said the constable. “Or you’ll go home by Weeping Cross again!”

  “Cross? I’ll cross you!” the termagant retorted. “Selling up widows’ houses is your bread and meat! May the devil, hoof and horn, with his scythe on his back, go through you! If there were three men here, ay, men as you’d call men — —”

  “Easy, woman, easy!”

  “Woman, dang you! You call me woman — —”

  “Now, let go, Bet! You’ll be in trouble else!” some one said.

  But she held on, and the crowd were beginning to jostle the men in charge when Basset stepped forward. “Steady, a moment,” he said. “Will the guardians let the woman stop if the rent is provided?”

  “Who be you, master?” the constable asked. “You’d best let us do our duty.”

  “Dang it, man,” an old fellow interposed, “it’s Squire Basset of Blore. Dunno you know him? Keep a civil tongue in your head, will you!”

  “Ay,” chimed in another, pushing forward with a menacing gesture. “You be careful, Jack! You be Jack in office, but ‘twon’t always be so! ‘Twon’t always be so!”

  “Mr. Colet knows the old woman?” Basset asked.

  “Sure, sir, the curate knows her.”

  “Well, I’ll find the rent,” Basset said, addressing the constable, “if you’ll let her be. I’ll see the overseer about her in the morning.”

  “So long as she don’t come on the rates, sir?”

  “She’ll not come on the rates for six months,” Basset said. “I’ll be answerable for so much.”

  The men had little stomach for their task, and with a good excuse they were willing enough to desist. A woman fetched a stub of a pen and a drop of ink and Basset wrote a word for their satisfaction. While he did so, “O’d Staffordshire! O’d Staffordshire!” a man explained in the background. “Bassets of Blore — they be come from an Abbey and come to a Grange, as the saying is. You never heard of the Bassets of Blore, you be neither from Mixen nor Moor!” In old Stafford talk the rich lands of Cheshire stood for the “mixen” as against the bare heaths of the home county.

  In five minutes the business was done, the woman freed, and Basset was trudging away through the gathering darkness. But the incident had done him good. It had lightened his heart. It had changed ever so little the direction of his thoughts. Out of his own trouble he had stretched a hand to another; and although he knew that it was not by stray acts such as this that he could lift himself to Mary’s standard, though the battle over the new Poor Law had taught him, and many others, that charity may be the greatest of evils, what he had done seemed to bring him nearer to her. A hardship of the poor, which he might have seen with blind eyes, or viewed from afar as the inevitable result of the stay of outdoor relief, had come home to him. As he plodded across the moor he carried with him a picture of the old woman with her gray hair falling about her wrinkled face, and her hands clasped in hopeless resignation. And he felt that his was not the only trouble in the world.

  When he had passed the wall of Beaudelays Park, Basset struck — not far from the Gatehouse — into the road leading down to the Vale, and a couple of hours after dark he plodded into Riddsley. He made for the Audley Arms, a long straggling house on the main street, in one part of two stories, in another of three, with a big bay window at the end. Entering the yard by the archway he ordered a gig to go to the Gatehouse for his portmanteau. Then he turned into the inn, and scribbled a note to John Audley, stating that he was called away, and would explain matters when he wrote again. He sent it by the driver.

  It was eight o’clock. “I am afraid, Squire,” the landlord said, “that there’s no fire upstairs. If you’d not mind our parlor for once, there’s no one there and it’s snug and warm.”

  “I’ll do that, Musters,” he said. He was cold and famished and he was not sorry to avoid the company of his own thoughts. In the parlor, next door to the Snug, he might be alone or listen to the local gossip as he pleased.

  Ten minutes later he sat in front of a good plain meal, and for the time the pangs of appetite overcame those of disappointment. About nine the landlord entered on some errand. “I suppose, sir,” he said, lingering to see that his guest had all that he wanted, “you’ve heard this about Mr. Mottisfont?”

  “No, Musters, what is it? Get a clean glass and tell me about it.”

  “He’s to resign, sir, I hear. And his son is to stand.”

  “Why?”

  “Along o’ t
his about Sir Robert Peel, I understand. They have it that Sir Robert’s going to repeal the corn taxes — some say that he’s been for it all through, and some talk about a potato failure. Mr. Mottisfont sees that that’ll never do for Riddsley, but he don’t want to part from his leader, after following him all these years; so he’ll go out and the young gentleman will take his place.”

  “Do you think it is true about Peel?”

  “They’re saying it, and Mr. Stubbs, he believes it. But it’ll never go down in Riddsley, Squire. We’re horn and corn men here, two to one of us. There’s just the two small factories on the other side, and most of the hands haven’t votes. But here’s Mr. Stubbs himself.”

  The lawyer had looked into the room in passing. Seeing Basset he removed his hat. “Pardon, Squire,” he said. “I did not know that you were here.”

  “Not at all,” Basset answered. He knew the lawyer locally, and had seen him often — at arm’s length — in the peerage suit. “Will you take a glass of wine with me?”

  Stubbs said that he would with pleasure, if he might take it standing — his time was short. The landlord was for withdrawing, but Stubbs detained him. “No, John, with Mr. Basset’s leave I’ve a bone to pick with you,” he said. “Who are these men who are staying here?”

  Musters’s face fell. “Lord, Mr. Stubbs,” he said, “have you heard of them?”

  “I hear most things,” the lawyer answered. “But repealers talking treason at the Audley Arms is a thing I never thought to hear. They must go.”

  The landlord rubbed his head. “I can’t turn ‘em out,” he said. “They’d have the law of me. His lordship couldn’t turn ‘em out.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Stubbs replied. “He’s a good landlord, but he likes his own way.”

  “But what can I do?” the stout man protested. “When they came I knew no more about them than a china babe. When they began to talk, so glib that no one could answer them, I was more took aback than anybody. Seems like the world’s coming to an end with Manchester men coming here.”