But to assume a warmth which she did not feel was another matter. This was beyond her.
He, for his part, set down her manner to a natural depression. “Poor child!” he said, “you have had a sad time. Well, we must make up for it. As soon as we can make arrangements you must leave that gloomy house where everything reminds you of your uncle and — and we must make a fresh start. Do you know where I am taking you?”
She saw that they had turned off the road and were following a track that scrambled upwards through the scrub that clothed the slope below the Gatehouse. It slanted in the direction of the Great House. “Not to Beaudelays?” she said.
“Yes — to Beaudelays. But don’t be afraid. Not to the house.”
“Oh no!” she cried. “I don’t think I could bear to go there to-day!”
“I know. But I want you to see the gardens. I want you to see what might have been ours, what we might have enjoyed had fortune been more kind to us! Had we been rich, Mary! It is hard to believe that you have never seen even the outside of the Great House.”
“I have never been beyond the Iron Gate.”
“And all these months within a mile!”
“All these months within a mile. But he did not wish it. It was one of the first things he made me understand.”
“Ah! Well, there is an end of that!” And again so matter-of-fact was his tone that she had to struggle against the impulse to withdraw her arm. “Now, if there is any one who has a right to be there, it is you! And I want to be the one to take you there. I want you to see for yourself that it is only fallen grandeur that you are marrying, Mary, the thing that has been, not the thing that is. By G — d! I don’t know that there is a creature in the world — certainly there is none in my world — more to be pitied than a poor peer!”
“That’s nothing to me,” she said. And, indeed, his words had brought him nearer to her than anything he had said. So that when, taking advantage of the undergrowth which hid them from the road below, he put his arm about her and assisted her in her climb, she yielded readily. “To think,” he said, “that you have never seen this place! I wonder that after we parted you did not go the very next morning to visit it!”
“Perhaps I wished to be taken there by you.”
“By Jove! Do you know that that is the most lover-like thing you have said.”
“I may improve with practice,” she rejoined. “Indeed, it is possible,” she continued demurely, “that we both need practice!”
She had not a notion that he was in two minds; that one half of him was revelling in the hour, pleased with possession, enjoying her beauty, dwelling on the dainty curves of her figure, while the other uncertain, wavering, was asking continually, “Shall I or shall I not?” But if she did not guess thoughts to which she had no clue he was sharp enough to understand hers. “Ah! you are there, are you?” he said. “Wait! Presently, when we are out of sight of that cursed road — —”
“I didn’t find fault!”
On that there was a little banter between them, gallant and smiling on his part, playful and defensive on hers, which lasted until they reached a door leading into the lower garden. It was a rusty, damp-stained door, once painted green, and masked by trees somewhat higher than the underwood through which they had climbed. Ivy hung from the wall above it, rank grass grew against it, the air about it was dank, and in summer sent up the smell of wild leeks. Once under-gardeners had used it to come and go, and many a time on moonlit nights maids had stolen through it to meet their lovers in the coppice or on the road.
Audley had brought the key and he set it in the lock and turned it. But he did not open the door. Instead, he turned to Mary with a smile. “This is my surprise,” he said. “Shut your eyes and open them when I tell you. I will guide you.”
She complied without suspicion, and heard the door squeak on its rusty hinges. Guided by his hand she advanced three or four paces. She heard the door close behind her. He put his arm round her and drew her on. “Now?” she asked, “May I look?”
“Yes, now!” he answered. As he spoke he drew her to him, and, before she knew what to expect, he had crushed her to his breast and was pressing kisses on her face and lips.
She was taken by surprise and so completely, that for a moment she was helpless, without defence. Then the instinctive impulse to resist overcame her, and she struggled fiercely; and, presently, she released herself. “Oh, you shouldn’t have done it!” she cried. “You shouldn’t have done it!”
“My darling!”
“You — you hurt me!” she panted, her breath coming short and quick. She was as red now as she had for a moment been white. Her lips trembled, and there were tears in her eyes. He thought that he had been too rough with her, and though he did not understand, he stayed his impulse to seize her again. Instead, he stood looking down at her, a little put out.
She tried to smile, tried bravely to pass it off; but she was put to it, he could see, not to burst into tears. “Perhaps I am foolish,” she faltered, “but please don’t do it again.”
“I can’t promise — for always,” he answered, smiling. But, none the less, he was piqued. What a prude the girl was! What a Sainte-ni-touche! To make such a fuss about a few kisses!
She tried to take the same tone. “I know I am silly,” she said, “but you took me by surprise.”
“You were very innocent, then, my dear. Still, I’ll be good, and next time I will give you warning. Now, don’t be afraid, take my arm, and let us — —”
“If I could sit down?” she murmured. Then he saw that the color had again left her cheeks.
There was an old wheelbarrow inside the door, half full of dead leaves. He swept it clear, and she sat down on the edge of it. He stood by her, puzzled, and at a loss.
Certainly he had played a trick on her, and he had been a little rough because he had felt her impulse to resist. But she must have known that he would kiss her sooner or later. And she was no child. Her convent days were not of yesterday. She was a woman. He did not understand it.
Alas, she did understand it. It was not her lover’s kisses, it was not his passion or his roughness that had shaken Mary. She was not a prude and she was a woman. That which had overwhelmed her was the knowledge, the certainty forced on her by his embrace, that she did not love him! That, however much she might have deluded herself a few weeks earlier, however far she might have let the lure of love mislead her, she did not love this man! And she was betrothed to him, she was promised to him, she was his! On her engagement to him, on her future with him had been based — a moment before — all her plans and all her hopes for the future.
No wonder that the color was struck from her face, that she was shaken to the depths of her being. For, indeed, she knew something more — that she had had her warning and had closed her eyes to it. That evening, when she had heard Basset’s step come through the hall, that moment when his presence had lifted the burden of suspense from her, should have made her wise. And for an instant the veil had been lifted, and she had been alarmed. But she reflected that the passing doubt was due to her lover’s absence and his coldness; and she had put the doubt from her. When Audley returned all would be well, she would feel as before. She was hipped and lonely and the other was kind to her — that was all!
Now she knew that that was not all. She did not love Audley and she did love some one else. And it was too late. She had misled herself, she had misled the man who loved her, she had misled that other whom she loved. And it was too late!
For a time that was short, yet seemed long to her companion, who stood watching her, she sat lost in thought and unconscious of his presence. At length he could bear it no longer. Pale cheeks and dull eyes had no charm for him! He had not come, he had not met her, for this.
“Come!” he said, “come, Mary, you will catch cold sitting there! One might suppose I was an ogre!”
She smiled wanly. “Oh no!” she said, “It is I — who am foolish. Please forgive me.”
“If you would like to go back?”
But her ear detected temper in his tone, and with a newborn fear of him she hastened to appease him. “Oh no!” she said. “You were going to show me the gardens!”
“Such as they are. Well, so you will see what there is to be seen. It is a sorry sight, I can tell you.” She rose and, taking her arm, he led her some fifty yards along the alley in which they were, then, turning to the right, he stopped. “There,” he said. “What do you think of it?”
They had before them the long, dank, weed-grown walk, broken midway by the cracked fountain and closed at the far end by the broad flight of broken steps that led upward to the terrace and so to the great lawn. When Audley had last stood on this spot the luxuriance of autumn had clothed the neglected beds. A tangle of vegetation, covering every foot of soil with leaf and bloom, had veiled the progress of neglect. Now, as by magic, all was changed. The sun still shone, but coldly and on a bald scene. The roses that had run riot, the spires of hollyhocks that had risen above them, the sunflowers that had struggled with the encroaching elder, nay, the very bindweed that had strangled all alike in its green embrace, were gone, or only reared naked stems to the cold sky. Gone, too, were the Old Man, the Sweet William, the St. John’s Wort, the wilderness of humbler growths that had pressed about their feet; and from the bare earth and leafless branches, the fountain and the sundial alone, like mourners over fallen grandeur, lifted gray heads.
There is no garden that has not its sad season, its days of stillness and mourning, but this garden was sordid as well as sad. Its dead lay unburied.
Involuntarily Mary spoke. “Oh, it is terrible!” she cried.
“It is terrible,” he answered gloomily.
Then she feared that, preoccupied as she was with other thoughts, she had hurt him. She was trying to think of something to comfort him, when he repeated, “It is terrible! But, d — n it, let us see the rest of it! We’ve come here for that! Let us see it!”
Together they went slowly along the walk. They came by and by to the sundial. She hung a moment, wishing to read the inscription, but he would not stay. “It’s the old story,” he said. “We are gay fellows in the sunshine, but in the shadow — we are moths.”
He did not explain his meaning. He drew her on. They mounted the wide flight which had once, flanked by urns and nymphs and hot with summer sunshine, echoed the tread of red-heeled shoes and the ring of spurs. Now, elder grew between the shattered steps, weeds clothed them, the nymphs mouldered, lacking arms and heads, the urns gaped.
Mary felt his depression and would have comforted him, but her brain was numbed by the discovery which she had made; she was unable to think, without power to help. She shared, she more than shared, his depression. And it was not until they had surmounted the last flight and stood gazing on the Great House that she found her voice. Then, as the length and vastness of the pile broke upon her, she caught her breath. “Oh,” she cried. “It is immense!”
“It’s a nightmare,” he replied. “That is Beaudelays! That is,” with bitterness, “the splendid seat of Philip, fourteenth Lord Audley — and a millstone about his neck! It is well, my dear, that you should see it! It is well that you should know what is before you! You see your home! And what you are marrying — if you think it worth while!”
If she had loved him she would have been strong to comfort him. If she had even fancied that she loved him, she would have known what to answer. As it was, she was dumb; she scarcely took in the significance of his words. Her mind — so much of it as she could divert from herself — was engaged with the sight before her, with the long rows of blank and boarded windows, the smokeless chimneys, the raw, unfinished air that, after eighty years, betrayed that this had never been a home, had never opened its doors to happy brides, nor heard the voices of children.
At last she spoke. “And this is Beaudelays?” she said.
“This is my home,” he replied. “That’s the place I’ve come to own! It’s a pleasant possession! It promises a cheerful homecoming, doesn’t it?”
“Have you never thought of — of doing anything to it?” she asked timidly.
“Do you mean — have I thought of completing it? Of repairing it?”
“I suppose I meant that,” she replied.
“I might as well think,” he retorted, “of repairing the Tower of London! All I have in the world wouldn’t do it! And I cannot pull it down. If I did, the lawyers first and the housebreakers afterwards, would pull down all I have with it! There is no escape, my dear,” he continued slowly. “Once I thought there was. I had my dream. I’ve stood on this lawn on summer days and I’ve told myself that I would build it up again, and that the name of Audley should not be lost. But I am a peer, what can I do? I cannot trade, I cannot plead. For a peer there is but one way — marriage. And there were times when I had visions of repairing the breach — in that way; when I thought that I could set the old name first and my pleasure second; when I dreamed of marrying a great dowry that should restore us to the place we once enjoyed. But — that is over! That is over,” he repeated in a sinking voice. “I had to choose between prosperity and happiness; I made my choice. God grant that we may never repent it!”
He sank into silence, waiting for her to speak; he waited with exasperation. She did not, and he looked down at her. Then, “I believe,” he said, “that you have not heard a word I have said!”
She glanced up, startled. “I am afraid I have not,” she answered meekly. “Please forgive me. I was thinking of my uncle, and wondering where he died.”
It was all that Audley could do to check the oath that rose to his lips. For he had spoken with intention; he had given her, as he thought, a lead, an opening; and he had wasted his pains. He could hardly believe that she had not heard. He could almost believe that she was playing with him. But in truth she had barely recovered from the shock of her discovery, and the thing before her eyes — the house — held her attention.
“I believe that you think more of your uncle than of me!” he cried.
“No,” she replied, “but he is gone and I have you.” She was beginning to be afraid of him; afraid of him, because she felt that she was in fault.
“Yes,” he replied. “But you must be more kind to me — or I don’t know that you will keep me.”
She thought that he spoke in jest, and she pressed his arm.
“You don’t want to go into the house?”
“Oh no! I could not bear it to-day.”
“Then you must not mind if I leave you for a moment. I have to look to something inside. I shall not be more than five minutes. Will you walk up and down?”
She assented, thankful to be alone with her thoughts; and he left her. A burly, stately figure, he passed across the lawn and disappeared round the corner of the old wing where the yew trees grew close to the walls. He let himself into the house. He wished to examine the strong-room for himself and to see what traces were left of the tragedy which had taken place there.
But when he stood inside and felt the icy chill of the house, where each footstep awoke echoes, and a ghostly tread seemed to follow him, he went no farther than the shadowy drawing-room with its mouldering furniture and fallen screen. There, placing himself before an unshuttered pane, he stood some minutes without moving, his hands resting on the head of his cane, his eyes fixed on Mary. The girl was slowly pacing the length of the terrace, her head bent.
Whether the lonely figure, with its suggestion of sadness, made its appeal, or the attraction of a grace that no depression could mar, overcame the dictates of prudence, he hesitated. At last, “I can’t do it!” he muttered, “hanged if I can! I suppose I ought not to have kissed her if I meant to do it to-day. No, I can’t do it.”
And when, half an hour later, he parted from her at the old Cross at the foot of the hill, he had not done it.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE MEETING AT THE MAYPOLE
Within twenty-four hours there were signs that Bosham’s brush w
ith his lordship and the show of feeling outside Hatton’s Works had set a sharper edge on the fight. Trifles as these were, the farmers about Riddsley took them up and resented them. The feudal feeling was not quite extinct. Their landlord was still a great man to them, and even those who did not love him believed that he was fighting their battle. An insult to him seemed, in any case, a portent, but that such a poor creature as Bosham — Ben Bosham of the Bridge End — should insult him, went beyond bearing.
Moreover, it was beginning to be whispered that Ben was tampering with the laborers. One heard that he was preaching higher wages in the public houses, another that he was asking Hodge what he got out of dear bread, a third that he was vaporing about commons and enclosures. The farmers growled. The farmers’ sons began to talk together outside the village inn. The farmers’ wives foresaw rick-burning, maimed cattle, and empty hen coops, and said that they could not sleep in their beds for Ben.
Meanwhile those who, perhaps, knew something of the origin of these rumors, and could size up the Boshams to a pound, were not unwilling to push the matter farther. Men who fancied with Stubbs that repeal of the corn-taxes meant the ruin of the country-side, were too much in earnest to pick and choose. They believed that this was a fight between the wholesome country and the black, sweating town, between the open life of the fields and the tyranny of mill and pit; and that the only aim of the repealer was to lower wages, and so to swell the profits that already enabled him to outshine the lords of the soil. They were prone, therefore, to think that any stick was good enough to beat so bad a dog, and if the stout arms of the farmers could redress the balance, they were in no mood to refuse their help.
Nor were sharpeners wanting on the other side. The methods of the League were brought into play. Women were sent out to sing through the streets of an evening, and the townsfolk ate their muffins to the doleful strains of:
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 605