The Great House Part 21

"And here it is!"

"Here it is. Apparently at some time or other it went out of fas.h.i.+on, was laid aside and lost sight of, and eventually bricked up with a ma.s.s of old and valueless papers."

Audley steadied his voice with difficulty. "And what is its effect?" he asked.

"Its effect, my lord, is to corroborate our case in every particular," the lawyer answered proudly. "Its entries form a history of the family for a long period, and amongst them is an entry of the marriage of Peter Paravicini Audley on the date alleged by us; an entry made in the handwriting of his father, and one of eleven made by the same hand. This entry agrees in every particular with the suspected statement in the register which we support, and fully bears out our case."

"And John Audley found that?" my lord cried, after a moment of pregnant silence. He had regained his composure. His eyes were s.h.i.+ning.

"Yes, and it killed him," Stubbs said gravely. "Doubtless he came on it at the moment when he thought success was within his grasp, and the shock was too much for him."

"Good Lord! Good Lord! And how did you get it?"

"From Mr. Ba.s.set."

"Ba.s.set?"

"Who obtained it, I have no doubt, from the man, Toft, either by pressure or purchase."

"The rascal! The d--d rascal! He ought to be prosecuted!"

"Possibly," the lawyer agreed. "But he was only an accomplice, and we could not prosecute him without involving others; without bringing Mr. John's name into it--and he is dead. As a fact, I have pa.s.sed my word to Mr. Ba.s.set that no steps should be taken against him, and I think your lords.h.i.+p will agree with me that I could not do otherwise."

"Still--the man ought to be punished!"

"He ought, but if any one has paid for his silence or for this book, it is not we."

After that there was a little more talk about the Bible, which my lord examined with curiosity, about the singularity of its discovery, about the handwriting of the entries, which the lawyer said he could himself prove. Stubbs was made free of the decanter, and of everything but my lord's mind. For Audley said nothing of his engagement to Mary--the moment was hardly opportune; and nothing--it was too late in the day--of Toft's former exploit. He stood awhile absorbed and dreaming, staring through the haze of the candles. Here at last was final and complete relief. No more fears, no more calculations. Here was an end at last of the feeling that there was a mine under him. Traditions, when they are bred in the bone, die slowly, and many a time he had been hard put to it to resist the belief, so long whispered, that his branch was illegitimate. At last the tradition was dead. There was no more need to play for safety. What he had he had, and no one could take it from him.

And presently the talk pa.s.sed to the election.

"There's no doubt," Stubbs said, "that Mr. Ba.s.set is a stronger candidate than either side expected."

"But he's no politician! He has no experience!"

The lawyer sat forward, with his legs apart and a hand on either knee. "No," he said. "But the truth is, though it is beyond me how a gentleman of his birth can be so misled, he believes what he says--and it goes down!"

"Is he a speaker?"

"He is and he isn't! I slipped in myself one night at the back of one of the new-fangled meetings his precious League has started. I wanted to see, my lord, if any of our people were there. I heard him for ten minutes, and at the start he was so jumpy I thought that he would break down. But when he got going--well, I saw how it was and what took the people. He believes what he says, and he says it plain. The way he painted Peel giving up everything, sacrificing himself, sacrificing his party, sacrificing his reputation, sacrificing all to do what he thought was right--the devil himself wouldn't have known his own!"

"He almost converted you?"

The lawyer laughed disdainfully. "Not a jot!" he said. "But I saw that he would convert some. Not many," Stubbs continued complacently. "There's some that mean to, but will think better of it at the last. And some would but daren't! Two or three may. Still, he's such a candidate as we've not had against us before, my lord. And with cheap bread and the preachings of this plaguy League--I shall be glad when it is over."

Audley rose and poked the fire. "You're not going to tell me," he said, in a voice that was unnaturally even, "that he's going to beat us? You're not going, after all the a.s.surances you've given me----"

"G.o.d forbid," Stubbs replied. "No, no, my lord! Mr. Mottisfont will hold the seat! I mean only that it will be a nearer thing--a nearer thing than it has been."

He had no idea that his patron was fighting a new spasm of anger; that the thought that he might, after all, have dealt with Sir Robert, the thought that he might, after all, have bargained with the party in power, was almost too much for the other's self-command. It was too late now, of course. It was too late. But if the contest was to be so close, surely if he had cast his weight on the other side, he might have carried it!

And what if the seat were lost? Then this stubborn, confident fool, who was as bigoted in his faith as the narrowest Leaguer of them all, had done him a deadly injury! My lord bit off an oath, and young as he was, his face wore a very apoplectic look as he turned round, after laying down the poker.

"That reminds me," the lawyer resumed, blandly unconscious of the crisis, and of the other's anger. "I meant to ask your lords.h.i.+p what's to be done about the two Boshams. You remember them, my lord? They've had the small holding by the bridge with the water meadow time out of mind--for seven generations they say. They pay eighteen pounds as joint tenants, and have votes as old freemen."

"What of them?" the other asked impatiently.

"Well, I'm afraid they'll not support us."

"Do you mean that they'll not vote for Mottisfont?"

"I'm afraid not," Stubbs answered. "They're as stubborn as their own pigs! I've spoken to them myself and told them that they've only one thing to expect if they go against their landlord."

"And that is, to go out!" Audley said. "Well, make that quite clear to them, Stubbs, and depend upon it--they'll see differently."

"I'm afraid they won't, my lord, and that is why I trouble you. They voted against the last lord--twice, I am told--and the story goes that he laid his stick about Ben Bosham's shoulders in the street--that would be in '31, I fancy. But he didn't turn them out--they'd been in the holding so long."

"Two votes may have been nothing to him," Audley replied coldly. "They are something to me. They will vote for Mottisfont or they will go, Stubbs. That is flat, and do you see to it. There, I'm tired now," he continued, rising from his seat.

Stubbs rose. "I don't know if your lords.h.i.+p's heard about Mr. John's will!"

"No!" My lord straightened himself. Earlier in the day he had given some thought to this, and had weighed Mary Audley's chances of inheriting what John Audley had. "No!" he said. And he waited.

"He has left the young lady eight thousand pounds."

"Eight thousand!" Audley e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Do you mean--he must have had more than that? He wasted a small fortune in that confounded suit. But he must have had--four times that, man!"

"The residue goes to Mr. Ba.s.set."

"Ba.s.set!" Audley cried, his face flushed with pa.s.sion. "To Ba.s.set?" he repeated. "Good G--d!"

"So I'm told, my lord," the lawyer answered, staggered by the temper in which his employer received the news.

"But Miss Audley was his own niece! Ba.s.set? He was no relation to him!"

"They were very old friends."

"That's no reason why he should leave him thirty thousand pounds of Audley money! Money taken straight out of the Audley property! Thirty thousand----"

"Not thirty, my lord," Stubbs ventured. "Not much above twenty, I should say. If you put it----"

"If I put it that you were--something of a fool at times," the angry man cried, "I shouldn't be far wrong! But there, there, never mind! Good-night! Can't you see I'm dead tired and hardly know what I am saying? Come to-morrow! Come at eleven in the morning."

Stubbs hardly knew how to take it. But after a moment's hesitation, he made the best of the apology, muttered something, and got out of the room. On the stairs he relieved his feelings by a word or two. In the street he wondered what had taken the man so suddenly. Surely he had not expected to get the money!

CHAPTER x.x.x.

A FRIEND IN NEED.

Ba.s.set had obtained the missing Bible very much in the way the lawyer had indicated--partly by purchase and partly by pressure. Shocked as Toft had been by his master's sudden death, he had had the presence of mind to remember that he might make something of what they had discovered could he secrete it; and with every nerve quivering the man had fought down panic until he had hidden the parcel which had caused John Audley's collapse. Then he had given way. He had turned his back on the Great House, and shuddering, clutched at by grisly hands, pursued by phantom feet, he had fled through the night and the Yew Walk, to hide, for the present at least, his part in the tragedy.

Ba.s.set, however, had known too much for him, and the servant, shaken by what had happened, had not been able to persist in his denials. But to tell and to give were two things, and it is doubtful whether he would have released his plunder if Ba.s.set had not in the last resort disclosed to him Miss Audley's engagement to her cousin.

The change which this news wrought in Toft had astonished Ba.s.set. The man had gone down under it as under a blow on the head. The spirit had gone out of him, and he had taken with thankfulness the sum which Ba.s.set, as John Audley's representative, had offered him--rather out of pity than because it seemed necessary. He had given up the parcel on the night before the funeral.

The book in his hands, Ba.s.set had hastened to be rid of it. Cynically he had told himself that he did so, lest he too might give way to the ign.o.ble impulse to withhold it. Audley was his rival, but that he might have forgiven, as men forgive great wrongs and in time smile on their enemies. But the little wrongs, who can forgive these--the slight, the sneer, the a.s.sumption of superiority, the upper hand lightly taken and insolently held?

Not Peter Ba.s.set, at a moment when he was being tried almost beyond bearing. For every day, between the finding of the body and the funeral, and often more than once in the day he had to see Mary, he had to advise her, he had--for there was no one else--to explain matters to her, to bear her company. He had to quit this meeting and that Ordinary--for election business stops for no man--and to go to her. He had to find her alone and to see her face light up at his entrance; he had to look back, and to see her watch him as he rode from the door. Nor when he was absent from the Gatehouse was it any better; nay, it was worse. For then he was forced to think of her as alone and sad, he had to picture her brooding over the fire, he had to fancy her at her solitary meals. And alike, with her or away from her, he had to damp down the old pa.s.sion, as well as the new regret that each day and each hour and every kind look on her part fanned into a flame. Nor was even this all; every day he saw that she grew more grave, daily he saw her color fading, and he did not know what qualms she masked, what nightmares she might be suffering in that empty house--nay, what cause for unhappiness she might be hiding. At last--it was the afternoon before the funeral--he could bear it no longer, and he spoke.

"You ought not to be here!" he said bluntly. "Why doesn't Audley fetch you away?" He was standing before the fire drawing on his gloves as he prepared to leave. The room was full of shadows, for he had chosen a time when she could not see his face.

She tried to fence with him. "I am afraid," she said, "that some formalities will be necessary before he can do that."

"Then why is he not here?" he retorted. "Or why doesn't he send some one to be with you? You ought not to be alone. Mrs. Jenkinson at The b.u.t.terflies--she's a good soul--you know her?"

"Yes."

"She'd come at a word. I know it's not my business----"

"Or you would go about it, I am sure," she replied gently, "with as much respect to my wishes as Lord Audley shows."

"Your wishes? But why--why do you wish----"

"Why do I wish to be alone?" she answered. "Because I owe something to my uncle. Because I owe him a little thought and some remembrance. He made my old life for me--would you have me begin the new one before he is in the grave? This was his house--would you have me entertain Lord Audley in it?" She stood up, slender and straight, with the table between them--and he did not guess that her knees were trembling. "Please to understand," she continued, "that Lord Audley and I are entirely at one in this. We have our lives before us, and it were indeed selfish of us, and ungrateful of me, if we grudged a few days to remembrance. As selfish," she continued bravely--and he did not know that she braced herself anew--"as if I were ever to forget the friend who was his friend, whose kindness has never failed me, whose loyalty has never--" she broke down there. She could not go on.

"Add, too," he said gruffly, "who has robbed you of the greater part of your inheritance! Don't forget that!" He had been explaining the effect of John Audley's will to her. It had been opened that morning.

His roughness helped her to recover herself. "I do not know what you mean by 'inheritance,'" she said. "My uncle has left me the portion his wife brought to him. I am more than satisfied. I am very grateful. My only fear is that, had he known of my engagement, he would not have wished me to have this."

"The will was made before you came to live here," Ba.s.set said. "The eight thousand was left to you because you were his brother's child. It was the least he could do for you, and had he made a new will he would doubtless have increased it. But," breaking off, "I must be going." Yet he still stood, and he still tapped the table with the end of his riding-crop. "When is Audley coming?" he asked suddenly. "To-morrow?"

"Yes, to-morrow."

"Well he ought to," he replied, without looking at her. "You should not be here a day longer by yourself. It is not fitting. I shall see you in the morning before we start for the church, but the lawyer will be here and I shall not be able to come again. But I must be sure that there is some one here." He spoke almost harshly, partly to impress her, partly to hide his own feelings; and he did not suspect that she, too, was fighting for calmness; that she was praying that he would go, before she showed more clearly how much the parting tried her--before every kind word, every thoughtful act, every toilsome journey taken on her behalf, rose to her remembrance and swept away the remnants of her self-control.

She had not imagined that she would feel the leave-taking as she did. She could not speak, and she was thankful that it was too dark for him to see her face. Would he never go? And still the slow tap-tap of his whip on the table went on. It seemed to her that she would never forget the sound! And if he touched her---- But he had no thought of touching her.

"Good-night," he said at last. He turned, moved away, lingered. At the door he looked back. "I am going into the library," he said. "The coffin will be closed in the morning."

"Yes, good-night," she muttered, thankful that the thought of the dead man steadied her and gave her power to speak. "I shall see him in the morning."

He closed the door, and she crept blindly to a chair, and covered by the darkness she gave way. She told herself that she was thinking of her uncle. But she knew that she deceived herself. She knew that her uncle had little to do with her tears, or with the feeling of loneliness that overcame her. Once more she had lost her friend--and a friend so good, so kind. Only now did she know his value!

Five minutes later Ba.s.set crossed the court in search of his horse. Mrs. Toft's door stood open and a stream of firelight and candlelight poured from it and cut the January fog. She was hard at work, cooking funeral meats with the help of a couple of women; for quietly as John Audley had lived, he could not be buried without some stir. Odd people would come, drawn by the Audley name, squires who boasted some distant connection with the line, a few who had been intimate with him in past days. And the gentry far and wide would send their carriages, and the servants must be fed. Still the preparations jarred on Ba.s.set as he crossed the court. He felt the bustle an outrage on the mourning girl he had left, and on his own depression.

Probably Mrs. Toft had set the door open that she might waylay him, for as he went by she came out and stopped him. "Mr. Ba.s.set, sir!" she said in a low voice. "Is this true, what Toft tells me? I declare, when I heard it, you could ha' knocked me down with a common dip!" She was wiping her hands on her ap.r.o.n. "That the young lady is to marry his lords.h.i.+p?"

"I believe it is true," Ba.s.set said coldly. "But you had better let her take her own time to make it known. Toft should not have told you."

"Never fear, sir, I'll not let on. But, Lord's sakes, who'd ha' thought it? And she'll be my lady! Not that she's not an Audley, and there's small differ, and she'll make none, or I don't know her! Well, indeed, I hope she's wise, but wedding cake, make it as rich as you like, it's soon stale. And for him, I don't know what the Master would have said if he'd known it! I thought things would come out," with a quick look at Ba.s.set, "quite otherways! And wished it, too!"

"Thank you, Mrs. Toft," he said quietly.

"Just so, sir, you'll excuse me. Well, it's not many months since the young lady came, and look at the changes! With the old Master dead, and you going in for elections--drat 'em, I say, plaguy things that set folks by the ears--and Mr. Colet gone and 'Truria that unsettled, and Toft for ever wool-gathering, I shall be glad when tomorrow's over and I can sit down and sort things out a bit!"

"Yes, Mrs. Toft."

"And speaking of elections reminds me. You know they two Boshams of the Bridge End, sir?"

"I know them. Yes."

Mrs. Toft sniffed. "They're sort of kin to me, and middling honest as town folks go. But two silly fellows, always meddling and making and gandering with things they'd ought to leave to the gentry! The old lord was soft with them, and so they've a mind now to see who is the stronger, they or his lords.h.i.+p."

"If you mean that they have promised to vote for me----"

"That's it, sir! Vote their living away, they will, and leave 'em alone! Votes are for poor men to make a bit of money by, odd times; but they two Boshams I've no patience with. Sally, Ben's wife, was with me to-day, and the long and the short of it is, Mr. Stubbs has told them that if they vote for you they'll go into the street."

"It's a hard case," Ba.s.set said. "But what can I do?"

"Don't ha' their votes. What's two votes to you? For the matter of that," Mrs. Toft continued, thoroughly wound up, "what's all the votes--put together? Ba.s.sets and Audleys, Audleys and Ba.s.sets were knights of the s.h.i.+re, time never was, as all the country knows! But for this little borough--place it's what your great-grandfather wouldn't ha' touched with a pair of gloves! I'd leave it to the riff-raff that's got money and naught else, and builds Inst.i.tutes and such like!"

"But you'd like cheap bread?" Ba.s.set said, smiling.

"Bread? Law, Mr. Ba.s.set, what's elections to do wi' bread? It's not bread they're thinking of, cheap or dear. It's beer! Swim in it they do, more shame to you gentry! I'll be bound to say there's three goes to bed drunk in the town these days for two that goes sober! But there, you speak to they Boshams, Mr. Ba.s.set, sir, and put some sense into them!"

"I'm afraid I can't promise," he answered. "I'll see!"

But it was not of the Boshams he thought as he rode down the hill with a tight rein--for between fog and frost the road was treacherous. He was thinking of the man who had been his friend and of whose face, sphinx-like in death, he had taken farewell in the library. And solemn thoughts, thoughts such as at times visit most men, calmed his spirit. The fret of the contest, the strivings of the platform, the rubs of vanity flitted to a distance, they became small things. Even pa.s.sion lost its fever and love its selfishness; and he thought of Audley with patience and of Mary as he would think of her in years to come, when time had enshrined her, and she was but a memory, one of the things that had shaped his life. He knew, indeed, that this mood would pa.s.s; that pa.s.sion would surge up again, that love would reach out to its object, that memory would awake and wound him, that pain and restlessness would be his for many days. But he knew also--in this hour of clear views--that all these things would have an end, and only the love, That seeketh not itself to please Nor of itself hath any care, would remain with him.

Already it had carried him some way. In the matter of the election, indeed, he might be wrong. He might have entered on it too hastily--often he thought that he had--he might be of fibre too weak for the task. It cost him much to speak, and the occasional failure, the mistake, the rebuff, worried him for hours and even days. Trifles, too, that would not have troubled another, troubled his conscience; side-issues that were false, but that he must not the less support, workers whom he despised and must still use, tools that soiled his hands but were the only tools. Then the vulgar greeting, the tipsy grasp, the friend in the market-place:-- The man who hails you Tom or Jack And proves by thumps upon your back How he esteems your merit! Who's such a friend that one had need Be very much his friend indeed To pardon or to bear it!

these humiliated him. But worse, far worse, than all was his unhappy gift of seeing the merits of the other side and of doubting the cause which he had set out to champion. He had fits of lowness when he was tempted to deny that honesty existed anywhere in politics; when Sir Robert Peel no less than Lord George Bentinck--who was coming to the front as the spokesman of the land--Cobden the Radical no less than Lord John Russell, seemed to be bent only on their own advancement, when all, he vowed, were of the School of the Cynics!

But were he right or wrong in his venture--and right or wrong he had small hope of winning--he would not the less cling to the thing which Mary had given him--the will to make something of his life, the determination that he would leave the world, were it only the few hundred acres that he owned, or the hamlet in which he lived, better than he had found them. The turmoil of the election over, he would devote himself to his property at Blore. There John Audley's twenty thousand pounds opened a wide door. He would build, drain, manure, make roads, re-stock. He would make all things new. From him as from a centre comfort should flow. He saw himself growing old in the middle of his people, a lonely, but not an unhappy man.

As he pa.s.sed the bridge at Riddsley he thought of the Boshams, and weary as he was, he drew rein at their door. Ben Bosham came out, bare-headed; a short, elderly man with a bald forehead and a dirty complexion, a man who looked like a cobbler rather than the cow-keeper he was.

"Shut your door, Bosham," Ba.s.set said. "I want a word with you."

And when the man had done this, he stooped from the saddle and said a few words to him in a low voice.