The Great House Part 9

He knew that she was holding him off, and all his alarms of the night were quickened. Again and again had John Audley's warning recurred to him and as often he had striven to reject it, but always in vain. And gradually, slowly, it had kindled his resolution, it had fired him to action. Now, the very modesty which had long kept him silent and withheld him from enterprise was changed--as so often happens with diffident man--into rashness. He was as anxious to put his fate to the test as he had before been unwilling.

Presently, "You will not need to tell your uncle about Lord Audley," he said. "I've done it."

"I hope you told him," she answered gravely, "that we were indebted to Lord Audley for our safety."

"You don't trust me?"

"Don't say things like that!" she cried. "It is foolish. I have no doubt that in telling my uncle you meant to relieve me. You have helped me more than once in that way. But----"

"But this is a special occasion?"

She looked at him. "If you wish us to be friends----"

"I don't," he answered roughly. "I don't want to be friends with you."

Then, ambiguous as his words were, she saw where she stood, and she mustered her presence of mind. She rose from her seat. "And I," she said, "am not going to quarrel with you, Mr. Ba.s.set. I am going now to learn how Etruria is. And then I shall see my uncle."

She escaped before he could answer.

Once or twice it had crossed her mind that he looked at her with intention; and once reading that look in his eyes she had felt her color rise, and her heart beat more quickly. But the absence on her side of any feeling, except that which a sister might feel for a kind brother, this and the reserve of his manner had nipped the fancy as soon as it budded. And if she had given it a second thought, it had been only to smile at her vanity.

Now she had no doubt of the fact, no doubt that it was jealousy that moved him, and her uppermost, almost her only feeling was vexation. Because they had lived in the same house for five months, because he had been useful and she had been grateful, because they were man and woman, how foolish it was! How absurd! How annoying! She foresaw from it many, many, inconveniences; a breach in their pleasant intercourse, displeasure on her uncle's part, trouble in the house that had been so peaceful--oh, many things. But that which vexed her most was the fear that she had, all unwittingly, encouraged him.

She believed that she had not. But while she talked to Etruria, and later, as she went down the stairs to interview her uncle, she had this weight on her mind. She strove to recall words and looks, and upon the whole she was sure that she could acquit herself, sure that of this evil no part lay at her door. But it was very, very vexatious!

On the threshold of the library she wrested her thoughts back to the present, and paused a moment, considering what she should say to her uncle.

She need not have troubled herself, for he was not there. At the first glance she took the room to be empty; a second showed her Ba.s.set. She turned to retire, but too late; he stepped between her and the door and closed it. He was a little paler than usual, and his air of purpose was not to be mistaken.

She stiffened. "I came to see my uncle," she said.

"I am the bearer of a message from him," he answered. "He asked me to say that he considers the matter at an end. He does not wish it to be mentioned again. Of course he does not blame you."

"But, Mr. Ba.s.set----"

But he would not let her speak. "That was his message," he continued, "and I am glad to be the messenger because it gives me a chance of speaking to you. Will you sit down?"

"But we have only just parted," she remonstrated, struggling against her fate. "I don't understand what you want----"

"To say? No, I am going to explain it--if you will sit down."

She sat down then with the feeling that she was trapped. And since it was clear that she must go through with it, she was glad that his insistence hardened her heart and dried up the springs of pity.

He went to the fire, stooped and moved the wood. "You won't come nearer?" he said.

"No," she replied. How foolish to trap her like this if he thought to get anything from her!

He turned to her and his face was changed. Under his wistful look she discovered that it was not so easy to be hard, not so easy to maintain her firmness. "You would rather escape?" he said, reading her mind. "I know. But I can't let you escape. You are thinking that I have trapped you? And you are fearing that I am going to make you unhappy for--for half an hour perhaps? I know. And I am fearing that you are going to make me unhappy for--always."

No, she could not retain her hardness. She knew that she was going to feel pity after all. But she would not speak.

"I have only hope," he went on. "There is only one thing I am clinging to. I have read that when a man loves a woman very truly, very deeply, as I love you, Mary"--she started violently, and blushed to the roots of her hair, so sudden was the avowal--"as I love you," he repeated sorrowfully, "I have read that she either hates him or loves him. His love is a fire that either warms her or scorches her, draws her or repels her. I thought of that last night, as I thought of many things, and I was sure, I was confident that you did not hate me."

"Oh no," she answered, unsteadily. "Indeed, indeed, I don't! I am very grateful to you. But the other--I don't think it is true."

"No?" he said, keeping his eyes on her face. "And then, you don't doubt that I love you?"

"No." The flush had faded from her face and left her pale. "I don't doubt that--now."

"It is so true that--you know that you have sometimes called me Peter? Well, I would have given much, very much to call you Mary. But I did not dare. I could not. For I knew that if I did, only once, my voice would betray me, and that I should alarm you before the time! I knew that that one word--that word alone--would set my heart upon my sleeve for all to see. And I did not want to alarm you. I did not want to hurry you. I thought then that I had time, time to make myself known to you, time to prove my devotion, time to win you, Mary. I thought that I could wait. Now, since last night, I am afraid to wait. I doubt, nay I am sure, that I have no time, that I dare not wait."

She did not answer, but the color mounted again to her face.

He turned and knocked the fire together with his foot. Then he took a step towards her. "Tell me," he said, "have I any chance? Any chance at all, Mary?"

She shook her head; but seeing then that he kept his eyes fixed on her and would not take that for an answer, "None," she said as kindly as she could. "I must tell you the truth. It is useless to try to break it. I have never once, not once thought of you but as a friend, Peter."

"But now," he said, "cannot you regard me differently--now! Now that you know? Cannot you begin to think of me as--a lover?"

"No," Mary said frankly and pitifully. "I should not be honest if I said that I could. If I held out hopes. You have been always good to me, kind to me, a dear friend, a brother when I had need of one. And I am grateful, Mr. Ba.s.set, honestly, really grateful to you. And fond of you--in that way. But I could not think of you in the way you desire. I know it for certain. I know that there is no chance."

He stood for a moment without speaking, and seeing how stricken he looked, how sad his face, her eyes filled with tears. Then, "Is there any one else?" he asked slowly, his eyes on her face.

She did not answer. She rose to her feet.

"Is there any one else?" he repeated, a new note in his voice. He moved forward a step.

"You have no right to ask that," she said.

"I have every right," he replied. "What?" he continued, moving still nearer to her, his whole bearing changed in a moment by the sting of jealousy. "I am condemned, I am rejected, and I am not to ask why?"

"No," she said.

"But I do ask!" he retorted with a pa.s.sion 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. Ba.s.set, 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. Ba.s.set! 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 s.h.i.+vered 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 pa.s.sed 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.

Ba.s.set 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 Staffords.h.i.+re 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 f.a.gged 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 s.h.i.+ft, 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 Ba.s.set 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 st.u.r.dy 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?" Ba.s.set asked.

"They're s.h.i.+fting 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 Staffords.h.i.+re 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.

Ba.s.set 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 s.h.i.+lling 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 Ba.s.set 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 Ba.s.set of Blore. Dunno you know him? Keep a civil tongue in your head, will you!"

"Ay," chimed in another, pus.h.i.+ng 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?" Ba.s.set asked.

"Sure, sir, the curate knows her."

"Well, I'll find the rent," Ba.s.set 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," Ba.s.set 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 Ba.s.set wrote a word for their satisfaction. While he did so, "O'd Staffords.h.i.+re! O'd Staffords.h.i.+re!" a man explained in the background. "Ba.s.sets of Blore--they be come from an Abbey and come to a Grange, as the saying is. You never heard of the Ba.s.sets of Blore, you be neither from Mixen nor Moor!" In old Stafford talk the rich lands of Ches.h.i.+re stood for the "mixen" as against the bare heaths of the home county.

In five minutes the business was done, the woman freed, and Ba.s.set 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 hards.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed the wall of Beaudelays Park, Ba.s.set 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."