CHAPTER XXXVII
A TURN OF THE WHEEL
Audley was suspicious and ill at ease. Standing on the hearth-rug with his back to the fire, he fixed the visitor with his eyes, and with secret anxiety asked himself what he wanted. The possibility that Basset came to champion Mary had crossed his mind more than once; if that were so he would soon dispose of him! In the meantime he took civility for his cue, exchanged an easy word or two about the poll and the election, and between times nodded to Stubbs to be seated. Through all, his eyes were watchful and he missed nothing.
"I asked Mr. Stubbs to be here," he said when a minute or two had been spent in this by-play, "as you spoke of business. You don't object?"
"Not at all," Basset replied. His face was grave. "I should tell you at once, Audley," he added, "that my mission is not a pleasant one."
The other raised his eyebrows. "You are sure that it concerns me?"
"It certainly concerns you. Though, as things stand, not very materially. I knew nothing of the matter myself until three o'clock to-day, and at first I doubted if it was my duty to communicate it. But the facts are known to a third person, they may be used to annoy you in the future, and though the task is unpleasant, I decided that I had no option."
Audley set his broad shoulders against the mantel-shelf. "But if the facts don't affect me?" he said.
"In a way they do. Not as they might under other circumstances. That is all."
"And yet you are making our hair stand on end! I confess you puzzle me. Well, let us have it. What is it all about?"
"A little time ago you recovered, if you remember, your Family Bible." "Well? What of that?"
"I have just learned that the man did not hand over all that he had. He kept back-it now appears-certain papers."
"Ah!" Audley's voice was stern. "Well, he has had his chance. This time, I can promise him a warrant will follow."
"Perhaps you will hear me out first?"
"No," was the sharp reply. Audley's temper was getting the better of him. "Last time, my dear fellow, you compounded with him; your motive an excellent one I don't doubt. But if he now thinks to get more money from me-and for other papers-I can promise him that he will see the inside of Stafford gaol. Besides, my good friend, you gave us to understand that he had surrendered all he had."
"I am afraid I did, and I fear I was wrong. Why he deceived me, and has now turned about, I know no more than you do!"
"I think I can enlighten you," the other answered-his fears as well as his temper were aroused. "The rogue is shallow. He thinks to be paid twice. Once by you and once by me. But you can tell him that this time he will be paid in other coin."
"I'm afraid that there is more in it than that," Basset said. "The fact is the papers he now produces, Audley, are of another character."
"Oh! The wind blows in that quarter, does it?" my lord replied. "You don't mean that you've come here-why, d-n it, man," with sudden passion, "either you are very simple, or you are art and part-"
"Steady, steady, my lord," Stubbs said, interposing discreetly. Hitherto he had not spoken. "There's no need to quarrel! I am sure that Mr. Basset's intentions are friendly. It will be better if he just tells us what these documents are which are now put forward. We shall then be able to judge where we stand."
"Go ahead," Audley said, averting his face and sulkily relapsing against the mantel-shelf. "Put your questions! And, for God's sake, let's get to the point!"
"The paper that is pertinent is a deed," Basset explained. "I have the heads of it here. A deed made between Peter Paravicini Audley, your ancestor, the Audley the date of whose marriage has been always in issue-between him on the one side, and his father and two younger brothers on the other."
"What is the date?" Stubbs asked.
"Seventeen hundred and four."
"Very good, Mr. Basset." Stubbs's tone was now as even as he could make it, but an acute listener would have detected a change in it. "Proceed, if you please."
Before Basset could comply, my lord broke in. "What's the use of this? Why the d-l are we going into it?" he cried. "If this man is out for plunder I will make him smart as sure as my name is Audley! And any one who supports him. In the meantime I want to hear no more of it!"
Basset moved in his chair as if he would rise. Stubbs intervened.
"That is one way of looking at it, my lord," he said temperately. "And I'm not saying that it is the wrong way. But I think we had better hear what Mr. Basset has to say. He is probably deceived-"
"He has let himself be used as a catspaw!" Audley cried. His face was flushed and there was an ugly look in his eyes.
"But he means us well, I am sure," the lawyer interposed. "At present I don't see" – he turned and carefully snuffed one of the candles-"I don't see-"
"I think you do!" Basset answered. He had had a long day and he had come on an unpleasant business. His own temper was not too good. "You see this, at any rate, Mr. Stubbs, that such a deed may be of vital import to your client."
"To me?" Audley exclaimed. Was it possible that the thing he had so long feared-and had ceased to fear-was going to befall him? Was it possible that at the eleventh hour, when he had burnt his boats, when he had thought all danger at an end-no, it was impossible! "To me?" he repeated passionately.
"Yes," Basset replied. "Or, rather, it would be of vital import to you in other circumstances."
"In what other circumstances? What do you mean?"
"If you were not about to marry the only person who, with you, is interested."
Audley cut short, by a tremendous effort, the execration that burst from his lips. His face, always too fleshy for his years, swelled till it was purple. Then, and as quickly, the blood ebbed, leaving it gray and flabby. He would have given much, very much at this moment to be able to laugh or to utter a careless word. But he could do neither. The blow had been too sudden, too heavy, too overwhelming. Only in his nightmares had he seen what he saw now!
Meanwhile Stubbs, startled by the half-uttered oath and a little out of his depth-for he had heard nothing of the engagement-intervened. "I think, my lord," he said, "you had better leave this to me. I think you had, indeed. We are quite in the dark and we are not getting forward. Let us have the facts, Mr. Basset. What is the gist of this deed? Or, first, have you seen it?"
"I have."
"And read it?"
"I have."
"It appears to you-I only say it appears-to be genuine?"
"I have no doubt that it is genuine," Basset replied. "It bears the marks of age, and it was found in the chest with the old Bible. If the book is genuine-"
The lawyer raised his hand. "Too fast," he said. "You say it was found! You mean that this man says it was found?"
"Yes."
"Precisely. But there is a difference. Still, we have cleared the ground. Now, what does this deed purport to be?"
Basset produced a slip of paper. "An agreement," he read from it, "between Peter Paravicini Audley and his father and his two younger brothers. After admitting that the entry of the marriage in the register is misleading and that no marriage took place until after the birth of his son, Peter Paravicini undertakes that, in consideration of his father and his brothers taking no action and making no attack upon his wife's reputation, she being their cousin, he will not set up for the said son, or the issue of the said son, any claim to the title or estates."
Audley listened to the description, so clear and so precise, and he recognized that it tallied with the deed which tradition had always held to exist but of which John Audley had been able to give no proof. He heard, he understood; yet while he listened and understood, his mind was working to another end, and viewing with passion the tragedy which fate had prepared for him. Too late! Too late! Had this become known a week, only a week, earlier, how lightly had the blow fallen! How impotently! But he had cut the rope, he had severed the strands once carefully twisted, that bound him to safety! And then the irony, the bitterness, the cruelty of those words of Basset's, "in other circumstances!" They bit into his mind.
Still he suffered in silence, and only his stillness and his unhealthy color betrayed the despair that gripped and benumbed his soul. Stubbs did not look at him; perhaps he was careful not to look at him. The lawyer sat thinking and drumming gently with his fingers on the table. "Just so, just so," he said presently. "On the face of it, the document of which Mr. John Audley tried to give secondary evidence, and which a person fraudulently inclined would of course concoct. That touch of the cousin well brought in!"
"But the lady was his cousin," Basset said.
"All the world knows it," the lawyer retorted coolly, "and use has been made of the knowledge. But, of course, there are a hundred things to be proved before any weight can be given to this document; its origin, the custody from which it comes, the signatures, the witnesses. Its production by a man who has once endeavored to blackmail is alone suspicious. And the deed itself is at variance with the evidence of the Bible."
"But that variance bears out the deed, which is to secure the younger sons' rights while covering the reputation of the lady."
The lawyer shook his head. "Very clever," he said. "But, frankly, the matter has an ugly look, Mr. Basset."
"Lord Audley says nothing," Basset replied, nettled by the lawyer's phrase.
"And will say nothing," Stubbs rejoined genially, "if he is advised by me. In the circumstances, as I understand them, he is not affected as he might be, but this is still a serious matter. We are not quarrelling with you for coming to us, Mr. Basset. On the contrary. But I would like to know why the man came to you."
"The answer is simple," Basset explained. "I am Mr. Audley's executor. On his account, I am obliged to be interested. The moment I learned this I saw that, be it true or false, I must disclose it to Miss Audley. But I thought it fair to open it to Lord Audley first that he might tell the young lady himself, if he preferred to do so."
Stubbs nodded. "Very proper," he replied. "And where, in the meantime, is this-precious document?"
"I lodged it with Mr. Audley's bankers this afternoon."
Stubbs nodded again. "Also very proper," he said. "Just so."
Basset rose. "I've told you what I know. If there is nothing more?" he said. He looked at Audley, who had turned his back on them and, with his hands in his pockets and one foot on the fender, was gazing into the fire.
"I think that's all," Stubbs hastened to say. "I am sure that his lordship is obliged to you, Mr. Basset, though it is a hundred to one that there is nothing in this."
At that, however, Audley turned about. He had pulled himself together, and his manner was excellent. "I would like to say that for myself," he said frankly, "I owe you many thanks for the straightforward course you have taken, Basset. You must pardon my momentary annoyance. Perhaps you will kindly keep this business to yourself for-shall we say-three days? I will speak myself to my cousin, but I should like to make one or two inquiries first."
Basset agreed willingly. He hated the whole thing and his part in it. It forced him to champion, or to seem to champion, Mary against her betrothed; and so set him in that kind of opposition to his rival which he loathed. It was only after some hesitation that he had determined to see Audley, and now that he had seen him, the sooner he was clear of the matter the happier he would be. So, "Certainly," he repeated, thinking that the other was taking it very well. "And now, as I have had a hard day, I will say good-night."
"Good-night, and believe me," my lord added warmly, "we recognize the friendliness of your action."
Outside, in the darkness of the road, Basset drew a breath of relief. He had had a hard day and he was utterly weary. But he had come now, thank God, to an end of many things; of the canvass he had detested and the contest in which he had been beaten; of his relations with Mary, whom he had lost; of this imbroglio, which he hated; of Riddsley and the Gatehouse and the old life there! He could go to his inn and sleep the clock round. In his bed he would be safe, he would be free from troubles. It seemed to him a refuge. Till the morrow he need think of nothing, and when he came forth again it would be to a new life. Henceforth Blore, his old house and his starved acres must bound his ambitions. With the money which John Audley had left him he would dig and drain and fence and build, and be by turns Talpa the mole and Castor the beaver. In time, as he began to see the fruit of his toil, he would win to some degree of content, and be glad, looking back, that he had made this trial of his powers, this essay towards a wider usefulness. So, in the end, he would come through to peace.
But at this point the current of his thoughts eddied against Toft, and he cursed the man anew. Why had he played these tricks? Why had he kept back this paper? Why had he produced it now and cast on others this unpleasant task?
CHAPTER XXXVIII
TOFT'S LITTLE SURPRISE
Toft had gone into Riddsley on the polling-day, but had returned before the result was known. "What the man was thinking of," his wife declared in wrath, "beats me! To be there hours and hours and come out no wiser than he went, and we waiting to hear-a babe would ha' had more sense! The young master that we've known all our lives, to be in or out, and we to know nothing till morning! It passes patience!"
Mary had her own feelings, but she concealed them. "He must know how it was going when he left?" she said.
"He doesn't know an identical thing!" Mrs. Toft replied. "And all he'd say was, 'There, there, what does it matter?' For all the world as if he spoke to a child! 'What else matters, man?' says I. 'What did you go for?' But there, Miss, he's beyond me these days! I believe he's going like the poor master, that had a bee in his bonnet, God forgive me for saying it! But what'd one not say, and we to wait till morning not knowing whether those plaguy Repealers are in or out!"
"But Mr. Basset is for Repeal," Mary said.
"What matter what he's for, if he's in?" Mrs. Toft replied loftily. "But to wait till morning to know-the man's no better than a numps!"
In the end, it was Mr. Colet who brought the news to the Gatehouse. He brought it to Etruria and so much of moment with it that before noon the election result had been set aside as a trifle, and Mary found herself holding a kind of court in the parlor-Mr. Colet plaintiff, Etruria defendant, Mrs. Toft counsel for the defence. Absence had but strengthened Mr. Colet's affection, and he came determined to come to an understanding with his mistress. He saw his way to making a small income by writing sermons for his more indolent brethren, and, in the meantime, Mr. Basset was giving him food and shelter; in return he was keeping Mr. Basset's accounts, and he was saving a little, a very little, money. But the body of his plea rested not on these counts, but on the political change. Repeal was in the air, repeal was in the country. Vote as Riddsley might, the Corn Laws were doomed. His opinions would no longer be banned; they would soon be the opinions of the majority, and with a little patience he might find a new curacy. When that happened he wished to marry Etruria.
"And why not?" Mary asked.
"I will never marry him to disgrace him," Etruria replied. She stood with bowed head, her hands clasped before her, her beautiful eyes lowered.
"But you love him?" Mary said, blushing at her own words.
"If I did not love him I might marry him," Etruria rejoined. "I am a servant, my father's a servant. I should be wronging him, and he would live to know it."
"To my way o' thinking, 'Truria's right," her mother said. "I never knew good come of such a marriage! He's poor, begging his reverence's pardon, but, poor or rich, his place is there." She pointed to the table. "And 'Truria's place is behind his chair."
"But you forget," Mary said, "that when she is Mr. Colet's wife her place will be by his side."
"And much good that'll do him with the parsons and such like, as are all gleg together! If he's in their black books for preaching too free-and when you come to tithes one parson is as like another as pigs o' the same litter-he'll not better himself by taking such as Etruria, take my word for it, Miss!"
"I will never do it," said Etruria.
"But," Mary protested, "Mr. Colet need not live here, and in another part people will not know what his wife has been. Etruria has good manners and some education, Mrs. Toft, and what she does not know she will learn. She will be judged by what she is. If there is a drawback, it is that such a marriage will divide her from you and from her father. But if you are prepared for that?"
Mrs. Toft rubbed her nose. "We'd be willing if that were all," she said. "She'd come to us sometimes, and there'd be no call for us to go to her."
Mr. Colet looked at Etruria. "If Etruria will come to me," he said, "I will be ashamed neither of her nor her parents."
"Bravely said!" Mary cried.
"But there's more to it than that," Mrs. Toft objected. "A deal more. Mr. Colet nor 'Truria can't live upon air. And it's my opinion that if his reverence gets a curacy, he'll lose it as soon as it's known who his wife is. And he can't dig and he can't beg, and where'll they be with the parsons all sticking to one another as close as wax?"
"He'll not need them!" replied a new speaker, and that speaker was Toft. He had entered silently, none of them had seen him, and the interruption took them aback. "He'll not need them," he repeated, "nor their curacies. He'll not need to dig nor beg. There's changes coming. There's changes coming for more than him, Miss. If Mr. Colet's willing to take my girl she'll not go to him empty-handed."
"I will take her as she stands," Mr. Colet said, his eyes shining. "She knows that."
"Well, you'll take her, sir, asking your pardon, with what I give her," Toft answered. "And that'll be five hundred pounds that I have in hand, and five hundred more that I look to get. Put 'em together and they'll buy what's all one with a living, and you'll be your own rector and may snap your fingers at 'em!"
They stared at the man, while Mrs. Toft, in an awestruck tone, cried, "You're out of your mind, Toft! Five hundred pounds! Whoever heard of the like of us with that much money?"
"Silence, woman," Toft said. "You know naught about it."
"But, Toft," Mary said, "are you in earnest? Do you understand what a large sum of money this is?"
"I have it," the man replied, his sallow cheek reddening. "I have it, and it's for Etruria."
"If this be true," Mr. Colet said slowly, "I don't know what to say, Toft."
"You've said all that is needful, sir," Toft replied. "It's long I've looked forward to this. She's yours, and she'll not come to you empty-handed, and you'll have no need to be ashamed of a wife that brings you a living. We'll not trouble except to see her at odd times in the year. It will be enough for her mother and me that she'll be a lady. She never was like us."
"Hear the man!" cried Mrs. Toft between admiration and protest. "You'd suppose she wasn't our child!"
But Mary went to him and gave him her hand. "That's very fine, Toft," she said. "I believe Etruria will be as happy as she is good, and Mr. Colet will have a wife of whom he may be proud. But Etruria will not be Etruria if she forgets her parents or your gift. Only you are sure that you are not deceiving yourself?"
"There's my bank-book to show for half of it," Toft replied. "The other half is as certain if I live three months!"
"Well, I declare!" Mrs. Toft cried. "If anybody'd told me yesterday that I'd have-'Truria, han't you got a word to say?"
Etruria's answer was to throw her arms round her father's neck. Yet it is doubtful if the moment was as much to her as to the ungainly, grim-visaged man, who looked so ill at ease in her embrace.
The contrast between them was such that Mary hastened to relieve the sufferer. "Etruria will have more to say to Mr. Colet," she said, "than to us. Suppose we leave them to talk it over."
She saw the Tofts out after another word or two, and followed them. "Well, well, well!" said Mrs. Toft, when they stood in the hall. "I'm sure I wish that everybody was as lucky this day-if all's true as Toft tells us."
"There's some in luck that don't know it!" the man said oracularly. And he slid away.
"If he said black was white, I'd believe him after this," his wife exclaimed, "asking your pardon, Miss, for the liberties we've taken! But you'd always a fancy for 'Truria. Anyway, if there's one will be pleased to hear the news, it's the Squire! If I'd some of those nine here that voted against him I'd made their ears burn!"
"But perhaps they thought that Mr. Basset was wrong," Mary said.
"What business had they o' thinking?" Mrs. Toft replied. "They had ought to vote; that's enough for them."
"Well, it does seem a pity," Mary allowed. And then, because she fancied that Mrs. Toft looked at her with meaning, she went upstairs and, putting on her hat and cloak, went out. The day was cold and bright, a sprinkling of snow lay on the ground, and a walk promised her an opportunity of thinking things over. Between the Butterflies, at the entrance to the flagged yard, she hung a moment in doubt, then she set off across the park in the direction of the Great House.
At first her thoughts were busy with Etruria's fortunes and the mysterious windfall which had enriched Toft. How had he come by it? How could he have come by it? And was the man really sane? But soon her mind took another turn. She had strayed this way on the morning after her arrival at the Gatehouse, and, remembering this, she looked across the gray, frost-bitten park, with its rows of leafless trees and its naked vistas. Her mind travelled back to that happy morning, and involuntarily she glanced behind her.
But to-day no one followed her, no one was thinking of her. Basset was gone, gone for good, and it was she who had sent him away. The May morning when he had hurried after her, the May sunshine, gay with the songs of larks and warm with the scents of spring were of the past. To-day she looked on a bare, cold landscape and her thoughts matched it. Yet she had no ground to complain, she told herself, no reason to be unhappy. Things might have been worse, ah, so much worse, she reflected. For a week ago she had been a captive, helpless, netted in her own folly! And now she was free.
Yes, she ought to be happy, being free; and, more than free, independent.
But she must go from here. And for many reasons the thought of going was painful to her. During the nine months which she had spent at the Gatehouse it had become a home. Its panelled rooms, its austerity, its stillness, the ancient woodlands about it were endeared to her by the memory of lamp-lit evenings and long summer days. The very plainness and solitude of the life, which had brought the Tofts and Etruria so near to her, had been a charm. And if her sympathy with her uncle had been imperfect, still he had been her uncle and he had been kind to her.
All this she must leave, and something else which she did not define; which was bound up with it, and which she had come to value when it was too late. She had taken brass for gold, and tin for silver! And now it was too late. So that it was no wonder that when she came to the hawthorn-tree where she had gathered her may that morning, a sob rose in her throat. She knew the tree! She had marked it often. But to-day there was no one to follow her, no one to call her back, no one to say that she should go no farther. Basset was gone, her uncle was dead.
Telling herself that, as she would never see it again, she would go as far as the Great House, she pushed on to the Yew Walk. Its recesses showed dark, the darker for the sprinkling of snow that lay in the park. But it was high noon, there was nothing to fear, and she pursued the path until she came to the crumbling monster that tradition said was a butterfly.
She was still viewing it with awe, thinking now of the duel which had taken place there, now of her uncle's attack, when a bird moved in the copse and she glanced nervously behind her, expecting she knew not what. The dark yews shut her in, and involuntarily she shivered. What if, in this solitary place-and then through the silence the sharp click of the Iron Gate reached her ear.
The stillness and the associations shook her nerves. She heard footsteps and, hardly knowing what she feared, she slipped among the trees and stood half-hidden. A moment passed and a man appeared. He came from the Great House. He crossed the opening slowly, his chin sunk upon his breast, his eyes bent on the path before him. A moment and he was gone, the way she had come, without seeing her.
It was Lord Audley, and foolish as the impulse to hide herself had been, she blessed it. Nothing pleasant, nothing good, could have come of their meeting; and into her thoughts of him had crept so much of distaste that she was glad that she had not met him in this lonely spot. She went on to the Iron Gate, and viewed for a few moments the desolate lawn and the long, gaunt front. Then, reflecting that if she turned back at once she might meet him, she took a side-path through the plantation, and emerged on the park at another point.
She was careful not to reach home until late in the day and then she learned that he had called, that he had waited, and that in the end Toft had seen him; and that he had departed in no good temper. "What Toft said to him," Mrs. Toft reported, "I know no more than the moon, but whatever it was his lordship marched off, Miss, as black as thunder."
After that nothing happened, and of the four at the Gatehouse Etruria alone was content. Mrs. Toft was uneasy about the future-what were they going to do? – and perplexed by Toft's mysterious fortune-how had he come by it? Toft himself was on the rack, looking for things to happen-and nothing happened. And Mary knew that she must take action. She could not stay at the Gatehouse, she could not remain as the guest either of Basset or of Lord Audley.
But she did not know where to go, and no suggestion reached her. At length she wrote, two days after Lord Audley's visit, to Quebec Street, to the house where she had stayed with her father many years before. It was the only address of the kind that she knew. But she received no answer, and her heart sank. The difficulty, small as it was, harassed her; she had no adviser, and ten times a day, to keep up her spirits, she had tell herself that she was independent, that she had eight thousand pounds, that the whole world was open to her, and that compared with the penniless girl who had lived on the upper floor of the Hôtel Lambert she was fortunate!
But in the Hôtel Lambert she had had work to do, and here she had none!
She thought of taking rooms in Riddsley, but Lord Audley was there and she shrank from meeting him. She would wait another week for the answer from London, and then, if none came, she must decide what she would do. But in her room that night the thought that Basset had abandoned her, that he no longer cared, no longer desired to come near her, broke her down. Of course, he was not to blame. He fancied her still engaged to her cousin and receiving from him all the advice, all the help, all the love, she needed. He fancied her happy and content, in no need of him. And, alas, there was the pinch. She had written to him to tell him of her engagement. She could not write to him to tell him that it was at an end!
And then, by the morrow's post, there came a long letter from Basset, and in the letter the whole astonishing, overwhelming story of the discovery of the document which John Audley had sought so long, and in the end so disastrously.
"No doubt," the writer added, "Lord Audley has made you acquainted with the facts, but I think it my duty as your uncle's executor to lay them before you in detail and also to advise you that in your interest and in view of the change in your position-and in Lord Audley's-which this imports, it is proper that you should have independent advice."
The blood ebbed and left Mary pale; it returned in a flood as with a bounding heart and shaking fingers she read and turned and re-read this letter. At length she grasped its meaning, and truly what astounding, what overwhelming news! What a shift of fortune! What a reversal of expectations! And how strangely, how singularly had all things shaped themselves to bring this about-were it true!
Unable to sit still, unable to control her excitement-and no wonder-she rose and paced the floor. If she were indeed Lady Audley! If this were indeed all hers! This dear house and the Great House! This which had seemed to its possessor so small, so meagre, so cramping an inheritance, but was to her fortune, an old name, a great place, a firm position in the world! A position that offered so many opportunities and so much power for good!
She walked the room with throbbing pulses, the letter now crushed in her hand, now smoothed out that she might assure herself of its meaning, might read again some word or some sentence, might resolve some doubt. Oh, it was a wonderful, it was a marvellous, it was an incredible turn of fortune! And presently her mind began to deal with and to sift the past. And, enlightened, she understood many of the things that had perplexed her, and read many of the riddles that had baffled her. And her cheeks burned, her heart was hot with indignation.