[Illustration]
THE GREAT HOUSE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF
THE NEW RECTOR
THE STORY OF FRANCIS CLUDDE
A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE
THE MAN IN BLACK
UNDER THE RED ROBE
MY LADY ROTHA
MEMOIRS OF A MINISTER OF FRANCE
THE RED COCKADE
SHREWSBURY
THE CASTLE INN
SOPHIA
COUNT HANNIBAL
IN KINGS’ BYWAYS
THE LONG NIGHT
THE ABBESS OF VLAYE
STARVECROW FARM
CHIPPINGE
LAID UP IN LAVENDER
THE WILD GEESE
THE GREAT HOUSE
BY
STANLEY J. WEYMAN
Author of “The Castle Inn,” “Chippinge,”
“A Gentleman of France,” etc., etc.
NEW YORK
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
FOURTH AVENUE AND 30th STREET
1919
Copyright, 1919
BY
STANLEY J. WEYMAN
Contents
CHAPTER I. The Hôtel Lambert—Upstairs.
CHAPTER II. The Hôtel Lambert—Downstairs.
CHAPTER III. The Lawyer Abroad.
CHAPTER IV. Homeward Bound.
CHAPTER V. The London Packet.
CHAPTER VI. Field and Forge.
CHAPTER VII. Mr. John Audley.
CHAPTER VIII. The Gatehouse.
CHAPTER IX. Old Things.
CHAPTER X. New Things.
CHAPTER XI. Tact and Temper.
CHAPTER XII. The Yew Walk.
CHAPTER XIII. Peter Pauper.
CHAPTER XIV. The Manchester Men.
CHAPTER XV. Strange Bedfellows.
CHAPTER XVI. The Great House at Beaudelays.
CHAPTER XVII. To the Rescue.
CHAPTER XVIII. Masks and Faces.
CHAPTER XIX. The Corn Law Crisis.
CHAPTER XX. Peter’s Return.
CHAPTER XXI. Toft at the Butterflies.
CHAPTER XXII. My Lord Speaks.
CHAPTER XXIII. Blore Under Weaver.
CHAPTER XXIV. An Agent of the Old School.
CHAPTER XXV. Mary is Lonely.
CHAPTER XXVI. Missing.
CHAPTER XXVII. A Footstep in the Hall.
CHAPTER XXVIII. The News from Riddsley.
CHAPTER XXIX. The Audley Bible.
CHAPTER XXX. A Friend in Need.
CHAPTER XXXI. Ben Bosham.
CHAPTER XXXII. Mary Makes a Discovery.
CHAPTER XXXIII. The Meeting at the Maypole.
CHAPTER XXXIV. By the Canal.
CHAPTER XXXV. My Lord Speaks Out.
CHAPTER XXXVI. The Riddsley Election.
CHAPTER XXXVII. A Turn of the Wheel.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. Toft’s Little Surprise.
CHAPTER XXXIX. The Deed of Renunciation.
CHAPTER XL. “Let Us Make Others Thankful.”
THE GREAT HOUSE
CHAPTER I
THE HÔTEL LAMBERT—UPSTAIRS
On an evening in March in the ’forties of last century a girl looked
down on the Seine from an attic window on the Ile St. Louis. The room
behind her—or beside her, for she sat on the window-ledge, with her
back against one side of the opening and her feet against the other—was
long, whitewashed from floor to ceiling, lighted by five gaunt windows,
and as cold to the eye as charity to the recipient. Along each side of
the chamber ran ten pallet beds. A black door broke the wall at one
end, and above the door hung a crucifix. A painting of a Station of the
Cross adorned the wall at the other end. Beyond this picture the room
had no ornament; it is almost true to say that beyond what has been
named it had no furniture. One bed—the bed beside the window at which
the girl sat—was screened by a thin curtain which did not reach the
floor. This was her bed.
But in early spring no window in Paris looked on a scene more cheerful
than this window; which as from an eyrie commanded a shining reach of
the Seine bordered by the lawns and foliage of the King’s Garden, and
closed by the graceful arches of the Bridge of Austerlitz. On the water
boats shot to and fro. The quays were gay with the red trousers of
soldiers and the coquettish caps of soubrettes, with students in
strange cloaks, and the twinkling wheels of yellow cabriolets. The
first swallows were hawking hither and thither above the water, and a
pleasant hum rose from the Boulevard Bourdon.
Yet the girl sighed. For it was her birthday, she was twenty this
twenty-fifth of March, and there was not a soul in the world to know
this and to wish her joy. A life of dependence, toned to the key of the
whitewashed room and the thin pallets, lay before her; and though she
had good reason to be thankful for the safety which dependence bought,
still she was only twenty, and springtime, viewed from prison windows,
beckons to its cousin, youth. She saw family groups walking the quays,
and father, mother, children, all, seen from a distance, were happy.
She saw lovers loitering in the garden or pacing to and fro, and
romance walked with every one of them; none came late, or fell to
words. She sighed more deeply; and on the sound the door opened.
“_Hola!_” cried a shrill voice, speaking in French, fluent, but oddly
accented. “Who is here? The Princess desires that the English
Mademoiselle will descend this evening.”
“Very good,” the girl in the window replied pleasantly. “At the same
hour, Joséphine?”
“Why not, Mademoiselle?” A trim maid, with a plain face and the
faultless figure of a Pole, came a few steps into the room. “But you
are alone?”
“The children are walking. I stayed at home.”
“To be alone? As if I did not understand that! To be alone—it is the
luxury of the rich.”
The girl nodded. “None but a Pole would have thought of that,” she
said.
“Ah, the crafty English Miss!” the maid retorted. “How she flatters!
Perhaps she needs a touch of the tongs to-night? Or the loan of a pair
of red-heeled shoes, worn no more than thrice by the Princess—and with
the black which is convenable for Mademoiselle, oh, so neat! Of the
_ancien régime_, absolutely!”
The other laughed. “The _ancien régime_, Joséphine—and this!” she
replied, with a gesture that embraced the room, the pallets, her own
bed. “A curled head—and this! You are truly a cabbage——”
“But Mademoiselle descends!”
“A cabbage of—foolishness!”
“Ah, well, if I descended, you would see,” the maid retorted. “I am but
the Princess’s second maid, and I know nothing! But if I descended it
would not be to this dormitory I should return! Nor to the tartines!
Nor to the daughters of Poland! Trust me for that—and I know but my
prayers. While Mademoiselle, she is an artist’s daughter.”
“There spoke the Pole again,” the girl struck in with a smile.
“The English Miss knows how to flatter,” Joséphine laughed. “That is
one for the touch of the tongs,” she continued, ticking them off on her
fingers. “And one for the red-heeled shoes. And—but no more! Let me
begone before I am bankrupt!” She turned about with a flirt of her
short petticoats, but paused and looked back, with her hand on the
door. “None the less, mark you well, Mademoiselle, from the whitewash
to the ceiling of Lebrun, from the dortoir of the Jeunes Filles to the
Gallery of Hercules, there are but twenty stairs, and easy, oh, so easy
to descend! If Mademoiselle instead of flattering Joséphine, the
Cracovienne, flattered some pretty gentleman—who knows? Not I! I know
but my prayers!” And with a light laugh the maid clapped to the door
and was gone.
The girl in the window had not throughout the parley changed her pose
or moved more than her head, and this was characteristic of her. For
even in her playfulness there was gravity, and a measure of stillness.
Now, left alone, she dropped her feet to the floor, turned, and knelt
on the sill with her brow pressed against the glass. The sun had set,
mists were rising from the river, the quays were gray and cold. Here
and there a lamp began to shine through the twilight. But the girl’s
thoughts were no longer on the scene beneath her eyes.
“There goes the third who has been good to me,” she pondered. “First
the Polish lodger who lived on the floor below, and saved me from that
woman. Then the Princess’s daughter. Now Joséphine. There are still
kind people in the world—God grant that I may not forget it! But how
much better to give than to take, to be strong than to be weak, to be
the mistress and not the puppet of fortune! How much better—and, were I
a man, how easy!”
But on that there came into her remembrance one to whom it had not been
easy, one who had signally failed to master fortune, or to grapple with
circumstances. “Poor father!” she whispered.