FIELD AND FORGE
The window of the clumsy carriage was narrow, but Mary gazed through it
as if she could never see enough of the flying landscape, the fields,
the woods, the ivy-clad homes and red-roofed towns that passed in
procession before her. The emotions of those who journeyed for the
first time on a railway at a speed four times as great as that of the
swiftest High-flier that ever devoured the road are forgotten by this
generation. But they were vivid. The thing was a miracle. And though by
this time men had ceased to believe that he who passed through the air
at sixty miles an hour must of necessity cease to breathe, the novice
still felt that he could never tire of the panorama so swiftly unrolled
before him.
And it was not only wonder, it was admiration that held Mary chained to
the window. Her infancy had been spent in a drab London street, her
early youth in the heart of a Paris which was still gloomy and
mediæval. Some beautiful things she had seen on fête days, the bend of
the river at Meudon or St. Germain, and once the Forest of
Fontainebleau; on Sundays the Bois. But the smiling English meadows,
the gray towers of village churches, the parks and lawns of
manor-houses, the canals with their lines of painted barges, and here
and there a gay packet boat—she drank in the beauty of these, and more
than once her eyes grew dim. For a time Basset, seated in the opposite
corner, did not exist for her; while he, behind the _Morning
Chronicle_, made his observations and took note of her at his leisure.
The longer he looked the more he marvelled.
He asked himself with amusement what John Audley would think of her
when he, too, should see her. He anticipated the old man’s surprise on
finding her so remote from their preconceived ideas of her. He wondered
what she would think of John Audley.
And while he pondered, and now scanned his paper without reading it,
and now stole another glance at her, he steeled himself against her.
She might not have been to blame, it might not have been her fault;
but, between them, the two on the boat had put him in his place and he
could not forget it. He had cut a poor figure, and he resented it. He
foresaw that in the future she would be dependent on him for society,
and he would be a fool if he then forgot the lesson he had learned. She
had a good face, but probably her up-bringing had been anything but
good. Probably it had taught her to make the most of the moment and of
the man of the moment, and he would be foolish if he let her amuse
herself with him. He had seen in what light she viewed him when other
game was afoot, and he would deserve the worst if he did not remember
this.
Presently an embankment cut off the view, and she withdrew her eyes
from the window. In her turn she took the measure of her companion. It
seemed to her that his face was too thoughtful for his years, and that
his figure was insignificant. The eye which had accustomed itself to
Lord Audley’s port and air found Basset slight and almost mean. She
smiled as she recalled the skill with which my lord had set him aside
and made use of him.
Still, he was a part of the life to which she was hastening, and
curiosity stirred in her. He was in possession, he was in close
relations with her uncle, he knew many things which she was anxious to
know. Much of her comfort might depend on him. Presently she asked him
what her uncle was like.
“You will see for yourself in a few hours,” he replied, his tone cold
and almost ungracious. “Did not Lord Audley describe him?”
“No. And you seem,” with a faint smile, “to be equally on your guard,
Mr. Basset.”
“Not at all,” he retorted. “But I think it better to leave you to judge
for yourself. I have lived too near to Mr. Audley to—to criticise him.”
She colored.
“Let me give you one hint, however,” he continued in the same dry tone;
“you will be wise not to mention Lord Audley to him. They are not on
good terms.”
“I am sorry.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “It cannot be said to be unnatural, after
what has happened.”
She considered this. “What has happened?” she asked after a pause.
“Well, the claim to the peerage, if nothing else——”
“What claim?” she asked. “Whose claim? What peerage? I am quite in the
dark.”
He stared. He did not believe her. “Your uncle’s claim,” he said
curtly. Then as she still looked a question, “You must know,” he
continued, “that your uncle claimed the title which Lord Audley bears,
and the property which goes with it. And that the decision was only
given against him three months ago.”
“I know nothing of it,” she said. “I never heard of the claim.”
“Really?” he replied. He hardly deigned to veil his incredulity. “Yet
if your uncle had succeeded you were the next heir.”
“I?”
“Yes, you.”
Then her face shook his unbelief. She turned slowly and painfully red.
“Is it possible?” she said. “You are not playing with me?”
“Certainly I am not. Do you mean that Lord Audley never told you that?
Never told you that you were interested?”
“Never! He only told me that he was not on good terms with my uncle,
and that for that reason he would leave me to learn the rest at the
Gatehouse.”
“Well, that was right,” Basset answered. “It is as well, since you have
to live with Mr. Audley, that you should not be prejudiced against
him.”
“No doubt,” she said dryly. “But I do not understand why he did not
answer my letters.”
“Did you write to him?”
“Twice.” She was going to explain the circumstances, but she refrained.
Why appeal to the sympathies of one who seemed so cold, so distant, so
indifferent?
“He cannot have had the letters,” Basset decided after a pause.
“Then how did he come to write to me at last?”
“Lord Audley sent your address to him.”
“Ah!” she said. “I supposed so.” With an air of finality she turned to
the window, and for some time she was silent. Her mind had much upon
which to work.
She was silent for so long that before more was said they were running
through the outskirts of Birmingham, and Mary awoke with a shock to
another and sadder side of England. In place of parks and homesteads
she saw the England of the workers—workers at that time exploited to
the utmost in pursuance of a theory of economy that heeded only the
wealth of nations, and placed on that wealth the narrowest meaning.
They passed across squalid streets, built in haste to meet the needs of
new factories, under tall chimneys the smoke of which darkened the sky
without hindrance, by vile courts, airless and almost sunless. They
looked down on sallow children whose only playground was the street and
whose only school-bell was the whistle that summoned them at dawn to
premature toil. Haggard women sat on doorsteps with puling babes in
their arms. Lines of men, whose pallor peered through the grime,
propped the walls, or gazed with apathy at the train. For a few minutes
Mary forgot not only her own hopes and fears, but the aloofness and
even the presence of her companion. When they came to a standstill in
the station, where they had to change on to the Grand Junction Railway,
Basset had to speak twice before she understood that he wished her to
leave the carriage.
“What a dreadful place!” she exclaimed.
“Well, it is not beautiful,” Basset admitted. “One does not look for
beauty in Birmingham and the Black Country.”
He got her some tea, and marshalled her carefully to the upper line.
But his answer had jarred upon her, and when they were again seated,
Mary kept her thoughts to herself. Beyond Birmingham their route
skirted towns rather than passed through them, but she saw enough to
deepen the impression which the lanes and alleys of that place had made
upon her. The sun had set and the cold evening light revealed in all
their meanness the rows of naked cottages, the heaps of slag and
cinders, the starveling horses that stood with hanging heads on the
dreary lands. As darkness fell, fires shone out here and there, and
threw into Dantesque relief the dark forms of half-naked men toiling
with fury to feed the flames. The change which an hour had made in all
she saw seemed appalling to the girl; it filled her with awe and
sadness. Here, so near the paradise of the country and the plough, was
the Inferno of the town, the forge, the pit! Here, in place of the
thatched cottage and the ruddy faces, were squalor and sunken cheeks
and misery and dearth.
She thought of the question which Lord Audley had raised twenty-four
hours before, and which he had told her was racking the minds of
men—should food be taxed? And she fancied that there was, there could
be, but one answer. These toiling masses, these slaves of the hammer
and the pick, must be fed, and, surely, so fed that a margin, however
small, however meagre, might be saved out of which to better their
sordid lot.
“We call this the Black Country,” Basset explained, feeling the silence
irksome. After all, she was in his charge, in a way she was his guest.
He ought to amuse her.
“It is well named,” she answered. “Is there anything in England worse
than this?”
“Well, round Hales Owen and Dudley,” he rejoined, “it may be worse. And
at Cradley Heath it may be rougher. More women and children are
employed in the pits; and where women make chains—well, it’s pretty
bad.”
She had spoken dryly to hide her feelings. He replied in a tone as
matter-of-fact, through lack of feeling. For this he was not so much to
blame as she fancied, for that which horrified her was to him an
everyday matter, one of the facts of life with which he had been
familiar from boyhood. But she did not understand this. She judged him
and condemned him. She did not speak again.
By and by, “We shall be at Penkridge in twenty minutes,” he said.
“After that a nine-miles drive will take us to the Gatehouse, and your
journey will be over. But I fear that you will find the life quiet
after Paris.”
“I was very quiet in Paris.”
“But you were in a large house.”
“I was at the Princess Czartoriski’s.”
“Of course. I suppose it was there that you met Lord Audley?”
“Yes.”
“Well, after that kind of life, I am afraid that the Gatehouse will
have few charms for you. It is very remote, very lonely.”
She cut him short with impatience, the color rising to her face. “I
thought you understood,” she said, “that I was in the Princess’s house
as a governess? It was my business to take care of a number of
children, to eat with them, to sleep with them, to see that they washed
their hands and kept their hair clean. That was my position, Mr.
Basset. I do not wish it to be misunderstood.”
“But if that were so,” he stammered, “how did you——”
“Meet Lord Audley,” she replied. “Very simply. Once or twice the
Princess ordered me to descend to the salon to interpret. On one of
these occasions Lord Audley saw me and learned—who I was.”
“Indeed,” he said. “I see.” Perhaps he had had it in his mind to test
her and the truth of Audley’s letter, which nothing in her or in my
lord’s conduct seemed to confirm. He did not know if this had been in
his mind, but in any case the result silenced him. She was either very
honest or very clever. Many girls, he knew, would have slurred over the
facts, and not a few would have boasted of the Princess’s friendship
and the Princess’s society, and the Princess’s hôtel, and brought up
her name a dozen times a day.
She is very clever, he thought, or she is—good. But for the moment he
steeled himself against the latter opinion.
No other travellers alighted at Penkridge, and he went away to claim
the baggage, while she waited, cold and depressed, on the little
platform which, lit by a single oil lamp, looked down on a dim
churchyard. Dusk was passing into night, and the wind, sweeping across
the flat, whipped her skirts and chilled her blood. Her courage sank. A
light or two betrayed the nearness of the town, but in every other
direction dull lines of willows or pale stretches of water ran into the
night.
Five minutes before she had resented Basset’s company, now she was glad
to see him return. He led the way to the road in silence. “The carriage
is late,” he muttered, but even as he spoke the quick tramp of a pair
of horses pushed to speed broke on them, lights appeared, a moment
later a fly pulled up beside them and turned. “You are late,” Basset
said.
“There!” the man replied. “Minutes might be guineas since trains came
in, dang ’em! Give me the days when five minutes made neither man nor
mouse, and gentry kept their own time.”
“Well, let us get off now.”
“I ask no better, Squire. Please yourself and you’ll please me.”
When they were shut in, Basset laughed. “Stafford manners!” he said.
“You’ll become used to them!”
“Is this my uncle’s carriage?” she asked.
“No,” he replied, smiling in the darkness. “He does not keep one.”
She said no more. Though she could not see him, her shoulder touched
his, and his nearness and the darkness in which they sat troubled her,
though she was not timid. They rode thus for a minute or two, then
trundled through a narrow street, dimly lit by shop windows; again they
were in the dark and the country. Presently the pace dropped to a walk
as they began to ascend.
She fancied, peering out on her side, that they were winding up through
woods. Branches swept the sides of the carriage. They jolted into ruts
and jolted out of them. By and by they were clear of the trees and the
road seemed to be better. The moon, newly risen, showed her a dreary
upland, bare and endless, here dotted with the dark stumps of trees,
there of a deeper black as if fire had swept over it and scarred it.
They met no one, saw no sign of habitation. To the girl, accustomed all
her life to streets and towns, the place seemed infinitely desolate—a
place of solitude and witches and terror and midnight murder.
“What is this?” she asked, shivering.
“This is the Great Chase,” he said. “Riddsley, on the farther side, is
our nearest town, but since the railway was opened we use Penkridge
Station.”
His practical tone steadied her, but she was tired, and the loneliness
which she had felt while she waited on the bleak platform weighed
heavily on her. To what was she going? How would her uncle receive her?
This dreary landscape, the gaunt signpost that looked like a gibbet and
might have been one, the skeleton trees that raised bare arms to
heaven, the scream of a dying rabbit, all added to the depression of
the moment. She was glad when at last the carriage stopped at a gate.
Basset alighted and opened the gate. He stepped in again, they went on.
There were now shadowy trees about them, sparsely set. They jolted
unevenly over turf.
“Are we there?” she asked, a tremor in her voice.
“Very nearly,” he said. “Another mile and we shall be there. This is
Beaudelays Park.”
She called pride to her aid, and he did not guess—for all day he had
marked her self-possession—that she was trembling. Vainly she told
herself that she was foolish, that nothing could happen to her, nothing
that mattered. What, after all, was a cold reception, what was her
uncle’s frown beside the poverty and the hazards from which she had
escaped? Vainly she reassured herself; she could not still the rapid
beating of her heart.
He might have said a word to cheer her. But he did not know that she
was suffering, and he said no word. She came near to hating him for his
stolidity and his silence. He was inhuman! A block!
She peered through the misty glass, striving to see what was before
them. But she could make out no more than the dark limbs of trees, and
now and then a trunk, which shone as the light of the lamp slipped over
it, and as quickly vanished. Suddenly they shot from turf to hard road,
passed through an open gateway, for an instant the lamp on her side
showed a grotesque pillar—they wheeled, they stopped. Within a few feet
of her a door stood open, and in the doorway a girl held a lantern
aloft in one hand, and with the other screened her eyes from the light.