THE YEW WALK
Basset had been absent the greater part of the day, and returning at
sunset had learned that Miss Audley had not come back from Brown Heath.
The servant had hinted alarm—the Chase was lonely, the hour late; and
Basset had hurried off without more, not doubting that John Audley was
in the house.
Now he was sure that John Audley had been abroad at the time, and he
suspected that Toft had known it, and had kept it from him. He stood
for a moment in thought, then he crossed the court to Toft’s house.
Mrs. Toft was cooking something savory in a bonnet before the fire, and
the contrast between her warm cheerful kitchen and the stillness of the
house from which he came struck him painfully. He told her that her
daughter had received a blow on the head, and that Miss Audley needed
supper—she had better attend to them.
Mrs. Toft was a stout woman, set by a placid and even temper above
small surprises. She looked at the clock, a fork in her hand. “I can’t
hurry it, Mr. Basset,” she said. “You may be Sir Robert Peel himself,
but meat’s your master and will have its time. A knock on the head?”
she continued, with a faint stirring of anxiety. “You don’t say so?
Lor, Mr. Basset, who’d go to touch Etruria?”
“You’d better go and see.”
“But where’s Toft?”
Basset’s temper gave way at that. “God knows!” he said. “He ought to be
here—and he’s not!” He went out.
Mrs. Toft stared after him, and by and by she let down her skirt and
prepared to go into the house. “On the head?” she ruminated. “Well,
’Truria’s a tidy lot of hair! And I will say this, if there’s few
points a man gives a woman, hair’s one of them.”
Meanwhile Basset had struck across the court and taken in the darkness
the track which led in the direction of the Great House. The breeze,
light but of an autumn coldness, swept the upland, whispering through
the dying fern, and rustling in the clumps of trees by which he steered
his course. He listened more than once, hoping that he might hear
approaching footsteps, but he heard none, and presently he came to the
yew-trees that masked the entrance to the gardens.
The trees formed a wall of blackness exceeding that of the darkest
night, and Basset hesitated before he plunged into it. The growth of a
century had long trespassed on the walk, a hundred and fifty yards
long, which led through the yew-wood, and had been in its time a
stately avenue trimmed to the neatness of a bowling green. Now it was
little better than a tunnel, dark even at noon, and at night bristling
with a hundred perils. Basset peered into the blackness, listened,
hesitated. But he was honestly anxious on John Audley’s account, and
contenting himself with exclaiming that the man was mad, he began to
grope his way along the path.
It was no pleasant task. If he swerved from his course he stumbled over
roots, branches swept his cheek, jagged points threatened his eyes, and
more than once he found himself in the hedge. Half-way through the wood
he came to a circular clearing, some twenty yards across; and here a
glimmer of light enabled him to avoid the crumbling stone Butterfly
that crouched on its mouldering base in the centre of the clearing—much
as a spider crouches in its web. It seemed in that dim light to be the
demon of this underworld, a monster, a thing of evil.
The same gleam, however, disclosed the opposite opening, and for
another seventy yards he groped his way onward, longing to be clear of
the stifling air, and the brooding fancies that dwelt in it, longing to
plant his feet on something more solid than this carpet of rotting yew.
At last he came to the tall, strait gate, wrought of old iron, that
admitted to the pleasance. It was ajar. He passed through it, and with
relief he felt the hard walk under his feet, the fresh air on his face.
He crossed the walk, and stepping on to the neglected lawn, he halted.
The Great House loomed before him, a hundred yards away. The moon had
not risen, but the brightness which goes before its rising lightened
the sky behind the monstrous building. It outlined the roof but left
the bulk in gloom. No light showed in any part, and it was only the
watcher’s memory that pictured the quaint casements of the north wing,
or filled in the bald rows of unglazed windows, which made of the new
portion a death-mask. In that north wing just eighty years before, in a
room hung with old Cordovan leather, the fatal house-warming had been
held. The duel had been fought at sunrise within a pace or two of the
moss-grown Butterfly that Basset had passed; and through the gate of
ironwork, wood-smelted and wrought with the arms of Audley, which had
opened at his touch, they had carried the dead heir back to his father.
Tradition had it that the servant who bore in the old lord’s morning
draught of cool ale had borne also the tragic news to his bedside.
Basset remembered that the hinges of the gate, seldom as it was used,
had not creaked, and he felt sure that he was on the right track. He
scanned the dark house, and tried to sift from the soughing of the wind
any sound that might inform him.
Presently he moved forward and scrutinized with care the north wing,
which abutted on the yew-wood. There lay between the two only a strip
of formal garden, once set with rows of birds and beasts cut in yew.
Time had turned these to monsters, huge, amorphous, menacing, amidst
which rank grass rioted and elder pushed. Even in daylight it seemed as
if the ancient trees stretched out arms to embrace and strangle the
deserted house.
But the north wing remained as dark as the bulk of the house, and
Basset uttered a sigh of relief. Ill-humor began to take the place of
misgiving. He called himself a fool for his pains and anticipated with
distaste a return through the yew-walk. However, the sooner he
undertook the passage the sooner it would be over, and he was turning
on his heel when somewhere between him and the old wing a stick
snapped.
Under a foot, he fancied; and he waited. In two or three minutes the
moon would rise.
Again he caught a faint sound. It resembled the stealthy tread of some
one approaching from the north wing, and Basset, peering that way, was
striving to probe the darkness, when a gleam of light shot across his
eyes. He turned and saw in the main building a bright spark. It
vanished. He waited to see it again, and while he waited a second stick
snapped. This time the sound was behind him, and near the iron gate.
He had been outflanked, and he had now to choose which he would stalk,
the footstep or the light. He chose the latter, the rather as while he
stood with his eyes fixed on the house the upper edge of a rising moon
peeped above the roof.
He stepped back to the gate, and in the shadow of the trees he waited.
Two or three minutes passed. The moon rose clear of the roof, outlining
the stately chimneys and gables and flooding with cold light the lower
part of the lawn. With the rising of the moon the air grew more chilly.
He shivered.
At length a dull sound reached him—the sound of a closing door or a
shutter cast back. A minute later he heard the footsteps of some one
moving along the walk towards him. The man trod with care, but once he
stumbled.
Basset advanced. “Is that you, sir?” he asked.
“D—n!” John Audley replied out of the darkness. He halted, breathing
quickly.
“I say d—n, too!” Basset replied. As a rule he was patient with the old
man, but to-night his temper failed him.
The other came on. “Why did you follow me?” he asked. “What is the use?
What is the use? If you are willing to help me, good! But if not, why
do you follow me?”
“To see that you don’t come to harm,” Basset retorted. “As you
certainly will one of these nights if you come here alone.”
“Well, I haven’t come to harm to-night! On the contrary—— But there,
there, man, let us get back.”
“The sooner the better,” Basset replied. “I nearly put out an eye as I
came.”
John Audley laughed. “Did you come through the yews in the dark?” he
asked.
“Didn’t you?”
“No, I brought a lantern.” He removed as he spoke the cap of a small
bull’s-eye lantern and threw its light on the path. “Who’s the fool
now?”
“Let us get home,” Basset snapped.
John Audley locked the iron gate behind them and they started. The
light removed their worst difficulties and they reached the open park
without mishap. But long before they gained the house the elder man’s
strength failed, and he was glad to lean on Basset’s arm. On that a
sense of weakness on the one side and of pity on the other closed their
differences. “After all,” Audley said wearily, “I don’t know what I
should have done if you had not come.”
“You’d have stayed there!”
“And that would have been—Heavens, what a pity that would have been!”
Audley paused and struck his stick on the ground. “I must take care of
myself, I must take care of myself! You don’t know, Basset, what I——”
“And I don’t want to know—here!” Basset replied. “When you are safe at
home, you may tell me what you like.”
In the courtyard they came on Toft, who was looking out for them with a
lantern. “Thank God, you’re safe, sir,” he said. “I was growing alarmed
about you.”
“Where were you,” Basset asked sharply, “when I came in?” John Audley
was too tired to speak.
“I had stepped out at the front to look for the master,” Toft replied.
“I fancied that he had gone out that way.”
Basset did not believe him, but he could not refute the story. “Well,
get the brandy,” he said, “and bring it to the library. Mr. Audley has
been out too long and is tired.”
They went into the library and Toft pulled off his master’s boots and
brought his slippers and the spirit-tray. That done, he lingered, and
Basset thought that he was trying to divine from the old man’s looks
whether the journey had been fruitful.
In the end, however, the man had to go, and Audley leant forward to
speak.
“Wait!” Basset muttered. “He is coming back.”
“How do you know?”
Basset raised his hand. The door opened. Toft came in. “I forgot to
take your boots, sir,” he said.
“Well, take them now,” his master replied peevishly. When the man had
again withdrawn, “How did you know?” he asked, frowning at the fire.
“I saw him go to take your boots—and leave them.”
Audley was silent for a time, then “Well,” he said, “he has been with
me many years and I think he is faithful.”
“To his own interests. He dogged you to-night.”
“So did you!”
“Yes, but I did not hide! And he did, and hid from me, too, and lied
about it. How long he had been watching you, I cannot say, but if you
think that you can break through all your habits, sir, and be missing
for two hours at night and a man as shrewd as Toft suspect nothing, you
are mistaken. Of course he wonders. The next time he thinks it over.
The third time he follows you. Presently whatever you know he will
know.”
“Confound him!” Audley turned to the table and jerked some brandy into
a glass. Then, “You haven’t asked yet,” he said, “what I’ve done.”
“If I am to choose,” Basset replied, “I would rather not know. You know
my views.”
“I know that you didn’t think I should do it? Well, I’ve done it!”
“Do you mean that—you’ve found the evidence?”
“Is it likely?” the other replied petulantly. “No, but I’ve been in the
Muniment Room. It is fifty years since I heard my father describe its
position, but I could have gone to it blindfold! I was a boy then, and
the name—he was telling a story of the old lord—took my fancy. I
listened. In time the thing faded, but one day when I was at the
lawyer’s and some one mentioned the Muniment Room, the story came back
to me so clearly, that I could almost repeat my father’s words.”
“And you’ve been in the room?”
“I’ve been in it. Why not? A door two inches thick and studded with
iron, and a lock that one out of any dozen big keys would open!” He
rubbed his calves in his satisfaction. “In twenty minutes I was
inside.”
“And it was empty?”
“It was empty,” the other agreed, with a cunning smile. “As bare as a
board. A little whitewashed room, just as my father described it!”
“They had removed the papers?”
“To the bank, or to London, or to Stubbs’s. The place was as clean as a
platter! Not a length of green tape or an end of parchment was left!”
“Then what have you gained?” Basset asked.
Audley looked slyly at him, his head on one side. “Ay, what?” he said.
“But I’ll tell you my father’s story. At one time the part of the room
under the stairs was crumbling and the rats got in. The steward told
the old lord and he went to see it. ‘Brick it up!’ he said. The steward
objected that there would not be room—the place was full; there were
boxes everywhere, some under the stairs. The old lord tapped one of the
boxes with his gold-headed cane. ‘What’s in these!’ he asked. ‘Old
papers,’ the steward explained. ‘Of no use, my lord, but curious; old
leases for lives, and terriers.’ ‘Terriers?’ cried the old lord. ‘Then,
by G—d, brick ’em up with the rats!’ And that day at dinner he told my
father the story and chuckled over it.”
“And that’s what you’ve had in your mind all this time?” Basset said.
“Do you think it was done?”
“The old lord bricked up many a pipe of port, and I think that he would
do it for the jest’s sake. And”— John Audley turned and looked in his
companion’s face—“the part under the stairs _is bricked up_, and the
room is as square and as flush as the family vault—and very like it.
The old lord,” he added sardonically, “knows what it is to be bricked
up himself now.”
“And still there may be nothing there to help you.”
Audley rose from his chair. “Don’t say it!” he cried passionately. “Or
I’ll say that there’s no right in the world, no law, no providence, no
God! Don’t dare to say it!” he continued, his cheeks trembling with
excitement. “If I believed that I should go mad! But it is there! It is
there! Do you think that it was for naught I heard that story? That it
was for naught I remembered it, for naught I’ve carried the story in my
mind all these years? No, they are there, the papers that will give me
mine and give it to Mary after me! They are there! And you must help me
to get them.”
“I cannot do it, sir,” Basset replied firmly. “I don’t think that you
understand what you ask. To break into Audley’s house like any common
burglar, to dig down his wall, to steal his deeds——”
John Audley shook his fist in the young man’s face. “His house!” he
shrieked. “His wall! His deeds! No, fool, but my house, my wall, my
deeds! my deeds! If the papers are there all’s mine! All! And I am but
taking my own! Can’t you see that? Can’t you see it? Have I no right to
take what is my own?”
“But if the papers are not there?” Basset replied gravely. “No, sir, if
you will take my advice you will tell your story, apply to the court,
and let the court examine the documents. That’s the straightforward
course.”
John Audley flung out his arms. “Man!” he cried. “Don’t you know that
as long as he is in possession he can sit on his deeds, and no power on
earth can force him to show them?”
Basset drew in his breath. “If that is so,” he said, “it is hard. Very
hard! But to go by night and break into his house—sticks in my gizzard,
sir. I’m sorry, but that is the way I look at it. The man’s here too. I
saw him this evening. The fancy might have taken him to visit the
house, and he might have found you there?”
Audley’s color faded, he seemed to shrink into himself. “Where did you
see him?” he faltered.
Basset told the story. “I don’t suppose that the girls were really in
danger,” he continued, “but they thought so, and Audley came to the
rescue and brought them as far as the park gap.”
The other took out his silk handkerchief and wiped his brow. “As near
as that,” he muttered.
“Ay, and if he had found you at the house, he might have guessed your
purpose.”
John Audley held out a hand trembling with passion. “I would have
killed him!” he cried. “I would have killed him—before he should have
had what is there!”
“Exactly,” Basset replied. “And that is why I will have nothing to do
with the matter! It’s too risky, sir. If you take my advice you will
give it up.”
Audley did not answer. He sat awhile, his shoulders bowed, his eyes
fixed on the hearth, while the other wondered for the hundredth time if
he were sane. At length, “What is he doing here?” the old man asked in
a lifeless tone. The passion had died out of him.
“Shooting, I suppose. But there was some talk in Riddsley of his coming
down to stir up old Mottisfont.”
“What about?”
“Against the corn-law repeal, I suppose.”
Audley nodded. But after a while, “That’s a pretext,” he said. “And so
is the shooting. He has followed the girl.”
Basset started. “Followed Mary!” he exclaimed.
“What else? I have looked for it from the first. I’ve pressed you to
come to an understanding with her for that reason. Why the devil can’t
you? If you leave it much longer you’ll be too late! Too late! And, by
G—d, I’ll never forgive you!” with a fresh spirt of passion. “Never!
Never, man!”
“I’ve not said that I meant to do it.”
“You’ve not said!” Audley replied contemptuously. “Do you think that I
don’t know that she’s all the world to you? Do you think that I’ve no
eyes? Do you think that when you sit there watching her from behind
your book by the hour together, I have not my sight? Man, I’m not a
fool! And I tell you that if you’re not to lose her you must speak! You
must speak! Stand by another month, wait a little longer, and Philip
Audley will put in his oar, and I’ll not give that for your chances!”
He snapped his fingers.
“Why should he put in his oar?” Basset asked sullenly. His face had
turned a dull red.
John Audley shrugged his shoulders. “Do you think that she is without
attractions?”
“But Audley lives in another world.”
“The more likely to have attractions for her!”
“But surely he’ll look for—for something more,” Basset stammered.
“For a rich wife? For an alliance, as the saying is? And sleep ill of
nights? And have bad dreams? No, he is no fool, if you are. He sees
that if he marries the girl he makes himself safe. He makes himself
safe! After me, it lies between them.”
“I take it that he does think himself safe.”
“Not he!” Audley replied. He was stooping over the ashes, warming his
hands, but at that he jumped up. “Not he! he knows better than you! And
fears! And sleeps ill of nights, d—n him! And dreams! But there, I must
not excite myself. I must not excite myself. Only, if he once begins,
he’ll be no laggard in love as you are! He’ll not sit puling and
peeping and looking at the back of her head by the hour together! He’ll
be up and at her—I know what that big jowl means! And she’ll be in his
arms in half the time that you’ve taken to count her eyelashes!” He
turned in a fresh fit of fury and seized his candle. “In his arms, I
tell you, fool, while you are counting her eyelashes. Well, lose her,
lose her, and I never want to see you again, or her! Never! I’ll curse
you both!”
He stumbled to the door and went out, a queer, gibbering, shaking
figure; and Basset had no doubt at such moments that he was mad. But on
this occasion he was afraid—he was very much afraid, as he sat
pondering in his chair, that there was method in his madness!