TOFT AT THE BUTTERFLIES
Basset’s view of Toft, if it did not hit, came very near the mark. For
many years the man had served his master with loyalty, the relations
between them being such as were common in days when servants stayed
long in a place and held themselves a part of the family. The master
had been easy, the man had had no ambitions beyond those of his
fellows, and no temptations except those which turned upon the
cellar-book.
But a year before Mary Audley’s arrival two things had happened. First
the curate had fallen in love with Etruria, and the fact had become
known to her father, to whom the girl was everything. Her refinement,
her beauty, her goodness were his secret delight. And the thought that
she might become a lady, that she might sit at the table at which he
served had taken hold of the austere man’s mind and become a passion.
He was ready to do anything and to suffer anything to bring this about.
Nor was he deceived when Etruria put the offer aside. She was nothing
if not transparent, and he was too fond of her not to see that her
happiness was bound up with the man who had stooped to woo her.
He was not blind to the difficulties or to the clergyman’s poverty. But
he saw that Colet, poor as he was, could raise his daughter in the
social scale; and he spent long hours in studying how the marriage
might be brought about. He hugged the matter to him, and brooded over
it, but he never discovered his thoughts or his hopes either to his
wife, or to Etruria.
Then one day the sale of a living happened to be discussed in his
presence, and as he went, solemn and silent, round the table he
listened. He learned that livings could be bought. He learned that the
one in question, with its house and garden and three hundred a year,
had fetched a thousand guineas, and from that day Toft’s aim was by
hook or crook to gain a thousand guineas. He revelled in impossible
dreams of buying a living, of giving it to Etruria, and of handing maid
and dowry to the fortunate man who was to make her a lady.
There have been more sordid and more selfish ambitions.
But a thousand guineas was a huge sum to the manservant. True, he had
saved a hundred and twenty pounds, and for his position in life he held
himself a rich man. But a thousand guineas? He turned the matter this
way and that, and sometimes he lost hope, and sometimes he pinned his
faith to a plan that twenty-four hours showed to be futile. All the
time his wife who lay beside him, his daughter who waited on him, his
master on whom he waited, were as far from seeing into his mind as if
they had lived in another planet.
Then the second thing happened. He surprised, wholly by chance, a
secret which gave him a hold over John Audley. Under other
circumstances he might have been above using the advantage; as it was,
he was tempted. He showed his hand, a sum of four hundred pounds was
named; for a week he fancied that he had performed half his task. Then
his master explained with a gentle smile that to know and to prove were
two things, and that whereas Toft had for a time been able to do both,
John Audley had now destroyed the evidence. The master had in fact been
too sly for the man, and Toft found himself pretty well where he had
been. In the end Audley thought it prudent to give him a hundred
pounds, which did but whet his desire and sharpen his wits.
For he had now tasted blood. He had made something by a secret. There
might be others to learn. He kept his eyes open, and soon he became
aware of his master’s disappearances. He tracked him, he played the
spy, he discovered that John Audley was searching for something in the
Great House. The words that the old man let fall, while half-conscious
in the Yew Walk, added to his knowledge, and at the same time scared
him. A moment later, and Lord Audley might have known as much as he
knew—and perhaps more!
For he did not as yet know all, and it was in the attempt to complete
his knowledge that Mary had caught him listening at the door. The blow
was a sharp one. He was still so far unspoiled, still so near the old
Toft that he could not bear that his wife and daughter should learn the
depth to which he had fallen. And John Audley? What would he do, if
Mary told him?
Toft could not guess. He knew that his master was barely sane, if he
was sane; but he knew also that he was utterly inhuman. John Audley
would put him and his family to the door without mercy if that seemed
to him the safer course. And that meant an end of all his plans for
Etruria, for Colet, for them all.
True, he might use such power as he had. But it was imperfect, and in
its use he must come to grips with one who had shown himself his better
both in courage and cunning. He had imbibed a strong fear of his
master, and he could not without a qualm contemplate a struggle with
him.
For a week after his detection by Mary, he went about his work in a
fever of anxiety. And nothing happened; it was that which tried him.
More than once he was on the point of throwing himself at her feet, of
telling her all he knew, of imploring her pardon. It was only her
averted eyes and cold tone that held him back.
Such a crisis makes a man either better or worse, and it made Toft
worse. At the end of three days a chance word put a fine point on his
fears and stung him to action. He might not know enough to face John
Audley, but he thought that he knew enough to sell his secret—in the
other camp. His lordship was young and probably malleable. He would go
to him and strike a bargain.
Arrived at this point the man did not hide from himself that he was
going to do a hateful thing. He thought of his wife and her wonder
could she know. He thought of Etruria’s mild eyes and her goodness. And
he shivered. But it was for her. It was for them. Within twenty-four
hours he was in Riddsley.
As he passed the Maypole, where Mr. Colet had his lodgings, he noticed
that the town wore an unusual aspect. Groups of men stood talking in
the doorway, or on the doorsteps. A passing horseman was shouting to a
man at a window. Nearer the middle of the town the stir was greater.
About the saddler’s door, about the steps leading up to the Audley
Arms, and round the yard of the inn, knots of men argued and
gesticulated. Toft asked the saddler what it was.
“Haven’t you heard?”
“No. What’s the news?”
“The General Election’s off!” The saddler proclaimed it with an
inflamed look. “Peel’s in again! And damn me, after this,” he
continued, “there’s nothing I won’t swallow! He come in in the farming
interest, and the hunting interest, and the racing interest, and the
gentlemanly interest, that I live by, and you too, Mr. Toft! And it was
bad enough when he threw it up! But to go in again and to take our
money and do the Radicals’ work!” The saddler spat on the brick
pavement. “Why, there was never such a thing heard of in the ’varsal
world! Never! If Tamworth don’t blush for him and his pigs turn pink,
I’m d—d, and that’s all.”
Toft had to ask half a dozen questions before he grasped the position.
Gradually he learned that after Peel had resigned the Whigs had tried
to form a government; that they had failed, and that now Peel was to
come in again, expressly to repeal the Corn Laws. The Corn Laws which
he had taken office to support, and to the maintenance of which his
party was pledged!
The thing was not much in Toft’s way, nor his interest in it great, but
as he passed along he caught odds and ends of conversation. “I don’t
believe a word of it!” cried an angry man. “The Radicals have invented
it!” “Like enough!” replied another. “Like enough! There’s naught they
wouldn’t do!” “Well, after all,” suggested a third in a milder tone,
“cheap bread is something.” “What? If you’ve got no money to buy it?
You’re a fool! I tell you it’ll be the ruin of Riddsley!” “You’re right
there, Joe!” answered the first speaker. “You’re right! There’ll be no
farmer for miles round’ll pay his way!”
At the door of Mr. Stubbs’s office three excited clients were clamoring
for entrance; an elderly clerk with a high bridge to his nose was
withstanding them. Before the Mechanics’ Institute the secretary, a
superior person of Manchester views, was talking pompously to a little
group. “We must take in the whole field,” Toft heard him say. “If
you’ll read Mr. Carlyle’s tract on——” Toft lost the rest. The Institute
readers belonged mainly to Hatton’s Works or Banfield’s, and the
secretary taught in an evening school. He was darkly suspected of being
a teetotaller, but it had never been proved against him.
Toft began to wonder if he had chosen his time well, but he was near
The Butterflies and he hardened his heart; to retreat now were to dub
himself coward. He told the maid that he came from the Gatehouse, and
that he was directed to deliver a letter into his lordship’s own hand,
and in a moment he found himself mounting the shallow carpeted stairs.
In comparison with the Gatehouse, the house was modern, elegant,
luxurious, the passages were warm.
When he was ushered in, his lordship, a dressing-gown cast over a chair
beside him as if he had just put on his coat, was writing near the
fireplace. After an interval that seemed long to Toft, who eyed his
heavy massiveness with a certain dismay, he laid down his pen, sat
back, and looked at the servant.
“From the Gatehouse?” he asked, after a leisurely survey.
“Yes, my lord,” Toft answered respectfully. “I was with Mr. Audley when
he was taken ill in the Yew Walk.”
“To be sure! I thought I knew your face. You’ve a letter for me?”
Toft hesitated. “I wished to see you, my lord,” he said. The thing was
not as easy as he had hoped it would be; the man was more formidable.
“On a matter of business.”
Audley raised his eyebrows. “Business?” he said. “Isn’t it Mr. Stubbs
you want to see?”
“No, my lord,” Toft answered. But the sweat broke out on his forehead.
What if his lordship took a high tone, ordered him out, and reported
the matter to his master? Too late it struck Toft that a gentleman
might take that line.
“Well, be quick,” Audley replied. Then in a different tone, “You don’t
come from Miss Audley?”
“No, my lord.”
“Then what is it?”
Toft turned his hat in his hands. “I have information”—it was with
difficulty he could control his voice—“which it is to your lordship’s
interest to have.”
There was a pregnant pause. “Oh!” the young man said at last. “And you
come—to sell it?”
Toft nodded, unable to speak. Yet he was getting on as well as could be
expected.
“Rather an unusual position, isn’t it?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“The information should be unusual?”
“It is, my lord.”
Lord Audley smiled. “Well,” he answered, “I’ll say this, my man. If you
are going to sell me a spavined horse, don’t! It will not be to your
advantage. What’s it all about?”
“Mr. Audley’s claim, my lord.”
Audley had expected this, yet he could not quite mask the effect which
the statement made upon him. The thing that he had foreseen and feared,
that had haunted him in the small hours and been as it were a
death’s-head at his feast, was taking shape. But he was quick to
recover himself, and “Oh!” said he. “That’s it, is it! Don’t you know
that that’s all over, my man?”
“I think not, my lord.”
The peer took up a paper-knife and toyed with it. “Well,” he said,
“what is it? Come, I don’t buy a pig in a poke.”
“Mr. Audley has found——”
“Found, eh?” raising his eyebrows.
Toft corrected himself. “He has in his power papers that upset your
lordship’s case. I can still enable you to keep those papers in your
hands.”
Audley threw down the paper-cutter. “They are certainly worthless,” he
said. His voice was contemptuous, but there was a hard look in his
eyes.
“Mr. Audley thinks otherwise.”
“But he has not seen them?”
“He knows what’s in them, my lord. He has been searching for them for
weeks.”
The young man weighed this, and Toft’s courage rose, and his
confidence. The trumps were in his hand, and though for a moment he had
shrunk before the other’s heavy jaw he was glad now that he had come;
more glad when the big man after a long pause asked quietly, “What do
you want?”
“Five hundred pounds, my lord.”
The other laughed, and Toft did not like the laugh. “Indeed? Five
hundred pounds? That’s a good deal of money!”
“The information is worth that, or it is worth nothing.”
“I quite agree!” the peer answered lightly. “You’re a wit, my man. But
that’s not saying you’ve a good case. However, I’ll put you to the
test. You know where the papers are?”
“I do, my lord.”
“Very good. There’s a piece of paper. Write on one side the precise
place where they lie. I will write on the other a promise to pay £500
if the papers are found in that place, and are of the value you assert.
That is a fair offer.”
Toft stood irresolute. He thought hard.
My lord pushed the paper across. “Come!” he said; “write! Or I’ll write
first, if that is your trouble.” With decision he seized a quill, held
it poised a moment, then he wrote four lines and signed them with a
flourish, added the date, and read them to himself. With a grim smile
he pushed the paper across to Toft. “There,” he said. “What more do you
want, my man, than that?”
Toft took the paper and read what was written on it, from the “In
consideration of,” that began the sentence, to the firm signature
“Audley of Beaudelays” that closed it. He did not speak.
“Come! You can’t want anything more than that!” my lord said. “You have
only to write, read me the secret, and keep the paper until it is
redeemed.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Then take the pen. Of course the place must be precise. I am not going
to pull down Beaudelays House to find a box of papers that I do not
believe is there!”
Toft’s face was gray, the sweat stood on his lip. “I did not say,” he
muttered, the paper rustling in his unsteady hand, “that they were in
Beaudelays House.”
“No?” Audley replied. “Perhaps not. And for the matter of that, it is
not a question of saying anything. It is a question of writing. You can
write, I suppose?”
Toft did not speak. He could not speak. He had supposed that the power
to put his lordship on the scent would be the same as pulling down the
fox. When he had said that the papers were in the house, that they were
behind a wall, that Mr. Audley knew where they were, he would have
earned—he thought—his money!
But he had not known the man with whom he had to deal. And challenged
to set down the place where the papers lay, he knew that he could not
do it. In the house? Behind a wall? He saw now that that would not do.
That would not satisfy the big smiling gentleman who sat opposite him,
amused at the dilemma in which he found himself.
He knew that he was cornered, and he lost his countenance and his
manners. He swore.
The young man laughed. “The biter bit,” he said. “Five hundred pounds
you said, didn’t you? I wonder whether I ought to send for the
constable? Or tell Mr. Audley? That would be wiser perhaps? What do you
think you deserve, my man?”
Toft stretched out a shaking arm towards the paper. But my lord was
before him. His huge hand fell on it. He tore it across and across, and
threw the pieces under the table.
“No,” he said, “that won’t do! You will write at a venture and if you
are right you will claim the money, and if you are wrong you will have
this paper to show that I bargained with you. But I never meant to
bargain with you, my good rascal. I knew you were a fraud. I knew it
from the beginning. And now I’ve only one thing to say. Either you will
tell me freely what you know, and in that case I shall say nothing. Or
I report you to your master. That’s my last word.”
Toft shook from head to foot. He had done a hateful thing, he had been
defeated, and exposure threatened him. As far as his master was
concerned he could face it. But his wife, his daughter? Who thought him
honest, loyal, who thought him a man! Who believed in him! How could
he, how would he face them, if this tale were told?
My lord saw the change in him, saw how he shrank, and, smiling, he
fancied that he had the man in his grasp, fancied that he would tell
what he knew, and tell it for nothing. And twice Toft opened his lips
to speak, and twice no words came. For at the last moment, in this
strait, what there was of good in him—and there was good—rose up, and
had the better; had the better, reinforced perhaps by his hatred of the
heavy smiling face that gloated upon him.
For at the last moment, “No, my lord,” he said desperately, “I’ll not
speak. I’m d—d if I do! You may do what you like.”
And before his lordship, taken by surprise, could interpose, the
servant had turned and made for the door. He was half-way down the
stairs before the other had risen from his seat. He had escaped. He was
clear for the time, and safe in the road he breathed more freely. But
he had gone a hundred yards on his way before he remarked that he was
in the open air, or bethought himself to put on his hat.