BLORE UNDER WEAVER
Gratitude and liking, and the worship of strength which is as natural
in a woman as the worship of beauty in a man, form no bad imitation of
love, and often pass into love as imperceptibly as the brook becomes a
river. The morning light brought Mary no repentance. Misgivings she
had, as what lover has not, were the truth told. Was her love as
perfect as Etruria’s, as unselfish, as absorbing? She doubted. But in
all honesty she hoped that it might become so; and when she dwelt on
the man who had done so much for her, and thought so well for her, who
had so much to offer and made so little of the offering, her heart
swelled with gratitude, and if she did not love she fancied that she
did.
So much was changed for her! She had wondered more than once what would
happen to her, if her uncle died. That fear was put from her. Toft—she
had been vexed with Toft. How small a matter that seemed now! And Peter
Basset? He had been kind to her, and a pang did pierce her heart on his
account. But he had recovered very quickly, she reflected. He had shown
himself cold enough and distant enough at his last visit! And then she
smiled as she thought how differently her new lover had assailed her,
with what force, what arrogance, what insistence—and yet with a force
and arrogance and insistence to which it was pleasant to yield.
She did not with all this forget that she would be Lady Audley, she,
whose past had been so precarious, whose prospects had been so dark,
whose fate it might have been to travel through life an obscure
teacher! She had not been woman if she had not thought of this; nor if
she had failed, when she thought of it, to breathe a prayer for the
gallant lover who had found her and saved her, and had held it enough
that she was an Audley. He might have chosen far and wide. He had
chosen her.
No wonder that Mrs. Toft saw a change in her. “Law, Miss,” she
remarked, when she came in to remove the breakfast. “One would think a
ten-mile walk was the making of you! It’s put a color into your cheeks
that would shame a June rose! And to be sure,” with a glance at the
young lady’s plate, “not much eaten either!”
“I am not hungry, Mrs. Toft,” Mary said meekly. “I drove back to the
foot of the hill.”
“And I’d like to sort Toft for it! Ifs he who should have gone! He’s
upstairs now, keeping out of my way, and that grim and gray you’d think
he’d seen a ghost! And ’Truria, silly girl, she’s all of a quiver this
morning. It’s ‘Mother, let me do this!’ and ‘Mother, I’ll do that!’ all
because her reverend—not, as I tell her, that aught will ever come of
it—has got a roof over his head at last.”
“But that’s good news! Has Mr. Colet got some work?”
“Not he, the silly man! Nor likely! There’s mighty little work for them
as go against the gentry. For what he’s got he’s to thank Mr. Basset.”
“Mr. Basset.”
“To be sure,” Mrs. Toft answered, with a covert glance at the girl,
“why not, Miss? Some talk and the wind goes by. There’s plenty of
those. And some say naught but do—and that’s Mr. Basset. He’s took in
Mr. Colet till he can find a church. Etruria’s that up about it, I tell
her, smile before breakfast and sweat before night. And so she’ll find
it, I warrant!”
“It is very good of Mr. Basset,” Mary said gravely. And then, “Is that
some one knocking, Mrs. Toft?”
“It’s well to have young ears!” Mrs. Toft took out the tray, and
returned with a letter. “It’s for you, Miss,” she said. “The postman’s
late this morning, but cheap’s a slow traveller. When a letter was a
letter and cost ninepence it came to hand like a gentleman!”
Mary waited to hear no more. She knew the handwriting, and as quickly
as she could she escaped from the room. No one with any claim to taste
used an envelope in those days, and to open a letter so that no rent
might mar its fairness called for a care which she could not exercise
in public.
Alone, in her room, she opened it, and her eyes grew serious as they
travelled down the page, which bore signs of haste.
“Sweetheart,” it began, and she thought that charming, “I do not ask if
you reached the Gatehouse safely, for I listened and I must have heard,
if harm befel you. I drove home as happy as a king, and grieved only
that I had not had that of you which I had a right to have—damn that
carter! This troubles me the more as I shall not see you again for a
time, and if this does not disappoint you too, you’re a deceiver! My
plans are altered by to-day’s news that Peel returns to office. In any
event, I had to go to Seabourne’s for Christmas, now I must be there
for a meeting to-morrow and go from there to London on the same
business. You would not have me desert my post, I am sure? Heaven knows
how long I may be kept, possibly a fortnight, possibly more. But the
moment I can I shall be with you.
“Write to me at the Brunswick Hôtel, Dover Street. Sweetheart, I am
yours, as you, my darling, are
“Philip’s.
“_P. S_.—I must put off any communication to your uncle till I can see
him. So for the moment, mum!”
Mary read the letter twice; the first time with eager eyes, the second
time more calmly. Nothing was more natural, she told herself, than that
her spirits should sink—Philip was gone. The walk with him, the talk
which was to bring them nearer, and to make them better known to one
another, stood over. The day that was to be so bright was clouded.
But beyond this the letter itself fell a little, a very little, short
of her expectations. The beginning was charming! But after that—was it
her fancy, or was her lover’s tone a little flippant, a little free, a
little too easy? Did it lack that tender note of reassurance, that
chivalrous thought for her, which she had a right to expect in a first
letter? She was not sure.
And as to her uncle. She must, of course, be guided by her lover, his
will must be her law now; and it was reasonable that in John Audley’s
state of health the mode of communication should be carefully weighed.
But she longed to be candid, she longed to be open; and in regard to
one person she would be open. Basset had let her see that her treatment
had cured him. At their last meeting he had been cold, almost unkind;
he had left her to deal with Toft as she could. Still she owed him, if
any one, the truth, and, were it only to set herself right in her own
eyes, she must tell him. If the news did nothing else it would open the
way for his return to the Gatehouse, and the telling would enable her
to make the _amende_.
The letter was not written on that day nor the next. But on the fourth
day after Audley’s departure it arrived at Blore, and lay for an hour
on the dusty hall table amid spuds and powder-flasks and old
itineraries. There Mr. Colet found it and another letter, and removed
the two for safety to the parlor, where litter of a similar kind
struggled for the upper hand with piles of books and dog’s-eared
Quarterlies. The decay of the Bassets dated farther back than the
decline of the Audleys, and the gabled house under the shadow of Weaver
was little better, if something larger, than a farm-house. There had
been a library, but Basset had taken the best books to the Gatehouse.
And there were in the closed drawing-room, and in some of the bedrooms,
old family portraits, bad for the most part; the best lay in marble in
Blore Church. But in the parlor, which was the living-room, hung only
paintings of fat oxen and prize sheep; and the garden which ran up to
the walls of the house, and in summer was a flood of color, lay in
these days dank and lifeless, ebbing away from bee-skips and
chicken-coops. The park had been ploughed during the great war, and now
pined in thin pasture. The whole of the valley was still Basset land,
but undrained in the bottom and light on the slopes, it made no figure
in a rent-roll. The present owner had husbanded the place, and paid off
charges, and cleared the estate, but he had been able to do no more.
The place was a poor man’s place, though for miles round men spoke to
the owner bareheaded. He was “Basset of Blore,” as much a part of
Staffordshire as Burton Bridge or the Barbeacon. The memories of the
illiterate are long.
He had been walking the hill that morning with a dog and a gun, and
between yearnings for the woman he loved, and longings for some plan of
life, some object, some aim, he was in a most unhappy mood. At one
moment he saw himself growing old, without the energy to help himself
or others, still toying with trifles, the last and feeblest of his
blood. At another he thought of Mary, and saw her smiling through the
flowering hawthorn, or bending over a book with the firelight on her
hair. Or again, stung by the lash of her reproaches he tried to harden
himself to do something. Should he take the land into his own hands,
and drain and fence and breed stock and be of use, were it only as a
struggling farmer in his own district? Or should he make that plunge
into public life to which Colonel Mottisfont had urged him and from
which he shrank as a shivering man shrinks from an icy bath?
For there was the rub. Mary was right. He was a dreamer, a weakling,
one in whom the strong pulse that had borne his forbears to the front
beat but feebly. He was not equal to the hard facts of life. With what
ease had Audley, whenever they had stood foot to foot, put him in the
second place, got the better of him, outshone him!
Old Don pointed in vain. His master shot nothing, for he walked for the
most part with his eyes on the turf. If he raised them it was to gaze
at the hamlet lying below him in the valley, the old house, the ring of
buildings and cottages, the church that he loved—and that like the
woman he loved, reproached him with his inaction.
About two o’clock he turned homewards. How many more days would he will
and not will, and end night by night where he had begun? In the main he
was of even temper, but of late small things tried him, and when he
entered the parlor and Colet rose at his entrance, he could not check
his irritation.
“For heaven’s sake, man, sit still!” he cried. “And don’t get up every
time I come in! And don’t look at me like a dog! And don’t ask me if I
want the book you are reading!”
The curate stared, and muttered an apology. It was true that he did not
wear the chain of obligation with grace.
“No, it is I who am sorry!” Basset replied, quickly repenting. “I am a
churlish ass! Get up when you like, and say what you like! But if you
can, make yourself at home!”
Then he saw the two letters lying on the table. He knew Mary’s writing
at a glance, and he let it lie, his face twitching. He took up the
other, made as if he would open it, then he threw it back again, and
took Mary’s to the window, where he could read it unwatched.
It was short.
“Dear Mr. Basset,” she wrote, “I should be paying you a poor compliment
if I pretended that what I am writing will not pain you. But I hope,
and since our last meeting, I have reason to believe that that pain
will not be lasting.
“My cousin, Lord Audley, has asked me to marry him, and I have
consented. Nothing beyond this is fixed, and no announcement will be
made until my uncle has recovered his strength. But I feel that I owe
it to you to let you know this at once.
“I owe you something more. You crowned your kindness by doing me a
great honor. I could not reply in substance otherwise than I did, but
for the foolish criticisms of an inexperienced girl, I ask you to
believe that I feel deep regret.
“When we meet I hope that we may meet as friends. If I can believe this
it will add something to the happiness of my engagement. My uncle is
better, but little stronger than when you saw him.
“I am, truly yours,
“Mary Audley.”
He stood looking at it for a long time, and only by an effort could he
control the emotion that strove to master him. Then his thoughts
travelled to the other, the man who had won her, the man who had got
the better of him from the first, who had played the Jacob from the
moment of their meeting on the steamer; and a passion of jealousy swept
him away. He swore aloud.
Mr. Colet leapt in his chair. “Mr. Basset!” he cried. And then, in a
different tone, “You have bad news, I fear?”
The other laughed bitterly. “Bad news?” he repeated, and Colet saw that
his face was white and that the letter shook in his hand. “The
Government’s out, and that’s bad news. The pig’s ill, and that’s bad
news. Your mother’s dead, and that’s bad news!”
“Swearing makes no news better,” Colet said mildly.
“Not even the pig? If your—if Etruria died, and some one told you that
she was dead, you wouldn’t swear? You wouldn’t curse God?”
“God forbid!” the clergyman cried in horror.
“What would you do then?”
“Try so to live, Mr. Basset, that we might meet again!”
“Rubbish, man!” Basset retorted rudely. “Try instead not to be a prig!”
“If I could be of use?”
“You cannot, nor any one else,” Basset answered. “There, say no more.
The worst is over. We’ve played our little part and—what’s the odds how
we played it?”
“Much when the curtain falls,” the poor clergyman ventured.
“Well, I’ll go and eat something. Hunger is one more grief!” And Basset
went out.
He came back ten minutes later, pale but quiet. “Sorry, Colet,” he
said. “Very rude, I am afraid! I had bad news, but I am right now.
Wasn’t there another letter for me?”
He found the letter and read it listlessly. He tossed it across the
table to his guest. “News is plentiful to-day,” he said.
Colet took the letter and read it. It was from a Mr. Hatton, better
known to him than to Basset, and the owner of one of the two small
factories in Riddsley. It was an invitation to contest the borough in
opposition to young Mottisfont.
“If it were a question, respected sir,” Hatton wrote, “of Whigs and
Tories we should not approach you. But as the result must depend upon
the proportions in which the Tory party splits for and against Sir
Robert Peel upon the Corn Laws, we, who are in favor of repeal,
recognize the advantage of being represented by a moderate Tory. The
adherence to Sir Robert of Sir James Graham in the North and of Lord
Lincoln in the Midlands proves that there are landowners who place
their country before their rents, and it is in the hope that you, sir,
are of the number that we invite you to give us that assistance which
your ancient name must afford.
“We are empowered to promise you the support of the Whig party in the
borough, conditioned only upon your support of the repeal of the Corn
Laws, leaving you free on other points. The Audley influence has been
hitherto paramount, but we believe that the time has come to free the
borough from the last remnant of the Feudal system.
“A deputation will wait upon you to give you such assurances as you may
desire. But as Parliament meets on an early date, and the present
member may at once apply for the Chiltern Hundreds, we shall be glad to
have your answer before the New Year.”
“Well?” Basset asked. “What do you think?”
“It opens a wide door.”
“If you wish to have your finger pinched,” Basset replied, flippantly,
“it does. I don’t know that it is an opening to anything else.” And as
Colet refrained from speaking, “You don’t think,” he went on, “that
it’s a way into Parliament? A repealer has as much chance of getting in
for Riddsley against the Audley interest as you have of being an
archdeacon! Of course the Radicals want a fight if they can find a man
fool enough to spend his money. But as for winning, they don’t dream of
it.”
“It is better to lose in some causes than to win in others.”
Basset laughed. “Do you know why they have come to me? They think that
I shall carry John Audley with me and divide the Audley interest.
There’s nothing in it, but that’s the notion.”
“Why look at the seamy side?” Colet objected. “I suppose there always
is one, but I don’t think that it was at that side Sir Robert looked
when he made up his mind to put the country first and his party second!
I don’t think that it was at that side he looked when he determined to
eat his words and pocket his pride, rather than be responsible for
famine in Ireland! Believe me, Mr. Basset,” the clergyman continued
earnestly, “it was no easy change of opinion. Before he came to that
resolution, proud, cold man as I am told he is, many a sight and sound
must have knocked at the door of his mind; a scene of poverty he passed
in his carriage, a passage in some report, a speech through which he
seemed to sleep, a begging letter—one by one they pressed the door
inwards, till at last, with—it may be with misery, he came to see what
he must do!”
“Possibly.”
“The call came, he had to answer it. Here is a call to you.”
“And do you think,” the other retorted, “that I can answer it more
cheaply than Sir Robert? So far as I have thought it out, I am with
him. But do you think I could do this,” he tapped the letter, “without
misery—of a different kind it may be? I am not a public man, I have
served no apprenticeship to it, I’ve not addressed a meeting three
times in my life, I don’t know what I should say or how I should say
it. And for Hatton and his friends, they would rub me up a dozen times
a day.”
“_Non sine pulvere!_” Mr. Colet murmured.
“Dust enough there’ll be! I don’t doubt that. And dirt. But there’s
another thing.” He paused, and turning, knocked the fire together. He
was nearly a minute about it, while the other waited. “There’s another
thing,” he repeated. “I am not going into this business to pay out a
private grudge, and I want to be clear that I am not doing that. And
I’m not going into this simply for what I can get out of it. Ambition
is a poor stayer with me, a washy chestnut. It would not carry me
through, Colet. If I go into this, it will be because I believe in it.
It seems as if I were preaching,” he continued awkwardly. “But there’s
nothing but belief will carry me through, and unless I am clear—I’ll
not start. I’ll not start, although I want to make a fresh start badly!
Devilish badly, if you’ll excuse me!”
“And how will you——”
“Make certain? I don’t know. I must fight it out by myself—go up on the
hill and think it out. I must believe in the thing, or I must leave it
alone!”
“Just so,” said Mr. Colet. And prudent for once he said no more.