TOFT’S LITTLE SURPRISE
Toft had gone into Riddsley on the polling-day, but had returned before
the result was known. “What the man was thinking of,” his wife declared
in wrath, “beats me! To be there hours and hours and come out no wiser
than he went, and we waiting to hear—a babe would ha’ had more sense!
The young master that we’ve known all our lives, to be in or out, and
we to know nothing till morning! It passes patience!”
Mary had her own feelings, but she concealed them. “He must know how it
was going when he left?” she said.
“He doesn’t know an identical thing!” Mrs. Toft replied. “And all he’d
say was, ‘There, there, what does it matter?’ For all the world as if
he spoke to a child! ‘What else matters, man?’ says I. ‘What did you go
for?’ But there, Miss, he’s beyond me these days! I believe he’s going
like the poor master, that had a bee in his bonnet, God forgive me for
saying it! But what’d one not say, and we to wait till morning not
knowing whether those plaguy Repealers are in or out!”
“But Mr. Basset is for Repeal,” Mary said.
“What matter what he’s for, if he’s in?” Mrs. Toft replied loftily.
“But to wait till morning to know—the man’s no better than a numps!”
In the end, it was Mr. Colet who brought the news to the Gatehouse. He
brought it to Etruria and so much of moment with it that before noon
the election result had been set aside as a trifle, and Mary found
herself holding a kind of court in the parlor—Mr. Colet plaintiff,
Etruria defendant, Mrs. Toft counsel for the defence. Absence had but
strengthened Mr. Colet’s affection, and he came determined to come to
an understanding with his mistress. He saw his way to making a small
income by writing sermons for his more indolent brethren, and, in the
meantime, Mr. Basset was giving him food and shelter; in return he was
keeping Mr. Basset’s accounts, and he was saving a little, a very
little, money. But the body of his plea rested not on these counts, but
on the political change. Repeal was in the air, repeal was in the
country. Vote as Riddsley might, the Corn Laws were doomed. His
opinions would no longer be banned; they would soon be the opinions of
the majority, and with a little patience he might find a new curacy.
When that happened he wished to marry Etruria.
“And why not?” Mary asked.
“I will never marry him to disgrace him,” Etruria replied. She stood
with bowed head, her hands clasped before her, her beautiful eyes
lowered.
“But you love him?” Mary said, blushing at her own words.
“If I did not love him I might marry him,” Etruria rejoined. “I am a
servant, my father’s a servant. I should be wronging him, and he would
live to know it.”
“To my way o’ thinking, ’Truria’s right,” her mother said. “I never
knew good come of such a marriage! He’s poor, begging his reverence’s
pardon, but, poor or rich, his place is there.” She pointed to the
table. “And ’Truria’s place is behind his chair.”
“But you forget,” Mary said, “that when she is Mr. Colet’s wife her
place will be by his side.”
“And much good that’ll do him with the parsons and such like, as are
all gleg together! If he’s in their black books for preaching too
free—and when you come to tithes one parson is as like another as pigs
o’ the same litter—he’ll not better himself by taking such as Etruria,
take my word for it, Miss!”
“I will never do it,” said Etruria.
“But,” Mary protested, “Mr. Colet need not live here, and in another
part people will not know what his wife has been. Etruria has good
manners and some education, Mrs. Toft, and what she does not know she
will learn. She will be judged by what she is. If there is a drawback,
it is that such a marriage will divide her from you and from her
father. But if you are prepared for that?”
Mrs. Toft rubbed her nose. “We’d be willing if that were all,” she
said. “She’d come to us sometimes, and there’d be no call for us to go
to her.”
Mr. Colet looked at Etruria. “If Etruria will come to me,” he said, “I
will be ashamed neither of her nor her parents.”
“Bravely said!” Mary cried.
“But there’s more to it than that,” Mrs. Toft objected. “A deal more.
Mr. Colet nor ’Truria can’t live upon air. And it’s my opinion that if
his reverence gets a curacy, he’ll lose it as soon as it’s known who
his wife is. And he can’t dig and he can’t beg, and where’ll they be
with the parsons all sticking to one another as close as wax?”
“He’ll not need them!” replied a new speaker, and that speaker was
Toft. He had entered silently, none of them had seen him, and the
interruption took them aback. “He’ll not need them,” he repeated, “nor
their curacies. He’ll not need to dig nor beg. There’s changes coming.
There’s changes coming for more than him, Miss. If Mr. Colet’s willing
to take my girl she’ll not go to him empty-handed.”
“I will take her as she stands,” Mr. Colet said, his eyes shining. “She
knows that.”
“Well, you’ll take her, sir, asking your pardon, with what I give her,”
Toft answered. “And that’ll be five hundred pounds that I have in hand,
and five hundred more that I look to get. Put ’em together and they’ll
buy what’s all one with a living, and you’ll be your own rector and may
snap your fingers at ’em!”
They stared at the man, while Mrs. Toft, in an awestruck tone, cried,
“You’re out of your mind, Toft! Five hundred pounds! Whoever heard of
the like of us with that much money?”
“Silence, woman,” Toft said. “You know naught about it.”
“But, Toft,” Mary said, “are you in earnest? Do you understand what a
large sum of money this is?”
“I have it,” the man replied, his sallow cheek reddening. “I have it,
and it’s for Etruria.”
“If this be true,” Mr. Colet said slowly, “I don’t know what to say,
Toft.”
“You’ve said all that is needful, sir,” Toft replied. “It’s long I’ve
looked forward to this. She’s yours, and she’ll not come to you
empty-handed, and you’ll have no need to be ashamed of a wife that
brings you a living. We’ll not trouble except to see her at odd times
in the year. It will be enough for her mother and me that she’ll be a
lady. She never was like us.”
“Hear the man!” cried Mrs. Toft between admiration and protest. “You’d
suppose she wasn’t our child!”
But Mary went to him and gave him her hand. “That’s very fine, Toft,”
she said. “I believe Etruria will be as happy as she is good, and Mr.
Colet will have a wife of whom he may be proud. But Etruria will not be
Etruria if she forgets her parents or your gift. Only you are sure that
you are not deceiving yourself?”
“There’s my bank-book to show for half of it,” Toft replied. “The other
half is as certain if I live three months!”
“Well, I declare!” Mrs. Toft cried. “If anybody’d told me yesterday
that I’d have—’Truria, han’t you got a word to say?”
Etruria’s answer was to throw her arms round her father’s neck. Yet it
is doubtful if the moment was as much to her as to the ungainly,
grim—visaged man, who looked so ill at ease in her embrace.
The contrast between them was such that Mary hastened to relieve the
sufferer. “Etruria will have more to say to Mr. Colet,” she said, “than
to us. Suppose we leave them to talk it over.”
She saw the Tofts out after another word or two, and followed them.
“Well, well, well!” said Mrs. Toft, when they stood in the hall. “I’m
sure I wish that everybody was as lucky this day—if all’s true as Toft
tells us.”
“There’s some in luck that don’t know it!” the man said oracularly. And
he slid away.
“If he said black was white, I’d believe him after this,” his wife
exclaimed, “asking your pardon, Miss, for the liberties we’ve taken!
But you’d always a fancy for ’Truria. Anyway, if there’s one will be
pleased to hear the news, it’s the Squire! If I’d some of those nine
here that voted against him I’d made their ears burn!”
“But perhaps they thought that Mr. Basset was wrong,” Mary said.
“What business had they o’ thinking?” Mrs. Toft replied. “They had
ought to vote; that’s enough for them.”
“Well, it does seem a pity,” Mary allowed. And then, because she
fancied that Mrs. Toft looked at her with meaning, she went upstairs
and, putting on her hat and cloak, went out. The day was cold and
bright, a sprinkling of snow lay on the ground, and a walk promised her
an opportunity of thinking things over. Between the Butterflies, at the
entrance to the flagged yard, she hung a moment in doubt, then she set
off across the park in the direction of the Great House.
At first her thoughts were busy with Etruria’s fortunes and the
mysterious windfall which had enriched Toft. How had he come by it? How
could he have come by it? And was the man really sane? But soon her
mind took another turn. She had strayed this way on the morning after
her arrival at the Gatehouse, and, remembering this, she looked across
the gray, frost-bitten park, with its rows of leafless trees and its
naked vistas. Her mind travelled back to that happy morning, and
involuntarily she glanced behind her.
But to-day no one followed her, no one was thinking of her. Basset was
gone, gone for good, and it was she who had sent him away. The May
morning when he had hurried after her, the May sunshine, gay with the
songs of larks and warm with the scents of spring were of the past.
To-day she looked on a bare, cold landscape and her thoughts matched
it. Yet she had no ground to complain, she told herself, no reason to
be unhappy. Things might have been worse, ah, so much worse, she
reflected. For a week ago she had been a captive, helpless, netted in
her own folly! And now she was free.
Yes, she ought to be happy, being free; and, more than free,
independent.
But she must go from here. And for many reasons the thought of going
was painful to her. During the nine months which she had spent at the
Gatehouse it had become a home. Its panelled rooms, its austerity, its
stillness, the ancient woodlands about it were endeared to her by the
memory of lamp-lit evenings and long summer days. The very plainness
and solitude of the life, which had brought the Tofts and Etruria so
near to her, had been a charm. And if her sympathy with her uncle had
been imperfect, still he had been her uncle and he had been kind to
her.
All this she must leave, and something else which she did not define;
which was bound up with it, and which she had come to value when it was
too late. She had taken brass for gold, and tin for silver! And now it
was too late. So that it was no wonder that when she came to the
hawthorn-tree where she had gathered her may that morning, a sob rose
in her throat. She knew the tree! She had marked it often. But to-day
there was no one to follow her, no one to call her back, no one to say
that she should go no farther. Basset was gone, her uncle was dead.
Telling herself that, as she would never see it again, she would go as
far as the Great House, she pushed on to the Yew Walk. Its recesses
showed dark, the darker for the sprinkling of snow that lay in the
park. But it was high noon, there was nothing to fear, and she pursued
the path until she came to the crumbling monster that tradition said
was a butterfly.
She was still viewing it with awe, thinking now of the duel which had
taken place there, now of her uncle’s attack, when a bird moved in the
copse and she glanced nervously behind her, expecting she knew not
what. The dark yews shut her in, and involuntarily she shivered. What
if, in this solitary place—and then through the silence the sharp click
of the Iron Gate reached her ear.
The stillness and the associations shook her nerves. She heard
footsteps and, hardly knowing what she feared, she slipped among the
trees and stood half-hidden. A moment passed and a man appeared. He
came from the Great House. He crossed the opening slowly, his chin sunk
upon his breast, his eyes bent on the path before him. A moment and he
was gone, the way she had come, without seeing her.
It was Lord Audley, and foolish as the impulse to hide herself had
been, she blessed it. Nothing pleasant, nothing good, could have come
of their meeting; and into her thoughts of him had crept so much of
distaste that she was glad that she had not met him in this lonely
spot. She went on to the Iron Gate, and viewed for a few moments the
desolate lawn and the long, gaunt front. Then, reflecting that if she
turned back at once she might meet him, she took a side-path through
the plantation, and emerged on the park at another point.
She was careful not to reach home until late in the day and then she
learned that he had called, that he had waited, and that in the end
Toft had seen him; and that he had departed in no good temper. “What
Toft said to him,” Mrs. Toft reported, “I know no more than the moon,
but whatever it was his lordship marched off, Miss, as black as
thunder.”
After that nothing happened, and of the four at the Gatehouse Etruria
alone was content. Mrs. Toft was uneasy about the future—what were they
going to do?—and perplexed by Toft’s mysterious fortune—how had he come
by it? Toft himself was on the rack, looking for things to happen—and
nothing happened. And Mary knew that she must take action. She could
not stay at the Gatehouse, she could not remain as the guest either of
Basset or of Lord Audley.
But she did not know where to go, and no suggestion reached her. At
length she wrote, two days after Lord Audley’s visit, to Quebec Street,
to the house where she had stayed with her father many years before. It
was the only address of the kind that she knew. But she received no
answer, and her heart sank. The difficulty, small as it was, harassed
her; she had no adviser, and ten times a day, to keep up her spirits,
she had tell herself that she was independent, that she had eight
thousand pounds, that the whole world was open to her, and that
compared with the penniless girl who had lived on the upper floor of
the Hôtel Lambert she was fortunate!
But in the Hôtel Lambert she had had work to do, and here she had none!
She thought of taking rooms in Riddsley, but Lord Audley was there and
she shrank from meeting him. She would wait another week for the answer
from London, and then, if none came, she must decide what she would do.
But in her room that night the thought that Basset had abandoned her,
that he no longer cared, no longer desired to come near her, broke her
down. Of course, he was not to blame. He fancied her still engaged to
her cousin and receiving from him all the advice, all the help, all the
love, she needed. He fancied her happy and content, in no need of him.
And, alas, there was the pinch. She had written to him to tell him of
her engagement. She could not write to him to tell him that it was at
an end!
And then, by the morrow’s post, there came a long letter from Basset,
and in the letter the whole astonishing, overwhelming story of the
discovery of the document which John Audley had sought so long, and in
the end so disastrously.
“No doubt,” the writer added, “Lord Audley has made you acquainted with
the facts, but I think it my duty as your uncle’s executor to lay them
before you in detail and also to advise you that in your interest and
in view of the change in your position—and in Lord Audley’s—which this
imports, it is proper that you should have independent advice.”
The blood ebbed and left Mary pale; it returned in a flood as with a
bounding heart and shaking fingers she read and turned and re-read this
letter. At length she grasped its meaning, and truly what astounding,
what overwhelming news! What a shift of fortune! What a reversal of
expectations! And how strangely, how singularly had all things shaped
themselves to bring this about—were it true!
Unable to sit still, unable to control her excitement—and no wonder—she
rose and paced the floor. If she were indeed Lady Audley! If this were
indeed all hers! This dear house and the Great House! This which had
seemed to its possessor so small, so meagre, so cramping an
inheritance, but was to her fortune, an old name, a great place, a firm
position in the world! A position that offered so many opportunities
and so much power for good!
She walked the room with throbbing pulses, the letter now crushed in
her hand, now smoothed out that she might assure herself of its
meaning, might read again some word or some sentence, might resolve
some doubt. Oh, it was a wonderful, it was a marvellous, it was an
incredible turn of fortune! And presently her mind began to deal with
and to sift the past. And, enlightened, she understood many of the
things that had perplexed her, and read many of the riddles that had
baffled her. And her cheeks burned, her heart was hot with indignation.