The Great House Part 13

"Strange," he murmured. "Does he often stray away like that?"

"He does, sometimes," she admitted reluctantly.

"Ah!" Audley was silent a moment. Then, "Well, I am glad he is better," he said in the tone of one who dismisses a subject. "Let us talk of something else--ourselves. Are you aware that this is the fourth time that I have come to your rescue?"

"I know that it is the fourth time that you have been very useful," she admitted. She wished that she had been able to control her color, but though he spoke playfully there was meaning in his voice.

"I, too, have a second sense it seems," he said, almost purring as he looked at her. "Did you by any chance think of me, when you missed your uncle?"

"Not for a moment," she retorted.

"Perhaps--you thought of Mr. Ba.s.set?"

"No, nor of Mr. Ba.s.set. Had he been at the Gatehouse I might have. But he is away."

"Away, is he? Oh!" He looked at her with a whimsical smile. "Do you know that when he met us the other evening I thought that he was a little out of temper? It was not a continuance of that which took him away, I suppose?"

Mary would have given the world to show an unmoved face at that moment. But she could not. Nor could she feel as angry as she wished. "I thought we were going to talk of ourselves," she said.

"I thought that we were talking of you."

On that, "I am afraid that I must be going back," she said. And she stopped.

"But I am going back with you!"

"Are you? Well, you may come as far as the Cross."

"Oh, hang the Cross!" he answered with a masterfulness of which Mary owned the charm, while she rebelled against it. "I shall come as far as I like! And hang Ba.s.set too--if he makes you unhappy!" He laughed. "We'll talk of--what shall we talk of, Mary? Why, we are cousins--does not that ent.i.tle me to call you 'Mary'?"

"I would rather you did not," she said, and this time there was no lack of firmness in her tone. She remembered what Ba.s.set had said about her name and--and for the moment the other's airiness displeased her.

"But we are cousins."

"Then you can call me cousin," she answered.

He laughed. "Beaten again!" he said.

"And I can call you cousin," she said sedately. "Indeed, I am going to treat you as a cousin. I want you, if not to do, to think of doing something for me. I don't know," nervously, "whether I am asking more than I ought--if so you must forgive me. But it is not for myself."

"You frighten me!" he said. "What is it?"

"It's about Mr. Colet, the curate whom you helped us to save from those men at Brown Heath. He has been shamefully treated. What they did to him might be forgiven--they knew no better. But I hear that because he preaches what is not to everybody's taste, but what thousands and thousands are saying, he is to lose his curacy. And that is his livelihood. It seems most wicked to me, because I am told that no one else will employ him. And what is he to do? He has no friends----"

"He has one eloquent friend."

"Don't laugh at me!" she cried.

"I am not laughing," he answered. He was, in fact, wondering how he should deal with this--this fad of hers. A little, too, he was wondering what it meant. It could not be that she was in love with Colet. Absurd! He recalled the look of the man. "I am not laughing," he repeated more slowly. "But what do you want me to do?"

"To use your influence for him," Mary explained, "either with the rector to keep him or with some one else to employ him."

"I see."

"He only did what he thought was his duty. And--and because he did it, is he to pay with all he has in the world?"

"It seems a hard case."

"It is more, it is an abominable injustice!" she cried.

"Yes," he said slowly. "It seems so. It certainly seems hard. But let me--don't be angry with me if I put another side." He spoke with careful moderation. "It is my experience that good, easy men, such as I take the rector of Riddsley to be, rarely do a thing which seems cruel, without reason. A clergyman, for instance; he has generally thought out more clearly than you or I what it is right to say in the pulpit; how far it is lawful, and then again how far it is wise to deal with matters of debate. He has considered how far a p.r.o.nouncement may offend some, and so may render his office less welcome to them. That is one consideration. Probably, too, he has considered that a statement, if events falsify it, will injure him with his poorer parishioners who look up to him as wiser than themselves. Well, when such a man has laid down a rule and finds a younger clergyman bent upon transgressing it, is it unreasonable if he puts his foot down?"

"I had not looked at it in that way."

"And that, perhaps, is not all," he resumed. "You know that a thing may be true, but that it is not always wise to proclaim it. It may be too strong meat. It may be true, for instance, that corn-dealers make an unfair profit out of the poor; but it is not a truth that you would tell a hungry crowd outside the corn-dealer's shop on a Sat.u.r.day night."

"No," Mary allowed reluctantly. "Perhaps not."

"And again--I have nothing to say against Colet. It is enough for me that he is a friend of yours----"

"I have a reason for being interested in him. I am sure that if you heard him----"

"I might be carried away? Precisely. But is it not possible that he has seen much of one side of this question, much of the poverty for which a cure is sought, without being for that reason fitted to decide what the cure should be?"

Mary nodded. "Have you formed any opinion yourself?" she asked.

But he was too prudent to enter on a discussion. He saw that so far he had impressed her with what he had said, and he was not going to risk the advantage he had gained. "No," he said, "I am weighing the matter at this moment. We are on the verge of a crisis on the Corn Laws, and it is my duty to consider the question carefully. I am doing so. I have hitherto been a believer in the tax. I may change my views, but I shall not do so hastily. As for your friend, I will consider what can be done, but I fear that he has been imprudent."

"Sometimes," she ventured, "imprudence is a virtue."

"And its own reward!" he retorted. They had pa.s.sed the Cross, they were by this time high on the hill, with one accord they came to a stand. "However, I will think it over," he continued. "I will think it over, and what a cousin may, a cousin shall."

"A cousin may much when he is Lord Audley."

"A poor man in a fine coat! A b.u.t.terfly in an east wind." He removed his curly-brimmed hat and stood gazing over the prospect, over the wide valley that far and near gleamed with many a sheet of flood-water. "Have you ever thought, Mary, what that means?" he continued with feeling. "To be the shadow of a name! A ghost of the past! To have for home a ruin, and for lands a few poor farms--in place of all that we can see from here! For all this was once ours. To live a poor man among the rich! To have nothing but----"

"Opportunities!" she answered, her voice betraying how deeply she was moved--for she too was an Audley. "For, with all said and done, you start where others end. You have no need to wait for a hearing. Doors stand open to you that others must open. Your name is a pa.s.sport--is there a Stafford man who does not thrill to it? Surely these things are something. Surely they are much?"

"You would make me think so!" he exclaimed.

"Believe me, they are."

"They would be if I had your enthusiasm!" he answered, moved by her words. "And, by Jove," gazing with admiration at her glowing face, "if I had you by me to spur me on there's no knowing, Mary, what I might not try! And what I might not do!"

Womanlike, she would evade the crisis which she had provoked. "Or fail to do!" she replied. "Perhaps the most worthy would be left undone. But I must go now," she continued. "I have to give my uncle his medicine. I fear I am late already."

"When shall I see you again?" he asked, trying to detain her.

"Some day, I have no doubt. But good-bye now! And don't forget Mr. Colet! Good-bye!"

He stood awhile looking after her, then he turned and went down the hill. By the time he was at the place where he had met her he was glad that she had broken off the interview.

"I might have said too much," he reflected. "She's handsome enough to turn any man's head! And not so cold as she looks. And she spells safety. But there's no hurry--and she's inclined to be kind, or I am mistaken! That clown, Ba.s.set, too, has got his dismissal, I fancy, and there's no one else!"

Presently his thoughts took another turn. "What maggots women get into their heads!" he muttered. "That pestilent Colet--I'm glad the rector acted on my hint. But there it is; when a woman meddles with politics she's game for the first spouter she comes across! Fine eyes, too, and the Audley blood! With a little drilling she would hold her own anywhere."

Altogether, he found the walk to the place where he had left his carriage pleasant enough and his thoughts satisfactory. With Mary and safety on one side, and Lady Adela and a plum on the other--it would be odd if he did not bring his wares to a tolerable market.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE CORN LAW CRISIS.

He had been right in his forecast when he told Mary that a political crisis was at hand. That which had been long whispered, was beginning to be stated openly in club and market-place. The Corn Laws, the support of the country, the mainstay, as so many thought, of the Const.i.tution, were in danger; and behind closed doors, while England listened without, the doctors were met to decide their fate.

Potatoes! The word flew from mouth to mouth that wet autumn, from town to country, from village to village. Potatoes! The thing seemed incredible. That the lordly Corn Laws, the bulwark of the landed interest, the prop of agriculture, that had withstood all attacks for two generations, and maintained themselves alike against high prices and the Corn Law League--that these should go down because a vulgar root like the potato had failed in Ireland--it was a thing pa.s.sing belief. It couldn't be. With the Conservatives in power, it seemed impossible.

Yet it was certain that the position was grave, if not hopeless. Never since the Reform Bill had there been such meetings of the Cabinet, so frequent, so secret. And strange things were said. Some who had supported Peel yet did not trust him, maintained that this was the natural sequel of his measures, the point to which he had been moving through all the years of his Ministry. Potatoes--bah! Others who still supported him, yet did not trust him, brooded nervously over his action twenty years before, when he had first resisted and then accepted the Catholic claims. Tories and Conservatives alike, wondered what they were there to conserve, if such things were in the wind; they protested, but with growing misgiving, that the thing could not be. While those among them who had seats to save and majorities to guard, met one another with gloomy looks, whispered together in corners and privately asked themselves what they would do--if he did. Happy in these circ.u.mstances were those who like Mottisfont, the father, were ready to retire; and still happier those who like Mottisfont, the son, knew the wishes of their const.i.tuents and could sing "John Barleycorn, my Joe, John," with no fear of being jilted.

Their anxieties--they were politicians--were mainly personal--and selfish. But there were some, simple people like Mr. Stubbs at Riddsley, who really believed, when these rumors reached them, that the foundations of things were breaking up, and that the world in which they had lived was sinking under their feet. Already in fancy they saw the glare of furnaces fall across the peaceful fields. Already they heard the tall mill jar and quiver where the cosey homestead and the full stackyard sprawled. They saw a weakly race, slaves to the factory bell, overrun the land where the ploughman still whistled at his work and his wife suckled healthy babes. To these men, if the rumors they heard were true, if Peel had indeed sold the pa.s.s, it meant the loss of all. It meant the victory of coal and cotton, the ruling of all after the Manchester pattern, the reign of Cash, the Lord, and ten per cent. his profit. It meant the end of the old England they had loved.

Not that Stubbs said this at Riddsley, or anything like it. He smiled and kept silence, as became a man who knew much and was set above common rumor. The landlord of the Audley Arms, the corndealer, the brewer, the saddler went away from him with their fears allayed merely by the way in which he shrugged his shoulders. At the farmers' ordinary he had never been more cheerful. He gave the toast of "Horn and Corn, gentlemen! And when potatoes take their place you may come and tell me!" And he gave it so heartily that the farmers went home, market-peart and rejoicing, laughed at their doubting neighbors, and quoted a hundred things that Lawyer Stubbs had not said.

But a day or two later the lawyer sustained an unpleasant shock. He had been little moved by Lord John's manifesto--the declaration in which the little Whig Leader, seeing that the Government hesitated, had plumped for total repeal. That was in the common course of things. It had heartened him, if anything. It was natural. It would bring the Tories into line and put an end to tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. But this--this which confronted him one morning when he opened his London paper was different. He read it, he held his breath, he stood aghast a long minute, he swore. After a few minutes he took his hat and the newspaper, and went round to the house in which Lord Audley lived when he was at Riddsley.

It was a handsome Georgian house, built of brick with stone facings, and partly covered with ivy. A wide smooth lawn divided it from the road. The occupant was a curate's widow who lived there with her two sisters and eked out their joint means by letting the first floor to her landlord. For "The b.u.t.terflies" was Audley property, and the clergyman's widow was held to derogate in no way by an arrangement which differed widely from a common letting of lodgings. Mrs. Jenkinson was stout, short, and fussy, her sisters were thin, short, and precise, but all three overflowed with words as kindly as their deeds. Good Mrs. Jenkinson, in fact, who never spoke of his lordship behind his back but with distant respect, sometimes forgot in his presence that he was anything but a "dear young man," and when he had a cold, would prescribe a posset or a warming-pan with an insistence which at times amused and more often bored him.

Stubbs found his lordship just risen from a late lunch, and in his excitement, the lawyer forgot his manners. "By G--d, my lord!" he cried, "he's resigned."

Audley looked at him with displeasure. "Who's resigned?" he asked coldly.

"Peel!"

Against that news the young man was not proof. He caught the infection. "Impossible!" he said, rising to his feet.

"It's true! It's in the Morning Post, my lord! He saw the Queen yesterday. She's sending for Lord John. It's black treachery! It's the blackest of treachery! With a majority in the House, with the peers in his pocket, the country quiet, trade improving, everything in his favor, he's sold us--sold us to Cobden on some d--d pretext of famine in Ireland!"

Audley did not answer at once. He stood deep in thought, his eyes on the floor, his hands in his pockets. At length, "I don't follow it," he said. "How is Russell, who is in a minority, to carry repeal?"

"Peel's promised his support!" Stubbs cried. Like most honest men, he was nothing if not thorough. "You may depend upon it, my lord, he has! He won't deceive me again. I know him through and through, now. He'll take with him Graham and Gladstone and Herbert, his old tail, Radicals at heart every man of them, and he's the biggest!"

"Well," Audley said slowly, "he might have done one thing worse. He might have stayed in and pa.s.sed repeal himself!"

"Good G--d!" the lawyer cried, "Judas wouldn't have done that! All he could do, he has done. He has let in corn from Canada, cattle from Heaven knows where, he has let in wool. All that he has done. But even he has a limit, my lord! Even he! The man who was returned to support the Corn Laws--to repeal them. Impossible!"

"Well?" Audley said. "There'll be an election, I suppose?"

"The sooner the better," Stubbs answered vengefully. "And we shall see what the country thinks of this. In Riddsley we've been ready for weeks--as you know, my lord. But a General Election? Gad! I only hope they will put up some one here, and we will give them such a beating as they've never had!"

Audley pondered. "I suppose Riddsley is safe," he said.

"As safe as Burton Bridge, my lord!"

The other rattled the money in his pocket. "As long as you give them a lead, Stubbs, I suppose? But if you went over? What then?"

Stubbs opened his eyes. "Went over?" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"Oh, I don't mean," my lord said airily, "that you're not as staunch as Burton Bridge. But supposing you took the other side--it would make a difference, I suppose?"

"Not a jot!" the lawyer answered st.u.r.dily.

"Not even if the two Mottisfonts sided with Peel?"

"If they did the old gentleman would never see Westminster again," Stubbs cried, "nor the young one go there!"

"Or," Audley continued, setting his shoulders against the mantel-shelf, and smiling, "suppose I did? If the Beaudelays interest were cast for repeal? What then?"

"What then?" Stubbs answered. "You'll pardon me, my lord, if I am frank. Then the Beaudelays influence, that has held the borough time out of mind, that returned two members before '32, and has returned one since--there'd be an end of it! It would snap like a rotten stick. The truth is we hold the borough while we go with the stream. In fair weather when it is a question of twenty votes one way or the other, we carry it. And you've the credit, my lord."

Audley moved his shoulders restlessly. "It's all I get by it," he said. "If I could turn the credit into a snug place of two thousand a year, Stubbs--it would be another thing. Do you know," he continued, "I've often wondered why you feel so strongly on the corn-taxes?"

"You asked me that once before, my lord," the agent answered slowly. "All that I can say is that more things than one go to it. Perhaps the best answer I can make is that, like your lordship's influence in the borough, it's part sentiment and part tradition. I have a picture in my mind--it's a picture of an old homestead that my grandfather lived in and died in, and that I visited when I was a boy. That would be about the middle nineties; the French war going, corn high, cattle high, a good horse in the gig and old ale for all comers. There was comfort inside and plenty without; comfort in the great kitchen, with its floor as clean as a pink, and greened in squares with bay leaves, its dresser bright with pewter, its mantel with Toby jugs! There was wealth in the stackyard, with the poultry strutting and scratching, and more in the byres knee-deep in straw, and the big barn where they flailed the wheat! And there were men and maids more than on two farms to-day, some in the house, some in thatched cottages with a run on the common and wood for the getting. I remember, as if they were yesterday, hot summer afternoons when there'd be a stillness on the farm and all drowsed together, the bees, and the calves, and the old sheep-dog, and the only sounds that broke the silence were the cluck of a hen, or the clank of pattens on the dairy-floor, while the sun fell hot on the orchard, where a little boy hunted for damsons! That's what I often see, my lord," Stubbs continued stoutly. "And may Peel protect me, if I ever raise a finger to set mill and furnace, devil's dust and slave-grown cotton, in place of that!"

My lord concealed a yawn. "Very interesting, Stubbs," he said. "Quite a picture! Peace and plenty and old ale! And little Jack Horner sitting in a corner! No, don't go yet, man. I want you." He made a sign to Stubbs to sit down, and settling his shoulders more firmly against the mantel-shelf, he thrust his hands deeper into his trouser-pockets. "I'm not easy in my mind about John Audley," he said. "I'm not sure that he has not found something."

Stubbs stared. "There's nothing to find," he said. "Nothing, my lord! You may be sure of it."

"He goes there."

"It's a craze."

"It's a confoundedly unpleasant one!"

"But harmless, my lord. Really harmless."

The younger man's impatience darkened his face, but he controlled it--a sure sign that he was in earnest. "Tell me this," he said. "What evidence would upset us? You told me once that the claim could be reopened on fresh evidence. On what evidence?"

"I regard the case as closed," Stubbs answered stubbornly. "But if you put the question--" he seemed to reflect--"the point at issue, on which the whole turned, was the legitimacy of your great-grandfather, my lord, Peter Paravicini Audley's son. Mr. John's great-grandfather was Peter Paravicini's younger brother. The other side alleged, but could not produce, a family agreement admitting that the son was illegitimate. Such an agreement, if Peter Paravicini was a party to it, if it was proved, and came from the proper custody, would be an awkward doc.u.ment and might let in the next brother's descendants--that's Mr. John. But in my opinion, its existence is a fairy story, and in its absence, the entry in the register stands good."

"But such a doc.u.ment would be fatal?"

"If it fulfilled the conditions it would be serious," the lawyer admitted. "But it does not exist," he added confidently.