The Great House Part 3

She spent an hour deep in thought, and, strange as the life of the ship was to her, she was deaf to the creaking of the timbers, and the surge of the waves as they swept past the beam. At intervals hoa.r.s.e orders, a rush of feet across the deck, the more regular tramp of rare pa.s.sengers, caught her attention, only to lose it as quickly. It was late when she roused herself. She saw that the candle was burning low, and she began to make her arrangements for the night.

Midway in them she paused, and colored, aware that she knew his tread from the many that had pa.s.sed. The footstep ceased. A hand tapped at her door. "Yes?" she said.

"We shall be in the river by daybreak," Audley announced. "I thought that you might like to come on deck early. You ought not to miss the river from the Nore to the Pool."

"Thank you," she answered.

"You shouldn't miss it," he persisted. "Greenwich especially!"

"I shall be there," she replied. "It is very good of you. Good-night."

He went away. After all, he was the only man on board shod like a gentleman; it had been odd if she had not known his step! And for going on deck early, why should she not? Was she to miss Greenwich because Lord Audley went to a good bootmaker?

So when Peter Ba.s.set, still pale and qualmish, came on deck in the early morning, a little below the Pool, the first person he saw was the girl whom he had come to escort. She was standing high above him on the captain's bridge, her hands clasping the rail, her hair blown about and shining golden in the sunshine. Lord Audley's stately form towered above her. He was pointing out this and that, and they were talking gaily; and now and again the captain spoke to them, and many were looking at them. She did not see Ba.s.set; he was on the deck below, standing amid the common crowd, and so he was free to look at her as he pleased. He might be said not to have seen her before, and what he saw now bewildered, nay, staggered him. Unwillingly, and to please his uncle, he had come to meet a girl of whom they knew no more than this, that, rescued from some backwater of Paris life, into which a weak and shiftless father had plunged her, she had earned her living, if she had earned it at all, in a dependent capacity. He had looked to find her one of two things; either flashy and underbred, with every fault an Englishman might consider French, or a nice mixture of craft and servility. He had not been able to decide which he would prefer.

Instead he saw a girl tall, slender, and slow of movement, with eyes set under a fine width of brow and grave when they smiled, a chin fuller than perfect beauty required, a mouth a little large, a perfect nose. Auburn hair, thick and waving, drooped over each temple, and framed a face as calm as it was fair. "Surely a pearl found on a midden!" he thought. And as the thought pa.s.sed through his mind, Mary looked down. Her eyes roved for a moment over the crowded deck, where some, like Ba.s.set, returned her gaze with interest, while others sought their baggage or bawled for missing companions. He was not a man, it has been said, to stand out in a crowd, and her eyes travelled over him without seeing him. Audley spoke to her, she lifted her eyes, she looked ash.o.r.e again. But the unheeding glance which had not deigned to know him stung Ba.s.set! He dubbed her, with all her beauty, proud and hard. Still--to be such and to have sprung from such a life! It was marvellous.

He knew nothing of the convent school with its hourly discipline lasting through years. He did not guess that the obstinacy which had been weakness in the father was strength in the child. Much less could he divine that the improvidence of that father had become a beacon, warning the daughter off the rocks which had been fatal to him! Mary was no miracle, but neither was she proud or hard.

They had pa.s.sed Erith, and Greenwich with its stately pile and formal gardens glittering in the sunshine of an April morning. The ripple of a westerly wind, meeting the flood, silvered the turbid surface. A hundred wherries skimmed like water-flies. .h.i.ther and thither, long lines of colliers fringed the wharves, tall China clippers forged slowly up under a sc.r.a.p of foresail, dumb barges deep laden with hay or Barclay's Entire, moved mysteriously with the tide. On all sides hoa.r.s.e voices bawled orders or objurgations. Charmed with the gayety, the movement, the color, Mary could not take her eyes from the scene. The sunshine, the leap of life, the pulse of spring, moved in her blood and put to flight the fears that had weighed on her at nightfall. She told herself with elation that this was England, this was her native land, this was her home.

Meanwhile Audley's mind took another direction. He reflected that in a few minutes he must part from the girl, and must trust henceforth to the impression he had made. For some hours he had scarcely given a thought to Ba.s.set, but he recalled him now, and he searched for him in the throng below. He found him at last, pressed against the rail between a fat woman with a basket and a crying child. Their eyes met. My lord glanced away, but he could not refrain from a smile as he pictured the poor affair the other had made of his errand. And Ba.s.set saw the smile and read its meaning, and though he was not self--a.s.sertive, though he was, indeed, backward to a fault, anger ran through his veins. To have travelled three hundred miles in order to meet this girl, to have found her happy in another's company, and to have accepted the second place--the position had vexed him even under the qualms of illness. This morning, and since he had seen her, it stirred in him an unwonted resentment. He d--d Audley under his breath, disengaged himself from the basket which the fat woman was thrusting into his ribs, lifted the child aside. He escaped below to collect his effects.

But in a short time he recovered his temper. When the boat began to go about in the crowded Pool and Mary reluctantly withdrew her eyes from the White Tower, darkened by the smoke and the tragedies of twenty generations, she found him awaiting them at the foot of the ladder. He was still pale, and the girl's conscience smote her. For many hours she had not given him a thought. "I hope you are better," she said gently.

"Horrid thing, mal de mer!" remarked my lord, with a gleam of humor in his eye.

"Thank you, I am quite right this morning," Ba.s.set answered.

"You go from Euston Grove, I suppose?"

"Yes. The morning train starts in a little over an hour."

No more was said, and they went ash.o.r.e together. Audley, an old traveller, and one whose height and presence gave weight to his orders, saw to Mary's safety in the crowd, shielded her from touts and tide-waiters, took the upper hand. He watched the ap.r.o.ned porters disappearing with the baggage in the direction of the Custom House, and a thought struck him. "I am sorry that my servant is not here," he said. "He would see our things through without troubling us." His eyes met Ba.s.set's.

Ba.s.set disdained to refuse. "I will do it," he said. He received the keys and followed the baggage.

Audley looked at Mary and laughed. "I think you'll find him useful," he said. "Takes a hint and is not too forward."

"For shame!" she cried. "It is very good of him to go." But she could not refrain from a smile.

"Well trained," Audley continued in a whimsical tone, "fetches and carries, barks at the name of Peel and growls at the name of Cobden, gives up a stick when required, could be taught to beg--by the right person."

She laughed--she could not resist his manner. "But you are not very kind," she said. "Please to call a--whatever we need. He shall not do everything."

"Everything?" Lord Audley echoed. "He should do nothing," in a lower tone, "if I had my way."

Mary blushed.

CHAPTER VI.

FIELD AND FORGE.

The window of the clumsy carriage was narrow, but Mary gazed through it as if she could never see enough of the flying landscape, the fields, the woods, the ivy-clad homes and red-roofed towns that pa.s.sed in procession before her. The emotions of those who journeyed for the first time on a railway at a speed four times as great as that of the swiftest High-flier that ever devoured the road are forgotten by this generation. But they were vivid. The thing was a miracle. And though by this time men had ceased to believe that he who pa.s.sed through the air at sixty miles an hour must of necessity cease to breathe, the novice still felt that he could never tire of the panorama so swiftly unrolled before him.

And it was not only wonder, it was admiration that held Mary chained to the window. Her infancy had been spent in a drab London street, her early youth in the heart of a Paris which was still gloomy and mediaeval. Some beautiful things she had seen on fete days, the bend of the river at Meudon or St. Germain, and once the Forest of Fontainebleau; on Sundays the Bois. But the smiling English meadows, the gray towers of village churches, the parks and lawns of manor-houses, the ca.n.a.ls with their lines of painted barges, and here and there a gay packet boat--she drank in the beauty of these, and more than once her eyes grew dim. For a time Ba.s.set, seated in the opposite corner, did not exist for her; while he, behind the Morning Chronicle, made his observations and took note of her at his leisure. The longer he looked the more he marvelled.

He asked himself with amus.e.m.e.nt what John Audley would think of her when he, too, should see her. He antic.i.p.ated the old man's surprise on finding her so remote from their preconceived ideas of her. He wondered what she would think of John Audley.

And while he pondered, and now scanned his paper without reading it, and now stole another glance at her, he steeled himself against her. She might not have been to blame, it might not have been her fault; but, between them, the two on the boat had put him in his place and he could not forget it. He had cut a poor figure, and he resented it. He foresaw that in the future she would be dependent on him for society, and he would be a fool if he then forgot the lesson he had learned. She had a good face, but probably her up-bringing had been anything but good. Probably it had taught her to make the most of the moment and of the man of the moment, and he would be foolish if he let her amuse herself with him. He had seen in what light she viewed him when other game was afoot, and he would deserve the worst if he did not remember this.

Presently an embankment cut off the view, and she withdrew her eyes from the window. In her turn she took the measure of her companion. It seemed to her that his face was too thoughtful for his years, and that his figure was insignificant. The eye which had accustomed itself to Lord Audley's port and air found Ba.s.set slight and almost mean. She smiled as she recalled the skill with which my lord had set him aside and made use of him.

Still, he was a part of the life to which she was hastening, and curiosity stirred in her. He was in possession, he was in close relations with her uncle, he knew many things which she was anxious to know. Much of her comfort might depend on him. Presently she asked him what her uncle was like.

"You will see for yourself in a few hours," he replied, his tone cold and almost ungracious. "Did not Lord Audley describe him?"

"No. And you seem," with a faint smile, "to be equally on your guard, Mr. Ba.s.set."

"Not at all," he retorted. "But I think it better to leave you to judge for yourself. I have lived too near to Mr. Audley to--to criticise him."

She colored.

"Let me give you one hint, however," he continued in the same dry tone; "you will be wise not to mention Lord Audley to him. They are not on good terms."

"I am sorry."

He shrugged his shoulders. "It cannot be said to be unnatural, after what has happened."

She considered this. "What has happened?" she asked after a pause.

"Well, the claim to the peerage, if nothing else----"

"What claim?" she asked. "Whose claim? What peerage? I am quite in the dark."

He stared. He did not believe her. "Your uncle's claim," he said curtly. Then as she still looked a question, "You must know," he continued, "that your uncle claimed the t.i.tle which Lord Audley bears, and the property which goes with it. And that the decision was only given against him three months ago."

"I know nothing of it," she said. "I never heard of the claim."

"Really?" he replied. He hardly deigned to veil his incredulity. "Yet if your uncle had succeeded you were the next heir."

"I?"

"Yes, you."

Then her face shook his unbelief. She turned slowly and painfully red. "Is it possible?" she said. "You are not playing with me?"

"Certainly I am not. Do you mean that Lord Audley never told you that? Never told you that you were interested?"

"Never! He only told me that he was not on good terms with my uncle, and that for that reason he would leave me to learn the rest at the Gatehouse."

"Well, that was right," Ba.s.set answered. "It is as well, since you have to live with Mr. Audley, that you should not be prejudiced against him."

"No doubt," she said dryly. "But I do not understand why he did not answer my letters."

"Did you write to him?"

"Twice." She was going to explain the circ.u.mstances, but she refrained. Why appeal to the sympathies of one who seemed so cold, so distant, so indifferent?

"He cannot have had the letters," Ba.s.set decided after a pause.

"Then how did he come to write to me at last?"

"Lord Audley sent your address to him."

"Ah!" she said. "I supposed so." With an air of finality she turned to the window, and for some time she was silent. Her mind had much upon which to work.

She was silent for so long that before more was said they were running through the outskirts of Birmingham, and Mary awoke with a shock to another and sadder side of England. In place of parks and homesteads she saw the England of the workers--workers at that time exploited to the utmost in pursuance of a theory of economy that heeded only the wealth of nations, and placed on that wealth the narrowest meaning. They pa.s.sed across squalid streets, built in haste to meet the needs of new factories, under tall chimneys the smoke of which darkened the sky without hindrance, by vile courts, airless and almost sunless. They looked down on sallow children whose only playground was the street and whose only school-bell was the whistle that summoned them at dawn to premature toil. Haggard women sat on doorsteps with puling babes in their arms. Lines of men, whose pallor peered through the grime, propped the walls, or gazed with apathy at the train. For a few minutes Mary forgot not only her own hopes and fears, but the aloofness and even the presence of her companion. When they came to a standstill in the station, where they had to change on to the Grand Junction Railway, Ba.s.set had to speak twice before she understood that he wished her to leave the carriage.

"What a dreadful place!" she exclaimed.

"Well, it is not beautiful," Ba.s.set admitted. "One does not look for beauty in Birmingham and the Black Country."

He got her some tea, and marshalled her carefully to the upper line. But his answer had jarred upon her, and when they were again seated, Mary kept her thoughts to herself. Beyond Birmingham their route skirted towns rather than pa.s.sed through them, but she saw enough to deepen the impression which the lanes and alleys of that place had made upon her. The sun had set and the cold evening light revealed in all their meanness the rows of naked cottages, the heaps of slag and cinders, the starveling horses that stood with hanging heads on the dreary lands. As darkness fell, fires shone out here and there, and threw into Dantesque relief the dark forms of half-naked men toiling with fury to feed the flames. The change which an hour had made in all she saw seemed appalling to the girl; it filled her with awe and sadness. Here, so near the paradise of the country and the plough, was the Inferno of the town, the forge, the pit! Here, in place of the thatched cottage and the ruddy faces, were squalor and sunken cheeks and misery and dearth.

She thought of the question which Lord Audley had raised twenty-four hours before, and which he had told her was racking the minds of men--should food be taxed? And she fancied that there was, there could be, but one answer. These toiling ma.s.ses, these slaves of the hammer and the pick, must be fed, and, surely, so fed that a margin, however small, however meagre, might be saved out of which to better their sordid lot.

"We call this the Black Country," Ba.s.set explained, feeling the silence irksome. After all, she was in his charge, in a way she was his guest. He ought to amuse her.

"It is well named," she answered. "Is there anything in England worse than this?"

"Well, round Hales Owen and Dudley," he rejoined, "it may be worse. And at Cradley Heath it may be rougher. More women and children are employed in the pits; and where women make chains--well, it's pretty bad."

She had spoken dryly to hide her feelings. He replied in a tone as matter-of-fact, through lack of feeling. For this he was not so much to blame as she fancied, for that which horrified her was to him an everyday matter, one of the facts of life with which he had been familiar from boyhood. But she did not understand this. She judged him and condemned him. She did not speak again.

By and by, "We shall be at Penkridge in twenty minutes," he said. "After that a nine-miles drive will take us to the Gatehouse, and your journey will be over. But I fear that you will find the life quiet after Paris."

"I was very quiet in Paris."

"But you were in a large house."

"I was at the Princess Czartoriski's."

"Of course. I suppose it was there that you met Lord Audley?"

"Yes."

"Well, after that kind of life, I am afraid that the Gatehouse will have few charms for you. It is very remote, very lonely."

She cut him short with impatience, the color rising to her face. "I thought you understood," she said, "that I was in the Princess's house as a governess? It was my business to take care of a number of children, to eat with them, to sleep with them, to see that they washed their hands and kept their hair clean. That was my position, Mr. Ba.s.set. I do not wish it to be misunderstood."

"But if that were so," he stammered, "how did you----"

"Meet Lord Audley," she replied. "Very simply. Once or twice the Princess ordered me to descend to the salon to interpret. On one of these occasions Lord Audley saw me and learned--who I was."

"Indeed," he said. "I see." Perhaps he had had it in his mind to test her and the truth of Audley's letter, which nothing in her or in my lord's conduct seemed to confirm. He did not know if this had been in his mind, but in any case the result silenced him. She was either very honest or very clever. Many girls, he knew, would have slurred over the facts, and not a few would have boasted of the Princess's friendship and the Princess's society, and the Princess's hotel, and brought up her name a dozen times a day.

She is very clever, he thought, or she is--good. But for the moment he steeled himself against the latter opinion.

No other travellers alighted at Penkridge, and he went away to claim the baggage, while she waited, cold and depressed, on the little platform which, lit by a single oil lamp, looked down on a dim churchyard. Dusk was pa.s.sing into night, and the wind, sweeping across the flat, whipped her skirts and chilled her blood. Her courage sank. A light or two betrayed the nearness of the town, but in every other direction dull lines of willows or pale stretches of water ran into the night.

Five minutes before she had resented Ba.s.set's company, now she was glad to see him return. He led the way to the road in silence. "The carriage is late," he muttered, but even as he spoke the quick tramp of a pair of horses pushed to speed broke on them, lights appeared, a moment later a fly pulled up beside them and turned. "You are late," Ba.s.set said.

"There!" the man replied. "Minutes might be guineas since trains came in, dang 'em! Give me the days when five minutes made neither man nor mouse, and gentry kept their own time."

"Well, let us get off now."

"I ask no better, Squire. Please yourself and you'll please me."

When they were shut in, Ba.s.set laughed. "Stafford manners!" he said. "You'll become used to them!"

"Is this my uncle's carriage?" she asked.

"No," he replied, smiling in the darkness. "He does not keep one."

She said no more. Though she could not see him, her shoulder touched his, and his nearness and the darkness in which they sat troubled her, though she was not timid. They rode thus for a minute or two, then trundled through a narrow street, dimly lit by shop windows; again they were in the dark and the country. Presently the pace dropped to a walk as they began to ascend.

She fancied, peering out on her side, that they were winding up through woods. Branches swept the sides of the carriage. They jolted into ruts and jolted out of them. By and by they were clear of the trees and the road seemed to be better. The moon, newly risen, showed her a dreary upland, bare and endless, here dotted with the dark stumps of trees, there of a deeper black as if fire had swept over it and scarred it. They met no one, saw no sign of habitation. To the girl, accustomed all her life to streets and towns, the place seemed infinitely desolate--a place of solitude and witches and terror and midnight murder.

"What is this?" she asked, shivering.

"This is the Great Chase," he said. "Riddsley, on the farther side, is our nearest town, but since the railway was opened we use Penkridge Station."

His practical tone steadied her, but she was tired, and the loneliness which she had felt while she waited on the bleak platform weighed heavily on her. To what was she going? How would her uncle receive her? This dreary landscape, the gaunt signpost that looked like a gibbet and might have been one, the skeleton trees that raised bare arms to heaven, the scream of a dying rabbit, all added to the depression of the moment. She was glad when at last the carriage stopped at a gate. Ba.s.set alighted and opened the gate. He stepped in again, they went on. There were now shadowy trees about them, spa.r.s.ely set. They jolted unevenly over turf.

"Are we there?" she asked, a tremor in her voice.

"Very nearly," he said. "Another mile and we shall be there. This is Beaudelays Park."

She called pride to her aid, and he did not guess--for all day he had marked her self-possession--that she was trembling. Vainly she told herself that she was foolish, that nothing could happen to her, nothing that mattered. What, after all, was a cold reception, what was her uncle's frown beside the poverty and the hazards from which she had escaped? Vainly she rea.s.sured herself; she could not still the rapid beating of her heart.