The Great House. Weyman Stanley John
"Sweet, pretty words, my boy! But there, there," he continued, veering between an elfish desire to tease and a desire equally strong to bring the other to his way of thinking. "I'm only joking. I know you'll never let that devil have his way! You'll never leave the course open for him! I know that. But there's no hurry! There's no hurry. Though, lord, how I sweated when I read his letter! I had never a wink of sleep the night after."
"I don't suppose that he's given a thought to her in that way," Basset answered. "Why should he?"
John Audley leant forward, and his face underwent a remarkable change. It became a pale, heavy mask, out of which his eyes gleamed, small and malevolent. "Don't talk like a fool!" he said harshly. "Of course he means it. And if she's fool enough all my plans, all my pains, all my rights-and once you come to your senses and help me I shall have my rights-all, all, all will go for nothing. For nothing!" He sank back in his chair. "There! now you've excited me. You've excited me, and you know that I can't bear excitement!" His hand groped feebly for his glass, and he raised it to his lips. He gasped once or twice. The color came back to his face.
"I am sorry," Basset said.
"Ay, ay. But be a good lad. Be a good lad. Make up your mind to help me at the Great House."
Basset shook his head.
"To help me, and twenty-four hours-only twenty-four hours, man-may make all the difference! All the difference in the world to me."
"I have told you my views about it," Basset said doggedly. He shifted uneasily in his chair. "I cannot do it, sir, and I won't."
John Audley groaned. "Well, well!" he answered. "I'll say no more now. I'll say no more now. When you and she have made it up" – in vain Basset shook his head-"you'll see the question in another light. Ay, believe me, you will. It'll be your business then, and your interest, and nothing venture, nothing win! You'll see it differently. You'll help the old man to his rights then."
Basset shrugged his shoulders, but thought it useless to protest. The other sighed once or twice and was silent also. At length, "You never told me that you had heard from her," Basset said.
"That I'd-" John Audley broke off. "What is it, Toft?" he asked over his shoulder.
A man-servant, tall, thin, lantern-jawed, had entered unseen. "I came to see if you wanted anything more, sir?" he said.
"Nothing, nothing, Toft. Good-night!" He spoke impatiently, and he watched the man out before he went on. Then, "Perhaps I heard from her, perhaps I didn't," he said. "It's some time ago. What of it?"
"She was in great distress when she wrote."
John Audley raised his eyebrows. "What of it!" he repeated. "She was that woman's daughter. When Peter married a tradesman's daughter-married a-" He did not continue. His thoughts trickled away into silence. The matter was not worthy of his attention.
But by and by he roused himself. "You've ridiculous scruples," he said. "Absurd scruples. But," briskly, "there's that much of good in this girl that I think she'll put an end to them. You must brighten up, my lad, and spark it a little! You're too grave."
"Damn!" said Basset. "For God's sake, don't begin it all again. I've told you that I've not the least intention-"
"She'll see to that if she's what I think her," John Audley retorted cheerfully. "If she's her mother's daughter! But very well, very well! We'll change the subject. I've been working at the Feathers-the Prince's Feathers."
"Have you gone any farther?" Basset asked, forcing an interest which would have been ready enough at another time.
"I might have, but I had a visitor."
Visitors were rare at the Gatehouse, and Basset wondered. "Who was it?" he asked.
"Bagenal the maltster from Riddsley. He came about some political rubbish. Some trouble they are having with Mottisfont. D-n Mottisfont! What do I care about him? They think he isn't running straight-that he's going in for corn-law repeal. And Bagenal and the other fools think that that will be the ruin of the town."
"But Mottisfont is a Tory," Basset objected.
"So is Peel. They are both in Bagenal's bad books. Bagenal is sure that Peel is going back to the cotton people he came from. Spinning Jenny spinning round again!"
"I see."
"I asked him," Audley continued, rubbing his knees with sly enjoyment, "what Stubbs the lawyer was doing about it. He's the party manager. Why didn't he come to me?"
Basset smiled. "What did he say to that?"
"Hummed and hawed. At last he said that owing to Stubbs's connection with-you know who-it was thought that he was not the right person to come to me. So I asked him what Stubbs's employer was going to do about it."
"Ah!"
"He didn't know what to say to that, the ass! Thought I should go the other way, you see. So I told him" – John Audley laughed maliciously as he spoke-"that, for the landed interest, the law had taken away my land, and, for politics, I would not give a d-n for either party in a country where men did not get their rights! Lord! how he looked!"
"Well, you didn't hide your feelings."
"Why should I?" John Audley asked cheerfully. "What will they do for me? Nothing. Will they move a finger to right me? No. Then a plague on both their houses!" He snapped his fingers in schoolboy fashion and rose to his feet. He lit a candle, taking a light from the fire with a spill. "I am going to bed now, Peter. Unless-" he paused, the candlestick in his hand, and gazed fixedly at his companion. "Lord, man, what we could do in two or three hours! In two or three hours. This very night!"
"I've told you that I will have nothing to do with it!" Basset repeated.
John Audley sighed, and removing his eyes, poked the wick of the candle with the snuffers. "Well," he said, "good-night. We must look to bright eyes and red lips to convert you. What a man won't do for another he will do for himself, Peter. Good-night."
Left alone, Basset stared fretfully at the fire. It was not the first time by scores that John Audley had tried him and driven him almost beyond bearing. But habit is a strong tie, and a common taste is a bond even stronger. In this room, and from the elder man, Basset had learned to trace a genealogy, to read a coat, to know a bar from a bend, to discourse of badges and collars under the guidance of the learned Anstie or the ingenious Le Neve. There he had spent hours flitting from book to book and chart to chart in the pursuit, as thrilling while it lasted as any fox-chase, of some family link, the origin of this, the end of that, a thing of value only to those who sought it, but to them all-important. He could recall many a day so spent while rain lashed the tall mullioned windows or sunlight flooded the window-seat in the bay; and these days had endeared to him every nook in the library from the folio shelves in the shadowy corner under the staircase to the cosey table near the hearth which was called "Mr. Basset's," and enshrined in a long drawer a tree of the Bassets of Blore.
For he as well as Audley came of an ancient and shrunken stock. He also could count among his forbears men who had fought at Blore Heath and Towton, or had escaped by a neck from the ruin of the Gunpowder Plot. So he had fallen early under the spell of the elder man's pursuits, and, still young, had learned from him to live in the past. Later the romantic solitude of the Gatehouse, where he had spent more of the last six years than in his own house at Blore, had confirmed him in the habit.
Under the surface, however, the two men remained singularly unlike. While a fixed idea had narrowed John Audley's vision to the inhuman, the younger man, under a dry and reserved exterior-he was shy, and his undrained acres, his twelve hundred a year, poorly supported an ancient name-was not only human, but in his way was something of an idealist. He dreamed dreams, he had his secret aspirations, at times ambition of the higher kind stirred in him, he planned plans and another life than this. But always-this was a thing inbred in him-he put forward the commonplace, as the cuttle-fish sheds ink, and hid nothing so shyly as the visions which he had done nothing to make real. On those about him he made no deep impression, though from one border of Staffordshire to the other his birth won respect. Politics viewed as a game, and a selfish game, had no attraction for him. Quarter Sessions and the Bench struck no spark from him. At the Races and the County Ball richer