The Great House. Weyman Stanley John
men outshone him. But given something to touch his heart and fire his ambition, he had qualities. He might still show himself in another light.
Something of this, for no reason that he could imagine, some feeling of regret for past opportunities, passed through his mind as he sat fretting over John Audley's folly. But after a time he roused himself and became aware that he was tired; and he rose and lit a candle. He pushed back the smouldering logs and slowly and methodically he put out the lights. He gave a last thought to John Audley. "There was always one maggot in his head," he muttered, "now there's a second. What I would not do to please him, he thinks I shall do to please another! Well, he does not know her yet!"
He went to bed.
CHAPTER VIII
THE GATEHOUSE
It is within the bounds of imagination that death may make no greater change in our inner selves than is wrought at times by a new mood or another outlook. When Mary, an hour before the world was astir on the morning after her arrival, let herself out of the Gatehouse, and from its threshold as from a ledge saw the broad valley of the Trent stretched before her in all the beauty of a May morning, her alarm of the past night seemed incredible. At her feet a sharp slope, clothed in gorse and shrub, fell away to meet the plain. It sank no more than a couple of hundred feet, but this was enough to enable her to follow the silver streak of the river winding afar between park and coppice and under many a church tower. Away to the right she could see the three graceful spires of Lichfield, and southward, where an opal haze closed the prospect, she could imagine the fringe of the Black Country, made beautiful by distance.
In sober fact few parts of England are less inviting than the low lands of Staffordshire, when the spring floods cover them or the fogs of autumn cling to the cold soil. But in spring, when larks soar above them and tall, lop-sided elms outline the fields, they have their beauty; and Mary gazed long at the fair prospect before she turned her back on it and looked at the house that was fated to be her home.
It was what its name signified, a gatehouse; yet by turns it could be a sombre and a charming thing. Some Audley of noble ideas, a man long dead, had built it to be the entrance to his demesne. The park wall, overhung by trees, still ran right and left from it, but the road which had once passed through the archway now slid humbly aside and entered the park by a field gate. A wide-latticed Tudor tower, rising two stories above the arch and turreted at the four corners, formed the middle. It was buttressed on either hand by a lower building, flush with it and of about the same width. The tower was of yellowish stone, the wings were faced with stained stucco. Right and left of the whole a plot of shrubs masked on the one hand the stables, on the other the kitchens-modern blocks set back to such a distance that each touched the old part at a corner only.
He who had planned the building had set it cunningly on the brow of the Great Chase, so that, viewed from the vale, it rose against the skyline. On dark days it broke the fringe of woodland and stood up, gloomy and forbidding, the portal of a Doubting Castle. On bright days, with its hundred diamond panes a-glitter in the sunshine, it seemed to be the porch of a fairy palace, the silent home of some Sleeping Beauty. At all times it imposed itself upon men below and spoke of something beyond, something unseen, greater, mysterious.
To Mary Audley, who saw it at its best, the very stains of the plaster glorified by the morning light, it was a thing of joy. She fancied that to live behind those ancient mullioned windows, to look out morning and evening on that spacious landscape, to feel the bustle of the world so remote, must in itself be happiness. For a time she could not turn from it.
But presently the desire to explore her new surroundings seized her and she re-entered the house. A glance at the groined roof of the hall-many a gallant horseman had ridden under it in his time-proved that it was merely the archway closed and fitted with a small door and window at either end. She unlocked the farther door and passed into a paved court, in which the grass grew between the worn flags. In the stables on the left a dog whined. The kitchens were on the other hand, and before her an opening flanked by tall heraldic beasts broke a low wall, built of moss-grown brick. She ventured through it and uttered a cry of delight.
Near at hand, under cover of a vast chestnut tree, were traces of domestic labor: a grindstone, a saw-pit, a woodpile, coops with clucking hens. But beyond these the sward, faintly lined at first with ruts, stretched away into forest glades, bordered here by giant oaks brown in bud, there by the yellowish-green of beech trees. In the foreground lay patches of gorse, and in places an ancient thorn, riven and half prostrate, crowned the russet of last year's bracken with a splash of cream. Heedless of the spectator, rabbits sat making their toilet, and from every brake birds filled the air with a riot of song.
To one who had seen little but the streets of Paris, more sordid then than now, the scene was charming. Mary's eyes filled, her heart swelled. Ah, what a home was here! She had espied on her journey many a nook and sheltered dell, but nothing that could vie with this! Heedless of her thin shoes, with no more than a handkerchief on her head, she strayed on and on. By and by a track, faintly marked, led her to the left. A little farther, and old trees fell into line on either hand, as if in days long gone, before age thinned their ranks, they had formed an avenue.
For a time she sat musing on a fallen trunk, then the hawthorn that a few paces away perfumed the spring air moved her to gather an armful of it. She forgot that time was passing, almost she forgot that she had not breakfasted, and she might have been nearly a mile from the Gatehouse when she was startled by a faint hail that seemed to come from behind her. She looked back and saw Basset coming after her.
He, too, was hatless-he had set off in haste-and he was out of breath. She turned with concern to meet him. "Am I very late, Mr. Basset?" she asked, her conscience pricking her. What if this first morning she had broken the rules?
"Oh no," he said. And then, "You've not been farther than this?"
"No. I am afraid my uncle is waiting?"
"Oh no. He breakfasts in his own room. But Etruria told me that you had gone this way, and I followed. I see that you are not empty-handed."
"No." And she thrust the great bunch of may under his nose-who would not have been gay, who would not have lost her reserve in such a scene, on such a morning? "Isn't it fresh? Isn't it delicious?"
As he stooped to the flowers his eyes met hers smiling through the hawthorn sprays, and he saw her as he had not seen her before. Her gravity had left her. Spring laughed in her eyes, youth fluttered in the tendrils of her hair, she was the soul of May. And what she had found of beauty in the woodland, of music in the larks' songs, of perfume in the blossoms, of freshness in the morning, the man found in her; and a shock, never to be forgotten, ran through him. He did not speak. He smelled the hawthorn in silence.
But a few seconds later-as men reckon time-he took note of his feelings, and he was startled. He had not been prepared to like her, we know; many things had armed him against her. But before the witchery of her morning face, the challenge of her laughing eyes, he awoke to the fact that he was in danger. He had to own that if he must live beside her day by day and would maintain his indifference, he must steel himself. He must keep his first impressions of her always before him, and be careful. And be very careful-if even that might avail.
For a hundred paces he walked at her side, listening without knowing what she said. Then his coolness returned, and when she asked him why he had come after her without his hat he was ready.
"I had better tell you," he answered, "this path is little used. It leads to the Great House, and your uncle, owing to his quarrel with Lord Audley, does not like any one to go farther in that direction than the Yew Tree Walk. You can see the Walk from here-the yews mark the entrance to the gardens. I thought that it would be unfortunate if you began by displeasing him, and I came after you."
"It was very good of you," she said. Her face was not gay now. "Does Lord Audley live there-when he is at home?"
"No one lives there," he explained soberly. "No one has lived there for three generations. It's a ruin-I was going to say, a nightmare. The greater part of the house was burnt down in a carouse held to celebrate the accession of George the Third. The Audley of that day rebuilt it on a great scale, but before it was finished he gave a housewarming, at which his only son quarrelled with a guest.