"Before dark? No, perhaps not!" She raised her hand and put back a tress of hair which had strayed from its fellows. "And I shall be tired. But I shall be much surprised if I cannot walk ten miles at a pinch."

"I shall be surprised if you walk ten miles to-day," he retorted. "My plans for you are quite different. Have you got what you came to fetch?"

She had steadied herself, and was by this time at her ease. She made a little grimace. "No," she said. "It will not be ready for quarter of an hour."

He rang Dr. Pepper's bell. An awestruck apprentice, who had watched the interview through the dusty window of the surgery, showed himself.

"Be good enough to send the medicine for Miss Audley to Mrs. Jenkinson's," Audley said. "You understand?"

"Yes, my lord! Certainly, my lord!" She was going to protest. He turned to her, silenced her. "And now I take possession of you," he said, supremely careless what the lad heard. "You are coming to The b.u.t.terflies to take tea, or sherry, or whatever you take when you have walked five miles."

"Oh, Lord Audley!"

"And then I am going to drive you as far as the old Cross, and walk up the hill with you--as far as I choose."

"Oh, but I cannot!" Mary cried, coloring charmingly, but whether with pleasure or embarra.s.sment she could not tell. She only knew that his ridiculous way of taking possession of her, the very masterfulness of it, moved her strangely. "I cannot indeed. What would my uncle say?"

"I don't know, and I don't care!" he replied, swinging his walking cane, and smiling as he towered above her.

"He may go hang--for once!"

She hesitated. "It is very good of you," she said. "I confess I did not look forward to the walk back. But----"

"There is no--but," he replied. "And no walk back! It is arranged. It is time--" his eyes dwelt kindly on her as she turned with him--"it is time that some one took it in hand to arrange things for you. Five miles in and five miles out over dirty roads on a winter afternoon--and Miss Audley! No, no! And now--this way, please!"

She yielded, she could not tell why, except that it was difficult to resist him, and not unpleasant to obey him. And after all, why should she not go with him? She had been feeling f.a.gged and tired, depressed, moreover, by her uncle's fears. The low-lying fields, the town, the streets, all dingy under a gray autumn sky, had given her no welcome.

And her thoughts, too, had been dun-colored. She had felt very lonely the last few days, doubtful of the future, without aim, hipped. And now in a moment all seemed changed. She was no longer alone, nor fearful. The streets were no longer dingy nor dreary. There were still pleasant things in the world, kindness, and thought for others, and friendship and--and tea and cake! Was it wonderful that as she walked along beside my lord her spirits rose? That she felt an unaccountable relief, and in the reaction of the moment smiled and sparkled more than her wont? That the muddy brick pavement, the low-browed shops, the leafless trees all seemed brighter than before, and that even the butcher's stall became almost a thing of beauty?

And he responded famously. He swung his stick, he laughed, he was gay. "Don't pretend!" he said. "I see that you were glad enough to meet me!"

"And the tea and cake!" she replied. "After five miles who would not be glad to meet them?"

"Exactly! It is my belief that if I had not met you, you would have fallen by the way. You want some one to look after you, Miss Audley." The name was a caress.

Nor was the pleasure all their own. Great was the excitement of the townsfolk as they pa.s.sed. "His lordship and a young lady?" cried half Riddsley, running to the windows. "Quick, or you will miss them!" Some wondered who she could be; more had seen her at church and could answer. "Miss Audley? The young lady who had come to live at the Gatehouse? Indeed! You don't say so?" For every soul in Riddsley, over twelve years old, was versed in the Audley history, knew all about the suit, and could tell off the degrees of kindred as easily as they could tell the distance from the Audley Arms to the Portcullis. "Mr. Peter Audley's daughter who lived in Paris? Lady-in-waiting to a Princess. And now walking with his lordship as if she had known him all her life! What would Mr. John say? D'you see how gay he looks! Not a bit what he is when he speaks to us! Wonder whether there's anything in it!" And so on, and so on, with t.i.t-bits from the history of Mary's father, and choice eccentricities from the life of John Audley.

Mrs. Jenkinson's amazement, as she espied them coming up the path to the house, was a thing by itself. It was such that she set her door ajar that she might see them pa.s.s through the hall. She was all of a twitter, she said afterwards. And poor Jane and poor Sarah--who were out! What a miss they were having! It was not thrice in the twelve months that his lordship brought a lady to the house.

A greater miss, indeed, it turned out, than she thought. For to her gratification Lord Audley tapped at her door. He pushed it open. "Mrs. Jenkinson," he said pleasantly, "this is my cousin, Miss Audley, who is good enough to take a cup of your excellent tea with me, if you will make it. She has walked in from the Gatehouse."

Mrs. Jenkinson was a combination of an eager, bright-eyed bird and a stout, short lady in dove-colored silk--if such a thing can be imagined; and the soul of good-nature. She took Mary by both hands, beamed upon her, and figuratively took her to her bosom. "A little cake and wine, my dear," she chirruped. "After a long walk! And then tea. To be sure, my dear! I knew your father, Mr. Peter Audley, a dear, good gentleman. You would like to wash your hands? Yes, my dear! Not that you are not--and his lordship will wait for us upstairs. Yes, there's a step. I knew your father, to be sure, to be sure. A new brush, my dear. And now will you let me--not that your sweet face needs any ornament! Yes, I talk too much--but, there, my love, when you are as old----"

She was a simple soul, and because her tongue rarely stopped she might have been thought to see nothing. But women, unlike men, can do two things at once, and little escaped her twinkling spectacles. As she told her sister later, "My dear, I saw it was spoons from the first. She sparkled all over, bless her innocent heart! And he, if she had been a d.u.c.h.ess, could not have waited on her more elegant--well, elegantly, Sally, if you like, but we can't all talk like you. They thought, the dear creatures, that I saw nothing; but once he said something too low for me to hear and she looked up at him, and her pretty eyes were like stars. And he looked--well, Sally, I could not tell you how he looked!"

"I am not sure that it would be proper," the spinster demurred.

"Ah, well, it was as pretty a thing as you'd wish to see," the good creature ran on, drumming with her fingers on the lap of her silk gown. "And she, bless her, I dare say she was all of a twitter, but she didn't show it. No airs or graces either--but there, an Audley has no need! Why, G.o.d bless me, I said something about the Princess and what company she must have seen, and what a change for her, and she up and said--I am sure I loved her for it!--that she had been no more than a governess! My dear, an Audley a governess! I fancied my lord wasn't quite pleased, and very natural! But when a man is spoons----"

"My dear sister!"

"Vulgar? Well, perhaps so, I know I run on, but gentle or simple, they're the same when they're in love! And Jane will be glad to hear that she took two pieces of the sultana and two cups of tea, and he watching every piece she put in her mouth, and she coloring up, once or twice, so that it did my heart good to see them, the pretty dears. Jane will be pleased. And there might have been nothing but seed cake in the house. I shall remember more presently, but I was in such a twitter!"

"What did she call him?" Miss Sarah asked.

"To be sure, my dear, that was what I was going to tell you! I listened, and not a single thing did she call him. But once, when he gave her some cake, I heard him call her Mary, for all the world as if it was a bit of sugar in his mouth. And there came a kind of quiver over her pretty face, and she looked at her plate as much as to say it was a new thing. And I said to myself 'Philip and Mary'--out of the old school-books you know, but who they were I don't remember. But it's my opinion," Mrs. Jenkinson continued, rubbing her nose with the end of her spectacles, "that he had spoken just before they came in, Sally."

"You don't say so?" Sarah cried.

"If you ask me, there was a kind of softness about them both! Law, when I think what you and Jane missed through going to that stupid Inst.i.tute! I am sure you'll never forgive yourselves!"

The good lady had not missed much herself, but she was mistaken in thinking that the two had come to an understanding. Indeed when, leaving the warmth of her presence behind them, they drove out of town, with the servant seated with folded arms behind them and Mary snugly tucked in beside my lord, a new constraint began to separate them. The excitement of the meeting had waned, the fillip of the unwonted treat had lost its power. A depression for which she could not account beset Mary as they rolled through the dull outskirts and faced the flat mistridden pastures and the long lines of willows. On his side doubt held him silent. He had found it pleasant to come to the brink, he had not been blind to Mary's smiles and her rare blushes. But the one step farther--that could not be re-trodden, and it was in the nature of the man to hesitate at the last, and to consider if he were getting full value.

So, as they drove through the dusk, now noiselessly over sodden leaves, now drumming along the hard road, the hint of a chill fell between them. Mary's thoughts went forward to the silent house and the lonely rooms, and she chid herself for ingrat.i.tude. She had had her pleasure, she had had an unwonted treat. What was wrong with her? What more did she want?

It was nearly dark, and not many words had pa.s.sed when Lord Audley pulled up the horses at the old Cross. The man leapt down and was going to help Mary to alight, when his master bade him take the box-seat and the reins.

Mary remonstrated. "Oh, don't get down, please!" she cried. "Please! It is nothing to the house from here."

"It is half a mile if it is a yard," he said. "And it is nearly dark. I am going with you." He bade the man walk the horses up and down.

She ventured another protest, but he put it aside. He threw back the rug and lifted her down. For a moment he stamped about and stretched himself. Then "Come, Mary," he said. It was an order.

She knew then what was at hand. And though she had a minute before looked forward with regret to the parting, all her thought now was how she might escape to the Gatehouse. It became a refuge. Her heart, as she started to walk beside him, beat so quickly that she could not speak. She was thankful that it was dark, and that he could not read her agitation in her face.

He did not speak himself for some minutes. Then "Mary," he said abruptly, looking straight before him, "I am rather one for taking than asking, and that stands in my way now. When I've wanted a thing I've generally taken it. Now I want a thing I can't take--without asking. And I feel that I'm not good at the asking. But I want it badly, and I must do the best I can. I love you, Mary. I love you, and I want you for my wife."

She could not find a word. When he went on his tone was lower.

"I'm rather a lonely man," he said. "You didn't know that, or think it? But it is true. And such an hour as we have spent to-day is not mine often. It lies with you to say if I am going to have more of them. I might tell you with truth that I haven't much to offer my wife. That if I am Audley of Beaudelays, I am the poorest Audley that ever was. That my wife will be no great lady, and will step into no golden shoes. The b.u.t.terflies are moths, Mary, nowadays, and if I am ever to be much she will have to help me. But I will tell no lies, my dear!" He turned to her then and stopped; and perforce, though her knees trembled, she had to stand also, and face him as he looked down at her. "I am not going to pretend that what I have to offer isn't enough. For you are lonely like me; you have no one but John Audley to look to, and I am big enough and strong enough to take care of you. And I will take care of you--if you will let me. If you will say the word, Mary?"

He loomed above her in the darkness. He seemed already to possess her. She tried to think, tried to ask herself if she loved him, if she loved him enough; but the fancy for him which she had had from the beginning, that and his masterfulness swept her irresistibly towards him. She was lonely--more lonely than ever of late, and to whom was she to look? Who else had been as good to her, as kind to her, as thoughtful for her, as he who now wooed her so honestly, who offered her all he had to offer? She hesitated, and he saw that she hesitated.

"Come, we've got to have this out," he said bluntly. And he put his hand on her shoulder. "We stand alone, both of us, you and I. We're the last of the old line, and I want you for my wife, Mary! With you I can do something, with you I believe that I can make something of my life! Without you--but there, if you say no, I won't take it! I won't take it, and I am going to have you, if not to-day, to-morrow, and if not to-morrow, the next day! Make no mistake about that!"

She tried to fence with him. "I have not a penny," she faltered.

"I don't ask you for a penny."

Her instinct was still to escape. "You are Lord Audley," she said, "and I am a poor relation. Won't you--don't you think that you will repent presently!"

"That's my business! If that be all--if there's no one else----"

"No, there's no one else," she admitted. "But----"

"But be hanged!" he cried. "If there's no one else you are mine." And he pa.s.sed his arm round her.

For a moment she stepped back. "No!" she protested, raising her hands to push him off. "Please--please let me think."

He let her be, for already he knew that he had won; and perhaps in his own mind he was beginning to doubt the wisdom of the step. "My uncle? Have you thought of him?" she asked. "What will he say?"

"I have not thought of him," he cried grandly, "and I am not going to think of him. I am thinking, my dear, only of you. Do you love me?"

She stood silent, gazing at him.

"Don't play with me!" he said. "I've a right to an answer."

"I think I do," she said softly. "Yes--I think--no, wait; that is not all."

"It is all."

"No," between laughing and crying. "You are not giving me time. I want to think. You are carrying me by storm, sir."

"And a good way, too!" he rejoined. Then she did let him take her, and for a few seconds she was in his arms. He crushed her to him, she felt all the world turning. But before he found her lips, the crack of a whip startled them, the creak of a wheel sliding round the corner warned them, she slipped from his arms.

"You little wretch!" he said.

Breathless, hardly knowing what she felt, or what storm shook her, she could not speak. The wagon came creaking past them, the driver clinging to the chain of the slipper. When it was gone by she found her voice. "It shall be as you will," she said, and her tone thrilled him. "But I want to think. It has been so sudden, I am frightened. I am frightened, and--yes, I think I am happy. But please to let me go now. I am safe here--in two minutes I shall be at home."

He tried to keep her, but "Let me go now," she pleaded. "Later it shall be as you wish--always as you wish. But let me go now."

He gave way then. He said a few words while he held her hands, and he said them very well. Then he let her go. Before the dusk hid her she turned and waved her hand, and he waved his. He stood, listening. He heard the sound of her footsteps grow fainter and fainter as she climbed the hill, until they were lost in the rustle of the wind through the undergrowth. At last he turned and trudged down the hill.

"Well, I've done it," he muttered presently. "And Uncle John may find what he likes, d.a.m.n him! After all, she's handsome enough to turn any man's head, and it makes me safe! But I'll go slow. I'll go slow now. There's no hurry."

CHAPTER XXIII.

BLORE UNDER WEAVER.

Grat.i.tude and liking, and the worship of strength which is as natural in a woman as the worship of beauty in a man, form no bad imitation of love, and often pa.s.s into love as imperceptibly as the brook becomes a river. The morning light brought Mary no repentance. Misgivings she had, as what lover has not, were the truth told. Was her love as perfect as Etruria's, as unselfish, as absorbing? She doubted. But in all honesty she hoped that it might become so; and when she dwelt on the man who had done so much for her, and thought so well for her, who had so much to offer and made so little of the offering, her heart swelled with grat.i.tude, and if she did not love she fancied that she did.

So much was changed for her! She had wondered more than once what would happen to her, if her uncle died. That fear was put from her. Toft--she had been vexed with Toft. How small a matter that seemed now! And Peter Ba.s.set? He had been kind to her, and a pang did pierce her heart on his account. But he had recovered very quickly, she reflected. He had shown himself cold enough and distant enough at his last visit! And then she smiled as she thought how differently her new lover had a.s.sailed her, with what force, what arrogance, what insistence--and yet with a force and arrogance and insistence to which it was pleasant to yield.

She did not with all this forget that she would be Lady Audley, she, whose past had been so precarious, whose prospects had been so dark, whose fate it might have been to travel through life an obscure teacher! She had not been woman if she had not thought of this; nor if she had failed, when she thought of it, to breathe a prayer for the gallant lover who had found her and saved her, and had held it enough that she was an Audley. He might have chosen far and wide. He had chosen her.

No wonder that Mrs. Toft saw a change in her. "Law, Miss," she remarked, when she came in to remove the breakfast. "One would think a ten-mile walk was the making of you! It's put a color into your cheeks that would shame a June rose! And to be sure," with a glance at the young lady's plate, "not much eaten either!"

"I am not hungry, Mrs. Toft," Mary said meekly. "I drove back to the foot of the hill."

"And I'd like to sort Toft for it! Ifs he who should have gone! He's upstairs now, keeping out of my way, and that grim and gray you'd think he'd seen a ghost! And 'Truria, silly girl, she's all of a quiver this morning. It's 'Mother, let me do this!' and 'Mother, I'll do that!' all because her reverend--not, as I tell her, that aught will ever come of it--has got a roof over his head at last."

"But that's good news! Has Mr. Colet got some work?"

"Not he, the silly man! Nor likely! There's mighty little work for them as go against the gentry. For what he's got he's to thank Mr. Ba.s.set."

"Mr. Ba.s.set."

"To be sure," Mrs. Toft answered, with a covert glance at the girl, "why not, Miss? Some talk and the wind goes by. There's plenty of those. And some say naught but do--and that's Mr. Ba.s.set. He's took in Mr. Colet till he can find a church. Etruria's that up about it, I tell her, smile before breakfast and sweat before night. And so she'll find it, I warrant!"

"It is very good of Mr. Ba.s.set," Mary said gravely. And then, "Is that some one knocking, Mrs. Toft?"

"It's well to have young ears!" Mrs. Toft took out the tray, and returned with a letter. "It's for you, Miss," she said. "The postman's late this morning, but cheap's a slow traveller. When a letter was a letter and cost ninepence it came to hand like a gentleman!"

Mary waited to hear no more. She knew the handwriting, and as quickly as she could she escaped from the room. No one with any claim to taste used an envelope in those days, and to open a letter so that no rent might mar its fairness called for a care which she could not exercise in public.

Alone, in her room, she opened it, and her eyes grew serious as they travelled down the page, which bore signs of haste.

"Sweetheart," it began, and she thought that charming, "I do not ask if you reached the Gatehouse safely, for I listened and I must have heard, if harm befel you. I drove home as happy as a king, and grieved only that I had not had that of you which I had a right to have--d.a.m.n that carter! This troubles me the more as I shall not see you again for a time, and if this does not disappoint you too, you're a deceiver! My plans are altered by to-day's news that Peel returns to office. In any event, I had to go to Seabourne's for Christmas, now I must be there for a meeting to-morrow and go from there to London on the same business. You would not have me desert my post, I am sure? Heaven knows how long I may be kept, possibly a fortnight, possibly more. But the moment I can I shall be with you.

"Write to me at the Brunswick Hotel, Dover Street. Sweetheart, I am yours, as you, my darling, are "Philip's.

"P. S.--I must put off any communication to your uncle till I can see him. So for the moment, mum!"

Mary read the letter twice; the first time with eager eyes, the second time more calmly. Nothing was more natural, she told herself, than that her spirits should sink--Philip was gone. The walk with him, the talk which was to bring them nearer, and to make them better known to one another, stood over. The day that was to be so bright was clouded.

But beyond this the letter itself fell a little, a very little, short of her expectations. The beginning was charming! But after that--was it her fancy, or was her lover's tone a little flippant, a little free, a little too easy? Did it lack that tender note of rea.s.surance, that chivalrous thought for her, which she had a right to expect in a first letter? She was not sure.

And as to her uncle. She must, of course, be guided by her lover, his will must be her law now; and it was reasonable that in John Audley's state of health the mode of communication should be carefully weighed. But she longed to be candid, she longed to be open; and in regard to one person she would be open. Ba.s.set had let her see that her treatment had cured him. At their last meeting he had been cold, almost unkind; he had left her to deal with Toft as she could. Still she owed him, if any one, the truth, and, were it only to set herself right in her own eyes, she must tell him. If the news did nothing else it would open the way for his return to the Gatehouse, and the telling would enable her to make the amende.

The letter was not written on that day nor the next. But on the fourth day after Audley's departure it arrived at Blore, and lay for an hour on the dusty hall table amid spuds and powder-flasks and old itineraries. There Mr. Colet found it and another letter, and removed the two for safety to the parlor, where litter of a similar kind struggled for the upper hand with piles of books and dog's-eared Quarterlies. The decay of the Ba.s.sets dated farther back than the decline of the Audleys, and the gabled house under the shadow of Weaver was little better, if something larger, than a farm-house. There had been a library, but Ba.s.set had taken the best books to the Gatehouse. And there were in the closed drawing-room, and in some of the bedrooms, old family portraits, bad for the most part; the best lay in marble in Blore Church. But in the parlor, which was the living-room, hung only paintings of fat oxen and prize sheep; and the garden which ran up to the walls of the house, and in summer was a flood of color, lay in these days dank and lifeless, ebbing away from bee-skips and chicken-coops. The park had been ploughed during the great war, and now pined in thin pasture. The whole of the valley was still Ba.s.set land, but undrained in the bottom and light on the slopes, it made no figure in a rent-roll. The present owner had husbanded the place, and paid off charges, and cleared the estate, but he had been able to do no more. The place was a poor man's place, though for miles round men spoke to the owner bareheaded. He was "Ba.s.set of Blore," as much a part of Staffordshire as Burton Bridge or the Barbeacon. The memories of the illiterate are long.

He had been walking the hill that morning with a dog and a gun, and between yearnings for the woman he loved, and longings for some plan of life, some object, some aim, he was in a most unhappy mood. At one moment he saw himself growing old, without the energy to help himself or others, still toying with trifles, the last and feeblest of his blood. At another he thought of Mary, and saw her smiling through the flowering hawthorn, or bending over a book with the firelight on her hair. Or again, stung by the lash of her reproaches he tried to harden himself to do something. Should he take the land into his own hands, and drain and fence and breed stock and be of use, were it only as a struggling farmer in his own district? Or should he make that plunge into public life to which Colonel Mottisfont had urged him and from which he shrank as a shivering man shrinks from an icy bath?

For there was the rub. Mary was right. He was a dreamer, a weakling, one in whom the strong pulse that had borne his forbears to the front beat but feebly. He was not equal to the hard facts of life. With what ease had Audley, whenever they had stood foot to foot, put him in the second place, got the better of him, outshone him!

Old Don pointed in vain. His master shot nothing, for he walked for the most part with his eyes on the turf. If he raised them it was to gaze at the hamlet lying below him in the valley, the old house, the ring of buildings and cottages, the church that he loved--and that like the woman he loved, reproached him with his inaction.

About two o'clock he turned homewards. How many more days would he will and not will, and end night by night where he had begun? In the main he was of even temper, but of late small things tried him, and when he entered the parlor and Colet rose at his entrance, he could not check his irritation.

"For heaven's sake, man, sit still!" he cried. "And don't get up every time I come in! And don't look at me like a dog! And don't ask me if I want the book you are reading!"

The curate stared, and muttered an apology. It was true that he did not wear the chain of obligation with grace.

"No, it is I who am sorry!" Ba.s.set replied, quickly repenting. "I am a churlish a.s.s! Get up when you like, and say what you like! But if you can, make yourself at home!"

Then he saw the two letters lying on the table. He knew Mary's writing at a glance, and he let it lie, his face twitching. He took up the other, made as if he would open it, then he threw it back again, and took Mary's to the window, where he could read it unwatched.

It was short.

"Dear Mr. Ba.s.set," she wrote, "I should be paying you a poor compliment if I pretended that what I am writing will not pain you. But I hope, and since our last meeting, I have reason to believe that that pain will not be lasting.