It was Lord Audley, and foolish as the impulse to hide herself had been, she blessed it. Nothing pleasant, nothing good, could have come of their meeting; and into her thoughts of him had crept so much of distaste that she was glad that she had not met him in this lonely spot. She went on to the Iron Gate, and viewed for a few moments the desolate lawn and the long, gaunt front. Then, reflecting that if she turned back at once she might meet him, she took a side-path through the plantation, and emerged on the park at another point.

She was careful not to reach home until late in the day and then she learned that he had called, that he had waited, and that in the end Toft had seen him; and that he had departed in no good temper. "What Toft said to him," Mrs. Toft reported, "I know no more than the moon, but whatever it was his lordship marched off, Miss, as black as thunder."

After that nothing happened, and of the four at the Gatehouse Etruria alone was content. Mrs. Toft was uneasy about the future--what were they going to do?--and perplexed by Toft's mysterious fortune--how had he come by it? Toft himself was on the rack, looking for things to happen--and nothing happened. And Mary knew that she must take action. She could not stay at the Gatehouse, she could not remain as the guest either of Ba.s.set or of Lord Audley.

But she did not know where to go, and no suggestion reached her. At length she wrote, two days after Lord Audley's visit, to Quebec Street, to the house where she had stayed with her father many years before. It was the only address of the kind that she knew. But she received no answer, and her heart sank. The difficulty, small as it was, hara.s.sed her; she had no adviser, and ten times a day, to keep up her spirits, she had tell herself that she was independent, that she had eight thousand pounds, that the whole world was open to her, and that compared with the penniless girl who had lived on the upper floor of the Hotel Lambert she was fortunate!

But in the Hotel Lambert she had had work to do, and here she had none!

She thought of taking rooms in Riddsley, but Lord Audley was there and she shrank from meeting him. She would wait another week for the answer from London, and then, if none came, she must decide what she would do. But in her room that night the thought that Ba.s.set had abandoned her, that he no longer cared, no longer desired to come near her, broke her down. Of course, he was not to blame. He fancied her still engaged to her cousin and receiving from him all the advice, all the help, all the love, she needed. He fancied her happy and content, in no need of him. And, alas, there was the pinch. She had written to him to tell him of her engagement. She could not write to him to tell him that it was at an end!

And then, by the morrow's post, there came a long letter from Ba.s.set, and in the letter the whole astonishing, overwhelming story of the discovery of the doc.u.ment which John Audley had sought so long, and in the end so disastrously.

"No doubt," the writer added, "Lord Audley has made you acquainted with the facts, but I think it my duty as your uncle's executor to lay them before you in detail and also to advise you that in your interest and in view of the change in your position--and in Lord Audley's--which this imports, it is proper that you should have independent advice."

The blood ebbed and left Mary pale; it returned in a flood as with a bounding heart and shaking fingers she read and turned and re-read this letter. At length she grasped its meaning, and truly what astounding, what overwhelming news! What a shift of fortune! What a reversal of expectations! And how strangely, how singularly had all things shaped themselves to bring this about--were it true!

Unable to sit still, unable to control her excitement--and no wonder--she rose and paced the floor. If she were indeed Lady Audley! If this were indeed all hers! This dear house and the Great House! This which had seemed to its possessor so small, so meagre, so cramping an inheritance, but was to her fortune, an old name, a great place, a firm position in the world! A position that offered so many opportunities and so much power for good!

She walked the room with throbbing pulses, the letter now crushed in her hand, now smoothed out that she might a.s.sure herself of its meaning, might read again some word or some sentence, might resolve some doubt. Oh, it was a wonderful, it was a marvellous, it was an incredible turn of fortune! And presently her mind began to deal with and to sift the past. And, enlightened, she understood many of the things that had perplexed her, and read many of the riddles that had baffled her. And her cheeks burned, her heart was hot with indignation.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

THE DEED OF RENUNCIATION.

Ba.s.set moved in his chair. He was unhappy and ill at ease. He looked at the fire, he looked askance at Mary. "But do you mean," he said, "that you knew nothing about this until you had my letter?"

"Nothing," Mary answered, "not a word." She, too, found it more easy to look at the fire.

"You must have been very much surprised?"

"I was. It was for that reason that I asked you to bring me the papers--to bring me everything, so that I might see for myself how it was."

"I don't understand why Audley did not tell you. He said he would."

It was the question Mary had foreseen and dreaded. She had slept two nights upon the letter and given a long day's thought to it, and she had made up her mind what she would do and how she would do it. But between the planning and the doing there were pa.s.sages which she would fain have shunned, fain have omitted, had it been possible; and this was one of them. She saw that there was nothing else for it, however--the thing must be told, and told by her. She tried, and not without success, to command her voice. "He did not tell me," she said. "Indeed I have not seen him. And I ought to say, Mr. Ba.s.set, you ought to know in these circ.u.mstances--that the engagement between my cousin and myself is at an end."

He may have started--he might well be astonished, in view of the business which brought him there. But he did not speak, and Mary could not tell what effect it had on him. She only knew that the silence seemed age-long, the pause cruel, and that her heart was beating so loudly that it seemed to her that he must hear it. At last, "Do you mean," he asked, his voice m.u.f.fled and uncertain, "that it is all over between you?"

"It is quite over between us," she answered soberly. "It was a mistake from the beginning."

"When--when did he----"

"Oh, before this arose. Some time before this arose." She spoke lightly, but her cheeks were hot.

"He did not tell me."

"No?"

"No," Ba.s.set repeated. He spoke angrily, as if he felt this a grievance, but in no other way could he have masked his emotion. Perhaps he did not mask it altogether, for she was observing him--ah, how keenly was she observing him! "On the contrary, he led me to believe," he continued, "that things were as before between you, and that he would tell you this himself. It was for that reason that I let a week go by before I wrote to you."

"Just so," she said, squeezing her handkerchief into a ball, and telling herself that the worst was over now, the story told, that in another minute this would be done and past. "Just so, I quite understand. At any rate there is no longer any question of that, Mr. Ba.s.set. And now," briskly, "may I see this famous deed which is to do so much. You brought it with you, I hope?"

"Yes, I brought it," he answered heavily. He took a packet of papers from his breast-pocket, and it did not escape her--she was cooler now--that his fingers were not as steady as a man's fingers should be. The packet he brought out was tied about with old and faded green ribbon, and bore a docket on the outside. She looked at it with curiosity. That ribbon had been tied by a long-dead hand in the reign of Queen Anne! Those yellowish papers had lain in damp and darkness a hundred and forty years, that in the end they might take John Audley's life! "I brought them from the bank this afternoon," he explained. "They have been in the bank's custody since they were handed to me, and I must return them to the bank to-night."

"Everything depends upon them, I suppose?"

"Everything."

"But I thought that it was a deed--just one paper?" she said.

"The actual instrument is a deed. This one!" He took it from the series as he untied the packet. "The other papers are of value as corroboration. They are letters, original letters, bearing on the preparation of the agreement. They were found all together as they are now, and in the same order. I did not disclose the letters to Audley, or to his lawyer, because I had not then gone through them; nor was it necessary to disclose them. I have since examined them, and they provide ample proof of the genuineness of the deed."

"So that you think...?"

"I do not think that it can be contested. I am sure that it cannot--with success. And if it be admitted, your opponent's case is gone. It was practically common ground in the former suit that if this agreement could be produced and proved his claim fell to the ground. Yours remains. I do not suppose," Ba.s.set concluded, "that he will contest it, save as a matter of form."

"I am sorry for him," she said thoughtfully. And almost for the first time her eyes met his. But he was not responsive. He shrugged his shoulders. "He has had it long enough to feel the loss of it," she continued, still bidding for his sympathy. "May I look at that now--the deed?" She held out her hand.

He gave it to her. It was a folded sheet of parchment, yellow with age and not very large, perhaps ten inches square. Three or four seals of green wax on ribbon ends dangled from it. It was written all over in a fine and curious penmanship, its initial letter adorned with a portrait of Queen Anne; altogether a pretty and delicate thing, but small--so small, she thought, to effect so great a change, to carry, to wreck, to make the fortunes of a house!

She handled it gently, almost fearfully, with awe and a little distaste. She turned it, she read the signatures. They were clear but faint. The ink had turned brown.

"Peter Paravicini Audley," she murmured. "He must have signed it sadly, to save his wife, his cousin, a young girl, a girl of my age perhaps! To save her name!" There was a quaver in her voice. Ba.s.set moved uncomfortably.

"They are all dead," he said.

"Yes, they are all dead," she agreed. "And their joys and failings, hopes and fears--all dead! It seems a pity that this should live to betray them."

"Not a pity on your account."

"No. You are glad, of course?"

"That you should have your rights?" he said manfully. "Of course I am."

"And you congratulate me?" She rose and held out her hand. Her eyes were shining, there were tears in them, and her face was marvellously soft. "You will be the first, won't you, to congratulate me? You who have done so much for me, you who have been my friend through all? You who have brought me this? You will wish me joy?"

He was deeply moved; how deeply he could not hide from her, and her last doubt faded. He took her hand--his own was cold--but he could not speak. At last, "May you be very happy! It is my one wish, Lady Audley!"

She let his hand fall. "Thank you," she said gently. "I think that I shall be happy. And now--now," in a firmer tone, "will you do something for me, Mr. Ba.s.set? It is not much. Will you deal with Toft for me? You told me in your letter that he held my uncle's note for 800, to be paid in the event of the discovery of these papers? And that 300, already paid, might be set off against this?"

"That is so."

"The money should be paid, of course."

"I fear it must be paid."

"Will you see him and tell him that it shall be. I--I am fond of Etruria, but I am not so fond of Toft, and I would rather not--would you see him about this?"

"I quite understand," Ba.s.set answered. "Of course I will do it." They had both regained the ordinary plane of feeling and he spoke in his usual tone. "You would like me to see him now?"

"If you please."

He went from the room. There were other things that as executor he must arrange, and when he had dealt with Toft, and not without a hard word or two that went home, had settled that matter, he went round the house and gave the orders he had to give. The light was beginning to fail and shadows to fill the corners, and as he glanced into this room and that and viewed the long-remembered places and saw ghosts and heard the voices of the dead, he knew that he was taking leave of many things, of things that had made up a large part of his life.

And he had other thoughts hardly more cheering. Mary's engagement was broken off. But how? By whom? Had she freed herself? Or had Audley, immemor Divum, and little foreseeing the discovery that trod upon his threshold, freed her? And if so, why? He was in the dark as to this and as to all--her att.i.tude, her thoughts, her feelings. He knew only that while her freedom trebled the moment of the news he had brought, the gifts of fortune which that news laid at her feet, rose insuperable between them and formed a barrier he could not pa.s.s.

For he could never woo her now. Whatever dawn of hope crept quivering above the horizon--and she had been kind, ah, in that moment of softness and remembrance she had been kind!--he could never speak now.

The dusk was far advanced and firelight was almost the only light when, after half an hour's absence, he returned to the parlor. Mary was standing before the hearth, her slender figure darkly outlined against the blaze. She held the poker in her hand, and she was stooping forward; and something in her pose, something in the tense atmosphere of the room, drew his gaze--he never knew why--to the table on which he had left the papers. It was bare. He looked round, he could not see them, a cry broke from him. "Mary!"

"They don't burn easily," she said, a quaver of exultation and defiance in her tone. "Parchment is so hard to burn--it burns so slowly, though I made a good fire on purpose!"

"D--n!" he cried, and he was going to seize, he tried to seize her arm. But he saw the next moment that it was useless, he saw that it was too late. "Are you mad? Are you mad?" he cried. Frantically, he went down on his knees, he raked among the embers. But he knew that it was futile, he had known it before he knelt, and he stood up again with a gesture of despair. "My G--d!" he said. "Do you know what you have done? You have destroyed what cannot be replaced! You have ruined your claim! You must have been mad! Mad, to do it!"

"Why, mad? Because I do not wish to be Lady Audley?" she said, facing him calmly, with her hands behind her.

"Mad!" he repeated, bitter self-reproach in his voice. For he felt himself to blame, he felt the full burden of his responsibility. He had left the papers with her, the true value of which she might not have known! And she had done this dreadful, this fatal, this irreparable thing!

She faced his anger without a quiver. "Why, mad!" she repeated. She was quite at her ease now. "Because, having been jilted by my cousin, I do not wish for this common, this vulgar, this poor revenge? Because I will not stoop to the game he plays and has played? Because I will not take from him what is little to me who have not had it, but much, nay all, to him who has?"

"But your uncle?" he cried. He was striving desperately to collect himself, trying to see the thing all round and not only as she saw it, but in its consequences. "Your uncle, whose one aim, whose one object in life----"

"Was to be Lord Audley? Believe me," she replied gently, "he sees more clearly now. And he is dead."

"But there are still--those who come after you?"

"Will they be better, happier, more useful?" she answered. "Will they be less Audleys, with less of ancient blood running in their veins because of what I have done? Because I have refused to rake up this old, pitiful, forgotten stain, this scandal of Queen Elizabeth? No, a thousand times no! And do not think, do not think," she continued more soberly, "that I have acted in haste or on impulse. I have not had this out of my thoughts for a moment since I knew the truth. I have weighed, carefully weighed, the price, and as carefully decided to pay it. My duty? I can do it, I hope, as well in one station as another. For the rest there is only one who will lose by it"--she faced him bravely now--"only one who will have the right to blame me--ever."

"I may have no right----"

"No you have no right at present."

"Still----"

"When you have the right--when you have gained the right, if ever--you may blame me."

Was he deceived? Was it the fact or only his fancy, a mere will-o'-the-wisp inviting him to trouble that led him to imagine that she looked at him queerly? With a mingling of raillery and tenderness, with a tear and a smile, with something in her eyes that he had never seen in them before? With--with--but her face was in shadow, she had her back to the blaze that filled the room with dancing lights, and his thoughts were in a turmoil of confusion. "I wish I knew," he said in a low voice, "what you meant by that?"

"By what?"

"By what you have just said. Did you mean that now that he--now that Audley is out of the way, there was a chance for me?"

"A chance for you?" she repeated. She stared at him in seeming astonishment.

"Don't play with me!" he cried, advancing upon her. "You understand me? You understand me very well! Yes, or no, Mary?"

She did not flinch. "There is no chance for you," she answered slowly, still confronting him. "If there be a second chance for me----"

"Ah!"

"For me, Peter?" And with that her tone told him all, all there was to tell. "If you are willing to take me second-hand," she continued, with a tremulous laugh, "you may take me. I don't deserve it, but I know my own mind now. I have known it since the day my uncle died and I heard your step come through the hall. And if you are still willing?"

He did not answer her, but he took her. He held her to him, his heart too full for anything but a thankfulness beyond speech, while she, shaken out of her composure, trembled between tears and laughter. "Peter! Peter!" she said again and again. And once, "We are the same height, Peter!" and so showed him a new side of her nature which thrilled him with surprise and happiness.

That she brought him no t.i.tle, no lands, that by her own act she had flung away her inheritance and came to him almost empty-handed was no pain to him, no subject for regret. On the contrary, every word she had said on that, every argument she had used, came home to him now with double force. It had been a poor, it had been a common, it had been a pitiful revenge! It had mingled the sordid with the cup, it had cast the shadow of the Great House on their happiness. In that room in which they had shared their first meal on that far May morning, and where the light of the winter fire now shone on the wainscot, now brought life to the ruffed portraits above it, there was no question of name or fortune, or more or less.

So much so, that when Mrs. Toft came in with the tea she well-nigh dropped the tray in her surprise. As she said afterwards, "The sight of them two as close as chives in a barrel, I declare you might ha' knocked me down with a straw! G.o.d bless 'em!"

CHAPTER XL.

"LET US MAKE OTHERS THANKFUL"

A man can scarcely harbor a more bitter thought than that he has lost by foul play what fair play would have won for him. This for a week was Lord Audley's mood and position; for masterful as he was he owned the power of Nemesis, he felt the force of tradition, nor, try as he might, could he convince himself that in face of this oft-cited deed his chance of retaining the t.i.tle and property was anything but desperate. He made the one attempt to see Mary of which we know; and had he seen her he would have done his best to knot again the tie which he had cut. But missing her by a hair's breadth, and confronted by Toft who knew all, he had found even his courage unequal to a second attempt. The spirit in which Mary had faced the breach had shown his plan to be from the first a counsel of despair, and despairing he let her go. In a dark mood he sat down to wait for the next step on the enemy's part, firmly resolved that whatever form it might take he would contest the claim to the bitter end.

And Stubbs was scarcely in happier case. At the time, and face to face with Ba.s.set, he had borne up well, but the production of the fateful deed had none the less fallen on him with stunning effect. He appreciated--none better and more clearly now--what the effect of his easiness would have been had Lord Audley not been engaged to his cousin; nor did his negligence appear in a less glaring light because his patron was to escape its worst results. He foresaw that whatever befel he must suffer, and that the agency which his family had so long enjoyed--that, that at any rate was forfeit.

This was enough to make him a most unhappy, a most miserable man. But it did not stand alone. Everything seemed to him to be going wrong. All good things, public and private, seemed to be verging on their end. The world as he had known it for sixty years was crumbling about his ears. It was time that he was gone.

Certainly the days of that Protection with which he believed the welfare of the land to be bound up, were numbered. In the House Lord George and Mr. Disraeli--those strangest of bedfellows!--might rage, the old Protectionist party might foam, invective and sarcasm, taunt and sneer might rain upon the traitor as he sat with folded arms and hat drawn down to his eyes, rectors might fume and squires swear; the end was certain, and Stubbs saw that it was. Those rascals in the North, they and their greed and smoke, that stained the face of England, would win and were winning. He had saved Riddsley by nine--but to what end? What was one vote among so many? He thought of the nut-brown ale, the teeming stacks, the wagoner's home, Hard-by, a cottage chimney smokes From betwixt two aged oaks.

He thought of the sweet cow-stalls, the brook where he had bent his first pin, and he sighed. Half the country folk would be ruined, and Shoddy from Halifax and Bra.s.s from Bury would buy their lands and walk in gaiters where better men had foundered. The country would be full of new men--Peels!

Well, it would last his time. But some day there would rise another Buonaparte and they would find Cobden with his calico millennium a poor stay against starvation, his lean and flashy songs a poor subst.i.tute for wheat. It was all money now; the kindly feeling, the Christmas dole, the human ties, where father had worked for father and son for son, and the thatch had covered three generations--all these were past and gone. He found one fault, it is true, in the past. He had one regret, as he looked back. The laborers' wage had been too low; they had been left outside the umbrella of Protection. He saw that now; there was the weak point in the case. "That's where they hit us," he said more than once, "the foundation was too narrow." But the knowledge came too late.

Naturally he buried his private mishap--and my lord's--in silence. But his mien was changed. He was an altered, a shaken man. When he pa.s.sed through the streets, he walked with his chin on his breast, his shoulders bowed. He shunned men's eyes. Then one day Ba.s.set entered his office and for a long time was closeted with him.

When he left Stubbs left also, and his bearing was so subtly changed as to impress all who met him; while Farthingale, stepping out in his absence, drank his way through three brown brandies in a silence which grew more portentous with every gla.s.s. At The b.u.t.terflies, whither the lawyer hastened, Audley met him with moody and repellent eyes, and in the first flush of the news which the lawyer brought refused to believe it. It was not only that the tidings seemed too good to be true, the relief from the nightmare which weighed upon him too great to be readily accepted. But the thing that Mary had done was so far out of his ken and so much beyond his understanding that he could not rise to it, or credit it. Even when he at last took in the truth of the story he put upon it the interpretation that was natural to him.

"It was a forgery!" he cried with an oath. "You may depend upon it, it was a forgery and they discovered it."

But Stubbs would not agree to that. Stubbs was very stout about it, and giving details of his conversation with Ba.s.set gradually persuaded his patron. In one way, indeed, the news coming through him wrought a benefit which neither Mary nor Ba.s.set had foreseen. It once more commended him to Audley, and by and by healed the breach which had threatened to sever the long connection between the lawyer and Beaudelays. If Stubbs's opinion of my lord could never again be wholly what it had been, if Audley still had hours of soreness when the other's negligence recurred to his mind, at least they were again at one as to the future. They were once more free to look forward to a time when a marriage with Lady Adela, or her like, would rebuild the fortunes of the Great House. Of Audley, whose punishment if short had been severe, one thing at least may be ventured with safety--and beyond this we need not inquire; that to the end his first, last, greatest thought would be--himself!