The Great House

The other swore. At the outset he had scarcely felt his poverty. But he was beginning to feel it. There were moments such as this when his withers were wrung; when the consequence which the title had brought failed to soften the hardships of his lot-a poor peer with a vast house. Had he tried to keep the Great House in repair it would have swallowed the whole income of the peerage-a sum which, as it was, barely sufficed for his needs as a bachelor.

Already Stubbs had hinted that there was one way out-a rich marriage. And Audley had received the hint with the easiness of a man who was in no haste to marry and might, likely enough, marry where money was. But once or twice during the last few days, which they had been spending in a review of the property, my lord had shown irritation. When an old farmer had said to his face, that he must bring home a bride with a good fat chest, "and his lordship would be what his forbears had been," the great man, in place of a laughing answer, had turned glumly away.

Presently the two halted at the door of the north wing. Stubbs unlocked it and pushed it open. They entered an ante-room of moderate size.

"Faugh!" Audley cried. "Open a window! Break one if necessary."

Stubbs succeeded in opening one, and they passed on into the great hall, a room sixty feet long and open to the roof, a gallery running round it. A withdrawing-room of half the length opened at one end, and midway along the inner side a short passage led to a second hall-the servants' hall-the twin of this. Together they formed an H, and were probably a Jacobean copy of a Henry the Eighth building. A long table, some benches, and a score of massive chairs furnished the room. Between the windows hung a few ragged pictures, and on either side of the farther door a piece of tapestry hung askew.

Audley looked about him. In this room eighty years before the old lord had held his revels. The two hearths had glowed with logs, a hundred wax-lights had shone on silver and glass and the rosy tints of old wine. Guests in satin and velvet, henchmen and led captains, had filled it with laughter and jest, and song. With a foot on the table they had toasted the young king-not stout Farmer George, not the old, mad monarch, but the gay young sovereign. To-day desolation reigned. The windows gray with dirt let in a grisly light. All was bare and cold and rusty-the webs of spiders crossed the very hearths. The old lord, mouldering in his coffin, was not more unlike that Georgian reveller than was the room of to-day unlike the room of eighty years before.

Perhaps the thought struck his descendant. "God! What a charnel-house!" he cried. "To think that men made merry in this room. It's a vault, it's a grave! Let us get away from it. What's through, man?"

They passed into the withdrawing-room, where panels of needlework of Queen Anne's time, gloomy with age, filled the wall spaces, and a few pieces of furniture crouched under shrouds of dust. As they stood gazing two rats leapt from a screen of Cordovan leather that lay in tatters on the floor. The rats paused an instant to stare at the intruders, then fled in panic.

The younger man advanced to one of the panels in the wall. "A hunting scene?" he said. "These may be worth money some day."

The lawyer looked doubtful. "It will be a long day first, I am afraid," he said. "It's funereal stuff at the best, my lord."

"At any rate it is out of reach of the rats," Lord Audley answered. He cast a look of distaste at the shreds of the screen. He touched them with his foot. A third rat sprang out and fled squeaking to covert. "Oh, d-n!" he said. "Let us see something else."

The lawyer led the way upstairs to the ghostly, echoing gallery that ran round the hall. They glanced into the principal guest-room, which was over the drawing-room. Then they went by the short passage of the H to the range of bedrooms over the servants' hall. For the most part they opened one from the other.

"The parents slept in the outer and the young ladies in the inner," Audley said, smiling. "Gad! it tells a tale of the times!"

Stubbs opened the nearest door and recoiled. "Take care, my lord!" he said. "Here are the bats!"

"Faugh! What a smell! Can't you keep them out?"

"We tried years ago-I hate them like poison-but it was of no use. They are in all these upper rooms."

They were. For when Stubbs, humping his shoulders as under a shower, opened a second door, the bats streamed forth in a long silent procession, only to stream back again as silently. In a dusky corner of the second room a cluster, like a huge bunch of grapes, hung to one of the rafters. Now and again a bat detached itself and joined the living current that swept without a sound through the shadowy rooms.

"There's nothing beyond these rooms?"

"No."

"Then let us go down. Rats and bats and rottenness! Non sine sole volo! We may not, but the bats do. Let us go down! Or no! I was forgetting. Where is the Muniment Room?"

"This way, my lord," Stubbs replied, turning with suspicious readiness-the bats were his pet aversion. "I brought a candle and some of the new lucifers. This way, my lord."

He led the way down to a door set in a corner of the ante-room. He unlocked this and they found themselves at the foot of a circular staircase. On the farther side of the stairfoot was another door which led, Stubbs explained, into the servants' quarters. "This turret," he added, "is older even than the wing, and forms no part of the H. It was retained because it supplied a second staircase, and also a short cut from the servants' hall to the entrance. The Muniment Room is over this lobby on the first floor. Allow me to go first, my lord."

The air was close, but not unpleasant, and the stairs were clean. On the first floor a low-browed door, clamped and studded with iron, showed itself. Stubbs halted before it. There was a sputter. A light shone out. "Wonderful invention!" he said. "Electric telegraph not more wonderful, though marvellous invention that, my lord."

"Yes," the other answered dryly. "But-when were you here last, Stubbs?"

"Not for a twelvemonth, my lord."

"Leave your candle?"

"No."

"Then what's that?" The young man pointed to something that lay in the angle between a stair and the wall.

"God bless my soul!" the lawyer cried. "It's a candle."

"And clean. It has not been there a week. Who has been here, my friend?"

Stubbs reflected. "No one with my authority," he said. "But if the devil himself has been here," he continued, stoutly recovering himself, "he can have done no harm. I can prove that in five minutes, my lord-if you will kindly hold the light." He inserted a large key in the lock, and with an effort, he shot back the bolts. He pushed open the door and signed to Lord Audley to enter.

He did so, and Stubbs followed. They stood and looked about them. They were in a whitewashed chamber twelve feet square, clean, bare, empty. The walls gave back the light so that the one candle lit the place perfectly.

"It's as good as air-tight," Stubbs said with pride. "And you see, my lord, we swept it as bare as the palm of my hand. I can answer for it that not a shred of paper or a piece of wax was left."

Audley, gazing about him, seemed satisfied. His face relaxed. "Yes," he said, "you could not overlook anything in a place like this. I'm glad I've seen it."

He was turning to go when a thought struck him. He lowered the light and scanned the floor. "All the same, somebody has been here!" he exclaimed. "There's one of the things you are so pleased with-a lucifer!"

Stubbs stooped and looked. "A lucifer?" he repeated. He picked up the bit of charred wood and examined it. "Now how did that come here? I never used one till six months ago."

My lord frowned. "Who is it?" he asked.

"Some one, I fear, who has had a key made," the agent answered, shaking his head,

"I can see that for myself. But has he learned anything?"

Stubbs stared. "There's nothing to learn, my lord," he said. "You can see that. Whoever he is, he has cracked the nut and found no kernel!"

The young man looked round him again. He nodded. "I suppose so," he said. But he seemed ill at ease and inclined to find fault. He threw the light of the candle this way and that, as if he expected the clean white walls to tell a tale. "What's that?" he asked suddenly. "A crack? Or what?"

Stubbs looked, passed his hand over the mark on the wall, effaced it. "No, my lord, a cobweb," he said. "Nothing."

There was no more to be seen, yet Audley seemed loth to go. At length he turned and went out. Stubbs closed and locked the door behind them, then he took the candle from his lordship and invited him to go down before him. Still the young man hesitated. "I suppose we can learn nothing more?" he said.

"Nothing, my lord," Stubbs answered. "To tell you the truth, I have long thought Mr. John mad, and it is possible that his madness has taken this turn. But I am equally sure that there is nothing for him to discover, if he spends every day of his life here."

"All the same I don't like it," the owner objected. "Whoever has been here has no right here. It is odd that I had some notion of this before we came. You may depend upon it that this was why he fixed himself at the Gatehouse."

"He may have had something of the sort in his mind," Stubbs admitted. "But I don't think so, my lord. More probably, being here and idle, he took to wandering in for lack of something to do."

"And by and by, had a key made and strayed into the Muniment Room! No, that won't do, Stubbs. And frankly there should be closer supervision here. It should not have remained for me to discover this."

He began to descend, leaving Stubbs to digest the remark; who for his part thought honestly that too much was being made of the matter. Probably the intruder was John Audley; the man had a bee in his bonnet, and what more likely than that he should be taken with a craze to haunt the house which he believed was his own? But the agent was too prudent to defend himself while the young man's vexation was fresh. He followed him down in silence, and before many minutes had passed, they were in the open air, and had locked the door behind them.

Clouds hung low on the tops of the trees, mist veiled the view, and a small rain was falling on the wet lawn. Nevertheless the young man moved into the open. "Come this way," he said.

The lawyer turned up the collar of his coat and followed him unwillingly. "Where does he get in?" my lord asked. It seemed as if the longer he dwelt on the matter the less he liked it. "Not by that door-the lock is rusty. The key had shrieked in it. Probably he enters by one of the windows in the new part."

He walked towards the middle of the lawn and Stubbs, thankful that he wore Wellington boots, followed him.

The lawyer thought that he had never seen the house wear so dreary an aspect as it wore under the gray weeping sky. But his lordship was more practical. "These windows look the most likely," he said after a short survey: and he dragged his unwilling attendant to the point he had marked.

A nearer view strengthened his suspicions. On the sill of one of the windows were scratches and stains. "You see?" he said. "It should not have been left to me to discover this! Probably John Audley comes from the Gatehouse by the Yew Walk." He turned to measure the distance with his eye, the distance which divided the spot from the Iron Gate. "That's it," he said, "he comes-"

Then, "Good G-d!" he muttered. "Look! Look!" Stubbs looked. They both looked. Beyond the lawn, on the farther side of the iron grille and clinging to it with both hands, a man stood bareheaded under the rain. Whether he had come uncovered, or his hat had been jerked from him by some movement caused by their appearance, they could not tell; nor how long he had stood thus, gazing at them through the bars. But they could see that his eyes never wavered, that his hands gripped the iron, and the two knew by instinct that in the intensity of his hate, the man was insensible alike to the rain that drenched him, and to the wind that blew out the skirts of his thin black coat.

Even Stubbs held his breath. Even he felt that there was something uncanny and ominous in the appearance. For the gazer was John Audley.

CHAPTER XVII

TO THE RESCUE

Stubbs was the first to collect himself, but a minute elapsed before he spoke. Then, "He must be mad," he cried, "mad, to expose himself to the weather at his age. If I had not seen it, I couldn't believe it!"

"I suppose it is John Audley?"

"Yes." Then raising his voice, "My lord! I don't think I would go to him now!"

But Audley was already striding across the lawn towards the gate. The lawyer hesitated, gave way, and followed him.

They were within twenty paces of the silent watcher when he moved-up to that time he might have been a lay figure. He shook one hand in the air, as if he would beat them off, then he turned and walked stiffly away. Half a dozen steps took him out of sight. The Yew Walk swallowed him.

But, quickly as he vanished, the lawyer had had time to see that he staggered. "I fear, my lord, he is ill," he said. "He will never reach the Gatehouse in that state. I had better follow him."

"Why the devil did he come here?" Audley retorted savagely. The watcher's strange aspect, his face, white against the dark yews, his stillness, his gesture, a something ominous in all, had shaken him. "If he had stopped at home-"

"Still-"

"D-n him, it's his affair!"

"Still we cannot leave him if he has fallen, my lord," Stubbs replied with decision. And without waiting for his employer's assent he tried the gate. It was locked, but in a trice he found the key on his bunch, turned it, and pushed back the gate. Audley noticed that it moved silently on its hinges.

Stubbs, the gate open, began to feel ashamed of his impulse. Probably there was nothing amiss after all. But he had hardly looked along the path before he uttered a cry, and hurrying forward, stooped over a bundle of clothes that lay in the middle of the walk. It was John Audley. Apparently he had tripped over a root and lain where he had fallen.

Stubbs's cry summoned the other, who followed him through the gate, to find him on his knees supporting the old man's head. The sight recalled Audley to his better self. The mottled face, the staring eyes, the helpless limbs shocked him. "Good G-d!" he cried, "you were right, Stubbs! He might have died if we had left him."

"He would have died," Stubbs answered. "As it is-I am not sure." He opened the waistcoat, felt for the beating of the heart, bent his ear to it. "No, I don't think he's gone," he said, "but the heart is feeble, very feeble. We must have brandy! My lord, you are the more active. Will you go to the Gatehouse-there is no nearer place-and get some? And something to carry him home! A hurdle if there is nothing better, and a couple of men?"

"Right!" Audley cried.

"And don't lose a minute, my lord! He's nearly gone."

Audley stripped off his overcoat. "Wrap this about him!" he said. And before the other could answer he had started for the Gatehouse, at a pace which he believed that he could keep up.

Pad, pad, my lord ran under the yew trees, swish, swish across the soaking grass, about the great Butterfly. Pad, pad, again through the gloom under the yews! Not too fast, he told himself-he was a big man and he must save himself. Now he saw before him the opening into the park, and the light falling on the pale turf. And then, at a point not more than twenty yards short of the open ground, he tripped over a root, tried to recover himself, struck another root, and fell.

The fall shook him, but he was young, and he was quickly on his feet. He paused an instant to brush the dirt from his hands and knees; and it was during that instant that his inbred fear of John Audley, and the certainty that if John Audley died he need fear no more, rose before him.

Yes, if he died-this man who was even now plotting against him-there was an end of that fear! There was an end of uneasiness, of anxiety, of the alarm that assailed him in the small hours, of the forebodings that showed him stripped of title and income and consequence. Stripped of all!

Five seconds passed, and he still stood, engaged with his hands. Five more; it was his knees he was brushing now-and very carefully. Another five-the sweat broke out on his brow though the day was cold. Twenty seconds, twenty-five! His face showed white in the gloom. And still he stood. He glanced behind him. No one could see him.

But the movement discovered the man to himself, and with an oath he broke away. He thrust the damning thought from him, he sprang forward. He ran. In ten strides he was in the open park, and trotting steadily, his elbows to his sides, across the sward. The blessed light was about him, the wind swept past his ears, the cleansing rain whipped his face. Thank God, he had left behind him the heavy air and noisome scent of the yews. He hated them. He would cut them all down some day.

For in a strange way he associated them with the temptation which had assailed him. And he was thankful, most thankful, that he had put that temptation from him-had put it from him, when most men, he thought, would have succumbed to it. Thank God, he had not! The farther he went, indeed, the better he felt. By the time he saw the Gatehouse before him, he was sure that few men, exposed to that temptation, would have overcome it. For if John Audley died what a relief it would be! And he had looked very ill; he had looked like a man at the point of death. The brandy could not reach him under-well, under half an hour. Half an hour was a long time, when a man looked like that. "I'll do my best," he thought. "Then if he dies, well and good. I've always been afraid of him."

He did not spare himself, but he was not in training, and he was well winded when he reached the Gatehouse. A last effort carried him between the Butterflies, and he halted on the flags of the courtyard. A woman, whose skirts were visible, but whose head and shoulders were hidden by an umbrella, was standing in the doorway on his left, speaking to some one in the house. She heard his footsteps and turned.

"Lord Audley!" she exclaimed-for it was Mary Audley. Then with a woman's quickness, "You have come from my uncle?" she cried. "Is he ill?"

Audley nodded. "I am come for some brandy," he gasped.

She did not waste a moment. She sped into the house, and to the dining-room. "I had missed him," she cried over her shoulder. "The man-servant is away. I hoped he might be with him."

In a trice she had opened a cellarette and taken from it a decanter of brandy. Then she saw that he could not carry this at any speed, and she turned to the sideboard and took a wicker flask from a drawer. With a steady hand and without the loss of a minute-he found her presence of mind admirable-she filled this.

As she corked it, Mrs. Toft appeared, wiping her hands on her apron. "Dear, dear, miss," she said, "is the master bad? But it's no wonder when he, that doesn't quit the fire for a week together, goes out like this? And Toft away and all!" She stared at his lordship. Probably she knew him by sight.

"Will you get his bed warmed, Mrs. Toft," Mary answered. She gave Lord Audley the flask. "Please don't lose a moment," she urged. "I am following-oh yes, I am. But you will go faster."

She had not a thought, he saw, for the disorder of her dress, or for her hair dishevelled by the wind, and scarce a thought for him. He decided that he had never seen her to such advantage, but it was no time for compliments, nor was she in the mood for them. Without more he nodded and set off on his return journey-he had not been in the house three minutes. By and by he looked back, and saw that Mary was following on his heels. She had snatched up a sun-bonnet, discarded the umbrella, and, heedless of the rain, was coming after him as swiftly and lightly as Atalanta of the golden apple. "Gad, she's not one of the fainting sort!" he reflected; and also that if he had given way to that d-d temptation he could not have looked her in the face. "As it is," his mind ran, "what are the odds the old boy's not dead when we get there? If he is-I am safe! If he is not, I might do worse than think of her. It would checkmate him finely. More" – he looked again over his shoulder-"she's a fine mover, by Gad, and her figure's perfect! Even that rag on her head don't spoil her!" Whereupon he thought of a certain Lady Adela with whom he was very friendly, who had political connections and would some day have a plum. The comparison was not, in the matter of fineness and figure, to Lady Adela's advantage. Her lines were rather on the Flemish side.

Meanwhile Mary was feeling anything but an Atalanta. Wind and rain and wet grass, loosened hair and swaying skirts do not make for romance. But in her anxiety she gave small thought to these. Her one instinct was to help. With all his oddity her uncle had been kind to her, and she longed to show him that she was grateful. And he was her one relative. She had no one else in the world. He had given her what of home he had, and ease, and a security which she had never known before. Were she to lose him now-the mere fancy spurred her to fresh exertions, and in spite of a pain in her side, in spite of clinging skirts, and shoes that threatened to leave her feet, she pushed on. She was not far behind Audley when he reached the Yew Walk.

She saw him plunge into it, she followed, and was on the scene not many seconds later. When she caught sight of the little group kneeling about the prostrate man, that sense of tragedy, and of the inevitable, which assails at such a time, shook her. The thing always possible, never expected, had happened at last.

Then the coolness which women find in these emergencies returned. She knelt between the men, took the insensible head on her arm, held out her other hand for the cup. "Has he swallowed any?" she asked, taking command of the situation.

"No," Toft answered-and she became aware that the man with Lord Audley was the servant.

She waited for no more, she tilted the cup, and by some knack she succeeded where Toft had failed. A little of the spirit was swallowed. She improvised a pillow and laid the head down on it. "The lower the better," she murmured. She felt the hands and began to rub one. "Rub the other," she said to Toft. "The first thing to do is to get him home! Have you a carriage? How near can you bring it, Lord Audley?"

"We can bring it to the park at the end of the walk," he answered. "My agent has gone to fetch it."

"Will you hasten it?" she replied. "Toft will stay with me. And bring something, please, on which you can carry him to it."

"At once," Audley answered, and he went off in the direction of the Great House.

"I've seen him as bad before, Miss," Toft said. "I found that he had gone out without his hat and I followed him, but I could not trace him at once. I don't think you need feel alarmed."

Certainly the face had lost its mottled look, the eyes were now shut, the limbs lay more naturally. "If he were only at home!" Mary answered. "But every moment he is exposed to the cold is against him. He must be wet through."

She induced the patient to swallow another mouthful of brandy, and with their eyes on his face the two watched for the first gleam of consciousness. It came suddenly. John Audley's eyes opened. He stared at them.

His mind, however, still wandered. "I knew it!" he muttered. "They could not be there and I not know it! But the wall! The wall is thick-thick and-" He was silent again.

The rambling mind is to those who are not wont to deal with it a most uncanny thing, and Mary looked at Toft to see what he made of it. But the servant had eyes only for his master. He was gazing at him with an absorbed face.

"Ay, a thick wall!" the sick man murmured. "They may look and look, they'll not see through it." He was silent a moment, then, "All bare!" he murmured. "All bare!" He chuckled faintly, and tried to raise himself, but sank back. "Fools!" he whispered, "fools, when in ten minutes if they took out a brick-"

The servant cut him short. "Here's his lordship!" he cried. He spoke so sharply that Mary looked up in surprise, wondering what was amiss. Lord Audley was within three or four paces of them-the carpet of yew leaves had deadened his footsteps. "Here's his lordship, sir!" Toft repeated in the same tone, his mouth close to John Audley's ear.