The Great House

by Stanley John Weyman

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.