“I am afraid I could not afford such a marriage,” Audley said coldly. “But I am to you. As for this news—” he flicked the newspaper that lay on the table—“it may be true or it may not. If it is true, it will alter many things. We shall see. If you hear anything fresh let me know.”
Stubbs said that he would and took his leave, wondering a little, but having weightier things on his mind. He sought his home by back ways, for he did not wish to meet Dr. Pepper or Bagenal the brewer, or even the saddler, until he had considered what face he would put on Peel’s latest move. He felt that his reputation for knowledge and sagacity was at stake.
Meanwhile his employer, left alone, fell to considering, not what face he should put upon the matter, but how he might at this crisis turn the matter and the borough to the best account. Certainly Stubbs was discouraging, but Stubbs was a fool. It was all very well for him; he drew his wages either way. But a man of the world did not cling to the credit of owning a borough for the mere name of the thing. If he were sensible he looked to get something more from it than that. And it was upon occasions such as this that the something more was to be had by those who knew how to go about the business.
Here, in fact, was the moment, if he was the man.
CHAPTER XX
PETER’S RETURN
Not a word or hint of John Audley’s illness had come to Basset’s ears. At the time of the alarm he had been in London, and it was not until some days later that he took his seat in the morning train to return to Stafford. On his way to town, and for some days after his arrival, he had been buoyed up by plans, nebulous indeed, but sufficient. He came back low in his mind and in poor spirits. The hopes, if not the aspirations, which Colet’s enthusiasm had generated in him had died down, and the visit to Francis Place had done nothing to revive them.
Some greatness in the man, a largeness of ideas, an echo of the revolutionary days when the sanest saw visions, Basset was forced to own. But the two stood too far apart, the inspired tailor and the country squire, for sympathy. They were divided by too wide a gulf of breeding and prejudice to come together. Basset was not even a Radical, and his desire to improve things, and to better the world, fell very far short of the passion of humanity which possessed the aged Republican—the man who for half a century had been so forward in all their movements that his fellows had christened him the “Old Postilion.”
Nothing but disappointment, therefore, had come of the meeting. The two had parted with a little contempt on the one side, a sense of failure on the other. If a man could serve his neighbors only in fellowship with such, if the cause which for a few hours had promised to fill the void left by an unhappy love, could be supported only by men who held such opinions, then Basset felt that the thing was not for him. For six or seven days he went up and down London at odds with himself and his kind, and ever striving to solve a puzzle, the answer to which evaded him. Was the hope that he might find a mission and found a purpose on Colet’s lines, was it just the desire to set the world right that seized on young men fresh from college? And if this were so, if this were all, what was he to do? Whither was he to turn? How was he going to piece together the life which Mary had broken? How was he going to arrange his future so that some thread of purpose might run through it, so that something of effort might still link together the long bede-roll of years?
He found no answer to the riddle. And it was in a gloomy, unsettled mood, ill-content with himself and the world, that he took his seat in the train. Alas, he could not refrain from recalling the May morning on which he had taken his seat in the same train with Mary. How ill had he then appreciated her company, how little had he understood, how little had he prized his good fortune! He who was then free to listen to her voice, to meet her eyes, to follow the changes of her mood from grave to gay! To be to her—all that he could! And that for hours, for days, for weeks!
He swore under his breath and sat back in the shadow of the corner. And a man who entered late, and saw that he kept his eyes shut, fancied that he was ill; and when he muttered a word under his breath, asked him if he spoke.