The Great House

by Stanley John Weyman

“True, worse luck. Your brother is retiring, I hear?”

“Yes, he has just horse sense, has Jack. He won’t vote against Peel. His lad has less and will take his place and vote old Tory. But there, I mustn’t abuse the family.”

They had still half an hour to spend together before Basset got out at Stafford. He had time to discover that the soldier was faced by a problem not unlike his own. His service over, he had to consider what he would do. “All I know,” the Colonel said breezily, “is that I won’t do nothing. Some take to preaching, others to Bath, but neither will suit me. But I’ll not drift. I kept from brandy pawnee out there, and I am going to keep from drift here. For you, you’re a young man, Basset, and a hundred things are open to you. I am over the top of the hill. But I’ll do something.”

“You have done something to-day,” Basset said. “You have done me good.”

Later he had time to think it over during the long journey from Stafford to Blore. He drove by twisting country roads, under the gray walls of Chartley, by Uttoxeter and Rocester. Thence he toiled uphill to the sterile Derbyshire border, the retreat of old families and old houses. He began to think that he had gained some ideas with which he could sympathize, ideas which were at one with Mary Audley’s burning desire to help, while they did not clash with old prejudices. If he threw himself into Peel’s cause, he would indeed be seen askance by many. He would have to put himself forward after a fashion that gave him the goose-flesh when he thought of it. A landowner, he would have to go against the land. But he would not feel, in his darker moods, that he was the dupe of cranks and fanatics. He saw Peel as Mottisfont had pictured him, as a man putting all behind him except the right; and his heart warmed to the picture. Many would fall away, few would be staunch. From this ship, as from every sinking ship, the rats would flee. But so much the stronger was the call.

The result was that the Peter Basset who descended at the porch of the old gabled house, that sat low and faced east in the valley under Weaver, was a more hopeful man than he who had entered the train at Euston. A purpose, a plan—he had gained these, and the hope that springs from them.

He had barely doffed his driving-coat, however, before his thoughts were swept in another direction. On the hall table lay two letters. He took up one. It was from Colet and written in deep dejection. “The barber was a Tory and had given him short notice. Feeling ran high in the town, and other lodgings were not to be had. The Bishop had supported the rector’s action, and he saw no immediate prospect of further work.” He did not ask for shelter, but it was plain that he was at his wit’s end, and more than a little surprised by the storm which he had raised.

Basset threw down the letter. “He shall come here,” he thought. “What is it to me whom he marries?” Many solitary hours spent in the streets of London had gone some way towards widening Peter’s outlook.

He took up the second letter. It was from John Audley, and before he had read three lines, he rang the bell and ordered that the post-chaise which had brought him from Stafford should be kept: he would want it in the morning. John Audley wrote that he had been very ill—he was still in bed. He must see Basset. The matter was urgent, he had something to tell him. He hinted that if he did not come quickly it might be too late.

Basset could not refuse to go; summoned after this fashion, he must go. But he tried to believe that he was not glad to go. He tried to believe that the excitement with which he looked forward to the journey had to do with his uncle. It was in vain; he knew that he tricked himself. Or if he did not know this then, his eyes were opened next day, when, after walking up the hill to spare the horses—and a little because he shrank at the last from the meeting—he came in sight of the Gatehouse, and saw Mary Audley standing in the doorway. The longing that gripped him then, the emotion that unmanned him, told him all. It was of Mary he had been thinking, towards Mary he had been travelling, of her work it was that the miles had seemed leagues! He was not cured. He was not in the way to be cured. He was the same love-sick fool whom she had driven from her with contumely an age—it seemed an age, ago.