The Great House

by Stanley John Weyman

Basset’s view of Toft, if it did not hit, came very near the mark. For many years the man had served his master with loyalty, the relations between them being such as were common in days when servants stayed long in a place and held themselves a part of the family. The master had been easy, the man had had no ambitions beyond those of his fellows, and no temptations except those which turned upon the cellar-book.

But a year before Mary Audley’s arrival two things had happened. First the curate had fallen in love with Etruria, and the fact had become known to her father, to whom the girl was everything. Her refinement, her beauty, her goodness were his secret delight. And the thought that she might become a lady, that she might sit at the table at which he served had taken hold of the austere man’s mind and become a passion. He was ready to do anything and to suffer anything to bring this about. Nor was he deceived when Etruria put the offer aside. She was nothing if not transparent, and he was too fond of her not to see that her happiness was bound up with the man who had stooped to woo her.

He was not blind to the difficulties or to the clergyman’s poverty. But he saw that Colet, poor as he was, could raise his daughter in the social scale; and he spent long hours in studying how the marriage might be brought about. He hugged the matter to him, and brooded over it, but he never discovered his thoughts or his hopes either to his wife, or to Etruria.

Then one day the sale of a living happened to be discussed in his presence, and as he went, solemn and silent, round the table he listened. He learned that livings could be bought. He learned that the one in question, with its house and garden and three hundred a year, had fetched a thousand guineas, and from that day Toft’s aim was by hook or crook to gain a thousand guineas. He revelled in impossible dreams of buying a living, of giving it to Etruria, and of handing maid and dowry to the fortunate man who was to make her a lady.

There have been more sordid and more selfish ambitions.

But a thousand guineas was a huge sum to the manservant. True, he had saved a hundred and twenty pounds, and for his position in life he held himself a rich man. But a thousand guineas? He turned the matter this way and that, and sometimes he lost hope, and sometimes he pinned his faith to a plan that twenty-four hours showed to be futile. All the time his wife who lay beside him, his daughter who waited on him, his master on whom he waited, were as far from seeing into his mind as if they had lived in another planet.

Then the second thing happened. He surprised, wholly by chance, a secret which gave him a hold over John Audley. Under other circumstances he might have been above using the advantage; as it was, he was tempted. He showed his hand, a sum of four hundred pounds was named; for a week he fancied that he had performed half his task. Then his master explained with a gentle smile that to know and to prove were two things, and that whereas Toft had for a time been able to do both, John Audley had now destroyed the evidence. The master had in fact been too sly for the man, and Toft found himself pretty well where he had been. In the end Audley thought it prudent to give him a hundred pounds, which did but whet his desire and sharpen his wits.

For he had now tasted blood. He had made something by a secret. There might be others to learn. He kept his eyes open, and soon he became aware of his master’s disappearances. He tracked him, he played the spy, he discovered that John Audley was searching for something in the Great House. The words that the old man let fall, while half-conscious in the Yew Walk, added to his knowledge, and at the same time scared him. A moment later, and Lord Audley might have known as much as he knew—and perhaps more!

For he did not as yet know all, and it was in the attempt to complete his knowledge that Mary had caught him listening at the door. The blow was a sharp one. He was still so far unspoiled, still so near the old Toft that he could not bear that his wife and daughter should learn the depth to which he had fallen. And John Audley? What would he do, if Mary told him?

Toft could not guess. He knew that his master was barely sane, if he was sane; but he knew also that he was utterly inhuman. John Audley would put him and his family to the door without mercy if that seemed to him the safer course. And that meant an end of all his plans for Etruria, for Colet, for them all.