The Great House

by Stanley John Weyman

Something in his tone, and in his thought for her, brought old times to Mary’s mind and the blood to her pale cheek. She did not say no, but she would not go to bed. She made Etruria come to her, and the two girls sat in the parlor listening and waiting, moving only when it was necessary to snuff the candles. It was a grim vigil. An hour passed, two hours. At length they caught the first distant murmur, the tread of men who moved slowly and heavily under a burden—there are few who have not at one time or another heard that sound. Little by little the shuffling feet, the subdued orders, the jar of a stumbling bearer, drew nearer, became more clear. A gust of wind swept through the hall, and moaned upwards through the ancient house. The candles on the table flickered. And still the two sat spell-bound, clasping cold hands, as the unseen procession passed over the threshold, and for the last time John Audley came home to sleep amid his books—heedless now of right or claim, or rank or blood.

* * * * *

A few minutes later Basset entered the parlor. His face betrayed his fatigue, and his first act was to go to the sideboard and drink a glass of wine. Mary saw that his hand shook as he raised the glass, and gratitude for what he had done for her brought the tears to her eyes. He stood a moment, leaning in utter weariness against the wall—he had ridden far that day. And Mary had been no woman if she had not drawn comparisons.

Opportunity had served him, and had not served the other. Nor, had her betrothed been here, could he have helped her in this pinch. He could not have taken Basset’s place, nor with all the will in the world could he have done what Basset had done.

That was plain. Yet deep down in her there stirred a faint resentment, a complaint hardly acknowledged. Audley was not here, but he might have been. It was his doing that she had not told her uncle, and that John Audley had passed away in ignorance. It was his doing that in her trouble she had had to lean on the other. It was not the first time during the long hours of the day that the thought had come to her; and though she had put it away, as she put it away now, the opening flower of love is delicate—the showers pass but leave their mark.

When Etruria had slipped out, and left them, Basset came forward, and warmed himself at the fire. “Perhaps it is as well you did not go to bed,” he said. “You can go now with an easy mind. It was as I thought—he lay on the stairs of the Great House and he had been dead many hours. Dr. Pepper will tell us more to-morrow, but I have no doubt that he died of syncope brought on by exertion. Toft had tried to give him brandy.”

Shocked and grieved, yet sensible of relief, she was silent for a time. She had known John Audley less than a year, but he had been good to her in his way and she sorrowed for him. But at least she was freed from the nightmare which had ridden her all day. Or was she? “May I know what took him there?” she asked in a low voice. “And Toft?”

“He believed that there were papers in the Great House, which would prove his claim. It was an obsession. He asked me more than once to go with him and search for them, and I refused. He fell back on Toft. They had begun to search—so Toft tells me—when Mr. Audley was taken ill. Before he could get him down the stairs, the end came. He sank down and died.”

With a shudder Mary pictured the scene in the empty house. She saw the light of the lantern fall on the huddled group, as the panic-stricken servant strove to pour brandy between the lips of the dying man; and truly she was thankful that in this strait she had Basset to support her, to assist her, to advise her! “It is very dreadful,” she said. “I do not wonder that Toft gave way. But had he—had my uncle—any right to be there?”

“In his opinion, yes. And if the papers were there, they were his papers, the house was his, all was his. In my opinion he was wrong. But if he believed anything, he believed that he was justified in what he did.”