That she brought him no title, no lands, that by her own act she had flung away her inheritance and came to him almost empty-handed was no pain to him, no subject for regret. On the contrary, every word she had said on that, every argument she had used, came home to him now with double force. It had been a poor, it had been a common, it had been a pitiful revenge! It had mingled the sordid with the cup, it had cast the shadow of the Great House on their happiness. In that room in which they had shared their first meal on that far May morning, and where the light of the winter fire now shone on the wainscot, now brought life to the ruffed portraits above it, there was no question of name or fortune, or more or less.

So much so, that when Mrs. Toft came in with the tea she well-nigh dropped the tray in her surprise. As she said afterwards, “The sight of them two as close as chives in a barrel, I declare you might ha’ knocked me down with a straw! God bless ’em!”

CHAPTER XL
“LET US MAKE OTHERS THANKFUL”

A man can scarcely harbor a more bitter thought than that he has lost by foul play what fair play would have won for him. This for a week was Lord Audley’s mood and position; for masterful as he was he owned the power of Nemesis, he felt the force of tradition, nor, try as he might, could he convince himself that in face of this oft-cited deed his chance of retaining the title and property was anything but desperate. He made the one attempt to see Mary of which we know; and had he seen her he would have done his best to knot again the tie which he had cut. But missing her by a hair’s breadth, and confronted by Toft who knew all, he had found even his courage unequal to a second attempt. The spirit in which Mary had faced the breach had shown his plan to be from the first a counsel of despair, and despairing he let her go. In a dark mood he sat down to wait for the next step on the enemy’s part, firmly resolved that whatever form it might take he would contest the claim to the bitter end.

And Stubbs was scarcely in happier case. At the time, and face to face with Basset, he had borne up well, but the production of the fateful deed had none the less fallen on him with stunning effect. He appreciated—none better and more clearly now—what the effect of his easiness would have been had Lord Audley not been engaged to his cousin; nor did his negligence appear in a less glaring light because his patron was to escape its worst results. He foresaw that whatever befel he must suffer, and that the agency which his family had so long enjoyed—that, that at any rate was forfeit.

This was enough to make him a most unhappy, a most miserable man. But it did not stand alone. Everything seemed to him to be going wrong. All good things, public and private, seemed to be verging on their end. The world as he had known it for sixty years was crumbling about his ears. It was time that he was gone.

Certainly the days of that Protection with which he believed the welfare of the land to be bound up, were numbered. In the House Lord George and Mr. Disraeli—those strangest of bedfellows!—might rage, the old Protectionist party might foam, invective and sarcasm, taunt and sneer might rain upon the traitor as he sat with folded arms and hat drawn down to his eyes, rectors might fume and squires swear; the end was certain, and Stubbs saw that it was. Those rascals in the North, they and their greed and smoke, that stained the face of England, would win and were winning. He had saved Riddsley by nine—but to what end? What was one vote among so many? He thought of the nut-brown ale, the teeming stacks, the wagoner’s home,

Hard-by, a cottage chimney smokes
From betwixt two aged oaks.

He thought of the sweet cow-stalls, the brook where he had bent his first pin, and he sighed. Half the country folk would be ruined, and Shoddy from Halifax and Brass from Bury would buy their lands and walk in gaiters where better men had foundered. The country would be full of new men—Peels!

Well, it would last his time. But some day there would rise another Buonaparte and they would find Cobden with his calico millennium a poor stay against starvation, his lean and flashy songs a poor substitute for wheat. It was all money now; the kindly feeling, the Christmas dole, the human ties, where father had worked for father and son for son, and the thatch had covered three generations—all these were past and gone. He found one fault, it is true, in the past. He had one regret, as he looked back. The laborers’ wage had been too low; they had been left outside the umbrella of Protection. He saw that now; there was the weak point in the case. “That’s where they hit us,” he said more than once, “the foundation was too narrow.” But the knowledge came too late.