The Great House

CHAPTER XXI

TOFT AT THE BUTTERFLIES

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.

True, he might use such power as he had. But it was imperfect, and in its use he must come to grips with one who had shown himself his better both in courage and cunning. He had imbibed a strong fear of his master, and he could not without a qualm contemplate a struggle with him.

For a week after his detection by Mary, he went about his work in a fever of anxiety. And nothing happened; it was that which tried him. More than once he was on the point of throwing himself at her feet, of telling her all he knew, of imploring her pardon. It was only her averted eyes and cold tone that held him back.

Such a crisis makes a man either better or worse, and it made Toft worse. At the end of three days a chance word put a fine point on his fears and stung him to action. He might not know enough to face John Audley, but he thought that he knew enough to sell his secret-in the other camp. His lordship was young and probably malleable. He would go to him and strike a bargain.

Arrived at this point the man did not hide from himself that he was going to do a hateful thing. He thought of his wife and her wonder could she know. He thought of Etruria's mild eyes and her goodness. And he shivered. But it was for her. It was for them. Within twenty-four hours he was in Riddsley.

As he passed the Maypole, where Mr. Colet had his lodgings, he noticed that the town wore an unusual aspect. Groups of men stood talking in the doorway, or on the doorsteps. A passing horseman was shouting to a man at a window. Nearer the middle of the town the stir was greater. About the saddler's door, about the steps leading up to the Audley Arms, and round the yard of the inn, knots of men argued and gesticulated. Toft asked the saddler what it was.

"Haven't you heard?"

"No. What's the news?"

"The General Election's off!" The saddler proclaimed it with an inflamed look. "Peel's in again! And damn me, after this," he continued, "there's nothing I won't swallow! He come in in the farming interest, and the hunting interest, and the racing interest, and the gentlemanly interest, that I live by, and you too, Mr. Toft! And it was bad enough when he threw it up! But to go in again and to take our money and do the Radicals' work!" The saddler spat on the brick pavement. "Why, there was never such a thing heard of in the 'varsal world! Never! If Tamworth don't blush for him and his pigs turn pink, I'm d-d, and that's all."

Toft had to ask half a dozen questions before he grasped the position. Gradually he learned that after Peel had resigned the Whigs had tried to form a government; that they had failed, and that now Peel was to come in again, expressly to repeal the Corn Laws. The Corn Laws which he had taken office to support, and to the maintenance of which his party was pledged!

The thing was not much in Toft's way, nor his interest in it great, but as he passed along he caught odds and ends of conversation. "I don't believe a word of it!" cried an angry man. "The Radicals have invented it!" "Like enough!" replied another. "Like enough! There's naught they wouldn't do!" "Well, after all," suggested a third in a milder tone, "cheap bread is something." "What? If you've got no money to buy it? You're a fool! I tell you it'll be the ruin of Riddsley!" "You're right there, Joe!" answered the first speaker. "You're right! There'll be no farmer for miles round'll pay his way!"

At the door of Mr. Stubbs's office three excited clients were clamoring for entrance; an elderly clerk with a high bridge to his nose was withstanding them. Before the Mechanics' Institute the secretary, a superior person of Manchester views, was talking pompously to a little group. "We must take in the whole field," Toft heard him say. "If you'll read Mr. Carlyle's tract on-" Toft lost the rest. The Institute readers belonged mainly to Hatton's Works or Banfield's, and the secretary taught in an evening school. He was darkly suspected of being a teetotaller, but it had never been proved against him.

Toft began to wonder if he had chosen his time well, but he was near The Butterflies and he hardened his heart; to retreat now were to dub himself coward. He told the maid that he came from the Gatehouse, and that he was directed to deliver a letter into his lordship's own hand, and in a moment he found himself mounting the shallow carpeted stairs. In comparison with the Gatehouse, the house was modern, elegant, luxurious, the passages were warm.

When he was ushered in, his lordship, a dressing-gown cast over a chair beside him as if he had just put on his coat, was writing near the fireplace. After an interval that seemed long to Toft, who eyed his heavy massiveness with a certain dismay, he laid down his pen, sat back, and looked at the servant.

"From the Gatehouse?" he asked, after a leisurely survey.

"Yes, my lord," Toft answered respectfully. "I was with Mr. Audley when he was taken ill in the Yew Walk."

"To be sure! I thought I knew your face. You've a letter for me?"

Toft hesitated. "I wished to see you, my lord," he said. The thing was not as easy as he had hoped it would be; the man was more formidable. "On a matter of business."

Audley raised his eyebrows. "Business?" he said. "Isn't it Mr. Stubbs you want to see?"

"No, my lord," Toft answered. But the sweat broke out on his forehead. What if his lordship took a high tone, ordered him out, and reported the matter to his master? Too late it struck Toft that a gentleman might take that line.

"Well, be quick," Audley replied. Then in a different tone, "You don't come from Miss Audley?"

"No, my lord."

"Then what is it?"

Toft turned his hat in his hands. "I have information" – it was with difficulty he could control his voice-"which it is to your lordship's interest to have."

There was a pregnant pause. "Oh!" the young man said at last. "And you come-to sell it?"

Toft nodded, unable to speak. Yet he was getting on as well as could be expected.

"Rather an unusual position, isn't it?"

"Yes, my lord."

"The information should be unusual?"

"It is, my lord."

Lord Audley smiled. "Well," he answered, "I'll say this, my man. If you are going to sell me a spavined horse, don't! It will not be to your advantage. What's it all about?"

"Mr. Audley's claim, my lord."

Audley had expected this, yet he could not quite mask the effect which the statement made upon him. The thing that he had foreseen and feared, that had haunted him in the small hours and been as it were a death's-head at his feast, was taking shape. But he was quick to recover himself, and "Oh!" said he. "That's it, is it! Don't you know that that's all over, my man?"

"I think not, my lord."

The peer took up a paper-knife and toyed with it. "Well," he said, "what is it? Come, I don't buy a pig in a poke."

"Mr. Audley has found-"

"Found, eh?" raising his eyebrows.

Toft corrected himself. "He has in his power papers that upset your lordship's case. I can still enable you to keep those papers in your hands."

Audley threw down the paper-cutter. "They are certainly worthless," he said. His voice was contemptuous, but there was a hard look in his eyes.

"Mr. Audley thinks otherwise."

"But he has not seen them?"

"He knows what's in them, my lord. He has been searching for them for weeks."

The young man weighed this, and Toft's courage rose, and his confidence. The trumps were in his hand, and though for a moment he had shrunk before the other's heavy jaw he was glad now that he had come; more glad when the big man after a long pause asked quietly, "What do you want?"

"Five hundred pounds, my lord."

The other laughed, and Toft did not like the laugh. "Indeed? Five hundred pounds? That's a good deal of money!"

"The information is worth that, or it is worth nothing."

"I quite agree!" the peer answered lightly. "You're a wit, my man. But that's not saying you've a good case. However, I'll put you to the test. You know where the papers are?"

"I do, my lord."

"Very good. There's a piece of paper. Write on one side the precise place where they lie. I will write on the other a promise to pay £500 if the papers are found in that place, and are of the value you assert. That is a fair offer."

Toft stood irresolute. He thought hard.

My lord pushed the paper across. "Come!" he said; "write! Or I'll write first, if that is your trouble." With decision he seized a quill, held it poised a moment, then he wrote four lines and signed them with a flourish, added the date, and read them to himself. With a grim smile he pushed the paper across to Toft. "There," he said. "What more do you want, my man, than that?"

Toft took the paper and read what was written on it, from the "In consideration of," that began the sentence, to the firm signature "Audley of Beaudelays" that closed it. He did not speak.

"Come! You can't want anything more than that!" my lord said. "You have only to write, read me the secret, and keep the paper until it is redeemed."

"Yes, my lord."

"Then take the pen. Of course the place must be precise. I am not going to pull down Beaudelays House to find a box of papers that I do not believe is there!"

Toft's face was gray, the sweat stood on his lip. "I did not say," he muttered, the paper rustling in his unsteady hand, "that they were in Beaudelays House."

"No?" Audley replied. "Perhaps not. And for the matter of that, it is not a question of saying anything. It is a question of writing. You can write, I suppose?"

Toft did not speak. He could not speak. He had supposed that the power to put his lordship on the scent would be the same as pulling down the fox. When he had said that the papers were in the house, that they were behind a wall, that Mr. Audley knew where they were, he would have earned-he thought-his money!

But he had not known the man with whom he had to deal. And challenged to set down the place where the papers lay, he knew that he could not do it. In the house? Behind a wall? He saw now that that would not do. That would not satisfy the big smiling gentleman who sat opposite him, amused at the dilemma in which he found himself.

He knew that he was cornered, and he lost his countenance and his manners. He swore.

The young man laughed. "The biter bit," he said. "Five hundred pounds you said, didn't you? I wonder whether I ought to send for the constable? Or tell Mr. Audley? That would be wiser perhaps? What do you think you deserve, my man?"

Toft stretched out a shaking arm towards the paper. But my lord was before him. His huge hand fell on it. He tore it across and across, and threw the pieces under the table.

"No," he said, "that won't do! You will write at a venture and if you are right you will claim the money, and if you are wrong you will have this paper to show that I bargained with you. But I never meant to bargain with you, my good rascal. I knew you were a fraud. I knew it from the beginning. And now I've only one thing to say. Either you will tell me freely what you know, and in that case I shall say nothing. Or I report you to your master. That's my last word."

Toft shook from head to foot. He had done a hateful thing, he had been defeated, and exposure threatened him. As far as his master was concerned he could face it. But his wife, his daughter? Who thought him honest, loyal, who thought him a man! Who believed in him! How could he, how would he face them, if this tale were told?