Chapter IV: Open-Eyed Conspiracy

Let me loose thy tongue with wine:

No, I love not what is new:
She is of the ancient house,
And I think we know the hue
Of that cap upon her brows!
—TENNYSON (_Vision of Sin_).

Old Giles, in the plate-room! Old Giles, butler of Bindon and confidential servant to Sir David, sunk in his wooden armchair and his head inclined till his double chin rested on his greasy stock, surveying with distasteful eye the mug of small-ale on the table before him.

A stout old man with a reddening nose may be no unpleasant picture if superabundance of flesh and misplacement of carmine bear witness to jollity and good cheer; but oh lamentable spectacle if melancholy droop that ruby nose; if fat cheeks hang disconsolate! Then for every added ounce of avoirdupois is added a pound of misery. Your melancholy thin man is fitted by nature to bear his burden, but the sad fat man seems to deliquesce, to collapse—so much in his case is affliction against the obvious design of nature!

From the inner pantry door Margery stood a moment and contemplated her fellow servant awhile, with an air of deeper commiseration than her usually set visage was wont to express. Then she carefully closed the door and advanced to the table. In her rolled up apron she was clasping something with both hands.

“Eh,” she said, in a long drawn note, “it do go to my heart, Mister Giles, to see you so cast down!”

The butler rolled his lack-lustre eye from the mug of beer to the housekeeper’s countenance; then his underlip began to tremble.

“Ah,” he answered, “that stuff is killing me, Mrs. Nutmeg. The cold of it on my stomach! It’ll creep up to my heart some of these nights, it will! And that will be the end of poor old faithful Giles!”

A tear twinkled on his vast cheek. He stretched out his hand for the glass, gulped a mouthful of it and replaced it on the table, drawing down the corners of his mouth into a grimace not unlike that which in an infant heralds a burst of wailing.

“Cold, cruel, poisonous stuff, that lies as heavy as heavy! Half a caskful, ma’am will not stimulate a man as much as half a wineglassful of port-wine or sherry-wine. It’s murder—that’s what it is!”

“Murder it is,” assented Margery. She took the glass and threw its contents into the grate: sympathy personified. Then she began to move about the room with an air of so much mystery that Giles’ attention was faintly roused in something external to himself and to the odiousness of small-ale.

Mrs. Nutmeg went to the pantry door, listened a moment with stooped head, then released her right hand from the enfolded object and turned the key in the lock. Stepping to the high-set window, she next squinted east and west, as if to make sure that no watchers were about; then returned to the table, slowly unrolled her apron and displayed to the butler’s astonished gaze a black bottle, cobwebbed, dust-crusted, red-sealed—a bottle of venerable appearance and, to the initiated, of Olympian promise. With infinite precaution she tilted it into a vertical position and placed it on the table, displaying in so doing the dusty streak of whitewash which had marked the upper side of its repose these twenty years. Into old Giles’ expressionless stare leaped a light of rapturous recognition.

“The Comet port, by gum! The port from the fifth bin!”

He raised himself in his chair and, as if sight were not enough for conviction, began with trembling hands to caress the bottle, and smacking his lips as if the taste were already upon them. Margery surveyed him with her head slightly on one side.

“How—how did you get it?” he babbled, now sniffing at the seal, his red nose laid fondly first on one side then on the other.

“Never you mind,” said she, “I’m not the one to stand by and see old service drove to death by stinginess nor yet by interference. There’s more where it came from.”

“The last bottle we drank together,” interrupted he, “was the first to break in upon the sixth dozen. Six dozen, minus one, seventy-one bottles. That makes——”

“Seventy bottles still,” said she. “Enough to warm your heart again for many a long day.” She stooped, and whipped out a corkscrew from one of her capacious pockets.

“Give me that bottle, Mister Giles.”

She lifted it from his grasp. He raised his hands, protesting, quivering.

“For Heaven’s sake, don’t shake it, ma’am! Don’t shake it! It’s thirty year old, if it’s a day. Oh, Lord, Mrs. Nutmeg, give it to me, ma’am!”

She cast one swift, contemptuous glance upon him.

“I think my wrist is steadier than yours,” she remarked drily, while with the neatest precision she inserted the point of the corkscrew into the middle of the seal.

“’Tis the yale,” he palpitated.

“Oh, aye,” said she, “the ale, of course.” She smiled in her sleek way while she turned the corkscrew. “Here,” she added, “is what will steady them for a while at any rate.”

The cork came forth with a chirp that once more brought the fire to the toper’s eye.

“Ho, ho!” he cried, every crease in his face that had before spelt despondency now wreathing rapture.

“Wait a bit,” she bade him, still keeping her strong hand on the bottle neck. She dived into the left pocket and brought forth a short cut-glass beaker. “You’re not going,” said she, “to drink Sir David’s Comet port out of a mug!”

She poured it out, gently tilting the venerable bottle. He could hardly wait till the gorgeous liquid garnet had brimmed to the edge, before grasping the glass. But palsied as his hands were not a drop did they spill. A mouthful first, to let the taste of it lie on his palate; another to roll round his tongue; then unctuously, as slowly as was compatible with the act of swallowing, the ichor of the grape destined to warm a high-born heart and to illumine the workings of a noble mind, was sent to kindle the base fires of Sir David’s thieving old servant.

“Ah!”

He took a deep-drawn breath of utter satisfaction, reached for the bottle, boldly poured himself forth another glass and drank again. Motionless, the woman watched.

“As good a bottle,” said he garrulously, “as ever came out of the bin! ’Twas of the laying of the good Sir Everard—Sir David’s grandfather, you mark, Mrs. Nutmeg. You wasn’t in these parts then. Ah, a judge of wine he was. I tell ye I could pick every drop he had bottled blindfold this minute, at the first taste. He and Master Rickart, Lord, what wild times they had together! Ah, he was a blade in those days, was old Rickart. Now——’Tis well there’s someone left at Bindon that knows the valley of precious liquor, for it’s been disgusting, I assure you, ma’am. There’s master had nothing but the light clary—French stuff—and not known the differ these five years! Well, well, ’twould have broken Sir Everard’s heart, but”—piously, “there’s one left as remembers him and his tastes. May I offer you a thimbleful, Mrs. Nutmeg? ’Tis as good as a cordial!”

He was once more the man of importance: the steward dispensing his master’s goods with a fine air of hospitality.

“No, Mister Giles, I thank you kindly,” said the lady. Then she measured him again with one of her deep looks, marked the hand which he was stretching out for the port and suddenly whipped the desired object from its reach. Her calculated moment had come.—The butler’s limbs had lost their palsied trembling and there was some kind of speculation in his eye.

“No, Mister Giles,” she said, as he gaped at her. “I came here for a little chat, if you please. You’re feeling more yourself again?”

The memory of his injuries, forgotten for the brief span of ecstasy, returned in full force. His lip drooped.

“Aye, ma’am, a little, a little. But I am sadly weak.”

He pushed his glass tentatively forward, but she ignored the hint.

“I thought you was a-dying by inches before my eyes,” she announced deliberately.

The red face opposite to her grew mottled grey and purple. Mr. Giles began to whimper:

“So I was, ma’am. So I be!”

Margery sat down and, clasping the bottle with both her determined hands, leaned her head on one side of it.

“Another month of small-ale,” she said, “would bring you to your grave, Mister Giles. Aye, you may groan. How many bottles be left of this old port? Seventy ye said. And there be as good besides.”

“The East India sherry,” said he, the light of his one remaining interest flickering up again in the aged sockets. “Oh, it’s a beauty, that wine is! As dry, ma’am, and as mellow!” He smacked his tongue. “And there’s the Madeiry, got at the Dook of Sussex’s sale. ‘Royal wine,’ says Sir Everard to me. And Royal wine it is! But you know the taste of it yourself. Then there are the Burgundy bins. Women folk,” said Mr. Giles, “have that inferiority, they can’t appreciate red wine. But there’s Burgundy down in my cellars that I’d rather go to bed on a bottle of as even of the Comet port.”

Margery broke in with a short laugh.

“Yes, yes,” said she; “I’ll warrant there is good stuff in your cellars. But who’s got the key of them now, if I may make so bold?”

Once again the toper was brought up to the sense of present limitations as by the tug of a merciless bit cunningly handled. With open mouth and starting eyes he paused, and the dark, senile blood rushed up to his face. Then he struck the table with his hand:

“That vixen of old Rickart’s, blast her!”

“And he—the daft old gentleman,” Margery’s voice dropped soft, as oil trickling down to fire, “eating the bread of charity, one may say, without so much as doing a stroke of work to save the shame of it!”

“Blast him!” cried Giles, with another thump.

“Oh, yes, when I brought you that bottle, I told you there was more where it came from. But the question is, who’s to have it, Mr. Giles! Is it all to be for that clever young lady and her crazy old father—that’s come like cuckoos to settle at Bindon, and bamfoozle that poor innocent gentleman, Sir David, and oust us as has served him so faithful and so long?”

“No, no, no!” cried old Giles, “blast ’em, blast ’em!”

Margery put her finger to her lip with a long drawn “Hush!” and glanced warningly round the room, though indeed, stronghold as it was, there was little fear of the sound escaping to the outer world. She then poured out a measured half glass and pushed it towards the butler, corked the bottle, placed it on the top of the safe; and betaking herself once again to her inexhaustible pockets, drew forth one after another and set in their turn upon the table a small unopened bottle of ink, a goose quill pen, of which she tested the nib, and a large sheet of paper, which she unfolded and smoothed.

“Now, Mr. Giles,” said she sharply.

He was absently sucking his empty glass and started to look upon her preparations uncomprehendingly.

“You write a fine hand,” said she, picking the stopper out of the inkpot with the point of the corkscrew.

“Ah,” said he, “my cellar book was a sight to see! It’s lain useless these six months. But so long,” he said, proudly but sadly, “as I kept the keys no one can say but as I kept the book.”

So he had indeed, with a quaint fidelity; and amazing reading it would have proved to the casual inspector, who would have founded wild opinions of Sir David’s and his cousin’s prowesses in the matter of toping.

“Do you want the keys back?” asked Margery, in a quiet whisper, “or is this to be the last bottle of port you’ll ever taste?”

He stared at her, his moist lip working. She seemed to find the answer sufficient, for she motioned him into his seat.

“Then you sit down and write,” said she, “and I promise you Bindon shall get his rights again, and our good master’s quiet, comfortable house be rid of her that brings no good to it.”

Giles sat down submissively, dipped the quill into the ink, manipulated it with the flourish of the proud penman; then, squaring his wrists flat on the sheet, prepared to start.

“I’d never have troubled you,” explained Margery, apologetically, “had I had your grand education, Mr. Giles.”

“Who be I to write to?” said Giles, with the stern air of the male mind controlling the female one, as it would wander from the point.

Again Margery whispered, not for fear of listeners, but to give the allurement of mystery to her purpose:

“To the Lady Lochore,” said she.

The pen dropped from Giles’ fingers, making a great blot at the top of the sheet, which Margery, with clacking tongue, deftly mopped up with a corner of her apron. Consternation and awe wrote themselves on the butler’s face. Faithless old ingrate as he was, robbing with remorseless system the hand that fed him, something of family spirit, some sense of clanship, still existed in his muddled mind. Enough of their master’s secrets had filtered to the household for everyone to know that his only sister had wedded the man who, under the pretending cloak of friendship, had done him mortal injury; and that from the moment she had thus given herself to his enemy, the lord of Bindon had cut her off from his life. But there were things beside, which old Giles alone knew; which he had kept to himself, even after his long devotion to the Bindon cellars had wreaked havoc upon the intelligence of his conscience.

It was but ten years back when a mounted messenger had brought the tidings to Sir David of the birth of an heir to the house of Lochore: heir also, as matters now stood, to the childless house of Bindon. Giles had conducted this messenger to Sir David’s presence. Giles had stood by and watched his master’s pale face grow death livid as he listened to the envoy’s tale, had seen him recoil from even the touch of his kinsman’s letter. It was Giles who had received the curt instructions: “Take the messenger away, give him food, rest and drink, and let him ride and bear back to Lord Lochore that letter he has sent me.” And now old Giles looked up into Margery’s inscrutable face, and cried with echoes of forgotten loyalty in his husky voice:

“Write to Miss Maud?—to my Lady, I mean. Nay, nay, Mrs. Nutmeg, I’ll not do that!”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Nutmeg.

She had been standing over his shoulder, showing more eagerness than her wont, and licking her lips over the words she was about to dictate to him, while a light shone in her eyes that was never kindled so long as she was under observation. At the check of his words the old sleek change came over her. The curtain of impassiveness fell over her countenance. The gleam went out in her eyes. She came quietly round, sat down, opposite him and, folding her hands, let them rest on the table before her.

“Ah,” said she, “it do go again the grain, don’t it, Mr. Giles? And if it was not for Sir David——”

Giles meanwhile, having pushed the writing materials on one side, had risen and helped himself freely again to the Comet port, drinking courage to his own half-repented resolution, a babble of disjointed phrases escaping from him in the intervals of his gulps. “No, he could not go against Sir David—poor old man, not many years to live—served his father’s father. Eh, and Sir Edmund had put him into these arms; and he but a babe—the greatest toper in the house, says Sir Edmund...” Here there was a chuckle and a tear, and a fresh glass poured out.

Margery never blinked towards the bottle. Unfolding her hands, she presently began to smooth out the writing paper, and by-and-bye began to speak. At first it was a merely soothing trickle of talk. No one knew Mr. Giles’ high-mindedness and nobility of character better than she did; though, indeed, she herself was but a new-comer at Bindon, compared to him—the third of his generation in the service of the house, and himself the servant of three Cheveral masters. By-and-bye, from this primrose path of flattery she turned aside into less smooth ground. Something she said of the real duties of old service, of the mistaken duty of blind submission. There was a dark hint of Sir David’s helplessness, a prey to designing intruders—“and him as easy to cheat as a child!” A tear here welled to Mistress Margery’s eyelid; there was no doubt she spoke as one whose knowledge was first hand.

Mister Giles knew best, of course; but, in her humble opinion, it was an old servitor’s bounden duty to let their master’s nearest relative know. Here Margery became very dark again; things are so much more terrible when merely hinted at. The butler’s hand halted with the sixth glass on the way to his lips; he put it down again untasted.

“Who’s to look after Master, I should like to know?” asked Margery boldly, “when you and I and all the old faithful folk is turned out of Bindon, and that deep young lady and Master Rickart reign alone, with their poisons and their powders?”

“By gum!” cried Giles, with a shout, thumping the table, so that the precious wine this time slopped over its barrier. “By gum! hand me that paper, and say your say, ma’am, and I’ll write it!”

The man was just tipsy enough already to be easily worked up, and unable to analyse the means by which his passion was roused; not too tipsy to be a perfectly capable instrument in the housekeeper’s hands.

The following was the letter that Giles, the butler of Bindon, wrote to “the Lady Lochore,” at her house in London:

MY LADY.—Trusting you will excuse the liberty and in the hopes this
finds your Ladyship well, as is the humble wish of the writer. My
Lady, I have not been the servant of your Ladyship’s brother, my most
honoured master, Sir David Cheveral of Bindon, without knowing the sad
facts of family divisions between yourself and Sir David. But, my
Lady, wishing to do my duty by my master, as has always been my humble
endeavour, I should consider myself deaf to the Voice of Conscience,
did I not take the pen this day to let you know the state of affairs
at Bindon at this present time.

Master Rickart’s daughter, Mistress Marvel, has come back to Bindon,
to live, and my Lady, she and her father is now master and mistress
here. Sir David being such as my Lady knows he is, different from
other people, is no match for such.

My Lady, what the end of it will be no one can tell. None of us like
to think of it. What is said in the village and all over the country
already, is what I must excuse myself from writing, not being fit for
your Ladyship’s eyes. But as your Ladyship’s father’s old and trusted
servant, I am doing no less than my bounden duty, in warning your
Ladyship.

Here Margery had halted, and flouted several eager suggestions on the part of the faithful butler, who was anxious to mention poisons and phials and black practises, who, moreover, had wished to introduce after every sentence a detailed account of the unmerited cruelty practised upon himself in forcing him to give up the keys of the family cellar, and express his intimate persuasion of the restlessness thereby caused to the good Sir Everard’s bones in their honoured grave. But Margery was firm; and now, after due reflection, sternly commanded Mr. Giles’ respects and signature. When this flourishing signature at length adorned the page, Margery laid a flat finger below it.

“Write: Post-Scriptum,” ordered she. “I humbly trust your Ladyship’s little son is well. There was great joy among us when we heard of his honoured birth. We was, up to now, all used to think of him as the heir to Bindon.”

Here she hesitated again; but finally, true to her instinct that suggestion is more potent than explanation, demanded the folding of the letter, its addressing and sealing. The latter duty she undertook herself, with the help of the inexhaustible bag. And as she laid her thumb on the hot wax, she smiled, well content, and allowed Giles to finish the bottle and drown any possible misgivings.

As she left the room to watch for the post-boy, and herself place the fruit of her morning labour in the bag, Giles, with tipsy gravity and mechanical neatness, was posting his too long disused cellar book up to date:

June 24th., 1823.
Comet Port. Bin V. Bottle: One.