AT the steps of Huntercombe Hall the servants streamed out, and relieved the strangers of the sorrowful load. Sir Charles was carried into the Hall, and Richard Bassett turned away, with one triumphant flash of his eye, quickly suppressed, and walked with impenetrable countenance and studied demeanor into Highmore House.
Even here he did not throw off the mask. It peeled off by degrees. He began by telling his wife, gravely enough, Sir Charles had met with a severe fall, and he had attended to him and taken him home.
“Ah, I am glad you did that, Richard,” said Mrs. Bassett. “And is he very badly hurt?”
“I am afraid he will hardly get over it. He never spoke. He just groaned when they took him down from the cart at Huntercombe.”
“Poor Lady Bassett!”
“Ay, it will be a bad job for her. Jane!”
“Yes, dear.”
“There is a providence in it. The fall would never have killed him; but his head struck a tree upon the ground; and that tree was one of the very elms he had just cut down to rob our boy.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes; he was felling the very hedgerow timber, and this was one of the old elms in a hedge. He must have done it out of spite, for elm-wood fetches no price; it is good for nothing I know of, except coffins. Well, he has cut down his.”
“Poor man! Richard, death reconciles enemies. Surely you can forgive him now.”
“I mean to try.”
Richard Bassett seemed now to have imbibed the spirit of quicksilver. His occupations were not actually enlarged, yet, somehow or other, he seemed full of business. He was all complacent bustle about nothing. He left off inveighing against Sir Charles. And, indeed, if you are one of those weak spirits to whom censure is intolerable, there is a cheap and easy way to moderate the rancor of detraction—you have only to die. Let me comfort genius in particular with this little recipe.
Why, on one occasion, Bassett actually snubbed Wheeler for a mere allusion. That worthy just happened to remark, “No more felling of timber on Bassett Manor for a while.”
“For shame!” said Richard. “The man had his faults, but he had his good qualities too: a high-spirited gentleman, beloved by his friends and respected by all the county. His successor will find it hard to reconcile the county to his loss.”
Wheeler stared, and then grinned satirically.
This eulogy was never repeated, for Sir Charles proved ungrateful—he omitted to die, after all.
Attended by first-rate physicians, tenderly nursed and watched by Lady Bassett and Mary Wells, he got better by degrees; and every stage of his slow but hopeful progress was communicated to the servants and the village, and to the ladies and gentlemen who rode up to the door every day and left their cards of inquiry.
The most attentive of all these was the new rector, a young clergyman, who had obtained the living by exchange. He was a man highly gifted both in body and mind—a swarthy Adonis, whose large dark eyes from the very first turned with glowing admiration on the blonde beauties of Lady Bassett.
He came every day to inquire after her husband; and she sometimes left the sufferer a minute or two to make her report to him in person. At other times Mary Wells was sent to him. That artful girl soon discovered what had escaped her mistress's observation.
The bulletins were favorable, and welcomed on all sides.
Richard Bassett alone was incredulous. “I want to see him about again,” said he. “Sir Charles is not the man to lie in bed if he was really better. As for the doctors, they flatter a fellow till the last moment. Let me see him on his legs, and then I'll believe he is better.”
Strange to say, obliging Fate granted Richard Bassett this moderate request. One frosty but sunny afternoon, as he was inspecting his coming domain from “The Heir's Tower,” he saw the Hall door open, and a muffled figure come slowly down the steps between two women: It was Sir Charles, feeble but convalescent. He crept about on the sunny gravel for about ten minutes, and then his nurses conveyed him tenderly in again.
This sight, which might have touched with pity a more generous nature, startled Richard Bassett, and then moved his bile. “I was a fool,” said he; “nothing will ever kill that man. He will see me out; see us all out. And that Mary Wells nurses him, and I dare say in love with him by this time; the fools can't nurse a man without. Curse the whole pack of ye!” he yelled, and turned away in rage and disgust.
That same night he met Mary Wells, and, in a strange fit of jealousy, began to make hot protestations of love to her. He knew it was no use reproaching her, so he went on the other tack.
She received his vows with cool complacency, but would only stay a minute, and would only talk of her master and mistress, toward whom her heart was really warming in their trouble. She spoke hopefully, and said: “'Tisn't as if he was one of your faint-hearted ones as meet death half-way. Why, the second day, when he could scarce speak, he sees me crying by the bed, and says he, almost in a whisper, 'What are you crying for?' 'Sir,' says I, ''tis for you—to see you lie like a ghost.' 'Then you be wasting of salt-water,' says he. 'I wish I may, sir,' says I. So then he raised himself up a little bit. 'Look at me,' says he; 'I'm a Bassett. I am not the breed to die for a crack on the skull, and leave you all to the mercy of them that would have no mercy'—which he meant you, I suppose. So he ordered me to leave crying, which I behooved to obey; for he will be master, mind ye, while he have a finger to wag, poor dear gentleman, he will.”
And, soon after this, she resisted all his attempts to detain her, and scudded back to the house, leaving Bassett to his reflections, which were exceedingly bitter.
Sir Charles got better, and at last used to walk daily with Lady Bassett. Their favorite stroll was up and down the lawn, close under the boundary wall he had built to shut out “The Heir's Walk.”
The afternoon sun struck warm upon that wall and the walk by its side.
On the other side a nurse often carried little Dicky Bassett, the heir; but neither of the promenaders could see each other for the wall.
Richard Bassett, on the contrary, from “The Heir's Tower,” could see both these little parties; and, as some men cannot keep away from what causes their pain, he used to watch these loving walks, and see Sir Charles get stronger and stronger, till at last, instead of leaning on his beloved wife, he could march by her side, or even give her his arm.
Yet the picture was, in a great degree, delusive; for, except during these blissful walks, when the sun shone on him, and Love and Beauty soothed him, Sir Charles was not the man he had been. The shake he had received appeared to have damaged his temper strangely. He became so irritable that several of his servants left him; and to his wife he repined; and his childless condition, which had been hitherto only a deep disappointment, became in his eyes a calamity that outweighed his many blessings. He had now narrowly escaped dying without an heir, and this seemed to sink into his mind, and, co-operating with the concussion his brain had received, brought him into a morbid state. He brooded on it, and spoke of it, and got back to it from every other topic, in a way that distressed Lady Bassett unspeakably. She consoled him bravely; but often, when she was alone, her gentle courage gave way, and she cried bitterly to herself.
Her distress had one effect she little expected; it completed what her invariable kindness had begun, and actually won the heart of a servant. Those who really know that tribe will agree with me that this was a marvelous conquest. Yet so it was; Mary Wells conceived for her a real affection, and showed it by unremitting attention, and a soft and tender voice, that soothed Lady Bassett, and drew many a silent but grateful glance from her dove-like eyes.
Mary listened, and heard enough to blame Sir Charles for his peevishness, and she began to throw out little expressions of dissatisfaction at him; but these were so promptly discouraged by the faithful wife that she drew in again and avoided that line. But one day, coming softly as a cat, she heard Sir Charles and Lady Bassett talking over their calamity. Sir Charles was saying that it was Heaven's curse; that all the poor people in the village had children; that Richard Bassett's weak, puny little wife had brought him an heir, and was about to make him a parent again; he alone was marked out and doomed to be the last of his race. “And yet,” said he, “if I had married any other woman, and you had married any other man, we should have had children by the dozen, I suppose.”
Upon the whole, though he said nothing palpably unjust, he had the tone of a man blaming his wife as the real cause of their joint calamity, under which she suffered a deeper, nobler, and more silent anguish than himself. This was hard to bear; and when Sir Charles went away, Mary Wells ran in, with an angry expression on the tip of her tongue.
She found Lady Bassett in a pitiable condition, lying rather than leaning on the table, with her hair loose about her, sobbing as if her heart would break.
All that was good in Mary Wells tugged at her heart-strings. She flung herself on her knees beside her, and seizing her mistress's hand, and drawing it to her bosom, fell to crying and sobbing along with her.
This canine devotion took Lady Bassett by surprise. She turned her tearful eyes upon her sympathizing servant, and said, “Oh, Mary!” and her soft hand pressed the girl's harder palm gratefully.
Mary spoke first. “Oh, my lady,” she sobbed, “it breaks my heart to see you so. And what a shame to blame you for what is no fault of yourn. If I was your husband the cradles would soon be full in this house; but these fine gentlemen, they be old before their time with smoking of tobacco; and then to come and lay the blame on we!”
“Mary, I value you very much—more than I ever did a servant in my life; but if you speak against your master we shall part.”
“La, my lady, I wouldn't for the world. Sir Charles is a perfect gentleman. Why, he gave me a sovereign only the other day for nursing of him; but he didn't ought to blame you for no fault of yourn, and to make you cry. It tears me inside out to see you cry; you that is so good to rich and poor. I wouldn't vex myself so for that: dear heart, 'twas always so; God sends meat to one house, and mouths to another.”
“I could be patient if poor Sir Charles was not so unhappy,” sighed Lady Bassett; “but if ever you are a wife, Mary, you will know how wretched it makes us to see a beloved husband unhappy.”
“Then I'd make him happy,” said Mary.
“Ah, if I only could!”
“Oh, I could tell you a way; for I have known it done; and now he is as happy as a prince. You see, my lady, some men are like children; to make them happy you must give them their own way; and so, if I was in your place, I wouldn't make two bites of a cherry, for sometimes I think he will fret himself out of the world for want on't.”
“Heaven forbid!”
“It is my belief you would not be long behind him.”
“No, Mary. Why should I?”
“Then—whisper, my lady!”
And, although Lady Bassett drew slightly back at this freedom, Mary Wells poured into her ear a proposal that made her stare and shiver.
As for the girl's own face, it was as unmoved as if it had been bronze.
Lady Bassett drew back, and eyed her askant with amazement and terror.
“What is this you have dared to say?”
“Why, it is done every day.”
“By people of your class, perhaps. No; I don't believe it. Mary, I have been mistaken in you. I am afraid you are a vicious girl. Leave me, please. I can't bear the sight of you.”
Mary went away, very red, and the tear in her eye.
In the evening Lady Bassett gave Mary Wells a month's warning, and Mary accepted it doggedly, and thought herself very cruelly used.
After this mistress and maid did not exchange an unnecessary word for many days.
This notice to leave was very bitter to Mary Wells, for she was in the very act of making a conquest. Young Drake, a very small farmer and tenant of Sir Charles, had fallen in love with her, and she liked him and had resolved he should marry her, with which view she was playing the tender but coy maiden very prettily. But Drake, though young and very much in love, was advised by his mother, and evidently resolved to go the old-fashioned way—keep company a year, and know the girl before offering the ring.
Just before her month was out a more serious trouble threatened Mary Wells.
Her low, artful amour with Richard Bassett had led to its natural results. By degrees she had gone further than she intended, and now the fatal consequences looked her in the face.
She found herself in an odious position; for her growing regard for young Drake, though not a violent attachment, was enough to set her more and more against Richard Bassett, and she was preparing an entire separation from the latter when the fatal truth dawned on her.
Then there was a temporary revulsion of feeling; she told her condition to Bassett, and implored him, with many tears, to aid her to disappear for a time and hide her misfortune, especially from her sister.
Mr. Bassett heard her, and then gave her an answer that made her blood run cold. “Why do you come to me?” said he. “Why don't you go to the right man—young Drake?”
He then told her he had had her watched, and she must not think to make a fool of him. She was as intimate with the young farmer as with him, and was in his company every day.
Mary Wells admitted that Drake was courting her, but said he was a civil, respectful young man, who desired to make her his wife. “You have lost me that,” said she, bursting into tears; “and so, for God's sake, show yourself a man for once, and see me through my trouble.”
The egotist disbelieved, or affected not to believe her, and said, “When there are two it is always the gentleman you girls deceive. But you can't make a fool of me, Mrs. Drake. Marry the farmer, and I'll give you a wedding present; that is all I can do for any other man's sweetheart. I have got my own family to provide for, and it is all I can contrive to make both ends meet.”
He was cold and inflexible to her prayers. Then she tried threats. He laughed at them. Said he, “The time is gone by for that: if you wanted to sue me for breach of promise, you should have done it at once; not waited eighteen months and taken another sweetheart first. Come, come; you played your little game. You made me come here week after week and bleed a sovereign. A woman that loved a man would never have been so hard on him as you were on me. I grinned and bore it; but when you ask me to own another man's child, a man of your own sort that you are in love with—you hate me—that is a little too much: no, Mrs. Drake; if that is your game we will fight it out—before the public if you like.” And, having delivered this with a tone of harsh and loud defiance, he left her—left her forever. She sat down upon the cold ground and rocked herself. Despair was cold at her heart.
She sat in that forlorn state for more than an hour. Then she got up and went to her mistress's room and sat by the fire, for her limbs were cold as well as her heart.
She sat there, gazing at the fire and sighing heavily, till Lady Bassett came up to bed. She then went through her work like an automaton, and every now and then a deep sigh came from her breast.
Lady Bassett heard her sigh, and looked at her. Her face was altered; a sort of sullen misery was written on it. Lady Bassett was quick at reading faces, and this look alarmed her. “Mary,” said she, kindly, “is there anything the matter?”
No reply.
“Are you unwell?”
“No.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“Ay!” with a burst of tears.
Lady Bassett let her cry, thinking it would relieve her, and then spoke to her again with the languid pensiveness of a woman who has also her trouble. “You have been very attentive to Sir Charles, and a kind good servant to me, Mary.”
“You are mocking me, my lady,” said Mary, bitterly. “You wouldn't have turned me off for a word if I had been a good servant.”
Lady Bassett colored high, and was silenced for a moment. At last she said, “I feel it must seem harsh to you. You don't know how wicked it was to tempt me. But it is not as if you had done anything wrong. I do not feel bound to mention mere words: I shall give you an excellent character, Mary—indeed I have. I think I have got a good place for you. I shall know to-morrow, and when it is settled we will look over my wardrobe together.”
This proposal implied a boxful of presents, and would have made Mary's dark eyes flash with delight at another time; but she was past all that now. She interrupted Lady Bassett with this strange speech: “You are very kind, my lady; will you lend me the key of your medicine chest?”
Lady Bassett looked surprised, but said, “Certainly, Mary,” and held out the keys.
But, before Mary could take them, she considered a moment, and asked her what medicine she required.
“Only a little laudanum.”
“No, Mary; not while you look like that, and refuse to tell me your trouble. I am your mistress, and must exert my authority for your good. Tell me at once what is the matter.”
“I'd bite my tongue off sooner.”
“You are wrong, Mary. I am sure I should be your best friend. I feel much indebted to you for the attention and the affection you have shown me, and I am grieved to see you so despondent. Make a friend of me. There—think it over, and talk to me again to-morrow.”
Mary Wells took the true servant's view of Lady Bassett's kindness. She looked at it as a trap; not, indeed, set with malice prepense, but still a trap. She saw that Lady Bassett meant kindly at present; but, for all that, she was sure that if she told the truth, her mistress would turn against her, and say, “Oh! I had no idea your trouble arose out of your own imprudence. I can do nothing for a vicious girl.”
She resolved therefore to say nothing, or else to tell some lie or other quite wide of the mark.
Deplorable as this young woman's situation was, the duplicity and coarseness of mind which had brought her into it would have somewhat blunted the mental agony such a situation must inflict; but it was aggravated by a special terror; she knew that if she was found out she would lose the only sure friend she had in the world.
The fact is, Mary Wells had seen a great deal of life during the two years she was out of the reader's sight. Rhoda had been very good to her; had set her up in a lodging-house, at her earnest request. She misconducted it, and failed: threw it up in disgust, and begged Rhoda to put her in the public line. Rhoda complied. Mary made a mess of the public-house. Then Rhoda showed her she was not fit to govern anything, and drove her into service again; and in that condition, having no more cares than a child, and plenty of work to do, and many a present from Rhoda, she had been happy.
But Rhoda, though she forgave blunders, incapacity for business, and waste of money, had always told her plainly there was one thing she never would forgive.
Rhoda Marsh had become a good Christian in every respect but one. The male rake reformed is rather tolerant; but the female rake reformed is, as a rule, bitterly intolerant of female frailty; and Rhoda carried this female characteristic to an extreme both in word and in deed. They were only half-sisters, after all; and Mary knew that she would be cast off forever if she deviated from virtue so far as to be found out.
Besides the general warning, there had been a special one. When she read Mary's first letter from Huntercombe Hall Rhoda was rather taken aback at first; but, on reflection, she wrote to Mary, saying she could stay there on two conditions: she must be discreet, and never mention her sister Rhoda in the house, and she must not be tempted to renew her acquaintance with Richard Bassett. “Mind,” said she, “if ever you speak to that villain I shall hear of it, and I shall never notice you again.”
This was the galling present and the dark future which had made so young and unsentimental a woman as Mary Wells think of suicide for a moment or two; and it now deprived her of her rest, and next day kept her thinking and brooding all the time her now leaden limbs were carrying her through her menial duties.
The afternoon was sunny, and Sir Charles and Lady Bassett took their usual walk.
Mary Wells went a little way with them, looking very miserable. Lady Bassett observed, and said, kindly, “Mary, you can give me that shawl; I will not keep you; go where you like till five o'clock.”
Mary never said so much as “Thank you.” She put the shawl round her mistress, and then went slowly back. She sat down on the stone steps, and glared stupidly at the scene, and felt very miserable and leaden. She seemed to be stuck in a sort of slough of despond, and could not move in any direction to get out of it.
While she sat in this somber reverie a gentleman walked up to the door, and Mary Wells lifted her head and looked at him. Notwithstanding her misery, her eyes rested on him with some admiration, for he was a model of a man: six feet high, and built like an athlete. His face was oval, and his skin dark but glowing; his hair, eyebrows, and long eyelashes black as jet; his gray eyes large and tender. He was dressed in black, with a white tie, and his clothes were well cut, and seemed superlatively so, owing to the importance and symmetry of the figure they covered. It was the new vicar, Mr. Angelo.
He smiled on Mary graciously, and asked her how Sir Charles was.
She said he was better.
Then Mr. Angelo asked, more timidly, was Lady Bassett at home.
“She is just gone out, sir.”
A look of deep disappointment crossed Mr. Angelo's face. It did not escape Mary Wells. She looked at him full, and, lowering her voice a little, said, “She is only in the grounds with Sir Charles. She will be at home about five o'clock.”
Mr. Angelo hesitated, and then said he would call again at five. He evidently preferred a duet to a trio. He then thanked Mary Wells with more warmth than the occasion seemed to call for, and retired very slowly: he had come very quickly.
Mary Wells looked after him, and asked herself wildly if she could not make some use of him and his manifest infatuation.
But before her mind could fix on any idea, and, indeed, before the young clergyman had taken twenty steps homeward, loud voices were heard down the shrubbery.
These were followed by an agonized scream.
Mary Wells started up, and the young parson turned: they looked at each other in amazement.
Then came wild and piercing cries for help—in a woman's voice.
The young clergyman cried out, “Her voice! her voice!” and dashed into the shrubbery with a speed Mary Wells had never seen equaled. He had won the 200-yard race at Oxford in his day.
The agonized screams were repeated, and Mary Wells screamed in response as she ran toward the place.
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