SIR CHARLES observed that he was never trusted alone. He remarked this, and inquired, with a peculiar eye, why that was.
Lady Bassett had the tact to put on an innocent look and smile, and say: “That is true, dearest. I have tied you to my apron-string without mercy. But it serves you right for having fits and frightening me. You get well, and my tyranny will cease at once.”
However, after this she often left him alone in the garden, to remove from his mind the notion that he was under restraint from her.
Mr. Bassett observed this proceeding from his tower.
One day Mr. Angelo called, and Lady Bassett left Sir Charles in the garden, to go and speak to him.
She had not been gone many minutes when a boy ran to Sir Charles, and said, “Oh, sir, please come to the gate; the lady has had a fall, and hurt herself.”
Sir Charles, much alarmed, followed the boy, who took him to a side gate opening on the high-road. Sir Charles rushed through this, and was passing between two stout fellows that stood one on each side the gate, when they seized him, and lifted him in a moment into a close carriage that was waiting on the spot. He struggled, and cried loudly for assistance; but they bundled him in and sprang in after him; a third man closed the door, and got up by the side of the coachman. He drove off, avoiding the village, soon got upon a broad road, and bowled along at a great rate, the carriage being light, and drawn by two powerful horses.
So cleverly and rapidly was it done that, but for a woman's quick ear, the deed might not have been discovered for hours; but Mary Wells heard the cry for help through an open window, recognized Sir Charles's voice, and ran screaming downstairs to Lady Bassett: she ran wildly out, with Mr. Angelo, to look for Sir Charles. He was nowhere to be found. Then she ordered every horse in the stables to be saddled; and she ran with Mary to the place where the cry had been heard.
For some time no intelligence whatever could be gleaned; but at last an old man was found who said he had heard somebody cry out, and soon after that a carriage had come tearing by him, and gone round the corner: but this direction was of little value, on account of the many roads, any one of which it might have taken.
However, it left no doubt that Sir Charles had been taken away from the place by force.
Terror-stricken, and pale as death, Lady Bassett never lost her head for a moment. Indeed, she showed unexpected fire; she sent off coachman and grooms to scour the country and rouse the gentry to help her; she gave them money, and told them not to come back till they had found Sir Charles.
Mr. Angelo said, eagerly, “I'll go to the nearest magistrate, and we will arrest Richard Bassett on suspicion.”
“God bless you, dear friend!” sobbed Lady Bassett. “Oh, yes, it is his doing—murderer!”
Off went Mr. Angelo on his errand.
He was hardly gone when a man was seen running and shouting across the fields. Lady Bassett went to meet him, surrounded by her humble sympathizers. It was young Drake: he came up panting, with a double-barreled gun in his hand (for he was allowed to shoot rabbits on his own little farm), and stammered out, “Oh, my lady—Sir Charles—they have carried him off against his will!”
“Who? Where? Did you see him?”
“Ay, and heerd him and all. I was ferreting rabbits by the side of the turnpike-road yonder, and a carriage came tearing along, and Sir Charles put out his head and cried to me,' Drake, they are kidnapping me. Shoot!' But they pulled him back out of sight.”
“Oh, my poor husband! And did you let them? Oh!”
“Couldn't catch 'em, my lady: so I did as I was bid; got to my gun as quick as ever I could, and gave the coachman both barrels hot.”
“What, kill him?”
“Lord, no; 'twas sixty yards off; but made him holler and squeak a good un. Put thirty or forty shots into his back, I know.”
“Give me your hand, Mr. Drake. I'll never forget that shot.” Then she began to cry.
“Doant ye, my lady, doant ye,” said the honest fellow, and was within an ace of blubbering for sympathy. “We ain't a lot o' babies, to see our squire kidnaped. If you would lend Abel Moss there and me a couple o' nags, we'll catch them yet, my lady.”
“That we will,” cried Abel. “You take me where you fired that shot, and we'll follow the fresh wheel-tracks. They can't beat us while they keep to a road.”
The two men were soon mounted, and in pursuit, amid the cheers of the now excited villagers. But still the perpetrators of the outrage had more than an hour's start; and an hour was twelve miles.
And now Lady Bassett, who had borne up so bravely, was seized with a deadly faintness, and supported into the house.
All this spread like wild-fire, and roused the villagers, and they must have a hand in it. Parson had said Mr. Bassett was to blame; and that passed from one to another, and so fermented that, in the evening, a crowd collected round Highmore House and demanded Mr. Bassett.
The servants were alarmed, and said he was not at home.
Then the men demanded boisterously what he had done with Sir Charles, and threatened to break the windows unless they were told; and, as nobody in the house could tell them, the women egged on the men, and they did break the windows; but they no sooner saw their own work than they were a little alarmed at it, and retired, talking very loud to support their waning courage and check their rising remorse at their deed.
They left a house full of holes and screams, and poor little Mrs. Bassett half dead with fright.
As for Lady Bassett, she spent a horrible night of terror, suspense, and agony. She could not lie down, nor even sit still; she walked incessantly, wringing her hands, and groaning for news.
Mary Wells did all she could to comfort her; but it was a situation beyond the power of words to alleviate.
Her intolerable suspense lasted till four o'clock in the morning; and then, in the still night, horses' feet came clattering up to the door.
Lady Bassett went into the hall. It was dimly lighted by a single lamp. The great door was opened, and in clattered Moss and Drake, splashed and weary and downcast.
“Well?” cried Lady Bassett, clasping her hands.
“My lady,” said Moss, “we tracked the carriage into the next county, to a place thirty miles from here—to a lodge—and there they stopped us. The place is well guarded with men and great big dogs. We heerd 'em bark, didn't us, Will?”
“Ay,” said Drake, dejectedly.
“The man as kept the lodge was short, but civil. Says he, 'This is a place nobody comes in but by law, and nobody goes out but by law. If the gentleman is here you may go home and sleep; he is safe enough.'”
“A prison? No!”
“A 'sylum, my lady.”
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