At last she said, doggedly but faintly, “You will go with me to that place to-morrow, one of you.”
“I'll go, my lady,” said Moss. “Will, here, had better not show his face. They might take the law on him for that there shot.”
Drake hung his head, and his ardor was evidently cooled by discovering that Sir Charles had been taken to a mad-house.
Lady Bassett saw and sighed, and said she would take Moss to show her the way.
At eleven o'clock next morning a light carriage and pair came round to the Hall gate, and a large basket, a portmanteau, and a bag were placed on the roof under care of Moss; smaller packages were put inside; and Lady Bassett and her maid got in, both dressed in black.
They reached Bellevue House at half-past two. The lodge-gate was open, to Lady Bassett's surprise, and they drove through some pleasant grounds to a large white house.
The place at first sight had no distinctive character: great ingenuity had been used to secure the inmates without seeming to incarcerate them. There were no bars to the lower front windows, and the side windows, with their defenses, were shrouded by shrubs. The sentinels were out of sight, or employed on some occupation or other, but within call. Some patients were playing at cricket; some ladies looking on; others strolling on the gravel with a nurse, dressed very much like themselves, who did not obtrude her functions unnecessarily. All was apparent indifference, and Argus-eyed vigilance. So much for the surface.
Of course, even at this moment, some of the locked rooms had violent and miserable inmates.
The hall door opened as the carriage drew up; a respectable servant came forward.
Lady Bassett handed him her card, and said, “I am come to see my husband, sir.”
The man never moved a muscle, but said, “You must wait, if you please, till I take your card in.”
He soon returned, and said, “Dr. Suaby is not here, but the gentleman in charge will see you.”
Lady Bassett got out, and, beckoning Mary Wells, followed the servant into a curious room, half library, half chemist's shop; they called it “the laboratory.”
Here she found a tall man leaning on a dirty mantelpiece, who received her stiffly. He had a pale mustache, very thin lips, and altogether a severe manner. His head bald, rather prematurely, and whiskers abundant.
Lady Bassett looked him all over with one glance of her woman's eye, and saw she had a hard and vain man to deal with.
“Are you the gentleman to whom this house belongs?” she faltered.
“No, madam; I am in charge during Dr. Suaby's absence.”
“That comes to the same thing. Sir, I am come to see my dear husband.”
“Have you an order?”
“An order, sir? I am his wife.”
Mr. Salter shrugged his shoulders a little, and said, “I have no authority to let any visitor see a patient without an order from the person by whose authority he is placed here, or else an order from the commissioners.”
“But that cannot apply to his wife; to her who is one with him, for better for worse, in sickness or health.”
“It seems hard; but I have no discretion in the matter. The patient only came yesterday—much excited. He is better to-day, and an interview with you would excite him again.”
“Oh no! no! no! I can always soothe him. I will be so mild, so gentle. You can be present, and hear every word I say. I will only kiss him, and tell him who has done this, and to be brave, for his wife watches over him; and, sir, I will beg him to be patient, and not blame you nor any of the people here.”
“Very proper, very proper; but really this interview must be postponed till you have an order, or Dr. Suaby returns. He can violate his own rules if he likes; but I cannot, and, indeed, I dare not.”
“Dare not let a lady see her husband? Then you are not a man. Oh, can this be England? It is too inhuman.”
Then she began to cry and wring her hands.
“This is very painful,” said Mr. Salter, and left the room.
The respectable servant looked in soon after, and Lady Bassett told him, between her sobs, that she had brought some clothes and things for her husband. “Surely, sir,” said she, “they will not refuse me that?”
“Lord, no, ma'am,” said the man. “You can give them to the keeper and nurse in charge of him.”
Lady Bassett slipped a guinea into the man's hand directly. “Let me see those people,” said she.
The man winked, and vanished: he soon reappeared, and said, loudly, “Now, madam, if you will order the things into the hall.”
Lady Bassett came out and gave the order.
A short, bull-necked man, and rather a pretty young woman with a flaunting cap, bestirred themselves getting down the things; and Mr. Salter came out and looked on.
Lady Bassett called Mary Wells, and gave her a five-pound note to slip into the man's hand. She telegraphed the girl, who instantly came near her with an India rubber bath, and, affecting ignorance, asked her what that was.
Lady Bassett dropped three sovereigns into the bath, and said, “Ten times, twenty times that, if you are kind to him. Tell him it is his cousin's doing, but his wife watches over him.”
“All right,” said the girl. “Come again when the doctor is here.”
All this passed, in swift whispers, a few yards from Mr. Salter, and he now came forward and offered his arm to conduct Lady Bassett to the carriage.
But the wretched, heart-broken wife forgot her art of pleasing. She shrank from him with a faint cry of aversion, and got into her carriage unaided. Mary Wells followed her.
Mr. Salter was unwilling to receive this rebuff. He followed, and said, “The clothes shall be given, with any message you may think fit to intrust to me.”
Lady Bassett turned away sharply from him, and said to Mary Wells, “Tell him to drive home. Home! I have none now. Its light is torn from me.”
The carriage drove away as she uttered these piteous words.
She cried at intervals all the way home; and could hardly drag herself upstairs to bed.
Mr. Angelo called next day with bad news. Not a magistrate would move a finger against Mr. Bassett: he had the law on his side. Sir Charles was evidently insane; it was quite proper he should be put in security before he did some mischief to himself or Lady Bassett. “They say, why was he hidden for two months, if there was not something very wrong?”
Lady Bassett ordered the carriage and paid several calls, to counteract this fatal impression.
She found, to her horror, she might as well try to move a rock. There was plenty of kindness and pity; but the moment she began to assure them her husband was not insane she was met with the dead silence of polite incredulity. One or two old friends went further, and said, “My dear, we are told he could not be taken away without two doctors' certificates: now, consider, they must know better than you. Have patience, and let them cure him.”
Lady Bassett withdrew her friendship on the spot from two ladies for contradicting her on such a subject; she returned home almost wild herself.
In the village her carriage was stopped by a woman with her hair all flying, who told her, in a lamentable voice, that Squire Bassett had sent nine men to prison for taking Sir Charles's part and ill-treating his captors.
“My lawyer shall defend them at my expense,” said Lady Bassett, with a sigh.
At last she got home, and went up to her own room, and there was Mary Wells waiting to dress her.
She tottered in, and sank into a chair. But, after this temporary exhaustion, came a rising tempest of passion; her eyes roved, her fingers worked, and her heart seemed to come out of her in words of fire. “I have not a friend in all the county. That villain has only to say 'Mad,' and all turn from me, as if an angel of truth had said 'Criminal.' We have no friend but one, and she is my servant. Now go and envy wealth and titles. No wife in this parish is so poor as I; powerless in the folds of a serpent. I can't see my husband without an order from him. He is all power, I and mine all weakness.” She raised her clinched fists, she clutched her beautiful hair as if she would tear it out by the roots. “I shall, go mad! I shall go mad! No!” said she, all of a sudden. “That will not do. That is what he wants—and then my darling would be defenseless. I will not go mad.” Then suddenly grinding her white teeth: “I'll teach him to drive a lady to despair. I'll fight.”
She descended, almost without a break, from the fury of a Pythoness to a strange calm. Oh! then it is her sex are dangerous.
“Don't look so pale,” said she, and she actually smiled. “All is fair against so foul a villain. You and I will defeat him. Dress me, Mary.”
Mary Wells, carried away by the unusual violence of a superior mind, was quite bewildered.
Lady Bassett smiled a strange smile, and said, “I'll show you how to dress me;” and she did give her a lesson that astonished her.
“And now,” said Lady Bassett, “I shall dress you.” And she took a loose full dress out of her wardrobe, and made Mary Wells put it on; but first she inserted some stuffing so adroitly that Mary seemed very buxom, but what she wished to hide was hidden. Not so Lady Bassett herself. Her figure looked much rounder than in the last dress she wore.
With all this she was late for dinner, and when she went down Mr. Angelo had just finished telling Mr. Oldfield of the mishap to the villagers.
Lady Bassett came in animated and beautiful.
Dinner was announced directly, and a commonplace conversation kept up till the servants were got rid of. She then told Mr. Oldfield how she had been refused admittance to Sir Charles at Bellevue House, a plain proof, to her mind, they knew her husband was not insane; and begged him to act with energy, and get Sir Charles out before his reason could be permanently injured by the outrage and the horror of his situation.
This led to a discussion, in which Mr. Angelo and Lady Bassett threw out various suggestions, and Mr. Oldfield cooled their ardor with sound objections. He was familiar with the Statutes de Lunatico, and said they had been strictly observed both in the capture of Sir Charles and in Mr. Salter's refusal to let the wife see the husband. In short, he appeared either unable or unwilling to see anything except the strong legal position of the adverse party.
Mr. Oldfield was one of those prudent lawyers who search for the adversary's strong points, that their clients may not be taken by surprise; and that is very wise of them. But wise things require to be done wisely: he sometimes carried this system so far as to discourage his client too much. It is a fine thing to make your client think his case the weaker of the two, and then win it for him easily; that gratifies your own foible, professional vanity. But suppose, with your discouraging him so, he flings up or compromises a winning case? Suppose he takes the huff and goes to some other lawyer, who will warm him with hopes instead of cooling him with a one-sided and hostile view of his case?
In the present discussion Mr. Oldfield's habit of beginning by admiring his adversaries, together with his knowledge of law and little else, and his secret conviction that Sir Charles was unsound of mind, combined to paralyze him; and, not being a man of invention, he could not see his way out of the wood at all; he could negative Mr. Angelo's suggestions and give good reasons, but he could not, or did not, suggest anything better to be done.
Lady Bassett listened to his negative wisdom with a bitter smile, and said, at last, with a sigh: “It seems, then, we are to sit quiet and do nothing, while Mr. Bassett and his solicitor strike blow upon blow. There! I'll fight my own battle; and do you try and find some way of defending the poor souls that are in trouble because they did not sit with their hands before them when their benefactor was outraged. Command my purse, if money will save them from prison.”
Then she rose with dignity, and walked like a camelopard all down the room on the side opposite to Mr. Oldfield. Angelo flew to open the door, and in a whisper begged a word with her in private. She bowed ascent, and passed on from the room.
“What a fine creature!” said Mr. Oldfield. “How she walks!”
Mr. Angelo made no reply to this, but asked him what was to be done for the poor men: “they will be up before the Bench to-morrow.”
Stung a little by Lady Bassett's remark, Mr. Oldfield answered, promptly, “We must get some tradesmen to bail them with our money. It will only be a few pounds apiece. If the bail is accepted, they shall offer pecuniary compensation, and get up a defense; find somebody to swear Sir Charles was sane—that sort of evidence is always to be got. Counsel must do the rest. Simple natives—benefactor outraged—honest impulse—regretted, the moment they understood the capture had been legally made. Then throw dirt on the plaintiff. He is malicious, and can be proved to have forsworn himself in Bassett v. Bassett.”
A tap at the door, and Mary Wells put in her head. “If you please, sir, my lady is tired, and she wishes to say a word to you before she goes upstairs.”
“Excuse me one minute,” said Mr. Angelo, and followed Mary Wells. She ushered him into a boudoir, where he found Lady Bassett seated in an armchair, with her head on her hand, and her eyes fixed sadly on the carpet.
She smiled faintly, and said, “Well, what do you wish to say to me?”
“It is about Mr. Oldfield. He is clearly incompetent.”
“I don't know. I snubbed him, poor man: but if the law is all against us!”
“How does he know that? He assumes it because he is prejudiced in favor of the enemy. How does he know they have done everything the Act of Parliament requires? And, if they have, Law is not invincible. When Law defies Morality, it gets baffled, and trampled on in all civilized communities.”
“I never heard that before.”
“But you would if you had been at Oxford,” said he, smiling.
“Ah!”
“What we want is a man of genius, of invention; a man who will see every chance, take every chance, lawful or unlawful, and fight with all manner of weapons.”
Lady Bassett's eye flashed a moment. “Ah!” said she; “but where can I find such a man, with knowledge to guide his zeal?”
“I think I know of a man who could at all events advise you, if you would ask him.”
“Ah! Who?”
“He is a writer; and opinions vary as to his merit. Some say he has talent; others say it is all eccentricity and affectation. One thing is certain—his books bring about the changes he demands. And then he is in earnest; he has taken a good many alleged lunatics out of confinement.”
“Is it possible? Then let us apply to him at once.”
“He lives in London; but I have a friend who knows him. May I send an outline to him through that friend, and ask him whether he can advise you in the matter?”
“You may; and thank you a thousand times!”
“A mind like that, with knowledge, zeal, and invention, must surely throw some light.”
“One would think so, dear friend.”
“I'll write to-night and send a letter to Greatrex; we shall perhaps get an answer the day after to-morrow.”
“Ah! you are not the one to go to sleep in the service of a friend. A writer, did you say? What does he write?”
“Fiction.”
“What, novels?”
“And dramas and all.”
Lady Bassett sighed incredulously. “I should never think of going to Fiction for wisdom.”
“When the Family Calas were about to be executed unjustly, with the consent of all the lawyers and statesmen in France, one man in a nation saw the error, and fought for the innocent, and saved them; and that one wise man in a nation of fools was a writer of fiction.”
“Oh! a learned Oxonian can always answer a poor ignorant thing like me. One swallow does not make summer, for all that.”
“But this writer's fictions are not like the novels you read; they are works of laborious research. Besides, he is a lawyer, as well as a novelist.”
“Oh, if he is a lawyer!”
“Then I may write?”
“Yes,” said Lady Bassett, despondingly.
“What is to become of Oldfield?”
“Send him to the drawing-room. I will go down and endure him for another hour. You can write your letter here, and then please come and relieve me of Mr. Negative.”
She rang, and ordered coffee and tea into the drawing-room; and Mr. Oldfield found her very cold company.
In half an hour Mr. Angelo came down, looking flushed and very handsome; and Lady Bassett had some fresh tea made for him.
This done she bade the gentlemen goodnight, and went to her room. Here she found Mary Wells full of curiosity to know whether the lawyer would get Sir Charles out of the asylum.
Lady Bassett gave loose to her indignation, and said nothing was to be expected from such a Nullity. “Mary, he could not see. I gave him every opportunity. I walked slowly down the room before him after dinner; and I came into the drawing-room and moved about, and yet he could not see.”
“Then you will have to tell him, that is all.”
“Never; no more shall you. I'll not trust my fate, and Sir Charles's, to a man that has no eyes.”
For this feminine reason she took a spite against poor Oldfield; but to Mr. Angelo she suppressed the real reason, and entered into that ardent gentleman's grounds of discontent, though these alone would not have entirely dissolved her respect for the family solicitor.
Next afternoon Angelo came to her in great distress and ire. “Beaten! beaten! and all through our adversaries having more talent. Mr. Bassett did not appear at first. Wheeler excused him on the ground that his wife was seriously ill through the fright. Bassett's servants were called, and swore to the damage and to the men, all but one. He got off. Then Oldfield made a dry speech; and a tradesman he had prepared offered bail. The magistrates were consulting, when in burst Mr. Bassett all in black, and made a speech fifty times stronger than Oldfield's, and sobbed, and told them the rioters had frightened his wife so she had been prematurely confined, and the child was dead. Could they take bail for a riot, a dastardly attack by a mob of cowards on a poor defenseless woman, the gentlest and most inoffensive creature in England? Then he went on: 'They were told I was not in the house; and then they found courage to fling stones, to terrify my wife and kill my child. Poor soul!' he said, 'she lies between life and death herself: and I come here in an agony of fear, but I come for justice; the man of straw, who offers bail, is furnished with the money by those who stimulated the outrage. Defeat that fraud, and teach these cowards who war on defenseless ladies that there is humanity and justice and law in the land.' Then Oldfield tried to answer him with his hems and his haws; but Bassett turned on him like a giant, and swept him away.”
“Poor woman!”
“Ah! that is true: I am afraid I have thought too little of her. But you suffer, and so must she. It is the most terrible feud; one would think this was Corsica instead of England, only the fighting is not done with daggers. But, after this, pray lean no more on that Oldfield. We were all carried away at first; but, now I think of it, Bassett must have been in the court, and held back to make the climax. Oh, yes! it was another surprise and another success. They are all sent to jail. Superior generalship! If Wheeler had been our man, we should have had eight wives crying for pity, each with one child in her arms, and another holding on to her apron. Do, pray, Lady Bassett, dismiss that Nullity.”
“Oh, I cannot do that; he is Sir Charles's lawyer; but I have promised you to seek advice elsewhere, and so I will.”
The conversation was interrupted by the tolling of the church-bell.
The first note startled Lady Bassett, and she turned pale.
“I must leave you,” said Angelo, regretfully. “I have to bury Mr. Bassett's little boy; he lived an hour.”
Lady Bassett sat and heard the bell toll.
Strange, sad thoughts passed through her mind. “Is it saddest when it tolls, or when it rings—that bell? He has killed his own child by robbing me of my husband. We are in the hands of God, after all, let Wheeler be ever so cunning, and Oldfield ever so simple.—And I am not acting by that.—Where is my trust in God's justice?—Oh, thou of little faith!—What shall I do? Love is stronger in me than faith—stronger than anything in heaven or earth. God forgive me—God help me—I will go back.
“But oh, to stand still, and be good and simple, and to see my husband trampled on by a cunning villain!
“Why is there a future state, where everything is to be different? no hate; no injustice; all love. Why is it not all of a piece? Why begin wrong if it is to end all right? If I was omnipotent it should be right from the first.—Oh, thou of little faith!—Ah, me! it is hard to see fools and devils, and realize angels unseen. Oh, that I could shut my eyes in faith and go to sleep, and drift on the right path; for I shall never take it with my eyes open, and my heart bleeding for him.”
Then her head fell languidly back, her eyes closed, and the tears welled through them: they knew the way by this time.
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