SOME days after this Mr. Rolfe received a line from Lady Bassett, to say she was at the Adelphi Hotel, in John Street. He put some letters into his pocket and called on her directly.
She received him warmly, and told him, more fully than she had by letter, how she had acted on his advice; then she told him of Richard Bassett's last act, and showed him her retort.
He knitted his brows at first over it; but said he thought her proclamation could do no harm.
“As a rule,” said he, “I object to flicking with a lady's whip when I am going to crush, but—yes—it is able, and gives you a good excuse for keeping out of the way of annoyances till we strike the blow. And now I have something to consult you upon. May I read you some extracts from your husband's letters to me?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Forgive a novelist; but this is a new situation, reading a husband's letters to his wife. However, I have a motive, and so I had in soliciting the correspondence with Sir Charles.” He then read her the letters that are already before the reader, and also the following extracts:
“Mr. Johnson, a broken tradesman, has some imagination, though not of a poetic kind; he is imbued with trade, and, in the daytime, exercises several, especially a butcher's. When he sees any of us coming, he whips before the nearest door or gate, and sells meat. He sells it very cheap; the reason is, his friends allow him only a shilling or two in coppers, and as every madman is the center of the universe, he thinks that the prices of all commodities are regulated by the amount of specie in his pocket. This is his style, 'Come, buy, buy, choice mutton three farthings the carcass. Retail shop next door, ma'am. Jack, serve the lady. Bill, tell him he can send me home those twenty bullocks, at three half-pence each—' and so on. But at night he subsides into an auctioneer, and, with knocking down lots while others are conversing, gets removed occasionally to a padded room. Sometimes we humor him, and he sells us the furniture after a spirited competition, and debits the amounts, for cash is not abundant here. The other night, heated with business, he went on from the articles of furniture to the company, and put us all up in succession.
“Having a good many dislikes, he sometimes forgot the auctioneer in the man, and depreciated some lots so severely that they had to be passed; but he set Miss Wieland in a chair, and descanted on her beauty, good temper, and other gifts, in terms florid enough for Robins, or any other poet. Sold for eighteen pounds, and to a lady. This lady had formed a violent attachment to Miss W.; so next week they will be at daggers drawn. My turn came, and the auctioneer did me the honor to describe me as 'the lot of the evening.' He told the bidders to mind what they were about, they might never again be able to secure a live baronet at a moderate price, owing to the tightness of the money market. Well, sir, I was honored with bids from several ladies; but they were too timid and too honest to go beyond their means; my less scrupulous sex soared above these considerations, and I was knocked down for seventy-nine pounds fifteen shillings, amid loud applause at the spirited result. My purchaser is a shop-keeper mad after gardening. Dr. Suaby has given him a plot to cultivate, and he whispered in my ear, 'The reason I went to a fancy price was, I can kill two birds with one stone with you. You'll make a very good statee stuck up among my flowers; and you can hallo, and keep those plaguy sparrows off.'”
“Oh, what creatures for my darling to live among!” cried Lady Bassett piteously.
Mr. Rolfe stared, and said, “What, then, you are like all your sex—no sense of humor?”
“Humor! when my husband is in misery and degradation!”
“And don't you see that the brave writer of these letters is steeled against misery, and above degradation? Such men are not the mere sport of circumstances. Your husband carries a soul not to be quelled by three months in a well-ordered mad-house. But I will read no more, since what gives me satisfaction gives you pain.”
“Oh, yes, yes! Don't let me lose a word my husband has ever uttered.”
“Well, I'll go on; but I'm horribly discouraged.”
“I'm so sorry for that sir. Please forgive me.”
Mr. Rolfe read the letter next in date—
“We are honored with one relic of antiquity, a Pythagorean. He has obliged me with his biography. He was, to use his own words, engendered by the sun shining on a dunghill at his father's door,' and began his career as a flea; but his identity was, somehow, shifted to a boy of nine years old. He has had a long spell of humanity, and awaits the great change—which is to turn him to a bee. It will not find him unprepared; he has long practiced humming, in anticipation. A faithful friend, called Caffyn, used to visit him every week. Caffyn died last year, and the poor Pythagorean was very lonely and sad; but, two months ago, he detected his friend in the butcher's horse, and is more than consoled, for he says, Caffyn comes six times a week now, instead of once.'”
“Poor soul!” said Lady Bassett. “What a strange world for him to be living in. It seems like a dream.”
“There is something stranger coming in this last letter.”
“I have at last found one madman allied to Genius. It has taken me a fortnight to master his delusion, and to write down the vocabulary he has invented to describe the strange monster of his imagination. All the words I write in italics are his own.
“Mr. Williams says that a machine has been constructed for malignant purposes, which machine is an air-loom. It rivals the human machine in this, that it can operate either on mind or matter. It was invented, and is worked, by a gang of villains superlatively skillful in pneumatic chemistry, physiology, nervous influence, sympathy, and the higher metaphysic, men far beyond the immature science of the present era, which, indeed, is a favorite subject of their ridicule.
“The gang are seven in number, but Williams has only seen the four highest: Bill, the King, a master of the art of magnetic impregnation; Jack, the schoolmaster, the short-hand writer of the gang; Sir Archy, Chief Liar to the Association; and the glove-woman, so called from her always wearing cotton mittens. This personage has never been known to speak to any one.
“The materials used in the air-loom by these pneumatic adepts are infinite; but principally effluvia of certain metals, poisons, soporific scents, etc.
“The principal effects are:
“1st. EVENT-WORKING.—This is done by magnetic manipulation of kings, emperors, prime ministers, and others; so that, while the world is fearing and admiring them, they are, in reality, mere puppets played by the workers of the air-loom.
“2d. CUTTING SOUL FROM SENSE.—This is done by diffusing the magnetic warp from the root of the nose under the base of the skull, till it forms a veil; so that the sentiments of the heart can have no communication with the operations of the intellect.
“3d. KITING.—As boys raise a kite in the air, so the air-loom can lift an idea into the brain, where it floats and undulates for hours together. The victim cannot get rid of an idea so insinuated.
“4th. LOBSTER-CRACKING.—An external pressure of the magnetic atmosphere surrounding the person assailed. Williams has been so operated on, and says he felt as if he was grasped by an enormous pair of nut-crackers with teeth, and subjected to a piercing pressure, which he still remembers with horror. Death sometimes results from Lobster-cracking.
“5th. LENGTHENING THE BRAIN.—As the cylindrical mirror lengthens the countenance, so these assailants find means to elongate the brain. This distorts the ideas, and subjects the most serious are made silly and ridiculous.
“6th. THOUGHT-MAKING.—While one of these villains sucks at the brain of the assailed, and extracts his existing sentiments, another will press into the vacuum ideas very different from his real thoughts. Thus his mind is physically enslaved.”
Then Sir Charles goes on to say:
“Poor Mr. Williams seems to me an inventor wasted. I thought I would try and reason him out of his delusion. I asked if he had ever seen this gang and their machine.
“He said yes, they operated on him this morning. 'Then show them me,' said I. 'Young man,' said he, satirically, 'do you think these assassins, and their diabolical machine, would be allowed to go on, if they could be laid hands on so easily? The gang are fertile in disguise; the machine operates at considerable distances.'
“To drive him into a corner, I said, 'Will you give me a drawing of it?' He seemed to hesitate, so I said, 'If you can not draw it, you never saw it, and never will.' He assented to that, and I was vain enough to think I had staggered him; but yesterday he produced the inclosed sketch and explanation. After this I sadly fear he is incurable.
“There are three sane patients in this asylum, besides myself. I will tell you their stories when you come here, which I hope will be soon; for the time agreed on draws near, and my patience and self-control are sorely tried, as day after day rolls by, and sees me still in a madhouse.”
“There, Lady Bassett,” said Mr. Rolfe. “And now for my motive in reading these letters. Sir Charles may still have a crotchet, an inordinate desire for an heir; but, even if he has, the writer of these letters has nothing to fear from any jury; and, therefore, I am now ready to act. I propose to go down to the asylum to-morrow, and get him out as quickly as I can.”
Lady Bassett uttered an ejaculation of joy. Then she turned suddenly pale, and her countenance fell. She said nothing.
Mr. Rolfe was surprised at this, since, at their last meeting, she was writhing at her inaction. He began to puzzle himself. She watched him keenly. He thought to himself, “Perhaps she dreads the excitement of meeting—for herself.”
At last Lady Bassett asked him how long it would take to liberate Sir Charles.
“Not quite a week, if Richard Bassett is well advised. If he fights desperately it may take a fortnight. In any case I don't leave the work an hour till it is done. I can delay, and I can fight; but I never mix the two. Come, Lady Bassett, there is something on your mind you don't like to say. Well, what does it matter? I will pack my bag, and write to Dr. Suaby that he may expect me soon; but I will wait till I get a line from you to go ahead. Then I'll go down that instant and do the work.”
This proposal was clearly agreeable to Lady Bassett, and she thanked him.
“You need not waste words over it,” said he. “Write one word, 'ACT!' That will be the shortest letter you ever wrote.”
The rest of the conversation is not worth recording.
Mr. Rolfe instructed a young solicitor minutely, packed his bag, and waited.
But day after day went by, and the order never came to act.
Mr. Rolfe was surprised at this, and began to ask himself whether he could have been deceived in this lady's affection for her husband. But he rejected that. Then he asked himself whether it might have cooled. He had known a very short incarceration produce that fatal effect. Both husband and wife interested him, and he began to get irritated at the delay.
Sir Charles's letters made him think they had already wasted time.
At last a letter came from Gloucester Place.
“Will my kind friend now ACT?
“Gratefully,
“BELLA BASSETT.”
Mr. Rolfe, upon this, cast his discontent to the winds and started for Bellevue House.
On the evening of that day a surgeon called Boddington was drinking tea with his wife, and they were talking rather disconsolately; for he had left a fair business in the country, and, though a gentleman of undoubted skill, was making his way very slowly in London.
The conversation was agreeably interrupted by a loud knock at the door.
A woman had come to say that he was wanted that moment for a lady of title in Gloucester Place, hard by.
“I will come,” said he, with admirably affected indifference; and, as soon as the woman was out of sight, husband and wife embraced each other.
“Pray God it may all go well, for your sake and hers, poor lady.”
Mr. Boddington hurried to the number in Gloucester Place. The door was opened by the charwoman.
He asked her with some doubt if that was the house.
The woman said yes, and she believed it was a surprise. The lady was from the country, and was looking out for some servants.
This colloquy was interrupted by an intelligent maid, who asked, over the balusters, if that was the medical man; and, on the woman's saying it was, begged him to step upstairs at once.
He found his patient attended only by her maid, but she was all discretion, and intelligence. She said he had only to direct her, she would do anything for her dear mistress.
Mr. Boddington said a single zealous and intelligent woman, who could obey orders, was as good as a number, or better.
He then went gently to the bedside, and his experience told him at once that the patient was in labor.
He told the attendant so, and gave her his directions.
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg