SIR CHARLES and Lady Bassett, relieved of their cousin's active enmity, led a quiet life, and one that no longer furnished striking incidents.
But dramatic incident is not everything: character and feeling show themselves in things that will not make pictures. Now it was precisely during this reposeful period that three personages of this story exhibited fresh traits of feeling, and also of character.
To begin with Sir Charles Bassett. He came back from the asylum much altered in body and mind. Stopping his cigars had improved his stomach; working in the garden had increased his muscular power, and his cheeks were healthy, and a little sunburned, instead of sallow. His mind was also improved: contemplation of insane persons had set him by a natural recoil to study self-control. He had returned a philosopher. No small thing could irritate him now. So far his character was elevated.
Lady Bassett was much the same as before, except a certain restlessness. She wanted to be told every day, or twice a day, that her husband was happy; and, although he was visibly so, yet, as he was quiet over it, she used to be always asking him if he was happy. This the reader must interpret as he pleases.
Mary Gosport gave herself airs. Respectful to her master and mistress, but not so tolerant of chaff in the kitchen as she used to be. Made an example of one girl, who threw a doubt on her marriage. Complained to Lady Bassett, affected to fret, and the girl was dismissed.
She turned singer. She had always sung psalms in church, but never a profane note in the house. Now she took to singing over her nursling; she had a voice of prodigious power and mellowness, and, provided she was not asked, would sing lullabies and nursery rhymes from another county that ravished the hearer. Horsemen have been known to stop in the road to hear her sing through an open window of Huntercombe, two hundred yards off.
Old Mr. Meyrick, a farmer well-to-do, fascinated by Mary Gosport's singing, asked her to be his housekeeper when she should have done nursing her charge.
She laughed in his face.
A fanatic who was staying with Sir Charles Bassett offered her three years' education in Do, Ra, Mi, Fa, preparatory to singing at the opera.
Declined without thanks.
Mr. Drake, after hovering shyly, at last found courage to reproach her for deserting him and marrying a sailor.
“Teach you not to shilly-shally,” said she. “Beauty won't go a-begging. Mind you look sharper next time.”
This dialogue, being held in the kitchen, gave the women some amusement at the young farmer's expense.
One day Mr. Richard Bassett, from motives of pure affection no doubt, not curiosity, desired mightily to inspect Mr. Bassett, aged eight months and two days.
So, in his usual wily way, he wrote to Mrs. Gosport, asking her, for old acquaintance' sake, to meet him in the meadow at the end of the lawn. This meadow belonged to Sir Charles, but Richard Bassett had a right of way through it, and could step into it by a postern, as Mary could by an iron gate.
He asked her to come at eleven o'clock, because at that hour he observed she walked on the lawn with her charge.
Mary Gosport came to the tryst, but without Mr. Bassett.
Richard was very polite; she cold, taciturn, observant.
At last he said, “But where's the little heir?”
She flew at him directly. “It is him you wanted, not me. Did you think I'd bring him here—for you to kill him?”
“Come, I say.”
“Ay, you'd kill him if you had a chance. But you never shall. Or if you didn't kill him, you'd cast the evil-eye on him, for you are well known to have the evil-eye. No; he shall outlive thee and thine, and be lord of these here manors when thou is gone to hell, thou villain.”
Mr. Richard Bassett turned pale, but did the wisest thing he could—put his hands in his pockets, and walked into his own premises, followed, however, by Mary Gosport, who stormed at him till he shut his postern in her face.
She stood there trembling for a little while, then walked away, crying.
But having a mind like running water, she was soon seated on a garden chair, singing over her nursling like a mavis: she had delivered him to Millar while she went to speak her mind to her old lover.
As for Richard Bassett, he was theory-bitten, and so turned every thing one way. To be sure, as long as the woman's glaring eyes and face distorted by passion were before him, he interpreted her words simply; but when he thought the matter over he said to himself, “The evil-eye! That is all bosh; the girl is in Lady Bassett's secrets; and I am not to see young master: some day I shall know the reason why.”
Sir Charles Bassett now belonged to the tribe of clucking cocks quite as much as his cousin had ever done; only Sir Charles had the good taste to confine his clucks to his own first-floor. Here, to be sure, he richly indemnified himself for his self-denial abroad. He sat for hours at a time watching the boy on the ground at his knee, or in his nurse's arms.
And while he watched the infant with undisguised delight, Lady Bassett would watch him with a sort of furtive and timid complacency.
Yet at times she suffered from twinges of jealousy—a new complaint with her.
I think I have mentioned that Sir Charles, at first, was annoyed at seeing his son and heir nursed by a woman of low condition. Well, he got over that feeling by degrees, and, as soon as he did get over it, his sentiments took quite an opposite turn. A woman for whom he did very little, in his opinion—since what, in Heaven's name, were a servant's wages?—he saw that woman do something great for him; saw her nourish his son and heir from her own veins; the child had no other nurture; yet the father saw him bloom and thrive, and grow surprisingly.
A weak observer, or a less enthusiastic parent, might have overlooked all this; but Sir Charles had naturally an observant eye and an analytical mind, and this had been suddenly but effectually developed by the asylum and his correspondence with Rolfe.
He watched the nurse, then, and her maternal acts with a curious and grateful eye, and a certain reverence for her power.
He observed, too, that his child reacted on the woman: she had never sung in the house before; now she sang ravishingly—sang, in low, mellow, yet sonorous notes, some ditties that had lulled mediaeval barons in their cradles.
And what had made her vocal made her beautiful at times.
Before, she had appeared to him a handsome girl, with the hardish look of the lower classes; but now, when she sat in a sunny window, and lowered her black lashes on her nursling, with the mixed and delicious smile of an exuberant nurse relieving and relieved, she was soft, poetical, sculptorial, maternal, womanly.
This species of contemplation, though half philosophical, half paternal, and quite innocent, gave Lady Bassett some severe pangs.
She hid them, however; only she bided her time, and then suggested the propriety of weaning baby.
But Mrs. Gosport got Sir Charles's ear, and told him what magnificent children they reared in her village by not weaning infants till they were eighteen months old or so.
By this means, and by crying to Lady Bassett, and representing her desolate condition with a husband at sea, she obtained a reprieve, coupled, however, with a good-humored assurance from Sir Charles that she was the greatest baby of the two.
When the inevitable hour approached that was to dethrone her she took to reading the papers, and one day she read of a disastrous wreck, the Carbrea Castle—only seven saved out of a crew of twenty-three. She read the details carefully, and two days afterward she received a letter written by a shipmate of Mr. Gosport's, in a handwriting not very unlike her own, relating the sad wreck of the Carbrea Castle, and the loss of several good sailors, James Gosport for one.
Then the house was filled with the wailing and weeping of the bereaved widow; and at last came consolers and raised doubts; but then somebody remembered to have seen the loss of that very ship in the paper. The paper was found, and the fatal truth was at once established.
Upon this Mr. Bassett was weaned as quickly as possible, and the widow clothed in black at Lady Bassett's expense, and everything in reason done to pet her and console her.
But she cried bitterly, and said she would throw herself into the sea and follow her husband.
Huntercombe was nowhere near the coast.
At last, however, she relented, and concluded to remain on earth as dry-nurse to Mr. Bassett.
Sir Charles did not approve this: it seemed unreasonable to turn a wet-nurse into a dry-nurse when that office was already occupied by a person her senior and more experienced.
Lady Bassett agreed with him, but shrugged her shoulders and said, “Two nurses will not hurt, and I suspect it will not be for long. Mary does not feel her husband's loss one bit.”
“Surely you are mistaken. She howls loud enough.”
“Too loud—much,” said Lady Bassett, dryly.
Her perspicuity was not deceived. In a very short time Mr. Meyrick, unable to get her for his housekeeper, offered her marriage.
“What!” said she, “and James Gosport not dead a month?”
“Say the word now, and take your own time,” said he.
“Well, I might do worse,” said she.
About six weeks after this Drake came about her, and in tender tones of consolation suggested that it is much better for a pretty girl to marry one who plows the land than one who plows the sea.
“That is true,” said Mary, with a sigh; “I have found it to my sorrow.”
After this Drake played a bit with her, and then relented, and one evening offered her marriage, expecting her to jump eagerly at his offer.
“You be too late, young man,” said she, coolly; “I'm bespoke.”
“Doan't ye say that! How can ye be bespoke? Why, t'other hain't been dead four months yet.”
“What o' that? This one spoke for me within a week. Why, our banns are to be cried to-morrow; come to church and hear 'em; that will learn ye not to shilly-shally so next time.”
“Next time!” cried Drake, half blubbering; then, with a sudden roar, “what, be you coming to market again, arter this?”
“Like enough: he is a deal older than I be. 'Tis Mr. Meyrick, if ye must know.”
Now Mr. Meyrick was well-to-do, and so Drake was taken aback.
“Mr. Meyrick!” said he, and turned suddenly respectful.
But presently a view of a rich widow flitted before his eye.
“Well,” said he, “you shan't throw it in my teeth again as I speak too late. I ask you now, and no time lost.”
“What! am I to stop my banns, and jilt Farmer Meyrick for thee?”
“Nay, nay. But I mean I'll marry you, if you'll marry me, as soon as ever the breath is out of that dall'd old hunks's body.”
“Well, well, Will Drake,” said Mary, gravely, “if I do outlive this one—and you bain't married long afore—and if you keeps in the same mind as you be now—and lets me know it in good time—I'll see about it.”
She gave a flounce that made her petticoats whisk like a mare's tail, and off to the kitchen, where she related the dialogue with an appropriate reflection, the company containing several of either sex. “Dilly-Dally and Shilly-Shally, they belongs to us as women be. I hate and despise a man as can't make up his mind in half a minnut.”
So the widow Gosport became Mrs. Meyrick, and lived in a farmhouse not quite a mile from the Hall.
She used often to come to the Hall, and take a peep at her lamb: this was the name she gave Mr. Bassett long after he had ceased to be a child.
About four years after the triumphant return to Huntercombe, Lady Bassett conceived a sudden coldness toward the little boy, though he was universally admired.
She concealed this sentiment from Sir Charles, but not from the female servants: and, from one to another, at last it came round to Sir Charles. He disbelieved it utterly at first; but, the hint having been given him, he paid attention, and discovered there was, at all events, some truth in it.
He awaited his opportunity and remonstrated: “My dear Bella, am I mistaken, or do I really observe a falling off in your tenderness for your child?”
Lady Bassett looked this way and that, as if she meditated flight, but at last she resigned herself, and said, “Yes, dear Charles; my heart is quite cold to him.”
“Good Heavens, Bella! But why? Is not this the same little angel that came to our help in trouble, that comforted me even before his birth, when my mind was morbid, to say the least?”
“I suppose he is the same,” said she, in a tone impossible to convey by description of mine.
“That is a strange answer.”
“If he is, I am changed.” And this she said doggedly and unlike herself.
“What!” said Sir Charles, very gravely, and with a sort of awe: “can a woman withdraw her affection from her child, her innocent child? If so, my turn may come next.”
“Oh, Charles! Charles!” and the tears began to well.
“Why, who can be secure after this? What is so stable as a mother's love? If that is not rooted too deep for gusts of caprice to blow it away, in Heaven's name, what is?”
No answer to that but tears.
Sir Charles looked at her very long, attentively, and seriously, and said not another syllable.
But his dropping so suddenly a subject of this importance was rather suspicious, and Lady Bassett was too shrewd not to see that.
They watched each other.
But with this difference: Sir Charles could not conceal his anxiety, whereas the lady appeared quite tranquil.
One day Sir Charles said, cheerfully, “Who do you think dines here to-morrow, and stays all night? Dr. Suaby.”
“By invitation, dear?” asked Lady Bassett, quietly.
Sir Charles colored a little, and said, quietly, “Yes.”
Lady Bassett made no remark, and it was impossible to tell by her face whether the visit was agreeable or not.
Some time afterward, however, she said, “Whom shall I ask to meet Dr. Suaby?”
“Nobody, for Heaven's sake!”
“Will not that be dull for him?”
“I hope not.”
“You will have plenty to say to him, eh, darling?”
“We never yet lacked topics. Whether or no, his is a mind I choose to drink neat.”
“Drink him neat?”
“Undiluted with rural minds.”
“Oh!”
She uttered that monosyllable very dryly, and said no more.
Dr. Suaby came next day, and dined with them, and Lady Bassett was charming; but rather earlier than usual she said, “Now I am sure you and Dr. Suaby must have many things to talk about,” and retired, casting back an arch, and almost a cunning smile.
The door closed on her, the smile fled, and a somber look of care and suffering took its place.
Sir Charles entered at once on what was next his heart, told Dr. Suaby he was in some anxiety, and asked him if he had observed anything in Lady Bassett.
“Nothing new,” said Dr. Suaby; “charming as ever.”
Then Sir Charles confided to Dr. Suaby, in terms of deep feeling and anxiety, what I have coldly told the reader.
Dr. Suaby looked a little grave, and took time to think before he spoke.
At last he delivered an opinion, of which this is the substance, though not the exact words.
“It is sudden and unnatural, and I cannot say it does not partake of mental aberration. If the patient was a man I should fear the most serious results; but here we have to take into account the patient's sex, her nature, and her present condition. Lady Bassett has always appeared to me a very remarkable woman. She has no mediocrity in anything; understanding keen, perception wonderfully swift, heart large and sensitive, nerves high strung, sensibilities acute. A person of her sex, tuned so high as this, is always subject, more or less, to hysteria. It is controlled by her intelligence and spirit; but she is now, for the time being, in a physical condition that has often deranged less sensitive women than she is. I believe this about the boy to be a hysterical delusion, which will pass away when her next child is born. That is to say, she will probably ignore her first-born, and everything else, for a time; but these caprices, springing in reality from the body rather than the mind, cannot endure forever. When she has several grown-up children the first-born will be the favorite. It comes to that at last, my good friend.”
“These are the words of wisdom,” said Sir Charles; “God bless you for them!”
After a while he said, “Then what you advise is simply—patience?”
“No, I don't say that. With such a large house as this, and your resources, you might easily separate them before the delusion grows any farther. Why risk a calamity?”
“A calamity?” and Sir Charles began to tremble.
“She is only cold to the child as yet. She might go farther, and fancy she hated it. Obsta principiis: that is my motto. Not that I really think, for a moment, the child is in danger. Lady Bassett has mind to control her nerves with; but why run the shadow of a chance?”
“I will not run the shadow of a chance,” said Sir Charles, resolutely; “let us come upstairs: my decision is taken.”
The very next day Sir Charles called on Mrs. Meyrick, and asked if he could come to any arrangement with her to lodge Mr. Bassett and his nurse under her roof. “The boy wants change of air,” said he.
Mrs. Meyrick jumped at the proposal, but declined all terms. “No,” said she, “the child I have suckled shall never pay me for his lodging. Why should he, sir, when I'd pay you to let him come, if I wasn't afeard of offending you?”
Sir Charles was touched at this, and, being a gentleman of tact, said, “You are very good: well, then, I must remain your debtor for the present.”
He then took his leave, but she walked with him a few yards, just as far as the wicket, gate that separated her little front garden from the high-road.
“I hope,” said she, “my lady will come and see me when my lamb is with me; a sight of her would be good for sore eyes. She have never been here but once, and then she did not get out of her carriage.”
“Humph!” said Sir Charles, apologetically; “she seldom goes out now; you understand.”
“Oh, I've heard, sir; and I do put up my prayers for her; for my lady has been a good friend to me, sir, and if you will believe me, I often sets here and longs for a sight of her, and her sweet eyes, and her hair like sunshine, that I've had in my hand so often. Well, sir, I hope it will be a girl this time, a little girl with golden hair; that's what I wants this time. They'll be the prettiest pair in England.”
“With all my heart,” said Sir Charles; “girl or boy, I don't care which; but I'd give a few thousands if it was here, and the mother safe.”
He hurried away, ashamed of having uttered the feelings of his heart to a farmer's wife. To avoid discussion, he sent Mrs. Millar and the boy off all in a hurry, and then told Lady Bassett what he had done.
She appeared much distressed at that, and asked what she had done.
He soothed her, and said she was not to blarne at all; and she must not blame him either. He had done it for the best.
“After all, you are the master,” said she, submissively.
“I am,” said he, “and men will be tyrants, you know.”
Then she flung her arm round her tyrant's neck, and there was an end of the discussion.
One day he inquired for her, and heard, to his no small satisfaction, she had driven to Mrs. Meyrick's, with a box of things for Mr. Bassett. She stayed at the farmhouse all day, and Sir Charles felt sure he had done the right thing.
Mrs. Meyrick found out to her cost the difference between a nursling and a rampageous little boy.
Her lamb, as she called him, was now a young monkey, vigorous, active, restless, and, unfortunately, as strong on his pins as most boys of six. It took two women to look after him, and smart ones too, so swiftly did he dash off into some mischief or other. At last Mrs. Meyrick simplified matters in some degree by locking the large gate, and even the small wicket, and ordering all the farm people and milkmaids to keep an eye on him, and bring him straight to her if he should stray, for he seemed to hate in-doors. Never was such a boy.
Nevertheless, such as had not the care of him admired the child for his beauty and his assurance. He seemed to regard the whole human race as one family, of which he was the rising head. The moment he caught sight of a human being he dashed at it and into conversation by one unbroken movement.
Now children in general are too apt to hide their intellectual treasures from strangers by shyness.
One day this ready converser was standing on the steps of the house, when a gentleman came to the wicket gate, and looked over into the garden.
Young master darted to the gate directly, and getting his foot on the lowest bar and his hands on the spikes, gave tongue.
“Who are you? I'm Mr. Bassett. I don't live here; I'm only staying. My home is Huncom Hall. I'm to have it for myself when papa dies. I didn't know dat till I come here. How old are you? I'm half past four—”
A loud scream, a swift rustle, and Mr. Bassett was clutched up by Mrs. Meyrick, who snatched him away with a wild glance of terror and defiance, and bore him swiftly into the house, with words ringing in her ears that cost Mr. Bassett dear, he being the only person she could punish. She sat down on a bench, flung young master across her knee in a minute, and bestowed such a smacking on him as far transcended his wildest dreams of the weight, power, and pertinacity of the human arm.
The words Richard Bassett had shot her flying with were these:
“Too late! I've SEEN THE PARSON'S BRAT.”
Richard Bassett mounted his horse and rode over to Wheeler, for he could no longer wheedle the man of law over to Highmore, and I will very briefly state why.
1st. About three years ago an old lady, one of his few clients, left him three thousand pounds, just reward of a very little law and a vast deal of gossip.
2d. The head solicitor of the place got old and wanted a partner. Wheeler bought himself in, and thenceforth took his share of a good business, and by his energy enlarged it, though he never could found one for himself.
3d. He married a wife.
4th. She was a pretty woman, and blessed with jealousy of a just and impartial nature: she was equally jealous of women, men, books, business—anything that took her husband from her.
No more sleeping out at Highmore; no more protracted potations; no more bachelor tricks for Wheeler. He still valued his old client and welcomed him; but the venue was changed, so to speak.
Richard Bassett was kept waiting in the outer office; but when he did get in he easily prevailed on Wheeler to send the next client or two to his partner, and give him a full hearing.
Then he opened his business. “Well,” said he, “I've seen him at last!”
“Seen him? seen whom?”
“The boy they have set up to rob my boy of the estate. I've seen him, Wheeler, seen him close; and HE'S AS BLACK AS MY HAT.”
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