AT this monstrous declaration, from the very lips of the man's wife, there was a dead silence, Sir Charles being struck dumb, and Lady Bassett herself terrified at the sound of the words she had uttered.
After a terrible pause, Sir Charles fixed his eyes on her, with an awful look, and said, very slowly, “Will—you—have—the—goodness— to—say that again? but first think what you are saying.”
This made Lady Bassett shake in every limb; indeed the very flesh of her body quivered. Yet she persisted, but in a tone that of itself showed how fast her courage was oozing. She faltered out, almost inaudibly, “I say you must waste no more love on him—he is not your son.”
Sir Charles looked at her to see if she was in her senses: it was not the first time he had suspected her of being deranged on this one subject. But no: she was pale as death, she was cringing, wincing, quivering, and her eyes roving to and fro; a picture not of frenzy, but of guilt unhardened.
He began to tremble in his turn, and was so horror-stricken and agitated that he could hardly speak. “Am I dreaming?” he gasped.
Lady Bassett saw the storm she had raised, and would have given the world to recall her words.
“Whose is he, then?” asked Sir Charles, in a voice scarcely human.
“I don't know,” said Lady Bassett doggedly.
“Then how dare you say that he isn't mine?”
“Kill me, Charles,” cried she, passionately; “but don't look at me so and speak to me so. Why I say he is not yours, is he like you either in face or mind?”
“And he is like—whom?”
Lady Bassett had lost all her courage by this time: she whimpered out, “Like nobody except the gypsies.”
“Bella, this is a subject which will part you and me for life unless we can agree upon it—”
No reply, in words, from Lady Bassett.
“So please let us understand each other. Your son is not my son. Is that what you look me in the face and tell me?”
“Charles, I never said that. How could he be my son, and not be yours?”
And she raised her eyes, and looked him full in the face: nor fear nor cringing now: the woman was majestic.
Sir Charles was a little alarmed in his turn; for his wife's soft eyes flamed battle for the first time in her life.
“Now you talk sense,” said he; “if he is yours, he is mine; and, as he is certainly yours, this is a very foolish conversation, which must not be renewed, otherwise—”
“I shall be insulted by my own husband?”
“I think it very probable. And, as I do not choose you to be insulted, nor to think yourself insulted, I forbid you ever to recur to this subject.”
“I will obey, Charles; but let me say one word first. When I was alone in London, and hardly sensible, might not this child have been imposed upon me and you? I'm sure he was.”
“By whom?”
“How can I tell? I was alone—that woman in the house had a bad face—the gypsies do these things, I've heard.”
“The gypsies! And why not the fairies?” said Sir Charles, contemptuously. “Is that all you have to suggest—before we close the subject forever?”
“Yes,” said Lady Bassett sorrowfully. “I see you take me for a mad-woman; but time will show. Oh that I could persuade you to detach your affections from that boy—he will break your heart else—and rest them on the children that resemble us in mind and features.”
“These partialities are allowed to mothers; but a father must be just. Reginald is my first-born; he came to me from Heaven at a time when I was under a bitter trial, and from the day he was born till this day I have been a happy man. It is not often a father owes so much to a son as I do to my darling boy. He is dear to my heart in spite of his faults; and now I pity him, as well as love him, since it seems he has only one parent, poor little fellow!”
Lady Bassett opened her mouth to reply, but could not. She raised her hands in mute despair, then quietly covered her face with them, and soon the tears trickled through her white fingers.
Sir Charles looked at her, and was touched at her silent grief.
“My darling wife,” said he, “I think this is the only thing you and I cannot agree upon. Why not be wise as well as loving, and avoid it.”
“I will never seek it again,” sobbed Lady Bassett. “But oh,” she cried, with sudden wildness, “something tells me it will meet me, and follow me, and rob me of my husband. Well, when that day comes, I shall know how to die.”
And with this she burst away from him, like some creature who has been stung past endurance.
Sir Charles often meditated on this strange scene: turn it how he could he came back to the same conclusion, that she must have an hallucination on this subject. He said to himself, “If Bella really believed the boy was a changeling, she would act upon her conviction, she would urge me to take some steps to recover our true child, whom the gypsies or the fairies have taken, and given us poor dear Reginald instead.”
But still the conversation, and her strange looks of terror, lay dormant in his mind: both were too remarkable to be ever forgotten. Such things lie like certain seeds, awaiting only fresh accidents to spring into life.
The month rolled away, and the day came for Reginald's liberation. A dogcart was sent for him, and the heir of the Bassetts emerged from a county jail, and uttered a whoop of delight; he insisted on driving, and went home at a rattling pace.
He was in high spirits till he got in sight of Huntercombe Hall; and then it suddenly occurred to his mercurial mind that he should probably not be received with an ovation, petty larceny being a novelty in that ancient house whose representative he was.
When he did get there he found the whole family in such a state of commotion that his return was hardly noticed at all.
Master Compton's dinner hour was two P.M., and yet, at three o'clock of this day, he did not come in.
This was reported to Lady Bassett, and it gave her some little anxiety; for she suspected he might possibly be in the company of Ruperta Bassett; and, although she did not herself much object to that, she objected very much to have it talked about and made a fuss. So she went herself to the end of the lawn, and out into the meadow, that a servant might not find the young people together, if her suspicion was correct.
She went into the meadow and called “Compton! Compton!” as loud as she could, but there was no reply.
Then she came in, and began to be alarmed, and sent servants about in all directions.
But two hours elapsed, and there were no tidings. The thing looked serious.
She sent out grooms well mounted to scour the country. One of these fell in with Sir Charles, who thereupon came home and found his wife in a pitiable state. She was sitting in an armchair, trembling and crying hysterically.
She caught his hand directly, and grasped it like a vise.
“It is Richard Bassett!” she cried. “He knows how to wound and kill me. He has stolen our child.”
Sir Charles hurried out, and, soon after that, Reginald arrived, and stood awe-struck at her deplorable condition.
Sir Charles came back heated and anxious, kissed Reginald, told him in three words his brother was missing, and then informed Lady Bassett that he had learned something very extraordinary; Richard Bassett's little girl had also disappeared, and his people were out looking after her.
“Ah, they are together,” cried Lady Bassett.
“Together? a son of mine consorting with that viper's brood!”
“What does that poor child know? Oh, find him for me, if you love that dear child's mother!'”
Sir Charles hurried out directly, but was met at the door by a servant, who blurted out, “The men have dragged the fish-ponds, Sir Charles, and they want to know if they shall drag the brook.”
“Hold your tongue, idiot!” cried Sir Charles, and thrust him out; but the wiseacre had not spoken in vain. Lady Bassett moaned, and went into worse hysterics, with nobody near her but Reginald.
That worthy, never having seen a lady in hysterics, and not being hardened at all points, uttered a sympathetic howl, and flung his arms round her neck. “Oh! oh! oh! Don't cry, mamma.”
Lady Bassett shuddered at his touch, but did not repel him.
“I'll find him for you,” said the boy, “if you will leave off crying.”
She stared in his face a moment, and then went on as before.
“Mamma,” said he, getting impatient, “do listen to me. I'll find him easy enough, if you will only listen.”
“You! you!” and she stared wildly at him.
“Ay, I know a sight more than the fools about here. I'm a poacher. Just you put me on to his track. I'll soon run into him, if he is above ground.”
“A child like you!” cried Lady Bassett; “how can you do that?” and she began to wring her hands again.
“I'll show you,” said the boy, getting very impatient, “if you will just leave off crying like a great baby, and come to any place you like where he has been to-day and left a mark—”
“Ah!” cried Lady Bassett.
“I'm a poacher,” repeated Reginald, quite proudly; “you forget that.”
“Come with me,” cried Lady Bassett, starting up. She whipped on her bonnet, and ran with him down the lawn.
“There, Reginald,” said she, panting, “I think my darling was here this afternoon; yes, yes, he must; for he had a key of the door, and it is open.”
“All right,” said Reginald; “come into the field.”
He ran about like a dog hunting, and soon found marks among the cowslips.
“Somebody has been gathering a nosegay here to-day,” said he; “now, mamma, there's only two ways put of this field—let us go straight to that gate; that is the likeliest.”
Near the gate was some clay, and Reginald showed her several prints of small feet.
“Look,” said he, “here's the track of two—one's a gal; how I know, here's a sole to this shoe no wider nor a knife. Come on.”
In the next field he was baffled for a long time; but at last he found a place in a dead hedge where they had gone through.
“See,” said he, “these twigs are fresh broken, and here's a bit of the gal's frock. Oh! won't she catch it?”:
“Oh, you brave, clever boy!” cried Lady Bassett.
“Come on!” shouted the urchin.
He hunted like a beagle, and saw like a bird, with his savage, glittering eye. He was on fire with the ardor of the chase; and, not to dwell too long on what has been so often and so well written by others, in about an hour and a half he brought the anxious, palpitating, but now hopeful mother, to the neighborhood of Bassett's wood. Here he trusted to his own instinct. “They have gone into the wood,” said he, “and I don't blame 'em. I found my way here long before his age. I say, don't you tell; I've snared plenty of the governor's hares in that wood.”
He got to the edge of the wood and ran down the side. At last he found the marks of small feet on a low bank, and, darting over it, discovered the fainter traces on some decaying leaves inside the wood.
“There,” said he; “now it is just as if you had got them in your pocket, for they'll never find their way out of this wood. Bless your heart, why I used to get lost in it at first.”
“Lost in the wood!” cried Lady Bassett; “but he will die of fear, or be eaten by wild beasts; and it is getting so dark.”
“What about that? Night or day is all one to me. What will you give me if I find him before midnight?”
“Anything I've got in the world.”
“Give me a sovereign?”
“A thousand!”
“Give me a kiss?”
“A hundred!”
“Then I'll tell you what I'll do—I don't mind a little trouble, to stop your crying, mamma, because you are the right sort. I'll get the village out, and we will tread the wood with torches, an' all for them as can't see by night; I can see all one; and you shall have your kid home to supper. You see, there's a heavy dew, and he is not like me, that would rather sleep in this wood than the best bed in London city; a night in a wood would about settle his hash. So here goes. I can run a mile in six minutes and a half.”
With these words, the strange boy was off like an arrow from a bow.
Lady Bassett, exhausted by anxiety and excitement, was glad to sit down; her trembling heart would not let her leave the place that she now began to hope contained her child. She sat down and waited patiently.
The sun set, the moon rose, the stars glittered; the infinite leaves stood out dark and solid, as if cut out of black marble; all was dismal silence and dread suspense to the solitary watcher.
Yet the lady of Huntercombe Hall sat on, sick at heart, but patient, beneath that solemn sky.
She shuddered a little as the cold dews gathered on her, for she was a woman nursed in luxury's lap; but she never moved.
The silence was dismal. Had that wild boy forgotten his promise, or were there no parents in the village, that their feet lagged so?
It was nearly ten o'clock, when her keen ears, strained to the utmost, discovered a faint buzzing of voices; but where she could not tell.
The sounds increased and increased, and then there was a temporary silence; and after that a faint hallooing in the wood to her right. The wood was five hundred acres, and the bulk of it lay in front and to her left.
The hallooing got louder and louder; the whole wood seemed to echo; her heart beat high; lights glimmered nearer and nearer, hares and rabbits pattered by and startled her, and pheasants thundered off their roosts with an incredible noise, owls flitted, and bats innumerable, disturbed and terrified by the glaring lights and loud resounding halloos.
Nearer, nearer came the sounds, till at last a line of men and boys, full fifty carrying torches and lanterns, came up, and lighted up the dew-spangled leaves, and made the mother's heart leap with joyful hope at succor so powerful.
Oh, she could have kissed the stout village blacksmith, whose deep sonorous lungs rang close to her. Never had any man's voice sounded to her so like a god's as this stout blacksmith's “hilloop! hilloop!” close and loud in her ear, and those at the end of the line hallooed “hillo-op; hillo-op!” like an echo; and so they passed on, through bush and brier, till their voices died away in the distance.
A boy detached himself from the line, and ran to Lady Bassett with a traveling rug. It was Reginald.
“You put on this,” said he. He shook it, and, standing on tiptoe, put it over her shoulders.
“Thank you, dear,” said she. “Where is papa?”
“Oh, he is in the line, and the Highmore swell and all.”
“Mr. Richard Bassett?”
“Air, his kid is out on the loose, as well as ours.”
“Oh, Reginald, if they should quarrel!”
“Why, our governor can lick him, can't he?”
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