“Well, we have got enough fellows to part them if they do.”
“Dear Reginald, you have been so good to me, and you are so clever; speak to some of the men, and let there be no more quarreling between papa and that man.”
“All right,” said the boy.
“On second thoughts take me to papa; I'll be by his side, and then they cannot.”
“You want to walk through the wood? that is a good joke. Why, it is like walking through a river, and the young wood slapping your eyes, for you can't see every twig by this light, and the leaves sponging your face and shoulders: and the briers would soon strip your gown into ribbons, and make your little ankles bleed. No, you are a lady; you stay where you are, and let us men work it. We shan't find him yet awhile. I must get near the governor. When we find my lord, I'll give a whistle you could hear a mile off.”
“Oh, Reginald, are you sure he is in the wood?”
“I'd bet my head to a chany orange. You might as well ask me, when I track a badger to his hole, and no signs of his going out again, whether old long-claws is there. I wish I was as sure of never going back to school as I am of finding that little lot. The only thing I don't like is, the young muff's not giving us a halloo back. But, any way, I'll find 'em, alive or dead.”
And, with this pleasing assurance, the little imp scudded off, leaving the mother glued to the spot with terror.
For full an hour more the torches gleamed, though fainter and fainter; and so full was the wood of echoes, that the voices, though distant, seemed to halloo all round the agonized mother.
But presently there was a continuous yell, quite different from the isolated shouts, a distant but unmistakable howl of victory that made a bolt of ice shoot down her back, and then her heart to glow like fire.
It was followed by a keen whistle.
She fell on her knees and thanked God for her boy.
In the middle of this wood was a shallow excavation, an old chalk-pit, unused for many years. It was never deep, and had been half filled up with dead leaves; these, once blown into the hollow, or dropped from the trees, had accumulated.
The very middle of the line struck on this place, and Moss, the old keeper, who was near the center, had no sooner cast his eyes into it than he halted, and uttered a stentorian halloo well known to sportsmen—“SEE HO!”
A dead halt, a low murmur, and in a very few seconds the line was a circle, and all the torches that had not expired held high in a flaming ring over the prettiest little sight that wood had ever presented.
The old keeper had not given tongue on conjecture, like some youthful hound. In a little hollow of leaves, which the boy had scraped out, lay Master Compton and Miss Ruperta, on their little backs, each with an arm round the other's neck, enjoying the sweet sound sleep of infancy, which neither the horror of their situation—babes in the wood—nor the shouts of fifty people had in the smallest degree disturbed; to be sure, they had undergone great fatigue.
Young master wore a coronet of bluebells on his golden bead, young miss a wreath of cowslips on her ebon locks. The pair were flowers, cherubs, children—everything that stands for young, tender, and lovely.
The honest villagers gaped, and roared in chorus, and held high their torches, and gazed with reverential delight. Not for them was it to finger the little gentlefolks, but only to devour them with admiring eyes.
Indeed, the picture was carried home to many a humble hearth, and is spoken of to this day in Huntercombe village.
But the pale and anxious fathers were in no state to see pictures—they only saw their children Sir Charles and Richard Bassett came round with the general rush, saw, and dashed into the pit.
Strange to say, neither knew the other was there. Each seized his child, and tore it away from the contact of the other child, as if from a viper; in which natural but harsh act they saw each other for the first time, and their eyes gleamed in a moment with hate and defiance over their loving children.
Here was a picture of a different kind, and if the melancholy Jaques, or any other gentleman with a foible for thinking in a wood; had been there, methinks he had moralized very prettily on the hideousness of hate and the beauty of the sentiment it had interrupted so fiercely. But it escaped this sort of comment for about eight years. Well, all this woke the bairns; the lights dazzled them, the people scared them. Each hid a little face on the paternal shoulder.
The fathers, like wild beasts, each carrying off a lamb, withdrew, glaring at each other; but the very next moment the stronger and better sentiment prevailed, and they kissed and blessed their restored treasures, and forgot their enemies for a time.
Sir Charles's party followed him, and supped at Huntercombe, every man Jack of them.
Reginald, who had delivered a terrific cat-call, now ran off to Lady Bassett. There she was, still on her knees.
“Found! found!” he shouted.
She clasped him in her arms and wept for joy.
“My eyes!” said he, “what a one you are to cry! You come home; you'll catch your death o' cold.”
“No, no; take me to my child at once.”
“Can't be done; the governor has carried him off through the wood; and I ain't a going to let you travel the wood. You come with me; we'll go the short cut, and be home as soon as them.”
She complied, though trembling all over.
On the way he told her where the children had been discovered, and in what attitude.
“Little darlings!” said she. “But he has frightened his poor mother, and nearly broken her heart. Oh!”
“If you cry any more, mamma—Shut up, I tell you!”
“Must I? Oh!”
“Yes, or you'll catch pepper.”
Then he pulled her along, gabbling all the time. “Those two swells didn't quarrel after all, you see.”
“Thank Heaven!”
“But they looked at each other like hobelixes, and pulled the kids away like pison. Ha! ha! I say, the young 'uns ain't of the same mind as the old 'uns. I say, though, our Compton is not a bad sort; I'm blowed if he hadn't taken off his tippet to put round his gal. I say, don't you think that little chap has begun rather early? Why, I didn't trouble my head about the gals till I was eleven years old.”
Lady Bassett was too much agitated to discuss these delicate little questions just then.
She replied as irrelevantly as ever a lady did. “Oh, you good, brave, clever boy!” said she.
Then she stopped a moment to kiss him heartily. “I shall never forget this night, dear. I shall always make excuses for you. Oh, shall we never get home?”
“We shall be home as soon as they will,” said Reginald. “Come on.”
He gabbled to her the whole way; but the reader has probably had enough of his millclack.
Lady Bassett reached home, and had just ordered a large fire in Compton's bedroom, when Sir Charles came in, bringing the boy.
The lady ran out screaming, and went down on her knees, with her arms out, as only a mother can stretch them to her child.
There was not a word of scolding that night. He had made her suffer; but what of that? She had no egotism; she was a true mother. Her boy had been lost, and was found; and she was the happiest soul in creation.
But the fathers of these babes in the wood were both intensely mortified, and took measures to keep those little lovers apart in future. Richard Bassett locked up his gate: Sir Charles padlocked his; and they both told their wives they really must be more vigilant. The poor children, being in disgrace, did not venture to remonstrate! But they used often to think of each other, and took a liking to the British Sunday; for then they saw each other in church.
By-and-by even that consolation ceased. Ruperta was sent to school, and passed her holidays at the sea-side.
To return to Reginald, he was compelled to change his clothes that evening, but was allowed to sit up, and, when the heads of the house were a little calmer, became the hero of the night.
Sir Charles, gazing on him with parental pride, said, “Reginald, you have begun a new life to-day, and begun it well. Let us forget the past, and start fresh to-day, with the love and gratitude of both your parents.”
The boy hung his head and said nothing in reply.
Lady Bassett came to his assistance. “He will; he will. Don't say a word about the past. He is a good, brave, beautiful boy, and I adore him.”
“And I like you, mamma,” said Reginald graciously.
From that day the boy had a champion in Lady Bassett; and Heaven knows, she had no sinecure; poor Reginald's virtues were too eccentric to balance his faults for long together. His parents could not have a child lost in a wood every day; but good taste and propriety can be offended every hour when one is so young, active, and savage as Master Reginald.
He was up at five, and doing wrong all day.
Hours in the stables, learning to talk horsey, and smell dunghilly.
Hours in the village, gossiping and romping.
In good company, an owl.
In bad, or low company, a cricket, a nightingale, a magpie.
He was seen at a neighboring fair, playing the fiddle in a booth to dancing yokels, and receiving their pence.
He was caught by Moss wiring hairs in Bassett's wood, within twenty yards of the place where he had found the babes in the wood so nobly.
Remonstrated with tenderly and solemnly, he informed Sir Charles that poaching was a thing he could not live without, and he modestly asked to have Bassett's wood given him to poach in, offering, as a consideration, to keep all other poachers out: as a greater inducement, he represented that he should not require a house, but only a coarse sheet to stretch across an old saw-pit, and a pair of blankets for winter use—one under, one over.
Sir Charles was often sad, sometimes indignant.
Lady Bassett excused each enormity with pathetic ingenuity; excused, but suffered, and indeed pined visibly, for all this time he was tormenting her as few women in her position have been tormented. Her life was a struggle of contesting emotions; she was wounded, harassed, perplexed, and so miserable, she would have welcomed death, that her husband might read that Manuscript and cease to suffer, and she escape the shame of confessing, and of living after it.
In one word, she was expiating.
Neither the excuses she made nor the misery she suffered escaped Sir Charles.
He said to her at last, “My own Bella, this unhappy boy is killing you. Dear as he is to me, you are dearer. I must send him away again.”
“He saved our darling,” said she, faintly, but she could say no more. He had exhausted excuse.
Sir Charles made inquiries everywhere, and at last his attention was drawn to the following advertisement in the Times:
UNMANAGEABLE, Backward, or other BOYS, carefully TRAINED, and EDUCATED, by a married rector. Home comforts. Moderate terms. Address Dr. Beecher, Fennymore, Cambridgeshire.
He wrote to this gentleman, and the correspondence was encouraging. “These scapegraces,” said the artist in tuition, “are like crab-trees; abominable till you graft them, and then they bear the best fruit.”
While the letters were passing, came a climax. Reckless Reginald could keep no bounds intact: his inward definition of a boundary was “a thing you should go a good way out of your way rather than not overleap.”
Accordingly, he was often on Highmore farm at night, and even in Highmore garden; the boundary wall tempted him so.
One light but windy night, when everybody that could put his head under cover, and keep it there, did, reckless Reginald was out enjoying the fresh breezes; he mounted the boundary wall of Highmore like a cat, to see what amusement might offer. Thus perched, he speedily discovered a bright light in Highmore dining-room.
He dropped from the wall directly, and stole softly over the grass and peered in at the window.
He saw a table with a powerful lamp on it; on that table, and gleaming in that light, were several silver vessels of rare size and workmanship, and Mr. Bassett, with his coat off, and a green baize apron on, was cleaning one of these with brush and leather. He had already cleaned the others, for they glittered prodigiously.
Reginald's black eye gloated and glittered at this unexpected display of wealth in so dazzling a form.
But this was nothing to the revelation in store. When Mr. Bassett had done with that piece of plate he went to the paneled wall, and opened a door so nicely adapted to the panels, that a stranger would hardly have discovered it. Yet it was an enormous door, and, being opened, revealed a still larger closet, lined with green velvet and fitted with shelves from floor to ceiling.
Here shone, in all their glory, the old plate of two good families: that is to say, half the old plate of the Bassetts, and all the old plate of the Goodwyns, from whom came Highmore to Richard Bassett through his mother Ruperta Goodwyn, so named after her grandmother; so named after her aunt; so named after her godmother; so named after her father, Prince Rupert, cavalier, chemist, glass-blower, etc., etc.
The wall seemed ablaze with suns and moons, for many of the chased goblets, plates, and dishes were silver-gilt: none of your filmy electro-plate, but gold laid on thick, by the old mercurial process, in days when they that wrought in precious metals were honest—for want of knowing how to cheat.
Glued to the pane, gloating on this constellation of gold suns and silver moons, and trembling with Bohemian excitement, reckless Reginald heard not a stealthy step upon the grass behind him.
He had trusted to a fact in optics, forgetting the doctrine of shadows.
The Scotch servant saw from a pantry window the shadow of a cap projected on the grass, with a face, and part of a body. She stepped out, and got upon the grass.
Finding it was only a boy, she was brave as well as cunning; and, owing to the wind and his absorption, stole on him unheard, and pinned him with her strong hands by both his shoulders.
Young Hopeful uttered a screech of dismay, and administered a back kick that made Jessie limp for two days, and scream very lustily for the present.
Mr. Bassett, at this dialogue of yells, dropped a coffee-pot with a crash and a tinkle, and ran out directly, and secured young Hopeful, who thereupon began to quake and remonstrate.
“I was only taking a look,” said he. “Where's the harm of that?”
“You were trespassing, sir,” said Richard Bassett.
“What is the harm of that, governor? You can come over all our place, for what I care.”
“Thank you. I prefer to keep to my own place.”
“Well, I don't. I say, old chap, don't hit me. 'Twas I put 'em all on the scent of your kid, you know.”
“So I have heard. Well, then, this makes us quits.”
“Don't it? You ain't such a bad sort, after all.”
“Only mind, Mr. Bassett, if I catch you prying here again, that will be a fresh account, and I shall open it with a horsewhip.”
He then gave him a little push, and the boy fled like the wind. When he was gone, Richard Bassett became rather uneasy. He had hitherto concealed, even from his own family, the great wealth his humble home contained. His secret was now public. Reginald had no end of low companions. If burglars got scent of this, it might be very awkward. At last he hit upon a defense. He got one of those hooks ending in a screw which are used for pictures, and screwed it into the inside of the cupboard door near the top. To this he fastened a long piece of catgut, and carried it through the floor. His bed was just above the cupboard door, and he attached the gut to a bell by his bedside. By this means nobody could open that cupboard without ringing in his ears.
Jessie told Tom, Tom told Maria and Harriet; Harriet and Maria told everybody; somebody told Sir Charles. He was deeply mortified.
“You young idiot!” said he, “would nothing less than this serve your turn? must you go and lower me and yourself by giving just offense to my one enemy?—the man I hate and despise, and who is always on the watch to injure or affront me. Oh, who would be a father! There, pack up your things; you will go to school next morning at eight o'clock.”
Mr. Reginald packed accordingly, but that did not occupy long; so he sallied forth, and, taking for granted that it was Richard Bassett who had been so mean as to tell, he purchased some paint and brushes and a rope, and languished until midnight.
But when that magic hour came he was brisk as a bee, let himself down from his veranda, and stole to Richard Bassett's front door, and inscribed thereon, in large and glaring letters,
“JERRY SNEAK, ESQ., Tell-Tale Tit.”
He then returned home much calmed and comforted, climbed up his rope and into his room, and there slept sweetly, as one who had discharged his duty to his neighbor and society in general.
In the morning, however, he was very active, hurried the grooms, and was off before the appointed time.
Sir Charles came down to breakfast, and lo! young Hopeful gone, without the awkward ceremony of leave-taking.
Sir Charles found, as usual, many delicacies on his table, and among them one rarer to him than ortolan, pin-tail, or wild turkey (in which last my soul delights); for he found a letter from Richard Bassett, Esq.
“SIR—Some nights since we caught your successor that is to be, at my dining-room window, prying into my private affairs. Having the honor of our family at heart, I was about to administer a little wholesome correction, when he reminded me he had been instrumental in tracking Miss Bassett, and thereby rescuing her: upon this I was, naturally, mollified, and sent him about his business, hoping to have seen the last of him at Highmore.
“This morning my door is covered with opprobrious epithets, and as Mr. Bassett bought paint and brushes at the shop yesterday afternoon, it is doubtless to him I am indebted for them.
“I make no comments; I simply record the facts, and put them down to your credit, and your son's.
“Your obedient servant,
“RICHARD BASSETT.”
Lady Bassett did not come down to breakfast that morning; so Sir Charles digested this dish in solitude.
He was furious with Reginald; but as Richard Bassett's remonstrance was intended to insult him, he wrote back as follows:
“SIR—I am deeply grieved that a son of mine should descend to look in at your windows, or to write anything whatever upon your door; and I will take care it shall never recur.
“Yours obediently,
“CHARLES DYKE BASSETT.”
This little correspondence was salutary; it fanned the coals of hatred between the cousins.
Reckless Reginald soon found he had caught a Tartar in his new master.
That gentleman punished him severely for every breach of discipline. The study was a cool dark room, with one window looking north, and that window barred. Here he locked up the erratic youth for hours at a time, upon the slightest escapade.
Reginald wrote a honeyed letter to Sir Charles, bewailing his lot, and praying to be removed.
Sir Charles replied sternly, and sent him a copy of Mr. Richard Bassett's letter. He wrote to Mr. Beecher at the same time, expressing his full approval.
Thus disciplined, the boy began to change; he became moody, sullen, silent, and even sleepy. This was the less wonderful, that he generally escaped at night to a gypsy camp, and courted a gypsy girl, who was nearly as handsome as himself, besides being older, and far more knowing.
His tongue went like a mill, and the whole tribe soon knew all about him and his parents.
One morning the servants got up supernaturally early, to wash. Mr. Reginald was detected stealing back to his roost, and reported to the master.
Mr. Beecher had him up directly, locked him into the study alone, put the other students into the drawing-room, and erected bars to his bedroom window.
A few days of this, and he pined like a bird in a cage.
A few more, and his gypsy girl came fortune-telling to the servants, and wormed out the truth.
Then she came at night under his window, and made him a signal. He told her his hard case, and told her also a resolution he had come to. She informed the tribe. The tribe consulted. A keen saw was flung up to him; in two nights he was through the bars; the third he was free, and joined his sable friends.
They struck their tents, and decamped with horses, asses, tents, and baggage, and were many miles away by daybreak, without troubling turnpikes.
The boy left not a line behind him, and Mr. Beecher half hoped he might come back; still he sent to the nearest station, and telegraphed to Huntercombe.
Sir Charles mounted a fleet horse, and rode off at once into Cambridgeshire. He set inquiries on foot, and learned that the boy had been seen consorting with a tribe of gypsies. He heard, also, that these were rather high gypsies, many of them foreigners; and that they dealt in horses, and had a farrier; and that one or two of the girls were handsome, and also singers.
Sir Charles telegraphed for detectives from London; wrote to the mayors of towns; advertised, with full description and large reward, and brought such pressure to bear upon the Egyptians, that the band begin to fear: they consulted, and took measures for their own security; none too soon, for, they being encamped on Grey's Common in Oxfordshire, Sir Charles and the rural police rode into the camp and demanded young Hopeful.
They were equal to the occasion; at first they knew nothing of the matter, and, with injured innocence, invited a full inspection.
The invitation was accepted.
Then, all of a sudden, one of the women affected to be struck with an idea. “It is the young gentleman who wanted to join us in Cambridgeshire.”
Then all their throats opened at once. “Yes, gentleman, there was a lovely young gentleman wanted to come with us; but we wouldn't have him. What could we do with him?”
Sir Charles left them under surveillance, and continued his researches, telegraphing Lady Bassett twice every day.
A dark stranger came into Huntercombe village, no longer young, but still a striking figure: had once, no doubt, been superlatively handsome. Even now, his long hair was black and his eye could glitter: but his life had impregnated his noble features with hardness and meanness; his large black eye was restless, keen, and servile: an excellent figure for a painter, though; born in Spain, he was not afraid of color, had a red cap on his snaky black hair, and a striped waistcoat.
He inquired for Mr. Meyrick's farm.
He soon found his way thither, and asked for Mrs. Meyrick.
The female servant who opened the door ran her eye up and down him, and said, bruskly, “What do you want with her, my man? because she is busy.”
“Oh, she will see me, miss.”
Softened by the “miss,” the girl laughed, and said, “What makes you think that, my man?”
“Give her this, miss,” said the gypsy, “and she will come to me.”
He held her out a dirty crumpled piece of paper.
Sally, whose hands were wet from the tub, whipped her hand under the corner of her checkered apron, and so took the note with a finger and thumb operating through the linen. By this means she avoided two evils—her fingers did not wet the letter, and the letter did not dirty her fingers.
She took it into the kitchen to her mistress, whose arms were deep in a wash-tub.
Mrs. Meyrick had played the fine lady at first starting, and for six months would not put her hand to anything. But those twin cajolers of the female heart, Dignity and Laziness, made her so utterly wretched, that she returned to her old habits of work, only she combined with it the sweets of domination.
Sally came in and said, “It's an old gypsy, which he have brought you this.”
Mrs. Meyrick instantly wiped the soapsuds from her brown but shapely arms, and, whipping a wet hand under her apron, took the note just as Sally had. It contained these words only:
“NURSE—The old Romance will tell you all about me.
“REGINALD.”
She had no sooner read it than she took her sleeves down, and whipped her shawl off a peg and put it on, and took off her apron—and all for an old gypsy. No stranger must take her for anything but a lady.
Thus embellished in a turn of the hand, she went hastily to the door.
She and the gypsy both started at sight of each other, and Mrs. Meyrick screamed.
“Why, what brings you here, old man?” said she, panting. The gypsy answered with oily sweetness, “The little gentleman sent me, my dear. Why, you look like a queen.”
“Hush!” said Mrs. Meyrick.—“Come in here.”
She made the old gypsy sit down, and she sat close to him.
“Speak low, daddy,” said she, “and tell me all about my boy, my beautiful boy.”
The old gypsy told Mrs. Meyrick the wrongs of Reginald that had driven him to this; and she fell to crying and lamenting, and inveighing against all concerned—schoolmaster, Sir Charles, Lady Bassett, and the gypsies. Them the old man defended, and assured her the young gentleman was in good hands, and would be made a little king of, all the more that Keturah had told them there was gypsy blood in him.
Mrs. Meyrick resented this loudly, and then returned to her grief.
When she had indulged that grief for a long time, she felt a natural desire to quarrel with somebody, and she actually put on her bonnet, and was going to the Hall to give Lady Bassett a bit of her mind, for she said that lady had never shown the feelings of a woman for the lamb.
But she thought better of it, and postponed the visit. “I shall be sure to say something I shall be sorry for after,” said she; so she sat down again, and returned to her grief.
Nor could she ever shake it off as thoroughly as she had done any other trouble in her life.
Months after this, she said to Sally, with a burst of tears, “I never nursed but one, and I shall never nurse another; and now he is across the seas.”
She kept the old gypsy at the farm; or, to speak more correctly, she made the farm his headquarters. She assigned him the only bedroom he would accept, viz., a cattle-shed, open on one side. She used often to have him into her room when she was alone; she gave him some of her husband's clothes, and made him wear a decent hat; by these means she effaced, in some degree, his nationality, and then she compelled her servants to call him “the foreign gent.”
The foreign gent was very apt to disappear in fine weather, but rain soon drove him back to her fireside, and hunger to her flesh-pots.
On the very day the foreign gent came to Meyrick's farm Lady Bassett had a letter by post from Reginald.
“DEAR MAMMA—I am gone with the gypsies across the water. I am sorry to leave you. You are the right sort: but they tormented me so with their books and their dark rooms. It is very unfortunate to be a boy. When I am a man, I shall be too old to be tormented, and then I will come back.
“Your dutiful son,
“REGINALD.”
Lady Bassett telegraphed Sir Charles, and he returned to Huntercombe, looking old, sad, and worn.
Lady Bassett set herself to comfort and cheer him, and this was her gentle office for many a long month.
She was the more fit for it, that her own health and spirits revived the moment Reginald left the country with his friends the gypsies; the color crept back to her cheek, her spirits revived, and she looked as handsome, and almost as young, as when she married. She tasted tranquillity. Year after year went by without any news of Reginald, and the hope grew that he would never cross her threshold again, and Compton be Sir Charles's heir without any more trouble.
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