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.”