MEANTIME Mary Wells had a long conversation with her master; and after that she retired into the adjoining room, and sat down to sew baby-linen clandestinely.
After a considerable tune Lady Bassett came in, and, sinking into a chair, covered her face with her hands. She had her bonnet on.
Mary Wells looked at her with black eyes that flashed triumph.
After so surveying her for some time she said: “I have been at him again, and there's a change for the better already. He is not the same man. You go and see else.”
Lady Bassett now obeyed her servant: she rose and crept like a culprit into Sir Charles's room. She found him clean shaved, dressed to perfection, and looking more cheerful than she had seen him for many a long day. “Ah, Bella,” said he, “you have your bonnet on; let us have a walk in the garden.”
Lady Bassett opened her eyes and consented eagerly, though she was very tired.
They walked together; and Sir Charles, being a man that never broke his word, put no direct question to Lady Bassett, but spoke cheerfully of the future, and told her she was his hope and his all; she would baffle his enemy, and cheer his desolate hearth.
She blushed, and looked confused and distressed; then he smiled, and talked of indifferent matters, until a pain in his head stopped him; then he became confused, and, putting his hand piteously to his head, proposed to retire at once to his own room.
Lady Bassett brought him in, and he reposed in silence on the sofa.
The next day, and, indeed, many days afterward, presented similar features.
Mary Wells talked to her master of the bright days to come, of the joy that would fill the house if all went well, and of the defeat in store for Richard Bassett. She spoke of this man with strange virulence; said “she would think no more of sticking a knife into him than of eating her dinner;” and in saying this she showed the white of her eye in a manner truly savage and vindictive.
To hurt the same person is a surer bond than to love the same person; and this sentiment of Mary Wells, coupled with her uniform kindness to himself, gave her great influence with Sir Charles in his present weakened condition. Moreover, the young woman had an oily, persuasive tongue; and she who persuades us is stronger than he who convinces us.
Thus influenced, Sir Charles walked every day in the garden with his wife, and forbore all direct allusion to her condition, though his conversation was redolent of it.
He was still subject to sudden collapses of the intellect; but he became conscious when they were coming on; and at the first warning he would insist on burying himself in his room.
After some days he consented to take short drives with Lady Bassett in the open carriage. This made her very joyful. Sir Charles refused to enter a single house, so high was his pride and so great his terror lest he should expose himself; but it was a great point gained that she could take him about the county, and show him in the character of a mere invalid.
Every thing now looked like a cure, slow, perhaps, but progressive; and Lady Bassett had her joyful hours, yet not without a bitter alloy: her divining mind asked itself what she should say and do when Sir Charles should be quite recovered. This thought tormented her, and sometimes so goaded her that she hated Mary Wells for her well-meant interference, and, by a natural recoil from the familiarity circumstances had forced on her, treated that young woman with great coldness and hauteur.
The artful girl met this with extreme meekness and servility; the only reply she ever hazarded was an adroit one; she would take this opportunity to say, “How much better master do get ever since I took in hand to cure him!”
This oblique retort seldom failed. Lady Bassett would look at her husband, and her face would clear; and she would generally end by giving Mary a collar, or a scarf, or something.
Thus did circumstances enable the lower nature to play with the higher. Lady Bassett's struggles were like those of a bird in a silken net; they led to nothing. When it came to the point she could neither do nor say any thing to retard his cure. Any day the Court of Chancery, set in motion by Richard Bassett, might issue a commissionde lunatico,and, if Sir Charles was not cured by that time, Richard Bassett would virtually administer the estate—so Mr. Oldfield had told her—and that, she felt sure, would drive Sir Charles mad for life.
So there was no help for it. She feared, she writhed, she hated herself; but Sir Charles got better daily, and so she let herself drift along.
Mary Wells made it fatally easy to her. She was the agent. Lady Bassett was silent and passive.
After all she had a hope of extrication. Sir Charles once cured, she would make him travel Europe with her. Money would relieve her of Mary Wells, and distance cut all the other cords.
And, indeed, a time came when she looked back on her present situation with wonder at the distress it had caused her. “I was in shallow water then,” said she—“but now!”
SIR CHARLES observed that he was never trusted alone. He remarked this, and inquired, with a peculiar eye, why that was.
Lady Bassett had the tact to put on an innocent look and smile, and say: “That is true, dearest. Ihavetied you to my apron-string without mercy. But it serves you right for having fits and frightening me. You get well, and my tyranny will cease at once.”
However, after this she often left him alone in the garden, to remove from his mind the notion that he was under restraint from her.
Mr. Bassett observed this proceeding from his tower.
One day Mr. Angelo called, and Lady Bassett left Sir Charles in the garden, to go and speak to him.
She had not been gone many minutes when a boy ran to Sir Charles, and said, “Oh, sir, please come to the gate; the lady has had a fall, and hurt herself.”
Sir Charles, much alarmed, followed the boy, who took him to a side gate opening on the high-road. Sir Charles rushed through this, and was passing between two stout fellows that stood one on each side the gate, when they seized him, and lifted him in a moment into a close carriage that was waiting on the spot. He struggled, and cried loudly for assistance; but they bundled him in and sprang in after him; a third man closed the door, and got up by the side of the coachman. He drove off, avoiding the village, soon got upon a broad road, and bowled along at a great rate, the carriage being light, and drawn by two powerful horses.
So cleverly and rapidly was it done that, but for a woman's quick ear, the deed might not have been discovered for hours; but Mary Wells heard the cry for help through an open window, recognized Sir Charles's voice, and ran screaming downstairs to Lady Bassett: she ran wildly out, with Mr. Angelo, to look for Sir Charles. He was nowhere to be found. Then she ordered every horse in the stables to be saddled; and she ran with Mary to the place where the cry had been heard.
For some time no intelligence whatever could be gleaned; but at last an old man was found who said he had heard somebody cry out, and soon after that a carriage had come tearing by him, and gone round the corner: but this direction was of little value, on account of the many roads, any one of which it might have taken.
However, it left no doubt that Sir Charles had been taken away from the place by force.
Terror-stricken, and pale as death, Lady Bassett never lost her head for a moment. Indeed, she showed unexpected fire; she sent off coachman and grooms to scour the country and rouse the gentry to help her; she gave them money, and told them not to come back till they had found Sir Charles.
Mr. Angelo said, eagerly, “I'll go to the nearest magistrate, and we will arrest Richard Bassett on suspicion.”
“God bless you, dear friend!” sobbed Lady Bassett. “Oh, yes, it is his doing—murderer!”
Off went Mr. Angelo on his errand.
He was hardly gone when a man was seen running and shouting across the fields. Lady Bassett went to meet him, surrounded by her humble sympathizers. It was young Drake: he came up panting, with a double-barreled gun in his hand (for he was allowed to shoot rabbits on his own little farm), and stammered out, “Oh, my lady—Sir Charles—they have carried him off against his will!”
“Who? Where? Did you see him?”
“Ay, and heerd him and all. I was ferreting rabbits by the side of the turnpike-road yonder, and a carriage came tearing along, and Sir Charles put out his head and cried to me,' Drake, they are kidnapping me. Shoot!' But they pulled him back out of sight.”
“Oh, my poor husband! And did you let them? Oh!”
“Couldn't catch 'em, my lady: so I did as I was bid; got to my gun as quick as ever I could, and gave the coachman both barrels hot.”
“What, kill him?”
“Lord, no; 'twas sixty yards off; but made him holler and squeak a good un. Put thirty or forty shots into his back, I know.”
“Give me your hand, Mr. Drake. I'll never forget that shot.” Then she began to cry.
“Doant ye, my lady, doant ye,” said the honest fellow, and was within an ace of blubbering for sympathy. “We ain't a lot o' babies, to see our squire kidnaped. If you would lend Abel Moss there and me a couple o' nags, we'll catch them yet, my lady.”
“That we will,” cried Abel. “You take me where you fired that shot, and we'll follow the fresh wheel-tracks. They can't beat us while they keep to a road.”
The two men were soon mounted, and in pursuit, amid the cheers of the now excited villagers. But still the perpetrators of the outrage had more than an hour's start; and an hour was twelve miles.
And now Lady Bassett, who had borne up so bravely, was seized with a deadly faintness, and supported into the house.
All this spread like wild-fire, and roused the villagers, and they must have a hand in it. Parson had said Mr. Bassett was to blame; and that passed from one to another, and so fermented that, in the evening, a crowd collected round Highmore House and demanded Mr. Bassett.
The servants were alarmed, and said he was not at home.
Then the men demanded boisterously what he had done with Sir Charles, and threatened to break the windows unless they were told; and, as nobody in the house could tell them, the women egged on the men, and they did break the windows; but they no sooner saw their own work than they were a little alarmed at it, and retired, talking very loud to support their waning courage and check their rising remorse at their deed.
They left a house full of holes and screams, and poor little Mrs. Bassett half dead with fright.
As for Lady Bassett, she spent a horrible night of terror, suspense, and agony. She could not lie down, nor even sit still; she walked incessantly, wringing her hands, and groaning for news.
Mary Wells did all she could to comfort her; but it was a situation beyond the power of words to alleviate.
Her intolerable suspense lasted till four o'clock in the morning; and then, in the still night, horses' feet came clattering up to the door.
Lady Bassett went into the hall. It was dimly lighted by a single lamp. The great door was opened, and in clattered Moss and Drake, splashed and weary and downcast.
“Well?” cried Lady Bassett, clasping her hands.
“My lady,” said Moss, “we tracked the carriage into the next county, to a place thirty miles from here—to a lodge—and there they stopped us. The place is well guarded with men and great big dogs. We heerd 'em bark, didn't us, Will?”
“Ay,” said Drake, dejectedly.
“The man as kept the lodge was short, but civil. Says he, 'This is a place nobody comes in but by law, and nobody goes out but by law. If the gentleman is here you may go home and sleep; he is safe enough.'”
“A prison? No!”
“A 'sylum, my lady.”
At last she said, doggedly but faintly, “You will go with me to that place to-morrow, one of you.”
“I'll go, my lady,” said Moss. “Will, here, had better not show his face. They might take the law on him for that there shot.”
Drake hung his head, and his ardor was evidently cooled by discovering that Sir Charles had been taken to a mad-house.
Lady Bassett saw and sighed, and said she would take Moss to show her the way.
At eleven o'clock next morning a light carriage and pair came round to the Hall gate, and a large basket, a portmanteau, and a bag were placed on the roof under care of Moss; smaller packages were put inside; and Lady Bassett and her maid got in, both dressed in black.
They reached Bellevue House at half-past two. The lodge-gate was open, to Lady Bassett's surprise, and they drove through some pleasant grounds to a large white house.
The place at first sight had no distinctive character: great ingenuity had been used to secure the inmates without seeming to incarcerate them. There were no bars to the lower front windows, and the side windows, with their defenses, were shrouded by shrubs. The sentinels were out of sight, or employed on some occupation or other, but within call. Some patients were playing at cricket; some ladies looking on; others strolling on the gravel with a nurse, dressed very much like themselves, who did not obtrude her functions unnecessarily. All was apparent indifference, and Argus-eyed vigilance. So much for the surface.
Of course, even at this moment, some of the locked rooms had violent and miserable inmates.
The hall door opened as the carriage drew up; a respectable servant came forward.
Lady Bassett handed him her card, and said, “I am come to see my husband, sir.”
The man never moved a muscle, but said, “You must wait, if you please, till I take your card in.”
He soon returned, and said, “Dr. Suaby is not here, but the gentleman in charge will see you.”
Lady Bassett got out, and, beckoning Mary Wells, followed the servant into a curious room, half library, half chemist's shop; they called it “the laboratory.”
Here she found a tall man leaning on a dirty mantelpiece, who received her stiffly. He had a pale mustache, very thin lips, and altogether a severe manner. His head bald, rather prematurely, and whiskers abundant.
Lady Bassett looked him all over with one glance of her woman's eye, and saw she had a hard and vain man to deal with.
“Are you the gentleman to whom this house belongs?” she faltered.
“No, madam; I am in charge during Dr. Suaby's absence.”
“That comes to the same thing. Sir, I am come to see my dear husband.”
“Have you an order?”
“An order, sir? I am his wife.”
Mr. Salter shrugged his shoulders a little, and said, “I have no authority to let any visitor see a patient without an order from the person by whose authority he is placed here, or else an order from the commissioners.”
“But that cannot apply to his wife; to her who is one with him, for better for worse, in sickness or health.”
“It seems hard; but I have no discretion in the matter. The patient only came yesterday—much excited. He is better to-day, and an interview with you would excite him again.”
“Oh no! no! no! I can always soothe him. I will be so mild, so gentle. You can be present, and hear every word I say. I will only kiss him, and tell him who has done this, and to be brave, for his wife watches over him; and, sir, I will beg him to be patient, and not blame you nor any of the people here.”
“Very proper, very proper; but really this interview must be postponed till you have an order, or Dr. Suaby returns. He can violate his own rules if he likes; but I cannot, and, indeed, I dare not.”
“Dare not let a lady see her husband? Then you are not a man. Oh, can this be England? It is too inhuman.”
Then she began to cry and wring her hands.
“This is very painful,” said Mr. Salter, and left the room.
The respectable servant looked in soon after, and Lady Bassett told him, between her sobs, that she had brought some clothes and things for her husband. “Surely, sir,” said she, “they will not refuse me that?”
“Lord, no, ma'am,” said the man. “You can give them to the keeper and nurse in charge of him.”
Lady Bassett slipped a guinea into the man's hand directly. “Let me see those people,” said she.
The man winked, and vanished: he soon reappeared, and said, loudly, “Now, madam, if you will order the things into the hall.”
Lady Bassett came out and gave the order.
A short, bull-necked man, and rather a pretty young woman with a flaunting cap, bestirred themselves getting down the things; and Mr. Salter came out and looked on.
Lady Bassett called Mary Wells, and gave her a five-pound note to slip into the man's hand. She telegraphed the girl, who instantly came near her with an India rubber bath, and, affecting ignorance, asked her what that was.
Lady Bassett dropped three sovereigns into the bath, and said, “Ten times, twenty times that, if you are kind to him. Tell him it is his cousin's doing, but his wife watches over him.”
“All right,” said the girl. “Come again when the doctor is here.”
All this passed, in swift whispers, a few yards from Mr. Salter, and he now came forward and offered his arm to conduct Lady Bassett to the carriage.
But the wretched, heart-broken wife forgot her art of pleasing. She shrank from him with a faint cry of aversion, and got into her carriage unaided. Mary Wells followed her.
Mr. Salter was unwilling to receive this rebuff. He followed, and said, “The clothes shall be given, with any message you may think fit to intrust to me.”
Lady Bassett turned away sharply from him, and said to Mary Wells, “Tell him to drive home. Home! I have none now. Its light is torn from me.”
The carriage drove away as she uttered these piteous words.
She cried at intervals all the way home; and could hardly drag herself upstairs to bed.
Mr. Angelo called next day with bad news. Not a magistrate would move a finger against Mr. Bassett: he had the law on his side. Sir Charles was evidently insane; it was quite proper he should be put in security before he did some mischief to himself or Lady Bassett. “They say, why was he hidden for two months, if there was not something very wrong?”
Lady Bassett ordered the carriage and paid several calls, to counteract this fatal impression.
She found, to her horror, she might as well try to move a rock. There was plenty of kindness and pity; but the moment she began to assure them her husband was not insane she was met with the dead silence of polite incredulity. One or two old friends went further, and said, “My dear, we are told he could not be taken away without two doctors' certificates: now, consider, they must know better than you. Have patience, and let them cure him.”
Lady Bassett withdrew her friendship on the spot from two ladies for contradicting her on such a subject; she returned home almost wild herself.
In the village her carriage was stopped by a woman with her hair all flying, who told her, in a lamentable voice, that Squire Bassett had sent nine men to prison for taking Sir Charles's part and ill-treating his captors.
“My lawyer shall defend them at my expense,” said Lady Bassett, with a sigh.
At last she got home, and went up to her own room, and there was Mary Wells waiting to dress her.
She tottered in, and sank into a chair. But, after this temporary exhaustion, came a rising tempest of passion; her eyes roved, her fingers worked, and her heart seemed to come out of her in words of fire. “I have not a friend in all the county. That villain has only to say 'Mad,' and all turn from me, as if an angel of truth had said 'Criminal.' We have no friend but one, and she is my servant. Now go and envy wealth and titles. No wife in this parish is so poor as I; powerless in the folds of a serpent. I can't see my husband without an order fromhim.He is all power, I and mine all weakness.” She raised her clinched fists, she clutched her beautiful hair as if she would tear it out by the roots. “I shall, go mad! I shall go mad! No!” said she, all of a sudden. “That will not do. That is what he wants—and then my darlingwouldbe defenseless. I will not go mad.” Then suddenly grinding her white teeth: “I'll teach him to drive a lady to despair. I'll fight.”
She descended, almost without a break, from the fury of a Pythoness to a strange calm. Oh! then it is her sex are dangerous.
“Don't look so pale,” said she, and she actually smiled. “All is fair against so foul a villain. You and I will defeat him. Dress me, Mary.”
Mary Wells, carried away by the unusual violence of a superior mind, was quite bewildered.
Lady Bassett smiled a strange smile, and said, “I'll show you how to dress me;” and she did give her a lesson that astonished her.
“And now,” said Lady Bassett, “I shall dress you.” And she took a loose full dress out of her wardrobe, and made Mary Wells put it on; but first she inserted some stuffing so adroitly that Mary seemed very buxom, but what she wished to hide was hidden. Not so Lady Bassett herself. Her figure looked much rounder than in the last dress she wore.
With all this she was late for dinner, and when she went down Mr. Angelo had just finished telling Mr. Oldfield of the mishap to the villagers.
Lady Bassett came in animated and beautiful.
Dinner was announced directly, and a commonplace conversation kept up till the servants were got rid of. She then told Mr. Oldfield how she had been refused admittance to Sir Charles at Bellevue House, a plain proof, to her mind, they knew her husband was not insane; and begged him to act with energy, and get Sir Charles out before his reason could be permanently injured by the outrage and the horror of his situation.
This led to a discussion, in which Mr. Angelo and Lady Bassett threw out various suggestions, and Mr. Oldfield cooled their ardor with sound objections. He was familiar with the Statutes de Lunatico, and said they had been strictly observed both in the capture of Sir Charles and in Mr. Salter's refusal to let the wife see the husband. In short, he appeared either unable or unwilling to see anything except the strong legal position of the adverse party.
Mr. Oldfield was one of those prudent lawyers who search for the adversary's strong points, that their clients may not be taken by surprise; and that is very wise of them. But wise things require to be done wisely: he sometimes carried this system so far as to discourage his client too much. It is a fine thing to make your client think his case the weaker of the two, and then win it for him easily; that gratifies your own foible, professional vanity. But suppose, with your discouraging him so, he flings up or compromises a winning case? Suppose he takes the huff and goes to some other lawyer, who will warm him with hopes instead of cooling him with a one-sided and hostile view of his case?
In the present discussion Mr. Oldfield's habit of beginning by admiring his adversaries, together with his knowledge of law and little else, and his secret conviction that Sir Charles was unsound of mind, combined to paralyze him; and, not being a man of invention, he could not see his way out of the wood at all; he could negative Mr. Angelo's suggestions and give good reasons, but he could not, or did not, suggest anything better to be done.
Lady Bassett listened to his negative wisdom with a bitter smile, and said, at last, with a sigh: “It seems, then, we are to sit quiet and do nothing, while Mr. Bassett and his solicitor strike blow upon blow. There! I'll fight my own battle; and do you try and find some way of defending the poor souls that are in trouble because they did not sit with their hands before them when their benefactor was outraged. Command my purse, if money will save them from prison.”
Then she rose with dignity, and walked like a camelopard all down the room on the side opposite to Mr. Oldfield. Angelo flew to open the door, and in a whisper begged a word with her in private. She bowed ascent, and passed on from the room.
“What a fine creature!” said Mr. Oldfield. “How she walks!”
Mr. Angelo made no reply to this, but asked him what was to be done for the poor men: “they will be up before the Bench to-morrow.”
Stung a little by Lady Bassett's remark, Mr. Oldfield answered, promptly, “We must get some tradesmen to bail them with our money. It will only be a few pounds apiece. If the bail is accepted, they shall offer pecuniary compensation, and get up a defense; find somebody to swear Sir Charles was sane—that sort of evidence is always to be got. Counsel must do the rest. Simple natives—benefactor outraged—honest impulse—regretted, the moment they understood the capture had been legally made. Then throw dirt on the plaintiff. He is malicious, and can be proved to have forsworn himself in Bassettv.Bassett.”
A tap at the door, and Mary Wells put in her head. “If you please, sir, my lady is tired, and she wishes to say a word to you before she goes upstairs.”
“Excuse me one minute,” said Mr. Angelo, and followed Mary Wells. She ushered him into a boudoir, where he found Lady Bassett seated in an armchair, with her head on her hand, and her eyes fixed sadly on the carpet.
She smiled faintly, and said, “Well, what do you wish to say to me?”
“It is about Mr. Oldfield. He is clearly incompetent.”
“I don't know. I snubbed him, poor man: but if the law is all against us!”
“How does he know that? He assumes it because he is prejudiced in favor of the enemy. How does heknowthey have doneeverythingthe Act of Parliament requires? And, if they have, Law is not invincible. When Law defies Morality, it gets baffled, and trampled on in all civilized communities.”
“I never heard that before.”
“But you would if you had been at Oxford,” said he, smiling.
“Ah!”
“What we want is a man of genius, of invention; a man who will see every chance, take every chance, lawful or unlawful, and fight with all manner of weapons.”
Lady Bassett's eye flashed a moment. “Ah!” said she; “but where can I find such a man, with knowledge to guide his zeal?”
“I think I know of a man who could at all events advise you, if you would ask him.”
“Ah! Who?”
“He is a writer; and opinions vary as to his merit. Some say he has talent; others say it is all eccentricity and affectation. One thing is certain—his books bring about the changes he demands. And then he is in earnest; he has taken a good many alleged lunatics out of confinement.”
“Is it possible? Then let us apply to him at once.”
“He lives in London; but I have a friend who knows him. May I send an outline to him through that friend, and ask him whether he can advise you in the matter?”
“You may; and thank you a thousand times!”
“A mind like that, with knowledge, zeal, and invention, must surely throw some light.”
“One would think so, dear friend.”
“I'll write to-night and send a letter to Greatrex; we shall perhaps get an answer the day after to-morrow.”
“Ah! you are not the one to go to sleep in the service of a friend. A writer, did you say? What does he write?”
“Fiction.”
“What, novels?”
“And dramas and all.”
Lady Bassett sighed incredulously. “I should never think of going to Fiction for wisdom.”
“When the Family Calas were about to be executed unjustly, with the consent of all the lawyers and statesmen in France, one man in a nation saw the error, and fought for the innocent, and saved them; and that one wise man in a nation of fools was a writer of fiction.”
“Oh! a learned Oxonian can always answer a poor ignorant thing like me. One swallow does not make summer, for all that.”
“But this writer's fictions are not like the novels you read; they are works of laborious research. Besides, he is a lawyer, as well as a novelist.”
“Oh, if he is a lawyer!”
“Then I may write?”
“Yes,” said Lady Bassett, despondingly.
“What is to become of Oldfield?”
“Send him to the drawing-room. I will go down and endure him for another hour. You can write your letter here, and then please come and relieve me of Mr. Negative.”
She rang, and ordered coffee and tea into the drawing-room; and Mr. Oldfield found her very cold company.
In half an hour Mr. Angelo came down, looking flushed and very handsome; and Lady Bassett had some fresh tea made for him.
This done she bade the gentlemen goodnight, and went to her room. Here she found Mary Wells full of curiosity to know whether the lawyer would get Sir Charles out of the asylum.
Lady Bassett gave loose to her indignation, and said nothing was to be expected from such a Nullity. “Mary, he could not see. I gave him every opportunity. I walked slowly down the room before him after dinner; and I came into the drawing-room and moved about, and yet he could not see.”
“Then you will have to tell him, that is all.”
“Never; no more shall you. I'll not trust my fate, and Sir Charles's, to a man that has no eyes.”
For this feminine reason she took a spite against poor Oldfield; but to Mr. Angelo she suppressed the real reason, and entered into that ardent gentleman's grounds of discontent, though these alone would not have entirely dissolved her respect for the family solicitor.
Next afternoon Angelo came to her in great distress and ire. “Beaten! beaten! and all through our adversaries having more talent. Mr. Bassett did not appear at first. Wheeler excused him on the ground that his wife was seriously ill through the fright. Bassett's servants were called, and swore to the damage and to the men, all but one. He got off. Then Oldfield made a dry speech; and a tradesman he had prepared offered bail. The magistrates were consulting, when in burst Mr. Bassett all in black, and made a speech fifty times stronger than Oldfield's, and sobbed, and told them the rioters had frightened his wife so she had been prematurely confined, and the child was dead. Could they take bail for a riot, a dastardly attack by a mob of cowards on a poor defenseless woman, the gentlest and most inoffensive creature in England? Then he went on: 'They were told I was not in the house; and then they found courage to fling stones, to terrify my wife and kill my child. Poor soul!' he said, 'she lies between life and death herself: and I come here in an agony of fear, but I come for justice; the man of straw, who offers bail, is furnished with the money by those who stimulated the outrage. Defeat that fraud, and teach these cowards who war on defenseless ladies that there is humanity and justice and law in the land.' Then Oldfield tried to answer him with his hems and his haws; but Bassett turned on him like a giant, and swept him away.”
“Poor woman!”
“Ah! that is true: I am afraid I have thought too little of her. But you suffer, and so must she. It is the most terrible feud; one would think this was Corsica instead of England, only the fighting is not done with daggers. But, after this, pray lean no more on that Oldfield. We were all carried away at first; but, now I think of it, Bassett must have been in the court, and held back to make the climax. Oh, yes! it was another surprise and another success. They are all sent to jail. Superior generalship! If Wheeler had been our man, we should have had eight wives crying for pity, each with one child in her arms, and another holding on to her apron. Do, pray, Lady Bassett, dismiss that Nullity.”
“Oh, I cannot do that; he is Sir Charles's lawyer; but I have promised you to seek advice elsewhere, and so I will.”
The conversation was interrupted by the tolling of the church-bell.
The first note startled Lady Bassett, and she turned pale.
“I must leave you,” said Angelo, regretfully. “I have to bury Mr. Bassett's little boy; he lived an hour.”
Lady Bassett sat and heard the bell toll.
Strange, sad thoughts passed through her mind. “Is it saddest when it tolls, or when it rings—that bell? He has killed his own child by robbing me of my husband. We are in the hands of God, after all, let Wheeler be ever so cunning, and Oldfield ever so simple.—And I am not acting by that.—Where is my trust in God's justice?—Oh, thou of little faith!—What shall I do? Love is stronger in me than faith—stronger than anything in heaven or earth. God forgive me—God help me—I will go back.
“But oh, to stand still, and be good and simple, and to see my husband trampled on by a cunning villain!
“Why is there a future state, where everything is to be different? no hate; no injustice; all love. Why is it not all of a piece? Why begin wrong if it is to end all right? If I was omnipotent it should be right from the first.—Oh, thou of little faith!—Ah, me! it is hard to see fools and devils, and realize angels unseen. Oh, that I could shut my eyes in faith and go to sleep, and drift on the right path; for I shall never take it with my eyes open, and my heart bleeding for him.”
Then her head fell languidly back, her eyes closed, and the tears welled through them: they knew the way by this time.
NEXT morning in came Mr. Angelo, with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes.
“I have got a letter, a most gratifying one. My friend called on Mr. Rolfe, and gave him my lines; and he replies direct to me. May I read you his letter?”
“Oh, yes.”
“'DEAR SIR—The case you have sent me, of a gentleman confined on certificates by order of an interested relative—as you presume, for you have not seen the order—and on grounds you think insufficient, is interesting, and some of it looks true; but there are gaps in the statement, and I dare not advise in so nice a matter till these are filled; but that, I suspect, can only be done by the lady herself. She had better call on me in person; it may be worth her while. At home every day, 10—3, this week. As for yourself, you need not address me through Greatrex. I have seen you pull No. 6, and afterward stroke in the University boat, and you dived in Portsmouth Harbor, and saved a sailor. See “Ryde Journal,” Aug. 10, p. 4, col. 3; cited in my Day-book Aug. 10, and also in my Index hominum, in voce “Angelo”—ha! ha! here's a fellow for detail!
“Yours very truly,
“'ROLFE.'”
“And did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Dive and save a sailor.”
“No; I nailed him just as he was sinking.”
“How good and brave you are!”
Angelo blushed like a girl. “It makes me too happy to hear such words from you. But I vote we don't talk about me. Will you call on Mr. Rolfe?”
“Is he married?”
Angelo opened his eyes at the question. “I think not,” said he. “Indeed, I know he is not.”
“Could you get him down here?”
Angelo shook his head. “If he knew you, perhaps; but can you expect him to come here upon your business? These popular writers are spoiled by the ladies. I doubt if he would walk across the street to advise a stranger. Candidly, why should he?”
“No; and it was ridiculous vanity to suppose he would. But I never called on a gentleman in my life.”
“Take me with you. You can go up at nine, and be back to a late dinner.”
“I shall never have the courage to go. Let me have his letter.”
He gave her the letter, and she took it away.
At six o'clock she sent Mary Wells to Mr. Angelo, with a note to say she had studied Mr. Rolfe's letter, and there was more in it than she had thought; but his going off from her husband to boat-racing seemed trivial, and she could not make up her mind to go to London to consult a novelist on such a serious matter.
At nine she sent to say she should go, but could not think of dragging him there: she should take her maid.
Before eleven, she half repented this resolution, but her maid kept her to it; and at half past twelve next day they reached Mr. Rolfe's door; an old-fashioned, mean-looking house, in one of the briskest thoroughfares of the metropolis; a cabstand opposite to the door, and a tide of omnibuses passing it.
Lady Bassett viewed the place discontentedly, and said to herself, “What a poky little place for a writer to live in; how noisy, how unpoetical!”
They knocked at the door. It was opened by a maid-servant.
“Is Mr. Rolfe at home?”
“Yes, ma'am. Please give me your card, and write the business.”
Lady Bassett took out her card and wrote a line or two on the back of it. The maid glanced at it, and showed her into a room, while she took the card to her master.
The room was rather long, low, and nondescript; scarlet flock paper; curtains and sofas green Utrecht velvet; woodwork and pillars white and gold; two windows looking on the street; at the other end folding-doors with scarcely any wood-work, all plate-glass, but partly hidden by heavy curtains of the same color and material as the others. Accustomed to large, lofty rooms, Lady Bassett felt herself in a long box here; but the colors pleased her. She said to Mary Wells, “What a funny, cozy little place for a gentleman to live in!”
Mr. Rolfe was engaged with some one, and she was kept waiting; this was quite new to her, and discouraged her, already intimidated by the novelty of the situation.
She tried to encourage herself by saying it was for her husband she did this unusual thing; but she felt very miserable and inclined to cry.
At last a bell rang; the maid came in and invited Lady Bassett to follow her. She opened the glass folding-doors, and took them into a small conservatory, walled like a grotto, with ferns sprouting out of rocky fissures, and spars sparkling, water dripping. Then she opened two more glass folding-doors, and ushered them into an empty room, the like of which Lady Bassett had never seen; it was large in itself, and multiplied tenfold by great mirrors from floor to ceiling, with no frames but a narrow oak beading; opposite her, on entering, was a bay-window all plate-glass, the central panes of which opened, like doors, upon a pretty little garden that glowed with color, and was backed by fine trees belonging to the nation; for this garden ran up to the wall of Hyde Park.
The numerous and large mirrors all down to the ground laid hold of the garden and the flowers, and by double and treble reflection filled the room with delightful nooks of verdure and color.
To confuse the eye still more, a quantity of young India-rubber trees, with glossy leaves, were placed before the large central mirror. The carpet was a warm velvet-pile, the walls were distempered, a French gray, not cold, but with a tint of mauve that gave a warm and cheering bloom; this soothing color gave great effect to the one or two masterpieces of painting that hung on the walls and to the gilt frames; the furniture, oak and marqueterie highly polished; the curtains, scarlet merino, through which the sun shone, and, being a London sun, diffused a mild rosy tint favorable to female faces. Not a sound of London could be heard.
So far the room was romantic; but there was a prosaic corner to shock those who fancy that fiction is the spontaneous overflow of a poetic fountain fed by nature only; between the fireplace and the window, and within a foot or two of the wall, stood a gigantic writing-table, with the signs of hard labor on it, and of severe system. Three plated buckets, each containing three pints, full of letters to be answered, other letters to be pasted into a classified guard-book, loose notes to be pasted into various books and classified (for this writer used to sneer at the learned men who say, “I will look among my papers for it;” he held that every written scrap ought either to be burned, or pasted into a classified guard-book, where it could be found by consulting the index); five things like bankers' bill-books, into whose several compartments MS. notes and newspaper cuttings were thrown, as a preliminary toward classification in books.
Underneath the table was a formidable array of note-books, standing upright, and labeled on their backs. There were about twenty large folios of classified facts, ideas, and pictures—for the very wood-cuts were all indexed and classified on the plan of a tradesman's ledger; there was also the receipt-book of the year, treated on the same plan. Receipts on a file would not do for this romantic creature. If a tradesman brought a bill, he must be able to turn to that tradesman's name in a book, and prove in a moment whether it had been paid or not. Then there was a collection of solid quartos, and of smaller folio guard-books called Indexes. There was “Index rerum et journalium”— “Index rerum et librorum,”—“Index rerum et hominum,” and a lot more; indeed, so many that, by way of climax, there was a fat folio ledger entitled “Index ad Indices.”
By the side of the table were six or seven thick pasteboard cards, each about the size of a large portfolio, and on these the author's notes and extracts were collected from all his repertories into something like a focus for a present purpose. He was writing a novel based on facts; facts, incidents, living dialogue, pictures, reflections, situations, were all on these cards to choose from, and arranged in headed columns; and some portions of the work he was writing on this basis of imagination and drudgery lay on the table in two forms, his own writing, and his secretary's copy thereof, the latter corrected for the press. This copy was half margin, and so provided for additions and improvements; but for one addition there were ten excisions, great and small. Lady Bassett had just time to take in the beauty and artistic character of the place, and to realize the appalling drudgery that stamped it a workshop, when the author, who had dashed into his garden for a moment's recreation, came to the window, and furnished contrast No. 3. For he looked neither like a poet nor a drudge, but a great fat country farmer. He was rather tall, very portly, smallish head, commonplace features mild brown eye not very bright, short beard, and wore a suit of tweed all one color. Such looked the writer of romances founded on fact. He rolled up to the window—for, if he looked like a farmer, he walked like a sailor—and stepped into the room.