WHEELER, instead of being thunder-stricken, said quietly, “Oh, is he? Well?”
“Sir Charles is lighter than I am: Lady Bassett has a skin like satin, and red hair.”
“Red! say auburn gilt. I never saw such lovely hair.”
“Well,” said Richard, impatiently, “then the boy has eyes like sloes, and a brown skin, like an Italian, and black hair almost; it will be quite.”
“Well,” said Wheeler, “it is not so very uncommon for a dark child to be born of fair parents, orvice versa.I once saw an urchin that was like neither father nor mother, but the image of his father's grandfather, that died eighty years before he was born. They used to hold him up to the portrait.”
Said Bassett, “Will you admit that it is uncommon?”
“Not so uncommon as for a high-bred lady, living in the country, and adored by her husband, to trifle with her marriage vow, for that is what you are driving at.”
“Then we have to decide between two improbabilities: will you grant me that, Mr. Wheeler?”
“Yes.”
“Then suppose I can prove fact upon fact, and coincidence upon coincidence, all tending one way! Are you so prejudiced that nothing will convince you?”
“No. But it will take a great deal: that lady's face is full of purity, and she fought us like one who loved her husband.”
“Fronti nulla fides:and as for her fighting, her infidelity was the weapon she defeated us with. Will you hear me?”
“Yes, yes; but pray stick to facts, and not conjectures.”
“Then don't interrupt me with childish arguments:
“Fact 1.—Both reputed parents fair; the boy as black as the ace of spades.
“Fact 2.—A handsome young fellow was always buzzing about her ladyship, and he was a parson, and ladies are remarkably fond of parsons.
“Fact 3.—This parson was of Italian breed, dark, like the boy.
“Fact 4.—This dark young man left Huntercombe one week, and my lady left it the next, and they were both in the city of Bath at one time.
“Fact 5.—The lady went from Bath to London. The dark young man went from Bath to London.”
“None of this is new to me,” said Wheeler, quietly.
“No; but it is the rule, in estimating coincidences, that each fresh one multiplies the value of the others. Now the boy looking so Italian is a new coincidence, and so is what I am going to tell you—at last I have found the medical man who attended Lady Bassett in London.”
“Ah!”
“Yes, sir; and I have learnedFact 6.—Her ladyship rented a house, but hired no servants, and engaged no nurse. She had no attendant but a lady's maid, no servant but a sort of charwoman.
“Fact 7.—She dismissed this doctor unusually soon, and gave him a very large fee.
“Fact 8.—She concealed her address from her husband.”
“Oh! can you prove that?”
“Certainly. Sir Charles came up to town, and had to hunt for her, came to this very medical man, and asked for the address his wife had not given him; but lo! when he got there the bird was flown.
“Fact 9.—Following the same system of concealment, my lady levanted from London within ten days of her confinement.
“Now put all these coincidences together. Don't you see that she had a lover, and that he was about her in London and other places? Stop!Fact 10.—Those two were married for years, and had no child but this equivocal one; and now four years and a half have passed, during all which time they have had none, and the young parson has been abroad during that period.”
Wheeler was staggered and perplexed by this artful array of coincidences.
“Now advise me,” said Bassett.
“It is not so easy. Of course if Sir Charles was to die, you could claim the estate, and give them a great deal of pain and annoyance; but the burden of proof would always rest on you. My advice is not to breathe a syllable of this; but get a good detective, and push your inquiries a little further among house agents, and the women they put into houses; find that charwoman, and see if you can pick up anything more.”
“Do you know such a thing as an able detective?”
“I know one that will work if I instruct him.”
“Instruct him, then.”
“I will.”
She spoke of the future, and tried to pierce it; and in all these little loving speculations and anxieties there was no longer any mention of herself.
This meant that she feared her husband was about to lose her. I put the fear in the very form it took in that gentle breast.
Possessed with this dread, so natural to her situation, she set her house in order, and left her little legacies of clothes and jewels, without the help of a lawyer; for Sir Charles, she knew, would respect her lightest wish.
To him she left her all, except these trifles, and, above all—a manuscript book. It was the history of her wedded life. Not the bare outward history; but such a record of a sensitive woman's heart as no male writer's pen can approach.
It was the nature of her face and her tongue to conceal; but here, on this paper, she laid bare her heart; here her very subtlety operated, not to hide, but to dissect herself and her motives.
But oh, what it cost her to pen this faithful record of her love, her trials, her doubts, her perplexities, her agonies, her temptations, and her crime! Often she laid down the pen, and hid her face in her hands. Often the scalding tears ran down that scarlet face. Often she writhed at her desk, and wrote on, sighing and moaning. Yet she persevered to the end. It was the grave that gave her the power. “When he reads this,” she said, “I shall be in my tomb. Men make excuses for the dead. My Charles will forgive me when I am gone. He will know I loved him to desperation.”
It took her many days to write; it was quite a thick quarto; so much may a woman feel in a year or two; and, need I say that, to the reader of that volume, the mystery of her conduct was all made clear as daylight; clearer far, as regards the revelation of mind and feeling, than I, dealer in broad facts, shall ever make it, for want of a woman's mental microscope and delicate brush.
And when this record was finished, she wrapped it in paper, and sealed it with many seals, and wrote on it,
“Only for my husband's eye. From her who loved him not wisely, But too well.”
And she took other means that even the superscription should never be seen of any other eye but his. It was some little comfort to her, when the book was written.
She never prayed to live. But she used to pray, fervently, piteously, that her child might live, and be a comfort and joy to his father.
The person employed by Wheeler discovered the house agent, and the woman he had employed.
But these added nothing to the evidence Bassett had collected.
At last, however, this woman, under the influence of a promised reward, discovered a person who was likely to know more about the matter—viz., the woman who was in the house with Lady Bassett at the very time.
But this woman scented gold directly: so she held mysterious language; declined to say a word to the officer; but intimated that she knew a great deal, and that the matter was, in truth, well worth looking into, and she could tell some strange tales, if it was worth her while.
This information was sent to Bassett; he replied that the woman only wanted money for her intelligence, and he did not blame her; he would see her next time he went to town, and felt sure she would complete his chain of evidence. This put Richard Bassett into extravagant spirits. He danced his little boy on his knee, and said, “I'll run this little horse against the parson's brat; five to one, and no takers.”
Indeed, his exultation was so loud and extravagant that it jarred on gentle Mrs. Bassett. As for Jessie, the Scotch servant, she shook her head, and said the master was fey.
In the morning he started for London, still so exuberant and excited that the Scotch woman implored her mistress not to let him go; there would be an accident on the railway, or something. But Mrs. Bassett knew her husband too well to interfere with his journeys.
Before he drove off he demanded his little boy.
“He must kiss me,” said he, “for I'm going to work for him. D'ye hear that, Jane? This day makes him heir of Huntercombe and Bassett.”
The nurse brought word that Master Bassett was not very well this morning.
“Let us look at him,” said Bassett.
He got out of his gig, and went to the nursery. He found his little boy had a dry cough, with a little flushing.
“It is not much,” said he; “but I'll send the doctor over from the town.”
He did so, and himself proceeded up to London.
The doctor came, and finding the boy labored in breathing, administered a full dose of ipecacuanha. This relieved the child for the time; but about four in the afternoon he was distressed again, and began to cough with a peculiar grating sound.
Then there was a cry of dismay—“The croup!” The doctor was gone for, and a letter posted to Richard Bassett, urging him to come back directly.
The doctor tried everything, even mercury, but could not check the fatal discharge; it stiffened into a still more fatal membrane.
When Bassett returned next afternoon, in great alarm, he found the poor child thrusting its fingers into its mouth, in a vain attempt to free the deadly obstruction.
A warm bath and strong emetics were now administered, and great relief obtained. The patient even ate and drank, and asked leave to get up and play with a new toy he had. But, as often happens in this disorder, a severe relapse soon came, with a spasm of the glottis so violent and prolonged that the patient at last resigned the struggle. Then pain ceased forever; the heavenly smile came; the breath went; and nothing was left in the little white bed but a fair piece of tinted clay, that must return to the dust, and carry thither all the pride, the hopes, the boasts of the stricken father, who had schemed, and planned, and counted without Him in whose hands are the issues of life and death.
As for the child himself, his lot was a happy one, if we could but see what the world is really worth. He was always a bright child, that never cried, nor complained: his first trouble was his last; one day's pain, then bliss eternal: he never got poisoned by his father's spirit of hate, but loved and was beloved during his little lifetime; and, dying, he passed from his Noah's ark to an inheritance a thousand times richer than Huntercombe, Bassett, and all his cousin's lands.
The little grave was dug, the bell tolled, and a man bowed double with grief saw his child and his ambition laid in the dust.
Lady Bassett heard the bell tolled, and spoke but two words: “Poor woman!”
She might well say so. Mrs. Bassett was in the same condition as herself, yet this heavy blow must fall on her.
As for Richard Bassett, he sat at home, bowed down and stupid with grief.
Wheeler came one day to console him; but, at the sight of him, refrained from idle words. He sat down by him for an hour in silence. Then he got up and said, “Good-by.”
“Thank you, old friend, for not insulting me,” said Bassett, in a broken voice.
Wheeler took his hand, and turned away his head, and so went away, with a tear in his eye.
A fortnight after this he came again, and found Bassett in the same attitude, but not in the same leaden stupor. On the contrary, he was in a state of tremor; he had lost, under the late blow, the sanguine mind that used to carry him through everything.
The doctor was upstairs, and his wife's fate trembled in the balance.
“Stay by me,” said he, “for all my nerve is gone. I'm afraid I shall lose her; for I have just begun to value her; and that is how God deals with his creatures—the merciful God, as they call him.”
Wheeler thought it rather hard God Almighty should be blamed because Dick Bassett had taken eight years to find out his wife's merit; but he forbore to say so. He said kindly that he would stay.
Now while they sat in trying suspense the church-bells struck up a merry peal.
Bassett started violently and his eyes gave a strange glare. “That's the other!” said he; for he had heard about Lady Bassett by this time.
Then he turned pale. “They ring for him: then they are sure to toll for me.”
This foreboding was natural enough in a man so blinded by egotism as to fancy that all creation, and the Creator himself, must take a side in Bassettv.Bassett.
Nevertheless, events did not justify that foreboding. The bells had scarcely done ringing for the happy event at Huntercombe, when joyful feet were heard running on the stairs; joyful voices clashed together in the passage, and in came a female servant with joyful tidings. Mrs. Bassett was safe, and the child in the world. “The loveliest little girl you ever saw!”
“A girl!” cried Richard Bassett with contemptuous amazement. Even his melancholy forebodings had not gone that length. “And what have they got at Huntercombe?”
“Oh, it is a boy, sir, there.”
“Of course.”
The ringers heard, and sent one of their number to ask him if they should ring.
“What for?” asked Bassett with a nasty glittering eye; and then with sudden fury he seized a large piece of wood from the basket to fling at his insulter. “I'll teach you to come and mock me.”
The ringer vanished, ducking.
“Gently,” said Wheeler, “gently.”
Bassett chucked the wood back into the basket, and sat down gloomily, saying, “Then how dare he come and talk about ringing bells for a girl? To think that I should have all this fright, and my wife all this trouble—for a girl!”
It was no time to talk of business then; but about a fortnight afterward Wheeler said, “I took the detective off, to save you expense.”
“Quite right,” said Bassett, wearily.
“I gave you the woman's address; so the matter is in your hands now, I consider.”
“Yes,” said Bassett, wearily; “Move no further in it.”
“Certainly not; and, frankly, I should be glad to see you abandon it.”
“Ihaveabandoned it. Why should I stir the mud now? I and mine are thrown out forever; the only question is, shall a son of Sir Charles or the parson's son inherit? I'm for the wrongful heir. Ay,” he cried, starting up, and beating the air with his fists in sudden fury, “since the right Bassetts are never to have it, let the wrong Bassetts be thrown out, at all events; I'm on my back, but Sir Charles is no better off; a bastard will succeed him, thanks to that cursed woman who defeatedme.”
This turn took Wheeler by surprise. It also gave him real pain. “Bassett,” said he, “I pity you. What sort of a life has yours been for the last eight years? Yet, when there's no fuel left for war and hatred, you blow the embers. You are incurable.”
“I am,” said Richard. “I'll hate those two with my last breath and curse them in my last prayer.”
LADY BASSETT'S forebodings, like most of our insights into the future, were confuted by the event.
She became the happy mother of a flaxen-haired boy. She insisted on nursing him herself; and the experienced persons who attended her raised no objection.
In connection with this she gave Sir Charles a peck, not very severe, but sudden, and remarkable as the only one on record.
He was contemplating her and her nursling with the deepest affection, and happened to say, “My own Bella, what delight it gives me to see you!”
“Yes,” said she, “we will have only one mother this time, will we, my darling? and it shall be Me.” Then suddenly, turning her head like a snake, “Oh, I saw the looks you gave that woman!”
This was the famous peck; administered in return for a look that he had bestowed on Mary Gosport not more than five years ago.
Sir Charles would, doubtless, have bled to death on the spot, but either he had never been aware how he looked, or time and business had obliterated the impression, for he was unaffectedly puzzled, and said, “What woman do you mean, dear?”
“No matter, darling,” said Lady Bassett, who had already repented her dire severity: “all I say is that a nurse is a rival I could not endure now; and another thing, I do believe those wet-nurses give their disposition to the child: it is dreadful to think of.”
“Well, if so, baby is safe. He will be the most amiable boy in England.”
“He shall be more amiable than I am—scolding my husband of husbands;” and she leaned toward him, baby and all, for a kiss from his lips.
We say at school “Seniores priores”—let favor go by seniority; but where babies adorn the scene, it is “juniores priores” with that sex to which the very young are confided.
To this rule, as might be expected, Lady Bassett furnished no exception; she was absorbed in baby, and trusted Mr. Bassett a good deal to his attendant, who bore an excellent character for care and attention.
Now Mr. Bassett was strong on his pins and in his will, and his nurse-maid, after all, was young; so he used to take his walks nearly every day to Mrs. Meyrick's: she petted him enough, and spoiled him in every way, while the nurse-maid was flirting with the farm-servants out of sight.
Sir Charles Bassett was devoted to the boy, and used always to have him to his study in the morning, and to the drawing-room after dinner, when the party was small, and that happened much oftener now than heretofore; but at other hours he did not look after him, being a business man, and considering him at that age to be under his mother's care.
One day the only guest was Mr. Rolfe; he was staying in the house for three days, upon a condition suggested by himself—viz., that he might enjoy his friends' society in peace and comfort, and not be set to roll the stone of conversation up some young lady's back, and obtain monosyllables in reply, faintly lisped amid a clatter of fourteen knives and forks. As he would not leave his writing-table on any milder terms, they took him on these.
After dinner in came Mr. Bassett, erect, and a proud nurse with little Compton, just able to hold his nurse's gown and toddle.
Rolfe did not care for small children; he just glanced at the angelic, fair-haired infant, but his admiring gaze rested on the elder boy.
“Why, what is here—an Oriental prince?”
The boy ran to him directly. “Who are you?”
“Rolfe the writer. Who are you—the Gipsy King?”
“No; but I am very fond of gypsies. I'mMisterBassett; and when papa dies I shall be Sir Charles Bassett.”
Sir Charles laughed at this with paternal fatuity, especially as the boy's name happened to be Reginald Francis, after his grandfather.
Rolfe smiled satirically, for these little speeches from children did much to reconcile him to his lot.
“Meantime,” said he, “let us feed off him; for it may be forty years before we can dance over his grave. First let us see what is the unwholesomest thing on the table.”
He rose, and to the infinite delight of Mr. Bassett, and even of Master Compton, who pointed and crowed from his mother's lap, he got up on his chair, and put on a pair of spectacles to look.
“Eureka!” said he; “behold that dish by Lady Bassett; those aremarrons glaces;fetch them here, and let us go in for a fit of the gout at once.”
“Gout! what's that?” inquired Mr. Bassett.
“Don't ask me.”
“You don't know.
“Not know! What, didn't I tell you I was Rolfe the writer? Writers know everything. That is what makes them so modest.”
Mr. Bassett was now unnaturally silent for five minutes, munching chestnuts; this enabled his guests to converse; but as soon as he had cleared his plate, he cut right across the conversation, with that savage contempt for all topics but his own which characterizes gentlemen of his age, and says he to Rolfe, “You know everything? Then what's a parson's brat?”
“Well, that's the one thing I don't know,” said Rolfe; “but a brat I take to be a boy who interrupts ladies and gentlemen with nonsense when they are talking sense.”
“I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Rolfe,” said Lady Bassett. “That remark was very much needed.”
Then she called Reginald to her, and lectured him,sotto voce,to the same tune.
“You old bachelors are rather hard,” said Sir Charles, not very well pleased.
“We are obliged to be; you parents are so soft. After all, it is no wonder. What a superb boy it is!—Here is nurse. I'm so sorry. Now we shall be cabined, cribbed, confined to rational conversation, and I shall not be expected to—(good-night, little flaxen angel; good-by, handsome and loquacious demon; kiss and be friends)—expected to know, all in a minute, what is a parson's brat. By-the-by, talking of parsons, what has become of Angelo?”
“He has been away a good many years. Consumption, I hear.”
“He was a fine-built fellow too; was he not, Lady Bassett?”
“I don't know; but he was beautifully strong. I think I see him now carrying dear Charles in his arms all down the garden.”
“Ah, you see he was raised in a university that does not do things by halves, but trains both body and mind, as they did at Athens; for the union of study and athletic sports is spoken of as a novelty, but it is only a return to antiquity.”
Here letters were brought by the second post. Sir Charles glanced at his, and sent them to his study. Lady Bassett had but one. She said,“MayI?” to both gentlemen, and then opened it.
“How strange!” said she. “It is from Mr. Angelo: just a line to say he is coming home quite cured.”
She began this composedly, but blushed afterward—blushed quite red.
“MayI?” said she, and tossed it delicately half-way to Rolfe. He handed it to Sir Charles.
Some remarks were then made about the coincidence, and nothing further passed worth recording at that time.
Next day Lady Bassett, with instinctive curiosity, asked Master Reginald how he came to put such a question as that to Mr. Rolfe.
“Because I wanted to know.”
“But what put such words into your head? I never heard a gentleman say such words; and you must never say them again, Reginald.”
“Tell me what it means, and I won't,” said he.
“Oh,” said Lady Bassett, “since you bargain with me, sir, I must bargain with you. Tell me first where you ever heard such words.”
“When I was staying at nurse's. Ah, that was jolly.”
“You like that better than being here?”
“Yes.”
“I am sorry for that. Well, dear, did nurse say that? Surely not?”
“Oh, no; it was the man.”
“What man?”
“Why, the man that came to the gate one morning, and talked to me, and I talked to him, and that nasty nurse ran out and caught us, and carried me in, and gave me such a hiding, and all for nothing.”
“A hiding! What words the poor child picks up! But I don't understand why nurse should beatyou.”
“For speaking to the man. She said he was a bad man, and she would kill me if ever I spoke to him again.”
“Oh, it was a bad man, and said bad words—to somebody he was quarreling with?”
“No, he said them to nurse because she took me away.”
“Whatdidhe say, Reginald?” asked Lady Bassett, becoming very grave and thoughtful all at once.
“He said, 'That's too late; I've seen the parson's brat.'”
“Oh!”
“And I've asked nurse again and again what it meant, but she won't tell me. She only says the man is a liar, and I am not to say it again; and so I never did say it again—for a long time; but last night, when Rolfe the writer said he knew everything, it struck my head—what is the matter, mamma?”
“Nothing; nothing.”
“You look so white. Are you ill, mamma?” and he went to put his arms round her, which was a mighty rare thing with him.
She trembled a good deal, and did not either embrace him or repel him. She only trembled.
After some time she recovered herself enough to say, in a voice and with a manner that impressed itself at once on this sharp boy: “Reginald, your nurse was quite right. Understand this: the man was your enemy—and mine; the words he said you must not say again. It would be like taking up dirt and flinging some on your own face and some on mine.”
“I won't do that,” said the boy, firmly. “Are you afraid of the man that you look so white?”
“A man with a woman's tongue—who can help fearing?”
“Don't you be afraid; as soon as I'm big enough, I'll kill him.”
Lady Bassett looked with surprise at the child, he uttered this resolve with such a steady resolution.
She drew him to her, and kissed him on the forehead.
“No, Reginald,” said she; “we must not shed blood; it is as wicked to kill our enemies as to kill any one else. But never speak to him, never even listen to him; if he tries to speak to you, run away from him, and don't let him—he is our enemy.”
That same day she went to Mrs. Meyrick, to examine her. But she found the boy had told her all there was to tell.
Mrs. Meyrick, whose affection for her was not diminished, was downright vexed. “Dear me!” said she; “I did think I had kept that from vexing of you. To think of the dear child hiding it for nigh two years, and then to blurt it out like that! Nobody heard him I hope?”
“Others heard; but—”
“Didn't heed; the Lord be praised for that.”
“Mary,” said Lady Bassett, solemnly, “I am not equal to another battle with Mr. Richard Bassett; and such a battle! Better tell all, and die.”
“Don't think of it,” said Mary. “You're safe from Richard Bassett now. Times are changed since he came spying to my gate. His own boy is gone. You have got two. He'll lie still if you do. But if you tell your tale, he must hear on't, and he'll tell his. For God's sake, my lady, keep close. It is the curse of women that they can't just hold their tongues, and see how things turn. And is this a time to spill good liquor? Look at Sir Charles! why, he is another man; he have got flesh on his bones now, and color into his cheeks, and 'twas you and I made a man of him. It is my belief you'd never have had this other little angel but for us having sense and courage to see whatmustbe done. Knock down our own work, and send him wild again, and give that Richard Bassett a handle? You'll never be so mad.”
Lady Bassett replied. The other answered; and so powerfully that Lady Bassett yielded, and went home sick at heart, but helpless, and in a sea of doubt.
Mr. Angelo did not call. Sir Charles asked Lady Bassett if he had called on her.
She said “No.”
“That is odd,” said Sir Charles. “Perhaps he thinks we ought to welcome him home. Write and ask him to dinner.”
“Yes, dear. Or you can write.”
“Very well, I will. No, I will call.”
Sir Charles called, and welcomed him home, and asked him to dinner. Angelo received him rather stiffly at first, but accepted his invitation.
He came, looking a good deal older and graver, but almost as handsome as ever; only somewhat changed in mind. He had become a zealous clergyman, and his soul appeared to be in his work. He was distant and very respectful to Lady Bassett; I might say obsequious. Seemed almost afraid of her at first.
That wore off in a few months; but he was never quite so much at his ease with her as he had been before he left some years ago.
And so did time roll on.
Every morning and every night Lady Bassett used to look wistfully at Sir Charles, and say—
“Are you happy, dear? Are you sure you are happy?”
And he used always to say, and with truth, that he was the happiest man in England, thanks to her.
Then she used to relax the wild and wistful look with which she asked the question, and give a sort of sigh, half content, half resignation.
In due course another fine boy came, and filled the royal office of baby in his turn.
But my story does not follow him.
Reginald was over ten years old, and Compton nearly six. They were as different in character as complexion—both remarkable boys.
Reginald, Sir Charles's favorite, was a wonderful boy for riding, running, talking; and had a downright genius for melody; he whistled to the admiration of the village, and latterly he practiced the fiddle in woods and under hedges, being aided and abetted therein by a gypsy boy whom he loved, and who, indeed, provided the instrument.
He rode with Sir Charles, and rather liked him; his brother he never noticed, except to tease him. Lady Bassett he admired, and almost loved her while she was in the act of playing him undeniable melodies. But he liked his nurse Meyrick better, on the whole; she flattered him more, and was more uniformly subservient.
With these two exceptions he despised the whole race of women, and affected male society only, especially of grooms, stable-boys, and gypsies; these last welcomed him to their tents, and almost prostrated themselves before him, so dazzled were they by his beauty and his color. It is believed they suspected him of having gypsy blood in his veins. They let him into their tents, and even into some of their secrets, and he promised them they should have it all their own way as soon as he was Sir Reginald; he had outgrown his original theory that he was to be Sir Charles on his father's death.
He hated in-doors; when fixed by command to a book, would beg hard to be allowed to take it into the sun; and at night would open his window and poke his black head out to wash in the moonshine, as he said.
He despised ladies and gentlemen, said they were all affected fools, and gave imitations of all his father's guests to prove it; and so keen was this child of nature's eye for affectation that very often his disapproving parents were obliged to confess the imp had seen with his fresh eye defects custom had made them overlook, or the solid good qualities that lay beneath had overbalanced.
Now all this may appear amusing and eccentric, and so on, to strangers; but after the first hundred laughs or so with which paternal indulgence dismisses the faults of childhood, Sir Charles became very grave.
The boy was his darling and his pride. He was ambitious for him. He earnestly desired to solve for him a problem which is as impossible as squaring the circle, viz., how to transmit our experience to our children. The years and the health he had wasted before he knew Bella Bruce, these he resolved his successor should not waste. He looked higher for this beautiful boy than for himself. He had fully resolved to be member for the county one day; but he did not care about it for himself; it was only to pave the way for his successor; that Sir Reginald, after a long career in the Commons, might find his way into the House of Peers, and so obtain dignity in exchange for antiquity; for, to tell the truth, the ancestors of four-fifths of the British House of Peers had been hewers of wood and drawers of water at a time when these Bassetts had already been gentlemen of distinction for centuries.
All this love and this vicarious ambition were now mortified daily. Some fathers could do wonders for a brilliant boy, and with him; they expect him, and a dull boy appears; that is a bitter pill; but this was worse. Reginald was a sharp boy; he could do anything; fasten him to a book for twenty minutes, he would learn as much as most boys in an hour; but there was no keeping him to it, unless you strapped him or nailed him, for he had the will of a mule, and the suppleness of an eel to carry out his will. And then his tastes—low as his features were refined; he was a sort of moral dung-fork; picked up all the slang of the stable and scattered it in the dining-room and drawing-room; and once or twice he stole out of his comfortable room at night, and slept in a gypsy's tent with his arm round a gypsy boy, unsullied from his cradle by soap.
At last Sir Charles could no longer reply to his wife at night as he had done for this ten years past. He was obliged to confess that there was one cloud upon his happiness. “Dear Reginald grieves me, and makes me dread the future; for if the child is father to the man, there is a bitter disappointment in store for us. He is like no other boy; he is like no human creature I ever saw. At his age, and long after, I was a fool; I was a fool till I knew you; but surely I was a gentleman. I cannot see myself again—in my first-born.”
LADY BASSETT was paralyzed for a minute or two by this speech. At last she replied by asking a question—rather a curious one. “Who nursed you, Charles?”
“What, when I was a baby? How can I tell? Yes, by-the-by, it was my mother nursed me—so I was told.”
“And your mother was a Le Compton. This poor boy was nursed by a servant. Oh, she has some good qualities, and is certainly devoted to us—to this day her face brightens at sight of me—but she is essentially vulgar; and do you remember, Charles, I wished to wean him early; but I was overruled, and the poor child drew his nature from that woman for nearly eighteen months; it is a thing unheard of nowadays.”
“Well, but surely it is from our parents we draw our nature.”
“No; I think it is from our nurses. If Compton or Alec ever turn out like Reginald, blame nobody but their nurse, and that is Me.”
Sir Charles smiled faintly at this piece of feminine logic, and asked her what he should do.
She said she was quite unable to advise. Mr. Rolfe was coming to see them soon; perhaps he might be able to suggest something.
Sir Charles said he would consult him; but he was clear on one thing—the boy must be sent from Huntercombe, and so separated from all his present acquaintances.
Mr. Rolfe came, and the distressed father opened his heart to him in strict confidence respecting Reginald.
Rolfe listened and sympathized, and knit his brow, and asked time to consider what he had heard, and also to study the boy for himself.
He angled for him next day accordingly. A little table was taken out on the lawn, and presently Mr. Rolfe issued forth in a uniform suit of dark blue flannel and a sombrero hat, and set to work writing a novel in the sun.
Reginald in due course descried this figure, and it smacked so of that Bohemia to which his own soul belonged that he was attracted thereby, but made his approaches stealthily, like a little cat.
Presently a fiddle went off behind a tree, so close that the novelist leaped out of his seat with an eldrich screech; for he had long ago forgotten all about Mr. Reginald, and, when he got heated in this kind of composition, any sudden sound seemed to his tense nerves and boiling brain about ten times as loud as it really was.
Having relieved himself with a yell, he sat down with the mien of a martyr expecting tortures; but he was most agreeably disappointed; the little monster played an English melody, and played it in tune. This done, he whistled a quick tune, and played a slow second to it in perfect harmony; this done, he whistled the second part and played the quick treble—a very simple feat, but still ingenious for a boy, and new to his hearer.
“Bravo! bravo!” cried Rolfe, with all his heart,
Mr. Reginald emerged, radiant with vanity. “You are like me, Mr. Writer,” said he; “you don't like to be cooped up in-doors.”
“I wish I could play the fiddle like you, my fine fellow.”
“Ah, you can't do that all in a minute; see the time I have been at it.”
“Ah, to be sure, I forgot your antiquity.”
“And it isn't the time only; it's giving your mind to it, old chap.”
“What, you don't give your mind to your books, then, as you do to your fiddle,young gentleman?”
“Not such a flat. Why, lookee here, governor, if you go and give your mind to a thing you don't like, it's always time wasted, because some other chap, that does like it, will beat you, and what's the use working for to be beat?”
“'For' is redundant,” objected Rolfe.
“But if you stick hard to the things you like, you do 'em downright well. But old people are such fools, they always drive you the wrong way. They make the gals play music six hours a day, and you might as well set the hen bullfinches to pipe. Look at the gals as come here, how they rattle up and down the piano, and can't make it sing a morsel. Why, theycouldn'trattle like that, if they'd music in their skins, d—n 'em; and they drive me to those stupid books, because I'm all for music and moonshine. Can you keep a secret?”
“As the tomb.”
“Well, then, I can do plenty of things well, besides fiddling; I can set a wire with any poacher in the parish. I have caught plenty of our old man's hares in my time; and it takes a workman to set a wire as it should be. Show me a wire, and I'll tell you whether it was Hudson, or Whitbeck, or Squinting Jack, or who it was that set it. I know all their work that walks by moonlight hereabouts.”
“This is criticism; a science; I prefer art; play me another tune, my bold Bohemian.”
“Ah, I thought I should catch ye with my fiddle. You're not such a muff as the others, old 'un, not by a long chalk. Hang me if I won't give ye 'Ireland's music,' and I've sworn never to waste that on a fool.”
He played the old Irish air so simply and tunably that Rolfe leaned back in his chair, with half closed eyes, in soft voluptuous ecstasy.
The youngster watched him with his coal-black eye.
“I like you,” said he, “better than I thought I should, a precious sight.”
“Highly flattered.”
“Come with me, and hear my nurse sing it.”
“What, and leave my novel?”
“Oh, bother your novel.”
“And so I will. That will be tit for tat; it has bothered me. Lead on, Bohemian bold.”
The boy took him, over hedge and ditch, the short-cut to Meyrick's farm; and caught Mrs. Meyrick, and said she must sing “Ireland's music” to Rolfe the writer.
Mrs. Meyrick apologized for her dress, and affected shyness about singing: Mr. Reginald stared at first, then let her know that, if she was going to be affected like the girls that came to the Hall, he should hate her, as he did them, and this he confirmed with a naughty word.
Thus threatened, she came to book, and sang Ireland's melody in a low, rich, sonorous voice; Reginald played a second; the harmony was so perfect and strong that certain glass candelabra on the mantel-piece rang loudly, and the drops vibrated. Then he made her sing the second, and he took the treble with his violin; and he wound up by throwing in a third part himself, a sort of countertenor, his own voice being much higher than the woman's.
The tears stood in Rolfe's eyes. “Well,” said he, “you have got the soul of music, you two. I could listen to you 'From morn till noon, from noon till dewy eve.'”
As they returned to Huntercombe, this mercurial youth went off at a tangent, and Rolfe saw him no more.
He wrote in peace, and walked about between the heats.
Just before dinner-time the screams of women were heard hard by, and the writer hurried to the place in time to see Mr. Basset hanging by the shoulder from the branch of a tree, about twenty feet from the ground.
Rolfe hallooed, as he ran, to the women, to fetch blankets to catch him, and got under the tree, determined to try and catch him in his arms, if necessary; but he encouraged the boy to hold on.
“All right, governor,” said the boy, in a quavering voice.
It was very near the kitchen; maids and men poured out with blankets; eight people held one, under Rolfe's direction, and down came Mr. Bassett in a semicircle, and bounded up again off the blanket, like an India-rubber ball.
His quick mind recovered courage the moment he touched wool.
“Crikey! that's jolly,” said he; “give me another toss or two.”
“Oh no! no!” said a good-natured maid. “Take an' put him to bed right off, poor dear.”
“Hold your tongue, ye bitch,” said young hopeful; “if ye don't toss me, I'll turn ye all off, as soon as ever the old un kicks the bucket.”
Thus menaced, they thought it prudent to toss him; but, at the third toss, he yelled out, “Oh! oh! oh! I'm all wet; it's blood! I'm dead!”
Then they examined, and found his arm was severely lacerated by an old nail that had been driven into the tree, and it had torn the flesh in his fall: he was covered with blood, the sight of which quenched his manly spirit, and he began to howl.
“Old linen rag, warm water, and a bottle of champagne,” shouted Rolfe: the servants flew.
Rolfe dressed and bandaged the wound for him, and then he felt faint: the champagne soon set that right; and then he wanted to get drunk, alleging, as a reason, that he had not been drunk for this two months.
Sir Charles was told of the accident, and was distressed by it, and also by the cause.
“Rolfe,” said he, sorrowfully, “there is a ring-dove's nest on that tree: she and hers have built there in peace and safety for a hundred years, and cooed about the place. My unhappy boy was climbing the tree to take the young, after solemnly promising me he never would: that is the bitter truth. What shall I do with the young barbarian?”
He sighed, and Lady Bassett echoed the sigh.
Said Rolfe, “The young barbarian, as you call him, has disarmed me: he plays the fiddle like a civilized angel.”
“Oh, Mr. Rolfe!”
“What, you his mother, and not found that out yet? Oh yes, he has a heaven-born genius for music.”
Rolfe then related the musical feats of the urchin.
Sir Charles begged to observe that this talent would go a very little way toward fitting him to succeed his father and keep up the credit of an ancient family.
“Dear Charles, Mr. Rolfe knows that; but it is like him to make the best of things, to encourage us. But what do you think of him, on the whole, Mr. Rolfe? has Sir Charles more to hope or to fear?”
“Give me another day or two to study him,” said Rolfe.
That night there was a loud alarm. Mr. Bassett was running about the veranda in his night-dress.
They caught him and got him to bed, and Rolfe said it was fever; and, with the assistance of Sir Charles and a footman, laid him between two towels steeped in tepid water, then drew blankets tight over him, and, in short, packed him.
“Ah!” said he, complacently; “I say, give me a drink of moonshine, old chap.”
“I'll give you a bucketful,” said Rolfe; then, with the servant's help, took his little bed and put it close to the window; the moonlight streamed in on the boy's face, his great black eyes glittered in it. He was diabolically beautiful. “Kiss me, moonshine,” said he; “I like to wash in you.”
Next day he was, apparently, quite well, and certainly ripe for fresh mischief. Rolfe studied him, and, the evening before he went, gave Sir Charles and Lady Bassett his opinion, but not with his usual alacrity; a weight seemed to hang on him, and, more than once, his voice trembled.
“I shall tell you,” said he, “what I see—what I foresee—and then, with great diffidence, what I advise.
“I see—what naturalists call a reversion in race, a boy who resembles in color and features neither of his parents, and, indeed, bears little resemblance to any of the races that have inhabited England since history was written. He suggests rather some Oriental type.”
Sir Charles turned round in his chair, with a sigh, and said, “We are to have a romance, it seems.”
Lady Bassett stared with all her eyes, and began to change color.
The theorist continued, with perfect composure, “I don't undertake to account for it with any precision. How can I? Perhaps there is Moorish blood in your family, and here it has revived; you look incredulous, but there are plenty of examples, ay, and stronger than this: every child that is born resembles some progenitor; how then do you account for Julia Pastrana, a young lady who dined with me last week, and sang me 'Ah perdona,' rather feebly, in the evening? Bust and figure like any other lady, hand exquisite, arms neatly turned, but with long, silky hair from the elbow to the wrist. Face, ugh! forehead made of black leather, eyes all pupil, nose an excrescence, chin pure monkey, face all covered with hair; briefly, a type extinct ten thousand years before Adam, yet it could revive at this time of day. Compared with La Pastrana, and many much weaker examples of antiquity revived, that I have seen, your Mauritanian son is no great marvel, after all.”
“This is alittletoo far-fetched,” said Sir Charles, satirically; “Bella's father was a very dark man, and it is a tradition in our family that all the Bassetts were as black as ink till they married with you Rolfes, in the year 1684.”
“Oho!” said Rolfe, “is it so? See how discussion brings out things.”
“And then,” said Lady Bassett, “Charles dear, tell Mr. Rolfe what I think.”
“Ay, do,” said Rolfe; “that will be a new form of circumlocution.”
Sir Charles complied, with a smile. “Lady Bassett's theory is, that children derive their nature quite as much from their wet-nurses as from their parents, and she thinks the faults we deplore in Reginald are to be traced to his nurse; by-the-by, she is a dark woman too.”
“Well,” said Rolfe, “there's a good deal of truth in that, as far as regards the disposition. But I never heard color so accounted for; yet why not? It has been proved that the very bones of young animals can be colored pink, by feeding them on milk so colored.”
“There!” said Lady Bassett.
“But no nurse could give your son a color which is not her own. I have seen the woman; she is only a dark Englishwoman. Her arms were embrowned by exposure, but her forehead was not brown. Mr. Reginald is quite another thing. The skin of his body, the white of his eye, the pupil, all look like a reversion to some Oriental type; and, mark the coincidence, he has mental peculiarities that point toward the East.”
Sir Charles lost patience. “On the contrary,” said he, “he talks and feels just like an English snob, and makes me miserable.”
“Oh, as to that, he has picked up vulgar phrases at that farm, and in your stables; but he never picked up his musical genius in stables and farms, far less his poetry.”
“What poetry?”
“What poetry? Why, did not you hear him? Was it not poetical of a wounded, fevered boy to beg to be laid by the window, and to say 'Let me drink the moonshine?' Take down your Homer, and read a thousand lines haphazard, and see whether you stumble over a thought more poetical than that. But criticism does not exist: whatever the dead said was good; whatever the living say is little; as if the dead were a race apart, and had never been the living, and the living would never be the dead.”
Heaven knows where he was running to now, but Sir Charles stopped him by conceding that point. “Well you are right: poor child, it was poetical,” and the father's pride predominated, for a moment, over every other sentiment.
“Yes; but where did it come from? That looks to me a typical idea; I mean an idea derived, not from his luxurious parents, dwellers in curtained mansions, but from some out-door and remote ancestor; perhaps from the Oriental tribe that first colonized Britain; they worshiped the sun and the moon, no doubt; or perhaps, after all, it only came from some wandering tribe that passed their lives between the two lights of heaven, and never set foot in a human dwelling.”
“This,” said Sir Charles, “is a flattering speculation, but so wild and romantic that I fear it will lead us to no practical result. I thought you undertook to advise me. What advice can you build on these cobwebs of your busy brain?”
“Excuse me, my practical friend,” said Rolfe. “I opened my discourse in three heads. What I see—what I foresee—and what, with diffidence, I advise. Pray don't disturb my methods, or I am done for; never disturb an artist's form. I have told you what I see. What I foresee is this: you will have to cut off the entail with Reginald's consent, when he is of age, and make the Saxon boy Compton your successor. Cutting off entails runs in families, like everything else; your grandfather did it, and so will you. You should put by a few thousands every year, that you may be able to do this without injustice either to your Oriental or your Saxon son.”
“Never!” shouted Sir Charles: then, in a broken voice, “He is my first-born, and my idol; his coming into the world rescued me out of a morbid condition: he healed my one great grief. Bar the entail, and put his younger brother in his place—never!”
Mr. Rolfe bowed his head politely, and left the subject, which, indeed, could be carried no farther without serious offense.
“And now for my advice. The question is, how to educate this strange boy. One thing is clear; it is no use trying the humdrum plan any longer; it has been tried, and failed. I should adapt his education to his nature. Education is made as stiff and unyielding as a board; but it need not be. I should abolish that spectacled tutor of yours at once, and get a tutor, young, enterprising, manly, and supple, who would obey orders; and the order should be to observe the boy's nature, and teach accordingly. Why need men teach in a chair, and boys learn in a chair? The Athenians studied not in chairs. The Peripatetics, as their name imports, hunted knowledge afoot; those who sought truth in the groves of Academus were not seated at that work. Then let the tutor walk with him, and talk with him by sunlight and moonlight, relating old history, and commenting on each new thing that is done, or word spoken, and improve every occasion. Why, I myself would give a guinea a day to walk with William White about the kindly aspects and wooded slopes of Selborne, or with Karr about his garden. Cut Latin and Greek clean out of the scheme. They are mere cancers to those who can never excel in them. Teach him not dead languages, but living facts. Have him in your justice-room for half an hour a day, and give him your own comments on what he has heard there. Let his tutor take him to all Quarter Sessions and Assizes, and stick to him like diaculum, especially out-of-doors; order him never to be admitted to the stable-yard; dismiss every biped there that lets him come. Don't let him visit his nurse so often, and never without his tutor; it was she who taught him to look forward to your decease; that is just like these common women. Such a tutor as I have described will deserve 500 pounds a year. Give it him; and dismiss him if he plays humdrum and doesn't earn it. Dismiss half a dozen, if necessary, till you get a fellow with a grain or two of genius for tuition. When the boy is seventeen, what with his Oriental precocity, and this system of education, he will know the world as well as a Saxon boy of twenty-one, and that is not saying much. Then, if his nature is still as wild, get him a large tract in Australia; cattle to breed, kangaroos to shoot, swift horses to thread the bush and gallop mighty tracts; he will not shirk business, if it avoids the repulsive form of sitting down in-doors, and offers itself in combination with riding, hunting, galloping, cracking of rifles, and of colonial whips as loud as rifles, and drinking sunshine and moonshine in that mellow clime, beneath the Southern Cross and the spangled firmament of stars unknown to us.”
His own eyes sparkled like hot coals at this Bohemian picture.
Then he sighed and returned to civilization. “But,” said he, “be ready with eighty thousand pounds for him, that he may enjoy his own way and join you in barring the entail. I forgot, I must say no more on that subject; I see it is as offensive—as it is inevitable. Cassandra has spoken wisely, and, I see, in vain. God bless you both—good-night.”
And he rolled out of the room with a certain clumsy importance.
Sir Charles treated all this advice with a polite forbearance while he was in the room, but on his departure delivered a sage reflection.
“Strange,” said he, “that a man so valuable in any great emergency should be so extravagant and eccentric in the ordinary affairs of life. I might as well drive to Bellevue House and consult the first gentleman I met there.”
Lady Bassett did not reply immediately, and Sir Charles observed that her face was very red and her hands trembled.
“Why, Bella,” said he, “has all that rhodomontade upset you?”
Lady Bassett looked frightened at his noticing her agitation, and said that Mr. Rolfe always overpowered her. “He is so large, and so confident, and throws such new light on things.”
“New light! Wild eccentricity always does that; but it is the light of Jack-o'-lantern. On a great question, so near my heart as this, give me the steady light of common sense, not the wayward coruscations of a fiery imagination. Bella dear, I shall send the boy to a good school, and so cut off at one blow all the low associations that have caused the mischief.”
“You know what is best, dear,” said Lady Bassett; “you are wiser than any of us.”
In the morning she got hold of Mr. Rolfe, and asked him if he could put her in the way of getting more than three per cent for her moneywithout risk.
“Only one,” said.Rolfe. “London freeholds in rising situations let to substantial tenants. I can get you five per cent that way, if you are always ready to buy. The thing does not offer every day.”
“I have twenty thousand pounds to dispose of so,” said Lady Bassett.
“Very well,” said Rolfe. “I'll look out for you, but Oldfield must examine titles and do the actual business. The best of that investment is, it is always improving; no ups and downs. Come,” thought he, “Cassandra has not spoken quite in vain.”
Sir Charles acted on his judgment, and in due course sent Mr. Bassett to a school at some distance, kept by a clergyman, who had the credit in that county of exercising sharp supervision and strict discipline.
Sir Charles made no secret of the boy's eccentricities. Mr. Beecher said he had one or two steady boys who assisted him in such cases.
Sir Charles thought that a very good idea; it was like putting a wild colt into the break with a steady horse.
He missed the boy sadly at first, but comforted himself with the conviction that he had parted with him for his good: that consoled him somewhat.
The younger children of Sir Charles and Lady Bassett were educated entirely by their mother, and taught as none but a loving lady can teach.
Compton, with whom we have to do, never knew the thorns with which the path of letters is apt to be strewn. A mistress of the great art of pleasing made knowledge from the first a primrose path to him. Sparkling all over with intelligence, she impregnated her boy with it. She made herself his favorite companion; she would not keep her distance. She stole and coaxed knowledge and goodness into his heart and mind with rare and loving cunning.
She taught him English and French and Latin on the Hamiltonian plan, and stored his young mind with history and biography, and read to him, and conversed with him on everything as they read it.
She taught him to speak the truth, and to be honorable and just.
She taught him to be polite, and even formal, rather than free-and-easy and rude. She taught him to be a man. He must not be what brave boys called a molly-coddle: like most womanly women, she had a veneration for man, and she gave him her own high idea of the manly character.
Natural ability, and habitual contact with a mind so attractive and so rich, gave this intelligent boy many good ideas beyond his age.
When he was six years old, Lady Bassett made him pass his word of honor that he would never go into the stable-yard; and even then he was far enough advanced to keep his word religiously.
In return for this she let him taste some sweets of liberty, and was not always after him. She was profound enough to see that without liberty a noble character cannot be formed; and she husbanded the curb.
One day he represented to her that, in the meadow next their lawn, were great stripes of yellow, which were possibly cowslips; of course they might be only buttercups, but he hoped better things of them; he further reported that there was an iron gate between him and this paradise: he could get over it if not objectionable; but he thought it safest to ask her what she thought of the matter; was that iron gate intended to keep little boys from the cowslips, because, if so, it was a misfortune to which he must resign himself. Still, itwasa misfortune. All this, of course, in the simple language of boyhood.
Then Lady Bassett smiled, and said, “Suppose I were to lend you a key of that iron gate?”
“Oh, mamma!”
“I have a great mind to.”
“Then you will, you will.”
“Does that follow?”
“Yes: whenever you say you think you'll do something kind, or you have a great mind to do it, you know you always do it; and that is one thing I do like you for, mamma—you are better than your word.”
“Better than my word? Where does the child learn these things?”
“La, mamma, papa says that often.”
“Oh, that accounts for it. I like the phrase very much. I wish I could think I deserved it. At any rate, I will be as good as my word for once; you shall have a key of the gate.”
The boy clapped his hands with delight. The key was sent for, and, meantime, she told him one reason why she had trusted him with it was because he had been as good as his word about the stable.
The key was brought, and she held it up half playfully, and said, “There, sir, I deliver you this upon conditions: you must only use it when the weather is quite dry, because the grass in the meadow is longer, and will be wet. Do you promise?”
“Yes, mamma.”
“And you must always lock the gate when you come back, and bring the key to one place—let me see—the drawer in the hall table, the one with marble on it; for you know a place for every thing is our rule. On these conditions, I hereby deliver you this magic key, with the right of egress and ingress.”