A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day Part 38

"You must go downstairs, and not come here for an hour at least, or you'll spoil my work. Mr. Angelo is in the drawing-room."

"I will go to him."

Lady Ba.s.sett slipped out by the other door, and it was three hours, instead of one, before she returned.

For the first time in her life she was afraid to face her husband.

CHAPTER XIX.

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 Ba.s.sett 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 Ba.s.sett 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 Ba.s.sett 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 Ba.s.sett, 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 Ba.s.sett 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 Ba.s.sett. 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 Ba.s.sett 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 Ba.s.sett 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 circ.u.mstances 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 Ba.s.sett 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 circ.u.mstances enable the lower nature to play with the higher.

Lady Ba.s.sett'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 r.e.t.a.r.d his cure. Any day the Court of Chancery, set in motion by Richard Ba.s.sett, might issue a commission _de lunatico,_ and, if Sir Charles was not cured by that time, Richard Ba.s.sett 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 Ba.s.sett was silent and pa.s.sive.

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!"

CHAPTER XX.

SIR CHARLES observed that he was never trusted alone. He remarked this, and inquired, with a peculiar eye, why that was.

Lady Ba.s.sett had the tact to put on an innocent look and smile, and say: "That is true, dearest. I _have_ tied you to my ap.r.o.n-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. Ba.s.sett observed this proceeding from his tower.

One day Mr. Angelo called, and Lady Ba.s.sett 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sistance; 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 Ba.s.sett: 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 Ba.s.sett 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 Ba.s.sett on suspicion."

"G.o.d bless you, dear friend!" sobbed Lady Ba.s.sett. "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 Ba.s.sett 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."