A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day Part 40

"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 Ba.s.sett 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 Ba.s.sett 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 Ba.s.sett 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 Ba.s.sett 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 Ba.s.sett 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 pa.s.sed, in swift whispers, a few yards from Mr. Salter, and he now came forward and offered his arm to conduct Lady Ba.s.sett 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 Ba.s.sett 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. Ba.s.sett: 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 Ba.s.sett. "They say, why was he hidden for two months, if there was not something very wrong?"

Lady Ba.s.sett 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 a.s.sure 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 Ba.s.sett withdrew her friends.h.i.+p 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 Ba.s.sett 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 Ba.s.sett, 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 pa.s.sion; 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 t.i.tles. 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 from _him._ 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 darling _would_ be 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 s.e.x 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 Ba.s.sett 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 Ba.s.sett, "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 Ba.s.sett 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 Ba.s.sett 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 Ba.s.sett 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 Ba.s.sett 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. Ba.s.sett 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 pa.s.sed 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 Ba.s.sett'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 Ba.s.sett _v._ Ba.s.sett."

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."