A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day Part 52

Ba.s.sett ground his teeth with vexation.

No train to London for an hour and a half. He took a stroll through the town to fill up the time.

How often, when a man abandons or remits his search for a time, Fate sends in his way the very thing he is after, but has given up hunting just then! As he walked along the north side of a certain street, what should he see but the truly beautiful and remarkable eyes and eyebrows of Mr. Angelo, s.h.i.+ning from afar.

That gentleman was standing, in a reverie, on the steps of a small hotel.

Ba.s.sett drew back at first, not to be seen. Looking round he saw he was at the door of a respectable house that let apartments. He hurried in, examined the drawing-room floor, took it for a week, paid in advance, and sent to the Royal for his bag.

He installed himself near the window, to await one of two things, and act accordingly. If Angelo left the place he should go by the same train, and so catch the parties together; if the lady doubled back to Bath, or had only pretended to leave it, he should soon know that, by diligent watch and careful following.

He wrote to Wheeler to announce this first step toward success.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

SOME days after this Mr. Rolfe received a line from Lady Ba.s.sett, to say she was at the Adelphi Hotel, in John Street. He put some letters into his pocket and called on her directly.

She received him warmly, and told him, more fully than she had by letter, how she had acted on his advice; then she told him of Richard Ba.s.sett's last act, and showed him her retort.

He knitted his brows at first over it; but said he thought her proclamation could do no harm.

"As a rule," said he, "I object to flicking with a lady's whip when I am going to crush, but--yes--it is able, and gives you a good excuse for keeping out of the way of annoyances till we strike the blow. And now I have something to consult you upon. May I read you some extracts from your husband's letters to me?"

"Oh, yes."

"Forgive a novelist; but this is a new situation, reading a husband's letters to his wife. However, I have a motive, and so I had in soliciting the correspondence with Sir Charles." He then read her the letters that are already before the reader, and also the following extracts:

"Mr. Johnson, a broken tradesman, has some imagination, though not of a poetic kind; he is imbued with trade, and, in the daytime, exercises several, especially a butcher's. When he sees any of us coming, he whips before the nearest door or gate, and sells meat. He sells it very cheap; the reason is, his friends allow him only a s.h.i.+lling or two in coppers, and as every madman is the center of the universe, he thinks that the prices of all commodities are regulated by the amount of specie in his pocket. This is his style, 'Come, buy, buy, choice mutton three farthings the carca.s.s. Retail shop next door, ma'am. Jack, serve the lady. Bill, tell him he can send me home those twenty bullocks, at three half-pence each--' and so on. But at night he subsides into an auctioneer, and, with knocking down lots while others are conversing, gets removed occasionally to a padded room. Sometimes we humor him, and he sells us the furniture after a spirited compet.i.tion, and debits the amounts, for cash is not abundant here. The other night, heated with business, he went on from the articles of furniture to the company, and put us all up in succession.

"Having a good many dislikes, he sometimes forgot the auctioneer in the man, and depreciated some lots so severely that they had to be pa.s.sed; but he set Miss Wieland in a chair, and descanted on her beauty, good temper, and other gifts, in terms florid enough for Robins, or any other poet. Sold for eighteen pounds, and to a lady. This lady had formed a violent attachment to Miss W.; so next week they will be at daggers drawn. My turn came, and the auctioneer did me the honor to describe me as 'the lot of the evening.' He told the bidders to mind what they were about, they might never again be able to secure a live baronet at a moderate price, owing to the tightness of the money market. Well, sir, I was honored with bids from several ladies; but they were too timid and too honest to go beyond their means; my less scrupulous s.e.x soared above these considerations, and I was knocked down for seventy-nine pounds fifteen s.h.i.+llings, amid loud applause at the spirited result. My purchaser is a shop-keeper mad after gardening.

Dr. Suaby has given him a plot to cultivate, and he whispered in my ear, 'The reason I went to a fancy price was, I can kill two birds with one stone with you. You'll make a very good statee stuck up among my flowers; and you can hallo, and keep those plaguy sparrows off.'"

"Oh, what creatures for my darling to live among!" cried Lady Ba.s.sett piteously.

Mr. Rolfe stared, and said, "What, then, you are like all your s.e.x--no sense of humor?"

"Humor! when my husband is in misery and degradation!"

"And don't you see that the brave writer of these letters is steeled against misery, and above degradation? Such men are not the mere sport of circ.u.mstances. Your husband carries a soul not to be quelled by three months in a well-ordered mad-house. But I will read no more, since what gives me satisfaction gives you pain."

"Oh, yes, yes! Don't let me lose a word my husband has ever uttered."

"Well, I'll go on; but I'm horribly discouraged."

"I'm so sorry for that sir. Please forgive me."

Mr. Rolfe read the letter next in date--

"We are honored with one relic of antiquity, a Pythagorean. He has obliged me with his biography. He was, to use his own words, engendered by the sun s.h.i.+ning on a dunghill at his father's door,' and began his career as a flea; but his ident.i.ty was, somehow, s.h.i.+fted to a boy of nine years old. He has had a long spell of humanity, and awaits the great change--which is to turn him to a bee. It will not find him unprepared; he has long practiced humming, in antic.i.p.ation. A faithful friend, called Caffyn, used to visit him every week. Caffyn died last year, and the poor Pythagorean was very lonely and sad; but, two months ago, he detected his friend in the butcher's horse, and is more than consoled, for he says, Caffyn comes six times a week now, instead of once.'"

"Poor soul!" said Lady Ba.s.sett. "What a strange world for him to be living in. It seems like a dream."

"There is something stranger coming in this last letter."

"I have at last found one madman allied to Genius. It has taken me a fortnight to master his delusion, and to write down the vocabulary he has invented to describe the strange monster of his imagination. All the words I write in italics are his own.

"Mr. Williams says that a machine has been constructed for malignant purposes, which machine is an _air-loom._ It rivals the human machine in this, that it can operate either on mind or matter. It was invented, and is worked, by a gang of villains superlatively skillful in _pneumatic chemistry, physiology, nervous influence, sympathy,_ and the _higher metaphysic,_ men far beyond the immature science of the present era, which, indeed, is a favorite subject of their ridicule.

"The gang are seven in number, but Williams has only seen the four highest: _Bill, the King,_ a master of the art of _magnetic impregnation; Jack, the schoolmaster,_ the short-hand writer of the gang; _Sir Archy,_ Chief Liar to the a.s.sociation; and the _glove-woman,_ so called from her always wearing cotton mittens. This personage has never been known to speak to any one.

"The materials used in the air-loom by these _pneumatic adepts_ are infinite; but princ.i.p.ally _effluvia of certain metals, poisons, soporific scents,_ etc.

"The princ.i.p.al effects are:

"1st. EVENT-WORKING.--This is done by _magnetic manipulation_ of kings, emperors, prime ministers, and others; so that, while the world is fearing and admiring them, they are, in reality, mere puppets played by the workers of the air-loom.

"2d. CUTTING SOUL FROM SENSE.--This is done _by diffusing the magnetic warp from the root of the nose under the base of the skull, till it forms a veil; so that the sentiments of the heart can have no communication with the operations of the intellect._

"3d. KITING.--As boys raise a kite in the air, so the air-loom can lift an idea into the brain, where it floats and undulates for hours together. The victim cannot get rid of an idea so insinuated.

"4th. LOBSTER-CRACKING.--An external pressure of the magnetic atmosphere surrounding the person a.s.sailed. Williams has been so operated on, and says he felt as if he was grasped by an enormous pair of nut-crackers with teeth, and subjected to a piercing pressure, which he still remembers with horror. Death sometimes results from Lobster-cracking.

"5th. LENGTHENING THE BRAIN.--_As the cylindrical mirror lengthens the countenance,_ so these a.s.sailants find means to _elon_gate the brain.

This distorts the ideas, and subjects the most serious are made silly and ridiculous.

"6th. THOUGHT-MAKING.--While one of these villains sucks at the brain of the a.s.sailed, and extracts his existing sentiments, another will press into the vacuum ideas very different from his real thoughts. Thus his mind is physically enslaved."

Then Sir Charles goes on to say:

"Poor Mr. Williams seems to me an inventor wasted. I thought I would try and reason him out of his delusion. I asked if he had ever seen this gang and their machine.

"He said yes, they operated on him this morning. 'Then show them me,'

said I. 'Young man,' said he, satirically, 'do you think these a.s.sa.s.sins, and their diabolical machine, would be allowed to go on, if they could be laid hands on so easily? The gang are fertile in disguise; the machine operates at considerable distances.'