A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day
Wheeler pitied him, but could not rouse him. At last a person for whose
narrow attainments and simplicity he had a profound, though, to do him
justice, a civil contempt, ventured to his rescue. Mrs. Bassett went
crying to her father, and told him she feared the worst if Richard's
mind could not be diverted from the Huntercombe estate and his hatred
of Sir Charles and Lady Bassett, which had been the great misfortune of
her life and of his own, but nothing would ever eradicate it. Richard
had great abilities; was a linguist, a wonderful accountant; could her
dear father find him some profitable employment to divert his thoughts?
“What! all in a moment?” said the old man. “Then I shall have to _buy_
it; and if I go on like this I shall not have much to leave you.”
Having delivered this objection, he went up to London, and, having many
friends in the City, and laying himself open to proposals, he got scent
at last of a new insurance company that proposed also to deal in
reversions, especially to entailed estates. By prompt purchase of
shares in Bassett's name, and introducing Bassett himself, who, by
special study, had a vast acquaintance with entailed estates, and a
genius for arithmetical calculation, he managed somehow to get him into
the direction, with a stipend, and a commission on all business he
might introduce to the office.
Bassett yielded sullenly, and now divided his time between London and
the country.
Wheeler worked with him on a share of commission, and they made some
money between them.
After the bitter lesson he had received Bassett vowed to himself he
never would attack Sir Charles again unless he was sure of victory. For
all this he hated him and Lady Bassett worse than ever, hated them to
the death.
He never moved a finger down at Huntercombe, nor said a word; but in
London he employed a private inquirer to find out where Lady Bassett
had lived at the time of her confinement, and whether any clergyman had
visited her.
The private inquirer could find out nothing, and Bassett, comparing his
advertisements with his performance, dismissed him for a humbug.
But the office brought him into contact with a great many medical men,
one after another. He used to say to each stranger, with an insidious
smile, “I think you once attended my cousin--Lady Bassett.”
CHAPTER XXXIII.
SIR CHARLES and Lady Bassett, relieved of their cousin's active enmity,
led a quiet life, and one that no longer furnished striking incidents.
But dramatic incident is not everything: character and feeling show
themselves in things that will not make pictures. Now it was precisely
during this reposeful period that three personages of this story
exhibited fresh traits of feeling, and also of character.
To begin with Sir Charles Bassett. He came back from the asylum much
altered in body and mind. Stopping his cigars had improved his stomach;
working in the garden had increased his muscular power, and his cheeks
were healthy, and a little sunburned, instead of sallow. His mind was
also improved: contemplation of insane persons had set him by a natural
recoil to study self-control. He had returned a philosopher. No small
thing could irritate him now. So far his character was elevated.
Lady Bassett was much the same as before, except a certain
restlessness. She wanted to be told every day, or twice a day, that her
husband was happy; and, although he was visibly so, yet, as he was
quiet over it, she used to be always asking him if he was happy. This
the reader must interpret as he pleases.
Mary Gosport gave herself airs. Respectful to her master and mistress,
but not so tolerant of chaff in the kitchen as she used to be. Made an
example of one girl, who threw a doubt on her marriage. Complained to
Lady Bassett, affected to fret, and the girl was dismissed.
She turned singer. She had always sung psalms in church, but never a
profane note in the house. Now she took to singing over her nursling;
she had a voice of prodigious power and mellowness, and, provided she
was not asked, would sing lullabies and nursery rhymes from another
county that ravished the hearer. Horsemen have been known to stop in
the road to hear her sing through an open window of Huntercombe, two
hundred yards off.
Old Mr. Meyrick, a farmer well-to-do, fascinated by Mary Gosport's
singing, asked her to be his housekeeper when she should have done
nursing her charge.
She laughed in his face.
A fanatic who was staying with Sir Charles Bassett offered her three
years' education in Do, Ra, Mi, Fa, preparatory to singing at the
opera.
Declined without thanks.
Mr. Drake, after hovering shyly, at last found courage to reproach her
for deserting him and marrying a sailor.
“Teach you not to shilly-shally,” said she. “Beauty won't go a-begging.
Mind you look sharper next time.”
This dialogue, being held in the kitchen, gave the women some amusement
at the young farmer's expense.
One day Mr. Richard Bassett, from motives of pure affection no doubt,
not curiosity, desired mightily to inspect Mr. Bassett, aged eight
months and two days.
So, in his usual wily way, he wrote to Mrs. Gosport, asking her, for
old acquaintance' sake, to meet him in the meadow at the end of the
lawn. This meadow belonged to Sir Charles, but Richard Bassett had a
right of way through it, and could step into it by a postern, as Mary
could by an iron gate.
He asked her to come at eleven o'clock, because at that hour he
observed she walked on the lawn with her charge.
Mary Gosport came to the tryst, but without Mr. Bassett.
Richard was very polite; she cold, taciturn, observant.
At last he said, “But where's the little heir?”
She flew at him directly. “It is him you wanted, not me. Did you think
I'd bring him here--for you to kill him?”
“Come, I say.”
“Ay, you'd kill him if you had a chance. But you never shall. Or if you
didn't kill him, you'd cast the evil-eye on him, for you are well known
to have the evil-eye. No; he shall outlive thee and thine, and be lord
of these here manors when thou is gone to hell, thou villain.”
Mr. Richard Bassett turned pale, but did the wisest thing he could--put
his hands in his pockets, and walked into his own premises, followed,
however, by Mary Gosport, who stormed at him till he shut his postern
in her face.
She stood there trembling for a little while, then walked away, crying.
But having a mind like running water, she was soon seated on a garden
chair, singing over her nursling like a mavis: she had delivered him to
Millar while she went to speak her mind to her old lover.
As for Richard Bassett, he was theory-bitten, and so turned every thing
one way. To be sure, as long as the woman's glaring eyes and face
distorted by passion were before him, he interpreted her words simply;
but when he thought the matter over he said to himself, “The evil-eye!
That is all bosh; the girl is in Lady Bassett's secrets; and I am not
to see young master: some day I shall know the reason why.”
Sir Charles Bassett now belonged to the tribe of clucking cocks quite
as much as his cousin had ever done; only Sir Charles had the good
taste to confine his clucks to his own first-floor. Here, to be sure,
he richly indemnified himself for his self-denial abroad. He sat for
hours at a time watching the boy on the ground at his knee, or in his
nurse's arms.
And while he watched the infant with undisguised delight, Lady Bassett
would watch _him_ with a sort of furtive and timid complacency.
Yet at times she suffered from twinges of jealousy--a new complaint
with her.
I think I have mentioned that Sir Charles, at first, was annoyed at
seeing his son and heir nursed by a woman of low condition. Well, he
got over that feeling by degrees, and, as soon as he did get over it,
his sentiments took quite an opposite turn. A woman for whom he did
very little, in his opinion--since what, in Heaven's name, were a
servant's wages?--he saw that woman do something great for him; saw her
nourish his son and heir from her own veins; the child had no other
nurture; yet the father saw him bloom and thrive, and grow
surprisingly.
A weak observer, or a less enthusiastic parent, might have overlooked
all this; but Sir Charles had naturally an observant eye and an
analytical mind, and this had been suddenly but effectually developed
by the asylum and his correspondence with Rolfe.
He watched the nurse, then, and her maternal acts with a curious and
grateful eye, and a certain reverence for her power.
He observed, too, that his child reacted on the woman: she had never
sung in the house before; now she sang ravishingly--sang, in low,
mellow, yet sonorous notes, some ditties that had lulled mediaeval
barons in their cradles.
And what had made her vocal made her beautiful at times.
Before, she had appeared to him a handsome girl, with the hardish look
of the lower classes; but now, when she sat in a sunny window, and
lowered her black lashes on her nursling, with the mixed and delicious
smile of an exuberant nurse relieving and relieved, she was soft,
poetical, sculptorial, maternal, womanly.
This species of contemplation, though half philosophical, half
paternal, and quite innocent, gave Lady Bassett some severe pangs.
She hid them, however; only she bided her time, and then suggested the
propriety of weaning baby.
But Mrs. Gosport got Sir Charles's ear, and told him what magnificent
children they reared in her village by not weaning infants till they
were eighteen months old or so.
By this means, and by crying to Lady Bassett, and representing her
desolate condition with a husband at sea, she obtained a reprieve,
coupled, however, with a good-humored assurance from Sir Charles that
she was the greatest baby of the two.
When the inevitable hour approached that was to dethrone her she took
to reading the papers, and one day she read of a disastrous wreck, the
_Carbrea Castle_--only seven saved out of a crew of twenty-three. She
read the details carefully, and two days afterward she received a
letter written by a shipmate of Mr. Gosport's, in a handwriting not
very unlike her own, relating the sad wreck of the _Carbrea Castle,_
and the loss of several good sailors, James Gosport for one.
Then the house was filled with the wailing and weeping of the bereaved
widow; and at last came consolers and raised doubts; but then somebody
remembered to have seen the loss of that very ship in the paper. The
paper was found, and the fatal truth was at once established.
Upon this Mr. Bassett was weaned as quickly as possible, and the widow
clothed in black at Lady Bassett's expense, and everything in reason
done to pet her and console her.
But she cried bitterly, and said she would throw herself into the sea
and follow her husband.
Huntercombe was nowhere near the coast.
At last, however, she relented, and concluded to remain on earth as
dry-nurse to Mr. Bassett.
Sir Charles did not approve this: it seemed unreasonable to turn a
wet-nurse into a dry-nurse when that office was already occupied by a
person her senior and more experienced.
Lady Bassett agreed with him, but shrugged her shoulders and said, “Two
nurses will not hurt, and I suspect it will not be for long. Mary does
not feel her husband's loss one bit.”
“Surely you are mistaken. She howls loud enough.”
“Too loud--much,” said Lady Bassett, dryly.
Her perspicuity was not deceived. In a very short time Mr. Meyrick,
unable to get her for his housekeeper, offered her marriage.
“What!” said she, “and James Gosport not dead a month?”
“Say the word now, and take your own time,” said he.
“Well, I might do worse,” said she.
About six weeks after this Drake came about her, and in tender tones of