A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day
“Oh, he is in the line, and the Highmore swell and all.”
“Mr. Richard Bassett?”
“Air, his kid is out on the loose, as well as ours.”
“Oh, Reginald, if they should quarrel!”
“Why, our governor can lick him, can't he?”
CHAPTER XL.
“OH, don't talk so. I wouldn't for all the world they should quarrel.”
“Well, we have got enough fellows to part them if they do.”
“Dear Reginald, you have been so good to me, and you are so clever;
speak to some of the men, and let there be no more quarreling between
papa and that man.”
“All right,” said the boy.
“On second thoughts take me to papa; I'll be by his side, and then they
cannot.”
“You want to walk through the wood? that is a good joke. Why, it is
like walking through a river, and the young wood slapping your eyes,
for you can't see every twig by this light, and the leaves sponging
your face and shoulders: and the briers would soon strip your gown into
ribbons, and make your little ankles bleed. No, you are a lady; you
stay where you are, and let us men work it. We shan't find him yet
awhile. I must get near the governor. When we find my lord, I'll give a
whistle you could hear a mile off.”
“Oh, Reginald, are you sure he is in the wood?”
“I'd bet my head to a chany orange. You might as well ask me, when I
track a badger to his hole, and no signs of his going out again,
whether old long-claws is there. I wish I was as sure of never going
back to school as I am of finding that little lot. The only thing I
don't like is, the young muff's not giving us a halloo back. But, any
way, I'll find 'em, _alive or dead.”_
And, with this pleasing assurance, the little imp scudded off, leaving
the mother glued to the spot with terror.
For full an hour more the torches gleamed, though fainter and fainter;
and so full was the wood of echoes, that the voices, though distant,
seemed to halloo all round the agonized mother.
But presently there was a continuous yell, quite different from the
isolated shouts, a distant but unmistakable howl of victory that made a
bolt of ice shoot down her back, and then her heart to glow like fire.
It was followed by a keen whistle.
She fell on her knees and thanked God for her boy.
In the middle of this wood was a shallow excavation, an old chalk-pit,
unused for many years. It was never deep, and had been half filled up
with dead leaves; these, once blown into the hollow, or dropped from
the trees, had accumulated.
The very middle of the line struck on this place, and Moss, the old
keeper, who was near the center, had no sooner cast his eyes into it
than he halted, and uttered a stentorian halloo well known to
sportsmen--“SEE HO!”
A dead halt, a low murmur, and in a very few seconds the line was a
circle, and all the torches that had not expired held high in a flaming
ring over the prettiest little sight that wood had ever presented.
The old keeper had not given tongue on conjecture, like some youthful
hound. In a little hollow of leaves, which the boy had scraped out, lay
Master Compton and Miss Ruperta, on their little backs, each with an
arm round the other's neck, enjoying the sweet sound sleep of infancy,
which neither the horror of their situation--babes in the wood--nor the
shouts of fifty people had in the smallest degree disturbed; to be
sure, they had undergone great fatigue.
Young master wore a coronet of bluebells on his golden bead, young miss
a wreath of cowslips on her ebon locks. The pair were flowers, cherubs,
children--everything that stands for young, tender, and lovely.
The honest villagers gaped, and roared in chorus, and held high their
torches, and gazed with reverential delight. Not for them was it to
finger the little gentlefolks, but only to devour them with admiring
eyes.
Indeed, the picture was carried home to many a humble hearth, and is
spoken of to this day in Huntercombe village.
But the pale and anxious fathers were in no state to see pictures--they
only saw their children Sir Charles and Richard Bassett came round with
the general rush, saw, and dashed into the pit.
Strange to say, neither knew the other was there. Each seized his
child, and tore it away from the contact of the other child, as if from
a viper; in which natural but harsh act they saw each other for the
first time, and their eyes gleamed in a moment with hate and defiance
over their loving children.
Here was a picture of a different kind, and if the melancholy Jaques,
or any other gentleman with a foible for thinking in a wood; had been
there, methinks he had moralized very prettily on the hideousness of
hate and the beauty of the sentiment it had interrupted so fiercely.
But it escaped this sort of comment for about eight years. Well, all
this woke the bairns; the lights dazzled them, the people scared them.
Each hid a little face on the paternal shoulder.
The fathers, like wild beasts, each carrying off a lamb, withdrew,
glaring at each other; but the very next moment the stronger and better
sentiment prevailed, and they kissed and blessed their restored
treasures, and forgot their enemies for a time.
Sir Charles's party followed him, and supped at Huntercombe, every man
Jack of them.
Reginald, who had delivered a terrific cat-call, now ran off to Lady
Bassett. There she was, still on her knees.
“Found! found!” he shouted.
She clasped him in her arms and wept for joy.
“My eyes!” said he, “what a one you are to cry! You come home; you'll
catch your death o' cold.”
“No, no; take me to my child at once.”
“Can't be done; the governor has carried him off through the wood; and
I ain't a going to let you travel the wood. You come with me; we'll go
the short cut, and be home as soon as them.”
She complied, though trembling all over.
On the way he told her where the children had been discovered, and in
what attitude.
“Little darlings!” said she. “But he has frightened his poor mother,
and nearly broken her heart. Oh!”
“If you cry any more, mamma--Shut up, I tell you!”
_“Must_ I? Oh!”
“Yes, or you'll catch pepper.”
Then he pulled her along, gabbling all the time. “Those two swells
didn't quarrel after all, you see.”
“Thank Heaven!”
“But they looked at each other like hobelixes, and pulled the kids away
like pison. Ha! ha! I say, the young 'uns ain't of the same mind as the
old 'uns. I say, though, our Compton is not a bad sort; I'm blowed if
he hadn't taken off his tippet to put round his gal. I say, don't you
think that little chap has begun rather early? Why, _I_ didn't trouble
my head about the gals till I was eleven years old.”
Lady Bassett was too much agitated to discuss these delicate little
questions just then.
She replied as irrelevantly as ever a lady did. “Oh, you good, brave,
clever boy!” said she.
Then she stopped a moment to kiss him heartily. “I shall never forget
this night, dear. I shall always make excuses for you. Oh, shall we
never get home?”
“We shall be home as soon as they will,” said Reginald. “Come on.”
He gabbled to her the whole way; but the reader has probably had enough
of his millclack.
Lady Bassett reached home, and had just ordered a large fire in
Compton's bedroom, when Sir Charles came in, bringing the boy.
The lady ran out screaming, and went down on her knees, with her arms
out, as only a mother can stretch them to her child.
There was not a word of scolding that night. He had made her suffer;
but what of that? She had no egotism; she was a true mother. Her boy
had been lost, and was found; and she was the happiest soul in
creation.
But the fathers of these babes in the wood were both intensely
mortified, and took measures to keep those little lovers apart in
future. Richard Bassett locked up his gate: Sir Charles padlocked his;
and they both told their wives they really must be more vigilant. The
poor children, being in disgrace, did not venture to remonstrate! But
they used often to think of each other, and took a liking to the
British Sunday; for then they saw each other in church.
By-and-by even that consolation ceased. Ruperta was sent to school, and
passed her holidays at the sea-side.
To return to Reginald, he was compelled to change his clothes that
evening, but was allowed to sit up, and, when the heads of the house
were a little calmer, became the hero of the night.
Sir Charles, gazing on him with parental pride, said, “Reginald, you
have begun a new life to-day, and begun it well. Let us forget the
past, and start fresh to-day, with the love and gratitude of both your
parents.”
The boy hung his head and said nothing in reply.
Lady Bassett came to his assistance. “He will; he will. Don't say a
word about the past. He is a good, brave, beautiful boy, and I adore
him.”
“And I like you, mamma,” said Reginald graciously.
From that day the boy had a champion in Lady Bassett; and Heaven knows,
she had no sinecure; poor Reginald's virtues were too eccentric to
balance his faults for long together. His parents could not have a
child lost in a wood every day; but good taste and propriety can be
offended every hour when one is so young, active, and savage as Master
Reginald.
He was up at five, and doing wrong all day.
Hours in the stables, learning to talk horsey, and smell dunghilly.
Hours in the village, gossiping and romping.
In good company, an owl.
In bad, or low company, a cricket, a nightingale, a magpie.
He was seen at a neighboring fair, playing the fiddle in a booth to
dancing yokels, and receiving their pence.
He was caught by Moss wiring hairs in Bassett's wood, within twenty
yards of the place where he had found the babes in the wood so nobly.
Remonstrated with tenderly and solemnly, he informed Sir Charles that
poaching was a thing he could not live without, and he modestly asked
to have Bassett's wood given him to poach in, offering, as a
consideration, to keep all other poachers out: as a greater inducement,
he represented that he should not require a house, but only a coarse
sheet to stretch across an old saw-pit, and a pair of blankets for
winter use--one under, one over.
Sir Charles was often sad, sometimes indignant.
Lady Bassett excused each enormity with pathetic ingenuity; excused,
but suffered, and indeed pined visibly, for all this time he was
tormenting her as few women in her position have been tormented. Her
life was a struggle of contesting emotions; she was wounded, harassed,
perplexed, and so miserable, she would have welcomed death, that her
husband might read that Manuscript and cease to suffer, and she escape
the shame of confessing, and of living after it.
In one word, she was expiating.
Neither the excuses she made nor the misery she suffered escaped Sir
Charles.
He said to her at last, “My own Bella, this unhappy boy is killing you.
Dear as he is to me, you are dearer. I must send him away again.”
“He saved our darling,” said she, faintly, but she could say no more.
He had exhausted excuse.
Sir Charles made inquiries everywhere, and at last his attention was
drawn to the following advertisement in the _Times:_
UNMANAGEABLE, Backward, or other BOYS, carefully TRAINED, and EDUCATED,
by a married rector. Home comforts. Moderate terms. Address Dr.
Beecher, Fennymore, Cambridgeshire.
He wrote to this gentleman, and the correspondence was encouraging.
“These scapegraces,” said the artist in tuition, “are like crab-trees;
abominable till you graft them, and then they bear the best fruit.”
While the letters were passing, came a climax. Reckless Reginald could
keep no bounds intact: his inward definition of a boundary was “a thing
you should go a good way out of your way rather than not overleap.”
Accordingly, he was often on Highmore farm at night, and even in