Part 45 (1/2)
He made both mistress and maid eat the thin slices of beef and drink a gla.s.s of champagne.
While they were thus fortifying themselves he wrote his address on some stamped envelopes, and gave them to Lady Ba.s.sett, and told her she had better write to him at once if anything occurred. ”You must also write to me if you really cannot get to see your husband. Then I will come down myself, with the public press at my back. But I am sure that will not be necessary in Dr. Suaby's asylum. He is a better Christian than I am, confound him for it! You went too soon; your husband had been agitated by the capture; Suaby was away; Salter had probably applied what he imagined to be soothing remedies, leeches--a blister--morphia.
Result, the patient was so much worse than he was before they touched him that Salter was ashamed to let you see him. Having really excited him, instead of soothing him, Sawbones Salter had to pretend that _you_ would excite him. As if creation contained any mineral, drug simple, leech, Spanish fly, gadfly, or showerbath, so soothing as a loving wife is to a man in affliction. New reading of an old song:
'If the heart of a man is oppressed with cares, It makes him much worse when a woman appears.'
”Go to-morrow; you will see him. He will be worse than he was; but not much. Somebody will have told him that his wife put him in there--”
”Oh! oh!”
”And he won't have believed it. His father was a Ba.s.sett; his mother a Le Compton; his great-great-great-grandmother was a Rolfe: there is no cur's blood in him. After the first shock he will have found the spirit and dignity of a gentleman to sustain adversity: these men of fas.h.i.+on are like that; they are better steel than women--and writers.”
When he had said this he indicated by his manner that he thought he had exhausted the subject, and himself.
Lady Ba.s.sett rose and said, ”Then, sir, I will take my leave; and oh! I am sorry I have not your eloquent pen or your eloquent tongue to thank you. You have interested yourself in a stranger--you have brought the power of a great mind to bear on our distress. I came here a widow--now I feel a wife again. Your good words have warmed my very heart. I can only pray G.o.d to bless you, sir.”
”Pray say no more, madam,” said Mr. Rolfe, hastily. ”A gentleman cannot be always writing lies; an hour or two given to truth and justice is a wholesome diversion. At all events, don't thank me till my advice has proved worth it.”
He rang the bell; the servant came, and showed the way to the street door. Mr. Rolfe followed them to the pa.s.sage only, whence he bowed ceremoniously once more to Lady Ba.s.sett as she went out.
As she pa.s.sed into the street she heard a fearful clatter. It was her counselor tearing back to his interrupted novel like a distracted bullock.
”Well, I don't think much of _he,”_ said Mary Wells.
Lady Ba.s.sett was mute to that, and all the journey home very absorbed and taciturn, impregnated with ideas she could not have invented, but was more able to execute than the inventor. She was absorbed in digesting Rolfe's every word, and fixing his map in her mind, and filling in details to his outline; so small-talk stung her: she gave her companion very short answers, especially when she disparaged Mr.
Rolfe.
”You couldn't get in a word edgeways,” said Mary Wells.
”I went to hear wisdom, and not to chatter.”
”He doesn't think small beer of hisself, anyhow.”
”How _can_ he, and see other men?”
”Well. I don't think much of him, for my part.”
”I dare say the Queen of Sheba's lady's-maid thought Solomon a silly thing.”
”I don't know; that was afore my time” (rather pertly).
”Of course it was, or you couldn't imitate her.”
On reaching home she ordered a light dinner upstairs, and sent directions to the coachman and grooms.
At nine next morning the four-in-hand came round, and they started for the asylum--coachman and two more in brave liveries; two outriders.
Twenty miles from Huntercombe they changed the wheelers, two fresh horses having been sent on at night.
They drove in at the lodge-gate of Bellevue House, which was left ostentatiously open, and soon drew up at the hall door, and set many a pale face peeping from the upper windows.