Part 80 (1/2)

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 Ba.s.sett's wood, within twenty yards of the place where he had found the babes in the wood so n.o.bly.

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 Ba.s.sett'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 coa.r.s.e 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 Ba.s.sett 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, hara.s.sed, perplexed, and so miserable, she would have welcomed death, that her husband might read that Ma.n.u.script 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt in the _Times:_

UNMANAGEABLE, Backward, or other BOYS, carefully TRAINED, and EDUCATED, by a married rector. Home comforts. Moderate terms. Address Dr.

Beecher, Fennymore, Cambridges.h.i.+re.

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 pa.s.sing, 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 Highmore garden; the boundary wall tempted him so.

One light but windy night, when everybody that could put his head under cover, and keep it there, did, reckless Reginald was out enjoying the fresh breezes; he mounted the boundary wall of Highmore like a cat, to see what amus.e.m.e.nt might offer. Thus perched, he speedily discovered a bright light in Highmore dining-room.

He dropped from the wall directly, and stole softly over the gra.s.s and peered in at the window.

He saw a table with a powerful lamp on it; on that table, and gleaming in that light, were several silver vessels of rare size and workmans.h.i.+p, and Mr. Ba.s.sett, with his coat off, and a green baize ap.r.o.n on, was cleaning one of these with brush and leather. He had already cleaned the others, for they glittered prodigiously.