A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day Part 59

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

So full was the joy of this loving pair that, for a long time, they sat rocking in each other's arms, and thought of nothing but their sorrows past, and the sea of bliss they were floating on.

But presently Sir Charles glanced round for a moment. Swift to interpret his every look, Lady Ba.s.sett rose, took two steps, came back and printed a kiss on his forehead, and then went to a door and opened it.

"Mrs. Millar!" said she, with one of those tones by which these ladies impregnate with meaning a word that has none at all; and then she came back to her husband.

Soon a buxom woman of forty appeared, carrying a biggish bank of linen and lace, with a little face in the middle. The good woman held it up to Sir Charles, and he felt something novel stir inside him. He looked at the little thing with a vast yearning of love, with pride, and a good deal of curiosity; and then turned smiling to his wife. She had watched him furtively but keenly, and her eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g over. He kissed the little thing, and blessed it, and then took his wife's hands, and kissed her wet eyes, and made her stand and look at baby with him, hand in hand. It was a pretty picture.

The buxom woman swelled her feathers, as simple women do when they exhibit a treasure of this sort; she lifted the little mite slowly up and down, and said, "Oh, you Beauty!" and then went off into various inarticulate sounds, which I recommend to the particular study of the new philosophers: they cannot have been invented after speech; that would be retrogression; they must be the vocal remains of that hairy, sharp-eared quadruped, our Progenitor, who by accident discovered language, and so turned Biped, and went ahead of all the other hairy quadrupeds, whose ears were too long or not sharp enough to stumble upon language.

Under cover of these primeval sounds Lady Ba.s.sett drew her husband a little apart, and looking in his face with piteous wistfulness, said, "You won't mind Richard Ba.s.sett and his baby now?"

"Not I."

"You will never have another fit while you live?"

"I promise."

"You will always be happy?"

"I must be an ungrateful scoundrel else, my dear."

"Then baby is our best friend. Oh, you little angel!" And she pounced on the mite, and kissed it far harder than Sir Charles had. Heaven knows what these gentle creatures are so rough with their mouths to children, but so it is.

And now how can a mere male relate all the pretty childish things that were done and said to baby, and of baby, before the inevitable squalling began, and baby was taken away to be consoled by another of his subjects.

Sir Charles and Lady Ba.s.sett had a thousand things to tell each other, to murmur in each other's ears, sitting lovingly close to each other.

But when all was quiet, and everybody else was in bed, Lady Ba.s.sett plucked up courage and said, "Charles, I am not quite happy. There is one thing wanting." And then she hid her face in her hands and blushed.

"I cannot nurse him."

"Never mind," said Sir Charles kindly.

"You forgive me?"

"Forgive you, my poor girl! Why, is that a crime?"

"It leads to so many things. You don't know what a plague a nurse is, and makes one jealous."

"Well, but it is only for a time. Come, Bella, this is a little peevish. Don't let us be ungrateful to Heaven. As for me, while you and our child live, I am proof against much greater misfortunes than that."

Then Lady Ba.s.sett cleared up, and the subject dropped.

But it was renewed next morning in a more definite form.

Sir Charles rose early; and in the pride and joy of his heart, and not quite without an eye to triumphing over his mortal enemy and his cold friends, sent a mounted messenger with orders to his servants to prepare for his immediate reception, and to send out his landau and four horses to the "Rose," at Staveleigh, half-way between Huntercombe and the place where he now was. Lady Ba.s.sett had announced herself able for the journey.

After breakfast he asked her rather suddenly whether Mrs. Millar was not rather an elderly woman to select for a nurse. "I thought people got a young woman for that office."

"Oh," said Lady Ba.s.sett, "why, Mrs. Millar is not _the_ nurse. Of course nurse is young and healthy, and from the country, and the best I could have in every way for baby. But yet--oh, Charles, I hope you will not be angry--who do you think nurse is? It is Mary Gosport--Mary Wells that was."

Sir Charles was a little staggered. He put this and that together, and said, "Why, she must have been playing the fool, then?"

"Hush! not so loud, dear. She is a married woman now, and her husband gone to sea, and her child dead. Most wet-nurses have a child of their own; and don't you think they must hate the stranger's child that parts them from their own? Now baby is a comfort to Mary. And the wet-nurse is always a tyrant; and I thought, as this one has got into a habit of obeying me, she might be more manageable; and then as to her having been imprudent, I know many ladies who have been obliged to shut their eyes a little. Why, consider, Charles, would good wives and good mothers leave their own children to nurse a stranger's? Would their husbands let them? And I thought," said she, piteously, "we were so fortunate to get a young, healthy girl, imprudent but not vicious, whose fault had been covered by marriage, and then so attached to us both as she is, poor thing!"

Sir Charles was in no humor to make mountains of mole-hills. "Why, my dear Bella," said he, "after all, this is your department, not mine."

"Yes, but unless I please you in every department there is no happiness for me."

"But you know you please me in everything; and the more I look into anything, the wiser I always think you. You have chosen the best wet-nurse possible. Send her to me."

Lady Ba.s.sett hesitated. "You will be kind to her. You know the consequence if anything happens to make her fret. Baby will suffer for it."

"Oh, I know. Catch me offending this she potentate till he is weaned.

Dress for the journey, my dear, and send nurse to me."

Lady Ba.s.sett went into the next room, and after a long time Mary came to Sir Charles with baby in her arms.

Mary had lost for a time some of her ruddy color, but her skin was clearer, and somehow her face was softened. She looked really a beautiful and attractive young woman.

She courtesied to Sir Charles, and then took a good look at him.

"Well, nurse," said he, cheerfully, "here we are back again, both of us."

"That we be, sir." And she showed her white teeth in a broad smile.

"La, sir, you be a sight for sore eyes. How well you do look, to be sure!"

"Thank you, Mary. I never was better in my life. You look pretty well too; only a little pale; paler than Lady Ba.s.sett does."

"I give my color to the child," said Mary, simply.

She did not know she had said anything poetic; but Sir Charles was so touched and pleased with her answer that he gave her a five-pound note on the spot; and he said, "We'll bring your color back if beef and beer and kindness can do it."

"I ain't afeard o' that, sir; and I'll arn it. 'Tis a lovely boy, sir, and your very image."

Inspection followed; and something or other offended young master; he began to cackle. But this nurse did not take him away, as Mrs. Millar had. She just sat down with him and nursed him openly, with rustic composure and simplicity.

Sir Charles leaned his arm on the mantel-piece, and eyed the pair; for all this was a new world of feeling to him. His paid servant seemed to him to be playing the mother to his child. Somehow it gave him a strange twinge, a sort of vicarious jealousy: he felt for his Bella.

But I think his own paternal pride, in all its freshness, was hurt a little too.

At last he shrugged his shoulders, and was going out of the room, with a hint to Mary that she must wrap herself up, for it would be an open carriage--

"Your own carriage, sir, and horses?"

"Certainly."

"And do all the folk know as we are coming?"