A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day
“They are always sad--saddest when they seem to be merriest. Poor
things! they are trying hard to be merry now; but they sound very sad
to me--sadder than usual, somehow.”
The girl knocked at the door. Mary half opened it, and the news shot
in--“'Tis for Squire Bassett; he is bringing of his bride home to
Highmore to-day.”
“Mr. Bassett--married--that is sudden. Who could he find to marry him?”
There was no reply. The house-maid had flown off to circulate the news,
and Mary Wells was supporting herself by clutching the door, sick with
the sudden blow.
Close as she was, her distress could not have escaped another woman's
eye, but Lady Bassett never looked at her. After the first surprise she
had gone into a reverie, and was conjuring up the future to the sound
of those church-bells. She requested Mary to go and tell Sir Charles;
but she did not lift her head, even to give this order.
Mary crept away, and knocked at Sir Charles's dressing-room.
“Come in,” said Sir Charles, thinking, of course, it was his valet.
Mary Wells just opened the door and held it ajar. “My lady bids me tell
you, sir, the bells are ringing for Mr. Bassett; he's married, and
brings her home tonight.”
A dead silence marked the effect of this announcement on Sir Charles.
Mary Wells waited.
“May Heaven's curse light on that marriage, and no child of theirs ever
take my place in this house!”
“A-a-men!” said Mary Wells.
“Thank you, sir!” said Sir Charles. He took her voice for a man's, so
deep and guttural was her “A--a--men” with concentrated passion.
She closed the door and crept back to her mistress.
Lady Bassett was seated at her glass, with her hair down and her
shoulders bare. Mary clinched her teeth, and set about her usual work;
but very soon Lady Bassett gave a start, and stared into the glass.
“Mary!” said she, “what _is_ the matter? You look ghastly, and your
hands are as cold as ice. Are you faint?”
“No.”
“Then you are ill; very ill.”
“I have taken a chill,” said Mary, doggedly.
“Go instantly to the still-room maid, and get a large glass of spirits
and hot water--quite hot.”
Mary, who wanted to be out of the room, fastened her mistress's back
hair with dogged patience, and then moved toward the door.
“Mary,” said Lady Bassett, in a half-apologetic tone.
“My lady.”
“I should like to hear what the bride is like.”
“I'll know that to-night,” said Mary, grinding her teeth.
“I shall not require you again till bedtime.”
Mary left the room, and went, not to the still-room, but to her own
garret, and there she gave way. She flung herself, with a wild cry,
upon her little bed, and clutched her own hair and the bedclothes, and
writhed all about the bed like a wild-cat wounded.
In this anguish she passed an hour she never forgot nor forgave. She
got up at last, and started at her own image in the glass. Hair like a
savage's, cheek pale, eyes blood-shot.
She smoothed her hair, washed her face, and prepared to go downstairs;
but now she was seized with a faintness, and had to sit down and moan.
She got the better of that, and went to the still-room, and got some
spirits; but she drank them neat, gulped them down like water. They
sent the devil into her black eye, but no color into her pale cheek.
She had a little scarlet shawl; she put it over her head, and went into
the village. She found it astir with expectation.
Mr. Bassett's house stood near the highway, but the entrance to the
premises was private, and through a long white gate.
By this gate was a heap of stones, and Mary Wells got on that heap and
waited.
When she had been there about half an hour, Richard Bassett drove up in
a hired carriage, with his pale little wife beside him. At his own gate
his eye encountered Mary Wells, and he started. She stood above him,
with her arms folded grandly; her cheek, so swarthy and ruddy, was now
pale, and her black eyes glittered like basilisks at him and his bride.
The whole woman seemed lifted out of her low condition, and dignified
by wrong.
He had to sustain her look for a few seconds, while the gate was being
opened, and it seemed an age. He felt his first pang of remorse when he
saw that swarthy, ruddy cheek so pale. Then came admiration of her
beauty, and disgust at the woman for whom he had jilted her; and that
gave way to fear: the hater looked into those glittering eyes, and saw
he had roused a hate as unrelenting as his own.
CHAPTER XIII.
FOR the first few days Richard Bassett expected some annoyance from
Mary Wells; but none came, and he began to flatter himself she was too
fond of him to give him pain.
This impression was shaken about ten days after the little scene I have
described. He received a short note from her, as follows:
“SIR--You must meet me to-night, at the same place, eight o'clock. If
you do not come it will be the worse for you.
“M. W.”
Richard Bassett's inclination was to treat this summons with contempt;
but he thought it would be wiser to go and see whether the girl had any
hostile intentions. Accordingly he went to the tryst. He waited for
some time, and at last he heard a quick, firm foot, and Mary Wells
appeared. She was hooded with her scarlet shawl, that contrasted
admirably with her coal-black hair; and out of this scarlet frame her
dark eyes glittered. She stood before him in silence.
He said nothing.
She was silent too for some time. But she spoke first.
“Well, sir, you promised one, and you have married another. Now what
are you going to do for me?”
“What _can_ I do, Mary? I'm not the first that wanted to marry for
love, but money came in his way and tempted him.”
“No, you are not the first. But that's neither here nor there, sir.
That chalk-faced girl has bought you away from me with her money, and
now I mean to have my share on't.”
“Oh, if that is all,” said Richard, “we can soon settle it. I was
afraid you were going to talk about a broken heart, and all that stuff.
You are a good, sensible girl; and too beautiful to want a husband
long. I'll give you fifty pounds to forgive me.”
“Fifty pounds!” said Mary Wells, contemptuously. “What! when you
promised me I should be your wife to-day, and lady of Huntercombe Hall
by-and-by? Fifty pounds! No; not five fifties.”
“Well, I'll give you seventy-five; and if that won't do, you must go to
law, and see what you can get.”
“What, han't you had your bellyful of law? Mind, it is an unked thing
to forswear yourself, and that is what you done at the 'sizes. I have
seen what you did swear about your letter to my sister; Sir Charles
have got it all wrote down in his study: and you swore a lie to the
judge, as you swore a lie to me here under heaven, you villain!” She
raised her voice very loud. “Don't you gainsay me, or I'll soon have
you by the heels in jail for your lies. You'll do as I bid you, and
very lucky to be let off so cheap. You was to be my master, but you
chose her instead: well, then, you shall be my servant. You shall come
here every Saturday at eight o'clock, and bring me a sovereign, which I
never could keep a lump o' money, and I have had one or two from Rhoda;
so I'll take it a sovereign a week till I get a husband of my own sort,
and then you'll have to come down handsome once for all.”
Bassett knitted his brows and thought hard. His natural impulse was to
defy her; but it struck him that a great many things might happen in a
few months; so at last he said, humbly, “I consent. I have been to
blame. Only I'd rather pay you this money in some other way.”
“My way, or none.”
“Very well, then, I will bring it you as you say.”
“Mind you do, then,” said Mary Wells, and turned haughtily on her heel.
Bassett never ventured to absent himself at the hour, and, at first,
the blackmail was delivered and received with scarcely a word; but
by-and-by old habits so far revived that some little conversation took
place.
Then, after a while, Bassett used to tell her he was unhappy, and she
used to reply she was glad of it.
Then he began to speak slightingly of his wife, and say what a fool he
had been to marry a poor, silly nonentity, when he might have wedded a
beauty.
Mary Wells, being intensely vain, listened with complacency to this,
although she replied coldly and harshly.
By-and-by her natural volubility overpowered her, and she talked to
Bassett about herself and Huntercombe House, but always with a secret
reserve.
Later--such is the force of habit--each used to look forward with
satisfaction to the Saturday meeting, although each distrusted and
feared the other at bottom.
Later still that came to pass which Mary Wells had planned from the
first with deep malice, and that shrewd insight into human nature which
many a low woman has--the cooler she was the warmer did Richard Bassett
grow, till at last, contrasting his pale, meek little wife with this
glowing Hebe, he conceived an unholy liking for the latter. She met it
sometimes with coldness and reproaches, sometimes with affected alarm,
sometimes with a half-yielding manner, and so tormented him to her
heart's content, and undermined his affection for his wife. Thus she
revenged herself on them both to her heart's content.
But malice so perverse is apt to recoil on itself; and women, in
particular, should not undertake a long and subtle revenge of this
sort; since the strongest have their hours of weakness, and are
surprised into things they never intended. The subsequent history of
Mary Wells will exemplify this. Meantime, however, meek little Mrs.
Bassett was no match for the beauty and low cunning of her rival.
Yet a time came when she defended herself unconsciously. She did
something that made her husband most solicitous for her welfare and
happiness. He began to watch her health with maternal care, to shield
her from draughts, to take care of her diet, to indulge her in all her
whims instead of snubbing her, and to pet her, till she was the
happiest wife in England for a time. She deserved this at his hands,
for she assisted him there where his heart was fixed; she aided his
hobby; did more for it than any other creature in England could.
To return to Huntercombe Hall: the loving couple that owned it were no
longer happy. The hope of offspring was now deserting them, and the
disappointment was cruel. They suffered deeply, with this
difference--that Lady Bassett pined and Sir Charles Bassett fretted.
The woman's grief was more pure and profound than the man's. If there
had been no Richard Bassett in the world, still her bosom would have
yearned and pined, and the great cry of Nature, “Give me children or I
die,” would have been in her heart, though it would never have risen to
her lips.
Sir Charles had, of course, less of this profound instinct than his
wife, but he had it too; only in him the feeling was adulterated and at
the same time imbittered by one less simple and noble. An enemy sat at
his gate. That enemy, whose enduring malice had at last begotten equal
hostility in the childless baronet, was now married, and would probably
have heirs; and, if so, that hateful brood--the spawn of an anonymous
letter-writer--would surely inherit Bassett and Huntercombe, succeeding
to Sir Charles Bassett, deceased without issue. This chafed the
childless man, and gradually undermined a temper habitually sweet,
though subject, as we have seen, to violent ebullitions where the
provocation was intolerable. Sir Charles, then, smarting under his
wound, spoke now and then rather unkindly to the wife he loved so
devotedly; that is to say, his manner sometimes implied that he blamed
her for their joint calamity.
Lady Bassett submitted to these stings in silence. They were rare, and
speedily followed by touching regrets; and even had it not been so she