A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day

“And the girl that drives them in the park, and draws all the duchesses and countesses at her tail--am I to send her to Tattersall's?” (Puff.) “Oh, it is _her_ you want to put down, then?” “Why, of course.” CHAPTER II. SIR CHARLES and Mr. Oldfield settled that lady's retiring pension, and Mr. Oldfield took the memoranda home, with instructions to prepare a draft deed for Miss Somerset's approval. Meantime Sir Charles visited Miss Bruce every day. Her affections for him grew visibly, for being engaged gave her the courage to love. Mr. Bassett called pretty often; but one day he met Sir Charles on the stairs, and scowled. That scowl cost him dear, for Sir Charles thereupon represented to Bella that a man with a grievance is a bore to the very eye, and asked her to receive no more visits from his scowling cousin. The lady smiled, and said, with soft complacency, “I obey.” Sir Charles's gallantry was shocked. “No, don't say 'obey.' It is a little favor I ventured to ask.” “It is like you to ask what you have a right to command. I shall be out to him in future, and to every one who is disagreeable to you. What! does 'obey' frighten you from my lips? To me it is the sweetest in the language. Oh, please let me 'obey' you! _May_ I?” Upon this, as vanity is seldom out of call, Sir Charles swelled like a turkey-cock, and loftily consented to indulge Bella Bruce's strange propensity. From that hour she was never at home to Mr. Bassett. He began to suspect; and one day, after he had been kept out with the loud, stolid “Not at home” of practiced mendacity, he watched, and saw Sir Charles admitted. He divined it all in a moment, and turned to wormwood. What! was he to be robbed of the lady he loved--and her fifteen thousand pounds--by the very man who had robbed him of his ancestral fields? He dwelt on the double grievance till it nearly frenzied him. But he could do nothing: it was his fate. His only hope was that Sir Charles, the arrant flirt, would desert this beauty after a time, as he had the others. But one afternoon, in the smoking-room of his club, a gentleman said to him, “So your cousin Charles is engaged to the Yorkshire beauty, Bell Bruce?” “He is flirting with her, I believe,” said Richard. “No, no,” said the other; “they are engaged. I know it for a fact. They are to be married next month.” Mr. Richard Bassett digested this fresh pill in moody silence, while the gentlemen of the club discussed the engagement with easy levity. They soon passed to a topic of wider interest, viz., who was to succeed Sir Charles with La Somerset. Bassett began to listen attentively, and learned for the first time Sir Charles Bassett's connection with that lady, and also that she was a woman of a daring nature and furious temper. At first he was merely surprised; but soon hatred and jealousy whispered in his ear that with these materials it must be possible to wound those who had wounded him. Mr. Marsh, a young gentleman with a receding chin, and a mustache between hay and straw, had taken great care to let them all know he was acquainted with Miss Somerset. So Richard got Marsh alone, and sounded him. Could he call upon the lady without ceremony? “You won't get in. Her street door is jolly well guarded, I can tell you.” “I am very curious to see her in her own house.” “So are a good many fellows.” “Could you not give me an introduction?” Marsh shook his head sapiently for a considerable time, and with all this shaking, as it appeared, out fell words of wisdom. “Don't see it. I'm awfully spooney on her myself; and, you know, when a fellow introduces another fellow, that fellow always cuts the other out.” Then, descending from the words of the wise and their dark sayings to a petty but pertinent fact, he added, _“Besides,_ I'm only let in myself about once in five times.” “She gives herself wonderful airs, it seems,” said Bassett, rather bitterly. Marsh fired up. “So would any woman that was as beautiful, and as witty and as much run after as she is. Why she is a leader of fashion. Look at all the ladies following her round the park. They used to drive on the north side of the Serpentine. She just held up her finger, and now they have cut the Serpentine, and followed her to the south drive.” “Oh, indeed!” said Bassett. “Ah then this is a great lady; a poor country squire must not venture into her august presence.” He turned savagely on his heel, and Marsh went and made sickly mirth at his expense. By this means the matter soon came to the ears of old Mr. Woodgate, the father of that club, and a genial gossip. He got hold of Bassett in the dinner-room and examined him. “So you want an introduction to La Somerset, and Marsh refuses--Marsh, hitherto celebrated for his weak head rather than his hard heart?” Richard Bassett nodded rather sullenly. He had not bargained for this rapid publicity. The venerable chief resumed: “We all consider Marsh's conduct unclubable and a thing to be combined against. Wanted--an Anti-dog-in-the-manger League. I'll introduce you to the Somerset.” “What! do _you_ visit her?” asked Bassett, in some astonishment. The old gentleman held up his hands in droll disclaimer, and chuckled merrily “No, no; I enjoy from the shore the disasters of my youthful friends--that sacred pleasure is left me. Do you see that elegant creature with the little auburn beard and mustache, waiting sweetly for his dinner. He launched the Somerset.” “Launched her?” “Yes; but for him she might have wasted her time breaking hearts and slapping faces in some country village. He it was set her devastating society; and with his aid she shall devastate you.--Vandeleur, will you join Bassett and me?” Mr. Vandeleur, with ready grace, said he should be delighted, and they dined together accordingly. Mr. Vandeleur, six feet high, lank, but graceful as a panther, and the pink of politeness, was, beneath his varnish, one of the wildest young men in London--gambler, horse-racer, libertine, what not?--but in society charming, and his manners singularly elegant and winning. He never obtruded his vices in good company; in fact, you might dine with him all your life and not detect him. The young serpent was torpid in wine; but he came out, a bit at a time, in the sunshine of Cigar. After a brisk conversation on current topics, the venerable chief told him plainly they were both curious to know the history of Miss Somerset, and he must tell it them. “Oh, with pleasure,” said the obliging youth. “Let us go into the smoking-room.” “Let--me--see. I picked her up by the sea-side. She promised well at first. We put her on my chestnut mare, and she showed lots of courage, so she soon learned to ride; but she kicked, even down there.” “Kicked!--whom?” “Kicked all round; I mean showed temper. And when she got to London, and had ridden a few times in the park, and swallowed flattery, there was no holding her. I stood her cheek for a good while, but at last I told the servants they must not turn her out, but they could keep her out. They sided with me for once. She had ridden over them, as well. The first time she went out they bolted the doors, and handed her boxes up the area steps.” “How did she take that?” “Easier than we expected. She said, 'Lucky for you beggars that I'm a lady, or I'd break every d--d window in the house.'” This caused a laugh. It subsided. The historian resumed. “Next day she cooled, and wrote a letter.” “To you?” “No, to my groom. Would you like to see it? It is a curiosity.” He sent one of the club waiters for his servant, and his servant for his desk, and produced the letter. “There!” said Vandeleur. “She looks like a queen, and steps like an empress, and this is how she writes: “'DEAR JORGE--i have got the sak, an' praps your turn nex. dear jorge he alwaies promise me the grey oss, which now an oss is life an death to me. If you was to ast him to lend me the grey he wouldn't refuse you, “'Yours respecfully, “'RHODA SOMERSET.'” When the letter and the handwriting, which, unfortunately, I cannot reproduce, had been duly studied and approved, Vandeleur continued-- “Now, you know, she had her good points, after all. If any creature was ill, she'd sit up all night and nurse them, and she used to go to church on Sundays, and come back with the sting out of her; only then she would preach to a fellow, and bore him. She is awfully fond of preaching. Her dream is to jump on a first-rate hunter, and ride across country, and preach to the villages. So, when George came grinning to me with the letter, I told him to buy a new side-saddle for the gray, and take her the lot, with my compliments. I had noticed a slight spavin in his near foreleg. She rode him that very day in the park, all alone, and made such a sensation that next day my gray was standing in Lord Hailey's stables. But she rode Hailey, like my gray, with a long spur, and he couldn't stand it. None of 'em could except Sir Charles Bassett, and he doesn't play fair--never goes near her.” “And that gives him an unfair advantage over his fascinating predecessors?” inquired the senior, slyly. “Of course it does,” said Vandeleur, stoutly. “You ask a girl to dine at Richmond once a month, and keep out of her way all the rest of the time, and give her lots of money--she will never quarrel with you.” “Profit by this information, young man,” said old Woodgate, severely; “it comes too late for me. In my day there existed no sure method of pleasing the fair. But now that is invented, along with everything else. Richmond and--absence, equivalent to 'Richmond and victory!' Now, Bassett, we have heard the truth from the fountain-head, and it is rather serious. She swears, she kicks, she preaches. Do you still desire an introduction? As for me, my manly spirit is beginning to quake at Vandeleur's revelations, and some lines of Scott recur to my Gothic memory-- “'From the chafed tiger rend his prey, Bar the fell dragon's blighting way, But shun that lovely snare.”' Bassett replied, gravely, that he had no such motive as Mr. Woodgate gave him credit for, but still desired the introduction. “With pleasure,” said Vandeleur; “but it will be no use to you. She hates me like poison; says I have no heart. That is what all ill-tempered women say.” Notwithstanding his misgivings the obliging youth called for writing materials, and produced the following epistle-- “DEAR MISS SOMERSET--Mr. Richard Bassett, a cousin of Sir Charles, wishes very much to be introduced to you, and has begged me to assist in an object so laudable. I should hardly venture to present myself, and, therefore, shall feel surprised as well as flattered if you will receive Mr. Bassett on my introduction, and my assurance that he is a respectable country gentleman, and bears no resemblance in character to “Yours faithfully, “ARTHUR VANDELEUR.” Next day Bassett called at Miss Somerset's house in May Fair, and delivered his introduction. He was admitted after a short delay and entered the lady's boudoir. It was Luxury's nest. The walls were rose colored satin, padded and puckered; the voluminous curtains were pale satin, with floods and billows of real lace; the chairs embroidered, the tables all buhl and ormolu, and the sofas felt like little seas. The lady herself, in a delightful peignoir, sat nestled cozily in a sort of ottoman with arms. Her finely formed hand, clogged with brilliants, was just conveying brandy and soda-water to a very handsome mouth when Richard Bassett entered. She raised herself superbly, but without leaving her seat, and just looked at a chair in a way that seemed to say, “I permit you to sit