A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day
“Well,” said this eccentric personage, cooling quite as suddenly as he
had fired, “the only improvement I can suggest is, be a little more
precise at your next visit. Promise his keepers twenty guineas apiece
the day Sir Charles is _cured;_ and promise them ten guineas apiece not
to administer one drop of medicine for the next two months; and, of
course, no leech nor blister. The cursed sedatives they believe in are
destruction to Sir Charles Bassett. His circulation must not be made
too slow one day, and too fast the next, which is the effect of a
sedative, but made regular by exercise and nourishing food. So, then,
you will square the keepers by their cupidity; the doctor is on the
right side _per se._ Shall we rely on these two, and ignore the medical
attendants? No; why throw a chance away? What is the key to these
medical attendants? Hum! Try flunkyism. I have great faith in British
flunkyism. Pay your next visit with four horses, two outriders, and
blazing liveries. Don't dress in perfect taste like _that;_ go in finer
clothes than you ever wore in the morning, or ought to wear, except at
a wedding; go not as a petitioner, but as a queen; and dazzle snobs;
the which being dazzled, then tickle their vanity: don't speak of Sir
Charles as an injured man, nor as a man unsound in mind, but a
gentleman who is rather ill; 'but _now,_ gentlemen, I feel your
remarkable skill will soon set him right.' Your husband runs that one
risk; make him safe: a few smiles and a little flattery will do it; and
if not, why, fight with all a woman's weapons. Don't be too nice: we
must all hold a candle to the devil once in our lives. A wife's love
sanctifies a woman's arts in fighting with a villain and disarming
donkeys.”
“Oh, I wish I was there now!”
“You are excited, madam,” said he, severely. “That is out of place--in
a deliberative assembly.”
“No, no; only I want to be there, doing all this for my dear husband.”
“You are very excited; and it is my fault. You must be hungry too: you
have come a journey. There will be a reaction, and then you will be
hysterical. Your temperament is of that kind.”
He rang a bell and ordered his maid-servant to bring some beef-wafers
and a pint of dry Champagne.
Lady Bassett remonstrated, but he told her to be quiet; “for,” said he,
“I have a smattering of medicine, as well as of law and of human
nature. Sir Charles must correspond with you. Probably he has already
written you six letters complaining of this monstrous act--a sane man
incarcerated. Well, that class of letter goes into a letter-box in the
hall of an asylum, but it never reaches its address. Please take a pen
and write a formula.” He dictated as follows:
“MY DEAR LOVE--The trifling illness I had when I came here is beginning
to give way to the skill and attention of the medical gentlemen here.
They are all most kind and attentive: the place, as it is conducted, is
a credit to the country.”
Lady Bassett's eyes sparkled. “Oh, Mr. Rolfe, is not this rather
artful?”
“And is it not artful to put up a letter-box, encourage the writing of
letters, and then open them, and suppress whatever is disagreeable? May
every man who opens another man's letter find that letter a trap. Here
comes your medicine. You never drink champagne in the middle of the
day, of course?”
“Oh, no.”
“Then it will be all the better medicine.”
He made both mistress and maid eat the thin slices of beef and drink a
glass of champagne.
While they were thus fortifying themselves he wrote his address on some
stamped envelopes, and gave them to Lady Bassett, 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 Bassett; 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 fashion
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 Bassett 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 God 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 passage only, whence he bowed
ceremoniously once more to Lady Bassett as she went out.
As she passed 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 Bassett 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.
The door opened; the respectable servant came out with a respectful
air.
“Is Mr. Salter at home, sir?”
“No, madam. Mr. Coyne is in charge to-day.”
Lady Bassett was glad to hear that, and asked if she might be allowed
to see Mr. Coyne.
“Certainly, madam. I'll tell him at once,” was the reply.
Determined to enter the place, Lady Bassett requested her people to
open the carriage door, and she was in the act of getting out when Mr.
Coyne appeared, a little oily, bustling man, with a good-humored,
vulgar face, liable to a subservient pucker; he wore it directly at
sight of a fine woman, fine clothes, fine footmen, and fine horses.
“Mr. Coyne, I believe,” said Lady Bassett, with a fascinating smile.
“At your service, madam.”
“May I have a word in private with you, sir?”
“Certainly, madam.”
“We have come a long way. May the horses be fed?”
“I am afraid,” said the little man, apologetically, “I must ask you to
send them to the inn. It is close by.”
“By all means.” (To one of the outriders:) “You will wait here for
orders.”
Mary Wells had been already instructed to wait in the hall and look out
sharp for Sir Charles's keeper and nurse, and tell them her ladyship
wanted to speak to them privately, and it would be money in their way.
Lady Bassett, closeted with Mr. Coyne, began first to congratulate
herself. “Mr. Bassett,” said she, “is no friend of mine, but he has
done me a kindness in sending Sir Charles here, when he might have sent
him to some place where he might have been made worse instead of
better. Here, I conclude, gentlemen of your ability will soon cure his
trifling disorder, will you not?”
“I have good hopes, your ladyship; he is better to-day.”
“Now I dare say you could tell me to a month when he will be cured.”
“Oh, your ladyship exaggerates my skill too much.”
“Three months?”
“That is a short time to give us; but your ladyship may rely on it we
will do our best.”
“Will you? Then I have no fear of the result. Oh, by-the-by, Dr. Willis
wanted me to take a message to you, Mr. Coyne. He knows you by
reputation.”
“Indeed! Really I was not aware that my humble--”
“Then you are better known than you in your modesty supposed. Let me
see: what was the message? Oh, it was a peculiarity in Sir Charles he
wished you to know. Dr. Willis has attended him from a boy, and he
wished me to tell you that morphia and other sedatives have some very
bad effects on him. I told Dr. Willis you would probably find that and
every thing else out without a hint from him or any one else.”
“Yes; but I will make a note of it, for all that.”
“That is very kind of you. It will flatter the doctor, the more so as
he has so high an opinion of you. But now, Mr. Coyne, I suppose if I am
very good, and promise to soothe him, and not excite him, I may see my
husband to-day?”
“Certainly, madam. You have an order from the person who--”
“I forgot to bring it with me. I relied on your humanity.”
“That is unfortunate. I am afraid I must not--” He hesitated, looked
very uncomfortable, and said he would consult Mr. Appleton; then,
suddenly puckering his face into obsequiousness, “Would your ladyship
like to inspect some of our arrangements for the comfort of our
patients?”
Lady Bassett would have declined the proposal but for the singular play
of countenance; she was herself all eye and mind, so she said, gravely,
“I shall be very happy, sir.”
Mr. Coyne then led the way, and showed her a large sitting-room, where
some ladies were seated at different occupations and amusements: they
kept more apart from each other than ladies do in general; but this was
the only sign a far more experienced observer than Lady Bassett could
have discovered, the nurses having sprung from authoritative into
unobtrusive positions at the sound of Mr. Coyne's footstep outside.
“What!” said Lady Bassett; “are all these ladies--” She hesitated.
“Every one,” said Mr. Coyne; “and some incurably.”
“Oh, please let us retire; I have no right to gratify my curiosity.
Poor things! they don't seem unhappy.”
“Unhappy!” said Mr. Coyne. “We don't allow unhappiness here; our doctor