A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day
the boasts of the stricken father, who had schemed, and planned, and
counted without Him in whose hands are the issues of life and death.
As for the child himself, his lot was a happy one, if we could but see
what the world is really worth. He was always a bright child, that
never cried, nor complained: his first trouble was his last; one day's
pain, then bliss eternal: he never got poisoned by his father's spirit
of hate, but loved and was beloved during his little lifetime; and,
dying, he passed from his Noah's ark to an inheritance a thousand times
richer than Huntercombe, Bassett, and all his cousin's lands.
The little grave was dug, the bell tolled, and a man bowed double with
grief saw his child and his ambition laid in the dust.
Lady Bassett heard the bell tolled, and spoke but two words: “Poor
woman!”
She might well say so. Mrs. Bassett was in the same condition as
herself, yet this heavy blow must fall on her.
As for Richard Bassett, he sat at home, bowed down and stupid with
grief.
Wheeler came one day to console him; but, at the sight of him,
refrained from idle words. He sat down by him for an hour in silence.
Then he got up and said, “Good-by.”
“Thank you, old friend, for not insulting me,” said Bassett, in a
broken voice.
Wheeler took his hand, and turned away his head, and so went away, with
a tear in his eye.
A fortnight after this he came again, and found Bassett in the same
attitude, but not in the same leaden stupor. On the contrary, he was in
a state of tremor; he had lost, under the late blow, the sanguine mind
that used to carry him through everything.
The doctor was upstairs, and his wife's fate trembled in the balance.
“Stay by me,” said he, “for all my nerve is gone. I'm afraid I shall
lose her; for I have just begun to value her; and that is how God deals
with his creatures--the merciful God, as they call him.”
Wheeler thought it rather hard God Almighty should be blamed because
Dick Bassett had taken eight years to find out his wife's merit; but he
forbore to say so. He said kindly that he would stay.
Now while they sat in trying suspense the church-bells struck up a
merry peal.
Bassett started violently and his eyes gave a strange glare. “That's
the other!” said he; for he had heard about Lady Bassett by this time.
Then he turned pale. “They ring for him: then they are sure to toll for
me.”
This foreboding was natural enough in a man so blinded by egotism as to
fancy that all creation, and the Creator himself, must take a side in
Bassett _v._ Bassett.
Nevertheless, events did not justify that foreboding. The bells had
scarcely done ringing for the happy event at Huntercombe, when joyful
feet were heard running on the stairs; joyful voices clashed together
in the passage, and in came a female servant with joyful tidings. Mrs.
Bassett was safe, and the child in the world. “The loveliest little
girl you ever saw!”
“A girl!” cried Richard Bassett with contemptuous amazement. Even his
melancholy forebodings had not gone that length. “And what have they
got at Huntercombe?”
“Oh, it is a boy, sir, there.”
“Of course.”
The ringers heard, and sent one of their number to ask him if they
should ring.
“What for?” asked Bassett with a nasty glittering eye; and then with
sudden fury he seized a large piece of wood from the basket to fling at
his insulter. “I'll teach you to come and mock me.”
The ringer vanished, ducking.
“Gently,” said Wheeler, “gently.”
Bassett chucked the wood back into the basket, and sat down gloomily,
saying, “Then how dare he come and talk about ringing bells for a girl?
To think that I should have all this fright, and my wife all this
trouble--for a girl!”
It was no time to talk of business then; but about a fortnight
afterward Wheeler said, “I took the detective off, to save you
expense.”
“Quite right,” said Bassett, wearily.
“I gave you the woman's address; so the matter is in your hands now, I
consider.”
“Yes,” said Bassett, wearily; “Move no further in it.”
“Certainly not; and, frankly, I should be glad to see you abandon it.”
“I _have_ abandoned it. Why should I stir the mud now? I and mine are
thrown out forever; the only question is, shall a son of Sir Charles or
the parson's son inherit? I'm for the wrongful heir. Ay,” he cried,
starting up, and beating the air with his fists in sudden fury, “since
the right Bassetts are never to have it, let the wrong Bassetts be
thrown out, at all events; I'm on my back, but Sir Charles is no better
off; a bastard will succeed him, thanks to that cursed woman who
defeated _me.”_
This turn took Wheeler by surprise. It also gave him real pain.
“Bassett,” said he, “I pity you. What sort of a life has yours been for
the last eight years? Yet, when there's no fuel left for war and
hatred, you blow the embers. You are incurable.”
“I am,” said Richard. “I'll hate those two with my last breath and
curse them in my last prayer.”
CHAPTER XXXVI.
LADY BASSETT'S forebodings, like most of our insights into the future,
were confuted by the event.
She became the happy mother of a flaxen-haired boy. She insisted on
nursing him herself; and the experienced persons who attended her
raised no objection.
In connection with this she gave Sir Charles a peck, not very severe,
but sudden, and remarkable as the only one on record.
He was contemplating her and her nursling with the deepest affection,
and happened to say, “My own Bella, what delight it gives me to see
you!”
“Yes,” said she, “we will have only one mother this time, will we, my
darling? and it shall be Me.” Then suddenly, turning her head like a
snake, “Oh, I saw the looks you gave that woman!”
This was the famous peck; administered in return for a look that he had
bestowed on Mary Gosport not more than five years ago.
Sir Charles would, doubtless, have bled to death on the spot, but
either he had never been aware how he looked, or time and business had
obliterated the impression, for he was unaffectedly puzzled, and said,
“What woman do you mean, dear?”
“No matter, darling,” said Lady Bassett, who had already repented her
dire severity: “all I say is that a nurse is a rival I could not endure
now; and another thing, I do believe those wet-nurses give their
disposition to the child: it is dreadful to think of.”
“Well, if so, baby is safe. He will be the most amiable boy in
England.”
“He shall be more amiable than I am--scolding my husband of husbands;”
and she leaned toward him, baby and all, for a kiss from his lips.
We say at school “Seniores priores”--let favor go by seniority; but
where babies adorn the scene, it is “juniores priores” with that sex to
which the very young are confided.
To this rule, as might be expected, Lady Bassett furnished no
exception; she was absorbed in baby, and trusted Mr. Bassett a good
deal to his attendant, who bore an excellent character for care and
attention.
Now Mr. Bassett was strong on his pins and in his will, and his
nurse-maid, after all, was young; so he used to take his walks nearly
every day to Mrs. Meyrick's: she petted him enough, and spoiled him in
every way, while the nurse-maid was flirting with the farm-servants out
of sight.
Sir Charles Bassett was devoted to the boy, and used always to have him
to his study in the morning, and to the drawing-room after dinner, when
the party was small, and that happened much oftener now than
heretofore; but at other hours he did not look after him, being a
business man, and considering him at that age to be under his mother's
care.
One day the only guest was Mr. Rolfe; he was staying in the house for
three days, upon a condition suggested by himself--viz., that he might
enjoy his friends' society in peace and comfort, and not be set to roll
the stone of conversation up some young lady's back, and obtain
monosyllables in reply, faintly lisped amid a clatter of fourteen
knives and forks. As he would not leave his writing-table on any milder
terms, they took him on these.
After dinner in came Mr. Bassett, erect, and a proud nurse with little
Compton, just able to hold his nurse's gown and toddle.
Rolfe did not care for small children; he just glanced at the angelic,
fair-haired infant, but his admiring gaze rested on the elder boy.
“Why, what is here--an Oriental prince?”
The boy ran to him directly. “Who are you?”
“Rolfe the writer. Who are you--the Gipsy King?”
“No; but I am very fond of gypsies. I'm _Mister_ Bassett; and when papa
dies I shall be Sir Charles Bassett.”
Sir Charles laughed at this with paternal fatuity, especially as the
boy's name happened to be Reginald Francis, after his grandfather.
Rolfe smiled satirically, for these little speeches from children did
much to reconcile him to his lot.
“Meantime,” said he, “let us feed off him; for it may be forty years
before we can dance over his grave. First let us see what is the
unwholesomest thing on the table.”
He rose, and to the infinite delight of Mr. Bassett, and even of Master
Compton, who pointed and crowed from his mother's lap, he got up on his
chair, and put on a pair of spectacles to look.
“Eureka!” said he; “behold that dish by Lady Bassett; those are
_marrons glaces;_ fetch them here, and let us go in for a fit of the
gout at once.”
“Gout! what's that?” inquired Mr. Bassett.
“Don't ask me.”
“You don't know.
“Not know! What, didn't I tell you I was Rolfe the writer? Writers know
everything. That is what makes them so modest.”
Mr. Bassett was now unnaturally silent for five minutes, munching
chestnuts; this enabled his guests to converse; but as soon as he had
cleared his plate, he cut right across the conversation, with that
savage contempt for all topics but his own which characterizes
gentlemen of his age, and says he to Rolfe, “You know everything? Then
what's a parson's brat?”
“Well, that's the one thing I don't know,” said Rolfe; “but a brat I
take to be a boy who interrupts ladies and gentlemen with nonsense when
they are talking sense.”
“I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Rolfe,” said Lady Bassett. “That
remark was very much needed.”
Then she called Reginald to her, and lectured him, _sotto voce,_ to the
same tune.
“You old bachelors are rather hard,” said Sir Charles, not very well
pleased.
“We are obliged to be; you parents are so soft. After all, it is no
wonder. What a superb boy it is!--Here is nurse. I'm so sorry. Now we
shall be cabined, cribbed, confined to rational conversation, and I
shall not be expected to--(good-night, little flaxen angel; good-by,
handsome and loquacious demon; kiss and be friends)--expected to know,
all in a minute, what is a parson's brat. By-the-by, talking of
parsons, what has become of Angelo?”
“He has been away a good many years. Consumption, I hear.”
“He was a fine-built fellow too; was he not, Lady Bassett?”
“I don't know; but he was beautifully strong. I think I see him now
carrying dear Charles in his arms all down the garden.”
“Ah, you see he was raised in a university that does not do things by
halves, but trains both body and mind, as they did at Athens; for the
union of study and athletic sports is spoken of as a novelty, but it is
only a return to antiquity.”
Here letters were brought by the second post. Sir Charles glanced at
his, and sent them to his study. Lady Bassett had but one. She said,
_“May_ I?” to both gentlemen, and then opened it.
“How strange!” said she. “It is from Mr. Angelo: just a line to say he
is coming home quite cured.”
She began this composedly, but blushed afterward--blushed quite red.
_“May_ I?” said she, and tossed it delicately half-way to Rolfe. He
handed it to Sir Charles.
Some remarks were then made about the coincidence, and nothing further