A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day
Complete and prompt accord upon two points: first, they would not have
a single quarrel, like other people; their love should never lose its
delicate bloom; second, they would grow old together, and die the same
day--the same minute if possible; if not, they must be content with the
same day, but, on that, inexorable.
But soon after this came a skirmish. Each wanted to obey t'other.
Sir Charles argued that Bella was better than he, and therefore more
fit to conduct the pair.
Bella, who thought him divinely good, pounced on this reason furiously.
He defended it. He admitted, with exemplary candor, that he was good
now--“awfully good.” But he assured her that he had been anything but
good until he knew her; now she had been always good; therefore, he
argued, as his goodness came originally from her, for her to obey him
would be a little too much like the moon commanding the sun.
“That is too ingenious for me, Charles,” said Bella. “And, for shame!
Nobody was ever so good as you are. I look up to you and--Now I could
stop your mouth in a minute. I have only to remind you that I shall
swear at the altar to obey you, and you will not swear to obey me. But
I will not crush you under the Prayer-book--no, dearest; but, indeed,
to obey is a want of my nature, and I marry you to supply that want:
and that's a story, for I marry you because I love and honor and
worship and adore you to distraction, my own--own--own!” With this she
flung herself passionately, yet modestly on his shoulder, and, being
there, murmured, coaxingly, “You will let me obey you, Charles?”
Thereupon Sir Charles felt highly gelatinous, and lost, for the moment,
all power of resistance or argument.
“Ah, you will; and then you will remind me of my dear mother. She knew
how to command; but as for poor dear papa, he is very disappointing. In
selecting an admiral for my parent, I made sure of being ordered about.
Instead of that--now I'll show you--there he is in the next room,
inventing a new system of signals, poor dear--”
She threw the folding-doors open.
“Papa dear, shall I ask Charles to dinner to-day?”
“As you please, my dear.”
“Do you think I had better walk or ride this afternoon?”
“Whichever you prefer.”
“There,” said Bella, “I told you so. That is always the way. Papa dear,
you used always to be firing guns at sea. Do, please, fire one in this
house--just one--before I leave it, and make the very windows rattle.”
“I beg your pardon, Bella; I never wasted powder at sea. If the convoy
sailed well and steered right I never barked at them. You are a modest,
sensible girl, and have always steered a good course. Why should I
hoist a petticoat and play the small tyrant? Wait till I see you going
to do something wrong or silly.”
“Ah! then you _would_ fire a gun, papa?”
“Ay, a broadside.”
“Well, that is something,” said Bella, as she closed the door softly.
“No, no; it amounts to just nothing,” said Sir Charles; “for you never
will do anything wrong or silly. I'll accommodate you. I have thought
of a way. I shall give you some blank cards; you shall write on them,
'I think I should like to do so and so.' You shall be careless, and
leave them about; I'll find them, and bluster, and say, 'I command you
to do so and so, Bella Bassett'--the very thing on the card, you know.”
Bella colored to the brow with pleasure and modesty. After a pause she
said: “How sweet! The worst of it is, I should get my own way. Now what
I want is to submit my will to yours. A gentle tyrant--that is what you
must be to Bella Bassett. Oh, you sweet, sweet, for calling me that!”
These projects were interrupted by a servant announcing luncheon. This
made Sir Charles look hastily at his watch, and he found it was past
two o'clock.
“How time flies in this house!” said he. “I must go, dearest; I am
behind my appointment already. What do you do this afternoon?”
“Whatever you please, my own.”
“I could get away by four.”
“Then I will stay at home for you.”
He left her reluctantly, and she followed him to the head of the
stairs, and hung over the balusters as if she would like to fly after
him.
He turned at the street-door, saw that radiant and gentle face beaming
after him, and they kissed hands to each other by one impulse, as if
they were parting for ever so long.
He had gone scarcely half an hour when a letter, addressed to her, was
left at the door by a private messenger.
“Any answer?” inquired the servant.
“No.”
The letter was sent up, and delivered to her on a silver salver.
She opened it; it was a thing new to her in her young life--an
anonymous letter.
“MISS BRUCE--I am almost a stranger to you, but I know your character
from others, and cannot bear to see you abused. You are said to be
about to marry Sir Charles Bassett. I think you can hardly be aware
that he is connected with a lady of doubtful repute, called Somerset,
and neither your beauty nor your virtue has prevailed to detach him
from that connection.
“If, on engaging himself to you, he had abandoned her, I should not
have said a word. But the truth is, he visits her constantly, and I
blush to say that when he leaves you this day it will be to spend the
afternoon at her house.
“I inclose you her address, and you can learn in ten minutes whether I
am a slanderer or, what I wish to be,
“A FRIEND OF INJURED INNOCENCE.”
CHAPTER V.
SIR CHARLES was behind his time in Mayfair; but the lawyer and his
clerk had not arrived, and Miss Somerset was not visible.
She appeared, however, at last, in a superb silk dress, the broad
luster of which would have been beautiful, only the effect was broken
and frittered away by six rows of gimp and fringe. But why blame her?
This is a blunder in art as universal as it is amazing, when one
considers the amount of apparent thought her sex devotes to dress. They
might just as well score a fair plot of velvet turf with rows of box,
or tattoo a blooming and downy cheek.
She held out her hand, like a man, and talked to Sir Charles on
indifferent topics, till Mr. Oldfield arrived. She then retired into
the background, and left the gentlemen to discuss the deed. When
appealed to, she evaded direct replies, and put on languid and imperial
indifference. When she signed, it was with the air of some princess
bestowing a favor upon solicitation.
But the business concluded, she thawed all in a moment, and invited the
gentlemen to luncheon with charming cordiality. Indeed, her genuine
_bonhomie_ after her affected indifference was rather comic. Everybody
was content. Champagne flowed. The lady, with her good mother-wit, kept
conversation going till the lawyer was nearly missing his next
appointment. He hurried away; and Sir Charles only lingered, out of
good-breeding, to bid Miss Somerset good-by. In the course of
leave-taking he said he was sorry he left her with people about her of
whom he had a bad opinion. “Those women have no more feeling for you
than stones. When you lay in convulsions, your housekeeper looked on as
philosophically as if you had been two kittens at play--you and Polly.”
“I saw her.”
“Indeed! You appeared hardly in a condition to see anything.”
“I did, though, and heard the old wretch tell the young monkey to water
my lilac dress. That was to get it for her Polly. She knew I'd never
wear it afterward.”
“Then why don't you turn her off?”
“Who'd take such a useless old hag, if I turned her off?”
“You carry a charity a long way.”
“I carry everything. What's the use doing things by halves, good or
bad?”
“Well, but that Polly! She is young enough to get her living elsewhere;
and she is extremely disrespectful to you.”
“That she is. If I wasn't a lady, I'd have given her a good hiding this
very day for her cheek!”
“Then why not turn her off this very day for her cheek?”
“Well, I'll tell you, since you and I are parted forever. No, I don't
like.”
“Oh, come! No secrets between friends.”
“Well, then, the old hag is--my mother.”
“What?”
“And the young jade--is my sister.”
“Good Heavens!”
“And the page--is my little brother.”
“Ha, ha, ha!”
“What, you are not angry?”
“Angry? no. Ha, ha, ha!”
“See what a hornets' nest you have escaped from. My dear friend, those
two women rob me through thick and thin. They steal my handkerchiefs,
and my gloves, and my very linen. They drink my wine like fishes.
They'd take the hair off my head, if it wasn't fast by the roots--for a
wonder.”
“Why not give them a ten-pound note and send them home?”
“They'd pocket the note, and blacken me in our village. That was why I
had them up here. First time I went home, after running about with that
little scamp, Vandeleur--do you know him?”
“I have not the honor.”
“Then your luck beats mine. One thing, he is going to the dogs as fast
as he can. Some day he'll come begging to me for a fiver. You mark my
words now.”
“Well, but you were saying--”
“Yes, I went off about Van. Polly _says_ I've a mind like running
water. Well, then, when I went home the first time--after Van, mother
and Polly raised a virtuous howl. 'All right,' said I--for, of course,
I know how much virtue there is under _their_ skins. Virtue of the
lower orders! Tell that to gentlefolks that don't know them. I do. I've
been one of 'em--'I know all about that,' says I. 'You want to share
the plunder, that is the sense of your virtuous cry.' So I had 'em up
here; and then there was no more virtuous howling, but a deal of
virtuous thieving, and modest drinking, and pure-minded selling of my
street-door to the highest male bidder. And they will corrupt the boy;
and if they do, I'll cuts their black hearts out with my riding-whip.
But I suppose I must keep them on; they are my own flesh and blood; and
if I was to be ill and dying, they'd do all they knew to keep me
alive--for their own sakes. I'm their milch cow, these country
innocents.”
Sir Charles groaned aloud, and said, “My poor girl, you deserve a
better fate than this. Marry some honest fellow, and cut the whole
thing.”
“I'll see about it. You try it first, and let us see how you like it.”
And so they parted gayly.
In the hall, Polly intercepted him, all smiles. He looked at her,
smiled in his sleeve, and gave her a handsome present. “If you please,
sir,” said she, “an old gentleman called for you.”
“When?”
“About an hour ago. Leastways, he asked if Sir Charles Bassett was
there. I said yes, but you wouldn't see no one.”
“Who could it be? Why, surely you never told anybody I was to be here
to-day?”
“La, no, sir! how could I?” said Polly, with a face of brass.
Sir Charles thought this very odd, and felt a little uneasy about it.
All to Portman Square he puzzled over it; and at last he was driven to
the conclusion that Miss Somerset had been weak enough to tell some
person, male or female, of the coming interview, and so somebody had
called there--doubtless to ask him a favor.
At five o'clock he reached Portman Square, and was about to enter, as a
matter of course; but the footman stopped him. “I beg pardon, Sir
Charles,” said the man, looking pale and agitated; “but I have strict
orders. My young lady is very ill.”
“Ill! Let me go to her this instant.”
“I daren't, Sir Charles, I daren't. I know you are a gentleman; pray
don't lose me my place. You would never get to see her. We none of us
know the rights, but there's something up. Sorry to say it, Sir
Charles, but we have strict orders not to admit you. Haven't you the
admiral's letter, sir?”
“No; what letter?”
“He has been after you, sir; and when he came back he sent Roger off to
your house with a letter.”
A cold chill began to run down Sir Charles Bassett. He hailed a passing
hansom, and drove to his own house to get the admiral's letter; and as