A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day
the idea at _first,”_ said he; “but the more you think of it, the more
you will see it is the surest way of all.”
“Well, but what is it?”
“You must let me marry you.”
Ruperta stared, and began to blush crimson.
“Will you, cousin?”
“Of course not, child. The idea!”
“Oh, Ruperta,” cried the boy in dismay, “surely you don't mean to marry
anybody else but me!”
“Would that make you very unhappy, then?”
“You know it would, wretched for my life.”
“I should not like to do that. But I disapprove of early marriages. I
mean to wait till I'm nineteen; and that is three years nearly.”
“It is a fearful time; but if you will promise not to marry anybody
else, I suppose I shall live through it.”
Ruperta, though she made light of Compton's offer, was very proud of it
(it was her first). She told her mother directly.
Mrs. Bassett sighed, and said that was too blessed a thing ever to
happen.
“Why not?” said Ruperta.
“How could it,” said Mrs. Bassett, “with everybody against it but poor
little me!”
“Compton assures me that Lady Bassett wishes it.”
“Indeed! But Sir Charles and papa, Ruperta?”
“Oh, Compton must talk Sir Charles over, and I will persuade papa. I'll
begin this evening, when he comes home from London.”
Accordingly, as he was sitting alone in the dining-room sipping his
glass of port, Ruperta slipped away from her mother's side and found
him.
His face brightened at the sight of her; for he was extremely fond and
proud of this girl, for whom he would not have the bells rung when she
was born.
She came and hung round his neck a little, and kissed him, and said
softly, “Dear papa, I have something to tell you. I have had a
proposal.”
Richard Bassett stared.
“What, of marriage?”
Ruperta nodded archly.
“To a child like you? Scandalous! No, for, after all, you look nineteen
or twenty. And who is the highwayman that thinks to rob me of my
precious girl?”
“Well, papa, whoever he is, he will have to wait three years, and so I
told him. It is my cousin Compton.”
“What!” cried Richard Bassett, so loudly that the girl started back
dismayed. “That little monkey have the impudence to offer marriage to
my daughter? Surely, Ruperta, you have offered him no encouragement?”
“N--no.”
“Your mother promised me nothing but common civility should pass
between you and that young gentleman.”
“She promised for me, but she could not promise for him--poor little
fellow!”
“Marry a son of the man who has robbed and insulted your father!”
“Oh, papa! is it so? Are you sure you did not begin?”
“If you can think that, it is useless to say more. I thought
ill-fortune had done its worst; but no; blow upon blow, and wound upon
wound. Don't spare me, child. Nobody else has, and why should you?
Marry my enemy's son, his younger son, and break your father's heart.”
At this, what could a sensitive girl of sixteen do but burst out
crying, and promise, round her father's neck, never to marry any one
whom he disliked.
When she had made this promise, her father fondled and petted her, and
his tenderness consoled her, for she was not passionately in love with
her cousin.
Yet she cried a good deal over the letter in which she communicated
this to Compton.
He lay in wait for her; but she baffled him for three weeks.
After that she relaxed her vigilance, for she had no real wish to avoid
him, and was curious to see whether she had cured him.
He met her; and his conduct took her by surprise. He was pale, and
looked very wretched.
He said solemnly, “Were you jesting with me when you promised to marry
no one but me?”
“No, Compton. But you know I could never marry you without papa's
consent.”
“Of course not; but, what I fear, he might wish you to marry somebody
else.”
“Then I should refuse. I will never break my word to you, cousin. I am
not in love with you, you are too young for that--but somehow I feel I
could not make you unhappy. Can't you trust my word? You might. I come
of the same people as you. Why do you look so pale?--we are very
unhappy.”
Then the tears began to steal down her cheeks; and Compton's soon
followed.
Compton consulted his mother. She told him, with a sigh, she was
powerless. Sir Charles might yield to her, but she had no power to
influence Mr. Bassett at present. “The time may come,” said she. She
could not take a very serious view of this amour, except with regard to
its pacific results. So Mr. Bassett's opposition chilled her in the
matter.
While things were so, something occurred that drove all these minor
things out of her distracted heart.
One summer evening, as she and Sir Charles and Compton sat at dinner, a
servant came in to say there was a stranger at the door, and he called
himself Bassett.
“What is he like?” said Lady Bassett, turning pale.
“He looks like a foreigner, my lady. He says he is Mr. Bassett,”
repeated the man, with a scandalized air.
Sir Charles got up directly, and hurried to the hall door. Compton
followed to the door only and looked.
Sure enough it was Reginald, full-grown, and bold, as handsome as ever,
and darker than ever.
In that moment his misconduct in running away never occurred either to
Sir Charles or Compton; all was eager and tremulous welcome. The hall
rang with joy. They almost carried him into the dining-room.
The first thing they saw was a train of violet-colored velvet, half
hidden by the table.
Compton ran forward with a cry of dismay.
It was Lady Bassett, in a dead swoon, her face as white as her neck and
arms, and these as white and smooth as satin.
CHAPTER XLII.
LADY BASSETT was carried to her room, and did not reappear. She kept
her own apartments, and her health declined so rapidly that Sir Charles
sent for Dr. Willis. He prescribed for the body, but the disease lay in
the mind. Martyr to an inward struggle, she pined visibly, and her
beautiful eyes began to shine like stars, preternaturally large. She
was in a frightful condition: she longed to tell the truth and end it
all; but then she must lose her adored husband's respect, and perhaps
his love; and she had not the courage. She saw no way out of it but to
die and leave her confession; and, as she felt that the agony of her
soul was killing her by degrees, she drew a somber resignation from
that.
She declined to see Reginald. She could not bear the sight of him.
Compton came to her many times a day, with a face full of concern, and
even terror. But she would not talk to him of herself.
He brought her all the news he heard, having no other way to cheer her.
One day he told her there were robbers about. Two farmhouses had been
robbed, a thing not known in these parts for many years.
Lady Bassett shuddered, but said nothing.
But by-and-by her beloved son came to her in distress with a grief of
his own.
Ruperta Bassett was now the beauty of the county, and it seems Mr.
Rutland had danced with her at her first ball, and been violently
smitten with her; he had called more than once at Highmore, and his
attentions were directly encouraged by Mr. Bassett. Now Mr. Rutland was
heir to a peerage, and also to considerable estates in the county.
Compton was sick at heart, and, being young, saw his life about to be
blighted; so now he was pale and woe-begone, and told her the sad news
with such deep sighs, and imploring, tearful eyes, that all the mother
rose in arms. “Ah!” said she, “they say to themselves that I am down,
and cannot fight for my child; but I would fight for him on the edge of
the grave. Let me think all by myself, dear. Come back to me in an
hour. I shall do something. Your mother is a very cunning woman--for
those she loves.”
Compton kissed her gown--a favorite action of his, for he worshiped
her--and went away.
The invalid laid her hollow cheek upon her wasted hand, and thought
with all her might. By degrees her extraordinary brain developed a
twofold plan of action; and she proceeded to execute the first part,
being the least difficult, though even that was not easy, and brought a
vivid blush to her wasted cheek.
She wrote to Mrs. Bassett.
“MADAM--I am very ill, and life is uncertain. Something tells me you,
like me, regret the unhappy feud between our houses. If this is so, it
would be a consolation to me to take you by the hand and exchange a few
words, as we already have a few kind looks.
“Yours respectfully,
“BELLA BASSETT.”
She showed this letter to Compton, and told him he might send a servant
with it to Highmore at once.
“Oh, mamma!” said he, “I never thought you would do that: how good you
are! You couldn't ask Ruperta, could you? Just in a little postscript,
you know.”
Lady Bassett shook her head.
“That would not be wise, my dear. Let me hook that fish for you, not
frighten her away.”
Great was the astonishment at Highmore when a blazing footman knocked
at the door and handed Jessie the letter with assumed nonchalance, then
stalked away, concealing with professional art his own astonishment at
what he had done.
It was no business of Jessie's to take letters into the drawing-room;
she would have deposited any other letter on the hall table; but she
brought this one in, and, standing at the door, exclaimed, “Here a
letter fr' Huntercombe!”
Richard Bassett, Mrs. Bassett, and Ruperta, all turned upon her with
one accord.
“From where?”
“Fr' Huntercombe itsel'. Et isna for you, nor for you, missy. Et's for
the mesterress.”
She marched proudly up to Mrs. Bassett and laid the letter down on the
table; then drew back a step or two, and, being Scotch, coolly waited
to hear the contents. Richard Basset, being English, told her she need
not stay.
Mrs. Bassett cast a bewildered look at her husband and daughter, then
opened the letter quietly; read it quietly; and, having read it, took
out her handkerchief and began to cry quietly.
Ruperta cried, “Oh, mamma!” and in a moment had one long arm round her
mother's neck, while the other hand seized the letter, and she read it
aloud, cheek to cheek; but, before she got to an end, her mother's
tears infected her, and she must whimper too.
“Here are a couple of geese,” said Richard Bassett. “Can't you write a
civil reply to a civil letter without sniveling? I'll answer the letter
for you.”
“No!” said Mrs. Bassett.
Richard was amazed: Ruperta ditto.
The little woman had never dealt in “Noes,” least of all to her
husband; and besides this was such a plump “No.” It came out of her
mouth like a marble.
I think the sound surprised even herself a little, for she proceeded to
justify it at once. “I have been a better wife than a Christian this
many years. But there's a limit. And, Richard, I should never have
married you if you had told me we were to be at war all our lives with
our next neighbor, that everybody respects. To live in the country, and
not speak to our only neighbor, that is a life I never would have left
my father's house for. Not that I complain: if you have been bitter to
them, you have always been good and kind to me; and I hope I have done
my best to deserve it; but when a sick lady, and perhaps dying, holds
out her hand to me---write her one of your cold-blooded letters! That I
WON'T. Reply? my reply will be just putting on my bonnet and going to
her this afternoon. It is Passion-week, too; and that's not a week to
play the heathen. Poor lady! I've seen in her sweet eyes this many
years that she would gladly be friends with me; and she never passed me
close but she bowed to me, in church or out, even when we were at
daggers drawn. She is a lady, a real lady, every inch. But it is not
that altogether. No, if a sick woman called me to her bedside this
week, I'd go, whether she wrote from Huntercombe Hall or the poorest