A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day
he went he asked himself, with chill misgivings, what on earth had
happened.
What had happened shall be told the reader precisely but briefly..
In the first place, Bella had opened the anonymous letter and read its
contents, to which the reader is referred.
There are people who pretend to despise anonymous letters. Pure
delusion! they know they ought to, and so fancy they do; but they
don't. The absence of a signature gives weight, if the letter is ably
written and seems true.
As for poor Bella Bruce, a dove's bosom is no more fit to rebuff a
poisoned arrow than she was to combat that foulest and direst of all a
miscreant's weapons, an anonymous letter. She, in her goodness and
innocence, never dreamed that any person she did not know could
possibly tell a lie to wound her. The letter fell on her like a cruel
revelation from heaven.
The blow was so savage that, at first, it stunned her.
She sat pale and stupefied; but beneath the stupor were the rising
throbs of coming agonies.
After that horrible stupor her anguish grew and grew, till it found
vent in a miserable cry, rising, and rising, and rising, in agony.
“Mamma! mamma! mamma!”
Yes; her mother had been dead these three years, and her father sat in
the next room; yet, in her anguish, she cried to her mother--a cry the
which, if your mother had heard, she would have expected Bella's to
come to her even from the grave.
Admiral Bruce heard this fearful cry--the living calling on the
dead--and burst through the folding-doors in a moment, white as a
ghost.
He found his daughter writhing on the sofa, ghastly, and grinding in
her hand the cursed paper that had poisoned her young life.
“My child! my child!”
“Oh, papa! see! see!” And she tried to open the letter for him, but her
hands trembled so she could not.
He kneeled down by her side, the stout old warrior, and read the
letter, while she clung to him, moaning now, and quivering all over
from head to foot.
“Why, there's no signature! The writer is a coward and, perhaps, a
liar. Stop! he offers a test. I'll put him to it this minute.”
He laid the moaning girl on the sofa, ordered his servants to admit
nobody into the house, and drove at once to Mayfair.
He called at Miss Somerset's house, saw Polly, and questioned her.
He drove home again, and came into the drawing-room looking as he had
been seen to look when fighting his ship; but his daughter had never
seen him so. “My girl,” said he, solemnly, “there's nothing for you to
do but to be brave, and hide your grief as well as you can, for the man
is unworthy of your love. That coward spoke the truth. He is there at
this moment.”
“Oh, papa! papa! let me die! The world is too wicked for me. Let me
die!”
“Die for an unworthy object? For shame! Go to your own room, my girl,
and pray to your God to help you, since your mother has left us. Oh,
how I miss her now! Go and pray, and let no one else know what we
suffer. Be your father's daughter. Fight and pray.”
Poor Bella had no longer to complain that she was not commanded. She
kissed him, and burst into a great passion of weeping; but he led her
to the door, and she tottered to her own room, a blighted girl.
The sight of her was harrowing. Under its influence the admiral dashed
off a letter to Sir Charles, calling him a villain, and inviting him to
go to France and let an indignant father write scoundrel on his
carcass.
But when he had written this his good sense and dignity prevailed over
his fury; he burned the letter, and wrote another. This he sent by hand
to Sir Charles's house, and ordered his servants--but that the reader
knows.
Sir Charles found the admiral's letter in his letter-rack. It ran thus:
“SIR--We have learned your connection with a lady named Somerset, and I
have ascertained that you went from my daughter to her house this very
day.
“Miss Bruce and myself withdraw from all connection with you, and I
must request you to attempt no communication with her of any kind. Such
an attempt would be an additional insult.
“I am, sir, your obedient servant,
“JOHN URQUHART BRUCE.”
At first Sir Charles Bassett was stunned by this blow. Then his mind
resisted the admiral's severity, and he was indignant at being
dismissed for so common an offense. This gave way to deep grief and
shame at the thought of Bella and her lost esteem. But soon all other
feelings merged for a time in fury at the heartless traitor who had
destroyed his happiness, and had dashed the cup of innocent love from
his very lips. Boiling over with mortification and rage, he drove at
once to that traitor's house. Polly opened the door. He rushed past
her, and burst into the dining-room, breathless, and white with
passion.
He found Miss Somerset studying the deed by which he had made her
independent for life. She started at his strange appearance, and
instinctively put both hands flat upon the deed.
“You vile wretch!” cried Sir Charles. “You heartless monster! Enjoy
your work.” And he flung her the admiral's letter. But he did not wait
while she read it; he heaped reproaches on her; and, for the first time
in her life, she did not reply in kind.
“Are you mad?” she faltered. “What have I done?”
“You have told Admiral Bruce.”
“That's false.”
“You told him I was to be here to-day.”
“Charles, I never did. Believe me.”
“You did. Nobody knew it but you. He was here to-day at the very hour.”
“May I never get up alive off this chair if I told a soul. Yes, our
Polly. I'll ring for her.”
“No, you will not. She is your sister. Do you think I'll take the word
of such reptiles against the plain fact? You have parted my love and
me--parted us on the very day I had made you independent for life. An
innocent love was waiting to bless me, and an honest love was in your
power, thanks to me, your kind, forgiving friend and benefactor. I have
heaped kindness on you from the first moment I had the misfortune to
know you. I connived at your infidelities--”
“Charles! Don't say that. I never _was.”_
“I indulged your most expensive whims, and, instead of leaving you with
a curse, as all the rest did that ever knew you, and as you deserve, I
bought your consent to lead a respectable life, and be blessed with a
virtuous love. You took the bribe, but robbed me of the
blessing--viper! You have destroyed me, body and soul--monster! perhaps
blighted her happiness as well; you she-devils hate an angel worse than
Heaven hates you. But you shall suffer with us; not your heart, for you
have none, but your pocket. You have broken faith with me, and sent all
my happiness to hell; I'll send your deed to hell after it!” With this,
he flung himself upon the deed, and was going to throw it into the
fire. Now up to that moment she had been overpowered by this man's
fury, whom she had never seen the least angry before; but when he laid
hands on her property it acted like an electric shock. “No! no!” she
screamed, and sprang at him like a wildcat.
Then ensued a violent and unseemly struggle all about the room; chairs
were upset, and vases broken to pieces; and the man and woman dragged
each other to and fro, one fighting for her property, as if it was her
life, and the other for revenge.
Sir Charles, excited by fury, was stronger than himself, and at last
shook off one of her hands for a moment, and threw the deed into the
fire. She tried to break from him and save it, but he held her like
iron.
Yet not for long. While he was holding her back, and she straining
every nerve to get to the fire, he began to show sudden symptoms of
distress. He gasped loudly, and cried, “Oh! oh! I'm choking!” and then
his clutch relaxed. She tore herself from it, and, plunging forward,
rescued the smoking parchment.
At that moment she heard a great stagger behind her, and a pitiful
moan, and Sir Charles fell heavily, striking his head against the edge
of the sofa. She looked round--as she knelt, and saw him, black in the
face, rolling his eyeballs fearfully, while his teeth gnashed awfully,
and a little jet of foam flew through his lips.
Then she shrieked with terror, and the blackened deed fell from her
hands. At this moment Polly rushed into the room. She saw the fearful
sight, and echoed her sister's scream. But they were neither of them
women to lose their heads and beat the air with their hands. They got
to him, and both of them fought hard with the unconscious sufferer,
whose body, in a fresh convulsion, now bounded away from the sofa, and
bade fair to batter itself against the ground.
They did all they could to hold him with one arm apiece, and to release
his swelling throat with the other. Their nimble fingers whipped off
his neck-tie in a moment; but the distended windpipe pressed so against
the shirt-button they could not undo it. Then they seized the collar,
and, pulling against each other, wrenched the shirt open so powerfully
that the button flew into the air, and tinkled against a mirror a long
way off.
A few more struggles, somewhat less violent, and then the face, from
purple, began to whiten, the eyeballs fixed; the pulse went down; the
man lay still.
“Oh, my God!” cried Rhoda Somerset. “He is dying! To the nearest
doctor! There's one three doors off. No bonnet! It's life and death
this moment. Fly!”
Polly obeyed, and Doctor Andrews was actually in the room within five
minutes.
He looked grave, and kneeled down by the patient, and felt his pulse
anxiously.
Miss Somerset sat down, and, being from the country, though she did not
look it, began to weep bitterly, and rock herself in rustic fashion.
The doctor questioned her kindly, and she told him, between her sobs,
how Sir Charles had been taken.
The doctor, however, instead of being alarmed by those frightful
symptoms she related, took a more cheerful view directly. “Then do not
alarm yourself unnecessarily,” he said. “It was only an epileptic fit.”
“Only!” sobbed Miss Somerset. “Oh, if you had seen him! And he lies
like death.”
“Yes,” said Dr. Andrews; “a severe epileptic fit is really a terrible
thing to look at; but it is not dangerous in proportion. Is he used to
have them?”
“Oh, no, doctor--never had one before.”
Here she was mistaken, I think.
“You must keep him quiet; and give him a moderate stimulant as soon as
he can swallow comfortably; the quietest room in the house; and don't
let him be hungry, night or day. Have food by his bedside, and watch
him for a day or two. I'll come again this evening.”
The doctor went to his dinner--tranquil.
Not so those he left. Miss Somerset resigned her own luxurious bedroom,
and had the patient laid, just as he was, upon her bed. She sent the
page out to her groom and ordered two loads of straw to be laid before
the door; and she watched by the sufferer, with brandy and water by her
side.
Sir Charles now might have seemed to be in a peaceful slumber, but for
his eyes. They were open, and showed more white, and less pupil, than
usual.
However, in time he began to sigh and move, and even mutter; and,
gradually, some little color came back to his pale cheeks.
Then Miss Somerset had the good sense to draw back out of his sight,
and order Polly to take her place by his side. Polly did so, and, some
time afterward, at a fresh order, put a teaspoonful of brandy to his
lips, which were still pale and even bluish.
The doctor returned, and brought his assistant. They put the patient to
bed.
“His life is in no danger,” said he. “I wish I was as sure about his
reason.”
At one o'clock in the morning, as Polly was snoring by the patient's
bedside, a hand was laid on her shoulder. It was Rhoda.
“Go to bed, Polly: you are no use here.”
“You'd be sleepy if you worked as hard as I do.”