A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day
The ladies rose to go: Lady Bassett took leave of them thus: “Good-by,
my most valued friend, and sister in sorrow; good-by, my dear
daughter.”
At the gate of Huntercombe, whom should they meet but Compton Bassett,
looking very pale and unhappy.
He was upon honor not to speak to Ruperta; but he gazed on her with a
wistful and terrified look that was very touching. She gave him a soft
pitying smile in return, that drove him almost wild with hope.
That night Richard Bassett sat in his chair, gloomy.
When his wife and daughter spoke to him in their soft accents, he
returned short, surly answers. Evidently a storm was brewing.
At last it burst. He had heard of Ruperta's repeated visits to
Huntercombe Hall. “You are not dealing fairly with me, you two,” said
he. “I allowed you to go once to see a woman that says she is very ill;
but I warned you she was the cunningest woman in creation, and would
make a fool of you both; and now I find you are always going. This will
not do. She is netting two simple birds that I have the care of. Now,
listen to me; I forbid you two ever to set foot in that house again. Do
you hear me?”
“We hear you, papa,” said Mrs. Bassett, quietly; “we must be deaf, if
we did not.”
Ruperta kept her countenance with difficulty.
“It is not a request, it is a command.”
Mrs. Bassett for once in her life fired up. “And a most tyrannical
one,” said she.
Ruperta put her hand before her mother's mouth, then turned to her
father.
“There was no need to express your wish so harshly, papa. We shall
obey.”
Then she whispered her mother, “And Mr. Rutland shall pay for it.”
Mrs. Bassett communicated this behest to Lady Bassett in a letter.
Then Lady Bassett summoned all her courage, and sent for her son
Compton. “Compton,” said she, “I must speak to Reginald. Can you find
him?”
“Oh yes, I can find him. I am sorry to say anybody can find him at this
time of day.”
“Why, where is he?”
“I hardly like to tell you.”
“Do you think his peculiarities have escaped me?”
“At the public-house.”
“Ask him to come to me.”
Compton went to the public-house, and there, to his no small disgust,
found Mr. Reginald Bassett playing the fiddle, and four people, men and
women, dancing to the sound, while one or two more smoked and looked
on.
Compton restrained himself till the end of that dance, and then stepped
up to Reginald and whispered him, “Mamma wants to see you directly.”
“Tell her I'm busy.”
“I shall tell her nothing of the kind. You know she is very ill, and
has not seen you yet; and now she wants to. So come along at once, like
a good fellow.”
“Youngster,” said Reginald, “it is a rule with me never to leave a
young woman for an old one.”
“Not for your mother?”
“No, nor my grandmother either.”
“Then you were born without a heart. But you shall come, whether you
like it or not--though I have to drag you there by the throat.”
“Learn to spell 'able' first.”
“I'll spell it on your head, if you don't come.”
“Oh, that is the game, young un, is it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, don't let us have a shindy on the bricks; there is a nice little
paddock outside. Come out there and I'll give you a lesson.”
“Thank you; I don't feel inclined to assist you in degrading our
family.”
“Chaps that are afraid to fight shouldn't threaten. Come now, the first
knock-down blow shall settle it. If I win, you stay here and dance with
us. If you win, I go to the old woman.”
Compton consented, somewhat reluctantly; but to do him justice, his
reluctance arose entirely from his sense of relationship, and not from
any fear of his senior.
The young gentlemen took off their coats, and proceeded to spar without
any further ceremony.
Reginald, whose agility was greater than his courage, danced about on
the tips of his toes, and succeeded in planting a tap or two on
Compton's cheek.
Compton smarted under these, and presently, in following his
antagonist, who fought like a shadow, he saw Ruperta and her mother
looking horror-stricken over the palings.
Infuriated with Reginald for this exposure, he rushed in at him,
received a severe cut over the eye, but dealt him with his mighty
Anglo-Saxon arm a full straightforward smasher on the forehead, which
knocked him head over heels like a nine-pin.
That active young man picked himself up wondrous slowly; rheumatism
seemed to have suddenly seized his well-oiled joints; he then addressed
his antagonist, in his most ingratiating tones--“All right, sir,” said
he. “You are the best man. I'll go to the old lady this minute.”
“I'll see you go,” said Compton, sternly; “and mind I can run as well
as hit: so none of your gypsy tricks with me.”
Then he came sheepishly to the palings and said, “It is not my fault,
Miss Bassett; he would not come to mamma without, and she wants to
speak to him.”
“Oh! he is hurt! he is wounded!” cried Ruperta. “Come here to me.”
He came to her, and she pressed her white handkerchief tenderly on his
eyebrow; it was bleeding a little.
“Well, are you coming?” said Reginald, ironically, “or do _you_ like
young women better than old ones?”
Compton instantly drew back a little, made two steps, laid his hand on
the palings, vaulted over, and followed Reginald.
“That's your _boy,”_ said Mrs. Bassett.
Ruperta made no reply, but began to gulp.
“What is the matter, darling?”
“The fighting--the blood”--said Ruperta, sobbing.
Mrs. Bassett drew her on one side, and soon soothed her.
When their gentle bosoms got over their agitation, they rather enjoyed
the thing, especially Ruperta: she detested Reginald for his character,
and for having insulted her father.
All of a sudden, she cried out, “He has taken my handkerchief. How dare
he?” And she affected anger.
“Never mind, dear,” said Mrs. Bassett, coolly, “we have got his
tippet.”
CHAPTER XLIII.
COULD any one have looked through the keyhole at Lady Bassett waiting
for Reginald, he would have seen, by the very movements of her body,
the terrible agitation of the mind. She rose--she sat down--she walked
about with wild energy--she dropped on the sofa, and appeared to give
it up as impossible; but ere long that deadly languor gave way to
impatient restlessness again.
At last her quick ear heard a footstep in the corridor, accompanied by
no rustle of petticoats, and yet the footstep was not Compton's.
Instantly she glanced with momentary terror toward the door.
There was a tap.
She sat down, and said, with a tone from which all agitation was
instantly banished, “Come in.”
The door opened, and the swarthy Reginald, diabolically handsome, with
his black snaky curls, entered the room.
She rose from her chair, and fixed her great eyes on him, as if she
would read him soul and body before she ventured to speak.
“Here I am, mamma: sorry to see you look so ill.”
“Thank you, my dear,” said Lady Bassett, without relaxing for a moment
that searching gaze.
She said, still covering him with her eye, “Would you cure me if you
could?”
To appreciate this opening, and Lady Bassett's sweet engaging manner,
you must understand that this young man was, in her eyes, a sort of
black snake. Her flesh crept, with fear and repugnance, at the sight of
him. Yet that is how she received him, being a mother defending her
favorite son.
“Of course I would,” said Reginald. “Just you tell me how.”
Excellent words. But the lady's calm infallible eye saw a cunning
twinkle in those black twinkling orbs. Young as he was, he was on his
guard, and waiting for her. Nor was this surprising: Reginald,
naturally intelligent, had accumulated a large stock of low cunning in
his travels and adventures with the gypsies, a smooth and cunning
people. Lady Bassett's fainting upon his return, his exclusion from her
room, and one or two minor circumstances, had set him thinking.
The moment she saw that look, Lady Bassett, with swift tact, glided
away from the line she had intended to open, and, after merely thanking
him, and saying, “I believe you, dear,” though she did not believe him,
she resumed, in a very impressive tone, “You see me worse than ever
to-day, because my mind is in great trouble. The time is come when I
must tell you a secret, which will cause you a bitter disappointment.
Why I send for you is, to see whether I cannot do something for you to
make you happy, in spite of that cruel disappointment.”
Not a word from Reginald.
“Mr. Bassett--forgive me, if you can--for I am the most miserable woman
in England--you are not the heir to this place; you are not Sir Charles
Bassett's son.”
“What!” shouted the young man.
Her fortitude gave way for a moment. She shook her head, in
confirmation of what she had said, and hid her burning face and
scalding tears in her white and wasted hands.
There was a long silence.
Reginald was asking himself if this could be true, or was it a maneuver
to put her favorite Compton over his head.
Lady Bassett looked up, and saw this paltry suspicion in his face. She
dried her tears directly, and went to a bureau, unlocked it, and
produced the manuscript confession she had prepared for her husband.
She bade Reginald observe the superscription and the date.
When he had done so, she took her scissors and opened it for him.
“Read what I wrote to my beloved husband at a time when I expected soon
to appear before my Judge.”
She then sank upon the sofa, and lay there like a log; only, from time
to time, during the long reading, tears trickled from her eyes.
Reginald read the whole story, and saw the facts must be true: more
than that, being young, and a man, he could not entirely resist the
charm of a narrative in which a lady told at full the love, the grief,
the terror, the sufferings, of her heart, and the terrible temptation
under which she had gone astray.
He laid it down at last, and drew a long breath.
“It's a devil of a job for _me,”_ said he; “but I can't blame you. You
sold that Dick Bassett, and I hate him. But what is to become of _me?”_
“What I offer you is a life in which you will be happier than you ever
could be at Huntercombe. I mean to buy you vast pasture-fields in
Australia, and cattle to feed. Those noble pastures will be bounded
only by wild forests and hills. You will have swift horses to ride over
your own domain, or to gallop hundreds of miles at a stretch, if you
like. No confinement there; no fences and boundaries; all as free as
air. No monotony: one week you can dig for gold, another you can ride
among your flocks, another you can hunt. All this in a climate so
delightful that you can lie all night in the open air, without a
blanket, under a new firmament of stars, not one of which illumines the
dull nights of Europe.”
The bait was too tempting. “Well, you _are_ the right sort,” cried
Reginald.
But presently he began to doubt. “But all that will cost a lot of
money.”
“It will, but I have a great deal of money.”
Reginald thought, and said, suspiciously, “I don't know why you should
do all this for me.”
“Do you not? What! when I have brought you into this family, and
encouraged you in such vast expectations, could I, in honor and common
humanity, let you fall into poverty and neglect? No. I have many
thousand pounds, all my own, and you will have them all, and perhaps
waste them all; but it will take you some time, because, while you are
wasting, I shall be saving more for you.”
Then there was a pause, each waiting for the other.
Then Lady Bassett said, quietly, and with great apparent composure, “Of
course there is a condition attached to all this.”
“What is that?”
“I must receive from you a written paper, signed by yourself and by
Mrs. Meyrick, acknowledging that you are not Sir Charles's son, but