A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day
Wells, and she snatched the words out of her mouth.
“What is the use of questioning _her?_ She knows no more than you do. I
done it all; and done it for the best. My lady's child died; I hid that
from her; for I knew it would kill her, and keep you in a mad-house. I
done for the best: I put my live child by her side, and she knew no
better. As time went on, and the boy so dark, she suspected; but know
it she couldn't till now. My lady, I am his mother, and there stands
his cruel father; cruel to me, and cruel to him. But don't you dare to
harm him; I've got all your letters, promising me marriage; I'll take
them to your wife and daughter, and they shall know it is your own
flesh and blood you are sending to prison. Oh, I am mad to threaten
him! my darling, speak him fair; he is your father; he may have a bit
of nature in his heart somewhere, though I could never find it.”
The young man put his hands together, like an Oriental, and said,
“Forgive me,” then sank at Richard Bassett's knees.
Then Sir Charles, himself much shaken, took his wife's arm and led her,
trembling like an aspen leaf, from the room.
Perhaps the prayers of Reginald and the tears of his mother would alone
have sufficed to soften Richard Bassett, but the threat of exposure to
his wife and daughter did no harm. The three soon came to terms.
Reginald to be liberated on condition of going to London by the next
train, and never setting his foot in that parish again. His mother to
go with him, and see him off to Australia. She solemnly pledged herself
not to reveal the boy's real parentage to any other soul in the world.
This being settled, Richard Bassett called the constable in, and said
the young gentleman had satisfied him that it was a practical joke,
though a very dangerous one, and he withdrew the charge of felony.
The constable said he must have Sir Charles's authority for that.
A message was sent to Sir Charles. He came. The prisoner was released,
and Mary Meyrick took his arm sharply, as much as to say, “Out of my
hands you go no more.”
Before they left the room, Sir Charles, who was now master of himself,
said, with deep feeling, “My poor boy, you can never be a stranger to
me. The affection of years cannot be untied in a moment. You see now
how folly glides into crime, and crime into punishment. Take this to
heart, and never again stray from the paths of honor. Lead an honorable
life; and, if you do, write to me as if I was still your father.”
They retired, but Richard Bassett lingered, and hung his head.
Sir Charles wondered what this inveterate foe could have to say now.
At last Richard said, half sullenly, yet with a touch of compunction,
“Sir Charles, you have been more generous than I was. You have laid me
under an obligation.”
Sir Charles bowed loftily.
“You would double that obligation if you would prevail on Lady Bassett
to keep that old folly of mine secret from my wife and daughter. I am
truly ashamed of it; and, whatever my faults may have been, they love
and respect me.”
“Mr. Bassett,” said Sir Charles, “my son Compton must be told that he
is my heir; but no details injurious to you shall transpire: you may
count on absolute secrecy from Lady Bassett and myself.”
“Sir Charles,” said Richard Bassett, faltering for a moment, “I am very
much obliged to you, and I begin to be sorry we are enemies.
Good-morning.”
The agitation and terror of this scene nearly killed Lady Bassett on
the spot. She lay all that day in a state of utter prostration.
Meantime Sir Charles put this and that together, but said nothing. He
spoke cheerfully and philosophically to his wife--said it had been a
fearful blow, terrible wrench: but it was all for the best; such a son
as that would have broken his heart before long.
“Ah, but your wasted affections!” groaned Lady Bassett; and her tears
streamed at the thought.
Sir Charles sighed; but said, after a while, “Is affection ever
entirely wasted? My love for that young fool enlarged my heart. There
was a time he did me a deal of good.”
But next day, having only herself to think of now, Lady Bassett could
live no longer under the load of deceit. She told Sir Charles Mary
Meyrick had deceived him. “Read this,” she said, “and see what your
miserable wife has done, who loved you to madness and crime.”
Sir Charles looked at her, and saw in her wasted form and her face
that, if he did read it, he should kill her; so he played the man: he
restrained himself by a mighty effort, and said, “My dear, excuse me;
but on this matter I have more faith in Mary Meyrick's exactness than
in yours. Besides, I know your heart, and don't care to be told of your
errors in judgment, no, not even by yourself. Sorry to offend an
authoress; but I decline to read your book, and, more than that, I
forbid you the subject entirely for the next thirty years, at least.
Let by-gones be by-gones.”
That eventful morning Mr. Rutland called and proposed to Ruperta. She
declined politely, but firmly.
She told Mrs. Bassett, and Mrs. Bassett told Richard in a nervous way,
but his answer surprised her. He said he was very glad of it; Ruperta
could do better.
Mrs. Bassett could not resist the pleasure of telling Lady Bassett. She
went over on purpose, with her husband's consent.
Lady Bassett asked to see Ruperta. “By all means,” said Richard
Bassett, graciously.
On her return to Highmore, Ruperta asked leave to go to the Hall every
day and nurse Lady Bassett. “They will let her die else,” said she.
Richard Bassett assented to that, too. Ruperta, for some weeks, almost
lived at the Hall, and in this emergency revealed great qualities. As
the malevolent small-pox, passing through the gentle cow, comes out the
sovereign cow-pox, so, in this gracious nature, her father's vices
turned to their kindred virtues; his obstinacy of purpose shone here a
noble constancy; his audacity became candor, and his cunning wisdom.
Her intelligence saw at once that Lady Bassett was pining to death, and
a weak-minded nurse would be fatal: she was all smiles and brightness,
and neglected no means to encourage the patient.
With this view, she promised to plight her faith to Compton the moment
Lady Bassett should be restored to health; and so, with hopes and
smiles, and the novelty of a daughter's love, she fought with death for
Lady Bassett, and at last she won the desperate battle.
This did Richard Bassett's daughter for her father's late enemy.
The grateful husband wrote to Bassett, and now acknowledged _his_
obligation.
A civil, mock-modest reply from Richard Bassett.
From this things went on step by step, till at last Compton and
Ruperta, at eighteen years of age, were formally betrothed.
Thus the children's love wore out the father's hate.
That love, so troubled at the outset, left, by degrees, the region of
romance, and rippled smoothly through green, flowery meadows.
Ruperta showed her lover one more phase of girlhood; she, who had been
a precocious and forward child, and then a shy and silent girl, came
out now a bright and witty young woman, full of vivacity, modesty, and
sensibility. Time cured Compton of his one defect. Ruperta stopped
growing at fifteen, but Compton went slowly on; caught her at
seventeen, and at nineteen had passed her by a head. He won a
scholarship at Oxford, he rowed in college races, and at last in the
University race on the Thames.
Ruperta stood, in peerless beauty, dark blue from throat to feet, and
saw his boat astern of his rival, saw it come up with, and creep ahead,
amid the roars of the multitude. When she saw her lover, with bare
corded arms, as brown as a berry, and set teeth, filling his glorious
part in that manly struggle within eight yards of her, she confessed he
was not a boy now.
But Lady Bassett accepted no such evidence: being pestered to let them
marry at twenty years of age, she clogged her consent with one
condition--they must live three years at Huntercombe as man and wife.
“No boy of twenty,” said she, “can understand a young woman of that
age. I must be in the house to prevent a single misunderstanding
between my beloved children.”
The young people, who both adored her, voted the condition reasonable.
They were married, and a wing of the spacious building allotted to
them.
For their sakes let us hope that their wedded life, now happily
commenced, will furnish me no materials for another tale: the happiest
lives are uneventful.
The foreign gent recovered his wound, but acquired rheumatism and a
dislike for midnight expeditions.
Reginald galloped a year or two over seven hundred miles of colony,
sowing his wild oats as he flew, but is now a prosperous squatter, very
fond of sleeping in the open air. England was not big enough for the
bold Bohemian. He does very well where he is.
Old Meyrick died, and left his wife a little estate in the next county.
Drake asked her hand at the funeral. She married him in six months, and
migrated to the estate in question; for Sir Charles refused her a lease
of his farm, not choosing to have her near him.
Her new abode was in the next parish to her sister's.
La Marsh set herself to convert Mary, and often exhorted her to
penitence; she bore this pretty well for some time, being overawed by
old reminiscences of sisterly superiority: but at last her vanity
rebelled. “Repent! and Repent!” cried she. “Why you be like a cuckoo,
all in one song. One would think I had been and robbed a church. 'Tis
all very well for you to repent, as led a fastish life at starting:
_but I never done nothing as I'm ashamed on.”_
Richard Bassett said one day to Wheeler, “Old fellow, there is not a
worse poison than Hate. It has made me old before my time. And what
does it all come to? We might just as well have kept quiet; for my
grandson will inherit Huntercombe and Bassett, after all--”
“Thanks to the girl you would not ring the bells for.”
Sir Charles and Lady Bassett lead a peaceful life after all their
troubles, and renew their youth in their children, of whom Ruperta is
one, and as dear as any.
Yet there is a pensive and humble air about Lady Bassett, which shows
she still expiates her fault, though she knows it will always be
ignored by him for whose sake she sinned.
In summing her up, it may be as well to compare this with the unmixed
self-complacency of Mrs. Drake.
You men and women, who judge this Bella Bassett, be firm, and do not
let her amiable qualities or her good intentions blind you in a plain
matter of right and wrong: be charitable, and ask yourselves how often
in your lives you have seen yourselves, or any other human being,
resist a terrible temptation.
My experience is, that we resist other people's temptations nobly, and
succumb to our own.
So let me end with a line of England's gentlest satirist--
“Heaven be merciful to us all, sinners as we be.”
THE END