A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day
As a part of this excellent system, she had to walk round the square
from eleven to twelve A. M., but never alone; he was not going to have
Sir Charles surprising her into an interview. He always went with her,
and, as he was too stiff to walk briskly, he sat down, and she had to
walk in sight. He took a stout stick with him--for Sir Charles. But Sir
Charles was proud, and stayed at home with his deep wound.
One day, walking round the square with a step of Mercury and heart of
lead, Bella Bruce met a Sister of Charity pacing slow and thoughtful;
their eyes met and drank, in a moment, every feature of each other.
The Sister, apparently, had seen the settled grief on that fair face;
for the next time they met, she eyed her with a certain sympathy, which
did not escape Bella.
This subtle interchange took place several times and Bella could not
help feeling a little grateful. “Ah!” she thought to herself, “how kind
religious people are! I should like to speak to her.” And the next time
they met she looked wistfully in the Sister's face.
She did not meet her again, for she went and rested on a bench, in
sight of her father, but at some distance from him. Unconsciously to
herself, his refusal even to hear Sir Charles repelled her. That was so
hard on him and her. It looked like throwing away the last chance, the
last little chance of happiness.
By-and-by the Sister came and sat on the same bench.
Bella was hardly surprised, but blushed high, for she felt that her own
eyes had invited the sympathy of a stranger; and now it seemed to be
coming. The timid girl felt uneasy. The Sister saw that, and approached
her with tact. “You look unwell,” said she, gently, but with no
appearance of extravagant interest or curiosity.
“I am--a little,” said Bella, very reservedly.
“Excuse my remarking it. We are professional nurses, and apt to be a
little officious, I fear.”
No reply.
“I saw you were unwell. But I hope it is not serious. I can generally
tell when the sick are in danger.” A peculiar look. “I am glad not to
see it in so young and--good a face.”
“You are young, too; very young, and--” she was going to say
“beautiful,” but she was too shy--“to be a Sister of Charity. But I am
sure you never regret leaving such a world as this is.”
“Never. I have lost the only thing I ever valued in it.”
“I have no right to ask you what that was.”
“You shall know without asking. One I loved proved unworthy.”
The Sister sighed deeply, and then, hiding her face with her hands for
a moment, rose abruptly, and left the square, ashamed, apparently, of
having been betrayed into such a confession.
Bella, when she was twenty yards off, put out a timid hand, as if to
detain her; but she had not the courage to say anything of the kind.
She never told her father a word. She had got somebody now who could
sympathize with her better than he could.
Next day the Sister was there, and Bella bowed to her when she met her.
This time it was the Sister who went and sat on the bench.
Bella continued her walk for some time, but at last could not resist
the temptation. She came and sat down on the bench, and blushed; as
much as to say, “I have the courage to come, but not to speak upon a
certain subject, which shall be nameless.”
The Sister, as may be imagined, was not so shy. She opened a
conversation. “I committed a fault yesterday. I spoke to you of myself,
and of the past: it is discouraged by our rules. We are bound to
inquire the griefs of others; not to tell our own.”
This was a fair opening, but Bella was too delicate to show her wounds
to a fresh acquaintance.
The Sister, having failed at that, tried something very different.
“But I could tell you a pitiful case about another. Some time ago I
nursed a gentleman whom love had laid on a sick-bed.”
“A gentleman! What! can they love as we do?” said Bella, bitterly.
“Not many of them; but this was an exception. But I don't know whether
I ought to tell these secrets to so young a lady.”
“Oh, yes--please--what else is there in this world worth talking about?
Tell me about the poor man who could love as we can.”
The Sister seemed to hesitate, but at last decided to go on.
“Well, he was a man of the world, and he had not always been a good
man; but he was trying to be. He had fallen in love with a young lady,
and seen the beauty of virtue, and was going to marry her and lead a
good life. But he was a man of honor, and there was a lady for whom he
thought it was his duty to provide. He set his lawyer to draw a deed,
and his lawyer appointed a day for signing it at her house. The poor
man came because his lawyer told him. Do you think there was any great
harm in that?”
“No; of course not.”
“Well, then, he lost his love for that.”
Miss Bruce's color began to come and go, and her supple figure to
crouch a little. She said nothing.
The Sister continued: “Some malicious person went and told the young
lady's father the gentleman was in the habit of visiting that lady, and
would be with her at a certain hour. And so he was; but it was the
lawyer's appointment, you know. You seem agitated.”
“No, no; not agitated,” said Bella, “but astonished; it is so like a
story I know. A young lady, a friend of mine, had an anonymous letter,
telling her that one she loved and esteemed was unworthy. But what you
have told me shows me how deceitful appearances may be. What was your
patient's name?”
“It is against our rules to tell that. But you said an 'anonymous
letter.' Was your friend so weak as to believe an anonymous letter? The
writer of such a letter is a coward, and a coward always is a liar.
Show me your friend's anonymous letter. I may, perhaps, be able to
throw a light on it.”
The conversation was interrupted by Admiral Bruce, who had approached
them unobserved. “Excuse me,” said he, “but you ladies seem to have hit
upon a very interesting theme.”
“Yes, papa,” said Bella. “I took the liberty to question this lady as
to her experiences of sick-beds, and she was good enough to give me
some of them.”
Having uttered this with a sudden appearance of calmness that first
amazed the Sister, then made her smile, she took her father's arm,
bowed politely, and a little stiffly, to her new friend, and drew the
admiral away.
“Oh!” thought the Sister. “I am not to speak to the old gentleman. He
is not in her confidence. Yet she is very fond of him. How she hangs on
his arm! Simplicity! Candor! We are all tarred with the same stick--we
women.”
That night Bella was a changed girl--exalted and depressed by turns,
and with no visible reason.
Her father was pleased. Anything better than that deadly languor.
The next day Bella sat by her father's side in the square, longing to
go to the Sister, yet patiently waiting to be ordered.
At last the admiral, finding her dull and listless, said, “Why don't
you go and talk to the Sister? She amuses you. I'll join you when I
have smoked this cigar.”
The obedient Bella rose, and went toward the Sister as if compelled.
But when she got to her her whole manner changed. She took her warmly
by the hand, and said, trembling and blushing, and all on fire, “I have
brought you the anonymous letter.”
The elder actress took it and ran her eye over it--an eye that now
sparkled like a diamond. “Humph!” said she, and flung off all the
dulcet tones of her assumed character with mighty little ceremony.
“This hand is disguised a little, but I think I know it. I am sure I
do! The dirty little rascal!”
“Madam!” cried Bella, aghast with surprise at this language.
“I tell you I know the writer and his rascally motive. You must lend me
this for a day or two.”
“Must I?” said Bella. “Excuse me! Papa would be so angry.”
“Very likely; but you will lend it to me for all that; for with this I
can clear Miss Bruce's lover and defeat his enemies.”
Bella uttered a faint cry, and trembled, and her bosom heaved
violently. She looked this way and that, like a frightened deer. “But
papa? His eye is on us.”
“Never deceive your father!” said the Sister, almost sternly; “but,”
darting her gray eyes right into those dove-like orbs, “give me five
minutes' start--IF YOU REALLY LOVE SIR CHARLES BASSETT.”
With these words she carried off the letter; and Bella ran, blushing,
panting, trembling, to her father, and clung to him.
He questioned her, but could get nothing from her very intelligible
until the Sister was out of sight, and then she told him all without
reserve.
“I was unworthy of him to doubt him. An anonymous slander. I'll never
trust appearances again. Poor Charles! Oh, my darling! what he must
have suffered if he loves like me.” Then came a shower of happy tears;
then a shower of happy kisses.
The admiral groaned, but for a long time he could not get a word in.
When he did it was chilling. “My poor girl,” said he, “this unhappy
love blinds you. What, don't you see the woman is no nun, but some sly
hussy that man has sent to throw dust in your eyes?”
Nothing she could say prevailed to turn him from this view, and he
acted upon it with resolution: he confined her excursions to a little
garden at the back of the house, and forbade her, on any pretense, to
cross the threshold.
Miss Somerset came to the square in another disguise, armed with
important information. But no Bella Bruce appeared to meet her.
All this time Richard Bassett was happy as a prince.
So besotted was he with egotism, and so blinded by imaginary wrongs,
that he rejoiced in the lovers' separation, rejoiced in his cousin's
attack.
Polly, who now regarded him almost as a lover, told him all about it;
and already in anticipation he saw himself and his line once more lords
of the two manors--Bassett and Huntercombe--on the demise of Sir
Charles Bassett, Bart., deceased without issue.
And, in fact, Sir Charles was utterly defeated. He lay torpid.
But there was a tough opponent in the way--all the more dangerous that
she was not feared.
One fine day Miss Somerset electrified her groom by ordering her pony
carriage to the door at ten A. M.
She took the reins on the pavement, like a man, jumped in light as a
feather, and away rattled the carriage into the City. The ponies were
all alive, the driver's eye keen as a bird's; her courage and her
judgment equal. She wound in and out among the huge vehicles with
perfect composure; and on those occasions when, the traffic being
interrupted, the oratorical powers were useful to fill up the time, she
shone with singular brilliance. The West End is too often in debt to
the City, but, in the matter of chaff, it was not so this day; for
whenever she took a peck she returned a bushel; and so she rattled to
the door of Solomon Oldfield, solicitor, Old Jewry.
She penetrated into the inner office of that worthy, and told him he
must come with her that minute to Portman Square.
“Impossible, madam!” And, as they say in the law reports, gave his
reasons.
“Certain, sir!” And gave no reasons.
He still resisted.
Thereupon she told him she should sit there all day and chaff his
clients one after another, and that his connection with the Bassett and
Huntercombe estates should end.
Then he saw he had to do with a termagant, and consented, with a sigh.
She drove him westward, wincing every now and then at her close
driving, and told him all, and showed him what she was pleased to call
her little game. He told her it was too romantic. Said he, “You ladies
read nothing but novels; but the real world is quite different from the
world of novels.” Having delivered this remonstrance--which was
tolerably just, for she never read anything but novels and sermons--he
submitted like a lamb, and received her instructions.
She drove as fast as she talked, so that by this time they were at