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A Terrible Temptation

C >> Charles Reade >> A Terrible Temptation



Produced by James Rusk




A Terrible Temptation

A Story of To-Day

by

Charles Reade



CHAPTER I.

THE morning-room of a large house in Portman Square, London.

A gentleman in the prime of life stood with his elbow on the broad
mantel-piece, and made himself agreeable to a young lady, seated a
little way off, playing at work.

To the ear he was only conversing, but his eyes dwelt on her with
loving admiration all the time. Her posture was favorable to this
furtive inspection, for she leaned her fair head over her work with a
pretty, modest, demure air, that seemed to say, "I suspect I am being
admired: I will not look to see: I might have to check it."

The gentleman's features were ordinary, except his brow--that had power
in it--but he had the beauty of color; his sunburned features glowed
with health, and his eye was bright. On the whole, rather good-looking
when he smiled, but ugly when he frowned; for his frown was a scowl,
and betrayed a remarkable power of hating.

Miss Arabella Bruce was a beauty. She had glorious masses of dark red
hair, and a dazzling white neck to set it off; large, dove-like eyes,
and a blooming oval face, which would have been classical if her lips
had been thin and finely chiseled; but here came in her Anglo-Saxon
breed, and spared society a Minerva by giving her two full and rosy
lips. They made a smallish mouth at rest, but parted ever so wide when
they smiled, and ravished the beholder with long, even rows of dazzling
white teeth.

Her figure was tall and rather slim, but not at all commanding. There
are people whose very bodies express character; and this tall, supple,
graceful frame of Bella Bruce breathed womanly subservience; so did her
gestures. She would take up or put down her own scissors half timidly,
and look around before threading her needle, as if to see whether any
soul objected. Her favorite word was "May I?" with a stress on the
"May," and she used it where most girls would say "I will," or nothing,
and do it.

Mr. Richard Bassett was in love with her, and also conscious that her
fifteen thousand pounds would be a fine addition to his present income,
which was small, though his distant expectations were great. As he had
known her but one month, and she seemed rather amiable than
inflammable, he had the prudence to proceed by degrees; and that is
why, though his eyes gloated on her, he merely regaled her with the
gossip of the day, not worth recording here. But when he had actually
taken his hat to go, Bella Bruce put him a question that had been on
her mind the whole time, for which reason she had reserved it to the
very last moment.

"Is Sir Charles Bassett in town?" said she, mighty carelessly, but
bending a little lower over her embroidery.

"Don't know," said Richard Bassett, with such a sudden brevity and
asperity that Miss Bruce looked up and opened her lovely eyes. Mr.
Richard Bassett replied to this mute inquiry, "We don't speak." Then,
after a pause, "He has robbed me of my inheritance."

"Oh, Mr. Bassett!"

"Yes, Miss Bruce, the Bassett and Huntercombe estates were mine by
right of birth. My father was the eldest son, and they were entailed on
him. But Sir Charles's father persuaded my old, doting grandfather to
cut off the entail, and settle the estates on him and his heirs; and so
they robbed me of every acre they could. Luckily my little estate of
Highmore was settled on my mother and her issue too tight for the
villains to undo."

These harsh expressions, applied to his own kin, and the abruptness and
heat they were uttered with, surprised and repelled his gentle
listener. She shrank a little away from him. He observed it. She
replied not to his words, but to her own thought:

"But, after all, it does seem hard." She added, with a little fervor,
"But it wasn't poor Sir Charles's doing, after all."

"He is content to reap the benefit," said Richard Bassett, sternly.

Then, finding he was making a sorry impression, he tried to get away
from the subject. I say tried, for till a man can double like a hare he
will never get away from his hobby. "Excuse me," said he; "I ought
never to speak about it. Let us talk of something else. You cannot
enter into my feelings; it makes my blood boil. Oh, Miss Bruce! you
can't conceive what a disinherited man feels--and I live at the very
door: his old trees, that ought to be mine, fling their shadows over my
little flower beds; the sixty chimneys of Huntercombe Hall look down on
my cottage; his acres of lawn run up to my little garden, and nothing
but a ha-ha between us."

"It _is_ hard," said Miss Bruce, composedly; not that she entered into
a hardship of this vulgar sort, but it was her nature to soothe and
please people.

"Hard!" cried Richard Bassett, encouraged by even this faint sympathy;
"it would be unendurable but for one thing--I shall have my own some
day."

"I am glad of that," said the lady; "but how?"

"By outliving the wrongful heir."

Miss Bruce turned pale. She had little experience of men's passions.
"Oh, Mr. Bassett!" said she--and there was something pure and holy in
the look of sorrow and alarm she cast on the presumptuous
speaker--"pray do not cherish such thoughts. They will do you harm. And
remember life and death are not in our hands. Besides--"

"Well?"'

"Sir Charles might--"

"Well?"

"Might he not--marry--and have children?" This with more hesitation and
a deeper blush than appeared absolutely necessary.

"Oh, there's no fear of that. Property ill-gotten never descends.
Charles is a worn-out rake. He was fast at Eton--fast at Oxford--fast
in London. Why, he looks ten years older than I, and he is three years
younger. He had a fit two years ago. Besides, he is not a marrying man.
Bassett and Huntercombe will be mine. And oh! Miss Bruce, if ever they
are mine--"

"Sir Charles Bassett!" trumpeted a servant at the door; and then
waited, prudently, to know whether his young lady, whom he had caught
blushing so red with one gentleman, would be at home to another.

"Wait a moment," said Miss Bruce to him. Then, discreetly ignoring what
Bassett had said last, and lowering her voice almost to a whisper, she
said, hurriedly: "You should not blame him for the faults of others.
There--I have not been long acquainted with either, and am little
entitled to inter--But it is such a pity you are not friends. He is
very good, I assure you, and very nice. Let me reconcile you two. _May_
I?"

This well-meant petition was uttered very sweetly; and, indeed--if I
may be permitted--in a way to dissolve a bear.

But this was not a bear, nor anything else that is placable; it was a
man with a hobby grievance; so he replied in character:

"That is impossible so long as he keeps me out of my own." He had the
grace, however, to add, half sullenly, "Excuse me; I feel I have been
too vehement."

Miss Bruce, thus repelled, answered, rather coldly:

"Oh, never mind _that;_ it was very natural.--I am at home, then," said
she to the servant.

Mr. Bassett took the hint, but turned at the door, and said, with no
little agitation, "I was not aware he visits you. One word--don't let
his ill-gotten acres make you quite forget the disinherited one." And
so he left her, with an imploring look.

She felt red with all this, so she slipped out at another door, to cool
her cheeks and imprison a stray curl for Sir Charles.

He strolled into the empty room, with the easy, languid air of fashion.
His features were well cut, and had some nobility; but his sickly
complexion and the lines under his eyes told a tale of dissipation. He
appeared ten years older than he was, and thoroughly _blase._

Yet when Miss Bruce entered the room with a smile and a little blush,
he brightened up and looked handsome, and greeted her with momentary
warmth.

After the usual inquiries she asked him if he had met any body.

"Where?"

"Here; just now."

"No."

"What, nobody at all?"

"Only my sulky cousin; I don't call him anybody," drawled Sir Charles,
who was now relapsing into his normal condition of semi-apathy.

"Oh," said Miss Bruce gayly, "you must expect him to be a little cross.
It is not so very nice to be disinherited, let me tell you."

"And who has disinherited the fellow?"

"I forget; but you disinherited him among you. Never mind; it can't be
helped now. When did you come back to town? I didn't see you at Lady
d'Arcy's ball, did I?"

"You did not, unfortunately for me; but you would if I had known you
were to be there. But about Richard: he may tell you what he likes, but
he was not disinherited; he was bought out. The fact is, his father was
uncommonly fast. My grandfather paid his debts again and again; but at
last the old gentleman found he was dealing with the Jews for his
reversion. Then there was an awful row. It ended in my grandfather
outbidding the Jews. He bought the reversion of his estate from his own
son for a large sum of money (he had to raise it by mortgages); then
they cut off the entail between them, and he entailed the mortgaged
estate on his other son, and his grandson (that was me), and on my
heir-at-law. Richard's father squandered his thirty thousand pounds
before he died; my father husbanded the estates, got into Parliament,
and they put a tail to his name."

Sir Charles delivered this version of the facts with a languid
composure that contrasted deliciously with Richard's heat in telling
the story his way (to be sure, Sir Charles had got Huntercombe and
Bassett, and it is easier to be philosophical on the right side of the
boundary hedge), and wound up with a sort of corollary: "Dick Bassett
suffers by his father's vices, and I profit by mine's virtues. Where's
the injustice?"

"Nowhere, and the sooner you are reconciled the better."

Sir Charles demurred. "Oh, I don't want to quarrel with the fellow: but
he is a regular thorn in my side, with his little trumpery estate, all
in broken patches. He shoots my pheasants in the unfairest way." Here
the landed proprietor showed real irritation, but only for a moment. He
concluded calmly, "The fact is, he is not quite a gentleman. Fancy his
coming and whining to you about our family affairs, and then telling
you a falsehood!"

"No, no; be did not mean. It was his way of looking at things. You can
afford to forgive him."

"Yes, but not if he sets you against me."

"But he cannot do that. The more any one was to speak against you, the
more I--of course."

This admission fired Sir Charles; he drew nearer, and, thanks to his
cousin's interference, spoke the language of love more warmly and
directly than he had ever done before.

The lady blushed, and defended herself feebly. Sir Charles grew warmer,
and at last elicited from her a timid but tender avowal, that made him
supremely happy.

When he left her this brief ecstasy was succeeded by regrets on account
of the years he had wasted in follies and intrigues.

He smoked five cigars, and pondered the difference between the pure
creature who now honored him with her virgin affections and beauties of
a different character who had played their parts in his luxurious life.

After profound deliberation he sent for his solicitor. They lighted the
inevitable cigars, and the following observations struggled feebly out
along with the smoke.

"Mr. Oldfield, I'm going to be married."

"Glad to hear it, Sir Charles." (Vision of settlements.) "It is a high
time you were." (Puff-puff.)

"Want your advice and assistance first."

"Certainly."

"Must put down my pony-carriage now, you know."

"A very proper retrenchment; but you can do that without my assistance,

"There would be sure to be a row if I did. I dare say there will be as
it is. At any rate, I want to do the thing like a gentleman."

"Send 'em to Tattersall's." (Puff.)

"And the girl that drives them in the park, and draws all the duchesses
and countesses at her tail--am I to send her to Tattersall's?" (Puff.)

"Oh, it is _her_ you want to put down, then?"

"Why, of course."


CHAPTER II.

SIR CHARLES and Mr. Oldfield settled that lady's retiring pension, and
Mr. Oldfield took the memoranda home, with instructions to prepare a
draft deed for Miss Somerset's approval.

Meantime Sir Charles visited Miss Bruce every day. Her affections for
him grew visibly, for being engaged gave her the courage to love.

Mr. Bassett called pretty often; but one day he met Sir Charles on the
stairs, and scowled.

That scowl cost him dear, for Sir Charles thereupon represented to
Bella that a man with a grievance is a bore to the very eye, and asked
her to receive no more visits from his scowling cousin. The lady
smiled, and said, with soft complacency, "I obey."

Sir Charles's gallantry was shocked.

"No, don't say 'obey.' It is a little favor I ventured to ask."

"It is like you to ask what you have a right to command. I shall be out
to him in future, and to every one who is disagreeable to you. What!
does 'obey' frighten you from my lips? To me it is the sweetest in the
language. Oh, please let me 'obey' you! _May_ I?"

Upon this, as vanity is seldom out of call, Sir Charles swelled like a
turkey-cock, and loftily consented to indulge Bella Bruce's strange
propensity. From that hour she was never at home to Mr. Bassett.

He began to suspect; and one day, after he had been kept out with the
loud, stolid "Not at home" of practiced mendacity, he watched, and saw
Sir Charles admitted.

He divined it all in a moment, and turned to wormwood. What! was he to
be robbed of the lady he loved--and her fifteen thousand pounds--by the
very man who had robbed him of his ancestral fields? He dwelt on the
double grievance till it nearly frenzied him. But he could do nothing:
it was his fate. His only hope was that Sir Charles, the arrant flirt,
would desert this beauty after a time, as he had the others.

But one afternoon, in the smoking-room of his club, a gentleman said to
him, "So your cousin Charles is engaged to the Yorkshire beauty, Bell
Bruce?"

"He is flirting with her, I believe," said Richard.

"No, no," said the other; "they are engaged. I know it for a fact. They
are to be married next month."

Mr. Richard Bassett digested this fresh pill in moody silence, while
the gentlemen of the club discussed the engagement with easy levity.
They soon passed to a topic of wider interest, viz., who was to succeed
Sir Charles with La Somerset. Bassett began to listen attentively, and
learned for the first time Sir Charles Bassett's connection with that
lady, and also that she was a woman of a daring nature and furious
temper. At first he was merely surprised; but soon hatred and jealousy
whispered in his ear that with these materials it must be possible to
wound those who had wounded him.

Mr. Marsh, a young gentleman with a receding chin, and a mustache
between hay and straw, had taken great care to let them all know he was
acquainted with Miss Somerset. So Richard got Marsh alone, and sounded
him. Could he call upon the lady without ceremony?

"You won't get in. Her street door is jolly well guarded, I can tell
you."

"I am very curious to see her in her own house."

"So are a good many fellows."

"Could you not give me an introduction?"

Marsh shook his head sapiently for a considerable time, and with all
this shaking, as it appeared, out fell words of wisdom. "Don't see it.
I'm awfully spooney on her myself; and, you know, when a fellow
introduces another fellow, that fellow always cuts the other out."
Then, descending from the words of the wise and their dark sayings to a
petty but pertinent fact, he added, _"Besides,_ I'm only let in myself
about once in five times."

"She gives herself wonderful airs, it seems," said Bassett, rather
bitterly.

Marsh fired up. "So would any woman that was as beautiful, and as witty
and as much run after as she is. Why she is a leader of fashion. Look
at all the ladies following her round the park. They used to drive on
the north side of the Serpentine. She just held up her finger, and now
they have cut the Serpentine, and followed her to the south drive."

"Oh, indeed!" said Bassett. "Ah then this is a great lady; a poor
country squire must not venture into her august presence." He turned
savagely on his heel, and Marsh went and made sickly mirth at his
expense.

By this means the matter soon came to the ears of old Mr. Woodgate, the
father of that club, and a genial gossip. He got hold of Bassett in the
dinner-room and examined him. "So you want an introduction to La
Somerset, and Marsh refuses--Marsh, hitherto celebrated for his weak
head rather than his hard heart?"

Richard Bassett nodded rather sullenly. He had not bargained for this
rapid publicity.

The venerable chief resumed: "We all consider Marsh's conduct
unclubable and a thing to be combined against. Wanted--an
Anti-dog-in-the-manger League. I'll introduce you to the Somerset."

"What! do _you_ visit her?" asked Bassett, in some astonishment.

The old gentleman held up his hands in droll disclaimer, and chuckled
merrily "No, no; I enjoy from the shore the disasters of my youthful
friends--that sacred pleasure is left me. Do you see that elegant
creature with the little auburn beard and mustache, waiting sweetly for
his dinner. He launched the Somerset."

"Launched her?"

"Yes; but for him she might have wasted her time breaking hearts and
slapping faces in some country village. He it was set her devastating
society; and with his aid she shall devastate you.--Vandeleur, will you
join Bassett and me?"

Mr. Vandeleur, with ready grace, said he should be delighted, and they
dined together accordingly.

Mr. Vandeleur, six feet high, lank, but graceful as a panther, and the
pink of politeness, was, beneath his varnish, one of the wildest young
men in London--gambler, horse-racer, libertine, what not?--but in
society charming, and his manners singularly elegant and winning. He
never obtruded his vices in good company; in fact, you might dine with
him all your life and not detect him. The young serpent was torpid in
wine; but he came out, a bit at a time, in the sunshine of Cigar.

After a brisk conversation on current topics, the venerable chief told
him plainly they were both curious to know the history of Miss
Somerset, and he must tell it them.

"Oh, with pleasure," said the obliging youth. "Let us go into the
smoking-room."



"Let--me--see. I picked her up by the sea-side. She promised well at
first. We put her on my chestnut mare, and she showed lots of courage,
so she soon learned to ride; but she kicked, even down there."

"Kicked!--whom?"

"Kicked all round; I mean showed temper. And when she got to London,
and had ridden a few times in the park, and swallowed flattery, there
was no holding her. I stood her cheek for a good while, but at last I
told the servants they must not turn her out, but they could keep her
out. They sided with me for once. She had ridden over them, as well.
The first time she went out they bolted the doors, and handed her boxes
up the area steps."

"How did she take that?"

"Easier than we expected. She said, 'Lucky for you beggars that I'm a
lady, or I'd break every d--d window in the house.'"

This caused a laugh. It subsided. The historian resumed.

"Next day she cooled, and wrote a letter."

"To you?"

"No, to my groom. Would you like to see it? It is a curiosity."

He sent one of the club waiters for his servant, and his servant for
his desk, and produced the letter.

"There!" said Vandeleur. "She looks like a queen, and steps like an
empress, and this is how she writes:


"'DEAR JORGE--i have got the sak, an' praps your turn nex. dear jorge
he alwaies promise me the grey oss, which now an oss is life an death
to me. If you was to ast him to lend me the grey he wouldn't refuse
you,

"'Yours respecfully,

"'RHODA SOMERSET.'"



When the letter and the handwriting, which, unfortunately, I cannot
reproduce, had been duly studied and approved, Vandeleur continued--

"Now, you know, she had her good points, after all. If any creature was
ill, she'd sit up all night and nurse them, and she used to go to
church on Sundays, and come back with the sting out of her; only then
she would preach to a fellow, and bore him. She is awfully fond of
preaching. Her dream is to jump on a first-rate hunter, and ride across
country, and preach to the villages. So, when George came grinning to
me with the letter, I told him to buy a new side-saddle for the gray,
and take her the lot, with my compliments. I had noticed a slight
spavin in his near foreleg. She rode him that very day in the park, all
alone, and made such a sensation that next day my gray was standing in
Lord Hailey's stables. But she rode Hailey, like my gray, with a long
spur, and he couldn't stand it. None of 'em could except Sir Charles
Bassett, and he doesn't play fair--never goes near her."

"And that gives him an unfair advantage over his fascinating
predecessors?" inquired the senior, slyly.

"Of course it does," said Vandeleur, stoutly. "You ask a girl to dine
at Richmond once a month, and keep out of her way all the rest of the
time, and give her lots of money--she will never quarrel with you."

"Profit by this information, young man," said old Woodgate, severely;
"it comes too late for me. In my day there existed no sure method of
pleasing the fair. But now that is invented, along with everything
else. Richmond and--absence, equivalent to 'Richmond and victory!' Now,
Bassett, we have heard the truth from the fountain-head, and it is
rather serious. She swears, she kicks, she preaches. Do you still
desire an introduction? As for me, my manly spirit is beginning to
quake at Vandeleur's revelations, and some lines of Scott recur to my
Gothic memory--

"'From the chafed tiger rend his prey, Bar the fell dragon's blighting
way, But shun that lovely snare."'

Bassett replied, gravely, that he had no such motive as Mr. Woodgate
gave him credit for, but still desired the introduction.

"With pleasure," said Vandeleur; "but it will be no use to you. She
hates me like poison; says I have no heart. That is what all
ill-tempered women say."

Notwithstanding his misgivings the obliging youth called for writing
materials, and produced the following epistle--



"DEAR MISS SOMERSET--Mr. Richard Bassett, a cousin of Sir Charles,
wishes very much to be introduced to you, and has begged me to assist
in an object so laudable. I should hardly venture to present myself,
and, therefore, shall feel surprised as well as flattered if you will
receive Mr. Bassett on my introduction, and my assurance that he is a
respectable country gentleman, and bears no resemblance in character to

"Yours faithfully,

"ARTHUR VANDELEUR."



Next day Bassett called at Miss Somerset's house in May Fair, and
delivered his introduction.

He was admitted after a short delay and entered the lady's boudoir. It
was Luxury's nest. The walls were rose colored satin, padded and
puckered; the voluminous curtains were pale satin, with floods and
billows of real lace; the chairs embroidered, the tables all buhl and
ormolu, and the sofas felt like little seas. The lady herself, in a
delightful peignoir, sat nestled cozily in a sort of ottoman with arms.
Her finely formed hand, clogged with brilliants, was just conveying
brandy and soda-water to a very handsome mouth when Richard Bassett
entered.

She raised herself superbly, but without leaving her seat, and just
looked at a chair in a way that seemed to say, "I permit you to sit
down;" and that done, she carried the glass to her lips with the same
admirable firmness of hand she showed in driving. Her lofty manner,
coupled with her beautiful but rather haughty features, smacked of
imperial origin. Yet she was the writer to "jorge," and four years ago
a shrimp-girl, running into the sea with legs as brown as a berry.

So swiftly does merit rise in this world which, nevertheless, some
morose folk pretend is a wicked one.

I ought to explain, however, that this haughty reception was partly
caused by a breach of propriety. Vandeleur ought first to have written
to her and asked permission to present Richard Bassett. He had no
business to send the man and the introduction together. This law a
Parliament of Sirens had passed, and the slightest breach of it was a
bitter offense Equilibrium governs the world. These ladies were bound
to be overstrict in something or other, being just a little lax in
certain things where other ladies are strict.

Now Bassett had pondered well what he should say, but he was
disconcerted by her superb presence and demeanor and her large gray
eyes, that rested steadily upon his face.

However, he began to murmur mellifluously. Said he had often seen her
in public, and admired her, and desired to make her acquaintance, etc.,
etc.

"Then why did you not ask Sir Charles to bring you here?" said Miss
Somerset, abruptly, and searching him with her eyes, that were not to
say bold, but singularly brave, and examiners pointblank.

"I am not on good terms with Sir Charles. He holds the estates that
ought to be mine; and now he has robbed me of my love. He is the last
man in the world I would ask a favor of."

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