A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day Part 16

"Yes."

"And have you been very ill? You look ill."

"I am better now, dearest."

"Dearest! Don't call me names. How dare you keep speaking to me when I request you not?"

"But I can't excuse myself, and obtain my pardon, and recover your love, unless I am allowed to speak."

"Oh, you can speak to my aunt Molineux, and she will read you a fine lesson."

"Where is she?"

"n.o.body knows. But there is her house, the one with the iron gate. Get her ear first, if you really love me; and don't you ever waylay me again. If you do, I shall say something rude to you, sir. Oh, I'm so happy!"

Having let this out, she hid her face with her hands, and fled like the very wind.

At dinner-time she was in high spirits.

The admiral congratulated her.

"Brava, Bell! Youth and health and a foreign air will soon cure you of that folly."

Bella blushed deeply, and said nothing. The truth struggled within her, too, but she shrank from giving pain, and receiving expostulation.

She kept the house, though, for two days, partly out of modesty, partly out of an honest and pious desire to obey her father as much as she could.

The third day Mrs. Molineux arrived, and sent over to the admiral.

He invited Bella to come with him. She consented eagerly, but was so long in dressing that he threatened to go without her. She implored him not to do that; and after a monstrous delay, the motive of which the reader may perhaps divine, father and daughter called on Mrs. Molineux.

She received them very affectionately. But when the admiral, with some hesitation, began to enter on the great subject, she said, quietly, "Bella, my dear, go for a walk, and come back to me in half an hour."

"Aunt Molineux!" said Bella, extending both her hands imploringly to that lady.

Mrs. Molineux was proof against this blandishment, and Bella had to go.

When she was gone, this lady, who both as wife and mother was literally a model, rather astonished her brother the admiral. She said: "I am sorry to tell you that you have conducted this matter with perfect impropriety, both you and Bella. She had no business to show you that anonymous letter; and when she did show it you, you should have taken it from her, and told her not to believe a word of it."

"And married my daughter to a libertine! Why, Charlotte, I am ashamed of you."

Mrs. Molineux colored high; but she kept her temper, and ignored the interruption. "Then, if you decided to go into so indelicate a question at all (and really you were not bound to do so on anonymous information), why, then, you should have sent for Sir Charles, and given him the letter, and put him on his honor to tell you the truth.

He would have told you the fact, instead of a garbled version; and the fact is that before he knew Bella he had a connection, which he prepared to dissolve, on terms very honorable to himself, as soon as he engaged himself to your daughter. What is there in that? Why, it is common, universal, among men of fashion. I am so vexed it ever came to Bella's knowledge: really it is dreadful to me, as a mother, that such a thing should have been discussed before that child. Complete innocence means complete ignorance; and that is how all my girls went to their husbands. However, what we must do now is to tell her Sir Charles has satisfied me he was not to blame; and after that the subject must never be recurred to. Sir Charles has promised me never to mention it, and no more shall Bella. And now, my dear John, let me congratulate you. Your daughter has a high-minded lover, who adores her, with a fine estate: he has been crying to me, poor fellow, as men will to a woman of my age; and if you have any respect for my judgment--ask him to dinner."

She added that it might be as well if, after dinner, he were to take a little nap.

Admiral Bruce did not fall into these views without discussion. I spare the reader the dialogue, since he yielded at last; only he stipulated that his sister should do the dinner, and the subsequent siesta.

Bella returned looking very wistful and anxious.

"Come here, niece," said Mrs. Molineux. "Kneel you at my knee. Now look--me in the face. Sir Charles has loved you, and you only, from the day he first saw you. He loves you now as much as ever. Do you love him?"

"Oh, aunt! aunt!" A shower of kisses, and a tear or two.

"That is enough. Then dry your eyes, and dress your beautiful hair a little better than _that;_ for he dines with me to-day!"

Who so bright and happy now as Bella Bruce?

The dreaded aunt did not stop there. She held that after the peep into real life Bella Bruce had obtained, for want of a mother's vigilance, she ought to be a wife as soon as possible. So she gave Sir Charles a hint that Baden was a very good place to be married in; and from that moment Sir Charles gave Bella and her father no rest till they consented.

Little did Richard Ba.s.sett, in England, dream what was going on at Baden. He now surveyed the chimneys of Huntercombe Hall with resignation, and even with growing complacency, as chimneys that would one day be his, since their owner would not be in a hurry to love again. He shot Sir Charles's pheasants whenever they strayed into his hedgerows, and he lived moderately and studied health. In a word, content with the result of his anonymous letter, he confined himself now to cannily out-living the wrongful heir--his cousin.

One fine frosty day the chimneys of Huntercombe began to show signs of life; vertical columns of blue smoke rose in the air, one after another, till at last there were about forty going.

Old servants flowed down from London. New ones trickled in, with their boxes, from the country. Carriages were drawn out into the stable-yard, horses exercised, and a whisper ran that Sir Charles was coming to live on his estates, and not alone.

Richard Ba.s.sett went about inquiring cautiously.

The rumor spread and was confirmed by some little facts.

At last, one fine day, when the chimneys were all smoking, the church-bells began to peal.

Richard Ba.s.sett heard, and went out, scowling deeply. He found the village all agog with expectation.

Presently there was a loud cheer from the steeple, and a flag floated from the top of Huntercombe House. Murmurs. Distant cheers. Approaching cheers. The clatter of horses' feet. The roll of wheels. Huntercombe gates flung wide open by a cl.u.s.ter of grooms and keepers.

Then on came two outriders, ushered by loud hurrahs, and followed by a carriage and four that dashed through the village amid peals of delight from the villagers. The carriage was open, and in it sat Sir Charles and Bella Ba.s.sett. She was lovelier than ever; she dazzled the very air with her beauty and her glorious hair. The hurrahs of the villagers made her heart beat; she pressed Sir Charles's hand tenderly, and literally shone with joy and pride; and so she swept past Richard Ba.s.sett; she saw him directly, shuddered a moment, and half clung to her husband; then on again, and pa.s.sed through the open gates amid loud cheers. She alighted in her own hall, and walked, nodding and smiling sunnily, through two files of domestics and retainers; and thought no more of Richard Ba.s.sett than some bright bird that has flown over a rattlesnake and glanced down at him.

But a gorgeous bird cannot always be flying. A snake can sometimes creep under her perch, and glare, and keep hissing, till she shudders and droops and lays her plumage in the dust.

CHAPTER IX.

GENERALLY deliberate crimes are followed by some great punishment; but they are also often attended in their course by briefer chastis.e.m.e.nts--single strokes from the whip that holds the round dozen in reserve. These precursors of the grand expiation are sharp but kindly lashes, for they tend to whip the man out of the wrong road.

Such a stroke fell on Richard Ba.s.sett: he saw Bella Bruce sweep past him, clinging to her husband, and shuddering at himself. For this, then, he had plotted and intrigued and written an anonymous letter. The only woman he had ever loved at all went past him with a look of aversion, and was his enemy's wife, and would soon be the mother of that enemy's children, and blot him forever out of the coveted inheritance.

The man crept home, and sat by his little fireside, crushed. Indeed, from that hour he disappeared, and drank his bitter cup alone.

After a while it transpired in the village that he was very ill. The clergyman went to visit him, but was not admitted. The only person who got to see him was his friend Wheeler, a small but sharp attorney, by whose advice he acted in country matters. This Wheeler was very fond of shooting, and could not get a crack at a pheasant except on Highmore; and that was a bond between him and its proprietor. It was Wheeler who had first told Ba.s.sett not to despair of possessing the estates, since they had inserted Sir Charles's heir at law in the entail.

This Wheeler found him now so shrunk in body, so pale and haggard in face, and dejected in mind, that he was really shocked, and asked leave to send a doctor from a neighboring town.