The Way We Live Now (128 page)

But, in the teeth of these adverse opinions, Sir Felix managed to get his dinner-table close to theirs and to tell them at dinner something of his future prospects. He was going to travel and see the world. He had, according to his own account, completely run through London life and found that it was all barren.

‘In life I've rung all changes through,
    Run every pleasure down,

'Midst each excess of folly too,
    And lived with half the town.'
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Sir Felix did not exactly quote the old song, probably having never heard the words. But that was the burden of his present story. It was his determination to seek new scenes, and in search of them to travel over the greater part of the known world.

‘How jolly for you!' said Dolly.

‘It will be a change, you know.'

‘No end of a change. Is any one going with you?'

‘Well – yes. I've got a travelling companion – a very pleasant fellow, who knows a lot, and will be able to coach me up in things. There's a deal to be learned by going abroad, you know.'

‘A sort of a tutor,' said Nidderdale.

‘A parson, I suppose,' said Dolly.

‘Well – he is a clergyman. Who told you?'

‘It's only my inventive genius. Well; – yes; I should say that would be nice – travelling about Europe with a clergyman. I shouldn't get enough advantage out of it to make it pay, but I fancy it will just suit you.'

‘It's an expensive sort of thing – isn't it?' asked Nidderdale.

‘Well – it does cost something. But I've got so sick of this kind of life – and then that railway board coming to an end, and the club smashing up, and –'

‘Marie Melmotte marrying Fisker,' suggested Dolly.

‘That too, if you will. But I want a change, and a change I mean to have. I've seen this side of things, and now I'll have a look at the other.'

‘Didn't you have a row in the street with some one the other day?' This question was asked very abruptly by Lord Grasslough, who,
though he was sitting near them, had not yet joined in the conversation, and who had not before addressed a word to Sir Felix. ‘We heard something about it, but we never got the right story.' Nidderdale glanced across the table at Dolly, and Dolly whistled. Grasslough looked at the man he addressed as one does look when one expects an answer. Mr Lupton, with whom Grasslough was dining, also sat expectant. Dolly and Nidderdale were both silent.

It was the fear of this that had kept Sir Felix away from the club. Grasslough, as he had told himself, was just the fellow to ask such a question – ill-natured, insolent, and obtrusive. But the question demanded an answer of some kind. ‘Yes,' said he; ‘a fellow attacked me in the street, coming behind me when I had a girl with me. He didn't get much the best of it, though.'

‘Oh – didn't he?' said Grasslough. ‘I think, upon the whole, you know, you're right about going abroad.'

‘What business is it of yours?' asked the baronet.

‘Well – as the club is being broken up, I don't know that it is very much the business of any of us.'

‘I was speaking to my friends, Lord Nidderdale and Mr Longestaffe, and not to you.'

‘I quite appreciate the advantage of the distinction,' said Lord Grasslough, ‘and am sorry for Lord Nidderdale and Mr Longestaffe.'

‘What do you mean by that?' said Sir Felix, rising from his chair. His present opponent was not horrible to him as had been John Crumb, as men in clubs do not now often knock each other's heads or draw swords one upon another.

‘Don't let's have a quarrel here,' said Mr Lupton. ‘I shall leave the room if you do.'

‘If we must break up, let us break up in peace and quietness,' said Nidderdale.

‘Of course, if there is to be a fight, I'm good to go out with anybody,' said Dolly. ‘When there's any beastly thing to be done, I've always got to do it. But don't you think that kind of thing is a little slow?'

‘Who began it?' said Sir Felix, sitting down again. Whereupon Lord Grasslough, who had finished his dinner, walked out of the room. ‘That fellow is always wanting to quarrel.'

‘There's one comfort, you know,' said Dolly. ‘It wants two men to make a quarrel.'

‘Yes; it does,' said Sir Felix, taking this as a friendly observation; ‘and I'm not going to be fool enough to be one of them.'

‘Oh yes, I meant it fast enough,' said Grasslough afterwards up in the card-room. The other men who had been together had quickly followed him, leaving Sir Felix alone, and they had collected themselves there not with the hope of play, but thinking that they would be less interrupted than in the smoking-room. ‘I don't suppose we shall ever any of us be here again, and as he did come in I thought I would tell him my mind.'

‘What's the use of taking such a lot of trouble?' said Dolly. ‘Of course he's a bad fellow. Most fellows are bad fellows in one way or another.'

‘But he's bad all round,' said the bitter enemy.

‘And so this is to be the end of the Beargarden,' said Lord Nidderdale with a peculiar melancholy. ‘Dear old place! I always felt it was too good to last. I fancy it doesn't do to make things too easy – one has to pay so uncommon dear for them! And then, you know, when you've got things easy, then they get rowdy – and, by George, before you know where you are, you find yourself among a lot of blackguards. If one wants to keep one's self straight, one has to work hard at it, one way or the other. I suppose it all comes from the fall of Adam.'

‘If Solomon, Solon, and the Archbishop of Canterbury were rolled into one, they couldn't have spoken with more wisdom,' said Mr Lupton.

‘Live and learn,' continued the young lord. ‘I don't think anybody has liked the Beargarden so much as I have, but I shall never try this kind of thing again. I shall begin reading blue books
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to-morrow, and shall dine at the Carlton. Next session I shan't miss a day in the House, and I'll bet anybody a fiver that I make a speech before Easter. I shall take to claret at 20s. a dozen, and shall go about London on the top of an omnibus.'

‘How about getting married?' asked Dolly.

‘Oh – that must be as it comes. That's the governor's affair. None of you fellows will believe me, but, upon my word, I liked that girl; and I'd 've stuck to her at last – only that there are some things a fellow can't do. He was such a thundering scoundrel!'

After a while Sir Felix followed them upstairs and entered the room as though nothing unpleasant had happened below. ‘We can make up a rubber – can't we?' said he.

‘I should say not,' said Nidderdale.

‘I shall not play,' said Mr Lupton.

‘There isn't a pack of cards in the house,' said Dolly. Lord Grasslough didn't condescend to say a word. Sir Felix sat down with his cigar in his mouth, and the others continued to smoke in silence.

‘I wonder what has become of Miles Grendall?' asked Sir Felix. But no one made any answer, and they smoked on in silence. ‘He hasn't paid me a shilling yet of the money he owes me.' Still there was not a word. ‘And I don't suppose he ever will.' There was another pause. ‘He is the biggest scoundrel I ever met,' said Sir Felix.

‘I know one as big,' said Lord Grasslough – ‘or at any rate, as little.'

There was another pause of a minute, and then Sir Felix left the room muttering something as to the stupidity of having no cards – and so brought to an end his connection with his associates of the Beargarden. From that time forth he was never more seen by them – or, if seen, was never known.

The other men remained there till well on into the night, although there was not the excitement of any special amusement to attract them. It was felt by them all that this was the end of the Beargarden, and, with a melancholy seriousness befitting the occasion, they whispered sad things in low voices, consoling themselves simply with tobacco. ‘I never felt so much like crying in my life,' said Dolly, as he asked for a glass of brandy and water at about midnight. ‘Good night, old fellows; good-bye. I'm going down to Caversham, and I shouldn't wonder if I didn't drown myself.'

How Mr Flatfleece went to law, and tried to sell the furniture, and threatened everybody, and at last singled out poor Dolly Longestaffe as his special victim; and how Dolly Longestaffe, by the aid of Mr Squercum, utterly confounded Mr Flatfleece, and brought that ingenious but unfortunate man, with his wife and small family to absolute ruin, the reader will hardly expect to have told to him in detail in this chronicle.

Mrs Hurtle had consented at the joint request of Mrs Pipkin and John Crumb to postpone her journey to New York and to go down to Bungay and grace the marriage of Ruby Ruggles, not so much from any love for the persons concerned, not so much even from any desire to witness a phase of English life, as from an irresistible tenderness towards Paul Montague. She not only longed to see him once again, but she could
with difficulty bring herself to leave the land in which he was living. There was no hope for her. She was sure of that. She had consented to relinquish him. She had condoned his treachery to her – and for his sake had even been kind to the rival who had taken her place. But still she lingered near him. And then, though, in all her very restricted intercourse with such English people as she met, she never ceased to ridicule things English, yet she dreaded a return to her own country. In her heart of hearts she liked the somewhat stupid tranquillity of the life she saw, comparing it with the rough tempests of her past days. Mrs Pipkin, she thought, was less intellectual than any American woman she had ever known; and she was quite sure that no human being so heavy, so slow, and so incapable of two concurrent ideas as John Crumb had ever been produced in the United States – but, nevertheless, she liked Mrs Pipkin, and almost loved John Crumb. How different would her life have been could she have met a man who would have been as true to her as John Crumb was to his Ruby!

She loved Paul Montague with all her heart, and she despised herself for loving him. How weak he was – how inefficient; how unable to seize glorious opportunities; how swathed and swaddled by scruples and prejudices – how unlike her own countrymen in quickness of apprehension and readiness of action! But yet she loved him for his very faults, telling herself that there was something sweeter in his English manners than in all the smart intelligence of her own land. The man had been false to her – false as hell; had sworn to her and had broken his oath; had ruined her whole life; had made everything blank before her by his treachery! But then she also had not been quite true with him. She had not at first meant to deceive – nor had he. They had played a game against each other; and he, with all the inferiority of his intellect to weigh him down, had won – because he was a man. She had much time for thinking, and she thought much about these things. He could change his love as often as he pleased, and be as good a lover at the end as ever; whereas she was ruined by his defection. He could look about for a fresh flower and boldly seek his honey; whereas she could only sit and mourn for the sweets of which she had been rifled. She was not quite sure that such mourning would not be more bitter to her in California than in Mrs Pipkin's solitary lodgings at Islington.

‘So he was Mr Montague's partner – was he now?' asked Mrs Pipkin a day or two after their return from the Crumb marriage. For Mr Fisker had called on Mrs Hurtle, and Mrs Hurtle had told Mrs Pipkin so much. ‘To my thinking now he's a nicer man than Mr Montague.' Mrs Pipkin
perhaps thought that as her lodger had lost one partner she might be anxious to secure the other – perhaps felt, too, that it might be well to praise an American at the expense of an Englishman.

‘There's no accounting for tastes, Mrs Pipkin.'

‘And that's true, too, Mrs Hurtle.'

‘Mr Montague is a gentleman.'

‘I always did say that of him, Mrs Hurtle.'

‘And Mr Fisker is – an American citizen.' Mrs Hurtle when she said this was very far gone in tenderness.

‘Indeed now!' said Mrs Pipkin, who did not in the least understand the meaning of her friend's last remark.

‘Mr Fisker came to me with tidings from San Francisco which I had not heard before, and has offered to take me back with him.' Mrs Pipkin's apron was immediately at her eyes. ‘I must go some day, you know.'

‘I suppose you must. I couldn't hope as you'd stay here always. I wish I could. I never shall forget the comfort it's been. There hasn't been a week without everything settled; and most ladylike – most ladylike! You seem to me, Mrs Hurtle, just as though you had the bank in your pocket.' All this the poor woman said, moved by her sorrow to speak the absolute truth.

‘Mr Fisker isn't in any way a special friend of mine. But I hear that he will be taking other ladies with him, and I fancy I might as well join the party. It will be less dull for me, and I shall prefer company just at present for many reasons. We shall start on the first of September.' As this was said about the middle of August there was still some remnant of comfort for poor Mrs Pipkin. A fortnight gained was something; and as Mr Fisker had come to England on business, and as business is always uncertain, there might possibly be further delay. Then Mrs Hurtle made a further communication to Mrs Pipkin, which, though not spoken till the latter lady had her hand on the door, was, perhaps, the one thing which Mrs Hurtle had desired to say. ‘By-the-by, Mrs Pipkin, I expect Mr Montague to call to-morrow at eleven. Just show him up when he comes.' She had feared that unless some such instructions were given, there might be a little scene at the door when the gentleman came.

‘Mr Montague – oh! Of course, Mrs Hurtle – of course. I'll see to it myself.' Then Mrs Pipkin went away abashed – feeling that she had made a great mistake in preferring any other man to Mr Montague, if, after all, recent difficulties were to be adjusted.