The Way We Live Now III

THE WAY WE LIVE NOW

know how you and Nidderdale like that. I never went in for her myself. Squercum never seemed to see it.”

“Poor dear!” said Nidderdale. “She’s welcome for me, and I dare say she couldn’t do better with herself. I was very fond of her; — I’ll be shot if I wasn’t.”

“And Carbury too, I suppose,” said Dolly.

“No; I wasn’t. If I’d really been fond of her I suppose it would have come off. I should have had her safe enough to America, if I’d cared about it.” This was Sir Felix’s view of the matter.

“Come into the smoking-room, Dolly,” said Nidderdale. “I can stand most things, and I try to stand everything; but, by George, that fellow is such a cad that I cannot stand him. You and I are bad enough, — but I don’t think we’re so heartless as Carbury.”

“I don’t think I’m heartless at all,” said Dolly. “I’m goodnatured to everybody that is good-natured to me, — and to a great many people who ain’t. I’m going all the way down to Caversham next week to see my sister married, though I hate the place and hate marriages, and if I was to be hung for it I couldn’t say a word to the fellow who is going to be my broth- er-in-law. But I do agree about Carbury. It’s very hard to be good-natured to him.”

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.

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“In life I’ve rung all changes through,

Run every pleasure down, ‘Midst each excess of folly too, And lived with half the town.“

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.

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“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, DQG ³

“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.”

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“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 others’ 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

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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 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.

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“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 up-stairs, 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 amuse-

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ble 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.

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“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 fan-

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