FRIENDS IN COUNCIL.
Those persons to whom London is a home--a place to be lived in all
the year round, save on the occasion of the two months' holiday, when
one rushes off to the North, or to the sea, or to the Continent,
returning with a renewed stock of health, and a pleasurable sense of
having enjoyed yourself, but with a still more pleasurable sense of
being back again in town--are very much amused at a notion prevalent
amongst many worthy people who arrive at their own or at a hired house
in the month of March, stay there till the end of the month of June,
and go away fancying that they know London. Know London! A lifetime's
earnest devotion does not suffice for that study, and those people
who talk thus have not even the merest smattering of its topography.
Their London used to be bounded on the west by the Knightsbridge
Barracks--even now they acknowledge nothing beyond Princes Terrace.
On the south-west they have penetrated as far as Onslow Square; the
territory beyond that might be full of tiger-lairs and hiding-places
for dragons, for all they know about it. Of the suburbs, beyond such
knowledge as they derive from an occasional visit to the Star and
Garter at Richmond, they know absolutely nothing. They do not know, and
it would not make the smallest difference to them if they did, that if,
instead of cantering up and down that ghastly, treeless, sun-scorched
mile of gravel, the Row, they chose to turn their horses' heads
north-westward, they could find shade in the green Willesden lanes
and air on the breezy Hendon heights. They do not know that within a
very short distance of Hyde Park there are shady lanes half hidden
in greenery, dotted here and there with quaint old-fashioned houses
standing in the midst of large grounds--some with gardens sloping
away towards the river; others with enormous trees overhanging them,
blotting out all view or vista; and others again with such an expanse
of what the auctioneers are pleased to term "park-like grounds" visible
from their windows, that you would have no idea of the immediate
proximity of London, save for the never-varying presence of the
smoke-wreath hanging over the horizon, and the never-ceasing, save on
Sundays, dull rumble of distant traffic, which grinds on the ear like
the monotonous surging of the waves upon the shore.
In one of these metropolitan suburbs, no matter which, stood and stands
the house which at the period of our story was George Wainwright's
home, the residence of his father, Dr. Wainwright. It was a big, long,
rambling, red-faced old house, with an enormous number of rooms,
some large and some small, standing in the midst of a large garden.
Tradition said that it had been a favourite residence of Cromwell's;
but it was generally believed, and the belief was not ill-founded,
that it had been given by the Lord Protector to the husband of his
favourite daughter, and that he himself had frequently been in the
habit of staying there. At the end of the first quarter of the present
century it had a very different occupant from the grim old Ironsides
leader, being rented by the Countess Delia Crusca, the wittiest, the
most beautiful, the most extravagant, the most fascinating woman of her
day. Old Knaves of Clubs still _raffolent_ about the Delia Crusca, her
eyes and her poems, her bust and her repartees. She had a husband?--Oh
yes! the Count Delia Crusca, ex-officer of Bersaglieri and one of the
first naturalists of his day, corresponding member of all the principal
European societies, and perfectly devoted to his favourite pursuit; so
devoted, that he was invariably away in some distant foreign country,
engaged in hunting for specimens. The Countess was an Englishwoman,
daughter of Captain Ramus, half-pay, educated at a convent in Paris,
under the guidance of her maternal aunt, Miss Coghlan, of Letterkenney
in Ireland. Immediately on issuing from the convent she eloped with
Count Della Crusca, whose acquaintance she had made in a casual manner
in the _coupé_ of one of the diligences belonging to Messrs. Lafitte,
Caillard et Cie. A very short time served to prove to them that they
had no tastes in common. Madame la Comtesse did not care for natural
history, which the Count loved, and she did care for England, which the
Count loathed. So he went his way, in pursuit of specimens, and she
went hers to England. She arrived in London, and Marston Moor House
being to let, she took it.
Some of us are yet alive who recollect the little saccharine poems, the
plaintive little sonnets, the--well, yes, to speak the truth--the washy
three-volume novels which were composed in that sturdy old building
and dated thence. Sturdy outside, but lovely within. Such furniture:
white satin and gold, black satin and red trimming; such pictures, and
statues, and busts; such looking-glasses let into the walls at every
conceivable place; such hanging baskets and ormolu clocks, and Dresden
and Sèvres china; such Chinese fans, and Indian screens, and Turkish
yataghans and Malay creeses; such books--at least, such bindings; such
a satinwood desk, at which the Countess penned her inspirations; such a
solemn-sounding library clock, which had belonged to Marie Antoinette;
such lion-skins and leopard-skins for rugs; such despatch-boxes with
the Della Cruscan coronet and cipher; such waste-paper baskets always
littered with proof-sheets! The garden! never was anything seen like
that! It was not much more than half an acre, but Smiff, the great
landscape gardener, made it look more like a square mile. Delightfully
rustic and English here, quaintly Dutch there, Italian terraced a
little lower down, small avenue, vista broken by the fountain; might be
a thousand miles away from London, so everyone said. Everyone said so,
because everyone came there. Who was everyone? Well, the Grand-Duke of
Schweinerei was someone, at all events. Ex-Grand-Duke, I should have
said, recollecting that some years before, the people of Schweinerei,
although by no means a strait-laced people, grew so disgusted at the
"goings-on" of their reigning potentate, that they rose in revolt, and
incontinently kicked him out. Then he came to England, where he has
remained ever since, dwelling in a big house, and occupying his spare
time with fighting newspapers for libelling him in a very blackguard
and un-English manner. His highness is an elderly, short, fat man,
with admirably-fitting wig and whiskers of the Tyrian purple. He has
dull bleary eyes, pendulous cheeks, and a great fat double chin. He
is covered all over with diamonds: his studs are diamonds; he wears
a butterfly diamond brooch on the knot of his white cravat; his
waistcoat-buttons are diamonds; his sleeve-links are diamonds; and he
resembles the old woman of Banbury Cross in having (diamond) rings on
his fingers, and probably, for all the historian knows to the contrary,
on his toes.
Who else came there? A tall, thin, dark man, with a long face like a
sheep's head, a full dull eye, a long nose, a very long upper lip,
arid a retreating chin. Prince Bernadotte of the Lipari Isles, also
an exile, but one who has since been recalled to his kingdom. Nobody
thought much of Prince Bernadotte in those days. He lived in cheap
chambers in London, and used to play billiards with _coiffeurs_ and
_agents de change_ and _commis voyageurs_ from the hotels in Leicester
Square; and who went into a very little English society, where he
always sat silent and reserved, and where they thought very little of
him. He must have been marvellously misunderstood then, or must have
grown into quite a different kind of man when he sat smoking his cigar
with his feet on the fender in the Elysée, and to all inquiries made
but the one reply, "_Qu'on exécute mes orders!_"--those "ordres" being
fulfilled in the massacre of the Boulevards.
Who else? _Savans_, philosophers, barristers, poets, newspaper-writers,
novelists, caricaturists, eminent physicians and surgeons, fiddlers,
foreigners, anybody who had done anything which had given him the
merest temporary notoriety was welcome, so long as he came at the time.
And they never failed to do that. The society was so delightful, the
welcome was so warm, the eating and drinking were so good, that there
was never any chance of an invitation to Marston Moor House being
refused. Thither came Fermez, the opera _impresario_, driving down
a couple of lords in his phaeton; and Tom Gilks, the scene-painter
of Covent Garden, who arrived per omnibus; and Whiston, who had just
written that tremendous pamphlet on the religious controversy of
the day; and Rupert Robinson, who had sat up all the previous night
to finish his burlesque, and who was so enchanted with the personal
appearance of the Grand-Duke of Schweinerei, that he wanted to carry
him off bodily--rings, diamonds, wig, whiskers, and all--to Madame
Tussaud's Exhibition. Dinners and balls, conversazioni and fêtes--with
the garden illuminated with Italian lamps, and supper served in
extemporised pavilions--two royal dukes, in addition to standard
celebrities, and foreign princes in town for the season--without end.
Vain transitory splendour! could not all Retain the tott'ring mansion
from its fall?
Apparently not. One morning the servants at Marston Moor House got
up, to find their mistress had risen before them, or rather had not
been to bed at all, having decamped during the night with the plate
and all the portable valuables, and left an enormous army of creditors
behind her. There was weeping and wailing round the neighbourhood for
months; but tears and outcries did not pay the defrauded tradespeople,
and they never had any money. Nobody ever knew who received the money
realised by the sale of the furniture, &c, though that ought to have
been something considerable, for there never was a sale so tremendously
attended, or at which things fetched such high prices. All the ladies
of high rank who combined frightful stupidity with rigid virtue, and
who would as soon have thought of walking into Tophet as of crossing
Madame Della Crusca's threshold, rushed to Marston Moor House so soon
as its proprietress had fled, and bought eagerly at the sale. The large
looking-glass which formed the back of the alcove in which Madame
Delia Crusca's bed was placed now figures in the boudoir, or, as it
is generally called, the work-room, of the Countess of Textborough,
and is scarcely so happy in its reflections as in former days. The
satinwood desk fell to the nod of Mrs. Quisby, who used to follow the
Queen's hounds in a deep-pink jacket and a short skirt, and who now
holds forth on Sunday afternoons at the infant schools in Badger's
Buildings, Mayfair, and is especially hard on the Scarlet Woman. Many
of the old _habitués_ attended, and bought well-remembered scraps for
_souvenirs_. Finally everything, down to the kitchen pots and pans, the
stable buckets and the gardeners' implements, were cleared off, and a
big painted board frowned in the great courtyard, informing the British
public that that eligible mansion was to let.
Not for long did that black-and-white board blossom in that flinty
soil. Within three weeks of the sale a rumour ran through London
that an _al-fresco_ place of entertainment on a magnificent scale
was about to be opened on what had been the Della-Cruscan property,
and that Wuff, the great Wuff, the most enterprising man of his day,
was at the back of it. Straightway the board was pulled down, and an
army of painters, and decorators, and plumbers, and builders, and
Irish gentlemen in flannel jackets, and Italian gentlemen in slouch
wideawakes and paint-stained gaberdines, took possession of the place.
Big rooms were converted into supper and dining-rooms, and small rooms
into _cabinets particuliers_; a row of supper-boxes on the old Vauxhall
pattern sprang up in the grounds, which, moreover, were tastefully
planted with gas-lamps, with plaster-of-Paris statues, with two or
three sham fountains, and with grottos made of slag and shiny-faced
bricks. Then, on an Easter Monday, the place was opened with a ballet,
with dancing on the circular platform, with Signor Simioso's performing
monkeys, and with a grand display of fireworks. Very good, all this;
but somehow it didn't draw. The great Wuff did all he could; sent an
enormous power of legs into the ballet; engaged the most excruciatingly
funny comic singers, put silver rosettes into the button-holes and
silver-gilt wands into the hands of all the masters of the ceremonies
on the circular platform; and had Guffino il Diavolo flying from the
top of the pasteboard Leaning Tower of Pisa into the canvas Lake of
Geneva, down a wire, with a squib in his cap, and one in each of his
heels--and yet the public would not come. The great Wuff tried it for
two seasons, and then gave it up in despair.
Up went the black-and-white board again; to be taken down at the
bidding of Mrs. Trimmer, who, having a very good boarding-school for
young ladies at Highgate, thought she might increase her connection
by establishing herself in a more eligible neighbourhood. The board
had been up so long, that the proprietor of the house was willing,
not merely to take a reduced rent, but to pull up the gas-lamps, and
pull down the supper-boxes, and restore the garden, not indeed to its
original state of beauty, but to decency and order. The rooms were
repapered (it must be owned that Wuff's taste in decoration had been
loud), and the name of the house changed from Marston Moor to Cornelia.
Then Mrs. Trimmer took possession, and brought her young friends with
her, and they throve and multiplied exceedingly; and all went well
until Mrs. Trimmer died, and there was no one to carry on the business;
and the board went up, and remained up longer than ever.
No one knew exactly when or how the house was taken again. The
proprietor, hoping to get another school-keeper for a tenant, the
house being too large for ordinary domestic purposes, had bought Mrs.
Trimmer's furniture--the iron bedsteads and school fittings--for a
song, and had placed an old woman in charge. One day this old woman put
her luggage, consisting of a blue bundle, and herself into a cab, and
went away. A few carpenters had arrived from town in the morning, and
had occupied themselves in fitting iron bars to the interior of some of
the windows. During the greater portion of that night carriages were
heard rolling up the lane in which the back entrance to the house was
situated, and the next day smoke was seen issuing from the chimneys;
a big brass plate with the name of "Dr. Bulph" was screwed on to the
iron gates of the carriage-drive, and two or three strong-built men
were noticed going in and out of the premises. Gradually it became
known that Dr. Bulph was a physician celebrated for his treatment of
the insane, a "mad-doctor," as the neighbours called him; and women and
children used to skurry past the old red garden-walls as though they
thought the inmates were climbing over to get at them. But the house
was so thoroughly well-conducted, so quietly and with such excellent
discipline, that people soon thought nothing of it, any more than of
any other of the big mansions in the neighbourhood; and when Dr. Bulph
retired, and Dr. Wainwright succeeded him, the door-plate had actually
been changed for some days before the neighbours noticed it.
Dr. Wainwright made many changes in the establishment. He was a man of
great fame for several specialities, and was constantly being called
away to patients in the country. He considerably enlarged the old
house, and brought to it a better and wealthier class of patients, who
were attended, under his supervision, by two resident surgeons. Dr.
Wainwright did not live in the house. In addition to his practice he
worked very hard with his pen, contributing largely to the principal
medical Scientific reviews and journals, and corresponding with
many continental _savans_. For all this work he required solitude
and silence; and, as he was a widower, he was able to enjoy both in
a set of chambers in the Albany, where he could go in and out as
he liked, and where no unwelcome visitor could get at him. He had
consulting-rooms in Grosvenor Square; and when in town, was to be found
there between ten and one; but after those hours it was impossible to
know where to catch him.
But George Wainwright lived at the old house, or rather in an
outbuilding in the grounds, sole remainder of Mr. Wuff's erections;
which had been converted to his use, and which yielded him a large,
high-roofed, roomy studio, and a capital bedroom, both on the ground
floor. The studio was no misnomer for the living-room; for, in addition
to his Civil-Service work, George followed art with deep and earnest
devotion, and was known and recognised as one of the best amateurs of
the day. Men whose names stood very high in the art-world were his
friends; and on winter nights the studio would be filled with members
of that pleasant Bohemian society, discussing their craft and its
members and such cognate subjects. George was a great reader also, and
had a goodly store of books littering the tables or ranged on common
shelves, disputing possession of the walls with choice bits of his
friends' painting or half-finished attempts of his own. In the middle
of the room stood a quaintly-carved old black-oak desk, ink-blotted and
penknife-hacked, with some pages of manuscript and some slips of proof
lying on it--for George, who had been educated in Germany, was in the
habit of contributing essays on abstruse questions of German philosophy
and metaphysics to a monthly review of very portentous weight--and in
the corner was a cabinet piano, covered with loose leaves of music,
scraps from oratorios, _studenten-lieder_, bits of Bach and Glück,
glees of Purcell and Arne, and even ballads by Claribel. Some of
George's painter friends had formed themselves into a singing-club and
sang very sweetly; and the greatest treat that could be offered to
the inmates of the house was these fellows' musical performances. The
young swells of the Stannaries Office wondered why George Wainwright
was never seen at casino, singing and supper-houses, or other of those
resorts which they specially affected. They looked upon him as somewhat
of a fogey, and could not understand what a bright, genial, jolly
fellow like Paul Derinzy could see to like in him. He was kind and
good-natured and all that, they owned, as indeed they had often proved
by loans of "sovs" and "fivers," when the end of the quarter had left
them dry; but he was an uncomfortable sort of chap, they said, and was
always by himself.
He was by himself the evening of the day after that on which he had
seen Paul Derinzy walking with Daisy in Kensington Gardens. He had
had a light dinner at his club, and thence walked straight away
home, where, on his arrival at his den, he had lit a big pipe and
thrown himself into an easy-chair, and sat watching the blue smoke
curling above his head, and pondering over the present and the future
of his friend. George Wainwright had a stronger feeling than mere
liking for Paul; there was a touch of romance in the regard which the
good-looking, bright, easy-going young man had aroused in his steady,
sober, practical senior. George was too much a man of the world to
thrill with horror because he had seen his friend in the company of a
pretty girl, and come across what was evidently a lovers' meeting. But
his knowledge of Paul's character was large and well-founded; in the
mere glance which he had got of the pair as they stood together in the
act of saying adieu, he had caught an expression in his friend's face
which intuitively led him to feel that the woman who could call up such
a look of intense earnest devotion was no mere passing light-o'-love;
and as George thought over the scene, and reproduced it, time after
time, from the storehouse of his memory, he puffed fiercer blasts from
his pipe, and shook his head in an unsettled, not to say desponding
manner.
While he was thus occupied he heard steps on the gravel-walk outside,
then a tap at the door. Opening it, Paul Derinzy stood before him.
"Just the man I was thinking about, and come exactly in the nick of
time! _Alma quies optata, veni!_ Not that you can be called _alma
quies_, you restless bird of the night! What's the matter? what are you
making signs about?" asked George.
"That idiot, Billy Dunlop, is with me," replied Paul, grinning; "he
is doing some of his pantomime nonsense outside;" and, indeed, George
Wainwright, peering out in the darkness, could make out a stout figure
approaching with cautious gestures, which, when it emerged into the
lamplight, proved to be Mr. Dunlop.
"Hallo, Billy! what are you at? Come in, man; light a pipe, and be
happy."
But Mr. Dunlop, true to his character of comic man, did not enter the
room quietly, but came in with a little rush, and then, his knees
knocking together in simulated abject terror, asked:
"Am I safe? Can none of them get at me?"
"None of whom?"
"None of the patients. I was in such a fright coming up that garden, I
could scarcely speak. I thought I saw eyes behind every laurestinus;
and--I suppose the staff of keepers is adequate, in case any of 'em
_should_ prove rampagious?"
"Oh yes, it's all right. Have you never been here before?"
"Never, sir; and I don't think, provided I get safe away this time,
that I'm ever likely to come again."
"You're complimentary; but now you are here, sit down and have a drink.
Spirits there in that stand, soda-water here in the window-seat, ice in
that refrigerator by the door. Or stay, let me make you the new Yankee
drink that has just come up--a cobbler. There are plenty of straws
somewhere about."
"I should think so," said Billy, in a stage-whisper to Paul. "He gets
'em out of the patients' heads. Lunatics always stick straws in their
heads, vide the drama _passim_. I say, Wainwright, while you're mixing
the grog, may I run out and have a look at the night-watch?"
"The what?" asked George, raising his head.
"The night-watch, you know;" and Mr. Dunlop sat down at the piano,
squared his elbows, contorted his face, and with much ludicrous
exaggeration burst forth:
"Hush-sh-sh-sh! 'tis the NIGHT-WATCH!! he gy-ards my lonely cell!
"Now don't you say that he doesn't, you know, because I've Mr. Henry
Russell's authority that he does. So produce your night-watch!"
"Don't make such a row, Billy!" cried Paul; "there's no night-watch, or
anything else of the sort."
"What! do you mean to say that I did not see her dancing in the hall?
that I am not cold, bitter cold? that his glimmering lamp no more I
see? and that no, no, by hav-vens, I am not ma-a-ad?" With these words,
uttered in the wildest tones, Mr. Dunlop cast himself at full length
on the sofa, whence arising immediately with a placid countenance, he
said: "Gentlemen, if you wish thus to uproot and destroy the tenderest
associations of childhood, I shall be happy, when I have finished my
drink, to wish you a good-evening, and return home."
"I can't think what the deuce you came for," said Paul, with a smile.
"He looked in at the club where I was dining, hoping to meet you, and
where I heard you had been and gone, and asked me whether I wasn't
going to evening service. When I told him 'yes,' he said he would come
with me; and all the way along he has done nothing but growl at the
pace I was walking, and the length of the way."
"Don't mind me, Mr. Wainwright," said Billy, politely; "pray let the
gentleman go on. I am not the Stannaries Stag, sir, and I never laid
claim to the title; consequently it's no degradation to me to avow that
I can't keep on heeling and toeing it at the rate of seven miles an
hour for long. As it happens, I have a friend in the neighbourhood, a
fisherman, who has managed to combine a snack-bend with a Kirby hook
in a manner which he assures me--pardon me, dear sirs, those imbecile
grins remind me that I am speaking to men who don't know a stone-fly
from a gentle; that I have been throwing my--I needn't finish the
sentence. I have finished the drink. Mr. Wainwright, have the goodness
to see me off the premises, and, in the words of the distraught
Ophelia--to whom, by-the-way, I daresay your talented father would have
been called in, had he happened to live in Denmark at the time--'let
out the maid who'--goodnight!"
When George Wainwright returned, alone, he found Paul, who had lighted
a cigar, walking up and down the room, his hands plunged in his
pockets, his chin down upon his chest. George went up to him, and
putting his hand affectionately on his shoulder, said:
"What brought you down here to-night, young 'un? The last rats must
have deserted the sinking ship of Fashion and Season when you clear out
of it to come down to Diogenes in his tub. Not but that I'm delighted
to see you; all I want to know is why?"
"I was nervous and restless, George; a little tired of fools and
frippery, and--and myself. I wanted you to blow a little of the ozone
of common sense into me, you know!"
"Oh yes, I know," said George Wainwright; but he uttered the words in
such deep solemn tones that Paul turned upon him suddenly, saying:
"You know? Well, what do you know?"
"I know why you could not play tennis, or come to the Oval, or walk to
Hendon with me yesterday afternoon."
"The deuce you do! And why?"
"For a very sufficient reason to a young fellow of five-and-twenty!"
said George, with a rather melancholy grin. "Look here, Paul; I don't
think you'll imagine I'm a spy, or a meddling, impertinent busybody,
and I'm sure you'll believe it was by the merest accident that I was
crossing Kensington Gardens last evening, and there saw a friend of
mine in deep conversation with a very handsome young lady."
"The deuce you did!" cried Paul, turning very red. "What then?"
"Ah!" said George, filling his pipe, "that's exactly the point--what
then?"
"What a provoking old beggar you are! Why do you echo me? Why don't you
go on?"
"It's for you to go on, my boy! What are your relations--or what are
they to be--with this handsome girl?"
"She is handsome, is she not?"
"Beautiful!"
"'Gad! she must be to strike fire out of an old flint like you,
George!" cried Paul. "What are my relations with her? Strictly proper,
I give you my word."
"And you intend to marry her?"
"How the man jumps at an idea! Well, no; I don't know at all that I
intend that."
"Not the--the other thing, Paul? No; you're, to say the least of it,
too much of a gentleman. You don't intend that."
"I don't intend anything, I tell you. Can't a man talk to a pretty girl
without 'intention'?"
"I don't know, Paul. I'm quite incompetent to pronounce any opinion
on such matters; only--only see here: I look on you as on a younger
brother, and, prompted by my regard for you, I may say many things
which you may dislike."
"Well, say away, old George; you won't offend me."
"Well, then, if this is a good honest girl, and you don't intend to
marry her, you ought not to be meeting her, and walking with her, and
leading her to believe that she will attain to a position through you
which she never would otherwise; and if she isn't an honest girl you
ought never to have spoken to her."
Paul Derinzy laughed, the quiet easy chuckle of a man of the world, as
he replied to his simple senior:
"She _is_ a good, honest girl, no doubt of that. But suppose the
question of marriage had never risen between us, and she still liked
to meet me and to walk with me, what then? In the gravel paths of
Kensington Gardens, Pamela herself might have strolled with Captain
Lovelace himself without fear. Why should not I with--with this young
lady?"
"Because, though you don't know it, you're deceiving yourself and
deceiving her; because the whole thing is incongruous and won't fit,
however you may try to make it do so; because it's wrong, however much
you may slur it over. Look here, Paul; suppose, just for the sake of
argument, that you wanted to marry this girl--you're as weak as water,
and there's no accounting for what you might wish--you know your people
would oppose it in the very strongest way, and----"
"Oh, if I chose it, my 'people,' as you call them, must have it, or
leave it alone, which would be quite immaterial to me."
"Yes, yes, no doubt; but still----"
"Look here, George; let's bring this question to a practical issue.
I'm ten times more a man of the world than you, though you are an old
fogey, and clever and sensible and all that. What you are aiming it is
that I must give up this girl. Well, then, shortly, I won't!"
"And why won't you?"
"For a reason you can't understand, you old mole, burrowed down here
under your paintings, and your fugues, and your dreary old German
philosophers--because I love her; because I think of her from morning
till night, and from night till morning again; because her bright
face and her gay creamy skin come between me and those beastly old
minutes and memoranda that we have to write at the shop; and when I'm
lying awake in Hanover Street, or even sitting surrounded by a lot of
gabbling idiots in the smoking-room of the club, I can see her gray
eyes looking at me, and----"
"Oh Lord!" said George Wainwright, with a piteous smile; "I had no idea
I'd let myself in for this!"
"You have, my dear old George, and for a lot more at a future time.
Just now I came out to you because I was horribly restless, and Billy
fastened himself on to me at the club, and I could not shake him off.
But I want to talk to you about it seriously, George--seriously, you
understand!"
"Whenever you like, Paul; but I expect you'll only get one scrap of
advice out of me, repeated, as I fear, _ad nauseam_."
"And that is?"
"Give her up! give her up! give her up! Cato's powers of iteration in
the _delenda est Carthago_ business will prove weak as compared to mine
in this."
"You'll find me stubborn, George."
"Buffon gives stubbornness as a characteristic of your class, Paul.
Goodnight, old man."
"Goodnight, God bless you! To-morrow as per usual, I suppose?" and he
was gone.
Alone once more, George Wainwright threw himself again into the
easy-chair and renewed his pipe; but he shook his head more than ever,
and when he did speak, it was only to mutter to himself: "Worse than I
thought! Don't see the way out of that. Must look into this, and take
care that Paul does not make a fool of himself."
When the clock struck midnight he rose, yawned, stretched, and seemed
more than half inclined to turn towards his cosy bedroom, which opened
from the studio; but he shook himself together, and saying, "Poor dear,
she would not sleep if I did not say goodnight to her, I suppose!" lit
a lamp, and took his way across the garden to the house.