THE ROAD TO RUIN.
Maude Tredethlyn took her new life very pleasantly. Her father was
happy. There had been a reaction in the City; things were going very
well for the Australian merchant; and Francis Tredethlyn was receiving
handsome interest for his thirty thousand pounds.
He brought these tidings to his wife’s boudoir one morning early in the
new year.
“I knew you’d be glad to hear it, Maude,” he said; “and now you see that
it _was_ a very fine thing for me to get into your father’s business. So
you need not have been uneasy about the matter, my darling.”
Mrs. Tredethlyn lifted herself upon tiptoe, and pursed up the rosiest
lips in Christendom. A kiss, transient as the passing flutter of a
butterfly’s wing, alighted somewhere amid the thickets of the
Cornishman’s beard.
“You dear, good old Francis! That is the pleasantest news I ever heard,
except----”
“Except what, darling?”
“The news that papa brought me home a year ago, when a generous friend
stepped in between him and ruin.”
Francis Tredethlyn blushed like a schoolgirl.
“Oh, Frank, if I should ever forget that day!” said Maude, in a low
voice, that had something of sadness in its tone.
Was she thinking that there had been occasions since her marriage when
she _had_ almost forgotten how much she owed to the devotion of her
lover,--occasions on which some little social failure--some small
omission or commission--some petty sin against the laws of the
Belgravians and Tyburnians, had been large enough to blot out all memory
of her husband’s goodness? How can you remember that a man has a noble
heart, when, for want of the ordinary tact by which the well-bred
navigators steer their barks amid the troubled waters of society, he
blurts out some unlucky allusion which paralyzes the conversational
powers of an entire dinner-table, and brings blight and ruin down upon
an assemblage which has fairly promised to be a success? Or how can you
be expected to appreciate the generous spirit of a being whose ungainly
elbow has just tilted half-a-dozen _petites timbales de gibier_ into the
ruby-velvet lap of your most important guest?
There were times when Maude was forgetful of everything except her
husband’s genial good-nature and unfailing devotion. There were other
times when her heart sank within her as she saw his candid face beaming
at her from the remote end of a long dinner-table, and heard his
sonorous laugh pealing loud and long above the hushed accents of
Belgravia.
He was her slave. If she loved him--and surely it was impossible that
she could accept so much idolatry, and render no small tribute of
affection in return--her love for him was pretty much of the same
quality as that which she bestowed on her favourite Skye terrier.
He was such a dear, devoted creature--so sensible, so obedient; and if
he did not quite stand up in a corner to beg, with a bit of bread upon
his nose, it was only because he was not required to do so. He was the
best of creatures--a big, amiable Newfoundland, ready to lie down in the
dirt to be trodden upon by his mistress’s pretty slipper, or to fly at
the throat of the foe who dared to assail her. He was a faithful slave
and defender, and it was very pleasant to know that he was always at
hand--to be patted on the head now and then when he was specially
good--to be a little neglected when his mistress was absorbed by the
agreeable distractions of society--to be blushed for, and even disowned
now and then, when his big awkward paws went ruthlessly trampling upon
some of the choicest flowers in the conventional flower-garden.
He was her slave--her own. He loved her with an idolatrous devotion
which she could rarely think of without smiling at his exaggerated
estimate of her charms and graces. He was hers--so entirely that no
possibility of losing him ever entered into her mind. He was hers, and
we are apt to be just a little indifferent about the possessions we hold
most securely. It had become a matter of course that her husband should
scatter all the treasures of his affection at her feet, and hold himself
richly repaid by any waif or stray of tenderness she might choose to
bestow upon him. She had no uneasiness about him,--none of those sharp
twinges of jealousy--those chilling pangs of doubt--those foolish and
morbid fears, which are apt to disturb the peace of even the happiest
wife. She knew that he had loved her from the very hour of their first
meeting, against his will, in despite of his better reason. She knew
that he had been content to stand afar and worship her in utter
hopelessness; and having now rewarded his fidelity, she fancied that she
had no more to do, except to receive his idolatry, and smile upon him
now and then when it pleased her to be gracious.
There was neither pride nor presumption in her nature; but she had lived
all her life in one narrow circle, and she could not help being
unconsciously patronizing in her treatment of the man who had taken her
Majesty’s shilling, and blacked Harcourt Lowther’s boots.
Francis Tredethlyn might perhaps have been entirely satisfied by
brightly patronizing smiles, and gentle pattings on the head, if he had
not been blessed with a friend and adviser, always at his elbow, always
ready to step in with an intellectual lantern held gracefully aloft, and
a mocking finger pointed, when the simple Cornishman’s perception failed
to show him the uncomfortable side of the subject.
“What a darling she is!” exclaimed Mr. Tredethlyn, as he left the house
with Harcourt Lowther, after Maude had parted from him on the staircase
all in a flutter of silk and lace, and with a feathery bush of golden
hair framed in the last Parisian absurdity in the way of bonnets.
“Mrs. Tredethlyn is just the sort of wife for a man of the world,”
Harcourt answered, with a slight shrug of his well-shaped shoulders.
“But I can’t help fancying sometimes that you’re too good a fellow to be
thrown away upon the loveliest creature who ever isolated herself from
the rest of the human race in the remote centre of a continent of moiré
antique. Of course I can’t for a moment deny that you are the most
fortunate of created beings--but--there is always a ‘but,’ you know,
even if one has a beautiful wife and thirty thousand a year. I suppose
it is the habit of my mind to quarrel with perfection. I think if I were
a fresh-hearted, simple-minded fellow like you, Tredethlyn, I should
yearn for something nearer and dearer to me than a fashionable wife.”
The finger of Mephistopheles, always pointing, generally contrived to
touch a sore place. Francis Tredethlyn, even when he had been happiest
in the sunlight of Maude’s smiles, had felt a vague sense of that one
bitter truth. She was no nearer to him than of old. The impassable gulf
still yawned between them, not to be bridged over by pretty little
courtesies or patronizing smiles.
But in spite of all inward misgivings, Mr. Tredethlyn turned upon his
friend, and hotly denied the truth of that gentleman’s observations.
Harcourt Lowther was quite resigned to a little fiery contradiction of
this kind. The arrow went home to the mark it had been shot at, and
rankled there. Such discussions were very frequent between the two men;
and however firmly Francis might argue with his friend in the daytime,
he was apt to lie awake in the dead of the night, like false cousin Amy
in the poem, when the rain was pattering on the roofs of the palatial
district, and wonder, with a dull, aching pain in his heart, whether
Harcourt Lowther was right after all; and Maude--sunny-haired,
beautiful, frivolous Maude--would never be any nearer and dearer to him
than she was now.
In the meantime, Mr. Lowther, who sowed the seeds of the disease, was
always ready with the remedy; and the remedy was--dissipation.
Harcourt Lowther, in whose few years of legal study had been crammed the
vicious experiences of a lifetime, was eager to perform the promise he
had made to Francis Tredethlyn some two years before, when the young man
first received the tidings of his uncle Oliver’s bequest.
“I told you I’d show you life, dear boy,” he said; “and I mean to keep
my word. While Mrs. Tredethlyn amuses herself with the usual social
treadmill business--perpetually moving on, and never getting any
farther--you and I will see a world in which life is worth living.”
Thus it was that Francis Tredethlyn was lured away from a home in which
he was taught to believe himself unappreciated, and introduced for the
first time within the unholy precincts of the kingdom of Bohemia.
He entered the mysterious regions at first very reluctantly. He had the
ignorant rustic’s notion of Vice, and fancied that she would show
herself in naked hideousness; but he found her with her natural face
hidden under a plaster mask modelled from the fair countenance of
Virtue. It was something of a caricature, perhaps; for all imitations
are so apt to become exaggerations. He found that Bohemia was a kind of
Belgravia in electro-plate. There were the same dresses and properties,
only a little tarnished and faded; the same effects, always considerably
overdone; the same jargon, but louder and coarser. Life in Bohemia
seemed like a Transpontine version of a West-end drama, with cheaper
scenery and actors, and a more uproarious audience.
This was the kingdom with whose inner mysteries Harcourt Lowther
affected a fashionable familiarity. He presented his wealthy friend to
the potentates of the kingdom, and carried him hither and thither to
worship at numerous temples, whose distinguishing features were the
flare of gas-lamps, and the popping of champagne corks, branded with the
obscurest names in the catalogue of wine-growers, and paid for at the
highest rate known in the London market.
Perhaps in all his wanderings in the darksome wilderness which his
Mentor called London life, Francis Tredethlyn’s worst sin was the
perpetual “standing” of spurious sparkling wines, and the waste of a
good deal of money lost at unlimited loo, or blind hookey, as the case
might be. He had high animal spirits and thirty thousand a year, which
common report exaggerated into sixty thousand, and which the more
imaginative denizens of Bohemia multiplied into fabulous and
incalculable riches; so that he met with a very cordial welcome from the
magnates of the land. But the descent of Avernus, however easy it may
be, is a gradual slope, and not a precipitous mountain-side, down which
a man can be flung headlong by one push from a friendly hand. Francis
Tredethlyn yawned in the faces of the brightest stars in the Bohemian
hemisphere. His frank nature revolted against the shallow falsehoods
around and about him. The glare of the gas seemed to have no brilliancy:
the bloom upon the women’s faces was only so much vermilion and
crimson-lake bought at the perfumer’s shop, and ghastly to look at in a
sidelight. The laughter had the false ring of spurious coin; the music
was out of tune. In all this little world there was no element of
spontaneity; except perhaps in the uproarious gaiety of some boyish
country squire making a railroad journey through some fine old property
that had been kept sacred and unbroken for half-a-dozen centuries, to be
squandered on a handful of pearls to melt in Cleopatra’s wine, or
expended on the soaps and perfumeries of a modern Lamia.
There was neither bloom nor freshness on anything except on the wings of
a few pigeons newly lured into the haunts of the vulture tribe.
Everything else was false, and withered, and faded. The smiles of the
women, the friendship of the men, were as spurious as the rhubarb
champagnes and gooseberry Moselles, and were bought and sold like them.
Mephistopheles may lead his pupil to the Brocken, but he cannot compel
the young man to enjoy himself amongst the wicked revellers; nor can he
altogether prevent the neophyte from perceiving such small
_inconvenances_ as occasional red mice hopping out of the mouths of
otherwise charming young damsels.
Harcourt Lowther found it very hard work to keep Francis Tredethlyn
amused, night after night, in remote and unapproachable regions, whose
very names were only to be spoken in hushed accents over the fourth
bottle of Chambertin or Clos Vougeot at a bachelor’s dessert. Poor Frank
would rather have been dancing attendance upon his wife, and trampling
on the silken trains of stern matrons and dowagers at the dullest
“Wednesday,” or “Tuesday,” or “Saturday,” in all the stuccoed mansions
in which Maude’s pretty face and pleasant manners, and his own good old
Cornish name and comfortable income, had secured his footing. He was
very good-natured, and did not care how much bad wine he was called upon
to pay for. He could lose a heavy sum at blind hookey without the
faintest contraction of his black eyebrows, or the smallest depression
of his lower jaw. But he did not enjoy himself.
He did not enjoy himself--and yet somehow or other he went again and
again to the same temples, always under convoy of his friend Harcourt,
and generally very firmly resolved that each visit should be the last.
But there was always some special reason for another visit--an
appointment with some elegant acquaintance of the vulture tribe, who
wanted his revenge at blind hookey; or a little dinner to be given at
the Star and Garter, in honour of some beautiful Free-Lance, whose chief
fascinations were the smoking of tissue-paper cigarettes and a vivacious
disregard of Lindley Murray. There was always some engagement of this
kind; and as it happened somehow that Francis Tredethlyn generally found
himself pledged to act as paymaster, it would of course have been very
unmanly to draw back. If he could have sent his friend Lowther and a
blank cheque as a substitute for his own presence, he would gladly have
done so; but his friend Lowther took care to make that impossible. So
the matter always ended by Mr. Tredethlyn finding himself, at some time
on the wrong side of midnight seated at the head of a glittering
dinner-table; with the ruins of an expensive dessert and the faces of
his guests only dimly visible athwart a thick and stifling vapour of
cigar smoke; while the clamour of strident laughter mingled with the
occasional chinking and clattering of glass, as some applauding hand
thumped its owner’s approval of the florid sentiments in an eloquent
postprandial oration.
It is impossible to be perpetually paying for sparkling wines without
occasionally drinking a little too freely of their bubbling vintage.
Francis Tredethlyn, under the influence of unlimited Moet or Clicquot,
found the Bohemians a much pleasanter kind of people than when he
contemplated them in the cold grey morning light of sobriety. Harcourt
Lowther took care that his friend should pretty generally look at things
through a rose-tinted medium engendered of the juice of the grape; for
he found that it was by this means alone that he could retain his hold
upon his pupil.
Go where he might, the Cornishman carried his wife’s image in his heart,
and he would have left the most brilliant assemblage in Bohemia for a
quiet _tête-à-tête_ in Maude’s boudoir; if his friend Harcourt had not
carefully impressed upon him that his entrance into that pretty little
chamber was an intrusion only tolerated by Mrs. Tredethlyn’s good
nature.
There is no need to enter very minutely upon the details of the work
which Harcourt Lowther was doing. The art of ruining a well-disposed
young man is not a very difficult one; but Mr. Lowther had reduced the
art into a science. His great effects were not the sublime hazards of
genius, but the calculated results of a carefully studied process. So
many nights in a tainted atmosphere; so many Richmond and Greenwich
dinners; so many subtle insinuations of Maude’s indifference, must
produce such and such an effect. Mr. Lowther displayed none of that
impolitic and vulgar haste with which a meaner man might ruin his
friend. He never hurried his work by so much as a single step taken
before its time. But he never wavered, or relented, or turned aside even
for one moment from the course which he had mapped out for himself. So,
in the course of that London season, it became quite a common thing for
a street hansom to bring Mr. Tredethlyn to the gigantic stuccoed mansion
which he called his own in the early sunlight of a spring morning. There
were even times when the returning wanderer found it no easy matter to
open a door with a patent latch-key, which _would_ go meandering
hopelessly over the panel of the door, scratching all manner of
eccentric circles and parabolas on the varnish, instead of finding its
way into the key-hole. There was one awful night, on which Maude, coming
home from some very late assembly, was stumbled against by a tipsy man
who was groping his way up the great stone staircase, and found, to her
unutterable horror, that the tipsy man--who apologized profusely for
tearing half-a-dozen yards of Mechlin from the hem of her skirt,
declaring that he was “ver’ sorr’, ’pon m’ wor’; b’t y’ see, m’ dea’
Maurr, if y’ w’ll wear dress s’ long, mussn’ be s’prise get torr t’
piecess”--was her husband.
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