ADOLPHUS CROSBIE SPENDS AN EVENING AT HIS CLUB.
[ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)]
Crosbie, as he was being driven from the castle to the nearest
station, in a dog-cart hired from the hotel, could not keep himself
from thinking of that other morning, not yet a fortnight past, on
which he had left Allington; and as he thought of it he knew that
he was a villain. On this morning Alexandrina had not come out from
the house to watch his departure, and catch the last glance of his
receding figure. As he had not started very early she had sat with
him at the breakfast-table; but others also had sat there, and when
he got up to go, she did no more than smile softly and give him her
hand. It had been already settled that he was to spend his Christmas
at Courcy; as it had been also settled that he was to spend it at
Allington.
Lady Amelia was, of all the family, the most affectionate to him, and
perhaps of them all she was the one whose affection was worth the
most. She was not a woman endowed with a very high mind or with very
noble feelings. She had begun life trusting to the nobility of her
blood for everything, and declaring somewhat loudly among her friends
that her father's rank and her mother's birth imposed on her the duty
of standing closely by her own order. Nevertheless, at the age of
thirty-three she had married her father's man of business, under
circumstances which were not altogether creditable to her. But she
had done her duty in her new sphere of life with some constancy and a
fixed purpose; and now that her sister was going to marry, as she had
done, a man much below herself in social standing, she was prepared
to do her duty as a sister and a sister-in-law.
"We shall be up in town in November, and of course you'll come to
us at once. Albert Villa, you know, in Hamilton Terrace, St. John's
Wood. We dine at seven, and on Sundays at two; and you'll always find
a place. Mind you come to us, and make yourself quite at home. I do
so hope you and Mortimer will get on well together."
"I'm sure we shall," said Crosbie. But he had had higher hopes in
marrying into this noble family than that of becoming intimate with
Mortimer Gazebee. What those hopes were he could hardly define to
himself now that he had brought himself so near to the fruition of
them. Lady De Courcy had certainly promised to write to her first
cousin who was Under-Secretary of State for India, with reference to
that secretaryship at the General Committee Office; but Crosbie, when
he came to weigh in his mind what good might result to him from this,
was disposed to think that his chance of obtaining the promotion
would be quite as good without the interest of the Under-Secretary of
State for India as with it. Now that he belonged, as we may say, to
this noble family, he could hardly discern what were the advantages
which he had expected from this alliance. He had said to himself that
it would be much to have a countess for a mother-in-law; but now,
even already, although the possession to which he had looked was not
yet garnered, he was beginning to tell himself that the thing was not
worth possessing.
As he sat in the train, with a newspaper in his hand, he went on
acknowledging to himself that he was a villain. Lady Julia had spoken
the truth to him on the stairs at Courcy, and so he confessed over
and over again. But he was chiefly angry with himself for this,--that
he had been a villain without gaining anything by his villany; that
he had been a villain, and was to lose so much by his villany. He
made comparison between Lily and Alexandrina, and owned to himself,
over and over again, that Lily would make the best wife that a man
could take to his bosom. As to Alexandrina, he knew the thinness of
her character. She would stick by him, no doubt; and in a circuitous,
discontented, unhappy way, would probably be true to her duties as
a wife and mother. She would be nearly such another as Lady Amelia
Gazebee. But was that a prize sufficiently rich to make him contented
with his own prowess and skill in winning it? And was that a prize
sufficiently rich to justify him to himself for his terrible villany?
Lily Dale he had loved; and he now declared to himself that he could
have continued to love her through his whole life. But what was there
for any man to love in Alexandrina De Courcy?
While resolving, during his first four or five days at the castle,
that he would throw Lily Dale overboard, he had contrived to quiet
his conscience by inward allusions to sundry heroes of romance. He
had thought of Lothario, Don Juan, and of Lovelace; and had told
himself that the world had ever been full of such heroes. And the
world, too, had treated such heroes well; not punishing them at all
as villains, but caressing them rather, and calling them curled
darlings. Why should not he be a curled darling as well as another?
Ladies had ever been fond of the Don Juan character, and Don Juan had
generally been popular with men also. And then he named to himself a
dozen modern Lotharios,--men who were holding their heads well above
water, although it was known that they had played this lady false,
and brought that other one to death's door, or perhaps even to death
itself. War and love were alike, and the world was prepared to
forgive any guile to militants in either camp.
But now that he had done the deed he found himself forced to look
at it from quite another point of view. Suddenly that character of
Lothario showed itself to him in a different light, and one in which
it did not please him to look at it as belonging to himself. He began
to feel that it would be almost impossible for him to write that
letter to Lily, which it was absolutely necessary that he should
write. He was in a position in which his mind would almost turn
itself to thoughts of self-destruction as the only means of escape. A
fortnight ago he was a happy man, having everything before him that a
man ought to want; and now--now that he was the accepted son-in-law
of an earl, and the confident expectant of high promotion--he was the
most miserable, degraded wretch in the world!
He changed his clothes at his lodgings in Mount Street and went down
to his club to dinner. He could, at any rate, do nothing that night.
His letter to Allington must, no doubt, be written at once; but, as
he could not send it before the next night's post, he was not forced
to set to work upon it that evening. As he walked along Piccadilly
on his way to St. James's Square, it occurred to him that it might
be well to write a short line to Lily, telling her nothing of the
truth,--a note written as though his engagement with her was still
unbroken, but yet written with care, saying nothing about that
engagement, so as to give him a little time. Then he thought that he
would telegraph to Bernard and tell everything to him. Bernard would,
of course, be prepared to avenge his cousin in some way, but for such
vengeance Crosbie felt that he should care little. Lady Julia had
told him that Lily was without father or brother, thereby accusing
him of the basest cowardice. "I wish she had a dozen brothers," he
said to himself. But he hardly knew why he expressed such a wish.
He returned to London on the last day of October, and he found the
streets at the West End nearly deserted. He thought, therefore, that
he should be quite alone at his club, but as he entered the dinner
room he saw one of his oldest and most intimate friends standing
before the fire. Fowler Pratt was the man who had first brought him
into Sebright's, and had given him almost his earliest start on his
successful career in life. Since that time he and his friend Fowler
Pratt had lived in close communion, though Pratt had always held a
certain ascendancy in their friendship. He was in age a few years
senior to Crosbie, and was in truth a man of better parts. But he
was less ambitious, less desirous of shining in the world, and much
less popular with men in general. He was possessed of a moderate
private fortune on which he lived in a quiet, modest manner, and was
unmarried, not likely to marry, inoffensive, useless, and prudent.
For the first few years of Crosbie's life in London he had lived very
much with his friend Pratt, and had been accustomed to depend much
on his friend's counsel; but latterly, since he had himself become
somewhat noticeable, he had found more pleasure in the society of
such men as Dale, who were not his superiors either in age or wisdom.
But there had been no coolness between him and Pratt, and now they
met with perfect cordiality.
"I thought you were down in Barsetshire," said Pratt.
"And I thought you were in Switzerland."
"I have been in Switzerland," said Pratt.
"And I have been in Barsetshire," said Crosbie. Then they ordered
their dinner together.
"And so you're going to be married?" said Pratt, when the waiter had
carried away the cheese.
"Who told you that?"
"Well, but you are? Never mind who told me, if I was told the truth."
"But if it be not true?"
"I have heard it for the last month," said Pratt, "and it has been
spoken of as a thing certain; and it is true; is it not?"
"I believe it is," said Crosbie, slowly.
"Why, what on earth is the matter with you, that you speak of it in
that way? Am I to congratulate you, or am I not? The lady, I'm told,
is a cousin of Dale's."
Crosbie had turned his chair from the table round to the fire, and
said nothing in answer to this. He sat with his glass of sherry in
his hand, looking at the coals, and thinking whether it would not be
well that he should tell the whole story to Pratt. No one could give
him better advice; and no one, as far as he knew his friend, would
be less shocked at the telling of such a story. Pratt had no romance
about women, and had never pretended to very high sentiments.
"Come up into the smoking-room and I'll tell you all about it," said
Crosbie. So they went off together, and, as the smoking-room was
untenanted, Crosbie was able to tell his story.
He found it very hard to tell;--much harder than he had beforehand
fancied. "I have got into terrible trouble," he began by saying. Then
he told how he had fallen suddenly in love with Lily, how he had been
rash and imprudent, how nice she was--"infinitely too good for such a
man as I am," he said;--how she had accepted him, and then how he had
repented. "I should have told you beforehand," he then said, "that I
was already half engaged to Lady Alexandrina De Courcy." The reader,
however, will understand that this half-engagement was a fiction.
"And now you mean that you are altogether engaged to her?"
"Exactly so."
"And that Miss Dale must be told that, on second thoughts, you have
changed your mind?"
"I know that I have behaved very badly," said Crosbie.
"Indeed you have," said his friend.
"It is one of those troubles in which a man finds himself involved
almost before he knows where he is."
"Well; I can't look at it exactly in that light. A man may amuse
himself with a girl, and I can understand his disappointing her and
not offering to marry her,--though even that sort of thing isn't much
to my taste. But, by George, to make an offer of marriage to such
a girl as that in September, to live for a month in her family as
her affianced husband, and then coolly go away to another house in
October, and make an offer to another girl of higher rank--"
"You know very well that that has had nothing to do with it."
"It looks very like it. And how are you going to communicate these
tidings to Miss Dale?"
"I don't know," said Crosbie, who was beginning to be very sore.
"And you have quite made up your mind that you'll stick to the earl's
daughter?"
The idea of jilting Alexandrina instead of Lily had never as yet
presented itself to Crosbie, and now, as he thought of it, he could
not perceive that it was feasible.
"Yes," he said, "I shall marry Lady Alexandrina;--that is, if I do
not cut the whole concern, and my own throat into the bargain."
"If I were in your shoes I think I should cut the whole concern. I
could not stand it. What do you mean to say to Miss Dale's uncle?"
"I don't care a ---- for Miss Dale's uncle," said Crosbie. "If he
were to walk in at that door this moment, I would tell him the whole
story, without--"
As he was yet speaking, one of the club servants opened the door of
the smoking-room, and seeing Crosbie seated in a lounging-chair near
the fire, went up to him with a gentleman's card. Crosbie took the
card and read the name. "Mr. Dale, Allington."
"The gentleman is in the waiting-room," said the servant.
Crosbie for the moment was struck dumb. He had declared that very
moment that he should feel no personal disinclination to meet Mr.
Dale, and now that gentleman was within the walls of the club,
waiting to see him!
"Who's that?" asked Pratt. And then Crosbie handed him the card.
"Whew-w-w-hew," whistled Pratt.
"Did you tell the gentleman I was here?" asked Crosbie.
"I said I thought you were upstairs, sir."
"That will do," said Pratt. "The gentleman will no doubt wait for a
minute." And then the servant went out of the room. "Now, Crosbie,
you must make up your mind. By one of these women and all her friends
you will ever be regarded as a rascal, and they of course will look
out to punish you with such punishment as may come to their hands.
You must now choose which shall be the sufferer."
The man was a coward at heart. The reflection that he might, even
now, at this moment, meet the old squire on pleasant terms,--or at
any rate not on terms of defiance, pleaded more strongly in Lily's
favour than had any other argument since Crosbie had first made up
his mind to abandon her. He did not fear personal ill-usage;--he was
not afraid lest he should be kicked or beaten; but he did not dare to
face the just anger of the angry man.
"If I were you," said Pratt, "I would not go down to that man at the
present moment for a trifle."
"But what can I do?"
"Shirk away out of the club. Only if you do that it seems to me that
you'll have to go on shirking for the rest of your life."
"Pratt, I must say that I expected something more like friendship
from you."
"What can I do for you? There are positions in which it is impossible
to help a man. I tell you plainly that you have behaved very badly. I
do not see that I can help you."
"Would you see him?"
"Certainly not, if I am to be expected to take your part."
"Take any part you like,--only tell him the truth."
"And what is the truth?"
"I was part engaged to that other girl before; and then, when I came
to think of it, I knew that I was not fit to marry Miss Dale. I know
I have behaved badly; but, Pratt, thousands have done the same thing
before."
"I can only say that I have not been so unfortunate as to reckon any
of those thousands among my friends."
"You mean to tell me, then, that you are going to turn your back on
me?" said Crosbie.
"I haven't said anything of the kind. I certainly won't undertake to
defend you, for I don't see that your conduct admits of defence. I
will see this gentleman if you wish it, and tell him anything that
you may desire me to tell him."
At this moment the servant returned with a note for Crosbie. Mr. Dale
had called for paper and envelope, and sent up to him the following
missive:--"Do you intend to come down to me? I know that you are in
the house." "For heaven's sake go to him," said Crosbie. "He is well
aware that I was deceived about his niece,--that I thought he was
to give her some fortune. He knows all about that, and that when I
learned from him that she was to have nothing--"
"Upon my word, Crosbie, I wish you could find another messenger."
"Ah! you do not understand," said Crosbie in his agony. "You think
that I am inventing this plea about her fortune now. It isn't so. He
will understand. We have talked all this over before, and he knew
how terribly I was disappointed. Shall I wait for you here, or will
you come to my lodgings? Or I will go down to the Beaufort, and will
wait for you there." And it was finally arranged that he should get
himself out of this club and wait at the other for Pratt's report of
the interview.
"Do you go down first," said Crosbie.
"Yes: I had better," said Pratt. "Otherwise you may be seen. Mr. Dale
would have his eye upon you, and there would be a row in the house."
There was a smile of sarcasm on Pratt's face as he spoke which
angered Crosbie even in his misery, and made him long to tell his
friend that he would not trouble him with this mission,--that he
would manage his own affairs himself; but he was weakened and
mentally humiliated by the sense of his own rascality, and had
already lost the power of asserting himself, and of maintaining his
ascendancy. He was beginning to recognize the fact that he had done
that for which he must endure to be kicked, to be kicked morally if
not materially; and that it was no longer possible for him to hold
his head up without shame.
Pratt took Mr. Dale's note in his hand and went down into the
stranger's room. There he found the squire standing, so that he could
see through the open door of the room to the foot of the stairs down
which Crosbie must descend before he could leave the club. As a
measure of first precaution the ambassador closed the door; then he
bowed to Mr. Dale, and asked him if he would take a chair.
"I wanted to see Mr. Crosbie," said the squire.
"I have your note to that gentleman in my hand," said he. "He has
thought it better that you should have this interview with me;--and
under all the circumstances perhaps it is better."
"Is he such a coward that he dare not see me?"
"There are some actions, Mr. Dale, that will make a coward of any
man. My friend Crosbie is, I take it, brave enough in the ordinary
sense of the word, but he has injured you."
"It is all true, then?"
"Yes, Mr. Dale; I fear it is all true."
"And you call that man your friend! Mr.--; I don't know what your
name is."
"Pratt;--Fowler Pratt. I have known Crosbie for fourteen years,--ever
since he was a boy; and it is not my way, Mr. Dale, to throw over an
old friend under any circumstances."
"Not if he committed a murder."
"No; not though he committed a murder."
"If what I hear is true, this man is worse than a murderer."
"Of course, Mr. Dale, I cannot know what you have heard. I believe
that Mr. Crosbie has behaved very badly to your niece, Miss Dale; I
believe that he was engaged to marry her, or, at any rate, that some
such proposition had been made."
"Proposition! Why, sir, it was a thing so completely understood that
everybody knew it in the county. It was so positively fixed that
there was no secret about it. Upon my honour, Mr. Pratt, I can't as
yet understand it. If I remember right, it's not a fortnight since
he left my house at Allington,--not a fortnight. And that poor girl
was with him on the morning of his going as his betrothed bride.
Not a fortnight since! And now I've had a letter from an old family
friend telling me that he is going to marry one of Lord De Courcy's
daughters! I went instantly off to Courcy, and found that he had
started for London. Now, I have followed him here; and you tell me
it's all true."
"I am afraid it is, Mr. Dale; too true."
"I don't understand it; I don't, indeed. I cannot bring myself to
believe that the man who was sitting the other day at my table should
be so great a scoundrel. Did he mean it all the time that he was
there?"
"No; certainly not. Lady Alexandrina De Courcy was, I believe, an old
friend of his;--with whom, perhaps, he had had some lover's quarrel.
On his going to Courcy they made it up; and this is the result."
"And that is to be sufficient for my poor girl?"
"You will, of course, understand that I am not defending Mr. Crosbie.
The whole affair is very sad,--very sad, indeed. I can only say, in
his excuse, that he is not the first man who has behaved badly to a
lady."
"And that is his message to me, is it? And that is what I am to tell
my niece? You have been deceived by a scoundrel. But what then? You
are not the first! Mr. Pratt, I give you my word as a gentleman, I do
not understand it. I have lived a good deal out of the world, and am,
therefore, perhaps, more astonished than I ought to be."
"Mr. Dale, I feel for you--"
"Feel for me! What is to become of my girl? And do you suppose that
I will let this other marriage go on; that I will not tell the
De Courcys, and all the world at large, what sort of a man this
is;--that I will not get at him to punish him? Does he think that I
will put up with this?"
"I do not know what he thinks; I must only beg that you will not mix
me up in the matter--as though I were a participator in his offence."
"Will you tell him from me that I desire to see him?"
"I do not think that that would do any good."
"Never mind, sir; you have brought me his message; will you have the
goodness now to take back mine to him?"
"Do you mean at once--this evening,--now?"
"Yes, at once--this evening,--now;--this minute."
"Ah; he has left the club; he is not here now; he went when I came to
you."
"Then he is a coward as well as a scoundrel." In answer to which
assertion, Mr. Fowler Pratt merely shrugged his shoulders.
"He is a coward as well as a scoundrel. Will you have the kindness to
tell your friend from me that he is a coward and a scoundrel,--and a
liar, sir."
"If it be so, Miss Dale is well quit of her engagement."
"That is your consolation, is it? That may be all very well
now-a-days; but when I was a young man, I would sooner have burnt out
my tongue than have spoken in such a way on such a subject. I would,
indeed. Good-night, Mr. Pratt. Pray make your friend understand that
he has not yet seen the last of the Dales; although, as you hint, the
ladies of that family will no doubt have learned that he is not fit
to associate with them." Then, taking up his hat, the squire made his
way out of the club.
"I would not have done it," said Pratt to himself, "for all the
beauty, and all the wealth, and all the rank that ever were owned by
a woman."