CHAPTER III.

THE BEARGARDEN.

Lady Carbury's house in Welbeck Street was a modest house

enough,--with no pretensions to be a mansion, hardly assuming even

to be a residence; but, having some money in her hands when she

first took it, she had made it pretty and pleasant, and was still

proud to feel that in spite of the hardness of her position she had

comfortable belongings around her when her literary friends came to

see her on her Tuesday evenings. Here she was now living with her son

and daughter. The back drawing-room was divided from the front by

doors that were permanently closed, and in this she carried on her

great work. Here she wrote her books and contrived her system for the

inveigling of editors and critics. Here she was rarely disturbed by

her daughter, and admitted no visitors except editors and critics.

But her son was controlled by no household laws, and would break

in upon her privacy without remorse. She had hardly finished two

galloping notes after completing her letter to Mr. Ferdinand Alf,

when Felix entered the room with a cigar in his mouth and threw

himself upon the sofa.

"My dear boy," she said, "pray leave your tobacco below when you come

in here."

"What affectation it is, mother," he said, throwing, however, the

half-smoked cigar into the fire-place. "Some women swear they like

smoke, others say they hate it like the devil. It depends altogether

on whether they wish to flatter or snub a fellow."

"You don't suppose that I wish to snub you?"

"Upon my word I don't know. I wonder whether you can let me have

twenty pounds?"

"My dear Felix!"

"Just so, mother;--but how about the twenty pounds?"

[Illustration: "Just so, mother;--but how about the twenty

pounds?"]

"What is it for, Felix?"

"Well;--to tell the truth, to carry on the game for the nonce till

something is settled. A fellow can't live without some money in his

pocket. I do with as little as most fellows. I pay for nothing that

I can help. I even get my hair cut on credit, and as long as it was

possible I had a brougham, to save cabs."

"What is to be the end of it, Felix?"

"I never could see the end of anything, mother. I never could nurse

a horse when the hounds were going well in order to be in at the

finish. I never could pass a dish that I liked in favour of those

that were to follow. What's the use?" The young man did not say

"carpe diem," but that was the philosophy which he intended to

preach.

"Have you been at the Melmottes' to-day?" It was now five o'clock on

a winter afternoon, the hour at which ladies are drinking tea, and

idle men playing whist at the clubs,--at which young idle men are

sometimes allowed to flirt, and at which, as Lady Carbury thought,

her son might have been paying his court to Marie Melmotte the great

heiress.

"I have just come away."

"And what do you think of her?"

"To tell the truth, mother, I have thought very little about her.

She is not pretty, she is not plain; she is not clever, she is not

stupid; she is neither saint nor sinner."

"The more likely to make a good wife."

"Perhaps so. I am at any rate quite willing to believe that as wife

she would be 'good enough for me.'"

"What does the mother say?"

"The mother is a caution. I cannot help speculating whether, if I

marry the daughter, I shall ever find out where the mother came from.

Dolly Longestaffe says that somebody says that she was a Bohemian

Jewess; but I think she's too fat for that."

"What does it matter, Felix?"

"Not in the least."

"Is she civil to you?"

"Yes, civil enough."

"And the father?"

"Well, he does not turn me out, or anything of that sort. Of course

there are half-a-dozen after her, and I think the old fellow is

bewildered among them all. He's thinking more of getting dukes to

dine with him than of his daughter's lovers. Any fellow might pick

her up who happened to hit her fancy."

"And why not you?"

"Why not, mother? I am doing my best, and it's no good flogging a

willing horse. Can you let me have the money?"

"Oh, Felix, I think you hardly know how poor we are. You have still

got your hunters down at the place!"

"I have got two horses, if you mean that; and I haven't paid a

shilling for their keep since the season began. Look here, mother;

this is a risky sort of game, I grant, but I am playing it by your

advice. If I can marry Miss Melmotte, I suppose all will be right.

But I don't think the way to get her would be to throw up everything

and let all the world know that I haven't got a copper. To do that

kind of thing a man must live a little up to the mark. I've brought

my hunting down to a minimum, but if I gave it up altogether there

would be lots of fellows to tell them in Grosvenor Square why I had

done so."

There was an apparent truth in this argument which the poor woman was

unable to answer. Before the interview was over the money demanded

was forthcoming, though at the time it could be but ill afforded, and

the youth went away apparently with a light heart, hardly listening

to his mother's entreaties that the affair with Marie Melmotte might,

if possible, be brought to a speedy conclusion.

Felix, when he left his mother, went down to the only club to which

he now belonged. Clubs are pleasant resorts in all respects but one.

They require ready money, or even worse than that in respect to

annual payments,--money in advance; and the young baronet had been

absolutely forced to restrict himself. He, as a matter of course, out

of those to which he had possessed the right of entrance, chose the

worst. It was called the Beargarden, and had been lately opened with

the express view of combining parsimony with profligacy. Clubs were

ruined, so said certain young parsimonious profligates, by providing

comforts for old fogies who paid little or nothing but their

subscriptions, and took out by their mere presence three times as

much as they gave. This club was not to be opened till three o'clock

in the afternoon, before which hour the promoters of the Beargarden

thought it improbable that they and their fellows would want a

club. There were to be no morning papers taken, no library, no

morning-room. Dining-rooms, billiard-rooms, and card-rooms would

suffice for the Beargarden. Everything was to be provided by a

purveyor, so that the club should be cheated only by one man.

Everything was to be luxurious, but the luxuries were to be achieved

at first cost. It had been a happy thought, and the club was said to

prosper. Herr Vossner, the purveyor, was a jewel, and so carried on

affairs that there was no trouble about anything. He would assist

even in smoothing little difficulties as to the settling of card

accounts, and had behaved with the greatest tenderness to the drawers

of cheques whose bankers had harshly declared them to have "no

effects." Herr Vossner was a jewel, and the Beargarden was a

success. Perhaps no young man about town enjoyed the Beargarden more

thoroughly than did Sir Felix Carbury. The club was in the close

vicinity of other clubs, in a small street turning out of St. James's

Street, and piqued itself on its outward quietness and sobriety. Why

pay for stone-work for other people to look at;--why lay out money

in marble pillars and cornices, seeing that you can neither eat such

things, nor drink them, nor gamble with them? But the Beargarden had

the best wines,--or thought that it had,--and the easiest chairs, and

two billiard-tables than which nothing more perfect had ever been

made to stand upon legs. Hither Sir Felix wended on that January

afternoon as soon as he had his mother's cheque for £20 in his

pocket.

He found his special friend, Dolly Longestaffe, standing on the steps

with a cigar in his mouth, and gazing vacantly at the dull brick

house opposite. "Going to dine here, Dolly?" said Sir Felix.

"I suppose I shall, because it's such a lot of trouble to go anywhere

else. I'm engaged somewhere, I know; but I'm not up to getting home

and dressing. By George! I don't know how fellows do that kind of

thing. I can't."

"Going to hunt to-morrow?"

"Well, yes; but I don't suppose I shall. I was going to hunt every

day last week, but my fellow never would get me up in time. I can't

tell why it is that things are done in such a beastly way. Why

shouldn't fellows begin to hunt at two or three, so that a fellow

needn't get up in the middle of the night?"

"Because one can't ride by moonlight, Dolly."

"It isn't moonlight at three. At any rate I can't get myself to

Euston Square by nine. I don't think that fellow of mine likes

getting up himself. He says he comes in and wakes me, but I never

remember it."

"How many horses have you got at Leighton, Dolly?"

"How many? There were five, but I think that fellow down there sold

one; but then I think he bought another. I know he did something."

"Who rides them?"

"He does, I suppose. That is, of course, I ride them myself, only I

so seldom get down. Somebody told me that Grasslough was riding two

of them last week. I don't think I ever told him he might. I think he

tipped that fellow of mine; and I call that a low kind of thing to

do. I'd ask him, only I know he'd say that I had lent them. Perhaps

I did when I was tight, you know."

"You and Grasslough were never pals."

"I don't like him a bit. He gives himself airs because he is a lord,

and is devilish ill-natured. I don't know why he should want to ride

my horses."

"To save his own."

"He isn't hard up. Why doesn't he have his own horses? I'll tell you

what, Carbury, I've made up my mind to one thing, and, by Jove, I'll

stick to it. I never will lend a horse again to anybody. If fellows

want horses let them buy them."

"But some fellows haven't got any money, Dolly."

"Then they ought to go tick. I don't think I've paid for any of mine

I've bought this season. There was somebody here yesterday--"

"What! here at the club?"

"Yes; followed me here to say he wanted to be paid for something! It

was horses, I think, because of the fellow's trousers."

"What did you say?"

"Me! Oh, I didn't say anything."

"And how did it end?"

"When he'd done talking I offered him a cigar, and while he was

biting off the end I went up-stairs. I suppose he went away when he

was tired of waiting."

"I'll tell you what, Dolly; I wish you'd let me ride two of yours

for a couple of days,--that is, of course, if you don't want them

yourself. You ain't tight now, at any rate."

"No; I ain't tight," said Dolly, with melancholy acquiescence.

"I mean that I wouldn't like to borrow your horses without your

remembering all about it. Nobody knows as well as you do how awfully

done up I am. I shall pull through at last, but it's an awful squeeze

in the meantime. There's nobody I'd ask such a favour of except you."

"Well, you may have them;--that is, for two days. I don't know

whether that fellow of mine will believe you. He wouldn't believe

Grasslough, and told him so. But Grasslough took them out of the

stables. That's what somebody told me."

"You could write a line to your groom."

"Oh, my dear fellow, that is such a bore; I don't think I could do

that. My fellow will believe you, because you and I have been pals.

I think I'll have a little drop of curaçoa before dinner. Come along

and try it. It'll give us an appetite."

It was then nearly seven o'clock. Nine hours afterwards the same

two men, with two others,--of whom young Lord Grasslough, Dolly

Longestaffe's peculiar aversion, was one,--were just rising from a

card-table in one of the up-stairs rooms of the club. For it was

understood that, though the Beargarden was not to be open before

three o'clock in the afternoon, the accommodation denied during

the day was to be given freely during the night. No man could get

a breakfast at the Beargarden, but suppers at three o'clock in

the morning were quite within the rule. Such a supper, or rather

succession of suppering, there had been to-night, various devils and

broils and hot toasts having been brought up from time to time first

for one and then for another. But there had been no cessation of

gambling since the cards had first been opened about ten o'clock. At

four in the morning Dolly Longestaffe was certainly in a condition

to lend his horses and to remember nothing about it. He was quite

affectionate with Lord Grasslough, as he was also with his other

companions,--affection being the normal state of his mind when

in that condition. He was by no means helplessly drunk, and was,

perhaps, hardly more silly than when he was sober; but he was willing

to play at any game whether he understood it or not, and for any

stakes. When Sir Felix got up and said he would play no more, Dolly

also got up, apparently quite contented. When Lord Grasslough, with

a dark scowl on his face, expressed his opinion that it was not

just the thing for men to break up like that when so much money had

been lost, Dolly as willingly sat down again. But Dolly's sitting

down was not sufficient. "I'm going to hunt to-morrow," said Sir

Felix,--meaning that day,--"and I shall play no more. A man must go

to bed at some time."

"I don't see it at all," said Lord Grasslough. "It's an understood

thing that when a man has won as much as you have he should stay."

"Stay how long?" said Sir Felix, with an angry look. "That's

nonsense; there must be an end of everything, and there's an end of

this for me to-night."

"Oh, if you choose," said his lordship.

"I do choose. Good night, Dolly; we'll settle this next time we meet.

I've got it all entered."

The night had been one very serious in its results to Sir Felix. He

had sat down to the card-table with the proceeds of his mother's

cheque, a poor £20, and now he had,--he didn't at all know how much

in his pockets. He also had drunk, but not so as to obscure his mind.

He knew that Longestaffe owed him over £800, and he knew also that

he had received more than that in ready money and cheques from Lord

Grasslough and the other player. Dolly Longestaffe's money, too,

would certainly be paid, though Dolly did complain of the importunity

of his tradesmen. As he walked up St. James's Street, looking for a

cab, he presumed himself to be worth over £700. When begging for a

small sum from Lady Carbury, he had said that he could not carry

on the game without some ready money, and had considered himself

fortunate in fleecing his mother as he had done. Now he was in

the possession of wealth,--of wealth that might, at any rate, be

sufficient to aid him materially in the object he had in hand. He

never for a moment thought of paying his bills. Even the large sum of

which he had become so unexpectedly possessed would not have gone far

with him in such a quixotic object as that; but he could now look

bright, and buy presents, and be seen with money in his hands. It is

hard even to make love in these days without something in your purse.

He found no cab, but in his present frame of mind was indifferent to

the trouble of walking home. There was something so joyous in the

feeling of the possession of all this money that it made the night

air pleasant to him. Then, of a sudden, he remembered the low wail

with which his mother had spoken of her poverty when he demanded

assistance from her. Now he could give her back the £20. But it

occurred to him sharply, with an amount of carefulness quite new to

him, that it would be foolish to do so. How soon might he want it

again? And, moreover, he could not repay the money without explaining

to her how he had gotten it. It would be preferable to say nothing

about his money. As he let himself into the house and went up to his

room he resolved that he would not say anything about it.

On that morning he was at the station at nine, and hunted down in

Buckinghamshire, riding two of Dolly Longestaffe's horses,--for the

use of which he paid Dolly Longestaffe's "fellow" thirty shillings.