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Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 "That's a nice girl," said William Bowker, as the door closed after
her; "a regular nice girl--modest, ladylike, and true; none of your
infernal fal-lal affectations--honest as the day; you can see that in
her eyes and in every word she says. Where do you keep your
tobacco? All right. Your pipes want looking after, Geoff. Ive tried
three, and each is as foul as a chimney. Ah, this will do at last; now
I'm all right, and can look at your work. H--m! that seems good
stuff. You must tone-down that background a little, and put a touch
of light here and there on the dress, which is infernally heavy and
Hamlet-like. Hallo, Geoff, are you going in for the P.-R.-B. business?"

"Not I. What do you mean?"

"What do you mean by this red-haired party, my boy? This is a

new style for you, Geoff, and one which no one would have thought
of your taking up. You weren't brought up to consider this the right
style of thing in old Sassoon's academy, Geoff. If the old boy could
rise from his grave, and see his favourite pupil painting a frizzy, red-
haired, sallow-faced woman as the realisation of beauty, I think he'd
be glad he'd been called away before such awful times."

There was a hesitation in Geoff's voice, and a hollowness in his

smile, as he answered:

"P.-R.-B. nonsense! Old Sassoon couldn't teach everything; and as

for his ideas of beauty, look how often he made us paint Mrs. S. and
the Miss S.'s, who, Heaven knows, were anything but reproductions
of the Venus Calipyge. The simple question, as I take it, is this--is
the thing a good thing or a bad one? Tell me that."

"As a work of art?"

"Of course; as you see it. What else could I mean?"

"As a work of art, it's good--undeniably good, in tone, and

treatment, and conception; as a work of prudence, it's infernally
bad."
 Geoff looked at him sharply for a minute, and William Bowker,
calmly puffing at his pipe, did not shrink from his friend's glance.
Then, with a flush, Geoff said:

"It strikes me that it is as a work of art you have to regard it. As

to what you say about a work of prudence, you have the advantage
of me. I don't understand you."

"Don't you?" said William. "I'm sorry for you. What model did you
paint that head from?"

"From no model."

"From life?"

"N-no; from memory--from--Upon my soul, Bowker, I don't see

what right you have to cross-question me in this way."

"Don't you?" said Bowker. "Give your William something to drink,

please; he can't talk when he's dry. What is that? B. and soda. Yes,
that'll do. Look here, Geoffrey Ludlow, when you were little more
than a boy, grinding away in the Life-School, and only too pleased if
the Visitor gave you an encouraging word, your William, who is ten
years your senior, had done work which made him be looked upon
as the coming man. He had the ball at his foot, and he had merely
to kick it to send it where he chose. He does not say this out of
brag--you know it?"

Geoffrey Ludlow inclined his head in acquiescence.

"Your William didn't kick the bail; something interfered just as his
foot was lifted to send it flying to the goal--a woman."

Again Geoffrey Ludlow nodded in acquiescence.

"You have heard the story. Every body in town knew it, and each
had his peculiar version; but I will tell you the whole truth myself.
You don't know how I struggled on against that infatuation;--no, you
may think you do, but I am a much stronger man than you--am, or
was--and I saw what I was losing by giving way. I gave way. I
knocked down the whole fabric which, from the time I had had a
man's thoughts, a man's mind, a man's energy and power, I had
striven to raise. I kicked it all down, as Alnaschar did his basket of
eggs, and almost as soon found how vain had been my castle-
building. I need scarcely go into detail with you about that story: it
was published in the Sunday newspapers of the time; it echoed in
every club-room; it has remained lingering about art-circles, and in
them is doubtless told with great gusto at the present day, should
ever my name be mentioned. I fell in love with a woman who was
married to a man of more than double her age,--a woman of
education, taste, and refinement; of singular beauty too--and that to
a young artist was not her least charm--tied for life to an old
heartless scoundrel. My passion for her sprung from the day of my
first seeing her; but I choked it down. I saw as plainly as I see this
glass before me now what would be the consequence of any absurd
escapade on my part; how it would crush me, how, infinitely more, it
would drag her down. I knew what was working in each of us; and,
so help me Heaven! I tried to spare us both. I tried--and failed,
dismally enough. It was for no want of arguing with myself--from no
want of forethought of all the consequences that might ensue. I
looked at all point-blank; for though I was young and mad with
passion, I loved that woman so that I could even have crushed my
own selfishness lest it should be harm to her. I could have done this:
I did it until--until one night I saw a blue livid mark on her shoulder.
God knows how many years that is ago, but I have the whole scene
before me at this moment. It was at some fine ball (I went into what
is called 'society' then), and we were standing in a conservatory,
when I noticed this mark. I asked her about it, and she hesitated; I
taxed her with the truth, which she first feebly denied, then
admitted. He had struck her, the hound! in a fit of jealous rage,--had
struck her with his clenched fist! Even as she told me this, I could
see him within a few yards of us, pretending to be rapt in
conversation, but obviously noting our conduct. I suppose he
guessed that she had told me of what had occurred. I suppose he
guessed it from my manner and the expression of my face, for a
deadly pallor came over his grinning cheeks; and as we passed out
of the conservatory, he whispered to her--not so low but that I
caught the words--'You shall pay for this, madam--you shall pay for
this!' That determined me, and that night we fled.--Give me some
more brandy and soda, Geoff. Merely to tell this story drags the
heart out of my breast."

Geoff pushed the bottle over to his friend, and after a gulp Bowker
proceeded:

"We went to Spain, and remained there many months; and there
it was all very well. That slumbering country is even now but little
haunted by your infernal British tourist; but then scarcely any
Englishman came there. Such as we came across were all bachelors,
your fine lad can't stand the mule-travelling and the roughing it in
the posadas; and they either had not heard the story, or didn't see
the propriety of standing on any squeamishness, more especially
when the acquaintance was all to their advantage, and we got on
capitally. Nelly had seen nothing, poor child, having left school to be
married; and all the travel, and the picturesque old towns, and the
peasantry, and the Alhambra, and all the rest of it, made a sort of
romantic dream for her. But then old Van den Bosch got his divorce;
and so soon as I had heard of that, like a madman as I was, I
determined to come back to England. The money was running short,
to be sure; but I had made no end of sketches, and I might have
sent them over and sold them; but I wanted to get back. A man
can't live on love alone; and I wanted to be amongst my old set
again, for the old gossip and the old camaraderie; and so back we
came. I took a little place out at Ealing, and then I went into the old
haunts, and saw the old fellows, and--for the first time--so help me
Heaven! for the first time I saw what I had done. They cut me, sir,
right and left! There were some of them--blackguards who would
have hobnobbed with Greenacre, if he'd stood the drink--who
accepted my invitations, and came Sunday after Sunday, and would
have eaten and drunk me out of house and home, if I'd have stood
it; but the best--the fellows I really cared about--pretty generally
gave me the cold shoulder. Some of them had married during my
absence, and of course they couldn't come; others were making
their way in their art, working under the patronage of big swells in
the Academy, and hoping for election there, and they daren't be
mixed up with such a notoriously black sheep as your William. I felt
this, Geoff, old boy. By George, it cut me to the heart; it took all the
change out of me; it made me low and hipped, and, I fear,
sometimes savage. And I suppose I showed it at home; for poor Nell
seemed to change and wither from the day of our return. She had
her own troubles, poor darling, though she thought she kept them to
herself. In a case like that, Geoff, the women get it much hotter than
we do. There were no friends for her, no one to whom she could tell
her troubles. And then the story got known, and people used to
stare and nudge each other, and whisper as she passed. The parson
called when we first came, and was a good pleasant fellow; but a
fortnight afterwards he'd heard all about it, and grew purple in the
face as he looked straight over our heads when we met him. And
once a butcher, who had to be spoken to for cheating, cheeked her
and alluded to her story; but I think what I did to him prevented any
repetition of that kind of conduct. But I couldn't silence the whole
world by thrashing it, old fellow; and Nell drooped and withered
under all the misery--drooped and--died! And I--well, I became the
graceless, purposeless, spiritless brute you see me now!"

Mr. Bowker stopped and rubbed the back of his hand across his
eyes, and gave a great cough before finishing his drink; and then
Geoffrey patted him on the shoulder and said, "But you know how
we all love you, old friend; how that Charley Potts, and I, and
Markham, and Wallis, and all the fellows, would do anything for
you."

Mr. Bowker gave his friend's hand a tight grip as he said, "I know,
Geoff; I know you boys are fond of your William but it wasn't to
parade my grief, or to cadge for sympathy from them, that I told you
that story. I had another motive."

"And that was--"

"To set myself up as an example and a warning to--any one who

might be going to take a similar step. You named yourself just now,
Geoff, amongst those who cared for me. Your William is a bit of a
fogy, he knows; but some of you do care for him, and you amongst
them."

"Of course. You know that well enough."

"Then why not show your regard for your William, dear boy?

"Show my regard--how shall I show it?"

"By confiding in him, Geoff; by talking to him about yourself;

telling him your hopes and plans; asking him for some of that advice
which seeing a great many men and cities, and being a remarkably
downy old skittle, qualifies him to give. Why not confide in him,
Geoff?"

"Confide in you? About what? Why on earth not speak out plainly
at once?"

"Well, well, I won't beat about the bush any longer. I daresay
there's nothing in it; but people talk and cackle so confoundedly,
and, by George, men--some men, at least--are quite as bad as
women in that line; and they say you're in love, Geoff; regularly hard
hit--no chance of recovery!"

"Do they?" said Geoff, flushing very red--"do they? Who are 'they,'
by the way?--not that it matters, a pack of gabbling fools! But
suppose I am, what then?"
 "What then! Why, nothing then--only it's rather odd that you've
never told your William, whom you've known so long and so
intimately, any thing about it. Is that" (pointing to the picture) "a
portrait of the lady?"

"There--there is a reminiscence of her--her head and general

style."

"Then your William would think that her head and general style
must be doosid good. Any sisters?"

"I--I think not."

"Are her people pleasant--do you get on with them?"

"I don't know them."

"Ah, Geoff, Geoff, why make me go on in this way? Don't you

know me well enough to be certain that I'm not asking all these
questions for impertinence and idle curiosity? Don't you see that I'm
dragging bit by bit out of you because I'm coming to the only point
any of your friends can care about? Is this girl a good girl; is she
respectable; is she in your own sphere of life; can you bring her
home and tell the old lady to throw her arms round her neck, and
welcome her as a daughter? Can you introduce her to that sweet
sister of yours who was here when I came in?"

There came over Geoffrey Ludlow's face a dark shadow such as

William Bowker had never seen there before. He did not speak nor
turn his eyes, but sat fixed and rigid as a statue.

"For God's sake think of all this, Geoff! Ive told you a thousand
times that you ought to be married; that there was no man more
calculated to make a woman happy, or to have his own happiness
increased by a woman's love. But then she must be of your own
degree in life, and one of whom you could be every where proud. I
would not have you married to an ugly woman or a drabby woman,
or any thing that wasn't very nice; how much less, then, to any one
whom you would feel ashamed of, or who could not be received by
your dear ones at home! Geoff, dear old Geoff, for heaven's sake
think of all this before it is too late! Take warning by my fatal error,
and see what misery you would prepare for both of you."

Geoffrey Ludlow still sat in the same attitude. He made no reply

for some minutes; then he said, dreamily, "Yes--yes, you're quite
right, of course,--quite right. But I don't think we'll continue the
conversation now. Another time, Bowker, please--another time."
Then he ceased, and Mr. Bowker rose and pressed his hand, and
took his departure. As he closed the door behind him, that worthy
said to himself: "Well, I've done my duty, and I know I've done right;
but it's very little of Geoff's mutton that your William will cut, and
very little of Geoff's wine that your William will drink, if that marriage
comes off. For of course he'll tell her all I've said, and won't she love
your William!"

And for hours Geoffrey Ludlow sat before his easel, gazing at the
Scylla head, and revolving all the detail of Mr. Bowker's story in his
mind.

CHAPTER XI.

PLAYING THE FISH.

 When did the giver of good, sound, unpalatable, wholesome
advice ever receive his due? Who does not possess, amongst the
multitude of acquaintances, a friend who says, "Such and such are
my difficulties: I come to you because I want advice;" and who,
after having heard all that, after a long struggle with yourself, you
bring yourself to say, wrings your hand, goes away thinking what an
impertinent idiot you are, and does exactly the opposite of all you
have suggested? All men, even the most self-opinionated and
practical, are eager for advice. None, even the most hesitating and
diffident, take it, unless it agrees with their own preconceived ideas.
There are, of course, exceptions by which this rule is proved; but
there are two subjects on which no man was ever yet known to take
advice, and they are horses and women. Depreciate your friend's
purchase as delicately as Agag came unto Saul; give every possible
encomium to make and shape and breeding; but hint, per contra,
that the animal is scarcely up to his weight, or that that cramped
action looks like a possible blunder; suggest that a little more slope
in the shoulder, a little less cowiness in the general build, might be
desirable for riding purposes, and your friend will smile, and shake
his head, and canter away, convinced of the utter shallowness of
your equine knowledge. In the other matter it is much worse. You
must be very much indeed a man's friend if you can venture to hint
to him, even after his iterated requests for your honest candid
opinion, that the lady of his love is any thing but what he thinks her.
And though you iterate and reiterate, moralise as shrewdly as
Ecclesiasticus, bring chapter and verse to support your text, he must
be more or less than a man, and cast in very different clay from that
of which we poor ordinary mortals are composed, if he accepts one
of your arguments or gives way one atom before your elucidations.

Did William Bowker's forlorn story, commingled with his earnest

passionate appeal, weigh one scruple with Geoffrey Ludlow? Not
one. Geoff was taken aback by the story. There was a grand human
interest in that laying bare before him of a man's heart, and of two
persons' wasted lives, which aroused his interest and his sympathy,
made him ponder over what might have been, had the principal
actors in the drama been kept asunder, and sent him into a fine
drowsy state of metaphysical dubiety. But while Bowker was pointing
his moral, Geoff was merely turning over the various salient points
which had adorned his tale.

He certainly heard Bowker drawing a parallel between his own

unhappy passion and Geoff's regard for the original owner of that
"Scylla head;" but as the eminent speaker was arguing on
hypothetical facts, and drawing deductions from things of which he
knew absolutely nothing, too much reliance was not to be placed on
his arguments. In Bowker's case there had been a public scandal, a
certain betrayal of trust, which was the worst feature in the whole
affair, a trial and an exposé, and a denunciation of the--well, the
world used hard words--the seducer; which--though Bowker was the
best fellow in the world, and had obviously a dreadful time of it--was
only according to English custom. Now, in his own case, Margaret
(he had already accustomed himself to think of her as Margaret) had
been victimised by a scoundrel, and the blame--for he supposed
blame would, at least in the minds of very strait-laced people, attach
to her--was mitigated by the facts. Besides--and here was his great
thought--nothing would be known of her former history. Her life, so
far as any one in his set could possibly know any thing about it,
began on the night when he and Charley Potts found her in the
street. She was destitute and starving, granted; but there was
nothing criminal in destitution and starvation, which indeed would, in
the eyes of a great many weak and good-natured (the terms are
synonymous) persons, bind a kind of romance to the story. And as to
all that had gone before, what of that? How was any thing of that
love ever to become known? This Leonard Brookfield, an army swell,
a man who, under any circumstances, was never likely to come
across them, or to be mixed up in Geoff's artist-circle, had vanished,
and with him vanished the whole dark part of the story. Vanished for
ever and aye! Margaret's life would begin to date from the time
when she became his wife, when he brought her home to----Ah, by
the way, what was that Bowker said about her worthiness to
associate with his mother and sister? Why not? He would tell them
all about it. They were good women, who fully appreciated the
grand doctrine of forgiveness; and yet--He hesitated; he knew his
mother to be a most excellent church-going woman, bearing her
"cross" womanfully, not to say rather flaunting it than otherwise; but
he doubted whether she would appreciate an introduction to a
Magdalen, however penitent. To subscribe to a charity for "those
poor creatures;" to talk pleasantly and condescendingly to them, and
to leave them a tract on visiting a "Home" or a "Refuge," is one
thing; to take them to your heart as daughters-in-law is another. And
his sister! Well, young girls didn't understand this kind of thing, and
would put a false construction on it, and were always chattering, and
a great deal of harm might be done by Til's want of reticence; and
so, perhaps, the best thing to be done was to hold his tongue,
decline to answer any questions about former life, and leave matters
to take their course. He had already arrived at that state of mind
that he felt, if any disagreements arose, he was perfectly ready to
leave mother and sister, and cleave to his wife--that was to be.

So Geoffrey Ludlow, tossing like a reed upon the waters, but ever,
like the same reed, drifting with the resistless current of his will,
made up his mind; and all the sage experience of William Bowker,
illustrated by the story of his life, failed in altering his determination.
It is questionable whether a younger man might not have been
swayed by, or frightened at, the council given to him. Youth is
impressible in all ways; and however people may talk of the
headstrong passion of youth, it is clear that--nowadays at least--
there is a certain amount of selfish forethought mingled with the
heat and fervour; that love--like the measles--though innocuo us in
youth, is very dangerous when taken in middle life; and Geoffrey
Ludlow was as weak, and withal as stubborn, an in-patient, as ever
caught the disease.

And yet?--and yet?--was the chain so strong, were the links

already so well riveted, as to defy every effort to break them? Or, in
truth, was it that the effort was wanting? An infatuation for a woman
had been painted in very black shadows by William Bowker; but it
was a great question to Geoff whether there was not infinite
pleasure in the mere fact of being infatuated. Since he had seen
Margaret Dacre--at all events, since he had been fascinated by her--
not merely was he a different man, so far as she was concerned, but
all life was to him a different and infinitely more pleasurable thing.
That strange doubting and hesitation which had been his bane
through life seemed, if not to have entirely vanished, at all events to
be greatly modified; and he had recently, in one or two matters,
shown a decision which had astonished the members of his little
household. He felt that he had at last--what he had wanted all
through his life--a purpose; he felt that there was something for him
to live for; that by his love he had learned something that he had
never known before; that his soul was opened, and the whole aspect
of nature intensified and beautified; that he might have said with
Maud's lover in that exquisite poem of the Laureate's, which so few
really appreciate--
"It seems that I am happy, that to me
A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass,
A purer sapphire melts into the sea."

Then he sat down at his easel again, and worked away at the
Scylla head, which came out grandly, and soon grew all a-glow with
Margaret Dacre's peculiar expression; and then, after contemplating
it long and lovingly, the desire to see the original came madly upon
him, and he threw down his palette and brushes, and went out.

He walked straight to Mrs. Flexor's, and, on his knocking, the door

was opened to him by that worthy dame, who announced to him,
with awful solemnity, that he'd "find a change upstairs."

"A change!" cried Geoffrey, his heart thumping audibly, and his
cheek blanched; "a change!"

"O, nothin' serious, Mr. Ludlows; but she have been a worritin'
herself, poor lamb, and a cryin' her very eyes out. But what it is I
can't make out, though statin' put your trust in one where trust is
doo, continual."

"I don't follow you yet, Mrs. Flexor. Your lodger has been in low
spirits--is that it?"

"Sperrits isn't the name for it, Mr. Ludlows, when downer than
dumps is what one would express. As queer as Dick's hatband have
she been ever since you went away yesterday; and I says to her at
tea last evening--"

"I can see her, I suppose?"

"Of course you can, sir; which all I was doing was to prepare you
for the--" but here Mrs. Flexor, who had apparently taken something
stronger than usual with her dinner, broke down and became
inarticulate.

Geoffrey pushed past her, and, knocking at the parlour-door,

entered at once. He found Margaret standing, with her arms on the
mantelshelf, surveying herself in the wretched little scrap of looking-
glass which adorned the wall. Her hair was arranged in two large full
bands, her eyes were swollen, and her face was blurred and marked
by tears. She did not turn round at the opening of the door, nor,
indeed, until she had raised her head and seen in the glass Geoff's
reflection; even then she moved languidly, as though in pain, and
her hand, when she placed it in his, was dry with burning heat.

"That chattering idiot down stairs was right after all," said Geoff,
looking alarmedly at her; "you are ill?"

"No," she said, with a faint smile; "not ill, at all events not now. I
have been rather weak and silly; but I did not expect you yet. I
intended to remove all traces of such folly by the time you came. It
was fit I should, as I want to talk to you most seriously and soberly."
 "Do we not always talk so? did we not the last time I was here--
yesterday?"

"Well, generally, perhaps; but not the last time--not yesterday. If I

could have thought so, I should have spared myself a night of agony
and a morning of remorse."

Geoff's face grew clouded.

"I am sorry for your agony, but much more sorry for your
remorse, Miss Dacre," said he.

"Ah, Mr. Ludlow," cried Margaret, passionately, "don't you be angry

with me; don't you speak to me harshly, or I shall give way all
together! O, I watched every change of your face; and I saw what
you thought at once; but indeed, indeed it is not so. My remorse is
not for having told you all that I did yesterday; for what else could I
do to you who had been to me what you had? My remorse was for
what I had done--not for what I had said--for the wretched folly
which prompted me to yield to a wheedling tongue, and so ruin
myself for ever."

Her tears burst forth again as she said this, and she stamped her
foot upon the ground.

"Ruin you for ever, Margaret!" said Geoffrey, stealing his arm
round her waist as she still stood by the mantelshelf; "O no, not ruin
you, dearest Margaret--"

"Ah, Mr. Ludlow," she interrupted, neither withdrawing from nor

yielding to his arm, "have I not reason to say ruin? Can I fail to see
that you have taken an interest in me which--which--"

"Which nothing you have told me can alter--which I shall preserve,

please God," said Geoff, in all simplicity and sincerity, "to the end of
my life."
 She looked at him as he said these words with a fixed regard, half
of wonder, half of real unfeigned earnest admiration.

"I--I'm a very bad hand at talking, Margaret, and know I ought to

say a great deal for which I can't find words. You see," he continued,
with a grave smile, "I'm not a young man now, and I suppose one
finds it more difficult to express oneself about--about such matters.
But I'm going to ask you--to--to share my lot--to be my wife!"

Her heart gave one great bound within her breast, and her face
was paler than ever, as she said:

"Your wife! your wife! Do you know what you are saying, Mr.
Ludlow? or is it I who, as the worldling, must point out to you--"

"I know all," said Geoffrey, raising his hand deprecatingly; but she
would not be silenced.

"I must point out to you what you would bring upon yourself--
what you would have to endure. The story of my life is known to you
and to you alone; not another living soul has ever heard it. My
mother died while I was in Italy; and of--the other person--nothing
has ever been heard since his flight. So far, then, I do not fear that
my--my shame--we will use the accepted term--would be flung in
your teeth, or that you would be made to wince under any thing that
might be said about me. But you would know the facts yourself; you
could not hide them from your own heart; they would be ever
present to you; and in introducing me to your friends, your relatives,
if you have any, you would feel that--"

"I don't think we need go into that, Margaret. I see how right and
how honourable are your motives for saying all this; but I have
thought it over, and do not attach one grain of importance to it. If
you say 'yes' to me, we shall live for ourselves, and with a very few
friends who will appreciate us for ourselves. Ah, I was going to say
that to you. I'm not rich, Margaret, and your life would, I'm afraid,
be dull. A small income and a small house, and--"
 "It would be my home, and I should have you;" and for the first
time during the interview she gave him one of her long dreamy looks
out of her half-shut eyes.

"Then you will say 'yes,' dearest?" asked Geoff passionately.

"Ah, how can I refuse! how can I deny myself such happiness as
you hold out to me after the misery I have zone through!"

"Ah, darling, you shall forget that--"

"But you must not act rashly--must not do in a moment what you
would repent your life long. Take a week for consideration. Go over
every thing in your mind, and then come back to me and tell me the
result."

"I know it now. O, don't hesitate, Margaret; don't let me wait the
horrid week!"

"It is right, and so we will do it. It will be more tedious to me than

to you, my--my Geoffrey."

Ah, how caressingly she spoke, and what a look of love and
passion glowed in her deep-violet eyes!

"And I am not to see you during this week?"

"No; you shall be free from whatever little influence my presence

may possess. You shall go now. Goodbye."

"God bless you, my darling!" He bent down and kissed her

upturned mouth, then was gone. She looked after him wistfully;
then after some time said softly to herself: "I did not believe there
lived so good a man."
 CHAPTER XII.

UNDER THE HARROW.

Mr. Bowker was not the only one of Geoffrey Ludlow's friends to
whom that gentleman's intentions towards the lodger at Flexor's
occasioned much troubled thought. Charley Potts regarded his
friend's intimacy in that quarter with any thing but satisfaction; and
an enormous amount of bird's-eye tobacco was consumed by that
rising young artist in solemn cogitation over what was best to be
done in the matter. For though Geoffrey had reposed no confidence
in his friend, and, indeed, had never called upon him, and abstained
as much as possible from meeting him since the night of the
adventure outside the Titian Sketching-Club, yet Mr. Potts was pretty
accurately informed of the state of affairs, through the medium of
Mr. Flexor, then perpetually sitting for the final touches to Gil Bias;
and having a tolerable acquaintance with human nature,--or being,
as he metaphorically expressed it, "able to reckon how many blue
beans made five,"--Mr. Potts was enabled to arrive at a pretty
accurate idea of how affairs stood in Little Flotsam Street. And
affairs, as they existed in Little Flotsam Street, were by no means
satisfactory to Mr. Charles Potts. Had it been a year ago, he would
have cared but little about it. A man of the world, accustomed to
take things as they were, without the remotest idea of ever setting
himself up to correct abuses, or protest against a habitude of being
not strictly in accordance with the views of the most strait-laced,
Charley Potts had floated down the stream of life objecting to
nothing, objected to by none. There were fifty ladies of his
acquaintance, passing as the wives of fifty men of his acquaintance,
pleasant genial creatures, capital punch-mixers,--women in whose
presence you might wear your hat, smoke, talk slang, chaff, and
sing; women who knew all the art-gossip, and entered into it; whom
one could take to the Derby, or who would be delighted with a
cheap-veal-and-ham-pie, beer-in-a-stone-jar, and bottle-of-hot-
sherry picnic in Bushey Park,--the copy of whose marriage-licenses
Charley never expected to see. It was nothing to him, he used to
say. It might or it might not be; but he didn't think that Joe's punch
would be any the stronger, or Tom's weeds any the better, or Bill's
barytone voice one atom more tuneful and chirpy, if the Archbishop
of Canterbury had given out the bans and performed the ceremony
for the lot. There was in it, he thought, a glorious phase of the vie
de Bohême, a scorn of the respectable conventionalities of society, a
freedom of thought and action possessing a peculiar charm of their
own; and he looked upon the persons who married and settled, and
paid taxes and tradesmen's bills, and had children, and went to bed
before morning, and didn't smoke clay pipes and sit in their shirt-
sleeves, with that softened pity with which the man bound for
Epsom Downs regards the City clerk going to business on the
Clapham omnibus.

But within the last few months Mr. Potts's ideas had very
considerably changed. It was not because he had attained the
venerable age of thirty, though he was at first inclined to ascribe the
alteration to that; it was not that his appetite for fun and pleasure
had lost any of its keenness, nor that he had become "awakened,"
or "enlightened," or subjected to any of the preposterous revival
influences of the day. It was simply that he had, in the course of his
intimacy with Geoffrey Ludlow, seen a great deal of Geoffrey
Ludlow's sister, Til; and that the result of his acquaintance with that
young lady was the entire change of his ideas on various most
important points. It was astonishing, its effect on him: how, after an
evening at Mrs. Ludlow's tea-table--presided over, of course, by Miss
Til--Charley Potts, going somewhere out to supper among his old
set, suddenly had his eyes opened to Louie's blackened eyelids and
Bella's painted cheeks; how Georgie's h-slips smote with tenfold
horror on his ear, and Carry's cigarette-smoking made him wince
with disgust. He had seen all these things before, and rather liked
them; it was the contrast that induced the new feeling. Ah, those
preachers and pedants,--well-meaning, right-thinking men,--how
utterly futile are the means which they use for compassing their
ends! In these sceptical times, their pulpit denunciations, their
frightful stories of wrath to come, are received with polite shoulder-
shrugs and grins of incredulity; their twopence coloured pictures of
the Scarlet Woman, their time-worn renderings of the street-
wanderer, are sneered at as utterly fictitious and untrue; and
meanwhile detached villas in St. John's Wood, and first-floors in
quiet Pimlico streets, command the most preposterous rents. Young
men will of course be young men; but the period of young-man-ism
in that sense narrows and contracts every year. The ranks of her
Scarlet Ladyship's army are now filled with very young boys who do
not know any better, or elderly men who cannot get into the new
groove, and who still think that to be gentlemanly it is necessary to
be immoral. Those writers who complain of the "levelling" tone of
society, and the "fast" manners of our young ladies, scarcely reflect
upon the improved morality of the age. Our girls--all the outcry
about fastness and selling themselves for money notwithstanding--
are as good and as domestic as when formed under the literary
auspices of Mrs. Chapone; and--granting the existence of Casinos
and Anonymas--our young men are infinitely more wholesome than
the class for whose instruction Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of
Chesterfield, penned his delicious letters.

So Mr. Charles Potts, glowing with newly-awakened ideas of

respectability, began to think that, after all, the vie de Bohême was
perhaps a mistake, and not equal, in the average amount of
happiness derived from it, to the vie de Camden Town. He began to
think that to pay rent and taxes and tradesmen's bills was very likely
no dearer, and certainly more satisfactory, than to invest in pensions
for cast-off mistresses and provisions for illegitimate children. He
began to think, in fact, that a snug little house in the suburbs, with
his own Lares and Penates about him, and Miss Matilda Ludlow, now
looking over his shoulder and encouraging him at his work, now
confronting him at the domestic dinner-table, was about the
pleasantest thing which his fancy could conjure up in his then frame
of mind.

Thinking all this, devoutly hoping it might so fall out, and being,
like most converts, infinitely more rabid in the cause of Virtue than
those who had served her with tolerable fidelity for a series of years,
Mr. Charley Potts heard with a dreadful amount of alarm and
amazement of Geoffrey Ludlow's close connection with a person
whose antecedents were not comeatable and siftable by a local
committee of Grundys. A year ago, and Charley would have laughed
the whole business to scorn; insisted that every man had a right to
do as he liked; slashed at the doubters; mocked their shaking heads
and raised shoulders and taken no heed of any thing that might
have been sad. But matters were different now. Not merely was
Charley a recruit in the Grundy ranks, having pinned the Grundy
colours in his coat, and subscribed to the Grundy oath; but the
person about to be brought before the Grundy Fehmgericht, or
court-marshal, was one in whom, should his hopes be realised, he
would have the greatest interest. Though he had never dared to
express his hopes, though he had not the smallest actual foundation
for his little air-castle, Charles Potts naturally and honestly regarded
Matilda Ludlow as the purest and most honourable of her sex--as
does every young fellow regard the girl he loves; and the idea that
she should be associated, or intimately connected, with any one
under a moral taint, was to him terrible and loathsome.

The moral taint, mind, was all hypothetical. Charles Potts had not
heard one syllable of Margaret Dacre's history, had been told nothing
about it, knew nothing of her except that he and Geoffrey had saved
her from starvation in the streets. But when people go in for the
public profession of virtue, it is astonishing to find how quickly they
listen to reports of the shortcomings and backslidings of those who
are not professedly in the same category. It seemed a bit of fatalism