"Georgiana, you make me very unhappy. I am wretched to see you so discontented. If I could do anything for you, I would. But I will not meddle about Mr. Brehgert. I shouldn't dare to do so. I don't think you know how angry your papa can be."

"I'm not going to let papa be a bugbear to frighten me. What can he do? I don't suppose he'll beat me. And I'd rather he would than shut me up here. As for you, mamma, I don't think you care for me a bit.

Because Sophy is going to be married to that oaf, you are become so proud of her that you haven't half a thought for anybody else."

"That's very unjust, Georgiana."

"I know what's unjust,--and I know who's ill-treated. I tell you fairly, mamma, that I shall write to Mr. Brehgert and tell him that I am quite ready to marry him. I don't know why he should be afraid of papa. I don't mean to be afraid of him any more, and you may tell him just what I say."

All this made Lady Pomona very miserable. She did not communicate her daughter's threat to Mr. Longestaffe, but she did discuss it with Sophia. Sophia was of opinion that Georgiana did not mean it, and gave two or three reasons for thinking so. In the first place had she intended it she would have written her letter without saying a word about it to Lady Pomona. And she certainly would not have declared her purpose of writing such letter after Lady Pomona had refused her a.s.sistance. And moreover,--Lady Pomona had received no former hint of the information which was now conveyed to her,--Georgiana was in the habit of meeting the curate of the next parish almost every day in the park.

"Mr. Batherbolt!" exclaimed Lady Pomona.

"She is walking with Mr. Batherbolt almost every day."

"But he is so very strict."

"It is true, mamma."

"And he's five years younger than she! And he's got nothing but his curacy! And he's a celibate! I heard the bishop laughing at him because he called himself a celibate."

"It doesn't signify, mamma. I know she is with him constantly. Wilson has seen them,--and I know it. Perhaps papa could get him a living.

Dolly has a living of his own that came to him with his property."

"Dolly would be sure to sell the presentation," said Lady Pomona.

"Perhaps the bishop would do something," said the anxious sister, "when he found that the man wasn't a celibate. Anything, mamma, would be better than the Jew." To this latter proposition Lady Pomona gave a cordial a.s.sent. "Of course it is a come-down to marry a curate,--but a clergyman is always considered to be decent."

The preparations for the Whitstable marriage went on without any apparent attention to the intimacy which was growing up between Mr.

Batherbolt and Georgiana. There was no room to apprehend anything wrong on that side. Mr. Batherbolt was so excellent a young man, and so exclusively given to religion, that, even should Sophy's suspicion be correct, he might be trusted to walk about the park with Georgiana. Should he at any time come forward and ask to be allowed to make the lady his wife, there would be no disgrace in the matter.

He was a clergyman and a gentleman,--and the poverty would be Georgiana's own affair.

Mr. Longestaffe returned home only on the eve of his eldest daughter's marriage, and with him came Dolly. Great trouble had been taken to teach him that duty absolutely required his presence at his sister's marriage, and he had at last consented to be there. It is not generally considered a hardship by a young man that he should have to go into a good partridge country on the 1st of September, and Dolly was an acknowledged sportsman. Nevertheless, he considered that he had made a great sacrifice to his family, and he was received by Lady Pomona as though he were a bright example to other sons. He found the house not in a very comfortable position, for Georgiana still persisted in her refusal either to be a bridesmaid or to speak to Mr.

Whitstable; but still his presence, which was very rare at Caversham, gave some a.s.sistance: and, as at this moment his money affairs had been comfortably arranged, he was not called upon to squabble with his father. It was a great thing that one of the girls should be married, and Dolly had brought down an enormous china dog, about five feet high, as a wedding present, which added materially to the happiness of the meeting. Lady Pomona had determined that she would tell her husband of those walks in the park, and of other signs of growing intimacy which had reached her ears;--but this she would postpone until after the Whitstable marriage.

But at nine o'clock on the morning set apart for that marriage, they were all astounded by the news that Georgiana had run away with Mr.

Batherbolt. She had been up before six. He had met her at the park gate, and had driven her over to catch the early train at Stowmarket.

Then it appeared, too, that, by degrees, various articles of her property had been conveyed to Mr. Batherbolt's lodgings in the adjacent village, so that Lady Pomona's fear that Georgiana would not have a thing to wear was needless. When the fact was first known it was almost felt, in the consternation of the moment, that the Whitstable marriage must be postponed. But Sophia had a word to say to her mother on that head, and she said it. The marriage was not postponed. At first Dolly talked of going after his younger sister, and the father did dispatch various telegrams. But the fugitives could not be brought back, and with some little delay,--which made the marriage perhaps uncanonical but not illegal,--Mr. George Whitstable was made a happy man.

It need only be added that in about a month's time Georgiana returned to Caversham as Mrs. Batherbolt, and that she resided there with her husband in much connubial bliss for the next six months. At the end of that time they removed to a small living, for the purchase of which Mr. Longestaffe had managed to raise the necessary money.

CHAPTER XCVI.

WHERE "THE WILD a.s.sES QUENCH THEIR THIRST."

We must now go back a little in our story,--about three weeks,--in order that the reader may be told how affairs were progressing at the Beargarden. That establishment had received a terrible blow in the defection of Herr Vossner. It was not only that he had robbed the club, and robbed every member of the club who had ventured to have personal dealings with him. Although a bad feeling in regard to him was no doubt engendered in the minds of those who had suffered deeply, it was not that alone which cast an almost funereal gloom over the club. The sorrow was in this,--that with Herr Vossner all their comforts had gone. Of course Herr Vossner had been a thief.

That no doubt had been known to them from the beginning. A man does not consent to be called out of bed at all hours in the morning to arrange the gambling accounts of young gentlemen without being a thief. No one concerned with Herr Vossner had supposed him to be an honest man. But then as a thief he had been so comfortable that his absence was regretted with a tenderness almost amounting to love even by those who had suffered most severely from his rapacity. Dolly Longestaffe had been robbed more outrageously than any other member of the club, and yet Dolly Longestaffe had said since the departure of the purveyor that London was not worth living in now that Herr Vossner was gone. In a week the Beargarden collapsed,--as Germany would collapse for a period if Herr Vossner's great compatriot were suddenly to remove himself from the scene; but as Germany would strive to live even without Bismarck, so did the club make its new efforts. But here the parallel must cease. Germany no doubt would at last succeed, but the Beargarden had received a blow from which it seemed that there was no recovery. At first it was proposed that three men should be appointed as trustees,--trustees for paying Vossner's debts, trustees for borrowing more money, trustees for the satisfaction of the landlord who was beginning to be anxious as to his future rent. At a certain very triumphant general meeting of the club it was determined that such a plan should be arranged, and the members a.s.sembled were unanimous. It was at first thought that there might be a little jealousy as to the trusteeship. The club was so popular and the authority conveyed by the position would be so great, that A, B, and C might feel aggrieved at seeing so much power conferred on D, E, and F. When at the meeting above mentioned one or two names were suggested, the final choice was postponed, as a matter of detail to be arranged privately, rather from this consideration than with any idea that there might be a difficulty in finding adequate persons. But even the leading members of the Beargarden hesitated when the proposition was submitted to them with all its honours and all its responsibilities. Lord Nidderdale declared from the beginning that he would have nothing to do with it,--pleading his poverty openly. Beauchamp Beauclerk was of opinion that he himself did not frequent the club often enough. Mr. Lupton professed his inability as a man of business. Lord Gra.s.slough pleaded his father.

The club from the first had been sure of Dolly Longestaffe's services;--for were not Dolly's pecuniary affairs now in process of satisfactory arrangement, and was it not known by all men that his courage never failed him in regard to money? But even he declined. "I have spoken to Squerc.u.m," he said to the Committee, "and Squerc.u.m won't hear of it. Squerc.u.m has made inquiries and he thinks the club very shaky." When one of the Committee made a remark as to Mr.

Squerc.u.m which was not complimentary,--insinuated indeed that Squerc.u.m without injustice might be consigned to the infernal deities,--Dolly took the matter up warmly. "That's all very well for you, Gra.s.slough; but if you knew the comfort of having a fellow who could keep you straight without preaching sermons at you you wouldn't despise Squerc.u.m. I've tried to go alone and I find that does not answer. Squerc.u.m's my coach, and I mean to stick pretty close to him." Then it came to pa.s.s that the triumphant project as to the trustees fell to the ground, although Squerc.u.m himself advised that the difficulty might be lessened if three gentlemen could be selected who lived well before the world and yet had nothing to lose.

Whereupon Dolly suggested Miles Grendall. But the committee shook its heads, not thinking it possible that the club could be re-established on a basis of three Miles Grendalls.

Then dreadful rumours were heard. The Beargarden must surely be abandoned. "It is such a pity," said Nidderdale, "because there never has been anything like it."

"Smoke all over the house!" said Dolly.

"No horrid nonsense about closing," said Gra.s.slough, "and no infernal old fogies wearing out the carpets and paying for nothing."

"Not a vestige of propriety, or any beastly rules to be kept! That's what I liked," said Nidderdale.

"It's an old story," said Mr. Lupton, "that if you put a man into Paradise he'll make it too hot to hold him. That's what you've done here."

"What we ought to do," said Dolly, who was pervaded by a sense of his own good fortune in regard to Squerc.u.m, "is to get some fellow like Vossner, and make him tell us how much he wants to steal above his regular pay. Then we could subscribe that among us. I really think that might be done. Squerc.u.m would find a fellow, no doubt." But Mr.

Lupton was of opinion that the new Vossner might perhaps not know, when thus consulted, the extent of his own cupidity.

One day, before the Whitstable marriage, when it was understood that the club would actually be closed on the 12th August unless some new heaven-inspired idea might be forthcoming for its salvation, Nidderdale, Gra.s.slough, and Dolly were hanging about the hall and the steps, and drinking sherry and bitters preparatory to dinner, when Sir Felix Carbury came round the neighbouring corner and, in a creeping, hesitating fashion, entered the hall door. He had nearly recovered from his wounds, though he still wore a bit of court plaster on his upper lip, and had not yet learned to look or to speak as though he had not had two of his front teeth knocked out. He had heard little or nothing of what had been done at the Beargarden since Vossner's defection, It was now a month since he had been seen at the club. His thrashing had been the wonder of perhaps half nine days, but latterly his existence had been almost forgotten. Now, with difficulty, he had summoned courage to go down to his old haunt, so completely had he been cowed by the latter circ.u.mstances of his life; but he had determined that he would pluck up his courage, and talk to his old a.s.sociates as though no evil thing had befallen him. He had still money enough to pay for his dinner and to begin a small rubber of whist. If fortune should go against him he might glide into I.O.U.'s,--as others had done before, so much to his cost. "By George, here's Carbury!" said Dolly. Lord Gra.s.slough whistled, turned his back, and walked upstairs; but Nidderdale and Dolly consented to have their hands shaken by the stranger.

"Thought you were out of town," said Nidderdale, "Haven't seen you for the last ever so long."

"I have been out of town," said Felix,--lying; "down in Suffolk. But I'm back now. How are things going on here?"

"They're not going at all;--they're gone," said Dolly. "Everything is smashed," said Nidderdale.

"We shall all have to pay, I don't know how much."

"Wasn't Vossner ever caught?" asked the baronet.

"Caught!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Dolly. "No;--but he has caught us. I don't know that there has ever been much idea of catching Vossner. We close altogether next Monday, and the furniture is to be gone to law for.

Flatfleece says it belongs to him under what he calls a deed of sale.

Indeed, everything that everybody has seems to belong to Flatfleece.

He's always in and out of the club, and has got the key of the cellar."

"That don't matter," said Nidderdale, "as Vossner took care that there shouldn't be any wine."

"He's got most of the forks and spoons, and only lets us use what we have as a favour."

"I suppose one can get a dinner here?"

"Yes; to-day you can, and perhaps to-morrow,"

"Isn't there any playing?" asked Felix with dismay.

"I haven't seen a card this fortnight," said Dolly. "There hasn't been anybody to play. Everything has gone to the dogs. There has been the affair of Melmotte, you know;--though, I suppose, you do know all about that."

"Of course I know he poisoned himself."

"Of course that had effect," said Dolly, continuing his history.