Part 28 (2/2)

She would never, her pride alone would never let her, degrade herself to a position at the very thought of which she caught her breath with horror. Come what may, the man who purchased her must put the transaction into the form of marriage. True, she was already married, in the view of the law; but, with a woman's eye for essentials, she felt her divorce from Philip already accomplished. The law, she allowed, would have to be satisfied with matters of form: but that was a detail to be observed when the time came; Philip would not oppose obstacles.

So she would let matters take their course, would wait upon occurrences. In very truth, to put herself on view with intent of catching a husband, of obtaining an establishment in life, was no more than young ladies of fas.h.i.+on, of virtue, of piety, did continually, under the skilled direction of the most estimable mothers. In Madge's case, the only difference was, on the one side, the excuse of necessity; on the other side, the enc.u.mbrance of her existing marriage. But the latter could be removed, whereas the former would daily increase.

She must, therefore, benefit by Ned's operations as long as they did not threaten to degrade her. By the time they did threaten so, she would have gained some experience of her own, circ.u.mstances would have arisen which she could turn to her use. Of actual dest.i.tution, never having felt it, she could not conceive; and therefore she did not take account of its possibility in her case.

So, having recovered from her brief panic, she went to bed and slept soundly.

The next morning Ned was in jubilant spirits. His visit the previous night had been to a gaminghouse in Covent Garden, and fortune had showered him with benefactions. He saw the margin of time at their disposal lengthened by several weeks. He bade his sister put herself at her best, drank with her to their success, and went and engaged a hairdresser and a maid. They went that night, in a hackney-coach, to the play at Drury Lane.

The open-mouthed gazing of her new maid, the deftly spoken admiration of her hairdresser, and the mirror upon her dressing-table, had prepared Madge for triumph. Her expectations were not disappointed, but they were almost forgotten. Her pleasure at sight of the restless, chattering crowd; her interest in the performance; her joy in seeing, in fine: supplanted half the consciousness of being seen. But she was, indeed, stared at from all parts of the house; people looked, and nudged one another; and the powdered bucks and beauties in the side-boxes, glancing up, forgot their own looks in examining hers.

Ned was elated beyond measure. He praised her all the way home in the coach, and when they stood at last on the step of their lodging-house, he waited a moment before going in, and looked back toward the Strand, half-thinking that some susceptible and adventurous admirer might have followed their conveyance to the door.

The next day, Sunday, he took her to church, at St. James's in Piccadilly, where they had difficulty in getting seats, and where several pious dowagers were scandalised at the inattention of their male company to the service. Ned walked out alone in the afternoon, but, to his surprise, he was not accosted by any gentleman pretending to recognise him as some one else, as a means of knowing him as himself.

On Monday he made himself seen at numerous coffee-houses and taverns, but, although he came upon two or three faces that he had noted in the theatre, no one looked at him with any sign of recollection. ”Well, well,” thought he, and afterward said to Madge, ”in time they will come to remember me as the lovely creature's escort; at first their eyes will be all for the lovely creature herself.”

They went to Covent Garden that evening, and to the Haymarket the next; and subsequently to public a.s.semblies: Madge everywhere arresting attention, and exciting whispers and elbowings among observers wherever she pa.s.sed. At the public b.a.l.l.s, she was asked to dance, by fellows of whom neither she nor Ned approved, but who, Ned finally came to urge, might be useful acquaintances as leading to better ones. But she found all of them contemptible, and would not encourage any of them.

”If we could only get an invite to some private entertainment, the thing would be done in a jiffy,” said Ned, ”but d.a.m.n it, you won't lead on any of these fellows--sure they must know ladies to whom they would mention you.”

”I shouldn't think much of ladies that sought acquaintances on _their_ recommendation.”

”Why, curse it, we must begin somewhere, to get in.”

”If we began where these could open the doors, I warrant we shouldn't get very far in.”

”Rat me if I understand why the men that are taken with you at the play, and elsewhere--real gentlemen of quality, some of 'em--never try to follow you up through me. I've put myself in their way, the Lord knows. Maybe they think I'm your husband. Curse it, there _is_ a difficulty! If you walked alone, in St. James Park, or past the clubs--?”

”You scoundrel, do you think I've come to that?”

Her look advised him not to pursue his last suggestion. By this time his expectations from their public appearances together had been sadly dampened. They must make acquaintances; creditable ones, that is to say, for of another kind he had enough and to spare.

But at last, after some weeks, during which he remained unapproached, and at the end of which he came to a belated perception of the insuperable barrier between the elect and the undesirable, and of his own ident.i.ty with the latter cla.s.s, he decided he must fall back upon his friends for what they might be worth. He had undergone many snubs in his efforts to thrust himself upon fine gentlemen in taverns, coffee-houses, and gaming-places. As for Madge, her solitude had been mitigated by her enjoyment of plays and sights, of the external glimpses of that life to which her entrance seemed impossible.

Ned began therefore to bring his a.s.sociates to their lodgings: chiefly, a gambling barrister of Lincoln's Inn, a drunken cas.h.i.+ered captain of marines, and a naval surgeon's mate with an unhealthy outbreak on his face. One meeting with each rascal sufficed to make Madge deny her presence upon his next visit. At this Ned raged, declaring, that these gentlemen, though themselves in adverse circ.u.mstances, had relations and friends among the quality or the wealthy. And at length he triumphantly made good his a.s.sertion by introducing a youth to whom the barrister had introduced him, and who, he whispered to Madge, though not blessed with a t.i.tle, was the heir in prospect of an immense fortune. It came out that he was the son of a prosperous fishmonger in the city.

He was a fat, good-humoured fellow, expensively dressed, and clean, being in all these points an exception among Ned's acquaintances.

Madge found him, as a mere acquaintance, more amusing than intolerable; but as a possible husband, not to be thought of save with laughter and contempt.

Her refusal to consider him in the desired light, made Ned very wroth; and in revenge he went out, and, between drink and gaming, rid himself of every penny he possessed. He thereupon begged that Madge would let him p.a.w.n some of her jewelry. She refused to do so; until their landlady threatened ejection and suit.

After that, matters went from bad to worse. With part of the money obtained upon what trinkets she gave him, Ned tried to repair his fortunes at the gaming-table; and that failing, he consoled himself in drunkenness. More of her valuables were demanded; yielded up after terrible quarrels with Ned, and humiliating scenes with the landlady.

The visits to the play ceased, the maid was discharged, the hairdresser was no more brought into requisition. Their fall to dest.i.tution was worthy of the harebrained design, the bungling conduct, of Ned; the childish inexperience, the blind confidence, of Madge. 'Twas a fall as progressive as a series of prints by Hogarth.

The brother was perpetually in liquor; he no longer took Madge out with him. Often he stayed away nights and days at a time.

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