What Will He Do with It? — Complete

But Lionel, younger in character than in years, was too boyish as yet to be safely consigned to those trials of tact and temper which await the neophyte who enters on life through the doors of a mess-room. His pride was too morbid, too much on the alert for offence; his frankness too crude, his spirit too untamed by the insensible discipline of social commerce.

Quoth the observant man of the world: “Place his honour in his own keeping, and he will carry it about with him on full cock, to blow off a friend’s head or his own before the end of the first month. Huffy! decidedly huffy! and of all causes that disturb regiments, and induce courts-martial, the commonest cause is a huffy lad! Pity! for that youngster has in him the right metal,—spirit and talent that should make him a first-rate soldier. It would be time well spent that should join professional studies with that degree of polite culture which gives dignity and cures dulness. I must get him out of London, out of England; cut him off from his mother’s apron-strings, and the particular friends of his poor father who prowl unannounced into the widow’s drawing-room. He shall go to Paris; no better place to learn military theories, and be civilized out of huffy dispositions. No doubt my old friend, the chevalier, who has the art strategic at his fingerends, might be induced to take him en pension, direct his studies, and keep him out of harm’s way. I can secure to him the entree into the circles of the rigid old Faubourg St. Germain, where manners are best bred, and household ties most respected. Besides, as I am so often at Paris myself, I shall have him under my eye, and a few years there, spent in completing him as man, may bring him nearer to that marshal’s baton which every recruit should have in his eye, than if I started him at once a raw boy, unable to take care of himself as an ensign, and unfitted, save by mechanical routine, to take care of others, should he live to buy the grade of a colonel.”

The plans thus promptly formed Alban Morley briefly explained to Lionel when the boy came to breakfast in Curzon Street; requesting him to obtain Mrs. Haughton’s acquiesence in that exercise of the discretionary powers with which he had been invested by Mr. Darrell. To Lionel the proposition that commended the very studies to which his tastes directed his ambition, and placed his initiation into responsible manhood among scenes bright to his fancy, because new to his experience, seemed of course the perfection of wisdom. Less readily pleased was poor Mrs. Haughton, when her son returned to communicate the arrangement, backing a polite and well-worded letter from the Colonel with his own more artless eloquence. Instantly she flew off on the wing of her “little tempers.” “What! her only son taken from her; sent to that horrid Continent, just when she was so respectably settled! What was the good of money if she was to be parted from her boy! Mr. Darrell might take the money back if he pleased; she would write and tell him so. Colonel Morley had no feeling; and she was shocked to think Lionel was in such unnatural hands. She saw very plainly that he no longer cared for her,—a serpent’s tooth,” etc. But as soon as the burst was over, the sky cleared and Mrs. Haughton became penitent and sensible. Then her grief for Lionel’s loss was diverted by preparations for his departure. There was his wardrobe to see to; a patent portmanteau to purchase and to fill. And, all done, the last evening mother and son spent together, though painful at the moment, it would be happiness for both hereafter to recall! Their hands clasped in each other, her head leaning on his young shoulder, her tears kissed so soothingly away, and soft words of kindly motherly counsel, sweet promises of filial performances. Happy, thrice happy, as an after remembrance, be the final parting between hopeful son and fearful parent at the foot of that mystic bridge, which starts from the threshold of home,—lost in the dimness of the far-opposing shore!—bridge over which goes the boy who will never return but as the man.

CHAPTER XII

The pocket-cannibal baits his woman’s trap with love-letters, and a widow allured steals timidly towards it from under the weeds.

Jasper Losely is beginning to be hard up! The infallible calculation at rouge-et-noir has carried off all that capital which had accumulated from the savings of the young gentlemen whom Dolly Poole had contributed to his exchequer. Poole himself is beset by duns, and pathetically observes “that he has lost three stone in weight, and that he believes the calves to his legs are gone to enlarge his liver.”

Jasper is compelled to put down his cabriolet, to discharge his groom, to retire from his fashionable lodgings; and just when the prospect even of a dinner becomes dim, he bethinks himself of Arabella Crane, and remembers that she promised him L5, nay L10, which are still due from her. He calls; he is received like the prodigal son. Nay, to his own surprise, he finds Mrs. Crane has made her house much more inviting: the drawing-rooms are cleaned up; the addition of a few easy articles of furniture gives them quite a comfortable air. She herself has improved in costume, though her favourite colour still remains iron gray. She informs Jasper that she fully expected him; that these preparations are in his honour; that she has engaged a very good cook; that she hopes he will dine with her when not better engaged; in short, lets him feel himself at home in Podden Place.

Jasper at first suspected a sinister design, under civilities that his conscience told him were unmerited,—a design to entrap him into that matrimonial alliance which he had so ungallantly scouted, and from which he still recoiled with an abhorrence which man is not justified in feeling for any connubial partner less preternaturally terrific than the Witch of Endor or the Bleeding Nun!

But Mrs. Crane quickly and candidly hastened to dispel his ungenerous apprehensions. She had given up, she said, all ideas so preposterous; love and wedlock were equally out of her mind. But ill as he had behaved to her, she could not but feel a sincere regard for him,—a deep interest in his fate. He ought still to make a brilliant marriage: did that idea not occur to him? She might help him there with her woman’s wit. “In short,” said Mrs. Crane, pinching her lips, “In short, Jasper, I feel for you as a mother. Look on me as such!”

The pure and affectionate notion wonderfully tickled and egregiously delighted Jasper Losely. “Look on you as a mother! I will,” said he, with emphasis. “Best of creatures!” And though in his own mind he had not a doubt that she still adored him (not as a mother), he believed it was a disinterested, devoted adoration, such as the beautiful brute really had inspired more than once in his abominable life. Accordingly, he moved into the neighbourhood of Podden Place, contenting himself with a second-floor bedroom in a house recommended to him by Mrs. Crane, and taking his meals at his adopted mother’s with filial familiarity. She expressed a desire to make Mr. Poole’s acquaintance; Jasper hastened to present that worthy. Mrs. Crane invited Samuel Dolly to dine one day, to sup the next; she lent him L3 to redeem his dress-coat from pawn, and she gave him medicaments for the relief of his headache.

Samuel Dolly venerated her as a most superior woman; envied Jasper such a “mother.” Thus easily did Arabella Crane possess herself of the existence of Jasper Losely. Lightly her fingers closed over it,—lightly as the fisherman’s over the captivated trout. And whatever her generosity, it was not carried to imprudence. She just gave to Jasper enough to bring him within her power; she had no idea of ruining herself by larger supplies: she concealed from him the extent of her income (which was in chief part derived from house-rents), the amount of her savings, even the name of her banker. And if he carried off to the rouge-et-noir table the coins he obtained from her, and came for more, Mrs. Crane put on the look of a mother incensed,—mild but awful,—and scolded as mothers sometimes can scold. Jasper Losely began to be frightened at Mrs. Crane’s scoldings. And he had not that power over her which, though arrogated by a lover, is denied to an adopted son. His mind, relieved from the habitual distraction of the gaming-table for which the resource was wanting, settled with redoubled ardour on the image of Mrs. Haughton. He had called at her house several times since the fatal day on which he had met there Colonel Morley, but Mrs. Haughton was never at home. And as when the answer was given to him by the footman, he had more than once, on crossing the street, seen herself through the window, it was clear that his acquaintance was not courted. Jasper Losely, by habit, was the reverse of a pertinacious and troublesome suitor; not, Heaven knows, from want of audacity, but from excess of self-love. Where a Lovelace so superb condescended to make overtures, a Clarissa so tasteless as to decline them deserved and experienced his contempt. Besides, steadfast and prolonged pursuit of any object, however important and attractive, was alien to the levity and fickleness of his temper. But in this instance he had other motives than those on the surface for unusual perseverance.

A man like Jasper Losely never reposes implicit confidence in any one. He is garrulous, indiscreet; lets out much that Machiavel would have advised him not to disclose: but he invariably has nooks and corners in his mind which he keeps to himself. Jasper did not confide to his adopted mother his designs upon his intended bride. But she knew them through Poole, to whom he was more frank; and when she saw him looking over her select and severe library, taking therefrom the “Polite Letter-Writer” and the “Elegant Extracts,” Mrs. Crane divined at once that Jasper Losely was meditating the effect of epistolary seduction upon the widow of Gloucester Place.

Jasper did not write a bad love-letter in the florid style. He had at his command, in especial, certain poetical quotations, the effect of which repeated experience had assured him to be as potent upon the female breast as the incantations or carmina of the ancient sorcery. The following in particular,

          “Had I a heart for falsehood framed,           I neer could injure you.”

Another, generally to be applied when confessing that his career had been interestingly wild, and would, if pity were denied him, be pathetically short,

       “When he who adores thee has left but the name         Of his faults and his follies behind.”

Armed with these quotations, many a sentence from the “Polite Letter-Writer” or the “Elegant Extracts,” and a quire of rose-edged paper, Losely sat down to Ovidian composition.

But as he approached the close of epistle the first, it occurred to him that a signature and address were necessary. The address was not difficult. He could give Poole’s (hence his confidence to that gentleman): Poole had a lodging in Bury Street, St. James’s, a fashionable locality for single men. But the name required more consideration. There were insuperable objections against signing his own to any person who might be in communication with Mr. Darrell; a pity, for there was a good old family of the name of Losely. A name of aristocratic sound might indeed be readily borrowed from any lordly proprietor thereof without asking a formal consent. But this loan was exposed to danger. Mrs. Haughton might very naturally mention such name, as borne by her husband’s friend, to Colonel Morley; and Colonel Morley would most probably know enough of the connections and relations of any peer so honoured to say, “There is no such Greville, Cavendish, or Talbot.” But Jasper Losely was not without fertility of invention and readiness of resource. A grand idea, worthy of a master, and proving that, if the man had not been a rogue in grain, he could have been reared into a very clever politician, flashed across him. He would sign himself “SMITH.” Nobody could say there is no such Smith; nobody could say that a Smith might not be a most respectable, fashionable, highly-connected man. There are Smiths who are millionaires; Smiths who are large-acred squires; substantial baronets; peers of England, and pillars of the State. You can no more question a man’s right to be a Smith than his right to be a Briton; and wide as the diversity of rank, lineage, virtue, and genius in Britons is the diversity in Smiths. But still a name so generic often affects a definitive precursor. Jasper signed himself “J. COURTENAY SMITH.” He called, and left epistle the first with his own kid-gloved hand, inquiring first if Mrs. Haughton were at home, and, responded to in the negative this time, he asked for her son. “Her son was gone abroad with Colonel Morley.” Jasper, though sorry to lose present hold over the boy, was consoled at learning that the Colonel was off the ground. Afore sanguine of success, he glanced up at the window, and, sure that Mrs. Haughton was there, though he saw her not, lifted his hat with as melancholy an expression of reproach as he could throw into his face.

The villain could not have found a moment in Mrs. Haughton’s widowed life so propitious to his chance of success. In her lodging-house at Pimlico, the good lady had been too incessantly occupied for that idle train of revery, in which the poets assure us that Cupid finds leisure to whet his arrows and take his aim. Had Lionel still been by her side, had even Colonel Morley been in town, her affection for the one, her awe of the other, would have been her safeguards. But alone in that fine new house, no friends, no acquaintances as yet, no dear visiting circle on which to expend the desire of talk and the zest for innocent excitement that are natural to ladies of an active mind and a nervous temperament, the sudden obtrusion of a suitor so respectfully ardent,—oh, it is not to be denied that the temptation was IMMENSE.

And when that note, so neatly folded, so elegantly sealed, lay in her irresolute hand, the widow could not but feel that she was still young, still pretty; and her heart flew back to the day when the linendraper’s fair daughter had been the cynosure of the provincial High Street; when young officers had lounged to and fro the pavement, looking in at her window; when ogles and notes had alike beset her, and the dark eyes of the irresistible Charlie Haughton had first taught her pulse to tremble. And in her hand lies the letter of Charlie Haughton’s particular friend. She breaks the seal. She reads—a declaration!

Five letters in five days did Jasper write. In the course of those letters, he explains away the causes for suspicion which Colonel Morley had so ungenerously suggested. He is no longer anonymous; he is J. Courtenay Smith. He alludes incidentally to the precocious age in which he had become “lord of himself, that heritage of woe.” This accounts for his friendship with a man so much his senior as the late Charlie. He confesses that in the vortex of dissipation his hereditary estates have disappeared; but he has still a genteel independence; and with the woman of his heart, etc. He had never before known what real love was, etc. “Pleasure had fired his maddening soul;” “but the heart,—the heart been lonely still.” He entreated only a personal interview, even though to be rejected,—scorned. Still, when “he who adored her had left but the name,” etc. Alas! alas! as Mrs. Haughton put down epistle the fifth, she hesitated; and the woman who hesitates in such a case, is sure, at least—to write a civil answer.

Mrs. Haughton wrote but three lines,—still they were civil; and conceded an interview for the next day, though implying that it was but for the purpose of assuring Mr. J. Courtenay Smith, in person, of her unalterable fidelity to the shade of his lamented friend.

In high glee Jasper showed Mrs. Haughton’s answer to Dolly Poole, and began seriously to speculate on the probable amount of the widow’s income, and the value of her movables in Gloucester Place. Thence he repaired to Mrs. Crane; and, emboldened by the hope forever to escape from her maternal tutelage, braved her scoldings and asked for a couple of sovereigns. He was sure that he should be in luck that night. She gave to him the sum, and spared the scoldings. But, as soon as he was gone, conjecturing from the bravado of his manner what had really occurred, Mrs. Crane put on her bonnet and went out.

CHAPTER XIII

Unhappy is the man who puts his trust in a woman.

Late that evening a lady, in a black veil, knocked at No.—Gloucester Place, and asked to see Mrs. Haughton on urgent business. She was admitted. She remained but five minutes.

The next day when, “gay as a bridegroom prancing to his bride,” Jasper Losely presented himself at the widow’s door, the servant placed in his hand a packet, and informed him bluffly that Mrs. Haughton had gone out of town. Jasper with difficulty suppressed his rage, opened the packet,—his own letters returned, with these words, “Sir, your name is not Courtenay Smith. If you trouble me again, I shall apply to the police.” Never from female hand had Jasper Losely’s pride received such a slap on its face. He was literally stunned. Mechanically he hastened to Arabella Crane; and having no longer any object in concealment, but, on the contrary, a most urgent craving for sympathy, he poured forth his indignation and wrongs. No mother could be more consolatory than Mrs. Crane. She soothed, she flattered, she gave him an excellent dinner; after which, she made him so comfortable, what with an easy-chair and complimentary converse, that, when Jasper rose late to return to his lodging, he said, “After all, if I had been ugly and stupid, and of a weakly constitution, I should have been of a very domestic turn of mind.”

CHAPTER XIV

No author ever drew a character consistent to human nature, but what he was forced to ascribe to it many inconsistencies.

Whether moved by that pathetic speech of Jasper’s, or by some other impulse not less feminine, Arabella Crane seemed suddenly to conceive the laudable and arduous design of reforming that portentous sinner. She had some distant relations in London, whom she very rarely troubled with a visit, and who, had she wanted anything from them, would have shut their doors in her face; but as, on the contrary, she was well off, single, and might leave her money to whom she pleased, the distant relations were always warm in manner, and prodigal in their offers of service. The next day she repaired to one of these kinsfolk,—a person in a large way of business,—and returned home with two great books in white sheepskin. And when Losely looked in to dine, she said, in the suavest tones a tender mother can address to an amiable truant, “Jasper, you have great abilities; at the gaming-table abilities are evidently useless: your forte is calculation; you were always very quick at that. I have been fortunate enough to procure you an easy piece of task-work, for which you will be liberally remunerated. A friend of mine wishes to submit these books to a regular accountant: he suspects that a clerk has cheated him; but he cannot tell how or where. You know accounts thoroughly,—no one better,—and the pay will be ten guineas.”

Jasper, though his early life had rendered familiar and facile to him the science of book-keeping and double-entry, made a grimace at the revolting idea of any honest labour, however light and well paid. But ten guineas were an immense temptation, and in the evening Mrs. Crane coaxed him into the task.

Neglecting no feminine art to make the lawless nomad feel at home under her roof, she had provided for his ease and comfort morocco slippers and a superb dressing-robe, in material rich, in colour becoming. Men, single or marital, are accustomed to connect the idea of home with dressing-gown and slippers, especially if, after dinner, they apply (as Jasper Losely now applied) to occupations in which the brain is active, the form in repose. What achievement, literary or scientific, was ever accomplished by a student strapped to unyielding boots, and “cabined, cribbed, confined,” in a coat that fits him like wax? As robed in the cozy garment which is consecrated to the sacred familiar Lares, the relaxing, handsome ruffian sat in the quiet room, bending his still regular profile over the sheepskin books, the harmless pen in that strong well-shaped hand, Mrs. Crane watched him with a softening countenance. To bear him company, she had actively taken, herself, to work,—the gold thimble dragged from its long repose,—marking and hemming, with nimble artistic fingers, new cravats for the adopted son! Strange creature is woman! Ungrateful and perfidious as that sleek tiger before her had often proved himself, though no man could less deserve one kindly sentiment in a female heart, though she knew that he cared nothing for her, still it was pleasing to know that he cared for nobody else, that he was sitting in the same room; and Arabella Crane felt that, if that existence could continue, she could forget the past and look contented towards the future. Again I say, strange creature is woman; and in this instance, creature more strange, because so grim! But as her eyes soften, and her fingers work, and her mind revolves schemes for making that lawless wild beast an innocuous tame animal, who can help feeling for and with grim Arabella Crane?

Poor woman! And will not the experiment succeed? Three evenings does Jasper Losely devote to this sinless life and its peaceful occupation. He completes his task; he receives the ten guineas. (How much of that fee came out of Mrs. Crane’s privy purse?) He detects three mistakes, which justify suspicion of the book-keeper’s integrity. Set a thief to catch a thief! He is praised for acuteness, and promised a still lighter employment, to be still better paid. He departs, declaring that he will come the next day, earlier than usual; he volunteers an eulogium upon work in general; he vows that evenings so happy he has not spent for years; he leaves Mrs. Crane so much impressed by the hope of his improvement that, if a good clergyman had found her just at that moment, she might almost have been induced to pray. But

            “Heu quoties fidem              Mutatosque deos flebit!”

Jasper Losely returns not, neither to Podden place or his lodging in the neighborhood. Days elapse and still he comes not; even Poole does not know where he has gone; even Poole has not seen him! But that worthy is now laid up with a serious rheumatic fever—confined to his room and a water gruel. And Jasper Losely is not the man to intrude himself on the privacy of a sick chamber. Mrs. Crane, more benevolent, visits Poole cheers him up—gets him a nurse—writes to Uncle Sam. Poole blesses her. He hopes that Uncle Sam, moved by the spectacle of the sick-bed will say, “Don’t let your debts fret you: I will pay them!” Whatever her disappointment or resentment at Jasper’s thankless and mysterious evasion, Arabella Crane is calmly confident of his return. To her servant, Bridget Greggs, who was perhaps the sole person in the world who entertained affection for the lone gaunt woman, and who held Jasper Losely in profound detestation, she said, with tranquil sternness, “That man has crossed my life, and darkened it. He passed away, and left Night behind him. He has dared to return. He shall never escape me again till the grave yawn for one of us.”

“But, Lor’ love you, miss, you would not put yourself in the power of such a black-hearted villing?”

“In his power! No, Bridget; fear not, he must be in mine, sooner or later in mine, hand and foot. Patience!” As she was thus speaking,—a knock at the door! “It is he; I told you so; quick!”

But it was not Jasper Losely. It was Mr. Rugge.

CHAPTER XV

   “When God wills, all winds bring rain.” —Ancient Proverb.

The manager had not submitted to the loss of his property in Sophy and L100 without taking much vain trouble to recover the one or the other. He had visited Jasper while that gentleman lodged in St. James’s; but the moment he hinted at the return of the L100, Mr. Losely opened both door and window, and requested the manager to make his immediate choice of the two. Taking the more usual mode of exit, Mr. Rugge vented his just indignation in a lawyer’s letter, threatening Mr. Losely with an action for conspiracy and fraud. He had also more than once visited Mrs. Crane, who somewhat soothed him by allowing that he had been very badly used, that he ought at least to be repaid his money, and promising to do her best to persuade Mr. Losely “to behave like a gentleman.” With regard to Sophy herself, Mrs. Crane appeared to feel a profound indifference. In fact, the hatred which Mrs. Crane had unquestionably conceived for Sophy while under her charge was much diminished by Losely’s unnatural conduct towards the child. To her it was probably a matter of no interest whether Sophy was in Rugge’s hands or Waife’s; enough for her that the daughter of a woman against whose memory her fiercest passions were enlisted was, in either case, so far below herself in the grades of the social ladder.