Lord and Lady Piccadilly

Chapter I

Whatever may be said of London society, it can never be averred with truth that it is slow to recognise merit — that is, when the merit consists of high rank, youth, a state of promising bachelorhood, and an enormous fortune. At any rate, in the case of Henry, Lord Piccadilly, those persons with bankers' books who reside westward of The Griffin, and who call themselves the aristocracy of England, were quick enough to take him by the right hand of friendship — nay, to place him on a pedestal, as if he were a brewer or a royal personage. VOL. II. B The flattery he met with on all sides pleased Harry. He had not a sufficiently mean opinion of human nature to believe that it could all be false, that it would cease to-morrow if a claimant came forward and success fully asserted his right to the St. James title and estates.

He had not, for instance, seen any little bit of true everyday comedy like this : Scene at a Club. To Brown enter Jones. Jones. Heard of the FitzCrown smash ? Brown. Yes. Sad thing. Poor Fitz loses his title. Scamp, his father. But he's got 10,000.. left — the Basland estate. Poor chap ! I'll ask him to dine with me next week. Jones. No. You're wrong about the Basland property. That goes with the title. I have just seen B , who is arranging the affair. Poor Fitz is a pauper. PLCCADILLY 3 Brown. By Jove ! Well, he always was rather a swaggering chap — and — and — no, I won't ask him to dinner next week. Harry was not fool enough to think that he was liked for himself alone by all ; for instance, by old Lady Molygold, who pelted him, until he was morally sore and bruised, with notes of invitation, compliments, and daughters, nor by Colonel Mouther, who asked him for the loan of a ' monkey ' five minutes after introducing himself to him on the club steps.

But he did find it very pleasant to be greeted everywhere with bright smiles of welcome, and to know that there was not a house in London where his entrance would not give — or, at least, seem to give — pleasure. The thing did not turn his head, as the phrase goes, but it filled his head with very pleasant thoughts, and, with one ex ception, he had nothing in his life just now to give him anything but unmitigated satisfaction. His mother, now a wealthy dinner-giver of Belgrave Square, B had improved under the influence of prosperity. Al though still eager about the scandals of the day, she no longer searched for them with the eagerness and as perity of yore. To use a hunting metaphor, she did not dig up her foxes when she ran them to ground. They were given another chance of life, till the tittle tattle dogs — the character-hounds — drew the covert another time, and then who knows ? — there might be other foxes afoot with a stronger scent than they.

No woman was ever prouder of her son than Mrs. St. James. To see him doing the honours at the head of her table gave her as much pleasure as half-a-dozen of the newest stories of friends' delinquencies, and she, by some mysterious logical and inductive process— known alone to the female mind — had quite persuaded herself that Harry's success was entirely owing to her own unparalleled sagacity and foresight. The one thorn of Harry's rose, the one exception to the rule of his happiness, was that, search as he might, he could find no trace of his early love. Nellie Barton had entirely disappeared. The house in Eich lake where they had lived had been pulled down, and a new house had been erected in its place. None of the village inhabitants could tell him more than that, first, Nellie had gone away, to London they believed, and that, some months after, Mr. Barton, whose medical practice had died away almost to nothing — a new and more popular physician having set up in opposition — had gone too.

As everyone who leftEichlake did go to London this intelligence was not worth much, and yet it was all he could obtain. The servants who had been with the old Lord at The Grange had disappeared long ago, taking with them their handsome legacies ; and though Harry did manage to hunt up Mrs. Eichards and the butler — who had joined forces and taken a corner public-house in East London — from them he could gather no more than a vague idea tbat Nellie had married a young gentleman who used to visit at The Grange, and that Mr. Barton was dead ' for sure ' — he was ' that old,' and besides, very unhealthy. Although at first this unsuccess made Harry very miserable, it was scarcely possible for him, in the active bright life he now led, to keep his first love always in his thoughts, and gradually he ceased to remember the early romance and reconciled himself to the fact that one page — a pleasant one — of his life had been read, turned over, and done with.

Absence often makes the heart grow fonder of those who are not absent, and he was surrounded now by so many pairs of bright eyes that would sparkle at his humour or damp at his sentiment so very — so extraor dinarily — easily. To give my readers a notion of the position that he occupied in the world at present, I think it would scarcely be safe to trust to my own unaided power of description, and I am relieved to turn to an account of him which appeared in one of the ' Society ' papers of the day, which, under the heading of ' Great Ones Chez Eux,' had been indulging its readers for some time with sketches of those persons who filled the public eye: ' Great Ones Chez Eux. No. XXI. ' Henry, Baron Piccadilly. 'The young nobleman who has lately appeared upon the horizon of society is much to be envied.

From a position of comparative obscurity he has suddenly sprung into the zenith of fame and grandeur. The St. James family, which can scarcely be said to go back into the mists of time, has always been noted for its loyalty to that entity known to us slangy nineteenth century folk as " the main chance," and the result is apparent now in the person of the subject of our sketch. Many a petty German prince of the good old days before Bismarck and Moltke put their heads together and evolved a German Empire might have envied him, for without the cares of Government he is a petty king, and without exigencies of state etiquette he may be said to preside over a court. ' Let us see what he has, this young princeling, who only the other day led the Four-in-Hand Club their drive to the Crystal Palace, with a Royal Highness on the box-seat, and a coach load of beauties that no other capital in Europe could match. ' There is Mall Castle in Slumberland, a splendid edifice in cut stone, with something Uke five thousand acres of wild picturesque park undulating around it, and placed in the centre of an estate estimated to bring in some 70,000.. a year. ' Then there is the old Manor House in Kent, built when the Tudors were kings, and a miracle of orna mental architecture. ' Shut up for years — as had also been the Castle in Sutherland — the old walls must have been startled to hear the sound of gay voices the other day, when a PLCCADILLY 9 galaxy of beauty and fashion congregated there for the Canterbury Week, and desecrated (as no doubt the old housekeeper thought) that gloomy room where Geoffrey, Lord Piccadilly, was murdered, by playing battledore and shuttlecock in it on a Sunday morning.

Then we have the Scotch forest, with the lodge of Ellancruich nestling among the heather-covered hills, and the stags only awaiting the advent of their new owner, with his friends and his rifles, to do the thinning that has so long been wanting. ' Besides these, is there not a lovely cottage in the Isle of Wight, with, close to it, a perfect little natural harbour, where two or three yachts can lie in any wind ? The Villa Moresca, in the outskirts of Naples, a para dise of Italian art and English comfort ? The little house in the Rue Scribe, in Paris ? The palazzo in Rome ? The curious shooting-box, built by Joseph, Lord Piccadilly, in Albania ? Then who in London does not know Piccadilly House with it garden of six acres enclosed with a high wall, aDd its stately if some what gloomy facade looking over the park ?

Or who that has gone a-pleasuring to Richlake has not seen that rose-embowered cottage, with its trim lawn sloping down to the river ? ' Lord Piccadilly lives, when in town, at his chambers in the Albany, disliking the space and empti ness of the family mansion ; but it is said that he does not intend the latter to be wasted, but bas sent invita tions to such of bis county neighbours as find a stay in town expensive to come up for various periods and take advantage of the French cook and household he has placed there. ' But we have not got half through our young Crœsus' possessions.

He has about the nicest house near Melton, and quite the best stud in Leicestershire ; he owns a little place not two miles from Newmarket, which is said to be a miracle of comfort, where he is gradually getting together a string of race-horses under the experienced guidance of Colonel Ditchin, and much helped by his trainer, Jack Knight. ' He has a place in the west of Ireland which those few brave persons who dare venture in that country de scribe as something quite magnificent, with some miles of shrubbery walks, and with splendid fishing at hand ; he has twelve thousand acres of the best shooting in Norfolk ; he has a rental of something like 80,000Z. a year in London property ; and he inherited the sum of over two millions in the Funds. ' Then rumour has it that his Lordship, anxious, like so many of his class, to promote the interests of the drama, has taken a lease of the Quip Theatre, and that, cherishing the same feeling as regards art, he has bought a large hall, not far from Piccadilly, where young artists will be encouraged to give the public a view of their early efforts to achieve fame. ' Nothing, perhaps, in the naval architecture of PLCCADILLY 12 pleasure can come near the Banshee, a three-masted schooner, with auxiliary screw, of seven hundred and eighty tons, just completed for him by Mr. Black, of Porthampton ; and all know of the powers of his racing cutter of one hundred tons, the Katinka.

To sum up, this Dives of the modern time is said — and we believe correctly said — to enjoy an income of three hundred thousand a year, and, judging from what he has already done, it may be predicted that he will spend it like a gentleman.' Thus far the Society paper. It is scarcely worth while to correct the blunders and exaggerations of the article, for in the main the picture is correct. Harry was unquestionably a great man, as we measure greatness, and it is for this veracious history to describe not so much his greatness as what he did with it. If there should be found lurking a moral in my story I protest that it is not my fault. Morals wUl get in where they are not wanted, even as a Radical flea has been known to invade the sanctity of a princess's bed.

Chapter II

When John Heckthorpe was observed by his cronies to take seven glasses of grog at night instead of his customary eight, all agreed that something had gone wrong with his affairs. What that something was he told nobody, and it was some time before he even con fided to his daughter Amalia the cause of his trouble. But at length it came out. One morning he was more than ordinarily loquacious, and he felt a sudden need for human sympathy. ' Maly, my girl,' he said, sitting in the armchair that took up a large part of the back parlour ; ' Maly, the child's dead.' ' What child, pa ? ' ' Why, Jenny's, of course ! ' ' You never told me she had one.' ' Where's the good of my telling you ? When young 'Umphrey had come into his property then 'ud been the time to talk about the heir, Maly. And, damme, the young beggar's gone off.

I heard from 'er a month ago.' ' She hasn't written home for nearly a year,' cried Amalia, with a tremblement of half anger, half affection in her voice. ' No. You see, he were ashamed of us. And besides, he daren't own to his marriage till the cousin goes off the hooks. When that's come off I'll precious soon see that he owns us. But it's too dangerous now.' ' But where is Jenny ? ' ' Where ? Why, at Brussels ; in a lodging. He's 'ad to go to his cousin's. But he sends her money pretty reg'lar ; and I suppose it's all right. The only thing is that she writes that she's ill too. Now, if she were to go off ' ' Oh, papa, she can't be as bad as that ! ' ' Can't she ? ' he sneered, taking his pipe out of his mouth with a trembling hand. ' 'Ow the devil do you know that, miss ? I say if she were to go off too we lose all hold over the feller ! ' ' Oh, mayn't I go to her ? ' cried Amalia, who really was fond of her sister. ' Let me go and nurse her if she's ill ! ' But Mr. Heckthorpe went on, without taking any notice of the remark : ' And I've bin speculating on it all the time — not to speak of your pianers, and masters, and things.

I've been a-going it a little bit too fast on my own account ; and what's come to my luck I don't know — I haven't spotted a winning 'orse these six months. D them ! they allus run second when I'm on, and win when they're supposed not to be trying. I tell you that if I lose my hold over that feller I'm about in Queer Street. Do you know what that means ? ' ' You mean in difficulties about money ? ' 'Yes, my girl. B-A-N-K, bank— R-U-P, rup ; that's about what I mean. Read that.' He handed her a letter which she glanced over. It commenced abruptly : ' I really have no power of doing any more for you now. You must be patient, and trust to me when tbe time arrives. It cannot be far off. I send J. all I can spare. Do not make any inquiries or do anything ; and write and tell J. to be most careful.

A discovery would be ruin to us all. I must stay on here. To leave here just now might be disastrous. 'H. B. ' What's the postmark—" Ballydrum ? " ' ' It's somewhere in Ireland. If I thought he was playing me any trick But I believe he's on the square; and I daresay, what with Jenny and one thing and another, 'asn't much spare cash. But 'e'U have to stump up pretty smart when this blessed cousin cuts it.' vol. 11. c ' And Jenny's all alone and ill at Brussels,' said Amalia, her thoughts reverting to her sister. ' It is dreadful ! You told me she was well and happy ! ' ' Did I ? I daresay. If you'd a-asked no questions you'd a-heard no lies. Now go and draw me a glass of bitter, and then leave me alone. I've got to look through that 'andicap. If Joe Waite comes in, tell him I want him.' ' You'll let me hear any more news, father ? ' said the girl, as she put a glass before him ; but his only answer was an impatient order for her to be gone.

And with a sigh she went back to her household duties. Amalia Heckthorpehad in her some ofthe elements of a fine character. Intelligent she was, and possessed of immense courage and determination. Her affections were rather of the animal kind, but she clung by them very fiercely, and a certain grocer's wife's ears tingled still when she remembered having dropped an insinuation against Jane Heckthorpe's fair fame before her sister. It was said, indeed, that those ears had more than moral cause for this tingling, and that it had taken all Mr. Heckthorpe's strength to drag his daughter away from the culprit ; and those who knew Amalia's ungovernable temper believed in the tale. At any rate, people were afterwards very careful as to what they said concerning the absent young lady. Amalia was, for one in her position, very well educated.

She had read a good deal in a desultory haphazard way ; she had learned to play upon the piano ; and she possessed a rich voice, which only required teaching to develop into a most melodious one. The science of dress she had not yet mastered, being still a little addicted to brilliant colours and not too harmonious a disposition of them ; but Nature had instructed her in the art of moving ; she carried herself erect and put her small feet down as so few Englishwomen can ; while there was not in her an ounce of that shyness that often proc duces awkwardness in a young woman. Proud of her looks, and imagining herself to be a good many cuts above those with whom she mixed, her demeanour in Ilborough society might have been studied with ad vantage by many a London would-be-fine lady. Vulgar enough at heart, she had learned enough to show but little of it on the surface, and her dark eyes, fine bust, aud bewitching smile played sad havoc with the Ilborough young men, and with the hearts of the com mercial gentlemen who came from time to time to the King's Arms.

The Reverend Portleton had some time since gone to sleep with his fathers, and the rectory had passed to a pastor who did not require to eke out his income by taking pupils, so that one source of innocent enjoyment to the publican's daughter had been removed. Still, she had grown rather weary of the incessant chaff and useless sham love-making with which the gay pupils had favoured her. Besides, there lurked always in her mind the beautiful youth of high lineage who had held her in his arms in the London restaurant, and never a day passed that she did not expect to see his handsome face and stalwart form at tbe door of the King's Arms, and to hear that her fate had found her out. For it need scarcely be said that Amalia was ambitious, and fully intended some day to be ' a lady.' True, there was in her mind an alternative possi bility — the stage — but her ideas as to this were as yet crude and unshaped.

She only knew that her face and figure would surely attract, and that she was troubled with no scruples as to that thing people call ' morality.' Success with respectability if possible, but at all events success. Si possis, recte ; si non, quocumque modo, rem'' Harry was her Victory, the photograph-shop windows her Westminster Abbey. You see, she was so unsophisticated as not to be aware that nowadays our beauties amass all the glories of respectability as well as those of its opposite. Things went on getting worse for some time at the King's Arms. Mr. Heckthorpe betted more and more, and a row in his house, commenced, it is said, by him self, made people whisper a doubt as to his obtaining a renewal of his license. An enterprising rival started a club, with singing twice a week and political debates on Saturdays, which took away a good many of his customers ; and he began doubling his once modest bets upon horseraces, in the vain hope of winning back the money he had lost.

Then worse accounts of Jane came from abroad, and at length Amalia obtained his permission to go to her sister. ' I am so lonely,' she wrote, ' and I do not think I can live long. I cannot breathe when I Ue down, and have to sit in a chair all night. And H. says he can't come to me. He scarcely ever writes now ; but he does send me money enough. But I want him. I think he is in London again. Can't you persuade him to come ? I know I worried him before ; but I'll be better now, and it isn't for long.' ' I must go to her ! ' cried Amalia, when she had read this letter ; and her father, after some use of bad language, had at length consented, and was much relieved to find that Amalia had saved enough out of her allowance to defray the expenses of the journey. Amalia's progress to Brussels was a series of triumphs.

Young male passengers vied with each other in atten tions ; Belgian guards put her tenderly into coupes ; and even haughty gendarmes twisted their moustaches less fiercely when they looked upon her graceful figure, and smiled with infinite condescension when she asked questions in British French. But her thoughts were too much set upon her sister's woes to care much for these things. She only experienced a comfortable feeling that she had not over-estimated her powers of pleasing outside the narrow limits of Ilborough, where her rivals were so far behind her in attractions ; and it was with a beating heart that she ascended the stairs of the lodgings where Jane lay. I need not dwell upon the meeting of the sisters, or the weary weeks while the life of the one ebbed slowly but unmistakably away, nor on the grief of the one that was left when Jane's sweet face, beautiful in death, lay upon the pillow surrounded by its masses of fair hair.

The Belgian doctor always avowed that he had never seen anything more beautiful than the sight of the dark beauty clasping to her the inanimate form of her dead sister, while their tresses, dark and fair, mingled together. ' Black and gold ' were at length to be dissevered for ever. It was on November 24 that poor Jane passed away. She had gone, while at Brussels, by the name of Mrs. Humphreys, and it was under this name that the certificate of death was given. Amalia was so furious at the desertion of her sister by her husband — for prac tically he had deserted her for the last five months — that she was more than half inclined to leave him in the dark as to her death ; for she scarcely knew in what terms to address him. Jane had given her the name of a London club at which to direct to him, but the letter remained unwritten.

Mr. Heckthorpe, to whom she had telegraphed, sent an unintelligible answer, by which however she made out that he did not intend to come to Brussels ; and on Amalia, therefore, devolved all the arrangements as to the funeral. On the day after this ceremony sbe left the town, and having, owing to an accident to the engine, missed the steamer at Ostend by which she intended to cross, she was obliged to go to the inn there and wait until next day. The bedroom she had taken being uncomfortable, and there being many people in the salon, she was about to go out and kill an hour in walking through the streets, when her ear was caught, as she passed the open door of a room where servants of travellers took their meals, by the sound of a familiar name ; and not being troubled by scruples, she stopped and listened.

The speakers were of opposite sexes. The man's voice was raised now : ' Yes, Miss Jones, as I tell you, it was a rum sort of wedding. There was young Ballard — Humphrey Ballard is his name, a regular young swell — a-looking more Uke death than a bridegroom at the altar ; and the bride — a pretty young woman she were — not much more happy like. They say she had a fortune of ever so many thousands, though goodness knows who from, as she lived in the village with the doctor ; but I has my suspicions ; and then there was the old Lord a cussing and a-swearing as usual in his chair, and the parson as frightened as twopence, nearly dropping the book.' ' Weren't it in church, Mr. Perker ? ' asked the female voice. ' Church ! Do you think my Lord 'ud go into a church ? He were a rare old heathen, he were.

Oh no! They had a special license from the Harchbishop of Canterbury, and done it in the drawing room.' 9 ' And where did the young couple go ? ' ' They went to Ireland, I 'eard say, where Ballard has an uncle or cousin or something with a castle.' ' WeU, I don't envy 'em Ireland,' said the lady. ' But how come you to have left so sudden ? ' ' Oh, my Lord got in one of his rages after the wedding, and packed a lot of us off at a moment's notice ; and I happened in the nick of time to catch Sir Thomas — as I was with before — in London. He wanted a travelling-servant in a hurry, and I came on with him the very same night, and we're a-going to tower on the Continent all the winter. I'm blessed glad to get away from that old tiger at Richlake, I can tell you, Miss Jones.' At this point Amalia pushed the door open, and addressing the man, said, with great politeness : ' Excuse me, Mr. Perker, but I accidentally heard the name of a person in whom I am much interested.

Mr. Humphrey Ballard, I think you said ? ' ' Yes, miss,' said Perker, a little taken aback. ' He was married, I think you said,' went on Amalia, steadying her voice with difficulty, ' the other day ? Could you tell me the date of the marriage ? ' ' Why, yes — it was — let me see — to-day's Thursday •it was Tuesday.' ' That would be the 25th, I think — November the 25th?' ' Exactly, miss.' 'Thank you. And— could I speak to you a moment ? I am much interested in Mr. Humphrey Ballard.' ' Oh, lor ! Don't mind me, said Miss Jones, rising, with some asperity. ' I know when I'm not wanted. Good day, Mr. Perker.' Then, by the aid of some money which luckily remained in her purse, AmaUa obtained aU information as to the wedding at Richlake. 'The 25th — the 25th!' she repeated over and over again to herself, as she walked rapidly up and down the esplanade that evening, with an expression on her face that boded ill to someone. ' The day after ! One day after ! But he did not know it 1 The scoundrel ! '

Chapter III

' It is so good of you to call,' said Mrs. Maintenong, rising picturesquely from her sofa and holding out the prettiest hand in London to Harry. ' I never thought you woidd.' ' I always keep my promises, Mrs. Maintenong,' said he, keeping the hand perhaps the fraction of a second longer than was absolutely necessary for the customary salutation of our latter-day barbarism. ' Do you ? ' she said, italicising the first word with a sigh that spoke volumes. ' I hope so. People so seldom do. My husband promised to love, honour, and obey me, you know, and he doesn't.' ' I thought you promised that ? ' observed Harry, smiling. ' Ah, by the way, so I did ! But he promised to help me in sickness and sorrow, in poverty and riches, until death do us part. And he refused to buy me the prettiest bay horse to-day.

But I don't mind so much, for Lord Passaye is going to get the creature and give it to me.' ' What does Mr. Maintenong say to that ? ' ' Why, what can he say to it ? If he won't give me the necessaries of life, somebody must. I am told it is the law.' ' Perhaps he can't.: ' Perhaps not. I do believe Tom is head over ears in debt. But that's his fault. He must have known when he knew me first that I wanted things.' ' Not so many things as you do want, though,' said Harry, glancing round the room, crammed with objects which, if not particularly adornful, were very expensive, and then looking back into the liquid wonderful eyes of his hostess, and at her perfect figure in its perfect covering. She sighed as she poured him out a cup of tea. ' Ah, Lord Piccadilly, how do we know what we want ? I want to be good.