Too Good for Him

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LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. l:.Y FLOKENCE MAEKYAT, (MES. EOSS CHURCH,) AUTBOB OF "LOVES CONFLICT.'' " A perfect woman, nobly plann'd, To warn, to suffer, and command. And yet a^ spirit still and bright, With something of an angel light." Wordsworth. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. III. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. fhiMttfjra: tit ©rtrittars ta i£»cr ffin\t&tia. 1865. {The right of Translation is reserved.] CONTEXTS OF VOLUME III.

258 CHAPTER XH. REPARATION ........ 282 CHAPTER XHI. THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE .....

Chapter I. Mr

HALKETT SHOWS HIMSELF IN HIS TRUB COLOURS. But a few hours before, Mr. Halkett had been seated at a cosy little dinner in his chambers, in company with young Lawton of the Inner Temple and Lizzie Ashton — Lizzie Ashton, who was becoming more careless every day, and im perilling her fair fame by such imprudent acts, as dining with young men in their bachelor rooms. The hour was seven, and the meal had already advanced to the stage of being half over. The cheese and celery were on the table, but the port wine and walnuts were yet to come, and the sociable three had intended to sit over their dessert for as long a time as the whole dinner had occupied. Lizzie Ashton was in high spirits, so was young Lawton, who had long VOL. in. B looked on her with a favourable eye, and had been made supremely happy that afternoon by her acceptance of some trifling trinket at his hands and promising that she would wear it always for his sake.

Of course that little promise was just between him and her, there was not the least necessity for telling Mr. Halkett anything about it — indeed, it was no concern of his — how should it be ? the locket and chain were inside Lizzie Ashton's dress, and the words with which they had been placed there inside Mr. Lawton's heart, and Mr. Halkett was as cognisant of the one fact as of the other. How should he guess why the young man's eyes were so glowing on this particular evening, his manner so gallant and attentive, his voice so seductively low ? it was the usual thing to happen to the eyes and manners and voices of those men who lingered in the company of Lizzie Ashton, for that she possessed charms, and win ning charms too, for some people, I think I have made plain enough to you alreadv. Even had it been anything out of the common wav, I scarcely think Mr. Halkett would have observed it that night, for he was not in good spirits him self.

He had not been in good spirits on and off for the last two months, and he had had to endure a great deal of banter in consequence from his lively friends. They insisted now that it was the death of his grandmother that had so cut him up, and Halkett let them maintain the assertion. " No disgrace, if it was so," he said, almost rudely. "She was a better woman, Lizzie, than you'll ever be." " I didn't say she wasn't," replied poor Lizzie, to whom the mention of better women struck home sometimes with a sudden pang. "If I live to be a grandmother, I mean to be re spectable too." "Easier said than done," was trembling upon Halkett's lips, when a sharp, sudden rap at the door startled them all into silence. "Who the deuce can that be?" he exclaimed. " Some bothering dun, I suppose. Come, Lizzie, you cut."

Miss Ashton seemed to be accustomed to " cutting," for she jumped up from her seat at table, and ran at once through the folding doors into the next room, which was Mr. Halkett's bedroom, where, not entirely shut ting them' after her, she remained, with her face closely pressed against the chink which she had left. As soon as she was safely housed, Mr. Hal kett went to the door and opened it. As he did so he started backward. " Good Heavens, Reverdon ! is that you ? What brings you here ?" "I want to have a few words with you, Hal kett," said Rex, walking past him into the room, and then, perceiving Lawton, he removed his hat. " I didn't know you had company. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but mv business won't wait." Halkett had grown verv white when he first met the sight of Rex Reverdon's closely knit brows, and knew that something serious was the matter.

Now he "followed him to the table and tried to carry off his discomfiture by an attempt at gaiety. " I'll attend to you with the greatest of 'pleasure, my dear fellow ; but you'll 7sit down and have a glass of wine first. Let me introduce you to my friend Lawton." Rex bowed slightly, but he made no effort to sit down. " I am sorry to disturb Mr. Lawton," he said, gravely, "but I shall not detain you long, Halkett." Mr. Lawton immediately rose, and begging Mr. Reverdon not to mention it, said he would run down to his own rooms for half an hour, until the interview was completed. " Nonsense, man !" cried Halkett. " Sit down again. Why, hang it, Reverdon, surely your business cannot be of so pressing a nature that it can't wait for a little while. Let's finish our dinners in peace first." •' You'll think me very importunate," said Rex, " but I must ask you to attend to me at once, Halkett.

I have but one question to ask you, and then my business is over ; but I must have an immediate answer." Rex's face looked very stern and grave ; Halkett's, pale and nervous, though he tried to be debonair through it all ; and Lawton, not liking the aspect of things, insisted upon leaving the friends to themselves. " You must allow me to have my own way, Halkett," he said, in answer to that gentleman's renewed entreaty that he would not move. " When Mr. Reverdon's business is settled, he can let me know as he goes out, and then I will return, if you wish it." But there was some thing in both the men's looks which made Mr. Lawton think, and with justice, that it was probabie that the festivities for that evening were closed. Lizzie Ashton, from her look-out between the folding-doors, noticed that as soon as Mr. Law ton had taken his departure, Rex Reverdon, still standing, drew closer to the man he called his " friend," and that Halkett seemed to cower beneath his glance, although there was a mixture of defiance and malice in the look with which he returned it.

" Halkett," said Rex, " my visit here is ex plained in a very few words. There has been a mistake somewhere, I think ; at least, I can sup pose it to be nothing but a mistake. I had a writ served on me this afternoon, by Issachar." Halkett had felt certain of what was coming, directly he had seen Rex's pale, stern face in his door-way. He had known it would come, sooner or later ; but he had scarcely expected it so soon as this. Why, the three months was only up yesterday. He had intended to be well out of the way before affairs came to a crisis, but as it had fallen out otherwise, the only thing to be done was to put a bold face on the matter and brave it out. ' Well — " he said, sitting down in his chair again, though Rex was still standing and looking at the other, coolly. " Well," repeated Rex, " you know what for, Halkett, without my telling you.

Has .that money never been paid ? You told me at the time that you were certain of receiving it in a few weeks." " Money !" replied Halkett. " What money ? You're talking riddles to me, Reverdon." " It's no good beating about the bush, Halkett, and I must say I didn't expect it of you either. When I put my name to that bill for two thousand pounds for you, didn't you tell me that you were certain of getting the money within a few weeks, and that it was a mere matter of form ?" Mr. Halkett gave a kind of light, pitying laugh, as if his friend was a little mad, or a little drunk, or a great fool. " I wish you'd sit down, Reverdon, and ex plain yourself a little more clearly. I really don't know what you're talking about." At this, all the veins in Rex's fair forehead stood out in sudden darkness, his blue eyes flashed almost black with rage, the colour mounted painfully into his face, and his voice trembled with excitement.

" Are you playing with me, Mr. Halkett, or do you think I am a man to stand insult quietly ? Do you mean to tell me that you have entirely forgotten that I signed a bill for you, at Wimbledon, three months ago, for the sum I mentioned, and that the words I have repeated passed between us at the time ?" " Most entirely. I've put my name to plenty of bills for yourself; in days gone by, but I never asked a friend yet to sign for me. You're think ing of somebody else, perhaps." " You don't remember coming to me at Wimbledon last November, when you were afraid of being arrested ; and walking up and down my dressing-room whilst I was dressing ; and my signing the bill at the same time — a bill for two thousand pounds — which you said you had sent to your father on the occasion of your sisters' marriages, and that he had promised to repay you before ? you don't remember this, Halkett ?"

" I have told you before, my dear Reverdon, that I do not. You may have obliged some body else in the same way, or this may be a little chimera of an over-heated brain. Have you been drinking this afternoon ?" " Do you want me to fell you where you stand, Halkett ?" replied Rex, his muscular frame shaking with his rage, " or to call you — what I would have called myself first, yesterday — a scoundrel ?" " You can call me what you like, my dear fellow," returned Halkett, as he helped himself to wine, although the unsteady manner in which he did so proved that his calmness was only assumed, " or you may knock me down, if you choose, but you can't alter facts. I wish you'd sit down yourself and be a little less violent, for I should like to argue this matter with you. You assert that you put your name to a bill for two thousand pounds for me, three months ago.

Now let us just look at things in a calm and reasonable light : if you did so, where's my receipt for the money ?" As Rex heard these words drop deliberately one after another from the false mouth of his " friend," he started. He started at first as people start when bad news is communicated to them too suddenly. That receipt ! he had never received it — as I told you before. The sending of it had been delayed on Mr. Halkett's part, from day to day ; and when Rex remembered the omission, his own pride, and his fear lest his " friend " would suppose he doubted his honour, would forbid his asking for it. And as the months went on, and Rex heard nothing more about the bill, he concluded the money had been paid ; Halkett had said that a few weeks would see matters settled, and if he had not received the money, he would certainly have informed him ; so Rex Reverdon, in his own honesty, thought.

But he proved to have been bitterly mistaken ; not only on account of the loss to himself. The bitterest thing of all in this world ; harder than the loss of wealth, or health, or friends, is the discovery that one whom you have loved and trusted has deceived you ; that what you thought all truth, towards at least yourself, has been one great falsehood from beginning to end. This was the pain Rex Reverdon had to bear, when the words dropped from Henry Halkett's mouth, " Where's my receipt for the money ?" This was the shock that made the light fade out of his angry eyes ; the corners of his mouth droop ; the uplifted hand drop nerveless to his side. He had loved this man, after the fashion of men's love for their own sex. He had believed in him, trusted him always, been ready to do anything for him, and to uphold him behind his back to the very endth.

And this was his return ! " Where's my receipt for the money ?" With those words his faith in man seemed to pale and fade away ; his hold upon the world to loosen ; his spirit to turn inwards, and cry, " There is no truth in friendship, no help, since Halkett has turned traitor." He felt all this, — but he had not the time to think it over. As he stood confronting what had been his " friend," after those cruel words which had killed the belief in so much that was good and beautiful in Rex's breast had escaped him, his eyes calmly meeting the dark looks of Hal kett's, searching him through and through, until the other's dropped beneath his gaze ; Lizzie Ashton, watching the two attentively through her chink in the folding-doors, thought that Rex looked like a king, and Halkett, like a slave.

Still more so when, his first excitement over, Rex dropped into a chair, and with his head buried in his hands, said — " God forgive you, Halkett." Then there was deep silence for a few moments, only broken by one or two gasping sobs from the injured man, given to the memory M 12 "TOO good for him. of the affection which had just died. Only for a few moments ; at the end of that time, Rex Reverdon was erect again, looking none the less proud for having given way to that heaven-born weakness ; but when he spoke, his voice was entirely changed ; it was cold, constrained, and very dignified. " Halkett," he said, " your last words need no reply of mine, your own conscience will supply it to you. They have served, however, to show me your intentions. It is no use my wasting more time here. If it had been any man but you, that had behaved to me with such unmitigated scoundrelism, I wouldn't have left him unmarked in this room to-night ; but no blows, not blood itself, could wipe out the injury I have received from you this day.

You have taken a base advantage of my credulity and trust in your honour ; but it is the last time you will have the opportunity. I spare you, to-night ; but don't let me meet you in this life again ; or I will not answer for the consequences." He did not remind him of the worldly injury which would accrue to himself ; he never told him that, not having the money to pay the bill with, arrest must follow the issuing of that writ. Halkett had done him so much greater a harm that day than the loss of any money, or an arrest of any number of months' standing could be, that it was not worth the while of his noble nature to reproach him with the lesser evil. As the last words issued from his lips, he took up his hat, and left the room — left it without another look, either of reproach or anger. What was there left for him to look at ?

The room was virtually empty to him ; the friend he had loved and trusted had gone from him for ever. Only a scoundrel remained there, whose name henceforward he should consider it beneath his lips to form. As the door closed behind him with a heavy slam, Lizzie Ashton came forth from her hiding place, her cheeks all a-flame, and her looks indignant at the interview to which she had been a witness. Halkett had forgotten her presence in the other room, and as she surprised him, gazing moodily upon the spot just vacated by his injured friend, he almost started. " I had forgotten you, Lizzie," he said. "Hadvou?" she returned; "it's more than I have you. What have you got to say for yourse P now, Mr. Halkett ? Yours is a safe " TOO GOOD FOR HIM." 14 honour to confide in. I shall take advantage of it next time I want a trusty friend."

" What do you mean ?" he rejoined, angrily. " You heard, I suppose, what I said to Reverdon. It's a mistake on his part ; he's been drinking, or something of the sort." " A mistake J" she repeated, scornfully ; " it may serve your purpose to say so when you try to dupe your best friend ; but you must go on another tack with me, Mr. Halkett. I thought you promised me you wouldn't fleece him." " What on earth was I to do ?" almost whined Halkett, in his endeavours to excuse him self to the angry woman who stood before him. " I must have bad money, or I should have been arrested myself. I did write to my father to advance me the sum, but he couldn't ; it wasn't my fault." " And what about the two thousand you lent to your father yourself? when is that forth coming ?" " Oh ! that was a little ruse, I allow," said Halkett.

" Come, Lizzie, it's not so bad as you would wish to make out. Reverdon's got lots of money ; he will just pay it out of his capital, and there will be an end of it. He'll make it up some way by-and-by, but it would have been the ruin of me." " And you don't think about losing his friendship, then ; I suppose that goes for nothing in the scale." " Well ! there are as good men as him in the world, Lizzie ; and if there were not, it makes little difference to me, as long as one woman remains." And he attempted some little gal lantry with her, but she repulsed him with scorn. " What do you intend to do ?" she said shortly. "You're not going to stay here, I suppose." Now Mr. Halkett was very well aware of what he was going to do, but he had no wish to communicate his plans just at present to Miss Ashton, so he said : "Why not?"

" Why not ?" she repeated ; " why, because your name will be a by-word, in another twelve hours, throughout the length and breadth of London, and I don't suppose you will like that, although I should think you were accustomed to a good deal of mild execration from various quarters already." He didn't like her sneers, but he took no notice of them, his object just now was to con ciliate her, and to get her home. " Well, Lizzie," he said, " perhaps I may leave town, and perhaps I may not ; at all events, I'll talk it over with you to-morrow. What time will be convenient for you to see me ?" " Why not to-night ?" she asked. " Because I have business which cannot be put off for to-night, and I was just going to ask, if I should get a cab and take you home first : or perhaps Lawton would do it ; only of course, Lizzie, I needn't tell you that this little breeze between Reverdon and myself must be kept quiet, for the present."

" You seem very anxious to get rid of me," she said, in answer. " No, I never am that," he replied ; " only my business, to-night, won't wait." " Like poor Rex's," she returned. " Well, I'll go home, then, to accommodate you, Halkett." She knew he was deceiving her, and that he was hatching plans in his head unconnected with herself. He was not afraid of her betray ing his secret to a stranger, and therefore he confided her to the guardianship of Mr. Lawton for her journey home, a charge which that gentleman was only too pleased to accept. But before she left the chambers, Miss Ashton contrived to get speech of the same old woman who had attended on poor little Lucy when she took tea there, and often performed similar offices for Lizzie Ashton. Slipping half-a crown into her hand, she whispered to her to come up to her address in the Strand, either that evening, or early the next morning, as she wanted to speak to her on particular business, which the woman promised she would do.

" Whatever plans he may have in his head," she thought to herself, as she drove home, " I will outwit them as far as it may tend to my own benefit. Mr. Halkett will not manage to get quit of me quite so easily as he has done of that poor dear Rex. I'd outwit him, if only to take revenge on him for the way in which he has behaved this night." Which meditations, though very interesting to the lady herself, made her so absent and reserved, in comparison with what she had been before, with young Lawton, that that gentleman could only suppose that Halkett had made a discovery of their incipient flirtation, and been vol. in. c already administering cautions to Miss Ashton on the subject, which supposition was further con firmed on their arrival at the lady's apartments, by her summarily dismissing him at the door with a brief " good-night," and a few words to the effect that she had so much to do that evening, that she couldn't ask him to walk in ; which last blow sent Mr. Lawton home in a most despondent and unhappy frame of mind, and with a strong inclination to punch some body's head, even his dear friend, Mr. Halkett's, if he couldn't find any one better.

And in the meanwhile, Rex Reverdon was journeying towards his home, with anything but enviable feelings, as he remembered that he had to break the news of his impending arrest to his wife. Now that it was too late, he felt what a fool he had made of himself, and for the old failing too — the impossibility of saying "No." The money was not his own, he should have remem bered that ; he had no right, on his wife's account to lend, even as a " matter of form," (what a mockery those words seemed to him, now !), without taking a proper receipt in ex change. But then he h?d trusted him so. Yes ! as the thought of how much he had trusted flashed across poor Rex's mind, and how much he had been deceived, the softening influence, which the first knowledge of that deception had had upon him, passed away, and in its place he could only remember the injury he had sus tained: — remember it, with a heaving breast, and a clenched fist, and feel as if his hand was against every man's, and every man's hand against him.

Who loved him, out of all the world ? His mother, Pearl Ashton, Halkett, had all dropped, as it were, and crumbled away beneath his feet, at the very time he had needed their help, comfort, or assistance most. Gabriel had loved him once, better than any one else, but even Gabriel had grown to love Isobel better than him ; he could see it plainly, he had seen it, not without a degree of jealousy, for months past. As for Isobel herself, who had appeared at one time so loving and devoted to his every want, she positively shunned him now, so he imagined, though she often wept over an idea as foolish respecting himself. But as these various thoughts passed through the mind of Rex, they hardened him. He had tried to love them all, so he told himself, and they wouldn't be loved ; it was no use thinking about it any more, there y* "TOO good for him. 20 was no such thing as love in the world.

He had made a fool of himself, and he must suffer for it. No need to make a greater, by hum bling himself before his wife, and acknowledging he had been in the wrong to risk her money. She would most likely take advantage of it, by turning round upon him ; women had no middle course, they either were your tyrants or your slaves, and he had no notion of a woman assum ing the rule over him. Besides which, it was his own money after all. What was hers was his, and he was answerable to no one for what he did with his own. Occupied by thoughts like these, wrung from him by his pain and urgent want of sympathy, Rex Reverdon approached his home in no happy humour. His wife was in-doors, for she had not been well lately, and the cold weather tried her strength, so she seldom went out in the evening.

She was sitting reading be fore the fire in the dining-room, and though she looked up with a smile as he entered, and said, " Well, Rex " she did not spring to welcome him as she used to do in the first days of their married life, when they lived at Paris together. " I've got a piece of news for you, Isobel," he said, abruptly, as he came up to the fireplace and stood before it, warming himself. " I don't know whether you'll call it good news or bad. You're going to get rid of me for a time." She thought, perhaps, he had received some invitation into the country, and expressed no surprise. " Where are you going to, Rex ? Down to your grandfather's ?" " No ; not quite so far as that, my dear, though it may lead me a little farther in time, perhaps. I'm going into the Queen's Bench, Isobel. I shall be arrested in a few days."

She neither exclaimed nor cried out, for she was a woman not given to expressing her deepest emotions by words, but she grew excessively pale, and her hand grasped the side of the arm chair in which she sat. " Reginald, you are not in earnest !" she said, presently. " Never was more so in my life," he rejoined, with an attempt at laughter. " I'm regularly in for it, Isobel. I signed my name to a bill for two thousand pounds, for a friend, about three months back, and he has left me to pay it, as a return for my kindness." " But you hold his receipt ?" said Isobel, who J* 22 "TOO good for him. was sufficiently a woman of business to know it was the usual thing to do. " I took none," he rejoined, carelessly. " And the friend is Mr. Halkett ?" said Isobel, hastily. " Who told you so ?" he asked.

" I guessed it," she said. " I mistrusted that man from the commencement." " It's more than I did," answered Rex. " He has proved like everybody else in this world, — worthless. But don't let us talk of him. I'd rather forget there was ever such a person in existence. The fact remains, that I shall be arrested in the course of ten days." " Never !" said Isobel, rising from her chair in her excitement. " What, for two thousand pounds, Rex? We must pay it out of the capital." " We can't touch the capital, Isobel ; it's tied down too securely." "But your mother will lend it, will she not? Ask her." At the mention of his mother, Rex's face darkened. His last appeal to her for help in his distress was only too vividly remembered by him. "No, by Heavens, I won't!" he exclaimed, bringing his foot down with a vehement stamp, " and I forbid you to mention the subject to her, Isobel.

When I'm in quod, you can tell her the reason of my non-appearance, if she inquires, but not before." " But how is it to be paid then, Rex ?" " By quarterly instalments, twenty-five pounds a quarter (if you can spare so much from your income), by which means we can clear it off in about twenty years, more or less, and in the meanwhile I may have grown steadier. The Queen's Bench is a splendid place to live in, I've heard. No end of larks going on, all the year round, only you can't get any pheasant shooting. I shall be out again in twenty years, Isobel." « Oh, Rex ! don't talk like that. You know I will pay off the debt as soon as ever I can." " Ah ! I suppose you will be ashamed to con fess you've got a husband in jail, won't you ? Women are something like rats, Isobel, ain't they? It's their fashion to desert a falling house.

I suppose I shall hardly know you again when I come out." And although it was quite early, he took up "TOO good for him. his bedroom candlestick and walked off to bed. She stood by the fire where he had left her, her tears fast dropping upon h r clasped hands. Oh ! if he wouldn't speak to her in that way, she thought — if he would only be in earnest — it would be so much less hard to bear. She felt it deeply, but she could hardly believe it yet that it was true. Her Rex, — her kind, generous, noble hearted Rex, — whom, though he could not care for her, she so much loved and cherished, dragged off to a prison, like any common man, any low thief or murderer. For Isobel, with the generality of her sex, had very strange notions with respect to the incarceration of gentlemen for debt, and pictured her husband as being treated and regarded no better than a felon.