The Outsider. A novel

Front matter

_§S& a Nobs!. KV HAWLEY SMART, Author of "Breezie Langton," "SocrAL Sinners" "Hard Lines," "From Tost to Finish." " Bad to Beat," &c, 4c. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. LONDON : F. V. WHITE & CO., 31, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND. 1886. I'UINTKD BV KELLY AND CO., GATE STBKKT, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS, AND KTNGSTON-ON-THAMES, CONTENTS. CHAP. TAGE I. — Thf, Glories of Victory ... 1 II. — "Julia's Troubles . . . . 18 III. — "A Greenwich Dinner .... 35 IV. — "A Water Party .... 5U V. — " An Unexpected Visitor ... 71 VI. — " Mrs. Desmond Speaks out " 86 VLI. — That Folly is ended . . . .102 VIII. — "Julia's Perplexities "... 119 IX.— " A Last Good-Bye " . . .137 X. — "I'm in an awful Scrape '' . . 156 XI. — "Prospecting the ' Plant ' . . 177 XII.— "A Socialist Plot" ... 197 XIII.—" Taken Red-Handed " . . .213 XIV. — " Very near the Winning Post, now, Thea !

" . . . .231 XVI. — Conclusion . . ... . "SELECT" NOVELS. Crown Svo, cloth, 3s. 6d. each. AT ALL BOOKSELLERS' AND BOOKSTALLS. By FLORENCE MARRYAT. THE HEIR PRESUMPTIVE. HER WORLD AGAINST A LIE. THE HEART OF JANE WARNER. PEERESS AND PLAYER. UNDER THE LILIES & ROSES. FACING THE FOOTLIGHTS. MY OWN CHILD. MY SISTER THE ACTRESS. By ANNIE THOMAS (Mrs. Fender Cudlip). HER SUCCESS. I JENIFER. KATE VALLIANT. | FRIENDS AND LOVERS. By LADY CONSTANCE HOWARD. MATED WITH A CLOWN. I ONLY A VILLAGE MAIDEN. MOLLIE DARLING. By MRS. HOTJSTOTJN, Authorof " Recommended to Mercy." BARBARA'S WARNING. By MRS. ALEXANDER FRASER. THE MATCH OF THE SEASON. I A FATAL PASSION. A PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY. By IZA DUFFUS HARDY. ONLY A LOVE STORY. | NOT EASILY JEALOUS. LOVE, HONOUR AND OBEY. By JEAN MIDDLEMASS. POISONED ARROWS. By MRS. LOVETT-CAMERON.

IN A GRASS COUNTRY. | A DEAD PAST. A NORTH COUNTRY MAID, By DORA RUSSELL. By LADY VIOLET GRENVILLE OUT OF EDEN. j KEITH'S WIFE. By NELLIE FORTESCUE HARRISON. Author of " So runs my Dream." FOR ONE MAN'S PLEASURE. By EDMUND LEATHES. THE ACTOR'S WIFE. By HARRIETT JAY. A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE.

Chapter I. The Glories Of Victory

If a momentary stillness had succeeded the great race, one of those silences which sometimes for a space of sixty seconds or so descend upon a crowd wound up to a high state of excitement, and still ignorant of what has or is about to happen, that stillness was made up for by the babble of tongues when garrulous London heard of Mazeppa's victory. At no period of turf history had speculation ever raged higher, and there was no doubt but it had been a most sensational Derby. In club smok ing-rooms, and in drawing-rooms, fabulous were the sums rumoured to have been won and lost ; extraordinary astuteness was ascribed to most of the winners, astuteness VOL. II. indeed to which they had no possible claim, being winners for the most part in spite of themselves, having backed Mazeppa at long odds, and in consequence of his mishap having had no chance to cover their bets.

On no race of late years had there been so much bye-betting, that is to say, wagers in which one horse was backed against one other ; it was a mode of backing their favourite which seemed to have found much favour in the eyes of the partisans of Mazeppa. But if there were rumours of large winners, it stands to reason that there were also reports of very heavy losers ; it was whispered about that the next Monday would bring with it some gruesome stories, that there were many amongst the gentlemen who had thought proper to bet wildly against Mazeppa ; that others, again, who had laid these heavy bye-wagers, looking upon the horse as having no possible chance, had never taken the trouble to secure them selves by taking the long odds against Mazeppa when they found he was going to start, as in common prudence they ought to have done.

That the ring would never settle was asseverated in more than one quarter, notwithstanding that this much maligned body as a whole always do meet their engagements. Two or three of them may perhaps break over a very heavy betting race, such as this one was ; but, as a rule, they have no more defaulters than other business communities during a financial crisis. Amongst the heroes of the hour figured Hugh Musgrave, all sorts of versions of his luck were floating about in society, that his winnings were multiplied four-fold, one need scarcely observe ; it always is on these occasions. " Miraculous," exclaimed Charlie Wrey, " who before ever heard of gratitude in a bookmaker! the romance is interesting," he continued. " I don't be lieve Musgrave has ever been abroad, he has been residing all the time in the suburbs, and employed as a brother of charity amongst the very class of men who wrought his undoing.

It was beautiful, it 17* was sublime, this turning the other cheek to the smiter. He cast his bread upon the waters, and he has his reward ; but it don't do for us ordinary young men to trust to the gratitude of bookmakers." This mocking, jesting version of Wrey's made its way gradually around society, and there were not wanting circumstantial narrators who told how Hugh had dis covered the bookmaker starving ; how he had brought home coals in the pockets of his overcoat (narrator did not say from where), how he made some soup, and in fact snatched the bookmaker from the brink of the grave and how ': this ring fellow don't you know, I forget his name, Linnet, Chaffinch, or something of that sort, just like one of the jolly old ladies in the fairy tales, filled Musgrave's pockets with gold, and is no doubt going to marr}" him to the king's daughter before the year is out."

Garbled versions there were, and much heated debate to boot, concerning the finding of the coin, whether it was copper or gold ; according to one version, the wicked Mr. Chaffinch saw Musgrave drop it, picked it up, and converted it to his own use, and on his sick bed made confes sion of the crime to his benefactor. Others again, who had got much nearer the true story, said that the coin was a French five sou piece, and that Mr. Sparrow, who had in his time experienced much difficulty in hunting what Henri Miiroer calls " that ferocious beast le piece de cinq cent sous," superstitiously believing that his luck was wrapped up with that coin, had had it drilled, rimmed with gold, and wore it on his watch-chain. A little more, and " Mazeppa " lockets became the rage, small bronze representations of a five-sou piece set in gold.

It was the charm of the season, and as fashionable as bells and pigs became subsequently. Varied were the stpries of that sensational Derby, but none, I think, took more hold on the public than what became known as the bookmaker's romance. It had gone the round of the papers, and amongst other people who at tained much notorietv from it was Mr. Sparrow himself. Now notoriety is to a man of his profession invaluable, so long as it contains no reflection on his credit, but, as one young gentleman much addicted to reckless plunging sagaciously observed, " a solid bookmaker who gives such tips as this is a man to be cultivated." Mr. Sparrow had made himself a name, and was far too shrewd a man not to make the most of it. The success of Mazeppa had enlarged his capital as well as his custom. At Ascot the bookmaker became the rage It was quite the correct thing to have a bet with Sparrow.

" Very safe man, you know, gave Musgrave that famous tip for the Derby ; " and by the time the Royal meeting had terminated, concluding as it D ' _5 usually does very much in favour of the fielders, there was no doubt about it Mr. Sparrow must become a member of Tatter sall's. He was a really substantial member of his profession at last, and on the high road to attain the object of his ambition, namely, that of becoming one of the magnates of the ring. " There is nothing like following your luck," is a time-honoured adage ; had not Mr. Sparrow himself enunciated this theory on his way up from Newmarket in the Craven week, little dreaming what the idle chatter of a railway journey would tend to bring about. Hugh Musgrave was a man in whose doings society had always more or less interested itself, and now he really promised to afford them much matter for conversation.

While the town was yet ringing with the tale of his Epsom gains it was informed that he had won another great stake. On the Sunday preceding Ascot there is run a famous race near Paris entitled the Grand Prix, and for this Hugh Musgrave on the above-men tioned principle had backed the English horses against the French for a level thousand, and once more had fortune smiled upon him. The Royal meeting, too, fatal as it had been to the generality of backers, had curiously enough proved a veritable gold-mine to him. Carefully es chewing general speculation, he had reserved himself for some three or four coups which had proved to be the certainties they looked on paper ; on these he had plunged "in the fearless old fashion," and at the end of that week he was once more credited with a very substantial sum in reality and an enormous one in the eyes of the world.

There is nothing extraordinary about a run of luck of this nature, it is as common on the racecourse as at the gaming table, any old turfite could point you out scores of such instances. It is only fifteen years ago since the late Baron Rothschild addressed his constituents in a speech which offers singular contrast to the wordy rhetoric of most politicians. Brief were his words ; briefer still the peroration, three little words, but in all their bursts of oratory did Bright, Beaconsfield or Glad stone ever give such advice to their auditors as that pithy, " Follow the Baron." A merry Christmas must have been the lot of those who took the hint, for the well known dark blue and yellow cap carried all before it from Epsom Downs to New market, and bore the names of Derby Oaks, St. Leger, and Cesarewitch on its scroll of victory.

The vicissitudes of the racecourse are at times as startling as they are rapid. Scarce three weeks ago and Hugh Musgrave was gravely debating whether he could afford to stay a month in England, and now he had actually won money enough, if judi ciouslv invested, to about double the modest income that remained to him. " To follow your luck," may be a good maxim, but to know when to leave off is a bit of knowledge quite as useful and much more difficult to acquire. Musgrave and Mr. Sparrow were by this time great friends. The bookmaker always attributed his prosperity to the start Hugh had given him ; while on the other hand he proudly reflected that, if Mr. Musgrave had made him, he had set Mr. Musgrave on his legs again ; moreover, he had that strong feeling for him so commonly felt by men for those on whom they confer benefits.

That feeling of which Dickens has made such grotesque use in " Great Expectations," wherein Mr. Magwitch never tires of exulting over the gentleman he has made of Pip ; but for that very reason the bookmaker now coun selled moderation, he did not wish that the man whom he had, so to say, set up should be speedily knocked down again. " I'd stick to my winnings now Mr. Mus grave, I would indeed sir," said Mr. Sparrow on the last day of the Ascot Meeting. " I am going on, of course, but then it is different with us, it's like the tables at Monaco, we must win in the end, if we only exercise common sense and play the strict game. It's all summed up in this, men and horses deceive but figures don't. Just you wait till I've another Mazeppa chance for you." " Warned off the turf," said Musgrave, " for that's about what it comes to.

Such a chance as that only comes once in a lifetime and if I am to bet no more till you once more prompt me, I may as well give up racing." Curious what a change these last two or three weeks have wrought in him ; Hugh forgets what a little time back it is that he said he had given up racing, how that the sole thing that had really taken him down to Epsom had been the chance of passing an afternoon in Mrs. Welstead's society. There was no question of his leaving England now, and he fully made up his mind to see the season out and enjoy himself to the uttermost. Thea and he had met many times since Mrs. Petersham's ball, chiefly in society, but Hugh had also paid more than one visit to the little house in Bryanston Square, and in her present defiant mood Thea had not forbidden such calls. What difference did it make, she would ask herself vehemently.

" If I can receive Lord Collington why should I not receive Mr. Musgrave, what differ ence can it make ? Am I a child that I should be dictated to by that stuck-up Lady Dullingham, am I to submit to the dictum of a censorious lot of old women, as to whom I may receive and whom not? No, my husband has forfeited all right to control my actions, and these are matters now that are left to my discretion ;" and yet, try to deceive herself though she might, Thea was not one wit duped by such sophisms as these. She knew very well that there was the greatest difference between receiving Lord Collington and Hugh Musgrave. The one was merely a friend ; the other had been her avowed lover before her marriage, her tacit admirer afterwards, and promised now to be tacit no longer. Her name had been notoriously coupled with the latter, while scandal had never dreamed of commenting on her in timacy with the former.

She was no fool, she saw all the imprudence of her present proceedings, she knew that she was play ing with fire, she knew that Hugh loved her passionately. There was not much danger in that, but she was also not blind to the fact that she returned his love, and that I think experts in these matters would -have said, put a very different complexion on the case. She was confident in her own strength of character ; her life was very dull and solitary, why should she not bask in these few weeks of sunshine that lay before her? The season over, Hugh would go his way and she would go hers, and they would be no more to each other. Rashness ! That supreme strength in our own power to overcome temptation is a sure sign of the infirmity of our nature. " The best way to overcome the passions," quoth the cynical St. Evremonde, " is to indulge them ;" and the easiest way to escape them, quoth the moralist, is to flv them.

It was not to be supposed Thea's flirtation escaped the eyes of the town. Hugh had always been well known, and was now a notoriety in the London world. The man who breaks the bank is always an object of interest to his fellows, and the account of Musgrave's winnings during the last few weeks depended upon the imaginative powers of the narrator. If Hugh had been disappointed about meeting Mrs. Welstead at Epsom, ample atonement had been made to him at Ascot, where for three long summer afternoons he was constantly at -her side. Thea was staying with a pleasant party at a villa not very far from the course — sporting people who took the keenest interest in the races, who were punctual in their attendance each day. And what ball-room affords such oppor tunities for flirtation as a racecourse ?

Hugh marked her card, and insisted on her having a slight interest in his own specula tions. Of course, he took care of her at luncheon, and his shoulder was there to lean upon when she stood upon the seat of the brake to look at the racing ; in short, the pair indulged in three afternoons of such butterfly love-making as is much in fashion at Ascot. The question was in their case, was it butterfly love-making, mere flirtation or something more serious ; and there were two people present at the Royal meeting who regarded it by no means in that light. Lady Dullingham laughed maliciously when she first discovered this little comedy going on — and from that out devoted more of her attention to Hugh and his companion than she did to the legitimate business of the day. Her glasses were continually levelled at the adjacent brake.

" Ah ! my dear," she said, to one of her intimates, " I wonder when that little pastorale will terminate, when will spotless Phyllis, and immaculate Corydon make an end of such fooling, and how. I have all along declined to believe in the innocence of that affair, some people think otherwise, some people will see Mr. Welstead will be in a fair way to obtain his release before the end of the season, unless, perchance, Corydon should tire, and will dance no more to poor Phyllis's piping." No fault of Lady Dullingham if that imprudent flirtation should be over-looked. There were yet another pair of glasses often levelled at that same brake ; but it was no feminine hand that held them ; and though the looker-on's face did not betray the malicious amusement of Lady Dullingham's, yet I think an observer would have thought the man more deeply interested in Thea's proceedings than was her ladyship.

A handsome face, too, it was, though wear ing a jaded, wearied expression, such as betokens long nights at the card-table, and more consumption of tobacco or strong waters than is good for one. A slight man of barely middle-height and somewhat effeminate appearance, dressed in the ex treme of dandyism from his lavender gloves to his patent leather shoes ; he was evidently well-known amongst the racing fraternity. Many of the bookmakers ad dressed him as well as did many of the gentlemen connected with the turf. He had a low trainante voice, and the cigarette be tween his lips only died out to be at once replaced by another. Hardly the man you would expect to have pointed out to you as perhaps the most notorious roue in town. Such was Algernon Welstead ; and he was now looking on at his wife's proceedings with no little irritation ; for the first time he was experiencing a sharp attack of jealousy.

Had Lady Dullingham been aware of this new complication in her pastorale, she would have been much amused, and would probably have commented upon it, some what in this fashion : " Jealous ! " what very bad style on the part of M le Mari, absurd too, it was too late for him to contract that complaint ; he should have had his fit before, however, it does not much matter nowadays, it is not possible to give to such comedies a tragedy ending — it is only a matter of damages, which dreadfully vulgarises the whole affair, when a woman went wrong in the old times it must have been some consolation to her to think there was a probability of a man being killed about it. If I have miscontrued Lady Dullingham's views on the subject, I apologise. She was not a lady with much idea of tempering the wind to the lamb that had strayed without the fold. IS VOL.

CHAPTER 11.

" julia's troubles.' Algernon Welstead had now thoroughly awoke to the fact that he had made a great mistake. Such insult as he had passed upon his wife he knew it was scarce likely a woman would forgive, it is only amongst the Orientals that a wife can ever forget the degradation of having seen the con cubine set up in her place. Welstead was suffering from no pangs of remorse, he was repenting not an iota of the shame he had put upon Thea, it was simply he groaned under the iron thrall of Mdlle. Therese. He had separated from a wife, whom if he had ceased to care about, had at all events been an ornament to his house, and a woman to be socially proud of ; a woman who if she had some little tendency to extravagance was at all events not rapacious, now he had fallen into the hands of a veritable daughter of the horseleech, whose thirst for gold seemed insatiable.

It was a just Nemesis ; if he had been false and faithless he was now in the toils of a violent pas sionate woman, from whom he seemed unable to free himself. Welstead would have been puzzled to analyse his feelings towards his own wife. From the very first he had been struck with her, and somewhat piqued at the coldness with which she had received his advances, for he was a man to whom such amourettes as he indulged in wealth had made facile, and to whom society had certainly given much encouragement to cast the handkerchief. Caprice on the one side and pique on the other had been the chief factors in their ill-starred marriage. Welstead had speedily penetrated the fact that his wife did not love him, and fickle, unstable as water where women were concerned, he was hardly the man by patient devotion to win the love of such a woman as Thea.

Another thing too that irritated him was that he felt she was intellectually 18* his superior. Welstead was a man who had gone through the usual curriculum common to a young man of wealth and family, that is to say, he had been to a public school and from thence to the Univer sity, from which he had brought away little more than some aptitude for arith metic as comprised in the comprehension of vulgar and decimal fractions, and a mar vellous knowledge of the racing calendar. Thea was by no means a " blue " and she honestly endeavoured to fall in with his tastes and mastered not only the racing shibbo leth, but attained some creditable under standing of turf matters generally, but it was no use, man and wife cannot always discuss racing, and upon other topics Wel stead quickly became cognisant that his wife was " over his head."

He resented the sense of inferiority thus thrust upon him, hitherto he had played the Grand Turk in his love affairs, it was new to him to throw on one side his Eastern ideas and prostrate himself before the lady of his love. Whether Welstead was a man who could have been really constant to any woman is matter of question, but certain it is that he would never have brought such a scandal about his ears, but for the designing jade who had unluckily found place in his household. She had induced him to listen to that little fable of hers. Whether he believed it or not is not very doubtful, but he speedily succumbed to the temptation. It is perhaps hardly likely that he and Thea would have ever come honestly together, I don't mean on account of the difference in their natures, for we every day see clever women making devoted wives to most ponderously minded men, and clever men quite as faithful to pretty dolls whom we much wonder attracted them.

There is, as Sterne says, no follow ing the caprices of this same strange passion, but it must always be borne in mind that with the Welsteads there had been no love on either side to commence with. How then came it about that Algernon Welstead should have felt the pangs of jealousy at Ascot ? It must have been in this wise ; things so often seem of little or no value to us till somebody else appears to covet them. However, be the cause what it might, one thing was certain, no passionately attached husband could have viewed his wife's flirtation with more fiercely jealous eye_ than Algernon Wel stead did. He was a man of a peculiar disposition, a disappointed man, and he had ambitions, and at one time burned to make his mark in the world, true, he was not clever, but then he knew that dogged hard work is no very bad substitute for talent ; but that was just where it was, Wel stead had little inclination, for that.

Had it been a necessity for him he might have done so, but he had been brought up to no profession and been even in what he was wont to call his impoverished day, that is before he came into his property, in receipt of a very comfortable allowance. Still he envied other men their successes in life ; he even envied his fellows their winnings at the turf or the card table, it was not that he was covetous of money, it was the success which jaundiced him. He regarded Thea as he would a piece of valuable pro perty ; he might not particularly care for it himself, but it did not at all follow that he meant to allow any one else to appro priate it ; he had forfeited all right to control her, but she was his wife, and his anger was stirred at the persistent way in which Hugh Musgrave dangled at Thea's side ; he hated Musgrave too, no personal animosity, but he had conceived that dis like for him which he felt for any man who had achieved notoriety, not a very amiable character perhaps, but a good deal commoner than would be credited, and yet surely we must know that carping individual whom neither art nor nature can satisfy, whom no theatrical entertain ment ever pleased, and to whom the most glorious landscape only suggests how im measurably inferior it is to some other view that he has seen.

With what Charley Wrey termed " Mus grave's resurrection," there came much gossip about his former life. His name was bandied about freely in club smoking rooms, and it was not long before there came to Welstead's ears, the story that his wife had been engaged to Musgrave previous to her marriage ; we know this was not the case, but there is always much in accuracy concerning love affairs, and the promulgation of engagements upon in sufficient grounds has always figured plentifully in the small talk of society ; Welstead never questioned the story,, it was no very great matter even if she had been. Still under the circumstances it was not likely that Welstead would deem that mended the situation. From this out he watched his wife's proceedings with jealous eyes. I do not mean for one instant that he established any espionage over Thea, but he certainly took somewhat more to fre quenting society than he had done before, and more than once during that season, at large crushes where his presence was not likely to attract her attention, Algernon Welstead took jealous stock of his wife's doings.

Julia Harwood had conceived a most enthusiastic friendship for her new acquaintance, she declared that Thea was the dearest and cleverest little woman that ever lived. " Not a muff, you know, ask the Bedminster men about that, they could hardly see the way she went, and yet you must not think that she is ' horsey.' Don't laugh, Val, you know very well what I mean. There are some of my acquaintance would have never ceased telling the story of that triumph with the Bedminster all the season." " That's as ma}' be," replied Valentine Harwood, " but I suppose you know that your new friend gets more and more talked about every da)T." " That is all Lady Dullingham's male volence, it is war to the knife between those two, and of course the telling of lies about one's fellow creature is wondrous easy."

" Quite so," retorted her brother, " that's no reason Mrs. Welstead should make it so much easier, and apparently devote her whole energies to the confirming of old stories, and furnishing materials for new." " Of course I know what you're alluding to, but it's all nonsense. Thea and Mr. Musgrave are old friends." " Old lovers," replied her brother, quietly, " let's call things by their right names, Ju, if we talk about them at all." "I don't believe one word of it," retorted Miss Harwood. " At all events, I intend to stand by Thea Welstead." " So I see," replied Valentine, "and I've no doubt you will keep your word as long as you can, but if I'm not mistaken, the time is not very far distant when you'll find the governor put a stop to this intimacy." " Why, you don't mean to say " ex claimed Julia.

" Yes I do," interposed Valentine sharply. "You have your own way a good deal, but you don't suppose that you'll be allowed to chum with a woman who has been dropped by half London." " It's infamous, cowardly of you, to utter such a falsehood as that, you know she goes everywhere." " She does just now, but people are al ready beginning to look shy at her. Be fore the season's over you will find my words come true. Do be advised, Ju, and drop this sudden intimacy." " I should utterly despise myself if I did," rejoined Miss Harwood, and then the young lady swept out of the room with — to use a homely expression, " her nose very much in the air." " Well, I'm sorry for everybody all round," muttered Valentine to himself, " but if all one sees and half one hears can be believed, it must end in a row.