"Hyde is exactly the man to invite me to meet him in Marylebone Fields for the answer," said a young officer, who had been urged to make inquiries because he was on familiar terms with his comrade. "If it comes to a matter of catechism, gentlemen, I'll bet ten to one that none of you ask him two consecutive questions regarding the American lady."
And perhaps many husbands may be able to understand a fact which to the general world seems beyond satisfactory explanation. Hyde loved his wife, loved her tenderly and constantly; he felt himself to be a better man whenever he thought of her and his little son, and he thought of them very frequently; and yet his eyes, his actions, the tones of his voice, daily led his cousin, Lady Suffolk, to imagine herself the empress of his heart and life. Nor was it to her alone that he permitted this affectation of love. He found beauty, wherever he met it, provocative of the same apparent devotion. There were a dozen men in his own circle who hated him with all the sincerity that jealousy gives to dislike and envy; there were a score of women who believed themselves to have private tokens of Hyde's special admiration for them.
Unfortunately, his military duties were only on very rare occasions any restraint to him. His days were mainly spent in dangling after Lady Suffolk and other fair dames. It was auctions at Christie's, and morning concerts, and afternoon rides and plays, and dinners and balls and masks at Ranelagh's. It was sails down the river to Richmond, and trips to Sadler's Wells, and one perpetual round of flirting and folly, of dressing and dancing and dining and gaming.
And it must be remembered that the English women of that day were such as England may well hope never to see again. They had little education: many very great ladies could hardly read and spell properly. Their sole accomplishments were dressing and embroidery; the ability to make a few delicate dishes for the table, and scents and pomade for the toilet. In the higher classes they married for money or position, and gave themselves up to intrigue. They drank deeply; they played high; they very seldom went to church, for Sunday was the fashionable day for all kinds of frivolity and amusement. And as the men of any generation are just what the women make them, England never had sons so profligate, so profane and drunken. The clubs, especially Brooke's, were the nightly scenes of indescribable orgies. Gambling alone was their serious occupation; duels were of constant occurrence.
Such a life could not be lived except at frightful and generally ruinous expense. Hyde was soon embarrassed. His pay was small and uncertain and the allowance which his brother William added to it, in order that the heir-apparent to the earldom might live in becoming style, had not been calculated on the squandering basis of Hyde's expenditures. Toward Christmas bills began to pour in, creditors became importunate, and, for the first time in his life, creditors really troubled him. Lady Capel was not likely to pay his debts any more. The earl, in settling Hyde's American obligations, had warned him against incurring others, and had frankly told him he would permit him to go to jail rather than pay such wicked and foolish bills for him again. The income from Hyde Manor had never been more than was required for the expenses of the place; and the interest on Katherine's money had gone, though he could not tell how. He was destitute of ready cash, and he foresaw that he would have to borrow some from Lady Capel or some other accommodating friend.
He returned to barracks one Sunday afternoon, and was moodily thinking over these things, when his orderly brought him a letter which had arrived during his absence. It was from Katherine. His face flushed with delight as he read it, so sweet and tender and pure was the neat epistle. He compared it mentally with some of the shameless scented billet-doux he was in the habit of receiving; and he felt as if his hands were unworthy to touch the white wings of his Katherine's most womanly, wifely message. "She wants to see me. Oh, the dear one! Not more than I want to see her. Fool, villain, that I am! I will go to her. Katherine! Kate! My dear little Kate!" So he ejaculated as he paced his narrow quarters, and tried to arrange his plans for a Christmas visit to his wife and child.
First he went to his colonel's lodging, and easily obtained two weeks' absence; then he dressed carefully, and went to his club for dinner. He had determined to ask Lady Capel for a hundred pounds; and he thought it would be the best plan to make his request when she was surrounded by company, and under the pleasurable excitement of a winning rubber. And if the circumstances proved adverse, then he could try his fortune in the hours of her morning retirement.
The mansion in Berkeley Square was brilliantly lighted when he approached it. Chairs and coaches were waiting in lines of three deep; coachmen and footmen quarrelling, shouting, talking; link-boys running here and there in search of lost articles or missing servants. But the hubbub did not at that time make his blood run quicker, or give any light of expectation to his countenance; for his heart and thoughts were near a hundred miles away.
Sunday night was Lady Capel's great card-night, and the rooms were full of tables surrounded by powdered and painted beauties intent upon the game and the gold. The odour of musk was everywhere, and the sound of the tapping of gold snuff-boxes, and the fluttering of fans, and the sharp, technical calls of the gamesters, and the hollow laughter of hollow hearts. There was a hired singing-girl with a lute at one end of the room, babbling of Cupid and Daphne, and green meadow and larks. But she was poorly dressed and indifferent looking; and she sang with a sad, mechanical air, as if her thoughts were far off. Hyde would have passed her without a glance; but, as he approached, she broke her love-ditty in two, and began to sing, with a meaning look at him,—