Fate, however, and the laws are averse. To gibbet him, in one sense, would have been my privilege, had I drunk deeper from that Castalian rill whose dark waters are tinged with the gall of poetic indignation; but as in other sense I may not hang him, I will tell how he was driven from his club, and how he ceased to number himself among the legislators of his country.
Undy Scott, among his other good qualities, possessed an enormous quantity of that which schoolboys in these days call 'cheek.' He was not easily browbeaten, and was generally prepared to browbeat others. Mr. Chaffanbrass certainly did get the better of him; but then Mr. Chaffanbrass was on his own dunghill. Could Undy Scott have had Mr. Chaffanbrass down at the clubs, there would have been, perhaps, another tale to tell.
Give me the cock that can crow in any yard; such cocks, however, we know are scarce. Undy Scott, as he left the Old Bailey, was aware that he had cut a sorry figure, and felt that he must immediately do something to put himself right again, at any rate before his portion of the world. He must perform some exploit uncommonly cheeky in order to cover his late discomfiture. To get the better of Mr. Chaffanbrass at the Old Bailey had been beyond him; but he might yet do something at the clubs to set aside the unanimous verdict which had been given against him in the city. Nay, he must do something, unless he was prepared to go to the wall utterly, and at once.
Going to the wall with Undy would mean absolute ruin; he lived but on the cheekiness of his gait and habits; he had become member of Parliament, Government official, railway director, and club aristocrat, merely by dint of cheek. He had now received a great blow; he had stood before a crowd, and been annihilated by the better cheek of Mr. Chaffanbrass, and, therefore, it behoved him at once to do something. When the perfume of the rose grows stale, the flower is at once thrown aside, and carried off as foul refuse. It behoved Undy to see that his perfume was maintained in its purity, or he, too, would be carried off.
The club to which Undy more especially belonged was called the Downing; and of this Alaric was also a member, having been introduced into it by his friend. Here had Alaric spent by far too many of the hours of his married life, and had become well known and popular. At the time of his conviction, the summer was far advanced; it was then August; but Parliament was still sitting, and there were sufficient club men remaining in London to create a daily gathering at the Downing.
On the day following that on which the verdict was found, Undy convened a special committee of the club, in order that he might submit to it a proposition which he thought it indispensable should come from him; so, at least, he declared. The committee did assemble, and when Undy met it, he saw among the faces before him not a few with whom he would willingly have dispensed. However, he had come there to exercise his cheek; no one there should cow him; the wig of Mr. Chaffanbrass was, at any rate, absent.
And so he submitted his proposition. I need not trouble my readers with the neat little speech in which it was made. Undy was true to himself, and the speech was neat. The proposition was this: that as he had unfortunately been the means of introducing Mr. Alaric Tudor to the club, he considered it to be his duty to suggest that the name of that gentleman should be struck off the books. He then expressed his unmitigated disgust at the crime of which Tudor had been found guilty, uttered some nice little platitudes in the cause of virtue, and expressed a hope 'that he might so far refer to a personal matter as to say that his father's family would take care that the lady, whose fortune had been the subject of the trial, should not lose one penny through the dishonesty of her trustee.'
Oh, Undy, as high as Haman, if I could! as high as Haman! and if not in Lombard Street, then on that open ground where Waterloo Place bisects Pall Mall, so that all the clubs might see thee!
'He would advert,' he said, 'to one other matter, though, perhaps, his doing so was unnecessary. It was probably known to them all that he had been a witness at the late trial; an iniquitous attempt had been made by the prisoner's counsel to connect his name with the prisoner's guilt. They all too well knew the latitude allowed to lawyers in the criminal courts, to pay much attention to this. Had he' (Undy Scott) 'in any way infringed the laws of his country, he was there to answer for it. But he would go further than this, and declare that if any member of that club doubted his probity in the matter, he was perfectly willing to submit to such member documents which would,' &c., &c.
He finished his speech, and an awful silence reigned around him. No enthusiastic ardour welcomed the well-loved Undy back to his club, and comforted him after the rough usage of the unpolished Chaffanbrass. No ten or twenty combined voices expressed, by their clamorous negation of the last-proposed process, that their Undy was above reproach. The eyes around looked into him with no friendly alacrity. Undy, Undy, more cheek still, still more cheek, or you are surely lost.