“Too deep!” said he, with a bitter effort at a laugh,—“a great deal too deep.”
“We 're all too deep with those fellows,” said Cavendish, as, stretching out his legs, he contemplated the shape and lustre of his admirably fitting boots. “One begins by some trumpery loan or so; thence you go on to a play transaction or a betting-book with them, and you end—egad, you end by having the fellow at dinner!”
“Martin wants his friend to be put up for the Club,” said Willoughby.
“Eh, what? At the 'Cercle,' do you mean?”
“Why not? Is it so very select?”
“No, not exactly that; there are the due proportions of odd reputations, half reputations, and no reputations; but remember, Martin, that however black they be now, they all began white. When they started, at least, they were gentlemen.”
“I suspect that does not make the case much better.”
“No; but it makes ours better, in associating with them. Come, come, you know as well as any one that this is impossible, and that if you should do it to-day, I should follow the lead to-morrow, and our Club become only an asylum for unpayable tailors and unappeasable bootmakers!”
“You go too fast, sir,” exclaimed Martin, in a tone of anger. “I never intended to pay my debts by a white ball in the ballot-box, nor do I think that Mr. Merl would relinquish his claim on some thousand pounds, even for the honor of being the club colleague of Sir Spencer Cavendish.”
“Then I know him better,” said the other, tapping his-boot with his cane; “he would, and he 'd think it a right good bargain besides. From seeing these fellows at racecourses and betting-rooms, always cold, calm, and impassive, never depressed by ill-luck, as little elated by good, we fall into the mistake of esteeming them as a kind of philosophers in life, without any of those detracting influences that make you and Willoughby, and even myself, sometimes rash and headstrong. It is a mistake, though; they have a weakness,—and a terrible weakness,—which is, their passion to be thought in fashionable society. Yes, they can't resist that! All their shrewd calculations, all their artful schemes, dissolve into thin air, at the bare prospect of being recognized 'in society.' I have studied this flaw in them for many a year back. I 'll not say I haven't derived advantage from it.”