"Egad, I shall have to commit bigamy if she doesn't; so for conscience' sake she ought to give up the ghost," answered Chambers. "I have been seriously meditating running off with an Irish heiress, under a false name, and settling in some corner of her barbarous country, where I could live upon her fortune, and escape all the vexations of this accursed town."
"I don't think you should anathematise a town, Bob, which has allowed you to cut a very pretty figure and to spend twice your fortune," said his friend.
"O, your damned shopkeepers have been civil enough," answered Chambers, lolling back in his chair and picking his teeth languidly. "I had a bevy of them in my dressing-room every morning teasing me for orders long after I was absolutely insolvent. But 'twas my tailor finished me."
"Indeed! How was that? Surely he never caught you in so soft a mood as to pay him?"
"O, it was a bite of the most diabolical nature. 'Twas soon after I married that the fellow began to get importunate. I had run up a pretty long bill with him—birthday-suits, hunting clothes, an occasional hundred on my I O U—when I was hard up for card-money. Your West End snip is generally a money-lender in disguise. I suppose the total must have been close upon four figures; but I had never bothered myself about the matter. One morning the insolent rascal congratulated me upon having married an heiress. No doubt he knew Belle's poor little fortune to a guinea. I thanked him for his compliments in a manner which was as good as telling him to mind his own business, and next week he asked me for five or six hundred on account. 'Shillings, d'ye mean, sirrah?' says I. 'No, Captain, guineas,' says he; 'your bill, including money lent, is over twelve hundred.' This staggered me for I had not a sixpence of my own, and my wife's modest dowry of seven thousand pounds was tightly settled upon herself. I have always thought with Dick Steele that our new fashion of marriage-settlements is the most detestable form of bargaining that was ever invented. Mr. Snip looked black as thunder when I frankly confessed my inability to pay him till I dropped into an expected legacy from my East Indian godfather, who had long been ailing. Need I say that I invented the godfather and the legacy on the spot?"
"And was Snip satisfied to accept your Oriental security?"
"Alas, no. He told me that unless my wife would guarantee the payment of his bill he should be under the painful necessity of consigning me to the Fleet Prison and the tender mercies of that notorious friend of humanity, Governor Bambridge. The fellow was evidently in earnest, so to make a long story short, poor Belle consented to be responsible for the scoundrel's account, and all went merrily for the next three years, when, after worrying damnably with lawyers' letters, of which I naturally took no notice, he put in an execution, and had to be paid off in a lump sum of 6859l. 7s. 11-1/2d., and poor Belle found her fortune was altogether swamped by this one liability."
"How did she take it?" asked his friend.
"Like an angel; and I believe she would have been a loving wife to the end, in spite of all my peccadilloes, debts, cards, and women included; but the old Dowager came swooping down like Medea in her chariot, and carried her lost lamb back to the family fold in Golden Square, where they all pig together upon shoulders of mutton and cow-heel, but contrive to keep up a show of gentility in the way of a worn-out coach and a leash of hungry footmen."
"Very wonderful are the struggles of polite poverty," said the other; "but it is still more wonderful to me, Bob, how you contrive to keep out of the sponging-house, criblé de dettes though you are."