All at once he remembered that in abandoning Singleton Terrace so suddenly he had lost his kit. The value of his baggage was not very great, and with the sum now in his possession he would not for three times its value go back to Richmond for it. He had now no personal belongings but the clothes he stood in and a portmanteau at Welford. He would go to a tailor and an outfitter and order what he wanted. That would amuse him and help to kill time. He should get back to the club about seven, and devote the rest of the evening and all the night to cards.
He did not go to the tailor with whom he had dealt since he came to live at Richmond. He wanted to cut himself off from that place as completely as possible.
At the tailor's he ordered three suits of clothes to be ready in three days and forwarded to Crawford's House, Crawford Street, Welford. What he bought at the outfitter's were to be sent to the tailor's and to accompany the parcel of the latter. He paid in advance for all. Then he went to another shop, purchased a portmanteau, and directed it to be delivered at the tailor's, and sent a note with it, asking him to put the outfitter's parcel and the clothes into it and send it to the address already given.
Then he bethought him of a dressing-bag, and he bought a handsome one with silver-mounted bottle and ivory-backed brushes. The bag, being of leather, reminded him that he had no boots but those on his feet. So he purchased a couple of pairs and a pair of slippers, and the slippers put him in mind of a dressing-gown.
He directed all these things to be sent to the tailor's, and wrote to the tailor to let them all be forwarded at the one time--that is, when the clothes were finished, in three days.
He enjoyed this shopping greatly. He had never before spent so much money on himself in one day. It was so pleasant to buy these articles without worrying about the price, to be in doubt as to whether he should have a dressing-bag at thirty or thirty-five pounds, and to decide in favour of the thirty-five-pound one merely because it had prettier bottles and a greater number of pockets.
When he could think of nothing else which he wanted, he said to himself, "And now what shall I take Hetty? I must get the very handsomest present I can light upon."
This set him off calling Hetty up to mind. He looked into the windows of a dozen jewellers' and shops where fancy articles were sold. He failed to find an article to his liking. He could not realise Hetty accepting any of the costly gifts presented to his view. At length with a sudden start he cried out to himself, "What an idiot I have been! Of course, she would not accept any of these things from me now. A few simple flowers from Covent Garden to-morrow morning on my way to Welford will be the very thing."
It never once occurred to him during the day that the money he was spending belonged to his wife, and was being laid out in a way and under conditions not contemplated by her in giving it to him. When he decided on taking flowers to Hetty, it never once occurred to him that this would be spending his wife's money to conciliate a rival of hers, and that twenty-four hours ago he would have bought these same flowers for his deserted wife.
"Hetty," he said, formulating his theory, "is to be won through her imagination, not by pelf."