When he got back to the club he reckoned up what he had spent. It was an agreeable surprise to find that although he had treated himself with great liberality, all his purchases did not absorb the hundred-pound note he had changed at the tailor's. He had got a moderate outfit and a very handsome dressing-case, with cut-glass bottles silver-mounted, and ivory-backed brushes, for less than one thirty-second part of the money received from Mr. Brereton that afternoon. He sat down to an excellent dinner with the conviction that he had done a fair day's work, and that he was entitled to enjoy himself for the remainder of the evening, and as far into the morning as he chose.
The dinner was excellent; his shopping had given him zest for it, and when he stood up from the table he felt in the most excellent humour with himself and all the world.
He looked at his watch.
"She has my letter by this time," he said to himself, thinking of his wife. "If she is not a greater fool than I take her for, she will know from it that she has seen the last of me."
When he wrote the letter he had no intention of conveying any such idea to her, but his shopping and thoughts of Hetty had hardened his heart since then towards his unhappy wife, and now he wanted to believe that his letter would leave her no loophole of hope.
"Dr. Loftus said any shock might bring on the end. Perhaps my letter----" He paused and did not finish the sentence, but began another: "When a case is hopeless the greatest mercy which can be shown to the sufferer is, of course, to put an end to the struggle. She could not have fancied for a moment that I was going to spend all my life in the sick-room of a woman almost old enough to be my mother. Anyway, I need not bother my head any more about the matter. She cannot say that while our married life lasted I was not a kind and considerate husband. Turn about is fair play, and I am going to be a little kind and considerate to myself now. I'll put the past away from my mind. 'Gather we rosebuds while we may' is my version. Now to lose for the last time."
At the Counter Club there were men every night who did not mind how far into the morning they sat so long as they were winning. From the moment Crawford touched the cards until he rose at half-past six he had lost steadily. Though he had played for higher stakes than usual, he had been as careful of his game as if he had no more than a few hundred pounds with him. He had not been reckless. He had not plunged. Luck had simply been dead against him, and when, while eating his early breakfast, he counted up the cost, he found he was close on three hundred pounds the worse for his night's experience.
Mentally he cursed his bad luck.
"But I deserve no better," he thought. "I told myself that I should have good luck only when I had come from Welford. The luck I played with last night was my wife's or my own, and both have been invariably bad. I shall go to Welford to-day, and play to-night with Hetty's luck, and win back all I have lost and more besides. And now to get a bouquet for Hetty--for the loveliest girl in the whole of England. But the bouquet must not be too splendid. It must be simple and cheap, or it might do more harm than good."
At Covent Garden he bought some simple blossoms, and had them tied carelessly together.