Ah, the rapture of those first nights, when he revelled
amid the tumult of London, pursuing joy with a pocket
full of sovereigns! Theatres, music-halls, restaurants
and public-houses—he had seen so little
of these things, that they excited him as they do a
lad fresh from the country. He drew the line
nowhere. Love of a worthy woman tells for chastity
even in the young and the sensual; love of a Fanny
French merely debauches the mind and inflames the passions.
Secure in his paganism, Horace followed where the lures
of London beckoned him; he knew not reproach of conscience;
shame offered but thin resistance to his boiling blood.
By a miracle he had as yet escaped worse damage to
health than a severe cold, caught one night after
heroic drinking. That laid him by the heels for
a time, and the cough still clung to him.
In less than two years he would command seven thousand
pounds, and a share in the business now conducted
by Samuel Barmby. What need to stint himself
whilst he felt able to enjoy life? If Fanny deceived
him, were there not, after all, other and better Fannys
to be won by his money? For it was a result of
this girl’s worthlessness that Horace, in most
things so ingenuous, had come to regard women with
unconscious cynicism. He did not think he could
be loved for his own sake, but he believed that, at
any time, the show of love, perhaps its ultimate sincerity,
might be won by display of cash.
Midway in the month of May he again caught a severe
cold, and was confined to the house for nearly three
weeks. Mrs. Damerel, who nursed him well and
tenderly, proposed that he should go down for change
of air to Falmouth. He wrote to Nancy, asking
whether she would care to see him. A prompt reply
informed him that his sister was on the point of returning
to London, so that he had better choose some nearer
seaside resort.
He went to Hastings for a few days, but wearied of
the place, and came back to his London excitements.
Nancy, however, had not yet returned; nor did she
until the beginning of July.
CHAPTER 4
This winter saw the establishment of the South London
Fashionable Dress Supply Association—the
name finally selected by Beatrice French and her advisers.
It was an undertaking shrewdly conceived, skilfully
planned, and energetically set going. Beatrice
knew the public to which her advertisements appealed;
she understood exactly the baits that would prove
irresistible to its folly and greed. In respect
that it was a public of average mortals, it would believe
that business might be conducted to the sole advantage
of the customer. In respect that it consisted
of women, it would give eager attention to a scheme
that permitted each customer to spend her money, and
yet to have it. In respect that it consisted of
ignorant and pretentious women, this public could
be counted upon to deceive itself in the service of
its own vanity, and maintain against all opposition
that the garments obtained on this soothing system
were supremely good and fashionable.
