The Way We Live Now | Page 8

Felix, was not very
trustworthy. And yet Sir Felix was the darling of her heart.
At the time of the writing of the three letters, at which our story is
supposed to begin, she was driven very hard for money. Sir Felix was
then twenty-five, had been in a fashionable regiment for four years, had
already sold out, and, to own the truth at once, had altogether wasted
the property which his father had left him. So much the mother knew
and knew, therefore, that with her limited income she must maintain
not only herself and daughter, but also the baronet. She did not know,
however, the amount of the baronet's obligations nor, indeed, did he, or
any one else. A baronet, holding a commission in the Guards, and

known to have had a fortune left him by his father, may go very far in
getting into debt; and Sir Felix had made full use of all his privileges.
His life had been in every way bad. He had become a burden on his
mother so heavy and on his sister also that their life had become one of
unavoidable embarrassments. But not for a moment, had either of them
ever quarrelled with him. Henrietta had been taught by the conduct of
both father and mother that every vice might be forgiven in a man and
in a son, though every virtue was expected from a woman, and
especially from a daughter. The lesson had come to her so early in life
that she had learned it without the feeling of any grievance. She
lamented her brother's evil conduct as it affected him, but she pardoned
it altogether as it affected herself. That all her interests in life should be
made subservient to him was natural to her; and when she found that
her little comforts were discontinued, and her moderate expenses
curtailed, because he, having eaten up all that was his own, was now
eating up also all that was his mother's, she never complained.
Henrietta had been taught to think that men in that rank of life in which
she had been born always did eat up everything.
The mother's feeling was less noble or perhaps, it might better be said,
more open to censure. The boy, who had been beautiful as a star, had
ever been the cynosure of her eyes, the one thing on which her heart
had riveted itself. Even during the career of his folly she had hardly
ventured to say a word to him with the purport of stopping him on his
road to ruin. In everything she had spoilt him as a boy, and in
everything she still spoilt him as a man. She was almost proud of his
vices, and had taken delight in hearing of doings which if not vicious of
themselves had been ruinous from their extravagance. She had so
indulged him that even in her own presence he was never ashamed of
his own selfishness or apparently conscious of the injustice which he
did to others.
From all this it had come to pass that that dabbling in literature which
had been commenced partly perhaps from a sense of pleasure in the
work, partly as a passport into society, had been converted into hard
work by which money if possible might be earned. So that Lady
Carbury when she wrote to her friends, the editors, of her struggles was
speaking the truth. Tidings had reached her of this and the other man's
success, and coming near to her still of this and that other woman's

earnings in literature. And it had seemed to her that, within moderate
limits, she might give a wide field to her hopes. Why should she not
add a thousand a year to her income, so that Felix might again live like
a gentleman and marry that heiress who, in Lady Carbury's look-out
into the future, was destined to make all things straight! Who was so
handsome as her son? Who could make himself more agreeable? Who
had more of that audacity which is the chief thing necessary to the
winning of heiresses?
And then he could make his wife Lady Carbury. If only enough money
might be earned to tide over the present evil day, all might be well.
The one most essential obstacle to the chance of success in all this was
probably Lady Carbury's conviction that her end was to be obtained not
by producing good books, but by inducing certain people to say that her
books were good. She did work hard at what she wrote hard enough at
any rate to cover her pages quickly; and was, by nature, a clever
woman. She could write after a glib, commonplace, sprightly fashion,
and had already acquired the knack of spreading all she