london is the candle which, ever attracting country moths by its feverish glare destroys them remorselessly in its cruel flame.
reginald blake was not enjoying himself very much in town owing to his disturbed state of mind. for years he had pictured to himself the marvellous city and his life therein; how he would one day find himself a denizen of the great metropolis, eager to win fame and fortune by the magic of his voice, how he would delight in leading the ambitious, half bohemian, wholly delightful existence of a singer, and how he would be able to wander about the streets and see the brilliant life of the mighty city with its restless activity and ardent strivings after wealth, fame and novelty. grey westminster abbey, noble st. paul's, the enormous pile of the parliament house, the golden-topped column of the monument, he would see all these, with their wealth of historical, religious and artistic associations. he would tread the very streets over whose stones wandered proud poverty-stricken chatterton, courtly addison and ponderous dr. johnson; he would find the picturesque alleys, houses and roads described in the fascinating pages of dickens, and he would stray about the sacred purlieus of drury lane, haunted by the stately shades of wilkes, of siddons, of bracegirdle, and david garrick. good heavens, what innumerable fantastic castles did he not build in cloud cuckoo land about the unseen glories of london, where every street and stone was redolent of the glorious history of england from plantagenet to guelph.
oh, beautiful castles of cloudland, how rapidly did their gorgeousness disappear from his fancy before the disenchanting touch of chilling reality. he was indeed in london, but alas it was not the magic london of his dreams, this enormous assemblage of houses through which flowed a melancholy grey river and over which hung a dismal dark cloud of smoke and fog. the london of romance and the london of reality were two very different things, yet the disenchantment of this dreaming youth was not wholly due to the prosaic appearance of the city itself but rather to the gloom and depression of his spirits.
the recollection of how his wealth had come to him weighed heavily on his mind, causing him to view all things in a most dismal manner, and tortured his sensitive disposition with irritating thoughts and maddening delusions. in vain he tried hard to shake off this gloomy feeling and enjoy the many-coloured life of the great city; in vain he told himself that the accident of his birth was no fault of his own and in vain he strove to take pleasure in the society of the men and women to whom he had been introduced by basil beaumont. it was all useless, for a dark cloud of bitterness and distrust seemed to settle upon the joyousness of his life which led him to view everything with jaundiced eyes. he felt that he had lost the adolescent zest for life as donatello must have done after he had stained his hands with blood, and although he had youth, talent, good looks, and wealth, yet all these delightful gifts of the fairies were neutralized by the fatal gift of dishonour bestowed upon him by the malignant beldame who had proved herself the evil genius of his life.
as soon as the business connected with the garsworth estate was properly completed and he had been fully recognized as the heir of the old squire, bolby considering that he had done his duty, left the young man and his friend dick pretty well to their own devices. dick enjoyed everything with the inexhaustible appetite of youth, but reginald took his pleasures, such as they were, in a listless manner, which showed how completely he had lost all capabilities of enjoyment.
mr. pemberton had been rather irritated by the prosaic life they led when in the leading strings of mr. bolby, whose ideas of amusement were of the most primitive nature, rarely extending beyond an afternoon at the zoo or a night at madame tussaud's or the egyptian hall. the only thing dick saw in mr. bolby's ideas of life, which he considered at all meritorious were the excellent dinners which the little lawyer gave them, but dick in his flying visits to town had tasted of the tree of knowledge beneath whose shade were the music halls and the burlesque theatres, so he was anxious to go to such like places for his amusement.
when they left mr. bolby, therefore, and were comfortably established in a quiet hotel in jermyn street, dick, seeing that reginald was absolutely indifferent as to where he went, or what he did, took the whole arrangement of their london life into his own hands and succeeded in going to a good many places which would have terribly shocked the vicar had he known. not that such forbidden pleasures did them much harm, for both lads were extremely sensible for their age, still dick finding himself able, through reginald's generosity, to spend a good deal of money, took his friend and himself to sundry shady places of which they might just as well have been ignorant. but nemesis soon came down upon the unhappy richard, and just as he was developing into a fair specimen of a man about town his bachelor uncle at folkestone wrote him a letter asking him to come down on a visit and as dick was supposed to be his bachelor uncle's heir, he had to leave town, much to his own disgust and to the regret of reginald, who missed his lively friend every hour of the day.
he still stayed in town, however, but as he knew no one, his existence was to say the least extremely dull. reginald was essentially of a social nature and wanted someone to whom he could talk, therefore he was not sorry when one day basil beaumont, who had been waiting for the departure of dick, called upon him and henceforth constituted himself his bear leader. as they had seen nothing of the artist since their arrival in town, dick had never thought of telling reginald his mistrust of the fascinating beaumont, so the young man, remembering the artist's kindness about his probable career as a singer, felt very friendly towards him and was quite prepared to accept his offer of companionship as the outcome of a kindly disposition and not the result of a carefully calculated scheme.
a more dangerous companion for a young man in a depressed state of mind than beaumont could hardly be imagined, for he led reginald to plunge into riotous pleasures for the sake of distraction, from which he would have otherwise recoiled. having an eminently refined mind, and a delight in cultured company, had he been thoroughly healthy he would never have been drawn by this modern mephistopheles into the vortex of frenzied pleasure in which his days and nights were now engulfed. but, being in a morbid state of mind, he brooded eternally over the presumed stigma attached to his name until it became a perfect nightmare to him. he thought that everyone knew his miserable story and despised him for the anomalous position he now occupied, so, in a mad spirit of bravado, he became quite reckless, and determined to defy the world which his sensitive spirit imagined to be sneering at him as a bastard. terrible to relate, in spite of the relationship existing between them, beaumont, who should have prevented the young man from falling into such an unhealthy state of mind, rather encouraged his gloomy fits than otherwise, as he thought it would give him a greater hold than ever over his son, so deliberately led the unhappy young man on to ruin--ruin, not of his fortune or position, but of his physical and moral nature.
in his best days, the circle of beaumont's acquaintances had not been a very large or reputable one, but now it was smaller and worse than ever; nevertheless, he introduced the young master of garsworth grange to his friends, whose manners, generally speaking, were as polished as their morals were bad. broken down professional men, played-out lords, ruined gentlemen of fortune, shady hangers-on of society; these were the daily associates of reginald blake, until his mind, eminently calculated to receive impressions, began to grow corrupted. the society of hawks is rather a dangerous thing for doves, and this poor unsophisticated dove was of far too guileless a nature to mistrust the birds of prey by which he found himself surrounded, though, to be sure, his natural instincts of right and wrong saved him from many a pitfall.
not that the hawks around him did any harm to his pecuniary position, for beaumont was too selfish to allow anyone to have the plucking of this well-feathered pigeon save himself, and there being an unwritten code of honour even among hawks, the young man was left entirely to the tender mercies of his evil-minded mentor. nevertheless, the long nights of play, the wiles of women whose beauty did not redeem their frailty, and the constant life of excitement passed under the feverish glare of the gaslight, soon destroyed the fresh healthy feeling of youth reginald blake had possessed during the quiet years of his country life.
when at times his better feelings prevailed, and he would have fled this unhealthy life of bitter-tasting pleasures, beaumont was always at his elbow with some new device wherewith to beguile him to destruction. blake was not a weak-minded man by any means, still he was young and impressionable, and the sudden change from the poverty and quiet living of garsworth, to the opulent, brilliant life of london, threw him off his moral balance.
no doubt he should have bravely resisted the allurements of sin, and the shallow frivolities to which he yielded with the apathy of despair, but, in the armida-like gardens of london, the keenest eyes are blinded, the acutest senses are bewildered and dazed by the hubbub and brilliance around him, the victim falls only too easily into the snares hidden below the splendid pageant.
one thing, however, reginald stoutly resisted, and that was the temptation to drink--he played nap and baccarat, losing comparatively large sums thereat, mixed in the society of women who lured him onward to destruction with siren voices, but in spite of beaumont's insidious enticements he never took more wine than was good for him, and this temperance was in a certain measure a guard against the fatal influence of his otherwise foolish life. however, beaumont was not impatient, as he knew from experience the effect of time in wearing away good resolutions, and waited calmly until some lucky chance should enable him to put a finishing stroke to the ruin of his unhappy son. it seems almost incredible that such a man as basil beaumont, from whom not even his own flesh and blood was safe, could exist; but, unhappily, he is only one of the many men in whom all natural love and affection is entirely destroyed by the vicious, feverish life which they lead.
behold, therefore, this unhappy country moth lured to destruction by the garish glitter of the lights of london beneath which sat the fatal circe of pleasure, with rose-crowned hair and wine-filled cup. around her moved the splendid throng of pleasure seekers, dancing, singing, eating and drinking, taking no heed of the morrow in the evil joy of the present; but, below this glittering maelstrom of vice and rascality, were the rose-hidden pitfalls into which every moment sank some gay reveller, his dying cry of despair drowned in the riotous crowd dancing gaily over his unseen grave.
