x, when he left his mother, went down to the only club to which he
now belonged. Clubs are pleasant resorts in all respects but one. They
require ready money or even worse than that in respect to annual
payments,--money in advance; and the young baronet had been absolutely
forced to restrict himself. He, as a matter of course, out of those to
which he had possessed the right of entrance, chose the worst. It was
called the Beargarden, and had been lately opened with the express
view of combining parsimony with profligacy. Clubs were ruined, so
said certain young parsimonious profligates, by providing comforts for
old fogies who paid little or nothing but their subscriptions, and
took out by their mere presence three times as much as they gave. This
club was not to be opened till three o'clock in the afternoon, before
which hour the promoters of the Beargarden thought it improbable that
they and their fellows would want a club. There were to be no morning
papers taken, no library, no morning-room. Dining-rooms,
billiard-rooms, and card-rooms would suffice for the Beargarden.
Everything was to be provided by a purveyor, so that the club should
be cheated only by one man. Everything was to be luxurious, but the
luxuries were to be achieved at first cost. It had been a happy
thought, and the club was said to prosper. Herr Vossner, the purveyor,
was a jewel, and so carried on affairs that there was no trouble about
anything. He would assist even in smoothing little difficulties as to
the settling of card accounts, and had behaved with the greatest
tenderness to the drawers of cheques whose bankers had harshly
declared them to have 'no effects.' Herr Vossner was a jewel, and the
Beargarden was a success. Perhaps no young man about town enjoyed the
Beargarden more thoroughly than did Sir Felix Carbury. The club was in
the close vicinity of other clubs, in a small street turning out of
St. James's Street, and piqued itself on its outward quietness and
sobriety. Why pay for stone-work for other people to look at;--why lay
out money in marble pillars and cornices, seeing that you can neither
eat such things, nor drink them, nor gamble with them? But the
Beargarden had the best wines--or thought that it had--and the easiest
chairs, and two billiard-tables than which nothing more perfect had
ever been made to stand upon legs. Hither Sir Felix wended on that
January afternoon as soon as he had his mother's cheque for L20 in his
pocket