Red Pottage

"I can't get out," said Sterne's starling, looking through the bars of

his cage.

"I will get out," said Hugh Scarlett to himself, seeing no bars, but

half conscious of a cage. "I will get out," he repeated, as his hansom

took him swiftly from the house in Portman Square, where he had been

dining, towards that other house in Carlton House Terrace, whither his

thoughts had travelled on before him, out-distancing the

_trip-clip-clop, trip-clip-clop_ of the horse.

It was a hot night in June. Hugh had thrown back his overcoat, and the

throng of passers-by in the street could see, if they cared to see, "the

glass of fashion" in the shape of white waistcoat and shirt front,

surmounted by the handsome, irritated face of their owner, leaning back

with his hat tilted over his eyes.

_Trip-clip-clop_ went the horse.

A great deal of thinking may be compressed into a quarter of an hour,

especially if it has been long eluded.

"I will get out," he said again to himself with an impatient movement.

It was beginning to weary him, this commonplace intrigue which had been

so new and alluring a year ago. He did not own it to himself, but he

was tired of it. Perhaps the reason why good resolutions have earned for

themselves such an evil repute as paving-stones is because they are

often the result, not of repentance, but of the restlessness that dogs

an evaporating pleasure. This liaison had been alternately his pride and

his shame for many months. But now it was becoming something more--which

it had been all the time, only he had not noticed it till lately--a

fetter, a clog, something irksome, to be cast off and pushed out of

sight. Decidedly the moment for the good resolution had arrived.

"I will break it off," he said again. "Thank Heaven, not a soul has ever

guessed it."

How could any one have guessed it?

He remembered the day when he had first met her a year ago, and had

looked upon her as merely a pretty woman. He remembered other days, and

the gradual building up between them of a fairy palace. He had added a

stone here, she a stone there, until suddenly it became--a prison. Had

he been tempter or tempted? He did not know. He did not care. He wanted

only to be out of it. His better feelings and his conscience had been

awakened by the first touch of weariness. His brief infatuation had run

its course. His judgment had been whirled--he told himself it had been

whirled, but it had really only been tweaked--from its centre, had

performed its giddy orbit, and now the check-string had brought it back

to the point from whence it had set out, namely, that she was merely a

pretty woman.