Broken Promise

The Temple Club

St. James, London

January 4th, 1899

Lord Lachlan McCammack stood at the table’s head while his fellow members of the Temple Club filed in, heads bowed. They shrugged from thick black greatcoats, passed their polished black hats into the hands of a waiting footman, heads bowed. Each member slowed his circumnavigation of the table when he passed the fireplace, pausing long enough to chase away the chill of a bleak February evening before moving to his seat.

It was the same club they’d visited at least once a week for nearly a decade. The fireplace’s white plaster mantle was ever stained black beneath its lip where Halloway had tried in a fit of intellectual pique to burn two thousand pamphlets on spiritualism he’d stolen from a corner-stand quack. As chimney fires went it had been rather tame. Walls hung with the same photographs, pugilism cartoons, and neoclassical works. But when Lachlan looked down the table’s length to Peregrine Camden at its foot, and counted three men on the one side and four on the other, he struggled to swallow. It was not the same club, and it never could be again.

Hill came up the rear stairs with his salver of tumblers jealously guarded to his chest, Hill who had been snow capped and sour when they were lads of nineteen or twenty. He placed a tumbler just so before Lachlan, and before James Mildmay whose chair bore his wounded weight, and then Graham Foster. Addison MacQuillan, Fletcher Clery, Daniel O’Malley, Lennox Davies, Stirling Ellis, and Camden; a glass for each member in his turn.

They stood for Hill’s rounds, until he came to the empty chair of Tad Holloway. Hill set out the tumbler, placed a folded white silk handkerchief inside, and turned the glass upside down in a silent message: The member did not drink tonight.

Lachlan swallowed down the pressure in his chest.

Or ever again. Hill pushed Tad’s heavy grained leather chair in to the table, its red arms faded from years of Tad’s hands resting just so. Its frame thumped the table like a casket lid falling shut. Lachlan dropped to his seat, and the men fell likewise in unison.

When the best port from the cellar had been poured, Lachlan raised his glass without meeting any eyes. “Theodore,” he rasped, and the name became a hymn on the other’s lips. Lachlan downed his port, smooth and unoffensive, and unequal.

“I know Theodore has had his service, and a memorial, but there’s no question we should remember him here.”

Murmured agreement.

Lachlan took a flask from inside in frock and swigged, filled his tumbler, and passed it to Mildmay to send it down the table. “I’ve struggled...these last three nights grief has felt impenetrable. I’ve tried so hard to give it some aim, some purpose because…” He met Mildmay’s eyes, a brief passing, knowing that James felt the words cut deeper than anybody. They had been ruthlessly acquainted with Tad’s death; James had lived it.

“Because I don’t know how to go on if losing Tad doesn’t have some purpose. And I think I know what that purpose is.”

Each member shifted eagerly in his seat; Lachlan thought they might not see the wisdom as clearly as he had at a drunken post-midnight hour.

“What was the purpose of our founding?”

Ellis flicked his slender fingers. “Money.”

“Certainly. Titles or tenant houses, I don’t think one of us came her with two pennies to put together.” “Knowledge.” This from buttoned-down Peregrine Camden, who wouldn’t save books before women and children on a sinking ship, but would make each carry an armload to the lifeboats.“Adventure,” piped Daniel O’Malley, who probably had the word tattooed somewhere on his body.

“Growth,” agreed Lachlan. “We came here barely men, broke as a stick and ignorant, but not so ignorant we didn’t know better. And with three-quarters of us still shy our thirtieth birthday…” He gestured at the small room that had been more a home to them than almost any other place.

He looked to Mildmay again, whose dark head was bowed, and silently apologized for what he was about to say.

“All of this, and still Tad Halloway died alone.”

That earned a hiss from Davies, one winged blond brow falling into disapproval.

“He had us as brothers. But Tad had no wife, no companion. No children to carry on his legacy.” Lachlan worked up his courage. “I think that we’ve become bogged down in the guts of the machine, so much that we’ve built an astounding invention we’re too absorbed to use properly. To use for happiness.” He took the paper from his elbow and laid it just so before him. “I propose we dissolve the Temple Club.” “To hell we will!” Clery’s swear was the only distinguishable part of the near riot Lachlan had sparked. He shushed them down, realizing too late that a night of raw nerves may not have yielded the best timing. “We’ve each failed to do one very important thing with our lives. I propose that on December thirty-first, eighteen ninety-nine, at eleven fifty-nine in the evening, the Temple Club dissolve – with its last member, if not wed, settled with the partner of his life for the new century.” He slid the contract further out along the polished mahogany. “A lady, gentlemen. Each man will have the full support of his brothers, but…” He aimed a faint smile at MacQuillan, their consummate gambler, “in true Temple fashion, there’s a catch. A wager.”

Addison MacQuillan’s lips twitched ever so slightly, and he bowed his head to Lachlan. “I know our propensity for wandering off, procrastinating, and distraction, so some encouragement is needed,” Lachlan declared.

“Not one of us needs money,” Daniel frowned. “So what’s the carrot?”

“Not what you get,” Lachlan sent his contract skimming down the table to Daniel’s waiting hands. “What you lose. Each of us wagers his most prized possession.”

“Who gets it if we lose?” asked Peregrine.

“The ocean. It goes right in the drink, lost for good.” “That settles it.” Danny rapped the table. “My most prized possession is a pair of Westin boots.”

“Mm.” Lachlan smirked. “Hm-m. A majority rule. Put something shabby on the list and the membership can veto you. And we can decide on your behalf.”

“I’m in!” shouted Ellis, snatching the contract from Danny. “This is brilliant. High stakes is just the thing. Something to think of besides feeling so damned low about Tad.” He snaked a pen from his pocket and scrawled on his appointed lines.

Lachlan was silently thrilled to see it passed on, some fingers eager and a few reticent - until it reached James. He stared at the contract, the fire’s pop and hiss, a clicking pendulum on the wall clock grating out his decision. He pushed it to Lachlan. “I’m sorry, gentleman,” he muttered, struggling from the table and onto his crutches. “You’ll have to count me out on this one, for obvious reasons.” Watching James wince and stagger his way to the front room broke Lachlan’s heart. He jumped to offer his shoulder; James took it, but pride stiffened him all the same.

“I wasn’t making sport of Tad,” Lachlan pleaded in a whisper while James donned his hat and gloves. “Or your suffering.”

James rested a hand on his shoulder and regarded Lachlan through his least swollen eye. “I never thought that you were. But a courtship? A wife? In my sleep I hear his…” James stuttered out a breath. “And when I wake my body is broken. What you’ve done couldn’t honor Tad more; he’s looking down and cheering you on. But it’s not for me, Lach. Not for me.”

Lachlan gave James a short, fierce hug when he’d got his friend up into his carriage, and pressed a hand to the glass, but James kept his head down.

Eager conversation had ignited when Lachlan returned to the parlor, almost too pleasant for how pulped he felt inside. “Just you, McCammack,” cried Camden as he passed, slapping the contract against Lachlan’s chest. “If you’re lordship pleases.”