The Way We Live Now (105 page)

And so Dolly had said that she ought to be locked up! She'd like to see somebody do it! As soon as she had read her brother's epistle she tore it into fragments and threw it away in her sister's presence. ‘How can mamma be such a hypocrite as to pretend to care what Dolly says? Who doesn't know that he's an idiot? And papa has thought it worth his while to send that down here for me to see! Well after that I must say that I don't much care what papa does.'

‘I don't see why Dolly shouldn't have an opinion as well as anybody else,' said Sophy.

‘As well as George Whitstable? As far as stupidness goes they are about the same. But Dolly has a little more knowledge of the world.'

‘Of course we all know, Georgiana,' rejoined the elder sister, ‘that for cuteness and that kind of thing one must look among the commercial classes, and especially among a certain sort.'

‘I've done with you all,' said Georgey rushing out of the room. ‘I'll have nothing more to do with any one of you.'

But it is very difficult for a young lady to have done with her family! A young man may go anywhere, and may be lost at sea; or come and claim his property after twenty years.
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A young man may demand an allowance, and has almost a right to live alone. The young male bird is supposed to fly away from the paternal nest. But the daughter of a house is compelled to adhere to her father till she shall get a husband. The only way in which Georgey could ‘have done' with them all at Caver-sham would be by trusting herself to Mr Brehgert, and at the present moment she did not know whether Mr Brehgert did or did not consider himself as engaged to her.

That day also passed away with ineffable tedium. At one time she was so beaten down by ennui that she almost offered her assistance to her sister in reference to the wedding garments. In spite of the very bitter words which had been spoken in the morning she would have done so had Sophy afforded her the slightest opportunity. But Sophy was heartlessly cruel in her indifference. In her younger days she had had her bad things, and now – with George Whitstable by her side – she meant to have good things, the goodness of which was infinitely enhanced by the badness of her sister's things. She had been so greatly despised that the charm of despising again was irresistible. And she was able to reconcile her cruelty to her conscience by telling herself that duty required her to show implacable resistance to such a marriage as this which her sister contemplated. Therefore Georgiana dragged out another day, not in the least knowing what was to be her fate.

Mr Longestaffe had brought his daughter down to Caversham on a Wednesday. During the Thursday and Friday she had passed a very sad time, not knowing whether she was or was not engaged to marry Mr Brehgert
Her father had declared to her that he would break off the match, and she believed that he had seen Mr Brehgert with that purpose. She had certainly given no consent, and had never hinted to any one of the family an idea that she was disposed to yield. But she felt that, at any rate with her father, she had not adhered to her purpose with tenacity, and that she had allowed him to return to London with a feeling that she might still be controlled. She was beginning to be angry with Mr Brehgert, thinking that he had taken his dismissal from her father without consulting her. It was necessary that something should be settled, something known. Life such as that she was leading now would drive her mad. She had all the disadvantages of the Brehgert connection and none of the advantages. She could not comfort herself with thinking of the Brehgert wealth and the Brehgert houses, and yet she was living under the general ban of Caversham on account of her Brehgert associations. She was beginning to think that she herself must write to Mr Brehgert – only she did not know what to say to him.

But on the Saturday morning she got a letter from Mr Brehgert. It was handed to her as she was sitting at breakfast with her sister – who at that moment was triumphant with a present of gooseberries which had been sent over from Toodlam. The Toodlam gooseberries were noted throughout Suffolk, and when the letters were being brought in Soph) was taking her lover's offering from the basket with her own fair hands ‘Well!' Georgey had exclaimed, ‘to send a pottle of gooseberries to his lady love across the country! Who but George Whitstable would dc that?'

‘I dare say you get nothing but gems and gold,' Sophy retorted. ‘I don't suppose that Mr Brehgert knows what a gooseberry is.' At that moment the letter was brought in, and Georgiana knew the writing. ‘I suppose that's from Mr Brehgert,' said Sophy.

‘I don't think it matters much to you who it's from.' She tried to be composed and stately, but the letter was too important to allow Of composure, and she retired to read it in privacy.

The letter was as follows: –

‘MY DEAR GEORGIANA,

‘Your father came to me the day after I was to have met you at Lady Monogram's party. I told him then that I would not write to you till I had taken a day or two to consider what he said to me – and also that I thought it better that you should have a day or two to consider what he might say to you. He has now repeated what he said at our first
interview, almost with more violence; for I must say that I think he has allowed himself to be violent when it was surely unnecessary.

‘The long and short of it is this. He altogether disapproves of your promise to marry me. He has given three reasons: – first that I am in trade; secondly that I am much older than you, and have a family; and thirdly that I am a Jew. In regard to the first I can hardly think that he is earnest. I have explained to him that my business is that of a banker; and I can hardly conceive it to be possible that any gentleman in England should object to his daughter marrying a banker, simply because the man is a banker. There would be a blindness of arrogance in such a proposition of which I think your father to be incapable. This has merely been added in to strengthen his other objections.

‘As to my age, it is just fifty-one. I do not at all think myself too old to be married again. Whether I am too old for you is for you to judge – as is also that question of my children who, of course, should you become my wife, will be to some extent a care upon your shoulders. As this is all very serious you will not, I hope, think me wanting in gallantry if I say that I should hardly have ventured to address you if you had been quite a young girl. No doubt there are many years between us – and so I think there should be. A man of my age hardly looks to marry a woman of the same standing as himself. But the question is one for the lady to decide – and you must decide it now.

‘As to my religion, I acknowledge the force of what your father says – though I think that a gentleman brought up with fewer prejudices would have expressed himself in language less likely to give offence. However I am a man not easily offended; and on this occasion I am ready to take what he has said in good part. I can easily conceive that there should be those who think that the husband and wife should agree in religion. I am indifferent to it myself. I shall not interfere with you if you make me happy by becoming my wife, nor, I suppose, will you with me. Should you have a daughter or daughters I am quite willing that they should be brought up subject to your influence.' There was a plain speaking in this which made Georgiana look round the room as though to see whether any one was watching her as she read it ‘But no doubt your father objects to me specially because I am a Jew. If I were an atheist he might, perhaps, say nothing on the subject of religion. On this matter as well as on others it seems to me that your father has hardly kept pace with the movements of the age. Fifty years ago whatever claim a Jew might have to be as well considered as a Christian, he certainly was not so
considered. Society was closed against him, except under special circumstances, and so were all the privileges of high position. But that has been altered. Your father does not admit the change; but I think he is blind-to it, because he does not wish to see.

‘I say all this more as defending myself than as combating his views with you. It must be for you and for you alone to decide how far his views shall govern you. He has told me, after a rather peremptory fashion, that I have behaved badly to him and to his family because I did not go to him in the first instance when I thought of obtaining the honour of an alliance with his daughter. I have been obliged to tell him that in this matter I disagree with him entirely, though in so telling him I endeavoured to restrain myself from any appearance of warmth. I had not the pleasure of meeting you in his house, nor had I any acquaintance with him. And again, at the risk of being thought uncourteous, I must say that you are to a certain degree emancipated by age from that positive subordination to which a few years ago you probably submitted without a question. If a gentleman meets a lady in society, as I met you in the home of our friend Mr Melmotte, I do not think that the gentleman is to be debarred from expressing his feelings because the lady may possibly have a parent Your father, no doubt with propriety, had left you to be the guardian of yourself, and I cannot submit to be accused of improper conduct because, finding you in that condition, I availed myself of it.

‘And now, having said so much, I must leave the question to be decided entirely by yourself. I beg you to understand that I do not at all wish to hold you to a promise merely because the promise has been given. I readily acknowledge that the opinion of your family should be considered by you, though I will not admit that I was bound to consult that opinion before I spoke to you. It may well be that your regard for me or your appreciation of the comforts with which I may be able to surround you, will not suffice to reconcile you to such a breach from your own family as your father, with much repetition, has assured me will be inevitable. Take a day or two to think of this and turn it well over in your mind. When I last had the happiness of speaking to you, you seemed to think that your parents might raise objections, but that those objections would give way before an expression of your own wishes. I was flattered by your so thinking; but, if I may form any judgement from your father's manner, I must suppose that you were mistaken. You will understand that I do not say this as any reproach to you. Quite the contrary. I think your
father is irrational; and you may well have failed to anticipate that he should be so.

‘As to my own feelings, they remain exactly as they were when I endeavoured to explain them to you. Though I do not find myself to be too old to marry, I do think myself too old to write love-letters. I have no doubt you believe me when I say that I entertain a most sincere affection for you; and I beseech you to believe me in saying further that should you become my wife it shall be the study of my life to make you happy.

‘It is essentially necessary that I should allude to one other matter, as to which I have already told your father what I will now tell you. I think it probable that within this week I shall find myself a loser of a very large sum of money through the failure of a gentleman whose bad treatment of me I will the more readily forgive because he was the means of making me known to you. This you must understand is private between you and me, though I have thought it proper to inform your father. Such loss, if it fall upon me, will not interfere in the least with the income which I have proposed to settle upon you for your use after my death; and, as your father declares that in the event of your marrying me he will neither give to you nor bequeath to you a shilling, he might have abstained from telling me to my face that I was a bankrupt merchant when I myself told him of my loss. I am not a bankrupt merchant nor at all likely to become so. Nor will this loss at all interfere with my present mode of living. But I have thought it right to inform you of it, because, if it occur – as I think it will – I shall not deem it right to keep a second establishment probably for the next two or three years. But my house at Fulham and my stables there will be kept up just as they are at present.

‘I have now told you everything which I think it is necessary you should know, in order that you may determine either to adhere to or to recede from your engagement. When you have resolved you will let me know – but a day or two may probably be necessary for your decision. I hope I need not say that a decision in my favour will make me a happy man.

‘I am, in the meantime, your affectionate friend,

‘EZEKIEL BREHGERT.'

This very long letter puzzled Georgey a good deal, and left her, at the time of reading it, very much in doubt as to what she would do. She could understand that it was a plain-spoken and truth-telling letter. Not that she, to herself, gave it praise for those virtues; but that it imbued
her unconsciously with a thorough belief. She was apt to suspect deceit in other people – but it did not occur to her that Mr Brehgert had written a single word with an attempt to deceive her. But the single-minded genuine honesty of the letter was altogether thrown away upon her. She never said to herself, as she read it, that she might safely trust herself to this man, though he were a Jew, though greasy and like a butcher, though over fifty and with a family, because he was an honest man. She did not see that the letter was particularly sensible – but she did allow herself to be pained by the total absence of romance. She was annoyed at the first allusion to her age, and angry at the second; and yet she had never supposed that Brehgert had taken her to be younger than she was. She was well aware that the world in general attributes more years to unmarried women than they have lived, as a sort of equalizing counterweight against the pretences which young women make on the other side, or the lies which are told on their behalf. Nor had she wished to appear peculiarly young in his eyes. But, nevertheless, she regarded the reference to be uncivil – perhaps almost butcher-like – and it had its effect upon her. And then the allusion to the ‘daughter or daughters' troubled her. She told herself that it was vulgar – just what a butcher might have said. And although she was quite prepared to call her father the most irrational, the most prejudiced, and most ill-natured of men, yet she was displeased that Mr Brehgert should take such a liberty with him. But the passage in Mr Brehgert's letter which was most distasteful to her was that which told her of the loss which he might probably incur through his connection with Melmotte. What right had he to incur a loss which would incapacitate him from keeping his engagements with her? The town-house had been the great persuasion, and now he absolutely had the face to tell her that there was to be no town-house for three years. When she read this she felt that she ought to be indignant, and for a few moments was minded to sit down without further consideration and tell the man with considerable scorn that she would have nothing more to say to him.