The Way We Live Now (113 page)

‘You think it is all over with the Melmottes?'

‘A rumour reached me just now that he had been already arrested.' It was now between nine and ten in the evening. ‘But as I came away from my room, I heard that he was down at the House. That he will have to stand a trial for forgery, I think there cannot be a doubt, and I imagine that it will be found that not a shilling will be saved out of the property.'

‘What a wonderful career it has been!'

‘Yes – the strangest thing that has come up in our days. I am inclined to think that the utter ruin at this moment has been brought about by his reckless personal expenditure.'

‘Why did he spend such a lot of money?'

‘Because he thought that he could conquer the world by it, and obtain universal credit. He very nearly succeeded too. Only he had forgotten to calculate the force of the envy of his competitors.'

‘You think he has committed forgery?'

‘Certainly, I think so. Of course we know nothing as yet.'

‘Then I suppose it is better that Felix should not have married her.'

‘Certainly better. No redemption was to have been had on that side, and I don't think you should regret the loss of such money as his.' Lady Carbury shook her head, meaning probably to imply that even Mel-motte's money would have had no bad odour
¹
to one so dreadfully in want of assistance as her son. ‘At any rate do not think of it any more.'
Then she told him her grief about Hetta. ‘Ah, there,' said he, ‘I feel myself less able to express an authoritative opinion.'

‘He doesn't owe a shilling,' said Lady Carbury, ‘and he is really a fine gentleman.'

‘But if she doesn't like him?'

‘Oh, but she does. She thinks him to be the finest person in the world. She would obey him a great deal sooner than she would me. But she has her mind stuffed with nonsense about love.'

‘A great many people, Lady Carbury, have their minds stuffed with that nonsense.'

‘Yes – and ruin themselves with it, as she will do. Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it. And those who will have it when they can't afford it, will come to the ground like this Mr Melmotte. How odd it seems! It isn't a fortnight since we all thought him the greatest man in London.' Mr Broune only smiled, not thinking it worth his while to declare that he had never held that opinion about the late idol of Abchurch Lane.

On the following morning, very early, while Melmotte was still lying, as yet undiscovered, on the floor of Mr Longestaffe's room, a letter was brought up to Hetta by the maid-servant, who told her that Mr Montague had delivered it with his own hands. She took it greedily, and then repressing herself, put it with an assumed gesture of indifference beneath her pillow. But as soon as the girl had left the room she at once seized her treasure. It never occurred to her as yet to think whether she would or would not receive a letter from her dismissed lover. She had told him that he must go, and go for ever, and had taken it for granted that he would do so – probably willingly. No doubt he would be delighted to return to the American woman. But now that she had the letter, she allowed no doubt to come between her and the reading of it. As soon as she was alone she opened it, and she ran through its contents without allowing herself a moment for thinking, as she went on, whether the excuses made by her lover were or were not such as she ought to accept.

‘
DEAREST HETTA
,

‘I think you have been most unjust to me, and if you have ever loved me I cannot understand your injustice. I have never deceived you in anything, not by a word or for a moment. Unless you mean to throw me over because I did once love another woman, I do not know what cause of anger you have. I could not tell you
about Mrs Hurtle till you had accepted me, and, as you yourself must know, I had had no opportunity to tell you anything afterwards till the story had reached your ears. I hardly know what I said the other day, I was so miserable at your accusation. But I suppose I said then, and I again declare now, that I had made up my mind that circumstances would not admit of her becoming my wife before I had ever seen you, and that I have certainly never wavered in my determination since I saw you. I can with safety refer to Roger as to this, because I was with him when I so determined, and made up my mind very much at his instance. This was before I had ever even met you.

‘If I understand it all right you are angry because I have associated with Mrs Hurtle since I so determined. I am not going back to my first acquaintance with her now. You may blame me for that if you please – though it cannot have been a fault against you. But, after what had occurred, was I to refuse to see her when she came to England to see me? I think that would have been cowardly. Of course I went to her. And when she was all alone here, without a single other friend, and telling me that she was unwell, and asking me to take her down to the seaside, was I to refuse? I think that that would have been unkind. It was a dreadful trouble to me. But of course I did it.

‘She asked me to renew my engagement. I am bound to tell you that, but I know in telling you that it will go no farther. I declined, telling her that it was my purpose to ask another woman to be my wife. Of course there has been anger and sorrow – anger on her part and sorrow on mine. But there has been no doubt. And at last she yielded. As far as she was concerned my trouble was over – except in so far that her unhappiness has been a great trouble to me – when, on a sudden, I found that the story had reached you in such a form as to make you determined to quarrel with me!

‘Of course you do not know it all, for I cannot tell you all without telling her history. But you know everything that in the least concerns yourself, and I do say that you have no cause whatever for anger. I am writing at night. This evening your brooch was brought to me with three or four cutting words from your mother. But I cannot understand that if you really love me, you should wish to separate yourself from me – or that, if you ever loved me, you should cease to love me now because of Mrs Hurtle.

‘I am so absolutely confused by the blow that I hardly know what I am writing, and take first one outrageous idea into my head and then another. My love for you is so thorough and so intense that I cannot
bring myself to look forward to living without you, now that you have once owned that you have loved me. I cannot think it possible that love, such as I suppose yours must have been, could be made to cease all at a moment. Mine can't I don't think it is natural that we should be parted.

‘If you want corroboration of my story go yourself to Mrs Hurtle. Anything is better than that we both should be broken-hearted.

‘Yours most affectionately,
‘PAUL MONTAGUE.'

Lord Nidderdale was greatly disgusted with his own part of the performance when he left the House of Commons, and was, we may say, disgusted with his own position generally, when he considered all its circumstances. That had been at the commencement of the evening, and Melmotte had not then been tipsy; but he had behaved with unsurpassable arrogance and vulgarity, and had made the young lord drink the cup of his own disgrace to the very dregs. Everybody now knew it as a positive fact that the charges made against the man were to become matter of investigation before the chief magistrate for the City, everybody knew that he had committed forgery upon forgery, everybody knew that he could not pay for the property which he had pretended to buy, and that he was actually a ruined man – and yet he had seized Nidderdale by the hand, and called the young lord ‘his dear boy' before the whole House.

And then he had made himself conspicuous as this man's advocate. If he had not himself spoken openly of his coming marriage with the girl, he had allowed other men to speak to him about it. He had quarrelled with one man for saying that Melmotte was a rogue, and had confidentially told his most intimate friends that, in spite of a little vulgarity of manner, Melmotte at bottom was a very good fellow. How was he now to back out of his intimacy with the Melmottes generally! He was engaged to marry the girl, and there was nothing of which he could accuse her. He acknowledged to himself that she deserved well at his hands. Though at this moment he hated the father most bitterly, as
those odious words, and the tone in which they had been pronounced, rang in his ears, nevertheless he had some kindly feeling for the girl. Of course he could not marry her now. That was manifestly out of the question. She herself, as well as all others, had known that she was to be married for her money, and now that bubble had been burst. But he felt that he owed it to her, as to a comrade who had on the whole been loyal to him, to have some personal explanation with herself. He arranged in his own mind the sort of speech that he would make to her. ‘Of course you know it can't be. It was all arranged because you were to have a lot of money, and now it turns out that you haven't got any. And I haven't got any, and we should have nothing to live upon. It's out of the question. But, upon my word, I'm very sorry, for I like you very much, and I really think we should have got on uncommon well together.' That was the kind of speech that he suggested to himself, but he did not know how to find for himself the opportunity of making it. He thought that he must put it all into a letter. But then that would be tantamount to a written confession that he had made her an offer of marriage, and he feared that Melmotte – or Madame Melmotte on his behalf, if the great man himself were absent, in prison – might make an ungenerous use of such an admission.

Between seven and eight he went into the Beargarden, and there he saw Dolly Longestaffe and others. Everybody was talking about Melmotte, the prevailing belief being that he was at this moment in custody. Dolly was full of his own griefs; but consoled amidst them by a sense of his own importance. ‘I wonder whether it's true,' he was saying to Lord Grasslough. ‘He has an appointment to meet me and my governor at twelve o'clock to-morrow, and to pay us what he owes us. He swore yesterday that he would have the money to-morrow. But he can't keep his appointment, you know, if he's in prison.'

‘You won't see the money, Dolly, you may swear to that,' said Grasslough.

‘I don't suppose I shall. By George, what an ass my governor has been. He had no more right than you have to give up the property. Here's Nidderdale. He could tell us where he is; but I'm afraid to speak to him since he cut up so rough the other night.'

In a moment the conversation was stopped; but when Lord Grasslough asked Nidderdale in a whisper whether he knew anything about Melmotte, the latter answered out loud, ‘Yes; – I left him in the House half an hour ago.'

‘People are saying that he has been arrested.'

‘I heard that also; but he certainly had not been arrested when I left the House.' Then he went up and put his hand on Dolly Longestaffe's shoulder, and spoke to him. ‘I suppose you were about right the other night and I was about wrong; but you could understand what it was that I meant. I'm afraid this is a bad look-out for both of us.'

‘Yes; – I understand. It's deuced bad for me,' said Dolly. ‘I think you're very well out of it. But I'm glad there's not to be a quarrel. Suppose we have a rubber of whist'.

Later on in the night news was brought to the club that Melmotte had tried to make a speech in the House, that he had been very drunk, and that he had tumbled over, upsetting Beauchamp Beauclerk in his fall. ‘By George, I should like to have seen that!' said Dolly.

‘I am very glad I was not there,' said Nidderdale. It was three o'clock before they left the card-table, at which time Melmotte was lying dead upon the floor in Mr Longestaffe's house.

On the following morning, at ten o'clock, Lord Nidderdale sat at breakfast with his father in the old lord's house in Berkeley Square. From thence the house which Melmotte had hired was not above a few hundred yards distant. At this time the young lord was living with his father, and the two had now met by appointment in order that something might be settled between them as to the proposed marriage. The marquis was not a very pleasant companion when the affairs in which he was interested did not go exactly as he would have them. He could be very cross and say most disagreeable words – so that the ladies of the family, and others connected with him, for the most part, found it impossible to live with him. But his eldest son had endured him – partly perhaps because, being the eldest, he had been treated with a nearer approach to courtesy, but chiefly by means of his own extreme good-humour. What did a few hard words matter? If his father was ungracious to him, of course he knew what all that meant. As long as his father would make fair allowance for his own peccadilloes – he also would make allowances for his father's roughness. All this was based on his grand theory of live and let live. He expected his father to be a little cross on this occasion, and he acknowledged to himself that there was cause for it.

He was a little late himself, and he found his father already buttering his toast. ‘I don't believe you'd get out of bed a moment sooner than you liked if you could save the whole property by it'.

‘You show me how I can make a guinea by it, sir, and see if I don't earn the money.' Then he sat down and poured himself out a cup of tea, and looked at the kidneys and looked at the fish.

‘I suppose you were drinking last night,' said the old lord.

‘Not particular.' The old man turned round and gnashed his teeth at him. ‘The fact is, sir, I don't drink. Everybody knows that'.

‘I know when you're in the country you can't live without champagne. Well – what have you got to say about all this?'

‘What have you got to say?'

‘You've made a pretty kettle of fish of it.'

‘I've been guided by you in everything. Come, now; you ought to own that. I suppose the whole thing is over?'