The Way We Live Now (118 page)

‘I suppose so.'

‘It was old Mr Todd that first took to him – but I was deceived as much as Todd, and then I ventured on a speculation with him outside of our house. The long and the short of it is that I shall lose something about sixty thousand pounds.'

‘That's a large sum of money.'

‘Very large – so large as to affect my daily mode of life. In my correspondence with your daughter, I considered it to be my duty to point out to her that it would be so. I do not know whether she told you.'

This reference to his daughter for the moment altogether upset Mr Longestaffe. The reference was certainly most indelicate, most deserving of censure; but Mr Longestaffe did not know how to pronounce his censure on the spur of the moment, and was moreover at the present time so very anxious for Brehgert's assistance in the arrangement of his affairs that, so to say, he could not afford to quarrel with the man. But he assumed something more than his normal dignity as he asserted that his daughter had never mentioned the fact.

‘It was so,' said Brehgert.

‘No doubt' – and Mr Longestaffe assumed a great deal of dignity.

‘Yes; it was so. I had promised your daughter when she was good enough to listen to the proposition which I made to her, that I would maintain a second house when we should be married.'

‘It was impossible,' said Mr Longestaffe – meaning to assert that such hymeneals were altogether unnatural and out of the question.

‘It would have been quite possible as things were when that proposition was made. But looking forward to the loss which I afterwards anticipated from the affairs of our deceased friend, I found it to be prudent to relinquish my intention for the present, and I thought myself bound to inform Miss Longestaffe.'

‘There were other reasons,' muttered Mr Longestaffe, in a suppressed voice, almost in a whisper which was intended to convey a sense of present horror and a desire for future reticence.

‘There may have been; but in the last letter which Miss Longestaffe did me the honour to write to me – a letter with which I have not the slightest right to find any fault – she seemed to me to confine herself almost exclusively to that reason.'

‘Why mention this now, Mr Brehgert; why mention this now? The subject is painful.'

‘Just because it is not painful to me, Mr Longestaffe; and because I wish that all they who have heard of the matter should know that it is not painful. I think that throughout I behaved like a gentleman.' Mr Longestaffe, in an agony, first shook his head twice, and then bowed it three times, leaving the Jew to take what answer he could from so dubious an oracle. ‘I am sure,' continued Brehgert, ‘that I behaved like an honest man; and I didn't quite like that the matter should be passed over as if I was in any way ashamed of myself.'

‘Perhaps on so delicate a subject the less said the soonest mended.'

‘I've nothing more to say, and I've nothing at all to mend.' Finishing the conversation with this little speech Brehgert arose to take his leave, making some promise at the time that he would use all the expedition in his power to complete the arrangement of the Melmotte affairs.

As soon as he was gone Mr Longestaffe opened the door and walked about the room and blew out long puffs of breath, as though to cleanse himself from the impurities of his late contact. He told himself that he could not touch pitch and not be defiled! How vulgar had the man been, how indelicate, how regardless of all feeling, how little grateful for the honour which Mr Longestaffe had conferred upon him by asking him to dinner! Yes; – yes! A horrid Jew! Were not all Jews necessarily an abomination? Yet, Mr Longestaffe was aware that in the present crisis of his fortunes he could not afford to quarrel with Mr Brehgert.

It was a long time now since Lady Carbury's great historical work on the Criminal Queens of the World had been completed and given to the world. Any reader careful as to dates will remember that it was as far back as in February that she had solicited the assistance of certain of her literary friends who were connected with the daily and weekly press. These gentlemen had responded to her call with more or less zealous aid, so that the
Criminal Queens
had been regarded in the trade as one of the successful books of the season. Messrs Leadham and Loiter had published a second, and then, very quickly, a fourth and fifth edition; and had been able in their advertisements to give testimony from various criticisms showing that Lady Carbury's book was about the greatest historical work which had emanated from the press in the present century. With this object a passage was extracted even from the columns of the
Evening Pulpit
– which showed very great ingenuity on the part of some young man connected with the establishment of Messrs Leadham and Loiter. Lady Carbury had suffered something in the struggle. What efforts can mortals make as to which there will not be some disappointment? Paper and print cannot be had for nothing, and advertisements are very costly. An edition may be sold with startling rapidity, but it may have been but a scanty edition. When Lady Carbury received from Messrs Leadham and Loiter their second very moderate cheque, with the expression of a fear on their part that there would not probably be a third – unless some unforeseen demand should arise – she repeated to herself those well-known lines from the satirist –

‘Oh, Amos Cottle, for a moment think
What meagre profits spread from pen and ink.'
¹

But not on that account did she for a moment hesitate as to further attempts. Indeed she had hardly completed the last chapter of her
Criminal Queens
before she was busy on another work; and although the last six months had been to her a period of incessant trouble, and sometimes of torture, though the conduct of her son had more than once forced her to declare to herself that her mind would fail her, still she
had persevered. From day to day, with all her cares heavy upon her, she had sat at her work, with a firm resolve that so many lines should be always forthcoming, let the difficulty of making them be what it might. Messrs Leadham and Loiter had thought that they might be justified in offering her certain terms for a novel – terms not very high indeed, and those contingent on the approval of the manuscript by their reader. The smallness of the sum offered, and the want of certainty, and the pain of the work in her present circumstances, had all been felt by her to be very hard. But she had persevered, and the novel was now complete.

It cannot with truth be said of her that she had had any special tale to tell. She had taken to the writing of a novel because Mr Loiter had told her that upon the whole novels did better than anything else. She would have written a volume of sermons on the same encouragement, and have gone about the work exactly after the same fashion. The length of her novel had been her first question. It must be in three volumes,
²
and each volume must have three hundred pages. But what fewest number of words might be supposed sufficient to fill a page? The money offered was too trifling to allow of very liberal measure on her part. She had to live, and if possible to write another novel – and, as she hoped, upon better terms – when this should be finished. Then what should be the name of her novel; what the name of her hero; and above all what the name of her heroine? It must be a love story of course; but she thought that she would leave the complications of the plot to come by chance – and they did come. ‘Don't let it end unhappily, Lady Carbury,' Mr Loiter had said, ‘because though people like it in a play, they hate it in a book. And whatever you do, Lady Carbury, don't be historical. Your historical novel,
³
Lady Carbury, isn't worth a–' Mr Loiter stopping himself suddenly, and remembering that he was addressing himself to a lady, satisfied his energy at last by the use of the word ‘straw'. Lady Carbury had followed these instructions with accuracy.

The name for the story had been the great thing. It did not occur to the authoress that, as the plot was to be allowed to develop itself and was, at this moment when she was perplexed as to the title, altogether uncreated, she might as well wait to see what appellation might best suit her work when its purpose should have declared itself. A novel, she knew well, was most unlike a rose, which by any other name will smell as sweet.
The Faultless Father
,
The Mysterious Mother
,
The Lame Lover –
such names as that she was aware would be useless now.
Mary Jane Walker
, if she could be very simple, would do, or
Blanche De Veau
, if she were able to maintain throughout a somewhat high-stilted style of
feminine rapture. But as she considered that she could best deal with rapid action and strange coincidences, she thought that something more startling and descriptive would better suit her purpose. After an hour's thought a name did occur to her, and she wrote it down, and with considerable energy of purpose framed her work in accordance with her chosen title,
The Wheel of Fortune
!. She had no particular fortune in her mind when she chose it, and no particular wheel – but the very idea conveyed by the words gave her the plot which she wanted. A young lady was blessed with great wealth, and lost it all by an uncle, and got it all back by an honest lawyer, and gave it all up to a distressed lover, and found it all again in the third volume. And the lady's name was Cordinga, selected by Lady Carbury as never having been heard before either in the world of fact or in that of fiction.

And now with all her troubles thick about her – while her son was still hanging about the house in a condition that would break any mother's heart, while her daughter was so wretched and sore that she regarded all those around her as her enemies, Lady Carbury finished her work, and having just written the last words in which the final glow of enduring happiness was given to the young married heroine whose wheel had now come full round, sat with the sheets piled at her right hand. She had allowed herself a certain number of weeks
⁴
for the task, and had completed it exactly in the time fixed. As she sat with her hand near the pile, she did give herself credit for her diligence. Whether the work might have been better done she never asked herself. I do not think that she prided herself much on the literary merit of the tale. But if she could bring the papers to praise it, if she could induce Mudie
⁵
to circulate it, if she could manage that the air for a month should be so loaded with
The Wheel of Fortune
, as to make it necessary for the reading world to have read or to have said that it had read the book – then she would pride herself very much upon her work.

As she was so sitting on a Sunday afternoon, in her own room, Mr Alf was announced. According to her habit, she expressed warm delight at seeing him. Nothing could be kinder than such a visit just at such a time – when there was so very much to occupy such a one as Mr Alf. Mr Alf, in his usual mildly satirical way, declared that he was not peculiarly occupied just at present. ‘The emperor has left Europe at last,' he said. ‘Poor Melmotte poisoned himself on Friday, and the inquest sat yesterday. I don't know that there is anything of interest to-day.' Of course Lady Carbury was intent upon her book, rather even than on the exciting death of a man whom she had herself known. Oh, if she could
only get Mr Alf! She had tried it before, and had failed lamentably. She was well aware of that; and she had a deep-seated conviction that it would be almost impossible to get Mr Alf. But then she had another deep-seated conviction, that which is almost impossible may possibly be done. How great would be the glory, how infinite the service! And did it not seem as though Providence had blessed her with this special opportunity, sending Mr Alf to her just at the one moment at which she might introduce the subject of her novel without seeming premeditation?

‘I am so tired,' she said, affecting to throw herself back as though stretching her arms out for ease.

‘I hope I am not adding to your fatigue,' said Mr Alf.

‘Oh dear no. It is not the fatigue of the moment, but of the last six months. Just as you knocked at the door, I had finished the novel at which I have been working, oh, with such diligence!'

‘Oh – a novel! When is it to appear, Lady Carbury?'

‘You must ask Leadham and Loiter that question. I have done my part of the work. I suppose you never wrote a novel, Mr Alf?'

‘I' Oh dear no; I never write anything.'

‘I have sometimes wondered whether I have hated or loved it the most. One becomes so absorbed in one's plot and one's characters! One loves the lovable so intensely, and hates with such fixed aversion those who are intended to be hated. When the mind is attuned to it, one is tempted to think that it is all so good. One cries at one's own pathos, laughs at one's own humour, and is lost in admiration at one's own sagacity and knowledge.'

‘How very nice!'

‘But then there comes the reversed picture, the other side of the coin. On a sudden everything becomes flat, tedious, and unnatural. The heroine who was yesterday alive with the celestial spark is found to-day to be a lump of motionless clay. The dialogue that was so cheery on the first perusal is utterly uninteresting at a second reading. Yesterday I was sure that there was my monument,' and she put her hand upon the manuscript; ‘to-day I feel it to be only too heavy for a gravestone!'

‘One's judgement about one's self always does vacillate,' said Mr Alf in a tone as phlegmatic as were the words.

‘And yet it is so important that one should be able to judge correctly of one's own work! I can at any rate trust myself to be honest, which is more perhaps than can be said of all the critics.'

‘Dishonesty is not the general fault of the critics, Lady Carbury – at
least not as far as I have observed the business. It is incapacity. In what little I have done in the matter, that is the sin which I have striven to conquer. When we want shoes we go to a professed shoemaker; but for criticism we have certainly not gone to professed critics. I think that when I gave up the
Evening Pulpit
, I left upon it a staff of writers who are entitled to be regarded as knowing their business.'