The Way We Live Now (122 page)

Of her own quarrel of course there must be an end. She had been unjust to the man, and injustice must of course be remedied by repentance and confession. As she walked quickly back to the railway station she brought herself to love her lover more fondly than she had ever done. He had been true to her from the first hour of their acquaintance. What truth higher than that has any woman a right to desire? No doubt she gave to him a virgin heart. No other man had ever touched her lips, or been allowed to press her hand, or to look into her eyes with unrebuked admiration. It was her pride to give herself to the man she loved after this fashion, pure and white as snow on which no foot has trodden. But in taking him all that she wanted was that he should be true to her now and henceforward. The future must be her own work. As to the ‘now', she felt that Mrs Hurtle had given her sufficient assurance.

She must at once let her mother know this change in her mind. When she re-entered the house she was no longer sullen, no longer anxious to be silent, very willing to be gracious if she might be received with favour – but quite determined that nothing should shake her purpose. She went at once into her mother's room, having heard from the boy at the door that Lady Carbury had returned.

‘Hetta, wherever have you been?' asked Lady Carbury.

‘Mamma,' she said, ‘I mean to write to Mr Montague and tell him that I have been unjust to him.'

‘Hetta, you must do nothing of the kind,' said Lady Carbury, rising from her seat.

‘Yes, mamma. I have been unjust, and I must do so.'

 

‘It will be asking him to come back to you.'

‘Yes, mamma – that is what I mean. I shall tell him that if he will come, I will receive him. I know he will come. Oh, mamma, let us be friends, and I will tell you everything. Why should you grudge me my love?'

‘You have sent him back his brooch,' said Lady Carbury hoarsely.

‘He shall give it me again. Hear what I have done. I have seen that American lady.'

‘Mrs Hurtle!'

‘Yes – I have been to her. She is a wonderful woman.'

‘And she has told you wonderful lies.'

‘Why should she lie to me? She has told me no lies. She said nothing in his favour.'

‘I can well believe that. What can any one say in his favour?'

‘But she told me that which has assured me that Mr Montague has never behaved badly to me. I shall write to him at once. If you like I will show you the letter.'

‘Any letter to him, I will tear,' said Lady Carbury, full of anger.

‘Mamma, I have told you everything, but in this I must judge for myself.' Then Hetta, seeing that her mother would not relent, left the room without further speech, and immediately opened her desk that the letter might be written.

Ten days had passed since the meeting narrated in the last chapter – ten days, during which Hetta's letter had been sent to her lover, but in which she had received no reply – when two gentlemen met each other in a certain room in Liverpool, who were seen together in the same room in the early part of this chronicle. These were our young friend Paul Montague, and our not much older friend Hamilton K. Fisker. Melmotte had died on the 18th of July, and tidings of the event had been at once sent by telegraph to San Francisco. Some weeks before this Montague had written to his partner, giving his account of the South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway Company – describing its condition in
England as he then believed it to be – and urging Fisker to come over to London. On receipt of a message from his American correspondent he had gone down to Liverpool, and had there awaited Fisker's arrival, taking council with his friend Mr Ramsbottom. In the meantime Hetta's letter was lying at the Beargarden, Paul having written from his club and having omitted to desire that the answer should be sent to his lodgings. Just at this moment things at the Beargarden were not well managed. They were indeed so ill-managed that Paul never received that letter – which would have had for him charms greater than those of any letter ever before written.

‘This is a terrible business,' said Fisker, immediately on entering the room in which Montague was waiting him. ‘He was the last man I'd have thought would be cut up in that way.'

‘He was utterly ruined.'

‘He wouldn't have been ruined – and couldn't have thought so if he'd known all he ought to have known. The South Central would have pulled him through a'most anything if he'd have understood how to play it.'

‘We don't think much of the South Central here now,' said Paul.

‘Ah – that's because you've never above half spirit enough for a big thing. You nibble at it instead of swallowing it whole – and then, of course, folks see that you're only nibbling. I thought that Melmotte would have had spirit.'

‘There is, I fear, no doubt that he had committed forgery. It was the dread of detection as to that which drove him to destroy himself.'

‘I call it dam clumsy from beginning to end; – dam clumsy. I took him to be a different man, and I feel more than half ashamed of myself because I trusted such a fellow. That chap Cohenlupe has got off with a lot of swag. Only think of Melmotte allowing Cohenlupe to get the better of him!'

‘I suppose the thing will be broken up now at San Francisco,' suggested Paul.

‘Bu'st up at Frisco! Not if I know it. Why should it be bu'st up? D'you think we're all going to smash there because a fool like Melmotte blows his brains out in London?'

‘He took poison.'

‘Or p'ison either. That's not just our way. I'll tell you what I'm going to do; and why I'm over here so uncommon sharp. These shares are at a'most nothing now in London. I'll buy every share in the market. I wired for as many as I dar'd, so as not to spoil our own game, and I'll
make a clean sweep of every one of them. Bu'st up! I'm sorry for him because I thought him a biggish man – but what he's done 'll just be the making of us over there. Will you get out of it, or will you come back to Frisco with me?'

In answer to this Paul asserted most strenuously that he would not return to San Francisco, and, perhaps too ingenuously, gave his partner to understand that he was altogether sick of the great railway, and would under no circumstances have anything more to do with it Fisker shrugged his shoulders, and was not displeased at the proposed rupture. He was prepared to deal fairly – nay, generously – by his partner, having recognized the wisdom of that great commercial rule which teaches us that honour should prevail among associates of a certain class; but he had fully convinced himself that Paul Montague was not a fit partner for Hamilton K. Fisker. Fisker was not only unscrupulous himself, but he had a thorough contempt for scruples in others. According to his theory of life, nine hundred and ninety-nine men were obscure because of their scruples, whilst the thousandth man predominated and cropped up into the splendour of commercial wealth because he was free from such bondage. He had his own theories, too, as to commercial honesty. That which he had promised to do he would do, if it was within his power. He was anxious that his bond should be good; and his word equally so. But the work of robbing mankind in gross by magnificently false representations, was not only the duty, but also the delight and the ambition of his life. How could a man so great endure a partnership with one so small as Paul Montague? ‘And now what about Winifrid Hurtle?' asked Fisker.

‘What makes you ask? She's in London.'

‘Oh yes, I know she's in London, and Hurtle's at Frisco, swearing that he'll come after her. He would, only he hasn't got the dollars.'

‘He's not dead, then?' muttered Paul.

‘Dead! – no, nor likely to die. She'll have a bad time of it with him yet.'

‘But she divorced him.'

‘She got a Kansas lawyer to say so, and he's got a Frisco lawyer to say that there's nothing of the kind. She hasn't played her game badly neither, for she's had the handling of her own money, and has put it so that he can't get hold of a dollar. Even if it suited other ways, you know, I wouldn't marry her myself till I saw my way clearer out of the wood.'

‘I'm not thinking of marrying her – if you mean that.'

‘There was a talk about it in Frisco – that's all. And I have heard Hurtle say when he was a little farther gone than usual that she was
here with you, and that he meant to drop in on you some of these days.' To this Paul made no answer, thinking that he had now both heard enough and said enough about Mrs Hurtle.

On the following day the two men, who were still partners, went together to London, and Fisker immediately became immersed in the arrangement of Melmotte's affairs. He put himself into communication with Mr Brehgert, went in and out of the offices in Abchurch Lane and the rooms which had belonged to the railway company, cross-examined Croll, mastered the books of the company as far as they were to be mastered, and actually summoned both the Grendalls, father and son, up to London. Lord Alfred, and Miles with him, had left London a day or two before Melmotte's death – having probably perceived that there was no further occasion for their services. To Fisker's appeal Lord Alfred was proudly indifferent. Who was this American that he should call upon a director of the London company to appear? Does not every one know that a director of a company need not direct unless he pleases? Lord Alfred, therefore, did not even condescend to answer Fisker's letter – but he advised his son to run up to town. ‘I should just go, because I'd taken a salary from the d— company,' said the careful father, ‘but when there I wouldn't say a word.' So Miles Grendall, obeying his parent, reappeared upon the scene.

But Fisker's attention was perhaps most usefully and most sedulously paid to Madame Melmotte and her daughter. Till Fisker arrived no one had visited them in their solitude at Hampstead, except Croll, the clerk. Mr Brehgert had abstained, thinking that a widow, who had become a widow under such terrible circumstances, would prefer to be alone. Lord Nidderdale had made his adieux, and felt that he could do no more. It need hardly be said that Lord Alfred had too much good taste to interfere at such a time, although for some months he had been domestically intimate with the poor woman, or that Sir Felix would not be prompted by the father's death to renew his suit to the daughter. But Fisker had not been two days in London before he went out to Hampstead, and was admitted to Madame Melmotte's presence – and he had not been there four days before he was aware that, in spite of all misfortunes, Marie Melmotte was still the undoubted possessor of a large fortune.

In regard to Melmotte's effects generally the Crown had been induced to abstain from interfering – giving up the right to all the man's plate and chairs and tables which it had acquired by the finding of the coroner's verdict – not from tenderness to Madame Melmotte, for whom
no great commiseration was felt, but on behalf of such creditors as poor Mr Longestaffe and his son. But Marie's money was quite distinct from this. She had been right in her own belief as to this property, and had been right, too, in refusing to sign those papers – unless it may be that that refusal led to her father's act. She herself was sure that it was not so, because she had withdrawn her refusal, and had offered to sign the papers before her father's death. What might have been the ultimate result had she done so when he first made the request, no one could now say. That the money would have gone there could be no doubt. The money was now hers – a fact which Fisker soon learned with that peculiar cleverness which belonged to him.

Poor Madame Melmotte felt the visits of the American to be a relief to her in her misery. The world makes great mistakes as to that which is and is not beneficial to those whom Death has bereaved of a companion. It may be, no doubt sometimes it is the case, that grief shall be so heavy, so absolutely crushing, as to make any interference with it an additional trouble, and this is felt also in acute bodily pain, and in periods of terrible mental suffering. It may also be, and, no doubt, often is the case, that the bereaved one chooses to affect such overbearing sorrow, and that friends abstain, because even such affectation has its own rights and privileges. But Madame Melmotte was neither crushed by grief nor did she affect to be so crushed. She had been numbed by the suddenness and by the awe of the catastrophe. The man who had been her merciless tyrant for years, who had seemed to her to be a very incarnation of cruel power, had succumbed, and shown himself to be powerless against his own misfortunes. She was a woman of very few words, and had spoken almost none on this occasion even to her own daughter, but when Fisker came to her, and told her more than she had ever known before of her husband's affairs, and spoke to her of her future life, and mixed for her a small glass of brandy and water warm, and told her that Frisco would be the fittest place for her future residence, she certainly did not find him to be intrusive.

And even Marie liked Fisker, though she had been wooed and almost won both by a lord and a baronet, and had understood, if not much, at least more than her mother, of the life to which she had been introduced. There was something of real sorrow in her heart for her father. She was prone to love – though, perhaps, not prone to deep affection. Melmotte had certainly been often cruel to her, but he had also been very indulgent. And as she had never been specially grateful for the one, so neither had she ever specially resented the other. Tenderness, care, real
solicitude for her well-being, she had never known, and had come to regard the unevenness of her life, vacillating between knocks and knick-knacks, with a blow one day and a jewel the next, as the condition of things which was natural to her. When her father was dead she remembered for a while the jewels and the knick-knacks, and forgot the knocks and blows. But she was not beyond consolation, and she also found consolation in Mr Fisker's visits.