The Way We Live Now (18 page)

‘All your people are coming! You know, mother, it is such an awful bore.'

‘Madame Melmotte and her daughter will be here.'

‘One looks such a fool carrying on that kind of thing in one's own house. Everybody sees that it has been contrived. And it is such a pokey, stuffy little place!'

Then Lady Carbury spoke out her mind. ‘Felix, I think you must be a fool. I have given over ever expecting that you would do anything to please me. I sacrifice everything for you and I do not even hope for a return. But when I am doing everything to advance your own interests, when I am working night and day to rescue you from ruin, I think you might at any rate help a little – not for me of course, but for yourself.'

‘I don't know what you mean by working day and night I don't want you to work day and night.'

‘There is hardly a young man in London that is not thinking of this girl, and you have chances that none of them have. I am told they are going out of town at Whitsuntide, and that she's to meet Lord Nidderdale down in the country.'

‘She can't endure Nidderdale. She says so herself.'

‘She will do as she is told – unless she can be made to be downright in love with some one like yourself. Why not ask her at once on Tuesday?'

‘If I'm to do it at all I must do it after my own fashion. I'm not going to be driven.'

‘Of course if you will not take the trouble to be here to see her when she comes to your own house, you cannot expect her to think that you really love her.'

‘Love her! what a bother there is about loving! Well; – I'll look in. What time do the animals come to feed?'

‘There will be no feeding. Felix you are so heartless and so cruel that I sometimes think I will make up my mind to let you go your own way and never speak to you again. My friends will be here about ten – I should say from ten till twelve. I think you should be here to receive her, not later than ten.'

‘If I can get my dinner out of my throat by that time, I will come.'

When the Tuesday came, the over-driven young man did contrive to get his dinner eaten, and his glass of brandy sipped, and his cigar smoked, and perhaps his game of billiards played, so as to present himself in his mother's drawing-room not long after half-past ten. Madame Melmotte and her daughter were already there – and many others, of whom the majority were devoted to literature. Among them Mr Alf was in the room, and was at this very moment discussing Lady Carbury's book with Mr Booker. He had been quite graciously received, as though he had not authorized the crushing. Lady Carbury had given him her hand with that energy of affection, with which she was wont to welcome her literary friends, and had simply thrown one glance of appeal into his eyes as she looked into his face – as though asking him how he had found it in his heart to be so cruel to one so tender, so unprotected, so innocent as herself. ‘I cannot stand this kind of thing,' said Mr Alf, to Mr Booker. ‘There's a regular system of touting got abroad, and I mean to trample it down.'

‘If you're strong enough,' said Mr Booker.

‘Well, I think I am. I'm strong enough, at any rate, to show that I'm not afraid to lead the way. I've the greatest possible regard for our friend here – but her book is a bad book, a thoroughly rotten book, an unblushing compilation from half a dozen works of established reputation, in pilfering from which she has almost always managed to misapprehend her facts, and to muddle her dates. Then she writes to me and asks me to do the best I can for her. I have done the best I could.'

Mr Alf knew very well what Mr Booker had done, and Mr Booker was aware of the extent of Mr Alf's knowledge. ‘What you say is all very right,' said Mr Booker; 'only you want a different kind of world to live in.'

‘Just so – and therefore we must make it different I wonder how our friend Broune felt when he saw that his critic had declared that the
Criminal Queens
was the greatest historical work of modern days.'

‘I didn't see the notice. There isn't much in the book, certainly, as far
as I have looked at it. I should have said that violent censure or violent praise would be equally thrown away upon it. One doesn't want to break a butterfly on the wheel – especially a friendly butterfly.'

‘As to the friendship, it should be kept separate. That's my idea,' said Mr Alf, moving away.

‘I'll never forget what you've done for me – never!' said Lady Carbury, holding Mr Broune's hand for a moment, as she whispered to him.

‘Nothing more than my duty,' said he, smiling.

‘I hope you'll learn to know that a woman can really be grateful,' she replied. Then she let go his hand and moved away to some other guest There was a dash of true sincerity in what she had said. Of enduring gratitude it may be doubtful whether she was capable: but at this moment she did feel that Mr Broune had done much for her, and that she would willingly make him some return of friendship. Of any feeling of another sort, of any turn at the moment towards flirtation, of any idea of encouragement to a gentleman who had once acted as though he were her lover, she was absolutely innocent. She had forgotten that little absurd episode in their joint lives. She was at any rate too much in earnest at the present moment to think about it. But it was otherwise with Mr Broune. He could not quite make up his mind whether the lady was or was not in love with him – or whether, if she were, it was incumbent on him to indulge her, – and if so, in what manner. Then as he looked after her, he told himself that she was certainly very beautiful, that her figure was distinguished, that her income was certain, and her rank considerable. Nevertheless, Mr Broune knew of himself that he was not a marrying man. He had made up his mind that marriage would not suit his business, and he smiled to himself as he reflected how impossible it was that such a one as Lady Carbury should turn him from his resolution.

‘I am so glad that you have come to-night, Mr Alf,' Lady Carbury said to the high-minded editor of the
Evening Pulpit.

‘Am I not always glad to come, Lady Carbury?'

‘You are very good. But I feared –'

‘Feared what, Lady Carbury?'

‘That you might perhaps have felt that I should be unwilling to welcome you after – well, after the compliments of last Thursday.'

‘I never allow the two things to join themselves together. You see, Lady Carbury, I don't write all these things myself.'

‘No indeed. What a bitter creature you would be if you did.'

‘To tell the truth, I never write any of them. Of course we endeavour to get people whose judgements we can trust, and if, as in this case, it should unfortunately happen that the judgement of our critic should be hostile to the literary pretensions of a personal friend of my own, I can only lament the accident, and trust that my friend may have spirit enough to divide me as an individual from that Mr Alf who has the misfortune to edit a newspaper.'

‘It is because you have so trusted me that I am obliged to you,' said Lady Carbury with her sweetest smile. She did not believe a word that Mr Alf had said to her. She thought, and thought rightly, that Mr Alf's Mr Jones had taken direct orders from his editor, as to his treatment of the
Criminal Queens.
But she remembered that she intended to write another book, and that she might perhaps conquer even Mr Alf by spirit and courage under her present infliction.

It was Lady Carbury's duty on the occasion to say pretty things to everybody. And she did her duty. But in the midst of it all she was ever thinking of her son and Marie Melmotte, and she did at last venture to separate the girl from her mother. Marie herself was not unwilling to be talked to by Sir Felix. He had never bullied her, had never seemed to scorn her; and then he was so beautiful! She, poor girl, bewildered among various suitors, utterly confused by the life to which she was introduced, troubled by fitful attacks of admonition from her father, who would again, fitfully, leave her unnoticed for a week at a time; with no trust in her pseudo-mother – for poor Marie had in truth been born before her father had been a married man, and had never known what was her own mother's fate – with no enjoyment in her present life, had come solely to this conclusion, that it would be well for her to be taken away somewhere by somebody. Many a varied phase of life had already come in her way. She could just remember the dirty street in the German portion of New York in which she had been born and had lived for the first four years of her life, and could remember too the poor, hardly-treated woman who had been her mother. She could remember being at sea, and her sickness – but could not quite remember whether that woman had been with her. Then she had run about the streets of Hamburgh, and had sometimes been very hungry, sometimes in rags – and she had a dim memory of some trouble into which her father had fallen, and that he was away from her for a time. She had up to the present splendid moment her own convictions about that absence, but she had never mentioned them to a human being. Then her father had married her present mother in Francfort. That she could remember
distinctly, as also the rooms in which she was then taken to live, and the fact that she was told that from henceforth she was to be a Jewess. But there had soon come another change. They went from Francfort to Paris, and there they were all Christians. From that time they had lived in various apartments in the French capital, but had always lived well. Sometimes there had been a carriage, sometimes there had been none. And then there came a time in which she was grown woman enough to understand that her father was being much talked about Her father to her had always been alternately capricious and indifferent rather than cross or cruel, but just at this period he was cruel both to her and to his wife. And Madame Melmotte would weep at times and declare that they were all ruined. Then, at a moment, they burst out into sudden splendour at Paris. There was an hotel, with carriages and horses almost unnumbered – and then there came to their rooms a crowd of dark, swarthy, greasy men, who were entertained sumptuously; but there were few women. At this time Marie was hardly nineteen, and young enough in manner and appearance to be taken for seventeen. Suddenly again she was told that she was to be taken to London, and the migration had been effected with magnificence. She was first taken to Brighton, where the half of an hotel had been hired, and had then been brought to Grosvenor Square, and at once thrown into the matrimonial market. No part of her life had been more disagreeable to her, more frightful, than the first months in which she had been trafficked for by the Nidderdales and Grassloughs. She had been too frightened, too much of a coward to object to anything proposed to her, but still had been conscious of a desire to have some hand in her own future destiny. Luckily for her, the first attempts at trafficking with the Nidderdales and Grassloughs had come to nothing; and at length she was picking up a little courage, and was beginning to feel that it might be possible to prevent a disposition of herself which did not suit her own tastes. She was also beginning to think that there might be a disposition of herself which would suit her own tastes.

Felix Carbury was standing leaning against a wall, and she was seated on a chair close to him. ‘I love you better than any one in the world,' he said, speaking plainly enough for her to hear, perhaps indifferent as to the hearing of others.

‘Oh, Sir Felix, pray do not talk like that.'

‘You knew that before. Now I want you to say whether you will be my wife.'

‘How can I answer that myself? Papa settles everything.'

‘May I go to papa?'

‘You may if you like,' she replied in a very low whisper. It was thus that the greatest heiress of the day, the greatest heiress of any day if people spoke truly, gave herself away to a man without a penny.

When all her friends were gone Lady Carbury looked about for her son – not expecting to find him, for she knew how punctual was his nightly attendance at the Beargarden, but still with some faint hope that he might have remained on this special occasion to tell her of his fortune. She had watched the whispering, had noticed the cool effrontery with which Felix had spoken – for without hearing the words she had almost known the very moment in which he was asking – and had seen the girl's timid face, and eyes turned to the ground, and the nervous twitching of her hands as she replied. As a woman, understanding such things, who had herself been wooed, who had at least dreamed of love, she had greatly disapproved her son's manner. But yet, if it might be successful, if the girl would put up with love-making so slight as that, and if the great Melmotte would accept in return for his money a title so modest as that of her son, how glorious should her son be to her in spite of his indifference!

‘I heard him leave the house before the Melmottes went,' said Henrietta, when the mother spoke of going up to her son's bedroom.

‘He might have stayed to-night. Do you think he asked her?'

‘How can I say, mamma?'

‘I should have thought you would have been anxious about your brother. I feel sure he did – and that she accepted him.'

‘If so I hope he will be good to her. I hope he loves her.'

‘Why shouldn't he love her as well as any one else? A girl need not be odious because she has money. There is nothing disagreeable about her.'

‘No – nothing disagreeable. I do not know that she is especially attractive.'

‘Who is? I don't see anybody specially attractive. It seems to me you are quite indifferent about Felix.'

‘Do not say that, mamma.'

‘Yes you are. You don't understand all that he might be with this girl's fortune, and what he must be unless he gets money by marriage. He is eating us both up.'

‘I would not let him do that, mamma.'

‘It's all very well to say that, but I have some heart. I love him. I could not see him starve. Think what he might be with twenty thousand pounds a year!'