The Way We Live Now (38 page)

‘She has never said so.'

‘You have told her of your love?'

‘Never.'

‘There is nothing, then, between you? And you would put her against me – some woman who has nothing to suffer, no cause of complaint, who, for aught you know, cares nothing for you. Is that so?'

‘I suppose it is,' said Paul.

‘Then you may still be mine. Oh, Paul, come back to me. Will any woman love you as I do – live for you as I do? Think what I have done in coming here, where I have no friend – not a single friend – unless you are a friend. Listen to me. I have told the woman here that I am engaged to marry you.'

‘You have told the woman of the house?'

‘Certainly I have. Was I not justified? Were you not engaged to me? Am I to have you to visit me here, and to risk her insults, perhaps to be told to take myself off and to find accommodation elsewhere, because I am too mealy-mouthed to tell the truth as to the cause of my being here? I am here because you have promised to make me your wife, and, as far as I am concerned, I am not ashamed to have the fact advertised in every newspaper in the town. I told her that I was the promised wife of one Paul Montague, who was joined with Mr Melmotte in managing the new great American railway, and that Mr Paul Montague would be with me this morning. She was too far-seeing to doubt me, but had she doubted, I could have shown her your letters. Now go and tell her that what I have said is false – if you dare.' The woman was not there, and it did not seem to be his immediate duty to leave the room in order that he might denounce a lady whom he certainly had ill-used. The position was one which required thought. After a while he took up his hat to go. ‘Do you mean to tell her that my statement is untrue?'

‘No,' he said; ‘not to-day.'

‘And you will come back to me?'

‘Yes; – I will come back.'

‘I have no friend here, but you, Paul. Remember that. Remember all your promises. Remember all our love – and be good to me.' Then she let him go without another word.

On the day after the visit just recorded, Paul Montague received the following letter from Mrs Hurtle: –

‘
MY DEAR PAUL
–

‘I think that perhaps we hardly made ourselves understood to each other yesterday, and I am sure that you do not understand how absolutely my whole life is now at stake. I need only refer you to our journey from San Francisco to London to make you conscious that I really love you. To a woman such love is all important. She cannot throw it from her as a man may do amidst the affairs of the world. Nor, if it has to be thrown from her, can she bear the loss as a man bears it. Her thoughts have dwelt on it with more constancy than his – and then too her devotion has separated her from other things. My devotion to you has separated me from everything.

‘But I scorn to come to you as a suppliant. If you choose to say after hearing me that you will put me away from you because you have seen some one fairer than I am, whatever course I may take in my indignation, I shall not throw myself at your feet to tell you of my wrongs. I wish, however, that you should hear me. You say that there is some one you love better than you love me, but that you have not committed yourself to her. Alas, I know too much of the world to be surprised that a man's constancy should not stand out two years in the absence of his mistress. A man cannot wrap himself up and keep himself warm with an absent love as a woman does. But I think that some remembrance of the past must come back upon you now that you have seen me again. I think that you must have owned to yourself that you did love me, and that you could love me again. You sin against me to my utter destruction if you leave me. I have given up every friend I have to follow you. As regards the other – nameless lady, there can be no fault; for, as you tell me, she knows nothing of your passion.

‘You hinted that there were other reasons – that we know too little of each other. You meant no doubt that you knew too little of me. Is it not the case that you were content when you knew only what was to be learned in those days of our sweet intimacy, but that you have been made discontented by stories told you by your partners at San Francisco? If this be so, trouble yourself at any rate to find out the truth before you allow yourself to treat a woman as you propose to treat me. I think you are too good a man to cast aside a woman you have loved – like a soiled glove – because ill-natured words have been spoken of her by men, or perhaps by women, who know nothing of her life. My late husband, Caradoc Hurtle, was Attorney-General in the State of Kansas when I married him, I being then in possession of a considerable fortune left to me by my mother. There his life was infamously bad. He spent what money he could get of mine,
and then left me and the State, and took himself to Texas – where he drank himself to death. I did not follow him, and in his absence I was divorced from him in accordance with the laws of Kansas State. I then went to San Francisco about property of my mother's, which my husband had fraudulently sold to a countryman of ours now resident in Paris – having forged my name. There I met you, and in that short story I tell you all that there is to be‘ told. It may be that you do not believe me now; but if so, are you not bound to go where you can verify your own doubts or my word?

‘I try to write dispassionately, but I am in truth overborne by passion. I also have heard in California rumours about myself, and after much delay I received your letter. I resolved to follow you to England as soon as circumstances would permit me. I have been forced to fight a battle about my property, and I have won it. I had two reasons for carrying this through by my personal efforts before I saw you. I had begun it and had determined that I would not be beaten by fraud. And I was also determined that I would not plead to you as a pauper. We have talked too freely together in past days of our mutual money matters for me to feel any delicacy in alluding to them. When a man and woman have agreed to be husband and wife there should be no delicacy of that kind. When we came here together we were both embarrassed. We both had some property, but neither of us could enjoy it. Since that I have made my way through my difficulties. From what I have heard at San Francisco I suppose that you have done the same. I at any rate shall be perfectly contented if from this time our affairs can be made one.

‘And now about myself – immediately. I have come here all alone. Since I last saw you in New York I have not had altogether a good time. I have had a great struggle and have been thrown on my own resources and have been all alone. Very cruel things have been said of me. You heard cruel things said, but I presume them to have been said to you with reference to my late husband. Since that they have been said to others with reference to you. I have not now come, as my countrymen do generally, backed with a trunk full of introductions and with scores of friends ready to receive me. It was necessary to me that I should see you and hear my fate – and here I am. I appeal to you to release me in some degree from the misery of my solitude. You know – no one so well – that my nature is social and that I am not given to be melancholy. Let us be cheerful together, as we once were, if it be only for a day. Let me see you as I used to see you, and let me be seen as I used to be seen.

‘Come to me and take me out with you, and let us dine together,
and take me to one of your theatres. If you wish it I will promise you not to allude to that revelation you made to me just now, though of course it is nearer to my heart than any other matter. Perhaps some woman's vanity makes me think that if you would only see me again, and talk to me as you used to talk, you would think of me as you used to think.

‘You need not fear but you will find me at home. I have no whither to go – and shall hardly stir from the house till you come to me. Send me a line, however, that I may have my hat on if you are minded to do as I ask you.

‘Yours with all my heart,
‘WINIFRED HURTLE
.'

This letter took her much time to write, though she was very careful so to write as to make it seem that it had flown easily from her pen. She copied it from the first draft, but she copied it rapidly, with one or two premeditated erasures, so that it should look to have been done hurriedly. There had been much art in it. She had at any rate suppressed any show of anger. In calling him to her she had so written as to make him feel that if he would come he need not fear the claws of an offended lioness – and yet she was angry as a lioness who had lost her cub. She had almost ignored that other lady whose name she had not yet heard. She had spoken of her lover's entanglement with that other lady as a light thing which might easily be put aside. She had said much of her own wrongs, but had not said much of the wickedness of the wrong doer. Invited as she had invited him, surely he could not but come to her! And then, in her reference to money, not descending to the details of dollars and cents, she had studied how to make him feel that he might marry her without imprudence. As she read it over to herself she thought that there was a tone through it of natural feminine uncautious eagerness. She put her letter up in an envelope, stuck a stamp on it and addressed it – and then threw herself back in her chair to think of her position.

He should marry her – or there should be something done which should make the name of Winifred Hurtle known to the world! She had no plan of revenge yet formed. She would not talk of revenge – she told herself that she would not even think of revenge – till she was quite sure that revenge would be necessary. But she did think of it, and could not keep her thoughts from it for a moment. Could it be possible that she, with all her intellectual gifts as well as those of her outward person,
should be thrown over by a man whom well as she loved him – and she did love him with all her heart – she regarded as greatly inferior to herself! He had promised to marry her; and he should marry her, or the world should hear the story of his perjury!

Paul Montague felt that he was surrounded by difficulties as soon as he read the letter. That his heart was all the other way he was quite sure; but yet it did seem to him that there was no escape from his troubles open to him. There was not a single word in this woman's letter that he could contradict. He had loved her and had promised to make her his wife – and had determined to break his word to her because he found that she was enveloped in dangerous mystery. He had so resolved before he had ever seen Hetta Carbury, having been made to believe by Roger Carbury that a marriage with an unknown American woman, of whom he only did know that she was handsome and clever – would be a step to ruin. The woman, as Roger said, was an adventuress – might never have had a husband – might at this moment have two or three – might be overwhelmed with debt – might be anything bad, dangerous, and abominable. All that he had heard at San Francisco had substantiated Roger's views. ‘Any scrape is better than that scrape,' Roger had said to him. Paul had believed his Mentor,
¹
and had believed with a double faith as soon as he had seen Hetta Carbury.

But what should he do now? It was impossible, after what had passed between them, that he should leave Mrs Hurtle at her lodgings at Islington without any notice. It was clear enough to him that she would not consent to be so left. Then her present proposal – though it seemed to be absurd and almost comical in the tragical condition of their present circumstances – had in it some immediate comfort. To take her out and give her a dinner, and then go with her to some theatre, would be easy and perhaps pleasant. It would be easier, and certainly much pleasanter, because she had pledged herself to abstain from talking of her grievances. Then he remembered some happy evenings, delicious hours, which he had so passed with her, when they were first together at New York. There could be no better companion for such a festival. She could talk – and she could listen as well as talk. And she could sit silent, conveying to her neighbour the sense of her feminine charms by her simple proximity. He had been very happy when so placed. Had it been possible he would have escaped the danger now, but the reminiscence of past delights in some sort reconciled him to the performance of this perilous duty.

But when the evening should be over, how would he part with her?
When the pleasant hour should have passed away and he had brought her back to her door, what should he say to her then? He must make some arrangement as to a future meeting. He knew that he was in a great peril, and he did not know how he might best escape it. He could not now go to Roger Carbury for advice; for was not Roger Carbury his rival? It would be for his friend's interest that he should marry the widow. Roger Carbury, as he knew well, was too honest a man to allow himself to be guided in any advice he might give by such a feeling, but, still on this matter, he could no longer tell everything to Roger Carbury. He could not say all that he would have to say without speaking of Hetta – and of his love for Hetta he could not speak to his rival.

He had no other friend in whom he could confide. There was no other human being he could trust, unless it was Hetta herself. He thought for a moment that he would write a stern and true letter to the woman, telling her that as it was impossible that there should ever be marriage between them, he felt himself bound to abstain from her society. But then he remembered her solitude, her picture of herself in London without even an acquaintance except himself, and he convinced himself that it would be impossible that he should leave her without seeing her. So he wrote to her thus: –

‘DEAR WINIFRED,

‘I will come for you to-morrow at half-past five. We will dine together at the Thespian – and then I will have a box at the Haymarket. The Thespian is a good sort of place, and lots of ladies dine there. You can dine in your bonnet
²

‘Yours affectionately,
‘P. M.
'