The Way We Live Now (39 page)

Some half-formed idea ran through his brain that P. M. was a safer'signature than Paul Montague. Then came a long train of thoughts as to the perils of the whole proceeding. She had told him that she had announced herself to the keeper of the lodging-house as engaged to him, and he had in a manner authorized the statement by declining to contradict it at once. And now, after that announcement, he was assenting to her proposal that they should go out and amuse themselves together. Hitherto she had always seemed to him to be open, candid, and free from intrigue. He had known her to be impulsive, capricious, at times violent, but never deceitful. Perhaps he was unable to read correctly the inner character of a woman whose experience of the world had been
much wider than his own. His mind misgave him that it might be so; but still he thought that he knew that she was not treacherous. And yet did not her present acts justify him in thinking that she was carrying on a plot against him? The note, however, was sent, and he prepared for the evening of the play, leaving the dangers of the occasion to adjust themselves. He ordered the dinner and he took the box, and at the hour fixed he was again at her lodgings.

The woman of the house with a smile showed him into Mrs Hurtle's sitting-room, and he at once perceived that the smile was intended to welcome him as an accepted lover. It was a smile half of congratulation to the lover, half of congratulation to herself as a woman, that another man had been caught by the leg and made fast. Who does not know the smile? What man, who has been caught and made sure, has not felt a certain dissatisfaction at being so treated, understanding that the smile is intended to convey to him a sense of his own captivity? It has, however, generally mattered but little to us. If we have felt that something of ridicule was intended, because we have been regarded as cocks with their spurs cut away, then we also have a pride when we have declared to ourselves that upon the whole we have gained more than we have lost. But with Paul Montague at the present moment there was no satisfaction, no pride – only a feeling of danger which every hour became deeper, and stronger, with less chance of escape. He was almost tempted at this moment to detain the woman, and tell her the truth – and bear the immediate consequences. But there would be treason in doing so, and he would not, could not do it.

He was left hardly a moment to think of this. Almost before the woman had shut the door, Mrs Hurtle came to him out of her bedroom, with her hat on her head. Nothing could be more simple than her dress, and nothing prettier. It was now June, and the weather was warm, and the lady wore a light gauzy black dress – there is a fabric which the milliners I think call grenadine – coming close up round her throat It was very pretty, and she was prettier even than her dress. And she had on a hat, black also, small and simple, but very pretty. There are times at which a man going to a theatre with a lady wishes her to be bright in her apparel – almost gorgeous; in which he will hardly be contented unless her cloak be scarlet, and her dress white, and her gloves of some bright hue – unless she wear roses or jewels in her hair. It is thus our girls go to the theatre now, when they go intending that all the world shall know who they are. But there are times again in which a man would prefer that his companion should be very quiet in her dress – but still pretty; in
which he would choose that she should dress herself for him only. All this Mrs Hurtle had understood accurately; and Paul Montague, who understood nothing of it, was gratified. ‘You told me to have a hat, and here I am – hat and all.' She gave him her hand, and laughed, and looked pleasantly at him, as though there was no cause of unhappiness between them. The lodging-house woman saw them enter the cab, and muttered some little word as they went off. Paul did not hear the word, but was sure that it bore some indistinct reference to his expected marriage.

Neither during the drive, nor at the dinner, nor during the performance at the theatre, did she say a word in allusion to her engagement. It was with them, as in former days it had been at New York. She whispered pleasant words to him, touching his arm now and again with her finger as she spoke, seeming ever better inclined to listen than to speak. Now and again she referred, after some slightest fashion, to little circumstances that had occurred between them, to some joke, some hour of tedium, some moment of delight; but it was done as one man might do it to another – if any man could have done it so pleasantly. There was a scent which he had once approved, and now she bore it on her handkerchief. There was a ring which he had once given her, and she wore it on the finger with which she touched his sleeve. With his own hands he had once adjusted her curls, and each curl was as he had placed it. She had a way of shaking her head, that was very pretty – a way that might, one would think, have been dangerous at her age, as likely to betray those first grey hairs which will come to disturb the last days of youth. He had once told her in sport to be more careful. She now shook her head again, and, as he smiled, she told him that she could still dare to be careless. There are a thousand little silly softnesses which are pretty and endearing between acknowledged lovers, with which no woman would like to dispense, to which even men who are in love submit sometimes with delight; but which in other circumstances would be vulgar – and to the woman distasteful. There are closenesses and sweet approaches, smiles and nods and pleasant winkings, whispers, innuendoes and hints, little mutual admirations and assurances that there are things known to those two happy ones of which the world beyond is altogether ignorant. Much of this comes of nature, but something of it sometimes comes by art. Of such art as there may be in it Mrs Hurtle was a perfect master. No allusion was made to their engagement – not an unpleasant word was spoken; but the art was practised with all its pleasant adjuncts. Paul was flattered to the top of his bent; and, though the sword was hanging over his head, though he knew that the sword must fall – must partly fall that very night – still he enjoyed it.

There are men who, of their natures, do not like women, even though they may have wives and legions of daughters, and be surrounded by things feminine in all the affairs of their lives. Others again have their strongest affinities and sympathies with women, and are rarely altogether happy when removed from their influence. Paul Montague was of the latter sort. At this time he was thoroughly in love with Hetta Carbury, and was not in love with Mrs Hurtle. He would have given much of his golden prospects in the American railway to have had Mrs Hurtle reconveyed suddenly to San Francisco. And yet he had a delight in her presence. ‘The acting isn't very good,' he said when the piece was nearly over.

‘What does it signify? What we enjoy or what we suffer depends upon the humour. The acting is not first-rate, but I have listened and laughed and cried, because I have been happy.'

He was bound to tell her that he also had enjoyed the evening, and was bound to say it in no voice of hypocritical constraint. ‘It has been very jolly,' he said.

‘And one has so little that is really jolly, as you call it. I wonder whether any girl ever did sit and cry like that because her lover talked to another woman. What I find fault with is that the writers and actors are so ignorant of men and women as we see them every day. It's all right that she should cry, but she shouldn't cry there.' The position described was so nearly her own, that he could say nothing to this. She had so spoken on purpose – fighting her own battle after her own fashion, knowing well that her words would confuse him. ‘A woman hides such tears. She may be found crying because she is unable to hide them – but she does not willingly let the other woman see them. Does she?'

‘I suppose not.'

‘Medea did not weep when she was introduced to Creusa.'
³

‘Women are not all Medeas,' he replied.

‘There's a dash of the savage princess about most of them. I am quite ready if you like. I never want to see the curtain fall. And I have had no nosegay brought in a wheelbarrow to throw on to the stage. Are you going to see me home?'

‘Certainly.'

‘You need not. I'm not a bit afraid of a London cab by myself.' But of course he accompanied her to Islington. He owed her at any rate as much as that. She continued to talk during the whole journey. What a wonderful place London was – so immense, but so dirty! New York of course was not so big, but was, she thought, pleasanter. But Paris was the gem of gems
among towns. She did not like Frenchmen, and she liked Englishmen even better than Americans; but she fancied that she could never like English women. ‘I do so hate all kinds of buckram. I like good conduct, and law, and religion too if it be not forced down one's throat; but I hate what your women call propriety. I suppose what we have been doing to-night is very improper; but I am quite sure that it has not been in the least wicked.'

‘I don't think it has,' said Paul Montague very tamely.

It is a long way from the Haymarket to Islington, but at last the cab reached the lodging-house door. ‘Yes, this is it,' she said. ‘Even about the houses there is an air of stiff-necked propriety which frightens me.' She was getting out as she spoke, and he had already knocked at the door. ‘Come in for one moment,' she said as he paid the cabman. The woman the while was standing with the door in her hand. It was near midnight – but, when people are engaged, hours do not matter. The woman of the house, who was respectability herself – a nice kind widow, with five children, named Pipkin – understood that and smiled again as he followed the lady into the sitting-room. She had already taken off her hat and was flinging it on to the sofa as he entered. ‘Shut the door for one moment,' she said; and he shut it. Then she threw herself into his arms, not kissing him but looking up into his face. ‘Oh Paul,' she exclaimed, ‘my darling! Oh Paul, my love! I will not bear to be separated from you. No, no – never. I swear it, and you may believe me. There is nothing I cannot do for love of you – but to lose you.' Then she pushed him from her and looked away from him, clasping her hands together. ‘But Paul, I mean to keep my pledge to you to-night. It was to be an island in our troubles, a little holiday in our hard school-time, and I will not destroy it at its close. You will see me again soon – will you not?' He nodded assent, then took her in his arms and kissed her, and left her without a word.

It has been told how the gambling at the Beargarden went on one Sunday night. On the following Monday Sir Felix did not go to the club. He had watched Miles Grendall at play, and was sure that on more than
one or two occasions the man had cheated. Sir Felix did not quite know what in such circumstances it would be best for him to do. Reprobate as he was himself, this work of villainy was new to him and seemed to be very terrible. What steps ought he to take? He was quite sure of his facts, and yet he feared that Nidderdale and Grasslough and Longestaffe would not believe him. He would have told Montague, but Montague had, he thought, hardly enough authority at the club to be of any use to him. On the Tuesday again he did not go to the club. He felt severely the loss of the excitement to which he had been accustomed, but the thing was too important to him to be slurred over. He did not dare to sit down and play with the man who had cheated him without saying anything about it. On the Wednesday afternoon life was becoming unbearable to him, and he sauntered into the building at about five in the afternoon. There, as a matter of course, he found Dolly Longestaffe drinking sherry and bitters. ‘Where the blessed angels have you been?' said Dolly. Dolly was at that moment alert with the sense of a duty performed. He had just called on his sister and written a sharp letter to his father, and felt himself to be almost a man of business.

‘I've had fish of my own to fry,' said Felix, who had passed the last two days in unendurable idleness. Then he referred again to the money which Dolly owed him, not making any complaint, not indeed asking for immediate payment, but explaining with an air of importance that if a commercial arrangement could be made, it might, at this moment, be very serviceable to him. ‘I'm particularly anxious to take up those shares,' said Felix.

‘Of course you ought to have your money.'

‘I don't say that at all, old fellow. I know very well that you're all right. You're not like that fellow, Miles Grendall.'

‘Well; no. Poor Miles has got nothing to bless himself with. I suppose I could get it, and so I ought to pay.'

‘That's no excuse for Grendall,' said Sir Felix shaking his head.

‘A chap can't pay if he hasn't got it, Carbury. A chap ought to pay of course. I've had a letter from our lawyer within the last half hour – here it is.' And Dolly pulled a letter out of his pocket which he had opened and read indeed within the last hour, but which had been duly delivered at his lodgings early in the morning. ‘My governor wants to sell Pickering, and Melmotte wants to buy the place. My governor can't sell without me, and I've asked for half the plunder. I know what's what. My interest in the property is greater than his. It isn't much of a place, and they are talking of fifty thousand pounds, over and above the debt upon
it. Twenty-five thousand would pay off what I owe on my own property, and make me very square. From what this fellow says I suppose they're going to give in to my terms.'

‘By George, that'll be a grand thing for you, Dolly.'

‘Oh yes. Of course I want it. But I don't like the place going. I'm not much of a fellow, I know. I'm awfully lazy and can't get myself to go in for things as I ought to do; but I've a sort of feeling that I don't like the family property going to pieces. A fellow oughtn't to let his family property go to pieces.'

‘You never lived at Pickering.'

‘No – and I don't know that it is any good. It gives us three per cent on the money it's worth, while the governor is paying six per cent, and I'm paying twenty-five, for the money we've borrowed. I know more about it than you'd think. It ought to be sold, and now I suppose it will be sold. Old Melmotte knows all about it, and if you like I'll go with you to the City to-morrow and make it straight about what I owe you. He'll advance me a thousand pounds, and then you can get the shares. Are you going to dine here?'