The Way We Live Now (73 page)

‘I must get that money for Longestaffe,' said Melmotte to his friend.

‘What, eighty thousand pounds! You can't do it this week – nor yet before this day week.'

‘It isn't eighty thousand pounds. I've renewed the mortgage, and that
makes it only fifty. If I can manage the half of that which goes to the son, I can put the father off.'

‘You must raise what you can on the whole property.'

‘I've done that already,' said Melmotte hoarsely.

‘And where's the money gone?'

‘Brehgert has had forty thousand pounds. I was obliged to keep it up with them. You can manage twenty-five thousand pounds for me by Monday?' Mr Cohenlupe said that he would try, but intimated his opinion that there would be considerable difficulty in the operation.

The Conservative party at this particular period was putting its shoulder to the wheel – not to push the coach up any hill, but to prevent its being hurried along at a pace which was not only dangerous, but manifestly destructive. The Conservative party now and then does put its shoulder to the wheel, ostensibly with the great national object above named; but also actuated by a natural desire to keep its own head well above water and be generally doing something, so that other parties may not suppose that it is moribund. There are, no doubt, members of it who really think that when some object has been achieved – when, for instance, a good old Tory has been squeezed into Parliament for the borough of Porcorum, which for the last three parliaments has been represented by a Liberal – the coach has been really stopped. To them, in their delightful faith, there comes at these triumphant moments, a conviction that after all the people as a people have not been really in earnest in their efforts to take something from the greatness of the great, and to add something to the lowliness of the lowly. The handle of the windlass has been broken, the wheel is turning fast the reverse way, and the rope of Radical progress is running back. Who knows what may not be regained if the Conservative party will only put its shoulder to the wheel and take care that the handle of the windlass be not mended! Sticinthemud, which has ever been a doubtful little borough, has just been carried by a majority of fifteen! A long pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether – and the old day will come back again. Venerable patriarchs think of Lord
Liverpool and other heroes, and dream dreams of Conservative bishops, Conservative lord-lieutenants, and of a Conservative ministry that shall remain in for a generation.

Such a time was now present. Porcorum and Sticinthemud had done their duty valiantly – with much management. But Westminster! If this special seat for Westminster could be carried, the country then could hardly any longer have a doubt on the matter. If only Mr Melmotte could be got in for Westminster, it would be manifest that the people were sound at heart, and that all the great changes which had been effected during the last forty years – from the first reform in Parliament down to the ballot – had been managed by the cunning and treachery of a few ambitious men. Not, however, that the ballot was just now regarded by the party as an unmitigated evil, though it was the last triumph of Radical wickedness. The ballot was on the whole popular with the party. A short time since, no doubt it was regarded by the party as being one and the same as national ruin and national disgrace. But it had answered well at Porcorum, and with due manipulation had been found to be favourable at Sticinthemud. The ballot might perhaps help the long pull and the strong pull – and, in spite of the ruin and disgrace, was thought by some just now to be a highly Conservative measure. It was considered that the ballot might assist Melmotte at Westminster very materially.

Any one reading the Conservative papers of the time, and hearing the Conservative speeches in the borough – any one at least who lived so remote as not to have learned what these things really mean – would have thought that England's welfare depended on Melmotte's return. In the enthusiasm of the moment, the attacks made on his character were answered by eulogy as loud as the censure was bitter. The chief crime laid to his charge was connected with the ruin of some great continental assurance company, as to which it was said that he had so managed it as to leave it utterly stranded, with an enormous fortune of his own. It was declared that every shilling which he had brought to England with him had consisted of plunder stolen from the shareholders in the company. Now the
Evening Pulpit
, in its endeavour to make the facts of this transaction known, had placed what it called the domicile of this company in Paris, whereas it was ascertained that its official headquarters had in truth been placed at Vienna. Was not such a blunder as this sufficient to show that no merchant of higher honour than Mr Melmotte had ever adorned the Exchanges of modern capitals? And then two different newspapers of the time, both of them antagonistic to Melmotte,
failed to be in accord on a material point One declared that Mr Melmotte was not in truth possessed of any wealth. The other said that he had derived his wealth from those unfortunate shareholders. Could anything betray so bad a cause as contradictions such as these? Could anything be so false, so weak, so malignant, so useless, so wicked, so self-condemned – in fact, so ‘Liberal' as a course of action such as this. The belief naturally to be deduced from such statements, nay, the unavoidable conviction on the minds – of, at any rate, the Conservative newspapers – was that Mr Melmotte had accumulated an immense fortune, and that he had never robbed any shareholder of a shilling.

The friends of Melmotte had moreover a basis of hope, and were enabled to sound premonitory notes of triumph, arising from causes quite external to their party. The
Breakfast Table
supported Melmotte, but the
Breakfast Table
was not a Conservative organ. This support was given, not to the great man's political opinions, as to which a well-known writer in that paper suggested that the great man had probably not as yet given very much attention to the party questions which divided the country – but to his commercial position. It was generally acknowledged that few men living – perhaps no man alive – had so acute an insight into the great commercial questions of the age as Mr Augustus Melmotte. In whatever part of the world he might have acquired his commercial experience – for it had been said repeatedly that Melmotte was not an Englishman – he now made London his home and Great Britain his country, and it would be for the welfare of the country that such a man should sit in the British Parliament Such were the arguments used by the
Breakfast Table
in supporting Mr Melmotte. This was, of course, an assistance – and not the less so because it was asserted in other papers that the country would be absolutely disgraced by his presence in Parliament. The hotter the opposition the keener will be the support. Honest good men, men who really loved their country, fine gentlemen, who had received unsullied names from great ancestors, shed their money right and left, and grew hot in personally energetic struggles to have this man returned to Parliament as the head of the great Conservative mercantile interests of Great Britain!

There was one man who thoroughly believed that the thing at the present moment most essentially necessary to England's glory was the return of Mr Melmotte for Westminster. This man was undoubtedly a very ignorant man. He knew nothing of any one political question which had vexed England for the last half century – nothing whatever of the political history which had made England what it was at the
beginning of that half century. Of such names as Hampden, Somers, and Pitt he had hardly ever heard. He had probably never read a book in his life. He knew nothing of the working of Parliament, nothing of nationality – had no preference whatever for one form of government over another, never having given his mind a moment's trouble on the subject He had not even reflected how a despotic monarch or a federal republic might affect himself, and possibly did not comprehend the meaning of those terms. But yet he was fully confident that England did demand and ought to demand that Mr Melmotte should be returned for Westminster. This man was Mr Melmotte himself.

In this conjunction of his affairs Mr Melmotte certainly lost his head. He had audacity almost sufficient for the very dangerous game which he was playing; but, as crisis heaped itself upon crisis, he became deficient in prudence. He did not hesitate to speak of himself as the man who ought to represent Westminster, and of those who opposed him as little malignant beings who had mean interests of their own to serve. He went about in his open carriage, with Lord Alfred at his left hand, with a look on his face which seemed to imply that Westminster was not good enough for him. He even hinted to certain political friends that at the next general election he should try the City.
¹
Six months since he had been a humble man to a lord – but now he scolded earls and snubbed dukes, and yet did it in a manner which showed how proud he was of connecting himself with their social pre-eminence, and how ignorant of the manner in which such preeminence affects English gentlemen generally. The more arrogant he became the more vulgar he was, till even Lord Alfred would almost be tempted to rush away to impecuniosity and freedom. Perhaps there were some with whom this conduct had a salutary effect. No doubt arrogance will produce submission; and there are men who take other men at the price those other men put upon themselves. Such persons could not refrain from thinking Melmotte to be mighty because he swaggered; and gave their hinder parts to be kicked merely because he put up his toe. We all know men of this calibre – and how they seem to grow in number. But the net result of his personal demeanour was injurious; and it was debated among some of the warmest of his supporters, whether a hint should not be given him. ‘Couldn't Lord Alfred say a word to him,' said the Honourable Beauchamp Beauclerk, who, himself in Parliament, a leading man in his party, thoroughly well acquainted with the borough, wealthy and connected by blood with half the great Conservative families in the kingdom, had been moving heaven and earth on behalf of the great financial king, and working like a slave for his success.

‘Alfred's more than half afraid of him,' said Lionel Lupton, a young aristocrat, also in Parliament, who had been inoculated with the idea that the interests of the party demanded Melmotte in Parliament, but who would have given up his Scotch shooting rather than have undergone Melmotte's company for a day.

‘Something really must be done, Mr Beauclerk,' said Mr Jones, who was the leading member of a very wealthy firm of builders in the borough, who had become a Conservative politician, who had thoughts of the House for himself, but who never forgot his own position. ‘He is making a great many personal enemies.'

‘He's the finest old turkey cock out,' said Lionel Lupton.

Then it was decided that Mr Beauclerk should speak a word to Lord Alfred. The rich man and the poor man were cousins, and had always been intimate. ‘Alfred,' said the chosen mentor at the club one afternoon, ‘I wonder whether you couldn't say something to Melmotte about his manner.' Lord Alfred turned sharp round and looked into his companion's face. ‘They tell me he is giving offence. Of course he doesn't mean it Couldn't he draw it a little milder?'

Lord Alfred made his reply almost in a whisper. ‘If you ask me, I don't think he could. If you got him down and trampled on him, you might make him mild. I don't think there's any other way.'

‘You couldn't speak to him, then?'

‘Not unless I did it with a horsewhip.'

This, coming from Lord Alfred, who was absolutely dependent on the man, was very strong. Lord Alfred had been much afflicted that morning. He had spent some hours with his friend, either going about the borough in the open carriage, or standing just behind him at meetings, or sitting close to him in committee-rooms – and had been nauseated with Melmotte. When spoken to about his friend he could not restrain himself Lord Alfred had been born and bred a gentleman, and found the position in which he was now earning his bread to be almost insupportable. It had gone against the grain with him at first, when he was called Alfred; but now that he was told ‘just to open the door', and ‘just to give that message', he almost meditated revenge. Lord Nidderdale, who was quick at observation, had seen something of this in Grosvenor Square, and declared that Lord Alfred had invested part of his recent savings in a cutting whip. Mr Beauclerk, when he had got his answer, whistled and withdrew. But he was true to his party. Melmotte was not the first vulgar man whom the Conservatives had taken by the hand, and patted on the back, and told that he was a god.
²

The Emperor of China was now in England, and was to be entertained one night at the India Office. The Secretary of State for the second great Asiatic Empire was to entertain the ruler of the first. This was on Saturday the 6th of July, and Melmotte's dinner was to take place on the following Monday. Very great interest was made by the London world generally to obtain admission to the India Office – the making of such interest consisting in the most abject begging for tickets of admission, addressed to the Secretary of State, to all the under secretaries, to assistant secretaries, secretaries of departments, chief clerks, and to head-messengers and their wives. If a petitioner could not be admitted as a guest into the splendour of the reception rooms, might not he – or she – be allowed to stand in some passage whence the emperor's back might perhaps be seen – so that, if possible, the petitioner's name might be printed in the list of guests which would be published on the next morning. Now Mr Melmotte with his family was, of course, supplied with tickets. He, who was to spend a fortune in giving the emperor a dinner, was of course entitled to be present at other places to which the emperor would be brought to be shown. Melmotte had already seen the emperor at a breakfast in Windsor Park, and at a ball in royal halls. But hitherto he had not been presented to the emperor. Presentations have to be restricted – if only on the score of time; and it had been thought that as Mr Melmotte would of course have some communication with the hard-worked emperor at his own house, that would suffice. But he had felt himself to be ill-used and was offended. He spoke with bitterness to some of his supporters of the Royal Family generally, because he had not been brought to the front rank either at the breakfast or at the ball – and now, at the India Office, was determined to have his due. But he was not on the list of those whom the Secretary of State intended on this occasion to present to the Brother of the Sun.