The Way We Live Now (112 page)

He might have wrapped his toga around him better perhaps had he remained at home, but if to have himself talked about was his only object, he could hardly have taken a surer course. The scene, as it occurred, was one very likely to be remembered when the performer should have been carried away into enforced obscurity. There was much commotion in the House. Mr Beauclerk, a man of natural good-nature, though at the moment put to considerable personal inconvenience, hastened, when he recovered his own equilibrium, to assist the drunken man. But Melmotte had by no means lost the power of helping himself. He
quickly recovered his legs, and then reseating himself, put his hat on, and endeavoured to look as though nothing special had occurred. The House resumed its business, taking no further notice of Melmotte, and having no special rule of its own as to the treatment to be adopted with drunken members. But the member for Westminster caused no further inconvenience. He remained in his seat for perhaps ten minutes, and then, not with a very steady step, but still with capacity sufficient for his own guidance, he made his way down to the doors. His exit was watched in silence, and the moment was an anxious one for the Speaker, the clerks, and all who were near him. Had he fallen some one – or rather some two or three – must have picked him up and carried him out. But he did not fall either there or in the lobbies, or on his way down to Palace Yard. Many were looking at him, but none touched him. When he had got through the gates, leaning against the wall he hallooed for his brougham, and the servant who was waiting for him soon took him home to Bruton Street. That was the last which the British Parliament saw of its new member for Westminster.

Melmotte as soon as he reached home got into his own sitting-room without difficulty, and called for more brandy and water. Between eleven and twelve he was left there by his servant with a bottle of brandy, three or four bottles of soda-water, and his cigar-case. Neither of the ladies of the family came to him, nor did he speak of them. Nor was he so drunk then as to give rise to any suspicion in the mind of the servant. He was habitually left there at night, and the servant as usual went to his bed. But at nine o'clock on the following morning the maid-servant found him dead upon the floor. Drunk as he had been – more drunk as he probably became during the night – still he was able to deliver himself from the indignities and penalties to which the law might have subjected him by a dose of prussic acid.

It is hoped that the reader need hardly be informed that Hetta Carbury was a very miserable young woman as soon as she decided that duty compelled her to divide herself altogether from Paul Montague. I think that she was irrational; but to her it seemed that the offence against herself – the offence against her own dignity as a woman – was too great
to be forgiven. There can be no doubt that it would all have been forgiven with the greatest ease had Paul told the story before it had reached her ears from any other source. Had he said to her – when her heart was softest towards him – I once loved another woman, and that woman is here now in London, a trouble to me, persecuting me, and her history is so and so, and the history of my love for her was after this fashion, and the history of my declining love is after that fashion, and of this at any rate you may be sure, that this woman has never been near my heart from the first moment in which I saw you – had he told it to her thus, there would not have been an opening for anger. And he doubtless would have so told it, had not Hetta's brother interfered too quickly. He was then forced to exculpate himself, to confess rather than to tell his own story – and to admit facts which wore the air of having been concealed, and which had already been conceived to be altogether damning if true. It was that journey to Lowestoft, not yet a month old, which did the mischief – a journey as to which Hetta was not slow in understanding all that Roger Carbury had thought about it, though Roger would say nothing of it to herself. Paul had been staying at the seaside with this woman in amicable intimacy – this horrid woman – in intimacy worse than amicable, and had been visiting her daily at Islington! Hetta felt quite sure that he had never passed a day without going there since the arrival of the woman; and everybody would know what that meant. And during this very hour he had been – well, perhaps not exactly making love to herself, but looking at her and talking to her, and behaving to her in a manner such as could not but make her understand that he intended to make love to her. Of course they had really understood it, since they had met at Madame Melmotte's first ball, when she had made a plea that she could not allow herself to dance with him more than – say half-a-dozen times. Of course she had not intended him then to know that she would receive his love with favour; but equally of course she had known that he must so feel it. She had not only told herself, but had told her mother, that her heart was given away to this man; and yet the man during this very time was spending his hours with a – woman, with a strange American woman, to whom he acknowledged that he had been once engaged. How could she not quarrel with him? How could she refrain from telling him that everything must be over between them? Everybody was against him – her mother, her brother, and her cousin: and she felt that she had not a word to say in his defence. A horrid woman! A wretched, bad, bold American intriguing woman! It was terrible to her that a friend of hers should have
come to her with a second tale of love long, long before he had cleared himself from the first – perhaps with no intention of clearing himself from the first! Of course she could not forgive him! No; – she would never forgive him. She would break her heart for him. That was a matter of course; but she would never forgive him. She knew well what it was that her mother wanted. Her mother thought that by forcing her into a quarrel with Montague she would force her also into a marriage with Roger Carbury. But her mother would find out that in that she was mistaken. She would never marry her cousin, though she would be always ready to acknowledge his worth. She was sure now that she would never marry any man. As she made this resolve she had a wicked satisfaction in feeling that it would be a trouble to her mother – for though she was altogether in accord with Lady Carbury as to the iniquities of Paul Montague she was not the less angry with her mother for being so ready to expose those iniquities.

Oh, with what slow, cautious fingers, with what heartbroken tenderness did she take out from its guardian case the brooch which Paul had given her! It had as yet been an only present, and in thanking him for it, which she had done with full, free-spoken words of love, she had begged him to send her no other, so that that might ever be to her – to her dying day – the one precious thing that had been given to her by her lover while she was yet a girl. Now it must be sent back – and, no doubt, it would go to that abominable woman! But her fingers lingered over it as she touched it, and she would fain have kissed it, had she not told herself that she would have been disgraced, even in her solitude, by such a demonstration of affection. She had given her answer to Paul Montague; and, as she would have no further personal correspondence with him, she took the brooch to her mother with a request that it might be returned.

‘Of course, my dear, I will send it back to him. Is there nothing else?'

‘No, mamma – nothing else. I have no letters, and no other present. You always knew everything that took place. If you will just send that back to him – without a word. You won't say anything – will you, mamma?'

‘There is nothing for me to say if you have really made him understand you.'

‘I think he understood me, mamma. You need not doubt about that'.

‘He has behaved very, very, badly – from the beginning,' said Lady Carbury.

But Hetta did not really think that the young man had behaved very
badly from the beginning, and certainly did not wish to be told of his misbehaviour. No doubt she thought that the young man had behaved very well in falling in love with her directly he saw her – only that he had behaved so badly in taking Mrs Hurtle to Lowestoft afterwards! ‘It's no good talking about that, mamma. I hope you will never talk of him any more.'

‘He is quite unworthy,' said Lady Carbury.

‘I can't bear to – have him – abused,' said Hetta sobbing.

‘My dear Hetta, I have no doubt this has made you for the time unhappy. Such little accidents do make people unhappy – for the time. But it will be much for the best that you should endeavour not to be so sensitive about it. The world is too rough and too hard for people to allow their feelings full play. You have to look out for the future, and you can best do so by resolving that Paul Montague shall be forgotten at once.'

‘Oh, mamma, don't. How is a person to resolve? Oh, mamma, don't say any more.'

‘But, my dear, there is more that I must say. Your future life is before you, and I must think of it, and you must think of it. Of course you must be married.'

‘There is no of course at all.'

‘Of course you must be married,' continued Lady Carbury, ‘and of course it is your duty to think of the way in which this may be best done. My income is becoming less and less every day. I already owe money to your cousin, and I owe money to Mr Broune.'

‘Money to Mr Broune!'

‘Yes – to Mr Broune. I had to pay a sum for Felix which Mr Broune told me ought to be paid. And I owe money to tradesmen. I fear that I shall not be able to keep on this house. And they tell me – your cousin and Mr Broune – that it is my duty to take Felix out of London – probably abroad.'

‘Of course I shall go with you.'

‘It may be so at first; but, perhaps, even that may not be necessary. Why should you? What pleasure could you have in it? Think what my life must be with Felix in some French or German town!'

‘Mamma, why don't you let me be a comfort to you? Why do you speak of me always as though I were a burden?'

‘Everybody is a burden to other people. It is the way of life. But you – if you will only yield in ever so little – you may go where you will be no burden, where you will be accepted simply as a blessing. You have
the opportunity of securing comfort for your whole life, and of making a friend, not only for yourself, but for me and your brother, of one whose friendship we cannot fail to want.'

‘Mamma, you cannot really mean to talk about that now?'

‘Why should I not mean it? What is the use of indulging in high-flown nonsense? Make up your mind to be the wife of your cousin Roger.'

‘This is horrid,' said Hetta, bursting out in her agony. ‘Cannot you understand that I am broken-hearted about Paul, that I love him from my very soul, that parting from him is like tearing my heart in pieces? I know that I must, because he has behaved so very badly – and because of that wicked woman! And so I have. But I did not think that in the very next hour you would bid me give myself to somebody else! I will never marry Roger Carbury. You may be quite – quite sure that I shall never marry any one. If you won't take me with you when you go away with Felix, I must stay behind and try and earn my bread. I suppose I could go out as a nurse.' Then, without waiting for a reply, she left the room and betook herself to her own apartment.

Lady Carbury did not even understand her daughter. She could not conceive that she had in any way acted unkindly in taking the opportunity of Montague's rejection for pressing the suit of the other lover. She was simply anxious to get a husband for her daughter – as she had been anxious to get a wife for her son – in order that her child might live comfortably. But she felt that whenever she spoke common sense to Hetta, her daughter took it as an offence, and flew into tantrums, being altogether unable to accommodate herself to the hard truths of the world. Deep as was the sorrow which her son brought upon her, and great as was the disgrace, she could feel more sympathy for him than for the girl. If there was anything that she could not forgive in life it was romance. And yet she, at any rate, believed that she delighted in romantic poetry! At the present moment she was very wretched; and was certainly unselfish in her wish to see her daughter comfortably settled before she commenced those miserable roamings with her son which seemed to be her coming destiny.

In these days she thought a good deal of Mr Broune's offer, and of her own refusal. It was odd that since that refusal she had seen more of him, and had certainly known much more of him than she had ever seen or known before. Previous to that little episode their intimacy had been very fictitious, as are many intimacies. They had played at being friends, knowing but very little of each other. But now, during the last five or six
weeks – since she had refused his offer – they had really learned to know each other. In the exquisite misery of her troubles, she had told him the truth about herself and her son, and he had responded, not by compliments, but by real aid and true counsel. His whole tone was altered to her, as was hers to him. There was no longer any egregious flattery between them – and he, in speaking to her, would be almost rough to her. Once he had told her that she would be a fool if she did not do so and so. The consequence was that she almost regretted that she had allowed him to escape. But she certainly made no effort to recover the lost prize, for she told him all her troubles. It was on that afternoon, after her disagreement with her daughter, that Marie Melmotte came to her. And, on that same evening, closeted with Mr Broune in her back room, she told him of both occurrences. ‘If the girl has got the money –' she began, regretting her son's obstinacy.

‘I don't believe a bit of it,' said Broune. ‘From all that I can hear, I don't think that there is any money. And if there is, you may be sure that Melmotte would not let it slip through his fingers in that way. I would not have anything to do with it'.