The Way We Live Now (45 page)

‘Yours, as ever,
‘
GEORGIANA LONGESTAFFE.
'

It was a troublesome letter to get written. Lady Monogram was her junior in age and had once been lower than herself in social position. In the early days of their friendship she had sometimes domineered over Julia Triplex, and had been entreated by Julia, in reference to balls here and routs there. The great Monogram marriage had been accomplished very suddenly, and had taken place – exalting Julia very high – just as Georgiana was beginning to allow her aspirations to descend. It was in that very season that she moved her castle in the air from the Upper to the Lower House. And now she was absolutely begging for notice, and praying that she might not be cut! She sent her letter by post, and on the following day received a reply, which was left by a footman.

'DEAR GEORGIANA,

‘Of course I shall be delighted to see you. I don't know what you mean by cutting. I never cut anybody. We happen to have got into different sets, but that is not my fault. Sir Damask won't let me call on the Melmottes. I can't help that You wouldn't have me go where he tells me not I don't know anything about them myself, except that I did go to their ball. But everybody knows that's different I shall be at home all to-morrow till three – that is to-day I mean, for I'm
writing after coming home from Lady Killarney's ball; but if you wish to see me alone you had better come before lunch.

‘Yours affectionately,
‘
J. MONOGRAM.
'

Georgiana condescended to borrow the carriage and reached her friend's house a little after noon. The two ladies kissed each other when they met – of course, and then Miss Longestaffe at once began. ‘Julia, I did think that you would at any rate have asked me to your second ball.'

‘Of course you would have been asked if you had been up in Bruton Street. You know that as well as I do. It would have been a matter of course.'

‘What difference does a house make?'

‘But the people in a house make a great deal of difference, my dear. I don't want to quarrel with you, my dear; but I can't know the Melmottes.'

‘Who asks you?'

‘You are with them.'

‘Do you mean to say that you can't ask anybody to your house without asking everybody that lives with that person? It's done every day.'

‘Somebody must have brought you.'

‘I would have come with the Primeros, Julia.'

‘I couldn't do it. I asked Damask and he wouldn't have it. When that great affair was going on in February, we didn't know much about the people. I was told that everybody was going, and therefore I got Sir Damask to let me go. He says now that he won't let me know them; and after having been at their house I can't ask you out of it, without asking them too.'

‘I don't see it at all, Julia.'

‘I'm very sorry, my dear, but I can't go against my husband.'

‘Everybody goes to their house,' said Georgiana, pleading her cause to the best of her ability. ‘The Duchess of Stevenage has dined in Grosvenor Square since I have been there.'

‘We all know what that means,' replied Lady Monogram.

‘And people are giving their eyes to be asked to the dinner-party which he is to give to the emperor in July – and even to the reception afterwards.'

‘To hear you talk, Georgiana, one would think that you didn't
understand anything,' said Lady Monogram. ‘People are going to see the emperor, not to see the Melmottes. I dare say we might have gone – only I suppose we shan't now because of this row.'

‘I don't know what you mean by a row, Julia.'

‘Well; – it is a row, and I hate rows. Going there when the Emperor of China is there, or anything of that kind, is no more than going to the play. Somebody chooses to get all London into his house, and all London chooses to go. But it isn't understood that that means acquaintance. I should meet Madame Melmotte in the park afterwards and not think of bowing to her.'

‘I should call that rude.'

‘Very well. Then we differ. But really it does seem to me that you ought to understand these things as well as anybody. I don't find any fault with you for going to the Melmottes' – though I was very sorry to hear it; but when you have done it, I don't think you should complain of people because they won't have the Melmottes crammed down their throats.'

‘Nobody has wanted it,' said Georgiana sobbing. At this moment the door was opened, and Sir Damask came in. ‘I'm talking to your wife about the Melmottes,' she continued, determined to take the bull by the horns. ‘I'm staying there, and – I think it – unkind that Julia – hasn't been – to see me. That's all.'

‘How'd you do, Miss Longestaffe? She doesn't know them.' And Sir Damask, folding his hands together, raising his eyebrows, and standing on the rug, looked as though he had solved the whole difficulty.

‘She knows me, Sir Damask.'

‘Oh yes – she knows you. That's a matter of course. We're delighted to see you, Miss Longestaffe – I am, always. Wish we could have had you at Ascot. But –' Then he looked as though he had again explained everything.

‘I've told her that you don't want me to go to the Melmottes',' said Lady Monogram.

‘Well, no; – not just to go there. Stay and have lunch, Miss Longestaffe.'

‘No, thank you.'

‘Now you're here, you'd better,' said Lady Monogram.

‘No, thank you. I'm sorry that I have not been able to make you understand me. I could not allow our very long friendship to be dropped without a word.'

‘Don't say – dropped,' exclaimed the baronet.

‘I do say dropped, Sir Damask. I thought we should have understood each other – your wife and I. But we haven't. Wherever she might have gone, I should have made it my business to see her; but she feels differently. Good-bye.'

‘Good-bye, my dear. If you will quarrel, it isn't my doing.' Then Sir Damask led Miss Longestaffe out, and put her into Madame Melmotte's carriage. ‘It's the most absurd thing I ever knew in my life,' said the wife as soon as her husband had returned to her. ‘She hasn't been able to bear to remain down in the country for one season, when all the world knows that her father can't afford to have a house for them in town. Then she condescends to come and stay with these abominations and pretends to feel surprised that her old friends don't run after her. She is old enough to have known better.'

‘I suppose she likes parties,' said Sir Damask.

‘Likes parties! She'd like to get somebody to take her. It's twelve years now since Georgiana Longestaffe came out. I remember being told of the time when I was first entered myself. Yes, my dear, you know all about it, I dare say. And there she is still. I can feel for her, and do feel for her. But if she will let herself down in that way she can't expect not to be dropped. You remember the woman; – don't you?'

‘What woman?'

‘Madame Melmotte?'

‘Never saw her in my life.'

‘Oh yes, you did. You took me there that night when Prince – danced with the girl. Don't you remember the blowsy fat woman at the top of the stairs – a regular horror?'

‘Didn't look at her. I was only thinking what a lot of money it all cost.'

‘I remember her, and if Georgiana Longestaffe thinks I'm going there to make an acquaintance with Madame Melmotte, she is very much mistaken. And if she thinks that that is the way to get married, I think she is mistaken again.' Nothing perhaps is so efficacious in preventing men from marrying as the tone in which married women speak of the struggles made in that direction by their unmarried friends.

Sir Felix Carbury made an appointment for meeting Ruby Ruggles a second time at the bottom of the kitchen-garden belonging to Sheep's Acre farm, which appointment he neglected, and had, indeed, made without any intention of keeping it. But Ruby was there, and remained hanging about among the cabbages till her grandfather returned from Harlestone market. An early hour had been named; but hours may be mistaken, and Ruby had thought that a fine gentleman, such as was her lover, used to live among fine people up in London, might well mistake the afternoon for the morning. If he would come at all she could easily forgive such a mistake. But he did not come, and late in the afternoon she was obliged to obey her grandfather's summons as he called her into the house.

After that for three weeks she heard nothing of her London lover, but she was always thinking of him – and though she could not altogether avoid her country lover, she was in his company as little as possible. One afternoon her grandfather returned from Bungay and told her that her country lover was coming to see her. ‘John Crumb be a coming over by-and-by,' said the old man. ‘See and have a bit o' supper ready for him.'

‘John Crumb coming here, grandfather? He's welcome to stay away then, for me.'

‘That be dommed.' The old man thrust his old hat on to his head and seated himself in a wooden arm-chair that stood by the kitchen-fire. Whenever he was angry he put on his hat, and the custom was well understood by Ruby. ‘Why not welcome, and he all one as your husband? Look ye here, Ruby, I'm going to have an end o' this. John Crumb is to marry you next month, and the banns is to be said.'

‘The parson may say what he pleases, grandfather. I can't stop his saying of 'em. It isn't likely I shall try, neither. But no parson among 'em all can marry me without I'm willing.'

‘And why should you no be willing, you contrairy young jade, you?'

‘You've been a drinking, grandfather.'

He turned round at her sharp, and threw his old hat at her head – nothing to Ruby's consternation, as it was a practice to which she was
well accustomed. She picked it up, and returned it to him with a cool indifference which was intended to exasperate him. ‘Look ye here, Ruby,' he said, ‘out o' this place you go. If you go as John Crumb's wife you'll go with five hun'erd pound, and we'll have a dinner here, and a dance, and all Bungay.'

‘Who cares for all Bungay – a set of beery chaps as knows nothing but swilling and smoking – and John Crumb the main of 'em all? There never was a chap for beer like John Crumb.'

‘Never saw him the worse o' liquor in all my life.' And the old farmer, as he gave this grand assurance, rattled his fist down upon the table.

‘It ony just makes him stoopider and stoopider the more he swills. You can't tell me, grandfather, about John Crumb. I knows him.'

‘Didn't ye say as how ye'd have him? Didn't ye give him a promise?'

‘If I did, I ain't the first girl as has gone back of her word – and I shan't be the last.'

‘You means you won't have him?'

‘That's about it, grandfather.'

‘Then you'll have to have somebody to fend for ye, and that pretty sharp – for you won't have me.'

‘There ain't no difficulty about that, grandfather.'

‘Very well. He's a coming here to-night, and you may settle it along wi' him. Out o' this ye shall go. I know of your doings.'

‘What doings! You don't know of no doings. There ain't no doings. You don't know nothing ag'in me.'

‘He's a coming here to-night, and if you can make it up wi' him, well and good. There's five hun'erd pound, and ye shall have the dinner and the dance and all Bungay. He ain't a going to be put off no longer – he ain't.'

‘Whoever wanted him to be put on? Let him go his own gait.'

‘If you can't make it up wi' him –'

‘Well, grandfather, I shan't anyways.'

‘Let me have my say, will ye, yer jade, you? There's five hun'erd pound! and there ain't ere a farmer in Suffolk or Norfolk paying rent for a bit of land like this can do as well for his darter as that – let alone only a granddarter. You never thinks o' that – you don't. If you don't like to take it – leave it. But you'll leave Sheep's Acre too.'

‘Bother Sheep's Acre. Who wants to stop at Sheep's Acre? It's the stoopidest place in all England.'

‘Then find another. Then find another. That's all about it. John Crumb's a coming up for a bit o' supper. You tell him your own mind.
I'm dommed if I trouble about it. Ony you don't stay here. Sheep's Acre ain't good enough for you, and you'd best find another home. Stoopid, is it? You'll have to put up wi' places stoopider nor Sheep's Acre, afore you've done.'

In regard to the hospitality promised to Mr Crumb, Miss Ruggles went about her work with sufficient alacrity. She was quite willing that the young man should have a supper, and she did understand that, so far as the preparation of the supper went, she owed her service to her grandfather. She therefore went to work herself, and gave directions to the servant girl who assisted her in keeping her grandfather's house. But as she did this, she determined that she would make John Crumb understand that she would never be his wife. Upon that she was now fully resolved. As she went about the kitchen, taking down the ham and cutting the slices that were to be broiled, and as she trussed the fowl that was to be boiled for John Crumb, she made mental comparisons between him and Sir Felix Carbury. She could see, as though present to her at the moment, the mealy, floury head of the one, with hair stiff with perennial dust from his sacks, and the sweet glossy dark well-combed locks of the other, so bright, so seductive, that she was ever longing to twine her fingers among them. And she remembered the heavy flat broad honest face of the meal-man, with his mouth slow in motion, and his broad nose looking like a huge white promontory, and his great staring eyes, from the corners of which he was always extracting meal and grit; – and then also she remembered the white teeth, the beautiful soft lips, the perfect eyebrows, and the rich complexion of her London lover. Surely a lease of Paradise with the one, though but for one short year, would be well purchased at the price of a life with the other! ‘It's no good going against love,' she said to herself, ‘and I won't try. He shall have his supper, and be told all about it, and then go home. He cares more for his supper than he do for me.' And then, with this final resolution firmly made, she popped the fowl into the pot. Her grandfather wanted her to leave Sheep's Acre. Very well. She had a little money of her own, and would take herself off to London. She knew what people would say, but she cared nothing for old women's tales. She would know how to take care of herself, and could always say in her own defence that her grandfather had turned her out of Sheep's Acre.