The Way We Live Now (52 page)

‘And couldn't you manage that I should have the shares before the twentieth of next month?'

‘I'll see about it. Perhaps I could let you have a few of my own. At any rate I won't see you short of money.'

The terms were enticing and the letter was of course written. Melmotte himself dictated the words, which were not romantic in their nature. The reader shall see the letter.

‘
DEAR SIR
,

‘In consideration of the offers made by you to me, and on a clear understanding that such a marriage would be disagreeable to you and to the lady's mother, and would bring down a father's curse upon your daughter, I hereby declare and promise that I will not renew my suit to the young lady, which I hereby altogether renounce.

‘I am, Dear Sir,
‘Your obedient Servant,
‘
FELIX CARBURY
.

‘
AUGUSTUS MELMOTTE, ESQ.,
‘ –,
Grosvenor Square
.'

The letter was dated 21st July,
²
and bore the printed address of the offices of the South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway.

‘You'll give me that cheque for two hundred pounds, Mr Melmotte.' The financier hesitated for a moment, but did give the baronet the cheque as promised. ‘And you'll see about letting me have those shares.'

‘You can come to me in Abchurch Lane, you know.' Sir Felix said that he would call in Abchurch Lane.

As he went westward towards the Beargarden, the baronet was not happy in his mind. Ignorant as he was as to the duties of a gentleman, indifferent as he was to the feelings of others, still he felt ashamed of himself. He was treating the girl very badly. Even he knew that he was behaving badly. He was so conscious of it that he tried to console himself by reflecting that his writing such a letter as that would not prevent his running away with the girl, should he, on consideration, find it to be worth his while to do so.

That night he was again playing at the Beargarden, and he lost a great part of Mr Melmotte's money. He did in fact lose much more than the £200; but when he found his ready money going from him he issued paper.

Paul Montague had other troubles on his mind beyond this trouble of the Mexican Railway. It was now more than a fortnight since he had taken Mrs Hurtle to the play, and she was still living in lodgings at Islington. He had seen her twice, once on the following day, when he was allowed to come and go without any special reference to their engagement, and again, three or four days afterwards, when the meeting was by no means so pleasant. She had wept, and after weeping had stormed. She had stood upon what she called her rights, and had dared him to be false to her. Did he mean to deny that he had promised to marry her? Was not his conduct to her, ever since she had now been in London, a repetition of that promise? And then again she became soft, and pleaded with him. But for the storm he might have given way. At that moment he had felt that any fate in life would be better than a marriage on compulsion. Her tears and her pleadings, nevertheless, touched him very nearly. He had promised her most distinctly. He had loved her and had won her love. And she was lovely. The very violence of the storm made the sunshine more sweet. She would sit down on a stool at his feet, and it was impossible to drive her away from him. She would look up in his face and he could not but embrace her. Then there had come a passionate flood of tears and she was in his arms. How he had escaped he hardly knew, but he did know that he had promised to be with her again before two days should have passed.

On the day named he wrote to her a letter excusing himself, which was at any rate true in words. He had been summoned, he said, to Liverpool on business, and must postpone seeing her till his return. And he explained that the business on which he was called was connected with the great American railway, and, being important, demanded his attention. In words this was true. He had been corresponding with a gentleman at Liverpool with whom he had become acquainted on his return home after having involuntarily become a partner in the house of Fisker, Montague, and Montague. This man he trusted and had consulted, and the gentleman, Mr Ramsbottom by name, had suggested that he should come to him at Liverpool. He had gone, and his conduct at the board had been the result of the advice which he had received; but it
may be doubted whether some dread of the coming interview with Mrs Hurtle had not added strength to Mr Ramsbottom's invitation.

In Liverpool he had heard tidings of Mrs Hurtle, though it can hardly be said that he obtained any trustworthy information. The lady after landing from an American steamer had been at Mr Ramsbottom's office, inquiring for him, Paul; and Mr Ramsbottom had thought that the inquiries were made in a manner indicating danger. He therefore had spoken to a fellow-traveller with Mrs Hurtle, and the fellow-traveller had opined that Mrs Hurtle was ‘a queer card.' ‘On board ship we all gave it up to her that she was about the handsomest woman we had ever seen, but we all said that there was a bit of the wild cat in her breeding.' Then Mr Ramsbottom had asked whether the lady was a widow. ‘There was a man on board from Kansas,' said the fellow-traveller, ‘who knew a man named Hurtle at Leavenworth, who was separated from his wife and is still alive. There was, according to him, a queer story about the man and his wife having fought a duel with pistols, and then having separated.' This Mr Ramsbottom, who in an earlier stage of the affair had heard something of Paul and Mrs Hurtle together, managed to communicate to the young man. His advice about the railway company was very clear and general, and such as an honest man would certainly give; but it might have been conveyed by letter. The information, such as it was, respecting Mrs Hurtle, could only be given vivâ voce, and perhaps the invitation to Liverpool had originated in Mr Ramsbottom's appreciation of this fact. ‘As she was asking after you here, perhaps it is as well that you should know,' his friend said to him. Paul had only thanked him, not daring on the spur of the moment to speak of his own difficulties.

In all this there had been increased dismay, but there had also been some comfort. It had only been at moments in which he had been subject to her softer influences that Paul had doubted as to his adherence to the letter which he had written to her, breaking off his engagement When she told him of her wrongs and of her love; of his promise and his former devotion to her, when she assured him that she had given up everything in life for him, and threw her arms round him, looking into his eyes – then he would almost yield. But when, what the traveller called the breeding of the wild cat, showed itself – and when, having escaped from her, he thought of Hetta Carbury and of her breeding – he was fully determined that let his fate be what it might, it should not be that of being the husband of Mrs Hurtle. That he was in a mass of troubles from which it would be very difficult for him to extricate
himself he was well aware – but if it were true that Mr Hurtle was alive, that fact might help him. She certainly had declared him to be – not separated, or even divorced – but dead. And if it were true also that she had fought a duel with one husband, that also ought to be a reason why a gentleman should object to become her second husband. These facts would at any rate justify himself to himself, and would enable himself to break from his engagement without thinking himself to be a false traitor.

But he must make up his mind as to some line of conduct. She must be made to know the truth. If he meant to reject the lady finally on the score of her being a wild cat, he must tell her so. He felt very strongly that he must not flinch from the wild cat's claws. That he would have to undergo some severe handling, an amount of clawing which might perhaps go near his life, he could perceive. Having done what he had done he would have no right to shrink from such usage. He must tell her to her face that he was not satisfied with her past life, and that therefore he would not marry her. Of course he might write to her – but when summoned to her presence he would be unable to excuse himself, even to himself, for not going. It was his misfortune – and also his fault – that he had submitted to be loved by a wild cat.

But it might be well that before he saw her he should get hold of information that might have the appearance of real evidence. He returned from Liverpool to London on the morning of the Friday on which the board was held, and thought even more of all this than he did of the attack which he was prepared to make on Mr Melmotte. If he could come across that traveller he might learn something. The husband's name had been Caradoc Carson Hurtle. If Caradoc Carson Hurtle had been seen in the State of Kansas within the last two years, that certainly would be sufficient evidence. As to the duel he felt that it might be very hard to prove that, and that if proved, it might be hard to found upon the fact any absolute right on his part to withdraw from the engagement. But there was a rumour also, though not corroborated during his last visit to Liverpool, that she had shot a gentleman in Oregon. Could he get at the truth of that story? If they were all true, surely he could justify himself to himself.

But this detective's work was very distasteful to him. After having had the woman in his arms how could he undertake such inquiries as these? And it would be almost necessary that he should take her in his arms again while he was making them – unless indeed he made them with her knowledge. Was it not his duty, as a man, to tell everything to herself. To speak to her thus: – ‘I am told that your life with your last husband
was, to say the least of it, eccentric; that you even fought a duel with him. I could not marry a woman who had fought a duel – certainly not a woman who had fought with her own husband. I am told also that you shot another gentleman in Oregon. It may well be that the gentleman deserved to be shot; but there is something in the deed so repulsive to me – no doubt irrationally – that, on that score also, I must, decline to marry you. I am told also that Mr Hurtle has been seen alive quite lately. I had understood from you that he is dead. No doubt you may have been deceived. But as I should not have engaged myself to you had I known the truth, so now I consider myself justified in absolving myself from an engagement which was based on a misconception.' It would no doubt be difficult to get through all these details; but it might be accomplished gradually – unless in the process of doing so he should incur the fate of the gentleman in Oregon. At any rate he claimed a right to consider himself free, and would bear the consequences. Such was the resolve which he made on his journey up from Liverpool, and that trouble was also on his mind when he rose up to attack Mr Melmotte single-handed at the board.

When the board was over, he also went down to the Beargarden. Perhaps, with reference to the board, the feeling which hurt him most was the conviction that he was spending money which he would never have had to spend had there been no board. He had been twitted with this at the board-meeting, and had justified himself by referring to the money which had been invested in the company of Fisker, Montague, and Montague, which money was now supposed to have been made over to the railway. But the money which he was spending had come to him after a loose fashion, and he knew that if called upon for an account, he could hardly make out one which would be square and intelligible to all parties. Nevertheless he spent much of his time at the Beargarden, dining there when no engagement carried him elsewhere. On this evening he joined his table with Nidderdale's, at the young lord's instigation. ‘What made you so savage at old Melmotte to-day?' said the young lord.

‘I didn't mean to be savage, but I think that as we call ourselves directors we ought to know something about it.'

‘I suppose we ought. I don't know, you know. I'll tell you what I've been thinking. I can't make out why the mischief they made me a director.'

‘Because you're a lord,' said Paul bluntly.

‘I suppose there's something in that. But what good can I do them? Nobody thinks that I know anything about business. Of course I'm in
Parliament, but I don't often go there unless they want me to vote. Everybody knows that I'm hard up. I can't understand it The governor said that I was to do it, and so I've done it.'

‘They say, you know – there's something between you and Melmotte's daughter.'

‘But if there is, what has that to do with a railway in the City? And why should Carbury be there? And, heaven and earth, why should old Grendall be a director? I'm impecunious; but if you were to pick out the two most hopeless men in London in regard to money, they would be old Grendall and young Carbury. I've been thinking a good deal about it, and I can't make it out.'

‘I have been thinking about it too,' said Paul.

‘I suppose old Melmotte is all right?' asked Nidderdale. This was a question which Montague found it difficult to answer. How could he be justified in whispering suspicions to the man who was known to be at any rate one of the competitors for Marie Melmotte's hand? ‘You can speak out to me, you know,' said Nidderdale, nodding his head.

‘I've got nothing to speak. People say that he is about the richest man alive.'

‘He lives as though he were.'

‘I don't see why it shouldn't be all true. Nobody, I take it, knows very much about him.' When his companion had left him, Nidderdale sat down, thinking of it all. It occurred to him that he would ‘be coming a cropper rather' were he to marry Melmotte's daughter for her money, and then find that she had got none.

A little later in the evening he invited Montague to go up to the card-room. ‘Carbury, and Grasslough, and Dolly Longestaffe are there waiting,' he said. But Paul declined. He was too full of his troubles for play. ‘Poor Miles isn't there, if you're afraid of that,' said Nidderdale.

‘Miles Grendall wouldn't hinder me,' said Montague.