The Way We Live Now (78 page)

‘Say good-bye to me, Marie.'

‘Oh, I don't mind saying good-bye. Good-bye, my lord; and don't come any more.'

‘Yes, I shall. Good-bye, Marie. You'll find the difference between me and him yet' So he took his leave, and as he sauntered away he thought that upon the whole he had prospered, considering the extreme difficulties under which he had laboured in carrying on his suit ‘She's quite a different sort of girl from what I took her to be,' he said to himself. ‘Upon my word, she's awfully jolly.'

Marie, when the interview was over, walked about the room almost in
dismay. It was borne in upon her by degrees that Sir Felix Carbury was not at all points quite as nice as she had thought him. Of his beauty there was no doubt; but then she could trust him for no other good quality. Why did he not come to her? Why did he not show some pluck? Why did he not tell her the truth? She had quite believed Lord Nidderdale when he said that he knew the cause that had kept Sir Felix from going to Liverpool. And she had believed him, too, when he said that it was not his business to tell her. But the reason, let it be what it might, must, if known, be prejudicial to her love. Lord Nidderdale was, she thought, not at all beautiful. He had a common-place, rough face, with a turn-up nose, high cheek bones, no especial complexion, sandy-coloured whiskers, and bright laughing eyes – not at all an Adonis such as her imagination had painted. But if he had only made love at first as he had attempted to do it now, she thought that she would have submitted herself to be cut in pieces for him.

While these things were being done in Bruton Street and Grosvenor Square horrid rumours were prevailing in the City and spreading from the City westwards to the House of Commons, which was sitting this Monday afternoon with a prospect of an adjournment at seven o'clock in consequence of the banquet to be given to the emperor. It is difficult to explain the exact nature of this rumour, as it was not thoroughly understood by those who propagated it But it is certainly the case that the word forgery was whispered by more than one pair of lips.

Many of Melmotte's staunchest supporters thought that he was very wrong not to show himself that day in the City. What good could he do pottering about among the chairs and benches in the banqueting room? There were people to manage that kind of thing. In such an affair it was his business to do simply as he was told, and to pay the bill. It was not as though he were giving a little dinner to a friend, and had to see himself that the wine was brought up in good order. His work was in the City; and at such a time as this and in such a crisis as this, he should have been in the City. Men will whisper forgery behind a man's back who would not dare even to think it before his face.

Of this particular rumour our young friend Dolly Longestaffe was the parent. With unhesitating resolution, nothing awed by his father, Dolly had gone to his attorney, Mr Squercum, immediately after that Friday on which Mr Longestaffe first took his seat at the railway board. Dolly was possessed of fine qualities, but it must be owned that veneration was not one of them. ‘I don't know why Mr Melmotte is to be different from anybody else,' he had said to his father. ‘When I buy a thing and don't pay for it, it is because I haven't got the tin, and I suppose it's about the same with him. It's all right, no doubt, but I don't see why he should have got hold of the place till the money was paid down.'

‘Of course it's all right,' said the father. ‘You think you understand everything, when you really understand nothing at all.'

‘Of course I'm slow,' said Dolly. ‘I don't comprehend these things. But then Squercum does. When a fellow is stupid himself, he ought to have a sharp fellow to look after his business.'

‘You'll ruin me and yourself too, if you go to such a man as that. Why can't you trust Mr Bideawhile? Slow and Bideawhile have been the family lawyers for a century.' Dolly made some remark as to the old family advisers which was by no means pleasing to the father's ears, and went his way. The father knew his boy, and knew that his boy would go to Squercum. All he could himself do was to press Mr Melmotte for the money with what importunity he could assume. He wrote a timid letter to Mr Melmotte, which had no result; and then, on the next Friday, again went into the City and there encountered perturbation of spirit and sheer loss of time – as the reader has already learned.

Squercum was a thorn in the side of all the Bideawhiles. Mr Slow had been gathered to his fathers, but of the Bideawhiles there were three in the business, a father and two sons, to whom Squercum was a pest and musquito, a running sore and a skeleton in the cupboard. It was not only in reference to Mr Longestaffe's affairs that they knew Squercum. The Bideawhiles piqued themselves on the decorous and orderly transaction of their business. It had grown to be a rule in the house that anything done quickly must be done badly. They never were in a hurry for money, and they expected their clients never to be in a hurry for work. Squercum was the very opposite to this. He had established himself, without predecessors and without a partner, and we may add without capital, at a little office in Fetter Lane, and had there made a character for getting things done after a marvellous and new fashion. And it was said of him that he was fairly honest, though it must be owned that among the Bideawhiles of the profession this was not the character
which he bore. He did sharp things no doubt, and had no hesitation in supporting the interests of sons against those of their fathers. In more than one case he had computed for a young heir the exact value of his share in a property as compared to that of his father, and had come into hostile contact with many family Bideawhiles. He had been closely watched. There were some who, no doubt, would have liked to crush a man who was at once so clever, and so pestilential. But he had not as yet been crushed, and had become quite in vogue with elder sons. Some three years since his name had been mentioned to Dolly by a friend who had for years been at war with his father, and Squercum had been quite a comfort to Dolly.

He was a mean-looking little man, not yet above forty, who always wore a stiff light-coloured cotton cravat, an old dress coat, a coloured dingy waistcoat, and light trousers of some hue different from his waistcoat. He generally had on dirty shoes and gaiters. He was light haired, with light whiskers, with putty-formed features, a squat nose, a large mouth, and very bright blue eyes. He looked as unlike the normal Bideawhile of the profession as a man could be; and it must be owned, though an attorney, would hardly have been taken for a gentleman from his personal appearance. He was very quick, and active in his motions, absolutely doing his law work himself, and trusting to his three or four juvenile clerks for little more than scrivener's labour. He seldom or never came to his office on a Saturday, and many among his enemies said that he was a Jew. What evil will not a rival say to stop the flow of grist to the mill of the hated one? But this report Squercum rather liked, and assisted. They who knew the inner life of the little man declared that he kept a horse and hunted down in Essex on Saturday, doing a bit of gardening in the summer months – and they said also that he made up for this by working hard all Sunday. Such was Mr Squercum – a sign, in his way, that the old things are being changed.

Squercum sat at a desk, covered with papers in chaotic confusion, on a chair which moved on a pivot. His desk was against the wall, and when clients came to him, he turned himself sharp round, sticking out his dirty shoes, throwing himself back till his body was an inclined plane with his hands thrust into his pockets. In this attitude he would listen to his client's story, and would himself speak as little as possible. It was by his instructions that Dolly had insisted on getting his share of the purchase money for Pickering into his own hands, so that the incum-brance on his own property might be paid off. He now listened as Dolly told him of the delay in the payment. ‘Melmotte's at Pickering?' asked
the attorney. Then Dolly informed him how the tradesmen of the great financier had already half knocked down the house. Squercum still listened, and promised to look to it. He did ask what authority Dolly had given for the surrender of the title-deeds. Dolly declared that he had given authority for the sale, but none for the surrender. His father, some time since, had put before him, for his signature, a letter, prepared in Mr Bideawhile's office, which Dolly said that he had refused even to read, and certainly had not signed. Squercum again said that he'd look to it, and bowed Dolly out of his room. ‘They've got him to sign something when he was tight,' said Squercum to himself, knowing something of the habits of his client. ‘I wonder whether his father did it, or old Bideawhile, or Melmotte himself?' Mr Squercum was inclined to think that Bideawhile would not have done it, that Melmotte could have had no opportunity, and that the father must have been the practitioner. ‘It's not the trick of a pompous old fool either,' said Mr Squercum, in his soliloquy. He went to work, however, making himself detestably odious among the very respectable clerks in Mr Bideawhile's office – men who considered themselves to be altogether superior to Squercum himself in professional standing.

And now there came this rumour which was so far particular in its details that it inferred the forgery, of which it accused Mr Melmotte, to his mode of acquiring the Pickering property. The nature of the forgery was of course described in various ways – as was also the signature said to have been forged. But there were many who believed, or almost believed, that something wrong had been done – that some great fraud had been committed; and in connection with this it was ascertained – by some as a matter of certainty – that the Pickering estate had been already mortgaged by Melmotte to its full value at an assurance office. In such a transaction there would be nothing dishonest; but as this place had been bought for the great man's own family use, and not as a speculation, even this report of the mortgage tended to injure his credit. And then, as the day went on, other tidings were told as to other properties. Houses in the East End of London were said to have been bought and sold, without payment of the purchase money as to the buying, and with receipt of the purchase money as to the selling.

It was certainly true that Squercum himself had seen the letter in Mr Bideawhile's office which conveyed to the father's lawyer the son's sanction for the surrender of the title-deeds, and that that letter, prepared in Mr Bideawhile's office, purported to have Dolly's signature. Squercum said but little, remembering that his client was not always
clear in the morning as to anything he had done on the preceding evening. But the signature, though it was scrawled as Dolly always scrawled it, was not like the scrawl of a drunken man.

The letter was said to have been sent to Mr Bideawhile's office with other letters and papers, direct from old Mr Longestaffe. Such was the statement made at first to Mr Squercum by the Bideawhile party, who at that moment had no doubt of the genuineness of the letter or of the accuracy of their statement. Then Squercum saw his client again, and returned to the charge at Bideawhile's office, with the positive assurance that the signature was a forgery. Dolly, when questioned by Squercum, quite admitted his propensity to be ‘tight'. He had no reticence, no feeling of disgrace on such matters. But he had signed no letter when he was tight. ‘Never did such a thing in my life, and nothing could make me,' said Dolly. ‘I'm never tight except at the club, and the letter couldn't have been there. I'll be drawn and quartered if I ever signed it That's flat.' Dolly was intent on going to his father at once, on going to Melmotte at once, on going to Bideawhile's at once, and making there ‘no end of a row' – but Squercum stopped him. ‘We'll just ferret this thing out quietly,' said Squercum, who perhaps thought that there would be high honour in discovering the peccadilloes of so great a man as Mr Melmotte. Mr Longestaffe, the father, had heard nothing of the matter till the Saturday after his last interview with Melmotte in the City. He had then called at Bideawhile's office in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and had been shown the letter. He declared at once that he had never sent the letter to Mr Bideawhile. He had begged his son to sign the letter and his son had refused. He did not at that moment distinctly remember what he had done with the letter unsigned. He believed he had left it with the other papers; but it was possible that his son might have taken it away. He acknowledged that at the time he had been both angry and unhappy. He didn't think that he could have sent the letter back unsigned – but he was not sure. He had more than once been in his own study in Bruton Street since Mr Melmotte had occupied the house – by that gentleman's leave – having left various papers there under his own lock and key. Indeed it had been matter of agreement that he should have access to his own study when he let the house. He thought it probable that he would have kept back the unsigned letter, and have kept it under lock and key, when he sent away the other papers. Then reference was made to Mr Longestaffe's own letter to the lawyer, and it was found that he had not even alluded to that which his son had been asked to sign; but that he had said, in his own usually pompous style,
that Mr Longestaffe, junior, was still prone to create unsubstantial difficulties. Mr Bideawhile was obliged to confess that there had been a want of caution among his own people. This allusion to the creation of difficulties by Dolly, accompanied, as it was supposed to have been, by Dolly's letter doing away with all difficulties, should have attracted notice. Dolly's letter must have come in a separate envelope; but such envelope could not be found, and the circumstance was not remembered by the clerk. The clerk who had prepared the letter for Dolly's signature represented himself as having been quite satisfied when the letter came again beneath his notice with Dolly's well-known signature.