The Way We Live Now - 06

have money not pay it back to her?"

"She can have the twenty pounds, if you mean that."

"I mean that, and a good deal more than that. I suppose you have been
gambling."

"I don't know that I am bound to answer your questions, and I
won't do it. If you have nothing else to say, I'll go about my own
business."

"I have something else to say, and I mean to say it." Felix had
walked towards the door, but Roger was before him, and now leaned his
back against it.

"I am not going to be kept here against my will," said Felix.

"You have to listen to me, so you may as well sit still. Do you wish
to be looked upon as a blackguard by all the world?"

"Oh,--go on."

"That is what it will be. You have spent every shilling of your
own,--and because your mother is affectionate and weak, you are now
spending all that she has, and are bringing her and your sister to
beggary."

"I don't ask them to pay anything for me."

"Not when you borrow her money?"

"There is the £20. Take it and give it her," said Felix, counting the
notes out of the pocket-book. "When I asked her for it, I did not
think she would make such a row about such a trifle." Roger took up
the notes and thrust them into his pocket. "Now, have you done?" said
Felix.


[Illustration: "There's the £20."]


"Not quite. Do you purpose that your mother should keep you and
clothe you for the rest of your life?"

"I hope to be able to keep her before long, and to do it much better
than it has ever been done before. The truth is, Roger, you know
nothing about it. If you'll leave me to myself, you'll find that I
shall do very well."

"I don't know any young man who ever did worse, or one who had less
moral conception of what is right and wrong."

"Very well. That's your idea. I differ from you. People can't all
think alike, you know. Now, if you please, I'll go."

Roger felt that he hadn't half said what he had to say, but he hardly
knew how to get it said. And of what use could it be to talk to a
young man who was altogether callous and without feeling? The remedy
for the evil ought to be found in the mother's conduct rather than
the son's. She, were she not foolishly weak, would make up her mind
to divide herself utterly from her son, at any rate for a while, and
to leave him to suffer utter penury. That would bring him round. And
then when the agony of want had tamed him, he would be content to
take bread and meat from her hand and would be humble. At present he
had money in his pocket, and would eat and drink of the best, and
be free from inconvenience for the moment. While this prosperity
remained it would be impossible to touch him. "You will ruin your
sister, and break your mother's heart," said Roger, firing a last
harmless shot after the young reprobate.

When Lady Carbury came into the room, which she did as soon as the
front door was closed behind her son, she seemed to think that a
great success had been achieved because the £20 had been recovered.
"I knew he would give it me back, if he had it," she said.

"Why did he not bring it to you of his own accord?"

"I suppose he did not like to talk about it. Has he said that he got
it by--playing?"

"No,--he did not speak a word of truth while he was here. You may
take it for granted that he did get it by gambling. How else should
he have it? And you may take it for granted also that he will lose
all that he has got. He talked in the wildest way,--saying that he
would soon have a home for you and Hetta."

"Did he;--dear boy!"

"Had he any meaning?"

"Oh; yes. And it is quite on the cards that it should be so. You have
heard of Miss Melmotte."

"I have heard of the great French swindler who has come over here,
and who is buying his way into society."

"Everybody visits them now, Roger."

"More shame for everybody. Who knows anything about him,--except that
he left Paris with the reputation of a specially prosperous rogue?
But what of him?"

"Some people think that Felix will marry his only child. Felix is
handsome; isn't he? What young man is there nearly so handsome? They
say she'll have half a million of money."

"That's his game;--is it?"

"Don't you think he is right?"

"No; I think he's wrong. But we shall hardly agree with each other
about that. Can I see Henrietta for a few minutes?"




CHAPTER VIII.

LOVE-SICK.


Roger Carbury said well that it was very improbable that he and
his cousin, the widow, should agree in their opinions as to the
expedience of fortune-hunting by marriage. It was impossible that
they should ever understand each other. To Lady Carbury the prospect
of a union between her son and Miss Melmotte was one of unmixed joy
and triumph. Could it have been possible that Marie Melmotte should
be rich and her father be a man doomed to a deserved sentence in a
penal settlement, there might perhaps be a doubt about it. The wealth
even in that case would certainly carry the day against the disgrace,
and Lady Carbury would find reasons why "poor Marie" should not be
punished for her father's sins, even while enjoying the money which
those sins had produced. But how different were the existing facts?
Mr. Melmotte was not at the galleys, but was entertaining duchesses
in Grosvenor Square. People said that Mr. Melmotte had a reputation
throughout Europe as a gigantic swindler,--as one who in the
dishonest and successful pursuit of wealth had stopped at nothing.
People said of him that he had framed and carried out long
premeditated and deeply laid schemes for the ruin of those who
had trusted him, that he had swallowed up the property of all who
had come in contact with him, that he was fed with the blood of
widows and children;--but what was all this to Lady Carbury? If the
duchesses condoned it all, did it become her to be prudish? People
also said that Melmotte would yet get a fall,--that a man who had
risen after such a fashion never could long keep his head up. But he
might keep his head up long enough to give Marie her fortune. And
then Felix wanted a fortune so badly;--was so exactly the young man
who ought to marry a fortune! To Lady Carbury there was no second way
of looking at the matter.

And to Roger Carbury also there was no second way of looking at it.
That condonation of antecedents which, in the hurry of the world,
is often vouchsafed to success, that growing feeling which induces
people to assert to themselves that they are not bound to go outside
the general verdict, and that they may shake hands with whomsoever
the world shakes hands with, had never reached him. The old-fashioned
idea that the touching of pitch will defile still prevailed with him.
He was a gentleman;--and would have felt himself disgraced to enter
the house of such a one as Augustus Melmotte. Not all the duchesses
in the peerage, or all the money in the city, could alter his notions
or induce him to modify his conduct. But he knew that it would be
useless for him to explain this to Lady Carbury. He trusted, however,
that one of the family might be taught to appreciate the difference
between honour and dishonour. Henrietta Carbury had, he thought, a
higher turn of mind than her mother, and had as yet been kept free
from soil. As for Felix,--he had so grovelled in the gutters as to be
dirt all over. Nothing short of the prolonged sufferings of half a
life could cleanse him.

He found Henrietta alone in the drawing-room. "Have you seen Felix?"
she said, as soon as they had greeted each other.

"Yes. I caught him in the street."

"We are so unhappy about him."

"I cannot say but that you have reason. I think, you know, that your
mother indulges him foolishly."

"Poor mamma! She worships the very ground he treads on."

"Even a mother should not throw her worship away like that. The fact
is that your brother will ruin you both if this goes on."

"What can mamma do?"

"Leave London, and then refuse to pay a shilling on his behalf."

"What would Felix do in the country?"

"If he did nothing, how much better would that be than what he does
in town? You would not like him to become a professional gambler."

"Oh, Mr. Carbury; you do not mean that he does that!"

"It seems cruel to say such things to you,--but in a matter of such
importance one is bound to speak the truth. I have no influence over
your mother; but you may have some. She asks my advice, but has not
the slightest idea of listening to it. I don't blame her for that;
but I am anxious for the sake of--, for the sake of the family."

"I am sure you are."

"Especially for your sake. You will never throw him over."

"You would not ask me to throw him over."

"But he may drag you into the mud. For his sake you have already been
taken into the house of that man Melmotte."

"I do not think that I shall be injured by anything of that kind,"
said Henrietta, drawing herself up.

"Pardon me if I seem to interfere."

"Oh, no;--it is no interference from you."

"Pardon me then if I am rough. To me it seems that an injury is done
to you if you are made to go to the house of such a one as this man.
Why does your mother seek his society? Not because she likes him;
not because she has any sympathy with him or his family;--but simply
because there is a rich daughter."

"Everybody goes there, Mr. Carbury."

"Yes,--that is the excuse which everybody makes. Is that sufficient
reason for you to go to a man's house? Is there not another place to
which we are told that a great many are going, simply because the
road has become thronged and fashionable? Have you no feeling that
you ought to choose your friends for certain reasons of your own?
I admit there is one reason here. They have a great deal of money,
and it is thought possible that he may get some of it by falsely
swearing to a girl that he loves her. After what you have heard, are
the Melmottes people with whom you would wish to be connected?"

"I don't know."

"I do. I know very well. They are absolutely disgraceful. A
social connection with the first crossing-sweeper would be less
objectionable." He spoke with a degree of energy of which he was
himself altogether unaware. He knit his brows, and his eyes flashed,
and his nostrils were extended. Of course she thought of his own
offer to herself. Of course her mind at once conceived,--not that the
Melmotte connection could ever really affect him, for she felt sure
that she would never accept his offer,--but that he might think that
he would be so affected. Of course she resented the feeling which she
thus attributed to him. But, in truth, he was much too simple-minded
for any such complex idea. "Felix," he continued, "has already
descended so far that I cannot pretend to be anxious as to what
houses he may frequent. But I should be sorry to think that you
should often be seen at Mr. Melmotte's."

"I think, Mr. Carbury, that mamma will take care that I am not taken
where I ought not to be taken."

"I wish you to have some opinion of your own as to what is proper for
you."

"I hope I have. I am sorry you should think that I have not."

"I am old-fashioned, Hetta."

"And we belong to a newer and worse sort of world. I dare say it is
so. You have been always very kind, but I almost doubt whether you
can change us now. I have sometimes thought that you and mamma were
hardly fit for each other."

"I have thought that you and I were,--or possibly might be fit for
each other."

"Oh,--as for me, I shall always take mamma's side. If mamma chooses
to go to the Melmottes I shall certainly go with her. If that is
contamination, I suppose I must be contaminated. I don't see why I'm
to consider myself better than any one else."

"I have always thought that you were better than any one else."

"That was before I went to the Melmottes. I am sure you have altered
your opinion now. Indeed, you have told me so. I am afraid, Mr.
Carbury, you must go your way, and we must go ours."

He looked into her face as she spoke, and gradually began to perceive
the working of her mind. He was so true himself that he did not
understand that there should be with her even that violet-coloured
tinge of prevarication which women assume as an additional charm.
Could she really have thought that he was attending to his own
possible future interests when he warned her as to the making of new
acquaintances?

"For myself," he said, putting out his hand and making a slight vain
effort to get hold of hers, "I have only one wish in the world; and
that is, to travel the same road with you. I do not say that you
ought to wish it too; but you ought to know that I am sincere. When
I spoke of the Melmottes, did you believe that I was thinking of
myself?"

"Oh no;--how should I?"

"I was speaking to you then as to a cousin who might regard me as an
elder brother. No contact with legions of Melmottes could make you
other to me than the woman on whom my heart has settled. Even were
you in truth disgraced,--could disgrace touch one so pure as you,--it
would be the same. I love you so well that I have already taken you
for better or for worse. I cannot change. My nature is too stubborn
for such changes. Have you a word to say to comfort me?" She turned
away her head, but did not answer him at once. "Do you understand how
much I am in need of comfort?"

"You can do very well without comfort from me."

"No, indeed. I shall live, no doubt; but I shall not do very well.
As it is, I am not doing at all well. I am becoming sour and moody,
and ill at ease with my friends. I would have you believe me, at any
rate, when I say I love you."

"I suppose you mean something."

"I mean a great deal, dear. I mean all that a man can mean. That is
it. You hardly understand that I am serious to the extent of ecstatic
joy on the one side, and utter indifference to the world on the
other. I shall never give it up till I learn that you are to be
married to some one else."

"What can I say, Mr. Carbury?"

"That you will love me."

"But if I don't?"

"Say that you will try."

"No; I will not say that. Love should come without a struggle. I
don't know how one person is to try to love another in that way. I
like you very much; but being married is such a terrible thing."

"It would not be terrible to me, dear."

"Yes;--when you found that I was too young for your tastes."

"I shall persevere, you know. Will you assure me of this,--that if
you promise your hand to another man, you will let me know at once?"

"I suppose I may promise that," she said, after pausing for a moment.

"There is no one as yet?"

"There is no one. But, Mr. Carbury, you have no right to question me.
I don't think it generous. I allow you to say things that nobody else
could say because you are a cousin and because mamma trusts you so
much. No one but mamma has a right to ask me whether I care for any
one."

"Are you angry with me?"

"No."

"If I have offended you it is because I love you so dearly."

"I am not offended, but I don't like to be questioned by a gentleman.
I don't think any girl would like it. I am not to tell everybody all
that happens."

"Perhaps when you reflect how much of my happiness depends upon it
you will forgive me. Good-bye now." She put out her hand to him and
allowed it to remain in his for a moment. "When I walk about the old
shrubberies at Carbury where we used to be together, I am always
asking myself what chance there is of your walking there as the
mistress."

"There is no chance."

"I am, of course, prepared to hear you say so. Well; good-bye, and
may God bless you."

The man had no poetry about him. He did not even care for romance.
All the outside belongings of love which are so pleasant to many men
and which to many women afford the one sweetness in life which they
really relish, were nothing to him. There are both men and women to
whom even the delays and disappointments of love are charming, even
when they exist to the detriment of hope. It is sweet to such persons
to be melancholy, sweet to pine, sweet to feel that they are now
wretched after a romantic fashion as have been those heroes and
heroines of whose sufferings they have read in poetry. But there was
nothing of this with Roger Carbury. He had, as he believed, found
the woman that he really wanted, who was worthy of his love, and now,
having fixed his heart upon her, he longed for her with an amazing
longing. He had spoken the simple truth when he declared that life
had become indifferent to him without her. No man in England could
be less likely to throw himself off the Monument or to blow out his
brains. But he felt numbed in all the joints of his mind by this
sorrow. He could not make one thing bear upon another, so as to
console himself after any fashion. There was but one thing for
him;--to persevere till he got her, or till he had finally lost her.
And should the latter be his fate, as he began to fear that it would
be, then, he would live, but live only, like a crippled man.

He felt almost sure in his heart of hearts that the girl loved that
other, younger man. That she had never owned to such love he was
quite sure. The man himself and Henrietta also had both assured him
on this point, and he was a man easily satisfied by words and prone
to believe. But he knew that Paul Montague was attached to her,
and that it was Paul's intention to cling to his love. Sorrowfully
looking forward through the vista of future years, he thought he saw
that Henrietta would become Paul's wife. Were it so, what should he
do? Annihilate himself as far as all personal happiness in the world
was concerned, and look solely to their happiness, their prosperity,
and their joys? Be as it were a beneficent old fairy to them, though
the agony of his own disappointment should never depart from him?
Should he do this, and be blessed by them,--or should he let Paul
Montague know what deep resentment such ingratitude could produce?
When had a father been kinder to a son, or a brother to a brother,
than he had been to Paul? His home had been the young man's home, and
his purse the young man's purse. What right could the young man have
to come upon him just as he was perfecting his bliss and rob him of
all that he had in the world? He was conscious all the while that
there was a something wrong in his argument,--that Paul when he
commenced to love the girl knew nothing of his friend's love,--that
the girl, though Paul had never come in the way, might probably have
been as obdurate as she was now to his entreaties. He knew all this
because his mind was clear. But yet the injustice,--at any rate, the
misery was so great, that to forgive it and to reward it would be
weak, womanly, and foolish. Roger Carbury did not quite believe in
the forgiveness of injuries. If you pardon all the evil done to you,
you encourage others to do you evil! If you give your cloak to him
who steals your coat, how long will it be before your shirt and
trousers will go also? Roger Carbury returned that afternoon to
Suffolk, and as he thought of it all throughout the journey, he
resolved that he would never forgive Paul Montague if Paul Montague
should become his cousin's husband.




CHAPTER IX.

THE GREAT RAILWAY TO VERA CRUZ.


"You have been a guest in his house. Then, I guess, the thing's about
as good as done." These words were spoken with a fine, sharp, nasal
twang by a brilliantly-dressed American gentleman in one of the
smartest private rooms of the great railway hotel at Liverpool, and
they were addressed to a young Englishman who was sitting opposite
to him. Between them there was a table covered with maps, schedules,
and printed programmes. The American was smoking a very large cigar,
which he kept constantly turning in his mouth, and half of which
was inside his teeth. The Englishman had a short pipe. Mr. Hamilton
K. Fisker, of the firm of Fisker, Montague, and Montague, was the
American, and the Englishman was our friend Paul, the junior member
of that firm.

"But I didn't even speak to him," said Paul.

"In commercial affairs that matters nothing. It quite justifies you
in introducing me. We are not going to ask your friend to do us a
favour. We don't want to borrow money."

"I thought you did."

"If he'll go in for the thing he'd be one of us, and there would
be no borrowing then. He'll join us if he's as clever as they say,
because he'll see his way to making a couple of million of dollars
out of it. If he'd take the trouble to run over and show himself in
San Francisco, he'd make double that. The moneyed men would go in
with him at once, because they know that he understands the game and
has got the pluck. A man who has done what he has by financing in
Europe,--by George! there's no limit to what he might do with us.
We're a bigger people than any of you and have more room. We go after
bigger things, and don't stand shilly-shally on the brink as you do.
But Melmotte pretty nigh beats the best among us. Anyway he should
come and try his luck, and he couldn't have a bigger thing or a safer
thing than this. He'd see it immediately if I could talk to him for
half an hour."

"Mr. Fisker," said Paul mysteriously, "as we are partners, I think
I ought to let you know that many people speak very badly of Mr.
Melmotte's honesty."

Mr. Fisker smiled gently, turned his cigar twice round in his mouth,
and then closed one eye. "There is always a want of charity," he
said, "when a man is successful."

The scheme in question was the grand proposal for a South Central
Pacific and Mexican railway, which was to run from the Salt Lake
City, thus branching off from the San Francisco and Chicago
line,--and pass down through the fertile lands of New Mexico and
Arizona, into the territory of the Mexican Republic, run by the city
of Mexico, and come out on the gulf at the port of Vera Cruz. Mr.
Fisker admitted at once that it was a great undertaking, acknowledged
that the distance might be perhaps something over 2,000 miles,
acknowledged that no computation had or perhaps could be made as to
the probable cost of the railway; but seemed to think that questions
such as these were beside the mark and childish. Melmotte, if he
would go into the matter at all, would ask no such questions.

But we must go back a little. Paul Montague had received a telegram
from his partner, Hamilton K. Fisker, sent on shore at Queenstown
from one of the New York liners, requesting him to meet Fisker at
Liverpool immediately. With this request he had felt himself bound to
comply. Personally he had disliked Fisker,--and perhaps not the less
so because when in California he had never found himself able to
resist the man's good humour, audacity, and cleverness combined. He
had found himself talked into agreeing with any project which Mr.
Fisker might have in hand. It was altogether against the grain with
him, and yet by his own consent, that the flour-mill had been opened
at Fiskerville. He trembled for his money and never wished to see
Fisker again; but still, when Fisker came to England, he was proud
to remember that Fisker was his partner, and he obeyed the order and
went down to Liverpool.

If the flour-mill had frightened him, what must the present project
have done! Fisker explained that he had come with two objects,--first
to ask the consent of the English partner to the proposed change in
their business, and secondly to obtain the co-operation of English
capitalists. The proposed change in the business meant simply the
entire sale of the establishment at Fiskerville, and the absorption
of the whole capital in the work of getting up the railway. "If you
could realise all the money it wouldn't make a mile of the railway,"
said Paul. Mr. Fisker laughed at him. The object of Fisker, Montague,
and Montague was not to make a railway to Vera Cruz, but to float
a company. Paul thought that Mr. Fisker seemed to be indifferent
whether the railway should ever be constructed or not. It was clearly
his idea that fortunes were to be made out of the concern before a
spadeful of earth had been moved. If brilliantly printed programmes
might avail anything, with gorgeous maps, and beautiful little
pictures of trains running into tunnels beneath snowy mountains and
coming out of them on the margin of sunlit lakes, Mr. Fisker had
certainly done much. But Paul, when he saw all these pretty things,
could not keep his mind from thinking whence had come the money to
pay for them. Mr. Fisker had declared that he had come over to obtain
his partner's consent, but it seemed to that partner that a great
deal had been done without any consent. And Paul's fears on this hand
were not allayed by finding that on all these beautiful papers he
himself was described as one of the agents and general managers of
the company. Each document was signed Fisker, Montague, and Montague.
References on all matters were to be made to Fisker, Montague, and
Montague,--and in one of the documents it was stated that a member
of the firm had proceeded to London with the view of attending to
British interests in the matter. Fisker had seemed to think that his
young partner would express unbounded satisfaction at the greatness
which was thus falling upon him. A certain feeling of importance,
not altogether unpleasant, was produced, but at the same time there
was another conviction forced upon Montague's mind, not altogether
pleasant, that his money was being made to disappear without any
consent given by him, and that it behoved him to be cautious lest
such consent should be extracted from him unawares.

"What has become of the mill?" he asked.

"We have put an agent into it."

"Is not that dangerous? What check have you on him?"

"He pays us a fixed sum, sir. But, my word! when there is such a
thing as this on hand a trumpery mill like that is not worth speaking
of."

"You haven't sold it?"

"Well;--no. But we've arranged a price for a sale."

"You haven't taken the money for it?"

"Well;--yes; we have. We've raised money on it, you know. You see you
weren't there, and so the two resident partners acted for the firm.
But Mr. Montague, you'd better go with us. You had indeed."

"And about my own income?"

"That's a flea-bite. When we've got a little ahead with this it won't
matter, sir, whether you spend twenty thousand or forty thousand
dollars a year. We've got the concession from the United States
Government through the territories, and we're in correspondence with
the President of the Mexican Republic. I've no doubt we've an office
open already in Mexico and another at Vera Cruz."

"Where's the money to come from?"

"Money to come from, sir? Where do you suppose the money comes from
in all these undertakings? If we can float the shares, the money'll
come in quick enough. We hold three million dollars of the stock
ourselves."

"Six hundred thousand pounds!" said Montague.

"We take them at par, of course,--and as we sell we shall pay for
them. But of course we shall only sell at a premium. If we can run
them up even to 110, there would be three hundred thousand dollars.
But we'll do better than that. I must try and see Melmotte at once.
You had better write a letter now."

"I don't know the man."

"Never mind. Look here--I'll write it, and you can sign it."
Whereupon Mr. Fisker did write the following letter:--


Langham Hotel, London.
March 4, 18--.

DEAR SIR,--I have the pleasure of informing you that my
partner, Mr. Fisker,--of Fisker, Montague, and Montague,
of San Francisco,--is now in London with the view of
allowing British capitalists to assist in carrying out
perhaps the greatest work of the age,--namely, the South
Central Pacific and Mexican Railway, which is to give