The Way We Live Now - 63

Who were the happy people that were driven neither by ambition, nor
poverty, nor greed, nor the cross purposes of unhappy love, to stifle
and trample upon their feelings? She had known no one so blessed.
She had never been happy after that fashion. She herself had within
the last few weeks refused to join her lot with that of a man she
really liked, because her wicked son was so grievous a burden on her
shoulders. A woman, she thought, if she were unfortunate enough to be
a lady without wealth of her own, must give up everything, her body,
her heart,--her very soul if she were that way troubled,--to the
procuring of a fitting maintenance for herself. Why should Hetta hope
to be more fortunate than others? And then the position which chance
now offered to her was fortunate. This cousin of hers, who was so
devoted to her, was in all respects good. He would not torture her by
harsh restraint and cruel temper. He would not drink. He would not
spend his money foolishly. He would allow her all the belongings of
a fair, free life. Lady Carbury reiterated to herself the assertion
that she was manifestly doing a mother's duty by her endeavours to
constrain her girl to marry such a man. With a settled purpose she
was severe and hard. But when she found how harsh her daughter could
be in response to this,--how gloomy, how silent, and how severe in
retaliation,--she was almost frightened at what she herself was
doing. She had not known how stern and how enduring her daughter
could be. "Hetta," she said, "why don't you speak to me?" On this
very day it was Hetta's purpose to visit Mrs. Hurtle at Islington.
She had said no word of her intention to any one. She had chosen
the Friday because on that day she knew her mother would go in the
afternoon to her publisher. There should be no deceit. Immediately
on her return she would tell her mother what she had done. But she
considered herself to be emancipated from control. Among them they
had robbed her of her lover. She had submitted to the robbery, but
she would submit to nothing else. "Hetta, why don't you speak to me?"
said Lady Carbury.

"Because, mamma, there is nothing we can talk about without making
each other unhappy."

"What a dreadful thing to say! Is there no subject in the world to
interest you except that wretched young man?"

"None other at all," said Hetta obstinately.

"What folly it is,--I will not say only to speak like that, but to
allow yourself to entertain such thoughts!"

"How am I to control my thoughts? Do you think, mamma, that after
I had owned to you that I loved a man,--after I had owned it to him
and, worst of all, to myself,--I could have myself separated from
him, and then not think about it? It is a cloud upon everything. It
is as though I had lost my eyesight and my speech. It is as it would
be to you if Felix were to die. It crushes me."

There was an accusation in this allusion to her brother which the
mother felt,--as she was intended to feel it,--but to which she could
make no reply. It accused her of being too much concerned for her son
to feel any real affection for her daughter. "You are ignorant of the
world, Hetta," she said.

"I am having a lesson in it now, at any rate."

"Do you think it is worse than others have suffered before you? In
what little you see around you do you think that girls are generally
able to marry the men upon whom they set their hearts?" She paused,
but Hetta made no answer to this. "Marie Melmotte was as warmly
attached to your brother as you can be to Mr. Montague."

"Marie Melmotte!"

"She thinks as much of her feelings as you do of yours. The truth is
you are indulging a dream. You must wake from it, and shake yourself,
and find out that you, like others, have got to do the best you can
for yourself in order that you may live. The world at large has to
eat dry bread, and cannot get cakes and sweetmeats. A girl, when she
thinks of giving herself to a husband, has to remember this. If she
has a fortune of her own she can pick and choose, but if she have
none she must allow herself to be chosen."

"Then a girl is to marry without stopping even to think whether she
likes the man or not?"

"She should teach herself to like the man, if the marriage be
suitable. I would not have you take a vicious man because he was
rich, or one known to be cruel and imperious. Your cousin Roger, you
know--"

"Mamma," said Hetta, getting up from her seat, "you may as well
believe me. No earthly inducement shall ever make me marry my cousin
Roger. It is to me horrible that you should propose it to me when you
know that I love that other man with my whole heart."

"How can you speak so of one who has treated you with the utmost
contumely?"

"I know nothing of any contumely. What reason have I to be offended
because he has liked a woman whom he knew before he ever saw me? It
has been unfortunate, wretched, miserable; but I do not know that I
have any right whatever to be angry with Mr. Paul Montague." Having
so spoken she walked out of the room without waiting for a further
reply.

It was all very sad to Lady Carbury. She perceived now that she had
driven her daughter to pronounce an absolution of Paul Montague's
sins, and that in this way she had lessened and loosened the barrier
which she had striven to construct between them. But that which
pained her most was the unrealistic, romantic view of life which
pervaded all Hetta's thoughts. How was any girl to live in this world
who could not be taught the folly of such idle dreams?

That afternoon Hetta trusted herself all alone to the mysteries of
the Marylebone underground railway, and emerged with accuracy at
King's Cross. She had studied her geography, and she walked from
thence to Islington. She knew well the name of the street and the
number at which Mrs. Hurtle lived. But when she reached the door she
did not at first dare to stand and raise the knocker. She passed on
to the end of the silent, vacant street, endeavouring to collect her
thoughts, striving to find and to arrange the words with which she
would commence her strange petition. And she endeavoured to dictate
to herself some defined conduct should the woman be insolent to
her. Personally she was not a coward, but she doubted her power of
replying to a rough speech. She could at any rate escape. Should the
worst come to the worst, the woman would hardly venture to impede
her departure. Having gone to the end of the street, she returned
with a very quick step and knocked at the door. It was opened almost
immediately by Ruby Ruggles, to whom she gave her name.

"Oh laws,--Miss Carbury!" said Ruby, looking up into the stranger's
face. "Yes;--sure enough she must be Felix's sister." But Ruby did
not dare to ask any question. She had admitted to all around her
that Sir Felix should not be her lover any more, and that John Crumb
should be allowed to return. But, nevertheless, her heart twittered
as she showed Miss Carbury up to the lodger's sitting-room.

Though it was midsummer Hetta entered the room with her veil down.
She adjusted it as she followed Ruby up the stairs, moved by a sudden
fear of her rival's scrutiny. Mrs. Hurtle rose from her chair and
came forward to greet her visitor, putting out both her hands to do
so. She was dressed with the most scrupulous care,--simply, and in
black, without an ornament of any kind, without a ribbon or a chain
or a flower. But with some woman's purpose at her heart she had so
attired herself as to look her very best. Was it that she thought
that she would vindicate to her rival their joint lover's first
choice, or that she was minded to teach the English girl that an
American woman might have graces of her own? As she came forward she
was gentle and soft in her movements, and a pleasant smile played
round her mouth. Hetta at the first moment was almost dumbfounded by
her beauty,--by that and by her ease and exquisite self-possession.
"Miss Carbury," she said with that low, rich voice which in old
days had charmed Paul almost as much as her loveliness, "I need not
tell you how interested I am in seeing you. May I not ask you to
lay aside your veil, so that we may look at each other fairly?"
Hetta, dumbfounded, not knowing how to speak a word, stood gazing
at the woman when she had removed her veil. She had had no personal
description of Mrs. Hurtle, but had expected something very different
from this! She had thought that the woman would be coarse and big,
with fine eyes and a bright colour. As it was they were both of
the same complexion, both dark, with hair nearly black, with eyes
of the same colour. Hetta thought of all that at the moment,--but
acknowledged to herself that she had no pretension to beauty such as
that which this woman owned. "And so you have come to see me," said
Mrs. Hurtle. "Sit down so that I may look at you. I am glad that you
have come to see me, Miss Carbury."


[Illustration: "Sit down so that I may look at you."]


"I am glad at any rate that you are not angry."

"Why should I be angry? Had the idea been distasteful to me I should
have declined. I know not why, but it is a sort of pleasure to me to
see you. It is a poor time we women have,--is it not,--in becoming
playthings to men? So this Lothario that was once mine, is behaving
badly to you also. Is it so? He is no longer mine, and you may ask me
freely for aid, if there be any that I can give you. If he were an
American I should say that he had behaved badly to me;--but as he is
an Englishman perhaps it is different. Now tell me;--what can I do,
or what can I say?"

"He told me that you could tell me the truth."

"What truth? I will certainly tell you nothing that is not true. You
have quarrelled with him too. Is it not so?"

"Certainly I have quarrelled with him."

"I am not curious;--but perhaps you had better tell me of that. I
know him so well that I can guess that he should give offence. He can
be full of youthful ardour one day, and cautious as old age itself
the next. But I do not suppose that there has been need for such
caution with you. What is it, Miss Carbury?"

Hetta found the telling of her story to be very difficult. "Mrs.
Hurtle," she said, "I had never heard your name when he first asked
me to be his wife."

"I dare say not. Why should he have told you anything of me?"

"Because,--oh, because--. Surely he ought, if it is true that he had
once promised to marry you."

"That certainly is true."

"And you were here, and I knew nothing of it. Of course I should have
been very different to him had I known that,--that,--that--"

"That there was such a woman as Winifrid Hurtle interfering with him.
Then you heard it by chance, and you were offended. Was it not so?"

"And now he tells me that I have been unjust to him and he bids me
ask you. I have not been unjust."

"I am not so sure of that. Shall I tell you what I think? I think
that he has been unjust to me, and that therefore your injustice to
him is no more than his due. I cannot plead for him, Miss Carbury.
To me he has been the last and worst of a long series of, I think,
undeserved misfortune. But whether you will avenge my wrongs must be
for you to decide."

"Why did he go with you to Lowestoft?"

"Because I asked him,--and because, like many men, he cannot be
ill-natured although he can be cruel. He would have given a hand not
to have gone, but he could not say me nay. As you have come here,
Miss Carbury, you may as well know the truth. He did love me, but he
had been talked out of his love by my enemies and his own friends
long before he had ever seen you. I am almost ashamed to tell you my
own part of the story, and yet I know not why I should be ashamed. I
followed him here to England--because I loved him. I came after him,
as perhaps a woman should not do, because I was true of heart. He had
told me that he did not want me;--but I wanted to be wanted, and I
hoped that I might lure him back to his troth. I have utterly failed,
and I must return to my own country,--I will not say a broken-hearted
woman, for I will not admit of such a condition,--but a creature with
a broken spirit. He has misused me foully, and I have simply forgiven
him; not because I am a Christian, but because I am not strong enough
to punish one that I still love. I could not put a dagger into
him,--or I would; or a bullet,--or I would. He has reduced me to a
nothing by his falseness, and yet I cannot injure him! I, who have
sworn to myself that no man should ever lay a finger on me in scorn
without feeling my wrath in return, I cannot punish him. But if you
choose to do so it is not for me to set you against such an act of
justice." Then she paused and looked up to Hetta as though expecting
a reply.

But Hetta had no reply to make. All had been said that she had come
to hear. Every word that the woman had spoken had in truth been a
comfort to her. She had told herself that her visit was to be made in
order that she might be justified in her condemnation of her lover.
She had believed that it was her intention to arm herself with proof
that she had done right in rejecting him. Now she was told that
however false her lover might have been to this other woman he had
been absolutely true to her. The woman had not spoken kindly of
Paul,--had seemed to intend to speak of him with the utmost severity;
but she had so spoken as to acquit him of all sin against Hetta.
What was it to Hetta that her lover had been false to this American
stranger? It did not seem to her to be at all necessary that she
should be angry with her lover on that head. Mrs. Hurtle had told her
that she herself must decide whether she would take upon herself to
avenge her rival's wrongs. In saying that Mrs. Hurtle had taught her
to feel that there were no other wrongs which she need avenge. It was
all done now. If she could only thank the woman for the pleasantness
of her demeanour, and then go, she could, when alone, make up her
mind as to what she would do next. She had not yet told herself she
would submit herself again to Paul Montague. She had only told
herself that, within her own breast, she was bound to forgive him.
"You have been very kind," she said at last,--speaking only because
it was necessary that she should say something.

"It is well that there should be some kindness where there has been
so much that is unkind. Forgive me, Miss Carbury, if I speak plainly
to you. Of course you will go back to him. Of course you will be his
wife. You have told me that you love him dearly, as plainly as I have
told you the same story of myself. Your coming here would of itself
have declared it, even if I did not see your satisfaction at my
account of his treachery to me."

"Oh, Mrs. Hurtle, do not say that of me!"

"But it is true, and I do not in the least quarrel with you on that
account. He has preferred you to me, and as far as I am concerned
there is an end of it. You are a girl, whereas I am a woman,--and he
likes your youth. I have undergone the cruel roughness of the world,
which has not as yet touched you; and therefore you are softer to the
touch. I do not know that you are very superior in other attractions;
but that has sufficed, and you are the victor. I am strong enough
to acknowledge that I have nothing to forgive in you;--and am weak
enough to forgive all his treachery." Hetta was now holding the woman
by the hand, and was weeping, she knew not why. "I am so glad to
have seen you," continued Mrs. Hurtle, "so that I may know what his
wife was like. In a few days I shall return to the States, and then
neither of you will ever be troubled further by Winifrid Hurtle. Tell
him that if he will come and see me once before I go, I will not be
more unkind to him than I can help."

When Hetta did not decline to be the bearer of this message she
must have at any rate resolved that she would see Paul Montague
again,--and to see him would be to tell him that she was again his
own. She now got herself quickly out of the room, absolutely kissing
the woman whom she had both dreaded and despised. As soon as she was
alone in the street she tried to think of it all. How full of beauty
was the face of that American female,--how rich and glorious her
voice in spite of a slight taint of the well-known nasal twang;--and
above all how powerful and at the same time how easy and how gracious
was her manner! That she would be an unfit wife for Paul Montague was
certain to Hetta, but that he or any man should have loved her and
have been loved by her, and then have been willing to part from her,
was wonderful. And yet Paul Montague had preferred herself, Hetta
Carbury, to this woman! Paul had certainly done well for his own
cause when he had referred the younger lady to the elder.

Of her own quarrel of course there must be an end. She had been
unjust to the man, and injustice must of course be remedied by
repentance and confession. As she walked quickly back to the railway
station she brought herself to love her lover more fondly than she
had ever done. He had been true to her from the first hour of their
acquaintance. What truth higher than that has any woman a right to
desire? No doubt she gave to him a virgin heart. No other man had
ever touched her lips, or been allowed to press her hand, or to look
into her eyes with unrebuked admiration. It was her pride to give
herself to the man she loved after this fashion, pure and white as
snow on which no foot has trodden. But in taking him, all that she
wanted was that he should be true to her now and henceforward. The
future must be her own work. As to the "now," she felt that Mrs.
Hurtle had given her sufficient assurance.

She must at once let her mother know this change in her mind. When
she re-entered the house she was no longer sullen, no longer anxious
to be silent, very willing to be gracious if she might be received
with favour,--but quite determined that nothing should shake her
purpose. She went at once into her mother's room, having heard from
the boy at the door that Lady Carbury had returned.

"Hetta, wherever have you been?" asked Lady Carbury.

"Mamma," she said, "I mean to write to Mr. Montague and tell him that
I have been unjust to him."

"Hetta, you must do nothing of the kind," said Lady Carbury, rising
from her seat.

"Yes, mamma. I have been unjust, and I must do so."

"It will be asking him to come back to you."

"Yes, mamma:--that is what I mean. I shall tell him that if he will
come, I will receive him. I know he will come. Oh, mamma, let us be
friends, and I will tell you everything. Why should you grudge me my
love?"

"You have sent him back his brooch," said Lady Carbury hoarsely.

"He shall give it me again. Hear what I have done. I have seen that
American lady."

"Mrs. Hurtle!"

"Yes;--I have been to her. She is a wonderful woman."

"And she has told you wonderful lies."

"Why should she lie to me? She has told me no lies. She said nothing
in his favour."

"I can well believe that. What can any one say in his favour?"

"But she told me that which has assured me that Mr. Montague has
never behaved badly to me. I shall write to him at once. If you like
I will show you the letter."

"Any letter to him, I will tear," said Lady Carbury, full of anger.

"Mamma, I have told you everything, but in this I must judge for
myself." Then Hetta, seeing that her mother would not relent, left
the room without further speech, and immediately opened her desk that
the letter might be written.




CHAPTER XCII.

HAMILTON K. FISKER AGAIN.


Ten days had passed since the meeting narrated in the last
chapter,--ten days, during which Hetta's letter had been sent to her
lover, but in which she had received no reply,--when two gentlemen
met each other in a certain room in Liverpool, who were seen together
in the same room in the early part of this chronicle. These were our
young friend Paul Montague, and our not much older friend Hamilton
K. Fisker. Melmotte had died on the 18th of July, and tidings of the
event had been at once sent by telegraph to San Francisco. Some weeks
before this Montague had written to his partner, giving his account
of the South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway Company,--describing
its condition in England as he then believed it to be,--and urging
Fisker to come over to London. On receipt of a message from his
American correspondent he had gone down to Liverpool, and had
there awaited Fisker's arrival, taking counsel with his friend
Mr. Ramsbottom. In the mean time Hetta's letter was lying at the
Beargarden, Paul having written from his club and having omitted to
desire that the answer should be sent to his lodgings. Just at this
moment things at the Beargarden were not well managed. They were
indeed so ill managed that Paul never received that letter,--which
would have had for him charms greater than those of any letter ever
before written.

"This is a terrible business," said Fisker, immediately on entering
the room in which Montague was waiting him. "He was the last man I'd
have thought would be cut up in that way."

"He was utterly ruined."

"He wouldn't have been ruined,--and couldn't have thought so if he'd
known all he ought to have known. The South Central would have pulled
him through a'most anything if he'd have understood how to play it."

"We don't think much of the South Central here now," said Paul.

"Ah;--that's because you've never above half spirit enough for a big
thing. You nibble at it instead of swallowing it whole,--and then, of
course, folks see that you're only nibbling. I thought that Melmotte
would have had spirit."

"There is, I fear, no doubt that he had committed forgery. It was the
dread of detection as to that which drove him to destroy himself."

"I call it dam clumsy from beginning to end;--dam clumsy. I took him
to be a different man, and I feel more than half ashamed of myself
because I trusted such a fellow. That chap Cohenlupe has got off with
a lot of swag. Only think of Melmotte allowing Cohenlupe to get the
better of him!"

"I suppose the thing will be broken up now at San Francisco,"
suggested Paul.

"Bu'st up at Frisco! Not if I know it. Why should it be bu'st up?
D'you think we're all going to smash there because a fool like
Melmotte blows his brains out in London?"

"He took poison."

"Or p'ison either. That's not just our way. I'll tell you what I'm
going to do; and why I'm over here so uncommon sharp. These shares
are at a'most nothing now in London. I'll buy every share in the
market. I wired for as many as I dar'd, so as not to spoil our own
game, and I'll make a clean sweep of every one of them. Bu'st up! I'm
sorry for him because I thought him a biggish man;--but what he's
done 'll just be the making of us over there. Will you get out of it,
or will you come back to Frisco with me?"

In answer to this Paul asserted most strenuously that he would
not return to San Francisco, and, perhaps too ingenuously, gave
his partner to understand that he was altogether sick of the great
railway, and would under no circumstances have anything more to
do with it. Fisker shrugged his shoulders, and was not displeased
at the proposed rupture. He was prepared to deal fairly,--nay,
generously,--by his partner, having recognised the wisdom of that
great commercial rule which teaches us that honour should prevail
among associates of a certain class; but he had fully convinced
himself that Paul Montague was not a fit partner for Hamilton K.
Fisker. Fisker was not only unscrupulous himself, but he had a
thorough contempt for scruples in others. According to his theory of
life, nine hundred and ninety-nine men were obscure because of their
scruples, whilst the thousandth man predominated and cropped up into
the splendour of commercial wealth because he was free from such
bondage. He had his own theories, too, as to commercial honesty. That
which he had promised to do he would do, if it was within his power.
He was anxious that his bond should be good, and his word equally
so. But the work of robbing mankind in gross by magnificently false
representations, was not only the duty, but also the delight and the
ambition of his life. How could a man so great endure a partnership
with one so small as Paul Montague? "And now what about Winifrid
Hurtle?" asked Fisker.

"What makes you ask? She's in London."

"Oh yes, I know she's in London, and Hurtle's at Frisco, swearing
that he'll come after her. He would, only he hasn't got the dollars."

"He's not dead then?" muttered Paul.

"Dead!--no, nor likely to die. She'll have a bad time of it with him
yet."

"But she divorced him."

"She got a Kansas lawyer to say so, and he's got a Frisco lawyer to
say that there's nothing of the kind. She hasn't played her game
badly neither, for she's had the handling of her own money, and has
put it so that he can't get hold of a dollar. Even if it suited other
ways, you know, I wouldn't marry her myself till I saw my way clearer
out of the wood."

"I'm not thinking of marrying her,--if you mean that."

"There was a talk about it in Frisco;--that's all. And I have heard
Hurtle say when he was a little farther gone than usual that she was
here with you, and that he meant to drop in on you some of these
days." To this Paul made no answer, thinking that he had now both
heard enough and said enough about Mrs. Hurtle.

On the following day the two men, who were still partners, went
together to London, and Fisker immediately became immersed in the
arrangement of Melmotte's affairs. He put himself into communication
with Mr. Brehgert, went in and out of the offices in Abchurch
Lane and the rooms which had belonged to the Railway Company,
cross-examined Croll, mastered the books of the Company as far as
they were to be mastered, and actually summoned both the Grendalls,
father and son, up to London. Lord Alfred, and Miles with him, had
left London a day or two before Melmotte's death,--having probably
perceived that there was no further occasion for their services. To
Fisker's appeal Lord Alfred was proudly indifferent. Who was this
American that he should call upon a director of the London Company
to appear? Does not every one know that a director of a company need
not direct unless he pleases? Lord Alfred, therefore, did not even
condescend to answer Fisker's letter;--but he advised his son to run
up to town. "I should just go, because I'd taken a salary from the
d---- Company," said the careful father, "but when there I wouldn't
say a word." So Miles Grendall, obeying his parent, reappeared upon
the scene.

But Fisker's attention was perhaps most usefully and most sedulously
paid to Madame Melmotte and her daughter. Till Fisker arrived no one
had visited them in their solitude at Hampstead, except Croll, the
clerk. Mr. Brehgert had abstained, thinking that a widow, who had
become a widow under such terrible circumstances, would prefer to be
alone. Lord Nidderdale had made his adieux, and felt that he could do
no more. It need hardly be said that Lord Alfred had too much good
taste to interfere at such a time, although for some months he had
been domestically intimate with the poor woman, or that Sir Felix
would not be prompted by the father's death to renew his suit to
the daughter. But Fisker had not been two days in London before
he went out to Hampstead, and was admitted to Madame Melmotte's
presence;--and he had not been there four days before he was aware
that in spite of all misfortunes, Marie Melmotte was still the
undoubted possessor of a large fortune.

In regard to Melmotte's effects generally the Crown had been induced
to abstain from interfering,--giving up the right to all the man's
plate and chairs and tables which it had acquired by the finding of
the coroner's verdict,--not from tenderness to Madame Melmotte, for
whom no great commiseration was felt, but on behalf of such creditors