The Way We Live Now Part 49

"I agree with you there;--I do indeed," said Lord Nidderdale.

"And no governor shall make me marry. I've thought a great deal about it since that other time, and that's what I've come to determine."

"But I don't know why you shouldn't--just marry me--because you--like me."

"Only,--just because I don't. Well; I do like you, Lord Nidderdale."

"Thanks;--so much!"

"I like you ever so,--only marrying a person is different."

"There's something in that, to be sure."

"And I don't mind telling you," said Marie with an almost solemn expression on her countenance, "because you are good-natured and won't get me into a sc.r.a.pe if you can help it, that I do like somebody else;--oh, so much."

"I supposed that was it."

"That is it."

"It's a deuced pity. The governors had settled everything, and we should have been awfully jolly. I'd have gone in for all the things you go in for; and though your governor was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g us up a bit, there would have been plenty of tin to go on with. You couldn't think of it again?"

"I tell you, my lord, I'm--in love."

"Oh, ah;--yes. So you were saying. It's an awful bore. That's all. I shall come to the party all the same if you send me a ticket." And so Nidderdale took his dismissal, and went away,--not however without an idea that the marriage would still come off. There was always,--so he thought,--such a bother about things before they would get themselves fixed. This happened some days after Mr. Broune's proposal to Lady Carbury, more than a week since Marie had seen Sir Felix. As soon as Lord Nidderdale was gone she wrote again to Sir Felix begging that she might hear from him,--and entrusted her letter to Didon.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

MR. BROUNE'S PERILS.

Lady Carbury had allowed herself two days for answering Mr. Broune's proposition. It was made on Tuesday night and she was bound by her promise to send a reply some time on Thursday. But early on the Wednesday morning she had made up her mind; and at noon on that day her letter was written. She had spoken to Hetta about the man, and she had seen that Hetta had disliked him. She was not disposed to be much guided by Hetta's opinion. In regard to her daughter she was always influenced by a vague idea that Hetta was an unnecessary trouble. There was an excellent match ready for her if she would only accept it. There was no reason why Hetta should continue to add herself to the family burden. She never said this even to herself,--but she felt it, and was not therefore inclined to consult Hetta's comfort on this occasion. But nevertheless, what her daughter said had its effect. She had encountered the troubles of one marriage, and they had been very bad. She did not look upon that marriage as a mistake,--having even up to this day a consciousness that it had been the business of her life, as a portionless girl, to obtain maintenance and position at the expense of suffering and servility. But that had been done. The maintenance was, indeed, again doubtful, because of her son's vices; but it might so probably be again secured,--by means of her son's beauty! Hetta had said that Mr.

Broune liked his own way. Had not she herself found that all men liked their own way? And she liked her own way. She liked the comfort of a home to herself. Personally she did not want the companions.h.i.+p of a husband. And what scenes would there be between Felix and the man! And added to all this there was something within her, almost amounting to conscience, which told her that it was not right that she should burden any one with the responsibility and inevitable troubles of such a son as her son Felix. What would she do were her husband to command her to separate herself from her son? In such circ.u.mstances she would certainly separate herself from her husband.

Having considered these things deeply, she wrote as follows to Mr.

Broune:--

DEAREST FRIEND,

I need not tell you that I have thought much of your generous and affectionate offer. How could I refuse such a prospect as you offer me without much thought? I regard your career as the most n.o.ble which a man's ambition can achieve. And in that career no one is your superior. I cannot but be proud that such a one as you should have asked me to be his wife. But, my friend, life is subject to wounds which are incurable, and my life has been so wounded. I have not strength left me to make my heart whole enough to be worthy of your acceptance. I have been so cut and scotched and lopped by the sufferings which I have endured that I am best alone. It cannot all be described;--and yet with you I would have no reticence. I would put the whole history before you to read, with all my troubles past and still present, all my hopes, and all my fears,--with every circ.u.mstance as it has pa.s.sed by and every expectation that remains, were it not that the poor tale would be too long for your patience. The result of it would be to make you feel that I am no longer fit to enter in upon a new home. I should bring showers instead of suns.h.i.+ne, melancholy in lieu of mirth.

I will, however, be bold enough to a.s.sure you that could I bring myself to be the wife of any man I would now become your wife. But I shall never marry again.

Nevertheless, I am your most affectionate friend,

MATILDA CARBURY.

About six o'clock in the afternoon she sent this letter to Mr.

Broune's rooms in Pall Mall East, and then sat for awhile alone,--full of regrets. She had thrown away from her a firm footing which would certainly have served her for her whole life. Even at this moment she was in debt,--and did not know how to pay her debts without mortgaging her life income. She longed for some staff on which she could lean. She was afraid of the future. When she would sit with her paper before her, preparing her future work for the press, copying a bit here and a bit there, inventing historical details, dovetailing her chronicle, her head would sometimes seem to be going round as she remembered the unpaid baker, and her son's horses, and his unmeaning dissipation, and all her doubts about the marriage. As regarded herself, Mr. Broune would have made her secure,--but that now was all over. Poor woman! This at any rate may be said for her,--that had she accepted the man her regrets would have been as deep.

Mr. Broune's feelings were more decided in their tone than those of the lady. He had not made his offer without consideration, and yet from the very moment in which it had been made he repented it. That gently sarcastic appellation by which Lady Carbury had described him to herself when he had kissed her best explained that side of Mr.

Broune's character which showed itself in this matter. He was a susceptible old goose. Had she allowed him to kiss her without objection, the kissing might probably have gone on; and, whatever might have come of it, there would have been no offer of marriage. He had believed that her little manoeuvres had indicated love on her part, and he had felt himself constrained to reciprocate the pa.s.sion.

She was beautiful in his eyes. She was bright. She wore her clothes like a lady; and,--if it was written in the Book of the Fates that some lady was to sit at the top of his table,--Lady Carbury would look as well there as any other. She had repudiated the kiss, and therefore he had felt himself bound to obtain for himself the right to kiss her.

The offer had no sooner been made than he met her son reeling in, drunk, at the front door. As he made his escape the lad had insulted him. This perhaps helped to open his eyes. When he woke the next morning, or rather late in the next day, after his night's work, he was no longer able to tell himself that the world was all right with him. Who does not know that sudden thoughtfulness at waking, that first matutinal retrospection, and prospection, into things as they have been and are to be; and the lowness of heart, the blankness of hope which follows the first remembrance of some folly lately done, some word ill-spoken, some money misspent,--or perhaps a cigar too much, or a gla.s.s of brandy and soda-water which he should have left untasted? And when things have gone well, how the waker comforts himself among the bedclothes as he claims for himself to be whole all over, teres atque rotundus,--so to have managed his little affairs that he has to fear no harm, and to blush inwardly at no error! Mr.

Broune, the way of whose life took him among many perils, who in the course of his work had to steer his bark among many rocks, was in the habit of thus auditing his daily account as he shook off sleep about noon,--for such was his lot, that he seldom was in bed before four or five in the morning. On this Wednesday he found that he could not balance his sheet comfortably. He had taken a very great step and he feared that he had not taken it with wisdom. As he drank the cup of tea with which his servant supplied him while he was yet in bed, he could not say of himself, teres atque rotundus, as he was wont to do when things were well with him. Everything was to be changed. As he lit a cigarette he bethought himself that Lady Carbury would not like him to smoke in her bedroom. Then he remembered other things. "I'll be d---- if he shall live in my house," he said to himself.

And there was no way out of it. It did not occur to the man that his offer could be refused. During the whole of that day he went about among his friends in a melancholy fas.h.i.+on, saying little snappish uncivil things at the club, and at last dining by himself with about fifteen newspapers around him. After dinner he did not speak a word to any man, but went early to the office of the newspaper in Trafalgar Square at which he did his nightly work. Here he was lapped in comforts,--if the best of chairs, of sofas, of writing tables, and of reading lamps can make a man comfortable who has to read nightly thirty columns of a newspaper, or at any rate to make himself responsible for their contents.

He seated himself to his work like a man, but immediately saw Lady Carbury's letter on the table before him. It was his custom when he did not dine at home to have such doc.u.ments brought to him at his office as had reached his home during his absence;--and here was Lady Carbury's letter. He knew her writing well, and was aware that here was the confirmation of his fate. It had not been expected, as she had given herself another day for her answer,--but here it was, beneath his hand. Surely this was almost unfeminine haste. He chucked the letter, unopened, a little from him, and endeavoured to fix his attention on some printed slip that was ready for him. For some ten minutes his eyes went rapidly down the lines, but he found that his mind did not follow what he was reading. He struggled again, but still his thoughts were on the letter. He did not wish to open it, having some vague idea that, till the letter should have been read, there was a chance of escape. The letter would not become due to be read till the next day. It should not have been there now to tempt his thoughts on this night. But he could do nothing while it lay there. "It shall be a part of the bargain that I shall never have to see him," he said to himself, as he opened it. The second line told him that the danger was over.

When he had read so far he stood up with his back to the fireplace, leaving the letter on the table. Then, after all, the woman wasn't in love with him! But that was a reading of the affair which he could hardly bring himself to look upon as correct. The woman had shown her love by a thousand signs. There was no doubt, however, that she now had her triumph. A woman always has a triumph when she rejects a man,--and more especially when she does so at a certain time of life.

Would she publish her triumph? Mr. Broune would not like to have it known about among brother editors, or by the world at large, that he had offered to marry Lady Carbury and that Lady Carbury had refused him. He had escaped; but the sweetness of his present safety was not in proportion to the bitterness of his late fears.

He could not understand why Lady Carbury should have refused him! As he reflected upon it, all memory of her son for the moment pa.s.sed away from him. Full ten minutes had pa.s.sed, during which he had still stood upon the rug, before he read the entire letter. "'Cut and scotched and lopped!' I suppose she has been," he said to himself. He had heard much of Sir Patrick, and knew well that the old general had been no lamb. "I shouldn't have cut her, or scotched her, or lopped her." When he had read the whole letter patiently there crept upon him gradually a feeling of admiration for her, greater than he had ever yet felt,--and, for awhile, he almost thought that he would renew his offer to her. "'Showers instead of suns.h.i.+ne; melancholy instead of mirth,'" he repeated to himself. "I should have done the best for her, taking the showers and the melancholy if they were necessary."

He went to his work in a mixed frame of mind, but certainly without that dragging weight which had oppressed him when he entered the room. Gradually, through the night, he realized the conviction that he had escaped, and threw from him altogether the idea of repeating his offer. Before he left he wrote her a line--

Be it so. It need not break our friends.h.i.+p.

N. B.

This he sent by a special messenger, who returned with a note to his lodgings long before he was up on the following morning.

No;--no; certainly not. No word of this will ever pa.s.s my mouth.

M. C.

Mr. Broune thought that he was very well out of the danger, and resolved that Lady Carbury should never want anything that his friends.h.i.+p could do for her.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

THE BOARD-ROOM.

On Friday, the 21st June, the Board of the South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway sat in its own room behind the Exchange, as was the Board's custom every Friday. On this occasion all the members were there, as it had been understood that the chairman was to make a special statement. There was the great chairman as a matter of course. In the midst of his numerous and immense concerns he never threw over the railway, or delegated to other less experienced hands those cares which the commercial world had intrusted to his own. Lord Alfred was there, with Mr. Cohenlupe, the Hebrew gentleman, and Paul Montague, and Lord Nidderdale,--and even Sir Felix Carbury. Sir Felix had come, being very anxious to buy and sell, and not as yet having had an opportunity of realizing his golden hopes, although he had actually paid a thousand pounds in hard money into Mr. Melmotte's hands. The secretary, Mr. Miles Grendall, was also present as a matter of course. The Board always met at three, and had generally been dissolved at a quarter past three. Lord Alfred and Mr. Cohenlupe sat at the chairman's right and left hand. Paul Montague generally sat immediately below, with Miles Grendall opposite to him;--but on this occasion the young lord and the young baronet took the next places.

It was a nice little family party, the great chairman with his two aspiring sons-in-law, his two particular friends,--the social friend, Lord Alfred, and the commercial friend Mr. Cohenlupe,--and Miles, who was Lord Alfred's son. It would have been complete in its friendliness, but for Paul Montague, who had lately made himself disagreeable to Mr. Melmotte;--and most ungratefully so, for certainly no one had been allowed so free a use of the shares as the younger member of the house of Fisker, Montague, and Montague.

It was understood that Mr. Melmotte was to make a statement. Lord Nidderdale and Sir Felix had conceived that this was to be done as it were out of the great man's heart, of his own wish, so that something of the condition of the company might be made known to the directors of the company. But this was not perhaps exactly the truth. Paul Montague had insisted on giving vent to certain doubts at the last meeting but one, and, having made himself very disagreeable indeed, had forced this trouble on the great chairman. On the intermediate Friday the chairman had made himself very unpleasant to Paul, and this had seemed to be an effort on his part to frighten the inimical director out of his opposition, so that the promise of a statement need not be fulfilled. What nuisance can be so great to a man busied with immense affairs, as to have to explain,--or to attempt to explain,--small details to men incapable of understanding them? But Montague had stood to his guns. He had not intended, he said, to dispute the commercial success of the company. But he felt very strongly, and he thought that his brother directors should feel as strongly, that it was necessary that they should know more than they did know. Lord Alfred had declared that he did not in the least agree with his brother director. "If anybody don't understand, it's his own fault," said Mr. Cohenlupe. But Paul would not give way, and it was understood that Mr. Melmotte would make a statement.