The Way We Live Now Part 79

Father Barham stood humbly with his hat off. He was a man of infinite pluck; but outward humility--at any rate at the commencement of an enterprise,--was the rule of his life. "I am the Rev. Mr. Barham,"

said the visitor. "I am the priest of Beccles in Suffolk. I believe I am speaking to Mr. Melmotte."

"That's my name, sir. And what may you want? I don't know whether you are aware that you have found your way into my private dining-room without any introduction. Where the mischief are the fellows, Alfred, who ought to have seen about this? I wish you'd look to it, Miles.

Can anybody who pleases walk into my hall?"

"I came on a mission which I hope may be pleaded as my excuse," said the priest. Although he was bold, he found it difficult to explain his mission. Had not Lord Alfred been there he could have done it better, in spite of the very repulsive manner of the great man himself.

"Is it business?" asked Lord Alfred.

"Certainly it is business," said Father Barham with a smile.

"Then you had better call at the office in Abchurch Lane,--in the City," said his lords.h.i.+p.

"My business is not of that nature. I am a poor servant of the Cross, who is anxious to know from the lips of Mr. Melmotte himself that his heart is inclined to the true Faith."

"Some lunatic," said Melmotte. "See that there ain't any knives about, Alfred."

"No otherwise mad, sir, than they have ever been accounted mad who are enthusiastic in their desire for the souls of others."

"Just get a policeman, Alfred. Or send somebody; you'd better not go away."

"You will hardly need a policeman, Mr. Melmotte," continued the priest. "If I might speak to you alone for a few minutes--"

"Certainly not;--certainly not. I am very busy, and if you will not go away you'll have to be taken away. I wonder whether anybody knows him."

"Mr. Carbury, of Carbury Hall, is my friend."

"Carbury! D---- the Carburys! Did any of the Carburys send you here?

A set of beggars! Why don't you do something, Alfred, to get rid of him?"

"You'd better go," said Lord Alfred. "Don't make a rumpus, there's a good fellow;--but just go."

"There shall be no rumpus," said the priest, waxing wrathful. "I asked for you at the door, and was told to come in by your own servants. Have I been uncivil that you should treat me in this fas.h.i.+on?"

"You're in the way," said Lord Alfred.

"It's a piece of gross impertinence," said Melmotte. "Go away."

"Will you not tell me before I go whether I shall pray for you as one whose steps in the right path should be made sure and firm; or as one still in error and in darkness?"

"What the mischief does he mean?" asked Melmotte.

"He wants to know whether you're a papist," said Lord Alfred.

"What the deuce is it to him?" almost screamed Melmotte;--whereupon Father Barham bowed and took his leave.

"That's a remarkable thing," said Melmotte,--"very remarkable." Even this poor priest's mad visit added to his inflation. "I suppose he was in earnest."

"Mad as a hatter," said Lord Alfred.

"But why did he come to me in his madness--to me especially? That's what I want to know. I'll tell you what it is. There isn't a man in all England at this moment thought of so much as--your humble servant. I wonder whether the 'Morning Pulpit' people sent him here now to find out really what is my religion."

"Mad as a hatter," said Lord Alfred again;--"just that and no more."

"My dear fellow, I don't think you've the gift of seeing very far.

The truth is they don't know what to make of me;--and I don't intend that they shall. I'm playing my game, and there isn't one of 'em understands it except myself. It's no good my sitting here, you know.

I shan't be able to move. How am I to get at you if I want anything?"

"What can you want? There'll be lots of servants about."

"I'll have this bar down, at any rate." And he did succeed in having removed the bar which had been specially put up to prevent his intrusion on his own guests in his own house. "I look upon that fellow's coming here as a very singular sign of the times," he went on to say. "They'll want before long to know where I have my clothes made, and who measures me for my boots!" Perhaps the most remarkable circ.u.mstance in the career of this remarkable man was the fact that he came almost to believe in himself.

Father Barham went away certainly disgusted; and yet not altogether disheartened. The man had not declared that he was not a Roman Catholic. He had shown himself to be a brute. He had blasphemed and cursed. He had been outrageously uncivil to a man whom he must have known to be a minister of G.o.d. He had manifested himself to this priest, who had been born an English gentleman, as being no gentleman. But, not the less might he be a good Catholic,--or good enough at any rate to be influential on the right side. To his eyes Melmotte, with all his insolent vulgarity, was infinitely a more hopeful man than Roger Carbury. "He insulted me," said Father Barham to a brother religionist that evening within the cloisters of St.

Fabricius.

"Did he intend to insult you?"

"Certainly he did. But what of that? It is not by the hands of polished men, nor even of the courteous, that this work has to be done. He was preparing for some great festival, and his mind was intent upon that."

"He entertains the Emperor of China this very day," said the brother priest, who, as a resident in London, heard from time to time what was being done.

"The Emperor of China! Ah, that accounts for it. I do think that he is on our side, even though he gave me but little encouragement for saying so. Will they vote for him, here at Westminster?"

"Our people will. They think that he is rich and can help them."

"There is no doubt of his wealth, I suppose," said Father Barham.

"Some people do doubt;--but others say he is the richest man in the world."

"He looked like it,--and spoke like it," said Father Barham. "Think what such a man might do, if he be really the wealthiest man in the world! And if he had been against us would he not have said so?

Though he was uncivil, I am glad that I saw him." Father Barham, with a simplicity that was singularly mingled with his religious cunning, made himself believe before he returned to Beccles that Mr. Melmotte was certainly a Roman Catholic.

CHAPTER LVII.

LORD NIDDERDALE TRIES HIS HAND AGAIN.

Lord Nidderdale had half consented to renew his suit to Marie Melmotte. He had at any rate half promised to call at Melmotte's house on the Sunday with the object of so doing. As far as that promise had been given it was broken, for on the Sunday he was not seen in Bruton Street. Though not much given to severe thinking, he did feel that on this occasion there was need for thought. His father's property was not very large. His father and his grandfather had both been extravagant men, and he himself had done something towards adding to the family embarra.s.sments. It had been an understood thing, since he had commenced life, that he was to marry an heiress. In such families as his, when such results have been achieved, it is generally understood that matters shall be put right by an heiress. It has become an inst.i.tution, like primogeniture, and is almost as serviceable for maintaining the proper order of things.

Rank squanders money; trade makes it;--and then trade purchases rank by re-gilding its splendour. The arrangement, as it affects the aristocracy generally, is well understood, and was quite approved of by the old marquis--so that he had felt himself to be justified in eating up the property, which his son's future marriage would renew as a matter of course. Nidderdale himself had never dissented, had entertained no fanciful theory opposed to this view, had never alarmed his father by any liaison tending towards matrimony with any undowered beauty;--but had claimed his right to "have his fling"

before he devoted himself to the reintegration of the family property. His father had felt that it would be wrong and might probably be foolish to oppose so natural a desire. He had regarded all the circ.u.mstances of "the fling" with indulgent eyes. But there arose some little difference as to the duration of the fling, and the father had at last found himself compelled to inform his son that if the fling were carried on much longer it must be done with internecine war between himself and his heir. Nidderdale, whose sense and temper were alike good, saw the thing quite in the proper light.

He a.s.sured his father that he had no intention of "cutting up rough,"

declared that he was ready for the heiress as soon as the heiress should be put in his way, and set himself honestly about the task imposed on him. This had all been arranged at Auld Reekie Castle during the last winter, and the reader knows the result.

But the affair had a.s.sumed abnormal difficulties. Perhaps the Marquis had been wrong in flying at wealth which was reputed to be almost unlimited, but which was not absolutely fixed. A couple of hundred thousand pounds down might have been secured with greater ease. But here there had been a prospect of endless money,--of an inheritance which might not improbably make the Auld Reekie family conspicuous for its wealth even among the most wealthy of the n.o.bility. The old man had fallen into the temptation, and abnormal difficulties had been the result. Some of these the reader knows. Latterly two difficulties had culminated above the others. The young lady preferred another gentleman, and disagreeable stories were afloat, not only as to the way in which the money had been made, but even as to its very existence.

The Marquis, however, was a man who hated to be beaten. As far as he could learn from inquiry, the money would be there or, at least, so much money as had been promised. A considerable sum, sufficient to secure the bridegroom from absolute s.h.i.+pwreck,--though by no means enough to make a brilliant marriage,--had in truth been already settled on Marie, and was, indeed, in her possession. As to that, her father had armed himself with a power of attorney for drawing the income,--but had made over the property to his daughter, so that in the event of unforeseen accidents on 'Change, he might retire to obscure comfort, and have the means perhaps of beginning again with whitewashed cleanliness. When doing this, he had doubtless not antic.i.p.ated the grandeur to which he would soon rise, or the fact that he was about to embark on seas so dangerous that this little harbour of refuge would hardly offer security to his vessel. Marie had been quite correct in her story to her favoured lover. And the Marquis's lawyer had ascertained that if Marie ever married before she herself had restored this money to her father, her husband would be so far safe,--with this as a certainty and the immense remainder in prospect. The Marquis had determined to persevere. Pickering was to be added. Mr. Melmotte had been asked to depone the t.i.tle-deeds, and had promised to do so as soon as the day of the wedding should have been fixed with the consent of all the parties. The Marquis's lawyer had ventured to express a doubt; but the Marquis had determined to persevere. The reader will, I trust, remember that those dreadful misgivings, which are I trust agitating his own mind, have been borne in upon him by information which had not as yet reached the Marquis in all its details.