The Way We Live Now Part 93

"I am Miss Carbury," said Hetta in a very low voice.

"Oh, indeed;--Miss Carbury!--the sister of Sir Felix Carbury?" There was something in the tone of the man's voice which grated painfully on Hetta's ears,--but she answered the question. "Oh;--Sir Felix's sister! May I be permitted to ask whether--you have any business with my daughter?" The story was a hard one to tell, with all the workmen around her, in the midst of the lumber, with the coa.r.s.e face of the suspicious man looking down upon her; but she did tell it very simply. She had come with a message from her brother. There had been something between her brother and Miss Melmotte, and her brother had felt that it would be best that he should acknowledge that it must be all over. "I wonder whether that is true," said Melmotte, looking at her out of his great coa.r.s.e eyes, with his eyebrows knit, with his hat on his head and his hands in his pockets. Hetta, not knowing how, at the moment, to repudiate the suspicion expressed, was silent.

"Because, you know, there has been a deal of falsehood and double dealing. Sir Felix has behaved infamously; yes,--by G----, infamously. A day or two before my daughter started, he gave me a written a.s.surance that the whole thing was over, and now he sends you here. How am I to know what you are really after?"

"I have come because I thought I could do some good," she said, trembling with anger and fear. "I was speaking to your daughter at your party."

"Oh, you were there;--were you? It may be as you say, but how is one to tell? When one has been deceived like that, one is apt to be suspicious, Miss Carbury." Here was one who had spent his life in lying to the world, and who was in his very heart shocked at the atrocity of a man who had lied to him! "You are not plotting another journey to Liverpool;--are you?" To this Hetta could make no answer.

The insult was too much, but alone, unsupported, she did not know how to give him back scorn for scorn. At last he proposed to take her across to Bruton Street himself and at his bidding she walked by his side. "May I hear what you say to her?" he asked.

"If you suspect me, Mr. Melmotte, I had better not see her at all. It is only that there may no longer be any doubt."

"You can say it all before me."

"No;--I could not do that. But I have told you, and you can say it for me. If you please, I think I will go home now."

But Melmotte knew that his daughter would not believe him on such a subject. This girl she probably would believe. And though Melmotte himself found it difficult to trust anybody, he thought that there was more possible good than evil to be expected from the proposed interview. "Oh, you shall see her," he said. "I don't suppose she's such a fool as to try that kind of thing again." Then the door in Bruton Street was opened, and Hetta, repenting her mission, found herself almost pushed into the hall. She was bidden to follow Melmotte upstairs, and was left alone in the drawing-room, as she thought, for a long time. Then the door was slowly opened and Marie crept into the room. "Miss Carbury," she said, "this is so good of you,--so good of you! I do so love you for coming to me! You said you would love me. You will; will you not?" and Marie, sitting down by the stranger, took her hand and encircled her waist.

"Mr. Melmotte has told you why I have come."

"Yes;--that is, I don't know. I never believe what papa says to me."

To poor Hetta such an announcement as this was horrible. "We are at daggers drawn. He thinks I ought to do just what he tells me, as though my very soul were not my own. I won't agree to that;--would you?" Hetta had not come there to preach disobedience, but could not fail to remember at the moment that she was not disposed to obey her mother in an affair of the same kind. "What does he say, dear?"

Hetta's message was to be conveyed in three words, and when those were told, there was nothing more to be said. "It must all be over, Miss Melmotte."

"Is that his message, Miss Carbury?" Hetta nodded her head. "Is that all?"

"What more can I say? The other night you told me to bid him send you word. And I thought he ought to do so. I gave him your message, and I have brought back the answer. My brother, you know, has no income of his own;--nothing at all."

"But I have," said Marie with eagerness.

"But your father--"

"It does not depend upon papa. If papa treats me badly, I can give it to my husband. I know I can. If I can venture, cannot he?"

"I think it is impossible."

"Impossible! Nothing should be impossible. All the people that one hears of that are really true to their loves never find anything impossible. Does he love me, Miss Carbury? It all depends on that.

That's what I want to know." She paused, but Hetta could not answer the question. "You must know about your brother. Don't you know whether he does love me? If you know I think you ought to tell me."

Hetta was still silent. "Have you nothing to say?"

"Miss Melmotte-" began poor Hetta very slowly.

"Call me Marie. You said you would love me, did you not? I don't even know what your name is."

"My name is Hetta."

"Hetta;--that's short for something. But it's very pretty. I have no brother, no sister. And I'll tell you, though you must not tell anybody again;--I have no real mother. Madame Melmotte is not my mamma, though papa chooses that it should be thought so." All this she whispered, with rapid words, almost into Hetta's ear. "And papa is so cruel to me! He beats me sometimes." The new friend, round whom Marie still had her arm, shuddered as she heard this. "But I never will yield a bit for that. When he boxes and thumps me I always turn and gnash my teeth at him. Can you wonder that I want to have a friend? Can you be surprised that I should be always thinking of my lover? But,--if he doesn't love me, what am I to do then?"

"I don't know what I am to say," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Hetta amidst her sobs.

Whether the girl was good or bad, to be sought or to be avoided, there was so much tragedy in her position that Hetta's heart was melted with sympathy.

"I wonder whether you love anybody, and whether he loves you," said Marie. Hetta certainly had not come there to talk of her own affairs, and made no reply to this. "I suppose you won't tell me about yourself."

"I wish I could tell you something for your own comfort."

"He will not try again, you think?"

"I am sure he will not."

"I wonder what he fears. I should fear nothing,--nothing. Why should not we walk out of the house, and be married any way? n.o.body has a right to stop me. Papa could only turn me out of his house. I will venture if he will."

It seemed to Hetta that even listening to such a proposition amounted to falsehood,--to that guilt of which Mr. Melmotte had dared to suppose that she could be capable. "I cannot listen to it. Indeed I cannot listen to it. My brother is sure that he cannot--cannot--"

"Cannot love me, Hetta! Say it out, if it is true."

"It is true," said Hetta. There came over the face of the other girl a stern hard look, as though she had resolved at the moment to throw away from her all soft womanly things. And she relaxed her hold on Hetta's waist. "Oh, my dear, I do not mean to be cruel, but you ask me for the truth."

"Yes; I did."

"Men are not, I think, like girls."

"I suppose not," said Marie slowly. "What liars they are, what brutes;--what wretches! Why should he tell me lies like that? Why should he break my heart? That other man never said that he loved me.

Did he never love me,--once?"

Hetta could hardly say that her brother was incapable of such love as Marie expected, but she knew that it was so. "It is better that you should think of him no more."

"Are you like that? If you had loved a man and told him of it, and agreed to be his wife and done as I have, could you bear to be told to think of him no more,--just as though you had got rid of a servant or a horse? I won't love him. No;--I'll hate him. But I must think of him. I'll marry that other man to spite him, and then, when he finds that we are rich, he'll be broken-hearted."

"You should try to forgive him, Marie."

"Never. Do not tell him that I forgive him. I command you not to tell him that. Tell him,--tell him, that I hate him, and that if I ever meet him, I will look at him so that he shall never forget it. I could,--oh!--you do not know what I could do. Tell me;--did he tell you to say that he did not love me?"

"I wish I had not come," said Hetta.

"I am glad you have come. It was very kind. I don't hate you. Of course I ought to know. But did he say that I was to be told that he did not love me?"

"No;--he did not say that."

"Then how do you know? What did he say?"

"That it was all over."

"Because he is afraid of papa. Are you sure he does not love me?"

"I am sure."

"Then he is a brute. Tell him that I say that he is a false-hearted liar, and that I trample him under my foot." Marie as she said this thrust her foot upon the ground as though that false one were in truth beneath it,--and spoke aloud, as though regardless who might hear her. "I despise him;--despise him. They are all bad, but he is the worst of all. Papa beats me, but I can bear that. Mamma reviles me and I can bear that. He might have beaten me and reviled me, and I could have borne it. But to think that he was a liar all the time;--that I can't bear." Then she burst into tears. Hetta kissed her, tried to comfort her, and left her sobbing on the sofa.

Later in the day, two or three hours after Miss Carbury had gone, Marie Melmotte, who had not shown herself at luncheon, walked into Madame Melmotte's room, and thus declared her purpose. "You can tell papa that I will marry Lord Nidderdale whenever he pleases." She spoke in French and very rapidly.