The Way We Live Now Part 13

Mr. Alf knew very well what Mr. Booker had done, and Mr. Booker was aware of the extent of Mr. Alf's knowledge. "What you say is all very right," said Mr. Booker; "only you want a different kind of world to live in."

"Just so;--and therefore we must make it different. I wonder how our friend Broune felt when he saw that his critic had declared that the 'Criminal Queens' was the greatest historical work of modern days."

"I didn't see the notice. There isn't much in the book, certainly, as far as I have looked at it. I should have said that violent censure or violent praise would be equally thrown away upon it. One doesn't want to break a b.u.t.terfly on the wheel;--especially a friendly b.u.t.terfly."

"As to the friendship, it should be kept separate. That's my idea,"

said Mr. Alf, moving away.

"I'll never forget what you've done for me,--never!" said Lady Carbury, holding Mr. Broune's hand for a moment, as she whispered to him.

"Nothing more than my duty," said he, smiling.

"I hope you'll learn to know that a woman can really be grateful,"

she replied. Then she let go his hand and moved away to some other guest. There was a dash of true sincerity in what she had said. Of enduring grat.i.tude it may be doubtful whether she was capable: but at this moment she did feel that Mr. Broune had done much for her, and that she would willingly make him some return of friendship. Of any feeling of another sort, of any turn at the moment towards flirtation, of any idea of encouragement to a gentleman who had once acted as though he were her lover, she was absolutely innocent. She had forgotten that little absurd episode in their joint lives. She was at any rate too much in earnest at the present moment to think about it. But it was otherwise with Mr. Broune. He could not quite make up his mind whether the lady was or was not in love with him,--or whether, if she were, it was inc.u.mbent on him to indulge her;--and if so, in what manner. Then as he looked after her, he told himself that she was certainly very beautiful, that her figure was distinguished, that her income was certain, and her rank considerable. Nevertheless, Mr. Broune knew of himself that he was not a marrying man. He had made up his mind that marriage would not suit his business, and he smiled to himself as he reflected how impossible it was that such a one as Lady Carbury should turn him from his resolution.

"I am so glad that you have come to-night, Mr. Alf," Lady Carbury said to the high-minded editor of the "Evening Pulpit."

"Am I not always glad to come, Lady Carbury?"

"You are very good. But I feared--"

"Feared what, Lady Carbury?"

"That you might perhaps have felt that I should be unwilling to welcome you after,--well, after the compliments of last Thursday."

"I never allow the two things to join themselves together. You see, Lady Carbury, I don't write all these things myself."

"No indeed. What a bitter creature you would be if you did."

"To tell the truth, I never write any of them. Of course we endeavour to get people whose judgments we can trust, and if, as in this case, it should unfortunately happen that the judgment of our critic should be hostile to the literary pretensions of a personal friend of my own, I can only lament the accident, and trust that my friend may have spirit enough to divide me as an individual from that Mr. Alf who has the misfortune to edit a newspaper."

"It is because you have so trusted me that I am obliged to you," said Lady Carbury with her sweetest smile. She did not believe a word that Mr. Alf had said to her. She thought, and thought rightly, that Mr.

Alf's Mr. Jones had taken direct orders from his editor, as to his treatment of the "Criminal Queens." But she remembered that she intended to write another book, and that she might perhaps conquer even Mr. Alf by spirit and courage under her present infliction.

It was Lady Carbury's duty on the occasion to say pretty things to everybody. And she did her duty. But in the midst of it all she was ever thinking of her son and Marie Melmotte, and she did at last venture to separate the girl from her mother. Marie herself was not unwilling to be talked to by Sir Felix. He had never bullied her, had never seemed to scorn her; and then he was so beautiful! She, poor girl, bewildered among various suitors, utterly confused by the life to which she was introduced, troubled by fitful attacks of admonition from her father, who would again, fitfully, leave her unnoticed for a week at a time; with no trust in her pseudo-mother--for poor Marie, had in truth been born before her father had been a married man, and had never known what was her own mother's fate,--with no enjoyment in her present life, had come solely to this conclusion, that it would be well for her to be taken away somewhere by somebody. Many a varied phase of life had already come in her way. She could just remember the dirty street in the German portion of New York in which she had been born and had lived for the first four years of her life, and could remember too the poor, hardly-treated woman who had been her mother. She could remember being at sea, and her sickness,--but could not quite remember whether that woman had been with her. Then she had run about the streets of Hamburg, and had sometimes been very hungry, sometimes in rags,--and she had a dim memory of some trouble into which her father had fallen, and that he was away from her for a time. She had up to the present splendid moment her own convictions about that absence, but she had never mentioned them to a human being. Then her father had married her present mother in Frankfort.

That she could remember distinctly, as also the rooms in which she was then taken to live, and the fact that she was told that from henceforth she was to be a Jewess. But there had soon come another change. They went from Frankfort to Paris, and there they were all Christians. From that time they had lived in various apartments in the French capital, but had always lived well. Sometimes there had been a carriage, sometimes there had been none. And then there came a time in which she was grown woman enough to understand that her father was being much talked about. Her father to her had always been alternately capricious and indifferent rather than cross or cruel, but, just at this period he was cruel both to her and to his wife.

And Madame Melmotte would weep at times and declare that they were all ruined. Then, at a moment, they burst out into sudden splendour at Paris. There was an hotel, with carriages and horses almost unnumbered;--and then there came to their rooms a crowd of dark, swarthy, greasy men, who were entertained sumptuously; but there were few women. At this time Marie was hardly nineteen, and young enough in manner and appearance to be taken for seventeen. Suddenly again she was told that she was to be taken to London, and the migration had been effected with magnificence. She was first taken to Brighton, where the half of an hotel had been hired, and had then been brought to Grosvenor Square, and at once thrown into the matrimonial market.

No part of her life had been more disagreeable to her, more frightful, than the first months in which she had been trafficked for by the Nidderdales and Gra.s.sloughs. She had been too frightened, too much of a coward to object to anything proposed to her, but still had been conscious of a desire to have some hand in her own future destiny. Luckily for her, the first attempts at trafficking with the Nidderdales and Gra.s.sloughs had come to nothing; and at length she was picking up a little courage, and was beginning to feel that it might be possible to prevent a disposition of herself which did not suit her own tastes. She was also beginning to think that there might be a disposition of herself which would suit her own tastes.

Felix Carbury was standing leaning against a wall, and she was seated on a chair close to him. "I love you better than anyone in the world," he said, speaking plainly enough for her to hear, perhaps indifferent as to the hearing of others.

"Oh, Sir Felix, pray do not talk like that."

"You knew that before. Now I want you to say whether you will be my wife."

"How can I answer that myself? Papa settles everything."

"May I go to papa?"

"You may if you like," she replied in a very low whisper. It was thus that the greatest heiress of the day, the greatest heiress of any day if people spoke truly, gave herself away to a man without a penny.

CHAPTER XII.

SIR FELIX IN HIS MOTHER'S HOUSE.

When all her friends were gone Lady Carbury looked about for her son,--not expecting to find him, for she knew how punctual was his nightly attendance at the Beargarden, but still with some faint hope that he might have remained on this special occasion to tell her of his fortune. She had watched the whispering, had noticed the cool effrontery with which Felix had spoken,--for without hearing the words she had almost known the very moment in which he was asking,--and had seen the girl's timid face, and eyes turned to the ground, and the nervous twitching of her hands as she replied. As a woman, understanding such things, who had herself been wooed, who had at least dreamed of love, she had greatly disapproved her son's manner. But yet, if it might be successful, if the girl would put up with love-making so slight as that, and if the great Melmotte would accept in return for his money a t.i.tle so modest as that of her son, how glorious should her son be to her in spite of his indifference!

"I heard him leave the house before the Melmottes went," said Henrietta, when the mother spoke of going up to her son's bedroom.

"He might have stayed to-night. Do you think he asked her?"

"How can I say, mamma?"

"I should have thought you would have been anxious about your brother. I feel sure he did,--and that she accepted him."

"If so I hope he will be good to her. I hope he loves her."

"Why shouldn't he love her as well as any one else? A girl need not be odious because she has money. There is nothing disagreeable about her."

"No,--nothing disagreeable. I do not know that she is especially attractive."

"Who is? I don't see anybody specially attractive. It seems to me you are quite indifferent about Felix."

"Do not say that, mamma."

"Yes you are. You don't understand all that he might be with this girl's fortune, and what he must be unless he gets money by marriage.

He is eating us both up."

"I wouldn't let him do that, mamma."

"It's all very well to say that, but I have some heart. I love him. I could not see him starve. Think what he might be with 20,000 a-year!"

"If he is to marry for that only, I cannot think that they will be happy."

"You had better go to bed, Henrietta. You never say a word to comfort me in all my troubles."

Then Henrietta went to bed, and Lady Carbury absolutely sat up the whole night waiting for her son, in order that she might hear his tidings. She went up to her room, disembarra.s.sed herself of her finery, and wrapped herself in a white dressing-gown. As she sat opposite to her gla.s.s, relieving her head from its garniture of false hair, she acknowledged to herself that age was coming on her. She could hide the unwelcome approach by art,--hide it more completely than can most women of her age; but, there it was, stealing on her with short grey hairs over her ears and around her temples, with little wrinkles round her eyes easily concealed by objectionable cosmetics, and a look of weariness round the mouth which could only be removed by that self-a.s.sertion of herself which practice had made always possible to her in company, though it now so frequently deserted her when she was alone.

But she was not a woman to be unhappy because she was growing old.

Her happiness, like that of most of us, was ever in the future,--never reached but always coming. She, however, had not looked for happiness to love and loveliness, and need not therefore be disappointed on that score. She had never really determined what it was that might make her happy,--having some hazy aspiration after social distinction and literary fame, in which was ever commingled solicitude respecting money. But at the present moment her great fears and her great hopes were centred on her son. She would not care how grey might be her hair, or how savage might be Mr. Alf, if her Felix were to marry this heiress. On the other hand, nothing that pearl-powder or the "Morning Breakfast Table" could do would avail anything, unless he could be extricated from the ruin that now surrounded him. So she went down into the dining-room, that she might be sure to hear the key in the door, even should she sleep, and waited for him with a volume of French memoirs in her hand.

Unfortunate woman! she might have gone to bed and have been duly called about her usual time, for it was past eight and the full staring daylight shone into her room when Felix's cab brought him to the door. The night had been very wretched to her. She had slept, and the fire had sunk nearly to nothing and had refused to become again comfortable. She could not keep her mind to her book, and while she was awake the time seemed to be everlasting. And then it was so terrible to her that he should be gambling at such hours as these!

Why should he desire to gamble if this girl's fortune was ready to fall into his hands? Fool, to risk his health, his character, his beauty, the little money which at this moment of time might be so indispensable to his great project, for the chance of winning something which in comparison with Marie Melmotte's money must be despicable! But at last he came! She waited patiently till he had thrown aside his hat and coat, and then she appeared at the dining-room door. She had studied her part for the occasion. She would not say a harsh word, and now she endeavoured to meet him with a smile. "Mother," he said, "you up at this hour!" His face was flushed, and she thought that there was some unsteadiness in his gait. She had never seen him tipsy, and it would be doubly terrible to her if such should be his condition.

"I could not go to bed till I had seen you."