The Way We Live Now Part 65

"Then, Mr. Montague, I will leave you with your friend. My toilet, though it will be very slight, will take longer than yours. We dine you know in twenty minutes. I wish you could get your friend to join us." So saying, Mrs. Hurtle tripped back across the sand towards the hotel.

"Is this wise?" demanded Roger in a voice that was almost sepulchral, as soon as the lady was out of hearing.

"You may well ask that, Carbury. n.o.body knows the folly of it so thoroughly as I do."

"Then why do you do it? Do you mean to marry her?"

"No; certainly not."

"Is it honest then, or like a gentleman, that you should be with her in this way? Does she think that you intend to marry her?"

"I have told her that I would not. I have told her--." Then he stopped. He was going on to declare that he had told her that he loved another woman, but he felt that he could hardly touch that matter in speaking to Roger Carbury.

"What does she mean then? Has she no regard for her own character?"

"I would explain it to you all, Carbury, if I could. But you would never have the patience to hear me."

"I am not naturally impatient."

"But this would drive you mad. I wrote to her a.s.suring her that it must be all over. Then she came here and sent for me. Was I not bound to go to her?"

"Yes;--to go to her and repeat what you had said in your letter."

"I did do so. I went with that very purpose, and did repeat it."

"Then you should have left her."

"Ah; but you do not understand. She begged that I would not desert her in her loneliness. We have been so much together that I could not desert her."

"I certainly do not understand that, Paul. You have allowed yourself to be entrapped into a promise of marriage; and then, for reasons which we will not go into now but which we both thought to be adequate, you resolved to break your promise, thinking that you would be justified in doing so. But nothing can justify you in living with the lady afterwards on such terms as to induce her to suppose that your old promise holds good."

"She does not think so. She cannot think so."

"Then what must she be, to be here with you? And what must you be, to be here, in public, with such a one as she is? I don't know why I should trouble you or myself about it. People live now in a way that I don't comprehend. If this be your way of living, I have no right to complain."

"For G.o.d's sake, Carbury, do not speak in that way. It sounds as though you meant to throw me over."

"I should have said that you had thrown me over. You come down here to this hotel, where we are both known, with this lady whom you are not going to marry;--and I meet you, just by chance. Had I known it, of course I could have turned the other way. But coming on you by accident, as I did, how am I not to speak to you? And if I speak, what am I to say? Of course I think that the lady will succeed in marrying you."

"Never."

"And that such a marriage will be your destruction. Doubtless she is good-looking."

"Yes, and clever. And you must remember that the manners of her country are not as the manners of this country."

"Then if I marry at all," said Roger, with all his prejudice expressed strongly in his voice, "I trust I may not marry a lady of her country. She does not think that she is to marry you, and yet she comes down here and stays with you. Paul, I don't believe it. I believe you, but I don't believe her. She is here with you in order that she may marry you. She is cunning and strong. You are foolish and weak. Believing as I do that marriage with her would be destruction, I should tell her my mind,--and leave her." Paul at the moment thought of the gentleman in Oregon, and of certain difficulties in leaving. "That's what I should do. You must go in now, I suppose, and eat your dinner."

"I may come to the hall as I go back home?"

"Certainly you may come if you please," said Roger. Then he bethought himself that his welcome had not been cordial. "I mean that I shall be delighted to see you," he added, marching away along the strand.

Paul did go into the hotel, and did eat his dinner. In the meantime Roger Carbury marched far away along the strand. In all that he had said to Montague he had spoken the truth, or that which appeared to him to be the truth. He had not been influenced for a moment by any reference to his own affairs. And yet he feared, he almost knew, that this man,--who had promised to marry a strange American woman and who was at this very moment living in close intercourse with the woman after he had told her that he would not keep his promise,--was the chief barrier between himself and the girl that he loved. As he had listened to John Crumb while John spoke of Ruby Ruggles, he had told himself that he and John Crumb were alike. With an honest, true, heartfelt desire they both panted for the companionship of a fellow-creature whom each had chosen. And each was to be thwarted by the make-believe regard of unworthy youth and fatuous good looks!

Crumb, by dogged perseverance and indifference to many things, would probably be successful at last. But what chance was there of success for him? Ruby, as soon as want or hardship told upon her, would return to the strong arm that could be trusted to provide her with plenty and comparative ease. But Hetta Carbury, if once her heart had pa.s.sed from her own dominion into the possession of another, would never change her love. It was possible, no doubt,--nay, how probable,--that her heart was still vacillating. Roger thought that he knew that at any rate she had not as yet declared her love. If she were now to know,--if she could now learn,--of what nature was the love of this other man; if she could be instructed that he was living alone with a lady whom not long since he had promised to marry,--if she could be made to understand this whole story of Mrs. Hurtle, would not that open her eyes? Would she not then see where she could trust her happiness, and where, by so trusting it, she would certainly be shipwrecked!

"Never," said Roger to himself, hitting at the stones on the beach with his stick. "Never." Then he got his horse and rode back to Carbury Manor.

CHAPTER XLVII.

MRS. HURTLE AT LOWESTOFT.

When Paul got down into the dining-room Mrs. Hurtle was already there, and the waiter was standing by the side of the table ready to take the cover off the soup. She was radiant with smiles and made herself especially pleasant during dinner, but Paul felt sure that everything was not well with her. Though she smiled, and talked and laughed, there was something forced in her manner. He almost knew that she was only waiting till the man should have left the room to speak in a different strain. And so it was. As soon as the last lingering dish had been removed, and when the door was finally shut behind the retreating waiter, she asked the question which no doubt had been on her mind since she had walked across the strand to the hotel. "Your friend was hardly civil; was he, Paul?"

"Do you mean that he should have come in? I have no doubt it was true that he had dined."

"I am quite indifferent about his dinner,--but there are two ways of declining as there are of accepting. I suppose he is on very intimate terms with you?"

"Oh, yes."

"Then his want of courtesy was the more evidently intended for me. In point of fact he disapproves of me. Is not that it?" To this question Montague did not feel himself called upon to make any immediate answer. "I can well understand that it should be so. An intimate friend may like or dislike the friend of his friend, without offence.

But unless there be strong reason he is bound to be civil to his friend's friend, when accident brings them together. You have told me that Mr. Carbury was your beau ideal of an English gentleman."

"So he is."

"Then why didn't he behave as such?" and Mrs. Hurtle again smiled.

"Did not you yourself feel that you were rebuked for coming here with me, when he expressed surprise at your journey? Has he authority over you?"

"Of course he has not. What authority could he have?"

"Nay, I do not know. He may be your guardian. In this safe-going country young men perhaps are not their own masters till they are past thirty. I should have said that he was your guardian, and that he intended to rebuke you for being in bad company. I dare say he did after I had gone."

This was so true that Montague did not know how to deny it. Nor was he sure that it would be well that he should deny it. The time must come, and why not now as well as at any future moment? He had to make her understand that he could not join his lot with her,--chiefly indeed because his heart was elsewhere, a reason on which he could hardly insist because she could allege that she had a prior right to his heart;--but also because her antecedents had been such as to cause all his friends to warn him against such a marriage. So he plucked up courage for the battle. "It was nearly that," he said.

There are many--and probably the greater portion of my readers will be among the number,--who will declare to themselves that Paul Montague was a poor creature, in that he felt so great a repugnance to face this woman with the truth. His folly in falling at first under the battery of her charms will be forgiven him. His engagement, unwise as it was, and his subsequent determination to break his engagement, will be pardoned. Women, and perhaps some men also, will feel that it was natural that he should have been charmed, natural that he should have expressed his admiration in the form which unmarried ladies expect from unmarried men when any such expression is to be made at all;--natural also that he should endeavour to escape from the dilemma when he found the manifold dangers of the step which he had proposed to take. No woman, I think, will be hard upon him because of his breach of faith to Mrs. Hurtle. But they will be very hard on him on the score of his cowardice,--as, I think, unjustly. In social life we hardly stop to consider how much of that daring spirit which gives mastery comes from hardness of heart rather than from high purpose, or true courage. The man who succ.u.mbs to his wife, the mother who succ.u.mbs to her daughter, the master who succ.u.mbs to his servant, is as often brought to servility by a continual aversion to the giving of pain, by a softness which causes the fretfulness of others to be an agony to himself,--as by any actual fear which the firmness of the imperious one may have produced. There is an inner softness, a thinness of the mind's skin, an incapability of seeing or even thinking of the troubles of others with equanimity, which produces a feeling akin to fear; but which is compatible not only with courage, but with absolute firmness of purpose, when the demand for firmness arises so strongly as to a.s.sert itself. With this man it was not really that. He feared the woman;--or at least such fears did not prevail upon him to be silent; but he shrank from subjecting her to the blank misery of utter desertion. After what had pa.s.sed between them he could hardly bring himself to tell her that he wanted her no further and to bid her go.

But that was what he had to do. And for that his answer to her last question prepared the way. "It was nearly that," he said.

"Mr. Carbury did take it upon himself to rebuke you for showing yourself on the sands at Lowestoft with such a one as I am?"

"He knew of the letter which I wrote to you."

"You have canva.s.sed me between you?"

"Of course we have. Is that unnatural? Would you have had me be silent about you to the oldest and the best friend I have in the world?"

"No, I would not have had you be silent to your oldest and best friend. I presume you would declare your purpose. But I should not have supposed you would have asked his leave. When I was travelling with you, I thought you were a man capable of managing your own actions. I had heard that in your country girls sometimes hold themselves at the disposal of their friends,--but I did not dream that such could be the case with a man who had gone out into the world to make his fortune."