The Way We Live Now Part 9

"I mean a great deal, dear. I mean all that a man can mean. That is it. You hardly understand that I am serious to the extent of ecstatic joy on the one side, and utter indifference to the world on the other. I shall never give it up till I learn that you are to be married to some one else."

"What can I say, Mr. Carbury?"

"That you will love me."

"But if I don't?"

"Say that you will try."

"No; I will not say that. Love should come without a struggle. I don't know how one person is to try to love another in that way. I like you very much; but being married is such a terrible thing."

"It would not be terrible to me, dear."

"Yes;--when you found that I was too young for your tastes."

"I shall persevere, you know. Will you a.s.sure me of this,--that if you promise your hand to another man you will let me know at once?"

"I suppose I may promise that," she said, after pausing for a moment.

"There is no one as yet?"

"There is no one. But, Mr. Carbury, you have no right to question me.

I don't think it generous. I allow you to say things that n.o.body else could say because you are a cousin and because mamma trusts you so much. No one but mamma has a right to ask me whether I care for any one."

"Are you angry with me?"

"No."

"If I have offended you it is because I love you so dearly."

"I am not offended, but I don't like to be questioned by a gentleman.

I don't think any girl would like it. I am not to tell everybody all that happens."

"Perhaps when you reflect how much of my happiness depends upon it you will forgive me. Good-bye now." She put out her hand to him and allowed it to remain in his for a moment. "When I walk about the old shrubberies at Carbury where we used to be together, I am always asking myself what chance there is of your walking there as the mistress."

"There is no chance."

"I am, of course, prepared to hear you say so. Well; good-bye, and may G.o.d bless you."

The man had no poetry about him. He did not even care for romance.

All the outside belongings of love which are so pleasant to many men and which to many women afford the one sweetness in life which they really relish, were nothing to him. There are both men and women to whom even the delays and disappointments of love are charming, even when they exist to the detriment of hope. It is sweet to such persons to be melancholy, sweet to pine, sweet to feel that they are now wretched after a romantic fashion as have been those heroes and heroines of whose sufferings they have read in poetry. But there was nothing of this with Roger Carbury. He had, as he believed, found the woman that he really wanted, who was worthy of his love, and now, having fixed his heart upon her, he longed for her with an amazing longing. He had spoken the simple truth when he declared that life had become indifferent to him without her. No man in England could be less likely to throw himself off the Monument or to blow out his brains. But he felt numbed in all the joints of his mind by this sorrow. He could not make one thing bear upon another, so as to console himself after any fashion. There was but one thing for him;--to persevere till he got her, or till he had finally lost her.

And should the latter be his fate, as he began to fear that it would be, then, he would live, but live only, like a crippled man.

He felt almost sure in his heart of hearts that the girl loved that other younger man. That she had never owned to such love he was quite sure. The man himself and Henrietta also had both a.s.sured him on this point, and he was a man easily satisfied by words and p.r.o.ne to believe. But he knew that Paul Montague was attached to her, and that it was Paul's intention to cling to his love. Sorrowfully looking forward through the vista of future years, he thought he saw that Henrietta would become Paul's wife. Were it so, what should he do?

Annihilate himself as far as all personal happiness in the world was concerned, and look solely to their happiness, their prosperity, and their joys? Be as it were a beneficent old fairy to them, though the agony of his own disappointment should never depart from him? Should he do this and be blessed by them,--or should he let Paul Montague know what deep resentment such ingrat.i.tude could produce? When had a father been kinder to a son, or a brother to a brother, than he had been to Paul? His home had been the young man's home, and his purse the young man's purse. What right could the young man have to come upon him just as he was perfecting his bliss and rob him of all that he had in the world? He was conscious all the while that there was a something wrong in his argument,--that Paul when he commenced to love the girl knew nothing of his friend's love,--that the girl, though Paul had never come in the way, might probably have been as obdurate as she was now to his entreaties. He knew all this because his mind was clear. But yet the injustice,--at any rate, the misery was so great, that to forgive it and to reward it would be weak, womanly, and foolish. Roger Carbury did not quite believe in the forgiveness of injuries. If you pardon all the evil done to you, you encourage others to do you evil! If you give your cloak to him who steals your coat, how long will it be, before your shirt and trousers will go also? Roger Carbury, returned that afternoon to Suffolk, and as he thought of it all throughout the journey, he resolved that he would never forgive Paul Montague if Paul Montague should become his cousin's husband.

CHAPTER IX.

THE GREAT RAILWAY TO VERA CRUZ.

"You have been a guest in his house. Then, I guess, the thing's about as good as done." These words were spoken with a fine, sharp, nasal tw.a.n.g by a brilliantly-dressed American gentleman in one of the smartest private rooms of the great railway hotel at Liverpool, and they were addressed to a young Englishman who was sitting opposite to him. Between them there was a table covered with maps, schedules, and printed programmes. The American was smoking a very large cigar, which he kept constantly turning in his mouth, and half of which was inside his teeth. The Englishman had a short pipe. Mr. Hamilton K.

Fisker, of the firm of Fisker, Montague, and Montague, was the American, and the Englishman was our friend Paul, the junior member of that firm.

"But I didn't even speak to him," said Paul.

"In commercial affairs that matters nothing. It quite justifies you in introducing me. We are not going to ask your friend to do us a favour. We don't want to borrow money."

"I thought you did."

"If he'll go in for the thing he'd be one of us, and there would be no borrowing then. He'll join us if he's as clever as they say, because he'll see his way to making a couple of million of dollars out of it. If he'd take the trouble to run over and show himself in San Francisco, he'd make double that. The moneyed men would go in with him at once, because they know that he understands the game and has got the pluck. A man who has done what he has by financing in Europe,--by George! there's no limit to what he might do with us.

We're a bigger people than any of you and have more room. We go after bigger things, and don't stand shilly-shally on the brink as you do.

But Melmotte pretty nigh beats the best among us. Anyway he should come and try his luck, and he couldn't have a bigger thing or a safer thing than this. He'd see it immediately if I could talk to him for half an hour."

"Mr. Fisker," said Paul mysteriously, "as we are partners, I think I ought to let you know that many people speak very badly of Mr.

Melmotte's honesty."

Mr. Fisker smiled gently, turned his cigar twice round in his mouth, and then closed one eye. "There is always a want of charity," he said, "when a man is successful."

The scheme in question was the grand proposal for a South Central Pacific and Mexican railway, which was to run from the Salt Lake City, thus branching off from the San Francisco and Chicago line,--and pa.s.s down through the fertile lands of New Mexico and Arizona into the territory of the Mexican Republic, run by the city of Mexico, and come out on the gulf at the port of Vera Cruz. Mr.

Fisker admitted at once that it was a great undertaking, acknowledged that the distance might be perhaps something over 2000 miles, acknowledged that no computation had or perhaps could be made as to the probable cost of the railway; but seemed to think that questions such as these were beside the mark and childish. Melmotte, if he would go into the matter at all, would ask no such questions.

But we must go back a little. Paul Montague had received a telegram from his partner, Hamilton K. Fisker, sent on sh.o.r.e at Queenstown from one of the New York liners, requesting him to meet Fisker at Liverpool immediately. With this request he had felt himself bound to comply. Personally he had disliked Fisker,--and perhaps not the less so because when in California he had never found himself able to resist the man's good humour, audacity, and cleverness combined. He had found himself talked into agreeing with any project which Mr.

Fisker might have in hand. It was altogether against the grain with him, and yet by his own consent, that the flour-mill had been opened at Fiskerville. He trembled for his money and never wished to see Fisker again; but still, when Fisker came to England, he was proud to remember that Fisker was his partner, and he obeyed the order and went down to Liverpool.

If the flour-mill had frightened him, what must the present project have done! Fisker explained that he had come with two objects,--first to ask the consent of the English partner to the proposed change in their business, and secondly to obtain the cooperation of English capitalists. The proposed change in the business meant simply the entire sale of the establishment at Fiskerville, and the absorption of the whole capital in the work of getting up the railway. "If you could realise all the money it wouldn't make a mile of the railway,"

said Paul. Mr. Fisker laughed at him. The object of Fisker, Montague, and Montague was not to make a railway to Vera Cruz, but to float a company. Paul thought that Mr. Fisker seemed to be indifferent whether the railway should ever be constructed or not. It was clearly his idea that fortunes were to be made out of the concern before a spadeful of earth had been moved. If brilliantly printed programmes might avail anything, with gorgeous maps, and beautiful little pictures of trains running into tunnels beneath snowy mountains and coming out of them on the margin of sunlit lakes, Mr. Fisker had certainly done much. But Paul, when he saw all these pretty things, could not keep his mind from thinking whence had come the money to pay for them. Mr. Fisker had declared that he had come over to obtain his partner's consent, but it seemed to that partner that a great deal had been done without any consent. And Paul's fears on this hand were not allayed by finding that on all these beautiful papers he himself was described as one of the agents and general managers of the company. Each doc.u.ment was signed Fisker, Montague, and Montague.

References on all matters were to be made to Fisker, Montague, and Montague,--and in one of the doc.u.ments it was stated that a member of the firm had proceeded to London with the view of attending to British interests in the matter. Fisker had seemed to think that his young partner would express unbounded satisfaction at the greatness which was thus falling upon him. A certain feeling of importance, not altogether unpleasant, was produced, but at the same time there was another conviction forced upon Montague's mind, not altogether pleasant, that his, money was being made to disappear without any consent given by him, and that it behoved him to be cautious lest such consent should be extracted from him unawares.

"What has become of the mill?" he asked

"We have put an agent into it."

"Is not that dangerous? What check have you on him?"

"He pays us a fixed sum sir. But, my word! when there is such a thing as this on hand a trumpery mill like that is not worth speaking of."

"You haven't sold it?"

"Well;--no. But we've arranged a price for a sale."

"You haven't taken the money for it?"

"Well;--yes; we have. We've raised money on it, you know. You see you weren't there, and so the two resident partners acted for the firm.

But Mr. Montague, you'd better go with us. You had indeed."