CHAPTER LXXV.

IN BRUTON STREET.


Mr. Squercum all this time was in a perfect fever of hard work and
anxiety. It may be said of him that he had been quite sharp enough
to perceive the whole truth. He did really know it all,--if he could
prove that which he knew. He had extended his enquiries in the city
till he had convinced himself that, whatever wealth Melmotte might
have had twelve months ago, there was not enough of it left at
present to cover the liabilities. Squercum was quite sure that
Melmotte was not a falling, but a fallen star,--perhaps not giving
sufficient credence to the recuperative powers of modern commerce.
Squercum told a certain stockbroker in the City, who was his
specially confidential friend, that Melmotte was a "gone coon." The
stockbroker made also some few enquiries, and on that evening agreed
with Squercum that Melmotte was a "gone coon." If such were the
case it would positively be the making of Squercum if it could be
so managed that he should appear as the destroying angel of this
offensive dragon. So Squercum raged among the Bideawhiles, who were
unable altogether to shut their doors against him. They could not
dare to bid defiance to Squercum,--feeling that they had themselves
blundered, and feeling also that they must be careful not to seem to
screen a fault by a falsehood. "I suppose you give it up about the
letter having been signed by my client," said Squercum to the elder
of the two younger Bideawhiles.

"I give up nothing and I assert nothing," said the superior attorney.
"Whether the letter be genuine or not we had no reason to believe it
to be otherwise. The young gentleman's signature is never very plain,
and this one is about as like any other as that other would be like
the last."

"Would you let me look at it again, Mr. Bideawhile?" Then the letter
which had been very often inspected during the last ten days was
handed to Mr. Squercum. "It's a stiff resemblance;--such as he never
could have written had he tried it ever so."

"Perhaps not, Mr. Squercum. We are not generally on the lookout for
forgeries in letters from our clients or our clients' sons."

"Just so, Mr. Bideawhile. But then Mr. Longestaffe had already told
you that his son would not sign the letter."

"How is one to know when and how and why a young man like that will
change his purpose?"

"Just so, Mr. Bideawhile. But you see after such a declaration as
that on the part of my client's father, the letter,--which is in
itself a little irregular perhaps--"

"I don't know that it's irregular at all."

"Well;--it didn't reach you in a very confirmatory manner. We'll just
say that. What Mr. Longestaffe can have been at to wish to give up
his title-deeds without getting anything for them--"

"Excuse me, Mr. Squercum, but that's between Mr. Longestaffe and us."

"Just so;--but as Mr. Longestaffe and you have jeopardised my
client's property it is natural that I should make a few remarks. I
think you'd have made a few remarks yourself, Mr. Bideawhile, if the
case had been reversed. I shall bring the matter before the Lord
Mayor, you know." To this Mr. Bideawhile said not a word. "And I
think I understand you now that you do not intend to insist on the
signature as being genuine."

"I say nothing about it, Mr. Squercum. I think you'll find it very
hard to prove that it's not genuine."

"My client's oath, Mr. Bideawhile."

"I'm afraid your client is not always very clear as to what he does."

"I don't know what you mean by that, Mr. Bideawhile. I fancy that if
I were to speak in that way of your client you would be very angry
with me. Besides, what does it all amount to? Will the old gentleman
say that he gave the letter into his son's hands, so that, even if
such a freak should have come into my client's head, he could have
signed it and sent it off? If I understand, Mr. Longestaffe says that
he locked the letter up in a drawer in the very room which Melmotte
occupied, and that he afterwards found the drawer open. It won't, I
suppose, be alleged that my client knew so little what he was about
that he broke open the drawer in order that he might get at the
letter. Look at it whichever way you will, he did not sign it, Mr.
Bideawhile."

"I have never said he did. All I say is that we had fair ground for
supposing that it was his letter. I really don't know that I can say
anything more."

"Only that we are to a certain degree in the same boat together in
this matter."

"I won't admit even that, Mr. Squercum."

"The difference being that your client by his fault has jeopardised
his own interests and those of my client, while my client has not
been in fault at all. I shall bring the matter forward before the
Lord Mayor to-morrow, and as at present advised shall ask for an
investigation with reference to a charge of fraud. I presume you will
be served with a subpoena to bring the letter into court."

"If so you may be sure that we shall produce it." Then Mr. Squercum
took his leave and went straight away to Mr. Bumby, a barrister well
known in the City. The game was too powerful to be hunted down by Mr.
Squercum's unassisted hands. He had already seen Mr. Bumby on the
matter more than once. Mr. Bumby was inclined to doubt whether it
might not be better to get the money, or some guarantee for the
money. Mr. Bumby thought that if a bill at three months could be had
for Dolly's share of the property it might be expedient to take it.
Mr. Squercum suggested that the property itself might be recovered,
no genuine sale having been made. Mr. Bumby shook his head.
"Title-deeds give possession, Mr. Squercum. You don't suppose that
the company which has lent money to Melmotte on the title-deeds
would have to lose it. Take the bill; and if it is dishonoured run your
chance of what you'll get out of the property. There must be assets."

"Every rap will have been made over," said Mr. Squercum.

This took place on the Monday, the day on which Melmotte had offered
his full confidence to his proposed son-in-law. On the following
Wednesday three gentlemen met together in the study in the house
in Bruton Street from which it was supposed that the letter had
been abstracted. There were Mr. Longestaffe, the father, Dolly
Longestaffe, and Mr. Bideawhile. The house was still in Melmotte's
possession, and Melmotte and Mr. Longestaffe were no longer on
friendly terms. Direct application for permission to have this
meeting in this place had been formally made to Mr. Melmotte, and he
had complied. The meeting took place at eleven o'clock--a terribly
early hour. Dolly had at first hesitated as to placing himself as he
thought between the fire of two enemies, and Mr. Squercum had told
him that as the matter would probably soon be made public, he could
not judiciously refuse to meet his father and the old family lawyer.
Therefore Dolly had attended, at great personal inconvenience to
himself. "By George, it's hardly worth having if one is to take all
this trouble about it," Dolly had said to Lord Grasslough, with whom
he had fraternised since the quarrel with Nidderdale. Dolly entered
the room last, and at that time neither Mr. Longestaffe nor Mr.
Bideawhile had touched the drawer, or even the table, in which the
letter had been deposited.

"Now, Mr. Longestaffe," said Mr. Bideawhile, "perhaps you will show
us where you think you put the letter."

"I don't think at all," said he. "Since the matter has been discussed
the whole thing has come back upon my memory."

"I never signed it," said Dolly, standing with his hands in his
pockets and interrupting his father.

"Nobody says you did, sir," rejoined the father with an angry voice.
"If you will condescend to listen we may perhaps arrive at the
truth."

"But somebody has said that I did. I've been told that Mr. Bideawhile
says so."

"No, Mr. Longestaffe; no. We have never said so. We have only said
that we had no reason for supposing the letter to be other than
genuine. We have never gone beyond that."

"Nothing on earth would have made me sign it," said Dolly. "Why
should I have given my property up before I got my money? I never
heard such a thing in my life."

The father looked up at the lawyer and shook his head, testifying as
to the hopelessness of his son's obstinacy. "Now, Mr. Longestaffe,"
continued the lawyer, "let us see where you put the letter."

Then the father very slowly, and with much dignity of deportment,
opened the drawer,--the second drawer from the top, and took from it
a bundle of papers very carefully folded and docketed. "There," said
he, "the letter was not placed in the envelope but on the top of it,
and the two were the two first documents in the bundle." He went on
to say that as far as he knew no other paper had been taken away. He
was quite certain that he had left the drawer locked. He was very
particular in regard to that particular drawer, and he remembered
that about this time Mr. Melmotte had been in the room with him when
he had opened it, and,--as he was certain,--had locked it again. At
that special time there had been, he said, considerable intimacy
between him and Melmotte. It was then that Mr. Melmotte had offered
him a seat at the Board of the Mexican railway.

"Of course he picked the lock, and stole the letter," said Dolly.
"It's as plain as a pike-staff. It's clear enough to hang any man."

"I am afraid that it falls short of evidence, however strong and just
may be the suspicion induced," said the lawyer. "Your father for a
time was not quite certain about the letter."

"He thought that I had signed it," said Dolly.

"I am quite certain now," rejoined the father angrily. "A man has to
collect his memory before he can be sure of anything."

"I am thinking you know how it would go to a jury."

"What I want to know is how we are to get the money," said Dolly.
"I should like to see him hung,--of course; but I'd sooner have the
money. Squercum says--"

"Adolphus, we don't want to know here what Mr. Squercum says."

"I don't know why what Mr. Squercum says shouldn't be as good as what
Mr. Bideawhile says. Of course Squercum doesn't sound very
aristocratic."

"Quite as much so as Bideawhile, no doubt," said the lawyer laughing.

"No; Squercum isn't aristocratic, and Fetter Lane is a good deal
lower than Lincoln's Inn. Nevertheless Squercum may know what he's
about. It was Squercum who was first down upon Melmotte in this
matter, and if it wasn't for Squercum we shouldn't know as much about
it as we do at present." Squercum's name was odious to the elder
Longestaffe. He believed, probably without much reason, that all his
family troubles came to him from Squercum, thinking that if his son
would have left his affairs in the hands of the old Slows and the
old Bideawhiles, money would never have been scarce with him, and
that he would not have made this terrible blunder about the Pickering
property. And the sound of Squercum, as his son knew, was horrid to
his ears. He hummed and hawed, and fumed and fretted about the room,
shaking his head and frowning. His son looked at him as though quite
astonished at his displeasure. "There's nothing more to be done here,
sir, I suppose," said Dolly putting on his hat.

"Nothing more," said Mr. Bideawhile. "It may be that I shall have
to instruct counsel, and I thought it well that I should see in the
presence of both of you exactly how the thing stood. You speak so
positively, Mr. Longestaffe, that there can be no doubt?"

"There is no doubt."

"And now perhaps you had better lock the drawer in our presence. Stop
a moment--I might as well see whether there is any sign of violence
having been used." So saying Mr. Bideawhile knelt down in front of
the table and began to examine the lock. This he did very carefully
and satisfied himself that there was "no sign of violence." "Whoever
has done it, did it very well," said Bideawhile.





"Of course Melmotte did it," said Dolly Longestaffe standing
immediately over Bideawhile's shoulder.

At that moment there was a knock at the door,--a very distinct, and,
we may say, a formal knock. There are those who knock and immediately
enter without waiting for the sanction asked. Had he who knocked done
so on this occasion Mr. Bideawhile would have been found still on
his knees, with his nose down to the level of the keyhole. But the
intruder did not intrude rapidly, and the lawyer jumped on to his
feet, almost upsetting Dolly with the effort. There was a pause,
during which Mr. Bideawhile moved away from the table,--as he might
have done had he been picking a lock;--and then Mr. Longestaffe bade
the stranger come in with a sepulchral voice. The door was opened,
and Mr. Melmotte appeared.

Now Mr. Melmotte's presence certainly had not been expected. It was
known that it was his habit to be in the City at this hour. It was
known also that he was well aware that this meeting was to be held
in this room at this special hour,--and he might well have surmised
with what view. There was now declared hostility between both the
Longestaffes and Mr. Melmotte, and it certainly was supposed by all
the gentlemen concerned that he would not have put himself out of the
way to meet them on this occasion. "Gentlemen," he said, "perhaps you
think that I am intruding at the present moment." No one said that he
did not think so. The elder Longestaffe simply bowed very coldly. Mr.
Bideawhile stood upright and thrust his thumbs into his waistcoat
pockets. Dolly, who at first forgot to take his hat off, whistled a
bar, and then turned a pirouette on his heel. That was his mode of
expressing his thorough surprise at the appearance of his debtor. "I
fear that you do think I am intruding," said Melmotte, "but I trust
that what I have to say will be held to excuse me. I see, sir," he
said, turning to Mr. Longestaffe, and glancing at the still open
drawer, "that you have been examining your desk. I hope that you will
be more careful in locking it than you were when you left it before."

"The drawer was locked when I left it," said Mr. Longestaffe. "I make
no deductions and draw no conclusions, but the drawer was locked."

"Then I should say it must have been locked when you returned to it."

"No, sir, I found it open. I make no deductions and draw no
conclusions,--but I left it locked and I found it open."

"I should make a deduction and draw a conclusion," said Dolly; "and
that would be that somebody else had opened it."

"This can answer no purpose at all," said Bideawhile.

"It was but a chance remark," said Melmotte. "I did not come here
out of the City at very great personal inconvenience to myself to
squabble about the lock of the drawer. As I was informed that you
three gentlemen would be here together, I thought the opportunity
a suitable one for meeting you and making you an offer about this
unfortunate business." He paused a moment; but neither of the three
spoke. It did occur to Dolly to ask them to wait while he should
fetch Squercum; but on second thoughts he reflected that a great deal
of trouble would have to be taken, and probably for no good. "Mr.
Bideawhile, I believe," suggested Melmotte; and the lawyer bowed his
head. "If I remember rightly I wrote to you offering to pay the money
due to your clients--"

"Squercum is my lawyer," said Dolly.

"That will make no difference."

"It makes a deal of difference," said Dolly.

"I wrote," continued Melmotte, "offering my bills at three and six
months' date."

"They couldn't be accepted, Mr. Melmotte."

"I would have allowed interest. I never have had my bills refused
before."

"You must be aware, Mr. Melmotte," said the lawyer, "that the sale of
a property is not like an ordinary mercantile transaction in which
bills are customarily given and taken. The understanding was that
money should be paid in the usual way. And when we learned, as we did
learn, that the property had been at once mortgaged by you, of course
we became,--well, I think I may be justified in saying more than
suspicious. It was a most,--most--unusual proceeding. You say you
have another offer to make, Mr. Melmotte."

"Of course I have been short of money. I have had enemies whose
business it has been for some time past to run down my credit, and,
with my credit, has fallen the value of stocks in which it has been
known that I have been largely interested. I tell you the truth
openly. When I purchased Pickering I had no idea that the payment of
such a sum of money could inconvenience me in the least. When the
time came at which I should pay it, stocks were so depreciated that
it was impossible to sell. Very hostile proceedings are threatened
against me now. Accusations are made, false as hell,"--Mr. Melmotte
as he spoke raised his voice and looked round the room,--"but which
at the present crisis may do me most cruel damage. I have come to
say that, if you will undertake to stop proceedings which have been
commenced in the City, I will have fifty thousand pounds,--which is
the amount due to these two gentlemen,--ready for payment on Friday
at noon."

"I have taken no proceedings as yet," said Bideawhile.

"It's Squercum," says Dolly.

"Well, sir," continued Melmotte addressing Dolly, "let me assure
you that if these proceedings are stayed the money will be
forthcoming;--but if not, I cannot produce the money. I little
thought two months ago that I should ever have to make such a
statement in reference to such a sum as fifty thousand pounds. But
so it is. To raise that money by Friday, I shall have to cripple
my resources frightfully. It will be done at a terrible cost. But
what Mr. Bideawhile says is true. I have no right to suppose that
the purchase of this property should be looked upon as an ordinary
commercial transaction. The money should have been paid,--and, if
you will now take my word, the money shall be paid. But this cannot
be done if I am made to appear before the Lord Mayor to-morrow. The
accusations brought against me are damnably false. I do not know
with whom they have originated. Whoever did originate them, they are
damnably false. But unfortunately, false as they are, in the present
crisis, they may be ruinous to me. Now gentlemen, perhaps you will
give me an answer."

Both the father and the lawyer looked at Dolly. Dolly was in truth
the accuser through the mouthpiece of his attorney Squercum. It was
at Dolly's instance that these proceedings were being taken. "I, on
behalf of my client," said Mr. Bideawhile, "will consent to wait till
Friday at noon."

"I presume, Adolphus, that you will say as much," said the elder
Longestaffe.

Dolly Longestaffe was certainly not an impressionable person, but
Melmotte's eloquence had moved even him. It was not that he was sorry
for the man, but that at the present moment he believed him. Though
he had been absolutely sure that Melmotte had forged his name or
caused it to be forged,--and did not now go so far into the matter
as to abandon that conviction,--he had been talked into crediting
the reasons given for Melmotte's temporary distress, and also into
a belief that the money would be paid on Friday. Something of
the effect which Melmotte's false confessions had had upon Lord
Nidderdale, they now also had on Dolly Longestaffe. "I'll ask
Squercum, you know," he said.

"Of course Mr. Squercum will act as you instruct him," said
Bideawhile.

"I'll ask Squercum. I'll go to him at once. I can't do any more than
that. And upon my word, Mr. Melmotte, you've given me a great deal of
trouble."

Melmotte with a smile apologized. Then it was settled that they three
should meet in that very room on Friday at noon, and that the payment
should then be made,--Dolly stipulating that as his father would be
attended by Bideawhile, so would he be attended by Squercum. To this
Mr. Longestaffe senior yielded with a very bad grace.



CHAPTER LXXVI.

HETTA AND HER LOVER.



Lady Carbury was at this time so miserable in regard to her son that
she found herself unable to be active as she would otherwise have
been in her endeavours to separate Paul Montague and her daughter.
Roger had come up to town and given his opinion, very freely at any
rate with regard to Sir Felix. But Roger had immediately returned to
Suffolk, and the poor mother in want of assistance and consolation
turned naturally to Mr. Broune, who came to see her for a few minutes
almost every evening. It had now become almost a part of Mr. Broune's
life to see Lady Carbury once in the day. She told him of the two
propositions which Roger had made: first, that she should fix her
residence in some second-rate French or German town, and that Sir
Felix should be made to go with her; and, secondly, that she should
take possession of Carbury manor for six months. "And where would Mr.
Carbury go?" asked Mr. Broune.

"He's so good that he doesn't care what he does with himself.
There's a cottage on the place, he says, that he would move to." Mr.
Broune shook his head. Mr. Broune did not think that an offer so
quixotically generous as this should be accepted. As to the German or
French town, Mr. Broune said that the plan was no doubt feasible, but
he doubted whether the thing to be achieved was worth the terrible
sacrifice demanded. He was inclined to think that Sir Felix should go
to the colonies. "That he might drink himself to death," said Lady
Carbury, who now had no secrets from Mr. Broune. Sir Felix in the
mean time was still in the doctor's hands up-stairs. He had no doubt
been very severely thrashed, but there was not in truth very much
ailing him beyond the cuts on his face. He was, however, at the
present moment better satisfied to be an invalid than to have to come
out of his room and to meet the world. "As to Melmotte," said Mr.
Broune, "they say now that he is in some terrible mess which will
ruin him and all who have trusted him."

"And the girl?"

"It is impossible to understand it all. Melmotte was to have been
summoned before the Lord Mayor to-day on some charge of fraud;--
but it was postponed. And I was told this morning that Nidderdale
still means to marry the girl. I don't think anybody knows the truth
about it. We shall hold our tongue about him till we really do know
something." The "we" of whom Mr. Broune spoke was, of course,
the "Morning Breakfast Table."

But in all this there was nothing about Hetta. Hetta, however,
thought very much of her own condition, and found herself driven to
take some special step by the receipt of two letters from her lover,
written to her from Liverpool. They had never met since she had
confessed her love to him. The first letter she did not at once
answer, as she was at that moment waiting to hear what Roger
Carbury would say about Mrs. Hurtle. Roger Carbury had spoken,
leaving a conviction on her mind that Mrs. Hurtle was by no means
a fiction,--but indeed a fact very injurious to her happiness. Then
Paul's second love-letter had come, full of joy, and love, and
contentment,--with not a word in it which seemed to have been in the
slightest degree influenced by the existence of a Mrs. Hurtle. Had
there been no Mrs. Hurtle, the letter would have been all that Hetta
could have desired; and she could have answered it, unless forbidden
by her mother, with all a girl's usual enthusiastic affection for her
chosen lord. But it was impossible that she should now answer it in
that strain;--and it was equally impossible that she should leave
such letters unanswered. Roger had told her to "ask himself;" and
she now found herself constrained to bid him either come to her and
answer the question, or, if he thought it better, to give her some
written account of Mrs. Hurtle,--so that she might know who the lady
was, and whether the lady's condition did in any way interfere with
her own happiness. So she wrote to Paul, as follows:--


Welbeck Street,
16th July, 18--.

MY DEAR PAUL.

She found that after that which had passed between them she could not
call him "My dear Sir," or "My dear Mr. Montague," and that it must
either be "Sir" or "My dear Paul." He was dear to her,--very dear;
and she thought that he had not been as yet convicted of any conduct
bad enough to force her to treat him as an outcast. Had there been no
Mrs. Hurtle he would have been her "Dearest Paul,"--but she made her
choice, and so commenced.

MY DEAR PAUL,

A strange report has come round to me about a lady called
Mrs. Hurtle. I have been told that she is an American lady
living in London, and that she is engaged to be your wife.
I cannot believe this. It is too horrid to be true. But
I fear,--I fear there is something true that will be very
very sad for me to hear. It was from my brother I first
heard it,--who was of course bound to tell me anything he
knew. I have talked to mamma about it, and to my cousin
Roger. I am sure Roger knows it all;--but he will not tell
me. He said,--"Ask himself." And so I ask you. Of course I
can write about nothing else till I have heard about this.
I am sure I need not tell you that it has made me very
unhappy. If you cannot come and see me at once, you had
better write. I have told mamma about this letter.

Then came the difficulty of the signature, with the declaration
which must naturally be attached to it. After some hesitation she
subscribed herself,

Your affectionate friend,

HENRIETTA CARBURY.


"Most affectionately your own Hetta" would have been the form in
which she would have wished to finish the first letter she had ever
written to him.

Paul received it at Liverpool on the Wednesday morning, and on the
Wednesday evening he was in Welbeck Street. He had been quite aware
that it had been incumbent on him to tell her the whole history of
Mrs. Hurtle. He had meant to keep back--almost nothing. But it had
been impossible for him to do so on that one occasion on which he
had pleaded his love to her successfully. Let any reader who is
intelligent in such matters say whether it would have been possible
for him then to have commenced the story of Mrs. Hurtle and to have
told it to the bitter end. Such a story must be postponed for a
second or a third interview. Or it may, indeed, be communicated
by letter. When Paul was called away to Liverpool he did consider
whether he should write the story. But there are many reasons strong
against such written communications. A man may desire that the woman
he loves should hear the record of his folly,--so that, in after
days, there may be nothing to be detected; so that, should the Mrs.
Hurtle of his life at any time intrude upon his happiness, he may
with a clear brow and undaunted heart say to his beloved one,--"Ah,
this is the trouble of which I spoke to you." And then he and his
beloved one will be in one cause together. But he hardly wishes to
supply his beloved one with a written record of his folly. And then
who does not know how much tenderness a man may show to his own
faults by the tone of his voice, by half-spoken sentences, and by
an admixture of words of love for the lady who has filled up the
vacant space once occupied by the Mrs. Hurtle of his romance? But the
written record must go through from beginning to end, self-accusing,
thoroughly perspicuous, with no sweet, soft falsehoods hidden under
the half-expressed truth. The soft falsehoods which would be sweet as
the scent of violets in a personal interview, would stand in danger
of being denounced as deceit added to deceit, if sent in a letter. I
think therefore that Paul Montague did quite right in hurrying up to
London.

He asked for Miss Carbury, and when told that Miss Henrietta was with
her mother, he sent his name up and said that he would wait in the
dining-room. He had thoroughly made up his mind to this course. They
should know that he had come at once; but he would not, if it could
be helped, make his statement in the presence of Lady Carbury. Then,
up-stairs, there was a little discussion. Hetta pleaded her right to
see him alone. She had done what Roger had advised, and had done it
with her mother's consent. Her mother might be sure that she would
not again accept her lover till this story of Mrs. Hurtle had been
sifted to the very bottom. But she must herself hear what her lover
had to say for himself. Felix was at the time in the drawing-room
and suggested that he should go down and see Paul Montague on his
sister's behalf;--but his mother looked at him with scorn, and his
sister quietly said that she would rather see Mr. Montague herself.
Felix had been so cowed by circumstances that he did not say another
word, and Hetta left the room alone.

When she entered the parlour Paul stept forward to take her in his
arms. That was a matter of course. She knew it would be so, and she
had prepared herself for it. "Paul," she said, "let me hear about all
this--first." She sat down at some distance from him,--and he found
himself compelled to seat himself at some little distance from her.

"And so you have heard of Mrs. Hurtle," he said, with a faint attempt
at a smile.

"Yes;--Felix told me, and Roger evidently had heard about her."

"Oh yes; Roger Carbury has heard about her from the beginning;--knows
the whole history almost as well as I know it myself. I don't think
your brother is as well informed."

"Perhaps not. But--isn't it a story that--concerns me?"

"Certainly it so far concerns you, Hetta, that you ought to know it.
And I trust you will believe that it was my intention to tell it
you."

"I will believe anything that you will tell me."

"If so, I don't think that you will quarrel with me when you know
all. I was engaged to marry Mrs. Hurtle."

"Is she a widow?"--He did not answer this at once. "I suppose she
must be a widow if you were going to marry her."

"Yes;--she is a widow. She was divorced."

"Oh, Paul! And she is an American?"

"Yes."

"And you loved her?"

Montague was desirous of telling his own story, and did not wish to
be interrogated. "If you will allow me I will tell it you all from
beginning to end."

"Oh, certainly. But I suppose you loved her. If you meant to marry
her you must have loved her." There was a frown upon Hetta's brow and
a tone of anger in her voice which made Paul uneasy.

"Yes;--I loved her once; but I will tell you all." Then he did
tell his story, with a repetition of which the reader need not be
detained. Hetta listened with fair attention,--not interrupting very
often, though when she did interrupt, the little words which she
spoke were bitter enough. But she heard the story of the long journey
across the American continent, of the ocean journey before the end of
which Paul had promised to make this woman his wife. "Had she been
divorced then?" asked Hetta,--"because I believe they get themselves
divorced just when they like." Simple as the question was he could
not answer it. "I could only know what she told me," he said, as he
went on with his story. Then Mrs. Hurtle had gone on to Paris, and
he, as soon as he reached Carbury, had revealed everything to Roger.
"Did you give her up then?" demanded Hetta with stern severity.
No,--not then. He had gone back to San Francisco, and,--he had not
intended to say that the engagement had been renewed, but he was
forced to acknowledge that it had not been broken off. Then he had
written to her on his second return to England,--and then she had
appeared in London at Mrs. Pipkin's lodgings in Islington. "I can
hardly tell you how terrible that was to me," he said, "for I had by
that time become quite aware that my happiness must depend upon you."
He tried the gentle, soft falsehoods that should have been as sweet
as violets. Perhaps they were sweet. It is odd how stern a girl can
be, while her heart is almost breaking with love. Hetta was very
stern.

"But Felix says you took her to Lowestoft,--quite the other day."

Montague had intended to tell all,--almost all. There was a something
about the journey to Lowestoft which it would be impossible to make
Hetta understand, and he thought that that might be omitted. "It was
on account of her health."

"Oh;--on account of her health. And did you go to the play with her?"

"I did."

"Was that for her--health?"

"Oh, Hetta, do not speak to me like that! Cannot you understand that
when she came here, following me, I could not desert her?"

"I cannot understand why you deserted her at all," said Hetta. "You
say you loved her, and you promised to marry her. It seems horrid to
me to marry a divorced woman,--a woman who just says that she was
divorced. But that is because I don't understand American ways. And I
am sure you must have loved her when you took her to the theatre, and
down to Lowestoft,--for her health. That was only a week ago."

"It was nearly three weeks," said Paul in despair.

"Oh;--nearly three weeks! That is not such a very long time for a
gentleman to change his mind on such a matter. You were engaged to
her, not three weeks ago."

"No, Hetta, I was not engaged to her then."

"I suppose she thought you were when she went to Lowestoft with you."

"She wanted then to force me to--to--to--. Oh, Hetta, it is so hard
to explain, but I am sure that you understand. I do know that you do
not, cannot think that I have, even for one moment, been false to
you."

"But why should you be false to her? Why should I step in and crush
all her hopes? I can understand that Roger should think badly of her
because she was--divorced. Of course he would. But an engagement is
an engagement. You had better go back to Mrs. Hurtle and tell her
that you are quite ready to keep your promise."





"She knows now that it is all over."

"I dare say you will be able to persuade her to reconsider it. When
she came all the way here from San Francisco after you, and when she
asked you to take her to the theatre, and to Lowestoft--because of
her health, she must be very much attached to you. And she is waiting
here,--no doubt on purpose for you. She is a very old friend,--very
old,--and you ought not to treat her unkindly. Good bye, Mr.
Montague. I think you had better lose no time in going--back to Mrs.
Hurtle." All this she said with sundry little impedimentary gurgles
in her throat, but without a tear and without any sign of tenderness.

"You don't mean to tell me, Hetta, that you are going to quarrel with
me!"

"I don't know about quarrelling. I don't wish to quarrel with any
one. But of course we can't be friends when you have married--Mrs.
Hurtle."

"Nothing on earth would induce me to marry her."

"Of course I cannot say anything about that. When they told me this
story I did not believe them. No; I hardly believed Roger when,--he
would not tell it for he was too kind,--but when he would not
contradict it. It seemed to be almost impossible that you should
have come to me just at the very same moment. For, after all, Mr.
Montague, nearly three weeks is a very short time. That trip to
Lowestoft couldn't have been much above a week before you came to
me."

"What does it matter?"

"Oh no; of course not;--nothing to you. I think I will go away now,
Mr. Montague. It was very good of you to come and tell me all. It
makes it so much easier."

"Do you mean to say that--you are going to--throw me over?"

"I don't want you to throw Mrs. Hurtle over. Good bye."

"Hetta!"

"No; I will not have you lay your hand upon me. Good night, Mr.
Montague." And so she left him.

Paul Montague was beside himself with dismay as he left the house.
He had never allowed himself for a moment to believe that this affair
of Mrs. Hurtle would really separate him from Hetta Carbury. If she
could only really know it all, there could be no such result. He
had been true to her from the first moment in which he had seen her,
never swerving from his love. It was to be supposed that he had loved
some woman before; but, as the world goes, that would not, could
not, affect her. But her anger was founded on the presence of Mrs.
Hurtle in London,--which he would have given half his possessions to
have prevented. But when she did come, was he to have refused to see
her? Would Hetta have wished him to be cold and cruel like that? No
doubt he had behaved badly to Mrs. Hurtle;--but that trouble he had
overcome. And now Hetta was quarrelling with him, though he certainly
had never behaved badly to her.

He was almost angry with Hetta as he walked home. Everything that
he could do he had done for her. For her sake he had quarrelled with
Roger Carbury. For her sake,--in order that he might be effectually
free from Mrs. Hurtle,--he had determined to endure the spring of the
wild cat. For her sake,--so he told himself,--he had been content
to abide by that odious railway company, in order that he might if
possible preserve an income on which to support her. And now she
told him that they must part,--and that only because he had not been
cruelly indifferent to the unfortunate woman who had followed him
from America. There was no logic in it, no reason,--and, as he
thought, very little heart. "I don't want you to throw Mrs. Hurtle
over," she had said. Why should Mrs. Hurtle be anything to her?
Surely she might have left Mrs. Hurtle to fight her own battles.
But they were all against him. Roger Carbury, Lady Carbury, and Sir
Felix; and the end of it would be that she would be forced into
marriage with a man almost old enough to be her father! She could not
ever really have loved him. That was the truth. She must be incapable
of such love as was his own for her. True love always forgives.
And here there was really so very little to forgive! Such were his
thoughts as he went to bed that night. But he probably omitted to
ask himself whether he would have forgiven her very readily had he
found that she had been living "nearly three weeks ago" in close
intercourse with another lover of whom he had hitherto never even
heard the name. But then,--as all the world knows,--there is a wide
difference between young men and young women!

Hetta, as soon as she had dismissed her lover, went up at once to
her own room. Thither she was soon followed by her mother, whose
anxious ear had heard the closing of the front door. "Well; what
has he said?" asked Lady Carbury. Hetta was in tears,--or very
nigh to tears,--struggling to repress them, and struggling almost
successfully. "You have found that what we told you about that
woman was all true."

"Enough of it was true," said Hetta, who, angry as she was with
her lover, was not on that account less angry with her mother for
disturbing her bliss.

"What do you mean by that, Hetta? Had you not better speak to me
openly?"

"I say, mamma, that enough was true. I do not know how to speak more
openly. I need not go into all the miserable story of the woman. He
is like other men, I suppose. He has entangled himself with some
abominable creature and then when he is tired of her thinks that he
has nothing to do but to say so,--and to begin with somebody else."

"Roger Carbury is very different."

"Oh, mamma, you will make me ill if you go on like that. It seems to
me that you do not understand in the least."

"I say he is not like that."

"Not in the least. Of course I know that he is not in the least like
that."

"I say that he can be trusted."

"Of course he can be trusted. Who doubts it?"

"And that if you would give yourself to him, there would be no cause
for any alarm."

"Mamma," said Hetta jumping up, "how can you talk to me in that way?
As soon as one man doesn't suit, I am to give myself to another! Oh,
mamma, how can you propose it? Nothing on earth will ever induce me
to be more to Roger Carbury than I am now."

"You have told Mr. Montague that he is not to come here again?"

"I don't know what I told him, but he knows very well what I mean."

"That it is all over?" Hetta made no reply. "Hetta, I have a right to
ask that, and I have a right to expect a reply. I do not say that you
have hitherto behaved badly about Mr. Montague."

"I have not behaved badly. I have told you everything. I have done
nothing that I am ashamed of."

"But we have now found out that he has behaved very badly. He has
come here to you,--with unexampled treachery to your cousin Roger--"

"I deny that," exclaimed Hetta.

"And at the very time was almost living with this woman who says that
she is divorced from her husband in America! Have you told him that
you will see him no more?"

"He understood that."

"If you have not told him so plainly, I must tell him."

"Mamma, you need not trouble yourself. I have told him very plainly."
Then Lady Carbury expressed herself satisfied for the moment, and
left her daughter to her solitude.



CHAPTER LXXVII.

ANOTHER SCENE IN BRUTON STREET.



When Mr. Melmotte made his promise to Mr. Longestaffe and to Dolly,
in the presence of Mr. Bideawhile, that he would, on the next day but
one, pay to them a sum of fifty thousand pounds, thereby completing,
satisfactorily as far as they were concerned, the purchase of the
Pickering property, he intended to be as good as his word. The reader
knows that he had resolved to face the Longestaffe difficulty,--that
he had resolved that at any rate he would not get out of it by
sacrificing the property to which he had looked forward as a safe
haven when storms should come. But, day by day, every resolution
that he made was forced to undergo some change. Latterly he had
been intent on purchasing a noble son-in-law with this money,--still
trusting to the chapter of chances for his future escape from the
Longestaffe and other difficulties. But Squercum had been very hard
upon him; and in connexion with this accusation as to the Pickering
property, there was another, which he would be forced to face also,
respecting certain property in the East of London, with which the
reader need not much trouble himself specially, but in reference to
which it was stated that he had induced a foolish old gentleman to
consent to accept railway shares in lieu of money. The old gentleman
had died during the transaction, and it was asserted that the old
gentleman's letter was hardly genuine. Melmotte had certainly raised
between twenty and thirty thousand pounds on the property, and had
made payments for it in stock which was now worth--almost nothing at
all. Melmotte thought that he might face this matter successfully
if the matter came upon him single-handed;--but in regard to the
Longestaffes he considered that now, at this last moment, he had
better pay for Pickering.

The property from which he intended to raise the necessary funds was
really his own. There could be no doubt about that. It had never been
his intention to make it over to his daughter. When he had placed it
in her name, he had done so simply for security,--feeling that his
control over his only daughter would be perfect and free from danger.
No girl apparently less likely to take it into her head to defraud
her father could have crept quietly about a father's house. Nor did
he now think that she would disobey him when the matter was explained
to her. Heavens and earth! That he should be robbed by his own
child,--robbed openly, shamefully, with brazen audacity! It was
impossible. But still he had felt the necessity of going about this
business with some little care. It might be that she would disobey
him if he simply sent for her and bade her to affix her signature
here and there. He thought much about it and considered that it would
be wise that his wife should be present on the occasion, and that
a full explanation should be given to Marie, by which she might be
made to understand that the money had in no sense become her own.
So he gave instructions to his wife when he started into the city that
morning; and when he returned, for the sake of making his offer to
the Longestaffes, he brought with him the deeds which it would be
necessary that Marie should sign, and he brought also Mr. Croll, his
clerk, that Mr. Croll might witness the signature.

When he left the Longestaffes and Mr. Bideawhile he went at once to
his wife's room. "Is she here?" he asked.

"I will send for her. I have told her."

"You haven't frightened her?"

"Why should I frighten her? It is not very easy to frighten her,
Melmotte. She is changed since these young men have been so much
about her."

"I shall frighten her if she does not do as I bid her. Bid her come
now." This was said in French. Then Madame Melmotte left the room,
and Melmotte arranged a lot of papers in order upon a table. Having
done so, he called to Croll, who was standing on the landing-place,
and told him to seat himself in the back drawing-room till he should
be called. Melmotte then stood with his back to the fire-place in his
wife's sitting-room, with his hands in his pockets, contemplating
what might be the incidents of the coming interview. He would be very
gracious,--affectionate if it were possible,--and, above all things,
explanatory. But, by heavens, if there were continued opposition
to his demand,--to his just demand,--if this girl should dare to
insist upon exercising her power to rob him, he would not then be
affectionate,--nor gracious! There was some little delay in the
coming of the two women, and he was already beginning to lose his
temper when Marie followed Madame Melmotte into the room. He at once
swallowed his rising anger--with an effort. He would put a constraint
upon himself. The affection and the graciousness should be all
there,--as long as they might secure the purpose in hand.

"Marie," he began, "I spoke to you the other day about some property
which for certain purposes was placed in your name just as we were
leaving Paris."

"Yes, papa."

"You were such a child then,--I mean when we left Paris,--that I
could hardly explain to you the purpose of what I did." "I understood
it, papa."

"You had better listen to me, my dear. I don't think you did quite
understand it. It would have been very odd if you had, as I never
explained it to you."

"You wanted to keep it from going away if you got into trouble."

This was so true that Melmotte did not know how at the moment to
contradict the assertion. And yet he had not intended to talk of the
possibility of trouble. "I wanted to lay aside a large sum of money
which should not be liable to the ordinary fluctuations of commercial
enterprise."

"So that nobody could get at it."

"You are a little too quick, my dear."

"Marie, why can't you let your papa speak?" said Madame Melmotte.

"But of course, my dear," continued Melmotte, "I had no idea of
putting the money beyond my own reach. Such a transaction is very
common; and in such cases a man naturally uses the name of some one
who is very near and dear to him, and in whom he is sure that he can
put full confidence. And it is customary to choose a young person, as
there will then be less danger of the accident of death. It was for
these reasons, which I am sure that you will understand, that I chose
you. Of course the property remained exclusively my own."

"But it is really mine," said Marie.

"No, miss; it was never yours," said Melmotte, almost bursting out
into anger, but restraining himself. "How could it become yours,
Marie? Did I ever make you a gift of it?"

"But I know that it did become mine,--legally."

"By a quibble of law,--yes; but not so as to give you any right to
it. I always draw the income."

"But I could stop that, papa,--and if I were married, of course it
would be stopped."

Then, quick as a flash of lightning, another idea occurred to
Melmotte, who feared that he already began to see that this child of
his might be stiff-necked. "As we are thinking of your marriage," he
said, "it is necessary that a change should be made. Settlements must
be drawn for the satisfaction of Lord Nidderdale and his father. The
old Marquis is rather hard upon me, but the marriage is so splendid
that I have consented. You must now sign these papers in four or
five places. Mr. Croll is here, in the next room, to witness your
signature, and I will call him."

"Wait a moment, papa."

"Why should we wait?"

"I don't think I will sign them."

"Why not sign them? You can't really suppose that the property is
your own. You could not even get it if you did think so."

"I don't know how that may be; but I had rather not sign them. If I
am to be married, I ought not to sign anything except what he tells
me."

"He has no authority over you yet. I have authority over you. Marie,
do not give more trouble. I am very much pressed for time. Let me
call in Mr. Croll."

"No, papa," she said.

Then came across his brow that look which had probably first induced
Marie to declare that she would endure to be "cut to pieces," rather
than to yield in this or that direction. The lower jaw squared
itself, and the teeth became set, and the nostrils of his nose became
extended,--and Marie began to prepare herself to be "cut to pieces."
But he reminded himself that there was another game which he had
proposed to play before he resorted to anger and violence. He would
tell her how much depended on her compliance. Therefore he relaxed
the frown,--as well as he knew how, and softened his face towards
her, and turned again to his work. "I am sure, Marie, that you will
not refuse to do this when I explain to you its importance to me. I
must have that property for use in the city to-morrow, or--I shall
be ruined." The statement was very short, but the manner in which he
made it was not without effect.

"Oh!" shrieked his wife.

"It is true. These harpies have so beset me about the election that
they have lowered the price of every stock in which I am concerned,
and have brought the Mexican Railway so low that they cannot be sold
at all. I don't like bringing my troubles home from the city; but on
this occasion I cannot help it. The sum locked up here is very large,
and I am compelled to use it. In point of fact it is necessary to
save us from destruction." This he said, very slowly, and with the
utmost solemnity.

"But you told me just now you wanted it because I was going to be
married," rejoined Marie.

A liar has many points in his favour,--but he has this against him,
that unless he devote more time to the management of his lies than
life will generally allow, he cannot make them tally. Melmotte was
thrown back for a moment, and almost felt that the time for violence
had come. He longed to be at her that he might shake the wickedness
and the folly, and the ingratitude out of her. But he once more
condescended to argue and to explain. "I think you misunderstood me,
Marie. I meant you to understand that settlements must be made, and
that of course I must get my own property back into my own hands
before anything of that kind can be done. I tell you once more, my
dear, that if you do not do as I bid you, so that I may use that
property the first thing to-morrow, we are all ruined. Everything
will be gone."

"This can't be gone," said Marie, nodding her head at the papers.

"Marie,--do you wish to see me disgraced and ruined? I have done a
great deal for you."

"You turned away the only person I ever cared for," said Marie.

"Marie, how can you be so wicked? Do as your papa bids you," said
Madame Melmotte.

"No!" said Melmotte. "She does not care who is ruined, because we
saved her from that reprobate."

"She will sign them now," said Madame Melmotte.

"No;--I will not sign them," said Marie. "If I am to be married to
Lord Nidderdale as you all say, I am sure I ought to sign nothing
without telling him. And if the property was once made to be mine,
I don't think I ought to give it up again because papa says that he
is going to be ruined. I think that's a reason for not giving it up
again."

"It isn't yours to give. It's mine," said Melmotte gnashing his
teeth.

"Then you can do what you like with it without my signing," said
Marie.

He paused a moment, and then laying his hand gently upon her
shoulder, he asked her yet once again. His voice was changed, and was
very hoarse. But he still tried to be gentle with her. "Marie," he
said, "will you do this to save your father from destruction?"

But she did not believe a word that he said to her. How could she
believe him? He had taught her to regard him as her natural enemy,
making her aware that it was his purpose to use her as a chattel for
his own advantage, and never allowing her for a moment to suppose
that aught that he did was to be done for her happiness. And now,
almost in a breath, he had told her that this money was wanted that
it might be settled on her and the man to whom she was to be married,
and then that it might be used to save him from instant ruin. She
believed neither one story nor the other. That she should have done
as she was desired in this matter can hardly be disputed. The father
had used her name because he thought that he could trust her. She
was his daughter and should not have betrayed his trust. But she had
steeled herself to obstinacy against him in all things. Even yet,
after all that had passed, although she had consented to marry Lord
Nidderdale, though she had been forced by what she had learned to
despise Sir Felix Carbury, there was present to her an idea that she
might escape with the man she really loved. But any such hope could
depend only on the possession of the money which she now claimed as
her own. Melmotte had endeavoured to throw a certain supplicatory
pathos into the question he had asked her; but, though he was in some
degree successful with his voice, his eyes and his mouth and his
forehead still threatened her. He was always threatening her. All her
thoughts respecting him reverted to that inward assertion that he
might "cut her to pieces" if he liked. He repeated his question in
the pathetic strain. "Will you do this now,--to save us all from
ruin?" But his eyes still threatened her.

"No;" she said, looking up into his face as though watching for the
personal attack which would be made upon her; "no, I won't."

"Marie!" exclaimed Madame Melmotte.

She glanced round for a moment at her pseudo-mother with contempt.
"No;" she said. "I don't think I ought,--and I won't."

"You won't!" shouted Melmotte. She merely shook her head. "Do you
mean that you, my own child, will attempt to rob your father just at
the moment you can destroy him by your wickedness?" She shook her
head but said no other word.

"Nec pueros coram populo Medea trucidet."

"Let not Medea with unnatural rage
Slaughter her mangled infants on the stage."

Nor will I attempt to harrow my readers by a close description of the
scene which followed. Poor Marie! That cutting her up into pieces was
commenced after a most savage fashion. Marie crouching down hardly
uttered a sound. But Madame Melmotte frightened beyond endurance
screamed at the top of her voice,--"Ah, Melmotte, tu la tueras!"
And then she tried to drag him from his prey. "Will you sign them
now?" said Melmotte, panting. At that moment Croll, frightened by the
screams, burst into the room. It was perhaps not the first time that
he had interfered to save Melmotte from the effects of his own wrath.

"Oh, Mr. Melmotte, vat is de matter?" asked the clerk.

Melmotte was out of breath and could hardly tell his story. Marie
gradually recovered herself, and crouched, cowering, in a corner of
a sofa, by no means vanquished in spirit, but with a feeling that
the very life had been crushed out of her body. Madame Melmotte
was standing weeping copiously, with her handkerchief up to her
eyes. "Will you sign the papers?" Melmotte demanded. Marie, lying
as she was, all in a heap, merely shook her head. "Pig!" said
Melmotte,--"wicked, ungrateful pig."

"Ah, Ma'am-moiselle," said Croll, "you should oblige your fader."





"Wretched, wicked girl!" said Melmotte, collecting the papers
together. Then he left the room, and followed by Croll descended to
the study, whence the Longestaffes and Mr. Bideawhile had long since
taken their departure.

Madame Melmotte came and stood over the girl, but for some minutes
spoke never a word. Marie lay on the sofa, all in a heap, with her
hair dishevelled and her dress disordered, breathing hard, but
uttering no sobs and shedding no tears. The stepmother,--if she might
so be called,--did not think of attempting to persuade where her
husband had failed. She feared Melmotte so thoroughly, and was so
timid in regard to her own person, that she could not understand
the girl's courage. Melmotte was to her an awful being, powerful as
Satan,--whom she never openly disobeyed, though she daily deceived
him, and was constantly detected in her deceptions. Marie seemed to
her to have all her father's stubborn, wicked courage, and very much
of his power. At the present moment she did not dare to tell the girl
that she had been wrong. But she had believed her husband when he had
said that destruction was coming, and had partly believed him when he
declared that the destruction might be averted by Marie's obedience.
Her life had been passed in almost daily fear of destruction. To
Marie the last two years of splendour had been so long that they had
produced a feeling of security. But to the elder woman the two years
had not sufficed to eradicate the remembrance of former reverses, and
never for a moment had she felt herself to be secure. At last she
asked the girl what she would like to have done for her. "I wish he
had killed me," Marie said, slowly dragging herself up from the sofa,
and retreating without another word to her own room.

In the meantime another scene was being acted in the room below.
Melmotte after he reached the room hardly made a reference to his
daughter,--merely saying that nothing would overcome her wicked
obstinacy. He made no allusion to his own violence, nor had Croll the
courage to expostulate with him now that the immediate danger was
over. The Great Financier again arranged the papers, just as they had
been laid out before,--as though he thought that the girl might be
brought down to sign them there. And then he went on to explain to
Croll what he had wanted to have done,--how necessary it was that
the thing should be done, and how terribly cruel it was to him that in
such a crisis of his life he should be hampered, impeded,--he did not
venture to his clerk to say ruined,--by the ill-conditioned obstinacy
of a girl! He explained very fully how absolutely the property was
his own, how totally the girl was without any right to withhold it
from him! How monstrous in its injustice was the present position
of things! In all this Croll fully agreed. Then Melmotte went on
to declare that he would not feel the slightest scruple in writing
Marie's signature to the papers himself. He was the girl's father and
was justified in acting for her. The property was his own property,
and he was justified in doing with it as he pleased. Of course he
would have no scruple in writing his daughter's name. Then he looked
up at the clerk. The clerk again assented,--after a fashion, not by
any means with the comfortable certainty with which he had signified
his accordance with his employer's first propositions. But he did
not, at any rate, hint any disapprobation of the step which Melmotte
proposed to take. Then Melmotte went a step farther, and explained
that the only difficulty in reference to such a transaction would
be that the signature of his daughter would be required to be
corroborated by that of a witness before he could use it. Then he
again looked up at Croll;--but on this occasion Croll did not move a
muscle of his face. There certainly was no assent. Melmotte continued
to look at him; but then came upon the old clerk's countenance a
stern look which amounted to very strong dissent. And yet Croll had
been conversant with some irregular doings in his time, and Melmotte
knew well the extent of Croll's experience. Then Melmotte made a
little remark to himself. "He knows that the game is pretty well
over." "You had better return to the city now," he said aloud. "I
shall follow you in half an hour. It is quite possible that I may
bring my daughter with me. If I can make her understand this thing I
shall do so. In that case I shall want you to be ready." Croll again
smiled, and again assented, and went his way.

But Melmotte made no further attempt upon his daughter. As soon as
Croll was gone he searched among various papers in his desk and
drawers, and having found two signatures, those of his daughter and
of this German clerk, set to work tracing them with some thin tissue
paper. He commenced his present operation by bolting his door and
pulling down the blinds. He practised the two signatures for the best
part of an hour. Then he forged them on the various documents;--and,
having completed the operation, refolded them, placed them in a
little locked bag of which he had always kept the key in his purse,
and then, with the bag in his hand, was taken in his brougham into
the city.



CHAPTER LXXVIII.

MISS LONGESTAFFE AGAIN AT CAVERSHAM.



All this time Mr. Longestaffe was necessarily detained in London
while the three ladies of his family were living forlornly at Cav-
ersham. He had taken his younger daughter home on the day after
his visit to Lady Monogram, and in all his intercourse with her had
spoken of her suggested marriage with Mr. Brehgert as a thing utterly
out of the question. Georgiana had made one little fight for her
independence at the Jermyn Street Hotel. "Indeed, papa, I think it's
very hard," she said.

"What's hard? I think a great many things are hard; but I have to
bear them."

"You can do nothing for me."

"Do nothing for you! Haven't you got a home to live in, and clothes
to wear, and a carriage to go about in,--and books to read if you
choose to read them? What do you expect?"

"You know, papa, that's nonsense."

"How do you dare to tell me that what I say is nonsense?"

"Of course there's a house to live in and clothes to wear; but what's
to be the end of it? Sophia, I suppose, is going to be married."

"I am happy to say she is,--to a most respectable young man and a
thorough gentleman."

"And Dolly has his own way of going on."

"You have nothing to do with Adolphus."

"Nor will he have anything to do with me. If I don't marry what's to
become of me? It isn't that Mr. Brehgert is the sort of man I should
choose."

"Do not mention his name to me."

"But what am I to do? You give up the house in town, and how am I to
see people? It was you sent me to Mr. Melmotte."

"I didn't send you to Mr. Melmotte."

"It was at your suggestion I went there, papa. And of course I could
only see the people he had there. I like nice people as well as
anybody."

"There's no use talking any more about it."

"I don't see that. I must talk about it, and think about it too. If
I can put up with Mr. Brehgert I don't see why you and mamma should
complain."

"A Jew!"

"People don't think about that as they used to, papa. He has a very
fine income, and I should always have a house in--"

Then Mr. Longestaffe became so furious and loud, that he stopped her
for that time. "Look here," he said, "if you mean to tell me that you
will marry that man without my consent, I can't prevent it. But you
shall not marry him as my daughter. You shall be turned out of my
house, and I will never have your name pronounced in my presence
again. It is disgusting,--degrading,--disgraceful!" And then he left
her.

On the next morning before he started for Caversham he did see Mr.
Brehgert; but he told Georgiana nothing of the interview, nor had
she the courage to ask him. The objectionable name was not mentioned
again in her father's hearing, but there was a sad scene between
herself, Lady Pomona, and her sister. When Mr. Longestaffe and his
younger daughter arrived, the poor mother did not go down into the
hall to meet her child,--from whom she had that morning received the
dreadful tidings about the Jew. As to these tidings she had as yet
heard no direct condemnation from her husband. The effect upon Lady
Pomona had been more grievous even than that made upon the father.
Mr. Longestaffe had been able to declare immediately that the
proposed marriage was out of the question, that nothing of the kind
should be allowed, and could take upon himself to see the Jew with
the object of breaking off the engagement. But poor Lady Pomona was
helpless in her sorrow. If Georgiana chose to marry a Jew tradesman
she could not help it. But such an occurrence in the family would,
she felt, be to her as though the end of all things had come. She
could never again hold up her head, never go into society, never
take pleasure in her powdered footmen. When her daughter should have
married a Jew, she didn't think that she could pluck up the courage
to look even her neighbours Mrs. Yeld and Mrs. Hepworth in the face.
Georgiana found no one in the hall to meet her, and dreaded to go to
her mother. She first went with her maid to her own room, and waited
there till Sophia came to her. As she sat pretending to watch the
process of unpacking, she strove to regain her courage. Why need she
be afraid of anybody? Why, at any rate, should she be afraid of other
females? Had she not always been dominant over her mother and sister?
"Oh, Georgey," said Sophia, "this is wonderful news!"

"I suppose it seems wonderful that anybody should be going to be
married except yourself."

"No;--but such a very odd match!"

"Look here, Sophia. If you don't like it, you need not talk about it.
We shall always have a house in town, and you will not. If you don't
like to come to us, you needn't. That's about all."

"George wouldn't let me go there at all," said Sophia.

"Then--George--had better keep you at home at Toodlam. Where's mamma?
I should have thought somebody might have come and met me to say a
word to me, instead of allowing me to creep into the house like
this."

"Mamma isn't at all well; but she's up and in her own room. You
mustn't be surprised, Georgey, if you find mamma very--very much cut
up about this." Then Georgiana understood that she must be content to
stand all alone in the world, unless she made up her mind to give up
Mr. Brehgert.

"So I've come back," said Georgiana, stooping down and kissing her
mother.

"Oh, Georgiana; oh, Georgiana!" said Lady Pomona, slowly raising
herself and covering her face with one of her hands. "This is
dreadful. It will kill me. It will indeed. I didn't expect it from
you."

"What is the good of all that, mamma?"

"It seems to me that it can't be possible. It's unnatural. It's worse
than your wife's sister. I'm sure there's something in the Bible
against it. You never would read your Bible, or you wouldn't be going
to do this."

"Lady Julia Start has done just the same thing,--and she goes
everywhere."

"What does your papa say? I'm sure your papa won't allow it. If he's
fixed about anything, it's about the Jews. An accursed race;--think
of that, Georgiana;--expelled from Paradise."

"Mamma, that's nonsense."

"Scattered about all over the world, so that nobody knows who anybody
is. And it's only since those nasty Radicals came up that they have
been able to sit in Parliament."

"One of the greatest judges in the land is a Jew," said Georgiana,
who had already learned to fortify her own case.

"Nothing that the Radicals can do can make them anything else but
what they are. I'm sure that Mr. Whitstable, who is to be your
brother-in-law, will never condescend to speak to him."

Now, if there was anybody whom Georgiana Longestaffe had despised
from her youth upwards it was George Whitstable. He had been a
laughing-stock to her when they were children, had been regarded
as a lout when he left school, and had been her common example of
rural dullness since he had become a man. He certainly was neither
beautiful nor bright;--but he was a Conservative squire born of Tory
parents. Nor was he rich,--having but a moderate income, sufficient
to maintain a moderate country house and no more. When first
there came indications that Sophia intended to put up with George
Whitstable, the more ambitious sister did not spare the shafts of her
scorn. And now she was told that George Whitstable would not speak to
her future husband! She was not to marry Mr. Brehgert lest she should
bring disgrace, among others, upon George Whitstable! This was not to
be endured.

"Then Mr. Whitstable may keep himself at home at Toodlam and not
trouble his head at all about me or my husband. I'm sure I shan't
trouble myself as to what a poor creature like that may think about
me. George Whitstable knows as much about London as I do about the
moon."

"He has always been in county society," said Sophia, "and was staying
only the other day at Lord Cantab's."

"Then there were two fools together," said Georgiana, who at this
moment was very unhappy.

"Mr. Whitstable is an excellent young man, and I am sure he will make
your sister happy; but as for Mr. Brehgert,--I can't bear to have his
name mentioned in my hearing."

"Then, mamma, it had better not be mentioned. At any rate it shan't
be mentioned again by me." Having so spoken, Georgiana bounced out of
the room and did not meet her mother and sister again till she came
down into the drawing-room before dinner.

Her position was one very trying both to her nerves and to her
feelings. She presumed that her father had seen Mr. Brehgert, but did
not in the least know what had passed between them. It might be that
her father had been so decided in his objection as to induce Mr.
Brehgert to abandon his intention,--and if this were so, there could
be no reason why she should endure the misery of having the Jew
thrown in her face. Among them all they had made her think that she
would never become Mrs. Brehgert. She certainly was not prepared to
nail her colours upon the mast and to live and die for Brehgert. She
was almost sick of the thing herself. But she could not back out of
it so as to obliterate all traces of the disgrace. Even if she should
not ultimately marry the Jew, it would be known that she had been
engaged to a Jew,--and then it would certainly be said afterwards
that the Jew had jilted her. She was thus vacillating in her mind,
not knowing whether to go on with Brehgert or to abandon him. That
evening Lady Pomona retired immediately after dinner, being "far from
well." It was of course known to them all that Mr. Brehgert was her
ailment. She was accompanied by her elder daughter, and Georgiana
was left with her father. Not a word was spoken between them. He sat
behind his newspaper till he went to sleep, and she found herself
alone and deserted in that big room. It seemed to her that even the
servants treated her with disdain. Her own maid had already given her
notice. It was manifestly the intention of her family to ostracise
her altogether. Of what service would it be to her that Lady Julia
Goldsheiner should be received everywhere, if she herself were to
be left without a single Christian friend? Would a life passed
exclusively among the Jews content even her lessened ambition? At
ten o'clock she kissed her father's head and went to bed. Her father
grunted less audibly than usual under the operation. She had always
given herself credit for high spirits, but she began to fear that her
courage would not suffice to carry her through sufferings such as
these.

On the next day her father returned to town, and the three ladies
were left alone. Great preparations were going on for the Whitstable
wedding. Dresses were being made and linen marked, and consultations
held,--from all which things Georgiana was kept quite apart. The
accepted lover came over to lunch, and was made as much of as though
the Whitstables had always kept a town house. Sophy loomed so large
in her triumph and happiness, that it was not to be borne. All
Caversham treated her with a new respect. And yet if Toodlam was a
couple of thousand a year, it was all it was;--and there were two
unmarried sisters! Lady Pomona went half into hysterics every time
she saw her younger daughter, and became in her way a most oppressive
parent. Oh, heavens;--was Mr. Brehgert with his two houses worth all
this? A feeling of intense regret for the things she was losing came
over her. Even Caversham, the Caversham of old days which she had
hated, but in which she had made herself respected and partly feared
by everybody about the place,--had charms for her which seemed to
her delightful now that they were lost for ever. Then she had always
considered herself to be the first personage in the house,--superior
even to her father;--but now she was decidedly the last.

Her second evening was worse even than the first. When Mr.
Longestaffe was not at home the family sat in a small dingy room
between the library and the dining-room, and on this occasion the
family consisted only of Georgiana. In the course of the evening she
went up-stairs and calling her sister out into the passage demanded
to be told why she was thus deserted. "Poor mamma is very ill," said
Sophy.

"I won't stand it if I'm to be treated like this," said Georgiana.
"I'll go away somewhere."

"How can I help it, Georgey? It's your own doing. Of course you must
have known that you were going to separate yourself from us."

On the next morning there came a dispatch from Mr. Longestaffe,--of
what nature Georgey did not know as it was addressed to Lady Pomona.
But one enclosure she was allowed to see. "Mamma," said Sophy,
"thinks you ought to know how Dolly feels about it." And then a
letter from Dolly to his father was put into Georgey's hands. The
letter was as follows:--


MY DEAR FATHER,--

Can it be true that Georgey is thinking of marrying that
horrid vulgar Jew, old Brehgert? The fellows say so; but I
can't believe it. I'm sure you wouldn't let her. You ought
to lock her up.

Yours affectionately,

A. LONGESTAFFE.


Dolly's letters made his father very angry, as, short as they were,
they always contained advice or instruction, such as should come from
a father to a son, rather than from a son to a father. This letter
had not been received with a welcome. Nevertheless the head of the
family had thought it worth his while to make use of it, and had sent
it to Caversham in order that it might be shown to his rebellious
daughter.

And so Dolly had said that she ought to be locked up! She'd like to
see somebody do it! As soon as she had read her brother's epistle she
tore it into fragments and threw it away in her sister's presence.
"How can mamma be such a hypocrite as to pretend to care what Dolly
says? Who doesn't know that he's an idiot? And papa has thought it
worth his while to send that down here for me to see! Well, after
that I must say that I don't much care what papa does."

"I don't see why Dolly shouldn't have an opinion as well as anybody
else," said Sophy.

"As well as George Whitstable? As far as stupidness goes they are
about the same. But Dolly has a little more knowledge of the world."

"Of course we all know, Georgiana," rejoined the elder sister,
"that for cuteness and that kind of thing one must look among the
commercial classes, and especially among a certain sort."

"I've done with you all," said Georgey rushing out of the room. "I'll
have nothing more to do with any one of you."

But it is very difficult for a young lady to have done with her
family! A young man may go anywhere, and may be lost at sea; or come
and claim his property after twenty years. A young man may demand an
allowance, and has almost a right to live alone. The young male bird
is supposed to fly away from the paternal nest. But the daughter of
a house is compelled to adhere to her father till she shall get a
husband. The only way in which Georgey could "have done" with them
all at Caversham would be by trusting herself to Mr. Brehgert, and at
the present moment she did not know whether Mr. Brehgert did or did
not consider himself as engaged to her.

That day also passed away with ineffable tedium. At one time she was
so beaten down by ennui that she almost offered her assistance to
her sister in reference to the wedding garments. In spite of the
very bitter words which had been spoken in the morning she would
have done so had Sophy afforded her the slightest opportunity. But
Sophy was heartlessly cruel in her indifference. In her younger days
she had had her bad things, and now,--with George Whitstable by her
side,--she meant to have good things, the goodness of which was
infinitely enhanced by the badness of her sister's things. She
had been so greatly despised that the charm of despising again
was irresistible. And she was able to reconcile her cruelty to
her conscience by telling herself that duty required her to show
implacable resistance to such a marriage as this which her sister
contemplated. Therefore Georgiana dragged out another day, not in the
least knowing what was to be her fate.



CHAPTER LXXIX.

THE BREHGERT CORRESPONDENCE.



Mr. Longestaffe had brought his daughter down to Caversham on a
Wednesday. During the Thursday and Friday she had passed a very sad
time, not knowing whether she was or was not engaged to marry Mr.
Brehgert. Her father had declared to her that he would break off
the match, and she believed that he had seen Mr. Brehgert with that
purpose. She had certainly given no consent, and had never hinted to
any one of the family an idea that she was disposed to yield. But
she felt that, at any rate with her father, she had not adhered to
her purpose with tenacity, and that she had allowed him to return
to London with a feeling that she might still be controlled. She
was beginning to be angry with Mr. Brehgert, thinking that he had
taken his dismissal from her father without consulting her. It was
necessary that something should be settled, something known. Life
such as that she was leading now would drive her mad. She had all the
disadvantages of the Brehgert connection and none of the advantages.
She could not comfort herself with thinking of the Brehgert wealth
and the Brehgert houses, and yet she was living under the general
ban of Caversham on account of her Brehgert associations. She was
beginning to think that she herself must write to Mr. Brehgert,--only
she did not know what to say to him.

But on the Saturday morning she got a letter from Mr. Brehgert.
It was handed to her as she was sitting at breakfast with her
sister,--who at that moment was triumphant with a present of
gooseberries which had been sent over from Toodlam. The Toodlam
gooseberries were noted throughout Suffolk, and when the letters
were being brought in Sophia was taking her lover's offering from the
basket with her own fair hands. "Well!" Georgey had exclaimed, "to
send a pottle of gooseberries to his lady love across the country!
Who but George Whitstable would do that?"

"I dare say you get nothing but gems and gold," Sophy retorted. "I
don't suppose that Mr. Brehgert knows what a gooseberry is." At that
moment the letter was brought in, and Georgiana knew the writing. "I
suppose that's from Mr. Brehgert," said Sophy.

"I don't think it matters much to you who it's from." She tried to be
composed and stately, but the letter was too important to allow of
composure, and she retired to read it in privacy.

The letter was as follows:--


MY DEAR GEORGIANA,

Your father came to me the day after I was to have met you
at Lady Monogram's party. I told him then that I would not
write to you till I had taken a day or two to consider
what he said to me;--and also that I thought it better
that you should have a day or two to consider what he
might say to you. He has now repeated what he said at our
first interview, almost with more violence; for I must say
that I think he has allowed himself to be violent when it
was surely unnecessary.

The long and short of it is this. He altogether
disapproves of your promise to marry me. He has given
three reasons;--first that I am in trade; secondly that
I am much older than you, and have a family; and thirdly
that I am a Jew. In regard to the first I can hardly
think that he is earnest. I have explained to him that my
business is that of a banker; and I can hardly conceive it
to be possible that any gentleman in England should object
to his daughter marrying a banker, simply because the man
is a banker. There would be a blindness of arrogance in
such a proposition of which I think your father to be
incapable. This has merely been added in to strengthen his
other objections.

As to my age, it is just fifty-one. I do not at all think
myself too old to be married again. Whether I am too old
for you is for you to judge,--as is also that question of
my children who, of course, should you become my wife will
be to some extent a care upon your shoulders. As this is
all very serious you will not, I hope, think me wanting in
gallantry if I say that I should hardly have ventured to
address you if you had been quite a young girl. No doubt
there are many years between us;--and so I think there
should be. A man of my age hardly looks to marry a woman
of the same standing as himself. But the question is one
for the lady to decide,--and you must decide it now.

As to my religion, I acknowledge the force of what your
father says,--though I think that a gentleman brought up
with fewer prejudices would have expressed himself in
language less likely to give offence. However I am a man
not easily offended; and on this occasion I am ready to
take what he has said in good part. I can easily conceive
that there should be those who think that the husband
and wife should agree in religion. I am indifferent to it
myself. I shall not interfere with you if you make me
happy by becoming my wife, nor, I suppose, will you with
me. Should you have a daughter or daughters I am quite
willing that they should be brought up subject to your
influence.

There was a plain-speaking in this which made Georgiana look round
the room as though to see whether any one was watching her as she
read it.

But no doubt your father objects to me specially because
I am a Jew. If I were an atheist he might, perhaps, say
nothing on the subject of religion. On this matter as well
as on others it seems to me that your father has hardly
kept pace with the movements of the age. Fifty years ago
whatever claim a Jew might have to be as well considered
as a Christian, he certainly was not so considered.
Society was closed against him, except under special
circumstances, and so were all the privileges of high
position. But that has been altered. Your father does not
admit the change; but I think he is blind to it, because
he does not wish to see.

I say all this more as defending myself than as combating
his views with you. It must be for you and for you alone
to decide how far his views shall govern you. He has told
me, after a rather peremptory fashion, that I have behaved
badly to him and to his family because I did not go to
him in the first instance when I thought of obtaining
the honour of an alliance with his daughter. I have been
obliged to tell him that in this matter I disagree with
him entirely, though in so telling him I endeavoured to
restrain myself from any appearance of warmth. I had not
the pleasure of meeting you in his house, nor had I any
acquaintance with him. And again, at the risk of being
thought uncourteous, I must say that you are to a certain
degree emancipated by age from that positive subordination
to which a few years ago you probably submitted without a
question. If a gentleman meets a lady in society, as I met
you in the home of our friend Mr. Melmotte, I do not think
that the gentleman is to be debarred from expressing his
feelings because the lady may possibly have a parent. Your
father, no doubt with propriety, had left you to be the
guardian of yourself, and I cannot submit to be accused of
improper conduct because, finding you in that condition, I
availed myself of it.

And now, having said so much, I must leave the question to
be decided entirely by yourself. I beg you to understand
that I do not at all wish to hold you to a promise merely
because the promise has been given. I readily acknowledge
that the opinion of your family should be considered by
you, though I will not admit that I was bound to consult
that opinion before I spoke to you. It may well be that
your regard for me or your appreciation of the comforts
with which I may be able to surround you, will not suffice
to reconcile you to such a breach from your own family as
your father, with much repetition, has assured me will be
inevitable. Take a day or two to think of this and turn it
well over in your mind. When I last had the happiness of
speaking to you, you seemed to think that your parents
might raise objections, but that those objections would
give way before an expression of your own wishes. I was
flattered by your so thinking; but, if I may form any
judgment from your father's manner, I must suppose that
you were mistaken. You will understand that I do not say
this as any reproach to you. Quite the contrary. I think
your father is irrational; and you may well have failed to
anticipate that he should be so.

As to my own feelings they remain exactly as they were
when I endeavoured to explain them to you. Though I do not
find myself to be too old to marry, I do think myself too
old to write love letters. I have no doubt you believe me
when I say that I entertain a most sincere affection for
you; and I beseech you to believe me in saying further
that should you become my wife it shall be the study of my
life to make you happy.

It is essentially necessary that I should allude to one
other matter, as to which I have already told your father
what I will now tell you. I think it probable that within
this week I shall find myself a loser of a very large sum
of money through the failure of a gentleman whose bad
treatment of me I will the more readily forgive because
he was the means of making me known to you. This you must
understand is private between you and me, though I have
thought it proper to inform your father. Such loss, if it
fall upon me, will not interfere in the least with the
income which I have proposed to settle upon you for your
use after my death; and, as your father declares that in
the event of your marrying me he will neither give to you
nor bequeath to you a shilling, he might have abstained
from telling me to my face that I was a bankrupt merchant
when I myself told him of my loss. I am not a bankrupt
merchant nor at all likely to become so. Nor will this
loss at all interfere with my present mode of living. But
I have thought it right to inform you of it, because, if
it occur,--as I think it will,--I shall not deem it right
to keep a second establishment probably for the next two
or three years. But my house at Fulham and my stables
there will be kept up just as they are at present.

I have now told you everything which I think it is
necessary you should know, in order that you may determine
either to adhere to or to recede from your engagement.
When you have resolved you will let me know,--but a day or
two may probably be necessary for your decision. I hope I
need not say that a decision in my favour will make me a
happy man.

I am, in the meantime, your affectionate friend,

EZEKIEL BREHGERT.


This very long letter puzzled Georgey a good deal, and left her, at
the time of reading it, very much in doubt as to what she would do.
She could understand that it was a plain-spoken and truth-telling
letter. Not that she, to herself, gave it praise for those virtues;
but that it imbued her unconsciously with a thorough belief. She
was apt to suspect deceit in other people;--but it did not occur to
her that Mr. Brehgert had written a single word with an attempt to
deceive her. But the single-minded genuine honesty of the letter was
altogether thrown away upon her. She never said to herself, as she
read it, that she might safely trust herself to this man, though he
were a Jew, though greasy and like a butcher, though over fifty and
with a family, because he was an honest man. She did not see that
the letter was particularly sensible;--but she did allow herself to be
pained by the total absence of romance. She was annoyed at the first
allusion to her age, and angry at the second; and yet she had never
supposed that Brehgert had taken her to be younger than she was.
She was well aware that the world in general attributes more years
to unmarried women than they have lived, as a sort of equalising
counter-weight against the pretences which young women make on
the other side, or the lies which are told on their behalf. Nor had
she wished to appear peculiarly young in his eyes. But, neverthe-
less, she regarded the reference to be uncivil,--perhaps almost
butcher-like,--and it had its effect upon her. And then the allusion
to the "daughter or daughters" troubled her. She told herself that it
was vulgar,--just what a butcher might have said. And although she
was quite prepared to call her father the most irrational, the most
prejudiced, and most ill-natured of men, yet she was displeased that
Mr. Brehgert should take such a liberty with him. But the passage
in Mr. Brehgert's letter which was most distasteful to her was that
which told her of the loss which he might probably incur through his
connection with Melmotte. What right had he to incur a loss which
would incapacitate him from keeping his engagements with her? The
town-house had been the great persuasion, and now he absolutely had
the face to tell her that there was to be no town-house for three
years. When she read this she felt that she ought to be indignant,
and for a few moments was minded to sit down without further
consideration and tell the man with considerable scorn that she
would have nothing more to say to him.

But on that side too there would be terrible bitterness. How would
she have fallen from her greatness when, barely forgiven by her
father and mother for the vile sin which she had contemplated, she
should consent to fill a common bridesmaid place at the nuptials of
George Whitstable! And what would then be left to her in life? This
episode of the Jew would make it quite impossible for her again
to contest the question of the London house with her father. Lady
Pomona and Mrs. George Whitstable would be united with him against
her. There would be no "season" for her, and she would be nobody
at Caversham. As for London, she would hardly wish to go there!
Everybody would know the story of the Jew. She thought that she could
have plucked up courage to face the world as the Jew's wife, but not
as the young woman who had wanted to marry the Jew and had failed.
How would her future life go with her, should she now make up her
mind to retire from the proposed alliance? If she could get her
father to take her abroad at once, she would do it; but she was not
now in a condition to make any terms with her father. As all this
gradually passed through her mind, she determined that she would so
far take Mr. Brehgert's advice as to postpone her answer till she had
well considered the matter.

She slept upon it, and the next day she asked her mother a few
questions. "Mamma, have you any idea what papa means to do?"

"In what way, my dear?" Lady Pomona's voice was not gracious, as
she was free from that fear of her daughter's ascendancy which had
formerly affected her.

"Well;--I suppose he must have some plan."

"You must explain yourself. I don't know why he should have any
particular plan."

"Will he go to London next year?"

"That will depend upon money, I suppose. What makes you ask?"

"Of course I have been very cruelly circumstanced. Everybody must
see that. I'm sure you do, mamma. The long and the short of it is
this;--if I give up my engagement, will he take us abroad for a
year?"

"Why should he?"

"You can't suppose that I should be very comfortable in England. If
we are to remain here at Caversham, how am I to hope ever to get
settled?"

"Sophy is doing very well."

"Oh, mamma, there are not two George Whitstables;--thank God." She
had meant to be humble and supplicating, but she could not restrain
herself from the use of that one shaft. "I don't mean but what Sophy
may be very happy, and I am sure that I hope she will. But that won't
do me any good. I should be very unhappy here."

"I don't see how you are to find any one to marry you by going
abroad," said Lady Pomona, "and I don't see why your papa is to be
taken away from his own home. He likes Caversham."

"Then I am to be sacrificed on every side," said Georgey, stalking
out of the room. But still she could not make up her mind what letter
she would write to Mr. Brehgert, and she slept upon it another night.

On the next day after breakfast she did write her letter, though when
she sat down to her task she had not clearly made up her mind what
she would say. But she did get it written, and here it is.


Caversham,
Monday.

MY DEAR MR. BREHGERT,

As you told me not to hurry, I have taken a little time
to think about your letter. Of course it would be very
disagreeable to quarrel with papa and mamma and everybody.
And if I do do so, I'm sure somebody ought to be very
grateful. But papa has been very unfair in what he has
said. As to not asking him, it could have been of no good,
for of course he would be against it. He thinks a great
deal of the Longestaffe family, and so, I suppose, ought
I. But the world does change so quick that one doesn't
think of anything now as one used to do. Anyway, I don't
feel that I'm bound to do what papa tells me just because
he says it. Though I'm not quite so old as you seem to
think, I'm old enough to judge for myself,--and I mean to
do so. You say very little about affection, but I suppose
I am to take all that for granted.

I don't wonder at papa being annoyed about the loss of the
money. It must be a very great sum when it will prevent
your having a house in London,--as you agreed. It does
make a great difference, because, of course, as you have
no regular place in the country, one could only see one's
friends in London. Fulham is all very well now and then,
but I don't think I should like to live at Fulham all the
year through. You talk of three years, which would be
dreadful. If as you say it will not have any lasting
effect, could you not manage to have a house in town? If
you can do it in three years, I should think you could do
it now. I should like to have an answer to this question.
I do think so much about being the season in town!

As for the other parts of your letter, I knew very well
beforehand that papa would be unhappy about it. But I
don't know why I'm to let that stand in my way when so
very little is done to make me happy. Of course you will
write to me again, and I hope you will say something
satisfactory about the house in London.

Yours always sincerely,

GEORGIANA LONGESTAFFE.


It probably never occurred to Georgey that Mr. Brehgert would under
any circumstances be anxious to go back from his engagement. She so
fully recognised her own value as a Christian lady of high birth and
position giving herself to a commercial Jew, that she thought that
under any circumstances Mr. Brehgert would be only too anxious to
stick to his bargain. Nor had she any idea that there was anything
in her letter which could probably offend him. She thought that she
might at any rate make good her claim to the house in London; and
that as there were other difficulties on his side, he would yield to
her on this point. But as yet she hardly knew Mr. Brehgert. He did
not lose a day in sending to her a second letter. He took her letter
with him to his office in the city, and there answered it without a
moment's delay.


No. 7, St. Cuthbert's Court, London,
Tuesday, July 16, 18--.

MY DEAR MISS LONGESTAFFE,

You say it would be very disagreeable to you to quarrel
with your papa and mamma; and as I agree with you, I will
take your letter as concluding our intimacy. I should not,
however, be dealing quite fairly with you or with myself
if I gave you to understand that I felt myself to be
coerced to this conclusion simply by your qualified assent
to your parents' views. It is evident to me from your
letter that you would not wish to be my wife unless I can
supply you with a house in town as well as with one in the
country. But this for the present is out of my power. I
would not have allowed my losses to interfere with your
settlement because I had stated a certain income; and
must therefore to a certain extent have compromised my
children. But I should not have been altogether happy till
I had replaced them in their former position, and must
therefore have abstained from increased expenditure till
I had done so. But of course I have no right to ask you
to share with me the discomfort of a single home. I may
perhaps add that I had hoped that you would have looked to
your happiness to another source, and that I will bear my
disappointment as best I may.

As you may perhaps under these circumstances be unwilling
that I should wear the ring you gave me, I return it by
post. I trust you will be good enough to keep the trifle
you were pleased to accept from me, in remembrance of one
who will always wish you well.

Yours sincerely,

EZEKIEL BREHGERT.


And so it was all over! Georgey, when she read this letter, was very
indignant at her lover's conduct. She did not believe that her own
letter had at all been of a nature to warrant it. She had regarded
herself as being quite sure of him, and only so far doubting herself,
as to be able to make her own terms because of such doubts. And now
the Jew had rejected her! She read this last letter over and over
again, and the more she read it the more she felt that in her heart
of hearts she had intended to marry him. There would have been
inconveniences no doubt, but they would have been less than the
sorrow on the other side. Now she saw nothing before her but a long
vista of Caversham dullness, in which she would be trampled upon by
her father and mother, and scorned by Mr. and Mrs. George Whitstable.

She got up and walked about the room thinking of vengeance. But what
vengeance was possible to her? Everybody belonging to her would take
the part of the Jew in that which he had now done. She could not ask
Dolly to beat him; nor could she ask her father to visit him with the
stern frown of paternal indignation. There could be no revenge. For
a time,--only for a few seconds,--she thought that she would write to
Mr. Brehgert and tell him that she had not intended to bring about
this termination of their engagement. This, no doubt, would have been
an appeal to the Jew for mercy;--and she could not quite descend to
that. But she would keep the watch and chain he had given her, and
which somebody had told her had not cost less than a hundred and
fifty guineas. She could not wear them, as people would know whence
they had come; but she might exchange them for jewels which she could
wear.

At lunch she said nothing to her sister, but in the course of the
afternoon she thought it best to inform her mother. "Mamma," she
said, "as you and papa take it so much to heart, I have broken off
everything with Mr. Brehgert."

"Of course it must be broken off," said Lady Pomona. This was very
ungracious,--so much so that Georgey almost flounced out of the room.
"Have you heard from the man?" asked her ladyship.

"I have written to him, and he has answered me; and it is all
settled. I thought that you would have said something kind to me."
And the unfortunate young woman burst out into tears.

"It was so dreadful," said Lady Pomona;--"so very dreadful. I never
heard of anything so bad. When young what's-his-name married the
tallow-chandler's daughter I thought it would have killed me if
it had been Dolly; but this was worse than that. Her father was a
methodist."

"They had neither of them a shilling of money," said Georgey through
her tears.

"And your papa says this man was next door to a bankrupt. But it's
all over?"

"Yes, mamma."
+
"And now we must all remain here at Caversham till people forget
it. It has been very hard upon George Whitstable, because of course
everybody has known it through the county. I once thought he would
have been off, and I really don't know that we could have said
anything." At that moment Sophy entered the room. "It's all over
between Georgiana and the--man," said Lady Pomona, who hardly saved
herself from stigmatising him by a further reference to his religion.

"I knew it would be," said Sophia.

"Of course it could never have really taken place," said their
mother.

"And now I beg that nothing more may be said about it," said
Georgiana. "I suppose, mamma, you will write to papa?"

"You must send him back his watch and chain, Georgey," said Sophia.

"What business is that of yours?"

"Of course she must. Her papa would not let her keep it."

To such a miserable depth of humility had the younger Miss
Longestaffe been brought by her ill-considered intimacy with the
Melmottes! Georgiana, when she looked back on this miserable episode
in her life, always attributed her grief to the scandalous breach of
compact of which her father had been guilty.



CHAPTER LXXX.

RUBY PREPARES FOR SERVICE.


Our poor old honest friend John Crumb was taken away to durance vile
after his performance in the street with Sir Felix, and was locked up
for the remainder of the night. This indignity did not sit so heavily
on his spirits as it might have done on those of a quicker nature.
He was aware that he had not killed the baronet, and that he had
therefore enjoyed his revenge without the necessity of "swinging
for it at Bury." That in itself was a comfort to him. Then it was a
great satisfaction to think that he had "served the young man out"
in the actual presence of his Ruby. He was not prone to give himself
undue credit for his capability and willingness to knock his enemies
about; but he did think that Ruby must have observed on this occasion
that he was the better man of the two. And, to John, a night in the
station-house was no great personal inconvenience. Though he was
very proud of his four-post bed at home, he did not care very much
for such luxuries as far as he himself was concerned. Nor did he
feel any disgrace from being locked up for the night. He was very
good-humoured with the policeman, who seemed perfectly to understand
his nature, and was as meek as a child when the lock was turned
upon him. As he lay down on the hard bench, he comforted himself
with thinking that Ruby would surely never care any more for the
"baronite" since she had seen him go down like a cur without striking
a blow. He thought a good deal about Ruby, but never attributed any
blame to her for her share in the evils that had befallen him.

The next morning he was taken before the magistrates, but was told
at an early hour of the day that he was again free. Sir Felix was not
much the worse for what had happened to him, and had refused to make
any complaint against the man who had beaten him. John Crumb shook
hands cordially with the policeman who had had him in charge, and
suggested beer. The constable, with regrets, was forced to decline,
and bade adieu to his late prisoner with the expression of a hope
that they might meet again before long. "You come down to Bungay,"
said John, "and I'll show you how we live there."

From the police-office he went direct to Mrs. Pipkin's house, and at
once asked for Ruby. He was told that Ruby was out with the children,
and was advised both by Mrs. Pipkin and Mrs. Hurtle not to present
himself before Ruby quite yet. "You see," said Mrs. Pipkin, "she's a
thinking how heavy you were upon that young gentleman."

"But I wasn't;--not particular. Lord love you, he ain't a hair the
wuss."

"You let her alone for a time," said Mrs. Hurtle. "A little neglect
will do her good."

"Maybe," said John,--"only I wouldn't like her to have it bad. You'll
let her have her wittles regular, Mrs. Pipkin."

It was then explained to him that the neglect proposed should not
extend to any deprivation of food, and he took his leave, receiving
an assurance from Mrs. Hurtle that he should be summoned to town
as soon as it was thought that his presence there would serve his
purposes; and with loud promises repeated to each of the friendly
women that as soon as ever a "line should be dropped" he would appear
again upon the scene, he took Mrs. Pipkin aside, and suggested that
if there were "any hextras," he was ready to pay for them. Then he
took his leave without seeing Ruby, and went back to Bungay.

When Ruby returned with the children she was told that John Crumb had
called. "I thought as he was in prison," said Ruby.

"What should they keep him in prison for?" said Mrs. Pipkin. "He
hasn't done nothing as he oughtn't to have done. That young man was
dragging you about as far as I can make out, and Mr. Crumb just did
as anybody ought to have done to prevent it. Of course they weren't
going to keep him in prison for that. Prison indeed! It isn't him as
ought to be in prison."

"And where is he now, aunt?"

"Gone down to Bungay to mind his business, and won't be coming here
any more of a fool's errand. He must have seen now pretty well what's
worth having, and what ain't. Beauty is but skin deep, Ruby."

"John Crumb 'd be after me again to-morrow, if I'd give him
encouragement," said Ruby. "If I'd hold up my finger he'd come."

"Then John Crumb's a fool for his pains, that's all; and now do you
go about your work." Ruby didn't like to be told to go about her
work, and tossed her head, and slammed the kitchen door, and scolded
the servant girl, and then sat down to cry. What was she to do with
herself now? She had an idea that Felix would not come back to her
after the treatment he had received;--and a further idea that if he
did come he was not, as she phrased it to herself, "of much account."
She certainly did not like him the better for having been beaten,
though, at the time, she had been disposed to take his part. She did
not believe that she would ever dance with him again. That had been
the charm of her life in London, and that was now all over. And as
for marrying her,--she began to feel certain that he did not intend
it. John Crumb was a big, awkward, dull, uncouth lump of a man, with
whom Ruby thought it impossible that a girl should be in love. Love
and John Crumb were poles asunder. But--! Ruby did not like wheeling
the perambulator about Islington, and being told by her aunt Pipkin
to go about her work. What Ruby did like was being in love and
dancing; but if all that must come to an end, then there would be a
question whether she could not do better for herself, than by staying
with her aunt and wheeling the perambulator about Islington.

Mrs. Hurtle was still living in solitude in the lodgings, and having
but little to do on her own behalf, had devoted herself to the
interest of John Crumb. A man more unlike one of her own countrymen
she had never seen. "I wonder whether he has any ideas at all in his
head," she had said to Mrs. Pipkin. Mrs. Pipkin had replied that Mr.
Crumb had certainly a very strong idea of marrying Ruby Ruggles. Mrs.
Hurtle had smiled, thinking that Mrs. Pipkin was also very unlike
her own countrywomen. But she was very kind to Mrs. Pipkin, ordering
rice-puddings on purpose that the children might eat them, and she
was quite determined to give John Crumb all the aid in her power.

In order that she might give effectual aid she took Mrs. Pipkin into
confidence, and prepared a plan of action in reference to Ruby. Mrs.
Pipkin was to appear as chief actor on the scene, but the plan was
altogether Mrs. Hurtle's plan. On the day following John's return
to Bungay Mrs. Pipkin summoned Ruby into the back parlour, and thus
addressed her. "Ruby, you know, this must come to an end now."

"What must come to an end?"

"You can't stay here always, you know."

"I'm sure I work hard, Aunt Pipkin, and I don't get no wages."

"I can't do with more than one girl,--and there's the keep if there
isn't wages. Besides, there's other reasons. Your grandfather won't
have you back there; that's certain."

"I wouldn't go back to grandfather, if it was ever so."

"But you must go somewheres. You didn't come to stay here
always,--nor I couldn't have you. You must go into service."

"I don't know anybody as 'd have me," said Ruby.

"You must put a 'vertisement into the paper. You'd better say as
nursemaid, as you seems to take kindly to children. And I must give
you a character;--only I shall say just the truth. You mustn't ask
much wages just at first." Ruby looked very sorrowful, and the tears
were near her eyes. The change from the glories of the music hall
was so startling and so oppressive! "It has got to be done sooner or
later, so you may as well put the 'vertisement in this afternoon."

"You're going to turn me out, Aunt Pipkin."

"Well;--if that's turning out, I am. You see you never would be
said by me as though I was mistress. You would go out with that
rapscallion when I bid you not. Now when you're in a regular place
like, you must mind when you're spoke to, and it will be best for
you. You've had your swing, and now you see you've got to pay for it.
You must earn your bread, Ruby, as you've quarrelled both with your
lover and with your grandfather."

There was no possible answer to this, and therefore the necessary
notice was put into the paper,--Mrs. Hurtle paying for its insertion.
"Because, you know," said Mrs. Hurtle, "she must stay here really,
till Mr. Crumb comes and takes her away." Mrs. Pipkin expressed
her opinion that Ruby was a "baggage" and John Crumb a "soft." Mrs.
Pipkin was perhaps a little jealous at the interest which her lodger
took in her niece, thinking perhaps that all Mrs. Hurtle's sympathies
were due to herself.

Ruby went hither and thither for a day or two, calling upon the
mothers of children who wanted nursemaids. The answers which she
had received had not come from the highest members of the aristo-
cracy, and the houses which she visited did not appal her by their
splendour. Many objections were made to her. A character from an aunt
was objectionable. Her ringlets were objectionable. She was a deal
too flighty-looking. She spoke up much too free. At last one happy
mother of five children offered to take her on approval for a month,
at £12 a year, Ruby to find her own tea and wash for herself. This
was slavery;--abject slavery. And she too, who had been the beloved
of a baronet, and who might even now be the mistress of a better
house than that into which she was to go as a servant,--if she
would only hold up her finger! But the place was accepted, and with
broken-hearted sobbings Ruby prepared herself for her departure from
aunt Pipkin's roof.

"I hope you like your place, Ruby," Mrs. Hurtle said on the afternoon
of her last day.

"Indeed then I don't like it at all. They're the ugliest children you
ever see, Mrs. Hurtle."

"Ugly children must be minded as well as pretty ones."

"And the mother of 'em is as cross as cross."

"It's your own fault, Ruby; isn't it?"

"I don't know as I've done anything out of the way."

"Don't you think it's anything out of the way to be engaged to a
young man and then to throw him over? All this has come because you
wouldn't keep your word to Mr. Crumb. Only for that your grandfather
wouldn't have turned you out of his house."

"He didn't turn me out. I ran away. And it wasn't along of John
Crumb, but because grandfather hauled me about by the hair of my
head."

"But he was angry with you about Mr. Crumb. When a young woman
becomes engaged to a young man, she ought not to go back from her
word." No doubt Mrs. Hurtle, when preaching this doctrine, thought
that the same law might be laid down with propriety for the conduct
of young men. "Of course you have brought trouble on yourself. I am
sorry that you don't like the place. I'm afraid you must go to it
now."

"I am agoing,--I suppose," said Ruby, probably feeling that if she
could but bring herself to condescend so far there might yet be open
for her a way of escape.

"I shall write and tell Mr. Crumb where you are placed."

"Oh, Mrs. Hurtle, don't. What should you write to him for? It ain't
nothing to him."

"I told him I'd let him know if any steps were taken."

"You can forget that, Mrs. Hurtle. Pray don't write. I don't want him
to know as I'm in service."

"I must keep my promise. Why shouldn't he know? I don't suppose you
care much now what he hears about you."

"Yes I do. I wasn't never in service before, and I don't want him to
know."

"What harm can it do you?"

"Well, I don't want him to know. It is such a come down, Mrs.
Hurtle."

"There is nothing to be ashamed of in that. What you have to be
ashamed of is jilting him. It was a bad thing to do;--wasn't it,
Ruby?"

"I didn't mean nothing bad, Mrs. Hurtle; only why couldn't he say
what he had to say himself, instead of bringing another to say it for
him? What would you feel, Mrs. Hurtle, if a man was to come and say
it all out of another man's mouth?"

"I don't think I should much care if the thing was well said at last.
You know he meant it."

"Yes;--I did know that."

"And you know he means it now?"

"I'm not so sure about that. He's gone back to Bungay, and he isn't
no good at writing letters no more than at speaking. Oh,--he'll go
and get somebody else now."

"Of course he will if he hears nothing about you. I think I'd better
tell him. I know what would happen."

"What would happen, Mrs. Hurtle?"

"He'd be up in town again in half a jiffey to see what sort of a
place you'd got. Now, Ruby, I'll tell you what I'll do, if you'll
say the word. I'll have him up here at once and you shan't go to Mrs.
Buggins'." Ruby dropped her hands and stood still, staring at Mrs.
Hurtle. "I will. But if he comes you mustn't behave this time as you
did before."

"But I'm to go to Mrs. Buggins' to-morrow."

"We'll send to Mrs. Buggins and tell her to get somebody else. You're
breaking your heart about going there;--are you not?"

"I don't like it, Mrs. Hurtle."

"And this man will make you mistress of his house. You say he isn't
good at speaking; but I tell you I never came across an honester man
in the whole course of my life, or one who I think would treat a
woman better. What's the use of a glib tongue if there isn't a heart
with it? What's the use of a lot of tinsel and lacker, if the real
metal isn't there? Sir Felix Carbury could talk, I dare say, but you
don't think now he was a very fine fellow."

"He was so beautiful, Mrs. Hurtle!"

"But he hadn't the spirit of a mouse in his bosom. Well, Ruby,
you have one more choice left you. Shall it be John Crumb or Mrs.
Buggins?"

"He wouldn't come, Mrs. Hurtle."

"Leave that to me, Ruby. May I bring him if I can?" Then Ruby in a
very low whisper told Mrs. Hurtle, that if she thought proper she
might bring John Crumb back again. "And there shall be no more
nonsense?"

"No," whispered Ruby.

On that same night a letter was sent to Mrs. Buggins, which
Mrs. Hurtle also composed, informing that lady that unforeseen
circumstances prevented Ruby Ruggles from keeping the engagement she
had made; to which a verbal answer was returned that Ruby Ruggles
was an impudent hussey. And then Mrs. Hurtle in her own name wrote a
short note to Mr. John Crumb.


DEAR MR. CRUMB,

If you will come back to London I think you will find Miss
Ruby Ruggles all that you desire.

Yours faithfully,

WINIFRID HURTLE.


"She's had a deal more done for her than I ever knew to be done for
young women in my time," said Mrs. Pipkin, "and I'm not at all so
sure that she has deserved it."

"John Crumb will think she has."

"John Crumb's a fool;--and as to Ruby; well, I haven't got no
patience with girls like them. Yes; it is for the best; and as for
you, Mrs. Hurtle, there's no words to say how good you've been. I
hope, Mrs. Hurtle, you ain't thinking of going away because this is
all done."



CHAPTER LXXXI.

MR. COHENLUPE LEAVES LONDON.


Dolly Longestaffe had found himself compelled to go to Fetter Lane
immediately after that meeting in Bruton Street at which he had
consented to wait two days longer for the payment of his money. This
was on a Wednesday, the day appointed for the payment being Friday.
He had undertaken that, on his part, Squercum should be made to
desist from further immediate proceedings, and he could only carry
out his word by visiting Squercum. The trouble to him was very
great, but he began to feel that he almost liked it. The excitement
was nearly as good as that of loo. Of course it was a "horrid
bore,"--this having to go about in cabs under the sweltering sun of a
London July day. Of course it was a "horrid bore,"--this doubt about
his money. And it went altogether against the grain with him that
he should be engaged in any matter respecting the family property
in agreement with his father and Mr. Bideawhile. But there was an
importance in it that sustained him amidst his troubles. It is said
that if you were to take a man of moderate parts and make him Prime
Minister out of hand, he might probably do as well as other Prime
Ministers, the greatness of the work elevating the man to its own
level. In that way Dolly was elevated to the level of a man of
business, and felt and enjoyed his own capacity. "By George!" It
depended chiefly upon him whether such a man as Melmotte should or
should not be charged before the Lord Mayor. "Perhaps I oughtn't to
have promised," he said to Squercum, sitting in the lawyer's office
on a high-legged stool with a cigar in his mouth. He preferred
Squercum to any other lawyer he had met because Squercum's room was
untidy and homely, because there was nothing awful about it, and
because he could sit in what position he pleased, and smoke all the
time.

"Well; I don't think you ought, if you ask me," said Squercum.

"You weren't there to be asked, old fellow."

"He's to bring it with him to Bruton Street."

"I don't believe a word of it;--and I'm sure Bideawhile doesn't. In
what shape will he bring it? He'll give you a cheque dated on Monday,
and that'll give him two days more, and then on Monday there'll be a
note to say the money can't be lodged till Wednesday. There should
be no compromising with such a man. You only get from one mess into
another. I told you neither to do anything or to say anything."

"I suppose we can't help ourselves now. You're to be there on Friday.
I particularly bargained for that. If you're there, there won't be
any more compromising."

Squercum made one or two further remarks to his client, not at all
flattering to Dolly's vanity,--which might have caused offence had
not there been such perfectly good feeling between the attorney and
the young man. As it was Dolly replied to everything that was said
with increased flattery. "If I was a sharp fellow like you, you
know," said Dolly, "of course I should get along better; but I ain't,
you know." It was then settled that they should meet each other, and
also meet Mr. Longestaffe senior, Bideawhile, and Melmotte, at twelve
o'clock on Friday morning in Bruton Street.

Squercum was by no means satisfied. He had busied himself in this
matter, and had ferreted things out, till he had pretty nearly got
to the bottom of that affair about the houses in the East, and had
managed to induce the heirs of the old man who had died to employ
him. As to the Pickering property he had not a doubt on the subject.
Old Longestaffe had been induced by promises of wonderful aid and by
the bribe of a seat at the Board of the South Central Pacific and
Mexican Railway to give up the title-deeds of the property,--as far
as it was in his power to give them up; and had endeavoured to induce
Dolly to do so also. As he had failed, Melmotte had supplemented his
work by ingenuity, with which the reader is acquainted. All this was
perfectly clear to Squercum, who thought that he saw before him a
most attractive course of proceeding against the Great Financier. It
was pure ambition rather than any hope of lucre that urged him on. He
regarded Melmotte as a grand swindler,--perhaps the grandest that the
world had ever known,--and he could conceive no greater honour than
the detection, successful prosecution, and ultimate destroying of
so great a man. To have hunted down Melmotte would make Squercum
as great almost as Melmotte himself. But he felt himself to have been
unfairly hampered by his own client. He did not believe that the
money would be paid; but delay might rob him of his Melmotte. He had
heard a good many things in the City, and believed it to be quite out
of the question that Melmotte should raise the money,--but there were
various ways in which a man might escape.

It may be remembered that Croll, the German clerk, preceded Melmotte
into the City on Wednesday after Marie's refusal to sign the deeds.
He, too, had his eyes open, and had perceived that things were not
looking as well as they used to look. Croll had for many years been
true to his patron, having been, upon the whole, very well paid for
such truth. There had been times when things had gone badly with him,
but he had believed in Melmotte, and, when Melmotte rose, had been
rewarded for his faith. Mr. Croll at the present time had little invest-
ments of his own, not made under his employer's auspices, which
would leave him not absolutely without bread for his family should
the Melmotte affairs at any time take an awkward turn. Melmotte had
never required from him service that was actually fraudulent,--had
at any rate never required it by spoken words. Mr. Croll had not
been over-scrupulous, and had occasionally been very useful to Mr.
Melmotte. But there must be a limit to all things; and why should any
man sacrifice himself beneath the ruins of a falling house,--when
convinced that nothing he can do can prevent the fall? Mr. Croll
would have been of course happy to witness Miss Melmotte's sign-
ature; but as for that other kind of witnessing,--this clearly to his
thinking was not the time for such good-nature on his part.

"You know what's up now;--don't you?" said one of the junior clerks
to Mr. Croll when he entered the office in Abchurch Lane.

"A good deal will be up soon," said the German.

"Cohenlupe has gone!"

"And to vere has Mr. Cohenlupe gone?"

"He hasn't been civil enough to leave his address. I fancy he don't
want his friends to have to trouble themselves by writing to him.
Nobody seems to know what's become of him."

"New York," suggested Mr. Croll.

"They seem to think not. They're too hospitable in New York for Mr.
Cohenlupe just at present. He's travelling private. He's on the
continent somewhere,--half across France by this time; but nobody
knows what route he has taken. That'll be a poke in the ribs for the
old boy;--eh, Croll?" Croll merely shook his head. "I wonder what has
become of Miles Grendall," continued the clerk.

"Ven de rats is going avay it is bad for de house. I like de rats to
stay."

"There seems to have been a regular manufactory of Mexican Railway
scrip."

"Our governor knew noding about dat," said Croll.

"He has a hat full of them at any rate. If they could have been kept
up another fortnight they say Cohenlupe would have been worth nearly
a million of money, and the governor would have been as good as the
bank. Is it true they are going to have him before the Lord Mayor
about the Pickering title-deeds?" Croll declared that he knew nothing
about the matter, and settled himself down to his work.

In little more than two hours he was followed by Melmotte, who thus
reached the City late in the afternoon. It was he knew too late to
raise the money on that day, but he hoped that he might pave the way
for getting it on the next day, which would be Thursday. Of course
the first news which he heard was of the defection of Mr. Cohenlupe.
It was Croll who told him. He turned back, and his jaw fell, but at
first he said nothing. "It's a bad thing," said Mr. Croll.

"Yes;--it is bad. He had a vast amount of my property in his hands.
Where has he gone?" Croll shook his head. "It never rains but it
pours," said Melmotte. "Well; I'll weather it all yet. I've been
worse than I am now, Croll, as you know, and have had a hundred
thousand pounds at my banker's,--loose cash,--before the month
was out."

"Yes, indeed," said Croll.

"But the worst of it is that every one around me is so damnably
jealous. It isn't what I've lost that will crush me, but what men
will say that I've lost. Ever since I began to stand for Westminster
there has been a dead set against me in the City. The whole of that
affair of the dinner was planned,--planned by G----, that it might
ruin me. It was all laid out just as you would lay the foundation of
a building. It is hard for one man to stand against all that when he
has dealings so large as mine."

"Very hard, Mr. Melmotte."

"But they'll find they're mistaken yet. There's too much of the real
stuff, Croll, for them to crush me. Property's a kind of thing that
comes out right at last. It's cut and come again, you know, if the
stuff is really there. But I mustn't stop talking here. I suppose I
shall find Brehgert in Cuthbert's Court."

"I should say so, Mr. Melmotte. Mr. Brehgert never leaves much before
six."

Then Mr. Melmotte took his hat and gloves, and the stick that he
usually carried, and went out with his face carefully dressed in its
usually jaunty air. But Croll as he went heard him mutter the name of
Cohenlupe between his teeth. The part which he had to act is one very
difficult to any actor. The carrying an external look of indifference
when the heart is sinking within,--or has sunk almost to the very
ground,--is more than difficult; it is an agonizing task. In all
mental suffering the sufferer longs for solitude,--for permission to
cast himself loose along the ground, so that every limb and every
feature of his person may faint in sympathy with his heart. A grandly
urbane deportment over a crushed spirit and ruined hopes is beyond
the physical strength of most men;--but there have been men so
strong. Melmotte very nearly accomplished it. It was only to the eyes
of such a one as Herr Croll that the failure was perceptible.

Melmotte did find Mr. Brehgert. At this time Mr. Brehgert had
completed his correspondence with Miss Longestaffe, in which he
had mentioned the probability of great losses from the anticipated
commercial failure in Mr. Melmotte's affairs. He had now heard that
Mr. Cohenlupe had gone upon his travels, and was therefore nearly
sure that his anticipation would be correct. Nevertheless, he
received his old friend with a smile. When large sums of money are
concerned there is seldom much of personal indignation between man
and man. The loss of fifty pounds or of a few hundreds may create
personal wrath;--but fifty thousand require equanimity. "So Cohenlupe
hasn't been seen in the City to-day," said Brehgert.

"He has gone," said Melmotte hoarsely.

"I think I once told you that Cohenlupe was not the man for large
dealings."

"Yes, you did," said Melmotte.

"Well;--it can't be helped; can it? And what is it now?" Then
Melmotte explained to Mr. Brehgert what it was that he wanted then,
taking the various documents out of the bag which throughout the
afternoon he had carried in his hand. Mr. Brehgert understood enough
of his friend's affairs, and enough of affairs in general, to
understand readily all that was required. He examined the documents,
declaring as he did so that he did not know how the thing could be
arranged by Friday. Melmotte replied that £50,000 was not a very
large sum of money, that the security offered was worth twice as much
as that. "You will leave them with me this evening," said Brehgert.
Melmotte paused for a moment, and said that he would of course do so.
He would have given much, very much, to have been sufficiently master
of himself to have assented without hesitation;--but then the weight
within was so very heavy!

Having left the papers and the bag with Mr. Brehgert, he walked west-
wards to the House of Commons. He was accustomed to remain in the
City later than this, often not leaving it till seven,--though during
the last week or ten days he had occasionally gone down to the House
in the afternoon. It was now Wednesday, and there was no evening
sitting;--but his mind was too full of other things to allow him to
remember this. As he walked along the Embankment, his thoughts were
very heavy. How would things go with him?--What would be the end of
it? Ruin;--yes, but there were worse things than ruin. And a short
time since he had been so fortunate;--had made himself so safe! As
he looked back at it, he could hardly say how it had come to pass
that he had been driven out of the track that he had laid down for
himself. He had known that ruin would come, and had made himself so
comfortably safe, so brilliantly safe, in spite of ruin. But insane
ambition had driven him away from his anchorage. He told himself over
and over again that the fault had been not in circumstances,--not
in that which men call Fortune,--but in his own incapacity to bear
his position. He saw it now. He felt it now. If he could only begin
again, how different would his conduct be!

But of what avail were such regrets as these? He must take things as
they were now, and see that, in dealing with them, he allowed himself
to be carried away neither by pride nor cowardice. And if the worst
should come to the worst, then let him face it like a man! There was
a certain manliness about him which showed itself perhaps as strongly
in his own self-condemnation as in any other part of his conduct at
this time. Judging of himself, as though he were standing outside
himself and looking on to another man's work, he pointed out to
himself his own shortcomings. If it were all to be done again he
thought that he could avoid this bump against the rocks on one side,
and that terribly shattering blow on the other. There was much that
he was ashamed of,--many a little act which recurred to him vividly
in this solitary hour as a thing to be repented of with inner
sackcloth and ashes. But never once, not for a moment, did it occur
to him that he should repent of the fraud in which his whole life had
been passed. No idea ever crossed his mind of what might have been
the result had he lived the life of an honest man. Though he was
inquiring into himself as closely as he could, he never even told
himself that he had been dishonest. Fraud and dishonesty had been the
very principle of his life, and had so become a part of his blood and
bones that even in this extremity of his misery he made no question
within himself as to his right judgment in regard to them. Not
to cheat, not to be a scoundrel, not to live more luxuriously
than others by cheating more brilliantly, was a condition of
things to which his mind had never turned itself. In that respect
he accused himself of no want of judgment. But why had he, so
unrighteous himself, not made friends to himself of the Mammon of
unrighteousness? Why had he not conciliated Lord Mayors? Why had
he trod upon all the corns of all his neighbours? Why had he been
insolent at the India Office? Why had he trusted any man as he had
trusted Cohenlupe? Why had he not stuck to Abchurch Lane instead of
going into Parliament? Why had he called down unnecessary notice on
his head by entertaining the Emperor of China? It was too late now,
and he must bear it; but these were the things that had ruined him.

He walked into Palace Yard and across it, to the door of Westminster
Abbey, before he found out that Parliament was not sitting. "Oh,
Wednesday! Of course it is," he said, turning round and directing
his steps towards Grosvenor Square. Then he remembered that in the
morning he had declared his purpose of dining at home, and now he did
not know what better use to make of the present evening. His house
could hardly be very comfortable to him. Marie no doubt would keep
out of his way, and he did not habitually receive much pleasure from
his wife's company. But in his own house he could at least be alone.
Then, as he walked slowly across the park, thinking so intently on
matters as hardly to observe whether he himself were observed or no,
he asked himself whether it still might not be best for him to keep
the money which was settled on his daughter, to tell the Longestaffes
that he could make no payment, and to face the worst that Mr.
Squercum could do to him,--for he knew already how busy Mr. Squer-
cum was in the matter. Though they should put him on his trial for
forgery, what of that? He had heard of trials in which the accused
criminals had been heroes to the multitude while their cases were in
progress,--who had been fêted from the beginning to the end though
no one had doubted their guilt,--and who had come out unscathed at
the last. What evidence had they against him? It might be that the
Longestaffes and Bideawhiles and Squercums should know that he was
a forger, but their knowledge would not produce a verdict. He, as
member for Westminster, as the man who had entertained the Emperor,
as the owner of one of the most gorgeous houses in London, as the
great Melmotte, could certainly command the best half of the bar.
He already felt what popular support might do for him. Surely there
need be no despondency while so good a hope remained to him! He did
tremble as he remembered Dolly Longestaffe's letter, and the letter
of the old man who was dead. And he knew that it was possible that
other things might be adduced; but would it not be better to face it
all than surrender his money and become a pauper, seeing, as he did
very clearly, that even by such surrender he could not cleanse his
character?

But he had given those forged documents into the hands of Mr.
Brehgert! Again he had acted in a hurry,--without giving sufficient
thought to the matter in hand. He was angry with himself for that
also. But how is a man to give sufficient thought to his affairs
when no step that he takes can be other than ruinous? Yes;--he had
certainly put into Brehgert's hands means of proving him to have
been absolutely guilty of forgery. He did not think that Marie would
disclaim the signatures, even though she had refused to sign the
deeds, when she should understand that her father had written her
name; nor did he think that his clerk would be urgent against him,
as the forgery of Croll's name could not injure Croll. But Brehgert,
should he discover what had been done, would certainly not permit him
to escape. And now he had put these forgeries without any guard into
Brehgert's hands.

He would tell Brehgert in the morning that he had changed his mind.
He would see Brehgert before any action could have been taken on the
documents, and Brehgert would no doubt restore them to him. Then he
would instruct his daughter to hold the money fast, to sign no paper
that should be put before her, and to draw the income herself. Having
done that, he would let his foes do their worst. They might drag him
to gaol. They probably would do so. He had an idea that he could not
be admitted to bail if accused of forgery. But he would bear all
that. If convicted he would bear the punishment, still hoping that
an end might come. But how great was the chance that they might
fail to convict him! As to the dead man's letter, and as to Dolly
Longestaffe's letter, he did not think that any sufficient evidence
could be found. The evidence as to the deeds by which Marie was to
have released the property was indeed conclusive; but he believed
that he might still recover those documents. For the present it
must be his duty to do nothing,--when he should have recovered and
destroyed those documents,--and to live before the eyes of men as
though he feared nothing.

He dined at home alone, in the study, and after dinner carefully
went through various bundles of papers, preparing them for the eyes
of those ministers of the law who would probably before long have
the privilege of searching them. At dinner, and while he was thus
employed, he drank a bottle of champagne,--feeling himself greatly
comforted by the process. If he could only hold up his head and look
men in the face, he thought that he might still live through it all.
How much had he done by his own unassisted powers! He had once been
imprisoned for fraud at Hamburgh, and had come out of gaol a pauper;
friendless, with all his wretched antecedents against him. Now he was
a member of the British House of Parliament, the undoubted owner of
perhaps the most gorgeously furnished house in London, a man with an
established character for high finance,--a commercial giant whose
name was a familiar word on all the exchanges of the two hemispheres.
Even though he should be condemned to penal servitude for life, he
would not all die. He rang the bell and desired that Madame Melmotte
might be sent to him, and bade the servant bring him brandy.

In ten minutes his poor wife came crawling into the room. Every one
connected with Melmotte regarded the man with a certain amount of
awe,--every one except Marie, to whom alone he had at times been
himself almost gentle. The servants all feared him, and his wife
obeyed him implicitly when she could not keep away from him. She came
in now and stood opposite to him, while he spoke to her. She never
sat in his presence in that room. He asked her where she and Marie
kept their jewelry;--for during the last twelvemonths rich trinkets
had been supplied to both of them. Of course she answered by another
question. "Is anything going to happen, Melmotte?"

"A good deal is going to happen. Are they here in this house, or in
Grosvenor Square?"

"They are here."

"Then have them all packed up,--as small as you can; never mind about
wool and cases and all that. Have them close to your hand so that if
you have to move you can take them with you. Do you understand?"

"Yes; I understand."

"Why don't you speak, then?"

"What is going to happen, Melmotte?"

"How can I tell? You ought to know by this time that when a man's
work is such as mine, things will happen. You'll be safe enough.
Nothing can hurt you."

"Can they hurt you, Melmotte?"

"Hurt me! I don't know what you call hurting. Whatever there is to be
borne, I suppose it is I must bear it. I have not had it very soft
all my life hitherto, and I don't think it's going to be very soft
now."

"Shall we have to move?"

"Very likely. Move! What's the harm of moving? You talk of moving as
though that were the worst thing that could happen. How would you
like to be in some place where they wouldn't let you move?"

"Are they going to send you to prison?"

"Hold your tongue."

"Tell me, Melmotte;--are they going to?" Then the poor woman did sit
down, overcome by her feelings.

"I didn't ask you to come here for a scene," said Melmotte. "Do as I
bid you about your own jewels, and Marie's. The thing is to have them
in small compass, and that you should not have it to do at the last
moment, when you will be flurried and incapable. Now you needn't
stay any longer, and it's no good asking any questions because I
shan't answer them." So dismissed, the poor woman crept out again,
and immediately, after her own slow fashion, went to work with her
ornaments.

Melmotte sat up during the greater part of the night, sometimes
sipping brandy and water, and sometimes smoking. But he did no work,
and hardly touched a paper after his wife left him.



CHAPTER LXXXII.

MARIE'S PERSEVERANCE.


Very early the next morning, very early that is for London life,
Melmotte was told by a servant that Mr. Croll had called and wanted
to see him. Then it immediately became a question with him whether
he wanted to see Croll. "Is it anything special?" he asked. The
man thought that it was something special, as Croll had declared
his purpose of waiting when told that Mr. Melmotte was not as yet
dressed. This happened at about nine o'clock in the morning. Melmotte
longed to know every detail of Croll's manner,--to know even the
servant's opinion of the clerk's manner,--but he did not dare to ask
a question. Melmotte thought that it might be well to be gracious.
"Ask him if he has breakfasted, and if not give him something in
the study." But Mr. Croll had breakfasted and declined any further
refreshment.

Nevertheless Melmotte had not as yet made up his mind that he would
meet his clerk. His clerk was his clerk. It might perhaps be well
that he should first go into the City and send word to Croll, bidding
him wait for his return. Over and over again, against his will,
the question of flying would present itself to him; but, though he
discussed it within his own bosom in every form, he knew that he
could not fly. And if he stood his ground,--as most assuredly he
would do,--then must he not be afraid to meet any man, let the man
come with what thunderbolts in his hand he might. Of course sooner
or later some man must come with a thunderbolt,--and why not Croll
as well as another? He stood against a press in his chamber, with a
razor in his hand, and steadied himself. How easily might he put an
end to it all! Then he rang his bell and desired that Croll might be
shown up into his room.

The three or four minutes which intervened seemed to him to be very
long. He had absolutely forgotten in his anxiety that the lather was
still upon his face. But he could not smother his anxiety. He was
fighting with it at every turn, but he could not conquer it. When
the knock came at his door, he grasped at his own breast as though
to support himself. With a hoarse voice he told the man to come in,
and Croll himself appeared, opening the door gently and very slowly.
Melmotte had left the bag which contained the papers in possession
of Mr. Brehgert, and he now saw, at a glance, that Croll had got the
bag in his hand,--and could see also by the shape of the bag that the
bag contained the papers. The man therefore had in his own hands, in
his own keeping, the very documents to which his own name had been
forged! There was no longer a hope, no longer a chance that Croll
should be ignorant of what had been done. "Well, Croll," he said
with an attempt at a smile, "what brings you here so early?" He was
pale as death, and let him struggle as he would, could not restrain
himself from trembling.

"Herr Brehgert vas vid me last night," said Croll.

"Eh!"

"And he thought I had better bring these back to you. That's all."
Croll spoke in a very low voice, with his eyes fixed on his master's
face, but with nothing of a threat in his attitude or manner.





"Eh!" repeated Melmotte. Even though he might have saved himself from
all coming evils by a bold demeanour at that moment, he could not
assume it. But it all flashed upon him at a moment. Brehgert had seen
Croll after he, Melmotte, had left the City, had then discovered
the forgery, and had taken this way of sending back all the forged
documents. He had known Brehgert to be of all men who ever lived the
most good-natured, but he could hardly believe in pure good-nature
such as this. It seemed that the thunderbolt was not yet to fall.

"Mr. Brehgert came to me," continued Croll, "because one signature
was wanting. It was very late, so I took them home with me. I said
I'd bring them to you in the morning."

They both knew that he had forged the documents, Brehgert and Croll;
but how would that concern him, Melmotte, if these two friends had
resolved together that they would not expose him? He had desired
to get the documents back into his own hands, and here they were!
Melmotte's immediate trouble arose from the difficulty of speaking
in a proper manner to his own servant who had just detected him
in forgery. He couldn't speak. There were no words appropriate to
such an occasion. "It vas a strong order, Mr. Melmotte," said Croll.
Melmotte tried to smile but only grinned. "I vill not be back in the
Lane, Mr. Melmotte."

"Not back at the office, Croll?"

"I tink not;--no. De leetle money coming to me, you will send it.
Adieu." And so Mr. Croll took his final leave of his old master after
an intercourse which had lasted twenty years. We may imagine that
Herr Croll found his spirits to be oppressed and his capacity for
business to be obliterated by his patron's misfortunes rather than by
his patron's guilt. But he had not behaved unkindly. He had merely
remarked that the forgery of his own name half-a-dozen times over was
a "strong order."

Melmotte opened the bag, and examined the documents one by one. It
had been necessary that Marie should sign her name some half-dozen
times, and Marie's father had made all the necessary forgeries. It
had been of course necessary that each name should be witnessed;--
but here the forger had scamped his work. Croll's name he had written
five times; but one forged signature he had left unattested! Again
he had himself been at fault. Again he had aided his own ruin by his
own carelessness. One seems inclined to think sometimes that any fool
might do an honest business. But fraud requires a man to be alive and
wide awake at every turn!

Melmotte had desired to have the documents back in his own hands, and
now he had them. Did it matter much that Brehgert and Croll both knew
the crime which he had committed? Had they meant to take legal steps
against him they would not have returned the forgeries to his own
hands. Brehgert, he thought, would never tell the tale,--unless there
should arise some most improbable emergency in which he might make
money by telling it; but he was by no means so sure of Croll. Croll
had signified his intention of leaving Melmotte's service, and would
therefore probably enter some rival service, and thus become an enemy
to his late master. There could be no reason why Croll should keep
the secret. Even if he got no direct profit by telling it, he would
curry favour by making it known. Of course Croll would tell it.

But what harm could the telling of such a secret do him? The girl was
his own daughter! The money had been his own money! The man had been
his own servant! There had been no fraud; no robbery; no purpose of
peculation. Melmotte, as he thought of this, became almost proud of
what he had done, thinking that if the evidence were suppressed the
knowledge of the facts could do him no harm. But the evidence must be
suppressed, and with the view of suppressing it he took the little
bag and all the papers down with him to the study. Then he ate his
breakfast,--and suppressed the evidence by the aid of his gas lamp.

When this was accomplished he hesitated as to the manner in which he
would pass his day. He had now given up all idea of raising the money
for Longestaffe. He had even considered the language in which he
would explain to the assembled gentlemen on the morrow the fact that
a little difficulty still presented itself, and that as he could not
exactly name a day, he must leave the matter in their hands. For he
had resolved that he would not evade the meeting. Cohenlupe had gone
since he had made his promise, and he would throw all the blame on
Cohenlupe. Everybody knows that when panics arise the breaking of one
merchant causes the downfall of another. Cohenlupe should bear the
burden. But as that must be so, he could do no good by going into
the City. His pecuniary downfall had now become too much a matter of
certainty to be staved off by his presence; and his personal security
could hardly be assisted by it. There would be nothing for him to do.
Cohenlupe had gone. Miles Grendall had gone. Croll had gone. He could
hardly go to Cuthbert's Court and face Mr. Brehgert! He would stay
at home till it was time for him to go down to the House, and then
he would face the world there. He would dine down at the House, and
stand about in the smoking-room with his hat on, and be visible in
the lobbies, and take his seat among his brother legislators,--and,
if it were possible, rise on his legs and make a speech to them. He
was about to have a crushing fall,--but the world should say that he
had fallen like a man.

About eleven his daughter came to him as he sat in the study. It
can hardly be said that he had ever been kind to Marie, but perhaps
she was the only person who in the whole course of his career had
received indulgence at his hands. He had often beaten her; but he had
also often made her presents and smiled on her, and in the periods of
his opulence, had allowed her pocket-money almost without limit. Now
she had not only disobeyed him, but by most perverse obstinacy on
her part had driven him to acts of forgery which had already been
detected. He had cause to be angry now with Marie if he had ever had
cause for anger. But he had almost forgotten the transaction. He had
at any rate forgotten the violence of his own feelings at the time of
its occurrence. He was no longer anxious that the release should be
made, and therefore no longer angry with her for her refusal.

"Papa," she said, coming very gently into the room, "I think that
perhaps I was wrong yesterday."

"Of course you were wrong;--but it doesn't matter now."

"If you wish it I'll sign those papers. I don't suppose Lord
Nidderdale means to come any more;--and I'm sure I don't care whether
he does or not."

"What makes you think that, Marie?"

"I was out last night at Lady Julia Goldsheiner's, and he was there.
I'm sure he doesn't mean to come here any more."

"Was he uncivil to you?"

"O dear no. He's never uncivil. But I'm sure of it. Never mind how.
I never told him that I cared for him and I never did care for him.
Papa, is there something going to happen?"

"What do you mean?"

"Some misfortune! Oh, papa, why didn't you let me marry that other
man?"

"He is a penniless adventurer."

"But he would have had this money that I call my money, and then
there would have been enough for us all. Papa, he would marry me
still if you would let him."

"Have you seen him since you went to Liverpool?"

"Never, papa."

"Or heard from him?"

"Not a line."

"Then what makes you think he would marry you?"

"He would if I got hold of him and told him. And he is a baronet. And
there would be plenty of money for us all. And we could go and live
in Germany."

"We could do that just as well without your marrying."

"But I suppose, papa, I am to be considered as somebody. I don't want
after all to run away from London, just as if everybody had turned up
their noses at me. I like him, and I don't like anybody else."

"He wouldn't take the trouble to go to Liverpool with you."

"He got tipsy. I know all about that. I don't mean to say that he's
anything particularly grand. I don't know that anybody is very grand.
He's as good as anybody else."

"It can't be done, Marie."

"Why can't it be done?"

"There are a dozen reasons. Why should my money be given up to him?
And it is too late. There are other things to be thought of now than
marriage."

"You don't want me to sign the papers?"

"No;--I haven't got the papers. But I want you to remember that the
money is mine and not yours. It may be that much may depend on you,
and that I shall have to trust to you for nearly everything. Do not
let me find myself deceived by my daughter."

"I won't,--if you'll let me see Sir Felix Carbury once more."

Then the father's pride again reasserted itself and he became angry.
"I tell you, you little fool, that it is out of the question. Why
cannot you believe me? Has your mother spoken to you about your
jewels? Get them packed up, so that you can carry them away in your
hand if we have to leave this suddenly. You are an idiot to think of
that young man. As you say, I don't know that any of them are very
good, but among them all he is about the worst. Go away and do as I
bid you."

That afternoon the page in Welbeck Street came up to Lady Carbury and
told her that there was a young lady down-stairs who wanted to see
Sir Felix. At this time the dominion of Sir Felix in his mother's
house had been much curtailed. His latch-key had been surreptitiously
taken away from him, and all messages brought for him reached his
hands through those of his mother. The plasters were not removed from
his face, so that he was still subject to that loss of self-assertion
with which we are told that hitherto dominant cocks become afflicted
when they have been daubed with mud. Lady Carbury asked sundry
questions about the lady, suspecting that Ruby Ruggles, of whom she
had heard, had come to seek her lover. The page could give no special
description, merely saying that the young lady wore a black veil.
Lady Carbury directed that the young lady should be shown into her
own presence,--and Marie Melmotte was ushered into the room. "I dare
say you don't remember me, Lady Carbury," Marie said. "I am Marie
Melmotte."

At first Lady Carbury had not recognised her visitor;--but she did so
before she replied. "Yes, Miss Melmotte, I remember you."

"Yes;--I am Mr. Melmotte's daughter. How is your son? I hope he is
better. They told me he had been horribly used by a dreadful man in
the street."

"Sit down, Miss Melmotte. He is getting better." Now Lady Carbury
had heard within the last two days from Mr. Broune that "it was all
over" with Melmotte. Broune had declared his very strong belief, his
thorough conviction, that Melmotte had committed various forgeries,
that his speculations had gone so much against him as to leave him a
ruined man, and, in short, that the great Melmotte bubble was on the
very point of bursting. "Everybody says that he'll be in gaol before
a week is over." That was the information which had reached Lady
Carbury about the Melmottes only on the previous evening.

"I want to see him," said Marie. Lady Carbury, hardly knowing what
answer to make, was silent for a while. "I suppose he told you
everything;--didn't he? You know that we were to have been married?
I loved him very much, and so I do still. I am not ashamed of coming
and telling you."

"I thought it was all off," said Lady Carbury.

"I never said so. Does he say so? Your daughter came to me and was
very good to me. I do so love her. She said that it was all over; but
perhaps she was wrong. It shan't be all over if he will be true."

Lady Carbury was taken greatly by surprise. It seemed to her at
the moment that this young lady, knowing that her own father was
ruined, was looking out for another home, and was doing so with
a considerable amount of audacity. She gave Marie little credit
either for affection or for generosity; but yet she was unwilling to
answer her roughly. "I am afraid," she said, "that it would not be
suitable."

"Why should it not be suitable? They can't take my money away. There
is enough for all of us even if papa wanted to live with us;--but
it is mine. It is ever so much;--I don't know how much, but a great
deal. We should be quite rich enough. I ain't a bit ashamed to come
and tell you, because we were engaged. I know he isn't rich, and I
should have thought it would be suitable."

It then occurred to Lady Carbury that if this were true the marriage
after all might be suitable. But how was she to find out whether it
was true? "I understand that your papa is opposed to it," she said.

"Yes, he is;--but papa can't prevent me, and papa can't make me give
up the money. It's ever so many thousands a year, I know. If I can
dare to do it, why can't he?"

Lady Carbury was so beside herself with doubts, that she found it
impossible to form any decision. It would be necessary that she
should see Mr. Broune. What to do with her son, how to bestow him,
in what way to get rid of him so that in ridding herself of him she
might not aid in destroying him,--this was the great trouble of her
life, the burden that was breaking her back. Now this girl was not
only willing but persistently anxious to take her black sheep and to
endow him,--as she declared,--with ever so many thousands a year. If
the thousands were there,--or even an income of a single thousand
a year,--then what a blessing would such a marriage be! Sir Felix
had already fallen so low that his mother on his behalf would not
be justified in declining a connection with the Melmottes because
the Melmottes had fallen. To get any niche in the world for him in
which he might live with comparative safety would now be to her a
heaven-sent comfort. "My son is up-stairs," she said. "I will go up
and speak to him."

"Tell him I am here and that I have said that I will forgive him
everything, and that I love him still, and that if he will be true to
me, I will be true to him."

"I couldn't go down to her," said Sir Felix, "with my face all in
this way."

"I don't think she would mind that."

"I couldn't do it. Besides, I don't believe about her money. I never
did believe it. That was the real reason why I didn't go to
Liverpool."

"I think I would see her if I were you, Felix. We could find out to
a certainty about her fortune. It is evident at any rate that she is
very fond of you."

"What's the use of that, if he is ruined?" He would not go down to
see the girl,--because he could not endure to expose his face, and
was ashamed of the wounds which he had received in the street. As
regarded the money he half-believed and half-disbelieved Marie's
story. But the fruition of the money, if it were within his reach,
would be far off and to be attained with much trouble; whereas the
nuisance of a scene with Marie would be immediate. How could he kiss
his future bride, with his nose bound up with a bandage?

"What shall I say to her?" asked his mother.

"She oughtn't to have come. I should tell her just that. You might
send the maid to her to tell her that you couldn't see her again."

But Lady Carbury could not treat the girl after that fashion. She
returned to the drawing-room, descending the stairs very slowly, and
thinking what answer she would make. "Miss Melmotte," she said, "my
son feels that everything has been so changed since he and you last
met, that nothing can be gained by a renewal of your acquaintance."

"That is his message;--is it?" Lady Carbury remained silent. "Then he
is indeed all that they have told me; and I am ashamed that I should
have loved him. I am ashamed;--not of coming here, although you will
think that I have run after him. I don't see why a girl should not
run after a man if they have been engaged together. But I'm ashamed
of thinking so much of so mean a person. Good-bye, Lady Carbury."

"Good-bye, Miss Melmotte. I don't think you should be angry with me."

"No;--no. I am not angry with you. You can forget me now as soon as
you please, and I will try to forget him."

Then with a rapid step she walked back to Bruton Street, going
round by Grosvenor Square and in front of her old house on the way.
What should she now do with herself? What sort of life should she
endeavour to prepare for herself? The life that she had led for the
last year had been thoroughly wretched. The poverty and hardship
which she remembered in her early days had been more endurable. The
servitude to which she had been subjected before she had learned by
intercourse with the world to assert herself, had been preferable. In
these days of her grandeur, in which she had danced with princes, and
seen an emperor in her father's house, and been affianced to lords,
she had encountered degradation which had been abominable to her. She
had really loved;--but had found out that her golden idol was made
of the basest clay. She had then declared to herself that bad as the
clay was she would still love it;--but even the clay had turned away
from her and had refused her love!

She was well aware that some catastrophe was about to happen to her
father. Catastrophes had happened before, and she had been conscious
of their coming. But now the blow would be a very heavy blow. They
would again be driven to pack up and move and seek some other
city,--probably in some very distant part. But go where she might,
she would now be her own mistress. That was the one resolution she
succeeded in forming before she re-entered the house in Bruton
Street.




CHAPTER LXXXIII.

MELMOTTE AGAIN AT THE HOUSE.


On that Thursday afternoon it was known everywhere that there was to
be a general ruin of all the Melmotte affairs. As soon as Cohenlupe
had gone, no man doubted. The City men who had not gone to the dinner
prided themselves on their foresight, as did also the politicians
who had declined to meet the Emperor of China at the table of the
suspected Financier. They who had got up the dinner and had been
instrumental in taking the Emperor to the house in Grosvenor Square,
and they also who had brought him forward at Westminster and had
fought his battle for him, were aware that they would have to defend
themselves against heavy attacks. No one now had a word to say in
his favour, or a doubt as to his guilt. The Grendalls had retired
altogether out of town, and were no longer even heard of. Lord Alfred
had not been seen since the day of the dinner. The Duchess of Albury,
too, went into the country some weeks earlier than usual, quelled, as
the world said, by the general Melmotte failure. But this departure
had not as yet taken place at the time at which we have now arrived.

When the Speaker took his seat in the House, soon after four o'clock,
there were a great many members present, and a general feeling
prevailed that the world was more than ordinarily alive because
of Melmotte and his failures. It had been confidently asserted
throughout the morning that he would be put upon his trial for
forgery in reference to the purchase of the Pickering property from
Mr. Longestaffe, and it was known that he had not as yet shown
himself anywhere on this day. People had gone to look at the house
in Grosvenor Square,--not knowing that he was still living in Mr.
Longestaffe's house in Bruton Street, and had come away with the
impression that the desolation of ruin and crime was already plainly
to be seen upon it. "I wonder where he is," said Mr. Lupton to Mr.
Beauchamp Beauclerk in one of the lobbies of the House.

"They say he hasn't been in the City all day. I suppose he's in
Longestaffe's house. That poor fellow has got it heavy all round. The
man has got his place in the country and his house in town. There's
Nidderdale. I wonder what he thinks about it all."

"This is awful;--ain't it?" said Nidderdale.

"It might have been worse, I should say, as far as you are
concerned," replied Mr. Lupton.

"Well, yes. But I'll tell you what, Lupton. I don't quite understand
it all yet. Our lawyer said three days ago that the money was
certainly there."

"And Cohenlupe was certainly here three days ago," said Lupton;--"but
he isn't here now. It seems to me that it has just happened in time
for you." Lord Nidderdale shook his head and tried to look very
grave.

"There's Brown," said Sir Orlando Drought, hurrying up to the
commercial gentleman whose mistakes about finance Mr. Melmotte on a
previous occasion had been anxious to correct. "He'll be able to tell
us where he is. It was rumoured, you know, an hour ago, that he was
off to the continent after Cohenlupe." But Mr. Brown shook his head.
Mr. Brown didn't know anything. But Mr. Brown was very strongly of
opinion that the police would know all that there was to be known
about Mr. Melmotte before this time on the following day. Mr. Brown
had been very bitter against Melmotte since that memorable attack
made upon him in the House.

Even ministers as they sat to be badgered by the ordinary
question-mongers of the day were more intent upon Melmotte than
upon their own defence. "Do you know anything about it?" asked the
Chancellor of the Exchequer of the Secretary of State for the Home
Department.

"I understand that no order has been given for his arrest. There is
a general opinion that he has committed forgery; but I doubt whether
they've got their evidence together."

"He's a ruined man, I suppose," said the Chancellor.

"I doubt whether he ever was a rich man. But I'll tell you what;--he
has been about the grandest rogue we've seen yet. He must have spent
over a hundred thousand pounds during the last twelve months on his
personal expenses. I wonder how the Emperor will like it when he
learns the truth." Another minister sitting close to the Secretary of
State was of opinion that the Emperor of China would not care half so
much about it as our own First Lord of the Treasury.

At this moment there came a silence over the House which was almost
audible. They who know the sensation which arises from the continued
hum of many suppressed voices will know also how plain to the
ear is the feeling caused by the discontinuance of the sound.
Everybody looked up, but everybody looked up in perfect silence. An
Under-Secretary of State had just got upon his legs to answer a most
indignant question as to an alteration of the colour of the facings
of a certain regiment, his prepared answer to which, however, was so
happy as to allow him to anticipate quite a little triumph. It is not
often that such a Godsend comes in the way of an under-secretary; and
he was intent upon his performance. But even he was startled into
momentary oblivion of his well-arranged point. Augustus Melmotte, the
member for Westminster, was walking up the centre of the House.

He had succeeded by this time in learning so much of the forms of
the House as to know what to do with his hat,--when to wear it, and
when to take it off,--and how to sit down. As he entered by the door
facing the Speaker, he wore his hat on one side of his head, as was
his custom. Much of the arrogance of his appearance had come from
this habit, which had been adopted probably from a conviction that it
added something to his powers of self-assertion. At this moment he
was more determined than ever that no one should trace in his outer
gait or in any feature of his face any sign of that ruin which, as
he well knew, all men were anticipating. Therefore, perhaps, his hat
was a little more cocked than usual, and the lapels of his coat were
thrown back a little wider, displaying the large jewelled studs which
he wore in his shirt; and the arrogance conveyed by his mouth and
chin was specially conspicuous. He had come down in his brougham, and
as he had walked up Westminster Hall and entered the House by the
private door of the members, and then made his way in across the
great lobby and between the doorkeepers,--no one had spoken a word
to him. He had of course seen many whom he had known. He had indeed
known nearly all whom he had seen;--but he had been aware, from the
beginning of this enterprise of the day, that men would shun him, and
that he must bear their cold looks and colder silence without seeming
to notice them. He had schooled himself to the task, and he was now
performing it. It was not only that he would have to move among men
without being noticed, but that he must endure to pass the whole
evening in the same plight. But he was resolved, and he was now doing
it. He bowed to the Speaker with more than usual courtesy, raising
his hat with more than usual care, and seated himself, as usual,
on the third opposition-bench, but with more than his usual fling.
He was a big man, who always endeavoured to make an effect by
deportment, and was therefore customarily conspicuous in his
movements. He was desirous now of being as he was always, neither
more nor less demonstrative;--but, as a matter of course, he
exceeded; and it seemed to those who looked at him that there was a
special impudence in the manner in which he walked up the House and
took his seat. The Under-Secretary of State, who was on his legs, was
struck almost dumb, and his morsel of wit about the facings was lost
to Parliament for ever.

That unfortunate young man, Lord Nidderdale, occupied the seat next
to that on which Melmotte had placed himself. It had so happened
three or four times since Melmotte had been in the House, as the
young lord, fully intending to marry the Financier's daughter, had
resolved that he would not be ashamed of his father-in-law. He
had understood that countenance of the sort which he as a young
aristocrat could give to the man of millions who had risen no one
knew whence, was part of the bargain in reference to the marriage,
and he was gifted with a mingled honesty and courage which together
made him willing and able to carry out his idea. He had given
Melmotte little lessons as to ordinary forms of the House, and had
done what in him lay to earn the money which was to be forthcoming.
But it had become manifest both to him and to his father during the
last two days,--very painfully manifest to his father,--that the
thing must be abandoned. And if so,--then why should he be any longer
gracious to Melmotte? And, moreover, though he had been ready to be
courteous to a very vulgar and a very disagreeable man, he was not
anxious to extend his civilities to one who, as he was now assured,
had been certainly guilty of forgery. But to get up at once and leave
his seat because Melmotte had placed himself by his side, did not
suit the turn of his mind. He looked round to his neighbour on the
right, with a half-comic look of misery, and then prepared himself to
bear his punishment, whatever it might be.

"Have you been up with Marie to-day?" said Melmotte.

"No;--I've not," replied the lord.

"Why don't you go? She's always asking about you now. I hope we shall
be in our own house again next week, and then we shall be able to
make you comfortable."

Could it be possible that the man did not know that all the world
was united in accusing him of forgery? "I'll tell you what it is,"
said Nidderdale. "I think you had better see my governor again, Mr.
Melmotte."

"There's nothing wrong, I hope."

"Well;--I don't know. You'd better see him. I'm going now. I only
just came down to enter an appearance." He had to cross Melmotte on
his way out, and as he did so Melmotte grasped him by the hand. "Good
night, my boy," said Melmotte quite aloud,--in a voice much louder
than that which members generally allow themselves for conversation.
Nidderdale was confused and unhappy; but there was probably not a man
in the House who did not understand the whole thing. He rushed down
through the gangway and out through the doors with a hurried step,
and as he escaped into the lobby he met Lionel Lupton, who, since his
little conversation with Mr. Beauclerk, had heard further news.

"You know what has happened, Nidderdale?"

"About Melmotte, you mean?"

"Yes, about Melmotte," continued Lupton. "He has been arrested in his
own house within the last half-hour on a charge of forgery."

"I wish he had," said Nidderdale, "with all my heart. If you go in
you'll find him sitting there as large as life. He has been talking
to me as though everything were all right."

"Compton was here not a moment ago, and said that he had been taken
under a warrant from the Lord Mayor."

"The Lord Mayor is a member and had better come and fetch his
prisoner himself. At any rate he's there. I shouldn't wonder if he
wasn't on his legs before long."

Melmotte kept his seat steadily till seven, at which hour the House
adjourned till nine. He was one of the last to leave, and then with
a slow step,--with almost majestic steps,--he descended to the
dining-room and ordered his dinner. There were many men there, and
some little difficulty about a seat. No one was very willing to make
room for him. But at last he secured a place, almost jostling some
unfortunate who was there before him. It was impossible to expel
him,--almost as impossible to sit next him. Even the waiters were
unwilling to serve him;--but with patience and endurance he did at
last get his dinner. He was there in his right, as a member of the
House of Commons, and there was no ground on which such service as
he required could be refused to him. It was not long before he had
the table all to himself. But of this he took no apparent notice.
He spoke loudly to the waiters and drank his bottle of champagne
with much apparent enjoyment. Since his friendly intercourse with
Nidderdale no one had spoken to him, nor had he spoken to any man.
They who watched him declared among themselves that he was happy in
his own audacity;--but in truth he was probably at that moment the
most utterly wretched man in London. He would have better studied
his personal comfort had he gone to his bed, and spent his evening
in groans and wailings. But even he, with all the world now gone
from him, with nothing before him but the extremest misery which the
indignation of offended laws could inflict, was able to spend the
last moments of his freedom in making a reputation at any rate for
audacity. It was thus that Augustus Melmotte wrapped his toga around
him before his death!

He went from the dining-room to the smoking-room, and there, taking
from his pocket a huge case which he always carried, proceeded to
light a cigar about eight inches long. Mr. Brown, from the City, was
in the room, and Melmotte, with a smile and a bow, offered Mr. Brown
one of the same. Mr. Brown was a short, fat, round little man, over
sixty, who was always endeavouring to give to a somewhat commonplace
set of features an air of importance by the contraction of his lips
and the knitting of his brows. It was as good as a play to see Mr.
Brown jumping back from any contact with the wicked one, and putting
on a double frown as he looked at the impudent sinner. "You needn't
think so much, you know, of what I said the other night. I didn't
mean any offence." So spoke Melmotte, and then laughed with a loud,
hoarse laugh, looking round upon the assembled crowd as though he
were enjoying his triumph.

He sat after that and smoked in silence. Once again he burst out
into a laugh, as though peculiarly amused with his own thoughts;--as
though he were declaring to himself with much inward humour that all
these men around him were fools for believing the stories which they
had heard; but he made no further attempt to speak to any one. Soon
after nine he went back again into the House, and again took his old
place. At this time he had swallowed three glasses of brandy and
water, as well as the champagne, and was brave enough almost for
anything. There was some debate going on in reference to the game
laws,--a subject on which Melmotte was as ignorant as one of his own
housemaids,--but, as some speaker sat down, he jumped up to his legs.
Another gentleman had also risen, and when the House called to that
other gentleman Melmotte gave way. The other gentleman had not much
to say, and in a few minutes Melmotte was again on his legs. Who
shall dare to describe the thoughts which would cross the august mind
of a Speaker of the House of Commons at such a moment? Of Melmotte's
villainy he had no official knowledge. And even could he have had
such knowledge it was not for him to act upon it. The man was a
member of the House, and as much entitled to speak as another. But
it seemed on that occasion that the Speaker was anxious to save the
House from disgrace;--for twice and thrice he refused to have his
"eye caught" by the member for Westminster. As long as any other
member would rise he would not have his eye caught. But Melmotte was
persistent, and determined not to be put down. At last no one else
would speak, and the House was about to negative the motion without
a division,--when Melmotte was again on his legs, still persisting.
The Speaker scowled at him and leaned back in his chair. Melmotte
standing erect, turning his head round from one side of the House
to another, as though determined that all should see his audacity,
propping himself with his knees against the seat before him, remained
for half a minute perfectly silent. He was drunk,--but better able
than most drunken men to steady himself, and showing in his face
none of those outward signs of intoxication by which drunkenness is
generally made apparent. But he had forgotten in his audacity that
words are needed for the making of a speech, and now he had not a
word at his command. He stumbled forward, recovered himself, then
looked once more round the House with a glance of anger, and after
that toppled headlong forward over the shoulders of Mr. Beauchamp
Beauclerk, who was now sitting in front of him.

He might have wrapped his toga around him better perhaps had he
remained at home, but if to have himself talked about was his only
object, he could hardly have taken a surer course. The scene, as it
occurred, was one very likely to be remembered when the performer
should have been carried away into enforced obscurity. There was much
commotion in the House. Mr. Beauclerk, a man of natural good nature,
though at the moment put to considerable personal inconvenience,
hastened, when he recovered his own equilibrium, to assist the
drunken man. But Melmotte had by no means lost the power of helping
himself. He quickly recovered his legs, and then reseating himself,
put his hat on, and endeavoured to look as though nothing special had
occurred. The House resumed its business, taking no further notice of
Melmotte, and having no special rule of its own as to the treatment
to be adopted with drunken members. But the member for Westminster
caused no further inconvenience. He remained in his seat for perhaps
ten minutes, and then, not with a very steady step, but still with
capacity sufficient for his own guidance, he made his way down to the
doors. His exit was watched in silence, and the moment was an anxious
one for the Speaker, the clerks, and all who were near him. Had he
fallen some one,--or rather some two or three,--must have picked him
up and carried him out. But he did not fall either there or in the
lobbies, or on his way down to Palace Yard. Many were looking at him,
but none touched him. When he had got through the gates, leaning
against the wall he hallooed for his brougham, and the servant who
was waiting for him soon took him home to Bruton Street. That was
the last which the British Parliament saw of its new member for
Westminster.

Melmotte as soon as he reached home got into his own sitting-room
without difficulty, and called for more brandy and water. Between
eleven and twelve he was left there by his servant with a bottle
of brandy, three or four bottles of soda-water, and his cigar-case.
Neither of the ladies of the family came to him, nor did he speak of
them. Nor was he so drunk then as to give rise to any suspicion in
the mind of the servant. He was habitually left there at night, and
the servant as usual went to his bed. But at nine o'clock on the
following morning the maid-servant found him dead upon the floor.
Drunk as he had been,--more drunk as he probably became during the
night,--still he was able to deliver himself from the indignities
and penalties to which the law might have subjected him by a dose of
prussic acid.




CHAPTER LXXXIV.

PAUL MONTAGUE'S VINDICATION.


It is hoped that the reader need hardly be informed that Hetta
Carbury was a very miserable young woman as soon as she decided that
duty compelled her to divide herself altogether from Paul Montague.
I think that she was irrational; but to her it seemed that the
offence against herself,--the offence against her own dignity as a
woman,--was too great to be forgiven. There can be no doubt that it
would all have been forgiven with the greatest ease had Paul told the
story before it had reached her ears from any other source. Had he
said to her,--when her heart was softest towards him,--I once loved
another woman, and that woman is here now in London, a trouble to me,
persecuting me, and her history is so and so, and the history of my
love for her was after this fashion, and the history of my declining
love is after that fashion, and of this at any rate you may be sure,
that this woman has never been near my heart from the first moment in
which I saw you;--had he told it to her thus, there would not have
been an opening for anger. And he doubtless would have so told it,
had not Hetta's brother interfered too quickly. He was then forced to
exculpate himself, to confess rather than to tell his own story,--and
to admit facts which wore the air of having been concealed, and which
had already been conceived to be altogether damning if true. It
was that journey to Lowestoft, not yet a month old, which did the
mischief,--a journey as to which Hetta was not slow in understanding
all that Roger Carbury had thought about it, though Roger would say
nothing of it to herself. Paul had been staying at the seaside with
this woman in amicable intimacy,--this horrid woman,--in intimacy
worse than amicable, and had been visiting her daily at Islington!
Hetta felt quite sure that he had never passed a day without going
there since the arrival of the woman; and everybody would know what
that meant. And during this very hour he had been,--well, perhaps not
exactly making love to herself, but looking at her and talking to
her, and behaving to her in a manner such as could not but make her
understand that he intended to make love to her. Of course they had
really understood it, since they had met at Madame Melmotte's first
ball, when she had made a plea that she could not allow herself to
dance with him more than,--say half-a-dozen times. Of course she had
not intended him then to know that she would receive his love with
favour; but equally of course she had known that he must so feel it.
She had not only told herself, but had told her mother, that her
heart was given away to this man; and yet the man during this very
time was spending his hours with a--woman, with a strange American
woman, to whom he acknowledged that he had been once engaged. How
could she not quarrel with him? How could she refrain from telling
him that everything must be over between them? Everybody was against
him,--her mother, her brother, and her cousin: and she felt that she
had not a word to say in his defence. A horrid woman! A wretched,
bad, bold American intriguing woman! It was terrible to her that
a friend of hers should ever have attached himself to such a
creature;--but that he should have come to her with a second
tale of love long, long before he had cleared himself from the
first;--perhaps with no intention of clearing himself from the first!
Of course she could not forgive him! No;--she would never forgive
him. She would break her heart for him. That was a matter of course;
but she would never forgive him. She knew well what it was that her
mother wanted. Her mother thought that by forcing her into a quarrel
with Montague she would force her also into a marriage with Roger
Carbury. But her mother would find out that in that she was mistaken.
She would never marry her cousin, though she would be always ready to
acknowledge his worth. She was sure now that she would never marry
any man. As she made this resolve she had a wicked satisfaction in
feeling that it would be a trouble to her mother;--for though she
was altogether in accord with Lady Carbury as to the iniquities of
Paul Montague she was not the less angry with her mother for being so
ready to expose those iniquities.

Oh, with what slow, cautious fingers, with what heartbroken
tenderness did she take out from its guardian case the brooch which
Paul had given her! It had as yet been an only present, and in
thanking him for it, which she had done with full, free-spoken words
of love, she had begged him to send her no other, so that that might
ever be to her,--to her dying day,--the one precious thing that had
been given to her by her lover while she was yet a girl. Now it must
be sent back;--and, no doubt, it would go to that abominable woman!
But her fingers lingered over it as she touched it, and she would
fain have kissed it, had she not told herself that she would have
been disgraced, even in her solitude, by such a demonstration of
affection. She had given her answer to Paul Montague; and, as she
would have no further personal correspondence with him, she took the
brooch to her mother with a request that it might be returned.

"Of course, my dear, I will send it back to him. Is there nothing
else?"

"No, mamma;--nothing else. I have no letters, and no other present.
You always knew everything that took place. If you will just send
that back to him,--without a word. You won't say anything,--will you,
mamma?"

"There is nothing for me to say if you have really made him
understand you."

"I think he understood me, mamma. You need not doubt about that."

"He has behaved very, very badly,--from the beginning," said Lady
Carbury.

But Hetta did not really think that the young man had behaved very
badly from the beginning, and certainly did not wish to be told of
his misbehaviour. No doubt she thought that the young man had behaved
very well in falling in love with her directly he saw her;--only
that he had behaved so badly in taking Mrs. Hurtle to Lowestoft
afterwards! "It's no good talking about that, mamma. I hope you will
never talk of him any more."

"He is quite unworthy," said Lady Carbury.

"I can't bear to--have him--abused," said Hetta sobbing.

"My dear Hetta, I have no doubt this has made you for the time
unhappy. Such little accidents do make people unhappy--for the time.
But it will be much for the best that you should endeavour not to be
so sensitive about it. The world is too rough and too hard for people
to allow their feelings full play. You have to look out for the
future, and you can best do so by resolving that Paul Montague shall
be forgotten at once."

"Oh, mamma, don't. How is a person to resolve? Oh, mamma, don't say
any more."

"But, my dear, there is more that I must say. Your future life is
before you, and I must think of it, and you must think of it. Of
course you must be married."

"There is no of course at all."

"Of course you must be married," continued Lady Carbury, "and of
course it is your duty to think of the way in which this may be best
done. My income is becoming less and less every day. I already owe
money to your cousin, and I owe money to Mr. Broune."

"Money to Mr. Broune!"

"Yes,--to Mr. Broune. I had to pay a sum for Felix which Mr. Broune
told me ought to be paid. And I owe money to tradesmen. I fear that
I shall not be able to keep on this house. And they tell me,--your
cousin and Mr. Broune,--that it is my duty to take Felix out of
London,--probably abroad."

"Of course I shall go with you."

"It may be so at first; but, perhaps, even that may not be necessary.
Why should you? What pleasure could you have in it? Think what my
life must be with Felix in some French or German town!"

"Mamma, why don't you let me be a comfort to you? Why do you speak of
me always as though I were a burden?"

"Everybody is a burden to other people. It is the way of life. But
you,--if you will only yield in ever so little,--you may go where you
will be no burden, where you will be accepted simply as a blessing.
You have the opportunity of securing comfort for your whole life,
and of making a friend, not only for yourself, but for me and your
brother, of one whose friendship we cannot fail to want."

"Mamma, you cannot really mean to talk about that now?"

"Why should I not mean it? What is the use of indulging in high-flown
nonsense? Make up your mind to be the wife of your cousin Roger."

"This is horrid," said Hetta, bursting out in her agony. "Cannot
you understand that I am broken-hearted about Paul, that I love him
from my very soul, that parting from him is like tearing my heart
in pieces? I know that I must, because he has behaved so very
badly,--and because of that wicked woman! And so I have. But I did
not think that in the very next hour you would bid me give myself
to somebody else! I will never marry Roger Carbury. You may be
quite--quite sure that I shall never marry any one. If you won't
take me with you when you go away with Felix, I must stay behind and
try and earn my bread. I suppose I could go out as a nurse." Then,
without waiting for a reply she left the room and betook herself to
her own apartment.

Lady Carbury did not even understand her daughter. She could not
conceive that she had in any way acted unkindly in taking the
opportunity of Montague's rejection for pressing the suit of the
other lover. She was simply anxious to get a husband for her
daughter,--as she had been anxious to get a wife for her son,--in
order that her child might live comfortably. But she felt that
whenever she spoke common sense to Hetta, her daughter took it as
an offence, and flew into tantrums, being altogether unable to
accommodate herself to the hard truths of the world. Deep as was the
sorrow which her son brought upon her, and great as was the disgrace,
she could feel more sympathy for him than for the girl. If there was
anything that she could not forgive in life it was romance. And yet
she, at any rate, believed that she delighted in romantic poetry! At
the present moment she was very wretched; and was certainly unselfish
in her wish to see her daughter comfortably settled before she
commenced those miserable roamings with her son which seemed to be
her coming destiny.

In these days she thought a good deal of Mr. Broune's offer, and of
her own refusal. It was odd that since that refusal she had seen more
of him, and had certainly known much more of him than she had ever
seen or known before. Previous to that little episode their intimacy
had been very fictitious, as are many intimacies. They had played at
being friends, knowing but very little of each other. But now, during
the last five or six weeks,--since she had refused his offer,--they
had really learned to know each other. In the exquisite misery of
her troubles, she had told him the truth about herself and her son,
and he had responded, not by compliments, but by real aid and true
counsel. His whole tone was altered to her, as was hers to him.
There was no longer any egregious flattery between them,--and he, in
speaking to her, would be almost rough to her. Once he had told her
that she would be a fool if she did not do so and so. The consequence
was that she almost regretted that she had allowed him to escape.
But she certainly made no effort to recover the lost prize, for
she told him all her troubles. It was on that afternoon, after her
disagreement with her daughter, that Marie Melmotte came to her. And,
on that same evening, closeted with Mr. Broune in her back room, she
told him of both occurrences. "If the girl has got the money--," she
began, regretting her son's obstinacy.

"I don't believe a bit of it," said Broune. "From all that I can
hear, I don't think that there is any money. And if there is, you may
be sure that Melmotte would not let it slip through his fingers in
that way. I would not have anything to do with it."

"You think it is all over with the Melmottes?"

"A rumour reached me just now that he had been already arrested." It
was now between nine and ten in the evening. "But as I came away from
my room, I heard that he was down at the House. That he will have to
stand a trial for forgery, I think there cannot be a doubt, and I
imagine that it will be found that not a shilling will be saved out
of the property."

"What a wonderful career it has been!"

"Yes,--the strangest thing that has come up in our days. I am
inclined to think that the utter ruin at this moment has been brought
about by his reckless personal expenditure."

"Why did he spend such a lot of money?"

"Because he thought that he could conquer the world by it, and obtain
universal credit. He very nearly succeeded too. Only he had forgotten
to calculate the force of the envy of his competitors."

"You think he has committed forgery?"

"Certainly, I think so. Of course we know nothing as yet."

"Then I suppose it is better that Felix should not have married her."

"Certainly better. No redemption was to have been had on that side,
and I don't think you should regret the loss of such money as his."
Lady Carbury shook her head, meaning probably to imply that even
Melmotte's money would have had no bad odour to one so dreadfully in
want of assistance as her son. "At any rate do not think of it any
more." Then she told him her grief about Hetta. "Ah, there," said he,
"I feel myself less able to express an authoritative opinion."

"He doesn't owe a shilling," said Lady Carbury, "and he is really a
fine gentleman."

"But if she doesn't like him?"

"Oh, but she does. She thinks him to be the finest person in the
world. She would obey him a great deal sooner than she would me. But
she has her mind stuffed with nonsense about love."

"A great many people, Lady Carbury, have their minds stuffed with
that nonsense."

"Yes;--and ruin themselves with it, as she will do. Love is like any
other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it. And
those who will have it when they can't afford it, will come to the
ground like this Mr. Melmotte. How odd it seems! It isn't a fortnight
since we all thought him the greatest man in London." Mr. Broune only
smiled, not thinking it worth his while to declare that he had never
held that opinion about the late idol of Abchurch Lane.

On the following morning, very early, while Melmotte was still lying,
as yet undiscovered, on the floor of Mr. Longestaffe's room, a letter
was brought up to Hetta by the maid-servant, who told her that Mr.
Montague had delivered it with his own hands. She took it greedily,
and then repressing herself, put it with an assumed gesture of
indifference beneath her pillow. But as soon as the girl had left the
room she at once seized her treasure. It never occurred to her as
yet to think whether she would or would not receive a letter from
her dismissed lover. She had told him that he must go, and go for
ever, and had taken it for granted that he would do so,--probably
willingly. No doubt he would be delighted to return to the American
woman. But now that she had the letter, she allowed no doubt to come
between her and the reading of it. As soon as she was alone she
opened it, and she ran through its contents without allowing herself
a moment for thinking, as she went on, whether the excuses made by
her lover were or were not such as she ought to accept.


DEAREST HETTA,

I think you have been most unjust to me, and if you have
ever loved me I cannot understand your injustice. I have
never deceived you in anything, not by a word, or for a
moment. Unless you mean to throw me over because I did
once love another woman, I do not know what cause of anger
you have. I could not tell you about Mrs. Hurtle till you
had accepted me, and, as you yourself must know, I had had
no opportunity to tell you anything afterwards till the
story had reached your ears. I hardly know what I said the
other day, I was so miserable at your accusation. But I
suppose I said then, and I again declare now, that I had
made up my mind that circumstances would not admit of her
becoming my wife before I had ever seen you, and that I
have certainly never wavered in my determination since
I saw you. I can with safety refer to Roger as to this,
because I was with him when I so determined, and made up
my mind very much at his instance. This was before I had
ever even met you.

If I understand it all right you are angry because I have
associated with Mrs. Hurtle since I so determined. I am
not going back to my first acquaintance with her now. You
may blame me for that if you please,--though it cannot
have been a fault against you. But, after what had
occurred, was I to refuse to see her when she came to
England to see me? I think that would have been cowardly.
Of course I went to her. And when she was all alone here,
without a single other friend, and telling me that she was
unwell, and asking me to take her down to the seaside, was
I to refuse? I think that that would have been unkind. It
was a dreadful trouble to me. But of course I did it.

She asked me to renew my engagement. I am bound to tell
you that, but I know in telling you that it will go no
farther. I declined, telling her that it was my purpose to
ask another woman to be my wife. Of course there has been
anger and sorrow,--anger on her part and sorrow on mine.
But there has been no doubt. And at last she yielded. As
far as she was concerned my trouble was over,--except in
so far that her unhappiness has been a great trouble to
me,--when, on a sudden, I found that the story had reached
you in such a form as to make you determined to quarrel
with me!

Of course you do not know it all, for I cannot tell you
all without telling her history. But you know everything
that in the least concerns yourself, and I do say that you
have no cause whatever for anger. I am writing at night.
This evening your brooch was brought to me with three
or four cutting words from your mother. But I cannot
understand that if you really love me, you should wish to
separate yourself from me,--or that, if you ever loved me,
you should cease to love me now because of Mrs. Hurtle.

I am so absolutely confused by the blow that I hardly know
what I am writing, and take first one outrageous idea into
my head and then another. My love for you is so thorough
and so intense that I cannot bring myself to look forward
to living without you, now that you have once owned that
you have loved me. I cannot think it possible that love,
such as I suppose yours must have been, could be made to
cease all at a moment. Mine can't. I don't think it is
natural that we should be parted.

If you want corroboration of my story go yourself to Mrs.
Hurtle. Anything is better than that we both should be
broken-hearted.

Yours most affectionately,

PAUL MONTAGUE.f