The Way We Live Now (132 page)

‘I want you,' said Mr Broune, very quietly.

‘Ah – that is so kind of you. There is nothing makes one so good as goodness – nothing binds your friend to you so firmly as the acceptance from him of friendly actions. You say you want me, because I have so sadly wanted you. When I go you will simply miss an almost daily trouble, but where shall I find a friend?'

‘When I said I wanted you, I meant more than that, Lady Carbury. Two or three months ago I asked you to be my wife. You declined, chiefly, if I understood you rightly, because of your son's position. That has been altered, and therefore I ask you again. I have quite convinced myself – not without some doubts, for you shall know all; but, still, I have quite convinced myself – that such a marriage will best contribute to my own happiness. I do not think, dearest, that it would mar yours.'

This was said with so quiet a voice and so placid a demeanour, that the words, though they were too plain to be misunderstood, hardly at first brought themselves home to her. Of course he had renewed his offer of marriage, but he had done so in a tone which almost made her feel that the proposition could not be an earnest one. It was not that she believed that he was joking with her or paying her a poor insipid compliment. When she thought about it at all, she knew that it could not be so. But the thing was so improbable! Her opinion of herself was so poor, she had become so sick of her own vanities and littlenesses and pretences, that she could not understand that such a man as this should in truth want to make her his wife.
At this moment she thought less of herself and more of Mr Broune than either perhaps deserved. She sat silent, quite unable to look him in the face, while he kept his place in his arm-chair, lounging back, with his eyes intent on her countenance. ‘Well,' he said; ‘what do you think of it? I never loved you better than I did for refusing me before, because I thought that you did so because it was not right that I should be embarrassed by your son.'

‘That was the reason,' she said, almost in a whisper.

‘But I shall love you better still for accepting me now – if you will accept me.'

The long vista of her past life appeared before her eyes. The ambition of her youth which had been taught to look only to a handsome maintenance, the cruelty of her husband which had driven her to run from him, the further cruelty of his forgiveness when she returned to him; the calumny which had made her miserable, though she had never confessed her misery; then her attempts at life in London, her literary successes and failures and the wretchedness of her son's career; there had never been happiness, or even comfort, in any of it. Even when her smiles had been sweetest her heart had been heaviest. Could it be that now at last real peace should be within her reach, and that tranquillity which comes from an anchor holding to a firm bottom? Then she remembered that first kiss – or attempted kiss – when, with a sort of pride in her own superiority she had told herself that the man was a susceptible old goose. She certainly had not thought then that his susceptibility was of this nature. Nor could she quite understand now whether she had been right then, and that the man's feelings, and almost his nature, had since changed – or whether he had really loved her from first to last. As he remained silent it was necessary that she should answer him. ‘You can hardly have thought of it enough,' she said.

‘I have thought of it a good deal too. I have been thinking of it for six months at least.'

‘There is so much against me.'

‘What is there against you?'

‘They say bad things of me in India.'

‘I know all about that,' replied Mr Broune.

‘And Felix!'

‘I think I may say that I know all about that also.'

‘And then I have become so poor!'

‘I am not proposing to myself to marry you for your money. Luckily for me – I hope luckily for both of us – it is not necessary that I should do so.'

‘And then I seem so to have fallen through in everything. I don't know what I've got to give to a man in return for all that you offer to give to me.'

‘Yourself,' he said, stretching out his right hand to her. And there he sat with it stretched out – so that she found herself compelled to put her own into it, or to refuse to do so with very absolute words. Very slowly she put out her own, and gave it to him without looking at him. Then he drew her towards him, and in a moment she was kneeling at his feet, with her face buried on his knees. Considering their ages, perhaps we must say that their attitude was awkward. They would certainly have thought so themselves had they imagined that any one could have seen them. But how many absurdities of the kind are not only held to be pleasant, but almost holy – as long as they remain mysteries inspected by no profane eyes! It is not that Age is ashamed of feeling passion and acknowledging it – but that the display of it is, without the graces of which Youth is proud, and which Age regrets.

On that occasion there was very little more said between them. He had certainly been in earnest, and she had now accepted him. As he went down to his office he told himself now that he had done the best, not only for her but for himself also. And yet I think that she had won him more thoroughly by her former refusal than by any other virtue.

She, as she sat alone, late into the night, became subject to a thorough reaction of spirit That morning the world had been a perfect blank to her. There was no single object of interest before her. Now everything was rose-coloured. This man who had thus bound her to him, who had given her such assured proofs of his affection and truth, was one of the considerable ones of the world; a man than whom few – so she now told herself – were greater or more powerful. Was it not a career enough for any woman to be the wife of such a man, to receive his friends, and to shine with his reflected glory?

Whether her hopes were realized, or – as human hopes never are realized – how far her content was assured, these pages cannot tell; but they must tell that, before the coming winter was over, Lady Carbury became the wife of Mr Broune, and, in furtherance of her own resolve, took her husband's name. The house in Welbeck Street was kept, and Mrs Broune's Tuesday evenings were much more regarded by the literary world than had been those of Lady Carbury.

It need hardly be said that Paul Montague was not long in adjusting his affairs with Hetta after the visit which he received from Roger Carbury. Early on the following morning he was once more in Welbeck Street, taking the brooch with him; and though at first Lady Carbury kept up her opposition, she did it after so weak a fashion as to throw in fact very little difficulty in his way. Hetta understood perfectly that she was in this matter stronger than her mother, and that she need fear nothing, now that Roger Carbury was on her side. ‘I don't know what you mean to live on,' Lady Carbury said, threatening future evils in a plaintive tone. Hetta repeated, though in other language, the assurance which the young lady made who declared that if her future husband would consent to live on potatoes she would be quite satisfied with the potato-peelings; while Paul made some vague allusion to the satisfactory nature of his final arrangements with the house of Fisker, Montague, and Montague. ‘I don't see anything like an income,' said Lady Carbury; ‘but I suppose Roger will make it right. He takes everything upon himself now, it seems.' But this was before the halcyon day of Mr Broune's second offer.

It was at any rate decided that they were to be married, and the time fixed for the marriage was to be the following spring. When this was finally arranged Roger Carbury, who had returned to his own home, conceived the idea that it would be well that Hetta should pass the autumn and if possible the winter also down in Suffolk, so that she might get used to him in the capacity which he now aspired to fill; and with that object he induced Mrs Yeld, the bishop's wife, to invite her down to the palace. Hetta accepted the invitation and left London before she could hear the tidings of her mother's engagement with Mr Broune.

Roger Carbury had not yielded in this matter – had not brought himself to determine that he would recognize Paul and Hetta as acknowledged lovers – without a fierce inward contest. Two convictions had been strong in his mind, both of which were opposed to this recognition – the first telling him that he would be a fitter husband for the girl than Paul Montague, and the second assuring him that Paul had
ill-treated him in such a fashion that forgiveness would be both foolish and unmanly. For Roger, though he was a religious man, and one anxious to conform to the spirit of Christianity, would not allow himself to think that an injury should be forgiven unless the man who did the injury repented of his own injustice. As to giving his coat to the thief who had taken his cloak – he told himself that were he and others to be guided by that precept honest industry would go naked in order that vice and idleness might be comfortably clothed. If any one stole his cloak he would certainly put that man in prison as soon as possible and not commence his lenience till the thief should at any rate affect to be sorry for his fault. Now, to his thinking, Paul Montague had stolen his cloak, and were he, Roger, to give way in this matter of his love, he would be giving Paul his coat also. No! He was bound after some fashion to have Paul put into prison; to bring him before a jury, and to get a verdict against him, so that some sentence of punishment might be at least pronounced. How then could he yield?

And Paul Montague had shown himself to be very weak in regard to women. It might be – no doubt it was true – that Mrs Hurtle's appearance in England had been distressing to him. But still he had gone down with her to Lowestoft as her lover, and, to Roger's thinking, a man who could do that was quite unfit to be the wife of Hetta Carbury. He would himself tell no tales against Montague on that head. Even when pressed to do so he had told no tale. But not the less was his conviction strong that Hetta ought to know the truth, and to be induced by that knowledge to reject her younger lover.

But then over these convictions there came a third – equally strong – which told him that the girl loved the younger man and did not love him, and that if he loved the girl it was his duty as a man to prove his love by doing what he could to make her happy. As he walked up and down the walk by the moat, with his hands clasped behind his back, stopping every now and again to sit on the terrace wall – walking there, mile after mile, with his mind intent on the one idea – he schooled himself to feel that that, and that only, could be his duty. What did love mean if not that' What could be the devotion which men so often affect to feel if it did not tend to self-sacrifice on behalf of the beloved one. A man would incur any danger for a woman, would subject himself to any toil – would even die for her! But if this were done simply with the object of winning her, where was that real love of which sacrifice of self on behalf of another is the truest proof? So, by degrees, he resolved that the thing must be done. The man, though he had been bad to his friend, was not all bad. He was one
who might become good in good hands. He, Roger, was too firm of purpose and too honest of heart to buoy himself up into new hopes by assurances of the man's unfitness. What right had he to think that he could judge of that better than the girl herself? And so, when many many miles had been walked, he succeeded in conquering his own heart – though in conquering it he crushed it – and in bringing himself to the resolve that the energies of his life should be devoted to the task of making Mrs Paul Montague a happy woman. We have seen how he acted up to this resolve when last in London, withdrawing at any rate all signs of anger from Paul Montague and behaving with the utmost tenderness to Hetta.

When he had accomplished that task of conquering his own heart and of assuring himself thoroughly that Hetta was to become his rival's wife, he was, I think, more at ease and less troubled in his spirit than he had been during those months in which there had still been doubt. The sort of happiness which he had once pictured to himself could certainly never be his. That he would never marry he was quite sure. Indeed, he was prepared to settle Carbury on Hetta's eldest boy on condition that such boy should take the old name. He would never have a child whom he could in truth call his own. But if he could induce these people to live at Carbury, or to live there for at least a part of the year, so that there should be some life in the place, he thought that he could awaken himself again, and again take an interest in the property. But as a first step to this he must learn to regard himself as an old man – as one who had let life pass by too far for the purposes of his own home, and who must therefore devote himself to make happy the homes of others.

So thinking of himself and so resolving, he had told much of his story to his friend the bishop, and as a consequence of those revelations Mrs Yeld had invited Hetta down to the palace. Roger felt that he had still much to say to his cousin before her marriage which could be said in the country much better than in town, and he wished to teach her to regard Suffolk as the county to which she should be attached and in which she was to find her home. The day before she came he was over at the palace with the pretence of asking permission to come and see his cousin soon after her arrival, but in truth with the idea of talking about Hetta to the only friend to whom he had looked for sympathy in his trouble. ‘As to settling your property on her or her children,' said the bishop, ‘it is quite out of the question. Your lawyer would not allow you to do it Where would you be if after all you were to marry?'

‘I shall never marry.'

‘Very likely not – but yet you may. How is a man of your age to
speak with certainty of what he will do or what he will not do in that respect? You can make your will, doing as you please with your property – and the will, when made, can be revoked.'