The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (best fiction novels of all time .TXT) 📕

him,” he said to himself, as he opened it. The second line told him that the danger was over.

When he had read so far he stood up with his back to the fireplace, leaving the letter on the table. Then, after all, the woman wasn’t in love with him! But that was a reading of the affair which he could hardly bring himself to look upon as correct. The woman had shown her love by a thousand signs. There was no doubt, however, that she now had her triumph. A woman always has a triumph when she rejects a man⁠—and more especially when she does so at a certain time of life. Would she publish her triumph? Mr. Broune would not like to have it known about among brother editors, or by the world at large, that he had offered to marry Lady Carbury and that Lady Carbury had refused him. He had escaped; but the sweetness of his present safety was not in proportion to the bitterness of his late fears.

He could not understand why Lady Carbury should have refused him! As he reflected upon it, all memory of her son for the moment passed away from him. Full ten minutes had passed, during which he had still stood upon the rug, before he read the entire letter. “ ‘Cut and scotched and lopped!’ I suppose she has been,” he said to himself. He had heard much of Sir Patrick, and knew well that the old general had been no lamb. “I shouldn’t have cut her, or scotched her, or lopped her.” When he had read the whole letter patiently there crept upon him gradually a feeling of admiration for her, greater than he had ever yet felt⁠—and, for awhile, he almost thought that he would renew his offer to her. “ ‘Showers instead of sunshine; melancholy instead of mirth,’ ” he repeated to himself. “I should have done the best for her, taking the showers and the melancholy if they were necessary.”

He went to his work in a mixed frame of mind, but certainly without that dragging weight which had oppressed him when he entered the room. Gradually, through the night, he realised the conviction that he had escaped, and threw from him altogether the idea of repeating his offer. Before he left he wrote her a line⁠—

Be it so. It need not break our friendship.

N. B.

This he sent by a special messenger, who returned with a note to his lodgings long before he was up on the following morning.

No;⁠—no; certainly not. No word of this will ever pass my mouth.

M. C.

Mr. Broune thought that he was very well out of the danger, and resolved that Lady Carbury should never want anything that his friendship could do for her.

XXXVII The Boardroom

On Friday, the 21st June, the Board of the South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway sat in its own room behind the Exchange, as was the Board’s custom every Friday. On this occasion all the members were there, as it had been understood that the chairman was to make a special statement. There was the great chairman as a matter of course. In the midst of his numerous and immense concerns he never threw over the railway, or delegated to other less experienced hands those cares which the commercial world had entrusted to his own. Lord Alfred was there, with Mr. Cohenlupe, the Hebrew gentleman, and Paul Montague, and Lord Nidderdale⁠—and even Sir Felix Carbury. Sir Felix had come, being very anxious to buy and sell, and not as yet having had an opportunity of realising his golden hopes, although he had actually paid a thousand pounds in hard money into Mr. Melmotte’s hands. The secretary, Mr. Miles Grendall, was also present as a matter of course. The Board always met at three, and had generally been dissolved at a quarter past three. Lord Alfred and Mr. Cohenlupe sat at the chairman’s right and left hand. Paul Montague generally sat immediately below, with Miles Grendall opposite to him;⁠—but on this occasion the young lord and the young baronet took the next places. It was a nice little family party, the great chairman with his two aspiring sons-in-law, his two particular friends⁠—the social friend, Lord Alfred, and the commercial friend Mr. Cohenlupe⁠—and Miles, who was Lord Alfred’s son. It would have been complete in its friendliness, but for Paul Montague, who had lately made himself disagreeable to Mr. Melmotte;⁠—and most ungratefully so, for certainly no one had been allowed so free a use of the shares as the younger member of the house of Fisker, Montague, and Montague.

It was understood that Mr. Melmotte was to make a statement. Lord Nidderdale and Sir Felix had conceived that this was to be done as it were out of the great man’s own heart, of his own wish, so that something of the condition of the company might be made known to the directors of the company. But this was not perhaps exactly the truth. Paul Montague had insisted on giving vent to certain doubts at the last meeting but one, and, having made himself very disagreeable indeed, had forced this trouble on the great chairman. On the intermediate Friday the chairman had made himself very unpleasant to Paul, and this had seemed to be an effort on his part to frighten the inimical director out of his opposition, so that the promise of a statement need not be fulfilled. What nuisance can be so great to a man busied with immense affairs, as to have to explain⁠—or to attempt to explain⁠—small details to men incapable of understanding them? But Montague had stood to his guns. He had not intended, he said, to dispute the commercial success of the company. But he felt very strongly, and he thought that his brother directors should feel as strongly, that it was necessary that they should know more than they did know. Lord Alfred had declared that he did not in