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

best that Marie Melmotte should know the truth. But she had not that sort of strength which would have enabled her to tell it. “Tell me just what you think,” said Marie. Hetta was still silent. “Ah⁠—I see. Then I must give him up? Eh?”

“What can I say, Miss Melmotte? Felix never tells me. He is my brother⁠—and of course I love you for loving him.” This was almost more than Hetta meant; but she felt herself constrained to say some gracious word.

“Do you? Oh! I wish you did. I should so like to be loved by you. Nobody loves me, I think. That man there wants to marry me. Do you know him? He is Lord Nidderdale. He is very nice; but he does not love me any more than he loves you. That’s the way with men. It isn’t the way with me. I would go with Felix and slave for him if he were poor. Is it all to be over then? You will give him a message from me?” Hetta, doubting as to the propriety of the promise, promised that she would. “Just tell him I want to know; that’s all. I want to know. You’ll understand. I want to know the real truth. I suppose I do know it now. Then I shall not care what happens to me. It will be all the same. I suppose I shall marry that young man, though it will be very bad. I shall just be as if I hadn’t any self of my own at all. But he ought to send me word after all that has passed. Do not you think he ought to send me word?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“You tell him, then,” said Marie, nodding her head as she crept away.

Nidderdale had been observing her while she had been talking to Miss Carbury. He had heard the rumour, and of course felt that it behoved him to be on his guard more specially than anyone else. But he had not believed what he had heard. That men should be thoroughly immoral, that they should gamble, get drunk, run into debt, and make love to other men’s wives, was to him a matter of everyday life. Nothing of that kind shocked him at all. But he was not as yet quite old enough to believe in swindling. It had been impossible to convince him that Miles Grendall had cheated at cards, and the idea that Mr. Melmotte had forged was as improbable and shocking to him as that an officer should run away in battle. Common soldiers, he thought, might do that sort of thing. He had almost fallen in love with Marie when he saw her last, and was inclined to feel the more kindly to her now because of the hard things that were being said about her father. And yet he knew that he must be careful. If “he came a cropper” in this matter, it would be such an awful cropper! “How do you like the party?” he said to Marie.

“I don’t like it at all, my lord. How do you like it?”

“Very much, indeed. I think the Emperor is the greatest fun I ever saw. Prince Frederic,”⁠—one of the German princes who was staying at the time among his English cousins⁠—“Prince Frederic says that he’s stuffed with hay, and that he’s made up fresh every morning at a shop in the Haymarket.”

“I’ve seen him talk.”

“He opens his mouth, of course. There is machinery as well as hay. I think he’s the grandest old buffer out, and I’m awfully glad that I’ve dined with him. I couldn’t make out whether he really put anything to eat into his jolly old mouth.”

“Of course he did.”

“Have you been thinking about what we were talking about the other day?”

“No, my lord⁠—I haven’t thought about it since. Why should I?”

“Well;⁠—it’s a sort of thing that people do think about, you know.”

“You don’t think about it.”

“Don’t I? I’ve been thinking about nothing else the last three months.”

“You’ve been thinking whether you’d get married or not.”

“That’s what I mean,” said Lord Nidderdale.

“It isn’t what I mean, then.”

“I’ll be shot if I can understand you.”

“Perhaps not. And you never will understand me. Oh, goodness;⁠—they’re all going, and we must get out of the way. Is that Prince Frederic, who told you about the hay? He is handsome; isn’t he? And who is that in the violet dress;⁠—with all the pearls?”

“That’s the Princess Dwarza.”

“Dear me;⁠—isn’t it odd, having a lot of people in one’s own house, and not being able to speak a word to them? I don’t think it’s at all nice. Good night, my lord. I’m glad you like the Emperor.”

And then the people went, and when they had all gone Melmotte put his wife and daughter into his own carriage, telling them that he would follow them on foot to Bruton Street when he had given some last directions to the people who were putting out the lights, and extinguishing generally the embers of the entertainment. He had looked round for Lord Alfred, taking care to avoid the appearance of searching; but Lord Alfred had gone. Lord Alfred was one of those who knew when to leave a falling house. Melmotte at the moment thought of all that he had done for Lord Alfred, and it was something of the real venom of ingratitude that stung him at the moment rather than this additional sign of coming evil. He was more than ordinarily gracious as he put his wife into the carriage, and remarked that, considering all things, the party had gone off very well. “I only wish it could have been done a little cheaper,” he said laughing. Then he went back into the house, and up into the drawing-rooms which were now utterly deserted. Some of the lights had been put out, but the men were busy in the rooms below, and he threw himself into the chair in which the Emperor had sat. It was wonderful that