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

evil nor good of the man except in regard to his conduct to myself. Send for him and ask him to tell you the story of Mrs. Hurtle as it concerns himself. I do not think he will lie, but if he lies you will know that he is lying.”

“And that is all?”

“All that I can say, Hetta. You ask me to be your brother; but I cannot put myself in the place of your brother. I tell you plainly that I am your lover, and shall remain so. Your brother would welcome the man whom you would choose as your husband. I can never welcome any husband of yours. I think if twenty years were to pass over us, and you were still Hetta Carbury, I should still be your lover⁠—though an old one. What is now to be done about Felix, Hetta?”

“Ah⁠—what can be done? I think sometimes that it will break mamma’s heart.”

“Your mother makes me angry by her continual indulgence.”

“But what can she do? You would not have her turn him into the street?”

“I do not know that I would not. For a time it might serve him perhaps. Here is the cab. Here they are. Yes; you had better go down and let your mother know that I am here. They will perhaps take him up to bed, so that I need not see him.”

Hetta did as she was bid, and met her mother and her brother in the hall. Felix having the full use of his arms and legs was able to descend from the cab, and hurry across the pavement into the house, and then, without speaking a word to his sister, hid himself in the dining-room. His face was strapped up with plaister so that not a feature was visible; and both his eyes were swollen and blue; part of his beard had been cut away, and his physiognomy had altogether been so treated that even the page would hardly have known him. “Roger is upstairs, mamma,” said Hetta in the hall.

“Has he heard about Felix;⁠—has he come about that?”

“He has heard only what I have told him. He has come because of your letter. He says that a man named Crumb did it.”

“Then he does know. Who can have told him? He always knows everything. Oh, Hetta, what am I to do? Where shall I go with this wretched boy?”

“Is he hurt, mamma?”

“Hurt;⁠—of course he is hurt; horribly hurt. The brute tried to kill him. They say that he will be dreadfully scarred forever. But oh, Hetta;⁠—what am I to do with him? What am I to do with myself and you?”

On this occasion Roger was saved from the annoyance of any personal intercourse with his cousin Felix. The unfortunate one was made as comfortable as circumstances would permit in the parlour, and Lady Carbury then went up to her cousin in the drawing-room. She had learned the truth with some fair approach to accuracy, though Sir Felix himself had of course lied as to every detail. There are some circumstances so distressing in themselves as to make lying almost a necessity. When a young man has behaved badly about a woman, when a young man has been beaten without returning a blow, when a young man’s pleasant vices are brought directly under a mother’s eyes, what can he do but lie? How could Sir Felix tell the truth about that rash encounter? But the policeman who had brought him to the hospital had told all that he knew. The man who had thrashed the baronet had been called Crumb, and the thrashing had been given on the score of a young woman called Ruggles. So much was known at the hospital, and so much could not be hidden by any lies which Sir Felix might tell. And when Sir Felix swore that a policeman was holding him while Crumb was beating him, no one believed him. In such cases the liar does not expect to be believed. He knows that his disgrace will be made public, and only hopes to be saved from the ignominy of declaring it with his own words.

“What am I to do with him?” Lady Carbury said to her cousin. “It is no use telling me to leave him. I can’t do that. I know he is bad. I know that I have done much to make him what he is.” As she said this the tears were running down her poor worn cheeks. “But he is my child. What am I to do with him now?”

This was a question which Roger found it almost impossible to answer. If he had spoken his thoughts he would have declared that Sir Felix had reached an age at which, if a man will go headlong to destruction, he must go headlong to destruction. Thinking as he did of his cousin he could see no possible salvation for him. “Perhaps I should take him abroad,” he said.

“Would he be better abroad than here?”

“He would have less opportunity for vice, and fewer means of running you into debt.”

Lady Carbury, as she turned this counsel in her mind, thought of all the hopes which she had indulged⁠—her literary aspirations, her Tuesday evenings, her desire for society, her Brounes, her Alfs, and her Bookers, her pleasant drawing-room, and the determination which she had made that now in the afternoon of her days she would become somebody in the world. Must she give it all up and retire to the dreariness of some French town because it was no longer possible that she should live in London with such a son as hers? There seemed to be a cruelty in this beyond all cruelties that she had hitherto endured. This was harder even than those lies which had been told of her when almost in fear of her life she had run from her husband’s house. But yet she must do even this if in no other way she and her son could be