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

to Francisco anything to induce me to change my mind, I shall change it. I like you very well, but I’m not going to take a leap in the dark, and I’m not going to marry a pig in a poke.”

“There you’re quite right,” he said⁠—“quite right.”

“You may give it out on board the ship that we’re engaged, and I’ll tell Madame Melmotte the same. She and Croll don’t mean going any farther than New York.”

“We needn’t break our hearts about that;⁠—need we?”

“It don’t much signify. Well;⁠—I’ll go on with Mrs. Hurtle, if she’ll have me.”

“Too much delighted she’ll be.”

“And she shall be told we’re engaged.”

“My darling!”

“But if I don’t like it when I get to Frisco, as you call it, all the ropes in California shan’t make me do it. Well;⁠—yes; you may give me a kiss I suppose now if you care about it.” And so⁠—or rather so far⁠—Mr. Fisker and Marie Melmotte became engaged to each other as man and wife.

After that Mr. Fisker’s remaining business in England went very smoothly with him. It was understood up at Hampstead that he was engaged to Marie Melmotte⁠—and it soon came to be understood also that Madame Melmotte was to be married to Herr Croll. No doubt the father of the one lady and the husband of the other had died so recently as to make these arrangements subject to certain censorious objections. But there was a feeling that Melmotte had been so unlike other men, both in his life and in his death, that they who had been concerned with him were not to be weighed by ordinary scales. Nor did it much matter, for the persons concerned took their departure soon after the arrangement was made, and Hampstead knew them no more.

On the 3rd of September Madame Melmotte, Marie, Mrs. Hurtle, Hamilton K. Fisker, and Herr Croll left Liverpool for New York; and the three ladies were determined that they never would revisit a country of which their reminiscences certainly were not happy. The writer of the present chronicle may so far look forward⁠—carrying his reader with him⁠—as to declare that Marie Melmotte did become Mrs. Fisker very soon after her arrival at San Francisco.

XCIX Lady Carbury and Mr. Broune

When Sir Felix Carbury declared to his friends at the Beargarden that he intended to devote the next few months of his life to foreign travel, and that it was his purpose to take with him a Protestant divine⁠—as was much the habit with young men of rank and fortune some years since⁠—he was not altogether lying. There was indeed a sounder basis of truth than was usually to be found attached to his statements. That he should have intended to produce a false impression was a matter of course⁠—and nearly equally so that he should have made his attempt by asserting things which he must have known that no one would believe. He was going to Germany, and he was going in company with a clergyman, and it had been decided that he should remain there for the next twelve months. A representation had lately been made to the Bishop of London that the English Protestants settled in a certain commercial town in the northeastern district of Prussia were without pastoral aid, and the bishop had stirred himself in the matter. A clergyman was found willing to expatriate himself, but the income suggested was very small. The Protestant English population of the commercial town in question, though pious, was not liberal. It had come to pass that the Morning Breakfast Table had interested itself in the matter, having appealed for subscriptions after a manner not unusual with that paper. The bishop and all those concerned in the matter had fully understood that if the Morning Breakfast Table could be got to take the matter up heartily, the thing would be done. The heartiness had been so complete that it had at last devolved upon Mr. Broune to appoint the clergyman; and, as with all the aid that could be found, the income was still small, the Rev. Septimus Blake⁠—a brand snatched from the burning of Rome⁠—had been induced to undertake the maintenance and total charge of Sir Felix Carbury for a consideration. Mr. Broune imparted to Mr. Blake all that there was to know about the baronet, giving much counsel as to the management of the young man, and specially enjoining on the clergyman that he should on no account give Sir Felix the means of returning home. It was evidently Mr. Broune’s anxious wish that Sir Felix should see as much as possible of German life, at a comparatively moderate expenditure, and under circumstances that should be externally respectable if not absolutely those which a young gentleman might choose for his own comfort or profit;⁠—but especially that those circumstances should not admit of the speedy return to England of the young gentleman himself.

Lady Carbury had at first opposed the scheme. Terribly difficult as was to her the burden of maintaining her son, she could not endure the idea of driving him into exile. But Mr. Broune was very obstinate, very reasonable, and, as she thought, somewhat hard of heart. “What is to be the end of it then?” he said to her, almost in anger. For in those days the great editor, when in presence of Lady Carbury, differed very much from that Mr. Broune who used to squeeze her hand and look into her eyes. His manner with her had become so different that she regarded him as quite another person. She hardly dared to contradict him, and found herself almost compelled to tell him what she really felt and thought. “Do you mean to let him eat up everything you have to your last shilling, and then go to the workhouse with him?”

“Oh, my friend, you know how I am struggling! Do not say such horrid things.”

“It is because I know how you are struggling that I find myself compelled to say anything on the subject. What hardship