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

had no pity for his tenants in regard to game, but he hesitated much as to raising their rent. He had his theory of life and endeavoured to live up to it; but the attempt had hardly brought satisfaction to himself or to his family.

At the present moment, it was the great desire of his heart to sell the smaller of his two properties and disembarrass the other. The debt had not been altogether of his own making, and the arrangement would, he believed, serve his whole family as well as himself. It would also serve his son, who was blessed with a third property of his own which he had already managed to burden with debt. The father could not bear to be refused; and he feared that his son would decline. “But Adolphus wants money as much as anyone,” Lady Pomona had said. He had shaken his head and pished and pshawed. Women never could understand anything about money. Now he walked down sadly from Mr. Melmotte’s office and was taken in his brougham to his lawyer’s chambers in Lincoln’s Inn. Even for the accommodation of those few thousand pounds he was forced to condescend to tell his lawyers that the title-deeds of his house in town must be given up. Mr. Longestaffe felt that the world in general was very hard on him.

“What on earth are we to do with them?” said Sophia, the eldest Miss Longestaffe, to her mother.

“I do think it’s a shame of papa,” said Georgiana, the second daughter. “I certainly shan’t trouble myself to entertain them.”

“Of course you will leave them all on my hands,” said Lady Pomona wearily.

“But what’s the use of having them?” urged Sophia. “I can understand going to a crush at their house in town when everybody else goes. One doesn’t speak to them, and need not know them afterwards. As to the girl, I’m sure I shouldn’t remember her if I were to see her.”

“It would be a fine thing if Adolphus would marry her,” said Lady Pomona.

“Dolly will never marry anybody,” said Georgiana. “The idea of his taking the trouble of asking a girl to have him! Besides, he won’t come down to Caversham; cart-ropes wouldn’t bring him. If that is to be the game, mamma, it is quite hopeless.”

“Why should Dolly marry such a creature as that?” asked Sophia.

“Because everybody wants money,” said Lady Pomona. “I’m sure I don’t know what your papa is to do, or how it is that there never is any money for anything. I don’t spend it.”

“I don’t think that we do anything out of the way,” said Sophia. “I haven’t the slightest idea what papa’s income is; but if we’re to live at all, I don’t know how we are to make a change.”

“It’s always been like this ever since I can remember,” said Georgiana, “and I don’t mean to worry about it any more. I suppose it’s just the same with other people, only one doesn’t know it.”

“But, my dears⁠—when we are obliged to have such people as these Melmottes!”

“As for that, if we didn’t have them somebody else would. I shan’t trouble myself about them. I suppose it will only be for two days.”

“My dear, they’re coming for a week!”

“Then papa must take them about the country, that’s all. I never did hear of anything so absurd. What good can they do papa by being down there?”

“He is wonderfully rich,” said Lady Pomona.

“But I don’t suppose he’ll give papa his money,” continued Georgiana. “Of course I don’t pretend to understand, but I think there is more fuss about these things than they deserve. If papa hasn’t got money to live at home, why doesn’t he go abroad for a year? The Sydney Beauchamps did that, and the girls had quite a nice time of it in Florence. It was there that Clara Beauchamp met young Lord Liffey. I shouldn’t at all mind that kind of thing, but I think it quite horrible to have these sort of people brought down upon us at Caversham. No one knows who they are, or where they came from, or what they’ll turn to.” So spoke Georgiana, who among the Longestaffes was supposed to have the strongest head, and certainly the sharpest tongue.

This conversation took place in the drawing-room of the Longestaffes’ family town-house in Bruton Street. It was not by any means a charming house, having but few of those luxuries and elegancies which have been added of late years to newly-built London residences. It was gloomy and inconvenient, with large drawing-rooms, bad bedrooms, and very little accommodation for servants. But it was the old family town-house, having been inhabited by three or four generations of Longestaffes, and did not savour of that radical newness which prevails, and which was peculiarly distasteful to Mr. Longestaffe. Queen’s Gate and the quarters around were, according to Mr. Longestaffe, devoted to opulent tradesmen. Even Belgrave Square, though its aristocratic properties must be admitted, still smelt of the mortar. Many of those living there and thereabouts had never possessed in their families real family town-houses. The old streets lying between Piccadilly and Oxford Street, with one or two well-known localities to the south and north of these boundaries, were the proper sites for these habitations. When Lady Pomona, instigated by some friend of high rank but questionable taste, had once suggested a change to Eaton Square, Mr. Longestaffe had at once snubbed his wife. If Bruton Street wasn’t good enough for her and the girls then they might remain at Caversham. The threat of remaining at Caversham had been often made, for Mr. Longestaffe, proud as he was of his town-house, was, from year to year, very anxious to save the expense of the annual migration. The girls’ dresses and the girls’ horses, his wife’s carriage and his own brougham, his dull London dinner-parties, and the one ball which it was always necessary that Lady Pomona should give, made him look forward to the end of July, with more dread than