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

“Heard of it! San Francisco is full of it. Hamilton Fisker is the great man of the day there, and, when I left, your uncle was buying a villa for seventy-four thousand dollars. And yet they say that the best of it all has been transferred to you Londoners. Many there are very hard upon Fisker for coming here and doing as he did.”

“It’s doing very well, I believe,” said Paul, with some feeling of shame, as he thought how very little he knew about it.

“You are the manager here in England?”

“No⁠—I am a member of the firm that manages it at San Francisco; but the real manager here is our chairman, Mr. Melmotte.”

“Ah⁠—I have heard of him. He is a great man;⁠—a Frenchman, is he not? There was a talk of inviting him to California. You know him of course?”

“Yes;⁠—I know him. I see him once a week.”

“I would sooner see that man than your Queen, or any of your dukes or lords. They tell me that he holds the world of commerce in his right hand. What power;⁠—what grandeur!”

“Grand enough,” said Paul, “if it all came honestly.”

“Such a man rises above honesty,” said Mrs. Hurtle, “as a great general rises above humanity when he sacrifices an army to conquer a nation. Such greatness is incompatible with small scruples. A pigmy man is stopped by a little ditch, but a giant stalks over the rivers.”

“I prefer to be stopped by the ditches,” said Montague.

“Ah, Paul, you were not born for commerce. And I will grant you this, that commerce is not noble unless it rises to great heights. To live in plenty by sticking to your counter from nine in the morning to nine at night, is not a fine life. But this man with a scratch of his pen can send out or call in millions of dollars. Do they say here that he is not honest?”

“As he is my partner in this affair perhaps I had better say nothing against him.”

“Of course such a man will be abused. People have said that Napoleon was a coward, and Washington a traitor. You must take me where I shall see Melmotte. He is a man whose hand I would kiss; but I would not condescend to speak even a word of reverence to any of your Emperors.”

“I fear you will find that your idol has feet of clay.”

“Ah⁠—you mean that he is bold in breaking those precepts of yours about coveting worldly wealth. All men and women break that commandment, but they do so in a stealthy fashion, half drawing back the grasping hand, praying to be delivered from temptation while they filch only a little, pretending to despise the only thing that is dear to them in the world. Here is a man who boldly says that he recognises no such law; that wealth is power, and that power is good, and that the more a man has of wealth the greater and the stronger and the nobler he can be. I love a man who can turn the hobgoblins inside out and burn the wooden bogies that he meets.”

Montague had formed his own opinions about Melmotte. Though connected with the man, he believed their Grand Director to be as vile a scoundrel as ever lived. Mrs. Hurtle’s enthusiasm was very pretty, and there was something of feminine eloquence in her words. But it was shocking to see them lavished on such a subject. “Personally, I do not like him,” said Paul.

“I had thought to find that you and he were hand and glove.”

“Oh no.”

“But you are prospering in this business?”

“Yes⁠—I suppose we are prospering. It is one of those hazardous things in which a man can never tell whether he be really prosperous till he is out of it. I fell into it altogether against my will. I had no alternative.”

“It seems to me to have been a golden chance.”

“As far as immediate results go it has been golden.”

“That at any rate is well, Paul. And now⁠—now that we have got back into our old way of talking, tell me what all this means. I have talked to no one after this fashion since we parted. Why should our engagement be over? You used to love me, did you not?”

He would willingly have left her question unanswered, but she waited for an answer. “You know I did,” he said.

“I thought so. This I know, that you were sure and are sure of my love to you. Is it not so? Come, speak openly like a man. Do you doubt me?”

He did not doubt her, and was forced to say so. “No, indeed.”

“Oh, with what bated, half-mouthed words you speak⁠—fit for a girl from a nursery! Out with it if you have anything to say against me! You owe me so much at any rate. I have never ill-treated you. I have never lied to you. I have taken nothing from you⁠—if I have not taken your heart. I have given you all that I have to give.” Then she leaped to her feet and stood a little apart from him. “If you hate me, say so.”

“Winifrid,” he said, calling her by her name.

“Winifrid! Yes, now for the first time, though I have called you Paul from the moment you entered the room. Well, speak out. Is there another woman that you love?”

At this moment Paul Montague proved that at any rate he was no coward. Knowing the nature of the woman, how ardent, how impetuous she could be, and how full of wrath, he had come at her call intending to tell her the truth which he now spoke. “There is another,” he said.

She stood silent, looking into his face, thinking how she would commence her attack upon him. She fixed her eyes upon him, standing quite upright, squeezing her own right hand with the fingers of the left. “Oh,” she said, in a whisper;⁠—“that is the reason why I am told that I