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

make me your wife, and, as far as I am concerned, I am not ashamed to have the fact advertised in every newspaper in the town. I told her that I was the promised wife of one Paul Montague, who was joined with Mr. Melmotte in managing the new great American railway, and that Mr. Paul Montague would be with me this morning. She was too farseeing to doubt me, but had she doubted, I could have shown her your letters. Now go and tell her that what I have said is false⁠—if you dare.” The woman was not there, and it did not seem to be his immediate duty to leave the room in order that he might denounce a lady whom he certainly had ill-used. The position was one which required thought. After a while he took up his hat to go. “Do you mean to tell her that my statement is untrue?”

“No⁠—” he said; “not today.”

“And you will come back to me?”

“Yes;⁠—I will come back.”

“I have no friend here, but you, Paul. Remember that. Remember all your promises. Remember all our love⁠—and be good to me.” Then she let him go without another word.

XXVII Mrs. Hurtle Goes to the Play

On the day after the visit just recorded, Paul Montague received the following letter from Mrs. Hurtle:⁠—

My dear Paul⁠—

I think that perhaps we hardly made ourselves understood to each other yesterday, and I am sure that you do not understand how absolutely my whole life is now at stake. I need only refer you to our journey from San Francisco to London to make you conscious that I really love you. To a woman such love is all important. She cannot throw it from her as a man may do amidst the affairs of the world. Nor, if it has to be thrown from her, can she bear the loss as a man bears it. Her thoughts have dwelt on it with more constancy than his;⁠—and then too her devotion has separated her from other things. My devotion to you has separated me from everything.

But I scorn to come to you as a suppliant. If you choose to say after hearing me that you will put me away from you because you have seen someone fairer than I am, whatever course I may take in my indignation, I shall not throw myself at your feet to tell you of my wrongs. I wish, however, that you should hear me. You say that there is someone you love better than you love me, but that you have not committed yourself to her. Alas, I know too much of the world to be surprised that a man’s constancy should not stand out two years in the absence of his mistress. A man cannot wrap himself up and keep himself warm with an absent love as a woman does. But I think that some remembrance of the past must come back upon you now that you have seen me again. I think that you must have owned to yourself that you did love me, and that you could love me again. You sin against me to my utter destruction if you leave me. I have given up every friend I have to follow you. As regards the other⁠—nameless lady, there can be no fault; for, as you tell me, she knows nothing of your passion.

You hinted that there were other reasons⁠—that we know too little of each other. You meant no doubt that you knew too little of me. Is it not the case that you were content when you knew only what was to be learned in those days of our sweet intimacy, but that you have been made discontented by stories told you by your partners at San Francisco? If this be so, trouble yourself at any rate to find out the truth before you allow yourself to treat a woman as you propose to treat me. I think you are too good a man to cast aside a woman you have loved⁠—like a soiled glove⁠—because ill-natured words have been spoken of her by men, or perhaps by women, who know nothing of her life. My late husband, Caradoc Hurtle, was Attorney-General in the State of Kansas when I married him, I being then in possession of a considerable fortune left to me by my mother. There his life was infamously bad. He spent what money he could get of mine, and then left me and the State, and took himself to Texas;⁠—where he drank himself to death. I did not follow him, and in his absence I was divorced from him in accordance with the laws of Kansas State. I then went to San Francisco about property of my mother’s, which my husband had fraudulently sold to a countryman of ours now resident in Paris⁠—having forged my name. There I met you, and in that short story I tell you all that there is to be told. It may be that you do not believe me now; but if so, are you not bound to go where you can verify your own doubts or my word?

I try to write dispassionately, but I am in truth overborne by passion. I also have heard in California rumours about myself, and after much delay I received your letter. I resolved to follow you to England as soon as circumstances would permit me. I have been forced to fight a battle about my property, and I have won it. I had two reasons for carrying this through by my personal efforts before I saw you. I had begun it and had determined that I would not be beaten by fraud. And I was also determined that I would not plead to you as a pauper. We have talked too freely together in past days of our mutual money matters for me to feel any delicacy in alluding to them. When a man and woman have agreed to be