The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope [good story books to read .txt] 📗

“My dear fellow, I don’t think you’ve the gift of seeing very far. The truth is they don’t know what to make of me;⁠—and I don’t intend that they shall. I’m playing my game, and there isn’t one of ’em understands it except myself. It’s no good my sitting here, you know. I shan’t be able to move. How am I to get at you if I want anything?”

“What can you want? There’ll be lots of servants about.”

“I’ll have this bar down, at any rate.” And he did succeed in having removed the bar which had been specially put up to prevent his intrusion on his own guests in his own house. “I look upon that fellow’s coming here as a very singular sign of the times,” he went on to say. “They’ll want before long to know where I have my clothes made, and who measures me for my boots!” Perhaps the most remarkable circumstance in the career of this remarkable man was the fact that he came almost to believe in himself.

Father Barham went away certainly disgusted; and yet not altogether disheartened. The man had not declared that he was not a Roman Catholic. He had shown himself to be a brute. He had blasphemed and cursed. He had been outrageously uncivil to a man whom he must have known to be a minister of God. He had manifested himself to this priest, who had been born an English gentleman, as being no gentleman. But, not the less might he be a good Catholic⁠—or good enough at any rate to be influential on the right side. To his eyes Melmotte, with all his insolent vulgarity, was infinitely a more hopeful man than Roger Carbury. “He insulted me,” said Father Barham to a brother religionist that evening within the cloisters of St. Fabricius.

“Did he intend to insult you?”

“Certainly he did. But what of that? It is not by the hands of polished men, nor even of the courteous, that this work has to be done. He was preparing for some great festival, and his mind was intent upon that.”

“He entertains the Emperor of China this very day,” said the brother priest, who, as a resident in London, heard from time to time what was being done.

“The Emperor of China! Ah, that accounts for it. I do think that he is on our side, even though he gave me but little encouragement for saying so. Will they vote for him, here at Westminster?”

“Our people will. They think that he is rich and can help them.”

“There is no doubt of his wealth, I suppose,” said Father Barham.

“Some people do doubt;⁠—but others say he is the richest man in the world.”

“He looked like it⁠—and spoke like it,” said Father Barham. “Think what such a man might do, if he be really the wealthiest man in the world! And if he had been against us would he not have said so? Though he was uncivil, I am glad that I saw him.” Father Barham, with a simplicity that was singularly mingled with his religious cunning, made himself believe before he returned to Beccles that Mr. Melmotte was certainly a Roman Catholic.

Lord Nidderdale had half consented to renew his suit to Marie Melmotte. He had at any rate half promised to call at Melmotte’s house on the Sunday with the object of so doing. As far as that promise had been given it was broken, for on the Sunday he was not seen in Bruton Street. Though not much given to severe thinking, he did feel that on this occasion there was need for thought. His father’s property was not very large. His father and his grandfather had both been extravagant men, and he himself had done something towards adding to the family embarrassments. It had been an understood thing, since he had commenced life, that he was to marry an heiress. In such families as his, when such results have been achieved, it is generally understood that matters shall be put right by an heiress. It has become an institution, like primogeniture, and is almost as serviceable for maintaining the proper order of things. Rank squanders money; trade makes it;⁠—and then trade purchases rank by re-gilding its splendour. The arrangement, as it affects the aristocracy generally, is well understood, and was quite approved of by the old marquis⁠—so that he had felt himself to be justified in eating up the property, which his son’s future marriage would renew as a matter of course. Nidderdale himself had never dissented, had entertained no fanciful theory opposed to this view, had never alarmed his father by any liaison tending towards matrimony with any undowered beauty;⁠—but had claimed his right to “have his fling” before he devoted himself to the redintegration of the family property. His father had felt that it would be wrong and might probably be foolish to oppose so natural a desire. He had regarded all the circumstances of “the fling” with indulgent eyes. But there arose some little difference as to the duration of the fling, and the father had at last found himself compelled to inform his son that if the fling were carried on much longer it must be done with internecine war between himself and his heir. Nidderdale, whose sense and temper were alike good, saw the thing quite in the proper light. He assured his father that he had no intention of “cutting up rough,” declared that he was ready for the heiress as soon as the heiress should be put in his way, and set himself honestly about the task imposed on him. This had all been arranged at Auld Reekie Castle during the last winter, and the reader knows the result.

But the affair had assumed abnormal difficulties. Perhaps the Marquis had been wrong in flying at wealth which was reputed to be almost unlimited, but which was not absolutely fixed. A couple of hundred thousand pounds