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

the course of the afternoon allowed herself to be carried away. She said one word to Lady Monogram before she went. “Tell him that I was called away suddenly.”

“I will, my dear. I thought your papa would not like it.” The poor girl had not spirit sufficient to upbraid her friend; nor did it suit her now to acerbate an enemy. For the moment, at least, she must yield to everybody and everything. She spent a lonely evening with her father in a dull sitting-room in the hotel, hardly speaking or spoken to, and the following day she was taken down to Caversham. She believed that her father had seen Mr. Brehgert on the morning of that day;⁠—but he said no word to her, nor did she ask him any question.

That was on the day after Lady Monogram’s party. Early in the evening, just as the gentlemen were coming up from the dining-room, Mr. Brehgert, apparelled with much elegance, made his appearance. Lady Monogram received him with a sweet smile. “Miss Longestaffe,” she said, “has left me and gone to her father.”

“Oh, indeed.”

“Yes,” said Lady Monogram, bowing her head, and then attending to other persons as they arrived. Nor did she condescend to speak another word to Mr. Brehgert, or to introduce him even to her husband. He stood for about ten minutes inside the drawing-room, leaning against the wall, and then he departed. No one had spoken a word to him. But he was an even-tempered, good-humoured man. When Miss Longestaffe was his wife things would no doubt be different;⁠—or else she would probably change her acquaintance.

LXVI “So Shall Be My Enmity.”

“You shall be troubled no more with Winifrid Hurtle.” So Mrs. Hurtle had said, speaking in perfect good faith to the man whom she had come to England with the view of marrying. And then when he had said goodbye to her, putting out his hand to take hers for the last time, she declined that. “Nay,” she had said; “this parting will bear no farewell.”

Having left her after that fashion Paul Montague could not return home with very high spirits. Had she insisted on his taking that letter with the threat of the horsewhip as the letter which she intended to write to him⁠—that letter which she had shown him, owning it to be the ebullition of her uncontrolled passion, and had then destroyed⁠—he might at any rate have consoled himself with thinking that, however badly he might have behaved, her conduct had been worse than his. He could have made himself warm and comfortable with anger, and could have assured himself that under any circumstances he must be right to escape from the clutches of a wild cat such as that. But at the last moment she had shown that she was no wild cat to him. She had melted, and become soft and womanly. In her softness she had been exquisitely beautiful; and as he returned home he was sad and dissatisfied with himself. He had destroyed her life for her⁠—or, at least, had created a miserable episode in it which could hardly be obliterated. She had said that she was all alone, and had given up everything to follow him⁠—and he had believed her. Was he to do nothing for her now? She had allowed him to go, and after her fashion had pardoned him the wrong he had done her. But was that to be sufficient for him⁠—so that he might now feel inwardly satisfied at leaving her, and make no further inquiry as to her fate? Could he pass on and let her be as the wine that has been drunk⁠—as the hour that has been enjoyed⁠—as the day that is past?

But what could he do? He had made good his own escape. He had resolved that, let her be woman or wild cat, he would not marry her, and in that he knew he had been right. Her antecedents, as now declared by herself, unfitted her for such a marriage. Were he to return to her he would be again thrusting his hand into the fire. But his own selfish coldness was hateful to him when he thought that there was nothing to be done but to leave her desolate and lonely in Mrs. Pipkin’s lodgings.

During the next three or four days, while the preparations for the dinner and the election were going on, he was busy in respect to the American railway. He again went down to Liverpool, and at Mr. Ramsbottom’s advice prepared a letter to the board of directors, in which he resigned his seat, and gave his reasons for resigning it; adding that he should reserve to himself the liberty of publishing his letter, should at any time the circumstances of the railway company seem to him to make such a course desirable. He also wrote a letter to Mr. Fisker, begging that gentleman to come to England, and expressing his own wish to retire altogether from the firm of Fisker, Montague, and Montague upon receiving the balance of money due to him⁠—a payment which must, he said, be a matter of small moment to his two partners, if, as he had been informed, they had enriched themselves by the success of the railway company in San Francisco. When he wrote these letters at Liverpool the great rumour about Melmotte had not yet sprung up. He returned to London on the day of the festival, and first heard of the report at the Beargarden. There he found that the old set had for the moment broken itself up. Sir Felix Carbury had not been heard of for the last four or five days⁠—and then the whole story of Miss Melmotte’s journey, of which he had read something in the newspapers, was told to him. “We think that Carbury has drowned himself,” said Lord Grasslough, “and I haven’t heard of anybody being heartbroken about it.” Lord Nidderdale had hardly been seen at the club. “He’s taken up the running