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

that⁠—you are going to⁠—throw me over?”

“I don’t want you to throw Mrs. Hurtle over. Goodbye.”

“Hetta!”

“No; I will not have you lay your hand upon me. Good night, Mr. Montague.” And so she left him.

Paul Montague was beside himself with dismay as he left the house. He had never allowed himself for a moment to believe that this affair of Mrs. Hurtle would really separate him from Hetta Carbury. If she could only really know it all, there could be no such result. He had been true to her from the first moment in which he had seen her, never swerving from his love. It was to be supposed that he had loved some woman before; but, as the world goes, that would not, could not, affect her. But her anger was founded on the presence of Mrs. Hurtle in London⁠—which he would have given half his possessions to have prevented. But when she did come, was he to have refused to see her? Would Hetta have wished him to be cold and cruel like that? No doubt he had behaved badly to Mrs. Hurtle;⁠—but that trouble he had overcome. And now Hetta was quarrelling with him, though he certainly had never behaved badly to her.

He was almost angry with Hetta as he walked home. Everything that he could do he had done for her. For her sake he had quarrelled with Roger Carbury. For her sake⁠—in order that he might be effectually free from Mrs. Hurtle⁠—he had determined to endure the spring of the wild cat. For her sake⁠—so he told himself⁠—he had been content to abide by that odious railway company, in order that he might if possible preserve an income on which to support her. And now she told him that they must part⁠—and that only because he had not been cruelly indifferent to the unfortunate woman who had followed him from America. There was no logic in it, no reason⁠—and, as he thought, very little heart. “I don’t want you to throw Mrs. Hurtle over,” she had said. Why should Mrs. Hurtle be anything to her? Surely she might have left Mrs. Hurtle to fight her own battles. But they were all against him. Roger Carbury, Lady Carbury, and Sir Felix; and the end of it would be that she would be forced into marriage with a man almost old enough to be her father! She could not ever really have loved him. That was the truth. She must be incapable of such love as was his own for her. True love always forgives. And here there was really so very little to forgive! Such were his thoughts as he went to bed that night. But he probably omitted to ask himself whether he would have forgiven her very readily had he found that she had been living “nearly three weeks ago” in close intercourse with another lover of whom he had hitherto never even heard the name. But then⁠—as all the world knows⁠—there is a wide difference between young men and young women!

Hetta, as soon as she had dismissed her lover, went up at once to her own room. Thither she was soon followed by her mother, whose anxious ear had heard the closing of the front door. “Well; what has he said?” asked Lady Carbury. Hetta was in tears⁠—or very nigh to tears⁠—struggling to repress them, and struggling almost successfully. “You have found that what we told you about that woman was all true.”

“Enough of it was true,” said Hetta, who, angry as she was with her lover, was not on that account less angry with her mother for disturbing her bliss.

“What do you mean by that, Hetta? Had you not better speak to me openly?”

“I say, mamma, that enough was true. I do not know how to speak more openly. I need not go into all the miserable story of the woman. He is like other men, I suppose. He has entangled himself with some abominable creature and then when he is tired of her thinks that he has nothing to do but to say so⁠—and to begin with somebody else.”

“Roger Carbury is very different.”

“Oh, mamma, you will make me ill if you go on like that. It seems to me that you do not understand in the least.”

“I say he is not like that.”

“Not in the least. Of course I know that he is not in the least like that.”

“I say that he can be trusted.”

“Of course he can be trusted. Who doubts it?”

“And that if you would give yourself to him, there would be no cause for any alarm.”

“Mamma,” said Hetta jumping up, “how can you talk to me in that way? As soon as one man doesn’t suit, I am to give myself to another! Oh, mamma, how can you propose it? Nothing on earth will ever induce me to be more to Roger Carbury than I am now.”

“You have told Mr. Montague that he is not to come here again?”

“I don’t know what I told him, but he knows very well what I mean.”

“That it is all over?” Hetta made no reply. “Hetta, I have a right to ask that, and I have a right to expect a reply. I do not say that you have hitherto behaved badly about Mr. Montague.”

“I have not behaved badly. I have told you everything. I have done nothing that I am ashamed of.”

“But we have now found out that he has behaved very badly. He has come here to you⁠—with unexampled treachery to your cousin Roger⁠—”

“I deny that,” exclaimed Hetta.

“And at the very time was almost living with this woman who says that she is divorced from her husband in America! Have you told him that you will see him no more?”

“He understood that.”

“If you have not told him so plainly, I must tell him.”

“Mamma, you need not trouble yourself. I have told him very plainly.” Then Lady Carbury expressed herself satisfied for the moment, and left her daughter to her solitude.

LXXVII Another Scene in Bruton Street

When Mr. Melmotte