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

the dear susceptible old donkey could be made at once to understand that that wasn’t the way to go on!

Without a flutter, and without a blush, she escaped from his arm, and then made him an excellent little speech. “Mr. Broune, how foolish, how wrong, how mistaken! Is it not so? Surely you do not wish to put an end to the friendship between us!”

“Put an end to our friendship, Lady Carbury! Oh, certainly not that.”

“Then why risk it by such an act? Think of my son and of my daughter⁠—both grown up. Think of the past troubles of my life;⁠—so much suffered and so little deserved. No one knows them so well as you do. Think of my name, that has been so often slandered but never disgraced! Say that you are sorry, and it shall be forgotten.”

When a man has kissed a woman it goes against the grain with him to say the very next moment that he is sorry for what he has done. It is as much as to declare that the kiss had not answered his expectation. Mr. Broune could not do this, and perhaps Lady Carbury did not quite expect it. “You know that for worlds I would not offend you,” he said. This sufficed. Lady Carbury again looked into his eyes, and a promise was given that the articles should be printed⁠—and with generous remuneration.

When the interview was over Lady Carbury regarded it as having been quite successful. Of course when struggles have to be made and hard work done, there will be little accidents. The lady who uses a street cab must encounter mud and dust which her richer neighbour, who has a private carriage, will escape. She would have preferred not to have been kissed;⁠—but what did it matter? With Mr. Broune the affair was more serious. “Confound them all,” he said to himself as he left the house; “no amount of experience enables a man to know them.” As he went away he almost thought that Lady Carbury had intended him to kiss her again, and he was almost angry with himself in that he had not done so. He had seen her three or four times since, but had not repeated the offence.

We will now go on to the other letters, both of which were addressed to the editors of other newspapers. The second was written to Mr. Booker, of the Literary Chronicle. Mr. Booker was a hardworking professor of literature, by no means without talent, by no means without influence, and by no means without a conscience. But, from the nature of the struggles in which he had been engaged, by compromises which had gradually been driven upon him by the encroachment of brother authors on the one side and by the demands on the other of employers who looked only to their profits, he had fallen into a routine of work in which it was very difficult to be scrupulous, and almost impossible to maintain the delicacies of a literary conscience. He was now a bald-headed old man of sixty, with a large family of daughters, one of whom was a widow dependent on him with two little children. He had five hundred a year for editing the Literary Chronicle, which, through his energy, had become a valuable property. He wrote for magazines, and brought out some book of his own almost annually. He kept his head above water, and was regarded by those who knew about him, but did not know him, as a successful man. He always kept up his spirits, and was able in literary circles to show that he could hold his own. But he was driven by the stress of circumstances to take such good things as came in his way, and could hardly afford to be independent. It must be confessed that literary scruple had long departed from his mind. Letter No. 2 was as follows;⁠—

Welbeck Street, 25th February, 187-.

Dear Mr. Booker,

I have told Mr. Leadham⁠—[Mr. Leadham was senior partner in the enterprising firm of publishers known as Messrs. Leadham and Loiter]⁠—to send you an early copy of my Criminal Queens. I have already settled with my friend Mr. Broune that I am to do your New Tale of a Tub in the Breakfast Table. Indeed, I am about it now, and am taking great pains with it. If there is anything you wish to have specially said as to your view of the Protestantism of the time, let me know. I should like you to say a word as to the accuracy of my historical details, which I know you can safely do. Don’t put it off, as the sale does so much depend on early notices. I am only getting a royalty, which does not commence till the first four hundred are sold.

Yours sincerely,

Matilda Carbury.

Alfred Booker, Esq., Literary Chronicle, Office, Strand.

There was nothing in this which shocked Mr. Booker. He laughed inwardly, with a pleasantly reticent chuckle, as he thought of Lady Carbury dealing with his views of Protestantism⁠—as he thought also of the numerous historical errors into which that clever lady must inevitably fall in writing about matters of which he believed her to know nothing. But he was quite alive to the fact that a favourable notice in the Breakfast Table of his very thoughtful work, called the New Tale of a Tub, would serve him, even though written by the hand of a female literary charlatan, and he would have no compunction as to repaying the service by fulsome praise in the Literary Chronicle. He would not probably say that the book was accurate, but he would be able to declare that it was delightful reading, that the feminine characteristics of the queens had been touched with a masterly hand, and that the work was one which would certainly make its way into all drawing-rooms. He was an adept at this sort of work, and knew well how to review such