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

put it so that he can’t get hold of a dollar. Even if it suited other ways, you know, I wouldn’t marry her myself till I saw my way clearer out of the wood.”

“I’m not thinking of marrying her⁠—if you mean that.”

“There was a talk about it in Frisco;⁠—that’s all. And I have heard Hurtle say when he was a little farther gone than usual that she was here with you, and that he meant to drop in on you some of these days.” To this Paul made no answer, thinking that he had now both heard enough and said enough about Mrs. Hurtle.

On the following day the two men, who were still partners, went together to London, and Fisker immediately became immersed in the arrangement of Melmotte’s affairs. He put himself into communication with Mr. Brehgert, went in and out of the offices in Abchurch Lane and the rooms which had belonged to the Railway Company, cross-examined Croll, mastered the books of the Company as far as they were to be mastered, and actually summoned both the Grendalls, father and son, up to London. Lord Alfred, and Miles with him, had left London a day or two before Melmotte’s death⁠—having probably perceived that there was no further occasion for their services. To Fisker’s appeal Lord Alfred was proudly indifferent. Who was this American that he should call upon a director of the London Company to appear? Does not everyone know that a director of a company need not direct unless he pleases? Lord Alfred, therefore, did not even condescend to answer Fisker’s letter;⁠—but he advised his son to run up to town. “I should just go, because I’d taken a salary from the d⁠⸺ Company,” said the careful father, “but when there I wouldn’t say a word.” So Miles Grendall, obeying his parent, reappeared upon the scene.

But Fisker’s attention was perhaps most usefully and most sedulously paid to Madame Melmotte and her daughter. Till Fisker arrived no one had visited them in their solitude at Hampstead, except Croll, the clerk. Mr. Brehgert had abstained, thinking that a widow, who had become a widow under such terrible circumstances, would prefer to be alone. Lord Nidderdale had made his adieux, and felt that he could do no more. It need hardly be said that Lord Alfred had too much good taste to interfere at such a time, although for some months he had been domestically intimate with the poor woman, or that Sir Felix would not be prompted by the father’s death to renew his suit to the daughter. But Fisker had not been two days in London before he went out to Hampstead, and was admitted to Madame Melmotte’s presence;⁠—and he had not been there four days before he was aware that in spite of all misfortunes, Marie Melmotte was still the undoubted possessor of a large fortune.

In regard to Melmotte’s effects generally the Crown had been induced to abstain from interfering⁠—giving up the right to all the man’s plate and chairs and tables which it had acquired by the finding of the coroner’s verdict⁠—not from tenderness to Madame Melmotte, for whom no great commiseration was felt, but on behalf of such creditors as poor Mr. Longestaffe and his son. But Marie’s money was quite distinct from this. She had been right in her own belief as to this property, and had been right, too, in refusing to sign those papers⁠—unless it may be that that refusal led to her father’s act. She herself was sure that it was not so, because she had withdrawn her refusal, and had offered to sign the papers before her father’s death. What might have been the ultimate result had she done so when he first made the request, no one could now say. That the money would have gone there could be no doubt. The money was now hers⁠—a fact which Fisker soon learned with that peculiar cleverness which belonged to him.

Poor Madame Melmotte felt the visits of the American to be a relief to her in her misery. The world makes great mistakes as to that which is and is not beneficial to those whom Death has bereaved of a companion. It may be, no doubt sometimes it is the case, that grief shall be so heavy, so absolutely crushing, as to make any interference with it an additional trouble, and this is felt also in acute bodily pain, and in periods of terrible mental suffering. It may also be, and, no doubt, often is the case, that the bereaved one chooses to affect such overbearing sorrow, and that friends abstain, because even such affectation has its own rights and privileges. But Madame Melmotte was neither crushed by grief nor did she affect to be so crushed. She had been numbed by the suddenness and by the awe of the catastrophe. The man who had been her merciless tyrant for years, who had seemed to her to be a very incarnation of cruel power, had succumbed, and shown himself to be powerless against his own misfortunes. She was a woman of very few words, and had spoken almost none on this occasion even to her own daughter; but when Fisker came to her, and told her more than she had ever known before of her husband’s affairs, and spoke to her of her future life, and mixed for her a small glass of brandy-and-water warm, and told her that Frisco would be the fittest place for her future residence, she certainly did not find him to be intrusive.

And even Marie liked Fisker, though she had been wooed and almost won both by a lord and a baronet, and had understood, if not much, at least more than her mother, of the life to which she had been introduced. There was something of real sorrow in her heart for her father. She was prone to love⁠—though, perhaps, not prone to deep affection. Melmotte had certainly been often cruel to her, but he had also been very indulgent.