The Way We Live Now

by Anthony Trollope

There had at one time been much solicitude about the ball. Many anxious thoughts had been given. When great attempts fail, the failure is disastrous, and may be ruinous. But this ball had now been put beyond the chance of failure.

It was said that he had made a railway across Russia, that he provisioned the Southern army in the American civil war, that he had supplied Austria with arms, and had at one time bought up all the iron in England. He could make or mar any company by buying or selling stock, and could make money dear or cheap as he pleased. All this was said of him in his praise,—but it was also said that he was regarded in Paris as the most gigantic swindler that had ever lived; that he had made that City too hot to hold him; that he had endeavoured to establish himself in Vienna, but had been warned away by the police; and that he had at length found that British freedom would alone allow him to enjoy, without persecution, the fruits of his industry.

Melmotte himself was a large man, with bushy whiskers and rough thick hair, with heavy eyebrows, and a wonderful look of power about his mouth and chin. This was so strong as to redeem his face from vulgarity; but the countenance and appearance of the man were on the whole unpleasant, and, I may say, untrustworthy. He looked as though he were purse-proud and a bully.

She was not beautiful, she was not clever, and she was not a saint. But then neither was she plain, nor stupid, nor, especially, a sinner.

As in royal espousals interests of State regulate their expedience with an acknowledged absence, with even a proclaimed impossibility, of personal predilections, so in this case was money allowed to have the same weight. Such a marriage would or would not be sanctioned in accordance with great pecuniary arrangements.

She had had experience since Lord Nidderdale, with a half laugh,

A covered way had been made from the door, down across the pathway, to the road, and the police had, I fear, been bribed to frighten foot passengers into a belief that they were bound to go round. The house had been so arranged that it was impossible to know where you were, when once in it. The hall was a paradise. The staircase was fairyland. The lobbies were grottoes rich with ferns. Walls had been knocked away and arches had been constructed. The leads behind had been supported and walled in, and covered and carpeted. The ball had possession of the ground floor and first floor, and the house seemed to be endless.

When millions of dollars are at stake,—belonging perhaps to widows and orphans, as Fisker remarked,—a man was forced to set his own convenience on one side.

There is the review intended to sell a book,—which comes out immediately after the appearance of the book, or sometimes before it; the review which gives reputation, but does not affect the sale, and which comes a little later; the review which snuffs a book out quietly; the review which is to raise or lower the author a single peg, or two pegs, as the case may be; the review which is suddenly to make an author, and the review which is to crush him. An exuberant Jones has been known before now to declare aloud that he would crush a man, and a self-confident Jones has been known to declare that he has accomplished the deed. Of all reviews, the crushing review is the most popular, as being the most readable. When the rumour goes abroad that some notable man has been actually crushed,—been positively driven over by an entire Juggernaut’s car of criticism till his literary body be a mere amorphous mass,—then a real success has been achieved,

He will go on boodying over it, till he will become an old misanthrope.

She was beginning to understand the tortuous mazes of manoeuvres in which her mother’s mind had learned to work, and to dislike and almost to despise them. But she felt it to be her duty to abstain from rebukes.

Roger Carbury was not a man given to much deep thinking, but he felt that the bishop’s manner was the pleasanter of the two.

To Mr Alf she commonly talked of her mind; to Mr Broune, of her heart; to Mr Booker of her body—and its wants. She was quite ready to talk of her soul on a proper occasion, but she was much too wise to thrust the subject even on a bishop.

The taciturn humility with which he commenced his operations was in exact proportion to the enthusiastic volubility of his advanced intimacy.

She had understood that the two horses now in the running were Lord Nidderdale and Sir Felix; and though she would not probably have done much to aid Sir Felix, she was quite willing to destroy Lord Nidderdale.

She longed to be told by him that he loved her. He had no objection to tell her so, but, without thinking much about it, felt it to be a bore. All that kind of thing was trash and twaddle. He desired her to accept him; and he would have wished, were it possible, that she should have gone to her father for his consent. There was something in the big eyes and heavy jaws of Mr Melmotte which he almost feared. ‘Do you really love me well enough?’ she whispered. ‘Of course I do. I’m bad at making pretty speeches, and all that, but you know I love you.’ ‘Do you?’ ‘By George, yes. I always liked you from the first moment I saw you. I did indeed.’ It was a poor declaration of love, but it sufficed. ‘Then I will love you,’ she said. ‘I will with all my heart.’ ‘There’s a darling!’

He only partially resisted the temptation; and though determined at times to probe the affair to the bottom, was so determined only at times. The money was very pleasant to him.

In all his aspirations, and in all his fears, he was true to Hetta Carbury, and made her the centre of his hopes. Nevertheless, had Hetta known everything, it may be feared that she would have at any rate endeavoured to dismiss him from her heart.

Where the mischief would he, Sir Felix Carbury, be, if he were to marry the girl, and then to find that the money was not all there?

‘If things go on as we hope they will between you and Marie, you can have pretty nearly any number of shares that you please;—that is, if your father consents to a proper settlement.’

‘No;—I’d consent to that on condition that the money was paid down, and the income insured to me,—say £7,000 or £8,000 a year. I wouldn’t do it for less, mother; it wouldn’t be worth while.’ ‘But you have nothing left of your own.’ ‘I’ve got a throat that I can cut, and brains that I can blow out,’ said the son, using an argument which he conceived might be efficacious with his mother; though, had she known him, she might have been sure that no man lived less likely to cut his own throat or blow out his own brains.

It may be supposed that he was meditating on millions, and arranging the prices of money and funds for the New York, Paris, and London Exchanges. But on this occasion he was waked from slumber, which he seemed to have been enjoying with a cigar in his mouth. ‘How do you do, Sir Felix?’ he said. ‘I suppose you want the ladies.’

He believed that he should thrive best by resenting any interference with him in his capacity as financier.

‘Mr Melmotte, I’m come,—I’m come to;—in short, Mr Melmotte, I want to propose myself as a suitor for your daughter’s hand.’ ‘The d—— you do!’ ‘Well, yes; and we hope you’ll give us your consent.’ ‘She knows you’re coming, then?’ ‘Yes;—she knows.’ ‘And my wife,—does she know?’

If my daughter marries to please me, I shall give her money, no doubt. How much is neither here nor there. If she marries to please herself, without considering me, I shan’t give her a farthing.’

He was not the man to forgive a girl, and then bestow his wealth on the Lothario who had injured him. His daughter was valuable to him because she might make him the father-in-law of a Marquis or an Earl; but the higher that he rose without such assistance, the less need had he of his daughter’s aid.

Lord Alfred had explained that it was not necessary that he should have been born in England, or even that he should have an English name. No questions would be asked. Let him first get into Parliament, and then spend a little money on the proper side,—by which Lord Alfred meant the Conservative side,—and be munificent in his entertainments, and the baronetcy would be almost a matter of course. Indeed, there was no knowing what honours might not be achieved in the present days by money scattered with a liberal hand. In these conversations, Melmotte would speak of his money and power of making money as though they were unlimited,—and Lord Alfred believed him.

But nothing had opened his eyes to the ways of the world so widely as the sweet lover-like proposition made by Miss Melmotte for robbing her father. It certainly recommended the girl to him. She had been able at an early age, amidst the circumstances of a very secluded life, to throw off from her altogether those scruples of honesty, those bugbears of the world, which are apt to prevent great enterprises in the minds of men.

There was a good deal of praise, but still alloyed by a dash of irony, bestowed on the idea of civilizing Mexico by joining it to California. Praise was bestowed upon England for taking up the matter, but accompanied by some ironical touches at her incapacity to believe thoroughly in any enterprise not originated by herself. Then there was something said of the universality of Mr Melmotte’s commercial genius, but whether said in a spirit prophetic of ultimate failure and disgrace, or of heavenborn success and unequalled commercial splendour, no one could tell.

Very wild Ideas occurred to her.

To such a one as Melmotte, a man doing great things through the force of the confidence placed in him by the world at large, the freely-spoken support of the Press would be everything.

Her most natural friend was Roger Carbury. But even had he been there she could not have consulted him on any matter touching the Melmottes. His advice would have been very clear. He would have told her to have nothing at all to do with such adventurers. But then dear Roger was old-fashioned, and knew nothing of people as they are now. He lived in a world which, though slow, had been good in its way; but which, whether bad or good, had now passed away.

Had it been on the cards with her to love any man as a lover, it would have been some handsome spendthrift who would have hung from her neck like a nether millstone. This man was a friend to be used,—to be used because he knew the world.

That a man,—such a man,—should offer to take half her burdens, and to confer upon her half his blessings! What an idiot! But what a god!

Towns which consider, always render themselves. Ladies who doubt always solve their doubts in the one direction.

The men lit their pipes and smoked in silence, while Ruby went through her domestic duties. So matters went on for half an hour; during which Ruby escaped by the back door, went round into the house, got into her own room, and formed the grand resolution of going to bed. She began her operations in fear and trembling, not being sure that her grandfather would bring the man upstairs to her.

Were I to buy a little property, some humble cottage with a garden,—or you, O reader, unless you be magnificent,—the money to the last farthing would be wanted, or security for the money more than sufficient, before we should be able to enter in upon our new home. But money was the very breath of Melmotte’s nostrils, and therefore his breath was taken for money.

I could not marry a woman who had fought a duel,— certainly not a woman who had fought with her own husband. I am told also that you shot another gentleman in Oregon. It may well be that the gentleman deserved to be shot; but there is something in the deed so repulsive to me,—no doubt irrationally,—that, on that score also, I must decline to marry you.

Of course we know what such friendship means.