When Paul got down into the dining-room Mrs. Hurtle was already there, and the waiter was standing by the side of the table ready to take the cover off the soup. She was radiant with smiles and made herself especially pleasant during dinner, but Paul felt sure that everything was not well with her. Though she smiled, and talked and laughed, there was something forced in her manner. He almost knew that she was only waiting till the man should have left the room to speak in a different strain. And so it was. As soon as the last lingering dish had been removed, and when the door was finally shut behind the retreating waiter, she asked the question which no doubt had been on her mind since she had walked across the strand to the hotel. "Your friend was hardly civil; was he, Paul?"
"Do you mean that he should have come in? I have no doubt it was true that he had dined."
"I am quite indifferent about his dinner,--but there are two ways of declining as there are of accepting. I suppose he is on very intimate terms with you?"
"Oh, yes."
"Then his want of courtesy was the more evidently intended for me. In point of fact he disapproves of me. Is not that it?" To this question Montague did not feel himself called upon to make any immediate answer. "I can well understand that it should be so. An intimate friend may like or dislike the friend of his friend, without offence. But unless there be strong reason he is bound to be civil to his friend's friend, when accident brings them together. You have told me that Mr. Carbury was your beau ideal of an English gentleman."
"So he is."
"Then why didn't he behave as such?" and Mrs. Hurtle again smiled. "Did not you yourself feel that you were rebuked for coming here with me, when he expressed surprise at your journey? Has he authority over you?"
"Of course he has not. What authority could he have?"
"Nay, I do not know. He may be your guardian. In this safe-going country young men perhaps are not their own masters till they are past thirty. I should have said that he was your guardian, and that he intended to rebuke you for being in bad company. I dare say he did after I had gone."
This was so true that Montague did not know how to deny it. Nor was he sure that it would be well that he should deny it. The time must come, and why not now as well as at any future moment? He had to make her understand that he could not join his lot with her,--chiefly indeed because his heart was elsewhere, a reason on which he could hardly insist because she could allege that she had a prior right to his heart;--but also because her antecedents had been such as to cause all his friends to warn him against such a marriage. So he plucked up courage for the battle. "It was nearly that," he said.
There are many,--and probably the greater portion of my readers will be among the number,--who will declare to themselves that Paul Montague was a poor creature, in that he felt so great a repugnance to face this woman with the truth. His folly in falling at first under the battery of her charms will be forgiven him. His engagement, unwise as it was, and his subsequent determination to break his engagement, will be pardoned. Women, and perhaps some men also, will feel that it was natural that he should have been charmed, natural that he should have expressed his admiration in the form which unmarried ladies expect from unmarried men when any such expression is to be made at all;--natural also that he should endeavour to escape from the dilemma when he found the manifold dangers of the step which he had proposed to take. No woman, I think, will be hard upon him because of his breach of faith to Mrs. Hurtle. But they will be very hard on him on the score of his cowardice,--as, I think, unjustly. In social life we hardly stop to consider how much of that daring spirit which gives mastery comes from hardness of heart rather than from high purpose, or true courage. The man who succumbs to his wife, the mother who succumbs to her daughter, the master who succumbs to his servant, is as often brought to servility by a continual aversion to the giving of pain, by a softness which causes the fretfulness of others to be an agony to himself,--as by any actual fear which the firmness of the imperious one may have produced. There is an inner softness, a thinness of the mind's skin, an incapability of seeing or even thinking of the troubles of others with equanimity, which produces a feeling akin to fear; but which is compatible not only with courage, but with absolute firmness of purpose, when the demand for firmness arises so strongly as to assert itself. With this man it was not really that. He feared the woman;--or at least such fears did not prevail upon him to be silent; but he shrank from subjecting her to the blank misery of utter desertion. After what had passed between them he could hardly bring himself to tell her that he wanted her no further and to bid her go. But that was what he had to do. And for that his answer to her last question prepared the way. "It was nearly that," he said.
"Mr. Carbury did take it upon himself to rebuke you for showing yourself on the sands at Lowestoft with such a one as I am?"
"He knew of the letter which I wrote to you."
"You have canvassed me between you?"
"Of course we have. Is that unnatural? Would you have had me be silent about you to the oldest and the best friend I have in the world?"
"No, I would not have had you be silent to your oldest and best friend. I presume you would declare your purpose. But I should not have supposed you would have asked his leave. When I was travelling with you, I thought you were a man capable of managing your own actions. I had heard that in your country girls sometimes hold themselves at the disposal of their friends,--but I did not dream that such could be the case with a man who had gone out into the world to make his fortune."
Paul Montague did not like it. The punishment to be endured was being commenced. "Of course you can say bitter things," he replied.
"Is it my nature to say bitter things? Have I usually said bitter things to you? When I have hung round your neck and have sworn that you should be my God upon earth, was that bitter? I am alone and I have to fight my own battles. A woman's weapon is her tongue. Say but one word to me, Paul, as you know how to say it, and there will be soon an end to that bitterness. What shall I care for Mr. Carbury, except to make him the cause of some innocent joke, if you will speak but that one word? And think what it is I am asking. Do you remember how urgent were once your own prayers to me;--how you swore that your happiness could only be secured by one word of mine? Though I loved you, I doubted. There were considerations of money, which have now vanished. But I spoke it,--because I loved you, and because I believed you. Give me that which you swore you had given before I made my gift to you."
"I cannot say that word."
"Do you mean that, after all, I am to be thrown off like an old glove? I have had many dealings with men and have found them to be false, cruel, unworthy, and selfish. But I have met nothing like that. No man has ever dared to treat me like that. No man shall dare."
"I wrote to you."
"Wrote to me;--yes! And I was to take that as sufficient! No. I think but little of my life and have but little for which to live. But while I do live I will travel over the world's surface to face injustice and to expose it, before I will put up with it. You wrote to me! Heaven and earth;--I can hardly control myself when I hear such impudence!" She clenched her fist upon the knife that lay on the table as she looked at him, and raising it, dropped it again at a further distance. "Wrote to me! Could any mere letter of your writing break the bond by which we were bound together? Had not the distance between us seemed to have made you safe would you have dared to write that letter? The letter must be unwritten. It has already been contradicted by your conduct to me since I have been in this country."
"I am sorry to hear you say that."
"Am I not justified in saying it?"
"I hope not. When I first saw you I told you everything. If I have been wrong in attending to your wishes since, I regret it."
"This comes from your seeing your master for two minutes on the beach. You are acting now under his orders. No doubt he came with the purpose. Had you told him you were to be here?"
"His coming was an accident."
"It was very opportune at any rate. Well;--what have you to say to me? Or am I to understand that you suppose yourself to have said all that is required of you? Perhaps you would prefer that I should argue the matter out with your--friend, Mr. Carbury."
"What has to be said, I believe I can say myself."
"Say it then. Or are you so ashamed of it, that the words stick in your throat?"
"There is some truth in that. I am ashamed of it. I must say that which will be painful, and which would not have been to be said, had I been fairly careful."
Then he paused. "Don't spare me," she said. "I know what it all is as well as though it were already told. I know the lies with which they have crammed you at San Francisco. You have heard that up in Oregon--I shot a man. That is no lie. I did. I brought him down dead at my feet." Then she paused, and rose from her chair, and looked at him. "Do you wonder that that is a story that a woman should hesitate to tell? But not from shame. Do you suppose that the sight of that dying wretch does not haunt me? that I do not daily hear his drunken screech, and see him bound from the earth, and then fall in a heap just below my hand? But did they tell you also that it was thus alone that I could save myself,--and that had I spared him, I must afterwards have destroyed myself? If I were wrong, why did they not try me for his murder? Why did the women flock around me and kiss the very hems of my garments? In this soft civilization of yours you know nothing of such necessity. A woman here is protected,--unless it be from lies."
"It was not that only," he whispered.
"No; they told you other things," she continued, still standing over him. "They told you of quarrels with my husband. I know the lies, and who made them, and why. Did I conceal from you the character of my former husband? Did I not tell you that he was a drunkard and a scoundrel? How should I not quarrel with such a one? Ah, Paul; you can hardly know what my life has been."
"They told me that--you fought him."
"Psha;--fought him! Yes;--I was always fighting him. What are you to do but to fight cruelty, and fight falsehood, and fight fraud and treachery,--when they come upon you and would overwhelm you but for fighting? You have not been fool enough to believe that fable about a duel? I did stand once, armed, and guarded my bedroom door from him, and told him that he should only enter it over my body. He went away to the tavern and I did not see him for a week afterwards. That was the duel. And they have told you that he is not dead."
"Yes;--they have told me that."
"Who has seen him alive? I never said to you that I had seen him dead. How should I?"
"There would be a certificate."
"Certificate;--in the back of Texas;--five hundred miles from Galveston! And what would it matter to you? I was divorced from him according to the law of the State of Kansas. Does not the law make a woman free here to marry again,--and why not with us? I sued for a divorce on the score of cruelty and drunkenness. He made no appearance, and the Court granted it me. Am I disgraced by that?"
"I heard nothing of the divorce."
"I do not remember. When we were talking of these old days before, you did not care how short I was in telling my story. You wanted to hear little or nothing then of Caradoc Hurtle. Now you have become more particular. I told you that he was dead,--as I believed myself, and do believe. Whether the other story was told or not I do not know."
"It was not told."
"Then it was your own fault,--because you would not listen. And they have made you believe I suppose that I have failed in getting back my property?"
"I have heard nothing about your property but what you yourself have said unasked. I have asked no question about your property."
"You are welcome. At last I have made it again my own. And now, sir, what else is there? I think I have been open with you. Is it because I protected myself from drunken violence that I am to be rejected? Am I to be cast aside because I saved my life while in the hands of a reprobate husband, and escaped from him by means provided by law;--or because by my own energy I have secured my own property? If I am not to be condemned for these things, then say why am I condemned."
She had at any rate saved him the trouble of telling the story, but in doing so had left him without a word to say. She had owned to shooting the man. Well; it certainly may be necessary that a woman should shoot a man--especially in Oregon. As to the duel with her husband,--she had half denied and half confessed it. He presumed that she had been armed with a pistol when she refused Mr. Hurtle admittance into the nuptial chamber. As to the question of Hurtle's death,--she had confessed that perhaps he was not dead. But then,--as she had asked,--why should not a divorce for the purpose in hand be considered as good as a death? He could not say that she had not washed herself clean;--and yet, from the story as told by herself, what man would wish to marry her? She had seen so much of drunkenness, had become so handy with pistols, and had done so much of a man's work, that any ordinary man might well hesitate before he assumed to be her master. "I do not condemn you," he replied.
"At any rate, Paul, do not lie," she answered. "If you tell me that you will not be my husband, you do condemn me. Is it not so?"
"I will not lie if I can help it. I did ask you to be my wife--"
"Well;--rather. How often before I consented?"
"It matters little; at any rate, till you did consent. I have since satisfied myself that such a marriage would be miserable for both of us."
"You have?"
"I have. Of course, you can speak of me as you please and think of me as you please. I can hardly defend myself."
"Hardly, I think."
"But, with whatever result, I know that I shall now be acting for the best in declaring that I will not become--your husband."
"You will not?" She was still standing, and stretched out her right hand as though again to grasp something.
He also now rose from his chair. "If I speak with abruptness it is only to avoid a show of indecision. I will not."
"Oh, God! what have I done that it should be my lot to meet man after man false and cruel as this! You tell me to my face that I am to bear it! Who is the jade that has done it? Has she money?--or rank? Or is it that you are afraid to have by your side a woman who can speak for herself,--and even act for herself if some action be necessary? Perhaps you think that I am--old." He was looking at her intently as she spoke, and it did seem to him that many years had been added to her face. It was full of lines round the mouth, and the light play of drollery was gone, and the colour was fixed,--and her eyes seemed to be deep in her head. "Speak, man,--is it that you want a younger wife?"
"You know it is not."
"Know! How should any one know anything from a liar? From what you tell me I know nothing. I have to gather what I can from your character. I see that you are a coward. It is that man that came to you, and who is your master, that has forced you to this. Between me and him you tremble, and are a thing to be pitied. As for knowing what you would be at, from anything that you would say,--that is impossible. Once again I have come across a mean wretch. Oh, fool!--that men should be so vile, and think themselves masters of the world! My last word to you is, that you are--a liar. Now for the present you can go. Ten minutes since, had I had a weapon in my hand I should have shot another man."
Paul Montague, as he looked round the room for his hat, could not but think that perhaps Mrs. Hurtle might have had some excuse. It seemed at any rate to be her custom to have a pistol with her,--though luckily, for his comfort, she had left it in her bedroom on the present occasion. "I will say good-bye to you," he said, when he had found his hat.
"Say no such thing. Tell me that you have triumphed and got rid of me. Pluck up your spirits, if you have any, and show me your joy. Tell me that an Englishman has dared to ill-treat an American woman. You would,--were you not afraid to indulge yourself." He was now standing in the doorway, and before he escaped she gave him an imperative command. "I shall not stay here now," she said--"I shall return on Monday. I must think of what you have said, and must resolve what I myself will do. I shall not bear this without seeking a means of punishing you for your treachery. I shall expect you to come to me on Monday."
He closed the door as he answered her. "I do not see that it will serve any purpose."
"It is for me, sir, to judge of that. I suppose you are not so much a coward that you are afraid to come to me. If so, I shall come to you; and you may be assured that I shall not be too timid to show myself and to tell my story." He ended by saying that if she desired it he would wait upon her, but that he would not at present fix a day. On his return to town he would write to her.
When he was gone she went to the door and listened awhile. Then she closed it, and turning the lock, stood with her back against the door and with her hands clasped. After a few moments she ran forward, and falling on her knees, buried her face in her hands upon the table. Then she gave way to a flood of tears, and at last lay rolling upon the floor.
Was this to be the end of it? Should she never know rest;--never have one draught of cool water between her lips? Was there to be no end to the storms and turmoils and misery of her life? In almost all that she had said she had spoken the truth, though doubtless not all the truth,--as which among us would in giving the story of his life? She had endured violence, and had been violent. She had been schemed against, and had schemed. She had fitted herself to the life which had befallen her. But in regard to money, she had been honest and she had been loving of heart. With her heart of hearts she had loved this young Englishman;--and now, after all her scheming, all her daring, with all her charms, this was to be the end of it! Oh, what a journey would this be which she must now make back to her own country, all alone!
But the strongest feeling which raged within her bosom was that of disappointed love. Full as had been the vials of wrath which she had poured forth over Montague's head, violent as had been the storm of abuse with which she had assailed him, there had been after all something counterfeited in her indignation. But her love was no counterfeit. At any moment if he would have returned to her and taken her in his arms, she would not only have forgiven him but have blessed him also for his kindness. She was in truth sick at heart of violence and rough living and unfeminine words. When driven by wrongs the old habit came back upon her. But if she could only escape the wrongs, if she could find some niche in the world which would be bearable to her, in which, free from harsh treatment, she could pour forth all the genuine kindness of her woman's nature,--then, she thought she could put away violence and be gentle as a young girl. When she first met this Englishman and found that he took delight in being near her, she had ventured to hope that a haven would at last be open to her. But the reek of the gunpowder from that first pistol shot still clung to her, and she now told herself again, as she had often told herself before, that it would have been better for her to have turned the muzzle against her own bosom.
After receiving his letter she had run over on what she had told herself was a vain chance. Though angry enough when that letter first reached her, she had, with that force of character which marked her, declared to herself that such a resolution on his part was natural. In marrying her he must give up all his old allies, all his old haunts. The whole world must be changed to him. She knew enough of herself, and enough of Englishwomen, to be sure that when her past life should be known, as it would be known, she would be avoided in England. With all the little ridicule she was wont to exercise in speaking of the old country there was ever mixed, as is so often the case in the minds of American men and women, an almost envious admiration of English excellence. To have been allowed to forget the past and to live the life of an English lady would have been heaven to her. But she, who was sometimes scorned and sometimes feared in the eastern cities of her own country, whose name had become almost a proverb for violence out in the far West,--how could she dare to hope that her lot should be so changed for her?
She had reminded Paul that she had required to be asked often before she had consented to be his wife; but she did not tell him that that hesitation had arisen from her own conviction of her own unfitness. But it had been so. Circumstances had made her what she was. Circumstances had been cruel to her. But she could not now alter them. Then gradually, as she came to believe in his love, as she lost herself in love for him, she told herself that she would be changed. She had, however, almost known that it could not be so. But this man had relatives, had business, had property in her own country. Though she could not be made happy in England, might not a prosperous life be opened for him in the far West? Then had risen the offer of that journey to Mexico with much probability that work of no ordinary kind might detain him there for years. With what joy would she have accompanied him as his wife! For that at any rate she would have been fit.
She was conscious,--perhaps too conscious, of her own beauty. That at any rate, she felt, had not deserted her. She was hardly aware that time was touching it. And she knew herself to be clever, capable of causing happiness, and mirth and comfort. She had the qualities of a good comrade--which are so much in a woman. She knew all this of herself. If he and she could be together in some country in which those stories of her past life would be matter of indifference, could she not make him happy? But what was she that a man should give up everything and go away and spend his days in some half-barbarous country for her alone? She knew it all and was hardly angry with him in that he had decided against her. But treated as she had been she must play her game with such weapons as she possessed. It was consonant with her old character, it was consonant with her present plans that she should at any rate seem to be angry.
Sitting there alone late into the night she made many plans, but the plan that seemed best to suit the present frame of her mind was the writing of a letter to Paul bidding him adieu, sending him her fondest love, and telling him that he was right. She did write the letter, but wrote it with a conviction that she would not have the strength to send it to him. The reader may judge with what feeling she wrote the following words:--
DEAR PAUL,--
You are right and I am wrong. Our marriage would not have been fitting. I do not blame you. I attracted you when we were together; but you have learned and have learned truly that you should not give up your life for such attractions. If I have been violent with you, forgive me. You will acknowledge that I have suffered.
Always know that there is one woman who will love you better than any one else. I think too that you will love me even when some other woman is by your side. God bless you, and make you happy. Write me the shortest, shortest word of adieu. Not to do so would make you think yourself heartless. But do not come to me.
For ever,
W. H.
This she wrote on a small slip of paper, and then having read it twice, she put it into her pocket-book. She told herself that she ought to send it; but told herself as plainly that she could not bring herself to do so. It was early in the morning before she went to bed but she had admitted no one into the room after Montague had left her.
Paul, when he escaped from her presence, roamed out on to the sea-shore, and then took himself to bed, having ordered a conveyance to take him to Carbury Manor early in the morning. At breakfast he presented himself to the squire. "I have come earlier than you expected," he said.
"Yes, indeed;--much earlier. Are you going back to Lowestoft?"
Then he told the whole story. Roger expressed his satisfaction, recalling however the pledge which he had given as to his return. "Let her follow you, and bear it," he said. "Of course you must suffer the effects of your own imprudence." On that evening Paul Montague returned to London by the mail train, being sure that he would thus avoid a meeting with Mrs. Hurtle in the railway-carriage.

When Paul went into the dining-room Mrs. Hurtle was already there, radiant with smiles. She made herself especially pleasant during dinner, but Paul felt sure that everything was not well with her. Though she talked and laughed, there was something forced in her manner. He knew that she was only waiting till the serving-man should have left the room to speak in a different strain.
And when the door was finally shut behind the retreating waiter, she asked, "Your friend was hardly civil, was he, Paul? I suppose he is on very intimate terms with you?"
"Oh, yes."
"Then his want of courtesy was intended for me. He disapproves of me. I can understand that it should be so. But he should have been civil to his friend's friend. You have told me that Mr. Carbury was your ideal of an English gentleman."
"So he is."
"Then why didn't he behave as such?" Mrs. Hurtle again smiled. "Has he authority over you?"
"Of course not. What authority could he have?"
"I do not know. I should have said that he was your guardian, and that he intended to rebuke you for being in bad company. I dare say he did after I had gone."
This was so true that Montague did not know how to deny it. Nor was he sure that he should. Why not say it now as well as at any future moment? He had to make her understand that he could not marry her - chiefly indeed because his heart was elsewhere - but also because her history caused all his friends to warn him against such a marriage. So he plucked up courage for the battle.
"It was nearly that," he said.
There are many of my readers who will declare that Paul Montague was a poor creature, in his reluctance to face this woman with the truth. His folly in falling for her charms will be forgiven him; his unwise engagement, and his determination to break it, will be pardoned as natural. But readers will be very hard on him on the score of his cowardice - I think unjustly. Mastery often comes from hardness of heart rather than true courage. The man who succumbs to his wife, the mother who succumbs to her daughter, often does so because of an aversion to giving pain.
Paul feared the woman; but he also shrank from subjecting her to the blank misery of utter desertion. After what had passed between them he could hardly bring himself to tell her that he wanted her no further. But that was what he had to do.
"Mr. Carbury rebuked you for showing yourself on the sands at Lowestoft with me?"
"He knew of the letter which I wrote to you."
"You have discussed me between you?"
"Of course we have. Would you have had me be silent about you to the oldest and best friend I have in the world?"
"No. But I should not have supposed you would have asked his leave. I thought you were a man capable of managing your own actions. I had heard that in your country, girls sometimes hold themselves at the disposal of their friends, but I did not dream that such could be the case with a man who had gone out into the world."
Paul Montague's punishment was begun, and he did not like it. "Of course you can say bitter things," he replied.
"Have I usually said bitter things to you? When I hung round your neck and swore that you should be my God upon earth, was that bitter? I am alone and I have to fight my own battles. Say but one word to me, Paul, and there will be an end to bitterness. And think what it is I am asking. Do you remember how urgent were once your own prayers to me; how you begged for one word of mine? I spoke it, because I loved you, and because I believed you."
"I cannot say that word."
"So after all, I am to be thrown off like an old glove? I have had many dealings with men and have found them to be false, cruel, unworthy, and selfish. But I have met nothing like that. No man has ever dared to treat me like that."
"I wrote to you."
"Wrote to me! And I was to take that as sufficient! No. While I live I will face injustice and expose it. You wrote to me! Heaven and earth - I can hardly control myself when I hear such impudence!" She clenched her fist upon the knife that lay on the table, and then dropped it again. "Could any mere letter break the bond by which we were bound together? The letter must be unwritten. It has already been contradicted by your conduct to me since I have been in this country."
"I am sorry to hear you say that."
"Am I not justified in saying it?"
"I hope not. When I first saw you I told you everything. If I have been wrong in attending to your wishes since, I regret it."
"This comes from your seeing your master for two minutes on the beach. You are acting now under his orders. No doubt he came with the purpose. Had you told him you were to be here?"
"His coming was an accident."
"It was very opportune. Well; what have you to say to me? Or perhaps you would prefer that I should argue the matter out with your - friend, Mr. Carbury."
"What has to be said, I can say myself."
"Say it then. Or are you so ashamed of it, that the words stick in your throat?"
"I am ashamed of it. I must say that which will be painful, and which would not have needed to be said, if I had been careful."
"Don't spare me," she said. "I already know it all. I know the lies with which they crammed you at San Francisco. You have heard that up in Oregon I shot a man. That is no lie. I did. I brought him down dead at my feet." Then she rose from her chair, and looked at him. "Do you suppose that the sight of that dying wretch does not haunt me? that I do not daily hear his drunken screech, and see him fall? But did they tell you also that it was only thus that I could save myself? Otherwise, why did they not try me for his murder? Why did the women flock around me and kiss the very hems of my garments? In this soft civilization of yours you know nothing of such necessity. A woman here is protected - except from lies."
"It was not that only," he whispered.
"No; they told you other things," she continued, still standing over him. "They told you of quarrels with my husband. I know the lies, and who made them, and why. Did I conceal my husband's character from you? Did I not tell you that he was a drunkard and a scoundrel?"
"They told me that - you fought him."
"Fought him! Yes; I was always fighting him. What are you to do but to fight cruelty, and fight falsehood, and fight fraud and treachery? You have not been foolish enough to believe that fable about a duel? I did stand once, armed, and guarded my bedroom door from him, and told him that he should only enter it over my body. He went away to the tavern and I did not see him for a week afterwards. That was the duel. And they have told you that he is not dead."
"Yes; they have."
"Who has seen him alive? And what would it matter to you? I was divorced from him according to the law of the State of Kansas, on the grounds of his cruelty and drunkenness. He made no appearance, and the Court granted it me. Am I disgraced by that?"
"I heard nothing of the divorce."
"When we were talking in the old days you wanted to hear nothing of Caradoc Hurtle. Now you are more particular. I told you that he was dead, as I believed myself, and do believe. And I suppose they have told you that I failed in getting back my property?"
"I have asked no question about your property."
"You are welcome to know. At last I have it again. And now, sir, what else is there? Is it because I protected myself from drunken violence that I am to be rejected? Am I to be cast aside because I saved my life from a reprobate husband, and escaped from him by lawful means; or because I have secured my own property? If I am not condemned for these things, then say why am I condemned."
She had left him without a word to say. She had owned to shooting the man. Well; it certainly may be necessary that a woman should shoot a man in Oregon. As to the duel with her husband, she had half confessed it. She had confessed that perhaps Hurtle was not dead. But then, as she had asked, why was not a divorce as good as a death?
And yet, from this story, what man would wish to marry her? She had seen so much of drunkenness, had become so handy with pistols, and had done so much of a man's work, that any ordinary man might well hesitate before he assumed to be her master.
"I do not condemn you," he replied.
"Paul, do not lie. If you tell me that you will not be my husband, you condemn me."
"I will not lie if I can help it. I did ask you to be my wife-"
"How often did you ask before I consented?"
"I now believe such a marriage would be miserable for both of us. Of course, I can hardly defend myself."
"Hardly."
"But I know that I shall now be acting for the best in declaring that I will not become your husband."
"You will not?" She was still standing, and stretched out her right hand as though to grasp something.
He also rose. "I will not."
"Oh, God! Why is it my lot to meet man after man as false and cruel as this! You tell me to my face that I am to bear it! Who is the jade that has done it? Has she money? or rank? Or are you afraid to marry a woman who can speak for herself, and act for herself? Perhaps you think that I am - old." He was looking at her intently as she spoke, and it did seem to him that many years had been added to her face. It was full of lines round the mouth, and her eyes seemed to be deep in her head. "Speak, man. Is it that you want a younger wife?"
"You know it is not."
"Know! How should one know anything from a liar? You are a coward. It is that man who has forced you to this. Between me and him you tremble, and are a thing to be pitied - another mean wretch. That men should be so vile, and think themselves masters of the world! You are a liar. Now go. Had I had a weapon in my hand I should have used it."
Paul Montague felt that perhaps Mrs. Hurtle might have had some excuse. "I will say good-bye to you," he said.
"Say no such thing. Tell me that you have triumphed and got rid of me. Show me your joy. Tell me that an Englishman has dared to ill-treat an American woman." He was now standing in the doorway, and before he escaped she gave him a command. "I shall not stay here now," she said. "I shall return on Monday. I must resolve what I will do. I shall seek a means of punishing you for your treachery. I expect you to come to me on Monday."
"I do not see that it will serve any purpose."
"It is for me, sir, to judge of that. If you are too much of a coward to come to me, I shall come to you. I shall not be too timid to show myself and tell my story." He said he would visit her, but would not fix a day. On his return to town he would write to her.
When he was gone she went to the door and listened. Then she locked it, and stood with her hands clasped. After a few moments she ran forward, and falling on her knees, buried her face in her hands. She gave way to a flood of tears, and at last lay rolling upon the floor.
Should she never know rest? Was there to be no end to the storms and turmoils of her life? In almost all that she had said she had spoken the truth, though doubtless not all the truth. She had endured violence, and had been violent. She had been schemed against, and had schemed. But she had been honest about money, and she had been loving of heart. She had loved this young Englishman - and now this was to be the end of it! Oh, what a journey she would now have to make back to her own country, all alone!
But the strongest feeling which raged within her bosom was that of disappointed love. Violently as she had abused him, if he had taken her in his arms, she would not only have forgiven him but have blessed him for his kindness. She was in truth sick at heart of rough living. If she could only escape, if she could find some safe niche in the world, then she thought she could put away violence and be as gentle as a girl. When she first met this admiring Englishman, she had ventured to hope that a haven would at last be open to her. But the reek of the gunpowder from that first pistol shot still clung to her, and she told herself - not for the first time - that it would have been better for her to have shot herself.
On receiving his letter, though she had been angry, she declared to herself that his resolution was natural. In marrying her he must give up his old friends and haunts. She was aware that when her past life became known, she would be avoided in English society. To have been allowed to forget the past and to live the life of an English lady would have been heaven to her. But she, whose name had become almost a proverb for violence out in the far West - how could she dare to hope that her lot should be so changed?
She had reminded Paul that he had asked her often before she had consented to be his wife; but she did not tell him that her hesitation had arisen from her sense of her own unfitness. Then gradually, as she came to believe in his love, as she lost herself in love for him, she told herself that she would be changed. She had, however, known that it could not be so.
But this man had relatives and property in the United States. Might not a prosperous life be opened for him in the far West? Then had risen the offer of that journey to Mexico. With what joy would she have accompanied him as his wife! For that at any rate she would have been fit.
She was conscious - perhaps too conscious - of her own beauty. And she knew herself to be clever, and a good comrade. If they could be together in some other country, could she not make him happy? Yet what was she that a man should give up everything and go away to some half-barbarous country for her alone? She knew it all and was hardly angry with him. But treated as she had been, she must play her game with such weapons as she possessed. She should at least seem to be angry.
Sitting alone late into the night she made many plans, but the plan that seemed best to suit her frame of mind was the writing of a letter to Paul bidding him adieu, sending him her fondest love, and telling him that he was right. She did write this letter, believing that she would not have the strength to send it.
Dear Paul,
You are right and I am wrong. Our marriage would not have been fitting. I do not blame you. I attracted you; but you have learned truly that you should not give up your life for such attractions. If I have been violent with you, forgive me. You will acknowledge that I have suffered.
Always know that there is one woman who will love you better than anyone else. I think too that you will love me even when some other woman is by your side. God bless you, and make you happy. Write me the shortest word of adieu. Not to do so would make you think yourself heartless. But do not come to me.
For ever,
W. H.
Having read this note twice, she put it into her pocket-book. She told herself that she ought to send it; but told herself as plainly that she could not bring herself to do so.
Paul, when he escaped from her presence, roamed out on to the sea-shore, and then went to bed, having ordered a carriage to take him to Carbury Manor early in the morning.
At breakfast he presented himself to the squire, and told the whole story. Roger expressed his satisfaction. That evening Paul Montague returned to London by the mail train, being sure that he would thus avoid a meeting with Mrs. Hurtle in the railway-carriage.


Mr. Longestaffe had brought his daughter down to Caversham on a Wednesday. During the Thursday and Friday she had passed a very sad time, not knowing whether she was or was not engaged to marry Mr. Brehgert. Her father had declared to her that he would break off the match, and she believed that he had seen Mr. Brehgert with that purpose. She had certainly given no consent, and had never hinted to any one of the family an idea that she was disposed to yield. But she felt that, at any rate with her father, she had not adhered to her purpose with tenacity, and that she had allowed him to return to London with a feeling that she might still be controlled. She was beginning to be angry with Mr. Brehgert, thinking that he had taken his dismissal from her father without consulting her. It was necessary that something should be settled, something known. Life such as that she was leading now would drive her mad. She had all the disadvantages of the Brehgert connection and none of the advantages. She could not comfort herself with thinking of the Brehgert wealth and the Brehgert houses, and yet she was living under the general ban of Caversham on account of her Brehgert associations. She was beginning to think that she herself must write to Mr. Brehgert,--only she did not know what to say to him.
But on the Saturday morning she got a letter from Mr. Brehgert. It was handed to her as she was sitting at breakfast with her sister,--who at that moment was triumphant with a present of gooseberries which had been sent over from Toodlam. The Toodlam gooseberries were noted throughout Suffolk, and when the letters were being brought in Sophia was taking her lover's offering from the basket with her own fair hands. "Well!" Georgey had exclaimed, "to send a pottle of gooseberries to his lady love across the country! Who but George Whitstable would do that?"
"I dare say you get nothing but gems and gold," Sophy retorted. "I don't suppose that Mr. Brehgert knows what a gooseberry is." At that moment the letter was brought in, and Georgiana knew the writing. "I suppose that's from Mr. Brehgert," said Sophy.
"I don't think it matters much to you who it's from." She tried to be composed and stately, but the letter was too important to allow of composure, and she retired to read it in privacy.
The letter was as follows:--
MY DEAR GEORGIANA,
Your father came to me the day after I was to have met you at Lady Monogram's party. I told him then that I would not write to you till I had taken a day or two to consider what he said to me;--and also that I thought it better that you should have a day or two to consider what he might say to you. He has now repeated what he said at our first interview, almost with more violence; for I must say that I think he has allowed himself to be violent when it was surely unnecessary.
The long and short of it is this. He altogether disapproves of your promise to marry me. He has given three reasons;--first that I am in trade; secondly that I am much older than you, and have a family; and thirdly that I am a Jew. In regard to the first I can hardly think that he is earnest. I have explained to him that my business is that of a banker; and I can hardly conceive it to be possible that any gentleman in England should object to his daughter marrying a banker, simply because the man is a banker. There would be a blindness of arrogance in such a proposition of which I think your father to be incapable. This has merely been added in to strengthen his other objections.
As to my age, it is just fifty-one. I do not at all think myself too old to be married again. Whether I am too old for you is for you to judge,--as is also that question of my children who, of course, should you become my wife will be to some extent a care upon your shoulders. As this is all very serious you will not, I hope, think me wanting in gallantry if I say that I should hardly have ventured to address you if you had been quite a young girl. No doubt there are many years between us;--and so I think there should be. A man of my age hardly looks to marry a woman of the same standing as himself. But the question is one for the lady to decide,--and you must decide it now.
As to my religion, I acknowledge the force of what your father says,--though I think that a gentleman brought up with fewer prejudices would have expressed himself in language less likely to give offence. However I am a man not easily offended; and on this occasion I am ready to take what he has said in good part. I can easily conceive that there should be those who think that the husband and wife should agree in religion. I am indifferent to it myself. I shall not interfere with you if you make me happy by becoming my wife, nor, I suppose, will you with me. Should you have a daughter or daughters I am quite willing that they should be brought up subject to your influence.
There was a plain-speaking in this which made Georgiana look round the room as though to see whether any one was watching her as she read it.
But no doubt your father objects to me specially because I am a Jew. If I were an atheist he might, perhaps, say nothing on the subject of religion. On this matter as well as on others it seems to me that your father has hardly kept pace with the movements of the age. Fifty years ago whatever claim a Jew might have to be as well considered as a Christian, he certainly was not so considered. Society was closed against him, except under special circumstances, and so were all the privileges of high position. But that has been altered. Your father does not admit the change; but I think he is blind to it, because he does not wish to see.
I say all this more as defending myself than as combating his views with you. It must be for you and for you alone to decide how far his views shall govern you. He has told me, after a rather peremptory fashion, that I have behaved badly to him and to his family because I did not go to him in the first instance when I thought of obtaining the honour of an alliance with his daughter. I have been obliged to tell him that in this matter I disagree with him entirely, though in so telling him I endeavoured to restrain myself from any appearance of warmth. I had not the pleasure of meeting you in his house, nor had I any acquaintance with him. And again, at the risk of being thought uncourteous, I must say that you are to a certain degree emancipated by age from that positive subordination to which a few years ago you probably submitted without a question. If a gentleman meets a lady in society, as I met you in the home of our friend Mr. Melmotte, I do not think that the gentleman is to be debarred from expressing his feelings because the lady may possibly have a parent. Your father, no doubt with propriety, had left you to be the guardian of yourself, and I cannot submit to be accused of improper conduct because, finding you in that condition, I availed myself of it.
And now, having said so much, I must leave the question to be decided entirely by yourself. I beg you to understand that I do not at all wish to hold you to a promise merely because the promise has been given. I readily acknowledge that the opinion of your family should be considered by you, though I will not admit that I was bound to consult that opinion before I spoke to you. It may well be that your regard for me or your appreciation of the comforts with which I may be able to surround you, will not suffice to reconcile you to such a breach from your own family as your father, with much repetition, has assured me will be inevitable. Take a day or two to think of this and turn it well over in your mind. When I last had the happiness of speaking to you, you seemed to think that your parents might raise objections, but that those objections would give way before an expression of your own wishes. I was flattered by your so thinking; but, if I may form any judgment from your father's manner, I must suppose that you were mistaken. You will understand that I do not say this as any reproach to you. Quite the contrary. I think your father is irrational; and you may well have failed to anticipate that he should be so.
As to my own feelings they remain exactly as they were when I endeavoured to explain them to you. Though I do not find myself to be too old to marry, I do think myself too old to write love letters. I have no doubt you believe me when I say that I entertain a most sincere affection for you; and I beseech you to believe me in saying further that should you become my wife it shall be the study of my life to make you happy.
It is essentially necessary that I should allude to one other matter, as to which I have already told your father what I will now tell you. I think it probable that within this week I shall find myself a loser of a very large sum of money through the failure of a gentleman whose bad treatment of me I will the more readily forgive because he was the means of making me known to you. This you must understand is private between you and me, though I have thought it proper to inform your father. Such loss, if it fall upon me, will not interfere in the least with the income which I have proposed to settle upon you for your use after my death; and, as your father declares that in the event of your marrying me he will neither give to you nor bequeath to you a shilling, he might have abstained from telling me to my face that I was a bankrupt merchant when I myself told him of my loss. I am not a bankrupt merchant nor at all likely to become so. Nor will this loss at all interfere with my present mode of living. But I have thought it right to inform you of it, because, if it occur,--as I think it will,--I shall not deem it right to keep a second establishment probably for the next two or three years. But my house at Fulham and my stables there will be kept up just as they are at present.
I have now told you everything which I think it is necessary you should know, in order that you may determine either to adhere to or to recede from your engagement. When you have resolved you will let me know,--but a day or two may probably be necessary for your decision. I hope I need not say that a decision in my favour will make me a happy man.
I am, in the meantime, your affectionate friend,
EZEKIEL BREHGERT.
This very long letter puzzled Georgey a good deal, and left her, at the time of reading it, very much in doubt as to what she would do. She could understand that it was a plain-spoken and truth-telling letter. Not that she, to herself, gave it praise for those virtues; but that it imbued her unconsciously with a thorough belief. She was apt to suspect deceit in other people;--but it did not occur to her that Mr. Brehgert had written a single word with an attempt to deceive her. But the single-minded genuine honesty of the letter was altogether thrown away upon her. She never said to herself, as she read it, that she might safely trust herself to this man, though he were a Jew, though greasy and like a butcher, though over fifty and with a family, because he was an honest man. She did not see that the letter was particularly sensible;--but she did allow herself to be pained by the total absence of romance. She was annoyed at the first allusion to her age, and angry at the second; and yet she had never supposed that Brehgert had taken her to be younger than she was. She was well aware that the world in general attributes more years to unmarried women than they have lived, as a sort of equalising counter-weight against the pretences which young women make on the other side, or the lies which are told on their behalf. Nor had she wished to appear peculiarly young in his eyes. But, nevertheless, she regarded the reference to be uncivil,--perhaps almost butcher-like,--and it had its effect upon her. And then the allusion to the "daughter or daughters" troubled her. She told herself that it was vulgar,--just what a butcher might have said. And although she was quite prepared to call her father the most irrational, the most prejudiced, and most ill-natured of men, yet she was displeased that Mr. Brehgert should take such a liberty with him. But the passage in Mr. Brehgert's letter which was most distasteful to her was that which told her of the loss which he might probably incur through his connection with Melmotte. What right had he to incur a loss which would incapacitate him from keeping his engagements with her? The town-house had been the great persuasion, and now he absolutely had the face to tell her that there was to be no town-house for three years. When she read this she felt that she ought to be indignant, and for a few moments was minded to sit down without further consideration and tell the man with considerable scorn that she would have nothing more to say to him.
But on that side too there would be terrible bitterness. How would she have fallen from her greatness when, barely forgiven by her father and mother for the vile sin which she had contemplated, she should consent to fill a common bridesmaid place at the nuptials of George Whitstable! And what would then be left to her in life? This episode of the Jew would make it quite impossible for her again to contest the question of the London house with her father. Lady Pomona and Mrs. George Whitstable would be united with him against her. There would be no "season" for her, and she would be nobody at Caversham. As for London, she would hardly wish to go there! Everybody would know the story of the Jew. She thought that she could have plucked up courage to face the world as the Jew's wife, but not as the young woman who had wanted to marry the Jew and had failed. How would her future life go with her, should she now make up her mind to retire from the proposed alliance? If she could get her father to take her abroad at once, she would do it; but she was not now in a condition to make any terms with her father. As all this gradually passed through her mind, she determined that she would so far take Mr. Brehgert's advice as to postpone her answer till she had well considered the matter.
She slept upon it, and the next day she asked her mother a few questions. "Mamma, have you any idea what papa means to do?"
"In what way, my dear?" Lady Pomona's voice was not gracious, as she was free from that fear of her daughter's ascendancy which had formerly affected her.
"Well;--I suppose he must have some plan."
"You must explain yourself. I don't know why he should have any particular plan."
"Will he go to London next year?"
"That will depend upon money, I suppose. What makes you ask?"
"Of course I have been very cruelly circumstanced. Everybody must see that. I'm sure you do, mamma. The long and the short of it is this;--if I give up my engagement, will he take us abroad for a year?"
"Why should he?"
"You can't suppose that I should be very comfortable in England. If we are to remain here at Caversham, how am I to hope ever to get settled?"
"Sophy is doing very well."
"Oh, mamma, there are not two George Whitstables;--thank God." She had meant to be humble and supplicating, but she could not restrain herself from the use of that one shaft. "I don't mean but what Sophy may be very happy, and I am sure that I hope she will. But that won't do me any good. I should be very unhappy here."
"I don't see how you are to find any one to marry you by going abroad," said Lady Pomona, "and I don't see why your papa is to be taken away from his own home. He likes Caversham."
"Then I am to be sacrificed on every side," said Georgey, stalking out of the room. But still she could not make up her mind what letter she would write to Mr. Brehgert, and she slept upon it another night.
On the next day after breakfast she did write her letter, though when she sat down to her task she had not clearly made up her mind what she would say. But she did get it written, and here it is.
Caversham, Monday.
MY DEAR MR. BREHGERT,
As you told me not to hurry, I have taken a little time to think about your letter. Of course it would be very disagreeable to quarrel with papa and mamma and everybody. And if I do do so, I'm sure somebody ought to be very grateful. But papa has been very unfair in what he has said. As to not asking him, it could have been of no good, for of course he would be against it. He thinks a great deal of the Longestaffe family, and so, I suppose, ought I. But the world does change so quick that one doesn't think of anything now as one used to do. Anyway, I don't feel that I'm bound to do what papa tells me just because he says it. Though I'm not quite so old as you seem to think, I'm old enough to judge for myself,--and I mean to do so. You say very little about affection, but I suppose I am to take all that for granted.
I don't wonder at papa being annoyed about the loss of the money. It must be a very great sum when it will prevent your having a house in London,--as you agreed. It does make a great difference, because, of course, as you have no regular place in the country, one could only see one's friends in London. Fulham is all very well now and then, but I don't think I should like to live at Fulham all the year through. You talk of three years, which would be dreadful. If as you say it will not have any lasting effect, could you not manage to have a house in town? If you can do it in three years, I should think you could do it now. I should like to have an answer to this question. I do think so much about being the season in town!
As for the other parts of your letter, I knew very well beforehand that papa would be unhappy about it. But I don't know why I'm to let that stand in my way when so very little is done to make me happy. Of course you will write to me again, and I hope you will say something satisfactory about the house in London.
Yours always sincerely,
GEORGIANA LONGESTAFFE.
It probably never occurred to Georgey that Mr. Brehgert would under any circumstances be anxious to go back from his engagement. She so fully recognised her own value as a Christian lady of high birth and position giving herself to a commercial Jew, that she thought that under any circumstances Mr. Brehgert would be only too anxious to stick to his bargain. Nor had she any idea that there was anything in her letter which could probably offend him. She thought that she might at any rate make good her claim to the house in London; and that as there were other difficulties on his side, he would yield to her on this point. But as yet she hardly knew Mr. Brehgert. He did not lose a day in sending to her a second letter. He took her letter with him to his office in the city, and there answered it without a moment's delay.
No. 7, St. Cuthbert's Court, London, Tuesday, July 16, 18--.
MY DEAR MISS LONGESTAFFE,
You say it would be very disagreeable to you to quarrel with your papa and mamma; and as I agree with you, I will take your letter as concluding our intimacy. I should not, however, be dealing quite fairly with you or with myself if I gave you to understand that I felt myself to be coerced to this conclusion simply by your qualified assent to your parents' views. It is evident to me from your letter that you would not wish to be my wife unless I can supply you with a house in town as well as with one in the country. But this for the present is out of my power. I would not have allowed my losses to interfere with your settlement because I had stated a certain income; and must therefore to a certain extent have compromised my children. But I should not have been altogether happy till I had replaced them in their former position, and must therefore have abstained from increased expenditure till I had done so. But of course I have no right to ask you to share with me the discomfort of a single home. I may perhaps add that I had hoped that you would have looked to your happiness to another source, and that I will bear my disappointment as best I may.
As you may perhaps under these circumstances be unwilling that I should wear the ring you gave me, I return it by post. I trust you will be good enough to keep the trifle you were pleased to accept from me, in remembrance of one who will always wish you well.
Yours sincerely,
EZEKIEL BREHGERT.
And so it was all over! Georgey, when she read this letter, was very indignant at her lover's conduct. She did not believe that her own letter had at all been of a nature to warrant it. She had regarded herself as being quite sure of him, and only so far doubting herself, as to be able to make her own terms because of such doubts. And now the Jew had rejected her! She read this last letter over and over again, and the more she read it the more she felt that in her heart of hearts she had intended to marry him. There would have been inconveniences no doubt, but they would have been less than the sorrow on the other side. Now she saw nothing before her but a long vista of Caversham dullness, in which she would be trampled upon by her father and mother, and scorned by Mr. and Mrs. George Whitstable.
She got up and walked about the room thinking of vengeance. But what vengeance was possible to her? Everybody belonging to her would take the part of the Jew in that which he had now done. She could not ask Dolly to beat him; nor could she ask her father to visit him with the stern frown of paternal indignation. There could be no revenge. For a time,--only for a few seconds,--she thought that she would write to Mr. Brehgert and tell him that she had not intended to bring about this termination of their engagement. This, no doubt, would have been an appeal to the Jew for mercy;--and she could not quite descend to that. But she would keep the watch and chain he had given her, and which somebody had told her had not cost less than a hundred and fifty guineas. She could not wear them, as people would know whence they had come; but she might exchange them for jewels which she could wear.
At lunch she said nothing to her sister, but in the course of the afternoon she thought it best to inform her mother. "Mamma," she said, "as you and papa take it so much to heart, I have broken off everything with Mr. Brehgert."
"Of course it must be broken off," said Lady Pomona. This was very ungracious,--so much so that Georgey almost flounced out of the room. "Have you heard from the man?" asked her ladyship.
"I have written to him, and he has answered me; and it is all settled. I thought that you would have said something kind to me." And the unfortunate young woman burst out into tears.
"It was so dreadful," said Lady Pomona;--"so very dreadful. I never heard of anything so bad. When young what's-his-name married the tallow-chandler's daughter I thought it would have killed me if it had been Dolly; but this was worse than that. Her father was a methodist."
"They had neither of them a shilling of money," said Georgey through her tears.
"And your papa says this man was next door to a bankrupt. But it's all over?"
"Yes, mamma."
"And now we must all remain here at Caversham till people forget it. It has been very hard upon George Whitstable, because of course everybody has known it through the county. I once thought he would have been off, and I really don't know that we could have said anything." At that moment Sophy entered the room. "It's all over between Georgiana and the--man," said Lady Pomona, who hardly saved herself from stigmatising him by a further reference to his religion.
"I knew it would be," said Sophia.
"Of course it could never have really taken place," said their mother.
"And now I beg that nothing more may be said about it," said Georgiana. "I suppose, mamma, you will write to papa?"
"You must send him back his watch and chain, Georgey," said Sophia.
"What business is that of yours?"
"Of course she must. Her papa would not let her keep it."
To such a miserable depth of humility had the younger Miss Longestaffe been brought by her ill-considered intimacy with the Melmottes! Georgiana, when she looked back on this miserable episode in her life, always attributed her grief to the scandalous breach of compact of which her father had been guilty.

Georgiana felt that she had allowed her father to return to London thinking that she might still be controlled. She was beginning to be angry with Mr. Brehgert, assuming he had taken his dismissal from her father without consulting her. It was necessary that something should be settled, something known. She had all the disadvantages of the Brehgert connection and none of the advantages. She was beginning to think that she herself must write to Mr. Brehgert - only she did not know what to say to him.
But on the Saturday morning she got a letter from Mr. Brehgert. It was handed to her as she was sitting at breakfast with her sister - who at that moment was triumphant with a present of gooseberries which had been sent over from Toodlam.
"Well!" Georgey had exclaimed, "to send gooseberries to his lady love across the country! Who but George Whitstable would do that?"
"I dare say you get nothing but gems and gold," Sophy retorted. "I don't suppose that Mr. Brehgert knows what a gooseberry is." At that moment the letter was brought in. "I suppose that's from Mr. Brehgert."
"I don't think it matters to you who it's from." Georgiana tried to be composed and stately, but the letter was too important to allow of composure, and she retired to read it in privacy.
The letter was as follows:
My dear Georgiana,
Your father came to me the day after I was to have met you at Lady Monogram's party. I told him that I would not write to you till I had taken a day or two to consider what he said to me; and also that I thought that you should have a day or two to consider what he might say to you. He has now repeated what he said at our first interview, almost with more violence; for I must say that I think he has allowed himself to be violent when it was surely unnecessary.
The long and short of it is this. He altogether disapproves of your promise to marry me. He has given three reasons; first that I am in trade; secondly that I am much older than you, and have a family; and thirdly that I am a Jew.
In regard to the first I can hardly think that he is earnest. I am a banker; and I can hardly conceive it to be possible that any gentleman in England should object to his daughter marrying a banker.
As to my age, it is fifty-one. I do not think myself too old to be married again. Whether I am too old for you is for you to judge - as is also that question of my children who, of course, should you become my wife will be to some extent a care upon your shoulders. As this is all very serious you will not, I hope, think me wanting in gallantry if I say that I should hardly have ventured to address you if you had been quite a young girl. No doubt there are many years between us. But the question is one for the lady to decide, and you must decide it now.
As to my religion, I acknowledge the force of what your father says, though I think that a gentleman brought up with fewer prejudices would have expressed himself in language less likely to give offence. However I am a man not easily offended; and I am ready to take what he has said in good part. I can easily conceive that there should be those who think that the husband and wife should agree in religion. I am indifferent to it myself. I shall not interfere with you if you make me happy by becoming my wife, nor, I suppose, will you with me. Should you have a daughter or daughters I am quite willing that they should be brought up subject to your influence. (There was a plain-speaking in this which made Georgiana look round the room as though to see whether anyone was watching her as she read it.)
But no doubt your father objects to me specially because I am a Jew. If I were an atheist he might, perhaps, say nothing on the subject of religion. On this matter it seems to me that your father has hardly kept pace with the movements of the age. Fifty years ago Society was closed against the Jew, except under special circumstances, and so were all the privileges of high position. But that has been altered. Your father is blind to the change; but I think he does not wish to see.
I say this more to defend myself than to combat his views. It must be for you and for you alone to decide how far his views shall govern you. He has told me, in a rather peremptory fashion, that I have behaved badly because I did not go to him in the first instance when I thought of obtaining the honour of an alliance with his daughter. I have been obliged to tell him that in this matter I disagree with him entirely. I had no acquaintance with him. And again, at the risk of being thought uncourteous, I must say that you are to a certain degree freed by age from that subordination to which a few years ago you probably submitted without question. Your father, no doubt with propriety, had left you to be the guardian of yourself, and I cannot submit to be accused of improper conduct because, finding you in that condition, I availed myself of it.
And now, having said so much, I must leave the question to be decided entirely by yourself. I beg you to understand that I do not at all wish to hold you to a promise merely because the promise has been given. I readily acknowledge that you should consider the opinion of your family. It may well be that your regard for me will not suffice to reconcile you to such a breach from your own family as your father, with much repetition, has assured me will be inevitable.
Take a day or two to think of this and turn it over in your mind. When I last had the happiness of speaking to you, you seemed to think that your parents might raise objections, but that those objections would give way before your own wishes. I was flattered by your so thinking; but I must suppose that you were mistaken. I do not say this as any reproach to you. Quite the contrary. I think your father is irrational; and you may well have failed to anticipate that he should be so.
As to my own feelings, they remain exactly the same as before. Though I do not find myself to be too old to marry, I do think myself too old to write love letters. However, I have a most sincere affection for you; and if you should become my wife it shall be the study of my life to make you happy.
It is necessary that I should allude to one other matter; I have already told your father what I will now tell you. I think it probable that within this week I shall find myself a loser of a very large sum of money through the failure of a gentleman whose bad treatment of me I will the more readily forgive because he was the means of making me known to you. Such a loss, if it falls upon me, will not interfere in the least with the income which I have proposed to settle upon you for your use after my death; and, as your father declares that in the event of your marrying me he will not give you a shilling, he might have abstained from telling me that I was a bankrupt merchant when I myself told him of my loss. I am not a bankrupt merchant nor at all likely to become so. Nor will this loss interfere with my present mode of living. But I have thought it right to inform you of it, because, if it occurs, I shall probably not keep a second establishment for the next two or three years. But my house at Fulham and my stables there will be kept up just as they are at present.
I have now told you everything which I think it is necessary you should know, in order that you may determine either to keep to or withdraw from your engagement. I hope I need not say that a decision in my favour will make me a happy man.
I am, in the meantime, your affectionate friend,
Ezekiel Brehgert.
This long letter puzzled Georgey a good deal, and left her very much in doubt as to what she would do. She could understand that it was a plain-spoken and truth-telling letter. Not that she gave it praise for those virtues; but it filled her unconsciously with a thorough belief.
But the genuine honesty of the letter was altogether thrown away upon her. She never said to herself, as she read it, that she might safely trust herself to this man, though he were a Jew over fifty, because he was honest. She did not see that the letter was particularly sensible; but she did allow herself to be pained by the total absence of romance. She was annoyed at the first allusion to her age, and angry at the second; and yet she had never supposed that Brehgert had taken her to be younger than she was. Nor had she wished to appear particularly young in his eyes. Nevertheless, she felt the reference to be uncivil, and it had its effect upon her.
And then the allusion to the "daughter or daughters" troubled her. She told herself that it was vulgar - just what a butcher might have said. And although she was quite prepared to call her father irrational and prejudiced, yet she was displeased that Mr. Brehgert should take such a liberty.
But the most distasteful passage in the letter was that which told her of the loss which he might incur through his connection with Melmotte. What right had he to incur a loss which would stop him from keeping his engagement? The town-house had been the great persuasion, and now he absolutely had the face to tell her that there was to be no town-house for three years. When she read this she felt that she ought to be indignant, and for a few moments was minded to sit down and tell the man scornfully that she would have nothing more to say to him.
But on that side too there would be terrible bitterness. How would she have fallen from her greatness when she would be a common bridesmaid at her sister's wedding! And what would then be left to her in life? There would be no "season" for her, and she would be nobody at Caversham. As for London, she would hardly wish to go there! Everybody would know the story of the Jew. She could have plucked up courage to face the world as the Jew's wife, but not as the young woman who had wanted to marry the Jew and had failed. If she could get her father to take her abroad at once, she would do it; but she was not now in a condition to make any terms with her father. As all this passed through her mind, she determined that she would so far take Mr. Brehgert's advice as to postpone her answer till she had considered the matter.
She slept upon it, and the next day she asked her mother a few questions.
"Mamma, have you any idea what papa means to do?"
"In what way, my dear?" Lady Pomona's voice was not gracious.
"Will he go to London next year?"
"That will depend upon money, I suppose. What makes you ask?"
"Of course I have been very cruelly circumstanced. Everybody must see that. The long and the short of it is this; if I give up my engagement, will he take us abroad for a year?"
"Why should he?"
"You can't suppose that I should be comfortable in England. If we are to remain here at Caversham, how am I ever to get settled?"
"Sophy is doing very well."
"Oh, mamma, there are not two George Whitstables - thank God." She had meant to be humble, but she could not restrain herself from that one shaft. "I am sure that I hope she will be very happy. But that won't do me any good."
"I don't see how you are to find anyone to marry you by going abroad," said Lady Pomona, "and I don't see why your papa is to be taken away from his home. He likes Caversham."
"Then I am to be sacrificed on every side," said Georgey, stalking out of the room. But still she could not make up her mind what letter she would write to Mr. Brehgert, and she slept upon it another night.
On the next day after breakfast she did write her letter, though when she sat down she had not clearly made up her mind what she would say. But she got it written, and here it is.
My dear Mr. Brehgert,
As you told me not to hurry, I have taken a little time to think about your letter. Of course it would be very disagreeable to quarrel with papa and mamma and everybody. And if I do so, I'm sure somebody ought to be very grateful. But papa has been very unfair. He thinks a great deal of the Longestaffe family, and so, I suppose, ought I. But the world does change so quick that one doesn't think of anything now as one used to do. Anyway, I don't feel that I'm bound to do what papa tells me just because he says it. Though I'm not quite so old as you seem to think, I'm old enough to judge for myself, and I mean to do so. You say very little about affection, but I suppose I am to take all that for granted.
I don't wonder at papa being annoyed about the loss of the money. It must be a very great sum when it will prevent your having a house in London, as you agreed. It does make a great difference, because one could only see one's friends in London. Fulham is all very well now and then, but I don't think I should like to live at Fulham all the year through. You talk of three years, which would be dreadful. If as you say it will not have any lasting effect, could you not manage to have a house in town? If you can do it in three years, I should think you could do it now. I should like to have an answer to this question. I do think so much about spending the season in town!
As for the other parts of your letter, I knew very well beforehand that papa would be unhappy about it. But I don't know why I'm to let that stand in my way when so very little is done to make me happy. Of course you will write to me again, and I hope you will say something satisfactory about the house in London.
Yours always sincerely,
Georgiana Longestaffe.
It probably never occurred to Georgey that Mr. Brehgert might wish to go back from his engagement. She so fully recognised her own value as a Christian lady of high birth that she thought that Mr. Brehgert would be only too anxious to stick to his bargain. Nor had she any idea that there was anything in her letter which could offend him. She thought that she might at least make good her claim to the house in London; and that he would yield to her on this point. But Mr. Brehgert did not lose a day in replying to her.
My dear Miss Longestaffe,
You say it would be very disagreeable to you to quarrel with your papa and mamma; and as I agree with you, I will take your letter as concluding our intimacy. I should not, however, be dealing quite fairly with you or with myself if I gave you to understand that I felt myself to be forced to this conclusion simply by your qualified assent to your parents' views. It is evident to me from your letter that you would not wish to be my wife unless I can supply you with a house in town. But this for the present is out of my power. I would not have allowed my losses to interfere with your settlement, but I must therefore to a certain extent have compromised my children. I should not have been happy till I had replaced them in their former position, and must therefore have abstained from increased expenditure till I had done so. But of course I have no right to ask you to share with me the discomfort of a single home. I may perhaps add that I had hoped that you would have looked for your happiness to another source, and that I will bear my disappointment as best I may.
As you may under these circumstances be unwilling that I should wear the ring you gave me, I return it by post. I trust you will be good enough to keep the trifle you were pleased to accept from me, in remembrance of one who will always wish you well.
Yours sincerely,
Ezekiel Brehgert.
And so it was all over! Georgey, when she read this letter, was very indignant at her lover's conduct. She did not believe that her own letter had at all warranted it. She had been quite sure of him. And now the Jew had rejected her! She read this letter over and over again, and the more she read it the more she felt that in her heart of hearts she had intended to marry him. There would have been inconveniences no doubt; but now she saw nothing before her but a long vista of Caversham dullness, in which she would be trampled upon by her father and mother, and scorned by Mr. and Mrs. George Whitstable.
She got up and walked about the room thinking of vengeance. But what vengeance was possible? She could not ask Dolly to beat him; nor could she ask her father to visit him with paternal indignation. There could be no revenge. For a time - only for a few seconds - she thought that she would write to Mr. Brehgert and tell him that she had not intended to end their engagement. But she could not quite descend to that. However she would keep the watch and chain he had given her, and which somebody had told her had cost more than a hundred and fifty guineas. She could not wear them, as people would know whence they had come; but she might exchange them for jewels which she could wear.
She thought it best to inform her mother. "Mamma," she said, "as you and papa take it so much to heart, I have broken off everything with Mr. Brehgert."
"Of course it must be broken off," said Lady Pomona. This was so ungracious that Georgey almost flounced out of the room. "Have you heard from the man?" asked her ladyship.
"I have written to him, and it is all settled. I thought that you would have said something kind to me." And she burst into tears.
"It was so very dreadful," said Lady Pomona; "I never heard of anything so bad. It was worse than when young what's-his-name married the tallow-chandler's daughter."
"They had neither of them a shilling," said Georgey through her tears.
"And your papa says this man was next door to a bankrupt. But it's all over?"
"Yes, mamma."
"And now we must all remain here at Caversham till people forget it. It has been very hard upon George Whitstable. I once thought he would have been off, and I really don't know that we could have said anything." At that moment Sophy entered the room. "It's all over between Georgiana and that man," said Lady Pomona.
"I knew it would be," said Sophia.
"And now I beg that nothing more may be said about it," said Georgiana. "I suppose, mamma, you will write to papa?"
"You must send him back his watch and chain, Georgey," said Sophia.
"What business is that of yours?"
"Of course she must. Papa would not let her keep it."
To such a miserable depth of humility had she been brought! Georgiana, when she looked back on this miserable episode in her life, always blamed her father for her grief, by bringing about her ill-considered intimacy with the Melmottes.