3 books to know Horatian Satire. Anthony TrollopeЧитать онлайн книгу.
well. I am becoming sour and moody, and ill at ease with my friends. I would have you believe me, at any rate, when I say I love you.’
‘I suppose you mean something.’
‘I mean a great deal, dear. I mean all that a man can mean. That is it. You hardly understand that I am serious to the extent of ecstatic joy on the one side, and utter indifference to the world on the other. I shall never give it up till I learn that you are to be married to some one else.’
‘What can I say, Mr Carbury?’
‘That you will love me.’
‘But if I don’t?’
‘Say that you will try.’
‘No; I will not say that. Love should come without a struggle. I don’t know how one person is to try to love another in that way. I like you very much; but being married is such a terrible thing.’
‘It would not be terrible to me, dear.’
‘Yes; — when you found that I was too young for your tastes.’
‘I shall persevere, you know. Will you assure me of this — that if you promise your hand to another man you will let me know at once?’
‘I suppose I may promise that,’ she said, after pausing for a moment.
‘There is no one as yet?’
‘There is no one. But, Mr Carbury, you have no right to question me. I don’t think it generous. I allow you to say things that nobody else could say because you are a cousin and because mamma trusts you so much. No one but mamma has a right to ask me whether I care for any one.’
‘Are you angry with me?’
‘No.’
‘If I have offended you it is because I love you so dearly.’
‘I am not offended, but I don’t like to be questioned by a gentleman. I don’t think any girl would like it. I am not to tell everybody all that happens.’
‘Perhaps when you reflect how much of my happiness depends upon it you will forgive me. Good-bye now.’ She put out her hand to him and allowed it to remain in his for a moment. ‘When I walk about the old shrubberies at Carbury where we used to be together, I am always asking myself what chance there is of your walking there as the mistress.’
‘There is no chance.’
‘I am, of course, prepared to hear you say so. Well; good-bye, and may God bless you.’
The man had no poetry about him. He did not even care for romance. All the outside belongings of love which are so pleasant to many men and which to many women afford the one sweetness in life which they really relish, were nothing to him. There are both men and women to whom even the delays and disappointments of love are charming, even when they exist to the detriment of hope. It is sweet to such persons to be melancholy, sweet to pine, sweet to feel that they are now wretched after a romantic fashion as have been those heroes and heroines of whose sufferings they have read in poetry. But there was nothing of this with Roger Carbury. He had, as he believed, found the woman that he really wanted, who was worthy of his love, and now, having fixed his heart upon her, he longed for her with an amazing longing. He had spoken the simple truth when he declared that life had become indifferent to him without her. No man in England could be less likely to throw himself off the Monument or to blow out his brains. But he felt numbed in all the joints of his mind by this sorrow. He could not make one thing bear upon another, so as to console himself after any fashion. There was but one thing for him; — to persevere till he got her, or till he had finally lost her. And should the latter be his fate, as he began to fear that it would be, then, he would live, but live only, like a crippled man.
He felt almost sure in his heart of hearts that the girl loved that other younger man. That she had never owned to such love he was quite sure. The man himself and Henrietta also had both assured him on this point, and he was a man easily satisfied by words and prone to believe. But he knew that Paul Montague was attached to her, and that it was Paul’s intention to cling to his love. Sorrowfully looking forward through the vista of future years, he thought he saw that Henrietta would become Paul’s wife. Were it so, what should he do? Annihilate himself as far as all personal happiness in the world was concerned, and look solely to their happiness, their prosperity, and their joys? Be as it were a beneficent old fairy to them, though the agony of his own disappointment should never depart from him? Should he do this and be blessed by them — or should he let Paul Montague know what deep resentment such ingratitude could produce? When had a father been kinder to a son, or a brother to a brother, than he had been to Paul? His home had been the young man’s home, and his purse the young man’s purse. What right could the young man have to come upon him just as he was perfecting his bliss and rob him of all that he had in the world? He was conscious all the while that there was a something wrong in his argument — that Paul when he commenced to love the girl knew nothing of his friend’s love — that the girl, though Paul had never come in the way, might probably have been as obdurate as she was now to his entreaties. He knew all this because his mind was clear. But yet the injustice — at any rate, the misery was so great, that to forgive it and to reward it would be weak, womanly, and foolish. Roger Carbury did not quite believe in the forgiveness of injuries. If you pardon all the evil done to you, you encourage others to do you evil! If you give your cloak to him who steals your coat, how long will it be, before your shirt and trousers will go also? Roger Carbury, returned that afternoon to Suffolk, and as he thought of it all throughout the journey, he resolved that he would never forgive Paul Montague if Paul Montague should become his cousin’s husband.
Chapter IX
The Great Railway to Vera Cruz
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‘You have been a guest in his house. Then, I guess, the thing’s about as good as done.’ These words were spoken with a fine, sharp, nasal twang by a brilliantly-dressed American gentleman in one of the smartest private rooms of the great railway hotel at Liverpool, and they were addressed to a young Englishman who was sitting opposite to him. Between them there was a table covered with maps, schedules, and printed programmes. The American was smoking a very large cigar, which he kept constantly turning in his mouth, and half of which was inside his teeth. The Englishman had a short pipe. Mr Hamilton K. Fisker, of the firm of Fisker, Montague, and Montague, was the American, and the Englishman was our friend Paul, the junior member of that firm.
‘But I didn’t even speak to him,’ said Paul.
‘In commercial affairs that matters nothing. It quite justifies you in introducing me. We are not going to ask your friend to do us a favour. We don’t want to borrow money.’
‘I thought you did.’
‘If he’ll go in for the thing he’d be one of us, and there would be no borrowing then. He’ll join us if he’s as clever as they say, because he’ll see his way to making a couple of million of dollars out of it. If he’d take the trouble to run over and show himself in San Francisco, he’d make double that. The moneyed men would go in with him at once, because they know that he understands the game and has got the pluck. A man who has done what he has by financing in Europe — by George! there’s no limit to what he might do with us. We’re a bigger people than any of you and have more room. We go after bigger things, and don’t stand shilly-shally on the brink as you do. But Melmotte pretty nigh beats the best among us. Anyway he should come and try his luck, and he couldn’t have a bigger thing or a safer thing than this. He’d see it immediately if I could talk to him for half an hour.’
‘Mr Fisker,’ said Paul mysteriously, ‘as we are partners, I think I ought to let you know that many people speak very badly of Mr Melmotte’s honesty.’
Mr Fisker smiled gently, turned his cigar twice round in his mouth, and then closed