The Way We Live Now

by Anthony Trollope

And there was no way out of it. It did not occur to the man that his offer could be refused. During the whole of that day he went about among his friends in a melancholy fashion, saying little snappish uncivil things at the club, and at last dining by himself with about fifteen newspapers around him. After dinner he did not speak a word to any man, but went early to the office of the newspaper in Trafalgar Square at which he did his nightly work. Here he was lapped in comforts,—if the best of chairs, of sofas, of writing tables, and of reading lamps can make a man comfortable who has to read nightly thirty columns of a newspaper, or at any rate to make himself responsible for their contents.

He seated himself to his work like a man, but immediately saw Lady Carbury's letter on the table before him. It was his custom when he did not dine at home to have such documents brought to him at his office as had reached his home during his absence;—and here was Lady Carbury's letter. He knew her writing well, and was aware that here was the confirmation of his fate. It had not been expected, as she had given herself another day for her answer,—but here it was, beneath his hand. Surely this was almost unfeminine haste. He chucked the letter, unopened, a little from him, and endeavoured to fix his attention on some printed slip that was ready for him. For some ten minutes his eyes went rapidly down the lines, but he found that his mind did not follow what he was reading. He struggled again, but still his thoughts were on the letter. He did not wish to open it, having some vague idea that, till the letter should have been read, there was a chance of escape. The letter would not become due to be read till the next day. It should not have been there now to tempt his thoughts on this night. But he could do nothing while it lay there. "It shall be a part of the bargain that I shall never have to see him," he said to himself, as he opened it. The second line told him that the danger was over.

When he had read so far he stood up with his back to the fire-place, leaving the letter on the table. Then, after all, the woman wasn't in love with him! But that was a reading of the affair which he could hardly bring himself to look upon as correct. The woman had shown her love by a thousand signs. There was no doubt, however, that she now had her triumph. A woman always has a triumph when she rejects a man,—and more especially when she does so at a certain time of life. Would she publish her triumph? Mr. Broune would not like to have it known about among brother editors, or by the world at large, that he had offered to marry Lady Carbury and that Lady Carbury had refused him. He had escaped; but the sweetness of his present safety was not in proportion to the bitterness of his late fears.

He could not understand why Lady Carbury should have refused him! As he reflected upon it, all memory of her son for the moment passed away from him. Full ten minutes had passed, during which he had still stood upon the rug, before he read the entire letter. "'Cut and scotched and lopped!' I suppose she has been," he said to himself. He had heard much of Sir Patrick, and knew well that the old general had been no lamb. "I shouldn't have cut her, or scotched her, or lopped her." When he had read the whole letter patiently there crept upon him gradually a feeling of admiration for her, greater than he had ever yet felt,—and, for awhile, he almost thought that he would renew his offer to her. "'Showers instead of sunshine; melancholy instead of mirth,'" he repeated to himself. "I should have done the best for her, taking the showers and the melancholy if they were necessary."

He went to his work in a mixed frame of mind, but certainly without that dragging weight which had oppressed him when he entered the room. Gradually, through the night, he realised the conviction that he had escaped, and threw from him altogether the idea of repeating his offer. Before he left he wrote her a line—

Be it so. It need not break our friendship.

N. B.

This he sent by a special messenger, who returned with a note to his lodgings long before he was up on the following morning.

No;—no; certainly not. No word of this will ever pass my mouth.

M. C.

Mr. Broune thought that he was very well out of the danger, and resolved that Lady Carbury should never want anything that his friendship could do for her.