CHAPTER XXXV.
MELMOTTE'S GLORY.
Augustus Melmotte was becoming greater and greater in everydirection,--mightier and mightier every day. He was learning todespise mere lords, and to feel that he might almost domineer overa duke. In truth he did recognise it as a fact that he must eitherdomineer over dukes, or else go to the wall. It can hardly be said ofhim that he had intended to play so high a game, but the game that hehad intended to play had become thus high of its own accord. A mancannot always restrain his own doings and keep them within the limitswhich he had himself planned for them. They will very often fallshort of the magnitude to which his ambition has aspired. They willsometimes soar higher than his own imagination. So it had now beenwith Mr. Melmotte. He had contemplated great things; but the thingswhich he was achieving were beyond his contemplation.
The reader will not have thought much of Fisker on his arrival inEngland. Fisker was, perhaps, not a man worthy of much thought. Hehad never read a book. He had never written a line worth reading.He had never said a prayer. He cared nothing for humanity. He hadsprung out of some Californian gully, was perhaps ignorant of his ownfather and mother, and had tumbled up in the world on the strengthof his own audacity. But, such as he was, he had sufficed to givethe necessary impetus for rolling Augustus Melmotte onwards intoalmost unprecedented commercial greatness. When Mr. Melmotte took hisoffices in Abchurch Lane, he was undoubtedly a great man, but nothingso great as when the South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway hadbecome not only an established fact, but a fact established inAbchurch Lane. The great company indeed had an office of its own,where the Board was held; but everything was really managed inMr. Melmotte's own commercial sanctum. Obeying, no doubt, someinscrutable law of commerce, the grand enterprise,--"perhaps thegrandest when you consider the amount of territory manipulated, whichhas ever opened itself before the eyes of a great commercial people,"as Mr. Fisker with his peculiar eloquence observed through his nose,about this time to a meeting of shareholders at San Francisco,--hadswung itself across from California to London, turning itself to thecentre of the commercial world as the needle turns to the pole, tillMr. Fisker almost regretted the deed which himself had done. AndMelmotte was not only the head, but the body also, and the feet ofit all. The shares seemed to be all in Melmotte's pocket, so thathe could distribute them as he would; and it seemed also that whendistributed and sold, and when bought again and sold again, they cameback to Melmotte's pocket. Men were contented to buy their shares andto pay their money, simply on Melmotte's word. Sir Felix had realiseda large portion of his winnings at cards,--with commendable prudencefor one so young and extravagant,--and had brought his savings to thegreat man. The great man had swept the earnings of the Beargardeninto his till, and had told Sir Felix that the shares were his. SirFelix had been not only contented, but supremely happy. He could nowdo as Paul Montague was doing,--and Lord Alfred Grendall. He couldrealize a perennial income, buying and selling. It was only afterthe reflection of a day or two that he found that he had as yet gotnothing to sell. It was not only Sir Felix that was admitted intothese good things after this fashion. Sir Felix was but one amonghundreds. In the meantime the bills in Grosvenor Square were no doubtpaid with punctuality,--and these bills must have been stupendous.The very servants were as tall, as gorgeous, almost as numerous, asthe servants of royalty,--and remunerated by much higher wages. Therewere four coachmen with egregious wigs, and eight footmen, not onewith a circumference of calf less than eighteen inches.
And now there appeared a paragraph in the "Morning Breakfast Table,"and another appeared in the "Evening Pulpit," telling the worldthat Mr. Melmotte had bought Pickering Park, the magnificent Sussexproperty of Adolphus Longestaffe, Esq., of Caversham. And it was so.The father and son who never had agreed before, and who now had cometo no agreement in the presence of each other, had each consideredthat their affairs would be safe in the hands of so great a man asMr. Melmotte, and had been brought to terms. The purchase-money,which was large, was to be divided between them. The thing was donewith the greatest ease,--there being no longer any delay as is thecase when small people are at work. The magnificence of Mr. Melmotteaffected even the Longestaffe lawyers. Were I to buy a littleproperty, some humble cottage with a garden,--or you, O reader,unless you be magnificent,--the money to the last farthing would bewanted, or security for the money more than sufficient, before weshould be able to enter in upon our new home. But money was the verybreath of Melmotte's nostrils, and therefore his breath was taken formoney. Pickering was his, and before a week was over a London builderhad collected masons and carpenters by the dozen down at Chichester,and was at work upon the house to make it fit to be a residence forMadame Melmotte. There were rumours that it was to be made ready forthe Goodwood week, and that the Melmotte entertainment during thatfestival would rival the duke's.
But there was still much to be done in London before the Goodwoodweek should come round in all of which Mr. Melmotte was concerned,and of much of which Mr. Melmotte was the very centre. A member forWestminster had succeeded to a peerage, and thus a seat was vacated.It was considered to be indispensable to the country that Mr.Melmotte should go into Parliament, and what constituency could sucha man as Melmotte so fitly represent as one combining as Westminsterdoes all the essences of the metropolis? There was the popularelement, the fashionable element, the legislative element, the legalelement, and the commercial element. Melmotte undoubtedly was the manfor Westminster. His thorough popularity was evinced by testimonywhich perhaps was never before given in favour of any candidate forany county or borough. In Westminster there must of course be acontest. A seat for Westminster is a thing not to be abandoned byeither political party without a struggle. But, at the beginning ofthe affair, when each party had to seek the most suitable candidatewhich the country could supply, each party put its hand uponMelmotte. And when the seat, and the battle for the seat, weresuggested to Melmotte, then for the first time was that great manforced to descend from the altitudes on which his mind generallydwelt, and to decide whether he would enter Parliament as aConservative or a Liberal. He was not long in convincing himself thatthe Conservative element in British Society stood the most in needof that fiscal assistance which it would be in his province to give;and on the next day every hoarding in London declared to the worldthat Melmotte was the Conservative candidate for Westminster. It isneedless to say that his committee was made up of peers, bankers, andpublicans, with all that absence of class prejudice for which theparty has become famous since the ballot was introduced among us.Some unfortunate Liberal was to be made to run against him, for thesake of the party; but the odds were ten to one on Melmotte.
This no doubt was a great matter,--this affair of the seat; but thedinner to be given to the Emperor of China was much greater. It wasthe middle of June, and the dinner was to be given on Monday, 8thJuly, now three weeks hence;--but all London was already talking ofit. The great purport proposed was to show to the Emperor by thisbanquet what an English merchant-citizen of London could do. Ofcourse there was a great amount of scolding and a loud clamour on theoccasion. Some men said that Melmotte was not a citizen of London,others that he was not a merchant, others again that he was not anEnglishman. But no man could deny that he was both able and willingto spend the necessary money; and as this combination of ability andwill was the chief thing necessary, they who opposed the arrangementcould only storm and scold. On the 20th of June the tradesmen wereat work, throwing up a building behind, knocking down walls, andgenerally transmuting the house in Grosvenor Square in such a fashionthat two hundred guests might be able to sit down to dinner in thedining-room of a British merchant.
But who were to be the two hundred? It used to be the case that whena gentleman gave a dinner he asked his own guests;--but when affairsbecome great, society can hardly be carried on after that simplefashion. The Emperor of China could not be made to sit at tablewithout English royalty, and English royalty must know whom it has tomeet,--must select at any rate some o
f its comrades. The minister ofthe day also had his candidates for the dinner,--in which arrangementthere was however no private patronage, as the list was confined tothe cabinet and their wives. The Prime Minister took some credit tohimself in that he would not ask for a single ticket for a privatefriend. But the Opposition as a body desired their share of seats.Melmotte had elected to stand for Westminster on the Conservativeinterest, and was advised that he must insist on having as it werea Conservative cabinet present, with its Conservative wives. He wastold that he owed it to his party, and that his party exacted paymentof the debt. But the great difficulty lay with the city merchants.This was to be a city merchant's private feast, and it was essentialthat the Emperor should meet this great merchant's brother merchantsat the merchant's board. No doubt the Emperor would see all themerchants at the Guildhall; but that would be a semi-public affair,paid for out of the funds of a corporation. This was to be a privatedinner. Now the Lord Mayor had set his face against it, and what wasto be done? Meetings were held; a committee was appointed; merchantguests were selected, to the number of fifteen with their fifteenwives;--and subsequently the Lord Mayor was made a baronet on theoccasion of receiving the Emperor in the city. The Emperor with hissuite was twenty. Royalty had twenty tickets, each ticket for guestand wife. The existing Cabinet was fourteen; but the coming wasnumbered at about eleven only;--each one for self and wife. Fiveambassadors and five ambassadresses were to be asked. There were tobe fifteen real merchants out of the city. Ten great peers,--withtheir peeresses,--were selected by the general committee ofmanagement. There were to be three wise men, two poets, threeindependent members of the House of Commons, two Royal Academicians,three editors of papers, an African traveller who had just come home,and a novelist;--but all these latter gentlemen were expected to comeas bachelors. Three tickets were to be kept over for presentationto bores endowed with a power of making themselves absolutelyunendurable if not admitted at the last moment,--and ten were leftfor the giver of the feast and his own family and friends. It isoften difficult to make things go smooth,--but almost all roughnessesmay be smoothed at last with patience and care, and money andpatronage.
But the dinner was not to be all. Eight hundred additional ticketswere to be issued for Madame Melmotte's evening entertainment, andthe fight for these was more internecine than for seats at thedinner. The dinner-seats, indeed, were handled in so statesmanlike afashion that there was not much visible fighting about them. Royaltymanages its affairs quietly. The existing Cabinet was existing, andthough there were two or three members of it who could not have gotthemselves elected at a single unpolitical club in London, they had aright to their seats at Melmotte's table. What disappointed ambitionthere might be among Conservative candidates was never known to thepublic. Those gentlemen do not wash their dirty linen in public.The ambassadors of course were quiet, but we may be sure that theMinister from the United States was among the favoured five. Thecity bankers and bigwigs, as has been already said, were at firstunwilling to be present, and therefore they who were not chosen couldnot afterwards express their displeasure. No grumbling was heardamong the peers, and that which came from the peeresses floated downinto the current of the great fight about the evening entertainment.The poet laureate was of course asked, and the second poet was asmuch a matter of course. Only two Academicians had in this yearpainted royalty, so that there was no ground for jealousy there.There were three, and only three, specially insolent and speciallydisagreeable independent members of Parliament at that time in theHouse, and there was no difficulty in selecting them. The wise menwere chosen by their age. Among editors of newspapers there was someill-blood. That Mr. Alf and Mr. Broune should be selected was almosta matter of course. They were hated accordingly, but still this wasexpected. But why was Mr. Booker there? Was it because he had praisedthe Prime Minister's translation of Catullus? The African travellerchose himself by living through all his perils and coming home. Anovelist was selected; but as royalty wanted another ticket at thelast moment, the gentleman was only asked to come in after dinner.His proud heart, however, resented the treatment, and he joinedamicably with his literary brethren in decrying the festivalaltogether.
We should be advancing too rapidly into this portion of our storywere we to concern ourselves deeply at the present moment with thefeud as it raged before the evening came round, but it may be rightto indicate that the desire for tickets at last became a burningpassion, and a passion which in the great majority of cases couldnot be indulged. The value of the privilege was so great that MadameMelmotte thought that she was doing almost more than friendshipcalled for when she informed her guest, Miss Longestaffe, thatunfortunately there would be no seat for her at the dinner-table;but that, as payment for her loss, she should receive an eveningticket for herself and a joint ticket for a gentleman and his wife.Georgiana was at first indignant, but she accepted the compromise.What she did with her tickets shall be hereafter told.
From all this I trust it will be understood that the Mr. Melmotte ofthe present hour was a very different man from that Mr. Melmotte whowas introduced to the reader in the early chapters of this chronicle.Royalty was not to be smuggled in and out of his house now withouthis being allowed to see it. No manoeuvres now were necessary tocatch a simple duchess. Duchesses were willing enough to come. LordAlfred when he was called by his Christian name felt no aristocratictwinges. He was only too anxious to make himself more and morenecessary to the great man. It is true that all this came as it wereby jumps, so that very often a part of the world did not know on whatledge in the world the great man was perched at that moment. MissLongestaffe who was staying in the house did not at all know howgreat a man her host was. Lady Monogram when she refused to go toGrosvenor Square, or even to allow any one to come out of the housein Grosvenor Square to her parties, was groping in outer darkness.Madame Melmotte did not know. Marie Melmotte did not know. Thegreat man did not quite know himself where, from time to time, hewas standing. But the world at large knew. The world knew that Mr.Melmotte was to be Member for Westminster, that Mr. Melmotte was toentertain the Emperor of China, that Mr. Melmotte carried the SouthCentral Pacific and Mexican Railway in his pocket;--and the worldworshipped Mr. Melmotte.
In the meantime Mr. Melmotte was much troubled about his privateaffairs. He had promised his daughter to Lord Nidderdale, and as herose in the world had lowered the price which he offered for thismarriage,--not so much in the absolute amount of fortune to beultimately given, as in the manner of giving it. Fifteen thousand ayear was to be settled on Marie and on her eldest son, and twentythousand pounds were to be paid into Nidderdale's hands six monthsafter the marriage. Melmotte gave his reasons for not paying this sumat once. Nidderdale would be more likely to be quiet, if he were keptwaiting for that short time. Melmotte was to purchase and furnish forthem a house in town. It was, too, almost understood that the youngpeople were to have Pickering Park for themselves, except for a weekor so at the end of July. It was absolutely given out in the papersthat Pickering was to be theirs. It was said on all sides thatNidderdale was doing very well for himself. The absolute moneywas not perhaps so great as had been at first asked; but then,at that time, Melmotte was not the strong rock, the impregnabletower of commerce, the very navel of the commercial enterprise ofthe world,--as all men now regarded him. Nidderdale's father, andNidderdale himself, were, in the present condition of things, contentwith a very much less stringent bargain than that which they hadendeavoured at first to exact.
But, in the midst of all this, Marie, who had at one time consentedat her father's instance to accept the young lord, and who in somespeechless fashion had accepted him, told both the young lord andher father, very roundly, that she had changed her mind. Her fatherscowled at her and told her that her mind in the matter was of noconcern. He intended that she should marry Lord Nidderdale, andhimself fixed some day in August for the wedding. "It is no use,father, for I will never have him," said Marie.
"Is it about that other scamp?" he asked angrily.
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"If you mean Sir Felix Carbury, it is about him. He has been to youand told you, and therefore I don't know why I need hold my tongue."
"You'll both starve, my lady; that's all." Marie however was not sowedded to the grandeur which she encountered in Grosvenor Square asto be afraid of the starvation which she thought she might have tosuffer if married to Sir Felix Carbury. Melmotte had not time for anylong discussion. As he left her he took hold of her and shook her."By ----," he said, "if you run rusty after all I've done for you,I'll make you suffer. You little fool; that man's a beggar. He hasn'tthe price of a petticoat or a pair of stockings. He's looking onlyfor what you haven't got, and shan't have if you marry him. He wantsmoney, not you, you little fool!"
But after that she was quite settled in her purpose when Nidderdalespoke to her. They had been engaged and then it had been off;--andnow the young nobleman, having settled everything with the father,expected no great difficulty in resettling everything with the girl.He was not very skilful at making love,--but he was thoroughlygood-humoured, from his nature anxious to please, and averse to givepain. There was hardly any injury which he could not forgive, andhardly any kindness which he would not do,--so that the labour uponhimself was not too great. "Well, Miss Melmotte," he said; "governorsare stern beings: are they not?"
"Is yours stern, my lord?"
"What I mean is that sons and daughters have to obey them. I thinkyou understand what I mean. I was awfully spoony on you that timebefore; I was indeed."
"I hope it didn't hurt you much, Lord Nidderdale."
"That's so like a woman; that is. You know well enough that you and Ican't marry without leave from the governors."
"Nor with it," said Marie, nodding her head.
"I don't know how that may be. There was some hitch somewhere,--Idon't quite know where."--The hitch had been with himself, as hedemanded ready money. "But it's all right now. The old fellows areagreed. Can't we make a match of it, Miss Melmotte?"
"No, Lord Nidderdale; I don't think we can."
"Do you mean that?"
"I do mean it. When that was going on before I knew nothing about it.I have seen more of things since then."
"And you've seen somebody you like better than me?"
"I say nothing about that, Lord Nidderdale. I don't think you oughtto blame me, my lord."
"Oh dear no."
"There was something before, but it was you that was off first.Wasn't it now?"
"The governors were off, I think."
"The governors have a right to be off, I suppose. But I don't thinkany governor has a right to make anybody marry any one."
"I agree with you there;--I do indeed," said Lord Nidderdale.
"And no governor shall make me marry. I've thought a great deal aboutit since that other time, and that's what I've come to determine."
"But I don't know why you shouldn't--just marry me--because you--likeme."
"Only,--just because I don't. Well; I do like you, Lord Nidderdale."
"Thanks;--so much!"
"I like you ever so,--only marrying a person is different."
"There's something in that to be sure."
"And I don't mind telling you," said Marie with an almost solemnexpression on her countenance, "because you are good-natured andwon't get me into a scrape if you can help it, that I do likesomebody else;--oh, so much."
"I supposed that was it."
"That is it."
"It's a deuced pity. The governors had settled everything, and weshould have been awfully jolly. I'd have gone in for all the thingsyou go in for; and though your governor was screwing us up a bit,there would have been plenty of tin to go on with. You couldn't thinkof it again?"
"I tell you, my lord, I'm--in love."
"Oh, ah;--yes. So you were saying. It's an awful bore. That's all. Ishall come to the party all the same if you send me a ticket." And soNidderdale took his dismissal, and went away,--not however without anidea that the marriage would still come off. There was always,--so hethought,--such a bother about things before they would get themselvesfixed. This happened some days after Mr. Broune's proposal to LadyCarbury, more than a week since Marie had seen Sir Felix. As soon asLord Nidderdale was gone she wrote again to Sir Felix begging thatshe might hear from him,--and entrusted her letter to Didon.