When the Board was over, he also went down to the Beargarden. Perhaps, with reference to the Board, the feeling which hurt him most was the conviction that he was spending money which he would never have had to spend had there been no Board. He had been twitted with this at the Board-meeting, and had justified himself by referring to the money which had been invested in the company of Fisker, Montague, and Montague, which money was now supposed to have been made over to the railway. But the money which he was spending had come to him after a loose fashion, and he knew that if called upon for an account, he could hardly make out one which would be square and intelligible to all parties. Nevertheless he spent much of his time at the Beargarden, dining there when no engagement carried him elsewhere. On this evening he joined his table with Nidderdale's, at the young lord's instigation. 'What made you so savage at old Melmotte to-day?' said the young lord.
'I didn't mean to be savage, but I think that as we call ourselves Directors we ought to know something about it.'
'I suppose we ought. I don't know, you know. I'll tell you what I've been thinking. I can't make out why the mischief they made me a Director.'
'Because you're a lord,' said Paul bluntly.
'I suppose there's something in that. But what good can I do them? Nobody thinks that I know anything about business. Of course I'm in Parliament, but I don't often go there unless they want me to vote. Everybody knows that I'm hard up. I can't understand it. The Governor said that I was to do it, and so I've done it.'
'They say, you know,--there's something between you and Melmotte's daughter.'
'But if there is, what has that to do with a railway in the city? And why should Carbury be there? And, heaven and earth, why should old Grendall be a Director? I'm impecunious; but if you were to pink out the two most hopeless men in London in regard to money, they would be old Grendall and young Carbury. I've been thinking a good deal about it, and I can't make it out.'
'I have been thinking about it too,' said Paul.
'I suppose old Melmotte is all right?' asked Nidderdale. This was a question which Montague found it difficult to answer. How could he be justified in whispering suspicions to the man who was known to be at any rate one of the competitors for Marie Melmotte's hand? 'You can speak out to me, you know,' said Nidderdale, nodding his head.