He Knew He Was Right, Anthony Trollope [children's ebooks free online .TXT] 📗

her whole will over again, and now she wants to send some message

to Uncle Barty. I don’t know what it is yet, but I am to take it. As

far as I can understand, she has sent all the way to London for me, in

order that I may take a message across the Close.’

 

‘You talk as though it were very disagreeable, coming to Exeter,’ said

Dorothy, with a little pout.

 

‘So it is very disagreeable.’

 

‘Oh, Brooke!’

 

‘Very disagreeable if our marriage is to be put off by it. I think it

will be so much nicer making love somewhere on the Rhine than having

snatches of it here, and talking all the time about wills and tenements

and settlements.’ As he said this, with his arm round her waist and his

face quite close to hers, shewing thereby that he was not altogether

averse even to his present privileges, she forgave him.

 

On that same afternoon, just before the banking hours were over, Brooke

went across to the house of Cropper and Burgess, having first been

closeted for nearly an hour with his aunt and, as he went, his step was

sedate and his air was serious. He found his uncle Barty, and was not

very long in delivering his message. It was to this effect, that Miss

Stanbury particularly wished to see Mr Bartholomew Burgess on business,

at some hour on that afternoon or that evening. Brooke himself had been

made acquainted with the subject in regard to which this singular

interview was desired; but it was not a part of his duty to communicate

any information respecting it. It had been necessary that his consent

to certain arrangements should be asked before the invitation to Barty

Burgess could be given; but his present mission was confined to an

authority to give the invitation.

 

Old Mr Burgess was much surprised, and was at first disposed to decline

the proposition made by the ‘old harridan,’ as he called her. He had

never put any restraint on his language in talking of Miss Stanbury

with his nephew, and was not disposed to do so now, because she had

taken a new vagary into her head. But there was something in his

nephew’s manner which at last induced him to discuss the matter

rationally.

 

‘And you don’t know what it’s all about?’ said Uncle Barty.

 

‘I can’t quite say that. I suppose I do know pretty well. At any rate,

I know enough to think that you ought to come. But I must not say what

it is.’

 

‘Will it do me or anybody else any good?’

 

‘It can’t do you any harm. She won’t eat you.’

 

‘But she can abuse me like a pickpocket, and I should return it, and

then there would be a scolding match. I always have kept out of her

way, and I think I had better do so still.’

 

Nevertheless Brooke prevailed, or rather the feeling of curiosity which

was naturally engendered prevailed. For very, very many years Barty

Burgess had never entered or left his own house of business without

seeing the door of that in which Miss Stanbury lived, and he had never

seen that door without a feeling of detestation for the owner of it. It

would, perhaps, have been a more rational feeling on his part had he

confined his hatred to the memory of his brother, by whose will Miss

Stanbury had been enriched, and he had been, as he thought,

impoverished. But there had been a contest, and litigation, and

disputes, and contradictions, and a long course of those incidents in

life which lead to rancour and ill blood, after the death of the former

Brooke Burgess; and, as the result of all this, Miss Stanbury held the

property and Barty Burgess held his hatred. He had never been ashamed

of it, and had spoken his mind out to all who would hear him. And, to

give Miss Stanbury her due, it must be admitted that she had hardly

been behind him in the warmth of her expression, of which old Barty was

well aware. He hated, and knew that he was hated in return. And he

knew, or thought that he knew, that his enemy was not a woman to relent

because old age and weakness and the fear of death were coming on her.

His enemy, with all her faults, was no coward. It could not be that now

at the eleventh hour she should desire to reconcile him by any act of

tardy justice, nor did he wish to be reconciled at this, the eleventh

hour. His hatred was a pleasant excitement to him. His abuse of Miss

Stanbury was a chosen recreation. His unuttered daily curse, as he

looked over to her door, was a relief to him. Nevertheless he would go.

As Brooke had said, no harm could come of his going. He would go, and at

least listen to her proposition.

 

About seven in the evening his knock was heard at the door. Miss

Stanbury was sitting in the small upstairs parlour, dressed in her

second best gown, and was prepared with considerable stiffness and

state for the occasion. Dorothy was with her, but was desired in a

quick voice to hurry away the moment the knock was heard, as though old

Barty would have jumped from the hall door into the room at a bound.

Dorothy collected herself with a little start, and went without a word.

She had heard much of Barty Burgess, but had never spoken to him, and

was subject to a feeling of great awe when she would remember that the

grim old man of whom she had heard so much evil would soon be her

uncle. According to arrangement, Mr Burgess was shewn upstairs by his

nephew. Barty Burgess had been born in this very house, but had not

been inside the walls of it for more than thirty years. He also was

somewhat awed by the occasion, and followed his nephew without a word.

Brooke was to remain at hand, so that he might be summoned should he be

wanted; but it had been decided by Miss Stanbury that he should not be

present at the interview. As soon as her visitor entered the room she

rose in a stately way, and curtseyed, propping herself with one hand

upon the table as she did so. She looked him full in the face

meanwhile, and curtseying a second time, asked him to seat himself in a

chair which had been prepared for him. She did it all very well, and it

may be surmised that she had rehearsed the little scene, perhaps more

than once, when nobody was looking at her. He bowed, and walked round

to the chair and seated himself; but finding that he was so placed that

he could not see his neighbour’s face, he moved his chair. He was not

going to fight such a duel as this with the disadvantage of the sun in

his eyes.

 

Hitherto there had hardly been a word spoken. Miss Stanbury had

muttered something as she was curtseying, and Barty Burgess had made

some return. Then she began: ‘Mr Burgess,’ she said, ‘I am indebted to

you for your complaisance in coming here at my request.’ To this he

bowed again. ‘I should not have ventured thus to trouble you were it

not that years are dealing more hardly with me than they are with you,

and that I could not have ventured to discuss a matter of deep interest

otherwise than in my own room.’ It was her room now, certainly, by law;

but Barty Burgess remembered it when it was his mother’s room, and when

she used to give them all their meals there now so many, many years

ago! He bowed again, and said not a word. He knew well that she could

sooner be brought to her point by his silence than by his speech.

 

She was a long time coming to her point. Before she could do so she was

forced to allude to times long past, and to subjects which she found it

very difficult to touch without saying that which would either belie

herself, or seem to be severe upon him. Though she had prepared

herself, she could hardly get the words spoken, and she was greatly

impeded by the obstinacy of his silence. But at last her proposition

was made to him. She told him that his nephew, Brooke, was about to be

married to her niece, Dorothy; and that it was her intention to make

Brooke her heir in the bulk of the property which she had received

under the will of the late Mr Brooke Burgess. ‘Indeed,’ she said, ‘all

that I received at your brother’s hands shall go back to your brother’s

family unimpaired’ He only bowed, and would not say a word. Then she

went on to say that it had at first been a mater to her of deep regret

that Brooke should have set his affections upon her niece, as there had

been in her mind a strong desire that none of her own people should

enjoy the reversion of the wealth, which she had always regarded as

being hers only for the term of her life; but that she had found that

the young people had been so much in earnest, and that her own feeling

had been so near akin to a prejudice, that she had yielded. When this

was said Barty smiled instead of bowing, and Miss Stanbury felt that

there might be something worse even than his silence. His smile told

her that he believed her to be lying. Nevertheless she went on. She was

not fool enough to suppose that the whole nature of the man was to be

changed by a few words from her. So she went on. The marriage was a

thing fixed, and she was thinking of settlements, and had been talking

to lawyers about a new will.

 

‘I do not know that I can help you,’ said Barty, finding that a longer

pause than usual made some word from him absolutely necessary.

 

‘I am going on to that, and I regret that my story should detain you so

long, Mr Burgess’ And she did go on. She had, she said, made some

saving out of her income. She was not going to trouble Mr Burgess with

this matter, only that she might explain to him that what she would at

once give to the young couple, and what she would settle on Dorothy

after her own death, would all come from such savings, and that such

gifts and bequests would not diminish the family property. Barty again

smiled as he heard this, and Miss Stanbury in her heart likened him to

the devil in person. But still she went on. She was very desirous that

Brooke Burgess should come and live at Exeter. His property would be in

the town and the neighbourhood. It would be a seemly thing, such was her

word, that he should occupy the house that had belonged to his

grandfather and his great-grandfather; and then, moreover, she

acknowledged that she spoke selfishly; she dreaded the idea of being

left alone for the remainder of her own years. Her proposition at last

was uttered. It was simply this, that Barty Burgess should give to his

nephew, Brooke, his share in the bank.

 

‘I am damned, if I do!’ said Barty Burgess, rising up from his chair.

 

But before he had left the room he had agreed to consider the

proposition. Miss Stanbury had of course known that any such suggestion

coming from her without an adequate reason assigned, would have been

mere idle wind. She was prepared with such adequate reason. If Mr

Burgess could see his