Books: He Knew He Was Right

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'We can't afford it, my dear indeed we can't,' said Mrs Stanbury.

'That's not the question, mother. The rent must be paid up to
Christmas, and you can live here as cheap as you can anywhere.'

'But Priscilla--'

'Oh, Priscilla! Of course we know what Priscilla says. Priscilla has
been writing to me about it in the most sensible manner in the world;
but what does it all come to? If you are ashamed of taking assistance
from me, I don't know who is to do anything for anybody. You are
comfortable here?'

'Very comfortable; only Priscilla feels--'

'Priscilla is a tyrant, mother; and a very stern one. Just make up your
mind to stay here till Christmas. If I tell you that I can afford it,
surely that ought to be enough.' Then Dorothy entered the room, and
Hugh appealed to her. Dorothy had come to Nuncombe only on the day
before, and had not been consulted on the subject. She had been told
that the Clock House was to be abandoned, and had been taken down to
inspect the cottage in which old Soames had lived but her opinion had
not been asked. Priscilla had quite made up her mind, and why should
she ask an opinion of any one? But now Dorothy's opinion was demanded.
'It's what I call the rhodomontade of independence,' said Hugh.

'I suppose it is very expensive,' suggested Dorothy.

'The house must be paid for,' said Hugh 'and if I say that I've got the
money, is not that enough? A miserable, dirty little place, where
you'll catch your death of lumbago, mother.'

'Of course it's not a comfortable house;' said Mrs Stanbury who, of
herself, was not at all indifferent to the comforts of her present
residence.

'And it is very dirty,' said Dorothy.

'The nastiest place I ever saw in my life. Come, mother; if I say that
I can afford it, ought not that to be enough for you? If you think you
can't trust me, there's an end of everything, you now.' And Hugh, as he
thus expressed himself, assumed an air of injured virtue.

Mrs Stanbury had very nearly yielded, when Priscilla came in among
them. It was impossible not to continue the conversation, though Hugh
would much have preferred to have forced an assent from his mother
before he opened his mouth on the subject to his sister. 'My mother
agrees with me,' said he abruptly, 'and so does Dolly, that it will be
absurd to move away from this house at present.'

'Mamma!' exclaimed Priscilla.

'I don't think I said that, Hugh,' murmured Dorothy, softly.

'I am sure I don't want anything for myself,' said Mrs Stanbury.

'It's I that want it,' said Hugh. 'And I think that I've a right to
have my wishes respected, so far as that goes.'

'My dear Hugh,' said Priscilla, 'the cottage is already taken, and we
shall certainly go into it. I spoke to Mrs Crocket yesterday about a
cart for moving the things. I'm sure mamma agrees with me. What
possible business can people have to live in such a house as this with
about twenty-four shillings a week for every thing? I won't do it. And
as the thing is settled, it is only making trouble to disturb it.'

'I suppose, Priscilla,' said Hugh, 'you'll do as your mother chooses?'

'Mamma chooses to go. She has told me so already.'

'You have talked her into it.'

'We had better go, Hugh,' said Mrs Stanbury. 'I'm sure we had better
go.'

'Of course we shall go,' said Priscilla. 'Hugh-is very kind and very
generous, but he is only giving trouble for nothing about this. Had we
not better go down to breakfast?'

And so Priscilla carried the day. They went down to breakfast, and
during the meal Hugh would speak to nobody. When the gloomy meal was
over he took his pipe and walked out to the cottage. It was an
untidy-looking, rickety place, small and desolate, with a pretension
about it of the lowest order, a pretension that was evidently ashamed
of itself. There was a porch. And the one sitting-room had what the
late Mr Soames had always called his bow window. But the porch looked
as though it were tumbling down, and the bow window looked as though it
were tumbling out. The parlour and the bedroom over it had been papered
but the paper was torn and soiled, and in sundry places was hanging
loose. There was a miserable little room called a kitchen to the right
as you entered the door, in which the grate was worn out, and behind
this was a shed with a copper. In the garden there remained the stumps
and stalks of Mr Soames's cabbages, and there were weeds in plenty, and
a damp hole among some elder bushes called an arbour. It was named
Laburnum Cottage, from a shrub that grew at the end of the house. Hugh
Stanbury shuddered as he stood smoking among the cabbage-stalks. How
could a man ask such a girl as Nora Rowley to be his wife, whose mother
lived in a place like this? While he was still standing in the garden,
and thinking of Priscilla's obstinacy and his: own ten guineas a week,
and the sort of life which he lived in London where he dined usually at
his club, and denied himself nothing in the way of pipes, beer, and
beef-steaks, he heard a step behind him, and turning round, saw his
elder sister.

'Hugh,' she said, 'you must not be angry with me.'

'But I am angry with you.'

'I know you are; but you are unjust. I am doing what I am sure is
right.'

'I never saw such a beastly hole as this in all my life.'

'I don't think it beastly at all. You'll find that I'll make it nice.
Whatever we want here you shall give us. You are not to think that I am
too proud to take anything at your hands. It is not that.'

'It's very like it.'

'I have never refused anything that is reasonable, but it is quite
unreasonable that we should go on living in such a place as that, as
though we had three or four hundred a year of our own. If mamma got
used to the comfort of it, it would be hard then upon her to move. You
shall give her what you can afford, and what is reasonable; but it is
madness to think of living there. I couldn't do it.'

'You're to have your way at any rate, it seems.'

'But you must not quarrel with me, Hugh. Give me a kiss. I don't have
you often with me; and yet you are the only man in the world that I
ever speak to, or even know. I sometimes half think that the bread is
so hard and the water so bitter, that life will become impossible. I
try to get over it; but if you were to go away from me in anger, I
should be so beaten for a week or two that I could do nothing.'

'Why won't you let me do anything?'

'I will whatever you please. But kiss me.' Then he kissed her, as he
stood among Mr Soames's cabbage-stalks. 'Dear Hugh; you are such a god
to me!'

'You don't treat me like a divinity.'

'But I think of you as one when you are absent. The gods were never
obeyed when they showed themselves. Let us go and have a walk. Come;
shall we get as far as Ridleigh Mill?'

Then they started together, and all unpleasantness was over between
them when they returned to the Clock House.

CHAPTER XLIV - BROOKE BURGESS TAKES LEAVE OF EXETER

The time had arrived at which Brooke Burgess was to leave Exeter. He
had made his tour through the county, and returned to spend his two
last nights at Miss Stanbury's house. When he came back Dorothy was
still at Nuncombe, but she arrived in the Close the day before his
departure. Her mother and sister had wished her to stay at Nuncombe.
'There is a bed for you now, and a place to be comfortable in,'
Priscilla had said, laughing, 'and you may as well see the last of us.'
But Dorothy declared that she had named a day to her aunt, and that she
would not break her engagement. 'I suppose you can stay if you like,'
Priscilla had urged. But Dorothy was of opinion that she ought not to
stay. She said not a word about Brooke Burgess; but it may be that it
would have been matter of regret to her not to shake hands with him
once more. Brooke declared to her that had she not come back he would
have gone over to Nuncombe to see her; but: Dorothy did not consider
herself entitled to believe that.

On the morning of the last day Brooke went over to his uncle's office.
'I've come to say Good-bye, Uncle Barty,' he said.

'Good-bye, my boy. Take care of yourself.'

'I mean to try.'

'You haven't quarrelled with the old woman have you? said Uncle Barty.

'Not yet that is to say, not to the knife.'

'And you still believe that you are to have her money?'

'I believe nothing one way or the other. You may be sure of this I
shall never count it mine till I've got it; and I shall never make
myself so sure of it, as to break my heart because I don't get it. I
suppose I've got as good a right to it as anybody else, and I don't see
why I shouldn't take it if it come in my way.'

'I don't think it ever will,' said the old man, after a pause.

'I shall be none the worse,' said Brooke.

'Yes, you will. You'll be a broken-hearted man. And she means to break
your heart. She does it on purpose. She has no more idea of leaving you
her money than I have. Why should she?'

'Simply because she takes the fancy.'

'Fancy! Believe me, there is very little fancy about it. There isn't
one of the name she wouldn't ruin if she could. She'd break all our
hearts if she could get at them. Look at me and my position. I'm little
more than a clerk in the concern. By God I'm not so well off as a
senior clerk in many a bank. If there came a bad time, I must lose as
the others would lose but a clerk never loses. And my share in the
business is almost a nothing. It's just nothing compared to what it
would have been, only for her.'

Brooke had known that his uncle was a disappointed, or at least a
discontented man; but he had never known much of the old man's
circumstances, and certainly had not expected to hear him speak in the
strain that he had now used. He had heard often that his Uncle Barty
disliked Miss Stanbury, and had not been surprised at former sharp,
biting little words spoken to reference to that lady's character. But
he had not expected such a tirade of abuse as the banker had now poured
out. 'Of course I know nothing about the bank,' said he; 'but I did not
suppose that she had had anything to do with it.'

'Where do: you think the money came from that she has got? Did you ever
hear that she had anything of her own? She never had a penny never a
penny. It came out of this house. It is the capital on which this
business was founded, and on which it ought to be carried on to this
day. My brother had thrown her off; by heavens, yes had thrown her off.
He had found out what she was and had got rid of her.'

'But he left her his money.'

'Yes she got near him when he was dying, and he did leave her his money
his money, and my money, and your father's money.'

'He could have given her nothing, Uncle Barty, that wasn't his own.'

'Of course that's true it's true in one way. You might say the same of
a man who was cozened into leaving every shilling away from his own
children. I wasn't in Exeter when the will was made. We none of us were
here. But she was here; and when we came to see him die, there we found
her. She had had her revenge upon him, and she means to have it on all
of us. I don't believe she'll ever leave you a shilling, Brooke. You'll
find her out yet, and you'll talk of her to your nephews as I do to
you.'

Brooke made some ordinary answer to this, and bade is uncle adieu. He
had allowed himself to entertain a half chivalrous idea that he could
produce a reconciliation between Miss Stanbury and his uncle Barty; and
since he had been at Exeter he had said a word, first to the one and
then to the other, hinting at the subject but his hints had certainly
not been successful. As he walked from the bank into the High Street he
could not fail to ask himself whether there were any grounds for the
terrible accusations which he had just heard from his uncle's lips.
Something of the same kind, though in form much less violent, had been
repeated to him very often by others of the family. Though he had as a
boy known Miss Stanbury well, he had been taught to regard her as an
ogress. All the Burgesses had regarded Miss Stanbury as an ogress since
that unfortunate will had come to light. But she was an ogress from
whom something might be gained and the ogress had still persisted in
saying that a Burgess should be her heir. It had therefore come to pass
that Brooke had been brought up half to revere her and half to abhor
her.'she is a dreadful woman,' said his branch of the family, 'who will
not scruple at anything evil. But as it seems that you may probably
reap the advantage of the evil that she does, it will become you to put
up with her iniquity' As he had become old enough to understand the
nature of her position, he had determined to judge for himself; but his
judgment hitherto simply amounted to this that Miss Stanbury was a very
singular old woman, with a kind heart and good instincts, but so
capricious withal that no sensible man would risk his happiness on
expectations formed on her promises. Guided by this opinion, he had
resolved to be attentive to her and, after a certain fashion,
submissive; but certainly not to become her slave. She had thrown over
her nephew. She was constantly complaining to him of her niece. Now and
again she would say a very bitter word to him about himself. When he
had left Exeter on his little excursion, no one was so much in favour
with her as Mr Gibson. On his return he found that Mr Gibson had been
altogether discarded, and was spoken of in terms of almost insolent
abuse. 'If I were ever so humble to her,' he had said to himself, 'it
would do no good; and there is nothing I hate so much as humility.' He
had thus determined to take the goods the gods provided, should it ever
come to pass that such godlike provision was laid before him out of
Miss Stanbury's coffers but not to alter his mode of life or put
himself out of his way in obedience to her behests, as a man might be
expected to do who was destined to receive so rich a legacy. Upon this
idea he had acted, still believing the old woman to be good, but
believing at the same time that she was very capricious. Now he had
heard what his Uncle Bartholomew Burgess had had to say upon the
matter, and he could not refrain from asking himself whether his
uncle's accusations were true.

In a narrow passage between the High Street and the Close he met Mr
Gibson. There had come to be that sort of intimacy between the two men
which grows from closeness of position rather than from any social
desire on either side, and it was natural that Burgess should say a
word of farewell. On the previous evening Miss Stanbury had relieved
her mind by turning Mr Gibson into ridicule in her description to
Brooke of the manner in which the clergyman had carried on his love
affair; and she had at the same time declared that Mr Gibson had been
most violently impertinent to herself. He knew, therefore, that Miss
Stanbury and Mr Gibson had become two, and would on this occasion have
passed on without a word relative to the old lady had Mr Gibson allowed
him to do so. But Mr Gibson spoke his mind freely.

'Off to-morrow, are you?' he said. 'Good-bye. I hope we may meet again;
but not in the same house, Mr Burgess.'

'There or anywhere I shall be very happy,' said Brooke.

'Not there, certainly. While you were absent Miss Stanbury treated me
in such a way that I shall certainly never put my foot in her house
again.'

'Dear me! I thought that you and she were such great friends.'

'I knew her very well, of course and respected her. She is a good
churchwoman, and is charitable in the city; but she has got such a
tongue in her head that there is no bearing it when she does what she
calls giving you a bit of her mind.'

'She has been indulgent to me, and has not given me much of it.'

'Your time will come, I've no doubt,' continued Mr Gibson. 'Everybody
has always told me that it would be so. Even her oldest friends knew
it. You ask Mrs MacHugh, or Mrs French, at Heavitree.'

'Mrs French!' said Brooke, laughing. 'That would hardly be fair
evidence.'

'Why not? I don't know a better judge of character in all Exeter than
Mrs French. And she and Miss Stanbury have been intimate all their
lives. Ask your uncle at the bank.'

'My uncle and Miss Stanbury never were friends,' said Brooke.

'Ask Hugh Stanbury what he thinks of her. But don't suppose I want to
say a word against her. I wouldn't for the world do such a thing. Only,
as we've met there and all that, I thought it best to let you know that
she had treated me in such a way, and has been altogether so violent,
that I never will go there again.' So saying, Mr Gibson passed on, and
was of opinion that he had spoken with great generosity of the old
woman who had treated him so badly.

In the afternoon Brooke Burgess went over to the further end of the
Close, and called on Mrs MacHugh; and from thence he walked across to
Heavitree, and called on the Frenches. It may be doubted whether he
would have been so well behaved to these ladies had they not been
appealed to by Mr Gibson as witnesses to the character of Miss
Stanbury. He got very little from Mrs MacHugh. That lady was kind and
cordial, and expressed many wishes that she might see him again in
Exeter. When he said a few words about Mr Gibson, Mrs MacHugh only
laughed, and declared that the gentleman would soon find a plaister for
that sore. 'There are more fishes than one in the sea,' she said.

'But I'm afraid they've quarrelled, Mrs MacHugh.'

'So they tell me. What should we have to talk about here if somebody
didn't quarrel sometimes? She and I ought to get up a quarrel for the
good of the public only they know that I never can quarrel with
anybody. I never see anybody interesting enough to quarrel with.' But
Mrs MacHugh said nothing about Miss Stanbury, except that she sent over
a message with reference to a rubber of whist for the next night but
one.

He found the two French girls sitting with their mother, and they all
expressed their great gratitude to him for coming to say good-bye
before he went. 'It is so very nice of you, Mr Burgess,' said Camilla,
'and particularly just at present.'

'Yes, indeed,' said Arabella, 'because you know things have been so
unpleasant.'

'My dears, never mind about that,' said Mrs French. 'Miss Stanbury has
meant everything for the best, and it is all over now.'

'I don't know what you mean by its being all over, mamma,' said
Camilla. 'As far as I can understand, it has never been begun.'

'My dear, the least said the soonest mended,' said Mrs French.

'That's of course, mamma,' said Camilla; 'but yet one can't hold one's
tongue altogether. All the city is talking about it, and I dare say Mr
Burgess has heard as much as anybody else.'

'I've heard nothing at all,' said Brooke.

'Oh yes, you have,' continued Camilla. Arabella conceived herself at
this moment to be situated in so delicate a position, that it was best
that her sister should talk about it, and that she herself should hold
her tongue with the exception, perhaps, of a hint here and there which
might be of assistance; for Arabella completely understood that the
prize was now to be hers, if the prize could be rescued out of the
Stanbury clutches. She was aware no one better aware how her sister had
interfered with her early hopes, and was sure, in her own mind, that
all her disappointment had come from fratricidal rivalry on the part of
Camilla. It had never, however, been open to her to quarrel with
Camilla. There they were, linked together, and together they must fight
their battles. As two pigs may be seen at the same trough, each
striving to take the delicacies of the banquet from the other, and yet
enjoying always the warmth of the same dunghill in amicable contiguity,
so had these young ladies lived in sisterly friendship, while each was
striving to take a husband from the other. They had understood the
position, and, though for years back they had talked about Mr Gibson,
they had never quarrelled; but now, in these latter days of the
Stanbury interference, there had come tacitly to be something of an
understanding between them that, if any fighting were still possible on
the subject, one must be put forward and the other must yield. There
had been no spoken agreement, but Arabella quite understood that she
was to be put forward. It was for her to take up the running, and to
win, if possible, against the Stanbury filly. That was her view, and
she was inclined to give Camilla credit for acting in accordance with
it with honesty and zeal. She felt, therefore, that her words on the
present occasion ought to be few. She sat back in her corner of the
sofa, and was intent on her work, and shewed by the pensiveness of her
brow that there were thoughts within her bosom of which she was not
disposed to speak. 'You must have heard a great deal,' said Carnilla,
laughing. 'You must know how poor Mr Gibson has been abused, because he
wouldn't--'

'Camilla, don't be foolish,' said Mrs French.

'Because he wouldn't what?' asked Brooke. 'What ought he to have done
that he didn't do?'

'I don't know anything about ought,' said Camilla. 'That's a matter of
taste altogether.'

'I'm the worst hand in the world at a riddle,' said Brooke.

'How sly you are,' continued Camilla, laughing; 'as if dear Aunt
Stanbury hadn't confided all her hopes to you.'

'Camilla, dear don't,' said Arabella.

'But when a gentleman is hunted, and can't be caught, I don't think he
ought to be abused to his face.'

'But who hunted him, and who abused him?' asked Brooke.

'Mind, I don't mean to say a word against Miss Stanbury, Mr Burgess.
We've known her and loved her all our lives haven't we, mamma?'

'And respected her,' said Arabella.

'Quite so,' continued Camilla. 'But you know, Mr Burgess, that she
likes her own way.'

'I don't know anybody that does not,' said Brooke.

'And when she's disappointed, she shows it. There's no doubt she is
disappointed now, Mr Burgess.'

'What's the good of going on, Camilla?' said Mrs French. Arabella sat
silent in her corner, with a conscious glow of satisfaction, as she
reflected that the joint disappointment of the elder and the younger
Miss Stanbury had been caused by a tender remembrance of her own
charms. Had not dear Mr Gibson told her, in the glowing language of
truth, that there was nothing further from his thoughts than the idea
of taking Dorothy Stanbury for his wife?

'Well, you know,' continued Camilla, 'I think that when a person makes
an attempt, and comes by the worst of it, that person should put up
with the defeat, and not say all manner of ill-natured things.
Everybody knows that a certain gentleman is very intimate in this
house.'

Don't, dear,' said Arabella, in a whisper.

'Yes, I shall,' said Camilla. 'I don't know why people should hold
their tongues, when other people talk so loudly. I don't care a bit
what anybody says about the gentleman and us. We have known him for
ever so many years, and mamma is very fond of him.'

'Indeed I am, Camilla,' said Mrs French.

'And for the matter of that, so am I very,' said Camilla, laughing
bravely. 'I don't care who knows it.'

'Don't be so silly, child,' said Arabella. Camilla was certainly doing
her best, and Arabella was grateful.

'We don't care what people may say,' continued Camilla again. 'Of
course we heard, as everybody else heard too, that a certain gentleman
was to be married to a certain lady. It was nothing to us whether he
was married or not.'

'Nothing at all,' said Arabella.

'We never spoke ill of the young lady. We did not interfere. If the
gentleman liked the young lady, he was quite at liberty to marry her,
as far as we were concerned. We had been in the habit of seeing him
here, almost as a brother, and perhaps we might feel that a connection
with that particular young lady would take him from us; but we never
hinted so much even as that to him or to anyone else. Why should we? It
was nothing to us. Now it turns Out that the gentleman never meant
anything of the kind, whereupon he is pretty nearly kicked out of the
house, and all manner of ill-natured things are said about us
everywhere.' By this time Camilla had become quite excited, and was
speaking with much animation.

'How can you be so foolish, Camilla?' said Arabella.

'Perhaps I am foolish,' said Camilla, 'to care what anybody says.'

'What can it all be to Mr Burgess?' said Mrs French.

'Only this, that as we all like Mr Burgess, and as he is almost one of
the family in the Close, I think he ought to know why we are not quite
so cordial as we used to be. Now that the matter is over I have no
doubt things will get right again. And as for the young lady, I'm sure
we feel for her. We think it was the aunt who was indiscreet.'

'And then she has such a tongue,' said Arabella.

Our friend Brooke, of course, knew the whole truth knew the nature of
Mr Gibson's failure, and knew also how Dorothy had acted in the affair.
He was inclined, moreover, to believe that the ladies who were now
talking to him were as well instructed on the subject as was he
himself. He had heard, too, of the ambition of the two young ladies now
before him, and believed that that ambition was not yet dead. But he
did not think it incumbent on him to fight a battle even on behalf of
Dorothy. He might have declared that Dorothy, at least, had not been
disappointed, but he thought it better to be silent about Dorothy.
'Yes,' he said, 'Miss Stanbury has a tongue; but I think it speaks as
much good as it does evil, and perhaps that is a great deal to say for
any lady's tongue.'