He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope (books you need to read .txt) 📕

all that he does do well. As for getting a potato properly boiled,

that’s quite out of the question. Yes, it is a good glass of sherry. I

told you we’d a fairish tap of sherry on. Well, I was there, backwards

and forwards, for nearly six weeks.’

‘And how did you get on with the old woman?’

‘Like a house on fire,’ said Brooke.

‘She didn’t quarrel with you?’

‘No upon the whole she did not. I always felt that it was touch and go.

She might or she might not. Every now and then she looked at me, and

said a sharp word, as though it was about to come. But I had determined

when I went there altogether to disregard that kind of thing.’

‘It’s rather important to you is it not?’

‘You mean about her money?’

‘Of course, I mean about her money,’ said Stanbury.

‘It is important and so it was to you.’

‘Not in the same degree, or nearly so. And as for me, it was not on the

cards that we shouldn’t quarrel. I am so utterly a Bohemian in all my

ideas of life, and she is so absolutely the reverse, that not to have

quarrelled would have been hypocritical on my part or on hers. She had

got it into her head that she had a right to rule my life; and, of

course, she quarrelled with me when I made her understand that she

should do nothing of the kind. Now, she won’t want to rule you.’

‘I hope not.’

‘She has taken you up,’ continued Stanbury, ‘on altogether a different

understanding. You are to her the representative of a family to whom

she thinks she owes the restitution of the property which se enjoys. I

was simply a member of her own family, to which she owes nothing. She

thought it well to help one of us out of what she regarded as her

private purse, and she chose me. But the matter is quite different with

you.’

‘She might have given everything to you, as well as to me,’ said

Brooke.

‘That’s not her idea. She conceives herself bound to leave all she has

back to a Burgess, except anything she may save as she says, off her

own back, or out of her own belly. She has told me so a score of

times.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘I always told her that, let her do as she would, I should never ask

any question about her will.’

‘But she hates us all like poison except me,’ said Brooke. ‘I never

knew people so absurdly hostile as are your aunt and my uncle Barty.

Each thinks the other the most wicked person in the world.’

‘I suppose your uncle was hard upon her once.’

‘Very likely. He is a hard man and has, very warmly, all the feelings

of an injured man. I suppose my uncle Brooke’s will was a cruel blow to

him. He professes to believe that Miss Stanbury will never leave me a

shilling.’

‘He is wrong, then,’ said Stanbury.

‘Oh yes he’s wrong, because he thinks that that’s her present

intention. I don’t know that he’s wrong as to the probable result.’

‘Who will have it, then?’

‘There are ever so many horses in the race,’ said Brooke. ‘I’m one.’

‘You’re the favourite,’ said Stanbury.

‘For the moment I am. Then there’s yourself.’

‘I’ve been scratched, and am altogether out of the betting.’

‘And your sister,’ continued Brooke.

‘She’s only entered to run for the second money; and, if she’ll trot

over the course quietly, and not go the wrong side of the posts, she’ll

win that.’

‘She may do more than that. Then there’s Martha.’

‘My aunt will never leave her money to a servant. What she may give to

Martha would come from her own savings.’

‘The next is a dark horse, but one that wins a good many races of this

kind. He’s apt to come in with a fatal rush at the end.’

‘Who is it?’

‘The hospitals. When an old lady finds in her latter days that she

hates everybody, and fancies that the people around her are all

thinking of her motley, she’s uncommon likely to indulge herself a

little bit of revenge, and solace herself with large-handed charity.’

‘But she’s so good a woman at heart,’ said Hugh.

‘And what can a good woman do better than promote hospitals?’

‘She’ll never do that. She’s too strong. It’s a maudlin sort of thing,

after all, for a person to leave everything to a hospital.’

‘But people are maudlin when they’re dying,’ said Brooke ‘or even when

they think they’re dying. How else did the Church get the estates, of

which we are now distributing so bountifully some of the last remnants

down at our office? Come into the next room, and we’ll have a smoke.’

They had their smoke, and then they went at half-price to the play;

and, after the play was over, they eat three or four dozen of oysters

between them. Brooke Burgess was a little too old for oysters at

midnight in September; but he went through his work like a man. Hugh

Stanbury’s powers were so great, that he could have got up and done the

same thing again, after he had been an hour in bed, without any serious

inconvenience.

But, in truth, Brooke Burgess had still another word or two to say

before he went to his rest, They supped somewhere near the Haymarket,

and then he offered to walk home with Stanbury, to his chambers in

Lincoln’s Inn. ‘Do you know that Mr Gibson at Exeter?’ he asked, as

they passed through Leicester Square.

‘Yes; I knew him. He was a sort of tame-cat parson at my aunt’s house,

in my days.’

‘Exactly but I fancy that has come to an end now. Have you heard

anything about him lately?’

‘Well yes I have,’ said Stanbury, feeling that dislike to speak of his

sister which is common to most brothers when in company with other men.

‘I suppose you’ve heard of it, and, as I was in the middle of it all,

of course I couldn’t but know all about it too. Your aunt wanted him to

marry your sister.’

‘So I was told.’

‘But your sister didn’t see it,’ said Brooke.

‘So I understand,’ said Stanbury. ‘I believe my aunt was exceedingly

liberal,’ and meant to do the best she could for poor Dorothy; but, if

she didn’t like him, I suppose she was right not to have him,’ said

Hugh.

‘Of course she was right,’ said Brooke, with a good deal of enthusiasm.

‘I believe Gibson to be a very decent sort of fellow,’ said Stanbury.

‘A mean, paltry dog,’ said Brooke. There had been a little whisky-toddy

after the oysters, and Mr Burgess was perhaps moved to a warmer

expression of feeling than he might have displayed had he discussed

this branch of the subject before supper. ‘I knew from the first that

she would have nothing to say to him. He is such a poor creature!’

‘I always thought well of him,’ said Stanbury, ‘and was inclined to

think that Dolly might have done worse.’

‘It is hard to say what is the worst a girl might do; but I think she

might do, perhaps, a little better.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Hugh.

‘I think I shall go down, and ask her to take myself.’

‘Do you mean it in earnest?’

‘I do,’ said Brooke. ‘Of course, I hadn’t a chance when I was there.

She told me—’

‘Who told you, Dorothy?’

‘No, your aunt she told me that Mr Gibson was to marry your sister. You

know your aunt’s way. She spoke of it as though the thing were settled

as soon as she had got it into her own head; and she was as hot upon it

as though Mr Gibson had been an archbishop. I had nothing to do then

but to wait and see.’

‘I had no idea of Dolly being fought for by rivals.’

‘Brothers never think much of their sisters,’ said Brooke Burgess.

‘I can assure you I think a great deal of Dorothy,’ said Hugh. ‘I

believe her to be as sweet a woman as God ever made. She hardly knows

that she has a self belonging to herself.’

‘I’m sure she doesn’t,’ said Brooke.

‘She is a dear, loving, sweet-tempered creature, who is only too ready

to yield in all things.’

‘But she wouldn’t yield about Gibson,’ said Brooke.

‘How did she and my aunt manage?’

‘Your sister simply said she couldn’t and then that she wouldn’t. I

never thought from the first moment that she’d take that fellow. In the

first place he can’t say boo to a goose.’

‘But Dolly wouldn’t want a man to say boo.’

‘I’m not so sure of that, old fellow. At any rate I mean to try myself.

Now what’ll the old woman say?’

‘She’ll be pleased as Punch, I should think,’ said Stanbury.

‘Either that or else she’ll swear that she’ll never speak another word

to either of us. However, I shall go on with it.’

‘Does Dorothy know anything of this?’ asked Stanbury.

‘Not a word,’ said Brooke. ‘I came away a day or so after Gibson was

settled; and as I had been talked to all through the affair by both of

them, I couldn’t turn round and offer myself the moment he was gone.

You won’t object will you?’

‘Who; I?’ said Stanbury. ‘I shall have no objection as long as Dolly

pleases herself. Of course you know that we haven’t as much as a brass

farthing among us?’

‘That won’t matter if the old lady takes it kindly,’ said Brooke. Then

they parted, at the corner of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and Hugh as he went

up to his own rooms, reflected with something of wonderment on the

success of Dorothy’s charms. She had always been the poor one of the

family, the chick out of the nest which would most require assistance

from the stronger birds; but it now appeared that she would become the

first among all the Stanburys. Wealth had first flowed down upon the

Stanbury family from the will of old Brooke Burgess; and it now seemed

probable that poor Dolly would ultimately have the enjoyment of it all.