He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope (ebook reader with internet browser txt) 📖

CROPPER AND BURGESS

We must now go back to Exeter and look after Mr Brooke Burgess and Miss

Dorothy Stanbury. It is rather hard upon readers that they should be

thus hurried from the completion of hymeneals at Florence to the

preparations for other hymeneals in Devonshire; but it is the nature of

a complex story to be entangled with many weddings towards its close.

In this little history there are, we fear, three or four more to come.

We will not anticipate by alluding prematurely to Hugh Stanbury’s

treachery, or death, or the possibility that he after all may turn out

to be the real descendant of the true Lord Peterborough and the actual

inheritor of the title and estate of Monkhams, nor will we speak of

Nora’s certain fortitude under either of these emergencies. But the

instructed reader must be aware that Camilla French ought to have a

husband found for her; that Colonel Osborne should be caught in some

matrimonial trap, as how otherwise should he be fitly punished? and

that something should be at least attempted for Priscilla Stanbury, who

from the first has been intended to be the real heroine of these pages.

That Martha should marry Giles Hickbody, and Barty Burgess run away

with Mrs MacHugh, is of course evident to the meanest novel-expounding

capacity; but the fate of Brooke Burgess and of Dorothy will require to

be evolved with some delicacy and much detail.

There was considerable difficulty in fixing the day. In the first place

Miss Stanbury was not very well and then she was very fidgety. She must

see Brooke again before the day was fixed, and after seeing Brooke she

must see her lawyer. ‘To have a lot of money to look after is more

plague than profit, my dear,’ she said to Dorothy one day;

‘particularly when you don’t quite know what you ought to do with it.’

Dorothy had always avoided any conversation with her aunt about money

since the first moment in which she had thought of accepting Brooke

Burgess as her husband. She knew that her aunt had some feeling which

made her averse to the idea that any portion of the property which she

had inherited should be enjoyed by a Stanbury after her death, and

Dorothy, guided by this knowledge, had almost convinced herself that

her love for Brooke was treason either against him or against her aunt.

If, by engaging herself to him, she would rob him of his inheritance,

how bitter a burden to him would her love have been! If, on the other

hand, she should reward her aunt for all that had been done for her by

forcing herself, a Stanbury, into a position not intended for her, how

base would be her ingratitude! These thoughts had troubled her much,

and had always prevented her from answering any of her aunt’s chance

allusions to the property. For her, things had at last gone very right.

She did not quite know how it had come about, but she was engaged to

marry the man she loved. And her aunt was, at any rate, reconciled to

the marriage. But when Miss Stanbury declared that she did not know

what to do about the property, Dorothy could only hold her tongue. She

had had plenty to say when it had been suggested to her that the

marriage should be put off yet for a short while, and that, in the

meantime, Brooke should come again to Exeter. She swore that she did

not care for how long it was put off, only that she hoped it might not

be put off altogether. And as for Brooke’s coming, that, for the

present, would be very much nicer than being married out of hand at

once. Dorothy, in truth, was not at all in a hurry to be married, but

she would have liked to have had her lover always coming and going.

Since the courtship had become a thing permitted, she had had the

privilege of welcoming him twice at the house in the Close; and that

running down to meet him in the little front parlour, and the getting

up to make his breakfast for him as he started in the morning, were

among the happiest epochs of her life. And then, as soon as ever the

breakfast was eaten, and he was gone, she would sit down to write him a

letter. Oh, those letters, so beautifully crossed, more than one of

which was copied from beginning to end because some word in it was not

thought to be sweet enough—what a heaven of happiness they were to her!

The writing of the first had disturbed her greatly, and she had almost

repented of the privilege before it was ended; but with the first and

second the difficulties had disappeared; and, had she not felt somewhat

ashamed of the occupation, she could have sat at her desk and written

him letters all day. Brooke would answer them, with fair regularity,

but in a most cursory manner, sending seven or eight lines in return for

two sheets fully crossed; but this did not discompose her in the least.

He was worked hard at his office, and had hundreds of other things to

do. He, too, could say, so thought Dorothy, more in eight lines than she

could put into as many pages.

She was quite happy when she was told that the marriage could not take

place till August, but that Brooke must come again in July. Brooke did

come in the first week of July, and somewhat horrified Dorothy by

declaring to her that Miss Stanbury was unreasonable.

‘If I insist upon leaving London so often for a day or two,’ said he,

‘how am I to get anything like leave of absence when the time comes?’

In answer to this Dorothy tried to make him understand that business

should not be neglected, and that, as far as she was concerned, she

could do very well without that trip abroad which he had proposed for

her. ‘I’m not going to be done in that way,’ said Brooke. ‘And now that

I am here she has nothing to say to me. I’ve told her a dozen times

that I don’t want to know anything about her will, and that I’ll take

it all for granted. There is something to be settled on you, that she

calls her own.’

‘She is so generous, Brooke.’

‘She is generous enough, but she is very whimsical. She is going to

make