But, my pet, do not let that reasoning of Aunt Stanbury’s about the thirty young girls who would give their eyes for Mr. Gibson, have any weight with you. You should not take him because thirty other young girls would be glad to have him. And do not think too much of that respectability of which you speak. I would never advise my Dolly to marry any man unless she could be respectable in her new position; but that alone should go for nothing. Nor should our poverty. We shall not starve. And even if we did, that would be but a poor excuse.
I can find no escape from this—that you should love him before you say that you will take him. But honest, loyal love need not, I take it, be of that romantic kind which people write about in novels and poetry. You need not think him to be perfect, or the best or grandest of men. Your heart will tell you whether he is dear to you. And remember, Dolly, that I shall remember that love itself must begin at some precise time. Though you had not learned to love him when you wrote on Tuesday, you may have begun to do so when you get this on Thursday.
If you find that you love him, then say that you will be his wife. If your heart revolts from such a declaration as being false;—if you cannot bring yourself to feel that you prefer him to others as the partner of your life—then tell him, with thanks for his courtesy, that it cannot be as he would have it.
XXXV
Mr. Gibson’s Good Fortune
“I’ll bet you half-a-crown, my lad, you’re thrown over at last, like the rest of them. There’s nothing she likes so much as taking someone up in order that she may throw him over afterwards.” It was thus that Mr. Bartholomew Burgess cautioned his nephew Brooke.
“I’ll take care that she shan’t break my heart, Uncle Barty. I will go my way and she may go hers, and she may give her money to the hospital if she pleases.”
On the morning after his arrival Brooke Burgess had declared aloud in Miss Stanbury’s parlour that he was going over to the bank to see his uncle. Now there was in this almost a breach of contract. Miss Stanbury, when she invited the young man to Exeter, had stipulated that there should be no intercourse between her house and the bank. “Of course, I shall not need to know where you go or where you don’t go,” she had written; “but after all that has passed there must not be any positive intercourse between my house and the bank.” And now he had spoken of going over to C and B, as he called them, with the utmost indifference. Miss Stanbury had looked very grave, but had said nothing. She had determined to be on her guard, so that she should not be driven to quarrel with Brooke if she could avoid it.
Bartholomew Burgess was a tall, thin, ill-tempered old man, as well-known in Exeter as the cathedral, and respected after a fashion. No one liked him. He said ill-natured things of all his neighbours, and had never earned any reputation for doing good-natured acts. But he had lived in Exeter for nearly seventy years, and had achieved that sort of esteem which comes from long tenure. And he had committed no great iniquities in the course of his fifty years of business. The bank had never stopped payment, and he had robbed no one. He had not swallowed up widows and orphans, and had done his work in the firm of Cropper and Burgess after the old-fashioned safe manner, which leads neither to riches nor to ruin. Therefore he was respected. But he was a discontented, sour old man, who believed himself to have been injured by all his own friends, who disliked his own partners because they had bought that which had, at any rate, never belonged to him;—and whose strongest passion it was to hate Miss Stanbury of the Close.
“She’s got a parson by the hand, now,” said the uncle, as he continued his caution to the nephew.
“There was a clergyman there last night.”
“No doubt, and she’ll play him off against you, and you against him; and then she’ll throw you both over. I know her.”
“She has got a right to do what she likes with her own, Uncle Barty.”
“And how did she get it? Never mind. I’m not going to set you against her, if you’re her favourite for the moment. She has a niece with her there—hasn’t she?”
“One of her brother’s daughters.”
“They say she’s going to make that clergyman marry her.”
“What;—Mr. Gibson?”
“Yes. They tell me he was as good as engaged to another girl—one of the Frenches of Heavitree. And therefore dear Jemima could do nothing better than interfere. When she has succeeded in breaking the girl’s heart—”
“Which girl’s heart, Uncle Barty?”
“The girl the man was to have married; when that’s done she’ll throw Gibson
