“I would try to forget it all now, Aunt Stanbury.”
“Forget it! How is that to be done? How can the mind forget the history of its own life? No—I cannot forget it. I can forgive it.”
“Then why not forgive it?”
“I do. I have. Why else are you here?”
“But forgive old Uncle Barty also!”
“Has he forgiven me? Come now. If I wished to forgive him, how should I begin? Would he be gracious if I went to him? Does he love me, do you think—or hate me? Uncle Barty is a good hater. It is the best point about him. No, Brooke, we won’t try the farce of a reconciliation after a long life of enmity. Nobody would believe us, and we should not believe each other.”
“Then I certainly would not try.”
“I do not mean to do so. The truth is, Brooke, you shall have it all when I’m gone, if you don’t turn against me. You won’t take to writing for penny newspapers, will you, Brooke?” As she asked the question she put one of her hands softly on his shoulder.
“I certainly shan’t offend in that way.”
“And you won’t be a Radical?”
“No, not a Radical.”
“I mean a man to follow Beales and Bright, a republican, a putter-down of the Church, a hater of the Throne. You won’t take up that line, will you, Brooke?”
“It isn’t my way at present, Aunt Stanbury. But a man shouldn’t promise.”
“Ah me! It makes me sad when I think what the country is coming to. I’m told there are scores of members of Parliament who don’t pronounce their h’s. When I was young, a member of Parliament used to be a gentleman;—and they’ve taken to ordaining all manner of people. It used to be the case that when you met a clergyman you met a gentleman. By the by, Brooke, what do you think of Mr. Gibson?”
“Mr. Gibson! To tell the truth, I haven’t thought much about him.”
“But you must think about him. Perhaps you haven’t thought about my niece, Dolly Stanbury?”
“I think that she’s an uncommonly nice girl.”
“She’s not to be nice for you, young man. She’s to be married to Mr. Gibson.”
“Are they engaged?”
“Well, no; but I intend that they shall be. You won’t begrudge that I should give my little savings to one of my own name?”
“You don’t know me, Aunt Stanbury, if you think that I should begrudge anything that you might do with your money.”
“Dolly has been here a month or two. I think it’s three months since she came, and I do like her. She’s soft and womanly, and hasn’t taken up those vile, filthy habits which almost all the girls have adopted. Have you seen those Frenches with the things they have on their heads?”
“I was speaking to them yesterday.”
“Nasty sluts! You can see the grease on their foreheads when they try to make their hair go back in the dirty French fashion. Dolly is not like that;—is she?”
“She is not in the least like either of the Miss Frenches.”
“And now I want her to become Mrs. Gibson. He is quite taken.”
“Is he?”
“Oh dear, yes. Didn’t you see him the other night at dinner and afterwards? Of course he knows that I can give her a little bit of money, which always goes for something, Brooke. And I do think it would be such a nice thing for Dolly.”
“And what does Dolly think about it?”
“There’s the difficulty. She likes him well enough; I’m sure of that. And she has no stuck-up ideas about herself. She isn’t one of those who think that almost nothing is good enough for them. But—”
“She has an objection.”
“I don’t know what it is. I sometimes think she is so bashful and modest she doesn’t like to talk of being married—even to an old woman like me.”
“Dear me! That’s not the way of the age;—is it, Aunt Stanbury?”
“It’s coming to that, Brooke, that the girls will ask the men soon. Yes—and that they won’t take a refusal either. I do believe that Camilla French did ask Mr. Gibson.”
“And what did Mr. Gibson say?”
“Ah;—I can’t tell you that. He knows too well what he’s about to take her. He’s to come here on Friday at eleven, and you must be out of the way. I shall be out of the way too. But if Dolly says a word to you before that, mind you make her understand that she ought to accept Gibson.”
“She’s too good for him, according to my thinking.”
“Don’t you be a fool. How can any young woman be too good for a gentleman and a clergyman? Mr. Gibson is a gentleman. Do you know—only you must not mention this—that I have a kind of idea that we could get Nuncombe Putney for him. My father had the living, and my brother; and I should like it to go on in the family.”
No opportunity came in the way of Brooke Burgess to say anything in favour of Mr. Gibson to Dorothy Stanbury. There did come to be very quickly a sort of intimacy between her and her aunt’s favourite; but she was one not prone to talk about her own affairs. And as to such an affair as this—a question as to whether she should or should not give herself in marriage to her suitor—she, who could not speak of it even to her own sister without a blush, who felt confused and almost confounded when receiving her aunt’s admonitions and instigations on the subject, would not have endured to hear Brooke Burgess speak on the matter. Dorothy did feel that a person easier to know than Brooke had never come in her way. She had already said as much to him as she had spoken to Mr. Gibson in the three months that she had made his acquaintance. They had talked about Exeter, and about Mrs. MacHugh, and the cathedral, and Tennyson’s poems, and the London theatres, and Uncle Barty, and the family quarrel.
