“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.
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 goodbye, Uncle Barty,” he said.
“Goodbye, 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 brokenhearted 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 in 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
