_ PART I CHAPTER XXIII. THE RUMORS AS TO MR. PROSPER
It was still October when Harry Annesley went down to Buston, and the Mountjoys had just reached Brussels. Mr. Grey had made his visit to Tretton and had returned to London. Harry went home on an understanding,--on the part of his mother, at any rate,--that he should remain there till Christmas. But he felt himself very averse to so long a sojourn. If the Hall and park were open to him he might endure it. He would take down two or three stiff books which he certainly would never read, and would shoot a few pheasants, and possibly ride one of his future brother-in-law's horses with the hounds. But he feared that there was to be a quarrel by which he would be debarred from the Hall and the park; and he knew, too, that it would not be well for him to shoot and hunt when his income should have been cut off. It would be necessary that some great step should be taken at once; but then it would be necessary, also, that Florence should agree to that step. He had a modest lodging in London, but before he started he prepared himself for what must occur by giving notice. "I don't say as yet that I shall give them up; but I might as well let you know that it's possible." This he said to Mrs. Brown, who kept the lodgings, and who received this intimation as a Mrs. Brown is sure to do. But where should he betake himself when his home at Mrs. Brown's had been lost? He would, he thought, find it quite impossible to live in absolute idleness at the rectory. Then in an unhappy frame of mind he went down by the train to Stevenage, and was there met by the rectory pony-carriage.
He saw it all in his mother's eye the moment she embraced him. There was some terrible trouble in the wind, and what could it be but his uncle? "Well, mother, what is it?"
"Oh, Harry, there is such a sad affair up at the Hall!"
"Is my uncle dead?"
"Dead! No!"
"Then why do you look so sad?--
"'Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,
Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night.'"
"Oh Harry do not laugh. Your uncle says such dreadful things!"
"I don't care much what he says. The question is--what does he mean to do?"
"He declares that he will cut you off altogether."
"That is sooner said than done."
"That is all very well, Harry; but he can do it. Oh, Harry! But come and sit down and talk to me. I told your father to be out, so that I might have you alone; and the dear girls are gone into Buntingford."
"Ah, like them! Thoroughbung will have enough of them."
"He is our only happiness now."
"Poor Thoroughbung! I pity him if he has to do happiness for the whole household."
"Joshua is a most excellent young man. Where we should be without him I do not know." The flourishing young brewer was named Joshua, and had been known to Harry for some years, though never as yet known as a brother-in-law.
"I am sure he is; particularly as he has chosen Molly to be his wife. He is just the young man who ought to have a wife."
"Of course he ought."
"Because he can keep a family. But now about my uncle. He is to perform this ceremony of cutting me off. Will he turn out to have had a wife and family in former ages? I have no doubt old Scarborough could manage it, but I don't give my uncle credit for so much cleverness."
"But in future ages--" said the unhappy mother, shaking her head and rubbing her eyes.
"You mean that he is going to have a family?"
"It is all in the hands of Providence," said the parson's wife.
"Yes; that is true. He is not too old yet to be a second Priam, and have his curtains drawn the other way. That's his little game, is it?"
"There's a sort of rumor about, that it is possible."
"And who is the lady?"
"You may be sure there will be no lack of a lady if he sets his mind upon it. I was turning it over in my mind, and I thought of Matilda Thoroughbung."
"Joshua's aunt!"
"Well; she is Joshua's aunt, no doubt. I did just whisper the idea to Joshua, and he says that she is fool enough for anything. She has twenty-five thousand pounds of her own, but she lives all by herself."
"I know where she lives,--just out of Buntingford, as you go to Royston. But she's not alone. Is Uncle Prosper to marry Miss Tickle also?" Miss Tickle was an estimable lady living as companion to Miss Thoroughbung.
"I don't know how they may manage; but it has to be thought of, Harry. We only know that your uncle has been twice to Buntingford."
"The lady is fifty, at any rate."
"The lady is barely forty. She gives out that she is thirty-six. And he could settle a jointure on her which would leave the property not worth having."
"What can I do?"
"Yes, indeed, my dear; what can you do?"
"Why is he going to upset all the arrangements of my life, and his life, after such a fashion as this?"
"That's just what your father says."
"I suppose he can do it. The law will allow him. But the injustice would be monstrous. I did not ask him to take me by the hand when I was a boy and lead me into this special walk of life. It has been his own doing. How will he look me in the face and tell me that he is going to marry a wife? I shall look him in the face and tell him of my wife."
"But is that settled?"
"Yes, mother; it is settled. Wish me joy for having won the finest lady that ever walked the earth." His mother blessed him,--but said nothing about the finest lady,--who at that moment she believed to be the future bride of Mr. Joshua Thoroughbung. "And when I shall tell my uncle that it is so, what will he say to me? Will he have the face then to tell me that I am to be cut out of Buston? I doubt whether he will have the courage."
"He has thought of that, Harry."
"How thought of it, mother?"
"He has given orders that he is not to see you."
"Not to see me!"
"So he declares. He has written a long letter to your father, in which he says that he would be spared the agony of an interview."
"What! is it all done, then?"
"Your father got the letter yesterday. It must have taken my poor brother a week to write it."
"And he tells the whole plan,--Matilda Thoroughbung, and the future family?"
"No, he does not say anything about Miss Thoroughbung He says that he must make other arrangements about the property."
"He can't make other arrangements; that is, not until the boy is born. It may be a long time first, you know."
"But the jointure?"
"What does Molly say about it?"
"Molly is mad about it and so is Joshua. Joshua talks about it just as though he were one of us, and he says that the old people at Buntingford would not hear of it." The old people spoken of were the father and mother of Joshua, and the half-brother of Miss Matilda Thoroughbung. "But what can they do?"
"They can do nothing. If Miss Matilda likes Uncle Prosper--"
"Likes, my dear! How young you are! Of course she would like a country house to live in, and the park, and the county society. And she would like somebody to live with besides Miss Tickle."
"My uncle, for instance."
"Yes, your uncle."
"If I had my choice, mother, I should prefer Miss Tickle."
"Because you are a silly boy. But what are you to do now?"
"In this long letter which he has written to my father does he give no reason?"
"Your father will show you the letter. Of course he gives reasons. He says that you have done something which you ought not to have done--about that wretched Mountjoy Scarborough."
"What does he know about it?--the idiot!"
"Oh, Harry!"
"Well, mother, what better can I say of him? He has taken me as a child and fashioned my life for me; has said that this property should be mine, and has put an income into my hand as though I were an eldest son; has repeatedly declared, when his voice was more potent than mine, that I should follow no profession. He has bound himself to me, telling all the world that I was his heir. And now he casts me out because he has heard some cock-and-bull story, of the truth of which he knows nothing. What better can I say of him than call him an idiot? He must be that or else a heartless knave. And he says that he does not mean to see me,--me with whose life he has thus been empowered to interfere, so as to blast it if not to bless it, and intends to turn me adrift as he might do a dog that did not suit him! And because he knows that he cannot answer me he declares that he will not see me."
"It is very hard, Harry."
"Therefore I call him an idiot in preference to calling him a knave. But I am not going to be dropped out of the running in that way, just in deference to his will. I shall see him. Unless they lock him up in his bedroom I shall compel him to see me."
"What good would that do, Harry? That would only set him more against you."
"You don't know his weakness."
"Oh yes, I do; he is very weak."
"He will not see me, because he will have to yield when he hears what I have to say for myself. He knows that, and would therefore fain keep away from me. Why should he be stirred to this animosity against me?"
"Why indeed?"
"Because there is some one who wishes to injure me more strong than he is, and who has got hold of him. Some one has lied behind my back."
"Who has done this?"
"Ah, that is the question. But I know who has done it, though I will not name him just now. This enemy of mine, knowing him to be weak,--knowing him to be an idiot, has got hold of him and persuaded him. He believes the story which is told to him, and then feels happy in shaking off an incubus. No doubt I have not been very soft with him,--nor, indeed, hard. I have kept out of his way, and he is willing to resent it; but he is afraid to face me and tell me that it is so. Here are the girls come back from Buntingford. Molly, you blooming young bride, I wish you joy of your brewer."
"He's none the worse on that account, Master Harry," said the eldest sister.
"All the better,--very much the better. Where would you be if he was not a brewer? But I congratulate you with all my heart, old girl. I have known him ever so long, and he is one of the best fellows I do know."
"Thank you, Harry," and she kissed him.
"I wish Fanny and Kate may even do so well."
"All in good time," said Fanny.
"I mean to have a banker--all to myself," said Kate.
"I wish you may have half as good a man for your husband," said Harry.
"And I am to tell you," continued Molly, who was now in high good-humor, "that there will be always one of his horses for you to ride as long as you remain at home. It is not every brother-in-law that would do as much as that for you."
"Nor yet every uncle," said Kate, shaking her head, from which Harry could see that this quarrel with his uncle had been freely discussed in the family circle.
"Uncles are very different," said the mother; "uncles can't be expected to do everything as though they were in love."
"Fancy Uncle Peter in love!" said Kate. Mr. Prosper was called Uncle Peter by the girls, though always in a sort of joke. Then the other two girls shook their heads very gravely, from which Harry learned that the question respecting the choice of Miss Matilda Thoroughbung as a mistress for the Hall had been discussed also before them.
"I am not going to marry all the family," said Molly.
"Not Miss Matilda, for instance," said her brother, laughing.
"No, especially not Matilda. Joshua is quite as angry about his aunt as anybody here can be. You'll find that he is more of an Annesley than a Thoroughbung."
"My dear," said the mother, "your husband will, as a matter of course, think most of his own family. And so ought you to do of his family, which will be yours. A married woman should always think most of her husband's family." In this way the mother told her daughter of her future duties; but behind the mother's back Kate made a grimace, for the benefit of her sister Fanny, showing thereby her conviction that in a matter of blood,--what she called being a gentleman,--a Thoroughbung could not approach an Annesley.
"Mamma does not know it as yet," Molly said afterward in privacy to her brother, "but you may take it for granted that Uncle Peter has been into Buntingford and has made an offer to Aunt Matilda. I could tell it at once, because she looked so sharp at me to-day. And Joshua says that he is sure it is so by the airs she gives herself."
"You think she'll have him?"
"Have him! Of course she'll have him. Why shouldn't she? A wretched old maid living with a companion like that would have any one."
"She has got a lot of money."
"She'll take care of her money, let her alone for that.
"And she'll have his house to live in. And there'll be a jointure. Of course, if there were to be children--"
"Oh, bother!"
"Well, perhaps there will not. But it will be just as bad. We don't mean even to visit them; we think it so very wicked. And we shall tell them a bit of our mind as soon as the thing has been publicly declared." _