"She knows you are at home, sir."

"Why does she know I'm at home? That's your fault. She oughtn't to know anything about it. Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear!" These last e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns arose from his having just then remembered the nature of his postscript to Harry Annesley, and the engagement of Joe Thoroughbung to his niece.

He made up his mind at the moment,--or thought that he had made up his mind,--that Harry Annesley should not have a shilling as long as he lived. "I am quite out of breath. I cannot see her yet. Go and offer the lady cake and wine, and tell her that you had found me very much indisposed. I think you will have to tell her that I am not well enough to receive her to-day."

"Get it over, sir, and have done with it."

"It's all very well to say have done with it. I shall never have done with it. Because you have let her in to-day she'll think that she can come always. Good Lord! There she is on the stairs! Pick up my slippers." Then the door was opened, and Miss Thoroughbung herself entered the room. It was an up-stairs chamber, known as Mr. Prosper's own: and from it was the door into his bedroom. How Miss Thoroughbung had learned her way to it he never could guess. But she had come up the stairs as though she had been acquainted with all the intricacies of the house from her childhood.

"Mr. Prosper," she said, "I hope I see you quite well this morning, and that I have not disturbed you at your toilet." That she had done so was evident, from the fact that Matthew, with the dressing-gown and slippers, was seen disappearing into the bedroom.

"I am not very well, thank you," said Mr. Prosper, rising from his chair, and offering her his hand with the coldest possible salutation.

"I am sorry for that,--very. I hope it is not your indisposition which has prevented you from coming to see me. I have been expecting you every day since Soames wrote his last letter. But it's no use pretending any longer. Oh, Peter, Peter!" This use of his Christian name struck him absolutely dumb, so that he was unable to utter a syllable. He should, first of all, have told her that any excuse she had before for calling him by his Christian name was now at an end. But there was no opening for speech such as that. "Well," she continued, "have you got nothing to say to me? You can write flippant letters to other people, and turn me into ridicule glibly enough."

"I have never done so."

"Did you not write to Joe Thoroughbung, and tell him you had given up all thoughts of having me?"

"Joe!" he exclaimed. His very surprise did not permit him to go farther, at the moment, than this utterance of the young man's Christian name.

"Yes, Joe,--Joe Thoroughbung, my nephew, and yours that is to be. Did you not write and tell him that everything was over?"

"I never wrote to young Mr. Thoroughbung in my life. I should not have dreamed of such a correspondence on such a subject."

"Well, he says you did. Or, if you didn't write to Joe himself, you wrote to somebody."

"I may have written to somebody, certainly."

"And told them that you didn't mean to have anything farther to say to me?" That traitor Harry had now committed a sin worse that knocking a man down in the middle of the night and leaving him bleeding, speechless, and motionless; worse than telling a lie about it;--worse even than declining to listen to sermons read by his uncle. Harry had committed such a sin that no shilling of allowance should evermore be paid to him. Even at this moment there went through Mr. Prosper's brain an idea that there might be some unmarried female in England besides Miss Puffle and Miss Thoroughbung. "Peter Prosper, why don't you answer like a man, and tell me the honest truth?" He had never before been called Peter Prosper in his whole life.

"Perhaps you had better let me make a communication by letter," he said.

At that very moment the all but completed epistle was lying on the table before him, where even her eyes might reach it. In the flurry of the moment he covered it up.

"Perhaps that is the letter which has taken you so long to write?" she said.

"It is the letter."

"Then hand it me over, and save yourself the penny stamp." In his confusion he gave her the letter, and threw himself down on the sofa while she read it. "You have been very careful in choosing your language, Mr. Prosper: 'It will be expedient that I should make known to you the entire truth.' Certainly, Mr. Prosper, certainly. The entire truth is the best thing,--next to entire beer, my brother would say."

"The horrid vulgar woman!" Mr. Prosper e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed to himself. "'There seems to have been a complete misunderstanding with regard to that amiable lady, Miss Tickle.' No misunderstanding at all. You said you liked her, and I supposed you did. And when I had been living for twenty years with a female companion, who hasn't sixpence in the world to buy a rag with but what she gets from me, was it to be expected that I should turn her out for any man?"

"An annuity might have been arranged, Miss Thoroughbung."

"Bother an annuity! That's all you think about feelings! Was she to go and live alone and desolate because you wanted some one to nurse you?

And then those wretched ponies. I tell you, Peter Prosper, that let me marry whom I will, I mean to drive a pair of ponies, and am able to do so out of my own money. Ponies, indeed! It's an excuse. Your heart has failed you. You've come to know a woman of spirit, and now you are afraid that she'll be too much for you. I shall keep this letter, though it has not been sent."

"You can do as you please about that, Miss Thoroughbung."

"Oh yes; of course I shall keep it, and shall give it to Messrs. Soames & Simpson. They are most gentlemanlike men, and will be shocked at such conduct as this from the Squire of Buston. The letter will be published in the newspapers, of course. It will be very painful to me, no doubt, but I shall owe it to my s.e.x to punish you. When all the county are talking of your conduct to a lady, and saying that no man could have done it, let alone no gentleman, then you will feel it. Miss Tickle,--and a pair of ponies! You expected to get my money and nothing to give for it. Oh, you mean man!"

She must have been aware that every word she spoke was a dagger. There was a careful a.n.a.lysis of his peculiar character displayed in every word of reproach which she uttered. Nothing could have wounded him more than the comparison between himself and Soames & Simpson. They were gentlemen! "The vulgarest men in all Buntingford!" he declared to himself, and always ready for any sharp practice. Whereas he was no man, Miss Thoroughbung said,--a mean creature, altogether unworthy to be regarded as a gentleman. He knew himself to be Mr. Prosper of Buston Hall, with centuries of Prospers for his ancestors; whereas Soames was the son of a tax-gatherer, and Simpson had come down from London as a clerk from a solicitor's office in the City. And yet it was true that people would talk of him as did Miss Thoroughbung! His cruelty would be in every lady's mouth. And then his stinginess about the ponies would be the gossip of the county for twelve months. And, as he found out what Miss Thoroughbung was, the disgrace of even having wished to marry her loomed terribly large before him.

But there was a twinkle of jest in the lady's eyes all the while which he did not perceive, and which, had he perceived it, he could not have understood. Her anger was but simulated wrath. She, too, had thought that it might be well, under circ.u.mstances, if she were to marry Mr.

Prosper, but had quite understood that those circ.u.mstances might not be forthcoming. "I don't think it will do at all, my dear," she had said to Miss Tickle. "Of course an old bachelor like that won't want to have you."

"I beg you won't think of me for a moment," Miss Tickle had answered, with solemnity.

"Bother! why can't you tell the truth? I'm not going to throw you over, and of course you'd be just nowhere if I did. I shan't break my heart for Mr. Prosper. I know I should be an old fool if I were to marry him; and he is more of an old fool for wanting to marry me. But I did think he wouldn't cut up so rough about the ponies." And then, when no answer came to the last letter from Soames & Simpson, and the tidings reached her, round from the brewery, that Mr. Prosper intended to be off, she was not in the least surprised. But the information, she thought, had come to her in an unworthy manner. So she determined to punish the gentleman, and went out to Buston Hall and called him Peter Prosper. We may doubt, however, whether she had ever realized how terribly her scourges would wale him.

"And to think that you would let it come round to me in that way, through the young people,--writing about it just as a joke!"

"I never wrote about it like a joke," said Mr. Prosper, almost crying.

"I remember now. It was to your nephew; and of course everybody at the rectory saw it. Of course they were all laughing at you." There was one thing now written in the book of fate, and sealed as certainly as the crack of doom: no shilling of allowance should ever be paid to Harry Annesley. He would go abroad. He said so to himself as he thought of this, and said also that, if he could find a healthy young woman anywhere, he would marry her, sacrificing every idea of his own happiness to his desire of revenge upon his nephew. This, however, was only the pa.s.sionate feeling of the moment. Matrimony had become altogether so distasteful to him, since he had become intimately acquainted with Miss Thoroughbung, as to make any release in that manner quite impossible to him. "Do you propose to make me any amends?" asked Miss Thoroughbung.

"Money?" said he.

"Yes; money. Why shouldn't you pay me money? I should like to keep three ponies, and to have Miss Tickle's sister to come and live with me."

"I do not know whether you are in earnest, Miss Thoroughbung."

"Quite in earnest, Peter Prosper. But perhaps I had better leave that matter in the hands of Soames & Simpson,--very gentleman-like men,--and they'll be sure to let you know how much you ought to pay. Ten thousand pounds wouldn't be too much, considering the distress to my wounded feelings." Here Miss Thoroughbung put her handkerchief up to her eyes.

There was nothing that he could say. Whether she were laughing at him, as he thought to be most probable, or whether there was some grain of truth in the demand which she made, he found it equally impossible to make any reply. There was nothing that he could say; nor could he absolutely turn her out of the room. But after ten minutes' farther continuation of these amenities, during which it did at last come home to his brain that she was merely laughing at him, he began to think that he might possibly escape, and leave her there in possession of his chamber.

"If you will excuse me, Miss Thoroughbung, I will retire," he said, rising from the sofa.

"Regularly chaffed out of your own den!" she said, laughing.

"I do not like this interchange of wit on subjects that are so serious."

"Interchange! There is very little interchange, according to my idea.

You haven't said anything witty. What an idea of interchange the man has!"

"At any rate I will escape from your rudeness."

"Now, Peter Prosper, before you go let me ask you one question. Which of the two has been the rudest to the other? You have come and asked me to marry you, and have evidently wished to back out of it from the moment in which you found that I had ideas of my own about money. And now you call me rude, because I have my little revenge. I have called you Peter Prosper, and you can't stand it. You haven't spirit enough to call me Matty Thoroughbung in reply. But good-bye, Mr. Prosper,--for I never will call you Peter again. As to what I said to you about money, that, of course, is all bosh. I'll pay Soames's bill, and will never trouble you.

There's your letter, which, however, would be of no use, because it is not signed. A very stupid letter it is. If you want to write naturally you should never copy a letter. Good-bye, Mr. Prosper--Peter that never shall be." Then she got up and walked out of the room.

Mr. Prosper, when he was left alone, remained for a while nearly paralyzed. That he should have ever entertained the idea of making that woman his wife! Such was his first thought. Then he reflected that he had, in truth, escaped from her more easily than he had hoped, and that she had certainly displayed some good qualities in spite of her vulgarity and impudence. She did not, at any rate, intend to trouble him any farther. He would never again hear himself called Peter by that terribly loud voice. But his anger became very fierce against the whole family at the rectory. They had ventured to laugh at him, and he could understand that, in their eyes, he had become very ridiculous.

He could see it all,--the manner in which they had made fun of him, and had been jocose over his intended marriage. He certainly had not intended to be funny in their eyes. But, while he had been exercising the duty of a stern master over them, and had been aware of his own extreme generosity in his efforts to forgive his nephew, that very nephew had been laughing at him, in conjunction with the nephew of her whom he had intended to make his wife! Not a shilling, again, should ever be allowed to Harry Annesley. If it could be so arranged, by any change of circ.u.mstances, he might even yet become the father of a family of his own.

CHAPTER LI.

MR. PROSPER IS TAKEN ILL.