Chapter Thirty Eight.
Mr William Forth Burge is Indignant.
You may make money, and you may turn philanthropist giving right and left, letting not either hand know what the other doeth; but if you think you are going to make innumerable friends by so doing, you are mistaken, for you will most likely make enemies.
You will excite jealousy amongst your equals, because you have passed them in the race; your superiors, as they call themselves, will condemn you, and hold you in contempt for trying, as they say, to climb to their level; and even the recipients of your bounty will be offended.
Mrs Dilly will think that Miss Bolly’s half-pound of tea was better than hers, and old Tom Dibley will be sure to consider the piece of beef his neighbour, Joe Stocks, received “a better cut” than his own.
It was so with Mr William Forth Burge, who gave a great deal of beef to the poor—it was in his way—and who was constantly giving offence by presenting one poor family with better “cuts” than others; and he knew it, too.
“I tell you what, Betsey,” he said, rubbing his ear with vexation, one day, “it’s my full belief that nature made a regular mistake in bullocks. There ought to be no legs and shins, or clods or stickings, my dear, but every beast ought to be all sirloin; though it’s my belief, old girl, that if it was, and you let ’em have it full of gravy, and sprinkled with nice white scraped horse-radish on the top, they wouldn’t be satisfied, but would say the quality was bad.”
“There, never mind, Bill dear,” said his comforter; “some people always would be ungrateful. Old Granny Jinkins is just as bad. She said yesterday that the nice, warm, soft, new flannel jacket I made for her myself was not half so nice and warm as one I gave to Nancy Dean.”
“Yes, that’s just the way,” said Mr William Forth Burge. “The more you help people, the more they turns again’ you. I often wish I’d never made a penny; for what’s the good of it all but to help other people, and be grumbled at afterwards for not helping ’em more?”
“Oh, but all people ain’t the same, dear.”
“There ain’t much difference, Betsey. Here’s old Mrs Thorne quite hates me; that boy thinks I’m a reg’lar cad; and Miss Thorne’s turning the same way.”
“That I’m sure she’s not!” cried little Miss Burge, starting up and speaking angrily, with her face flushed, “Miss Hazel Thorne’s as good as gold, and she thinks you the best of men; and I declare, Bill, that you ought to be ashamed of yourself, and I don’t know what you don’t deserve. It’s too bad. There!”
“Thanky, Betsey, my dear. That seems to do me good. I like to hear you speak out like that. But do you really think she likes me?”
“I’m sure she does, Bill, and there ain’t no think in the matter; and there, for goodness’ sake, don’t you settle down into a grumbler, Bill, because you’ve got no cause to be, I’m sure.”
“Well, I don’t know, Betsey,” he said, stirring his tea slowly. “Things don’t seem to go right. I thought, seeing what I’d done for the schools, I ought to have a pretty good voice in everything, but because I’ve spent hundreds and hundreds over ’em it seems just why I’m to be opposed. Here’s Chute: I showed the committee that he was a miserable spy of a fellow, not content with watching Miss Thorne, but putting it about that she was carrying on with different people in the place and gentlemen from town, just out of spite like, as Lambent agrees with me, because the poor gal wouldn’t notice him. Well, I want him dismissed or made to resign.”
“Well, and isn’t he to go?”
“Go! Lor’ bless you! Why, the committee’s up in arms to keep him; and just on account of that school-pence job, as the poor gal couldn’t help at all, they’d have dismissed her if she hadn’t said she’d resign.”
“Oh, Bill, it’s much too bad!”
“Bad ain’t nothing to it, my dear. I’ve been fighting hard for her stopping, and sending her resignation back; but neither Lambent nor Squire George Canninge won’t interfere, and I’m left to fight it all out, and they’re beating me.”
“And why didn’t you tell me all this before, Bill?” said Miss Burge.
“Oh, I hadn’t the heart to talk about it, my dear,” replied her brother. “It’s all worry and vexation, that it is, and I wish I’d never done nothing for the schools at all.”
“Don’t say that, Bill, when you’ve done so much good.”
“But I do say it,” he cried angrily. “Here is everybody setting themselves again’ me, and it’s all jealousy because I’ve got on. I never asked no favours of ’em before; it’s all been give, give; and now they show what they’re all made of. It’s all horse-leeches’ daughters with ’em, that’s what it is, and I wish Plumton All Saints was burnt. All Saints indeed!” he cried indignantly; “it’s all devils, and no saints in it at all.”
“But can’t Mr Lambent settle it?”
“No, he couldn’t if he’d moved; and those two cats—there, I can’t call ’em anything else—who are always going about preaching charity and love to the poor people, and giving ’em ‘Dairyman’s Daughters’ instead of beef or tea, have been setting every one again’ the poor gal, and they’re at the bottom of it all I know. They hate her like poison.”
“Well, I don’t know about as bad as poison,” said little Miss Burge thoughtfully; “but they don’t like her, and I don’t think that Mrs Canninge likes her either.”
“No, I’m sure she don’t; but I don’t care,” said Mr William Forth Burge furiously. “I’m not beaten, and if that poor girl will stand by us, I’ll stand by her, to the last shilling I’ve got.”
“That’s right, Bill!” cried little Miss Burge enthusiastically, “for I do like her ever so; and the good, patient way in which she puts up with the fine airs and silly ways of her ma makes me like her more and more. I haven’t got a very bad temper, have I, Bill?”
“I think you’ve got a regular downright good ’un, Betsey,” said her brother, looking at her admiringly.
“Well, Bill, do you know if I was to go there much, Mrs Thorne would make me a regular spitfire. She gives me the hot creeps with her condescending, high-and-mighty ways. She’s come down in the world. Well, suppose she has. So’s thousands more, but they don’t—they don’t—”
“Howl,” said Mr William Forth Burge, “that’s it; they don’t howl. Lor a mussy me, what difference do it make? Do you know, Betsey, I believe I was just as happy when I first started business on my own account; and I’m sure I thought a deal more of my first new cart, with brass boxes and patent axles, painted chocklit—it was picked out with yallar—than I did of our new carriage, here, and pair. Ah! and my first mare, as I only give fifteen pun for, could get over the ground better than either of these for which I give two hundred because they was such a match.”
“There, now, you’re beginning to grumble again, Bill, and I won’t have it. You’ve grown to be a rich man, all out of your own cleverness, and you ought to be very proud of of it; and if you’re not, I am.”
“But, you see, Betsey, I ain’t so happy as I thought I should be.”
“Then you ought to be, seeing how happy you can make other folks; and oh, Bill, by-the-way, them Potts’s are in trouble.”
“Well, that ain’t nothing new. Potts always is in trouble. He ought to have been christened Beer Potts or Pewter Potts, though they don’t know what a pewter pot is down in this part of the world.”
“That’s better, Bill; now you’re beginning to joke,” said little Miss Burge, smiling, “But you’ll do something for the Potts’s?”
“I’ll never do nothing for anybody else again in the place,” said Mr William Forth Burge; “a set of ungrateful beggars. What’s the matter with Potts? Been tipsy again?”
“I’m afraid he has, Bill; but that isn’t it. They’ve got the fever there; that big, saucy girl, Feelier, is down with it and the poor mother wants money badly.”
“Why don’t she work for it, then?”
“Oh, she do, Bill; she’s the most hard-working woman in the place.”
Mr William Forth Burge’s hand went into his pocket, and he brought out five pounds, to place them in his sister’s hand.
“I wouldn’t give it her all at once, dear,” he said; “but a pound at a time like. It makes it do more good.”
Little Miss Burge had the tears in her eyes as she gave her brother a sounding smack on either cheek.
“Now, don’t you pretend again, Bill, that you ain’t happy here,” she said, “for ain’t it nice to be able to do a bit of good like this now and then?”
“Of course it is,” he replied, “but they only jumps on you afterwards. Here we’re going to do this, and p’r’aps save that child’s life; and as soon as she gets well the first thing she’ll do will be to make faces at your back in the school, as I’ve seen her do on Sundays over and over again.”
“Oh, I don’t mind, Bill.”
“But you’re not going to the house where that gal’s ill?”
“Oh no, Bill dear; I won’t go down. Don’t you be afraid about that. And look here; you make a big fight of it, and beat ’em about Miss Thorne.”
“I’m going to,” he replied. “But I say, Betsey,” he continued, half turning away his face.
“Yes, Bill.”
“Should—should—”
Mr William Forth Burge’s collar seemed to be very tight, for he thrust, one finger between it and his neck, and gave it a tug before continuing hoarsely—
“I never keep anything from you, Betsey?”
“No, Bill, you don’t. You always was a good brother.”
“Should—should you mind it much, Betsey, if I was to—to—get married?”
Little Miss Burge stood gazing at him silently for some minutes, and then she said softly—
“No, Bill; I don’t think I should. Not if it was some one nice, who would make you very happy.”
“She is very nice, and she would make me very happy,” he said slowly. “But, Betsey—my—dear—do—you—think—she’d—have me?”
Mr William Forth Burge’s words came very slowly indeed at last, and he rested his arms upon his knees and sat in a bent position, looking down at the carpet as if waiting to hear what was a sentence of great moment to his life.
“Bill dear, I know who you mean, of course,” said the little woman at last, tearfully. “I don’t know. She likes you, for she told me she did; but I shouldn’t be your own true sister if I didn’t say that p’r’aps it’s only as a friend; and that ain’t love, you know, Bill, is it?”
“No,” he said softly; “no, Betsey; you’re quite right, dear. But I’m going to try, and—and I’m only a common sort of a chap, dear—if she says no, I’m going to try and bear it like a man.”
“That’s my own dear—dear—O Bill, look; if there she isn’t coming up to the house!”
And little Miss Burge ran off to hide her tears.