“You can’t in reality be poorer now than you were last year. You have not spent anything to speak of. There can be no doubt that Chaldicotes will be ample to pay all you owe the duke.”
“It’s as much as it will; and what am I to do then? I almost think more of the seat than I do of Chaldicotes.”
“You know what I advise,” said Mrs. Smith. “Ask Miss Dunstable to advance the money on the same security which the duke holds. She will be as safe then as he is now. And if you can arrange that, stand for the county against him; perhaps you may be beaten.”
“I shouldn’t have a chance.”
“But it would show that you are not a creature in the duke’s hands. That’s my advice,” said Mrs. Smith, with much spirit; “and if you wish, I’ll broach it to Miss Dunstable, and ask her to get her lawyer to look into it.”
“If I had done this before I had run my head into that other absurdity!”
“Don’t fret yourself about that; she will lose nothing by such an investment, and therefore you are not asking any favour of her. Besides, did she not make the offer? and she is just the woman to do this for you now, because she refused to do that other thing for you yesterday. You understand most things, Nathaniel; but I am not sure that you understand women; not, at any rate, such a woman as her.”
It went against the grain with Mr. Sowerby, this seeking of pecuniary assistance from the very woman whose hand he had attempted to gain about a fortnight since; but he allowed his sister to prevail. What could any man do in such straits that would not go against the grain? At the present moment he felt in his mind an infinite hatred against the duke, Mr. Fothergill, Gumption and Gagebee, and all the tribes of Gatherum Castle and South Audley Street; they wanted to rob him of that which had belonged to the Sowerbys before the name of Omnium had been heard of in the county, or in England! The great leviathan of the deep was anxious to swallow him up as a prey! He was to be swallowed up, and made away with, and put out of sight, without a pang of remorse! Any measure which could now present itself as the means of staving off so evil a day would be acceptable; and therefore he gave his sister the commission of making this second proposal to Miss Dunstable. In cursing the duke—for he did curse the duke lustily—it hardly occurred to him to think that, after all, the duke only asked for his own.
As for Mrs. Harold Smith, whatever may be the view taken of her general character as a wife and a member of society, it must be admitted that as a sister she had virtues.