Not If I Know It
NOT IF I KNOW IT.” IT WAS AN ILL-NATURED ANSWER TO GIVE, MADE IN THE TONE THAT WAS used, by a brother-in-law to a brother-in-law, in the hearing of the sister of the one and wife of the other, — made, too, on Christmas Eve, when the married couple had come as visitors to the house of him who made it! There was no joke in the words, and the man who had uttered them had gone for the night. There was to be no other farewell spoken indicative of the brightness of the coming day. “Not if I know it!” and the door was slammed behind him. The words were very harsh in the ears even of a loving sister.
“He was always a cur,” said the husband.
“No; not so. George has his ill-humours and his little periods of bad temper; but he was not always a cur. Don’t say so of him, Wilfred.”
“He always was so to me. He wanted you to marry that fellow Cross because he had a lot of money.”
“But I didn’t,” said the wife, who now had been three years married to Wilfred Horton.
“I cannot understand that you and he should have been children of the same parents. Just the use of his name, and there would be no risk.”
“I suppose he thinks that there might have been risk,” said the wife. “He cannot know you as I do.”
“Had he asked me I would have given him mine without thinking of it. Though he knows that I am a busy man, I have never asked him to lend me a shilling. I never will.”
“Wilfred!”
“All right, old girl — I am going to bed; and you will see that I shall treat him to-morrow just as though he had refused me nothing. But I shall think that he is a cur.” And Wilfred Horton prepared to leave the room.
“Wilfred!”
“Well, Mary, out with it.”
“Curs are curs —— ”
“Because other curs make them so; that is what you are going to say.”
“No, dear, no; I will never call you a cur, because I know well that you are not one. There is nothing like a cur about you.” Then she took him in her arms and kissed him. “But if there be any signs of ill-humour in a man, the way to increase it is to think much of it. Men are curs because other men think them so; women are angels sometimes, just because some loving husband like you tells them that they are. How can a woman not have something good about her when everything she does is taken to be good? I could be as cross as George is if only I were called cross. I don’t suppose you want the use of his name so very badly.”
“But I have condescended to ask for it. And then to be answered with that jeering pride! I wouldn’t have his name to a paper now, though you and I were starving for the want of it. As it is, it doesn’t much signify. I suppose you won’t be long before you come.” So saying, he took his departure.
She followed him, and went through the house till she came to her brother’s apartments. He was a bachelor, and was living all alone when he was in the country at Hallam Hall. It was a large, rambling house, in which there had been of custom many visitors at Christmas time. But Mrs. Wade, the widow, had died during the past year, and there was nobody there now but the owner of the house, and his sister, and his sister’s husband. She followed him to his rooms, and found him sitting alone, with a pipe in his mouth, and as she entered she saw that preparations had been made for the comfort of more than one person. “If there be anything that I hate,” said George Wade, “it is to be asked for the use of my name. I would sooner lend money to a fellow at once, — or give it to him.”
“There is no question about money, George.”
“Oh, isn’t there? I never knew a man’s name wanted when there was no question about money.”
“I suppose there is a question — in some remote degree.” Here George Wade shook his head. “In some remote degree,” she went on repeating her words. “Surely you know him well enough not to be afraid of him.”
“I know no man well enough not to be afraid of him where my name is concerned.”
“You need not have refused him so crossly, just on Christmas Eve.”
“I don’t know much about Christmas where money is wanted.”
“‘Not if I know it!’ you said.”
“I simply meant that I did not wish to do it. Wilfred expects that everybody should answer him with such constrained courtesy! What I said was as good a way of answering him as any other; and if he didn’t like it — he must lump it.”
“Is that the message that you send him?” she asked.
“I don’t send it as a message at all. If he wants a message you may tell him that I’m extremely sorry, but that it’s against my principles. You are not going to quarrel with me as well as he?”
“Indeed, no,” she said, as she prepared to leave him for the night. “I should be very unhappy to quarrel with either of you.” Then she went.
“He is the most punctilious fellow living at this moment, I believe,” said George Wade, as he walked alone up and down the room. There were certain regrets which did make the moment bitter to him. His brother-in-law had on the whole treated him well, — had been liberal to him in all those matters in which one brother comes in contact with another. He had never asked him for a shilling, or even for the use of his name. His sister was passionately devoted to her husband. In fact, he knew Wilfred Horton to be a fine fellow. He told himself that he had not meant to be especially uncourteous, but that he had been at the moment startled by the expression of Horton’s wishes. But looking back over his own conduct, he could remember that in the course of their intimacy he himself had been occasionally rough to his brother-in-law, and he could remember that his brother-in-law had not liked it. “After all what does it mean, ‘Not if I know it’? It is just a form of saying that I had rather not.” Nevertheless, Wilfred Horton could not persuade himself to go to bed in a good humour with George Wade.
“I think I shall get back to London to-morrow,” said Mr. Horton, speaking to his wife from beneath the bedclothes, as soon as she had entered the room.
“To-morrow?”
“It is not that I cannot bear his insolence, but that I should have to show by my face that I had made a request, and had been refused. You need not come.”
“On Christmas Day?”
“Well, yes. You cannot understand the sort of flutter I am in. ‘Not if I know it!’ The insolence of the phrase in answering such a request! The suspicion that it showed! If he had told me that he had any feeling about it, I would have deposited the money in his hands. There is a train in the morning. You can stay here and go to church with him, while I run up to town.”
“That you two should part like that on Christmas Day; you two dear ones! Wilfred, it will break my heart.” Then he turned round and endeavoured to make himself comfortable among the bedclothes. “Wilfred, say that you will not go out of this to-morrow.”
“Oh, very well! You have only to speak and I obey. If you could only manage to make your brother more civil for the one day it would be an improvement.”
“I think he will be civil. I have been speaking to him, and he seems to be sorry that he should have annoyed you.”
“Well, yes; he did annoy me. ‘Not if I know it!’ in answer to such a request! As if I had asked him for five thousand pounds! I wouldn’t have asked him or any man alive for five thousand pence. Coming down to his house at Christmastime, and to be suspected of such a thing!” Then he prepared himself steadily to sleep, and she, before she stretched herself by his side, prayed that God’s mercy might obliterate the wrath between these men, whom she loved so well, before the morrow’s sun should have come and gone.
The bells sounded merry from Hallam Church tower on the following morning, and told to each of the inhabitants of the old hall a tale that was varied according to the minds of the three inhabitants whom we know. With her it was all hope, but hope accompanied by that despondency which is apt to afflict the weak in the presence of those that are stronger. With her husband it was anger, — but mitigated anger. He seemed, as he came into his wife’s room while dressing, to be aware that there was something which should be abandoned, but which still it did his heart some good to nourish. With George Wade there was more of Christian feeling, but of Christian feeling which it was disagreeable to entertain. “How on earth is a man to get on with his relatives, if he cannot speak a word above his breath?” But still he would have been very willing that those words should have been left unsaid.
Any observer might have seen that the three persons as they sat down to breakfast were each under some little constraint. The lady was more than ordinarily courteous, or even affectionate, in her manner. This was natural on Christmas Day, but her too apparent anxiety was hardly natural. Her husband accosted his brother-in-law with almost loud good humour. “Well, George, a merry Christmas, and many of them. My word; — how hard it froze last night! You won’t get any hunting for the next fortnight. I hope old Burnaby won’t spin us a long yarn.”
George Wade simply kissed his sister, and shook hands with his brother-in-law. But he shook hands with more apparent zeal than he would have done but for the quarrel, and when he pressed Wilfred Horton to eat some devilled turkey, he did it with more ardour than was usual with him. “Mrs. Jones is generally very successful with devilled turkey.” Then, as he passed round the table behind his sister’s back, she put out her hand to touch him, and as though to thank him for his goodness. But any one could see that it was not quite natural.
The two men as they left the house for church, were thinking of the request that had been made yesterday, and which had been refused. “Not if I know it!” said George Wade to himself. “There is nothing so unnatural in that, that a fellow should think so much of it. I didn’t mean to do it. Of course, if he had said that he wanted it particularly I should have done it.”
“Not if I know it!” said Wilfred Horton. “There was an insolence about it. I only came to him just because he was my brother-in-law. Jones, or Smith, or Walker would have done it without a word.” Then the three walked into church, and took their places in the front seat, just under Dr. Burnaby’s reading-desk.
We will not attempt to describe the minds of the three as the Psalms were sung, and as the prayers were said. A twinge did cross the minds of the two men as the coming of the Prince of Peace was foretold to them; and a stronger hope did sink into the heart of her whose happiness depended so much on the manner in which they two stood with one another. And when Dr. Burnaby found time, in the fifteen minutes which he gave to his sermon, to tell his hearers why the Prophet had specially spoken of Christ as the Prince of Peace, and to describe what the blessings were, hitherto unknown, which had come upon the world since a desire for peace had filled the minds of men, a feeling did come on the hearts of both of them, — to one that the words had better not have been spoken, and to the other that they had better have been forgiven. Then came the Sacrament, more powerful with its thoughts than its words, and the two men as they left the church were ready to forgive each other — if they only knew how.
There was something a little sheep-faced about the two men as they walked up together across the grounds to the old hall, — something sheep-faced which Mrs. Horton fully understood, and which made her feel for the moment triumphant over them. It is always so with a woman when she knows that she has for the moment got the better of a man. How much more so when she has conquered two? She hovered about among them as though they were dear human beings subject to the power of some beneficent angel. The three sat down to lunch, and Dr. Burnaby could not but have been gratified had he heard the things that were said of him. “I tell you, you know,” said George, “that Burnaby is a right good fellow, and awfully clever. There isn’t a man or woman in the parish that he doesn’t know how to get to the inside of.”
“And he knows what to do when he gets there,” said Mrs. Horton, who remembered with affection the gracious old parson as he had blessed her at her wedding.
“No; I couldn’t let him do it for me.” It was thus Horton spoke to his wife as they were walking together about the gardens. “Dear Wilfred, you ought to forgive him.”
“I have forgiven him. There!” And he made a sign as of blowing his anger away to the winds. “I do forgive him. I will think no more about it. It is as though the words had never been spoken, — though they were very unkind. ‘Not if I know it!’ All the same, they don’t leave a sting behind.”
“But they do.”
“Nothing of the kind. I shall drink prosperity to the old house and a loving wife to the master just as cheerily by and by as though the words had never been spoken.”
“But there will not be peace, — not the peace of which Dr. Burnaby told us. It must be as though it had really — really never been uttered. George has not spoken to me about it, not to-day, but if he asks, you will let him do it?”
“He will never ask — unless at your instigation.”
“I will not speak to him,” she answered, — “not without telling you. I would never go behind your back. But whether he does it or not, I feel that it is in his heart to do it.” Then the brother came up and joined them in their walk, and told them of all the little plans he had in hand in reference to the garden. “You must wait till she comes, for that, George,” said his sister.
“Oh, yes; there must always be a she when another she is talking. But what will you say if I tell you there is to be a she?”
“Oh, George!”
“Your nose is going to be put out of joint, as far as Hallam Hall is concerned.” Then he told them all his love story, and so the afternoon was allowed to wear itself away till the dinner hour had nearly come.
“Just come in here, Wilfred,” he said to his brother-in-law when his sister had gone up to dress. “I have something I want to say to you before dinner.”
“All right,” said Wilfred. And as he got up to follow the master of the house, he told himself that after all his wife would prove herself too many for him.
“I don’t know the least in the world what it was you were asking me to do yesterday.”
“It was a matter of no consequence,” said Wilfred, not able to avoid assuming an air of renewed injury.
“But I do know that I was cross,” said George Wade.
“After that,” said Wilfred, “everything is smooth between us. No man can expect anything more straightforward. I was a little hurt, but I know that I was a fool. Every man has a right to have his own ideas as to the use of his name.”
“But that will not suffice,” said George.
“Oh! yes it will.”
“Not for me,” repeated George. “I have brought myself to ask your pardon for refusing, and you should bring yourself to accept my offer to do it.”
“It was nothing. It was only because you were my brother-in-law, and therefore the nearest to me. The Turco-Egyptian New Waterworks Company simply requires somebody to assert that I am worth ten thousands pounds.”
“Let me do it, Wilfred,” said George Wade. “Nobody can know your circumstances better than I do. I have begged your pardon, and I think that you ought now in return to accept this at my hand.”
“All right,” said Wilfred Horton. “I will accept it at your hand.” And then he went away to dress. What took place up in the dressing-room need not here be told. But when Mrs. Horton came down to dinner the smile upon her face was a truer index of her heart than it had been in the morning.
“I have been very sorry for what took place last night,” said George afterwards in the drawing-room, feeling himself obliged, as it were, to make full confession and restitution before the assembled multitude, — which consisted, however, of his brother-in-law and his sister. “I have asked pardon, and have begged Wilfred to show his grace by accepting from me what I had before declined. I hope that he will not refuse me.”
“Not if I know it,” said Wilfred Horton.