LITMIR.BIZ

      Not if I Know It

      (Anthony Trollope)

       Table of Contents

      It was an illnatured 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 tomorrow 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 tomorrow,” said Mr. Horton, speaking to his wife from beneath the bedclothes, as soon as she had entered the room.

      “Tomorrow?”

      “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 tomorrow.”

      “Oh, very well! You have only to speak and

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