Anthony Trollope: The Belton Estate

14. CHAPTER XIV: MR WILLIAM BELTON TAKES A WALK IN LONDON (continued)

How he hated him! With what an unchristian spirit did he regard that worthy captain as he walked across St. James's Square, across Jermyn Street, across Piccadilly, and up Bond Street, not knowing whither he was going. He thought with an intense regret of the laws of modern society which forbid duelling forgetting altogether that even had the old law prevailed, the conduct of the man whom he so hated would have afforded him no casus belli. But he was too far gone in misery and animosity to be capable of any reason on the matter. Captain Aylmer had interfered with his dearest wishes, and during this now passing hour he would willingly have crucified Captain Aylmer had it been within his power to do so. Till he had gone beyond Oxford Street, and had wandered away into the far distance of Portman Square and Baker Street, he had not begun to think of any interest which Clara Amedroz might have in the matter on which his thoughts were employed. He was sojourning at an hotel in Bond Street, and had gone thitherwards more by habit than by thought; but he had passed the door of his inn, feeling it to be impossible to render himself up to his bed in his present disturbed mood. As he was passing the house in Bond Street he had been intent on the destruction of Captain Aylmer and had almost determined that if Captain Aylmer could not be made to vanish into eternity, he must make up his mind to go that road himself.

It was out of the question that he should go down to Belton. As to that he had come to a very decided opinion by the time that he had crossed Oxford Street. Go down to see her, when she had treated him after this fashion I No, indeed. She wanted no brother now. She had chosen to trust herself to this other man, and he, Will Belton, would not interfere further in her affairs. Then he drew upon his imagination for a picture of the future, in which he portrayed Captain Aylmer as a ruined man, who would probably desert his wife, and make himself generally odious to all his acquaintance a picture as to the realization of which I am bound to say that Captain Aylmer's antecedents gave no probability. But it was the looking at this self-drawn picture which first softened the artist's heart towards the victim whom he had immolated on his imaginary canvas. When Clara should be ruined by the baseness and villainy and general scampishness of this man whom she was going to marry to whom she was about to be weak enough and fool enough to trust herself then he would interpose and be her brother once again a broken-hearted brother no doubt, but a brother efficacious to keep the wolf from the door of this poor woman and her children. Then, as he thus created Captain Aylmer's embryo family of unprovided orphans for after a while he killed the captain, making him to die some death that was very disgraceful, but not very distinct even to his own imagination as he thought of those coming pledges of a love which was to him so bitter, he stormed about the streets, performing antics of which no one would have believed him capable who had known him as the thriving Mr William Belton, of Plaistow Hall, among the fens of Norfolk.