Anthony Trollope: The Belton Estate

20. CHAPTER XX: WILLIAM BELTON DOES NOT GO OUT HUNTING (continued)

'But you can't. Nobody can make it either better or worse. I promised her once before that I would go to her when she might be in trouble, and I will be as good as my word. I said I would be a brother to her and so I will. So help me God, I will!' Then he rushed out of the room, striding through the door as though he would knock it down, and hurried up. stairs to his own chamber. When there he stripped himself of his hunting things, and dressed himself again with all the expedition in his power; and then he threw a heap of clothes into a large portmanteau, and set himself to work packing as though everything in the world were to depend upon his catching a certain train. And he went to a locked drawer, and taking out a cheque-book, folded it up and put it into his pocket. Then he rang the bell violently; and as he was locking the portmanteau, pressing down the lid with all his weight and all his strength, he ordered that a certain mare should be put into a certain dog-cart and that somebody might be ready to drive over with him to the Downham Station. Within twenty minutes of the time of his rushing upstairs he appeared again before his sister with a greatcoat on, and a railway rug hanging over his arm. 'Do you mean that you are going today?' said she.

'Yes. I'll catch the 11.40 up-train at Downham. What's the good of going unless I go at once? If I can be of any use it will be at the first. It may be that she will have nobody there to do anything for her.'

'There is the clergyman, and Colonel Askerton even if Captain Aylmer has not gone down.'

'The clergyman and Colonel Askerton are nothing to her. And if that man is there I can come back again.'

'You will not quarrel with him?'

'Why should I quarrel with him? What is there to quarrel about? I'm not such a fool as to quarrel with a man because I hate him. If he is there I shall see her for a minute or two, and then I shall come back.'