“Have you heard the news, my dear, from the Small House?” said Mrs Boyce to her husband, some two or three days after Mrs Dale’s visit to the squire. It was one o’clock, and the parish pastor had come in from his ministrations to dine with his wife and children.
“What news?” said Mr Boyce, for he had heard none.
“Mrs Dale and the girls are going to leave the Small House; they’re going into Guestwick to live.”
“Mrs Dale going away; nonsense!” said the vicar. “What on earth should take her into Guestwick? She doesn’t pay a shilling of rent where she is.”
“I can assure you it’s true, my dear. I was with Mrs Hearn just now, and she had it direct from Mrs Dale’s own lips. Mrs Hearn said she’d never been taken so much aback in her whole life. There’s been some quarrel, you may be sure of that.”
Mr Boyce sat silent, pulling off his dirty shoes preparatory to his dinner. Tidings so important, as touching the social life of his parish, had not come to him for many a day, and he could hardly bring himself to credit them at so short a notice.
“Mrs Hearn says that Mrs Dale spoke ever so firmly about it, as though determined that nothing should change her.”
“And did she say why?”
“Well, not exactly. But Mrs Hearn said she could understand there had been words between her and the squire. It couldn’t be anything else, you know. Probably it had something to do with that man, Crosbie.”
“They’ll be very pushed about money,” said Mr Boyce, thrusting his feet into his slippers.
“That’s just what I said to Mrs Hearn. And those girls have never been used to anything like real economy. What’s to become of them I don’t know;” and Mrs Boyce, as she expressed her sympathy for her dear friends, received considerable comfort from the prospect of their future poverty. It always is so, and Mrs Boyce was not worse than her neighbours.
“You’ll find they’ll make it up before the time comes,” said Mr Boyce, to whom the excitement of such a change in affairs was almost too good to be true.
“I am afraid not,” said Mrs Boyce; “I’m afraid not. They are both so determined. I always thought that riding and giving the girls hats and habits was injurious. It was treating them as though they were the squire’s daughters, and they were not the squire’s daughters.”
“It was almost the same thing.”
“But now we see the difference,” said the judicious Mrs Boyce. “I often said that dear Mrs Dale was wrong, and it turns out that I was right. It will make no difference to me, as regards calling on them and that sort of thing.”
“Of course it won’t.”
“Not but what there must be a difference, and a very great difference too. It will be a terrible come down for poor Lily, with the loss of her fine husband and all.”
After dinner, when Mr Boyce had again gone forth upon his labours, the same subject was discussed between Mrs Boyce and her daughters, and the mother was very careful to teach her children that Mrs Dale would be just as good a person as ever she had been, and quite as much a lady, even though she should live in a very dingy house at Guestwick; from which lesson the Boyce girls learned plainly that Mrs Dale, with Bell and Lily, were about to have a fall in the world, and that they were to be treated accordingly.
From all this, it will be discovered that Mrs Dale had not given way to the squire’s arguments, although she had found herself unable to answer them. As she had returned home she had felt herself to be almost vanquished, and had spoken to the girls with the air and tone of a woman who hardly knew in which course lay the line of her duty. But they had not seen the squire’s manner on the occasion, nor heard his words, and they could not understand that their own purpose should be abandoned because he did not like it. So they talked their mother into fresh resolves, and on the following morning she wrote a note to her brother-in-law, assuring him that she had thought much of all that he had said, but again declaring that she regarded herself as bound in duty to leave the Small House. To this he had returned no answer, and she had communicated her intention to Mrs Hearn, thinking it better that there should be no secret in the matter.
“I am sorry to hear that your sister-in-law is going to leave us,” Mr Boyce said to the squire that same afternoon.
“Who told you that?” asked the squire, showing by his tone that he by no means liked the topic of conversation which the parson had chosen.
“Well, I had it from Mrs Boyce, and I think Mrs Hearn told her.”
“I wish Mrs Hearn would mind her own business, and not spread idle reports.”
The squire said nothing more, and Mr Boyce felt that he had been very unjustly snubbed.
Dr Crofts had come over and pronounced as a fact that it was scarlatina. Village apothecaries are generally wronged by the doubts which are thrown upon them, for the town doctors when they come always confirm what the village apothecaries have said.
“There can be no doubt as to its being scarlatina,” the doctor declared; “but the symptoms are all favourable.”
There was, however, much worse coming than this. Two days afterwards Lily found herself to be rather unwell. She endeavoured to keep it to herself, fearing that she should be brought under the doctor’s notice as a patient; but her efforts were unavailing, and on the following morning it was known that she had also taken the disease. Dr Crofts declared that everything was in her favour. The weather was cold. The presence of the malady in the house had caused them all to be careful, and, moreover, good advice was at hand at once. The doctor begged Mrs Dale not to be uneasy, but he was very eager in begging that the two sisters might not be allowed to be together. “Could you not send Bell into Guestwick,—to Mrs Eames’s?” said he. But Bell did not choose to be sent to Mrs Eames’s, and was with great difficulty kept out of her mother’s bedroom, to which Lily as an invalid was transferred.
“If you will allow me to say so,” he said to Bell, on the second day after Lily’s complaint had declared itself, “you are wrong to stay here in the house.”
“I certainly shall not leave mamma, when she has got so much upon her hands,” said Bell.
“But if you should be taken ill she would have more on her hands,” pleaded the doctor.
“I could not do it,” Bell replied. “If I were taken over to Guestwick, I should be so uneasy that I should walk back to Allington the first moment that I could escape from the house.”
“I think your mother would be more comfortable without you.”
“And I think she would be more comfortable with me. I don’t ever like to hear of a woman running away from illness; but when a sister or a daughter does so, it is intolerable.” So Bell remained, without permission indeed to see her sister, but performing various outside administrations which were much needed.
And thus all manner of trouble came upon the inhabitants of the Small House, falling upon them as it were in a heap together. It was as yet barely two months since those terrible tidings had come respecting Crosbie; tidings which, it was felt at the time, would of themselves be sufficient to crush them; and now to that misfortune other misfortunes had been added,—one quick upon the heels of another. In the teeth of the doctor’s kind prophecy Lily became very ill, and after a few days was delirious. She would talk to her mother about Crosbie, speaking of him as she used to speak in the autumn that was passed. But even in her madness she remembered that they had resolved to leave their present home; and she asked the doctor twice whether their lodgings at Guestwick were ready for them.
It was thus that Crofts first heard of their intention. Now, in these days of Lily’s worst illness, he came daily over to Allington, remaining there, on one occasion, the whole night. For all this he would take no fee;—nor had he ever taken a fee from Mrs Dale. “I wish you would not come so often,” Bell said to him one evening, as he stood with her at the drawing-room fire, after he had left the patient’s room; “you are overloading us with obligations.” On that day Lily was over the worst of the fever, and he had been able to tell Mrs Dale that he did not think that she was now in danger.
“It will not be necessary much longer,” he said; “the worst of it is over.”
“It is such a luxury to hear you say so. I suppose we shall owe her life to you; but nevertheless—”
“Oh, no; scarlatina is not such a terrible thing now as it used to be.”
“Then why should you have devoted your time to her as you have done? It frightens me when I think of the injury we must have done you.”
“My horse has felt it more than I have,” said the doctor, laughing. “My patients at Guestwick are not so very numerous.” Then, instead of going, he sat himself down. “And it is really true,” he said, “that you are all going to leave this house?”
“Quite true. We shall do so at the end of March, if Lily is well enough to be moved.”
“Lily will be well long before that, I hope; not, indeed, that she ought to be moved out of her own rooms for many weeks to come yet.”
“Unless we are stopped by her we shall certainly go at the end of March.” Bell now had also sat down, and they both remained for some time looking at the fire in silence.
“And why is it, Bell?” he said, at last. “But I don’t know whether I have a right to ask.”
“You have a right to ask any question about us,” she said. “My uncle is very kind. He is more than kind; he is generous. But he seems to think that our living here gives him a right to interfere with mamma. We don’t like that, and, therefore, we are going.”
The doctor still sat on one side of the fire, and Bell still sat opposite to him; but the conversation did not form itself very freely between them. “It is bad news,” he said, at last.
“At any rate, when we are ill you will not have so far to come and see us.”
“Yes, I understand. That means that I am ungracious not to congratulate myself on having you all so much nearer to me; but I do not in the least. I cannot bear to think of you as living anywhere but here at Allington. Dales will be out of their place in a street at Guestwick.”
“That’s hard upon the Dales, too.”
“It is hard upon them. It’s a sort of offshoot from that very tyrannical law of noblesse oblige. I don’t think you ought to go away from Allington, unless the circumstances are very imperative.”
“But they are very imperative.”
“In that case, indeed!” And then again he fell into silence.
“Have you never seen that mamma is not happy here?” she said, after another pause. “For myself, I never quite understood it all before as I do now; but now I see it.”
“And I have seen it;—have seen at least what you mean. She has led a life of restraint; but then, how frequently is such restraint the necessity of a life? I hardly think that your mother would move on that account.”
“No. It is on our account. But this restraint, as you call it, makes us unhappy, and she is governed by seeing that. My uncle is generous to her as regards money; but in other things,—in matters of feeling,—I think he has been ungenerous.”
“Bell,” said the doctor; and then he paused.
She looked up at him, but made no answer. He had always called her by her Christian name, and they two had ever regarded each other as close friends. At the present moment she had forgotten all else besides this, and yet she had infinite pleasure in sitting there and talking to him.
“I am going to ask you a question which perhaps I ought not to ask, only that I have known you so long that I almost feel that I am speaking to a sister.”
“You may ask me what you please,” said she.
“It is about your cousin Bernard.”
“About Bernard!” said Bell.
It was now dusk; and as they were sitting without other light than that of the fire, she knew that he could not discern the colour which covered her face as her cousin’s name was mentioned. But, had the light of day pervaded the whole room, I doubt whether Crofts would have seen that blush, for he kept his eyes firmly fixed upon the fire.
“Yes, about Bernard. I don’t know whether I ought to ask you.”
“I’m sure I can’t say,” said Bell; speaking words of the nature of which she was not conscious.
“There has been a rumour in Guestwick that he and you—”
“It is untrue,” said Bell; “quite untrue. If you hear it repeated, you should contradict it. I wonder why people should say such things.”
“It would have been an excellent marriage;—all your friends must have approved it.”
“What do you mean, Dr Crofts? How I do hate those words, ‘an excellent marriage’. In them is contained more of wicked worldliness than any other words that one ever hears spoken. You want me to marry my cousin simply because I should have a great house to live in, and a coach. I know that you are my friend, but I hate such friendship as that.”
“I think you misunderstand me, Bell. I mean that it would have been an excellent marriage, provided you had both loved each other.”
“No, I don’t misunderstand you. Of course it would be an excellent marriage, if we loved each other. You might say the same if I loved the butcher or the baker. What you mean is, that it makes a reason for loving him.”
“I don’t think I did mean that.”
“Then you mean nothing.”
After that, there were again some minutes of silence during which Dr Crofts got up to go away. “You have scolded me very dreadfully,” he said, with a slight smile, “and I believe I have deserved it for interfering.”
“No; not at all for interfering.”
“But at any rate you must forgive me before I go.”
“I won’t forgive you at all, unless you repent of your sins, and alter altogether the wickedness of your mind. You will become very soon as bad as Dr Gruffen.”
“Shall I?”
“Oh, but I will forgive you; for after all, you are the most generous man in the world.”
“Oh, yes; of course I am. Well,—goodbye.”
“But, Dr Crofts, you should not suppose others to be so much more worldly than yourself. You do not care for money so very much—”
“But I do care very much.”
“If you did, you would not come here for nothing day after day.”
“I do care for money very much. I have sometimes nearly broken my heart because I could not get opportunities of earning it. It is the best friend that a man can have—”
“Oh, Dr Crofts!”
“—the best friend that a man can have, if it be honestly come by. A woman can hardly realise the sorrow which may fall upon a man from the want of such a friend.”
“Of course a man likes to earn a decent living by his profession; and you can do that.”
“That depends upon one’s ideas of decency.”
“Ah! mine never ran very high. I’ve always had a sort of aptitude for living in a pigsty;—a clean pigsty, you know, with nice fresh bean straw to lie upon. I think it was a mistake when they made a lady of me. I do, indeed.”
“I do not,” said Dr Crofts.
“That because you don’t quite know me yet. I’ve not the slightest pleasure in putting on three different dresses a day. I do it very often because it comes to me to do it, from the way in which we have been taught to live. But when we get to Guestwick I mean to change all that; and if you come in to tea, you’ll see me in the same brown frock that I wear in the morning,—unless, indeed, the morning work makes the brown frock dirty. Oh, Dr Crofts! you’ll have it pitch-dark riding home under the Guestwick elms.”
“I don’t mind the dark,” he said; and it seemed as though he hardly intended to go even yet.
“But I do,” said Bell, “and I shall ring for candles.” But he stopped her as she put her hand out to the bell-pull.
“Stop a moment, Bell. You need hardly have the candles before I go, and you need not begrudge my staying either, seeing that I shall be all alone at home.”
“Begrudge your staying!”
“But, however, you shall begrudge it, or else make me very welcome.” He still held her by the wrist, which he had caught as he prevented her from summoning the servant.
“What do you mean?” said she. “You know you are welcome to us as flowers in May. You always were welcome; but now, when you have come to us in our trouble— At any rate, you shall never say that I turn you out.”
“Shall I never say so?” And still he held her by the wrist. He had kept his chair throughout, but she was standing before him,—between him and the fire. But she, though he held her in this way, thought little of his words, or of his action. They had known each other with great intimacy, and though Lily would still laugh at her, saying that Dr Crofts was her lover, she had long since taught herself that no such feeling as that would ever exist between them.
“Shall I never say so, Bell? What if so poor a man as I ask for the hand that you will not give to so rich a man as your cousin Bernard?”
She instantly withdrew her arm and moved back very quickly a step or two across the rug. She did it almost with the motion which she might have used had he insulted her; or had a man spoken such words who would not, under any circumstances, have a right to speak them.
“Ah, yes! I thought it would be so,” he said. “I may go now, and may know that I have been turned out.”
“What is it you mean, Dr Crofts? What is it you are saying? Why do you talk that nonsense, trying to see if you can provoke me?”
“Yes; it is nonsense. I have no right to address you in that way, and certainly should not have done it now that I am in your house in the way of my profession. I beg your pardon.” Now he also was standing, but he had not moved from his side of the fireplace. “Are you going to forgive me before I go?”
“Forgive you for what?” said she.
“For daring to love you; for having loved you almost as long as you can remember; for loving you better than all beside. This alone you should forgive; but will you forgive me for having told it?”
He had made her no offer, nor did she expect that he was about to make one. She herself had hardly yet realised the meaning of his words, and she certainly had asked herself no question as to the answer which she should give to them. There are cases in which lovers present themselves in so unmistakable a guise, that the first word of open love uttered by them tells their whole story, and tells it without the possibility of a surprise. And it is generally so when the lover has not been an old friend, when even his acquaintance has been of modern date. It had been so essentially in the case of Crosbie and Lily Dale. When Crosbie came to Lily and made his offer, he did it with perfect ease and thorough self-possession, for he almost knew that it was expected. And Lily, though she had been flurried for a moment, had her answer pat enough. She already loved the man with all her heart, delighted in his presence, basked in the sunshine of his manliness, rejoiced in his wit, and had tuned her ears to the tone of his voice. It had all been done, and the world expected it. Had he not made his offer, Lily would have been illtreated;—though, alas, alas, there was future illtreatment, so much heavier, in store for her! But there are other cases in which a lover cannot make himself known as such without great difficulty, and when he does do so, cannot hope for an immediate answer in his favour. It is hard upon old friends that this difficulty should usually fall the heaviest upon them. Crofts had been so intimate with the Dale family that very many persons had thought it probable that he would marry one of the girls. Mrs Dale herself had thought so, and had almost hoped it. Lily had certainly done both. These thoughts and hopes had somewhat faded away, but yet their former existence should have been in the doctor’s favour. But now, when he had in some way spoken out, Bell started back from him and would not believe that he was in earnest. She probably loved him better than any man in the world, and yet, when he spoke to her of love, she could not bring herself to understand him.
“I don’t know what you mean, Dr Crofts; indeed I do not,” she said.
“I had meant to ask you to be my wife; simply that. But you shall not have the pain of making me a positive refusal. As I rode here to-day I thought of it. During my frequent rides of late I have thought of little else. But I told myself that I had no right to do it. I have not even a house in which it would be fit that you should live.”
“Dr Crofts, if I loved you,—if I wished to marry you—” and then she stopped herself.
“But you do not?”
“No; I think not. I suppose not. No. But in any way no consideration about money has anything to do with it.”
“But I am not that butcher or that baker whom you could love?”
“No,” said Bell; and then she stopped herself from further speech, not as intending to convey all her answer in that one word, but as not knowing how to fashion any further words.
“I knew it would be so,” said the doctor.
It will, I fear, be thought by those who condescend to criticise this lover’s conduct and his mode of carrying on his suit, that he was very unfit for such work. Ladies will say that he wanted courage, and men will say that he wanted wit. I am inclined, however, to believe that he behaved as well as men generally do behave on such occasions, and that he showed himself to be a good average lover. There is your bold lover, who knocks his ladylove over as he does a bird, and who would anathematise himself all over, and swear that his gun was distraught, and look about as though he thought the world was coming to an end, if he missed to knock over his bird. And there is your timid lover, who winks his eyes when he fires, who has felt certain from the moment in which he buttoned on his knickerbockers that he at any rate would kill nothing, and who, when he hears the loud congratulations of his friends, cannot believe that he really did bag that beautiful winged thing by his own prowess. The beautiful winged thing which the timid man carries home in his bosom, declining to have it thrown into a miscellaneous cart, so that it may never be lost in a common crowd of game, is better to him than are the slaughtered hecatombs to those who kill their birds by the hundred.
But Dr Crofts had so winked his eye, that he was not in the least aware whether he had winged his bird or no. Indeed, having no one at hand to congratulate him, he was quite sure that the bird had flown away uninjured into the next field. “No” was the only word which Bell had given in answer to his last sidelong question, and No is not a comfortable word to lovers. But there had been that in Bell’s No which might have taught him that the bird was not escaping without a wound, if he had still had any of his wits about him.
“Now I will go,” said he. Then he paused for an answer, but none came. “And you will understand what I meant when I spoke of being turned out.”
“Nobody—turns you out.” And Bell, as she spoke, had almost descended to a sob.
“It is time, at any rate, that I should go; is it not? And, Bell, don’t suppose that this little scene will keep me away from your sister’s bedside. I shall be here tomorrow, and you will find that you will hardly know me again for the same person.” Then in the dark he put out his hand to her.
“Goodbye,” she said, giving him her hand. He pressed hers very closely, but she, though she wished to do so, could not bring herself to return the pressure. Her hand remained passive in his, showing no sign of offence; but it was absolutely passive.
“Goodbye, dearest friend,” he said.
“Goodbye,” she answered,—and then he was gone.
She waited quite still till she heard the front-door close after him, and then she crept silently up to her own bedroom, and sat herself down in a low rocking-chair over the fire. It was in accordance with a custom already established that her mother should remain with Lily till the tea was ready downstairs; for in these days of illness such dinners as were provided were eaten early. Bell, therefore, knew that she had still some half-hour of her own, during which she might sit and think undisturbed.
And what naturally should have been her first thoughts? That she had ruthlessly refused a man who, as she now knew, loved her well, and for whom she had always felt at any rate the warmest friendship? Such were not her thoughts, nor were they in any way akin to this. They ran back instantly to years gone by,—over long years, as her few years were counted, and settled themselves on certain halcyon days, in which she had dreamed that he had loved her, and had fancied that she had loved him. How she had schooled herself for those days since that, and taught herself to know that her thoughts had been over-bold! And now it had all come round. The only man that she had ever liked had loved her. Then there came to her a memory of a certain day, in which she had been almost proud to think that Crosbie had admired her, in which she had almost hoped that it might be so; and as she thought of this she blushed, and struck her foot twice upon the floor. “Dear Lily,” she said to herself—”poor Lily!” But the feeling which induced her then to think of her sister had had no relation to that which had first brought Crosbie into her mind.
And this man had loved her through it all,—this priceless, peerless man,—this man who was as true to the backbone as that other man had shown himself to be false; who was as sound as the other man had proved himself to be rotten. A smile came across her face as she sat looking at the fire, thinking of this. A man had loved her, whose love was worth possessing. She hardly remembered whether or no she had refused him or accepted him. She hardly asked herself what she would do. As to all that it was necessary that she should have many thoughts, but the necessity did not press upon her quite immediately. For the present, at any rate, she might sit and triumph;—and thus triumphant she sat there till the old nurse came in and told her that her mother was waiting for her below.
The fourteenth of February was finally settled as the day on which Mr Crosbie was to be made the happiest of men. A later day had been at first named, the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth having been suggested as an improvement over the first week in March; but Lady Amelia had been frightened by Crosbie’s behaviour on that Sunday evening, and had made the countess understand that there should be no unnecessary delay. “He doesn’t scruple at that kind of thing,” Lady Amelia had said in one of her letters, showing perhaps less trust in the potency of her own rank than might have been expected from her. The countess, however, had agreed with her, and when Crosbie received from his motherin-law a very affectionate epistle, setting forth all the reasons which would make the fourteenth so much more convenient a day than the twenty-eighth, he was unable to invent an excuse for not being made happy a fortnight earlier than the time named in the bargain. His first impulse had been against yielding, arising from some feeling which made him think that more than the bargain ought not to be exacted. But what was the use to him of quarrelling? What the use, at least, of quarrelling just then? He believed that he could more easily enfranchise himself from the de Courcy tyranny when he should be once married than he could do now. When Lady Alexandrina should be his own he would let her know that he intended to be her master. If in doing so it would be necessary that he should divide himself altogether from the de Courcys, such division should be made. At the present moment he would yield to them, at any rate in this matter. And so the fourteenth of February was fixed for the marriage.
In the second week in January Alexandrina came up to look after her things; or, in more noble language, to fit herself with becoming bridal appanages. As she could not properly do all this work alone, or even under the surveillance and with the assistance of a sister, Lady de Courcy was to come up also. But Alexandrina came first, remaining with her sister in St. John’s Wood till the countess should arrive. The countess had never yet condescended to accept of her son-in-law’s hospitality, but always went to the cold, comfortless house in Portman Square,—the house which had been the de Courcy town family mansion for many years, and which the countess would long since have willingly exchanged for some abode on the other side of Oxford Street; but the earl had been obdurate; his clubs and certain lodgings which he had occasionally been wont to occupy, were on the right side of Oxford Street; why should he change his old family residence? So the countess was coming up to Portman Square, not having been even asked on this occasion to St. John’s Wood.
“Don’t you think we’d better,” Mr Gazebee had said to his wife, almost trembling at the renewal of his own proposition.
“I think not, my dear,” Lady Amelia had answered. “Mamma is not very particular; but there are little things, you know—”
“Oh, yes, of course,” said Mr Gazebee; and then the conversation had been dropped. He would most willingly have entertained his august motherin-law during her visit to the metropolis, and yet her presence in his house would have made him miserable as long as she remained there.
But for a week Alexandrina sojourned under Mr Gazebee’s roof, during which time Crosbie was made happy with all the delights of an expectant bridegroom. Of course he was given to understand that he was to dine at the Gazebees’ every day, and spend all his evenings there; and, under the circumstances, he had no excuse for not doing so. Indeed, at the present moment, his hours would otherwise have hung heavily enough upon his hands. In spite of his bold resolution with reference to his eye, and his intention not to be debarred from the pleasures of society by the marks of the late combat, he had not, since that occurrence, frequented his club very closely; and though London was now again becoming fairly full, he did not find himself going out so much as had been his wont. The brilliance of his coming marriage did not seem to have added much to his popularity; in fact, the world,—his world,—was beginning to look coldly at him. Therefore that daily attendance at St. John’s Wood was not felt to be so irksome as might have been expected.
A residence had been taken for the couple in a very fashionable row of buildings abutting upon the Bayswater Road, called Princess Royal Crescent. The house was quite new, and the street being unfinished had about it a strong smell of mortar, and a general aspect of builders’ poles and brickbats; but nevertheless, it was acknowledged to be a quite correct locality. From one end of the crescent a corner of Hyde Park could be seen, and the other abutted on a very handsome terrace indeed, in which lived an ambassador,—from South America,—a few bankers’ senior clerks, and a peer of the realm. We know how vile is the sound of Baker Street, and how absolutely foul to the polite ear is the name of Fitzroy Square. The houses, however, in those purlieus are substantial, warm, and of good size. The house in Princess Royal Crescent was certainly not substantial, for in these days substantially-built houses do not pay. It could hardly have been warm, for, to speak the truth, it was even yet not finished throughout; and as for the size, though the drawing-room was a noble apartment, consisting of a section of the whole house, with a corner cut out for the staircase, it was very much cramped in its other parts, and was made like a cherub, in this respect, that it had no rear belonging to it. “But if you have no private fortune of your own, you cannot have everything,” as the countess observed when Crosbie objected to the house because a closet under the kitchen-stairs was to be assigned to him as his own dressingroom.
When the question of the house was first debated, Lady Amelia had been anxious that St. John’s Wood should be selected as the site, but to this Crosbie had positively objected.
“I think you don’t like St. John’s Wood,” Lady Amelia had said to him somewhat sternly, thinking to awe him into a declaration that he entertained no general enmity to the neighbourhood. But Crosbie was not weak enough for this.
“No; I do not,” he said. “I have always disliked it. It amounts to a prejudice, I dare say. But if I were made to live here I am convinced I should cut my throat in the first six months.”
Lady Amelia had then drawn herself up, declaring her sorrow that her house should be so hateful to him.
“Oh, dear, no,” said he. “I like it very much for you, and enjoy coming here of all things. I speak only of the effect which living here myself would have upon me.”
Lady Amelia was quite clever enough to understand it all; but she had her sister’s interest at heart, and therefore persevered in her affectionate solicitude for her brother-in-law, giving up that point as to St. John’s Wood. Crosbie himself had wished to go to one of the new Pimlico squares down near Vauxhall Bridge and the river, actuated chiefly by consideration of the enormous distance lying between that locality and the northern region in which Lady Amelia lived; but to this Lady Alexandrina had objected strongly. If, indeed, they could have achieved Eaton Square, or a street leading out of Eaton Square,—if they could have crept on to the hem of the skirt of Belgravia,—the bride would have been delighted. And at first she was very nearly being taken in with the idea that such was the proposal made to her. Her geographical knowledge of Pimlico had not been perfect, and she had nearly fallen into a fatal error. But a friend had kindly intervened. “For heaven’s sake, my dear, don’t let him take you anywhere beyond Eccleston Square!” had been exclaimed to her in dismay by a faithful married friend. Thus warned, Alexandrina had been firm, and now their tent was to be pitched in Princess Royal Crescent, from one end of which the Hyde Park may be seen.
The furniture had been ordered chiefly under the inspection, and by the experience, of the Lady Amelia. Crosbie had satisfied himself by declaring that she at any rate could get the things cheaper than he could buy them, and that he had no taste for such employment. Nevertheless, he had felt that he was being made subject to tyranny and brought under the thumb of subjection. He could not go cordially into this matter of beds and chairs, and, therefore, at last deputed the whole matter to the de Courcy faction. And for this there was another reason, not hitherto mentioned. Mr Mortimer Gazebee was finding the money with which all the furniture was being bought. He, with an honest but almost unintelligible zeal for the de Courcy family, had tied up every shilling on which he could lay his hand as belonging to Crosbie, in the interest of Lady Alexandrina. He had gone to work for her, scraping here and arranging there, strapping the new husband down upon the grindstone of his matrimonial settlement, as though the future bread of his, Gazebee’s, own children were dependent on the validity of his legal workmanship. And for this he was not to receive a penny, or gain any advantage, immediate or ulterior. It came from his zeal,—his zeal for the coronet which Lord de Courcy wore. According to his mind an earl and an earl’s belongings were entitled to such zeal. It was the theory in which he had been educated, and amounted to a worship which, unconsciously, he practised. Personally, he disliked Lord de Courcy, who illtreated him. He knew that the earl was a heartless, cruel, bad man. But as an earl he was entitled to an amount of service which no commoner could have commanded from Mr Gazebee. Mr Gazebee, having thus tied up all the available funds in favour of Lady Alexandrina’s seemingly expected widowhood, was himself providing the money with which the new house was to be furnished. “You can pay me a hundred and fifty a year with four per cent. till it is liquidated,” he had said to Crosbie; and Crosbie had assented with a grunt. Hitherto, though he had lived in London expensively, and as a man of fashion, he had never owed any one anything. He was now to begin that career of owing. But when a clerk in a public office marries an earl’s daughter, he cannot expect to have everything his own way.
Lady Amelia had bought the ordinary furniture,—the beds, the stair-carpets, the washing-stands, and the kitchen things. Gazebee had got a bargain of the dinner-table and sideboard. But Lady Alexandrina herself was to come up with reference to the appurtenances of the drawing-room. It was with reference to matters of costume that the countess intended to lend her assistance,—matters of costume as to which the bill could not be sent in to Gazebee, and be paid for by him with five per cent. duly charged against the bridegroom. The bridal trousseau must be produced by de Courcy’s means, and, therefore, it was necessary that the countess herself should come upon the scene. “I will have no bills, d’ye hear?” snarled the earl, gnashing and snapping upon his words with one specially ugly black tooth. “I won’t have any bills about this affair.” And yet he made no offer of ready money. It was very necessary under such circumstances that the countess herself should come upon the scene. An ambiguous hint had been conveyed to Mr Gazebee, during a visit of business which he had lately made to Courcy Castle, that the milliner’s bills might as well be pinned on to those of the furniture-makers, the crockery-mongers, and the like. The countess, putting it in her own way, had gently suggested that the fashion of the thing had changed lately, and that such an arrangement was considered to be the proper thing among people who lived really in the world. But Gazebee was a clear-headed, honest man; and he knew the countess. He did not think that such an arrangement could be made on the present occasion. Whereupon the countess pushed her suggestion no further, but made up her mind that she must come up to London herself.
It was pleasant to see the Ladies Amelia and Alexandrina, as they sat within a vast emporium of carpets in Bond Street, asking questions of the four men who were waiting upon them, putting their heads together and whispering, calculating accurately as to extra twopences a yard, and occasioning as much trouble as it was possible for them to give. It was pleasant because they managed their large hoops cleverly among the huge rolls of carpets, because they were enjoying themselves thoroughly, and taking to themselves the homage of the men as clearly their due. But it was not so pleasant to look at Crosbie, who was fidgeting to get away to his office, to whom no power of choosing in the matter was really given, and whom the men regarded as being altogether supernumerary. The ladies had promised to be at the shop by half-past ten, so that Crosbie should reach his office at eleven—or a little after. But it was nearly eleven before they left the Gazebee residence, and it was very evident that half-an-hour among the carpets would be by no means sufficient. It seemed as though miles upon miles of gorgeous colouring were unrolled before them; and then when any pattern was regarded as at all practicable, it was unrolled backwards and forwards till a room was nearly covered by it. Crosbie felt for the men who were hauling about the huge heaps of material; but Lady Amelia sat as composed as though it were her duty to inspect every yard of stuff in the warehouse. “I think we’ll look at that one at the bottom again.” Then the men went to work and removed a mountain. “No, my dear, that green in the scroll-work won’t do. It would fly directly, if any hot water were spilt.” The man, smiling ineffably, declared that that particular green never flew anywhere. But Lady Amelia paid no attention to him, and the carpet for which the mountain had been removed became part of another mountain.
“That might do,” said Alexandrina, gazing upon a magnificent crimson ground through which rivers of yellow meandered, carrying with them in their streams an infinity of blue flowers. And as she spoke she held her head gracefully on one side, and looked down upon the carpet doubtingly. Lady Amelia poked it with her parasol at though to test its durability, and whispered something about yellows showing the dirt. Crosbie took out his watch and groaned.
“It’s a superb carpet, my lady, and about the newest thing we have. We put down four hundred and fifty yards of it for the Duchess of South Wales, at Cwddglwlch Castle, only last month. Nobody has had it since, for it has not been in stock.” Whereupon Lady Amelia again poked it, and then got up and walked upon it. Lady Alexandrina held her head a little more on one side.
“Five and three?” said Lady Amelia.
“Oh, no, my lady; five and seven; and the cheapest carpet we have in the house. There is twopence a yard more in the colour; there is, indeed.”
“And the discount?” asked Lady Amelia.
“Two and a half, my lady.”
“Oh dear, no,” said Lady Amelia. “I always have five per cent. for immediate payment—quite immediate, you know.” Upon which the man declared the question must be referred to his master. Two and a half was the rule of the house. Crosbie, who had been looking out of the window, said that upon his honour he couldn’t wait any longer.
“And what do you think of it, Adolphus?”, asked Alexandrina.
“Think of what?”
“Of the carpet—this one, you know!”
“Oh—what do I think of the carpet? I don’t think I quite like all these yellow bands; and isn’t it too red? I should have thought something brown with a small pattern would have been better. But, upon my word, I don’t much care.”
“Of course he doesn’t,” said Lady Amelia. Then the two ladies put their heads together for another five minutes, and the carpet was chosen—subject to that question of the discount. “And now about the rug,” said Lady Amelia. But here Crosbie rebelled, and insisted that he must leave them and go to his office. “You can’t want me about the rug,” he said. “Well, perhaps not,” said Lady Amelia. But it was manifest that Alexandrina did not approve of being thus left by her male attendant.
The same thing happened in Oxford Street with reference to the chairs and sofas, and Crosbie began to wish that he were settled, even though he should have to dress himself in the closet below the kitchen-stairs. He was learning to hate the whole household in St. John’s Wood, and almost all that belonged to it. He was introduced there to little family economies of which hitherto he had known nothing, and which were disgusting to him, and the necessity for which was especially explained to him. It was to men placed as he was about to place himself that these economies were so vitally essential—to men who with limited means had to maintain a decorous outward face towards the fashionable world. Ample supplies of butchers’ meat and unlimited washing-bills might be very well upon fifteen hundred a year to those who went out but seldom, and who could use the first cab that came to hand when they did go out. But there were certain things that Lady Alexandrina must do, and therefore the strictest household economy became necessary. Would Lily Dale have required the use of a carriage, got up to look as though it were private, at the expense of her husband’s beefsteaks and clean shirts? That question and others of that nature were asked by Crosbie within his own mind, not unfrequently.
But, nevertheless, he tried to love Alexandrina, or rather to persuade himself that he loved her. If he could only get her away from the de Courcy faction, and especially from the Gazebee branch of it, he would break her of all that. He would teach her to sit triumphantly in a street cab, and to cater for her table with a plentiful hand. Teach her!—at some age over thirty; and with such careful training as she had already received! Did he intend to forbid her ever again to see her relations, ever to go to St. John’s Wood, or to correspond with the countess and Lady Margaretta? Teach her, indeed! Had he yet to learn that he could not wash a blackamoor white? that he could not have done so even had he himself been well adapted for the attempt, whereas he was in truth nearly as ill adapted as a man might be? But who could pity him? Lily, whom he might have had in his bosom, would have been no blackamoor.
Then came the time of Lady de Courcy’s visit to town, and Alexandrina moved herself off to Portman Square. There was some apparent comfort in this to Crosbie, for he would thereby be saved from those daily dreary journeys up to the northwest. I may say that he positively hated that windy corner near the church, round which he had to walk in getting to the Gazebee residence, and that he hated the lamp which guided him to the door, and the very door itself. This door stood buried as it were in a wall, and opened on to a narrow passage which ran across a so-called garden, or front yard, containing on each side two iron receptacles for geraniums, painted to look like Palissy ware, and a naked female on a pedestal. No spot in London was, as he thought, so cold as the bit of pavement immediately in front of that door. And there he would be kept five, ten, fifteen minutes, as he declared—though I believe in my heart that the time never exceeded three—while Richard was putting off the trappings of his work and putting on the trappings of his grandeur.
If people would only have their doors opened to you by such assistance as may come most easily and naturally to the work! I stood lately for some minutes on a Tuesday afternoon at a gallant portal, and as I waxed impatient a pretty maiden came and opened it. She was a pretty maiden, though her hands and face and apron told tales of the fire-grates. “Laws, sir,” she said, “the visitors’ day is Wednesday; and if you would come then, there would be the man in livery!” She took my card with the corner of her apron, and did just as well as the man in livery; but what would have happened to her had her little speech been overheard by her mistress?
Crosbie hated the house in St. John’s Wood, and therefore the coming of the countess was a relief to him. Portman Square was easily to be reached, and the hospitalities of the countess would not be pressed upon him so strongly as those of the Gazebees. When he first called he was shown into the great family dining-room, which looked out towards the back of the house. The front windows were, of course, closed, as the family was not supposed to be in London. Here he remained in the room for some quarter of an hour, and then the countess descended upon him in all her grandeur. Perhaps he had never before seen her so grand. Her dress was very large, and rustled through the broad doorway, as if demanding even a broader passage. She had on a wonder of a bonnet, and a velvet mantle that was nearly as expansive as her petticoats. She threw her head a little back as she accosted him, and he instantly perceived that he was enveloped in the fumes of an affectionate but somewhat contemptuous patronage. In old days he had liked the countess, because her manner to him had always been flattering. In his intercourse with her he had been able to feel that he gave quite as much as he got, and that the countess was aware of the fact. In all the circumstances of their acquaintance the ascendancy had been with him, and therefore the acquaintance had been a pleasant one. The countess had been a goodnatured, agreeable woman, whose rank and position had made her house pleasant to him; and therefore he had consented to shine upon her with such light as he had to give. Why was it that the matter was reversed, now that there was so much stronger a cause for good feeling between them? He knew that there was such change, and with bitter internal upbraidings he acknowledged to himself that this woman was getting the mastery over him. As the friend of the countess he had been a great man in her eyes;—in all her little words and looks she had acknowledged his power; but now, as her son-in-law, he was to become a very little man,—such as was Mortimer Gazebee!
“My dear Adolphus,” she said, taking both his hands, “the day is coming very near now; is it not?”
“Very near, indeed,” he said.
“Yes, it is very near. I hope you feel yourself a happy man.”
“Oh, yes, that’s of course.”
“It ought to be. Speaking very seriously, I mean that it ought to be a matter of course. She is everything that a man should desire in a wife. I am not alluding now to her rank, though of course you feel what a great advantage she gives you in this respect.”
Crosbie muttered something as to his consciousness of having drawn a prize in the lottery; but he so muttered it as not to convey to the lady’s ears a proper sense of his dependent gratitude. “I know of no man more fortunate than you have been,” she continued; “and I hope that my dear girl will find that you are fully aware that it is so. I think that she is looking rather fagged. You have allowed her to do more than was good for her in the way of shopping.”
“She has done a good deal, certainly,” said Crosbie.
“She is so little used to anything of that kind! But of course, as things have turned out, it was necessary that she should see to these things herself.”
“I rather think she liked it,” said Crosbie.
“I believe she will always like doing her duty. We are just going now to Madame Millefranc’s, to see some silks;—perhaps you would wish to go with us?”
Just at this moment Alexandrina came into the room, and looked as though she were in all respects a smaller edition of her mother. They were both well-grown women, with handsome large figures, and a certain air about them which answered almost for beauty. As to the countess, her face, on close inspection, bore, as it was entitled to do, deep signs of age; but she so managed her face that any such close inspection was never made; and her general appearance for her time of life was certainly good. Very little more than this could be said in favour of her daughter.
“Oh dear, no, mamma,” she said, having heard her mother’s last words. “He’s the worst person in a shop in the world. He likes nothing, and dislikes nothing. Do you, Adolphus?”
“Indeed I do. I like all the cheap things, and dislike all the dear things.”
“Then you certainly shall not go with us to Madame Millefranc’s,” said Alexandrina.
“It would not matter to him there, you know, my dear,” said the countess, thinking perhaps of the suggestion she had lately made to Mr Gazebee.
On this occasion Crosbie managed to escape, simply promising to return to Portman Square in the evening after dinner. “By-the-by, Adolphus,” said the countess, as he handed her into the hired carriage which stood at the door, “I wish you would go to Lambert’s, on Ludgate Hill, for me. He has had a bracelet of mine for nearly three months. Do, there’s a good creature. Get it if you can, and bring it up this evening.”
Crosbie, as he made his way back to his office, swore that he would not do the bidding of the countess. He would not trudge off into the city after her trinkets. But at five o’clock, when he left his office, he did go there. He apologised to himself by saying that he had nothing else to do, and bethought himself that at the present moment his lady motherin-law’s smiles might be more convenient than her frowns. So he went to Lambert’s, on Ludgate Hill, and there learned that the bracelet had been sent down to Courcy Castle full two months since.
After that he dined at his club, at Sebright’s. He dined alone, sitting by no means in bliss with his half-pint of sherry on the table before him. A man now and then came up and spoke to him, one a few words, and another a few, and two or three congratulated him as to his marriage; but the club was not the same thing to him as it had formerly been. He did not stand in the centre of the rug, speaking indifferently to all or any around him, ready with his joke, and loudly on the alert with the last news of the day. How easy it is to be seen when any man has fallen from his pride of place, though the altitude was ever so small, and the fall ever so slight. Where is the man who can endure such a fall without showing it in his face, in his voice, in his step, and in every motion of every limb? Crosbie knew that he had fallen, and showed that he knew it by the manner in which he ate his mutton-chop.
At half-past eight he was again in Portman Square, and found the two ladies crowding over a small fire in a small back drawing-room. The furniture was all covered with brown holland, and the place had about it that cold comfortless feeling which uninhabited rooms always produce. Crosbie, as he had walked from the club up to Portman Square, had indulged in some serious thoughts. The kind of life which he had hitherto led had certainly passed away from him. He could never again be the pet of a club, or indulged as one to whom all good things were to be given without any labour at earning them on his own part. Such for some years had been his good fortune, but such could be his good fortune no longer. Was there anything within his reach which he might take in lieu of that which he had lost? He might still be victorious at his office, having more capacity for such victory than others around him. But such success alone would hardly suffice for him. Then he considered whether he might not even yet be happy in his own home,—whether Alexandrina, when separated from her mother, might not become such a wife as he could love. Nothing softens a man’s feelings so much as failure, or makes him turn so anxiously to an idea of home as buffetings from those he meets abroad. He had abandoned Lily because his outer world had seemed to him too bright to be deserted. He would endeavour to supply her place with Alexandrina, because his outer world had seemed to him too harsh to be supported. Alas! alas! a man cannot so easily repent of his sins, and wash himself white from their stains!
When he entered the room the two ladies were sitting over the fire, as I have stated, and Crosbie could immediately perceive that the spirit of the countess was not serene. In fact there had been a few words between the mother and child on that matter of the trousseau, and Alexandrina had plainly told her mother that if she were to be married at all she would be married with such garments belonging to her as were fitting for an earl’s daughter. It was in vain that her mother had explained with many circumlocutional phrases, that the fitness in this respect should be accommodated rather to the plebeian husband than to the noble parent. Alexandrina had been very firm, and had insisted on her rights, giving the countess to understand that if her orders for finery were not complied with, she would return as a spinster to Courcy, and prepare herself for partnership with Rosina.
“My dear,” said the countess, piteously, “you can have no idea of what I shall have to go through with your father. And, of course, you could get all these things afterwards.”
“Papa has no right to treat me in such a way. And if he would not give me any money himself, he should have let me have some of my own.”
“Ah, my dear, that was Mr Gazebee’s fault.”
“I don’t care whose fault it was. It certainly was not mine. I won’t have him to tell me”—”him” was intended to signify Adolphus Crosbie—”that he had to pay for my wedding-clothes.”
“Of course not that, my dear.”
“No; nor yet for the things which I wanted immediately. I’d much rather go and tell him at once that the marriage must be put off.”
Alexandrina of course carried her point, the countess reflecting with a maternal devotion equal almost to that of the pelican, that the earl could not do more than kill her. So the things were ordered as Alexandrina chose to order them, and the countess desired that the bills might be sent in to Mr Gazebee. Much self-devotion had been displayed by the mother, but the mother thought that none had been displayed by the daughter, and therefore she had been very cross with Alexandrina.
Crosbie, taking a chair, sat himself between them, and in a very good-humoured tone explained the little affair of the bracelet. “Your ladyship’s memory must have played you false,” said he, with a smile.
“My memory is very good,” said the countess; “very good indeed. If Twitch got it, and didn’t tell me, that was not my fault.” Twitch was her ladyship’s lady’s-maid. Crosbie, seeing how the land lay, said nothing more about the bracelet.
After a minute or two he put out his hand to take that of Alexandrina. They were to be married now in a week or two, and such a sign of love might have been allowed to him, even in the presence of the bride’s mother. He did succeed in getting hold of her fingers, but found in them none of the softness of a response. “Don’t,” said Lady Alexandrina, withdrawing her hand; and the tone of her voice as she spoke the word was not sweet to his ears. He remembered at the moment a certain scene which took place one evening at the little bridge at Allington, and Lily’s voice, and Lily’s words, and Lily’s passion, as he caressed her: “Oh, my love, my love, my love!”
“My dear,” said the countess, “they know how tired I am. I wonder whether they are going to give us any tea.” Whereupon Crosbie rang the bell, and, on resuming his chair, moved it a little farther away from his ladylove.
Presently the tea was brought to them by the housekeeper’s assistant, who did not appear to have made herself very smart for the occasion, and Crosbie thought that he was de trop. This, however, was a mistake on his part. As he had been admitted into the family, such little matters were no longer subject of care. Two or three months since, the countess would have fainted at the idea of such a domestic appearing with a tea-tray before Mr Crosbie. Now, however, she was utterly indifferent to any such consideration. Crosbie was to be admitted into the family, thereby becoming entitled to certain privileges,—and thereby also becoming subject to certain domestic drawbacks. In Mrs Dale’s little household there had been no rising to grandeur; but then, also, there had never been any bathos of dirt. Of this also Crosbie thought as he sat with his tea in his hand.
He soon, however, got himself away. When he rose to go Alexandrina also rose, and he was permitted to press his nose against her cheekbone by way of a salute.
“Goodnight, Adolphus,” said the countess, putting out her hand to him. “But stop a minute; I know there is something I want you to do for me. But you will look in as you go to your office tomorrow morning.”
When Crosbie was making his ineffectual inquiry after Lady de Courcy’s bracelet at Lambert’s, John Eames was in the act of entering Mrs Roper’s front door in Burton Crescent.
“Oh, John, where’s Mr Cradell?” were the first words which greeted him, and they were spoken by the divine Amelia. Now, in her usual practice of life, Amelia did not interest herself much as to the whereabouts of Mr Cradell.
“Where’s Cradell?” said Eames, repeating the question. “Upon my word, I don’t know. I walked to the office with him, but I haven’t seen him since. We don’t sit in the same room, you know.”
“John!” and then she stopped.
“What’s up now?” said John.
“John! That woman’s off and left her husband. As sure as your name’s John Eames, that foolish fellow has gone off with her.”
“What, Cradell? I don’t believe it.”
“She went out of this house at two o’clock in the afternoon, and has never been back since.” That, certainly, was only four hours from the present time, and such an absence from home in the middle of the day was but weak evidence on which to charge a married woman with the great sin of running off with a lover. This Amelia felt, and therefore she went on to explain. “He’s there upstairs in the drawing-room, the very picture of disconsolateness.”
“Who,—Cradell?”
“Lupex is. He’s been drinking a little, I’m afraid; but he’s very unhappy, indeed. He had an appointment to meet his wife here at four o’clock, and when he came he found her gone. He rushed up into their room, and now he says she has broken open a box he had and taken off all his money.”
“But he never had any money.”
“He paid mother some the day before yesterday.”
“That’s just the reason he shouldn’t have any to-day.”
“She certainly has taken things she wouldn’t have taken if she’d merely gone out shopping or anything like that, for I’ve been up in the room and looked about. She’d three necklaces. They weren’t much account; but she must have them all on, or else have got them in her pocket.”
“Cradell has never gone off with her in that way. He may be a fool—”
“Oh, he is, you know. I’ve never seen such a fool about a woman as he has been.”
“But he wouldn’t be a party to stealing a lot of trumpery trinkets, or taking her husband’s money. Indeed, I don’t think he has anything to do with it.” Then Eames thought over the circumstances of the day, and remembered that he had certainly not seen Cradell since the morning. It was that public servant’s practice to saunter into Eames’s room in the middle of the day, and there consume bread and cheese and beer,—in spite of an assertion which Johnny had once made as to crumbs of biscuit bathed in ink. But on this special day he had not done so. “I can’t think he has been such a fool as that,” said Johnny.
“But he has,” said Amelia. “It’s dinnertime now, and where is he? Had he any money left, Johnny?”
So interrogated, Eames disclosed a secret confided to him by his friend which no other circumstances would have succeeded in dragging from his breast.
“She borrowed twelve pounds from him about a fortnight since, immediately after quarter-day. And she owed him money, too, before that.”
“Oh, what a soft!” exclaimed Amelia; “and he hasn’t paid mother a shilling for the last two months!”
“It was his money, perhaps, that Mrs Roper got from Lupex the day before yesterday. If so, it comes to the same thing as far as she is concerned, you know.”
“And what are we to do now?” said Amelia, as she went before her lover upstairs. “Oh, John, what will become of me if ever you serve me in that way? What should I do if you were to go off with another lady?”
“Lupex hasn’t gone off,” said Eames, who hardly knew what to say when the matter was brought before him with so closely personal a reference.
“But it’s the same thing,” said Amelia. “Hearts is divided. Hearts that have been joined together ought never to be divided; ought they?” And then she hung upon his arm just as they got to the drawing-room door.
“Hearts and darts are all my eye,” said Johnny. “My belief is that a man had better never marry at all. How d’you do, Mr Lupex? Is anything the matter?”
Mr Lupex was seated on a chair in the middle of the room, and was leaning with his head over the back of it. So despondent was he in his attitude that his head would have fallen off and rolled on to the floor, had it followed the course which its owner seemed to intend that it should take. His hands hung down also along the back legs of the chair, till his fingers almost touched the ground, and altogether his appearance was pendent, drooping, and woebegone. Miss Spruce was seated in one corner of the room, with her hands folded in her lap before her, and Mrs Roper was standing on the rug with a look of severe virtue on her brow,—of virtue which, to judge by its appearance, was very severe. Nor was its severity intended to be exercised solely against Mrs Lupex. Mrs Roper was becoming very tired of Mr Lupex also, and would not have been unhappy if he also had run away,—leaving behind him so much of his property as would have paid his bill.
Mr Lupex did not stir when first addressed by John Eames, but a certain convulsive movement was to be seen on the back of his head, indicating that this new arrival in the drawing-room had produced a fresh accession of agony. The chair, too, quivered under him, and his fingers stretched themselves nearer to the ground and shook themselves.
“Mr Lupex, we’re going to dinner immediately,” said Mrs Roper. “Mr Eames, where is your friend, Mr Cradell?”
“Upon my word I don’t know,” said Eames.
“But I know,” said Lupex, jumping up and standing at his full height, while he knocked down the chair which had lately supported him. “The traitor to domestic bliss! I know. And wherever he is, he has that false woman in his arms. Would he were here!” And as he expressed the last wish he went through a motion with his hands and arms which seemed intended to signify that if that unfortunate young man were in the company he would pull him in pieces and double him up, and pack him close, and then despatch his remains off, through infinite space, to the Prince of Darkness. “Traitor,” he exclaimed, as he finished the process. “False traitor! Foul traitor! And she too!” Then, as he thought of this softer side of the subject, he prepared himself to relapse again on to the chair. Finding it on the ground he had to pick it up. He did pick it up, and once more flung away his head over the back of it, and stretched his finger-nails almost down to the carpet.
“James,” said Mrs Roper to her son, who was now in the room, “I think you’d better stay with Mr Lupex while we are at dinner. Come, Miss Spruce, I’m very sorry that you should be annoyed by this kind of thing.”
“It don’t hurt me,” said Miss Spruce, preparing to leave the room. “I’m only an old woman.”
“Annoyed!” said Lupex, raising himself again from his chair, not perhaps altogether disposed to remain upstairs while the dinner, for which it was intended that he should some day pay, was being eaten below. “Annoyed! It is a profound sorrow to me that any lady should be annoyed by my misfortunes. As regards Miss Spruce, I look upon her character with profound veneration.”
“You needn’t mind me; I’m only an old woman,” said Miss Spruce.
“But, by heavens, I do mind!” exclaimed Lupex; and hurrying forward he seized Miss Spruce by the hand. “I shall always regard age as entitled—” But the special privileges which Mr Lupex would have accorded to age were never made known to the inhabitants of Mrs Roper’s boarding-house, for the door of the room was again opened at this moment, and Mr Cradell entered.
“Here you are, old fellow, to answer for yourself,” said Eames.
Cradell, who had heard something as he came in at the front door, but had not heard that Lupex was in the drawing-room, made a slight start backwards when he saw that gentleman’s face. “Upon my word and honour,” he began;—but he was able to carry his speech no further. Lupex, dropping the hand of the elderly lady whom he reverenced, was upon him in an instant, and Cradell was shaking beneath his grasp like an aspen leaf,—or rather not like an aspen leaf, unless an aspen leaf when shaken is to be seen with its eyes shut, its mouth open, and its tongue hanging out.
“Come, I say,” said Eames, stepping forward to his friend’s assistance; “this won’t do at all, Mr Lupex. You’ve been drinking. You’d better wait till tomorrow morning, and speak to Cradell then.”
“Tomorrow morning, viper,” shouted Lupex, still holding his prey, but looking back at Eames over his shoulder. Who the viper was had not been clearly indicated. “When will he restore to me my wife? When will he restore to me my honour?”
“Upon-on-on-on my—” It was for the moment in vain that poor Mr Cradell endeavoured to asseverate his innocence, and to stake his honour upon his own purity as regarded Mrs Lupex. Lupex still held to his enemy’s cravat, though Eames had now got him by the arm, and so far impeded his movements as to hinder him from proceeding to any graver attack.
“Jemima, Jemima, Jemima!” shouted Mrs Roper. “Run for the police; run for the police!” But Amelia, who had more presence of mind than her mother, stopped Jemima as she was making to one of the front windows. “Keep where you are,” said Amelia. “They’ll come quiet in a minute or two.” And Amelia no doubt was right. Calling for the police when there is a row in the house is like summoning the water-engines when the soot is on fire in the kitchen chimney. In such cases good management will allow the soot to burn itself out, without aid from the water-engines. In the present instance the police were not called in, and I am inclined to think that their presence would not have been advantageous to any of the party.
“Upon—my—honour—I know nothing about her,” were the first words which Cradell was able to articulate, when Lupex, under Eames’s persuasion, at last relaxed his hold.
Lupex turned round to Miss Spruce with a sardonic grin. “You hear his words,—this enemy to domestic bliss,— Ha, ha! man, tell me whither you have conveyed my wife!”
“If you were to give me the Bank of England I don’t know,” said Cradell.
“And I’m sure he does not know,” said Mrs Roper, whose suspicions against Cradell were beginning to subside. But as her suspicions subsided, her respect for him decreased. Such was the case also with Miss Spruce, and with Amelia, and with Jemima. They had all thought him to be a great fool for running away with Mrs Lupex, but now they were beginning to think him a poor creature because he had not done so. Had he committed that active folly he would have been an interesting fool. But now, if, as they all suspected, he knew no more about Mrs Lupex than they did, he would be a fool without any special interest whatever.
“Of course he doesn’t,” said Eames.
“No more than I do,” said Amelia.
“His very looks show him innocent,” said Mrs Roper.
“Indeed they do,” said Miss Spruce.
Lupex turned from one to the other as they thus defended the man whom he suspected, and shook his head at each assertion that was made. “And if he doesn’t know who does?” he asked. “Haven’t I seen it all for the last three months? Is it reasonable to suppose that a creature such as she, used to domestic comforts all her life, should have gone off in this way, at dinnertime, taking with her my property and all her jewels, and that nobody should have instigated her; nobody assisted her! Is that a story to tell to such a man as me! You may tell it to the marines!” Mr Lupex, as he made this speech, was walking about the room, and as he finished it he threw his pockethandkerchief with violence on to the floor. “I know what to do, Mrs Roper,” he said. “I know what steps to take. I shall put the affair into the hands of my lawyer tomorrow morning.” Then he picked up his handkerchief and walked down into the dining-room.
“Of course you know nothing about it?” said Eames to his friend, having run upstairs for the purpose of saying a word to him while he washed his hands.
“What,—about Maria? I don’t know where she is, if you mean that.”
“Of course I mean that. What else should I mean? And what makes you call her Maria?”
“It is wrong. I admit it’s wrong. The word will come out, you know.”
“Will come out! I’ll tell you what it is, old fellow, you’ll get yourself into a mess, and all for nothing. That fellow will have you up before the police for stealing his things—”
“But, Johnny—”
“I know all about it. Of course you have not stolen them, and of course there was nothing to steal. But if you go on calling her Maria you’ll find that he’ll have a pull on you. Men don’t call other men’s wives names for nothing.”
“Of course we’ve been friends,” said Cradell, who rather liked this view of the matter.
“Yes,—you have been friends! She’s diddled you out of your money, and that’s the beginning and the end of it. And now, if you go on showing off your friendship, you’ll be done out of more money. You’re making an ass of yourself. That’s the long and the short of it.”
“And what have you made of yourself with that girl? There are worse asses than I am yet, Master Johnny.” Eames, as he had no answer ready to this counter attack, left the room and went downstairs. Cradell soon followed him, and in a few minutes they were all eating their dinner together at Mrs Roper’s hospitable table.
Immediately after dinner Lupex took himself away, and the conversation upstairs became general on the subject of the lady’s departure.
“If I was him I’d never ask a question about her, but let her go,” said Amelia.
“Yes; and then have all her bills following you, wherever you went,” said Amelia’s brother.
“I’d sooner have her bills than herself,” said Eames.
“My belief is, that she’s been an illused woman,” said Cradell. “If she had a husband that she could respect and have loved, and all that sort of thing, she would have been a charming woman.”
“She’s every bit as bad as he is,” said Mrs Roper.
“I can’t agree with you, Mrs Roper,” continued the lady’s champion. “Perhaps I ought to understand her position better than any one here, and—”
“Then that’s just what you ought not to do, Mr Cradell,” said Mrs Roper. And now the lady of the house spoke out her mind with much maternal dignity and with some feminine severity. “That’s just what a young man like you has no business to know. What’s a married woman like that to you, or you to her; or what have you to do with understanding her position? When you’ve a wife of your own, if ever you do have one, you’ll find you’ll have trouble enough then without anybody else interfering with you. Not but what I believe you’re innocent as a lamb about Mrs Lupex; that is, as far as any harm goes. But you’ve got yourself into all this trouble by meddling, and was like enough to get yourself choked upstairs by that man. And who’s to wonder when you go on pretending to be in love with a woman in that way, and she old enough to be your mother? What would your mamma say if she saw you at it?”
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Cradell.
“It’s all very well your laughing, but I hate such folly. If I see a young man in love with a young woman, I respect him for it;” and then she looked at Johnny Eames. “I respect him for it,—even though he may now and then do things as he shouldn’t. They most of ‘em does that. But to see a young man like you, Mr Cradell, dangling after an old married woman, who doesn’t know how to behave herself; and all just because she lets him to do it;—ugh!—an old broomstick with a petticoat on would do just as well! It makes me sick to see it, and that’s the truth of it. I don’t call it manly; and it ain’t manly, is it, Miss Spruce?”
“Of course I know nothing about it,” said the lady to whom the appeal was thus made. “But a young gentleman should keep himself to himself till the time comes for him to speak out,—begging your pardon all the same, Mr Cradell.”
“I don’t see what a married woman should want with any one after her but her own husband,” said Amelia.
“And perhaps not always that,” said John Eames.
It was about an hour after this when the front-door bell was rung, and a scream from Jemima announced to them all that some critical moment had arrived. Amelia, jumping up, opened the door, and then the rustle of a woman’s dress was heard on the lower stairs. “Oh, laws, ma’am, you have given us sich a turn,” said Jemima. “We all thought you was run away.”
“It’s Mrs Lupex,” said Amelia. And in two minutes more that illused lady was in the room.
“Well, my dears,” said she, gaily, “I hope nobody has waited dinner.”
“No; we didn’t wait dinner,” said Mrs Roper, very gravely.
“And where’s my Orson? Didn’t he dine at home? Mr Cradell, will you oblige me by taking my shawl? But perhaps you had better not. People are so censorious; ain’t they, Miss Spruce? Mr Eames shall do it; and everybody knows that that will be quite safe. Won’t it, Miss Amelia?”
“Quite, I should think,” said Amelia. And Mrs Lupex knew that she was not to look for an ally in that quarter on the present occasion. Eames got up to take the shawl, and Mrs Lupex went on.
“And didn’t Orson dine at home? Perhaps they kept him down at the theatre. But I’ve been thinking all day what fun it would be when he thought his bird was flown.”
“He did dine at home,” said Mrs Roper; “and he didn’t seem to like it. There wasn’t much fun, I can assure you.”
“Ah, wasn’t there, though? I believe that man would like to have me tied to his buttonhole. I came across a few friends,—lady friends, Mr Cradell, though two of them had their husbands; so we made a party, and just went down to Hampton Court. So my gentleman has gone again, has he? That’s what I get for gadding about myself, isn’t it, Miss Spruce?”
Mrs Roper, as she went to bed that night, made up her mind that, whatever might be the cost and trouble of doing so, she would lose no further time in getting rid of her married guests.
Lily Dale’s constitution was good, and her recovery was retarded by no relapse or lingering debility; but, nevertheless, she was forced to keep her bed for many days after the fever had left her. During all this period Dr Crofts came every day. It was in vain that Mrs Dale begged him not to do so; telling him in simple words that she felt herself bound not to accept from him all this continuation of his unremunerated labours now that the absolute necessity for them was over. He answered her only by little jokes, or did not answer her at all; but still he came daily, almost always at the same hour, just as the day was waning, so that he could sit for a quarter of an hour in the dusk, and then ride home to Guestwick in the dark. At this time Bell had been admitted into her sister’s room, and she would always meet Dr Crofts at Lily’s bedside; but she never sat with him alone, since the day on which he had offered her his love with half-articulated words, and she had declined it with words also half-articulated. She had seen him alone since that, on the stairs, or standing in the hall, but she had not remained with him, talking to him after her old fashion, and no further word of his love had been spoken in speech either half or wholly articulate.
Nor had Bell spoken of what had passed to any one else. Lily would probably have told both her mother and sister instantly; but then no such scene as that which had taken place with Bell would have been possible with Lily. In whatever way the matter might have gone with her, there would certainly have been some clear tale to tell when the interview was over. She would have known whether or no she loved the man, or could love him, and would have given him some true and intelligible answer. Bell had not done so, but had given him an answer which, if true, was not intelligible, and if intelligible was not true. And yet, when she had gone away to think over what had passed, she had been happy and satisfied, and almost triumphant. She had never yet asked herself whether she expected anything further from Dr Crofts, nor what that something further might be,—and yet she was happy!
Lily had now become pert and saucy in her bed, taking upon herself the little airs which are allowed to a convalescent invalid as compensation for previous suffering and restraint. She pretended to much anxiety on the subject of her dinner, and declared that she would go out on such or such a day, let Dr Crofts be as imperious as he might. “He’s an old savage, after all,” she said to her sister, one evening after he was gone, “and just as bad as the rest of them.”
“I do not know who the rest of them are,” said Bell, “but at any rate he’s not very old.”
“You know what I mean. He’s just as grumpy as Dr Gruffen, and thinks everybody is to do what he tells them. Of course, you take his part.”
“And of course you ought, seeing how good he has been.”
“And of course I should, to anybody but you. I do like to abuse him to you.”
“Lily, Lily!”
“So I do. It’s so hard to knock any fire out of you, that when one does find the place where the flint lies, one can’t help hammering at it. What did he mean by saying that I shouldn’t get up on Sunday? Of course I shall get up if I like it.”
“Not if mamma asks you not?”
“Oh, but she won’t, unless he interferes and dictates to her. Oh, Bell, what a tyrant he would be if he were married!”
“Would he?”
“And how submissive you would be, if you were his wife! It’s a thousand pities that you are not in love with each other,—that is, if you are not.”
“Lily, I thought that there was a promise between us about that.”
“Ah! but that was in other days. Things are all altered since that promise was given,—all the world has been altered.” And as she said this the tone of her voice was changed, and it had become almost sad. “I feel as though I ought to be allowed to speak about anything I please.”
“You shall, if it pleases you, my pet.”
“You see how it is, Bell; I can never again have anything of my own to talk about.”
“Oh, my darling, do not say that.”
“But it is so, Bell; and why not say it? Do you think I never say it to myself in the hours when I am all alone, thinking over it—thinking, thinking, thinking. You must not,—you must not grudge to let me talk of it sometimes.”
“I will not grudge you anything;—only I cannot believe that it must be so always.”
“Ask yourself, Bell, how it would be with you. But I sometimes fancy that you measure me differently from yourself.”
“Indeed I do, for I know how much better you are.”
“I am not so much better as to be ever able to forget all that. I know I never shall do so. I have made up my mind about it clearly and with an absolute certainty.”
“Lily, Lily, Lily! pray do not say so.”
“But I do say it. And yet I have not been very mopish and melancholy; have I, Bell? I do think I deserve some little credit, and yet, I declare, you won’t allow me the least privilege in the world.”
“What privilege would you wish me to give you?”
“To talk about Dr Crofts.”
“Lily, you are a wicked, wicked tyrant.” And Bell leaned over her, and fell upon her, and kissed her, hiding her own face in the gloom of the evening. After that it came to be an accepted understanding between them that Bell was not altogether indifferent to Dr Crofts.
“You heard what he said, my darling,” Mrs Dale said the next day, as the three were in the room together after Dr Crofts was gone. Mrs Dale was standing on one side of the bed, and Bell on the other, while Lily was scolding them both. “You can get up for an hour or two tomorrow, but he thinks you had better not go out of the room.”
“What would be the good of that, mamma? I am so tired of looking always at the same paper. It is such a tiresome paper. It makes one count the pattern over and over again. I wonder how you ever can live here.”
“I’ve got used to it, you see.”
“I never can get used to that sort of thing; but go on counting, and counting, and counting. I’ll tell you what I should like; and I’m sure it would be the best thing, too.”
“And what would you like?” said Bell.
“Just to get up at nine o’clock tomorrow, and go to church as though nothing had happened. Then, when Dr Crofts came in the evening, you would tell him I was down at the school.”
“I wouldn’t quite advise that,” said Mrs Dale.
“It would give him such a delightful start. And when he found I didn’t die immediately, as of course I ought to do according to rule, he would be so disgusted.”
“It would be very ungrateful, to say the least of it,” said Bell.
“No, it wouldn’t, a bit. He needn’t come, unless he likes it. And I don’t believe he comes to see me at all. It’s all very well, mamma, your looking in that way; but I’m sure it’s true. And I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll pretend to be bad again, otherwise the poor man will be robbed of his only happiness.”
“I suppose we must allow her to say what she likes till she gets well,” said Mrs Dale, laughing. It was now nearly dark, and Mrs Dale did not see that Bell’s hand had crept under the bedclothes, and taken hold of that of her sister. “It’s true, mamma,” continued Lily, “and I defy her to deny it. I would forgive him for keeping me in bed if he would only make her fall in love with him.”
“She has made a bargain, mamma,” said Bell, “that she is to say whatever she likes till she gets well.”
“I am to say whatever I like always; that was the bargain, and I mean to stand to it.”
On the following Sunday Lily did get up, but did not leave her mother’s bedroom. There she was, seated in that half-dignified and half-luxurious state which belongs to the first getting up of an invalid, when Dr Crofts called. There she had eaten her tiny bit of roast mutton, and had called her mother a stingy old creature, because she would not permit another morsel; and there she had drunk her half glass of port wine, pretending that it was very bad, and twice worse than the doctor’s physic; and there, Sunday though it was, she had fully enjoyed the last hour of daylight, reading that exquisite new novel which had just completed itself, amidst the jarring criticisms of the youth and age of the reading public.
“I am quite sure she was right in accepting him, Bell,” she said, putting down the book as the light was fading, and beginning to praise the story.
“It was a matter of course,” said Bell. “It always is right in the novels. That’s why I don’t like them. They are too sweet.”
“That’s why I do like them, because they are so sweet. A sermon is not to tell you what you are, but what you ought to be, and a novel should tell you not what you are to get, but what you’d like to get.”
“If so, then, I’d go back to the old school, and have the heroine really a heroine, walking all the way up from Edinburgh to London, and falling among thieves; or else nursing a wounded hero, and describing the battle from the window. We’ve got tired of that; or else the people who write can’t do it nowadays. But if we are to have real life, let it be real.”
“No, Bell, no,” said Lily. “Real life sometimes is so painful.” Then her sister, in a moment, was down on the floor at her feet, kissing her hand and caressing her knees, and praying that the wound might be healed.
On that morning Lily had succeeded in inducing her sister to tell her all that had been said by Dr Crofts. All that had been said by herself also, Bell had intended to tell; but when she came to this part of the story, her account was very lame. “I don’t think I said anything,” she said. “But silence always gives consent. He’ll know that,” Lily had rejoined. “No, he will not; my silence didn’t give any consent; I’m sure of that. And he didn’t think that it did.” “But you didn’t mean to refuse him?” “I think I did. I don’t think I knew what I meant; and it was safer, therefore, to look no, than to look yes. If I didn’t say it, I’m sure I looked it.” “But you wouldn’t refuse him now?” asked Lily. “I don’t know,” said Bell. “It seems as though I should want years to make up my mind; and he won’t ask me again.”
Bell was still at her sister’s feet, caressing them, and praying with all her heart that that wound might be healed in due time, when Mrs Dale came in and announced the doctor’s daily visit. “Then I’ll go,” said Bell.
“Indeed you won’t,” said Lily. “He is coming simply to make a morning call, and nobody need run away. Now, Dr Crofts, you need not come and stand over me with your watch, for I won’t let you touch my hand except to shake hands with me;” and then she held her hand out to him. “And all you’ll know of my tongue you’ll learn from the sound.”
“I don’t care in the least for your tongue.”
“I dare say not, and yet you may some of these days. I can speak out if I like it; can’t I, mamma?”
“I should think Dr Crofts knows that by this time, my dear.”
“I don’t know. There are some things gentlemen are very slow to learn. But you must sit down, Dr Crofts, and make yourself comfortable and polite; for you must understand that you are not master here any longer. I am out of bed now, and your reign is over.”
“That’s the gratitude of the world, all through,” said Mrs Dale.
“Who is ever grateful to a doctor? He only cures you that he may triumph over some other doctor, and declare, as he goes by Dr Gruffen’s door, ‘There, had she called you in, she’d have been dead before now; or else would have been ill for twelve months.’ Don’t you jump for joy when Dr Gruffen’s patients die?”
“Of course I do—out in the marketplace, so that everybody shall see me,” said the doctor.
“Lily, how can you say such shocking things?” said her sister.
Then the doctor did sit down, and they were all very cosy together over the fire, talking about things which were not medical, or only half medical in their appliance. By degrees the conversation came round to Mrs Eames and to John Eames. Two or three days since, Crofts had told Mrs Dale of that affair at the railway station, of which up to that time she had heard nothing. Mrs Dale, when she was assured that young Eames had given Crosbie a tremendous thrashing—the tidings of the affair which had got themselves substantiated at Guestwick so described the nature of the encounter—could not withhold some meed of applause.
“Dear boy!” she said, almost involuntarily. “Dear boy! it came from the honestness of his heart!” And then she gave special injunctions to the doctor,—injunctions which were surely unnecessary,—that no word of the matter should be whispered before Lily.
“I was at the manor, yesterday,” said the doctor, “and the earl would talk about nothing but Master Johnny. He says he’s the finest fellow going.” Whereupon Mrs Dale touched him with her foot, fearing that the conversation might be led away in the direction of Johnny’s prowess.
“I am so glad,” said Lily. “I always knew that they’d find John out at last.”
“And Lady Julia is just as fond of him,” said the doctor.
“Dear me!” said Lily. “Suppose they were to make up a match!”
“Lily, how can you be so absurd?”
“Let me see; what relation would he be to us? He would certainly be Bernard’s uncle, and Uncle Christopher’s half brother-in-law. Wouldn’t it be odd?”
“It would rather,” said Mrs Dale.
“I hope he’ll be civil to Bernard. Don’t you, Bell? Is he to give up the Income-tax Office, Dr Crofts?”
“I didn’t hear that that was settled yet.” And so they went on talking about John Eames.
“Joking apart,” said Lily, “I am very glad that Lord De Guest has taken him by the hand. Not that I think an earl is better than anybody else, but because it shows that people are beginning to understand that he has got something in him. I always said that they who laughed at John would see him hold up his head yet.” All which words sank deep into Mrs Dale’s mind. If only, in some coming time, her pet might be taught to love this new young hero! But then would not that last heroic deed of his militate most strongly against any possibility of such love!
“And now I may as well be going,” said the doctor, rising from his chair. At this time Bell had left the room, but Mrs Dale was still there.
“You need not be in such a hurry, especially this evening,” said Lily.
“Why especially this evening?”
“Because it will be the last. Sit down again, Dr Crofts. I’ve got a little speech to make to you. I’ve been preparing it all the morning, and you must give me an opportunity of speaking it.”
“I’ll come the day after tomorrow, and I’ll hear it then.”
“But I choose, sir, that you should hear it now. Am I not to be obeyed when I first get up on to my own throne? Dear, dear Dr Crofts, how am I to thank you for all that you have done?”
“How are any of us to thank him?” said Mrs Dale.
“I hate thanks,” said the doctor. “One kind glance of the eye is worth them all, and I’ve had many such in this house.”
“You have our hearts’ love, at any rate,” said Mrs Dale.
“God bless you all!” said he, as he prepared to go.
“But I haven’t made my speech yet,” said Lily. “And to tell the truth, mamma, you must go away, or I shall never be able to make it. It’s very improper, is it not, turning you out, but it shall only take three minutes.” Then Mrs Dale, with some little joking word, left the room; but, as she left it, her mind was hardly at ease. Ought she to have gone, leaving it to Lily’s discretion to say what words he might think fit to Dr Crofts? Hitherto she had never doubted her daughters—not even their discretion; and therefore it had been natural to her to go when she was bidden. But as she went downstairs she had her doubts whether she was right or no.
“Dr Crofts,” said Lily, as soon as they were alone. “Sit down there, close to me. I want to ask you a question. What was it you said to Bell when you were alone with her the other evening in the parlour?”
The doctor sat for a moment without answering, and Lily, who was watching him closely, could see by the light of the fire that he had been startled—had almost shuddered as the question was asked him.
“What did I say to her?” and he repeated her words in a very low voice. “I asked her if she could love me, and be my wife.”
“And what answer did she make to you?”
“What answer did she make? She simply refused me.”
“No, no, no; don’t believe her, Dr Crofts. It was not so;—I think it was not so. Mind you, I can say nothing as coming from her. She has not told me her own mind. But if you really love her, she will be mad to refuse you.”
“I do love her, Lily; that at any rate is true.”
“Then go to her again. I am speaking for myself now. I cannot afford to lose such a brother as you would be. I love you so dearly that I cannot spare you. And she,—I think she’ll learn to love you as you would wish to be loved. You know her nature, how silent she is, and averse to talk about herself. She has confessed nothing to me but this,—that you spoke to her and took her by surprise. Are we to have another chance? I know how wrong I am to ask such a question. But, after all, is not the truth the best?”
“Another chance!”
“I know what you mean, and I think she is worthy to be your wife. I do, indeed; and if so, she must be very worthy. You won’t tell of me, will you now, doctor?”
“No; I won’t tell of you.”
“And you’ll try again?”
“Yes; I’ll try again.”
“God bless you, my brother! I hope,—I hope you’ll be my brother.” Then, as he put out his hand to her once more, she raised her head towards him, and he, stooping down, kissed her forehead. “Make mamma come to me,” were the last words she spoke as he went out at the door.
“So you’ve made your speech,” said Mrs Dale.
“Yes, mamma.”
“I hope it was a discreet speech.”
“I hope it was, mamma. But it has made me so tired, and I believe I’ll go to bed. Do you know I don’t think I should have done much good down at the school to-day?”
Then Mrs Dale, in her anxiety to repair what injury might have been done to her daughter by over-exertion, omitted any further mention of the farewell speech.
Dr Crofts as he rode home enjoyed but little of the triumph of a successful lover. “It may be that she’s right,” he said to himself; “and, at any rate, I’ll ask again.” Nevertheless, that “No” which Bell had spoken, and had repeated, still sounded in his ears harsh and conclusive. There are men to whom a peal of noes rattling about their ears never takes the sound of a true denial, and others to whom the word once pronounced, be it whispered ever so softly, comes as though it were an unchangeable verdict from the supreme judgment-seat.
Will any reader remember the loves,—no, not the loves; that word is so decidedly ill-applied as to be incapable of awakening the remembrance of any reader; but the flirtations—of Lady Dumbello and Mr Plantagenet Palliser? Those flirtations, as they had been carried on at Courcy Castle, were laid bare in all their enormities to the eye of the public, and it must be confessed that if the eye of the public was shocked, that eye must be shocked very easily.
But the eye of the public was shocked, and people who were particular as to their morals said very strange things. Lady de Courcy herself said very strange things indeed, shaking her head, and dropping mysterious words; whereas Lady Clandidlem spoke much more openly, declaring her opinion that Lady Dumbello would be off before May. They both agreed that it would not be altogether bad for Lord Dumbello that he should lose his wife, but shook their heads very sadly when they spoke of poor Plantagenet Palliser. As to the lady’s fate, that lady whom they had both almost worshipped during the days at Courcy Castle,—they did not seem to trouble themselves about that.
And it must be admitted that Mr Palliser had been a little imprudent,—imprudent, that is, if he knew anything about the rumours afloat,—seeing that soon after his visit at Courcy Castle he had gone down to Lady Hartletop’s place in Shropshire, at which the Dumbellos intended to spend the winter, and on leaving it had expressed his intention of returning in February. The Hartletop people had pressed him very much,—the pressure having come with peculiar force from Lord Dumbello. Therefore it is reasonable to suppose that the Hartletop people had at any rate not heard of the rumour.
Mr Plantagenet Palliser spent his Christmas with his uncle, the Duke of Omnium, at Gatherum Castle. That is to say, he reached the castle in time for dinner on Christmas eve, and left it on the morning after Christmas day. This was in accordance with the usual practice of his life, and the tenants, dependants, and followers of the Omnium interest were always delighted to see this manifestation of a healthy English domestic family feeling between the duke and his nephew. But the amount of intercourse on such occasions between them was generally trifling. The duke would smile as he put out his right hand to his nephew, and say,—
“Well, Plantagenet,—very busy, I suppose?”
The duke was the only living being who called him Plantagenet to his face, though there were some scores of men who talked of Planty Pal behind his back. The duke had been the only living being so to call him. Let us hope that it still was so, and that there had arisen no feminine exception, dangerous in its nature and improper in its circumstances.
“Well, Plantagenet,” said the duke, on the present occasion, “very busy, I suppose?”
“Yes, indeed, duke,” said Mr Palliser. “When a man gets the harness on him he does not easily get quit of it.”
The duke remembered that his nephew had made almost the same remark at his last Christmas visit.
“By-the-by,” said the duke, “I want to say a word or two to you before you go.”
Such a proposition on the duke’s part was a great departure from his usual practice, but the nephew of course undertook to obey his uncle’s behests.
“I’ll see you before dinner tomorrow,” said Plantagenet.
“Ah, do,” said the duke. “I’ll not keep you five minutes.” And at six o’clock on the following afternoon the two were closeted together in the duke’s private room.
“I don’t suppose there is much in it,” began the duke, “but people are talking about you and Lady Dumbello.”
“Upon my word, people are very kind.” And Mr Palliser bethought himself of the fact,—for it certainly was a fact,—that people for a great many years had talked about his uncle and Lady Dumbello’s motherin-law.
“Yes; kind enough; are they not? You’ve just come from Hartlebury, I believe.” Hartlebury was the Marquis of Hartletop’s seat in Shropshire.
“Yes, I have. And I’m going there again in February.”
“Ah, I’m sorry for that. Not that I mean, of course, to interfere with your arrangements. You will acknowledge that I have not often done so, in any matter whatever.”
“No; you have not,” said the nephew, comforting himself with an inward assurance that no such interference on his uncle’s part could have been possible.
“But in this instance it would suit me, and I really think it would suit you too, that you should be as little at Hartlebury as possible. You have said you would go there, and of course you will go. But if I were you, I would not stay above a day or two.”
Mr Plantagenet Palliser received everything he had in the world from his uncle. He sat in Parliament through his uncle’s interest, and received an allowance of ever so many thousand a year which his uncle could stop tomorrow by his mere word. He was his uncle’s heir, and the dukedom, with certain entailed properties, must ultimately fall to him, unless his uncle should marry and have a son. But by far the greater portion of the duke’s property was unentailed; the duke might probably live for the next twenty years or more; and it was quite possible that, if offended, he might marry and become a father. It may be said that no man could well be more dependent on another than Plantagenet Palliser was upon his uncle; and it may be said also that no father or uncle ever troubled his heir with less interference. Nevertheless, the nephew immediately felt himself aggrieved by this allusion to his private life, and resolved at once that he would not submit to such surveillance.
“I don’t know how long I shall stay,” said he; “but I cannot say that my visit will be influenced one way or the other by such a rumour as that.”
“No; probably not. But it may perhaps be influenced by my request.” And the duke, as he spoke, looked a little savage.
“You wouldn’t ask me to regard a report that has no foundation.”
“I am not asking about its foundation. Nor do I in the least wish to interfere with your manner in life.” By which last observation the duke intended his nephew to understand that he was quite at liberty to take away any other gentleman’s wife, but that he was not at liberty to give occasion even for a surmise that he wanted to take Lord Dumbello’s wife. “The fact is this, Plantagenet. I have for many years been intimate with that family. I have not many intimacies, and shall probably never increase them. Such friends as I have, I wish to keep, and you will easily perceive that any such report as that which I have mentioned, might make it unpleasant for me to go to Hartlebury, or for the Hartlebury people to come here.” The duke certainly could not have spoken plainer, and Mr Palliser understood him thoroughly. Two such alliances between the two families could not be expected to run pleasantly together, and even the rumour of any such second alliance might interfere with the pleasantness of the former one.
“That’s all,” said the duke.
“It’s a most absurd slander,” said Mr Palliser.
“I dare say. Those slanders always are absurd; but what can we do? We can’t tie up people’s tongues.” And the duke looked as though he wished to have the subject considered as finished, and to be left alone.
“But we can disregard them,” said the nephew, indiscreetly.
“You may. I have never been able to do so. And yet, I believe, I have not earned for myself the reputation of being subject to the voices of men. You think that I am asking much of you; but you should remember that hitherto I have given much and have asked nothing. I expect you to oblige me in this matter.”
Then Mr Plantagenet Palliser left the room, knowing that he had been threatened. What the duke had said amounted to this—If you go on dangling after Lady Dumbello, I’ll stop the seven thousand a year which I give you. I’ll oppose your next return at Silverbridge, and I’ll make a will and leave away from you Matching and The Horns,—a beautiful little place in Surrey, the use of which had been already offered to Mr Palliser in the event of his marriage; all the Littlebury estate in Yorkshire, and the enormous Scotch property. Of my personal goods, and money invested in loans, shares, and funds, you shall never touch a shilling, or the value of a shilling. And, if I find that I can suit myself, it may be that I’ll leave you plain Mr Plantagenet Palliser, with a little first cousin for the head of your family.
The full amount of this threat Mr Palliser understood, and, as he thought of it, he acknowledged to himself that he had never felt for Lady Dumbello anything like love. No conversation between them had ever been warmer than that of which the reader has seen a sample. Lady Dumbello had been nothing to him. But now,—now that the matter had been put before him in this way, might it not become him, as a gentleman, to fall in love with so very beautiful a woman, whose name had already been linked with his own? We all know that story of the priest, who, by his question in the confessional, taught the ostler to grease the horses’ teeth. “I never did yet,” said the ostler, “but I’ll have a try at it.” In this case, the duke had acted the part of the priest, and Mr Palliser, before the night was over, had almost become as ready a pupil as the ostler. As to the threat, it would ill become him, as a Palliser and a Plantagenet, to regard it. The duke would not marry. Of all men in the world he was the least likely to spite his own face by cutting off his own nose; and, for the rest of it, Mr Palliser would take his chance. Therefore he went down to Hartlebury early in February, having fully determined to be very particular in his attentions to Lady Dumbello.
Among a houseful of people at Hartlebury, he found Lord Porlock, a slight, sickly, wornout looking man, who had something about his eye of his father’s hardness, but nothing in his mouth of his father’s ferocity.
“So your sister is going to be married?” said Mr Palliser.
“Yes. One has no right to be surprised at anything they do, when one remembers the life their father leads them.”
“I was going to congratulate you.”
“Don’t do that.”
“I met him at Courcy, and rather liked him.”
Mr Palliser had barely spoken to Mr Crosbie at Courcy, but then in the usual course of his social life he seldom did more than barely speak to anybody.
“Did you?” said Lord Porlock. “For the poor girl’s sake I hope he’s not a ruffian. How any man should propose to my father to marry a daughter out of his house, is more than I can understand. How was my mother looking?”
“I didn’t see anything amiss about her.”
“I expect that he’ll murder her some day.” Then that conversation came to an end.
Mr Palliser himself perceived—as he looked at her he could not but perceive—that a certain amount of social energy seemed to enliven Lady Dumbello when he approached her. She was given to smile when addressed, but her usual smile was meaningless, almost leaden, and never in any degree flattering to the person to whom it was accorded. Very many women smile as they answer the words which are spoken to them, and most who do so flatter by their smile. The thing is so common that no one thinks of it. The flattering pleases, but means nothing. The impression unconsciously taken simply conveys a feeling that the woman has made herself agreeable, as it was her duty to do,—agreeable, as far as that smile went, in some very infinitesimal degree. But she has thereby made her little contribution to society. She will make the same contribution a hundred times in the same evening. No one knows that she has flattered anybody; she does not know it herself; and the world calls her an agreeable woman. But Lady Dumbello put no flattery into her customary smiles. They were cold, unmeaning, accompanied by no special glance of the eye, and seldom addressed to the individual. They were given to the room at large; and the room at large, acknowledging her great pretensions, accepted them as sufficient. But when Mr Palliser came near to her she would turn herself slightly, ever so slightly, on her seat, and would allow her eyes to rest for a moment upon his face. Then when he remarked that it had been rather cold, she would smile actually upon him as she acknowledged the truth of his observation. All this Mr Palliser taught himself to observe, having been instructed by his foolish uncle in that lesson as to the greasing of the horses’ teeth.
But, nevertheless, during the first week of his stay at Hartlebury, he did not say a word to her more tender than his observation about the weather. It is true that he was very busy. He had undertaken to speak upon the address, and as Parliament was now about to be opened, and as his speech was to be based upon statistics, he was full of figures and papers. His correspondence was pressing, and the day was seldom long enough for his purposes. He felt that the intimacy to which he aspired was hindered by the laborious routine of his life; but nevertheless he would do something before he left Hartlebury, to show the special nature of his regard. He would say something to her, that should open to her view the secret of—shall we say his heart? Such was his resolve, day after day. And yet day after day went by, and nothing was said. He fancied that Lord Dumbello was somewhat less friendly in his manner than he had been, that he put himself in the way and looked cross; but, as he declared to himself, he cared very little for Lord Dumbello’s looks.
“When do you go to town?” he said to her one evening.
“Probably in April. We certainly shall not leave Hartlebury before that.”
“Ah, yes. You stay for the hunting.”
“Yes; Lord Dumbello always remains here through March. He may run up to town for a day or two.”
“How comfortable! I must be in London on Thursday, you know.”
“When Parliament meets, I suppose?”
“Exactly. It is such a bore; but one has to do it.”
“When a man makes a business of it, I suppose he must.”
“Oh, dear, yes; it’s quite imperative.” Then Mr Palliser looked round the room, and thought he saw Lord Dumbello’s eye fixed upon him. It was really very hard work. If the truth must be told, he did not know how to begin. What was he to say to her? How was he to commence a conversation that should end by being tender? She was very handsome certainly, and for him she could look interesting; but for his very life he did not know how to begin to say anything special to her. A liaison with such a woman as Lady Dumbello,—platonic, innocent, but nevertheless very intimate,—would certainly lend a grace to his life, which, under its present circumstances, was rather dry. He was told,—told by public rumour, which had reached him through his uncle,—that the lady was willing. She certainly looked as though she liked him; but how was he to begin? The art of startling the House of Commons and frightening the British public by the voluminous accuracy of his statistics he had already learned; but what was he to say to a pretty woman?
“You’ll be sure to be in London in April?” This was on another occasion.
“Oh, yes; I think so.”
“In Carlton Gardens, I suppose.”
“Yes; Lord Dumbello has got a lease of the house now.”
“Has he, indeed? Ah, it’s an excellent house. I hope I shall be allowed to call there sometimes.”
“Certainly,—only I know you must be so busy.”
“Not on Saturdays and Sundays.”
“I always receive on Sundays,” said Lady Dumbello. Mr Palliser felt that there was nothing peculiarly gracious in this. A permission to call when all her other acquaintances would be there, was not much; but still, perhaps, it was as much as he could expect to obtain on that occasion. He looked up and saw that Lord Dumbello’s eyes were again upon him, and that Lord Dumbello’s brow was black. He began to doubt whether a country house, where all the people were thrown together, was the best place in the world for such manœuvring. Lady Dumbello was very handsome, and he liked to look at her, but he could not find any subject on which to interest her in that drawing-room at Hartlebury. Later in the evening he found himself saying something to her about the sugar duties, and then he knew that he had better give it up. He had only one day more, and that was required imperatively for his speech. The matter would go much easier in London, and he would postpone it till then. In the crowded rooms of London private conversation would be much easier, and Lord Dumbello wouldn’t stand over and look at him. Lady Dumbello had taken his remarks about the sugar very kindly, and had asked for a definition of an ad valorem duty. It was a nearer approach to a real conversation than he had ever before made; but the subject had been unlucky, and could not, in his hands, be brought round to anything tender; so he resolved to postpone his gallantry till the London spring should make it easy, and felt as he did so that he was relieved for the time from a heavy weight.
“Goodbye, Lady Dumbello,” he said, on the next evening. “I start early tomorrow morning.”
“Goodbye, Mr Palliser.”
As she spoke she smiled ever so sweetly, but she certainly had not learned to call him Plantagenet as yet. He went up to London and immediately got himself to work. The accurate and voluminous speech came off with considerable credit to himself,—credit of that quiet, enduring kind which is accorded to such men. The speech was respectable, dull, and correct. Men listened to it, or sat with their hats over their eyes, asleep, pretending to do so; and the daily Jupiter in the morning had a leading article about it, which, however, left the reader at its close altogether in doubt whether Mr Palliser might be supposed to be a great financial pundit or no. Mr Palliser might become a shining light to the moneyed world, and a glory to the banking interests; he might be a future Chancellor of the Exchequer. But then again, it might turn out that, in these affairs, he was a mere ignis fatuus, a blind guide,—a man to be laid aside as very respectable, but of no depth. Who, then, at the present time, could judiciously risk his credit by declaring whether Mr Palliser understood his subject or did not understand it? We are not content in looking to our newspapers for all the information that earth and human intellect can afford; but we demand from them what we might demand if a daily sheet could come to us from the world of spirits. The result, of course, is this,—that the papers do pretend that they have come daily from the world of spirits; but the oracles are very doubtful, as were those of old.
Plantagenet Palliser, though he was contented with this article, felt, as he sat in his chambers in the Albany, that something else was wanting to his happiness. This sort of life was all very well. Ambition was a grand thing, and it became him, as a Palliser and a future peer, to make politics his profession. But might he not spare an hour or two for Amaryllis in the shade? Was it not hard, this life of his? Since he had been told that Lady Dumbello smiled upon him, he had certainly thought more about her smiles than had been good for his statistics. It seemed as though a new vein in his body had been brought into use, and that blood was running where blood had never run before. If he had seen Lady Dumbello before Dumbello had seen her, might he not have married her? Ah! in such case as that, had she been simply Miss Grantly, or Lady Griselda Grantly, as the case might have been, he thought he might have been able to speak to her with more ease. As it was, he certainly had found the task difficult, down in the country, though he had heard of men of his class doing the same sort of thing all his life. For my own part, I believe that the reputed sinners are much more numerous than the sinners.
As he sat there, a certain Mr Fothergill came in upon him. Mr Fothergill was a gentleman who managed most of his uncle’s ordinary affairs,—a clever fellow, who knew on which side his bread was buttered. Mr Fothergill was naturally anxious to stand well with the heir; but to stand well with the owner was his business in life, and with that business he never allowed anything to interfere. On this occasion Mr Fothergill was very civil, complimenting his future possible patron on his very powerful speech, and predicting for him political power with much more certainty than the newspapers which had, or had not, come from the world of spirits. Mr Fothergill had come in to say a word or two about some matter of business. As all Mr Palliser’s money passed through Mr Fothergill’s hands, and as his electioneering interests were managed by Mr Fothergill, Mr Fothergill not infrequently called to say a necessary word or two. When this was done he said another word or two, which might be necessary or not, as the case might be.
“Mr Palliser,” said he, “I wonder you don’t think of marrying. I hope you’ll excuse me.”
Mr Palliser was by no means sure that he would excuse him, and sat himself suddenly upright in his chair in a manner that was intended to exhibit a first symptom of outraged dignity. But, singularly enough, he had himself been thinking of marriage at that moment. How would it have been with him had he known the beautiful Griselda before the Dumbello alliance had been arranged? Would he have married her? Would he have been comfortable if he had married her? Of course he could not marry now, seeing that he was in love with Lady Dumbello, and that the lady in question, unfortunately, had a husband of her own; but though he had been thinking of marrying, he did not like to have the subject thus roughly thrust before his eyes, and, as it were, into his very lap by his uncle’s agent. Mr Fothergill, no doubt, saw the first symptom of outraged dignity, for he was a clever, sharp man. But, perhaps, he did not in truth much regard it. Perhaps he had received instructions which he was bound to regard above all other matters.
“I hope you’ll excuse me, Mr Palliser, I do, indeed; but I say it because I am half afraid of some—some—some diminution of good feeling, perhaps, I had better call it, between you and your uncle. Anything of that kind would be such a monstrous pity.”
“I am not aware of any such probability.”
This Mr Palliser said with considerable dignity; but when the words were spoken he bethought himself whether he had not told a fib.
“No; perhaps not. I trust there is no such probability. But the duke is a very determined man if he takes anything into his head;—and then he has so much in his power.”
“He has not me in his power, Mr Fothergill.”
“No, no, no. One man does not have another in his power in this country,—not in that way; but then you know, Mr Palliser, it would hardly do to offend him; would it?”
“I would rather not offend him, as is natural. Indeed, I do not wish to offend any one.”
“Exactly so; and least of all the duke, who has the whole property in his own hands. We may say the whole, for he can marry tomorrow if he pleases. And then his life is so good. I don’t know a stouter man of his age, anywhere.”
“I’m very glad to hear it.”
“I’m sure you are, Mr Palliser. But if he were to take offence, you know?”
“I should put up with it.”
“Yes, exactly; that’s what you would do. But it would be worth while to avoid it, seeing how much he has in his power.”
“Has the duke sent you to me now, Mr Fothergill?”
“No, no, no,—nothing of the sort. But he dropped words the other day which made me fancy that he was not quite—quite—quite at ease about you. I have long known that he would be very glad indeed to see an heir born to the property. The other morning,—I don’t know whether there was anything in it,—but I fancied he was going to make some change in the present arrangements. He did not do it, and it might have been fancy. Only think, Mr Palliser, what one word of his might do! If he says a word, he never goes back from it.” Then, having said so much, Mr Fothergill went his way.
Mr Palliser understood the meaning of all this very well. It was not the first occasion on which Mr Fothergill had given him advice,—advice such as Mr Fothergill himself had no right to give him. He always received such counsel with an air of half-injured dignity, intending thereby to explain to Mr Fothergill that he was intruding. But he knew well whence the advice came; and though, in all such cases, he had made up his mind not to follow such counsel, it had generally come to pass that Mr Palliser’s conduct had more or less accurately conformed itself to Mr Fothergill’s advice. A word from the duke might certainly do a great deal! Mr Palliser resolved that in that affair of Lady Dumbello he would follow his own devices. But, nevertheless, it was undoubtedly true that a word from the duke might do a great deal!
We, who are in the secret, know how far Mr Palliser had already progressed in his iniquitous passion before he left Hartlebury. Others, who were perhaps not so well informed, gave him credit for a much more advanced success. Lady Clandidlem, in her letter to Lady de Courcy, written immediately after the departure of Mr Palliser, declared that, having heard of that gentleman’s intended matutinal departure, she had confidently expected to learn at the breakfast-table that Lady Dumbello had flown with him. From the tone of her ladyship’s language, it seemed as though she had been robbed of an anticipated pleasure by Lady Dumbello’s prolonged sojourn in the halls of her husband’s ancestors. “I feel, however, quite convinced,” said Lady Clandidlem, “that it cannot go on longer than the spring. I never yet saw a man so infatuated as Mr Palliser. He did not leave her for one moment all the time he was here. No one but Lady Hartletop would have permitted it. But, you know, there is nothing so pleasant as good old family friendships.”
Lily had exacted a promise from her mother before her illness, and during the period of her convalescence often referred to it, reminding her mother that that promise had been made, and must be kept. Lily was to be told the day on which Crosbie was to be married. It had come to the knowledge of them all that the marriage was to take place in February. But this was not sufficient for Lily. She must know the day.
And as the time drew nearer,—Lily becoming stronger the while, and less subject to medical authority,—the marriage of Crosbie and Alexandrina was spoken of much more frequently at the Small House. It was not a subject which Mrs Dale or Bell would have chosen for conversation; but Lily would refer to it. She would begin by doing so almost in a drolling strain, alluding to herself as a forlorn damsel in a play-book; and then she would go on to speak of his interests as a matter which was still of great moment to her. But in the course of such talking she would too often break down, showing by some sad word or melancholy tone how great was the burden on her heart. Mrs Dale and Bell would willingly have avoided the subject, but Lily would not have it avoided. For them it was a very difficult matter on which to speak in her hearing. It was not permitted to them to say a word of abuse against Crosbie, as to whom they thought that no word of condemnation could be sufficiently severe; and they were forced to listen to such excuses for his conduct as Lily chose to manufacture, never daring to point out how vain those excuses were.
Indeed, in those days Lily reigned as a queen at the Small House. Ill-usage and illness together falling into her hands had given her such power, that none of the other women were able to withstand it. Nothing was said about it; but it was understood by them all, Jane and the cook included, that Lily was for the time paramount. She was a dear, gracious, loving, brave queen, and no one was anxious to rebel;—only that those praises of Crosbie were so very bitter in the ears of her subjects. The day was named soon enough, and the tidings came down to Allington. On the fourteenth of February, Crosbie was to be made a happy man. This was not known to the Dales till the twelfth, and they would willingly have spared the knowledge then, had it been possible to spare it. But it was not so, and on that evening Lily was told.
During these days, Bell used to see her uncle daily. Her visits were made with the pretence of taking to him information as to Lily’s health; but there was perhaps at the bottom of them a feeling that, as the family intended to leave the Small House at the end of March, it would be well to let the squire know that there was no enmity in their hearts against him. Nothing more had been said about their moving,—nothing, that is, from them to him. But the matter was going on, and he knew it. Dr Crofts was already in treaty on their behalf for a small furnished house at Guestwick. The squire was very sad about it,—very sad indeed. When Hopkins spoke to him on the subject, he sharply desired that faithful gardener to hold his tongue, giving it to be understood that such things were not to be made matter of talk by the Allington dependants till they had been officially announced. With Bell during these visits he never alluded to the matter. She was the chief sinner, in that she had refused to marry her cousin, and had declined even to listen to rational counsel upon the matter. But the squire felt that he could not discuss the subject with her, seeing that he had been specially informed by Mrs Dale that his interference would not be permitted; and then he was perhaps aware that if he did discuss the subject with Bell, he would not gain much by such discussion. Their conversation, therefore, generally fell upon Crosbie, and the tone in which he was mentioned in the Great House was very different from that assumed in Lily’s presence.
“He’ll be a wretched man,” said the squire, when he told Bell of the day that had been fixed.
“I don’t want him to be wretched,” said Bell. “But I can hardly think that he can act as he has done without being punished.”
“He will be a wretched man. He gets no fortune with her, and she will expect everything that fortune can give. I believe, too, that she is older than he is. I cannot understand it. Upon my word, I cannot understand how a man can be such a knave and such a fool. Give my love to Lily. I’ll see her tomorrow or the next day. She’s well rid of him; I’m sure of that;—though I suppose it would not do to tell her so.”
The morning of the fourteenth came upon them at the Small House, as comes the morning of those special days which have been long considered, and which are to be long remembered. It brought with it a hard, bitter frost,—a black, biting frost,—such a frost as breaks the water-pipes, and binds the ground to the hardness of granite. Lily, queen as she was, had not yet been allowed to go back to her own chamber, but occupied the larger bed in her mother’s room, her mother sleeping on a smaller one.
“Mamma,” she said, “how cold they’ll be!” Her mother had announced to her the fact of the black frost, and these were the first words she spoke.
“I fear their hearts will be cold also,” said Mrs Dale. She ought not to have said so. She was transgressing the acknowledged rule of the house in saying any word that could be construed as being inimical to Crosbie or his bride. But her feeling on the matter was too strong, and she could not restrain herself.
“Why should their hearts be cold? Oh, mamma, that is a terrible thing to say. Why should their hearts be cold?”
“I hope it may not be so.”
“Of course you do; of course we all hope it. He was not cold-hearted, at any rate. A man is not cold-hearted, because he does not know himself. Mamma, I want you to wish for their happiness.”
Mrs Dale was silent for a minute or two before she answered this, but then she did answer it. “I think I do,” said she. “I think I do wish for it.”
“I am very sure that I do,” said Lily.
At this time Lily had her breakfast upstairs, but went down into the drawing-room in the course of the morning.
“You must be very careful in wrapping yourself as you go downstairs,” said Bell, who stood by the tray on which she had brought up the toast and tea. “The cold is what you would call awful.”
“I should call it jolly,” said Lily, “if I could get up and go out. Do you remember lecturing me about talking slang the day that he first came?”
“Did I, my pet?”
“Don’t you remember, when I called him a swell? Ah, dear! so he was. That was the mistake, and it was all my own fault, as I had seen it from the first.”
Bell for a moment turned her face away, and beat with her foot against the ground. Her anger was more difficult of restraint than was even her mother’s,—and now, not restraining it, but wishing to hide it, she gave it vent in this way.
“I understand, Bell. I know what your foot means when it goes in that way; and you shan’t do it. Come here, Bell, and let me teach you Christianity. I’m a fine sort of teacher, am I not? And I did not quite mean that.”
“I wish I could learn it from some one,” said Bell. “There are circumstances in which what we call Christianity seems to me to be hardly possible.”
“When your foot goes in that way it is a very unchristian foot, and you ought to keep it still. It means anger against him, because he discovered before it was too late that he would not be happy,—that is, that he and I would not be happy together if we were married.”
“Don’t scrutinise my foot too closely, Lily.”
“But your foot must bear scrutiny, and your eyes, and your voice. He was very foolish to fall in love with me. And so was I very foolish to let him love me, at a moment’s notice,—without a thought as it were. I was so proud of having him, that I gave myself up to him all at once, without giving him a chance of thinking of it. In a week or two it was done. Who could expect that such an engagement should be lasting?”
“And why not? That is nonsense, Lily. But we will not talk about it.”
“Ah, but I want to talk about it. It was as I have said, and if so, you shouldn’t hate him because he did the only thing which he honestly could do when he found out his mistake.”
“What; become engaged again within a week!”
“There had been a very old friendship, Bell; you must remember that. But I was speaking of his conduct to me, and not of his conduct to—” And then she remembered that that other lady might at this very moment possess the name which she had once been so proud to think that she would bear herself. “Bell,” she said, stopping her other speech suddenly, “at what o’clock do people get married in London?”
“Oh, at all manner of hours,—any time before twelve. They will be fashionable, and will be married late.”
“You don’t think she’s Mrs Crosbie yet, then?”
“Lady Alexandrina Crosbie,” said Bell, shuddering.
“Yes, of course; I forgot. I should so like to see her. I feel such an interest about her. I wonder what coloured hair she has. I suppose she is a sort of Juno of a woman,—very tall and handsome. I’m sure she has not got a pug-nose like me. Do you know what I should really like, only of course it’s not possible;—to be godmother to his first child.”
“Oh, Lily!”
“I should. Don’t you hear me say that I know it’s not possible? I’m not going up to London to ask her. She’ll have all manner of grandees for her godfathers and godmothers. I wonder what those grand people are really like.”
“I don’t think there’s any difference. Look at Lady Julia.”
“Oh, she’s not a grand person. It isn’t merely having a title. Don’t you remember that he told us that Mr Palliser is about the grandest grandee of them all. I suppose people do learn to like them. He always used to say that he had been so long among people of that sort, that it would be very difficult for him to divide himself off from them. I should never have done for that kind of thing; should I?”
“There is nothing I despise so much as what you call that kind of thing.”
“Do you? I don’t. After all, think how much work they do. He used to tell me of that. They have all the governing in their hands, and get very little money for doing it.”
“Worse luck for the country.”
“The country seems to do pretty well. But you’re a radical, Bell. My belief is, you wouldn’t be a lady if you could help it.”
“I’d sooner be an honest woman.”
“And so you are,—my own dear, dearest, honest Bell,—and the fairest lady that I know. If I were a man, Bell, you are just the girl that I should worship.”
“But you are not a man; so it’s no good.”
“But you mustn’t let your foot go astray in that way; you mustn’t, indeed. Somebody said, that whatever is, is right, and I declare I believe it.”
“I’m sometimes inclined to think, that whatever is, is wrong.”
“That’s because you’re a radical. I think I’ll get up now, Bell; only it’s so frightfully cold that I’m afraid.”
“There’s a beautiful fire,” said Bell.
“Yes; I see. But the fire won’t go all around me, like the bed does. I wish I could know the very moment when they’re at the altar. It’s only half-past ten yet.”
“I shouldn’t be at all surprised if it’s over.”
“Over! What a word that is! A thing like that is over, and then all the world cannot put it back again. What if he should be unhappy after all?”
“He must take his chance,” said Bell, thinking within her own mind that that chance would be a very bad one.
“Of course he must take his chance. Well,—I’ll get up now.” And then she took her first step out into the cold world beyond her bed. “We must all take our chance. I have made up my mind that it will be at half-past eleven.”
When half-past eleven came, she was seated in a large easy chair over the drawing-room fire, with a little table by her side, on which a novel was lying. She had not opened her book that morning, and had been sitting for some time perfectly silent, with her eyes closed, and her watch in her hand.
“Mamma,” she said at last, “it is over now, I’m sure.”
“What is over, my dear?”
“He has made that lady his wife. I hope God will bless them, and I pray that they may be happy.” As she spoke these words, there was an unwonted solemnity in her tone which startled Mrs Dale and Bell.
“I also will hope so,” said Mrs Dale. “And now, Lily, will it not be well that you should turn your mind away from the subject, and endeavour to think of other things?”
“But I can’t, mamma. It is so easy to say that; but people can’t choose their own thoughts.”
“They can usually direct them as they will, if they make the effort.”
“But I can’t make the effort. Indeed, I don’t know why I should. It seems natural to me to think about him, and I don’t suppose it can be very wrong. When you have had so deep an interest in a person, you can’t drop him all of a sudden.” Then there was again silence, and after a while Lily took up her novel. She made that effort of which her mother had spoken, but she made it altogether in vain. “I declare, Bell,” she said, “it’s the greatest rubbish I ever attempted to read.” This was specially ungrateful, because Bell had recommended the book. “All the books have got to be so stupid! I think I’ll read Pilgrim’s Progress again.”
“What do you say to Robinson Crusoe?” said Bell.
“Or Paul and Virginia?” said Lily. “But I believe I’ll have Pilgrim’s Progress. I never can understand it, but I rather think that makes it nicer.”
“I hate books I can’t understand,” said Bell. “I like a book to be clear as running water, so that the whole meaning may be seen at once.”
“The quick seeing of the meaning must depend a little on the reader, must it not?” said Mrs Dale.
“The reader mustn’t be a fool, of course,” said Bell.
“But then so many readers are fools,” said Lily. “And yet they get something out of their reading. Mrs Crump is always poring over the Revelations, and nearly knows them by heart. I don’t think she could interpret a single image, but she has a hazy, misty idea of the truth. That’s why she likes it,—because it’s too beautiful to be understood; and that’s why I like Pilgrim’s Progress.” After which Bell offered to get the book in question.
“No, not now,” said Lily. “I’ll go on with this, as you say it’s so grand. The personages are always in their tantrums, and go on as though they were mad. Mamma, do you know where they’re going for the honeymoon?”
“No, my dear.”
“He used to talk to me about going to the lakes.” And then there was another pause, during which Bell observed that her mother’s face became clouded with anxiety. “But I won’t think of it any more,” continued Lily; “I will fix my mind to something.” And then she got up from her chair. “I don’t think it would have been so difficult if I had not been ill.”
“Of course it would not, my darling.”
“And I’m going to be well again now, immediately. Let me see: I was told to read Carlyle’s History of the French Revolution, and I think I’ll begin now.” It was Crosbie who had told her to read the book, as both Bell and Mrs Dale were well aware. “But I must put it off till I can get it down from the other house.”
“Jane shall fetch it, if you really want it,” said Mrs Dale.
“Bell shall get it, when she goes up in the afternoon; will you, Bell? And I’ll try to get on with this stuff in the meantime.” Then again she sat with her eyes fixed upon the pages of the book. “I’ll tell you what, mamma,—you may have some comfort in this: that when to-day’s gone by, I shan’t make a fuss about any other day.”
“Nobody thinks that you are making a fuss, Lily.”
“Yes, but I am. Isn’t it odd, Bell, that it should take place on Valentine’s day? I wonder whether it was so settled on purpose, because of the day. Oh, dear, I used to think so often of the letter that I should get from him on this day, when he would tell me that I was his valentine. Well; he’s got another—valen—tine—now.” So much she said with articulate voice, and then she broke down, bursting out into convulsive sobs, and crying in her mother’s arms as though she would break her heart. And yet her heart was not broken, and she was still strong in that resolve which she had made, that her grief should not overpower her. As she had herself said, the thing would not have been so difficult, had she not been weakened by illness.
“Lily, my darling; my poor, illused darling.”
“No, mamma, I won’t be that.” And she struggled grievously to get the better of the hysterical attack which had overpowered her. “I won’t be regarded as illused; not as specially illused. But I am your darling, your own darling. Only I wish you’d beat me and thump me when I’m such a fool, instead of pitying me. It’s a great mistake being soft to people when they make fools of themselves. There, Bell; there’s your stupid book, and I won’t have any more of it. I believe it was that that did it.” And she pushed the book away from her.
After this little scene she said no further word about Crosbie and his bride on that day, but turned the conversation towards the prospect of their new house at Guestwick.
“It will be a great comfort to be nearer Dr Crofts; won’t it, Bell?”
“I don’t know,” said Bell.
“Because if we are ill, he won’t have such a terrible distance to come.”
“That will be a comfort for him, I should think,” said Bell, very demurely.
In the evening the first volume of the French Revolution had been procured, and Lily stuck to her reading with laudable perseverance; till at eight her mother insisted on her going to bed, queen as she was.
“I don’t believe a bit, you know, that the king was such a bad man as that,” she said.
“I do,” said Bell.
“Ah, that’s because you’re a radical. I never will believe that kings are so much worse than other people. As for Charles the First, he was about the best man in history.”
This was an old subject of dispute; but Lily on the present occasion was allowed her own way,—as being an invalid.
The fourteenth of February in London was quite as black, and cold, and as wintersome as it was at Allington, and was, perhaps, somewhat more melancholy in its coldness. Nevertheless Lady Alexandrina de Courcy looked as bright as bridal finery could make her, when she got out of her carriage and walked into St. James’s church at eleven o’clock on that morning.
It had been finally arranged that the marriage should take place in London. There were certainly many reasons which would have made a marriage from Courcy Castle more convenient. The de Courcy family were all assembled at their country family residence, and could therefore have been present at the ceremony without cost or trouble. The castle too was warm with the warmth of life, and the pleasantness of home would have lent a grace to the departure of one of the daughters of the house. The retainers and servants were there, and something of the rich mellowness of a noble alliance might have been felt, at any rate by Crosbie, at a marriage so celebrated. And it must have been acknowledged, even by Lady de Courcy, that the house in Portman Square was very cold—that a marriage from thence would be cold,—that there could be no hope of attaching to it any honour and glory, or of making it resound with fashionable éclat in the columns of the Morning Post. But then, had they been married in the country, the earl would have been there; whereas there was no probability of his travelling up to London for the purpose of being present on such an occasion.
The earl was very terrible in these days, and Alexandrina, as she became confidential in her communications with her future husband, spoke of him as of an ogre, who could not by any means be avoided in all the concerns of life, but whom one might shun now and again by some subtle device and careful arrangement of favourable circumstances. Crosbie had more than once taken upon himself to hint that he did not specially regard the ogre, seeing that for the future he could keep himself altogether apart from the malicious monster’s dominions.
“He will not come to me in our new home,” he had said to his love, with some little touch of affection. But to this view of the case Lady Alexandrina had demurred. The ogre in question was not only her parent, but was also a noble peer, and she could not agree to any arrangement by which their future connection with the earl, and with nobility in general, might be endangered. Her parent, doubtless, was an ogre, and in his ogreship could make himself very terrible to those near him; but then might it not be better for them to be near to an earl who was an ogre, than not to be near to any earl at all? She had therefore signified to Crosbie that the ogre must be endured.
But, nevertheless, it was a great thing to be rid of him on that happy occasion. He would have said very dreadful things,—things so dreadful that there might have been a question whether the bridegroom could have borne them. Since he had heard of Crosbie’s accident at the railway station, he had constantly talked with fiendish glee of the beating which had been administered to his son-in-law. Lady de Courcy in taking Crosbie’s part, and maintaining that the match was fitting for her daughter, had ventured to declare before her husband that Crosbie was a man of fashion, and the earl would now ask, with a loathsome grin, whether the bridegroom’s fashion had been improved by his little adventure at Paddington. Crosbie, to whom all this was not repeated, would have preferred a wedding in the country. But the countess and Lady Alexandrina knew better.
The earl had strictly interdicted any expenditure, and the countess had of necessity construed this as forbidding any unnecessary expense. “To marry a girl without any immediate cost was a thing which nobody could understand,” as the countess remarked to her eldest daughter.
“I would really spend as little as possible,” Lady Amelia had answered. “You see, mamma, there are circumstances about it which one doesn’t wish to have talked about just at present. There’s the story of that girl,—and then that fracas at the station. I really think it ought to be as quiet as possible.” The good sense of Lady Amelia was not to be disputed, as her mother acknowledged. But then if the marriage were managed in any notoriously quiet way, the very notoriety of that quiet would be as dangerous as an attempt at loud glory. “But it won’t cost as much,” said Amelia. And thus it had been resolved that the wedding should be very quiet.
To this Crosbie had assented very willingly, though he had not relished the manner in which the countess had explained to him her views.
“I need not tell you, Adolphus,” she had said, “how thoroughly satisfied I am with this marriage. My dear girl feels that she can be happy as your wife, and what more can I want? I declared to her and to Amelia that I was not ambitious, for their sakes, and have allowed them both to please themselves.”
“I hope they have pleased themselves,” said Crosbie.
“I trust so; but nevertheless,—I don’t know whether I make myself understood?”
“Quite so, Lady de Courcy. If Alexandrina were going to marry the eldest son of a marquis, you would have a longer procession to church than will be necessary when she marries me.”
“You put it in such an odd way, Adolphus.”
“It’s all right so long as we understand each other. I can assure you I don’t want any procession at all. I should be quite contented to go down with Alexandrina, arm in arm, like Darby and Joan, and let the clerk give her away.”
We may say that he would have been much better contented could he have been allowed to go down the street without any encumbrance on his arm. But there was no possibility now for such deliverance as that.
Both Lady Amelia and Mr Gazebee had long since discovered the bitterness of his heart and the fact of his repentance, and Gazebee had ventured to suggest to his wife that his noble sister-in-law was preparing for herself a life of misery.
“He’ll become quiet and happy when he’s used to it,” Lady Amelia had replied, thinking, perhaps, of her own experiences.
“I don’t know, my dear; he’s not a quiet man. There’s something in his eye which tells me that he could be very hard to a woman.”
“It has gone too far now for any change,” Lady Amelia had answered.
“Well; perhaps it has.”
“And I know my sister so well; she would not hear of it. I really think they will do very well when they become used to each other.”
Mr Gazebee, who also had had his own experiences, hardly dared to hope so much. His home had been satisfactory to him, because he had been a calculating man, and having made his calculation correctly was willing to take the net result. He had done so all his life with success. In his house his wife was paramount,—as he very well knew. But no effort on his wife’s part, had she wished to make such effort, could have forced him to spend more than two-thirds of his income. Of this she also was aware, and had trimmed her sails accordingly, likening herself to him in this respect. But of such wisdom, and such trimmings, and such adaptability, what likelihood was there with Mr Crosbie and Lady Alexandrina?
“At any rate, it is too late now,” said Lady Amelia, thus concluding the conversation.
But nevertheless, when the last moment came, there was some little attempt at glory. Who does not know the way in which a lately married couple’s little dinner-party stretches itself out from the pure simplicity of a fried sole and a leg of mutton to the attempt at clear soup, the unfortunately cold dish of round balls which is handed about after the sole, and the brightly red jelly, and beautifully pink cream, which are ordered, in the last agony of ambition, from the next pastrycook’s shop?
“We cannot give a dinner, my dear, with only cook and Sarah.”
It has thus begun, and the husband has declared that he has no such idea. “If Phipps and Dowdney can come here and eat a bit of mutton, they are very welcome; if not, let them stay away. And you might as well ask Phipps’s sister; just to have some one to go with you into the drawing-room.”
“I’d much rather go alone, because then I can read,”—or sleep, we may say.
But her husband has explained that she would look friendless in this solitary state, and therefore Phipps’s sister has been asked. Then the dinner has progressed down to those costly jellies which have been ordered in a last agony. There has been a conviction on the minds of both of them that the simple leg of mutton would have been more jolly for them all. Had those round balls not been carried about by a hired man; had simple mutton with hot potatoes been handed to Miss Phipps by Sarah, Miss Phipps would not have simpered with such unmeaning stiffness when young Dowdney spoke to her. They would have been much more jolly. “Have a bit more mutton, Phipps; and where do you like it?” How pleasant it sounds! But we all know that it is impossible. My young friend had intended this, but his dinner had run itself away to cold round balls and coloured forms from the pastrycook. And so it was with the Crosbie marriage.
The bride must leave the church in a properly appointed carriage, and the postboys must have wedding favours. So the thing grew; not into noble proportions, not into proportions of true glory, justifying the attempt and making good the gala. A well-cooked rissole, brought pleasantly to you, is good eating. A gala marriage, when everything is in keeping, is excellent sport. Heaven forbid that we should have no gala marriages. But the small spasmodic attempt, made in opposition to manifest propriety, made with an inner conviction of failure,—that surely should be avoided in marriages, in dinners, and in all affairs of life.
There were bridesmaids and there was a breakfast. Both Margaretta and Rosina came up to London for the occasion, as did also a first cousin of theirs, one Miss Gresham, a lady whose father lived in the same county. Mr Gresham had married a sister of Lord de Courcy’s, and his services were also called into requisition. He was brought up to give away the bride, because the earl,—as the paragraph in the newspaper declared,—was confined at Courcy Castle by his old hereditary enemy, the gout. A fourth bridesmaid also was procured, and thus there was a bevy, though not so large a bevy as is now generally thought to be desirable. There were only three or four carriages at the church, but even three or four were something. The weather was so frightfully cold that the light-coloured silks of the ladies carried with them a show of discomfort. Girls should be very young to look nice in light dresses on a frosty morning, and the bridesmaids at Lady Alexandrina’s wedding were not very young. Lady Rosina’s nose was decidedly red. Lady Margaretta was very wintry, and apparently very cross. Miss Gresham was dull, tame, and insipid; and the Honourable Miss O’Flaherty, who filled the fourth place, was sulky at finding that she had been invited to take a share in so very lame a performance.
But the marriage was made good, and Crosbie bore up against his misfortunes like a man. Montgomerie Dobbs and Fowler Pratt both stood by him, giving him, let us hope, some assurance that he was not absolutely deserted by all the world,—that he had not given himself up, bound hand and foot, to the de Courcys, to be dealt with in all matters as they might please. It was that feeling which had been so grievous to him,—and that other feeling, cognate to it, that if he should ultimately succeed in rebelling against the de Courcys, he would find himself a solitary man.
“Yes; I shall go,” Fowler Pratt had said to Montgomerie Dobbs. “I always stick to a fellow if I can. Crosbie has behaved like a blackguard, and like a fool also; and he knows that I think so. But I don’t see why I should drop him on that account. I shall go as he has asked me.”
“So shall I,” said Montgomerie Dobbs, who considered that he would be safe in doing whatever Fowler Pratt did, and who remarked to himself that after all Crosbie was marrying the daughter of an earl.
Then, after the marriage, came the breakfast, at which the countess presided with much noble magnificence. She had not gone to church, thinking, no doubt, that she would be better able to maintain her good humour at the feast, if she did not subject herself to the chance of lumbago in the church. At the foot of the table sat Mr Gresham, her brother-in-law, who had undertaken to give the necessary toast and make the necessary speech. The Honourable John was there, saying all manner of illnatured things about his sister and new brother-in-law, because he had been excluded from his proper position at the foot of the table. But Alexandrina had declared that she would not have the matter entrusted to her brother. The Honourable George would not come, because the countess had not asked his wife.
“Maria may be slow, and all that sort of thing,” George had said; “but she is my wife. And she had got what they haven’t. Love me, love my dog, you know.” So he had stayed down at Courcy,—very properly as I think.
Alexandrina had wished to go away before breakfast, and Crosbie would not have cared how early an escape had been provided for him; but the countess had told her daughter that if she would not wait for the breakfast, there should be no breakfast at all, and in fact no wedding; nothing but a simple marriage. Had there been a grand party, that going away of the bride and bridegroom might be very well; but the countess felt that on such an occasion as this nothing but the presence of the body of the sacrifice could give any reality to the festivity. So Crosbie and Lady Alexandrina Crosbie heard Mr Gresham’s speech, in which he prophesied for the young couple an amount of happiness and prosperity almost greater than is compatible with the circumstances of humanity. His young friend Crosbie, whose acquaintance he had been delighted to make, was well known as one of the rising pillars of the State. Whether his future career might be parliamentary, or devoted to the permanent Civil Service of the country, it would be alike great, noble, and prosperous. As to his dear niece, who was now filling that position in life which was most beautiful and glorious for a young woman,—she could not have done better. She had preferred genius to wealth,—so said Mr Gresham,—and she would find her fitting reward. As to her finding her fitting reward, whatever her preferences may have been, there Mr Gresham was no doubt quite right. On that head I myself have no doubt whatever. After that Crosbie returned thanks, making a much better speech than nine men do out of ten on such occasions, and then the thing was over. No other speaking was allowed, and within half an hour from that time, he and his bride were in the postchaise, being carried away to the Folkestone railway station; for that place had been chosen as the scene of their honeymoon. It had been at one time intended that the journey to Folkestone should be made simply as the first stage to Paris, but Paris and all foreign travelling had been given up by degrees.
“I don’t care a bit about France;—we have been there so often,” Alexandrina said.
She had wished to be taken to Naples, but Crosbie had made her understand at the first whispering of the word, that Naples was quite out of the question. He must look now in all things to money. From the very first outset of his career he must save a shilling wherever a shilling could be saved. To this view of life no opposition was made by the de Courcy interest. Lady Amelia had explained to her sister that they ought so to do their honeymooning that it should not cost more than if they began keeping house at once. Certain things must be done which, no doubt, were costly in their nature. The bride must take with her a well-dressed lady’s-maid. The rooms at the Folkestone hotel must be large, and on the first floor. A carriage must be hired for her use while she remained; but every shilling must be saved the spending of which would not make itself apparent to the outer world. Oh, deliver us from the poverty of those who, with small means, affect a show of wealth! There is no whitening equal to that of sepulchres whited as they are whited!
By the proper administration of a slight bribe Crosbie secured for himself and his wife a compartment in the railway carriage to themselves. And as he seated himself opposite to Alexandrina, having properly tucked her up with all her bright-coloured trappings, he remembered that he had never in truth been alone with her before. He had danced with her frequently, and been left with her for a few minutes between the figures. He had flirted with her in crowded drawing-rooms, and had once found a moment at Courcy Castle to tell her that he was willing to marry her in spite of his engagement with Lilian Dale. But he had never walked with her for hours together as he had walked with Lily. He had never talked to her about government, and politics, and books, nor had she talked to him of poetry, of religion, and of the little duties and comforts of life. He had known the Lady Alexandrina for the last six or seven years; but he had never known her,—perhaps never would know her,—as he had learned to know Lily Dale within the space of two months.
And now that she was his wife, what was he to say to her? They two had commenced a partnership which was to make of them for the remaining term of their lives one body and one flesh. They were to be all-in-all to each other. But how was he to begin this all-in-all partnership? Had the priest, with his blessing, done it so sufficiently that no other doing on Crosbie’s own part was necessary? There she was, opposite to him, his very actual wife,—bone of his bone; and what was he to say to her? As he settled himself on his seat, taking over his own knees a part of a fine fur rug trimmed with scarlet, with which he had covered her other mufflings, he bethought himself how much easier it would have been to talk to Lily. And Lily would have been ready with all her ears, and all her mind, and all her wit, to enter quickly upon whatever thoughts had occurred to him. In that respect Lily would have been a wife indeed,—a wife that would have transferred herself with quick mental activity into her husband’s mental sphere. Had he begun about his office Lily would have been ready for him, but Alexandrina had never yet asked him a single question about his official life. Had he been prepared with a plan for tomorrow’s happiness Lily would have taken it up eagerly, but Alexandrina never cared for such trifles.
“Are you quite comfortable?” he said, at last.
“Oh, yes, quite, thank you. By-the-by, what did you do with my dressing-case?”
And that question she did ask with some energy.
“It is under you. You can have it as footstool if you like it.”
“Oh, no; I should scratch it. I was afraid that if Hannah had it, it might be lost.” Then again there was silence, and Crosbie again considered as to what he would next say to his wife.
We all know the advice given us of old as to what we should do under such circumstances; and who can be so thoroughly justified in following that advice as a newly-married husband? So he put out his hand for hers and drew her closer to him.
“Take care of my bonnet,” she said, as she felt the motion of the railway carriage when he kissed her. I don’t think he kissed her again till he had landed her and her bonnet safely at Folkestone. How often would he have kissed Lily, and how pretty would her bonnet have been when she reached the end of her journey, and how delightfully happy would she have looked when she scolded him for bending it! But Alexandrina was quite in earnest about her bonnet; by far too much in earnest for any appearance of happiness.
So he sat without speaking, till the train came to the tunnel.
“I do so hate tunnels,” said Alexandrina.
He had half intended to put out his hand again, under some mistaken idea that the tunnel afforded him an opportunity. The whole journey was one long opportunity, had he desired it; but his wife hated tunnels, and so he drew his hand back again. Lily’s little fingers would have been ready for his touch. He thought of this, and could not help thinking of it.
He had The Times newspaper in his dressing-bag. She also had a novel with her. Would she be offended if he took out the paper and read it? The miles seemed to pass by very slowly; and there was still another hour down to Folkestone. He longed for his Times, but resolved at last that he would not read unless she read first. She also had remembered her novel; but by nature she was more patient than he, and she thought that on such a journey any reading might perhaps be almost improper. So she sat tranquilly, with her eyes fixed on the netting over her husband’s head.
At last he could stand it no longer, and he dashed off into a conversation, intended to be most affectionate and serious.
“Alexandrina,” he said, and his voice was well-tuned for the tender serious manner, had her ears been alive to such tuning. “Alexandrina, this is a very important step that you and I have taken to-day.”
“Yes; it is, indeed,” said she.
“I trust we shall succeed in making each other happy.”
“Yes; I hope we shall.”
“If we both think seriously of it, and remember that that is our chief duty, we shall do so.”
“Yes, I suppose we shall. I only hope we shan’t find the house very cold. It is so new, and I am so subject to colds in my head. Amelia says we shall find it very cold; but then she was always against our going there.”
“The house will do very well,” said Crosbie. And Alexandrina could perceive that there was something of the master in his tone as he spoke.
“I am only telling you what Amelia said,” she replied.
Had Lily been his bride, and had he spoken to her of their future life and mutual duties, how she would have kindled to the theme! She would have knelt at his feet on the floor of the carriage, and, looking up into his face, would have promised him to do her best,—her best,—her very best. And with what an eagerness of inward resolution would she have determined to keep her promise. He thought of all this now, but he knew that he ought not to think of it. Then, for some quarter of an hour, he did take out his newspaper, and she, when she saw him do so, did take out her novel.
He took out his newspaper, but he could not fix his mind upon the politics of the day. Had he not made a terrible mistake? Of what use to him in life would be that thing of a woman that sat opposite to him? Had not a great punishment come upon him, and had he not deserved the punishment? In truth, a great punishment had come upon him. It was not only that he had married a woman incapable of understanding the higher duties of married life, but that he himself would have been capable of appreciating the value of a woman who did understand them. He would have been happy with Lily Dale; and therefore we may surmise that his unhappiness with Lady Alexandrina would be the greater. There are men who, in marrying such as Lady Alexandrina de Courcy, would get the article best suited to them, as Mortimer Gazebee had done in marrying her sister. Miss Griselda Grantly, who had become Lady Dumbello, though somewhat colder and somewhat cleverer than Lady Alexandrina, had been of the same sort. But in marrying her, Lord Dumbello had got the article best suited to him;—if only the illnatured world would allow him to keep the article. It was in this that Crosbie’s failure had been so grievous,—that he had seen and approved the better course, but had chosen for himself to walk in that which was worse. During that week at Courcy Castle,—the week which he passed there immediately after his second visit to Allington,—he had deliberately made up his mind that he was more fit for the bad course than for the good one. The course was now before him, and he had no choice but to walk in it.
It was very cold when they got to Folkestone, and Lady Alexandrina shivered as she stepped into the private-looking carriage which had been sent to the station for her use.
“We shall find a good fire in the parlour at the hotel,” said Crosbie.
“Oh, I hope so,” said Alexandrina, “and in the bedroom too.”
The young husband felt himself to be offended, but he hardly knew why. He felt himself to be offended, and with difficulty induced himself to go through all those little ceremonies the absence of which would have been remarked by everybody. He did his work, however, seeing to all her shawls and wrappings, speaking with goodnature to Hannah, and paying special attention to the dressing-case.
“What time would you like to dine?” he asked, as he prepared to leave her alone with Hannah in the bedroom.
“Whenever you please; only I should like some tea and bread-and-butter presently.”
Crosbie went into the sitting-room, ordered the tea and bread-and-butter, ordered also the dinner, and then stood himself up with his back to the fire, in order that he might think a little of his future career.
He was a man who had long since resolved that his life should be a success. It would seem that all men would so resolve, if the matter were simply one of resolution. But the majority of men, as I take it, make no such resolution, and very many men resolve that they will be unsuccessful. Crosbie, however, had resolved on success, and had done much towards carrying out his purpose. He had made a name for himself, and had acquired a certain fame. That, however, was, as he acknowledged to himself, departing from him. He looked the matter straight in the face, and told himself that his fashion must be abandoned; but the office remained to him. He might still rule over Mr Optimist, and make a subservient slave of Butterwell. That must be his line in life now, and to that line he would endeavour to be true. As to his wife and his home,—he would look to them for his breakfast, and perhaps his dinner. He would have a comfortable armchair, and if Alexandrina should become a mother he would endeavour to love his children; but above all things he would never think of Lily. After that he stood and thought of her for half an hour.
“If you please, sir, my lady wants to know at what time you have ordered dinner.”
“At seven, Hannah.”
“My lady says she is very tired, and will lie down till dinnertime.”
“Very well, Hannah. I will go into her room when it is time to dress. I hope they are making you comfortable downstairs?”
Then Crosbie strolled out on the pier in the dusk of the cold winter evening.