“Why doesn’t she pay what she owes, and leave the house?” said Amelia.
“Hold your tongue,” said her brother. “What she owes is no affair of yours.”
“But it’s an affair of mine, when I’m insulted by such a creature as that.”
“Creature!” said Mrs. Lupex. “I’d like to know which is most like a creature! But I’ll tell you what it is, Amelia Roper—”
Here, however, her eloquence was stopped, for Amelia had disappeared through the door, having been pushed out of the room by her brother. Whereupon Mrs. Lupex, having found a sofa convenient for the service, betook herself to hysterics. There for the moment we will leave her, hoping that poor Mrs. Roper was not kept late out of her bed.
“What a deuce of a mess Eames will make of it if he marries that girl!” Such was Cradell’s reflection as he betook himself to his own room. But of his own part in the night’s transactions he was rather proud than otherwise, feeling that the married lady’s regard for him had been the cause of the battle which had raged. So, likewise, did Paris derive much gratification from the ten years’ siege of Troy.
CHAPTER XII
Lilian Dale Becomes a Butterfly
And now we will go back to Allington. The same morning that brought to John Eames the two letters which were given in the last chapter but one, brought to the Great House, among others, the following epistle for Adolphus Crosbie. It was from a countess, and was written on pink paper, beautifully creamlaid and scented, ornamented with a coronet and certain singularly-entwined initials. Altogether, the letter was very fashionable and attractive, and Adolphus Crosbie was by no means sorry to receive it.
Courcy Castle, September 186—.
MY DEAR MR. CROSBIE,
We have heard of you from the Gazebees, who have come down to us, and who tell us that you are rusticating at a charming little village, in which, among other attractions, there are wood nymphs and water nymphs, to whom much of your time is devoted. As this is just the thing for your taste, I would not for worlds disturb you; but if you should ever tear yourself away from the groves and fountains of Allington, we shall be delighted to welcome you here, though you will find us very unromantic after your late Elysium.
Lady Dumbello is coming to us, who I know is a favourite of yours. Or is it the other way, and are you a favourite of hers? I did ask Lady Hartletop, but she cannot get away from the poor marquis, who is, you know, so very infirm. The duke isn’t at Gatherum at present, but, of course, I don’t mean that that has anything to do with dear Lady Hartletop’s not coming to us. I believe we shall have the house full, and shall not want for nymphs either, though I fear they will not be of the wood and water kind. Margaretta and Alexandrina particularly want you to come, as they say you are so clever at making a houseful of people go off well. If you can give us a week before you go back to manage the affairs of the nation, pray do.
Yours very sincerely,
ROSINA DE COURCY
The Countess de Courcy was a very old friend of Mr. Crosbie’s; that is to say, as old friends go in the world in which he had been living. He had known her for the last six or seven years, and had been in the habit of going to all her London balls, and dancing with her daughters everywhere, in a most good-natured and affable way. He had been intimate, from old family relations, with Mr. Mortimer Gazebee, who, though only an attorney of the more distinguished kind, had married the countess’s eldest daughter, and now sat in Parliament for the city of Barchester, near to which Courcy Castle was situated. And, to tell the truth honestly at once, Mr. Crosbie had been on terms of great friendship with Lady de Courcy’s daughters, the Ladies Margaretta and Alexandrina—perhaps especially so with the latter, though I would not have my readers suppose by my saying so that anything more tender than friendship had ever existed between them.
Crosbie said nothing about the letter on that morning; but during the day, or, perhaps, as he thought over the matter in bed, he made up his mind that he would accept Lady de Courcy’s invitation. It was not only that he would be glad to see the Gazebees, or glad to stay in the same house with that great master in the high art of fashionable life, Lady Dumbello, or glad to renew his friendship with the Ladies Margaretta and Alexandrina. Had he felt that the circumstances of his engagement with Lily made it expedient for him to stay with her till the end of his holidays, he could have thrown over the De Courcys without a struggle. But he told himself that it would be well for him now to tear himself away from Lily; or perhaps he said that it would be well for Lily that he should be torn away. He must not teach her to think that they were to live only in the sunlight of each other’s eyes during those months, or perhaps years, which might elapse before their engagement could be carried out. Nor must he allow her to suppose that either he or she were to depend solely upon the other for the amusements and employments of life. In this way he argued the matter very sensibly within his own mind, and resolved, without much difficulty, that he would go to Courcy Castle, and bask for a week in the sunlight of the fashion which would be collected there. The quiet humdrum of his own fireside would come upon him soon enough!
“I think I shall leave you on Wednesday, sir,” Crosbie said to the squire at breakfast on Sunday morning.
“Leave us on Wednesday!” said the squire, who had an old-fashioned idea that people who were engaged to marry each other should remain together as long as circumstances could be made to admit of their doing so. “Nothing wrong, is there?”
“Oh, dear, no! But everything must come to an end some day; and as I must make one or two short visits before I get back to town, I might as well go on Wednesday. Indeed, I have made it as late as I possibly could.”
“Where do you go from here?” asked Bernard.
“Well, as it happens, only into the next county—to Courcy Castle.” And then there was nothing more said about the matter at that breakfast-table.
It had become their habit to meet together on the Sunday mornings before church, on the lawn belonging to the Small House, and on this day the three gentlemen walked down together, and found Lily and Bell already waiting for them. They generally had some few minutes to spare on those occasions before Mrs. Dale summoned them to pass through the house to church, and such was the case at present. The squire at these times would stand in the middle of the grass-plot, surveying his grounds, and taking stock of the shrubs, and flowers, and fruit-trees round him; for he never forgot that it was all his own, and would thus use this opportunity, as he seldom came down to see the spot on other days. Mrs. Dale, as she would see him from her own window while she was tying on her bonnet, would feel that she knew what was passing through his mind, and would regret that circumstances had forced her to be beholden to him for such assistance. But, in truth, she did not know all that he thought at such times. “It is mine,” he would say to himself, as he looked around on the pleasant place. “But it is well for me that they should enjoy it. She is my brother’s widow, and she is welcome—very welcome.” I think that if those two persons had known more than they did of each other’s hearts and minds they might have loved each other better.
And then Crosbie told Lily of his intention. “On Wednesday!” she said, turning almost pale with emotion as she heard this news. He had told her abruptly, not thinking, probably, that such tidings would affect her so strongly.
“Well, yes. I have written to Lady de Courcy and said Wednesday. It wouldn’t do for me exactly to drop everybody, and perhaps—”
“Oh, no! And, Adolphus, you don’t suppose I begrudge your going. Only it does seem so sudden; does it not?”
“You see, I’ve been here over six weeks.”
“Yes; you’ve been very good. When I think of it, what a six weeks it has been! I wonder whether the difference seems to you as great as it does to me. I’ve left off being a grub, and begun to be a butterfly.”
“But you mustn’t be a butterfly when you’re married, Lily.”
“No; not in that sense. But I meant that my real position in the world—that for which I would fain hope that I was created—opened to me only when I knew you and knew that you loved me. But mamma is calling us, and we must go through to church. Going on Wednesday! There are only three days more, then!”
“Yes, just three days,” he said, as he took her on his arm and passed through the house on to the road.
“And when are we to see you again?” she asked, as they reached the churchyard.
“Ah, who is to say that yet? We must ask the Chairman of Committees when he will let me go again.” Then there was nothing more said, and they all followed the squire through the little porch and up to the big family-pew in which they all sat. Here the squire took his place in one special corner which he had occupied ever since his father’s death, and from which he read the responses loudly and plainly—so loudly and plainly, that the parish clerk could by no means equal him, though with tremulous voice he still made the attempt. “T’ squire’d like to be squire, and parson, and clerk, and everything; so a would,” the poor clerk would say, when complaining of the ill-usage which he suffered.
If Lily’s prayers were interrupted by her new sorrow, I think that her fault in that respect would be forgiven. Of course she had known that Crosbie was not going to remain at Allington much longer. She knew quite as well as he did the exact day on which his leave of absence came to its end, and the hour at which it behoved him to walk into his room at the General Committee Office. She had taught herself to think that he would remain with them up to the end of his vacation, and now she felt as a schoolboy would feel who was told suddenly, a day or two before the time, that the last week of his holidays was to be taken from him. The grievance would have been slight had she known it from the first; but what schoolboy could stand such a shock, when the loss amounted to two-thirds of his remaining wealth? Lily did not blame her lover. She did not even think that he ought to stay. She would not allow herself to suppose that he could propose anything that was unkind. But she felt her loss, and more than once, as she knelt at her prayers, she wiped a hidden tear from her eyes.
Crosbie also was thinking of his departure more than he should have done during Mr. Boyce’s sermon. “It’s easy listening to him,” Mrs. Hearn used to say of her husband’s successor. “It don’t give one much trouble following him into his arguments.” Mr. Crosbie perhaps found the difficulty greater than did Mrs. Hearn, and would have devoted his mind more perfectly to the discourse had the argument been deeper. It is very hard, that necessity of listening to a man who says nothing. On this occasion Crosbie ignored the necessity altogether, and gave up his mind to the consideration of what it might be expedient that he should say to Lily before he went. He remembered well those few words which he had spoken in the first ardour of his love, pleading that an early day might be fixed for their marriage. And he remembered, also, how prettily Lily had yielded to him. “Only do not let it be too soon,” she had said. Now he must unsay what he had then said; he must plead against his own pleadings, and explain to her that he desired to postpone the marriage rather than to hasten it—a task which, I presume, must always be an unpleasant one for any man engaged to be married. “I might as well do it at once,” he said to himself, as he bobbed his head forward into his hands by way of returning thanks for the termination of Mr. Boyce’s sermon.
As he had only three days left, it was certainly as well that he should do this at once. Seeing that Lily had no fortune, she could not in justice complain of a prolonged engagement. That was the argument which he used in his own mind. But he as often told himself that she would have very great ground of complaint if she were left for a day unnecessarily in doubt as to this matter. Why had he rashly spoken those hasty words to her in his love, betraying himself into all manner of scrapes, as a schoolboy might do, or such a one as Johnny Eames? What an ass he had been not to have remembered himself and to have been collected—not to have bethought himself on the occasion of all that might be due to Adolphus Crosbie! And then the idea came upon him whether he had not altogether made himself an ass in this matter. And as he gave his arm to Lily outside the church-door, he shrugged his shoulders while making that reflection. “It is too late now,” he said to himself; and than turned round and made some sweet little loving speech to her. Adolphus Crosbie was a clever man; and he meant also to be a true man—if only the temptations to falsehood might not be too great for him.
“Lily,” he said to her, “will you walk in the fields after lunch?”
Walk in the fields with him! Of course she would. There were only three days left, and would she not give up to him every moment of her time, if he would accept of all her moments? And then they lunched at the Small House, Mrs. Dale having promised to join the dinner-party at the squire’s table. The squire did not eat any lunch, excusing himself on the plea that lunch in itself was a bad thing. “He can eat lunch at his own house,” Mrs. Dale afterwards said to Bell. “And I’ve often seen him take a glass of sherry.” While thinking of this, Mrs. Dale made her own dinner. If her brother-in-law would not eat at her board, neither would she eat at his.
And then in a few minutes Lily had on her hat, in place of that decorous, church-going bonnet which Crosbie was wont to abuse with a lover’s privilege, feeling well assured that he might say what he liked of the bonnet as long as he would praise the hat. “Only three days,” she said, as she walked down with him across the lawn at a quick pace. But she said it in a voice which made no complaint—which seemed to say simply this—that as the good time was to be so short, they must make the most of it. And what compliment could be paid to a man so sweet as that? What flattery could be more gratifying? All my earthly heaven is with you; and now, for the delight of these immediately present months or so, there are left to me but three days of this heaven! Come, then; I will make the most of what happiness is given to me. Crosbie felt it all as she felt it, and recognised the extent of the debt he owed her. “I’ll come down to them for a day at Christmas, though it be only for a day,” he said to himself. Then he reflected that as such was his intention, it might be well for him to open his present conversation with a promise to that effect.
“Yes, Lily; there are only three days left now. But I wonder whether—I suppose you’ll all be at home at Christmas?”
“At home at Christmas?—of course we shall be at home. You don’t mean to say you’ll come to us!”
“Well; I think I will, if you’ll have me.”
“Oh! that will make such a difference. Let me see. That will only be three months. And to have you here on Christmas Day! I would sooner have you then than on any other day in the year.”
“It will only be for one day, Lily. I shall come to dinner on Christmas Eve, and must go away the day after.”
“But you will come direct to our house!”
“If you can spare me a room.”
“Of course we can. So we could now. Only when you came, you know—” Then she looked up into his face and smiled.