“Ah, yes; a nice girl I’m told. You know all those Dales are connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My brother-in-law doesn’t like travelling, and so I don’t see very much of him; but of course I’m interested about the family.”
“They’re very old friends of mine,” said Crafts.
“Yes, I dare say. There are two girls, are there not?”
“Yes, two.”
“And Miss Lily is the youngest. There’s nothing about the elder one getting married, is there?”
“I’ve not heard anything of it.”
“A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle’s last year. I shouldn’t wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. He is to have the property, you know; and he’s my nephew.”
“I’m not quite sure that it’s a good thing for cousins to marry,” said Crofts.
“They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his hands without any trouble.”
Dr. Crofts didn’t exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not anxious to argue it very closely with the earl. “The younger one,” he said, “has provided for herself.”
“What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her something. They’re not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He’ll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something. You’ll see if he does. I’m told that he has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle.”
Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised the earl that he would dine with him again before long.
“It’ll be a great convenience to me if you’d come about that time,” said the earl, “and as you’re a bachelor perhaps you won’t mind it. You’ll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It’s as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr. Crofts.” And then the earl took himself off to bed.
Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the two girls at Allington. “He’ll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something.” Had it come to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind—no feeling of chivalry? “He’s got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle,” said the earl; and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It was in this tone that men spoke of women nowadays, and yet he himself had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her that he loved her.
CHAPTER XXI
John Eames Encounters Two Adventures, and Displays Great Courage in Both
Lily thought that her lover’s letter was all that it should be. She was not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, in the course of the morning, walked down to the post-office, in order that she might be sure that it was not remaining there.
“Why, miss, they all be delivered; you know that,” said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress.
“But one might be left behind, I thought.”
“John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for your mamma. I can’t make letters for people if folks don’t write them.”
“But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs. Crump. He wouldn’t come up with one letter if he’d got nothing else for anybody in the street.”
“Indeed but he would then. I wouldn’t let him leave a letter here no how, nor yet a paper. It’s no good you’re coming down here for letters, Miss Lily. If he don’t write to you, I can’t make him do it.” And so poor Lily went home discomforted.
But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got the better of him as to that manœuvre. And then she kissed the words which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should be so. And when he accused himself of being worldly, she excused him, persuading herself that he was nearly perfect in this respect as in others. Of course a man living in London, and having to earn his bread out in the world, must be more worldly than a country girl; but the fact of his being able to love such a girl, to choose such a one for his wife—was not that alone sufficient proof that the world had not enslaved him? “My heart is on the Allington lawns,” he said; and then, as she read the words, she kissed the paper again.
In her eyes, and to her ears, and to her heart, the letter was a beautiful letter. I believe there is no bliss greater than that which a thorough love-letter gives to a girl who knows that in receiving it she commits no fault—who can open it before her father and mother with nothing more than the slight blush which the consciousness of her position gives her. And of all love-letters the first must be the sweetest! What a value there is in every word! How each expression is scanned and turned to the best account! With what importance are all those little phrases invested, which too soon become mere phrases, used as a matter of course. Crosbie had finished his letter by bidding God bless her; “And you too,” said Lily, pressing the letter to her bosom.
“Does he say anything particular?” asked Mrs. Dale.
“Yes, mamma; it’s all very particular.”
“But there’s nothing for the public ear.”
“He sends his love to you and Bell.”
“We are very much obliged to him.”
“So you ought to be. And he says that he went to church going through Barchester, and that the clergyman was the grandfather of that Lady Dumbello. When he got to Courcy Castle Lady Dumbello was there.”
“What a singular coincidence!” said Mrs. Dale.
“I won’t tell you a word more about his letter,” said Lily. So she folded it up, and put it in her pocket. But as soon as she found herself alone in her own room, she had it out again, and read it over some half-a-dozen times.
That was the occupation of her morning—that, and the manufacture of some very intricate piece of work which was intended for the adornment of Mr. Crosbie’s person. Her hands, however, were very full of work—or, rather, she intended that they should be full. She would take with her to her new home, when she was married, all manner of household gear, the produce of her own industry and economy. She had declared that she wanted to do something for her future husband, and she would begin that something at once. And in this matter she did not belie her promises to herself, or allow her good intentions to evaporate unaccomplished. She soon surrounded herself with harder tasks than those embroidered slippers with which she indulged herself immediately after his departure. And Mrs. Dale and Bell, though in their gentle way they laughed at her—nevertheless they worked with her, sitting sternly to their long tasks, in order that Crosbie’s house might not be empty when their darling should go to take her place there as his wife.
But it was absolutely necessary that the letter should be answered. It would in her eyes have been a great sin to have let that day’s post go without carrying a letter from her to Courcy Castle—a sin of which she felt no temptation to be guilty. It was an exquisite pleasure to her to seat herself at her little table, with her neat desk and small appurtenances for epistle-craft, and to feel that she had a letter to write in which she had truly much to say. Hitherto her correspondence had been uninteresting and almost weak in its nature. From her mother and sister she had hardly been yet parted; and though she had other friends, she had seldom found herself with very much to tell them by post. What could she communicate to Mary Eames at Guestwick, which should be in itself exciting as she wrote it? When she wrote to John Eames, and told “Dear John” that mamma hoped to have the pleasure of seeing him to tea at such an hour, the work of writing was of little moment to her, though the note when written became one of the choicest treasures of him to whom it was addressed.
But now the matter was very different. When she saw the words “Dearest Adolphus” on the paper before her, she was startled with their significance. “And four months ago I had never even heard of him,” she said to herself, almost with awe. And now he was more to her, and nearer to her, than even was her sister or her mother! She recollected how she had laughed at him behind his back, and called him a swell on the first day of his coming to the Small House, and how, also, she had striven, in her innocent way, to look her best when called upon to go out and walk with the stranger from London. He was no longer a stranger now, but her own dearest friend.
She had put down her pen that she might think of all this—by no means for the first time—and then resumed it with a sudden start as though fearing that the postman might be in the village before her letter was finished. “Dearest Adolphus, I need not tell you how delighted I was when your letter was brought to me this morning.” But I will not repeat the whole of her letter here. She had no incident to relate, none even so interesting as that of Mr. Crosbie’s encounter with Mr. Harding at Barchester. She had met no Lady Dumbello, and had no counterpart to Lady Alexandrina, of whom, as a friend, she could say a word in praise. John Eames’s name she did not mention, knowing that John Eames was not a favourite with Mr. Crosbie; nor had she anything to say of John Eames, that had not been already said. He had, indeed, promised to come over to Allington; but this visit had not been made when Lily wrote her first letter to Crosbie. It was a sweet, good, honest love-letter, full of assurances of unalterable affection and unlimited confidence, indulging in a little quiet fun as to the grandees of Courcy Castle, and ending with a promise that she would be happy and contented if she might receive his letters constantly, and live with the hope of seeing him at Christmas.
“I am in time, Mrs. Crump, am I not?” she said, as she walked into the post-office.
“Of course you be—for the next half-hour. T’ postman—he bain’t stirred from t’ ale’us yet. Just put it into t’ box wull ye?”
“But you won’t leave it there?”
“Leave it there! Did you ever hear the like of that? If you’re afeared to put it in, you can take it away; that’s all about it, Miss Lily.” And then Mrs. Crump turned away to her avocations at the washing-tub. Mrs. Crump had a bad temper, but perhaps she had some excuse. A separate call was made upon her time with reference to almost every letter brought to her office, and for all this, as she often told her friends in profound disgust, she received as salary no more than “tuppence farden a day. It don’t find me in shoe-leather; no more it don’t.” As Mrs. Crump was never seen out of her own house, unless it was in church once a month, this latter assertion about her shoe-leather could hardly have been true.
Lily had received another letter, and had answered it before Eames made his promised visit to Allington. He, as will be remembered, had also had a correspondence. He had answered Miss Roper’s letter, and had since that been living in fear of two things; in a lesser fear of some terrible rejoinder from Amelia, and in a greater fear of a more terrible visit from his lady-love. Were she to swoop down in very truth upon his Guestwick home, and declare herself to his mother and sister as his affianced bride, what mode of escape would then be left for him? But this she had not yet done, nor had she even answered his cruel missive.
“What an ass I am to be afraid of her!” he said to himself as he walked along under the elms of Guestwick manor, which overspread the road to Allington. When he first went over to Allington after his return home, he had mounted himself on horseback, and had gone forth brilliant with spurs, and trusting somewhat to the glories of his dress and gloves. But he had then known nothing of Lily’s engagement. Now he was contented to walk; and as he had taken up his slouched hat and stick in the passage of his mother’s house, he had been very indifferent as to his appearance. He walked quickly along the road, taking for the first three miles the shade of the Guestwick elms, and keeping his feet on the broad greensward which skirts the outside of the earl’s palings. “What an ass I am to be afraid of her!” And as he swung his big stick in his hand, striking a tree here and there, and knocking the stones from his path, he began to question himself in earnest, and to be ashamed of his position in the world. “Nothing on earth shall make me marry her,” he said; “not if they bring a dozen actions against me. She knows as well as I do, that I have never intended to marry her. It’s a cheat from beginning to end. If she comes down here, I’ll tell her so before my mother.” But as the vision of her sudden arrival came before his eyes, he acknowledged to himself that he still held her in great fear. He had told her that he loved her. He had written as much as that. If taxed with so much, he must confess his sin.
Then, by degrees, his mind turned away from Amelia Roper to Lily Dale, not giving him a prospect much more replete with enjoyment than that other one. He had said that he would call at Allington before he returned to town, and he was now redeeming his promise. But he did not know why he should go there. He felt that he should sit silent and abashed in Mrs. Dale’s drawing-room, confessing by his demeanour that secret which it behoved him now to hide from everyone. He could not talk easily before Lily, nor could he speak to her of the only subject which would occupy his thoughts when in her presence. If indeed, he might find her alone— But, perhaps that might be worse for him than any other condition.
When he was shown into the drawing-room there was nobody there. “They were here a minute ago, all three,” said the servant girl. “If you’ll walk down the garden, Mr. John, you’ll be sure to find some of ‘em.” So John Eames, with a little hesitation, walked down the garden.
First of all he went the whole way round the walks, meeting nobody. Then he crossed the lawn, returning again to the farther end; and there, emerging from the little path which led from the Great House, he encountered Lily alone. “Oh, John,” she said, “how d’ye do? I’m afraid you did not find anybody in the house. Mamma and Bell are with Hopkins, away in the large kitchen-garden.”
“I’ve just come over,” said Eames, “because I promised. I said I’d come before I went back to London.”
“And they’ll be very glad to see you, and so am I. Shall we go after them into the other grounds? But perhaps you walked over and are tired.”
“I did walk,” said Eames; “not that I am very tired.” But in truth he did not wish to go after Mrs. Dale, though he was altogether at a loss as to what he would say to Lily while remaining with her. He had fancied that he would like to have some opportunity of speaking to her alone before he went away—of making some special use of the last interview which he should have with her before she became a married woman. But now the opportunity was there, and he hardly dared to avail himself of it.
“You’ll stay and dine with us,” said Lily.
“No, I’ll not do that, for I especially told my mother that I would be back.”
“I’m sure it was very good of you to walk so far to see us. If you really are not tired, I think we will go to mamma, as she would be very sorry to miss you.”
This she said, remembering at the moment what had been Crosbie’s injunctions to her about John Eames. But John had resolved that he would say those words which he had come to speak, and that, as Lily was there with him, he would avail himself of the chance which fortune had given him.
“I don’t think I’ll go into the squire’s garden,” he said.
“Uncle Christopher is not there. He is about the farm somewhere.”
“If you don’t mind, Lily, I think I’ll stay here. I suppose they’ll be back soon. Of course I should like to see them before I go away to London. But, Lily, I came over now chiefly to see you. It was you who asked me to promise.”
Had Crosbie been right in those remarks of his? Had she been imprudent in her little endeavour to be cordially kind to her old friend? “Shall we go into the drawing-room?” she said, feeling that she would be in some degree safer there than out among the shrubs and paths of the garden. And I think she was right in this. A man will talk of love out among the lilacs and roses, who would be stricken dumb by the demure propriety of the four walls of a drawing-room. John Eames also had some feeling of this kind, for he determined to remain out in the garden, if he could so manage it.