“It never will, Lily. I once fancied that I cared for Dr. Crofts, but it was only fancy. I know it, because—” She was going to explain that her knowledge on that point was assured to her, because since that day she had felt that she might have learned to love another man. But that other man had been Mr. Crosbie, and so she stopped herself.
“I wish he would come and ask you himself.”
“He will never do so. He would never ask such a question without encouragement, and I shall give him none. Nor will he ever think of marrying till he can do so without—without what he thinks to be imprudence as regards money. He has courage enough to be poor himself without unhappiness, but he has not courage to endure poverty with a wife. I know well what his feelings are.”
“Well, we shall see,” said Lily. “I shouldn’t wonder if you were married first now, Bell. For my part I’m quite prepared to wait for three years.”
Late on that evening the squire returned to Allington, Bernard having driven over to meet him at the station. He had telegraphed to his nephew that he would be back by a late train, and no more than this had been heard from him since he went. On that day Bernard had seen none of the ladies at the Small House. With Bell at the present moment it was impossible that he should be on easy terms. He could not meet her alone without recurring to the one special subject of interest between them, and as to that he did not choose to speak without much forethought. He had not known himself, when he had gone about his wooing so lightly, thinking it a slight thing, whether or no he might be accepted. Now it was no longer a slight thing to him. I do not know that it was love that made him so eager; not good, honest, downright love. But he had set his heart upon the object, and with the wilfulness of a Dale was determined that it should be his. He had no remotest idea of giving up his cousin, but he had at last persuaded himself that she was not to be won without some toil, and perhaps also some delay.
Nor had he been in a humour to talk either to Mrs. Dale or to Lily. He feared that Lady Julia’s news was true—that at any rate there might be in it something of truth; and while thus in doubt he could not go down to the Small House. So he hung about the place by himself, with a cigar in his mouth, fearing that something evil was going to happen, and when the message came for him, almost shuddered as he seated himself in the gig. What would it become him to do in this emergency if Crosbie had truly been guilty of the villainy with which Lady Julia had charged him? Thirty years ago he would have called the man out, and shot at him till one of them was hit. Nowadays it was hardly possible for a man to do that; and yet what would the world say of him if he allowed such an injury as this to pass without vengeance?
His uncle, as he came forth from the station with his travelling-bag in his hand, was stern, gloomy, and silent. He came out and took his place in the gig almost without speaking. There were strangers about, and therefore his nephew at first could ask no question, but as the gig turned the corner out of the station-house yard he demanded the news.
“What have you heard?” he said.
But even then the squire did not answer at once. He shook his head, and turned away his face, as though he did not choose to be interrogated.
“Have you seen him, sir?” asked Bernard.
“No, he has not dared to see me.”
“Then it is true?”
“True?—yes, it is all true. Why did you bring the scoundrel here? It has been your fault.”
“No, sir; I must contradict that. I did not know him for a scoundrel.”
“But it was your duty to have known him before you brought him here among them. Poor girl! how is she to be told?”
“Then she does not know it?”
“I fear not. Have you seen them?”
“I saw them yesterday, and she did not know it then; she may have heard it to-day.”
“I don’t think so. I believe he has been too great a coward to write to her. A coward indeed! How can any man find the courage to write such a letter as that?”
By degrees the squire told his tale. How he had gone to Lady Julia, had made his way to London, had tracked Crosbie to his club, and had there learned the whole truth from Crosbie’s friend, Fowler Pratt, we already know. “The coward escaped me while I was talking to the man he sent down,” said the squire. “It was a concerted plan, and I think he was right. I should have brained him in the hall of the club.” On the following morning Pratt had called upon him at his inn with Crosbie’s apology. “His apology!” said the squire. “I have it in my pocket. Poor reptile; wretched worm of a man! I cannot understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been impossible for me to write such a letter as that.” He went on telling how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie declined an interview. “The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come from such a meeting. ‘You mean,’ I answered, ‘that I cannot touch pitch and not be defiled!’ He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he could not say a word for his friend.”
“I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him.”
“Excuse him! How could anyone excuse him? Words could not be found to excuse him.” And then he sat silent for some half mile. “On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that it is no longer worth a man’s while to live in it.”
“And he is engaged to this other girl?”
“Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer’s hands by this time. He must have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don’t suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time here in the country.”
“He meant it up to the time of his leaving.”
“I don’t think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don’t think he meant it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own house with so sore a heart.”
They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open sorrow than might have been expected from his character. “What am I to say to them in the morning?” he repeated over and over again. “How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her child?”
“Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?”
“As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know—that Crosbie would probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it is,” and the squire threw the letter over the table; “read it and let me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far as he is concerned.”
It was a vile letter to have written—not because the language was bad, or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated—but because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds which will not bear a gloss—sins as to which the perpetrator cannot speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had been written.
“I can’t stand this kind of thing,” said Pratt. “If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once.” Then, with inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at last were forthcoming. Such words as they were! “I know that I can have no excuse to make to you—or to her. But, circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had proposed for me.” There was more of it, but we all know of what words such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves constrained to write as reptiles.
“As an honest man!” repeated the squire. “On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was sitting the other day as a guest at my table.”
“What are we to do to him?” said Bernard, after a while.
“Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get into your house. That is too late for us now.”
“There must be more than that, uncle.”
“I don’t know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by the nature of his own villainy. We have to remember Lily’s name, and do what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!”
Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle. “Bernard,” he said, “let my sister-in-law know early to-morrow that I will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be that he has written to-day.”
Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club?
CHAPTER XXVIII
The Board
Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the morning after his escape from Sebright’s, at which establishment he left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story will have shown what took place at that interview.
He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of humanity by the meanness of his production.
But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him—cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of his office, at ten o’clock, he became aware that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. “I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this,” said the semi-official note; “but I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at the heels; but you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them,” &c., &c. He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr. Butterwell himself.
How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily’s charms. He told himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be wiped out—not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing.
And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess.
That house full of babies in St. John’s Wood appeared to him now under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which he wore at the present moment.
During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. “I suppose it’s all right,” said one bluff old gentleman. “My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords’ families.” The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady de Courcy’s influential relation at the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the subject.
At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie’s room, and the new secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to great men and a little more patronising to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men’s corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him. “Tact,” Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the paths of his Putney villa. “Tact. Tact. Tact.”
“Crosbie,” he said, as he entered the room cheerily, “I congratulate you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in life, and you deserve it thoroughly—much better than I did when I was appointed to the same office.”
“Oh, no,” said Crosbie, gloomily.
“But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I told the Commissioners.”
“I’m sure I’m very much obliged to you.”
“I’ve known it all along—before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the Board.”
“Ah—I wish I’d known,” said Crosbie.
“You are much better as you are,” said Butterwell. “There’s no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind, and yet doesn’t know it. I don’t mind saying now that I knew it—swearing that I knew it—but I wouldn’t have said so to a living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income-tax!”
“Exactly so,” said Crosbie.
“But it’s all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I signed the letter afterwards. I’m not sure that I don’t lose more than I gain.”
“What! with three hundred a year more and less work?”
“Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees everything and knows everything. But I’m getting old, and, as you say, the lighter work will suit me. By-the-by, will you come down to Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. There’s nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing.”
But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell’s table in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town. “And indeed,” as he said, “he was not his own master just at present.”
“By-the-by—of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on that head. So you’re going to be married? Well; I’m very glad, and hope you’ll be as lucky as I have been.”
“Thank you,” said Crosbie, again rather gloomily.
“A young lady from near Guestwick, isn’t it; or somewhere in those parts?”
“N—no,” stammered Crosbie. “The lady comes from Barsetshire.”
“Why, I heard the name. Isn’t she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some such name as that?”
“No,” said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. “Her name is De Courcy.”
“One of the earl’s daughters?”
“Yes,” said Crosbie.
“Oh, I beg your pardon. I’d heard wrong. You’re going to be allied to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in life.” Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand—having offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick—a girl without any money; and Mr. Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits’ ends.
“Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you’ll come to us. If you’re at leisure before that I’ll make over what papers I have to you. I’ve not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won’t break your back.”
Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie’s room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt’s eye.
He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend’s fault, or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit of his grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man’s own folly and sin—especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion.
But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two o’clock, neglecting Mr. Butterwell and his office papers, and not stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leather arm-chair at the side of it, farthest from the door. Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fireplace, talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. Mr. Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at Sir Raffle’s jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr. Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the
Daily Jupiter
had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The
Daily Jupiter
, a fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly advocating the claims of Mr. Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to the praise of those powers which he obeys?
Mr. Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a discontented, broken-hearted, silent man, who had been sent to the General Committee Office some few years before because he was not wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent. “Don’t tell me, Butterwell,” he would say—for with Mr. Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close. “Don’t tell me. I know what men are. I’ve seen the world. I’ve been looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing.” And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn’t think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be.