“George and his wife are coming up to town; couldn’t we ask them to come to us for a week or so?” said his wife to him, as soon as they were in the fly together, going home.
“No,” shouted Crosbie; “we will do no such thing.” There was not another word said on the subject—nor on any other subject till they got home. When they reached their house Alexandrina had a headache, and went up to her room immediately. Crosbie threw himself into a chair before the remains of a fire in the dining-room, and resolved that he would cut the whole De Courcy family altogether. His wife, as his wife, should obey him. She should obey him—or else leave him and go her way by herself, leaving him to go his way. There was an income of twelve hundred a year. Would it not be a fine thing for him if he could keep six hundred for himself and return to his old manner of life. All his old comforts of course he would not have—nor the old esteem and regard of men. But the luxury of a club dinner he might enjoy. Unembarrassed evenings might be his—with liberty to him to pass them as he pleased. He knew many men who were separated from their wives, and who seemed to be as happy as their neighbours. And then he remembered how ugly Alexandrina had been this evening, wearing a great tinsel coronet full of false stones, with a cold in her head which had reddened her nose. There had, too, fallen upon her in these her married days a certain fixed dreary dowdiness. She certainly was very plain! So he said to himself, and then he went to bed. I myself am inclined to think that his punishment was sufficiently severe.
The next morning his wife still complained of headache, so that he breakfasted alone. Since that positive refusal which he had given to her proposition for inviting her brother, there had not been much conversation between them. “My head is splitting, and Sarah shall bring some tea and toast up to me, if you will not mind it.”
He did not mind it in the least, and ate his breakfast by himself, with more enjoyment than usually attended that meal.
It was clear to him that all the present satisfaction of his life must come to him from his office work. There are men who find it difficult to live without some source of daily comfort, and he was such a man. He could hardly endure his life unless there were some page in it on which he could look with gratified eyes. He had always liked his work, and he now determined that he would like it better than ever. But in order that he might do so it was necessary that he should have much of his own way. According to the theory of his office, it was incumbent on him as Secretary simply to take the orders of the Commissioners, and see that they were executed; and to such work as this his predecessor had strictly confined himself. But he had already done more than this, and had conceived the ambition of holding the Board almost under his thumb. He flattered himself that he knew his own work and theirs better than they knew either, and that by a little management he might be their master. It is not impossible that such might have been the case had there been no fracas at the Paddington station; but, as we all know, the dominant cock of the farmyard must be ever dominant. When he shall once have had his wings so smeared with mud as to give him even the appearance of adversity, no other cock will ever respect him again. Mr. Optimist and Mr. Butterwell knew very well that their secretary had been cudgelled, and they could not submit themselves to a secretary who had been so treated.
“Oh, by-the-by, Crosbie,” said Butterwell, coming into his room, soon after his arrival at his office on that day of his solitary breakfast, “I want to say just a few words to you.” And Butterwell turned round and closed the door, the lock of which had not previously been fastened. Crosbie, without much thinking, immediately foretold himself the nature of the coming conversation.
“Do you know—” said Butterwell, beginning.
“Sit down, won’t you?” said Crosbie, seating himself as he spoke. If there was to be a contest, he would make the best fight he could. He would show a better spirit here than he had done on the railway platform. Butterwell did sit down, and felt as he did so, that the very motion of sitting took away some of his power. He ought to have sent for Crosbie into his own room. A man, when he wishes to reprimand another, should always have the benefit of his own atmosphere.
“I don’t want to find any fault,” Butterwell began.
“I hope you have not any cause,” said Crosbie.
“No, no; I don’t say that I have. But we think at the Board—”
“Stop, stop, Butterwell. If anything unpleasant is coming, it had better come from the Board. I should take it in better spirit; I should, indeed.”
“What takes place at the Board must be official.”
“I should not mind that in the least. I should rather like it than otherwise.”
“It simply amounts to this—that we think you are taking a little too much on yourself. No doubt, it’s a fault on the right side, and arises from your wishing to have the work well done.”
“And if I don’t do it, who will?” asked Crosbie.
“The Board is very well able to get through all that appertains to it. Come, Crosbie, you and I have known each other a great many years, and it would be a pity that we should have any words. I have come to you in this way because it would be disagreeable to you to have any question raised officially. Optimist isn’t given to being very angry, but he was downright angry yesterday. You had better take what I say in good part, and go along a little quieter.”
But Crosbie was not in a humour to take anything quietly. He was sore all over, and prone to hit out at everybody that he met. “I have done my duty to the best of my ability, Mr. Butterwell,” he said, “and I believe I have done it well. I believe I know my duty here as well as anyone can teach me. If I have done more than my share of work, it is because other people have done less than theirs.” As he spoke, there was a black cloud upon his brow, and the Commissioner could perceive that the Secretary was very wrathful.
“Oh! very well,” said Butterwell, rising from his chair. “I can only, under such circumstances, speak to the Chairman, and he will tell you what he thinks at the Board. I think you’re foolish; I do, indeed. As for myself, I have only meant to act kindly by you.” After that, Mr. Butterwell took himself off.
On the same afternoon, Crosbie was summoned into the Board-room in the usual way, between two and three. This was a daily occurrence, as he always sat for about an hour with two out of the three Commissioners, after they had fortified themselves with a biscuit and a glass of sherry. On the present occasion, the usual amount of business was transacted, but it was done in a manner which made Crosbie feel that they did not all stand together on their usual footing. The three Commissioners were all there. The Chairman gave his directions in a solemn, pompous voice, which was by no means usual to him when he was in good humour. The Major said little or nothing; but there was a gleam of satisfied sarcasm in his eye. Things were going wrong at the Board, and he was pleased. Mr. Butterwell was exceedingly civil in his demeanour, and rather more than ordinarily brisk. As soon as the regular work of the day was over, Mr. Optimist shuffled about on his chair, rising from his seat, and then sitting down again. He looked through a lot of papers close to his hand, peering at them over his spectacles. Then he selected one, took off his spectacles, leaned back in his chair, and began his little speech.
“Mr. Crosbie,” he said, “we are all very much gratified—very much gratified, indeed—by your zeal and energy in the service.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Crosbie; “I am fond of the service.”
“Exactly, exactly; we all feel that. But we think that you—if I were to say take too much upon yourself, I should say, perhaps, more than we mean.”
“Don’t say more than you mean, Mr. Optimist.” Crosbie’s eyes, as he spoke, gleamed slightly with his momentary triumph; as did also those of Major Fiasco.
“No, no, no,” said Mr. Optimist; “I would say rather less than more to so very good a public servant as yourself. But you, doubtless, understand me?”
“I don’t think I do quite, sir. If I have not taken too much on me, what is it that I have done that I ought not to have done?”
“You have given directions in many cases for which you ought first to have received authority. Here is an instance,” and the selected paper was at once brought out.
It was a matter in which the Secretary had been manifestly wrong according to written law, and he could not defend it on its own merits.
“If you wish me,” said he, “to confine myself exactly to the positive instructions of the office, I will do so; but I think you will find it inconvenient.”
“It will be far the best” said Mr. Optimist.
“Very well,” said Mr. Crosbie, “it shall be done.” And he at once determined to make himself as unpleasant to the three gentlemen in the room as he might find it within his power to do. He could make himself very unpleasant, but the unpleasantness would be as much to him as to them.
Nothing would now go right with him. He could look in no direction for satisfaction. He sauntered into Sebright’s, as he went home, but he could not find words to speak to anyone about the little matters of the day. He went home, and his wife, though she was up, complained still of her headache.
“I haven’t been out of the house all day,” she said, “and that has made it worse.”
“I don’t know how you are to get out if you won’t walk,” he answered.
Then there was no more said between them till they sat down to their meal.
Had the squire at Allington known all, he might, I think, have been satisfied with the punishment which Crosbie had encountered.
CHAPTER XLIX
Preparations for Going
“Mamma, read that letter.”
It was Mrs. Dale’s eldest daughter who spoke to her, and they were alone together in the parlour at the Small House. Mrs. Dale took the letter and read it very carefully. She then put it back into its envelope and returned it to Bell.
“It is, at any rate, a good letter, and, as I believe, tells the truth.”
“I think it tells a little more than the truth, mamma. As you say, it is a well-written letter. He always writes well when he is in earnest. But yet—”
“Yet what, my dear?”
“There is more head than heart in it.”
“If so, he will suffer the less; that is, if you are quite resolved in the matter.”
“I am quite resolved, and I do not think he will suffer much. He would not, I suppose, have taken the trouble to write like that, if he did not wish this thing.”
“I am quite sure that he does wish it, most earnestly; and that he will be greatly disappointed.”
“As he would be if any other scheme did not turn out to his satisfaction; that is all.”
The letter, of course, was from Bell’s cousin Bernard, and containing the strongest plea he was able to make in favour of his suit for her hand. Bernard Dale was better able to press such a plea by letter than by spoken words. He was a man capable of doing anything well in the doing of which a little time for consideration might be given to him; but he had not in him that power of passion which will force a man to eloquence in asking for that which he desires to obtain. His letter on this occasion was long, and well argued. If there was little in it of passionate love, there was much of pleasant flattery. He told Bell how advantageous to both their families their marriage would be; he declared to her that his own feeling in the matter had been rendered stronger by absence; he alluded without boasting to his past career of life as her best guarantee for his future conduct; he explained to her that if this marriage could be arranged there need then, at any rate, be no further question as to his aunt removing with Lily from the Small House; and then he told her that his affection for herself was the absorbing passion of his existence. Had the letter been written with the view of obtaining from a third person a favourable verdict as to his suit, it would have been a very good letter indeed; but there was not a word in it that could stir the heart of such a girl as Bell Dale.
“Answer him kindly,” Mrs. Dale said.
“As kindly as I know how,” said Bell. “I wish you would write the letter, mamma.”
“I fear that would not do. What I should say would only tempt him to try again.”
Mrs. Dale knew very well—had known for some months past—that Bernard’s suit was hopeless. She felt certain, although the matter had not been discussed between them, that whenever Dr. Crofts might choose to come again and ask for her daughter’s hand he would not be refused. Of the two men she probably liked Dr. Crofts the best; but she liked them both, and she could not but remember that the one, in a worldly point of view, would be a very poor match, whereas the other would, in all respects, be excellent. She would not, on any account, say a word to influence her daughter, and knew, moreover, that no word which she could say would influence her; but she could not divest herself of some regret that it should be so.
“I know what you would wish, mamma,” said Bell.
“I have but one wish, dearest, and that is for your happiness. May God preserve you from any such fate as Lily’s. When I tell you to write kindly to your cousin, I simply mean that I think him to have deserved a kind reply by his honesty.”
“It shall be as kind as I can make it, mamma; but you know what the lady says in the play—how hard it is to take the sting from that word ‘no.’” Then Bell walked out alone for a while, and on her return got her desk and wrote her letter. It was very firm and decisive. As for that wit which should pluck the sting “from such a sharp and waspish word as ‘no,’” I fear she had it not. “It will be better to make him understand that I, also, am in earnest,” she said to herself; and in this frame of mind she wrote her letter. “Pray do not allow yourself to think that what I have said is unfriendly,” she added, in a postscript. “I know how good you are, and I know the great value of what I refuse; but in this matter it must be my duty to tell you the simple truth.”
It had been decided between the squire and Mrs. Dale that the removal from the Small House to Guestwick was not to take place till the first of May. When he had been made to understand that Dr. Crofts had thought it injudicious that Lily should be taken out of their present house in March, he had used all the eloquence of which he was master to induce Mrs. Dale to consent to abandon her project. He had told her that he had always considered that house as belonging, of right, to some other of the family than himself; that it had always been so inhabited, and that no squire of Allington had for years past taken rent for it. “There is no favour conferred—none at all,” he had said; but speaking nevertheless in his usual sharp, ungenial tone.
“There is a favour, a great favour, and great generosity,” Mrs. Dale had replied. “And I have never been too proud to accept it; but when I tell you that we think we shall be happier at Guestwick, you will not refuse to let us go. Lily has had a great blow in that house, and Bell feels that she is running counter to your wishes on her behalf—wishes that are so very kind!”
“No more need be said about that. All that may come right yet, if you will remain where you are.”
But Mrs. Dale knew that “all that” could never come right, and persisted. Indeed, she would hardly have dared to tell her girls that she had yielded to the squire’s entreaties. It was just then, at that very time, that the squire was, as it were, in treaty with the earl about Lily’s fortune; and he did feel it hard that he should be opposed in such a way by his own relatives at the moment when he was behaving towards them with so much generosity. But in his arguments about the house he said nothing of Lily, or her future prospects.
They were to move on the first of May, and one week of April was already past. The squire had said nothing further on the matter after the interview with Mrs. Dale to which allusion has just been made. He was vexed and sore at the separation, thinking that he was ill-used, by the feeling which was displayed by this refusal. He had done his duty by them, as he thought; indeed more than his duty, and now they told him that they were leaving him because they could no longer bear the weight of an obligation conferred by his hands. But in truth he did not understand them; nor did they understand him. He had been hard in his manner, and had occasionally domineered, not feeling that his position, though it gave him all the privileges of a near and a dear friend, did not give him the authority of a father or a husband. In that matter of Bernard’s proposed marriage he had spoken as though Bell should have considered his wishes before she refused her cousin. He had taken upon himself to scold Mrs. Dale, and had thereby given offence to the girls, which they at the time had found it utterly impossible to forgive.
But they were hardly better satisfied in the matter than was he; and now that the time had come, though they could not bring themselves to go back from their demand, almost felt that they were treating the squire with cruelty. When their decision had been made—while it had been making—he had been stern and hard to them. Since that he had been softened by Lily’s misfortune, and softened also by the anticipated loneliness which would come upon him when they should be gone from his side. It was hard upon him that they should so treat him when he was doing his best for them all! And they also felt this, though they did not know the extent to which he was anxious to go in serving them. When they had sat round the fire planning the scheme of their removal, their hearts had been hardened against him, and they had resolved to assert their independence. But now, when the time for action had come, they felt that their grievances against him had already been in a great measure assuaged. This tinged all that they did with a certain sadness; but still they continued their work.
Who does not know how terrible are those preparations for house-moving—how infinite in number are the articles which must be packed, how inexpressibly uncomfortable is the period of packing, and how poor and tawdry is the aspect of one’s belongings while they are thus in a state of dislocation? Nowadays people who understand the world, and have money commensurate with their understanding, have learned the way of shunning all these disasters, and of leaving the work to the hands of persons paid for doing it. The crockery is left in the cupboards, the books on the shelves, the wine in the bins, the curtains on their poles, and the family that is understanding goes for a fortnight to Brighton. At the end of that time the crockery is comfortably settled in other cupboards, the books on other shelves, the wine in other bins, the curtains are hung on other poles, and all is arranged. But Mrs. Dale and her daughters understood nothing of such a method of moving as this. The assistance of the village carpenter in filling certain cases that he had made was all that they knew how to obtain beyond that of their own two servants. Every article had to pass through the hands of some one of the family; and as they felt almost overwhelmed by the extent of the work to be done, they began it much sooner than was necessary, so that it became evident as they advanced in their work, that they would have to pass a dreadfully dull, stupid, uncomfortable week at last, among their boxes and cases, in all the confusion of dismantled furniture.
At first an edict had gone forth that Lily was to do nothing. She was an invalid, and was to be petted and kept quiet. But this edict soon fell to the ground, and Lily worked harder than either her mother or her sister. In truth she was hardly an invalid any longer, and would not submit to an invalid’s treatment. She felt herself that, for the present, constant occupation could alone save her from the misery of looking back—and she had conceived an idea that the harder that occupation was, the better it would be for her. While pulling down the books, and folding the linen, and turning out from their old hiding-places the small long-forgotten properties of the household, she would be as gay as ever she had been in old times. She would talk over her work, standing with flushed cheek and laughing eyes among the dusty ruins around her, till for a moment her mother would think that all was well within her. But then at other moments, when the reaction came, it would seem as though nothing were well. She could not sit quietly over the fire, with quiet rational work in her hands, and chat in a rational quiet way. Not as yet could she do so. Nevertheless it was well with her—within her own bosom. She had declared to herself that she would conquer her misery—as she had also declared to herself during her illness that her misfortune should not kill her—and she was in the way to conquer it. She told herself that the world was not over for her because her sweet hopes had been frustrated. The wound had been deep and very sore, but the flesh of the patient had been sound and healthy, and her blood pure. A physician having knowledge in such cases would have declared, after long watching of her symptoms, that a cure was probable. Her mother was the physician who watched her with the closest eyes; and she, though she was sometimes driven to doubt, did hope, with stronger hope from day to day, that her child might live to remember the story of her love without abiding agony.
That nobody should talk to her about it—that had been the one stipulation which she had seemed to make, not sending forth a request to that effect among her friends in so many words, but showing by certain signs that such was her stipulation. A word to that effect she had spoken to her uncle—as may be remembered, which word had been regarded with the closest obedience. She had gone out into her little world very soon after the news of Crosbie’s falsehood had reached her—first to church and then among the people of the village, resolving to carry herself as though no crushing weight had fallen upon her. The village people had understood it all, listening to her and answering her without the proffer of any outspoken parley.
“Lord bless ‘ee,” said Mrs. Crump, the post-mistress—and Mrs. Crump was supposed to have the sourest temper in Allington—”whenever I look at thee, Miss Lily, I thinks that surely thee is the beautifulest young ‘ooman in all these parts.”
“And you are the crossest old woman,” said Lily, laughing, and giving her hand to the post-mistress.
“So I be,” said Mrs. Crump. “So I be.” Then Lily sat down in the cottage and asked after her ailments. With Mrs. Hearn it was the same. Mrs. Hearn, after that first meeting which has been already mentioned, petted and caressed her, but spoke no further word of her misfortune. When Lily called a second time upon Mrs. Boyce, which she did boldly by herself, that lady did begin one other word of commiseration. “My dearest Lily, we have all been made so unhappy—” So far Mrs. Boyce got, sitting close to Lily and striving to look into her face; but Lily, with a slightly heightened colour, turned sharp round upon one of the Boyce girls, tearing Mrs. Boyce’s commiseration into the smallest shreds. “Minnie,” she said, speaking quite loud, almost with girlish ecstasy, “what do you think Tartar did yesterday? I never laughed so much in my life.” Then she told a ludicrous story about a very ugly terrier which belonged to the squire. After that even Mrs. Boyce made no further attempt. Mrs. Dale and Bell both understood that such was to be the rule—the rule even to them. Lily would speak to them occasionally on the matter—to one of them at a time, beginning with some almost single word of melancholy resignation, and then would go on till she opened her very bosom before them; but no such conversation was ever begun by them. But now, in these busy days of the packing, that topic seemed to have been banished altogether.
“Mamma,” she said, standing on the top rung of a house-ladder, from which position she was handing down glass out of a cupboard, “are you sure that these things are ours? I think some of them belong to the house.”
“I’m sure about that bowl at any rate, because it was my mother’s before I was married.”