“I thought I’d just come in and ask you how you are,” said Cradell.
“I’m pretty well, thank you; and how are you?”
“Oh, I’m pretty well—in health, that is. You see one has so many things to think of when one has a large family. Upon my word, Johnny, I think you’ve been lucky to keep out of it.”
“I have kept out of it, at any rate; haven’t I?”
“Of course; living with you as much as I used to do, I know the whole story of what kept you single.”
“Don’t mind about that, Cradell; what is it you want?”
“I mustn’t let you suppose, Johnny, that I’m grumbling about my lot. Nobody knows better than you what a trump I got in my wife.”
“Of course you did—an excellent woman.”
“And if I cut you out a little there, I’m sure you never felt malice against me for that.”
“Never for a moment, old fellow.”
“We all have our luck, you know.”
“Your luck has been a wife and family. My luck has been to be a bachelor.”
“You may say a family,” said Cradell. “I’m sure that Amelia does the best she can; but we are desperately pushed sometimes—desperately pushed. I never was so bad, Johnny, as I am now.”
“So you said last time.”
“Did I? I don’t remember it. I didn’t think I was so bad then. But, Johnny, if you can let me have one more fiver now I have made arrangements with Amelia how I’m to pay you off by thirty shillings a month—as I get my salary. Indeed I have. Ask her else.”
“I’ll be shot if I do.”
“Don’t say that, Johnny.”
“It’s no good your Johnnying me, for I won’t be Johnnyed out of another shilling. It comes too often, and there’s no reason why I should do it. And what’s more, I can’t afford it. I’ve people of my own to help.”
“But oh, Johnny, we all know how comfortable you are. And I’m sure no one rejoiced as I did when the money was left to you. If it had been myself I could hardly have thought more of it. Upon my solemn word and honour if you’ll let me have it this time, it shall be the last.”
“Upon my word and honour then, I won’t. There must be an end to everything.”
Although Mr. Cradell would probably, if pressed, have admitted the truth of this last assertion, he did not seem to think that the end had as yet come to his friend’s benevolence. It certainly had not come to his own importunity. “Don’t say that, Johnny; pray don’t.”
“But I do say it.”
“When I told Amelia yesterday evening that I didn’t like to go to you again, because of course a man has feelings, she told me to mention her name. ‘I’m sure he’d do it for my sake,’ she said.”
“I don’t believe she said anything of the kind.”
“Upon my word she did. You ask her.”
“And if she did, she oughtn’t to have said it.”
“Oh, Johnny, don’t speak in that way of her. She’s my wife, and you know what your own feelings were once. But look here—we are in that state at home at this moment, that I must get money somewhere before I go home. I must, indeed. If you’ll let me have three pounds this once, I’ll never ask you again. I’ll give you a written promise if you like, and I’ll pledge myself to pay it back by thirty shillings a time out of the next two months’ salary. I will, indeed.” And then Mr. Cradell began to cry. But when Johnny at last took out his cheque-book and wrote a cheque for three pounds, Mr. Cradell’s eyes glistened with joy. “Upon my word I am so much obliged to you! You are the best fellow that ever lived. And Amelia will say the same when she hears of it.”
“I don’t believe she’ll say anything of the kind, Cradell. If I remember anything of her, she has a stouter heart than that.” Cradell admitted that his wife had a stouter heart than himself, and then made his way back to his own part of the office.
This little interruption to the current of Mr. Eames’s thoughts was, I think, for the good for the service, as immediately on his friend’s departure he went to his work; whereas, had not he been called away from his reflections about Miss Dale, he would have sat thinking about her affairs probably for the rest of the morning. As it was, he really did write a dozen notes in answer to as many private letters addressed to his chief, Sir Raffle Buffle, in all of which he made excellently-worded false excuses for the non-performance of various requests made to Sir Raffle by the writers. “He’s about the best hand at it that I know,” said Sir Raffle, one day, to the secretary; “otherwise you may be sure I shouldn’t keep him there.” “I will allow that he is clever,” said the secretary. “It isn’t cleverness, so much as tact. It’s what I call tact. I hadn’t been long in the service before I mastered it myself; and now that I’ve been at the trouble to teach him I don’t want to have the trouble to teach another. But upon my word he must mind his
p
‘s and
q
‘s; upon my word, he must; and you had better tell him so.” “The fact is, Mr. Kissing,” said the private secretary the next day to the secretary—Mr. Kissing was at that time secretary to the board of commissioners for the receipt of income tax—”The fact is, Mr. Kissing, Sir Raffle should never attempt to write a letter himself. He doesn’t know how to do it. He always says twice too much, and yet not half enough. I wish you’d tell him so. He won’t believe me.” From which it will be seen Mr. Eames was proud of his special accomplishment, but did not feel any gratitude to the master who assumed to himself the glory of having taught him. On the present occasion John Eames wrote all his letters before he thought again of Lily Dale, and was able to write them without interruption, as the chairman was absent for the day at the Treasury—or perhaps at his club. Then, when he had finished, he rang his bell, and ordered some sherry and soda-water, and stretched himself before the fire—as though his exertions in the public service had been very great—and seated himself comfortably in his arm-chair, and lit a cigar, and again took out Lady Julia’s letter.
As regarded the cigar, it may be said that both Sir Raffle and Mr. Kissing had given orders that on no account should cigars be lit within the precincts of the Income-tax Office. Mr. Eames had taken upon himself to understand that such orders did not apply to a private secretary, and was well aware that Sir Raffle knew his habit. To Mr. Kissing, I regret to say, he put himself in opposition whenever and wherever opposition was possible; so that men in the office said that one of the two must go at last. “But Johnny can do anything, you know, because he has got money.” That was too frequently the opinion finally expressed among the men.
So John Eames sat down, and drank his soda-water, and smoked his cigar, and read his letter; or, rather, simply that paragraph of the letter which referred to Miss Dale. “The tidings of her death have disturbed her, and set her thinking again of things that were fading from her mind.” He understood it all. And yet how could it possibly be so? How could it be that she should not despise a man—despise him if she did not hate him—who had behaved as this man had behaved to her? It was now four years since this Crosbie had been engaged to Miss Dale, and had jilted her so heartlessly as to incur the disgust of every man in London who had heard the story. He had married an earl’s daughter, who had left him within a few months of their marriage, and now Mr. Crosbie’s noble wife was dead. The wife was dead, and simply because the man was free again, he, John Eames, was to be told that Miss Dale’s mind was “disturbed”, and that her thoughts were going back to things which had faded from her memory, and which should have been long since banished altogether from such holy ground.
If Lily Dale were now to marry Mr. Crosbie, anything so perversely cruel as the fate of John Eames would never yet have been told in romance. That was his own idea on the matter as he sat smoking his cigar. I have said that he was proud of his constancy, and yet, in some sort, he was also ashamed of it. He acknowledged the fact of his love, and believed himself to have out-Jacobed Jacob; but he felt that it was hard for a man who had risen in the world as he had done to be made a plaything of by a foolish passion. It was now four years ago—that affair of Crosbie—and Miss Dale should have accepted him long since. Half-a-dozen times he had made up his mind to be very stern to her; and he had written somewhat sternly—but the first moment that he saw her he was conquered again. “And now that brute will reappear, and everything will be wrong again,” he said to himself. If the brute did reappear, something should happen of which the world should hear the tidings. So he lit another cigar, and began to think what that something should be.
As he did so he heard a loud noise, as of harsh, rattling winds in the next room, and he knew that Sir Raffle had come back from the Treasury. There was a creaking of boots, and a knocking of chairs, and a ringing of bells, and then a loud angry voice—a voice that was very harsh, and on this occasion very angry. Why had not his twelve o’clock letters been sent up to him to the West End? Why not? Mr. Eames knew all about it. Why did Mr. Eames know all about it? Why had not Mr. Eames sent them up? Where was Mr. Eames? Let Mr. Eames be sent to him. All which Mr. Eames heard standing with the cigar in his mouth and his back to the fire. “Somebody has been bullying old Buffle, I suppose. After all he has been up at the Treasure to-day,” said Eames to himself. But he did not stir till the messenger had been to him, nor even then at once. “All right, Rafferty,” he said; “I’ll go in just now.” Then he took half-a-dozen more whiffs from the cigar, threw the remainder into the fire, and opened the door which communicated between his room and Sir Raffle’s.
The great man was standing with two unopened epistles in his hand. “Eames,” said he, “here are letters—” Then he stopped himself, and began upon another subject. “Did I not give express orders that I would have no smoking in the office?”
“I think Mr. Kissing said something about it, sir.”
“Mr. Kissing! It was not Mr. Kissing at all. It was I. I gave the order myself.”
“You’ll find it began with Mr. Kissing.”
“It did not begin with Mr. Kissing; it began and ended with me. What are you going to do, sir?” John Eames stepped towards the bell, and his hand was already on the bell-pull.
“I was going to ring for the papers, sir.”
“And who told you to ring for the papers? I don’t want the papers. The papers won’t show anything. I suppose my word may be taken without the papers. Since you’re so fond of Mr. Kissing—”
“I’m not fond of Mr. Kissing at all.”
“You’ll have to go back to him, and let somebody come here who will not be too independent to obey my orders. Here are two most important letters have been lying here all day, instead of being sent up to me at the Treasury.”
“Of course they have been lying there. I thought you were at the club.”
“I told you I should go to the Treasury. I have been there all morning with the chancellor,”—when Sir Raffle spoke officially of the chancellor he was not supposed to mean the Lord Chancellor—”and here I find letters which I particularly wanted lying upon my desk now. I must put an end to this kind of thing. I must, indeed. If you like the outer office better say so at once, and you can go.”
“I’ll think about it, Sir Raffle.”
“Think about it! What do you mean by thinking about it? But I can’t talk about that now. I’m very busy, and shall be here till past seven. I suppose you can stay?”
“All night, if you wish it, sir.”
“Very well. That will do for the present.—I wouldn’t have had these letters delayed for twenty pounds.”
“I don’t suppose it would have mattered one straw if both of them remained unopened till next week.” This last little speech, however, was not made aloud to Sir Raffle, but by Johnny to himself in the solitude of his own room.
Very soon after that he went away, Sir Raffle having discovered that one of the letters in question required his immediate return to the West End. “I’ve changed my mind about staying. I shan’t stay now. I should have done if these letters had reached me as they ought.”
“Then I suppose I can go?”
“You can do as you like about that,” said Sir Raffle.
Eames did do as he liked, and went home, or to his club; and as he went he resolved that he would put an end, and at once, to the present trouble of his life. Lily Dale should accept him or reject him; and, taking either the one or the other alternative, she should hear a bit of his mind plainly spoken.
CHAPTER XVI
Down at Allington
It was Christmas-time down at Allington, and at three o’clock on Christmas Eve, just as the darkness of the early winter evening was coming on, Lily Dale and Grace Crawley were seated together, one above the other, on the steps leading up to the pulpit in Allington Church. They had been working all day at the decorations of the church, and they were now looking round them at the result of their handiwork. To an eye unused to the gloom the place would have been nearly dark; but they could see every corner turned by the ivy sprigs, and every line on which the holly-leaves were shining. And the greeneries of the winter had not been stuck up in the old-fashioned, idle way, a bough just fastened up here and a twig inserted there; but everything had been done with some meaning, with some thought towards the original architecture of the building. The Gothic lines had been followed, and all the lower arches which it had been possible to reach with an ordinary ladder had been turned as truly with the laurel cuttings as they had been turned originally with the stone.
“I wouldn’t tie another twig,” said the elder girl, “for all the Christmas pudding that was ever boiled.”
“It’s lucky then that there isn’t another twig to tie.”
“I don’t know about that. I see a score of places where the work has been scamped. This is the sixth time I have done the church, and I don’t think I’ll ever do it again. When we first began it, Bell and I, you know—before Bell was married—Mrs. Boyce, and the Boycian establishment generally, used to come and help. Or rather we used to help her. Now she hardly ever looks after it at all.”
“She is older, I suppose.”
“She’s a little older, and a deal idler. How idle people do get! Look at him. Since he has had a curate he hardly ever stirs round the parish. And he is getting so fat that— H—sh! Here she is herself—come to give her judgment upon us.” Then a stout lady, the wife of the vicar, walked slowly up the aisle. “Well, girls,” she said, “you have worked hard, and I am sure Mr. Boyce will be very much obliged to you.”
“Mr. Boyce, indeed!” said Lily Dale. “We shall expect the whole parish to rise from their seats and thank us. Why didn’t Jane and Bessy come and help us?”
“They were so tired when they came in from the coal club. Besides, they don’t care for this kind of thing—not as you do.”
“Jane is utilitarian to the backbone, I know,” said Lily, “and Bessy doesn’t like getting up ladders.”
“As for ladders,” said Mrs. Boyce, defending her daughter, “I am not quite sure that Bessy isn’t right. You don’t mean to say that you did all those capitals yourself?”
“Every twig, with Hopkins to hold the ladder and cut the sticks; and as Hopkins is just a hundred and one years old, we could have done it pretty nearly as well alone.”
“I do not think that,” said Grace.
“He has been grumbling all the time,” said Lily, “and swears he never will have the laurels so robbed again. Five or six years ago he used to declare that death would certainly save him from the pain of such another desecration before the next Christmas; but he has given up that foolish notion now, and talks as though he meant to protect the Allington shrubs at any rate to the end of this century.”
“I am sure we gave our share from the parsonage,” said Mrs. Boyce, who never understood a joke.
“All the best came from the parsonage, as of course they ought,” said Lily. “But Hopkins had to make up the deficiency. And as my uncle told him to take the haycart for them instead of the hand-barrow, he is broken-hearted.”
“I am sure he was very good-natured,” said Grace.
“Nevertheless he is broken-hearted; and I am very good-natured too, and I am broken-backed. Who is going to preach to-morrow morning, Mrs. Boyce?”
“Mr. Swanton will preach in the morning.”
“Tell him not to be too long, because of the children’s pudding. Tell Mr. Boyce if he is long, we won’t any of us come next Sunday.”
“My dear, how can you say such wicked things! I shall not tell him anything of the kind.”
“That’s not wicked, Mrs. Boyce. If I were to say I had eaten so much lunch that I didn’t want any dinner, you’d understand that. If Mr. Swanton will preach for three-quarters of an hour—”
“He only preached for three-quarters of an hour once, Lily.”
“He has been over the half-hour every Sunday since he has been here. His average is over forty minutes, and I say it’s a shame.”
“It is not a shame at all, Lily,” said Mrs. Boyce, becoming very serious.
“Look at my uncle; he doesn’t like to go to sleep, and he has to suffer a purgatory in keeping himself awake.”
“If your uncle is heavy, how can Mr. Swanton help it? If Mr. Dale’s mind were on the subject he would not sleep.”
“Come, Mrs. Boyce; there’s somebody else sleeps sometimes besides my uncle. When Mr. Boyce puts up his finger and just touches his nose, I know as well as possible why he does it.”
“Lily Dale, you have no business to say so. It is not true. I don’t know how you can bring yourself to talk in that way of your own clergyman. If I were to tell your mamma, she would be shocked.”
“You won’t be so ill-natured, Mrs. Boyce—after all that I’ve done for the church.”
“If you think more about the clergyman, Lily, and less about the church,” said Mrs. Boyce very sententiously, “more about the matter and less about the manner, more of the reality and less of the form, I think you’d find that your religion would go further with you. Miss Crawley is the daughter of a clergyman, and I’m sure she will agree with me.”
“If she agrees with anybody in scolding me I’ll quarrel with her.”
“I didn’t mean to scold you, Lily.”
“I don’t mind it from you, Mrs. Boyce. Indeed, I rather like it. It is a sort of pastoral visitation; and as Mr. Boyce never scolds me himself I take it as coming from from him by attorney.” Then there was silence for a minute or two, during which Mrs. Boyce was endeavouring to discover whether Miss Dale was laughing at her or not. As she was not quite certain, she thought at last that she would let the suspected fault pass unobserved. “Don’t wait for us, Mrs. Boyce,” said Lily. “We must remain till Hopkins has sent Gregory to sweep the church out and take away the rubbish. We’ll see that the key is left at Mrs. Giles’s.”
“Thank you, my dear. Then I may as well go. I thought I’d come in and see that it was all right. I’m sure Mr. Boyce will be very much obliged to you and Miss Crawley. Good-night, my dear.”
“Good-night, Mrs. Boyce; and be sure you don’t let Mr. Swanton be long to-morrow.” To this parting shot Mrs. Boyce made no rejoinder; but she hurried out of the church somewhat quicker for it, and closed the door after her with something of a slam.
Of all persons clergymen are the most irreverent in the handling of things supposed to be sacred, and next to them clergyman’s wives, and after them those other ladies, old or young, who take upon themselves semi-clerical duties. And it is natural that it should be so; for is it not said that familiarity does breed contempt? When a parson takes his lay friend over his church on a week day, how much less of the spirit of genuflexion and head-uncovering the clergyman will display than the layman! The parson pulls about the woodwork and knocks about the stonework, as though it were mere wood and stone; and talks aloud in the aisle, and treats even the reading-desk as a common thing; whereas the visitor whispers gently, and carries himself as though even in looking at a church he was bound to regard himself as performing some service that was half divine. Now Lily Dale and Grace Crawley were both accustomed to churches, and had been so long at work in this church for the last two days, that the building had lost to them much of its sacredness, and they were almost as irreverent as though they were two curates.
“I am so glad she has gone,” said Lily. “We shall have to stop here for the next hour, as Gregory won’t know what to take away and what to leave. I was so afraid she was going to stop and see us off the premises.”
“I don’t know why you should dislike her.”
“I don’t dislike her. I like her very well,” said Lily Dale. “But don’t you feel that there are people whom one knows very intimately, who are really friends—for whom if they were dying one would grieve, whom if they were in misfortune one would go far to help, but with whom for all that one can have no sympathy. And yet they are so near to one that they know all the events of one’s life, and are justified by unquestioned friendship in talking about things which should never be mentioned except where sympathy exists.”
“Yes; I understand that.”
“Everybody understands it who has been unhappy. That woman sometimes says things to me that make me wish—wish that they’d make him bishop of Patagonia. And yet she does it all in friendship, and mamma says that she is quite right.”
“I liked her for standing up for her husband.”
“But he does go to sleep—and then he scratches his nose to show that he’s awake. I shouldn’t have said it, only she is always hinting at uncle Christopher. Uncle Christopher certainly does go to sleep when Mr. Boyce preaches, and he hasn’t studied any scientific little movements during his slumbers to make the people believe that he’s all alive. I gave him a hint one day, and he got so angry with me!”
“I shouldn’t have thought he could have been angry with you. It seems to me from what you say that you may do whatever you please with him.”
“He is very good to me. If you knew it all—if you could understand how good he has been! I’ll try and tell you one day. It is not what he has done that makes me love him so—but what he has thoroughly understood, and what, so understanding, he has not done, and what he has not said. It is a case of sympathy. If ever there was a gentleman uncle Christopher is one. And I used to dislike him so, at one time!”
“And why?”
“Chiefly because he would make me wear brown frocks when I wanted to have them pink or green. And he kept me for six months from having them long, and up to this day he scolds me if there is half an inch on the ground for him to tread upon.”
“I shouldn’t mind that if I were you.”
“I don’t—not now. But it used to be serious when I was a young girl. And we thought, Bell and I, that he was cross to mamma. He and mamma didn’t agree at first, you know, as they do now. It is quite true that he did dislike mamma when we first came here.”
“I can’t think how anybody could ever dislike Mrs. Dale.”
“But he did. And then he wanted to make up a marriage between Bell and my cousin Bernard. But neither of them cared a bit for the other, and then he used to scold them—and then—and then—and then— Oh, he was so good to me! Here’s Gregory at last. Gregory, we’ve been waiting this hour and a half.”
“It ain’t ten minutes since Hopkins let me come with the barrows, miss.”
“Then Hopkins is a traitor. Never mind. You’d better begin now—up there at the steps. It’ll be quite dark in a few minutes. Here’s Mrs. Giles with her broom. Come, Mrs. Giles; we shall have to pass the night here if you don’t make haste. Are you cold, Grace?”
“No; I’m not cold. I’m thinking what they’re doing now in the church at Hogglestock.”
“The Hogglestock church is not pretty—like this?”
“Oh, no. It is a very plain brick building, with something like a pigeon-house for a belfry. And the pulpit is over the reading-desk, and the reading-desk over the clerk, so that papa, when he preaches, is nearly up to the ceiling. And the whole place is divided into pews, in which the farmers hide themselves when they come to church.”
“So that nobody can see whether they go to sleep or no. Oh, Mrs. Giles, you mustn’t pull that down. That’s what we have been putting up all day.”
“But it be in the way, miss; so that the minister can’t budge in or out o’ the door.”
“Never mind. Then he must stay one side or the other. That would be too much after all our trouble!” And Miss Dale hurried across the chancel to save some pretty arching boughs, which, in the judgment of Mrs. Giles, encroached too much on the vestry door. “As if it signified which side he was,” she said in a whisper to Grace.
“I don’t suppose they’ll have anything in the church at home,” said Grace.
“Somebody will stick up a wreath or two, I daresay.”
“Nobody will. There never is anybody at Hogglestock to stick up wreaths, or do anything for the prettinesses of life. And now there will be less done than ever. How can mamma look after holly-leaves in her present state? And yet she will miss them, too. Poor mamma sees very little that is pretty; but she has not forgotten how pleasant pretty things are.”
“I wish I knew your mother, Grace.”
“I think it would be impossible for anyone to know mamma now—for anyone who had not known her before. She never makes even a new acquaintance. She seems to think that there is nothing left for her in the world but to try and keep papa out of his misery. And she does not succeed in that. Poor papa!”
“Is he very unhappy about this wicked accusation?”
“Yes; he is very unhappy. But, Lily, I don’t know about its being wicked.”
“But you know that it is untrue.”
“Of course I know that papa did not mean to take anything that was not his own. But, you see, nobody knows where it came from; and nobody except mamma and Jane and I understand how very absent papa can be. I’m sure he doesn’t know the least in the world how he came by it himself, or he would tell mamma. Do you know, Lily, I think I have been wrong to come away.”
“Don’t say that, dear. Remember how anxious Mrs. Crawley was that you should come.”
“But I cannot bear to be comfortable here while they are so wretched at home. It seems such a mockery. Every time I find myself smiling at what you say to me, I think I must be the most heartless creature in the world.”
“Is it so very bad with them, Grace?”
“Indeed it is bad. I don’t think you can imagine what mamma has to go through. She has to cook all that is eaten in the house, and then, very often, there is no money in the house to buy anything. If you were to see the clothes she wears, even that would make your heart bleed. I who have been used to being poor all my life—even I, when I am at home, am dismayed by what she has to endure.”