The Small House at Allington, Anthony Trollope [best ebook reader for chromebook .txt] 📗

“Of course we’ll go,” said Lily; “why not? We always do. And we’ll have blind-man’s-buff with all the Boyces, as we had last year, if uncle will ask them up.” But the Boyces were not asked up for that occasion.

But Lily, though she put on it all so brave a face, had much to suffer, and did in truth suffer greatly. If you, my reader, ever chanced to slip into the gutter on a wet day, did you not find that the sympathy of the bystanders was by far the severest part of your misfortune? Did you not declare to yourself that all might yet be well, if the people would only walk on and not look at you? And yet you cannot blame those who stood and pitied you; or, perhaps, essayed to rub you down, and assist you in the recovery of your bedaubed hat. You, yourself, if you see a man fall, cannot walk by as though nothing uncommon had happened to him. It was so with Lily. The people of Allington could not regard her with their ordinary eyes. They would look at her tenderly, knowing that she was a wounded fawn, and thus they aggravated the soreness of her wound. Old Mrs. Hearn condoled with her, telling her that very likely she would be better off as she was. Lily would not lie about it in any way. “Mrs. Hearn,” she said, “the subject is painful to me.” Mrs. Hearn said no more about it, but on every meeting between them she looked the things she did not say.

“Miss Lily!” said Hopkins, one day, “Miss Lily!”⁠—and as he looked up into her face a tear had almost formed itself in his old eye⁠—“I knew what he was from the first. Oh, dear! oh, dear! if I could have had him killed!”

“Hopkins, how dare you?” said Lily. “If you speak to me again in such a way, I will tell my uncle.” She turned away from him; but immediately turned back again, and put out her little hand to him. “I beg your pardon,” she said. “I know how kind you are, and I love you for it.” And then she went away.

“I’ll go after him yet, and break the dirty neck of him,” said Hopkins to himself, as he walked down the path.

Shortly before Christmas Day she called with her sister at the vicarage. Bell, in the course of the visit, left the room with one of the Boyce girls, to look at the last chrysanthemums of the year. Then Mrs. Boyce took advantage of the occasion to make her little speech. “My dear Lily,” she said, “you will think me cold if I do not say one word to you.”

“No, I shall not,” said Lily, almost sharply, shrinking from the finger that threatened to touch her sore. “There are things which should never be talked about.”

“Well, well; perhaps so,” said Mrs. Boyce. But for a minute or two she was unable to fall back upon any other topic, and sat looking at Lily with painful tenderness. I need hardly say what were Lily’s sufferings under such a gaze; but she bore it, acknowledging to herself in her misery that the fault did not lie with Mrs. Boyce. How could Mrs. Boyce have looked at her otherwise than tenderly?

It was settled, then, that Lily was to dine up at the Great House on Christmas Day, and thus show to the Allington world that she was not to be regarded as a person shut out from the world by the depth of her misfortune. That she was right there can, I think, be no doubt; but as she walked across the little bridge, with her mother and sister, after returning from church, she would have given much to be able to have turned round, and have gone to bed instead of to her uncle’s dinner.

The show of fat beasts in London took place this year on the twentieth day of December, and I have always understood that a certain bullock exhibited by Lord De Guest was declared by the metropolitan butchers to have realized all the possible excellences of breeding, feeding, and condition. No doubt the butchers of the next half-century will have learned much better, and the Guestwick beast, could it be embalmed and then produced, would excite only ridicule at the agricultural ignorance of the present age; but Lord De Guest took the praise that was offered to him, and found himself in a seventh heaven of delight. He was never so happy as when surrounded by butchers, graziers, and salesmen who were able to appreciate the work of his life, and who regarded him as a model nobleman. “Look at that fellow,” he said to Eames, pointing to the prize bullock. Eames had joined his patron at the show after his office hours, looking on upon the living beef by gaslight. “Isn’t he like his sire? He was got by Lambkin, you know.”

“Lambkin,” said Johnny, who had not as yet been able to learn much about the Guestwick stock.

“Yes, Lambkin. The bull that we had the trouble with. He has just got his sire’s back and forequarters. Don’t you see?”

“I daresay,” said Johnny, who looked very hard, but could not see.

“It’s very odd,” exclaimed the earl, “but do you know, that bull has been as quiet since that day⁠—as quiet as⁠—as anything. I think it must have been my pocket-handkerchief.”

“I daresay it was,” said Johnny;⁠—“or perhaps the flies.”

“Flies!” said the earl, angrily. “Do you suppose he isn’t used to flies? Come away. I ordered dinner at seven, and it’s past six now. My brother-in-law, Colonel Dale, is up in town, and he dines with us.” So he took Johnny’s arm, and led him off through the show, calling his attention as he went to several beasts which were inferior to his own.

And then they walked down through Portman Square and Grosvenor Square, and across Piccadilly to Jermyn Street. John