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

This little ebullition threw a gloom over the dinner-table, and nothing more was said on the occasion as to the glories of Eames’s career. But, in the course of the evening, Amelia heard of the encounter which had taken place at the railway station, and at once perceived that she might use the occasion for her own purposes.

“John,” she whispered to her victim, finding an opportunity for coming upon him when almost alone, “what is this I hear? I insist upon knowing. Are you going to fight a duel?”

“Nonsense,” said Johnny.

“But it is not nonsense. You don’t know what my feelings will be, if I think that such a thing is going to happen. But then you are so hardhearted!”

“I ain’t hardhearted a bit, and I’m not going to fight a duel.”

“But is it true that you beat Mr. Crosbie at the station?”

“It is true. I did beat him.”

“Oh, John! not that I mean to say you were wrong, and indeed I honour you for the feeling. There can be nothing so dreadful as a young man’s deceiving a young woman and leaving her after he has won her heart⁠—particularly when she has had his promise in plain words, or, perhaps, even in black and white.” John thought of that horrid, foolish, wretched note which he had written. “And a poor girl, if she can’t right herself by a breach of promise, doesn’t know what to do. Does she, John?”

“A girl who’d right herself that way wouldn’t be worth having.”

“I don’t know about that. When a poor girl is in such a position, she has to be aided by her friends. I suppose, then, Miss Lily Dale won’t bring a breach of promise against him.”

This mention of Lily’s name in such a place was sacrilege in the ears of poor Eames. “I cannot tell,” said he, “what may be the intention of the lady of whom you speak. But from what I know of her friends, I should not think that she will be disgraced by such a proceeding.”

“That may be all very well for Miss Lily Dale⁠—” Amelia said, and then she hesitated. It would not be well, she thought, absolutely to threaten him as yet⁠—not as long as there was any possibility that he might be won without a threat. “Of course I know all about it,” she continued. “She was your L. D., you know. Not that I was ever jealous of her. To you she was no more than one of childhood’s friends. Was she, Johnny?”

He stamped his foot upon the floor, and then jumped up from his seat. “I hate all that sort of twaddle about childhood’s friends, and you know I do. You’ll make me swear that I’ll never come into this room again.”

“Johnny!”

“So I will. The whole thing makes me sick. And as for that Mrs. Lupex⁠—”

“If this is what you learn, John, by going to a lord’s house, I think you had better stay at home with your own friends.”

“Of course I had;⁠—much better stay at home with my own friends. Here’s Mrs. Lupex, and at any rate I can’t stand her.” So he went off, and walked round the Crescent, and down to the New Road, and almost into the Regent’s Park, thinking of Lily Dale and of his own cowardice with Amelia Roper.

On the following morning he received a message, at about one o’clock, by the mouth of the Boardroom messenger, informing him that his presence was required in the Boardroom. “Sir Raffle Buffle has desired your presence, Mr. Eames.”

“My presence, Tupper! what for?” said Johnny, turning upon the messenger almost with dismay.

“Indeed I can’t say, Mr. Eames; but Sir Raffle Buffle has desired your presence in the Boardroom.”

Such a message as that in official life always strikes awe into the heart of a young man. And yet, young men generally come forth from such interviews without having received any serious damage, and generally talk about the old gentlemen whom they have encountered with a good deal of light-spirited sarcasm⁠—or chaff, as it is called in the slang phraseology of the day. It is that same “majesty which doth hedge a king” that does it. The turkey-cock in his own farmyard is master of the occasion, and the thought of him creates fear. A bishop in his lawn, a judge on the bench, a chairman in the big room at the end of a long table, or a policeman with his bull’s-eye lamp upon his beat, can all make themselves terrible by means of those appanages of majesty which have been vouchsafed to them. But how mean is the policeman in his own home, and how few thought much of Sir Raffle Buffle as he sat asleep after dinner in his old slippers! How well can I remember the terror created within me by the air of outraged dignity with which a certain fine old gentleman, now long since gone, could rub his hands slowly, one on the other, and look up to the ceiling, slightly shaking his head, as though lost in the contemplation of my iniquities! I would become sick in my stomach, and feel as though my ankles had been broken. That upward turn of the eye unmanned me so completely that I was speechless as regarded any defence. I think that that old man could hardly have known the extent of his own power.

Once upon a time a careless lad, having the charge of a bundle of letters addressed to the King⁠—petitions and suchlike, which in the course of business would not get beyond the hands of some lord-in-waiting’s deputy assistant⁠—sent the bag which contained them to the wrong place; to Windsor, perhaps, if the Court were in London; or to St. James’s, if it were at Windsor. He was summoned; and the great man of the occasion contented himself with holding his hands up to the heavens as he stood up from his chair, and exclaiming twice, “Mis-sent the Monarch’s pouch!