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

“Resolved on what?” said the squire, turning his eyes full upon her.

“We have resolved to leave the Small House.”

“Leave the Small House!” he said, repeating her words; “and where on earth do you mean to go?”

“We think we shall go into Guestwick.”

“And why?”

“Ah, that is so hard to explain. If you would only accept the fact as I tell it to you, and not ask for the reasons which have guided me!”

“But that is out of the question, Mary. In such a matter as that I must ask your reasons; and I must tell you also that, in my opinion, you will not be doing your duty to your daughters in carrying out such an intention, unless your reasons are very strong indeed.”

“But they are very strong,” said Mrs. Dale; and then she paused.

“I cannot understand it,” said the squire. “I cannot bring myself to believe that you are really in earnest. Are you not comfortable there?”

“More comfortable than we have any right to be with our means.”

“But I thought you always did very nicely with your money. You never get into debt.”

“No; I never get into debt. It is not that, exactly. The fact is, Mr. Dale, we have no right to live there without paying rent; but we could not afford to live there if we did pay rent.”

“Who has talked about rent?” he said, jumping up from his chair. “Someone has been speaking falsehoods of me behind my back.” No gleam of the real truth had yet come to him. No idea had reached his mind that his relatives thought it necessary to leave his house in consequence of any word that he himself had spoken. He had never considered himself to have been in any special way generous to them, and would not have thought it reasonable that they should abandon the house in which they had been living, even if his anger against them had been strong and hot. “Mary,” he said, “I must insist upon getting to the bottom of this. As for your leaving the house, it is out of the question. Where can you be better off, or so well? As to going into Guestwick, what sort of life would there be for the girls? I put all that aside as out of the question; but I must know what has induced you to make such a proposition. Tell me honestly⁠—has anyone spoken evil of me behind my back?”

Mrs. Dale had been prepared for opposition and for reproach; but there was a decision about the squire’s words, and an air of masterdom in his manner, which made her recognize more fully than she had yet done the difficulty of her position. She almost began to fear that she would lack power to carry out her purpose.

“Indeed, it is not so, Mr. Dale.”

“Then what is it?”

“I know that if I attempt to tell you, you will be vexed, and will contradict me.”

“Vexed I shall be, probably.”

“And yet I cannot help it. Indeed, I am endeavouring to do what is right by you and by the children.”

“Never mind me; your duty is to think of them.”

“Of course it is; and in doing this they most cordially agree with me.”

In using such argument as that, Mrs. Dale showed her weakness, and the squire was not slow to take advantage of it. “Your duty is to them,” he said; “but I do not mean by that that your duty is to let them act in any way that may best please them for the moment. I can understand that they should be run away with by some romantic nonsense, but I cannot understand it of you.”

“The truth is this, Mr. Dale. You think that my children owe to you that sort of obedience which is due to a parent, and as long as they remain here, accepting from your hands so large a part of their daily support, it is perhaps natural that you should think so. In this unhappy affair about Bell⁠—”

“I have never said anything of the kind,” said the squire, interrupting her.

“No; you have not said so. And I do not wish you to think that I make any complaint. But I feel that it is so, and they feel it. And, therefore, we have made up our minds to go away.”

Mrs. Dale, as she finished, was aware that she had not told her story well, but she had acknowledged to herself that it was quite out of her power to tell it as it should be told. Her main object was to make her brother-in-law understand that she certainly would leave his house, and to make him understand this with as little pain to himself as possible. She did not in the least mind his thinking her foolish, if only she could so carry her point as to be able to tell her daughters on her return that the matter was settled. But the squire, from his words and manners, seemed indisposed to give her this privilege.

“Of all the propositions which I ever heard,” said he, “it is the most unreasonable. It amounts to this, that you are too proud to live rent-free in a house which belongs to your husband’s brother, and therefore you intend to subject yourself and your children to the great discomfort of a very straitened income. If you yourself only were concerned I should have no right to say anything; but I think myself bound to tell you that, as regards the girls, everybody that knows you will think you to have been very wrong. It is in the natural course of things that they should live in that house. The place has never been let. As far as I know, no rent has ever been paid for the house since it was built. It has always been given to some member of the family, who has been considered as having the best right to it. I have considered your footing there as firm as my own here. A quarrel between me