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

removed a mountain. “No, my dear, that green in the scroll-work won’t do. It would fly directly, if any hot water were spilt.” The man smiling ineffably, declared that that particular green never flew anywhere. But Lady Amelia paid no attention to him, and the carpet for which the mountain had been removed became part of another mountain.

“That might do,” said Alexandrina, gazing upon a magnificent crimson ground through which rivers of yellow meandered, carrying with them in their streams an infinity of blue flowers. And as she spoke she held her head gracefully on one side, and looked down upon the carpet doubtingly. Lady Amelia poked it with her parasol as though to test its durability, and whispered something about yellows showing the dirt. Crosbie took out his watch and groaned.

“It’s a superb carpet, my lady, and about the newest thing we have. We put down four hundred and fifty yards of it for the Duchess of South Wales, at Cwddglwlch Castle, only last month. Nobody has had it since, for it has not been in stock.” Whereupon Lady Amelia again poked it, and then got up and walked upon it. Lady Alexandrina held her head a little more on one side.

“Five and three?” said Lady Amelia.

“Oh, no, my lady; five and seven; and the cheapest carpet we have in the house. There is twopence a yard more in the colour; there is, indeed.”

“And the discount?” asked Lady Amelia.

“Two and a half, my lady.”

“Oh dear, no,” said Lady Amelia. “I always have five percent for immediate payment⁠—quite immediate, you know.” Upon which the man declared the question must be referred to his master. Two and a half was the rule of the house. Crosbie, who had been looking out of the window, said that upon his honour he couldn’t wait any longer.

“And what do you think of it, Adolphus?” asked Alexandrina.

“Think of what?”

“Of the carpet⁠—this one, you know!”

“Oh⁠—what do I think of the carpet? I don’t think I quite like all these yellow bands; and isn’t it too red? I should have thought something brown with a small pattern would have been better. But, upon my word, I don’t much care.”

“Of course he doesn’t,” said Lady Amelia. Then the two ladies put their heads together for another five minutes, and the carpet was chosen⁠—subject to that question of the discount. “And now about the rug,” said Lady Amelia. But here Crosbie rebelled, and insisted that he must leave them and go to his office. “You can’t want me about the rug,” he said. “Well, perhaps not,” said Lady Amelia. But it was manifest that Alexandrina did not approve of being thus left by her male attendant.

The same thing happened in Oxford Street with reference to the chairs and sofas, and Crosbie began to wish that he were settled, even though he should have to dress himself in the closet below the kitchen-stairs. He was learning to hate the whole household in St. John’s Wood, and almost all that belonged to it. He was introduced there to little family economies of which hitherto he had known nothing, and which were disgusting to him, and the necessity for which was especially explained to him. It was to men placed as he was about to place himself that these economies were so vitally essential⁠—to men who with limited means had to maintain a decorous outward face towards the fashionable world. Ample supplies of butchers’ meat and unlimited washing-bills might be very well upon fifteen hundred a year to those who went out but seldom, and who could use the first cab that came to hand when they did go out. But there were certain things that Lady Alexandrina must do, and therefore the strictest household economy became necessary. Would Lily Dale have required the use of a carriage, got up to look as though it were private, at the expense of her husband’s beefsteaks and clean shirts? That question and others of that nature were asked by Crosbie within his own mind, not unfrequently.

But, nevertheless, he tried to love Alexandrina, or rather to persuade himself that he loved her. If he could only get her away from the De Courcy faction, and especially from the Gazebee branch of it, he would break her of all that. He would teach her to sit triumphantly in a street cab, and to cater for her table with a plentiful hand. Teach her!⁠—at some age over thirty; and with such careful training as she had already received! Did he intend to forbid her ever again to see her relations, ever to go to St. John’s Wood, or to correspond with the countess and Lady Margaretta? Teach her, indeed! Had he yet to learn that he could not wash a blackamoor white?⁠—that he could not have done so even had he himself been well adapted for the attempt, whereas he was in truth nearly as ill adapted as a man might be? But who could pity him? Lily, whom he might have had in his bosom, would have been no blackamoor.

Then came the time of Lady De Courcy’s visit to town, and Alexandrina moved herself off to Portman Square. There was some apparent comfort in this to Crosbie, for he would thereby be saved from those daily dreary journeys up to the northwest. I may say that he positively hated that windy corner near the church, round which he had to walk in getting to the Gazebee residence, and that he hated the lamp which guided him to the door, and the very door itself. This door stood buried as it were in a wall, and opened on to a narrow passage which ran across a so-called garden, or front yard, containing on each side two iron receptacles for geraniums, painted to look like Palissy ware, and a naked female on a pedestal. No spot in London was, as he thought, so cold as the bit of pavement immediately in front of that door. And there he would be