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

in the same house with you. If I was going to make love to a girl, of course I’d sooner have her close to me⁠—staying in the same house. I should think it the best fun in the world. And we might have had a dance, and all that kind of thing. But I couldn’t make her come, you know.”

“Oh, no; of course not.”

“And Lady Julia thinks that it’s best as it is. You must go over, you know, and get the mother on your side, if you can. I take it, the truth is this;⁠—you mustn’t be angry with me, you know, for saying it.”

“You may be sure of that.”

“I suppose she was fond of that fellow, Crosbie. She can’t be very fond of him now, I should think, after the way he has treated her; but she’ll find a difficulty in making her confession that she really likes you better than she ever liked him. Of course that’s what you’ll want her to say.”

“I want her to say that she’ll be my wife⁠—some day.”

“And when she has agreed to the some day, then you’ll begin to press her to agree to your day;⁠—eh, sir? My belief is you’ll bring her round. Poor girl! why should she break her heart when a decent fellow like you will only be too glad to make her a happy woman?” And in this way the earl talked to Eames till the latter almost believed that the difficulties were vanishing from out of his path. “Could it be possible,” he asked himself, as he went to bed, “that in a fortnight’s time Lily Dale should have accepted him as her future husband?” Then he remembered that day on which Crosbie, with the two girls, had called at his mother’s house, when in the bitterness of his heart, he had sworn to himself that he would always regard Crosbie as his enemy. Since then the world had gone well with him; and he had no longer any very bitter feeling against Crosbie. That matter had been arranged on the platform of the Paddington Station. He felt that if Lily would now accept him he could almost shake hands with Crosbie. The episode in his life and in Lily’s would have been painful; but he would learn to look back upon that without regret, if Lily could be taught to believe that a kind fate had at last given her to the better of her two lovers.

“I’m afraid she won’t bring herself to forget him,” he had said to the earl.

“She’ll only be too happy to forget him,” the earl had answered, “if you can induce her to begin the attempt. Of course it is very bitter at first;⁠—all the world knew about it; but, poor girl, she is not to be wretched forever, because of that. Do you go about your work with some little confidence, and I doubt not but what you’ll have your way. You have everybody in your favour⁠—the squire, her mother, and all.”

While such words as these were in his ears how could he fail to hope and to be confident? While he was sitting cozily over his bedroom fire he resolved that it should be as the earl had said. But when he got up on the following morning, and stood shivering as he came out of his bath, he could not feel the same confidence. “Of course I shall go to her,” he said to himself, “and make a plain story of it. But I know what her answer will be. She will tell me that she cannot forget him.” Then his feelings towards Crosbie were not so friendly as they had been on the previous evening.

He did not visit the Small House on that, his first day. It had been thought better that he should first meet the squire and Bell at Guestwick Manor, so he postponed his visit to Mrs. Dale till the next morning.

“Go when you like,” said the earl. “There’s the brown cob for you to do what you like with him while you are here.”

“I’ll go and see my mother,” said John; “but I won’t take the cob today. If you’ll let me have him tomorrow, I’ll ride to Allington.” So he walked off to Guestwick by himself.

He knew well every yard of the ground over which he went, remembering every gate and stile and greensward from the time of his early boyhood. And now as he went along through his old haunts, he could not but look back and think of the thoughts which had filled his mind in his earlier wanderings. As I have said before, in some of these pages, no walks taken by the man are so crowded with thought as those taken by the boy. He had been early taught to understand that the world to him would be very hard; that he had nothing to look to but his own exertions, and that those exertions would not, unfortunately, be backed by any great cleverness of his own. I do not know that anybody had told him that he was a fool; but he had come to understand, partly through his own modesty, and partly, no doubt, through the somewhat obtrusive diffidence of his mother, that he was less sharp than other lads. It is probably true that he had come to his sharpness later in life than is the case with many young men. He had not grown on the sunny side of the wall. Before that situation in the Income-tax Office had fallen in his way, very humble modes of life had offered themselves⁠—or, rather, had not offered themselves for his acceptance. He had endeavoured to become an usher at a commercial seminary, not supposed to be in a very thriving condition; but he had been, luckily, found deficient in his arithmetic. There had been some chance of his going into the leather-warehouse of Messrs. Basil and Pigskin, but those gentlemen had required a premium, and any