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

this I will say, I’ve lived here about t’ squire’s place, man and boy, jist all my life, seeing I was born here, as you knows, Mrs. Dale; and of all the bad things I ever see come about the place, this is a sight the worst.”

“Oh, Hopkins!”

“The worst of all, ma’am; the worst of all! It’ll just kill t’ squire! There’s ne’ery doubt in the world about that. It’ll be the very death of t’ old man.”

“That’s nonsense, Hopkins,” said Lily.

“Very well, miss. I don’t say but what it is nonsense; only you’ll see. There’s Mr. Bernard⁠—he’s gone away; and by all accounts he never did care very much for the place. They all say he’s a-going to the Hingies. And Miss Bell is going to be married⁠—which is all proper, in course; why shouldn’t she? And why shouldn’t you, too, Miss Lily?”

“Perhaps I shall, some day, Hopkins.”

“There’s no day like the present, Miss Lily. And I do say this, that the man as pitched into him would be the man for my money.” This, which Hopkins spoke in the excitement of the moment, was perfectly unintelligible to Lily, and Mrs. Dale, who shuddered as she heard him, said not a word to call for any explanation. “But,” continued Hopkins, “that’s all as it may be, Miss Lily, and you be in the hands of Providence⁠—as is others.”

“Exactly so, Hopkins.”

“But why should your mamma be all for going away? She ain’t going to marry no one. Here’s the house, and there’s she, and there’s t’ squire; and why should she be for going away? So much going away all at once can’t be for any good. It’s just a breaking up of everything, as though nothing wasn’t good enough for nobody. I never went away, and I can’t abide it.”

“Well, Hopkins; it’s settled now,” said Mrs. Dale, “and I’m afraid it can’t be unsettled.”

“Settled;⁠—well. Tell me this: do you expect, Mrs. Dale, that he’s to live there all alone by hisself without anyone to say a cross word to⁠—unless it be me or Dingles; for Jolliffe’s worse than nobody, he’s so mortial cross hisself. Of course he can’t stand it. If you goes away, Mrs. Dale, Mister Bernard, he’ll be squire in less than twelve months. He’ll come back from the Hingies, then, I suppose?”

“I don’t think my brother-in-law will take it in that way, Hopkins.”

“Ah, ma’am, you don’t know him⁠—not as I knows him;⁠—all the ins and outs and crinks and crannies of him. I knows him as I does the old apple-trees that I’ve been a-handling for forty year. There’s a deal of bad wood about them old cankered trees, and some folk say they ain’t worth the ground they stand on; but I know where the sap runs, and when the fruit-blossom shows itself I know where the fruit will be the sweetest. It don’t take much to kill one of them old trees⁠—but there’s life in ’m yet if they be well handled.”

“I’m sure I hope my brother’s life may be long spared to him,” said Mrs. Dale.

“Then don’t be taking yourself away, ma’am, into them gashly lodgings at Guestwick. I says they are gashly for the likes of a Dale. It is not for me to speak, ma’am, of course. And I only came up now just to know what things you’d like with you out of the greenhouse.”

“Oh, nothing, Hopkins, thank you,” said Mrs. Dale.

“He told me to put up for you the best I could pick, and I means to do it;” and Hopkins, as he spoke, indicated by a motion of his head that he was making reference to the squire.

“We shan’t have any place for them,” said Lily.

“I must send a few, miss, just to cheer you up a bit. I fear you’ll be very dolesome there. And the doctor⁠—he ain’t got what you can call a regular garden, but there is a bit of a place behind.”

“But we wouldn’t rob the dear old place,” said Lily.

“For the matter of that what does it signify? T’ squire’ll be that wretched he’ll turn sheep in here to destroy the place, or he’ll have the garden ploughed. You see if he don’t. As for the place, the place is clean done for, if you leave it. You don’t suppose he’ll go and let the Small House to strangers. T’ squire ain’t one of that sort any ways.”

“Ah me!” exclaimed Mrs. Dale, as soon as Hopkins had taken himself off.

“What is it, mamma? He’s a dear old man, but surely what he says cannot make you really unhappy.”

“It is so hard to know what one ought to do. I did not mean to be selfish, but it seems to me as though I were doing the most selfish thing in the world.”

“Nay, mamma; it has been anything but selfish. Besides, it is we that have done it; not you.”

“Do you know, Lily, that I also have that feeling as to breaking up one’s old mode of life of which Hopkins spoke. I thought that I should be glad to escape from this place, but now that the time has come I dread it.”

“Do you mean that you repent?”

Mrs. Dale did not answer her daughter at once, fearing to commit herself by words which could not be retracted. But at last she said, “Yes, Lily; I think I do repent. I think that it has not been well done.”

“Then let it be undone,” said Lily.

The dinner-party at Guestwick Manor on that day was not very bright, and yet the earl had done all in his power to make his guests happy. But gaiety did not come naturally to his house, which, as will have been seen, was an abode very unlike in its nature to that of the other earl at Courcy Castle. Lady De Courcy at any rate understood how to receive and entertain a house full of people, though the practice of doing so might give rise to difficult questions in the privacy of her domestic relations. Lady Julia did not understand