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

telling of an amount of suffering greater even than that which she had anticipated. It was true that Lily had never said so much to her as she had now said to John Eames, or had attempted to make so clear an exposition of her own feelings. “I should be disgraced in my own eyes if I admitted the love of another man!” They were terrible words, but very easy to be understood. Mrs. Dale had felt, from the first, that Eames was coming too soon, that the earl and the squire together were making an effort to cure the wound too quickly after its infliction; that time should have been given to her girl to recover. But now the attempt had been made, and words had been forced from Lily’s lips, the speaking of which would never be forgotten by herself.

“I knew that it would be so,” said John.

“Ah, yes; you know it, because your heart understands my heart. And you will not be angry with me, and say naughty, cruel words, as you did once before. We will think of each other, John, and pray for each other; and will always love one another. When we do meet let us be glad to see each other. No other friend shall ever be dearer to me than you are. You are so true and honest! When you marry I will tell your wife what an infinite blessing God has given her.”

“You shall never do that.”

“Yes, I will. I understand what you mean; but yet I will.”

“Goodbye, Mrs. Dale,” he said.

“Goodbye, John. If it could have been otherwise with her, you should have had all my best wishes in the matter. I would have loved you dearly as my son; and I will love you now.” Then she put up her lips and kissed his face.

“And so will I love you,” said Lily, giving him her hand again. He looked longingly into her face as though he had thought it possible that she also might kiss him: then he pressed her hand to his lips, and without speaking any further farewell, took up his hat and left the room.

“Poor fellow!” said Mrs. Dale.

“They should not have let him come,” said Lily. “But they don’t understand. They think that I have lost a toy, and they mean to be good-natured, and to give me another.” Very shortly after that Lily went away by herself, and sat alone for hours; and when she joined her mother again at teatime, nothing further was said of John Eames’s visit.

He made his way out by the front door, and through the churchyard, and in this way on to the field through which he had asked Lily to walk with him. He hardly began to think of what had passed till he had left the squire’s house behind him. As he made his way through the tombstones he paused and read one, as though it interested him. He stood a moment under the tower looking up at the clock, and then pulled out his own watch, as though to verify the one by the other. He made, unconsciously, a struggle to drive away from his thoughts the facts of the late scene, and for some five or ten minutes he succeeded. He said to himself a word or two about Sir Raffle and his letters, and laughed inwardly as he remembered the figure of Rafferty bringing in the knight’s shoes. He had gone some half mile upon his way before he ventured to stand still and tell himself that he had failed in the great object of his life.

Yes; he had failed: and he acknowledged to himself, with bitter reproaches, that he had failed, now and forever. He told himself that he had obtruded upon her in her sorrow with an unmannerly love, and rebuked himself as having been not only foolish but ungenerous. His friend the earl had been wont, in his waggish way, to call him the conquering hero, and had so talked him out of his common sense as to have made him almost think that he would be successful in his suit. Now, as he told himself that any such success must have been impossible, he almost hated the earl for having brought him to this condition. A conquering hero, indeed! How should he manage to sneak back among them all at the Manor House, crestfallen and abject in his misery? Everybody knew the errand on which he had gone, and everybody must know of his failure. How could he have been such a fool as to undertake such a task under the eyes of so many lookers-on? Was it not the case that he had so fondly expected success, as to think only of his triumph in returning, and not of his more probable disgrace? He had allowed others to make a fool of him, and had so made a fool of himself that now all hope and happiness were over for him. How could he escape at once out of the country⁠—back to London? How could he get away without saying a word further to anyone? That was the thought that at first occupied his mind.

He crossed the road at the end of the squire’s property, where the parish of Allington divides itself from that of Abbot’s Guest in which the earl’s house stands, and made his way back along the copse which skirted the field in which they had encountered the bull, into the high woods which were at the back of the park. Ah, yes; it had been well for him that he had not come out on horseback. That ride home along the high road and up to the Manor House stables would, under his present circumstances, have been almost impossible to him. As it was, he did not think it possible that he should return to his place in the earl’s house. How could he pretend to maintain his ordinary demeanour under the eyes of those two old men?