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

It would be better for him to get home to his mother⁠—to send a message from thence to the Manor, and then to escape back to London. So thinking, but with no resolution made, he went on through the woods, and down from the hill back towards the town till he again came to the little bridge over the brook. There he stopped and stood a while with his broad hand spread over the letters which he had cut in those early days, so as to hide them from his sight. “What an ass I have been⁠—always and ever!” he said to himself.

It was not only of his late disappointment that he was thinking, but of his whole past life. He was conscious of his hobbledehoyhood⁠—of that backwardness on his part in assuming manhood which had rendered him incapable of making himself acceptable to Lily before she had fallen into the clutches of Crosbie. As he thought of this he declared to himself that if he could meet Crosbie again he would again thrash him⁠—that he would so belabour him as to send him out of the world, if such sending might possibly be done by fair beating, regardless whether he himself might be called upon to follow him. Was it not hard that for the two of them⁠—for Lily and for him also⁠—there should be such punishment because of the insincerity of that man? When he had thus stood upon the bridge for some quarter of an hour, he took out his knife, and, with deep, rough gashes in the wood, cut out Lily’s name from the rail.

He had hardly finished, and was still looking at the chips as they were being carried away by the stream, when a gentle step came close up to him, and turning round, he saw that Lady Julia was on the bridge. She was close to him, and had already seen his handiwork. “Has she offended you, John?” she said.

“Oh, Lady Julia!”

“Has she offended you?”

“She has refused me, and it is all over.”

“It may be that she has refused you, and that yet it need not be all over. I am sorry that you have cut out the name, John. Do you mean to cut it out from your heart?”

“Never. I would if I could, but I never shall.”

“Keep to it as to a great treasure. It will be a joy to you in after years, and not a sorrow. To have loved truly, even though you shall have loved in vain, will be a consolation when you are as old as I am. It is something to have had a heart.”

“I don’t know. I wish that I had none.”

“And, John;⁠—I can understand her feeling now; and indeed, I thought all through that you were asking her too soon; but the time may yet come when she will think better of your wishes.”

“No, no; never. I begin to know her now.”

“If you can be constant in your love you may win her yet. Remember how young she is; and how young you both are. Come again in two years’ time, and then, when you have won her, you shall tell me that I have been a good old woman to you both.”

“I shall never win her, Lady Julia.” As he spoke these last words the tears were running down his cheeks, and he was weeping openly in presence of his companion. It was well for him that she had come upon him in his sorrow. When he once knew that she had seen his tears, he could pour out to her the whole story of his grief; and as he did so she led him back quietly to the house.

LV Not Very Fie Fie After All

It will perhaps be remembered that terrible things had been foretold as about to happen between the Hartletop and Omnium families. Lady Dumbello had smiled whenever Mr. Plantagenet Palliser had spoken to her. Mr. Palliser had confessed to himself that politics were not enough for him, and that Love was necessary to make up the full complement of his happiness. Lord Dumbello had frowned latterly when his eyes fell on the tall figure of the duke’s heir; and the duke himself⁠—that potentate, generally so mighty in his silence⁠—the duke himself had spoken. Lady De Courcy and Lady Clandidlem were, both of them, absolutely certain that the thing had been fully arranged. I am, therefore, perfectly justified in stating that the world was talking about the loves⁠—the illicit loves⁠—of Mr. Palliser and Lady Dumbello.

And the talking of the world found its way down to that respectable country parsonage in which Lady Dumbello had been born, and from which she had been taken away to those noble halls which she now graced by her presence. The talking of the world was heard at Plumstead Episcopi, where still lived Archdeacon Grantly, the lady’s father; and was heard also at the deanery of Barchester, where lived the lady’s aunt and grandfather. By whose ill-mannered tongue the rumour was spread in these ecclesiastical regions it boots not now to tell. But it may be remembered that Courcy Castle was not far from Barchester, and that Lady De Courcy was not given to hide her lights under a bushel.

It was a terrible rumour. To what mother must not such a rumour respecting her daughter be very terrible? In no mother’s ears could it have sounded more frightfully than it did in those of Mrs. Grantly. Lady Dumbello, the daughter, might be altogether worldly; but Mrs. Grantly had never been more than half worldly. In one moiety of her character, her habits, and her desires, she had been wedded to things good in themselves⁠—to religion, to charity, and to honest-hearted uprightness. It is true that the circumstances of her life had induced her to serve both God and Mammon, and that, therefore, she had gloried greatly in the marriage of her daughter with the heir of a marquis. She had revelled in the aristocratic