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

me over by not understanding. I’ll walk with you down to the bridge.” So they went off together across the lawn.

But Lily was soon left alone, and continued her walk, waiting for her mother’s return. As she went round and round the gravel paths, she thought of the words that she had said to her mother. She had declared that she also was widowed. “And so it should be,” she said, debating the matter with herself. “What can a heart be worth if it can be transferred hither and thither as circumstances and convenience and comfort may require? When he held me here in his arms”⁠—and, as the thoughts ran through her brain, she remembered the very spot on which they had stood⁠—“oh, my love!” she had said to him then as she returned his kisses⁠—“oh, my love, my love, my love!” “When he held me here in his arms, I told myself that it was right, because he was my husband. He has changed, but I have not. It might be that I should have ceased to love him, and then I should have told him so. I should have done as he did.” But, as she came to this, she shuddered, thinking of the Lady Alexandrina. “It was very quick,” she said, still speaking to herself; “very, very. But then men are not the same as women.” And she walked on eagerly, hardly remembering where she was, thinking over it all, as she did daily; remembering every little thought and word of those few eventful months in which she had learned to regard Crosbie as her husband and master. She had declared that she had conquered her unhappiness; but there were moments in which she was almost wild with misery. “Tell me to forget him!” she said. “It is the one thing which will never be forgotten.”

At last she heard her mother’s step coming down across the squire’s garden, and she took up her post at the bridge.

“Stand and deliver,” she said, as her mother put her foot upon the plank. “That is, if you’ve got anything worth delivering. Is anything settled?”

“Come up to the house,” said Mrs. Dale, “and I’ll tell you all.”

LVIII The Fate of the Small House

There was something in the tone of Mrs. Dale’s voice, as she desired her daughter to come up to the house, and declared that her budget of news should be opened there, which at once silenced Lily’s assumed pleasantry. Her mother had been away fully two hours, during which Lily had still continued her walk round the garden, till at last she had become impatient for her mother’s footstep. Something serious must have been said between her uncle and her mother during those long two hours. The interviews to which Mrs. Dale was occasionally summoned at the Great House did not usually exceed twenty minutes, and the upshot would be communicated to the girls in a turn or two round the garden; but in the present instance Mrs. Dale positively declined to speak till she was seated within the house.

“Did he come over on purpose to see you, mamma?”

“Yes, my dear, I believe so. He wished to see you, too; but I asked his permission to postpone that till after I had talked to you.”

“To see me, mamma? About what?”

“To kiss you, and bid you love him; solely for that. He has not a word to say to you that will vex you.”

“Then I will kiss him, and love him, too.”

“Yes, you will when I have told you all. I have promised him solemnly to give up all idea of going to Guestwick. So that is over.”

“Oh, oh! And we may begin to unpack at once? What an episode in one’s life!”

“We may certainly unpack, for I have pledged myself to him; and he is to go into Guestwick himself and arrange about the lodgings.”

“Does Hopkins know it?”

“I should think not yet.”

“Nor Mrs. Boyce! Mamma, I don’t believe I shall be able to survive this next week. We shall look such fools! I’ll tell you what we’ll do;⁠—it will be the only comfort I can have;⁠—we’ll go to work and get everything back into its place before Bell comes home, so as to surprise her.”

“What! in two days?”

“Why not? I’ll make Hopkins come and help, and then he’ll not be so bad. I’ll begin at once and go to the blankets and beds, because I can undo them myself.”

“But I haven’t half told you all; and, indeed, I don’t know how to make you understand what passed between us. He is very unhappy about Bernard; Bernard has determined to go abroad, and may be away for years.”

“One can hardly blame a man for following up his profession.”

“There was no blaming. He only said that it was very sad for him that, in his old age, he should be left alone. This was before there was any talk about our remaining. Indeed he seemed determined not to ask that again as a favour. I could see that in his eye, and I understood it from his tone. He went on to speak of you and Bell, saying how well he loved you both; but that, unfortunately, his hopes regarding you had not been fulfilled.”

“Ah, but he shouldn’t have had hopes of that sort.”

“Listen, my dear, and I think that you will not feel angry with him. He said that he felt his house had never been pleasant to you. Then there followed words which I could not repeat, even if I could remember them. He said much about myself, regretting that the feeling between us had not been more kindly. ‘But my heart,’ he said, ‘has ever been kinder than my words.’ Then I got up from where I was seated, and going over to him, I told him that we would remain here.”

“And what did he say?”

“I don’t know what he said. I know that I was crying, and that he kissed me. It was the first time