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

to be a gay, good-hearted, somewhat reckless young man, open to temptation, but also open to good impressions; as to whom no great success could be predicated, but of whom his friends might fairly hope that he might so live as to bring upon them no disgrace and not much trouble. But, above all things, they would have called him thoughtless. In so calling him, they judged him wrong. He was ever thinking⁠—thinking much of the world as it appeared to him, and of himself as he appeared to the world; and thinking, also, of things beyond the world. What was to be his fate here and hereafter? Lily Dale was gone from him, and Amelia Roper was hanging round his neck like a millstone! What, under such circumstances, was to be his fate here and hereafter?

We may say that the difficulties in his way were not as yet very great. As to Lily, indeed, he had no room for hope; but, then, his love for Lily had, perhaps, been a sentiment rather than a passion. Most young men have to go through that disappointment, and are enabled to bear it without much injury to their prospects or happiness. And in afterlife the remembrance of such love is a blessing rather than a curse, enabling the possessor of it to feel that in those early days there was something within him of which he had no cause to be ashamed. I do not pity John Eames much in regard to Lily Dale. And then, as to Amelia Roper⁠—had he achieved but a tithe of that lady’s experience in the world, or possessed a quarter of her audacity, surely such a difficulty as that need not have stood much in his way! What could Amelia do to him if he fairly told her that he was not minded to marry her? In very truth he had never promised to do so. He was in no way bound to her, not even by honour. Honour, indeed, with such as her! But men are cowards before women until they become tyrants; and are easy dupes, till of a sudden they recognize the fact that it is pleasanter to be the victimizer than the victim⁠—and as easy. There are men, indeed, who never learn the latter lesson.

But, though the cause for fear was so slight, poor John Eames was thoroughly afraid. Little things which, in connection with so deep a sorrow as his, it is almost ridiculous to mention, added to his embarrassments, and made an escape from them seem to him to be impossible. He could not return to London without going to Burton Crescent, because his clothes were there, and because he owed to Mrs. Roper some small sum of money which on his return to London he would not have immediately in his pocket. He must therefore meet Amelia, and he knew that he had not the courage to tell a girl, face to face, that he did not love her, after he had been once induced to say that he did do so. His boldest conception did not go beyond the writing of a letter in which he would renounce her, and removing himself altogether from that quarter of the town in which Burton Crescent was situated. But then about his clothes, and that debt of his? And what if Amelia should in the meantime come down to Guestwick and claim him? Could he in his mother’s presence declare that she had no right to make such claim? The difficulties, in truth, were not very great, but they were too heavy for that poor young clerk from the Income-tax Office.

You will declare that he must have been a fool and a coward. Yet he could read and understand Shakespeare. He knew much⁠—by far too much⁠—of Byron’s poetry by heart. He was a deep critic, often writing down his criticisms in a lengthy journal which he kept. He could write quickly, and with understanding; and I may declare that men at his office had already ascertained that he was no fool. He knew his business, and could do it⁠—as many men failed to do who were much less foolish before the world. And as to that matter of cowardice, he would have thought it the greatest blessing in the world to be shut up in a room with Crosbie, having permission to fight with him till one of them should have been brought by stress of battle to give up his claim to Lily Dale. Eames was no coward. He feared no man on earth. But he was terribly afraid of Amelia Roper.

He wandered about through the old Manor woods very ill at ease. The post from Guestwick went out at seven, and he must at once make up his mind whether or no he would write to Amelia on that day. He must also make up his mind as to what he would say to her. He felt that he should at least answer her letter, let his answer be what it might. Should he promise to marry her⁠—say, in ten or twelve years’ time? Should he tell her that he was a blighted being, unfit for love, and with humility entreat of her that he might be excused? Or should he write to her mother, telling her that Burton Crescent would not suit him any longer, promising her to send the balance on receipt of his next payment, and asking her to send his clothes in a bundle to the Income-tax Office? Or should he go home to his own mother, and boldly tell it all to her?

He at last resolved that he must write the letter, and as he composed it in his mind he sat himself down beneath an old tree which stood on a spot at which many of the forest tracks met and crossed each other. The letter, as he framed it here, was not a bad letter, if only he could have got it written