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

prefer the sort of life which belongs to the latter. I know that I have been what the world calls worldly, but you will have to cure me of that. I have questioned myself very much since I left you, and I do not think that I am quite beyond the reach of a cure. At any rate, I will put myself trustingly into the doctor’s hands. I know it is hard for a man to change his habits; but I can with truth say this for myself, that I was happy at Allington, enjoying every hour of the day, and that here I am ennuyé by everybody and nearly by everything. One of the girls of the house I do like; but as to other people, I can hardly find a companion among them, let alone a friend. However, it would not have done for me to have broken away from all such alliances too suddenly.

When I get up to London⁠—and now I really am anxious to get there⁠—I can write to you more at my ease, and more freely than I do here. I know that I am hardly myself among these people⁠—or rather, I am hardly myself as you know me, and as I hope you always will know me. But, nevertheless, I am not so overcome by the miasma but what I can tell you how truly I love you. Even though my spirit should be here, which it is not, my heart would be on the Allington lawns. That dear lawn and that dear bridge!

Give my kind love to Bell and your mother. I feel already that I might almost say my mother. And Lily, my darling, write to me at once. I expect your letters to me to be longer, and better, and brighter than mine to you. But I will endeavour to make mine nicer when I get back to town.

God bless you. Yours, with all my heart,

A. C.

As he had waxed warm with his writing he had forced himself to be affectionate, and, as he flattered himself, frank and candid. Nevertheless, he was partly conscious that he was preparing for himself a mode of escape in those allusions of his to his own worldliness; if escape should ultimately be necessary. “I have tried,” he would then say; “I have struggled honestly, with my best efforts for success; but I am not good enough for such success.” I do not intend to say that he wrote with a premeditated intention of thus using his words; but as he wrote them he could not keep himself from reflecting that they might be used in that way.

He read his letter over, felt satisfied with it, and resolved that he might now free his mind from that consideration for the next forty-eight hours. Whatever might be his sins he had done his duty by Lily! And with this comfortable reflection he deposited his letter in the Courcy Castle letter-box.

XIX The Squire Makes a Visit to the Small House

Mrs. Dale acknowledged to herself that she had not much ground for hoping that she should ever find in Crosbie’s house much personal happiness for her future life. She did not dislike Mr. Crosbie, nor in any great degree mistrust him; but she had seen enough of him to make her certain that Lily’s future home in London could not be a home for her. He was worldly, or, at least, a man of the world. He would be anxious to make the most of his income, and his life would be one long struggle, not perhaps for money, but for those things which money only can give. There are men to whom eight hundred a year is great wealth, and houses to which it brings all the comforts that life requires. But Crosbie was not such a man, nor would his house be such a house. Mrs. Dale hoped that Lily would be happy with him, and satisfied with his modes of life, and she strove to believe that such would be the case; but as regarded herself she was forced to confess that in such a marriage her child would be much divided from her. That pleasant abode to which she had long looked forward that she might have a welcome there in coming years should be among fields and trees, not in some narrow London street. Lily must now become a city lady; but Bell would still be left to her, and it might still be hoped that Bell would find for herself some country home.

Since the day on which Lily had first told her mother of her engagement, Mrs. Dale had found herself talking much more fully and more frequently with Bell than with her younger daughter. As long as Crosbie was at Allington this was natural enough. He and Lily were of course together, while Bell remained with her mother. But the same state of things continued even after Crosbie was gone. It was not that there was any coolness or want of affection between the mother and daughter, but that Lily’s heart was full of her lover, and that Mrs. Dale, though she had given her cordial consent to the marriage, felt that she had but few points of sympathy with her future son-in-law. She had never said, even to herself, that she disliked him; nay, she had sometimes declared to herself that she was fond of him. But, in truth, he was not a man after her own heart. He was not one who could ever be to her as her own son and her own child.

But she and Bell would pass hours together talking of Lily’s prospects. “It seems so strange to me,” said Mrs. Dale, “that she of all girls should have been fancied by such a man as Mr. Crosbie, or that she should have liked him. I cannot imagine Lily living in London.”

“If he is good and affectionate to her she will be