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

In the meantime, the earl was asleep upstairs, and the two young men from Guestwick did not find that they could amuse themselves with any satisfaction. Each took up a book; but there are times at which a man is quite unable to read, and when a book is only a cover for his idleness or dullness. At last, Dr. Crofts suggested, in a whisper, that they might as well begin to think of going home.

“Eh; yes; what?” said the earl: “I’m not asleep.” In answer to which the doctor said that he thought he’d go home, if his lordship would let him order his horse. But the earl was again fast bound in slumber, and took no further notice of the proposition.

“Perhaps we could get off without waking him,” suggested Eames, in a whisper.

“Eh; what?” said the earl. So they both resumed their books, and submitted themselves to their martyrdom for a further period of fifteen minutes. At the expiration of that time, the footman brought in tea.

“Eh, what? tea!” said the earl. “Yes, we’ll have a little tea. I’ve heard every word you’ve been saying.” It was that assertion on the part of the earl which always made Lady Julia so angry. “You cannot have heard what I have been saying, Theodore, because I have said nothing,” she would reply. “But I should have heard it if you had,” the earl would rejoin, snappishly. On the present occasion neither Crofts nor Eames contradicted him, and he took his tea and swallowed it while still three parts asleep.

“If you’ll allow me, my lord, I think I’ll order my horse,” said the doctor.

“Yes; horse⁠—yes⁠—” said the earl, nodding.

“But what are you to do, Eames, if I ride?” said the doctor.

“I’ll walk,” whispered Eames, in his very lowest voice.

“What⁠—what⁠—what?” said the earl, jumping up on his feet. “Oh, ah, yes; going away, are you? I suppose you might as well, as sit here and see me sleeping. But, doctor⁠—I didn’t snore, did I?”

“Only occasionally.”

“Not loud, did I? Come, Eames, did I snore loud?”

“Well, my lord, you did snore rather loud two or three times.”

“Did I?” said the earl, in a voice of great disappointment. “And yet, do you know, I heard every word you said.”

The small phaeton had been already ordered, and the two young men started back to Guestwick together, a servant from the house riding the doctor’s horse behind them. “Look here, Eames,” said the earl, as they parted on the steps of the hall door. “You’re going back to town the day after tomorrow, you say, so I shan’t see you again?”

“No, my lord,” said Johnny.

“Look you here, now. I shall be up for the Cattle-show before Christmas. You must dine with me at my hotel, on the twenty-second of December, Pawkins’s, in Jermyn Street; seven o’clock, sharp. Mind you do not forget, now. Put it down in your pocketbook when you get home. Goodbye, doctor; goodbye. I see I must stick to that mutton chop in the middle of the day.” And then they drove off.

“He’ll make him his heir for certain,” said Vickers to himself, as he slowly returned to his own quarters.

“You were returning from Allington, I suppose,” said Crofts, “when you came across Lord De Guest and the bull?”

“Yes: I just walked over to say goodbye to them.”

“Did you find them all well?”

“I only saw one. The other two were out.”

“Mrs. Dale, was it?”

“No; it was Lily.”

“Sitting alone, thinking of her fine London lover, of course? I suppose we ought to look upon her as a very lucky girl. I have no doubt she thinks herself so.”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Johnny.

“I believe he’s a very good young man,” said the doctor; “but I can’t say I quite liked his manner.”

“I should think not,” said Johnny.

“But then in all probability he did not like mine a bit better, or perhaps yours either. And if so it’s all fair.”

“I don’t see that it’s a bit fair. He’s a snob,” said Eames; “and I don’t believe that I am.” He had taken a glass or two of the earl’s “severe Falernian,” and was disposed to a more generous confidence, and perhaps also to stronger language, than might otherwise have been the case.

“No; I don’t think he is a snob,” said Crofts. “Had he been so, Mrs. Dale would have perceived it.”

“You’ll see,” said Johnny, touching up the earl’s horse with energy as he spoke. “You’ll see. A man who gives himself airs is a snob; and he gives himself airs. And I don’t believe he’s a straightforward fellow. It was a bad day for us all when he came among them at Allington.”

“I can’t say that I see that.”

“I do. But mind, I haven’t spoken a word of this to anyone. And I don’t mean. What would be the good? I suppose she must marry him now?”

“Of course she must.”

“And be wretched all her life. Oh-h-h-h!” and he muttered a deep groan. “I’ll tell you what it is, Crofts. He is going to take the sweetest girl out of this country that ever was in it, and he don’t deserve her.”

“I don’t think she can be compared to her sister,” said Crofts slowly.

“What; not Lily?” said Eames, as though the proposition made by the doctor were one that could not hold water for a minute.

“I have always thought that Bell was the more admired of the two,” said Crofts.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Eames. “I have never yet set my eyes on any human creature whom I thought so beautiful as Lily Dale. And now that beast is going to marry her! I’ll tell you what, Crofts; I’ll manage to pick a quarrel with him yet.” Whereupon the doctor, seeing the nature of the complaint from which his companion was suffering, said nothing more, either about Lily or about Bell.

Soon after this Eames was at his own door, and was received there by his mother and sister with all the enthusiasm due