The Small House at Allington
we are going in a very few days, now. We shall see you sometimes, I
hope, over at Guestwick."
"Humph!" said Hopkins. "So you be really going! I didn't think it'd
ever come to that, miss; I didn't indeed,--and no more it oughtn't;
but of course it isn't for me to speak."
"People must change their residence sometimes, you know," said Mrs.
Dale, using the same argument by which Eames had endeavoured to
excuse his departure to Mrs. Roper.
"Well, ma'am; it ain't for me to say anything. But this I will say,
I've lived here about t' squire's place, man and boy, jist all my
life, seeing I was born here, as you knows, Mrs. Dale; and of all
the bad things I ever see come about the place, this is a sight the
worst."
"Oh, Hopkins!"
"The worst of all, ma'am; the worst of all! It'll just kill t'
squire! There's ne'ery doubt in the world about that. It'll be the
very death of t' old man."
"That's nonsense, Hopkins," said Lily.
"Very well, miss. I don't say but what it is nonsense; only you'll
see. There's Mr. Bernard,--he's gone away; and by all accounts he
never did care very much for the place. They all say he's a-going
to the Hingies. And Miss Bell is going to be married,--which is all
proper, in course; why shouldn't she? And why shouldn't you, too,
Miss Lily?"
"Perhaps I shall, some day, Hopkins."
"There's no day like the present, Miss Lily. And I do say this, that
the man as pitched into him would be the man for my money." This,
which Hopkins spoke in the excitement of the moment, was perfectly
unintelligible to Lily, and Mrs. Dale, who shuddered as she heard
him, said not a word to call for any explanation. "But," continued
Hopkins, "that's all as it may be, Miss Lily, and you be in the hands
of Providence,--as is others."
"Exactly so, Hopkins."
"But why should your mamma be all for going away? She ain't going
to marry no one. Here's the house, and there's she, and there's t'
squire; and why should she be for going away? So much going away all
at once can't be for any good. It's just a breaking up of everything,
as though nothing wasn't good enough for nobody. I never went away,
and I can't abide it."
"Well, Hopkins; it's settled now," said Mrs. Dale, "and I'm afraid it
can't be unsettled."
"Settled;--well. Tell me this: do you expect, Mrs. Dale, that he's to
live there all alone by hisself without any one to say a cross word
to,--unless it be me or Dingles; for Jolliffe's worse than nobody,
he's so mortial cross hisself. Of course he can't stand it. If you
goes away, Mrs. Dale, Mister Bernard, he'll be squire in less than
twelve months. He'll come back from the Hingies, then, I suppose?"
"I don't think my brother-in-law will take it in that way, Hopkins."
"Ah, ma'am, you don't know him,--not as I knows him;--all the ins
and outs and crinks and crannies of him. I knows him as I does the
old apple-trees that I've been a-handling for forty year. There's a
deal of bad wood about them old cankered trees, and some folk say
they ain't worth the ground they stand on; but I know where the
sap runs, and when the fruit-blossom shows itself I know where the
fruit will be the sweetest. It don't take much to kill one of them
old trees,--but there's life in 'm yet if they be well handled."
"I'm sure I hope my brother's life may be long spared to him," said
Mrs. Dale.
"Then don't be taking yourself away, ma'am, into them gashly lodgings
at Guestwick. I says they are gashly for the likes of a Dale. It is
not for me to speak, ma'am, of course. And I only came up now just to
know what things you'd like with you out of the greenhouse."
"Oh, nothing, Hopkins, thank you," said Mrs. Dale.
"He told me to put up for you the best I could pick, and I means to
do it;" and Hopkins, as he spoke, indicated by a motion of his head
that he was making reference to the squire.
"We shan't have any place for them," said Lily.
"I must send a few, miss, just to cheer you up a bit. I fear you'll
be very dolesome there. And the doctor,--he ain't got what you can
call a regular garden, but there is a bit of a place behind."
"But we wouldn't rob the dear old place," said Lily.
"For the matter of that what does it signify? T' squire'll be that
wretched he'll turn sheep in here to destroy the place, or he'll have
the garden ploughed. You see if he don't. As for the place, the place
is clean done for, if you leave it. You don't suppose he'll go and
let the Small House to strangers. T' squire ain't one of that sort
any ways."
"Ah me!" exclaimed Mrs. Dale, as soon as Hopkins had taken himself
off.
"What is it, mamma? He's a dear old man, but surely what he says
cannot make you really unhappy."
"It is so hard to know what one ought to do. I did not mean to be
selfish, but it seems to me as though I were doing the most selfish
thing in the world."
"Nay, mamma; it has been anything but selfish. Besides, it is we that
have done it; not you."
"Do you know, Lily, that I also have that feeling as to breaking
up one's old mode of life of which Hopkins spoke. I thought that I
should be glad to escape from this place, but now that the time has
come I dread it."
"Do you mean that you repent?"
Mrs. Dale did not answer her daughter at once, fearing to commit
herself by words which could not be retracted. But at last she said,
"Yes, Lily; I think I do repent. I think that it has not been well
done."
"Then let it be undone," said Lily.
The dinner-party at Guestwick Manor on that day was not very bright,
and yet the earl had done all in his power to make his guests happy.
But gaiety did not come naturally to his house, which, as will have
been seen, was an abode very unlike in its nature to that of the
other earl at Courcy Castle. Lady De Courcy at any rate understood
how to receive and entertain a house full of people, though the
practice of doing so might give rise to difficult questions in the
privacy of her domestic relations. Lady Julia did not understand it;
but then Lady Julia was never called upon to answer for the expense
of extra servants, nor was she asked about twice a week who
the ---- was to pay the wine-merchant's bill? As regards Lord De
Guest and the Lady Julia themselves, I think they had the best of it;
but I am bound to admit, with reference to chance guests, that the
house was dull. The people who were now gathered at the earl's table
could hardly have been expected to be very sprightly when in company
with each other. The squire was not a man much given to general
society, and was unused to amuse a table full of people. On the
present occasion he sat next to Lady Julia, and from time to time
muttered a few words to her about the state of the country. Mrs.
Eames was terribly afraid of everybody there, and especially of the
earl, next to whom she sat, and whom she continually called "my
lord," showing by her voice as she did so that she was almost alarmed
by the sound of her own voice. Mr. and Mrs. Boyce were there, the
parson sitting on the other side of Lady Julia, and the parson's wife
on the other side of the earl. Mrs. Boyce was very studious to show
that she was quite at home, and talked perhaps more than any one
else; but in doing so she bored the earl most exquisitely, so that he
told John Eames the next morning that she was worse than the bull.
The parson ate his dinner, but said little or nothing between the two
graces. He was a heavy, sensible, slow man, who knew himself and his
own powers. "Uncommon good stewed beef," he said, as he went home;
"why can't we have our beef stewed like that?" "Because we don't pay
our cook sixty pounds a year," said Mrs. Boyce. "A woman with sixteen
pounds can stew beef as well as a woman with sixty," said he; "she
only wants looking after." The earl himself was possessed of a sort
of gaiety. There was about him a lightness of spirit which often made
him an agreeable companion to one single person. John Eames conceived
him to be the most sprightly old man of his day,--an old man with the
fun and frolic almost of a boy. But this spirit, though it would show
itself before John Eames, was not up to the entertainment of John
Eames's mother and sister, together with the squire, the parson, and
the parson's wife of Allington. So that the earl was overweighted and
did not shine on this occasion at his own dinner-table. Dr. Crofts,
who had also been invited, and who had secured the place which was
now peculiarly his own, next to Bell Dale, was no doubt happy enough;
as, let us hope, was the young lady also; but they added very little
to the general hilarity of the company. John Eames was seated between
his own sister and the parson, and did not at all enjoy his position.
He had a full view of the doctor's felicity, as the happy pair sat
opposite to him, and conceived himself to be hardly treated by Lily's
absence.
The party was certainly very dull, as were all such dinners at
Guestwick Manor. There are houses, which, in their every-day course,
are not conducted by any means in a sad or unsatisfactory manner,--in
which life, as a rule, runs along merrily enough; but which cannot
give a dinner-party; or, I might rather say, should never allow
themselves to be allured into the attempt. The owners of such houses
are generally themselves quite aware of the fact, and dread the
dinner which they resolved to give quite as much as it is dreaded
by their friends. They know that they prepare for their guests an
evening of misery, and for themselves certain long hours of purgatory
which are hardly to be endured. But they will do it. Why that long
table, and all those supernumerary glasses and knives and forks,
if they are never to be used? That argument produces all this
misery; that and others cognate to it. On the present occasion,
no doubt, there were excuses to be made. The squire and his niece
had been invited on special cause, and their presence would have
been well enough. The doctor added in would have done no harm. It
was good-natured, too, that invitation given to Mrs. Eames and her
daughter. The error lay in the parson and his wife. There was no
necessity for their being there, nor had they any ground on which to
stand, except the party-giving ground. Mr. and Mrs. Boyce made the
dinner-party, and destroyed the social circle. Lady Julia knew that
she had been wrong as soon as she had sent out the note.
Nothing was said on that evening which has any bearing on our story.
Nothing, indeed, was said which had any bearing on anything. The
earl's professed object had been to bring the squire and young Eames
together; but people are never brought together on such melancholy
occasions. Though they sip their port in close contiguity, they are
poles asunder in their minds and feelings. When the Guestwick fly
came for Mrs. Eames, and the parson's pony phaeton came for him and
Mrs. Boyce, a great relief was felt; but the misery of those who were
left had gone too far to allow of any reaction on that evening. The
squire yawned, and the earl yawned, and then there was an end of it
for that night.
CHAPTER LIV.
THE SECOND VISIT TO THE GUESTWICK BRIDGE.
Bell had declared that her sister would be very happy to see John
Eames if he would go over to Allington, and he had replied that of
course he would go there. So much having been, as it were, settled,
he was able to speak of his visit as a matter of course at the
breakfast-table, on the morning after the earl's dinner-party.
"I must get you to come round with me, Dale, and see what I am
doing to the land," the earl said. And then he proposed to order
saddle-horses. But the squire preferred walking, and in this way they
were disposed of soon after breakfast.
John had it in his mind to get Bell to himself for half an hour,