The Small House at Allington
[ILLUSTRATION: (untitled)]
Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the
morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he
left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had
seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story
will have shown what took place at that interview.
He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work
of writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from
his pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by
his friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the
day passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The
letter to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we
have seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank
of humanity by the meanness of his production.
But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited
him,--cares which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had
the state of his mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On
entering the lobby of his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware
that he was received by the messengers assembled there with almost
more than their usual deference. He was always a great man at
the General Committee Office; but there are shades of greatness
and shades of deference, which, though quite beyond the powers
of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves clearly to the
experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own apartment, and
there found two official letters addressed to him lying on his table.
The first which came to hand, though official, was small, and marked
private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old friend,
Butterwell, the outgoing secretary. "I shall see you in the morning,
nearly as soon as you get this," said the semi-official note; "but
I must be the first to congratulate you on the acquisition of my old
shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing to you, though they
pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they want new soling,
and perhaps they are a little down at heels; but you will find some
excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will give them a grace
in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since they came into my
possession. I wish you much joy with them," &c., &c. He then opened
the larger official letter, but that had now but little interest for
him. He could have made a copy of the contents without seeing them.
The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in promoting him to
the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of Mr. Butterwell
to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was signed by Mr.
Butterwell himself.
How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return
to his office had his heart in other respects been free from care!
And as he thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told
himself how much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock,
with whom he was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he
had rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith,
freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the
last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such
as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years
of tedious scrubbing.
And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments
which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale
were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or
eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or
thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this
promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been
declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He
even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before
Pratt had seen Mr. Dale, he would have sent a different message to
the squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De
Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so.
An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that
his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what
it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project
first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural
squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess.
That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now
under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his
room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such
an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as
though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of
his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he
considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for
him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old,
how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the
spectacles which he wore at the present moment.
During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the
younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He
was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion.
Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated
with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff
old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be
able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted
with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper
because Crosbie had begun to feel how absolutely useless to him had
been all that high interest and noble connection which he had formed.
He had really been promoted because he knew more about his work than
any of the other men, and Lady De Courcy's influential relation at
the India Board had not yet even had time to write a note upon the
subject.
At eleven Mr. Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new
secretary was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr. Butterwell was
a pleasant, handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the
Thames on fire, and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a
little more civil to great men and a little more patronizing to those
below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there
was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before
the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too
civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very
clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom
made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's
corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we
may therefore say of Mr. Butterwell that he had walked his path in
life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he had married a lady with
some little fortune, and now he lived a pleasant, easy, smiling life
in a villa at Putney. When Mr. Butterwell heard, as he often did
hear, of the difficulty which an English gentleman has of earning his
bread in his own country, he was wont to look back on his own career
with some complacency. He knew that he had not given the world much;
yet he had received largely, and no one had begrudged it to him.
"Tact," Mr. Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the
paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact."
"Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate
you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in
life, and you deserve it thoroughly;--much better than I did when I
was appointed to the same office."
"Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily.
"But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I
told the commissioners."
"I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you."
"I've known it all along,--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle
had told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two
thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at
the Board."
"Ah;--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie.
"You are much better as you are," said Butterwell. "There's no
pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of that kind,
and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew
it,--swearing that I knew it,--but I wouldn't have said so to a
living being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between
the cups and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the
Income-tax!"
"Exactly so," said Crosbie.
"But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though
I signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more
than I gain."
"What! with three hundred a year more and less work?"
"Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees
everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you
say, the lighter work will suit me. By the by, will you come down to
Putney to-morrow? Mrs. Butterwell will be delighted to see the new
secretary. There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for
refusing."
But Mr. Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been
impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs. Butterwell's table
in his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory
manner, he let Mr. Butterwell know that private affairs of importance
made it absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in
town. "And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at
present."
"By the by,--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you
on that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and
hope you'll be as lucky as I have been."
"Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily.
"A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those
parts?"
"N--no," stammered Crosbie. "The lady comes from Barsetshire."
"Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some
such name as that?"
"No," said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her
name is De Courcy."
"One of the earl's daughters?"
"Yes," said Crosbie.
"Oh, I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied
to a very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your
success in life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the
hand,--having offered him no such special testimony of approval when
under the belief that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a
Ball. All the same, Mr. Butterwell began to think that there was
something wrong. He had heard from an indubitable source that
Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece of a squire with whom he
had been staying near Guestwick,--a girl without any money; and Mr.
Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend Crosbie to be
rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to marry one of the
De Courcys! Mr. Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends.
"Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll
come to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what
papers I have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and
they won't break your back."
Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's
room, and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's
eye.
He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried
to lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs
behind him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life;
but he could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself
to be banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault,
or by a turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put
his grief down and trample it under foot; he can exorcise the spirit