The Small House at Allington
But when the squire had walked to the end of the terrace and had
turned upon the path which led round the side of the house, he
stopped and called to Hopkins.
"Have what is needful done to the flue," he said.
"Yes, sir; very well, sir. It'll only be re-setting the bricks.
Nothing more ain't needful, just this winter."
"Have the place put in perfect order while you're about it," said the
squire, and then he walked away.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
DR. CROFTS IS TURNED OUT.
"Have you heard the news, my dear, from the Small House?" said Mrs.
Boyce to her husband, some two or three days after Mrs. Dale's visit
to the squire. It was one o'clock, and the parish pastor had come in
from his ministrations to dine with his wife and children.
"What news?" said Mr. Boyce, for he had heard none.
"Mrs. Dale and the girls are going to leave the Small House; they're
going into Guestwick to live."
"Mrs. Dale going away; nonsense!" said the vicar. "What on earth
should take her into Guestwick? She doesn't pay a shilling of rent
where she is."
"I can assure you it's true, my dear. I was with Mrs. Hearn just now,
and she had it direct from Mrs. Dale's own lips. Mrs. Hearn said
she'd never been taken so much aback in her whole life. There's been
some quarrel, you may be sure of that."
Mr. Boyce sat silent, pulling off his dirty shoes preparatory to his
dinner. Tidings so important, as touching the social life of his
parish, had not come to him for many a day, and he could hardly bring
himself to credit them at so short a notice.
"Mrs. Hearn says that Mrs. Dale spoke ever so firmly about it, as
though determined that nothing should change her."
"And did she say why?"
"Well, not exactly. But Mrs. Hearn said she could understand there
had been words between her and the squire. It couldn't be anything
else, you know. Probably it had something to do with that man
Crosbie."
"They'll be very pushed about money," said Mr. Boyce, thrusting his
feet into his slippers.
"That's just what I said to Mrs. Hearn. And those girls have never
been used to anything like real economy. What's to become of them I
don't know;" and Mrs. Boyce, as she expressed her sympathy for her
dear friends, received considerable comfort from the prospect of
their future poverty. It always is so, and Mrs. Boyce was not worse
than her neighbours.
"You'll find they'll make it up before the time comes," said Mr.
Boyce, to whom the excitement of such a change in affairs was almost
too good to be true.
"I am afraid not," said Mrs. Boyce; "I'm afraid not. They are both so
determined. I always thought that riding and giving the girls hats
and habits was injurious. It was treating them as though they were
the squire's daughters, and they were not the squire's daughters."
"It was almost the same thing."
"But now we see the difference," said the judicious Mrs. Boyce. "I
often said that dear Mrs. Dale was wrong, and it turns out that I was
right. It will make no difference to me, as regards calling on them
and that sort of thing."
"Of course it won't."
"Not but what there must be a difference, and a very great difference
too. It will be a terrible come down for poor Lily, with the loss of
her fine husband and all."
After dinner, when Mr. Boyce had again gone forth upon his labours,
the same subject was discussed between Mrs. Boyce and her daughters,
and the mother was very careful to teach her children that Mrs. Dale
would be just as good a person as ever she had been, and quite as
much a lady, even though she should live in a very dingy house at
Guestwick; from which lesson the Boyce girls learned plainly that
Mrs. Dale, with Bell and Lily, were about to have a fall in the
world, and that they were to be treated accordingly.
From all this, it will be discovered that Mrs. Dale had not given
way to the squire's arguments, although she had found herself unable
to answer them. As she had returned home she had felt herself to be
almost vanquished, and had spoken to the girls with the air and tone
of a woman who hardly knew in which course lay the line of her duty.
But they had not seen the squire's manner on the occasion, nor heard
his words, and they could not understand that their own purpose
should be abandoned because he did not like it. So they talked their
mother into fresh resolves, and on the following morning she wrote a
note to her brother-in-law, assuring him that she had thought much of
all that he had said, but again declaring that she regarded herself
as bound in duty to leave the Small House. To this he had returned
no answer, and she had communicated her intention to Mrs. Hearn,
thinking it better that there should be no secret in the matter.
"I am sorry to hear that your sister-in-law is going to leave us,"
Mr. Boyce said to the squire that same afternoon.
"Who told you that?" asked the squire, showing by his tone that he by
no means liked the topic of conversation which the parson had chosen.
"Well, I had it from Mrs. Boyce, and I think Mrs. Hearn told her."
"I wish Mrs. Hearn would mind her own business, and not spread idle
reports."
The squire said nothing more, and Mr. Boyce felt that he had been
very unjustly snubbed.
Dr. Crofts had come over and pronounced as a fact that it was
scarlatina. Village apothecaries are generally wronged by the doubts
which are thrown upon them, for the town doctors when they come
always confirm what the village apothecaries have said.
"There can be no doubt as to its being scarlatina," the doctor
declared; "but the symptoms are all favourable."
There was, however, much worse coming than this. Two days afterwards
Lily found herself to be rather unwell. She endeavoured to keep it to
herself, fearing that she should be brought under the doctor's notice
as a patient; but her efforts were unavailing, and on the following
morning it was known that she had also taken the disease. Dr. Crofts
declared that everything was in her favour. The weather was cold.
The presence of the malady in the house had caused them all to be
careful, and, moreover, good advice was at hand at once. The doctor
begged Mrs. Dale not to be uneasy, but he was very eager in begging
that the two sisters might not be allowed to be together. "Could
you not send Bell into Guestwick,--to Mrs. Eames's?" said he. But
Bell did not choose to be sent to Mrs. Eames's, and was with great
difficulty kept out of her mother's bedroom, to which Lily as an
invalid was transferred.
"If you will allow me to say so," he said to Bell, on the second day
after Lily's complaint had declared itself, "you are wrong to stay
here in the house."
"I certainly shall not leave mamma, when she has got so much upon her
hands," said Bell.
"But if you should be taken ill she would have more on her hands,"
pleaded the doctor.
"I could not do it," Bell replied. "If I were taken over to
Guestwick, I should be so uneasy that I should walk back to Allington
the first moment that I could escape from the house."
"I think your mother would be more comfortable without you."
"And I think she would be more comfortable with me. I don't ever like
to hear of a woman running away from illness; but when a sister or
a daughter does so, it is intolerable." So Bell remained, without
permission indeed to see her sister, but performing various outside
administrations which were much needed.
And thus all manner of trouble came upon the inhabitants of the Small
House, falling upon them as it were in a heap together. It was as yet
barely two months since those terrible tidings had come respecting
Crosbie; tidings which, it was felt at the time, would of themselves
be sufficient to crush them; and now to that misfortune other
misfortunes had been added,--one quick upon the heels of another. In
the teeth of the doctor's kind prophecy Lily became very ill, and
after a few days was delirious. She would talk to her mother about
Crosbie, speaking of him as she used to speak in the autumn that was
passed. But even in her madness she remembered that they had resolved
to leave their present home; and she asked the doctor twice whether
their lodgings in Guestwick were ready for them.
It was thus that Crofts first heard of their intention. Now, in
these days of Lily's worst illness, he came daily over to Allington,
remaining there, on one occasion, the whole night. For all this he
would take no fee;--nor had he ever taken a fee from Mrs. Dale. "I
wish you would not come so often," Bell said to him one evening, as
he stood with her at the drawing-room fire, after he had left the
patient's room; "you are overloading us with obligations." On that
day Lily was over the worst of the fever, and he had been able to
tell Mrs. Dale that he did not think that she was now in danger.
"It will not be necessary much longer," he said; "the worst of it is
over."
"It is such a luxury to hear you say so. I suppose we shall owe her
life to you; but nevertheless--"
"Oh, no; scarlatina is not such a terrible thing now as it used to
be."
"Then why should you have devoted your time to her as you have done?
It frightens me when I think of the injury we must have done you."
"My horse has felt it more than I have," said the doctor, laughing.
"My patients at Guestwick are not so very numerous." Then, instead of
going, he sat himself down. "And it is really true," he said, "that
you are all going to leave this house?"
"Quite true. We shall do so at the end of March, if Lily is well
enough to be moved."
"Lily will be well long before that, I hope; not, indeed, that she
ought to be moved out of her own rooms for many weeks to come yet."
"Unless we are stopped by her we shall certainly go at the end of
March." Bell now had also sat down, and they both remained for some
time looking at the fire in silence.
"And why is it, Bell?" he said, at last. "But I don't know whether I
have a right to ask."
"You have a right to ask any question about us," she said. "My uncle
is very kind. He is more than kind; he is generous. But he seems to
think that our living here gives him a right to interfere with mamma.
We don't like that, and, therefore, we are going."
The doctor still sat on one side of the fire, and Bell still sat
opposite to him; but the conversation did not form itself very freely
between them. "It is bad news," he said, at last.
"At any rate, when we are ill you will not have so far to come and
see us."
"Yes, I understand. That means that I am ungracious not to
congratulate myself on having you all so much nearer to me; but I do
not in the least. I cannot bear to think of you as living anywhere
but here at Allington. Dales will be out of their place in a street
at Guestwick."
"That's hard upon the Dales, too."
"It is hard upon them. It's a sort of offshoot from that very
tyrannical law of noblesse oblige. I don't think you ought to go away
from Allington, unless the circumstances are very imperative."
"But they are very imperative."
"In that case, indeed!" And then again he fell into silence.
"Have you never seen that mamma is not happy here?" she said, after
another pause. "For myself, I never quite understood it all before as
I do now; but now I see it."
"And I have seen it;--have seen at least what you mean. She has led
a life of restraint; but then, how frequently is such restraint the
necessity of a life? I hardly think that your mother would move on
that account."
"No. It is on our account. But this restraint, as you call it, makes
us unhappy, and she is governed by seeing that. My uncle is generous
to her as regards money; but in other things,--in matters of
feeling,--I think he has been ungenerous."
"Bell," said the doctor; and then he paused.