The Last Chronicle of Barset (26 page)

‘Did I? I don't remember it. I didn't think I was so bad then. But, Johnny, if you can let me have one more fiver now I have made arrangements with Amelia how I'm to pay you off by thirty shillings a month – as I get my salary. Indeed I have. Ask her else.'

‘I'll be shot if I do.'

‘Don't say that, Johnny.'

‘It's no good your Johnnying me, for I won't be Johnnyed out of another shilling. It comes too often, and there's no reason why I should do it. And what's more, I can't afford it. I've people of my own to help.'

‘But oh, Johnny, we all know how comfortable you are. And I'm sure no one rejoiced as I did when the money was left to you. If it had been myself I could hardly have thought more of it. Upon my solemn word and honour if you'll let me have it this time, it shall be the last.'

‘Upon my word and honour then, I won't. There must be an end to everything.'

Although Mr Cradell would probably, if pressed, have admitted the truth of this last assertion, he did not seem to think that the end had as yet come to his friend's benevolence. It certainly had not come to his own importunity. ‘Don't say that, Johnny; pray don't.'

‘But I do say it.'

‘When I told Amelia yesterday evening that I didn't like to go to you again, because of course a man has feelings, she told me to mention her name. ‘‘I'm sure he'd do it for my sake,'' she said.'

‘I don't believe she said anything of the kind.'

‘Upon my word she did. You ask her.'

‘And if she did, she oughtn't to have said it.'

‘Oh, Johnny, don't speak in that way of her. She's my wife, and you know what your own feelings were once. But look here – we are in that state at home at this moment, that I must get money somewhere before I go home. I must, indeed. If you'll let me have three pounds this once, I'll never ask you again. I'll give you a written promise if you like, and I'll pledge myself to pay it back by thirty shillings a time out of the next two months' salary. I will, indeed.' And then Mr Cradell began to cry. But when Johnny at last took out his chequebook and wrote a cheque for three pounds, Mr Cradell's eyes glistened with joy. ‘Upon my word I am so much obliged to you! You are the best fellow that ever lived. And Amelia will say the same when she hears of it.'

‘I don't believe she'll say anything of the kind, Cradell. If I remember anything of her, she has a stouter heart than that.' Cradell admitted that his wife had a stouter heart than himself, and then made his way back to his own part of the office.

This little interruption to the current of Mr Eames's thoughts was, I think, for the good of the service, as immediately on his friend's departure he went to his work; whereas, had not he been thus called away from his reflections about Miss Dale, he would have sat thinking about her affairs probably for the rest of the morning. As it was, he really did write a dozen notes in answer to as many private letters addressed to his chief, Sir Raffle Buffle, in all of which he made excellently-worded false excuses for the non-performance of various requests made to Sir Raffle by the writers. ‘He's about the best hand at it that I know,' said Sir Raffle, one day, to the secretary; ‘otherwise you may be sure I shouldn't keep him there.' ‘I will allow that he is clever,' said the secretary. ‘It isn't cleverness, so much as tact. It's what I call tact. I hadn't been long in the service before I mastered it myself; and now that I've been at the trouble to teach him I don't
want to have the trouble to teach another. But upon my word he must mind his
p
's and
q
's; upon my word he must; and you had better tell him so.' ‘The fact is, Mr Kissing,' said the private secretary the next day to the secretary – Mr Kissing was at that time secretary to the board of commissioners for the receipt of income tax – ‘The fact is, Mr Kissing, Sir Raffle should never attempt to write a letter himself. He doesn't know how to do it. He always says twice too much, and yet not half enough. I wish you'd tell him so. He won't believe me.' From which it will be seen Mr Eames was proud of his special accomplishment, but did not feel any gratitude to the master who assumed to himself the glory of having taught him. On the present occasion John Eames wrote all his letters before he thought again of Lily Dale, and was able to write them without interruption, as the chairman was absent for the day at the Treasury – or perhaps at his club. Then, when he had finished, he rang his bell, and ordered some sherry and soda-water, and stretched himself before the fire – as though his exertions in the public service had been very great – and seated himself comfortably in his arm-chair, and lit a cigar, and again took out Lady Julia's letter.

As regarded the cigar, it may be said that both Sir Raffle and Mr Kissing had given orders that on no account should cigars be lit within the precincts of the Income-tax Office. Mr Eames had taken upon himself to understand that such orders did not apply to a private secretary, and was well aware that Sir Raffle knew his habit. To Mr Kissing, I regret to say, he put himself in opposition whenever and wherever opposition was possible; so that men in the office said that one of the two must go at last. ‘But Johnny can do anything, you know, because he has got money.' That was too frequently the opinion finally expressed among the men.

So John Eames sat down, and drank his soda-water, and smoked his cigar, and read his letter; or rather, simply that paragraph of the letter which referred to Miss Dale. ‘The tidings of her death have disturbed her, and set her thinking again of things that were fading from her mind.' He understood it all. And yet how could it possibly be so? How could it be that she should not despise a man – despise him if she did not hate him – who had behaved as this man had
behaved to her? It was now four years since this Crosbie had been engaged to Miss Dale, and had jilted her so heartlessly as to incur the disgust of every man in London who had heard the story. He had married an earl's daughter, who had left him within a few months of their marriage, and now Mr Crosbie's noble wife was dead. The wife was dead, and simply because the man was free again, he, John Eames, was to be told that Miss Dale's mind was ‘disturbed,' and that her thoughts were going back to things which had faded from her memory, and which should have been long since banished altogether from such holy ground.

If Lily Dale were now to marry Mr Crosbie, anything so perversely cruel as the fate of John Eames would never yet have been told in romance. That was his own idea on the matter as he sat smoking his cigar. I have said that he was proud of his constancy, and yet, in some sort, he was also ashamed of it. He acknowledged the fact of his love, and believed himself to have out-Jacobed Jacob,
⁵
but he felt that it was hard for a man who had risen in the world as he had done to be made a plaything of by a foolish passion. It was now four years ago – that affair of Crosbie – and Miss Dale should have accepted him long since. Half-a-dozen times he had made up his mind to be very stern to her; and he had written somewhat sternly – but the first moment that he saw her he was conquered again. ‘And now that brute will reappear, and everything will be wrong again,' he said to himself. If the brute did reappear, something should happen of which the world should hear the tidings. So he lit another cigar, and began to think what that something should be.

As he did so he heard a loud noise, as of harsh, rattling winds in the next room, and he knew that Sir Raffle had come back from the Treasury. There was a creaking of boots, and a knocking of chairs, and a ringing of bells, and then a loud angry voice – a voice that was very harsh, and on this occasion very angry. Why had not his twelve-o'clock letters been sent up to him to the West End? Why not? Mr Eames knew all about it. Why did Mr Eames know all about it? Why had not Mr Eames sent them up? Where was Mr Eames? Let Mr Eames be sent to him. All which Mr Eames heard standing with the cigar in his mouth and his back to the fire. ‘Somebody has been
bullying old Buffle, I suppose. After all he has been up at the Treasury today,' said Eames to himself. But he did not stir till the messenger had been to him, nor even then, at once. ‘All right, Rafferty,' he said; ‘I'll go in just now.' Then he took half-a-dozen more whiffs from the cigar, threw the remainder into the fire, and opened the door which communicated between his room and Sir Raffle's.

The great man was standing with two unopened epistles in his hand. ‘Eames,' said he, ‘here are letters –' Then he stopped himself, and began upon another subject. ‘Did I not give express orders that I would have no smoking in the office?'

‘I think Mr Kissing said something about it, sir.'

‘Mr Kissing! It was not Mr Kissing at all. It was I. I gave the order myself.'

‘You'll find it began with Mr Kissing.'

‘It did not begin with Mr Kissing; it began and ended with me. What are you going to do, sir?' John Eames stepped towards the bell, and his hand was already on the bell-pull.

‘I was going to ring for the papers, sir.'

‘And who told you to ring for the papers? I don't want the papers. The papers won't show anything. I suppose my word may be taken without the papers. Since you're so fond of Mr Kissing –'

‘I'm not fond of Mr Kissing at all.'

‘You'll have to go back to him, and let somebody come here who will not be too independent to obey my orders. Here are two most important letters have been lying here all day, instead of being sent up to me at the Treasury.'

‘Of course they have been lying there. I thought you were at the club.'

‘I told you I should go to the Treasury. I have been there all the morning with the chancellor' – when Sir Raffle spoke officially of the chancellor he was not supposed to mean the Lord Chancellor – ‘and here I find letters which I particularly wanted lying upon my desk now. I must put an end to this kind of thing. I must, indeed. If you like the outer office better say so at once, and you can go.'

‘I'll think about it, Sir Raffle.'

‘Think about it! What do you mean by thinking about it? But I
can't talk about that now. I'm very busy, and shall be here till past seven. I suppose you can stay?'

‘All night, if you wish it, sir.'

‘Very well. That will do for the present. – I wouldn't have had these letters delayed for twenty pounds.'

‘I don't suppose it would have mattered one straw if both of them remained unopened till next week.' This last little speech, however, was not made aloud to Sir Raffle, but by Johnny to himself in the solitude of his own room.

Very soon after that he went away, Sir Raffle having discovered that one of the letters in question required his immediate return to the West End. ‘I've changed my mind about staying. I shan't stay now. I should have done if these letters had reached me as they ought.'

‘Then I suppose I can go?'

‘You can do as you like about that,' said Sir Raffle.

Eames did do as he liked, and went home, or to his club; and as he went he resolved that he would put an end, and at once, to the present trouble of his life. Lily Dale should accept him or reject him; and, taking either the one or the other alternative, she should hear a bit of his mind plainly spoken.

It was Christmas-time down at Allington, and at three o'clock on Christmas Eve, just as the darkness of the early winter evening was coming on, Lily Dale and Grace Crawley were seated together, one above the other, on the steps leading up to the pulpit in Allington Church. They had been working all day at the decorations of the church, and they were now looking round them at the result of their handiwork. To an eye unused to the gloom the place would have been nearly dark; but they could see every corner turned by the ivy
sprigs, and every line on which the holly-leaves were shining. And the greeneries of the winter had not been stuck up in the old-fashioned, idle way, a bough just fastened up here and a twig inserted there; but everything had been done with some meaning, with some thought towards the original architecture of the building. The Gothic lines had been followed, and all the lower arches which it had been possible to reach with an ordinary ladder had been turned as truly with the laurel cuttings as they had been turned originally with the stone.

‘I wouldn't tie another twig,' said the elder girl, ‘for all the Christmas pudding that was ever boiled.'

‘It's lucky then that there isn't another twig to tie.'

‘I don't know about that. I see a score of places where the work has been scamped. This is the sixth time I have done the church, and I don't think I'll ever do it again. When we first began it, Bell and I, you know – before Bell was married – Mrs Boyce, and the Boycian establishment generally, used to come and help. Or rather we used to help her. Now she hardly ever looks after it at all.'

‘She is older, I suppose.'

‘She's a little older, and a deal idler. How idle people do get! Look at him. Since he has had a curate he hardly ever stirs round the parish. And he is getting so fat that – H – sh! Here she is herself – come to give her judgment upon us.' Then a stout lady, the wife of the vicar, walked slowly up the aisle. ‘Well, girls,' she said, ‘you have worked hard, and I am sure Mr Boyce will be very much obliged to you.'

‘Mr Boyce, indeed!' said Lily Dale. ‘We shall expect the whole parish to rise from their seats and thank us. Why didn't Jane and Bessy come and help us?'

‘They were so tired when they came in from the coal club. Besides, they don't care for this kind of thing – not as you do.'

‘Jane is utilitarian to the backbone, I know,' said Lily, ‘and Bessy doesn't like getting up ladders.'

‘As for ladders,' said Mrs Boyce, defending her daughter, ‘I am not quite sure that Bessy isn't right. You don't mean to say that you did all those capitals yourself?'