The Last Chronicle of Barset (55 page)

He went through the garden and over the lawn belonging to the Small House and saw no one. He forgot, I think, that ladies do not
come out to pick roses when the ground is frozen, and that croquet is not often in progress with the hoar-frost on the grass. So he walked up to the little terrace before the drawing-room, and looking in saw Mrs Dale, and Lily, and Grace at their morning work. Lily was drawing, and Mrs Dale was writing, and Grace had her needle in her hand. As it happened, no one at first perceived him, and he had time to feel that after all he would have managed better if he had been announced in the usual way. As, however, it was now necessary that he should announce himself, he knocked at the window, and they all immediately looked up and saw him. ‘It's my cousin John,' said Grace. ‘Oh, Johnny, how are you at last?' said Mrs Dale. But it was Lily who, without speaking, opened the window for him, who was the first to give him her hand, and who led him through into the room.

‘It's a great shame my coming in this way,' said John, ‘and letting all the cold air in upon you.'

‘We shall survive it,' said Mrs Dale. ‘I suppose you have just come down from my brother-in-law?'

‘No; I have not seen the squire as yet. I will do so before I go back, of course. But it seemed such a commonplace sort of thing to go round by the village.'

‘We are very glad to see you, by whatever way you come – are we not, mamma?' said Lily.

‘I'm not so sure of that. We were only saying yesterday that as you had been in the country a fortnight without coming to us, we did not think we would be at home when you did come.'

‘But I have caught you, you see,' said Johnny.

And so they went on, chatting of old times and of mutual friends very comfortably for full an hour. And there was some serious conversation about Grace's father and his affairs, and John declared his opinion that Mr Crawley ought to go to his uncle, Thomas Toogood, not at all knowing at that time that Mr Crawley himself had come to the same opinion. And John gave them an elaborate description of Sir Raffle Buffle, standing up with his back to the fire with his hat on his head, and speaking with a loud harsh voice, to show them the way in which he declared that that gentleman received his inferiors; and then bowing and scraping and rubbing his hands
together and simpering with would-be softness – declaring that after that fashion Sir Raffle received his superiors. And they were very merry – so that no one would have thought that Johnny was a despondent lover, now bent on throwing the dice for his last stake; or that Lily was aware that she was in the presence of one lover, and that she was like to fall to the ground between two stools – having two lovers, neither of whom could serve her turn.

‘How can you consent to serve him if he's such a man as that?' said Lily, speaking of Sir Raffle.

‘I do not serve him. I serve the Queen – or rather the public. I don't take his wages, and he does not play his tricks with me. He knows that he can't. He has tried it, and has failed. And he only kept me where I am because I've had some money left me. He thinks it fine to have a private secretary with a fortune. I know that he tells people all manner of lies about it, making it out to be five times as much as it is. Dear Old Huffle Snuffle. He is such an ass; and yet he's had wit enough to get to the top of the tree, and to keep himself there. He began the world without a penny. Now he has got a handle to his name, and he'll live in clover all his life. It's very odd, isn't it, Mrs Dale?'

‘I suppose he does his work?'

‘When men get so high as that, there's no knowing whether they work or whether they don't. There isn't much for them to do, as far as I can see. They have to look beautiful, and frighten the young ones.'

‘And does Sir Raffle look beautiful?' Lily asked.

‘After a fashion, he does. There is something imposing about such a man till you're used to it, and can see through it. Of course it's all padding. There are men who work, no doubt. But among the bigwigs, and bishops and cabinet ministers, I fancy that the looking beautiful is the chief part of it. Dear me, you don't mean to say it's luncheon time?'

But it was luncheon time, and not only had he not as yet said a word of all that which he had come to say, but had not as yet made any move towards getting it said. How was he to arrange that Lily should be left alone with him? Lady Julia had said that she should
not expect him back till dinner-time, and he had answered her lackadaisically, ‘I don't suppose I shall be there above ten minutes. Ten minutes will say all I've got to say, and do all I've got to do. And then I suppose I shall go and cut names upon bridges – eh, Lady Julia?' Lady Julia understood his words; for once, upon a former occasion, she had found him cutting Lily's name on the rail of a wooden bridge in her brother's grounds.
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But he had now been a couple of hours at the Small House, and had not said a word of that which he had come to say.

‘Are you going to walk out with us after lunch?' said Lily.

‘He will have had walking enough,' said Mrs Dale.

‘We'll convoy him back part of the way,' said Lily.

‘I'm not going yet,' said Johnny, ‘unless you turn me out.'

‘But we must have our walk before it is dark,' said Lily.

‘You might go up with him to your uncle,' said Mrs Dale. ‘Indeed, I promised to go up myself, and so did you, Grace, to see the microscope. I heard Mr Dale give orders that one of those long-legged reptiles should be caught on purpose for your inspection.'

Mrs Dale's little scheme for bringing the two together was very transparent, but it was not the less wise on that account. Schemes will often be successful, let them be ever so transparent. Little intrigues become necessary, not to conquer unwilling people, but people who are willing enough, who nevertheless, cannot give way except under the machinations of an intrigue.

‘I don't think I'll mind looking at the long-legged creature today,' said Johnny.

‘I must go of course,' said Grace.

Lily said nothing at the moment, either about the long-legged creature or the walk. That which must be, must be. She knew well why John Eames had come there. She knew that the visits to his mother and to Lady Julia would never have been made, but that he might have this interview. And he had a right to demand, at any rate, as much as that. That which must be, must be. And therefore when both Mrs Dale and Grace stoutly maintained their purpose of going up to the squire, Lily neither attempted to persuade John to accompany them nor said that she would do so herself.

‘I will convoy you home myself,' she said, ‘and Grace, when she has done with the beetle, shall come and meet me. Won't you, Grace?'

‘Certainly.'

‘We are not helpless young ladies in these parts, nor yet timorous,' continued Lily. ‘We can walk about without being afraid of ghosts, robbers, wild bulls, young men, or gypsies. Come the field path, Grace. I will go as far as the big oak with him, and then I shall turn back and I shall come in by the stile opposite the church gate, and through the garden. So you can't miss me.'

‘I daresay he'll come back with you,' said Grace.

‘No, he won't. He will do nothing of the kind. He'll have to go on and open Lady Julia's bottle of port wine for his own drinking.'

All this was very good on Lily's part, and very good also on the part of Mrs Dale; and John was of course very much obliged to them. But there was a lack of romance in it all, which did not seem to him to argue well as to his success. He did not think much about it, but he felt that Lily would not have been so ready to arrange their walk had she intended to yield to his entreaty. No doubt in these latter days plain good sense had become the prevailing mark of her character – perhaps, as Johnny thought, a little too strongly prevailing; but even with all her plain good sense and determination to dispense with the absurdities of romance in the affairs of her life, she would not have proposed herself as his companion for a walk across the fields merely that she might have an opportunity of accepting his hand. He did not say all this to himself, but he instinctively felt that it was so. And he felt also that it should have been his duty to arrange the walk, or the proper opportunity for the scene that was to come. She had done it instead – she and her mother between them, thereby forcing upon him a painful conviction that he himself had not been equal to the occasion. ‘I always make a mull of it,' he said to himself, when the girls went up to get their hats.

They went down together through the garden, and parted where the paths led away, one to the great house and the other towards the church. ‘I'll certainly come and call upon the squire before I go back to London,' said Johnny.

‘We'll tell him so,' said Mrs Dale. ‘He would be sure to hear that you had been with us, even if we said nothing about it.'

‘Of course he would,' said Lily; ‘Hopkins has seen him.' Then they separated, and Lily and John Eames were together.

Hardly a word was said, perhaps not a word, till they had crossed the road and got into the field opposite to the church. And in this first field there was more than one path, and the children of the village were often there, and it had about it something of a public nature. John Eames felt that it was by no means a fitting field to say that which he had to say. In crossing it, therefore, he merely remarked that the day was very fine for walking. Then he added one special word, ‘And it is so good of you, Lily, to come with me.'

‘I am very glad to come with you. I would do more than that, John, to show how glad I am to see you.' Then they had come to the second little gate, and beyond that the fields were really fields, and there were stiles instead of wicket-gates, and the business of the day must be begun.

‘Lily, whenever I come here you say you are glad to see me?'

‘And so I am – very glad. Only you would take it as meaning what it does not mean, I would tell you, that of all my friends living away from the reach of my daily life, you are the one whose coming is ever the most pleasant to me.'

‘Oh, Lily!'

‘It was, I think, only yesterday that I was telling Grace that you are more like a brother to me than anyone else. I wish it might be so. I wish we might swear to be brother and sister. I'd do more for you then than walk across the fields with you to Guestwick Cottage. Your prosperity would then be the thing in the world for which I should be most anxious. And if you should marry –'

‘It can never be like that between us,' said Johnny.

‘Can it not? I think it can. Perhaps not this year, or next year; perhaps not in the next five years. But I make myself happy with thinking that it may be so some day. I shall wait for it patiently, very patiently, even though you should rebuff me again and again – as you have done now.'

‘I have not rebuffed you.'

‘Not maliciously, or injuriously, or offensively. I will be very patient, and take little rebuffs without complaining. This is the worst stile of all. When Grace and I are here together we can never manage it without tearing ourselves to pieces. It is much nicer to have you help me.'

‘Let me help you always.' he said, keeping her hands in his after he had aided her to jump from the stile to the ground.

‘Yes, as my brother.'

‘That is nonsense, Lily.'

‘Is it nonsense? Nonsense is a hard word.'

‘It is nonsense as coming from you to me. Lily, I sometimes think that I am persecuting you, writing to you, coming after you, as I am doing now – telling the same whining story – asking, asking, and asking for that which you say you will never give me. And then I feel ashamed of myself, and swear that I will do it no more.'

‘Do not be ashamed of yourself; but yet do it no more.'

‘And then,' he continued, without minding her words, ‘at other times I feel that it must be my own fault; that if I only persevered with sufficient energy I must be successful. At such times I swear that I will never give it up.'

‘Oh, John, if you could only know how little worthy of such pursuit it is.'

‘Leave me to judge of that, dear. When a man has taken a month, or perhaps only a week, or perhaps not more than half-an-hour, to make up his mind, it may be very well to tell him that he doesn't know what he is about. I've been in the office now for over seven years, and the first day I went I put an oath into a book that I would come back and get you for my wife when I had got enough to live upon.'

‘Did you, John?'

‘Yes. I can show it to you. I used to come and hover about the place in the old days, before I went to London, when I was such a fool that I couldn't speak to you if I met you. I am speaking of a time long before – before that man came down here.'

‘Do not speak of him, Johnny.'

‘I must speak of him. A man isn't to hold his tongue when everything
he has in the world is at stake. I suppose he loved you after a fashion, once.'

‘Pray, pray do not speak ill of him.'

‘I am not going to abuse him. You can judge of him by his deeds. I cannot say anything worse of him than what they say. I suppose he loved you; but he certainly did not love you as I have done. I have at any rate been true to you. Yes, Lily, I have been true to you. I am true to you. He did not know what he was about. I do. I am justified in saying that I do. I want you to be my wife. It is no use your talking about it as though I only half wanted it.'

‘I did not say that.'

‘Is not a man to have any reward? Of course if you had married him there would have been an end of it. He had come in between me and my happiness, and I must have borne it, as other men bear such sorrows. But you have not married him; and, of course, I cannot but feel that I may yet have a chance. Lily, answer me this. Do you believe that I love you?' But she did not answer him. ‘You can at any rate tell me that. Do you think that I am in earnest?'