He returned to London on the last day of October, and he found the streets at the West End nearly deserted. He thought, therefore, that he should be quite alone at his club, but as he entered the dinner room he saw one of his oldest and most intimate friends standing before the fire. Fowler Pratt was the man who had first brought him into Sebright’s, and had given him almost his earliest start on his successful career in life. Since that time he and his friend Fowler Pratt had lived in close communion, though Pratt had always held a certain ascendancy in their friendship. He was in age few years senior to Crosbie, and was in truth a man of better parts. But he was less ambitious, less desirous of shining in the world, and much less popular with men in general. He was possessed of a moderate private fortune on which he lived in a quiet, modest manner, and was unmarried, not likely to marry, inoffensive, useless, and prudent. For the first few years of Crosbie’s life in London he had lived very much with his friend Pratt, and had been accustomed to depend much on his friend’s counsel; but latterly, since he had himself become somewhat noticeable, he had found more pleasure in the society of such men as Dale, who were not his superiors either in age or wisdom. But there had been no coolness between him and Pratt, and now they met with perfect cordiality.
‘I thought you were down in Barsetshire,’ said Pratt.
‘And I thought you were in Switzerland.’
‘I have been in Switzerland,’ said Pratt.
‘And I have been in Barsetshire,’ said Crosbie. Then they ordered their dinner together.
‘And so you’re going to be married?’ said Pratt, when the waiter had carried away the cheese.
‘Who told you that?’
‘Well, but you are? Never mind who told me, if I was told the truth.’
‘But if it be not true?’
‘I have heard it for the last month,’ said Pratt, ‘and it has been spoken of as a thing certain; and it is true; is it not?’
‘I believe it is,’ said Crosbie, slowly.
‘Why, what on earth is the matter with you, that you speak of it in that way? Am I to congratulate you, or am I not? The lady, I’m told, is a cousin of Dale’s.’
Crosbie had turned his chair from the table round to the fire, and said nothing in answer to this. He sat with his glass of sherry in his hand, looking at the coals, and thinking whether it would not be well that he should tell the whole story to Pratt. No one could give him better advice; and no one, as far as he knew his friend, would be les shocked at the telling of such a story. Pratt had no romance about women, and had never pretended to very high sentiments.
‘Come up into the smoking-room and I’ll tell you all about it,’ said Crosbie. So they went off together, and, as the smoking-room was untenanted, Crosbie was able to tell his story.
He found it very hard to tell – much harder than he had beforehand fancied. ‘I have got into terrible trouble,’ he began by saying. Then he told how he had fallen suddenly in love with Lily, how he had been rash and imprudent, how nice she was – ‘infinitely too good for such a man as I am,’ he said – how she had accepted him, and then how he had repented. ‘I should have told you beforehand,’ he then said, ‘that I was already half engaged to Lady Alexandrina De Courcy.’ The reader, however, will understand that this half-engagement was a fiction.
‘And now you mean that you are altogether engaged to her?’
‘Exactly so.’
‘And that Miss Dale must be told that, on second thoughts, you have changed your mind?’
‘I know that I have behaved very badly,’ said Crosbie.
‘Indeed you have,’ said his friend.
‘It is one of those troubles in which a man finds himself involved almost before he knows where he is.’
‘Well; I can’t look at it exactly in that light. A man may amuse himself with a girl, and I can understand his disappointing her and not offering to marry her – though even that sort of thing isn’t much to my taste. But, by George, to make an offer of marriage to such a girl as that in September, to live for month in her family as her family as her affianced husband, and then coolly go away to another house in October, and make an offer to another girl of higher rank –’
‘You know very well that that has had nothing to do with it.’
‘It looks very like it. And how are you going to communicate these tidings to Miss Dale?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Crosbie, who was beginning to be very sore.
‘And you have quite made up your mind that you’ll stick to the earl’s daughter?’
The idea of jilting Alexandrina instead of Lily had never as yet presented itself to Crosbie, and now, as he thought of it, he could not perceive that it was feasible.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I shall marry Lady Alexandrina – that is, if I do not cut the whole concern, and my own throat into the bargain.’
‘If I were in your shoes I think I should cut the whole concern. I could not stand it. What do you mean to say to Miss Dale’s uncle?’
‘I don’t care a — for Miss Dale’s uncle,’ said Crosbie. ‘If he were to walk in at that door this moment, I would tell him the whole story, without –’
As he was yet speaking, one of the club servants opened the door of the smoking-room, and seeing Crosbie seated in a lounging-chair near the fire, went up to him with a gentleman’s card. Crosbie took the card and read the name. ‘Mr Dale, Allington.’
‘The gentleman is in the waiting-room,’ said the servant.
Crosbie for the moment was struck dumb. He had declared that very moment that he should feel no personal disinclination to meet Mr Dale, and now that gentleman was within the walls of the club, waiting to see him!
‘Who’s that?’ asked Pratt. And then Crosbie handed him the card. ‘Whew-w-w-hew,’ whistled Pratt.
‘Did you tell the gentleman I was here?’ asked Crosbie.
‘I said I thought you were upstairs, sir?’
‘That will do,’ said Pratt. ‘The gentleman will not doubt wait for a minute.’ And then the servant went out of the room. ‘Now, Crosbie, you must make up your mind. By one of these women and all her friends you will ever be regarded as a rascal, and they of course will look out to punish you with such punishment as may come to their hands. You must now choose which shall be the sufferer.’
The man was a coward at heart. The reflection that he might, even now, at this moment, meet the old squire on pleasant terms – or at any rate not on terms of defiance, pleaded more strongly in Lily’s favour than had any other argument since Crosbie had first made up his mind to abandon her. He did not fear personal ill-usage – he was not afraid lest he should be kicked or beaten; but he did not dare to face the just anger of the angry man.
‘If I were you,’ said Pratt, ‘I would not go down to that man at the present moment for a trifle.’
‘But what can I do?’
‘Shirk away out of the club. Only if you do that it seems to me that you’ll have to go on shirking for the rest of your life.’
‘Pratt, I must say that I expected something more like friendship from you.’
‘What can I do for you? There are positions in which it is impossible to help a man. I tell you plainly that you have behaved very badly. I do not see that I can help you.’
‘Would you see him?’
‘Certainly not, if I am to be expected to take your part.’
‘Take any part you like – only tell him the truth.’
‘And what is the truth?’
‘I was part engaged to that other girl before; and then, when I came to think of it, I knew that I was not fit to marry Miss Dale. I know I have behaved badly; but, Pratt, thousands have done the same thing before.’
‘I can only say that I have not been so unfortunate as to reckon any of those thousands among my friends.’
‘You mean to tell me, then, that you are going to turn your back on me?’ said Crosbie.
‘I haven’t said anything of the kind. I certainly won’t undertake to defend
you, for I don’t see that your conduct admits of defence. I will see this gentleman if you may desire me to tell him.’
At this moment the servant returned with a note for Crosbie. Mr Dale had called for paper and envelope, and sent up to him the following missive – ‘Do you intend to come down to me? I know that you are in the house.’ ‘For heaven’s sake go to him,’ said Crosbie. ‘He is well aware that I was deceived about his niece – that I thought he was to give her some fortune. He knows all about that, and that when I learned from his that she was to have nothing –’
‘Upon my word, Crosbie, I wish you could find another messenger.’
‘Ah! you do not understand,’ said Crosbie in his agony. ‘You think that I am inventing this plea about her fortune now. It isn’t so. He will understand. We have talked all this over before, and he knew how terribly I was disappointed. Shall I wait for you here, or will you come to my lodgings? Or I will go down to the Beaufort, and will wait for you there.’ And it was finally arranged that he should get himself out of this club and wait at the other for Pratt’s report of the interview.
‘Do you go down first,’ said Crosbie.
‘Yes: I had better,’ said Pratt. ‘Otherwise you may be seen. Mr Dale would have his eye upon you, and there would be a row in the house.’ There was a smile of sarcasm on Pratt’s face as he spoke which angered Crosbie even in his misery, and made him long to tell his friend that he would not trouble him with this mission – that he would manage his own affairs himself; but he was weakened and mentally humiliated by the sense of his own rascality, and had already lost power of asserting himself, and of maintaining his ascendancy. He was beginning to recognize the fact that he had done that for which he must endure to he kicked, to be kicked morally if not materially; and that it was no longer possible for him to hold his head up without shame.
Pratt took Mr Dale’s note in his hand and went down into the stranger’s room. There he found the squire standing, so that he could see through the open door of the room to the foot of the stairs down which Crosbie must descend before he could leave the club. As a measure of first precaution the ambassador closed the door; then he bowed to Mr Dale, and asked him if he would take a chair.
‘I wanted to see Mr Crosbie,’ said the squire.
‘I have your note to that gentleman in my hand,’ said he. ‘He has though it better that you should have this interview with me – and under all the circumstances perhaps it is better.’
‘Is he such a coward that he dare not see me?’
‘There are some actions, Mr Dale, that will make a coward of any man. My friend Crosbie is, I take it, brave enough in the ordinary sense of the word, but he has injured you.’
‘It is all true, then?’
‘Yes, Mr Dale; I fear it is all true.’
‘And you call that man your friend! Mr –; I don’t know what your name is.’
‘Pratt – Fowler Pratt. I have known Crosbie for fourteen years – ever since he was a boy; and it is not my way, Mr Dale, to throw over an old friend under any circumstances.’
‘Not if he committed a murder.’
‘No; not though he committed a murder.’
‘If what I hear is true, this man is worse than a murderer.’
‘Of course, Mr Dale, I cannot know what you have heard. I believe that Mr Crosbie has behaved very badly to your niece, Miss Dale; I believe that he was engaged to marry her, or, at any rate, that some such proposition had been made.’
‘Proposition! Why, sir, it was a thing so completely understood that everybody knew it in the country. It was so positively fixed that there was no secret about it. Upon my honour, Mr Pratt, I can’t as yet understand it. If I remember right, it’s not a fortnight since he left my house at Allington – not a fortnight. And that poor girl was with him on the morning of his going as his betrothed bride. Not a fortnight since! And now I’ve had a letter from an old family friend telling me that he is going to marry one of Lord De Courcy’s daughters! I went instantly off to Courcy, and found that he had started for London. Now, I have followed him here; and you tell me it’s all true.’
‘I am afraid it is, Mr Dale; to true.’
‘I don’t understand it; I don’t indeed. I cannot bring myself to believe that them man who was sitting the other day at my table should be so great scoundrel. Did he mean it all the time that he was there?’
‘No; certainly not. Lady Alexandrina De Courcy was, I believe, an old friend of his – with whom, perhaps, he had had some lover’s quarrel. On his going to Courcy they made it up; and this is the result.’
‘And that is to be sufficient for my poor girl?’
‘You will, of course, understand that I am not defending Mr Crosbie. The whole affair is very sad – very sad, indeed. I can only say, in his excuse, that he is not the first man who has behaved badly to a lady.’
‘And that is his message to me, is it? And that is what I am to tell my niece? You have been deceived by a scoundrel. But what then? You are not the first! Mr Pratt, I give you my word as a gentleman, I do not understand it, I have lived a good deal out of the world, and am, therefore, perhaps, more astonished than I ought to be.’
‘Mr Dale, I feel for you –’
‘Feel for me! What is to become of my girl? And do you suppose that I will let this other marriage go on; that I will not tell the De Courcys, and all the world at large, what sort of man this is – that I will not get at him to punish him? Does he think that I will put up with this?’
‘I do not know what he thinks; I must only beg that you will not mix me up in the matter – as though I were a participator in his offence.’
‘Will you tell him from me that I desire to see him?’
‘I do not think that that would do any good.’
‘Never mind, sir; you have brought me his message; will you have the goodness now to take back mine to him?’
‘Do you mean at once – this evening – now?’
‘Yes, at once – this evening – now – this minute.’
‘Ah; he had left the club; he is not here now; he went when I came to you.’
‘Then he is a coward as well as a scoundrel.’ In answer to which assertion, Mr Fowler Pratt merely shrugged his shoulders.
‘He is a coward as well as a scoundrel. Will you have the kindness to tell your friend from me that he is a coward and a scoundrel – and a liar, sir.’
‘If it be so, Miss Dale is well quit of her engagement.’
‘That is your consolation, is it? That may be all very well nowadays; but when I was a young man, I would sooner have burnt out my tongue than have spoken in such a way on such a subject. I would, indeed. Good-night, Mr Pratt. Pray make your friend understand that he has not yet seen the last of the Dales; although, as you hint, the ladies of that family will no doubt have learned that he is not fit to associate with them.’ Then, taking up his hat, the squire made his way out of the club.
‘I would not have done it,’ said Pratt to himself, ‘for all the beauty, and all the wealth, and all the rank that ever were owned by a woman.’
CHAPTER 26
LORD DE COURCY IN THE BOSOM OF HIS
FAMILY
LADY JULIA De Guest had not during her life written many letters to Mr Dale of Allington, nor had she ever been very fond of him. But when she felt certain how things were going at Courcy, or rather, as we may say, how they had already gone, she took pen in hand, and sat herself to work, doing, as she conceived, her duty by her neighbour.
MY DEAR MR DALE (she said),
I BELIEVE I need make no secret of having known that your niece Lilian is engaged to Mr Crosbie, of London. I think it proper to warn you that if this be true Mr Crosbie is behaving himself in a very improper manner here. I am not a person who concerns myself much in the affairs of other people; and under ordinary circumstances, the conduct of Mr Crosbie would be nothing to me – or, indeed, less than nothing; but I do to you as I would wish that others should do unto me. I believe it is o
nly too true that Mr Crosbie had proposed to Lady Alexandrina De Courcy, and been accepted by her. I think you will believe that I would not say this without warrant, and if there be anything in it, it may be well, for the poor young lady’s sake, that you should put yourself in the way of learning the truth.
Believe me to be yours sincerely,
JULIA DE GUEST
Courcy Castle, Thursday
The squire had never been very fond of any of the De Guest family, and had, perhaps, liked Lady Julia the least of them all. He was wont to call her a meddling old woman – remembering her bitterness and pride in those now long bygone days in which the gallant major had run off with Lady Fanny. When he first received this letter, he did not, on the first reading of it, believe a word of its contents. ‘Cross-grained old harridan,’ he said out loud to his nephew. ‘Look what that aunt of yours has written to me.’ Bernard read the letter twice, and as he did so his face became hard and angry.
‘You don’t mean to say you believe it?’ said the squire.
‘I don’t think it will be safe to disregard it.’
‘What! you think it possible that your friend is doing as she says.’
‘It is certainly possible. He was angry when he found that Lily had no fortune.’
‘Heavens, Bernard! And you can speak of it in that way?’
The Small House at Allington Page 35