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.
She looked up at him, but made no answer. He had always called her
by her Christian name, and they two had ever regarded each other
as close friends. At the present moment she had forgotten all else
besides this, and yet she had infinite pleasure in sitting there and
talking to him.
"I am going to ask you a question which perhaps I ought not to ask,
only that I have known you so long that I almost feel that I am
speaking to a sister."
"You may ask me what you please," said she.
"It is about your cousin Bernard."
"About Bernard!" said Bell.
It was now dusk; and as they were sitting without other light than
that of the fire, she knew that he could not discern the colour which
covered her face as her cousin's name was mentioned. But, had the
light of day pervaded the whole room, I doubt whether Crofts would
have seen that blush, for he kept his eyes firmly fixed upon the
fire.
"Yes, about Bernard. I don't know whether I ought to ask you."
"I'm sure I can't say," said Bell, speaking words of the nature of
which she was not conscious.
"There has been a rumour in Guestwick that he and you--"
"It is untrue," said Bell; "quite untrue. If you hear it repeated,
you should contradict it. I wonder why people should say such
things."
"It would have been an excellent marriage;--all your friends must
have approved it."
"What do you mean, Dr. Crofts? How I do hate those words, 'an
excellent marriage.' In them is contained more of wicked worldliness
than any other words that one ever hears spoken. You want me to marry
my cousin simply because I should have a great house to live in, and
a coach. I know that you are my friend; but I hate such friendship as
that."
"I think you misunderstand me, Bell. I mean that it would have been
an excellent marriage, provided you had both loved each other."
"No, I don't misunderstand you. Of course it would be an excellent
marriage, if we loved each other. You might say the same if I loved
the butcher or the baker. What you mean is, that it makes a reason
for loving him."
"I don't think I did mean that."
"Then you mean nothing."
After that, there were again some minutes of silence during which
Dr. Crofts got up to go away. "You have scolded me very dreadfully,"
he said, with a slight smile, "and I believe I have deserved it for
interfering--"
"No; not at all for interfering."
"But at any rate you must forgive me before I go."
"I won't forgive you at all, unless you repent of your sins, and
alter altogether the wickedness of your mind. You will become very
soon as bad as Dr. Gruffen."
"Shall I?"
"Oh, but I will forgive you; for after all, you are the most generous
man in the world."
"Oh, yes; of course I am. Well,--good-by."
"But, Dr. Crofts, you should not suppose others to be so much more
worldly than yourself. You do not care for money so very much--"
"But I do care very much."
"If you did, you would not come here for nothing day after day."
"I do care for money very much. I have sometimes nearly broken my
heart because I could not get opportunities of earning it. It is the
best friend that a man can have--"
"Oh, Dr. Crofts!"
"--the best friend that a man can have, if it be honestly come by.
A woman can hardly realize the sorrow which may fall upon a man from
the want of such a friend."
"Of course a man likes to earn a decent living by his profession; and
you can do that."
"That depends upon one's ideas of decency."
"Ah! mine never ran very high. I've always had a sort of aptitude for
living in a pigsty;--a clean pigsty, you know, with nice fresh bean
straw to lie upon. I think it was a mistake when they made a lady of
me. I do, indeed."
"I do not," said Dr. Crofts.
"That's because you don't quite know me yet. I've not the slightest
pleasure in putting on three different dresses a day. I do it very
often because it comes to me to do it, from the way in which we have
been taught to live. But when we get to Guestwick I mean to change
all that; and if you come in to tea, you'll see me in the same brown
frock that I wear in the morning,--unless, indeed, the morning
work makes the brown frock dirty. Oh, Dr. Crofts! you'll have it
pitch-dark riding home under the Guestwick elms."
"I don't mind the dark," he said; and it seemed as though he hardly
intended to go even yet.
"But I do," said Bell, "and I shall ring for candles." But he stopped
her as she put her hand out to the bell-pull.
"Stop a moment, Bell. You need hardly have the candles before I go,
and you need not begrudge my staying either, seeing that I shall be
all alone at home."
"Begrudge your staying!"
"But, however, you shall begrudge it, or else make me very welcome."
He still held her by the wrist, which he had caught as he prevented
her from summoning the servant.
"What do you mean?" said she. "You know you are welcome to us as
flowers in May. You always were welcome; but now, when you have come
to us in our trouble-- At any rate, you shall never say that I turn
you out."
"Shall I never say so?" And still he held her by the wrist. He had
kept his chair throughout, but she was standing before him,--between
him and the fire. But she, though he held her in this way, thought
little of his words, or of his action. They had known each other with
great intimacy, and though Lily would still laugh at her, saying that
Dr. Crofts was her lover, she had long since taught herself that no
such feeling as that would ever exist between them.
"Shall I never say so, Bell? What if so poor a man as I ask for the
hand that you will not give to so rich a man as your cousin Bernard?"
She instantly withdrew her arm and moved back very quickly a step or
two across the rug. She did it almost with the motion which she might
have used had he insulted her; or had a man spoken such words who
would not, under any circumstances, have a right to speak them.
"Ah, yes! I thought it would be so," he said. "I may go now, and may
know that I have been turned out."
"What is it you mean, Dr. Crofts? What is it you are saying? Why do
you talk that nonsense, trying to see if you can provoke me?"
"Yes; it is nonsense. I have no right to address you in that way, and
certainly should not have done it now that I am in your house in the
way of my profession. I beg your pardon." Now he also was standing,
but he had not moved from his side of the fireplace. "Are you going
to forgive me before I go?"
"Forgive you for what?" said she.
"For daring to love you; for having loved you almost as long as you
can remember; for loving you better than all beside. This alone you
should forgive; but will you forgive me for having told it?"
He had made her no offer, nor did she expect that he was about to
make one. She herself had hardly yet realized the meaning of his
words, and she certainly had asked herself no question as to the
answer which she should give to them. There are cases in which lovers
present themselves in so unmistakeable a guise, that the first word
of open love uttered by them tells their whole story, and tells it
without the possibility of a surprise. And it is generally so when
the lover has not been an old friend, when even his acquaintance
has been of modern date. It had been so essentially in the case of
Crosbie and Lily Dale. When Crosbie came to Lily and made his offer,
he did it with perfect ease and thorough self-possession, for he
almost knew that it was expected. And Lily, though she had been
flurried for a moment, had her answer pat enough. She already loved
the man with all her heart, delighted in his presence, basked in
the sunshine of his manliness, rejoiced in his wit, and had tuned
her ears to the tone of his voice. It had all been done, and the
world expected it. Had he not made his offer, Lily would have been
ill-treated;--though, alas, alas, there was future ill-treatment, so
much heavier, in store for her! But there are other cases in which
a lover cannot make himself known as such without great difficulty,
and when he does do so, cannot hope for an immediate answer in his
favour. It is hard upon old friends that this difficulty should
usually fall the heaviest upon them. Crofts had been so intimate with
the Dale family that very many persons had thought it probable that
he would marry one of the girls. Mrs. Dale herself had thought so,
and had almost hoped it. Lily had certainly done both. These thoughts
and hopes had somewhat faded away, but yet their former existence
should have been in the doctor's favour. But now, when he had in some
way spoken out, Bell started back from him and would not believe that
he was in earnest. She probably loved him better than any man in the
world, and yet, when he spoke to her of love, she could not bring
herself to understand him.
"I don't know what you mean, Dr. Crofts; indeed I do not," she said.
"I had meant to ask you to be my wife; simply that. But you shall not
have the pain of making me a positive refusal. As I rode here to-day
I thought of it. During my frequent rides of late I have thought of
little else. But I told myself that I had no right to do it. I have
not even a house in which it would be fit that you should live."
"Dr. Crofts, if I loved you,--if I wished to marry you--" and then
she stopped herself.
"But you do not?"
"No; I think not. I suppose not. No. But in any way no consideration
about money has anything to do with it."
"But I am not that butcher or that baker whom you could love?"
"No," said Bell; and then she stopped herself from further speech,
not as intending to convey all her answer in that one word, but as
not knowing how to fashion any further words.
"I knew it would be so," said the doctor.
It will, I fear, be thought by those who condescend to criticize this
lover's conduct and his mode of carrying on his suit, that he was
very unfit for such work. Ladies will say that he wanted courage, and
men will say that he wanted wit. I am inclined, however, to believe
that he behaved as well as men generally do behave on such occasions,
and that he showed himself to be a good average lover. There is your
bold lover, who knocks his lady-love over as he does a bird, and
who would anathematize himself all over, and swear that his gun was
distraught, and look about as though he thought the world was coming
to an end, if he missed to knock over his bird. And there is your
timid lover, who winks his eyes when he fires, who has felt certain
from the moment in which he buttoned on his knickerbockers that he
at any rate would kill nothing, and who, when he hears the loud
congratulations of his friends, cannot believe that he really did
bag that beautiful winged thing by his own prowess. The beautiful
winged thing which the timid man carries home in his bosom, declining
to have it thrown into a miscellaneous cart, so that it may never
be lost in a common crowd of game, is better to him than are the
slaughtered hecatombs to those who kill their birds by the hundred.
But Dr. Crofts had so winked his eye, that he was not in the least
aware whether he had winged his bird or no. Indeed, having no one at
hand to congratulate him, he was quite sure that the bird had flown
away uninjured into the next field. "No" was the only word which Bell
had given in answer to his last sidelong question, and No is not a
comfortable word to lovers. But there had been that in Bell's No
which might have taught him that the bird was not escaping without a
wound, if he had still had any of his wits about him.
"Now I will go," said he. Then he paused for an answer, but none
came. "And you will understand what I meant when I spoke of being
turned out."
"Nobody--turns you out." And Bell, as she spoke, had almost descended
to a sob.
"It is time, at any rate, that I should go; is it not? And, Bell,
don't suppose that this little scene will keep me away from your
sister's bedside. I shall be here to-morrow, and you will find that
you will hardly know me again for the same person." Then in the dark
he put out his hand to her.
"Good-by," she said, giving him her hand. He pressed hers very
closely, but she, though she wished to do so, could not bring herself
to return the pressure. Her hand remained passive in his, showing no
sign of offence; but it was absolutely passive.
"Good-by, dearest friend," he said.
"Good-by," she answered,--and then he was gone.
She waited quite still till she heard the front-door close after him,
and then she crept silently up to her own bedroom, and sat herself
down in a low rocking-chair over the fire. It was in accordance with
a custom already established that her mother should remain with Lily
till the tea was ready downstairs; for in these days of illness such
dinners as were provided were eaten early. Bell, therefore, knew that
she had still some half-hour of her own, during which she might sit
and think undisturbed.
And what naturally should have been her first thoughts?--that she had
ruthlessly refused a man who, as she now knew, loved her well, and
for whom she had always felt at any rate the warmest friendship? Such
were not her thoughts, nor were they in any way akin to this. They
ran back instantly to years gone by,--over long years, as her few
years were counted,--and settled themselves on certain halcyon days,
in which she had dreamed that he had loved her, and had fancied
that she had loved him. How she had schooled herself for those days
since that, and taught herself to know that her thoughts had been
over-bold! And now it had all come round. The only man that she
had ever liked had loved her. Then there came to her a memory of a
certain day, in which she had been almost proud to think that Crosbie
had admired her, in which she had almost hoped that it might be so;
and as she thought of this she blushed, and struck her foot twice
upon the floor. "Dear Lily," she said to herself--"poor Lily!" But
the feeling which induced her then to think of her sister had had no
relation to that which had first brought Crosbie into her mind.
And this man had loved her through it all,--this priceless, peerless
man,--this man who was as true to the backbone as that other man had
shown himself to be false; who was as sound as the other man had
proved himself to be rotten. A smile came across her face as she sat
looking at the fire, thinking of this. A man had loved her, whose
love was worth possessing. She hardly remembered whether or no she
had refused him or accepted him. She hardly asked herself what she
would do. As to all that it was necessary that she should have many
thoughts, but the necessity did not press upon her quite immediately.
For the present, at any rate, she might sit and triumph;--and thus
triumphant she sat there till the old nurse came in and told her that
her mother was waiting for her below.