The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (best fiction novels of all time .TXT) 📕

like Ruby don’t want no time to be wooed by one such as that, though they’ll fall-lall with a man like John Crumb for years.”

“I suppose she’s gone to London.”

“Don’t know nothing of where she’s gone, squoire;⁠—only she have gone some’eres. May be it’s Lowestoffe. There’s lots of quality at Lowestoffe a’ washing theyselves in the sea.”

Then they returned to the priest, who might be supposed to be cognisant of the guiles of the world and competent to give advice on such an occasion as this. “If she was one of our people,” said Father Barham, “we should have her back quick enough.”

“Would ye now?” said Ruggles, wishing at the moment that he and all his family had been brought up as Roman Catholics.

“I don’t see how you would have more chance of catching her than we have,” said Carbury.

“She’d catch herself. Wherever she might be she’d go to the priest, and he wouldn’t leave her till he’d seen her put on the way back to her friends.”

“With a flea in her lug,” suggested the farmer.

“Your people never go to a clergyman in their distress. It’s the last thing they’d think of. Anyone might more probably be regarded as a friend than the parson. But with us the poor know where to look for sympathy.”

“She ain’t that poor, neither,” said the grandfather.

“She had money with her?”

“I don’t know just what she had; but she ain’t been brought up poor. And I don’t think as our Ruby’d go of herself to any clergyman. It never was her way.”

“It never is the way with a Protestant,” said the priest.

“We’ll say no more about that for the present,” said Roger, who was waxing wroth with the priest. That a man should be fond of his own religion is right; but Roger Carbury was beginning to think that Father Barham was too fond of his religion. “What had we better do? I suppose we shall hear something of her at the railway. There are not so many people leaving Beccles but that she may be remembered.” So the wagonette was ordered, and they all prepared to go off to the station together.

But before they started John Crumb rode up to the door. He had gone at once to the farm on hearing of Ruby’s departure, and had followed the farmer from thence to Carbury. Now he found the squire and the priest and the old man standing around as the horses were being put to the carriage. “Ye ain’t a’ found her, Mr. Ruggles, ha’ ye?” he asked as he wiped the sweat from his brow.

“Noa;⁠—we ain’t a’ found no one yet.”

“If it was as she was to come to harm, Mr. Carbury, I’d never forgive myself⁠—never,” said Crumb.

“As far as I can understand it is no doing of yours, my friend,” said the squire.

“In one way, it ain’t; and in one way it is. I was over there last night a bothering of her. She’d a’ come round may be, if she’d a’ been left alone. She wouldn’t a’ been off now, only for our going over to Sheep’s Acre. But⁠—oh!”

“What is it, Mr. Crumb?”

“He’s a coosin o’ yours, squoire; and long as I’ve known Suffolk, I’ve never known nothing but good o’ you and yourn. But if your baronite has been and done this! Oh, Mr. Carbury! If I was to wring his neck round, you wouldn’t say as how I was wrong; would ye, now?” Roger could hardly answer the question. On general grounds the wringing of Sir Felix’s neck, let the immediate cause for such a performance have been what it might, would have seemed to him to be a good deed. The world would be better, according to his thinking, with Sir Felix out of it than in it. But still the young man was his cousin and a Carbury, and to such a one as John Crumb he was bound to defend any member of his family as far as he might be defensible. “They says as how he was groping about Sheep’s Acre when he was last here, a hiding himself and skulking behind hedges. Drat ’em all. They’ve gals enough of their own⁠—them fellows. Why can’t they let a fellow alone? I’ll do him a mischief, Master Roger; I wull;⁠—if he’s had a hand in this.” Poor John Crumb! When he had his mistress to win he could find no words for himself; but was obliged to take an eloquent baker with him to talk for him. Now in his anger he could talk freely enough.

“But you must first learn that Sir Felix has had anything to do with this, Mr. Crumb.”

“In coorse; in coorse. That’s right. That’s right. Must l’arn as he did it, afore I does it. But when I have l’arned!”⁠—And John Crumb clenched his fist as though a very short lesson would suffice for him upon this occasion.

They all went to the Beccles Station, and from thence to the Beccles post office⁠—so that Beccles soon knew as much about it as Bungay. At the railway station Ruby was distinctly remembered. She had taken a second-class ticket by the morning train for London, and had gone off without any appearance of secrecy. She had been decently dressed, with a hat and cloak, and her luggage had been such as she might have been expected to carry, had all her friends known that she was going. So much was made clear at the railway station, but nothing more could be learned there. Then a message was sent by telegraph to the station in London, and they all waited, loitering about the post office, for a reply. One of the porters in London remembered seeing such a girl as was described, but the man who was supposed to have carried her box for her to a cab had gone away for the day. It was believed that she had left the station in a four-wheel cab. “I’ll be arter her. I’ll be arter her at once,” said John Crumb. But