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

let herself into her aunt’s house, and cried herself to sleep with a child on each side of her.

On the next day Roger called. She had begged Mrs. Pipkin to attend the door, and had asked her to declare, should any gentleman ask for Ruby Ruggles, that Ruby Ruggles was out. Mrs. Pipkin had not refused to do so; but, having heard sufficient of Roger Carbury to imagine the cause which might possibly bring him to the house, and having made up her mind that Ruby’s present condition of independence was equally unfavourable to the lodging-house and to Ruby herself, she determined that the Squire, if he did come, should see the young lady. When therefore Ruby was called into the little back parlour and found Roger Carbury there, she thought that she had been caught in a trap. She had been very cross all the morning. Though in her rage she had been able on the previous evening to dismiss her titled lover, and to imply that she never meant to see him again, now, when the remembrance of the loss came upon her amidst her daily work⁠—when she could no longer console herself in her drudgery by thinking of the beautiful things that were in store for her, and by flattering herself that though at this moment she was little better than a maid of all work in a lodging-house, the time was soon coming in which she would bloom forth as a baronet’s bride⁠—now in her solitude she almost regretted the precipitancy of her own conduct. Could it be that she would never see him again;⁠—that she would dance no more in that gilded bright saloon? And might it not be possible that she had pressed him too hard? A baronet of course would not like to be brought to book, as she could bring to book such a one as John Crumb. But yet⁠—that he should have said never;⁠—that he would never marry! Looking at it in any light, she was very unhappy, and this coming of the Squire did not serve to cure her misery.

Roger was very kind to her, taking her by the hand, and bidding her sit down, and telling her how glad he was to find that she was comfortably settled with her aunt. “We were all alarmed, of course, when you went away without telling anybody where you were going.”

“Grandfather’d been that cruel to me that I couldn’t tell him.”

“He wanted you to keep your word to an old friend of yours.”

“To pull me all about by the hairs of my head wasn’t the way to make a girl keep her word;⁠—was it, Mr. Carbury? That’s what he did, then;⁠—and Sally Hockett, who is there, heard it. I’ve been good to grandfather, whatever I may have been to John Crumb; and he shouldn’t have treated me like that. No girl’d like to be pulled about the room by the hairs of her head, and she with her things all off, just getting into bed.”

The Squire had no answer to make to this. That old Ruggles should be a violent brute under the influence of gin and water did not surprise him. And the girl, when driven away from her home by such usage, had not done amiss in coming to her aunt. But Roger had already heard a few words from Mrs. Pipkin as to Ruby’s late hours, had heard also that there was a lover, and knew very well who that lover was. He also was quite familiar with John Crumb’s state of mind. John Crumb was a gallant, loving fellow who might be induced to forgive everything, if Ruby would only go back to him; but would certainly persevere, after some slow fashion of his own, and “see the matter out,” as he would say himself, if she did not go back. “As you found yourself obliged to run away,” said Roger, “I’m glad that you should be here; but you don’t mean to stay here always?”

“I don’t know,” said Ruby.

“You must think of your future life. You don’t want to be always your aunt’s maid.”

“Oh dear, no.”

“It would be very odd if you did, when you may be the wife of such a man as Mr. Crumb.”

“Oh, Mr. Crumb! Everybody is going on about Mr. Crumb. I don’t like Mr. Crumb, and I never will like him.”

“Now look here, Ruby; I have come to speak to you very seriously, and I expect you to hear me. Nobody can make you marry Mr. Crumb, unless you please.”

“Nobody can’t, of course, sir.”

“But I fear you have given him up for somebody else, who certainly won’t marry you, and who can only mean to ruin you.”

“Nobody won’t ruin me,” said Ruby. “A girl has to look to herself, and I mean to look to myself.”

“I’m glad to hear you say so, but being out at night with such a one as Sir Felix Carbury is not looking to yourself. That means going to the devil head foremost.”

“I ain’t a going to the devil,” said Ruby, sobbing and blushing.

“But you will, if you put yourself into the hands of that young man. He’s as bad as bad can be. He’s my own cousin, and yet I’m obliged to tell you so. He has no more idea of marrying you than I have; but were he to marry you, he could not support you. He is ruined himself, and would ruin any young woman who trusted him. I’m almost old enough to be your father, and in all my experience I never came across so vile a young man as he is. He would ruin you and cast you from him without a pang of remorse. He has no heart in his bosom;⁠—none.” Ruby had now given way altogether, and was sobbing with her apron to her eyes in one corner of the room. “That’s what Sir Felix Carbury is,” said the Squire, standing up so that he might speak with the more energy, and talk her down more thoroughly. “And if