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

in London; but he knew well all that had occurred⁠—how the dealer in pollard had thrashed his cousin, Sir Felix, how he had been locked up by the police and then liberated⁠—and how he was now regarded in Bungay as a hero, as far as arms were concerned, but as being very “soft” in the matter of love. The reader need hardly be told that Roger was not at all disposed to quarrel with Mr. Crumb, because the victim of Crumb’s heroism had been his own cousin. Crumb had acted well, and had never said a word about Sir Felix since his return to the country. No doubt he had now come to talk about his love⁠—and in order that his confessions might not be made before all the assembled haymakers, Roger Carbury hurried to meet him. There was soon evident on Crumb’s broad face a whole sunshine of delight. As Roger approached him he began to laugh aloud, and to wave a bit of paper that he had in his hands. “She’s a coomin; she’s a coomin,” were the first words he uttered. Roger knew very well that in his friend’s mind there was but one “she” in the world, and that the name of that she was Ruby Ruggles.

“I am delighted to hear it,” said Roger. “She has made it up with her grandfather?”

“Don’t know now’t about grandfeyther. She have made it up wi’ me. Know’d she would when I’d polish’d t’other un off a bit;⁠—know’d she would.”

“Has she written to you, then?”

“Well, squoire⁠—she ain’t; not just herself. I do suppose that isn’t the way they does it. But it’s all as one.” And then Mr. Crumb thrust Mrs. Hurtle’s note into Roger Carbury’s hand.

Roger certainly was not predisposed to think well or kindly of Mrs. Hurtle. Since he had first known Mrs. Hurtle’s name, when Paul Montague had told the story of his engagement on his return from America, Roger had regarded her as a wicked, intriguing, bad woman. It may, perhaps, be confessed that he was prejudiced against all Americans, looking upon Washington much as he did upon Jack Cade or Wat Tyler; and he pictured to himself all American women as being loud, masculine, and atheistical. But it certainly did seem that in this instance Mrs. Hurtle was endeavouring to do a good turn from pure charity. “She is a lady,” Crumb began to explain, “who do be living with Mrs. Pipkin; and she is a lady as is a lady.”

Roger could not fully admit the truth of this assertion; but he explained that he, too, knew something of Mrs. Hurtle, and that he thought it probable that what she said of Ruby might be true. “True, squoire!” said Crumb, laughing with his whole face. “I ha’ nae a doubt it’s true. What’s again its being true? When I had dropped into t’other fellow, of course she made her choice. It was me as was to blame, because I didn’t do it before. I ought to ha’ dropped into him when I first heard as he was arter her. It’s that as girls like. So, squoire, I’m just going again to Lon’on right away.”

Roger suggested that old Ruggles would, of course, receive his niece; but as to this John expressed his supreme indifference. The old man was nothing to him. Of course he would like to have the old man’s money; but the old man couldn’t live forever, and he supposed that things would come right in time. But this he knew⁠—that he wasn’t going to cringe to the old man about his money. When Roger observed that it would be better that Ruby should have some home to which she might at once return, John adverted with a renewed grin to all the substantial comforts of his own house. It seemed to be his idea, that on arriving in London he would at once take Ruby away to church and be married to her out of hand. He had thrashed his rival, and what cause could there now be for delay?

But before he left the field he made one other speech to the squire. “You ain’t a’taken it amiss, squoire, ’cause he was coosin to yourself?”

“Not in the least, Mr. Crumb.”

“That’s koind now. I ain’t a done the yong man a ha’porth o’ harm, and I don’t feel no grudge again him, and when me and Ruby’s once spliced, I’m darned if I don’t give ’un a bottle of wine the first day as he’ll come to Bungay.”

Roger did not feel himself justified in accepting this invitation on the part of Sir Felix; but he renewed his assurance that he, on his own part, thought that Crumb had behaved well in that matter of the street encounter, and he expressed a strong wish for the immediate and continued happiness of Mr. and Mrs. John Crumb.

“Oh, ay, we’ll be ’appy, squoire,” said Crumb as he went exulting out of the field.

On the day after this Roger Carbury received a letter which disturbed him very much, and to which he hardly knew whether to return any answer, or what answer. It was from Paul Montague, and was written by him but a few hours after he had left his letter for Hetta with his own hands, at the door of her mother’s house. Paul’s letter to Roger was as follows:⁠—

My dear Roger⁠—

Though I know that you have cast me off from you I cannot write to you in any other way, as any other way would be untrue. You can answer me, of course, as you please, but I do think that you will owe me an answer, as I appeal to you in the name of justice.

You know what has taken place between Hetta and myself. She had accepted me, and therefore I am justified in feeling sure that she must have loved me. But she has now quarrelled with me altogether, and has told me that I am never to see her again. Of course I don’t mean to put up with this.