Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “The Small House at Allington,” where we first meet her, is no such symmetrically proportioned and excellently fashioned work of art as “The Warden,” which stands almost sole among the author’s books for form. It is a very well balanced and compactly built story, however, and strongly held together by uncommon singleness of motive. The love of Lily Dale for Adolphus Crosbie who jilts her, after their engagement, and marries Lady Alexandrina de Courcy, is the interest which the whole life of the book centres about so unremittingly that in the retrospect it seems the only interest; but there is a subsidiary interest in the love of John Eames for Lily Dale vital enough to prolong itself through the wandering ways of “The Last Chronicle of Barset,” and really essential to the full evolution of Lily’s fate. Without this we could not know that her hapless love had become so largely herself that when it was crushed there was not enough of her left together for a second and happier passion. She lived to realize that her false lover had been too basely cruel, not for her forgiveness, but for her endurance. She lived to refuse him when he offered himself again after his wife’s death; she lived to see him, and even in a social exigency to have him speak to her; but though she lived to know that he was nothing to her forever, she lived also to make sure that no man could be anything to her as a lover evermore. This put an end to the long, brave hopes of Johnny Eames, who was not always, as high as his hopes, but always delightfully a human being, such as Lily might well be glad to have for a friend.

  It cannot be said that the concluding passages of her story are as effectively managed as those of what is more distinctly her tragedy; and yet her final and decisive refusal of Eames is truly the climax of the whole. Her character triumphs, her nature remains good and kind, but her life, that poor little existence which is all there is of her on earth, is spoiled of that which should have made its supreme happiness. It is a great story, whose absolute fidelity to manners, and whose reliance ANTHONY TROLLOPE’S LILY DALE upon the essential strength of the motive must exalt it in the esteem of those accustomed to think of what they read.

  II

  If any such reader happens himself to be of that period of the early eighteen-sixties to which Lily Dale’s romantic young girlhood belonged, and in which young girlhood was sweeter than it has ever been since, he will see her as she first appeared to Adolphus Crosbie. He will know that she wore a large hoop, which tilted enough when she played croquet to give a glimpse of her white stockings; that her loose sleeves were confined at the wrists with narrow little linen cuffs matching a little linen collar at her neck; and that everything was very plain and smooth about her. She would have on a pork-pie hat, which was thought very chic in the days before it was known what chic was, the word itself being not yet; and but for the author, I should say that she wore her hair in a net of rather a heavy velvet mesh. The author, however, contends that she wore it in “simple braids,” and that “it was not flaxen hair, and yet it was very light. Nor did it approach auburn; and yet there ran through it a golden tint that gave it a distinct brightness of its own. “ Her eyes were “brightly blue... and seldom kept by any want of courage from fixing themselves where they pleased.” Her face was not “perfectly oval”; her nose was “somewhat broader than it should be; she had a dimple in her decided chin. She was something below the middle height,” the time of the tall heroine not having come yet, and she was “very fair, so that the soft tint of color which relieved her complexion was rather acknowledged than distinctly seen.”

  This was the sort of girl who gave her heart in per feet abandon of passion and hero-worship to as selfish a scoundrel as ever was recreant to his plighted troth. The worst of Adolphus Crosbie is that he is no worse in nature than he is. Worse in conduct he could not be; and yet in his way he always loved Lily Dale, and he suffered in betraying her. But he did betray her; he first won her heart in her quiet home at Allington under her mother’s approving eyes, and then when he found that her uncle, Squire Dale, would not meet his hopes as to settlements, went from her with renewed vows of constancy, and offered himself to Lady Alexandrina. His engagement to Lily was already known and she had to bear the public shame as well as the secret anguish of being jilted. The thing was as bad as it could be, but how bad it was for Lily Dale can be known only to those familiar with her history, and these do not need telling. I wish I might send to it those unfamiliar with it, for I do not believe that a story of simple heart-break, as it may happen in good society, without the squalid adjuncts of social perdition or infamy for the victim, has ever been so truly told. Lily Dale was jilted by the man whom she had absolutely trusted; and she had to gather up her broken life and make what she could of it. The mild but strong resistance she opposes to her fate begins with her first knowledge of it. She has never been represented as very beautiful or brilliant, but merely as sweet and good and kind, with an unselfish common-sense which has served her well with every one but the wretch who stole her heart from her. These great qualities — for, oh! dear young ladies, these are the great qualities — avail her in the hour of her disaster, when she must spare herself in order to spare others, and first of all, the poor mother whom her wretched lover has made the messenger of his treason to her.

  Crosbie had written to Mrs. Dale from Courcy Castle, where he had just been accepted by Lady Alexandrina, and had asked her to tell Lily, enclosing a brief note for her which her mother was to give her if she thought best. “Now, they [the letters] had been read by her to whom they had been addressed, and the daughter was standing before the mother to hear her doom. ‘Tell me all at once,’ Lily had said; but in what words was her mother to tell her?... ‘Is it from him, mamma? May I read it? He cannot be—”

  “It is from Mr. Crosbie,’ “ Is he ill, mamma? Tell me at once. If he is ill I will go to him.’ ‘No, my darling, he is not ill. Not yet; — do not read it yet. Oh, Lily! It brings bad news; very bad news,’... “Mamma,’ said Lily, ‘whatever it is, I must, of course, be made to know it. I begin to guess the truth. It will pain you to say it. Shall I read the letter?” Mrs. Dale was astonished at her calmness. It could not be that she had guessed the truth, or she would not stand like that, with tearless eyes and unquelled courage before her. “You shall read it, but I ought to tell you first. Oh, my child, my own one!” Lily was now leaning against the bed, and her mother was standing over her, caressing her. ‘Then tell me,” said she. “But I know what it is. He has thought it all over while away from me, and he finds that it must not be as we have supposed. Before he went I offered to release him, and now he knows that he had better accept my offer. Is it so, mamma?” In answer to this Mrs. Dale did not speak, but Lily understood from her signs that it was so. “He might have written it to me, myself,’ said Lily, very proudly. “Mamma, we will go down to breakfast. He has sent nothing to me, then?” ‘There is a note. He bids me read it, but I have not opened it. It is here.” ‘Give it me,’ said Lily, almost sternly. ‘Let me have his last words to me,’ and she took the note from her mother’s hands. “Lily,” said the note, “your mother will have told you all. Before you read these few words you will know that you have trusted one who was quite untrustworthy. I know that you will hate me. — I cannot even ask you to forgive me. You will let me pray that you may yet be happy. — A. C.’ She read these few words, still leaning against the bed. Then she got up, and walking to a chair, seated herself with her back to her mother. Mrs. Dale moving silently after her stood over the back of the chair, not daring to speak to her. So she sat for some five minutes, with her eyes fixed upon the open window, and with Crosbie’s note in her hand. ‘I will not hate him, and I do forgive him,’ she said at last, struggling to command her voice, and hardly showing that she could not altogether succeed in her attempt. ‘I may not write to him again, but you shall write and tell him so. Now we will go down to breakfast. ‘And so saying, she got up from her chair Mrs. Dale almost feared to speak to her, her composure was so complete, and her manner so stem and fixed.... ‘You frighten me, Lily,’ she said. ‘Your
very calmness frightens me.’ ‘Dear mamma!’ and the poor girl absolutely smiled as she embraced her mother, ‘You need not be frightened by my calmness. I know the truth well. I have been very unfortunate; — very. The brightest hopes of my life are all gone; — and I shall never again see him whom I love beyond all the world!’ Then at last she broke down, and wept in her mother’s arms. There was not a word of anger spoken then against him who had done all this. Mrs. Dale felt that she did not dare to speak in anger against him, and words of anger were not likely to come from poor Lily. She, indeed, hitherto, did not know the whole of his offence, for she had not read his letter. ‘Give it me, mamma,’ she said at last. ‘It has to be done sooner or later.’ ‘Not now, Lily. I have told you all, — all that you need know at present.’ ‘Yes; now, mamma,’ and again that sweet silvery voice became stem. ‘I will read it now, and there shall be an end,’ Whereupon Mrs. Dale gave her the letter and she read it in silence. Her mother, though standing somewhat behind her, watched her narrowly as she did so. She was now lying over upon the bed, and the letter was on the pillow, as she propped herself upon her arm. Her tears were running, and ever and again she would stop to dry her eyes. Her sobs too were very audible, but she went on steadily with her reading till she came to the line on which Crosbie told that he had already engaged himself to another woman. Then her mother could see that she paused suddenly, and that a shudder slightly convulsed all her limbs. ‘He has been very quick,’ she said, almost in a whisper; and then she finished the letter. ‘Tell him, mamma,’ she said ‘that I do forgive him, and I will not hate him. You will tell him that, — from me; will you not?’ And then she raised herself from the bed.... ‘You must, mamma; or, if you do not, I shall do so. Remember that I love him. You know what it is to have loved one single man. He has made me very unhappy; I hardly know yet how unhappy. But I have loved him, and do love him. I believe, in my heart, that he still loves me. Where this has been there must not be hatred and unforgiveness.’ ‘I will pray that I may become able to forgive him,’ said Mrs. Dale. ‘But you must write to him those words. Indeed you must, mamma! “ She bids me tell you that she has forgiven you, and will not hate you.” Promise me that I’ ‘I can make no promise now, Lily. I will think about it, and endeavor to do my duty. Lily was now seated, and was holding the skirt of her mother’s dress. ‘Mamma,’ she said, looking up into her mother’s face, ‘you must be very good to me now; and I must be very good to you. We shall be always together now. I must be your friend and counsellor; and be everything to you, more than ever. I must fall in love with you now;’ and she smiled again, and the tears were almost dry upon her cheeks.”

  III

  I think the quiet truth of this scene, full of the gentle self-control of a nature superior to the impulses of passion, is worth worlds of “ passion.” It is really so that such a girl as Lily Dale would have spoken and acted, and the readers of latter-day romance are the losers that such types of girlhood are no longer presented to them. In the present default I could not send the girls of this period back to better company than hers, who was the contemporary of their mothers, and often their companion.

  It will not be contended by any true friend of hers that she was perfectly wise; but what she tried to do she did. She did forgive the man who had so atrociously wronged her; in a manner she did fall in love with her mother, and lived to console and support her under the blow that had fallen upon her through her own heart. In the lapse of time she achieved a calm that if never gay was often cheerful. After much honest endeavor in behalf of Johnny Eames, she found it was no longer in her to love any man again. When, with incredible meanness, Crosbie offered himself, after his wife’s death, she refused him, not ungently; when later they chanced to meet she found that she no longer cared even for the man he had once seemed. He was no longer her hero, her idol, and the wonder was that he could ever have been. She had survived her illusion, but there could never be any other — for love is always an illusion — in its place. She had ceased to suffer from the hurt he had done her, but not from the memory of her suffering. This had full power upon her when chance — a freak or a duty of fate — brought them together again. There were, in fact, two last meetings of this sort, both treated with a dignity, a repose, worthy of the material, and with a true, strong emotion very uncommon in the author, who had caught from Thackeray the bad habit of twaddling about his women, and could not often leave them so entirely alone, to work themselves out in their own way, as he does Lily Dale in this case. In the first of the meetings Lily was riding with her cousin Bernard and his betrothed in Rotten Row, when “on a sudden, coming slowly towards her along the diverging path and leaning on the arm of another man, she saw, — Adolphus Crosbie. She had never seen him since a day on which she had parted from him with many kisses, — with warm, pressing, eager kisses, — of which she had been nowhat ashamed. He had then been to her almost as her husband. She had trusted him entirely, and had thrown herself into his arms with a full reliance. There is often much of reticence on the part of a woman towards a man to whom she is engaged, something also of shamefacedness occasionally. There exists a shadow of doubt, at least of that hesitation which shows that in spite of vows the woman knows that a change may come, and that provision for such possible steps backward should always be within her reach. But Lily had cast all such caution to the winds. She had given herself to the man entirely, and had determined that she would sink or swim, stand or fall, live or die, by him and by his truth. He had been as false as hell. She had been in his arms, clinging to him, kissing him, swearing that her only pleasure in the world was to be with him, — with him her treasure, her promised husband; and within a month, a week, he had been false to her. There had come upon her crushing tidings, and she had for days wondered at herself that they had not killed her. But she had lived, and had forgiven him. She had still loved him, and had received new offers from him, which had been answered as the reader knows. But she had never seen him since the day on which she had parted from him at Allington, without a doubt as to his faith. Now he was before her, walking on the footpath, almost within reach of her whip.... Then he raised his eyes and saw Lily’s side-face, and recognized her. Had he seen her before he had been stopped on his way I think he would have passed on, endeavoring to escape observation. But as it was, his feet had been arrested before he knew of her close vicinity, and now it would seem that he was afraid of her, and was flying from her, were he at once to walk off, leaving his friend behind him. And he knew that she had seen him, and had recognized him, and was now suffering from his presence. He could not but perceive that it was so from the fixedness of her face, and from the constrained manner in which she gazed before her.... He could not take his eyes from off her. He could see that she was as pretty as ever, that she was but very little altered. She was, in truth, somewhat stouter than in the old days, but of that he took no special notice. Should he speak to her? Should he try to catch her eye, and then raise his hat? Should he go up to her horse’s head boldly and ask her to let bygones be bygones?... Or should he simply ask her after her health. He made one step towards her, and he saw that the face became more rigid and more fixed than before, and then he desisted. He told himself that he was simply hateful to her. He thought that he could perceive that there was no tenderness mixed with her unabated anger. At this moment Bernard Dale and Emily came close upon him, and Bernard saw him at once.... ‘Dunn,’ he said, ‘I think we will ride on,’ and he put his horse into a trot....

  ‘Is there anything the matter?’ said Emily to her lover.

  ‘Nothing specially the matter,’ he replied; ‘but you were standing in company with the greatest blackguard that ever lived, and I thought we had better change our ground.’ ‘Bernard!’ said Lily, flashing on him with all the Are which her eyes could command. Then she remembered that she could not reprimand him for the offence of such abuse in such a company; so she reined in her horse and fell a-weeping.”

  The second and the last of the two encounte
rs between Lily and Crosbie took place in a great London house, where Lily was looking at the pictures, with her cousin and his friends:

  “Mrs. Harold Smith had declared that she would not look at another painting till the exhibition was open; three of the ladies were seated in the drawing-room, and Siph Dunn was standing before them, lecturing about art as though he had been brought up on the ancient masters; Emily and Bernard were lingering behind, and the others were simply delaying their departure till the truant lovers should have caught them. At this moment two gentlemen entered the room from the gallery, and the two gentlemen were Fowler Pratt and Adolphus Crosbie. All the party except Mrs. Thorne knew Crosbie personally, and all of them except Mrs. Harold Smith knew something of the story of what had occurred between Crosbie and Lily. Siph Dunn had learned it all since the meeting in the Park, having nearly learned it all from what he had seen there with his eyes. But Mrs. Thorne, who knew Lily’s story, did not know Crosbie’s appearance.... Crosbie would have gone on, but that in this attempt to do so he passed close by the chair on which Mrs. Harold Smith was sitting, and that he was accosted by her. ‘Mr. Crosbie,’ she said, ‘I haven’t seen you for an age. Has it come to pass that you have buried yourself entirely?’ He did not know how to extricate himself so as to move on at once. He paused, and hesitated, and then stopped, and made an attempt to talk to Mrs. Smith as though he were at his ease. The attempt was anything but successful; but having once stopped, he did not know how to put himself in motion again, so that he might escape. At this moment Bernard Dale and Emily Dunstable came up and joined the group; but neither of them had discovered who Crosbie was till they were close upon him.... Crosbie, in his attempt to talk to Mrs.