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AYALA’S ANGEL
that he was ready to receive Frank Houston as his brother-inlaw, should it be so decided.
The time was running by both with Houston, the expectant son-in-law, and with Mr. Traffick, who had achieved his
position, and both were aware that no grace would be allowed to them beyond that which had been promised. Frank
had fully considered the matter, and was quite resolved that it
would be unmanly in him to run after his cousin Imogene, in
the Tyrol, before he had performed his business. One day,
therefore, after having returned from the daily allowance of
slaughter, he contrived to find Sir Thomas in the solitude of
his own room, and again began to act the part of Allan-a-Dale.
“I thought, Mr. Houston,” said Sir Thomas, “that we had settled that matter before.”
“Not quite,” said Houston.
“I don’t know why you should say so. I intended to be understood as expressing my mind.”
“But you have been good enough to ask me down here.”
“I may ask a man to my house, I suppose, without intending to give him my daughter’s hand.” Then he again asked
the important question, to which Allan-a-Dale’s answer was
so unreasonable and so successful. “Have you an income on
which to maintain my daughter?”
“I cannot just say that I have, Sir Thomas,” said Houston,
apologetically.
“Then you mean to ask me to furnish you with an income.”
“You can do as you please about that, Sir Thomas.”
“You can hardly marry her without it.”
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ANTHONY TROLLOPE
“Well; no; not altogether. No doubt it is true that I should
not have proposed myself had I not thought that the young
lady would have something of her own.”
“But she has nothing of her own,” said Sir Thomas. And
then that interview was over.
“You won’t throw us over, Lady Tringle?” Houston said to
Gertrude’s mother that evening.
“Sir Thomas likes to have his own way,” said Lady Tringle.
“Somebody got round him about Septimus Traffick.”
“That was different,” said Lady Tringle. “Mr. Traffick is in
Parliament, and that gives him an employment. He is a son of
Lord Boardotrade, and some of these days he will be in office.”
“Of course, you know that if Gertrude sticks to it she will
have her own way. When a girl sticks to it her father has to
give way. What does it matter to him whether I have any business or not? The money would be the same in one case as
the other, only it does seem such an unnecessary trouble to
have it put off.”
All this Lady Tringle seemed to take in good part, and half
acknowledged that if Frank Houston were constant in the matter he would succeed at last. Gertrude, when the time for his
departure had come, expressed herself as thoroughly disgusted by her father’s sternness. “It’s all bosh,” she said to her lover.
“Who is Lord Boardotrade that that should make a difference?
I have as much right to please myself as Augusta.” But there
was the stern fact that the money had not been promised, and
even Frank had not proposed to marry the girl of his heart
without the concomitant thousands.
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AYALA’S ANGEL
Before he left Glenbogie, on the evening of his departure,
he wrote a second letter to Miss Docimer, asfollows;—
'ൾൺඋർඈඎඌංඇ,ආ,
Here I am at Glenbogie, and here I have been for a week,
without doing a stroke of work. The father still asks “of his
house and his home,” and does not seem to be at all affected by my reference to the romantic grandeur of my own peculiar residence. Perhaps I may boast so far as to say that I have
laughed on the lass as successfully as did Allan-a-Dale. But
what’s the good of laughing on a lass when one has got nothing to eat. Allan-a-Dale could pick a pocket or cut a purse, accomplishments in which I am altogether deficient. I suppose
I shall succeed sooner or later, but when I put my neck into
the collar I had no idea that there would be so much up-hill
work before me. It is all very well joking, but it is not nice to
be asked “of your house and your home” by a gentleman who
knows very well you’ve got none, and is conscious of inhabiting three or four palaces himself. Such treatment must be
described as being decidedly vulgar. And then he must know
that it can be of no possible permanent use. The ladies are
all on my side, but I am told by Tringle mère that I am less acceptable than old Traffick, who married the other girl, because
I’m not the son of Lord Boardotrade! Nothing astonishes me so
much as the bad taste of some people. Now, it must all be put
off till Christmas, and the cruel part is, that one doesn’t see
how I’m to go on living.
In the meantime I have a little time in which to amuse myself, and I shall turn up in about three weeks at Merle Park.
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ANTHONY TROLLOPE
I wish chiefly to beg that you will not dissuade me from what
I see clearly to be a duty. I know exactly your line of argument.
Following a girl for her money is, you will say, mercenary. So,
as far as I can see, is every transaction in the world by which
men live. The judges, the bishops, the poets, the Royal academicians, and the Prime Ministers, are all mercenary;—as is also
the man who breaks stones for 2s. 6d. a-day. How shall a man
live without being mercenary unless he be born to fortune?
Are not girls always mercenary? Will she marry me knowing that I have nothing? Will you not marry some one whom
you will probably like much less simply because he will have
something for you to eat and drink? Of course I am mercenary,
and I don’t even pretend to old Tringle that I am not so. I feel
a little tired of this special effort;—but if I were to abandon it
I should simply have to begin again elsewhere. I have sighted my stag, and I must go on following him, trying to get on
the right side of the wind till I bring him down. It is not nice,
but it is to me manifestly my duty,—and I shall do it. Therefore, do not let there be any blowing up. I hate to be scolded.
Yours always affectionately,
F. H.
Gertrude, when he was gone, did not take the matter quite
so quietly as he did, feeling that, as she had made up her mind,
and as all her world would know that she had made up her
mind, it behoved her to carry her purpose to its desired end.
A girl who is known to be engaged, but whose engagement is
not allowed, is always in a disagreeable plight.
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AYALA’S ANGEL
“Mamma,” she said, “I think that papa is not treating
me well.”
“My dear, your papa has always had his own way.”
“That is all very well;—but why am I to be worse used than
Augusta? It turns out now that Mr. Traffick has not got a shilling of his own.”
“Your papa likes his being in Parliament.”
“All the girls can’t marry Members of Parliament.”
“And he likes his being the son of Lord Boardotrade.”
“Lord Boardotrade! I call that very mean. Mr. Houston is
a gentleman, and the Buncombe property has been for ever so
many hundreds of years in the family. I think more of Frank
as to birth and all that than I do of Lord Boardotrade and his
mushroom peerage. Can’t you tell papa that I mean to marry
Mr. Houston at last, and that he is making very little of me to
let me be talked about as I shall be?”
“I don’t think I can, Gertrude.”
“Then I shall. What would he say if I were to run away with
Frank?”
“I don’t think Frank Houston would do that.”
“He would if I told him,—in a moment.” There Miss Tringle was probably in error. “And unless papa consents I shall
tell him. I am not going to be made miserable for ever.”
This was at Glenbogie, in Inverness-shire, on the southeastern side of Loch Ness, where Sir Thomas Tringle possessed
a beautiful mansion, with a deer-forest, and a waterfall of his
own, and any amount of moors which the minds of sportmen
could conceive. Nothing in Scotland could be more excellent,
unless there might be some truth in the remarks of those who
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ANTHONY TROLLOPE
said that the grouse were scarce, and that the deer were almost non-existent. On the other side of the lake, four miles up
from the gates, on the edge of a ravine, down which rushed
a little stream called the Caller, was an inconvenient ricketty
cottage, built piecemeal at two or three different times, called
Drumcaller. From one room you went into another, and from
that into a third. To get from the sitting-room, which was
called the parlour, into another which was called the den, you
had to pass through the kitchen, or else to make communication by a covered passage out of doors which seemed to hang
over the margin of the ravine. Pine-trees enveloped the place.
Looking at the house from the outside any one would declare it to be wet through. It certainly could not with truth
be described as a comfortable family residence. But you might,
perhaps, travel through all Scotland without finding a more
beautifully romantic spot in which to reside. From that passage, which seemed to totter suspended over the rocks, whence
the tumbling rushing waters could always be heard like music
close at hand, the view down over the little twisting river was
such as filled the mind with a conviction of realised poetry. Behind the house across the little garden there was a high rock
where a little path had been formed, from which could be seen
the whole valley of the Caller and the broad shining expanse of
the lake beyond. Those who knew the cottage of Drumcaller
were apt to say that no man in Scotland had a more picturesque abode, or one more inconvenient. Even bread had to
be carried up from Callerfoot, as was called the little village
down on the lake side, and other provisions, such even as meat,
had to be fetched twenty miles, from the town of Inverness.
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AYALA’S ANGEL
A few days after the departure of Houston from Glenbogie
two men were seated with pipes in their mouths on the landing outside the room called the den to which the passage from
the parlour ran. Here a square platform had been constructed
capable of containing two arm-chairs, and here the owner of
the cottage was accustomed to sit, when he was disposed, as
he called it, to loaf away his time at Drumcaller. This man was
Colonel Jonathan Stubbs, and his companion at the present
moment was Isadore Hamel.
“I never knew them in Rome,” said the Colonel. “I never
even saw Ayala there, though she was so much at my aunt’s
house. I was in Sicily part of the time, and did not get back
till they had all quarrelled. I did know the nephew, who was
a good-natured but a vulgar young man. They are vulgar people, I should say.”
“You could hardly have found Ayala vulgar?” asked Hamel.
“Indeed, no. But uncles and aunts and nephews and nieces
are not at all bound to run together. Ayala is the daintiest little
darling I ever saw.”
“I knew their father and mother, and certainly no one
would have called them vulgar.”
“Sisters when they marry of course go off according to their
husbands, and the children follow. In this case one sister became Tringlish after Sir Tringle, and the other Dormerish, after that most improvident of human beings, your late friend
the artist. I don’t suppose any amount of experience will teach
Ayala how many shillings there are in a pound. No doubt
the Honourable Mrs. Traffick knows all about it.”
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ANTHONY TROLLOPE
“I don’t think a girl is much improved by knowing how
many shillings there are in a pound,” said Hamel.
“It is useful sometimes.”
“So it might be to kill a sheep and skin it, or to milk a cow
and make cheese; but here, as in other things, one acquirement will drive out others. A woman, if she cannot be beautiful, should at any rate be graceful, and if she cannot soar to
poetry, should at least be soft and unworldly.”
“That’s all very well in its way, but I go in for roasting, baking, and boiling.
I can bake and I can brew;
I can make an Irish stew;
Wash a shirt and iron it too.
That’s the sort of girl I mean to go in for if ever I marry;
and when you’ve got six children and a small income it’s apt to
turn out better than grace and poetry.”
“A little of both perhaps,” said Hamel.
“Well, yes; I don’t mind a little Byron now and again, so
there is no nonsense. As to Glenbogie, it’s right over there
across the lake. You can get a boat at Callerfoot, and a fellow to take you across and wait for you won’t cost you more
than three half-crowns. I suppose Glenbogie is as far from
the lake on that side as my cottage is on this. How you’ll get up
except by walking I cannot say, unless you will write a note to
Sir Thomas and ask him to send a horse down for you.”
“Sir Thomas would not accommodate me.”
“You think he will frown if you come after his niece?”
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AYALA’S ANGEL
“I simply want to call on Miss Dormer,” said Hamel, blushing, “because her father was always kind to me.”
“I don’t mean to ask any questions,” said the Colonel.
“It is just so as I say. I do not like being in the neighbourhood without calling on Miss Dormer.”
“I daresay not.”
“But I doubt whether Sir Thomas or Lady Tringle would
be at all inclined to make me welcome. As to the distance, I can
walk that easily enough, and if the door is slammed in my face
I can walk back again.”
Thus it was resolved that early on the following morning
after breakfast Isadore Hamel should go across the lake and
make his way up to Glenbogie.
CHAPTER XIX
ISADORE HAMEL IS
ASKED TO LUNCH
On the following morning, the morning of Monday, 2nd
September, Isadore Hamel started on his journey. He had
thought much about the journey before he made it. No doubt
the door had been slammed in his face in London. He felt
quite conscious of that, and conscious also that a man should
not renew his attempt to enter a door when it has been once
slammed in his face. But he understood the circumstances
nearly as they had happened,—except that he was not aware
how far the door had been slammed by Lady Tringle without any concurrence on the part of Sir Thomas. But the door
had, at any rate, not been slammed by Lucy. The only person
he had really wished to see within that house had been Lucy
Dormer; and he had hitherto no reason for supposing that she
would be unwilling to receive him. Her face had been sweet
and gracious when she saw him in the Park. Was he to deny
himself all hope of any future intercourse with her because
Lady Tringle had chosen to despise him? He must make some
attempt. It was more than probable, no doubt, that this attempt would be futile. The servant at Glenbogie would probably be as well instructed as the servant in Queen’s Gate. But
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