Crosbie said nothing about the letter on that morning; but during the day, or, perhaps, as he thought over the matter in bed, he made up his mind that he would accept Lady de Courcy's invitation. It was not only that he would be glad to see the Gazebees, or glad to stay in the same house with that great master in the high art of fashionable life, Lady Dumbello, or glad to renew his friendship with the Ladies Margaretta and Alexandrina. Had he felt that the circumstances of his engagement with Lily made it expedient for him to stay with her till the end of his holidays, he could have thrown over the de Courcys without a struggle. But he told himself that it would be well for him now to tear himself away from Lily; or perhaps he said that it would be well for Lily that he should be torn away. He must not teach her to think that they were to live only in the sunlight of each other's eyes during those months, or perhaps years, which might elapse before their engagement could be carried out. Nor must he allow her to suppose that either he or she were to depend solely upon the other for the amusements and employments of life. In this way he argued the matter very sensibly within his own mind, and resolved, without much difficulty, that he would go to Courcy Castle, and bask for a week in the sunlight of the fashion which would be collected there. The quiet humdrum of his own fireside would come upon him soon enough!
"I think I shall leave you on Wednesday, sir," Crosbie said to the squire at breakfast on Sunday morning.
"Leave us on Wednesday!" said the squire, who had an old-fashioned idea that people who were engaged to marry each other should remain together as long as circumstances could be made to admit of their doing so. "Nothing wrong, is there?"
"Oh, dear, no! But everything must come to an end some day; and as I must make one or two short visits before I get back to town, I might as well go on Wednesday. Indeed, I have made it as late as I possibly could."
"Where do you go from here?" asked Bernard.
"Well, as it happens, only into the next county,—to Courcy Castle." And then there was nothing more said about the matter at that breakfast-table.
It had become their habit to meet together on the Sunday mornings before church, on the lawn belonging to the Small House, and on this day the three gentlemen walked down together, and found Lily and Bell already waiting for them. They generally had some few minutes to spare on those occasions before Mrs Dale summoned them to pass through the house to church, and such was the case at present. The squire at these times would stand in the middle of the grass-plot, surveying his grounds, and taking stock of the shrubs, and flowers, and fruit-trees round him; for he never forgot that it was all his own, and would thus use this opportunity, as he seldom came down to see the spot on other days. Mrs Dale, as she would see him from her own window while she was tying on her bonnet, would feel that she knew what was passing through his mind, and would regret that circumstances had forced her to be beholden to him for such assistance. But, in truth, she did not know all that he thought at such times. "It is mine," he would say to himself, as he looked around on the pleasant place. "But it is well for me that they should enjoy it. She is my brother's widow, and she is welcome;—very welcome." I think that if those two persons had known more than they did of each other's hearts and minds they might have loved each other better.
And then Crosbie told Lily of his intention. "On Wednesday!" she said, turning almost pale with emotion as she heard this news. He had told her abruptly, not thinking, probably, that such tidings would affect her so strongly.
"Well, yes. I have written to Lady de Courcy and said Wednesday. It wouldn't do for me exactly to drop everybody, and perhaps—"
"Oh, no! And, Adolphus, you don't suppose I begrudge your going. Only it does seem so sudden; does it not?"
"You see, I've been here over six weeks."
"Yes; you've been very good. When I think of it, what a six weeks it has been! I wonder whether the difference seems to you as great as it does to me. I've left off being a grub, and begun to be a butterfly."
"But you mustn't be a butterfly when you're married, Lily."
"No; not in that sense. But I meant that my real position in the world,—that for which I would fain hope that I was created,—opened to me only when I knew you and knew that you loved me. But mamma is calling us, and we must go through to church. Going on Wednesday! There are only three days more, then!"
"Yes, just three days," he said, as he took her on his arm and passed through the house on to the road.
"And when are we to see you again?" she asked, as they reached the churchyard.
"Ah, who is to say that yet? We must ask the Chairman of Committees when he will let me go again." Then there was nothing more said, and they all followed the squire through the little porch and up to the big family-pew in which they all sat. Here the squire took his place in one special corner which he had occupied ever since his father's death, and from which he read the responses loudly and plainly,—so loudly and plainly, that the parish clerk could by no means equal him, though with tremulous voice he still made the attempt. "T' squire'd like to be squire, and parson, and clerk, and everything; so a would," the poor clerk would say, when complaining of the ill-usage which he suffered.
If Lily's prayers were interrupted by her new sorrow, I think that her fault in that respect would be forgiven. Of course she had known that Crosbie was not going to remain at Allington much longer. She knew quite as well as he did the exact day on which his leave of absence came to its end, and the hour at which it behoved him to walk into his room at the General Committee Office. She had taught herself to think that he would remain with them up to the end of his vacation, and now she felt as a schoolboy would feel who was told suddenly, a day or two before the time, that the last week of his holidays was to be taken from him. The grievance would have been slight had she known it from the first; but what schoolboy could stand such a shock, when the loss amounted to two-thirds of his remaining wealth? Lily did not blame her lover. She did not even think that he ought to stay. She would not allow herself to suppose that he could propose anything that was unkind. But she felt her loss, and more than once, as she knelt at her prayers, she wiped a hidden tear from her eyes.
Crosbie also was thinking of his departure more than he should have done during Mr Boyce's sermon. "It's easy listening to him," Mrs Hearn used to say of her husband's successor. "It don't give one much trouble following him into his arguments." Mr Crosbie perhaps found the difficulty greater than did Mrs Hearn, and would have devoted his mind more perfectly to the discourse had the argument been deeper. It is very hard, that necessity of listening to a man who says nothing. On this occasion Crosbie ignored the necessity altogether, and gave up his mind to the consideration of what it might be expedient that he should say to Lily before he went. He remembered well those few words which he had spoken in the first ardour of his love, pleading that an early day might be fixed for their marriage. And he remembered, also, how prettily Lily had yielded to him. "Only do not let it be too soon," she had said. Now he must unsay what he had then said; he must plead against his own pleadings, and explain to her that he desired to postpone the marriage rather than to hasten it,—a task which, I presume, must always be an unpleasant one for any man engaged to be married. "I might as well do it at once," he said to himself, as he bobbed his head forward into his hands by way of returning thanks for the termination of Mr Boyce's sermon.