When Roger Carbury returned to Suffolk, after seeing his cousins in Welbeck Street, he was by no means contented with himself. That he should be discontented generally with the circumstances of his life was a matter of course. He knew that he was farther removed than ever from the object on which his whole mind was set. Had Hetta Carbury learned all the circumstances of Paul’s engagement with Mrs Hurtle before she had confessed her love to Paul — so that her heart might have been turned against the man before she had made her confession — then, he thought, she might at last have listened to him. Even though she had loved the other man, she might have at last done so, as her love would have been buried in her own bosom. But the tale had been told after the fashion which was most antagonistic to his own interests. Hetta had never heard Mrs Hurtle’s name till she had given herself away, and had declared to all her friends that she had given herself away to this man, who was so unworthy of her. The more Roger thought of this, the more angry he was with Paul Montague, and the more convinced that that man had done him an injury which he could never forgive.
But his grief extended even beyond that. Though he was never tired of swearing to himself that he would not forgive Paul Montague, yet there was present to him a feeling that an injury was being done to the man, and that he was in some sort responsible for that injury. He had declined to tell Hetta any part of the story about Mrs Hurtle — actuated by a feeling that he ought not to betray the trust put in him by a man who was at the time his friend; and he had told nothing. But no one knew so well as he did the fact that all the attention latterly given by Paul to the American woman had by no means been the effect of love, but had come from a feeling on Paul’s part that he could not desert the woman he had once loved, when she asked him for his kindness. If Hetta could know everything exactly — if she could look back and read the state of Paul’s mind as he, Roger, could read it — then she would probably forgive the man, or perhaps tell herself that there was nothing for her to forgive. Roger was anxious that Hetta’s anger should burn hot — because of the injury done to himself. He thought that there were ample reasons why Paul Montague should be punished — why Paul should be utterly expelled from among them, and allowed to go his own course. But it was not right that the man should be punished on false grounds. It seemed to Roger now that he was doing an injustice to his enemy by refraining from telling all that he knew.
As to the girl’s misery in losing her lover, much as he loved her, true as it was that he was willing to devote himself and all that he had to her happiness, I do not think that at the present moment he was disturbed in that direction. It is hardly natural, perhaps, that a man should love a woman with such devotion as to wish to make her happy by giving her to another man. Roger told himself that Paul would be an unsafe husband, a fickle husband — one who might be carried hither and thither both in his circumstances and his feelings — and that it would be better for Hetta that she should not marry him; but at the same time he was unhappy as he reflected that he himself was a party to a certain amount of deceit.
And yet he had said not a word. He had referred Hetta to the man himself. He thought that he knew, and he did indeed accurately know, the state of Hetta’s mind. She was wretched because she thought that while her lover was winning her love, while she herself was willingly allowing him to win her love, he was dallying with another woman, and making to that other woman promises the same as those he made to her. This was not true. Roger knew that it was not true. But when he tried to quiet his conscience by saying that they must fight it out among themselves, he felt himself to be uneasy under that assurance.
His life at Carbury, at this time, was very desolate. He had become tired of the priest, who, in spite of various repulses, had never for a moment relaxed his efforts to convert his friend. Roger had told him once that he must beg that religion might not be made the subject of further conversation between them. In answer to this, Father Barham had declared that he would never consent to remain as an intimate associate with any man on those terms. Roger had persisted in his stipulation, and the priest had then suggested that it was his host’s intention to banish him from Carbury Hall. Roger had made no reply, and the priest had of course been banished. But even this added to his misery. Father Barham was a gentleman, was a good man, and in great penury. To ill-treat such a one, to expel such a one from his house, seemed to Roger to be an abominable cruelty. He was unhappy with himself about the priest, and yet he could not bid the man come back to him. It was already being said of him among his neighbours, at Eardly, at Caversham, and at the Bishop’s palace, that he either had become or was becoming a Roman Catholic, under the priest’s influence. Mrs Yeld had even taken upon herself to write to him a most affectionate letter, in which she said very little as to any evidence that had reached her as to Roger’s defection, but dilated at very great length on the abominations of a certain lady who is supposed to indulge in gorgeous colours.
He was troubled, too, about old Daniel Ruggles, the farmer at Sheep’s Acre, who had been so angry because his niece would not marry John Crumb. Old Ruggles, when abandoned by Ruby and accused by his neighbours of personal cruelty to the girl, had taken freely to that source of consolation which he found to be most easily within his reach. Since Ruby had gone he had been drunk every day, and was making himself generally a scandal and a nuisance. His landlord had interfered with his usual kindness, and the old man had always declared that his niece and John Crumb were the cause of it all; for now, in his maudlin misery, he attributed as much blame to the lover as he did to the girl. John Crumb wasn’t in earnest. If he had been in earnest he would have gone after her to London at once. No; — he wouldn’t invite Ruby to come back. If Ruby would come back, repentant, full of sorrow — and hadn’t been and made a fool of herself in the meantime — then he’d think of taking her back. In the meantime, with circumstances in their present condition, he evidently thought that he could best face the difficulties of the world by an unfaltering adhesion to gin, early in the day and all day long. This, too, was a grievance to Roger Carbury.
But he did not neglect his work, the chief of which at the present moment was the care of the farm which he kept in his own hands. He was making hay at this time in certain meadows down by the river side; and was standing by while the men were loading a cart, when he saw John Crumb approaching across the field. He had not seen John since the eventful journey to London; nor had he seen him 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............