John Eames as he returned to the cottage was by no means able to fall back upon those resolutions as to his future life, which he had formed for himself and communicated to his friend Dalrymple, and which he had intended to bring at once into force in the event of his being rejected by Lily Dale. 'I will cleanse my mind of it altogether,' he had said, 'and though I may not forget her, I will live as though she were forgotten. If she declines my proposal again, I will accept her word as final. I will not go about the world any longer as a stricken deer--to be pitied or else bullied by the rest of the herd.' On his way down to Guestwick he had sworn twenty times that it should be so. He would make one more effort, and then he would give it up. But now, after his interview with Lily, he was as little disposed to give it up as ever.
He sat upon a gate in a paddock through which there was a back entrance into Lady Julia's garden, and there swore a thousand oaths that he would never give her up. He was, at any rate, sure that she would never become the wife of anyone else. He was equally sure that he would never become the husband of any other wife. He could trust her. Yes; he was sure of that. But could he trust himself? Communing with himself, he told himself that after all he was but a poor creature. Circumstances had been very good to him, but he had done nothing for himself. He was vain, and foolish, and unsteady. So he told himself while sitting upon the gate. But he had, at any rate, been constant to Lily, and constant he would remain.
He would never more mention her name to anyone--unless it were to Lady Julia tonight. To Dalrymple he would not open his mouth about her, but would plainly ask his friend to be silent on that subject if her name should be mentioned by him. But morning and evening he would pray for her, and in his prayers he would always think of her as his wife. He would never speak to another girl without remembering that he was bound to Lily. He would go nowhere into society without recalling to mind the fact that he was bound by the chains of a solemn engagement. If he knew himself he would be constant to Lily.
And then he considered in what manner it would be best and most becoming that he should still prosecute his endeavour and repeat his offer. He thought that he would write to her every year, on the same day of the year, year after year, it might be for the next twenty years. And his letters would be very ******. Sitting there on the gate he planned the wording of his letters; --of his first letter, and of his second, and of his third. They should be very like to each other--should hardly be more than a repetition of the same words. 'If now you are ready for me, then Lily, am I, as ever, still ready for you.' And then, 'if now' again and again, 'if now;--and still 'if now'. When his hair should be grey, and the wrinkles on his cheeks--ay, though they should be on hers, he would still continue to tell her from year to year that he was ready to take her. Surely some day that 'if now' would prevail. And should it never prevail, the merit of his constancy should be its own reward.
Such letters as those she would surely keep. Then he looked forward, down into the valley of coming years, and fancied her as she might sit reading them in the twilight of some long evening--letters which had been written all in vain. He thought that he could look forward with some satisfaction towards the close of his own career, in having been the hero of such a love-story. At any rate, if such a story were to be his story, the melancholy attached to it should arise from no fault of his own. He would still press her to be his wife. And then as he remembered that he was only twenty-seven and that she was twenty-four, he began to marvel at the feeling of grey old age which had come upon him, and tried to make himself believe that he would have her yet before the bloom was off her cheeks.
He went into the cottage and made his way at once into the room in which Lady Julia was sitting. She did not speak at first, but looked anxiously about his face. And he did not speak, but turned to a table near the window and took up a book--though the room was too dark for him to see to read the words. 'John,' at last said Lady Julia.
'Well, my lady?'
'Have you nothing to tell me, John?'
'Nothing on earth--except the same old story, which has now become a matter of course.'
'But, John, will you not tell me what she said?'
'Lady Julia, she has said no; simply no. It is a very easy word to say, and she has said it so often that it seems to come from her quite naturally.' Then he got a candle and sat down over the fire with a volume of a novel. It was not yet past five, and Lady Julia did not go upstairs to dress till six, and therefore there was an hour during which they were together. John had at first been rather grand to his old friend, and very uncommunicative. But before the dressing-bell had rung he had been coaxed into a confidential strain and had told everything.
'I suppose it is wrong and selfish,' he said. 'I suppose I am a dog in a manger. But I do own that there is a consolation to me in the assurance that she will never be the wife of that scoundrel.'
'I could never forgive her if she were to marry him now,' said Lady Julia.
'I could never forgive him. But she has said that she will not, and Iknow that she will not forswear herself. I shall go on with it, Lady Julia. I have made up my mind to that. I suppose it will never come to anything, but I shall stick to it. I can live an old bachelor as well as another man. At any rate I shall stick to it.' Then the good silly old woman comforted him and applauded him as though he were a hero among men, and did reward him, as Lily had predicted, by one of those now rare bottles of super-excellent port which had come to her from her brother's cellar.
John Eames stayed out his time at the cottage, and went over more than once again to Allington, and called on the squire, on one occasion dining with him and meeting the three ladies from the Small House; and he walked with the girls, comporting himself like any ordinary man. But he was not again alone with Lily Dale, nor did he learn whether she had in truth written those two words in her book. But the reader may be know that she did write them there on the evening of the day on which the promise was made. 'Lilian Dale--Old Maid'.
And when John's holiday was over, he returned to his duties at the elbow of Sir Raffle Buffle.