“I thought it best to let you see it if you pleased,” said John Eames. Then he turned round as though he were going to leave the room; but suddenly he turned back again. “I don’t like to leave you, Sir Raffle, without saying goodbye. I do not suppose we shall meet again. Of course you must do your duty, and I do not wish you to think that I have any personal ill-will against you.” So saying, he put out his hand to Sir Raffle as though to take a final farewell. Sir Raffle looked at him in amazement. He was dressed, as has been said, in black, and did not look like the John Eames of every day to whom Sir Raffle was accustomed.
“I don’t understand this at all,” said Sir Raffle.
“I was afraid that it was only too plain,” said John Eames.
“And you must go?”
“Oh, yes;—that’s certain. I have pledged myself to go.”
“Of course I don’t know anything of this matter that is so important to your family.”
“No; you do not,” said Johnny.
“Can’t you explain it to me, then? so that I may have some reason—if there is any reason.”
Then John told the story of Mr. Crawley—a considerable portion of the story; and in his telling of it, I think it probable that he put more weight upon the necessity of his mission to Italy than it could have fairly been made to bear. In the course of the narration Sir Raffle did once contrive to suggest that a lawyer by going to Florence might do the business at any rate as well as John Eames. But Johnny denied this. “No, Sir Raffle, it is impossible; quite impossible,” he said. “If you saw the lawyer who is acting in the matter, Mr. Toogood, who is also my uncle, he would tell you the same.” Sir Raffle had already heard something of the story of Mr. Crawley, and was now willing to accept the sad tragedy of that case as an excuse for his private secretary’s somewhat insubordinate conduct. “Under the circumstances, Eames, I suppose you must go; but I think you should have told me all about it before.”
“I did not like to trouble you, Sir Raffle, with private business.”
“It is always best to tell the whole of a story,” said Sir Raffle. Johnny being quite content with the upshot of the negotiations accepted this gentle rebuke in silence, and withdrew. On the next day he appeared again at the office in his ordinary costume, and an idea crossed Sir Raffle’s brain that he had been partly “done” by the affectation of a costume. “I’ll be even with him some day yet,” said Sir Raffle to himself.
“I’ve got my leave, boys,” said Eames when he went out into the room in which his three friends sat.
“No!” said Cradell.
“But I have,” said Johnny.
“You don’t mean that old Huffle Scuffle has given it out of his own head?” said Fisher.
“Indeed he has,” said Johnny; “and bade God bless me into the bargain.”
“And you didn’t give him the oysters?” said FitzHoward.
“Not a shell,” said Johnny.
“I’m blessed if you don’t beat cockfighting,” said Cradell, lost in admiration at his friend’s adroitness.
We know how John passed his evening after that. He went first to see Lily Dale at her uncle’s lodgings in Sackville Street, from thence he was taken to the presence of the charming Madalina in Porchester Terrace, and then wound up the night with his friend Conway Dalrymple. When he got to his bed he felt himself to have been triumphant, but in spite of his triumph he was ashamed of himself. Why had he left Lily to go to Madalina? As he thought of this he quoted to himself against himself Hamlet’s often-quoted appeal to the two portraits. How could he not despise himself in that he could find any pleasure with Madalina, having a Lily Dale to fill his thoughts? “But she is not fair for me,” he said to himself—thinking thus to comfort himself. But he did not comfort himself.
On the next morning early his uncle, Mr. Toogood, met him at the Dover Railway Station. “Upon my word, Johnny, you’re a clever fellow,” said he. “I never thought that you’d make it all right with Sir Raffle.”
“As right as a trivet, uncle. There are some people, if you can only get to learn the length of their feet, you can always fit them with shoes afterwards.”
“You’ll go on direct to Florence, Johnny?”
“Yes; I think so. From what we have heard, Mrs. Arabin must be either there or at Venice, and I don’t suppose I could learn from anyone at Paris at which town she is staying at this moment.”
“Her address is Florence;—poste restante, Florence. You will be sure to find out at any of the hotels where she is staying, or where she has been staying.”
“But when I have found her, I don’t suppose she can tell me anything,” said Johnny.
“Who can tell? She may or she may not. My belief is that the money was her present altogether, and not his. It seems that they don’t mix their moneys. He has always had some scruple about it because of her son by a former marriage, and they always have different accounts at their bankers’. I found that out when I was at Barchester.”
“But Crawley was his friend.”
“Yes, Crawley was his friend; but I don’t know that fifty-pound notes have always been so very plentiful with him. Deans’ incomes ain’t what they were, you know.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” said Johnny.
“Well; they are not. And he has nothing of his own, as far as I can learn. It would be just
