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Title: The Last Chronicle of Barset
Author: Anthony Trollope
Release Date: January, 2002 [Etext #3045]
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by Anthony Trollope
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The Last Chronicle of Barset
by
Anthony Trollope
CONTENTS
I How Did He Get It?
II By Heavens, He Had Better Not!
III The Archdeacon's Threat
IV The Clergyman's House at Hogglestock
V What the World Thought about it
VI Grace Crawley
VII Miss Prettyman's Private Room
VIII Mr Crawley is Taken to Silverbridge
IX Grace Crawley Goes to Allington
X Dinner at Framley Court
XI The Bishop Sends his Inhibition
XII Mr Crawley Seeks for Sympathy
XIII The Bishop's Angel
XIV Major Grantly Consults a Friend
XV Up in London
XVI Down in Allington
XVII Mr Crawley is Summoned to Barchester
XVIII The Bishop of Barchester is Crushed
XIX Where Did it Come From?
XX What Mr Walker Thought about it
XXI Mr Robarts on his Embassy
XXII Major Grantly at Home
XXIII Miss Lily Dale's Resolution
XXIV Mrs Dobbs Broughton's Dinner-Party
XXV Miss Madalina Demolines
XXVI The Picture
XXVII A Hero at Home
XXVIII Showing How Major Grantly took a Walk
XXIX Miss Lily Dale's Logic
XXX Showing what Major Grantly did after his Walk
XXXI Showing how Major Grantly Returned to Guestwick
XXXII Mr Toogood
XXXIII The Plumstead Foxes
XXXIV Mrs Proudie Sends for her Lawyer
XXXV Lily Dale writes Two Words in her Book
XXXVI Grace Crawley Returns Home
XXXVII Hook Court
XXXVIII Jael
XXXIX A New Flirtation
XL Mr Toogood's Ideas about Society
XLI Grace Crawley at Home
XLII Mr Toogood Travels Professionally
XLIII Mr Crosbie Goes to the City
XLIV 'I Suppose I Must Let You Have It'
XLV Lily Dale Goes to London
XLVI The Bayswater Romance
XLVII Dr Tempest at the Palace
XLVIII The Softness of Sir Raffle Buffle
XLIX Near the Close
L Lady Lufton's Proposition
LI Mrs Dobbs Broughton Piles her Fagots
LII Why don't you have an 'It' for Yourself?
LIII Rotten Row
LIV The Clerical Commission
LV Framley Parsonage
LVI The Archdeacon Goes to Framley
LVII A Double Pledge
LVIII The Cross-grainedness of Men
LIX A Lady Presents her Compliments to Miss L.D.
LX The End of Jael and Sisera
LXI 'It's Dogged as Does It'
LXII Mr Crawley's Letter to the Dean
LXIII Two Vistors to Hogglestock
LXIV The Tragedy in Hook Court
LXV Miss Van Siever makes her Choice
LXVI Requiescat in Pace
LXVII In Memoriam
LXVIII The Obstinacy of Mr Crawley
LXIX Mr Crawley's Last Appearance in his own Pulpit
LXX Mrs Arabin is Caught
LXXI Mr Toogood at Silverbridge
LXXII There is Comfort at Plumstead
LXXIV The Crawleys are Informed
LXXV Madalina's Heart is Bleeding
LXXVI I Think he is Light of Heart
LXXVII The Shattered Tree
LXXVIII The Arabins Return to Barchester
LXXIX Mr Crawley Speaks of his Coat
LXXX Miss Demolines Desires to Become a Finger-post
LXXXI Barchester Cloisters
LXXXII The Last Scene at Hogglestock
LXXXIII Mr Crawley is Conquered
LXXXIV Conclusion
CHAPTER I
HOW DID HE GET IT?
'I can never bring myself to believe it, John,' said Mary Walker the
pretty daughter of Mr George Walker, attorney of Silverbridge. Walker
and Winthrop was the name of the firm, and they were respectable people,
who did all the solicitors' business that had to be done in that part of
Barsetshire on behalf of the Crown, were employed on the local business
of the Duke of Omnium, who is great in those parts, and altogether held
their heads up high, as provincial lawyers often do. They--the
Walkers--lived in a great brick house in the middle of the town, gave
dinners, to which the county gentlemen not unfrequently condescended to
come, and in a mild way led the fashion in Silverbridge. 'I can never
bring myself to believe it, John,' said Miss Walker.
'You'll have to bring yourself to believe it,' said John, without taking
his eyes from his book.
'A clergyman--and such a clergyman too!'
'I don't see that that has anything to do with it.' And as he now
spoke, John did take his eyes of his book. 'Why should not a clergyman
turn thief as well as anybody else? You girls always seem to forget that
clergymen are only men after all.'
'Their conduct is likely to be better than that of other men, I think.'
'I deny it utterly,' said John Walker. 'I'll undertake to say that at
this moment there are more clergymen in debt in Barsetshire than there
are either lawyers or doctors. This man has always been in debt. Since
he has been in the county I don't think he has ever been able to show
his face in the High Street of Silverbridge.'
'John, that is saying more than you have a right to say,' said Mrs
Walker.
'Why, mother, this very cheque was given to a butcher who had threatened
a few days before to post bills all about the county, giving an account
of the debt that was due to him, if the money was not paid at once.'
'More shame for Mr Fletcher,' said Mary. 'He has made a fortune as
butcher in Silverbridge.'
'What has that to do with it? Of course a man likes to have his money.
He had written three times to the bishop, and he had sent a man over to
Hogglestock to get his little bill settled six days running. You see he
got it at last. Of course, a tradesman must look for his money.'
'Mamma, do you think that Mr Crawley stole the cheque?' Mary, as she
asked the question, came and stood over her mother, looking at her with
anxious eyes.
'I would rather give no opinion, dear.'
'But you must think something when everybody is talking about it,
mamma.'
'Of course my mother thinks he did,' said John, going back to his book.
'It is impossible that she should think otherwise.'
'That is not fair, John,' said Mrs Walker; 'and I won't have you
fabricate thoughts for me, or put the expression of them into my mouth.
The whole affair is very painful, and as your father is engaged in the
inquiry, I think that the less said about the matter in this house the
better. I am sure that that would be your father's feeling.'
'I do not see that at all,' said John. 'Mr Crawley is not more than any
other man just because he's a clergyman. I hate all that kind of
clap-trap. There are a lot of people here in Silverbridge who think the
matter shouldn't be followed up, just because the man is in a position
which makes the crime more criminal in him than it would be in another.'
'But I feel sure that Mr Crawley has committed no crime at all,' said
Mary.
'My dear,' said Mrs Walker, 'I have just said that I would rather you
would not talk about it. Papa will be in directly.'
'I won't, mamma, only--'
'Only! yes; just only!' said John. 'She'd go on till dinner if anyone
would stay to hear her.'
'You've said twice as much as I have, John.' But John had left the room
before his sister's words could reach him.
'You know, mamma, it is quite impossible not to help thinking of it,'
said Mary.
'I daresay it is, my dear.'
'And when one knows the people it does make it so dreadful.'
'But do you know them? I never spoke to Mr Crawley in my life, and I do
not think I ever saw her.'
'I knew Grace very well--when she used to come first to Miss Prettyman's
school.'
'Poor girl. I pity her.'
'Pity her! Pity is no word for it, mamma. My heart bleeds for them.
And yet I do not believe for a moment that he stole the cheque. How can
it be possible? For though he may have been in debt because they have
been so very, very, poor, yet we all know that he has been an excellent
clergyman. When the Robartses were dining here last, I heard Mrs Robarts
say that for piety and devotion to his duties she had hardly ever seen
anyone equal to him. And the Robartses know more of them than anybody.'
'They say that the dean is his great friend.'
'What a pity it is that the Arabins should be away just now when he is
in such trouble.' And in this way the mother and daughter went on
discussing the question of the clergyman's guild in spite of Mrs
Walker's expressed desire that nothing more might be said about it. But
Mrs Walker, like many other mothers, was apt to be more free in converse
with her daughter than she was with her son. While they were thus
talking the father came in from his office, and then the subject was
dropped. He was a man between fifty and sixty years of age, with grey
hair, rather short, and somewhat corpulent, but still gifted with that
amount of personal comeliness which comfortable position and the respect
of others will generally seem to give. A man rarely carries himself
meanly whom the world holds in high esteem.
'I am very tired, my dear,' said Mr Walker.
'You look tired. Come and sit down for a few minutes before you dress.
Mary, get your father's slippers.' Mary instantly ran to the door.
'Thanks, my darling,' said the father. And then he whispered to his
wife, as soon as Mary was out of hearing. 'I fear the unfortunate man is
guilty. I fear he is! I fear he is!'
'Oh, heavens! what will become of them?'
'What indeed? She has been with me today.'
'Has she? And what could you say to her?'
'I told her at first that I could not see her, and begged her not to
speak to me about it. I tried to make her understand that she should go
to someone else. But it was of no use.'
'And how did it end?'
'I asked to go in to you, but she declined. She said you could do
nothing for her.'
'And does she think her husband guilty?'
'No, indeed. She think him guilty! Nothing on earth--or from heaven
either, as I take it, would make her suppose it to be possible. She came
simply to tell me how good he was.'
'I love her for that,' said Mrs Walker.
'So did I. But what is the good of loving her? Thank you, dearest.
I'll get your slippers for you some day, perhaps.'
The whole county was astir with this matter of this alleged guilt of the
Reverend Mr Crawley--the whole county almost as keenly as the family of
Mr Walker, of Silverbridge. The crime laid to his charge was the theft
of a cheque for twenty pounds, which he was said to have stolen out of a
pocket-book left or dropped in his house, and to have passed as money
into the hands of one Fletcher, a butcher of Silverbridge, to whom he
was indebted. Mr Crawley was in those days the perpetual curate of
Hogglestock, a pariah in the northern extremity of East Barsetshire; a
man known by all who knew anything of him to be very poor--an unhappy,
moody, disappointed man, upon whom the troubles of the world always
seemed to come with a double weight. But he had ever been respected as a
clergyman, since his old friend Mr Arabin, the dean of Barchester, had
given him the small incumbency which he now held. Though moody, unhappy,
and disappointed, he was a hard-working, conscientious pastor, among the
poor people with whom his lot was cast; for in the parish of Hogglestock
there resided only a few farmers higher in degree than field labourers,
brickmakers, and such like. Mr Crawley had now passed some ten years of
his life at Hogglestock; and during those years he had worked very hard
to do his duty, struggling to teach the people around him perhaps too
much of the mystery, but something of the comfort, of religion. That he
had became popular in his parish cannot be said of him. He was not a man
to make himself popular in any position. I have said that he was moody
and disappointed. He was even worse than this; he was morose, sometimes
almost to insanity. There had been days in which even his wife had found
it impossible to deal with him otherwise than as with an acknowledged
lunatic. And this was known among the farmers, who talked about their
clergyman among themselves as though he were a madman. But among the
very poor, among the brickmakers of Hoggle End--a lawless, drunken,
terribly rough lot of humanity--he was held in high respect; for they
knew that he lived hardly, as they lived; that he worked hard, as they
worked; and that the outside world was hard to him, as it was to them;
and there had been an apparent sincerity of godliness about the man, and
a manifest struggle to do his duty in spite of the world's ill-usage,
which had won its way even with the rough; so that Mr Crawley's name had
stood high with many in the parish, in spite of the unfortunate
peculiarity of his disposition. This was the man who was now accused of
stealing a cheque for twenty pounds.
But before the circumstances of the alleged theft are stated, a word or
two must be said as to Mr Crawley's family. It is declared that a good
wife is a crown to her husband, but Mrs Crawley has been much more than
a crown to him. As had regarded all the inner life of the man--all that
portion of his life which had not been passed in the pulpit or in
pastoral teaching--she had been crown, throne, and sceptre all in one.
That she had endured with him and on his behalf the miseries of poverty,
and the troubles of a life which had known no smiles, is perhaps not to
be alleged as much to her honour. She had joined herself to him for
better or worse, and it was her manifest duty to bear such things; wives
always have to bear them, knowing when they marry that they must take
their chance. Mr Crawley might have been a bishop, and Mrs Crawley, when
she married him, perhaps thought it probable that such would be his
fortune. Instead of that he was now, just as he was approaching his
fiftieth year, a perpetual curate, with an income of one hundred and
thirty pounds per annum--and a family. That had been Mrs Crawley's luck
in life, and of course she bore it. But she had also done much more than
this. She had striven hard to be contented, or, rather, to appear to be
contented, when he had been most wretched and most moody. She had
struggled to conceal from him her own conviction to his half-insanity,
treating him at the same time with the respect due to an honoured father
of a family, and with the careful measured indulgence fit for a sick and
wayward child. In all the terrible troubles of their life her courage
had been higher than his. The metal of which she was made had been
tempered to a steel which was very rare and fine, but the rareness and
fineness of which he had failed to appreciate. He had often told her
that she was without pride, because she was stooped to receive from
others on his behalf and on behalf of their children, things which were
needful, but which she could not buy. He had told her that she was a
beggar, and that it was better to starve than to beg. She had borne the
rebuke without a word in reply, and had then begged again for him, and
had endured the starvation herself. Nothing in their poverty had, for
years past, been a shame to her; but every accident of their poverty was
still, and ever had been, a living disgrace to him.
They had had many children, and three were still alive. Of the eldest,
Grace Crawley, we shall hear much in the coming story. She was at this
time nineteen years old, and there were those who said, that in spite of
her poverty, her shabby outward apparel, and a certain thin, unfledged,
unrounded form of person, a want of fulness in the lines of her figure,
she was the prettiest girl in that part of the world. She was living now
at a school in Silverbridge, where for the last year she had been a
teacher; and there were many in Silverbridge who declared that very
bright prospects were opening to her--that young Major Grantly of Crosby
Lodge, who, though a widower with a young child, was the cynosure of all
female eyes in and around Silverbridge, had found beauty in her thin
face, and that Grace Crawley's fortune was made in the teeth, as it
were, of the prevailing ill-fortune of the family. Bob Crawley, who was
two years younger, was not at Malbro' School, from whence it was
intended that he should proceed to Cambridge, and be educated there at
the expense of his godfather Dean Arabin. In this also the world saw a
stroke of good luck. But then nothing was lucky to Mr Crawley. Bob,
indeed, who had done well at school, might do well at Cambridge--might
achieve great things there. But Mr Crawley would almost preferred that
the boy should work in the fields, than that he should be educated in a
manner so manifestly eleemosynary. And then his clothes! How was he to
be provided with clothes fit either for school or for college? But the
dean and Mrs Crawley between them managed this, leaving Mr Crawley very
much in the dark, as Mrs Crawley was in the habit of leaving him. Then
there was a younger daughter, Jane, still at home, who passed her life
between her mother's work-table and her father's Greek, mending linen,
and learning to scan iambics--for Mr Crawley in his early days had been
a ripe scholar.
And now there had come upon them all this terribly crushing disaster.
That poor Mr Crawley had gradually got himself into a mess of debt at
Silverbridge, from which he had been quite unable to extricate himself,
was generally known by all the world both of Silverbridge and
Hogglestock. To a great many it was known that Dean Arabin had paid
money for him, very much contrary to his own consent, and that he had
quarrelled, or attempted to quarrel, with the dean in consequence--had
so attempted, although the money had in part passed through his own
hands. There had been one creditor, Fletcher, the butcher at
Silverbridge, who had of late been specially hard upon poor Crawley.
This man, who had not been without good nature in his dealings, had
heard stories of the dean's good-will and such like, and had loudly
expressed his opinion that the perpetual curate of Hogglestock would
show a higher pride in allowing himself to be indebted to a rich brother
clergyman, than in remaining under the thrall of a butcher. And thus a
rumour had grown up. And hen the butcher had written repeated letters to
the bishop--to bishop Proudie of Barchester, who had first caused his
chaplain to answer them, and had told Mr Crawley somewhat roundly what
was his opinion of a clergyman who ate meat and did not pay for it. But
nothing that bishop could say or do enabled Mr Crawley to pay the
butcher. It was very grievous to such a man as Mr Crawley to receive
these letters from such a man as Bishop Proudie; but the letters came,
and made festering wounds, but then there was an end of them. And at
last there had come forth from the butcher's shop a threat that if the
money were not paid by a certain date, printed bills would be posted
about the country. All who heard of this in Silverbridge were very angry
with Mr Fletcher, for no one there had ever known a tradesman to take
such a step before; but Fletcher swore that he would persevere, and
defended himself by showing that six or seven months since, in the
spring of the year, Mr Crawley had been paying money in Silverbridge,
but had paid none to him--to him who had been not only his earliest, but
his most enduring creditor. 'He got money from the dean in March,' said
Mr Fletcher to Mr Walker 'and he paid twelve pounds ten to Green, and
seventeen pounds to Grobury the baker.' It was that seventeen pounds to
Grobury, the baker, for flour, which made the butcher fixedly determined
to smite the poor clergyman hip and thigh. 'And he paid money to Hall
and to Mrs Holt, and to a deal more; but he never came near my shop. If
he had even shown himself, I would not have so much about it.' And then
a day before the day named, Mrs Crawley had come into Silverbridge, and
had paid the butcher twenty pounds in four five-pound notes. So far
Fletcher the butcher had been successful.
Some six weeks after this, inquiry began to be made as to a certain
cheque for twenty pounds drawn by Lord Lufton on his bankers in London,
which cheque had been lost in the early spring by Mr Soames, Lord
Lufton's man of business in Barsetshire, together with a pocket-book in
which it had been folded. This pocket-book Soames had believed himself
to have left it at Mr Crawley's house, and had gone so far, even at the
time of the loss, as to express his absolute conviction that he had so
left it. He was in the habit of paying a rentcharge to Mr Crawley on
behalf of Lord Lufton, amounting to twenty pounds four shillings, every
half-year. Lord Lufton held the large tithes of Hogglestock, and paid
annually a sum of forty pounds eight shillings to the incumbent. This
amount was, as a rule, remitted punctually by Mr Soames through the
post. On the occasion now spoken of, he had had some reason to visit
Hogglestock, and had paid the money personally to Mr Crawley. Of so much
there is no doubt. But he had paid it by a cheque drawn by himself on
his own bankers at Barchester, and that cheque had been cashed in the
ordinary way on the next morning. On returning to his own house in
Barchester he had missed his pocket-book, and had written to Mr Crawley
to make inquiry. There had been no money in it, beyond the cheque drawn
by Lord Lufton for twenty pounds. Mr Crawley had answered this letter by
another, saying that no pocket-book had been found in his house. All
this had happened in March.
In October, Mrs Crawley paid twenty pounds to Fletcher, the butcher, and
in November Lord Lufton's cheque was traced back through the Barchester
bank to Mr Crawley's hands. A brickmaker of Hoggle End, much favoured by
Mr Crawley, had asked for change over the counter of this Barchester
bank--not, as will be understood, the bank on which the cheque was
drawn--and had received it. The accommodation had been refused to the
man at first, but when he presented the cheque the second day, bearing
Mr Crawley' name on the back of it, together with a note from Mr Crawley
himself, the money had been given for it; and the identical notes so
paid had been given to Fletcher, the butcher on the next day by Mrs
Crawley. When inquiry was made, Mr Crawley stated that the cheque had
been paid to him by Mr Soames, on behalf of the rentcharge due to him by
Lord Lufton. But the error of this statement was at once made manifest.
There was the cheque, signed by Mr Soames himself, for the exact
amount--twenty pounds four shillings. As he himself declared, he had
never in his life paid money on behalf of Lord Lufton by a cheque drawn
on his lordship. The cheque given by Lord Lufton, and which had been
lost, had been a private matter between them. His lordship had simply
wanted change in his pocket, and his agent had given it to him. Mr
Crawley was speedily shown to be altogether wrong in the statement made
to account for the possession of the cheque.
Then he became very moody and would say nothing further. But his wife,
who had known nothing of his first statement when made, came forward and
declared that she believed the cheque for twenty pounds to be part of a
present given by Dean Arabin to her husband in April last. There had
been, she said, great heart-burnings about this gift, and she hardly
dared to speak to her husband on the subject. An execution had been
threatened in the house by Grobury, the baker, of which the dean had
heard. Then there had been some scenes at the deanery between her
husband and the dean and Mrs Arabin, as to which she had subsequently
heard much from Mrs Arabin. Mrs Arabin had told her that money had been
given--and at last taken. Indeed, so much had been very apparent, as
bills had been paid to the amount of at least fifty pounds. When the
threat made by the butcher had reached her husband's ears, the effect
upon him had been very grievous. All this was the story told by Mrs
Crawley to Mr Walker, the lawyer, when he was pushing his inquiries.
She, poor woman, at any rate told all she knew. Her husband had told her
one morning, when the butcher's threat was weighing heavily on his mind,
speaking to her in such a humour that she found it impossible to cross-
question him, that he had still money left, though it was money which he
had hoped that he would not be driven to use; and he had given her four
five pound notes and had told her to go to Silverbridge and satisfy the
man who was so eager for his money. She had done so, and had felt no
doubt that the money so forthcoming had been given by the dean. That was
the story told by Mrs Crawley.
But how could she explain her husband's statements as to the cheque,
which had been shown to be altogether false? All this passed between Mr
Walker and Mrs Crawley, and the lawyer was very gentle with her. In the
first stages of the inquiry he had simply desired to learn the truth,
and place the clergyman above suspicion. Latterly, being bound as he was
to follow up officially, he would not have seen Mrs Crawley, had he been
able to escape that lady's importunity. 'Mr Walker,' she had said, at
last, 'you do not know my husband. No one knows him but I. It is hard to
have to tell you all of our troubles.' 'If I can lessen them, trust me
that I will do so,' said the lawyer. 'No one, I think, can lessen them
in this world,' said the lady. 'The truth is, sir, that my husband often
knows not what he says. When he declared that the money had been paid to
him by Mr Soames, most certainly he thought so. There are times when in
his misery he knows not what he says--when he forgets everything.'
Up to this period Mr Walker had not suspected Mr Crawley of anything
dishonest, nor did he suspect him as yet. The poor man had probably
received the money from the dean, and had told the lie about it, not
choosing to own that he had taken the money from his rich friend, and
thinking that there would be no further inquiry. He had been very
foolish, and that would be the end of it. Mr Soames was by no means so
good-natured in his belief. 'How should my pocket-book have got into
Dean Arabin's hands?' said Mr Soames, almost triumphantly. 'And then I
felt sure at the time that I had left it at Crawley's house!'
Mr Walker wrote a letter to the dean, who at that moment was in
Florence, on his way to Rome, from whence he was going on to the Holy
Land. There came back a letter from Mr Arabin, saying that on the 17th
March he had given to Mr Crawley a sum of fifty pounds and that the
payment had been made in five Bank of England notes of ten pounds each,
which had been handed to his friend in the library at the deanery. The
letter was very short, and, may, perhaps, be described as having been
almost curt. Mr Walker, in his anxiety to do the best he could for Mr
Crawley, had simply asked a question as to the nature of the transaction
between the two gentlemen, saying that no doubt the dean's answer would
clear up a little mystery which existed at present respecting a cheque
for twenty pounds. The dean in answer simply stated the fact as it had
been given above; but he wrote to Mr Crawley begging to know what was in
truth this new difficulty, and offering any assistance in his power. He
explained all the circumstances of the money, as he remembered them. The
sun advanced had certainly consisted of fifty pounds, and there had
certainly been five Bank of England notes. He had put the notes into an
envelope, which he had not closed, but had addressed to Mr Crawley, and
had placed this envelope in his friend's hands. He went on to say that
Mrs Arabin would have written, but the was in Paris with her son. Mrs
Arabin was to remain in Paris during his absence in the Holy Land, and
meet him in Italy on his return. As she was so much nearer at hand, the
dean expressed a hope that Mrs Crawley would apply to her if there was
any trouble.
The letter to Mr Walker was conclusive as to the dean's money. Mr
Crawley had not received Lord Lufton's cheque from the dean. Then whence
had he received it? The poor wife was left by the lawyer to obtain
further information from her husband. Ah, who can tell how terrible were
the scenes between that poor pair of wretches, as the wife endeavoured
to learn the truth from her miserable, half-maddened husband! That her
husband had been honest throughout, she had not any shadow of doubt. She
did not doubt that to her at least he endeavoured to tell the truth, as
far as his poor racked imperfect memory would allow him to remember what
was true and what was not true. The upshot of it all was that the
husband declared that he still believed that the money had come to him
from the dean. He had kept it by him, not wishing to use it if he could
help it. He had forgotten it--so he said at times--having understood
from Arabin that he was to have fifty pounds, and having received more.
If it had not come to him from the dean, then it had been sent to him by
the Prince of Evil for his utter undoing; and there were times in which
he seemed to think that such had been the manner in which the fatal
cheque had reached him. In all that he said he was terribly confused,
contradictory, unintelligible--speaking almost as a madman might
speak--ending always in declaring that the cruelty of the world had been
too much for him, that the waters were meeting over his head, and
praying to God's mercy to remove him from this world. It need hardly be
said that his poor wife in these days had a burden on her shoulders that
was more than enough to crush any woman.
She at last acknowledged to Mr Walker that she could not account for the
twenty pounds. She herself would write again to the dean about it, but
she hardly hoped for any further assistance there. 'The dean's answer
was plain,' said Mr Walker. 'He says that he gave Mr Crawley five
ten-pound notes, and those five notes we have traced to Mr Crawley's
hands.' Then Mrs Crawley could say nothing further beyond making
protestations of her husband's innocence.
CHAPTER II
BY HEAVENS, HE HAD BETTER NOT!
I must ask the reader to make acquaintance with Major Grantly of Cosby
Lodge, before he is introduced to the family of Mr Crawley, at their
parsonage at Hogglestock. It has been said that Major Grantly had thrown
a favourable eye on Grace Crawley--by which report occasion was given to
all men and women in those parts to hint that the Crawleys, with all
their piety and humility, were very cunning, and that one of the
Grantlys was--to say the least of it--very soft, admitted as it was
throughout the county of Barsetshire, that there was no family therein
more widely awake to the affairs generally of this world and the next
combined, than the family of which Archdeacon Grantly was the respected
head and patriarch. Mrs Walker, the most good-natured woman in
Silverbridge, had acknowledged to her daughter that she could not
understand it--that she could not see anything at all in Grace Crawley.
Mr Walker had shrugged his shoulders and expressed a confident belief
that Major Grantly had not a shilling of his own beyond his half-pay and
his late wife's fortune, which was only six thousand pounds. Others, who
were ill-natured, had declared that Grace Crawley was little better than
a beggar, and that she could not possibly have acquired the manners of a
gentlewoman. Fletcher the butcher had wondered whether the major would
pay his future father-in-law's debts; and Dr Tempest, the old Rector of
Silverbridge, whose four daughters were all as yet unmarried, had turned
up his old nose, and had hinted that half-pay majors did not get caught
in marriage so easily as that.
Such and such like had been the expressions of the opinions of men and
women in Silverbridge. But the matter had been discussed further afield
than at Silverbridge, and had been allowed to intrude itself as a most
unwelcome subject into the family conclave of the archdeacon's rectory.
To those who have not as yet learned the fact from the public character
and well-appreciated reputation of the man, let it be known that
Archdeacon Grantly was at this time, as he had been for many years
previously, Archdeacon of Barchester and Rector of Plumstead Episcopi. A
rich and prosperous man he had even been--though he also had had his
sore troubles, as we all have--his having arisen chiefly from want of
that higher ecclesiastical promotion which his soul had coveted, and for
which the whole tenor of his life had especially fitted him. Now, in his
green old age, he had ceased to covet, but had not ceased to repine. He
had ceased to covet aught for himself, but still coveted much for his
children; and for him such a marriage as this which was now suggested
for his son, was encompassed almost with the bitterness of death. 'I
think it would kill me,' he said to his wife; 'by heavens, I think it
would be my death!'
A daughter of the archdeacon had made a splendid matrimonial
alliance--so splendid that its history was at the time known to all the
aristocracy of the county, and had not been altogether forgotten by any
of those who keep themselves well instructed in the details of the
peerage. Griselda Grantly had married Lord Dumbello, the eldest don of
the Marquis of Hartletop--than whom no English nobleman was more
puissant, if broad acres, many castles, high title, and stars and
ribbons are any sign of puissance--and she was now, herself, Marchioness
of Hartletop, with a little Lord Dumbello of her own. The daughter's
visits to the parsonage of her father were of necessity rare, such
necessity having come from her own altered sphere of life. A Marchioness
of Hartletop has special duties which will hardly permit her to devote
herself frequently to the humdrum society of a clerical mother and
father. That it would be so, father and mother had understood when they
sent the fortunate girl forth to a higher world. But, now and again,
since her august marriage, she had laid her coroneted head upon one of
the old rectory pillows for a night or so, and, on such occasions all
the Plumsteadians had been loud in praise of her condescension. Now it
happened that when this second and more aggravated blast of the evil
wind reached the rectory--the renewed waft as to Major Grantly's
infatuation regarding Miss Grace Crawley, which, on its renewal, seemed
to bring with it something of a confirmation--it chanced, I say, that at
that moment Griselda, Marchioness of Hartletop, was gracing the paternal
mansion.
I am not quite sure that the mother would have been equally quick to ask
her daughter's advice, had she been left in the matter entirely to her
own propensities. Mrs Grantly had ever loved her daughter dearly, and
had been very proud of that great success in life which Griselda had
achieved; but in late years, the child had become, as a woman, separate
from the mother, and there had arisen not unnaturally, a break of that
close confidence which in early years had existed between them.
Griselda, Marchioness of Hartletop, was more than ever the daughter of
the archdeacon, even though he might never see her. Nothing could rob
him of the honour of such a progeny--nothing, even though there had been
an actual estrangement between them. But it was not so with Mrs Grantly.
Griselda had done very well, and Mrs Grantly had rejoiced; but she had
lost her child. Now the major, who had done well also, though in a much
lesser degree, was still her child, moving in the same sphere of life
with her, still dependent in a great degree upon his father's bounty, a
neighbour in the county, a frequent visitor at the parsonage, and a
visitor who could be received without any of that trouble that attended
the unfrequent comings of Griselda, the Marchioness, to the home of her
youth. And for this reason Mrs Grantly, terribly put out as she was at
the idea of a marriage between her son and one standing so poorly in the
world's esteem as Grace Crawley, would not have brought forward the
matter before her daughter, had she been left to her own desires. A
marchioness in one's family is a tower of strength, no doubt; but there
are counsellors so strong that we do not wish to trust them, lest in the
trusting we ourselves be overwhelmed by their strength. Now Mrs Grantly
was by no means willing to throw her influence into the hands of her
titled daughter.
But the titled daughter was consulted and gave her advice. On the
occasion of the present visit to Plumstead she had consented to lay her
head for two nights on the parsonage pillows, and on the second evening
her brother the major was to come over from Cosby Lodge to meet her.
Before his coming the affair of Grace Crawley was discussed.
'It would break my heart, Griselda,'said the archdeacon, piteously--'and
your mother's.'
'There is nothing against the girl's character,' said Mrs Grantly, 'and
the father and mother are gentlefolk by birth; but such a marriage for
Henry would be unseemly.'
'To make it worse, there is a terrible story about him,' said the
archdeacon.
'I don't suppose there is much in that,' said Mrs Grantly.
'I can't say. There is no knowing. They told me today in Barchester
that Soames is pressing a case against him.'
'Who is Soames, papa?' asked the marchioness.
'He is Lord Lufton's man of business, my dear.'
'Oh, Lord Lufton's man of business!' There was something of a sneer in
the tone of the lady's voice as she mentioned Lord Lufton's name.
'I am told,' continued the archdeacon, 'that Soames declares the cheque
was taken from a pocket-book which he left by accident in Crawley's
house.'
'You don't mean to say, archdeacon, that you think that Mr Crawley--a
clergyman--stole it!' said Mrs Grantly.
'I don't say anything of the kind, my dear. But supposing Mr Crawley to
be as honest as the sun, you wouldn't wish Henry to marry his daughter.'
'Certainly not,' said the mother. 'It would be an unfitting marriage.
The poor girl has no advantages.'
'He is not able to pay the baker's bill. I always though Arabin was
very wrong to place such a man in such a parish as Hogglestock. Of
course the family could not live there.' The Arabin here spoken of was
Dr Arabin, dean of Barchester. The dean and archdeacon had married
sisters, and there was much intimacy between the families.
'After all it is only rumour, as yet,' said Mrs Grantly.
'Fothergill told me only yesterday, that he sees her almost every day,'
said the father. 'What are we to do, Griselda? You know how headstrong
Henry is.' The marchioness sat quite still; looking at the fire, and
made no immediate answer to this address.
'There is nothing for it but that you should tell him what you think,'
said the mother.
'If his sister were to speak to him, it might do much,' said the
archdeacon. To this Mrs Grantly said nothing; but Mrs Grantly's daughter
understood very well that her mother's confidence in her was not equal
to her father's. Lady Hartletop said nothing, but still sat, with
impassive face, and eyes fixed upon the fire. 'I think that if you were
to speak to him, Griselda, and tell him that he would disgrace his
family, he would be ashamed to go on with such a marriage,' said the
father. 'He would feel, connected as he is with Lord Hartletop--'
'I don't think he would feel anything about that,' said Mrs Grantly.
'I daresay not,' said Lady Hartletop.
'I am sure he ought to feel it,' said the father. They were all silent,
and sat looking at the fire.
'I suppose, papa, you allow Henry an income,' said Lady Hartletop, after
a while.
'Indeed I do--eight hundred a year.'
'Then I think I should tell him that that must depend upon his conduct.
Mamma, if you won't mind ringing the bell, I will send for Cecile, and
go upstairs and dress.' Then the marchioness went upstairs to dress, and
in about an hour the major arrived in his dogcart. He was also allowed
to go upstairs to dress before anything was said to him about his great
offence.
'Griselda is right,' said the archdeacon, speaking to his wife out of
his dressing-room. 'She is always right. I never knew a young woman with
more sense than Griselda.'
'But you do not mean to say that in any event you would stop Henry's
income?' Mrs Grantly was also dressing and made reply out of her
bedroom.
'Upon my word, I don't know. As a father I would do anything to prevent
such a marriage as that.'
'But if he did marry her in spite of the threat? And he would if he had
once said so.'
'Is a father's word, then, to go for nothing; and a father who allows
his son eight hundred a year? If he told the girl that he would be
ruined she couldn't hold him to it.'
'My dear, they'd know as well as I do, that you would give way after
three months.'
'But why should I give way? Good heavens--'
'Of course you'd give way, and of course we should have the young woman
here, and of course we should make the best of it.'
The idea of having Grace Crawley as a daughter at the Plumstead Rectory
was too much for the archdeacon, and he resented it by additional
vehemence to the tone of his voice, and a nearer personal approach to
the wife of his bosom. All unaccoutred as he was, he stood in the
doorway between the two rooms, and thence fulminated at his wife his
assurances that he would never allow himself to be immersed in such a
depth of humility as that she had suggested. 'I can tell you this, then,
that if ever she comes here, I shall take care to be away. I will never
receive her here. You can do as you please.'
'That is just what I cannot do. If I could do as I pleased, I would put
a stop to it at once.'
'It seems to me that you want to encourage him. A child about sixteen
years of age!'
'I am told she is nineteen.'
'What does it matter if she's fifty-nine? Think of what her bringing up
has been. Think what it would be to have all the Crawleys in our house
for ever, and all their debts, and all their disgrace!'
'I do not know that they have ever been disgraced.'
'You'll see. The whole county has heard of the affair of this twenty
pounds. Look at that dear girl upstairs, who has been such a comfort to
us. Do you think it would be fit that she and her husband should meet
such a one as Grace Crawley at our table?'
'I don't think it would do them a bit of harm,' said Mrs Grantly. 'But
there would be no chance of that, seeing that Griselda's husband never
comes to us.'
'He was here the year before last.'
'And I never was so tired of a man in my life.'
'Then you prefer the Crawleys, I suppose. This is what you get from
Eleanor's teaching.' Eleanor was the dean's wife, and Mrs Grantly's
younger sister. 'It has always been a sorrow to me that I ever brought
Arabin into the diocese.'
'I never asked you to bring him, archdeacon. But nobody was so glad as
you when he proposed to Eleanor.'
'Well, the long and the short of it is this, I shall tell Henry tonight
that if he makes a fool of himself with this girl, he must not look to
me any longer for an income. He has about six thousand a year of his
own, and if he chooses to throw himself away, he had better go and live
in the south of France, or in Canada, or where he pleases. He shan't
come here.'
'I hope he won't marry the girl, with all my heart,' said Mrs Grantly.
'He had better not. By heavens, he had better not!'
'But if he does, you'll be the first to forgive him.'
On hearing this the archdeacon slammed the door, and retired to his own
washing apparatus. At the present moment he was very angry with his
wife, but then he was so accustomed to such anger, and was so well aware
that it in truth meant nothing, that it did not make him unhappy. The
archdeacon and Mrs Grantly had now been man and wife for more than
quarter of a century and had never in truth quarrelled. He had the most
profound respect for her judgment, and the most implicit reliance on her
conduct. She had never yet offended him, or caused him to repent the
hour in which he had made her Mrs Grantly. But she had come to
understand that she might use a woman's privilege with her tongue; and
she used it--not altogether to his comfort. On the present occasion he
was the more annoyed because he felt that she might be right. 'It would
be a positive disgrace, and I never would see him again,' he said to
himself. And yet as he said it, he knew that he would not have the
strength of character to carry him through a prolonged quarrel with his
son. 'I never would see her--never, never!' he said to himself. 'And
than such an opening as he might have in his sister's house!'
Major Grantly had been a successful man in life--with the one exception
of having lost the mother of his child within a twelve-month of his
marriage and within a few hours of that child's birth. He had served in
India as a very young man, and had been decorated with the Victoria
Cross. Then he had married a lady with some money, and had left the
active service of the army, with the concurring advice of his own family
and that of his wife. He had taken a small place in his father's county,
but the wife for whose comfort he had taken it had died before she was
permitted to see it. Nevertheless he had gone to reside there, hunting a
good deal and farming a little, making himself popular in the district,
and keeping up the good name of Grantly in a successful way,
till--alas!,--it had seemed good to him to throw those favouring eyes on
poor Grace Crawley. His wife had now been dead just two years, and he
was still under thirty, no could deny it would be right that he should
marry again. No one did deny it. His father had hinted that he ought to
do so, and had generously whispered that if some little increase to the
major's present income were needed, he might possibly be able to do
something. 'What is the good of keeping it?' the archdeacon had said in
a liberal after-dinner warmth; 'I only want it for your brother and
yourself.' The brother was a clergyman.
And the major's mother had strongly advised him to marry again without
loss of time. 'My dear Henry,' she had said, 'you'll never be younger,
and youth does go for something. As for dear little Edith, being a girl,
she is almost no impediment. Do you know those two girls at
Chaldicotes?'
'What, Mrs Thorne's nieces?'
'No; they are not her nieces but her cousins. Emily Dunstable is very
handsome;--and as for money--!'
'But what about birth, mother?'
'One can't have everything, my dear.'
'As far as I am concerned, I should like to have everything or nothing,'
the major said, laughing. Now for him to think of Grace Crawley after
that--of Grace Crawley who had no money, and no particular birth, and
not even beauty herself--so at least Mrs Grantly said--who had not even
enjoyed the ordinary education of a lady, was too bad. Nothing had been
wanting to Emily Dunstable's education, and it was calculated that she
would have at least twenty thousand pounds on the day of her marriage.
The disappointment of the mother would be the more sore because she had
gone to work upon her little scheme with reference to Miss Emily
Dunstable, and had at first, as she thought, seen her way to success--to
success in spite of the disparaging words her son had spoken to her. Mrs
Thorne's house at Chaldicotes--or Dr Thorne's house as it should,
perhaps, be more commonly called, for Dr Thorne was the husband of Mrs
Thorne--was in these days the pleasantest house in Barsetshire. No one
saw so much company as the Thornes, or spent so much money in so
pleasant a way. The great county families, the Pallisers and the De
Courcys, the Luftons and the Greshams, were no doubt grander, and some
of them were perhaps richer than the Chaldicote Thornes--as they were
called to distinguish them from the Thornes of Ullathorne; but none of
these people were so pleasant in their ways, so free in their
hospitality, or so easy in their modes of living, as the doctor and his
wife. When first Chaldicotes, a very old country seat, had by the
chances of war fallen into their hands and been newly furnished, and
newly decorated, and newly gardened, and newly greenhoused and
hot-watered by them, many of the county people had turned up their noses
at them. Dear old Lady Lufton had done so, and had been greatly
grieved--saying nothing, however, of her grief, when her son and
daughter-in-law had broken away from her, and submitted themselves to
the blandishments of the doctor's wife. And the Grantlys had stood
aloof, partly influenced, no doubt, by their dear and intimate old
friend Miss Monica Thorne of Ullathorne, a lady of the very old school,
who, though good as gold and kind as charity, could not endure that an
interloping Mrs Thorne, who never had a grandfather, should come to
honour and glory in the county, simply because of her riches. Miss
Monica Thorne stood out, but Mrs Grantly gave way, and having once found
that Dr Thorne, and Mrs Thorne, and Emily Dunstable, and Chaldicote
House together, were very charming. And the major had been once there
with her, and had made himself very pleasant, and there certainly had
been some little passage of incipient love between him and Miss
Dunstable, as to which Mrs Thorne, who managed everything, seemed to be
well pleased. This had been after the first mention made by Mrs Grantly
to her son of Emily Dunstable's name, but before she had heard any
faintest whispers of his fancy for Grace Crawley; and she had therefore
been justified in hoping--almost in expecting, that Emily Dunstable
would be her daughter-in-law, and was therefore the more aggrieved when
this terrible Crawley peril first opened itself before her eyes.
CHAPTER III
THE ARCHDEACON'S THREAT
The dinner-party at the rectory comprised none but the Grantly family.
The marchioness had written to say that she preferred to have it so. The
father had suggested that the Thornes of Ullathorne, very old friends,
might be asked, and the Greshams of Boxall Hill, and had even promised
to endeavour to get old Lady Lufton over to the rectory, Lady Lufton
having in former years been Griselda's warm friend. But Lady Hartletop
had preferred to see her dear mother and father in privacy. Her brother
Henry she would be glad to meet, and hoped to make some arrangement with
him for a short visit to Hartlebury, her husband's place in
Shropshire--as to which latter hint, it may, however, be at once said
that nothing further was spoken after the Crawley alliance had been
suggested. And there had been a very sore point mooted by the daughter
in a request made to her father that she might not be called upon to
meet her grandfather, her mother's father. Mr Harding, a clergyman of
Barchester, who was now stricken in years.--'Papa would not have come,'
said Mrs Grantly, 'but I think, I do think--' Then she stopped herself.
'Your father has odd ways sometimes, my dear. You know how fond I am of
having him here myself.'
'It does not signify,' said Mrs Grantly. 'Do not let us say anything
more about it. Of course we cannot have everything. I am told the child
does her duty in her sphere of life, and I suppose we ought to be
contented.' Then Mrs Grantly went up to her own room, and there she
cried. Nothing was said to the major on the unpleasant subject of the
Crawleys before dinner. He met his sister in the drawing-room, and was
allowed to kiss her noble cheek. 'I hope Edith is well, Henry,' said the
sister. 'Quite well; and little Dumbello is the same, I hope?' 'Thank
you, yes; quite well.' The major never made inquiries after the august
family, or would allow it to appear that he was conscious of being shone
upon by the wife of a marquis. Any adulation which Griselda received of
that kind came from her father, and therefore, unconsciously she had
learned to think that her father was more better bred than the other
members of her family, and more fitted by nature to move in that sacred
circle to which she herself had been exalted. We need not dwell upon the
dinner, which was but a dull affair. Mrs Grantly strove to carry on the
family party exactly as it would have been carried on had her daughter
married the son of some neighbouring squire; but she herself was
conscious of the struggle, and the fact of there being a struggle
produced failure. The rector's servants treated the daughter of the
house with special awe, and the marchioness herself moved, and spoke,
and ate, and drank with a cold magnificence, which I think had become a
second nature with her, but which was not on that account the less
oppressive. Even the archdeacon, who enjoyed something in that which was
so disagreeable to his wife, felt a relief when he was left alone after
dinner with his son. He felt relieved as his son got up to open the door
for his mother and sister, but was aware at the same time that he had
before him a most difficult and possibly a most disastrous task. His
dear son Henry was not a man to be talked smoothly out of, or into, any
propriety. He had a will of his own, and having hitherto been a
successful man, who in youth had fallen into few youthful troubles--who
had never justified his father in using stern parental authority--was
not now inclined to bend his neck. 'Henry,' said the archdeacon, 'what
are you drinking? That's '34 port, but it's not just what it should be.
Shall I send for another bottle?'
'It will do for me, sir. I shall only take a glass.'
'I shall drink two or three glasses of claret. But you young fellows
have become so desperately temperate.'
'We take our wine at dinner, sir.'
'By-the-by, how well Griselda is looking.'
'Yes, she is. It's always easy for women to look well when they're
rich.' How would Grace Crawley look, then, who was poor as poverty
itself, and who would remain poor, if his son was fool enough to marry
her? That was the train of thought which ran through the archdeacon's
mind. 'I do not think much of riches,' said he, 'but it is always well
that a gentleman's wife or a gentleman's daughter should have a
sufficiency to maintain her position in life.'
'You may say the same, sir, of everybody's wife and everybody's
daughter.'
'You know what I mean, Henry.'
'I am not quite sure that I do, sir.'
'Perhaps I had better speak out at once. A rumour has reached your
mother and me, which we don't believe for a moment, but which,
nevertheless, makes us unhappy even as a report. They say that there is
a young woman living in Silverbridge to whom you are becoming attached.'
'Is there any reason why I should not become attached to a young woman
in Silverbridge?--though I hope any young woman to whom I may become
attached will be worthy at any rate of being called a young lady.'
'I hope so, Henry; I hope so. I do hope so.'
The archdeacon looked across at his son's face, and his heart sank
within him. His son's voice and his son's eyes seemed to tell him two
things. They seemed to tell him, firstly, that the rumour about Grace
Crawley was true; and, secondly, that the major was resolved not to be
talked out of his folly. 'But you are not engaged to anyone, are you?'
said the archdeacon. The son did not at first make any answer, and then
the father repeated the question. 'Considering our mutual positions,
Henry, I think you ought to tell me if you are engaged.'
'I am not engaged. Had I become so, I should have taken the first
opportunity of telling you or my mother.'
'Thank God. Now, my dear boy, I can speak out more plainly. The young
woman whose name I have heard is daughter to that Mr Crawley who is
perpetual curate at Hogglestock. I knew that there could be nothing in
it.'
'But there is something in it, sir.'
'What is there in it? Do not keep me in suspense, Henry. What is it
you mean?'
'It is rather hard to be cross-questioned in this way on such a subject.
When you express yourself as thankful that there is nothing in the
rumour, I am forced to stop you, as otherwise it is possible that
hereafter you may say that I have deceived you.'
'But you don't mean to marry her?'
'I certainly do not pledge myself not to do so.'
'Do you mean to tell me, Henry, that you are in love with Miss Crawley?'
Then there was another pause, during which the archdeacon sat looking
for an answer; but the major never said a word. 'Am I to suppose that
you intend to lower yourself by marrying a young woman who cannot
possibly have enjoyed any of the advantages of a lady's education? I say
nothing of the imprudence of the thing; nothing of her own want of
fortune; nothing of your having to maintain a whole family steeped in
poverty; nothing of the debts and character of the father, upon whom, as
I understand, at this moment there rests a grave suspicion
of--of--of--what I'm afraid I must call downright theft.'
'Downright theft, certainly, if he were guilty.'
'I say nothing of that; but looking at the young woman herself--'
'She is simply the best educated girl whom it has ever been my lot to
meet.'
'Henry, I have a right to expect that you will be honest with me.'
'I am honest with you.'
'Do you mean to ask this girl to marry you?'
'I do not think that you have any right to ask me that question, sir.'
'I have a right at any rate to tell you this, that if you so far
disgrace yourself and me, I shall consider myself bound to withdraw from
you all the sanction which would be conveyed by my --my--continued
assistance.'
'Do you intend me to understand that you will stop my income?'
'Certainly I should.'
'Then, sir, I think you would behave to me most cruelly. You advised me
to give up my profession.'
'Not in order that you might marry Grace Crawley.'
'I claim the privilege of a man of my age to do as I please in such a
matter as marriage. Miss Crawley is a lady. Her father is a clergyman,
as is mine. Her father's oldest friend is my uncle. There is nothing on
earth against her except her poverty. I do not think I ever heard of
such cruelty on a father's part.'
'Very well, Henry.'
'I have endeavoured to do my duty by you, sir, always; and by my mother.
You can treat me in this way, if you please, but it will not have any
effect on my conduct. You can stop my allowance tomorrow, if you like
it. I had not yet made up my mind to make an offer to Miss Crawley, but
I shall do so tomorrow morning.'
This was very bad indeed, and the archdeacon was extremely unhappy. He
was by no means at heart a cruel man. He loved his children dearly. If
this disagreeable marriage were to take place, he would doubtless do
exactly as his wife had predicted. He would not stop his son's income
for a single quarter; and, though he went on telling himself that he
would stop it, he knew in his own heart that any such severity was
beyond his power. He was a generous man in money matters--having a
dislike for poverty which was not generous--and for his own sake could
not have endured to see a son of his in want. But he was terribly
anxious to exercise the power which the use of the threat might give
him. 'Henry,' he said, 'you are treating me badly, very badly. My
anxiety has always been for the welfare of my children. Do you think
that Miss Crawley would be a fitting sister-in-law for that dear girl
upstairs?'
'Certainly I do, or for any other dear girl in the world; excepting that
Griselda, who is not clever, would hardly be able to appreciate Miss
Crawley, who is clever.'
'Griselda not clever! Good heavens!' Then there was another pause, and
as the major said nothing, the father continued his entreaties. 'Pray,
pray think of what my wishes are, and your mother's. You are not
committed as yet. Pray think of us while there is time. I would rather
double your income, if I saw you marry anyone that we could name here.'
'I have enough as it is, if I may only be allowed to know that it will
not be capriciously withdrawn.' The archdeacon filled his glass
unconsciously, and sipped his wine, while he thought what further he
might say. Perhaps it might be better that he should say nothing further
at the moment. The major, however, was indiscreet, and pushed the
question. 'May I understand, sir, that you threat is withdrawn, and that
my income is secure?'
'What, if you marry this girl?'
'Yes sir; will my income be continued to me if I marry Miss Crawley?'
'No, it will not.' Then the father got up hastily, pushed the decanter
back angrily from his hand, and without saying another word walked away
into the drawing-room. That evening at the rectory was gloomy. The
archdeacon now and again said a word or two to his daughter, and his
daughter answered him in monosyllables. The major sat apart moodily, and
spoke to no one. Mrs Grantly, understanding well what had passed, knew
that nothing could be done at the present moment to restore family
comfort; so she sat by the fire and knitted. Exactly at ten they all
went to bed.
'Dear Henry,' said the mother to her son the next morning; 'think much
of yourself and of your child, and of us, before you take any great step
in your life.'
'I will, mother,' said he. Then he went out and put on his wrapper, and
got into his dog-cart, and drove himself to Silverbridge. He had not
spoken to his father since they were in the dining-room on the previous
evening. When he started, the marchioness had not yet come downstairs;
but at eleven she breakfasted, and at twelve she also was taken away.
Poor Mrs Grantly had not had much comfort from her children's visits.
CHAPTER IV
THE CLERGYMAN'S HOUSE AT HOGGLESTOCK
Mrs Crawley had walked from Hogglestock to Silverbridge on the occasion
of her visit to Mr Walker, the attorney, and had been kindly sent back
by that gentleman in his wife's little open carriage. The tidings which
she brought home with her to her husband were very grievous. The
magistrates would sit on the next Thursday--it was then Friday--and Mr
Crawley had better appear before them to answer the charge made by Mr
Soames. He would be served with a summons, which he would obey of his
own accord. There had been many points very closely discussed between
Walker and Mrs Crawley, as to which there had been great difficulty in
the choice of words which should be tender enough to convey to her the
very facts as they stood. Would Mr Crawley come, or must a policeman be
sent to fetch him? The magistrate had already issued a warrant for his
apprehension. Such in truth was the fact, but they had agreed with Mr
Walker, that as there was no reasonable ground for anticipating any
attempt at escape on the part of the reverend gentleman, the lawyer
might use what gentle means he could for ensuring the clergyman's
attendance. Could Mrs Crawley undertake to say that he would appear? Mrs
Crawley did undertake either that her husband should appear on the
Thursday, or else that she would send over in the early part of the week
and declare her inability to ensure his appearance. In that case it was
understood the policeman must come. Then Mr Walker had suggested that Mr
Crawley had better employ a lawyer. Upon this Mrs Crawley had looked
beseechingly up into Mr Walker's face, and had asked him to undertake
the duty. He was of course obliged to explain that he was already
employed on the other side. Mr Soames had secured his services, and
though he was willing to do all in his power to mitigate the sufferings
of the family, he could not abandon the duty he had undertaken. He named
another attorney, however, and then sent the poor woman home in his
wife's carriage. 'I fear that unfortunate man is guilty. I fear he is,'
Mr Walker had said to his wife within ten minutes of the departure of
the visitor.
Mrs Crawley would not allow herself to be driven up to the garden gate
before her own house, but had left the carriage some three hundred yards
off down the road and from thence she walked home. It was now quite
dark. It was nearly six in the evening on a wet December night, and
although cloaks and shawls had been supplied to her, she was wet and
cold when she reached her home. But at such a moment, anxious as she was
to prevent the additional evil which would come to them from illness to
herself she could not pass through to her room till she had spoken to
her husband. He was sitting in the one sitting-room on the left side of
the passage as the house was entered, and with him was their daughter
Jane, a girl now nearly sixteen years of age. There was no light in the
room, and hardly more than a spark of fire showed in the grate. The
father was sitting on one side of the hearth, in an old arm-chair, and
there he had sat for the last hour without speaking. His daughter had
been in and out of the room, and had endeavoured to gain his attention
now and again by a word, but he had never answered her, and had not even
noticed her presence. At the moment when Mrs Crawley's step was heard
upon the gravel which led to the door, Jane was kneeling before the fire
with a hand upon her father's arm. She had tried to get her hand into
his, but he had either been aware of the attempt, or rejected it.
'Here is mamma, at last,' said Jane, rising to her feet as her mother
entered the house.
'Are you all in the dark,' said Mrs Crawley, striving to speak in a
voice that should not sound sorrowful.
'Yes, mamma; we are in the dark. Papa is here. Oh, mamma, how wet you
are!'
'Yes, dear. It is raining. Get alight out of the kitchen, Jane, and I
will go upstairs in two minutes.' Then when Jane was gone, the wife made
her way in the dark over to her husband's side, and spoke a word to him.
'Josiah,' she said, 'will you not speak to me?'
'What should I speak about? Where have you been?'
'I have been to Silverbridge. I have been to Mr Walker. He, at any
rate, is very kind'
'I don't want his kindness. I want no man's kindness. Mr Walker is the
attorney, I believe. Kind indeed!'
'I mean considerate. Josiah, let us to the best we can in this trouble.
We have had others as heavy before.'
'But none to crush me as this will crush me. Well; what am I to do? Am
I to go to prison--tonight?' At this moment his daughter returned with a
candle, and the mother could not make her answer at once. It was a
wretched, poverty-stricken room. By degrees the carpet had disappeared,
which had been laid down some nine or ten years since, when they had
first come to Hogglestock, and which even then had not been new. Now
nothing but a poor fragment of it remained in front of the fire-place.
In the middle of the room there was a table which had once been large;
but one flap of it was gone altogether, and the other flap sloped
grievously towards the floor, the weakness of old age having fallen into
its legs. There were two or three smaller tables about, but they stood
propped against walls, thence obtaining a security which their own
strength would not give them. At the further end of the room there was
an ancient piece of furniture, which was always called 'papa's
secretary', at which Mr Crawley customarily sat and wrote his sermons,
and did all work that was done by him within the house. The man who had
made it, some time in the last century, had intended it to be a locked
guardian for domestic documents, and the receptacle for all that was
most private in the house of some paterfamilias. But beneath the hands
of Mr Crawley it always stood open; and with the exception of the small
space at which he wrote, was covered with dog's-eared books, from
nearly all of which the covers had disappeared.
There were there two odd volumes of Euripides, a Greek Testament, an
Odyssey, a duodecimo Pindar, and a miniature Anacreon. There was half a
Horace--the two first books of the Odes at the beginning and the De Arte
Poetica at the end having disappeared. There was a little bit of a
volume of Cicero, and there were Caesar's 'Commentaries' in two volumes,
so stoutly bound that they had defied the combined ill-usage of time and
the Crawley family. All these were piled upon the secretary, with many
others--odd volumes of sermons and the like; but the Greek and Latin lay
at the top, and showed signs of frequent use. There was one arm-chair in
the room--a Windsor chair, as such used to be called, made soft by an
old cushion in the back, in which Mr Crawley sat when both he and his
wife were in the room, and Mrs Crawley when he was absent. And there was
an old horsehair sofa--now almost denuded of its horsehair--but that,
like the tables required the assistance of a friendly wall. Then there
was a half a dozen of other chairs--all of different sorts --and they
completed the furniture of the room. It was not such a room as one would
wish to see inhabited by an beneficed clergyman of the Church of
England; but they who know what money will do and what it will not, will
understand how easily a man with a family, and with a hundred and thirty
pounds a year, may be brought to the need of inhabiting such a chamber.
When it is remembered that three pounds of meat a day, at ninepence a
pound, will cost over forty pounds a year, there need be no difficulty
in understanding that it may be so. Bread for such a family must cost at
least twenty-five pounds. Clothes for five persons of whom one must at
any rate wear the raiment of a gentleman, can hardly be found for less
than ten pounds a year a head. Then there remains fifteen pounds for
tea, sugar, beer, wages, education, amusements and the like. In such
circumstances a gentleman can hardly pay much for the renewal of
furniture!
Mrs Crawley could not answer her husband's question before her daughter,
and was therefore obliged to make another excuse for again sending her
out of the room. 'Jane, dear,' she said, 'bring my things down to the
kitchen and I will change them by the fire. I will be there in two
minutes, when I have had a word with your papa.' The girl went
immediately and then Mrs Crawley answered her husband's question. 'No,
my dear; there is no question of you going to prison.'
'But there will be.'
'I have undertaken that you shall attend before the magistrates at
Silverbridge in Thursday next, at twelve o'clock. You will do that?'
'Do it! You mean, I suppose, to say that I must go there. Is anybody
to come and fetch me?'
'Nobody will come. Only you must promise that you will be there. I have
promised for you. You will go; will you not?' She stood leaning over
him, half embracing him, waiting for an answer; but for a while he gave
none. 'You will tell me that you will do what I have undertaken for you,
Josiah?'
'I think I would rather that they fetched me. I think that I will not
go myself.'
'And have policemen come for you in the parish! Mr Walker has promised
that he will send over his phaeton. He sent me home in it today.'
'I want nobody's phaeton. If I go I will walk. If it were ten times
the distance, and though I had not a shoe left to my feet I would walk.
If I go there at all, of my own accord, I will walk there.'
'But you will go?'
'What do I care for the parish? What matters who sees me now? I cannot
be degraded as worse than I am. Everybody knows it.'
'There is no disgrace without guilt,' said his wife.
'Everybody thinks me guilty. I see it in their eyes. The children know
of it, and I hear whispers in the school. "Mr Crawley has taken some
money." I heard the girl say it myself.'
'What matters what the girl says?'
'And yet you would have me go in a fine carriage to Silverbridge, as
though to a wedding. If I am wanted let them take me as they would
another. I shall be here for them--unless I am dead.'
At this moment Jane appeared, pressing her mother to take off her wet
clothes, and Mrs Crawley went with her daughter to the kitchen. The one
red-armed young girl who was their only servant was sent away, and then
the mother and the child discussed how best they might prevail on the
head of the family. 'But, mamma, it must come right; must it not?'
'I trust it will; I think it will. But I cannot see my way as yet.'
'Papa cannot have done anything wrong.'
'No, my dear; he has done nothing wrong. He has made great mistakes, it
is hard to make people understand that he has not intentionally spoken
untruths. He is ever thinking of other things, about the school, and his
sermons, and he does not remember.'
'And about how poor we are, mamma.'
'He has much to occupy his mind, and he forgets things which dwell in
the memory of other people. He said that he had got this money from Mr
Soames, and of course he thought it was so.'
'And where did he get it, mamma?'
'Ah--I wish I knew. I should have said that I had seen every shilling
that came into the house; but I know nothing of this cheque--whence it
came.'
'But will not papa tell you?'
'He would tell me if he knew. He thinks it came from the dean.'
'And are you sure that it did not?'
'Yes; quite sure; as sure as I can be of anything. The dean told me he
would give him fifty pounds, and the fifty pounds came. I had them in my
own hands. And he was written to say that it was so.'
'But couldn't it be part of the fifty pounds?'
'No, dear, no.'
'Then where did papa get it? Perhaps he picked it up and has
forgotten?'
To this Mrs Crawley made no reply. The idea that the cheque had been
found by her husband--had been picked up as Jane had said--had occurred
also to Jane's mother. Mr Soames was confident that he had dropped the
pocket-book at the parsonage. Mrs Crawley had always disliked Mr Soames,
thinking him to be hard, cruel and vulgar. She would not have hesitated
to believe him guilty of a falsehood, or even of direct dishonesty, if
by so believing she could in her own mind have found the means of
reconciling her husband's possession of the cheque with absolute truth
on his part. But she could not do so. Even though Soames had, with
devilish premeditated malice, slipped the cheque into her husband's
pocket, his having done so would not account for her husband's having
used the cheque when he found it there. She was driven to make excuses
for him which, valid as they might be with herself, could not be valid
with others. He had said that Soames had paid the cheque to him. That
was clearly a mistake. He had said that the cheque had been given to him
by the dean. That was clearly another mistake. She knew, or thought she
knew, that he, being such as he was, might make blunders such as these,
and yet be true. She believed that such statements might be blunders and
not falsehoods--so convinced was she that her husband's mind would not
act at all times as do the minds of other men. But having such a
conviction she was driven to believe also that almost anything might be
possible. Soames may have been right, or he might have dropped, not the
book, but the cheque. She had no difficulty in presuming Soames to be
wrong in any detail, if by so supposing she could make the exculpation
of her husband easier to herself. If villainy on the part of Soames was
needful to her theory, Soames would become to her a villain at once--of
the blackest die. Might it not be possible that the cheque having thus
fallen into her husband's hands, he had come, after a while, to think
that it had been sent to him by his friend, the dean? And if it were so,
would it be possible to make others so believe? That there was some
mistake which would be easily explained were her husband's mind lucid at
all points, but which she could not explain because of the darkness of
his mind, she was thoroughly convinced. But were she herself to put
forward such a defence on her husband's part, she would in doing so be
driven to say that he was a lunatic--that he was incapable of managing
the affairs of himself or his family. It seemed to her that she would be
compelled to have him proved to be either a thief or a madman. And yet
she knew that he was neither. That he was not a thief was as clear to
her as the sun at noonday. Could she have lain on this man's bosom for
twenty years, and not yet have learned the secrets of the heart beneath?
The whole mind of the man was, as she told herself, within her grasp. He
might have taken the twenty pounds; he might have taken it and spent it,
though it was not his own; but yet he was no thief. Nor was he a madman.
No man more sane in preaching the gospel of his Lord, in making
intelligible to the ignorant the promises of his Saviour, ever got into
a parish pulpit, or taught in a parish school. The intellect of the man
was as clear as running water in all things not appertaining to his
daily life, and its difficulties. He could be logical with a
vengeance--so logical as to cause infinite trouble to his wife, who,
with all her good sense, was not logical. And he had Greek at his
fingers' ends--as his daughter very well knew. And even to this day he
would sometimes recite to them English poetry, lines after lines,
stanzas upon stanzas, in a sweet low melancholy voice, on long winter
evenings when occasionally the burden of his troubles would be lighter
to him than was usual. Books in Latin and in French he read with as much
ease as in English, and took delight in such as came to him, when he
would condescend to accept such loans from the deanery. And there was at
times a lightness of heart about the man. In the course of the last
winter he had translated into Greek irregular verse the very noble
ballad of Lord Bateman, maintaining the rhythm and the rhyme, and had
repeated it with uncouth glee till his daughter knew it all by heart.
And when there had come to him a five-pound note from some admiring
magazine editor as the price of the same--still through the dean's
hands--he had brightened up his heart and had thought for an hour or two
that even yet the world would smile upon him. His wife knew well that he
was not mad; but yet she knew that there were dark moments with him, in
which his mind was so much astray that he could not justly be called to
account as to what he might remember and what he might forget. How would
it be possible to explain all this to a judge and jury, so that they
might neither say that he was dishonest, nor yet that he was mad?
'Perhaps he picked it up, and had forgotten,' her daughter said to her.
Perhaps it was so, but she might not as yet admit as much even to her
child.
'It is a mystery, dear, as yet, which, with God's aid, will be
unravelled. Of one thing we at least may be sure; that your papa has not
wilfully done anything wrong.'
'Of course we are sure of that, mamma.'
Mrs Crawley had many troubles during the next four or five days, of
which the worst, perhaps, had reference to the services of the Sunday
which intervened between the day of her visit to Silverbridge and the
sitting of the magistrates. On the Saturday it was necessary that he
should prepare his sermons, of which he preached two every Sunday,
though his congregation consisted only of farmers, brickmakers, and
agricultural labourers, who would willingly have dispensed with the
second. Mrs Crawley proposed to send over to Mr Robarts, a neighbouring
clergyman, for the loan of a curate. Mr Robarts was a warm friend to the
Crawleys, and in such an emergency would probably have come himself; but
Mr Crawley would not hear of it. The discussion took place early on the
Saturday morning, before it was as yet daylight, for the poor woman was
thinking day and night of her husband's troubles, and it had this good
effect, that immediately after breakfast he seated himself at his desk,
and worked at his task as though he had forgotten all else in the world.
And on the Sunday morning he went into his school before the hour of the
church service, as had been his wont, and taught there as though
everything with him was as usual. Some of the children were absent,
having heard of their teacher's tribulation, and having been told
probably that he would remit his work; and for these absent ones he sent
in great anger. The poor bairns came creeping in, for he was a man who
by his manners had been able to secure their obedience in spite of his
poverty. And he preached to the people of his parish on that Sunday, as
he had always preached; eagerly, clearly, and with an eloquence fitted
for the hearts of such an audience. No one would have guessed from his
tones and gestures and appearance on that occasion, that there was aught
wrong with him--unless there had been some observer keen enough to
perceive that the greater care which he used, and the special eagerness
of his words, denoted a special frame of mind.
After that, after those church services were over, he sank again and
never roused himself till the dreaded day had come.
CHAPTER V
WHAT THE WORLD THOUGHT OF IT
Opinion at Silverbridge, at Barchester, and throughout the county, was
very much divided as to the guilt or innocence of Mr Crawley. Up to the
time of Mrs Crawley's visit to Silverbridge, the affair had not been
much discussed. To give Mr Soames his due he had be no means been
anxious to press the matter against the clergyman; but he had been
forced to go on with it. While the first cheque was missing, Lord Lufton
had sent him a second cheque for the money, and the loss had thus fallen
upon his lordship. The cheque had of course been traced, and inquiry had
of course been made as to Mr Crawley's possession of it. When that
gentleman declared that he had received it from Mr Soames, Mr Soames had
been forced to contradict and to resent such assertion. When Mr Crawley
had afterwards said that the money had come to him from the dean, and
when the dean had shown that this was also untrue, Mr Soames, confident
as he was that he had dropped the pocket-book at Mr Crawley's house,
could not but continue the investigation. He had done so with as much
silence as the nature of the work admitted. But by the day of the
magistrate's meeting at Silverbridge, the subject had become common
through the county, and men's minds were much divided.
All Hogglestock believed their parson to be innocent; but then all
Hogglestock believed him to be mad. At Silverbridge the tradesmen with
whom he had dealt, and to whom he had owed, and still owed, money, all
declared him to be innocent. They knew something of the man personally,
and could not believe him to be a thief. All the ladies at Silverbridge,
too, were sure of his innocence. It was to them impossible that such a
man should have stolen twenty pounds. 'My dear,' said the eldest Miss
Prettyman to poor Grace Crawley, 'in England, where the laws are good,
no gentleman is ever made out to be guilty when he is innocent; and your
papa, of course, is innocent. Therefore you should not trouble
yourself.' 'It will break papa's heart,' Grace had said, and she did
trouble herself. But the gentlemen in Silverbridge were made of sterner
stuff, and believed the man to be guilty, clergyman and gentleman though
he was. Mr Walker, who among the lights in Silverbridge was the leading
light, would not speak a word upon the subject to anybody; and then
everybody, who was anybody, knew that Mr Walker was convinced of the
man's guilt. Had Mr Walker believed him to be innocent, his tongue would
have been ready enough. John Walker, who was in the habit of laughing at
his father's good nature, had no doubt upon the subject. Mr Winthrop, Mr
Walker's partner, shook his head. People did not think much of Mr
Winthrop, excepting certain unmarried ladies; for Mr Winthrop was a
bachelor, and had plenty of money. People did not think much of Mr
Winthrop; but still on this subject he might know something, and when he
shook his head he manifestly intended to indicate guilt. And Dr Tempest,
the rector of Silverbridge, did not hesitate to declare his belief in
the guilt of the incumbent of Hogglestock. No man reverences a
clergyman, as a clergyman, so slightly as a brother clergyman. To Dr
Tempest it appeared to be neither very strange nor very terrible that Mr
Crawley should have stolen twenty pounds. 'What is a man to do,' he
said, 'when he sees his children starving? He should not have married on
such a preferment as that.' Mr Crawley had married, however, long before
he got the living at Hogglestock.
There were two Lady Luftons--mother-in-law and daughter-in-law--who at
this time were living together at Framley Hall, Lord Lufton's seat in
the county of Barset, and there were both thoroughly convinced of Mr
Crawley's innocence. The elder lady had lived much among clergymen, and
could hardly, I think, by any means have been brought to believe in the
guilt of any man who had taken upon himself the orders of the Church of
England. She had also known Mr Crawley personally for some years, and
was one of those who could not admit to herself that anyone was vile who
had been near to herself. She believed intensely in the wickedness of
the outside world, of the world which was far away from herself, and of
which she never saw anything; but they who were near to her, and who had
even become dear to her, or who even had been respected by her, were
made, as it were, saints in her imagination. They were brought into the
inner circle, and could hardly be expelled. She was an old woman who
thought all evil of those she did not know, and all good of those whom
she did know; and as she did know Mr Crawley, she was quite sure that he
had not stolen Mr Soames's twenty pounds. She did know Mr Soames also;
and thus there was a mystery for the unravelling of which she was very
anxious. And the young Lady Lufton was equally sure, and perhaps with
better reason for such certainty.
She had, in truth, known more of Mr Crawley personally, than anyone in
the county, unless it was the dean. The younger Lady Lufton, the present
Lord Lufton's wife, had sojourned at one time in Mr Crawley's house,
amidst the Crawley poverty, living as they lived, and nursing Mrs
Crawley through an illness which had wellnigh been fatal to her; and the
younger Lady Lufton believed in Mr Crawley--as Mr Crawley believed in
her.
'It is quite impossible, my dear,' the old woman said to her
daughter-in-law.
'Quite impossible, my lady.' The dowager was always called 'my lady',
both by her daughter and her son's wife, except when in the presence of
their children, when she was addressed as 'grandmamma'. 'Think how well
I knew him. It's no use talking of evidence. No evidence would make me
believe it.'
'Nor me; and I think it a great shame that such a report should be
spread about.'
'I suppose Mr Soames could not help himself?' said the younger lady, who
was not herself very fond of Mr Soames.
'Ludovic says that he has only done what he was obliged to do.' The
Ludovic spoken of was Lord Lufton.
This took place in the morning, but in the evening the affair was again
discussed at Framley Hall. Indeed, for some days, there was hardly any
other subject held to be worthy of discussion in the county. Mr Robarts,
the clergyman of the parish and the brother of the younger Lady Lufton,
was dining at the hall with his wife, and the three ladies had together
expressed their perfect conviction of the falseness of the accusation.
But when Lord Lufton and Mr Robarts were together after the ladies had
left them, there was much less certainty of this expressed. 'By Jove,'
said Lord Lufton,' 'I don't know what to think of it. I wish with all my
heart that Soames had said nothing about it, and that the cheque had
passed without remark.'
'That was impossible. When the banker sent to Soames, he was obliged to
take the matter up.'
'Of course he was. But I'm sorry that it was so. For the life of me, I
can't conceive how the cheque got into Crawley's hands.'
'I imagine it had been lying in the house, and that Crawley had come to
think that it was his own.'
'But, my dear Mark,' said Lord Lufton, 'excuse me if I say that that's
nonsense. What do we do when a poor man has come to think that another
man's property is his own? We send him to prison for making the
mistake.'
'I hope they won't sent Crawley to prison.'
'I hope so too; but what is a jury to do?'
'You think it will go to a jury, then?'
'I do,' said Lord Lufton. 'I don't see how the magistrates can save
themselves from committing him. It is one of those cases in which
everyone concerned would wish to drop it if it were only possible. But
it is not possible. On the evidence, as one sees it at present, one is
bound to say that it is a case for the jury.'
'I believe that he is mad,' said the brother parson.
'He always was, as far as I could learn,' said the lord. 'I never knew
him myself. You do, I think?'
'Oh yes, I know him.' and the vicar of Framley became silent and
thoughtful as the memory of a certain interview between himself and Mr
Crawley came back into his mind. At that time the waters had nearly
closed over his head and Mr Crawley had given him some assistance. When
the gentlemen had again found the ladies, they kept their own doubts to
themselves; for at Framley Hall, as at present tenanted, female voices
and female influences predominated over those which came from the other
sex.
At Barchester, the cathedral city of the county in which the Crawleys
lived, opinion was violently against Mr Crawley. In the city Mrs
Proudie, the wife of the bishop, was the leader of opinion in general,
and she was very strong in her belief of the man's guilt. She had known
much of clergymen all her life, as it behoved a bishop's wife to do, and
she had none of that mingled weakness and ignorance which taught so many
ladies in Barchester to suppose that an ordained clergyman could not
become a thief. She hated old Lady Lufton with all her heart, and old
Lady Lufton hated her as warmly. Mrs Proudie would say frequently that
Lady Lufton was a conceited old idiot, and Lady Lufton would declare as
frequently that Mrs Proudie was a vulgar virago. It was known at the
palace in Barchester that kindness had been shown to the Crawleys by the
family at Framley Hall, and this alone would have been sufficient to
make Mrs Proudie believe that Mr Crawley could be guilty of any crime.
And as Mrs Proudie believed, so did the bishop believe. 'It is a
terrible disgrace to the diocese,' said the bishop, shaking his head,
and patting his apron as he sat by his study fire.
'Fiddlestick!' said Mrs Proudie.
'But, my dear--a beneficed clergyman.'
'You must get rid of him; that's all. You must be firm whether he be
acquitted or convicted.'
'But if he's acquitted, I cannot get rid of him, my dear.'
'Yes, you can, if you are firm. And you must be firm. Is it not true
that he has been disgracefully involved in debt ever since he has been
there; that you have been pestered by letters from unfortunate tradesmen
who cannot get their money from him?'
'That is true, my dear, certainly.'
'And is that kind of thing to go on? He cannot come to the palace as
all clergymen should do, because he has got no clothes to come in. I saw
him once about the lanes, and I never set my eyes on such an object in
all my life! I would not believe that the man was a clergyman till John
told me. He is a disgrace to the diocese, and he must be got rid of. I
feel sure of his guilt, and I hope he will be convicted. One is bound to
hope that a guilty man should be convicted. But if he escapes
conviction, you must sequestrate the living because of the debts. The
income is enough to get an excellent curate. It would just do for
Thumble.' To all of which the bishop made no reply, but simply nodded
his head and patted his apron. He knew that he could not do exactly what
his wife required of him; but if it should so turn out that poor Crawley
was found to be guilty, then the matter would be comparatively easy.
'It should be an example to us, that we should look to our own steps, my
dear,' said the bishop.
'That's all very well,' said Mrs Proudie, 'but it has become your duty,
and mine too, to look upon the steps of other people; and that duty we
must do.'
'Of course, my dear, of course.' That was the tone in which the
question of Mr Crawley's alleged guilt was discussed at the palace.
We have already heard what was said on the subject at the house of
Archdeacon Grantly. As the days passed by, and as other tidings came in,
confirmatory of those which had before reached him, the archdeacon felt
himself unable not to believe in the man's guilt. And the fear which he
entertained as to his son's intended marriage with Grace Crawley, tended
to increase the strength of that belief. Dr Grantly had been a very
successful man in the world, and on all ordinary occasions had been able
to show that bold front with which success endows a man. But he still
had his moments of weakness, and feared greatly lest anything of
misfortune should touch him and mar the comely roundness of his
prosperity. He was very wealthy. The wife of his bosom had been to him
all that a wife should be. His reputation in the clerical world stood
very high. His two sons had hitherto done well in the world, not only as
regarded their happiness, but as to marriage also, and as to social
standing. But how great would be the fall if his son should at last
marry the daughter of a convicted thief! How would the Proudies rejoice
over him--the Proudies who had been crushed to the ground by the success
of the Hartletop alliance; and how would the low-church curates, who
swarmed in Barsetshire, gather together and scream in delight over his
dismay! 'But why should we say that he is guilty?' said Mrs Grantly.
'It hardly matters as far as we are concerned, whether they find him
guilty or not,' said the archdeacon; 'if Henry marries that girl my
heart will be broken.'
But perhaps to no one except the Crawleys themselves had the matter
caused so much terrible anxiety as to the archdeacon's son. He had told
his father that he had made an offer of marriage to Grace Crawley, and
he had told the truth. But there are perhaps few men who make such
offers in direct terms without having already said and done that which
makes such offers simply necessary as the final closing of an accepted
bargain. It was so at any rate between Major Grantly and Miss Crawley,
and Major Grantly acknowledged to himself that it was so. He
acknowledged also to himself that as regarded Grace herself he had no
wish to go back from his implied intentions. Nothing that either his
father or mother might say would shake him in that. But could it be his
duty to bind himself to the family of a convicted thief? Could it be
right that he should disgrace his father and his mother and his sister
and his one child by such a connexion? He had a man's heart, and the
poverty of the Crawleys caused him no solicitude. But he shrank from the
contamination of a prison.
CHAPTER VI
GRACE CRAWLEY
It has already been said that Grace Crawley was at this time living with
the two Miss Prettymans, who kept a girls' school at Silverbridge. Two
more benignant ladies than the Miss Prettymans never presided over such
an establishment. The younger was fat, and fresh, and fair, and seemed
to be always running over with the milk of human kindness. The other was
very thin and very small, and somewhat afflicted with bad health--was
weak, too, in the eyes, and subject to racking headaches, so that it was
considered generally that she was unable to take much active part in the
education of the pupils. But it was considered as generally that she did
all the thinking, that she knew more than any other woman in
Barsetshire, and that all the Prettyman schemes for education emanated
from her mind. It was said, too, by those who knew them best, that her
sister's good-nature was as nothing to hers; that she was the most
charitable, the most loving, and the most conscientious of
school-mistresses. This was Miss Annabella Prettyman, the elder; and
perhaps it may be inferred that some portion of her great character for
virtue may have been due to the fact that nobody ever saw her out of her
own house. She could not even go to church, because the open air brought
on neuralgia. She was therefore perhaps taken to be magnificent, partly
because she was unknown. Miss Anne Prettyman, the younger, went about
frequently to tea-parties--would go, indeed, to any party to which she
might be invited; and was known to have a pleasant taste for poundcake
and sweetmeats. Being seen so much in the outer world, she became
common, and her character did not stand so high as did that of her
sister. Some people were ill-natured enough to say that she wanted to
marry Mr Winthrop; but of what maiden lady that goes out in the world
are not such stories told? And all such stories in Silverbridge were
told with special reference to Mr Winthrop.
Miss Crawley, at present, lived with the Miss Prettymans, and assisted
them in the school. This arrangement had been going on for the last
twelve months, since the time in which Grace would have left the school
in the natural course of things. There had been no bargain made, and no
intention that Grace should stay. She had been invited to fill the place
of an absent superintendent, first, for one month, then for another, and
then for two more months; and when the assistant came back, the Miss
Prettymans thought there were reasons why Grace should be asked to
remain a little longer. But they took great care to let the fashionable
world of Silverbridge know that Grace Crawley was a visitor with them,
and not a teacher. 'We pay her no salary, or anything of that kind,'
said Miss Ann Prettyman; a statement, however, which was by no means
true, for during those last four months the regular stipend had been
paid to her; and twice since then, Miss Annabella Prettyman, who managed
all the money matters, had called Grace into her little room, and had
made a little speech, and had put a little bit of paper into her hand.
'I know I ought not to take it,' Grace had said to her friend Anne. 'If
I was not here, there would be no one in my place.' 'Nonsense, my dear,'
Anne Prettyman had said; 'it is the greatest comfort to us in the world.
And you should make yourself nice, you know, for his sake. All the
gentlemen like it.' Then Grace had been very angry, and had sworn that
she would give the money back again. Nevertheless, I think she did make
herself as nice as she knew how to do. And from all this it may be seen
that the Miss Prettymans had hitherto quite approved of Major Grantly's
attentions.
But when this terrible affair came on about the cheque which had been
lost and found and traced to Mr Crawley's hands, Miss Anne Prettyman
said nothing further to Grace Crawley about Major Grantly. It was not
that she thought that Mr Crawley was guilty, but she knew enough of the
world to be aware that suspicion of such guilt might compel such a man
as Major Grantly to change his mind. 'If he had only popped,' Anne said
to her sister,' it would have been all right. He would never have gone
back from his word.' 'My dear,' said Annabella, 'I wish you would not
talk about popping. It is a terrible word.' 'I shouldn't, to anyone
except you,' said Anne.
There had come to Silverbridge some few months since, on a visit to Mrs
Walker, a young lady from Allington, in the neighbouring county, between
whom and Grace Crawley there had grown up from circumstances a warm
friendship. Grace had a cousin in London--a clerk high up and
well-to-do in a public office, a nephew of her mother's--and this cousin
was, and for years had been, violently smitten in love for this young
lady. But the young lady's tale had been sad, and though she
acknowledged feelings of the most affectionate friendship for the
cousin, she could not bring herself to acknowledge more. Grace Crawley
had met the young lady at Silverbridge, and words had been spoken about
the cousin; and though the young lady from Allington was some years
older than Grace, there had grown up to be a friendship, and, as is not
uncommon between young ladies, there had been an agreement that they
would correspond. The name of the lady was Miss Lily Dale, and the name
of the well-to-do cousin was Mr John Eames.
At the present moment Miss Dale was at home with her mother at
Allington, and Grace Crawley in her terrible sorrow wrote to her friend,
pouring out her whole heart. As Grace's letter and Miss Dale's answer
will assist us in our story, I will venture to give them both.
'SILVERBRIDGE,--December, 186-
'DEAREST LILY,
'I hardly know how to tell you what has
happened, it is so very terrible. But perhaps you
will have heard it already, as everybody is talking
about it here. It has got into the newspapers, and
therefore it cannot be kept secret. Not that I should
keep anything from you; only this is so very dreadful
that I hardly know how to write it. Somebody says--a
Mr Soames, I believe it is--that papa has taken some
money that does not belong to him, and he is to be
brought before the magistrates and tried. Of course
papa has done nothing wrong. I do think he would be
the last man in the world to take a penny that did not
belong to him. You know how poor he is; what a life
he has had! But I think he would almost sooner see
mamma starving;--I am sure he would rather be starved
himself, then even borrow a shilling which he could
not pay. To suppose that he would take money'
(she had tried to write the word 'steal' but she could not bring
her pen to form the letters)
'is monstrous. But, somehow, the circumstances have
been made to look bad against him, and they say that
he must come over here to the magistrates. I often
think that of all men in the world papa is the most
unfortunate. Everything seems to go against him, and
yet he is so good! Poor mamma has been over here, and
she is distracted. I never saw her so wretched
before. She has been to your friend Mr Walker, and
came to me afterwards for a minute. Mr Walker has got
something to do with it, though mamma says she thinks
he is quite friendly to papa. I wonder whether you
could find out, through Mr Walker, what he thinks
about it. Of course, mamma knows that papa has done
nothing wrong; but she says that the whole thing is so
mysterious, and that she does not know how to account
for the money. Papa, you know, is not like other
people. He forgets things; and is always thinking,
thinking, thinking of his great misfortunes. Poor
papa! My heart bleeds so when I remember all his
sorrows, that I hate myself for thinking about myself.
'When mamma left me--and it was then I first
knew that papa would really have to be tried--I
went to Miss Annabella, and told her that I would go
home. She asked me why, and I said I would not
disgrace her house by staying in it. She got up and
took me in her arms, and there came a tear out of both
her dear old eyes, and she said that if anything evil
came to papa--which she would not believe, as she
knew him to be a good man--there should be a home in
her house not only for me, but for mamma and Jane.
Isn't she a wonderful woman? When I think of her, I
sometimes think that she must be an angel already.
Then she became very serious--for just before,
through her tears she had tried to smile--and she
told me to remember that all people could not be like
her, who had nobody to look to but herself and her
sister; and that at present I must task myself not to
think of that which I had been thinking of before.
She did not mention anybody's name, but of course I
understood very well what she meant; and I suppose she
is right. I said nothing in answer to her, for I
could not speak. She was holding my hand, and I took
hers up and kissed it, to show her, if I could, that I
knew that she was right; but I could not have spoken
about it for all the world. It was not ten days since
that she herself, with all her prudence, told me that
she thought I ought to make up my mind what answer I
would give him. And then I did not say anything; but
of course she knew. And after that Miss Anne spoke
quite freely about it, so that I had to beg her to be
silent even before the girls. You know how imprudent
she is. But it is all over now. Of course Miss
Annabella is right. He has got a great many people to
think of; his father and mother, and his darling
little Edith, whom he brought here twice, and left her
with us once for two days, so that she got to know me
quite well; and I took such a love for her, that I
could not bear to part with her. But I think
sometimes that all our family are born to be
unfortunate, and then I tell myself that I will never
hope for anything again.
'Pray write to me soon. I feel as though
nothing on earth could comfort me, and yet I shall
like to have your letter. Dear, dear Lily, I am not
even yet so wretched but what I shall rejoice to be
told good news of you. If it only could be as John
wishes it! And why should it not? It seems to me
that nobody has a right or a reason to by unhappy
except us. Good-bye, dearest Lily.
'Your affectionate friend,
'GRACE CRAWLEY'
'P.S.--I think I have made up my mind that I will go
back to Hogglestock at once if the magistrates decide
against papa. I think I should be doing the school
harm if I were to stay here.'
The answer to this letter did not reach Miss Crawley till after the
magistrate's hearing on the Thursday, but it will be better for our
story that it should be given her than postponed until the result of
that meeting shall have been told. Miss Dale's answer was as follows:-
'ALLINGTON,--December, 186-
'DEAR GRACE,
'Your letter has made me very unhappy. If it
can at all comfort you to know that mamma and I
sympathise with you altogether, in that you may at any
rate be sure. But in such troubles nothing will give
comfort. They must be borne, till the fire of
misfortune burns itself out.
'I had heard about the affair a day or two
before I got your note. Our clergyman, Mr Boyce, told
us of it. Of course we all know that the charge must
be altogether unfounded, and mamma says that the truth
will be sure to show itself at last. But that
conviction does not cure the evil, and I can well
understand that your father should suffer grievously;
and I pity your mother quite as much as I do him.
'As for Major Grantly, if he be such a man as I
took him to be from the little I saw of him, all this
would make no difference to him. I am sure that it
ought to make none. Whether it should not make a
difference in you is another question. I think it
should; and I think your answer to him should be that
you could not even consider any such proposition while
your father was in so great trouble. I am so much
older than you, and seem to have so much experience,
that I do not scruple, as you will see, to come down
upon you with all the weight of my wisdom.
'About that other subject I had rather say
nothing. I have known your cousin all my life almost;
and I regard no one more kindly than I do him. When I
think of my friends, he is always the one of the
dearest. But when one thinks of going beyond
friendship, even if one tries to do so, there are so
many barriers!
'Your affectionate friend,
'LILY DALE
'Mamma bids me say that she would be delighted
to have you here whenever it might suit you to come;
and I add to this message my entreaty that you will
come at once. You say that you think you ought to
leave Miss Prettyman's for a while. I can well
understand your feeling; but as your sister is with
your mother, surely you had better come to us--I mean
quite at once. I will not scruple to tell you what
mamma says, because I know your good sense. She says
that as the interest of the school may possibly be
concerned, and as you have no regular engagement, she
thinks you ought to leave Silverbridge; but she says
that it will be better that you come to us than that
you should go home. If you went home, people might
say that had left in some sort of disgrace. Come to
us, and when all this is put right, then you go back
to Silverbridge; and then, if a certain person speaks
again, you can make a different answer. Mamma quite
understands that you are to come; so you have only to
ask your own mamma, and come at once.'
This letter, the reader will understand, did not reach Grace Crawley
till after the all-important Thursday; but before that day had come
round, Grace had told Miss Prettyman--had told both the Miss
Prettymans--that she was resolved to leave them. She had done this
without consulting her mother, driven to it by various motives. She knew
her father's conduct was being discussed by the girls at school, and
that things were said of him which it could not but be for the
disadvantage of Miss Prettyman that anyone should say of a teacher in
the establishment. She felt, too, that she could not hold up her head in
Silverbridge in these days, as it would become her to do if she retained
her position. She did struggle gallantly, and succeeded much more nearly
than she was herself aware. She was all but able to carry herself as
though no terrible accusation was being made against her father. Of the
struggle, however, she was not herself the less conscious, and she told
herself that on that account also she must go. And then she must go
because of Major Grantly. Whether he was minded to come and speak to her
that one other needed word, or whether he was not so minded, it would be
better that she should be away from Silverbridge. If he spoke it she
could only answer him by the negative; she should leave herself the
power of thinking that his silence had been caused by her absence, and
not by his coldness or indifference.
She asked, therefore, for an interview with Miss Prettyman, and was
shown into the elder sister's room, at eleven o'clock on the Tuesday
morning. The elder Miss Prettyman never came into the school herself
till twelve, but was in the habit of having interviews with the young
ladies--which were sometimes very awful in their nature--for the two
previous hours. During these interviews an immense amount of business
was done, and the fortunes in life of some girls were said to have been
made or marred; as when, for instance, Miss Crimpton had been advised to
stay at home with her uncle in England, instead of going out with her
sisters to India, both of which sisters were married within three months
of their landing in Bombay. The way in which she gave her counsel on
such occasions was very efficacious. No one knew better than Miss
Prettyman that a cock can crow most effectively in his own farmyard, and
therefore all crowing intended to be effective was done by her within
the shrine of her own peculiar room.
'Well, my dear, what is it?' she said to Grace. 'Sit in the arm-chair,
my dear, and we can then talk comfortably.' The teachers, when they were
closeted with Miss Prettyman, were always asked to sit in the arm-chair,
whereas a small, straight-backed, uneasy chair was kept for the use of
the young ladies. And there was, too, a stool of repentance, out against
the wall, very uncomfortable indeed for young ladies who had not behaved
themselves so prettily as young ladies generally do.
Grace seated herself, and then began her speech very quickly. 'Miss
Prettyman,' she said, 'I have made up my mind that I will go home, if
you please.'
'And why should you go home, Grace? Did I not tell you that you should
have a home here?' Miss Prettyman had weak eyes, and was very small, and
had never possessed any claim to be called good-looking. And she
assumed nothing of the majestical awe from any adornment or studied
amplification of the outward woman by means of impressive trappings. The
possessor of an unobservant eye might have called her a mean-looking,
little old woman. And certainly there would have been nothing awful in
her to anyone who came across her otherwise than as a lady having
authority in her own school. But within her own precincts, she did know
how to surround herself with a dignity which all felt who approached her
there. Grace Crawley, as she heard the simple question which Miss
Prettyman had asked, unconsciously acknowledged the strength of the
woman's manner. She already stood rebuked for having proposed a plan so
ungracious, so unnecessary, and so unwise.
'I think I ought to be with mamma at present,' said Grace.
'You mother has her sister with her.'
'Yes, Miss Prettyman, Jane is there.'
'If there is no other reason, I cannot think that that can be held to be
a reason now. Of course your mother would like to have you always;
unless you should be married--but then there are reasons why this should
not be so.'
'Of course there are.'
'I do not think--that is, if I know all that there is to be known--I do
not think, I say, that there can be any good ground for your leaving us
now--just now.'
Then Grace sat silent for a moment, gathering her courage, and
collecting her words; and after that she spoke. 'It is because of papa,
and because of this charge--'
'But, Grace--'
'I know what you are going to say, Miss Prettyman;--that is, I think I
know.'
'If you hear me, you may be sure that you know.'
'But I want you to hear me for one moment first. I beg your pardon,
Miss Prettyman; I do indeed, but I want to say this before you go on. I
must go home, and I know I ought. We are all disgraced, and I won't stop
here to disgrace the school. I know papa has done nothing wrong; but
nevertheless we are disgraced. The police are to bring him in here on
Thursday, and everybody in Silverbridge will know it. It cannot be right
that I should be here teaching in the school, while it is all going
on;--and I won't. And, Miss Prettyman, I couldn't do it, indeed I
couldn't. I can't bring myself to think of anything I am doing. Indeed I
can't; and then, Miss Prettyman, there are other reasons.' By the time
that she had proceeded thus far, Grace Crawley's words were nearly
choked by her tears.
'And what are the other reasons, Grace?'
'I don't know,' said Grace, struggling to speak through her tears.
'But I know,' said Miss Prettyman. 'I know them all. I know all your
reasons, and I tell you that in my opinion you ought to remain where you
are, and not go away. The very reasons which to you are reasons for your
going, to me are reasons for your remaining here.'
'I can't remain. I am determined to go. I don't mind you and Miss
Anne, but I can't bear to have the girls looking at me--and the
servants.'
Then Miss Prettyman paused awhile, thinking of what words of wisdom
would be most appropriate in the present conjuncture. But words of
wisdom did not seem to come easily to her, having for the moment been
banished by a tenderness of heart. 'Come here, my love,' she said at
last. 'Come here, Grace.' Slowly Grace got up from her seat and came
round, and stood by Miss Prettyman's elbow. Miss Prettyman pushed her
chair a little back, and pushed herself a little forward, and stretching
out one hand, placed her arm round Grace's waist, and with the other
took hold of Grace's hand, and thus drew her down and kissed the girl's
forehead and lips. And then Grace found herself kneeling at her friend's
feet. 'Grace,' she said, 'do you not know that I love you? Do you not
know that I love you dearly?' In answer to this Grace kissed the
withered hand she held in hers, while the warm tears trickled upon Miss
Prettyman's knuckles. 'I love you as though you were my own,' exclaimed
the schoolmistress; 'and will you not trust me, that I know what is best
for you?'
'I must go home,' said Grace.
'Of course you shall, if you think it right at last; but let us talk of
it. No one in the house, you know, has the slightest suspicion that your
father has done anything that is in the least dishonourable.'
'I know that you have not.'
'No, nor has Anne.' Miss Prettyman said this as though no one in that
house beyond herself and her sister had a right to have any opinion on
any subject.
'I know that,' said Grace.
'Well, my dear. If we think so--'
'But the servant, Miss Prettyman?'
'If any servant in this house says a word to offend you, I'll--I'll--'
'They don't say anything, Miss Prettyman, but they look. Indeed, I'd
better go home. Indeed I had!'
'Do not you think your mother has cares enough upon her, and burden
enough, without another mouth to feed, and another head to shelter? You
haven't thought of that, Grace.'
'Yes, I have.'
'And for the work, whilst you are not quite well you shall not be
troubled with teaching. I have some old papers that want copying and
settlings, and you shall sit here and do that just for an employment.
Anne knows that I've long wanted to have it done, and I'll tell her that
you have kindly promised to do it for me.'
'No; no; no,' said Grace; 'I must go home.' She was still kneeling at
Miss Prettyman's knee, and still holding Miss Prettyman's hand. And
then, at that moment, there came a tap on the door, gentle but yet not
humble, a tap which acknowledged, on the part of the tapper, the
supremacy in that room of the lady who was sitting there, but which
still claimed admittance almost as a right. The tap was well known by
both of them to be the tap of Miss Anne. Grace immediately jumped up,
and Miss Prettyman settled herself in her chair with a motion which
almost seemed to indicate some feeling of shame as to her late position.
'I suppose I may come in?' said Miss Anne, opening the door and
inserting her head.
'Yes, you may come in--if you have anything to say,' said Miss
Prettyman, with an air which seemed to be intended to assert her
supremacy. But, in truth, she was simply collecting the wisdom and
dignity which had been somewhat dissipated by her tenderness.
'I did not know that Grace Crawley was here,' said Miss Anne.
'Grace Crawley is here,' said Miss Prettyman.
'What is the matter, Grace?' said Miss Anne, seeing her tears.
'Never mind now,' said Miss Prettyman.
'Poor dear, I'm sure I'm sorry as though she were my own sister,' said
Anne. 'But, Annabella, I want to speak to you especially.'
'To me, in private?'
'Yes, to you; in private, if Grace won't mind?'
Then Grace prepared to go. But as she was going, Miss Anne, upon whose
brow a heavy burden of thought was lying, stopped her suddenly. 'Grace,
my dear,' she said, 'go upstairs to your room, will you?--not across the
hall to the school.'
'And why shouldn't she go to the school?' said Miss Prettyman.
Miss Anne paused for a moment, and then answered--unwillingly, as though
driven to make a reply which she knew to be indiscreet. 'Because there
is somebody in the hall.'
'Go to your room, dear,' said Miss Prettyman. And Grace went to her
room, never turning an eye down towards the hall. 'Who is it?' said Miss
Prettyman.
'Major Grantly is here, asking to see you,' said Miss Anne.
CHAPTER VII
MISS PRETTYMAN'S PRIVATE ROOM
Major Grantly, when threatened by his father with pecuniary punishment,
should he demean himself by such a marriage as that he had proposed to
himself, had declared that he would offer his hand to Miss Crawley on
the next morning. This, however, he had not done. He had not done it,
partly because he did not quite believe his father's threat, and partly
because he felt that that threat was almost justified--for the present
moment--by the circumstances in which Grace Crawley's father had placed
himself.
Henry Grantly acknowledged, as he drove himself home on the morning
after his dinner at the rectory, that in this matter of his marriage he
did owe much to his family. Should he marry at all, he owed it to them
to marry a lady. And Grace Crawley--so he told himself--was a lady. And
he owed it to them to bring among them as his wife a woman who should
not disgrace him or them by her education, manners, or even by her
personal appearance. In all these respects Grace Crawley was, in his
judgment, quite as good as they had a right to expect her to be, and in
some respects a great deal superior to that type of womanhood with which
they had been most generally conversant. 'If everybody had her due, my
sister isn't fit to hold a candle to her,' he said to himself. It must
be acknowledged, therefore, that he was really in love with Grace
Crawley; and he declared to himself over and over again, that his family
had no right to demand that he should marry a woman with money. The
archdeacon's son by no means despised money. How could he, having come
forth as a bird fledged from such a nest as the rectory at Plumstead
Episcopi? Before he had been brought by his better nature and true
judgment to see that Grace Crawley was the greater woman of the two, he
had nearly submitted himself to the twenty thousand pounds of Miss Emily
Dunstable--to that, and her good-humour and rosy freshness combined. But
he regarded himself as the well-to-do son of a very rich father. His
only child was amply provided for; and he felt that, as regarded money,
he had a right to do as he pleased. He felt this with double strength
after his father's threat.
But he had no right to make a marriage by which his family would be
disgraced. Whether he was right or wrong in supposing that he would
disgrace his family were he to marry the daughter of a convicted thief,
it is hardly necessary to discuss here. He told himself that it would be
so--telling himself also that, by the stern laws of the world, the son
and the daughter must pay for the offence of the father and mother. Even
among the poor, who would willingly marry the child of a man who had
been hanged? But he carried the argument beyond this, thinking much of
the matter, and endeavouring to think of it not only justly but
generously. If the accusation against Crawley were false--if the man
were being injured by an unjust charge--even if he, Grantly, could make
himself think that the girl's father had not stolen the money, then he
would dare everything and go on. I do not know that his argument was
good, or that his mind was logical on the matter. He ought to have felt
that his own judgment as to the man's guilt was less likely to be
correct than that of those whose duty it was and would be to form and to
express a judgment on the matter; and as to Grace herself, she was
equally innocent whether her father were guilty or not guilty. If he
were to be debarred from asking for her hand by his feelings for her
father and mother, he should hardly have trusted to his own skill in
ascertaining the real truth as to the alleged theft. But he was not
logical, and thus, meaning to be generous, he became unjust.
He found that among those in Silverbridge whom he presumed to be best
informed on such matters, there was a growing opinion that Mr Crawley
had stolen the money. He was intimate with all the Walkers, and was able
to find out that Mrs Walker knew that her husband believed in the
clergyman's guilt. He was by no means alone in his willingness to accept
Mr Walker's opinion as the true opinion. Silverbridge, generally, was
endeavouring to dress itself in Mr Walker's glass, and to believe as Mr
Walker believed. The ladies of Silverbridge, including the Miss
Prettymans, were aware that Mr Walker had been very kind both to Mr and
Mrs Crawley, and argued from this that Mr Walker must think the man
innocent. But Henry Grantly, who did not dare to ask a direct question
of the solicitor, went cunningly to work, and closeted himself with Mrs
Walker--with Mrs Walker, who knew well of the good fortune that was
hovering over Grace's head and was so nearly settling itself on her
shoulders. She would have given a finger to be able to whitewash Mr
Crawley in the major's estimation. Nor must it be supposed that she told
the major in plain words that her husband had convinced himself of the
man's guilt. In plain words no question was asked between them, and in
plain words no opinion was expressed. But there was the look of sorrow
in the woman's eye, there was the absence of reference to her husband's
assurance that the man was innocent, there was the air of settled grief
which told of her own conviction; and the major left her, convinced that
Mrs Walker believed Mr Crawley to be guilty.
Then he went to Barchester; not open-mouthed with inquiry, but rather
with open ears, and it seemed to him that all men in Barchester were of
one mind. There was a county-club in Barchester, and at this county-club
nine men out of ten were talking about Mr Crawley. It was by no means
necessary that a man should ask questions on the subject. Opinion was
expressed so freely that no such asking was required; and opinion in
Barchester--at any rate in the county-club--seemed now to be all of one
mind. There had been every disposition at first to believe Mr Crawley to
be innocent. He had been believed to be innocent even after he had said
wrongly that the cheque had been paid to him by Mr Soames; but he had
since stated that he had received it from Dean Arabin, and that
statement was also shown to be false. A man who has a cheque changed on
his own behalf is bound at least to show where he got the cheque. Mr
Crawley had not only failed to do this, but had given two false excuses.
Henry Grantly, as he drove home to Silverbridge on the Sunday afternoon,
summed up all the evidence in his own mind, and brought in a verdict of
Guilty against the father of the girl whom he loved.
On the following morning he walked into Silverbridge and called at Miss
Prettyman's house. As he went along his heart was warmer towards Grace
than it had ever been before. He had told himself that he was now bound
to abstain, for his father's sake, from doing that which he had told his
father he certainly would do. But he knew also, that he had said that
which, though it did not bind him to Miss Crawley, gave her a right to
expect that he would so bind himself. And Miss Prettyman could not but
be aware of what his intention had been, and could not but expect that
he should not be explicit. Had he been a wise man altogether, he would
probably have abstained from saying anything at the present moment--a
wise man, that is, in the ways and feelings of the world in such
matters. But, as there are men who will allow themselves all imaginable
latitude in their treatment of women, believing that the world will
condone any amount of fault of that nature, so there are other men, and
a class of men which on the whole is the more numerous of the two, who
are tremblingly alive to the danger of censure on this head--and to the
danger of censure not only from others but from themselves also. Major
Grantly had done that which made him think it imperative upon him to do
something further, and do that something at once.
Therefore he started off on the Monday morning after breakfast and
walked into Silverbridge, and as he walked he built various castles in
the air. Why should no not marry Grace--if she would have him--and take
her away beyond the reach of her father's calamity? Why should he not
throw over his own people altogether, money, position, society, and all,
and give himself up to love? Were he to do so, men might say that he was
foolish, but no one could hint that he was dishonourable. His spirit was
high enough to teach him to think that such conduct on his part would
have in it something of magnificence; but, yet, such was not his
purpose. In going to Miss Prettyman it was his intention to apologise
for not doing this magnificent thing. His mind was quite made up.
Nevertheless he built castles in the air.
It so happened that he encountered the younger Miss Prettyman in the
hall. It would not at all have suited him to reveal to her the purport
of his visit, or ask her to assist his suit or receive his apologies.
Miss Anne Prettyman was too common a personage in the Silverbridge world
to be fit for such employment. Miss Anne Prettyman was, indeed, herself
submissive to him, and treated him with the courtesy which is due to a
superior being. He therefore simply asked her whether he could be
allowed to see her sister.
'Surely, Major Grantly;--that is, I think so. It is a little early, but
I think she can receive you.'
'It is early, I know; but as I want to say a word or two on business--'
'Oh, on business. I am sure she will see you on business; she will only
be too proud. If you will be kind enough to step in here for two
minutes.' Then Miss Anne, having deposited the major in the little
parlour, ran upstairs with her message to her sister. 'Of course it's
about Grace Crawley' she said to herself as she went. 'It can't be about
anything else. I wonder what he's going to say. If he's going to pop,
and the father in all this trouble, he's the finest fellow that ever
trod.' Such were her thoughts as she tapped at the door and announced in
the presence of Grace that there was somebody in the hall.
'It's Major Grantly,' whispered Anne, as soon as Grace had shut the door
behind her.
'So I suppose by your telling her not to go into the hall. What has he
come to say?'
'How on earth can I tell you that, Annabella? But I suppose he can have
only one thing to say after all that has come and gone. He can only have
come with one object.'
'He wouldn't have come to me for that. He would have asked to see
herself.'
'She never goes out now, and he can't see her.'
'Or he would have gone to them over at Hogglestock,' said Miss
Prettyman. 'But of course he must come up now he is here. Would you mind
telling him? Of shall I ring the bell?'
'I'll tell him. We need not make more fuss than necessary, with the
servants, you know. I suppose I'd better not come back with him?'
There was a tone of supplication in the younger sister's voice as she
made the last suggestion, which ought to have melted the heart of the
elder; but it was unavailing. 'As he has asked to see me, I think you
had better not,' said Annabella. Miss Anne Prettyman bore her cross
meekly, offered no argument on the subject, and returning to the little
parlour where she had left the major, brought him upstairs, and ushered
him into her sister's room without even entering it again, herself.
Major Grantly was as intimately acquainted with Miss Anne Prettyman as a
man under thirty may well be with a lady nearer fifty than forty, who is
not specially connected with him by any family tie; but of Miss
Prettyman he knew personally very much less. Miss Prettyman, as has
before been said, did not go out, and was therefore not common to the
eyes of the Silverbridgians. She did occasionally see her friends in her
own house, and Grace Crawley's lover, as the major had come to be
called, had been there on more than one occasion; but of real personal
intimacy between them there had hitherto existed none. He might have
spoken, perhaps a dozen words to her in his life. He had now more than a
dozen to speak to her, but he hardly knew how to commence them.
She had got up and curtseyed, and had then taken his hand and asked him
to sit down. 'My sister tells me that you want to see me,' she said in
her softest, mildest voice.
'I do, Miss Prettyman. I want to speak to you about a matter that
troubles me very much--very much indeed.'
'Anything that I can do, Major Grantly--'
'Thank you, yes. I know that you are very good, or I should not have
ventured to come and see you. Indeed I shouldn't trouble you now, of
course, if it was only about myself. I know very well what a great
friend you are to Miss Crawley.'
'Yes, I am. We love Grace dearly here.'
'So do I,' said the major bluntly; 'I love her dearly, too.' Then he
paused, as though he thought that Miss Prettyman ought to take up the
speech. But Miss Prettyman seemed to think quite differently, and he was
obliged to go on. 'I don't know whether you have ever heard about it or
noticed it, or--or--or--' He felt that he was very awkward, and he
blushed. Major as he was, he blushed as he sat before the woman, trying
to tell his story, but not knowing how to tell it. 'The truth is, Miss
Prettyman, I have done all but ask her to be my wife, and now has come
this terrible affair about her father.'
'It is a terrible affair, Major Grantly; very terrible.'
'By Jove, you may say that!'
'Of course, Mr Crawley is as innocent in the matter as you or I are.'
'You think so, Miss Prettyman?'
'Think so! I feel sure of it. What; a clergyman of the Church of
England, a pious, hard-working country gentleman, whom we have known
among us by his good works for years, suddenly turn thief, and pilfer a
few pounds! It is not possible, Major Grantly. And the father of such a
daughter, too! It is not possible. It may do for men of business to
think so, lawyers and such like, who are obliged to think in accordance
with the evidence, as they call it; but to my mind the idea is
monstrous. I don't know how he got it, and I don't care; but I'm quite
sure he did not steal it. Whoever heard of anybody becoming so base as
that all at once?'
The major was startled by her eloquence, and by the indignant tone of
voice in which it was expressed. It seemed to tell him that she would
give him no sympathy in that which he had come to say to her, and to
upbraid him already in that he was not prepared to do the magnificent
thing of which he had thought when he had been building his castles in
the air. Why should he not do the magnificent thing? Miss Prettyman's
eloquence was so strong that it half convinced him that the Barchester
Club and Mr Walker had come to a wrong conclusion after all.
'And how does Miss Crawley bear it?' he asked, desirous of postponing
for a while any declaration of his own purpose.
'She is very unhappy, of course. Not that she thinks evil of her
father.'
'Of course she does not think him guilty.'
'Nobody thinks him so in this house, Major Grantly,' said the little
woman, very imperiously. 'But Grace is, naturally enough, very
sad;--very sad indeed. I do not think I can ask you to see her today.'
'I was not thinking of it,' said the major.
'Poor, dear girl! It is a great trial for her. Do you wish me to give
her any message, Major Grantly?'
The moment had now come in which he must say that which he had come to
say. The little woman waited for an answer, and as he was there, within
her power as it were, he must speak. I fear that what he said will not
be approved by any strong-minded person. I fear that our lover will
henceforth be considered by such a one as being a weak, wishy-washy man,
who had hardly any mind of his own to speak of--that he was a man of no
account, as the poor people say. 'Miss Prettyman, what message ought I
to give her?'
'Nay, Major Grantly, how can I tell you that? How can I put words into
your mouth?'
'It isn't the words,' he said; 'but the feelings.'
'And how can I tell the feelings in your heart?'
'Oh, as for that, I know what my feelings are. I do love her with all
my heart;--I do, indeed. A fortnight ago I was only thinking whether she
would accept me, and whether she would mind having Edith to take care
of.'
'She is very fond of Edith--very fond indeed.'
'Is she?' said the major, more distracted than ever. Why should he not
do the magnificent thing after all? 'But it is a great charge for a girl
when she marries.'
'It is a great charge--a very great charge. It is for you to think
whether you should entrust so great a charge to one so young.'
'I have no fear about that at all.'
'Nor should I have any--as you ask me. We have known Grace well,
thoroughly, and are quite sure that she will do her duty in that state
of life to which it may please God to call her.'
The major was aware when this was said to him that he had not come to
Miss Prettyman for a character of the girl he loved; and yet he was not
angry at receiving it. He was neither angry, nor even indifferent. He
accepted the character most gratefully, though he felt that he was being
led away from his purpose. He consoled himself for this however, by
remembering that the path which Miss Prettyman was now leading him, led
to the magnificent, and to those pleasant castles in the air which he
had been building as he walked into Silverbridge. 'I am quite sure that
she is all that you say,' he replied. 'Indeed I had made up my mind
about that long ago.'
'And what can I do for you, Major Grantly?'
'You think that I ought not to see her?'
'I will ask her, if you please. I have such trust in her judgment that
I should leave her altogether to her own discretion.'
The magnificent thing must be done, and the major made up his mind
accordingly. Something of regret came over his spirit as he thought of a
father-in-law disgraced and degraded, and of his own father
broken-hearted. But now there was hardly any alternative left to him.
And was it not the manly thing for him to do? He had loved the girl
before this trouble had come upon her, and was he not bound to accept
the burden which his love had brought with it? 'I will see her,' he
said, 'at once, if you will let me, and ask her to be my wife. But I
must see her alone.'
Then Miss Prettyman paused. Hitherto, she had undoubtedly been playing
her fish cautiously, or rather her young friend's fish--perhaps I may
say cunningly. She had descended to artifice on behalf of the girl whom
she loved, admired, and pitied. She had seen some way into the man's
mind, and had been partly aware of his purpose--of his infirmity of
purpose, of his double purpose. She had perceived that a word from her
might help Grace's chance, and had led the man on till he had committed
himself, at any rate to her. In doing this she had been actuated by
friendship rather than by abstract principle. But now, when the moment
had come in which she must decide upon some action, she paused. Was it
right, for the sake of either of them, that an offer of marriage should
be made at such a moment as this? It might be very well, in regard to
some future time, that the major should have so committed himself. She
saw something of the man's spirit, and believed that, having gone so
far--having so far told his love, he would return to his love hereafter,
let the result of the Crawley trial be what it might. But--but, this
could be no proper time for love-making. Though Grace loved the man, as
Miss Prettyman knew well, though Grace loved the child, having allowed
herself to long to call it her own, though such a marriage could be the
making of Grace's fortune as those who loved her could hardly have hoped
that it should ever have been made, she would certainly refuse the man,
if he were to propose to her now. She would refuse him, and then the man
would be free;--free to change his mind if he saw fit. Considering all
these things, craftily in the exercise of her friendship, too cunningly,
I fear, to satisfy the claims of a high morality, she resolved that the
major had better not see Miss Crawley at the present moment. Miss
Prettyman paused before she replied, and, when she did speak, Major
Grantly had risen from his chair and was standing with his back to the
fire. 'Major Grantly,' she said, 'you shall see if you please, and if
she pleases; but I doubt whether her answer at such a moment as this
would be that which you would wish to receive.'
'You think she would refuse me?'
'I do not think she would accept you now. She would feel--I am sure she
would feel, that these hours of her father's sorrow are not hours in
which love should be either offered or accepted. You shall, however, see
her if you please.'
The major allowed himself a moment for thought; and as he thought he
sighed. Grace Crawley had become more beautiful in his eyes than ever,
was endowed by these words from Miss Prettyman with new charms and
brighter virtues than he had seen before. Let come what might he would
ask her to be his wife on some future day; if he did not ask her now.
For the present, perhaps, he had better be guided by Miss Prettyman.
'Then I will not see her,' he said.
'I think that would be the wiser course.'
'Of course you knew before this that I--loved her?'
'I thought so, Major Grantly.'
'And that I intended to ask her to be my wife?'
'Well; since you put the question to me so plainly, I must confess that
as Grace's friend I should not quite have let things go on as they have
gone--though I am not at all disposed to interfere with any girl whom I
believe to be pure and good as I know her to be--but still I should
hardly have been justified in letting things go on as they have gone, if
I had not believed that such was your purpose.'
'I wanted to set myself right with you, Miss Prettyman.'
'You are right with me--quite right'; and she got up and gave him her
hand. 'You are a fine, noble-hearted gentleman, and I hope that our
Grace may live to be your happy wife, and the mother of your darling
child, and the mother of other children. I do not see how a woman could
have a happier lot in life.'
'And will you give Grace my love?'
'I will tell her at any rate that you have been here, and that you have
inquired after her with the greatest kindness. She will understand what
that means without any word of love.'
'Can I do anything for her--or her father; I mean in the way of money?
I don't mind mentioning it to you, Miss Prettyman.'
'I will tell her that you are ready to do it, if anything can be done.
For myself I feel no doubt that the mystery will be cleared up at last;
and then, if you will come here, we shall be so glad to see you.--I
shall at least.'
Then the major went, and Miss Prettyman herself actually descended with
him into the hall, and bade him farewell most affectionately before her
sister and two of the maids who came out to open the door. Miss Anne
Prettyman, when she saw the great friendship with which the major was
dismissed, could not contain herself, but asked most impudent questions,
in a whisper indeed, but in such a whisper that any sharp-eared
maid-servant could hear and understand them. 'Is it settled,' she asked
when her sister had ascended only the first flight of stairs;--'has he
popped?' The look with which her elder sister punished and dismayed the
younger, I would not have borne for twenty pounds. She simply looked,
and said nothing, but passed on. When she had regained her room she rang
the bell, and desired to ask the servant to ask Miss Crawley to be good
enough to step to her. Poor Miss Anne retired discomforted into the
solitude of one of the lower rooms, and sat for some minutes all alone,
recovering from the shock of her sister's anger. 'At any rate, he hasn't
popped,' she said to herself, as she made her way back to the school.
After that Miss Prettyman and Miss Crawley were closeted together for
about an hour. What passed between them need not be repeated here word
for word; but it may be understood that Miss Prettyman said no more than
she ought to have said, and that Grace understood all that she ought to
have understood.
'No man ever behaved with more considerate friendship, or more like a
gentleman,' said Miss Prettyman.
'I am sure he is very good, and I am so glad he did not ask to see me,'
said Grace. Then Grace went away, and Miss Prettyman sat awhile in
thought, considering what she had done, not without some stings of
conscience.
Major Grantly as he walked home was not altogether satisfied with
himself, though he gave himself credit for some diplomacy which I do not
think he deserved. He felt that Miss Prettyman and the world in general,
should the world in general ever hear anything about it, would give him
credit for having behaved well; and that he had obtained this credit
without committing himself to the necessity of marrying the daughter of
a thief, should things turn out badly in regard to the father. But--and
this but robbed him of all the pleasure which comes from real
success--but he had not treated Grace Crawley with the perfect
generosity which love owes, and he was in some degree ashamed of
himself. He felt, however, that he might probably have Grace, should he
choose to ask for her when this trouble should have passed by. 'And I
will,' he said to himself, as he entered the gate of his own paddock,
and saw his child in her perambulator before the nurse. 'And I will ask
her, sooner or later, let things go as they may.' Then he took the
perambulator under his own charge for half-an-hour, to the satisfaction
of the nurse, of the child, and of himself.
CHAPTER VIII
MR CRAWLEY IS TAKEN TO SILVERBRIDGE
It had become necessary on the Monday morning that Mrs Crawley should
obtain from her husband an undertaking that he should present himself
before the magistrates at Silverbridge on the Thursday. She had been
made to understand that the magistrates were sinning against the strict
rule of law in not issuing a warrant at once for Mr Crawley's
apprehension; and they were so sinning at the instance of Mr Walker--at
whose instance they would have committed almost any sin practicable by a
board of English magistrates, so great was their faith in him; and she
knew that she was bound to answer her engagement. She had also another
task to perform--that, namely, of persuading him to employ an attorney
for his defence; and she was prepared with the name of an attorney, one
Mr Mason, also of Silverbridge, who had been recommended to her by Mr
Walker. But when she came to the performance of these two tasks on the
Monday morning, she found that she was unable to accomplish either of
them. Mr Crawley first declared that he would have nothing to do with
any attorney. As to that he seemed to have made up his mind beforehand,
and she saw at once that she had no hope of shaking him. But when she
found that he was equally obstinate in the other matter, and that he
declared that he would not go before the magistrates unless he were made
to do so--unless the policeman came and fetched him, then she almost
sank beneath the burden of her troubles, and for a while was disposed to
let things go as they would. How could she strive to bear a load that
was so manifestly too heavy for her shoulders?
On the Sunday the poor man had exerted himself to get through his Sunday
duties, and he had succeeded. He had succeeded so well that his wife had
thought that things might yet come right with him, that he would
remember, before it was too late, the true history of that unhappy piece
of paper, and that he was rising above that half madness which for
months past had afflicted him.
On the Sunday evening, when he was tired with his work, she thought it
best to say nothing to him about the magistrates and the business of
Thursday. But on Monday morning she commenced her task, feeling that she
owed it to Mr Walker to lose no more time. He was very decided in his
manners and made her to understand that he would employ no lawyer on his
own behalf. 'Why should I want a lawyer? I have done nothing wrong,' he
said. Then she tried to make him understand that many who may have done
nothing wrong require a lawyer's aid. 'And who is to pay him?' he asked.
To this she replied, unfortunately, that there would be no need of
thinking of that at once. 'And I am to get further into debt!' he said.
'I am to put myself right before the world by incurring debts which I
know I can never pay? When it has been a question of food for the
children I have been weak, but I will not be weak in such a matter as
this. I will have no lawyer.' She did not regard this denial on his part
as very material, though she would fain have followed Mr Walker's advice
had she been able; but when, later in the day, he declared that the
police should fetch him, then her spirits gave way. Early in the morning
he had seemed to assent to the expedient of going into Silverbridge on
the Thursday, and it was not till after he had worked himself into a
rage about the proposed attorney, that he utterly refused to make the
journey. During the whole day, however, his state was such as almost to
break his wife' heart. He would do nothing. He would not go to the
school, nor even stir beyond the house-door. He would not open a book.
He would not eat, nor would he even sit at table or say the accustomed
grace when the scanty midday meal was placed upon the table. 'Nothing is
blessed to me,' he said, when his wife pressed him to say the word for
their child's sake. 'Shall I say that I thank God when my heart is
thankless? Shall I serve my child by a lie?' Then for hours he sat in
the same position, in the old arm-chair, hanging over the fire
speechless, sleepless, thinking ever, as she well knew, of the injustice
of the world. She hardly dared to speak to him, so great was the
bitterness of his words when she was goaded to reply. At last, late in
the evening, feeling that it would be her duty to send to Mr Walker
early on the following morning, she laid her hand gently on his shoulder
and asked him for his promise. 'I may tell Mr Walker that you will be
there on Thursday?'
'No,' he said, shouting at her. 'No. I will have no such message
sent.' She started back, trembling. Not that she was accustomed to
tremble at his ways, or to show that she feared him in his paroxysms,
but that his voice had been louder than she had before known it. 'I will
hold no intercourse with them at Silverbridge in this matter. Do you
hear me, Mary?'
'I hear you, Josiah; but I must keep my word to Mr Walker. I promised
that I would send to him.'
'Tell him, then, that I will not stir a foot out of this house on
Thursday of my own accord. On Thursday I shall be here; and here I will
remain all day--unless they take me by force.'
'But Josiah--'
'Will you obey me, or shall I walk into Silverbridge myself and tell the
man that I will not come to him.' Then he arose from his chair and
stretched forth his hand to his hat as though he were going forth
immediately, on his way to Silverbridge. The night was now pitch dark,
and the rain was falling, and abroad he would encounter all the severity
of the pitiless winter. Still it might have been better that he should
have gone. The exercise and the fresh air, even the wet and the mud,
would have served to bring back his mind to reason. But his wife thought
of the misery of the journey, of his scanty clothing, of his worn boots,
of the need there was to preserve the raiment which he wore; and she
remembered that he was fasting--that he had eaten nothing since the
morning, and that he was not fit to be alone. She stopped him,
therefore, before he could reach the door.
'Your bidding shall be done,' she said--'of course.'
'Tell them, then, that they must seek me if they want me.'
'But, Josiah, think of the parish--of the people who respect you --for
their sakes let it not be said that you were taken away by policemen.'
'Was St Paul not bound in prison? Did he think of what the people might
see?'
'If it were necessary, I would encourage you to bear it without a
murmur.'
'It is necessary, whether you murmur, or do not murmur. Murmur indeed!
Why does not your voice ascend to heaven with one loud wail against the
cruelty of man?' Then he went forth from the room into an empty chamber
on the other side of the passage; and his wife, when she followed him
there after a few minutes, found him on his knees, with his forehead
against the floor, and with his hands clutching at the scanty hairs of
his head. Often before had she seen him so, on the same spot, half
grovelling, half prostrate in prayer, reviling in his agony all things
around him--nay, nearly all things above him--and yet striving to
reconcile himself to his Creator by the humiliation of his confession.
It might be better for him now, if only he could bring himself to some
softness of heart. Softly she closed the door, and placing the candle on
the mantle-shelf, softly she knelt beside him, and softly touched his
hand with hers. He did not stir nor utter a single word, but seemed to
clutch at his thin locks more violently than before. Then she kneeling
there, aloud, but with a low voice, with her thin hands clasped, uttered
a prayer in which she asked her God to remove from her husband the
bitterness of that hour. He listened till she had finished, and then
rose slowly to his feet. 'It is in vain,' said he, 'it is all in vain.
It is all in vain.' Then he returned back to the parlour, and seating
himself again in the arm-chair, remained there without speaking till
past midnight. At last, when she told him that she herself was very
cold, and reminded him that for the last hour there had been no fire,
still speechless, he went up with her to their bed.
Early on the following morning she contrived to let him know that she
was about to send a neighbour's son over with a note to Mr Walker,
fearing to urge him further to change his mind; but hoping that he might
express his purpose of doing so when he heard that the letter was to be
sent; but he took no notice whatever of her words. At this moment he was
reading Greek with his daughter, or rather rebuking her because she
could not be induced to read her Greek.
'Oh, papa,' the poor girl said, 'don't scold me now. I am so unhappy
because of all of this.'
'And am I not unhappy?' he said, as he closed the book. 'My God, what
have I done against thee, that my lines should be cast in such terrible
places?'
The letter was sent to Mr Walker. 'He knows himself to be innocent,'
said the poor wife, writing what best excuse she how to make, 'and
thinks that he should take no step himself in such a matter. He will not
employ a lawyer, and he says that he should prefer that he be sent for,
if the law requires his presence at Silverbridge on Thursday.' All this
she wrote, as though she felt that she ought to employ a high tone in
defending her husband's purpose; but she broke down altogether in a few
words of the postscript. 'Indeed, indeed I have done what I could!' Mr
Walker understood it all, both the high tone and the subsequent fall.
On the Thursday morning, at about ten o'clock, a fly stopped at the gate
at Hogglestock Parsonage, and out of it came two men. One was dressed in
ordinary black clothes, and seemed from his bearing to be a respectable
man of the middle class of life. He was, however, the superintendent of
police for the Silverbridge district. The other man was a policeman,
pure and simple, with the helmet-looking hat which has lately become
common, and all the ordinary half-military and wholly disagreeable
outward adjuncts of the profession. 'Wilkins,' said the superintendent,
'likely enough I shall want you, for they tell me the gent is uncommon
strange. But if I don't call you when I come out, just open the door
like a servant and mount up on the box when we're in. And don't speak
nor say nothing.' then the senior policeman entered the house.
He found Mrs Crawley sitting in the parlour with her bonnet and shawl
on, and Mr Crawley in the arm-chair, leaning over the fire. 'I suppose
we had better go with you,' said Mrs Crawley directly the door was
opened; for of course she had seen the arrival of the fly from the
window.
'The gentleman had better come with us if he'll be so kind,' said
Thompson. 'I've brought a carriage for him.'
'But I may go with him?' said the wife, with frightened voice. 'I may
accompany my husband. He is not well, sir, and wants assistance.'
Thompson thought about it for a moment before he spoke. There was room
in the fly for only two, or if for three, still he knew his place better
than to thrust himself inside together with his prisoner and his
prisoner's wife. He had been specially asked by Mr Walker to be very
civil. Only one could sit on the box with the driver, and if the request
was conceded the poor policeman must walk back. The walk, however would
not kill the policeman. 'All right, ma'am,' said Thompson;--'that is, if
the gentleman will just pass his word not to get out till I ask him.'
'He will not! He will not!' said Mrs Crawley.
'I will pass my word for nothing,' said Mr Crawley.
Upon hearing this, Thompson assumed a very long face, and shook his head
as he turned his eyes first towards the husband and then towards the
wife, and shrugged his shoulders, and compressing his lips, blew out his
breath, as though in this way he might blow off some of the mingled
sorrow and indignation with which the gentleman's words afflicted him.
Mrs Crawley rose and came close to him. 'You may take my word for it he
will not stir. You may indeed. He thinks it incumbent on him not to give
any undertaking himself, because he feels himself so harshly used.'
'I don't know about harshness,' said Thompson, brindling up. 'A close
carriage brought and--'
'I will walk. If I am to go, I will walk,' shouted Mr Crawley.
'I did not allude to you--or to Mr Walker,' said the poor wife. 'I know
you have been most kind. I meant the harshness of the circumstances. Of
course he is innocent, and you must feel for him.'
'Yes, I feel for him, and for you too, ma'am.'
'That is all I meant. He knows his own innocence, and therefore he is
unwilling to give way in anything.'
'Of course he knows hisself, that's certain. But he'd better come in
the carriage, if only because of the dirt and slush.'
'He will go in the carriage; and I will go with him. There will be room
for you there, sir.'
Thompson looked up at the rain, and told himself that it was very cold.
Then he remembered Mr Walker's injunction, and bethought himself that
Mrs Crawley, in spite of her poverty, was a lady. He conceived even
unconsciously the idea that something was due to her because of her
poverty. 'I'll go with the driver,' said he, 'but he'll only give
hisself a deal of trouble if he tries to get out.'
'He won't; he won't,' said Mrs Crawley. 'And I thank you with all my
heart.'
'Come along, then,' said Thompson.
She went up to her husband, hat in hand, and looking round to see that
she was not watched put the hat on his head, and then lifted him as it
were from the chair. He did not refuse to be led, and allowed her to
throw round his shoulders the old cloak which was hanging in the
passage, and then he passed out, and was the first to seat himself in
the Silverbridge fly. His wife followed him, and did not hear the
blandishments with which Thompson instructed his myrmidon to follow
through the mud on foot. Slowly they made their way through the lanes,
and it was nearly twelve when the fly was driven through the yard of the
"George and Vulture" at Silverbridge.
Silverbridge, though it was blessed with a mayor and corporation, and
was blessed also with a Member of Parliament all to itself, was not
blessed with a courthouse. The magistrates were therefore compelled to
sit in the big room at the "George and Vulture" in which the county
balls were celebrated, and the meeting of the West Barsetshire
freemasons was held. That part of the country was, no doubt, very much
ashamed of its backwardness in this respect, but as yet nothing had been
done to remedy the evil. Thompson and his fly were therefore driven into
the yard of the inn, and Mr and Mrs Crawley were ushered by him up into
a little bed-chamber close adjoining to the big room in which the
magistrates were already assembled. 'There's a bit of a fire here,' said
Thompson, 'and you can make yourselves a little warm.' He himself was
shivering with the cold. 'When the gents is ready in there, I'll just
come and fetch you.'
'I may go in with him?' said Mrs Crawley.
'I'll have a chair for you at the end of the table, just nigh to him,'
said Thompson. 'You can slip into it and say nothing to nobody.' Then he
left them and went away to the magistrates.
Mr Crawley had not spoken a word since he had entered the vehicle. Nor
had she said much to him, but had sat with him holding his hand in hers.
Now he spoke to her--'Where is it that we are?' he asked.
'At Silverbridge, dearest.'
'But what is this chamber? And why are we here?'
'We are to wait here till the magistrates are ready. They are in the
next room.'
'But this is the Inn?'
'Yes dear, it is the Inn.'
'And I see crowds of people about.' There were crowds of people about.
There had been men in the yard, and others standing about on the stairs,
and the public room was full of men who were curious to see the
clergyman who had stolen twenty pounds, and to hear what would be the
result of the case before the magistrates. He must be committed; so, at
least said everybody; but then there would be the question of bail.
Would the magistrates let him out on bail, and who would be the
bailsmen? 'Why are the people here?' said Mr Crawley.
'I suppose it is a custom when the magistrates are sitting,' said his
wife.
'They have come to see the degradation of a clergyman,' said he; --'and
they will not be disappointed.'
'Nothing can degrade but guilt,' said his wife.
'Yes--misfortune can degrade, and poverty. A man is degraded when the
cares of the world press so heavily upon him that he cannot rouse
himself. They have come to look at me as though I were a hunted beast.'
'It is but their custom always on such days.'
'They have not always had a clergyman before them as a criminal.' Then
he was silent for a while, while she was chafing his cold hands. 'Would
that I were dead, before they brought me to this! Would that I were
dead!'
'Is it not right, dear, that we should bear all that He sends us?'
'Would that I were dead!' he repeated. 'The load is too heavy for me to
bear, and I would that I were dead.'
The time seemed very long before Thompson returned and asked them to
accompany him into the big room. When he did so, Mr Crawley grasped hold
of chair as though he had resolved that he would not go.
But his wife whispered a word to him, and he obeyed her. 'He will
follow me,' she said to the policeman. And in that way they went from
the smaller room into the large one. Thompson went first; Mrs Crawley
with her veil down came next; and the wretched man followed his wife,
with his eyes fixed upon the ground and his hands clasped together upon
his breast. He could at first have seen nothing, and could hardly have
known where he was when they placed him in a chair. She, with better
courage, contrived to look round through her veil, and saw that there
was a long board or table covered with green cloth, and that six or
seven gentlemen were sitting at one end of it, while there seemed to be
a crowd standing along the sides and about the room. Her husband was
seated at the other end of the table, near the corner, and round the
corner--so that she might be close to him--her chair had been placed. On
the other side of him there was another chair, now empty, intended for
any professional gentleman whom he might choose to employ.
There were five magistrates sitting there. Lord Lufton, from Framley,
was in the chair;--a handsome man, still young, who was very popular in
the county. The cheque which had been cashed had borne his signature,
and he had consequently expressed his intention of not sitting on the
board; but Mr Walker, desirous of having him there, had overruled him,
showing that the loss was not his loss. The cheque, if stolen, had not
been stolen from him. He was not the prosecutor. 'No, by Jove,' said
Lord Lufton, 'if I could quash the whole thing, I would do so at once!'
'You can't do that, my lord, but you may help us at the board,' said Mr
Walker.
Then there was the Hon George De Courcy, Lord De Courcy's brother, from
Castle Courcy. Lord De Courcy did not live in the county, but his
brother did so, and endeavoured to maintain the glory of the family by
the discretion of his conduct. He was not, perhaps, among the wisest of
men, but he did very well as a county magistrate, holding his tongue,
keeping his eyes open, and, on such occasions as this, obeying Mr Walker
in all things. Dr Tempest was also there, the rector of the parish, he
being both magistrate and clergyman. There were many in Silverbridge who
declared that Dr Tempest would have done far better to stay away when a
brother clergyman was thus to be brought before the bench; but it had
been long since Dr Tempest had cared what was said about him in
Silverbridge. He had become accustomed to the life he led as to like to
be disliked, and to be enamoured of unpopularity. So when Mr Walker had
ventured to suggest to him that, perhaps, he might not choose to be
there, he had laughed Mr Walker to scorn. 'Of course I shall be there,'
he said. 'I am interested in the case--very much interested. Of course I
shall be there.' And had not Lord Lufton been present he would have made
himself more conspicuous by taking the chair. Mr Fothergill was the
fourth. Mr Fothergill was man of business to the Duke of Omnium, who was
the great owner of property in and around Silverbridge, and he was the
most active magistrate in that part of the county. He was a sharp man,
and not at all likely to have any predisposition in favour of a
clergyman. The fifth was Dr Thorne of Chaldicotes, a gentleman whose
name has been already mentioned in these pages. He had been for many
years a medical man practising in a little village in the further end of
the county; but it had come to be his fate, late in life, to marry a
great heiress, with whose money the ancient house and domain of
Chaldicotes had been purchased from the Sowerbys. Since then Dr Thorne
had done his duty well as a country gentleman--not, however, without
some little want of smoothness between him and the duke's people.
Chaldicotes lay next to the duke's territory, and the duke had wished to
buy Chaldicotes. When Chaldicotes slipped through the duke's fingers and
went into the hands of Dr Thorne--or of Dr Thorne's wife--the duke had
been very angry with Mr Fothergill. Hence it had come to pass that there
had not always been smoothness between the duke's people and the
Chaldicotes people. It was now rumoured that Dr Thorne intended to stand
for the county on the next vacancy, and that did not tend to make things
smoother. On the right hand of Lord Lufton sat Lord George and Mr
Fothergill, and beyond Mr Fothergill sat Mr Walker, and beyond Mr Walker
sat Mr Walker's clerk. On the left hand of the chairman were Dr Tempest
and Dr Thorne, and a little lower down was Mr Zachary Winthrop, who held
the situation of clerk to the magistrates. Many people in Silverbridge
said that this was all wrong, as Mr Winthrop was partner with Mr Walker,
who was always employed before the magistrates if there was any
employment going for an attorney. For this, however, Mr Walker cared
very little. He had so much of his own way in Silverbridge, that he was
supposed to care nothing for anybody.
There were many other gentlemen in the room, and some who knew Mr
Crawley with more or less intimacy. He, however, took notice of no one,
and when one friend, who had really known him well, came up behind and
spoke to him gently leaning over his chair the poor man barely
recognised his friend.
'I'm sure your husband won't forget me,' said Mr Robarts, the clergyman
at Framley, as he gave his hand to that lady across the back of Mr
Crawley's chair.
'No, Mr Robarts, he does not forget you. But you must excuse him if at
this moment he is not quite himself. It is a trying situation for a
clergyman.'
'I can understand all that; but I'll tell you why I have come. I
suppose this inquiry will finish the whole affair, and clear up whatever
may be the difficulty. But should it not be so, it may be just possible,
Mrs Crawley, that something may be said about bail. I don't understand
much about it, and I daresay you do not either; but if there should be
anything of that sort, let Mr Crawley name me. A brother clergyman will
be best, and I'll have some other gentleman with me.' Then he left
without waiting for an answer.
At the same time there was a conversation going on between Mr Walker and
another attorney standing behind him, Mr Mason. 'I'll go to him,' said
Walker, 'and try to arrange it.' So Mr Walker seated himself in the
empty chair beside Mr Crawley, and endeavoured to explain to the
wretched man, that he would do well to allow Mr Mason to assist him. Mr
Crawley seemed to listen to all that was said, and then turned to the
speaker sharply: 'I will have no one to assist me,' he said so loudly
that everyone in the room heard the words. 'I am innocent. Why should I
want assistance? Nor have I the money to pay for it.' Mr Mason made a
quick movement forward, intending to explain that that consideration
need offer no impediment, but was stopped by further speech by Mr
Crawley. 'I will have no one to help me,' said he, standing upright, and
for the first time removing his hat from his head. 'Go on, and do what
it is you have to do.' After than he did not sit down till the
proceedings were nearly over, though he was invited more than once by
Lord Lufton to do so.
We need not go through all the evidence that was brought to bear upon
the question. It was proved that money for the cheque was paid to Mr
Crawley's messenger, and that this money was given to Mr Crawley. When
there occurred some little delay in the chain of evidence necessary to
show that Mr Crawley had signed and sent the cheque and got the money,
he became impatient. 'Why do you trouble the man?' he said. 'I had the
cheque, and I sent him; I got the money. Has anyone denied it, that you
would strive to drive a poor man like that beyond his wits?' Then Mr
Soames and the manager of the bank showed what inquiry had been made as
soon as the cheque came back from the London bank; how at first they had
both thought that Mr Crawley could of course explain the matter and how
he explained it by a statement which was manifestly untrue. Then there
was evidence to prove that the cheque could not have been paid to him by
Mr Soames, and as this was given, Mr Crawley shook his head and again
became impatient. 'I erred in that,' he exclaimed. 'Of course I erred.
In my haste I thought it was so, and in my haste I said so. I am not
good at reckoning money and remembering sums; but I say that I had been
wrong when my error was shown to me, and I acknowledged at once that I
had been wrong.'
Up to this point he had behaved not only with so much spirit, but with
so much reason, that his wife began to hope that the importance of the
occasion had brought back the clearness of his mind, and that he would,
even now, be able to place himself right as the inquiry went on. Then it
was explained that Mr Crawley had stated that the cheque had been given
to him by Dean Arabin, as soon as it was shown that it could not have
been given to him by Mr Soames. In reference to this, Mr Walker was
obliged to explain that application had been made to the dean, who was
abroad, and that the dean had stated that he had given fifty pounds to
his friend. Mr Walker explained also that the very notes of which this
fifty pounds had consisted had been traced back to Mr Crawley, and that
they had no connexion with the cheque or with the money which had been
given for the cheque at the bank.
Mr Soames stated that he had lost the cheque with a pocket-book; that he
had certainly lost it on the day on which he had called on Mr Crawley at
Hogglestock; and that he missed his pocket-book on his journey back from
Hogglestock to Barchester. At the moment of missing it he remembered
that he had taken the book out from his pocket in Mr Crawley's room,
and, at that moment, he had not doubted that he had left it in Mr
Crawley's house. He had written and sent to Mr Crawley to inquire, but
had been assured that nothing had been found. There had been no other
property of value in the pocket-book--nothing but a few visiting-cards
and a memorandum, and he had therefore stopped the cheque at the London
bank, and thought no more about it.
Mr Crawley was then asked to explain in what way he came possessed of
the cheque. The question was first put by Lord Lufton; but it soon fell
into Mr Walker's hands, who certainly asked it with all the kindness
with which such an inquiry could be made. Could Mr Crawley at all
remember by what means that bit of paper had come into his possession,
or how long he had had it? He answered the last question first. 'It had
been with me for months.' And why had he kept it. He looked round the
room sternly, almost savagely, he answered, fixing his eyes for a moment
upon almost every face around him as he did so. Then he spoke. 'I was
driven by shame to keep it--and then by shame to use it.' That his
statement was true, no one in the room doubted it.
And then the other question was pressed upon him; and he lifted up his
hands, and raised his voice, and swore by the Saviour in whom he
trusted, and he knew not from whence the money had come to him. Why then
had he said that it had come from the dean? He had thought so. The dean
had given him money, covered up, in an enclosure, 'so that the touch of
the coin might not add to my disgrace in taking alms,' said the wretched
man, thus speaking openly and freely in his agony of the shame which he
had striven so persistently to hide. He had not seen the dean's monies
as they had been given, and he had thought that the cheque had been with
them. Beyond that he could tell them nothing.
Then there was a conference between the magistrates and Mr Walker, in
which Mr Walker submitted that the magistrates had no alternative but to
commit the gentleman. To this Lord Lufton demurred, and with him Dr
Thorne.
'I believe, as I am sitting here,' said Lord Lufton, 'that he has told
the truth, and that he does not know any more than I do from whence the
cheque came.'
'I am quite sure he does not,' said Dr Thorne.
Lord George remarked that it was the 'queerest thing he had ever come
across.' Dr Tempest merely shook his head. Mr Fothergill pointed out
that even supposing the gentleman's statement to be true, it by no means
went towards establishing the gentleman's innocence. The cheque had been
traced to the gentleman's hands, and the gentleman was bound to show how
it had come into his possession. Even supposing that the gentleman had
found the cheque in his house, which was likely enough, he was not
thereby justified in changing it; and applying the proceeds to his own
purposes. Mr Walker told them that Mr Fothergill was right, and that the
only excuse to be made for Mr Crawley was that he was out of his senses.
'I don't see it,' said Lord Lufton. 'I might have a lot of paper money
on me, and not know from Adam where I got it.'
'But you would have to show where you got it, my lord, when inquiry was
made,' said Mr Fothergill.
Lord Lufton, who was not particularly fond of Mr Fothergill, and was
very unwilling to be instructed by him in any of the duties of a
magistrate, turned his back at once upon the duke's agent; but within
three minutes afterwards he had submitted to the same instructions from
Mr Walker.
Mr Crawley had again seated himself, and during this period of the
affair was leaning over the table with his face buried on his arms. Mrs
Crawley sat by his side, utterly impotent as to any assistance, just
touching him with her hand, and waiting behind her veil till she should
be made to understand what was the decision of the magistrates. This was
at last communicated to her--and to him--in a whisper by Mr Walker. Mr
Crawley must understand that he was committed to take his trial at
Barchester, at the next assizes, which would be held in April, but that
bail would be taken;--in his own bail in five hundred pounds, and that
of two others in two hundred and fifty pounds each. And Mr Walker
explained further that he and the bailsmen were ready, and that the
bail-bond was prepared. The bailsmen were to be the Rev Mr Robarts and
Major Grantly. In five minutes the bond was signed and Mr Crawley was at
liberty to go away a free man--till the Barchester Assizes should come
around in April.
Of all that was going on at this time Mr Crawley knew little or nothing,
and Mrs Crawley did not know much. She did say a word of thanks to Mr
Robarts, and begged that the same might be said to--the other gentleman.
If she had heard the Major's name she did not remember it. Then they
were led out back into the bedroom, where Mrs Walker was found, anxious
to do something, if she only knew what, to comfort the wretched husband
and the wretched wife. But what comfort or consolation could there be
within their reach? There was tea made for them, and sandwiches cut from
the Inn larder. And there was sherry in the Inn decanter. But no such
comfort as that was possible for either of them.
They were taken home again in the fly, returning without the escort of
Mr Thompson, and as they went home some few words were spoken by Mrs
Crawley. 'Josiah,' she said, 'there will be a way out of this, even yet,
if you will only hold up your head and trust.'
'There is a way out of it,' he said. 'There is a way. There is but one
way.' When he had spoken she said no more, but resolved that her eye
should never be off him, no--not for a moment. Then, when she had gotten
him once more into that front parlour, she threw her arms around him and
kissed him.
CHAPTER IX
GRACE CRAWLEY GOES TO ALLINGTON
The tidings of what had been done by the magistrates at their petty
sessions was communicated the same night to Grace Crawley by Miss
Prettyman. Miss Anne Prettyman had heard the news within five minutes of
the execution of the bail-bond, and had rushed to her sister with
information as to the event. 'They have found him guilty; they have,
indeed. They have convicted him--or whatever it is, because he couldn't
say where he got it.' 'You do not mean that they have sent him to
prison?' 'No;--not to prison; not as yet, that is. I don't understand it
altogether; but he's to be tried again in the assizes. In the meantime
he's to be out on bail. Major Grantly is to be the bail--and Mr Robarts.
That, I think, was very nice of him.' It was undoubtedly the fact that
Miss Anne Prettyman had received an accession of pleasurable emotion
when she learned that Mr Crawley had not been sent away scatheless, but
had been condemned, as it were, to public trial at the assizes. And yet
she would have done anything in her power to save Grace Crawley, or even
to save her father. And it must be explained that Miss Anne Prettyman
was supposed to be specially efficient in teaching Roman history to her
pupils, although she was so manifestly ignorant of the course of the law
in the country in which she lived. 'Committed him,' said Miss Prettyman,
correcting her sister with scorn. 'They have not convicted him. Had they
convicted him there would be no question of bail.' 'I don't know how
that all is, Annabella, but at any rate Major Grantly is to be the
bailsman, and there is to be another trial at Barchester.' 'There cannot
be more than one trial in a criminal case,' said Miss Prettyman, 'unless
the jury should disagree, or something of that kind. I suppose he has
been committed and the trial will take place at the assizes.'
'Exactly--that's just it.' Had Lord Lufton appeared as lictor and had
Thompson carried the fasces, Miss Anne would have known more about it.
The sad tidings were not told to Grace till the evening. Mrs Crawley,
when the inquiry was over before the magistrates, would fain have had
herself driven to the Miss Prettyman's school, that she might see her
daughter; but she felt that to be impossible while her husband was in
her charge. The father would of course have gone to his child, had the
visit been suggested to him; but that would have caused another terrible
scene; and the mother, considering it all in her mind, thought it better
to abstain. Miss Prettyman did her best to make poor Grace think that
the affair had so far gone favourably--did her best, that is, without
saying anything which her conscience told her to be false. 'It is to be
settled at the assizes in April,' she said.
'In the meantime what will become of papa?'
'Your papa will be at home, just as usual. He must have someone to
advise him. I daresay it would have been all over now if he would have
employed an attorney.'
'But it seems so hard that an attorney should be wanted.'
'My dear Grace, things in this world are hard.'
'But they are always harder for poor papa and mamma than for anybody
else.' In answer to this Miss Prettyman made some remarks intended to be
wise and kind at the same time. Grace, whose eyes were laden with tears,
made no immediate reply to this, but reverted to her former statement
that she must go home. 'I cannot remain, Miss Prettyman, I am so
unhappy.'
'Will you be more happy at home?'
'I can bear it better there.'
The poor girl soon learned from the intended consolations of those
around her, from the ill-considered kindness of the pupils, and from
words which fell from the servants, that her father had in fact been
judged to be guilty, as far as judgment had as yet gone. 'They do say,
miss, it's only because he hadn't a lawyer,' said the house-keeper. And
if men so kind as Lord Lufton and Mr Walker had made him out to be
guilty, what could be expected from a stern judge down from London, who
would know nothing about her poor father and his peculiarities, and from
twelve jurymen who would be shopkeepers out of Barchester. It would kill
her father, and then it would kill her mother; and after that it would
kill her also. And there was no money in the house at home. She knew it
well. She had been paid three pounds a month for her services at the
school, and the money for the last two months had been sent to her
mother. Yet, badly as she wanted anything that she might be able to
earn, she knew that she could not go on teaching. It had come to be
acknowledged by both the Miss Prettymans that any teaching on her part
at the present was impossible. She would go home and perish with the
rest of them. There was no room left for hope to her, or to any of her
family. They had accused her father of being a common thief--her father
whom she knew to be so nobly honest, her father whom she believed to be
among the most devoted of God's servants. He was accused of a paltry
theft, and the magistrates and lawyers and policemen among them had
decided that the accusation was true! How could she look the girls in
the face after that, or attempt to hold her own among the teachers!
On the next morning there came a letter from Miss Lily Dale, and with
that in her hand she again went to Miss Prettyman. She must go home, she
said. She must at any rate go to her mother. Could Miss Prettyman be
kind enough to send her home. 'I haven't sixpence to pay for anything,'
she said, bursting into tears; 'and I haven't a right to ask for it.'
Then the statements which Miss Prettyman made in her eagerness to cover
this latter misfortune were decidedly false. There was so much money
owing to Grace, she said; money for this, money for that, money for
anything or nothing! Ten pounds would hardly clear the account. 'Nobody
owes me anything; but if you'll lend me five shillings!' said Grace, in
her agony. Miss Prettyman, as she made her way through this difficulty,
thought of Major Grantly and his love. It would have been of no use, she
knew. Had she brought them together on that Monday, Grace would have
said nothing to him. Indeed such a meeting at such a time would have
been improper. But, regarding Major Grantly, as she did, in the light of
a millionaire--for the wealth of the Archdeacon was notorious --she
could not but think it a pity that poor Grace should be begging for five
shillings. 'You need not at any rate trouble yourself about money,
Grace,' said Miss Prettyman. 'What is a pound or two more or less
between you and me? It is almost unkind of you to think about it. Is
that letter in your hand anything for me to see, my dear?' Then Grace
explained that she did not wish to show Miss Dale's letter, but that
Miss Dale had asked her to go to Allington. 'And you will go,' said Miss
Prettyman. 'It will be the best thing for you, and the best thing for
your mother.'
It was at last decided that Grace should go to her friend at Allington,
and to Allington she went. She returned home for a day or two, and was
persuaded by her mother to accept the invitation that had been given
her. At Hogglestock, while she was there, new troubles came up, of which
something will shortly be told; but they were troubles in which Grace
could give no assistance to her mother, and which, indeed, though they
were in truth troubles, as will be seen, were so far beneficent that
they stirred her father up to a certain action which was in itself
salutary. 'I think it will be better that you should be away, dearest,'
said her mother, who now, for the first time, heard plainly what poor
Grace had to tell about Major Grantly;--Grace having, heretofore, barely
spoken, in most ambiguous words, of Major Grantly as a gentleman whom
she had met at Framley, and whom she had described as being 'very nice'.
In old days, long ago, Lucy Robarts, the present Lady Lufton, sister of
the Rev Mark Robarts, the parson of Framley, had sojourned for a while
under Mrs Crawley's roof at Hogglestock. Peculiar circumstances, which
need not, perhaps, be told here, had given occasion for the visit. She
had then resolved--for her future destiny been known to her before she
had left Mrs Crawley's house--that she would in coming days do much to
befriend the family of her friend; but the doing of much had been very
difficult. And the doing of anything had come to be very difficult
through a certain indiscretion on Lord Lufton's part. Lord Lufton had
offered assistance, pecuniary assistance to Mr Crawley, which Mr Crawley
had rejected with outspoken anger. What was Lord Lufton to him that his
lordship should dare to come to him with his paltry money in his hand?
But after a while, Lady Lufton, exercising some cunning in the operation
of her friendship, had persuaded her sister-in-law at the Framley
parsonage to have Grace Crawley over there as a visitor--and there she
had been during the summer holidays previous to the commencement of our
story. And there, at Framley, she had become acquainted with Major
Grantly, who was staying with Lord Lufton at Framley Court. She had then
said something to her mother about Major Grantly, something ambiguous,
something about his being 'very nice', and the mother had thought how
great was the pity that her daughter, who was 'nice' too in her
estimation, should have had so few of those adjuncts to assist her which
come from full pockets. She had thought no more about it then; but now
she felt herself constrained to think more. 'I don't quite understand
why he should have come to Miss Prettyman on Monday,' said Grace,
'because he hardly knows her at all.'
'I suppose it was on business,' said Mrs Crawley.
'No, mamma, it was not on business.'
'How can you tell, dear?'
'Because Miss Prettyman said it was--to ask after me. Oh, mamma, I must
tell you. I know he did like me.'
'Did he ever say so to you, dearest?'
'Yes, mamma.'
'And what did you tell him?'
'I told him nothing, mamma.'
'And did he ask to see you on Monday?'
'No, mamma; I don't think he did. I think he understood it all too
well, for I could not have spoken to him then.'
Mrs Crawley pursued her cross-examination no further, but made up her
mind that it would be better that her girl should be away from her
wretched home during this period of her life. If it were written in the
book of fate that one of her children should be exempted from the series
of misfortunes which seemed to fall, on after another, almost as a
matter of course, upon her husband, upon her, and upon her family; if so
great a good fortune were in store for her Grace as such a marriage as
this which seemed to be so nearly offered to her, it might probably be
well that Grace should be as little at home as possible. Mrs Crawley had
heard nothing but good of Major Grantly; but she knew that the Grantlys
were proud rich people--who lived with their heads high up in the
county--and it could hardly be that a son of the archdeacon would like
to take his bride direct from Hogglestock parsonage.
It was settled that Grace should go to Allington as soon as a letter
could be received from Miss Dale in return to Grace's note, and on the
third morning after her arrival at home she started. None but they who
have themselves been poor gentry--gentry so poor as not to know how to
raise a shilling--can understand the peculiar bitterness of the trials
which such poverty produces. The poverty of the normal poor does not
approach it; or, rather, the pangs arising from such poverty are
altogether of a different sort. To be hungry and have no food, to be
cold and have no fuel, to be threatened with distraint for one's few
chairs and tables, and with the loss of the roof over one's head--all
these miseries, which, if they do not positively reach, are so
frequently near to reaching the normal poor, are, no doubt, the severest
of the trials to which humanity is subjected. They threaten life--or, if
not life, then liberty--reducing the abject one to a choice between
captivity or starvation. By hook or crook, the poor gentleman or poor
lady--let the one or the other be so poor--does not often come to the
last extremity of the workhouse. There are such cases, but they are
exceptional. Mrs Crawley, through all her sufferings, had never yet
found her cupboard to be absolutely bare, or the bread-pan to be
actually empty. But there are pangs to which, at the time, starvation
itself would seem to be preferable. The angry eyes of the unpaid
tradesman, savage with anger which one knows to be justifiable; the
taunt of the poor servant who wants her wages; the gradual
relinquishment of habits which the soft nurture of earlier, kinder years
had made second nature; the wan cheeks of the wife whose malady demands
wine; the rags of the husband whose outward occupations demand decency;
the neglected children, who are learning not be the children of
gentlefolk; and, worse than all, the alms and doles of half-generous
friends, the waning pride, the pride that will not wane, the growing
doubt whether it be not better to bow the head, and acknowledge to all
the world that nothing of the pride of station is left--that the hand is
open to receive and ready to touch the cap, that the fall from the upper
to the lower level has been accomplished--these are the pangs of poverty
which drive the Crawleys of the world to be frequent entertaining of
that idea of the bare bodkin. It was settled that Grace should go to
Allington;--but how about her clothes? And then, whence was to come the
money for the journey?
'I don't think they'll mind about my being shabby at Allington. They
live very quietly there.'
'But you say that Miss Dale is so very nice in all her ways.'
'Lily is very nice, mamma; but I shan't mind her so much as her mother,
because she knows it all. I have told her everything.'
'But you have given me all your money, dearest.'
'Miss Prettyman told me I was to come to her,' said Grace, who had
already taken some from the schoolmistress, which at once had gone into
mother's pocket, and into household purposes. 'She said I should be sure
to go to Allington, and that of course I should go to her, as I must
pass through Silverbridge.'
'I hope papa will not ask about it,' said Mrs Crawley. Luckily papa did
not ask about it, being at the moment occupied much with other thoughts
and other troubles, and Grace was allowed to return by Silverbridge, and
to take what was needed from Miss Prettyman. Who can tell of the mending
and patching, of the very wearing midnight hours of needlework which
were accomplished before the poor girl went, so that she might not reach
her friend's house in actual rags? And when the world was ended, what
was there to show for it? I do not think that the idea of the bare
bodkin, as regarded herself, ever flitted across Miss Crawley's
brain--she being one of those who are very strong to endure; but it must
have occurred to her very often that the repose of the grave is sweet,
and that there cometh after death a levelling and making even of things,
which would at last cure all her evils.
Grace no doubt looked forward to a levelling and making even of
things--or perhaps to something more prosperous than that, which should
come to her relief on this side of the grave. She could not but have
high hopes in regard to her future destiny. Although, as has been said,
she understood no more than she ought to have understood from Miss
Prettyman's account of the conversation with Major Grantly, still,
innocent as she was, she had understood much. She knew that the man
loved her, and she knew also that she loved the man. She thoroughly
comprehended that the present could be to her no time for listening to
speeches of love, or for giving kind answers; but still I think that she
did look for relief on this side of the grave.
'Tut, tut,' said Miss Prettyman, as Grace in vain tried to conceal her
tears up in the private sanctum. 'You ought to know me by this time, and
to have learned that I can understand things.' The tears had flown in
return not only for the five gold sovereigns which Miss Prettyman had
pressed into her hand, but on account of the prettiest, soft, grey
merino frock that ever charmed a girl's eye. 'I should like to know how
many girls I have given dresses to, when they have been going out
visiting. Law, my dear; they take them, many of them, from us old maids,
almost as if we were only paying our debts in giving them.' And then
Miss Anne gave her a cloth cloak, very warm, with pretty buttons and
gimp trimmings--just such a cloak as any girl might like to wear who
thought that she would be seen out walking with her Major Grantly on a
Christmas morning. Grace Crawley did not expect to be seen out walking
by her Major Grantly, but nevertheless she liked the cloak. By the power
of her practical will, and by her true sympathy, the elder Miss
Prettyman had for a while conquered the annoyance, which on Grace's
part, was attached to the receiving of gifts, by the consciousness of
her poverty; and when Miss Anne, with some pride in the tone of her
voice, expressed a hope that Grace would think the cloak pretty, Grace
put her arms pleasantly round her friend's neck, and declared that it
was very pretty--the prettiest cloak in all the world!
Grace was met at the Guestwick railway station by her friend Lily Dale,
and was driven over to Allington in a pony carriage belonging to Lily's
uncle, the squire of the parish. I think she will be excused in having
put on her new cloak, not so much because of the cold as with a view of
making the best of herself before Mrs Dale. And yet she knew Mrs Dale
would know all the circumstances of her poverty, and was very glad that
it should be so. 'I am so glad that you have come, my dear,' said Lily.
'It will be such a comfort.'
'I am sure you are very good,' said Grace.
'And mamma is so glad. From the moment that we both talked ourselves
into eagerness about it--while I was writing my letter, you know, we
resolved that it must be so.'
'I'm afraid I shall be a great trouble to Mrs Dale.'
'A trouble to mamma! Indeed you will not. You shall be a trouble to no
one but me. I will have all the trouble myself, and the labour I delight
in shall be physic to my pain.'
Grace Crawley could not during the journey be at home and at ease even
with her friend Lily. She was going to a strange house under strange
circumstances. Her father had not indeed been tried and found guilty of
theft, but the charge of theft had been made against him, and the
magistrates before whom it had been made had thought the charge was
true. Grace knew all the newspapers had told the story, and was of
course aware that Mrs Dale would have heard it. Her own mind was full of
it, and though she dreaded to speak of it, yet she could not be silent.
Miss Dale, who understood much of this, endeavoured to talk her friend
into easiness; but she feared to begin upon the one subject, and before
the drive was over they were, both of them, too cold for much
conversation. 'There's mamma,' said Miss Dale as they drove up, turning
out of the street of the village to the door of Mrs Dale's house. 'She
always knows by instinct, when I am coming. You must understand now that
you are among us, that mamma and I are not mother and daughter, but two
loving old ladies living together in peace and harmony. We do have our
quarrels--whether the chicken shall be roast or boiled, but never
anything beyond that. Mamma, here is Grace, starved to death; and she
says if you don't give her some tea she will go back at once.'
'I will give her some tea,' said Mrs Dale.
'And I am worse than she is, because I've been driving. It's all up
with Bertram and Mr Green for the next week at least. It is freezing as
hard as it can freeze, and they might as well try to hunt in Lapland as
here.'
'They'll console themselves with skating,' said Mrs Dale.
'Have you ever observed, Grace,' said Miss Dale,' how much amusement
gentlemen require, and how imperative it is that some other game should
be provided when one game fails?'
'Not particularly,' said Grace.
'Oh, but it is so. Now, with women, it is supposed that they can amuse
themselves or live without amusement. Once or twice in a year, perhaps
something is done for them. There is an arrow-shooting party, or a
ball, or a picnic. But the catering for men's sport is never ending, and
is always paramount to everything else. And yet the pet game of the day
never goes off properly. In partridge time, the partridges are wild, and
won't come to be killed. In hunting time the foxes won't run straight
--the wretches. They show no spirit, and will take to ground to save
their brushes. Then comes a nipping frost, and skating is proclaimed;
but the ice is always rough, and the woodcocks have deserted the
country. And as for salmon--when the summer comes round I do really
believe that they suffer a great deal about the salmon. I'm sure they
never catch any. So they go back to their clubs and their cards, and
their billiards, and abuse their cooks and blackball their friends.
That's about it, mamma; is it not?'
'You know more about it than I do, my dear.'
'Because I have to listen to Bertram, as you never will do. We've got
such a Mr Green down here, Grace. He's such a duck of a man--such
top-boots and all the rest of it. And yet they whisper to me that he
doesn't always ride to hounds. And to see him play billiards is
beautiful, only he can never make a stroke. I hope you play billiards,
Grace, because uncle Christopher has just had a new table put up.'
'I never saw a billiard-table yet,' said Grace.
'Then Mr Green shall teach you. He'll do anything that you ask him. If
you don't approve the colour of the ball, he'll go to London to get you
another one. Only you must be very careful about saying that you like
anything before him, as he'll be sure to have it for you the next day.
Mamma happened to say that she wanted a four-penny postage stamp, and he
walked off to Guestwick to get it for her instantly, although it was
lunch-time.'
'He did nothing of the kind, Lily,' said her mother. 'He was going to
Guestwick, and was very good-natured, and brought me back a
postage-stamp that I wanted.'
'Of course he's good-natured, I know that. And there's my cousin
Bertram. He's Captain Dale, you know. But he prefers to be called Mr
Dale, because he has left the army, and has set up as junior squire of
the parish. Uncle Christopher is the real squire; only Bertram does all
the work. And now you know all about us. I'm afraid you'll find us dull
enough--unless you can take a fancy to Mr Green.'
'Does Mr Green live here?'
'No; he does not live here. I never heard of his living anywhere. He
was something once, but I don't know what; and I don't think he's
anything now in particular. But he's Bertram's friend, and like most
men, as one sees them, he never has much to do. Does Major Grantly ever
go forth to fight his country's battles?' This last question she asked
in a low whisper, so that the words did not reach her mother. Grace
blushed up to her eyes, however, as she answered--'I think Major Grantly
has left the army.'
'We shall get round her in a day or two, mamma,' said Lily Dale to her
mother that night. 'I'm sure it will be the best thing to force her out
of her troubles.'
'I would not use too much force on her, dear.'
'Things are better when they are talked about. I'm sure they are. And
it will be good to make her accustomed to speak of Major Grantly. From
what Mary Walker tells me, he certainly means it. And if so, she should
be ready for it when it comes.'
'Do not make her ready for what may never come.'
'No, mamma; but she is at present such a child that she knows nothing of
her powers. She should be made to understand that it is possible that
even a Major Grantly may think himself fortunate in being allowed to
love her.'
'I should leave that to Nature, if I were you,' said Mrs Dale.
CHAPTER X
DINNER AT FRAMLEY COURT
Lord Lufton, as he drove home to Framley after the meeting of the
magistrates at Silverbridge, discussed the matter with his
brother-in-law, Mark Robarts, the clergyman. Lord Lufton was driving a
dog-cart, and went along the road at the rate of twelve miles an hour.
'I'll tell you what it is, Mark,' he said, 'that man is innocent; but if
he won't employ lawyers at his trial, the jury will find him guilty.'
'I don't know what to think about it,' said the clergyman.
'Were you in the room when he protested so vehemently that he did not
know where he got the money?'
'I was in the room all the time.'
'And you did not believe him when he said that?'
'Yes, I think I did.'
'Anybody must have believed him--except old Tempest, who never believes
anybody, and Fothergill, who always suspects everybody. The truth is,
that he found the cheque and put it by, and did not remember anything
about it.'
'But, Lufton, surely that would amount to stealing it?'
'Yes, if it wasn't that he is such a poor, cracked, crazy creature, with
his mind all abroad. I think Soames did drop his book in his house. I'm
sure Soames would not say so unless he was quite confident. Somebody has
picked it up, and in some way the cheque has got into Crawley's hand.
Then he has locked it up and forgotten all about it; and when that
butcher threatened him, he has put his hand upon it, and he thought, or
believed, that it had come from Soames or the dean or from heaven, if
you will. When a man is so crazy as that, you can't judge of him as you
do of others.'
'But a jury must judge him as it would of others.'
'And therefore there should be a lawyer to tell the jury what to do.
They should have somebody up out of the parish to show that he is beside
himself half the time. His wife would be the best person, only it would
be hard lines on her.'
'Very hard. And after all he would only escape by being shown to be
mad.'
'And he is mad.'
'Mrs Proudie would come upon him in such a case as that, and sequester
his living.'
'And what will Mrs Proudie do when he's a convicted thief? Simply
unfrock him, and take away his living altogether. Nothing on earth
should induce me to find him guilty if I were on a jury.'
'But you have committed him.'
'Yes--I've been one, at least, in doing so. I simply did that which
Walker told us we must do. A magistrate is not left to himself as a
juryman is. I'd eat the biggest pair of boots in Barchester before I
found him guilty. I say, Mark, you must talk it over with the women, and
see what can be done for them. Lucy tells me that they're so poor, that
if they have bread to eat, it's as much as they have.'
On this evening Archdeacon Grantly and his wife dined and slept at
Framley Court, there having been a very long family friendship between
old Lady Lufton and the Grantlys, and Dr Thorne with his wife, from
Chaldicotes, also dined at Framley. There was also there another
clergyman from Barchester, one Mr Champion, one of the prebends of the
cathedral. There were only three now who had houses in the city since
the retrenchments of the ecclesiastical commission had come into full
force. And this Mr Champion was dear to the Dowager Lady Lufton, because
he carried on worthily the clerical war against the bishop which had
raged in Barchester ever since Dr Proudie had come there--which war old
Lady Lufton, good and pious and charitable as she was, considered that
she was bound to keep up, even to the knife, till Dr Proudie and all his
satellites should have been banished into the outer darkness. As the
light of the Proudies still shone brightly, it was probable that poor
old Lady Lufton might die before her battle was accomplished. She often
said that it would be so, but when so saying, always expressed a wish
that is might be carried on after her death. 'I shall never, never rest
in my grave,' she had once said to the archdeacon, 'while that woman
sits in your father's palace.' For the archdeacon's father had been
Bishop of Barchester before Dr Proudie. What mode of getting rid of the
bishop or his wife Lady Lufton proposed to herself, I am unable to say;
but I think she lived in hopes that in some way it might be done. If
only the bishop could have been found to have stolen a cheque for twenty
pounds instead of poor Mr Crawley, Lady Lufton would, I think, have been
satisfied.
In the course of these battles Framley Court would sometimes assume a
clerical aspect--having a prevailing hue, as it were, of black coats,
which was not altogether to the taste of Lord Lufton, and as to which he
would make complaint to his wife, and to Mark Robarts, himself a
clergyman. 'There's more of this than I can stand,' he'd say to the
latter. 'There's deuced more of it than you like yourself, I know.'
'It's not for me to like or dislike. It's a great thing having your
mother in the parish.'
'That's all very well; and of course she'll do as she likes. She may
ask whom she pleases here, and I shan't interfere. It's the same as
though it was her own house. But I shall take Lucy to Lufton.' Now Lord
Lufton had been building his house at Lufton for the last seven years
and it was not yet finished--or nearly finished, if all that his wife
had said were true. And if they could have their way, it never would be
finished. And so, in order that Lord Lufton might not actually be driven
away by the turmoils of ecclesiastical contest, the younger Lady Lufton
would endeavour to moderate both the wrath and the zeal of the elder
one, and would struggle against the coming clergymen. On this day,
however, three sat at the board at Framley, and Lady Lufton, in her
justification to her son, swore that the invitation had been given by
her daughter-in-law. 'You know, my dear,' the dowager said to Lord
Lufton, 'something must be done for these poor Crawleys; and as the dean
is away, Lucy wants to speak to the archdeacon about them.'
'And the archdeacon could not subscribe his ten-pound note without
having Champion to back him?'
'My dear Ludovic, you do put it in such a way.'
'Never mind, mother. I've no special dislike for Champion, only as you
are not paid five thousand pound a year for your trouble, it is rather
hard that you should have to & all the work of opposition bishop in the
diocese.'
It was felt by them all--including Lord Lufton himself, who became so
interested in the matter as to forgive the black coats before the
evening was over--that this matter of Mr Crawley's committal was very
serious, and demanded the full energies of their party. It was known to
them all that the feeling at the palace was inimical to Mr Crawley.
'That she-Beelzebub hates him for his poverty, and because Arabin
brought him into the diocese,' said the archdeacon, permitting himself
to use very strong language in his allusion to the bishop's wife. It
must be recorded on his behalf that he used the phrase in the presence
only of the gentlemen of the party. I think he might have whispered the
word in the ear of his confidential friend old Lady Lufton, and perhaps
have given no offence; but he would not have ventured to use such words
aloud in the presence of ladies.
'You forget, archdeacon,' said Dr Thorne, laughing, 'that the
she-Beelzebub is my wife's particular friend.'
'Not a bit of it,' said the archdeacon. 'Your wife knows better than
that. You tell her what I call her, and if she complains of the name
I'll unsay it.' It may therefore be supposed that Dr Thorne, and Mrs
Thorne, and the archdeacon, knew each other intimately, and understood
each other's feelings on these matters.
It was quite true that the palace party was inimical to Mr Crawley. Mr
Crawley undoubtedly was poor, and had not been so submissive to
episcopal authority as it behoves any clergyman to be whose loaves and
fishes are scanty. He had raised his back more than once against orders
emanating from the palace in a manner that had made the hairs on the
head of the bishop's wife to stand almost on end, and had taken as much
upon himself as though his living had been worth twelve hundred a year.
Mrs Proudie, almost as energetic in her language as the archdeacon, had
called him a beggarly perpetual curate. 'We must have perpetual curates,
my dear,' the bishop had said. 'They should know their places then. But
what can you expect of a creature from the deanery? All that ought to be
altered. The dean should have no patronage in the diocese. No dean
should have any patronage. It is an abuse from the beginning to the end.
Dean Arabin, if he had any conscience, would be doing the duty at
Hogglestock himself.' How the bishop strove to teach his wife, with the
mildest words, what really ought to be a dean's duty, and how the wife
rejoined by teaching her husband, not in the mildest words, what ought
to be a bishop's duty, we will not further inquire here. The fact that
such dialogues took place at the palace is recorded simply to show that
the palatial feeling in Barchester ran counter to Mr Crawley.
And this was cause enough, if no other cause existed, for partiality to
Mr Crawley at Framley Court. But, as has been partly explained, there
existed, if possible, even stronger ground than this for adherence to
the Crawley cause. The younger Lady Lufton had known the Crawleys
intimately, and the elder Lady Lufton had reckoned them among the
neighbouring clerical families of her acquaintance. Both these ladies
were therefore staunch in their defence of Mr Crawley. The archdeacon
himself had his own reasons--reasons which at present he kept altogether
within his own bosom--for wishing that Mr Crawley had never entered the
diocese. Whether the perpetual curate should or should not be declared a
thief, it would terrible to him to have to call the child of that
perpetual curate his daughter-in-law. But not the less on this occasion
was he true to his order, true to his side of the diocese, true to his
hatred of the palace.
'I don't believe it for a moment,' he said, as he took his place on the
rug before the fire in the drawing-room when the gentlemen came in from
their wine. The ladies understood at once what it was that he couldn't
believe. Mr Crawley had for the moment so usurped the county that nobody
thought of talking of anything else.
'How is it the,' said Mrs Thorne, 'that Lord Lufton, and my husband, and
the other wiseacres at Silverbridge, have committed him for trial?'
'Because we are told to do so by the lawyer,' said Dr Thorne.
'Ladies will never understand that magistrates must act in accordance
with the law,' said Lord Lufton.
'But you all say he's not guilty,' said Mrs Robarts.
'The fact is, that the magistrate cannot try the question,' said the
archdeacon; 'they only hear primary evidence. In this case I don't
believe Crawley would ever have been committed if he had employed an
attorney, instead of speaking for himself.'
'Why didn't somebody make him have an attorney?' said Lady Lufton.
'I don't think any attorney in the world could have spoken for him
better than he spoke for himself,' said Dr Thorne.
'And yet you committed him,' said his wife. 'What can we do for him?
Can't we pay the bail and send him off to America?'
'A jury will never find him guilty,' said Lord Lufton.
'And what is the truth of it?' asked the younger Lady Lufton.
Then the whole matter was discussed again, and it was settled among them
all that Mr Crawley had undoubtedly appropriated the cheque through
temporary obliquity of judgment--obliquity of judgment and forgetfulness
as to the source from whence the cheque had come to him. 'He has picked
it up about the house, and then has thought that it was his own,' said
Lord Lufton. Had they come to the conclusion that such an appropriation
of money had been made by one of the clergy of the palace, by one of the
Proudieian party, they would doubtless have been very loud and very
bitter as to the iniquity of the offender. They would have said as much
as to the weakness of the bishop and the wickedness of the bishop's
wife, and would have declared the appropriator to have been as very a
thief as ever picked a pocket or opened a bill;--but they were unanimous
in their acquittal of Mr Crawley. It had not been his intention, they
said, to be a thief, and a man should be judged only by his intention.
It must now be their object to induce a Barchester jury to look at the
matter in the same light.
'When they come to understand how the land lies,' said the archdeacon,
'they will be all right. There's not a tradesman in the city who does
not hate that woman as though she were--'
'Archdeacon,' said his wife, cautioning him to repress his energy.
'Their bills are all paid by this new chaplain they've got, and he is
made to claim discount on every leg of mutton,' said the archdeacon.
Arguing from which fact--or from which assertion, he came to the
conclusion that no Barchester jury would find Mr Crawley guilty.
But it was agreed on all sides that it would not be well to trust to the
unassisted friendship of the Barchester tradesmen. Mr Crawley must be
provided with legal assistance, and this must be furnished to him
whether he should be willing or unwilling to receive it. That there
would be a difficulty was acknowledged. Mr Crawley was known to be a man
not easy of persuasion, with a will of his own, with a great energy of
obstinacy on points which he chose to take as being of importance to his
calling, or to his own professional status. He had pleaded his own cause
before the magistrates, and it might be that he would insist on doing
the same thing before the judge. At last Mr Robarts, the clergyman from
Framley, was deputed from the knot of Crawleian advocates assembled at
Lady Lufton's drawing-room, to undertake the duty of seeing Mr Crawley,
and of explaining to him that his proper defence was regarded as a
matter appertaining to the clergy and gentry generally of that part of
the country, and that for the sake of the clergy and gentry the defence
must of course be properly conducted. In such circumstances the expense
of the defence would of course be borne by the clergy and gentry
concerned. It was thought that Mr Robarts could put the matter to Mr
Crawley with such a mixture of the strength of manly friendship and the
softness of clerical persuasion, as to overcome the recognised
difficulties of the task.
CHAPTER XI
THE BISHOP SENDS HIS INHIBITION
Tidings of Mr Crawley's fate reached the palace at Barchester on the
afternoon of the day on which the magistrates had committed him. All
such tidings travel very quickly, conveyed by imperceptible wires, and
distributed by indefatigable message boys whom Rumour seems to supply
for the purpose. Barchester is twenty miles from Silverbridge by road,
and more than forty by railway. I doubt whether anyone was commissioned
to send the news along the actual telegraph, and yet Mrs Proudie knew it
before four o'clock. But she did not know it quite accurately. 'Bishop,'
she said, standing at her husband's study door. 'They have committed
that man to gaol. There was no help for them unless they had foresworn
themselves.'
'Not foresworn themselves, my dear,' said the bishop, striving, as was
usual with him, by some meek and ineffectual word to teach his wife that
she was occasionally led by her energy into error. He never persisted in
the lessons when he found, as was usual, that they were taken amiss.
'I say foresworn themselves!' said Mrs Proudie; 'and now what do you
mean to do? This is Thursday, and of course the man must not be allowed
to desecrate the church of Hogglestock by performing the Sunday
services.'
'If he has been committed, my dear, and is in prison--'
'I said nothing about prison, bishop.'
'Gaol, my dear.'
'I said they committed him to gaol. So my informant tells me. But of
course all Plumstead and Framley set will move heaven and earth to get
him out, so that he may be there as a disgrace to the diocese. I wonder
how the dean will feel when he hears of it! I do indeed. For the dean,
though he is an idle, useless man, with no church principles, and no
real piety, still he has a conscience. I think he has a conscience.'
'I'm sure he has, my dear.'
'Well;--let us hope so. And if he has a conscience, what must be his
feelings when he hears that this creature whom he has brought into the
diocese has been committed to gaol along with common felons.'
'Not with felons, my dear; at least, I should think not.'
'I say with common felons! A downright robbery of twenty pounds, just
as though he had broken into the bank! And so he did, with sly artifice,
which is worse in such hands than a crowbar. And now what are we to do?
Here is Thursday, and something must be done before Sunday for the souls
of those poor benighted creatures at Hogglestock.' Mrs Proudie was ready
for the battle, and was even now sniffing the blood far off. 'I believe
it's a hundred and thirty pounds a year,' she said, before the bishop
had collected his thought sufficiently for a reply.
'I think we must find out, first of all, whether he is really to be shut
up in prison,' said the bishop.
'And suppose he is not to be shut up. Suppose they have been weak, or
untrue to their duty--and from what we know of the magistrates of
Barsetshire, there is too much reason to suppose they will have been so;
suppose they have let him out, is he to go about like a roaring
lion--among the souls of the people?'
The bishop shook in his shoes. When Mrs Proudie began to talk of the
souls of the people he always shook in his shoes. She had an eloquent
way of raising her voice over the word souls that was qualified to make
any ordinary man shake in his shoes. The bishop was a conscientious man,
and well know that poor Mr Crawley, even, would not roar at Hogglestock
to the injury of any man's soul. He was aware that this poor clergyman
had done his duty laboriously and efficiently, and he was also aware
that though he might have been committed by the magistrates, and then
let out upon bail, he should not be regarded now, in these days before
trial, as a convicted thief. But to explain all this to Mrs Proudie was
beyond his power. He knew well that she would not hear a word in
mitigation of Mr Crawley's presumed offence. Mr Crawley belonged to the
other party, and Mrs Proudie was a thorough-going partisan. I know a
man--an excellent fellow, who, being himself a strong politician,
constantly expressed a belief that all politicians opposed to him are
thieves, child-murderers, parricides, lovers of incest, demons upon
earth. He is a strong partisan, but not, I think, so strong as Mrs
Proudie. He says that he believes all evil of his opponents; but she
really believed the evil. The archdeacon had called Mrs Proudie a she-
Beelzebub; but that was a simple ebullition of mortal hatred. He
believed her to simply a vulgar, interfering, brazen-faced virago. Mrs
Proudie in truth believed that the archdeacon was an actual emanation
from Satan, sent to these parts to devour souls --as she would call
it--and that she herself was an emanation of another sort, sent from
another source expressly to Barchester, to prevent such devouring, as
far as it might be prevented by a mortal agency. The bishop knew it
all--understood it all. He regarded the archdeacon as a clergyman
belonging to a party opposed to his party, and he disliked the man. He
knew that from his first coming into the diocese he had been encountered
with enmity by the archdeacon and the archdeacon's friends. If left to
himself he could feel and to a certain extent could resent such enmity.
But he had no faith in his wife's doctrine of emanations. He had not
faith in many things which she believed religiously;--and yet what could
he do? If he attempted to explain, she would stop him before he had got
through the first half of his first sentence.
'If he is out on bail--' commenced the bishop.
'Of course he will be out on bail.'
'Then I think he should feel--'
'Feel! Such men never feel! What feeling can one expect from a
convicted thief?'
'Not convicted yet, my dear,' said the bishop.
'A convicted thief,' repeated Mrs Proudie; and she vociferated the words
in such a tone that the bishop resolved that he would for the future let
the word convicted pass without notice. After all she was only using the
phrase in a peculiar sense given to it by herself.
'It won't be proper, certainly, that he should do the services,'
suggested the bishop.
'Proper! It would be a scandal to the whole diocese. How could he
raise his head as he pronounced the eighth commandment? That must be at
least prevented.'
The bishop, who was seated, fretted himself in his chair, moving about
with little movements. He knew that there was a misery coming upon him;
and, as far as he could see, it might become a great misery--a huge
blistering sore upon him. When miseries came to him, as they did not
unfrequently, he would unconsciously endeavour to fathom them and weigh
them, and then, with some gallantry, resolve to bear them, if he could
find that their depth and weight were not too great for his powers of
endurance. He would let the cold wind whistle by him, putting up the
collar of his coat, and would be patient under the winter weather
without complaint. And he would be patient under the sun, knowing well
that tranquillity is best for those who have to bear tropical heat. But
when the storm threatened to knock him off his legs, when the earth
beneath him became too hot for his poor tender feet--what could he do
then? There had been with him such periods of misery, during which he
had wailed inwardly and had confessed to himself that the wife of his
bosom was too much for him. Now the storm seemed to be coming very
roughly. It would be demanded of him that he should exercise certain
episcopal authority which he knew did not belong to him. Now, episcopal
authority admits of being stretched or contracted according to the
character of the bishop who uses it. It is not always easy for a bishop
himself to know what he may do, and what he may not do. He may certainly
give advice to any clergyman in his diocese, and he may give it in such
form that it will have in it something of authority. Such advice coming
from a dominant bishop to a clergyman with a submissive mind, has in it
very much of authority. But Bishop Proudie knew that Mr Crawley was not
a clergyman with a submissive mind, and he feared that he himself, as
regarded from Mr Crawley's point of view, was not a dominant bishop. And
yet he could only act by advice. 'I will write to him,' said the bishop
'and will explain to him that as he is circumstanced he should not
appear in the reading-desk.'
'Of course he must not appear in the reading-desk. That scandal must at
any rate be inhibited.' Now the bishop did not at all like the use of
the word inhibited, understanding will that Mrs Proudie intended it to
be understood as implying some episcopal command against which there
should be no appeal;--but he let it pass.
'I will write to him, dear, tonight.'
'And Mr Thumble can go over with the letter first thing in the morning.'
'Will not the post be better?'
'No, bishop; certainly not.'
'He would get it sooner, if I write tonight, dear.'
'In either case he will get it tomorrow morning. An hour or two will
not signify, and if Mr Thumble takes it himself we shall know how it is
received. It will be well that Thumble should be there in person as he
will want to look for lodgings in the parish.'
'But, my dear--'
'Well, bishop?'
'About lodgings? I hardly think Mr Thumble, if we decide that Mr
Thumble should undertake the duty--'
'We have decided that Mr Thumble should undertake the duty. That is
decided.'
'But I do not think he should trouble himself to look for lodgings at
Hogglestock. He can go over on the Sundays.'
'And who is to do the parish work? Would you have that man, a convicted
thief, to look after the schools, and visit the sick, and perhaps attend
the dying?'
'There will be a great difficulty; there will indeed,' said the bishop,
becoming very unhappy, and feeling that he was driven by circumstances
either assert his own knowledge or teach his wife something of the law
with reference to his position as a bishop. 'Who is to pay Mr Thumble?'
'The income of the parish must be sequestrated, and he must be paid out
of that. Of course he must have the income while he does the work.'
'But, my dear, I cannot sequestrate the man's income.'
'I don't believe it, bishop. If the bishop cannot sequestrate, who can?
But you are always timid in exercising the authority put into your hands
for wise purposes. Not sequestrate the income of a man who has been
proved to be a thief! You leave that to us, and we will manage it.' The
'us' named comprised Mrs Proudie and the bishop's managing chaplain.
Then the bishop was left alone for an hour to write the letter which Mr
Thumble was to carry over to Mr Crawley--and after a while he did write
it. Before he commenced the task, however, he sat for some moments in
his arm-chair close by the fire-side, asking himself whether it might
not be possible for him to overcome his enemy in this matter. How would
it go with him suppose he were to leave the letter unwritten, and send
in a message by his chaplain to Mrs Proudie, saying that as Mr Crawley
was out on bail, the parish might be left for the present without
episcopal interference? She could not make him interfere. She could not
force him to write the letter. So, at least, he said to himself. But as
he said it, he almost thought that she could do these things. In the
last thirty years, or more, she had ever contrived by some power latent
in her to have her will effected. But what would happen if now, even
now, he were to rebel? That he would personally become very
uncomfortable, he was well aware, but he thought he could bear that. The
food would become bad--mere ashes, between his teeth, the daily modicum
of wine would lose its flavour, the chimneys would all smoke, the wind
would come from the east, and the servants would not answer the bell.
Little miseries of that kind would crowd upon him. He had arrived at a
time in life in which such miseries make such men very miserable; but
yet he thought that he could endure them. And what other wretchedness
would come to him? She would scold him--frightfully, loudly,
scornfully, and worse than all, continually. But of this he had so much
habitually, that anything added might be borne also;--if only he could
be sure that the scoldings should go on in private, that the world of
the palace should not be allowed to hear the revilings to which he would
be subjected. But to be scolded publicly was the great evil which he
dreaded beyond all evils. He was well aware that the palace would know
his misfortune, that it was known, and freely discussed by all, from the
examining chaplain down to the palace boot-boy;--nay, that it was known
to all the diocese; but yet he could smile upon those around him, and
look as though he held his own like other men--unless when open violence
was displayed. But when that voice was heard aloud along the corridors
of the palace, and when he was summoned imperiously by the woman,
calling for the bishop, so that all Barchester heard it, and when he was
compelled to creep forth from his study, at the sound of that summons,
with distressed face, and shaking hands, and short hurrying steps--a
being to be pitied even by a deacon--not venturing to assume an air of
masterdom should he chance to meet a housemaid on the stairs--then, at
such moments as that, he would feel that any submission was better than
the misery which he suffered. And he well knew that should he now rebel,
the whole house would be in a turmoil. He would be bishoped here,
bishoped there, before the eyes of all palatial men and women, till life
would be a burden to him. So he got up from his seat over the fire, and
went to his desk and wrote the letter. The letter was as follows:--
THE PALACE, BARCHESTER,--December, 186-'
'REVEREND SIR,--
(he left out the dear, because he knew that if he inserted it he
would be compelled to write the letter over again).
'I have heard today with the greatest trouble of
spirit, that you have been taken before a bench of
magistrates assembled at Silverbridge, having
previously been arrested by the police in your
parsonage house at Hogglestock, and that the
magistrates of Silverbridge have committed you to take
your trial at the next assizes at Barchester, on a
charge of theft.
'Far be it from me to prejudge the case. You
will understand, reverend sir, that I express no
opinion whatever as to your guilt or innocence in this
matter. If you have been guilty, may the Lord give you
grace to repent of your great sin and to make such
amends as may come from immediate acknowledgement and
confession, if you are innocent, may He protect you,
and make your innocence shine before all men. In
either case may the Lord be with you and keep your
feet from further stumbling.
'But I write to you now as your bishop, to
explain to you that, circumstanced as you are, you
cannot with decency perform the church services of
your parish. I have that confidence in you that I
doubt not that you will agree with me in this, and
will be grateful to me for relieving you from the
immediate perplexities of your position. I have,
therefore, appointed Rev Caleb Thumble to perform the
duties of incumbent of Hogglestock till such time as a
jury shall have decided upon your case at Barchester;
and in order that you may at once become acquainted
with Mr Thumble, as will be most convenient that you
should do, I will commission him to deliver this
letter into your hand personally tomorrow, trusting
that you will receive him with that brotherly spirit
in which he is sent on this painful mission.
'Touching the remuneration to which Mr Thumble
will become entitled for his temporary ministration in
the parish of Hogglestock, I do not at present lay
down any strict injunction. He must, at any rate, be
paid at a rate not less than that ordinarily afforded
for a curate.
'I will once again express my fervent hope that
the Lord may bring you to see the true state of your
own soul, and that He may fill you with the grace of
repentance, so that the bitter waves of the present
hour may not pass over your head and destroy you.
'I have the honour to be,
Reverend Sir,
'Your faithful servant in Christ,
'T. BARNUM'
(Baronum Castrum having been the old Roman name from which the modern
Barchester is derived, the bishops of the diocese have always signed
themselves Barnum.)
The bishop had hardly finished his letter when Mrs Proudie returned to
the study, followed by the Rev Caleb Thumble. Mr Thumble was a little
man, about forty years of age, who had a wife and children living in
Barchester, and who existed on such chance clerical crumbs as might fall
from the table of the bishop's patronage. People in Barchester said that
Mrs Thumble was a cousin of Mrs Proudie's; but as Mrs Proudie stoutly
denied the connexion, it may be supposed that the people of Barchester
were wrong. And, had Mr Thumble's wife in truth been a cousin, Mrs
Proudie would surely have provided for him during the many years in
which the diocese had been in her hands. No such provision had been
made, and Mr Thumble, who had not been living in the diocese for three
years, had received nothing else from the bishop than such chance
employment as this which he was not to undertake at Hogglestock. He was
a humble, mild-voiced man, when within the palace precincts, and had so
far succeeded in making his way among his brethren in the cathedral city
as to be employed not unfrequently for absent minor canons in chanting
the week-day services, being remunerated for his work at the rate of
about two shillings and sixpence a service.
The bishop handed the letter to his wife, observing in an off-hand kind
of way that she might as well see what he said. 'Of course I shall read
it,' said Mrs Proudie. And the bishop winced, visibly, because Mr
Thumble was present. 'Quite right,' said Mrs Proudie, 'quite right to
let him know that you knew he had been arrested--actually arrested by
the police.'
'I thought it proper to mention that, because of the scandal,' said the
bishop.
'Oh, it has been terrible in the city,' said Mr Thumble.
'Never mind, Mr Thumble,' said Mrs Proudie. 'Never mind that at
present.' Then she continued to read the letter. 'What's this?
Confession! That must come out, bishop. It will never do that you should
recommend confession to anybody, under any circumstances.'
'But, my dea--'
'It must come out, bishop.'
'My lord has not meant auricular confession,' suggested Mr Thumble. Then
Mrs Proudie turned around and looked at Mr Thumble, and Mr Thumble
nearly sank amidst the tables and chairs. 'I beg your pardon, Mrs
Proudie,' he said, 'I didn't mean to intrude.'
'The word must come out, bishop,' repeated Mrs Proudie. 'There should
be no stumbling blocks prepared for feet that are only too ready to
fall.' And the word did come out.
'Now, Mr Thumble,' said the lady, as she gave the letter to her
satellite, 'the bishop and I wish you to be at Hogglestock early
tomorrow. You should there not later than ten, certainly.' Then she
paused until Mr Thumble had given the required promise. 'And we request
that you will be very firm in the mission which is confided to you, a
mission which, as of course, you see, is of a very delicate and
important nature. You must be firm.'
'I will endeavour,' said Mr Thumble.
'The bishop and I both feel that this most unfortunate man must not
under any circumstances be allowed to perform the services of the Church
while this charge is hanging over him--a charge as to the truth of which
no sane man can entertain a doubt.'
'I'm afraid not, Mrs Proudie,' said Mr Thumble.
'The bishop and I therefore are most anxious that you should make Mr
Crawley understand at once--at once,' and the lady, as she spoke, lifted
up her hand with an eloquent violence which had its effect on Mr
Thumble, 'that he is inhibited,'--the bishop shook in his
shoes--'inhibited from the performance of any of his sacred duties.'
Thereupon, Mr Thumble promised obedience and went his way.
CHAPTER XII
MR CRAWLEY SEEKS FOR SYMPATHY
Matters went very badly indeed in the parsonage at Hogglestock. On the
Friday morning, the morning of the day after his committal, Mr Crawley
got up very early, long before the daylight, and dressing himself in the
dark, groped his way downstairs. His wife having vainly striven to
persuade him to remain where he was, followed him into the cold room
below with a lighted candle. She found him standing with his hat on and
with his old cloak, as though he were prepared to go out. 'Why do you do
this?' she said. 'You will make yourself ill with the cold and the night
air; and then you, and I too, will be worse than we now are.'
'We cannot be worse. You cannot be worse, and for me it does not
signify. Let it pass.'
'I will not let you pass, Josiah. Be a man and bear it. Ask God for
strength, instead of seeking it in an over-indulgence of your own
sorrow.'
'Indulgence!'
'Yes, love;--indulgence. It is indulgence. You will allow your mind to
dwell on nothing for a moment but your own wrongs.'
'What else have I that I can think of? Is not all the world against
me?'
'Am I against you?'
'Sometimes I think you are. When you accuse me of self-indulgence you
are against me--me, who for myself have desired nothing but to be
allowed to do my duty, and to have bread enough to keep me alive, and
clothes to make me decent.'
'Is it not self-indulgence, this giving way to grief? Who would know so
well as you how to teach the lesson of endurance to others? Come, love.
Lay down your hat. It cannot be fitting that you should go out into the
wet and cold of the raw morning.'
For a moment he hesitated, but as she raised her hand to take his cloak
from him he drew back from her, and would not permit it. 'I shall find
those up whom I want to see,' he said. 'I must visit my flock, and I
dare not go through the parish by daylight lest they hoot after me as a
thief.'
'Not one in Hogglestock would say a word to insult you.'
'Would they not? The very children in the school whisper at me. Let me
pass, I say. It has not yet come to that, that I should be stopped in my
egress and ingress. They have--bailed me; and while their bail lasts, I
may go where I will.'
'Oh, Josiah, what words to me! Have I ever stopped your liberty? Would
I not give my life to secure it?'
'Let me go, then, now. I tell you that I have business in hand.'
'But I will go with you. I well be ready in an instant.'
'You go! Why should you go? Are there not the children for you to
mind?'
'There is only Jane.'
'Stay with her, then. Why should you go about the parish?' She still
held him by the cloak, and looked anxiously up into his face. 'Woman,'
he said, raising his voice, 'what is that you dread? I command you to
tell me what it is you fear?' He had now taken hold of her by the
shoulder, slightly thrusting her from him, so that he might see her
face, by the dim light of the single candle. 'Speak, I say. What is it
that you think I shall do?'
'Dearest, I know that you will be better at home, better with me, than
you can be on such a morning as this out in the cold damp air.'
'And is that all?' He looked hard at her, while she returned his gaze
with beseeching loving eyes. 'It there nothing behind, that you will not
tell me?'
She paused for a moment before she replied. She had never lied to him.
She could not lie to him. 'I wish you knew my heart towards you,' she
said, 'with all and everything in it.'
'I know your heart well, but I want to know your mind. Why would you
persuade me not to go out among my poor?'
'Because it will be bad for you to be out alone in the dark lanes, in
the mud and wet, thinking of your sorrow. You will brood over it till
you will lose your senses through the intensity of your grief. You will
stand out in the cold air, forgetful of everything around you, till your
limbs will be numbed, and your blood chilled--'
'And then--?'
'Oh, Josiah, do not hold me like that, and look at me so angrily.'
'And even then I will bear my burden till the Lord in His mercy shall
see fit to relieve me. Even then I will endure, though a bare bodkin or
leaf of hemlock would put an end to it. Let me pass on; you need fear
nothing.'
She did let him pass without another word, and he went out of the house,
shutting the door after him noiselessly, and closing the wicket gate of
the garden. For a while she sat herself down on the nearest chair, and
tried to make up her mind how she might best treat him in his present
state of mind. As regarded the present morning her heart was at ease.
She new that he would do now nothing of that which she had apprehended.
She could trust him not to be false in his word to her, though she could
not before have trusted him not to commit so much heavier a sin. If he
would really employ himself from morning till night among the poor, he
would be better so--his trouble would be easier of endurance--than with
any other employment which he could adopt. What she most dreaded was
that he should sit idle over the fire and do nothing. When he was so
seated she could read his mind, as though it was open to her as a book.
She had been quite right when she had accused him of over-indulgence in
his grief. He did give way to it till it became a luxury to him--a
luxury which she would not have had the heart to deny him, had she not
felt it to be of all luxuries the most pernicious. During these long
hours, in which he would sit speechless, doing nothing, he was telling
himself from minute to minute that of all God's creatures, he was the
most heavily afflicted, and was revelling in the sense of the injustice
done to him. He was recalling all the facts of life, his education,
which had been costly, and, as regarded knowledge, successful; his
vocation to the Church, when in his youth he had determined to devote
himself to the service of his Saviour, disregarding promotion or the
favour of men; the short, sweet days of his early love, in which he had
devoted himself again--thinking nothing of self, but everything of her;
his diligent working, in which he had ever done his very utmost for the
parish in which he was placed, and always his best for the poorest; the
success of other men who had been his compeers, and, as he too often
told himself, intellectually his inferiors; then of his children, who
had been carried off from his love to the churchyard--over whose graves
he himself had stood, reading out the pathetic words of the funeral
service with unswerving voice and a bleeding heart; and then of his
children still living, who loved their mother so much better than they
loved him. And he would recall the circumstances of their poverty--how
he had been driven to accept alms, to fly from creditors, to hide
himself, to see his chairs and tables seized before the eyes of those
over whom he had been set as their spiritual pastor. And in it all, I
think, there was nothing so bitter to the man as the derogation from the
spiritual grandeur of his position as priest among men, which came as
one necessary result from his poverty. St Paul could go forth without
money in his purse or shoes on his feet or two suits to his back, and
his poverty never stood in the way of his preaching, or hindered the
veneration of the faithful. St Paul, indeed, was called upon to bear
stripes, was flung into prison, encountered terrible dangers. But Mr
Crawley--so he told himself--could have encountered all that without
flinching. The stripes and scorn of the unfaithful would have been
nothing to him, if only the faithful would have believed in him, poor as
he was, as they would have believed in him had he been rich! Even they
whom he had most loved and treated him almost with derision, because he
was now different from them. Dean Arabin had laughed at him because he
had persisted in walking ten miles through the mud instead of being
conveyed in the dean's carriage; and yet, after that, he had been driven
to accept the dean's charity! No one respected him. No one! His very
wife thought that he was a lunatic. And now he had been publicly branded
as a thief; and in all likelihood would end his days in a gaol! Such
were always his thoughts as he sat idle, silent, moody, over the fire;
and his wife knew well their currents. It would certainly be better that
he should drive himself to some employment, if any employment could be
found possible for him.
When she had been alone for a few minutes, Mrs Crawley got up from her
chair, and going into the kitchen, lighted the fire there, and put the
kettle over it, and began to prepare such breakfast for her husband as
the means in the house afforded. Then she called the sleeping
servant-girl, who was little more than a child, and went into her own
girl's room, and then she got into bed with her daughter.
'I have been up with your papa, dear, and I am cold.'
'Oh, mamma, poor mamma! Why is papa up so early?'
'He has gone out to visit some of the brickmakers, before they go to
their work. It is better for him to be employed.'
'But, mamma, it is pitch dark.'
'Yes, dear, it is still dark. Sleep again for a while, and I will sleep
too. I think Grace will be here tonight, and then there will be no room
for me here.'
Mr Crawley went forth and made his way with rapid steps to a portion of
this parish nearly two miles from his house, through which was carried a
canal, affording water communication in some intricate way both to
London and Bristol. And on the brink of this canal there had sprung up a
colony of brickmakers, the nature of the earth in those parts combining
with the canal to make brickmaking a suitable trade. The workmen there
assembled were not, for the most part, native-born Hogglestockians, or
folk descended from Hogglestockian parents. They had come thither from
unknown regions, as labourers of that class do come when they are
needed. Some young men from that and neighbouring parishes had joined
themselves to the colony, allured by wages, and disregarding the menaces
of the neighbouring farmers; but they were all in appearance and manners
nearer akin to the race of navvies than to ordinary rural labourers.
They had a bad name in the country; but it may be that their name was
worse than their deserts. The farmers hated them, and consequently they
hated the farmers. They had a beershop, and a grocer's shop, and a
huxter's shop for their own accommodation, and were consequently
vilified by the small old-established tradesmen around them. They got
drunk occasionally, but I doubt whether they drank more than did the
farmers themselves on market-day. They fought among themselves
sometimes, but they forgave each other freely, and seemed to have no
objection to black eyes. I fear that they were not always good to their
wives, nor were their wives always good to them; but it should be
remembered that among the poor, especially when they live in clusters,
such misfortunes cannot be hidden as they may amidst the decent
belongings of more wealthy people. That they worked very hard was
certain; and it was certain also that very few of their number ever came
upon the poor rates. What became of the old brickmakers no one knew. Who
ever sees a worn-out navvy?
Mr Crawley, ever since first coming into Hogglestock, had been very busy
among these brickmakers, and by no means without success. Indeed the
farmers had quarrelled with him because the brickmakers had so crowded
the parish church, as to leave but scant room for decent people. 'Doo
they folk pay tithes? That's what I want'un to tell me?' argued one
farmer--not altogether unnaturally, believing as he did that Mr Crawley
was paid by tithes out of his own pocket. But Mr Crawley had done his
best to make the brickmaker welcome at the church, scandalising the
farmers by causing them to sit or stand in any portion of the church
which was hitherto unappropriated. He had been constant in his personal
visits to them, and had felt himself to more a St Paul with them than
with any other of his neighbours around him.
It was a cold morning, but the rain of the preceding evening had given
way to frost, and the air, though sharp, was dry. The ground under the
feet was crisp, having felt the wind and frost, and was no longer
clogged with mud. In his present state of mind the walk was good for our
poor pastor, and exhilarated him; but still, as he went, he thought
always of his injuries. His own wife believed that he was about to
commit suicide, and for so believing he was very angry with her; and
yet, as he well knew, the idea of making away with himself had flitted
through his own mind a dozen times. Not from his own wife could he get
real sympathy. He would see what he could do with a certain brickmaker
of his acquaintance.
'Are you here, Dan?' he said, knocking at the door of a cottage which
stood alone, close to the towing path of the canal, and close also to a
forlorn corner of the muddy, watery, ugly, disordered brick-field. It
was now just past six o'clock, and the men would be rising, as in
midwinter they commenced their work at seven. The cottage was an
unalluring, straight brick-built tenement, seeming as though intended
to be one of a row which had never progressed beyond Number One. A voice
answered from the interior, inquiring who was the visitor, to which Mr
Crawley replied by giving his name. Then the key was turned in the lock,
and Dan Morris, the brickmaker, appeared with a candle in his hand. He
had been engaged in lighting the fire, with a view to his own breakfast.
'Where is your wife, Dan?' asked Mr Crawley. The man answered by
pointing with a short poker, which he held in his hand, to the bed,
which was half-screened from the room by a ragged curtain, which hung
from the ceiling half-way down to the floor. 'And are the Darvels here?'
asked Mr Crawley. Then Morris, again using the poker, pointed upwards,
showing that the Darvels were still in their allotted abode upstairs.
'You're early out, Muster Crawley,' said Morris, and then he went on
with his fire. 'Drat the sticks, if they bean't as wet as the old 'un
hisself. Get up, old woman, and do you do it, for I can't. They wun't
kindle for me, nohow.' But the old woman, having well noted the presence
of Mr Crawley, thought it better to remain where she was.
Mr Crawley sat himself down by the obstinate fire, and began to arrange
the sticks. 'Dan, Dan,' said a voice from the bed, 'sure you wouldn't
let his reverence trouble himself with the fire.'
'How be I to keep him from it, if he chooses? I didn't ax him.' Then
Morris stood by and watched, and after a while Mr Crawley succeeded in
his attempt.
'How could it burn when you had not given the small spark a current of
air to help it?' said Mr Crawley.
'In course not,' said the woman, 'but he be such stupid.'
The husband said no word in acknowledgement of this compliment, nor did
he thank Mr Crawley for what he had done, nor appear as though he
intended to take any notice of him. He was going on with his work when
Mr Crawley again interrupted him.
'How did you get back from Silverbridge yesterday, Dan?'
'Footed it--all the blessed way.'
'It's only eight miles.'
'And I footed it there, and that's sixteen. And I paid one-and-
sixpence for beer and grub;--s'help me I did.'
'Dan!' said a voice from the bed, rebuking him for the impropriety of
his language.
'Well; I beg pardon, but I did. And they guv'me two bob;--just two
plain shillings by--'
'Dan!'
'And I'd 've arned three-and-six here at brickmaking easy; that's what I
wuld. How's a poor man to live that way? They'll not cotch me at
Barchester 'Sizes at that price; they may be sure of that. Look
there--that's what I've got for my day.' And he put his hand into his
breeches-pocket and fetched out a sixpence. 'How's a man to fill his
belly out of that. Damnation!'
'Dan!'
'Well, what did I say? Hold your jaw, will you, and not be halloaing at
me that way? I know what I am saying of, and what I'm a doing of.'
'I wish they'd given you something more with all my heart,' said
Crawley.
'We knows that,' cried the woman from the bed. 'We is sure of that,
your reverence.'
'Sixpence!' said the man, scornfully. 'If they'd have guv' me nothing
at all but the run of my teeth at the public-house, I'd 've taken it
better. But sixpence!'
Then there was a pause. 'And what have they given to me?' said Mr
Crawley, when the man's ill-humour about his sixpence had so far
subsided as to allow of his busying himself again about the premises.
'Yes, indeed;--yes, indeed,' said the woman. 'Yes, yes, we feel that;
we do indeed, Mr Crawley.'
'I tell you what, sir; for another sixpence I'd have sworn you'd never
guv' me the paper at all; and so I will now, if it bean't too
late;--sixpence or no sixpence. What do I care? D--- them.'
'Dan!'
'And why shouldn't I? They hain't got brains enough among them to winny
the truth from the lies--not among the lot of 'em. I'll swear afore the
judge that you didn't give it me at all, if that'll do any good.'
'Man, do you think I would have you perjure yourself, even if that would
do me a service? And do you think any man was ever served by a lie?'
'Faix, among them chaps it don't do to tell them too much of the truth.
Look at that!' And he brought out the sixpence again from his
breeches-pocket. 'And look at your reverence. Only that they've let you
out for a while, they've been nigh as hard on you as though you were one
of us.'
'If they think that I stole it, they have been right,' said Mr Crawley.
'It's been along of that chap Soames,' said the woman. 'The lord
would've paid the money out of his own pocket and never said not a
word.'
'If they think that I've been a thief, they've done right,' repeated Mr
Crawley. 'But how can they think so? How can they think so? Have I lived
like a thief among them?'
'For the matter o' that, if a man ain't paid for his work by them as his
employers, he must pay hisself. Them's my notions. Look at that!'
Whereupon he again pulled out the sixpence, and held it forth in the
palm of his hand.
'You believe, then,' said Mr Crawley, speaking very slowly, 'that I did
steal the money. Speak out, Dan; I shall not be angry. As you go you are
an honest men, and I want to know what such of you think about it.'
'He don't think nothing of the kind,' said the woman, almost getting out
of bed in her energy. 'If he' thought the like o' that in his head, I'd
read 'un such a lesson he'd never think again the longest day he had to
live.'
'Speak out, Dan,' said the clergyman, not attending to the woman. 'You
can understand that no good can come of lie.' Dan Morris scratched his
head. 'Speak out, man, when I tell you,' said Crawley.
'Drat it all,' said Dan, 'where's the use of so much jaw about it?'
'Say you know his reverence is as innocent as the babe as isn't born,'
said the woman.
'No; I won't--say anything of the kind,' said Dan.
'Speak out the truth,' said Crawley.
'They do say, among 'em,' said Dan, 'that you picked it up, and then got
woolgathering in your head till you didn't rightly know where it come
from.' Then he paused. 'And after a bit you guv' it me to get the money.
Didn't you, now?'
'I did.'
'And they do say if a poor man had done it, it'd be stealing, for
sartin.'
'And I'm a poor man--the poorest in all Hogglestock; and, therefore, of
course, it is stealing. Of course I am a thief. Yes; of course I am a
thief. When the world believe the worst of the poor?' Having so spoken,
Mr Crawley rose from his chair and hurried out of the cottage, waiting
for no further reply from Dan Morris or his wife. And as he made his way
slowly home, not going there by the direct road, but by a long circuit,
he told himself there could be no sympathy for him anywhere. Even Dan
Morris, the brickmaker, thought that he was a thief.
'And am I a thief?' he said to himself, standing in the middle of the
road, with his hands up to his forehead.
CHAPTER XIII
THE BISHOP'S ANGEL
It was nearly nine before Mr Crawley got back to his house, and found
his wife and daughter waiting breakfast for him. 'I should not wonder if
Grace were over here today,' said Mrs Crawley. 'She'd better remain
where she is,' said he. After this the meal passed almost without a
word. When it was over, Jane, at a sign from her mother, went up to her
father and asked him whether she should read with him. 'Not now,' he
said, 'not just now. I must rest my brain before it will be fit for any
work.' Then he got into the chair over the fire, and his wife began to
fear that he would remain there all day.
But the day was not far advanced, when there came a visitor who
disturbed him, and by disturbing him did him a real service. Just at ten
there arrived at the little gate before the house a man on a pony, whom
Jane espied, standing there by the pony's head and looking about for
someone to relieve him of the charge of the steed. This was Mr Thumble,
who had ridden over to Hogglestock on a poor spavined brute belonging to
the bishop's stable, and which had once been the bishop's cob. Now it
was the vehicle by which Mrs Proudie's episcopal messages were sent
backwards and forwards through a twelve-miles ride round Barchester; and
so many were the lady's requirements, that the poor animal by no means
ate the hay of idleness. Mr Thumble had suggested to Mrs Proudie, after
their interview with the bishop and the giving up of the letter to the
clerical messenger's charge, that before hiring a gig from the Dragon of
Wantley, he should be glad to know--looking as he always did to 'Mary
Anne and the children'--whence the price of the gig was to be returned
to him. Mrs Proudie had frowned at him--not with all they austerity of
frowning which she could use when really angered, but simply with a
frown which gave her some little time for thought, and would enable her
to continue to rebuke if, after thinking, she should find that rebuke
was needed. But mature consideration showed her that Mr Thumble's
caution was not without reason. Were the bishop energetic--or even the
bishop's managing chaplain as energetic as he should be, Mr Crawley
might, as Mrs Proudie felt assured, be made in some way to pay for a
conveyance for Mr Thumble. But the energy was lacking, and the price of
the gig, if the gig were ordered, would certainly fall ultimately on the
bishop's shoulders. This was very sad. Mrs Proudie had often grieved
over the necessary expenditure of episcopal surveillance, and had been
heard to declare her opinion that a liberal allowance for secret service
should be made in every diocese. What better could the Ecclesiastical
Commission do with all those rich revenues which they had stolen from
the bishops? But there was no such liberal allowance at present, and
therefore, Mrs Proudie, after having frowned at Mr Thumble for some
seconds, desired him to take the grey cob. Now, Mr Thumble had ridden
the grey cob before, and would have much preferred a gig. But even the
grey cob was better than a gig at his own cost.
'Mamma, there's a man at the gate waiting to come in,' said Jane. 'I
think he's a clergyman.'
Mr Crawley immediately raised his head, though he did not at once leave
his chair. Mrs Crawley went to the window, and recognised the reverend
visitor. 'My dear, it is that Mr Thumble, who is so much with the
bishop.'
'What does Mr Thumble want with me.'
'Nay, my dear; he will tell you that himself.' But Mrs Crawley, though
she answered him with a voice intended to be cheerful, greatly feared
the coming messenger from the palace. She perceived at once that the
bishop was about to interfere with her husband in consequence of that
which the magistrates had done yesterday.
'Mamma, he doesn't know what to do with his pony,' said Jane.
'Tell him to tie it to the rail,' said Mr Crawley. 'If he has expected
to find menials here, as he has them at the palace, he will be wrong. If
he wants to come in here, let him tie the beast to the rail.' So Jane
went out and sent a message to Mr Thumble by the girl, and Mr Thumble
did tie the pony to the rail, and followed the girl into the house. Jane
in the meantime had retired out by the back door to the school but Mrs
Crawley kept her ground. She kept her ground although she believed that
her husband would have preferred to have the field to himself. As Mr
Thumble did not at once enter the room, Mr Crawley stalked to the door,
and stood with it open in his hand. Though he knew Mr Thumble's person,
he was not acquainted with him, and therefore simply bowed to the
visitor, bowing more than once or twice with a cold courtesy, which did
not put Mr Thumble altogether at his ease. 'My name is Mr Thumble,' said
the visitor--'the Reverend Caleb Thumble,' and he held the bishop's
letter in his hand. Mr Crawley seemed to take no notice of the letter,
but motioned Mr Thumble with his hand into the room.
'I suppose you have come from Barchester this morning?' said Mrs
Crawley.
'Yes, madam--from the palace.' Mr Thumble, though a humble man in
positions in which he felt humility would become him--a humble man to
his betters, as he himself would have expressed it --had still about him
something of that pride which naturally belonged to those clergymen who
were closely attached to the palace at Barchester. Had he been sent on a
message to Plumstead --could any such message from Barchester palace
have been possible--he would have been properly humble in his demeanour
to the archdeacon, or to Mrs Grantly had he been admitted to the august
presence of that lady; but he was aware that humility would not become
him on this present mission; he had been expressly ordered to be firm by
Mrs Proudie, and firm he meant to be; and therefore, in communicating to
Mrs Crawley the fact that he had come from the palace, he did load the
tone of his voice with something of the dignity which Mr Crawley might
perhaps be excused for regarding as arrogance.
'And what does the "palace" want with me?' said Mr Crawley. Mrs Crawley
knew at once there was to be a battle. Nay, the battle had begun. Nor
was she altogether sorry; for though she could not trust her husband to
sit alone all day in his arm-chair over the fire, she could trust him to
carry on a disputation with any other clergyman on any subject whatever.
'What does the palace want with me?' And as Mr Crawley asked the
question he stood erect, and looked Mr Thumble full in the face. Mr
Thumble called to mind the fact, that Mr Crawley was a very poor man
indeed--so poor that he owed money all round the country to butchers and
bakers, and the other fact that he, Mr Thumble himself, did not owe any
money to anyone, his wife luckily having a little income of her own;
and, strengthened by these remembrances, he endeavoured to bear Mr
Crawley's attack with gallantry.
'Of course, Mr Crawley, you are aware that this unfortunate affair at
Silverbridge--'
'I am not prepared to discuss the unfortunate affair at Silverbridge
with a stranger. If you are the bearer of any message to me from the
Bishop of Barchester, perhaps you will deliver it.'
'I have brought a letter,' said Mr Thumble. Then Mr Crawley stretched
out his hand without a word, and taking the letter with him to the
window, read it very slowly. When he had made himself master of its
contents, he refolded the letter, placed it again in the envelope, and
returned to the spot where Mr Thumble was standing. 'I will answer the
bishop's letter,' he said; 'I will answer it of course, as it is fitting
that I should do so. Shall I ask you to wait for my reply, or shall I
send it by course of post?'
'I think, Mr Crawley, as the bishop wishes me to undertake the duty--'
'You will not undertake the duty, Mr Thumble. You need not trouble
yourself, for I shall not surrender my pulpit to you.'
'But the bishop--'
'I care nothing for the bishop in this matter.' So much he spoke in
anger, and then he corrected himself. 'I crave the bishop's pardon, and
yours as his messenger, if in the heat occasioned by my strong feelings
I have said aught which may savour of irreverence towards his lordship's
office. I respect his lordship's high position as bishop of this
diocese, and I bow to his commands in all things lawful. But I must not
bow to him in things unlawful, nor must I abandon my duty before God at
his bidding, unless his bidding be given in accordance with the canons
of the Church and the laws of the land. It will be my duty, on the
coming Sunday, to lead the prayers of my people in the church of my
parish, and to preach to them from my pulpit; and that my duty, with
God's assistance, I will perform. Nor will I allow any clergyman to
interfere with me in the performance of those sacred offices--no, not
though the bishop himself should be present with the object of enforcing
his illegal command.' Mr Crawley spoke these words without hesitation,
even with eloquence, standing upright, and with something of a noble
anger gleaming over his poor wan face; and, I think, that while speaking
them, he was happier than he had been for many a long day.
Mr Thumble listened to him patiently, standing with one foot a little in
advance of the other, with one hand folded over the other, with his head
rather on one side, and with his eyes fixed on the corner where the wall
and ceiling joined each other. He had been told to be firm, and he was
considering how he might best display firmness. He thought that he
remembered some story of two parsons fighting for one pulpit, and he
thought also that he should not himself like to incur the scandal of
such a proceeding in the diocese. As to the law in the matter he knew
nothing himself; but he presumed that a bishop would probably know the
letter better than a perpetual curate. That Mrs Proudie was intemperate
and imperious, he was aware. Had the message come from her alone, he
might have felt that even for her sake he had better give way. But as
the despotic arrogance of the lady in this case had been backed by the
timid presence and hesitating words of her lord, Mr Thumble thought that
he must have the law on his side. 'I think you will find, Mr Crawley,'
said he, 'that the bishop's inhibition is strictly legal.' He had picked
up the powerful word from Mrs Proudie and flattered himself that it
might be of use to him in carrying his purpose.
'It is illegal,' said Mr Crawley, speaking somewhat louder than before,
'and will be absolutely futile. As you pleaded to me that you yourself
and your personal convenience were concerned in this matter, I have made
known my intentions to you, which otherwise I should have made known
only to the bishop. If you please, we will discuss the matter no
further.'
'Am I to understand, Mr Crawley, that you refuse to obey the bishop?'
'The bishop has written to me, sire, and I will make known my intention
to the bishop by a written answer. As you have been the bearer of the
bishop's letter to me, I am bound to ask whether I shall be indebted to
you for carrying back my reply, or whether I shall send it by course of
post?' Mr Thumble considered for a moment, and then made up his mind
that he had better wait, and carry back the epistle. This was Friday,
and the letter could not be delivered by post till the Saturday morning.
Mrs Proudie might be angry with him if he should be the cause of loss of
time. He did not, however, at all like waiting, having perceived that Mr
Crawley, though with language courteously worded, had spoken of him as a
mere messenger.
'I think,' he said, 'that I may, perhaps, best further the object which
we must all have in view, that namely of providing properly for the
Sunday services in the church of Hogglestock, by taking your reply
personally to the bishop.'
'That provision is my care and need trouble no one else,' said Mr
Crawley, in a loud voice. Then, before seating himself at his old desk,
he stood awhile, pondering with his back turned to his visitor. 'I have
to ask your pardon, sir,' said he, looking round for a moment, 'because
by the reason of the extreme poverty of this house, my wife is unable to
offer you any hospitality which is especially due from one clergyman to
another.'
'Oh, don't mention it,' said Mr Thumble.
'If you will allow me, sir, I would prefer that it should be mentioned.'
Then he seated himself, and commenced his letter.
Mr Thumble felt himself to be awkwardly placed. Had there been no third
person in the room he could have sat down in Mr Crawley's arm-chair, and
waited patiently till the letter should be finished. But Mrs Crawley was
there, and of course he was bound to speak to her. In what strain should
he do so? Even he, as little as he was given to indulge in sentiment,
had been touched by the man's appeal to his own poverty, and he felt,
moreover, that Mrs Crawley must have been deeply moved by her husband's
position with reference to the bishop's order. It was quite out of the
question that he should speak of that, as Mr Crawley would, he was well
aware, would immediately turn upon him. At last he thought of a subject,
and spoke with a voice intended to be pleasant. 'That was the
school-house I passed, probably, as I came here?' Mrs Crawley told him
that it was the school-house. 'Ah, yes, I thought so. Have you a
certified teacher there?' Mrs Crawley explained that no Government aid
had ever reached Hogglestock. Besides themselves, they had only a young
woman whom they themselves had instructed.
'Ah, that is a pity,' said Mr Thumble.
'I--I am the certified teacher,' said Mr Crawley, turning round upon him
from his chair.
'Oh, ah, yes,' said Mr Thumble; and after that Mr Thumble asked no more
questions about the Hogglestock school. Soon afterwards Mrs Crawley left
the room, seeing the difficulty under which Mr Thumble was labouring,
and feeling sure that her presence would not now be necessary. Mr
Crawley's letter was written quickly, though every now and then he would
sit for a moment with his pen poised in the air, searching his memory
for a word. But the words came to him easily, and before an hour was
over he had handed his letter to Mr Thumble. The letter was as
follows:--
'THE PARSONAGE, HOGGLESTOCK, December, 186-
'RIGHT REVEREND LORD,
'I have received the letter of yesterday's date
which your lordship has done me the honour of sending
by the hands of the Reverend Mr Thumble, and I avail
myself of that gentleman's kindness to return to you
an answer by the same means, moved this to use his
patience chiefly by the consideration that in this way
my reply to your lordship's injunctions may be in your
hands with less delay than would attend the course of
the mail-post.
'It is with deep regret that I feel myself
constrained to inform your lordship that I cannot obey
the command which you have laid upon me with reference
to the services of my church in this parish. I cannot
permit Mr Thumble, or any other delegate from your
lordship, to usurp my place in the pulpit. I would
not have you think, if I can possibly dispel such
thoughts from your mind, that I disregard your high
office, or that I am deficient in that respectful
obedience to the bishop set over me, which is due to
the authority of the Crown as the head of the church
in these realms; but in this, as in all questions of
obedience, he who is required to obey must examine the
extent of the authority exercised by him who demands
obedience. Your lordship might possibly call upon me,
using your voice as bishop of the diocese, to abandon
altogether the freehold rights which are now mine in
this perpetual curacy. The judge of assize, before
whom I shall soon stand for my trial, might command me
to retire to prison without a verdict given by a jury.
The magistrates who committed me so lately as
yesterday, upon whose decision in that respect your
lordship has taken action against me so quickly, might
have equally strained their authority. But in no
case, in this land, is he that is subject bound to
obey, further than where the law gives authority and
exacts obedience. It is not in the power of the Crown
itself to inhibit me from the performance of my
ordinary duties in this parish by any such missive as
that sent to me by your lordship. If your lordship
think right to stop my mouth as a clergyman in your
diocese, you must proceed to do so in an
ecclesiastical court in accordance with the laws, and
will succeed in your object, of fail, in accordance
with the evidences as to the ministerial fitness or
unfitness, which may be produced respecting me before
the proper tribunal.
'I will allow that much attention is due from a
clergyman to pastoral advice given to him by his
bishop. On that head I must first express to your
lordship my full understanding that your letter has
not been intended to convey advice, but an order;--an
inhibition, as your messenger, the Reverend Mr
Thumble, has expressed it. There might be a case
certainly in which I should submit myself to counsel,
though I should resist command. No counsel, however,
has been given--except indeed that I should receive
your messenger in a proper spirit, which I hope I have
done. No other advice has been given me, and
therefore there is now no such case as that I have
imagined. But in this matter, my lord, I could not
have accepted advice from a living man, no, not though
the hands of the apostles themselves had made him
bishop who tendered it to me, and had set him over me
for my guidance. I am in a terrible strait. Trouble,
and sorrow, and danger are upon me and mine. It may
well be, as your lordship says, that the bitter waters
of the present hour may pass over my head and destroy
me. I thank your lordship for telling me whither I am
to look for assistance. Truly I know not whether
there is any to be found for me on earth. But the
deeper my troubles, the greater my sorrow, the more
pressing any danger, the stronger is my need that I
should carry myself in these days with that outward
respect of self which will teach those around me to
know that, let who will condemn me, I have not
condemned myself. Were I to abandon my pulpit, unless
forced to do so by legal means, I should in doing so
be putting a plea of guilty against myself upon the
record. This, my lord, I will not do.
'I have the honour to be, my lord,
'Your lordship's most obedient servant,
'JOSIAH CRAWLEY'
When he had finished writing his letter he read it over slowly, and then
handed it to Mr Thumble. The act of writing, and the current of the
thoughts through his brain, and the feeling that in every word written
he was getting the better of the bishop--all this joined to a certain
manly delight in warfare against authority, lighted up the man's face
and gave to his eyes an expression which had been long wanting to them.
His wife at that moment came into the room and he looked at her with an
air of triumph as he handed the letter to Mr Thumble. 'If you will give
that to his lordship with an assurance of my duty to his lordship in all
things proper, I will thank you kindly, craving your pardon for the
great delay to which you have been subjected.'
'As to the delay, it is nothing,' said Mr Thumble.
'It has been much; but you as a clergyman will feel that it has been
incumbent upon me to speak my mind fully.'
'Oh, yes; of course.' Mr Crawley was standing up, as also was Mrs
Crawley. It was evident to Mr Thumble that they both expected that he
should go. But he had been especially enjoined to be firm, and he
doubted whether hitherto he had been firm enough. As far as this
morning's work had as yet gone, it seemed to him that Mr Crawley had had
the play to himself, and that he, Mr Thumble, had not had his innings.
He, from the palace, had been, as it were, cowed by this man, who had
been forced to plead his own poverty. It was certainly incumbent upon
him, before he went, to speak up, not only for the bishop, but for
himself also. 'Mr Crawley,' he said, 'hitherto I have listened to you
patiently.'
'Nay,' said Mr Crawley, smiling, 'you have indeed been patient, and I
thank you; but my words have been written, not spoken.'
'You have told me that you intend to disobey the bishop's inhibition.'
'I have told the bishop so, certainly.'
'May I ask you now to listen to me for a few minutes?'
Mr Crawley, still smiling, still having in his eyes the unwonted triumph
which had lighted them up, paused a moment, and then answered him.
'Reverend sir, you must excuse me if I say no--not on this subject.'
'You will not let me speak?'
'No; not on this matter, which is very private to me. What should you
think if I went into your house and inquired of you as to those things
which were particularly near to you?'
'But the bishop sent me.'
'Though ten bishops sent me--a council of archbishops if you will!' Mr
Thumble started back, appalled by the energy of the words used to him.
'Shall a man have nothing of his own;--no sorrow in his heart, no care
in his family, no thought in his breast so private and special to him,
but that, if he happen to be a clergyman, the bishop may touch it with
his thumb?'
'I am not the bishop's thumb,' said Mr Thumble, drawing himself up.
'I intended not to hint anything personally objectionable to yourself.
I will regard you as one of the angels of the church.' Mr Thumble, when
he heard this, began to be sure that Mr Crawley was mad; he knew of no
angels that could ride about the Barsetshire lanes on grey ponies. 'And
as much as I respect you; but I cannot discuss with you the matter of
the bishop's message.'
'Oh, very well. I will tell his lordship.'
'I will pray you to do so.'
'And his lordship, should he so decide, will arm me with such power on
my next coming as will enable me to carry out his lordship's wishes.'
'His lordship will abide by the law, as will you also.' In speaking
these last words he stood with the door in his hand, and Mr Thumble, not
knowing how to increase or even maintain his firmness, thought it best
to pass out, and mount his grey pony and ride away.
'The poor man thought that you were laughing at him when you called him
an angel of the church,' said Mrs Crawley, coming up to him and smiling
on him.
'Had I told him he was simply a messenger, he would have taken it
worse;--poor fool! When they have rid themselves of me they may put him
here, in my church; but not yet--not yet. Where is Jane? Tell her that I
am ready to commence the Seven against Thebes with her.' Then Jane was
immediately sent for out of the school, and the Seven against Thebes was
commenced with great energy. Often during the next hour and a half Mrs
Crawley from the kitchen would hear him reading out, or rather saying by
rote, with sonorous rolling voice, great passages from some chorus, and
she was very thankful to the bishop, who had sent over to them a message
and messenger which had been so salutary in their effect upon her
husband. 'In truth an angel of the church,' she said to herself as she
chopped up the onions for the mutton-broth; and ever afterwards she
regarded Mr Thumble as an 'angel'.
CHAPTER XIV
MAJOR GRANTLY CONSULTS A FRIEND
Grace Crawley passed through Silverbridge on her way to Allington on the
Monday, and on the Tuesday morning Major Grantly received a very short
note from Miss Prettyman, telling him that she had done so. 'Dear
Sir,--I think you will be very glad to learn that our friend Miss
Crawley went from us yesterday on a visit to her friend, Miss Dale, at
Allington.--Yours truly, Annabella Prettyman.' The note said no more
than that. Major Grantly was glad to get it, obtaining from it the
satisfaction which a man always feels when he is presumed to be
concerned in the affairs of the lady with whom he is in love. And he
regarded Miss Prettyman with favourable eyes as a discreet and friendly
woman. Nevertheless, he was not altogether happy. The very fact that
Miss Prettyman should write to him on such a subject made him feel that
he was bound to Grace Crawley. He knew enough of himself to be sure that
he could not give her up without making himself miserable. And yet, as
regarded her father, things were going from bad to worse. Everybody now
said that the evidence was so strong against Mr Crawley as to leave
hardly any doubt of his guilt. Even the ladies in Silverbridge were
beginning to give up his cause, acknowledging that the money could not
have come rightfully into his hands, and excusing him on the plea of
partial insanity. 'He has picked it up and put it by for months, and
then thought that it was his own . . .' The ladies at Silverbridge could
find nothing better to say for him than that; and when young Mr Walker
remarked that such little mistakes were the customary causes of men
being taken to prison, the ladies of Silverbridge did not know how to
answer him. It had come to be their opinion that Mr Crawley was affected
with a partial lunacy, which ought to be forgiven in one to whom the
world had been so cruel; and when young Mr Walker endeavoured to explain
to them that a man must be sane altogether or mad altogether, and that
Mr Crawley must, if sane, be locked up as a thief, and if mad, locked up
as a madman, they sighed, and were convinced that until the world should
have been improved by a new infusion of romance, and a stronger feeling
of justice, Mr John Walker was right.
And the result of this general opinion made its way to Major Grantly,
and made its way, also, to the archdeacon at Plumstead. As to the major,
in giving him his due, it must be explained that the more certain he
became of the father's guilt, the more certain also he became of the
daughter's merits. It was very hard. The whole thing was cruelly hard.
It was cruelly hard upon him that he should be brought into this
trouble, and be forced to take upon himself the armour of a
knight-errant for the redress of the wrong on the part of the young
lady. But when alone in his house, or with his child, he declared to
himself that he would do so. It might well be that he could not live in
Barsetshire after he had married Mr Crawley's daughter. He had inherited
from his father enough of that longing for ascendancy among those around
him to make him feel that in such circumstances he would be wretched.
But he would be made more wretched by the self-knowledge that he had
behaved badly to the girl he loved; and the world beyond Barsetshire was
open to him. He would take her with him to Canada, to New Zealand, or to
some other far-away country, and there begin his life again. Should his
father choose to punish him for so doing by disinheriting him, they
would be poor enough; but, in his present frame of mind, the major was
able to regard such poverty as honourable and not altogether
disagreeable.
He had been out shooting all day at Chaldicotes, with Dr Thorne and a
party who were staying in the house there, and had been talking about Mr
Crawley, first with one man and then with another. Lord Lufton had been
there, and young Gresham from Greshambury, and Mr Robarts, the
clergyman, and news had come among them of the attempt made by the
bishop to stop Mr Crawley from preaching. Mr Robarts had been of the
opinion that Mr Crawley should have given way; and Lord Lufton, who
shared his mother's intense dislike of everything that came from the
palace, had sworn that he was right to resist. The sympathy of the whole
party had been with Mr Crawley; but they had all agreed that he had
stolen the money.
'I fear he'll have to give way to the bishop at last,' Lord Lufton had
said.
'And what on earth will become of his children,' said the doctor. 'Think
of the fate of that pretty girl; for she is a very pretty girl. It will
be the ruin of her. No man will allow himself to fall in love with her
when her father shall have been found guilty of stealing a cheque for
twenty pounds.'
'We must do something for the whole family,' said the lord. 'I say,
Thorne, you haven't half the game her that there used to be in poor old
Sowerby's time.'
'Haven't I?' said the doctor. 'You see, Sowerby had been at it all his
days, and never did anything else. I only began late in life.'
The major had intended to stay and dine at Chaldicotes, but when he
heard what was said about Grace, his heart became sad, and he made some
excuse as to the child, and returned home. Dr Thorne had declared that
no man could allow himself to fall in love with her. But what if a man
had fallen in love with her beforehand? What if a man had not only
fallen in love, but spoken of his love? Had he been alone with the
doctor, he would, I think, have told him the whole of his trouble; for
in all the county there was no man whom he would sooner have trusted
with his secret. This Dr Thorne was known far and wide for his soft
heart, his open hand, and his well-sustained indifference to the world's
opinions on most of those social matters with which the world meddles;
and therefore the words which he had spoken had more weight with Major
Grantly than they would have had from other lips. As he drove home he
almost made up his mind that he would consult Dr Thorne upon the matter.
There were many younger men with whom he was very intimate--Frank
Gresham, for instance, and Lord Lufton himself; but this was an affair
which he hardly knew who to discuss with a young man. To Dr Thorne he
thought that he could bring himself to tell the whole story.
In the evening there came to him a message from Plumstead, with a letter
from his father and some present for the child. He knew at once that the
present had been thus sent as an excuse for the letter. His father might
have written by the post, or course; but that would have given to his
letter a certain air and tone which he had not wished it to bear. After
some message from the major's mother, and some allusion to Edith, the
archdeacon struck off upon the matter that was near his heart.
'I fear it is all up with that unfortunate man at Hogglestock,' he said.
'From what I hear of the evidence which came out before the magistrates,
there can, I think, be no doubt as to his guilt. Have you heard that the
bishop sent over on the following day to stop him from preaching? He did
so, and sent again on the Sunday. But Crawley would not give way, and so
far I respect the man; for, as a matter of course, whatever the bishop
did, or attempted to do, he would do with an extreme bad taste, probably
with gross ignorance as to his own duty and as to the duty of the man
under him. I am told that on the first day Crawley turned out of his
house the messenger sent to him--some stray clergyman whom Mrs Proudie
keeps in the house; and that on Sunday the stairs to the reading-desk
and pulpit were occupied by a lot of brickmakers, among whom the parson
from Barchester did not venture to attempt to make his way, although he
was fortified by the presence of one of the cathedral vergers and by one
of the palace footmen. As for the rest, I have no doubt it is all true.
I pity Crawley from my heart. Poor, unfortunate man! The general opinion
seems to be that he is not in truth responsible for what he does. As for
his victory over the bishop, nothing on earth could be better.
'Your mother particularly wishes you to come over to us before the end
of the week, and to bring Edith. Your grandfather will be here, and he
is becoming so infirm that he will never come to us for another
Christmas. Of course you will stay for the new year.'
Though the letter was full of Mr Crawley and his affairs there was not a
word about Grace. This, however, was quite natural. Major Grantly
perfectly well understood his father's anxiety to carry his point
without seeming to allude to the disagreeable subject. 'My father is
very clever,' he said to himself, 'very clever. But he isn't so clever
but one can see how clever he is.'
On the next day he went into Silverbridge, intending to call on Miss
Prettyman; nor was he called upon to do so, as he never got as far as
that lady's house. While walking up the High Street he saw Mrs Thorne in
her carriage, and, as a matter of course, he stopped to speak to her. He
knew Mrs Thorne quite as intimately as he did her husband, and liked her
quite as well. 'Major Grantly,' she said, speaking out loud to him, half
across the street; 'I was very angry with you yesterday. Why did you not
come up to dinner? We had a room ready for you and everything.'
'I was not quite well, Mrs Thorne.'
'Fiddlestick. Don't tell me of not being well. There was Emily
breaking her heart about you.'
'I'm sure, Miss Dunstable--'
'To tell you the truth, I think she'll get over it. It won't be mortal
with her. But do tell me, Major Grantly, what are we to think about this
poor Mr Crawley? It was so good of you to be one of his bailsmen.'
'He would have found twenty in Silverbridge, if he had wanted them.'
'And do you hear that he has defied the bishop? I do so like him for
that. Not but what poor Mrs Proudie is the dearest friend I have in the
world, and I'm always fighting a battle with old Lady Lufton on her
behalf. But one likes to see one's friends worsted sometimes.'
'I don't quite understand what did happen at Hogglestock on the Sunday,'
said the major.
'Some say he had the bishop's chaplain put under the pump. I don't
believe that; but there is no doubt that when the poor fellow tried to
get into the pulpit, they took him and carried him neck and heels out of
the church. But, tell me, Major Grantly, what is to become of the
family?'
'Heaven knows!'
'Is it not sad? And that eldest girl is so nice! They tell me that she
is perfect--not only in beauty, but in manners and accomplishments.
Everybody says that she talks Greek just as well as she does English,
and that she understands philosophy from the top to the bottom.'
'At any rate, she is so good and so lovely that one cannot but pity
her.'
'You know her, Major Grantly? By-the-by, of course you do, as you were
staying with her at Framley.'
'Yes, I know her.'
'What is to become of her? I'm going your way. You might as well get
into the carriage, and I'll drive you home. If he is sent to prison--and
they say he must be sent to prison--what is to become of them?' Then
Major Grantly did get into the carriage, and, before he got out again,
he had told Mrs Thorne the whole story of his love.
She listened to him with the closest attention; only interrupting him
now and then with little words, intended to signify her approval. He, as
he told his tale, did not look her in the face, but sat with his eyes
fixed upon her muff. 'And now,' he said, glancing up at her almost for
the first time as he finished his speech, 'and now, Mrs Thorne, what am
I to do?'
'Marry her, of course,' said she, raising her hand aloft and bringing it
down heavily upon is knee as she gave her decisive reply.
'H--sh--h,' he exclaimed, looking back in dismay towards the servants.
'Oh, they never hear anything up there. They're thinking about the last
pot of porter they had, or the next they're to get. Deary me, I am so
glad! Of course you'll marry her.'
'You forget my father.'
'No, I don't. What has a father to do with it? You're old enough to
please yourself without asking your father. Besides, Lord bless me, the
archdeacon isn't the man to bear malice. He'll storm and threaten and
stop the supplies for a month or so. Then he'll double them, and take
your wife to his bosom, and kiss her, and bless her, and all that kind
of thing. We all know what parental wrath means in such cases as this.'
'But my sister--'
'As for your sister, don't talk to me about her. I don't care two
straws about your sister. You must excuse me, Major Grantly, but Lady
Hartletop is really too big for my powers of vision.'
'And Edith--of course, Mrs Thorne, I can't be blind to the fact that in
many ways such a marriage would be injurious to her. No man wishes to be
connected with a convicted thief.'
'No, Major Grantly; but a man does wish to marry the girl that he loves.
At least, I suppose so. And what man was ever able to give a more
touching proof of his affection than you can to now? If I were you, I'd
be at Allington before twelve o'clock tomorrow--I would indeed. What
does it matter about the trumpery cheque? Everybody knows it was a
mistake if he did take it. And surely you would not punish her for
that?'
'No--no; but I don't suppose she'd think it a punishment.'
'You go and ask her then. And I'll tell you what. If she hasn't a
house of her own to be married from, she shall be married from
Chaldicotes. We'll have such a breakfast! And I'll make as much of her
as if she were the daughter of my old friend, the bishop himself--I will
indeed.'
This was Mrs Thorne's advice. Before it was completed, Major Grantly
had been carried half way to Chaldicotes. When he left his impetuous
friend he was too prudent to make any promise, but he declared that what
she had said should have much weight with him.
'You won't mention it to anybody,' said the Major.
'Certainly not, without your leave,' said Mrs Thorne. 'Don't you know
I'm the soul of honour?'
CHAPTER XV
UP IN LONDON
Some kind and attentive reader may perhaps remember that Miss Grace
Crawley, in a letter written by her to her friend Miss Lily Dale, said a
word or two of a certain John. 'If it can only be as John wishes it!'
And the same reader, if there be one so kind and attentive, may also
remember that Miss Lily Dale had declared, in reply, that 'about that
other subject she would rather say nothing,'--and then she added, 'When
one thinks of going beyond friendship--even if one tries to do so--there
are so many barriers!' From which words the kind and attentive reader,
if such a reader be in such matters intelligent as well as kind and
attentive, may have learned a great deal in reference to Miss Lily Dale.
We will now pay a visit to the John in question--a certain Mr John
Eames, living in London, a bachelor, as the intelligent reader will
certainly have discovered, and cousin to Miss Grace Crawley. Mr John
Eames at the time of our story was a young man, some seven or eight and
twenty years of age, living in London, where he was supposed by his
friends in the country to have made his mark, and to be something a
little out of the common way. But I do not know that he was very much
out of the common way, except in the fact that he had some few thousand
pounds left him by an old nobleman with great affection, and who had
died some two years since. Before this, John Eames had not been a very
poor man, as he filled the comfortable official position of the private
secretary to the Chief Commissioner of the Income-Tax Board, and drew a
salary of three hundred and fifty pounds a year from the resources of
the country; but when, in addition to this source of official wealth, he
became known as the undoubted possessor of a hundred and twenty-eight
shares in one of the most prosperous joint-stock banks in the
metropolis, which property had been left to him free of legacy duty by
the lamented nobleman above named, then Mr John Eames rose very high
indeed as a young man in the estimation of those who knew him, and was
supposed to be something a good deal out of the common way. His mother,
who lived in the country, was obedient to his slightest word, never
venturing to impose upon him any sign of parental authority; and to his
sister, Mary Eames, who lived with her mother, he was almost a god on
earth. To sisters who have nothing of their own --not even some special
god for their own individual worship--generous, affectionate, unmarried
brothers, with sufficient incomes, are gods upon earth.
And even up in London Mr John Eames was somebody. He was so especially
at his office; although, indeed, it was remembered by many a man how raw
a lad he had been when he first came there, not so very many years ago;
and how they had laughed at him and played him tricks; and how he had
customarily been known to be without a shilling for the last week before
pay-day, during which period he would borrow sixpence here and a
shilling there with energy, from men who now felt themselves to be
honoured when he smiled upon them. Little stories of his former days
would often be told of him behind his back; but they were not told with
ill-nature, because he was very constant in referring to the same
matters himself. And it was acknowledged by everyone at the office, that
neither the friendship of the nobleman, nor that fact of the private
secretaryship, nor the acquisition of his wealth, had made him proud to
his old companions or forgetful of old friendships. To the young men,
lads who had lately been appointed, he was perhaps a little cold; but
then it was only reasonable to conceive that such a one as Mr John Eames
was now could not be expected to make an intimate acquaintance with
every new clerk that might be brought into the office. Since competitive
examinations had come into vogue, there was no knowing who might be
introduced; and it was understood generally through the
establishment--and I may almost say by the civil service at large, so
wide was his fame--that Mr Eames was very averse to the whole theory of
competition. The 'Devil take the hindmost' scheme he called it; and
would then go on to explain that hindmost candidates were often the best
gentlemen, and that, in this way, the Devil got the pick of the flock.
And he was respected the more for this because it was known that on this
subject he had fought some hard battles with the commissioner. The chief
commissioner was a great believer in competition, wrote papers about it,
which he read aloud to various bodies of the civil service--not at all
to their delight--which he got to be printed here and there, and which
he sent by post all over the kingdom. More that once this chief
commissioner had told his private secretary that they must part company,
unless the private secretary could see fit to alter his view, or could,
at least, keep his views to himself. But the private secretary would do
neither; and, nevertheless, there he was, still private secretary. 'It's
because Johnny has got money,' said one of the young clerks, who was
discussing this singular state of things with his brethren at the
office. 'When a chap has got money, he may do what he likes. Johnny has
got lots of money, you know.' The young clerk in question was by no
means on intimate terms with Mr Eames, but there had grown up in the
office a way of calling him Johnny behind his back, which had probably
come down from the early days of his scrapes and poverty.
Now the entire life of Mr John Eames was pervaded by a great secret; and
although he never, in those days, alluded to the subject in conversation
with any man belonging to the office, yet the secret was known by them
all. It had been historical for the last four or five years, and was now
regarded as a thing of course. Mr John Eames was in love, and his love
was not happy. He was in love, and had long been in love, and the lady
of his love was not kind to him. The little history had grown to be very
touching and pathetic, having received, no doubt some embellishments
from the imaginations of the gentlemen of the Income-Tax Office. It was
said of him that he had been in love from his early boyhood, that at
sixteen he had been engaged, under the sanction of the nobleman now
deceased and of the young lady's parents, that contracts of betrothal
had been drawn up, and things done very unusual in private families in
these days, and that then there had come a stranger into the
neighbourhood just as the young lady was beginning to reflect whether
she had a heart of her own or not, and that she had thrown her parents,
and the noble lord, and the contract, and poor Johnny Eames to the
winds, and had--Here the story took different directions, as told by
different men. Some said the lady had gone off with the stranger and
that there had been a clandestine marriage, which afterwards turned out
to be no marriage at all; others, that the stranger suddenly took
himself off, and was no more seen by the young lady; others that he
owned at last to having another wife--and so on. The stranger was very
well known to be one Mr Crosbie, belonging to another public office; and
there were circumstances in his life, only half known, which gave rise
to these various rumours. But there was one thing certain, one point as
to which no clerk in the Income-Tax Office had a doubt, one fact which
had conduced much to the high position which Mr John Eames now held in
the estimation of his brother clerks--he had given this Mr Crosbie such
a thrashing that no man had ever received such treatment before and
lived through it. Wonderful stories were told about that thrashing, so
that it was believed, even by the least enthusiastic in such matters,
that the poor victim had only dragged on a crippled existence since the
encounter. 'For nine weeks he never said a word or ate a mouthful,' said
one young clerk to a younger clerk who was just entering the office;
'and even now he can't speak above a whisper, and has to take all his
food in pap.' It will be seen, therefore, that Mr John Eames had about
him much of the heroic.
That he was still in love, and in love with the same lady, was known to
everyone in the office. When it was declared of him that in the way of
amatory expressions he had never in his life opened his mouth to another
woman, there were those in the office who knew that to be an
exaggeration. Mr Cradell, for instance, who in his early years had been
very intimate with John Eames, and who still kept up the old
friendship--although, being a domestic man, with wife and six young
children, and living on a small income, he did not go out much among his
friends--could have told a very different story; for Mrs Cradell herself
had, in the days before Cradell had made good his claim upon her, been
not unadmired by Cradell's fellow-clerk. But the constancy of Mr Eames's
present love was doubted by none who knew him. It was not that he went
about with his stockings ungartered, or any of the old acknowledged
signs of unrequited affection. In his manner he was rather jovial than
otherwise, and seemed to live a happy, somewhat luxurious life, well
contented with himself and the world around him. But still he had this
passion within his bosom, and I am inclined to think that he was a
little proud of his own constancy.
It might be presumed that when Miss Dale wrote to her friend Grace
Crawley about going beyond friendship, pleading that there were so many
'barriers', she had probably seen her way over most of them. But this
was not so; nor did John Eames himself at all believe that he had given
the whole thing up as a bad job, because it was the law of his life that
the thing never should be abandoned as long as hope was possible. Unless
Miss Dale should become the wife of somebody else, he would always
regard himself as affianced to her. He had so declared to Miss Dale
herself and to Miss Dale's mother, and to all the Dale people who had
ever been interested in the matter. And there was an old lady living in
Miss Dale's neighbourhood, the sister of the lord who had left Johnny
Eames the bank shares, who always fought his battles for him, and kept a
close look-out, fully resolved that Johnny Eames should be rewarded at
last. This old lady was connected with the Dales by family ties, and
therefore had the means of close observation. She was in constant
correspondence with John Eames, and never failed to acquaint him when
any of the barriers were, in her judgment, giving way. The nature of
some of the barriers may possibly be made intelligible to my readers by
the following letter from Lady Julia De Guest to her young friend:-
'GUESTWICK COTTAGE, December, 186-
'MY DEAR JOHN,
'I am much obliged to you for going to Jones's.
I send stamps for two shillings and fourpence, which
is what I owe to you. It used only to be two
shillings and twopence, but they say everything has
got to be dearer now, and I suppose pills as well as
other things. Only think of Pritchard coming to me,
and saying she wanted her wages raised, after living
with me for twenty years! I was very angry, and
scolded her roundly; but as she acknowledged, she had
been wrong, and cried and begged my pardon, I did give
her two guineas a year more.
'I saw dear Lily just for a moment on Sunday,
and upon my word I think she grows prettier every
year. She had a young friend with her--a Miss
Crawley--who, I believe, is the cousin I have heard
you speak of. What is this sad story about her
father, the clergyman! Mind you tell me about it.
'It is quite true what I told you about the De
Courcys. Old Lady De Courcy is in London, and Mr
Crosbie is going to law with her about his wife's
money. He has been at it in one way or the other ever
since poor Lady Alexandrina died. I wish she had
lived, with all my heart. For though I feel sure that
our Lily will never willingly see him again, yet the
tidings of her death disturbed her, and set her
thinking of things that were fading from her mind. I
rated her soundly, not mentioning your name, however;
but she only kissed me, and told me in her quiet
drolling way that I didn't mean a word of what I said.
'You can come here whenever you please after the
tenth of January. But if you come early January you
must go to your mother first, and come to me for the
last week of your holiday. Go to Blackie's in Regent
Street, and bring me down all the colours in wool I
ordered. I said you would call. And tell them at
Dolland's the last spectacles don't suit at all, and I
won't keep them, they had better send me down, by you,
one or two more pairs to try. And you had better see
Smithers and Smith, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, No 57--
but you have been there before--and beg them to let
me know how my poor dear brother's matters are to be
settled at last. As far as I can see I shall be dead
before I shall know what income I have to spend. As
to my cousins at the manor, I never see them; and as
to talking to them about business, I should not dream
of it. She hasn't come to me since she first called,
and she may be quite sure I shan't go to her till she
does. Indeed I think we shall like each other apart
quite as much as we should together. So let me know
when you're coming, and pray don't forget to call at
Blackie's; nor yet at Dolland's, which is much more
important than the wool, because my eyes are getting
so weak. But what I want you specially to remember is
about Smithers and Smith. How is a woman to live if
she doesn't know how much she has got to spend?
'Believe me to be, my dear John,
'Your most sincere friend,
'JULIA DE GUEST.'
Lady Julia always directed her letters for her young friend to his
office, and there he received the one now given to the reader. When he
had read it he made a memorandum as to the commissions, and then threw
himself back in his arm-chair to think over the tidings communicated to
him. All the facts stated he had known before; that Lady De Courcy was
in London, and that her son-in-law Mr Crosbie, whose wife--Lady
Alexandrina--had died some twelve months since at Baden Baden, was at
variance with her respecting money which he supposed to be due to him.
But there was that Lady Julia's letter that was wormwood to him. Lily
Dale was again thinking of this man, whom she had loved in the old days,
and who had treated her with monstrous perfidy! It was all very well for
Lady Julia to be sure that Lily Dale would never desire to see Mr
Crosbie again; but John Eames was by no means equally certain that it
would be so. 'The tidings of her death disturbed her'! said Johnny,
repeating certain words out of the old lady's letter. 'I know they
disturbed me. I wish she could have lived for ever. If he ever ventures
to show himself within ten miles of Allington, I'll see if I cannot do
better than I did the last time I met him!' Then there came a knock at
the door, and the private secretary, finding himself to be somewhat
annoyed by the disturbance at such a moment, bade the intruder enter in
an angry voice. 'Oh, it's you, Cradell, is it? What can I do for you?'
Mr Cradell, who now entered, and who, as before said, was an old ally of
John Eames, was a clerk of longer standing in the department than his
friend. In age he looked much older, and he had left with him none of
that appearance of the gloss of youth which will stick for many years to
men who are fortunate in their world affairs. Indeed it may be said that
Mr Cradell was almost shabby in outward appearance, and his brow seemed
to be laden with care, and his eyes were dull and heavy.
'I thought I'd just come in and ask you how you are,' said Cradell.
'I'm pretty well, thank you; and how are you?'
'Oh, I'm pretty well--in health, that is. You see one has so many
things to think of when one has a large family. Upon my word, Johnny, I
think you've been lucky to keep out of it.'
'I have kept out of it, at any rate; haven't I?'
'Of course; living with you as much as I used to, I know the whole story
of what kept you single.'
'Don't mind about that, Cradell; what is it you want?'
'I mustn't let you suppose, Johnny, that I'm grumbling about my lot.
Nobody knows better than you do what a trump I got in my wife.'
'Of course you did;--an excellent woman.'
'And if I cut you out a little there, I'm sure you never felt malice
against me for that.'
'Never for a moment, old fellow.'
'We all have our luck, you know.'
'Your luck has been a wife and family. My luck has been to be a
bachelor.'
'You may say a family,' said Cradell. 'I'm sure that Amelia does the
best she can; but we a desperately pushed sometimes--desperately
pushed. I never had it so bad, Johnny, as I am now.'
'So you said last time.'
'Did I? I don't remember it. I didn't think I was so bad then. But,
Johnny, if you can let me have one more fiver now I have made
arrangements with Amelia how I'm to pay you off by thirty shillings a
month--as I get my salary. Indeed I have. Ask her else.'
'I'll be shot if I do.'
'Don't say that, Johnny.'
'It's no good your Johnnying me, for I won't be Johnnyed out of another
shilling. It comes too often, and there's no reason why I should do it.
And what's more, I can't afford it. I've people of my own to help.'
'But oh, Johnny, we all know how comfortable you are. And I'm sure no
one rejoiced as I did when the money was left to you. If it had been
myself I could hardly have thought more of it. Upon my solemn word and
honour if you'll let me have it this time, it shall be the last.'
'Upon my word and honour then, I won't. There must be an end to
everything.'
Although Mr Cradell would probably, if pressed, have admitted the truth
of this last assertion, he did not seem to think that the end had as yet
come to his friend's benevolence. It certainly had not come to his own
importunity. 'Don't say that, Johnny; pray don't.'
'But I do say it.'
'When I told Amelia yesterday evening that I didn't like to got to you
again, because of course a man has feelings, she told me to mention her
name. "I'm sure he'd do it for my sake,"' she said.
'I don't believe she said anything of the kind.'
'Upon my word she did. You ask her.'
'And if she did, she oughtn't to have said it.'
'Oh, Johnny, don't speak in that way of her. She's my wife, and you
know what your own feelings were once. But look here--we are in that
state at home at this moment, that I must get money somewhere before I
go home. I must, indeed. If you'll let me have three pounds this once,
I'll never ask you again. I'll give you a written promise if you like,
and I'll pledge myself to pay it back by thirty shillings a time out of
the next two months' salary. I will, indeed.' And then Mr Cradell began
to cry. But when Johnny at last took out his cheque-book and wrote a
cheque for three pounds, Mr Cradell's eyes glistened with joy. 'Upon my
word I am so much obliged to you! You are the best fellow that ever
lived. And Amelia will say the same when she hears of it.'
'I don't believe she'll say anything of the kind, Cradell. If I
remember anything of her, she has a stouter heart than that.' Cradell
admitted that his wife had a stouter heart than himself, and then made
his way back to his own part of the office.
This little interruption to the current of Mr Eames's thoughts was, I
think, good for the service, as immediately on his friend's departure he
went to his work; whereas, had not he been called away from his
reflections about Miss Dale, he would have sat thinking about her
affairs probably for the rest of the morning. As it was, he really did
write a dozen notes in answer to as many private letters addressed to
his chief, Sir Raffle Buffle, in all of which he made excellently-worded
false excuses for the non-performance of various requests made to Sir
Raffle by the writers. 'He's about the best hand at it that I know,'
said Sir Raffle, one day, to the secretary; 'otherwise you may be sure I
shouldn't keep him here.' 'I will allow that he's clever,' said the
secretary. 'It isn't cleverness, so much as tact. It's what I call tact.
I hadn't been long in the service before I mastered it myself; and now
that I've been at the trouble to teach him I don't want to have the
trouble to teach another. But upon my word he must mind his p's and q's;
upon my word, he must; and you had better tell him so.' 'The fact is, Mr
Kissing,' said the private secretary the next day to the secretary--Mr
Kissing was at that time secretary to the board of commissioners for the
receipt of income tax--'the fact is, Mr Kissing, Sir Raffle should never
attempt to write a letter himself. He doesn't know how to do it. He
always says twice too much, and yet not half enough. I wish you'd tell
him so. He won't believe me.' From which it will be seen Mr Eames was
proud of his special accomplishment, but did not feel any gratitude to
the master who assumed to himself the glory of having taught him. On the
present occasion John Eames wrote all his letters before he thought
again of Lily Dale, and was able to write them without interruption, as
the chairman was absent for the day at the Treasury--or perhaps at his
club. Then, when he had finished, he rang his bell, and ordered some
sherry and soda-water, and stretched himself before the fire--as though
his exertions in the public service had been very great--and seated
himself comfortably in his arm-chair, and lit a cigar, and again took
out Lady Julia's letter.
As regarded the cigar, it may be said that both Sir Raffle and Mr
Kissing had given orders that on no account should cigars be lit within
the precincts of the Income-Tax Office. Mr Eames had taken upon himself
to understand that such orders did not apply to a private secretary, and
was well aware that Sir Raffle knew his habit. To Mr Kissing, I regret
to say, he put himself in opposition whenever and wherever opposition
was possible; so that men in the office said that one of the two must go
at last. 'But Johnny can do anything, you know, because he has got
money.' That was too frequently the opinion finally expressed among the
men.
So John Eames sat down, and drank his soda-water, and smoked his cigar,
and read his letter; or, rather, simply that paragraph of the letter
which referred to Miss Dale. 'The tidings of her death have disturbed
her, and set her thinking again of things that were fading from her
mind.' He understood it all. And yet how could it possibly be so? How
could it be that she should not despise a man--despise him if she did
not hate him--who had behaved as this man had behaved to her? It was now
four years since this Crosbie had been engaged to Miss Dale, and had
jilted her so heartlessly as to incur the disgust of every man in London
who had heard the story. He had married an earl's daughter, who had left
him within a few months of their marriage, and now Mr Crosbie's noble
wife was dead. The wife was dead, and simply because the man was free
again, he, John Eames, was to be told that Miss Dale's mind was
'disturbed', and that her thoughts were going back to things which had
faded from her memory, and which should have been long since banished
altogether from such holy ground.
If Lily Dale were now to marry Mr Crosbie, anything so perversely cruel
as the fate of John Eames would never have yet been told in romance.
That was his own idea on the matter as he sat smoking his cigar. I have
said that was proud of his constancy, and yet, in some sort, he was also
ashamed of it. He acknowledged the fact of his love, and believed
himself to have out-Jacobed Jacob; but he felt that it was hard for a
man who had risen in the world as he had done to be made a plaything of
by a foolish passion. It was not four years ago--that affair of
Crosbie--and Miss Dale should have accepted him long since. Half-a-dozen
times he had made up his mind to be very stern with her; and he had
written somewhat sternly--but the first moment that he saw her he was
conquered again. 'And now that brute will reappear and everything will
be wrong again,' he said to himself. If the brute did reappear,
something should happen of which the world would hear the tidings. So he
lit another cigar, and began to think what that something should be.
As he did so he heard a loud noise, as of harsh, rattling winds in the
next room, and he knew that Sir Raffle had come back from the Treasury.
There was a creaking of boots, and a knocking of chairs, and a ringing
of bells, and then a loud angry voice--a voice that was very harsh, and
on this occasion very angry. Why had not his twelve o'clock letters been
sent up to him to the West End? Why not? Mr Eames knew all about it. Why
did Mr Eames know all about it? Why had not Mr Eames not sent them up?
Where was Mr Eames? Let Mr Eames be sent to him. All which Mr Eames
heard standing with the cigar in his mouth and his back to the fire.
'Somebody has been bullying old Buffle, I suppose. After all he as been
up at the Treasure today,' said Eames to himself. But he did not stir
till the messenger had been to him, nor even then at once. 'All right,
Rafferty,' he said; 'I'll go just now.' Then he took half-a-dozen more
whiffs from the cigar, threw the remainder into the fire, and opened the
door which communicated between his room and Sir Raffle's.
The great man was standing with two unopened epistles in his hand.
'Eames,' said he, 'here are letters--' Then he stopped himself, and
began upon another subject. 'Did I not give express orders that I would
have no smoking in the office?'
'I think Mr Kissing said something about it.'
'Mr Kissing! It was not Mr Kissing at all. It was I. I gave the order
myself.'
'You'll find it began with Mr Kissing.'
'It did not begin with Mr Kissing; it began and ended with me. What are
you going to do, sir?' John Eames stepped towards the bell, and his hand
was already on the bell-pull.
'I was going to ring for the papers, sir.'
'And who told you to ring for the papers? I don't want the papers. The
papers won't show anything. I suppose my word may be taken without the
papers. Since you are so fond of Mr Kissing--'
'I'm not fond of Mr Kissing at all.'
'You'll have to go back to him, and let somebody come here who will not
be too independent to obey my orders. Here are two most important
letters that have been lying here all day, instead of being sent up to
me at the Treasury.'
'Of course they have been lying there. I thought you went to the club.'
'I told you that I should go to the Treasury. I have been there all
morning with the chancellor'--when Sir Raffle spoke officially of the
chancellor he was not supposed to mean the Lord Chancellor--'and here I
find letters which I particularly wanted lying upon my desk now. I must
put an end to this kind of thing. I must, indeed. If you like the outer
office better say so at once, and you can go.'
'I'll think about it, Sir Raffle.'
'Think about it! What do you mean by thinking about it? But I can't
talk about that now. I'm very busy, and shall be here till past seven. I
suppose you can stay?'
'All night, if you wish it, sir.'
'Very well. That will do for the present--I wouldn't have had these
letters delayed for twenty pounds.'
'I don't suppose it would have mattered one straw if both of them
remained unopened till next week.' This last little speech, however, was
not made aloud to Sir Raffle, but by Johnny to himself in the solitude
of his own room.
Very soon after that he went away, Sir Raffle having discovered that one
of the letters in question required immediate return to the West End.
'I've changed my mind about staying. I shan't stay now. I should have
done if these letters had reached me as they ought.'
'Then I suppose I can go?'
'You can do as you like about that,' said Sir Raffle.
Eames did do as he liked, and went home, or to his club; and as he went
he resolved that he would put an end, and at once, to the present
trouble of his life. Lily Dale should accept him or reject him; and,
taking either the one or other alternative, she should hear a bit of his
mind plainly spoken.
CHAPTER XVI
DOWN AT ALLINGTON
It was Christmas-time down at Allington, and at three o'clock on
Christmas Eve, just as the darkness of the early winter evening was
coming on, Lily Dale and Grace Crawley were seated together, one above
the other, on the steps leading up to the pulpit at Allington Church.
They had been working all day at the decorations of the church, and they
were now looking round them at the result of their handiwork. To an eye
unused to the gloom the place would have been nearly dark; but they
could see every corner turned by the ivy sprigs, and every line on which
the holly-leaves were shining. And the greeneries of the winter had not
been stuck up in the old-fashioned, idle way, a bough just fastened up
here and a twig inserted there; but everything had been done with some
meaning, with some thought towards the original architecture of the
building. The Gothic lines had been followed, and all the lower arches
which it had been possible to reach with an ordinary ladder had been
turned as truly with the laurel cuttings as they had been turned
originally with the stone.
'I wouldn't tie another twig,' said the elder girl, 'for all the
Christmas puddings that was ever boiled.'
'It's lucky then that there isn't another twig to tie.'
'I don't know about that. I see a score of places where the work has
been scamped. This is the sixth time I have done the church, and I don't
think I'll ever do it again. When we first began it, Bell and I, you
know--before Bell was married--Mrs Boyce, and the Boycian establishment
generally, used to come and help. Or rather we used to help her. Now she
hardly ever looks after it at all.'
'She is older, I suppose.'
'She's a little older, and a deal idler. How idle people do get! Look
at him. Since he has had a curate he hardly ever stirs round the parish.
And he is getting so fat that--H--sh! Here she is herself--come to give
her judgment upon us.' Then a stout lady, the wife of the vicar, walked
slowly up the aisle. 'Well, girls,' she said, 'you have worked hard, and
I am sure Mr Boyce will be very much obliged to you.'
'Mr Boyce, indeed!' said Lily Dale. 'We shall expect the whole parish
to rise from their seats and thank us. Why didn't Jane and Betsy come
and help us?'
'They were so tired when they came in from the coal club. Besides, they
don't care for this kind of thing--not as you do.'
'Jane is utilitarian to the backbone, I know,' said Lily, 'and Betsy
doesn't like getting up ladders.'
'As for ladders,' said Mrs Boyce, defending her daughter, 'I am not
quite sure that Betsy isn't right. You don't mean to say that you did
all those capitals yourself?'
'Every twig, with Hopkins to hold the ladder and cut the sticks; and as
Hopkins is just a hundred and one years old, we could have done it
pretty nearly as well alone.'
'I do not think that,' said Grace.
'He has been grumbling all the time,' said Lily, 'and swears he never
will have the laurels robbed again. Five or six years ago he used to
declare that death would certainly save him from the pain of such
another desecration before next Christmas; but he has given up that
foolish notion now, and talks as though he meant to protect the
Allington shrubs at any rate to the end of this century.'
'I am sure we gave our share from the parsonage,' said Mrs Boyce, who
never understood a joke.
'All the best came from the parsonage, as of course they ought,' said
Lily. 'But Hopkins had to make up the deficiency. And as my uncle told
him to take the haycart for them instead of the hand-barrow, he is
broken-hearted.'
'I am sure he was very good-natured,' said Grace.
'Nevertheless he is broken-hearted; and I am very good-natured too, and
I am broken-backed. Who is going to preach tomorrow morning, Mrs Boyce?'
'Mr Swanton will preach in the morning.'
'Tell him not to be too long because of the children's pudding. Tell Mr
Boyce if he is long, we won't any of us come next Sunday.'
'My dear, how can you say such wicked things! I shall not tell him
anything of the kind.'
'That's not wicked, Mrs Boyce. If I were to say I had eaten so much
lunch that I didn't want any dinner, you'd understand that. If Mr
Swanton will preach for three-quarters of an hour--'
'He only preached for three-quarters of an hour once, Lily.'
'He has been over the half-hour every Sunday since he has been here.
His average is over forty minutes, and I say it's a shame.'
'It is not a shame at all, Lily,' said Mrs Boyce, becoming very serious.
'Look at my uncle; he doesn't like to go to sleep, and he has to suffer
a purgatory in keeping himself awake.'
'If your uncle is heavy now, how can Mr Swanton help it? If Mr Dale's
mind were on the subject he would not sleep.'
'Come, Mrs Boyce; there's somebody else asleep sometimes besides my
uncle. When Mr Boyce puts up his finger and just touches his nose, I
know as well as possible why he does it.'
'Lily Dale, you have no business to say so. It is not true. I don't
know how you can bring yourself to talk in that way of your own
clergyman. If I were to tell your mamma, she would be shocked.'
'You won't be so ill-natured, Mrs Boyce--after all that I've done for
the church.'
'If you think more about the clergymen, Lily, and less about the
church,' said Mrs Boyce very sententiously, 'more about the matter and
less about the manner, more of the reality and less of the form, I think
you would find that your religion would go further with you. Miss
Crawley is the daughter of a clergyman, and I am sure she will agree
with me.'
'If she agrees with anybody in scolding me I'll quarrel with her.'
'I didn't mean to scold you, Lily.'
'I don't mind it from you, Mrs Boyce. Indeed, I rather like it. It is a
sort of pastoral visitation; and as Mr Boyce never scolds me himself I
take it from him by attorney.' Then there was silence for a minute or
two, during which Mrs Boyce was endeavouring to discover whether Miss
Dale was laughing at her or not. As she was not quite certain, she
thought at last she would let the suspected fault pass unobserved.
'Don't wait for us, Mrs Boyce,' said Lily. 'We must remain till Hopkins
has sent Gregory to sweep the church out and take away the rubbish.
We'll see that the key is left at Mrs Giles's.'
'Thank you, my dear. Then I may as well go. I thought I'd come in and
see that it was all right. I'm sure Mr Boyce will be very much obliged
to you and Miss Crawley. Good-night, my dear.'
'Good-night, Mrs Boyce; and be sure you don't let Mr Swanton be long
tomorrow.' To this parting shot Mrs Boyce made no rejoinder; but she
hurried out of the church somewhat the quicker for it, and closed the
door after her with something of a slam.
Of all persons clergymen are the most irreverent in the handling of
things supposed to be sacred, and next to them clergyman's wives, and
after them those other ladies, old or young, who take upon themselves
semi-clerical duties. And it is natural that it should be so; for is it
not said that familiarity does breed contempt? When a parson takes his
lay friend over his church on a week day, how much less of the spirit of
genuflexion and head-uncovering the clergyman will display to the
layman! The parson pulls about the woodwork and knocks about the
stonework, as though it were mere wood and stone; and talks aloud in the
aisle, and treats even the reading-desk as a common thing; whereas the
visitor whispers gently, and carries himself as though even in looking
at a church he was bound to regard himself as performing some service
that was half divine. Now Lily Dale and Grace Crawley were both
accustomed to churches, and had been so long at work in this church for
the last two days, that the building had lost to them much of its
sacredness, and they were almost as irreverent as though they were two
curates.
'I am so glad she has gone,' said Lily. 'We shall have to stop here for
the next hour, as Gregory won't know what to take away and what to
leave. I was so afraid she was going to stop and see us off the
premises.'
'I don't know why you should dislike her.'
'I don't dislike her. I like her very well,' said Lily Dale. 'But don't
you feel that there are people whom one knows very intimately, who are
really friends--for whom if they were dying one would grieve, whom if
they were in misfortune one would go far to help, but with whom for all
that one can have no sympathy. And yet they are so near to one that they
know all the events of one's life, and are justified by unquestioned
friendship in talking about things which should never be mentioned
except where sympathy exists.'
'Yes; I understand that.'
'Everybody understands it who has been unhappy. That woman sometimes
says things to me that make me wish--wish that they'd make him bishop of
Patagonia. And yet does it all in friendship, and mamma says that she is
quite right.'
'I liked her for standing up for her husband.'
'But he does go to sleep--and then he scratches his nose to show that
he's awake. I shouldn't have said it, only she is always hinting at
uncle Christopher. Uncle Christopher certainly does go to sleep when Mr
Boyce preaches, and he hasn't studied any scientific little movement
during his slumbers to make the people believe that he's all alive. I
gave him a hint one day, and he got angry with me!'
'I shouldn't have thought he could have been angry with you. It seems
to me from what you say that you may do whatever you please with him.'
'He is very good to me. If you knew it all--if you could understand how
good he has been! I'll try and tell you one day. It is not what he has
done that makes me love him so--but what he has thoroughly understood,
and what, so understanding, he has not done, and what he has not said.
It is a case of sympathy. If ever there was a gentleman uncle
Christopher is one. And I used to dislike him so, at one time!'
'And why?'
'Chiefly because he would make me wear brown frocks when I wanted to
have them pink or green. And he kept me for six months from having them
long, and up to this day he scolds me if there is half an inch on the
ground for him to tread upon.'
'I shouldn't mind that if I were you.'
'I don't--not now. But it used to be serious when I was a young girl.
And we thought, Bell and I, that he was cross to mamma. He and mamma
didn't agree at first, you know, as they do now. It is quite true that
he did dislike mamma when we first came.'
'I can't think how anybody could ever dislike Mrs Dale.'
'But he did. And then he wanted to make up a marriage between Bell and
my cousin Bernard. But neither of them cared a bit for each other, and
then he used to scold them--and then--and then --and then--Oh, he was so
good to me! Here's Gregory at last. Gregory, we've been waiting this
hour and a half.'
'It ain't ten minutes since Hopkins let me come with the barrows, miss.'
'Then Hopkins is a traitor. Never mind. You'd better begin now --up
there at the steps. It'll be quite dark in a few minutes. Here's Mrs
Giles with her broom. Come, Mrs Giles; we shall have to pass the night
here if you don't make haste. Are you cold, Grace?'
'No; I'm not cold. I'm thinking what they are doing now in the church
at Hogglestock.'
'The Hogglestock church is not pretty, like this?'
'Oh, no. It is a very plain brick building, with something like a
pigeon-house for a belfry. And the pulpit is over the reading-desk, and
the reading-desk over the clerk, so that papa, when he preaches, is
nearly up to the ceiling. And the whole place is divided into pews, in
which the farmers hide themselves when they come to church.'
'So that nobody can see whether they go to sleep or not. Oh, Mrs Giles,
you mustn't pull that down. That's what we have been putting up all
day.'
'But it be in the way, miss; so that minister can't budge in or out o'
the door.'
'Never mind. Then he must stay one side or the other. That would be
too much after all our trouble!' And Miss Dale hurried across the
chancel to save some pretty arching boughs, which, in the judgment of
Mrs Giles, encroached too much on the vestry door. 'As if it signified
which side he was,' she said in a whisper to Grace.
'I don't suppose they'll have anything in the church at home.'
'Somebody will stick up a wreath or two, I daresay.'
'Nobody will. There never is anybody at Hogglestock to stick up wreaths
or do anything for the prettiness of life. And now there will be less
than ever. How can mamma look after holly-leaves in her present state?
And yet she will miss them, too. Poor mamma sees very little that is
pretty; but she has not forgotten how pleasant pretty things are.'
'I wish I knew your mother, Grace.'
'I think it would be impossible for anyone to know mamma now--for
anyone who had not known her before. She never makes even a new
acquaintance. She seems to think that there's nothing left for her in
the world but to try to keep papa out of his misery. And she does not
succeed in that. Poor papa!'
'Is he unhappy about this wicked situation?'
'Yes; he is very unhappy. But, Lily, I don't know about its being
wicked.'
'But you know it's untrue.'
'Of course I know that papa did not mean to take anything that was not
his own. But, you see, nobody knows where it came from; and nobody
except mamma and Jane and I understand how very absent papa can be. I'm
sure he doesn't know the least in the world how he came by it himself,
or he would tell mamma. Do you know, Lily, I think I have been wrong to
come away.'
'Don't say that, dear. Remember how anxious Mrs Crawley was that you
should come.'
'But I cannot bear to be comfortable here while they are so wretched at
home. It seems such a mockery. Every time I find myself smiling at what
you say to me, I think I must be the most heartless creature in the
world.'
'Is it so very bad with them, Grace?'
'Indeed it is bad. I don't think you can imagine what mamma has to go
through. She has to cook all that is eaten in the house, and then, very
often, there is no money in the house to buy anything. If you were to
see the clothes she wears, even that would make your heart bleed. I who
have been used to being poor all my life--even I, when I am at home, am
dismayed by what she has to endure.'
'What can we do for her, Grace?'
'You can do nothing, Lily. But when things are like that at home, you
can understand what I feel in being here.'
Mrs Giles and Gregory had now completed their task, or had so nearly
done so as to make Miss Dale think that she might safely leave the
church. 'We will go in now,' she said; 'for it is dark and cold, and
what I call creepy. Do you ever fancy that perhaps you will see a ghost
some day?'
'I don't think I shall ever see a ghost; but all the same I should be
half afraid to be here alone in the dark.'
'I am often here alone in the dark, but I am beginning to think I shall
never see a ghost now. I am losing all my romance, and getting to be an
old woman. Do you know, Grace, I do so hate myself for being such an old
maid.'
'But who says you're an old maid, Lily?'
'I see it in people's eyes, and hear it in their voices. And they all
talk to me as if I were steady, and altogether removed from anything
like fun and frolic. It seems to be admitted that if a girl does not
want to fall in love, she ought not to care for any other fun in the
world. If anybody made out a list of the old ladies in these parts,
they'd put down Lady Julia, and mamma, and Mrs Boyce, and me, and old
Mrs Hearne. The very children have an awful respect for me, and give
over playing directly they see me. Well, mamma, we've done at last, and
I have had such a scolding from Mrs Boyce.'
'I daresay you deserved it, my dear.'
'No, I did not, mamma. Ask Grace if I did.'
'Was she not saucy to Mrs Boyce, Miss Crawley?'
'She said Mr Boyce scratches his nose in church,' said Grace.
'So he does; and goes to sleep, too.'
'If you told Mrs Boyce that, Lily, I think she was quite right to scold
you.'
Such was Miss Lily Dale, with whom Grace Crawley was staying;--Lily
Dale with whom Mr John Eames, of the Income-tax Office, had been so long
and so steadily in love, that he was regarded among his fellow-clerks as
a miracle of constancy--who had, herself, in former days been so
unfortunate in love as to have been regarded among her friends in the
country as the most ill-used of women. As John Eames had been able to be
comfortable in life--that is to say, not utterly a wretch--in spite of
his love, so had she managed to hold up her head, and live as other
young women live, in spite of her fortune. But as it may be said also
that his constancy was true constancy, although he knew how to enjoy the
good things of the world, so also had her misfortune been a true
misfortune, although she had been able to bear it without much outer
show of shipwreck. For a few days--for a week or two, when the blow
first struck her, she had been knocked down, and the friends who were
nearest to her had thought that she would never again stand erect upon
her feet. But she had been very strong, stout at heart, of a fixed
purpose, and capable of resistance against oppression. Even her own
mother had been astonished, and sometimes almost dismayed, by the
strength of her will. Her mother knew well how it was with her now; but
they who saw her frequently, and who did not know her as her mother knew
her--the Mrs Boyce's of her acquaintance--whispered among themselves
that Lily Dale was not so soft of heart as people used to think.
On the next day, Christmas Day, as the reader will remember, Grace
Crawley was taken up to dine at the big house with the old squire. Mrs
Dale's eldest daughter, with her husband, Dr Crofts, was to be there;
and also Lily's old friend, who was also especially the old friend of
Johnny Eames, Lady Julia De Guest. Grace had endeavoured to be excused
from the party, pleading many pleas. But the upshot of all her pleas was
this--that while her father's position was so painful she ought not to
go out anywhere. In answer to this, Lily Dale, corroborated by her
mother, assured her that for her father's sake she ought not to exhibit
any such feeling; that in doing so, she would seem to express a doubt as
to her father's innocence. Then she allowed herself to be persuaded,
telling her friend, however, that she knew the day would be very
miserable to her. 'It will be very humdrum, if you please,' said Lily.
'Nothing can be more humdrum than Christmas at the Great House.
Nevertheless, you must go.'
Coming out of the church, Grace was introduced to the old squire. He was
a thin, old man, with grey hair, and the smallest possible grey
whiskers, with a dry, solemn face; not carrying in his outward gait much
of the customary jollity for Christmas. He took his hat off to Grace,
and said some word to her as to hoping to have the pleasure of seeing
her at dinner. It sounded very cold to her, and she became at once
afraid of him. 'I wish I was not going,' she said to Lily, again. 'I
know he thinks I ought not to go. I shall be so thankful if you will but
let me stay.'
'Don't be foolish, Grace. It all comes from your not knowing him, or
understanding him. And how should you understand him? I give you my word
that I would tell you if I did not know that he wishes you to go.'
She had to go. 'Of course I haven't a dress fit. How should I?' she
said to Lily. 'How wrong it is of me to put myself up in such a thing as
this.'
'Your dress is beautiful, child. We are none of us going in evening
dresses. Pray believe me that I will not make you do wrong. If you won't
trust me, can't you trust mamma?'
Of course she went. When the three ladies entered the drawing-room of
the Great House, they found that Lady Julia had arrived just before
them. Lady Julia immediately took hold of Lily, and had her apart,
having a word or two to say about the clerk at the Income-tax Office. I
am not sure but what the dear old woman sometimes said a few more words
than were expedient, with a view to the object which she had so closely
at heart. 'John is to be with us the first week in February,' she said.
'I suppose you'll see him before that, as he'll probably be with his
mother a few days before he comes to me.''
'I daresay we shall see him quite in time, Lady Julia,' said Lily.
'Now, Lily, don't be ill-natured.'
'I'm the most good-natured young woman alive, Lady Julia; and as for
Johnny, he is always as welcome at the Small House as violets in March.
Mamma purrs about him when he comes, asking all manner of flattering
questions as though he were a cabinet minister at least, and I always
admire some little knickknack that he has got, a new ring, or a stud, or
a button. There isn't another man in all the world whose buttons I'd
look at.'
'It isn't his buttons, Lily.'
'Ah, that's just it. I can go as far as his buttons. But, come, Lady
Julia, this is Christmas-time, and Christmas should be a holiday.'
In the meantime Mrs Dale was occupied with her married daughter and her
son-in-law, and the squire had attached himself to poor Grace. 'You have
never been in this part of the country before, Miss Crawley,' he said.
'No, sir.'
'It is rather pretty just about here, and Guestwick Manor is a fine
place in its way, but we have not so much natural beauty as you have in
Barsetshire. Chaldicote Chase is, I think, as pretty as anything in
England.'
'I never saw Chaldicote Chase, sir. It isn't pretty at all at
Hogglestock, where we live.'
'Ah, I forgot. No; it is not very pretty at Hogglestock. That's where
the bricks come from.'
'Papa is clergyman at Hogglestock.'
'Yes, yes; I remember. Your father is a great scholar. I have often
heard of him. I am sorry he should be distressed by this charge they
have made. But it will all come right in the assizes. They always get at
the truth there. I used to be intimate with a clergyman in Barsetshire
of the name of Grantly' --Grace felt that her ears were tingling, and
that her face was red--'Archdeacon Grantly. His father was bishop of the
diocese.'
'Yes, sir. Archdeacon Grantly lives at Plumstead.'
'I was staying once with an old friend of mine, Mr Thorne of Ullathorne,
who lives close to Plumstead, and saw a good deal of them. I remember
thinking Henry Grantly was a very nice lad. He married afterwards.'
'Yes sir; but his wife is dead now, and he has got a little girl --Edith
Grantly.'
'Is there no other child?'
'No sir; only Edith.'
'You know him, then?'
'Yes sir; I know Major Grantly--and Edith. I never saw Archdeacon
Grantly.'
'Then, my dear, you never saw a very famous pillar of the Church. I
remember when people used to talk a great deal about Archdeacon Grantly;
but when his time came to be made a bishop, he was not sufficiently
new-fangled; and so he got passed by. He is much better off as he is, I
should say. Bishops have to work very hard, my dear.'
'Do they, sir?'
'So they tell me. And the archdeacon is a wealthy man. So Henry
Grantly has got an only daughter? I hope she is a nice child, for I
remember liking him well.'
'She is a very nice child, indeed Mr Dale. She could not be nicer. And
she is so lovely.' Then Mr Dale looked into his young companion's face,
struck by the sudden animation of her words, and perceived for the first
time that she was very pretty.
After this Grace became accustomed to the strangeness of the faces round
her, and managed to eat her dinner without much perturbation of spirit.
When after dinner the squire proposed to her that they should drink the
health of her papa and mamma, she was almost reduced to tears, and yet
she liked him for doing it. It was terrible to her to have them
mentioned, knowing as she did that everyone who mentioned them must be
aware of their misery--for the misfortune of her father had become
notorious in the country; but it was almost terrible to her that no
allusion should be made to them; for then she would be driven to think
that her father was regarded as a man whom the world could not afford to
mention. 'Papa and mamma,' she just murmured, raising her glass to her
lips. 'Grace, dear,' said Lily from across the table, 'here's papa and
mamma, and the young man at Malborough who is carrying everything before
him.' 'Yes; and we won't forget the young man at Malborough,' said the
squire. Grace felt this to be good-natured, because her brother at
Malborough was the one bright spot in her family--and she was comforted.
'And we will drink the health of my friend, John Eames,' said Lady
Julia.
'John Eames's health,' said the squire, in a low voice.
'Johnny's health,' said Mrs Dale; but Mrs Dale's voice was not very
brisk.
'John's health,' said Dr Crofts and Mrs Crofts, in a breath.
'Here's the health of John Eames,' said Lily; and her voice was the
clearest and boldest of them all. But she made up her mind that if Lady
Julia could not be induced to spare her for the future, she and Lady
Julia must quarrel. 'No one can understand,' she said to her mother that
evening, 'how dreadful it is--this being constantly told before one's
family and friends that one ought to marry a certain young man.'
'She didn't say that, my dear.'
'I should much prefer that she should, then I could get up on my legs
and answer her off the reel.' Of course everybody there understood what
she meant--including old John Bates, who stood at the sideboard and
coolly drank the toast himself.
'He always does that to all the family toasts on Christmas Day. Your
uncle likes it.'
'That wasn't a family toast, and John Bates had no right to drink it.'
After dinner they all played cards--a round game--and the squire put in
the stakes. 'Now, Grace,' said Lily, 'you are the visitor and you must
win, or else Uncle Christopher won't be happy. He always likes a young
lady visitor to win.'
'But I never played a game of cards in my life.'
'Go and sit next to him, and he'll teach you. Uncle Christopher, won't
you teach Grace Crawley? She never saw a Pope Joan board in her life
before.'
'Come here, my dear, and sit next to me. Dear, dear, dear; fancy Henry
Grantly having a little girl. What a handsome lad he was. And it seems
only yesterday.' If it was so that Lily had said a word to her uncle
about Grace and the major, the old squire had become on a sudden very
sly. Be that as it may, Grace Crawley thought he was a pleasant old man;
and though, while talking to him about Edith, she persisted in not
learning to play Pope Joan, so that he could not contrive that she
should win, nevertheless the squire took to her very kindly, and told
her to come up with Lily and see him sometimes while she was staying at
the Small House. The squire in speaking of his sister-in-law's cottage
always called it the Small House.
'Only think of winning,' said Lady Julia, drawing together her wealth.
'Well, I'm sure I want it bad enough, for I don't at all know whether
I've got any income of my own. It's all John Eames's fault, my dear, for
he won't go and make those people settle it in Lincoln's Inn Fields.'
Poor Lily, who was standing on the hearth-rug, touched her mother's
arms. She knew Johnny's name was lugged in with reference to Lady
Julia's money altogether for her benefit. 'I wonder whether she had a
Johnny of her own,' she said to her mother, 'and if so, whether she
liked it when her friends sent the town-crier round to talk about him.'
'She means to be good-natured,' said Mrs Dale.
'Of course she does. But it is such a pity when people won't
understand.'
'My uncle didn't bite you after all, Grace,' said Lily to her friend as
they were going home at night, by the pathway which led from the garden
of one house to the garden of the other.
'I like Mr Dale very much,' said Grace. 'He was very kind to me.'
'There is some queer-looking animal of whom they say that he is better
than he looks, and I always think of that saying when I think of my
uncle.'
'For shame, Lily,' said her mother. 'Your uncle, for his age, is as
good looking a man as I know. And he always looks like just what he
is--an English gentleman.'
'I didn't mean to say a word against his dear old face and figure,
mamma; but his heart and mind, and general disposition, as they come out
in experience and days of trial, are so much better than the samples of
them which he puts out on the counter for men and women to judge by. He
wears well, and he washes well --if you know what I mean, Grace.'
'Yes; I think I know what you mean.'
'The Apollos of the world--I don't mean in outward looks, mamma --but
the Apollos in heart, the men--and the women too--who are so full of
feeling, so soft-natured, so kind, who never say a cross word, who never
get out of bed on the wrong side in the morning--it so often turns out
that they won't wash.'
Such was the expression of Miss Dale's experience.
CHAPTER XVII
MR CRAWLEY IS SUMMONED TO BARCHESTER
The scene which occurred in Hogglestock church on the Sunday after Mr
Thumble's first visit to the parish had not been described with accuracy
either by the archdeacon in his letter to his son, or by Mrs Thorne.
There had been no footman from the palace in attendance on Mr Thumble,
nor had there been a battle with the brickmakers; neither had Mr Thumble
been put under the pump. But Mr Thumble had gone over, taking his gown
and surplice with him, on the Sunday morning, and had intimated to Mr
Crawley his intention of performing the service. Mr Crawley, in answer
to this, had assured Mr Thumble that he would not be allowed to open his
mouth in the church; and Mr Thumble, not seeing his way to any further
successful action, had contented himself with attending the services in
his surplice, making thereby a silent protest that he, and not Mr
Crawley, ought to have been in the reading-desk and the pulpit.
When Mr Trumble reported himself and his failure to the palace, he
strove hard to avoid seeing Mrs Proudie, but not successfully. He knew
something of the palace habits, and did manage to reach the bishop alone
on the Sunday evening, justifying himself to his lordship for such an
interview by the remarkable circumstances of the case and the importance
of his late mission. Mrs Proudie always went to church on Sunday
evenings, making a point of hearing three services and three sermons
every Sunday of her life. On week-days she seldom heard any, having an
idea that week-day services were an invention of the High Church enemy,
and that they should therefore be vehemently discouraged. Services on
saints' days she regarded as rank papacy, and had been known to accuse a
clergyman's wife to her face, of idolatry because the poor lady had
dated a letter, St John's Eve. Mr Thumble, on this Sunday evening, was
successful in finding the bishop at home, and alone, but he was not
lucky enough to get away before Mrs Proudie returned. The bishop,
perhaps, thought that the story of the failure had better reach his
wife's ears from Mr Thumble's lips than from his own.
'Well, Mr Thumble?' said Mrs Proudie, walking into the study, armed in
her full Sunday-evening winter panoply, in which she had just descended
from her carriage. The church which Mrs Proudie attended in the evening
was nearly half a mile from the palace, and the coachman and groom never
got a holiday on Sunday night. She was gorgeous in a dark brown silk
dress of awful stiffness and terrible dimensions; and on her shoulders
she wore a short cloak of velvet and fur, very handsome withal, but so
swelling in its proportions on all sides as necessarily to create more
of dismay than of admiration in the mind of any ordinary man. And her
bonnet was a monstrous helmet with the beaver up, displaying the awful
face of the warrior, always ready for combat, and careless to guard
itself from attack. The large contorted bows which she bore were as a
grisly crest upon her casque, beautiful doubtless, but majestic and
fear-compelling. In her hand she carried her armour all complete, a
prayer-book, a Bible, and a book of hymns. These the footman had brought
for her to the study door, but she had thought it fit to enter her
husband's room with them in her own custody.
'Well, Mr Thumble!' she said.
Mr Thumble did not answer at once, thinking, probably, that the bishop
might choose to explain the circumstances. But neither did the bishop
say anything.
'Well, Mr Thumble?' she said again; and then she stood looking at the
man who had failed so disastrously.
'I have explained to the bishop,' said he. 'Mr Crawley has been
contumacious--very contumacious indeed.'
'But you preached at Hogglestock?'
'No, indeed, Mrs Proudie. Nor would it have been possible, unless I had
the police to assist me.'
'Then you should have had the police. I never heard of anything so
mismanaged in all my life--never in all my life.' And she put her books
down on the study table, and turned herself round from Mr Thumble
towards the bishop. 'If things go on like this, my lord,' she said,
'your authority in the diocese will very soon be worth nothing at all.'
It was not often that Mrs Proudie called her husband my lord, but when
she did so, it was a sign that terrible times had come;--times so
terrible that the bishop would know that he must either fight or fly. He
would almost endure anything rather than descend into the arena for the
purpose of doing battle with his wife, but occasions would come now and
again when even the alternatives of flight were hardly left to him.
'But, my dear--' began the bishop.
'Am I to understand that this man has professed himself to be altogether
indifferent to the bishop's prohibition?' said Mrs Proudie, interrupting
her husband and addressing Mr Thumble.
'Quite so. He seemed to think that the bishop had no lawful power in
the matter at all,' said Mr Thumble.
'Do you hear that, my lord?' said Mrs Proudie.
'Nor have I any,' said the bishop, almost weeping as he spoke.
'No authority in your own diocese!'
'None to silence a man merely by my own judgment. I thought, and still
think, that it was for this gentleman's own interest, as well as for the
credit of the Church, that some provision should be made for his duties
during the present--present--difficulties.'
'Difficulties indeed! Everybody knows that the man has been a thief.'
'No, my dear; I do not know it.'
'You never know anything, bishop.'
'I mean to say I do not know it officially. Of course, I have heard the
sad story; and though I hope it may not be--'
'There is no doubt about its truth. All the world knows it. He has
stolen twenty pounds, and yet he is to be allowed to desecrate the
Church, and imperil the souls of the people!' The bishop got up from his
chair and began to walk backwards and forwards through the room with
short quick steps. 'It only wants five days to Christmas Day,' continued
Mrs Proudie, 'and something must be done at once. I say nothing as to
the propriety or impropriety of his being out on bail, as it is no
affair of ours. When I heard that he had been bailed by a beneficed
clergyman of this diocese, of course I knew where to look for the man
who would act with so much impropriety. Of course I was not surprised,
when I found that that person belonged to Framley. But, as I have said
before, that is no business of ours. I hope, Mr Thumble, that the bishop
will never be found interfering with the ordinary laws of the land. I am
very sure that he will never do so by my advice. But when there comes a
question of inhibiting a clergyman who has committed himself as that
clergyman unfortunately has done, then I say that that clergyman ought
to be inhibited.' The bishop walked up and down the room throughout the
whole of this speech, but gradually his steps became quicker, and his
turns became shorter. 'And now here is Christmas Day upon us, and what
is to be done?' With these words Mrs Proudie finished her speech.
'Mr Thumble,' said the bishop, 'perhaps you had better now retire. I am
very sorry that you should have had so thankless and so disagreeable a
task.'
'Why should Mr Thumble retire?' asked Mrs Proudie.
'I think it better,' said the bishop. 'Mr Thumble, good-night.' Then Mr
Thumble did retire, and Mrs Proudie stood forth in her full panoply of
armour, silent and awful, with her helmet erect, and vouchsafed no
recognition whatever of the parting salutation which Mr Thumble greeted
her. 'My dear, the truth is, you do not understand the matter,' said the
bishop, as soon as the door was closed. 'You do not know how limited is
my power.'
'Bishop, I understand it a great deal better than some people; and I
understand also what is due to myself and the manner in which I ought to
be treated by you in the presence of the subordinate clergy of the
diocese. I shall not, however, remain here to be insulted in the
presence or absence of anyone.' Then the conquered amazon collected
together her weapons which she had laid upon the table, and took her
departure with majestic step, and not without the clang of arms. The
bishop, when he was left alone, enjoyed for a few moments the triumph of
victory.
But then he was left so very much alone! When he looked round about him
upon his solitude after the departure of his wife, and remembered that
he should not see her again till he should encounter on ground that was
all her own, he regretted his own success, and was tempted to follow her
and to apologise. He was unable to anything alone. He would not even
know how to get his tea, as the very servants would ask questions, if he
were to do so unaccustomed a thing as to order it to be brought up to
him in his solitude. They would tell him that Mrs Proudie was having tea
in her little sitting-room upstairs, or else that the things were laid
in the drawing-room. He did wander forth to the latter apartment, hoping
that he might find his wife there; but the drawing-room was dark and
deserted, and so he wandered back again. It was a grand thing certainly
to have triumphed over his wife, and there was a crumb of comfort in the
thought that he had vindicated himself before Mr Thumble; but the
general result was not comforting, and he knew from old how short-lived
his triumph would be.
But wretched as he was during that evening he did employ himself with
some energy. After much thought he resolved that he would again write to
Mr Crawley, and summon him to appear at the palace. In doing this he
would at any rate be doing something. There would be action. And though
Mr Crawley would, as he thought, decline to obey the order, something
would be gained even by that disobedience. So he wrote his
summons--sitting very fortless and all alone on that Sunday
evening--dating his letter, however, for the following day:--
'PALACE, December 20, 186-
'REVEREND SIR,
'I have just heard from Mr Thumble that you have
declined to accede to the advice which I thought it my
duty to tender to you as the bishop who has been set
over you by the Church, and that you yesterday
insisted on what you believed to be your right, to
administer the services of the parish church of
Hogglestock. This has occasioned me the deepest
regret. It is, I think, unavailing that I should further
write to you my mind upon the subject, as I possess
such strong evidence that my written word will not be
respected by you. I have therefore no alternative now
but to invite you to come to me here; and this I do,
hoping that I may induce you to listen to the
authority which I cannot but suppose you acknowledge
to be vested in the office which I hold.
'I shall be glad to see you tomorrow, Tuesday,
as near the hour of two as you can make it convenient
to yourself to be here, and I will take care to order
that refreshment will be provided for yourself and
your horse.--I am, Reverend Sir, &c, &c, &c.
'THOS. BARNUM'
'My dear,' he said, when he did again encounter his wife that night, 'I
have written to Mr Crawley, and I thought I might as well bring up the
copy of my letter.'
'I wash my hands of the whole affair,' said Mrs Proudie--'of the whole
affair.'
'But you will look at the letter?'
'Certainly not. Why should I look at the letter? My word goes for
nothing. I have done what I could, but in vain. Now let us see how you
manage it yourself.'
The bishop did not pass a comfortable night; but in the morning his wife
did read the letter, and after that things went a little smoother with
him. She was pleased to say that, considering all things; seeing, as she
could not help seeing, that the matter had been dreadfully mismanaged,
and that great weakness had been displayed;--seeing that these faults
had already been committed, perhaps no better step could now be taken
than that proposed in the letter.
'I suppose he will not come,' said the bishop.
'I think he will,' said Mrs Proudie, 'and I trust that we may be able to
convince him that obedience will be the best course. He will be more
humble-minded here than at Hogglestock.' In saying this the lady showed
some knowledge of the general nature of clergymen and of the world at
large. She understood how much louder a cock can crow in his own
farmyard than elsewhere, and knew that episcopal authority, backed by
all the solemn awe of palatial grandeur, goes much further than it will
do when sent under the folds of an ordinary envelope. But though she
understood ordinary human nature, it may be that she did not understand
Mr Crawley's nature.
But she was at any rate right in her idea as to Mr Crawley's immediate
reply. The palace groom who rode over to Hogglestock returned with an
immediate answer.
'MY LORD'--said Mr Crawley,
'I will obey your lordship's summons, and,
unless impediments should arise, I will wait upon your
lordship at the hour you name tomorrow. I will not
trespass on your hospitality. For myself, I rarely
break bread in any house but my own; and as to the
horse, I have none--I have the honour to by, My lord,
&c, &c,
JOSIAH CRAWLEY'
'Of course I shall go,' he had said to his wife as soon as he had time
to read the letter, and make known to her the contents. 'I shall go if
it be possible for me to get there. I think that I am bound to comply
with the bishop's wishes in so much as that.'
'But how will you get there, Josiah?'
'I will walk--with the Lord's aid.'
Now Hogglestock was fifteen miles from Barchester, and Mr Crawley was,
as his wife well knew, by no means fitted in his present state for great
physical exertion. But from the tone in which he had replied to her, she
well knew that it would not avail for her to remonstrate at the moment.
He had walked more than thirty miles in a day since he had been living
at Hogglestock, and she did not doubt but that it might be possible for
him to do it again. Any scheme, which she might be able to devise for
saving him from so terrible a journey in the middle of winter, must be
pondered over silently, and brought to bear, if not slyly, at least
deftly, and without discussion. She made no reply therefore when he
declared on the following day he would walk to Barchester and back--with
the Lord's aid; nor did she see, or ask to see the note which he sent to
the bishop. When the messenger was gone, Mr Crawley was all alert,
looking forward with evident glee to his encounter with the
bishop--snorting like a racehorse at the expected triumph of the coming
struggle. And he read much Greek with Jane on that afternoon, pouring
into her young ears, almost with joyous rapture, his appreciation of the
glory and the pathos and the humanity also, of the awful tragedy of the
story of Oedipus. His very soul was on fire at the idea of clutching the
weak bishop in his hand, and crushing him with his strong grasp.
In the afternoon Mrs Crawley slipped out to a neighbouring farmer's
wife, and returned in an hour's time with a little story which she did
not tell with any appearance of satisfaction. She had learned well what
were the little tricks necessary to the carrying of such a matter as she
now had in hand. Mr Mangle, the farmer, as it happened, was going
tomorrow morning in his tax-cart as far as Framley Mill, and would be
delighted if Mr Crawley would take a seat. He must remain at Framley the
best part of the afternoon, and hoped that Mr Crawley would take a seat
back again. Now Framley Mill was only a half mile off the direct road to
Barchester, and was almost half way from Hogglestock parsonage to the
city. This would, at any rate, bring the walk within a practicable
distance. Mr Crawley was instantly placed upon his guard, like an animal
that sees the bait and suspects the trap. Had he been told that farmer
Mangle was going all the way to Barchester, nothing would have induced
him to get into the cart. He would have felt sure that farmer Mangle had
been persuaded to pity him in his poverty and his strait, and he would
sooner have started to walk to London than have put a foot upon the step
of the cart. But this lift half way did look to him as if it were really
fortuitous. His wife could hardly have been cunning enough to persuade
the farmer to go to Framley, conscious that the trap would have been
suspected had the bait been more full. But I fear--I fear the dear good
woman had been thus cunning--had understood how far the trap might be
baited, and had thus succeeded in catching her prey.
On the following morning he consented to get into farmer Mangle's cart,
and was driven as far as Framley Mill. 'I wouldn't think nowt, your
reverence, of running you over to Barchester--that I wouldn't. The powny
is so mortal good.,' said farmer Mangle in his foolish good-nature.
'And how about your business here?' said Mr Crawley. The farmer
scratched his head, remembering Mrs Crawley's injunctions, and awkwardly
acknowledged that to be sure his own business with the miller was very
pressing. Then Mr Crawley descended, terribly suspicious, and went on
his journey.
'Anyways, your reverence will call for me coming back?' said the farmer
Mangle. But Mr Crawley would make no promise. He bade the farmer not
wait for him. If they chanced to meet together on the road he might get
up again. If the man really had business at Framley, how could he have
offered to go on to Barchester? Were they deceiving him? The wife of his
bosom had deceived him in such matters before now. But his trouble in
this respect was soon dissipated by the pride of his anticipated triumph
over the bishop. He took great glory from the thought that he would go
before the bishop with dirty boots--with boots necessarily dirty --with
rusty pantaloons, that he would be hot and mud-stained with his walk,
hungry, and an object to be wondered at by all who should see him,
because the misfortunes which had been unworthily heaped upon his head;
whereas the bishop would be sleek and clean and well-fed--pretty with
all the prettinesses that are becoming to a bishop's outward man. And
he, Mr Crawley, would be humble, whereas the bishop would be proud. And
the bishop would be in his own armchair--the cock in his own farmyard,
while he, Mr Crawley, would be seated afar off, in the cold extremity of
the room, with nothing of outward circumstances to assist him--a man
called thither to undergo censure. And yet he would take the bishop in
his grasp and crush him--crush him--crush him! As he thought of this he
walked quickly through the mud, and put out his long arm and his great
hand, far before him into the air, and there and then, he crushed the
bishop in his imagination. Yes, indeed! He thought it very doubtful
whether the bishop would ever send for him a second time. And as this
passed through his mind, he forgot his wife's cunning, and farmer
Mangle's sin, and for the moment he was happy.
As he turned a corner round by Lord Lufton's park paling, who should he
meet but his old friend Mr Robarts, the parson of Framley--the parson
who had committed the sin of being bail for him--the sin, that is,
according to Mrs Proudie's view of the matter. He was walking with his
hand still stretched out--still crushing the bishop, when Mr Robarts was
close upon him.
'What, Crawley! upon my word I am very glad to see you; you are coming
to me, of course?'
'Thank you, Mr Robarts; no, not today. The bishop has summoned me to
his presence, and I am on my road to Barchester.'
'But how are you going?'
'I shall walk.
'Walk to Barchester. Impossible!'
'I hope not quite impossible, Mr Robarts. I trust I shall get as far
before two o'clock; but to do so I must be on my road.' Then he showed
signs of a desire to go upon his way without further parley.
'But, Crawley, do let me send you over. There is the horse and gig
doing nothing.'
'Thank you, Mr Robarts; no. I should prefer to walk today.'
'And you have walked from Hogglestock?'
'No;--not so. A neighbour coming hither, who happened to have business
at your mill--he brought me so far in his cart. The walk home will be
nothing--nothing. I shall enjoy it. Good morning, Mr Robarts.'
But Mr Robarts thought of the dirty road and of the bishop's presence,
and of his own ideas of what would be becoming for a clergyman--and
persevered. 'You will find the lanes so very muddy; and our bishop, you
know, is apt to notice such things. Do be persuaded.'
'Notice what things?' demanded Mr Crawley, in an indignant tone.
'He, or perhaps she rather, will say how dirty your shoes were when you
came to the palace.'
'If he, or she, can find nothing unclean about me but my shoes, let them
say their worst. I shall be very indifferent. I have long ceased, Mr
Robarts, to care much what any man or woman may say about my shoes. Good
morning.' Then he stalked on, clutching and crushing in his hand the
bishop, and the bishop's wife, and the whole diocese--and all the Church
of England. Dirty shoes, indeed! Whose was the fault that there were in
the church so many feet soiled by unmerited poverty, and so many hands
soiled by undeserved wealth? If the bishop did not like his shoes, let
the bishop dare tell him so! So he walked on through the thick of the
mud, by no means picking his way.
He walked fast, and he found himself in the close half an hour before
the time named by the bishop. But on no account would he have rung the
palace bell one minute before two o'clock. So he walked up and down
under the towers of the cathedral, and cooled himself, and looked up at
the pleasant plate-glass in the windows of the house of his friend the
dean, and told himself how, in their college days, he and the dean had
been quite equal--quite equal, except by the voices of all qualified
judges in the university, he, Mr Crawley, had been acknowledged the
riper scholar. And now the Mr Arabin of those days was Dean of
Barchester--travelling abroad luxuriously at the moment for his delight,
while he, Crawley, was perpetual curate at Hogglestock, and had now
walked into Barchester at the command of the bishop, because he was
suspected of having stolen twenty pounds! When he had fully imbued his
mind with the injustice of all this, his time was up, and he walked
boldly to the bishop's gate, and boldly rang the bishop's bell.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE BISHOP OF BARCHESTER IS CRUSHED
Who inquires why it is that a little greased flour rubbed in among the
hair on a footman's head--just one dab here and another there--gives
such a tone of high life to the family? And seeing that the thing is so
easily done, why do not more people attempt it? The tax on hair powder
is but thirteen shillings a year. It may, indeed, be that the slightest
dab in the world justifies the wearer in demanding hot meat three times
a day, and wine at any rate on Sundays. I think, however, that a
bishop's wife may enjoy the privilege without such heavy attendant
expense; otherwise the man who opened the bishop's door to Mr Crawley
would hardly have been so ornamental.
The man asked for a card. 'My name is Mr Crawley,' said our friend.
'The bishop desired me to come to him at this hour. Will you be pleased
to tell him that I am here.' The man again asked for a card. 'I am not
bound to carry with me my name printed on a ticket,' said Mr Crawley.
'If you cannot remember it, give me a pencil and paper, and I will write
it.' The servant, somewhat awed by the stranger's manner, brought pen
and paper, and Mr Crawley wrote his name:--
'THE REV JOSHUA CRAWLEY, M.A.,
Perpetual Curate of Hogglestock'
He was then ushered into a waiting-room, but, to his disappointment, was
not kept there waiting long. Within three minutes he was ushered into
the bishop's study, and into the presence of the two great luminaries of
the diocese. He was at first somewhat disconcerted by finding Mrs
Proudie in the room. In the imaginary conversation with the bishop which
he had been preparing on the road, he had conceived that the bishop
would be attended by a chaplain, and he had suited his words to the
joint discomfiture of the bishop and of the lower clergyman;--but now
the line of his battle must be altered. This was no doubt an injury, but
he trusted to his courage and readiness to enable him to surmount it. He
had left his hat behind him in the waiting room, but he kept his old
short cloak still upon his shoulders; and when he entered the bishop's
room his hands and arms were hid beneath it. There was something lowly
in this constrained gait. It showed at least that he had no idea of
being asked to shake hands with the august persons he might meet. And
his head was somewhat bowed, though his great, bald, broad forehead
showed itself so prominent, that neither the bishop nor Mrs Proudie
could drop it from their sight during the whole interview. He was a man
who when seen could hardly be forgotten. The deep angry remonstrant
eyes, the shaggy eyebrows, telling tales of frequent anger--of anger
frequent but generally silent--the repressed indignation of the habitual
frown, the long nose and large powerful mouth, the deep furrows on the
cheek, and the general look of thought and suffering, all combined to
make the appearance of the man remarkable, and to describe to the
beholders at once his true character. No one ever on seeing Mr Crawley
took him to be a happy man, or a weak man, or an ignorant man, or a wise
man.
'You are very punctual, Mr Crawley,' said the bishop. Mr Crawley simply
bowed his head, still keeping his hands beneath his cloak. 'Will you not
take a chair nearer to the fire?' Mr Crawley had not seated himself, but
had placed himself in front of a chair at the extreme end of the
room--resolved that he would not use it unless he were duly asked.
'Thank you, my lord,' he said. 'I am warm with walking, and if you
please, will avoid the fire.'
'You have not walked, Mr Crawley?'
'Yes, my lord; I have been walking.'
'Not from Hogglestock!'
Now this was a matter which Mr Crawley certainly did not mean to discuss
with the bishop. It might be well for the bishop to demand his presence
in the palace, but it could be no part of the bishop's duty to inquire
how he got there. 'That, my lord, is a matter of no moment,' said he. 'I
am glad at any rate that I have been enable to obey your lordship's
order in coming hither on this morning.'
Hitherto Mrs Proudie had not said a word. She stood back in the room,
near the fire--more backward a good deal than she was accustomed to do
when clergymen made their ordinary visits. On such occasions she would
come forward and shake hands with them graciously--graciously, even if
proudly; but she had felt that she must do nothing of that kind now;
there must be no shaking hands with a man who had stolen a cheque for
twenty pounds! It might probably be necessary to keep Mr Crawley at a
distance, and therefore she had remained in the background. But Mr
Crawley seemed disposed to keep himself in the background, and therefore
she could speak. 'I hope your wife and children are well, Mr Crawley'
she said.
'Thank you, madam, my children are quite well, and Mrs Crawley suffers
no special ailment at present.'
'That is much to be thankful for, Mr Crawley.' Whether he were or were
not thankful for such mercies as these was no business of the bishop or
of the bishop's wife. That was between him and his God. So he would not
even bow to this civility, but sat with his head erect, and with a great
frown on his heavy brow.
Then the bishop rose from his chair to speak, intending to take up a
position on the rug. But as he did so Mr Crawley, who had also seated
himself on an intimation that he was expected to sit down, rose also,
and the bishop found that he would thus lose his expected vantage. 'Will
you not be seated, Mr Crawley?' said the bishop. Mr Crawley smiled, but
stood his ground. Then the bishop returned to his arm-chair, and Mr
Crawley also sat down again. 'Mr Crawley,' began the bishop, 'this
matter which the other day came before the magistrates at Silverbridge
has been a most unfortunate affair. It has given me, I can assure you,
the most sincere pain.'
Mr Crawley had made up his mind how far the bishop should be allowed to
go without a rebuke. He had told himself that it would only be natural,
and would not be unbecoming, that the bishop should allude to a meeting
of the magistrates and to the alleged theft, and that therefore such
allusions should be endured with patient humility. And, moreover, the
more rope he gave the bishop, the more likely the bishop would be to
entangle himself. It certainly was Mr Crawley's wish that the bishop
should entangle himself. He, therefore, replied, very meekly. 'It has
been most unfortunate, my lord.'
'I have felt for Mrs Crawley very deeply,' said Mrs Proudie. Mr Crawley
now made up his mind that as long as it was possible he would ignore the
presence of Mrs Proudie altogether; and, therefore, he made no sign that
he had heard the latter remark.
'It has been most unfortunate,' continued the bishop. 'I have never
before had a clergyman in my diocese placed in so distressing a
position.'
'That is a matter of opinion, my lord,' said Mr Crawley, who at that
moment thought of a crisis that had come in the life of another
clergyman in the diocese of Barchester, and the circumstances of which
he had by chance become acquainted.
'Exactly,' said the bishop. 'And I am expressing my opinion.' Mr
Crawley, who understood fighting, did not think the time had yet come
for striking a blow, so he simply bowed again. 'A most unfortunate
position, Mr Crawley,' continued the bishop. 'Far be it from me to
express an opinion on the matter, which will have to come before a jury
of your countrymen. It is enough for me to know that the magistrates
assembled at Silverbridge, gentlemen to whom no doubt you must be known,
as most of them live in your neighbourhood, have heard evidence upon the
subject--'
'Most convincing evidence,' said Mrs Proudie, interrupting her husband.
Mr Crawley's black brow became a little blacker has he heard the word,
but he still ignored the woman. He not only did not speak, but did not
turn his eyes upon her.
'They have heard the evidence on the subject,' continued the bishop,
'and they have thought it proper to refer the decision as to your
innocence or your guilt to a jury of your countrymen.'
'And they were right,' said Mr Crawley.
'Very possibly. I don't deny it. Probably,' said the bishop, whose
eloquence was somewhat disturbed by Mr Crawley's ready acquiescence.
'Of course they were right,' said Mrs Proudie.
'At any rate it is so,' said the bishop. 'You are in a position of a
man amenable to the criminal laws of the land.'
'There are no criminal laws, my lord,' said Mr Crawley; 'but to such
laws as there are we are all amenable--your lordship and I alike.'
'But you are so in a very particular way. I do not wish to remind you
what might be your condition now, but for the interposition of private
friends.'
'I should be in the condition of a man not guilty before the law;
--guiltless as far as the law goes--but kept in durance, nor for the
faults of his own, but because otherwise, by reason of laches in the
police, his presence at the assizes might not be ensured. In such a
position a man's reputation is made to hang for a while on the trust
which some friends or neighbours may have in it. I do not say the test
is a good one.'
'You would have been put in prison, Mr Crawley, because the magistrates
were of the opinion that you had taken Mr Soames's cheque,' said Mrs
Proudie. On this occasion he did look at her. He turned one glance upon
her from under his eyebrows, but he did not speak.
'With all that I have nothing to do,' said the bishop.
'Nothing whatever, my lord,' said Mr Crawley.
'But, bishop, I think you have,' said Mrs Proudie. 'The judgment formed
by the magistrates as to the conduct of one of your clergymen makes it
imperative upon you to act in the matter.'
'Yes, my dear, yes; I am coming to that. What Mrs Proudie says is
perfectly true. I have been constrained most unwillingly to take action
in the matter. It is undoubtedly the fact that you must at the next
assizes surrender yourself at the court-house yonder, to be tried for
this offence against the laws.'
'That is true. If I be alive, and have strength sufficient, I shall be
there.'
'You must be there,' said Mrs Proudie. 'The police will look to that,
Mr Crawley.' She was becoming very angry in that the man would not
answer her a word. On this occasion he did not even look at her.
'Yes; you will be there,' said the bishop. 'Now that is, to say the
least of it, an unseemly position for a beneficed clergyman.'
'You said before, my lord, that it was an unfortunate position, and the
word, methinks, was better chosen.'
'It is very unseemly, very unseemly indeed,' said Mrs Proudie; 'nothing
could possibly be more unseemly. The bishop might very properly have
used a much stronger word.'
'Under these circumstances,' continued the bishop, 'looking to the
welfare of your parish, to the welfare of the diocese, and allow me to
say, Mr Crawley, to the welfare of yourself also--'
'And especially the souls of the people,' said Mrs Proudie.
The bishop shook his head. It is hard to be impressively eloquent when
one is interrupted at every best turning period, even by a supporting
voice. 'Yes;--and looking of course to the religious interests of your
people, Mr Crawley, I came to the conclusion that it would be expedient
that you should cease your ministrations for a while.' The bishop
paused, and Mr Crawley bowed his head. 'I, therefore, sent over to you a
gentleman with whom I am well acquainted, Mr Thumble, with a letter from
myself, in which I endeavoured to impress upon you, without the use of
any severe language, what my convictions were.'
'Severe words are often the best mercy,' said Mrs Proudie. Mr Crawley
had raised his hand, with his finger out, preparatory to answering the
bishop. But as Mrs Proudie had spoken he dropped his finger and was
silent.
'Mr Thumble brought me back your written reply,' continued the bishop,
'by which I was grieved to find that you were not willing to submit
yourself to my counsel in the matter.'
'I was most unwilling, my lord. Submission to authority is at time a
duty;--and at times opposition to authority is a duty also.'
'Opposition to just authority cannot be a duty, Mr Crawley.'
'Opposition to usurped authority is an imperative duty,' said Mr
Crawley.
'And who is to be the judge?' demanded Mrs Proudie. Then there was
silence for a while; when, as Mr Crawley made no reply, the lady
repeated her question. 'Will you be pleased to answer my question, sir?
Who, in such case, is to be the judge?' But Mr Crawley did not please to
answer the question. 'The man is obstinate,' said Mrs Proudie.
'I had better proceed,' said the bishop. 'Mr Thumble brought me back
your reply, which grieved me greatly.'
'It was contumacious and indecent,' said Mrs Proudie.
The bishop again shook his head and looked so utterly miserable that a
smile came across Mr Crawley's face. After all, others beside himself
had their troubles and trials. Mrs Proudie saw and understood the smile,
and became more angry than ever. She drew her chair close to the table,
and began to fidget with her fingers among the papers. She had never
before encountered a clergyman so contumacious, so indecent, so
unreverend--so upsetting. She had had to deal with men difficult to
manage--the archdeacon for instance; but the archdeacon had never been
so impertinent to her as this man. She had quarrelled once openly with a
chaplain of her husband's, a clergyman whom she herself had introduced
to her husband, and who had treated her very badly;--but not so badly,
not with such unscrupulous violence, as she was now encountering from
this ill-clothed beggarly man, this perpetual curate, with his dirty
broken boots, this already half-convicted thief! Such was her idea of
Mr Crawley's conduct to her, while she was fingering the papers--simply
because Mr Crawley would not speak to her.
'I forget where I was,' said the bishop. 'Oh, Mr Thumble came back, and
I received your letter;--of course I received it. And I was surprised to
learn from that, that in spite of what had occurred at Silverbridge, you
were still anxious to continue the usual Sunday ministrations in your
church.'
'I was determined that I would do my duty at Hogglestock, as long as I
might be left there to do it,' said Mr Crawley.
'Duty!' said Mrs Proudie.
'Just a moment, my dear,' said the bishop. 'When Sunday came, I had no
alternative but to send Mr Thumble over again to Hogglestock. It
occurred to us--to me and to Mrs Proudie--'
'I will tell Mr Crawley just now what has occurred to me,' said Mrs
Proudie.
'Yes;--just so. And I am sure that he will take it in good part. It
occurred to me, Mr Crawley, that your first letter might have been
written in haste.'
'It was written in haste, my lord; your messenger was waiting.'
'Yes;--just so. Well; so I sent him again, hoping that he might be
accepted as a messenger of peace. It was a most disagreeable mission for
any gentleman, Mr Crawley.'
'Most disagreeable, my lord.'
'And you refused him permission to obey the instructions which I had
given him. You would not let him read from your desk, or preach from
your pulpit.'
'Had I been Mr Thumble,' said Mrs Proudie, 'I would have read from that
desk and I would have preached from that pulpit.'
Mr Crawley waited for a moment, thinking that the bishop might perhaps
speak again; but as he did not, but sat expectant as though he had
finished his discourse, and now expected a reply, Mr Crawley got up from
his seat and drew near the table. 'My lord,' he began, 'it has all been
just as you said. I did answer your first letter in haste.'
'The more shame for you,' said Mrs Proudie.
'And therefore, for aught I know, my letter to your lordship may be so
worded as to need some apology.'
'Of course it needs an apology,' said Mrs Proudie.
'But of the matter of it, my lord, no apology can be made, nor is any
needed. I did refuse your messenger permission to perform the services
of my church, and if you send twenty more, I shall refuse them all--till
the time may come when it will be your lordship's duty, in accordance
with the laws of the Church--as borne out and backed by the laws of the
land, to provide during my contstrained absence for the spiritual wants
of those poor people at Hogglestock.'
'Poor people, indeed,' said Mrs Proudie. 'Poor wretches!'
'And, my lord, it may well be, that it shall soon be your lordship's
duty to take due and legal steps for depriving me of my benefice at
Hogglestock;--nay, probably, for silencing me altogether as to the
exercise of my sacred profession!'
'Of course it will, sir. Your gown will be taken from you,' said Mrs
Proudie. The bishop was looking with all his eyes on the great forehead
and great eyebrows of the man, and was so fascinated by the power that
was exercised over him by the other man's strength that he hardly now
noticed his wife.
'It may well be so, continued Mr Crawley. 'The circumstances are strong
against me; and, though your lordship may altogether misunderstood the
nature of the duty performed by the magistrates in sending my case for
trial--although, as it seems to me, you have come to conclusions in this
matter in ignorance of the very theory of our laws--'
'Sir!' said Mrs Proudie.
'Yet I can foresee the probability that a jury will may discover me to
have been guilty of theft.'
'Of course the jury will do,' said Mrs Proudie.
'Should such a verdict be given, then, my lord, your interference will
be legal, proper, and necessary. And you will find that, even if it be
within my power to oppose obstacles to your lordship's authority, I will
oppose no such obstacle. There is, I believe, no appeal in criminal
cases.'
'None at all,' said Mrs Proudie. 'There is no appeal against your
bishop. You should have learned that before.'
'But till that time shall come, my lord, I shall hold my own at
Hogglestock as you hold your own here at Barchester. Nor have you any
more power to turn me out of my pulpit by your mere voice, than I have
to turn you out of your throne by mine. If you doubt me, my lord, your
lordship's ecclesiastical court is open to you. Try it there.'
'You defy us, then?' said Mrs Proudie.
'My lord, I grant your authority as bishop is great, but even a bishop
can only act as the laws allows him.'
'God forbid that I should do more,' said the bishop.
'Sir, you will find that your wicked threats will fall back upon your
own head,' said Mrs Proudie.
'Peace, woman,' Mr Crawley said, addressing her at last. The bishop
jumped out of his chair at hearing the wife of his bosom called a woman.
But he jumped rather in admiration than in anger. He had already begun
to perceive that Mr Crawley was a man who had better be left to take
care of the souls at Hogglestock, at any rate till the trial should come
on.
'Woman!' said Mrs Proudie, rising to her feet as though she really
intended some personal encounter.
'Madam,' said Mr Crawley, 'you should not interfere in these matters.
You simply debase you husband's high office. The distaff is more fitted
for you. My lord, good morning.' And before either of them could speak
again, he was out of the room, and through the hall, and beyond the
gate, and standing beneath the towers of the cathedral. Yes, he had, he
thought, in truth crushed the bishop. He had succeeded in crumpling the
bishop up within the clutch of his fist.
He started in spirit of triumph to walk back on his road towards
Hogglestock. He did not think of the long distance before him for the
first hour of his journey. He had had his victory, and the remembrance
of that braced his nerves and gave elasticity to his sinews, and he went
stalking along to road with rapid strides, muttering to himself from
time to time as he went along some word about Mrs Proudie and her
distaff. Mr Thumble would not, he thought, come to him again--not, at
any rate, till the assizes were drawing near. And he had resolved what
he would do then. When the day of his trial was near, he would himself
write to the bishop, and beg that provision might be made for his
church, in the event of the verdict going against him. His friend, Dean
Arabin, was to be home before that time, and the idea had occurred to
him of asking the dean to see to this; but now the other would be the
more independent course, and the better. And there was a matter as to
which he was not altogether well pleased with the dean, although he was
so conscious of his own peculiarities as to know that he could hardly
trust himself for a judgment. But, at any rate, he would apply to the
bishop --to the bishop whom he had just left prostrate in his palace--
when the time of his trial should be close at hand.
Full of such thoughts as these he went along almost gaily, nor felt the
fatigue of the road till he had covered the first five miles out of
Barchester. It was nearly four o'clock, and the thick gloom of the
winter evening was making itself felt. And then he began to be fatigued.
He had not as yet eaten since he had left his home in the morning, and
he now pulled a crust out of his pocket and leaned against a gate as he
crunched it. There were still ten miles before him, and he knew that
such an addition to the work he had already done would task him very
severely. Farmer Mangle had told him that he would not leave Framley
Mill by that time. But he had said that he would not return to Framley
Mill, and he remembered his suspicion that his wife and the farmer
between them had cozened him. No; he would persevere and walk--walk
though he should drop upon the road. He was now nearer fifty then forty
years of age, and hardships as well as time had told upon him. He knew
that the last four miles in the dark would be very sad with him. But
still he persevered, endeavouring, as he went, to cherish himself with
the remembrance of his triumph.
He passed the turning going down to Framley with courage, but when he
came to the further turning, by which the cart would return from Framley
to the Hogglestock road, he looked wistfully down the road for farmer
Mangle. But farmer Mangle was still at the Mill, waiting in expectation
that Mr Crawley might come to him. But the poor traveller paused here
barely for a minute, and then went on, stumbling through the mud,
striking his ill-covered feet against the rough stones in the dark,
sweating in his weakness, almost tottering at times, and calculating
whether his remaining strength would serve to carry him home. He had
almost forgotten the bishop and his wife before at last he grasped the
wicket gate leading to his own door.
'Oh, mamma, here is papa!'
'But where is the cart? I did not hear the wheels,' said Mrs Crawley.
'Oh, mamma, I think papa is ill.' Then the wife took her drooping
husband by both arms and strove to look him in the face. 'He has walked
all the way, and he is ill,' said Jane.
'No, my dear, I am very tired, but not ill. Let me sit down, and give
me some bread and tea, and I shall recover myself.' Then Mrs Crawley,
from some secret hoard, got him a small modicum of spirits, and gave him
meat and tea, and he was docile; and, obeying her behests, allowed
himself to be taken to his bed.
'I do not think the bishop will send for me again,' he said, as she
tucked the clothes around him.
CHAPTER XIX
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
When Christmas morning came no emissary from the bishop appeared at
Hogglestock to interfere with the ordinary performance of the day's
services. 'I think we need fear no further disturbance,' Mr Crawley said
to his wife--and there was no further disturbance.
On the day after his walk from Framley to Barchester, and from
Barchester back to Hogglestock, Mr Crawley had risen not much the worse
for his labour, and had gradually given to his wife a full account of
what had taken place. 'A poor weak man,' he said, speaking of the
bishop. 'A poor weak creature, and much to be pitied.'
'I have always heard that she is a violent woman.'
'Very violent, and very ignorant; and most intrusive withal.'
'And you did not answer her a word?'
'At last my forbearance with her broke down, and I bade her mind her
distaff.'
'What;--really? Did you say those words to her?'
'Nay; as for the exact words I cannot remember them. I was thinking
more of the word which it might be fitting that I should answer the
bishop. But I certainly told her that she had better mind her distaff.'
'And how did she behave then?'
'I did not wait to see. The bishop had spoken, and I had replied; and
why should I tarry to behold the woman's violence? I had told him that
he was wrong in law, and that I at least would not submit to usurped
authority. There was nothing to keep me longer, and so I went without
much ceremony of leave-taking. There had been little ceremony of
greeting on their part, and there was less in the making of adieux on
mine. They had told me that I was a thief--'
'No, Josiah--surely not so? They did not use that very word?'
'I say they did;--they did use that very word. But stop. I am wrong.
I wrong his lordship, and I crave pardon for having done so. If my
memory serve me, no expression so harsh escaped from the bishop's mouth.
He gave me, indeed, to understand more than once that the action taken
by the magistrates was tantamount to a conviction, and that I must be
guilty because they had decided that there was evidence sufficient to
justify a trial. But all that arose from my lord's ignorance of the
administration of the laws of his country. He was very
ignorant--puzzle-pated, as you may call it--led by the nose by his wife,
weak as water, timid and vacillating. But he did not wish, I think, to
be insolent. It was Mrs Proudie who told me to my face that I was
a--thief.'
'May she be punished for the cruel word!' said Mrs Crawley. 'May the
remembrance that she has spoken it come, some day, heavily upon her
heart.'
'"Vengeance is mine. I will repay," saith the Lord,' answered Mr
Crawley. 'We may safely leave all that alone, and rid our minds of such
wishes, if it be possible. It is well, I think, that violent offences,
when committed, should be met by instant rebuke. To turn the other cheek
instantly to the smiter can hardly be suitable in these days, when the
hands of so many are raised to strike. But the return blow should be
given only while the smart remains. She hurt me then; but what is to me
now, that she called me a thief to my face? Do I not know that, all the
country round, men and woman are calling me the same behind my back?'
'No, Josiah, you do not know that. They say the thing is very
strange--so strange that it requires a trial; but no one thinks you have
taken that which was not your own.'
'I think I did. I myself think I took that which was not my own. My
poor head suffers so;--so many grievous thoughts distract me, that I am
like a child, and know not what I do.' As he spoke thus he put both
hands up to his head, leaning forward as though in anxious thought--as
though he were striving to bring his mind to bear with accuracy on past
events. 'It could not have been mine, and yet--' Then he sat silent, and
made no effort to continue his speech.
'And yet?'--said his wife, encouraging him to proceed. If she could
only learn the real truth, she thought that she might perhaps yet save
him, with assistance from their friends.
'When I said that I had gotten it from that man I must have been mad.'
'From which man, love?'
'From the man Soames--he who accuses me. And yet, as the Lord hears me,
I thought so then. The truth is, that there are times when I am
not--sane. I am not a thief--not before God; but I am--mad at times.'
These last words were spoken very slowly, in a whisper--without any
excitement--indeed with a composure which was horrible to witness. And
what he said was the more terrible because she was so well convinced of
the truth of his words. Of course he was no thief. She wanted no one to
tell her that. As he himself had expressed it, he was no thief before
God, however the money might have come into his possession. That there
were times when his reason, once so fine and clear, could not act, could
not be trusted to guide him right, as she had gradually come to know
with fear and trembling. But he himself had never before hinted his own
consciousness of this calamity. Indeed he had been so unwilling to speak
of himself and his own state, that she had been unable even to ask him a
question about the money--lest he should suspect that she suspected him.
Now he was speaking--but speaking with such heartrending sadness that
she could hardly urge him to go on.
'You have sometimes been ill, Josiah, as any of us may be,' she said,
'and that has been the cause.'
'There are different kinds of sickness. There is sickness of the body,
and sickness of the heart, and sickness of the spirit;--and then there
is sickness of the mind, the worst of all.'
'With you, Josiah, it has chiefly been the first.'
'With me, Mary, it has been all of them--every one! My spirit is
broken, my mind has not been able to keep its even tenor amidst the
ruins. But I will strive. I will strive. I will strive still. And if God
helps me, I will prevail.' Then he took up his hat and cloak, and went
forth among the lanes; and on this occasion his wife was glad that he
should go alone.
This occurred a day or two before Christmas, and Mrs Crawley during
those days said nothing more to her husband on the subject which he had
so unexpectedly discussed. She asked him no questions about the money,
or as to the possibility of his exercising his memory, nor did she
counsel him to plead that the false excuses given by him for the
possession of the cheque had been occasioned by the sad slip to which
sorrow had in those days subjected his memory and his intellect. But the
matter had always been on her mind. Might it not be her paramount duty
to do something of this at the present moment? Might it not be that his
acquittal or conviction would depend on what she might now learn from
him? It was clear to her that he was brighter in spirit since his
encounter with the Proudies than he had ever been since the accusation
had been first made against him. And she knew well that his present mood
would not be of long continuance. He would fall again into his moody
silent ways, and then the chance of learning aught from him would be
past, and perhaps, for ever.
He performed the Christmas services with nothing of special despondency
in his tone or manner, and his wife thought that she had never heard him
give the sacrament with more impressive dignity. After the service he
stood awhile at the churchyard gate, and exchanged a word of courtesy as
to the season with such of the families of the farmers as had stayed for
the Lord's Supper.
'I waited at Framley for your reverence till arter six--so I did,' said
farmer Mangle.
'I kept the road, and walked the whole way,' said Mr Crawley, 'I think I
told you that I should not return to the mill. But I am not the less
obliged by your great kindness.'
'Say nowt o' that,' said the farmer. 'No doubt I had business at the
mill--lots to do at the mill.' Nor did he think the fib he was telling
was at all incompatible with the Holy Sacrament in which he had just
taken part.
The Christmas dinner at the parsonage was not a repast that did much
honour to the season, but it was a better dinner than the inhabitants of
that house usually had on the board before them. There was roast pork
and mince-pies, and a bottle of wine. As Mrs Crawley with her own hand
put the meat upon the table, and then, as was her custom in their house,
proceeded to cut it up, she looked at husband's face to see whether he
was scrutinising the food with painful eye. It was better that she
should tell the truth at once than that she should be made to tell it,
in answer to a question. Everything on the table, except the bread and
potatoes, had come in a basket from Framley Court. Pork had been sent
instead of beef, because people in the country, when they kill their
pigs, do sometimes give each other pork--but do not exchange joints of
beef, when they slay their oxen. All this was understood by Mrs Crawley,
but she almost wished that beef had been sent, because beef would have
attracted less attention. He said, however, nothing to the meat; but
when his wife proposed to him that he should eat a mince-pie he resented
it. 'The bare food,' said he, 'is bitter enough, coming as it does; but
that would choke me.' She did not press it, but ate one herself, as
otherwise her girl would have been forced also to refuse the dainty.
That evening, as soon as Jane was in bed, she resolved to ask him some
further questions. 'You will have a lawyer, Josiah--will you not?'
'Why should I have a lawyer?'
'Because he will know what questions to ask, and how questions on the
other side should be answered.'
'I have no questions to ask, and there is only one way in which
questions should be answered. I have no money to pay a lawyer.'
'But, Josiah, in such a case as this, where your honour, and our very
life depend upon it--'
'Depend on what?'
'On your acquittal.'
'I shall not be acquitted. It is as well to look it in the face at
once. Lawyer or no lawyer, they will say that I took the money. Were I
upon the jury, trying the case myself, knowing all that I know
now,'--and as he said this he struck forth with his hands into the
air--'I think that I should say so myself. A lawyer will do no good. It
is here. It is here.' And again he put his hands up to his head.
So far she had been successful. At this moment it had in truth been her
object to induce him to speak of his own memory, and not of the aid that
a lawyer might give. The proposition of the lawyer had been brought in
to introduce the subject.
'But, Josiah--'
'Well?'
It was very hard for her to speak. She could not bear to torment him by
any allusion to his own deficiencies. She could not endure to make him
think that she suspected him of any frailty either in intellect or
thought. Wifelike, she desired to worship him, and that he should know
that she worshipped him. But if a word might save him! 'Josiah, where
did it come from?'
'Yes,' said he; 'yes; that is the question. Where did it come
from:?'--and he turned sharp upon her, looking at her with all the power
of his eyes. 'It is because I cannot tell you where it came from that I
ought to be--either in Bedlam, as a madman, or in the county gaol as a
thief.' The words were so dreadful to her that she could not utter at
the moment another syllable. 'How is a man--to think himself--fit--for a
man's work, when he cannot answer his wife such a plain question as
that?' Then he paused again. 'They should take me to Bedlam at once--at
once--at once. That would not disgrace the children as the gaol will
do.'
Mrs Crawley could ask no further questions on that evening.
CHAPTER XX
WHAT MR WALKER THOUGHT ABOUT IT
It had been suggested to Mr Robarts, that parson at Framley, that he
should endeavour to induce his old acquaintance, Mr Crawley, to employ a
lawyer to defend him at his trial, and Mr Robarts had not forgotten the
commission which he had undertaken. But there were difficulties in the
matter of which he was well aware. In the first place Mr Crawley was a
man whom it had not at any time been easy to advise on matters private
to himself; and in the next place, this was a matter on which it was
very hard to speak to the man implicated, let him be who he would. Mr
Robarts had come round to the generally accepted idea that Mr Crawley
had obtained possession of the cheque illegally--acquitting his friend
in his own mind of theft, simply by supposing that he was wool-gathering
when the cheque came in his way. But in speaking to Mr Crawley, it would
be necessary--so he thought--to pretend a conviction that Mr Crawley was
as innocent in fact as in intention.
He had almost made up his mind to dash at the subject when he met Mr
Crawley walking through Framley to Barchester, but he had abstained
chiefly because Mr Crawley had been too quick for him, and had got away.
After that he resolved that it would be almost useless for him to go to
work unless he should be provided with a lawyer reading and willing to
undertake the task; and as he was not so provided at present, he made up
his mind that he would go into Silverbridge, and see Mr Walker, the
attorney there. Mr Walker always advised everybody in those parts about
everything, and would be sure to know what would be the proper thing to
be done in this case. So Mr Robarts got into his gig, and drove himself
into Silverbridge, passing very close to Mr Crawley's house on his road.
He drove at once to Mr Walker's office, and on arriving there found that
the attorney was not at that moment within. But Mr Winthrop was within.
Would Mr Robarts see Mr Winthrop? Now, seeing Mr Winthrop was a very
different thing from seeing Mr Walker, although the two gentlemen were
partners. But still Mr Robarts said that he would see Mr Winthrop.
Perhaps Mr Walker might return while he was there.
'Is there anything I can do for you, Mr Robarts?' asked Mr Winthrop. Mr
Robarts said that he had wished to see Mr Walker about that poor fellow
Crawley. 'Ah, yes; very said case! So much sadder being a clergyman, Mr
Robarts. We are really quite sorry for him;--we are indeed. We wouldn't
have touched the case ourselves if we could have helped ourselves. We
wouldn't indeed. But we are obliged to take all that business here. At
any rate he'll get nothing but fair usage from us.'
'I am sure of that. You don't know whether he has employed any lawyer
as yet to defend him?'
'I can't say. We don't know, you know. I should say he had--probably
some Barchester attorney. Borleys and Bonstock in Barchester are very
good people--very good people indeed;--for that sort of business I mean,
Mr Robarts. I don't suppose they have much county property in their
hands.'
Mr Robarts knew that Mr Winthrop was a fool, and that he could get no
useful advice from him. So he suggested that he would take his gig down
to the inn, and call back again before long. 'You'll find that Mr Walker
knows no more than I do about it,' said Mr Winthrop, 'but of course
he'll be glad to see you if he happens to come in.' So Mr Robarts went
to the inn, put up his horse, and then, as he sauntered back up the
street, met Mr Walker coming out of the private door of his house.
'I've been at home all the morning,' he said; 'but I've had a stiff job
of work on hand, and told them to say in the office that I was not in.
Seen Winthrop, have you? I don't suppose he did know that I was here.
The clerks often know more than the partners. About Mr Crawley, is it?
Come into my dining-room, Mr Robarts, where we shall be alone. Yes;--it
is a bad case; a very bad case. The pity is that anybody should have
said anything about it. Lord bless me, if I'd been Soames I'd have let
him have the twenty pounds. Lord Lufton would never have allowed Soames
to lose it.'
'But Soames wanted to find out the truth.'
'Yes;--that was just it. Soames couldn't bear to think that he should
be left in the dark, and then, when the poor man said that Soames had
paid the cheque to him in the way of business--it was not odd that
Soames's back should have been up, was it? But, Mr Robarts, I should
have thought a deal about it before I should have brought such a man as
Mr Crawley before a bench of magistrates on that charge.'
'But between me and you, Mr Walker, did he steal the money?'
'Well, Mr Robarts, you know how I'm placed.'
'Mr Crawley is my friend, and of course I want to assist him. I was
under a great obligation to Mr Crawley once, and I wish to befriend him,
whether he took the money or not. But I could act so much better if I
felt sure one way or the other.'
'If you ask me, I think he did take it.'
'What!--he stole it?'
'I think he knew it was not his own when he took it. You see I don't
think he meant to use it when he took it. He perhaps had some queer idea
that Soames had been hard on him, or his lordship, and that the money
was fairly his due. Then he kept the cheque by him till he was
absolutely badgered out of his life by the butcher up the street there.
That was about the long and the short of it, Mr Robarts.'
'I suppose so. And now what had we better do?'
'Well; if you ask me--He is in very bad health, isn't he?'
'No; I should say not. He walked to Barchester and back the other day.'
'Did he? But he's very queer, isn't he?'
'Very odd-mannered indeed.'
'And does and says all manner of odd things?'
'I think you'd find the bishop would say so after that interview.'
'Well; if it would do any good, you might have the bishop examined.'
'Examined for what, Mr Walker?'
'If you could show, you know, that Crawley has got a bee in his bonnet;
that the mens sana is not there, in short;--I think you might manage to
have the trial postponed.'
'But then somebody must take charge of his living.'
'You parsons could manage that among you;--you and the dean and the
archdeacon. The archdeacon has always got half-a-dozen curates about
somewhere. And then--after the assizes, Mr Crawley might come to his
senses; and I think--mind you it's only an idea--but I think the
committal might be quashed. It would have been temporary insanity, and,
though mind I don't give my word for it, I think he might go on and keep
his living. I think so, Mr Robarts.'
'That has never occurred to me.'
'No;--I daresay not. You see the difficulty is this. He's so
stiff-necked--will do nothing himself. Well, that will do for one proof
of temporary insanity. The real truth is, Mr Robarts, he is as mad as a
hatter.'
'Upon my word I've often thought so.'
'And you wouldn't mind saying so in evidence--would you? Well, you see,
there is no helping such a man in any other way. He won't even employ a
lawyer to defend him.'
'That was what I had come to you about.'
'I'm told he won't. Now a man must be mad who won't employ a lawyer
when he wants one. You see, the point we should gain would be this--if
we tried to get him through as being a little touched in the upper
storey--whatever we could do for him, we could do against his own will.
The more he opposed us the stronger our case would be. He would swear he
was not mad at all, and we should say that that was the greatest sign of
his madness. But when I say we, of course I mean you. I must not appear
in it.'
'I wish you could, Mr Walker.'
'Of course I can't; but that won't make any difference.'
'I suppose he must see a lawyer?'
'Yes, he must have a lawyer;--or rather, his friends must.'
'And who would employ him, ostensibly?'
'Ah;--there's the difficulty. His wife wouldn't do it, I suppose? She
couldn't do him a better turn.'
'He would never forgive her. And she would never consent against him.'
'Could you interfere?'
'If necessary, I will;--but I hardly know him well enough.'
'Has he no father or mother, or uncles or aunts? He must have somebody
belonging to him,' said Mr Walker.
Then it occurred to Mr Robarts that Dean Arabin would be the proper
person to interfere. Dean Arabin and Mr Crawley had been intimate
friends in early life, and Dean Arabin knew more of him than did any
man, at least in these parts. All this Mr Robarts explained to Mr
Walker, and Mr Walker agreed with him that the services of Dean Arabin
should if possible be obtained. Mr Robarts would at once write to Dean
Arabin and explain at length all the circumstances of the case. 'The
worst of it is, he will hardly be home in time,' said Mr Walker.
'Perhaps he would come a little sooner if you were to press it?'
'But we could act in his name in his absence, I suppose?--of course with
his authority?'
'I wish he could be here a month before the assizes, Mr Robarts. It
would be better.'
'And in the meantime shall I say anything to Mr Crawley, myself, about
employing a lawyer?'
'I think I would. If he turns upon you, as like he may, and abuses you,
that will help us in one way. If he should consent, and perhaps he may,
that would help us in the other way. I'm told he's been over and upset
the whole coach of the palace.'
'I shouldn't think the bishop got much of him,' said the parson.
'I don't like Crawley the less for speaking his mind free to the
bishop,' said the lawyer, laughing. 'And he'll speak it free to you too,
Mr Robarts.'
'He won't break any of my bones. Tell me, Mr Walker, what lawyer shall
I name to him?'
'You can't have a better man than Mr Mason, up the street there.'
'Winthrop proposed Borleys at Barchester.'
'No, no, no. Borleys and Bonstock are capital people to push a fellow
through on a charge of horse-stealing, or to squeeze a man for a little
money; but they are not the people for Mr Crawley in such a case as
this. Mason is the better man; and then Mason and I know each other.' In
saying which Mr Walker winked.
There was then a discussion between them whether Mr Robarts should go at
once to Mr Mason; but it was decided at last that he should see Mr
Crawley and also write to the dean before his did so. The dean might
wish to employ his own lawyer, and if so the double expense should be
avoided. 'Always remember, Mr Robarts, that when you go into an
attorney's office door, you will have to pay for it, first or last. In
here, you see, the dingy old mahogany, bare as it is, makes you safe. Or
else it's the salt-cellar, which will not allow itself to be polluted
by six-and-eightpenny considerations. But there is the other kind of
tax to be paid. You must go up and see Mrs Walker, or you won't get her
help in the matter.'
Mr Walker returned to his work, either to some private den within his
house, or to his office, and Mr Robarts was taken upstairs to the
drawing-room. There he found Mrs Walker and her daughter, and Miss Anne
Prettyman, who had just looked in, full of the story of Mr Crawley's
walk to Barchester. Mr Thumble had seen one of Dr Tempest's curates, and
had told the whole story--he, Mr Thumble, having heard Mrs Proudie's
version of what had occurred, and having, of course, drawn his own
deductions from her premises. And it seemed that Mr Crawley had been
watched as he passed through the close out of Barchester. A minor canon
had seen him, and had declared that he was going at the rate of a hunt,
swinging his arms on high and speaking very loud, though--as the minor
canon said with regret--the words were hardly audible. But there had
been no doubt as to the man. Mr Crawley's old hat, and short rusty
cloak, and dirty boots, had been duly observed and chronicled by the
minor canon; and Mr Thumble had been enabled to put together a not
altogether false picture of what had occurred. As soon as the greetings
between Mr Robarts and the ladies had been made, Miss Anne Prettyman
broke out again, just where she had left off when Mr Robarts came in.
'They say that Mrs Proudie declared that she will have him sent to
Botany Bay!'
'Luckily Mrs Proudie won't have much to do in the matter,' said Miss
Walker, who ranged herself, as to church matters, in the ranks
altogether opposed to those commanded by Mrs Proudie.
'She will have nothing to do with it, my dear,' said Mrs Walker; 'and I
daresay Mrs Proudie was not foolish enough to say anything of the kind.'
'Mamma, she would be foolish enough to say anything. Would she not Mr
Robarts?'
'You forget, Miss Walker, that Mrs Proudie is in authority over me.'
'So she is, for the matter of that,' said the young lady; 'but I know
very well what you all think of her, and say of her too, at Framley.
Your friend, Lady Lufton, loves her dearly. I wish I could have been
behind a curtain in the palace, to hear what Mr Crawley said to her.'
'Mr Smilie declares,' said Miss Prettyman, 'that the bishop has been ill
ever since. Mr Smilie went over to his mother's at Barchester for
Christmas, and took part of the cathedral duty, and we had Mr Spooner
over her in his place. So Mr Smilie of course heard all about it. Only
fancy, poor Mr Crawley walking all the way from Hogglestock to
Barchester and back;--and I am told he hardly had a shoe to his foot! Is
it not a shame, Mr Robarts?'
'I don't think it was quite as bad as you say, Miss Prettyman; but, upon
the whole, I do think it is a shame. But what can we do?'
'I suppose there are tithes at Hogglestock? Why are they not given up
to the church, as they ought to be?'
'My dear, Miss Prettyman, that is a very long subject, and I am afraid
it cannot be settled in time to relieve our poor friend from his
distress.' Then Mr Robarts escaped from the ladies in Mr Walker's house,
who, as it seemed to him, were touching upon dangerous ground, and went
back to the yard of the George Inn for his gig--the George and Vulture
it was properly called, and was the house in which the magistrates had
sat when they committed Mr Crawley for trial.
'Footed it every inch of the way, blowed if he didn't,' the ostler was
saying to a gentleman's groom, whom Mr Robarts recognised to be the
servant of his friend Major Grantly; and Mr Robarts knew that they also
were talking about Mr Crawley. Everybody in the county was talking about
Mr Crawley. At home, at Framley, there was no other subject of
discourse. Lady Lufton, the dowager, was full of it, being firmly
convinced that Mr Crawley was innocent, because the bishop was supposed
to regard him as guilty. There had been a family conclave held at
Framley Court over that basked of provisions which had been sent for the
Christmas cheer of the Hogglestock parsonage, each of the three ladies,
the two Lady Luftons and Mrs Robarts, having special views of their own.
How the pork had been substituted for the beef by old Lady Lufton, young
Lady Lufton thinking that after all the beef might be dangerous, and how
a small turkey had been rashly suggested by Mrs Robarts, and how certain
small articles had been inserted in the bottom of the basket which Mrs
Crawley had never shown to her husband, need not here be told at length.
But Mr Robarts, as he heard the two grooms talking about Mr Crawley,
began that Mr Crawley had achieved at least celebrity.
The groom touched his hat as Mr Robarts walked up. 'Has the major
returned home yet?' Mr Robarts asked. The groom said that his master was
still at Plumstead, and that he was to go over to fetch the major and
Miss Edith in a day or two. Then Mr Robarts got into his gig, and as he
drove out of the yard he heard the words of the men as they returned to
the same subject. 'Footed it all the way,' said one. 'And yet he's a
gen'leman, too,' said the other. Mr Robarts thought of this as he drove
on, intending to call at Hogglestock on that very day on his way home.
It was undoubtedly the fact that Mr Crawley was recognised to be a
gentleman by all who knew him, high or low, rich or poor, by those who
thought well of him and by those who thought ill. These grooms, who had
been telling each other that this parson, who was to be tried as a
thief, had been constrained to walk from Hogglestock to Barchester and
back, because he could not afford to travel any other way, and that his
boots were cracked and his clothes ragged, had still known him to be a
gentleman! Nobody doubted it; not even they who thought he had stolen
the money. Mr Robarts himself was certain of it, and told himself that
he knew it by the evidences which his own education made clear to him.
But how was it that the grooms knew it? For my part I think that there
are no better judges of the article than the grooms.
Thinking of all which he had heard, Mr Robarts found himself at Mr
Crawley's gate at Hogglestock.
CHAPTER XXI
MR ROBARTS ON HIS EMBASSY
Mr Robarts was not altogether easy in his mind as he approached Mr
Crawley's house. He was aware that the task before him was a very
difficult one, and he had not confidence in himself--that he was exactly
the man fitted for the performance of such a task. He was a little
afraid of Mr Crawley, acknowledging tacitly to himself that the man had
a power of ascendancy with which he would hardly be able to cope
successfully. In old days he had once been rebuked by Mr Crawley, and
had been cowed by the rebuke; and though there was no touch of rancour
in his heart on this account, no slightest remaining venom--but rather
increased respect and friendship--still he was unable to overcome his
remembrance of the scene in which the perpetual curate of Hogglestock
had undoubtedly the mastery of him. So, when two dogs have fought and
one has conquered, the conquered dog will always show an unconscious
submission to the conqueror.
He hailed a boy on the road as he drew near to the house, knowing that
he would find no one at the parsonage to hold his horse for him, and was
thus able without delay to walk through the garden and knock at the
door. 'Papa was not at home,' Jane said. 'Papa was at the school. But
papa could certainly be summoned.' She herself would run across to the
school if Mr Robarts would come in. So Mr Robarts entered, and found Mrs
Crawley in the sitting-room. Mr Crawley would be in directly, she said.
And then, hurrying on to the subject with confused haste, in order that
a word or two might be spoken before her husband came back, she
expressed her thanks and his for the good things which had been sent to
them at Christmas-tide.
'It's old Lady Lufton's doings,' said Mr Robarts, trying to laugh the
matter over.
'I knew that it came from Framley, Mr Robarts, and I know how good you
all are there. I have not written to thank Lady Lufton. I thought it
better not to write. Your sister will understand why, if no one else
does. But you will tell them from me, I am sure, that it was, as they
intended, a comfort to us. Your sister knows too much of us for me to
suppose that our great poverty can be a secret from her. And, as far as
I am concerned, I do not much care who knows it.'
'There is no disgrace in not being rich,' said Mr Robarts.
'No; and the feeling of disgrace which does attach itself to being so
poor as we are is deadened by the actual suffering which such poverty
brings with it. At least it has become so with me. I am not ashamed to
say that I am very grateful for what you all have done for us at
Framley. But you must not say anything to him about it.'
'Of course I will not, Mrs Crawley.'
'His spirit is higher than mine, I think, and he suffers more from the
natural disinclination which we all have from receiving alms. Are you
going to speak to him about the affair--the cheque, Mr Robarts?'
'I am going to ask him to put his case into some lawyer's hands.'
'Oh! I wish he would!'
'And will he not?'
'It is very kind of you, your coming to ask him, but--'
'Has he so strong an objection?'
'He will tell you that he has no money to pay a lawyer.'
'But, surely, if he were convinced that it was absolutely necessary for
the vindication of his innocence, he would submit to charge himself with
an expense so necessary, not only for himself, but for his family?'
'He will say it ought not to be necessary. You know, Mr Robarts, that
in some respects he is not like other men. You will not let what I say
of him set you against him?'
'Indeed, no.'
'It is most kind of you to make the attempt. He will be here directly,
and when he comes I will leave you together.'
While she was yet speaking his step was heard along the gravel-path,
and he hurried into the room with quick steps. 'I crave your pardon, Mr
Robarts,' he said, 'that I should keep you waiting.' now Mr Robarts had
not been there ten minutes, and any such asking of pardon was hardly
necessary. And, even in his own house, Mr Crawley affected a mock
humility, as though, either through his own debasement, or because of
the superior station of the other clergyman, he were not entitled to put
himself on an equal footing with his visitor. He would not have shaken
hands with Mr Robarts--intending to indicate that he did not presume to
do so while the present accusation was hanging over him--had not the
action been forced upon him. And then there was something of a protest
in his manner, as though remonstrating against a thing that was
unbecoming to him. Mr Robarts, without analysing it, understood it all,
and knew that behind the humility there was a crushing pride--a pride
which, in all probability, would rise up and crush him before he could
get himself out of the room again. It was, perhaps, after all, a
question whether the man was not served rightly by the extremities to
which he was reduced. There was something radically wrong within him,
which had put him into antagonism with all the world, and which produced
these never-dying grievances. There were many clergymen in the country
with incomes as small as that which had fallen to the lot of Mr Crawley,
but they managed to get on without displaying their sores as Mr Crawley
displayed his. They did not wear their old rusty cloaks with all that
ostentatious bitterness of poverty which seemed to belong to that
garment when displayed on Mr Crawley's shoulders. Such, for a moment,
were Mr Robarts' thoughts, and he almost repented himself of his present
mission. But then he thought of Mrs Crawley, and remembering that her
sufferings were at any rate undeserved, determined that he would
persevere.
Mrs Crawley disappeared almost as soon as her husband appeared, and Mr
Robarts found himself standing in front of his friend, who remained
fixed to the spot, with his hands folded over each other and his neck
bent slightly forward, in token also of humility. 'I regret,' he said,
'that your horse should be left there, exposed to the inclemency of the
weather; but--'
'The horse won't mind it a bit,' said Mr Robarts. 'A parson's horse is
like a butcher's, and knows he mustn't be particular about waiting in
the cold.'
'I never have had one myself,' said Mr Crawley. Now Mr Robarts had had
more horses than one before now, and had been thought by some to have
incurred greater expense than was befitting in his stable comforts. The
subject, therefore, was a sore one, and he was worried a little. 'I just
wanted to say a few words to you, Crawley,' he said, 'and if I am not
occupying too much of your time--'
'My time is altogether at your disposal. Will you be seated?'
Then Mr Robarts sat down, and, swinging his hat between his legs,
bethought himself how he should begin his work. 'We had the archdeacon
over at Framley the other day,' he said. 'Of course you know the
archdeacon?'
'I never had the advantage of any acquaintance with Dr Grantly. Of
course I know him well by name, and also personally--that is, by sight.'
'And by character?'
'Nay; I can hardly so much as that. But I am aware that his name stands
high with many of his order.'
'Exactly; that is what I mean. You know that his judgment is thought
more of in clerical matters than that of any other clergyman in the
county.'
'By a certain party, Mr Robarts.'
'Well, yes. They don't think much of him, I suppose, in the palace. But
that won't lower him in your estimation.'
'I by no means derogate from Dr Grantly's high position in his own
archdeaconry--to which, as you are aware, I am not attached --nor to
criticise his conduct in any respect. It would therefore be unbecoming
in me to do so. But I cannot accept it as a point in a clergyman's
favour, that he should be opposed to his bishop.'
Now this was too much for Mr Robarts. After all that he had heard of
the visit paid by Mr Crawley to the palace--of the venom displayed by
Mrs Proudie on that occasion, and of the absolute want of subordination
to episcopal authority which Mr Crawley himself was supposed to have
shown--Mr Robarts did feel it hard that his friend the archdeacon should
be snubbed in this way because he was deficient in reverence for his
bishop! 'I thought, Crawley,' he said, 'that you yourself were inclined
to dispute orders coming to you from the palace. That world at least
says as much concerning you.'
'What the world says of me I have learned to disregard very much, Mr
Robarts. But I hope that I shall never disobey the authority of the
Church when properly and legally exercised.'
'I hope with all my heart you never will; not I either. And the
archdeacon, who knows, to the breadth of a hair, what a bishop ought to
do and what he ought not, and what he may do and what he may not, will,
I should say, be the last man in England to sin in that way.'
'Very probably. I am far from contradicting you there. Pray
understand, Mr Robarts, that I bring no accusation against the
archdeacon. Why should I?'
'I didn't mean to discuss him at all.'
'Nor did I, Mr Robarts.'
'I only mentioned his name, because, as I said, he was over with us the
other day at Framley, and we were all talking about your affair.'
'My affair!' said Mr Crawley. And then came a frown upon his brow, and
a gleam of fire into his eyes, which effectually banished that look of
humility which he had assumed. 'And may I ask why the archdeacon was
discussing--my affair?'
'Simply from the kindness which he bears to you.'
'I am grateful for the archdeacon's kindness, as a man is bound to be
for any kindness, whether displayed wisely or unwisely. But it seems to
me that my affair, as you call it, Mr Robarts, is of that nature that
they who wish well to me will better further their wishes by silence
than by any discussion.'
'Then I cannot agree with you.' Mr Crawley shrugged his shoulders,
opened his hands a little and then closed them, and bowed his head. He
could not have declared more clearly by any words that he differed
altogether from Mr Robarts, and that as the subject was one so
peculiarly his own he had a right to expect that his opinion should be
allowed to prevail against that of any other person. 'If you come to
that, you know, how is anybody's tongue to be stopped?'
'That vain tongues cannot be stopped, I am well aware. I do not expect
that people's tongues should be stopped. I am not saying what men will
do, but what good wishes should dictate.'
'Well, perhaps you'll hear me out for a minute.' Mr Crawley again bowed
his head. 'Whether we were wise or unwise, we were discussing this
affair.'
'Whether I stole Mr Soames's money?'
'No; nobody supposed for a moment you had stolen it.'
'I cannot how they can suppose anything else, knowing, as they do, that
the magistrates have committed me for the theft. This took place at
Framley, you say, and probably in Lord Lufton's presence.'
'Exactly.'
'And Lord Lufton was chairman at the sitting of the magistrates at which
I was committed. How can it be that he should think otherwise?'
'I am sure that he has not an idea that you were guilty. Nor yet has Dr
Thorne, who was also one of the magistrates. I don't suppose one of them
then thought so.'
'Then their action, to say the least of it, was very strange.'
'It was all because you had nobody to manage it for you. I thoroughly
believe that if you had placed the matter in the hands of a good lawyer,
you would never have heard a word more about it. That seems to be the
opinion of everybody I speak to on the subject.'
'Then in this country a man is to be punished or not, according to
ability to fee a lawyer!'
'I am not talking about punishment.'
'And presuming an innocent man to have the ability and not the will to
do so, he is to be punished, to be ruined root and branch, self and
family, character and pocket, simply because, knowing his own innocence,
he does not choose to depend on the mercenary skill of a man whose trade
he abhors for the establishment of that which should be clear as sun at
noonday! You say I am innocent, and yet you tell me I am to be condemned
as a guilty man, have my gown taken from me, be torn from my wife and
children, be disgraced before the eyes of all men, and made a byword and
a thing horrible to be mentioned, because I will not fee an attorney to
fee another man to come and lie on my behalf, to browbeat witnesses, to
make false appeals, and perhaps shed false tears in defending me. You
have come to me asking me to do this, if I understand you, telling me
that the archdeacon would so advise me.'
'That is my object.' Mr Crawley, as he had spoken, had in his
vehemence, risen from his seat, and Mr Robarts was also standing.
'Then tell the archdeacon,' said Mr Crawley, 'that I will have none of
his advice. I will have no one there paid by me to obstruct the course
of justice or to hoodwink a jury. I have been in the courts of law, and
know what is the work for which these gentlemen are hired. I will have
none of it, and I will thank you to tell the archdeacon so, with my
respectful acknowledgements of his consideration and condescension. I
say nothing as to my own innocence, or my own guilt. But I do say that
if I am dragged before that tribunal, an innocent man, and am falsely
declared to be guilty, because I lack money to bribe a lawyer to speak
for me, then the laws of this country deserve but little of that
reverence which we are accustomed to pay them. And if I be guilty--'
'Nobody supposes you to be guilty.'
'And if I be guilty,' continued Mr Crawley, altogether ignoring the
interruption, except by the repetition of his words, and a slight
raising of his voice, 'I will not add to my guilt by hiring anyone to
prove a falsehood or to disprove a truth.'
'I'm sorry that you should say so, Mr Crawley.'
'I speak according to what light I have, Mr Robarts; and if I have been
over-warm with you--and I am conscious that I have been at fault in that
direction--I must pray you to remember that I am somewhat hardly tried.
My sorrows and troubles are so great that they rise against me and
disturb me, and drive me on--whither I would not be driven.'
'But, my friend, is not that just the reason why you should trust in
this matter to someone who can be more calm than yourself?'
'I cannot trust to anyone--in a matter of conscience. To do as you
would have me is to me wrong. Shall I do wrong because I am unhappy?'
'You should cease to think it wrong when so advised by persons you can
trust.'
'I can trust no one with my own conscience;--not even the archdeacon,
great as he is.'
'The archdeacon has meant only well by you.'
'I will presume so. I will believe so. I do think so. Tell the
archdeacon from me that I humbly thank him;--that in a matter of church
question, I might probably submit my judgment to his; even though he
might have no authority over me, knowing as I do that in such matters
his experience has been great. Tell him also, that though I would fain
that this unfortunate affair might burden the tongue of none of my
neighbours--at least till I shall have stood before the judge to receive
the verdict of the jury, and, if needful, his lordship's sentence--still
I am convinced that in what he has spoken, as also in what he has done,
he has not yielded to the idleness of gossip, but has exercised his
judgment with intended kindness.'
'He has certainly intended to do you a service; and as for its not being
talked about, that is out of the question.'
'And for yourself, Mr Robarts, whom I have ever regarded as a friend
since circumstances brought me into your neighbourhood--for you, whose
sister I love tenderly in memory of past kindness, though now she is
removed so far above my sphere, as to make it unfit I should call her my
friend--'
'She does not think so at all.'
'For yourself, as I was saying, pray believe me that though from the
roughness of my manner, being now unused to social intercourse, I seem
to be ungracious and forbidding, I am grateful and mindful, and that in
the tablets of my heart I have written you down as one in whom I could
trust--were it given to me to trust in men and women.' Then he turned
round with his face to the wall and his back to his visitor, and so
remained till Mr Robarts had left him. 'At any rate, I wish you well
through your trouble,' said Robarts; and as he spoke he found that his
own words were nearly choked by a sob that was rising in this throat.
He went away without another word, and got out to his gig without seeing
Mrs Crawley. During one period of the interview he had been very angry
with the man--so angry as to make him almost declare to himself that he
would take no more trouble on his behalf. Then he had been brought to
acknowledge that Mr Walker was right, and that Crawley was certainly
mad. He was so mad, so far removed from the dominion of sound sense,
that no jury could say that he was guilty and that he ought to be
punished for his guilt. And, as he so resolved, he could not but ask
himself the question, whether the charge of the parish ought to be left
in the hands of such a man? But, at last, just before he went, these
feelings and these convictions gave way to pity, and he remembered
simply the troubles which seemed to have been heaped on the head of this
poor victim to misfortune. As he drove home he resolved that there was
nothing left for him to do, but to write to the dean. It was known by
all who knew them both, that the dean and Mr Crawley had lived together
on the closest intimacy at college, and that the friendship had been
maintained through life;--though, from the peculiarity of Mr Crawley's
character, the two had not been much together of late years. Seeing how
things were going now, and hearing how pitiful was the plight in which
Mr Crawley was placed, the dean would, no doubt, feel it to be his duty
to hasten his return to England. He was believed to be at this moment in
Jerusalem, and it would be long before a letter could reach him; but
there still wanted three months to the assizes, and his return might be
probably effected before the end of February.
'I was never so distressed in my life,' Mark Robarts said to his wife.
'And you think you have done no good?'
'Only this, that I have convinced myself that the poor man is to
responsible for what he does, and that for her sake as well as for his
own, some person should be enabled to interfere for his protection.'
Then he told Mrs Robarts what Mr Walker had said; also the message which
Mr Crawley had sent to the archdeacon. But the both agreed that that
message need not be sent any further.
CHAPTER XXII
MAJOR GRANTLY AT HOME
Mrs Thorne had spoken very plainly in the advice which she had given to
Major Grantly. That had been Mrs Thorne's advice; and though Major
Grantly had no idea of making the journey so rapidly as the lady had
proposed, still he thought that he would make it before long, and follow
the advice in spirit if not to the letter. Mrs Thorne had asked him if
it was fair that the girl should be punished because of the father's
fault; and the idea had been sweet to him that the infliction or
non-infliction of such punishment should be in his hands. 'You go and
ask her,' Mrs Thorne had said. Well;--he would go an ask her. If it
should turn out at last that he had married the daughter of a thief, and
that he was disinherited for doing so--an arrangement of circumstances
which had to teach himself to regard as very probable--he would not love
Grace the less on that account, or allow himself for one moment to
repent what had done. As he thought of all this he became somewhat in
love with a small income, and imagined to himself what honours would be
done to him by the Mrs Thornes of the county, when they should come to
know in what way he had sacrificed himself to his love. Yes;--they would
go and live in Pau. He thought Pau would do. He would have enough income
for that;--and Edith would get lessons cheaply, and would learn to talk
French fluently. He certainly would do it. He would go down to
Allington, and ask Grace to be his wife; and bid her to understand that
if she loved him she could not be justified in refusing him by the
circumstances of her father's position.
But he must go to Plumstead before he could go to Allington. He was
engaged to spend Christmas there, and must go now at once. There was not
time for the journey to Allington before he was due at Plumstead. And,
moreover, though he could not bring himself to resolve that he would
tell his father what he was going to do; --'It would seem as though I
were asking his leave!' he said to himself;--he thought he would make a
clean breast of it to his mother. It made him sad to think that he
should cut the rope which fastened his own boat among the other boats in
the home harbour at Plumstead, and that he should go out all alone into
strange waters--turned adrift altogether, as it were, from the Grantly
fleet. If he could only get the promise of his mother's sympathy for
Grace it would be something. He understood--no one better than he--the
tendency of all his family to an uprising in the world, which tendency
was almost as strong in his mother as his father. And he had been by no
means without a similar ambition himself, though with him the ambition
had been only fitful, not enduring. He had a brother, a clergyman, a
busy, stirring, eloquent London preacher, who got churches built, and
was heard of far and wide as a rising man, who had married a certain
Lady Anne, the daughter of an earl, and who was already mentioned as a
candidate for high places. How his sister was the wife of a marquis, and
a leader in the fashionable world, the reader already knows. The
archdeacon himself was a rich man, so powerful that he could afford to
look down upon a bishop; and Mrs Grantly, though there was left about
her something of an old softness of nature, a touch of the former life
which had been hers before the stream of her days had run to gold, yet
she, too, had taken kindly to wealth and high standing, and was by no
means one of those who construe literally that passage of scripture
which tells of the camel and the needle's eye. Our Henry Grantly, our
major, knew himself to be his mother's favourite child--knew himself to
have become so since something of a coolness had grown up between her
and her daughter. The augustness of the daughter had done much to
reproduce the old freshness of which I spoke of in the mother's heart,
and had specially endeared to her the son, who, of all her children, was
the least subject to the family's failing. The clergyman, Charles
Grantly--he who had married the Lady Anne--was his father's darling in
these days. The old archdeacon would go up to London and be quite happy
in his son's house. He met there the men whom he loved to meet, and
heard the talk which he loved to hear. It was very fine, having the
Marquis of Hartletop for his son-in-law, but he had never cared to be
much at Lady Hartletop's house. Indeed, the archdeacon cared to be in no
house in which those around him were supposed to be bigger than himself.
Such was the little family fleet from which Henry Grantly was now
proposing to sail alone with his little boat--taking Grace Crawley with
him at the helm. 'My father is a just man at the bottom,' he said to
himself, 'and though he may not forgive me, he will not punish Edith.'
But there was still left one of the family--not a Grantly, indeed, but
one so nearly allied to them as to have his boat moored in the same
harbour--who, as the major well knew, would thoroughly sympathise with
him. This was old Mr Harding, his mother's father--the father of his
mother and of his aunt Mrs Arabin--whose home was now at the deanery. He
was also to be at Plumstead during this Christmas, and he at any rate
would give a ready assent to such a marriage as that which the major was
proposing to himself. But then poor old Mr Harding had been thoroughly
deficient in that ambition which had served to aggrandize the family
into which his daughter had married. He was a poor old man who, in spite
of good friends--for the late bishop of the diocese had been his dearest
friend--had never risen high in his profession, and had fallen even from
the moderate altitude which he had attained. But he was a man whom all
loved who knew him; and it was much to the credit of his son-in-law the
archdeacon, that, with all his tendencies to love rising suns, he had
ever been true to Mr Harding.
Major Grantly took his daughter with him, and on his arrival at
Plumstead she of course was the first object of attention. Mrs Grantly
declared that she had grown immensely. The archdeacon complimented her
red cheeks, and said that Cosby Lodge was as healthy a place as any in
the county, while Mr Harding, Edith's great-grandfather, drew slowly
from his pocket sundry treasures with which he had come prepared for the
delight of the little girl. Charles Grantly and Lady Anne had no
children, and the heir of all the Hartletops was too august to have been
trusted to the embraces of her mother's grandfather. Edith, therefore,
was all that he had in that generation, and of Edith he was prepared to
be as indulgent as he had been, in their time, of his grandchildren, the
Grantlys, and still was of his grandchildren the Arabins, and before
that of his own daughters. 'She's more like Eleanor than anyone else,'
said the old man in a plaintive tone. Now Eleanor was Mrs Arabin, the
dean's wife, and was at this time--if I were to say over forty I do not
think I should be uncharitable. No one else saw the special likeness,
but no one else remembered, as Mr Harding did, what Eleanor had been
when she was three years old.
'Aunt Nelly is in France,' said the child.
'Yes, my darling, aunt Nelly is in France, and I wish she were at home.
Aunt Nelly has been away a long time.'
'I suppose she'll stay till the dean picks her up on his way home?'
'So she says in her letters. I heard from her yesterday, and I brought
the letter, as I thought you'd like to see it.' Mrs Grantly took the
letter and read it, while her father still played with the child. The
archdeacon and the major were standing together on the rug discussing
the shooting at Chaldicotes, as to which the archdeacon had a strong
opinion. 'I'm quite sure that a man with a place like that does more
good by preserving than by leaving it alone. The better head of game he
as the richer the county will be generally. It is just the same with
pheasants as it is with sheep and bullocks. A pheasant doesn't cost more
than he's worth any more than a barn-door fowl. Besides, a man who
preserves is always respected by the poachers, and the man who doesn't
is not.'
'There's something in that, sir, certainly,' said the major.
'More than you think for, perhaps. Look at poor Sowerby, who went on
there for years without a shilling. How he was respected, because he
lived as the people around him expected a gentleman to live. Thorne will
have a bad time of it, if he tries to change things.'
'Only think,' exclaimed Mrs Grantly, 'when Eleanor wrote she had not
heard of that affair of poor Mr Crawley's.'
'Does she say anything about him?' asked the major.
'I'll read what it says. "I see in Galignani that a clergyman in
Barsetshire has been committed for theft. Pray tell me who it is. Not
the bishop, I hope, for the credit of the diocese?"'
'I wish it were,' said the archdeacon
'For shame, my dear,' said his wife.
'No shame at all. If we are to have a thief among us, I'd sooner find
him in a bad man than a good one. Besides, we should have a change at
the palace, which would be a great thing.'
'But is it not odd that Eleanor should have heard nothing of it?' said
Mrs Grantly.
'It's odd that you should not have mentioned it yourself.'
'I did not, certainly; nor you, papa, I suppose?'
Mr Harding acknowledged that he had not spoken of it, and then they
calculated that perhaps she might not have received any letter from her
husband since the news had reached him. 'Besides, why should he have
mentioned it?' said the major. 'He only knows as yet of the inquiry
about the cheque, and can have heard nothing of what was done by the
magistrates.'
'Still it seems odd that Eleanor should not have known of it, seeing
that we have been talking of nothing else for the last week.'
For two days the major said not a word of Grace Crawley to anyone.
Nothing could be more courteous and complaisant that was his father's
conduct to him. Anything that he wanted for Edith was to be done. For
himself there was no trouble which would not be taken. His hunting, and
his shooting, and his fishing seemed to have become matters of paramount
consideration to his father. And then the archdeacon became very
confidential about money matters--not offering anything to his son,
which, as he well knew, would be seen through as palpable bribery and
corruption--but telling him of this little scheme and of that, of one
investment and of another;--how he contemplated buying a small property
here, and spending a few thousands on building there. 'Of course it is
all for you and your brother,' said the archdeacon, with that benevolent
sadness which is used habitually by fathers on such occasions; 'and I
like you to know what it is I am doing. I told Charles about the London
property the last time I was up,' said the archdeacon, 'and there shall
be no difference between him and you, if all goes well.' This was very
good-natured on the archdeacon's part, and was not strictly necessary,
as Charles was the eldest son; but the major understood it perfectly.
'There shall be an elysium opened to you, if only you will not do that
terrible thing of which you spoke when last you were here.' The
archdeacon uttered no such words as these, and did not even allude to
Grace Crawley; but the words were as good as spoken, and had they been
spoken ever so plainly the major could not have understood them more
clearly. He was quite awake to the loveliness of the elysium before him.
He had had his moment of anxiety, whether his father would or would not
make an elder son of his brother Charles. The whole thing was now put
before him plainly. Give up Grace Crawley, and you shall share alike
with your brother. Disgrace yourself by marrying her, and you brother
shall have everything. There was the choice, and it was till open to him
to take which side he pleased. Were he never to go near Grace Crawley
again no one would blame him, unless it were Miss Prettyman or Mrs
Thorne. 'Fill your glass, Henry,' said the archdeacon. 'You'd better, I
tell you, for there is no more of it left.' Then the major filled his
glass and sipped the wine, and swore to himself that he would go down to
Allington at once. What! Did his father think to bribe him by giving him
'20 port? He would certainly go down to Allington, and he would tell his
mother tomorrow morning, or certainly on the next day, what he was going
to do. 'Pity it should all be gone; isn't it, sir?' said the archdeacon
to his father-in-law. 'It has lasted my time,' said Mr Harding, 'and I'm
very much obliged to it. Dear, dear; how well I remember your father
giving the order for it! There were two pipes, and somebody said it was
a heady wine. "If the prebendaries and rectors can't drink it," said
your father, "the curates will."'
'Curates indeed!' said the archdeacon. 'It's too good for a bishop,
unless it is of the right sort.'
'Your father used to say those things, but with him the poorer the guest
the better the cheer. When he had a few clergymen round him, how he
loved to make them happy!'
'Never talked shop to them--did he?' said the archdeacon.
'Not after dinner, at any rate. Goodness gracious, when one thinks of
it! Do you remember how we used to play cards?'
'Every night regularly;--threepenny points, and sixpence on the rubber,'
said the archdeacon.
'Dear, dear! How things are changed! And I remember when the clergymen
did more of the dancing in Barchester than all the other young men in
the city put together.'
'And a good set they were;--gentlemen every one of them. It's well that
some of them don't dance now;--that is, for the girl's sake.'
'I sometimes sit and wonder,' said Mr Harding, 'whether your father's
spirit ever comes back to the old house and sees the changes--and if so
whether he approves of them.'
'Approves them!' said the archdeacon.
'Well;--yes. I think he would, upon the whole. I'm sure of this: he
would not disapprove, because the new ways are changed from his ways. He
never thought himself infallible. And do you know, my dear, I am not
sure that it isn't all for the best. I sometimes think that some of us
were very idle when we were young. I was, I know.'
'I worked hard enough,' said the archdeacon.
'Ah, yes; you. But most of us took it very easily. Dear, dear! When I
think of it, and see how hard they work now, and remember what pleasant
times we used to have--I don't feel sometimes quite sure.'
'I believe the work was done a great deal better than it is now,' said
the archdeacon. 'There wasn't so much fuss, but there was more reality.
And men were men, and clergymen were gentlemen.'
'Yes;--they were gentlemen.'
'Such a creature as that old woman at the palace couldn't have held his
head up among us. That's what has come from Reform. A reformed House of
Commons makes Lord Brock Prime Minister, and then your Prime Minister
makes Dr Proudie a bishop! Well;--it will last my time, I suppose.'
'It has lasted mine--like the wine,' said Mr Harding.
'There's one glass more, and you shall have it, sir.' Then Mr Harding
drank the last of the 1820 port, and they went into the drawing-room.
On the next morning after breakfast the major went out for a walk by
himself. His father had suggested to him that he should go over to shoot
at Framley, and had offered him the use of everything the archdeacon
possessed in the way of horses, dogs, guns and carriages. But the major
would have none of these things. He would go out and walk by himself.
'He's not thinking of her; is he?' said the archdeacon to his wife, in a
whisper. 'I don't know. I think he is,' said Mrs Grantly. 'It will be so
much better for Charles, if he does,' said the archdeacon grimly; and
the look of his face as he spoke was by no means pleasant. 'You will do
nothing unjust, archdeacon,' said his wife. 'I will do as I like with my
own,' said he. And then he also went out and took a walk by himself.
That evening after dinner, there was no 1820 port, and no recollection
of old days. They were rather dull, the three of them, as they sat
together--and dullness is always more endurable than sadness. Old Mr
Harding went to sleep and the archdeacon was cross. 'Henry,' he said,
'you haven't said a word to throw to a dog.' 'I've got rather a headache
this evening, sir,' said the major. The archdeacon drank two glasses of
wine, one after another, quickly. Then he woke his father-in-law gently,
and went off. 'Is there anything the matter?' asked the old man.
'Nothing particular. My father seems a little cross.' 'Ah! I've been to
sleep, and I oughtn't. It's my fault. We'll go in and smooth him down.'
But the archdeacon wouldn't be smoothed down on that occasion. He would
let his son see the difference between a father pleased, and a father
displeased--or rather between a father pleasant, and a father
unpleasant. 'He hasn't said anything to you, has he?' said the
archdeacon that night to his wife. 'Not a word;--as yet.' 'If he does it
without the courage to tell us, I shall think him a cur,' said the
archdeacon. 'But he did tell you,' said Mrs Grantly, standing up for her
favourite son; 'and, for the matter of that, he has courage enough for
anything. If he does it, I shall always say that he has been driven to
it by your threats.'
'That's sheer nonsense,' said the archdeacon.
'It's not nonsense at all,' said Mrs Grantly.
'Then I suppose I was to hold my tongue and say nothing?' said the
archdeacon; and as he spoke he banged the door between his dressing-room
and Mrs Grantly's bedroom.
On the first day of the new year Major Grantly spoke his mind to his
mother. The archdeacon had gone into Barchester, having in vain
attempted to induce his son to go with him. Mr Harding was in the
library reading a little and sleeping a little, and dreaming of old days
and old friends, and perhaps sometimes, of the old wine. Mrs Grantly was
alone in a small sitting-room which she frequented upstairs, when
suddenly her son entered the room. 'Mother,' he said, 'I think it better
to tell you that I am going to Allington.'
'To Allington, Henry?' She knew very well who was at Allington, and
what must be the business which would take him there.
'Yes, mother. Miss Crawley is there, and there are circumstances which
make it incumbent on me to see her without delay.'
'What circumstances, Henry?'
'As I intend to ask her to be my wife, I think it best to do so now. I
owe it to her and to myself that she should not think I am deterred by
her father's position.'
'But would it not be reasonable that you should be deterred by her
father's position?'
'No, I think not. I think it would be dishonest as well as ungenerous.
I cannot bring myself to brook such delay. Of course I am alive to the
misfortune which has fallen upon her--upon her and me, too, should she
ever become my wife. But it is one of those burdens which a man should
have shoulders broad enough to bear.'
'Quite so, if she were your wife, or even if you were engaged to her.
Then honour would require it of you, as well as affection. As it is,
your honour does not require it, and I think you should hesitate, for
all our sakes, and especially for Edith's.'
'It will do Edith no harm; and, mother, if you alone were concerned, I
think you would feel that it would not hurt you.'
'I was not thinking of myself, Henry.'
'As for my father, the very threats which he has made make me conscious
that I have only to measure the price. He has told me that he will stop
my allowance.'
'But than may not be the worst. Think how you are situated. You are
the younger son of a man who will be held to be justified in making an
elder son, if he thinks fit to do so.'
'I can only hope that he will be fair to Edith. If you will tell him
that from me, it is all that I wish you to do.'
'But you will see him yourself?'
'No, mother; not till I have been to Allington. Then I will see him
again or not, just as he pleases. I shall stop at Guestwick, and will
write to a line from thence. If my father decides on doing anything, let
me know at once, as it will be necessary that I should get rid of the
lease of my house.'
'Oh, Henry!'
'I have thought a great deal about it, mother, and I believe I am right.
Whether I am right or wrong, I shall do it. I will not ask you now for
any promise or pledge; but should Miss Crawley become my wife, I hope
that you at least will not refuse to see her as your daughter.' Having
so spoken, he kissed his mother, and was about to leave the room; but
she held him by his arm, and he saw that her eyes were full of tears.
'Dearest mother, if I grieve you I am sorry indeed.'
'Not me, not me, not me,' she said.
'For my father, I cannot help it. Had he not threatened me I should
have told him also. As he has done so, you must tell him. But give him
my kindest love.'
'Oh, Henry; you will be ruined. You will, indeed. Can you not wait?
Remember how headstrong your father is, and how good;--and how he loves
you! Think of all he that he has done for you. When did he refuse you
anything?'
'He has been good to me, but in this I cannot obey him. He should not
ask me.'
'You are wrong. You are indeed. He has a right to expect that you will
not bring disgrace upon the family.'
'Nor will I;--except such disgrace as shall attend upon poverty.
Good-bye, mother. I wish you could have said one kind word to me.'
'Have I not said a kind word?'
'Not as yet, mother.'
'I would not for the world speak unkindly to you. If it were not for
your father I would bid you bring whom you pleased home to me as your
wife; and I would be as a mother to her. And if this girl should become
your wife--'
'It shall not be my fault if she does not.'
'I will try to love her--some day.'
Then the major went, leaving Edith at the rectory, as requested by his
mother. His own dog-cart and servant were at Plumstead, and he drove
himself home to Cosby Lodge.
When the archdeacon returned the news was told to him at once. 'Henry
has gone to Allington to propose to Miss Crawley,' said Mrs Grantly.
'Gone--without speaking to me!'
'He left his love, and said that it was useless remaining, as he knew he
should only offend you.'
'He has made his bed, and he must lie upon it,' said the archdeacon.
And then there was not another word said about Grace Crawley on that
occasion.
CHAPTER XXIII
MISS LILY DALE'S RESOLUTION
The ladies at the Small House at Allington breakfasted always at nine--a
liberal nine; and the postman whose duty it was to deliver letters in
that village at half-past eight, being also liberal in his ideas as to
time, always arrived punctually in the middle of breakfast, so that Mrs
Dale expected her letters, and Lily hers, just before the second cup of
tea, as though the letters formed a part of the morning meal. Jane, the
maidservant, always brought them in, and handed them to Mrs Dale --for
Lily had in these days come to preside at the breakfast table; and then
there would be an examination of the outsides before the envelopes were
violated, and as each party knew pretty well the circumstances of the
correspondence of the other, there would be some guessing as to what
this or that epistle might contain; and after that a reading out loud of
passages, and not unfrequently the entire letter. But now, at the time
of which I am speaking, Grace Crawley was at the Small House, and
therefore the common practice was somewhat in abeyance.
On one of the first days of the new year Jane brought in the letters as
usual, and handed them to Mrs Dale. Lily was at the time occupied with
the teapot, but still she saw the letters, and had not her hands so full
as to be debarred from the expression of her usual anxiety. 'Mamma, I'm
sure I see two there for me,' she said. 'Only one for you, Lily,' said
Mrs Dale. Lily instantly knew from the tone of the voice that some
letter had come, which by the very aspect of the handwriting had
disturbing her mother. 'There is one for you, my dear,' said Mrs Dale,
throwing a letter across the table Grace. 'And one for you, Lily, from
Bell. The others are for me.' 'And whom are you yours from, mamma?'
asked Lily. 'One is from Mrs Jones; and the other, I think, is a letter
on business.' Then Lily said nothing further, but she observed that her
mother only opened one of her letters at the breakfast-table. Lily was
very patient;--not be nature, I think, but by exercise and practice. She
had, once in her life, been too much in a hurry; and having then burned
herself grievously, she now feared the fire. She did not therefore
follow her mother after breakfast, but sat with Grace over the fire,
hemming diligently at certain articles of clothing which were intended
for use in the Hogglestock parsonage. The two girls were making a set of
new shirts for Mr Crawley. 'But I know he will ask where they come
from,' said Grace; 'and then mamma will be scolded.' 'But I hope he'll
wear them,' said Lily. 'Sooner of later he will,' said Grace; 'because
mamma manages generally to have her way at last.' Then they went on for
an hour or so, talking about the home affairs at Hogglestock. But during
the whole time Lily's mind was intent upon her mother's letter.
Nothing was said about it at lunch, and nothing when they walked out
after lunch, for Lily was very patient. But during the walk Mrs Dale
became aware that her daughter was uneasy. These two watched each other
unconsciously with a closeness which hardly allowed a glance of the eye,
certainly not a tone of the voice, to pass unobserved. To Mrs Dale it
was everything in the world that her daughter should be, if not happy at
heart, at least tranquil; and to Lily, who knew that her mother was
always thinking of her, and of her alone, her mother was the only human
divinity now worthy of adoration. But nothing was said about the letter
during the walk.
When they came home it was nearly dusk, and it was their habit to sit up
for a while without candles, talking, till the evening had in truth set
in and the unmistakable and enforced idleness of remaining without
candles was apparent. During this time, Lily, demanding patience of
herself all the while, was thinking what she would do, or rather what
she would say, about the letter. That nothing would be done or said in
the presence of Grace Crawley was a matter of course, nor would she do
or say anything to get rid of Grace. She would be very patient; but she
would, at last, ask her mother about the letter.
And then, as luck would have it, Grace Crawley got up and left the room.
Lily still waited for a few minutes, and, in order that he patience
might be thoroughly exercised, she said a word or two about her sister
Bell; how the eldest child's whooping-cough was nearly well, and how
the baby was doing wonderful things with its first tooth. But as Mrs
Dale had already seen Bell's letter, all this was not intensely
interesting. At last Lily came to the point and asked her question.
'Mamma, from whom was that other letter which you got this morning?'
Our story will perhaps be best told by communicating the letter to the
reader before it was discussed with Lily. The letter was as follows:-
'GENERAL COMMITTEE OFFICE,--January, 186-'
I should have said that Mrs Dale had not opened the letter till she had
found herself in the solitude of her own bedroom; and that then, before
doing so, she had examined the handwriting with anxious eyes. When she
first received it she thought she knew the writer, but was not sure.
Then she had glanced at the impression over the fastening, and had known
at once from whom the letter had come. It was from Mr Crosbie, the man
who had brought so much trouble into her house, who had jilted her
daughter; the only man in the world whom she had a right to regard as a
positive enemy to herself. She had not doubt about it, as she tore the
envelope open; and yet, when the address given made her quite sure, a
new feeling of shivering came upon her, and she asked herself whether it
might not be better that she should send his letter back to him without
reading it. But she read it.
'MADAM,' the letter began--
'You will be very much surprised to hear from
me, and I am quite aware that I am not entitled to the
ordinary courtesy of an acknowledgement from you,
should you be pleased to throw my letter on some side
as unworthy of your notice. But I cannot refrain from
addressing you, and must leave it to you to reply or
not, as you may think fit.
'I will only refer to that episode of my life
with which you are acquainted, for the sake of
acknowledging my great fault and of assuring you that
I did not go unpunished. It would be useless for me
now to attempt to explain to you the circumstances
which led me into that difficulty which ended in so
great a blunder; but I will ask you to believe that my
folly was greater than my sin.
'But I will come to my point at once. You are,
no doubt, aware that I married the daughter of Lord De
Courcy, and that I was separated from my wife a few
weeks after our unfortunate marriage. It is now
something over twelve months since she died at Baden-
Baden in her mother's house. I never saw her since
the day we first parted. I have not a word to say
against her. The fault was mine in marrying a woman
whom I did not love and had never loved. When I
married Lady Alexandrina I loved, not her, but your
daughter.
'I believe I may venture to say to you that your
daughter once loved me. From the day on which I last
wrote to you that terrible letter which told you of my
fate, I have never mentioned the name of Lily Dale to
human ears. It has been too sacred for my mouth--too
sacred for the intercourse of any friendship with
which I have been blessed. I now use it for the first
time to you, in order that I may ask whether it be
possible that her old love should ever live again.
Mine has lived always--has never faded for an hour,
making me miserable during the last years that have
passed since I saw her, but capable of making me very
happy, if I may be allowed to see her again.
'You will understand my purpose now as well as
though I were to write pages. I have no scheme formed
in my head for seeing your daughter again. How can I
dare to form a scheme, when I am aware that the chance
of success must be so strong against me? But if you
will tell me that there can be a gleam of hope, I will
obey any commands that you can put upon me in any way
that you may point out. I am free again--and she is
free. I love her with all my heart, and seem to long
for nothing in the world but that she should become my
wife. Whether any of her old love may still abide
with her, you will know. If it do, it may even yet
prompt her to forgive one, who, in spite of falseness
of conduct, has yet been true to her in heart.
'I have the honour to be, Madam,
'Your most obedient servant,
ADOLPHUS CROSBIE.'
This was the letter which Mrs Dale had received, and as to which she had
not as yet said a word to Lily, or even made up her mind whether she
would say a word or not. Dearly as the mother and daughter loved each
other, thorough as was the confidence between them, yet the name of
Adolphus Crosbie had not been mentioned between them oftener, perhaps,
than half-a-dozen times since the blow had been struck. Mrs Dale knew
that their feelings about the man were altogether different. She,
herself, not only condemned him for what he had done, believing it to be
impossible that any shadow of excuse could be urged for his offence,
thinking that the fault had shown the man to be mean beyond
redemption--but she had allowed herself actually to hate him. He had in
one sense murdered her daughter, and she believed that she could never
forgive him. But, Lily, as her mother well knew, had forgiven this man
altogether, had made excuses for him which cleansed his sin of all its
blackness in her own eyes, and was to this day anxious as ever for his
welfare and his happiness. Mrs Dale feared that Lily did in truth love
him still. If it was so, was she not bound to show her this letter? Lily
was old enough to judge for herself--old enough, and wise enough too.
Mrs Dale told herself half-a-score of times that morning that she could
not be justified in keeping the letter from her daughter.
But yet much she wished that the letter had never been written, and
would have given very much to be able to put it out of the way without
injustice to Lily. To her thinking it would be impossible that Lily
should be happy marrying such a man. Such a marriage now would be, as
Mrs Dale thought, a degradation to her daughter. A terrible injury had
been done to her; but such reparation as this would, in Mrs Dale's eyes,
only make the injury deeper. And yet Lily loved the man; and, loving
him, how could she resist the temptation of his offer? 'Mamma, from whom
was that letter which you got this morning? Lily asked. For a few
moments Mrs Dale remained silent. 'Mamma,' continued Lily, 'I think I
know whom it was from. If you tell me to ask nothing further, of course
I will not.'
'No, Lily; I cannot tell you that.'
'Then, mamma, out with it at once. What is the use of shivering on the
brink?'
'It was from Mr Crosbie.'
'I knew it. I cannot tell you why, but I knew it. And now, mamma;--am
I to read it?'
'You shall do as you please, Lily.'
'Then I please to read it.'
'Listen to me a moment first. For myself, I wish that the letter had
never been written. It tells badly for the man, as I think of it. I
cannot understand how any man could have brought himself to address
either you or me, after having acted as he acted.'
'But, mamma, we differ about all that, you know.'
'Now he has written, and there is the letter--if you choose to read it.'
Lily had it in her hand, but she still sat motionless, holding it. 'You
think, mamma, I ought not to read it?'
'You must judge for yourself, dearest.'
'And if I do not read it, what shall you do, mamma?'
'I shall do nothing;--or, perhaps, I should in such a case acknowledge
it, and tell him that we have nothing more to say to him.'
'That should be very stern.'
'He has done that which makes some sternness necessary.'
Then Lily was again silent, and still she sat motionless, with the
letter in her hand. 'Mamma,' she said at last, 'if you tell me not to
read it, I will give it back to you unread. If you bid me exercise my
own judgment, I shall take it upstairs and read it.'
'You must exercise your own judgment,' said Mrs Dale. Then Lily got up
from her chair and walked slowly out of the room, and went to her
mother's chamber. The thoughts which passed through Mrs Dale's mind
while her daughter was reading the letter were very sad. She could find
no comfort anywhere. Lily, she had told herself, would surely give way
to this man's renewed expressions of affection, and she, Mrs Dale
herself, would be called upon to give her child to a man whom she could
neither love nor respect; --who, for aught she knew, she could never
cease to hate. And she could not bring herself to believe that Lily
could be happy with such a man. As for her own life, desolate as it
would be--she cared little for that. Mothers know that their daughters
will leave them. Even widowed mothers, mothers with but one child
left--such a one as was this mother---are aware that they will be left
alone, and they can bring themselves to welcome the sacrifice of
themselves with something of satisfaction. Mrs Dale and Lily had,
indeed, of late become bound together especially, so that the mother had
been justified in regarding the link which joined them as being firmer
than that by which most daughters are bound to their mothers;--but in
all that she would have found no regret. Even now, in these very days,
she was hoping that Lily might yet be brought to give herself to John
Eames. But she could not, after all that was come and gone, be happy in
thinking that Lily should be given to Adolphus Crosbie.
When Mrs Dale went upstairs to her own room before dinner Lily was not
there; nor were they alone together again that evening except for a
moment, when Lily, as usual, went into her mother's room when she was
undressing. But neither of them then said a word about the letter. Lily
during dinner and throughout the evening had borne herself well, giving
no sign of special emotion, keeping to herself entirely her own thoughts
about the proposition made to her. And afterwards she had progressed
diligently with the fabrication of Mr Crawley's shirts, as though she
had no such letter in her pocket. And yet there was not a moment in
which she was not thinking of it. To Grace, just before she went to bed,
she did say one word. 'I wonder whether it can ever come to a person to
be so placed that there can be no doing right, let what will be
done;--that, do or not do, as you may, it must be wrong?'
'I hope you are not in such a condition,' said Grace.
'I am something near it,' said Lily, 'but perhaps if I look long enough
I shall see the light.'
'I hope that it will be a happy light at last,' said Grace, who thought
that Lily was referring only to John Eames.
At noon on the next day Lily had still said nothing to her mother about
the letter; and then what she said was very little. 'When must you
answer Mr Crosbie, mamma?'
'When, my dear?'
'I mean how long may you take? It need not be today.'
'No;--certainly not today.'
'Then I will talk it over with you tomorrow. It wants some
thinking;--does it not, mamma?'
'It would not want much with me, Lily.'
'But then, mamma, you are not I. Believing as I believe, feeling as I
feel, it wants some thinking. That's what I mean.'
'I wish I could help you, my dear.'
'You shall help me--tomorrow.' The morrow came and Lily was still very
patient; but she had prepared herself, and had prepared the time also,
so that in the hour of the gloaming she was alone with her mother, and
sure that she might remain alone with her for an hour or so. 'Mamma, sit
there,' she said; 'I will sit down here, and then I can lean against you
and be comfortable. You can bear as much of me as that--can't you,
mamma?' Then Mrs Dale put her arm over Lily's shoulder, and embraced her
daughter. 'And now, mamma, we will talk about this wonderful letter.'
'I do not know, dear, that I have anything to say about it.'
'But you must have something to say about it, mamma. You must bring
yourself to have something to say--to have a great deal to say.'
'You know what I think as well as though I talked for a week.'
'That won't do, mamma. Come, you must not be hard with me.'
'Hard, Lily!'
'I don't mean that you will hurt me, or not give me any food--or that
you will not go on caring about me more than anything else in the whole
world ten times over--' And Lily as she spoke, tightened the embrace of
her mother's arm round her neck. I'm not afraid you'll be hard in that
way. But you must soften your heart so as to be able to mention his name
and talk about him, and tell me what I ought to do. You must see with my
eyes, and hear with my ears, and feel with my heart;--and then, when I
know that you have done that, I must judge with your judgment.'
'I wish you to use your own.'
'Yes;--because you won't see with my eyes and hear with my ears. That's
what I call being hard. Though you should feed me with blood from your
breast, I should call you a hard pelican, unless you could give me also
the sympathy which I demand from you. You see, mamma, we have never
allowed ourselves to speak of this man.'
'What need has there been, dearest?'
'Only because we have been thinking of him. Out of the full heart the
mouth speaketh;--that is, the mouth does so, when the full heart is
allowed to have its own comfortably.'
'There are things which should be forgotten.'
'Forgotten, mamma?'
'The memory of which should not be fostered by much talking.'
'I have never blamed you, mamma; never, even in my heart. I have known
how good and gracious and sweet you have been. But I have often accused
myself of cowardice because I have not allowed his name to cross my lips
either to you or to Bell. To talk of forgetting such an accident as that
is a farce. And as for fostering the memory of it--! Do you think that I
have ever spent a night from that time to this without thinking of him?
Do you imagine that I have ever crossed our own lawn, or gone down
through the garden-path there, without thinking of the times when he and
I walked there together? There needs no fostering for such memories as
those. They are weeds which will go rank and strong though nothing be
done to foster them. There is the earth and the rain, and that is enough
for them. You cannot kill them if you would, and they certainly will not
die because you are careful not to hoe and rake the ground.
'Lily, you forget how short the time has been as yet.'
'I have thought it very long; but the truth is, mamma, that this
non-fostering of memories, as you call it, has not been the real cause
of our silence. We have not spoken of Mr Crosbie because we have not
thought alike about him. Had you spoken you would have spoken with
anger, and I could not endure to hear him abused. That has been it.'
'Partly so, Lily.'
'Now you must talk of him, and you must not abuse him. We must talk of
him, because something must be done about his letter. Even it be left
unanswered, it cannot be so left without discussion. And yet you must
say no evil of him.'
'Am I to think he behaved well?'
'No, mamma; you are not to think that; but you are to look upon his
fault as a fault that has been forgiven.'
'It cannot be forgiven, dear.'
'But, mamma, when you go to heaven--'
'My dear!'
'But you will go to heaven, mamma, and why should I not speak of it?
You will go to heaven, and yet I suppose you have been very wicked,
because we are all very wicked. But you won't be told of your wickedness
there. You won't be hated there, because you were this or that when you
were here.'
'I hope not, Lily; but isn't your argument almost profane?'
'No; I don't think so. We ask to be forgiven just as we forgive. That
is the way in which we hope to be forgiven, and therefore it is the way
in which we ought to forgive. When you say that prayer at night, mamma,
do you ever ask yourself whether you have forgiven him?'
'I forgive him as far as humanity can forgive. I would do him no
injury.'
'But if you and I are forgiven only after that fashion we shall never
get to heaven.' Lily paused for some further answer from her mother, but
as Mrs Dale was silent she allowed that portion of the subject to pass
as completed. 'And now, mamma, what answer do you think we ought to send
to his letter?'
'My dear, how am I to say? You know I have said already that if I could
act on my own judgment, I would send none.'
'But that was said in the bitterness of gall.'
'Come, Lily, say what you think yourself. We shall get on better when
you have brought yourself to speak. Do you think that you wish to see
him again?'
'I don't know, mamma. Upon the whole, I think not.'
'Then in heaven's name, let me write and tell him so.'
'Stop a moment, mamma. There are two persons here to be considered--or
rather, three.'
'I would not have you think of me in such a question.'
'I know you would not; but never mind, and let me go on. The three of
us are concerned, at any rate; you, he, and I. I am thinking of him now.
We have all suffered, but I do believe that hitherto he has had the
worst of it.'
'And who had deserved the worst?'
'Mamma, how can you go back in that way? We have agreed that that
should be regarded as done and gone. He has been very unhappy, and now
we see what remedy he proposes to himself for his misery. Do I flatter
myself if I allow myself to look at it in that way?'
'Perhaps he thinks he is offering a remedy for your misery.'
As this was said, Lily turned round slowly and looked up into her
mother's face. 'Mamma,' she said, 'that is very cruel. I did not think
you could be so cruel. How can you, who believe him to be so selfish,
think that?'
'It is very hard to judge of men's motives. I have never supposed him
to be so black that he would not wish to make atonement for the evil he
has done.'
'If I thought that there certainly could be no answer.'
'Who can look into a man's heart and judge all the sources of his
actions? There are mixed feelings there, no doubt. Remorse for what he
has done; regret for what he has lost;--something, perhaps, of the
purity of love.'
'Yes, something--I hope something--for his sake.'
'But when a horse kicks and bites, you know his nature and do not go
near him. When a man has cheated you once, you think he will cheat you
again, and you do not deal with him. You do not look to gather grapes
from thistles, after you have found that they are thistles.'
'I still go for the roses though I have often torn my hand with thorns
in looking for them.'
'But you do not pluck those that have become cankered in the blowing.'
'Because he was once at fault, will he be cankered always?'
'I would not trust him.'
'Now, mamma, see how different we are; or, rather, how different it is
when one judges for oneself or another. If it were simply myself, and my
own future fate in life, I would trust him with it all tomorrow, without
a word. I should go to him as a gambler goes to the gaming-table,
knowing that I lose everything, I could hardly be poorer than I was
before. But I should have a better hope than the gambler is justified in
having. That, however, is not my difficulty. And when I think of him I
can see a prospect for success for the gambler. I think so well of
myself that, loving him, as I do;--yes, mamma, do not be uneasy;--loving
him as I do, I believe I could be a comfort to him. I think that he
might be better with me than without me. That is, he would be so, if he
could teach himself to look back upon the past as I can do, and to judge
of me as I can judge of him.'
'He has nothing, at least, for which to condemn you.'
'But he would have, were I to marry him now. He would condemn me
because I had forgiven him. He would condemn me because I had borne what
he had done to me, and had still loved him--loved him through it all. He
would feel and know the weakness--and there is weakness. I have been
weak in not being able to rid myself of him altogether. He would
recognise this after a while, and would despise me for it. But he would
not see what there is of devotion to him in my being able to bear the
taunts of the world in going back to him, and to your taunts, and my own
taunts. I should have to bear his also--not spoken aloud, but to be seen
in his face and heard in his voice--and that I could not endure. If he
despised me, and he would, that would make us both unhappy. Therefore,
mamma, tell him not to come; tell him that he can never come; but, if it
be possible, tell him tenderly.' Then she got up and walked away, as
though she were going out of the room, but her mother had caught her
before the door was opened.
'Lily,' she said, 'if you think you can be happy with him, he shall
come.'
'No, mamma, no. I have been looking for the light ever since I read his
letter, and I think I see it. And now, mamma, I will make a clean breast
of it. From the moment in which I heard that that poor woman was dead, I
have been in a state of flutter. It has been weak of me, and silly, and
contemptible. But I could not help it. I kept on asking myself whether
he would ever think of me now. Well; he has answered the question; and
has so done it that he has forced upon me the necessity of a resolution.
I have resolved, and I believe that I shall be the better for it.'
The letter which Mrs Dale wrote to Mr Crosbie was as follows:-
'Mrs Dale presents her compliments to Mr Crosbie, and begs to assure him
that it will not now be possible that he should renew the relations
which were broken off three years ago, between him and Mrs Dale's
family.' It was very short, certainly, and it did not by any means
satisfy Mrs Dale. But she did not know how to say more without saying
too much. The object of her letter was to save him the trouble of a
futile perseverance, and them from the annoyance of persecution; and
this she wished to do without mentioning her daughter's name. And she
was determined that no word should escape her in which there was any
touch of severity, any hint of an accusation. So much she owed to Lily
in return for all that Lily was prepared to abandon. 'There is my note,'
she said at last, offering it to her daughter. 'I did not mean to see
it,' said Lily, 'and, mamma, I will not read it now. Let it go. I know
you have been good and have not scolded him.' 'I have not scolded him,
certainly,' said Mrs Dale. And then the letter was sent.
CHAPTER XXIV
MRS DOBBS BROUGHTON'S DINNER-PARTY
Mr John Eames of the Income-Tax Office, had in three days risen so high
in that world that people in the west-end of town, and very respectable
people too--people living in South Kensington, in neighbourhoods not far
from Belgravia, and in very handsome houses round Bayswater--were glad
to ask him out to dinner. Money had been left to him by an earl, and
rumour had of course magnified that money. He was a private secretary,
which is in itself a great advance on being a mere clerk. And he had
become the particular intimate friend of an artist who had pushed
himself into high fashion during the last year or two--one Conway
Dalrymple, whom the rich English world was beginning to pet and pelt
with gilt sugar-plums, and who seemed to take very kindly to petting and
gilt sugar-plums. I don't know whether the friendship of Conway
Dalrymple had not done as much to secure John Eames his position at the
Bayswater dinner-tables, as had either the private secretaryship, or the
earl's money; and yet, when they had first know each other, now only two
or three years ago, Conway Dalrymple had been the poorer man of the two.
Some chance had brought them together, and they had lived in the same
room for nearly two years. This arrangement had been broken up, and the
Conway Dalrymple of these days had a studio of his own, somewhere near
Kensington Palace, where he painted portraits of young countesses, and
in which he had even painted a young duchess. It was the peculiar merit
of his pictures--so at least said the art-loving world--that though the
likeness was always good, the stiffness of the modern portrait was never
there. There was also ever some story told in Dalrymple's pictures over
and above the story of the portraiture. This countess was drawn as a
fairy with wings, that countess as a goddess with a helmet. The thing
took for a time, and Conway Dalrymple was picking up his gilt
sugar-plums with considerable rapidity.
On a certain day he and John Eames were to dine out together at a
certain house in that Bayswater district. It was a large mansion, if not
made of stone yet looking very stony, with thirty windows at least, all
of them with cut-stone frames, requiring, let me say, at least four
thousand a year for its maintenance. And its owner, Dobbs Broughton, a
man very well known both in the City and over the grass in
Northamptonshire, was supposed to have a good deal more than four
thousand a year. Mrs Dobbs Broughton, a very beautiful woman, who
certainly was not yet thirty-five, let her worst enemies say what they
might, had been painted by Conway Dalrymple as a Grace. There were, of
course, three Graces in the picture, but each Grace was Mrs Dobbs
Broughton repeated. We all know how Graces stand sometimes; two Graces
looking one way, and one the other. In this picture, Mrs Dobbs Broughton
as centre Grace looked you full in the face. For this pretty toy Mr
Conway Dalrymple had picked up a gilt sugar-plum to the tune of six
hundred pounds, and had, moreover, won the heart of both Mr and Mrs
Dobbs Broughton. 'Upon my word, Johnny,' Dalrymple had said to his
friend, 'he's a deuced good fellow, has really a good glass of
claret--which is getting rarer and rarer every day--and will mount you
for a day, whenever you please, down Market Harboro'. Come and dine with
them.' Johnny Eames condescended, and did go and dine with Mr Dobbs
Broughton. I wonder whether he remembered, when Conway Dalrymple was
talking of the rarity of good claret, how much beer the young painter
used to drink when they were out together in the country, as they used
to do occasionally, three years ago; and how the painter had then been
used to complain that bitter cost threepence a glass, instead of
twopence, which had hitherto been the recognised price of the article.
In those days the sugar-plums had not been gilt, and had been much
rarer.
Johnny Eames and his friend went together to the house of Mr Dobbs
Broughton. As Dalrymple lived close to the Broughtons, Eames picked him
up in a cab. 'Filthy things, these cabs are,' said Dalrymple, as he got
into the hansom.
'I don't know about that,' said Johnny. 'They're pretty good, I think.'
'Foul things,' said Conway. 'Don't you feel what a draught comes in
here because the glass is cracked. I'd have one of my own, only I should
never know what to do with it.'
'The greatest nuisance on earth, I should think,' said Johnny.
'If you could always have it standing ready round the corner,' said the
artist, 'it would be delightful. But one would want half-a-dozen horses,
and two or three men for that.'
'I think the stands are the best,' said Johnny.
They were a little late--a little later than they should have been had
they considered that Eames was to be introduced to his new
acquaintances. But he had already lived long enough before the world to
be quite at his ease in such circumstances, and he entered Mrs
Broughton's drawing-room with his pleasantest smile upon his face. But
as he entered he saw a sight which made him look serious in spite of his
efforts to the contrary. Mr Adolphus Crosbie, secretary to the Board at
the General Committee Office, was standing on the rug before the fire.
'Who will be there?' Eames had asked of his friend, when the suggestion
to go and dine with Dobbs Broughton had been made to him.
'Impossible to say,' Conway had replied. 'A certain horrible fellow by
the name of Musselbro, will almost certainly be there. He always is when
they have anything of a swell dinner-party. He is a sort of partner of
Broughton's in the City. He wears a lot of chains, and has elaborate
whiskers, and an elaborate waistcoat, which is worse; and he doesn't
wash his hands as often as he ought to do.'
'An objectionable party, rather, I should say,' said Eames.
'Well, yes; Musselbro is objectionable. He's very good-humoured you
know, and good-looking in a sort of way, and goes everywhere; that is
among people of this sort. Of course he's not hand-and-glove with Lord
Derby; and I wish he could be make to wash his hands. They haven't any
other standing dish, and you may meet anybody. They always have a Member
of Parliament; they generally manage to catch a Baronet; and I have met
a Peer there. On that august occasion Musselbro was absent.'
So instructed, Eames, on entering that room, looked round at once for Mr
Musselbro. 'If I don't see the whiskers and chain,' he had said, I shall
know there's a Peer.' Mr Musselbro was in the room, but Eames had
descried Mr Crosbie long before he had seen Mr Musselbro.
There was no reason for confusion on his part in meeting Crosbie. They
had both loved Lily Dale. Crosbie might have been successful, but for
his own fault. Eames had on one occasion been thrown into contact with
him, and on that occasion had quarrelled with him and had beaten him,
giving him a black eye, and in this way obtained some mastery over him.
There was no reason why he should be ashamed of meeting Crosbie; and
yet, when he saw him, the blood mounted all over his face, and he forgot
to make any further search for Mr Musselbro.
'I am so much obliged to Mr Dalrymple for bringing you,' said Mrs Dobbs
Broughton very sweetly, 'only he ought to have come sooner. Naught man!
I know it was his fault. Will you take Miss Demolines down? Miss
Demolines--Mr Eames.'
Mr Dobbs Broughton was somewhat sulky and had not welcomed our hero very
cordially. He was beginning to think that Conway gave himself airs and
did not sufficiently understand that a man who had horses at Market
Harboro' and '41 Lafitte was at any rate as good as a painter who was
pelted with gilt sugar-plums for painting countesses. But he was a man
whose ill-humour never lasted long, and he was soon pressing his wine on
Johnny Eames as though he loved him dearly.
But there was a few minutes before they went down to dinner, and Johnny
Eames, as he endeavoured to find something to say to Miss
Demolines--which was difficult, as he did not in the least know Miss
Demolines' line of conversation--was aware that his efforts were impeded
by thoughts of Mr Crosbie. The man looked older than when he had last
seen him--so much older that Eames was astonished. He was bald, or
becoming bald; and his whiskers were grey, or were becoming grey, and he
was much fatter. Johnny Eames, who was always thinking of Lily Dale,
could not now keep himself from thinking of Adolphus Crosbie. He saw at
a glance that the man was in mourning, though there was nothing but his
shirt-studs by which to tell it; and he knew that he was in mourning for
his wife. 'I wish she might have lived for ever,' Johnny said to
himself.
He had not yet been definitely called upon by the entrance of the
servant to offer his arm to Miss Demolines, when Crosbie walked across
to him from the rug and addressed him.
'Mr Eames,' said he, 'it is some time since we met.' And he offered his
hand to Johnny.
'Yes, it is' said Johnny, accepting the proffered salutation. 'I don't
know exactly how long, but ever so long.'
'I am very glad to have the opportunity of shaking hands with you,' said
Crosbie; and then he retired, as it had become his duty to wait with his
arm ready for Mrs Dobbs Broughton. Having married an earl's daughter he
was selected for that honour. There was a barrister in the room, and Mrs
Dobbs Broughton ought to have known better. As she professed to be
guided in such matters by the rules laid down by the recognised
authorities, she ought to have been aware that a man takes no rank from
his wife. But she was entitled I think to merciful consideration for her
error. A woman situated as was Mrs Dobbs Broughton cannot altogether
ignore these terrible rules. She cannot let her guests draw lots for
precedence. She must select someone for the honour of her arm. And
amidst the intricacies of rank how is it possible for woman to learn and
to remember everything? If Providence would only send Mrs Dobbs
Broughton a Peer for every dinner-party, the thing would go more easily;
but what woman will tell me, off-hand, which should go out of a room
first; a C.B., and Admiral of the Blue, the Dean of Barchester, or the
Dean of Arches? Who is to know who was everybody's father? How am I to
remember that young Thompson's progenitor was made a baronet and not a
knight when he was Lord Mayor? Perhaps Mrs Dobbs Broughton ought to have
known that Mr Crosbie could have gained nothing by his wife's rank, and
the barrister may be considered to have been not immoderately severe
when he simply spoke of her afterwards as the silliest and most ignorant
old woman he had ever met in his life. Eames with the lovely Miss
Demolines on his arm was the last to move before the hostess. Mr Dobbs
Broughton had led the way energetically with old Lady Demolines. There
was no doubt about Lady Demolines--as his wife had told him, because her
title marked her. Her husband had been a physician in Paris, and had
been knighted in consequence of some benefit supposed to have been done
to some French scion of royalty--when such scions in France were royal
and not imperial. Lady Demolines' rank was not much certainly; but it
served to mark her, and was beneficial.
As he went downstairs Eames was still thinking of his meeting with
Crosbie, and had as yet hardly said a word to his neighbour, and his
neighbour had not said a word to him. Now Johnny understood dinners
quite well enough to know that in a party of twelve, among whom six are
ladies, everything depends of your next neighbour, and generally on the
next neighbour who specially belongs to you; and as he took his seat he
was a little alarmed as to his prospect for the next two hours. On his
other hand sat Mrs Ponsonby, the barrister's wife, and he did not much
like the look of Mrs Ponsonby. She was fat, heavy, and good-looking;
with a broad space between her eyes, and light smooth hair;--a youthful
British matron every inch of her, of whom any barrister with a young
family of children might be proud. Now Miss Demolines, though she was
hardly to be called beautiful, was at any rate remarkable. She had
large, dark, well-shaped eyes, and very dark hair, which she wore
tangled about in an extraordinary manner, and she had an expressive
face--a face made expressive by the owner's will. Such power of
expression is often attained by dint of labour--though it never reaches
to the expression of anything in particular. She was almost sufficiently
good-looking to be justified in considering herself a beauty.
But Miss Demolines, though she had said nothing as yet, knew her game
very well. A lady cannot begin conversation to any good purpose in the
drawing-room, when she is seated and the man is standing;--nor can she
know then how the table may subsequently arrange itself. Powder may be
wasted, and often is wasted, and the spirit rebels against the necessity
of commencing a second enterprise. But Miss Demolines, when she found
herself seated, and perceived that on the other side of her was Mr
Ponsonby, a married man, commenced her enterprise at once, and our
friend John Eames was immediately aware that he would have no difficulty
as to conversation.
'Don't you like winter dinner-parties?' began Miss Demolines. This was
said just as Johnny was taking his seat, and he had time to declare that
he liked dinner-parties at all periods of the year if the dinner was
good and the people pleasant before the host had muttered something
which was intended to be understood to be a grace. 'But I mean specially
the winter,' continued Miss Demolines. 'I don't think daylight should
ever be admitted at a dinner-table; and though you may shut out the
daylight, you can't shut out the heat. And then there are always so many
other things to go to in May and June and July. Dinners should be
stopped by Act of Parliament for those three months. I don't care what
people do afterwards, because we always fly away on the first of
August.'
'That is good-natured on your part.'
'I'm sure what I say would be for the good of society;--but at this time
of the year a dinner is warm and comfortable.'
'Very comfortable, I think.'
'And people get to know each other';--in saying which Miss Demolines
looked very pleasantly into Johnny's face.
'There is a great deal in that,' said he. 'I wonder whether you and I
will get to know each other.'
'Of course we shall;--that is, if I'm worth knowing.'
'There can be no doubt about that, I should say.'
'Time alone can tell. But, Mr Eames, I see that Mr Crosbie is a friend
of yours.'
'Hardly a friend.'
'I know very well that men are friends when they step up and shake hands
with each other. It is the same when women kiss.'
'When I see women kiss, I always think there is deep hatred at the
bottom of it.'
'And there may be deep hatred between you and Mr Crosbie for anything I
know to the contrary,' said Miss Demolines.
'The very deepest,' said Johnny, pretending to look grave.
'Ah; then I know he is your bosom friend, and that you will tell him
anything I say. What a strange history that was of his marriage.'
'So I have heard;--but he is not quite bosom friend enough with me to
have told me all the particulars. I know that his wife is dead.'
'Dead; oh, yes; she has been dead these two years I should say.'
'Not so long as that, I should think.'
'Well--perhaps not. But it's ever so long ago;--quite long enough for
him to be married again. Did you know her?'
'I never saw her in my life.'
'I knew her--not well indeed; but I am intimate with her sister, Lady
Amelia Gazebee, and I have met her there. None of that family have
married what you may call well. And now, Mr Eames, pray look at the menu
and tell me what I am to eat. Arrange for me a little dinner of my own,
out of the great bill of fare provided. I always expect some gentleman
to do that for me. Mr Crosbie, you know, only lived with his wife for
one month.'
'So I've been told.'
'And a terrible month they had of it. I used to hear of it. He doesn't
look that sort of man, does he?'
'Well;--no. I don't think he does. But what sort of man do you mean?'
'Why, such a regular Bluebeard! Of course you know how he treated
another girl before he married Lady Alexandrina. She died of it--with a
broken heart; absolutely died; and there he is, indifferent as
possible;--and would treat me in the same way tomorrow if I would let
him.'
Johnny Eames, finding it impossible to talk to Miss Demolines about Lily
Dale, took up the card of the dinner and went to work in earnest,
recommending his neighbour what to eat and what to pass by. 'But you
have skipped the pate?' said she, with energy.
'Allow me to ask you to choose mine for me instead. You are much more
fit to do it.' And she did choose his dinner for him.
They were sitting at a round table, and in order that the ladies and
gentlemen should alternate themselves properly, Mr Musselboro was
opposite to the host. Next to him on his right was old Mrs Van Siever,
the widow of a Dutch merchant, who was very rich. She was a ghastly
thing to look at, as well from the quantity as from the nature of the
wiggeries she wore. She had not only a false front, but long false
curls, as to which it cannot be conceived that she would suppose that
anyone would be ignorant as to their falseness. She was very thin, too,
and very small, and putting aside her wiggeries, you would think her to
be all eyes. She was a ghastly old woman to the sight, and not
altogether pleasant in her mode of talking. She seemed to know Mr
Musselboro very well, for she called him by his name without any prefix.
He had, indeed, begun life as a clerk in her husband's office.
'Why doesn't What's-his-name have real silver forks?' she said to him.
Now Mrs What's-his-name--Mrs Dobbs Broughton we will call her--was
sitting on the other side of Mr Musselboro, between him and Mr Crosbie;
and, so placed, Mr Musselboro found it rather hard to answer the
question, more especially as he was probably aware that other questions
would follow.
'What's the use?' said Mr Musselboro. 'Everybody has these plated
things now. What's the use of a lot of capital lying dead?'
'Everybody doesn't. I don't. You know as well as I do, Musselboro,
that the appearance of the thing goes for a great deal. Capital isn't
lying dead as long as people know that you've got it.'
Before answering this Mr Musselboro was driven to reflect that Mrs Dobbs
Broughton would probably hear his reply. 'You won't find that there is
any doubt on that head in the City as to Broughton,' he said.
'I shan't ask in the City, and if I did, I should not believe what
people told me. I think there are sillier folks in the City than
anywhere else. What did he give for that picture upstairs which the
young man painted?'
'What, Mrs Dobbs Broughton's portrait?'
'You don't call that a portrait, do you? I mean the one with the three
naked women?' Mr Musselboro glanced around with one eye, and felt sure
that Mrs Dobbs Broughton had heard the question. But the old woman was
determined to have an answer. 'How much did he give for it, Musselboro?'
'Six hundred pounds, I believe,' said Mr Musselboro, looking straight
before him as he answered, and pretending to treat the subject with
perfect indifference.
'Did he indeed, now? Six hundred pounds! And yet he hasn't got silver
spoons. How things are changed! Tell me, Musselboro, who was that young
man who came in with the painter?'
Mr Musselboro turned round and asked Mrs Dobbs Broughton. 'A Mr John
Eames, Mrs Van Siever,' said Mrs Dobbs Broughton, whispering across the
front of Mr Musselboro. 'He is private secretary to Lord--Lord--Lord I
forget who. Some one of the Ministers, I know. And he had a great
fortune left him the other day by Lord --Lord--Lord somebody else.'
'All among the lords, I see,' said Mrs Van Siever. Then Mrs Dobbs
Broughton drew herself back, remembering some little attack which had
been made on her by Mrs Van Siever when she herself had had the real
lord to dine with her.
There was a Miss Van Siever there also, sitting between Crosbie and
Conway Dalrymple. Conway Dalrymple had been specially brought there to
sit next to Miss Van Siever. 'There's no knowing how much she'll have,'
said Mrs Dobbs Broughton, in the warmth of their friendship. 'But it's
all real. It is, indeed,. The mother is awfully rich.'
'But she's awful in another way, too,' said Dalrymple.
'Indeed she is, Conway.' Mrs Dobbs Broughton had got into a way of
calling her young friend by his Christian name. 'All the world calls him
Conway,' she had said to her husband once when her husband had caught
her doing so. 'She is awful. Her husband made the business in the City,
when things were very different from what they are now, and I can't help
having her. She has transactions of business with Dobbs. But there's no
mistake about the money.'
'She needn't leave it to her daughter, I suppose?'
'But why shouldn't she? She has nobody else. You might offer to paint
her, you know. She'd make an excellent picture. So much character. You
come and see her.'
Conway Dalrymple had expressed his willingness to meet Miss Van Siever,
saying something, however, as to his present position being one which
did not admit of any matrimonial speculation. Then Mrs Dobbs Broughton
had told him, with much seriousness, that he was altogether wrong, and
that were he to forget himself, or commit himself, or misbehave himself,
there must be an end to their pleasant intimacy. In answer to which, Mr
Dalrymple had said that his Grace was surely of all Graces the least
gracious. And now he had come to meet Miss Van Siever, and was now
seated next to her at table.
Miss Van Siever, who at this time had perhaps reached her twenty-fifth
year, was certainly a handsome young woman. She was fair and large,
bearing no likeness whatever to her mother. Her features were regular,
and her full, clear eyes had a brilliance of their own, looking at you
always steadfastly and boldly, though very seldom pleasantly. Her mouth
would have been beautiful had it not been too strong for feminine
beauty. Her teeth were perfect--too perfect--looking like miniature
walls of carved ivory. She knew the fault of this perfection, and showed
her teeth as little as she could. Her nose and chin were finely
chiselled, and her head stood well upon her shoulders. But there was
something hard about it all which repelled you. Dalrymple, when he saw
her, recoiled from her, not outwardly, but inwardly. Yes, she was
handsome, as may be horse or a tiger; but there was about her nothing of
feminine softness. He could not bring himself to think of taking Clara
Van Siever as the model that was to sit before him for the rest of his
life. He certainly could make a picture of her, as had been suggested by
his friend, Mrs Broughton, but it must be as Judith with the dissevered
head, of as Jael using her hammer over the temple of Sisera. Yes--he
thought she would do as Jael; and if Mrs Van Siever would throw him a
sugar-plum--for he would want the sugar-plum, seeing that any other
result was out of the question --the thing might be done. Such was the
idea of Mr Conway Dalrymple respecting Miss Van Siever--before he led
her down to dinner.
At first he found it hard to talk to her. She answered him, and not
with monosyllables. But she answered him without sympathy, or apparent
pleasure in talking. Now the young artist was in the habit of being
flattered by ladies, and expected to have his small talk made very easy
for him. He liked to give himself little airs, and was not generally
disposed to labour very hard at the task of making himself agreeable.
'Were you ever painted yet?' he asked after they had both been sitting
silent for two or three minutes.
'Was I ever--painted? In what way?'
'I don't mean rouged, or enamelled, or got up by Madame Rachel; but have
you ever had your portrait taken?'
'I have been photographed of course.'
'That's why I asked you if you had been painted--so as to make some
little distinction between the two. I am a painter by profession, and do
portraits.'
'So Mrs Broughton told me.'
'I am not asking for a job, you know.'
'I am quite sure of that.'
'But I should have thought you would have been sure to have sat to
somebody.'
'I never did. I never thought of doing so. One does those things at
the instigation of one's intimate friends--fathers, mothers, uncles, and
aunts and the like.'
'Or husbands, perhaps--or lovers?'
'Well, yes; my intimate friend is my mother, and she would never dream
of such a thing. She hates pictures.'
'Hates pictures!'
'And especially portraits. And I'm afraid, Mr Dalrymple, she hates
artists.'
'Good heavens; how cruel! I suppose there is some story attached to it.
There has been some fatal likeness--some terrible picture--something in
her early days.'
'Nothing of the kind, Mr Dalrymple. It is merely the fact that her
sympathies are with ugly things, rather than with pretty things. I think
she loves the mahogany dinner-table better than anything else in the
house; and she likes to have everything dark, and plain, and solid.'
'And good?'
'Good of its kind, certainly.'
'If everyone was like your mother, how would the artist live?'
'There would be none.'
'And the world, you think, would be none the poorer?'
'I did not speak for myself. I think the world would be very much the
poorer. I am very fond of ancient masters, though I do not suppose that
I understand them.'
'They are easier understood than the modern, I can tell you. Perhaps you
don't care for modern pictures?'
'Not in comparison, certainly. If that is uncivil, you have brought it
on yourself. But I do not in truth mean anything derogatory to the
painters of the day. When their pictures are old, they--that is the good
ones among them--will be nice also.'
'Pictures are like wine, and want age, you think?'
'Yes, and statues too, and buildings above all things. The colours of
new paintings are so glaring, and the faces are so bright and
self-conscious, that they look to me when I go to the exhibition like
coloured prints in a child's new picture-book. It is the same thing with
buildings. One sees all the points, and nothing is left to the
imagination.'
'I find I have come across a real critic.'
'I hope so, at any rate, I am not a sham one' and Miss Van Siever as she
said this looked very savage.
'I shouldn't take you to be sham in anything.'
'Ah, that would be saying a great deal for myself. Who can undertake to
say that he is not a sham in anything?'
As she said this the ladies were getting up. So Miss Van Siever also
got up, and left Mr Conway Dalrymple to consider whether he could say or
could think of himself that he was not a sham in anything. As regarded
Miss Clara Van Siever, he began to think that he could not object to
paint her portrait, even though there might be no sugar-plum. He would
certainly do it as Jael; and he would, if he dared, insert dimly in the
background some idea of the face of the mother, half-appearing,
half-vanishing, as the spirit of the sacrifice. He was composing the
picture, while Mr Dobbs Broughton was arranging himself and his bottles.
'Musselboro,' he said, 'I'll come up between you and Crosbie. Mr Eames,
though I run away from you, the claret shall remain; or, rather, it
shall flow backwards and forwards as rapidly as you will.'
'I'll keep it moving,' said Johnny.
'Do; there's a good fellow. It's a nice glass of wine isn't it? Old
Ramsby, who keeps as good a stock of stuff as any wine-merchant in
London, gave me a hint, three or four years ago, that he'd a lot of tidy
Bordeaux. It's '41, you know. He had ninety dozen, and I took it all.'
'What was the figure, Broughton?' said Crosbie, asking the question
which he knew was expected.
'Well, I only gave one hundred and four for it then; it's worth a
hundred and twenty now. I wouldn't sell a bottle of it for any money.
Come, Dalrymple, pass it round; but fill your glass first.'
'Thank you, no; I don't like it. I'll drink sherry.'
'Don't like it!' said Dobbs Broughton.
'It's strange, isn't it? But I don't.'
'I thought you particularly told me to drink his claret?' said Johnny to
his friend afterwards.
'So I did,' said Conway; 'and wonderfully good wine it is. But I make
it a rule never to eat or drink anything in a man's house when he
praises himself and tells me the price of it.'
'And I make it a rule never to cut the nose off my own face,' said
Johnny.
Before he went, Johnny Eames had been specially invited to call on Lady
Demolines, and had said that he would do so. 'We live in Porchester
Gardens,' said Miss Demolines. 'Upon my word, I believe that the farther
London stretches in that direction, the farther mamma will go. She
thinks the air so much better. I know it's a long way.'
'Distance is nothing to me,' said Johnny; 'I can always set off over
night.
Conway Dalrymple did not get invited to call on Mrs Van Siever, but
before he left the house he did say a word or two more to his friend Mrs
Broughton as to Clara Van Siever. 'She is a fine young woman,' he said;
'she is indeed.'
'You have found it out, have you?'
'Yes; I have found it out. I do not doubt that some day she'll murder
her husband or her mother, or startle the world by some newly-invented
crime; but that only makes her the more interesting.'
'And when you add to that all the old woman's money,' said Mrs Dobbs
Broughton, 'you think that she might do?'
'For a picture, certainly. I'm speaking of her simply as a model. Could
we not manage it? Get her once here, without her mother knowing it, or
Broughton, or anyone. I've got the subject --Jael and Sisera, you know.
I should like to put Musselboro in as Sisera, with the nail half driven
in.' Mrs Dobbs Broughton declared that the scheme was a great deal too
wicked for her participation, but at last she promised to think of it.
'You might as well come up and have a cigar,' Dalrymple said, as he and
his friend left Mrs Broughton's house. Johnny said that he would go up
and have a cigar or two. 'And now tell me what you think if Mrs Dobbs
Broughton and her set,' said Conway.
'Well; I'll tell you what I think of them. I think they stink of money,
as people say; but I'm not sure that they've got any all the same.'
'I should suppose he makes a large income.'
'Very likely, and perhaps spends more than he makes. A good deal of it
looked to me like make-believe. There's not doubt about the claret, but
the champagne was execrable. A man is a criminal to have such stuff
handed round to his guests. And there isn't the ring of real gold about
the house.'
'I hate the ring of gold, as you call it,' said the artist.
'So do I--I hate it like poison; but if it is there, I like it to be
true. There is a sort of persons going now--and one meets them out here
and there every day in one's life--who are downright Brummagem as such
at the very first moment. My honoured lord and master, Sir Raffle, is
one such. There is no mistaking him. Clap him down upon the counter, and
he rings dull and untrue at once. Pardon me, my dear Conway, if I say
the same of your excellent friend Mr Dobbs Broughton.'
'I think you go a little too far, but I don't deny it. What you mean
is, that he's not a gentleman.'
'I mean a great deal more than that. Bless you, when you come to talk
of a gentleman, who is to define the word? How do I know whether or no
I'm a gentleman myself? When I used to be in Burton Crescent, I was
hardly a gentlemen then--sitting at the same table with Mrs Roper and
the Lupexes;--do you remember them, and the lovely Amelia?'
'I suppose you were a gentleman, then, as well as now?'
'You, if you had been painting duchesses then, with a studio in
Kensington Gardens, would have said so, if you had happened to come
across me. I can't define a gentleman, even in my own mind; --but I can
define a man with whom I think I can live pleasantly.'
'And poor Dobbs doesn't come within the line?'
'N-o, not quite; a very nice fellow, I'm quite sure, and I'm very much
obliged to you for taking me there.'
'I never will take you to any house again. And what did you think of
the wife?'
'That's a horse of another colour altogether. A pretty woman with such
a fine figure as hers has got a right to be anything she pleases. I see
you are a great favourite.'
'No, I'm not;--not especially. I do like her. She wants to make up a
match between me and that Miss Van Siever. Miss Van is to have gold by
the ingot, and jewels by the bushel, and a hatful of back shares, and a
whole mine in Cornwall, for her fortune.'
'And is very handsome into the bargain.'
'Yes; she's handsome.'
'So is her mother,' said Johnny. 'If you take the daughter, I'll take
the mother, and see if I can't do you out of a mine or two. Good-night,
old fellow. I'm only joking about old Dobbs. I'll go and dine there
again tomorrow, if you like it.'
CHAPTER XXV
MISS MADELINE DEMOLINES
'I don't think you care two straws about her,' Conway Dalrymple said to
his friend John Eames, two days after the dinner-party at Mrs Dobbs
Broughton's. The painter was at work in his studio, and the private
secretary from the Income-Tax Office, who was no doubt engaged on some
special mission to the West End on the part of Sir Raffle Buffle, was
sitting in a lounging-chair and smoking a cigar.
'Because I don't go about with my stockings cross-gartered, and do that
kind of business?'
'Well, yes; because you don't do that kind of business, more or less.'
'It isn't in my line, my dear fellow. I know what you mean, very well.
I daresay, artistically speaking--'
'Don't be an ass, Johnny.'
'Well then, poetically, or romantically, if you like that better --I
daresay that poetically or romantically I am deficient. I eat my dinner
very well, and I don't suppose I ought to do that; and, if you'll
believe me, I find myself laughing sometimes.'
'I never knew a man who laughed so much. You're always laughing.'
'And that, you think, is a bad sign?'
'I don't believe you really care about her. I think you are aware that
you have got a love-affair on hand, and that you hang on to it rather
persistently, having in some way come to a resolution that you would be
persistent. But there isn't much heart in it. I daresay there was once.'
'And that is your opinion?'
'You are just like some of those men who for years past have been going
to write a book on some new subject. The intention has been sincere at
first, and it never altogether dies away. But the would-be author,
though he still talks of his work, knows that it will never be executed,
and is very patient under his disappointment. All enthusiasm about the
thing is gone, but he is still known as the man who is going to do it
some day. You are the man who means to marry Miss Dale in five, ten, or
twenty years' time.'
'Now, Conway, all that is thoroughly unfair. The would-be author talks
of his would-be book to everybody. I have never talked of Miss Dale to
anyone but you, and one or two very old family friends. And from year to
year, and from month to month, I have done all that has been in my power
to win her. I don't think I shall ever succeed, and yet I am as
determined about it as I was when I first began it--or rather much more
so. If I do not marry Lily, I shall never marry at all, and if anybody
were to tell me tomorrow that she had made up her mind to have me, I
should well nigh go mad for joy. But I am not going to give up all my
life for love. Indeed the less I can bring myself to give up for it, the
better I shall think of myself. Now I'll go away and call on old Lady
Demolines.'
'And flirt with her daughter.'
'Yes;--flirt with her daughter, if I get the opportunity. Why shouldn't
I flirt with her daughter?'
'Why not, if you like it?'
'I don't like it--not particularly, that is; because the young lady is
not very pretty, nor yet very graceful, not yet very wise.'
'She is pretty after a fashion,' said the artist, 'and if not wise, she
is at any rate clever.'
'Nevertheless, I do not like her,' said John Eames.
'Then why do you go there?'
'One has to be civil to people though they are neither pretty nor wise.
I don't mean to insinuate that Miss Demolines is particularly bad, or
indeed that she is worse than young ladies in general. I only abused her
because there was an insinuation in what you said, that I was going to
amuse myself with Miss Demolines in the absence of Miss Dale. The one
thing has nothing to do with the other thing. Nothing that I shall say
to Miss Demolines will at all militate against my loyalty to Lily.'
'All right, old fellow;--I didn't mean to put you on your purgation. I
want you to look at that sketch. Do you know for whom it is intended?'
Johnny took up a scrap of paper, and having scrutinised it for a minute
or two declared that he had not the slightest idea who was represented.
'You know the subject--the story that is intended to be told?' said
Dalrymple.
'Upon my word, I don't. There's some old fellow seems to be catching it
over the head; but it's all so confused, I can't make much of it. The
woman seems to be uncommon angry.'
'Do you ever read your Bible?'
'Ah dear! not as often as I ought to do. Al, I see; it's Sisera. I
never could quite believe that story. Jael might have killed Captain
Sisera in his sleep--for which, by-the-by, she ought to have been hung,
and she might possibly have done it with a hammer and a nail. But she
could not have driven it through, and staked him to the ground.'
'I've warrant enough for putting it into a picture, at any rate. My Jael
there is intended for Miss Van Siever.'
'Miss Van Siever! Well, it is like her. Has she sat for it?'
'Oh dear, no; not yet. I mean to get her to do so. There's a strength
about her, which would make her sit the part admirably. And I fancy she
would like to be driving a nail into a fellow's head. I think I shall
take Musselboro for a Sisera.'
'You're not in earnest?'
'He would just do for it. But of course I shan't ask him to sit, as my
Jael would not like it. She would not consent to operate on so base a
subject. So you really are going to Guestwick?'
'Yes; I start tomorrow. Good-bye, old fellow. I'll come and sit for
Sisera if you'll let me;--only Miss Van Jael shall have a blunted nail,
if you please.'
Then Johnny left the artist's room and walked from Kensington to Lady
Demoline's house. As he went he partly accused himself and partly
excused himself in that matter of his love for Lily Dale. There were
moments of his life in which he felt that he would willingly die for
her--that life was not worth having without her--in which he went about
inwardly reproaching fortune for having treated him so cruelly. Why
should she not be his? He half believed that she loved him. She had
almost told him so. She could not surely still love that other man who
had treated her with such vile falsehood? As he considered the question
in all its bearings he assured himself over and over again that there
would be now no fear of that rival;--and yet he had such fears, and
hated Crosbie almost as much as ever. It was a thousand pities,
certainly, that the man should have been made free by the death of his
wife. But it could hardly be that he should seek to see Lily again, or
that Lily, if so sought, should even listen to him. But yet there he
was, free once more--an odious being, whom Johnny was determined to
sacrifice to his vengeance, if cause for such sacrifice should occur.
And thus thinking of the real truth of his love, he endeavoured to
excuse himself to himself from that charge of vagueness and laxness
which his friend Conway Dalrymple had brought against him. And then
again he accused himself of the same sin. If he had been positively in
earnest, with downright manly earnestness, would he have allowed the
thing to drag itself with a weak uncertain life, as it had done for the
last two or three years? Lily Dale had been a dream to him in his
boyhood; and he had made a reality of his dream as soon as he had become
a man. But before he had been able, as a man, to tell his love to the
girl whom he had loved as a child, another man had intervened, and his
prize had been taken from him. Then the wretched victor had thrown his
treasure away, and he, John Eames, had been content to stoop to pick it
up--was content to do so now. But there was something which he felt to
be unmanly in the constant stooping. Dalrymple had told him that he was
like a man who is ever writing a book and yet never writes it. He would
do his very best to make Lily his own. But if he failed now, he would
have done with it. It seemed to him to be below his dignity as a man to
be always coveting a thing which he could not obtain.
Johnny was informed by the boy in buttons, who opened the door for him
at Lady Demolines', that the ladies were at home, and he was shown up
into the drawing-room. Here he was allowed full ten minutes to explore
the knick-knacks on the table, and open the photograph book, and examine
the furniture, before Miss Demolines made her appearance. When she did
come, her hair was tangled more marvellously even than when he saw at
the dinner-party, and her eyes were darker, and her cheeks thinner. 'I'm
afraid mamma won't be able to come down,' said Miss Demolines. 'She will
be so sorry but she is not quite well today. The wind is in the east,
she says, and when she says the wind is in the east she always refuses
to be well.'
'Then I should tell her it is in the west.'
'But it is in the east.'
'Ah, there I can't help you, Miss Demolines. I never know which is
east, and which is west; and if I did, I shouldn't know from which point
the wind blew.'
'At any rate mamma can't come downstairs, and you must excuse her. What
a very nice woman Mrs Dobbs Broughton is.' Johnny acknowledged that Mrs
Dobbs Broughton was charming. 'And Mr Broughton is so good-natured!'
Johnny again assented. 'I like him of all things,' said Miss Demolines.
'So do I,' said Johnny; --'I never liked anybody so much in my life. I
suppose one is bound to say that kind of thing.' 'Oh, you ill-natured
man,' said Miss Demollines. 'I suppose you think that poor Mr Broughton
is a little--just a little--you know what I mean.'
'Not exactly,' said Johnny.
'Yes, you do; you know very well what I mean. And of course he is. How
can he help it?'
'Poor fellow--no. I don't suppose he can help it, or he would;
--wouldn't he?'
'Of course Mr Broughton had not the advantage of birth or much early
education. All his friends know that, and make allowance accordingly.
When she married him, she was aware of his deficiency, and made up her
mind to put up with it.'
'It was very kind of her; don't you think so?'
'I knew Maria Clutterbuck for years before she was married. Of course
she was very much my senior, but, nevertheless, we were friends. I think
I was hardly more than twelve years old when I first began to correspond
with Maria. She was then past twenty. So you see, Mr Eames, I make no
secret of my age.'
'Why should you?'
'But never mind that. Everybody knows that Maria Clutterbuck was very
much admired. Of course I'm not going to tell you or any other gentleman
all her history.'
'I was in hopes you were.'
'Then certainly your hopes will be frustrated, Mr Eames. But
undoubtedly when she told us that she was going to take Dobbs Broughton,
we were a little disappointed. Maria Clutterbuck had been used to a
better kind of life. You understand what I mean, Mr Eames?'
'Oh, exactly;--and yet it's not a bad kind of life, either.'
'No, no; that is true. It has its attractions. She keeps her carriage,
sees a good deal of company, has an excellent house, and goes abroad for
six weeks every year. But you know, Mr Eames, there is, perhaps, a
little uncertainty about it.'
'Life is always uncertain, Miss Demolines.'
'You're quizzing now, I know. But don't you feel now, really, that City
money is always very chancy? It comes and goes so quick.'
'As regards the going, I think that's the same with all money,' said
Johnny.
'Not with land, or the funds. Mamma has every shilling laid out in a
first-class mortgage on land at four per cent. that does make one feel
so secure! The land can't run away.'
'But you think poor Broughton's money may?'
'It's all speculation, you know. I don't believe she minds it; I don't
indeed. She lives that kind of fevered life now that she likes
excitement. Of course we all know that Mr Dobbs Broughton is not what we
can call an educated gentleman. His manners are against him, and he is
very ignorant. Even dear Maria would admit that.'
'One would perhaps let that pass without asking her opinion at all.'
'She has acknowledged it to me, twenty times. But he is very
good-natured, and lets her do pretty nearly anything that she likes. I
only hope she won't trespass on his good-nature. I do, indeed.'
'You mean, spend too much money?'
'No; I didn't mean that exactly. Of course she ought to be moderate,
and I hope she is. To that kind of fevered existence profuse expenditure
is perhaps necessary. But I was thinking of something else. I fear she
is a little giddy.'
'Dear me! I should have thought she was too--too--too--'
'You mean too old for anything of that kind. Maria Broughton must be
thirty-three if she's a day.'
'That would make you just twenty-five,' said Johnny, feeling perfectly
sure as he said so that the lady whom he was addressing was at any rate
past thirty!
'Never mind my age, Mr Eames; whether I am twenty-five, or a hundred and
five, has nothing to do with poor Maria Clutterbuck. But now I'll tell
you why I mention all this to you. You must have seen how foolish she is
about your friend Mr Dalrymple?'
'Upon my word, I haven't.'
'Nonsense, Mr Eames; you have. If she were your wife, would you like
her to call a man Conway? Of course you would not. I don't mean to say
that there's anything in it. I know Maria's principles too well to
suspect that. It's merely because she's flighty and fevered.'
'That fevered existence accounts for it all,' said Johnny.
'No doubt it does,' said Miss Demolines, with a nod of her head, which
was intended to show that she was willing to give her friend the full
benefit of any excuse which could be offered for her. 'But don't you
think you could do something, Mr Eames?'
'I do something?'
'Yes, you. You and Mr Dalrymple are such friends! If you were just to
point out to him you know--'
'Point out what? Tell him that he oughtn't to be called Conway?
Because, after all, I suppose that's the worst of it. If you mean to say
that Dalrymple is in love with Mrs Broughton, you never made a greater
mistake in your life.'
'Oh, no; not in love. That would be terrible, you know.' And Miss
Demolines shook her head sadly. 'But there may be so much mischief done
without anything of that kind! Thoughtlessness, you know, Mr Eames--pure
thoughtlessness! Think of what I have said, and if you can speak a word
to your friend, do. And now I want to ask you something else. I'm so
glad you are come, because circumstances have seemed to make it
necessary that you and I should know each other. We may be of so much
use if we put our heads together.' Johnny bowed when he heard this, but
made no immediate reply. 'Have you heard anything about a certain
picture that is being planned?' Johnny did not wish to answer this
question, but Miss Demolines paused so long, and looked so earnestly
into his face, that he found himself forced to say something.
'What picture?'
'A certain picture that is--, or, perhaps, that is not to be, painted by
Mr Dalrymple?'
'I hear so much about Dalrymple's pictures! You don't mean the portrait
of Lady Glencora Palliser? That is nearly finished, and will be in the
Exhibition this year.'
'I don't mean that at all. I mean a picture that has not yet been
begun.'
'A portrait, I suppose?'
'As to that I cannot quite say. It is at any rate to be a likeness. I
am sure you have heard of it. Come, Mr Eames, it would be better that we
should be candid with each other. You remember Miss Van Siever, of
course?'
'I remember that she dined at the Broughtons.'
'And you have heard of Jael, I suppose, and Sisera?'
'Yes; in a general way--in the Bible.'
'And now will you tell me whether you have not heard the names of Jael
and Miss Van Siever coupled together? I see you know all about it.'
'I have heard of it certainly.'
'Of course you have. So have I, as you perceive. Now, Mr Eames,'--and
Miss Demoline's voice became tremulously eager as she addressed him--'it
is your duty, and it is my duty, to take care that that picture will
never be painted.'
'But why should it not be painted?'
'You don't know Miss Van Siever, yet.'
'Not in the least.'
'Nor Mrs Van Siever.'
'I never spoke a word to her.'
'I do. I know them both--well.' There was something almost grandly
tragic in Miss Demoline's voice as she thus spoke. 'Yes, Mr Eames, I
know them well. If that scheme be continued, it will work terrible
mischief. You and I must prevent it.'
'But I don't see what harm it will do.'
'Think of Conway Dalrymple passing so many hours in Maria's sitting-room
upstairs! The picture is to be painted there, you know.'
'But Miss Van Siever will be present. Won't that make it all right?
What is there wrong about Miss Van Siever?'
'I won't deny that Clara Van Siever has a certain beauty of her own. To
me she is certainly the most unattractive woman that I ever came near.
She is simply repulsive!' Hereupon Miss Demolines held up her hand as
though she were banishing Miss Van Siever for ever from her sight, and
shuddered slightly. 'Men think her handsome, and she is handsome. But
she is false, covetous, malicious, cruel, and dishonest.'
'What a fiend in petticoats!'
'You may say that, Mr Eames. And then her mother! Her mother is not so
bad. Her mother is different. But the mother is an odious woman, too. It
was an evil day for Maria Clutterbuck when she first saw either the
mother or the daughter. I tell you that in confidence.'
'But what can I do?' said Johnny, who began to be shattered and almost
interested by the eagerness of the woman.
'I'll tell you what you can do. Don't let your friend go to Mr
Broughton's house to paint the picture. If he does do it, there will be
mischief come of it. Of course you can prevent him.'
'I should not think of trying to prevent him unless I knew why.'
'She's a nasty proud minx, and it would set her up ever so high--to
think that she was being painted by Mr Dalrymple! But that isn't the
reason. Maria would get into terrible trouble about it, there would be
no end of mischief. I must not tell you more now, and if you do not
believe me, I cannot help it. Surely, Mr Eames, my word may be taken as
going for something? And when I ask you to help me in this, I do expect
that you will not refuse me.' By this time Miss Demolines was sitting
close to him, and had more than once put her hand upon his arm in the
energy of her eloquence. Then as he remembered that he had never seen
Miss Demolines till the other day, of Miss Van Siever, or even Mrs Dobbs
Broughton, he bethought himself that it was all very droll. Nevertheless
he had not objection to Miss Demolines putting her hand upon his arm.
'I never like to interfere in anything that does not seem to be my own
business,' said Johnny.
'Is not your friend's business your own business? What does friendship
mean if it not so? And when I tell you that it is my business, mine of
right, does that go for nothing with you? I thought I might depend upon
you, Mr Eames; I did indeed.' Then again she put her hand upon his arm,
and as he looked into her eyes he began to think that after all she was
good-looking in a certain way. At any rate she had fine eyes, and there
was something picturesque about the entanglement of her hair. 'Think of
it, and then come back and talk to me again,' said Miss Demolines.
'But I am going out of town tomorrow.'
'For how long?'
'For ten days.'
'Nothing can be done during that time. Clara Van Siever is going away
in a day, and will not be back for three weeks. I happen to know that;
so we have plenty of time for working. It would be very desirable that
she should never even hear of it; but that cannot be hoped, as Maria has
such a tongue! Couldn't you see Mr Dalrymple tonight?'
'Well, no; I don't think I could.'
'Mind, at least, that you come to me as soon as ever you return.'
Before he got out of the house, which he did after a most affectionate
farewell, Johnny felt himself compelled to promise that he would come to
Miss Demolines again as soon as he got back to town; and as the door was
closed behind him by the boy in buttons, he made up his mind that he
certainly would call as soon as he returned to London. 'It's as good as
a play,' he said to himself. Not that he cared in the least for Miss
Demolines, or that he would take any steps with the intention of
preventing the painting of the picture. Miss Demolines had some battle
to fight, and he would leave her to fight it with her own weapons. If
his friend chose to paint a picture of Jael, and take Miss Van Siever as
a model, it was no business of his. Nevertheless he would certainly go
and see Miss Demolines again, because, as he said, she was as good as a
play.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE PICTURE
On that same afternoon Conway Dalrymple rolled up his sketch of Jael and
Sisera, put it into his pocket, dressed himself with some considerable
care, putting on a velvet coat which he was in the habit of wearing out
of doors when he did not intend to wander beyond Kensington Gardens, and
the neighbourhood and which was supposed to become him well, yellow
gloves, and a certain Spanish hat of which he was fond, and slowly
sauntered across to the house of his friend Mrs Dobbs Broughton. When
the door was opened to him he did not ask of the lady were at home, but
muttering some word to the servant, made his way through the hall,
upstairs, to a certain small sitting-room looking to the north which was
much used by the mistress of the house. It was quite clear that Conway
Dalrymple had arranged his visit beforehand, and that he was expected.
He opened the door without knocking, and, though the servant had
followed him, he entered without being announced. 'I'm afraid I'm late,'
he said, as he gave his hand to Mrs Broughton; 'but for the life I could
not get away sooner.'
'You are quite in time,' said the lady, 'for any good that you are
likely to do.'
'What does that mean?'
'It means this, my friend, that you had better give the idea up. I have
been thinking of it all day, and I do not approve of it.'
'What nonsense!'
'Of course you will say so, Conway. I have observed of late that
whatever I say to you is called nonsense. I suppose it is the new
fashion that gentlemen should so express themselves, but I am not quite
sure that I like it.'
'You know what I mean. I am very anxious about this picture, and I
shall be much disappointed if it cannot be done now. It was you put it
into my head first.'
'I regret it very much, I can assure you; but it will not be generous in
you to urge that against me.'
'But why shouldn't it succeed?'
'There are many reasons--some personal to myself.'
'I do not know what they can be. You hinted at something which I only
took as having been said in joke.'
'If you mean about Miss Van Siever and yourself, I was quite in earnest,
Conway. I do not think you could do better, and I should be glad to see
it of all things. Nothing would please me more than to bring Miss Van
Siever and you together.'
'And nothing would please me less.'
'But why so?'
'Because--because--I can do nothing but tell you the truth, carina; it
is because my heart is not free to present itself at Miss Van Siever's
feet.'
'It ought to be so, Conway, and you must make it free. It will be well
that you should be married, and well for others besides yourself. I tell
you so as your friend, you have no truer friend. Sit where you are, if
you please. You can say anything you have to say without stalking about
the room.'
'I was not going to stalk--as you call it.'
'You will be safer and quieter while you are sitting. I heard a knock
at the door, and I do not doubt that it will be Clara. She said she
would be here.'
'And you have told her about the picture?'
'Yes; I have told her. She said that it would be impossible, and that
her mother would not allow it. Here she is.' Then Miss Van Siever was
shown into the room, and Dalrymple perceived that she was a girl the
peculiarity of whose complexion bore daylight better even than
candlelight. There was something in her countenance which seemed to
declare that she could bear any light to which it might be subjected,
without flinching from it. And her bonnet, which was very plain, and her
simple brown morning gown, suited her well. She was one who required
none of the circumstances of studied dress to carry off aught in her own
appearance. She could look her best when other women look their worst,
and could dare to be seen at all times. Dalrymple, with an artist's eye,
saw this at once, and immediately confessed to himself that there was
something great about her. He could not deny her beauty. But there was
ever present to him that look of hardness which had struck him when he
first saw her. He could not but fancy that though at times she might be
playful, and allow the fur of her coat to be stroked with
good-humour--she would be a dangerous plaything, using her claws
unpleasantly when the good-humour should have passed away. But not the
less was she beautiful, and--beyond that and better than that, for his
purpose--she was picturesque.
'Clara,' said Mrs Broughton, 'here is this mad painter, and he says that
he will have you on his canvas either with your will or without it.'
'Even if he could do that, I am sure he would not,' said Miss Van
Siever.
'To prove to you that I can, I think I need only show you the sketch,'
said Dalrymple, taking the drawing out of his pocket. 'As regards the
face, I know it so well by heart already, that I feel certain I could
produce a likeness without even a sitting. What do you think of it, Mrs
Broughton?'
'It is clever,' said she, looking at it with all the enthusiasm which
women are able to throw into their eyes on such occasions; 'very clever.
The subject would just suit her. I have never doubted that.'
'Eames says that it is confused,' said the artist.
'I don't see that at all,' said Mrs Broughton.
'Of course a sketch must be rough. This one has been rubbed about and
altered--but I think there is something in it.'
'An immense deal,' said Mrs Broughton. 'Don't you think so, Clara?'
'I am not a judge.'
'But you can see the woman's fixed purpose; and her stealthiness as
well;--and the man sleeps like a log. What is that dim outline?'
'Nothing in particular,' said Dalrymple. But the dim outline was
intended to represent Mrs Van Siever.
'It is very good--unquestionably good,' said Mrs Dobbs Broughton. 'I do
not for a moment doubt that you will make a great picture of it. It is
just the subject for you, Conway; so much imagination, and yet such a
scope for portraiture. It would be full of action, and yet such perfect
repose. And the lights and shadows would be exactly in your line. I can
see at a glance how you would manage the light in the tent, and bring it
down just on the nail. And then the pose of the woman would be so good,
so much strength, and yet such grace! You should have the bowl he drank
the milk out of, so as to tell the whole story. No painter living tells
a story so well as you do, Conway.' Conway Dalrymple knew that the woman
was talking nonsense to him, and yet he liked it, and liked her for
talking it.
'But Mr Dalrymple can paint his Sisera without making me Jael,' said
Miss Van Siever.
'Of course he can,' said Mrs Broughton.
'But I never will,' said the artist. 'I conceived the subject as
connected with you, and I will never disjoin the two ideas.'
'I think it no compliment, I can assure you,' said Miss Van Siever.
'And none was intended. But you may observe that artists in all ages
have sought for higher types of models in painting women who have been
violent or criminal, than have sufficed for them in their portraitures
of gentleness and virtue. Look at all the Judiths and the Lucretias, and
the Charlotte Cordays; how much finer the women are than the Madonnas
and the Saint Cecilias.'
'After that, Clara, you need not scruple to be a Jael,' said Mrs
Broughton.
'But I do scruple--very much; so strongly that I know I never shall do
it. In the first place I don't know why Mr Dalrymple wants it.'
'Want it!' said Conway. 'I want to paint a striking picture.'
'But you can do that without putting me into it.'
'No;--not this picture. And why should you object? It is the commonest
thing in the world for ladies to sit to artists in that manner.'
'People would know it.'
'Nobody would know it, so that you need care about it. What would it
matter if everybody knew it? We are not proposing anything
improper;--are we, Mrs Broughton?'
'She shall not be pressed if she does not like it,' said Mrs Broughton.
'You know I told you before Clara came in, that I was afraid it could
not be done.'
'And I don't like it,' said Miss Van Siever, with some little hesitation
in her voice.
'I don't see anything improper in it, if you mean that,' said Mrs
Broughton.
'But, mamma!'
'Well yes; that is the difficulty, no doubt. The only question is,
whether your mother is not so very singular, as to make it impossible
that you should comply with her in everything.'
'I am afraid that I do not comply with her in very much,' said Miss Van
Siever in her gentlest voice.
'Oh, Clara!'
'You drive me to say so, otherwise I should be a hypocrite. Of course I
ought not to have said it before Mr Dalrymple.'
'You and Mr Dalrymple will understand all about that, I daresay, before
the picture is finished,' said Mrs Broughton.
It did not take much persuasion on the part of Conway Dalrymple to get
the consent of the younger lady to be painted, or of the elder to allow
the sitting to go on in her room. When the question of easels and other
apparatus came to be considered, Mrs Broughton was rather flustered, and
again declared with energy that the whole thing must fall to the ground;
but a few ore words from the painter restored her, and at last the
arrangements were made. As Mrs Dobbs Broughton's dear friend, Madalina
Demolines had said, Mrs Dobbs Broughton liked a fevered existence. 'What
will Dobbs Broughton say?' she exclaimed more than once. And it was
decided at last that Dobbs should know nothing about it as long as it
could be kept from him. 'Of course he shall be told at last,' said his
wife. 'I wouldn't keep anything from the dear fellow for all the world.
But if he knew it at first it would be sure to get through Musselboro to
your mother.'
'I certainly shall beg that Mr Broughton may not be taken into
confidence if Mr Musselboro is to follow,' said Clara. 'And it must be
understood that I must cease to sit immediately, whatever may be the
inconvenience, should mamma speak to me about it.'
This stipulation was made and conceded, and then Miss Van Siever went
away, leaving the artist with Mrs Dobbs Broughton. 'And now, if you
please, Conway, you had better go too,' said the lady, as soon as there
had been time for Miss Van Siever to get downstairs and out of the
hall-door.
'Of course you are in a hurry to get rid of me.'
'Yes, I am.'
'A little while ago I improperly said that some suggestion of yours was
nonsense and you rebuked me for my blunt incivility. Might not I rebuke
you now with equal justice?'
'Do so, if you will;--but leave me. I tell you, Conway, that in these
matters you must either be guided by me, or you and I must cease to see
each other. It does not do that you should remain here with me longer
than the time usually allowed for a morning call. Clara has come and
gone, and you also must go. I am sorry to disturb you, for you seem to
be so very comfortable in that chair.'
'I am comfortable--and I can look at you. Come;--there can be no harm
in saying that, if I say nothing else. Well;--there, now I am gone.'
Whereupon he got up from his arm-chair.
'But you are not gone while you stand there.'
'And you would really wish me to marry this girl?'
'I do--if you can love her.'
'And what about her love?'
'You must win it, of course. She is to be won, like any other woman.
The fruit won't fall into your mouth merely because you open your lips.
You must climb the tree.'
'Still climbing trees in the Hesperides,' said Conway. 'Love does that,
you know; but it is hard to climb the trees without the love. It seems
to me that I have done my climbing--have clomb as high as I knew how,
and that the boughs are breaking with me, and that I am likely to get a
fall. Do you understand me?'
'I would rather not understand you.'
'That is no answer to my question. Do you understand that at this
moment I am getting a fall which will break every bone in my skin and
put any other climbing out of the question as far as I am concerned? Do
you understand that?'
'No; I do not,' said Mrs Broughton, in a tremulous voice.
'Then I'll go and make love at once to Clara Van Siever. There's enough
of pluck left in me to ask her to marry me, and I suppose I could manage
to go through the ceremony if she accepted me.'
'But I want you to love her,' said Mrs Dobbs Broughton.
'I daresay I should love her well enough after a bit;--that is, if she
didn't break my head or comb my hair. I suppose there will be no
objection to my saying that you sent me when I ask her?'
'Conway, you will of course not mention my name to her. I have
suggested to you a marriage which I think would tend to make you happy,
and would give you a stability in life which you want. It is perhaps
better that I should be explicit at once. As an unmarried man I cannot
continue to know you. You have said words of late which have driven me
to this conclusion. I have thought about it much--too much perhaps, and
I know that I am right. Miss Van Siever has beauty and wealth and
intellect, and I think that she would appreciate the love of such a man
as you are. Now go.' And Mrs Dobbs Broughton, standing upright, pointed
to the door. Conway Dalrymple slowly took his Spanish hat from of the
marble slab on which he had laid it, and left the room without saying a
word. The interview had been quite long enough, and there was nothing
else which he knew how to say with effect.
Croquet is a pretty game out of doors, and chess is delightful in a
drawing-room. Battledore and shuttlecock and hunt-the-slipper have also
their attractions. Proverbs are good, and cross questions with crooked
answers may be made very amusing. But none of these games are equal to
the game of love-making--providing that the players can be quite sure
that there shall be no heart in the matter. Any touch of heart not only
destroys the pleasure of the game, but makes the player awkward and
incapable and robs him of his skill. And thus it is that there are many
people who cannot play the game at all. A deficiency of some needed
internal physical strength prevents the owners of the heart from keeping
a proper control over its valves, and thus emotion sets in, and the
pulses are accelerated, and feeling supervenes. For such a one to
attempt the game of love-making, is as though your friend with the gout
should insist on playing croquet. A sense of the ridiculous, if nothing
else, should in either case deter the afflicted one from the attempt.
There was no such absurdity with our friend Mrs Dobbs Broughton and
Conway Dalrymple. Their valves and pulses were all right. They could
play the game without the slightest danger of any inconvenient
result;--of any inconvenient result, that is, as regarded their own
feelings. Blind people cannot see and stupid people cannot
understand--and it might be that Mr Dobbs Broughton, being both blind
and stupid in such matters, might perceive something of the playing of
the game and not know that it was only a game of skill.
When I say that as regarded these two lovers there was nothing of love
between them, and that the game was therefore so far innocent, I would
not be understood as asserting that these people had no hearts in their
bosoms. Mrs Dobbs Broughton probably loved her husband in a sensible,
humdrum way, feeling him to be a bore, knowing him to be vulgar, aware
that he often took a good deal more wine than was good for him, and that
he was almost as uneducated as a hog. Yet she loved him, and showed her
love by taking care that he should have things for dinner which he liked
to eat. But in this alone there were to be found none of the charms of a
fevered existence, and therefore, Mrs Dobbs Broughton, requiring those
charms for her comfort, played her little game with Conway Dalrymple.
And as regarded the artist himself let no reader presume him to have
been heartless because he flirted with Mrs Dobbs Broughton. Doubtless he
will marry some day, and will have a large family for which he will work
hard, and will make a good husband to some stout lady who will be
careful in looking after his linen. But on the present occasion he fell
into some slight trouble in spite of the innocence of his game. As he
quitted his friend's room he heard the hall-door slammed heavily; then
there was a quick step on the stairs, and on the landing-place above the
first flight he met the master of the house, somewhat flurried, as it
seemed, and not looking comfortable, either as regarded his person or
his temper. 'By George, he's been drinking!' Conway said to himself,
after the first glance. Now it certainly was the case that Dobbs
Broughton would sometimes drink at improper hours.
'What the devil are you doing here?' said Dobbs Broughton to his friend
the artist. 'You're always here. You're here a doosed sight more than I
like.' Husbands when they have been drinking are very apt to make
mistakes as to the purport of the game.
'Why Dobbs,' said the painter, 'there's something wrong with you.'
'No, there ain't. There's nothing wrong; and if there was, what's that
to you? I shan't ask you to pay anything for me, I suppose?'
'Well;--I hope not.'
'I won't have you here, and let that be an end of it. It's all very
well when I choose to have a few friends to dinner, but my wife can do
very well without your fal-lalling here all day. Will you remember that,
if you please?'
Conway Dalrymple, knowing that he had better not argue any question with
a drunken man, took himself out of the house, shrugging his shoulders as
he thought of the misery of which his poor dear playfellow would now be
called on to endure.
CHAPTER XXVII
A HERO AT HOME
On the morning after his visit to Miss Demolines, John Eames found
himself at the Paddington Station asking for a ticket for Guestwick, and
as he picked up his change another gentleman also demanded a ticket for
the same place. Had Guestwick been as Liverpool or Manchester, Eames
would have thought nothing about it. It is a matter of course that men
should always be going from London to Liverpool and Manchester; but it
seemed odd to him that two men should want first-class tickets for so
small a place as Guestwick at the same moment. And when, afterwards, he
was placed by the guard in the same carriage with this other traveller,
he could not but feel some little curiosity. The man was four or five
years Johnny's senior, a good-looking fellow, with a pleasant face, and
the outward appurtenances of a gentleman. The intelligent reader will no
doubt be aware that the stranger was Major Grantly; but the intelligent
reader has in this respect had much advantage over John Eames, who up to
this time had never even heard of his cousin Grace Crawley's lover. 'I
think you were asking for a ticket to Guestwick,' said Johnny;
--whereupon the major owned that such was the case. 'I lived in
Guestwick for the greater part of my life,' said Johnny, 'and it's the
dullest, dearest little town in all England.' 'I never was there
before,' said the major, 'and indeed I can hardly say I am going there
now. I shall only pass through it.' Then he got out his newspaper, and
Johnny also got his out, and for a time there was no conversation
between them. John remembered how holy was the errand upon which he was
intent, and gathered his thoughts together, resolving that having so
great a matter on his mind he would think about nothing else and speak
about nothing at all. He was going down to Allington to ask Lily Dale
for the last time whether she would be his wife; to ascertain whether he
was to be successful or unsuccessful in the one great wish of his life;
and, as such was the case with him--as he had in hand a thing so vital,
it could be nothing to him whether the chance companion of his voyage
was an agreeable or disagreeable person. He himself, in any of the
ordinary circumstances of life, was prone enough to talk with anyone he
might meet. He could have travelled for twelve hours together with an
old lady, and could listen to her or make her listen to him without
half-an-hour's interruption. But this journey was made on no ordinary
occasion, and it behoved him to think of Lily. Therefore, after the
first little almost necessary effort at civility, he fell back into
gloomy silence. He was going to do his best to win Lily Dale, and this
doing of his best would require all his thoughts and all his energy.
And probably Major Grantly's mind was bent in the same direction. He,
too, had this work before him, and could not look upon his work as a
thing that which he was intent upon obtaining. He knew --he almost
knew--that he had won the heart of the girl whom he was seeking. There
had been that between him and her which justified him in supposing that
he was dear to her, although no expression of affection had ever passed
from her lips to his ears. Men may know all that they require to know on
that subject without any plainly spoken words. Grace Crawley had spoken
no word, and yet he had known--at any rate had not doubted, that he
could have the place in her heart of which he desired to be the master.
She would never surrender herself altogether till she had taught herself
to be sure of him to whom she gave herself. But she had listened to him
with silence that had not rebuked him, and he had told himself that he
might venture, without fear of that rebuke as to which the minds of some
men are sensitive to a degree which other men cannot even understand.
But for all this Major Grantly could not be altogether happy as to his
mission; he would ask Grace Crawley to be his wife; but he would be
ruined by his own success. And the remembrance that he would be severed
from his own family by the thing that he was doing, was very bitter to
him. In generosity he might be silent about this to Grace, but who can
endure to be silent on such a subject to the woman who is to be his
wife? And then it would not be possible for him to abstain from some
explanation. He was now following her down to Allington, a step which he
certainly would not have taken but the misfortune which had befallen her
father, and he must explain to her in some sort of way why he did so. He
must say to her--if not in so many words, still almost as plainly as
words could speak--I am here now to ask you to be my wife, because you
specially require the protection and countenance of the man who loves
you, in the present circumstances of your father's affairs. He knew that
he was doing right;--perhaps had some idea that he was doing nobly; but
this very appreciation of his own good qualities made the task before
the more difficult.
Major Grantly had The Times, and John Eames had The Daily News, and they
exchanged papers. One had the last Saturday, and the other the last
Spectator, and the exchanged these also. Both had The Pall Mall Gazette,
of which enterprising periodical they gradually came to discuss the
merits and demerits, thus falling into conversation at last, in spite of
the weight of the mission on which each of them was intent. Then, at
last, when they were within half-an-hour of the end of their journey,
Major Grantly asked his companion what was the best inn at Guestwick. He
had at first been minded to go on to Allington at once--to go on to
Allington and get his work done, and then return home or remain there,
or find the nearest inn with a decent bed, as circumstances might direct
him. But on reconsideration, as he drew nearer to the scene of his
future operations, he thought that it might be well for him to remain
that night at Guestwick. He did not quite know how far Allington was
from Guestwick, but he did know that it was still mid-winter, and that
the days were short. 'The Magpie' was the best inn, Johnny said. Having
lived at Guestwick all his life, and having a mother living there now,
he had never himself put up at 'The Magpie' but he believed it to a good
country inn. They kept post-horses there, he knew. He did not tell the
stranger that his late old friend Lord De Guest, and his present old
friend Lady Julia, always hired post-horses from 'The Magpie', but he
grounded his ready assertion on the remembrance of that fact. 'I think I
shall stay there tonight,' said the major. 'You'll find it pretty
comfortable, I don't doubt,' said Johnny. 'Though, indeed, it always
seems to me that a man alone at an inn has a very bad time of it.
Reading is all very well, but one gets tired of it at last. And then I
hate horse-hair chairs.' 'It isn't very delightful,' said the major,
'but beggars mustn't be choosers.' Then there was a pause, after which
the major spoke again. 'You don't happen to know which way Allington
lies?'
'Allington!' said Johnny.
'Yes, Allington. Is there not a village called Allington?'
'There is a village called Allington, certainly. It lies over there.'
And Johnny pointed with his finger through the window. 'As you do not
know the country you can see nothing, but I can see the Allington trees
at this moment.'
'I suppose there is no inn at Allington?'
'There's a public-house, with a very nice bedroom. It is called the
"Red Lion". Mrs Forrard keeps it. I would quite as soon stay there as at
"The Magpie". Only if they don't expect you, they wouldn't have much for
dinner.'
'Then you know the village of Allington?'
'Yes, I know the village of Allington very well. I have friends living
there. Indeed, I may say I know everybody living in Allington.'
'Do you know Mrs Dale?'
'Mrs Dale,' said Johnny. 'Yes, I know Mrs Dale. I have known Mrs Dale
pretty nearly all my life.' Who could this man be who was gong down to
see Mrs Dale--Mrs Dale, and consequently, Lily Dale? He thought that he
knew Mrs Dale so well, that she could have no visitor of whom he would
not be entitled to have some knowledge. But Major Grantly had nothing
more to say at the moment about Mrs Dale. He had never seen Mrs Dale in
his life, and was now going to her house, not to see her, but a friend
of hers. He found that he could not very well explain this to a
stranger, and therefore at the moment he said nothing further. But
Johnny would not allow the subject to be dropped. 'Have you known Mrs
Dale long?' he asked.
'I have not the pleasure of knowing her at all,' said the major.
'I thought, perhaps, by your asking after her--'
'I intend to call upon her, that is all. I suppose they will have an
omnibus here from "The Magpie"?' Eames said that there no doubt would be
an omnibus from 'The Magpie', and then they were at their journey's end.
For the present we will follow John Eames, who went at once to his
mother's house. It was his intention to remain there for two or three
days, and then go over to the house, or rather to the cottage, of his
great ally Lady Julia, which lay just beyond Guestwick Manor, and
somewhat nearer to Allington than to the town of Guestwick. He had made
up his mind that he would not himself too over to Allington till he
could do so from Guestwick Cottage, as it was called, feeling that,
under certain untoward circumstances--should untoward circumstances
arise--Lady Julia's sympathy might be more endurable than that of his
mother. But he would take care that it should be known at Allington that
he was in the neighbourhood. He understood the necessary strategy of his
campaign too well to suppose that he could startle Lily into acceptance.
With his own mother and sister, John Eames was in these days quite a
hero. He was a hero with them now, because in his early boyish days
there had been so little about him that was heroic. Then there had been
a doubt whether he would ever earn his daily bread, and he had been a
very heavy burden on the slight family resources in the matter of
jackets and trousers. The pride taken in Johnny had not been great,
though the love felt for him had been warm. But gradually things had
changed, and John Eames had become hero in his mother's eyes. A chance
circumstance had endeared him to Earl De Guest, and from that moment
things had gone well with him. The earl had given him a watch and had
left him a fortune, and Sir Raffle Buffle had made him his private
secretary. In the old days, when Johnny's love for Lily Dale was first
discussed by his mother and sister, they had thought it impossible that
Lily should ever bring herself to regard with affection so humble a
suitor;--for the Dales have ever held their heads up in the world. But
now there is no misgiving on that score with Mrs Eames and her daughter.
Their wonder that Lily Dale should be such a fool as to decline the love
of such a man. So Johnny was received with respect due to a hero, as
well as with the affection belonging to a son;--by which I mean it to be
inferred that Mrs Eames had got a little bit of fish for dinner as well
as a leg of mutton.
'A man came down in the train with me who says he is going over to
Allington,' said Johnny. 'I wonder who he can be. He is staying at "The
Magpie".'
'A friend of Captain Dale's probably,' said Mary. Captain Dale was the
squire's nephew and his heir.
'But this man was not going to the squire's. He was going to the Small
House.'
'Is he going to stay there?'
'I suppose not, as he asked about the inn.' Then, Johnny reflected that
he might possibly be a friend of Crosbie's, and became melancholy in
consequence. Crosbie might have thought it expedient to send an
ambassador down to prepare the ground for him before he should venture
again upon the scene himself. If it were so, would it not be well that
he, John Eames, should get over to Lily as soon as possible, and not
wait till he should be staying with Lady Julia?
It was at any rate incumbent upon him to call upon Lady Julia the next
morning, because of his commission. The Berlin wool might remain in his
portmanteau till his portmanteau should go with him to the cottage; but
he would take the spectacles at once, and he must explain to Lady Julia
what the lawyers had told him about the income. So he hired a
saddle-horse from 'The Magpie' and started after breakfast on the
morning after his arrival. In his unheroic days he would have walked--as
he had done, scores of times, over the whole distance from Guestwick to
Allington. But now, in these grander days, he thought about his boots
and the mud, and the formal appearance of the thing. 'Ah dear,' he said
to himself, as the nag walked slowly out of the town, 'it used to be
better with the old days. I hardly hoped that she would ever accept me,
but at least she had never refused me. And then that brute had not as
yet made his way down to Allington!'
He did not go very fast. After leaving the town he trotted on for a
mile or so. But when he got to the palings of Guestwick Manor he let the
animal walk again, and his mind ran back over the incidents of his life
which were connected with the place. He remembered a certain long ramble
which he had taken in those days woods after Lily had refused him. That
had been subsequent to the Crosbie episode in his life, and Johnny had
been led to hope by certain of his friends--especially by Lord De Guest
and his sister--that he might then be successful. But he had been
unsuccessful, and had passed the bitterest hour of life wandering about
in those woods. Since that he had been unsuccessful again and again; but
the bitterness of failure had not been so strong with him as on that
first occasion. He would try again now, and if he failed, he would fail
for the last time. As he was thinking of all this, a gig overtook him on
the road, and on looking round he saw that the occupant of the gig was
the man who had travelled with him on the previous day in the train.
Major Grantly was alone in the gig, and as he recognised John Eames he
stopped his horse. 'Are you going to Allington?' he asked. John Eames,
with something of scorn in his voice, replied that he had no intention
of going to Allington on that day. He still thought that this man might
be an emissary from Crosbie, and therefore resolved that but scant
courtesy was due to him. 'I am on my way there now,' said Grantly, 'and
am going to the house of your friend. May I tell her that I travelled
with you yesterday?'
'Yes, sir,' said Johnny. 'You may tell her that you came down with John
Eames.'
'And are you John Eames?' asked the major.
'If you have no objection,' said Johnny. 'But I can hardly suppose that
you have heard of my name before?'
'It is familiar to me because I have the pleasure of knowing a cousin of
yours, Grace Crawley.'
'My cousin is at present staying at Allington with Mrs Dale,' said
Johnny.
'Just so,' said the major, who now began to reflect that he had been
indiscreet in mentioning Grace Crawley's name. No doubt everyone
connected with the family, all the Crawleys, all the Dales, and all the
Eames's, would soon know the business which had brought him down to
Allngton; but he need not have taken the trouble of beginning the story
himself. John Eames, in truth, had never heard of Major Grantly's name,
and was quite unaware of the fortune which awaited his cousin. Even
after what he had now been told, he still suspected the stranger of
being an emissary from his enemy; but the major, not giving him credit
for his ignorance, was annoyed with himself for having told so much of
his own history. 'I will tell the ladies that I had the pleasure of
meeting you,' he said; 'that is, if I am lucky enough to see them.' And
then he drove on.
'I know I should hate that fellow if I were to meet him anywhere again,'
said Johnny to himself as he rode on. 'When I take an aversion to a
fellow at first sight, I always stick to it. It's instinct, I suppose.'
And he was still giving himself credit for the strength of his instincts
when he reached Lady Julia's cottage. He rode at once into the
stable-yard, with the privilege of an accustomed friend of the house,
and having given up his horse, entered the cottage by the back door. 'Is
my lady at home, Jemima?' he said to the maid.
'Yes, Mr John; she is in the drawing-room, and friends of yours are with
her.' Then he was announced, and found himself in the presence of Lady
Julia, Lily Dale, and Grace Crawley.
He was very warmly received. Lady Julia really loved him dearly, and
would have done anything in her power to bring about a match between him
and Lily. Grace was his cousin, and though she had not seen him often,
she was prepared to love him dearly as Lily's lover. And Lily--Lily
loved him dearly too--if only she could have brought herself to love him
as he wished to be loved! To all of them Johnny Eames was something of a
hero. At any rate in the eyes of all of them he possessed those virtues
which seemed to them to justify them in petting him and making much of
him.
'I am so glad you've come--that is, if you've brought my spectacles,'
said Lady Julia.
'My pockets are crammed with spectacles,' said Johnny.
'And when are you coming to me?'
'I was thinking of Tuesday.'
'No; don't come till Wednesday. But I mean Monday. No; Monday won't
do. Come on Tuesday--early, and drive me out. And now tell us the news.'
Johnny swore that there was no news. He made a brave attempt to be gay
and easy before Lily; but he failed, and he knew that he failed--and he
knew that she knew that he failed. 'Mamma will be so glad to see you,'
said Lily. 'I suppose you haven't seen Bell yet?'
'I only got to Guestwick yesterday afternoon,' said he.
'And it will be so nice our having Grace at the Small House;--won't it?
Uncle Christopher has quite taken a passion for Grace --so that I am
hardly anybody now in the Allington world.'
'By-the-by,' said Johnny, 'I came down here with a friend of yours,
Grace.'
'A friend of mine?' said Grace.
'So he says, and he is at Allington at this moment. He passed me in the
gig down here.'
'And what was his name?' Lily asked.
'I have not the remotest idea,' said Johnny. 'He is a man about my own
age, very good-looking, and apparently very well able to take care of
himself. He is short-sighted, and holds a glass in one eye when he looks
out of a carriage window. That's all I know about him.
Grace Crawley's face had become suffused with blushes at the first
mention of the friend and the gig; but then Grace blushed very easily.
Lily knew all about it at once;--at once divined who must be the friend
in the gig, and was almost beside herself with joy. Lady Julia, who had
heard no more of the major than had Johnny, was still clever enough to
perceive that the friend must be a particular friend--for she had
noticed Miss Crawley's blushes. And Grace herself had no doubt as to the
man. The picture of her lover, with the glass in his eye as he looked
out of the window, had been too perfect to admit of a doubt. In her
distress she put out her hand and took hold of Lily's dress.
'And you say he is at Allington now?' said Lily.
'I have no doubt he is at the Small House at this moment,' said Johnny.
CHAPTER XXVIII
SHOWING HOW MAJOR GRANTLY TOOK A WALK
Major Grantly drove his gig into the yard of the 'Red Lion' at
Allington, and from thence walked away at once to Mrs Dale's house. When
he reached the village he had hardly made up his mind as the way in
which he would begin his attack; but now, as he went down the street, he
resolved that he would first ask for Mrs Dale. Most probably he would
find himself in the present of Mrs Dale and her daughter, and of Grace
also, at his first entrance; and if so, his position would be awkward
enough. He almost regretted now that he had not written to Mrs Dale, and
asked for an interview. His task would be very difficult if he should
find all the ladies together. But he was strong enough in the feeling
that when his purpose was told it would meet the approval at any rate of
Mrs Dale; and he walked boldly on, and bravely knocked at the door of
the Small House, as he had already learned that Mrs Dale's residence was
called by the neighbourhood. Nobody was at home, the servant said; and
then, when the visitor began to make further inquiry, the girl explained
that the two young ladies had walked as far as Guestwick Cottage, and
that Mrs Dale was at this moment at the Great House with the squire. She
had gone across soon after the young ladies had started. The maid,
however, was interrupted before she had finished telling all this to the
major, by finding her mistress behind her in the passage. Mrs Dale had
returned, and had entered the house from the lawn.
'I am here now, Jane,' said Mrs Dale, 'if the gentleman wishes to see
me.'
Then the major announced himself. 'My name is Major Grantly,' said he;
and he was blundering on with some words about his own intrusion, when
Mrs Dale begged him to follow her into the drawing-room. He had muttered
something to the effect that Mrs Dale would not know who he was; but Mrs
Dale knew all about him, and had heard the whole of Grace's story from
Lily. She and Lily had often discussed the question whether, under
existing circumstances, Major Grantly should feel himself bound to offer
his hand to Grace, and the mother and daughter had differed somewhat on
the matter. Mrs Dale had held that he was not so bound, urging that the
unfortunate position in which Mr Crawley was placed was so calamitous to
all connected with him, as to justify any man, not absolutely engaged,
in abandoning the thoughts of such a marriage. Mrs Dale had spoken of
Major Grantly's father and mother and brother and sister, and had
declared her opinion that they were entitled to consideration. But Lily
had opposed this idea very stoutly, asserting that in an affair of love
a man should think neither of father or brother of mother or sister. 'If
he is worth anything,' Lily had said, 'he will come to her now--in her
trouble; and will tell her that she at least has got a friend who will
be true to her. If he does that, then I shall think that there is
something of the poetry and nobleness of love left.' In answer to this
Mrs Dale had replied that women had o right to expect from men such
self-denying nobility as that. 'I don't expect it, mamma,' said Lily.
'And I am sure that Grace does not. Indeed I am quite sure that Grace
does not expect even to see him ever again. She never says so, but I
know that she has made up her mind about it. Still I think he ought to
come.' 'It can hardly be that a man is bound to do a thing, the doing of
which, as you confess, would be almost more than noble,' said Mrs Dale.
And so the matter had been discussed between them. But now, as it seemed
to Mrs Dale, the man had come to do the noble thing. At any rate he was
there in her drawing-room, and before either of them had sat down he had
contrived to mention Grace. 'You may not probably have heard my name,'
he said,' but I am acquainted with your friend, Grace Crawley.'
'I know your name very well, Major Grantly. My brother-in-law who lives
down yonder, Mr Dale, knows your father very well--or he did some years
ago. And I have heard him say that he remembers you.'
'I recollect. He used to be staying at Ullathorne. But that is a long
time ago. Is he at home now?'
'Mr Dale is almost always at home. He very rarely goes away, and I am
sure would be glad to see you.'
Then there was a little pause in the conversation. They had managed to
seat themselves, and Mrs Dale had said enough to put her visitor fairly
at his ease. If he had anything special to say to her, he must say
it--any request or proposition to make as to Grace Crawley, he must make
it. And he did make it at once. 'My object in coming to Allington,' he
said, 'was to see Miss Crawley.'
'She and my daughter have taken a long walk to call on a friend, and I
am afraid they will stay for lunch; but they will certainly be home
between three and four, if that is not too long for you to remain at
Allington.'
'Oh, dear, no,' said he. 'It will not hurt me to wait.'
'It certainly will not hurt me, Major Grantly. Perhaps you will lunch
with me?'
'I'll tell you what, Mrs Dale; if you'll permit me, I'll explain to you
why I have come here. Indeed, I have intended to do so all through, and
I can only ask you to keep my secret, if after all it should require to
be kept.'
'I will certainly keep any secret that you may ask me to keep,' said Mrs
Dale, taking off her bonnet.
'I hope there may be no need of one,' said Major Grantly. 'The truth
is, Mrs Dale, that I have known Grace Crawley for some time --nearly for
two years now, and--I may as well speak it out at once--I have made up
my mind to ask her to be my wife. That is why I am here.' Considering
the nature of the statement, which must have been embarrassing, I think
that it was made with fluency and simplicity.
'Of course, Major Grantly, you know that I have no authority with our
young friend,' said Mrs Dale. 'I mean that she is not connected with us
by family ties. She has a father and mother, living, as I believe, in
the same county as yourself.'
'I know that, Mrs Dale.'
'And you may, perhaps, understand that, as Miss Crawley is now staying
with me, I owe it in a measure to her friends to ask you whether they
are aware of your intention.'
'They are not aware of it.'
'I know that at the present moment they are in great trouble.'
Mrs Dale was going on, but she was interrupted by Major Grantly. 'That
is just it,' he said. 'There are circumstances at present which make it
almost impossible that I should go to Mr Crawley and ask his permission
to address his daughter. I do not know whether you have heard the whole
story?'
'As much, I believe, as Grace could tell me.'
'He is, I believe, in such a state of mental distress as to be hardly
capable of giving me a considerate answer. And I should not know how to
speak to him, or how not to speak to him, about this unfortunate affair.
But, Mrs Dale, you will, I think, perceive that the same circumstances
make it imperative upon me to be explicit to Miss Crawley. I think I am
the last man to boast of a woman's regard, but I had learned to think
that I was not indifferent to Grace. If that be so, what must she think
of me if I stay away from her now?'
'She understands too well the weight of the misfortune which has fallen
upon her father, to suppose that anyone not connected with her can be
bound to share it.'
'That is just it. She will think that I am silent for that reason. I
have determined that that shall not keep me silent, and, therefore, I
have come here. I may, perhaps, be able to bring comfort to her in her
trouble. As regards my worldly position--though, indeed, it will not be
very good--as hers is not good either, you will not think yourself bound
to forbid me to see her on that head.'
'Certainly not. I need hardly say that I fully understand that, as
regards money, you are offering everything where you can get nothing.'
'And you understand my feeling?'
'Indeed I do--and appreciate the great nobility of your love for Grace.
You shall see her here, if you wish it--and today, if you choose to
wait.' Major Grantly said that he would wait and would see Grace on that
afternoon. Mrs Dale again suggested that he should lunch with her, but
this he declined. She then proposed that he should go across and call
upon the squire, and thus consume his time. But to this he also
objected. He was not exactly in humour, he said, to renew so old and so
slight an acquaintance at that time. Mr Dale would probably have
forgotten him, and would be sure to ask what had brought him to
Allington. He would go and take a walk, he said, and come again at
exactly half-past three. Mrs Dale again expressed her certainty that the
young ladies would be back by that time, and Major Grantly left the
house.
Mrs Dale when she was left alone could not but compare the good fortune
that was awaiting Grace, with the evil fortune which had fallen on her
own child. Here was a man who was at all points a gentleman. Such, at
least, was the character which Mrs Dale at once conceded to him. And
Grace had chanced to come across this man, and to please his eye, and
satisfy his taste, and be loved by him. And the result of that chance
would be that Grace would have everything given to her that the world
has to give worth acceptance. She would have a companion for her life
whom she could trust, admire, love, and of whom she could be infinitely
proud. Mrs Dale was not at all aware whether Major Grantly might have
five hundred a year to spend, or five thousand--or what sum intermediate
between the two--nor did she give much of her thoughts at the moment to
that side of the subject. She knew without thinking of it--or fancied
that she knew, that there were means sufficient for comfortable living.
It was solely the nature and character of the man that was in her mind,
and the sufficiency that was to be found in them for a wife's happiness.
But her daughter, her Lily, had come across a man who was a scoundrel,
and, as the consequence of that meeting, all her life was marred! Could
any credit be given to Grace for her success, or any blame attached to
Lily for her failure. Surely not the latter! How was her girl to have
guarded herself from a love so unfortunate, or have avoided the rock on
which her vessel had been shipwrecked? Then many bitter thoughts passed
through Mrs Dale's mind, and she almost envied Grace Crawley her lover.
Lily was contented to remain as she was, but Lily's mother could not
bring herself to be satisfied that her child should fill a lower place
in the world than other girls. It had ever been her idea--an ideal
probably never absolutely uttered even to herself, but not the less
practically conceived--that it is the business of a woman to be married.
That her Lily should have been won and not worn, had been, and would be,
a trouble to her for ever.
Major Grantly went back to the inn and saw his horse fed, and smoked a
cigar, and then, finding that it was still only just one o'clock, he
started off for a walk. He was not careful not to go out of Allington by
the road he had entered it, as he had no wish to encounter Grace and her
friend on their return to the village; so he crossed a little brook
which runs at the bottom of the hill on which the chief street of
Allington is built, and turned into a field-path to the left as soon as
he had got beyond the houses. Not knowing the geography of the place he
did not understand that by taking that path he was making his way back
to the squire's house; but it was so; and after sauntering on for about
a mile and crossing back again over the stream, of which he took no
notice, he found himself leaning across a gate, and looking into a
paddock on the other side of which was the high wall of a gentleman's
garden. To avoid this he went on a little farther and found himself on a
farm road, and before he could retrace his steps so as not to be seen,
he met a gentleman whom he presumed to be the owner of the house. It was
the squire surveying his home farm, as was his daily custom; but Major
Grantly had not perceived that the house must of necessity be Allington
House, having been aware that he had passed the entrance to the place,
as he entered the village on the other side. 'I'm afraid I'm intruding,'
he said, lifting his hat. 'I came up the path yonder, not knowing that
it would lead me so close to a gentleman's house.'
'There's a right of way through the fields on to the Guestwick road,'
said the squire, 'and therefore you are not trespassing in any sense;
but we are not particular about such things down here, and you would be
very welcome if there were no right of way. If you are a stranger,
perhaps you would like to see the outside of the old house. People think
it picturesque.'
Then Major Grantly became aware that this must be the squire, and he was
annoyed with himself for his own awkwardness in having thus come upon
the house. He would have wished to keep himself altogether unseen if it
had been possible--and especially unseen by this old gentleman, to whom,
now that he had met him, he was almost bound to introduce himself. But
he was not absolutely bound to do so, and he determined that he would
still keep his peace. Even if the squire should afterwards hear of his
having been there, what would it matter? But to proclaim himself at the
present moment would be disagreeable to him. He permitted the squire,
however, to lead him to the front of the house, and in a few moments was
standing on the terrace hearing an account of the architecture of the
mansion.
You can see the date still in the brickwork of one of the chimneys--that
is, if your eyes are very good you can see it--1617. It was completed
in that year, and very little has been done to it since. We think the
chimneys are pretty.'
'They are very pretty,' said the major. 'Indeed, the house altogether
is as graceful as it can be.'
'Those trees are old too,' said the squire, pointing to two cedars which
stood at the side of the house. 'They say they are older than the house
but I don't feel sure of it. There was a mansion here before, very
nearly, though not quite, on the same spot.'
'Your own ancestors were living here before that, I suppose?' said
Grantly, meaning to be civil.
'Well, yes; two or three hundred years before it, I suppose. If you
don't mind coming down to the churchyard, you'll get an excellent view
of the house;--by far the best there is. By-the-by, would you like to
step in and take a glass of wine?'
'I'm very much obliged,' said the major, 'but indeed I'd rather not.'
Then he followed the squire down to the churchyard, and was shown the
church as well as the view of the house, and the vicarage, and a view
over to Allington woods from the vicarage gate, of which the squire was
very fond, and in this way he was taken back on to the Guestwick side of
the village, and even down on the road by which he had entered it,
without in the least knowing where he was. He looked at his watch, and
saw that it was past two. 'I'm very much obliged to you, sir,' he said
again taking off his hat to the squire, 'and if I shall not be
intruding, I'll make my way back to the village.'
'What village?'
'To Allington,' said Grantly.
'This is Allington,' said the squire; and as he spoke, Lily Dale and
Grace Crawley turned the corner from the Guestwick road and came close
upon them. 'Well, girls, I did not expect to see you,' said the squire;
'your mamma told me you wouldn't be back till it was nearly dark, Lily.'
'We have come back earlier than we intended,' said Lily. She of course
had seen the stranger with her uncle, and knowing the ways of the squire
in such matters had expected to be introduced to him. But the reader
will be aware that no introduction was possible. It never occurred to
Lily that this man could be Major Grantly of whom she and Grace had been
talking during the whole length of the walk home. But Grace and her
lover had of course known each other at once, and Grantly, though he was
abashed and almost dismayed by the meeting, of course came forward and
gave his hand to his friend. Grace in taking it did not utter a word.
'Perhaps I ought to have introduced myself to you as Major Grantly,'
said he, turning to the squire.
'Major Grantly! Dear me! I had no idea that you were expected in these
parts.'
'I have come without being expected.'
'You are very welcome, I'm sure. I hope your father is well? I used to
know him some years ago, and I daresay he has not forgotten me.' Then,
while the girls stood by in silence, and while Grantly was endeavouring
to escape, the squire invited him very warmly to send his portmanteau up
to the house. 'We'll have the ladies up from the house below, and make
it as little dull for you as possible.' But this would not have suited
Grantly--at any rate would not suit him till he should know what answer
he was to have. He excused himself therefore, pleading a positive
necessity to be at Guestwick that evening, and then, explaining that he
had already seen Mrs Dale, he expressed his intention of going back to
the Small House in company with the ladies, if they would allow him. The
squire, who did not yet quite understand it all, bade him a formal
adieu, and Lily led the way home down behind the churchyard wall and
through the bottom of the gardens belonging to the Great House. She of
course knew now who the stranger was, and did all in her power to
relieve Grace of her embarrassment. Grace had hitherto not spoken a
single word since she had seen her lover, nor did she say a word to him
in their walk to the house. And, in truth, he was not much more
communicative than Grace. Lily did all the talking, and with wonderful
female skill contrived to have some words ready for use till they all
found themselves together in Mrs Dale's drawing-room. 'I have caught a
major, mamma, and landed him,' said Lily laughing, 'but I'm afraid, from
what I hear, that you had caught him first.'
CHAPTER XXIX
MISS LILY DALE'S LOGIC
Lady Julia De Guest always lunched at one exactly, and it was not much
past twelve when John Eames made his appearance at the cottage. He was
of course told to stay, and of course said that he would stay. It had
been his purpose to lunch with Lady Julia; but then he had not expected
to find Lily Dale at the cottage. Lily herself would have been quite at
her ease, protected by Lady Julia, and somewhat protected also by her
own powers of fence, had it not been that Grace was there also. But
Grace Crawley, from the moment that she had heard the description of the
gentleman who looked out of the window with his glass in his eye, had by
no means been at her ease. Lily saw at once that she could not be
brought to join in any conversation, and both John and Lady Julia, in
their ignorance of the matter in hand, made matters worse.
'So that was Major Grantly,' said John. 'I have heard of him before, I
think. He is a son of the old archdeacon, is he not?'
'I don't know about old archdeacon,' said Lady Julia. 'The archdeacon
is the son of the old bishop, whom I remember very well. And it is not
so very long since the bishop died, either.'
'I wonder what he is doing at Allington,' said John.
'I think he knows my uncle,' said Lily.
'But he's going to call on your mother, he said.' Then Johnny
remembered that the major had said something as to knowing Miss Crawley,
and for the moment he was silent.
'I remember when they talked of making the son a bishop also,' said Lady
Julia.
'What;--the same man who is now a major?' said Johnny.
'No, you goose. He is not the son of; he is the grandson. They were
going to make the archdeacon a bishop, and I remember hearing that he
was terribly disappointed. He is getting to be an old man now, I
suppose; and yet, dear me, how well I remember his father.'
'He didn't look like a bishop's son,' said Johnny.
'How does a bishop's son look,' Lily asked.
'I suppose he ought to have some sort of clerical tinge about him; but
this fellow had nothing of that kind.'
'But then this fellow, as you call him,' said Lily, 'is only the son of
an archdeacon.'
'That accounts for it, I suppose,' said Johnny.
But during all this time, Grace did not say a word, and Lily perceived
it. Then she bethought herself as to what she had better do. Grace, she
knew, could not be comfortable where she was. Nor, indeed, was it
probable that Grace would be very comfortable in returning home. There
could not be much ease for Grace till the coming meeting between her and
Major Grantly should be over. But it would be better that Grace should
go back to Allington at once; and better also, perhaps, for Major
Grantly that it should be so. 'Lady Julia,' she said, 'I don't think
we'll mind stopping for lunch today.'
'Nonsense, my dear; you promised.'
'I think we must break our promise; I do indeed. You mustn't be angry
with us.' And Lily looked at Lady Julia, as though there were something
which Lady Julia ought to understand, which she, Lily, could not quite
explain. I fear that Lily was false, and intended her old friend to
believe that she was running away because John Eames had come there.
'But you will be famished,' said Lady Julia.
'We shall live through it,' said Lily.
'It is out of the question that I should let you walk all the way here
from Allington and all the way back without taking something.'
'We shall just be home in time for lunch if we go now,' said Lily. 'Will
not that be the best, Grace?'
Grace hardly knew what would be best. She only knew that Major Grantly
was at Allington, and that he had come thither to see her. The idea of
hurrying back after him was unpleasant to her, and yet she was so
flurried that she felt thankful to Lily for taking her away from the
cottage. The matter was compromised at last. They remained for
half-an-hour, and ate some biscuits and pretended to drink a glass of
wine, and then they started. John Eames, who in truth believed that Lily
Dale was running away from him, was by no means well pleased, and when
the girls were gone, did not make himself so agreeable to his old friend
as he should have done. 'What a fool I am to come here at all,' he said,
throwing himself into an arm-chair as soon as the front door was closed.
'That's very civil to me, John!'
'You know what I mean, Lady Julia. I am a fool to come near her, until
I can do so without thinking more of her than I do of any other girl in
the country.'
'I don't think you have anything to complain of as yet,' said Lady
Julia, who had in some sort perceived that Lily's retreat had been on
Grace's account, and not on her own. 'It seems to me that Lily was very
glad to see you, and when I told her that you were coming to stay here,
and would be near them for some days, she seemed to be quite
pleased;--she did indeed.'
'Then why did she run away the moment I came in?' said Johnny.
'I think it was something you said about the man who has gone to
Allington.'
'What difference can the man make to her? The truth is, I despise
myself;--I do indeed, Lady Julia. Only think of my meeting Crosbie at
dinner the other day, and his having the impertinence to come up and
shake hands with me.'
'I suppose he didn't say anything about what happened at the Paddington
Station?'
'No; he didn't speak about that. I wish I knew whether she cares for
him still. If I thought she did, I would never speak another word to
her--I mean about myself. Of course I am not going to quarrel with them.
I am not such a fool as that.' Then Lady Julia tried to comfort him, and
succeeded so far that he was induced to eat the mince veal that had been
intended for the comfort and support of the two young ladies who had run
away.
'Do you think it is he?' were the first words which Grace said when they
were fairly on their way back together.
'I should think it must be. What other man can there be, of that sort,
who would be likely to come to Allington to see you?'
'His coming is not likely. I cannot understand that he should come. He
let me leave Silverbridge without seeing me--and I thought that he was
quite right.'
'And I think he is quite right to come here. I am very glad he has
come. It shows that he has really something like a heart inside him. Had
he not come, or sent, or written, or taken some step before the trial
comes on, to make you know that he was thinking of you, I should have
said that he was as hard--as hard as any other man I had ever heard of.
Men are so hard! But I don't think he is, now. I am beginning to regard
him as the one chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, and to fancy that
you ought to go down on your knees before him, and kiss his highness's
shoebuckle. In judging of men one's mind vacillates so quickly between
the scorn which is due to a false man and the worship which is due to a
true man.' Then she was silent for a moment, but Grace said nothing, and
Lily continued, 'I tell you fairly, Grace, that I shall expect very much
from you now.'
'Much in what way, Lily?'
'In the way of worship. I shall not be content that you should merely
love him. If he has come here, as he must have done, to say that the
moment of the world's reproach is the moment he has chosen to ask you to
be his wife, I think that you will owe him more than love.'
'I shall owe him more than love, and I will pay him more than love,'
said Grace. There was something in the tone of her voice as she spoke
which made Lily stop her and look up into her face. There was a smile
there which Lily had never seen before, and which gave a beauty to her
which was wonderful to Lily's eyes. Surely this lover of Grace's must
have seen a smile like that, and therefore had loved her and was giving
such wonderful proof of his love. 'Yes,' continued Grace, standing and
looking at her friend, 'you may stare at me, Lily, but you may be sure
that I will do for Major Grantly all the good that I can do for him.'
'Never mind what I mean. You are very imperious in managing your own
affairs, and you must let me be so equally in mine.'
'But I tell you everything.'
'Do you suppose that if--if--if in real truth it can possibly be the
case that Major Grantly shall have come here to offer me his hand when
we all ground down in the dust as we are, do you think that I will let
him sacrifice himself? Would you?'
'Certainly. Why not? There will be no sacrifice. He will be asking
for that which he wishes to get; and you will be bound to give it to
him.'
'If he wants it, where is his nobility? If it be as you say, he will
have shown himself noble, and his nobility will have consisted in this,
that he has been willing to take that which he does not want, in order
that he may succour the one whom he loves. I also will succour one whom
I love, as best I know how.' Then she walked on quickly before her
friend, and Lily stood for a moment thinking before she followed her.
They were now on a field-path, by which they were enabled to escape the
road back to Allington for the greater part of the distance, and Grace
had reached a stile, and had clambered over it before Lily had caught
her.
'You must not go away by yourself,' said Lily.
'I don't wish to go away by myself.'
'I want you to stop a moment and listen to me. I am sure you are wrong
in this--wrong for both your sakes. You believe that he loves you?'
'I thought he did once; and if he has come here to see me, I suppose he
does still.'
'If that be the case, and you also love him--'
'I do. I make no mystery about that to you. I do love him with all my
heart. I love him today, now that I believe him to be here, and that I
suppose I shall see him, perhaps this very afternoon. And I loved him
yesterday, when I thought that I should never see him again. I do love
him. I do. I love him so well that I will never do him an injury.'
'That being so, if he makes you an offer you are bound to accept it. I
do not think that you have an alternative.'
'I have an alternative, and I shall use it. Why don't you take my
cousin John?'
'Because I like somebody else better. If you have got as good a reason,
I won't say another word to you.'
'And why don't you take that other person?'
'Because I cannot trust his love; that is why. It is not very kind of
you, opening my sores afresh, when I am trying to heal yours.'
'Oh, Lily, I am unkind--unkind to you, who have been so generous to me?'
'I'll forgive you all that and a deal more if you will only listen to me
and try to take my advice. Because this major of yours does a generous
thing, which is for the good of you both--the infinite good of both of
you--you are to emulate his generosity by doing a thing which will be
for the good of neither of you. That is about it. Yes, it is, Grace. You
cannot doubt that he has been meaning this for some time past; and of
course, if he looks upon you as his own--and I daresay, if the whole
truth is to be told, he does--'
'But I am not his own.'
'Yes you are, in one sense; you have just said so with a great deal of
energy. And if it is so--let me see, where was I?'
'Oh, Lily, you need not mind where you were.'
'But I do mind, and I hate to be interrupted in my arguments. Yes, just
that. If he saw his cow sick, he'd try to doctor the cow in her
sickness. He sees that you are sick, and of course he comes to your
relief.'
'I am not Major Grantly's cow.'
'Yes, you are.'
'Nor his dog, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his,
except--except, Lily, the dearest friend that he has on the face of the
earth. He cannot have a friend that will go no further for him than I
will. He will never know how far I will go to serve him. You don't know
his people. Nor do I know them. But I know what they are. His sister is
married to a marquis.'
'What has that to do with it?' said Lily, sharply. 'If she were married
to an archduke, what difference would that make?'
'And they are proud people--all of them--and rich; and they live with
high persons in the world.'
'I didn't care though they lived with the royal family, and had the
Prince of Wales for their bosom friend. It only shows how much better he
is than they are.'
'But think of what my family is--how we are situated. When my father
was simply poor I did not care about it, because he has been born and
bred a gentleman. But now he is disgraced. Yes, Lily, he is. I am bound
to say so, at any rate to myself, when I am thinking of Major Grantly;
and I will not carry that disgrace into a family which would feel it so
keenly as they would do.' Lily, however, went on with her arguments, and
was still arguing when they turned the corner of the lane, and came upon
Lily's uncle and the major himself.
CHAPTER XXX
SHOWING WHAT MAJOR GRANTLY DID AFTER HIS WALK
In going down from the church to the Small House Lily Dale had all the
conversation to herself. During some portion of the way the path was
only broad enough for two person, and her Major Grantly walked by Lily's
side, while Grace followed them. Then they found their way into the
house, and Lily made her little speech to her mother about catching the
major. 'Yes, my dear, I have seen Major Grantly before,' said Mrs Dale.
'I suppose he has met you on the road. But I did not expect that any of
you would have returned so soon.' Some little explanation followed as to
the squire, and as to Major Grantly's walk, and after that the great
thing was to leave the two lovers alone. 'You will dine here, of course,
Major Grantly,' Mrs Dale said. But this he declined. He had learned, he
said, that there was a night-train up to London, and he thought that he
would return to town by that. He had intended, when he left London to
get back there as soon as possible. Then Mrs Dale, having hesitated for
two or three seconds, got up and left the room, and Lily followed. 'It
seems very odd and abrupt,' said Mrs Dale to her daughter, 'but I
suppose it is best.' 'Of course, it is best, mamma. Do as one would be
done by--that's the only rule. It will be much better for her that she
should have it over.'
Grace was seated on a sofa, and Major Grantly got up from his chair, and
came and stood opposite to her. 'Grace,' he said, 'I hope you are not
angry with me for coming down to see you here.'
'No, I am not angry,' she said.
'I have thought a great deal about it, and your friend, Miss Prettyman,
knew that I was coming. She quite approves of my coming.'
'She has written to me, but did not tell me of it,' said Grace, not
knowing what other answer to make.
'No--she could not have done that. She had no authority. I only
mention her name because it will have weight with you, and because I
have not done that which, under the circumstances, perhaps, I should
have been bound to do. I have not seen your father.'
'Poor papa,' said Grace.
'I have felt that at the present moment I could not do so with any
success. It has not come of any want of respect either for him or for
you. Of course, Grace, you know why I am here.' He paused, and then,
remembering that he had no right to expect an answer to such a question,
he continued, 'I have come here, dearest Grace, to ask you to be my
wife, and to be a mother to Edith. I know that you love Edith.'
'I do indeed.'
'And I have hoped sometimes--though I suppose I ought not to say so--but
I have hoped and almost thought sometimes, that you have been willing
to--love me, too. It is better to tell the truth simply, is it not?'
'I suppose so,' said Grace.
'And therefore, and because I love you dearly myself, I have come to ask
you to be my wife.' Saying which he opened out his hand, and held it to
her. But she did not take it. 'There is my hand, Grace. If your heart is
as I would have it you can give me yours, and I shall want nothing else
to make me happy.' But still she made no motion towards granting him his
request. 'If I have been too sudden,' he said, 'you must forgive me for
that. I have been sudden and abrupt, but as things are, no other way has
been open to me. Can you not bring yourself to give me some answer,
Grace?' His hand had now fallen again to his side, but he was still
standing before her.
She had said no word to him as yet, except that one in which she had
acknowledged her love for his child, and had expressed no surprise, even
in her countenance, at his proposal. And yet the idea that he should do
such a thing, since the idea that he certainly would do it had become
clear to her, had filled with a world of surprise. No girl ever lived
with any beauty belonging to her who had a smaller knowledge of her own
possession than Grace Crawley. Nor had she the slightest pride in her
own acquirements. That she had been taught in many things more than had
been taught to other girls, had come of her poverty and of the
desolation of her home. She had learned to read Greek and Italian
because there had been nothing else for her to do in that sad house.
And, subsequently, accuracy of knowledge had been necessary for the
earning of her bread. I think that Grace had at times been weak enough
to envy the idleness and almost envy the ignorance of other girls. Her
figure was light, perfect in symmetry, full of grace at all points; but
she had thought nothing of her figure, remembering only the poverty of
her dress, but remembering also with a brave resolution that she would
never be ashamed of it. And as her acquaintance with Major Grantly had
begun and had grown, and as she had learned to feel unconsciously that
his company was pleasanter to her than that of any other person she
knew, she had still told herself that anything like love must be out of
the question. But then words had been spoken, and there had been glances
in his eye, and a tone in his voice, and a touch upon his fingers, of
which she could not altogether refuse to accept the meaning. And others
had spoken of it, the two Miss Prettymans and her friend Lily. Yet she
would not admit to herself that it could be so, and she would not allow
herself to confess to herself that she loved him. Then had come the last
killing misery to which her father had been subjected. He had been
accused of stealing money, and had been committed to be tried for the
theft. From that moment, at any rate, any hope, if there had been a
hope, must be crushed. But she swore to herself bravely that there had
been no such hope. And she assured herself also that nothing had passed
which had entitled her to expect anything beyond ordinary friendship
from the man of whom she certainly had thought much. Even if those
touches and those tones and those glances had meant anything, all such
meaning must be annihilated by this disgrace which had come upon her.
She might know that her father was innocent; but the world thought
differently, and she, her brothers and sister, and her mother and her
poor father, must bend to the world's opinion. If those dangerous joys
had meant anything, they must be taken as meaning nothing more.
Thus she had argued with herself, and, fortified by such self-
teachings, she had come down to Allington. Since she had been with her
friends there had come upon her from day to day a clear conviction that
her arguments had been undoubtedly true--a clear conviction which had
been very cold to her heart in spite of all her courage. She had
expected nothing, hoped for nothing, and yet when nothing came she was
sad. She thought of one special half-hour in which he had said almost
all that he might have said --more than he ought to have said;--of a
moment during which her hand had remained in his; of a certain pressure
with which he had put her shawl upon her shoulders. If he had only
written to her one word to tell her that he believed her father was
innocent! But no; she had no right to expect anything from him. And then
Lily had ceased to talk of him, and she did expect nothing. Now he was
there before her, asking her to come to him and be his wife. Yes; she
would kiss his shoebuckles, only that the kissing of his shoebuckles
would bring upon him that injury which he should never suffer from her
hands! He had been generous, and her self-pride was satisfied. But her
other pride was touched, and she also would be generous. 'Can you not
bring yourself to give me some answer?' he had said to her. Of course
she must give him an answer, but how would she give it?
'You are very kind,' she said.
'I would be more than kind.'
'So you are. Kind is a cold word when used to such a friend at such a
time.'
'I would be everything on earth to you that a man can be to a woman.'
'I know I ought to thank you if I knew how. My heart is full of thanks;
it is indeed.'
'And is there no room for love there?'
'There is no room for love in our house, Major Grantly. You have not
seen papa.'
'No; but if you wish, I will do so at once.'
'It would to do no good;--none. I only asked you because you can hardly
know how sad is our state at home.'
'But I cannot see that that need deter you, if you can love me.'
'Can you not? If you saw him, and the house, and my mother, you would
not say so. In the Bible it is said of some season that it is not a time
for marrying, or giving in marriage. And so it is with us.'
'I am not pressing you as to a day. I only ask you to say that you will
be engaged to me--so that I may tell my own people, and let it be
known.'
'I understand all that. I know how good you are. But, Major Grantly,
you must understand me also when I assure you that it cannot be so.'
'Do you mean to refuse me altogether?'
'Yes; altogether.'
'And why?'
'Must I answer that question? Ought I to be made to answer it? But I
will tell you fairly, without touching on anything else, that I feel
that we are all disgraced, and that I will not take that disgrace into
another family.'
'Grace, do you love me?'
'I love no one now--that is, as you mean. I can love no one. I have no
room for any feeling except for my father and mother, and for us all. I
should not be here now but that I save my mother the bread that I should
eat at home.'
'Is it as bad as that?'
'Yes, it is as bad as that. It is much worse than that, if you knew it
all. You cannot conceive how low we have fallen. And now they tell me
that my father will be found guilty, and will be sent to prison. Putting
ourselves out of the question, what would you think of a girl who could
engage herself to any man under such circumstances? What would you think
of a girl who would allow herself to be in love in such a position? Had
I been ten times engaged to you, I would have broken it off.' And then
she got up to leave him.
But he stopped her, holding her by the arm. 'What you have said will
make me say what I certainly should have said without it. I declare that
we are engaged.'
'No, we are not,' said Grace.
'You have told me that you loved me.'
'I never told you so.'
'There are other ways of speaking than the voice; and I will boast to
you, though to no one else, that you have told me so. I believe you love
me. I shall hold myself engaged to you, and I shall think you false if I
hear that you listen to another man. Now, good-bye, Grace;--my own
Grace.'
'No, I am not your own,' she said, through her tears.
'You are my own, my very own. God bless you, dear, dear, dearest Grace.
You shall hear from me in a day or two, and shall see me as soon as this
horrid trial is over.' Then he took her in his arms before she could
escape from him, and kissed her forehead and her lips, while she
struggled in his arms. After that he left the room and the house as
quickly as he could, and was seen no more of the Dales upon that
occasion.
CHAPTER XXXI
SHOWING HOW MAJOR GRANTLY RETURNED TO GUESTWICK
Grace, when she was left alone, threw herself upon the sofa, and hid her
face in her hands. She was weeping almost hysterically, and had been
utterly dismayed and frightened by her lover's impetuosity. Things had
gone after a fashion which her imagination had not painted to her as
possible. Surely she had the power to refuse the man if she pleased. And
yet she felt as she lay there weeping that she did in truth belong to
him as part of his goods, and that her generosity had been foiled. She
had especially resolved that she would not confess any love to him. She
had made no such confession. She had guarded herself against doing so
with all the care which she knew how to use. But he assumed the fact,
and she had been unable to deny it. Could she have lied to him, and
sworn that she did not love him? Could she have so perjured herself,
even in support of her generosity? Yes, she would have done so--so she
told herself--if a moment had been given to her for thought. She ought
to have done so, and she blamed herself for being so little prepared for
the occasion. The lie would be useless now. Indeed, she would have no
opportunity for telling it; for of course she would not answer --would
not even read his letter. Though he might know that she loved him, yet
she would not be his wife. He had forced her secret from her, but he
could not force her to marry him. She did love him, but he should never
be disgraced by her love.
After a while she was able to think of his conduct, and she believed
that she ought to be very angry with him. He had taken her roughly in
his arms, and had insulted her. He had forced a kiss from her. She had
felt his arms warm and close and strong about her, and had not known
whether she was in paradise or in purgatory. She was very angry with
him. She would send back his letter to him without reading it--without
opening it, if that might be possible. He had done that to her which
nothing could justify. But yet--yet--yet how dearly she loved him! Was
he not the prince of men? He had behaved badly, of course; but had any
man ever behaved so badly before in so divine a way? Was it not a
thousand pities that she should be driven to deny anything to a lover
who so richly deserved everything that could be given to him? He had
kissed her hand as he let her go, and now, not knowing what she did, she
kissed the spot on which she had felt his lips. His arm had been round
her waist, and the old frock which she wore should be kept by her for
ever, because it had been so graced.
What was she now to say to Lily and Lily's mother? Of one thing there
was no doubt. She would never tell them of her lover's wicked audacity.
That was a secret never to be imparted to any ears. She would keep her
resentment to herself, and not ask the protection of any vicarious
wrath. He could never so sin again, that was certain; and she would keep
all her knowledge and memory of the sin for her own purposes. But how
could it be that such a man as that, one so good though so sinful, so
glorious though so great a trespasser, should have come to such a girl
as her and have asked for her love? Then she thought of her father's
poverty and the misery of her own condition, and declared to herself
that it was very wonderful.
Lily was the first to enter the room, and she, before she did so,
learned from the servant that Major Grantly had left the house. 'I heard
the door, miss, and then I saw the top of his hat out of the pantry
window.' Armed with this certain information, Lily entered the
drawing-room, and found Grace in the act of rising from the sofa.
'Am I disturbing you,' said Lily.
'No; not at all. I am glad you have come. Kiss me, and be good to me.'
And she twined her arms about Lily and embraced her.
'Am I not always good to you, you simpleton? Has he been good?'
'I don't know what you mean?'
'And have you been good to him?'
'As good as I knew how, Lily.'
'And where is he?'
'He has gone away. I shall never see him any more, Lily.'
Then she hid her face upon her friend's shoulder and broke forth again
into hysterical tears.
'But tell me, Grace, what he said;--that is, if you mean to tell me!'
'I will tell you everything;--that is, everything I can.' And Grace
blushed as she thought of the one secret which she certainly would not
tell.
'Has he--has he done what I said he would do? Come, speak out boldly.
Has he asked you to be his wife?'
'Yes,' said Grace, barely whispering the word.
'And you have accepted him?'
'No, Lily, I have not. Indeed, I have not. I did not know how to
speak, because I was surprised;--and he, of course, could say what he
liked. But I told him as well as I could, that I would not marry him.'
'And why;--did you tell him why?'
'Yes; because of papa!'
'Then, if he is the man I take him to be, that answer will go for
nothing. Of course he knew all that before he came here. He did not
think you were an heiress with forty thousand pounds. If he is in
earnest, that will go for nothing. And I think he is in earnest.'
'And so was I in earnest.'
'Well, Grace;--we shall see.'
'I suppose I may have a will of my own, Lily.'
'Do not be sure of that. Women are not allowed to have wills of their
own on all occasions. Some man comes in a girl's way, and she gets to be
fond of him, just because he does come in her way. Well; when that has
taken place, she has no alternative but to be taken if he chooses to
take her; or to be left, if he chooses to leave her.'
'Lily, don't say that.'
'But I do say it. A man may assure himself that he will find for
himself a wife who shall be learned, or beautiful, or six feet high, if
he wishes it, or who has red hair, or red eyes, or red cheeks--just what
he pleases; and he may go about till he finds it, as you can go about
and match your worsteds. You are a fool if you buy a colour you don't
want. But we can never match our worsteds for that other piece of work,
but are obliged to take any colour that comes--and, therefore, it is
that we make such a jumble of it! Here's mamma. We must not be
philosophical before her. Mamma, Major Grantly has--skedaddled.'
'Oh, Lily, what a word!'
'But, oh, mamma, what a thing! Fancy his going away and not saying a
word to anybody!'
'If he had anything to say to Grace, I suppose he said it.'
'He asked her to marry him, of course. We none of us had any doubt
about that. He swore to her that she and none but she should be his
wife--and all that kind of thing. But he seems to have done it in the
most prosaic way;--and now he has gone away without saying a word to any
of us. I shall never speak to him again--unless Grace asks me.'
'Grace, my dear, may I congratulate you?' said Mrs Dale.
Grace did not answer, as Lily was too quick for her. 'Oh, she has
refused him, of course. But, Major Grantly is a man of too much sense to
expect that he should succeed the first time. Let me see; this is the
fourteenth. These clocks run fourteen days, and therefore, you may
expect him again about the twenty-eighth. For myself, I think you are
giving him an immense deal of unnecessary trouble, and that if he left
you in the lurch it would only serve you right; but you have the world
with you, I'm told. A girl is supposed to tell a man two fibs before she
may tell him one truth.'
'I told him no fib, Lily. I told him that I would not marry him and I
will not.'
'But why not, dear Grace?' said Mrs Dale.
'Because the people say that papa is a thief!' Having said this, Grace
walked slowly out of the room, and neither Mrs Dale nor Lily attempted
to follow her.
'She's as good as gold,' said Lily, when the door was closed.
'And he;--what of him?'
'I think he is good too; but she has told me nothing yet of what he has
said to her. He must be good, or he would not have come down here after
her. But I don't wonder at his coming, because she is so beautiful! Once
or twice as we were walking back today, I thought her face was the most
lovely that I had ever seen. And did you see her just now, as she spoke
of her father?'
'Oh, yes;--I saw her.'
'Think what she will be in two or three years' time, when he becomes a
woman. She talks French, and Italian, and Hebrew for anything that I
know; and she is perfectly beautiful. I never saw a more lovely
figure;--and she has spirit enough for a goddess. I don't think that
Major Grantly is such a fool after all.'
'I never took him for a fool.'
'I have no doubt all his own people do;--or they will, when they hear of
it. But, mamma, she will grow to be big enough to walk atop all the Lady
Hartletops in England. It will all come right at last.'
'You think it will?'
'Oh, yes. Why should it not? If he is worth having, it will;--and I
think he is worth having. He must wait till this horrid trial is over.
It is clear to me that Grace thinks her father will be convicted.'
'But he cannot have taken the money.'
'I think he took it, and I think it wasn't his. But I don't think he
stole it. I don't know whether you can understand the difference.'
'I am afraid a jury won't understand it.'
'A jury of men will not. I wish they could put you and me on it, mamma.
I would take my best boots and eat them down to the heels, for Grace's
sake, and for Major Grantly's. What a good-looking man he is!'
'Yes, he is.'
'And so like a gentleman! I'll tell you what, mamma; we won't say
anything to her about him for the present. Her heart will be so full she
will be driven to talk, and we can comfort her better in that way.' The
mother and daughter agreed to act upon these tactics and nothing more
was said to Grace about her lover on that evening.
Major Grantly walked from Mrs Dale's house to the inn and ordered his
gig, and drove himself out of Allington, almost without remembering
where he was or whither he was going. He was thinking solely of what had
just occurred, and of what, on his part, should follow as the result of
that meeting. Half at least of the noble deeds done in this world are
due to emulation, rather than to the native nobility of the actors. A
young man leads a forlorn hope because another young man has offered to
do so. Jones in the hunting-field rides at an impracticable fence
because he is told Smith took it three years ago. And Walker puts his
name down for ten guineas at a charitable dinner when he hears
Thompson's read out for five. And in this case the generosity and
self-denial shown by Grace warmed and cherished similar virtues within
her lover's breast. Some few weeks ago Major Grantly had been in doubt
as to what his duty required of him in reference to Grace Crawley; but
he had no doubt whatsoever now. In the fervour of his admiration he
would have gone straight to the archdeacon, had it been possible, and
have told him what he had done and what he intended to do. Nothing now
should stop him;--no consideration, that is, either as regarded money or
position. He had pledged himself solemnly, and he was very glad that he
had pledged himself. He would write to Grace and explain to her that he
trusted altogether in her father's honour and innocence, but that no
consideration as to that ought to influence either him or her in any
way. If, independently of her father, she could bring herself to come to
him and be his wife, she was bound to do so now, let the position of her
father be what it might. And thus, as he drove his gig back towards
Guestwick, he composed a very pretty letter to the lady of his love.
And as he went, at the corner of the lane which led from the main road
up to Guestwick cottage, he again came upon John Eames, who was also
returning to Guestwick. There had been a few words spoken between Lady
Julia and Johnny respecting Major Grantly after the girls had left the
cottage, and Johnny had been persuaded that the strange visitor to
Allington could have no connexion with his arch-enemy. 'And why has he
gone to Allington,' John demanded, somewhat sternly, of his hostess.
'Well; if you ask me, I think he has gone there to see your cousin,
Grace Crawley.'
'He told me that he knew Grace,' said John, looking as though he were
conscious of his own ingenuity in putting two and two together very
cleverly.
'Your cousin Grace is a very pretty girl,' said Lady Julia.
'It's a long time since I've seen her,' said Johnny.
'Why, you saw her just this last minute,' said Lady Julia.
'I didn't look at her,' said Johnny. Therefore, when he again met Major
Grantly, having continued to put two and two together with great
ingenuity, he felt quite sure that the man had nothing to do with the
arch-enemy, and he determined to be gracious. 'Did you find them at home
at Allington,' he said, raising his hat.
'How do you do again?' said the major. 'Yes, I found your friend Mrs
Dale at home.'
'But not her daughter, or my cousin? They were up there;--where I've
come from. But, perhaps, they had got back before you left.'
'I saw them both. They found me on the road with Mr Dale.'
'What--the squire? Then you have seen everybody.'
'Everybody I wished to see at Allington.'
'But you wouldn't stay at the "Red Lion"?'
'Well, no. I remembered that I wanted to get back to London; and as I
had seen my friends, I thought I might as well hurry away.'
'You knew Mrs Dale before, then?'
'No, I didn't. I never saw her in my life before. But I knew the old
squire when I was a boy. However, I should have said friend. I went to
see one friend, and I saw her.'
John Eames perceived that his companion put a strong emphasis on the
word 'her', as though he were determined to declare boldly that he had
gone to Allington solely to see Grace Crawley. He had not the slightest
objection to recognising in Major Grantly a suitor for his cousin's
hand. He could only reflect what an unusually fortunate girl Grace must
be if such a thing could be true. Of those poor Crawleys he had only
heard from time to time that their misfortunes were as numerous as the
sands on the sea-shore, and as unsusceptible of any fixed and permanent
arrangement. But, as regarded Grace, there would be a very permanent
arrangement. Tidings had reached him that Grace was a great scholar, but
he had never heard much of her beauty. It must probably be the case that
Major Grantly was fond of Greek. There was, he reminded himself, no
accounting for tastes; but as nothing could be more respectable than
such an alliance, he thought that it would become him to be civil to the
major.
'I hope you found her quite well. I had barely time to speak to her
myself.'
'Yes, she was very well. This is a sad thing about her father.'
'Very sad,' said Johnny. Perhaps the major had heard about the
accusation for the first time today, and was going to find an escape on
that plea. If such was the case, it would not be so well to be
particularly civil.
'I believe Mr Crawley is a cousin of yours?' said the major.
'His wife is my mother's first-cousin. There mothers were sisters.'
'She is an excellent woman.'
'I believe so. I don't know much about them myself--that is,
personally. Of course I have heard of this charge that has been made
against him. It seems to me to be a great shame.'
'Well, I can't exactly say that it is a shame. I do not know that there
has been anything done with a feeling of persecution or of cruelty. It
is a great mystery, and we must have it cleared up if we can.'
'I don't suppose he can have been guilty,' said John.
'Certainly not in the ordinary sense of the word. I heard all the
evidence against him.'
'Oh, you did?'
'Yes,' said the major. 'I live near them in Barsetshire, and I am one
of his bailsmen.'
'Then you are an old friend, I suppose?'
'Not exactly that; but circumstances made me very much interested about
them. I fancy that the cheque was left in his house by accident, and
that it got into his hands he didn't know how, and that when he used it
he thought it was his.'
'That's queer,' said Johnny.
'He is very odd, you know.'
'But it's a kind of oddity that they don't like at assizes.'
'The great cruelty is,' said the major, 'that whatever may be the
result, the punishment will fall so heavily upon his wife and daughters.
I think the whole county ought to come forward and take them by the
hand. Well, good-bye. I'll drive on, as I'm a little in a hurry.'
'Good-bye,' said Johnny. 'I'm very glad to have had the pleasure of
meeting you.' 'He's a good sort of fellow after all,' he said to himself
when the gig had passed on. 'He wouldn't have talked in that way if he
meant to hang back.'
CHAPTER XXXII
MR TOOGOOD
Mr Crawley had declared to Mr Robarts, that he would summon no legal aid
to his assistance at the coming trial. The reader may, perhaps, remember
the impetuosity with which he rejected the advice on this subject which
was conveyed to him by Mr Robarts with all the authority of Archdeacon
Grantly's name. 'Tell the archdeacon,' he had said, 'that I will have
none of his advice.' And then Mr Robarts had left him, fully convinced
that any further interference on his part could be of no avail.
Nevertheless, the words which had then been spoken were not without
effect. This coming trial was ever present to Mr Crawley's mind, and
though, when driven to discuss the subject, he would speak of it with
high spirit, as he had done both to the bishop and to Mr Robarts, yet in
his long hours of privacy, or when alone with his wife, his spirit was
anything but high. 'It will kill me,' he would say to her. 'I shall get
salvation thus. Death will relieve me, and I shall never be called upon
to stand before those cruel eager eyes.' Then she would try to say words
of comfort, sometimes soothing him, as though he were a child, and at
others bidding him to be a man, and remember that as a man he should
have sufficient endurance to bear the eyes of any crowd that might be
there to look at him.
'I think I will go up to London,' he said to her one evening, very soon
after the day of Mr Robarts's visit.
'Go up to London, Josiah!' Mr Crawley had not been up to London once
since they had been settled at Hogglestock, and this sudden resolution
on his part frightened his wife. 'Go up to London, dearest! And why?'
'I will tell you why. They all say that I should speak to some man of
the law whom I may trust about this coming trial. I trust no one in
these parts. Not, mark you, that I say that they are untrustworthy. God
forbid that I should so speak or even so think of men whom I know not.
But the matter has become common in men's mouths at Barchester and at
Silverbridge, that I cannot endure to go among them and to talk of it. I
will go up to London, and I will see your cousin, Mr John Toogood, of
Gray's Inn.' Now in this scheme there was an amount of everyday prudence
which startled Mrs Crawley almost as much as did the prospect of the
difficulties to be overcome if the journey were to be made. Her husband
in the first place, had never once seen Mr John Toogood; and in days
very long back, when he and she were making their first gallant
struggle--for in those days it had been gallant--down in their Cornish
curacy, he had reprobated certain Toogood civilities--professional
civilities--which had been proffered, perhaps, with too plain an
intimation that on the score of relationship the professional work
should be done without payment. The Mr Toogood of those days, who had
been Mrs Crawley's uncle, and the father of Mrs Eames and grandfather or
our friend Johnny Eames, had been much angered by some correspondence
which had grown up between him and Mr Crawley, and from that day there
had been a cessation of all intercourse between the families. Since
those days that Toogood had been gathered to the ancient Toogoods of
old, and the son reigned on the family throne in Raymond Buildings. The
present Toogood was therefore first cousin to Mrs Crawley. But there had
been no intimacy between them. Mrs Crawley had not seen her cousin since
her marriage--as indeed she had seen none of her relations, having been
estranged from them by the singular bearing of her husband. She knew
that her cousin stood high in his profession, the firm of Toogood and
Crump--Crump and Toogood it should have been properly been called in
these days--having always held its head up high above all dirty work;
and she felt that her husband could look for advice from no better
source. But how would such a one as he manage to tell his story to a
stranger? Nay, how would he find his way alone into the lawyer's room,
to tell his story at all--so strange was he to the world? And then the
expense! 'If you do not wish me to apply to your cousin, say so, and
there shall be an end of it,' said Mr Crawley in an angry tone.
'Of course I would wish it. I believe him to be an excellent man, and a
good lawyer.'
'Then why should I not go to his chambers? In forma pauperis I must go
to him, and must tell him so. I cannot pay him for the labour of his
counsel, nor for such minutes of his time as I shall use.'
'Oh, Josiah, you need not speak of that.'
'But I must speak of it. Can I go to a professional man; who keeps as
it were his shop open for those who may think fit to come, and purchase
of him, and take of his goods, and afterwards, when the goods have been
used, tell him that I have not the price in my hand? I will not do that,
Mary. You think that I am mad, that I know not what I do. Yes--I see it
in your eyes; and you are sometimes partly right. But I am not so mad
but that I know what is honest. I will tell your cousin that I am sore
straitened, and brought down into the very dust by misfortune. And I
will beseech him, for what of ancient feeling of family he may bear to
you, to listen to me for a while. And I will be very short, and, if need
be, will bide his time patiently, and perhaps he may say a word to me
that may be of use.'
There was certainly very much in this to provoke Mrs Crawley. It was
not only that she knew well that her cousin would give ample and
immediate attention, and lend himself thoroughly to the matter without
any idea of payment--but that she could not quite believe that her
husband's humility was true humility. She strove to believe it, but she
knew that she failed. After all it was only a feeling on her part. There
was no argument within herself about it. An unpleasant taste came across
the palate of her mind, as such a savour will sometimes, from some
unexpected source, come across the palate of the mouth. Well; she could
only gulp at it, and swallow it an excuse it. Among the salad that comes
from your garden a bitter leaf will now and then make its way into your
salad-bowl. Alas, there were so many bitter leaves ever making their way
into her bowl! 'What I mean is, Josiah, that no long explanation will be
needed. I think from what I remember of him, that he would do for us
anything that he could do.'
'Then I will go to the man, and will humble myself before him. Even
that, hard as it is to me, may be a duty that I owe.' Mr Crawley as he
said this was remembering the fact that he was a clergyman of the Church
of England, and that he had a rank of his own in the country, which, did
he ever do such a thing as go out for dinner in company, would establish
for him a certain right of precedence; whereas this attorney, of whom he
was speaking, was, so to say, nobody in the eyes of the world.
'There need be no humbling, Josiah, other than that which is due from a
man to man in all circumstances. But never mind; we will not talk about
that. If it seems good to you, go to Mr Toogood. I think that it is
good. May I write to him and say that you will go?'
'I will write to him myself.'
Then the wife paused before she asked the next question--paused for some
minute or two, and than asked it with anxious doubt--'And may I go with
you, Josiah?'
'Why should two go when one can do the work?' he answered sharply. 'Have
we money so much to command?'
'Indeed, no.'
'You should go and do it all, for you are wiser in these things than I
am, were it not that I may not dare to show--that I submit myself to my
wife.'
'Nay, my dear!'
'But it is ay, my dear. It is so. This is a thing such as men do; not
such as women do, unless they be forlorn and unaided of men. I know that
I am weak where you are strong; that I am crazed where you are
clear-witted.'
'I meant not that, Josiah. It was of your health that I thought.'
'Nevertheless it is as I say; but, for all that, it may not be that you
should do my work. There are those watching me who would say, "Lo! He
confesses himself incapable." And then someone would whisper something
of a madhouse. Mary, I fear that worse than a prison.'
'May God in His mercy forbid such cruelty!'
'But I must look to it, my dear. Do you think that that woman, who sits
at Barchester in high places, disgracing herself and that puny
ecclesiastical lord who is her husband--do you think that she would not
immure me if she could? She is a she-wolf--only less reasonable than
the dumb brute as she sharpens her teeth in malice coming from anger,
and not in malice coming from hunger as do the outer wolves of the
forest. I tell you, Mary, that if she had a colourable ground for her
action, she would swear tomorrow that I am mad.'
'You shall go alone to London.'
'Yes, I will go alone. They shall not say that I cannot yet do my own
work as a man should do. I stood up before him, the puny man who is
called a bishop, and before her who makes herself great by his
littleness, and I scorned them both to their faces. Though the shoes
which I had on were broken, as I myself could not but see when I stood,
yet I was greater than they were with all their purple and fine linen.'
'But, Josiah, my cousin will not be harsh to you.'
'Well--and if he be not?'
'Ill-usage you can bear; and violent ill-usage, such as that which Mrs
Proudie allowed herself to exhibit, you can repay with interest; but
kindness seems to be too heavy a burden for you.'
'I will struggle. I will endeavour. I will speak but little, and, if
possible, I will listen much. Now, my dear, I will write to this man,
and you shall give me the address that is proper for him.' Then he wrote
the letter, not accepting a word in the way of dictation from his wife,
but 'craving great kindness of a short interview, for which he ventured
to become a solicitor, urged thereto by his wife's assurance that one
with whom he was connected by family ties would do as much as this for
the possible preservation of the honour of the family.' In answer to
this Mr Toogood wrote back as follows:--'Dear Mr Crawley, I will be at
my office all Thursday morning next from ten to two, and will take care
that you shan't be kept waiting for me above ten minutes. You parsons
never like waiting. But hadn't you better come and breakfast with me and
Maria at nine? Then we'd have a talk as we walked to the office. Yours
always, THOMAS TOOGOOD.' And the letter was dated from the attorney's
private house in Tavistock Square.
'I am sure he means to be kind,' said Mrs Crawley.
'Doubtless he means to be kind. But kindness is rough;--I will not say
unmannerly, as the word would be harsh. I have never even seen the lady
whom he calls Maria.'
'She is his wife!'
'So I would venture to suppose; but she is unknown to me. I will write
again, and thank him, and say that I will be with him at ten to the
moment.'
There were still many things to be settled before the journey could be
made. Mr Crawley, in his first plan, proposed that he should go up by
night mail train, travelling in the third class, having walked over to
Silverbridge to meet it; that he should then walk about London from 5am
to 10am, and afterwards come down by an afternoon train to which a third
class was also attached. But at last his wife persuaded him that such a
task as that, performed in the middle of winter, would be enough to kill
any man, and that, if attempted, it would certainly kill him; and he
consented at last to sleep the night in town--being specially moved
thereto by discovering that he could, in conformity with this scheme,
get in and out of the train at a station considerably nearer to him than
Silverbridge, and that he could get a return-ticket at a third-class
fare. The whole journey, he found, could be done for a pound, allowing
him seven shillings for his night's expenses in London; and out of the
resources of the family there were produced two sovereigns, so that in
the event of accident he would not utterly be a castaway from want of
funds.
So he started on his journey after an early dinner, almost hopeful
through the new excitement of a journey to London, and his wife walked
with him nearly as far as the station. 'Do not reject my cousin's
kindness,' were the last words she spoke.
'For his professional kindness, if he will extend it to me, I will be
most thankful,' he replied. She did not dare to say more; nor had she
dared to write privately to her cousin, asking for any special help,
lest by doing so she should seem to impugn the sufficiency and stability
of her husband's judgment. He got up to town late at night, and having
made inquiry of one of the porters, he hired a bed for himself in the
neighbourhood of the railway station. Here he had a cup of tea and a
morsel of bread-and-butter, and in the morning he breakfasted again on
the same fare. 'No I have no luggage,' he had said to the girl at the
public-house, who had asked him as to his travelling gear. 'If luggage
be needed as a certificate of respectability, I will pass on elsewhere,'
said he. The girl stared, and assured him that she did not doubt his
respectability. 'I am a clergyman of the Church of England,' he had
said, 'but my circumstances prevent me from seeking a more expensive
lodging.' They did their best to make him comfortable, and, I think,
almost disappointed him in not heaping further misfortunes on his head.
He was in Raymond's Buildings at half-past nine, and for half an hour
walked up and down the umbrageous pavement--it used to be umbrageous,
but perhaps the trees have gone now--before the doors of the various
chambers. He could hear the clock strike from Gray's Inn; and the moment
that it had struck he was turning in, but was encountered in the passage
by Mr Toogood, who was equally punctual with himself. Strange stories
about Mr Crawley had reached Mr Toogood's household, and that Maria, the
mention of whose Christian name had been so offensive to the clergyman,
had begged her husband not to be a moment late. Poor Mr Toogood, who on
ordinary days did perhaps take a few minutes' grace, was thus hurried
away almost with his breakfast in his throat, and, as we have seen, just
saved himself. 'Perhaps, sir, you are Mr Crawley?' he said, in a
good-humoured, cheery voice. He was a good-humoured, cheery-looking man,
about fifty years of age, with grizzled hair and sunburnt face, and
large whiskers. Nobody would have taken him to be a partner in any of
those great houses of which we have read in history--the Quirk, Gammon
and Snaps of the profession, or the Dodson and Foggs, who are immortal.
'That is my name, sir,' said Mr Crawley, taking off his hat and bowing
low, 'and I am here by appointment to meet Mr Toogood, the solicitor,
whose name I see affixed upon the door-post.'
'I am Mr Toogood, the solicitor, and I hope to see you quite well, Mr
Crawley.' Then the attorney shook hands with the clergyman and preceded
him upstairs to the front room on the first floor. 'Here we are, Mr
Crawley, and pray take a chair. I wish you could have made it convenient
to come and see us at home. We are rather long, as my wife says--long in
family, she means, and therefore are not very well off for spare beds--'
'Oh, sir.'
'I've twelve of 'em living, Mr Crawley--from eighteen years, the
eldest--a girl, down to eighteen months the youngest--a boy, and they go
in and out, boy and girl, boy and girl, like the cogs of a wheel. They
ain't such far away distant cousins from your own young ones--only
first, once, as we call it.'
'I am aware that there is a family tie, or I should not have ventured to
trouble you.'
'Blood is thicker than water, isn't it? I often say that. I heard of
one your girls only yesterday. She is staying somewhere down in the
country, not far from where my sister lives--Mrs Eames, the widow of
poor John Eames, who never did any good in this world. I daresay you've
heard of her?'
'The name is familiar to me, Mr Toogood.'
'Of course it is. I've a nephew down there just now, and he saw your
girl the other day;--very highly spoke of her too. Let me see;--how many
do you have?'
'Three living, Mr Toogood.'
'I've just four times three;--that's the difference. But I comfort
myself with the text about the quiver you know; and I tell them that
when they've eat up all the butter, they'll have to take their bread
dry.'
'I trust the young people take your teaching in the proper spirit.'
'I don't know much about spirit. There's spirit enough. My second
girl, Lucy, told me that if I came here today without tickets for the
pantomime I shouldn't have any dinner allowed me. That's the way they
treat me. But we understand each other at home. We're all pretty good
friends there, thank God. And there isn't a sick chick among the
boiling.'
'You have many mercies for which you should indeed be thankful,' said Mr
Crawley, gravely.
'Yes, yes, yes; that's true. I think of that sometimes, though perhaps
not so much as I ought to do. But the best way to be thankful is to use
the goods the gods provide you. "The lovely Thais sits beside you. Take
the goods the gods provide you." I often say that to my wife, till the
children have got calling her Thais. The children have it pretty much
their own way with us, Mr Crawley.'
By this time Mr Crawley was almost beside himself, and was altogether at
a loss how to bring in the matter on which he wished to speak. He had
expected to find a man who in the hurry of London business might perhaps
just manage to spare him five minutes--who would grapple instantly with
the subject that was to be discussed between them, would speak to him
half-a-dozen hard words of wisdom, and would then dismiss him and turn
on the instant to other matters of important business;--but here was an
easy familiar fellow, who seemed to have nothing on earth to do, and who
at this first meeting had taken advantage of a distant family connexion
to tell him everything about the affairs of his own household. And then
how peculiar were the domestic affairs which he told! What was Mr
Crawley to say to a man who had taught his own children to call their
mother Thais? Of Thais Mr Crawley did know something, and he forgot to
remember that perhaps Mr Toogood knew less. He felt it, however, to be
very difficult to submit the details of his case to a gentleman who
talked in such a strain about his own wife and children.
But something must be done. Mr Crawley, in his present frame of mind,
could not sit and talk about Thais all day. 'Sir,' he said, 'the picture
of your home is very pleasant, and I presume that plenty abounds there.'
'Well, you know, pretty toll-loll for that. With twelve of 'em, Mr
Crawley, I needn't tell you they are not all going to have castles and
parks of their own, unless they can get 'em off their own bats. But I
pay upwards of a hundred a year each for my eldest three boys'
schooling, and I've been paying eighty for the girls. Put that together
and see what it comes to. Educate, educate, educate; that's my word.'
'No better word can be spoken, sir.'
'I don't think there's a girl in Tavistock Square that can beat
Polly--she's the eldest, called after her mother, you know--that can
beat her at the piano. And Lucy has read Lord Byron and Tom Moore all
through, every word of 'em. By Jove, I believe she knows most of Tom
Moore by heart. And the young uns a coming on just as well.'
'Perhaps, sir, as your time is, no doubt, precious--'
'We'll tackle to? Very well; so be it. Now, Mr Crawley, let me hear
what it is I can do for you.' Of a sudden, as Mr Toogood spoke these
last words, the whole tone of his voice seemed to change, and even the
position of his body became so much altered as to indicate a different
kind of man. 'You just tell your story in your own way, and I won't
interrupt you till you've done. That's always the best.'
'I must first crave your attention to an unfortunate preliminary,' said
Mr Crawley.
'And what is that?'
'I come before you in forma pauperis.' Here Mr Crawley paused and stood
up before the attorney with his hands crossed one upon the other,
bending low, as though calling attention to the poorness of his raiment.
'I know that I have no justification for my conduct. I have nothing of
reason to offer why I should trespass upon your time. I am a poor man,
and cannot pay you for your services.'
'Oh, bother!' said Mr Toogood, jumping from his chair.
'I do not know whether your charity will grant me that which I ask--'
'Don't let us have any more of this,' said the attorney. 'We none of us
like that kind of thing at all. If I can be of any service to you,
you're as welcome as flowers in May; and as for billing my first-cousin,
which your wife is, I should as soon think of sending an account to my
own.'
'But, Mr Toogood--'
'Do you go on now with your story; I'll put the rest all right.'
'I was bound to be explicit, Mr Toogood.'
'Very well; now you have been explicit with a vengeance, and you may
heave ahead. Let's hear the story, and if I can help you I will. When
I've said that, you may be sure I mean it. I've heard something of it
before; but let me hear it all from you.'
Then Mr Crawley began and told his story. Mr Toogood was actually true
to his promise and let the narrator go on with his narrative without
interruption. When Mr Crawley came to his own statement that the cheque
had been paid to him by Mr Soames, and went on to say that that
statement had been false--'I told him that, but I told him so wrongly,'
and then paused, thinking that the lawyer would ask some question, Mr
Toogood simply said, 'Go on; go on. I'll come back to all that when
you've done.' And he merely nodded his head when Mr Crawley spoke of his
second statement, that the money had come from the dean. 'We had been
bound together by close ties of early familiarity,' said Mr Crawley,
'and in former years our estates in life were the same. But he has
prospered and I have failed. And when creditors were importunate, I
consented to accept relief in money which had previously been often
offered. And I must acknowledge, Mr Toogood, while saying this, that I
have known--have known with heartfelt agony--that at former times my
wife has taken that from my friend Mr Arabin, with hand half-hidden from
me, which I have refused. Whether it be better to eat--the bread of
charity --or not to eat bread at all, I, for myself, have no doubt,' he
said; 'but when the want strikes one's wife and children, and the
charity strikes only oneself, then there is a doubt.' When he spoke
thus, Mr Toogood got up, and thrusting his hands in his waistcoat
pockets walked about the room, exclaiming, 'By George, by George, by
George!' But he still let the man go on with his story, and heard him
out at last to the end.
'And they committed you for trial at the next Barchester assizes?' said
the lawyer.
'They did.'
'And you employed no lawyer before the magistrates?'
'None;--I refused to employ anyone.'
'You were wrong there, Mr Crawley. I must be allowed to say that you
were wrong there.'
'I may possibly have been so from your point of view, Mr Toogood; but
permit me to explain. I--'
'It's no good explaining now. Of course you must employ a lawyer for
your defence--an attorney who will put the case into the hands of
counsel.'
'But that I cannot do, Mr Toogood.'
'You must do it. If you don't do it, your friends should do it for you.
If you don't do it, everybody will say you're mad. There isn't a single
solicitor you could find within a half a mile of you at this moment who
wouldn't give you the same advice --not a single man, either, who had
got a head on his shoulders worth a trump.'
When Mr Crawley was told that madness would be laid at his charge if he
did not do as he was bid, his face became very black, and assumed
something of that look of determined obstinacy which it had worn when he
was standing in the presence of the bishop and Mrs Proudie. 'It may be
so,' he said. 'It may be as you say, Mr Toogood. But these neighbours of
yours, as to whose collected wisdom you speak with so much certainty,
would hardly recommend me to indulge in a luxury for which I have no
means of paying.'
'Who thinks about paying under such circumstances as these?'
'I do, Mr Toogood.'
'The wretched costermonger that comes to grief has a barrister in a wig
and gown to give him his chance of escape.'
'But I am not a costermonger, Mr Toogood--though more wretched perhaps
than any costermonger now in existence. It is my lot to have to endure
the sufferings of poverty, and at the same time not be exempt from those
feelings of honour to which poverty is seldom subject. I cannot afford
to call in legal assistance for which I cannot pay--and I will not do
it.'
'I'll carry the case through for you. It certainly is not just my line
of business--but I'll see it carried through for you.'
'Out of your own pocket?'
'Never mind; when I say I'll do a thing, I'll do it.'
'No, Mr Toogood; this thing you can not do. But do not suppose I am the
less grateful.'
'What is it that I can do then? Why do you come to me if you won't take
my advice?'
After this the conversation went on for a considerable time without
touching on any point which need be brought palpably before the reader's
eye. The attorney continued to beg the clergyman to have his case
managed in the usual way, and went so far as to tell him that he would
be ill-treating his wife and family if he continued to be obstinate. But
the clergyman was not shaken from his resolve, and was at last able to
ask Mr Toogood what he had better do--how he had better attempt to
defend himself--on the understanding that no legal aid was to be
employed. When this question was at last asked in such a way as to
demand an answer, Mr Toogood sat for a moment or two in silence. He felt
that an answer was not only demanded, but almost enforced; and yet there
might be much difficulty in giving it.
'Mr Toogood,' said Mr Crawley, seeing the attorney's hesitation, 'I
declare to you before God, that my only object will be to enable the
jury to know about this sad matter all that I know myself. If I could
open my breast to them I should be satisfied. But then a prisoner can
say nothing; and what he does so is ever accounted false.'
'That is why you should have legal assistance.'
'We had already come to a conclusion on that matter, as I thought,' said
Mr Crawley.
Mr Toogood paused for a another moment or two, and then dashed at his
answer; or rather, dashed at a counter question. 'Mr Crawley, where did
you get the cheque? You must pardon me, you know; or, if you wish it, I
will not press the question. But so much hangs on that, you know.'
'Everything would hang on it--if I only knew.'
'You mean that you forget?'
'Absolutely; totally. I wish, Mr Toogood, I could explain to you the
toilsome perseverance with which I have cudgelled my poor brains,
endeavouring to extract from them some scintilla of memory that would
aid me.'
'Could you have picked it up at the house?'
'No;--no; that I did not do. Dull as I am, I know so much. It was mine
of right, from whatever source it came to me. I know myself as no one
else can know me, in spite of the wise man's motto. Had I picked up a
cheque in my house, or on the road, I should not have slept till I had
taken steps to restore it to the seeming owner. So much I can say. But,
otherwise, I am in such matter so shandy-pated, that I can trust myself
to be sure of nothing. I thought;--I certainly thought--'
'You thought what?'
'I thought that it had been given to me by my friend the dean. I
remember well that I was in his library at Barchester, and I was
somewhat provoked in spirit. There were lying on the floor hundreds of
volumes, all glittering with gold, and reeking with new leather from
binders. He asked me to look at his toys. Why should I look at them?
There was a time, but the other day it seemed, when he had been glad to
borrow from me such treasures as I had. And it seemed to me that he was
heartless in showing me these things. Well; I need not trouble you with
all that.'
'Go on;--go on. Let me hear it all, and I shall learn something.'
'I know now how vain, how vile I was. I always know afterwards how low
the spirit has grovelled. I had gone to him then because I had resolved
to humble myself, and, for my wife's sake, to ask my friend--for money.
With words which were very awkward--which no doubt were ungracious--I
had asked him, and he had bid me follow him from his hall into his
library. There he left me awhile, and on returning told me with a smile
that he had sent for money--and, if I can remember, the sum he named was
fifty pounds.'
'But it has turned out, as you say, that you have paid fifty pounds with
his money--besides the cheque.'
'That is true;--that is quite true. There is no doubt of that. But as I
was saying--then he fell to talking about the books, and I was angered.
I was very sore in my heart. From the moment in which the words of
beggary had passed from my lips, I had repented. And he had laughed and
had taken it gaily. I turned upon him and told him that I had changed my
mind. I was grateful, but I would not have his money. And so I prepared
to go. But he argued with me, and would not let me go--telling me of my
wife and of my children, and while he argued there came a knock on the
door, and something was handed in, and I knew that it was the hand of
his wife.'
'It was the money, I suppose?'
'Yes, Mr Toogood; it was the money. And I became the more uneasy,
because she herself is rich. I liked it the less because it seemed to
come from her hand. But I took it. What could I do when he reminded me
that I could not keep my parish unless certain sums were paid? He gave
me a little parcel in a cover, and I took it--and left him sorrowing. I
had never before come quite to that;--though, indeed, it had in fact
been often so before. What was the difference whether the alms were
given into my hands or into my wife's?'
'You are too touchy about it all, Mr Crawley.'
'Of course I am. Do you try it, and see whether you will be touchy. You
have worked hard at your profession, I daresay.'
'Well, yes; pretty well. To tell the truth, I have worked hard. By
George, yes! It's not so bad now as it used to be.'
'But you have always earned your bread; bread for yourself, and bread
for your wife and little ones. You can buy tickets for the play.'
'I couldn't always buy tickets, mind you.'
'I have worked as hard, and yet I cannot get bread. I am older than
you, and I cannot earn my bare bread. Look at my clothes. If you had to
go and beg from Mr Crump, would you not be touchy?'
'As it happens, Crump isn't so well off as I am.'
'Never mind. But I took it, and went home, and for two days I did not
look at it. And then there came an illness upon me, and I know not what
passed. But two men who had been hard on me came to the house when I was
out, and my wife was in a terrible state; and I gave her the money, and
she went into Silverbridge and paid them.'
'And this cheque was with what you gave her?'
'No; I gave her money in notes--just fifty pounds. When I gave it her,
I thought I gave it all; and yet afterwards I thought I remembered that
in my illness I had found the cheque with the dean's money. But it was
not so.'
'You are sure of that?'
'He has said that he put fives notes of ten pounds each into the cover,
and such notes I certainly gave to my wife.'
'Where then did you get the cheque?' Mr Crawley again paused before he
answered. 'Surely, if you will exert your mind, you will remember,' said
the lawyer. 'Where did you get the cheque?'
'I do not know.'
Mr Toogood threw himself back in his chair, took his knee up into his
lap to nurse it, and began to think of it. He sat thinking of it for
some minutes without a word--perhaps for five minutes, though the time
seemed to be much longer to Mr Crawley, who was, however, determined
that he would not interrupt him. And Mr Toogood's thoughts were at
variance with Mr Toogood's former words. Perhaps, after all, this scheme
of Mr Crawley's--or rather the mode of defence on which he had resolved
without any scheme--might be the best of which the case admitted. It
might be well that he should go into court without a lawyer. 'He has
convinced me of his innocence,' Mr Toogood said to himself, 'and why
should he not convince a jury? He has convinced me, not because I am
specially soft, or because I love the man--for as to that I dislike him
rather than otherwise;--but because there is either real truth in his
words, or else so well-feigned a show a truth that no jury can tell the
difference. I think it is true. By George, I think he did get the twenty
pounds honestly, and that he does not this moment know where he got it.
He may have put his finger into my eye; but, if so, why not also into
the eyes of a jury?' Then he released his leg, and spoke something of
his thoughts aloud. 'It's a sad story,' he said; 'a very sad story.'
'Well, yes, it's sad enough. If you could see my house, you'd say so.'
'I haven't a doubt but what you're as innocent as I am.' Mr Toogood, as
he said this, felt a little tinge of conscience. He did believe Mr
Crawley to be innocent, but he was not so sure of it as his words would
seem to imply. Nevertheless he repeated the words again--'as innocent as
I am.'
'I don't know,' said Mr Crawley. 'I don't know. I think I am; but I
don't know.'
'I believe you are. But you see the case is a very distressing one. A
jury has a right to say that the man in possession of a cheque for
twenty pounds should account for his possession of it. If I understand
the story aright, Mr Soames will be able to prove that he brought the
cheque into your house, and, as far as he knows, never took it out
again.'
'I suppose so; all the same, if he brought it in, then did he take it
out again.'
'I am saying what he will prove--or, in other words, what he will state
upon oath. You can't contradict him. You can't get into the box to do
it--even if that would be of any avail; and I am glad that you cannot,
as it would be of no avail. And you can put no one else into the box who
can do so.'
'No; no.'
'That is to say, we think you cannot do so. People can do so many
things that they don't think they can do; and can't do so many things
that they think that they can do! When will the dean be home?'
'I don't know.'
'Before the trial?'
'I don't know. I have no idea.'
'It's almost a toss-up whether he'd do more harm or good if he were
there.'
'I wish he might be there if he has anything to say, whether it might be
for harm or good.'
'And Mrs Arabin;--she is with him?'
'They tell me she is not. She is in Europe. He is in Palestine.'
'In Palestine, is he?'
'So they tell me. A dean can go where he likes. He has no cure of
souls to stand in the way of his pleasures.'
'He hasn't--hasn't he? I wish I were a dean; that is, if I were not a
lawyer. Might I write a line to the dean--and to Mrs Dean if it seemed
fit? You wouldn't mind that? As you have come to see your cousin at
last--and very glad I am that you have--you must leave him a little
discretion. I won't say anything I oughtn't to say.' Mr Crawley opposed
this scheme for some time, but at last consented to the proposition.
'And I'll tell you what, Mr Crawley; I am very fond of cathedrals, I am
indeed; and I have long wanted to see Barchester. There's a very fine
what-you-may-call-em; isn't there? Well; I'll just run down at the
assizes. We have nothing to do in London when the judges are in the
country--of course.' Mr Toogood looked into Mr Crawley's eyes as he said
this, to see if his iniquity were detected, but the perpetual curate was
altogether innocent in these matters. 'Yes; I'll just run down for a
mouthful of fresh air. Of course I shan't open my mouth in court. But I
might say one word to the dean, if he's there;--and one word to Mr
Soames. Who is conducting the prosecution?' Mr Crawley said that Mr
Walker was doing so. 'Walker, Walker, Walker? oh--yes; Walker and
Winthrop, isn't it? A decent sort of man, I suppose?'
'I have heard nothing to his discredit, Mr Toogood.'
'And that's saying a great deal for a lawyer. Well, Mr Crawley, if
nothing else comes out between this and that--nothing, that is, that
shall clear your memory about that unfortunate bit of paper, you must
simply tell your story to the jury as you've told it to me. I don't
think any twelve men in England would convict you;--I don't indeed.'
'You think they would not?'
'Of course I've only heard one side, Mr Crawley.'
'No--no--no, that is true.'
'But judging as well as I can judge from one side, I don't think a jury
can convict you. At any rate, I'll see you at Barchester, and I'll write
a line or two before the trial just to find out anything that can be
found out. And you're sure you won't come and take a bit of mutton with
us in the Square? The girls would be delighted to see you, and so would
Maria.' Mr Crawley said that he was quite sure he could not do that, and
then having tendered reiterated thanks to his new friend in words which
were touching in spite of their old-fashioned gravity, he took his
leave, and walked back again to the public-house at Paddington.
He returned home to Hogglestock on the same afternoon, reaching that
place at nine in the evening. During the whole of the day after leaving
Raymond's Buildings he was thinking of the lawyer, and of the words
which the lawyer had spoken. Although he had been disposed to quarrel
with Mr Toogood on many points, although he had been more than once
disgusted by the attorney's bad taste, shocked by his low morality, and
almost insulted by his easy familiarity, still, when the interview was
over, he liked the attorney. When first Mr Toogood had begun to talk, he
regretted very much that he had subjected himself to the necessity of
discussing his private affairs with such a windbag of a man; but when he
left the chamber he trusted Mr Toogood altogether, and was very glad
that he had sought his aid. He was tired and exhausted when he reached
home, as he had eaten nothing but a biscuit or two since his breakfast;
but his wife got him food and tea, and then asked him as to his success.
'Was my cousin kind to you?'
'Very kind--more than kind--perhaps somewhat too pressing in his
kindness. But I find no fault. God forbid that I should. He is, I think,
a good man, and certainly has been good to me.'
'And what is to be done?'
'He will write to the dean.'
'I am glad of that.'
'And he will be at Barchester.'
'Thank God for that.'
'But not as my lawyer.'
'Nevertheless, I thank God that someone will be there who will know how
to give you assistance and advice.'
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE PLUMSTEAD FOXES
The letters had been brought into the breakfast-parlour at Plumstead
Rectory one morning, and the archdeacon had inspected them all, and then
thrown over to his wife her share of the spoil --as was the custom of
the house. As to most of Mrs Grantly's letters, he never made any
further inquiry. To letters from her sister, the dean's wife, he was
profoundly indifferent, and rarely made any inquiry as to those which
were directed in writing with which he was not familiar. But there were
others as to which, as Mrs Grantly knew, he would be sure to ask her
questions if she did not show them. No note ever reached her from Lady
Harteltop as to which he was not curious, and yet Lady Hartletop's notes
very seldom contained much that was of interest. Now, on this morning,
there came a letter which, as a matter of course, Mrs Grantly read at
breakfast, and which, she knew, would not be allowed to disappear
without inquiry. Nor, indeed, did she wish to keep the letter from her
husband. It was too important to be so treated. But she would have been
glad to gain time to think in what spirit she would discuss the contents
of the letter--if only such time might be allowed to her. But the
archdeacon would allow her no time. 'What does Henry say, my dear?' he
asked, before the breakfast things had been taken away.
'What does he say? Well, he says--I'll give you his letter to read
by-and-by.'
'And why not now?'
'I thought I'd read it again myself, first.'
'But if you have read it, I suppose you know what's in it?'
'Not very clearly, as yet. However, there it is.' She knew very well
that when she had once been asked for it, no peace would be allowed her
till he had seen it. And, alas! there was not much probability of peace
in the house for some time after he had seen it.
The archdeacon read the three or first lines in silence--and then burst
out. 'He has, has he? Then, by heavens--'
'Stop, dearest; stop,' said his wife, rising from her chair and coming
over to him; 'do not say words which you will surely repent.'
'I will say words which shall make him repent. He shall never have from
me a son's portion.'
'Do not make threats in anger. Do not! You know that it is wrong. If
he has offended you, say nothing about it--even to yourself---as to
threatened punishments, till you can judge of the offence in cool
blood.'
'I am cool,' said the archdeacon.
'No, my dear; no; you are angry. And you have not even read his letter
through.'
'I will read his letter.'
'You will see that the marriage is not imminent. It may be that even
yet it will never take place. The young lady has refused him.'
'Psha!'
'You will see that she has done so. He tells us so himself. And she
has behaved very properly.'
'Why has she refused him?'
'There can be no doubt about the reason. She feels that, with this
charge hanging over her father, she is not in a position to become the
wife of any gentleman. You cannot but respect her for that.'
The archdeacon finished his son's letter, uttering sundry interjections
and ejaculations as he did so.
'Of course; I knew it. I understood it all,' he said at last. 'I've
nothing to do with the girl. I don't care whether she be good or bad.'
'Oh, my dear!'
'I care not at all--with reference to my own concerns. Of course I
would wish that the daughter of a neighbouring clergyman --that the
daughter of any neighbour--that the daughter of anyone
whatsoever--should be good rather than bad. But as regards Henry and me,
and our mutual relation, her goodness can make no difference. Let her be
another Grizel, and still such a marriage must estrange him from me, and
me from him.'
'But she has refused him.'
'Yes; and what does he say?--that he has told her that he will not
accept her refusal. Of course we know what it all means. The girl I am
not judging. The girl I will not judge. But my own son, to whom I have
ever done a father's duty with a father's affectionate indulgence--him I
will judge. I have warned him, and he declares himself to be careless of
my warning. I shall take no notice of this letter. I shall neither write
to him about it or speak to him about it. But I charge you to write to
him and tell him that if he does this thing he shall not have a child's
portion from me. It is not that I will shorten that which would have
been his; but he shall have--nothing!' Then, having spoken these words
with a solemnity which for the moment silenced his wife, he got up and
left the room. He left the room and closed the door, but, before he had
gone half the length of the hall towards his own study, he returned and
addressed his wife again. 'You understand my instructions, I hope?'
'What instructions?'
'That you write to Henry and tell him what I say.'
'I will speak again to you about it by-and-by.'
'I will speak no more about it--not a word more. Let there be not a
word more said, but oblige me by doing as I ask you.'
Then he was again about to leave the room, but she stopped him. 'Wait a
moment, my dear.'
'Why should I wait?'
'That you may listen to me. Surely you will do that, when I ask you. I
will write to Henry, of course, if you bid me; and I will give him your
message, whatever it may be; but not today, my dear.'
'Why not today?'
'Because the sun shall go down on your wrath before I become its
messenger. If you choose to write that yourself, I cannot help it. I
cannot hinder you. If I am to write to him on your behalf I will take my
instructions from you tomorrow morning. When tomorrow morning comes you
will not be angry with me because of the delay.'
The archdeacon was by no means satisfied; but he knew his wife too well,
and himself too well, and the world too well, to insist on the immediate
gratification of his passion. Over his bosom's mistress he did exercise
a certain marital control--which was, for instance, quite sufficiently
fixed to enable him to look down with thorough contempt on such a one a
Bishop Proudie; but he was not a despot who could exact a passive
obedience to every fantasy. His wife would not have written the letter
for him on that day, and he knew very well that she would not do so. He
knew also that she was right;--and yet he regretted his want of power.
His anger at the present moment was very hot--so hot that he wished to
wreak it. He knew that it would cool before the morrow;--and, no doubt,
knew also theoretically, that it would be most fitting that it should be
cool. But not the less was it a matter of regret to him that so much
good hot anger should be wasted, and that he could not have his will of
his disobedient son while it lasted. He might, no doubt, have written
himself, but to have done so would not have suited him. Even in his
anger he could not have written to his son without using the ordinary
terms of affection, and in his anger he could not bring himself to use
those terms. 'You will find that I shall be of the same mind
tomorrow--exactly,' he said to his wife. 'I have resolved about it long
since; and it is not likely that I shall change in a day.' Then he went
out, about his parish, intending to continue to think of his son's
iniquity, so that he might keep his anger hot--red hot. Then he
remembered that the evening would come, and that he would say his
prayers; and he shook his head in regret--in a regret of which he was
only half conscious, though it was very keen, and which he did not
attempt to analyse--as he reflected that his rage would hardly be able
to survive that ordeal. How common with us it is to repine that the
devil is not stronger over than he is.
The archdeacon, who was a very wealthy man, had purchased a property at
Plumstead, contiguous to the glebe-land, and had thus come to exercise
in the parish the double duty of rector and squire. And of this estate
in Barsetshire, which extended beyond the confines of Plumstead into the
neighbouring parish of Stogpingum--Stoke Pinguium would have been the
proper name had not the barbarous Saxon tongues clipped it of its proper
proportions--he had always intended that his son Charles should enjoy
the inheritance. There was other property, both in land and in money,
for his elder son, and other again for the maintenance of his wife, for
the archdeacon's father had been for many years Bishop of Barchester,
and such a bishopric as that of Barchester had been in those days worth
money. Of his intention in this respect he had never spoken in plain
language to either of his sons; but the major had for the last year or
two enjoyed the shooting of the Barsetshire covers, giving what orders
he pleased about the game; and the father had encouraged him to take
something like the management of the property into his hands. There
might have been some fifteen hundred acres of it altogether, and the
archdeacon had rejoiced over it with his wife scores of times, saying
that there was many a squire in the county whose elder son would never
find himself so well placed as would his own younger son. Now there was
a string of narrow woods called Plumstead Coppices which ran from a
point near the church right across the parish, dividing the archdeacon's
land from the Ullathorne estate, and these coppices, or belts of
woodland, belonged to the archdeacon. On the morning of which we are
speaking, the archdeacon mounted on his cob, still thinking of his son's
iniquity and of his own fixed resolve to punish him as he had said that
he would punish him, opened with his whip a woodland gate, from which a
green muddy lane led through the trees up to the house of the
gamekeeper. The man's wife was ill, and in his ordinary way of business
the archdeacon was about to call and ask after her health. At the door
of the cottage he found the man, who was woodman as well as gamekeeper,
and was responsible for fences and faggots, as well as for the foxes and
pheasants' eggs.
'How's Martha, Flurry?' said the archdeacon.
'Thanking your reverence, she be a deal improved since the mistress was
here--last Tuesday it was, I think.'
'I'm glad of that. It was only rheumatism, I suppose?'
'Just a tich of fever with it, your reverence, the doctor said,'
'Tell her I was asking after it. I won't mind getting down today, as I
am rather busy. She has had what she wanted from the house?'
'The mistress has been very good in that way. She always is, God bless
her!'
'Good-day to you, Flurry. I'll ask Mr Sims to come and read to her a
bit this afternoon, or tomorrow morning.' The archdeacon kept two
curates, and Mr Sims was one of them.'
'She'll take it very kindly, your reverence. But while you are here,
sir, there's just a word I'd like to say. I didn't happen to catch Mr
Henry when he was here the other day.'
'Never mind Mr Henry--what is it you have to say?'
'I do think, I do indeed, sire, that Mr Thorne's man ain't dealing
fairly along of the foxes. I wouldn't say a word about it, only that Mr
Henry is so particular.'
'What about the foxes? What is he doing with the foxes?'
'Well, sire, he's a trapping on 'em. He is, indeed, your reverence. I
wouldn't speak if I warn't well nigh mortal sure.'
Now the archdeacon had never been a hunting man, though in his early
days many a clergyman had been in the habit of hunting without losing
his clerical character by doing so; but he had lived all his life among
gentlemen in a hunting county, and had his own very strong ideas about
the trapping of foxes. Foxes first, and pheasants afterwards, had always
been the rule with him as to any land of which he himself had the
management. And no man understood better than he did how to deal with
keepers as to this matter of fox-preserving, or knew better that keepers
will in truth obey not the words of their employers, but their
sympathies. 'Wish them to have foxes, and pay them, and they will have
them.' Mr Sowerby of Chaldicotes used to say, and he in his day was
reckoned to be the best preserver of foxes in Barsetshire. 'Tell them to
have them, and don't wish it, and pay them well, and you won't have a
fox to interfere with your game. I don't care what a man says to me, I
can read it all like a book when I see his covers drawn.' That was what
poor Mr Sowerby of Chaldicotes used to say, and the archdeacon had heard
him say it a score of time, and had learned the lesson. But now his
heart was not with the foxes--and especially not with the foxes on
behalf of his son Henry. 'I can't have any meddling with Mr Thorne,' he
said; 'I can't; and I won't.'
'But I don't suppose it can be Mr Thorne's order, your reverence; and Mr
Henry is so particular.'
'Of course it isn't Mr Thorne's order. Mr Thorne has been a hunting man
all his life.'
'But he have guv' up now, your reverence. He ain't hunted these two
years.'
'I'm sure he wouldn't have the foxes trapped.'
'Not if he knowed it, he wouldn't, your reverence. A gentleman of the
likes of him, who's been a hunting over fifty year, wouldn't do the
likes of that; but the foxes is trapped, and Mr Henry'll be a putting it
on me if I don't speak out. They is Plumstead foxes, too; and a vixen
was trapped just across the field yonder, in Goshall Springs, no later
than yesterday morning.' Flurry was now thoroughly in earnest; and,
indeed, the trapping of a vixen in February is a serious thing.
'Goshall Springs don't belong to me,' said the archdeacon.
'No, your reverence; they're on the Ullathorne property. But a word
from your reverence would do it. Mr Henry thinks more of the foxes than
anything. The last word he told me was that it would break his heart if
he saw the coppices drawn blank.'
'Then he must break his heart.' The words were pronounced, but the
archdeacon had so much command over himself as to speak them in such a
voice that the man should not hear them. But it was incumbent on him to
say something that the man should hear. 'I will have no meddling in the
matter, Flurry. Whether there are foxes or whether there are not, is a
matter of no great moment. I will not have a word said to annoy Mr
Thorne.' Then he rode away, back through the wood and out on to the
road, and the horse walked with him leisurely on, whither the archdeacon
hardly knew --for he was thinking, thinking, thinking. 'Well;--if that
ain't the darn'dest thing that ever was,' said Flurry; 'but I'll tell
the squire about Thorne's man--darned if I don't.' now, 'the squire' was
young Squire Gresham, the master of the East Barsetshire hounds.
But the archdeacon went on thinking, thinking, thinking. He could have
heard nothing of his son to stir him more in his favour than this strong
evidence of his partiality for foxes. I do not mean it to be understood
that the archdeacon regarded foxes as better than active charity, of a
contented mind, or a meek spirit, or than self-denying temperance. No
doubt all these virtues did hold in his mind their proper places,
altogether beyond contamination of foxes. But he had prided himself on
thinking that his son should be a country gentleman, and probably
nothing doubting as to the major's active charity and other virtues, was
delighted to receive evidence of those tastes which he had ever wished
to encourage in his son's character. Or rather, such evidence would have
delighted him at any other time than the present. Now it only added more
gall to his cup. 'Why should he teach himself to care for such things,
when he has not the spirit to enjoy them,' said the archdeacon to
himself. 'He is a fool--a fool. A man that has been married once, to go
crazy after a little girl, that has hardly a dress to her back, and who
never was in a drawing-room in her life! Charles is the eldest, and he
shall be the eldest. It was be better to keep it together. It is the way
in which the country has become what it is.' He was out nearly all day,
and did not see his wife till dinner-time. Her father, Mr Harding, was
still with them, but had breakfasted in his own room. Not a word,
therefore, was said about Henry Grantly between the father and mother on
that evening.
Mrs Grantly was determined that, unless provoked, she would say nothing
to him till the following morning. He should sleep upon his wrath before
she spoke to him again. And he was equally unwilling to recur to the
subject. Had she permitted, the next morning would have passed away, and
no word would have been spoken. But this would not have suited her. She
had his orders to write, and she had undertaken to obey these
orders--with the delay of one day. Were she not to write at all--or in
writing to send no message from the father, there would be cause for
further anger. And yet this, I think, was what the archdeacon wished.
'Archdeacon,' she said, 'I shall write to Henry today.'
'Very well.'
'And what am I to say from you?'
'I told you yesterday what are my intentions.'
'I am not asking about that now. We hope there will be years and years
to come, in which you may change them, and shape them as you will. What
shall I tell him now from you?'
'I have nothing to say to him--nothing; not a word. He knows what he
has to expect from me, for I have told him. He is acting with his eyes
open, and so am I. If he married Miss Crawley, he must live on his own
means. I told him that so plainly, that he can want no further
intimation.' Then Mrs Grantly knew that she was absolved from the burden
of yesterday's message, and she plumed herself on the prudence of her
conduct. On the same morning the archdeacon wrote the following note:--
'DEAR THORNE,--
'My man tells me that foxes have been trapped on
Darvell's farm, just outside the coppices. I know
nothing of it myself, but I am sure you'll look to it.
'Yours always,
'T. GRANTLY.'
CHAPTER XXXIV
MRS PROUDIE SENDS FOR HER LAWYER
There was great dismay in Barchester Palace after the visit paid to the
bishop and Mrs Proudie by that terrible clerical offender, Mr Crawley.
It will be remembered, perhaps, how he had defied the bishop with spoken
words, and how he had defied the bishop's wife by speaking words to her.
For the moment, no doubt, Mr Crawley had the best of it. Mrs Proudie
acknowledged to herself that this was the case; but as she was a woman
who had never yet succumbed to an enemy, who had never--if on such an
occasion I may be allowed to use a schoolboy's slang--taken a licking
from anyone, it was not likely that Mr Crawley would be allowed to enjoy
his triumph in peace. It would be odd if all the weight of the palace
would not be able to silence a wretch of a perpetual curate who had
already been committed to take his trial for thieving;--and Mrs Proudie
was determined that all the weight of the palace should be used. As for
the bishop, though he was not as angry as his wife, he was quite
unhappy, and therefore quite as hostile to Mr Crawley; and was fully
conscious that there could be no peace for him now until Mr Crawley
should be crushed. If only the assizes would come at once, and get him
condemned out of the way, what a blessed thing it would be! But
unluckily it still wanted three months to the assizes, and during those
three months Mr Crawley would be at large and subject only to the
episcopal authority. During that time he could not be silenced by the
arm of the civil law. His wife was not long in expressing her opinion
after Mr Crawley had left the palace. 'You must proceed against him in
the Court of Arches--and that at once,' said Mrs Proudie. 'You can do
that, of course? I know that it will be expensive. Of course it will be
expensive. I suppose it may cost us some three hundred pounds; but duty
is duty, my lord, and in such a case as this your duty as a bishop is
paramount.'
The poor bishop knew that it was useless to explain to her the various
mistakes which she made--which she was ever making--as to the extent of
his powers and the modes of procedure which were open to him. When he
would to so she would only rail at him for being lukewarm in his office,
poor in spirit, and afraid of dealing roundly with those below him. On
the present occasion he did say a word, but she would not even hear him
to the end. 'Don't tell me about rural deans, as if I didn't know. The
rural dean has nothing to do with such a case. The man has been
committed for trial. Send for Mr Chadwick at once, and let steps be
taken before you are an hour older.'
'But, my dear, Mr Chadwick can do nothing.'
'The I will see Mr Chadwick.' And in her anger she did sit down and
write a note to Mr Chadwick, begging him to come over to her at the
palace.
Mr Chadwick was a lawyer, living in Barchester, who earned his bread
from ecclesiastical business. His father, and his uncle, and his
grandfather and granduncles, had all been concerned in the affairs of
the diocese of Barchester. His uncle had been bailiff to the episcopal
estates, or steward as he had been called, in Bishop Grantly's time, and
still contrived to draw his income in some shape from the property of
the see. The nephew had also been the legal assistant of the bishop in
his latter days, and had been continued in that position by Bishop
Proudie, not from love, but from expediency. Mr John Chadwick was one of
those gentlemen, two or three of whom are to be seen in connexion with
every see--who seem to be hybrids--half-lay, half-cleric. They dress
like clergymen, and affect that mixture of clerical solemnity and
clerical waggishness which is generally to be found among minor canons
and vicars choral of a cathedral. They live, or at least have their
offices, half in the Close and half out of it--dwelling as it were just
on the borders of holy orders. They always wear white neck-handkerchiefs
and black gloves; and would be altogether clerical in their appearance,
were it not that as regards the outward man they impinge somewhat on the
characteristics of the undertaker. They savour of the church but the
savour is of the church's exterior. Any stranger thrown into chance
contact with one of them would, from instinct, begin to talk about
things ecclesiastical without any reference to things theological or
things religious. They are always most worthy men, much respected in the
society of the Close, and I never heard of one of them whose wife was
not comfortable or whose children were left without provision.
Such a one was Mr John Chadwick, and as it was a portion of his duties
to accompany the bishop to consecrations and ordinations, he knew Dr
Proudie very well. Having been brought up, as it were, under the very
wing of Bishop Grantly, it could not well be that he should love Bishop
Grantly's successor. The old bishop and the new bishop had been so
different that no man could like, or even esteem, them both. But Mr
Chadwick was a prudent man, who knew well the source from which he
earned his bread, and he had never quarrelled with Bishop Proudie. He
knew Mrs Proudie also--of necessity--and when I say of him that he had
hitherto avoided any open quarrel with her, it will I think be allowed
that he was a man of prudence and sagacity.
But he had sometimes been sorely tried, and he felt when he got her note
that he was now about to encounter a very sore trial. He muttered
something which might have been taken for an oath, were it not that the
outwards signs of the man gave warranty that no oath could proceed from
such a one. Then he wrote a short note presenting his compliments to Mrs
Proudie, and saying that he would call at the palace at eleven o'clock
on the following morning.
But, in the meantime, Mrs Proudie, who could not be silent on the
subject for a moment, did learn something of the truth from her husband.
The information did not come to her in the way of instruction, but was
teased out of the unfortunate man. 'I know that you can proceed against
him in the Court of Arches, under the "Church Discipline Act",' she
said.
'No, my dear; no,' said the bishop, shaking his head in his misery.
'Or in the Consistorial Court. It's all the same thing.'
'There must be an inquiry first--by his brother clergy. There must
indeed. It's the only way of proceeding.'
'But there has been an inquiry, and he has been committed.'
'That doesn't signify, my dear. That's the Civil Law.'
'And if the Civil Law condemns him, and locks him up in prison--as it
most certainly will do?'
'But it hasn't done so yet, my dear. I really think that as it has gone
so far, it will be best to leave it as it is till he has taken his
trial.'
'What! Leave him there after what has occurred this morning in this
palace?' The palace with Mrs Proudie was always a palace, and never a
house. 'No; no; ten thousand times no. Are you not aware that he
insulted you, and grossly, most grossly insulted me? Since I first came
to this palace;--never, never. And we know the man to be a thief;--we
absolutely know it. Think, my lord, of the souls of his people!'
'Oh, dear; oh, dear; oh, dear,' said the bishop.
'Why do you fret yourself in that way?'
'Because you will get me into trouble. I tell you the only thing to be
done is to issue a commission with the rural dean at the head of it.'
'Then issue a commission.'
'And they will take three months.'
'Why should they take three months? Why should they take more than
three days--or three hours? It is all plain sailing.'
'More shame for them who make it so.'
'But it is so. If I were to take legal proceedings against him, it
would cost--oh dear--more than a thousand pounds, I should say.'
'If it costs two, you must do it,' Mrs Proudie's anger was still very
hot, or she would not have spoken of an unremunerative outlay of money
in such language as that.
In this manner she did not come to understand, before the arrival of Mr
Chadwick, that her husband could take no legal steps towards silencing
Mr Crawley until a commission of clergymen had been appointed to inquire
into the matter, and that the commission should be headed by the rural
dean within the limits of whose rural deanery the parish of Hogglestock
was situated, or by some beneficed parochial clergyman of repute in the
neighbourhood. Now the rural dean was Dr Tempest of Silverbridge --who
had held that position before the coming of Dr Proudie to the diocese;
and there had grown up in the bosom of Mrs Proudie a strong feeling that
undue mercy had been shown to Mr Crawley by the magistrates of
Silverbridge, of whom Dr Tempest had been one. 'These magistrates had
taken bail for his appearance at the assizes, instead of committing him
to prison at once--as they were bound to do, when such an offence as
that had been committed by a clergyman. But, no;--even though there was
a clergymen among them, they had thought nothing of the souls of the
poor people!' In such language, Mrs Proudie had spoken of the affair at
Silverbridge, and having once committed herself to such an opinion, of
course she thought that Dr Tempest would go through fire and water and
would omit no stretch of what little judicial power might be committed
to his hands--with the view of opposing his bishop, and maintaining the
culprit in is position. 'In such a case as this, can not you name an
acting rural dean yourself? Dr Tempest, you know, is very old.' 'No, my
dear; no; I cannot.' 'You can ask Mr Chadwick, at any rate, and then you
could name Mr Thumble.' 'But Mr Thumble doesn't even hold a living in
the diocese. Oh, dear; oh, dear; oh, dear!' And so the matter rested
till Mr Chadwick came.
Mrs Proudie had no doubt intended to have Mr Chadwick all to herself--at
any rate so as to encounter him in the first instance. But having been
at length convinced that the inquiry by the rural dean was really
necessary as a preliminary, and having also slept upon the question of
expenditure, she gave direction that the lawyer should be shown into the
bishop's study, and she took care to be absent at the moment of his
arrival. Of course she did not intend that Mr Chadwick should leave the
palace without having heard what she had to say, but she thought that it
would be well that he should be made to conceive that though the summons
had been written by her, it had really been intended on the part of the
bishop. 'Mr Chadwick will be with you at eleven, bishop,' she said, as
she got up from the breakfast-table, at which she left his lordship with
two of his daughters and with a married son-in-law, a clergyman who was
staying in the house. 'Very well, my dear,' said the bishop, with a
smile--for he was anxious not to betray any vexation at his wife's
interference before his daughters or the Rev Mr Tickler. But he
understood it all. Mr Chadwick had been sent for with reference to Mr
Crawley, and he was driven--absolutely driven, to propose to his lawyer
that this commission of inquiry should be issued.
Punctually at eleven Mr Chadwick came, wearing a very long face as he
entered the palace door--for he felt that he would in all probability be
now compelled to quarrel with Mrs Proudie. Much he could bear, but there
was a limit to his endurance. She had never absolutely sent for him
before, though she had often interfered with him. 'I shall have to tell
her a bit of my mind,' he said, as he stepped across the Close, habited
in his best suit of black, with most exact white cravat, and yet looking
not quite like a clergyman--with some touch of the undertaker in his
gait. When he found that he was shown into the bishop's room, and that
the bishop was there--the bishop only--his mind was relieved. It would
have been better that the bishop should have written himself, or that
the chaplain should have written in his lordship's name; that, however,
was a trifle.
But the bishop did not know what to say to him. If he intended to
direct an inquiry to be made by the rural dean, it would be by no means
becoming that he should consult Mr Chadwick as to doing so. It might be
well, or if not well at any rate not improper, that he should make
application to Dr Tempest through Mr Chadwick; but in that case he must
give the order at once, and he still wished to avoid it if it were
possible. Since he had been in the diocese no case so grave as this had
been pushed upon him. The intervention of the rural dean in an ordinary
way he had used--had been made to use--more than once, by his wife. A
vicar had been absent a little too long from one parish, and there had
been rumours about brandy-and-water in another. Once he had been very
nearly in deep water because Mrs Proudie had taken it in dudgeon that a
certain young rector, who had been left a widower, had a pretty
governess for his children; and there had been that case, sadly
notorious in the diocese at the time, of our excellent friend Mr Robarts
of Framley, when the bailiffs were in the house because he couldn't pay
his debts--or rather, the debts of his friend for whom he had signed
bills. But in all these cases some good fortune had intervened, and he
had been saved from the terrible necessity of any ulterior process. But
now--now he was being driven beyond himself, and all to no purpose. If
Mrs Proudie would only wait three months the civil law would do it all
for him. But here was Mr Chadwick in the room, and he knew that it would
be useless for him to attempt to talk to Mr Chadwich about other
matters, and so dismiss him. The wife of his bosom would be down upon
them before Chadwick could be out of the room.
'H-m-ha. How d'ye do, Mr Chadwick--won't you sit down?' Mr Chadwick
thanked his lordship, and sat down. 'It's very cold, isn't it, Mr
Chadwick?'
'A hard frost, my lord, but a beautiful day.'
'Won't you come near the fire?' The bishop knew that Mrs Proudie was on
the road, and had an eye to the proper strategical position of his
forces. Mrs Proudie would certainly take up her position in a certain
chair from whence the light enabled her to rake her husband thoroughly.
What advantage she might have from this he could not prevent;--but he
could so place Mr Chadwick, that the lawyer should be more than within
reach of his eye than that of his wife. So the bishop pointed to an
arm-chair opposite to himself and near the fire, and Mr Chadwick seated
himself accordingly.
'This is a very sad affair about Mr Crawley,' said the bishop.
'Very said indeed,' said the lawyer. 'I never pitied a man so much in
my life, my lord.'
This was not exactly the line which the bishop was desirous of taking.
'Of course he is to be pitied;--of course he is. But from all I hear, Mr
Chadwick, I am afraid--I am afraid we must not acquit him.'
'As to that, my lord, he has to stand his trial, of course.'
'But, you see, Mr Chadwick, regarding him as a beneficed clergyman--with
a cure of souls--the question is whether I should be justified in
leaving him where he is till his trial shall come on.'
'Of course your lordship knows best about that, but--'
'I know there is a difficulty. I know that. But I am inclined to think
that in the interests of the parish I am bound to issue a commission of
inquiry.'
'I believer your lordship has attempted to silence him, and that he has
refused to comply.'
'I thought it better for everybody's sake--especially for his own, that
he should for a while be relieved from his duties; but he is an
obstinate man, a very obstinate man. I made the attempt with all
consideration for his feelings.'
'He is hard put to it, my lord. I know the man and his pride. The dean
has spoken of him to me more than once, and nobody knows him so well as
the dean. If I might venture to offer an opinion--'
'Good morning, Mr Chadwick,' said Mrs Proudie, coming into the room and
taking her accustomed seat. 'No thank you, no; I will stay away from the
fire, if you please. His lordship has spoken to you no doubt about this
unfortunate wretched man.'
'We are speaking of him now, my dear.'
'Something must of course be done to put a stop to the crying disgrace
of having such a man preaching from a pulpit in this diocese. When I
think of the souls of the people in that poor village, my hair literally
stands on end. And then he is disobedient!'
'That is the worst of it,' said the bishop. 'It would have been so much
better for himself if he would have allowed me to provide quietly for
the services till the trial be over.'
'I could have told you that, my lord, that he would not do that, from
what I knew of him,' said Mr Chadwick.
'But he must do it,' said Mrs Proudie. 'He must be made to do it.'
'His lordship will find it difficult,' said Mr Chadwick.
'I can issue a commission, you know, to the rural dean,' said the bishop
mildly.
'Yes, you can do that. And Dr Tempest in two months' time will have
named his assessors--'
'Dr Tempest must not name them; the bishop must name them,' said Mrs
Proudie.
'It is customary to leave that to the rural dean,' said Mr Chadwick.
'The bishop no doubt can object to anyone named.'
'And can specially select any clergyman he pleases from the
archdeaconry,' said the bishop. 'I have known it done.'
'The rural dean in such a case has probably been an old man, and not
active,' said the lawyer.
'And Dr Tempest is a very old man,' said Mrs Proudie, 'and in such a
matter not at all trustworthy. He was one of the magistrates who took
bail.'
'His lordship could hardly set him aside,' said the lawyer. 'At any
rate I would not recommend him to try. I think you might suggest a
commission of five, and propose two of the number yourself. I do not
think that in such a case Dr Tempest would raise any question.'
At last it was settled in this way. Mr Chadwick was to prepare a letter
to Dr Tempest, for the bishop's signature, in which the doctor should be
requested, as the rural dean to whom Mr Crawley was subject, to hold a
commission of five to inquire into Mr Crawley's conduct. The letter was
to explain to Dr Tempest that the bishop, moved by his solicitude for
the souls of the people of Hogglestock, had endeavoured, 'in a friendly
way,' to induce Mr Crawley to desist from his ministrations; but that
having failed through Mr Crawley's obstinacy, he had no alternative but
to proceed in this way. 'You had better say that his lordship, as bishop
of the diocese, can take no heed of the coming trial,' said Mrs Proudie.
'I think his lordship had better say nothing at all about the trial,'
said Mr Chadwick. 'I think it will be best,' said the bishop.
'But if they report against him,' said Mr Chadwick, 'you can only then
proceed in the ecclesiastical court--at your own expense.'
'He'll hardly be so obstinate as that,' said the bishop.
'I'm afraid you don't know him, my lord,' said the lawyer. The bishop,
thinking of the scene which had taken place in that very room only
yesterday, felt that he did know Mr Crawley, and felt also that the hope
which he had just expressed was one in which he himself put no trust.
But something might turn up; and it was devoutly to be hoped that Dr
Tempest would take a long time over his inquiry. The assizes might come
on as soon as it was terminated, or very shortly afterwards; and then
everything might be well. 'You won't find Dr Tempest very ready at it,'
said Mr Chadwick. The bishop in his heart was comforted by the words.
'But he must be made to be ready to do his duty,' said Mrs Proudie,
imperiously. Mr Chadwick shrugged his shoulders, then got up, spoke his
farewell little speeches, and left the palace.
CHAPTER XXXV
LILY DALE WRITES TWO WORDS IN HER BOOK
John Eames saw nothing more of Lily Dale till he packed up his
portmanteau, left his mother's house, and went to stay for a few days
with his old friend Lady Julia; and this did not happen till he had been
above a week at Guestwick. Mrs Dale repeatedly said that it was odd that
Johnny Eames did not come to see them; and Grace, speaking of him to
Lily, asked why he did not come. Lily, in her funny way, declared that
he would come soon enough. But even while she was joking there was
something of half-expressed consciousness in her words--as though she
felt it to be foolish to speak of his coming as she might of that of any
other young man, before people who knew her whole story. 'He'll come
quick enough. He knows, and I know, that his coming will do no good. Of
course I shall be glad to see him. Why shouldn't I be glad to see him?
I've known him and liked him all my life. I liked him when there did not
seem to be much about him to like, and now that he is clever, and
agreeable, and good-looking--which he never was as a lad--why shouldn't
I go on liking him? He's more like a brother to me than anybody else
I've got. James,'--James was her brother-in-law, Dr Crofts--'thinks of
nothing but his patients and his babies, and my cousin Bernard is much
too grand a person for me to take the liberty of loving him. I shall be
very glad to see Johnny Eames.' From all which Mrs Dale was led to
believe that Johnny's case was still hopeless. And how should it not be
hopeless? Had not Lily confessed within the last week or two that she
still loved Adolphus Crosbie?
Mrs Eames also, and Mary, were surprised that John did not go over to
Allington. 'You haven't seen Mrs Dale yet, or the squire?'
'I shall see them when I am at the cottage.'
'Yes;--no doubt. But it seems strange that you should be here so long
without going to them.'
'There's time enough,' said he. 'I shall have nothing else to do when
I'm at the cottage.' Then, when Mary had spoken to him again in private,
expressing a hope that there was 'nothing wrong', he had been very angry
with his sister. 'What do you mean by wrong? What rubbish you girls
talk! And you never have any delicacy of feeling to make you silent.'
'Oh, John, don't say such hard things as that of me!'
'But I do say them. You'll make me swear among you some day that I will
never see Lily Dale again. As it is, I wish I never had seen her--simple
because I am so dunned about it.' In all of which I think that Johnny
was manifestly wrong. When the humour was on him he was fond enough of
talking about Lily Dale. Had he not taught her to do so, I doubt whether
his sister would ever have mentioned Lily's name to him. 'I did not mean
to dun you, John,' said Mary, meekly.
But at last he went to Lady Julia's, and was no sooner there than he was
ready to start for Allington. When Lady Julia spoke to him about Lily,
he did not venture to snub her. Indeed, of all his friends, Lady Julia
was the one whom on this subject he allowed himself the most
unrestricted confidence. He came over one day, just before dinner, and
declared his intention of walking over to Allington immediately after
breakfast on the following morning. 'It's the last time, Lady Julia,' he
said.
'So you say, Johnny.'
'And so I mean it! What's the good of a man flittering away his life?
What's the good of wishing for what you can't get?'
'Jacob was not in such a hurry when he wished for Rachel.'
'That was all very well for an old patriarch who had seven or eight
hundred years to live.'
'My dear John, you forget your Bible. Jacob did not live half as long
as that.'
'He lived long enough, and slowly enough, to be able to wait fourteen
years;--and then he had something to comfort him in the meantime. And
after all, Lady Julia, it's more than seven years since I first thought
Lily was the prettiest girl I ever saw.'
'How old are you now?' 'Twenty-seven--and she's twenty-four.'
'You've time enough yet, if you'll only be patient.'
'I'll be patient for tomorrow, Lady Julia, but never again. Not that I
mean to quarrel with her. I'm not such a fool as to quarrel with a girl
because she can't like me. I know how it all is. If that scoundrel had
not come across my path just when he did--in that very nick of time, all
might have been right betwixt her and me. I couldn't have offered to
marry her before, when I hadn't as much income as would have found her
bread-and-butter. And then, just as better times came to me, he stepped
in! I wonder whether it will be expected of me that I should forgive
him?'
'As far as that goes, you have no right to be angry with him.'
'But I am--all the same.'
'And so was I--but not for stepping in, as you call it.'
'You and I are different, Lady Julia. I was angry with him for stepping
in; but I couldn't show it. Then he stepped out, and I did manage to
show it. And now I shouldn't wonder if he doesn't step in again. After
all, why should he have such a power? It was simply the nick of time
which gave it to him.' That John Eames should be able to find some
consolation in this consideration is devoutly to be hoped by us all.
There was nothing said about Lily Dale the next morning at breakfast.
Lady Julia observed that John was dressed a little more neatly than
usual;--though the change was not such as to have called for her special
observation, had she not known the business on which he was intent.
'You have nothing to send to the Dales?' he said, as he got up from the
table.
'Nothing but my love, Johnny.'
'No worsted embroidery work--or a pot of special jam for the squire?'
'No, sir, nothing; though I should like to make you carry a pair of
panniers, if I could.'
'They would become me well,' said Johnny, 'for I am going on an ass's
errand.' Then, without waiting for the word of affection which was on
the old woman's lips, he got himself out of the room, and started on his
journey.
The walk was only three miles and the weather was dry and frosty, and he
had come to the turn leading up to the church and the squire's house
almost before he remembered that he was near Allington. Here he paused
for a moment to think. If he continued his way down by the 'Red Lion'
and through Allington Street, he must knock at Mrs Dale's door, and ask
for admission by means of the servant--as would be done by any ordinary
visitor. But he could make his way on to the lawn by going up beyond the
wall of the churchyard and through the squire's garden. He knew the path
well--very well; and he thought that he might take so much liberty as
that, both with the squire and with Mrs Dale, although his visits to
Allington were not so frequent now as they used to be in the days of his
boyhood. He did not wish to be admitted by the servant, and therefore he
went through the gardens. Luckily he did not see the squire, who would
have detained him, and he escaped from Hopkins, the old gardener, with
little more than a word. 'I'm going down to see the ladies, Hopkins; I
suppose I shall find them?' And then, while Hopkins was arranging his
spade so that he might lean upon it for a little chat, Johnny was gone
and had made his way into the other garden. He had thought it possible
that he might meet Lily out among the walks by herself and such a
meeting as this would have suited him better than any other. And as he
crossed the little bridge which separated the gardens he thought of more
than one such meeting--of one especial occasion on which he had first
ventured to tell her in plain words that he loved her. But before that
day Crosbie had come there, and at the moment in which he was speaking
of his love she regarded Crosbie as an angel of light upon the earth.
What hope could there have been for him then? What use was there in
telling such a tale of love at that time? When he told it, he knew
Crosbie had been before him. He knew that Crosbie was at that moment the
angel of light. But as he had never before been able to speak of his
love, so was he then unable not to speak of it. He had spoken, and of
course had been simply rebuked. Since that day Crosbie had ceased to be
an angel of light, and he, John Eames, had spoken often. But he had
spoken in vain, and now he would speak once again.
He went through the garden and over the lawn belonging to the Small
House and saw no one. He forgot, I think, that ladies do not come out to
pick roses when the ground is frozen, and that croquet is not often in
progress with the hour-frost on the grass. So he walked up to the little
terrace before the drawing-room, and looking in saw Mrs Dale, and Lily,
and Grace at their morning work. Lily was drawing, and Mrs Dale was
writing, and Grace had her needle in her hand. As it happened, no one at
first perceived him, and he had time to feel that after all he would
have managed it better if he had been announced in the usual way. As,
however, it was now necessary that he should announce himself, he
knocked at the window, and they all immediately looked up and saw him.
'It's my cousin John,' said Grace. 'Oh, Johnny, how are you at last?'
said Mrs Dale. But it was Lily who, without speaking, opened the window
for him, who was the first to give him her hand, and who led him through
into the room.
'It's a great shame my coming in this way,' said John, 'and letting all
the cold air in upon you.'
'We shall survive it,' said Mrs Dale. 'I suppose you have just come
down from my brother-in-law?'
'No; I have not seen the squire as yet. I will do so before I go back,
of course. But it seemed such a commonplace sort of thing to go round by
the village.'
'We are very glad to see you, by whatever way you came;--are we not,
mamma?' said Lily.
'I'm not so sure of that. We were only saying yesterday that as you had
been in the country a fortnight without coming to us, we did not think
we would be at home when you did come.'
'But I have caught you, you see,' said Johnny.
And so they went on, chatting of old times and of mutual friends very
comfortably for full an hour. And there was some serious conversation
about Grace's father and his affairs, and John declared his opinion that
Mr Crawley should go to his uncle, Thomas Toogood, not at all knowing
that at that time Mr Crawley himself had come to the same opinion. And
John gave them an elaborate description of Sir Raffle Buffle, standing
up with his back to the fire with his hat on his head, and speaking with
a loud harsh voice, to show them the way in which he declared that that
gentleman received his inferiors; and then bowing and scraping and
rubbing his hands together and simpering with would-be
softness--declared that after that fashion Sir Raffle received his
superiors. And they were very merry--so that no one would have thought
that Johnny was a despondent lover, now bent on throwing the dice for
his last stake; or that Lily was aware that she was in the presence of
one lover, and that she was like to fall on the ground between two
stools--having two lovers, neither of whom could serve her turn.
'How can you consent to serve him if he's such a man as that?' said
Lily, speaking of Sir Raffle.
'I do not serve him. I serve the Queen--or rather the public. I don't
take his wages, and he does not play his tricks with me. He knows that
he can't. He has tried it, and failed. And he only keeps where I am
because I've had some money left me. He thinks it fine to have a private
secretary with a fortune. I know that he tells people all manner of lies
about it, making it out to be five times as much as it is. Dear old
Huffle Snuffle. He is such an ass; and yet he's had wit enough to get to
the top of the tree, and to keep himself there. He began the world
without a penny. Now he has got a handle to his name, and he'll live in
clover all his life. It's very odd, isn't it, Mrs Dale?'
'I suppose he does his work?'
'When men get so high as that, there's no knowing whether they work or
whether they don't. There isn't much left for them to do, as far as I
can see. They have to look beautiful, and frighten the young ones.'
'And does Sir Raffle look beautiful?' Lily asked.
'After a fashion he does. There is something imposing about such a man
till you're used to it, and can see through it. Of course it's all
padding. There are men who work, no doubt. But among the bigwigs, and
bishops and cabinet ministers, I fancy that the looking beautiful is the
chief part of it. Dear me, you don't mean to say it's luncheon time?'
But it was luncheon time, and not only had he not as yet said a word of
all that which he had come to say, but had not as yet made any move
towards getting it said. How was he to arrange that Lily should be left
alone with him? Lady Julia had said that she should not expect him back
till dinner-time, and he had answered her lackadaisically, 'I don't
suppose I shall be there above ten minutes. The minutes will say all
I've got to say, and do all I've got to do. And then I suppose I shall
go and cut names about bridges--eh, Lady Julia?' Lady Julia understood
the words; for once, upon a former occasion, she had found him cutting
Lily's name on the rail of a wooden bridge in her brother's grounds. But
he had now been a couple of hours at the Small House, and had not said a
word of that which he had come to say.
'Are you going to walk out with us after lunch?' said Lily.
'He will have had walking enough,' said Mrs Dale.
'We'll convoy him part of the way,' said Lily.
'I'm not going yet,' said Johnny, 'unless you turn me out.'
'But we must have our walk before it is dark,' said Lily.
'You might go up with him to your uncle,' said Mrs Dale. 'Indeed, I
promised to go up there myself, and so did you, Grace, to see the
microscope. I heard Mr Dale give orders that one of those long-legged
reptiles should be caught on purpose for your inspection.'
Mrs Dale's little scheme for bringing the two together was very
transparent, but it was not the less wise on that account. Schemes will
often be successful, let them be ever so transparent. Little intrigues
become necessary, not to conquer unwilling people, but people who are
willing enough, who, nevertheless, cannot give way except under the
machinations of an intrigue.
'I don't think I mind looking at the long-legged creature, today,' said
Johnny.
'I must go of course,' said Grace.
Lily said nothing at the moment, either about the long-legged creature
or the walk. That which must be, must be. She knew well why John Eames
had come there. She knew that the visits to his mother and to Lady Julia
would never have been made, but that he might have this interview. And
he had a right to demand, at any rate, as much as that. That which must
be, must be. And therefore when both Mrs Dale and Grace stoutly
maintained their purpose of going up to the squire, Lily neither
attempted to persuade John to accompany them nor said that she would do
so herself.
'I will convoy you home myself,' she said, 'and Grace, when she has done
with the beetle, shall come and meet me. Won't you, Grace?'
'Certainly.'
'We are not helpless young ladies in these parts, nor yet timorous,'
continued Lily. 'We can walk about without being afraid of ghosts,
robbers, wild bulls, young men, or gypsies. Come the field path, Grace.
I will go as far as the big oak with him, and then I shall turn back,
and I shall come in by the stile opposite the church gate, and through
the garden. So you can't miss me.'
'I daresay he'll come back with you,' said Grace.
'No, he won't. He will do nothing of the kind. He'll have to go on and
open Lady Julia's bottle of port wine for his own drinking.'
All this was very good on Lily's part, and very good also on the part of
Mrs Dale; and John was of course very much obliged to them. But there
was a lack of romance in it all, which did not seem to him to argue well
as to his success. He did not think much about it, but he felt that Lily
would not have been so ready to arrange their walk had she intended to
yield to his entreaty. No doubt in these latter days plain good sense
had become the prevailing mark of her character--perhaps, as Johnny
thought, a little too strongly prevailing; but even with all her plain
good sense and determination to dispense with the absurdities of romance
in the affairs of her life, she would not have proposed herself as his
companion for a walk across the fields merely that she might have an
opportunity of accepting his hand. He did not say all this to himself,
but he instinctively felt that it was so. And he felt also that it
should have been his duty to arrange the walk, or the proper opportunity
for the scene that was to come. She had done it instead--she and her
mother between them, thereby forcing upon him a painful conviction that
he himself had not been equal to the occasion. 'I always make a mull of
it,' he said to himself, when the girls went up to get their hats.
They went down together through the garden, and parted where the paths
led away, one to the great house and the other towards the church. 'I'll
certainly come and call upon the squire before I go back to London,'
said Johnny.
We'll tell him so,' said Mrs Dale. 'He would be sure to hear that you
had been with us, even if we said nothing about it.'
'Of course he would,' said Lily; 'Hopkins has seen him.' Then they
separated, and Lily and John Eames were together.
Hardly a word was said, perhaps not a word, till they had crossed the
road and got into the field opposite to the church. And in this first
field there was more than one path, and the children of the village were
often there, and it had about it something of a public nature. John
Eames felt that it was by no means a fitting field to say that which he
had to say. In crossing it, therefore, he merely remarked that the day
was very fine for walking. Then he added one special word, 'And it is so
good of you, Lily, to come with me.'
'I am very glad to come with you. I would do more than that, John, to
show how glad I am to see you.' Then they had come to the second little
gate, and beyond that the fields were really fields, and there were
stiles instead of wicket-gates, and the business of the day must be
begun.
'Lily, whenever I come here you say that you are glad to see me?'
'And so I am--very glad. Only you would take it as meaning what it does
not mean, I would tell you, that of all my friends living away from the
reach of my daily life, you are the one whose coming is ever the most
pleasant to me.'
'Oh, Lily!'
'It was, I think, only yesterday that I was telling Grace that you are
more like a brother to me than anyone else. I wish it might be so. I
which we might swear to be brother and sister. I'd do more for you then
than walk across the fields with you to Guestwick Cottage. Your
prosperity would then be the thing in the world for which I should be
most anxious. And if you should marry--'
'It can never be like that between us,' said Johnny.
'Can it not? I think it can. Perhaps not this year, or next year;
perhaps not in the next five years. But I make myself happy with
thinking that it may be so some day. I shall wait for it patiently, very
patiently, even though you should rebuff me again and again--as you have
done now.'
'I have not rebuffed you.'
'Not maliciously, or injuriously, or offensively. I will be very
patient and take little rebuffs without complaining. This is the worst
of it all. When Grace and I are together we can never manage it without
tearing ourselves all to pieces. It is much nicer to have you to help
me.'
'Let me help you always,' he said, keeping her hands in his after he had
aided her to jump from the stile to the ground.
'Yes, as my brother.'
'That is nonsense, Lily.'
'Is it nonsense? Nonsense is a hard word.'
'It is nonsense as coming from you to me. Lily, I sometimes think that
I am persecuting you, writing to you, coming after you, as I am doing
now--telling the same whining story--asking, asking, and asking for that
which you say you will never give me. And then I feel ashamed of myself,
and swear that I will do it no more.'
'Do not be ashamed of yourself; but yet do it no more.'
'And then,' he continued, without minding her words, 'at other times I
feel that it must be my own fault; that if I only persevered with
sufficient energy, I must be successful. At such times I swear I will
never give it up.'
'Oh, John, if you could only know how little worthy of such pursuit it
is.'
'Leave me to be the judge of that, dear. When a man has taken a month,
or perhaps only a week, or perhaps not more than half-an-hour, to make
up his mind, it may be very well to tell him that he doesn't know what
he is about. I've been in the office now for over seven years, and the
first day I went I put an oath into a book that I would come back and
get you for my wife when I had got enough to live upon.'
'Did you, John?'
'Yes. I can show it to you. I used to come and hover about the place
in the old days, before I went up to London, when I was such a fool that
I couldn't speak to you if I met you. I am speaking of a time long
before--before that man came down here.'
'Do not speak of him, John.'
'I must speak of him. A man isn't to hold his tongue when everything he
has in the world is at stake. I suppose he loved you after a fashion,
once.'
'Pray, pray, do not speak ill of him, John.'
'I am not going to abuse him. You can judge of him by his deeds. I
cannot say anything worse of him than what they say. I suppose he loved
you; but he certainly did not love you as I have done. I have at any
rate been true to you. Yes, Lily, I have been true to you. I am true to
you. He did not know what he was about. I do. I am justified in saying
that I do. I want you to be my wife. It is no use your talking about it
as though I only half wanted it.'
'I did not say that.'
'Is not a man to have any reward? Of course if you had married him
there would have been an end of it. He had come in between me and my
happiness, and I must have borne it, as other men bear such sorrows. But
you have not married him; and, of course, I cannot but feel that I may
yet have a chance. Lily, answer me this. Do you believe that I love
you?' But she did not answer him. 'You can at any rate tell me that. Do
you think that I am in earnest?'
'Yes, I think you are in earnest.'
'And do you believe that I love you with all my heart and all my
strength and all my soul?'
'Oh, John!'
'But do you?'
'I think you love me.'
'Think! What am I to say or to do to make you understand that my only
idea of happiness is the idea that sooner or later I may get you to be
my wife? Lily, will you say that it shall be so? Speak, Lily. There is
no one that will not be glad. Your uncle will consent--has consented.
Your mother wishes it. Bell wishes it. My mother wishes it. Lady Julia
wishes it. You would be doing what everybody around you wants you to do.
And why should you not do it? It isn't that you dislike me. You wouldn't
talk about being my sister, if you had not some sort of regard for me.'
'I have a regard for you.'
'Then why will you not be my wife? Oh, Lily, say the word now, here, at
once. Say the word, and you'll make me the happiest fellow in all
England.' As he spoke he took her by both arms, and held her fast. She
did not struggle to get away from him, but stood quite still, looking
into his face, while the first sparkle of a salt tear formed itself in
each eye. 'Lily, one little word will do it--half a word, a nod, a
smile. Just touch my arm with your hand and I will take it for a yes.' I
think that she almost tried to touch him; that the word was in her
throat, and that she almost strove to speak it. But there was no
syllable spoken, and her fingers did not loose themselves to fall upon
his sleeve. 'Lily, Lily, what can I say to you?'
'I wish I could,' she whispered;--but the whisper was so hoarse that he
hardly recognized the voice.
'And why can you not? What is there to hinder you? There is nothing to
hinder you, Lily.'
'Yes, John; there is that which must hinder me.'
'And what is it?'
'I will tell you. You are so good and so true, and so excellent --such
a dear, dear friend, that I will tell you everything, so that you may
read my heart. I will tell you as I tell mamma--you and her and no one
else;--for you are the choice friend of my heart. I cannot be your wife
because of the love I bear for another man.'
'And that man is he--he who came here?'
'Of course it is he. I think, Johnny, you and I are alike in this, that
when we have loved, we cannot bring ourselves to change. You will not
change, though it would be so much better you should do so.'
'No; I will never change.'
'Nor can I. When I sleep I dream of him. When I am alone I cannot
banish him from my thoughts. I cannot define what it is to love him. I
want nothing from him--nothing, nothing. But I move about through my
little world thinking of him, and I shall do so till the end. I used to
feel proud of my love, though it made me so wretched that I thought it
would kill me. I am not proud of it any longer. It is a foolish
poor-spirited weakness--as though my heart has been only half formed in
the making. Do you be stronger, John. A man should be stronger than a
woman.'
'I have none of that sort of strength.'
'Nor have I. What can we do but pity each other, and swear that we will
be friends--dear friends. There is the oak-tree and I have got to turn
back. We have said everything that we can say--unless you will tell me
that you will be my brother.'
'No; I will not tell you that.'
'Good-bye, then, Johnny.'
He paused, holding her by the hand and thinking of another question
which he longed to put to her--considering whether he would ask her that
question or not. He hardly knew whether he were entitled to ask
it;--whether or no the asking of it would be ungenerous. She had said
that she would tell him everything--as she had told everything to her
mother. 'Of course,' he said, 'I have no right to expect to know
anything of your future intentions.'
'You may know them all--as far as I know them myself. I have said that
you should read my heart.'
'If this man, whose name I cannot bear to mention, should come again--'
'If he were to come again he would come in vain, John.' She did not say
that he had come again. She could tell her own secret, but not that of
another person.
'You would not marry him, now that he is free?'
She stood and thought for a while before she answered him. 'No, I
should not marry him now. I think not.' Then she paused again. 'Nay, I
am sure I would not. After what has passed, I could not trust myself to
do it. There is my hand on it. I will not.'
'No, Lily, I do not want that.'
'But I insist. I will not marry Mr Crosbie. But you must not
misunderstand me, John. There;--all that is over for me now. All those
dreams about love, and marriage, and of a house of my own, and
children--and a cross husband, and a wedding-ring growing always tighter
as I grow fat and older. I have dreamed of such things as other girls
do--more perhaps than other girls, more than I should have done. And now
I accept the thing as finished. You wrote something in your book, you
dear John--something that could not be made to come true. Dear John, I
wish for your sake it was otherwise. I will go home and I will write in
my book, this very day, Lily Dale, Old Maid. If ever I make that false,
do you come and ask me for the page.'
'Let it remain there till I am allowed to tear it for you.'
'I will write it, and it shall never be torn out. You I cannot marry.
Him I will not marry. You may believe me, Johnny, when I say there can
never be a third.'
'And is that to be the end of it?'
'Yes;--that is to be the end of it. Not the end of our friendship. Old
maids have friends.'
'It shall not be the end of it. There shall be no end of it with me.'
'But, John--'
'Do not suppose that I will trouble you again--at any rate not for a
while. In five years perhaps--'
'Now, Johnny, you are laughing at me. And of course it is the best way.
If there is not Grace, and she has caught me before I have turned back.
Good-bye, dear John. God bless you. I think you the finest fellow in the
world. I do, and do does mamma. Remember always that there is a temple
at Allington in which your worship is never forgotten.' Then she pressed
his hand and turned away from him to meet Grace Crawley. John did not
stop to speak a word to his cousin, but pursued his way alone.
'That cousin of yours,' said Lily, 'is simply the dearest,
warmest-hearted, finest creature that ever was seen in the shape of a
man.'
'Have you told him that you think him so?' said Grace.
'Indeed, I have,' said Lily.
'But have you told this finest, warmest, dearest creature that he shall
be rewarded with the prize he covets?'
'No, Grace. I have told him nothing of the kind. I think he
understands it all now. If he does not, it is not for the want of my
telling him. I don't suppose any lady was ever more open-spoken to a
gentleman that I have been to him.'
'And why have you sent him away disappointed? You know you love him.'
'You see, my dear,' said Lily, 'you allow yourself, for the sake of your
argument, to use a word in a double sense, and you attempt to confound
me by doing so. But I am a great deal too clever for you, and have
thought too much about it, to be taken in in that way. I certainly love
your cousin John; and so do I love Mr Boyce, the vicar.'
'You love Johnny much better than you do Mr Boyce.'
'True; very much better; but it is of the same sort of love. However, it
is a great deal too deep for you to understand. You're too young, and I
shan't try to explain it. But the long and the short of it is--I am not
going to marry your cousin.'
'I wish you were,' said Grace, 'with all my heart.'
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 simple. 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 I
know 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.
CHAPTER XXXVI
GRACE CRAWLEY RETURNS HOME
About this time Grace Crawley received two letters, the first of them
reaching her while John Eames was still at the cottage, and the other
immediately after his return to London. They both help to tell our
story, and our reader shall, therefore, read them if he so please--or,
rather, he shall read the first and as much of the second as is
necessary for him. Grace's answer to the first letter he shall see also.
Her answer to the second will be told in a very few words. The first was
from Major Grantly, and the task of answering that was by no means easy
for Grace.
'COSBY LODGE,--February, 186-
'DEAREST GRACE,
'I told you when I parted from you, that I should write to you,
and I think it best to do so at once, in order that you may
fully understand me. Spoken words are soon forgotten,'--'I
shall never forget his words,' Grace had said to herself as she
read this;--'and are not always as plain as they might be. Dear
Grace, I suppose I ought not to say so, but I fancied when I
parted from you at Allington, that I had succeeded in making
myself dear to you. I believe you to be so true in spirit, that
you were unable to conceal from me the fact that you love me. I
shall believe that it is so, till I am deliberately and
solemnly assured by yourself that it is not so;--and I conjure
you to think what is due both to yourself and to myself, before
you allow yourself to think of making such an assurance unless
it be strictly true.
'I have already told my friends that I have asked you to be my
wife. I tell you this, in order that you may know how little
effect your answer to me has had towards inducing me to give
you up. What you said about your father and your family has no
weight with me, and ought ultimately to have none with you.
This business of your father's great misfortune--so great, that
probably, had we not known each other before it happened, it
might have prevented our becoming intimate when we chanced to
meet. But we had met before it happened, and before it happened
I had determined to ask you to be my wife. What should I have
to think of myself if I allowed my heart to be altered by such
a cause as that?
'I have only further to say that I love you better than anyone
in the world, and that it is my best hope that you will be my
wife. I will not press you further till this affair of your
father's has been settled; but when that is over, I shall look
for my reward without reference to its result. Not that I doubt
the result if there be anything like justice in England; but
that your debt to me, if you owe me any debt, will be
altogether irrespective of that. If, as I suppose, you will
remain at Allington for some time longer, I shall not see you
till after the trial is over. As soon as that is done, I will
come to you wherever you are. In the meantime I shall look for
an answer to this; and if it be true that you love me, dear,
dear Grace, pray have the courage to tell me so.--Most
affectionately your own,
'HENRY GRANTLY'
When the letter was given to Grace across the breakfast-table, both Mrs
Dale and Lily suspected that it came from Major Grantly, but not a word
was spoken about it. When Grace with hesitating hand broke the envelope,
neither of her friends looked at her. Lily had a letter of her own, and
Mrs Dale opened the newspaper. But still it was impossible not to
perceive that her face became red with blushes, and then they knew that
the letter must be from Major Grantly. Grace herself could not read it,
though her eye ran down over the two pages catching a word here and
there. She had looked at the name at once, and had seen the manner of
his signature. 'Most affectionately your own'! What was she to say to
him? Twice, thrice, as she sat at the breakfast-table she turned the
page of the letter, and at each turning she read the signature. And she
read the beginning, 'Dearest Grace'. More than that she did not really
read till she had got the letter away with her into the seclusion of her
own room.
Not a word was said about the letter at breakfast. Poor Grace went on
eating or pretending to eat, but could not bring herself to utter a
word. Mrs Dale and Lily spoke of various matters, which were quite
indifferent to them; but even with them the conversation was so
difficult that Grace felt it to be forced, and was conscious that they
were thinking about her and her lover. As soon as she could make an
excuse she left the room, and hurrying upstairs took the letter from her
pocket and read it in earnest.
'That was from Major Grantly, mamma,' said Lily.
'I daresay it was, my dear.'
'And what had we better do; or what had we better say?'
'Nothing--I should say. Let him fight his own battle. If we interfere,
we may probably only make her more stubborn in clinging to her old
idea.'
'I think she will cling to it.'
'For a time she will, I daresay. And it will be the best that she
should. He himself will respect her for it afterwards.' Thus it was
agreed between them that they should say nothing to Grace about the
letter unless Grace should first speak to them.
Grace read her letter over and over again. It was the first love-letter
she had ever had;--the first letter she had ever received from any man
except her father and brother--the first, almost, that had ever been
written to her by any other than her own special friends. The words of
it were very strange to her ear. He had told her when he left her that
he would write to her, and therefore she had looked forward to the event
which had now come; but she had thought that it would be much more
distant --and she had tried to make herself believe that when it did
come it would be very different from this letter which she now
possessed. 'He will tell me that he has altered his mind. He ought to do
so. It is not proper that he should still think of me when we are in
such disgrace.' But now the letter had come, and she acknowledged the
truth of his saying that written words were clearer in their expression
than those simply spoken. 'Not that I could ever forget a syllable that
he said.' Yet, as she held the letter in her hand she felt that it was a
possession. It was a thing at which she could look in coming years, when
he and she might be far apart--a thing at which she could look with
pride in remembering that he had thought her worthy of it.
Neither on that day nor on the next did she think of her answer, nor on
the third or fourth day with any steady thinking. She knew that an
answer would have to be written, and she felt that the sooner it was
written the easier might be the writing; but she felt also that it
should not be written too quickly. A week should first elapse, she
thought, and therefore a week was allowed to elapse, and then the day
for writing her answer came. She had spoken no word about it either to
Mrs Dale or to Lily. She had longed to do so, but had feared. Even
though she should speak to Lily she could not be led by Lily's advice.
Her letter, whatever it might be, must be her own letter. She would
admit of no dictation. She must say her own say, let her say it ever so
badly. As to the manner of saying it, Lily's aid would have been
invaluable; but she feared that she could not secure that aid without
compromising her own power of action--her own individuality; and
therefore she said no word about the letter either to Lily or to Lily's
mother.
On a certain morning she fixed herself at her desk to write her letter.
She had known that the task would be difficult, but she had little known
how difficult it would be. On that day of her first attempt she did not
get it written at all. Now was she to begin? He had called her 'Dearest
Grace'; and this mode of beginning seemed as easy as it was sweet. 'It
is very easy for a gentleman,' she said to herself, 'because he may say
just what he pleases.' She wrote the words 'Dearest Henry,' on a scrap
of paper, and immediately into fragments as though she was ashamed of
having written them. She knew that she would not dare to send away a
letter beginning with such words. She would not even have dared to let
such words in her own handwriting remain within the recesses of her own
little desk. 'Dear Major Grantly,' she began at length. It seemed to her
to be very ugly, but after much consideration she believed it to be
correct. On the second day the letter was written as follows:--
'ALLINGTON, Thursday
'MY DEAR MAJOR GRANTLY,
'I do not know how I ought to answer your kind letter, but I
must tell you that I am very much flattered by your great
goodness to me. I cannot understand why you should think so
much of me, but I suppose it is because you have felt for my
misfortunes. I will not say anything about what might have
happened, if it had not been for papa's sorrow and disgrace;
and as far as I can help it, I will not think of it; but I am
sure that I ought not to think about loving anyone, that is, in
the way you mean, while we are in such trouble at home. I
should not dare to meet any of your great friends, knowing that
I had brought nothing with me but disgrace. And I should fell
that I was doing an injury to dear Edith, which would be worse
to me than anything.
'Pray believe me that I am quite in earnest about this. I know
that a gentleman ought not to marry any girl to do himself and
his family an injury by it; and I know that if I were to make
such a marriage I should be unhappy ever afterwards, even
though I loved the man ever so dearly, with all my heart.'
These last words she had underscored at first, but the doing so
had been the unconscious expression of her own affection, and
had been done with no desire on her part to convey that
expression to him. But on reading the words she discovered
their latent meaning, and wrote it all again.
'Therefore I know that it will be best that I should wish you
good-bye, and I do so, thanking you again and again for your
goodness to me,--believe me to be, Yours very sincerely,
'GRACE CRAWLEY'
The letter when it was written was hateful to her; but she had tried her
hand at it again and again, and had found that she could do nothing
better. There was much in his letter that she had not attempted to
answer. He had implored her to tell him whether or no she did no truth
love him. Of course she loved him. He knew that well enough. Why should
she answer any such question? There was a way of answering it indeed
which might serve her turn--or rather serve his, of which she was
thinking more than of her own. She might say that she did not love him.
It would be a lie, and he would know it would be a lie. But still it
might serve the turn. She did not like the idea of writing such a lie as
that, but nevertheless she considered the matter. It would be very
wicked; but still, if it would serve the turn, might it not be well to
write it? But at last she reflected that, after all, the doing of the
thing was in her own hands. She could refuse to marry this man without
burdening her conscience with any lie about it. It only required that
she should be firm. She abstained, therefore, from the falsehood, and
left her lover's question unanswered. So she put up her letter and
directed it, and carried it herself to the village post-office.
On the day after this she got a second letter, and that she showed
immediately to Mrs Dale. It was from her mother, and was written to tell
that her father was seriously ill. 'He went up to London to see a lawyer
about this weary work of the trial,' said Mrs Crawley. 'The fatigue was
very great, and on the next day he was so weak that he could not leave
his bed. Dr Turner, who has been very kind, says that we need not
frighten ourselves, but he thinks it must be some time before he can
leave the house. He has a low fever on him, and wants nourishment. His
mind has wandered once or twice, and he has asked for you, and I think
it will be best, love, that you should come home. I know you will not
mind it when I say that I think he would like to have you here. Dr
Turner says that the illness is chiefly owing to his not having proper
food.'
Of course she would go home. 'Dear Mrs Dale,' she said; 'I must go
home. Can you send me to the station?' Then Mrs Dale read the letter. Of
course they would send her. Would she go on that day, or on the next?
Might it not be better to write first, and say that she was going? But
Grace would go at once. 'I know it will be a comfort to mamma; and I
know that he is worse than mamma says.' Of course there was no more to
be said, and she was despatched to the station. Before she went Mrs Dale
asked after her purse. 'If there is any trouble about money--for your
journey, or anything, you will not scruple to come to me as an old
friend.' But Grace assured her that there was no trouble about
money--for her journey. Then Lily took her aside and produced two clean
new five-pound notes. 'Grace, dear, you won't be ill-natured. You know I
have a little fortune of my own. You know I can give them without
missing them.' Grace threw herself into her friend's arms and wept, but
would have none of her money. 'Buy a present from me to your
mother--whom I love though I do not know her.' 'I will give her your
love,' Grace said, 'but nothing else.' And then she went.
CHAPTER XXXVII
HOOK COURT
Mr Dobbs Broughton and Mr Musselboro were sitting together on a certain
morning at their office in the City, discussing the affairs of their
joint business. The City office was a very poor place indeed, in
comparison with the fine house which Mr Dobbs occupied at the West End;
but then City offices are poor places, and there are certain City
occupations which seem to enjoy the greater credit the poorer are the
material circumstances by which they are surrounded. Turing out of a
lane which turns out of Lombard Street, there is a desolate,
forlorn-looking, dark alley, which is called Hook Court. The entrance to
this alley is beneath the first-floor of one of the houses in the lane,
and in passing under this covered way the visitor to the place finds
himself in a small paved square court, at the two further corners of
which thee are two open doors; for in Hook Court there are only two
houses. There is No 1 Hook Court, and No 2 Hook Court. The entire
premises indicated by No 1 are occupied by a firm of wine and spirit
merchants, in connexion with whose trade one side and two angles of the
court are always lumbered with crates, hampers, and wooden cases. And
nearly in the middle of the court, though somewhat more to the
wine-merchant's side than to the other, there is always gaping open a
trap-door, leading down to the vaults below; and over the trap there is
a great board with a bright advertisement in very large letters:--
BURTON AND BANGLES
HIMALAYA WINES
22s 6d per dozen
And this notice is so bright and so large, and the trap-door is so
conspicuous in the court, that no visitor, even to No 2, ever afterwards
can quite divest his memory of those names, Burton and Bangles, Himalaya
wines. It may therefore be acknowledged that Burton and Bangles have
achieved their object in putting up the notice. The house No 2, small as
it seems to be, standing in the jamb of a corner, is divided among
different occupiers, whose names are painted in small letters upon the
very dirty posts of the doorway. Nothing can be more remarkable than the
contrast between Burton and Bangles and these other City gentlemen in
the method taken by them in declaring their presence to visitors in the
court. The names of Dobbs Broughton and of A. Musselboro--the Christian
name of Mr Musselboro was Augustus--were on one of those dirty posts,
not joined together by any visible 'and', so as to declare boldly that
they were partners; but in close vicinity--showing at least that the two
gentlemen would be found in apartments very near to each other. And on
the first-floor of this house Dobbs Broughton and his friend did occupy
three rooms --or rather two rooms and a closet--between them. The larger
and front room was tenanted by an old clerk, who sat within a rail in
one corner of it. And there was a broad, short counter, which jutted out
from the wall into the middle of the room, intended for the use of such
of the public as might come to transact miscellaneous business with
Dobbs Broughton or Augustus Musselboro. But anyone accustomed to the
look of offices might have seen with half an eye that very little
business was ever done on that counter. Behind this large room was a
smaller one, belonging to Dobbs Broughton, in the furnishing and
arrangement of which some regard was paid to comfort. The room was
carpeted, and there was a sofa in it, though a very old one, and two
arm-chairs and a mahogany office-table, and a cellaret, which was
generally well supplied with wine which Dobbs Broughton did not get out
of the vaults of his neighbours, Burton and Bangles. Behind this again,
but with a separate entrance from the passage, was the closet; and this
closet was specially devoted to the use of Mr Musselboro. Closet as it
was--or cupboard as it might have almost been called--it contained a
table and two chairs; and it had a window of its own, which opened out
upon a blank wall which was distant from it not above four feet. As the
house to which this wall belonged was four storeys high, it would
sometimes happen that Mr Musselboro's cupboard was rather dark. But this
mattered the less as in these days Mr Musselboro seldom used it. Mr
Musselboro, who was very constant at his place of business--much more
constant than his friend Dobbs Broughton,--was generally to be found in
his friend's room. Only on some special occasions, on which it was
thought expedient that the commercial world should be made to understand
that Mr Augustus Musselboro had an individual existence of his own, did
that gentleman really seat himself in the dark closet. Mr Dobbs
Broughton, had he been asked what was his trade, would have said that he
was a stockbroker; and he would have answered truly, for he was a
stockbroker. A man may be a stockbroker though he never sells any stock;
as he may be a barrister though has not practiced at the bar. I do not
say that Mr Broughton never sold any stocks; but the buying and selling
of stock for other people was certainly not his chief business. And had
Mr Musselboro been asked what was his trade, he would have probably
given an evasive answer. At any rate in the City, and among people who
understood City matters, he would not have said that he was a
stockbroker. Both Mr Broughton and Mr Musselboro bought and sold a good
deal, but it was chiefly on account. The shares which were bought and
sold very generally did not pass from hand to hand; but the difference
in the price of the shares did do so. And then they had another little
business between them. They lent money on interest. And in this business
there was a third partner, whose name did not appear on the dirty
door-post. That third partner was Mrs Van Siever, the mother of Clara
Van Siever whom Mr Conway Dalrymple intended to portray as Jael driving
a nail into Sisera's head.
On a certain morning Mr Broughton and Mr Musselboro were sitting
together in the office which has been described. They were in Mr
Broughton's room, and occupied each arm-chair on the different sides of
the fire. Mr Musselboro was sitting close to the table, on which a
ledger was open before him, and he had a pen and ink before him, as
though he had been at work. Dobbs Broughton had a small betting-book in
his hand, and was seated with his feet up against the side of the
fire-place. Both men wore their hats, and the aspect of the room was not
the aspect of a place of business. They had been silent for some minutes
when Broughton took his cigar-case out of his pocket, and nibbled off
the end of a cigar, preparatory to lighting it.
'You had better not smoke here this morning, Dobbs,' said Musselboro.
'Why shouldn't I smoke in my own room?'
'Because she'll be here just now.'
'What do I care? If you think I'm going to be afraid of Mother Van,
you're mistaken. Let come what may, I'm not going to live under her
thumb.' So he lighted his cigar.
'All right,' said Musselboro, and he took up his pen and went to work at
his book.
'What is she coming her for this morning,' asked Broughton.
'To look after her money. What should she come for?'
'She gets her interest. I don't suppose there's better paid money in
the City.'
'She hasn't got what was coming to her at Christmas yet.'
'And this is February. What would she have? She had better put her
dirty money into the three per cents, if she is frightened at having to
wait a week or two.'
'Can she have it today?'
'What, the whole of it? Of course she can't. You know that as well as
I do. She can have four hundred pounds, if she wants it. But seeing all
she gets out of the concern, she has no right to press for it in that
way. She is the ----old usurer I ever came across in my life.'
'Of course she likes her money.'
'Likes her money! By George she does; her own and anybody else's that
she can get hold of. For a downright leech, recommend me always to a
woman. When a woman does go in for it, she is much more thorough than
any man.' Then Broughton turned over the little pages of his book, and
Musselboro pondered over the big pages of his book, and there was
silence for a quarter of an hour.
'There's something about nine hundred and fifteen pounds due to her,'
said Musselboro.
'I daresay there is.'
'It would be a very good thing to let her have it if you've got it. The
whole of it this morning, I mean.'
'If! Yes, if!' said Broughton.
'I know there's more than that at the bank.'
'And I'm to draw out every shilling that there is! I'll see Mother Van
---- further first. She can have 500 pounds if she likes it--and the
rest in a fortnight. Or she can have my note-of-hand for it all at
fourteen days.'
'She won't like that at all,' said Musselboro.
'Then she must lump it. I'm not going to bother myself about her. I've
pretty nearly as much money in it as she has, and we're in a boat
together. If she comes here bothering, you'd better tell her so.'
'You'll see her yourself?'
'Not unless she comes within the next ten minutes. I must go down to
the court. I said I'd be there by twelve. I've got somebody I want to
see.'
'I'd stay if I were you.'
'Why should I stay for her? If she thinks that I'm going to make myself
her clerk, she's mistaken. It may be all very well for you, Mussy, but
it won't do for me. I'm not dependent on her, and I don't want to marry
her daughter.'
'It will simply end in her demanding to have her money back again.'
'And how will she get it?' said Dobbs Broughton. 'I haven't a doubt in
life but she'd take it tomorrow if she could put her hands upon it. And
then, after a bit, when she began to find that she didn't like four per
cent, she'd bring it back again. But nobody can do business after such a
fashion as that. For the last three years she's drawn close upon two
thousand a year for less than eighteen thousand pounds. When a woman
wants to do that, she can't have her money in her pocket every Monday
morning.'
'But you've done better than that yourself, Dobbs.'
'Of course I have. And who has made the connexions; and who has done
the work? I suppose she doesn't think that I'm to have all the sweat and
that she is to have all the profit?'
'If you talk of work, Dobbs, it is I that have done the most of it.'
This Mr Musselboro said in a very serious voice, and with a look of much
reproach.
'And you've been paid for what you've done. Come, Mussy, you'd better
not turn against me. You'll never get your change out of that. Even if
you marry the daughter, that won't give you the mother's money. She'll
stick to every shilling of it till she dies; and she'd take it with her
then, if she knew how.' Having said this, he got up from his chair, put
his little book into his pocket, and walked out of the office. He pushed
his way across the court, which was more than ordinarily crowded with
the implements of Burton and Bangles' trade, and as he passed under the
covered way he encountered at the entrance an old woman getting out of a
cab. The old woman was, of course, Mother Van, as her partner, Mr Dobbs
Broughton irreverently called her. 'Mrs Van Siever, how d'ye do? Let me
give you a hand. Fare from South Kensington? I always give the fellow
three shillings.'
'You don't mean to tell me it's six miles!' And she tendered a florin
to the man.
'Can't take that, ma'am,' said the cabman.
'Can't take it! But you must take it. Broughton, just get a policeman,
will you?' Dobbs Broughton satisfied the driver out of his own pocket,
and the cab was driven away. 'What did you give him?' said Mrs Van
Siever.
'Just another sixpence. There never is a policeman anywhere about
here.'
'It'll be out of your own pocket, then,' said Mrs Van. 'But you're not
going away?'
'I must be at Capel Court by half-past twelve;--I must, indeed. If it
wasn't real business, I'd stay.'
'I told Musselboro, I should be here.'
'He's up there, and he knows all about the business just as well as I
do. When I found that I couldn't stay for you, I went through the
account with him, and it's all settled. Good morning. I'll see you at
the West End in a day or two.' Then he made his way out into Lombard
Street, and Mrs Van Siever picked her steps across the yard, and mounted
the stairs, and made her way into the room in which Mr Musselboro was
sitting.
'Somebody's been smoking, Gus,' she said, almost as soon as she had
entered the room.
'That's nothing new here,' he replied, as he got up from his chair.
'There's no good being done when men sit and smoke over their work. Is
it you, or he, or both of you?'
'Well--it was Broughton was smoking just now. I don't smoke of a
morning myself.'
'What made him get up and run away when I came?'
'How can I tell, Mrs Van Siever,' said Musselboro, laughing. 'If he did
run away when you came, I suppose it was because he didn't want to see
you.'
'And why shouldn't he want to see me? Gus, I expect the truth from you.
How are things going on here?' To this question Mr Musselboro made no
immediate answer; but tilted himself back in his chair and took his hat
off, and put his thumbs into the arm-holes of his waistcoat, and looked
his patroness full in the face. 'Gus,' she said again, 'I do expect the
truth from you. How are things going on here?'
'There'd be a good business--if he'd only keep things together.'
'But he's idle. Isn't he idle?'
'Confoundedly idle,' said Musselboro.
'And he drinks;--don't he drink in the day?'
'Like the mischief--some days. But that isn't the worst of it.'
'And what is the worst of it?'
'Newmarket;--that's the rock he's going to pieces on.'
'You don't mean to say he takes the money out of the business for that?'
And Mrs Van Siever's face, as she asked the question, expressed almost a
tragic horror. 'If I thought that I wouldn't give him an hour's mercy.'
'When a man bets he doesn't well know what money he uses. I can't say
that he takes money that is not his own. Situated as I am, I don't know
what is his own and what isn't. If your money was in my name I could
keep a hand on it;--but as it is not I can do nothing. I can see that
what is put out is put out fairly well; and when I think of it, Mrs Van
Siever, it is quite wonderful that we've lost so little. It has been
next to nothing. That has been my doing--and that's about all I can do.'
'You must know whether he has used my money for his own purposes or
not.'
'If you ask me, I think he has,' said Mr Musselboro.
'Then I'll go into it, and I'll find it out, and if it is so, as sure as
my name's Van Siever, I'll sew him up.' Having uttered which terrible
threat, the old woman drew a chair to the table and seated herself
fairly down, as though she were determined to go through all the books
of the office before she quitted that room. Mrs Van Siever in her
present habiliments was not a thing so terrible to look at as she had
been in her wiggeries at Mrs Dobbs Broughton's dinner-table. Her curls
were laid aside altogether, and she wore simply a front beneath her
close bonnet --and a very old front, too, which was not loudly offensive
because it told no lies. Her eyes were as bright, and her little wizen
face was as sharp as ever; but the wizen face and the bright eyes were
not so much amiss as seen together with the old dark brown silk dress
which she now wore, as they had been with the wiggeries and the evening
finery. Even now, in her morning costume, in her work-a-day business
dress, as we may call it, she looked to be very old--so old that nobody
could guess her age. People attempting to guess would say that she must
be at least over eighty. And yet she was wiry, and strong, and nimble.
It was not because she was feeble that she was thought to be old. They
who so judged of her were led to their opinion by the extreme thinness
of her face, and by the brightness of her eyes, joined to the depth of
the hollows in which they lay, and the red margin by which they were
surrounded. It was not really the fact that Mrs Van Siever was so very
aged, for she had still some years to live before she would reach
eighty, but that she was such a weird old woman, so small, so ghastly,
and so ugly! 'I'll sew him up, if he's robbing me,' she said. 'I will
indeed!' And she stretched out her hand to grab at the ledger which
Musselboro had been using.
'You won't understand anything from that,' said he, pushing the book
over to her.
'You can explain it to me.'
'That's all straight sailing, that is.'
'And where does he keep the figures that aren't straight sailing? That's
the book I want to see.'
'There is no such book.'
'Look here, Gus--if I find you deceiving me I'll throw you overboard as
sure as I'm a living woman. I will indeed. I'll have no mercy. I've
stuck to you, and made a man of you, and I expect you to stick to me.'
'Not much of a man,' said Musselboro, with a touch of scorn in his
voice.
'You've never had a shilling yet but what I gave you.'
'Yes; I have. I've had what I've worked for--and worked confounded hard
too.'
'Look here, Musselboro; if you're going to throw me over, just tell me
so, and let us begin fair.'
'I'm not going to throw you over. I've always been on the square with
you. Why don't you trust me out and out, and then I could do a deal
better for you. You ask me now about your money. I don't know about your
money, Mrs Van Siever. How am I to know anything about your money, Mrs
Van Seiver? You don't give me any power of keeping a hand upon Dobbs
Broughton. I suppose you have security from Dobbs Broughton, but I don't
know what security you have, Mrs Van Siever. He owes you now 915 pounds
16s 2d on last year's account!'
'Why doesn't he give me a cheque for the money?'
'He says he can't spare it. You may have 500 pounds, and the rest when
he can give it to you. Or he'll give you his note-of-hand at fourteen
days on the whole.'
'Bother the note-of-hand. Why should I take his note-of-hand?'
'Do as you like, Mrs Van Siever.'
'It's the interest on my own money. Why don't he give it me? I suppose
he has had it.'
'You must ask him that, Mrs Van Siever. You're in partnership with him,
and he can tell you. Nobody knows anything about it. If you were in
partnership with me, then of course I could tell you. But you're not.
You've never trusted me, Mrs Van Siever.'
The lady remained there closeted with Mr Musselboro for an hour after
that, and did, I think, at length learn something more as to the details
of her partner's business than her faithful servant Mr Musselboro had at
first found himself able to give to her. And at last they came to
friendly and confidential terms, in the midst of which the personal
welfare of Mr Dobbs Broughton was, I fear, somewhat forgotten. Not that
Mr Musselboro palpably and plainly threw his friend overboard. He took
his friend's part--alleging excuses for him, and pleading some facts.
'Of course, you know, a man like that is fond of pleasure, Mrs Van
Siever. He's been at it more or less all his life. I don't suppose he
ever missed a Derby or an Oaks, or the cup at Ascot, or the Goodwood in
his life.' 'He'll have to miss them before long, I'm thinking,' said Mrs
Van Siever. 'And as to not cashing up, you must remember, Mrs Van
Siever, that ten per cent won't come in quite as regularly as four or
five. When you go for high interest, there must be hitches here and
there. There must, indeed, Mrs Van Siever.' 'I know all about it,' said
Mrs Van Siever. 'If he gave it to me as soon as he got it himself, I
shouldn't complain. Never mind. He's only got to give me my little bit
of money out of the business, and then he and I will be all square. You
come and see Clara this evening, Gus.'
Then Mr Musselboro put Mrs Van Siever into another cab, and went out
upon the 'Change--hanging about the Bank, and standing in Threadneedle
Street, talking to other men just like himself. When he saw Dobbs
Broughton he told that gentleman that Mrs Van Siever had been in her
tantrums, but that he had managed to pacify her before she left Hook
Court. 'I'm to take the cheque for the five hundred tonight,' he said.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
JAEL
On the first of March, Conway Dalrymple's easel was put up in Mrs Dobbs
Broughton's boudoir upstairs, the canvas was placed upon it on which the
outlines of Jael and Sisera had been already drawn, and Mrs Broughton
and Clara Van Siever and Conway Dalrymple were assembled with the view
of steady art-work. But before we see how they began their work
together, we will go back for a moment to John Eames on his return to
his London lodgings. The first thing every man does when he returns home
after an absence, is to look for his letters, and John Eames looked at
his. There were not very many. There was a note marked immediate from
Sir Raffle Buffle, in which Sir R had scrawled in four lines a
notification that he should be driven to an extremity of inconvenience
if Eames were not at his post at half-past nine on the following
morning. 'I think I see myself there at that hour,' said John. There was
a notification of a house dinner, which he was asked to join, at his
club, and a card for an evening gathering at Lady Glencora
Palliser's--procured for him by his friend Conway--and an invitation for
dinner at the house of his uncle Mr Toogood; and there was a scented
noted in the handwriting of a lady, which he did not recognise. 'My
dearest, dearest friend, M D M,' he said, as he opened the note and
looked at the signature. Then he read the letter from Miss Demolines.
'MY DEAR MR EAMES,
'Pray come to me at once. I know that you are to be back
tomorrow. Do not lose an hour if you can help it. I shall
be at home at half-past five. I fear what you know of has begun.
But it certainly shall not go on. In one way or another it
must be prevented. I won't say another word till I see you,
but pray come at once--Yours always,
'Thursday.'
M D M'
'Poor mother isn't very well, so you had better ask for me.'
'Beautiful!' said Johnny, as he read the note. 'There's nothing I like
so much as a mystery--especially if it's about nothing. I wonder why she
is so desperately anxious that the picture should not be painted. I'd
ask Dalrymple, only I should spoil the mystery.' Then he sat himself
down, and began to think of Lily. There could be no treason to Lily in
his amusing himself with the freaks of such a woman as Miss Demolines.
At eleven o'clock on the morning of the first of March--the day
following that on which Miss Demolines had written her note--the easel
was put up and the canvas was placed on it in Mrs Broughton's room. Mrs
Broughton and Clara were both there, and when they had seen the outlines
as far as it had been drawn, they proceeded to make arrangements for
their future operations. The period of work was to begin always at
eleven, and was to be continued for an hour and a half or for two hours
on the days on which they met. I fear that there was a little improper
scheming in this against the two persons whom the ladies were bound to
obey. Mr Dobbs Broughton invariably left his house after ten in the
morning. It would sometimes happen, though not frequently, that he
returned home early in the day--at four perhaps, or even before that;
and should he chance to do so while the picture was going on, he would
catch them at their work if the work were postponed till after luncheon.
And then again Mrs Van Siever would often go out in the morning, and
when she did so, would always go without her daughter. On such occasion
she went into the City, or to other resorts of business, at which, in
some manner quite unintelligible to her daughter, she looked after her
money. But when she did not go out in the morning, she did go out in the
afternoon, and she would then require her daughter's company. There was
some place to which she always went of a Friday morning, and at which
she stayed for two or three hours. Friday therefore was a fitting day on
which to begin the work at Mrs Broughton's house. All this was explained
between the three conspirators. Mrs Dobbs Broughton declared that if she
entertained the slightest idea that her husband would object to the
painting of the picture in her room, nothing on earth would induce her
to lend her countenance to it; but yet it might be well not to tell him
just at first, perhaps not till the sittings were over--perhaps not till
the picture was finished; as otherwise, tidings of the picture might get
round to ears which were not intended to hear it. 'Poor dear Dobbs is so
careless with a secret.' Miss Van Siever explained her motives in a
different way. 'I know mamma would not let me do it if she knew it; and
therefore I shall not tell her.' 'My dear Clara,' said Mrs Broughton
with a smile 'you are so outspoken!' 'And why not?' said Miss Van
Siever. 'I am old enough to judge for myself. If mamma does not want me
to be deceived, she ought not to treat me as a child. Of course she'll
find it out sooner or later; but I don't care about that.' Conway
Dalrymple said nothing as the two ladies were thus excusing themselves.
'How delightful it must be not to have a master,' said Mrs Broughton,
addressing him. 'But then a man has to work for his own bread,' said he.
'I suppose it comes about equal in the long run.'
Very little drawing or painting was done on that day. In the first
place it was necessary that the question of costume should be settled,
and both Mrs Broughton and the artist had much to say on that subject.
It was considered proper that Jael should be dressed as a Jewess, and
there came to be much question how Jewesses dressed themselves in those
very early days. Mrs Broughton had prepared her jewels and raiment of
many colours, but the painter declared that the wife of Heber the Kenite
would have no jewels. But when Mrs Broughton discovered from her Bible
that Heber had been connected by family ties with Moses, she was more
than ever sure that Heber's wife would have much in her tent of the
spoilings of the Egyptians. And when Clara Van Siever suggested that at
any rate she would not have worn them in a time of confusion when
soldiers were loose, flying about the country, Mrs Broughton was quite
confident that she would have put them on before she invited the captain
of the enemy's host into her tent. The artist at last took the matter
into his own hand, by declaring that Miss Van Siever would sit the
subject much better without jewels, and therefore all Mrs Broughton's
gewgaws were put back into their boxes. And then on four different times
the two ladies had to retire into Mrs Broughton's room in order that
Jael might be arrayed in various costumes--and in each costume she had
to kneel down, taking the hammer in her hand, and holding the pointed
stick which had been prepared to do duty as the nail, upon the forehead
of the dummy Sisera. At last it was decided that her raiment should be
altogether white, and that she should wear, twisted round her head and
falling over her shoulder, a Roman silk scarf of various colours. 'Where
Jael could have gotten I don't know,' said Clara. 'You may be sure that
there were lots of such things among the Egyptians,' said Mrs Broughton,
'and that Moses brought away all the best for his own family.'
'And who is to be Sisera?' asked Mrs Broughton in one of the pauses in
their work.'
'I'm thinking of asking my friend John Eames to sit.'
'Of course we cannot sit together,' said Miss Van Siever.
'There's no reason why you should,' said Dalrymple. 'I can do the
second figure in my own room.' Then there was a bargain made that Sisera
should not be a portrait. 'It would never do,' said Mrs Broughton,
shaking her head very gravely.
Though there was really very little done to the picture on that day, the
work was commenced; and Mrs Broughton, who had at first objected
strongly to the idea, and who had said twenty times that it was quite
out of the question that it should be done her house, became very eager
in her delight about it. Nobody should know anything of the picture till
it should be exhibited. That would be best. And it should be the picture
of the year! She was a little heart-broken when Dalrymple assured her
that it could not possible be finished for exhibition in that May; but
she came to again when he declared that he meant to put out all his
strength upon it. 'There will be five or six months' work in it,' he
said. 'Will there, indeed? And how much work was there in "The Graces"?'
'The Graces', as will perhaps be remembered, was the triple portrait of
Mrs Dobbs Broughton herself. This question the artist did not answer
with absolute accuracy, but contented himself with declaring that with
such a model as Mrs Broughton the picture had been comparatively easy,
Mrs Broughton, having no doubt that ultimate object of which she had
spoken to her friend Conway steadily in view, took occasion before the
sitting was over to leave the room, so that the artist might have an
opportunity of speaking a word in private to his model--if he had any
such word to speak. And Mrs Broughton, as she did this, felt that she
was doing her duty as a wife, a friend, and a Christian. She was doing
her duty as a wife, because she was giving the clearest proof in the
world--the clearest at any rate to herself--that the intimacy between
herself and her friend Conway had in it nothing that was improper. And
she was doing her duty as a friend, because Clara Van Siever, with her
large expectations, would be an eligible wife. And she was doing her
duty as a Christian, because the whole thing was intended to be moral.
Miss Demolines had declared that her friend Maria Clutterbuck--as Miss
Demolines delighted to call Mrs Broughton, in memory of dear old
innocent days--had high principles; and the reader will see that she was
justified in her declaration. 'It will be better so,' said Mrs
Broughton, as she sat upon her bed and wiped a tear from the corner of
her eye. 'Yes; it will be better so. There is a pang. Of course there's
a pang. But it will be better so.' Acting upon this high principle, she
allowed Conway Dalrymple five minutes to say what he had to say to Clara
Van Siever. Then she allowed herself to indulge in some very savage
feelings in reference to her husband--accusing her husband in her
thoughts of great cruelty--nay, of brutality, because of certain sharp
words that he had said as to Conway Dalrymple. 'But of course he can't
understand,' said Mrs Broughton to herself. 'How is it to be expected
that he should understand?'
But she allowed her friend on this occasion only five minutes, thinking
probably that so much time might suffice. A woman, when she is jealous,
is apt to attribute to other woman with whom her jealousy is concerned,
both weakness and timidity, and to the man both audacity and strength. A
woman who has herself taken perhaps twelve months in the winning, will
think that another woman is to be won in five minutes. It is not to be
supposed that Mrs Dobbs Broughton had ever been won by anyone except Mr
Dobbs Broughton. At least, let it not be supposed that she had ever
acknowledged a spark of love for Conway Dalymple. But nevertheless there
was enough of jealousy in her present mood to make her think poorly of
Miss Van Siever's capacity for standing a siege against the artist's
eloquence. Otherwise, having left the two together with the object which
she had acknowledged to herself, she would hardly have returned to them
after so short an interval.
'I hope you won't dislike the trouble of all this?' said Dalrymple to
his model, as soon as Mrs Broughton was gone.
'I cannot say that I like it very much,' said Miss Van Siever.
'I'm afraid it will be a bore;--but I hope you'll go through with it.'
'I shall if I am not prevented,' said Miss Van Siever. 'When I've said
that I'll do a thing, I like to do it.'
There was a pause in the conversation which took up a considerable
portion of the five minutes. Miss Van Siever was not holding her nail
during those moments, but was sitting in a commonplace way on her chair,
while Dalrymple was scraping his palette. 'I wonder what it was that
first induced you to sit?' said he.
'Oh, I don't know. I took a fancy for it.'
'I'm very glad you did take the fancy. You'll make an excellent model.
If you won't mind posing again for a few minutes--I will not weary you
today. Your right arm a little more forward.'
'But I should tumble down.'
'Not if you lean well on the nail.'
'But that would have woken Sisera before she had struck a blow.'
'Never mind. Let us try it.' Then Mrs Broughton returned, with that
pleasant feeling in her bosom of having done her duty as a wife, friend,
and a Christian. 'Mrs Broughton,' continued the painter, 'just steady
Miss Van Siever's shoulder with your hand; and now bring the arm and the
elbow a little more forward.'
'But Jael did not have a friend to help her in that way,' said Miss Van
Siever.
At the end of an hour and a half the two ladies retired, and Jael
disrobed herself, and Miss Van Siever put on her customary raiment. It
was agreed among them that they had commenced their work auspiciously,
and that they would meet again on the following Monday. The artist
begged to be allowed an hour to go on with his work in Mrs Broughton's
room, and thus the hour was conceded to him. It was understood that he
could not take the canvas backwards and forwards with him to his own
house, and he pointed out that no progress whatever could be made,
unless he were occasionally allowed some such grace as this. Mrs
Broughton doubted and hesitated, made difficulties, and lifted up her
hands in despair. 'It is easy for you to say, Why not? but I know very
well why not?' But at last she gave way. 'Honi soit qui mal y pense,'
she said; 'that must be my protection.' So she followed Miss Van Siever
downstairs, leaving Mr Dalrymple in possession of her boudoir. 'I shall
give you just one hour,' she said, 'and then I shall come and turn you
out.' So she went down, and, as Miss Van Siever would not stay to lunch
with her, she ate her lunch by herself, sending a glass of sherry and a
biscuit up to the poor painter at his work.
Exactly at the end of the hour she returned to him. 'Now, Conway, you
must go,' she said.
'But why in such a hurry?'
'Because I say that it must be so. When I say so, pray let that be
sufficient.' But still Dalrymple went on painting.
'Conway,' she said, 'how can you treat me with such disdain?'
'Disdain, Mrs Broughton!'
'Yes, disdain. Have I not begged you to understand that I cannot allow
you to remain here, and yet you pay no attention to my wishes.'
'I have done now'; and he began to put his brushes and paints together.
'I suppose all these things may remain here?'
'Yes; they may remain. They must do so, of course. There; if you will
put the easel in the corner, with the canvas behind it, they will not be
seen if he should chance to come into the room.'
'He would not be angry, I suppose, if he should saw them?'
'There is no knowing. Men are so unreasonable. All men are, I think.
All those are whom I have had the fortune to know. Women generally say
that men are selfish. I do not complain so much that they are selfish as
that they are thoughtless. They are headstrong and do not look forward
to results. Now you--I do not think you would willingly do me an
injury?'
'I do not think I would.'
'I am sure you would not;--but yet you would forget to save me from
one.'
'What injury?'
'Oh, never mind. I am not thinking of anything in particular. From
myself, for instance. But we will not talk about that. That way madness
lies. Tell me, Conway;--what do you think of Clara Van Siever?'
'She is very handsome, certainly.'
'And clever?'
'Decidedly clever. I should think she has a temper of her own.'
'What woman is there worth a straw that has not? If Clara Van Siever
were ill-used, she would resent it. I do not doubt that for a moment. I
should not like to be the man who would do it.'
'Nor I, either,' said Conway.
'But there is plenty of feminine softness in that character, if she were
treated with love and kindness. Conway, if you will take my advice you
will ask Clara Van Siever to be your wife. But perhaps you have
already.'
'Who; I?'
'Yes; you.'
'I have not done it yet, certainly, Mrs Broughton.'
'And why should you not do it?'
'There are two or three reasons;--but perhaps none of any great
importance. Do you know of none, Mrs Broughton?'
'I know of none,' said Mrs Broughton in a very serious--in almost a
tragic tone;--'of none that should weigh for a moment. As far as I am
concerned, nothing would give me more pleasure.'
'That is so kind of you!'
'I mean to be kind. I do, indeed, Conway. I know it will be better for
you that you should be settled--very much better. And it will be better
for me. I do not mind admitting that;--though in saying so I trust
greatly to your generosity to interpret my words properly.'
'I shall not flatter myself, if you mean that.'
'There is no question of flattery, Conway. The question is simply of
truth and prudence. Do you not know that it would be better for yourself
that you should be married?'
'Not unless a certain gentleman were to die first,' said Conway
Dalrymple, as he deposited the last of his painting paraphernalia in the
recess which had been prepared for them by Mrs Broughton.
'Conway, how can you speak in that wicked, wicked way?'
'I can assure that I do not wish the gentleman in question the slightest
harm in the world. If his welfare depended on me, he should be safe as
the Bank of England.'
'And you will not take my advice?'
'What advice?'
'About Clara?'
'Mrs Broughton, matrimony is a very important thing.'
'Indeed, it is;--oh, who can say how important! There was a time,
Conway, when I thought that you had given your heart to Madelina
Demolines.'
'Heaven forbid!'
'And I grieved, because I thought that she was not worthy of you.'
'There was never anything in that, Mrs Broughton.'
'She thought that there was. At any rate, she said so. I know that for
certain. She told me so herself. But let that pass. Clara Van Siever is
in every respect very different from Madalina. Clara, I think, is worthy
of you. And Conway--of course it is not for me to dictate to you; but
this I must tell you--'
'What must you tell me?'
'I will tell you nothing more. If you cannot understand what I have
said, you must be more dull of comprehension than I believe you to be.
Now go. Why are you not gone this half-hour?'
'How could I go while you were giving me all this good advice?'
'I have not asked you to stay. Go now, at any rate. And, remember,
Conway, if this picture is to go on, I will not have you remaining here
after the work is done. Will you remember that?' And she held him by the
hand while he declared that he would remember it.
Mrs Dobbs Broughton was no more in love with Conway Dalrymple than she
was in love with King Charles on horseback at Charing Cross. And, over
and beyond the protection which came to her in the course of nature from
impassioned feelings in this special phase of her life--and indeed, if I
may say, in every phase of her life--it must be acknowledged on her
behalf that she did enjoy that protection which comes from what we call
principle--though the principle was not perhaps very high of its kind.
Madalina Demolines had been right when she talked of her friend Maria's
principles. Dobbs Broughton had been so far lucky in that jump in the
dark which had made in taking a wife to himself, that he had not fallen
upon a really vicious woman, or upon a woman of strong feeling. It had
come to be the lot of Mrs Dobbs Broughton to have six hours' work every
day of her life, I think that the work would have been done badly, but
that it would have kept her fires from all danger. As it was she had
nothing to do. She had no child. She was not given to much reading. She
could not sit with a needle in her hand all day. She had no aptitude for
May meetings, or the excitement of charitable good works. Life with her
was very dull, and she found no amusement within her reach so easy and
so pleasant as the amusement of pretending to be in love. If all that
she did and all that she said could only have been taken for its worth
and for nothing more, by the different persons concerned, there was very
little in it to flatter Mr Dalrymple or to give cause for tribulation to
Mr Broughton. She probably cared but little for either of them. She was
one of those women to whom it is not given by nature to care very much
for anybody. But, of the two, she certainly cared the most for Mr Dobbs
Broughton--because Mr Dobbs Broughton belonged to her. As to leaving Mr
Dobbs Broughton's house, and putting herself into the hands of another
man--no Imogen of a wife was ever less likely to take step so wicked, so
dangerous, and so generally disagreeable to all the parties concerned.
But Conway Dalrymple--though now and again he had got a side glance at
her true character with a clear-seeing eye--did allow himself to be
flattered and deceived. He knew that she was foolish and ignorant, and
that she often talked wonderful nonsense. He knew also that she was
continually contradicting herself--as when she would strenuously beg him
to leave her, while she would continue to talk to him in a strain that
prevented the possibility of his going. But, nevertheless, he was
flattered, and he did believe that she loved him. As to his love for
her--he knew very well that it amounted to nothing. Now and again,
perhaps, twice a week, if he saw her as often, he would say something
which would imply a declaration of affection. He felt that as much as
that was expected from him, and that he ought not to hope to get off
cheaper. And now that this little play was going on about Miss Van
Siever, he did think that Mrs Dobbs Broughton was doing her very best to
overcome an unfortunate attachment. It is so gratifying to a young man's
feelings to suppose that another man's wife has conceived an unfortunate
attachment for him! Conway Dalrymple ought not to have been fooled by
such a woman; but I fear that he was fooled by her.
As he returned home today from Mrs Broughton's house to his own lodgings
he rambled out for a while into Kensington Gardens, and thought of his
position seriously. 'I don't see why I should not marry her,' he said to
himself, thinking of course of Miss Van Siever. 'If Maria is not in
earnest it is not my fault. And it would be my wish that she should be
in earnest. If I suppose her to be so, and take her at her word, she can
have no right to quarrel with me. Poor Maria! At any rate it will be
better for her, for no good can come of this kind of thing. And, by
heavens, with a woman like that, of strong feelings, one never knows
what may happen.' And then he thought of the condition he would be in,
if he were to find her some fine day in his own rooms, and if she were
to tell him that she could not go home again, and that she meant to
remain with him!
In the meantime Mrs Dobbs Broughton has gone down into her own
drawing-room, had tucked herself up on the sofa, and had fallen fast
asleep.
CHAPTER XXXIX
A NEW FLIRTATION
John Eames sat at his office on the day after his return to London, and
answered the various letters which he had found waiting for him at his
lodgings on the previous evening. To Miss Demolines he had already
written from his club, a single line, which he considered to be
appropriate to the mysterious necessities of the occasion. 'I will be
with you at a quarter to six tomorrow.--J E. Just returned.' There was
not another word; and as he scrawled it at one of the club tables while
two or three other men were talking to him, he felt rather proud of his
correspondence. 'It was capital fun,' he said; 'and after all'--the
'all' on this occasion being Lily Dale, and the sadness of his
disappointment at Allington--'after all, let a fellow be ever so down in
the mouth, a little amusement should do him good.' And he reflected
further that the more a fellow be 'down in the mouth', the more good the
amusement would do him. He sent off his note, therefore, with some
little inward rejoicing--and a word of two also of spoken rejoicing.
'What fun women are sometimes,' he said to one of his friends--a friend
with whom he was very intimate, calling him always Fred, and slapping
his back, but whom he never by any chance saw out of his club.
'What up to now, Johnny? Some good fortune?'
'Good fortune, no. I never saw good fortune of that kind. But I've got
hold of a young woman--or rather a young woman has got hold of me, who
insists on having mystery with me. In the mystery itself there is not
the slightest interest. But the mysteriousness of it is charming. I have
just written to her three words to settle an appointment for tomorrow.
We don't sign our names lest the Postmaster General should find out
about it.'
'Is she pretty?'
'Well;--she isn't ugly. She has just enough of good looks to make the
sort of thing pass off pleasantly. A mystery with a downright ugly young
woman would be unpleasant.'
After this fashion the note from Miss Demolines had been received, and
answered at once, but the other letters remained in his pocket till he
reached his office on the following morning. Sir Raffle had begged him
to be there at half-past nine. This he had sworn he would not do; but he
did seat himself in his room at ten minutes before ten, finding of
course the whole building untenanted at that early hour--that unearthly
hour, as Johnny called it himself. 'I shouldn't wonder if he really is
here this morning,' Johnny said, as he entered the building, 'just that
he may have the opportunity of jumping on me.' But Sir Raffle was not
there, and then Johnny began to abuse Sir Raffle. 'If I ever come here
early to meet him again, because he says he means to be here himself, I
hope I may be--blessed.' On that especial morning it was twelve before
Sir Raffle made his appearance, and Johnny avenged himself--I regret to
have to tell it--by a fib. That Sir Raffle fibbed first, was no valid
excuse whatever for Eames.
'I've been at it ever since six o'clock,' said Sir Raffle.
'At what?' said John.
'Work, to be sure;--and very hard work too. I believe the Chancellor of
the Exchequer thinks that he can call upon me to any extent that he
pleases;--just any extent that he pleases. He doesn't give me credit for
a desire to have a single hour to myself.'
'What would he do, Sir Raffle, if you were to get ill, or wear yourself
out?'
'He knows I'm not one of the wearing-out sort of men. You got my note
last night?'
'Yes; I got your note.'
'I'm sorry that I troubled you; but I couldn't help it. I didn't expect
to get a box full of papers at eleven o'clock last night.'
'You didn't put me out, Sir Raffle; I happened to have business of my
own which prevented the possibility of my being here early.'
This was the way in which John Eames avenged himself. Sir Raffle turned
his face upon his private secretary, and his face was very black. Johnny
bore the gaze without dropping an eyelid. 'I'm not going to stand it,
and he may as well know that at once,' Johnny said to one of his friends
in the office afterwards. 'If he ever wants anything really done, I'll
do it;--though it should take me twelve hours at a stretch. But I'm not
going to pretend to believe all the lies he tells me about the
Chancellor of the Exchequer. If that is to be part of the private
secretary's business, he had better get somebody else.' But now Sir
Raffle was very angry, and his countenance was full of wrath as he
looked down upon his subordinate minister. 'If I had come here, Mr
Eames, and had found you absent, I should have been very much annoyed,
very much annoyed indeed, after having written as I did.'
'You would have found me absent at the hour you named. As I wasn't
there then, I think it's only fair to say so.'
'I'm afraid you begrudge your time to the service, Mr Eames.'
'I do begrudge it when the service doesn't want it.'
'At your age, Mr Eames, that's not for you to judge. If I had acted in
that way when I was young I should never have filled the position I now
hold. I always remembered in those days that as I was the hand and not
the head, I was bound to hold myself in readiness whether work might be
required of me or not.'
'If I'm wanted as hand now, Sir Raffle, I'm ready.'
'That's all very well;--but why were you not here at the hour I named?'
'Well, Sir Raffle, I cannot say that the Chancellor of the Exchequer
detained me;--but there was business. As I've been here for the last two
hours, I am happy to think that in this instance the public service will
not have suffered by my disobedience.'
Sir Raffle was still standing with his hat on, and with his back to the
fire, and his countenance was full of wrath. It was on his tongue to
tell Johnny that he had better return to his former work in the outer
office. He greatly wanted the comfort of a private secretary who would
believe in him--or at least pretend to believe in him. There are men
who, though they have not sense enough to be true, have nevertheless
sense enough to know that they cannot expect to be really believed in by
those who are near enough to them to know them. Sir Raffle Buffle was
such a one. He would have greatly delighted in the services of someone
who would trust him implicitly--of some young man who would really
believe all that he said of himself and of the Chancellor of the
Exchequer; but he was wise enough to perceive that no such young man was
to be had; or that any such man--could such a one be found--would be
absolutely useless for any purposes of work. He knew himself to be a
liar whom nobody trusted. And he knew himself also to be a bully--though
he could not think so low of himself as to believe that he was a bully
whom nobody feared. A private secretary was at the least bound to
pretend to believe in him. There is a decency in such things, and that
decency John Eames did not observe. He thought that he must get rid of
John Eames, in spite of certain attractions which belonged to Johnny's
appearance and general manners, and social standing, and reputed wealth.
But it would not be wise to punish a man on the spot for breaking an
appointment which he himself had not kept, and therefore he would wait
for another opportunity. 'You had better go to your own room now,' he
said. 'I am engaged on a matter connected with the Treasury, in which I
will not ask for your assistance.' He knew that Eames would not believe
a word as to what he said about the Treasury--not even some very
trifling base of truth which did exist; but the boast gave him an
opportunity of putting an end to the interview after his own fashion.
Then John Eames went to his own room and answered the letters which he
had in his pocket.
To the club dinner he would not go. 'What's the use of paying two
guineas for a dinner with fellows you see every day of your life?' he
said. To Lady Glencora's he would go, and he wrote a line to his friend
Dalrymple proposing that they should go together. And he would dine with
his cousin Toogood in Tavistock Square. 'One meets the queerest people
in the world there,' he said; 'but Tommy Toogood is such a good fellow
himself!' After that he had his lunch. Then he read the paper, and
before he went away he wrote a dozen or two of private notes, presenting
Sir Raffle's compliments right and left, and giving in no one note a
single word of information that could be of any use to any person.
Having thus earned his salary by half-past four o'clock he got into a
hansom cab and had himself driven to Porchester Terrace. Miss Demolines
was at home, of course, and he soon found himself closeted with that
interesting young woman.
'I thought you never would have come.' These were the first words she
spoke.
'My dear Miss Demolines, you must not forget that I have my bread to
earn.'
'Fiddlesticks!--Bread! As if I didn't know that you can get away from
your office when you choose.'
'But, indeed, I cannot.'
'What is there to prevent you, Mr Eames?'
'I'm not tied up like a dog, certainly; but who do you suppose will do
my work if I do not do it myself? It is a fact, though the world does
not believe it, that men in public offices have something to do.'
'Now you are laughing at me, I know; but you are welcome, if you like
it. It's the way of the world just at present that ladies should submit
to that sort of thing from gentlemen.'
'What sort of thing, Miss Demolines?'
'Chaff, as you call it. Courtesy is out of fashion, and gallantry has
come to signify quite a different kind of thing from what it used to
do.'
'The Sir Charles Grandison business is done and gone. That's what you
mean, I suppose? Don't you think we should find it very heavy if we
tried to get it back again?'
'I'm not going to ask you to be a Sir Charles Grandison, Mr Eames. But
never mind all that now. Do you know that that girl has absolutely had
her first sitting for the picture?'
'Has she, indeed?'
'She has. You may take my word for it. I know it as a fact. What a
fool that young man is!'
'Which young man?'
'Which young man! Conway Dalrymple to be sure. Artists are always
weak. Of all men in the world they are the most subject to flattery from
women; and we all know that Conway Dalrymple is very vain.'
'Upon my word I didn't know it,' said Johnny.
'Yes, you do. You must know it. When a man goes about in a purple
velvet coat of course he is vain.'
'I certainly cannot defend a purple velvet coat.'
'That is what he wore when this girl sat to him this morning.'
'This morning was it?'
'Yes, this morning. They little think that the can do nothing without
my knowing it. He was there for nearly four hours, and she was dressed
up in a white robe as Jael, with a turban on her head. Jael indeed! I
call it very improper, and I am quite astonished that Maria Clutterbuck
should have lent herself to such a piece of work. That Maria was never
very wise, of course we all know; but I thought that she had principle
enough to have kept her from this kind of thing.'
'It's her fevered existence,' said Johnny.
'That's just it. She must have excitement. It is like dram-drinking.
And then, you know, they are always living in the crater of a volcano.'
'Who are living in the crater of a volcano?'
'The Dobbs Broughtons are. Of course they are. There is no saying what
day a smash may come. They City people get so used to it that they enjoy
it. The risk is everything to them.'
'They like to have a little certainty behind the risk, I fancy.'
'I'm afraid there is very little that's certain with Dobbs Broughton.
But about this picture, Mr Eames. I look to you to assist me there. It
must be put a stop to. As to that I am determined. It must be--put
a--stop to.' And as Miss Demolines repeated these last words with a
tremendous emphasis she leant with both her elbows on a little table
that stood between her and her visitor, and looked with all her eyes
into his face. 'I do hope that you agree with me in that,' said she.
'Upon my word I do not see the harm of the picture,' said he.
'You do not?'
'Indeed no. Why should not Dalrymple paint Miss Van Siever as well as
any other lady? It is his special business to paint ladies.'
'Look her, Mr Eames--' And now Miss Demolines, as she spoke drew her own
seat closer to that of her companion and pushed away the little table.
'Do you suppose that Conway Dalrymple, in the usual way of his business,
paints pictures of young ladies of which their mothers know nothing? Do
you suppose that he paints them in ladies' rooms without their husbands'
knowledge? And in the common way of his business does he not expect to
be paid for his pictures?'
'But what is all that to you and me, Miss Demolines?'
'Is the welfare of your friend nothing to you? Would you like to see
him become the victim of the artifice of such a girl as Clara Van
Siever?'
'Upon my word I think he is very well able to take care of himself.'
'And would you wish to see that poor creature's domestic hearth ruined
and broken up?'
'Which poor creature?'
'Dobbs Broughton, to be sure.'
'I can't pretend that I care very much for Dobbs Broughton,' said John
Eames; 'and you see I know so little about his domestic hearth.'
'Oh, Mr Eames!'
'Besides, her principles will pull her through. You told me yourself
that Mrs Dobbs Broughton had high principles.'
'God forbid that I should say a word against Maria Clutterbuck,' said
Miss Demolines fervently. 'Maria Clutterbuck was my early friend, and
though words have been spoken which never should have been spoken, and
though things have been done which never should have been dreamed of,
still I will not desert Maria Clutterbuck in her hour of need. No,
never!'
'I'm sure you're what one may call a trump to your friends, Miss
Demolines.'
'I have endeavoured to be so, and always shall. You will find me
so;--that is if you and I ever become intimate enough to feel that sort
of friendship.'
'There is nothing on earth I should like better,' said Johnny. As soon
as these words were out of his mouth, he felt ashamed of himself. He
knew that he did not in truth desire the friendship of Miss Demolines,
and that any friendship with such a one would mean something different
from friendship--something that would be an injury to Lily Dale. A week
had hardly passed since he had sworn a life's constancy to Lily
Dale--had sworn it, not to her only, but to himself; and now he was
giving way to a flirtation with this woman, not because he liked it
himself, but because he was too weak to keep out of it.'
'If that is true--' said Miss Demolines.
'Oh, yes; it is quite true,' said Johnny.
'Then you must earn my friendship by doing what I ask of you. That
picture must not be painted. You must tell Conway Dalrymple as his
friend that he must cease to carry on such an intrigue in another man's
house.'
'You would hardly call painting a picture an intrigue; would you?'
'Certainly I would when it's kept a secret from the husband by the
wife--and from the mother by the daughter. If it cannot be stopped in
any other way, I must tell Mrs Van Siever;--I must, indeed. I have such
an abhorrence of the old woman, that I could not bring myself to speak
to her--but I should write to her. That's what I should do.'
'But what's the reason? You might as tell me the real reason.' Had Miss
Demolines been christened Mary, or Fanny, or Jane, I think that John
Eames would now have called her by either of those names; but Madalina
was such a mouthful that he could not bring himself to use it at once.
He had heard that among her intimates she was called Maddy. He had an
idea that he had heard Dalrymple in old times talk of her as Maddy
Mullins, and just at this moment the idea was not pleasant to him; at
any rate he could not call her Maddy as yet. 'How am I to help you,' he
said, 'unless I know all about it?'
'I hate that girl like poison!' said Miss Demolines, confidentially,
drawing herself very near to Johnny as she spoke.
'But what has she done?'
'What has she done? I can't tell you what she has done. I could not
demean myself by repeating it. Of course we all know what she wants. She
wants to catch Conway Dalrymple. That's as plain as anything can be. Not
that I care about that.'
'Of course not,' said Johnny.
'Not in the least. It's nothing to me. I have known Conway Dalrymple,
no doubt, for a year or two, and I should be sorry to see a young man
who has his good points sacrificed in that sort of way. But it is mere
acquaintance between Mr Dalrymple and me, and of course I cannot
interfere.'
'She'll have a lot of money, you know.'
'He thinks so; does he? I suppose that is what Maria has told him. Oh,
Mr Eames, you don't know the meanness of women; you don't indeed. Men
are so much more noble.'
'Are they, do you think?'
'Than some women. I see women doing things that really disgust me; I do
indeed;--things that I wouldn't do myself, were it ever so;--striving to
catch men in every possible way, and for such purposes! I wouldn't have
believed it of Maria Clutterbuck. I wouldn't indeed. However I will
never say a word against her, because she has been my friend. Nothing
shall ever induce me.'
John Eames before he left Porchester Terrace, had at last succeeded in
calling his fair friend Madalina, and had promised that he would
endeavour to open the artist's eyes to the folly of painting his picture
in Broughton's house without Broughton's knowledge.
CHAPTER XL
MR TOOGOOD'S IDEAS ABOUT SOCIETY
A day or two after the interview which was described in the last chapter
John Eames dined with his uncle Mr Thomas Toogood, in Tavistock Square.
He was in the habit of doing this about once a month, and was a great
favourite both with his cousins and with their mother. Mr Toogood did
not give dinner-parties; always begging those whom he asked to enjoy his
hospitality, to take pot luck, and telling young men whom he could treat
with familiarity --such as his nephew--that if they wanted to be regaled
a la Russe they must not come to Number 75 Tavistock Square. 'A leg of
mutton and trimmings; that will be about the outside of it,' he would
say; but he would add in a whisper--'and a glass of port such as you
don't get every day of your life.' Polly and Lucy Toogood were pretty
girls, and merry withal, and certain young men were well contented to
accept the attorney's invitation --whether attracted by the promised leg
of mutton, or the port wine, or the young ladies, I will not attempt to
say. But it had so happened that one young man, a clerk from John
Eames's office, had partaken so often of the put luck and port wine that
Polly Toogood had conquered him by her charms, and he was now a slave,
waiting an appropriate time for matrimonial sacrifice. William Summerkin
was the young man's name; and as it was known that Mr Summerkin was to
inherit a fortune amounting to three hundred pounds from his maiden
aunt, it was considered that Polly Toogood was not doing amiss. 'I'll
give you three hundred pounds, my boy, just to put a few sheets on the
beds,' said Toogood the father, 'and when the old birds are both dead
she'll have a thousand pounds out of the nest. That's the extent of
Polly's fortune;--so now you know.' Summerkin was, however, quite
contented to have his own money settled on his darling Polly, and the
whole thing was looked at with pleasant and propitious eyes by the
Toogood connexion.
When John Eames entered the drawing-room Summerkin and Polly were
already there. Summerkin blushed up to his eyes, of course, but Polly
sat as demurely as though she had been accustomed to having lovers all
her life. 'Mamma will be down almost immediately, John,' said Polly as
soon as the first greetings were over, 'and papa has come in, I know.'
'Summerkin,' said Johnny, 'I'm afraid you left the office before four
o'clock.'
'No, I did not,' said Summerkin. 'I deny it.'
'Polly,' said her cousin, 'you should keep him in better order. He will
certainly come to grief if he goes on like this. I suppose you could do
without him for half an hour.'
'I don't want him I assure you,' said Polly.
'I have only been here just five minutes,' said Summerkin, 'and I came
because Mrs Toogood asked me to do a commission.'
'That's civil to you, Polly,' said John.
'It's quite as civil as I wish him to be,' said Polly. 'And as for you,
John, everybody knows that you're a goose, and that you always were a
goose. Isn't he always doing foolish things at the office, William?' But
as John Eames was rather a great man at the Income-Tax Office, Summerkin
could not fall into his sweetheart's joke on this subject, finding it
easier and perhaps safer to twiddle the bodkins of Polly's work-basket.
Then Toogood and Mrs Toogood entered the room together, and the lovers
were able to be alone again during the general greetings with which
Johnny was welcomed.
'You don't know the Silverbridge people--do you?' asked Mr Toogood.
Eames said that he did not. He had been at Silverbridge more than once,
but did not know very much of the Silverbridgians. 'Because Walker is
coming here to dine here. Walker is the leading man in Silverbridge.'
'And what is Walker;--besides being the leading man in Silverbridge?'
'He's a lawyer. Walker and Winthrop. Everybody knows Walker in
Barsetshire. I've been down at Barchester since I saw you.'
'Have you indeed?' said Johnny.
'And I'll tell you what I've been about. You know Mr Crawley; don't
you?'
'The Hogglestock clergyman that has come to grief? I don't know him
personally. He's a sort of cousin by marriage, you know.'
'Of course he is,' said Toogood. 'His wife is my first-cousin, and your
mother's first cousin. He came here to me the other day;--or rather to
the shop. I had never seen the man before in my life, and a very queer
fellow he is too. He came to me about this trouble of his, and of course
I must do what I can for him. I got myself introduced to Walker, who has
the management of the prosecution, and I asked him to come and dine
tonight.'
'And what sort of fellow did you find Crawley, Uncle Tom?'
'Such a queer fish;--so unlike anybody else in the world.'
'But I suppose he did take the money,' said Johnny.
'I don't know what to say about it. I don't indeed. If he took it he
didn't mean to steal it. I'm as sure that man didn't mean to steal
twenty pounds as I ever could be of anything. Perhaps I shall get
something about it out of Walker after dinner.' Then Mr Walker entered
the room. 'This is very kind of you, Mr Walker; very indeed. I take it
quite as a compliment, your coming in in this sort of way. It's just pot
luck, you know, and nothing else.' Mr Walker of course assured his host
that he was delighted. 'Just a leg of mutton and a bottle of old port,
Mr Walker,' continued Toogood. 'We never get beyond that in the way of
dinner-giving; do, we, Maria?'
But Maria was at this moment descanting on the good luck of the family
to her nephew--and on one special piece of good luck which had just
occurred. Mr Summerkin's maiden aunt had declared her intention of
giving up the fortune to the young people at once. She had enough to
live upon, she said, and would therefore make two lovers happy. 'And
they're to be married on the first day of May,' said Lucy--that Lucy of
whom her father had boasted to Mr Crawley that she knew Byron by
heart--'and won't that be jolly? Mamma is going out to look for a house
for them tomorrow. Fancy Polly with a house of her own! Won't it be
stunning? I wish you were going to be married too, Johnny.'
'Don't be a fool, Lucy.'
'Of course I know that you are in love. I hope you are not going to
give over being in love, Johnny, because it is such fun.'
'Wait till you've caught yourself, my girl.'
'I don't mean to be caught till some great swell comes this way. And as
great swells never do come to Tavistock Square, I shan't have a chance.
I'll tell you what I would like; I'd like to have a Corsair--or else a
Giaour;--I think a Giaour would be nicest. Only a Giaour wouldn't be a
Giaour here, you know. Fancy a lover "who thundering comes on blackest
steed, With slackened bit and hoof of speed." Were not those days to
live in! But all that is over now, you know, and young people take
houses in Woburn Place, instead of being locked up, or drowned, or
married to a hideous monster behind a veil. I suppose it's better as it
is, for some reasons.'
'I think it must be more jolly, as you call it, Lucy.'
'I'm not quite sure. I know I'd go back and be Medora, if I could.
Mamma is always telling Polly that she must be careful about William's
dinner. But Conrad didn't care for his dinner. "Light toil! to cull and
dress my frugal fare! See, I have plucked the fruit that promised
best."'
'And how often do you think Conrad got drunk?'
'I don't think he got drunk at all. There is no reason why he should
any more than William. Come along, and take me down to dinner. After
all, papa's leg of mutton is better than Medora's apples, when one is as
hungry as I am.'
The leg of mutton on this occasion consisted of soup, fish, and a bit of
roast beef, and a couple of boiled fowls. 'If I had only two children
instead of twelve,' Mr Walker,' said the host, 'I'd give you a dinner a
la Russe.'
'I don't begrudge Mrs Toogood a single arrow in her quiver on that
score,' said Mr Walker.
'People are getting to be so luxurious that one can't live up to them at
all,' said Mrs Toogood. 'We dined out here with some newcomers in the
square only last week. We had asked them before, and they came quite in
a quiet way--just like this; and when we got there we found they'd four
kinds of ices after dinner!'
'And not a morsel of food on the table fit to eat,' said Toogood. 'I
never was so poisoned in my life. As for soup--it was just the washings
of the pastrycook's kettle next door.'
'And how is one to live with such people, Mr Walker?' continued Mrs
Toogood. 'Of course we can't ask them back again. We give them four
kinds of ices.'
'But would that be necessary? Perhaps they haven't got twelve
children.'
'They haven't got any at all,' said Toogood, triumphing; 'not a chick
belonging to them. But you see one must do as other people do. I hate
anything grand. I wouldn't want more than this for myself, if bank-notes
were as plenty as curl-papers.'
'Nobody has any curl-papers now, papa,' said Lucy.
'But I can't bear to be outdone,' said Mr Toogood. 'I think it's very
unpleasant--people living in that sort of way. It's all very well
telling me that I needn't live so too;--and of course I don't. I can't
afford to have four men in from the confectioner's dressed a sight
better than myself, at ten shillings a head. I can't afford it, and I
don't do it. But the worst of it is that I suffer because other people
do it. It stands to reason that I must either be driven along with the
crowd, or else be left behind. Now, I don't like either. And what's the
end of it? Why I'm half carried away and half left behind.'
'Upon my word, papa, I don't think you're carried away at all, said
Lucy.
'Yes, I am; and I'm ashamed of myself. Mr Walker, I don't dare to ask
you to drink a glass of wine with me in my own house--that's what I
don't--because it's the proper thing for you to wait till somebody
brings it to you, and then drink it by yourself. There is no knowing
whether I mightn't offend you.' And Mr Toogood as he spoke grasped the
decanter at his elbow. Mr Walker grasped another at his elbow, and the
two attorneys took their glass of wine together.
'A very queer case this is of my cousin Crawley's,' said Toogood to
Walker, when the ladies had left the dining-room.
'A most distressing case. I never knew anything so much talked of in
our part of the country.'
'He can't have been a popular man, I should say.'
'No; not popular--not in the ordinary way;--anything but that. Nobody
knew him personally before this matter came up.'
'But a good clergyman, probably? I'm interested in the case, of course
as his wife is my first-cousin. You will understand, however, that I
know nothing of him. My father tried to be civil to him once, but
Crawley wouldn't have it at all. We all thought he was mad then. I
suppose he has done his duty in his parish?'
'He has quarrelled with the bishop, you know,--out and out.'
'Has he, indeed? But I'm not sure that I think very much about bishops,
Walker.'
'That depends very much on the particular bishop. Some people say ours
isn't all that a bishop ought to be, while others are very fond of him.'
'And Mr Crawley belongs to the former set, that's all?' said Mr Toogood.
'No, Mr Toogood; that isn't all. The worst of your cousin as that he
has an aptitude to quarrel with everybody. He is one of those men who
always think themselves to be ill-used. Now our dean, Dr Arabin, has
been his very old friend--and as far as I can learn, a very good friend;
but it seems that Mr Crawley has done his best to quarrel with him too.'
'He spoke of the dean in the highest terms to me.'
'He may do that--and yet quarrel with him. He'd quarrel with his own
right hand, if he nothing else to quarrel with. That makes the
difficulty, you see. He'll take nobody's advice. He thinks we're all
against him.'
'I suppose the world has been heavy on him, Mr Walker?'
'The world has been very heavy on him,' said John Eames, who had now
been left free to join the conversation, Mr Summerkin having gone away
to his lady-love. 'You must not judge him as you do other men.'
'That is just it,' said Mr Walker. 'And to what result will that bring
us?'
'That we ought to stretch a point in his favour,' said Toogood.
'But why?' asked the attorney from Silverbridge. 'What do we mean when
we say that one man isn't to be trusted as another? We simply imply that
he is not what we call responsible.'
'And I don't think Mr Crawley is responsible,' said Johnny.
'Then how can he be fit to have charge of a parish?' said Mr Walker.
'You see where the difficulty is. How it embarrasses one all round. The
amount of evidence as to the cheque is, I think, sufficient to get a
verdict in an ordinary case, and the Crown has not alternative but so to
treat it. Then his friends come forward--and from sympathy with his
sufferings, I desire to be ranked among the number--and say, 'Ah, but
you should spare this man, because he is not responsible.' Were he one
who filled no position requiring special responsibility, that might be
very well. His friends might undertake to look after him, and the
prosecution might perhaps be smothered. But Mr Crawley holds a living,
and if he escape he will be triumphant--especially triumphant over the
bishop. Now, if he has really taken this money, and if his only excuse
be that he did not know when he took it whether he was stealing or
whether he was not--for the sake of justice that ought not to be
allowed.'
'You think he certainly did steal the money?' said Johnny.
'You have heard the evidence, no doubt?' said Mr Walker.
'I don't feel quite sure about it, yet,' said Mr Toogood.
'Quite sure of what?' said Mr Walker.
'That the cheque got dropped in his house.'
'It was at any rate traced to his hands.'
'I have no doubt about that,' said Toogood.
'And he can't account for it,' said Walker.
'A man isn't bound to show where he got his money,' said Johnny.
'Suppose that sovereign is marked,' and Johnny produced a coin from his
pocket, 'and I don't know but what it is; and suppose it is proved to
have belonged to someone who lost it, and then to be traced to my own
hands--how am I to say where I got it? If I were asked I should simply
decline to answer.'
'But a cheque is not a sovereign, Mr Eames,' said Walker. 'It is
presumed that a man can account for the possession of a cheque. It may
be that a man should have a cheque in his possession and not be able to
account for it, and should yet be open to no grave suspicion. In such a
case a jury has to judge. Here is the fact: that Mr Crawley has the
cheque, and brings it in to use some considerable time after it is
drawn; and the additional fact that the drawer of the cheque had lost
it, as he thought, in Mr Crawley's house, and had looked for it there,
soon after it was drawn, and long before it was paid. A jury must judge;
but, as a lawyer, I should say that the burden of disproof lies with Mr
Crawley.'
'Did you find out anything, Mr Walker,' said Toogood, 'about the man who
drove Mr Soames that day?'
'No--nothing.'
'The trap was from "The Dragon" at Barchester, I think?'
'Yes--from "The Dragon of Wantly".'
'A respectable sort of house?'
'Pretty well for that, I believe. I've heard that the people are poor,'
said Walker.
'Somebody told me that they'd had a queer lot about the house, and that
three or four of them left just then. I think I heard that two or three
men from the place went to New Zealand together. It just came out in
conversation while I was in the inn-yard.'
'I have never heard anything of it,' said Walker.
'I don't say that it can help us.'
'I don't see that it can,' said Walker.
After that there was a pause, and Mr Toogood pushed about the old port,
and made some very stinging remark as to the claret-drinking
propensities of the age. 'Gladstone claret the most of it is, I fancy,'
said Mr Toogood. 'I find that port wine which my father bought in the
wood five-and-twenty years ago is good enough for me.' Mr Walker said
that it was quite good enough for him, almost too good, and that he
thought that he had had enough of it. The host threatened another
bottle, and was up to draw the cork--rather to the satisfaction of John
Eames, who liked his uncle's port--but Mr Walker stopped him. 'Not a
drop more for me,' he said. 'You are quite sure?' 'Quite sure.' And Mr
Walker moved towards the door.
'It's a great pity, Mr Walker,' said Toogood, going back to that old
subject, 'that the dean and his wife should be away.'
'I understand that they both will be home before the trial,' said Mr
Walker.
'Yes--but you know how very important it is to learn beforehand exactly
what your witnesses can prove and what they can't prove. And moreover,
though neither the dean nor his wife might perhaps be able to tell us
anything themselves, they might help to put us on the proper scent. I
think I'll send somebody after them. I think I will.'
'It would be a heavy expense, Mr Toogood.'
'Yes,' said Toogood mournfully, thinking of his twelve children; 'it
would be a heavy expense. But I never like to stick at a thing when it
ought to be done. I think I shall send a fellow after them.'
'I'll go,' said Johnny.
'How can you go?'
'I'll make old Snuffle give me leave.'
'But will that lessen the expense?' said Mr Walker.
'Well, yes, I think it will,' said John, modestly.
'My nephew is a rich man, Mr Walker,' said Mr Toogood.
'That alters the case,' said Mr Walker. And thus, before they left the
dining-room, it was settled that John Eames should be taught his lesson
and should seek both Mrs Arabin and Dr Arabin on their travels.
CHAPTER XLI
GRACE CRAWLEY AT HOME
On the morning after his return from London, Mr Crawley showed symptoms
of great fatigue, and his wife implored him to remain in bed. But this
he would not do. He would get up, and go out down to the brickfields. He
has specially bound himself, he said, to see that the duties of the
parish should not suffer by being left in his hands. The bishop had
endeavoured to place them in other hands, but he had persisted in
retaining them. As had done so he could allow no weariness of his own to
interfere--and especially no weariness induced by labours undertaken on
his own behalf. The day in the week had come round on which it was his
wont to visit the brickmakers, and he would visit them. So he dragged
himself out of his bed and went forth amidst the cold storm of a harsh
wet March morning. His wife well knew when she heard his first word on
that morning that one of those terrible moods had come upon him which
made her doubt whether she ought to allow him to go anywhere alone.
Latterly there had been some improvement in his mental health. Since the
day of his encounter with the bishop and Mrs Proudie, though he had been
as stubborn as ever, he had been less apparently unhappy, less depressed
in spirits. And the journey to London had done him good. His wife had
congratulated herself on finding him able to set about his work like
another man, and he himself had experienced a renewal, if not of hope,
at any rate, of courage, which had given him a comfort which he had
recognised. His common-sense had not been very striking in his interview
with Mr Toogood, but yet he had talked more rationally then and had
given a better account of the matter in hand than could have been
expected from him for some weeks previously. But now the labour was
over, a reaction had come upon him, and he went away from his house
having hardly spoken a word to his wife after the speech which he made
about his duty to his parish.
I think that at this time nobody saw clearly the working of his
mind--not even his wife, who studied it very closely, who gave him
credit for all his high qualities, and who had gradually learned to
acknowledge to herself that she must distrust his judgment in many
things. She knew that he was good, and yet weak, that he was afflicted
by false pride and supported by true pride, that his intellect was still
very bright, yet so dismally obscured on many sides as almost to justify
people in saying that he was mad. She knew that he was almost a saint,
and yet almost a castaway through vanity and hatred of those above him.
But she did not know that he knew all this of himself also. She did not
comprehend that he should be hourly telling himself that people were
calling him mad and were so calling him with truth. It did not occur to
her that he could see her insight into him. She doubted as to the way in
which he had got the cheque--never imagining, however, that he had
wilfully stolen it--thinking that his mind had been so much astray as to
admit of his finding it and using it without wilful guilt--thinking
also, alas, that a man who could so act was hardly fit for such duties
as those which were entrusted to him. But she did not dream that this
was precisely his own idea of his own state and of his own position;
--that he was always inquiring of himself whether he was not mad;
whether, if mad, he was not bound to lay down his office; that he was
ever taxing himself with improper hostility to the bishop--never
forgetting for a moment his wrath against the bishop and the bishop's
wife, still comforting himself to go to the palace and there humbly to
relinquish his clerical authority. Such a course of action he was
proposing to himself, but not with any realised idea that he would so
act. He was as a man who walks along a river's bank thinking of suicide,
calculating now best he might kill himself--whether the river does not
offer an opportunity too good to be neglected, telling himself that the
water is pleasant and cool, and that his ears would soon be deaf to the
harsh noises of the world--but yet knowing, or thinking that he knows,
that he never will kill himself. So it was with Mr Crawley. Though his
imagination pictured to himself the whole scene--how he would humble
himself to the ground as he acknowledged his unfitness, how he would
endure the small-voiced triumph of the little bishop, how, from the
abjectness of his own humility, even from the ground on which he would
be crouching, he would rebuke the loud-mouthed triumph of the bishop's
wife; though there was no touch wanting to the picture which he thus
drew--he did not really propose to himself to commit this professional
suicide. His wife, too, had considered whether it might be in truth
becoming that he should give up his clerical duties, at any rate for a
while; but she had never thought that the idea was present to his mind
also.
Mr Toogood had told him that people would say that he was mad; and Mr
Toogood had looked at him, when he declared for the second time that he
had no knowledge whence the cheque had come to him, as though his words
were to be regarded as the words of some sick child; 'Mad!' he said to
himself, as he walked home from the station that night. 'Well; yes; and
what if I am mad? When I think of all that I have endured my wonder is
that I should not have been mad sooner.' And then he prayed--yes,
prayed, that in his madness the Devil might not be too strong for him,
and that he might be preserved from some terrible sin of murder or
violence. What, if the idea should come to him in his madness that it
would be well for him to slay his wife and his children? Only that was
wanting to make him of all men the most unfortunate.
He went down among the brickmakers on the following morning, leaving the
house almost without a morsel of food, and he remained at Hoggle End for
the greater part of the day. There were sick persons there with whom he
prayed, and then he sat talking with rough men while they ate their
dinners, and he read passages from the Bible to women while they washed
their husband's clothes. And for a while he sat with a little girl in
his lap teaching the child her alphabet. If it were possible for him he
would do his duty. He would spare himself in nothing, though he might
suffer even to fainting. And on this occasion he did suffer--almost to
fainting, for as he returned home in the afternoon he was forced to lean
from time to time against the banks on the road-side, while the cold
sweat of weakness trickled down his face, in order that he might recover
strength to go on a few yards. But he would persevere. If God would but
leave to him mind enough for his work, he would go on. No personal
suffering should deter him. He told himself that there had been men in
the world whose sufferings were sharper even than his own. Of what sort
had been the life of the man who had stood for years at the top of a
pillar? But then the man on the pillar had been honoured by all around
him. And thus, though he had thought of the man on the pillar to
encourage himself be remembering how lamentable had been that man's
sufferings, he came to reflect that after all his own sufferings were
perhaps keener than those of the man on the pillar.
When he reached home, he was very ill. There was no doubt about it
then. He staggered to his arm-chair, and stared at his wife first, and
then smiled at her with his ghastly smile. He trembled all over, and
when food was brought to him he could not eat it. Early on the next
morning the doctor was by his bedside, and before that evening came he
was delirious. He had been at intervals in this state for nearly two
days, when Mrs Crawley wrote to Grace, and though she had restrained
herself telling everything, she had written with sufficient strength to
bring Grace at once to her father's bedside.
He was not so ill when Grace arrived home but that he knew her, and he
seemed to received some comfort from her coming. Before she had been in
the house an hour she was reading Greek to him, and there was no
wandering in his mind as to the due emphasis to be given to the plaints
of the injured heroines, or as to the proper meaning of the choruses.
And as he lay with his head half buried in the pillows, he shouted out
long passages, lines from tragic plays by the score, and for a while
seemed to have all the enjoyment of a dear old pleasure placed newly
within his reach. But he tired of this after a while, and then, having
looked round to see that his wife was not in the room, he began to talk
of himself.
'So you have been to Allington, my dear?'
'Yes, papa.'
'Is it a pretty place?'
'Yes, papa;--very pretty.'
'And they were good to you?'
'Yes, papa;--very good.'
'Had they heard anything there about--me; of this trial that is to come
on?'
'Yes, papa; they had heard of it.'
'And what did they say? You need not think that you will shock me by
telling me. They cannot say worse there than people have said here or
think worse.'
'They don't think at all badly of you at Allington, papa.'
'But they must think badly of me if the magistrates are right.'
'They suppose that there has been a mistake;--as we all think.'
'They do not try men at the assizes for mistakes.'
'That you have been mistaken, I mean;--and the magistrates mistaken.'
'But cannot have been mistaken, Grace.'
'I don't know how to explain myself, papa; but we all know that it is
very sad, and are quite sure that you have never meant for one moment to
do anything that is wrong.'
'But people when they are--you know what I mean, Grace; when they are
not themselves--do things that are wrong without meaning it.' Then he
paused, while she remained standing by him with her hand on the back of
his. She was looking at his face, which had been turned towards her
while they were reading together, but which now was so far moved that
she knew that his eyes could not be fixed upon hers. 'Of course if the
bishop orders it, it shall be so,' he said. 'It is quite enough for me
that he is a bishop.'
'What has the bishop ordered, papa?'
'Nothing at all. It is she who does it. He has given me no opinion
about it. Of course not. He has none to give. It is the woman. You go
and tell her from me that in such a matter I will not obey the word of
any woman living. Go at once, when I tell you.'
Then she knew that her father's mind was wandering, and she knelt down
by the bedside, still holding his hand.
'Grace,' he said.
'Yes, papa, I am here.'
'Why do you not do what I tell you?' And he sat upright in his bed. 'I
suppose you are afraid of the woman.'
'I should be afraid of her, dear papa.'
'I was not afraid of her. When she spoke to me, I would have nothing to
say to her;--not a word;--not a word.' As he said this, he waved his
hands about. 'But as for him--if it must be, it must. I know I am not
fit for it. Of course I am not. Who is? But what has he ever done that
he should be dean? I beat him at everything; almost at everything. He
got the Newdigate, and that was about all. Upon my word I think that was
all.'
'But Dr Arabin loves you truly, dear papa.'
'Love me! psha! Does he ever come here to tea, as he used to do? No!
I remember buttering toast for him down on my knees before the fire,
because he liked it--and keeping all the cream for him. He should have
my heart's blood if he wanted it. But now;--look at his books, Grace.
It's the outside of them he cares for. They are all gilt, but I doubt if
he ever reads. As for her--I will not allow any woman to tell me my
duty. No;--but my Maker; not even your mother, who is the best of
women. And as for her, with her little husband dangling at her apron-
strings, as a call-whistle to be blown into when she pleases--that she
should dare to teach me my duty! No! The men in the jury-box may decide
how they will. If they can believe a plain story, let them! If not--let
them do as they please. I am ready to bear it all.'
'Dear papa, you are tired. Will you not try to sleep?'
'Tell Mrs Proudie what I say; and as for Arabin's money, I took it. I
know I took it. What would you have me do? Shall I--see them--all
starve?' Then he fell back upon his bed and did sleep.
The next day he was better, and insisted upon getting out of bed, and on
sitting in his old arm-chair over the fire. And the Greek books were
again had out; and Grace, not at all unwillingly, was put through her
facings. 'If you don't take care, my dear,' he said, 'Jane will beat you
yet. She understands the force of the verbs better than you do.'
'I am very glad that she is doing so well, papa. I am sure I shall not
begrudge her her superiority.'
'Ah, but you should begrudge it her!' Jane was sitting by at the time,
and the two sisters were holding each other By the hand. 'Always to be
the best;--always to be in advance of others. That should be your
motto.'
'But we can't both be best, papa,' said Jane.
'You can both strive to be best. But Grace has the better voice. I
remember when I knew the whole of the "Antigone" by heart. You girls
should see which can learn it first.'
'It would take such a long time,' said Jane.
'You are wrong, and what can you do better with your leisure hours? Fie,
Jane! I did not expect it from you. When I was learning it I had eight
or nine pupils, and read an hour a day with each of them. But I think
that nobody works now as they used to work then. Where is your mamma?
Tell her I think I could get out as far as Mrs Cox's, if she would help
me dress.' Soon after this he was in bed again, and his head was
wandering; but still they knew that he was better than he had been.
'You are more of a comfort to your papa than I can be,' said Mrs Crawley
to her eldest daughter that night as they sat together, when everybody
else was in bed.
'Do not say that, mamma. Papa does not think so.'
'I cannot read Greek plays to him as you can do. I can only nurse him
in his illness and endeavour to do my duty. Do you know, Grace, that it
I am beginning to fear that he half doubts me?'
'Oh, mamma!'
'That he half doubts me, and is half afraid of me. He does not think as
he used to do, that I am altogether, heart and soul, on his side. I can
see it in his eyes as he watches me. He thinks that I am tired of
him--tired of his sufferings, tired of his poverty, tired of the evil
which men say of him. I am not sure but what he thinks that I suspect
him.'
'Of what, mamma?'
'Of general unfitness for the work he has to do. The feeling is not
strong as yet, but I fear that he will teach himself to think that he
has an enemy at his hearth--not a friend. It will be the saddest mistake
he ever made.'
'He told me today that you were the best of women. Those were his very
words.'
'Were they, my dear? I am glad at least that he should say so to you.
He has been better since you came;--a great deal better. For one day I
was frightened; but I am very sorry now that I sent for you.'
'I am so glad, mamma; so very glad.'
'You were happy there--and comfortable. And if they were glad to have
you, why should I have brought you away?'
'But I was not happy;--even though they were very good to me. How could
I be happy there when I was thinking of you and papa and Jane here at
home? Whatever there is her, I would sooner share it with you than be
anywhere else--while this trouble lasts.'
'My darling!--it is a great comfort to see you again.'
'Only that I knew that one less in the house would be a saving to you I
should not have gone. When there is unhappiness, people should stay
together;--shouldn't they, mamma?' They were sitting quite close to each
other, on an old sofa in a small upstairs room, from which a door opened
into the larger chamber in which Mr Crawley was lying. It had been
arranged between them that on this night Mrs Crawley should remain with
her husband, and that Grace should go to bed. It was now past one
o'clock, but she was still there, clinging to her mother's side, with
her mother's arm drawn round her. 'Mamma,' she said, when they had both
been silent for some ten minutes. 'I have got something to tell you.'
'Tonight?'
'Yes, mamma; tonight, if you will let me.'
'But you promised that you would go to bed. You were up all last
night.'
'I am not sleepy, mamma.'
'Of course you shall tell me what you please, dearest. Is it a secret?
Is it something I am not to repeat?'
'You must say how that ought to be, mamma. I shall not tell it to
anyone else.'
'Well, dear?'
'Sit comfortably, mamma;--there; like that, and let me have your hand.
It's a terrible story to have to tell.'
'A terrible story, Grace?'
'I mean that you must not draw away from me. I shall want to feel that
you are quite close to me. Mamma, while I was at Allington, Major
Grantly came there?'
'Did he, my dear?'
'Yes, mamma.'
'Did he know them before?'
'No, mamma; not at the Small House. But he came there--to see me. He
asked me--to be his wife. Don't move, mamma.'
'My darling child! I won't move, dearest. Well; and what did you say
to him? God bless him, at any rate. May God bless him, because he has
seen with a true eye, and felt with a noble instinct. It is something,
Grace, to have been wooed by such a man at such a time.'
'Mamma, it did make me feel proud; it did.'
'You had known him well before--of course? I knew that you and he were
friends, Grace.'
'Yes, we were friends. I always liked him. I used not to know what to
think about him. Miss Anne Prettyman told me that it would be so; and
once before I had thought so myself.'
'And had you made up your mind what to say to him?'
'Yes, I did then. But I did not say it.'
'Did not say what you had made up your mind to say?'
'That was before all this happened to papa.'
'I understand you, dearest.'
'When Miss Anne Prettyman told me that I should be ready with my answer,
and when I saw that Miss Prettyman herself used to let him come to the
house and seemed to wish that I should see him when he came, and when he
once was--so very gentle and kind, and when he said that he wanted me to
love Edith--Oh, mamma!'
'Yes, darling, I know. Of course you loved him.'
'Yes, mamma. And I do love him. How could one not love him?'
'I love him--for loving you.'
'But, mamma, one is bound not to do a harm to anyone that one loves. So
when he came to Allington I told him that I could not be his wife.'
'Did you, my dear?'
'Yes; I did. Was I not right? Ought I to go to him to bring a disgrace
upon all the family, just because he is so good that he asks me? Shall I
injure him because he wants to do me a service?'
'If he loves you, Grace, the service he will require will be your love
in return.'
'That is all very well, mamma--in books; but I do not believe it in
reality. Being in love is very nice, and in poetry they make it out to
be everything. But I do not think I should make Major Grantly happy if
when I became his wife his own father and mother would not see him. I
know I should be so wretched, myself, that I could not live.'
'But would it be so?'
'Yes;--I think it would. And the archdeacon is very rich, and can leave
all his money away from Major Grantly if he pleases. Think what I should
feel if I were the cause of Edith losing her fortune!'
'But why do you suppose these terrible things?'
'I have a reason for supposing them. This must be a secret. Miss Anne
Prettyman wrote to me.'
'I wish Miss Anne Prettyman's hand had been in the fire.'
'No, mamma; no, she was right. Would not I have wished, do you think,
to have learned all the truth about the matter before I answered him?
Besides, it made no difference. I could have made no other answer while
papa is under such a terrible ban. It is no time for us to think of
being in love. We have got to love each other. Isn't it so, mamma?' The
mother did not answer in words, but slipping down on her knees before
her child threw her arms found her girl's body in a close embrace. 'Dear
mamma; dearest mamma; this is what I wanted;--that you should love me.'
'Love you, my angel!'
'And trust me;--and that we should understand each other, and stand
close by each other. We can do so much to comfort one another;--but we
cannot comfort other people.'
'He must know that best himself, Grace;--but what did he say more to
you?'
'I don't think he said anything more.'
'He just left you then?'
'He said one thing more.'
'And what was that?'
'He said--but he had no right to say it.'
'What was it, dear?'
'That he knew that I loved him, and that therefore--But, mamma, do not
think of that. I will never be his wife--never, in opposition to his
family.'
'But he did not take your answer?'
'He must take it, mamma. He shall take it. If he can be stubborn, so
can I. If he knows how to think of me more than himself, I can think of
him and Edith more than of myself. That is not quite all, mamma. Then he
wrote to me. There is his letter.'
Mrs Crawley read the letter. 'I suppose you answered it?'
'Yes, I answered it. It was very bad, my letter. I should think after
all that he will never want to have anything more to say to me. I tried
for two days, but I could not write a nice letter.'
'But what did you say?'
'I don't in the least remember. It does not in the least signify now,
but it was such a bad letter.'
'I daresay it was very nice.'
'It was terribly stiff, and all about a gentleman.'
'All about a gentleman! What do you mean, my dear?'
'Gentleman is such a frightful word to have to use to a gentleman; but I
did not know what else to say. Mamma, if you please, we won't talk about
it;--not about the letter, I mean. As for him, I'll talk about him for
ever if you like it. I don't mean to be a bit broken-hearted.'
'It seems to me that he is a gentleman.'
'Yes, mamma, that he is; and it is that which makes me so proud. When I
think of it, I can hardly hold myself. But now I've told you everything,
and I'll go away, and go to bed.'
CHAPTER XLII
MR TOOGOOD TRAVELS PROFESSIONALLY
Mr Toogood paid another visit to Barsetshire, in order that he might get
a little further information which he thought would be necessary before
despatching his nephew upon the traces of Dean Arabin and his wife. He
went down to Barchester after his work was over by an evening train, and
put himself up at 'The Dragon of Wantly', intending to have the whole of
the next day for his work. Mr Walker had asked him to come and take a
return potluck dinner with Mrs Walker at Silverbridge; and this he had
said that he would do. After having 'rummaged about for tidings' in
Barchester, as he called it, he would take the train for Silverbridge,
and would get back to town in time for business on the third day. 'One
day won't be much, you know,' he said to his partner, as he made half an
apology for absenting himself on business which was not to be in any
degree remunerative. 'That sort of thing is very well when one does it
without any expense' said Crump. 'So it is,' said Toogood; 'and the
expense won't make it any worse.' He had made up his mind, and it was
not probable that anything Mr Crump might say would deter him.
He saw John Eames before he started. 'You'll be ready this day week,
will you?' John Eames promised that he would. 'It will cost you some
forty pounds, I should say. By George--if you have to go on to
Jerusalem, it will cost you more.' In answer to this, Johnny pleaded
that it would be as good as any other tour to him. He would see the
world. 'I'll tell you what,' said Toogood; 'I'll pay half. Only you
mustn't tell Crump. And it will be quite as well not to tell Maria.' But
Johnny would hear nothing of this scheme. He would pay the entire cost
of his own journey. He had lots of money, he said, and would like
nothing better. 'Then I'll run down,' said Toogood, 'and rummage up what
tidings I can. As for writing to the dean, what's the good of writing to
a man when you don't know where he is? Business letters always lie at
hotels for two months, and then come back with double postage. From all
I can hear, you'll stumble on her before you find him. If we do nothing
else but bring him back, it will be a great thing to have the support of
such a friend in the court. A Barchester jury won't like to find a man
guilty who is hand-and-glove with the dean.'
Mr Toogood reached the 'Dragon' about eleven o'clock, and allowed the
boots to give him a pair of slippers and a candlestick. But he would to
go to bed just at that moment. He would go into the coffee-room first,
and have a glass of hot brandy-and-water. So the hot brandy-and-water
was brought to him, and a cigar, and as he smoked and drank he conversed
with the waiter. The man was a waiter of the ancient class, a
grey-haired waiter, with seedy clothes, and a dirty towel under his arm;
not a dapper waiter, with black shiny hair, and dressed like a guest for
a dinner-party. There are two distinct classes of waiters, and as far
as I have been able to perceive, the special status of the waiter in
question cannot be decided by observation of the class of waiter to
which he belongs. In such a town as Barchester you may find the old
waiter with the dirty towel in the head inn, or in the second-class inn,
and so you may the dapper waiter. Or you may find both in each and not
know which is senior waiter and which junior waiter. But for service I
always prefer the old waiter with the dirty towel, and I find it more
easy to satisfy him in the matter of sixpence when my relations with the
inn come to an end.
'Have you been here long, John,' said Mr Toogood.
'A goodish many years, sir.'
'So I thought, by the look of you. One can see that you belong in a way
to the place. You do a good deal of business here, I suppose, at this
time of the year?'
'Well, sir, pretty fair. The house ain't what it used to be sir.'
'Times are bad at Barchester--are they?'
'I don't know much about the times. It's the people is worse than the
times, I think. They used to like to have a little bit of dinner now and
again at a hotel;--and a drop of something to drink after it.'
'And don't they like it now?'
'I think they like it well enough, but they don't do it. I suppose it's
their wives as don't let 'em come out and enjoy themselves. There used
to be the Goose and Glee club;--that was once a month. They've gone and
clean done away with themselves--that club has. There's old Bumpter in
the High Street--he's the last of the old Geese. They died off, you see,
and when Mr Biddle died they wouldn't choose another president. A club
for having dinner, sir, ain't nothing without a president.'
'I suppose not.'
'And there's the Freemasons. They must meet, you know, sir, in course,
because of the dooties. But if you'll believe me, sir, they don't so
much as wet their whistles. They don't indeed. It always used to be a
supper, and that was once a month. Now they pays a rent for the use of
the room! Who is to get a living out of that, sir?--not in the way of a
waiter, that is.'
'If that's the way things are going on I suppose the servants leave
their places pretty often?'
'I don't know about that, sir. A man may do a deal worse than "The
Dragon of Wantly". Them as goes away to better themselves, often worses
themselves, as I call it. I've seen a good deal of that.'
'And you stick to the old shop?'
'Yes, sir; I've been here fifteen years, I think it is. There's a many
goes away, as doesn't go out of their heads, you know, sir.'
'They get the sack, you mean?'
'There's words between them and master--or more likely, missus. That's
where it is. Servants is so foolish. I often tell 'em how wrong folks
are to say that soft words butter no parsnips, and hard words break no
bones.'
'I think you've lost some of the old hands here since this time last
year, John?'
'You knows the house then, sir?'
'Well;--I've been here before.'
'There was four of them sent, I think, it's just about twelve months
back, sir.'
'There was a man in the yard I used to know, and last time I was down
here, I found that he was gone.'
'There was one of 'em out of the yard, and two out of the house. Master
and them had got to very high words. There was poor Scuttle, who had
been post-boy at "The Compass" before he came here.'
'He went away to New Zealand, didn't he?'
'B'leve he did, sir; or to some foreign parts. And Anne, as was
under-chambermaid here; she went with him, fool as she was. They got
themselves married and went off, and he was well nigh as old as me. But
seems he'd saved a little money, and that goes a long way with any
girl.'
'Was he the man who drove Mr Soames that day the cheque was lost?' Mr
Toogood asked this question perhaps a little too abruptly. At any rate
he obtained no answer to it. The waiter said he knew nothing about Mr
Soames, or the cheque, and the lawyer, suspecting that the waiter was
suspecting him, finished his brandy-and-water and went to bed.
Early on the following morning he observed that he was specially
regarded by a shabby-looking man, dressed in black, but in a black suit
that was very old, with a red nose, whom he had seen in the hotel on the
preceding day; and he learned that this man was a cousin of the
landlord--one Dan Stringer--who acted as a clerk in the hotel bar. He
took an opportunity also of saying a word to Mr Stringer the
landlord--whom he found to be a somewhat forlorn and gouty individual,
seated on cushions in a little parlour behind the door. After breakfast
he went out, and having twice walked round the Cathedral close and
inspected the front of the palace and looked up at the windows of the
prebendaries' houses, he knocked at the door of the deanery. The dean
and Mrs Arabin were on the Continent he was told. Then he asked for Mr
Harding, having learned that Mr Harding was Mrs Arabin's father, and
that he lived at the deanery. Mr Harding was at home, but was not very
well, the servant said. Mr Toogood, however, persevered, sending up his
card, and saying that he wished to have a few minutes' conversation with
Mr Harding on very particular business. He wrote a word upon his card
before giving it to the servant--'about Mr Crawley'. In a few minutes he
was shown into the library, and had hardly time, while looking at the
shelves, to remember what Mr Crawley had said of his anger at the
beautiful buildings, before an old man, very thin and very pale,
shuffled into the room. He stooped a good deal, and his black clothes
were very loose about his shrunken limbs. He was not decrepit, nor did
he seem to be one who had advanced to extreme old age; but yet he
shuffled rather than walked, hardly raising his feet from the ground. Mr
Toogood, as he came forward to meet him, thought that he had never seen
a sweeter face. There was very much of melancholy in it, of that soft
sadness of age which seems to acknowledge, and in some sort to regret,
the waning oil of life; but the regret to be read in such faces has in
it nothing of the bitterness of grief; there is no repining that the end
has come, but simply a touch of sorrow that so much that is dear must be
left behind. Mr Harding shook hands with his visitor, and invited him to
sit down, and then seated himself, folding his hands together over his
knees, and he said a few words in a very low voice as to the absence of
his daughter and the dean.
'I hope you will excuse my troubling you,' said Mr Toogood.
'It is no trouble at all--if I could be of any use. I don't know
whether it is proper, but may I ask whether you call as--as --as a
friend of Mr Crawley's?'
'Altogether as a friend, Mr Harding.'
'I'm glad of that; though of course I am well aware that the gentlemen
engaged on the prosecution must do their duty. Still--I don't
know--somehow I would rather not hear of them speak of this poor
gentleman before the trial.'
'You know Mr Crawley then?'
'Very slightly--very slightly indeed. He is a gentleman not much given
to social habits, and has been but seldom here. But he is an old friend
whom my son-in-law loves dearly.'
'I'm glad to hear you say that, Mr Harding. Perhaps before I go any
further, I ought to tell you that Mrs Crawley and I are first-cousins.'
'Oh, indeed. Then you are a friend.'
'I never saw him in my life till a few days ago. He is very queer, you
know--very queer indeed. I'm a lawyer, Mr Harding, practising in
London;--and attorney, that is. At each separate announcement Mr Harding
bowed, and when Toogood named his special branch of his profession Mr
Harding bowed lower than before, as though desirous of showing that he
had great respect for attorneys. 'And of course I'm anxious if only out
of respect for the family, that my wife's cousin should pull through
this little difficulty, if possible.'
'And for the sake of the poor man himself too, and for his wife and
children;--and for the sake of the cloth.'
'Exactly; taking it all together it's such a pity, you know. I think,
Mr Harding, he can hardly have intended to steal the money.'
'I'm sure he did not.'
'It's very hard to be sure of anybody, Mr Harding--very hard.'
'I feel quite sure he did not. He has been a most pious, hardworking
clergyman. I cannot bring myself to think that he is guilty. What does
the Latin proverb say? "No one of a sudden becomes most base".'
'But the temptation, Mr Harding, was very strong. He was awfully
badgered about his debts. That butcher at Silverbridge was playing the
mischief with him.'
'All the butchers in Barsetshire could not make an honest man steal
money, and I think that Mr Crawley is an honest man. You'll excuse me
for being a little hot about one of my own order.'
'Why, he's my cousin--or rather, my wife's. But the fact is, Mr
Harding, we must get hold of the dean as soon as possible; and I'm going
to send an gentleman after him.'
'To send a gentleman after him?' said Mr Harding, almost in dismay.
'Yes, I think that will be best.'
'I'm afraid he'll have to go a long way, Mr Toogood.'
'The dean, I'm told, is in Jerusalem.'
'I'm afraid he is--or on his journey there. He's to be there for the
Easter week, and Sunday week will be Easter Sunday. But why should the
gentleman want to go to Jerusalem after the dean?'
Then Mr Toogood explained as well as he was able that the dean might
have something to say on the subject which would serve Mr Crawley's
defence. 'We shouldn't leave any stone unturned,' said Mr Toogood. 'As
far as I can judge, Crawley still thinks--or half thinks--that he got
the cheque from your son-in-law.' Mr Harding shook his head sorrowfully.
'I'm not saying he did, you know,' continued Mr Toogood. 'I can't see
myself how it is possible;--but still, we ought not to leave any stone
unturned. And Mrs Arabin--can you tell me at all where we shall find
her?'
'Has she anything to do with it, Mr Toogood?'
'I can't quite say that she has, but it's just possible. As I said
before, Mr Harding, we mustn't leave a stone unturned. They're not
expected here till the end of April?'
'About the twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth, I think.'
'And the assizes are the twenty-eighth. The judges come into the city
on that day. It will be too late too wait till then. We must have our
defence ready, you know. Can you say where my friend will find Mrs
Arabin?'
Mr Harding began nursing his knee, patting and being very tender to it,
as he sat mediating with his head on one side--meditating not so much as
to the nature of his answer as to that of the question. Could it be
necessary that any emissary from a lawyer's office should be sent after
his daughter? He did not like the idea of his Eleanor being disturbed by
questions as to a theft. Though she had been twice married and had a son
who was now nearly a man, still she was his Eleanor. But if it was
necessary on Mr Crawley's behalf, of course it must be done. 'Her last
address was at Paris, sir; but I think she gone on to Florence. She has
friends there, and she purposes to meet the dean at Venice on his
return.' Then Mr Harding turned to the table and wrote on a card his
daughter's address.
'I suppose Mrs Arabin must have heard of this affair?' Said Mr Toogood.
'She had not done so when she last wrote. I mentioned it to her the
other day, before I knew that she had left Paris. If my letters and her
sister's letters have been sent on to her, she must know by now.'
Then Mr Toogood got up to take his leave. 'You will excuse me for
troubling you, I hope, Mr Harding.'
'Oh, sir, pray do not mention that. It is no trouble, if one could be
of any service.'
'One can always try to be of service. In these affairs so much is to be
done by rummaging about, as I always call it. There have been many
theatrical managers, you know, Mr Harding, who have usually made up the
pieces according to the dresses they have happened to have in their
wardrobes.'
'Have there, indeed, now? I never should have thought of that.'
'And we lawyers have to do the same thing.'
'Not with your clothes, Mr Toogood?'
'Not exactly with our clothes;--but with our information.'
'I do not quite understand you, Mr Toogood.'
'In preparing a defence we have to rummage about and get up what we can.
If we can't find anything that suits us exactly, we are obliged to use
what we do find as well as we can. I remember, when I was a young man,
an ostler was to be tried for stealing some oats in the Borough; and he
did steal them too, and sold them at a rag-shop regularly. The evidence
against was as plain as a pikestaff. All I could find out was that on a
certain day a horse had trod on a fellow's foot. So we put it to the
jury whether the man could walk as far as the rag-shop with a bag of
oats when he was dead lame;--and we got him off.'
'Did you, though,' said Mr Harding.
'Yes, we did.'
'And he was guilty?'
'He had been regularly at it for months.'
'Dear, dear, dear! Wouldn't it have been better to have had him
punished for the fault--gently; so as to warn him of the consequences of
such doings?'
'Our business was to get him off--and we got him off. It's my business
to get my cousin's husband off, if I can, and we must do it by hook or
by crook. It's a very difficult piece of work, because he won't let us
employ a barrister. However, I shall have one in the court and say
nothing to him about it at all. Good-bye, Mr Harding. As you say, it
would be thousand pities that a clergyman should be convicted of a
theft;--and one so well connected too.'
Mr Harding, when he was left alone, began to turn the matter over in his
mind and to reflect whether the thousand pities of which Mr Toogood had
spoken appertained to the conviction of the criminal, or the doing of
the crime. 'If he did steal the money I suppose he ought to be punished,
let him be ever so much a clergyman,' said Mr Harding to himself. But
yet--how terrible it would be! Of clergymen convicted of fraud in London
he had often heard; but nothing of the kind had ever disgraced the
diocese to which he belonged since he had known it. He could not teach
himself to hope that Mr Crawley should be acquitted if Mr Crawley were
guilty;--but he could teach himself to believe that Mr Crawley was
innocent. Something of a doubt had crept across his mind as he talked to
the lawyer. Mr Toogood, though Mrs Crawley was his cousin, seemed to
believe that the money had been stolen; and Mr Toogood as a lawyer ought
to understand such matters better than an old secluded clergyman in
Barchester. But, nevertheless, Mr Toogood might be wrong; and Mr Harding
succeeded in satisfying himself at last that he could not be doing harm
in thinking Mr Toogood was wrong. When he had made up his mind on this
matter he sat down and wrote the following letter, which he addressed to
his daughter at the post-office in Florence:-
'DEANERY--, March, 186-
'DEAREST NELLY,
'When I wrote on Tuesday I told you about poor Mr Crawley,
that he was a clergyman in Barsetshire of whose misfortune
you read an account in Galignani's Messenger--and I think
Susan must have written about it also, because everybody
here is talking of nothing else, and because, of course, we
know how strong a regard the dean has for Mr Crawley. But
since that something has occurred which makes me write to
you again--at once. A gentleman has just been here, and has
indeed only this moment left me, who tells me that he is an
attorney in London, and that he is nearly related to Mrs
Crawley. He seems to be a very good-natured man, and I
daresay he understands his business as a lawyer. His name is
Toogood, and he has come down as he says to get evidence to
help the poor gentleman on his trial. I cannot understand
how this should be necessary, because it seems to me that
the evidence should all be wanted on the other side. I
cannot for a moment suppose that a clergyman and a gentleman
such as Mr Crawley should have stolen money, and if he is
innocent I cannot understand why all this trouble should be
necessary to prevent a jury from finding him guilty.
'Mr Toogood came here because he wanted to see the dean--and
you also. He did not explain, as far as I can remember, why
he wanted to see you; but he said it would be necessary, and
that he was going to send off a messenger to find you first,
and the dean afterwards. It has something to do with the
money which was given to Mr Crawley last year, and which, if
I remember right, was your present. But of course Mr Toogood
could not have known anything about that. However, I gave
him the address--poste restante, Florence--and I daresay
that somebody will make you out before long, if you are
still stopping in Florence. I did not like letting him go
without telling you about it, as I thought that a lawyer's
coming to you would startle you.
'The bairns are quite well, as I told you in my other
letter, and Miss Jones says that little Elly is as good as
gold. They are with me every morning and evening, and behave
little darling angels, as they are. Posy is my own little
jewel always. You may be quite sure I do nothing to spoil
them.--God bless you, dearest Nelly, Your most affectionate
father,
'SEPTIMUS HARDING'
After this he wrote another letter to his other daughter, Mrs Grantly,
telling her also of Mr Toogood's visit; and then he spent the remainder
of the day thinking over the gravity of the occurrence. How terrible it
would be if a beneficed clergyman in the diocese should really be found
guilty of theft by a jury from the city! And then he had always heard so
high a character of this man from his son-in-law. No--it was impossible
to believe that Mr Crawley had in truth stolen a cheque for twenty
pounds!
Mr Toogood could get no further information in Barchester, and went on
to Silverbridge early in the afternoon. He was half disposed to go by
Hogglestock and look up his cousin, whom he had never seen, and his
cousin's husband, upon whose business he was now intent; but on
reflection he feared that he might do more harm than good. He had quite
appreciated the fact that Mr Crawley was not like other men. 'The man's
not above half-saved,' he had said to his wife--meaning thereby to
insinuate that the poor clergyman was not in full possession of his
wits. And, to tell the truth of Mr Toogood, he was a little afraid of
his relative. There was something in Mr Crawley's manner, in spite of
his declared poverty, and in spite also of his extreme humility, which
seemed to announce that he expected to be obeyed when he spoke on any
point with authority. Mr Toogood had not forgotten the tone in which Mr
Crawley had said to him, 'Sir, this is a thing you cannot do.' And he
thought that, upon the whole, he had better not go to Hogglestock on
this occasion.
When at Silverbridge, he began at once to 'rummage about'. His chief
rummaging was to be done at Mr Walker's table; but before dinner he had
time to call upon the magistrate's clerk, and ask a few questions as to
the proceedings at the sitting from which Mr Crawley was committed. He
found a very taciturn old man, who was nearly as difficult to deal with
in any rummaging process as a porcupine. But, nevertheless, at last he
reached a state of conversation which was not absolutely hostile. Mr
Toogood pleaded that he was the poor man's cousin--pleaded that, as the
family lawyer, he was naturally the poor man's protector at such a time
as the present--pleaded also that as the poor man was so very poor, no
one else could come forward on his behalf--and in this way somewhat
softened the hard sharpness of the old porcupine's quills. But after all
this, there was very little to be learned from the old porcupine. 'There
was not a magistrate on the bench,' he said, 'who had any doubt that the
evidence was sufficient to justify them in sending the case to the
assizes. They had all regretted,'--and the porcupine said in his softest
moment--'that the gentleman had come there without a legal adviser.'
'Ah, that's been the mischief of it all!' said Mr Toogood, dashing his
hand against the porcupine's mahogany table. 'But the facts are so
strong, Mr Toogood!' 'Nobody there to soften 'em down, you know,' said
Mr Toogood, shaking his head. Very little more than this was learned
from the porcupine; and then Mr Toogood went away, and prepared for Mr
Walker's dinner.
Mr Walker had invited Dr Tempest and Miss Anne Prettyman and Major
Grantly to meet Mr Toogood, and had explained, in a manner intended to
be half earnest and half jocose, that though Mr Toogood was an attorney,
like himself, and was at this moment engaged in a noble way on behalf of
his cousin's husband, without any idea of receiving back even the money
which he would be out of pocket, still he wasn't quite--not quite, you
know--'not quite so much of a gentleman as I am'--Mr Walker would have
said, had he spoken out freely that which he insinuated. But he
contented himself with the emphasis he put upon the 'not quite', which
expressed his meaning fully. And Mr Walker was correct in his opinion of
Mr Toogood. As regards the two attorneys I will not venture to say that
either of them was not a 'perfect gentleman'. A perfect gentleman is a
thing which I cannot define. But undoubtedly Mr Walker was a bigger man
in his way that was Mr Toogood in his, and did habitually consort in the
county of Barsetshire with men of higher standing than those with whom
Mr Toogood associated in London.
It seemed to be understood that Mr Crawley was to be the general subject
of conversation, and no one attempted to talk about anything else.
Indeed, at this time, very little else was talked about in that part of
the county;--not only because of the interest naturally attaching to the
question of the suspected guilt of a parish clergyman, but because much
had become lately known of Mr Crawley's character, and because it was
known also that an internecine feud had arisen between him and the
bishop. It had undoubtedly become the general opinion that Mr Crawley
had picked up and had used a cheque which was not his own;--that he had,
in fact, stolen it; but there was, in spite of that belief, a general
wish that he might be acquitted and left in his living. And when the
tidings of Mr Crawley's victory over the bishop at the palace had become
bruited about, popular sympathy went with the victor. The theft was, as
it were, condoned, and people made excuses which were not always
rational, but which were founded on the instincts of true humanity. And
now the tidings of another stage in the battle, as fought against Mr
Crawley by the bishop, had gone forth through the county, and men had
heard that the rural dean was to be instructed to make inquiries which
should be preliminary to proceedings against Mr Crawley in an
ecclesiastical court. Dr Tempest, who was now about to meet Mr Toogood
at Mr Walker's, was the rural dean to whom Mr Crawley would have to
submit himself in any such inquiry; but Dr Tempest had not as yet
received from the bishop any official order on the subject.
'We are so delighted to think that you have taken up your cousin's
case,' said Mrs Walker to Mr Toogood in almost a whisper.
'He is not just my cousin, himself,' said Mr Toogood, 'but of course
it's all the same thing. And as to taking up his case, you see, my dear
madam, he won't let me take it up.'
'I thought you had. I thought you were down here about it.'
'Only on the sly, Mrs Walker. He has such queer ideas that he will not
allow a lawyer to be properly employed; and you can't conceive how hard
that makes it. Do you know him, Mrs Walker?'
'We know his daughter Grace.' And then Mrs Walker whispered something
further, which we may presume to have been in intimation that the
gentleman opposite--Major Grantly--was supposed by some people to be
very fond of Miss Grace Crawley.
'Quite a child, isn't she?' said Toogood, whose own daughter, now about
to be married, was three or four years older than Grace.
'She's beyond being a child, I think. Of course she is young.'
'But I suppose this affair will knock all that on the head,' said the
lawyer.
'I do not know how that may be; but they do say he is very much attached
to her. The major is a man of family, and of course it would be very
disagreeable if Mr Crawley were found guilty.'
'Very disagreeable indeed; but, upon my word, Mrs Walker, I don't know
what to say about it.'
'You think it will go against him, Mr Toogood?' Mr Toogood shook his
head, and seeing this, Mrs Walker sighed deeply.
'I can only say that I have nothing from the bishop as yet,' said Dr
Tempest, after the ladies had left the room. 'Of course, if he thinks
well to order it, the inquiry will be made.'
'But how long would it take?' asked Mr Walker.
'Three months, I should think--or perhaps more. Of course Crawley would
do all that he could to delay us, and I am not at all sure that we
should be in any great hurry ourselves.'
'Who are "we", doctor?' said Mr Walker.
'I cannot make such an inquiry be myself, you know. I suppose the
bishop would ask me to select two or three other clergymen to act with
me. That's the usual way of doing it. But you may be quite sure of this,
Walker; the assizes will be over, and the jury have found their verdict
long before we have settled our preliminaries.'
'And what will the be the good of your going on after that?'
'Only this good:--if the unfortunate man be convicted--'
'Which he won't' said Toogood, who thought it expedient to put on a
bolder front in talking of the matter to the rural dean, than he had
assumed in his whispered conversation with Mrs Walker.
'I hope not, with all my heart,' said the doctor. 'But, perhaps, for
the sake of the argument, the supposition may be allowed to pass.'
'Certainly, sir,' said Mr Toogood. 'For the sake of the argument, it
may pass.'
'If he be convicted, then, I suppose, there will be an end of the
question. He would be sentenced for not less, I should say, than twelve
months; and after that--'
'And would be as good a parson of Hogglestock when he came out of prison
as when he went in,' said Mr Walker. 'The conviction and judgment in a
civil court would not touch his temporality.'
'Certainly not,' said Mr Toogood.
'Of course not,' said the doctor. 'We all know that; and in the event
of Mr Crawley coming back to his parish it would be open to the bishop
to raise the question as to his fitness for the duties.'
'Why shouldn't he be as fit as anyone else?' said Mr Toogood.
'Simply because he would have been found guilty to be a thief,' said the
doctor. 'You must excuse me, Mr Toogood, but it's only for the sake of
the argument.'
'I don't see what that has to do with it,' said Mr Toogood. 'He would
have undergone his penalty.'
'It is preferable that a man who preaches from a pulpit should not have
undergone such a penalty,' said the doctor. 'But, in practice, under
such circumstances--which we none of us anticipate, Mr Toogood--the
living should no doubt be vacated. Mr Crawley would probably hardly wish
to come back. The jury will do their work before we can do ours--will do
it on much better base than any we can have; and, when they have done
it, the thing ought to be finished. If the jury acquit him, the bishop
cannot proceed any further. If he be found guilty, I think that the
resignation of the living must follow.'
'It is all spite, then, on the bishop's part?' said the major.
'Not at all,' said the doctor. 'The poor man is weak; that is all. He
is driven to persecute because he cannot escape persecution himself. But
it may really be a question whether his present proceeding is not right.
If I were a bishop I should wait till the trial was over; that is all.'
From this and from much more that was said during the evening on the
same subject, Mr Toogood gradually learned the position which Mr Crawley
and the question of Mr Crawley's guilt really held in the county, and he
returned to town resolved to go on with the case.
'I'll have a barrister down express, and I'll defend him in his own
teeth,' he said to his wife. 'There'll be a scene in court, I daresay,
and the man will call upon his own counsel to hold his tongue and shut
up his brief; and, as far as I can see, counsel in such a case would
have no alternative. But there would come an explanation--how Crawley
was too honourable to employ a man whom he could not pay, and there
would be a romance, and it would all go down with the jury. One wants
sympathy in such a case as that--not evidence.'
'And how much will it cost, Tom?' said Maria, dolefully.
'Only a trifle. We won't think of that yet. There's John Eames is
going all the way to Jerusalem, out of his pocket.'
'But Johnny hasn't got twelve children, Tom.'
'One doesn't have a cousin in trouble every day,' said Toogood. 'And
then you see there's something very pretty in this case. It's quite a
pleasure getting it up.'
CHAPTER XLIII
MR CROSBIE GOES INTO THE CITY
'I've known the City now for more than ten years, Mr Crosbie, and I
never knew money to be so tight as it is at the moment. The best
commercial bills going can't be done under nine, and any other kind of
paper can't so much as get itself looked at.' Thus spoke Mr Musselboro.
He was seated in Dobbs Broughton's arm-chair in Dobbs Broughton's room
in Hook Court, on the hind legs of which he was balancing himself
comfortably; and he was communicating his experience in City matters to
our old friend Adolphus Crosbie--of whom we may surmise that he would
not have been there, at that moment, in Hook Court, if things had been
going well with him. It was now past eleven o'clock, and he should have
been at his office at the West End. His position in his office was not
doubt high enough to place him beyond the reach of any special inquiry
as to such absences; but it is generally felt that when the Crosbies of
the West End have calls into the City about noon, things in the world
are not going well with them. The man who goes into the City to look for
money is generally one who does not know where to get the money when he
wants it. Mr Musselboro on this occasion kept his hat on his head, and
there was something in the way in which he balanced his chair which in
itself an offence to Mr Crosbie's personal dignity. It was hardly as yet
two months since Mr Dobbs Broughton had assured him in that very room
that there need not be the slightest anxiety about his bill. Of course
it could be renewed--the commission being duly paid. As Mr Dobbs
Broughton explained on that occasion, that was his business. There was
nothing he liked so much as renewing bills for such customers as Mr
Crosbie; and he was very candid at that meeting, explaining how he did
this branch of his business, raising money on his own credit at four or
five per cent., and lending it on his own judgment at eight or nine. Mr
Crosbie did not feel himself then called upon to exclaim that what he
was called upon to pay was about twelve, perfectly understanding the
comfort and grace of euphony; but he had turned it over in his mind,
considering whether twelve per cent. was not more than ought to be
mulcted for the accommodation he wanted. Now, at the moment, he would
have been glad to get it from Mr Musselboro, without further words, for
twenty.
Things had much changed with Adolphus Crosbie when he was driven to make
morning visits to such a one as Mr Musselboro with the view of having a
bill renewed for two hundred and fifty pounds. In his early life he had
always had the merit of being a careful man as to money. In some other
respects he had gone astray very foolishly--as has been partly explained
in our earlier chapters; but up to the date of his marriage with Lady
Alexandrina De Courcy he had never had dealings in Hook Court or in any
such locality. Money troubles had then come upon him. Lady Alexandrina,
being the daughter of a countess, had high ideas; and when, very shortly
after his marriage, he had submitted to a separation from his noble
wife, he had found himself and his income to be tied up inextricably in
the hands of Mr Mortimer Gazebee, a lawyer who had married one of his
wife's sisters. It was not that Mr Gazebee was dishonest; nor did
Crosbie suspect him of dishonesty; but the lawyer was so wedded to the
interest of the noble family with which he was connected, that he worked
for them all as an inferior spider might be supposed to work, which,
from the infirmity of its nature, was compelled by instincts to be
catching flies for superior spiders. Mr Mortimer Gazebee had in this way
entangled Mr Crosbie in his web on behalf of those noble spiders, the De
Courcys, and our poor friend, in his endeavour to fight his way through
the web, had fallen into the hands of the Hook Court firm of Mrs Van
Siever, Dobbs Broughton, and Musselboro.
'Mr Broughton told me when I was last here,' said Crosbie, 'that there
would be no difficulty about it.'
'And it was renewed then; wasn't it?'
'Of course it was--for two months. But he was speaking of a
continuation of renewal.'
'I'm afraid we can't do it, Mr Crosbie. I'm afraid we can't, indeed.
Money is so awful tight.'
'Of course I must pay what you choose to charge me.'
'It isn't that, Mr Crosbie. The bill is out for collection, and must be
collected. In times like these we must draw ourselves in a little, you
know. Two hundred and fifty pounds isn't a great deal of money, you will
say; but every little helps, you know; and, besides, of course we go
upon a system. Business is business, and must not be made pleasure of. I
should have a great deal of pleasure in doing this for you, but it can't
be done in the way of business.'
'When will Broughton be here?'
'He may be in at any time--I can't say when. I suppose he's down at the
court now.'
'What court?'
'Capel Court.'
'I suppose I can see him there?' said Crosbie.
'If you catch him you can see him, of course. But what good will that
do you, Mr Crosbie? I tell you we can't do it for you. If Broughton was
here at this moment, it couldn't make the slightest difference.'
Now Mr Crosbie had an idea that Mr Musselboro, though he sat in Dobbs
Broughton's seat and kept on his hat, and balanced his chair on two
legs, was in truth nothing more than a clerk. He did not quite
understand the manner in which the affairs of the establishment were
worked, though he had been informed that Mrs Van Siever was one of the
partners. That Dobbs Broughton was the managing man, who really did the
business, he was convinced; and he did not therefore like to be answered
peremptorily by such a one as Musselboro. 'I should wish to see Mr
Broughton,' he said.
'You can call again--or you can go down to the court if you like it.
But you may take this as an answer from me that the bill can't be
renewed by us.' At this moment the door of the room was opened and Dobbs
Broughton himself came into it. His face was not at all pleasant, and
anyone might have seen with half an eye that the money-market was a
great deal tighter than he liked it to be. 'Here is Mr Crosbie
here--about his bill,' said Musselboro.
'Mr Crosbie must take up his bill; that's all,' said Dobbs Broughton.
'But it doesn't suit me to take it up,' said Crosbie.
'Then you must take it up without suiting you,' said Dobbs Broughton.
It might have been seen, I said, with half an eye, that Mr Broughton did
not like the state of the money-market; and it might also be seen with
the other half that he had been endeavouring to mitigate the bitterness
of his dislike by alcoholic aid. Musselboro at once perceived that his
patron and partner was half drunk, and Crosbie was aware that he had
been drinking. But, nevertheless, it was necessary that something more
should be said. The bill would be due tomorrow--was payable at Crosbie's
bankers; and, as Mr Crosbie too well knew, there were no funds there for
that purpose. And there were other purposes, very needful, for which Mr
Crosbie's funds were at the present moment unfortunately by no means
sufficient. He stood for a few moments thinking what he would
do;--whether he would leave the drunken man and his office and let the
bill take its chance or whether he would make one more effort for an
arrangement. He did not for a moment believe that Broughton himself was
subject to any pecuniary difficulty. Broughton lived in a big house, as
rich men live, and had a name for commercial success. It never occurred
to Crosbie that it was a matter of great moment to Dobbs Broughton
himself that the bill should be taken up. Crosbie still thought that
Musselboro was his special enemy, and that Broughton had joined
Musselboro in his hostility simply because he was too drunk to know
better. 'You might, at any rate, answer me civilly, Mr Broughton,' he
said.
'I know nothing of civility with things as they are at present,' said
Broughton. 'Civil by ----! There's nothing so civil as paying money when
you owe it. Musselboro, reach me down the decanter and some glasses.
Perhaps Mr Crosbie will wet his whistle.'
'He don't want any wine--nor you either,' said Musselboro.
'What's up now?' said Broughton, staggering across the room towards a
cupboard, in which it was his custom to keep a provision of that comfort
which he needed at the present moment. 'I suppose I may stand a glass of
wine to a fellow in my own room, if I like it.'
'I will take no wine, thank you,' said Crosbie.
'Then you can to do the other thing. When I ask a gentleman to take a
glass of wine, there is no compulsion. But about the bill there is
compulsion. Do you understand that? You may drink, or let it alone; but
pay you must. Why, Mussy, what d'ye think?--there's Carter, Ricketts
and Carter;--I'm blessed if Carter just now didn't beg for two months,
as though two months would be all the world to him, and that for a
trumpery five hundred pounds. I never saw money like it is now; never.'
To this appeal, Musselboro made no reply, not caring, perhaps, at the
present moment to sustain his partner. He still balanced himself in his
chair, and still kept his hat on his head. Even Mr Crosbie began to
perceive that Mr Musselboro's genius was in the ascendant in Hook Court.
'I can hardly believe,' said Crosbie, 'that things can be so bad that I
cannot have a bill for two hundred and fifty pounds renewed when I am
willing to pay for the accommodation. I have not done much in the way of
bills, but I never had one dishonoured yet.'
'Don't let this be the first,' said Dobbs Broughton.
'Not if I can prevent it,' said Crosbie. 'But to tell you the truth, Mr
Broughton, my bill will be dishonoured unless I can have it renewed. If
it does not suit you to do it, I suppose you can recommend me to someone
who can make it convenient.'
'Why don't you go to your bankers?' said Musselboro.
'I never did ask my bankers for anything of the kind.'
'Then you should try what your credit with them is worth,' said
Broughton. 'It isn't worth much here, as you can perceive, Mr Crosbie.'
Crosbie, when he heard this, became very angry; and Musselboro,
perceiving this, got out of his chair, so that he might be in readiness
to prevent any violence, if violence were attempted. 'It really is no
good your staying here,' he said. 'You see that Broughton has been
drinking. There is no knowing what he may say or do.'
'You be blowed,' said Broughton, who had taken the arm-chair as soon as
Musselboro had left it.
'But you may believe me in the way of business,' continued Musselboro,
'when I tell you that it really does not suit us to renew the bill.
We're pressed ourselves, and we must press others.'
'And who will do it for me?' said Crosbie, almost in despair.
'There are Burton and Bangles there, the wine-merchants down in the
yard; perhaps they may accommodate you. It's all in their line; but I'm
told they charge uncommon dear.'
'I don't know Messrs Burton and Bangles,' said Crosbie.
'That needn't stand in your way. You tell them where you come from, and
they'll make inquiry. If they think it's about right, they'll give you
the money; and if they don't, they won't.'
Mr Crosbie then left the office without exchanging another word with
Dobbs Broughton, and went down into Hook Court. As he descended the
stairs he turned over in his mind the propriety of going to Messrs
Burton and Bangles with the view of relieving himself from his present
difficulty. He knew that it was ruinous. Dealing even with such men as
Dobbs Broughton and Musselboro, whom he presumed to milder in their
greed than Burton and Bangles, were, all of them, steps on the road to
ruin. But what was he to do? If his bill were dishonoured, the fact
would certainly become known at his office, and he might even ultimately
be arrested. In the doorway at the bottom of the stairs he stood for
some moments, looking over at Burton and Bangles', and he did not at all
like the aspect of the establishment. Inside the office he could see a
man standing with a cigar in his mouth, very resplendent in his new
hat--with a hat remarkable for the bold upward curve of its rim, and
this man was copiously decorated with a chain and seals hanging about
widely over his waistcoat. He was leaning with his back against the
counter and was talking to someone on the other side of it. There was
something in the man's look and manner which was utterly repulsive to
Crosbie. He was more vulgar to the eye even than Musselboro, and his
voice, which Crosbie could hear as he stood in the other doorway, was
almost as detestable as that of Dobbs Broughton in his drunkenness.
Crosbie did not doubt that this was either Burton or Bangles, and that
the man standing inside was either Bangles or Burton. He could not bring
himself to accost these men and tell them of his necessities, and
propose to them that they should relieve him. In spite of what
Musselboro had just said to him, he could not believe it possible that
he should succeed, were he to do so without some introduction. So he
left Hook Court and went out into the lane, hearing as he went the loud
voice of the man with the turned-up hat and the chain.
But what was he to do? At the outset of his pecuniary troubles, when he
first found it necessary to litigate some question with the De Courcy
people, and withstand the web which Mortimer Gazebee wove so
assiduously, his own attorney had introduced him to Dobbs Broughton, and
the assistance which he had needed had come to him, at any rate, without
trouble. He did not especially like Mr Broughton; and when Mr Broughton
first invited him to come and eat a little bit of dinner, he had told
himself with painful remorse that in his early days he had been
accustomed to eat his little bits of dinner with people of a different
kind. But there had been nothing really painful in this. Since his
marriage with a daughter of the De Courcys--by which marriage he had
intended to climb the highest pinnacle of social eating and drinking--he
had gradually found himself to be falling in the scale of such matters,
and could bring himself to dine with Dobbs Broughton without any violent
pain. But now he had fallen so low that Dobbs Broughton had insulted
him, and he was in such distress that he did not know where to turn for
ten pounds. Mr Gazebee had beaten him at litigation, and his own lawyer
had advised him that it would be foolish to try the matter further. In
his marriage with the noble daughter of the De Courcys he had allowed
the framers of the De Courcy settlement to tie him up in such a way that
now, even when chance had done so much for him in freeing him from his
wife, he was still bound to the De Courcy faction. Money had been paid
away--on his behalf, as alleged by Mr Gazebee--like running water; money
for furniture, money for the lease of a house, money when he had been
separated from his wife, money while she was still living abroad. It had
seemed to him that he had been made to pay for the entire support of the
female moiety of the De Courcy family which had settled itself at
Baden-Baden, from the day, and in some respects from before the day, on
which his wife had joined that moiety. He had done all in his power to
struggle against these payments, but every such struggle had only cost
him more money. Mr Gazebee had written to him the most civil notes; but
every note seemed to cost him money --every word of each note seemed to
find its way into some bill. His wife had died and her body had been
brought back, with all the pomp befitting the body of an earl's
daughter, that it might be laid with the De Courcy dust--at his expense.
The embalming of her dear remains had cost a wondrous sum, and was a
terrible blow upon him. All these items were showered upon him by Mr
Gazebee with the most courteously worded demands for settlement as soon
as convenient. And then, when he applied that Lady Alexandrina's small
fortune should be made over to him--according to a certain agreement
under which he had made over all his possessions to his wife, should she
have survived him--Mr Gazebee expressed a mild opinion that he was wrong
in his law, and blandly recommended an amicable lawsuit. The amicable
lawsuit carried on. His own lawyer seemed to throw him over. Mr Gazebee
was successful in everything. No money came to him. Money was demanded
from him on old scores and on new scores--and all that he received to
console him for what he had lost was a mourning ring with his wife's
hair--for which, with sundry other mourning rings, he had to pay--and an
introduction to Mr Dobbs Broughton. To Mr Dobbs Broughton he owed five
hundred pounds; and as regarded a bill for the one-half of that sum
which was due tomorrow, Mr Dobbs Broughton had refused to grant him
renewal for a single month!
I know no more uncomfortable walking than that which falls to the lot of
men who go into the City to look for money, and who find none. Of all
the lost steps trodden by men, surely the steps lost after that fashion
are the most melancholy. It is not only that they are so vain, but that
they are accompanied by so killing a sense of shame! To wait about in
dingy rooms, which look on to bare walls, and are approached through
some Hook Court; or to keep appointments at a low coffee-house, to which
trystings the money-lender will not trouble himself to come unless it
pleases him; to be civil, almost suppliant, to a cunning knave whom the
borrower loathes; to be refused thrice, and then cheated with his eyes
open on the fourth attempt; to submit himself to vulgarity of the
foulest kind, and to have to seem to like it; to be badgered, reviled,
and at last accused of want of honesty by the most fraudulent of
mankind; and at the same time to be clearly conscious of the ruin that
is coming--this is the fate of him who goes into the City to find
money, not knowing where it is to be found!
Crosbie went along the lane into Lombard Street, and then he stood still
for a moment to think. Though he knew a good deal of affairs in general,
he did not quite know what would happen to him of his bill should be
dishonoured. That somebody would bring it to him noted, and require him
instantly to put his hand into his pocket and bring out the amount of
the bill, plus the amount of certain expenses, he thought that he did
know. And he knew that were he in trade he would become a bankrupt; and
he was well aware that such an occurrence would prove him to be
insolvent. But he did not know what his creditors would immediately have
the power of doing. That the fact of the bill having been dishonoured
would reach the Board under which he served--and, therefore, also the
fact that he had had recourse to such bill transactions--this alone was
enough to fill him with dismay. In early life he had carried his head so
high, he had been so much more than a mere Government clerk, that the
idea of the coming disgrace almost killed him. Would it not be well that
he should put an end to himself, and thus escape? What was there in the
world now for which it was worth his while to live? Lily, whom he had
once gained, and by that gain had placed himself high in all hopes of
happiness and riches--whom he had thrown away from him, and who had
again seemed to be almost within his reach--Lily had so refused him that
he knew not how to approach her with a further prayer. And, had she not
refused him, how could he have told her of his load of debt? As he stood
at the corner where the lane runs in Lombard Street, he came for a while
to think almost more of Lily than of his rejected bill. Then, as he
thought of both his misfortunes together, he asked himself whether a
pistol would not conveniently put an end to them together.
At that moment a loud harsh voice greeted his ear. 'Hallo, Crosbie,
what brings you so far east? One does not often see you in the City.' It
was the voice of Sir Raffle Buffle, which in former days had been very
odious to Crosbie's ears;--for Sir Raffle Buffle had once been the
presiding genius of the office to which Crosbie still belonged.
'No, indeed, not very often,' said Crosbie, smiling. Who can tell who
has not felt it, the pain that goes with the forcing of such smiles? But
Sir Raffle was not an acutely observant person, and did not see that
anything was wrong.
'I suppose you're doing a little business?' said Sir Raffle. 'If a man
has kept a trifle of money by him, this certainly is the time for
turning it. You have always been wide awake about such things.'
'No, indeed,' said Crosbie. If he could only make up his mind that he
would shoot himself, would it not be a pleasant thing to inflict some
condign punishment on this odious man before he left the world? But
Crosbie knew that he was not going to shoot himself, and he knew also
that he had no power of inflicting condign punishment on Sir Raffle
Buffle. He could only hate the man, and curse him inwardly.
'Ah, ha!' said Sir Raffle. 'You wouldn't be here unless you knew where
a good thing is to be picked up. But I must be off. I'm on the Rocky
Mountain Canal Company Directory. I'm not above taking my two guineas a
day. Good-bye, my boy. Remember me to old Optimist.' And so Sir Raffle
passed on, leaving Crosbie still standing at the corner of the lane.
What was he to do? This interruption had at least seemed to drive Lily
from his mind, and to send his ideas back to the consideration of his
pecuniary difficulties. He thought of his own bank, a West-End
establishment at which he was personally known to many of the clerks,
and where he had been heretofore treated, with great consideration. But
of late his balances had been very low, and more than once he had been
reminded that he had overdrawn his account. He knew well that the
distinguished firm of Bounce, Bounce, and Bounce would not cash a bill
for him or lend him money without security. He did not even dare to ask
them to do so.
On a sudden he jumped into a cab, and was driven back to his office. A
thought had come upon him. He would throw himself upon the kindness of a
friend there. Hitherto he had contrived to hold his head high above the
clerks below him, so high before the Commissioners who were above him,
that none there suspected him to be a man in difficulty. It not seldom
happens that a man's character stands too high for his interest--so high
that it cannot be maintained, and so high that any fall will be
dangerous. And so it was with Crosbie and his character at the General
Committed Office. The man to whom he was now thinking of applying as his
friend was a certain Mr Butterwell, who had been his predecessor in the
secretary's chair, and who now filled the less onerous but more
dignified position of a Commissioner. Mr Crosbie had somewhat despised
Mr Butterwell, and had of late years had not been averse to showing that
he did so. He had snubbed Mr Butterwell, and Mr Butterwell, driven to
his wits' ends, had tried a fall or two with him. In all these struggles
Crosbie had had the best of it, and Butterwell had gone to the wall.
Nevertheless, for the sake of official decency, and from certain wise
remembrances of the sources of official comfort and official discomfort,
Mr Butterwall had always maintained a show of outward friendship with
the secretary. They smiled and were gracious, called each other
Butterwell and Crosbie, and abstained from all cat-and-dog absurdities.
Nevertheless, it was the frequently expressed opinion of every clerk in
the office that Mr Butterwell hated Mr Crosbie like poison. This was the
man to whom Crosbie suddenly made up his mind that he would have
recourse.
As he was driven back to the office he resolved that he would make a
plunge at once at the difficulty. He knew that Butterwell was fairly
rich, and he knew also that he was good-natured--with that sort of
sleepy good-nature which is not active for philanthropic purposes, but
which dislikes to incur the pain of refusing. And then Mr Butterwell was
nervous, and if the thing was managed well, he might be cheated out of
an assent, before time had been given him in which to pluck up courage
for refusing. But Crosbie doubted his own courage also--fearing that if
he gave himself time for hesitation he would hesitate, and that,
hesitating, he would feel the terrible disgrace of the thing and not do
it. So, without going to his own desk, or ridding himself of his hat, he
went at once to Butterwell's room. When he opened the door, he found Mr
Butterwell alone, reading The Times. 'Butterwell,' said he, beginning to
speak before he had even closed the door, 'I have come to you in great
distress. I wonder whether you can help me; I want you to lend me five
hundred pounds? It must be for not less than three months.'
Mr Butterwell dropped the paper from his hands, and stared at the
secretary over his spectacles.
CHAPTER XLIV
'I SUPPOSE I MUST LET YOU HAVE IT'
Crosbie had been preparing the exact words with which he assailed Mr
Butterwell for the last quarter of an hour, before they were uttered.
There is always a difficulty in the choice, not only of the words with
which money should be borrowed, but of the fashion after which they
should be spoken. There is the slow deliberate manner, in using which
the borrower attempts to carry the wished-for lender along with him by
force of argument, and to prove that the desire to borrow shows no
imprudence on his own part, and that a tendency to lend will show none
on the part of the intended lender. It may be said that this mode fails
oftener than any other. There is the piteous manner--the plea for
commiseration. 'My dear fellow, unless you will see me through now, upon
my word I shall be very badly off.' And this manner may be divided again
into two. There is the plea piteous with a lie, and the plea piteous
with a truth. 'You shall have it again in two months as sure as the sun
rises.' That is generally the plea piteous with a lie. Or it may be as
follows; 'It is only fair to say that I don't quite know when I can pay
it back.' This is the plea piteous with a truth, and upon the whole I
think that this is generally the most successful mode of borrowing. And
there is the assured demand--which betokens a close intimacy. 'Old
fellow, can you let me have thirty pounds? No? Just put your name, then,
on the back of this, and I'll get it done in the City.' The worst of
that manner is, that the bill so often does not get itself done in the
City. Then there is the sudden attack--that being the manner to which
Crosbie had recourse in the present instance. That there are other modes
of borrowing by means of which youth becomes indebted to age, and love
to respect, and ignorance to experience, is a matter of course. It will
be understood that I am here speaking only of borrowing and lending
between the Butterwells and Crosbies of the world. 'I have come to you
in great distress,' said Crosbie. 'I wonder whether you can help me. I
want you to lend me five hundred pounds.' Mr Butterwell, when he heard
the words, dropped the paper which he was reading from his hand, and
stared at Crosbie over his spectacles.
'Yes it is--a very large sum. Half that is what I want at once; but I
shall want the other half in a month.'
'I thought that you were always so much above the world in money
matters. Gracious me;--nothing that I have heard for a long time has
astonished me more. I don't know why, but I always thought you had your
things so very snug.'
Crosbie was aware that he had made one very great step towards success.
The idea had been presented to Mr Butterwell's mind, and had not been
instantly rejected as a scandalously iniquitous idea, as an idea to
which no reception could be given for a moment. Crosbie had not been
treated as the needy knife-grinder, and had ground to stand upon while
he urged his request. 'I have been so pressed since my marriage,' he
said, 'that it has been impossible for me to keep things straight.'
'But Lady Alexandrina--'
'Yes, of course; I know. I do not like to trouble you with my private
affairs;--there is nothing, I think, so bad as washing one's dirty linen
in public;--but the truth is, that I am only now free from the rapacity
of the De Courcys. You would hardly believe me if I told you what I've
had to pay. What do you think of two hundred and forty-five pounds for
bringing her body over here, and burying it at De Courcy?'
'I'd have left it where it was.'
'And so would I. You don't suppose I ordered it to be done. Poor dear
thing. If it could do her any good, God knows I would not begrudge it.
We had a bad time of it when we were together, but I would have spared
nothing for her, alive or dead, that was reasonable. But to make me pay
for bringing the body over here, when I never had a shilling with her!
By George, it was too bad. And that oaf John De Courcy--I had to pay his
travelling bill too.'
'He didn't come to be buried;--did he?'
'It's too disgusting to talk of, Butterwell; it is indeed. And when I
asked for her money that was settled upon me--it was only two thousand
pounds--they made me go to law, and it seems there was no two thousand
pounds to settle. If I like, I can have another lawsuit with the
sisters, when the mother is dead. Oh, Butterwell, I have made such a
fool of myself. I have come to shipwreck! Oh, Butterwell, if you could
but know it all.'
'Are you free from the De Courcys now?'
'I owe Gazebee, the man who married the other woman, over a thousand
pounds. But I pay that off at two hundred a year, and he has a policy on
my life.'
'What do you owe that for?'
'Don't ask me. Not that I mind telling you;--furniture, and the lease
of a house, and his bill for the marriage settlement, d-- him.'
'God bless me. They seem to have been very hard upon you.'
'A man doesn't marry an earl's daughter for nothing, Butterwell. And
then to think what I lost! It can't be helped now, you know. As a man
makes his bed he must lie on it. I am sometimes so mad with myself when
I think over it all--that I should like to blow my brains out.'
'You must not talk that way, Crosbie. I hate to hear a man talk like
that.'
'I don't mean that I shall. I'm too much of a coward, I fancy.' A man
who desires to soften another man's heart should always abuse himself.
In softening a woman's heart, he should abuse her. 'But life has been so
bitter with me for the last three years! I haven't had an hour of
comfort;--not an hour. I don't know why I should trouble you with all
this Butterwell. Oh--about the money; yes; that's just how I stand. I
owed Gazebee something over a thousand pounds which is arranged as I
have told you. Then there were debts, due by my wife--at least some of
them were, I suppose--and that horrid, ghastly funeral--and debts, I
don't doubt, due by the cursed old countess. At any rate, to get myself
clear, I raised something over four hundred pounds, and now I owe five
which must be paid, part tomorrow, and the remainder this day month.'
'And you've no security?'
'Not a rag, not a shred, not a line, not an acre. There's my salary,
and after paying Gazebee what comes due to him, I can manage to let you
have the money within twelve months--that is, if you can lend it to me.
I can just do that and live; and if you will assist me with the money, I
will do so. That's what I've brought myself to by my own folly.'
'Five hundred pounds is such a large sum of money.'
'Indeed it is.'
'And without any security!'
'I know, Butterwell, that I've no right to ask for it. I feel that. Of
course I should pay you what interest you please.'
'Money's about seven now,' said Butterwell.
'I've not the slightest objection to seven per cent.,' said Crosbie.
'But that's on security,' said Butterwell.
'You can name your own terms,' said Crosbie.
Mr Butterwell got out of his chair, and walked about the room with his
hands in his pockets. He was thinking at the moment of what Mrs
Butterwell would say to him. 'Will an answer do tomorrow morning?' he
said. 'I would much rather have it today,' said Crosbie. Then Mr
Butterwell took another turn about the room. 'I suppose I must let you
have it.'
'Butterwell,' said Crosbie, 'I'm eternally obliged to you. It's hardly
too much to say that you have saved me from ruin.'
'Of course I was joking about interest,' said Butterwell. 'Five per
cent. is the proper thing. You'd better let me have a little
acknowledgement. I'll give you the first half tomorrow.'
They were genuine tears which filled Crosbie's eyes, as he seized hold
of the senior's hands. 'Butterwell,' he said, 'what am I to say to you?'
'Nothing at all--nothing at all.'
'Your kindness makes me feel that I ought not to have come to you.'
'Oh, nonsense. By-the-by, would you mind telling Thompson to bring
those papers to me which I gave him yesterday? I promised Optimist I
would read them before three, and it's past two now.' So saying he sat
himself down at his table, and Crosbie felt that he was bound to leave
the room.
Mr Butterwell, when he was left alone, did not read the papers which
Thompson brought him; but said, instead, thinking of his five hundred
pounds. 'Just put them down,' he said to Thompson. So the papers were
put down, and there they lay all that day and all the next. Then
Thompson took them away again, and it is to be hoped that somebody read
them. Five hundred pounds! It was a large sum of money, and Crosbie was
a man for whom Mr Butterwell in truth felt no very strong affection. 'Of
course he must have it now,' he said to himself. 'But where should I be
if anything should happen to him?' And then he remembered that Mrs
Butterwell especially disliked Mr Crosbie--disliked him because she knew
that he snubbed her husband. 'But it's hard to refuse, when one man has
known another for more than ten years.' Then he comforted himself
somewhat with the reflection, that Crosbie would no doubt make himself
more pleasant for the future than he had done lately, and with a second
reflection, that Crosbie's life was a good life--and with a third, as to
his own great goodness, in assisting a brother officer. Nevertheless, as
he sat looking out of the omnibus window, on his journey home to Putney,
he was not altogether comfortable in his mind. Mrs Butterwell was a very
prudent woman.
But Crosbie was very comfortable in his mind on that afternoon. He had
hardly dared to hope for success, but he had been successful. He had not
even thought of Butterwell as a possible fountain of supply, till his
mind had been brought back to the affairs of the office, by the voice of
Sir Raffle Buffle at the corner of the street. The idea that his bill
would be dishonoured, and that tidings of his insolvency would be
conveyed to the Commissioners at his Board, had been dreadful to him.
The way in which he had been treated by Musselboro and Dobbs Broughton
had made him hate City men, and what he supposed to be City ways. Now
there had come to him a relief which suddenly made everything feel
light. He could almost think of Mr Mortimer Gazebee without disgust.
Perhaps after all there might be some happiness yet in store for him.
Might it not be possible that Lily would yet accept him in spite of the
chilling letter--the freezing letter which he had received from Lily's
mother? Of one thing he was quite certain. If ever he had the
opportunity of pleading his own cause with her, he certainly would tell
her everything respecting his money difficulties.
In that last resolve I think we may say that he was right. If Lily
would ever listen to him again at all, she certainly would not be
deterred from marrying him by his own story of his debts.
CHAPTER XLV
LILY DALE GOES TO LONDON
One morning towards the end of March the squire rapped at the window of
the drawing-room of the Small House in which Mrs Dale and Lily were
sitting. He had a letter in his hand, and both Lily and her mother knew
that he had come down to speak about the contents of the letter. It was
always a sign of good-humour on the squire's part, this rapping at the
window. When it became necessary to him in his gloomy moods to see his
sister-in-law, he would write a note to her, and she would go across to
him at the Great House. At other times, if, as Lily would say, he was
just then neither sweet nor bitter, he would go round to the front door
and knock, and be admitted after the manner of ordinary people; but when
he was minded to make himself thoroughly pleasant he would come and rap
at the drawing-room window, as he was doing now.
'I'll let you in, uncle; wait a moment,' said Lily, as she unbolted the
window which opened out upon the lawn. 'It's dreadfully cold, so come in
as fast as you can.'
'It's not cold at all,' said the squire. 'It's more like spring than
any morning we've had yet. I've been sitting without a fire.'
'You won't catch us without one for the next two months; will he, mamma?
You have got a letter, uncle. Is it for us to see?'
'Well--yes; I've brought it down to show you. Mary, what do you think
is going to happen?'
A terrible idea occurred to Mrs Dale at that moment, but she was much to
wise to give it expression. Could it be possible that the squire was
going to make a fool of himself and get married? 'I am very bad at
guessing,' said Mrs Dale. 'You had better tell us.'
'Bernard is going to be married,' said Lily.
'How did you know?' said the squire.
'I didn't know. I only guessed.'
'Then you've guessed right,' said the squire, a little annoyed at having
his news thus taken out of his mouth.
'I am so glad,' said Mrs Dale; 'and I know from your manner that you
like the match.'
'Well--yes. I don't know the young lady, but I think that upon the
whole I do like it. It's quite time, you know, that he got married.'
'He's not thirty yet,' said Mrs Dale.
'He will be in a month or two.'
'And who is it, uncle?'
'Well;--as you're so good at guessing, I suppose you can guess that?'
'It's not that Miss Partridge he used to talk about?'
'No; it's not Miss Partridge--I'm glad to say. I don't believe that the
Partridges have a shilling among them.'
'Then I suppose it's an heiress,' said Mrs Dale.
'No; not an heiress; but she will have some money of her own. And she
had connexions in Barsetshire, which makes it pleasant.'
'Connexions in Barsetshire! Who can it be?' said Lily.
'Her name is Emily Dunstable,' said the squire, 'and she is the niece of
Miss Dunstable who married Dr Thorne and who lives at Chaldicotes.'
'She was the woman who had millions upon millions,' said Lily, 'and all
got by selling ointment.'
'New mind how it was got,' said the squire angrily. 'Miss Dunstable
married most respectably, and has always made a most excellent use of
her money.'
'And will Bernard's wife have all her fortune?' asked Lily.
'She will have twenty thousand pounds the day she marries, and I suppose
that will be all.'
'And quite enough, too,' said Mrs Dale.
'It seems that old Mr Dunstable, as he was called, who, as Lily says,
sold the ointment, quarrelled with his son or with his son's widow, and
left nothing either to her or to her child. The mother is dead, and the
aunt, Dr Thorne's wife, has always provided for the child. That's how it
is, and Bernard is going to marry her. They are to be married at
Chaldicotes in May.'
'I am delighted to hear it,' said Mrs Dale.
'I've known Dr Thorne for the last forty years;' and the squire now
spoke in a low melancholy tone. 'I've written to him to say that the
young people shall have the old place up there to themselves if they
like it.'
'What! And turn you out?' said Mrs Dale.
'That would not matter,' said the squire.
'You'd have to come and live with us,' said Lily, taking him by the
hand.
'It doesn't matter much now where I live,' said the squire.
'Bernard would never consent to that,' said Mrs Dale.
'I wonder whether she will ask me to be a bridesmaid?' said Lily.
'They'd sat that Chaldicotes is such a pretty place, and I should see
all the Barsetshire people that I've been hearing about from Grace. Poor
Grace! I know that the Grantlys and the Thornes are very intimate. Fancy
Bernard having twenty thousand pounds from the making of ointment!'
'What does it matter where it comes from?' said the squire, half in
anger.
'Not in the least; only it sounds so odd. I do hope she's a nice girl.'
Then the squire produced a photograph of Emily Dunstable which his
nephew had sent to him, and they all pronounced her to be very pretty,
very much like a lady, and to be very good-humoured. The squire was
evidently pleased with the match, and therefore the ladies were pleased
also. Bernard Dale was the heir to the estate, and his marriage was of
course a matter of moment; and as on such properties as that of
Allington money is always wanted, the squire may be forgiven for the
great importance which he attached to the young lady's fortune. 'Bernard
could hardly have married prudently without any money,' he said--'unless
he had chosen to wait till I am gone.'
'And then he would have been too old to marry at all,' said Lily.
But the squire's budget of news had not yet been emptied. He told them
soon afterwards that he himself had been summoned up to London. Bernard
had written to him, begging him to come and see the young lady; and the
family lawyer had written also, saying that his presence in town would
be very desirable. 'It is very troublesome, of course; but I shall go,'
said the squire. 'It will do you all the good in the world,' said Mrs
Dale; 'and of course you ought to know her personally before the
marriage.' And then the squire made a clean breast of it and declared
his full purpose. 'I was thinking that, perhaps, Lily would not object
to go up to London with me.'
'Oh, uncle Christopher, I should so like it,' said Lily.
'If your mamma does not object.'
'Mamma never objects to anything. I should like to see her objecting to
that!' And Lily shook her head at her mother.
'Bernard says that Miss Dunstable particularly wants to see you.'
'Does she, indeed? And I particularly want to see Miss Dunstable. How
nice! Mamma, I don't think I've ever been in London since I wore short
frocks. Do you remember taking us to the pantomime? Only think how many
years ago that is. I'm quite sure it's time that Bernard should get
married. Uncle, I hope you're prepared to take me to the play.'
'We must see about that.'
'And the opera, and Madame Tussaud, and the Horticultural Gardens, and
the new conjuror who makes a woman lie upon nothing. The idea of my
going to London! And then I suppose I shall be one of the bridesmaids. I
declare a new vista of life is opening out to me! Mamma, you mustn't be
dull while I'm away. It won't be very long, I suppose, uncle?'
'About a month, probably,' said the squire.
'Oh, mamma; what will you do?'
'Never mind me, Lily.'
'You must get Bell and the children to come. But I cannot imagine
living away from home a month. I was never away from home a month in my
life.'
And Lily did go up to town with her uncle, two days only after having
been allowed to her for her preparations. There was very much for to
think of in such a journey. It was not only that she would see Emily
Dunstable who was to be her cousin's wife, and that she would go to the
play and visit the new conjurer's entertainment, but that she would be
in the same city both with Adolphus Crosbie and with John Eames. Not
having personal experience of the wideness of London, and of the
wilderness which it is--of the distance which is set there between
persons who are not purposely brought together--it seemed to her fancy
as though for this month of her absence from home she would be brought
into close contiguity with both her lovers. She had hitherto felt
herself to be at any rate safe in her fortress at Allington. When
Crosbie had written to her mother, making a renewed offer which had been
rejected, Lily had felt that she certainly need not see him unless it
pleased her to do so. He could hardly force himself upon her at
Allington. And as to John Eames, though he would, of course, be welcome
at Allington as often as he pleased to show himself, still there was a
security in the place. She was so much at home there that she could
always be the mistress of the occasion. She knew that she could talk to
him at Allington as though from ground higher than that on which he
stood himself; but she felt that this would hardly be the case if she
should chance to meet him in London. Crosbie probably would not come in
her way. Crosbie, she thought--and she blushed for the man she loved, as
the idea came across her mind--would be afraid of meeting her uncle. But
John Eames would certainly find her; and she was led by the experience
of latter days to image that John would never cross her path without
renewing his attempts.
But she said no word of this, even to her mother. She was contented to
confine her outspoken expectations to Emily Dunstable, and the play, and
the conjurer. 'The chances are ten to one against my liking her, mamma,'
she said.
'I don't see that, my dear.'
'I feel to be too old to think that I shall ever like any more new
people. Three years ago I should have been quite sure that I should love
a new cousin. It would have been like having a new dress. But I've come
to think that an old dress is the most comfortable, and an old cousin
certainly the best.'
The squire had taken for them a gloomy lodging in Sackville Street.
Lodgings in London are always gloomy. Gloomy colours wear better than
bright ones for curtains and carpets, and the keepers of lodgings in
London seem to think that a certain dinginess of appearance is
respectable. I never saw a London lodging in which any attempt at
cheerfulness had been made, and I do not think that any such attempt, if
made, would pay. The lodging-seeker would be frightened and dismayed,
and would unconsciously be led to fancy that something was wrong. Ideas
of burglars and improper persons would present themselves. This is so
certainly the case that I doubt whether any well-conditioned
lodging-house matron could be induced to show rooms that were prettily
draped or pleasantly coloured. The big drawing-room and two large
bedrooms which the squire took were all that was proper, and were as
brown, and as gloomy, and as ill-suited for the comforts of ordinary
life as though they had been prepared for two prisoners. But Lily was
not so ignorant as to expect cheerful lodgings in London, and was
satisfied. 'And what are we to do now?' said Lily, as soon as they found
themselves settled. It was still March, and whatever may have been the
nature of the weather at Allington, it was very cold in London. They
reached Sackville Street about five in the evening, and an hour was
taken up in unpacking their trunks and making themselves as comfortable
as their circumstances allowed. 'And now what are we to do now?' said
Lily.
'I told them to have dinner for us at half-past six.'
'And what after that? Won't Bernard come to us tonight? I expected him
to be standing on the door-steps waiting for us with his bride in his
hand.'
'I don't suppose Bernard will be here tonight,' said the squire. 'He did
not say that he would, and as for Miss Dunstable, I promised to take you
to her aunt's house tomorrow.'
'But I wanted to see her tonight. Well;--of course bridesmaids must
wait upon brides. And ladies with twenty thousand pounds can't be
expected to run about like common people. As for Bernard--but Bernard
never was in a hurry.' Then they dined, and when the squire had very
nearly fallen asleep over a bottle of port wine which had been sent in
for him from some neighbouring public-house, Lily began to feel that it
was very dull. And she looked round the room, and she though that it was
very ugly. And she calculated that thirty evenings so spent would seem
to be very long. And she reflected that the hours were probably going
much more quickly with Emily Dunstable, who, no doubt, at this moment
had Bernard Dale by her side. And then she told herself that the hours
were not tedious with her at home, while sitting with her mother, with
all her daily occupations within her reach. But in so telling herself
she took herself to task, inquiring of herself whether such an assurance
was altogether true. Were not the hours sometimes tedious even at home?
And in this way her mind wandered off to thoughts upon life in general,
and she repeated to herself over and over again the two words which she
had told John Eames that she would write in her journal. The reader will
remember those two words--Old Maid. And she had written them in her
book, making each letter a capital, and round them she had drawn a
scroll, ornamented after her own fashion, and she had added the date in
quaintly formed figures--for in such matters Lily had some little skill
and a dash of fun to direct it; and she had inscribed below it an
Italian motto:--'Who goes softly, goes safely'; and above her work of
art she had put a heading--As arranged fate for L.D.' Now she thought of
all this, and reflected whether Emily Dunstable was in truth very happy.
Presently the tears came into her eyes, and she got up and went to the
window, as though she were afraid that her uncle might wake and see
them. And as she looked out on the blank street, she muttered a word or
two--'Dear mother! Dearest mother!' Then the door was opened, and her
cousin Bernard announced himself. She had not heard his knock at the
door as she had been thinking of the two words in her book.
'What; Bernard!--ah, yes, of course,' said the squire, rubbing his eyes
as he strove to wake himself. 'I wasn't sure you would come, but I'm
delighted to see you. I wish you joy with all my heart--with all my
heart.'
'Of course, I should come,' said Bernard. 'Dear Lily, this is so good
of you. Emily is so delighted.' Then Lily spoke her congratulations
warmly, and there was no trace of a tear in her eyes, and she was
thoroughly happy as she sat by her cousin's side, and listened to his
raptures about Emily Dunstable. 'And you will be so fond of her aunt,'
he said.
'But is she not awfully rich?' said Lily.
'Frightfully rich,' said Bernard; 'but really you would hardly find it
out if nobody told you. Of course she lives in a big house, and has a
heap of servants; but she can't help that.'
'I hate a heap of servants,' said Lily.
Then there came another knock at the door, and who should enter the room
but John Eames. Lily for a moment was taken aback, but it was only for a
moment. She had been thinking so much of him that his presence disturbed
her for an instant. 'He probably will not know that I am here,' she had
said to herself; but she had not yet been three hours in London, and he
was already with her! At first he hardly spoke to her, addressing
himself to the squire. 'Lady Julia told me you were to be here, and as I
start for the Continent early tomorrow morning, I thought you would let
me come and see you before I went.'
'I'm always glad to see you, John,' said the squire--'very glad. And so
you are going abroad, are you?'
Then Johnny congratulated his old acquaintance, Bernard Dale, as to his
coming marriage, and explained to them how Lady Julia in one of her
letters had told him all about it, and had even given him the number in
Sackville Street. 'I suppose she learned it from you, Lily,' said the
squire. 'Yes uncle, she did.' And then there came questions as to John's
projected journey to the Continent, and he explained that he was going
on law-business, on behalf of Mr Crawley, to catch the dean and Mrs
Arabin, if it might be possible. 'You see, sir, Mr Toogood, who is Mr
Crawley's cousin, and also his lawyer, is my cousin too; and that's why
I'm going.' And still there had been hardly a word spoken between him
and Lily.
'But you're not a lawyer, John; are you?' said the squire.
'No. I'm not a lawyer myself.'
'Nor a lawyer's clerk?'
'Certainly not a lawyer's clerk,' said John, laughing.
'Then why should you go?' asked Bernard Dale.
Then Johnny had to explain, and in doing so he became very eloquent as
to the hardships of Mr Crawley's case. 'You see, sir, nobody can
possibly believe that such a man as that stole twenty pounds.'
'I do not for one,' said Lily.
'God forbid that I should say he did,' said the squire.
'I'm quite sure he didn't,' said Johnny, warming to his subject. 'It
couldn't be that such a man as that should become a thief all at once.
It's not human nature, sir; is it?'
'It's very hard to know what human nature is,' said the squire.
'It's the general opinion down in Barsetshire that he did steal it,'
said Bernard. 'Dr Thorne was one of the magistrates who committed him,
and I know he thinks so.'
'I don't blame the magistrates in the least,' said Johnny.
'That's kind of you,' said the squire.
'Of course you'll laugh at me, sir; but you'll see that we shall come
out right. There's some mystery in it of which we haven't got at the
bottom as yet; and if there is anybody that can help us it is the dean.'
'If the dean knows anything, why has he not written and told what he
knows?' said the squire.
'That's what I can't say. The dean has not had an opportunity of
writing since he heard--even if he has yet heard--that Mr Crawley is to
be tried. And then he and Mrs Arabin are not together. It's a long
story, and I will not trouble you with it all; but at any rate I'm going
off tomorrow. Lily, can I do anything for you in Florence?'
'In Florence?' said Lily; 'and are you really going to Florence? How I
envy you.'
'And who pays your expenses,' said the squire.
'Well;--as to my expenses, they are to be paid by a person who won't
raise any unpleasant questions about the amount.'
'I don't know what you mean,' said the squire.
'He means himself,' said Lily.
'I'm going to have a trip for my own fun,' said Johnny, 'and I shall
pick up evidence on the road, as I'm going--that's all.'
Then Lily began to take an active part in the conversation, and a great
deal was said about Mr Crawley, and about Grace, and Lily declared that
she would be very anxious to hear any news which John Eames might be
able to send. 'You know, John, how fond we are of your cousin Grace, at
Allington? Are we not, uncle?'
'Yes, indeed,' said the squire. 'I thought her a very nice girl.'
'If you should be able to learn anything that may be of use, John, how
happy you will be.'
'Yes, I shall,' said John.
'And I think it's so good of you to go, John. But it is just like you.
You were always generous.' Soon after that he got up and went. It was
very clear to him that he would have no moment in which to say a word
alone to Lily; and if he could find such a moment, what good would such
a word do him? It was as yet but a few weeks since she had positively
refused him. And he too remembered very well those two words which she
had told him she would write in her book. As he had been coming to the
house he had told himself that his coming would be--could be of no use.
And yet he was disappointed with the result of his visit, although she
had spoken to him so sweetly.
'I suppose you'll be gone when I get back,' he said.
'We shall be here a month,' said the squire.
'I shall be back long before that, I hope,' said Johnny. 'Good-bye,
sir. Good-bye, Dale. Good-bye, Lily.' And he put out his hand to her.
'Good-bye, John.' And then she added, almost in a whisper. 'I think
you are very, very right to go.' How could he fail after that to hope as
he walked home that she might still relent. And she also thought much of
him, but her thoughts of him made her cling more firmly than ever to
those two words. She could not bring herself to marry him; but, at
least, she would not break his heart by becoming the wife of anyone
else. Soon after this Bernard Dale went also. I am not sure that he had
been well pleased at seeing John Eames become suddenly the hero of the
hour. When a young man is going to perform so important an act as
marriage he is apt to think that he ought to be the hero of the hour
himself--at any rate among his own family.
Early on the next morning Lily was taken by her uncle to call upon Mrs
Thorne, and to see Emily Dunstable. Bernard was to meet them there, but
it had been arranged that they should reach the house first. 'There is
nothing so absurd as these introductions,' Bernard had said. 'You go and
look at her, and when you've had time to look at her, then I'll come!'
So the squire and Lily went off to look at Emily Dunstable.
'You don't mean to say that she lives in that house?' said Lily, when
the cab was stopped before an enormous mansion in one of the most
fashionable of the London squares.
'I believe she does,' said the squire.
'I never shall be able to speak to anybody living in such a house as
that,' said Lily. 'A duke couldn't have anything grander.'
'Mrs Thorne is richer than half the dukes,' said the squire. Then the
door was opened by a porter, and Lily found herself within the hall.
Everything was very great, and very magnificent, and, as she thought,
very uncomfortable. Presently she heard a loud jovial voice on the
stairs. 'Mr Dale, I'm delighted to see you. And this is your niece Lily.
Come up, my dear. There is a young woman upstairs dying to embrace you.
Never mind the umbrella. Put it down anywhere. I want to have a look at
you, because Bernard swears that you're so pretty.' This was Mrs Thorne,
once Miss Dunstable, the richest woman in England, and the aunt of
Bernard's bride. The reader may perhaps remember the advice which she
once gave to Major Grantly, and her enthusiasm on that occasion. 'There
she is, Mr Dale; what do you think of her?' said Mrs Thorne as she
opened the door of a small sitting-room wedged in between two large
saloons, in which Emily Dunstable was sitting.
'Aunt Martha, how can you be so ridiculous?' said the young lady.
'I suppose it is ridiculous to ask the question to which one really
wants to have an answer,' said Mrs Thorne. 'But Mr Dale has, in truth,
come to inspect you, and to form an opinion; and, in honest truth, I
shall be very anxious to know what he thinks--though, of course, he
won't tell me.'
The old man took the girl in his arms, and kissed her on both cheeks.
'I have no doubt you will find out what I think,' he said, 'though I
should never tell you.'
'I generally do find out what people think,' she said. 'And so you're
Lily Dale?'
'Yes, I'm Lily Dale.'
'I have so often heard of you, particularly of late; for you must know
that a certain Major Grantly is a friend of mine. We must take care that
that affair comes off all right, must we not?'
'I hope it will.' Then Lily turned to Emily Dunstable, and, taking her
hand, went up and sat beside her, while Mrs Thorne and the squire talked
of the coming marriage. 'How long have you been engaged?' said Lily.
'Really engaged about three weeks. I think it is not more than three
weeks ago.'
'How very discreet Bernard has been. He never said a word about it
while it was going on.'
'Men never do tell, I suppose,' said Emily Dunstable.
'Of course you love him dearly?' said Lily, not knowing what else to
say.
'Of course I do.'
'And so do we. You know he's almost a brother to us; that is, to me and
my sister. We never had a brother of our own.' And so the morning was
passed till Lily was told by her uncle to come away, and was told also
by Mrs Thorne that she was to dine with them in the square on that day.
'You must not be surprised that my husband is not here,' she said. 'He's
a very odd sort of man, and he never comes to London if he can help it.'
CHAPTER XLVI
THE BAYSWATER ROMANCE
Eames had by no means done his work for that evening when he left Mr
Dale and Lily at their lodgings. He had other business in hand to which
he had promised to give attention, and another person to see who would
welcome his coming quite as warmly, though by no means as pleasantly, as
Lily Dale. It was then just nine o'clock, and as he had told Miss
Demolines--Madalina we may as well call her now--that he would be in
Porchester Terrace by nine at the latest, it was incumbent on him to
make haste. He got into a cab, and bid the cabman drive hard, and
lighting a cigar, began to inquire of himself over and over again
whether it was well for him to hurry away from the presence of Lily Dale
to that of Madalina Demolines. He felt that he was half-ashamed of what
he was doing. Though he declared to himself over and over again that he
never had said a word, and never intended to say a word, to Madalina,
which all the world might not hear, yet he knew that he was doing amiss.
He was doing amiss, and half repented it, and he was half proud of it.
He was most anxious to be able to give himself credit for his constancy
to Lily Dale; to be able to feel that he was steadfast in his passion;
and yet he liked the idea of amusing himself with his Bayswater romance,
as he would call it, and was not without something of conceit as he
thought of the progress he had made in it. 'Love is one thing and
amusement is another,' he said to himself as he puffed the cigar smoke
out of his mouth; and in his heart he was proud of his own capacity for
enjoyment. He thought it a fine thing, although at the same moment he
knew it to be an evil thing--this hurrying away from the young lady whom
he really loved to another as to whom he thought it very likely that he
should be called upon to pretend to love her. And he sang a little song
as he went, 'If she be not fair to me, what care I how fair she be.'
That was intended to apply to Lily, and was used as an excuse for his
fickleness in going to Miss Demolines. And he was perhaps, too, a little
conceited as to his mission to the Continent. Lily had told him that he
was very glad that he was going; that she thought him very right to go.
The words had been very pleasant to his ears, and Lily had never looked
prettier in his eyes than when she had spoken them. Johnny, therefore,
was rather proud of himself as he sat in the cab smoking his cigar. He
had, moreover, beaten his old enemy Sir Raffle Buffle in another
contest, and he felt that the world was smiling on him;--that the world
was smiling on him in spite of his cruel fate in the matter of his real
lovesuit.
There was a mystery about the Bayswater romance which was not without
its allurement, and a portion of the mystery was connected with
Madalina's mother. Lady Demolines was very rarely seen, and John Eames
could not quite understand what was the manner of life of that
unfortunate lady. Her daughter usually spoke of her with affectionate
regret as being unable to appear on that particular occasion on account
of some passing malady. She was suffering from a nervous headache, or
was afflicted with bronchitis, or had been touched with rheumatism, so
that she was seldom on the scene when Johnny was passing his time at
Porchester Terrace. And yet he heard of her dining out, and going to
plays and operas; and when he did chance to see her, he found that she
was a sprightly old woman enough. I will not venture to say that he much
regretted the absence of Lady Demolines, or that he was keenly alive to
the impropriety of being left alone with the gentle Madalina; but the
customary absence of the elder lady was an incident in the romance which
did not fail to strike him.
Madalina was alone when he was shown upon into the drawing-room on the
evening of which we are speaking.
'Mr Eames,' she said, 'will you kindly look at that watch which is lying
on the table.' She looked full at him with her great eyes wide open, and
the tone of her voice was intended to show him that she was aggrieved.
'Yes, I see it,' said John, looking down on Miss Demolines' little gold
Geneva watch, with which he had already made sufficient acquaintance to
know that it was worth nothing. 'Shall I give it you?'
'No, Mr Eames; let it remain there, that it may remind me, if it does
not remind you, by how long a time you have broken your word.'
'Upon my word I couldn't help it;--upon my honour I couldn't.'
'Upon your honour, Mr Eames?'
'I was obliged to go and see a friend who has just come to town from my
part of the country.'
'That is the friend, I suppose, of whom I have heard from Maria.' It is
to be feared that Conway Dalrymple had not been so guarded as he should
have been in some of his conversations with Mrs Dobbs Broughton, and
that a word or two had escaped from him as to the love of John Eames for
Lily Dale.
'I don't know what you may have heard,' said Johnny, 'but I was obliged
to see these people before I left town. There is going to be a marriage
and all that sort of thing.'
'Who is going to be married?'
'One Captain Dale is going to be married to Miss Dunstable.'
'Oh! And as to one Miss Lily Dale--is she to be married to anybody?'
'Not that I have heard of,' said Johnny.
'She is not going to be the wife of one Mr John Eames?'
He did not wish to talk to Miss Demolines about Lily Dale. He did not
choose to disown the imputation, or to acknowledge its truth.
'Silence gives consent,' she said. 'If it be so, I congratulate you. I
have no doubt she is the most charming young woman. It is about seven
years, I believe, since that little affair with Mr Crosbie, and
therefore that, I suppose, may be considered as forgotten.'
'It is only three years,' said Johnny, angrily. 'Besides, I don't know
what that has to do with it.'
'You need not be ashamed,' said Madalina. 'I have heard how well you
behaved on that occasion. You were quite the preux chevalier; and if any
gentleman ever deserved well of a lady you deserved well of her. I
wonder how Mr Crosbie felt when he met you the other day at Maria's. I
had not heard anything about it then, or I should have been much more
interested in watching your meeting.'
'I really can't say how he felt.'
'I daresay not; but I saw him shake hands with you. And so Lily Dale
has come to town.'
'Yes--Miss Dale is here with her uncle.'
'And you are going away tomorrow?'
'Yes--and I am going away tomorrow.'
After that there was a pause in the conversation. Eames was sick of it,
and was very anxious to change the conversation. Miss Demolines was
sitting in the shadow, away from the light, with her face half hidden by
her hands. At last she jumped up, and came round and stood opposite to
him. 'I charge you to tell me truly, John Eames,' she said, 'whether
Miss Lilian Dale is engaged to you as your future wife?' He looked up in
to her face, but made no immediate answer. Then she repeated her demand.
'I ask you whether you are engaged to marry Miss Lilian Dale, and I
expect a reply.'
'What makes you ask me such a question as that?'
'What makes me ask you? Do you deny my right to feel so much interest
in you as to desire to know whether you are about to married? Of course
you can decline to tell me if you choose.'
'And if I were to decline?'
'I should know then that it was true, and I should think you were a
coward.'
'I don't see any cowardice in the matter. One does not talk about that
kind of thing to everybody.'
'Upon my word, Mr Eames, you are complimentary;--indeed you are. To
everybody! I am everybody--am I? That is your idea of--friendship! You
may be sure that after that I shall ask no further questions.'
'I didn't mean it the way you have taken it, Madalina.'
'In what way did you mean it, sir? Everybody! Mr Eames, you must
excuse me if I say that I am not well enough this evening to bear the
company of--everybody. I think you had better leave me. I think that you
had better go.'
'Are you angry with me?'
'Yes, I am--very angry. Because I have condescended to feel an interest
in your welfare, and have asked you a question which I thought that our
intimacy justified, you tell me that that is a kind of thing that you
will not talk about to--everybody. I beg you to understand that I will
not be your everybody. Mr Eames, there is the door.'
Things had now become very serious. Hitherto Johnny had been seated
comfortably in the corner of a sofa, and had not found himself bound to
move, though Miss Demolines was standing before him. But now it was
absolutely necessary that he should do something. He must either go, or
else he must make entreaty to be allowed to remain. Would it not be
expedient that he should take the lady at her word and escape? She was
still pointing to the door, and the way was open to him. If he were to
walk out now of course he would never return, and there would be the end
of the Bayswater romance. If he remained it might be that the romance
would become troublesome. He got up from his seat, and had almost
resolved that he would go. Had she not somewhat relaxed the majesty of
her anger as he rose, had the fire of her eye not been somewhat quenched
and the lines of her mouth softened, I think that he would have gone.
The romance would have been over, and he would have felt it had come to
an inglorious end; but it would have been well for him that he should
have gone. Though the fire was somewhat quenched and the lines were
somewhat softened, she was still pointing at the door.
'Do you mean it?' he said.
'I do mean it--certainly.'
'And this is to be the end of everything?'
'I do not know what you mean by everything. It is a very little
everything to you, I should say. I do not quite understand your
everything and your everybody.'
'I will go if you wish me to go of course.'
'I do wish it.'
'But before I go, you must permit me to excuse myself. I did not intend
to offend you. I merely meant--'
'You merely meant! Give me an honest answer to a downright question.
Are you engaged to Miss Lilian Dale?'
'No;--I am not.'
'Upon your honour?'
'Do you think that I would tell you a falsehood about it? What I meant
was that it is a kind of thing that one doesn't like talking about,
merely because stories are bandied about. People are so fond of saying
that this man is engaged to that woman, and of making up tales; and it
seems so foolish to contradict such things.'
'But you know that you used to be very fond of her.'
He had taken up his hat when he had risen from the sofa, and was still
standing with it ready in his hand. He was even now half-minded to
escape; and the name of Lily Dale in Miss Demoline's mouth was so
distasteful to him that he would have done so--he would have gone in
sheer disgust, had she not stood in his way, so that he could not escape
without moving her, or going round behind the sofa. She did not stir to
make way for him, and it may be that she understood that he was her
prisoner, in spite of her late command to him to go. It may be, also,
that she understood his vexation and the cause of it, and that she saw
the expediency of leaving Lily Dale alone for the present. At any rate,
she pressed him no more upon the matter. 'Are we to be friends again?'
she said.
'I hope so,' said Johnny.
'There is my hand, then.' So Johnny took her hand and pressed it, and
held it for a little while--just long enough to seem to give a meaning
to the action. 'You will get to understand me some day,' she said, 'and
will learn that I do not like to be reckoned among the everybodies by
those for whom I really--really--really have a regard. When I am angry,
I am angry.'
'You were very angry just now, when you showed me the way to the door.'
'And I meant it too--for the minute. Only think--supposing you had
gone! We should never have seen each other again;--never, never! What a
change one word may make!'
'One word often does make a change.'
'Does it not? Just a little "yes" or "no". A "no" is said when a "yes"
is meant, and then there comes no second chance, and what a change that
may be from bright hopes to desolation! Or, worse again, a "yes" is said
when a "no" should be said--when the speaker knows that it should be
"no". What a difference that "no" makes! When one thinks of it, one
wonders that a woman should ever say anything but "no".'
'They never did say anything else to me,' said Johnny.
'I don't believe it. I daresay the truth is, you never asked anybody.'
'Did anybody ever ask you?'
'What would you give to know? But I will tell you frankly;--yes. And
once--once I thought that my answer would not have been a "no".'
'But you changed your mind?'
'When the moment came I could not bring myself to say the word that
should rob me of my liberty for ever. I had said "no" to him often
enough before--poor fellow; and on this occasion, he told me that he had
asked me for the last time. "I shall not give myself another chance," he
said, "for I shall be on board ship within a week." I merely bade him
good-bye. It was the only answer I gave him. He understood me, and since
that day his foot has not pressed his native soil.'
'And was it all because you are so fond of your liberty?' said Johnny.
'Perhaps--I did not--love him,' said Miss Demolines, thoughtfully. She
was now again seated in her chair, and John Eames had gone back to his
corner of the sofa. 'If I had really loved him, I suppose it would have
been otherwise. He was a gallant fellow, and had two thousand a year of
his own, in India stock and other securities.'
'Dear me! And he has not married yet?'
'He wrote me a word to say that he would never marry till I was
married--but that on the day that he should hear of my wedding, he would
go to the first single woman near him and propose. It was a droll thing
to say; was it not?'
'The single woman ought to feel herself flattered.'
'He would find plenty to accept him. Besides being so well off he was a
very handsome fellow, and is connected with people of title. He had
everything to recommend him.'
'And yet you refused him?'
'Yes. You think I was foolish;--do you not?'
'I don't think you were foolish if you didn't care for him.'
'It was my destiny, I suppose; I daresay I was wrong. Other girls marry
without violent love, and do very well afterwards. Look at Maria
Clutterbuck.'
The name of Maria Clutterbuck had become odious to John Eames. As long
as Miss Demolines would continue to talk about herself he could listen
with some amount of gratification. Conversation on that subject was the
natural progress of the Bayswater romance. And if Madalina would only
call her friend by her present name, he had no strong objection to an
occasional mention of the lady; but the combined names of Maria
Clutterbuck had come to be absolutely distasteful to him. He did not
believe in the Maria Clutterbuck friendship--either in its past or
present existence, as described by Madalina. Indeed, he did not put
strong faith in anything that Madalina said to him. In the handsome
gentleman with two thousand a year, he did not believe at all. But the
handsome gentleman had only been mentioned once in the course of his
acquaintance with Miss Demolines, whereas Maria Clutterbuck had come up
so often! 'Upon my word I must wish you good-bye,' he said. 'It is going
for eleven o'clock, and I have to start tomorrow at seven.'
'What difference does that make?'
'A fellow wants to get a little sleep, you know.'
'Go, then;--go and get your sleep. What a sleepy-head generation it
is.' Johnny longed to ask whether the last generation was less
sleepy-headed, and whether the gentleman with two thousand a year sat up
talking all night before he pressed his foot for the last time on his
native soil; but he did not dare. As he said to himself afterwards, 'It
would not do to bring the Bayswater romance too suddenly to
termination!' 'But before you go,' she continued, 'I must say the word
to you about that picture. Did you speak to Mr Dalrymple?'
'I did not. I have been so busy with different things that I have not
seen him.'
'And now you are going?'
'Well--to tell the truth, I think I shall see him tonight, in spite of
my being so sleepy-headed. I wrote him a line that I would look in and
smoke a cigar with him if he chanced to be at home!'
'And that is why you want to go. A gentleman cannot live without his
cigar now.'
'It is especially at your bidding that I am going to see him.'
'Go then--and make your friend understand that if he continues this
picture of his, he will bring himself to great trouble, and will
probably ruin the woman for whom he professes, I presume, to feel
something like friendship. You may tell him that Mrs Van Siever has
already heard of it.'
'Who told her?' demanded Johnny.
'Never mind. You need not look at me like that. It was not I. Do you
suppose that secrets can be kept when so many people know them? Every
servant in Maria's house knows all about it.'
'As for that, I don't suppose Mrs Broughton makes any great secret of
it.'
'Do you think she has told Mrs Broughton? I am sure she has not. I may
say that I know she has not. Maria Clutterbuck is infatuated. There is
no other excuse to be made for her.'
'Good-bye,' said Johnny, hurriedly.
'And you are really going?'
'Well--yes. I suppose so.'
'Go then. I have nothing more to say to you.'
'I shall come and call directly I return,' said Johnny.
'You may do as you please about that, sir.'
'Do you mean that you won't be glad to see me again?'
'I am not going to flatter you, Mr Eames. Mamma will be well by that
time, I hope, and I do not mind telling you that you are a favourite
with her.' Johnny thought that this was particularly kind, as he had
seen so very little of the old lady. 'If you choose to call upon her,'
said Madalina, 'of course she will be glad to see you.'
'But I was speaking of yourself, you know?' and Johnny permitted himself
for a moment to look tenderly at her.
'Then from myself pray understand that I will say nothing to flatter
your self-love.'
'I thought you would be kinder just when I was going away.'
'I think I have been quite kind enough. As you observed yourself just
now, it is nearly eleven o'clock, and I must ask you to go away. Bon
voyage, and a happy return to you.'
'And you will be glad to see me when I am back? Tell that you will be
glad to see me.'
'I will tell you nothing of the kind. Mr Eames, if you do, I will be
very angry with you.' And then he went.
On his way back to his own lodgings he did call on Conway Dalrymple, and
in spite of his need for early rising, sat smoking with the artist for
an hour. 'If you don't take care, young man,' said his friend, 'you will
find yourself in a scrape with your Madalina.'
'What sort of scrape?'
'As you walk away from Porchester Terrace some fine day, you will have
to congratulate yourself on having made a successful overture towards
matrimony.'
'You don't think I am such a fool as that comes to?'
'Other men as wise as you have done the same sought of thing. Miss
Demolines is very clever, and I daresay you find it amusing.'
'It isn't so much that she's clever, and I can hardly say that it is
amusing. One gets awfully tired of it, you know. But a fellow must have
something to do, and that is as good as anything else.'
'I suppose you have not heard that one young man levanted last year to
save himself from a breach of promise case?'
'I wonder whether he had any money in Indian securities?'
'What makes you ask that?'
'Nothing in particular.'
'Whatever little he chose to save, and I think that I heard that he went
to Canada. His name was Shorter; and they say that, on the eve of his
going, Madalina sent him word that she had no objection to the colonies,
and that, under the pressing emergency of his expatriation, she was
willing to become Mrs Shorter with more expedition than usually attends
fashionable weddings. Shorter, however, escaped, and has never been seen
back again.'
Eames declared that he did not believe a word of it. Nevertheless, as he
walked home he came to the conclusion that if Mr Shorter must have been
the handsome gentleman with Indian securities, to whom 'no' had been
said once too often.
While sitting with Conway Dalrymple, he had forgotten to say a word
about Jael and Sisera.
CHAPTER XLVII
DR TEMPEST AT THE PALACE.
Intimation had been sent from the palace to Dr Tempest of Silverbridge
of the bishop's intention that a commission should be held by him, as
rural dean, with other neighbouring clergymen, as assessors with him,
that inquiry might be made on the part of the Church into the question
of Mr Crawley's guilt. It must be understood that by this time the
opinion had become very general that Mr Crawley had been guilty--that he
had found the cheque in his house, and that he had, after holding it for
many months, succumbed to temptation, and applied it to his own
purposes. But various excuses were made for him by those who so
believed. In the first place it was felt by all who really knew anything
of the man's character, that the very fact of his committing such a
crime proved him to be hardly responsible for his actions. He must have
known, had not all judgment in such matters been taken from him, that
the cheque would certainly be traced back to his hands. No attempt had
been made in the disposing of it to dispose of it in such a way that the
trace should be obliterated. He had simply given it to a neighbour with
a direction to have it cashed, and had written his own name on the back
of it. And therefore, though there could be no doubt as to the theft in
the mind of those who supposed that he had found the cheque in his own
house, yet the guilt of the theft seemed to be almost annihilated by the
folly of the thief. And then his poverty, and his struggles, and the
sufferings of his wife, were remembered; and stories were told from
mouth to mouth of his industry in his profession, of his great zeal
among the brickmakers of Hoggle End, of acts of charity done by him
which startled the people of the district into admiration:--how he had
worked with his own hands for the sick poor to whom he could not give
relief in money, turning a woman's mangle for a couple of hours, and
carrying a boy's load along the lanes. Dr Tempest and others declared
that he had derogated from the dignity of his position as an English
parish clergyman by such acts; but, nevertheless, the stories of these
deeds acted strongly on the minds of both men and women, creating an
admiration for Mr Crawley which was much stronger than the condemnation
of his guilt.
Even Mrs Walker and her daughter, and the Miss Prettymans, had so far
given way that they had ceased to asseverate their belief in Mr
Crawley's innocence. They contented themselves with simply expressing a
hope that he would be acquitted by a jury, and that when he should be so
acquitted the thing might be allowed to rest. If he had sinned, no doubt
he had repented. And then there were serious debates whether he might
not have stolen the money without much sin, being mad or
half-mad--touched with madness when he took it; and whether he might
not, in spite of such temporary touch of madness, be well fitted for his
parish duties. Sorrow had afflicted him grievously; but that sorrow,
though it had incapacitated him for the management of his own affairs,
had not rendered him unfit for the ministration of his parish. Such were
the arguments now used in his favour by the women around him; and the
men were not keen to contradict them. The wish that he should be
acquitted and allowed to remain in his parsonage was very general.
When therefore it became known that the bishop had decided to put on
foot another investigation, with the view of bringing Mr Crawley's
conduct under ecclesiastical condemnation, almost everybody accused the
bishop of persecution. The world of the diocese declared that Mrs
Proudie was at work, and that the bishop himself was no better than a
puppet. It was in vain that certain clear headed men among the clergy,
of whom Dr Tempest himself was one, pointed out that the bishop after
all might perhaps be right;--that if Mr Crawley were guilty, and if he
should be found to have been so by a jury, it might be absolutely
necessary that an ecclesiastical court should take some cognizance of
the crime beyond that of taken by the civil law. 'The jury,' said Dr
Tempest, discussing the case with Mr Robarts and other clerical
neighbours--'the jury may probably find him guilty and recommend to him
mercy. The judge will have heard his character, and will have been made
acquainted with the manner of his life, and will deal as lightly with
the case as the law will allow him. For aught I know he may be
imprisoned for a month. I wish it might be for no more than a day--or an
hour. But when he comes out from his month's imprisonment--how then?
Surely it should be a case for ecclesiastical inquiry, whether a
clergyman who has committed a theft should be allowed to go into his
pulpit directly he comes out of prison?' But the answer to this was that
Mr Crawley had always been a good clergyman, was a good clergyman at
this moment, and would be a good clergyman when he did come out of
prison.
But Dr Tempest, though he had argued in this way, was by no means eager
for the commencement of the commission over which he was to be called
upon to preside. In spite of such arguments as the above, which came
from the man's head when his head was brought to bear on the matter,
there was a thorough desire within his heart to oppose the bishop. He
had no strong sympathy with Mr Crawley, as had others. He would have had
Mr Crawley silenced without regret, presuming Mr Crawley to be guilty.
But he had a much stronger feeling with regard to the bishop. Had there
been any question of silencing the bishop--could it have been possible
to take steps in that direction--he would have been very active. It may
therefore be understood that in spite of his defence of the bishop's
present proceedings as to the commission, he was anxious that the bishop
should fail, and anxious to put impediments in the bishop's way, should
it appear to him that he could do so with justice. Dr Tempest was well
known among his parishioners to be hard and unsympathetic, some said
unfeeling also, and cruel; but it was admitted by those who disliked him
the most that he was both practical and just, and that he cared for the
welfare of many, though he was rarely touched by the misery of one. Such
was the man who was rector of Silverbridge and rural dean in the
district, and who was now called upon by the bishop to assist him in
making further inquiry as to this wretched cheque for twenty pounds.
Once at this period Archdeacon Grantly and Dr Tempest met each other and
discussed the question of Mr Crawley's guilt. Both these men were
inimical to the present bishop of the diocese, and both had perhaps
respected the old bishop beyond all other men. But they were different
in this, that the archdeacon hated Dr Proudie as a partisan--whereas Dr
Tempest opposed the bishop on certain principles which he endeavoured to
make clear, at any rate to himself. 'Wrong!' said the archdeacon,
speaking of the bishop's intention of issuing a commission--'of course
he's wrong. How could anything right come from him or from her? I should
be sorry to have to do his bidding.'
'I think you are a little hard upon Bishop Proudie,' said Dr Tempest.
'One cannot be hard upon him,' said the archdeacon. 'He is so
scandalously weak, and she is so radically vicious, that they cannot but
be wrong together. The very fact that such a man should be a bishop
among us is to me terribly strong evidence of evil days coming.'
'You are more impulsive than I am,' said Dr Tempest. 'In this case I am
sorry for the poor man, who, I am sure, honest in the main. But I
believe that in such a case your father would have done just what the
present bishop is doing;--that he could have done nothing else; and as I
think that Dr Proudie is right I shall do all that I can to assist him
in the commission.'
The bishop's secretary had written to Dr Tempest, telling him of the
bishop's purpose; and now, in one of the last days in March, the bishop
himself wrote to Dr Tempest, asking him to come over to the palace. The
letter was worded most courteously, and expressed very feelingly the
great regret which the writer felt at being obliged to take these
proceedings against a clergyman in his diocese. Bishop Proudie knew how
to write such a letter. By the writing of such letters, and by the
making of speeches in the same strain, he had become Bishop of
Barchester. Now, in this letter, he begged Dr Tempest to come over to
him, saying how delighted Mrs Proudie would be to see him at the palace.
Then he went on to explain the great difficulty which he felt, and great
sorrow also, in dealing with this matter of Mr Crawley. He looked,
therefore, confidently for Dr Tempest's assistance. Thinking to do the
best for Mr Crawley, and anxious to enable Mr Crawley to remain in quiet
retirement till the trial should be over, he had sent a clergyman over
to Hogglestock, who would have relieved Mr Crawley from the burden of
the church-services;--but Mr Crawley would have none of this relief. Mr
Crawley had been obstinate and overbearing, and had persisted in
claiming his right to his own pulpit. Therefore was the bishop obliged
to interfere legally, and therefore was he under the necessity of asking
Dr Tempest to assist him. Would Dr Tempest come over on the Monday, and
stay till Wednesday?
The letter was a very good letter, and Dr Tempest was obliged to do as
he was asked. He so far modified the bishop's proposition that he
reduced the sojourn at the palace by one night. He wrote to say that he
would have the pleasure of dining with the bishop and Mrs Proudie on the
Monday, but would return home on the Tuesday, as soon as the business in
hand would permit him. 'I shall get on very well with him,' he said to
his wife, before he started; 'but I am afraid of the woman. If she
interferes there will be a row.' 'Then, my dear,' said his wife, 'there
will be a row, for I am told that she always interferes.' On reaching
the palace half-an-hour before dinner-time, Dr Tempest found that other
guests were expected, and on descending to the great yellow
drawing-room, which was used only on state occasions, he encountered Mrs
Proudie, and two of her daughters arrayed in full panoply of female
armour. She received him with her sweetest smiles, and if there had been
any former enmity between Silverbridge and the palace, it was now all
forgotten. She regretted greatly that Mrs Tempest had not accompanied
the doctor;--for Mrs Tempest also had been invited. But Mrs Tempest was
not quite as well as she might have been, the doctor had said, and very
rarely slept away from home. And then the bishop came in and greeted his
guest with his pleasantest good humour. It was quite a sorrow to him
that Silverbridge was so distant, and that he saw so little of Dr
Tempest; but he hoped that that might be somewhat mended now, and that
leisure might be found for social delights;--to all which Dr Tempest
said but little, bowing to the bishop at each separate expression of his
lordship's kindness.
There were guests there that evening who did not often sit at the
bishop's table. The archdeacon and Mrs Grantly had been summoned from
Plumstead, and had obeyed the summons. Great as was the enmity between
the bishop and the archdeacon, it had never quite taken the form of open
palpable hostility. Each, therefore, asked the other to dinner perhaps
once every year; and each went to the other, perhaps, once in two years.
And Dr Thorne from Chaldicotes was there but without his wife, who in
these days was up in London. Mrs Proudie always expressed a warm
friendship for Mrs Thorne, and on this occasion loudly regretted her
absence. 'You must tell her, Dr Thorne, how exceedingly much we miss
her.' Dr Thorne, who was accustomed to hear his wife speak of her dear
friend Mrs Proudie with almost unmeasured ridicule, promised that he
would do so. 'We are sorry the Lufton's couldn't come to us,' said Mrs
Proudie--not alluding to the dowager, of whom it was well known that no
earthly inducement would have sufficed to make her put her foot within
Mrs Proudie's room--'but one of the children is ill, and she couldn't
leave him.' But the Greshams were there from Boxall Hill, and the
Thornes from Ullathorne, and, with the exception of a single chaplain,
who pretended to carve, Dr Tempest and the archdeacon were the only
clerical guests at the table. From all which Dr Temple knew that the
bishop was anxious to treat him with special consideration on the
present occasion.
The dinner was rather long and ponderous, and occasionally, most dull.
The archdeacon talked a good deal, but a bystander with an acute ear
might have understood from the tone of his voice that he was not talking
as he would have talked among friends. Mrs Proudie felt this, and
understood it, and was angry. She could never find herself in the
presence of the archdeacon without becoming angry. Her accurate ear
would always appreciate the defiance of episcopal authority, as now
existing in Barchester, which was concealed, or only half concealed, by
all the archdeacon's words. But the bishop was not so keen, nor so
easily roused, to wrath; and though the presence of the enemy did to a
certain degree cow him, he strove to fight against the feeling with
renewed good-humour.
'You have improved so upon the old days,' said the archdeacon, speaking
of some small matter with reference to the cathedral, 'that one hardly
knows the old place.'
'I hope we have not fallen off,' said the bishop, with a smile.
'We have improved, Dr Grantly,' said Mrs Proudie, with great emphasis on
her words. 'What you say is true. We have improved.'
'Not a doubt about that,' said the archdeacon. Then Mrs Grantly
interposed, strove to change the subject, and threw oil upon the waters.
'Talking of improvements,' said Mrs Grantly, 'what an excellent row of
houses they have built at the bottom of High Street. 'I wonder who is to
live in them?'
'I remember when that was the very worst part of town,' said Dr Thorne.
'And now they're asking seventy pounds apiece for houses which did not
cost above six hundred each to build,' said Mr Thorne of Ullathorne,
with that seeming dislike of modern success which is evinced by most of
the elders of the world.
'And who is to live in them,' asked Mrs Grantly.
'Two have them have been already taken by clergymen,' said the bishop,
in a tone of triumph.
'Yes,' said the archdeacon, 'and the houses in the Close which used to
be the residences of the prebendaries have been leased out to
tallow-chandlers and retired brewers. That comes of the working of the
Ecclesiastical Commission.'
'And why not?' demanded Mrs Proudie.
'Why not, indeed, if you like to have tallow-chandlers next door to
you?' said the archdeacon. 'In the old days, we would sooner have had
our brethren near to us.'
'There is nothing, Dr Grantly, so objectionable in a cathedral town as a
lot of idle clergymen,' said Mrs Proudie.
'It is beginning to be a question to me,' said the archdeacon, 'whether
there is any use in clergymen at all for the present generation.'
'Dr Grantly, those cannot be your real sentiments,' said Mrs Proudie.
Then Mrs Grantly, working hard in her vocation as a peacemaker, changed
the conversation again and began to talk of the American war. But even
that was made a matter of discord on church matters--the archdeacon
professing an opinion that the Southerners were Christian gentlemen, and
the Northerners idle snobs; whereas Mrs Proudie had an idea that the
Gospel was preached with genuine zeal in the Northern States. And at
each such outbreak the poor bishop would laugh uneasily, and say a word
or two to which no one paid much attention. And so the dinner went on,
not always in the most pleasant manner for those who preferred continued
good-humour to the occasional excitement of a half-suppressed battle.
Not a word was said about Mr Crawley. When Mrs Proudie and the ladies
left the dining-room, the bishop strove to get up a little lay
conversation. He spoke to Mr Thorne about his game, and to Dr Thorne
about his timber, and even to Mr Gresham about his hounds. 'It is not so
very many years, Mr Gresham,' said he, 'since the Bishop of Barchester
was expected to keep hounds himself,' and the bishop laughed at his own
joke.
'Your lordship shall have them back at the palace next season,' said
young Frank Gresham, 'if you will promise to do the county justice.'
'Ha, ha, ha!' laughed the bishop. 'What do you say, Mr Tozer?' Mr Tozer
was the chaplain on duty.
'I have not least objection in the world, my lord,' said Mr Tozer, 'to
act as second whip.'
'I'm afraid you'll find them an expensive adjunct to the episcopate,'
said the archdeacon. And then the joke was over; for there had been a
rumour, now for some years prevalent in Barchester, that Bishop Proudie
was not liberal in his expenditure. As Mr Thorne said afterwards to his
cousin the doctor, the archdeacon might have spared that sneer. 'The
archdeacon will never spare the man who sits in his father's seat,' said
the doctor. 'The pity of it is that men who are so thoroughly different
in all their sympathies should ever be brought into contact.' 'Dear,
dear,' said the archdeacon, as he stood afterwards on the rug before the
drawing-room fire, 'how many of rubbers of whist I have seen played in
this room.' 'I sincerely hope that you will never see another played
here,' said Mrs Proudie. 'I'm quite sure that I shall not,' said the
archdeacon. For this last sally his wife scolded him bitterly on the way
home. 'You know very well,' she said, 'that the times are changed, and
that if you were Bishop of Barchester yourself, you would not have whist
played in the palace.' 'I only know,' said he, 'that when we had the
whist we had the true religion along with it, and some good sense and
good feeling also.' 'You cannot be right to sneer at others for doing
what you would do yourself,' said his wife. Then the archdeacon threw
himself sulkily into the corner of his carriage, and nothing more was
said between him and his wife about the bishop's dinner-party.
Not a word was spoken that night about Mr Crawley; and when that
obnoxious guest from Plumstead was gone, Mrs Proudie resumed her
good-humour towards Dr Tempest. So intent was she on conciliating him
that she refrained even from abusing the archdeacon, whom she knew to
have been intimate for very many years with the rector of Silverbridge.
In her accustomed moods she would have broken forth in loud anger,
caring nothing for old friendships; but at present she was thoughtful of
the morrow, and desirous that Dr Tempest should, if possible, meet her
in a friendly humour when the great discussion as to Hogglestock should
be opened between them. But Dr Tempest understood her bearing, and as he
pulled on his nightcap made certain resolutions of his own as to the
morrow's proceedings. 'I don't suppose she will dare to interfere,' he
had said to his wife; 'but if she does I shall certainly tell the bishop
that I cannot speak on the subject in her presence.'
At breakfast on the following morning there was no one present but the
bishop, Mrs Proudie, and Dr Tempest. Very little was said at the meal.
Mr Crawley's name was not mentioned, but there seemed to be a general
feeling among them that there was a task hanging over them which
prevented any general conversation. The eggs were eaten and the coffee
was drunk, but the eggs and the coffee disappeared almost in silence.
When these ceremonies had been altogether completed, and it was clearly
necessary that something further should be done, the bishop spoke: 'Dr
Tempest,' he said, 'perhaps you will join me in my study at eleven. We
can then say a few words to each other about the unfortunate matter on
which I shall have to trouble you.' Dr Tempest said he would be punctual
to his appointment, and then the bishop withdrew, muttering something as
to the necessity of looking at his letters. Dr Tempest took a newspaper
in his hand, which had been brought in by a servant, but Mrs Proudie did
not allow him to read it. 'Dr Tempest,' she said, 'this is a matter of
most vital importance. I am quite sure that you feel that it is so.'
'What matter, madam?' said the doctor.
'This terrible affair of Mr Crawley's. If something is not done the
whole diocese will be disgraced.' Then she turned for an answer, but
receiving none she was obliged to continue. 'Of the poor man's guilt
there can, I fear, be no doubt.' Then there was another pause, but still
the doctor made no answer. 'And if he be guilty,' said Mrs Proudie,
resolving that she would ask a question that must bring forth some
reply, 'can any experienced clergyman think that he can be fit to preach
from the pulpit of a parish church? I am sure that you must agree with
me, Dr Tempest? Consider the souls of the people!'
'Mrs Proudie,' said he, 'I think that we had better not discuss the
matter.'
'Not discuss it?'
'I think that we had better not do so. If I understand the bishop
aright, he wishes it that I should take some step in the matter.'
'Of course he does.'
'And therefore I must decline to make it a matter of common
conversation.'
'Common conversation, Dr Tempest! I should be the last person in the
world to make it a matter of common conversation. I regard this as by no
means a common conversation. God forbid that it should be a common
conversation. I am speaking very seriously with reference to the
interests of the Church, which I think will be endangered by having
among her active servants a man who has been guilty of so base a crime
as theft. Think of it, Dr Tempest. Theft! Stealing money! Appropriating
to his own use a cheque for twenty pounds which did not belong to him!
And then telling such terrible falsehoods about it! Can anything be
worse, anything more scandalous, anything more dangerous? Indeed, Dr
Tempest, I do not regard this as any common conversation.' The whole of
this speech was not made at once, fluently, or without a break. From
stop to stop Mrs Proudie paused, waiting for her companion's words; but
as he would not speak she was obliged to continue. 'I am sure that you
cannot but agree with me, Dr Tempest?' she said.
'I am quite sure I will not discuss it with you,' said the doctor, very
brusquely.
'And why not? Are you not here to discuss it?'
'Not with you, Mrs Proudie. You must excuse me for saying so, but I am
not here to discuss any such matter with you. Were I to do so, I should
be guilty of a very great impropriety.'
'All these things are in common between me and the bishop,' said Mrs
Proudie, with an air that was intended to be dignified, but which
nevertheless displayed her rising anger.
'As to that I know nothing, but they cannot be in common between you and
me. It grieves me much that I should have to speak to you in such a
strain, but my duty allows me no alternative. I think, if you will
permit me, I will take a turn round the garden before I keep my
appointment with his lordship.' And so saying he escaped from the lady
without hearing her further remonstrance.
It still wanted an hour to the time named by the bishop, and Dr Tempest
used it in preparing for his withdrawal from the palace as soon as his
interview with the bishop should be over. After what had passed he
thought he would be justified in taking his departure without bidding
adieu formally to Mrs Proudie. He would say a word or two, explaining
his haste, to the bishop; and then, if he could get out of the house at
once, it might be that he would never see Mrs Proudie again. He was
rather proud of his success in their late battle, but he felt that,
having been so completely victorious, it would be foolish in him to risk
his laurels in the chance of another encounter. He would say not a word
of what had happened to the bishop, and he thought it probable that
neither would Mrs Proudie speak of it--at any rate till after he was
gone. Generals who are beaten out of the field are not quick to talk of
their own repulses. He, indeed, had not beaten Mrs Proudie out of the
field. He had, in fact, himself run away. But he had left his foe
silenced; and with such a foe, and in such a contest, that was
everything. He put up his portmanteau, therefore, and prepared for his
final retreat. Then he rang his bell and desired the servant to show him
to the bishop's study. The servant did so, and when he entered the room
the first thing he saw was Mrs Proudie sitting in an arm-chair near the
window. The bishop was also in the room, sitting with his arms upon the
writing-table, and his head upon his hands. It was very evident that Mrs
Proudie did not consider herself to have been beaten and that she was
prepared for another battle. 'Will you sit down, Dr Tempest?' she said,
motioning him with her hand to a chair opposite to that occupied by the
bishop. Dr Tempest sat down. He felt that at the moment he had nothing
else to do, and that he must restrain any remonstrance that he might
make till Mr Crawley's name should be mentioned. He was almost lost in
admiration of the woman. He had left her, as he thought, utterly
vanquished and prostrated by his determined but uncourteous usage of
her; and here she was, present again on the field of battle as though
she had never been wounded. He could see that there had been words
between her and the bishop, and that she had carried a point on which
the bishop had been very anxious to have his own way. He could perceive
at once that the bishop had begged her to absent herself and was greatly
chagrined that he should not have prevailed with her. There she was--and
as Dr Tempest was resolved that he would neither give advice nor receive
instructions respecting Mr Crawley in her presence, he could only draw
upon his courage and his strategy for the coming warfare. For a few
moments no one said a word. The bishop felt that if Dr Tempest would
only begin, the work on hand might be got through, even in his wife's
presence. Mrs Proudie was aware that her husband should begin. If he
would do so, and if Dr Tempest would listen and then reply, she might
gradually make her way into the conversation; and if her words were once
accepted then she could say all that she desired to say; then she could
play her part and become somebody in the episcopal work. When once she
should have been allowed liberty of speech, the enemy would be powerless
to stop her. But all this Dr Tempest understood quite as well as she
understood it, and had they waited till night he would not have been the
first to mention Mr Crawley's name.
The bishop sighed aloud. The sigh might be taken as expressing grief
over the sin of an erring brother whose conduct they were then to
discuss, and was not amiss. But when the sigh with its attendant murmurs
had passed away it was necessary that some initiative step should be
taken. 'Dr Tempest,' said the bishop, 'what are we to do about this poor
stiff-necked gentleman?' Still Dr Tempest did not speak. 'There is no
clergyman in the diocese,' continued the bishop, 'in whose prudence and
wisdom I have more confidence than in yours. And I know, too, that you
are by no means disposed to severity where severe measures are not
necessary. What ought we to do? If he has been guilty, he should not
surely return to his pulpit after the expiration of such punishment as
the law of this country may award him.'
Dr Tempest looked at Mrs Proudie, thinking that she might perhaps say a
word now; but Mrs Proudie knew her part better and was silent. Angry as
she was, she contrived to hold her peace. Let the debate once begin and
she would be able to creep into it, and then to lead it--and so she
would hold her own. But she had met a foe as wary as herself. 'My lord,'
said the doctor, 'it will perhaps be well that you should communicate
your wishes to me in writing. If it be possible for me to comply with
them I will do so.'
'Yes;--exactly; no doubt;--but I thought that perhaps we might better
understand each other if we had a few words of quiet conversation upon
the subject. I believe you know the steps that I have--'
But here the bishop was interrupted. Dr Tempest rose from his chair,
and advancing to the table put both hands upon it. 'My lord,' he said,
'I feel myself compelled to say that which I would very much rather
leave unsaid, were it possible. I feel the difficulty, and I may say
delicacy, of my position; but I should be untrue to my conscience and to
my feeling of what is right in such matters, if I were take any part on
a discussion on this matter in the presence of--a lady.'
'Dr Tempest, what is your objection?' said Mrs Proudie, rising from her
chair, and coming also to the table, so that from thence she might
confront her opponent; and as she stood opposite to Dr Tempest she also
put both her hands upon the table.
'My dear, perhaps you will leave us for a few moments,' said the bishop.
Poor bishop! Poor weak bishop! As the words came from his mouth he knew
that they would be spoken in vain, and that if so, it would have been
better for him to have left them unspoken.
'Why should I be dismissed from your room without a reason?' said Mrs
Proudie. 'Cannot Dr Tempest understand that a wife may share her
husband's counsels--as she must share his troubles? If he cannot, I pity
him very much as to his own household.'
'Dr Tempest,' said the bishop, 'Mrs Proudie takes the greatest possible
interest in everything concerning the diocese.'
'I am sure, my lord,' said the doctor, 'that you will see how unseemly
it would be that I should interfere in any way between you and Mrs
Proudie. I certainly will not do so. I can only say again that if you
will communicate with me your wishes in writing, I will attend to
them--if it be possible.'
'You mean to be stubborn,' said Mrs Proudie, whose prudence was
beginning to give way under the great provocation to which her temper
was being subjected.
'Yes, madam; if it is to be called stubbornness, I must be stubborn. My
lord, Mrs Proudie spoke to me on this subject in the breakfast-room
after you had left it, and I then ventured to explain to her that in
accordance with such light as I have on the matter, I could not discuss
it in her presence. I greatly grieve that I failed to make myself
understood by her--as, otherwise, this unpleasantness might have been
spared.'
'I understood you very well, Dr Tempest, and I think you to be a most
unreasonable man. Indeed, I might use a much harsher word.'
'You may use any word you please, Mrs Proudie,' said the doctor.
'My dear, I really think you had better leave us for a few minutes,'
said the bishop.
'No, my lord--no,' said Mrs Proudie, turning round upon her husband.
'Not so. It would be most unbecoming that I should be turned out of a
room in this palace by an uncourteous word from a parish clergyman. It
would be unseemly. If Dr Tempest forgets his duty, I will not forget
mine. There are other clergymen in the diocese besides Dr Tempest who
can undertake the very easy task of this commission. As for his having
been appointed rural dean I don't know how many years ago, it is matter
of no consequence whatever. In such a preliminary inquiry any three
clergymen will suffice. It need not be done by the rural dean at all.'
'My dear!'
'I will not be turned out of this room by Dr Tempest;--and that is
enough.'
'My lord,' said the doctor, 'you had better write to me as I proposed to
you just now.'
'His lordship will not write. His lordship will do nothing of the
kind,' said Mrs Proudie.
'My dear!' said the bishop, driven in his perplexity beyond all
carefulness of reticence. 'My dear, I do wish you wouldn't--I do indeed.
If you would only go away!'
'I will not go away, my lord,' said Mrs Proudie.
'But I will,' said Dr Tempest, feeling true compassion for the
unfortunate man whom he saw writhing in agony before him. 'It will
manifestly be for the best that I should retire. My lord, I wish you
good morning. Mrs Proudie, good morning.' And so he left the room.
'A most stubborn and a most ungentlemanlike man,' said Mrs Proudie, as
soon as the door was closed behind the retreating rural dean. 'I do not
think that in the whole course of my life I ever met with anyone so
insubordinate and so ill-mannered. He is worse than the archdeacon.' As
she uttered these words she paced about the room. The bishop said
nothing; and when she herself had been silent for a few minutes she
turned upon him. 'Bishop,' she said, 'I hope that you agree with me. I
expect that will agree with me in a matter that is so of much moment to
my comfort, and I may say to my position generally in the diocese.
Bishop, why do you not speak?'
'You have behaved in such a way that I do not know that I shall ever
speak again,' said the bishop.
'What is that you say?'
'I say that I do not know how I shall ever speak again. You have
disgraced me.'
'Disgraced you! I disgrace you! It is you that disgrace yourself by
saying such words.'
'Very well. Let it be so. Perhaps you will go away now and leave me to
myself. I have got a bad headache, and I can't talk any more. Oh dear,
oh dear, what will he think of it?'
'And you mean to tell me that I have been wrong?'
'Yes, you have been wrong--very wrong. Why didn't you go away when I
asked you? You are always being wrong. I wish I had never come to
Barchester. In any other position I should not have felt it so much. As
it is I do not know how I can ever show my face again.'
'Not have felt what so much, Mr Proudie?' said the wife, going back in
the excitement of her anger to the nomenclature of old days. 'And this
is to be my return for all my care in your behalf! Allow me to tell you,
sir, that in any position in which you may be placed I know what is due
to you, and that your dignity will never lose anything in my hands. I
wish that you were as well able to take care of it yourself.' Then she
stalked out of the room, and left the poor man alone.
Bishop Proudie sat alone in his study throughout the whole day. Once or
twice in the course of the morning his chaplain came to him on some
matter of business, and was answered with a smile--the peculiar
softness of which the chaplain did not fail to attribute the right
cause. For it was soon known throughout the household that there had
been a quarrel. Could he quite have made up his mind to do so--could he
have resolved that it would be altogether better to quarrel with his
wife--the bishop would have appealed to the chaplain, and have asked at
any rate for sympathy. But even yet he could not bring himself to
confess his misery, and to own himself to another to be the wretch that
he was. Then during the long hours of the day he sat thinking of it all.
How happy could he be if it were only possible for him to go away, and
become even a curate in a parish, without his wife! Would there ever
come to him a time of freedom? Would she ever die? He was older than
she, and of course he would die first. Would it not be a fine thing if
he could die at once, and thus escape from his misery.
What could he do, even supposing himself strong enough to fight the
battle? He could not lock her up. He could not even very well lock her
out of his room. She was his wife, and must have the run of the house.
He could not altogether debar her from the society of the diocesan
clergymen. He had, on this very morning, taken strong measures with her.
More than once or twice he had desired her to leave the room. What was
there to be done with a woman who would not obey her husband--who would
not even leave him to the performance of his own work? What a blessed
thing it would be if a bishop could go away from his home to his work
every day like a clerk in a public office--as a stone-mason does! But
there was no such escape for him. He could not go away. And how was he
to meet her again on this very day?
And then for hours he thought of Dr Tempest and Mr Crawley, considering
what he had better do to repair the shipwreck of the morning. At last he
resolved that he would write to the doctor; and before he had again seen
his wife, he did write his letter, and he sent it off. In this letter he
made no direct illusion to the occurrence of the morning, but wrote as
though there had not been any fixed intention of a personal discussion
between them. 'I think it will be better that there should be a
commission,' he said, 'and I would suggest that you should have four
other clergymen with you. Perhaps you will select two yourself out of
your rural deanery; and, if you do not object, I will name as the other
two Mr Thumble and Mr Quiver, who are both resident in the city.' As he
wrote these two names he felt ashamed of himself, knowing that he had
chosen the two men as being special friends of his wife, and feeling
that he should have been brave enough to throw aside all considerations
of his wife's favour--especially at this moment, in which he was
putting on his armour to do battle against her. 'It is not probable,' he
continued to say in his letter, 'that you will be able to make your
report until after the trial of this unfortunate gentleman shall have
taken place, and a verdict shall have been given. Should he be
acquitted, that, I imagine, should end the matter. There can be no
reason why we should attempt to go beyond the verdict of a jury. But
should he be found guilty, I think we ought to be ready with such steps
as it will be becoming for us to take at the expiration of any sentence
which may be pronounced. It will be, at any rate, expedient that in such
a case the matter should be brought before an ecclesiastical court.' he
knew well as he wrote this, that he was proposing something much milder
than the course intended by his wife when she had instigated him to take
proceedings in the matter; but he did not much regard that now. Though
he had been weak enough to name certain clergymen as assessors with the
rural dean, because he thought that by doing so he would to a certain
degree conciliate his wife--though he had been so far a coward, yet he
was resolved that he would not sacrifice to her his own judgment and his
own conscience in his manner of proceeding. He kept no copy of his
letter, so that he might be unable to show her his very words when she
should ask to see them. Of course he would tell her what he had done;
but in telling her he would keep to himself what he had said as to the
result of an acquittal in a civil court. She need not yet be told that
he had promised to take such a verdict as sufficing also for an
ecclesiastical acquittal. In this spirit his letter was written and sent
off before he again saw his wife.
He did not meet her till they came together in the drawing-room before
dinner. In explaining the whole truth as to circumstances as they
existed at the palace at the moment, it must be acknowledged that Mrs
Proudie herself, great as was her courage, and wide as were the
resources which she possessed within herself, was somewhat appalled by
the position of affairs. I fear that it may now be too late for me to
excite much sympathy in the mind of any reader on behalf of Mrs Proudie.
I shall never be able to make her popular. But she had virtues, and
their existence now made her unhappy. She did regard the dignity of her
husband, and she felt at the present moment that she had almost
compromised it. She did also regard the welfare of the clergymen around
her, thinking of course in a general way that certain of them who agreed
with her were the clergymen whose welfare should be studied, and that
certain of them who disagreed with her were the clergymen whose welfare
should be postponed. But now an idea made its way into her bosom that
she was not perhaps doing the best for the welfare of the diocese
generally. What if it should come to pass that all the clergymen of the
diocese should refuse to open their mouths in her presence on
ecclesiastical subjects, as Dr Tempest had done? This special day was
not one on which she was well contented with herself, though by no means
on that account was her anger mitigated against the offending rural
dean.
During dinner she struggled to say a word or two to her husband, as
though there had been no quarrel between them. With him the matter had
gone so deep that he could not answer her in the same spirit. There were
sundry members of the family present--daughters, and a son-in-law, and
a daughter's friend who was staying with them; but even in the hope of
appearing to be serene before them he could not struggle through his
deep despondence. He was very silent, and to his wife's words he
answered hardly anything. He was courteous and gentle with them all, but
he spoke as little as was possible, and during the evening he sat alone,
with his head leaning on his hand--not pretending even to read. He was
aware that it was too late to make even an attempt to conceal his misery
and his disgrace from his own family.
His wife came to him that night in his dressing-room in a spirit of
feminine softness that was very unusual with her. 'My dear,' said she,
'let us forget what occurred this morning. If there has been anger, we
are bound as Christians to forget it.' She stood over him as she spoke,
and put her hand upon his shoulder almost caressingly.
'When a man's heart is broken, he cannot forget it,' was his reply. She
still stood by him, and still kept her hand upon him: but she could
think of no other words of comfort to say. 'I will go to bed,' he said.
'It is the best place for me.' Then she left him, and he went to bed.
CHAPTER XLVIII
THE SOFTNESS OF SIR RAFFLE BUFFLE
We have seen that John Eames was prepared to start on his journey in
search of the Arabins, and have seen him after he had taken farewell of
his office and of his master there, previous to his departure; but that
matter of his departure had not been arranged altogether with comfort as
far as his official interests were concerned. He had been perhaps a
little abrupt in his mode of informing Sir Raffle Buffle, that there was
a pressing cause for his official absence, and Sir Raffle had replied to
him that no private pressure could be allowed to interfere with his
public duties. 'I must go, Sir Raffle, at any rate,' Johnny had said;
'it is a matter affecting my family and must not be neglected.' 'If you
intend to go without leave,' said Sir Raffle, 'I presume you will first
put your resignation into the hands of Mr Kissing.' Now Mr Kissing was
the secretary to the Board. This had been serious undoubtedly. John
Eames was not specially anxious to keep his present position as private
secretary to Sir Raffle, but he certainly had no desire to give up his
profession altogether. He said nothing more to the great man on that
occasion, but before he left the office he wrote a private note to the
chairman expressing the extreme importance of the business, and begging
that he might be given leave of absence. On the next morning he received
it back with a very few words written across it. 'It can't be done,'
were the few words which Sir Raffle Buffle had written across the note
from his private secretary. Here was a difficulty which Johnny had not
anticipated, and which seemed to be insuperable. Sir Raffle would not
have answered him in that strain if he had not been very much in
earnest.
'I should send him a medical certificate,' said Cordell, his friend of
old.
'Nonsense,' said Eames.
'I don't see that it is nonsense at all. They can't get over a medical
certificate from a respectable man; and everybody has got something the
matter with him of some kind.'
'I should go and let him do his worst,' said Fisher, who was another
clerk. 'It wouldn't be more than putting you down a place or two. As to
losing your present berth you don't mind that, and they would never
think of dismissing you.'
'But I do mind being put down a place or two,' said Johnny, who could
not forget that were he so put down his friend Fisher would gain the
step which he would lose.
'I should give him a barrel of oysters, and talk to him about the
Chancellor of the Exchequer,' said Fit Howard, who had been private
secretary before Eames, and might therefore be supposed to know the man.
'That might have done very well if I had not asked him, and been refused
first,' said John Eames. 'I'll tell what I'll do. I'll write a long
letter on a sheet of foolscap paper, with a regular margin, so that it
must come before the Board, and perhaps that will frighten him.'
When he mentioned his difficulty on that evening to Mr Toogood, the
lawyer begged him to give up his journey. 'It will only be sending a
clerk, and it won't cost so very much after all,' said Toogood. But
Johnny's pride could not allow him to give way. 'I'm not going to be
done about it,' said he. 'I'm not going to resign, but I will go even
though he may dismiss me. I don't think it will come to that, but if it
does it must.' His uncle begged him not to think of such an alternative;
but this discussion took place after dinner, and away from the office,
and Eames would not submit to bow his neck to authority. 'If it comes to
that,' said he, 'a fellow might as well be a slave at once. And what is
the use of a fellow having a little money if it does not make him
independent? You may be sure of one thing, I shall go;' and that on the
day fixed.
On the next morning John Eames was very silent when he went into Sir
Raffle's room at the office. There was now only this day and another
before that fixed for his departure, and it was of course very necessary
that matters should be arranged. But he said nothing to Sir Raffle
during the morning. The great man himself was condescending and
endeavouring to be kind. He knew that his stern refusal had greatly
irritated his private secretary, and was anxious to show that, though in
the cause of public duty he was obliged to be stern, he was quite
willing to forget his sternness when the necessity for it had passed
away. On this morning, therefore, he was very cheery. But in the
afternoon, when most of the men had left the office, Johnny appeared
before the chairman for the last time that day with a very long face. He
was dressed in black, and had changed his ordinary morning coat for a
frock, which gave him an appearance altogether unlike that which was
customary to him. And he spoke almost in a whisper, very slowly; and
when Sir Raffle joked--and Sir Raffle often would joke--he not only did
not laugh, but he absolutely sighed. 'Is there anything the matter with
you, Eames?' asked Sir Raffle.
'I am in great trouble,' said John Eames.
'And what is your trouble?'
'It is essential for the honour of one of my family that I should be at
Florence by this day week. I cannot make up my mind what I ought to do.
I do not wish to lose my position in the public service, to which, as
you know, I am warmly attached; but I cannot submit to see the honour of
my family sacrificed!'
'Eames,' said Sir Raffle, 'that must be nonsense;--that must be
nonsense. There can be no reason why you should always expect to have
your own way in everything.'
'Of course if I go without leave I shall be dismissed.'
'Of course you will. It is out of the question that a young man should
take the bit between his teeth in that way.'
'As for taking the bit between his teeth, Sir Raffle, I do not think
that any man was ever more obedient, perhaps I should say more
submissive, than I have been. But there must be a limit to everything.'
'What do you mean by that, Mr Eames?' said Sir Raffle, turning in anger
upon his private secretary. But Johnny disregarded his anger. Johnny,
indeed, had made up his mind that Sir Raffle should be very angry. 'What
do you mean, Mr Eames, by saying that there must be a limit? I know
nothing about limits. One would suppose you intended to make an
accusation against me.'
'So I do. I think, Sir Raffle, that you are treating me with great
cruelty. I have explained to you my family circumstances--'
'You have explained nothing, Mr Eames.'
'Yes, I have, Sir Raffle. I have explained to you that matters relating
to one of my family, which materially affect the honour of a certain one
of its members, demand that I should go at once to Florence. You tell me
that if I go I shall be dismissed.'
'Of course you must not go without leave. I never heard of such a thing
in my life.' And Sir Raffle lifted his hands towards heaven, almost in
dismay.
'So I have drawn up a short statement of the circumstances, which I hope
may be read at the Board when the question of my dismissal comes before
it.'
'You mean to go, then?'
'Yes, Sir Raffle; I must go. The honour of a certain branch of my
family demands that I should do so. As I have for some time been so
especially under you, I thought it would be proper to show you what I
have said before I send my letter in, and therefore I have brought it
with me. Here it is.' And Johnny handed to Sir Raffle an official
document of large dimensions.
Sir Raffle began to be uncomfortable. He had acquired a character for
tyranny in the public service of which he was aware, though he thought
that he knew well that he had never deserved it. Some official
big-wig--perhaps that Chancellor of the Exchequer of whom he was so
fond--had on one occasion hinted to him that a little softness of usage
would be compatible with the prejudices of the age. Softness was
impossible to Sir Raffle; but his temper was sufficiently under his
control to enable him to encounter the rebuke, and to pull himself up
from time to time when he found himself tempted to speak loud and to
take things with a high hand. He knew that a clerk should not be
dismissed for leaving his office, who could show that his absence had
been caused by some matter really affecting the interest of his family;
and that were he to drive Eames to go on this occasion without leave,
Eames would simply be called in to state what was the matter of moment
which had taken him away. Probably he had stated that matter of moment
in this very document which Sir Raffle was holding in his hand. But Sir
Raffle was not willing to be conquered by the document. If it was
necessary that he should give way, he would much prefer to give way--out
of his own good-nature, let us say--without looking at the document at
all. 'I must, under the circumstances, decline to read this,' he said,
'unless it should come before me officially,' and he handed back the
paper.
'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 good-bye. 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 is 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 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 the 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,' 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 Fit Howard.
'Not a shell,' said Johnny.
'I'm blessed if you don't beat cock-fighting,' 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 of the two portraits. How could he
not despise himself in that he could find any pleasure in Madalina,
having a Lily Dale to fill his thoughts? 'But she is not fair to 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 you would 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 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 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 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 the thing for her to do--to give money to his
friend. At any rate she will tell you whether it was or not.'
'And then I will go on to Jerusalem, after him.'
'Should you find it necessary. He will probably be on his way back, and
she will know where you can hit him on the road. You must make him
understand that it is essential that he should be here some little time
before the trial. You can understand, Johnny;--and as he spoke Mr
Toogood lowered his voice to a whisper, though they were walking
together on the platform of the railway station, and could not possibly
have been overheard by anyone. 'You can understand that it may be
necessary to prove that he is not exactly compos mentis, and if so it
will be essential that he should have some influential friend near him.
Otherwise that bishop will trample him into dust.' If Mr Toogood could
have seen the bishop at this time and have read the troubles of the poor
man's heart, he would hardly have spoken of him as being so terrible a
tyrant.
'I understand all that,' said Johnny.
'I hope the dean is a good fellow.'
'They tell me he is a very good fellow.'
'I never did see much in bishops or deans as yet,' said Johnny, 'and I
should feel rather awe-struck travelling with one.'
'I should fancy that a dean is very much like anybody else.'
'But the man's hat would cow me.'
'I daresay you'll find him walking about Jerusalem with a wide-awake
on, and a big stick in his hand, probably smoking a cigar. Deans
contrive to get out of their armour sometimes, as the knights of old
used to. Bishops, I fancy, find it more difficult. Well--good-bye, old
fellow. I'm very much obliged to you for going--I am, indeed. I don't
doubt but what we shall pull through, somehow.'
Then Mr Toogood went home to breakfast, and from his own house he
proceeded to his office. When he had been there an hour or two, there
came to him a messenger from the Income-Tax Office, with an official
note addressed to himself by Sir Raffle Buffle--a note which looked to
be very official. Sir Raffle Buffle presented his compliments to Mr
Toogood, and could Mr Toogood favour Sir R B with the present address of
Mr John Eames. 'Old fox,' said Mr Toogood--'but then such a stupid old
fox! As if it was likely that I should have poached on Johnny if
anything was wrong.' So Mr Toogood sent his compliments to Sir Raffle
Buffle, and begged to inform Sir R B that Mr John Eames was away on very
particular family business, which would take him in the first instance
to Florence;--but that from Florence he would probably have to go onto
Jerusalem without the loss of an hour. 'Stupid old fool!' said Mr
Toogood, as he sent off his reply by the messenger.
CHAPTER XLIX
NEAR THE CLOSE
I wonder whether anyone will read these pages who has never known
anything of the bitterness of a family quarrel? If so, I shall have a
reader very fortunate, or else very cold-blooded. It would be wrong to
say that love produces quarrels; but love does produce those intimate
relations of which quarrelling is too often one of the consequences--one
of the consequences which frequently seem to be so natural, and
sometimes seem to be unavoidable. One brother rebukes the other--and
what brothers ever lived together between whom there is no such
rebuking?--then some warm word is misunderstood and hotter words follow
and there is a quarrel. The husband tyrannizes, knowing that it is his
duty to direct, and the wife disobeys, or only partially obeys, thinking
that a little independence will become her--and so there is a quarrel.
The father, anxious only for his son's good, looks into that son's
future with other eyes than those of his son himself--and so there is a
quarrel. They come very easily these quarrels, but the quittance from
them is sometimes terribly difficult. Much of thought is necessary
before the angry man can remember that he too in part may have been
wrong; and any attempt at such thinking is almost beyond the power of
him who is carefully nursing his wrath, let it cool! But the nursing of
such quarrelling kills all happiness. The very man who is nursing his
wrath lest it cool--his wrath against one whom he loves perhaps the best
of all whom it has been given to him to love--is himself wretched as
long as it lasts. His anger poisons every pleasure of his life. He is
sullen at his meals, and cannot understand his book as he turns the
pages. His work, let it be what it may, is ill done. He is full of his
quarrel--nursing it. He is telling himself how much he has loved that
wicked one, and that now that wicked one is repaying him simply with
wickedness! And yet the wicked one is at that very moment dearer to him
than ever. If that wicked one would only be forgiven how sweet would be
the world again! And yet he nurses his wrath.
So it was in these days with Archdeacon Grantly. He was very angry with
his son. It is hardly too much to say that in every moment of his life,
whether waking or sleeping, he was thinking of the injury his son was
doing him. He had almost come to forget the fact that his anger had been
first roused by the feeling that his son was about to do himself an
injury--to cut his own throat. Various other considerations had now
added themselves to that, and filled not only his mind but his daily
conversation with his wife. How terrible would be the disgrace to Lord
Hartletop, how incurable the injury to Griselda, the marchioness, should
the brother-in-law of the one, and the brother of the other, marry the
daughter of a convicted thief! Of himself he would say nothing. So he
declared constantly, though of himself he did say a great deal. Of
himself he would say nothing, though of course such a marriage would
ruin him in the county. 'My dear,' said his wife, 'that is nonsense.
That is really nonsense. I feel sure there is not a single person in the
county who would think of the marriage in such a light.' Then the
archdeacon would have quarrelled with his wife, too, had she not been
too wise to admit such a quarrel. Mrs Grantly was very wise and knew
that it took two persons to make a quarrel. He told her over and over
again that she was in league with her son --that she was encouraging her
son to marry Grace Crawley. 'I believe that in your heart you wish it,'
he once said to her. 'No, my dear, I do not wish it. I do not think it a
becoming marriage. But if he does marry her, I should wish to receive
his wife in my house and certainly would not quarrel with him.' 'I will
never receive her,' the archdeacon had replied; 'and as for him, I can
only say that in such a case I will make no provision for his family.'
It will be remembered that the archdeacon had on a former occasion
instructed his wife to write to their son and tell him of his father's
determination. Mrs Grantly had so manoeuvred that a little time had been
gained, and that those instructions had not been insisted upon in all
their bitterness. Since that time Major Grantly had renewed his
assurance that he would marry Grace Crawley if Grace Crawley would
accept him--writing on this occasion direct to his father--and had asked
his father whether, in such a case, he was to look forward to be
disinherited. 'It is essential that I should know,' the major had said,
'because in such a case I must take immediate measures for leaving this
place.' His father had sent back his letter, writing a few words at the
bottom of it. 'If you do as you propose above, you must expect nothing
from me.' The words were written in large round handwriting, very
hurriedly, and the son when he received them perfectly understood the
mood of his father's mind when he wrote them.
Then there came tidings, addressed on this occasion to Mrs Grantly, that
Cosby Lodge was to be given up. Lady-day had come, and the notice
necessarily to be given at that period, was so given. 'I know this will
grieve you,' Major Grantly had said, 'but my father has driven me to
it.' This, in itself, was a cause of great sorrow, both to the
archdeacon and to Mrs Grantly, as there were circumstances connected
with Cosby Lodge which made them think that it was a very desirable
residence for their son. 'I shall sell everything about the place and go
abroad at once,' he said in a subsequent letter. 'My present idea is
that, I shall settle myself at Pau, as my income will suffice for me to
live there, and education for Edith will be cheap. At any rate I will
not continue to live in England. I could never be happy here in
circumstance so altered. Of course I should not have left my profession,
unless I had understood from my father that the income arising from it
would not be necessary to me. I do not, however, mean to complain, but
simply to tell you that I shall go.' There were many letters between the
mother and son in those days.
'I shall stay till after the trial,' he said. 'If she will then go with
me, well and good; but whether she will or not, I shall not remain
here.' All this seemed to Mrs Grantly to be peculiarly unfortunate, for
had he not resolved to go, things might even yet have righted
themselves. From what she could now understand of the character of Miss
Crawley, whom she did not know personally, she thought it probable that
Grace, in the event of her father being found guilty by the jury, would
absolutely and persistently refuse the offer made to her. She would be
too good, as Mrs Grantly put it to herself, to bring misery and disgrace
into another family. But should Mr Crawley be acquitted, and should the
marriage then take place, the archdeacon himself might probably be got
to forgive it. In either case there would be no necessity for breaking
up the house at Cosby Lodge. But her dear son Henry, her best beloved,
was obstinate and stiff-necked and would take no advice. 'He is even
worse than his father,' she said, in her short-lived anger, to her own
father to whom alone at this time she could unburden her griefs, seeking
consolation and encouragement.
It was her habit to go over to the deanery at any rate twice a week at
this time, and on the occasion of one of the visits so made, she
expressed very strongly her distress at the family quarrel which had
come among them. The old man took his grandson's part through and
through. 'I do not at all see why he should not marry the young lady if
he likes her. As for money, there ought to be enough without his having
to look for a wife with a fortune.'
'It is not a question of money, papa.'
'And as to rank,' continued Mr Harding, 'Henry will not at any rate be
going lower than his father did when he married you;--not so low
indeed, for at that time I was only a minor canon, and Mr Crawley is in
possession of a benefice.'
'Papa, all this is nonsense. It is indeed.'
'Very likely, my dear.'
'It is not because Mr Crawley is only perpetual curate of Hogglestock
that the archdeacon objects to the marriage. It has nothing to do with
that at all. At the present moment he is in disgrace.'
'Under a cloud, my dear. Let us pray that it may only be a passing
cloud.'
'All the world thinks that he is guilty. And then he is such a man;--so
singular, so unlike anybody else! You know, papa, that I don't think
very much of money, merely as money.'
'I hope not, my dear. Money is worth thinking of, but it is not worth
very much thought.'
'But it does give advantages, and the absence of advantages must be very
much felt in the education of a girl. You would hardly wish Henry to
marry a young woman who, from the want of money, had not been brought up
among ladies. It is not Miss Crawley's fault, but such has been her lot.
We cannot ignore these deficiencies, papa.'
'Certainly not, my dear.'
'You would not, for instance, wish that Henry should marry a
kitchen-maid.'
'But is Miss Crawley a kitchen-maid, Susan?'
'I don't quite say that.'
'I am told that she has been educated infinitely more than most of the
young ladies in the neighbourhood,' said Mr Harding.
'You know what I mean, papa. But the fact is, that it is impossible to
deal with men. They will never be reasonable. A marriage such as this
would be injurious to Henry; but it will not be ruinous; and as to
disinheriting him for it, that would be downright wicked.'
'I think so,' said Mr Harding.
'But the archdeacon will look at it as though it would destroy Henry and
Edith together, while you speak of it as though it were the best thing
in the world.'
'If the young people love each other, I think it would be the best thing
in the world,' said Mr Harding.
'But, papa, you cannot but think that his father's wish should go for
something,' said Mrs Grantly, who, desirous as she was on the one side
to support her son, could not bear that her husband should, on the other
side, be declared to be altogether in the wrong.
'I do not know, my dear,' said Mr Harding; 'but I do think that if the
two young people are fond of each other, and if there is anything for
them to live upon, it cannot be right to keep them apart. You know, my
dear, she is the daughter of a gentleman.' Mrs Grantly upon this left
her father almost brusquely, without speaking another word on the
subject; for though was opposed to the vehement anger of her husband,
she could not endure the proposition now made by her father.
Mr Harding was at this time living all alone in the deanery. For some
few years the deanery had been his home, and as his youngest daughter
was the dean's wife, there could no more comfortable resting-place for
the evening of his life. During the last month or two the days had gone
tediously long with him; for he had had the large house all to himself,
and he was a man who did not love solitude. It is hard to conceive that
the old, whose thoughts have been all thought out, should ever love to
live alone. Solitude is surely for the young, who have time before them
for the execution of schemes, and who can, therefore, take delight in
thinking. In these days the poor old man would wander about the rooms,
shambling from one chamber to another, and would feel ashamed when the
servants met him ever on the move. He would make little apologies for
his uneasiness, which they would accept graciously, understanding, after
a fashion, why it was that he was uneasy. 'He ain't got nothing to do,'
said the housemaid to the cook 'and as for reading, they say that some
of the young ones can read all day sometimes, and all night too; but
bless you, when you're nigh eighty, reading don't go for much.' The
housemaid was right as to Mr Harding's reading. He was not one who had
read so much in his earlier days as to enable him to make reading go far
with him now that he was near eighty. So he wandered about the room, and
sat here for a few minutes, and there for a few minutes, and though he
did not sleep much, he made the hours of the night as many as possible.
Every morning he shambled across from the deanery to the cathedral, and
attended the morning service, sitting in the stall which he had occupied
for fifty years. The distance was very short, not exceeding, indeed a
hundred yards from a side-door in the deanery to another side-door into
the cathedral; but short as it was there had come to be a question
whether he should be allowed to go alone. It had been feared that he
might fall on his passage and hurt himself; for there was a step here,
and a step there, and the light was not very good in the purlieus of the
old cathedral. A word or two had been said once, and the offer of an arm
to help him had been made; but he had rejected the offered
assistance--softly, indeed, but still firmly--and every day he tottered
off by himself hardly lifting his feet as he went, and aiding himself on
his journey by a hand upon the wall when he thought that nobody was
looking at him. But many did see him, and they who knew him--ladies
generally of the city--would offer him a hand. Nobody was milder in his
dislikings than Mr Harding; but there were ladies in Barchester upon
whose arm he would always decline to lean, bowing courteously as he did
so, and saying a word or two of constrained civility. There were others
whom he would allow to accompany him home to the door of the deanery,
with whom he delighted to linger and chat if the morning was warm, and
to whom he would tell little stories of his own doings in the cathedral
services in the old days, when Bishop Grantly had ruled the diocese.
Never a word did he say against Bishop Proudie, or against Bishop
Proudie's wife; but the many words which he did say in praise of Bishop
Grantly--who, by his showing, was surely one of the best of churchmen
who ever walked through this vale of sorrow--were as eloquent in
dispraise of the existing prelate as could ever have been any more
clearly-pointed phrases. This daily visit to the cathedral, where he
would say his prayers as he had said them for so many years, and listen
to the organ, of which he knew all the power and every blemish as though
he himself had made the stops and fixed the pipes, was the chief
occupation of his life. It was a pity that it could not have been made
to cover a larger portion of his day.
It was sometimes sad enough to watch him as he sat alone. He would have
a book near him, and for a while would keep it in his hands. It would
generally be some volume of good old standard theology with which he had
been, or supposed himself to have been, conversant from his youth. But
the book would soon be laid aside, and gradually he would move himself
away from it, and he would stand about the room, looking now out of a
window from which he would fancy that he could not be seen, or gazing up
at some print which he had known for years; and then he would sit down
for a while in one chair, and for a while in another, while his mind was
wandering back into the old days, thinking of old troubles and
remembering old joys. And he had a habit, when he was sure that he that
he was not watched, of creeping up to a great black wooden case, which
always stood in one corner of the sitting-room which he occupied in the
deanery. Mr Harding, when he was younger, had been a performer on the
violoncello, and in this case there was still the instrument from which
he had been wont to extract the sounds which he had so dearly loved. Now
in these latter days he never made any attempt to play. Soon after he
had come to the deanery there had fallen upon him an illness, and after
that he had never again asked for his bow. They who were around him--his
daughter chiefly and her husband--had given the matter much thought,
arguing with themselves whether or no it would be better to invite him
to resume the task he so loved; for of all the works of his life this
playing on the violoncello had been the sweetest to him; but even before
that illness his hand had greatly failed him, and the dean and Mrs
Arabin had agreed that it would be better to let the matter pass without
a word. He had never asked to be allowed to play. He had expressed no
regrets. When he himself would propose that his daughter should 'give
them a little music'--and he would make such a proposition on every
evening that was suitable--he would never say a word of those former
performances at which he himself had taken a part. But it had become
known to Mrs Arabin, through the servants, that he had once dragged the
instrument forth from its case when he thought the house to be nearly
deserted; and a wail of sounds had been heard, very low, very
short-lived, recurring now and again at fitful intervals. He had at
those times attempted to play, as though with a muffled bow--so that
none should know of his vanity and folly. Then there had been further
consultations at the deanery, and it had been again agreed that it would
be best to say nothing to him of his music.
In these latter days of which I am now speaking he would never draw the
instrument out of its case. Indeed he was aware that it was too heavy
for him to handle without assistance. But he would pass his fingers
among the broad strings, and ever and anon would produce from one of
them a low, melancholy, almost unearthly sound. And then he would pause,
never daring to produce such notes in succession--one close upon the
other. And these last sad moans of the old fiddle were now known through
the household. They were the ghosts of the melody of days long past. He
imagined that his visits to the box were unsuspected--that none knew of
the folly of his old fingers which could not keep themselves from
touching the wires; but the voice of the old violoncello had been
recognised by the servants and by his daughter, and when that low wail
was heard through the house--like the last dying note of a dirge--they
would all know that Mr Harding was visiting his ancient friend.
When the dean and Mrs Arabin had first talked of going abroad for a long
visit, it had been understood that Mr Harding should pass the period of
their absence with his other daughter at Plumstead; but when the time
came he begged Mrs Arabin to be allowed to remain in his old rooms. 'Of
course I shall go backwards and forwards,' he had said. 'There is
nothing I like so much as a change now and then.' The result had been
that he had gone once to Plumstead during the dean's absence. When he
had thus remonstrated, begging go be allowed to remain in Barchester,
Mrs Arabin had declared her intention of giving up her tour. In telling
her father of this she had not said that her altered purpose had arisen
from her disinclination to leave him alone; but he had perceived that it
was so, and had then consented to be taken over to Plumstead. There was
nothing, he said, which he would like so much as going over to Plumstead
for four or five months. It had ended in his having his own way
altogether. The Arabins had gone upon their tour, and he was left in
possession of the deanery. 'I should not like to die out of Barchester,'
he said to himself in excuse to himself for his disinclination to
sojourn long under the archdeacon's roof. But, in truth, the archdeacon,
who loved him well and who, after a fashion, had always been good to
him--who had always spoken of the connexion which had bound the two
families together as the great blessing of his life--was too rough in
his greetings for the old man. Mr Harding had ever mixed something of
fear with his warm affection for his elder son-in-law, and now in these
closing hours of his life he could not avoid a certain amount of
shrinking from that loud voice--a certain inaptitude to be quite at ease
in that commanding presence. The dean, his second son-in-law, had been a
modern friend in comparison with the archdeacon; but the dean was more
gentle with him; and then the dean's wife had ever been the dearest to
him of human beings. It may be a doubt whether one of the dean's
children was not now almost more dear, and whether in these days he did
not have more free communication with that little girl than with any
other human being. Her name was Susan, but he had always called her
Posy, having himself invented for her that soubriquet. When it had been
proposed to him to pass the winter and spring at Plumstead, the
suggestion had been made alluring by a promise that Posy also should be
taken to Mrs Grantly's house. But he, as we have seen, remained at the
deanery, and Posy had remained with him.
Posy was now five years old, and could talk well, and had her own ideas
of things. Posy's eyes--hers, and no others besides her own--were
allowed to see the inhabitant of the big black case; and now that the
deanery was so nearly deserted, Posy's fingers had touched the strings
and had produced an infantine moan. 'Grandpa, let me do it again.'
Twang! It was not, however, in truth, a twang, but a sound as of a
prolonged dull, almost deadly, hum-m-m-m-m! On this occasion the moan
was not entirely infantine--Posy's fingers having been something too
strong--and the case was closed and locked, and grandpa shook his head.
'But Mrs Baxter won't be angry,' said Posy. Mrs Baxter was the
housekeeper in the deanery, and had Mr Harding under her especial
charge.
'No, my darling; Mrs Baxter will not be angry, but we mustn't disturb
the house.'
'No,' said Posy, with much of important awe in her tone; 'we mustn't
disturb the house; must we, grandpa?' And so she gave in her adhesion to
the closing of the case. But Posy could play cat's-cradle, and as
cat's-cradle did not disturb the house at all, there was a good deal of
cat's-cradle played in those days. Posy's fingers were so soft and
pretty, so small and deft, that the dear old man delighted in taking the
strings from them, and in having them taken from his own by those tender
little digits.
On the afternoon after the conversation respecting Grace Crawley which
is recorded in the early part of this chapter, a messenger from
Barchester went over to Plumstead, and part of his mission consisted of
a note from Mrs Baxter to Mrs Grantly, beginning 'Honoured Madam,' and
informing Mrs Grantly, among other things, that her 'respected papa', as
Mrs Baxter called him, was not quite so well as usual; not that Mrs
Baxter thought that there was much the matter. Mr Harding had been to
the cathedral service, as was usual with him, but had come home leaning
on a lady's arm, who had thought it well to stay with him at the door
till it had been opened for him. After that 'Miss Posy' had found him
asleep, and had been unable--or if not unable, unwilling, to wake him.
'Miss Posy' had come down to Mrs Baxter somewhat in a fright, and hence
this letter had been written. Mrs Baxter thought that there was nothing
'to fright' Mrs Grantly, and she wasn't sure that she should have
written at all only that Dick was bound to go over to Plumstead with the
wool; but as Dick was going, Mrs Baxter thought it proper to send her
duty, and to say that to her humble way of thinking perhaps it might be
best that Mr Harding shouldn't go alone to the cathedral in the morning.
'If the dear reverend gentleman was to get a tumble, ma'am,' said the
letter, 'it would be awkward.' Then Mrs Grantly remembered that she had
left her father almost without a greeting in the previous day, and she
resolved that she would go over very early on the following morning--so
early that she would be at the deanery before her father should have
gone to the cathedral.
'He ought to have come over here. And not stayed there by himself,'
said the archdeacon, when his wife told him of her intention.
'It is too late to think of that now, my dear; and one can understand, I
think, that he should not like leaving the cathedral as long as he can
attend it. The truth is that he does not like being out of Barchester.'
'He would be much better here,' said the archdeacon. 'Of course you can
have the carriage and go over. We can breakfast at eight; and if you can
bring him back with you, do. I should tell him that he ought to come.'
Mrs Grantly made no answer to this, knowing very well that she could not
bring herself to go beyond the gentlest persuasion with her father, and
on the next morning she was at the deanery by ten o'clock. Half-past ten
was the hour at which the service began. Mrs Baxter contrived to meet
her before she saw her father, and begged her not to let it be known
that any special tidings of Mr Harding's failing strength had been sent
from the deanery to Plumstead. 'And how is my father?' asked Mrs
Grantly. 'Well, then, ma'am,' said Baxter, 'in one sense he's finely. He
took a morsel of early lamb to his dinner yesterday, and relished it
ever so well--only he gave Miss Posy the best part of it. And then he
sat with Miss Posy quite happy for an hour or so. And then he slept in
his chair; and you know, ma'am, we never wake him. And after that old
Skulpit toddled up from the hospital'--this was Hiram's Hospital of
which establishment, in the city of Barchester, Mr Harding had once been
the warden and kind master, as has been told in former chronicles of the
city--'and your papa has said, ma'am, you know, that he is always to see
any of the old men when they come up. And Skulpit is sly, and no better
than he should be, and got money from your father, ma'am, I know. And
then he had just a drop of tea, and after that I took him a glass of
port wine with my own hands. And it touched me, ma'am, so it did, when
he said, "Oh, Mrs Baxter, how good you are; you know well what I like."
And then he went to bed. I listened hard--not from idle curiosity,
ma'am, as you, who know me, will believe, but just because it's becoming
to know what he's about, as there might be an accident, you know,
ma'am.' 'You are very good, Mrs Baxter, very good.' 'Thank ye, ma'am,
for saying so. And so I listened hard; but he didn't go to his music,
poor gentleman; and I think he had a quiet night. He doesn't sleep much
at nights, poor gentleman, but he's very quiet; leastwise he was last
night.' This was the bulletin which Mrs Baxter gave Mrs Grantly on that
morning before Mrs Grantly saw her father.
She found him preparing himself for his visit to the cathedral. Some
year or two--but no more--before the date of which we are speaking, he
had still taken some small part in the service; and while he had done so
he had of course worn his surplice. Living so close to the cathedral--so
close that he could almost walk out of the house into the transept--he
had kept his surplice in his own room, and had gone down in his
vestment. It had been a bitter day to him when he had first found
himself constrained to abandon the white garment which he loved. He had
encountered some failure in the performance of the slight clerical task
allotted to him, and the dean had tenderly advised him to desist. He did
not utter one word of remonstrance. 'It will perhaps be better,' the
dean had said. 'Yes--it will be better,' Mr Harding had replied. 'Few
have had accorded to them the high privilege of serving their Master in
His house for so many years--though few more humbly, or with lower
gifts.' But on the following morning, and for nearly a week afterwards,
he had been unable to face the minor canon and the vergers, and the old
women who knew him so well, in his ordinary black garments. At last he
went down with the dean, and occupied a stall close to the dean's seat
--far away from that which he had sat for so many years--and in this
seat he had said his prayers ever since that day. And now his surplices
were washed and ironed and folded and put away; but there were moments
in which he would stealthily visit them, as he also stealthily visited
his friend in the black wooden case. This was very melancholy, and the
sadness of it was felt by all those who lived with him; but he never
alluded himself to any of those bereavements which age had brought him.
Whatever might be his regrets, he kept them ever within his own breast.
Posy was with him when Mrs Grantly went up into his room, holding for
him his hat and stick while he was engaged in brushing a suspicion of
dust from his black gaiters. 'Grandpapa, here is aunt Susan,' said Posy.
The old man looked up with something--with some slightest sign of that
habitual fear which was always aroused within his bosom by visitations
from Plumstead. Had Mrs Arabin thoroughly understood the difference in
her father's feeling toward herself and toward her sister, I think she
would hardly have gone forth upon any tour while he remained with her in
the deanery. It is very hard sometimes to know how intensely we are
loved, and of what value our presence is to those who love us! Mrs
Grantly saw the look--did not analyse it, did not quite understand
it--but felt, as she had often felt before, that it was not altogether
laden with welcome. But all this had nothing to do with the duty on
which she had come; nor did it, in the slightest degree, militate
against her own affection. 'Papa,' she said, kissing him, 'you are
surprised to see me so early?'
'Well, my dear, yes;--but very glad all the same. I hope everybody is
well at Plumstead?'
'Everybody, thank you, papa.'
'That is well. Posy and I are getting ready for church. Are we not,
Posy?'
'Grandpapa is getting ready. Mrs Baxter won't let me go.'
'No, my dear, no--not yet, Posy. When Posy is a great girl she can go
to the cathedral every day. Only then, perhaps, Posy won't want to go.'
'I thought that, perhaps, papa, you would sit with me a little while
this morning, instead of going to morning prayers.'
'Certainly, my dear--certainly. Only I do not like not going;--for who
can say how often I may be able to go again? There is so little time
left, Susan--so very little left.'
After that she did not have the heart to ask him to stay, and therefore
she went with him. As they passed down the stairs and out of the doors
she was astonished to find how weak were his footsteps--how powerless he
was against the slightest misadventure. On this very day he would have
tripped at the upward step at the cathedral door had she not been with
him. 'Oh, papa,' she said 'indeed, indeed, you should not come here
alone.' Then he apologised for his little stumble with many words and
much shame, assuring her that anybody might trip on an occasion. It was
purely an accident; and though it was a comfort to have had her arm, he
was sure that he would have recovered himself even had he been alone. He
always, he said, kept quite close to the wall, so that there might be no
mistake--no possibility of an accident. All this he said volubly, but
with confused words, in the covered stone passage leading into the
transept. And, as he thus spoke, Mrs Grantly made up her mind that her
father should never again go to the cathedral alone. He never did go
again to the cathedral--alone.
When they returned to the deanery, Mr Harding was fluttered, weary, and
unwell. When his daughter left him for a few minutes he told Mrs Baxter
in confidence of the story of his accident, and his great grief that his
daughter should have seen it. 'Laws amercy, sir, it was a blessing she
was with you,' said Mrs Baxter; 'it was, indeed, Mr Harding.' Then Mr
Harding had been angry, and spoke almost crossly to Mrs Baxter; but,
before she left the room, he found an opportunity of begging her
pardon--not in a set speech to that effect, but by a little word of
gentle kindness, which she had understood perfectly. 'Papa,' said Mrs
Grantly to him as soon as she ha succeeded in getting both Posy and Mrs
Baxter out of the room--against the doing of which, Mr Harding had
manoeuvred with all his little impotent skill--'Papa, you must promise
that you will not go to the cathedral again alone, till Eleanor comes
home.' When he heard the sentence he looked at her with blank misery in
his eyes. He made not attempt at remonstrance. He begged for no respite.
The word had gone forth, and he knew that it must be obeyed. Though he
would have hidden the signs of his weakness had he been able, he would
not condescend to plead that he was strong. 'If you think it wrong, my
dear, I will not go alone,' he said. 'Papa, I do; indeed I do. Dear
papa, I would not hurt you by saying it if I did not know that I am
right.' He was sitting with his hand upon the table, and, as she spoke
to him, she put her hand upon his, caressing it. 'My dear,' he said,
'you are always right.'
She left him again for a while, having some business out in the city,
and he was alone in his room for an hour. What was there left to him now
in the world? Old as he was, and in some things almost childish,
nevertheless, he thought of this keenly, and some half-realised
remembrance of the 'lean and slippered pantaloon' flitted across his
mind, causing him a pang. What was there left to him now in the world?
Posy and cat's-cradle! Then, in the midst of his regrets, as he sat with
his back bent in his old easy-chair, with one arm over the shoulder of
the chair, and the other hanging loose by his side, on a sudden there
came across his face a smile as sweet as every brightened the face of
man or woman. He had been able to tell himself that he had no ground for
complaint--great ground rather for rejoicing and gratitude. Had not the
world and all in it been good to him; had he not children who loved him,
who had done him honour, who had been to him always a crown of glory,
never a mark for reproach; had not his lines fallen to him in very
pleasant places; was it not his happy fate to go and leave it all amidst
the good words and kind loving cares of devoted friends? Whose latter
days had ever been more blessed than his? And for the future--? It was
as he thought of this that the smile came across his face--as though it
were already the face of an angel. And then he muttered to himself a
word or two. 'Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace. Lord,
now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.'
When Mrs Grantly returned she found him in jocund spirits. And yet she
perceived that he was so weak that when he left his chair he could
barely get across the room without assistance. Mrs Baxter, indeed, had
not sent to her too soon, and it was well that the prohibition had come
in time to prevent some terrible accident. 'Papa,' she said, 'I think
you had better go with me to Plumstead. The carriage is here, and I can
take you home so comfortably.' But he would not allow himself to be
taken on this occasion to Plumstead. He smiled and thanked her, and put
his hand into hers, and repeated his promise that he would not leave the
house on any occasion without assistance, and declared himself specially
thankful to her for coming to him on that special morning;--but he would
not be taken to Plumstead. 'When summer comes,' he said, 'then, if you
will have me for a few days!'
He meant no deceit, and yet he had told himself within the last hour
that he should never see another summer. He could not tell even his
daughter that after such a life as this, after more than fifty years
spent in the ministration of his darling cathedral, it specially behoved
him to die--as he had lived--at Barchester. He could not say this to his
eldest daughter; but had his Eleanor been at home, he could have said it
to her. He thought he might yet live to see his Eleanor once again. If
this could be given to him he would ask for nothing more.
On the afternoon of the next day, Mrs Baxter wrote another letter, in
which she told Mrs Grantly that her father had declared, at his usual
hour of rising that morning, that he was not going to the cathedral, he
would, he thought, lie in bed a little longer. And then he had been in
bed the whole day. 'And perhaps, honoured madam, looking at all things,
it's best as he should,' said Mrs Baxter.
CHAPTER L
LADY LUFTON'S PROPOSITION
It was now known throughout Barchester that a commission was to be held
by the bishop's orders, at which inquiry would be made--that is,
ecclesiastical inquiry--as to the guilt imputed to Mr Crawley in the
matter of Mr Soames's cheque. Sundry rumours had gone abroad as to
quarrels which had taken place on the subject among certain clergymen
high in office; but these were simply rumours, and nothing was in truth
known. There was no more discreet clergyman in the diocese than Dr
Tempest, and not a word had escaped from him as to the stormy nature of
that meeting in the bishop's palace, at which he had attended with the
bishop--and at which Mrs Proudie had attended also. When it is said
that the fact of this coming commission was known to all Barsetshire,
allusion is of course made to that portion of the inhabitants of
Barsetshire to which clerical matters were dear;--and as such matters
were specially dear to the inhabitants of the parish of Framley, the
commission was discussed very eagerly in that parish, and was specially
discussed by the Dowager Lady Lufton.
And there was a double interest attached to the commission in the parish
of Framley by the fact that Mr Robarts, the vicar, had been invited by
Dr Tempest to be one of the clergymen who were to assist in making the
inquiry. 'I also to propose to ask Mr Oriel of Greshambury to join us,'
said Dr Tempest. 'The bishop wishes to appoint the other two, and has
already named Mr Thumble and Mr Quiverful, who are both residents in the
city. Perhaps his lordship may be right in thinking it better that the
matter should not be left altogether in the hands of clergymen who hold
livings in the diocese. You are no doubt aware that neither Mr Thumble
nor Mr Quiverful do hold any benefice.' Mr Robarts felt --as everybody
else did feel who knew anything of the matter--that Bishop Proudie was
singularly ignorant of his knowledge of men, and that he showed his
ignorance on this special occasion. 'If he intended to name two such men
he should at any rate have named three,' said Dr Thorne. 'Mr Thumble and
Mr Quiverful will simply be outvoted on the first day, and after that
will give in their adhesion to the majority.' 'Mr Thumble indeed!' Lady
Lufton had said, with much scorn in her voice. To her thinking, it was
absurd in the highest degree that such men as Dr Tempest and her Mr
Robarts should be asked to meet Mr Thumble and Mr Quiverful on a matter
of ecclesiastical business. Outvoted! Of course whey would be outvoted.
Of course they would be so paralysed by fear at finding themselves in
the presence of real gentlemen, that they would hardly be able to vote
at all. Old Lady Lufton did not in fact utter words so harsh as these;
but thoughts as harsh passed through her mind. The reader therefore will
understand that much interest was felt in the subject at Framley Court,
where Lady Lufton lived with her son and daughter-in-law.
'They tell me,' said Lady Lufton, 'that both the archdeacon and Dr
Tempest think it is right that a commission should be held. If so, I
have no doubt that it is right.'
'Mark says that the bishop could hardly do anything else,' rejoined Mrs
Robarts.
'I daresay not, my dear. I suppose the bishop that somebody has near
him to tell him what he may do and what he may not do. It would be
terrible to think of, if it were not so. But yet, when I hear that he
has named such men as Mr Thumble and Mr Quiverful, I cannot but feel
that the whole diocese is disgraced.'
'Oh, Lady Lufton, that is such a strong word,' said Mrs Robarts.
'It may be strong, but it is not the less true,' said Lady Lufton.
And from talking on the subject of the Crawleys, Lady Lufton soon
advanced, first to a desire for some action, and than to acting. 'I
think, my dear, I will go over and see Mrs Crawley,' said Lady Lufton,
the elder to Lady Lufton the younger. Lady Lufton the younger had
nothing to urge against this; but she did not offer to accompany the
elder Lady. I attempted to explain in the earlier part of this story
that there still existed a certain understanding between Mrs Crawley and
Lord Lufton's wife, and that kindnesses had occasionally passed from
Framley Court to Hogglestock Parsonage; but on this occasion, Lady
Lufton--the Lucy Robarts that had once passed certain days of her life
with the Crawleys at Hogglestock--did not choose to accompany her
mother-in-law; and therefore Mrs Robarts was invited to do so. 'I think
it may comfort her to know that she has our sympathy,' the elder woman
said to the younger as they made their journey together.
When the carriage stopped before the little wicker-gate, from when a
path led through a ragged garden from the road to Mr Crawley's house,
Lady Lufton hardly knew how to proceed. The servant came to the door of
the carriage, and asked for her orders. 'H--m--m, ha, yes; I think I'll
send in my card;--and say that I hope Mrs Crawley will be able to see
me. Won't that be best; eh, Fanny?' Fanny, otherwise Mrs Robarts, said
that she thought that would be best; and the card and message were
carried in.
It was happily the case that Mr Crawley was not at home. Mr Crawley was
away at Hoggle End, reading to the brickmakers, or turning the mangles
of their wives, or teaching them theology, or politics, or history,
after his fashion. In these days he spent, perhaps, the happiest hours
of his life down at Hoggle End. I say that his absence was a happy
chance, because, had he been at home, he would certainly have said
something, or done something, to offend Lady Lufton. He would either
have refused to see her, or when seeing her he would have bade her hold
her peace and not interfere with matters which did not concern her,
or--more probable still--he would have sat still and sullen, and have
spoken not at all. But he was away and Mrs Crawley sent out word by the
servant that she would be most proud to see her ladyship, if her
ladyship would be pleased to alight. Her ladyship did alight, and walked
into the parsonage, followed by Mrs Robarts.
Grace was with her mother. Indeed Jane had been there also when the
message was brought in, but she fled into the back regions, overcome by
shame as to her frock. Grace, I think, would have fled too, had she not
been bound in honour to support her mother. Lady Lufton, as she entered,
was very gracious, struggling with all the power of her womanhood so to
carry herself that there should be no outwardly visible sign of her rank
or her wealth--but not altogether succeeding. Mrs Robarts, on her first
entrance, said only a word or two of greeting to Mrs Crawley, and kissed
Grace, whom she had known intimately in early years. 'Lady Lufton,' said
Mrs Crawley, 'I am afraid this is a very poor place for you to come to;
but you have known that of old, and therefore I need hardly apologise.'
'Sometimes I like poor places best,' said Lady Lufton. Then there was a
pause, after which Lady Lufton addressed herself to Grace, seeking some
subject for immediate conversation. 'You have been down in Allington, my
dear, have you not?' Grace, in a whisper, said that she had. 'Staying
with the Dales, I believe? I know the Dales well by name, and I have
always heard that they are charming people.'
'I like them very much,' said Grace. And then there was another pause.
'I hope your husband is pretty well, Mrs Crawley?' said Lady Lufton.
'He is pretty well--not quite strong. I daresay you know, Lady Lufton,
that he has things to vex him?' Mrs Crawley felt that it was the need of
the moment that the only possible subject of conversation in that house
should be introduced; and therefore she brought it in at once, not
loving the subject, but being strongly conscious of the necessity. Lady
Lufton meant to be good-natured, and therefore Mrs Crawley would do all
in her power to make Lady Lufton's mission easy to her.
'Indeed yes,' said her ladyship; 'we do know that.'
'We feel so much for you and Mr Crawley,' said Mrs Robarts; 'and are so
sure that your sufferings are unmerited.' This was not discreet on the
part of Mrs Robarts, as she was the wife of one of the clergymen who had
been selected to form the commission of inquiry; and so Lady Lufton told
her on the way home.
'You are very kind,' said Mrs Crawley. 'We must only bear it with such
fortitude as God will give us. We are told that He tempers the wind to
the shorn lamb.'
'And so He does my dear,' said her ladyship very solemnly. 'So He does.
Surely you have felt that it is so?'
'I struggle not to complain,' said Mrs Crawley.
'I know that you struggle bravely. I hear of you, and I admire you for
it, and I love you.' It was still the old lady who was speaking and now
she had at last been roused out of her difficulty as to words, and had
risen from her chair, and was standing before Mrs Crawley. 'It is
because you do not complain, because you are so great and so good,
because your character is so high, and your spirit so firm, that I could
not resist the temptation of coming to you. Mrs Crawley, if you will let
me be your friend, I shall be proud of your friendship.'
'Your ladyship is too good,' said Mrs Crawley.
'Do not talk to me after that fashion,' said Lady Lufton. 'If you do I
shall be disappointed, and feel myself thrown back. You know what I
mean.' She paused for an answer; but Mrs Crawley had no answer to make.
She simply shook her head, not knowing why she did so. But we may know.
We can understand that she had felt that the friendship offered to her
by Lady Lufton was an impossibility. She had decided within her own
breast that it was so, though she did not know that she had come to such
decision. 'I wish you to take me at my word, Mrs Crawley,' continued
Lady Lufton. 'What can we do for you? We know that you are distressed.'
'Yes--we are distressed.'
'And we know how cruel circumstances have been to you. Will you not
forgive me for being plain?'
'I have nothing to forgive,' said Mrs Crawley.
'Lady Lufton means,' said Mrs Robarts, 'that in asking you to talk
openly of your affairs, she wishes you to remember that--I think you
know what I mean,' said Mrs Robarts, knowing very well herself what she
did mean, but not knowing at all how to express herself.
'Lady Lufton is very kind,' said Mrs Crawley, 'and so are you, Mrs
Robarts. I know how good you both are, and for how much it behoves me to
be grateful.' These words were very cold, and the voice in which they
were spoken were very cold. They made Lady Lufton feel that it was
beyond her power to proceed with the work of her mission in its intended
spirit. It is ever so much easier to proffer kindness graciously than to
receive it with grace. Lady Lufton had intended to say, 'Let us be women
together;--women bound by humanity, and not separated by rank, and let
us open our hearts freely. Let us see how we may be of comfort to each
other.' And could she have succeeded in this, she would have spread out
her little plans of succour with so loving a hand that she would have
conquered the woman before her. But the suffering spirit cannot descend
from its dignity of reticence. It has a nobility of its own, made sacred
by many tears, by the flowing of streams of blood from unseen wounds,
which cannot descend from its dais to receive pity and kindness. A
consciousness of undeserved woe produces a grandeur of its own, with
which the high-souled sufferer will not easily part. Baskets full of
eggs, pounds of eleemosynary butter, quarters of given pork, even
second-hand clothing from the wardrobe of some richer sister--even
money, unsophisticated money, she could accept. She had learned how that
it was her portion of her allotted misery to take such things--for the
sake of her children and her husband--and to be thankful for them. She
did take them and was thankful; and in the taking she submitted herself
to the rod of cruel circumstances; but she could not even yet bring
herself to accept spoken pity from a stranger, and to kiss the speaker.
'Can we not do something to help you?' said Mrs Robarts. She would not
have spoken but she perceived that Lady Lufton had completed her appeal,
and that Mrs Crawley did not seem prepared to answer it.
'You have done so much to help us,' said Mrs Crawley. 'The things you
have sent us have been very serviceable.'
'But we mean something more than that,' said Lady Lufton.
'I do not know what there is more,' said Mrs Crawley. 'A bit to eat and
something to wear;--that seems to be all that we have to care for now.'
'But we were afraid that this coming trial must cause you much anxiety.'
'Of course it causes anxiety;--but what can we do? It must be so. It
cannot be put off or avoided. We have made up our minds to it now, and
almost wish that it would come quicker. If it were once over, I think
that he would be better whatever the result might be.'
Then there was another lull in the conversation, and Lady Lufton began
to be afraid that her visit would be a failure. She thought that perhaps
she might get on better if Grace were not in the room, and she turned
over in her mind various schemes for sending her away. And perhaps her
task would be easier if Mrs Robarts also could be banished for a time.
'Fanny, my dear,' she said at last, boldly, 'I know you have a little
plan to arrange with Miss Crawley. Perhaps you will be more likely to be
successful if you can take a turn with her alone.' There was not much
subtlety in her ladyship's scheme; but it answered the proposed purpose,
and the two elder ladies were soon left face to face, so that Lady
Lufton had a fair pretext for making another attempt. 'Dear Mrs
Crawley,' she said, 'I do so long to say a word to you, but I fear that
I may be thought to interfere.'
'Oh, no, Lady Lufton; I have no feeling of that kind.'
'I have asked your daughter and Mrs Robarts to go out because I can
speak to you more easily alone. I wish I could teach you to trust me.'
'I do trust you.'
'As a friend, I mean;--as a real friend. If it should be the case, Mrs
Crawley, that a jury should give a verdict against your husband--what
will you do then? Perhaps I should not suppose that it is possible.'
'Of course we know that it is possible,' said Mrs Crawley. Her voice
was stern, and there was in it a tone almost of offence. As she spoke
she did not look at her visitor, but sat with her face averted and her
arms akimbo on the table.
'Yes;--it is possible,' said Lady Lufton. 'I suppose there is not one
in the county who does not truly wish it may not be so. But it is right
to be prepared for all alternatives. In such case have you thought what
you will do?'
'I do not know what they would do to him,' said she.
'I suppose that for some time he would be--'
'Put in prison,' said Mrs Crawley, speaking very quickly, bringing out
the words with a sharp eagerness that was quite unusual to her. 'They
will send him to gaol. Is it not so, Lady Lufton?'
'I suppose it would be so; not for long I should hope; but I presume
that such would be the sentence for some short period.'
'And I might not go with him?'
'No, that would be impossible.'
'And the house, and the living; would they let him have them again when
he came out?'
'Ah; that I cannot say. That will depend much, probably, in what these
clergymen will report. I hope he will not put himself in opposition to
them.'
'I do not know. I cannot say. It is probable that he may do so. It is
not easy for a man so injured as he has been, and one at the same time
so great in intelligence, to submit himself gently to such inquiries.
When ill is being done to himself or others he is very prone to oppose
it.'
'But these gentlemen to not wish to do him ill, Mrs Crawley.'
'I cannot say. I do not know. When I think of it I see that there is
nothing but ruin on every side. What is the use of talking of it? Do not
be angry, Lady Lufton, if I say that it is of no use.'
'But I desire to be of use--of real use. If it should be the case, Mrs
Crawley, that your husband should be--detained at Barchester--'
'You mean imprisoned, Lady Lufton.'
'Yes, I mean imprisoned. If it should be so, then do you bring yourself
and your children--all of them--over to Framley, and I will find a home
for you while he is lost to you.'
'Oh, Lady Lufton, I could not do that.'
'Yes, you can. You have not heard me yet. It would not be a comfort to
you in such a home as that to sit at table with people who are partly
strangers to you. But there is a cottage nearly adjoining to the house,
which you shall have all to yourself. The bailiff lived in it once, and
others have lived in it who belong to the place; but it is empty now and
it shall be made comfortable.' The tears were now running down Mrs
Crawley's face, so that she could not answer a word. 'Of course it is my
son's property, and not mine, but he has commissioned me to say that it
is most heartily at your service. He begs that in such a case you will
occupy it. And I beg the same. And your old friend Lucy has desired me
also to ask you in her name.'
'Lady Lufton, I could not do that,' said Mrs Crawley through her tears.
'You must think better of it, my dear. I do not scruple to advise you,
because I am older than you, and have experience of the world.' This, I
think, taken in the ordinary sense of the words, was a boast on the part
of Lady Lufton, for which but little true pretence existed. Lady
Lufton's experience of the world at large was not perhaps extensive.
Nevertheless she knew what one women might offer to another, and what
one woman might receive from another. 'You would be better over with me,
my dear, than you could be elsewhere. You will not misunderstand me if I
say that, under such circumstances, it would do your husband good that
you and your children should be under our protection during his period
of temporary seclusion. We stand well in the county. Perhaps I ought not
to say so, but I do not know how otherwise to explain myself; and when
it is known, by the bishop and others, that you have come to us during
that sad time, it will be understood that we think well of Mr Crawley,
in spite of anything a jury may say of him. Do you see that, my dear?
And we do think well of him. I have known of your husband for many
years, though I have not personally had the pleasure of much
acquaintance with him. He was over at Framley once at my request, and I
had great occasion to respect him. I do respect him; and I shall feel
grateful to him if he will allow you to put yourself and your children
under my wing, as being an old woman, should this misfortune fall upon
him. We hope that it will not fall upon him; but it is always well to be
provided for the worst.'
In this way Lady Lufton at last made her speech and opened out the
proposal with which she had come laden to Hogglestock. While she was
speaking Mrs Crawley's shoulder was still turned to her; but the speaker
could see that the quick tears were pouring themselves down the cheeks
of the woman whom she addressed. There was a downright honesty of
thorough-going well-wishing charity about the proposition which overcame
Mrs Crawley altogether. She did not feel for a moment that it would be
possible for her to go to Framley in such circumstances as those which
had been suggested. As she thought of it all at the present moment, it
seemed to her that her only appropriate home during the terrible period
which was coming upon her, would be under the walls of the prison in
which her husband would be incarcerated. But she fully appreciated the
kindness which had suggested a measure, which, if carried into
execution, would make the outside world feel that her husband was
respected in the county, despite the degradation to which he was
subjected. She felt all this, but her heart was too full to speak.
'Say that it shall be so, my dear,' continued Lady Lufton. 'Just give
me one nod of assent, and the cottage shall be ready for you should it
so chance that you should require it.'
But Mrs Crawley did not give the nod of assent. With her face still
averted, while the tears were still running down her cheeks, she
muttered but a word or two. 'I could not do that, Lady Lufton; I could
not do that.'
'You know at any rate what my wishes are, and as you become calmer you
will think of it. There is quite time enough, and I am speaking of an
alternative which may never happen. My dear friend Mrs Robarts, who is
now with your daughter, wishes Miss Crawley to go over to Framley
Parsonage while this inquiry among the clergymen is going on. They all
say it is the most ridiculous thing in the world--this inquiry. But the
bishop you know is so silly! We all think that if Miss Crawley would go
for a week or so to Framley Parsonage, that it will show how happy we
all are to receive her. It should be while Mr Robarts is employed in his
part of the work. What do you say, Mrs Crawley? We at Framley are all
clearly of the opinion that it will be best that it should be known that
the people in the county uphold your husband. Miss Crawley would be
back, you know, before the trial comes on. I hope you will let her come,
Mrs Crawley?'
But even to this proposition Mrs Crawley could give no assent, though
she expressed no direct dissent. As regarded her own feelings, she would
much preferred to have been left to live through her misery alone; but
she could not but appreciate the kindness which endeavoured to throw
over and hers in their trouble the aegis of first-rate county
respectability. She was saved from the necessity of giving a direct
answer to this suggestion by the return of Mrs Robarts and Grace
herself. The door was opened slowly, and they crept into the room as
though they were aware that their presence would be hardly welcomed.
'Is the carriage there, Fanny?' said Lady Lufton. 'It is almost time
for us to think of returning home.'
Mrs Robarts said that the carriage was standing within twenty yards of
the door.
'Then I think we will make a start,' said Lady Lufton. 'Have you
succeeded in persuading Miss Crawley to come over to Framley in April?'
Mrs Robarts made no answer to this, but looked at Grace; and Grace
looked down upon the ground.
'I have spoken to Mrs Crawley,' said Lady Lufton, 'and they will think
of it.' Then the two ladies took their leave, and walked out to their
carriage.
'What does she say about your plan?' Mrs Robarts asked.
'She is too broken-hearted to say anything.' Lady Lufton answered.
'Should it happen that he is convicted, we must come over and take her.
She will have no power to resist us in anything.'
CHAPTER LI
MRS DOBBS BROUGHTON PILES HER FAGGOTS
The picture still progressed up in Mrs Dobbs Broughton's room, and the
secret was still kept, or supposed to be kept. Miss Van Siever was, at
any rate, certain that her mother had heard nothing of it, and Mrs
Broughton reported from day to day that her husband had not as yet
interfered. Nevertheless there was in these days a great gloom upon the
Dobbs Broughton household, so much so that Conway Dalrymple had more
than once suggested to Mrs Broughton that the work should be
discontinued. But the mistress of the house would not consent to this.
In answer to these offers, she was wont to declare in somewhat
mysterious language, that any misery coming upon herself was a matter of
moment to nobody--hardly even to herself, as she was quite prepared to
encounter moral and social death without delay, if not an absolute
physical demise; as to which latter alternative, she seemed to think
that even that might not be so far distant as some people chose to
believe. What was the cause of the gloom over the house neither Conway
Dalrymple nor Miss Van Siever understood, and to speak the truth Mrs
Broughton did not quite understand the cause herself. She knew well
enough, no doubt, that her husband came home always sullen, and
sometimes tipsy, and that things were not going well in the City. She
had never understood much about the City, being satisfied with an
assurance that had come to her in the early days from her friends, that
there was a mine of wealth in Hook Court, from whence would always come
for her use, house and furniture, a carriage and some horses, dresses
and jewels, which latter, if not quite real, should be manufactured with
the best sham substitute known. Soon after her brilliant marriage with
Mr Dobbs Broughton, she had discovered that the carriage and horses, and
the sham jewels, did not lift her so completely into a terrestrial
paradise as she had taught herself to expect that they would do. Her
brilliant drawing-room, with Dobbs Broughton for a companion, was not an
elysium. But though she had found out early in her married life that
something was still wanting to her, she had by no means confessed to
herself that the carriage and horses and sham jewels were bad, and it
can hardly be said that she had repented. She had endeavoured to patch
up matters with a little romance, and then had fallen upon Conway
Dalrymple--meaning no harm. Indeed, love with her, as it never could
have meant much good, was not likely to mean much harm. That somebody
should pretend to love her, to which pretence she might reply by a
pretence of friendship--this was the little excitement which she craved,
and by which she had once flattered herself that something of an elysium
might yet be created for her. Mr Dobbs Broughton had unreasonably
expressed a dislike to this innocent amusement--very unreasonably,
knowing, as he ought to have known, that he himself did so very little
towards providing the necessary elysium by any qualities of his own. For
a few weeks this interference from her husband had enhanced the
amusement, giving an additional excitement to the game. She felt herself
to be woman misunderstood and ill-used; and to some women there is
nothing so charming as a little mild ill-usage, which does not interfere
with their creature comforts, with their clothes, or their carriage, or
their sham jewels; but suffices to afford them the indulgence of a
grievance. Of late, however, Mr Dobbs Broughton had become a little too
rough in his language, and things had gone uncomfortably. She suspected
that Conway Dalrymple was not the only cause of all this. She had an
idea that Mr Musselboro and Mrs Van Siever had it in their power to make
themselves unpleasant, and that they were exercising this power. Of his
business in the City her husband never spoke to her, nor she to him. Her
own fortune had been very small, some couple of thousand pounds or so,
and she conceived that she had no pretext on which she could, unasked,
interrogate him about his money. She had no knowledge that marriage of
itself had given her the right to such interference; and had such
knowledge been hers she would have had no desire to interfere. She hoped
that the carriage and sham jewels would be continued to her; but she did
not know how to frame any question on the subject. Touching the other
difficulty--the Conway Dalrymple difficulty--she had her ideas. The
tenderness of her friendship had been trodden upon by and outraged by
the rough foot of an overbearing husband, and she was ill-used. She
would obey. It was becoming to her as a wife that she should submit. She
would give up Conway Dalrymple, and would induce him--in spite of his
violent attachment to herself--to take a wife. She herself would choose
a wife for him. She herself would, with suicidal hands, destroy the love
of her own life, since an overbearing, brutal husband demanded that it
should be destroyed. She would sacrifice her own feelings, and do all in
her power to bring Conway Dalrymple and Clara Van Siever together. If,
after that, some poet did not immortalise her friendship in Byronic
verse, she certainly would not get her due. Perhaps Conway Dalrymple
would himself become a poet in order that this might be done properly.
For it must be understood that, though she expected Conway Dalrymple to
marry, she expected also that he should Byronically wretched after his
marriage on account of his love for herself.
But there was certainly something wrong over and beyond the Dalrymple
difficulty. The servants were not as civil as they used to be, and her
husband, when she suggested to him a little dinner-party, snubbed her
most unmercifully. The giving of dinner-parties had been his glory, and
she had made the suggestion simply with the view of pleasing him. 'If
the world were going round, the wrong way, a woman would still want a
party,' he had said, sneering at her. 'It was of you I was thinking,
Dobbs,' she replied; 'not of myself. I care little for such gatherings.'
After that she retired to her own room with a romantic tear in each eye,
and told herself that, had chance thrown Conway Dalrymple into her way
before she had seen Dobbs Broughton, she would have been the happiest
woman in the world. She sat for a while looking into vacancy, and
thinking that it would be very nice to break her heart. How should she
set about it? Should she take to her bed and grow thin? She would begin
by eating no dinner for ever so may days altogether. At lunch her
husband was never present, and therefore the broken heart could be
displayed at dinner without much positive suffering. In the meantime she
would implore Conway Dalrymple to get himself married with as little
delay as possible, and she would lay upon him her positive order to
restrain himself from any word of affection addressed to herself. She,
at any rate, would be pure, high-minded, and self-sacrificing--although
romantic and poetic also, as was her nature.
The picture was progressing, and so also, as it had come about, was the
love-affair between the artist and his model. Conway Dalrymple had begun
to think that he might, after all, do worse than make Clara Van Siever
his wife. Clara Van Siever was handsome, and undoubtedly clever, and
Clara Van Siever's mother was certainly rich. And, in addition to this,
the young lady herself began to like the man into whose society she was
thrown. The affair seemed to flourish, and Mrs Dobbs Broughton should
have been delighted. She told Clara, with a very serious air, that she
was delighted, bidding Clara, at the same time, to be very cautious, as
men were so fickle, and as Conway Dalrymple, though the best fellow in
the world, was not, perhaps, altogether free from that common vice of
men. Indeed, it might have been surmised, from a word or two which Mrs
Broughton allowed to escape, that she considered poor Conway to be more
than ordinarily afflicted in that way. Miss Van Siever at first only
pouted, and said that there was nothing in it. 'There is something in
it, my dear, certainly,' said Mrs Dobbs Broughton; 'and there can be no
earthly reason why there should not be a great deal in it.' 'There is
nothing in it,' said Miss Van Siever, impetuously; 'and if you will
continue to speak of Mr Dalrymple in that way, I must give up the
picture.' 'As for that,' said Mrs Broughton, 'I conceive that we are
both of us bound to the young man now, seeing that he has given so much
time to the work.' 'I am not bound to him at all,' said Miss Van Siever.
Mrs Broughton also told Conway Dalrymple that she was delighted--oh, so
much delighted! He had obtained permission to come in one morning before
the time of sitting, so that he might work at his canvas independently
of his model. As was his custom, he made his own way upstairs and
commenced his work alone--having been expressly told by Mrs Broughton
that she would not come to him till she brought Clara with her. But she
did go up to the room in which the artist was painting, without waiting
for Miss Van Siever. Indeed, she was at this time so anxious as the
future welfare of her two young friends that she could not restrain
herself from speaking either to the one of to the other, whenever any
opportunity for such speech came round. To have left Conway Dalrymple at
work upstairs without going to him was impossible to her. So she went,
and then took the opportunity of expressing to her friend her ideas as
to his past and future conduct.
'Yes, it is very good; very good, indeed,' she said, standing before the
easel, and looking at the half-completed work. 'I do not know that you
ever did anything better.'
'I never can tell myself till a picture is finished whether it is going
to be good or not,' said Dalrymple, thinking really of his picture and
of nothing else.
'I am sure this will be good,' she said, 'and I suppose it is because
you have thrown so much heart into it. It is not mere industry that will
produce good work, nor yet skill, nor even genius; more than this is
required. The heart of the artist must be thrust with all its gushing
tides into the performance.' By this time he knew all the tones of her
voice and their various meanings, and immediately became aware that at
the present moment she was intent upon something beyond the picture. She
was preparing for a little scene, and was going to give him some advice.
He understood it all, but as he was really desirous of working at his
canvas, and was rather averse to having a scene at the moment, he made a
little attempt to disconcert her. 'It is the heart that gives success,'
she said, he was considering how he might best put an extinguisher upon
her romance for the occasion.
'Not at all, Mrs Broughton; success depends on elbow-grease.'
'On what, Conway?'
'On elbow-grease--hard work, that is--and I must work hard now if I mean
to take advantage of today's sitting. The truth is, I don't give enough
hours work to it.' And he leaned upon his stick, and daubed away bristly
at the background, and then stood for a moment looking at his canvas
with his head a little on one side, as though he could not withdraw his
attention for a moment from the thing he was doing.
'You mean to say, Conway, that you would rather that I should not speak
to you.'
'Oh, no, Mrs Broughton, I did not mean that at all.'
'I won't interrupt you at your work. What I have to say is perhaps of
no great moment. Indeed, words between you and me never can have much
importance now. Can they, Conway?'
'I don't see that at all,' said he, working away at his brush.
'Do you not? I do. They should never amount to more--they can never
amount to more than the common ordinary courtesies of life; what I call
the greetings and good-byeings of conversation.' She said this in a low,
melancholy tone of voice, not intending to be in any degree jocose. 'How
seldom is it that conversation between ordinary friends goes beyond
that.'
'Don't you think it does?' said Conway, stepping back and taking another
look at the picture. 'I find myself talking to all manner of people
about all manner of things.'
'You are different from me. I cannot talk to all manner of people.'
'Politics, you know, and art, and a little scandal, and the wars, with a
dozen other things, make talking easy enough, I think. I grant you this,
that it is very often a great bore. Hardly a day passes that I don't
wish to cut out somebody's tongue.'
'Do you wish to cut out my tongue, Conway?'
He began to perceive that she was determined to talk about herself, and
that there was no remedy. He dreaded it, not because he did not like the
woman, but from a conviction that she was going to make some comparison
between her and Clara Van Siever. In his ordinary humour he liked a
little pretence at romance, and was rather good at that sort of
love-making which in truth means anything but love. But just now he was
really thinking of matrimony, and had on this very morning acknowledged
to himself that he had become sufficiently attached to Clara Van Siever
to justify him in asking her to be his wife. In his present mood he was
not anxious for one of those tilts with blunted swords and half-severed
lances in the list of Cupid of which Mrs Dobbs Broughton was so fond.
Nevertheless, if she insisted that he should now descend into the arena
and go through the paraphernalia of a mock tournament, he must obey her.
It is the hardship of men that when called upon by women for romance,
they are bound to be romantic, whether the opportunity serves them or
not. A man must produce romance, or at least submit to it, when duly
summoned, even though he should have a sore throat or a headache. He is
a brute if he decline such an encounter--and feels that, should he so
decline persistently, he will ever after be treated as a brute. There
are many Potiphar's wives who never dream of any mischief, and Josephs
who are very anxious to escape, though they are asked to return only
whisper for whisper. Mrs Dobbs Broughton had asked him whether he wished
that her tongue should be cut out, and he had of course replied that her
words had always been a joy to him--never a trouble. It occurred to him
as he made his little speech that it would only have served her right if
he had answered her in quite another strain; but she was a woman, and
was young and pretty, and was entitled to flattery. 'They have always
been a joy to me,' he said, repeating his last words as he strove to
continue his work.
'A deadly joy,' she replied, not quite knowing what she herself meant.
'A deadly joy, Conway. I wish with all my heart that we had never known
each other.'
'I do not. I will never wish away the happiness of my life, even should
it be followed by misery.'
'You are a man, and if trouble comes upon you, you can bear it on your
shoulders. A woman suffers more, just because another's shoulders may
have to bear the burden.'
'When she has got a husband, you mean.'
'Yes--when she has a husband.'
'It's the same with a man when he has a wife.' Hitherto the
conversation had had so much of milk-and-water in its composition that
Dalrymple found himself able to keep it up and go on with his background
at the same time. If she could only be kept in the same dim cloud of
sentiment, if the hot rays of the sun of romance could be kept from
breaking through the mist till Miss Van Siever should come, it might
still be well. He had known her to wander about within the clouds for an
hour together, without being able to find her way into the light. 'It's
all the same with a man when he has got a wife,' he said. 'Of course one
has to suffer for two, when one, so to say, is two.'
'And what happens when one has to suffer for three?' she asked.
'You mean when a woman has children?'
'I mean nothing of the kind, Conway; and you must know that I do not,
unless your feelings are indeed blunted. But worldly success has, I
suppose, blunted them.'
'I rather fancy not,' he said. 'I think they are pretty nearly as sharp
as ever.'
'I know mine are. Oh, how I wish I could rid myself of them! But it
cannot be done. Age will not blunt them--I am sure of that,' said Mrs
Broughton. 'I wish it could.'
He had determined not to talk about herself if the subject could be in
any way avoided; but now he felt that he was driven up into a
corner;--now he was forced to speak to her of her own personality. 'You
have no experience yet as to that. How can you say what age will do?'
'Age does not go by years,' said Mrs Dobbs Broughton. 'We all know
that. "His hair was grey, but not with years." Look here, Conway,' and
she moved back her tresses from off her temples to show him that there
were grey hairs behind. He did not see them; and had they been very
visible she might not perhaps have been so ready to exhibit them. 'No
one can say that length of years has blanched them. I have no secrets
from you about my age. One should not be grey before one has reached
thirty.'
'I did not see a changed hair.'
''Twas the fault of your eyes, then, for there are plenty of them. And
what is it that has made them grey?'
'They say hot rooms will do it.'
'Hot rooms! No, Conway, it does not come from heated atmosphere. It
comes from a cold heart, a chilled heart, a frozen heart, a heart that
is all ice.' She was getting out of the cloud into the heat now, and he
could only hope that Miss Van Siever would come soon. 'The world is
beginning with you, Conway, and you are as old as I am. It is ending
with me, and yet I am as young as you are. But I do not know why I talk
of this. It is simply folly--utter folly. I had not meant to speak of
myself; but I did wish to say a few words to you of your own future. I
suppose I may still speak to you as a friend?'
'I hope you will always do that.'
'Nay--I will make no such promise. That I will always have a friend's
feeling for you, a friend's interest in your welfare, a friend's triumph
in your success--that I will promise. But friendly words, Conway, are
sometimes misunderstood.'
'Never by me,' said he.
'No, not by you--certainly not by you. I did not mean that. I did not
expect that you should misinterpret them.' Then she laughed
hysterically--a little low, gurgling, hysterical laugh; and after that
she wiped her eyes, and then she smiled, and then she put her hand very
gently upon his shoulder. 'Thank God, Conway, we are quite safe
there--are we not?'
He had made a blunder, and it was necessary that he should correct it.
His watch was lying in the trough of his easel, and he looked at it and
wondered why Miss Van Siever was not there. He had tripped, and he must
make a little struggle and recover his step. 'As I said before, it shall
never be misunderstood by me. I have never been vain enough to suppose
for a moment that there was any other feeling--not for a moment. You
women can be so careful, while we men are always off our guard! A man
loves because he cannot help it; but a woman has been careful, and
answers him--with friendship. Perhaps I am wrong to say that I never
thought of winning anything more; but I never think of winning more
now.' Why the mischief didn't Miss Van Siever come! In another five
minutes, despite himself, he would be on his knees, making a mock
declaration, and she would be pouring forth the vial of her mock wrath,
or giving him mock counsel as to the restraint of his passion. He had
gone through it all before, and was tired of it; but for his life he did
not know how to help himself.
'Conway,' said she, gravely, 'how dare you address me in such language.'
'Of course it is very wrong, I know that.'
'I'm not speaking of myself now. I have learned to think so little of
myself, as even to be indifferent to the feeling of injury you are doing
me. My life is a blank, and I almost think that nothing can hurt me
further. I have not heart left enough to break; no, not enough to be
broken. It is not of myself that I am thinking, when I ask you how do
you dare to address my in such language. Do you not know that it is an
injury to another?'
'To what other?' asked Conway Dalrymple, whose mind was becoming rather
confused, and who was not quite sure whether the other one was Mr Dobbs
Broughton, or somebody else.
'To that poor girl who is coming here now, who is devoted to you, and to
whom, I do not doubt, you have uttered words which ought to have made it
impossible to speak to me as you spoke not a moment since.'
Things were becoming very grave and difficult. They would have been
very grave, indeed, had not some god saved him by sending Miss Van
Siever to his rescue at this moment. He was beginning to think what he
would say in answer to the accusation now made, when his eager ear
caught the sound of her step upon the stairs; and before the pause in
conversation which the circumstances admitted had given place to the
necessity for further speech, Miss Van Siever had knocked at the door
and had entered the room. He was rejoiced, and I think that Mrs
Broughton did not regret the interference. It is always well that these
little dangerous scenes should be brought to sudden ends. The last
details of such romances, if drawn out to their natural conclusions, are
apt to be uncomfortable, if not dull. She did not want him to go down on
his knees, knowing that the getting up again is always awkward.
'Clara, I began to think you were never coming,' said Mrs Broughton,
with her sweetest smile.
'I began to think so myself also,' said Clara. 'And I believe this must
be the last sitting, or, at any rate, the last but one.'
'Is anything the matter at home?' said Mrs Broughton, clasping her hands
together.
'Nothing very much; mamma asked me a question or two this morning, and I
said I was coming here. Had she asked me why, I should have told her.'
'But what did she ask? What did she say?'
'She does not always make herself very intelligible. She complains
without telling you what she complains of. But she muttered something
about artists which was not complimentary, and I suppose therefore she
has a suspicion. She stayed ever so late this morning, and we left the
house together. She will ask some direct question tonight, or before
long, and then there will be an end of it.'
'Let us make the best of our time, then,' said Dalrymple; and the
sitting was arranged; Miss Van Siever went down on her knees with her
hammer in her hand, and the work began. Mrs Broughton had twisted a
turban round Clara's head, as she always did on these occasions, and
assisted to arrange the drapery. She used to tell herself as she did so,
that she was like Isaac, piling the fagots for her own sacrifice. Only
Isaac had piled them in ignorance, and she piled them conscious of the
sacrificial flames. And Isaac had been saved; whereas it was impossible
that the catching of any ram in any thicket would save her. But,
nevertheless, she arranged the drapery with all her skill, piling the
fagots ever so high for her own pyre. In the meantime Conway Dalrymple
painted away, thinking more of his picture than he did of one woman or
of the other.
After a while when Mrs Broughton had piled the fagots as high as she
could pile them, she got up from her seat and prepared to leave the
room. Much of the piling consisted, of course, in her own absence during
a portion of these sittings. 'Conway,' she said, as she went, 'if this
is to be the last sitting, or the last but one, you should make the most
of it.' Then she threw upon him a very peculiar glance over the head of
the kneeling Jael, and withdrew. Jael, who in those moments would be
thinking more of the fatigue of her position than anything else, did not
at all take home to herself the peculiar meaning of her friend's words.
Conway Dalrymple understood them thoroughly, and thought that he might
as well take the advice given to him. He had made up his mind to propose
to Miss Van Siever, and why should he not do so now? He went on with his
brush for a couple of minutes without saying a word, working as well as
he could work, and then resolved that he would at once begin the other
task. 'Miss Van Siever,' he said, 'I am afraid you are tired?'
'Not more than usually tired. It is fatiguing to be slaying Sisera by
the hour together. I do get to hate this block.' The block was the dummy
by which the form of Sisera was supposed to be typified.
'Another sitting will about finish it,' said he, 'so that you need not
positively distress yourself now. Will you rest yourself for a minute or
two?' He had already perceived that the attitude in which Clara was
posed before him was not one in which an offer of marriage could be
received and replied to with advantage.
'Thank you, I am not tired yet,' said Clara, not changing the fixed
glance of national wrath with which she regarded her wooden Sisera as
she held her hammer on high.
'But I am. There; we will rest for a moment.' Dalrymple was aware that
Mrs Dobbs Broughton, though she was very assiduous in piling her fagots,
never piled them for long together. If he did not make haste she would
be back upon them before he could get his word spoken. When he put down
his brush, and got up from his chair, and stretched out his arm as a man
does when he ceases for a moment from his work, Clara of course got up
also, and seated herself. She was used to her turban and her drapery,
and therefore thought of it not at all; and he also was used to it,
seeing her in it two or three times a week; but now that he intended to
accomplish a special purpose, the turban and drapery seemed to be in the
way. 'I do so hope you will like the picture,' he said, as he was
thinking of this.
'I don't think I shall. But you will understand that it is natural that
a girl should not like herself in such a portraiture as that.'
'I don't know why. I can understand that you specially should not like
the picture; but I think that most women in London in your place would
at any rate say that they did.'
'Are you angry with me?'
'What; for telling the truth? No, indeed.' He was standing opposite to
his easel, looking at the canvas, shifting his head about so as to
change the lights, and observing critically this blemish and that; and
yet he was all the while thinking how he had best carry out his purpose.
'It will have been a prosperous picture to me,' he said at last, 'if it
leads to the success of which I am ambitious.'
'I am told that all you do is successful now--merely because you do it.
That is the worst of success.'
'What is the worst of success?'
'That when won by merit it leads to further success, for the gaining of
which no merit is necessary.'
'It may be so in my case. If it is not, I shall have a very poor
chance. Clara, I think you must know that I am not talking about my
pictures.'
'I thought you were.'
'Indeed I am not. As for success in my profession, far as I am from
thinking I merit it, I feel tolerably certain that I shall obtain it.'
'You have obtained it.'
'I am in the way of doing so. Perhaps one out of ten struggling artists
is successful, and for him the profession is very charming. It is
certainly a sad feeling that there is so much of chance in the
distribution of the prizes. It is a lottery. But one cannot complain of
that when one has drawn the prize.' Dalrymple was not a man without
self-possession, nor was he readily abashed, but he found it easier to
talk of his possession than to make his offer. The turban was his
difficulty. He had told himself over and over again within the last five
minutes, that he would have long since said what he had to say had it
not been for that turban. He had been painting all his life from living
models--from women dressed up in this or that costume, to suit the
necessities of his picture--but he had never made love to any of them.
They had been simply models to him, and now he found that there was a
difficulty. 'Of that prize,' he said, 'I have made myself tolerably
sure; but as to the other prize, I do not know. I wonder whether I am to
have that.' Of course Miss Van Siever understood well what was the prize
of which he was speaking; and as she was a young woman with a will and
purpose of her own, no doubt she was ready prepared with an answer. But
it was necessary that the question should be put to her in properly
distinct terms. Conway Dalrymple certainly had not put his question in
properly distinct terms at present. She did not choose to make any
answer to his last words; and therefore simply suggested that as time
was pressing he had better get on with his work. 'I am quite ready now,'
said she.
'Stop half a moment. How much more you are thinking of the picture than
I am! I do not care twopence for the picture. I will slit the canvas
from top to bottom without a groan--without a single inner groan--if you
will let me.'
'For heaven's sake, do nothing of the kind! Why should you?'
'Just to show you that it is not for the sake of the picture that I come
here. Clara--' Then the door was opened, and Isaac appeared, nature
could pile no more. Conway Dalrymple, who had made his way almost up to
Clara's seat, turned round sharply towards his easel, in anger, at
having been disturbed. He should have been more grateful for all that
his Isaac had done for him, and have recognised the fact that the fault
had been with himself. Mrs Broughton had been twelve minutes out of the
room. She had counted them to be fifteen--having no doubt made a mistake
as to three--and had told herself that with such a one as Conway
Dalrymple, with so much of the work ready done to his hand for him,
fifteen minutes should have been amply sufficient. When we reflect what
her own thoughts must have been during the interval--what it is to have
to pile up such fagots as those, how she was, as it were, giving away a
fresh morsel of her own heart during each minute that she allowed Clara
and Conway Dalrymple to remain together, it cannot surprise us that her
eyes should have become dizzy, and that she should not have counted the
minutes with accurate correctness. Dalrymple turned to his picture
angrily, but Miss Van Siever kept her seat and did not show the
slightest emotion.
'My friends,' said Mrs Broughton, 'this will not do. This is not
working; this is not sitting.'
'Mr Dalrymple had been explaining to me the precarious nature of an
artist's profession,' said Clara.
'It is not precarious with him,' said Mrs Dobbs Broughton,
sententiously.
'Not in a general way, perhaps; but to prove the truth of his words he
was going to treat Jael worse than Jael treats Sisera.'
'I was going to slit the picture from the top to the bottom.'
'And why?' said Mrs Broughton, putting her hands to heaven in tragic
horror.
'Just to show Miss Van Siever how little I care about it.'
'And how little you care about her, too,' said Mrs Broughton.
'She might take that as she like.' After this there was another genuine
sitting, and the real work went on as though there had been no episode.
Jael fixed her face, and held her hammer as though her mind and heart
were solely bent on seeming to be slaying Sisera. Dalrymple turned his
eyes from the canvas to the model, and from the model to the canvas,
working with his hand all the while, as though that last pathetic
'Clara' had never been uttered; and Mrs Dobbs Broughton reclined on a
sofa, looking at them and thinking of her own singularly romantic
position, till her mind was filled with a poetic frenzy. In one moment
she resolved that she would hate Clara as a woman was never hated by
woman; and then there were daggers, and poison-cups, and strangling
cords in her eye. In the next she was as firmly determined that she
would love Mrs Conway Dalrymple as woman was never loved by woman; and
then she saw herself kneeling by a cradle, and tenderly nursing a baby,
of which Conway was to be the father and Clara the mother. And so she
went to sleep.
For some time Dalrymple did not observe this; but at last there was a
little sound--even the ill-nature of Miss Demolines could hardly have
called it a snore--and he became aware that for practical purposes he
and Miss Van Siever were again alone together. 'Clara,' he said in a
whisper. Mrs Broughton instantly aroused herself from her slumbers, and
rubbed her eyes. 'Dear, dear, dear,' she said, 'I declare it's past one.
I'm afraid I must turn you both out. One more sitting, I suppose, will
finish it, Conway?'
'Yes, one more,' said he. It was always understood that he and Clara
should not leave the house together, and therefore he remained painting
when she left the room. 'And now, Conway,' said Mrs Broughton, 'I
suppose that all is over?'
'I don't know what you mean by being all over.'
'No--of course not. You look at it in another light, no doubt.
Everything is beginning for you. But you must pardon me, for my heart is
distracted--distracted--distracted!' Then she sat down upon the floor,
and burst into tears. What was he to do? He thought that the woman
should either give him up altogether, or not give him up. All this fuss
about it was irrational! He would not have made love to Clara Van Siever
in her room if she had not told him to do so!
'Maria,' he said, in a very grave voice, 'any sacrifice that is required
on my part on your behalf I am ready to make.'
'No sir; the sacrifices shall all be made by me. It is the part of a
woman to be ever sacrificial!' Poor Mrs Dobbs Broughton! 'You shall give
up nothing. The world is at your feet, and you shall have
everything--youth, beauty, wealth, station, love--love; friendship
also, if you will accept it from one so poor, so broken, so secluded as
I shall be.' At each of the last words there had been a desperate sob;
and as she was still crouching in the middle of the room, looking up
into Dalrymple's face while he stood over her, the scene was one which
had much in it that transcended the doings of everyday life, much that
would be ever memorable, and much, I have no doubt, that was thoroughly
enjoyed by the principal actor. As for Conway Dalrymple, he was so
second-rate a personage in the whole thing, that it mattered little
whether he enjoyed it or not. I don't think he did enjoy it. 'And now,
Conway,' she said, 'I will give you some advice. And when in after-days
you shall remember this interview, and reflect how that advice was given
you--with what solemnity.'--here she clasped both her hands
together--'I think that you will follow it. Clara Van Siever will now
become your wife.'
'I do not know that at all,' said Dalrymple.
'Clara Van Siever will now become your wife,' repeated Mrs Broughton in
a louder voice, impatient of opposition. 'Love her. Cleave to her. Make
her flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone. But rule her! Yes, rule
her! Let her be your second self, but not your first self. Rule her!
Love her. Cleave to her. Do not leave her alone, to feed on her own
thoughts as I have done--as I have been forced to do. Now go. No,
Conway, not a word; I will not hear a word. You must go, or I must.'
Then she rose quickly from her lowly attitude, and prepared herself for
a dart to the door. It was better by far that he should go, and so he
went.
An American when he has spent a pleasant day will tell you that he has
had a 'good time'. I think that Mrs Dobbs Broughton, if she had ever
spoken the truth of that day's employment would have acknowledged that
she had had a 'good time'. I think that she enjoyed her morning's work.
But as for Conway Dalrymple, I doubt whether he did enjoy his morning's
work. 'A man may have too much of this sort of thing, and then he
becomes very sick of his cake.' Such was the nature of his thoughts as
he returned to his own abode.
CHAPTER LII
WHY DON'T YOU HAVE AN 'IT' FOR YOURSELF?
Of course it came to pass that Lily Dale and Emily Dunstable were soon
very intimate, and that they saw each other every day. Indeed, before
long they would have been living together in the same house had it not
been that the squire had felt reluctant to abandon the independence of
his own lodgings. When Mrs Thorne had pressed her invitation for the
second, and then for the third time, asking them both to come to her
large house, he had begged his niece to go and leave him alone. 'You
need not regard me,' he had said, speaking not with the whining voice of
complaint, but with that thin tinge of melancholy which was usual to
him. 'I am so much alone down in Allington, that you need not mind
leaving me.' but Lily would not go on those terms, and therefore they
still lived together in the lodgings. Nevertheless Lily was every day at
Mrs Thorne's house, and thus a great intimacy grew up between the girls.
Emily Dunstable had neither brother nor sister, and Lily's nearest male
relative in her own degree was now Miss Dunstable's betrothed husband.
It was natural therefore that they should at any rate try to like each
other. It afterwards came to pass that Lily did go to Mrs Thorne's
house, and she stayed there for a while; but when that occurred the
squire had gone back to Allington.
Among other generous kindnesses Mrs Thorne insisted that Bernard should
hire a horse for his cousin Lily. Emily Dunstable rode daily, and of
course Captain Dale rode with her;--and now Lily joined the party.
Almost before she knew what was being done she found herself provided
with hat and habit and horse and whip. It was a way with Mrs Thorne that
they who came within the influence of her immediate sphere should be
made to feel that the comforts and luxuries arising from her wealth
belonged to a common stock, and were the joint property of them all.
Things were not offered and taken and talked about, but they made their
appearance, and were used as a matter of course. If you go to stay at a
gentleman's house you understand that, as a matter of course, you will
be provided with meat and drink. Some hosts furnish you also with
cigars. A small number give you stabling and forage for you horse; and a
very select few mount you on hunting days, and send you out with a groom
and a second horse. Mrs Thorne went beyond all others in this
open-handed hospitality. She had enormous wealth at her command, and had
but few of those all-absorbing drains upon her wealth which in this
country make so many rich men poor. She had no family property--no place
to keep up in which she did not live. She had no retainers to be
maintained because they were retainers. She had neither sons nor
daughters. Consequently she was able to be lavish in her generosity; and
as her heart was very lavish, she would have given her friends gold to
eat had gold been good for eating. Indeed there was no measure in her
giving--unless when the idea came upon her that the recipient of her
favours was trading on them. Then she could hold her hand very stoutly.
Lily Dale had not liked the idea of being fitted out thus expensively.
A box at the opera was all very well, as it was not procured especially
for her. And tickets for other theatres did not seem to come unnaturally
for a night or two. But her spirit had militated against the hat and the
habit and the horse. The whip was a little present from Emily Dunstable,
and that of course was accepted with a good grace. Then there came the
horse --as though from the heavens; there seemed to be ten horses,
twenty horses, if anybody needed them. All these things seemed to flow
naturally into Mrs Thorne's establishment, like air through the windows.
It was very pleasant, but Lily hesitated when she was told that a habit
was to be given to her. 'My dear old aunt insists,' said Emily
Dunstable. 'Nobody ever thinks of refusing anything from her. If you
only knew what some people will take, and some people will even ask, who
have nothing to do with her at all!' 'But I have nothing to do with
her--in that way I mean,' said Lily. 'Oh, yes, you have,' said Emily.
'You and Bernard are as good as brother and sister, and Bernard are as
good as man and wife, and my aunt and I are as good as mother and
daughter. So you see, in a sort of way you are a child of the house.' So
Lily accepted the habit; but made a stand at the hat, and paid for that
out of her own pocket. When the squire had seen Lily on horseback he
asked her questions about it. 'It was a hired horse, I suppose?' he
said. 'I think it came direct from heaven,' said Lily. 'What do you
mean, Lily?' said the squire angrily. 'I mean that when people are so
rich and good-natured as Mrs Thorne it is not good inquiring where
things come from. All that I know is that the horses come out of Potts'
livery-stable. They talk of Potts as if he were a good-natured man who
provides horses for the world without troubling anybody.' Then the
squire spoke to Bernard about it, saying that he would insist on
defraying his niece's expenses. But Bernard swore that he should give
his uncle no assistance. 'I would not speak to her about such a thing
for all the world,' said Bernard. 'Then I shall,' said the squire.
In those days Lily thought much of Johnny Eames--gave to him perhaps
more of that thought which leads to love than she had ever given him
before. She still heard the Crawley question discussed every day. Mrs
Thorne, as we all know, was at this time a Barsetshire personage, and
was of course interested in Barsetshire subjects; and she was specially
anxious in the matter, having strong hopes with reference to the
marriage of Major Grantly and Grace, and strong hopes also that Grace's
father might escape the fangs of justice. The Crawley case was
constantly in Lily's ears, and as constantly she heard high praise
awarded to Johnny for his kindness in going after the Arabins. 'He must
be a fine young fellow,' said Mrs Thorne, 'and we'll have him down at
Chaldicotes some day. Old Lord De Guest found him out and made a friend
of him, and old Lord De Guest was no fool.' Lilly was not altogether
free from a suspicion that Mrs Thorne knew the story of Johnny's love
and was trying to serve Johnny--as other people had tried to do, very
ineffectually. When this suspicion came upon her she would shut her
heart against her lover's praises, and swear that she would stand by
those two letters which she had written in her book at home. But the
suspicion would not always be there, and there did come upon her a
conviction that her lover was more esteemed among men and women than she
had been accustomed to believe. Her cousin, Bernard Dale, who certainly
was regarded in the world as somebody, spoke of him as an equal; where
in former days Bernard had always regarded Johnny Eames as standing low
in the world's regards. Then Lily, when alone, would remember a certain
comparison which she once made between Adolphus Crosbie and John Eames,
when neither of the men had as yet pleaded their cause to her, and which
had been very much in favour of the former. She had then declared that
Johnny was a 'mere clerk'. She had a higher opinion of him now--a much
higher opinion, even though he could never be more to her than a friend.
In these days Lily's new ally, Emily Dunstable, seemed to Lily to be so
happy! There was in Emily a complete realisation of that idea of
ante-nuptial blessedness, of which Lily had often thought so much.
Whatever Emily did she did for Bernard; and, to give Captain Dale his
due, he received all the sweets which were showered upon him with
becoming signs of gratitude. I suppose it is always the case at such
times that the girl has the best of it, and on this occasion Emily
Dunstable certainly made the most of her happiness. 'I do envy you,'
Lily said one day. The acknowledgement seemed to have been extorted from
her involuntarily. She did not laugh as she spoke, or follow up what she
had said with other words intended to take away the joke of what she had
uttered--had it been a joke; but she sat silent, looking at the girl who
was rearranging flowers which Bernard had brought to her.
'I can't give him up to you, you know,' said Emily.
'I don't envy you him, but "it",' said Lily.
'Then go and get an "it" for yourself. Why don't you have an "it" for
yourself? You can have an "it" tomorrow, if you like--or two or three,
if all that I hear is true.'
'No I can't,' said Lily. 'Things have gone wrong with me. Don't ask me
anything more about it. Pray don't. I shan't speak of it if you do.'
'Of course I will not if you tell me I must not.'
'I do tell you so. I have been a fool to say anything about it.
However, I have got over my envy now, and am ready to go out with your
aunt. Here she is.'
'Things have gone wrong with me.' She repeated the same words to
herself over and over again. With all the efforts which she had made she
could not quite reconcile herself to the two letters which she had
written in the book. This coming up to London, and riding in the Park,
and going to the theatres, seemed to unsettle her. At home she had
schooled herself down into quiescence, and made herself think that she
believed that she was satisfied with the prospects of her life. But now
she was all astray again, doubting about herself, hankering after
something over and beyond that which seemed to be allotted to her--but,
nevertheless, assuring herself that she never would accept of anything
else.
I must not, if I can help it, let the reader suppose that she was
softening her heart to John Eames because John Eames was spoken well of
in the world. But with all of us, in the opinion which we form of those
around us, we take unconsciously the opinion of others. A woman is
handsome because the world says so. Music is charming to us because it
charms others. We drink our wines with other men's palates, and look at
our pictures with other men's eyes. When Lily heard John Eames praised
by all around her, it could not be but that she should praise him
too--not out loud, as others did, but in the silence of her heart. And
then his constancy to her had been so perfect! If that other one had
never come! If it could be that she might begin again, and that she
might be spared that episode in her life which had brought him and her
together!
'When is Mr Eames going to be back?' Mrs Thorne said at dinner one day.
On this occasion the squire was dining at Mrs Thorne's house; and there
were three or four others there--among them a Mr Harold Smith, who was
in Parliament, and his wife, and John Eames's especial friend, Sir
Raffle Buffle. The question was addressed to the squire, but the squire
was slow to answer, and it was taken up by Sir Raffle Buffle.
'He'll be back on the 15th,' said the knight, 'unless he means to play
truant. I hope he won't do that, as his absence has been a terrible
inconvenience to me.' Then Sir Raffle explained that John Eames was his
private secretary, and that Johnny's journey to the Continent had been
made with, and could not have been made without, his sanction. 'When I
came to hear of the story, of course I told him that he must go.
"Eames," I said, "take the advice of a man who knows the world.
Circumstanced as you are, your are bound to go." And he went.'
'Upon my word that was very good-natured of you,' said Mrs Thorne.
'I never keep a fellow to his desk who has really go important business
elsewhere,' said Sir Raffle. 'The country, I say, can afford to do as
much as that for her servants. But then I like to know that the business
is business. One doesn't choose to be humbugged.'
'I daresay you are humbugged, as you call it, very often,' said Harold
Smith.
'Perhaps so; perhaps I am; perhaps that is the opinion which they have
of me at the Treasury. But you were hardly long enough there, Smith, to
have learned much about it, I should say.'
'I don't suppose I should have known much about it, as you call it, if I
had stayed till Doomsday.'
'I daresay not; I daresay not. Men who begin as late as you did never
know what official like really means. Now I've been at it all my life,
and I think I do understand it.'
'It's not a profession I should like unless where it's joined with
politics,' said Harold Smith.
'But then it's apt to be so short,' said Sir Raffle Buffle. Now it had
once happened in the life of Mr Harold Smith that he had been in a
Ministry, but, unfortunately, that Ministry had gone out almost within a
week of the time of Mr Smith's adhesion. Sir Raffle and Mr Smith had
known each other for many years, and were accustomed to make civil
little speeches to each other in society.
'I'd sooner be a horse in a mill than have to go to an office every
day,' said Mrs Smith, coming to her husband's assistance. 'You, Sir
Raffle, have kept yourself fresh and pleasant through it all; but who
besides you ever did?'
'I hope I am fresh,' said Sir Raffle; 'and as for pleasantness, I will
leave that for you to determine.'
'There can be but one opinion,' said Mrs Thorne.
The conversation had strayed away from John Eames, and Lily was
disappointed. It was a pleasure to her when people talked of him in her
hearing, and as a question or two had been asked about him, making him
the hero of the moment, it seemed to her that he was being robbed of his
due when the little amenities between Mr and Mrs Harold Smith and Sir
Raffle Buffle banished his name from the circle. Nothing more, however,
was said of him at dinner, and I fear that he would have been altogether
forgotten throughout the evening, had not Lily Dale referred--not to
him, which she could not possibly have been induced to do--but to the
subject of his journey. 'I wonder whether poor Mr Crawley will be found
guilty?' She said to Sir Raffle upon in the drawing-room.
'I am afraid he will; I am afraid he will,' said Sir Raffle; 'and I
fear, my dear Miss Dale, that I must go further than that. I fear I must
express an opinion that he is guilty.'
'Nothing will ever make me think so,' said Lily.
'Ladies are always tender-hearted,' said Sir Raffle, 'and especially
young ladies--and pretty young ladies. I do not wonder that such should
be your opinion. But you see, Miss Dale, a man of business has to look
at these things in a business light. What I want to know is, where did
he get that cheque? He is bound to be explicit in answering that before
anybody can acquit him.'
'That is just what Mr Eames has gone abroad to learn.'
'It is very well for Eames to go abroad--though, upon my word, I don't
know whether I should not have given him different advice if I had known
how much I was to be tormented by his absence. The thing couldn't have
happened at a more unfortunate time;--the Ministry going out and
everything. But, as I was saying, it is all very well for him to do what
he can. He is related to them, and is bound to save the honour of his
relations if it be possible. I like him for going. I always liked him.
As I said to my friend De Guest, "That young man will make his way." And
I rather fancy that the chance word which I spoke then to my valued old
friend was not thrown away in Eames's favour. But, my dear Miss Dale,
where did Mr Crawley get that cheque? That's what I want to know. If you
can tell me that, then I can tell you whether or no he will be
acquitted.'
Lily did not feel a strong prepossession in favour of Sir Raffle, in
spite of his praise of John Eames. The harsh voice of the man annoyed
her, and his egotism offended her. When, much later in the evening, his
character came on for discussion between herself and Mrs Thorne and
Emily Dunstable, she had not a word to say in his favour. But still she
had been pleased to meet him, because he was the man with whom Johnny's
life was most specially concerned. I think that a portion of her dislike
to him arose from the fact that in continuing the conversation he did
not revert to his private secretary, but preferred to regale her with
stories of his own doings in wonderful cases which had partaken of
interest similar to that which now attached itself to Mr Crawley's case.
He had known a man who had stolen a hundred pounds, and had never been
found out; and another man who had been arrested for stealing
two-and-sixpence which was found afterwards sticking to a bit of butter
at the bottom of a plate. Mrs Thorne had heard all this, and had
answered him, 'Dear me, Sir Raffle,' she had said, 'what a great many
thieves you have had amongst your acquaintance!' This had rather
disconcerted him, and then there had been no more talking about Mr
Crawley.
It had been arranged on this morning that Mr Dale should return to
Allington and leave Lily with Mrs Thorne. Some special need of his
presence at home, real or assumed, had arisen, and he had declared that
he must shorten his stay in London by about half the intended period.
The need would not have been so pressing, probably, had he not felt that
Lily would be more comfortable with Mrs Thorne than in his lodgings in
Sackville Street. Lily had at first declared that she would return with
him, but everybody had protested against this. Emily Dunstable had
protested against it very stoutly; Mrs Dale herself had protested
against it by letter; and Mrs Thorne's protest had been quite imperious
in its nature. 'Indeed,' my dear, you'll do nothing of the kind. I'm
sure your mother wouldn't wish it. I look upon it as quite essential
that you and Emily should learn to know each other.' 'But we do know
each other; don't we, Emily?' said Lily. 'Not quite well yet,' said
Emily. Then Lily had laughed, and so the matter was settled. And now, on
this present occasion, Mr Dale was at Mrs Thorne's house for the last
time. His conscience had been perplexed about Lily's horse, and if
anything was to be said it must be said now. The subject was very
disagreeable to him, and he was angry with Bernard because Bernard had
declined to manage it for him after his own fashion. But he had told
himself so often that anything was better than a pecuniary obligation,
that he was determined to speak his mind to Mrs Thorne, and to beg her
to allow him to have his way. So he waited till the Harold Smiths were
gone, and Sir Raffle Buffle, and then, when Lily was apart with
Emily--for Bernard Dale had left them--he found himself at last alone
with Mrs Thorne.
'I can't be too much obliged to you,' he said, 'for your kindness to my
girl.'
'Oh, laws, that's nothing,' said Mrs Thorne. 'We look on her as one of
us now.'
'I'm sure she is grateful--very grateful; and so am I. She and Bernard
have been brought up so much together that it is very desirable that she
should not be unknown to Bernard's wife.'
'Exactly--that's just what I mean. Blood's thicker than water; isn't
it? Emily's child, if she has one, will be Lily's cousin.'
'Her first-cousin once removed,' said the squire, who was accurate in
these matters. Then he drew himself up in his seat and compressed his
lips together, and prepared himself for his task. It was very
disagreeable. Nothing, he thought, could be more disagreeable. 'I have a
little thing to speak about,' he said at last, 'which I hope will not
offend you.'
'About Lily?'
'Yes; about Lily.'
'I'm not very easily offended, and I don't know how I could possibly be
offended about her.'
'I'm an old-fashioned man, Mrs Thorne, and don't know much about the
ways of the world. I have always been down in the country, and maybe I
have prejudices. You won't refuse to humour one of them, I hope?'
'You're beginning to frighten me, Mr Dale; what is it?'
'About Lily's horse.'
'Lily's horse! What about her horse? I hope he's not vicious?'
'She is riding every day with your niece,' said the squire, thinking it
best to stick to his own point.
'It will do her all the good in the world,' said Mrs Thorne.
'Very likely. I don't doubt it. I do not in the least disapprove her
riding. But--'
'But what, Mr Dale?'
'I should be much obliged if I might be allowed to pay the livery-stable
keeper's bill.'
'Oh, laws a'mercy.'
'I daresay it may sound odd, but as I have a fancy about it, I'm sure
you'll gratify me.'
'Of course I will. I'll remember it. I'll make it all right with
Bernard. Bernard and I have no end of accounts--or shall have before
long--and we'll make an item of it. Then you can arrange with Bernard
afterwards.'
Mr Dale as he got up to go away felt that he was beaten, but he did not
know how to carry the battle any further on that occasion. He could not
take out his purse and put down the cost of the horse on the table. 'I
will then speak to my nephew about it,' he said, very gravely, as he
went away. And he did speak to his nephew about it, and even wrote to
him more than once. But it was all to no purpose. Mr Potts could not be
induced to give a separate bill, and--so said Bernard--swore at last
that he would furnish no account to anybody for horses that went to Mrs
Thorne's door except to Mrs Thorne herself.
That night Lily took leave of her uncle and remained at Mrs Thorne's
house. As things were now arranged she would, no doubt, be in London
when John Eames returned. If he should find her in town--and she told
herself that is she was in town he certainly would find her--he would,
doubtless, repeat to her the offer he had so often made before. She
never ventured to tell herself that she doubted as to the answer to be
made to him. The two letters were written in the book, and must remain
there. But she felt that she would have had more courage for persistency
down at Allington than she would be able to summon to her assistance up
in London. She knew she would be weak, should she be found by him alone
in Mrs Thorne's drawing-room. It would be better for her to make some
excuse and go home. She was resolved that she would not become his wife.
She could not extricate herself from the dominion of a feeling which she
believed to be love for another man. She had given a solemn promise both
to her mother and to John Eames that she would not marry that other man;
but in doing so she had made a solemn promise to herself that she would
not marry John Eames. She had sworn it and would keep her oath. And yet
she regretted it! In writing home to her mother the next day, she told
Mrs Dale that all the world was speaking well of John Eames--that John
had won for himself a reputation of his own, and was known far and wide
to be a noble fellow. She could not keep herself from praising John
Eames, though she knew that such praise might, and would, be used
against her at some future time. 'Though I cannot love him I will give
him his due,' she said to herself.
'I wish you would make up your mind to have an "it" for yourself,' Emily
Dunstable said to her again that night; 'a nice "it", so that I could
make a friend, perhaps a brother, of him.'
'I shall never have an "it" if I live to be a hundred,' said Lily Dale.
CHAPTER LIII
ROTTEN ROW
Lily had heard nothing as to the difficulty about her horse, and could
therefore enjoy her exercise without the drawback of feeling that her
uncle was subject to an annoyance. She was in the habit of going out
every day with Bernard and Emily Dunstable, and their party was
generally joined by others who would meet them at Mrs Thorne's house.
For Mrs Thorne was a very hospitable woman, and there were many who
liked well enough to go to her house. Late in the afternoon there would
be a great congregation of horses before the door--sometimes as many as
a dozen; and then the cavalcade would go off into the Park, and there it
would become scattered. As neither Bernard nor Miss Dunstable were
unconscionable lovers, Lily in these scatterings did not often find her
self neglected or lost. Her cousin would generally remain with her, and
as in those days she had no 'it' of her own she was well pleased that he
should do so.
But it so happened that on a certain afternoon she found herself riding
in Rotten Row alone with a certain stout gentleman whom she constantly
met at Mrs Thorne's house. His name was Onesiphorus Dunn, and he was
actually called Siph by his intimate friends. It had seemed to Lily that
everybody was an intimate friend of Mr Dunn's, and she was in daily fear
lest she should make a mistake and call him Siph herself. Had she done
so it would not have mattered in the least. Mr Dunn, had he observed it
at all, would neither have been flattered or angry. A great many young
ladies about London did call him Siph, and to him it was quite natural
that they should do so. He was an Irishman, living on the best of
everything in the world, with apparently no fortune of his own, and
certainly never earning anything. Everybody liked him, and it was
admitted on all sides that there was no safer friend in the world,
either for young ladies or young men, than Mr Onesiphorus Dunn. He did
not borrow money, and he did not encroach. He did like being asked out
to dinner, and he did think that they to whom he gave the light of his
countenance in town owed him the return of a week's run in the country.
He neither shot, nor hunted, nor fished, nor read, and yet he was never
in the way in any house. He did play billiards, and whist, and
croquet--very badly. He was a good judge of wine, and would occasionally
condescend to look after the bottling of it on behalf of some very
intimate friend. He was a great friend of Mrs Thorne's, with whom he
always spent ten days in the autumn at Chaldicotes.
Bernard and Emily were not insatiable lovers, but, nevertheless, Mrs
Thorne had thought it proper to provide a fourth in the riding-parties,
and had put Mr Dunn on this duty. 'Don't bother yourself about it,
Siph,' she had said; 'only if those lovers should go off philandering
out of sight, our little country lassie might find herself to be nowhere
in the Park.' Siph had promised to make himself useful, and had done so.
There had generally been so large a number in their party that the work
imposed on Mr Dunn had been very light. Lily had never found out that he
had been especially consigned to her as her own cavalier, but had seen
quite enough of him to be aware that he was a pleasant companion. To
her, thinking, as she ever was thinking, about Johnny Eames, Siph was
much more agreeable than might have been a younger man who would have
endeavoured to make her think about himself.
Thus when she found herself riding alone in Rotten Row with Siph Dunn,
she was neither disconcerted nor displeased. He had been talking to her
about Lord De Guest, whom he had known--for Siph knew everybody--and
Lily had begun to wonder whether he knew John Eames. She was making up
her mind that she would say something about the Crawley matter--not
intending of course to mention John Eames's name--when suddenly her
tongue was paralysed and she could not speak. At that moment they were
standing near a corner, where a turning path made an angle in the iron
rails, Mr Dunn having proposed that they should wait there for a few
minutes before they returned home, as it was probable that Bernard and
Miss Dunstable might come up. They had been there for some five or ten
minutes, and Lily had asked her first question about the
Crawleys--inquiring of Mr Dunn whether he had heard of a terrible
accusation which had been made against a clergyman in Barsetshire--when
on a sudden her tongue was paralysed. As they were standing, Lily's
horse was turned towards the diverging path, whereas Mr Dun was looking
the other way, towards Achilles and Apsley house. Mr Dunn was nearer the
railings, but though they were thus looking different ways they were so
placed that each could see the face of the other. Then, on a sudden,
coming slowly towards her along the diverging path and leaning on the
arm of another man, she saw--Adolphus Crosbie.
She had never seen him since a day on which she had parted from him with
many kisses--with warm, pressing, eager kisses--of which she had been
nowhat ashamed. He had then been to her almost as her husband. She had
trusted him entirely, and had thrown herself into his arms with full
reliance. There is often much of reticence on the part of a woman
towards a man to whom she is engaged, something also of shamefacedness
occasionally. There exists a shadow of doubt, at least of that
hesitation which shows that in spite of vows the woman knows that a
change may come, and that provision for such possible steps backward
should always be within her reach. But Lily had cast all such caution to
the winds. She had given herself to the man entirely, and had determined
that she would sink or swim, stand or fall, live or die, by him and by
his truth. He had been as false as hell. She had been in his arms,
clinging to him, kissing him, swearing that her only pleasure in the
world was to be with him--with him, her treasure, her promised husband;
and within a month, a week, he had been false to her. There had come
upon her crushing tidings, and she had for days wondered at herself that
they had not killed her. But she had lived, and had forgiven him, which
had been answered as the reader knows. But she had never seem him since
the day on which she had parted from him at Allington, without a doubt
as to his faith. Now he was before her, walking on the footpath, almost
within reach of her whip.
He did not recognise her, but as he passed on he did recognise Mr
Onesiphorus Dunn, and stopped to speak to him. Or it might have been
that Crosbie's friend Fowler Pratt stopped with this special object--for
Siph Dunn was an intimate friend of Fowler Pratt's. Crosbie and Siph
were also acquainted, but in those days Crosbie did not care much for
stopping his friends in the Park or elsewhere. He had become moody and
discontented, and was generally seen going about the world alone. On
this special occasion he was having a little special conversation about
money with his very old friend Fowler Pratt.
'What, Siph, is this you? You're always on horseback now,' said Fowler
Pratt.
'Well, yes; I have gone in a good deal for cavalry work this last month.
I've been lucky enough to have a young lady to ride with me.' This he
said in a whisper, which the distance of Lily justified. 'How d'ye do,
Crosbie? One doesn't often see you on horseback or on foot either.'
'I've something to do besides going to look or to be looked at,' said
Crosbie. Then he raised his eyes and saw Lily's side-face, and
recognised her. Had he seen her before he had been stopped on his way I
think he would have passed on, endeavouring to escape observation. But
as it was, his feet had been arrested before he knew of her close
vicinity, and now it would seen that he was afraid of her, and was
flying from her, were he at once to walk off, leaving his friend behind
him. And he knew that she had seen him, and had recognised him, and was
now suffering from his presence. He could not but perceive that it was
so from the fixedness of her face, and from the constrained manner in
which she gazed before her. His friend Fowler Pratt had never seen Miss
Dale, though he knew very much of her history. Siph Dunn knew nothing of
the history of Crosbie and his love, and was unaware that he and Lily
had ever seen each other. There was thus no help near her to extricate
her from her difficulty.
'When a man has any work to do in the world,' said Siph, 'he always
boasts of it to his acquaintance, and curses his luck to himself. I have
nothing to do and can go about to see and be seen;--and I must own that
I like it.'
Crosbie was still looking at Lily. He could not help himself. He could
not take his eyes from off her. He could see that she was as pretty as
ever, that she was but very little altered. She was, in truth, somewhat
stouter than in the old days, but of that he took no special notice.
Should he speak to her? Should he try to catch her eye, and then raise
his hat? Should he go up to her horse's head boldly, and ask her to let
bygones be bygones? He had an idea that of all courses which he could
pursue that was the one which she would approve the best--which would be
most efficacious for him, if with her anything from him might have any
efficacy. But he could not do it. He did not know what words he might
best use. Would it become him humbly to sue to her for pardon? Or should
he strive to express his unaltered love by some tone of his voice? Or
should he simply ask her after her health? He made one step towards her,
and he saw that the face became more rigid and more fixed than before,
and then he desisted. He told himself that he was simply hateful to her.
He thought that he could perceive that there was no tenderness mixed
with her unabated anger.
At this moment Bernard Dale and Emily came close upon him, and Bernard
saw him at once. It was through Bernard that Lily and Crosbie had come
to know each other. He and Bernard Dale had been fast friends in old
times, and had, of course, been bitter enemies since the day of
Crosbie's treachery. They had never spoken since, though they had often
seen each other, and Dale was not at all disposed to speak to him now.
The moment that he recognised Crosbie he looked across to his cousin.
For an instant, an idea flashed across him that he was there by her
permission--with her assent; but it required no second glance to show
him that this was not the case. 'Dunn,' he said, 'I think we will ride
on,' and he put his horse into a trot. Siph, whose ear was very
accurate, and who knew that something was wrong, trotted on with him,
and Lily, of course, was not left behind. 'Is there anything the
matter?' said Emily to her lover.
'Nothing specially the matter,' he replied; 'but you were standing in
company with the greatest blackguard that every lived, and I thought we
had better change our ground.'
'Bernard!' said Lily, flashing on him with all the fire which her eyes
could command. Then she remembered that she could not reprimand him for
the offence of such abuse in such a company; so she reined in her horse
and fell a-weeping.
Siph Dunn, with his wicked cleverness, knew the whole story at once,
remembering that he had once heard something of Crosbie having behaved
very ill to someone before he married Lady Alexandra De Courcy. He
stopped his horse also, falling a little behind Lily, so that he might
not be supposed to have seen her tears, and began to hum a tune. Emily
also, though not wickedly clever, understood something of it. 'If
Bernard says anything to make you angry, I will scold him,' she said.
Then the two girls rode on together in front, while Bernard fell back
with Siph Dunn.
'Pratt,' said Crosbie, putting his hand on his friend's shoulder as soon
as the party had ridden out of hearing, 'do you see that girl there in
the dark blue habit?'
'What, the one nearest to the path?'
'Yes; the one nearest to the path. That is Lily Dale.'
'Lily Dale!' said Fowler Pratt.
'Yes, that is Lily Dale.'
'Did you speak to her?' Pratt asked.
'No; she gave me no chance. She was there but a moment. But it was
herself. It seems so odd to me that I should have been thus so near her
again.' If there was any man to whom Crosbie could have spoken freely
about Lily Dale it was this man, Fowler Pratt. Pratt was the oldest
friend he had in the world, and it had happened that when he first woke
to the misery that he had prepared for himself in throwing over Lily and
betrothing himself to his late wife, Pratt had been the first person to
whom he had communicated his sorrow. Not that he had ever been really
open in his communications. It was not given to such men as Crosbie to
speak openly of themselves to their friends. Nor, indeed, was Fowler
Pratt one who was fond of listening to such tales. He had no such tales
to tell of himself, and he thought that men and women should go through
the world quietly, not subjecting themselves or their acquaintances to
anxieties and emotions from peculiar conduct. But he was conscientious,
and courageous also as well as prudent, and he had dared to tell Crosbie
that he was behaving very badly. He had spoken his mind plainly, and had
then given all the assistance in his power.
He paused a moment before he replied, weighing, like a prudent man, the
force of the words he was about to utter. 'It is much better as it is,'
he said. 'It is much better that you should be strangers for the
future.'
'I do not see that at all,' said Crosbie. They were both leaning on the
rails, and so they remained for the next twenty minutes. 'I do not see
that at all.'
'I feel sure of it. What could come of any renewed intercourse--even
if she would allow it?'
'I might make her my wife.'
'And do you think that you would be happy with her, or she with you,
after what has passed?'
'I do think so.'
'I do not. It might be possible that she could bring herself to marry
you. Women delight to forgive injuries. They like the excitement of
generosity. But she could never forget that you had a former wife, or
the circumstances under which you were married. And as for yourself, you
would regret it after the first month. How could you ever speak to her
of your love without speaking also of your shame? If a man does marry he
should at least be able to hold up his head before his wife.'
This was very severe, but Crosbie showed no anger. 'I think I should do
so,' he said--'after a while.'
'And then, about money? Of course you would have to tell her
everything.'
'Everything--of course.'
'It is like enough that she might not regard that--except that she would
feel that if you could not afford to marry her when you were
unembarrassed, you can hardly afford to do so when you are over your
head and ears in debt.'
'She has money now.'
'After all that has come and gone you would hardly seek Lily Dale
because you want to marry a fortune.'
'You are too hard on me, Pratt. You know that my only reason for
seeking her is that I love her.'
'I do not mean to be hard. But I have a very strong opinion that the
quarrels of lovers, when they are of so very serious a nature, are a bad
basis for the renewal of love. Come, let us go and dress for dinner. I
am going to dine with Mrs Thorne, the millionaire, who married a country
doctor, and who used to be called Miss Dunstable.'
'I never dine out anywhere now,' said Crosbie. And then they walked out
of the Park together. Neither of them, of course, knew that Lily Dale
was staying at the house at which Fowler was going to dine.
Lily, as she rode home, did not speak a word. She would have given
worlds to be able to talk, but she could not even make a beginning. She
heard Bernard and Siph Dunn chatting behind her, had hoped they would
continue to do so till she was safe within the house. They all used her
well, for no one tried to draw her into conversation. Once Emily said to
her, 'Shall we trot a little, Lily?' And then they moved on quickly, and
the misery was soon over. As soon as she was upstairs in the house she
got Emily by herself, and explained all the mystery in a word or two. 'I
fear I have made a fool of myself. That was the man to whom I was once
engaged.' 'What, Mr Crosbie?' said Emily, who had heard the whole story
from Bernard. 'Yes, Mr Crosbie; pray do not say a word of it to
anybody--not even to your aunt. I am better now, but I was such a fool.
No, dear; I won't go into the drawing-room. I'll go upstairs, and come
down ready for dinner.'
When she was alone she sat down in her habit and declared to herself
that she certainly would never become the wife of Mr Crosbie. I do not
know why she should make such a declaration. She had promised her mother
and John Eames that she would not do so, and that promise would
certainly have bound her without any further resolutions on her part.
But, to tell the truth, the vision of the man had disenchanted her. When
last she had seen him he had been as it were a god to her; and though,
since that day, his conduct to her had been as ungodlike as it well
might be, still the memory of the outward signs of his divinity had
remained with her. It is difficult to explain how it had come to pass
that the glimpse which she had had of him should have altered so much
within her mind;--why she should so suddenly have come to regard him in
an altered light. It was not simply that he looked to be older, and
because his face was careworn. It was not only that he had lost that
look of an Apollo which Lily had once in her mirth attributed to him. I
think it was chiefly that she herself was older, and could no longer see
a god in such a man. She had never regarded John Eames as being gifted
with divinity, and had therefore always been making comparisons to his
discredit. Any such comparison now would tend quite the other way.
Nevertheless she would adhere to the two letters in her book. Since she
had seen Mr Crosbie she was altogether out of love with the prospect of
matrimony.
She was in the room when Mr Pratt was announced, and she at once
recognised him as the man who had been with Crosbie. And when, some
minutes afterwards, Siph Dunn came into the room, she could see that in
their greeting allusion was made to the scene in the Park. But still it
was probable that this man would not recognise her, and, if he did so,
what would it matter? There were twenty people to sit down to dinner,
and the chances were that she would not be called upon to exchange a
word with Mr Pratt. She had now recovered herself, and could speak
freely to her friend Siph, and when Siph came and stood near her she
thanked him graciously for his escort in the Park. 'If it wasn't for
you, Mr Dunn, I really think I should not get any riding at all. Bernard
and Miss Dunstable have only one thing to think about, and certainly I
am not the one thing.' She thought it probable that if she could keep
Siph close to her, Mrs Thorne, who always managed things herself, might
apportion her out to be led to dinner by her good-natured friend. But
the fates were averse. The time had now come, and Lily was waiting her
turn. 'Mr Fowler Pratt, let me introduce to Miss Lily Dale,' said Mrs
Thorne. Lily could perceive that Mr Pratt was startled. The sign he gave
was the least possible sign in the world; but still it sufficed for Lily
to perceive it. She put her hand upon his arm, and walked down with him
to the dining-room without giving him the slightest cause to suppose
that she knew who he was.
'I think I saw you in the park riding?' he said.
'Yes, I was there; we go nearly every day.'
'I never ride; I was walking.'
'It seems to me that the people who don't go there to walk, but to stand
still,' said Lily. 'I cannot understand how so many people can bear to
loiter about in that way--leaning on the rails and doing nothing.'
'It is about as good as riding, and costs less money. That is all that
can be said for it. Do you live chiefly in town?'
'Oh, dear no; I live altogether in the country. I'm only up here
because a cousin is going to be married.'
'Captain Dale, you mean--to Miss Dunstable?' said Fowler Pratt.
'When they have been joined together in holy matrimony, I shall go down
to the country, and never, I suppose, come up to London again.'
'You do not like London?'
'Not as a residence, I think,' said Lily. 'But of course one's likings
and dislikings on such a matter depend on circumstances. I live with my
mother, and all my relatives live near us. Of course I like the country
best, because they are there.'
'Young ladies so often have a different way of looking at this subject.
I shouldn't wonder if Miss Dunstable's views about it were altogether of
another sort. Young ladies generally expect to be taken away from their
father and mothers, and uncles and aunts.'
'But you see I expect to be left with mine,' said Lily. After that she
turned as much away from Mr Fowler Pratt as she could, having taken an
aversion to him. What business had he to talk to her about being taken
away from uncles and aunts? She had seen him with Mr Crosbie, and it
might be possible that they were intimate friends. It might be that Mr
Pratt was asking questions in Mr Crosbie's interests. Let that be as it
might, she would answer no more questions from him further than ordinary
good breeding should require of her.
'She is a nice girl, certainly,' said Fowler Pratt to himself, as he
walked home, 'and I have no doubt would make a good, ordinary, everyday
wife. But she is not such a paragon that a man should condescend to
grovel in the dirt for her.'
That night Lily told Emily Dunstable the whole of Mr Crosbie's history
as far as she knew it, and also explained her new aversion to Mr Fowler
Pratt. 'They are very great friends,' said Emily. 'Bernard has told me
so; and you may be sure that Mr Pratt knew the whole history before he
came here. I am so sorry that my aunt asked him.'
'It does not signify in the least,' said Lily. 'Even if I were to meet
Mr Crosbie I don't think I should make such a fool of myself again. As
it is, I can only hope that he did not see it.'
'I am sure he did not.'
Then there was a pause, during which Lily sat with her face resting on
both her hands. 'It is wonderful how much he has altered,' she said at
last.
'Think how much he has suffered.'
'I suppose I am altered as much, only I do not see it myself.'
'I don't know what you were, but I don't think you can have changed
much. You no doubt have suffered too, but not as he has done.'
'Oh, as for that, I have done very well. I think I'll go to bed now.
The riding makes me so sleepy.'
CHAPTER LIV
THE CLERICAL COMMISSION
It was at last arranged that the five clergymen selected should meet at
Dr Tempest's house at Silverbridge to make inquiry and report to the
bishop whether the circumstances connected with the cheque for twenty
pounds were of such a nature as to make it incumbent on him to institute
proceedings against Mr Crawley in the Court of Arches. Dr Tempest had
acted upon the letter which he had received from the bishop, exactly as
though there had been no meeting at the palace, no quarrel to the death
between him and Mrs Proudie. He was a prudent man, gifted with the great
power of holding his tongue, and had not spoken a word, even to his
wife, of what had occurred. After such a victory our old friend the
archdeacon would have blown his own trumpet loudly among his friends.
Plumstead would have heard of it instantly, and the paean would have
been sung out in the neighbouring parishes of Eiderdown, Stogpingum, and
St Ewolds. The High Street of Barchester would have known of it, and the
very bedesmen in Hiram's Hospital would have told among themselves the
terrible discomfiture of the bishop and his lady. But Dr Tempest spoke
no word of it to anybody. He wrote letters to the two clergymen named by
the bishop, and himself selected two others out of his own rural
deanery, and suggested to them all a day at which a preliminary meeting
should be held at his own house. The two who were invited by him were Mr
Oriel, the rector of Greshamsbury, and Mr Robarts, the vicar of Framley.
They all assented to the proposition, and on the day named assembled
themselves at Silverbridge.
It was now April, and the judges were to come into Barchester before the
end of the month. What then could be the use of this ecclesiastical
inquiry exactly at the same time? Men and women declared that it was a
double prosecution, and that a double prosecution for the same offence
was a course of action opposed to the feelings and the traditions of the
country. Miss Anne Prettyman went so far as to say that it was
unconstitutional, and Mary Walker declared that no human being except
Mrs Proudie would ever have been guilty of such cruelty. 'Don't tell me
about the bishop, John,' she said, 'the bishop is a cypher.' 'You may be
sure Dr Tempest would not have a hand in it if it were not right,' said
John Walker. 'My dear Mr John,' said Miss Anne Prettyman, 'Dr Tempest is
as hard as a bar of iron, and always was. But I am surprised that Mr
Robarts should take a part in it.'
In the meantime, at the palace, Mrs Proudie had been reduced to learn
what was going on from Mr Thumble. The bishop had never spoke a word to
her respecting Mr Crawley since that terrible day on which Dr Tempest
had witnessed his imbecility--having absolutely declined to answer when
his wife had mentioned the subject. 'You won't speak to me about it, my
dear?' she had said to him, when he had thus declined, remonstrating
more in sorrow than in anger. 'No; I won't,' the bishop had replied;
'there has been a great deal too much talking about it. It has broken my
heart already, I know.' These were very bad days in the palace. Mrs
Proudie affected to be satisfied with what was being done. She talked to
Mr Thumble about Mr Crawley and the cheque, as though everything were
arranged quite to her satisfaction--as though everything, indeed, had
been arranged by herself. But everybody about the house could see that
the manner of the woman was altogether altered. She was milder than
usual with the servants and was almost too gentle in her usage of her
husband. It seemed as though something had happened to frighten her and
break her spirit, and it was whispered about through the palace that she
was afraid that the bishop was dying. As for him, he hardly left his own
sitting-room in these days, except when he joined the family at
breakfast and at dinner. And in his study he did little or nothing. He
would smile when his chaplain went to him, and give some trifling verbal
directions; but for days he scarcely ever took a pen in his hands, and
though he took up many books he read hardly a page. How often he told
his wife in those days that he was broken-hearted, no one but his wife
ever knew.
'What has happened that you should speak like that?' she said to him
once. 'What has broken your heart?'
'You,' he replied. 'You; you have done it.'
'Oh, Tom,' she said, going back into the memory of very far distant days
in her nomenclature, 'how can you speak to me so cruelly as that! That
it should come to that between you and me after all!'
'Why did you not go away and leave me that day when I told you?'
'Did you ever know a woman who liked to be turned out of a room in her
own house?' said Mrs Proudie. When Mrs Proudie had condescended so far
as this, it must be admitted that in those days there was a great deal
of trouble in the palace.
Mr Thumble, on the day before he went to Silverbridge, asked for an
audience with the bishop in order that he might receive instructions. He
had been strictly desired to do this by Mrs Proudie, and had not dared
to disobey her injunctions--thinking, however, himself, that his doing
so was inexpedient. 'I have got nothing to say to you about it; not a
word,' said the bishop crossly. 'I thought that perhaps you might like
to see me before I started,' pleaded Mr Thumble very humbly. 'I don't
want to see you at all,' said the bishop; 'you are going there to
exercise your own judgment--if you have got any; and you ought not to
come to me.' After that Mr Thumble began to think that Mrs Proudie was
right, and that the bishop was near dissolution.
Mr Thumble and Mr Quiverful went over to Silverbridge together in a gig,
hired from the Dragon of Wantly--as to the cost of which there arose
among them a not unnatural apprehension which amounted to dismay. 'I
don't mind it so much for once,' said Mr Quiverful, 'but if many such
meetings are necessary, I for one can't afford it, and I won't do it. A
man with my family can't allow himself to be money out of pocket in that
way.' 'It is hard,' said Mr Thumble. 'She ought to pay it herself, out
of her own pocket,' said Mr Quiverful. He had had many concerns with the
palace when Mrs Proudie was in the full swing of her dominion, and had
not as yet begun to suspect that there might possibly be change.
Mr Oriel and Mr Robarts were already sitting with Dr Tempest when the
other two clergymen were shown into the room. When the first greetings
were over luncheon was announced, and while they were eating not a word
was said about Mr Crawley. The ladies of the family were not present,
and the five clergymen sat round the table alone. It would have been
difficult to have got together five gentlemen less likely to act with
one mind and spirit;--and perhaps it was all the better for Mr Crawley
that it should be so. Dr Tempest himself was a man peculiarly capable of
exercising the function of a judge in the matter, had he sat alone as a
judge; but he was one who would be almost sure to differ from others who
sat as equal assessors with him. Mr Oriel was a gentleman at all points;
but he was very shy, very reticent, and altogether uninstructed in the
ordinary daily intercourse of man with man. Anyone knowing him might
have predicted of him that he would be sure on such an occasion as this
to be found floundering in a sea of doubts. Mr Quiverful was the father
of a large family, whose life had been devoted to fighting a cruel world
on behalf of his wife and children. That fight he had fought bravely;
but it had left him no energy for any other business. Mr Thumble was a
poor creature--so poor a created that, in spite of a small restless
ambition to be doing something, he was almost cowed by the hard lines of
Dr Tempest's brow. The Rev. Mr Robarts was a man of the world, and a
clever fellow, and did not stand in awe of anybody--unless it might be,
in a very moderate degree, of his patrons the Luftons, whom he was bound
to respect; but his cleverness was not of the cleverness needed by a
judge. He was essentially a partisan, and would be sure to vote against
the bishop in such a matter as this now before him. There was a palace
faction in the diocese, and an anti-palace faction. Mr Thumble and Mr
Quiverful belonged to one, and Mr Oriel and Mr Robarts to the other. Mr
Thumble was too weak to stick to his faction against the strength of
such a man as Dr Tempest. Mr Quiverful would be too indifferent to do
so--unless his interest was concerned. Mr Oriel would be too
conscientious to regard his own side on such an occasion as this. But
Mark Robarts would be sure to support his friends and oppose his
enemies, let the case be what it might. 'Now, gentlemen, if you please,
we will go into the other room,' said Dr Tempest. They went into the
other room, and there they found five chairs arranged for them round the
table. Not a word had as yet been said about Mr Crawley, and no one of
the four strangers knew whether Mr Crawley was to appear before them on
that day or not.
'Gentlemen,' said Dr Tempest, seating himself at once in an armchair
placed at the middle of the table, 'I think it will be well to explain
to you at first what, as I regard the matter, is the extent of the work
which we are called upon to perform. It is of its nature very
disagreeable. It cannot but be so, be it ever so limited. Here is a
brother clergyman and a gentleman, living among us, and doing his duty,
as we are told, in a most exemplary manner; and suddenly we hear that he
is accused of theft. The matter is brought before the magistrates, of
whom I myself was one, and he was committed for trial. There is
therefore prima facie evidence of his guilt. But I do not think that we
need to go into the question of his guilt at all.' When he said this,
the other four all looked up at him in astonishment. 'I thought that we
had been summoned here for that purpose,' said Mr Robarts. 'Not at all,
as I take it,' said the doctor. 'Were we to commence any such inquiry,
the jury would have given their verdict before we could come to any
conclusion; and it would be impossible for us to oppose that verdict
whether it declares this unfortunate gentleman to be innocent or to be
guilty. If the jury shall say that he is innocent, there is an end of
the matter altogether. He would go back to his parish amidst the
sympathy and congratulations of his friends. That is what we all should
wish.'
'Of course it is,' said Mr Robarts. They all declared that was their
desire, as a matter of course; and Mr Thumble said it louder than anyone
else.
'But if he is found guilty, then will come that difficulty to the
bishop, in which we are bound to give him any assistance within our
power.'
'Of course we are,' said Mr Thumble, who, having heard his own voice
once, and having liked the sound, thought that he might creep into a
little importance by using it on any occasion that opened itself for
him.
'If you will allow me, sir, I will venture to state my views shortly as
I can,' said Dr Tempest. 'That may perhaps be the most expedient course
for us all in the end.'
'Oh, certainly,' said Mr Thumble. 'I didn't mean to interrupt.'
'In the case of his being found guilty,' continued the doctor, 'there
will arise the question whether the punishment awarded to him by the
judge should suffice for ecclesiastical purposes. Suppose, for instance,
that he should be imprisoned for two months, should he be allowed to
return to his living at the expiration of that term?'
'I think he ought,' said Mr Robarts:--'considering all things.'
'I don't see why he shouldn't,' said Mr Quiverful.
Mr Oriel sat listening patiently, and Mr Thumble looked up to the
doctor, expecting to hear some opinion expressed by him with which he
might coincide.
'There certainly are reasons why he should not,' said Dr Tempest;
'though I by no means say that those reasons are conclusive in the
present case. In the first place, a man who has stolen money can hardly
be a fitting person to teach others not to steal.'
'You must look to the circumstances,' said Robarts.
'Yes, that is true; but just bear with me for a moment. It cannot, at
any rate, be thought that a clergyman should come out of prison and go
to his living without any notice from his bishop, simply because he has
already been punished by the common law. If this were so, a clergyman
might be fined ten days running for being drunk in the street--five
shillings each time --and at the end of that time might set his bishop
at defiance. When a clergyman has shown himself to be utterly unfit for
clerical duties, he must not be held to be protected from ecclesiastical
censure or from deprivation by the action of the common law.'
'But Mr Crawley has not shown himself to be unfit,' said Robarts.
'That is begging the question, Robarts,' said the doctor.
'Just so,' said Mr Thumble. Then Mr Robarts gave a look at Mr Thumble,
and Mr Thumble retired into his shoes.
'That is the question as to which we are called upon to advise the
bishop,' continued Dr Tempest. 'And I must say that I think the bishop
is right. If he were to allow the matter to pass by without notice--that
is to say, in the event of Mr Crawley being pronounced guilty by a
jury--he would, I think, neglect in his duty. Now I have been informed
that the bishop has recommended Mr Crawley to desist from his duties
till the trial be over, and that Mr Crawley has declined to take the
bishop's advice.'
'That is true,' said Mr Thumble. 'He altogether disregarded the
bishop.'
'I think he was quite right,' said Mr Robarts.
'A bishop in almost all cases is entitled to the obedience of his
clergy,' said Mr Oriel.
'I must say I agree with you, sir,' said Mr Thumble.
'Be that as it may,' continued the doctor, 'the bishop feels that it may
be his duty to oppose the return of Mr Crawley to his pulpit, and that
he can oppose it in no other way than by proceeding against Mr Crawley
under the Clerical Offences Act. I propose, therefore, that we should
invite Mr Crawley to attend here--'
'Mr Crawley is not coming here today, then?' said Mr Robarts.
'I thought it useless to ask for his attendance until we had settled on
our own course of action,' said Dr Tempest. 'If we are all agreed, I
will beg him to come here on this day week, when we will meet again. And
we will then ask him whether he will submit himself to the bishop's
decision, in the event of the jury finding him guilty. If he should
decline to do so, we can only then form our opinion as to what will be
the bishop's duty by reference to the facts as they are elicited at the
trial. If Mr Crawley should choose to make to us any statement as to his
own case, of course we shall be willing to receive it. That is my idea
of what had better be done; and now, if any gentleman has any other
proposition to make, of course we shall be pleased to hear him.' Dr
Tempest, as he said this, looked round upon his companions, as though
his pleasure, under the circumstances suggested by himself, would be
very doubtful.
'I don't suppose we can do anything better,' said Mr Robarts. 'I think
it a pity, however, that any steps should have been taken by the bishop
before the trial.'
'The bishop has been placed in a very delicate position,' said Mr
Thumble, pleading for his patron.
'I don't know the meaning of the word "delicate",' said Robarts. 'I
think his duty was very clear, to avoid interference whilst the matter
is, so to say, before the judge.'
'Nobody has anything else to propose?' said Dr Tempest. 'Then I will
write to Mr Crawley and you, gentlemen, will perhaps do me the honour of
meeting me here at one o'clock this day week.' Then the meeting was
over, and the four clergymen having shaken hands with Dr Tempest in the
hall, all promised that they would return on that day week. So far, Dr
Tempest had carried his point exactly as he might have done had the four
gentlemen been represented by the chairs on which they sat.
'I shan't come again all the same, unless I know where I'm to get my
expenses,' said Mr Quiverful, as he got into the gig.
'I shall come,' said Mr Thumble, 'because I think it a duty. Of course
it is a hardship.' Mr Thumble liked the idea of being joined with such
men as Dr Tempest, and Mr Oriel, and Mr Robarts, and would any day have
paid the expense of a gig from Barchester to Silverbridge out of his own
pocket, for the sake of sitting with such benchfellows on any clerical
inquiry.
'One's first duty is to one's own wife and family,' said Mr Quiverful.
'Well, yes; in a way, of course, that is quite true, Mr Quiverful; and
when we know how very inadequate are the incomes of the working clergy,
we cannot but feel ourselves to be, if I may so say, put upon, when we
have to defray the expenses incidental to special duties out of our own
pockets. I think, you know--I don't mind saying this to you--that the
palace should have provided us with a chaise and pair.' This was
ungrateful on the part of Mr Thumble, who had been permitted to ride
miles upon miles to various outlying clerical duties upon the bishop's
worn-out cob. 'You see,' continued Mr Thumble, 'you and I go specially
to represent the palace, and the palace ought to remember that. I think
there ought to have been a chaise and pair; I do indeed.'
'I don't care much what the conveyance is,' said Mr Quiverful; 'but I
certainly shall pay nothing more out of my own pocket;--certainly I
shall not.'
'The result will be that the palace will be thrown over if they don't
take care,' said Mr Thumble. 'Tempest, however, seems to be pretty
steady. Tempest, I think, is steady. You see he is getting tired of
parish work, and would like to go into the close. That's what he is
looking out for. Did you ever see such a fellow as that Robarts--just
look at him;--quite indecent, wasn't he? He thinks he can have his own
way in everything just because his sister is married to a lord. I do
hate to see all that meanness.'
Mark Robarts and Caleb Oriel left Silverbridge in another gig by the
same road, and soon passed their brethren, as Mr Robarts was in the
habit of driving a large, quick-stepping horse. The last remarks were
being made as the dust from the vicar of Framley's wheels saluted the
faces of the two slower clergymen. Mr Oriel had promised to dine and
sleep at Framley, and therefore returned in Mr Robarts's gig.
'Quite unnecessary, all this fuss; don't you think so?' said Mr Robarts.
'I am not quite sure,' said Mr Oriel. 'I can understand that the bishop
may have found a difficulty.'
'The bishop indeed! The bishop doesn't care two straws about it. It's
Mrs Proudie! She has put her finger on the poor man's neck because he
has not put his neck beneath her feet; and now she thinks she can crush
him--as she would crush you or me, if it were in her power. That's about
the long and the short of the bishop's solicitude.'
'You are very hard on him,' said Mr Oriel.
'I know him;--and am not all hard on him. She is hard upon him if you
like. Tempest is fair. He is very fair, and as long as no one meddles
with him he won't do amiss. I can't hold my tongue always, but I often
know that it is better that I should.'
Dr Tempest said not a word to anyone on the subject, not even in his own
defence. And yet he was sorely tempted. On the very day of the meeting
he dined at Mr Walker's in Silverbridge, and there submitted to be
talked to by all the ladies and most of the gentlemen present, without
saying a word in his own defence. And yet a word or two would have been
so easy and so conclusive.
'Oh, Dr Tempest,' said Mary Walker, 'I am so sorry that you have joined
the bishop.'
'Are you, my dear?' said he. 'It is generally thought well that a
parish clergyman should agree with his bishop.'
'But you know, Mr Tempest, that you don't agree with your bishop
generally.'
'Then it is the more fortunate that I shall be able to agree with him on
this occasion.'
Major Grantly was present at the dinner, and ventured to ask the doctor
in the course of the evening what he thought would be done. 'I should
not venture to ask such a question, Dr Tempest,' he said, 'unless I had
the strongest possible reason to justify my anxiety.'
'I don't know that I can tell you anything, Major Grantly,' said the
doctor. 'We did not even see Mr Crawley today. But the real truth is
that he must stand or fall as the jury shall find him guilty or not
guilty. It would be the same in any profession. Could a captain in the
army hold up his head in his regiment after he had been tried and found
guilty of stealing twenty pounds?'
'I don't think he could,' said the major.
'Neither can a clergyman,' said the doctor. 'The bishop can neither
make him nor mar him. It is the jury that must do it.'
CHAPTER LV
FRAMLEY PARSONAGE
At this time Grace Crawley was at Framley Parsonage. Old Lady Lufton's
strategy had been quite intelligible, but some people said that in point
of etiquette and judgment and moral conduct, it was indefensible. Her
vicar, Mr Robarts, had been selected to be one of the clergymen who was
to sit in ecclesiastical judgment upon Mr Crawley, and while he was so
sitting Mr Crawley's daughter was staying in Mr Robarts's house as
visitor with his wife. It might be that there was no harm in this. Lady
Lufton, when the apparent impropriety was pointed out to her by no less
a person than Archdeacon Grantly, ridiculed the idea. 'My dear
archdeacon,' Lady Lufton had said, 'we all know the bishop to be such a
fool and the bishop's wife to be such a knave, that we cannot allow
ourselves to be governed in this matter by ordinary rules. Do you not
think that it is expedient to show how utterly we disregard his judgment
and her malice?' The archdeacon had hesitated much before he spoke to
Lady Lufton, whether he should address himself to her or to Mr
Robarts--or indeed to Mrs Robarts. But he had become aware that the
proposition as to the visit had originated with Lady Lufton, and he had
therefore decided on speaking to her. He had not condescended to say a
word as to his son, nor would he so condescend. Nor could he go from
Lady Lufton to Mr Robarts, having once failed with her ladyship. Indeed,
in giving him his due, we must acknowledge that his disapprobation of
Lady Lufton's strategy arose rather from his true conviction as to its
impropriety, than from any fear lest this attention paid to Miss Crawley
should tend to bring about her marriage with his son. By this time he
hated the very name of Crawley. He hated it the more because in hating
it he had to put himself for the time on the same side with Mrs Proudie.
But for all that he would not condescend to any unworthy mode of
fighting. He thought it wrong that the young lady should be invited to
Framley Parsonage at this moment, and he said so to the person who had,
as he thought, in truth, given the invitation; but he would not allow
his own personal motives to induce him to carry on the argument with
Lady Lufton. 'The bishop is a fool,' he said, 'and the bishop's wife is
a knave. Nevertheless I would not have had the young lady over to
Framley at this moment. If, however, you think it right and Robarts
thinks it right, there is an end of it.'
'Upon my word we do,' said Lady Lufton.
I am induced to think that Mr Robarts was not quite confident of the
expediency of what he was doing by the way in which he mentioned to Mr
Oriel the fact of Miss Crawley's presence at the parsonage as he drove
that gentleman home in his gig. They had been talking about Mr Crawley
when he suddenly turned himself round, so that he could look at his
companion, and said, 'Miss Crawley is staying with us at the parsonage
at the present moment.'
'What! Mr Crawley's daughter?' said Mr Oriel, showing plainly by his
voice that the tidings had much surprised him.
'Yes; Mr Crawley's daughter.'
'Oh, indeed. I did not know that you were on those terms with the
family.'
'We have known them for the last seven or eight years,' said Mark; 'and
though I should be giving a false notion if I were to say that I myself
have known them intimately--for Crawley is a man whom it is quite
impossible to know intimately--yet the womankind at Framley have known
them. My sister stayed with them over at Hogglestock for some time.'
'What; Lady Lufton?'
'Yes; my sister Lucy. It was just before her marriage. There was a lot
of trouble, and the Crawleys were all ill, and she went to nurse them.
And then the old lady took them up, and altogether there came to be a
sort of feeling that they were to be regarded as friends. They are
always in trouble, and now in this special trouble the women between
them have thought it best to have the girl over at Framley. Of course I
had a kind of feeling about this commission; but as I knew that it would
make no difference with me I did not think it necessary to put my veto
upon the visit.' Mr Oriel said nothing further, but Mark Robarts was
aware that Mr Oriel did not quite approve of the visit.
That morning old Lady Lufton herself had come across to the parsonage
with the express view of bidding all the party to come across to the
hall to dine. 'You can tell Mr Oriel, Fanny, with Lucy's compliments,
how delighted she will be to see him.' Old Lady Lufton always spoke of
her daughter-in-law as the mistress of the house. 'If you think he is
particular, you know, we will send a note across.' Mrs Robarts said that
she supposed Mr Oriel would not be particular, but, looking at Grace,
made some faint excuse. 'You must come, my dear,' said Lady Lufton.
'Lucy wishes it particularly.' Mrs Robarts did not know how to say that
she would not come; and so the matter stood--when Mrs Robarts was called
upon to leave the room for a moment, and Lady Lufton and Grace were left
alone.
'Dear Lady Lufton,' said Grace, getting up suddenly from her chair;
'will you do me a favour--a great favour?' She spoke with an energy
which quite surprised the old lady, and caused her almost to start from
her seat.
'I don't like making promises,' said Lady Lufton; 'but anything I can do
with propriety, I will.'
'You can do this. Pray let me stay here today. You don't understand
how I feel about going out while papa is in this way. I know how kind
and how good you all are; and when dear Mrs Robarts asked me here, and
mamma said that I had better come, I could not refuse. But indeed,
indeed I had rather not go out to a dinner-party.'
'It is not a party, my dear girl,' said Lady Lufton, with the kindest
voice which she knew how to assume. 'And you must remember that my
daughter-in-law regards you as so very old a friend! You remember, of
course, when she was staying at Hogglestock?'
'Indeed I do. I remember it well.'
'And therefore you should not regard it as going out. There will be
nobody there but ourselves and the people from this house.'
'But it will be going out, Lady Lufton; and I do hope you will let me
stay here. You cannot think how I feel it. Of course I cannot go without
something like dressing--and--and--. In poor papa's state I feel that I
ought not to do anything that looks like gaiety. I ought never to forget
it;--not for a moment.'
There was a tear in Lady Lufton's eye as she said--'My dear, you shan't
come. You and Fanny shall stop and dine here by yourselves. The
gentlemen shall come.'
'Do let Mrs Robarts go, please,' said Grace.
'I won't do anything of the kind,' said Lady Lufton. Then, when Mrs
Robarts returned to the room, her ladyship explained it all in two
words. 'Whilst you have been away, my dear, Grace has begged off, and
therefore we have decided that Mr Oriel and Mr Robarts shall come
without you.'
'I am so sorry, Mrs Robarts,' said Grace.
'Pooh, pooh,' said Lady Lufton. 'Fanny and I have known each other
quite long enough not to stand on any compliments--haven't we, my dear?
I must get home now, as all the morning has gone by. Fanny, my dear, I
want to speak to you.' Then she expressed her opinion of Grace Crawley
as she walked across the parsonage garden with Mrs Robarts. 'She is a
very nice girl, and a very good girl I am sure; and she shows excellent
feeling. Whatever happens we must take care of her. And, Fanny, have you
observed how handsome she is?'
'We think her very pretty.'
'She is more than pretty when she has a little fire in her eyes. She is
downright handsome--or will be when she fills out a little. I tell you
what, my dear; she'll make havoc with somebody yet; you see if she
doesn't. Bye-bye. Tell the two gentlemen to be up by seven punctually.'
And then Lady Lufton went home.
Grace so contrived that Mr Oriel came and went without seeing her. There
was a separate nursery breakfast at the parsonage, and by special
permission Grace was allowed to have her tea and bread-and--butter on
the next morning with the children. 'I thought you told me Miss Crawley
was here,' said Mr Oriel, as the two clergymen stood waiting for the gig
that was to take the visitor away to Barchester.
'So she is,' said Robarts; 'but she likes to hide herself, because of
her father's trouble. You can't blame her.'
'No, indeed,' said Mr Oriel.
'Poor girl. If you knew her you would not only pity her, but like her.'
'Is she--what you call--?'
'You mean, is she a lady?'
'Of course she is by birth, and all that,' said Mr Oriel, apologising
for his inquiry.
'I don't think there is another girl in the county so well educated,'
said Mr Robarts.
'Indeed! I had no idea of that.'
'And we think her a great beauty. As for manners, I never saw a girl
with a prettier way of her own.'
'Dear me,' said Mr Oriel. 'I wish she had come down to breakfast.'
It will have been perceived that old Lady Lufton had heard nothing of
Major Grantly's offence; that she had no knowledge that Grace had
already made havoc, as she had called it--had, in truth, made very sad
havoc, at Plumstead. She did not, therefore, think much about it when
her own son told her upon her return home from the parsonage on that
afternoon that Major Grantly had come over from Cosby Lodge, and that he
was going to dine and sleep at Framley Court. Some slight idea of
thankfulness came across her mind that she had not betrayed Grace
Crawley into a meeting with a stranger. 'I asked him to come some day
before we went to town,' said his lordship; 'and I am glad he has come
today, as two clergymen to one's self are, at any rate, one too many.'
So Major Grantly dined and slept at the Court.
But Mrs Robarts was in a great flurry when she was told of this by her
husband on his return from the dinner. Mrs Crawley had found an
opportunity of telling the story of Major Grantly's love to Mrs Robarts
before she had sent her daughter to Framley, knowing that the families
were intimate, and thinking it right that there should be some
precaution.
'I wonder whether he will come up here,' Mrs Robarts had said.
'Probably not,' said the vicar. 'He said he was going home early.'
'I hope he will not come--for Grace's sake,' said Mrs Robarts. She
hesitated whether she should tell her husband. She always did tell him
everything. But on this occasion she thought she had no right to do so,
and she kept the secret. 'Don't do anything to bring him up, dear.'
'You needn't be afraid. He won't come,' said the vicar. On the
following morning, as soon as Mr Oriel was gone, Mr Robarts went
out--about his parish he would probably have called it; but in
half-an-hour he might have been seen strolling about the Court
stable-yard with Lord Lufton. 'Where is Grantly?' asked the vicar. 'I
don't know where he is,' said his lordship. 'He has sloped off
somewhere.' The major had sloped off to the parsonage, well knowing in
what nest his dove was lying hid; and he and the vicar had passed each
other. The major had gone out the front gate, and the vicar had gone in
at the stable entrance.
The two clergymen had hardly taken their departure when Major Grantly
knocked at the parsonage door. He had come so early that Mrs Robarts had
taken no precautions--even had there been any precautions which she
would have thought it right to take. Grace was in the act of coming down
the stairs, not having heard the knock at the door, and thus she found
her lover in the hall. He had asked, of course, for Mrs Robarts, and
thus they two entered the drawing-room together. They had not had time
to speak when the servant opened the drawing-room door to announce the
visitor. There had been no word spoken between Mrs Robarts and Grace
about Major Grantly, but the mother had told the daughter of what she
had said to Mrs Robarts.
'Grace,' said the major, 'I am so glad I found you!' Then he turned to
Mrs Robarts with his open hand. 'You won't take it uncivil of me if I
say that my visit is not entirely to yourself? I think I may take upon
myself to say that I and Miss Crawley are old friends. May I not?'
Grace could not answer a word. 'Mrs Crawley told me that you had known
her at Silverbridge,' said Mrs Robarts, driven to say something, but
feeling that she was blundering.
'I came over to Framley yesterday because I heard that she was here. Am
I wrong to come up here to see her?'
'I think that she must answer that for herself, Major Grantly.'
'Am I wrong, Grace?' Grace thought that he was the finest gentleman and
the noblest lover that had ever shown his devotion to a woman, and was
stirred by a might resolve that if it ever should be in her power to
reward him after any fashion, she would pour out the reward with a very
full hand indeed. But what was she to say on the present moment? 'Am I
wrong, Grace?' he said, repeating his question with so much emphasis,
that she was positively driven to answer it.
'I do not think you are wrong at all. How can I say you are wrong when
you are so good? If I could be your servant I would serve you. But I can
be nothing to you, because of papa's disgrace. Dear Mrs Robarts, I
cannot stay. You must answer him for me.' And having thus made her
speech she escaped from the room.
It may suffice to say further now that the major did not see Grace again
during his visit to Framley.
CHAPTER LVI
THE ARCHDEACON GOES TO FRAMLEY
By some of these unseen telegraphic wires which carry news about the
country and make no charge for the conveyance, Archdeacon Grantly heard
that his son the major was at Framley. Now in that itself there would
have been nothing singular. There had been for years much intimacy
between the Lufton family and the Grantly family--so much that an
alliance between the two houses had once been planned, the elders having
considered it expedient that the young lord should marry that Griselda
who had since mounted higher in the world even than the elders had then
projected for her. There had come no such alliance; but the intimacy had
not ceased, and there was nothing in itself surprising in the fact that
Major Grantly should be staying at Framley Court. But the archdeacon,
when he heard the news, bethought him at once of Grace Crawley. Could it
be possible that his old friend Lady Lufton--Lady Lufton whom he had
known and trusted all his life, whom he had ever regarded as a pillar of
the Church in Barsetshire--should be now untrue to him in a matter so
closely affecting his interests? Men when they are worried by fears and
teased by adverse circumstances become suspicious of those on whom
suspicion should never rest. It was hardly possible, the archdeacon
thought, that Lady Lufton should treat him so unworthily--but the
circumstances were strong against his friend. Lady Lufton had induced
Miss Crawley to go to Framley, much against his advice, at a time when
such a visit seemed to him to be very improper; and it now appeared that
his son was to be there at the same time--a fact of which Lady Lufton
had made no mention to him whatever. Why had not Lady Lufton told him
that Henry Grantly was coming to Framley Court? The reader, whose
interest in the matter will be less keen than was the archdeacon's, will
know very well why Lady Lufton had said nothing about the major's visit.
The reader will remember that Lady Lufton, when she saw the archdeacon,
was as ignorant as to the intended visit as was the archdeacon himself.
But the archdeacon was uneasy, troubled, and suspicious;--and he
suspected his old friend unworthily.
He spoke to his wife about it within a very few hours of the arrival of
the tidings by those invisible wires. He had already told her that Miss
Crawley was to go to Framley parsonage, and that he thought that Mrs
Robarts was wrong to receive her at such a time. 'It is only intended
for good-nature,' Mrs Grantly had said. 'It is misplaced good-nature at
the present moment,' the archdeacon had replied. Mrs Grantly had not
thought it worth her while to undertake at the moment any strong defence
of the Framley people. She knew well how odious was the name of Crawley
in her husband's ears, and she felt that the less that was said at the
present about the Crawleys the better for the peace of the rectory at
Plumstead. She had therefore allowed the expression of his disapproval
to pass unchallenged. But now he came upon her with a more bitter
grievance and she was obliged to argue the matter with him.
'What do you think?' said he: 'Henry is at Framley.'
'He can hardly be staying there,' said Mrs Grantly, 'because I know that
he is so very busy at home.' The business at home of which the major's
mother was speaking was his projected moving from Cosby Lodge, a subject
which was also very odious to the archdeacon. He did not wish his son to
move from Cosby Lodge. He could not endure the idea that his son should
be known throughout the county to be giving up a residence because he
could not afford to keep it. The archdeacon could have afforded to keep
up two Cosby Lodges for his son, and would have been well pleased to do
so, if only his son would not misbehave against him so shamefully! He
could not bear that his son should be punished openly, before the eyes
of all Barsetshire. Indeed he did not wish that his son should be
punished at all. He simply desired that his son should recognise his
father's power to inflict punishment. It would be henbane to Archdeacon
Grantly to have a poor son--a son living at Pau--among
Frenchmen!--because he could not afford to live in England. Why had the
archdeacon been careful of his money, adding house to house and field to
field? He himself was contented--so he told himself--to die as he had
lived in a country parsonage, working with the collar round his neck up
to the day of his death, if God would allow him to do so. He was
ambitious of no grandeur for himself. So he would tell himself--being
partly oblivious of certain episodes in his own life. All his wealth had
been got together for his children. He desired that his sons should be
fitting brothers for their august sister. And now the son who was
nearest to him, whom he was bent upon making a squire in his own county,
wanted to marry the daughter of a man who had stolen twenty pounds, and
when objection was made to so discreditable a connexion, replied by
packing up all his things and saying that he would go and live--at Pau!
The archdeacon therefore did not like to hear of his son being very busy
at home.
'I don't know whether he is busy or not,' said the archdeacon, 'but I
tell you he is staying at Framley.'
'From whom have you heard it?'
'What matter does that make if it is so? I heard it from Flurry.'
'Flurry may have been mistaken,' said Mrs Grantly.
'It is not at all likely. Those people always know about such things.
He heard it from the Framley people. I don't doubt but it's true, and I
think that it's a great shame.'
'A great shame that Henry should be at Framley! He has been there two
or three times every year since he has lived in the county.'
'It is a great shame that he should be had over there just at the time
when that girl is there also. It is impossible to believe that such a
thing is an accident.'
'But, archdeacon, you do not mean to say that you think that Lady Lufton
has arranged it?'
'I don't know who arranged it. Somebody has arranged it. If it is
Robarts, that is almost worse. One could forgive a woman in such a
matter better than one could a man.'
'Psha!' Mrs Grantly's temper was never bitter, but at this moment it
was not sweetened by her husband's very uncivil reference to her sex.
'The whole idea is nonsense, and you should get it out of your head.'
'Am I to get it out of my head that Henry wants to make this girl his
wife, and that the two are at this moment at Framley together?' In this
the archdeacon was wrong as to his facts. Major Grantly had left Framley
on the previous day, having stayed there only one night. 'It is coming
to that that one can trust no one--no one--literally no one.' Mrs
Grantly perfectly understood that the archdeacon, in the agony of the
moment, intended to exclude even herself from his confidence by that 'no
one'; but to this she was indifferent, understanding accurately when his
words should be accepted as expressing his thoughts, and when they
should be supposed to express only his anger.
'The probability is that no one at Lufton knew anything about Henry's
partiality for Miss Crawley,' said Mrs Grantly.
'I tell you I think they are both at Framley together.'
'And I tell you that if they are, which I doubt, they are there simply
by accident. Besides, what does it matter? If they choose to marry each
other, you and I cannot prevent them. They don't want any assistance
from Lady Lufton, or anybody else. They have simply got to make up their
own minds, and then no one can hinder them.'
'And, therefore, you would wish to see them brought together?'
'I say nothing about it, archdeacon; but I do say that we must take
these things as they come. What can we do? Henry may go and stay with
Lady Lufton if he pleases. You and I cannot prevent him.'
After this the archdeacon walked away, and would not argue the matter
any further with his wife at the moment. He knew very well that he could
not get the better of her, and was apt at such moments to think that she
took an unfair advantage of him by keeping her temper. But he could not
get out of his head the idea that perhaps on this very day things were
being arranged between his son and Grace Crawley at Framley; and he
resolved that he himself would go over and see what might be done. He
would, at any rate, tell all his trouble to Lady Lufton, and beg his old
friend to assist him. He could not think that such a one as he had
always known Lady Lufton to be would approve of a marriage between Henry
Grantly and Grace Crawley. At any rate, he would learn the truth. He had
once been told that Grace Crawley had herself refused to marry his son,
feeling that she would do wrong to inflict so great an injury upon any
gentleman. He had not believed in so great a virtue. He could not
believe it now--now, when he heard that Miss Crawley and his son were
staying together in the same parish. Somebody must be doing him an
injury. It could hardly be chance. But his presence at Framley might
even yet have a good effect, and he would at least learn the truth. So
he had himself driven to Barchester, and from Barchester he took
post-horses to Framley.
As he came near to the village, he grew to be somewhat ashamed of
himself, or, at least, nervous as to the mode in which he would proceed.
The driver, turning round to him, had suggested that he supposed he was
to drive to 'My Lady's'. This injustice to Lord Lufton, to whom the
house belonged, and with whom his mother lived as a guest, was very
common in the county; for old Lady Lufton had lived at Framley Court
through her son's long minority, and had kept the house there till his
marriage; and even since his marriage she had been recognised as its
presiding genius. It certainly was not the fault of old Lady Lufton, as
she always spoke of everything as belonging either to her son or
daughter-in-law. The archdeacon had been in doubt whether he would go to
the Court or the parsonage. Could he have done exactly as he wished, he
would have left the chaise and walked to the parsonage, so as to reach
it without the noise and fuss incidental to a postillion's arrival. But
that was impossible. He could not drop into Framley as though he had
come from the clouds, and, therefore, he told the man to do as he had
suggested. 'To my lady's?' said the postillion. The archdeacon assented,
and the man, with loud cracks of his whip, and with a spasmodic gallop
along the short avenue, took the archdeacon up to the door of Lord
Lufton's house. He asked for Lord Lufton first, putting on his
pleasantest smile, so that the servant should not suspect the purpose,
of which he was somewhat ashamed. Was Lord Lufton at home? Lord Lufton
was not at home. Lord Lufton had gone up to London that morning,
intending to return the day after tomorrow; but both my ladies were at
home. So the archdeacon was shown into the room where both my ladies
were sitting--and with them he found Mrs Robarts. Anyone who had become
acquainted with the habits of the Framley ladies would have known that
this might very probably be the case. The archdeacon himself was as well
aware as anyone of the modes of life at Framley. The lord's wife was the
parson's sister, and the parson's wife had from her infancy been the
petted friend of the old lady. Of course they all lived very much
together. Of course Mrs Robarts was as much at home in the drawing-room
of Framley Court as she was in her own drawing-room at the parsonage.
Nevertheless, the archdeacon thought himself to be hardly used when he
found Mrs Robarts was at the house.
'My dear archdeacon, who ever expected to see you?' said old Lady
Lufton. Then the two younger women greeted him. And they all smiled on
him pleasantly, and seemed overjoyed to see him. He was, in truth, a
great favourite at Framley, and each of the three was glad to welcome
him. They believed in the archdeacon at Framley, and felt for him that
sort of love which ladies in the country do feel for their elderly male
friends. There was not one of the three who would not have taken much
trouble to get anything for the archdeacon which they had thought the
archdeacon would like. Even old Lady Lufton remembered what was his
favourite soup, and always took care that he should have it when he
dined at the Court. Young Lady Lufton would bring his tea to him as he
sat in his chair. He was petted in the house, was allowed to poke the
fire if he pleased, and called the servants by their names as though he
were at home. He was compelled, therefore, to smile and to seem pleased;
and it was not till after he had eaten his lunch, and had declared that
he must return home to dinner, that the dowager gave him an opportunity
of having the private conversation which he desired.
'Can I have a few minutes' talk with you?' he said to her, whispering
into her ear as they left the drawing-room together. So she led the way
into her own sitting-room, telling him, as she asked him to be seated,
that she supposed that something special must have brought him over to
Framley. 'I should have asked you to come up here, even if you had not
spoken.'
'Then perhaps you know what has brought me over?' said the archdeacon.
'Not in the least,' said Lady Lufton. 'I have not an idea. But I did
not flatter myself that you would come so far on a morning call to see
us three ladies. I hope you did not want to see Ludovic, because he will
not be back till tomorrow.'
'I wanted to see you, Lady Lufton.'
'That is lucky, as here I am. You may be pretty sure to find me here
any day in the year.'
After this there was a little pause. The archdeacon hardly knew how to
begin his story. In the first place he was in doubt whether Lady Lufton
had ever heard of the preposterous match which his son had proposed to
himself to make. In his anger at Plumstead he had felt sure that she
knew all about it, and that she was assisting his son. But this belief
had dwindled as his anger had dwindled; and as the chaise had entered
the parish of Framley he had told himself that it was quite impossible
that she should know anything about it. Her manner had certainly been
altogether in her favour since he had been in her house. There had been
nothing of the consciousness of guilt in her demeanour. But,
nevertheless, there was the coincidence! How had it come to pass that
Grace Crawley and his son should be at Framley together? It might,
indeed, be just possible that Flurry might have been wrong, and that his
son had not been there at all.
'I suppose Miss Crawley is at the parsonage?' he said at last.
'Oh, yes; she is still there, and will remain there I should think for
the next ten days.'
'Oh; I did not know,' said the archdeacon very coldly.
It seemed to Lady Lufton, who was as innocent as an unborn babe in the
matter of the projected marriage, that her old friend was in a mind to
persecute the Crawleys. He had on a former occasion taken upon himself
to advise that Grace Crawley should not be entertained at Framley, and
now it seemed that he had come all the way from Plumstead to say
something further in the same strain. Lady Lufton, if had anything
further to say of that kind, would listen to him as a matter of course.
She would listen to him and reply to him without temper. But she did not
approve of it. She told herself silently that she did not approve of
persecution or of interference. She therefore drew herself up, and
pursed her mouth, and put on something of that look of severity which
she could assume very visibly, if it so pleased her.
'Yes; she is still there, and I think her visit will do her a great deal
of good,' said Lady Lufton.
'When we talk of doing good to people,' said the archdeacon, 'we often
make terrible mistakes. It so often happens that we don't know when we
are doing good and when we are doing harm.'
'That is true, of course, Dr Grantly, and must be so necessarily, as our
wisdom here below is so very limited. But I should think --as far as I
can see, that is,--that the kindness which my friend Mrs Robarts is
showing to this young lady must be beneficial. You know, archdeacon, I
explained to you before that I could not quite agree with you in what
you said as to leaving these people alone till after the trial. I
thought that help was necessary to them at once.'
The archdeacon sighed deeply. He ought to have been somewhat renovated
in spirit by the tone in which Lady Lufton spoke to him, as it conveyed
to him almost an absolute conviction that his first suspicion was
incorrect. But any comfort which might have come to him from this source
was marred by the feeling that he must announce his own disgrace. At any
rate, he must do so, unless he were contented to go back to Plumstead
without having learned anything by his journey. He changed the tone of
his voice, however, and asked a question--as it might be altogether on a
different subject. 'I heard yesterday,' he said, 'that Henry was over
here.'
'He was here yesterday. He came the evening before, and dined and slept
here, and went home yesterday morning.'
'Was Miss Crawley with you that evening?'
'Miss Crawley? No; she would not come. She thinks it best not to go
out while her father is in his present unfortunate position; and she is
right.'
'She is quite right in that,' said the archdeacon; and then he paused
again. He thought that it would be best for him to make a clean breast
of it, and to trust Lady Lufton's sympathy. 'Did Henry go up to the
parsonage?' he asked.
But still Lady Lufton did not suspect the truth. 'I think he did,' she
replied, with an air of surprise. 'I think I heard that he went up there
to call on Mrs Robarts after breakfast.'
'No, Lady Lufton, he did not go up there to call on Mrs Robarts. He went
up there because he is making a fool of himself about that Miss Crawley.
That is the truth. Now you understand it all. I hope that Mrs Robarts
does not know it. I do hope for her own sake that Mrs Robarts does not
know it.'
The archdeacon certainly had no longer any doubt as to Lady Lufton's
innocence when he looked at her face as she heard these tidings. She had
predicted that Grace Crawley would 'make havoc', and could not,
therefore, be altogether surprised at the idea that some gentleman
should have fallen in love with her; but she had never suspected that
the havoc might be made so early in her days, or on so great a quarry.
'You don't mean to tell me that Henry Grantly is in love with Grace
Crawley?' she replied.
'I mean to say that he says he is.'
'Dear, dear, dear! I'm sure, archdeacon, that you will believe me when
I say that I knew nothing about it.'
'I am quite sure of that,' said the archdeacon dolefully.
'Or I certainly should not have been glad to see him here. But the
house, you know, is not mine, Dr Grantly. I could have done nothing if I
had known of it. But only to think--; well, to be sure. She has lost no
time, at any rate.'
Now this was not at all the light in which the archdeacon wished that
the matter should be regarded. He had been desirous that Lady Lufton
should be horror-stricken by the tidings, but it seemed to him that she
regarded the iniquity as a good joke. What did it matter how young or
how old the girl might be? She came of poor people--of people who had no
friends--of disgraced people; and Lady Lufton ought to feel that such a
marriage would be a terrible crime. 'I need hardly tell you, Lady
Lufton,' said the archdeacon, 'that I shall set my face against it as
far as it is in my power to do so.'
'If they both be resolved I suppose you can hardly prevent it.'
'Of course I cannot prevent it. Of course I cannot prevent it. If he
will break my heart and his mother's--and his sister's--of course I
cannot prevent it. If he will ruin himself he must have his own way.'
'Ruin himself, Dr Grantly!'
'They will have enough to live upon--somewhere in Spain or France.' The
scorn expressed in the archdeacon's voice as he spoke of Pau as being
somewhere in Spain or France' should have been heard to be understood.
'No doubt they will have enough to live upon.'
'Do you mean to say that it will make a difference as to your own
property, Dr Grantly?'
'Certainly it will, Lady Lufton. I told Henry when I first heard of the
thing--before he had definitely made any offer to the girl--that I
should withdraw from him altogether the allowance that I now make him,
if he married her. And I told him also that if he persisted in his folly
I should think it my duty to alter my will.'
'I am sorry for that, Dr Grantly.'
'Sorry! And am I not sorry? Sorrow is no sufficient word. I am
broken-hearted. Lady Lufton, it is killing me. It is indeed. I love him;
I love him;--I love him as you have loved your son. But what is the use?
What can he be to me when he shall have married the daughter of such a
man as that?'
Lady Lufton sat for a while silent, thinking of a certain episode in her
own life. There had been a time when her son was desirous of making a
marriage which she had thought would break her heart. She had for a time
moved heaven and earth--as far as she knew how to move them--to prevent
the marriage. But at last she had yielded--not from lack of power, for
the circumstances had been such that at the moment of yielding she had
still the power in her hand of staying the marriage--but she had yielded
because she had perceived that her son was in earnest. She had yielded,
and had kissed the dust; but from the moment in which her lips had so
touched the ground, they had taken great joy in the daughter in whom her
son had brought into the house. Since that she had learned to think that
young people might perhaps be right, and that old people might perhaps
be wrong. This trouble of her friend the archdeacon's was very like her
own trouble. 'And he is engaged to her now?' she said, when those
thoughts had passed through her mind.
'Yes;--that is, no. I am not sure. I do not know how to make myself
sure.'
'I am sure Major Grantly will tell you all the truth as it exists.'
'Yes; he'll tell me the truth--as far as he knows it. I do not see that
there is much anxiety to spare me in that matter. He is desirous rather
of making me understand that I have no power of saving him from his own
folly. Of course I have no power of saving him.'
'But is he engaged to her?'
'He says that she has refused him. But of course that means nothing.'
Again the archdeacon's position was very like Lady Lufton's position, as
it had existed before her son's marriage. In that case also the young
lady, who was now Lady Lufton's own daughter and dearest friend, had
refused the lover who proposed to her, although the marriage was so much
to her advantage--loving him too, the while, with her whole heart, as it
was natural to suppose that Grace Crawley might so love her lover. The
more she thought of the similarity of the stories, the stronger were her
sympathies on the side of poor Grace. Nevertheless, she would comfort
her old friend if she knew how; and of course she could not but admit to
herself that the match was one which must be a cause of real sorrow to
him. 'I don't know why her refusal should mean nothing,' said Lady
Lufton.
'Of course a girl refuses at first--a girl, I mean, in such
circumstances as hers. She can't but feel that more is offered to her
than she ought to take, and that she is bound to go through the ceremony
of declining. But my anger is not with her, Lady Lufton.'
'I do not see how it can be.'
'No; it is not with her. If she becomes his wife I trust that I may
never see her.'
'Oh, Dr Grantly!'
'I do; I do. How can it be otherwise with me? But I shall have no
quarrel with her. With him I must quarrel.'
'I do not see why,' said Lady Lufton.
'You do not? Does he not set me at defiance?'
'At his age surely a son has a right to marry as he pleases.'
'If he took her out of the streets, then it would be the same?' said the
archdeacon with bitter anger.
'No;--for such a one would herself be bad.'
'Or if she were the daughter of a huckster out of the city?'
'No again;--or in that case her want of education would probably unfit
her for your society.'
'Her father's disgrace, then, should be a matter of indifference to me,
Lady Lufton?'
'I did not say so. In the first place, her father is not disgraced--not
as yet; and we do not know whether he may ever be disgraced. You will
hardly be disposed to say that persecution from the palace disgraces a
clergyman in Barsetshire.'
'All the same, I believe that the man was guilty,' said the archdeacon.
'Wait and see, my friend, before you condemn him altogether. But, be
that as it may, I acknowledge that the marriage is one which must
naturally be distasteful to you.'
'Oh, Lady Lufton! If you only knew! If you only knew!'
'I do know; and I feel for you. But I think that your son has a right
to expect that you should not show the same repugnance to such a
marriage as this as you would have had a right to show had he suggested
to himself a wife as those at which you had just now hinted. Of course
you can advise him, and make him understand your feelings; but I cannot
think you will be justified in quarrelling with him, or in changing your
views towards him with regards money, seeing that Miss Crawley is an
educated lady, who has done nothing to forfeit your respect.' A heavy
cloud came upon the archdeacons's brow as he heard these words, but he
did not make any immediate answer. 'Of course, my friend,' continued
Lady Lufton, 'I should not have ventured to say so much to you, had you
not come to me, as it were, for my opinion.'
'I came here because I thought Henry was here,' said the archdeacon.
'If I have said too much, I beg your pardon.'
'No; you have not said too much. It is not that. You and I are such
old friends that either may say almost anything to the other.'
'Yes;--just so. And therefore I have ventured to speak my mind,' said
Lady Lufton.
'Of course;--and I am obliged to you. But, Lady Lufton, you do not
understand yet how this hits me. Everything in life that I have done, I
have done for my children. I am wealthy, but I have not used my wealth
for myself, because I have desired that they should be able to hold
their heads high in the world. All my ambition has been for them, and
all the pleasure which I have anticipated for myself in my old age is
that which I have hoped to receive from their credit. As for Henry, he
might have had anything he wanted from me in the way of money. He
expressed a wish, a few months since, to go into Parliament, and I
promised to help him as far as ever I could go. I have kept up the game
altogether for him. He, the younger son of a working parish parson, has
had everything that could be given to the eldest son of a country
gentleman--more than is given to the eldest son of many a peer. I have
hoped that he would marry again, but I have never cared that he should
marry for money. I have been willing to do anything for him myself. But,
Lady Lufton, a father does feel that he should have some return for all
this. No one can imagine that Henry ever supposed that a bride from that
wretched place at Hogglestock could be welcomed among us. He knew that
he would break our hearts, and he did not care for it. That is what I
feel. Of course he has the power to do as he likes;--and of course I
have the power to do as I like also with what is my own.'
Lady Lufton was a very good woman, devoted to her duties, affectionate
and just to those about her, truly religious, and charitable from her
nature; but I doubt whether the thorough worldliness of the archdeacon's
appeal struck her as it will strike the reader. People are so much more
worldly in practice than they are in theory, so much keener after their
own gratification in detail than they are in the abstract, that the
narrative of many an adventure would shock us, though the same adventure
would not shock us in the action. One girl tells another how she has
changed her mind in love; and the friend sympathises with the friend,
and perhaps applauds. Had the story been told in print, the friend who
had listened with equanimity would have read of such vacillation with
indignation. She who vacillated herself would have hated her own
performance when brought before her judgment as a matter in which she
had no personal interest. Very fine things are written every day about
honesty and truth, and men read them with a sort of external conviction
that a man, if he be anything of a man at all, is of course honest and
true. But when the internal convictions are brought out between two or
three who are personally interested together--between two or three who
feel that their little gathering is, so to say, 'tiled'--those internal
convictions differ very much from the external convictions. This man, in
his confidences, asserts broadly that he does not mean to be thrown
over, and that man has a project for throwing over somebody else; and
the intention of each is that scruples are not to stand in the way of
his success. The 'Ruat coelum, fiat justitia' was said, no doubt, from
an outside balcony to a crowd, and the speaker knew that he was talking
buncombe. The 'Rem, si possis recte, si non quocunque modo' was
whispered into the ear in a club smoking-room, and the whisperer
intended that his words should prevail.
Lady Lufton had often heard her friend the archdeacon preach, and she
knew well the high tone which he could take as the necessity of trusting
our hopes for the future for all our true happiness; and yet she
sympathised with him when he told her that he was broken-hearted because
his son would take a step which might possibly interfere with his
worldly prosperity. Had the archdeacon been preaching about matrimony,
he would have recommended young men, in taking wives to themselves,
especially to look for young women who feared the Lord. But in talking
about his own son's wife, no word as to her eligibility or non-
eligibility in this respect escaped his lips. Had he talked on the
subject till nightfall no such word would have been spoken. Had any
friend of his own, man or woman, in discussing such a matter with him
and asking his advice upon it, alluded to the fear of the Lord, the
allusion would have been distasteful to him and would have smacked to
his palate of hypocrisy. Lady Lufton, who understood as well as any
woman what it is to be 'tiled' with a friend, took all this in good
part. The archdeacon had spoken out of his heart what was in his heart.
One of his children had married a marquis. Another might probably become
a bishop--perhaps an archbishop. The third might be a county
squire--high among the county squires. But he could only so become by
walking warily;--and now he was bent on marrying the penniless daughter
of an impoverished half-mad country curate, who was about to be tried
for stealing twenty pounds! Lady Lufton, in spite of all her arguments,
could not refuse her sympathy to her old friend.
'After all, from what you say, I suppose they are not engaged.'
'I do not know,' said the archdeacon. 'I cannot tell!'
'And what do you wish me to do?'
'Oh--nothing. I came over, as I said before, because I thought he was
here. I think it right, before he has absolutely committed himself, to
take every means in my power to make him understand that I shall
withdraw from him all pecuniary assistance--now and for the future.'
'My friend, that threat seems to me to be so terrible.'
'It is the only power I have left to me.'
'But you, who are so affectionate by nature, would never adhere to it.'
'I will try. I will try my best to be firm. I will at once put
everything beyond my control after my death.' The archdeacon, as he
uttered these terrible words--words which were awful to Lady Lufton's
ears--resolved that he would endeavour to nurse his own wrath; but, at
the same time, almost hated himself for his own pusillanimity, because
he feared that his wrath would die away before he should have availed
himself of its heat.
'I would do nothing rash of that kind,' said Lady Lufton. 'Your object
is to prevent the marriage--not to punish him for it when once he has
made it.'
'He is not to have his own way in everything, Lady Lufton.'
'But you should first try to prevent it.'
'What can I do to prevent it?'
Lady Lufton paused a couple of minutes before she replied. She had a
scheme in her head, but it seemed to her to savour of cruelty. And yet
at present it was her chief duty to assist her old friend, if any
assistance could be given. There could hardly be a doubt that such a
marriage as this, of which they were speaking, was in itself an evil. In
her case, the case of her son, there had been no question of a trial, of
money stolen, of aught that was in truth disgraceful. 'I think if I were
you, Dr Grantly,' she said, 'that I would see the young lady while I was
here.'
'See her myself?' said the archdeacon. The idea of seeing Grace Crawley
himself had, up to this moment, never entered his head.
'I think I would do so.'
'I think I will,' said the archdeacon, after a pause. Then he got up
from his chair. 'If I am to do it, I had better do it at once.'
'Be gentle with her, my friend.' The archdeacon paused again. He
certainly had entertained the idea of encountering Miss Crawley with
severity rather than gentleness. Lady Lufton rose from her seat, and
coming up to him, took one of his hands between her own two. 'Be gentle
to her,' she said. 'You have owned that she has done nothing wrong.' The
archdeacon bowed his head in token of assent and left the room.
Poor Grace Crawley.
CHAPTER LVII
A DOUBLE PLEDGE
The archdeacon, as he walked across from the Court to the parsonage, was
very thoughtful and his steps were very slow. The idea of seeing Miss
Crawley herself had been suggested to him suddenly, and he had to
determine how he could bear himself towards her, and what he would say
to her. Lady Lufton had beseeched him to be gentle with her. Was the
mission one in which gentleness would be possible? Must it not be his
object to make this young lady understand that she could not be right in
desiring to come into his family and share in all his good things when
she had no good things of her own--nothing but evil things to bring with
her? And how could this be properly explained to the young lady in
gentle terms? Must he not be round with her, and give her to understand
in plain words--the plainest which he could use--that she would not get
his good things, though she would most certainly impose the burden of
all her evil things on the man whom she was proposing to herself as a
husband. He remembered very well as he went, that he had been told that
Miss Crawley had herself refused the offer, feeling herself to be unfit
for the honour tendered to her; but he suspected the sincerity of such a
refusal. Calculating in his own mind the unreasonably great advantages
which would be conferred on such a young lady as Miss Crawley by a
marriage with his son, he declared to himself that any girl must be very
wicked indeed who should expect, or even accept, so much more than was
her due;--but nevertheless he could not bring himself to believe that
any girl, when so tempted, would, in sincerity, decline to commit this
great wickedness. If he was to do any good by seeing Miss Crawley, must
it not consist in a proper explanation to her of the selfishness,
abomination, and altogether damnable blackness of such wickedness as
this on the part of a young woman in her circumstances? 'Heaven and
earth!' he must say, 'here are you, without a penny in your pocket, with
hardly decent raiment on your back, with a thief for your father, and
you think that you are to come and share all the wealth that the
Grantlys have amassed, that you are to have a husband with broad acres,
a big house, and game preserves, and become one of a family whose name
has never been touched by a single accusation--no, not a suspicion?
No;--injustice such as that shall never be done betwixt you and me. You
may wring my heart, and you may ruin my son; but the broad acres and the
big house, and the game preserves, and the rest of it, shall never be
your reward for doing do.' How was all that to be told effectively to a
young woman in gentle words? And then how was a man in the archdeacon's
position to be desirous of gentle words--gentle words which would not be
efficient--when he knew well in his heart of hearts that he had nothing
but threats on which to depend. He had no more power of disinheriting
his own son for such an offence as that contemplated than he had of
blowing out his own brains, and he knew that it was so. He was a man
incapable of such persistency of wrath against one whom he loved. He was
neither cruel enough nor strong enough to do such a thing. He could only
threaten to do it, and make what best use he might have of threats,
whilst threats might be of avail. In spite of all that he had said to
his wife, to Lady Lufton, and to himself, he knew very well that if his
son did sin in this way he, the father, would forgive the sin of the
son.
In going across from the front gate of the Court to the parsonage there
was a place where three roads met, and on this spot there stood a
finger-post. Round this finger-post there was now pasted a placard,
which at once arrested the archdeacon's eye:--'Cosby Lodge--Sale of
furniture--Growing crops to be sold on the grounds. Three hunters. A
brown gelding warranted for saddle or harness!'--The archdeacon himself
had given the brown gelding to his son, as a great treasure.--'Three
Alderney cows, two cow-calves, a low phaeton, a gig, two ricks of hay.'
In this fashion were proclaimed in odious details all those comfortable
additions to a gentleman's house in the country, with which the
archdeacon was so well acquainted. Only last November he had recommended
his son to buy a certain clod-crusher, and the clod-crusher had of
course been bought. The bright blue paint upon it had as yet not given
way to the stains of ordinary farmyard muck and mire;--and here was the
clod-crusher advertised for sale! The archdeacon did not want his son to
leave Cosby Lodge. He knew well enough that his son need not leave Cosby
Lodge. Why had the foolish fellow been in such a hurry with his hideous
ill-conditioned advertisements? Gentle! How was he in such
circumstances to be gentle? He raised his umbrella and poked angrily at
the disgusting notice. The iron ferrule caught the paper at a chink in
the post, and tore it from the top to the bottom. But what was the use?
A horrid ugly bill lying torn in such a spot would attract only more
attention than one fixed to a post. He could not condescend, however, to
give it further attention, but passed on to the parsonage. Gentle
indeed!
Nevertheless Archdeacon Grantly was a gentleman, and never yet had dealt
more harshly with any woman than we have sometimes seen him to do with
his wife--when he would say to her an angry word or two with a good deal
of marital authority. His wife, who knew well what his angry words were
worth, never even suggested to herself that she had the cause for
complaint on that head. Had she known that the archdeacon was about to
undertake such a mission as this which he had now in hand, she would not
have warned him to be gentle. She, indeed, would have strongly advised
him not to undertake the mission, cautioning him that the young lady
would probably get the better of him.
'Grace, my dear,' said Mrs Robarts, coming up into the nursery in which
Miss Crawley was sitting with the children, 'come out here a moment,
will you?' Then Grace left the children and went out into the passage.
'My dear, there is a gentleman in the drawing-room who asks to see
you.'
'A gentleman, Mrs Robarts! What gentleman?' But Grace, though she
asked the questions, conceived that the gentleman must be Henry Grantly.
Her mind did not suggest to her the possibility of any other gentleman
coming to see her.
'You must not be surprised, or allow yourself to be frightened.'
'Oh, Mrs Robarts, who is it?'
'It is Major Grantly's father.'
'The archdeacon?'
'Yes, dear; Archdeacon Grantly. He is in the drawing-room.'
'Must I see him, Mrs Robarts?'
'Well, Grace--I think you must. I hardly know how you can refuse. He is
an intimate friend of everybody here at Framley.'
'What will he say to me?'
'Nay; that I cannot tell. I suppose you know--'
'He has come, no doubt, to bid me having nothing to say to his son. He
need not have troubled himself. But he may say what he likes. I am no
coward, and I will go to him.'
'Stop a moment, Grace. Come into my room for an instant. The children
have pulled your hair about.' But Grace, though she followed Mrs Robarts
into the bedroom, would have nothing done to her hair. She was too proud
for that--and we may say, also, too little confident in any good which
such resources might effect on her behalf. 'Never mind about that,' she
said. 'What am I to say to him?' Mrs Robarts paused before she replied,
feeling that the matter was one which required some deliberation. 'Tell
me what I must say to him?' said Grace, repeating her question.
'I hardly know what your own feelings are, my dear.'
'Yes, you do. You do know. If I had all the world to give, I would
give it all to Major Grantly.'
'Tell him that, then.'
'No, I will not tell him that. Never mind about my frock, Mrs Robarts.
I do not care for that. I will tell him that I love his son and his
granddaughter too well to injure them. I will tell him nothing else. I
might as well go now.' Mrs Robarts, as she looked at Grace, was
astonished at the serenity of her face. And yet when her hand was in the
drawing-room door Grace hesitated, looked back, and trembled. Mrs
Robarts blew a kiss to her from the stairs; and then the door was
opened, and the girl found herself in the presence of the archdeacon. He
was standing on the rug, with his back to the fire, and his heavy
ecclesiastical hat was placed on the middle of the round table. The hat
caught Grace's eyes at the moment of her entrance, and she felt that all
the thunders of the Church were contained within it. And then the
archdeacon himself was so big and so clerical, and so imposing. Her
father's aspect was severe, but the severity of her father's face was
essentially different from that expressed by the archdeacon. Whatever
impression came from her father came from the man himself. There was no
outward adornment there; there was, so to say, no wig about Mr Crawley.
Now the archdeacon was not exactly adorned; but he was so thoroughly
imbued with high clerical belongings and sacerdotal fitnesses as to
appear always as a walking, sitting, or standing impersonation of
parsondom. To poor Grace, as she entered the room, he appeared to be a
personation of parsondom in its severest aspect.
'Miss Crawley, I believe?' said he.
'Yes, sir,' said she, curtseying ever so slightly, as she stood before
him at some considerable distance.
His first idea was that his son must be indeed a fool if he was going to
give up Cosby Lodge and all Barsetshire, and retire to Pau, for so
slight and unattractive a creature as he now saw before him. But this
idea stayed with him only for a moment. As he continued to gaze at her
during the interview he came to perceive that there was very much more
than he had perceived at the first glance, and that his son, after all,
had had eyes to see, though perhaps not a heart to understand.
'Will you take a chair?' he said. Then Grace sat down, still at a
distance from the archdeacon, and he kept his place upon the rug. He
felt that there would be a difficulty in making her feel the full force
of his eloquence all across the room; and yet he did not know how to
bring himself nearer to her. She became suddenly very important in his
eyes, and he was to some extent afraid of her. She was so slight, so
meek, so young; and yet there was about her something so beautifully
feminine--and, withal, so like a lady--that he felt instinctively that
he could not attack her with harsh words. Had her lips been full, and
her colour high, and had her eyes rolled, had she put forth against him
any of that ordinary artillery with which youthful feminine batteries
are charged, he would have been ready to rush to combat. But this girl,
about whom his son had gone mad, sat there as passively as though she
were conscious of the possession of no artillery. There was not a single
gun fired from beneath her eyelids. He knew not why, but he respected
his son now more than he had respected him for the last two
months;--more, perhaps, than he had ever respected him before. He was an
eager as ever against the marriage;--but in thinking of his son in what
he said and did after these few moments of the interview, he ceased to
think of him with contempt. The creature before him was a woman who grew
in his opinion till he began to feel that she was in truth fit to be the
wife of his son--if only she were not a pauper, and the daughter of a
mad curate, and alas! too probably, of a thief. Though his feeling
towards the girl had changed, his duty to himself, his family, and his
son, was the same as ever, and therefore he began his task.
'Perhaps you had not expected to see me?' he said.
'No, indeed, sir.'
'Nor had I intended when I came over her to call on my old friend, Lady
Lufton, to come up to this house. But as I knew that you were here, Miss
Crawley, I thought that upon the whole it would be better that I should
see you.' Then he paused as though he expected that Grace would say
something; but Grace had nothing to say. 'Of course you must understand,
Miss Crawley, that I should not venture to speak to you on this subject
unless I myself were very closely interested in it.' He had not yet said
what was the subject, and it was not probable that Grace should give him
any assistance by affecting to understand this without direct
explanation from him. She sat quite motionless, and did not even aid him
by showing by her altered colour that she understood his purpose. 'My
son has told me,' said he, 'that he has professed an attachment for you,
Miss Crawley.'
Then there was another pause, and Grace felt that she was compelled to
say something. 'Major Grantly has been very good to me,' she said, and
then she hated herself for having uttered words which were so tame and
unwomanly in their spirit. Of course her lover's father would despise
her for having so spoken. After all it did not much signify. If he would
only despise her and go away, it would perhaps be for the best.
'I do not know about being good,' said the archdeacon. 'I think he is
good. I think he means to be good.'
'I am sure he is good,' said Grace warmly.
'You know he has a daughter, Miss Crawley?'
'Oh, yes; I know Edith well.'
'Of course his first duty is to her. Is it not? and he owes much to
his family. Do you not feel that?'
'Of course I feel it, sir.' The poor girl had always heard Dr Grantly
spoken of as the archdeacon, but she did not in the least know what she
ought to call him.
'Now, Miss Crawley, pray listen to me; I will speak to you very openly.
I must speak to you openly, because it is my duty on my son's
behalf--but I will endeavour to speak to you kindly also. Of yourself I
have heard nothing but what is favourable, and there is no reason as yet
why I should not respect and esteem you.' Grace told herself that she
would do nothing which ought to forfeit his respect and esteem, but that
she did not care two straws whether his respect and esteem were bestowed
on her or not. She was striving after something very different from
that. 'If my son were to marry you, he would greatly injure himself, and
would very greatly injure his child.' Again he paused. He had told her
to listen, and she was resolved that she would listen--unless he would
say something which might make a word from her necessary at the moment.
'I do not know whether there does at present exist any engagement
between you.'
'There is no engagement, sir.'
'I am glad of that--very glad of it. I do not know whether you are
aware that my son is dependent upon me for the greater part of his
income. It is so, and as I am so circumstanced with my son, of course, I
feel the closest possible concern in his future prospects.' The
archdeacon did not know how to explain clearly why the fact of his
making his son an annual allowance should give him a warmer interest in
his son's affairs than he might have had had the major been altogether
independent of him; but he trusted that Grace would understand this by
her own natural lights. 'Now, Miss Crawley, of course I cannot wish to
say a word that will hurt your feelings. But there are reasons--'
'I know,' said she, interrupting him. 'Papa is accused of stealing
money. He did not steal it, but people think he did. And then we are so
very poor.'
'You do understand me then--and I feel grateful; I do indeed.'
'I don't think our being poor ought to signify a bit,' said Grace. 'Papa
is a gentleman, and a clergyman, and mamma is a lady.'
'But, my dear--'
'I know I ought not to be your son's wife as long as people think that
papa stole the money. If he had stolen it, I ought never to be Major
Grantly's wife--or anybody else's. I know that very well. And as for
Edith--I would sooner die than do anything that would be bad to her.'
The archdeacon had now left the rug, and advanced till he was almost
close to the chair on which Grace was sitting. 'My dear,' he said,' what
you say does you very much honour--very much honour indeed.' Now that he
was close to her, he could look into her eyes, and he could see the
exact form of her features, and could understand--could not help
understanding--the character of her countenance. It was a noble face,
having in it nothing that was poor, nothing that was mean, nothing that
was shapeless. It was a face that promised infinite beauty, with a
promise that was on the very verge of fulfilment. There was a play about
her mouth as she spoke and a curl in her nostrils as the eager words
came from her, which almost made the selfish father give way. Why had
they not told him that she was such a one as this? Why had not Henry
himself spoken of the speciality of her beauty? No man in England knew
better than the archdeacon the difference between beauty of one kind and
beauty of another kind in a woman's face--the one beauty, which comes
from health and youth and animal spirits, and which belongs to the
miller's daughter, and the other beauty, which shows itself in fine
lines and a noble spirit--the beauty which comes from breeding. 'What
you say does you very much honour indeed,' said the archdeacon.
'I should not mind at all about being poor,' said Grace.
'No; no; no,' said the archdeacon.
'Poor as we are--and no clergyman, I think, was ever so poor--I should
have done as your son asked me at once, if it had been only
that--because I love him.'
'If you love him you will not wish to injure him.'
'I will not injure him. Sir, there is my promise.' And now as she
spoke she rose from her chair, and standing close to the archdeacon,
laid her hand very lightly on the sleeve of his coat. 'There is my
promise. As long as people say that papa stole the money, I will never
marry your son. There.'
The archdeacon was still looking down at her, and feeling the slight
touch of her fingers, raised his arm a little as though to welcome the
pressure. He looked into her eyes, which were turned eagerly towards
his, and when doing so was quite sure that the promise would be kept. It
would have been a sacrilege--he felt that it would have been a
sacrilege--to doubt such a promise. He almost relented. His soft heart,
which was never very well under his own control, gave way so far that he
was nearly moved to tell her that, on his son's behalf, he acquitted her
of the promise. What could any man's son do better than have such a
woman for his wife? It would have been of no avail had he made her such
offer. The pledge she had given had not been wrung from her by his
influence, nor could his influence have availed aught with her towards
the alteration of her purpose. It was not the archdeacon who had taught
her that it would not be her duty to take disgrace into the house of the
man she loved. As he looked down upon her face two tears formed
themselves in his eyes, and gradually trickled down his old nose. 'My
dear,' he said, 'if this cloud passes away from you, you shall come to
us and be our daughter.' And thus he also pledged himself. There was a
dash of generosity about the man, in spite of his selfishness, which
always made him desirous of giving largely to those who gave largely to
him. He would fain that his gifts should be bigger, if it were possible.
He longed at this moment to tell her that the dirty cheque should go for
nothing. He would have done it, I think, but that it was impossible for
him to speak in her presence of that which moved her so greatly.
He had contrived that her hand should fall from his arm into his grasp,
and now for a moment he held it. 'You are a good girl,' he said--'a
dear, dear, good girl. When this cloud has passed away, you shall come
to us and be our daughter.'
'But it will never pass away,' said Grace.
'Let us hope that it may. Let us hope that it may.' Then he stooped
over and kissed her, and leaving the room, got out into the hall and
thence into the garden, and so away, without saying a word of adieu to
Mrs Robarts.
As he walked across to the Court, whither he was obliged to go, because
of his chaise, he was lost in surprise at what had occurred. He had gone
to the parsonage hating the girl, and despising his son. Now, as he
retraced his steps, his feelings were altogether changed. He admired the
girl--and as for his son, even his anger was for the moment altogether
gone. He would write to his son at once and implore him to stop the
sale. He would tell his son all that had occurred, or rather would make
Mrs Grantly do so. In respect to his son he was quite safe. He thought
at that moment that he was safe. There would be no use in hurling
further threats at him. If Crawley was found guilty of stealing the
money, there was the girl's promise. If he were acquitted there was his
own pledge. He remembered perfectly well that the girl had said more
than this--that she had not confined her assurance to the verdict of the
jury, that she had protested that she would not accept Major Grantly's
hand as long as people thought that her father had stolen the cheque;
but the archdeacon felt that it would be ignoble to hold her closely to
her words. The event, according to his ideas of the compact, was to
depend on the verdict of the jury. If the jury should find Mr Crawley
not guilty, all objection on his part to the marriage was to be
withdrawn. And he would keep his word! In such case it should be
withdrawn.
When he came to the rags of the auctioneer's bill, which he had before
torn down with his umbrella, he stopped a moment to consider he would
act at once. In the first place he would tell his son that his threats
were withdrawn, and would ask him to remain at Cosby Lodge. He would
write the letter as he passed through Barchester, on his way home, so
that his son might receive it on the following morning; and he would
refer the major to his mother for a full explanation of the
circumstances. Those odious bills must be removed from every barn-door
and wall in the county. At the present moment his anger against his son
was chiefly directed against his ill-judged haste in having put up those
ill-omened bills. Then he paused to consider what must be his wish as to
the verdict of the jury. He had pledged himself to abide by the verdict,
and he could not but have a wish on the subject. Could he desire in his
heart that Mr Crawley should be found guilty? He stood still for a
moment thinking of this, and then he walked on, shaking his head. If it
might be possible he would have no wish on the subject whatsoever.
'Well!' said Lady Lufton, stopping him in the passage--'have you seen
her?'
'Yes; I have seen her.'
'Well?'
'She is a good girl--a very good girl. I am in a great hurry, and
hardly know how to tell you more now.'
'You say that she is a good girl.'
'I say that she is a very good girl. An angel could not have behaved
better. I will tell you some day, Lady Lufton, but I can hardly tell you
now.'
When the archdeacon was gone old Lady Lufton confided to young Lady
Lufton her very strong opinion that many months would not be gone before
Grace Crawley would be the mistress of Cosby Lodge. 'It will be a great
promotion,' said the old lady, with a little toss of her head. When
Grace was interrogated afterwards by Mrs Robarts as to what had passed
between her and the archdeacon she had very little to say as to the
interview. 'No he did not scold me,' she replied to an inquiry from her
friend. 'There is no engagement,' said Grace. 'But I suppose you
acknowledged, my dear, that a future engagement is quite possible?' 'I
told him, Mrs Robarts,' Grace answered, after hesitating for a moment,
'that I would never marry his son as long as papa was suspected by any
one in the world of being a thief. And I will keep my word.' but she
said nothing to Mrs Robarts of the pledge which the archdeacon had made
to her.
CHAPTER LVIII
THE CROSS-GRAINEDNESS OF MEN
By the time that the archdeacon reached Plumstead his enthusiasm in
favour of Grace Crawley had somewhat cooled itself; and the language
which from time to time he prepared for conveying his impressions to his
wife, became less fervid as he approached his home. There was his
pledge, and by that he would abide;--and so much he would make both his
wife and son understand. But any idea which he might have entertained
for a moment of extending the promise he had given and relaxing that
given to him was gone before he saw his own chimneys. Indeed, I fear he
had by that time begun to feel that the only salvation now open to him
must come from the jury's verdict. If the jury should declare Mr Crawley
to be guilty, then--; he would not say even to himself that in such case
all would be right, but he did feel that much as he might regret the
fate of the poor Crawleys, and of the girl whom in his warmth he had
declared to be almost an angel, nevertheless to him personally such a
verdict would bring consolatory comfort.
'I have seen Miss Crawley,' he said to his wife, as soon as he had
closed the door of his study, before he had been two minutes out of the
chaise. He had determined that he would dash at the subject at once, and
he thus carried his resolution into effect.
'You have seen Grace Crawley?'
'Yes; I went up to the parsonage and called upon her. Lady Lufton
advised me to do so.'
'And Henry?'
'Oh, Henry has gone. He was only there one night. I suppose he saw
her, but I am not sure.'
'Would not Miss Crawley tell you?'
'I forgot to ask her.' Mrs Grantly, at hearing this, expressed her
surprise by opening wide her eyes. He had gone all the way over to
Framley on purpose to look after his son, and learn what were his
doings, and when there he had forgotten to ask the person who could have
given him better information than anyone else! 'But it does not
signify,' continued the archdeacon; 'she said enough to me to make that
of no importance.'
'And what did she say?'
'She said that she would never consent to marry Henry as long as there
was any suspicion abroad as to her father's guilt.'
'And you believe her promise?'
'Certainly I do; I do not doubt that in the least. I put implicit
confidence in her. And I have promised her that if her father is
acquitted--I will withdraw my opposition.'
'No!'
'But I have. And you would have done the same had you been there.'
'I doubt that, my dear. I am not so impulsive as you are.'
'You could not have helped yourself. You would have felt yourself
obliged to be equally generous with her. She came up to me and she put
her hand upon me--' 'Psha!' said Mrs Grantly. 'But she did, my dear, and
then she said, "I promise you that I will not become your son's wife
while people think papa stole this money." What else could I do?'
'And is she pretty?'
'Very pretty; very beautiful.'
'And like a lady?'
'Quite like a lady. There is no mistake about that.'
'And she behaved well?'
'Admirably,' said the archdeacon, who was in measure compelled to
justify the generosity into which he had been betrayed by his feelings.
'Then she is a paragon,' said Mrs Grantly.
'I don't know what you may call a paragon, my dear. I say that she is a
lady, and that she is extremely good-looking, and that she behaved very
well. I cannot say less in her favour. I am sure you would not say less
yourself, if you had been present.'
'She must be a wonderful young woman.'
'I don't know anything about her being wonderful.'
'She must be wonderful when she has succeeded both with the son and with
the father.'
'I wish you had been there instead of me,' said the archdeacon angrily.
Mrs Grantly very probably wished so also, feeling that in that case a
more serene mode of business would have been adopted. How keenly
susceptible the archdeacon still was to the influences of feminine
charms, no one knew better than Mrs Grantly, and whenever she became
aware that he had been in this way seduced from the wisdom of his cooler
judgment she always felt something akin to indignation against the
seducer. As for her husband, she probably told herself at such moments
that he was an old goose. 'If you had been there, and Henry with you,
you would have made a great deal worse job of it than I have done,' said
the archdeacon.
'I don't say you have made a bad job of it, my dear,' said Mrs Grantly.
'But it's past eight, and you must be terribly in want of your dinner.
Had you not better go and dress?'
In the evening the plan of future campaign was arranged between them.
The archdeacon would not write to his son at all. In passing through
Barchester he had abandoned his idea of despatching a note from the
hotel, feeling that such a note as would be required was not easily
written in a hurry. Mrs Grantly would now write to her son, telling him
that circumstances had changed, that it would be altogether unnecessary
for him to sell his furniture, and begging him to come over and see his
father without a day's delay. She wrote her letter that night, and read
to the archdeacon all that she had written--with the exception of the
postscript:--'You may be quite sure that there will be no unpleasantness
with your father.' That was the postscript which was not communicated to
the archdeacon.
On the third day after that Henry Grantly did come over to Plumstead.
His mother in her letter to him had not explained how it had come to
pass that the sale of the furniture would be unnecessary. His father had
given him to understand distinctly that his income would be withdrawn
from him unless he would express his intention of giving up Miss
Crawley; and it had been admitted among them all that Cosby Lodge must
be abandoned if this were done. He certainly would not give up Grace
Crawley. Sooner than that, he would give up every stick in his
possession, and go an live in New Zealand if it were necessary. Not only
had Grace's conduct to him made him thus firm, but the natural bent of
his own disposition had tended that way also. His father had attempted
to dictate to him, and sooner than submit to that he would sell the coat
off his back. Had his father confined his opposition to advice, and had
Miss Crawley been less firm in her view of her duty, the major might
have been less firm also. But things had so gone that he was determined
to be fixed as granite. If others would not be moved from their
resolves, neither would he. Such being the state of his mind, he could
not understand why he was thus summoned to Plumstead. He had already
written over to Pau about his house, and it was well that he should, at
any rate, see his mother before he started. He was willing, therefore,
to go to Plumstead, but he took no steps as to the withdrawal of those
auctioneer's bills to which the archdeacon so strongly objected. When he
drove into the rectory yard, his father was standing there before him.
'Henry,' he said, 'I am very glad to see you. I am very much obliged to
you for coming.' Then Henry got out of his cart and shook hands with his
father, and the archdeacon began to talk about the weather. 'Your mother
has gone into Barchester to see your grandfather,' said the archdeacon.
'If you are not tired, we might as well take a walk. I want to go up as
far as Flurry's cottage.' The major of course declared that he was not
at all tired, and that he should be delighted of all things to go up and
see old Flurry, and thus they started. Young Grantly had not even been
into the house before he left the yard with his father. Of course, he
was thinking of the coming sale at Cosby Lodge, and of his future life
at Pau, and of his injured position in the world. There would be no
longer any occasion for him to be solicitous as to the Plumstead foxes.
Of course these things were in his mind; but he could not begin to speak
of them till his father did so. 'I'm afraid your grandfather is not very
strong,' said the archdeacon, shaking his head. 'I fear he won't be with
us very long.'
'Is it so bad as that?'
'Well, you know, he is an old man, Henry; and he was always somewhat old
for his age. He will be eighty, if he lives two years longer, I think.
But he'll never reach eighty;--never. You must go and see him before you
go back home; you must indeed.' The major, of course, promised that he
would see his grandfather, and the archdeacon told his son how nearly
the old man had fallen in the passage between the cathedral and the
deanery. In this way they had nearly made their way up to the
gamekeeper's cottage without a word of reference to any subject that
touched upon the matter of which each of them was of course thinking.
Whether the major intended to remain at home or to live at Pau, the
subject of Mr Harding's health was a natural topic for conversation
between him and his father; but when his father stopped suddenly, and
began to tell him how a fox had been trapped on Darvell's farm--'and of
course it was a Plumstead fox --there can be no doubt that Flurry is
right about that';--when the archdeacon spoke of this iniquity with much
warmth, and told his son how he had at once written off to Mr Thorne of
Ullathorne, and how Mr Thorne had declared that he didn't believe a word
of it, and how Flurry had produced the pad of the fox, with the marks of
the trap on the skin--then the son began to feel that the ground was
becoming very warm, and that he could not go on much longer without
rushing into details about Grace Crawley. 'I've no more doubt that it
was one of our foxes than that I stand here,' said the archdeacon.
'It doesn't matter where the fox was bred. It shouldn't have been
trapped,' said the major.
'Of course not,' said the archdeacon, indignantly. I wonder whether he
would have been so keen had a Romanist priest come into his parish and
turned one of his Protestants into a Papist?
Then Flurry came up, and produced the identical pad out of his pocket.
'I don't suppose it was intended,' said the major, looking at the
interesting relic with scrutinising eyes. 'I suppose it was caught in a
rabbit-trap, eh, Flurry?'
'I don't see what right a man has with traps at all, when gentlemen is
particular about their foxes,' said Flurry. 'Of course they'd call it
rabbits.'
'I never liked that man on Darvell's farm,' said the archdeacon.
'Nor I either,' said Flurry. 'No farmer ought to be on that land who
don't have a horse of his own. And if I war Squire Thorne, I wouldn't
have no farmer there who didn't keep no horse. When a farmer has a horse
of his own, and follies the hounds, there ain't no rabbit-traps;--never.
How does that come about, Mr Henry? Rabbits! I know very well what
rabbits is!'
Mr Henry shook his head, and turned away, and the archdeacon followed
him. There was an hypocrisy about this pretended care for the foxes
which displeased the major. He could not, of course, tell his father
that the foxes were no longer anything to him; but yet he must make it
understood that such was his conviction. His mother had written to him,
saying that the sale of the furniture need not take place. It might be
all very well for his mother to say that, or for his father; but after
what had taken place, he could consent to remain in England on no other
understanding than that his income should be made permanent to him. Such
permanence must not be any longer dependent on his father's caprice. In
these days he had come to be somewhat in love with poverty and Pau, and
had been feeding on the luxury of his grievance. There, perhaps, nothing
so pleasant as the preparation for self-sacrifice. To give up Cosby
Lodge and the foxes, to marry a penniless wife, and to go and live at
Pau on six or seven hundred a year, seemed just now to Major Grantly to
be a fine thing, and he did not intend to abandon this fine thing
without receiving a very clear reason for doing so. 'I can't quite
understand Thorne,' said the archdeacon. 'He used to be so particular
about these foxes, and I don't suppose that a country gentleman will
change his ideas because he has given up hunting himself.'
'Mr Thorne never thought very much of Flurry,' said Henry Grantly, with
his mind intent upon Pau and his grievance.
'He might take my word, at any rate,' said the archdeacon.
It was a known fact that the archdeacon's solicitude about the Plumstead
covers was wholly on behalf of his son the major. The major himself knew
this thoroughly, and felt that his father's present special anxiety was
intended as a corroboration of the tidings conveyed in his mother's
letter. Every word so uttered was meant to have reference to his son's
future residence in the country. 'Father,' he said, turning round
shortly, and standing before the archdeacon in the pathway, 'I think you
are quite right about the covers. I feel sure that every gentleman who
preserves a fox does good to the country. I am sorry that I shall not
have a closer interest in the matter myself.'
'Why shouldn't you have a closer interest in it?' said the archdeacon.
'Because I shall be living abroad.'
'You got your mother's letter?'
'Yes, I got my mother's letter.'
'Did she not tell you that you can stay where you are?'
'Yes, she said so. But, to tell you the truth, sir, I do not like the
risk of living beyond my assured income.'
'But if I justify it?'
'I do not wish to complain, sir, but you have made me understand that
you can, and that in certain circumstances, you will, at a moment,
withdraw what you give me. Since this was said to me, I have felt myself
to be unsafe in such a house as Cosby Lodge.'
The archdeacon did not know how to explain. He had intended that the
real explanation should be given by Mrs Grantly, and had been anxious to
return to his old relations with his son without any exact terms on his
own part. But his son was, as he thought, awkward, and would drive him
to some speech that was unnecessary. 'You need not be unsafe there at
all,' he said, half angrily.
'I must be unsafe if I am not sure of my income.'
'Your income is not in any danger. But you had better speak to your
mother about it. For myself, I think I may say that I have never yet
behaved to any of you with any harshness. A son should, at any rate, not
be offended because a father thinks that he is entitled to some
consideration for what he does.'
'There are some points on which a son cannot give way even to his
father, sir.'
'You had better speak to your mother, Henry. She will explain to you
what has taken place. Look at that plantation. You don't remember it,
but every tree there was planted since you were born. I bought that farm
from old Mr Thorne, when he was purchasing St Ewold's Downs, and it was
the first bit of land I ever had of my own.'
'That is not in Plumstead, I think?'
'No: this is Plumstead, where we stand, but that's in Eiderdown. The
parishes run in and out here. I never bought any other land as cheap as
I bought that.'
'And did old Thorne make a good purchase at St Ewold's?'
'Yes, I fancy he did. It gave him the whole of the parish, which was a
great thing. It is astonishing how land has risen in value since that,
and yet rents are not so very much higher. They who buy land now can't
have above two-and-a-half for their money.'
'I wonder people are so fond of land,' said the major.
'It is a comfortable feeling to know that you stand on your own ground.
Land is about the only thing that can't fly away. And then, you see,
land gives so much more than the rent. It gives position and influence
and political power, to say nothing about the game. We'll go back now. I
daresay your mother will be at home by this time.'
The archdeacon was striving to teach a great lesson to his son when he
thus spoke of the pleasure which a man feels when he stands upon his own
ground. He was bidding his son to understand how great was the position
of an heir to a landed property, and how small the position of a man
depending on what Dr Grantly himself would have called a scratch
income--an income made up of a few odds and ends, a share or two in this
company and a share or two in that, a slight venture in foreign stocks,
a small mortgage and such-like convenient but uninfluential driblets. A
man, no doubt, may live at Pau and enjoy life after a fashion while
reading Galignani and looking at the mountains. But--as it seemed to the
archdeacon--when there was a choice between this kind of thing, and
fox-covers at Plumstead, and a seat among the magistrates of
Barsetshire, and an establishment full of horses, beeves, swine,
carriages, and hayricks, a man brought up as his son had been brought up
ought not to be very long in choosing. It never entered into the
archdeacon's mind that he was tempting his son; but Henry Grantly felt
that he was having the good things of the world shown to him, and that
he was being told that they should be his--for a consideration.
The major, in his present mood, looked at the matter from his own point
of view, and determined that the consideration was too high. He was
pledged not to give up Grace Crawley, and he would not yield on that
point, though he might be tempted by all the fox-covers in Barsetshire.
At this moment he did not know how far his father was prepared to yield,
or how far it was expected that he should yield himself. He was told
that he had to speak to his mother. He would speak to his mother, but,
in the meantime, he could not bring himself to make a comfortable answer
to his father's eloquent praise of landed property. He could not allow
himself to be enthusiastic on the matter till he knew what was expected
of him if he chose to submit to be made a British squire. At present
Galignani and the mountains had their charms for him. There was,
therefore, but little conversation between the father and the son as the
walked back to the rectory.
Late that night the major heard the whole story from his mother.
Gradually, and as though unintentionally, Mrs Grantly told him all she
knew of the archdeacon's visit to Framley. Mrs Grantly was quite as
anxious as was her husband to keep her son at home, and therefore she
omitted in her story those little sneers against Grace which she herself
had been tempted to make by the archdeacon's fervour in the girl's
favour. The major said as little as was possible while he was being told
of his father's adventure, and expressed neither anger nor satisfaction
till he had been made thoroughly to understand that Grace had pledged
herself not to marry him as long as any suspicion should rest upon her
father's name.
'Your father is quite satisfied with her,' said Mrs Grantly. 'He thinks
that she is behaving very well.'
'My father had no right to exact such a pledge.'
'But she made it of her own accord. She was the first to speak about Mr
Crawley's supposed guilt. Your father never mentioned it.'
'He must have led to it; and I think that he had no right to do so. He
had no right to go to her at all.'
'Now don't be foolish, Henry.'
'I don't see that I am foolish.'
'Yes, you are. A man is foolish if he won't take what he wants without
asking exactly how he is to come by it. That your father should be
anxious is the most natural thing in the world. You know how high he has
always held his own head, and how much he thinks about the characters
and the position of clergymen. It is not surprising that he should
dislike the idea of such a marriage.'
'Grace Crawley would disgrace no family,' said the lover.
'That's all very well for you to say, and I'll take your word that it is
so;--that is as far as the young lady goes herself. And there's your
father almost as much in love with her as you are. I don't know what you
would have?'
'I would be left alone.'
'But what harm has been done you? From what you yourself have told me,
I know that Miss Crawley has said the same thing to you that she has
said to your father. You can't but admire her for the feeling.'
'I admire her for everything.'
'Very well. We don't say anything against that.'
'And I don't mean to give her up.'
'Very well again. Let us hope that Mr Crawley will be acquitted, and
then all will be right. Your father never goes back on his promise. He
is always better than his word. You'll find that if Mr Crawley is
acquitted, or if he escapes in any way, your father will only be happy
for an excuse to make much of the young lady. You should not be hard on
him, Henry. Don't you see that it is his one great desire to keep you
near him. The sight of those odious bills nearly broke his heart.'
'Then why did he threaten me?'
'Henry, you are obstinate.'
'I am not obstinate, mother.'
'Yes, you are. You remember nothing, and you forget nothing. You expect
everything to be made smooth for you, and will do nothing towards making
things smooth for anybody else. You ought to promise to give up the
sale. If the worst came to the worst, your father would not let you
suffer in pocket for yielding to him so much.'
'If the worst comes to the worst, I wish to take nothing from my
father.'
'You won't put off the sale, then?'
The son paused a moment before he answered his mother, thinking over all
the circumstances of his position. 'I cannot do so as long as I am
subject to my father's threat,' he said at last. 'What took place
between my father and Miss Crawley can go for nothing with me. He has
told me that his allowance to me is to be withdrawn. Let him tell me
that he has reconsidered the matter.'
'But he has not withdrawn it. The last quarter was paid to your account
only the other day. He does not mean to withdraw it.'
'Let him tell me so; let him tell me that my power of living at Cosby
Lodge does not depend on my marriage--that my income will be continued
to me whether I marry or no, and I'll arrange matters with the
auctioneer tomorrow. You can't suppose that I should prefer to live in
France.'
'Henry, you are too hard on your father.'
'I think, mother, he has been too hard on me.'
'It is you who are to blame now. I tell you plainly that that is my
opinion. If evil comes of it, it will be your own fault.'
'If evil comes of it, I must bear it.'
'A son ought to give up something to his father;--especially to a father
as indulgent as yours.'
But it was of no use. And Mrs Grantly when she went to bed could only
lament in her own mind over what, in discussing the matter afterwards
with her sister, she called the cross-grainedness of men. 'They are as
alike each other as two peas,' she said, 'and though each of them wished
to be generous, neither of them would condescend to be just.' Early on
the following morning there was, no doubt, much said on the subject
between the archdeacon and his wife before they met their son at
breakfast; but neither at breakfast nor afterwards was there a word said
between the father and the son that had the slightest reference to the
subject in dispute between them. The archdeacon made no more speeches in
favour of land, nor did he revert to the foxes. He was very civil to his
son;--too civil by half, as Mrs Grantly continued to say to herself. And
then the major drove himself away in his cart, going through Barchester,
so that he might see his grandfather. When he wished his father
good-bye, the archdeacon shook hands with him, and said something about
the chance of rain. Had he not better take the big umbrella? The major
thanked him courteously, and said that he did not think it would rain.
Then he was gone. 'Upon his own head be it,' said the archdeacon when
his son's step was heard in the passage to the backyard. Then Mrs
Grantly got up quietly and followed her son. She found him settling
himself in his dog-cart, while the servant who was to accompany him was
still at the horse's head. She went up close to him, and, standing by
the wheel of the gig, whispered a word or two into his ear. 'If you love
me, Henry, you will postpone the sale. Do it for my sake.' There came
across his face a look of great pain, but he answered her not a word.
The archdeacon was walking about the room striking one hand open with
the other closed, clearly in a tumult of anger, when his wife returned
to him. 'I have done all that I can,' he said--'all that I can; more,
indeed, than was becoming of me. Upon his own head be it. Upon his own
head be it.'
'What is it you fear?' she asked.
'I fear nothing. But if he chooses to sell his things at Cosby Lodge he
must abide the consequences. They shall not be replaced with my money.'
'What will it matter if he does sell them?'
'Matter! Do you think there is a single person in the county who will
not know that his doing is a sign that he has quarrelled with me?'
'But he has not quarrelled with you.'
'I can tell you, then, that in that case, I shall have quarrelled with
him! I have not been a hard father, but there are some things which a
man cannot bear. Of course you take his part.'
'I am taking no part. I only want peace between you.'
'Peace!--yes; peace indeed. I am to yield in everything. I am to be
nobody. Look here;--as sure as ever an auctioneer's hammer is raised at
Cosby Lodge, I will alter the settlement of the property. Every acre
shall go to Charles. There is my word for it.' The poor woman had
nothing more to say at that moment. She thought that at the present
conjuncture her husband was less in the wrong than her son, but she
could not tell him so lest she should strengthen him in his wrath.
Henry Grantly found his grandfather in bed, with Posy seated on the bed
beside him. 'My father told me that you were not quite well, and I
thought I had better look in,' said the major.
'Thank you, my dear;--it is very good of you. There is not much the
matter with me, but I am not quite so strong as I was once.' And the old
man smiled as he held his grandson's hand.
'And how is cousin Posy?' said the major.
'Posy is quite well;--isn't she, my darling?' said the old man.
'Grandpa doesn't go to the cathedral now,' said Posy; 'so I come in to
talk to him. Don't I, grandpa?'
'And to play cat's-cradle;--only we have not had any cat's-cradle this
morning, because it is cold for grandpa to sit up in bed,' said Posy.
When the major had been there about twenty minutes he was preparing to
take his leave--but Mr Harding, bidding Posy go out of the room, told
his grandson that he had a word to say to him. 'I don't like to
interfere, Henry,' he said, 'but I am afraid things are not quite smooth
at Plumstead.'
'There is nothing wrong between me and my mother,' said the major.
'God forbid that there should be; but, my dear boy, don't let there be
anything wrong between you and your father. He is a good man, and the
time will come when you will be proud of his memory.'
'I am proud of him now.'
'Then be gentle with him--and submit yourself. I am an old man
now--very fast going away from all those I love here. But I am happy in
leaving my children because they have ever been gentle with me and kind.
If I am permitted to remember them whither I am going, my thoughts of
them all will be pleasant. Should it not be much to them that they have
made by death-bed happy?'
The major could not but tell himself that Mr Harding had been a man easy
to please, easy to satisfy, and, in that respect, very different from
his father. But of course he said nothing of this. 'I will do my best,'
he replied.
'Do, my boy. Honour thy father--that thy days may be long in the land.'
It seemed to the major as he drove away from Barchester that everybody
was against him; and yet he was sure that he himself was right. He could
not give up Grace Crawley; and unless he were to do so he could not live
at Cosby Lodge.
CHAPTER LIX
A LADY PRESENTS HER COMPLIMENTS TO MISS L.D.
One morning while Lily Dale was staying with Mrs Thorne in London, there
was brought up to her room, as she was dressing for dinner, a letter
which the postman had just left for her. The address was written in a
feminine hand, and Lily was at once aware that she did not know the
writing. The angles were very acute, and the lines were very straight,
and the vowels looked to be cruel and false, with their sharp points and
their open eyes. Lily at once knew that it was the performance of a
woman who had been taught to write at school, and not at home, and she
became prejudiced against the writer before she opened the letter. When
she had opened the letter and read it, her feelings towards the writer
were not of a kindly nature. It was as follows:-
'A lady presents her compliments to Miss L D and earnestly implores Miss
L D to give her answer to the following question: Is Miss L D engaged to
marry Mr J E? The lady in question pledges herself not to interfere with
Miss L D in any way, should the answer be in the affirmative. The lady
earnestly requests that a reply to this question may be sent to M D
Post-office 455 Edgware Road. In order that L D may not doubt that M D
had an interest in J E, M D encloses the last note she received from him
before he started for the Continent.' Then there was a scrap, which Lily
well knew to be in the handwriting of John Eames, and the scrap was as
follows:--'Dearest M--punctually at 8.30. Ever and always your
unalterable J E. Lily, as she read this, did not comprehend that John's
note to M D had been in itself a joke.
Lily Dale had heard of anonymous letters before, but had never received
one, or even received one. Now that she had one in her hand, it seemed
to her that there could be nothing more abominable than the writing of
such a letter. She let it drop from her as though the receiving, and
opening, and reading it had been a stain to her. As it lay on the ground
at her feet, she trod upon it. Of what sort could a woman be who wrote
such a letter as that? Answer it! Of course she would not answer it. It
never occurred to her for a moment that it could become her to answer
it. Had she been at home with her mother, she would have called her
mother to her, and Mrs Dale would have taken it from the ground, and
have read it, and then destroyed it. As it was, she must pick it up
herself. She did so, and declared to herself that there should be an end
to it. It might be right that somebody should see it, and therefore she
would show it to Emily Dunstable; after that it should be destroyed.
Of course the letter could have no effect upon her. So she told
herself. But it did have a very strong effect, and probably the exact
effect which the writer had intended that it should have. J E was, of
course, John Eames. There was no doubt about that. What a fool the
writer must have been to talk of L D in the letter, when the outside
cover was plainly addressed to Lily Dale! But there are some people for
whom the pretended mystery of initial letters has a charm, and who love
the darkness of anonymous letters. As Lily thought of this, she stamped
on the letter again. Who was the M D to whom she was required to send an
answer--with whom John Eames corresponded in the most affectionate
terms? She had resolved not even to ask a question about M D, and yet
she could not divert her mind from the inquiry. It was, at any rate, a
fact that there must be some woman designated by the letters--some woman
who had, at any rate, chosen to call herself M D. and John Eames had
called her M. There must, at any rate, be such a woman. This female, be
she who she might, had thought it worth her while to make this inquiry
about John Eames, and had manifestly learned something of Lily's own
history. And the woman had pledged herself not to interfere with John
Eames, if L D would only condescend to say that she was engaged to him!
As Lily thought of the proposition, she trod upon the letter for the
third time. Then she picked it up, and having no place of custody under
lock and key ready to her hand she put it in her pocket.
At night, before she went to bed, she showed the letter to Emily
Dunstable. 'Is it not surprising that any woman could bring herself to
write such a letter?' said Lily.
But Miss Dunstable hardly saw it in the same light. 'If anybody were to
write me such a letter about Bernard,' said she, 'I should show to him
as a good joke.'
'That would be very different. You and Bernard, of course, understand
each other.'
'And so will you and Mr Eames--some day, I hope.'
'Never more than we do now, dear. The thing that annoys me is that such
a woman as that should have even heard my name at all.'
'As long as people have got ears and tongues, people will hear other
people's names.'
Lily paused a moment, and then spoke again, asking another question. 'I
suppose this woman does know him? She must know him, because he has
written to her.'
'She knows something about him, no doubt, and has some reasons for
wishing that you will quarrel with him. If I were you, I should take
care not to gratify her. As for Mr Eames's note, it is a joke.'
'It is nothing to me,' said Lily.
'I suppose,' continued Emily, 'that most gentlemen become acquainted
with some people that they would not wish all their friends to know that
they knew. They go about so much more than we do, and meet people of all
sorts.'
'No gentleman should become intimately acquainted with a woman who could
write such a letter as that,' said Lily. And as she spoke she remembered
a certain episode in John Eames's early life, which had reached her from
a source which she had not doubted, and which had given her pain and
offended her. She had believed that John Eames had in that case behaved
very cruelly to a young woman, and had thought that her offence had come
simply from that feeling. 'But of course it is nothing to me,' she said.
'Mr Eames can choose his friends as he likes. I only wish that my name
might not be mentioned to them.'
'It is not from him that she has heard it.'
'Perhaps not. As I said before, of course, it does not signify; only
there is something very disagreeable about the whole thing. The idea is
so hateful! Of course this woman means me to understand that she
considers herself to have a claim upon Mr Eames, and that I stand in her
way.'
'And why should you not stand in her way?'
'I will stand in nobody's way. Mr Eames has a right to give his hand to
anyone that he pleases. I, at any rate, can have no cause of offence
against him. The only thing is that I do wish that my name could be left
alone.' Lily, when she was in her own room again, did destroy the
letter; but before she did so she read it again, and it became so
indelibly impressed on her memory that she could not forget even the
words of it. The lady who wrote had pledged herself, under certain
conditions, 'not to interfere with Miss L D.' 'Interfere with me!' Lily
said to herself; 'nobody has power to do so.' As she turned it over in
her mind, her heart became hard against John Eames. No woman would have
troubled herself to write such a letter without some cause for the
writing. That the writer was vulgar, false, unfeminine, Lily thought
that she could perceive from the letter itself; but no doubt the woman
knew John Eames had some interest in the question of his marriage, and
was entitled to some answer to her question--only was not entitled to
such answer from Lily Dale.
For some weeks past now, up to the hour at which the anonymous letter
had reached her hands, Lily's heart had been growing soft and still
softer towards John Eames; and now again it had become hardened. I think
that the appearance of Adolphus Crosbie in the Park, that momentary
vision of the real man by which the divinity of the imaginary Apollo had
been dashed to the ground, had done a service to the cause of her other
lover; of the lover who had never been a god, but who of late years had
at any rate grown into the full dimension of a man. Unfortunately for
the latter, he had commenced his love-making when he was but little more
than a boy. Lily, as she had thought of the two together, in the days of
her solitude, after she had been deserted by Crosbie, had ever pictured
to herself the lover whom she had preferred as having something godlike
in his favour, as being far the superior in wit, in manner, in
acquirement, and in personal advantage. There had been good-nature and
true hearty love on the side of the other man; but circumstances had
seemed to show that his good-nature was equal to all, and that he was
able to share even his hearty love among two or three. A man of such a
character, known by a girl from his boyhood as John Eames had been known
by Lily Dale, was likely to find more favour as a friend than as a
lover. So it had been between John Eames and Lily. While the untrue
memory of what Crosbie was, or ever had been, was present to her, she
could hardly bring herself to accept in her mind the idea of a lover who
was less noble in his manhood than the false picture which that untrue
memory was ever painting for her. Then had come before her eyes the
actual man; and though he had been seen but for a moment, the false
image had been broken into shivers. Lily had discovered that she had
been deceived, and that her forgiveness had been asked, not by a god,
but by an ordinary human being. As regarded the ungodlike man himself,
this could make no difference. Having thought upon the matter deeply,
she had resolved that she would not marry Mr Crosbie, and had pledged
herself to that effect to friends who never could have brought
themselves to feel affection for him, even had she married him. But the
shattering of the false image might have done John Eames a good turn.
Lily knew that she had at any rate full permission from all her friends
to throw in her lot with his--if she could persuade herself to do so.
Mother, uncle, sister, brother-in-law, cousin--and now this new
cousin's bride that was to be--together with Lady Julia and a whole
crowd of Allington and Guestwick friends, were in favour of such a
marriage. There had been nothing against it but the fact that the other
man had been dearer to her; and that other fact that poor Johnny lacked
something--something of earnestness, something of manliness, something
of that Phoebus divinity with which Crosbie had contrived to invest his
own image. But, as I have said above, John had gradually grown, if not
into divinity, at least into manliness; and the shattering of the false
image had done him yeoman's service. Now had come this accursed letter,
and Lily, despite herself, despite her better judgment, could not sweep
it away from her mind and make the letter as nothing to her. M D had
promised not to interfere with her! There was no room for such
interference, no possibility that such interference should take place.
She hoped earnestly--so she told herself--that her old friend John Eames
might have nothing to do with a woman so impudent and vulgar as must be
this M D; but except as regarded old friendship, M D and John Eames,
apart or together, could be as nothing to her. Therefore, I say that the
letter had had the effect which the writer of it had desired.
All London was new to Lily Dale, and Mrs Thorne was very anxious to show
her everything that could be seen. She was to return to Allington before
the flowers of May would have come, and the crowd and the glare and the
fashion and the art of the Academy's great exhibition must therefore
remain unknown to her; but she was taken to see many pictures, and among
others she was taken to see the pictures belonging to a certain nobleman
who, with that munificence which is so amply enjoyed and so little
recognised in England, keeps open house for the world to see the
treasures which the wealth of his family had collected. The necessary
order was procured, and on a certain brilliant April afternoon, Mrs
Thorne and her party found themselves in this nobleman's drawing-room.
Lily was with her, of course, and Emily Dunstable was there, and Bernard
Dale, and Mrs Thorne's dear friend Mrs Harold Smith, and Mrs Thorne's
constant and useful attendant, Siph Dunn. They had nearly completed
their delightful but wearying task of gazing at pictures, and Mrs Harold
Smith had declared that she would not look at another painting till the
exhibition was open; three of the ladies were seated in the
drawing-room, and Siph Dunn was standing before them, lecturing about
art as though he had been brought up on the ancient masters; Emily and
Bernard were lingering behind, and the others were simply delaying their
departure till the truant lovers should have caught them. At this moment
two gentlemen entered the room from the gallery, and the two gentlemen
were Fowler Pratt and Adolphus Crosbie.
All the party except Mrs Thorne knew Crosbie personally, and all of them
except Mrs Harold Smith knew something of the story of what had occurred
between Crosbie and Lily. Siph Dunn had learned it all since the meeting
in the park, having nearly learned it all from what he had seen with
there with his eyes. But Mrs Thorne, who knew Lily's story, did not know
Crosbie's appearance. But there was his friend Fowler Pratt, who, as
will be remembered, had dined with her but the other day; and she, with
that outspoken and somewhat loud impulse which was natural to her,
addressed him at once across the room, calling him by name. Had she not
done so, the two men might probably have escaped through the room, in
which case they would have met Bernard Dale and Emily Dunstable in the
doorway. Fowler Pratt would have endeavoured so to escape, and to carry
Crosbie with him, as he was quite alive to the experience of saving Lily
from such a meeting. But, as things turned out, escape from Mrs Thorne
was impossible.
'There's Fowler Pratt,' she had said when they first entered, quite loud
enough for Fowler Pratt to hear her. 'Mr Pratt, come here. How d'ye do?
You dined with me last Tuesday, and you've never been to call.'
'I never recognise that obligation till after the middle of May,' said
Mr Pratt, shaking hands with Mrs Thorne and Mrs Smith, and bowing to
Miss Dale.
'I don't see the justice of that at all,' said Mrs Thorne. 'It seems to
me that a good dinner is much entitled to a morsel of pasteboard in
April as at any other time. You won't have another till you have
called--unless you're specially wanted.'
Crosbie would have gone on, but that in his attempt to do so he passed
close by the chair on which Mrs Harold Smith was sitting, and that he
was accosted by her. 'Mr Crosbie,' she said, 'I haven't seen you for an
age. Has it come to pass that you have buried yourself entirely?' He did
not know how to extricate himself so as to move on at once. He paused,
and hesitated, and then stopped, and made an attempt to talk to Mrs
Smith as though he were at his ease. The attempt was anything but
successful; but having once stopped, he did not know how to put himself
in motion again, so that he might escape. At this moment Bernard Dale
and Emily Dunstable came up and joined the group; but neither of them
had discovered who Crosbie was till they were close upon him.
Lily was seated between Mrs Thorne and Mrs Smith, and Siph Dunn had been
standing immediately opposite to them. Fowler Pratt, who had been drawn
into the circle against his will, was now standing close to Dunn, almost
between him and Lily--and Crosbie was standing within two yards of Lily,
on the other side of Dunn. Emily and Bernard had gone behind Pratt and
Crosbie to Mrs Thorne's side before they had recognised the two
men;--and in this way Lily was completely surrounded. Mrs Thorne, who in
spite of her eager, impetuous ways, was as thoughtful of others as any
woman could be, as soon as she heard Crosbie's name understood it all,
and knew that it would be well that she should withdraw Lily from her
plight. Crosbie, in his attempt to talk to Mrs Smith, had smiled and
simpered, and had then felt that to smile and simper before Lily Dale,
with a pretended indifference to her presence, was false on his part,
and would seem to be mean. He would have avoided Lily for both their
sakes, had it been possible; but it was no longer possible, and he could
not keep his eyes from her face. Hardly knowing what he did, he bowed to
her, lifted his hat, and uttered some word of greeting.
Lily, from the moment that she had perceived his presence, had looked
straight before her, with something of fierceness in her eyes. Both
Pratt and Siph Dunn had observed her narrowly. It had seemed as though
Crosbie had been altogether outside the ken of her eyes, or the notice
of her ears, and yet she had seen every motion of his body, and had
heard every word which had fallen from his lips. Now, when he saluted
her, she turned her face full upon him, and bowed to him. Then she rose
from her seat, and made her way, between Siph Dunn and Pratt, out of the
circle. The blood had mounted to her face and suffused it all, and her
whole manner was such that it could escape the observation of none who
stood there. Even Mrs Harold Smith had seen it, and had read the story.
As soon as she was on her feet, Bernard had dropped Emily's hand, and
offered his arm to his cousin. 'Lily,' he had said out loud, 'you had
better let me take you away. It is a misfortune that you have been
subjected to the insult of such a greeting.' Bernard and Crosbie had
been early friends, and Bernard had been the unfortunate means of
bringing Crosbie and Lily together. Up to this day, Bernard had never
had his revenge for the ill-treatment which his cousin had received.
Some morsel of that revenge came to him now. Lily almost hated her
cousin for what he said; but she took his arm, and walked with him from
the room. It must be acknowledged in excuse for Bernard Dale, and as an
apology for the apparent indiscretion of his words, that all the
circumstances of the meeting had become apparent to everyone there. The
misfortune of the encounter had become too plain to admit of its being
hidden under any of the ordinary veils of society. Crosbie's salutation
had been made before the eyes of them all, and in the midst of absolute
silence, and Lily had risen with so queen-like a demeanour, and had
moved with so stately a step, that it was impossible that anyone
concerned should pretend to ignore the facts of the scene that had
occurred. Crosbie was still standing close to Mrs Harold Smith, Mrs
Thorne had risen from her seat, and the words which Bernard Dale had
uttered were still sounding in the ears of them all. 'Shall I see after
the carriage?' said Siph Dunn. 'Do,' said Mrs Thorne; 'or, stay a
moment; the carriage will of course be there, and we will go together.
Good-morning, Mr Pratt. I expect that, at any rate, you will send me
your card by post.' Then they all passed on, and Crosbie and Fowler
Pratt were left among the pictures.
'I think you will agree with me now that you had better give her up,'
said Fowler Pratt.
'I will never give her up,' said Crosbie, 'till I hear that she has
married someone else.'
'You may take my word for it, that she will never marry you after what
has just occurred.'
'Very likely not; but still the attempt, even the idea of the attempt
will be a comfort to me. I shall be endeavouring to do that which I
ought to have done.'
'What you have got to think of, I should suppose, is her comfort --not
your own.'
Crosbie stood for a while silent, looking at a portrait which was hung
just within the doorway of a smaller room into which they had passed, as
though his attention were entirely rivetted by the picture. But he was
thinking of the picture not at all, and did not even know what kind of
painting was on the canvas before him.
'Pratt,' he said at last, 'you are always hard to me.'
'I will say nothing more to you on the subject, if you wish me to be
silent.'
'I do wish you to be silent about that.'
'That shall be enough,' said Pratt.
'You do not quite understand me. You do not know how thoroughly I have
repented of the evil that I have done, or how far I would go to make
retribution, if retribution were possible.'
Fowler Pratt having been told to hold his tongue as regarded that
subject, made no reply to this, and began to talk about the pictures.
Lily, leaning on her cousin's arm, was out in the courtyard in front of
the house before Mrs Thorne and Siph Dunn. It was but for a minute, but
still there was a minute in which Bernard felt that he ought to say a
word to her.
'I hope you are not angry with me, Lily, for having spoken.'
'I wish, of course, that you had not spoken; but I am not angry. I have
no right to be angry. I made the misfortune for myself. Do not say
anything more about it, dear Bernard;--that is all.'
They had walked to the picture-gallery; but, by agreement, two carriages
had come to take them away--Mrs Thorne's and Mrs Harold Smith's. Mrs
Thorne easily managed to send Emily Dunstable and Bernard away with her
friend, and to tell Siph Dunn that he must manage for himself. In this
way it was contrived that no one but Mrs Thorne should be with Lily
Dale.
'My dear,' said Mrs Thorne, 'it seemed to me that you were a little put
out, and so I thought it best to send them all away.'
'It was very kind.'
'He ought to have passed on and not to have stood an instant when he saw
you,' said Mrs Thorne, with indignation. 'There are moments when it is a
man's duty simply to vanish, to melt into the air, or to sink into the
ground--in which he is bound to overcome the difficulties of such sudden
self-removal, or must ever after be accounted poor and mean.'
'I did not want him to vanish;--if only he had not spoken to me.'
'He should have vanished. A man is sometimes bound in honour to do so,
even when he himself has done nothing wrong;--when the sin has been all
with the woman. Her femininity has still a right to expect that so much
shall be done in its behalf. But when the sin has been all his own, as
it was in this case--and such damning sin too--'
'Pray do not go on, Mrs Thorne.'
'He ought to go out and hang himself simply for having allowed himself
to be seen. I thought Bernard behaved very well, and I shall tell him
so.'
'I wish you could manage to forget it all, and say no word more about
it.'
'I won't trouble you with it, my dear; I will promise you that. But,
Lily, I can hardly understand you. This man who must have been and must
ever be a brute--'
'Mrs Thorne, you promised me this instant that you would not talk of
him.'
'After this I will not; but you must let me have my way now for one
moment. I have so often longed to speak to you, but have not done so
from fear of offending you. Now the matter has come up by chance, and it
was impossible that what has occurred should pass by without a word. I
cannot conceive why the memory of that bad man should be allowed to
destroy your whole life.'
'My life is not destroyed. My life is anything but destroyed. It is a
very happy life.'
'But, my dear, if all that I hear is true, there is a most estimable
young man whom everybody likes, and particularly all your own family,
and whom you like very much yourself; and you will have nothing to say
to him, though his constancy is like the constancy of an old
Paladin--and all because of this wretch who just now came in your way.'
'Mrs Thorne, it is impossible to explain it all.'
'I do not want you to explain it all. Of course I would not ask any
young woman to marry any man whom she did not love. Such marriages are
abominable to me. But I think that a young woman ought to get married if
the thing fairly comes in her way, and if her friends approve, and if
she is fond of the man who is fond of her. It may be that some memory of
what has gone before is allowed to stand in your way, and that it should
not be so allowed. It sometimes happens that a horrid morbid sentiment
will destroy a life. Excuse me, then, Lily, if I say too much to you in
my hope that you may not suffer after this fashion.'
'I know how kind you are, Mrs Thorne.'
'Here we are at home, and perhaps you would like to go in. I have some
calls which I must make.' Then the conversation was ended, and Lily was
alone.
As if she had not thought of it all before! As if here was anything new
in this counsel which Mrs Thorne had given her! She had received the
same advice from her mother, from her sister, from her uncle, and from
Lady Julia, till she was sick of it. How had it come to pass that
matters which with others are so private, should with her have become
the public property of so large a circle? Any other girl would receive
advice on such a subject from her mother alone, and there the secret
would rest. But her secret had been published, as it were, by the
town-crier in the High Street! Everybody knew that she had been jilted
by Adolphus Crosbie, and that it was intended that she should be
consoled by John Eames. And people seemed to think that they had a right
to rebuke her if she expressed an unwillingness to carry out this
intention which the public had so kindly arranged for her.
Morbid sentiment! Why should she be accused of morbid sentiment because
she was unable to transfer her affections to a man who had been fixed on
as her future husband by the large circle of acquaintances who had
interested themselves in her affairs? There was nothing morbid in either
her desires or her regrets. So she assured herself, with something very
like anger at the accusation made against her. She had been contented,
and was contented, to live at home as her mother had lived, asking for
no excitement beyond that given by the daily routine of her duties.
There could be nothing morbid in that. She would go back to Allington as
soon as might be, and have done with this London life, which only made
her wretched. This seeing of Crosbie had been terrible to her. She did
not tell herself that his image had been shattered. Her idea was that
all her misery had come from the untowardness of the meeting. But there
was the fact that she had seen the man and heard his voice, and that the
seeing him and hearing him had made her miserable. She certainly desired
that it might never be her lot either to see him or to hear him again.
And as for John Eames--in those bitter moments of her reflection she
almost wished the same in regard to him. If he would only cease to be
her lover, he might be very well; but he was not very well to her as
long as his pretensions were dinned into her ear by everybody who knew
her. And then she told herself that John would have a better chance if
he had been content to plead for himself. In this, I think, she was hard
upon her lover. He had pleaded for himself as well as he knew how, and
as often as the occasion had been given to him. It had hardly been his
fault that his case had been taken in hand by other advocates. He had
given no commission to Mrs Thorne to plead for him.
Poor Johnny. He had stood in much better favour before that lady had
presented her compliments to Miss L D. It was that odious letter, and
the thoughts which it had forced upon Lily's mind, which were now most
inimical to his interests. Whether Lily loved him or not, she did not
love him well enough to be jealous of him. Had nay such letter reached
her respecting Crosbie in the happy days of her young love, she would
have simply have laughed at it. It would have been nothing to her. But
now she was sore and unhappy, and any trifle was powerful enough to
irritate her. 'Is Miss L D engaged to marry Mr J E?' 'No,' said Lily,
out loud. 'Lily Dale is not engaged to marry John Eames, and never will
be so engaged.' She was almost tempted to sit down and write the
required answer to Miss M D. Though the letter had been destroyed, she
well remembered the number of the post-office in the Edgware Road. Poor
John Eames.
That evening she told Emily Dunstable that she thought she would like to
return to Allington before the day that had been appointed for her. 'But
why,' said Emily, 'should you be worse than your word?'
'I daresay it will seem silly, but the fact is I am homesick. I'm not
accustomed to be away from mama for so long.'
'I hope it is not what occurred today at the picture-gallery.'
'I won't deny that it is that in part.'
'That was a strange accident, you know, that might never occur again.'
'It has occurred twice already, Emily.'
'I don't call the affair in the park anything. Anybody may see anybody
else in the Park, of course. He was not brought near you that he could
annoy you there. You ought certainly to wait till Mr Eames has come back
from Italy.'
Then Lily decided that she must and would go back to Allington on the
next Monday, and she actually did write a letter to her mother that
night to say that such was her intention. But on the morrow her heart
was less sore, and the letter was not sent.
CHAPTER LX
THE END OF JAEL AND SISERA
There was to be one more sitting for the picture, as the reader will
remember, and the day for that sitting had arrived. Conway Dalrymple had
in the meantime called at Mrs Van Siever's house, hoping that he might
be able to see Clara, and make his offer there. But he had failed in his
attempt to reach her. He had found it impossible to say all that he had
to say in the painting-room during the very short intervals which Mrs
Broughton left to him. A man should be allowed to be alone more than
fifteen minutes with a young lady on the occasion in which he offers her
his hand and his heart; but hitherto he had never had more than fifteen
minutes at his command; and then there had been the turban! He had also
in the meantime called in Mrs Broughton with the intention of explaining
to her that if she really intended to favour his views in respect to
Miss Van Siever, she ought to give him a little more liberty for
expressing himself. Mrs Broughton found it necessary during this meeting
to talk almost exclusively about herself and her own affairs. 'Conway,'
she had said, directly she saw him, 'I am so glad you have come. I think
I should have gone mad if I had not seen someone who cares for me.' This
was early in the morning, not much after eleven, and Mrs Broughton,
hearing first his knock at the door, and then his voice, had met him in
the hall and taken him into the dining-room.
'Is anything the matter?' he asked.
'Oh, Conway!'
'What is it? Has anything gone wrong with Dobbs?'
'Everything has gone wrong with him. He is ruined.'
'Heaven and earth! What do you mean?'
'Simply what I say. But you must not speak a word of it. I do not know
it from himself.'
'How do you know it?'
'Wait a moment. Sit down there, will you?--and I will sit by you. No,
Conway; do not take my hand. It is not right. There;--so. Yesterday Mrs
Van Siever was here. I need not tell you all that she said to me, even
if I could. She was very harsh and cruel, saying all manner of things
about Dobbs. How can I help it, if he drinks? I have not encouraged him.
And as for expensive living, I have been as ignorant as a child. I have
never asked for anything. When we were married somebody told me how much
we should have to spend. It was either two thousand, or three thousand,
or four thousand, or something like that. You know, Conway, how ignorant
I am about money;--that I am like a child. Is it not true?' She waited
for an answer and Dalrymple was obliged to acknowledge that it was true.
And yet he had known the times in which his dear friend had been very
sharp in her memory with reference to a few pounds. 'And now she says
that Dobbs owes her money which he cannot pay her, and that everything
must be sold. She says that Musselboro must have the business, and Dobbs
must shift for himself elsewhere.'
'Do you believe that she has the power to decide that things shall go
this way or that--as she pleases?'
'How am I to know? She says so, and she says it is because he drinks.
He does drink. That at least is true; but how can I help it? Oh, Conway,
what am I to do? Dobbs did not come home at all last night, but sent for
his things--saying that he must stay in the City. What am I to do if
they come and take the house, and sell the furniture, and turn me out
into the street?' Then the poor creature began to cry in earnest, and
Dalrymple had to console her as best he might. 'How I wish I had known
you first,' she said. To this Dalrymple was able to make no direct
answer. He was wise enough to know that a direct answer might possible
lead him into terrible trouble. He was by no means anxious to find
himself 'protecting' Mrs Dobbs Broughton from the ruin which her husband
had brought upon her.
Before he left her she had told him a long story, partly of matters of
which he had known something before, and partly made up of that which
she had heard from the old woman. It was settled, Mrs Broughton said,
that Mr Musselboro was to marry Clara Van Siever. But it appeared, as
far as Dalrymple could learn, that this was a settlement made simply
between Mrs Van Siever and Musselboro. Clara, as he thought, was not a
girl likely to fall into such a settlement without having an opinion of
her own. Musselboro was to have the business, and Dobbs Broughton was to
be 'sold up' and then look for employment in the City. From her husband
the wife had not heard a word on the matter, and the above story was
simply what had been told to Mrs Broughton by Mrs Van Siever. 'For
myself it seems that there can be but one fate,' said Mrs Broughton.
Dalrymple, in his tenderest voice, asked what that one fate must be.
'Never mind,' said Mrs Broughton. 'There are some things which one
cannot tell even to such a friend as you.' He was sitting near her and
had all but got his arm behind her waist. He was, however, able to be
prudent. 'Maria,' he said, getting up on his feet, 'if it should really
come about that you should want anything, you will send to me. You will
promise me that, at any rate?' She rubbed a tear from her eye and said
that she did not know. 'There are moments in which a man must speak
plainly,' said Conway Dalrymple;--'in which it would be unmanly not to
do so, however prosaic it may seem. I need hardly tell you that my purse
shall be yours if you want it.' But just at that moment she did not want
his purse, nor must it be supposed that she wanted to run away with him
and to leave her husband to fight the battle with Mrs Van Siever. The
truth was that she did not know what she wanted, over and beyond an
assurance from Conway Dalrymple that she was the most ill-used, the most
interesting, and the most beautiful woman ever heard of, either in
history or romance. Had he proposed to her to pack up a bundle and go
off with him in a cab to the London Chatham, and Dover railway station,
I do not for a moment think that she would have packed up her bundle.
She would have received intense gratification from the offer--so much so
that she would have been almost consoled for her husband's ruin; but she
would have scolded her lover, and would have explained to him the great
iniquity of which he was guilty. It was clear to him that at this
present time he could not make any special terms with her as to Clara
Van Siever. At such a moment as this he could hardly ask her to keep out
of the way, in order that he might have his opportunity. But when he
suggested that probably it might be better, in the present emergency, to
give up the idea of any further sitting in her room, and proposed to
send for his canvas, colour-box, and easel, she told him that, as far as
she was concerned, he was welcome to have that one other sitting for
which they had all bargained. 'You had better come tomorrow, as we had
agreed,' she said; 'and unless I shall have been turned out into the
street by the creditors, you may have the room as you did before. And
you must remember, Conway, that though Mrs Van Siever says that
Musselboro is to have Clara, it doesn't follow that Clara should give
way.' When we consider everything, we must acknowledge that this was, at
any rate, good-natured. Then there was a tender parting, with many
tears, and Conway Dalrymple escaped from the house.
He did not for a moment doubt the truth of the story which Mrs Broughton
had told, as far, at least, as it referred to the ruin of Dobbs
Broughton. He had heard something of this before, and for some weeks had
expected that a crash was coming. Broughton's rise had been very sudden,
and Dalrymple had never regarded his friend as firmly placed in the
commercial world. Dobbs was one of those men who seem born to surprise
the world by a spurt of prosperity, and might, perhaps, have a second
spurt, or even a third, could he have kept himself from drinking in the
morning. But Dalrymple, though he was hardly astonished by the story, as
it regarded Broughton, was put out by that part of it which had
reference to Musselboro. He had known that Musselboro had been
introduced to Broughton by Mrs Van Siever, but, nevertheless, he had
regarded the man as being nor more than Broughton's clerk. And now he
was told that Musselboro was to marry Clara Van Siever, and have all Mrs
Van Siever's money. He resolved, at last, that he would run his risk
about the money, and take Clara either with or without it, if she would
have him. And as for that difficulty in asking her, if Mrs Broughton
would give him no opportunity of putting the question behind her back,
he would put it before her face. He had not much leisure for
consideration on these points, as the next day was the day for the last
sitting.
On the following morning he found Miss Van Siever already seated in Mrs
Broughton's room when he reached it. And at the moment Mrs Broughton was
not there. As he took Clara's hand he could not prevent himself from
asking her whether she had heard anything? 'Heard what?' asked Clara.
'Then you have not,' said he. 'Never mind now, as Mrs Broughton is
here.' Then Mrs Broughton had entered the room. She seemed to be quite
cheerful, but Dalrymple perfectly understood, from a special glance
which she gave to him, that he was to perceive that her cheerfulness was
assumed for Clara's benefit. Mrs Broughton was showing how great a
heroine she could be on behalf of her friends. 'Now, my dear,' she said,
'do remember that this is the last day. It may be very well, Conway,
and, of course, you know best; but as far as I can see, you have not
made half as much progress as you ought to have done.' 'We shall do
excellently well,' said Dalrymple. 'So much the better,' said Mrs
Broughton; 'and now, Clara, I'll place you.' And so Clara was placed on
her knees, with the turban on her head.
Dalrymple began his work assiduously, knowing that Mrs Broughton would
not leave the room for some minutes. It was certain that she would
remain for a quarter of an hour, and it might be as well that he should
really use that time on the picture. The peculiar position in which he
was placed probably made his word difficult to him. There was something
perplexing in the necessity which bound him to look upon the young lady
before him both as Jael and as the future Mrs Conway Dalrymple, knowing
as he did that she was at present simply Clara Van Siever. A double
personification was not difficult to him. He had encountered it with
every model that had sat to him, and with every young lady he had
attempted to win--if he had ever made such an attempt with one before.
But the triple character joined to the necessity of the double work, was
distressing to him. 'The hand a little further back, if you don't mind,'
he said, 'and the wrist more turned towards me. That is just it. Lean a
little more over him. There--that will do exactly.' If Mrs Broughton did
not go very quickly, he must begin to address his model on a totally
different subject, even while she was in the act of slaying Sisera.
'Have you made up your mind who is to be Sisera?' asked Mrs Broughton.
'Not in the least,' said Clara, speaking without moving her face
--almost without moving her lips.
'That will be excellent,' said Mrs Broughton. She was still quite
cheerful, and really laughed as she spoke. 'Shall you like the idea,
Clara, of striking the nail right through his head?'
'Oh, yes; as well as his head's as another's. I shall seem to be having
my revenge for all the trouble he has given me.'
There was a slight pause, and then Dalrymple spoke. 'You have had that
already, in striking me right through the heart.'
'What a very pretty speech! Was it not, my dear?' said Mrs Broughton.
And then Mrs Broughton laughed. There was something slightly hysterical
in her laugh which grated on Dalrymple's ears --something which seemed
to tell him that at the present moment his dear friend was not going to
assist him honestly in his effort.
'Only that I should put him out, I would get up and make a curtsey,'
said Clara. No young lady could ever talk of making a curtsey for such a
speech if she supposed it to have been made in earnestness. And Clara,
no doubt, understood that a man might make a hundred such speeches in
the presence of a third person without any danger that they would be
taken as meaning anything. All this Dalrymple knew, and began to think
that he had better put down his palette and brush, and do the work which
he had before him in the most prosaic language that he could use. He
could, at any rate, succeed in making Clara acknowledge his intention in
this way. He waited still for a minute or two, and it seemed to him that
Mrs Broughton had no intention of piling her fagots on the present
occasion. It might be that the remembrance of her husband's ruin
prevented her from sacrificing herself in the other direction also.
'I am not very good at pretty speeches, but I am good at telling the
truth,' said Dalrymple.
'Ha, ha, ha!' laughed Mrs Broughton, still with a touch of hysterical
action in her throat. 'Upon my word, Conway, you know how to praise
yourself.'
'He dispraises himself most unnecessarily in denying the prettiness of
his language,' said Clara. As she spoke she hardly moved her lips, and
Dalrymple went on painting from the model. It was clear that Miss Van
Siever understood that the painting, and not the pretty speeches, was
the important business on hand.
Mrs Broughton had now tucked her feet up on the sofa, and was gazing at
the artist as he stood at his work. Dalrymple, remembering how he had
offered her his purse--an offer which, in the existing crisis of her
affairs, might mean a great deal--felt that she was ill-natured. Had
she intended to do him a good turn, she would have gone now; but there
she lay, with her feet tucked up, clearly proposing to be present
through the whole of the morning's sitting. His anger against her added
something to his spirit, and made him determine that he would carry out
his purpose. Suddenly, therefore, he prepared himself for action.
He was in the habit of working with a Turkish cap on his head, and with
a short apron tied round him. There was something picturesque about the
cap, which might not have been incongruous with love-making. It is easy
to suppose that Juan wore a Turkish cap when he sat with Haidee in
Lambro's island. But we may be quite sure that he did not wear an apron.
Now Dalrymple had thought of all this, and had made up his mind to work
today without his apron; but when arranging his easel and his brushes,
he had put it on from the force of habit, and was now disgusted with
himself as he remembered it. He put down his brush, divested his thumb
of his palette, then took off his cap, and after that untied the apron.
'Conway, what are you going to do?' said Mrs Broughton.
'I am going to ask Clara Van Siever to be my wife,' said Dalrymple. At
that moment the door was opened, and Mrs Van Siever entered the room.
Clara had not risen from her kneeling posture when Dalrymple began to
put off his trappings. She had not seen what he was doing as plainly as
Mrs Broughton had done, having her attention naturally drawn towards he
Sisera; and, besides this, she understood that she was to remain as she
was placed till orders to move were given to her. Dalrymple would
occasionally step aside from his easel to look at her in some altered
light, and such occasions she would simply hold her hammer somewhat more
tightly than before. When, therefore, Mrs Van Siever entered the room
Clara was still slaying Sisera, in spite of the artist's speech. the
speech, indeed, and her mother both seemed to come to her at the same
time. The old woman stood for a moment holding the open door in her
hand. 'You fool!' she said, 'what are you doing there, dressed up in
that way like a guy?' Then Clara got up from her feet and stood before
her mother in Jael's dress and Jael's turban. Dalrymple thought that the
dress and turban did not become her badly. Mrs Van Siever apparently
thought otherwise. 'Will you have the goodness to tell me, miss, why you
are dressed up after that Mad Bess of Bedlam fashion?'
The reader will no doubt bear in mind that Clara had other words of
which to think besides those which were addressed to her by her mother.
Dalrymple had asked her to be his wife in the plainest language, and she
thought that the very plainness of the language became him well. The
very taking off of his apron, almost as he said the words, though to
himself the action had been so distressing as almost to overcome his
purpose, had in it something to her of direct simple determination which
pleased her. When he had spoken of having a nail driven by her right
through his heart, she had not been in the least gratified; by the
taking off of the apron, and the putting down of the palette, and the
downright way in which he had called her Clara Van Siever --attempting
to be neither sentimental with Clara, nor polite with Miss Van
Siever--did please her. She had often said to herself that she would
never give a plain answer to a man who did not ask her a plain
question;--to a man who, in asking this question, did not say plainly to
her, 'Clara Van Siever, will you become Mrs Jones?'--or Mrs Smith, or
Mrs Tomkins, as the case might be. Now Conway Dalrymple had asked her to
become Mrs Dalrymple very much after this fashion. In spite of the
apparition of her mother, all this had passed through her mind. Not the
less, however, was she obliged to answer her mother, before she could
give any reply to the other questioner. In the meantime Mrs Dobbs
Broughton had untucked her feet.
'Mamma,' said Clara, 'who ever expected to see you here?'
'I daresay nobody did,' said Mrs Van Siever; 'but here I am,
nevertheless.'
'Madam,' said Mrs Dobbs Broughton, 'you might at any rate have gone
through the ceremony of having yourself announced by the servant.'
'Madam,' said the old woman attempting to mimic the tone of the other,
'I thought that on such a very particular occasion as this I might be
allowed to announce myself. You tomfool, you why don't you take that
turban off?' Then Clara, with slow and graceful motion, unwound the
turban. If Dalrymple really meant what he had said and would stick to
it, she need not mind being called a tomfool by her mother.
'Conway, I am afraid that our last sitting is disturbed,' said Mrs
Broughton, with her little laugh.
'Conway's last sitting is certainly disturbed,' said Mrs Van Siever, and
then she mimicked the laugh. 'And you'll all be disturbed--I can tell
you that. What an ass you must be to go on with this kind of thing,
after what I said to you yesterday! Do you know that he got beastly
drunk in the City last night, and that he is drunk now, while you are
going on with your tomfooleries?' Upon hearing this Mrs Dobbs Broughton
fainted in Dalrymple's arms.
Hitherto the artist had not said a word, and had hardly known what part
in it would best become him to play. If he intended to marry Clara--and
he certainly did intend to marry her if she would have him--it might be
as well not to quarrel with Mrs Van Siever. At any rate there was
nothing in Mrs Van Siever's intrusion, disagreeable that it was, which
need make him take up his sword to do battle with her. But now, as he
held Mrs Broughton in his arms, and as the horrid words which the old
woman had spoken rung in his ears, he could not refrain himself form
uttering reproach. 'You ought not to have told her in this way, before
other people, even if it be true,' said Conway.
'Leave me to be my own judge of what I ought to do, if you please, sir.
If she had any feeling at all, what I told her yesterday would have kept
her from all this. But some people have no feeling, and will go on being
tomfools though the house is on fire.' As these words were spoken, Mrs
Broughton fainted more persistently than ever--so that Dalrymple was
convinced that whether she felt or not, at any rate she heard. He had
now dragged her across the room, and laid her upon the sofa, and Clara
had come to her assistance. 'I daresay you think me very hard because I
speak plainly, but there are things much harder than plain speaking. How
much do you expect to be paid, sir, for this picture of my girl?'
'I do not expect to be paid for it at all,' said Dalrymple.
'And who is it to belong to?'
'It belongs to me at present.'
'Then, sir, it mustn't belong to you any longer. It won't do for you to
have a picture of my girl to hang up in your painting-room for all your
friends to come and make their jokes about, nor yet to make a show of it
in any of your exhibitions. My daughter has been a fool, and I can't
help it. If you'll tell me what's the cost, I'll pay you; then I'll have
the picture home, and I'll treat it as it deserves.'
Dalrymple thought for a moment about his picture and about Mrs Van
Siever. What had he better do? He wanted to behave well, and he felt
that the old woman had something of justice on her side. 'Madam,' he
said, 'I will not sell this picture; but it shall be destroyed, if you
wish it.'
'I certainly do wish it, but I won't trust you. If it's not sent to my
house at once you'll hear from me through my lawyers.'
Then Dalrymple deliberately opened his penknife and slit the canvas
across, through the middle of the picture each way. Clara, as she saw
him do it, felt that in truth that she loved him. 'There, Mrs Van
Siever,' he said; 'now you can take the bits home with you in your
basket if you wish it.' At this moment, as the rent canvas fell and
fluttered upon the stretcher, there came a loud voice of lamentation
from the sofa, a groan of despair and a shriek of wrath. 'Very fine
indeed,' said Mrs Van Siever. 'When ladies faint they always ought to
have their eyes about them. I see that Mrs Broughton understands that.'
'Take her away, Conway--for God's sake take her away,' said Mrs
Broughton.
'I shall take myself away very shortly,' said Mrs Van Siever, 'so you
needn't trouble Mr Conway about that. Not but that I thought the
gentleman's name was something else.'
'My name is Conway Dalrymple,' said the artist.
'Then I suppose you must be her brother, or her cousin, or something.'
'Take her away,' screamed Mrs Dobbs Broughton.
'Wait a moment, madam. As you've chopped up your handiwork there, Mr
Conway Dalrymple, and as I suppose my daughter has been more to blame
than anybody else--'
'She has not been to blame at all,' said Dalrymple.
'That's my affair and not yours,' said Mrs Van Siever, very sharply.
'But as you've been at all this trouble, and have now chopped it up, I
don't mind paying you for your time and paints; only I shall be glad to
know how much it will come to?'
'There will be nothing to pay, Mrs Van Siever.'
'How long has he been at it, Clara?'
'Mamma, indeed you had better not say anything about paying him.'
'I shall say whatever I please, miss. Will ten pounds do it, sir?'
'If you choose to buy the picture, the price will be seven hundred and
fifty,' said Dalrymple with a smile, pointing to the fragments.
'Seven hundred and fifty pounds?' said the old woman.
'But I strongly advise you not to make the purchase,' said Dalrymple.
'Seven hundred and fifty pounds! I certainly shall not give you seven
hundred and fifty pounds.'
'I certainly think you could invest your money better, Mrs Van Siever.
But if the thing is to be sold at all, that is my price. I've thought
that there was some justice in your demand that it should be
destroyed--and therefore I have destroyed it.'
Mrs Van Siever had been standing on the same spot ever since she had
entered the room, and now she turned round to leave the room.
'If you have any demand to make, I beg that you will send it in your
account for work done to Mr Musselboro. He is my man of business. Clara,
are you ready to come home? The cab is waiting at the door--at sixpence
the quarter of an hour, if you will be pleased to remember.'
'Mrs Broughton,' said Clara, thoughtful of her raiment, and remembering
that it might not be well that she should return home, even in a cab,
dressed as Jael, 'if you will allow me, I will go into your room for a
minute or two.'
'Certainly, Clara,' said Mrs Broughton, preparing to accompany her.
'But before you go, Mrs Broughton,' said Mrs Van Siever, 'it may be as
well that I should tell you that my daughter is going to become the wife
of Mr Musselboro. It may simplify matters that you should know this.'
And Mrs Van Siever, as she spoke, looked hard at Conway Dalrymple.
'Mamma!' exclaimed Clara.
'My dear,' said Mrs Van Siever, 'you had better change your dress and
come away with me.'
'Not till I have protested against what you have said, mamma.'
'You had better leave your protesting alone, I can tell you.'
'Mrs Broughton,' said Clara, 'I must beg you to understand that mamma
has not the slightest right in the world to tell you what she just now
said about me. Nothing on earth would induce me to become the wife of Mr
Broughton's partner.'
There was something which made Clara unwilling even to name the man whom
her mother had publicly proposed as her future husband.
'He isn't Mr Broughton's partner,' said Mrs Van Siever. 'Mr Broughton
has not got a partner. Mr Musselboro is the head of the firm. And as to
your marrying him, of course, I can't make you.'
'No, mamma, you cannot.'
'Mrs Broughton understands that, no doubt;--and so, probably, does Mr
Dalrymple. I can only tell them what are my ideas. If you choose to
marry the sweep at the crossing, I can't help it. Only I don't see what
good you would do the sweep, when he would have to sweep for himself and
you too. At any rate, I suppose you mean to go home with me now?' Then
Mrs Broughton and Clara left the room, and Mrs Van Siever was left with
Conway Dalrymple. 'Mr Dalrymple,' said Mrs Van Siever, 'do not deceive
yourself. What I told you just now will certainly come to pass.'
'It seems to me that that must depend on the young lady,' said
Dalrymple.
'I'll tell you what certainly will not depend on the young lady,' said
Mrs Van Siever, 'and that is whether the man who marries her will have
more with her than the clothes she stands up in. You will understand
that argument, I suppose?'
'I'm not quite sure that I do,' said Dalrymple.
'Then you'd better try to understand it. Good-morning, sir. I'm sorry
you've had to slit your picture.' Then she curtseyed low, and walked out
on to the landing-place. 'Clara,' she cried, 'I'm waiting for
you--sixpence a quarter of an hour--remember that.' In a minute or two
Clara came out to her, and then Mrs Van Siever and Miss Van Siever took
their departure.
'Oh, Conway, what am I to do? What am I to do?' said Mrs Dobbs
Broughton. Dalrymple stood perplexed for a few minutes, and could not
tell her what she was to do. She was in such a position that it was very
hard to tell her what she was to do. 'Do you believe, Conway, that he is
really ruined?'
'What am I to say? How am I to know?'
'I see that you believe it,' said the wretched woman.
'I cannot but believe that there is something of truth in what this
woman says. Why else should she come here with such a story?' Then there
was a pause, during which Mrs Broughton was burying her face on the arm
of the sofa. 'I'll tell you what I'll do,' continued he. 'I'll go into
the City and make inquiry. It can hardly be but what I shall learn the
truth there.'
Then there was another pause, at the end of which Mrs Broughton got up
from the sofa.
'Tell me,' said she:--'what do you mean about that girl?'
'You heard me ask her to be my wife?'
'I did! I did!'
'Is it not what you intended?'
'Do not ask me. My mind is bewildered. My brain is on fire! Oh,
Conway!'
'Shall I go into the City as I proposed?' said Dalrymple, who felt that
he might at any rate improve the position of circumstances by leaving
the house.
'Yes;--yes; go into the City! Go anywhere. Go. But stay! Oh,
Conway!' There was a sudden change in her voice as she spoke.
'Hark--there he is, as sure as life.' Then Conway listened, and heard a
footstep on the stairs, as to which he had then but little doubt that it
was the footstep of Dobbs Broughton. 'O heavens! He is tipsy!' exclaimed
Mrs Broughton; 'and what shall we do?' Then Dalrymple took her hand and
pressed it; and left the room, so that he might meet the husband on the
stairs. In the one moment that he had for reflection he thought it was
better that there should be no concealment.
CHAPTER LXI
'IT'S DOGGED AS DOES IT'
In accordance with the resolution to which the clerical commission had
come on the first day of their sitting, Dr Tempest wrote the following
letter to Mr Crawley:-
'RECTORY, SILVERBRIDGE, April, 9, 186-
'DEAR SIR,
'I have been given to understand that you have been informed
that the Bishop of Barchester has appointed a commission of
clergymen of the diocese to make inquiry respecting certain
accusations which, to the great regret of us all, have been
made against you, in respect of a cheque for twenty pounds
which was passed by you to a tradesman of the town. The
clergymen appointed to form this commission are Mr Oriel,
the rector of Greshamsbury, Mr Robarts, the vicar of
Framley, Mr Quiverful, the warden of Hiram's Hospital at
Barchester, and Mr Thumble, a clergyman established in that
city, and myself. We held our first meeting on last Monday,
and I now write to you in compliance with a resolution to
which we came. Before taking any other steps we thought it
best to ask you to attend us here on next Monday, at two
o'clock, and I beg that you will accept this letter as an
invitation to that effect.
'We are, of course, aware that you are about to stand your
trial at the next assizes for the offence in question. I beg
you to understand that I do not express any opinion as to
your guilt. But I think it right to point out to you that in
the event of a jury finding an adverse verdict, the bishop
will be placed in great difficulty unless he were fortified
with the opinion of a commission formed from your fellow
clerical labourers in the diocese. Should such adverse
verdict unfortunately be given, the bishop would hardly be
justified in allowing a clergyman placed as you then would
be placed, to return to his cure after the expiration of
such punishment as the judge might award, without a further
decision from an ecclesiastical court. This decision he
could only obtain by proceeding against you under the Act in
reference to clerical offences, which empowers him as bishop
of the diocese to bring you before the Court of
Arches--unless you would think well to submit yourself
entirely to his judgment. You will, I think, understand what
I mean. The judge at assizes might find it his duty to
imprison a clergyman for a month--regarding tat clergyman
simply as he would regard any other person found guilty by a
jury and thus made subject to his judgment--and might do
this for an offence which the ecclesiastical judge would
find himself obliged to visit with the severer sentence of
prolonged suspension, or even with deprivation.
'We are, however, clearly of the opinion that should the
jury find themselves able to acquit you, no further action
whatsoever should be taken. In such case we think that the
bishop may regard your innocence to be fully established,
and in such case we shall recommend his lordship to look
upon the matter as altogether at an end. I can assure you
that in such case I shall so regard it myself.
'You will perceive that, as a consequence of this
resolution, to which we have already come, we are not minded
to take any inquiries ourselves into the circumstances of
your alleged guilt, till the verdict of the jury shall be
given. But should you be convicted, we must in that case
advise the bishop to take the proceedings to which I have
alluded, or to abstain from taking them. We wish to ask you
whether, now that our opinion has been conveyed to you, you
will be willing to submit the bishop's decision, in the
event of an adverse verdict being given by the jury; and we
think that it will be better for us all that you should meet
us here at the hour I have named on Monday next, the
fifteenth instant. It is not our intention to make any
report to the bishop until the trial shall be over.--I have
the honour to be, my dear sir, your obedient servant,
'MORTIMER TEMPEST
'The Rev. Josiah Crawley,
'Hogglestock.'
In the same envelope Dr Tempest sent a short private note, in which he
said that he should be very happy to see Mr Crawley at half-past one on
the Monday named, that luncheon would be ready at that hour, and that,
as Mr Crawley's attendance was required on public grounds, he would take
care that a carriage was provided for the day.
Mr Crawley received this letter in his wife's presence, and read it in
silence. Mrs Crawley saw that he paid close attention to it, and was
sure--she felt that she was sure--that it referred in some way to the
terrible subject of the cheque for twenty pounds. Indeed, everything
that came into the house, almost every word spoken there, and every
thought that came into the breast of any of the family, had more or less
reference to the coming trial. How could it be otherwise? There was ruin
coming on them all--ruin and complete disgrace coming on father, mother,
and children! To have been accused itself was very bad; but now it
seemed to be the opinion of everyone that the verdict must be against
the man. Mrs Crawley herself, who was perfectly sure of her husband's
innocence before God, believed that the jury would find him guilty--and
believed also that he had become possessed of the money in some manner
that would have been dishonest, had he not been so different from other
people as to be entitled to be considered innocent where another man
would have been plainly guilty. She was full of the cheque for twenty
pounds, and of its results. When, therefore, he had read the letter
through a second time, and even then had spoken no word about it, of
course she could not refrain from questioning him. 'My love,' she said,
'what is the letter?'
'It is on business,' he answered.
She was silent for a moment before she spoke again. 'May I not know the
business?'
'No,' said he; 'not at present.'
'Is it from the bishop?'
'Have I not answered you? Have I not given you to understand that, for
a while at least, I would prefer to keep the contents of this epistle to
myself?' Then he looked at her very sternly, and afterwards turned his
eyes upon the fireplace and gazed at the fire, as though he were
striving to read there something of his future fate. She did not much
regard the severity of his speech. That, too, like the taking of the
cheque itself, was to be forgiven him, because he was different from
other men. His black mood had come upon him, cutting his teeth. Let the
poor wayward sufferer be ever so petulant, the mother simply pities and
loves him, and is never angry. 'I beg your pardon, Josiah,' she said,
'but I thought it would comfort you to speak to me about it.'
'It will not comfort me,' he said. 'Nothing comforts me. Nothing can
comfort me. Jane, give me my hat and my stick.' His daughter brought to
him his hat and stick, and without another word he went out and left
them.
As a matter of course he turned his steps towards Hoggle End. When he
desired to be long absent from the house, he always went among the
brickmakers. His wife, as she stood at the window and watched the
direction in which he went, knew that he might be away for hours. The
only friends out of his own family with whom he ever spoke freely were
some of those rough parishioners. But he was not thinking of the
brickmakers when he started. He was simply desirous of reading again Dr
Tempest's letter, and of considering it, in some spot where no eye could
see him. He walked away with long steps, regarding nothing--neither the
ruts in the dirty lane, nor the young primroses which were fast showing
themselves on the banks, nor the gathering clouds which might have told
him of the coming rain. He went on for a couple of miles, till he had
nearly reached the outskirts of the colony of Hoggle End, and then he
sat himself down upon a gate. He had not been there a minute before a
few slow drops began to fall, but he was altogether too much wrapped up
in his thoughts to regard the rain. What answer should he make to this
letter from the man from Silverbridge?
The position of his own mind in reference to his own guilt or his own
innocence was very singular. It was simply the truth that he did not
know how the cheque had come to him. He did know that he had blundered
about it most egregiously, especially when he had averred that this
cheque for twenty pounds had been identical with a cheque for another
sum which had been given to him by Mr Soames. He had blundered since, in
saying that the dean had given it to him. There could be no doubt as to
this, for the dean had denied that he had done so. And he had come to
think it very possible that he had indeed picked the cheque up, and had
afterwards used it, having deposited it by some strange accident --not
knowing then what he was doing, or what was the nature of the bit of
paper in his hand--with the notes which he had accepted from the dean
with so much reluctance, and with such an agony of spirit. In all these
thoughts of his own doings, and his own position, he almost admitted to
himself his own insanity, his inability to manage his own affairs with
that degree of rational sequence which is taken for granted as belonging
to a man when he is made subject to criminal laws. As he puzzled his
brain in his efforts to create a memory as to the cheque, and succeeded
in bringing to his mind a recollection that he had once known something
about the cheque--that the cheque had at one time been the subject of a
thought and a resolution--he admitted to himself that in accordance with
all law and all reason he must be regarded as a thief. He had taken and
used and spent that which he ought to have known was not his own--which
he would have known not to be his own but for some terrible incapacity
with which God had inflicted him. What then must be the result? His mind
was clear enough about this. If the jury should see everything and know
everything--as he would wish that they should do; and if the bishop's
commission, and the bishop himself, and the Court of Arches with its
judge, could see and know everything; and if so seeing and so knowing
they could act with clear honesty and perfect wisdom--what would they
do? They would declare of him that he was not a thief, only because he
was so muddy-minded, so addle-pated as not to know the difference
between meum and tuum! There could be no other end to it, let all the
lawyers and all the clergymen in England put their wits to it. Thought
he knew himself to be muddy-minded and addle-pated, he could see that.
And could anyone say of such a man that he was fit to be the
acting-clergyman of a parish--to have freehold possession in a parish as
curer of men's souls! The bishop was in the right of it, let him be ten
times as mean a fellow as he was.
And yet as he sat there on the gate, while the rain came down heavily
upon him, even when admitting the justice of the bishop, and the truth
of the verdict which the jury would no doubt give, and the propriety of
the action which that cold, reasonable, prosperous man at Silverbridge
would take, he pitied himself with a tenderness of commiseration which
knew no bounds. As for those belonging to him, his wife and children,
his pity for them was of a different kind. He would have suffered any
increase of suffering, could he by such agony have released them. Dearly
as he loved them, he would have severed himself from them, had it been
possible. Terrible thoughts as to their fate had come into his mind in
the worst moments of his moodiness--thoughts which he had sufficient
strength and manliness to put away from him with a strong hand, lest
they should drive him to crime indeed; and these had come from the great
pity he had felt for them. But the commiseration which he had felt for
himself had been different from this, and had mostly visited him at
times when that other pity was for the moment in abeyance. What though
he had taken the cheque, and spent the money though it was not his? He
might be guilty before the law, but he was not guilty before God. There
had never been a thought of theft in his mind, or a desire to steal in
his heart. He knew that well enough. No jury could make him guilty of
theft before God. And what though this mixture of guilt and innocence
had come from madness--from madness which these courts must recognise if
they chose to find him innocent of the crime? In spite of his
aberrations of intellect, if there were any such, his ministrations in
his parish were good. Had he not preached fervently and well--preaching
the true gospel? Had he not been very diligent among his people,
striving with all his might to lessen the ignorance of the ignorant, and
to gild with godliness the learning of the instructed? Had he not been
patient, enduring, instant, and in all things amenable to the laws and
regulations laid down by the Church for his guidance in his duties as a
parish clergyman? Who could point out in what he had been astray, or
where he had gone amiss? But for the work which he had done with so much
zeal the Church which he served had paid him so miserable a pittance
that, though life and soul had been kept together, the reason, or a
fragment of the reason, had at moments escaped from his keeping in the
scramble. Hence it was that this terrible calamity had fallen upon him!
Who had been tried as he had been tried, and had gone through such fire
with less loss of intellectual power than he had done? He was still a
scholar, though no brother scholar ever came near him, and would make
Greek iambics as he walked through the lanes. His memory was stored with
poetry, though no book ever came into his hands, except those shorn and
tattered volumes which lay upon his table. Old problems in trigonometry
were the pleasing relaxations of his mind, and complications of figures
were a delight to him. There was not one of those prosperous clergymen
around him, and who scorned him, whom he could not have instructed in
Hebrew. It was always a gratification to him to remember that his old
friend the dean was weak in his Hebrew. He, with these acquirements,
with these fitnesses, had been thrust down to the ground--to the very
granite--and because in that harsh heartless thrusting his intellect had
for moments wavered as to common things, cleaving still to all its
grander, nobler possessions, he was now to be rent in pieces and
scattered to the winds, as being altogether vile, worthless, and worse
than worthless. It was thus that he thought of himself, pitying himself,
as he sat upon the gate, while the rain fell ruthlessly on his
shoulders.
He pitied himself with a commiseration that was sickly in spite of its
truth. It was the fault of the man that he was imbued too strongly with
self-consciousness. He could do a great thing or two. He could keep up
his courage in positions which would wash all the courage out of most
men. He could tell the truth though truth should ruin him. He could
sacrifice all that he had to duty. He could do justice though the heaven
should fall. But he could not forget to pay tribute to himself for the
greatness of his own actions; nor, when accepting with an effort of
meekness the small payment made by the world to him, in return for his
great works, could he forget the great payments made to others for small
work. It was not sufficient for him to remember that he knew Hebrew, but
he must remember also that the dean did not.
Nevertheless, as he sat there under the rain, he made up his mind with a
clearness that certainly had in it nothing of that muddiness of mind of
which he had often accused himself. Indeed, the intellect of this man
was essentially clear. It was simply that his memory that would play him
tricks--his memory as to things which at the moment were not important
to him. The fact that the dean had given him money was very important,
and he remembered it well. But the amount of the money, and its form, at
a moment in which he had flattered himself that he might have strength
to leave it unused, had not been important to him. Now, he resolved that
he would go to Dr Tempest, and that he would tell Dr Tempest that there
was not occasion for any further inquiry. He would submit to the bishop,
let the bishop's decision be what it might. Things were different since
the day on which he had refused Mr Thumble admission to his pulpit. At
that time people believed him to be innocent, and he so believed of
himself. Now, people believed him to be guilty, and it could not be
right that a man held in such slight esteem could exercise the functions
of a parish priest, let his own opinion of himself be what it might. He
would submit himself, and go anywhere--to the galleys or the workhouse,
if they wished it. As for his wife and children, they would, he said to
himself, be better without him than with him. The world would never be
so hard to a woman or to children as it had been to him.
He was sitting saturated with rain--saturated also with thinking --and
quite unobservant of anything around him, when he was accosted by an old
man from Hoggle End, with whom he was well acquainted. 'Thee be wat,
Master Crawley,' said the old man.
'Wet!' said Crawley, recalled suddenly back to the realities of life.
'Well--yes. I am wet. That's because it's raining.'
'Thee be teeming o'wat. Hadn't thee better go home?'
'And are you not wet also,' said Mr Crawley, looking at the old man, who
had been at work in the brickfield, and who was soaked with mire, and
from whom there seemed to come a steam of muddy mist.
'Is it me, yer reverence? I'm wat of course. The loikes of us is
always wat--that is barring the insides of us. It comes to us natural to
have the rheumatics. How is one of us to help hisself against having on
'em? But there ain't no call for the loikes of you to have the
rheumatics.'
'My friend,' said Crawley, who was now standing on the road--and as he
spoke he put out his arm and took the brickmaker by the hand, 'there is
a worse complaint than rheumatism--there is, indeed.'
'There's what they calls the collerer,' said Giles Hoggett, looking up
into Crawley's face. 'That ain't a-got hold of yer?'
'Ay, and worse than the cholera. A man is killed all over when he is
struck with pride--and yet he lives.'
'Maybe that's bad enough too,' said Giles, with his hand still held by
the other.
'It is bad enough,' said Crawley, striking his breast with his left
hand. 'It is bad enough.'
'Tell 'ee what, Master Crawley;--and yer reverence mustn't think as I
means to be preaching; there ain't nowt a man can't bear if he'll only
be dogged. You to whome, Master Crawley, and think o' that, and maybe
it'll do ye a good yet. It's dogged as does it. It ain't thinking about
it.' Then Giles Hoggett withdrew his hand from the clergyman's, and
walked away towards his home at Hoggle End. Mr Crawley also turned away
homewards, and as he made his way through the lanes, he repeated to
himself Giles Hoggett's words. 'It's dogged as does it. It's not
thinking about it.'
He did not say a word to his wife on that afternoon about Dr Tempest;
and she was so much taken up with his outward condition when he
returned, as almost to have forgotten the letter. He allowed himself,
but barely allowed himself, to be made dry, and then for the remainder
of the day applied himself to learn the lesson which Hoggett had
endeavoured to teach him. But the learning of it was not easy, and
hardly became more easy when he had worked the problem out in his own
mind, and discovered that the brickmaker's doggedness simply meant
self-abnegation--that a man should force himself to endure anything that
might be sent upon him, not only without outward grumbling, but also
without grumbling inwardly.
Early on the next morning, he told his wife that he was going into
Silverbridge. 'It is that letter--the letter which I got yesterday that
calls me,' he said. And then he handed her the letter as to which he had
refused to speak to her on the preceding day.
'But this speaks of your going next Monday, Josiah,' said Mrs Crawley.
'I find it more suitable that I should go today,' said he. 'Some duty I
do owe in this matter, both to the bishop, and to Dr Tempest, who, after
a fashion is, as regards my present business, the bishop's
representative. But I do not perceive that I owe it as a duty to either
to obey implicitly their injunctions, and I will not submit myself to
the cross-questioning of the man Thumble. As I am purposed at present I
shall express my willingness to give up the parish.'
'Give up the parish altogether?'
'Yes, altogether.' As he spoke he clasped both his hands together, and
having held them for a moment on high, allowed them to fall thus clasped
before him. 'I cannot give it up in part; I cannot abandon the duties
and reserve the honorarium. Nor would I if I could.'
'I did not mean that, Josiah. But pray think of it before you speak.'
'I have thought of it, and I will think of it. Farewell, my dear.'
Then he came up to her and kissed her, and started on his journey on
foot to Silverbridge.
It was about noon when he reached Silverbridge, and he was told that
Doctor Tempest was at home. The servant asked him for a card. 'I have no
card,' said Mr Crawley, 'but I will write my name for your behoof if
your master's hospitality will allow me paper and pencil.' The name was
written, and as Crawley waited in the drawing-room he spent his time in
hating Dr Tempest because the door had been opened by a man-servant
dressed in black. Had the man been in livery he would have hated Dr
Tempest all the same. And he would have hated him a little had the door
been opened by a smart maid.
'Your letter came to hand yesterday morning, Dr Tempest,' said Mr
Crawley, still standing, though the doctor had pointed to a chair for
him after shaking hands with him; 'and having given yesterday to the
consideration of it, with what judgment I have been able to exercise, I
have felt it to be incumbent upon me to wait upon you without further
delay, as by doing so I may perhaps assist your views and save labour to
those gentlemen who are joined with you in this commission of which you
have spoken. To some of them it may possibly be troublesome that they
should be brought here on next Monday.
Dr Tempest had been looking at him during this speech, and could see by
his shoes and trousers that he had walked from Hogglestock to
Silverbridge. 'Mr Crawley, will you not sit down?' said he, and then he
rang his bell. Mr Crawley sat down, not on the chair indicated, but on
the further removed and at the other side of the table. When the servant
came--the objectionable butler in black clothes that were so much
smarter than Mr Crawley's own--his master's orders were communicated
without any audible word, and the man returned with a decanter and
wine-glasses.
'After your walk, Mr Crawley,' said Dr Tempest, getting up from his seat
to pour out wine.
'None, I thank you.'
'Pray let me persuade you. I know the length of the miles so well.'
'I will take none if you please, sir,' said Mr Crawley.
'Now, Mr Crawley,' said Dr Tempest, 'do let me speak to you as a friend.
You have walked eight miles, and are going to talk to me on a subject
which is of vital importance to yourself. I won't discuss it unless
you'll take a glass of wine and a biscuit.'
'Dr Tempest!'
'I'm quite in earnest. I won't. If you do as I ask, you shall talk to
me till dinner-time, if you like. There. Now you may begin.'
Mr Crawley did eat the biscuit and did drink the wine, and as he did so,
he acknowledged to himself that Dr Tempest was right. He felt that the
wine had made him stronger to speak. 'I hardly know why you have
preferred today to next Monday,' said Dr Tempest; 'but if anything can
be done by your presence here today, your time shall not be thrown
away.'
'I have preferred today to Monday,' said Crawley, 'partly because I
would sooner talk to one man than to five.'
'There is something in that, certainly,' said Dr Tempest.
'And as I have made up my mind as to the course of action which it is my
duty to take in the matter to which your letter of the ninth of this
month refers, there can be no reason why I should postpone the
declaration of my purpose. Dr Tempest, I have determined to resign my
preferment at Hogglestock, and shall today write to the Dean of
Barchester, who is the patron, acquainting him of my purpose.'
'You mean in the event--in the event--'
'I mean, sir, to do this without reference to any event that is future.
The bishop, Dr Tempest, when I shall have been proved to be a thief,
shall have no trouble either in causing my suspension or my deprivation.
The name and fame of a parish clergyman should be unstained. Mine have
become foul with infamy. I will not wait to be deprived by any court, by
any bishop, or by any commission. I will bow my head to that public
opinion which has reached me, and I will deprive myself.'
He had got up from his chair, and was standing as he pronounced the
final sentence against himself. Dr Tempest still remained seated in his
chair, looking at him, and for a few moments there was silence. 'You
must not do that, Mr Crawley,' said Dr Tempest, at last.
'But I shall do it.'
'Then the dean must not take your resignation. Speaking to you frankly,
I tell you that there is no prevailing opinion as to the verdict which
the jury may give.'
'My decision has nothing to do with the jury's verdict. My decision--'
'Stop a moment, Mr Crawley. It is possible that you might say that
which should not be said.'
'There is nothing to be said--nothing which I could say, which I would
not say at the Town Cross if it were possible. As to this money, I do
not know whether I stole it or whether I did not.'
'That is just what I have thought.'
'It is so.'
'Then you did not steal it. There can be no doubt about that.'
'Thank you, Dr Tempest. I thank you heartily for saying so much. But,
sir, you are not the jury. Nor, if you were, could you whitewash me from
the infamy which has been cast upon me. Against the opinion expressed at
the beginning of these proceedings by the bishop of this diocese--or
rather against that expressed by his wife--I did venture to make a
stand. Neither the opinion which came from the palace, nor the vehicle
by which it was expressed, commanded my respect. Since that, others have
spoken to whom I feel myself bound to yield--yourself not the least
among them, Dr Tempest--and to them I shall yield. You may tell the
Bishop of Barchester, that I shall at once resign the perpetual curacy
of Hogglestock into the hands of the Dean of Barchester, by whom I was
appointed.'
'No, Mr Crawley; I shall not do that. I cannot control you, but
thinking you to be wrong, I shall not make that communication to the
bishop.'
'Then I shall do it myself.'
'And your wife, Mr Crawley, and your children?'
At that moment Mr Crawley called to mind the advice of his friend Giles
Hoggett. 'It'd dogged as does it.' He certainly wanted something very
strong to sustain him in this difficulty. He found that this reference
to his wife and children required him to be dogged in a very marked
manner. 'I can only trust that the wind may be tempered to them,' he
said. 'They will, indeed, be shorn lambs.'
Dr Tempest got up from his chair, and took a couple of turns about the
room before he spoke again. 'Man,' he said, addressing Mr Crawley with
all his energy, 'if you do this thing, you will then at least be very
wicked. If the jury find a verdict in your favour you are safe, and the
chances are that the verdict will be in your favour.'
'I care nothing now for the verdict,' said Mr Crawley.
'And you will turn your wife into the poorhouse for an idea!'
'It's dogged as does it,' said Mr Crawley to himself. 'I have thought
of that,' he said aloud. 'That my wife is dear to me, and that my
children are dear, I will not deny. She was softly nurtured, Dr Tempest,
and came from a house in which want was never known. Since she has
shared my board she has had some experience of that nature. That I
should have brought her to all this is very terrible to me--so terrible,
that I often wonder how it is that I live. But, sir, you will agree with
me, that my duty as a clergyman is above everything. I do not dare, even
for their sake, to remain in the parish. Good morning, Dr Tempest.' Dr
Tempest, finding that he could not prevail with him, bade him adieu,
feeling that any service to the Crawleys within in his power might be
best done by intercession with the bishop and with the dean.
Then Mr Crawley walked back to Hogglestock, repeating to himself Giles
Hoggett's words, 'It's dogged as does it.'
CHAPTER LXII
MR CRAWLEY'S LETTER TO THE DEAN
Mr Crawley, when he got home after his walk to Silverbridge, denied that
he was at all tired. 'The man at Silverbridge, whom I went to see
administered refreshment to me;--nay, he administered it with salutary
violence,' he said, affecting even to laugh. 'And I am bound to speak
well of him on behalf of mercies over and beyond that exhibited by the
persistent tender of some wine. That I should find him judicious I had
expected. What little I have known of him taught me so to think of him.
But I found with him also a softness of heart for which I had not
looked.'
'And you will not give up the living, Josiah?'
'Most certainly I will. A duty, when it is clear before a man, should
never be made less so by any tenderness in others.' He was still
thinking of Giles Hoggett. 'It's dogged as does it.' The poor woman
could not answer him. She knew well that it was vain to argue with him.
She could only hope that in the event of his being acquitted at the
trial, the dean, whose friendship she did not doubt, might re-endow him
with the small benefice which was their only source of bread.
On the following morning there came by post a short note from Dr
Tempest. 'My dear Mr Crawley,' the note ran, 'I implore you,
if there be yet time, to do nothing rashly. And even though
you should have written to the bishop or to the dean, your
letters need have no effect, if you will allow me to make
them inoperative. Permit me to say that I am a man much
older than you, and one who has mixed much both with
clergymen and with the world at large. I tell you with
absolute confidence, that it is not your duty in your
present position to give up your living. Should your conduct
ever be called in question on this matter you will be at
perfect liberty to say that you were guided by my advice.
You should take no step till after the trial. Then, if the
verdict be against you, you should submit to the bishop's
judgment. If the verdict be in your favour, the bishop's
interference will be over.'
'And you must remember that if it is not your duty as a
clergyman to give up your living, you can have no right,
seeing that you have a wife and family, to throw it away as
an indulgence to your pride. Consult any other friend you
please--Mr Robarts, or the dean himself. I am quite sure
that any friend who knows many of the circumstances as I
know will advise you to hold the living, at any rate till
after the trial. You can refer any such friend to
me.--Believe me, to be yours very truly,
MORTIMER TEMPEST'
Mr Crawley walked about again with this letter in his pocket, but on
this occasion he did not go in the direction of Hoggle End. From Hoggle
End he could hardly hope to pick up further lessons of wisdom. What
could any Giles Hoggett say to him beyond what he had said to him
already? If he were to read the doctor's letter to Hoggett, and to
succeed in making Hoggett understand it, Hoggett could only caution him
to be dogged. But it seemed to him that Hoggett and his new friend at
Silverbridge did not agree in their doctrines, and it might be well that
he should endeavour to find out which of them had most of justice on his
side. He was quite sure that Hoggett would advise him to adhere to his
project of giving up the living--if only Hoggett could me made to
understand the circumstances.
'He had written, but had not as yet sent away his letter to the dean.
His letter to the bishop would be but a note, and he had postponed the
writing of that till the other should be copied and made complete.
He had sat up late into the night composing and altering his letter to
his old friend, and now that the composition was finished he was loth to
throw it away. Early in this morning, before the postman had brought to
him Dr Tempest's urgent remonstrance, he had shown to his wife the draft
of his letter to the dean. 'I cannot say that it is not true,' she had
said.
'It is certainly true.'
'But I wish, my dear, you would not send it. Why should you take any
step till the trial be over?'
'I shall assuredly send it,' he had replied. 'If you will peruse it
again, you will see that the epistle would be futile were it kept till I
shall have been proved to be a thief.'
'Oh, Josiah, such words kill me.'
'They are not pleasant, but it will be well that you should become used
to them. As for the letter, I have taken some trouble to express myself
with perspicuity, and I trust that I may have succeeded.' At that time
Hoggett was altogether in the ascendant; but now, as he started on his
walk, his mind was somewhat perturbed by the contrary advice of one, who
after all, might be as wise as Hoggett. There would be nothing dogged in
the conduct recommended to him by Dr Tempest. Were he to follow the
doctor's advice, he would be trimming his sails, so as to catch any
slant of a breeze that might be favourable to him. There could be no
doggedness in a character that would submit to such trimming.
The postman came to Hogglestock but once a day, so that he could not
despatch his letter till the next morning--unless, indeed, he chose to
send it a distance of four miles to the nearest post-office. As there
was nothing to justify this, there was another night for the copying of
his letter--should he at last determine to send it. He had sworn to his
wife that it should go. He had taken much trouble with it. He believed
in Hoggett. But, nevertheless, this incumbency of Hogglestock was his
all in the world. It might be that he could still hold it, and have
bread at least for his wife to eat. Dr Tempest had told him that he
would be probably acquitted. Dr Tempest knew as much of all the
circumstances as he did himself, and had told him that he was not
guilty. After all, Dr Tempest knew more about it that Hoggett knew.
If he resigned the living, what would become of him--of him--of him and
his wife? Whither would they first go when they turned their back upon
the door inside which there had at any rate been shelter for them for so
many years? He calculated everything that he had, and found that at the
end of April, even when he should have received his rent-charge, there
would not be five pounds in hand among them. As for his furniture, he
still owed enough to make it impossible that he should get anything out
of that. And these thoughts all had reference to his position if he
should be acquitted. What would become of his wife if he should be
convicted? And as for himself, whither would he go when he came out of
prison?
He had completely realised the idea that Hoggett's counsel was opposed
to that given to him by Dr Tempest; but then it might certainly be the
case that Hoggett had not known all the facts. A man should, no doubt,
be dogged when the evils of life are insuperable; but need he be so when
the evils can be overcome? Would not Hoggett himself undergo any
treatment which he believed to be specific for rheumatism? Yes; Hoggett
would undergo any treatment that was not in itself opposed to his duty.
The best treatment for rheumatism might be to stay away from the brick-
field on a rainy day; but if so, there would be no money to keep the pot
boiling, and Hoggett would certainly go to the brick-field, rheumatism
and all, as long as his limbs would carry him there. Yes; he would send
his letter. It was his duty, and he would do it. Men looked askance at
him, and pointed at him as a thief. He would send the letter, in spite
of Dr Tempest. Let justice be done, though the heaven may fall.
He had heard of Lady Lufton's to his wife. The offers of the Lady
Luftons of the world had been sorely distressing to his spirit, since it
had first come to pass that such offers had reached him in consequence
of his poverty. But now there was something almost of relief to him in
the thought that the Lady Luftons would, after some fashion, save his
wife and children from starvation--would save his wife from the
poorhouse, and enable his children to have a start in the world. For one
of his children a brilliant marriage might be provided--if only he
himself were out of the way. How could he take himself out of the way?
It had been whispered to him that he might be imprisoned for two
months--or for two years. Would it not be a grand thing if the judge
would condemn him to be imprisoned for life? Was thee ever a man whose
existence was so purposeless, so useless, so deleterious, as his own?
And yet he knew Hebrew well, whereas the dean knew but very little
Hebrew. He could make Greek iambics, and doubted whether the bishop knew
the difference between an iambus and a trochee. He could disport himself
with trigonometry, feeling confident that Dr Tempest had forgotten his
way over the asses' bridge. He knew 'Lycidas' by heart; and as for
Thumble, he felt quite sure that Thumble was incompetent of
understanding a single allusion in that divine poem. Nevertheless,
though all his wealth of acquirement was his, it would be better for
himself, better for those who belonged to him, better for the world at
large, that he should be put an end to. A sentence of penal servitude
for life, without any trial, would be of all things the most desirable.
Then there would be ample room for the practice of the virtue that
Hoggett had taught him.
When he returned home the Hoggethan doctrine prevailed, and he prepared
to copy his letter. But before he commenced his task, he sat down with
his youngest daughter, and read--or made her read to him--a passage of a
Greek poem, in which are described the troubles and agonies of a blind
giant. No giant would have been more powerful--only that he was blind,
and could not see to avenge himself on those who had injured him. 'The
same story is always coming up,' he said, stopping the girl in her
reading. 'We have it in various versions, because it is true to life.
"Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves."
It is the same story. Great power reduced to impotence, great glory to
misery, by the hand of Fate--Necessity, as the Greeks called her; to
goddess that will not be shunned. At the mill with slaves! People, when
they read it, do not appreciate the horror of the picture. Go on my
dear. It may be a question whether Polyphemus had mind enough to suffer;
but, from the description of his power, I should think he had. "At the
mill with slaves!" Can any picture be more dreadful than that? Go on, my
dear. Of course you remember Milton's Samson Agonistes. Agonistes
indeed!' His wife was sitting stitching at the other side of the room;
but she heard his words--heard and understood them; and before Jane
could again get herself into the swing of the Greek verse, she was over
at her husband's side, with her arms round his neck. 'My love!' she
said. 'My love!'
He turned to her, and smiled as he spoke to her. 'These are old
thoughts with me. Polyphemus and Belisarius, and Samson and Milton, have
always been pets of mine. The mind of the strong blind creature must be
sensible of the injury that he has been done to him! The impotency,
combined with the strength, or rather the impotency with the misery of
former strength and former aspirations, is so essentially tragic!'
She looked into his eyes as he spoke, and there was something of the
flash of old days, when the world was young to them, and when he would
tell her of his hopes, and repeat to her long passages of poetry, and
would criticise for her advantage the works of the old writers. 'Thank
God,' she said, 'that you are not blind. It may yet be all right with
you.'
'Yes--it may be,' he said.
'And you shall not be at the mill with slaves.'
'Or, at any rate, not eyeless in Gaza, if the Lord is good to me. Come,
Jane, we will go on.' Then he took up the passage himself, and read it
on with clear, sonorous voice, every now and then explaining some
passage or expressing his own ideas upon it, as though he were really
happy with his poetry.
It was late in the evening before he got out his small stock of best
letter-paper, and sat down to work at his letter. He first addressed
himself to the bishop; and what he wrote down to the bishop was as
follows:-
'HOGGLESTOCK PARSONAGE, April 11, 186-
'MY LORD BISHOP,
'I have been in communication with Dr Tempest, of
Silverbridge, from whom I have learned that your lordship
has been pleased to appoint a commission of inquiry--of
which commission he is the chairman--with reference to the
proceedings which it may be necessary that you should take,
as bishop of the diocese, after my forthcoming trial at the
approaching Barchester assizes. My lord, I think it right to
inform you, partly with a view to the comfort of the
gentlemen named on that commission, and partly with the
purport of giving you the information which I think that a
bishop should possess in regard to the clerical affairs of
his own diocese, that I have by this post resigned my
preferment at Hogglestock into the hands of the Dean of
Barchester, by whom it was given to me. In these
circumstances, it will, I suppose, be unnecessary for you to
continue the commission which you have set in force; but as
to that, your lordship will, of course, be the only
judge.--I have the honour to be, my Lord Bishop, your most
obedient and very humble servant,
'JOSIAH CRAWLEY
Perpetual Curate of Hogglestock
'The Right Reverend
'The Bishop of Barchester,
'&c, &c, &c
The Palace, Barchester'
But the letter which was of real importance--which was intended to say
something--was that to the dean, and that also shall be given to the
reader. Mr Crawley had been for a while in doubt how he should address
his old friend in commencing this letter, understanding that its tone
throughout must be, in a great degree, be mad conformable with its first
words. He would fain, in his pride, have begun 'Sir'. The question was
between that and 'My dear Arabin'. It had once between them always been
'Dear Frank,' and Dear Joe'' but the occasions for 'Dear Frank' and
'Dear Joe' between them had long been past. Crawley would have been very
angry had he now been called Joe by the dean, and would have bitten his
tongue out before he would have called the dean Frank. His better
nature, however, now prevailed, and he began his letter, and completed
it as follows:-
'MY DEAR ARABIN,
'Circumstances, of which you have probably heard something,
compel me to write to you, as I fear, at some length. I am
sorry that the trouble of such a letter should be forced
upon you during your holidays';--Mr Crawley, as he wrote
this, did not forget to remind himself that he never had any
holidays;--'but I think you will admit, if you will bear
with me to the end, that I have no alternative.
'I have been accused of stealing a cheque for twenty pounds,
which cheque was drawn by Lord Lufton on his London bankers,
and was lost out of his pocket by Mr Soames, his lordship's
agent, and was so lost, as Mr Soames states--but with an
absolute assertion--during a visit which he made to my
parsonage here at Hogglestock. Of the fact that I paid the
cheque to a tradesman in Silverbridge there is no doubt.
When questioned about it, I first gave an answer which was
so manifestly incorrect that it has seemed odd to me that I
should not have had credit for a mistake from those who must
have seen that detection was so evident. The blunder was
undoubtedly stupid, and it now bears heavily on me. I then,
as I have learned, made another error--of which I am aware
that you have been informed. I said that the cheque had come
from you, and in saying so, I thought that it had formed a
portion of that alms which your open-handed benevolence
bestowed upon me when I attended on you, not long before
your departure, in your library. I have striven to remember
the facts. It may be--nay, it probably is the case--that
such struggles to catch some accurate glimpse of bygone
things do not trouble you. You mind is, no doubt, clearer
and stronger than mine, having been kept to its proper tune
by greater and fitter work. With me, memory is all but gone,
and the power of thinking is on the wane! I struggled to
remember, and I thought that the cheque had been in an
envelope which you handed to me--and I said so. I have since
learned, from tidings received, as I am told, direct from
yourself, that I was wrong in the second statement as I had
been in the first. The double blunder has, of course, been
very heavy on me.
'I was taken before the magistrates at Silverbridge, and was
by them committed to stand my trial at the assizes to be
holden in Barchester on the twenty-eighth of this month.
Without doubt, the magistrates had not alternative but to
commit me, and I am indebted to them that they have allowed
me my present liberty upon bail. That my sufferings in all
this should have been grievous, you will understand. But on
that head I shall not touch, were it not that I am bound to
explain to you that my troubles with reference to this
parish of Hogglestock, to which I was appointed by you, have
not been the slightest of those sufferings. I felt at first,
believing then that the world around me would think it
unlikely that such a one as I had wilfully stolen a sum of
money, that it was my duty to maintain myself in my church.
I did so maintain myself against an attack made upon me by
the bishop, who sent over to Hogglestock one Mr Thumble, a
gentleman doubtless in holy orders, though I know nothing
and can learn nothing of the place of his cure, to
dispossess me of my pulpit and to remove me from my
ministrations among my people. To Mr Thumble I turned a deaf
ear, and would not let him so much as open his mouth inside
the porch of my church. Up to this time I myself have read
the services, and have preached to the people, and have
continued, as best I could, my visits to the poor and my
labours in the school, though I know --no one knows as
well--how unfitted I am for such work by the grief which has
fallen upon me.
'Then the bishop sent for me, and I thought it becoming on
my part to go to him. I presented myself to his lordship at
his palace, and was minded to be much governed in my conduct
by what he might say to me, remembering that I am bound to
respect the office, even though I may not approve of the
man; and I humbled myself before his lordship, waiting
patiently for any directions which he in his discretion
might think it proper to bestow on me. But there arose up
between us that very pestilent woman, his wife--to his
dismay, seemingly, as much as to mine--and she would let
there place for no speech but her own. If there be aught
clear to me in ecclesiastical matters, it is this--that no
authority can be delegated to a female. The special laws of
this and of some other countries do allow that women shall
sit upon the temporal thrones of the earth, but on the
lowest step of the throne of the Church no woman has been
allowed to sit as bearing authority, the romantic tale of
the woman Pope notwithstanding. Thereupon, I left the palace
in wrath, feeling myself aggrieved that a woman should have
attempted to dictate to me, and finding it hopeless to get a
clear instruction from his lordship--the woman taking up the
word whenever I put a question to my lord the bishop.
Nothing, therefore, came of that interview but fruitless
labour to myself, and anger, of which I have since been
ashamed.
'Since that time I have continued in my parish--working, not
without zeal, though, in truth, almost without hope--and
learning even from day to day that the opinion of men around
me have declared me to be guilty of the crime imputed to me.
And now the bishop has issued a commission as preparatory to
proceedings against me under the Act for the punishment for
clerical offences. In doing this, I cannot say that the
bishop has been ill-advised, even though the advice may have
come from that evil-tongued lady, his wife. And I hold that
a woman may be called upon for advice, with most salutary
effect, in affairs as to which any show of female authority
should be equally false and pernicious. With me it has ever
been so, and I have had a counsellor by me as wise as she
has been devoted.' It must be noticed that in the draft copy
of his letter which Mr Crawley gave to his wife to read this
last sentence was not inserted. Intending that she should
read his letter, he omitted it till he made the fair copy.
'Over this commission his lordship has appointed Dr Tempest
of Silverbridge to preside, and with him I have been in
communication. I trust that the labours of the gentlemen of
whom it is composed may be brought to a speedy close; and,
having regard to their trouble, I have informed Dr Tempest
that I should write this letter to you with the intent and
assured purpose of resigning the perpetual curacy of
Hogglestock in your hands.
'You will be good enough, therefore, to understand that I do
so resign the living, and that I shall continue to
administer the services of the Church only till some
clergyman, certified to me as coming from you or from the
bishop, may present himself in the parish, and shall declare
himself prepared to undertake the cure. Should it be so that
Mr Thumble be sent hither again, I will sit under him,
endeavouring to catch improvement from his teaching, and
striving to overcome the contempt which I felt for him when
he before visited this parish. I annex beneath my signature
a copy of the letter which I have written to the bishop on
this subject.
'And now it behoves me, as the guardianship of the souls of
those was placed in my hands by you, to explain to you as
shortly as may be possible the reasons which had induced me
to abandon my work. One or two whose judgment I do not
discredit--and I am allowed to name Dr Tempest of
Silverbridge as one--have suggested to me that I should take
no step till after my trial. They think that I should have
regard to the chance of the verdict, so that the preferment
may still be mine should I be acquitted; and they say, that
should I be acquitted, the bishop's action against me must
of necessity cease. That they are right in these facts I do
not doubt; but in giving such advice they look only to the
facts, having no regard to the conscience. I do not blame
them. I should give such advice myself, knowing that a
friend may give counsel as to outer things, but that a man
must satisfy his inner conscience by his own perceptions of
what is right and what is wrong.
'I find myself to be ill-spoken of, to be regarded with hard
eyes by those around me, my people thinking that I have
stolen this money. Two farmers in this parish, have, as I am
aware, expressed opinions that no jury could acquit me
honestly, and neither of these men have appeared in my
church since the expression of that opinion. I doubt whether
they have gone to other churches; and if not they have been
deterred from all public worship by my presence. If this be
so, how can I with a clear conscience remain among these
men? Shall I take from their hands wages for those
administrations, which their deliberately formed opinions
will not allow them to accept from my hands?' And yet,
though he thus pleaded against himself, he knew that the two
men of whom he was speaking were thick-headed dolts who were
always tipsy in Saturday nights, and who came to church
perhaps once in three weeks.
'Your kind heart will doubtless prompt you to tell me that
no clergyman could be safe in his parish if he were to allow
the opinion of chance parishioners to prevail against him;
and you would probably lay down for my guidance the grand
old doctrine "Nil conscire sibi; nulla pallescere culpa."
Presuming that you may do so, I will acknowledge such
guidance to be good. If my mind were clear in this matter, I
would not budge an inch for any farmer--no, nor for any
bishop, further than he might by law compel me! But my mind
is not clear. I do grow pale, and my hairs stands on end
with horror, as I confess to myself that I do not know
whether I stole this money or no! Such is the fact. In all
sincerity I tell you that I know not whether I be guilty or
innocent. It may be that I picked up the cheque from the
floor of my room, and afterwards took it out and used it,
not knowing whence it had come to me. If it be so, I stole
it, and am guilty before the laws of my country. If it be
so, I am not fit to administer the Lord's sacraments to
these people. When the cup was last in my hand and I was
blessing them, I felt that I was not fit, and I almost
dropped the chalice. That God will know my weakness and
pardon me the perplexity of my mind--that is between Him and
His creature.
'As I read my letter over to myself I feel how weak are my
words, and how inefficient to explain to you the exact
position in which I stand; but they will suffice to convince
you that I am assuredly purposed to resign this parish of
Hogglestock, and that it is therefore incumbent on you, as
patron of the living, to nominate my successor to the
benefice. I have only further to ask your pardon for this
long letter, and to thank you again for the many and great
marks of friendship which you have conferred on me. Alas,
could you have foreseen in those old days how barren of all
good would have been the life of him you then esteemed, you
might perhaps have escaped the disgrace of being called the
friend of one whom no one now regards with esteem.--
Nevertheless, I may still say that I am, with all affection,
yours truly,
'JOSIAH CRAWLEY'
The last paragraph of the letter was also added, since his wife had read
it. When he had first composed the letter, he had been somewhat proud of
his words, thinking that he had clearly told his story. But, when
sitting alone at his desk, he read it again, filling his mind as he went
on with ideas which he would fain have expressed to his old friend, were
it not that he feared to indulge himself with too many words, he began
to tell himself that his story was anything but well told. There was no
expression there of the Hoggethan doctrine. In answer to such a letter
as that the dean might well say, 'Think again of it. Try yet to save
yourself. Never mind the two farmers, or Mr Thumble, or the bishop.
Stick to the ship while there is a plank above the water.' Whereas it
had been his desire to use words that should make the dean clearly
understand that the thing was decided. He had failed--as he had failed
in everything throughout his life; but nevertheless the letter must go.
Were he to begin again he would not do it better. So he added to what he
had written a copy of his note to the bishop, and the letter was
fastened and sent.
Mrs Crawley might probably have been more instant in her efforts to stop
the letter, had she not felt that it would not decide everything. In the
first place it was improbable that the letter might not reach the dean
till after his return home--and Mrs Crawley had long since made up her
mind that she would see the dean as soon as possible after his return.
She had heard from Lady Lufton that it was not doubted in Barchester
that he would be back at any rate before the judges came into the city.
And then, in the next place, was it probable that the dean would act
upon such a letter by filling up the vacancy, even if he did get it? She
trusted in the dean, and knew that he would help them, if any help were
possible. Should the verdict go against her husband, then indeed it
might be that no help would be possible. In such case she thought that
the bishop with his commission might prevail. But she still believed
that the verdict would be favourable, if not with an assured belief,
still with a hope that was sufficient to stand in lieu of a belief. No
single man, let alone no twelve men, could think that her husband had
intended to appropriate the money dishonestly. That he had taken it
improperly--without real possession--she herself believed; but he had
not taken it as a thief, and could not merit a thief's punishment. After
two days he got a reply from the bishop's chaplain, in which the
chaplain expressed the bishop's commendation of Mr Crawley's present
conduct. 'Mr Thumble shall proceed from hence to Hogglestock on next
Sunday,' said the chaplain, 'and shall relieve you for the present from
the burden of your duties. As to the future status of the parish, it
will perhaps be best that nothing shall be done till the dean returns
--or perhaps till the assizes shall be over. This is the bishop's
opinion.' It need hardly be explained that the promised visit of Mr
Thumble to Hogglestock was gall and wormwood to Mr Crawley. He had told
the dean that should Mr Thumble come, he would endeavour to learn
something even from him. But it may be doubted whether Mr Crawley in his
present mood could learn anything useful from Mr Thumble. Giles Hoggett
was a much more effective teacher.
'I will endure even that,' he said to his wife, as she handed to him
back the letter from the bishop's chaplain.
CHAPTER LXIII
TWO VISITORS TO HOGGLESTOCK
The cross-grainedness of men is so great that things will often be
forced to go wrong, even when they have the strongest possible natural
tendency of their own to go right. It was now in these affairs between
the archdeacon and his son. The original difficulty was solved by the
good feeling of the young lady--by that and by the real kindness of the
archdeacon's nature. They had come to terms which were satisfactory to
both of them, and those terms admitted of perfect reconciliation between
the father and his son. Whether the major did marry the lady or whether
he did not, his allowance was to be continued to him, the archdeacon
being perfectly willing to trust himself in the matter to the pledge
which had received from Miss Crawley. All that he had required from his
son was simply this--that he should pull down the bills advertising the
sale of his effects. Was any desire more rational? The sale had been
advertised for a day just one week in advance of the assizes, and the
time must have been selected--so thought the archdeacon--with a
malicious intention. Why, at any rate, should the things be sold before
anyone knew whether the father of the young lady was or was not to be
regarded as a thief? And why should the things be sold at all, when the
archdeacon had tacitly withdrawn his threats--when he had given his son
to understand that the allowance would still be paid quarterly with the
customary archidiaconal regularity, and that no alteration was intended
in those settlements under which the Plumstead foxes would, in the
ripeness of time, become the property of the major himself. It was thus
that the archdeacon looked at it, and as he did so, he thought that his
son was the most cross-grained of men.
But the major had his own way of looking at the matter. He had, he
flattered himself, dealt very fairly with his father. When he had first
made up his mind to make Miss Crawley his wife, he had told his father
of his intention. The archdeacon declared that, if he did so, such and
such results would follow--results which, as was apparent to everyone,
would make it indispensable that the major should leave Cosby Lodge. The
major had never complained. So he told himself. He had simply said to
his father--'I shall do as I have said. You can do as you have said.
Therefore, I shall prepare to leave Cosby Lodge.' He had so prepared;
and as a part of that preparation, the auctioneer's bills had been stuck
up on the posts and walls. Then the archdeacon had gone to work
surreptitiously with the lady--the reader will understand that we are
still following the workings of the major's mind--and having succeeded
in obtaining a pledge which he had been wrong to demand, came forward
very graciously to withdraw his threats. He withdrew his threats because
he had succeeded in his object by other means. The major knew nothing of
the kiss that had been given, of the two tears that had trickled down
his father's nose, of the generous epithets which the archdeacon had
applied to Grace. He did not guess how nearly his father had yielded
altogether beneath the pressure of Grace's charms--how willing he was to
yield altogether at the first decent opportunity. His father had
obtained a pledge from Grace that she would not marry in certain
circumstances--as to which circumstances the major was strongly resolved
that they should form no bar to his marriage--and then came forward with
his eager demand that the sale should be stopped! The major could not
submit to so much indignity. He had resolved that his father should have
nothing to do with his marriage one way or the other. He would not
accept anything from his father on the understanding that his father had
any such right. His father had asserted such right with threats, and he,
the major, taking such threats as meaning something, had seen that he
must leave Cosby Lodge. Let his father come forward, and say that they
meant nothing that he abandoned all right to any interference as to his
son's marriage, and that the son--would dutifully consent to accept his
father's bounty! They were both cross-grained, as Mrs Grantly declared;
but I think that the major was the most cross-grained of the two.
Something of the truth made its way to Henry Grantly's mind as he drove
home from Barchester after seeing his grandfather. It was not that he
began to think that his father was right, but that he almost perceived
that it might be becoming to him to forgive some fault in his father. He
had been implored to honour his father, and he was willing to do so,
understanding that such honour must, to a certain degree, imply
obedience--if it could be done at no more than a moderate expense of his
feelings. The threatened auctioneer was the cause of offence to his
father, and he might see whether it would not be possible to have the
sale postponed. There would, of course, be a pecuniary loss, and that in
his diminished circumstances--might be inconvenient. But so much he
thought himself bound to endure on his father's behalf. At any rate, he
would consult the auctioneer at Silverbridge.
But he would not make any pause in the measures which he had proposed to
himself as likely to be conducive to his marriage. As for Grace's
pledge, such pledges from young ladies never went for anything. It was
out of the question that she should be sacrificed, even though his
father had taken the money. And, moreover, the very gist of the major's
generosity was to consist in his marrying her whether her father were
guilty or innocent. He understood that perfectly, and understood also
that it was his duty to make his purpose in this respect known to
Grace's family. He determined, therefore, that he would go over to
Hogglestock, and see Mr Crawley before he saw the auctioneer.
Hitherto Major Grantly had never spoken to Mr Crawley. It may be
remembered that the major was at the present moment one of the bailsmen
for the due appearance of Mr Crawley before the judge, and that he had
been present when the magistrates sat at the inn in Silverbridge. He
therefore knew the man's presence, but except on that occasion he had
never even seen his intended future father-in-law. From that moment when
he had first allowed himself to think of Grace, he had desired, yet
almost feared, to make acquaintance with the father; but had been
debarred from doing so by the peculiar position in which Mr Crawley was
placed. He had felt that it would be impossible to speak to the father
of his affection for the daughter without any allusion to the coming
trial; and he did not know how such allusion could be made. Thinking of
this, he had at different times almost resolved not to call at
Hogglestock till the trial might be over. Then he would go there, let
the result of the trial have been what it might. But it had now become
necessary for him to go on at once. His father had precipitated matters
by his appeal to Grace. He would appeal to Grace's father, and reach
Grace through his influence.
He drove over to Hogglestock, feeling himself to be anything but
comfortable as he came near to the house. And when he did reach the spot
he was somewhat disconcerted to find that another visitor was in the
house before him. He presumed this to be the case, because there stood a
little pony horse--an animal which did not recommend itself to his
instructed eye--attached by its rein to the palings. It was a poor
humble-looking beast, whose knees had very lately become acquainted with
the hard and sharp stones of a newly-mended highway. The blood was even
now red upon the wounds.
'He'll never be much good again,' said the major to his servant.
'That he won't, sir,' said the man. 'But I don't think he's been very
much good for some time back.'
'I shouldn't like to have to ride him into Silverbridge,' said the
major, descending from the gig, and instructing his servant to move the
horse and gig about as long as he might remain within the house. Then he
walked across the little garden and knocked at the door. The door was
immediately opened, and in the passage he found Mr Crawley and another
clergyman whom the reader will recognise as Mr Thumble. Mr Thumble had
come over to make arrangements as to the Sunday services and the
parochial work, and had been very urgent in impressing on Mr Crawley
that the duties were to be left entirely to himself. Hence had come some
bitter words, in which Mr Crawley, though no doubt he said the sharper
things of the two, had not been able to vanquish his enemy so completely
as he had done of former occasions.
'There must be no interference, my dear sir--not whatever, if you
please,' Mr Thumble had said.
'There shall be none of which the bishop shall have reason to complain,'
Mr Crawley had replied.
'There must be none at all, Mr Crawley, if you please. It is only on
that understanding that I have consented to take the parish temporarily
into my hands. Mrs Crawley, I hope that there may be no mistake about
the schools. It must be exactly as though I were residing on the spot.'
'Sir,' said Mr Crawley, very irate at this appeal to his wife, and
speaking in a loud voice, 'do you misdoubt my word; or do you think that
if I were minded to be false to you, that I should be corrected in my
falsehood by the firmer faith of my wife?'
'I meant nothing about falsehood, Mr Crawley.'
'Having resigned the benefice for certain reasons of my own, with which
I shall not trouble you, and acknowledging as I do--and have done in
writing under my hand to the bishop--the propriety of his lordship's
interference in providing for the services of the parish till any
successor shall have been instituted, I shall, with what feelings of
regret, I need not say, leave you to the performance of your temporary
duties.'
'That is all that I require, Mr Crawley.'
'But it is wholly unnecessary that you should instruct me in mine.'
'The bishop especially desires--' began Mr Thumble. But Mr Crawley
interrupted him instantly.
'If the bishop has directed you to give me such instructions, the bishop
is much in error. I will submit to receive none from him through you,
sir. If you please, sir, let there be an end of it'; and Mr Crawley
waved his hand. I hope the reader will conceive the tone of Mr Crawley's
voice, and will appreciate the aspect of his face, and will see the
motion of his hand, as he spoke these latter words. Mr Thumble felt the
power of the man so sensibly that he was unable to carry on the contest.
Thought Mr Crawley was now but a broken reed, and was beneath his feet,
yet Mr Thumble acknowledged to himself that he could not hold his own in
debate with this broken reed. But the words had been spoken, and the
tone of the voice had died away, and the fire in the eyes had burned
itself out before the moment of the major's arrival. Mr Thumble was now
returning to his horse, and having enjoyed--if he did enjoy--his little
triumph about the parish, was becoming unhappy at the future dangers
that awaited him. Perhaps he was the more unhappy because it had been
proposed to him by the authorities at the palace that he should
repeatedly ride on the same animal from Barchester to Hogglestock and
back. Mr Crawley was in the act of replying to his lamentations on this
subject with his hand on the latch, when the major arrived--'I regret to
say, sir that I cannot assist you by supplying any other steed.' Then
the major had knocked, and Mr Crawley had at once opened the door.
'You probably do not remember me, Mr Crawley?' said the major. 'I am
Major Grantly.' Mrs Crawley, who heard these words inside the room,
sprang up from her chair, and could hardly resist the temptation to rush
into the passage. She too had barely seen Major Grantly; and now the
only bright gleam which appeared on her horizon depended on his
constancy under circumstances which would have justified his
inconstancy. But had he meant to be inconstant, surely he would never
have come to Hogglestock!'
'I remember you well, sir,' said Mr Crawley. 'I am under no common
obligation to you. You are at present one of my bailsmen.'
'There's nothing in that,' said the major.
Mr Thumble had caught the name of Grantly, took off his hat, which he
had put on his head. He had not been particular in keeping off his hat
before Mr Crawley. But he knew well that Archdeacon Grantly was a big
man in the diocese; and though the Grantlys and the Proudies were
opposed to each other, still it might be well to take off his hat before
anyone who had to do with the big ones of the diocese. 'I hope your
respected father is well, sir?' said Mr Thumble.
'Pretty well, I thank you.' The major stood close up against the wall
of the passage, so as to allow room for Mr Thumble to pass out. His
business was one on which he could hardly begin to speak until the
visitor had gone. Mr Crawley was standing with the door wide open in his
hand. He also was anxious to be rid of Mr Thumble--and was perhaps not
so solicitous as a brother clergyman should have touching the future
fate of Mr Thumble in the matter of the bishop's old cob.
'Really, I don't know what to do as to getting upon him again,' said Mr
Thumble.
'If you will allow him to progress slowly,' said Mr Crawley, 'he will
probably travel with greater safety.'
'I don't know what you call slow, Mr Crawley. I was ever so much over
two hours coming here from Barchester. He stumbled almost at every
step.'
'Did he fall while you were on him?' asked the major.
'Indeed he did, sir. You never saw such a thing, Major Grantly. Look
here.' Then Mr Thumble, turning round, showed that the rear portion of
his clothes had not escaped without injury.
'It was well that he was not going fast, or you would have come on to
your head,' said Grantly.
'It was a mercy,' said Thumble. 'But, sir, as it was, I came to the
ground with much violence. It was on Spigglewick Hill, where the road is
covered with loose stones. I see, sir, you have a gig and horse here,
with a servant. Perhaps, as the circumstances are so very peculiar--'
Then Mr Thumble stopped, and looked up into the major's face with
imploring eyes. But the major had no tenderness for such sufferings.
'I'm sorry to say that I am going quite the other way,' he said. 'I am
returning to Silverbridge.'
Mr Thumble hesitated, and then made a renewed request. 'If you would
not mind taking me to Silverbridge, I could get home from thence by
railway; and perhaps you would allow your servant to take the horse to
Barchester.'
Major Grantly was for a moment dumbfounded. 'The request is most
unreasonable, sir.' said Mr Crawley.
'That is as Major Grantly pleases to look at it,' said Mr Thumble.
'I am sorry to say that it is quite out of my power,' said the major.
'You can surely walk, leading the beast, if you fear to mount him,' said
Mr Crawley.
'I shall do as I please about that,' said Mr Thumble. 'And, Mr Crawley,
if you will have the kindness to leave things in the parish just as they
are--just as they are, I will be obliged to you. It is the bishop's wish
that you should touch nothing.' Mr Thumble was by this time on the step,
and Mr Crawley instantly slammed the door. 'The gentleman is a clergyman
from Barchester,' said Mr Crawley, modestly folding his hands upon his
breast, 'whom the bishop has sent over here to take upon himself
temporarily the services of the church, and it appears, the duties also
of the parish. I refrain from animadverting upon his lordship's choice.'
'And you are leaving Hogglestock?'
'When I have found a shelter for my wife and children I shall do so;
nay, peradventure, I must do so before any such shelter can be found. I
shall proceed in that matter as I am bid. I am one who can regard myself
as no longer possessing the privilege of free action in anything. But
while I have a room at your service, permit me to ask you to enter it.'
Then Mr Crawley motioned him in with his hand, and Major Grantly found
himself in the presence of Mrs Crawley and her younger daughter.
He looked at them both for a moment, and could trace much of the lines
of that face which he loved so well. But the troubles of life had almost
robbed the elder lady of her beauty; and with the younger, the awkward
thinness of the last years of feminine childhood had not yet given place
to the fulfilment of feminine grace. But the likeness in each was quite
enough to make him feel that he ought to be at home in that room. He
thought that he could love the woman as his mother, and the girl as his
sister. He found it very difficult to begin any conversation in their
presence, and yet it seemed to be his duty to begin. Mr Crawley had
marshalled him into the room, and having done so, stood aside near the
door. Mrs Crawley had received him very graciously, and having done so,
seemed to be ashamed of her own hospitality. Poor Jane had shrunk back
into a distant corner, near the open standing desk at which she was
accustomed to read Greek to her father, and, of course, could not be
expected to speak. If Major Grantly could have found himself alone with
any one of the three--nay, if he could have been there with any two, he
could have opened his budget at once; but, before all the family, he
felt the difficulty of his situation. 'Mrs Crawley,' said he, 'I have
been most anxious to make your acquaintance, and I trust you will excuse
the liberty I have taken in calling.'
'I feel grateful to you, as I am sure does also my husband.' So much
she said, and then felt angry with herself for saying so much. Was she
not expressing the strong hope that he might stand fast by her child,
whereby the whole Crawley family would gain so much--and the Grantly
family lose much, in the same proportion?
'Sir,' said Mr Crawley, 'I owe you thanks, still unexpressed, in that
you came forward together with Mr Robarts of Framley, to satisfy the not
unnatural requisition of the magistrates before whom I was called upon
to appear in the early winter. I know not why anyone should have
ventured into such jeopardy on my account.'
'There was no jeopardy, Mr Crawley. Anyone in the county would have
done it.'
'I know not that; nor can I see that there was no jeopardy. I trust
that I may assure you that there is no danger;--none, I mean, to you.
The danger to myself and those belonging to me, is, alas, very urgent.
The facts of my position are pressing close upon me. Methinks I suffer
more from the visit of the gentleman who has just departed from me than
anything that has yet happened to me. And yet he is right;--he is
altogether right.'
'No, papa; he is not,' said Jane, from her standing ground near the
upright desk.
'My dear,' said her father, 'you should be silent on such a subject. It
is a matter hard to be understood in all its bearings --even by those
who are most conversant with them. But as this we need not trouble Major
Grantly.'
After that there was silence among them, and for a while it seemed as
though there could be no approach to the subject on which Grantly had
come hither to express himself. Mrs Crawley, in her despair, said
something about the weather; and the major, trying to draw near the
special subject, became bold enough to remark 'that he had the pleasure
of seeing Miss Crawley at Framley.' 'Mrs Robarts has been very kind,'
said Mrs Crawley, 'very kind indeed. You can understand, Major Grantly,
that this must be a very sad house for a young person.' 'I don't think
it is at all sad,' said Jane, still standing in the corner by the
upright desk.
Then Major Grantly rose from his seat and walked across to the girl and
shook her hand. 'You are so like your sister,' said he. 'Your sister is
a great friend of mine. She has often spoken to me of you. I hope we
shall be friends some day.' But Jane could make no answer to this,
though she had been able to vindicate the general character of the house
while she was left in the corner by herself. 'I wonder whether you would
be angry with me,' continued the major, 'if I told you I wanted to speak
a word to your father and mother alone?' To this Jane made no reply, but
was out of the room almost before the words had reached the ears of her
father and mother. Though she was only sixteen, and had as yet read
nothing but Latin and Greek--unless we are to count the twelve books of
Euclid and Wood's Algebra, and sundry smaller exercises of the same
description--she understood, as well as anyone present, the reason why
her absence was required.
As she closed the door the major paused for a moment, expecting, or
perhaps hoping, that the father or the mother would say a word. But
neither of them had a word to say. They sat silent, and as though
conscience-stricken. Here was a rich man, of whom they had heard that he
might probably wish to wed their daughter. It was manifest enough to
both of them that no man could marry into their family without
subjecting himself to a heavy portion of that reproach and disgrace
which was attached to them. But how was it possible that they should not
care more for their daughter--for their own flesh and blood, than for
the incidental welfare of this rich man? As regarded the man himself
they had heard everything that was good. Such a marriage was like the
opening of a paradise to their child. 'Nil conscire sibi,' said the
father to himself, as he buckled on his armour for the fight.
When he had waited for a moment or two, he began. 'Mrs Crawley,' he
said, addressing himself to the mother, 'I do not quite know how far you
may be aware that I--that I have for some time been --been acquainted
with your eldest daughter.'
'I have heard from her that she is acquainted with you,' said Mrs
Crawley, almost panting with anxiety.
'I may as well make a clean breast of it at once,' said the major,
smiling, 'and say outright that I have come here to request your
permission and her father's to ask her to be my wife.' Then he was
silent, and for a few moments neither Mr nor Mrs Crawley replied to him.
She looked at her husband, and he gazed at the fire, and the smile died
away from the major's face, as he watched the solemnity of them both.
There was something almost forbidding in the peculiar gravity of Mr
Crawley's countenance when, as at present, something operated within him
to cause him to express dissent from any proposition that was made to
him. 'I do not know how far this may be altogether new to you, Mrs
Crawley,' said the major, waiting for a reply.
'It is not new to me,' said Mrs Crawley.
'May I hope, then, that you will not disapprove?'
'Sir,' said Mr Crawley, 'I am so placed by the untoward circumstances of
my life that I can hardly claim to exercise over my own daughter that
authority which should belong to a parent.'
'My dear, do not say that,' said Mrs Crawley.
'But I do say it. Within three weeks of this time I may be a prisoner,
subject to the criminal laws of my country. At this moment I am without
power of earning bread for myself, or for my wife, or for my children.
Major Grantly, you have even now seen the departure of the gentleman who
has been sent here to take my place in this parish. I am, as it were, an
outlaw here, and entitled neither to obedience nor respect from those
who under other circumstances would be bound to give both.'
'Major Grantly,' said the poor woman, 'no husband or father in the
county is more closely obeyed or more thoroughly respected and loved.'
'I am sure of it,' said the major.
'All this, however, matters nothing,' said Mr Crawley, 'and all speech
on such homely matters would amount to an impertinence before you, sir,
were it not that you have hinted at the purpose of connecting yourself
at some future time with this unfortunate family.'
'I meant to be plain-spoken, Mr Crawley.'
'I did not mean to insinuate, sir, that there was aught of reticence in
your words, so contrived that you might fall back on the vagueness of
your expression for protection, should you hereafter see fit to change
your purpose. I should have wronged you much by such a suggestion. I
rather was minded to make known to you that I--or, I should rather say,
we,' and Mr Crawley pointed to his wife--'shall not accept your
plainness of speech as betokening aught beyond a conceived idea in
furtherance of which you have thought it expedient to make certain
inquiries.'
'I don't quite follow you,' said the major. 'But what I want you to do
is to give me your consent to visit your daughter; and I want Mrs
Crawley to write to Grace and tell her that it's all right.' Mrs Crawley
was quite sure that it was all right, and was ready to sit down and
write the letter that moment, if her husband would permit her to do so.
'I am sorry that I have not been explicit,' said Mr Crawley, 'but I will
endeavour to make myself more plainly intelligible. My daughter, sir, is
so circumstanced in reference to her father, that I, as her father and a
gentleman, cannot encourage any man to make a tender to her of his
hand.'
'But I have made up my mind about all that.'
'And I, sir, have made up mine. I dare not tell my girl that I think
she will do well to place her hand in yours. A lady, when she does that,
should feel at least that her hand is clean.'
'It is the cleanest and the sweetest and fairest hand in Barsetshire,'
said the major. Mrs Crawley could not restrain herself, but running up
to him, took his hand in hers and kissed it.
'There is unfortunately a stain, which is vicarial,' began Mr Crawley,
sustaining up to that point his voice with Roman fortitude--with a
fortitude which would have been Roman had it not at that moment broken
down under the pressure of human feeling. He could keep it up no longer,
but continued his speech with broken sobs, and with a voice altogether
changed in its tone --rapid now, whereas it had before been
slow--natural, whereas it had hitherto been affected--human, whereas it
had hitherto been Roman. 'Major Grantly,' he said. 'I am sore beset; but
what can I say to you? My darling is as pure as the light of day --only
that she is soiled with my impurity. She is fit to grace the house of
the best gentleman in England, had I not made her unfit.'
'She shall grace mine,' said the major. 'By God she shall!--tomorrow,
if she'll have me.' Mrs Crawley, who was standing beside him, again
raised his hand and kissed it.
'It may not be so. As I began by saying--or rather strove to say, for I
have been overtaken by weakness, and cannot speak my mind--I cannot
claim authority over my child as would another man. How can I exercise
authority from between a prison's bars?'
'She would obey your slightest wish,' said Mrs Crawley.
'I could express no wish,' said he. 'But I know my girl, and I am sure
that she will not consent to take infamy with her into the house of the
man who loves her.'
'There will be no infamy,' said the major. 'Infamy! I tell you that I
shall be proud of the connexion.'
'You, sir, are generous in your prosperity. We will strive to be at
least just in our adversity. My wife and children are to be
pitied--because of the husband and father.'
'No!' said Mrs Crawley. 'I will not hear that said, without denying
it.'
'But they must take their lot as it has been given to them,' continued
he. 'Such a position in life as that which you have proposed to bestow
upon my child would be to her, as regards human affairs, great
elevation. And from what I have heard--I may be permitted to add also
from what I now know from personal experience--such a marriage would be
laden with fair promise and future happiness. But if you ask my mind, I
think that my child is not free to make it. You, sir, have many
relatives, who are not in love, as you are, all of whom would be
affected by the stain of my disgrace. No one should go to your house as
your second wife who cannot feel that she will serve your child. My
daughter would feel that she was bringing injury upon the babe. I cannot
bid her do this--and I will not. Nor do I believe that she would do so
if I bid her.' Then he turned his chair round, and sat with his face to
the wall, wiping away the tears with a tattered handkerchief.
Mrs Crawley led the major to the further window, and there stood looking
up into his face. It need hardly be said that they also were crying.
Whose eyes could have been dry after such a scene--upon hearing such
words? 'You had better go,' said Mrs Crawley. 'I know him so well. You
had better go.'
'Mrs Crawley,' he said whispering to her, 'if I ever desert her, may all
that I love desert me! But will you help me?'
'You would want no help, were it not for this trouble.'
'But you will help me?'
Then she paused for a moment, 'I can do nothing,' she said, 'but what he
bids me.'
'You will trust me, at any rate,' said the major.
'I do trust you,' she replied. Then he went without saying a word
further to Mr Crawley. As soon as he was gone, the wife went over to her
husband, and put her arm gently round his neck as he was sitting. For a
while the husband took no notice of his wife's caress, but sat
motionless, with his face turned to the wall. Then she spoke to him a
word or two, telling him that their visitor was gone. 'My child!' he
said. 'My poor child!, my darling! She has found grace in this man's
sight; but even of that has her father robbed her! The Lord has visited
upon the children the sins of the father, and will do so to the third
and fourth generation.'
CHAPTER LXIV
TRAGEDY AT HOOK COURT
Conway Dalrymple had hurried out of the room in Mrs Broughton's house in
which he had been painting Jael and Sisera, thinking that it would be
better to meet an angry and perhaps tipsy husband on the stairs, than it
would be either to wait for him till he should make his way into his
wife's room, or to hide away from him with the view of escaping
altogether from so disagreeable an encounter. He had no fear of the man.
He did not think that there would be any violence--nor, as regarded
himself, did he much care if there was to be violence. But he felt that
he was bound, as far as it might be possible, to screen the poor woman
from the ill effects of her husband's temper and condition. He was,
therefore, prepared to stop Broughton on the stairs, and to use some
force in arresting him on his way, should he find the man to be really
intoxicated. But he had not descended above a stair or two before he was
aware that the man below him, whose step had been heard, was not
intoxicated, and that he was not Dobbs Broughton. It was Mr Musselboro.
'It is you, is it?' said Conway. 'I thought it was Broughton.' then he
looked into the man's face and saw that he was ashy pale. All that
appearance of low-bred jauntiness which used to belong to him seemed to
have been washed out of him. His hair had forgotten to curl, his gloves
had been thrown aside, and even his trinkets were out of sight. 'What
has happened,' said Conway. 'What is the matter? Something is wrong.'
Then it occurred to him that Musselboro had been sent to the house to
tell the wife of the husband's ruin.
'The servant told me that I should find you upstairs,' said Musselboro.
'Yes; I have a painting here. For some time past I have been doing a
picture of Miss Van Siever. Mrs Van Siever has been here today.' Conway
thought that this information would produce some strong effect on
Clara's proposed husband; but he did not seem to regard the matter of
the picture nor the mention of Miss Van Siever's name.
'She knows nothing of it?' said he. 'She doesn't know yet?'
'Know what?' said Conway. 'She knows that her husband has lost money.'
'Dobbs has--destroyed himself.'
'What!'
'Blew his brains out this morning just inside the entrance at Hook
Court. The horror of drink was on him, and he stood just in the pathway
and shot himself. Bangles was standing at the top of their vaults and
saw him do it. I don't think Bangles will ever be a man again. Oh lord!
I shall never get over it myself. The body was there when I went in.'
Then Musselboro sank back against the wall of the staircase, and stared
at Dalrymple as though he still saw before him the terrible sight of
which he had just spoken.
Dalrymple seated himself on the stairs and strove to bring his mind to
bear on the tale which he had just heard. What was he to do, and how was
that poor woman upstairs to be informed? 'You came here intending to
tell her,' he said in a whisper. He feared every moment that Mrs
Broughton would appear on the stairs, and learn from a word or two what
had happened without any hint to prepare her for the catastrophe.
'I thought you would be here. I knew you were doing the picture. He
knew it. He'd a letter to say so--one of those anonymous ones.'
'But that didn't influence him?'
'I don't think it was that,' said Musselboro. 'He meant to have had it
out with her; but it wasn't that as brought this about. Perhaps you
didn't know that he was clean ruined?'
'She had told me.'
'Then she knew it?'
'Oh, yes; she knew that. Mrs Van Siever had told her. Poor creature!
How are we to break this to her?'
'You and she are very thick,' said Musselboro. 'I suppose you'll do it
best.' By this time they were in the drawing-room, and the door was
closed. Dalrymple had put his hand on the other man's arm, and had led
him downstairs, out of reach of hearing from the room above. 'You'll
tell her--won't you?' said Musselboro. Then Dalrymple tried to think
what loving female friend there was who would break the news to the
unfortunate woman. He knew of the Van Sievers, and he knew of the
Demolines, and he almost knew that there was no other woman within reach
whom he was entitled to regard as closely connected with Mrs Broughton.
He was well aware that the anonymous letter of which Musselboro had just
spoken had come from Miss Demolines, and he could not go there for
sympathy and assistance. Nor could he apply to Mrs Van Siever after with
had passed this morning. To Clara Van Siever he would have applied, but
that it was impossible he should reach Clara except through her mother.
'I suppose I had better go to her,' he said, after a while. And then he
went, leaving Musselboro in the drawing-room. 'I'm so bad with it,' said
Musselboro, 'that I really don't know how I shall ever go up that court
again.'
Conway Dalrymple made his way up the stairs with very slow steps, and as
he did so he could not but think seriously of the nature of his
friendship with this woman, and could not but condemn himself heartily
for the folly and iniquity of his own conduct. Scores of times he had
professed his love to her with half-expressed words, intended to mean
nothing, as he said to himself when he tried to excuse himself, but
enough to turn her head, even if they did not reach her heart. Now, this
woman was a widow, and it came to be his duty to tell her that she was
so. What if she should claim from him now the love which he had so often
proffered to her! It was not that he feared that she would claim
anything from him at this moment--neither now, nor tomorrow, nor the
next day--but the agony of the present meeting would produce others in
which there would be some tenderness mixed with the agony; and so from
one meeting to another the thing would progress. But in this danger
before him, it was not of himself that he was thinking, but of her. How
could he assist her at such a time without doing her more injury than
benefit? And, if he did not assist her, who would do so? He knew her to
be heartless; but even heartless people have hearts which can be touched
and almost broken by certain sorrows. Her heart would not be broken by
her husband's death, but it would become very sore if she were utterly
neglected. He was now at the door, with his hand on the lock, and was
wondering why she should remain so long within without making herself
heard. Then he opened it, and found her seated in a lounge-chair, with
her back to the door, and he could see that she had a volume of a novel
in her hand. He understood it all. She was pretending to be indifferent
to her husband's return. He walked up to her, thinking that she would
recognise his step; but she made no sign of turning towards him. He saw
the motion of her hair over the back of the chair as she affected to
make herself luxuriously comfortable. She was striving to let her
husband see that she cared nothing for him, or for his condition, or for
his jealousy, if he were jealous--or even of his ruin. 'Mrs Broughton,'
he said, when he was close to her. Then she jumped up quickly, and
turned round facing him. 'Where is Dobbs?' she said. 'Where is Dobbs?'
'He is not here.'
'He is in the house, for I heard him. Why have you come back?'
Dalrymple's eye fell on the tattered canvas, and he thought of the
doings of the past month. He thought of the picture of the three Graces,
which was hanging in the room below, and he thoroughly wished that he
had never been introduced to the Broughton establishment. How was he to
get through his present difficulty? 'No,' said he, 'Broughton did not
come. It was Mr Musselboro whose steps you heard below.'
'What is he here for? What is he doing here? Where is Dobbs? Conway,
there is something the matter. Has he gone off?'
'Yes;--he has gone off.'
'The coward!'
'No; he was not a coward;--not in that way.'
The use of the past tense, unintentional as it had been, told the story
to the woman at once. 'He is dead,' she said. Then he took both her
hands in his and looked into her face, without speaking a word. And she
gazed at him with fixed eyes, and rigid mouth, while the quick coming
breath just moved the curl of her nostrils. It occurred to him at that
moment that he had never before seen her so wholly unaffected, and had
never before observed that she was so totally deficient in all the
elements of real beauty. She was the first to speak again. 'Conway,' she
said, 'tell me all. Why do you not speak to me?'
'There is nothing further to tell,' he said.
Then she dropped her hands and walked away from him to the window --and
stood there looking out upon the stuccoed turret of a huge house that
stood opposite. As she did so she was employing herself in counting the
windows. Her mind was paralysed by the blow, and she knew not how to
make any exertion with it for any purpose. Everything was changed with
her--and was changed in such a way that she could make no guess as to
her future mode of life. She was suddenly a widow, a pauper, and utterly
desolate--while the only person in the whole world that she really
liked was standing close to her. But in the midst of it all she counted
the windows of the house opposite. Had it been possible for her she
would have put her mind altogether to sleep.
He let her stand for a few minutes and then joined her at the window.
'My friend,' he said, 'what shall I do for you?'
'Do?' she said. 'What do you mean by--doing?'
'Come and sit down and let me talk to you,' he replied. Then he led her
to the sofa, and as she seated herself I doubt whether she had not
almost forgotten that her husband was dead.
'What a pity it was to cut it up,' she said, pointing to the rags of
Jael and Sisera.
'Never mind the picture now. Dreadful as it is, you must allow yourself
to think of him for a few minutes.'
'Think of what! Oh, God! Yes. Conway, you must tell me what to do.
Was everything gone? It isn't about myself. I don't mind about myself. I
wish it was me instead of him. I do. I do.'
'No wishing is of any avail.'
'But, Conway, how did it happen? Do you think it is true? That man
would say anything to gain his object. Is he here now?'
'I believe he is here still.'
'I won't see him. Remember that. Nothing on earth can make me see
him.'
'It may be necessary, but I do not think it will be;--at any rate, not
yet.'
'I will never see him. I believe that he has murdered my husband. I do.
I feel sure of it. Now I think of it I am quite sure of it. And he will
murder you too;--about that girl. He will. I tell you I know the man.'
Dalrymple simply shook his head, smiling sadly. 'Very well! You will
see. But, Conway, how do you know that it is true? Do you believe it
yourself?'
'I do believe it.'
'And how did it happen?'
'He could not bear the ruin that he had brought upon himself and you.'
'Then;--then--' She went no further in her speech; but Dalrymple
assented by a slight motion of his head, and she had been informed
sufficiently that her husband had perished by his own hand. 'What am I
to do?' she said. 'Oh, Conway, you must tell me. Was there ever so
miserable a woman! Was it--poison?'
He got up and walked quickly across the room and back again to the place
where she was sitting. 'Never mind about that now. You shall know all
that in time. Do not ask me any questions about that. If I were you I
think I would go to bed. You will be better there than up, and this
shock will make you sleep.'
'No,' she said. 'I will not go to bed. How should I know that that man
would not come and kill me? I believe he murdered Dobbs;--I do. You are
not going to leave me, Conway?'
'I think I had better, for a while. There are things which should be
done. Shall I send one of the women for you?'
'There is not one of them that cares for me in the least. Oh, Conway,
do not go; not yet. I will not be left alone in the house with him. You
will be very cruel if you go and leave me now--when you have so often
said that you--that you--that you were my friend.' And now, at last, she
began to weep.
'I think it will be best,' he said, 'that I should go to Mrs Van Siever.
If I can manage it, I will get Clara to come to you.'
'I do not want her,' said Mrs Broughton. 'She is a heartless cold
creature, and I do not want to have her near me. My poor husband was
ruined among them;--yes, ruined among them. It has all been done that
she may marry that horrid man and live here in this house. I have known
ever so long that he has not been safe among them.'
'You need fear nothing from Clara,' said Dalrymple, with some touch of
anger in his voice.
'Of course you will say so. I can understand that very well. And it is
natural that you should wish to be with her. Pray go.'
Then he sat beside her, and took her hand, and endeavoured to speak to
her so seriously, that she herself might become serious, and if it might
be possible, in some degree contemplative. He told her how necessary it
was that she should have some woman near her in her trouble, and
explained to her that as far as he knew her female friends, there would
be no one who would be so considerate with her as Clara Van Siever. She
at one time mentioned the name of Miss Demolines; but Dalrymple
altogether opposed the notion of sending for that lady--expressing his
opinion that the amiable Madalina had done all in her power to create
quarrels between Mrs Broughton and her husband and between Dobbs
Broughton and Mrs Van Siever. And he spoke his opinion very fully about
Miss Demolines. 'And yet you liked her once,' said Mrs Broughton. 'I
never liked her,' said Dalrymple with energy. 'But all that matters
nothing now. Of course you can send for her if you please; but I do not
think her trustworthy, and I will not willingly come in contact with
her.' Then Mrs Broughton gave him to understand that of course she must
give way, but that in giving way she felt herself to be submitting to
ill-usage which is the ordinary lot of women, and to which she, among
women, had been specially subjected. She did not exactly say as much,
fearing that if she did he would leave her altogether; but that was the
gist of he plaints and wails, and final acquiescence.
'And are you going?' she said, catching hold of his arm.
'I will employ myself altogether and only about your affairs, till I see
you again.'
'But I want you to stay.'
'It would be madness. Look here;--lie down till Clara comes or till I
return. Do not go beyond this room and your own. If she cannot come this
evening I will return. Good-bye now. I will see the servants as I go
out, and tell them what ought to be told.'
'Oh, Conway,' she said, clutching hold of him again. 'I know that you
despise me.'
'I do not despise you, and I will be as good a friend to you as I can.
God bless you.' Then he went, and as he descended the stairs he could
not refrain from telling himself that he did in truth despise her.
His first object was to find Musselboro, and to dismiss that gentleman
from the house. For though he himself did not attribute to Mrs Van
Siever's favourite any of those terrible crimes and potentialities for
crime with which Mrs Dobbs Broughton had invested him, still he thought
it reasonable that the poor woman upstairs should not be subjected to
the necessity of either seeing him or hearing him. But Musselboro had
gone, and Dalrymple could not learn from the head woman-servant whom he
saw, whether before going he had told to anyone in the house the tale of
the catastrophe which had happened in the City. Servants are wonderful
actors, looking often as though they knew nothing when they knew
everything--as though they understood nothing, when they understood all.
Dalrymple made known all that was necessary, and the discreet upper
servant listened to the tale, with the proper amount of awe and horror
and commiseration. 'Shot hisself in the City;--laws! You'll excuse me,
sir, but we all know'd as master was coming to no good.' But she
promised to do her best with her mistress--and kept her promise. It is
seldom that servants are not good in such straits as that.
From Mrs Broughton's house Dalrymple went directly to Mrs Van Siever's,
and learned that Musselboro had been there about half an hour before,
and had then gone off in a cab with Mrs Van Siever. It was now nearly
four o'clock in the afternoon, and no one in the house knew when Mrs Van
Siever would be back. Miss Van Siever was out, and had been out when Mr
Musselboro had called, but was expected every minute. Conway therefore
said that he would call again, and on returning found Clara alone. She
had not then heard a word of the fate of Dobbs Broughton. Of course she
would go at once to Mrs Broughton, and if necessary stay with her during
the night. She wrote a line at once to her mother, saying where she was,
and went across to Mrs Broughton leaning on Dalrymple's arm. 'Be good to
her,' said Conway, as he left her at the door. 'I will,' said Clara. 'I
will be as kind as nature will allow me.' 'And remember,' said Conway,
whispering into her ear as he pressed her hand at leaving her, 'that you
are the all the world to me.' It was perhaps not a proper time for an
expression of love, but Clara Van Siever forgave the impropriety.
CHAPTER LXV
MISS VAN SIEVER MAKES HER CHOICE
Clara Van Siever did stay all night with Mrs Broughton. In the course
of the evening she received a note from her mother, in which she was
told to come home to breakfast. 'You can go back to her afterwards,'
said Mrs Van Siever; 'and I will see her myself in the course of the
day, if she will let me.' The note was written on a scrap of paper, and
had neither beginning nor end; but this was after the manner of Mrs Van
Siever, and Clara was not in the least hurt or surprised. 'My mother
will come to see you after breakfast,' said Clara, as she was taking her
leave.
'Oh, goodness! And what shall I say to her?'
'You will have to say very little. She will speak to you.'
'I suppose everything belongs to her now,' said Mrs Broughton.
'I know nothing about that. I never do know anything of mamma's money
matters.'
'Of course she'll turn me out. I do not mind a bit about that--only I
hope she'll let me have some mourning.' Then she made Clara promise that
she would return as soon as possible, having in Clara's presence
overcome all that feeling of dislike which she had expressed to Conway
Dalrymple. Mrs Broughton was generally affectionate to those who were
near her. Had Musselboro forced himself into her presence, she would
have become quite confidential with him before he left her.
'Mr Musselboro will be here directly,' said Mrs Van Siever, as she was
starting for Mrs Broughton's house. 'You had better tell him to come to
me up here; or, stop--perhaps you had better keep him here till I come
back. Tell him to be sure and wait for me.'
'Very well, mamma. I suppose he can wait below?'
'Why should he wait below?,' said Mrs Van Siever, very angrily.
Clara had made the uncourteous proposition to her mother with the
express intention of making it understood that she would have nothing to
say to him. 'He can come upstairs if he likes,' said Clara; 'and I will
go up to my room.'
'If you fight shy of him, miss, you may remember this--that you will
fight shy of me at the same time.'
'I am sorry for that, mamma, for I shall certainly fight shy of Mr
Musselboro.'
'You can do as you please. I can't force you, and I shan't try. But I
can make your life a burden to you--and I will. What's the matter with
the man that he isn't good enough for you? He's as good as any of your
own people ever was. I hate your new-fangled airs--with pictures
painted on the sly, and all the rest of it. I hate such ways. See what
they have brought that wretched man to, and the poor fool his wife. If
you go and marry that painter, some of these days you'll be very much
like what she is. Only I doubt whether he has got the courage enough to
blow his brains out.' With these comfortable words, the old woman took
herself off, leaving Clara to entertain her lover as best she might
choose.
Mr Musselboro was not long in coming, and, in accordance with Mrs Van
Siever's implied directions to her daughter, was shown up into the
drawing-room. Clara gave him her mother's message in a very few words.
'I was expressly told, sir, to ask you to stop, if it is not
inconvenient, as she very much wants to see you.' Mr Musselboro declared
that of course he would stop. He was only too happy to have the
opportunity of remaining in such delightful society. As Clara answered
nothing to this, he went on to say that he hoped that the melancholy
occasion of Mrs Van Siever's visit to Mrs Broughton might make a long
absence necessary--he did not, indeed, care how long it might be. He had
recovered now from that paleness, and that want of gloves and jewellery
which had befallen him on the previous day immediately after the sight
he had seen in the City. Clara made no answer to the last speech, but,
putting some things together in her work-basket, prepared to leave the
room. 'I hope you are not going to leave me?' he said, in a voice that
was intended to convey much of love, and something of melancholy.
'I am so shocked by what has happened, Mr Musselboro, that I am
altogether unfit for conversation. I was with poor Mrs Broughton last
night, and I shall return to her when mamma comes home.'
'It is sad, certainly; but what was there to be expected? If you'd only
seen how he used to go on.' To this Clara made no answer. 'Don't go
yet,' said he; 'there is something that I want to say to you. There is,
indeed.'
Clara Van Siever was a young person whose presence of mind rarely
deserted her. It occurred to her now that she must undergo on some
occasion the nuisance of a direct offer from him, and that she could
have no better opportunity of answering him after her own fashion than
the present. Her mother was absent, and the field was her own. And,
moreover, it was a point in her favour that the tragedy which had so
lately occurred, and to which she had just now alluded, would give her a
fair excuse for additional severity. At such a moment no man could, she
told herself, be justified in making an offer of his love, and therefore
she might rebuke him with the less remorse. I wonder whether the last
words which Conway Dalrymple had spoken to her stung her conscience as
she thought of this! She had now reached the door, and was standing
close to it. As Mr Musselboro did not at once, begin, she encouraged
him. 'If you have anything special to tell me, I will hear you,' she
said.
'Miss Clara,' he began, rising from his chair, and coming into the
middle of the room. 'I think you know what my wishes are.' Then he put
his hand upon his heart. 'And your respected mother is the same way of
thinking. It's that that emboldens me to be so sudden. Not but what my
heart has been yours and yours only all along, before the old lady so
much as mentioned it.' Clara would give him no assistance, not even the
aid of a negative, but stood there quite passive, with her hand on the
door. 'Since I first had the pleasure of seeing you I have always said
to myself, "Augustus Musselboro, that is the woman for you, if you can
only win her." But there was so much against me--wasn't there?' She
would not even take advantage of this by assuring him that there
certainly always had been much against him, but allowed him to go on
till he should run out all the length of his tether. 'I mean, of course,
in the way of money,' he continued. 'I hadn't much that I could call my
own when your respected mother first allowed me to become acquainted
with you. But it's different now; and I think I may say that I'm all
right in that respect. Poor Broughton's going this way will make it a
deal smoother to me; and I may say that I and your mamma will be all in
all to each other now about money.' Then he stopped.
'I don't quite understand what you mean by all this,' said Clara.
'I mean that there isn't a more devoted fellow in all London than what I
am to you.' Then he was about to go down on one knee, but it occurred to
him that it would not be convenient to kneel to a lady who would stand
quite close to the door. 'One and one, if they're put together well,
will often make more than two. And so they shall with us,' said
Musselboro, who began to feel that it might be expedient to throw a
little spirit into his words.
'If you have done,' said Clara, 'you may as well hear from me for a
minute. And I hope you will have the sense to understand that I really
mean what I say.'
'I hope you will remember what are your mamma's wishes.'
'Mamma's wishes have no influence whatsoever with me in such matters as
this. Mamma's arrangements with you are for her own convenience, and I
am not party to them. I do not know anything about mamma's money, and I
do not want to know. But under no possible circumstances will I consent
to become your wife. Nothing that mamma could say or do would induce me
even to think of it. I hope you will be man enough to take this for an
answer, and say nothing more about it.'
'But, Miss Clara--'
'It's no good your Miss Claraing me, sir. What I have said to you may
be sure I mean. Good-morning, sir.' Then she opened the door, and left
him.
'By Jove, she is a Tartar,' said Musselboro to himself, when he was
alone. 'They're both Tartars, but the younger is the worse.' Then he
began to speculate whether Fortune was not doing the best for him in so
arranging that he might have use of the Tartar-mother's money without
binding himself to endure for life the Tartar qualities of the daughter.
It had been understood that Clara was to wait at home till her mother
should return before she again went to Mrs Broughton. At about eleven
Mrs Van Siever came in, and her daughter intercepted her at the
dining-room door before she made her way upstairs to Mr Musselboro. 'How
is she, mamma?' said Clara with something of hypocrisy in her assumed
interest for Mrs Broughton.
'She is an idiot!' said Mrs Van Siever.
'She has had a terrible misfortune!'
'That is no reason why she should be an idiot; and she is heartless too.
She never cared a bit for him--not a bit.'
'He was a man whom it was impossible to care for much. I will go to her
now, mamma.'
'Where is Musselboro?'
'He is upstairs.'
'Well?'
'Mamma, that is quite out of the question. Quite. I would not marry
him to save myself from starving.'
'You do not know what starving is yet, my dear. Tell me the truth at
once. Are you engaged to that painter?' Clara paused a moment before she
answered, not hesitating as to the expediency of telling her mother any
truth on the matter in question, but doubting what the truth might
really be. Could she say that she was engaged to Mr Dalrymple, or could
she say that she was not? 'If you tell me a lie, miss, I'll have you put
out at once.'
'I certainly shall not tell you a lie. Mr Dalrymple has asked me to be
his wife, and I have made him no answer. If he asks me again I shall
accept him.'
'Then I order you not to leave this house,' said Mrs Van Siever.
'Surely I may go to Mrs Broughton?'
'I order you not to leave this house,' said Mrs Van Siever again --and
thereupon she stalked out of the dining-room and went upstairs. Clara
had been standing with her bonnet on, ready dressed to go out, and the
mother made no attempt to send the daughter up to her room. That she did
not expect to be obeyed in her order may be inferred from the first
words which she spoke to Mr Musselboro. 'She has gone off to that man
now. You are not good, Musselboro, at this kind of work.'
'You see, Mrs Van, he had the start of me so much. And then being at
the West End, and all that, gives a man such a standing with a girl.'
'Bother!' said Mrs Van Siever, as he quick ear caught the sound of the
closing hall-door. Clara had stood a minute or two to consider, and then
had resolved that she would disobey her mother. She tried to excuse her
own conduct to her own satisfaction as she went. 'There are some
things,' she said, 'which even a daughter cannot hear from her mother.
If she chooses to close the door against me, she must do so.'
She found Mrs Broughton still in bed, and could not but agree with her
mother that the woman was both silly and heartless.
'Your mother says that everything must be sold up,' said Mrs Broughton.
'At any rate you would hardly choose to remain here,' said Clara.
'But I hope she will let me have my own things. A great many of them
are altogether my own. I know there's a law that a woman may have her
own things, even though her husband has--done what poor Dobbs did. And I
think she was hard upon me about the mourning. They never do mind giving
credit for such things as that, and though there is a bill due to Mrs
Morell now, she has had a deal of Dobbs's money.' Clara promised her
that she would have mourning to her heart's content. 'I will see to that
myself,' she said.
Presently there was a knock at the door, and the discreet head-servant
beckoned Clara out of the room. 'You are not going away,' said Mrs
Broughton. Clara promised her that she would not go without coming back
again. 'He will be here soon, I suppose, and perhaps you had better see
him; though, for the matter of that, perhaps you had better not, because
he is so much cut up about poor Dobbs.' The servant had come to tell
Clara that the 'he' in question was at the present moment waiting for
her below stairs.
The first words which passed between Dalrymple and Clara had reference
to the widow. He told her what he had learned in the City--that
Broughton's property had never been great, and that his personal
liabilities at the time of his death were supposed to be small. But he
had fallen lately altogether into the hands of Musselboro, who, though
penniless himself in the way of capital, was backed by the money of Mrs
Van Siever. There was not doubt that Broughton had destroyed himself in
the manner told by Musselboro, but the opinion in the City was that he
had done so rather through the effects of drink than because of his
losses. As to the widow, Dalrymple thought that Mrs Van Siever, or
nominally, perhaps, Musselboro, might be induced to settle an annuity on
her, or she would give up everything quietly. 'Doubt whether your mother
is not responsible for everything that Broughton owed when he died--for
everything, that is, in the way of business; and if so, Mrs Broughton
will certainly have a claim on the estate.' It occurred to Dalrymple
once or twice that he was talking to Clara about Mrs Van Siever as
though he and Clara were more closely bound together than were Clara and
her mother; but Clara seemed to take this in good part, and was as
solicitous as was he himself in the manner of Mrs Broughton's interest.
Then the discreet head-servant knocked and told them that Mrs Broughton
was very anxious to see Mr Dalrymple, but that Miss Van Siever was on no
account to go away. She was up, and in her dressing-gown, and had gone
into the sitting-room. 'I will come directly,' said Dalrymple, and the
discreet head-servant retired.
'Clara,' said Conway, 'I do not know when I may have another chance of
asking for an answer to my question. You heard my question?'
'Yes, I heard it.'
'And will you answer it?'
'If you wish it, I will.'
'Of course I wish it. You understand what I said upon the door-step
yesterday?'
'I don't think much of that; men say those things so often. What you
said before was serious, I suppose?'
'Serious! Heavens! Do you think that I am joking?'
'Mamma wants me to marry Mr Musselboro.'
'He is a vulgar brute. It would be impossible.'
'It is impossible; but mamma is very obstinate. I have no fortune of my
own--not a shilling. She told me today that she would turn me out into
the street. She forbade me to come here, thinking I should meet you; but
I came, because I had promised Mrs Broughton. I am sure that she will
never give me one shilling.'
Dalrymple paused for a moment. It was certainly true that he had
regarded Clara Van Siever as an heiress, and had at first been attracted
to her because he thought it expedient to marry an heiress. But there
had since come something beyond that, and there was perhaps less of
regret than most men would have felt as he gave up his golden hopes. He
took her into his arms and kissed her, and called her his own. 'Now we
understand each other,' he said.
'If you wish it to be so.'
'I do wish it.'
'And I shall tell my mother today that I am engaged to you--unless she
refuses to see me. Go to Mrs Broughton now. I feel that we are almost
cruel to be thinking of ourselves in this house at such a time.' Upon
this Dalrymple went, and Clara Van Siever was left to her reflections.
She had never before had a lover. She had never had even a friend whom
she loved and trusted. Her life had been passed at school till she was
nearly twenty, and since then had been vainly endeavouring to
accommodate herself into the absolute power of a man who was nearly a
strange to her! But she did love him, as she had never loved anyone
else;--and then, on the other side, there was Mr Musselboro!
Dalrymple went upstairs for an hour, and Clara did not see him again
before he left the house. It was clear to her, from Mrs Broughton's
first words, that Conway had told her what had passed. 'Of course I
shall never seen anything more of either of you now?' said Mrs
Broughton.
'I should say that probably you will see a great deal of us both.'
'There are some people,' said Mrs Broughton, 'who can do well for their
friends, but can never do well for themselves. I am one of them. I saw
at once how great a thing it would be for both of you to bring you two
together--especially for you, Clara; and therefore I did it. I may say
that I never had it out of my mind for months past. Poor Dobbs
misunderstood what I was doing. God knows how far that may have brought
about what has happened.'
'Oh, Mrs Broughton!'
'Of course he could not be blind to one thing;--nor was I. I mention it
now because it is right, but I shall never, never allude to again. Of
course he saw, and I saw, that Conway--was attached to me. Poor Conway
meant no harm. I was aware of that. But there was the terrible fact. I
knew at once that the only cure for him was a marriage with some girl he
could respect. Admiring you as I do, I immediately resolved on bringing
you to together. My dear, I have been successful, and I heartily trust
that you may be happier than Maria Broughton.'
Miss Van Siever knew the woman, understood all the facts, and pitying
the condition of the wretched creature, bore all this without a word of
rebuke. She scorned to put out her strength against one who was in truth
so weak.
CHAPTER LXVI
REQUIESCAT IN PACE
Things were gloomy at the palace. It has already been said that for may
days after Dr Tempest's visit to Barchester the intercourse between the
bishop and Mrs Proudie had not been of a pleasant nature. He had become
so silent, so sullen, and so solitary in his ways, that even her courage
had been almost cowed, and for a while she had condescended to use
gentler methods, with the hope that she might thus bring her lord round
to his usual state of active submission; or perhaps, if we strive to do
her full justice, we may say of her that her effort was made
conscientiously, with the idea of inducing him to do his duty with
proper activity. For she was a woman not without a conscience, and by no
means indifferent to the real service which her husband, as bishop of
the diocese, was bound to render to the affairs of the Church around
her. Of her own struggles after personal dominion she was herself
unconscious; and no doubt they gave her, when recognised and
acknowledged by herself, many stabs to her inner self, of which no
single being in the world knew anything. And now, as after a while she
failed in producing any amelioration in the bishop's mood, her temper
also gave way, and things were becoming very gloomy and unpleasant.
The bishop and his wife were at present alone in the palace. Their
married daughter and her husband had left them, and the unmarried
daughter was also away. How far the bishop's mood may have produced this
solitude in the vast house I will not say. Probably Mrs Proudie's state
of mind may have prevented her from having other guests in the place of
those who had gone. She felt herself to be almost disgraced in the eyes
of all those around her by her husband's long absence from the common
rooms of the house and by his dogged silence at meals. It was better,
she thought, that they two should be alone in the palace.
Her own efforts to bring him back to something like life, to some
activity of mind if not body, were made constantly; and when she failed,
as she did fail day after day, she would go slowly to her own room, and
lock her door, and look back in solitude at all the days of her life.
She had agonies in these minutes of which no one near her knew anything.
She would seize with her arm the part of the bed near which she would
stand, and hold by it, grasping it, as though she were afraid to fall;
and then, when it was at the worst with her, she would go to her
closet--a closet that no eyes ever saw unlocked but her own--and fill
for herself and swallow some draught and then she would sit down with
the Bible before her, and read it sedulously. She spent hours every day
with her Bible before her, repeating to herself whole chapters, which
she knew almost by heart.
It cannot be said that she was a bad woman, though she had in her time
done an indescribable amount of evil. She had endeavoured to do good,
failing partly by ignorance and partly from the effects of an unbridled,
ambitious temper. And now, even amidst her keenest sufferings, her
ambition was by no means dead. She still longed to rule the diocese by
means of her husband, but was made to pause and hesitate by the unwonted
mood that had fallen upon him. Before this, on more than one occasion,
and on one very memorable occasion, he had endeavoured to combat her. He
had fought with her, striving to put her down. He had failed, and given
up the hope of any escape fro himself in that direction. On those
occasions her courage had never quailed for a moment. While he openly
struggled to be master, she could openly struggle to be mistress--and
could enjoy the struggle. But nothing like this had ever come upon him
before.
She had yielded to it for many days, striving to coax him by little
softnesses of which she herself had been ashamed as she practised them.
They had served her nothing, and at last she determined that something
else must be done. If only for his sake, to keep some life in him,
something else must be done. Were he to continue as he was now, he must
give up the diocese, or, at any rate, declare himself too ill to keep up
the working of it in his own hands. How she hated Mr Crawley for all the
sorrow that he had brought upon her and her house!
And it was still the affair of Mr Crawley which urged her on to further
action. When the bishop received Mr Crawley's letter he said nothing of
it to her; but he handed it over to his chaplain. The chaplain, fearing
to act upon it himself, handed it to Mr Thumble, who he knew to be one
of the bishop's commission, and Mr Thumble, equally fearing
responsibility in the present state of affairs at the palace, found
himself obliged to consult Mrs Proudie. Mrs Proudie had no doubt as to
what should be done. The man had abdicated his living, and of course
some provision must be made for the services. She would again make an
attempt upon her husband, and therefore she went into his room holding
Mr Crawley's letter in her hand.
'My dear,' she said, 'here is Mr Crawley's letter. I suppose you have
read it.'
'Yes,' said the bishop; 'I have read it.'
'And what will you do about it? Something must be done.'
'I don't know,' said he. He did not even look at her as he spoke. He
had not turned his eyes upon her since she had entered the room.
'But, bishop, it is a letter that requires to be acted upon at once. We
cannot doubt that the man is doing right at last. He is submitting
himself where his submission is due; but his submission will be of no
avail unless you take some action upon his letter. Do you not think that
Mr Thumble had better go over?'
'No, I don't. I think Mr Thumble had better stay where he is,' said the
irritated bishop.
'What, then, would you wish to be done?'
'Never mind,' said he.
'But, bishop, that is nonsense,' said Mrs Proudie, adding something of
severity to the tone of her voice.
'No, it isn't nonsense,' said he. Still he did not look at her, nor had
he done so for a moment since she had entered the room. Mrs Proudie
could not bear this, and her anger became stronger within her breast,
she told herself that she would be wrong to bear it. She had tried what
gentleness would do, and she had failed. It was now imperatively
necessary that she should resort to sterner measures. She must make him
understand that he must give her authority to send Mr Thumble to
Hogglestock.
'Why do you not turn round and speak to me properly?' she said.
'I do not want to speak to you at all,' the bishop answered.
This was very bad;--almost anything would be better than this. He was
sitting now over the fire, with his elbows on his knees, and his face
buried in his hands. She had gone round the room so as to face him, and
was now standing almost over him, but still she could not see his
countenance. 'This will not do at all,' she said. 'My dear, do you know
that you are forgetting yourself altogether?'
'I wish I could forget myself.'
'That might be all very well if you were in a position in which you owed
no service to anyone; or, rather, it would not be well then, but the
evil would not be so manifest. You cannot do your duty in the diocese if
you continue to sit there doing nothing, with your head upon your hands.
Why do you not rally, and get to your work like a man?'
'I wish you would go away and leave me,' he said.
'No, bishop. I will not go away and leave you. You have brought
yourself into such a condition that it is my duty as your wife to stay
by you; and if you neglect your duty, I will not neglect mine.'
'It was you that brought me to it.'
'No sir, that is not true. I did not bring you to it.'
'It is the truth.' And now he got up and looked at her. For a moment
he stood upon his legs, and then sat down again with his face turned
towards her. 'It is the truth. You have brought on me such disgrace that
I cannot hold up my head. You have ruined me. I wish I were dead; and it
is all through you that I am driven to wish it.'
Of all that she had suffered in her life this was the worst. She
clasped both her hands to her side as she listened to him, and for a
minute or two she made no reply. When he ceased from speaking he again
put his elbows in his knees and again buried his face in his hands. What
had she better do, or how was it expedient that she should treat him? At
this crisis the whole thing was so important to her that she would have
postponed her own ambition and would have curbed her temper had she
thought that by doing so she might in any degree have benefited him. But
it seemed to her that she could not rouse him by conciliation. Neither
could she leave him as he was. Something must be done. 'Bishop,' she
said, 'the words that you speak are very sinful, very sinful.'
'You have made them sinful,' he said.
'I will not hear that from you. I will not indeed. I have endeavoured
to do my duty by you, and I do not deserve it. I am endeavouring to do
my duty now, and you must know that it would ill become me to remain
quiescent while you are in such a state. The world around you is
observing you, and knows that you are not doing your work. All I want of
you is that you should arouse yourself, and go to your work.'
'I could do my work very well,' he said, 'if you were not here.'
'I suppose, then, you wish that I were dead?' said Mrs Proudie. To this
he made no reply, nor did he stir himself. How could flesh and blood
bear this--female flesh and blood--Mrs Proudie's flesh and blood? Now,
at last, her temper once more got the better of her judgment, probably
much to her immediate satisfaction, and she spoke out. 'I'll tell you
what it is, my lord, if you are imbecile, I must be active. It is very
sad that I should have to assume your authority--'
'I will not allow you to assume my authority.'
'I must do so, or else must obtain a medical certificate as to your
incapacity, and beg that some neighbouring bishop may administer the
diocese. Things shall not go on as they are now. I, at any rate, will do
my duty. I shall tell Mr Thumble that he must go over to Hogglestock,
and arrange for the duties of the parish.'
'I desire that you will do no such thing,' said the bishop, now again
looking up at her.
'You may be sure that I shall,' said Mrs Proudie, and then she left the
room.
He did not even yet suppose that she would go about his this work at
once. The condition of his mind was in truth bad, and was becoming
worse, probably, from day to day; but still he did make his calculations
about things, and now reflected that it would be sufficient if he spoke
to his chaplain tomorrow about Mr Crawley's letter. Since the terrible
scene that Dr Tempest had witnessed, he had never been able to make up
his mind that some great step was necessary. There were moments in which
he thought that he would resign his bishopric. For such resignation,
without acknowledged incompetence on the score of infirmity, the
precedents were very few; but even if there were no precedents, it would
be better to do that then to remain where he was. Of course there would
be disgrace. But then it would be disgrace from which he could hide
himself. Now there was equal disgrace; and he could not hide himself.
And then such a measure as that would bring punishment where punishment
was due. It would bring his wife to the ground--her who had brought him
to the ground. The suffering should not be all his own. When she found
that her income, and her palace, and her position were all gone, then
perhaps she might repent the evil that she had done him. Now, when he
was left alone, his mind went back to this, and he did not think of
taking immediate measures--measures on that very day--to prevent the
action of Mr Thumble.
But Mrs Proudie did take immediate steps. Mr Thumble was at this moment
in the palace waiting for instructions. It was he who had brought Mr
Crawley's letter to Mrs Proudie, and she now returned to him with that
letter in her hand. The reader will know what was the result. Mr Thumble
was sent off to Hogglestock at once on the bishop's old cob, and--as
will be remembered, fell into trouble on the road. Late in the
afternoon, he entered the palace yard having led the cob by the bridle
the whole way home from Hogglestock.
Some hour or two before Mr Thumble's return Mrs Proudie returned to her
husband, thinking it better to let him know what she had done. She
resolved to be very firm with him, but at the same time she determined
not to use harsh language if it could be avoided. 'My dear,' she said,
'I have arranged with Mr Thumble.' She found him on this occasion
sitting at his desk with papers before him, with a pen in his hand; and
she could see at a glance that nothing had been written on the paper.
What would she have thought had she known that when he placed the sheet
before him he was proposing to consult the archbishop as to the
propriety of his resignation! He had not, however, progressed so far as
to write even the date of his letter.
'You have done what?' said he, throwing down his pen.
'I have arranged with Mr Thumble as to going out to Hogglestock,' she
said firmly. 'Indeed he has gone already.' Then the bishop jumped up
from his seat, and rang the bell with violence. 'What are you going to
do?' said Mrs Proudie.
'I am going to depart from here,' he said. 'I will not stay here to be
the mark of scorn for all men's fingers. I will resign the diocese.'
'You cannot do that,' said his wife.
'I can try, at any rate,' said he. Then the servant entered. 'John,'
said he, addressing the man, 'let Mr Thumble know the moment he returns
to the palace I wish to see him here. Perhaps he may not come to the
palace. In that case let word be sent to his house.'
Mrs Proudie allowed the man to go before she addressed her husband
again. 'What do you mean to say to Mr Thumble when you see him?'
'That is nothing to you.'
She came up to him and put her hand upon his shoulder, and spoke to him
very gently. 'Tom,' she said, 'is that the way in which you speak to
your wife?'
'Yes, it is. You have driven me to it. Why have you taken upon
yourself to send that man to Hogglestock?'
'Because it was right to do so. I came to you for instructions, and you
would give none.'
'I should have given what instructions I pleased in proper time. Thumble
shall not go to Hogglestock next Sunday.'
'Who shall go, then?'
'Never mind. Nobody. It does not matter to you. If you will leave me
now I shall be obliged to you. There will be an end of all this very
soon--very soon.'
Mrs Proudie stood for a while thinking what she would say; but she left
the room without uttering another word. As she looked at him a hundred
different thoughts came into her mind. She had loved him dearly, and she
loved him still; but she knew now--at this moment felt absolutely
sure--that by him she was hated! In spite of all her roughness and
temper, Mrs Proudie was in this like other women--that she would fain
have been loved had it been possible. She had always meant to serve him.
She was conscious of that; conscious also in a way that, although she
had been industrious, although she had been faithful, although she was
clever, yet she had failed. At the bottom of her heart she knew that she
had been a bad wife. And yet she had meant to be a pattern wife! She had
meant to be a good Christian; but she had so exercised her Christianity
that not a soul in the world loved her, or would endure her presence if
it could be avoided! She had sufficient insight to the minds and
feelings of those around her to be aware of this. And now her husband
had told her that her tyranny to him was so overbearing that he must
throw up his great position, and retire to an obscurity that would be
exceptionally disgraceful to them both, because he could no longer
endure the public disgrace which her conduct brought upon him in his
high place before the world! Her heart was too full for speech; and she
left him, very quietly closing the door behind her.
She was preparing to go up to her chamber, with her hand on the
banisters and with her foot upon the stairs, when she saw the servant
who had answered the bishop's bell. 'John,' she said, 'when Mr Thumble
comes to the palace, let me see him before he goes to my lord.'
'Yes, ma'am,' said John, who well understood the nature of those
quarrels between his master and his mistress. But the commands of the
mistress were still paramount among the servants, and John proceeded on
his mission with the view of accomplishing Mrs Proudie's behests. Then
Mrs Proudie went upstairs to her chamber, and locked her door.
Mr Thumble returned to Barchester that day, leading the broken-down
cob; and a dreadful walk he had. He was not good at walking, and before
he came near Barchester had come to entertain a violent hatred for the
beast that he was leading. The leading of a horse that is tired, or in
pain, or even stiff in his limbs, is not pleasant work. The brute will
not accommodate his paces to the man, and will contrive to make his head
very heavy on the bridle. And he will not walk on the part of the road
which the man intends for him, but will lean against the man, and will
make himself altogether disagreeable. It may be understood, therefore,
that Mr Thumble was not in a good humour when he entered the palace
yard. Nor was altogether quiet in his mind as to the injury which he had
done to the animal. 'It was the brute's fault,' said Mr Thumble. 'It
comes generally of not knowing how to ride 'em,' said the groom. For Mr
Thumble, though he often had a horse out of the episcopal stables, was
not ready with his shillings to the man who waited upon him with the
steed.
He had not, however, come to any satisfactory understanding respecting
the broken knees when the footman from the palace told him that he was
wanted. It was in vain that Mr Thumble pleaded that he was nearly dead
with fatigue, that he had walked all the way from Hogglestock and must
go home to change his clothes. John was peremptory with him, insisting
that he must wait first upon Mrs Proudie and then wait upon the bishop.
Mr Thumble might perhaps have turned a deaf ear to the latter command,
but the former was one which he felt himself bound to obey. So he
entered the palace, rather cross, very much soiled as to his outer man;
and in this condition went up a certain small staircase which was
familiar to him, to a small parlour which adjoined Mrs Proudie's room,
and there awaited the arrival of the lady. That he should be required to
wait some quarter of an hour was not surprising to him; but when half an
hour was gone, and he remembered himself of his own wife at home, and of
the dinner which he had not yet eaten, he ventured to ring the bell. Mrs
Proudie's own maid, Mrs Draper by name, came to him and said that she
had knocked twice at Mrs Proudie's door and would knock again. Two
minutes after that she returned, running into the room with her arms
extended, and exclaiming, 'Oh heavens, sir; mistress is dead!' Mr
Thumble, hardly knowing what he was about, followed the woman into the
bedroom, and there he found himself standing awe-struck before the
corpse of her who had so lately been the presiding spirit of the palace.
The body was still resting on its legs, leaning against the end of the
side of the bed, while one of the arms was close clasped round the
bed-post. The mouth was rigidly close, but the eyes were open as thought
staring at him. Nevertheless there could be no doubt from the first
glance that the woman was dead. He went up close to it, but did not dare
to touch it. There was no one there as yet but he and Mrs Draper;--no
one else knew what had happened.
'It's her heart,' said Mrs Draper.
'Did she suffer from heart complaint?' he asked.
'We suspected it, sir, though nobody knew it. She was very shy of
talking about herself.'
'We must send for the doctor at once,' said Mr Thumble. 'We had better
touch nothing till he is here.' Then they retreated and the door was
locked.
In ten minutes everybody in the house knew it except the bishop; and in
twenty minutes the nearest apothecary with his assistant were in the
room, and the body had been properly laid upon the bed. Even then the
husband had not been told--did not know either his relief or his loss.
It was now past seven, which was the usual hour for dinner at the
palace, and it was probable that he would come out of his room among the
servants, if he were not summoned. When it was proposed to Mr Thumble
that he should go in and tell him, he positively declined, saying that
the sight which he had just seen and the exertions of the day together,
had so unnerved him, that he had not physical strength for the task. The
apothecary, who had been summoned in a hurry, had escaped, probably
being equally unwilling to be the bearer of such a communication. The
duty therefore fell to Mrs Draper, and under the pressing instance of
the other servants she descended to her master's room. Had it not been
that the hour of dinner had come, so that the bishop could not have been
left much longer to himself, the evil time would have been still
postponed.
She went very slowly along the passage, and was just going to pause ere
she reached the room when the door was opened and the bishop stood close
before her. It was easy to be seen that he was cross. His hands and face
were unwashed and his face was haggard. In these days he would not even
go through the ceremony of dressing himself before dinner. 'Mrs Draper,'
he said, 'why don't they tell me that dinner is ready? Are they going to
give me any dinner?' She stood a moment without answering him, while the
tears streamed down her face. 'What is the matter?' said he. 'Has your
mistress sent you here?'
'Oh laws!' said Mrs Draper--and she put out her hands to support him if
such support should be necessary.
'What is the matter?' he demanded angrily.
'Oh, my lord--bear it like a Christian. Mistress isn't no more.' He
leaned back against the door-post and she took hold of him by the arms.
'It was the heart, my lord. Dr Filgrave hisself has not been yet; but
that's what it was.' The bishop did not say a word, but walked back to
his chair before the fire.
CHAPTER LXVII
IN MEMORIAM
The bishop when he had heard of the tidings of his wife's death walked
back to his seat over the fire, and Mrs Draper, the housekeeper came and
stood over him without speaking. Thus she stood for ten minutes looking
down at him and listening. But there was no sound; not a word, nor a
moan, nor a sob. It was as though he also were dead, but that a slight
irregular movement of his fingers on the top of his bald head, told her
that his mind and body were still active. 'My lord,' she said at last,
'would you wish to see the doctor when he comes?' She spoke very low and
he did not answer her. Then, after another minute of silence, she asked
the same question again.
'What doctor?' he said.
'Dr Filgrave. We sent for him. Perhaps he is here now. Shall I go and
see, my lord?' Mrs Draper found that her position there was weary and
she wished to escape. Anything on his behalf requiring trouble or work
she would have done willingly; but she could not stand there for ever,
watching the motion of his fingers.
'I suppose I must see him,' said the bishop. Mrs Draper took this as an
order for her departure, and crept silently out of the room, closing the
door behind her with the long protracted elaborate click which is always
produced by an attempt at silence on such occasions. He did not care for
noise or for silence. Had she slammed the door he would not have
regarded it. A wonderful silence had come upon him which for the time
almost crushed him. He would never hear that well-known voice again!
He was free now. Even in his misery--for he was very miserable --he
could not refrain from telling himself that. No once could now press
uncalled-for into his study, contradict him in the presence of those
before whom he was bound to be authoritative, and rob him of all his
dignity. There was no one else of whom he was afraid. She had at least
kept him out of the hands of other tyrants. He was now his own master,
and there was the feeling--I may not call it of relief, for as yet
there was more of pain in it than of satisfaction--a feeling as though
he had escaped from an old trouble at a terrible cost of which he could
not as yet calculate the amount. He knew that he might now give up all
idea of writing to the archbishop.
She had in some ways, and at certain periods of his life, been very good
to him. She had kept his money for him and made things go straight, when
they had been poor. His interests had always been her interests. Without
her he would never have been a bishop. So, at least, he told himself
now, and so told himself probably with truth. She had been very careful
of his children. She had never been idle. She had never been fond of
pleasure. She had neglected no acknowledged duty. He did not doubt that
she was now on her way to heaven. He took his hands from his head, and
clasping them together, said a little prayer. It may be doubted whether
he quite knew for what he was praying. The idea of giving up her soul,
now that she was dead, would have scandalised him. He certainly was not
praying for his own soul. I think that he was praying that God might
save him from being glad that his wife was dead.
But she was dead--and, as it were, in a moment! He had not stirred out
of that room since she had been there with him. Then there had been
angry words between them--perhaps more determined enmity on his part
than ever had existed; and they had parted for the last time with bitter
animosity. But he told himself that he had certainly been right in what
he had done then. He thought he had been right then. And so his mind
went back to the Crawley and Thumble question, and he tried to alleviate
the misery which the last interview with his wife now created by
assuring himself that he at least been justified in what he had done.
But yet his thoughts were very tender to her. Nothing reopens the
springs of love so fully as absence, and no absence so thoroughly as
that which must needs be endless. We want that which we have not; and
especially that which we never can have. She had told him in the very
last moments of her presence with him that he was wishing she were dead,
and he had made no reply. At the moment he had felt, with savage anger,
that such was his wish. Her words had now come to pass, and he was a
widower--and he assured himself that he would give all that he possessed
in the world to bring her back again.
Yes, he was a widower, and he might do as he pleased. The tyrant was
gone, and he was free. The tyrant was gone, and the tyranny had
doubtless been very oppressive. Who had suffered as he had done? But in
thus being left without his tyrant he was wretchedly desolate. Might it
not be that the tyranny had been good for him?--that the Lord had known
best what wife was fit for him? Then he thought of a story which he had
read--and had well marked as he was reading--of some man who had been
terribly afflicted by his wife, whose wife had starved him and beaten
him and reviled him; and yet this man had been able to thank God for
having mortified him in the flesh. Might it not be that the
mortification which he himself had doubtless suffered in his flesh had
been intended for his welfare, and had been very good for him? But if
this were so, it might be that the mortification was now removed because
the Lord knew that his servant had been sufficiently mortified. He had
not been starved or beaten, but the mortification had been certainly
severe. Then there came these words--into his mind, not into his
mouth--'The Lord sent the thorn, and the Lord has taken it away. Blessed
be the Lord.' After that he was very angry with himself, and tried to
pray that he might be forgiven. While he was so striving there came a
low knock at the door, and Mrs Draper again entered the room.
'Dr Filgrave, my lord, was not at home,' said Mrs Draper; 'but he will
be sent the moment when he arrives.'
'Very well, Mrs Draper.'
'But, my lord, will you not come out to dinner? A little soup, or a
morsel of something to eat, and a glass of wine, will enable your
lordship to bear it better.' He allowed Mrs Draper to persuade him, and
followed her into the dining-room. 'Do not go, Mrs Draper,' he said; 'I
would rather that you should stay with me.' So Mrs Draper stayed with
him, and administered to his wants. He was desirous of being seen by as
few eyes as possible in these first moments of his freedom.
He saw Dr Filgrave twice, both before and after the doctor had been
upstairs. There was no doubt, Dr Filgrave said, that it was as Mrs
Draper had surmised. The poor lady was suffering, and had for years been
suffering, from heart-complaint. To her husband she had never said a
word on the subject. To Mrs Draper a word had been said now and again--a
word when some moment of fear would come, when some sharp stroke of
agony would tell of danger. But Mrs Draper had kept the secret of her
mistress, and none of the family had known that there was aught to be
feared. Dr Filgrave, indeed, did tell the bishop that he had dreaded all
along exactly that which had happened. He had said the same to Mr
Rerechild, the surgeon, when they two had had a consultation at the
palace on the occasion of a somewhat alarming birth of a grandchild. But
he mixed up this information with so much medical Latin, and was so
pompous over it, and the bishop was so anxious to be rid of him, that
his words did not have much effect. What did it all matter? The thorn
was gone, and the wife was dead, and the widower must balance his gain
and the loss as best he might.
He slept well but when he woke in the morning the dreariness of his
loneliness was very strong on him. He must do something, and must see
somebody, but he felt that he did not know how to bear himself in his
new position. He must send of course for his chaplain, and tell his
chaplain to open all letters and to answer them for a week. Then he
remembered how many of his letters in days of yore had been opened and
answered by the helpmate, who had just gone from him. Since Dr Tempest's
visit he had insisted that the palace letter-bag should always be
brought in the first instance to him--and this had been done, greatly to
the annoyance of his wife. In order that it might be done the bishop had
been up every morning an hour before the usual time; and everybody in
the household had known why it was so. He thought of this now as the bag
was brought to him on the first morning of his freedom. He could have it
where he pleased now--either in his bedroom or left for him untouched on
the breakfast-table till he should go to it. 'Blessed be the name of the
Lord,' he said as he thought of all this; but he did not stop to analyse
what he was saying. On this morning he would not enjoy his liberty, but
desired that the letter-bag might be taken to Mr Snapper, the chaplain.
The news of Mrs Proudie's death had spread all over Barchester on the
evening of its occurrence, and had been received with that feeling of
distant awe which is always accompanied by some degree of pleasurable
sensation. There was no one in Barchester to lament a mother, or a
sister, or a friend who was really loved. There were those, doubtless,
who regretted the woman's death--and even some who regretted it without
any feeling of personal damage done to themselves. There had come to be
around Mrs Proudie a party who thought as she thought on church matters,
and such people had lost their head, and thereby their strength. And she
had been staunch to her own party, preferring bad tea from a low-church
grocer, to good tea from a grocer who went to the ritualistic church or
to no church at all. And it is due to her to say that she did not forget
those who were true to her--looking after them mindfully where looking
after might be profitable, and fighting their battles where fighting
might be more serviceable. I do not think that the appetite for
breakfast of any man or woman in Barchester was disturbed by the news of
Mrs Proudie's death, but there were some who felt that a trouble had
fallen on them.
Tidings of the catastrophe reached Hiram's Hospital on the evening of
its occurrence--Hiram's Hospital, where dwelt Mr and Mrs Quiverful with
all their children. Now Mrs Quiverful owed a debt of gratitude to Mrs
Proudie, having been placed in her present comfortable home by that
lady's patronage. Mrs Quiverful perhaps understood the character of the
deceased woman, and expressed her opinion respecting it, as graphically
did anyone in Barchester. There was the natural surprise felt at the
Warden's Lodge in the Hospital when the tidings were first received
there, and the Quiverful family was at first too full of dismay,
regrets, and surmises to be able to give themselves impartially to
criticism. But on the following morning, conversation at the
breakfast-table naturally referring to the great loss which the bishop
had sustained, Mrs Quiverful thus pronounced her opinion of her friend's
character: 'You'll find that he'll feel it, Q.,' she said to her
husband, in answer to some sarcastic remark made by him as to the
removal of the thorn. 'He'll feel it, though she was almost too many for
him while she was alive.'
'I daresay he'll feel it at first,' said Quiverful; 'but I think he'll
be more comfortable than he has been.'
'Of course he'll feel it, and go on feeling it till he dies, if he's the
man I take him to be. You're not to think that there has been no love
because there used to be some words, that he'll find himself the happier
he can do more things as he pleases. She was a great help to him, and he
must have known that she was, in spite of the sharpness of her tongue.
No doubt her tongue was sharp. No doubt she was upsetting. And she could
make herself a fool too in her struggles to have everything her own way.
But, Q., there were worse women than Mrs Proudie. She was never one of
your idle ones, and I'm quite sure that no man or woman ever heard her
say a word against her husband behind his back.'
'All the same, she gave him a terribly bad life of it, if all is true
that we hear.'
'There are men who must have what you call a terribly bad life of it,
whatever way it goes with them. The bishop is weak, and he wants
somebody near to him to be strong. She was strong--perhaps too strong;
but he had his advantage of it. After all I don't know that his life has
been so terribly bad. I daresay he's had everything very comfortable
about him. And a man ought to be grateful for that, though very few men
ever are.'
Mr Quiverful's predecessor at the Hospital, old Mr Harding, whose
halcyon days in Barchester had been passed before the coming of the
Proudies, was in bed playing cat's-cradle with Posy seated on the
counterpane, when tidings of Mrs Proudie's death were brought to him by
Mrs Baxter. 'Oh, sir,' said Mrs Baxter, seating herself on a chair by
the bed-side. Mr Harding liked Mrs Baxter to sit down, because he was
almost sure on such occasions to have the advantage of a prolonged
conversation.
'What is it, Mrs Baxter?'
'Oh, sir!'
'Is anything the matter?' And the old man attempted to raise himself in
his bed.
'You mustn't frighten grandpa,' said Posy.
'No, my dear; and there isn't nothing to frighten him. There isn't
indeed, Mr Harding. They're all well at Plumstead, and when I heard from
the missus at Venice, everything was going on well.'
'But what is it, Mrs Baxter?'
'God forgive all her sins--Mrs Proudie ain't no more.' Now there had
been a terrible feud between the palace and the deanery for years, in
carrying on which the persons of the opposed households were wont to
express themselves with eager animosity. Mrs Baxter and Mrs Draper never
dared speak to each other. The two coachmen each longed for an
opportunity to take the other before the magistrate for some breach of
the law of the road in driving. The footmen abused each other, and the
grooms occasionally fought. The masters and mistresses contented
themselves with simple hatred. Therefore it was not surprising that Mrs
Baxter in speaking of the death of Mrs Proudie, should remember first
her sins.
'Mrs Proudie dead!' said the old man.
'Indeed, she is, Mr Harding,' said Mrs Baxter, putting both her hands
together piously. 'We're just as grass, ain't we, sir! An dust and clay
and flowers of the field?' Whether Mrs Proudie had most partaken of the
clayey nature or of the flowery nature, Mrs Baxter did not stop to
consider.
'Mrs Proudie dead!' with a solemnity that was all her own. 'Then she
won't scold the poor bishop any more.'
'No, my dear; she won't scold anybody any more; and it will be a
blessing for some, I must say. Everybody is always so considerate in
this house, Miss Posy, that we none of us know nothing about what that
is.'
'Dead!' said Mr Harding again. 'I think, if you please, Mrs Baxter, you
shall leave me for little time, and take Miss Posy with you.' He had
been in the city of Barchester some fifty years, and here was one who
might have been his daughter, who had come there scarcely ten years
since, and who had now gone before him! He had never loved Mrs Proudie.
Perhaps he had come as near to disliking Mrs Proudie as he had ever come
to disliking any person. Mrs Proudie had wounded him in every part that
was most sensitive. It would be long to tell, nor need it be told now,
how she had ridiculed his cathedral work, how she had made nothing of
him, how she had despised him, always manifesting her contempt plainly.
He had been even driven to rebuke her, and it had perhaps been the only
personal rebuke which he had ever uttered in Barchester. But now she was
gone; and he thought of her simply as an active pious woman, who had
been taken away from her word before her time. And for the bishop, no
idea ever entered Mr Harding's mind as to the removal of a thorn. The
man had lost his life's companion at that time of life when such a
companion is most needed; and Mr Harding grieved for him with sincerity.
The news went out to Plumstead Episcopi by the postman, and happened to
reach the archdeacon as he was talking to his rector at the little gate
leading into the churchyard. 'Mrs Proudie is dead!' he almost shouted,
as the postman notified the fact to him. 'Impossible!'
'It be so for zartain, yer reverence,' said the postman, who was proud
of his news.
'Heavens!' ejaculated the archdeacon, and then hurried in to his wife.
'My dear,' he said--and as he spoke he could hardly deliver himself of
the words, so eager was he to speak them--'who do you think is dead?
Gracious heavens! Mrs Proudie is dead!' Mrs Grantly dropped from her
hand the teaspoonful of tea that was just going into the pot, and
repeated her husband's last words. 'Mrs Proudie dead?' There was a
pause, during which they looked into each other's faces. 'My dear, I
don't believe it,' said Mrs Grantly.
But she did believe it very shortly. There were no prayers at Plumstead
rectory that morning. The archdeacon immediately went out into the
village, and soon obtained sufficient evidence of the truth of that
which the postman had told him. Then he rushed back to his wife. 'It's
true,' he said. 'It's quite true. She's dead. There's no doubt about
that. She's dead. It was last night about seven. That was when they
found her, at least, and she may have died about an hour before.
Filgrave says not more than an hour.'
'And how did she die?'
'Heart-complaint. She was standing up, taking hold of the bedstead, and
so they found her.' Then there was a pause, during which the archdeacon
sat down to his breakfast. 'I wonder how he felt when he heard it?'
'Of course he was terribly shocked.'
'I've no doubt he was shocked. Any man would be shocked. But when you
come to think of it, what a relief!'
'How can you speak of it in that way?' said Mrs Grantly.
'How am I to speak of it in any other way?' said the archdeacon. 'Of
course I shouldn't go and say it out in the street.'
'I don't think you ought to say it anywhere,' said Mrs Grantly. 'The
poor man no doubt feels about his wife in the same way that anybody else
would.'
'And of any other poor man has got such a wife as she was, you may be
quite sure that he would be glad to get rid of her. I don't say that he
wished her to die, or that he would have done anything to contrive her
death--'
'Gracious, archdeacon; do pray hold your tongue.'
'But it stands to reason that her going will be a great relief to him.
What has she done for him? She has made him contemptible to everybody in
the diocese by her interference, and his life has been a burden to him
through her violence.'
'Is that the way you carry out your proverb De mortuis?' asked Mrs
Grantly.
'The proverb of De mortuis is founded on humbug. Humbug out of doors is
necessary. It would not do for you and me to go into the High Street
just now and say what we think about Mrs Proudie; but I don't suppose
that kind of thing need to be kept up in here --so uncomfortable that I
cannot believe that anyone will regret her. Dear me! Only to think that
she has gone! You may as well give me my tea.'
I do not think that Mrs Grantly's opinion differed much from that
expressed by her husband, or that she was, in truth, the least offended
by the archdeacon's plain speech. But it must be remembered that there
was probably no house in the diocese in which Mrs Proudie had been so
thoroughly hated as she had been at the Plumstead rectory. There had
been hatred in the deanery; but the hatred at the deanery had been mild
in comparison with the hatred at Plumstead. The archdeacon was a sound
friend; but he was also a sound enemy. From the very arrival of the
Proudies at Barchester, Mrs Proudie had thrown down her gauntlet to him,
and he had not been slow in picking it up. The war had been internecine,
and each had given the other terrible wounds. It had been understood
that there should be no quarter, and there had been none. His enemy was
now dead, and the archdeacon could not bring himself to adopt before his
wife the namby-pamby everyday decency of speaking well of one of whom he
had ever thought ill, or expressing regret when no regret could be felt.
'May all her sins be forgiven her,' said Mrs Grantly. 'Amen,' said the
archdeacon. There was something in the tone of his Amen which thoroughly
implied that it was uttered only on the understanding that her departure
from the existing world was to be regarded as an unmitigated good, and
that she should, at any rate, never come back again to Barchester.
When Lady Lufton heard the tidings, she was not so bold in speaking of
it as was her friend the archdeacon. 'Mrs Proudie dead!,' she said to
her daughter-in-law. This was some hours after the news had reached the
house, and when the fact of the poor lady's death had been fully
recognised. 'What will he do without her?'
'The same as other men do,' said the young Lady Lufton.
'But, my dear, he is not the same as other men. He is not at all like
other men. No doubt she was a virago, a woman who could not control her
temper for a moment! No doubt she had led him a terrible life! I have
often pitied him with all my heart. But, nevertheless, she was useful to
him. I suppose she was useful to him. I can hardly believe that Mrs
Proudie is dead. Had he gone, it would have seemed so much more natural.
Poor woman. I daresay she had her good points.' The reader will be
pleased to remember that the Luftons had ever been strong partisans on
the side of the Grantlys.
The news made its way even to Hogglestock on the same day. Mrs Crawley,
when she heard it, went out after her husband, who was in the school.
'Dead!' he said in answer to her whisper. 'Do you tell me that the woman
is dead?' Then Mrs Crawley explained that the tidings were credible.
'May God forgive her all her sins,' said Mrs Crawley. 'She was a violent
woman, certainly, and I think that she misunderstood her duties; but I
do not say that she was a bad woman. I am inclined to think that she was
earnest in her endeavours to do good.' It never occurred to Mr Crawley
that he and his affair, had, in truth, been the cause of her death.
It was thus that she was spoken of for a few days; and the men and women
ceased to speak much of her, and began to talk of the bishop instead. A
month had not passed before it was surmised that a man so long
accustomed to the comforts of married life would marry again; and even
then one lady connected with low-church clergymen in and around the
city was named as a probable successor to the great lady who was gone.
For myself I am inclined to think that the bishop will for the future be
content to lean upon his chaplain.
The monument that was put up to our friend's memory in one of the aisles
of the choir of the cathedral was supposed to be designed and executed
in good taste. There was a broken column, and on the column simply the
words 'My beloved wife!' Then there was a slab by the column, bearing
Mrs Proudie's name, with the date of her life and death. Beneath this
was the common inscription:-
'Requiescat in pace.'
CHAPTER LXVIII
THE OBSTINACY OF MR CRAWLEY
Dr Tempest, when he heard the news, sent immediately to Mr Robarts,
begging him to come over to Silverbridge. But this message was not
occasioned solely by the death of Mrs Proudie. Dr Tempest had also heard
that Mr Crawley had submitted himself to the bishop, that instant
advantage--and, as Dr Tempest thought,--unfair advantage--had been taken
of Mr Crawley's submission, and that the pernicious Mr Thumble had been
at once sent over to Hogglestock. Had these palace doings with reference
to Mr Crawley been unaccompanied by the catastrophe which had happened,
the doctor, much as he might have regretted them, would probably have
felt that there was nothing to be done. He could not in such case have
prevented Mr Thumble's journey to Hogglestock on the next Sunday, and
certainly he could not have softened the heart of the presiding genius
at the palace. But things were very different now. The presiding genius
was gone. Everybody at the palace would be for a while weak and
vacillating. Thumble would be then thoroughly cowed; and it might at any
rate be possible to make some movement in Mr Crawley's favour. Dr
Tempest, therefore, sent for Mr Robarts.
'I'm giving you a great deal of trouble, Robarts,' said the doctor; 'but
then you are so much younger than I am, and I've an idea that you would
do more for this poor man than anyone else in the diocese.' Mr Robarts
of course declared that he did not begrudge his trouble, and that he
would do anything in his power for the poor man. 'I think that you
should see him again, and that you should then see Thumble also. I don't
know whether you can condescend to be civil to Thumble. I could not.'
'I am not quite sure that incivility would not be more efficacious.'
'Very likely. There are men who are deaf as adders to courtesy, but who
are compelled to obedience at once by ill-usage. Very likely Thumble is
one of them; but of that you will be the best judge yourself. I would
see Crawley first, and get his consent.'
'That's the difficulty.'
'Then I should go without his consent, and I would see Thumble and the
bishop's chaplain Snapper. I think you might manage just at this moment,
when they will all be abashed and perplexed by this woman's death, to
arrange that simply nothing shall be done. The great thing will be that
Crawley should go on with the duty till the assizes. If it should happen
that he goes into Barchester and is acquitted, and comes back again, the
whole thing will be over, and there will be no further interference in
the parish. If I were you, I think I would try it.' Mr Robarts said that
he would try it. 'I daresay Mr Crawley will be a little stiff-necked
with you.'
'He will be very stiff-necked with me,' said Mr Robarts.
'But I can hardly think that he will throw away the only means he has of
supporting his wife and children, when he finds that there can be no
occasion for his doing so. I do not suppose that any person wishes him
to throw up his work now that the poor woman has gone.'
Mr Crawley had been almost in good spirits since the last visit which Mr
Thumble had made him. It seemed as though the loss of everything in the
world was in some way satisfactory to him. He had now given up his
living by his own doing, and had after a fashion acknowledged his guilt
by this act. He had proclaimed to all around him that he did not think
himself to be any longer fit to perform the sacred functions of his
office. He spoke of his trial as though a verdict against him must be
the result. He knew that in going into prison he would leave his wife
and children dependent on the charity of their friends--on charity which
they must condescend to accept, though he could not condescend to ask
it. And yet he was able to carry himself now with a greater show of
fortitude than had been within his power when the extent of his calamity
was more doubtful. I must not ask the reader to suppose that he was
cheerful. To have been cheerful under such circumstances would have been
inhuman. But he carried his head on high, and walked firmly, and gave
his orders with a clear voice. His wife, who was necessarily more
despondent than ever, wondered at him--but wondered in silence. It
certainly seemed as though the very extremity of ill-fortune was good
for him. And he was very diligent with his school, passing the greater
part of the morning with his children. Mr Thumble had told him that he
would come on Sunday, and that he would then take charge of the parish.
Up to the coming of Mr Thumble he would do everything in the parish that
could be done by a clergyman with a clear spirit and a free heart. Mr
Thumble should not find that spiritual weeds had grown rank in the
parish because of his misfortunes.
Mrs Proudie had died on the Tuesday--that having been the day of Mr
Thumble's visit to Hogglestock--and Mr Robarts had gone over to
Silverbridge, in answer to Dr Tempest's invitation, on the Thursday. He
had not, therefore, the command of much time, it being the express
object to prevent the appearance of Mr Thumble at Hogglestock on the
next Sunday. He had gone to Silverbridge by railway, and had, therefore,
been obliged to postpone his visit to Mr Crawley till the next day; but
early on the Friday morning he rode over to Hogglestock. That he did not
arrive there with a broken-kneed horse, the reader may be quite sure. In
all matters of that sort, Mr Robarts was ever above reproach. He rode a
good horse, and drove a neat gig, and was always well-dressed. On this
account Mr Crawley, though he really liked Mr Robarts, and was thankful
to him for many kindnesses, could never bear his presence with perfect
equanimity. Robarts was no scholar, was not a great preacher, had
obtained no celebrity as a churchman--had, in fact, done nothing to
merit great reward; and yet everything had been given to him with an
abundant hand. Within the last twelvemonth his wife had inherited Mr
Crawley did not care to know how many thousand pounds. And yet Mr
Robarts had won all that he possessed by being a clergyman. Was it
possible that Mr Crawley should regard such a man with equanimity?
Robarts rode over with a groom behind him--really taking the groom
because he knew that Mr Crawley would have no one to hold his horse for
him--and the groom was the source of great offence. He come upon Mr
Crawley standing at the school door, and stopping at once, jumped off
his nag. There was something in the way in which he sprang out of the
saddle and threw the reins to the man, which was not clerical to Mr
Crawley's eyes. No man could be so quick in the matter of a horse who
spent as many hours with the poor and with the children as should be
spent by a parish clergyman. It might be probable that Mr Robarts had
never stolen twenty pounds--might never be accused of so disgraceful a
crime--but, nevertheless, Mr Crawley had his own ideas, and made his own
comparisons.
'Crawley' said Robarts, 'I am so glad to find you at home.'
'I am generally to be found in the parish,' said the perpetual curate of
Hogglestock.
'I know you are,' said Robarts, who knew the man well, and cared nothing
for his friend's peculiarities when he felt his own withers to be
unwrung. 'But you might have been down at Hoggle End with the
brickmakers, and then, I would have had to go after you.'
'I should have grieved--' began Crawley; but Robarts interrupted him at
once.
'Let us go for a walk, and I'll leave the man with the horses. I've
something special to say to you, and I can say it better out here than
in the house. Grace is quite well, and sends her love. She is growing to
look so beautiful!'
'I hope she may grow in grace with God,' said Mr Crawley.
'She is as good a girl as ever I knew. By-the-bye, you had Henry
Grantly over here the other day?'
'Major Grantly, whom I cannot name without expressing my esteem for him,
did do us the honour of calling upon us not very long since. If it be
with reference to him that you have taken this trouble--'
'No, no; not at all. I'll allow him and the ladies to fight out that
battle. I've not the least doubt in the world how that will go. When I'm
told that she made a complete conquest of the archdeacon, there cannot
be any doubt about that.'
'A conquest of the archdeacon!'
But Mr Robarts did not wish to have to explain anything further about
the archdeacon. 'Were you not terribly shocked, Crawley,' he asked,
'when you heard of the death of Mrs Proudie?'
'It was sudden and very awful,' said Mr Crawley. 'Such deaths are
always shocking. Not more so, perhaps, as regards the wife of a bishop.,
than with any other woman.'
'Only we happen to know her.'
'No doubt the finite and meagre nature of our feelings does prevent us
from extending our sympathies to those whom we have not seen in the
flesh. It should not be so, and would not with one who had nurtured his
heart with the proper care. And we are prone to permit an evil worse
than that to canker our regards and to foster and to mar our
solicitudes. Those who are in high station strike us more by their joys
and sorrows than do the poor and lowly. Were some young duke's wife,
wedded but the other day, to die, all England would put on a show of
mourning--nay, would feel some true gleam of pity; but nobody cares for
the widowed brickmaker seated with his starving infant on his cold
hearth.'
'Of course we hear more of the big people,' said Robarts.
'Ay; and think more of them. But do not suppose, sir, that I complain
of this man or that woman because his sympathies, or hers, runs out of
that course which my reason tells me they should hold. The man with whom
it would not be so would simply be a god among men. It is in his
perfection as a man that we recognise the divinity of Christ. It is in
the imperfection of men that we recognise our necessity for a Christ.
Yes, sir, the death of the poor lady at Barchester was very sudden. I
hope that my lord bears with becoming fortitude the heavy misfortune.
They say that he was a man much beholden to his wife--prone to lean upon
her in his goings out and comings in. For such a man such a loss is more
dreadful than for another.'
'They say she led him a terrible life, you know.'
'I am not prone, sir, to believe much of what I hear about the
domesticities of other men, knowing how little any other man can know of
my own. And I have, methinks, observed a proneness in the world to
ridicule that dependence on a woman which every married man should
acknowledge in regard to the wife of his bosom, if he cant trust her as
well as love her. When I hear jocose proverbs spoken as to men such as
that in this house the grey mare is the better horse, or that in that
house the wife wears that garment which is supposed to denote virile
command, knowing that the joke is easy, and that meekness in a man is
more truly noble than the habit of stern authority, I do not allow them
to go far with me in influencing my judgment.'
So spoke Mr Crawley, who never permitted the slightest interference with
his own word in his own family, and who had himself been a witness of
one of those scenes between the bishop and his wife in which the poor
bishop had been so cruelly misused. But to Mr Crawley the thing which he
himself had seen under such circumstances was as sacred as though it had
come to him under the seal of confession. In speaking of the bishop and
Mrs Proudie--nay, as far as was possible in thinking of them--he was
bound to speak and to think as though he had not witnessed that scene in
the palace study.
'I don't suppose that there is much doubt as to her real character,'
said Robarts. 'But you and I need not discuss that.'
'By no means. Such discussion would be both useless and unseemly.'
'And just at present there is something else that I specially want to
say to you. Indeed, I went to Silverbridge on the same subject
yesterday, and have come here expressly to have a little conversation
with you.'
'If it be about affairs of mine, Mr Robarts, I am indeed troubled in
spirit that so great labour should have fallen upon you.'
'Never mind my labour. Indeed your saying that is a nuisance to me,
because I hoped that by this time you would have understood that I
regard you as a friend, and that I think nothing any trouble that I do
for a friend. You position just now is so peculiar that it requires a
great deal of care.'
'No care can be of any avail to me.'
'There I disagree with you. You must excuse me, but I do; and so does
Dr Tempest. We think that you have been a little too much in a hurry
since he communicated to you the result of our first meeting.'
'As how, sir?'
'It is, perhaps, hardly worth while for us to go into the whole
question; but that man, Thumble, must not come here on next Sunday.'
'I cannot say, Mr Robarts, that the Reverend Mr Thumble has recommended
himself to me strongly either by his outward symbols of manhood or by
such manifestation of inward mental gifts as I have succeeded in
obtaining. But my knowledge of him has been so slight, and has been
acquired in a manner so likely to bias me prejudicially against him,
that I am inclined to think my opinion should go for nothing. It is,
however, the fact that the bishop has nominated him to do this duty; and
that, as I have myself simply notified my decision to be relieved from
the care of the parish, on account of certain unfitness of my own, I am
the last man who should interfere with the bishop in the choice of my
temporary successor.
'It was her choice, not his.'
'Excuse me, Mr Robarts, but I cannot allow that assertion to pass
unquestioned. I must say that I have adequate cause for believing that
he came here by his lordship's authority.'
'No doubt he did. Will you just listen to me for a moment? Ever since
this unfortunate affair of the cheque became known, Mrs Proudie has been
anxious to get you out of the parish. She was a violent woman, and chose
to take this matter up violently. Pray hear me out before you interrupt
me. There would have been no commission at all but for her.'
'The commission is right and proper and just,' said Mr Crawley, who
could not keep himself silent.
'Very well. Let it be so. But Mr Thumble's coming over here is not
proper or right; and you may be sure the bishop does not wish it.'
'Let him send any other clergyman whom he may think more fitting,' said
Mr Crawley.
'But we do not want him to send anybody.'
'Somebody must be sent, Mr Robarts.'
'No, not so. Let me go over and see Thumble and Snapper--Snapper, you
know, is the domestic chaplain; and all that you need do is to go on
with your services on Sunday. If necessary, I will see the bishop. I
think you may be sure that I can manage it. If not, I will come back to
you.' Mr Robarts paused for an answer, but it seemed for a while that
all Mr Crawley's impatient desire to speak was over. He walked on
silently along the lane by his visitor's side, and when, after some five
or six minutes, Robarts stood still in the road, Mr Crawley even then
said nothing. 'It cannot be but that you should be anxious to keep the
income of the parish for your wife and children,' said Mark Robarts.
'Of course, I am anxious for my wife and children,' Crawley answered.
'Then let me do as I say. Why should you throw away a chance, even if
it be a bad one? But here the chance is all in your favour. Let me
manage it for you at Barchester.'
'Of course I am anxious for my wife and children,' said Crawley,
repeating his words; 'how anxious, I fancy no man can conceive who has
not been hear enough to absolute want to know how terrible is its
approach when it threatens those who are weak and who are very dear!
But, Mr Robarts, you spoke just now of the chance of the thing--the
chance of your arranging on my behalf that I should for a while longer
be left in the enjoyment of the freehold of my parish. It seemeth to me
that there should be no chance on such a subject; that in the adjustment
of so momentous a matter there should be a consideration of right and
wrong, and no consideration of aught beside. I have been growing to
feel, for some weeks past, that circumstances--whether through my fault
or not is an outside question as to which I will not further delay you
by offering even an opinion--that unfortunate circumstances have made me
unfit to remain here as guardian of the souls of the people of this
parish. Then there came to me the letter from Dr Tempest--for which I am
greatly beholden to him--strengthening me altogether in this view. What
could I do then, Mr Robarts? Could I allow myself to think of my wife
and my children when such a question as that was before me for self-
discussion?'
'I would--certainly,' said Robarts.
'No sir! Excuse the bluntness of my contradiction, but I feel assured
that in such emergency you would look solely to duty--as by God's help I
will endeavour to do. Mr Robarts, there are many of us who in many
things are much worse than we believe ourselves to be. But in other
matters, and perhaps of larger moment, we can rise to ideas of duty as
the need for such ideas comes to us. I say not this at all as praising
myself. I speak of men as I believe that they will be found to be;--of
yourself, of myself, and of others who strive to live with clean hands
and a clear conscience. I do not for a moment think that you would
retain your benefice at Framley if there had come upon you, after much
thought, an assured conviction that you could not retain it without
grievous injury to the souls of others and grievous sin to your own.
Wife and children, dear as they are to you and to me--as dear to me as
to you--fade from the sight when the time comes for judgment on such a
matter as that!' They were standing quite still now, facing each other,
and Crawley, as he spoke with a low voice, looked straight into his
friend's eyes, and kept his hand firmly fixed on his friend's arm.
'I cannot interfere further,' said Robarts.
'No--you cannot interfere further.' Robarts, when he told the story of
the interview to his wife that evening, declared that he had never heard
a voice so plaintively touching as was the voice of Mr Crawley when he
uttered those last words.
They turned back to the servant and the house almost without a word, and
Robarts mounted without offering to see Mrs Crawley. Nor did Mr Crawley
ask him to do so. It was better now that Robarts should go. 'May God
send you through all your troubles,' said Mr Robarts.
'Mr Robarts, I thank you warmly for your friendship,' said Mr Crawley.
And then they parted. In about half an hour Mr Crawley returned to the
house. 'Now for Pindar, Jane,' he said, seating himself at his old desk.
CHAPTER LXIX
MR CRAWLEY'S LAST APPEARANCE IN HIS OWN PULPIT
No word or message from Mr Crawley reached Barchester throughout the
week, and on the Sunday morning Mr Thumble was under a positive
engagement to go out to Hogglestock, and to perform the services of the
church. Dr Tempest had been quite right in saying that Mr Thumble would
be awed by the death of his patroness. Such was altogether the case, and
he was very anxious to escape from the task he had undertaken at her
instance, if it were possible. In the first place, he had never been a
favourite with the bishop himself, and had now, therefore, nothing to
expect in the diocese. The crusts and bits of loaves and the morsels of
broken fishes which had come his way had all come from the bounty of Mrs
Proudie. And then, as regarded this special Hogglestock job, how was he
to get paid for it? Whence, indeed, was he to seek repayment for the
actual money which he would be out of pocket in finding his way to
Hogglestock and back again? But he could not get to speak to the bishop,
nor could he induce anyone who had access to his lordship to touch upon
the subject. Mr Snapper avoided him as much as possible; and Mr Snapper,
when he was caught and interrogated, declared that he regarded the
matter as settled. Nothing could be in worse taste, Mr Snapper thought,
than to undo, immediately after the poor lady's death, work in the
diocese which had been arranged and done by her. Mr Snapper expressed
his opinion that Mr Thumble was bound to go to Hogglestock; and, when Mr
Thumble declared petulantly the he would not stir a step out of
Barchester, Mr Snapper protested that Mr Thumble would have to answer
for it in this world and in the next if there was no services at
Hogglestock on that Sunday. On the Saturday evening Mr Thumble made a
desperate attempt to see the bishop, but was told by Mrs Draper that the
bishop had positively declined to see him. The bishop himself probably
felt unwilling to interfere with his wife's doings so soon after her
death! So Mr Thumble, with a heavy heart, went across to the 'Dragon of
Wantly', and ordered a gig, resolving that the bill should be sent to
the palace. He was not going to trust himself again on the bishop's cob!
Up to Saturday evening Mr Crawley did the work of the parish, and on the
Saturday evening he made an address to his parishioners from his pulpit.
He had given notice among the brickmakers and labourers that he wished
to say a few words to them in the schoolroom; but the farmers also heard
of this and came with their wives and daughters, and all the brickmakers
came and most of the labourers were there, so that there was no room for
them in the schoolhouse. The congregation was much larger than was
customary even in the church. 'They will come,' he said to his wife, 'to
hear a ruined man declare his own ruin, but they will not come to hear
the word of God.' When it was found that the persons assembled were too
many for the school-room, the meeting was adjourned to the church, and
Mr Crawley was forced to get into his pulpit. He said a short prayer,
and then he began his story.
His story as he told it then shall not be repeated now, as the same
story has been told too often already in these pages. Surely it was a
singular story for a parish clergyman to tell himself in so solemn a
manner. That he had applied the cheque to his own purposes, and was
unable to account for its possession of it, was certain. He did not know
when or how he had got it. Speaking to them then in God's house he told
them that. He was to be tried by a jury, and all he could do was to tell
the jury the same. He would not expect the jury to believe him. The jury
would, of course, believe only that which was proved to them. But he did
expect his old friends at Hogglestock, who had known him so long, to
take his word as true. That there was no sufficient excuse for his
conduct, even in his own sight, this, his voluntary resignation of his
parish, was, he said, sufficient evidence. Then he explained to them, as
clearly as he was able, what the bishop had done, what the commission
had done, and what he had done himself. That he spoke no word of Mrs
Proudie to that audience need hardly be mentioned here. 'And now,
dearest friends, I leave you,' he said, with that weighty solemnity
which was so peculiar to the man, and which he was able to make
singularly impressive even on such a congregation as that of
Hogglestock, 'and I trust that the heavy burden but pleasing burden of
the charge which I have had over you may fall into hands better fitted
than mine have been for such work. I have always known my own unfitness,
by reason of the worldly cares with which I have been laden. Poverty
makes the spirit poor, and the hands weak, and the heart sore--and too
often makes the conscience dull. May the latter never be the case with
any of you.' Then he uttered another short prayer, and, stepping down
from the pulpit, walked out of the church, with his weeping wife hanging
on his arm, and his daughter following them, almost dissolved in tears.
He never again entered that church as the pastor of the congregation.
There was an old lame man from Hoggle End leaning on his stick near the
door as Mr Crawley went out, and with him was his old lame wife. 'He'll
pull through yet,' said the old man to his wife; 'you'll see else. He'll
pull through because he's so dogged. It's dogged as does it.'
On that night the position of the members of Mr Crawley's household
seemed to have changed. There was something almost of elation in his
mode of speaking, and he said soft loving words, striving to comfort his
wife. She, on the other hand, could say nothing to comfort him. She had
been averse to the step he was taking, but had been unable to press her
objection in opposition to his great argument as to duty. Since he had
spoken to her in that strain which he had used with Robarts, she also
had felt that she must be silent. But she could not even feign to feel
the pride which comes from the performance of a duty. 'What will he do
when he comes out?' she said to her daughter. The coming out spoken of
her was the coming out of prison. It was natural enough that she should
feel no elation.
The breakfast on Sunday morning was to her, perhaps, the saddest scene
of her life. They sat down, the three together, at the usual hour--nine
o'clock--but the morning had not been passed as was customary on
Sundays. It had been Mr Crawley's practice to go into the school from
eight to nine; but on this Sunday he felt, as he told his wife, that his
presence would be an intrusion there. But he requested Jane to go and
perform her usual task. 'If Mr Thumble should come,' he said to her, 'be
submissive to him in all things.' Then he stood at his door, watching to
see at what hour Mr Thumble would reach the school. But Mr Thumble did
not attend the school on that morning. 'And yet he was very express to
me in his desire that I would not meddle with the duties,' said Mr
Crawley to his wife as he stood at the door--'unnecessarily urgent, as I
may say I thought at the time.' If Mrs Crawley could have spoken out her
thoughts about Mr Thumble at that moment, her words would, I think have
surprised her husband.
At breakfast there was hardly a word spoken. Mr Crawley took his crust
and ate it mournfully--almost ostentatiously. Jane tried and failed, and
tried to hide her failure, failing in that also. Mrs Crawley made no
attempt. She sat behind her teapot, with her hands clasped and her eyes
fixed. It was as though some last day had come upon her--this, the first
Sunday of her husband's degradation.
'Mary,' he said to her, 'why do you not eat?'
'I cannot,' she replied, speaking not in a whisper, but in words which
would hardly get themselves articulated. 'I cannot. Do not ask me.'
'For the honour of the lord, you will want the strength which bread can
give you,' he said, intimating to her that he wished her to attend the
service.
'Do not ask me to be there, Josiah. I cannot. It is too much for me.'
'Nay, I will not press it,' he said. 'I can go alone.' He uttered no
word expressive of a wish that his daughter should attend the church;
but when the moment came, Jane accompanied him. 'What shall I do,
mamma?' she said, 'if I find that I cannot bear it?' 'Try to bear it,'
the mother said. 'Try for his sake. You are stronger than I am.'
The tinkle of the church bell was heard at the usual time, and Mr
Crawley, hat in hand, stood ready to go forth. He had heard nothing of
Mr Thumble, but had made up his mind that Mr Thumble would not trouble
him. He had taken the precaution to request his churchwarden to be early
at the church, so that Mr Thumble might encounter no difficulty. The
church was very near to the house, and any vehicle arriving might have
been heard had Mr Crawley watched closely. But no one had cared to watch
Mr Thumble's arrival at the church. He did not doubt that Mr Thumble
would be at the church. With reference to the school, he had had some
doubt.
But just as he was about to start he heard the clatter of a gig. Up came
Mr Thumble to the door of the parsonage, and having come down from his
gig was about to enter the house as though it were his own. Mr Crawley
greeted him in the pathway, raising his hat from his head, and
expressing a wish that Mr Thumble might not feel himself fatigued with
his drive. 'I will not ask you into my poor house,' he said, standing in
the middle of the pathway; 'for that my wife is ill.'
'Nothing catching, I hope?' said Mr Thumble.
'Her malady is of the spirit rather than of the flesh,' said Mr Crawley.
'Shall we go to the church?'
'Certainly--by all means. How about the surplice?'
'You will find, I trust, that the churchwarden has everything in
readiness. I have notified him expressly your coming, with the purport
that it may be so.'
'You'll take part in the service, I suppose?' said Mr Thumble.
'No part--no part whatever,' said Mr Crawley, standing still for a
moment as he spoke, and showing plainly by the tone of his voice how
dismayed he was, how indignant he had been made, by so indecent a
proposition. Was he giving up his pulpit to a stranger for any reason
less cogent than one which made it absolutely imperative of him to be
silent in that church which had so long been his own?
'Just as you please,' said Mr Thumble. 'Only it's rather hard lines to
have to do it all myself after coming all the way from Barchester this
morning.' To this Mr Crawley condescended to make no reply whatever.
In the porch of the church, which was the only entrance, Mr Crawley
introduced Mr Thumble to the churchwarden, simply by a wave of the hand,
and then passed on with his daughter to a seat which opened upon the
aisle. Jane was going on to that which she had hitherto always occupied
with her mother in the little chancel; but Mr Crawley would not allow
this. Neither to him nor to any of his family was there attached any
longer the privilege of using the chancel of the church of Hogglestock.
Mr Thumble scrambled into the reading-desk some ten minutes after the
proper time, and went through the morning service under, what must be
admitted to be, serious difficulties. There were the eyes of Mr Crawley
fixed upon him throughout the work, and a feeling pervaded him that
everybody there regarded him as an intruder. At first this was so strong
upon him that Mr Crawley pitied him, and would have encouraged him had
it been possible. But as the work progressed, and as custom and the
sound of his own voice emboldened him, there came to the man some
touches of the arrogance which so generally accompanies cowardice, and
Mr Crawley's acute ear detected the moment when it was so. An observer
might have seen that the motion of his hands was altered as they were
lifted in prayer. Though he was praying, even in prayer he could not
forget the man who was occupying the desk.
Then came the sermon, preached very often before, lasting exactly
half-an-hour, and then Mr Thumble's work was done. Itinerant clergymen,
who preach now here and now there, as it had been the lot of Mr Thumble
to do, have at any rate this relief--that they can preach their sermons
often. From the communion-table Mr Thumble had stated that, in the
present peculiar circumstances of the parish, there would be no second
service at Hogglestock for the present; and this was all he said or did
peculiar to the occasion. The moment of the service was over and he got
into his gig, and was driven back to Barchester.
'Mamma,' said Jane, as they sat at dinner, 'such a sermon I am sure was
never heard in Hogglestock before. Indeed, you can hardly call it a
sermon. It was downright nonsense.'
'My dear,' said Mr Crawley energetically, 'keep your criticisms for
matters that are profane; then, though they be childish and silly, they
may at least be innocent. Be critical of Eurypides, if you must be
critical.' But when Jane kissed her father after dinner, she, knowing
his humour well, felt assured that her remarks had not been taken
altogether in ill part.
Mr Thumble was neither seen nor heard of again in the parish during the
entire week.
CHAPTER LXX
MRS ARABIN IS CAUGHT
One morning about the middle of April Mr Toogood received a telegram
from Venice which caused him instantly to leave his business in Bedford
Row and take the first train for Silverbridge. 'It seems to me that this
job will be a deal of time and very little money,' said his partner to
him, when Toogood on the spur of the moment was making arrangements for
his sudden departure and uncertain period of absence. 'That's about it,'
said Toogood. 'A deal of time, some expense, and no returns. It is not
the kind of business a man can live upon, is it?' The partner growled,
and Toogood went. But we must go with Mr Toogood down to Silverbridge,
and as we cannot make the journey in this chapter, we will just indicate
his departure and then go back to John Eames, who, as will be
remembered, was just starting for Florence when we last saw him.
Our dear old friend Johnny had been rather proud of himself as he
started from London. He had gotten an absolute victory over Sir Raffle
Buffle, and that alone was gratifying to his feelings. He liked the
excitement of a journey, and especially a journey to Italy; and the
importance of the cause of his journey was satisfactory to him. But
above all things he was delighted at having found that Lily Dale was
pleased at his going. He had seen clearly that she was much pleased, and
that she had made something of a hero of him because of his alacrity in
the cause of his cousin. He had partially understood--and had understood
in a dim sort of way--that his want of favour in Lily's eyes had come
from some deficiency of his own in this respect. She had not found him
to be a hero. She had known him first as a boy, with boyish belongings
around him, and she had seen him from time to time as he became a man,
almost with too much intimacy for the creation of that love with which
he wished to fill her heart. His rival had come before her eyes for the
first time with all the glories of Pall Mall heroism about him, and Lily
in her weakness had been conquered by them. Since that she had learned
how weak she had been--how silly, how childish, she would say to herself
when she allowed her memory to go back to the details of her own story;
but not the less on that account did she feel the want of something
heroic in a man before she could teach herself to look upon him as more
worthy of her regard than other men. She had still unconsciously hoped
in regard to Crosbie, but now that hope had been dispelled as
unconsciously, by simply by his appearance. There had been moments in
which John Eames had almost risen to the necessary point--had almost
made good his footing on the top of some moderate, but still sufficient
mountain. But there had still be a succession of little tumbles
--unfortunately slips for which he himself should not always have been
held responsible; and he had never quite stood upright on his pinnacle,
visible to Lily's eyes as being really excelsior. Of all this John Eames
himself had an inkling which had often made him uncomfortable. What the
mischief was it she wanted of him; and what was he to do? The days for
plucking glory from the nettle danger were clean gone by. He was well
dressed. He knew a good many of the right sort of people. He was not in
debt. He had saved an old nobleman's life once upon a time, and had been
a good deal talked about on that score. He had even thrashed the man who
had ill-treated her. His constancy had been as the constancy of Jacob!
What was it that she wanted of him? But in a certain way he did know
what was wanted; and now, as he started for Florence, intending to stop
nowhere till he reached that city, he hoped that by this chivalrous
journey he might even yet achieve the thing necessary.
But on reaching Paris he heard tidings of Mrs Arabin which induced him
to change his plans and make for Venice instead of for Florence. A
banker at Paris, who whom he had brought a letter, told him that Mrs
Arabin would now be found at Venice. This did not perplex him at all. It
would have been delightful to have seen Florence--but was more
delightful still to see Venice. His journey was the same as far as
Turin; but from Turin he proceeded through Milan to Venice, instead of
going to Bologna to Florence. He had fortunately come armed with an
Austrian passport--as was necessary in those bygone days of Venice's
thraldom. He was almost proud of himself, as though he had done
something great, when he tumbled in to his inn at Venice, without having
been in bed since he left London.
But he was barely allowed to swim in a gondola, for on reaching Venice
he found that Mrs Arabin had gone back to Florence. He had been directed
to the hotel which Mrs Arabin had used, and was there told that she had
started the day before. She had received some letter, from her husband
as the landlord thought, and had done so. That was all the landlord
knew. Johnny was vexed, but became a little prouder than before as he
felt it to be his duty to go on to Florence before he went to bed. There
would be another night in a railway carriage, but he would live through
it. There was just time to have a tub, and a breakfast, to swim in a
gondola, to look at the outside of the Doge's palace, and to walk up and
down the piazza before he started again. It was hard work, but I think
he would have been pleased had he heard that Mrs Arabin had retreated
from Florence to Rome. Had such been the case, he would have folded his
cloak around him, and have gone on--regardless of brigands--thinking of
Lily, and wondering whether anybody else had ever done so much before
without going to bed. As it was, he found that Mrs Arabin was at the
hotel in Florence--still in bed, as he had arrived early in the morning.
So he had another tub, another breakfast, and sent up his card--'Mr John
Eames'--and across the top of it he wrote, 'has come from England about
Mr Crawley.' Then he threw himself on a sofa in the hotel reading-room,
and went fast to sleep.
John had found an opportunity of talking to a young lady in the
breakfast-room, and had told her of his deeds. 'I only left London on
Tuesday night, and I have come here taking Venice on the road.'
'Then you have travelled fast,' said the young lady.
'I haven't seen a bed, of course,' said John.
The young lady immediately afterwards told her father. 'I suppose he
must be one of the Foreign Office messengers,' said the young lady.
'Anything but that,' said the gentleman. 'People never talk about their
own trades. He's probably a clerk with a fortnight's leave of absence,
seeing how many towns he can do in the time. It's the usual way of
travelling nowadays. When I was young and there were no railways, I
remember going from Paris to Vienna without sleeping.' Luckily for his
present happiness, John did not hear this.
He was still fast asleep when a servant came to him from Mrs Arabin to
say that she would see him at once. 'Yes, yes; I'm quite ready to go
on,' said Johnny, jumping up, and thinking of the journey to Rome. But
there was no journey to Rome before him. Mrs Arabin was almost in the
next room, and there he found her.
The reader will understand that they had never met before, and hitherto
knew nothing of each other. Mrs Arabin had never heard the name of John
Eames till John's card was put into her hands, and would not have known
of his business with her had he not written those few words upon it.
'You have come about Mr Crawley?' she said to him eagerly. 'I have heard
from my father that somebody was coming.'
'Yes, Mrs Arabin; as hard as I could travel. I had expected to find you
at Venice.'
'Have you been to Venice?'
'I have just arrived from Venice. They told me at Paris I should find
you here. However, that does not matter, as I have found you here. I
wonder whether you can help us?'
'Do you know Mr Crawley? Are you a friend of his?'
'I never saw him in my life; but he married my cousin.'
'I gave him the cheque, you know,' said Mrs Arabin.
'What!' exclaimed Eames, literally almost knocked backwards by the
easiness of the words which contained a solution for so terrible a
difficulty. The Crawley case had assumed such magnitude, and the
troubles of the Crawley family had been so terrible, that it seemed to
him to be almost sacrilegious that words so simply uttered should
suffice to cure everything. He had hardly hoped--had at least barely
hoped--that Mrs Arabin might be able to suggest something which would
put them all on a track towards the discovery of the truth. But he found
that she had the clue in her hand, and that the clue was one which
required no further delicacy of investigation. There would be nothing
more to unravel; no journey to Jerusalem would be necessary!
'Yes,' said Mrs Arabin, 'I gave it to him. They have been writing to my
husband about it, and never wrote to me; and till I received a letter
about it from my father, and another from my sister, at Venice the day
before yesterday, I knew nothing of the particulars of Mr Crawley's
trouble.'
'Had you not heard that he had been taken before the magistrates?'
'No; not so much even as that. I had seen in "Galignani" something
about a clergyman, but I did not know what clergyman; and I heard that
there was something wrong about Mr Crawley's money, but there has always
been something wrong about money with poor Mr Crawley; and as I knew
that my husband had been written to also, I did not interfere, further
than to ask the particulars. My letters have followed me about, and I
only heard at Venice, just before I came here, what was the nature of
the case.'
'And did you do anything?'
'I telegraphed at once to Mr Toogood, who I understand is acting as Mr
Crawley's solicitor. My sister sent me his address.'
'He is my uncle.'
'I telegraphed to him, telling him that I had given Mr Crawley the
cheque, and then I wrote to Archdeacon Grantly giving him the whole
history. I was obliged to come here before I could return home, but I
intended to start this evening.'
'And what is the whole history?' asked John Eames.
The history of the gift of the cheque was very simple. It has been told
how Mr Crawley in his dire distress had called upon his old friend at
the deanery asking for pecuniary assistance. This he had done with so
much reluctance that his spirit had given way while he was waiting in
the dean's library, and he had wished to depart without accepting what
the dean was quite willing to bestow upon him. From this cause it had
come to pass there had been no time for explanatory words, even between
the dean and his wife--from whose private funds had in truth come the
money which had been given to Mr Crawley. For the private wealth of the
family belonged to Mrs Arabin, and not to the dean; and was left
entirely in Mrs Arabin's hands, to be disposed of as she might please.
Previously to Mr Crawley's arrival at the deanery this matter had been
discussed between the dean and his wife, and it had been agreed between
them that a sum of fifty pounds should be given. It should be given by
Mrs Arabin, but it was thought that the gift would come with more
comfort to the recipient from the hands of his old friend than from
those of his wife. There had been much discussion between them as to the
mode in which this might be done with the least offence to the man's
feelings--for they knew Mr Crawley and his peculiarities well. At last
it was agreed that the notes should be put into an envelope, which
envelope the dean should have ready with him. But when the moment came
the dean did not have the envelope ready, and was obliged to leave the
room to seek his wife. And Mrs Arabin explained to John Eames that even
she had not had it ready, and had been forced to go to her own desk to
fetch it. Then, at the last moment, with the desire of increasing the
good to be done to people who were so terribly in want, she put the
cheque for twenty pounds, which was in her possession as money of her
own, along with the notes, and in this way the cheque had been given by
the dean to Mr Crawley. 'I shall never forgive myself for not telling
the dean,' she said. 'Had I done that all this trouble would have been
saved.'
'But where did you get the cheque?' Eames asked with natural curiosity.
'Exactly,' said Mrs Arabin. 'I have got to show now that I did not
steal it--have I not? Mr Soames will indict me now. And, indeed, I have
had some trouble to refresh my memory as to all the particulars, for you
see it is more than a year past.' But Mrs Arabin's mind was clearer on
such matters than Mr Crawley's, and she was able to explain that she had
taken the cheque as part of the rent due to her from the landlord of
'The Dragon of Wantly', which inn was her property, having been the
property of her first husband. For some years past there had been a
difficulty about the rent, things not having gone at 'The Dragon of
Wantly' as smoothly as they had used to go. At once time the money had
been paid half-yearly by the landlord's cheque on the bank of
Barchester. For the last year-and-a-half this had not been done, and the
money had come into Mrs Arabin's hands at irregular periods and in
irregular sums. There was at this moment rent due for twelve months, and
Mrs Arabin expressed her doubt whether she would get it on her return to
Barchester. On the occasion to which she was now alluding, the money had
been paid into her own hands, in the deanery breakfast-parlour, by a man
she knew very well--not the landlord himself, but one bearing the
landlord's name, whom she believed to the landlord's brother, or at
least his cousin. The man in question was named Daniel Stringer, and he
had been employed in 'The Dragon of Wantly', as a sort of clerk or
managing man, as long as she had known it. The rent had been paid to her
by Daniel Stringer quite as often as by Daniel's brother or cousin, John
Stringer, who was, in truth, the landlord of the hotel. When questioned
by John respecting the persons employed at the inn, she said that she
did believe that there had been rumours of something wrong. The house
had been in the hands of the Stringers for many years--before the
property had been purchased by her husband's father--and therefore had
been an unwillingness to remove them; but gradually, so she said, there
had come upon her and her husband a feeling that the house must be put
into other hands. 'Yes, I said a good deal about it. I asked why a
cheque of Mr Soames's was brought to me, instead of being taken to the
bank for money; and Stringer explained to me that they were not very
fond of going to the bank, as they owed money there, but that I could
pay it into my account. Only I kept my account at the other bank.'
'You might have paid it in there?' said Johnny.
'I suppose I might, but I didn't. I gave it to poor Mr Crawley
instead--like a fool, as I know now that I was. And so I have brought
all this trouble on him and on her; and now I must rush home, without
waiting for the dean, as fast as the trains will carry me.'
Eames offered to accompany her, and this offer was accepted. 'It is
hard upon you, though,' she said; 'you will see nothing of Florence.
Three hours in Venice, and six in Florence, and no hours at all anywhere
else, will be a hard fate to you on your first trip to Italy.' But
Johnny said 'Exelsior' to himself once more, and thought of Lily Dale,
who was still in London, hoping that she might hear of his exertions;
and he felt, perhaps, also, that it would be pleasant to return with a
dean's wife, and never hesitated. Nor would it do, he thought, for him
to be absent in the excitement caused by the news of Mr Crawley's
innocence and injuries. 'I don't care a bit about that,' he said. 'Of
course, I should like to see Florence, and, of course, I should like to
go to bed; but I will live in hopes that I may do both some day.' And so
there grew to be a friendship between him and Mrs Arabin even before
they started.
He had driven through Florence; he saw the Venus de' Medici, and he saw
the Seggolia; he looked up from the side of the Duomo to the top of the
Campanile, and he walked round the back of the cathedral itself; he
tried to inspect the doors of the Baptistry, and declared that the
'David' was very fine. Then he went back to the hotel, dined with Mrs
Arabin, and started for England.
The dean was to have joined his wife at Venice, and then they were to
have returned together, coming round by Florence. Mrs Arabin had not,
therefore, taken her things away from Florence when she left it, and had
been obliged to return to pick them up on her journey homewards. He--the
dean--had been delayed in his Eastern travels. Neither Syria or
Constantinople had got themselves done as quickly as he had expected,
and he had, consequently, twice written to his wife, begging her to
pardon the transgression of his absence for even yet a few days longer.
'Everything, therefore,' as Mrs Arabin said, 'has conspired to
perpetuate this mystery, which a word from me would have solved. I owe
more to Mr Crawley than I can ever pay him.'
'He will be very well paid, I think,' said John, 'when he hears the
truth. If you could see the inside of his mind at this moment, I'm sure
you'd find that he thinks he stole the cheque.'
'He cannot think that, Mr Eames. Besides, at this moment I hope he has
heard the truth.'
'That may be, but he did think so. I do believe that he had not the
slightest notion where he got it; and, which is more, not a single
person in the whole county had a notion. People thought that he had
picked it up, and used it in his despair. And the bishop has been so
hard upon him.'
'Oh, Mr Eames, that is the worst of all.'
'So I am told. The bishop has a wife, I believe.'
'Yes, he has a wife, certainly,' said Mrs Arabin.
'And people say that she is not very good-natured.'
'There are some of us at Barchester who do not love her very dearly. I
cannot say that she is one of my own especial friends.'
'I believe she has been very hard on Mr Crawley,' said John Eames.
'I should not be in the least surprised,' said Mrs Arabin.
Then they reached Turin, and there, taking up 'Galignani's Messenger' in
the reading-room of Trompetta's Hotel, John Eames saw that Mrs Proudie
was dead. 'Look at that,' said he, taking the paragraph to Mrs Arabin;
'Mrs Proudie is dead!' 'Mrs Proudie dead!' she exclaimed. 'Poor woman!
Then there will be peace at Barchester!' 'I never knew her very
intimately,' she afterwards said to her companion, 'and I do not know
that I have a right to say that she ever did me an injury. But I
remember well her first coming into Barchester. My sister's
father-in-law, the late bishop, was just dead. He was a mild, kind, dear
old man, whom my father loved beyond all the world, except his own
children. You may suppose we were all a little sad. I was not specially
connected with the cathedral then, except through my father'--and Mrs
Arabin, as she told all this, remembered that in the days of which she
was speaking she was a young mourning widow--'but I think I can never
forget the sort of harsh-toned paean of low-church trumpets with which
that poor woman made her entry into the city. She might have been more
lenient, as we had never sinned by being very high. She might, at any
rate, have been more gentle with us at first. I think we had never
attempted much beyond decency, good-will and comfort. Our comfort she
utterly destroyed. Good-will was not to her taste. And as for decency,
when I remember some things, I must say that when the comfort and
good-will went, the decency went along with them. And now she is dead! I
wonder how the bishop will get on without her.'
'Like a house in fire, I should think,' said Johnny.
'Fie, Mr Eames; you shouldn't speak in such a way on such a subject.'
Mrs Arabin and Johnny became fast friends as they journeyed home. There
was a sweetness in his character which endeared him readily to women;
though, as we have seen, there was a want of something to make one woman
cling to him. He could be soft and pleasant-mannered. He was fond of
making himself useful, and was a perfect master of all those little
caressing modes of behaviour in which the caress is quite impalpable,
and of which most women know the value and appreciate the comfort. By
the time that they had reached Paris John had told the whole story of
Lily Dale and Crosbie, and Mrs Arabin had promised to assist him, if any
assistance might be in her power.
'Of course I have heard of Lily Dale,' she said, 'because we know the De
Courcys.' Then she turned away her face, almost blushing, as she
remembered the first time that she had seen that Lady Alexandrina De
Courcy whom Mr Crosbie had married. It had been at Mr Thorne's house at
Ullathorne, and on that day she had done a thing which she had never
since remembered without blushing. But it was an old story now, and a
story of which her companion knew nothing--of which he never could know
anything. That day at Ullathorne Mrs Arabin, the wife of the Dean of
Barchester, than whom there was no more discreet clerical matron in the
diocese, had--boxed a clergyman's ears!
'Yes,' said John, speaking of Crosbie, 'he was a wise fellow; he knew
what he was about; he married an earl's daughter.'
'And now I remember hearing that somebody gave him a terrible beating.
Perhaps it was you?'
'It wasn't terrible at all,' said Johnny.
'Then it was you?'
'Oh, yes; it was I.'
'Then it was you who saved poor old Lord De Guest from the bull?'
'Go on, Mrs Arabin. There is no end to the grand things I've done.'
'You're quite a hero of romance.'
He bit his lip as he told himself that he was not enough of a hero. 'I
don't know about that,' said Johnny. 'I think what a man ought to do in
these days is to seem not to care what he eats and drinks, and to have
his linen very well got up. Then he'll be a hero.' But that was hard
upon Lily.
'Is that what Miss Dale requires?' said Mrs Arabin.
'I was not thinking about her particularly,' said Johnny, lying.
They slept a night at Paris, as they had done also at Turin--Mrs Arabin
not finding herself able to accomplish such marvels in the way of
travelling as her companion had achieved--and then arrived in London in
the evening. She was taken to a certain quiet clerical hotel at the top
of Suffolk Street, much patronised by bishops and deans of the better
sort, expecting to find a message there from her husband. And there was
the message --just arrived. The dean had reached Florence three days
after her departure; and as he would do the journey home in twenty-four
hours less than she had taken, he would be there, at the hotel, on the
day after tomorrow. 'I suppose I may wait for him, Mr Eames?' said Mrs
Arabin.
'I will see Mr Toogood tonight, and I will call here tomorrow, whether I
see him or not. At what hour will you be in?'
'Don't trouble yourself to do that. You must take care of Sir Raffle
Buffle, you know.'
'I shan't go near Sir Raffle Buffle tomorrow, nor yet the next day. You
mustn't suppose that I am afraid of Sir Raffle Buffle.'
'You are only afraid of Lily Dale.' From all which it may be seen that
Mrs Arabin and John Eames had become very intimate on their way home.
It was then arranged that he should call on Mr Toogood that same night
or early next morning, and that he should come to the hotel at twelve
o'clock on the next day. Going along one of the passages he passed two
gentlemen in shovel hats, with very black new coats and knee-breeches;
and Johnny could not but hear a few words which one clerical gentleman
said to the other. 'She was a woman of great energy, of wonderful
spirit, but a firebrand, my lord--a complete firebrand!' Then Johnny
knew that the Dean of A was talking to the Bishop of B about the late
Mrs Proudie.
CHAPTER LXXI
MR TOOGOOD AT SILVERBRIDGE
We will now go back to Mr Toogood as he started for Silverbridge, on the
receipt of Mrs Arabin's telegram from Venice. 'I gave cheque to Mr
Crawley. It was part of a sum of money. Will write to Archdeacon Grantly
today, and return home at once.' That was the telegram which Mr Toogood
received at his office, and on receiving which he resolved that he must
start to Barchester immediately. 'It isn't certainly what you would call
a paying business,' he said to his partner, who continued to grumble;
'but it must be done all the same. If it don't get into the ledger in
one way it will in another.' So Mr Toogood started for Silverbridge,
having sent to his house in Tavistock Square for a small bag, a clean
shirt, and a toothbrush. And as he went down to the railway-carriage,
before he went to sleep, he turned it all over in his mind. 'Poor devil!
I wonder whether any man suffered so much before. And as for that
woman--it's ten thousand pities that she should have died before she
heard it. Talk of heart-complaint!; she'd have had a touch of heart-
complaint if she had known this!' Then, as he was speculating how Mrs
Arabin could have come possessed of the cheque he went to sleep.
He made up his mind that the first person to be seen was Mr Walker, and
after that he would, if possible, go to Archdeacon Grantly. He was at
first minded to go at once to Hogglestock; but when he remembered how
very strange Mr Crawley was in all his ways, and told himself
professionally that telegrams were but bad sources of evidence on which
to depend for details, he thought that it would be safer if he were
first to see Mr Walker. There would be very little delay. In a day or
two the archdeacon would receive his letter, and in a day or two after
that Mrs Arabin would probably be at home.
It was late in the evening before Mr Toogood reached the house of the
Silverbridge solicitor, having the telegram carefully folded in his
pocket; and he was shown into the dining-room while the servant took his
name up to Mr Walker. The clerks were gone, and the office was closed;
and persons coming on business at such times--as they often did come to
that house--were always shown into the parlour. 'I don't know whether
master can see you tonight,' said the girl; 'but if he can, he'll come
down.'
When the card was brought up to Mr Walker he was sitting alone with his
wife. 'It's Toogood,' said he; 'poor Crawley's cousin.'
'I wonder whether he has found anything out,' said Mrs Walker. 'May he
not come up here?' Then Mr Toogood was summoned into the drawing-room,
to the maid's astonishment; for Mr Toogood had made no toilet sacrifices
to the goddess of grace who presides over evening society in provincial
towns--and presented himself with the telegram in his hand. 'We have
found out all about poor Crawley's cheque,' he said, before the
maid-servant had closed the door. 'Look at that,' and he handed the
telegram to Mr Walker. The poor girl was obliged to go, though she would
have given one her ears to know the exact contents of that bit of paper.
'Walker, what is it?' said his wife, before Walker had had time to make
the contents of the document his own.
'He got it from Mrs Arabin,' said Toogood.
'No!' said Mrs Walker. 'I thought that was it all along.'
'It's a pity you didn't say so before,' said Mr Walker.
'So I did; but a lawyer thinks that nobody can ever seen anything but
himself;--begging your pardon, Mr Toogood, but I forgot you were one of
us. But, Walker, do read it.' Then the telegram was read; 'I gave the
cheque to Mr Crawley. It was part of a sum of money'--with the rest of
it. 'I knew it would come out,' said Mrs Walker. 'I was quite sure of
it.'
'But why the mischief didn't he say so?' said Walker.
'He did say he got it from the dean,' said Toogood.
'But he didn't get it from the dean; and the dean clearly knew nothing
about it.'
'I'll tell you what it is,' said Mrs Walker; 'it has been some private
transaction between Mr Crawley and Mrs Arabin, which the dean knew
nothing about; and so he wouldn't tell. I must say I honour him.'
'I don't think it has been that,' said Walker. 'Had he known all
through that it had come from Mrs Arabin, he would never have said that
Mr Soames gave it to him, and then that the dean gave it to him.'
'The truth has been that he has known nothing about it,' said Toogood;
'and we shall have to tell him.'
At that moment Mary Walker came into the room, and Mrs Walker could not
constrain herself. 'Mary, Mr Crawley is all right. He didn't steal the
cheque. Mrs Arabin gave it to him.'
'Who says so? How do you know? Oh, dear; I am so happy, if it's true.'
Then she saw Mr Toogood and curtseyed.
'It is quite true, my dear,' said Mr Walker. 'Mr Toogood has had a
message by the wires from Mrs Arabin at Venice. She is coming home at
once, and no doubt everything will be put right. In the meantime, it may
be a question whether we should not hold our tongues. Mr Crawley
himself, I suppose, knows nothing of it yet?'
'Not a word,' said Toogood.
'Papa, I must tell Miss Prettyman,' said Mary.
'I should think that probably all Silverbridge knows it by this time,'
said Mrs Walker, 'because Jane was in the room when the announcement was
made. You may be sure that every servant in the house has been told.'
Mary Walker, not waiting for any further command from her father,
hurried out of the room to convey the secret to her special circle of
friends.
It was known throughout Silverbridge that night, and indeed it made so
much commotion that it kept many people for an hour out of their beds.
Ladies who were not in the habit of going out late at night without the
fly from the 'George and Vulture', tied their heads up in their
handkerchiefs, and hurried up and down the street to tell each other
that the great secret had been discovered, and that in truth Mr Crawley
had not stolen the cheque. The solution of the mystery was not known to
all--was known on that night only to the very select portion of the
aristocracy of Silverbridge to whom it was communicated by Mary Walker
or Miss Anne Prettyman. For Mary Walker, when earnestly entreated by
Jane, the parlour-maid, to tell her something more of the great news,
had so far respected her father's caution as to say not a word about Mrs
Arabin. 'Is it true, Miss Mary, that he didn't steal it?' Jane asked
imploringly. 'It is true. He did not steal it.' 'And who did, Miss Mary?
Indeed I won't tell anybody.' 'Nobody. But don't ask any more questions,
for I won't answer them. Get me my hat at once, for I want to go up to
Miss Prettyman's.' Then Jane got Miss Walker's hat, and immediately
afterwards scampered into the kitchen with the news. 'Oh, law, cook,
it's all come out! Mr Crawley's as innocent as the unborn babe. The
gentleman upstairs what's just come, and was here once before--for I
know'd him immediate--I heard him say so. And master said so too.'
'Did master say so his own self?' asked the cook.
'Indeed he did; and Miss Mary told me the same this moment.'
'If master said so, then there ain't a doubt as they'll find him
innocent. And who took'd, Jane?'
'Miss Mary says as nobody didn't steal it.'
'That's nonsense, Jane. It stands to reason as somebody had it as
hadn't ought to have had it. But I'm glad as anything as how the poor
reverend gent'll come off;--I am. They tells me it's weeks sometimes
before a bit of butcher's meat finds its way into his house.' Then the
groom and the housemaid and the cook, one after another, took occasion
to slip out of the back-door, and poor Jane, who had really been the
owner of the news, was left to answer the bell.
Miss Walker found the two Miss Prettymans sitting together over their
accounts in the elder Miss Prettyman's private room. And she could see
at once by signs which were not unfamiliar to her that Miss Anne
Prettyman was being scolded. It often happened that Miss Anne Prettyman
was scolded, especially when the accounts were brought out upon the
table. 'Sister, they are illegible,' Mary Walker heard, as the servant
opened the door for her.
'I don't think it's quite so bad as that,' said Miss Anne, unable to
restrain her defence. Then, as Mary entered the room, Miss Prettyman the
elder laid her hands down on certain books and papers as though to hide
them from profane eyes.
'I am glad to see you, Mary,' said Miss Prettyman gravely.
'I've brought such a piece of news,' said Mary. 'I knew you'd be glad
to hear it, so I ventured to disturb you.'
'Is it good news?' said Anne Prettyman.
'Very good news. Mr Crawley is innocent.'
Both the ladies sprang on to their legs. Even Miss Prettyman herself
jumped up on to her legs. 'No!' said Anne. 'Your father has discovered
it?' said Miss Prettyman.
'Not exactly that. Mr Toogood has come down from London to tell him.
Mr Toogood, you know, is Mr Crawley's cousin; and he is a lawyer, like
papa.' It may be observed that ladies belonging to the families of
solicitors always talk about lawyers, and never about attorneys or
barristers.
'And does Mr Toogood say that Mr Crawley is innocent?' asked Miss
Prettyman.
'He has heard it by a message from Mrs Arabin. But you mustn't mention
this. You won't, please, because papa asked me not. I told him that I
should tell you.' Then, for the first time, the frown passed away
entirely from Miss Prettyman's face, and the papers and account books
were pushed aside, as being of no moment. Mary continued her story
almost in a whisper. 'It was Mrs Arabin who sent the cheque to Mr
Crawley. She says so herself. So that makes Mr Crawley quite innocent. I
am so glad.'
'But isn't it odd he didn't say so?' said Miss Prettyman.
'Nevertheless, it's true.' said Mary.
'Perhaps he forgot,' said Anne Prettyman.
'Men don't forget such things as that,' said the elder sister.
'I really do think that Mr Crawley could forget anything,' said the
younger sister.
'You may be sure it's true,' said Mary Walker, 'because papa said so.'
'If he said so, it must be true,' said Miss Prettyman; 'and I am
rejoiced. I really am rejoiced. Poor man! Poor ill-used man! And nobody
has ever believed that he has really been guilty, even though they may
have thought that he spent the money without any proper right to it. And
now he will get off. But, dear me, Mary, Mr Smithe told me yesterday
that he had already given up his living, and that Mr Spooner, the minor
canon, was trying to get it from the dean. But that was because Mr
Spooner and Mrs Proudie had quarrelled; and as Mrs Proudie is gone, Mr
Spooner very likely won't want to move now.'
'They'll never go and put anybody in Hogglestock, Annabella, over Mr
Crawley's head,' said Anne.
'I didn't say that they would. Surely I may be allowed to repeat what I
hear, like another person, without being snapped up.'
'I didn't mean to snap you up, Annabella.'
'You're always snapping me up. But if this is true, I cannot say how
glad I am. My poor Grace! Now, I suppose, there will be no difficulty,
and Grace will become a great lady.' Then they discussed very minutely
the chances of Grace Crawley's promotion.
John Walker, Mr Winthrop, and several others of the chosen spirits of
Silverbridge, were playing whist at a provincial club, which had
established itself in the town, when the news was brought to them.
Though Mr Winthrop was the partner of the great Walker, and though John
Walker was the great man's son, I fear that the news reached their ears
in but an underhand sort of way. As for the great man himself, he never
went near the club, preferring his slippers and tea at home. The
Walkerian groom, rushing up the street to the 'George and Vulture',
paused a moment to tell his tidings to the club porter; from the club
porter it was whispered respectfully to the Silverbridge apothecary,
who, by special grace, was a member of the club--and was by him repeated
with much cautious solemnity over the card-table. 'Who told you that,
Balsam?' said John Walker, throwing down his cards.
'I've just heard it,' said Balsam.
'I don't believe it,' said John.
'I shouldn't wonder if it's true,' said Winthrop. 'I always said that
something would turn up.'
'Will you bet three to one he is not found guilty?' said John Walker.
'Done,' said Winthrop; 'in pounds.' That morning the odds in the club
against the event had been only two to one. But as the matter was
discussed, the men in the club began to believe the tidings, and before
he went home, John Walker would have been glad to hedge his bet on any
terms. After he had spoken to his father, he gave his money up for lost.
But Mr Walker--the great Walker--had more to do that night before his
son came home from the club. He and Mr Toogood agreed that it would be
right that they should see Dr Tempest at once, and they went over
together to the rectory. It was past ten at this time, and they found
the doctor almost in the act of putting out the candles for the night.
'I could not but come to you, doctor,' said Mr Walker, 'with the news
that my friend has brought. Mrs Arabin gave the cheque to Crawley. Here
is a telegram from her saying so.' And the telegram was handed to the
doctor.
He stood perfectly silent for a few minutes, reading it over and over
again. 'I see it all,' he said, when he spoke at last. 'I see it all
now; and I must own I was never before so much puzzled in my life.'
'I own I can't see why she should have given him Mr Soames's cheque,'
said Mr Walker.
'I can't say where she got it, and I own I don't much care,' said Dr
Tempest. 'But I don't doubt but what she gave him without telling the
dean, and that Crawley thought it came from the dean. I'm very glad. I
am, indeed, very glad. I do not know that I ever pitied a man so much in
my life as I have pitied Mr Crawley.'
'It must have been a hard case when it has moved him,' said Mr Walker to
Toogood as they left the clergyman's house; and then the Silverbridge
attorney saw the attorney from London home to the inn.
It was the general opinion at Silverbridge that the news from Venice
ought to be communicated to the Crawleys by Major Grantly. Mary Walker
had expressed this opinion very strongly, and her mother had agreed with
her. Miss Prettyman also felt that poetical justice, or, at least, the
romance of justice, demanded this; and, as she told her sister Anne
after Mary Walker left her, she was of the opinion that such an
arrangement might tend to make things safe. 'I do think he is an honest
man and a fine fellow,' said Miss Prettyman; 'but, my dear, you know
what the proverb says, "There's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip".' Miss
Prettyman thought than anything which might be done to prevent a slip
ought to be done. The idea that the pleasant task of taking the news out
to Hogglestock ought to be confided to Major Grantly was very general;
but then Mr Walker was of the opinion that the news ought not to be
taken to Hogglestock at all till something more certain than the
telegram had reached them. Early on the following morning the two
lawyers should go over at once to Barchester, and that the Silverbridge
lawyer should see Major Grantly. Mr Toogood was still of the opinion
that with due diligence something might yet be learned as to the cheque
by inquiry among the denizens of 'The Dragon of Wantly'; and his opinion
to this effect was stronger than ever when he learned from Mr Walker
that the 'Dragon of Wantly' belonged to Mrs Arabin.
Mr Walker, after breakfast, had himself driven up in his open carriage
to Cosby Lodge, and, as he entered the gates, observed that the
auctioneer's bills as to the sale had been pulled down. The Mr Walkers
of the world know everything, and our Mr Walker had quite understood
that the major was leaving Cosby Lodge because of some misunderstanding
with his father. The exact nature of the misunderstanding he did not
know, even though he was Mr Walker, but had little doubt that it
referred in some to Grace Crawley. It the archdeacon's objection to
Grace arose from the imputation against the father, that objection would
now be removed, but the abolition of the posters could not as yet have
been owing to any such cause as that. Mr Walker found the major at the
gate of the farmyard attached to Cosby Lodge, and perceived that at that
very moment he was engaged in superintending the abolition of sundry
other auctioneer's bills from sundry posts. 'What is all this about?'
said Mr Walker, greeting the major. 'Is there to be no sale after all?'
'It has been postponed,' said the major.
'Postponed for good, I hope? Bill to be read again this day six
months!' said Mr Walker.
'I rather think not. But circumstances have induced me to have to put
it off.'
Mr Walker had got out of the carriage, and had taken Major Grantly
aside. 'Just come a little further,' he said; 'I've something special to
tell you. News reached me last night which will clear Mr Crawley
altogether. We know now where he got the cheque.'
'You don't tell me so!'
'Yes, I do. And though the news had reached us in such a way that we
cannot act upon it till it's confirmed, I do not in the least doubt it.'
'And how did he get it?'
'You cannot guess?'
'Not in the least,' said the major; 'unless, after all, Soames gave it
to him.'
'Soames did not give it to him, but Mrs Arabin did.'
'Mrs Arabin?'
'Yes, Mrs Arabin.'
'Not the dean?'
'No, not the dean. What we know is this, that your aunt has telegraphed
to Crawley's cousin, Toogood, to say that she gave Crawley the cheque,
and that she has written to your father about it at length. We do not
like to tell Crawley till that letter has been received. It is so easy,
you know, to misunderstand a telegram, and the wrong copying of a word
may make such a mistake!'
'When was it received?'
'Toogood received it in London only yesterday morning. Your father will
not get his letter, as I calculate, till the day after tomorrow. But,
perhaps, you had better go over to see him, and prepare him for it.
Toogood has gone to Barchester this morning.' To this proposition
Grantly made no immediate answer. He could not but remember the terms on
which he had left his father; and though he had, most unwillingly,
pulled down the auctioneer's bills, in compliance with his mother's last
prayer to him--and, indeed, had angrily told the auctioneer to send him
his bill when the auctioneer had demurred to these proceedings--
nevertheless he was hardly prepared to discuss the matter of Mr Crawley
with his father in pleasant words--in words which should be full of
rejoicing. It was a great thing for him, Henry Grantly, that Mr Crawley
should be innocent, and he did rejoice; but he had intended his father
to understand that he meant to persevere, whether Mr Crawley were
innocent or guilty, and thus he would now lose an opportunity for
establishing his obstinacy--an opportunity which had not been without a
charm for him. He must console himself as best he might with the
returning prospect of assured prosperity, and with his renewed hopes as
to the Plumstead foxes! 'We think, major, that when the time comes you
ought to be the bearer of the news to Hogglestock,' said Mr Walker. Then
the major did undertake to convey the news to Hogglestock, but he made
no promise as to going over to Plumstead.
CHAPTER LXXII
MR TOOGOOD AT 'THE DRAGON OF WANTLY'
In accordance with his arrangement with Mr Walker, Mr Toogood went over
to Barchester early in the morning and put himself up at 'The Dragon of
Wantly'. He now knew the following facts: that Mr Soames, when he lost
the cheque, had had with him one of the servants from that inn--that the
man who had been with Mr Soames had gone to New Zealand--that the cheque
had found its way into the hands of Mrs Arabin, and that Mrs Arabin was
the owner of the inn in question. So much he believed to be within his
knowledge, and if his knowledge should prove to be correct, his work
would be done as far as Mr Crawley was concerned. If Mr Crawley had not
stolen the cheque, and if that could be proved, it would be a question
of no great moment to Mr Toogood who had stolen it. But he was a
sportsman in his own line who liked to account for his own fox. As he
was down at Barchester, he thought that he might as well learn how the
cheque had got into Mrs Arabin's hands. No doubt that for her own
possession of it she would be able to account on her return. But it
might be well that he should be prepared with any small circumstantial
details which he might be able to pick up at the inn.
He reached Barchester before breakfast, and in ordering his tea and
toast, reminded the old waiter with the dirty towel of his former
acquaintance with him. 'I remember you, sir,' said the old waiter. 'I
remember you very well. You was asking questions about the cheque which
Mr Soames lost before Christmas.' Mr Toogood certainly had asked one
question on the subject. He had inquired whether a certain man who had
gone to New Zealand had been the post-boy who accompanied Mr Soames when
the cheque was lost; and the waiter had professed to know nothing about
Mr Soames or the cheque. He now perceived at once that the gist of the
question had remained in the old man's mind, and that he was recognised
as being in some way connected with the lost money.
'Did I? Ah, yes; I think I did. And I think you told me that he was
the man?'
'No, sir; I never told you that.'
'Then you told me he wasn't.'
'Nor I didn't tell you that neither,' said the waiter angrily.
'Then what the devil did you tell me?' To this further question the
waiter sulkily declined to give any answer, and soon afterwards left the
room. Toogood, as soon as he had done his breakfast, rang the bell, and
the same man appeared. 'Will you tell Mr Stringer that I should be glad
to see him if he's disengaged,' said Mr Toogood. 'I know he's bad with
the gout, and therefore if he'll allow me, I'll go to him instead of his
coming to me.' Mr Stringer was the landlord of the inn. The waiter
hesitated a moment, and then declared that to the best of his belief his
master was not down. He would go and see. Toogood, however, would not
wait for that; but rising quickly and passing the waiter, crossed the
hall from the coffee-room, and entered what was called the bar. The bar
was a small room connected with the hall by a large open window, at
which orders for rooms were given and cash was paid, and glasses of beer
were consumed--and a good deal of miscellaneous conversation was carried
on. The barmaid was here at the window, and there was also, in the
corner of the room, a man at a desk with a red nose. Toogood knew that
the man at the desk with the red nose was Mr Stringer's clerk. So much
he had learned in his former rummaging about the inn. And he also
remembered at this moment that he had observed the man with the red nose
standing under a narrow archway in the close as he was coming out of the
deanery, on the occasion of his visit to Mr Harding. It had not occurred
to him then that the man with the red nose was watching him, but it did
occur to him now that the man with the red nose had been there, under
the arch, with the express purpose of watching him on that occasion. Mr
Toogood passed quickly through the bar into the inner parlour, in which
was sitting Mr Stringer, the landlord, propped among his cushions.
Toogood, as he entered the hotel, had seen Mr Stringer so placed,
through the two doors, which at that moment had both happened to be
open. He knew therefore that his old friend the waiter had not been
quite true to him in suggesting that his master was not as yet down. As
Toogood cast a glance of his eye on the man with the red nose, he told
himself the old story of the apparition under the archway.
'Mr Stringer,' said Mr Toogood to the landlord, 'I hope I'm not
intruding.'
'Oh dear, no sir,' said the forlorn man. 'Nobody ever intrudes coming
in here. I'm always happy to see gentlemen--only, mostly, I'm so bad
with the gout.'
'Have you got a sharp touch of it now, Mr Stringer?'
'Not just today, sir. I've been a little easier since Saturday. The
worst of this burst is over. But Lord bless you, sir, it don't leave
me--not for a single fortnight at a time, now; it don't. And it ain't
what I drink, nor it ain't what I eat.'
'Constitutional, I suppose?' said Toogood.
'Look here, sir'; and Stringer showed his visitor the chalk stones in
all his knuckles. 'They say I'm a mass of chalk. I sometimes think
they'll break me up to mark the scores behind my own door with.' And Mr
Stringer laughed at his own wit.
Mr Toogood laughed too. He laughed loud and cheerily. And then he
asked a sudden question, keeping his eye as he did so upon a little
square open window which communicated between the landlord's private
room and the bar. Through this small aperture he could see as he stood a
portion of the hat worn by the man with the red nose. Since he had been
in the room with the landlord, the man with the red nose had moved his
head twice, on each occasion drawing himself closer into his corner; but
Mr Toogood, by moving also, had still contrived to keep a morsel of that
hat in sight. He laughed cheerily at the landlord's joke, and then he
asked a sudden question--looking at the morsel of that hat as he did so.
'Mr Stringer,' said he, 'how do you pay your rent, and to whom do you
pay it?' There was immediately a jerk in the hat, and then it
disappeared. Toogood, stepping to the open door, saw that the red-nosed
clerk had taken his hat off and was very busy at his accounts.
'How do I pay my rent?' said Mr Stringer, the landlord. 'Well, sir,
since this cursed gout has been so bad, it's hard enough to pay it at
all sometimes. You ain't here to look for it, sir, are you?'
'Not I,' said Toogood. 'It was only a chance question.' He felt that
he had nothing more to do with Mr Stringer, the landlord. Mr Stringer,
the landlord, knew nothing about Mr Soames's cheque. 'What's the name of
your clerk?' said he.
'The name of my clerk?' said Mr Stringer. 'Why do you want to know the
name of my clerk?'
'Does he ever pay the rent for you?'
'Well, yes; he does, at times. He pays it into the bank for the lady as
owns this house. Is there any reason for you asking these questions,
sir. It isn't usual, you know, for a stranger, sir.'
Toogood the whole of this time was standing with his eye upon the
red-nosed man, and the red-nosed man could not move. The red-nosed man
heard all the questions and the landlord's answers, and could not even
pretend that he did not hear them. 'I am my cousin's clerk,' said he,
putting on his hat, and coming up to Mr Toogood with a swagger. 'My name
is Dan Stringer, and I'm Mr John Stringer's cousin. I've lived with Mr
John Stringer for twelve year and more, and I'm a'most as well known in
Barchester as himself. Have you anything to say to me, sir?'
'Well, yes; I have,' said Toogood.
'I believe you're the one of them attorneys from London?' said Mr Dan
Stringer.
'That's true. I am an attorney from London.'
'I hope there's nothing wrong?' said the gouty man, trying to get off
his chair, but not succeeding. 'If there is anything wronger than usual,
Dan, do tell me. Is there anything wrong, sir?' and the landlord
appealed piteously to Mr Toogood.
'Never you mind, John,' said Dan. 'You keep yourself quiet, and don't
answer none of his questions. He's one of them low sort, he is. I know
him. I knowed him for what he is directly I saw him. Ferreting
about--that's his game; to see if there's anything to be got.'
'But what is he ferreting for?' said Mr John Stringer.
'I'm ferreting for Mr Soames's cheque for twenty pounds,' said Mr
Toogood.
'That's the cheque the parson stole,' said Dan Stringer. 'He's to be
tried for it at the 'sizes.'
'You've heard about Mr Soames and his cheque, and about Mr Crawley, I
daresay?' said Mr Toogood.
'I've heard a deal about them,' said the landlord.
'And so, I daresay, have you?' said Toogood, turning to Dan Stringer.
But Dan Stringer did not seem inclined to carry on the conversation any
further. When he was hardly pressed, he declared that he just had heard
that there was some parson in trouble about a sum of money; but that he
knew no more about it than that. He didn't know whether it was a cheque
or a note that the parson had taken, and had never been sufficiently
interested in the matter to make any inquiry.
'But you've just said that Mr Soames's cheque was the cheque the parson
stole,' said the astonished landlord, turning with open eyes, upon his
cousin.
'You be blowed,' said Dan Stringer, the clerk, to Mr John Stringer, the
landlord; and then walked out of the room back to the bar.
'I understand nothing about it--nothing at all,' said the gouty man.
'I understand nearly all about it,' said Mr Toogood, following the
red-nosed clerk. There was no necessity that he should trouble the
landlord any further. He left the room, and went through the bar, and as
he passed out along the hall, he found Dan Stringer with his hat on
talking to the waiter. The waiter immediately pulled himself up, and
adjusted his dirty napkin under his arm, after the fashion of waiters,
and showed that he intended to be civil to the customers of the house.
But he of the red nose cocked his hat, and looked with insolence at Mr
Toogood, and defied him. 'There's nothing I do hate so much as them
low-bred Old Bailey attorneys,' said Mr Dan Stringer to the waiter, in a
voice intended to reach Mr Toogood's ears. Then Mr Toogood told himself
that Dan Stringer was not the thief himself, and that it might be very
difficult to prove that Dan had even been the receiver of stolen goods.
He had, however, no doubt in his own mind but that such was the case.
He first went to the police office, and there explained his business.
Nobody at the police office pretended to forget Mr Soames's cheque, or
Mr Crawley's position. The constable went so far as to swear that there
wasn't a man, woman, or child in all Barchester who was not talking of
Mr Crawley at that present moment. Then Mr Toogood went with the
constable to the private house of the mayor, and had a little
conversation with the mayor. 'Not guilty!' said the mayor, with
incredulity, when he first heard the news about Crawley. But when he
heard Mr Toogood's story, or as much of it as it was necessary that he
should hear, he yielded reluctantly. 'Dear, dear!' he said. 'I'd have
bet anything 'twas he who stole it.' And after that he mayor was quite
sad. Only let us think what a comfortable excitement it would create
throughout England if it was surmised that an archbishop had forged a
deed; and how England would lose when it was discovered that the
archbishop was innocent! As the archbishop and his forgery would be to
England, so was Mr Crawley and the cheque for twenty pounds to
Barchester and its mayor. Nevertheless, the mayor promised his
assistance to Mr Toogood.
Mr Toogood, still neglecting his red-nosed friend, went next to the
deanery, hoping that he might again see Mr Harding. Mr Harding was, he
was told, too ill to be seen. Mr Harding, Mrs Baxter said, could never
be seen now by strangers, nor yet by friends, unless they were very old
friends. 'There's been a deal of change since you were here last, sire.
I remember you coming, sir. You were talking to Mr Harding about the
poor clergyman as is to be tried.' He did not stop to tell Mrs Baxter
the whole story of Mr Crawley's innocence; but having learned that a
message had been received to say that Mrs Arabin would be home on the
next Tuesday--this being Friday--he took his leave of Mrs Baxter. His
next visit was to Mr Soames, who lived three miles out in the country.
He found it very difficult to convince Mr Soames. Mr Soames was more
staunch in his belief of Mr Crawley's guilt than anyone whom Toogood had
yet encountered. 'I never took the cheque out of his house,' said Mr
Soames. 'But you have not stated that on oath,' said Mr Toogood. 'No,'
rejoined the other; 'and I never will. I can't swear to it; but yet I'm
sure of it.' He acknowledged that he had been driven by a man named
Scuttle, and that Scuttle might have picked up the cheque, if it had
been dropped in the gig. But the cheque had not been dropped in the gig.
The cheque had been dropped in Mr Crawley's house. 'Why did he say then
that I paid it to him?' said Mr Soames, when Mr Toogood spoke
confidently of Mr Crawley's innocence. 'Ah, why indeed?' answered
Toogood. 'If he had not been fool enough to do that, we should have been
saved all this trouble. All the same, he did not steal your money, Mr
Soames; and Jem Scuttle did steal it. Unfortunately, Jem Scuttle is in
New Zealand by this time.' 'Of course, it is possible,' said Mr Soames,
as he bowed Mr Toogood out. Mr Soames did not like Mr Toogood.
That evening a gentleman with a red nose asked at the Barchester station
for a second-class ticket for London by the up night-mail train. He was
well-known at the station, and the station-master made some little
inquiry. 'All the way to London tonight, Mr Stringer?' he said.
'Yes--all the way,' said the red-nosed man sulkily.
'I don't think you'd better go up to London tonight, Mr Stringer,' said
a tall man, stepping out of the door of the booking-office. 'I think
you'd better come back with me to Barchester. I do indeed.' There was
some little argument on the occasion; but the stranger, who was a
detective policeman, carried his point, and Mr Dan Stringer did return
to Barchester.
CHAPTER LXXIII
THERE IS COMFORT AT PLUMSTEAD
Henry Grantly had written the following short letter to Mrs Grantly when
he had made up his mind to pull down the auctioneer's bills. 'DEAR
MOTHER--I have postponed the sale, not liking to refuse you anything. As
far as I can see, I shall be forced to leave Cosby Lodge, as I certainly
shall do all I can to make Grace Crawley my wife. I say this that there
may be no misunderstanding with my father. The auctioneer has promised
to have the bills removed.--Your affectionate son, HENRY GRANTLY'
This had been written by the major on the Friday before Mr Walker had
brought up to him the tidings of Mr Toogood and Mrs Arabin's solution of
the Crawley difficulty; but it did not reach Plumstead till the
following morning. Mrs Grantly immediately took the glad news about the
sale to her husband--not of course showing him the letter, being far too
wise for that, and giving him credit for being too wise to ask for it.
'Henry has arranged with the auctioneer,' she said joyfully; 'and the
bills have been all pulled down.'
'How do you know?'
'I've just heard from him. He has told me so. Come, my dear, let me
have the pleasure of hearing you say that things shall be pleasant again
between you and him. He has yielded.'
'I don't see much yielding in it.'
'He has done what you wanted. What more can he do?'
'I want him to come over here, and take an interest in things, and not
treat me as though I were a nobody.' Within an hour of this the major
had arrived at Plumstead, laden with the story of Mrs Arabin and the
cheque, and of Mr Crawley's innocence--laden not only with such tidings
as he had received from Mr Walker, but also with further details, which
had received from Mr Toogood. For he had come through Barchester, and
had seen Mr Toogood on his way. This was on the Saturday morning, and he
had breakfasted with Mr Toogood at 'The Dragon of Wantly'. Mr Toogood
had told him of his suspicions--how the red-nosed man had been stopped
and had been summoned as a witness for Mr Crawley's trial--and how he
was now under surveillance of the police. Grantly had not cared very
much about the red-nosed man, confining his present solicitude to the
question whether Grace Crawley's father would certainly be shown to have
been innocent of the theft. 'There's not a doubt about it, major,' said
Mr Toogood; 'no a doubt on earth. But we'd better be a little quiet till
your aunt comes home--just a little quiet.' In spite of his desire for
quiescence Mr Toogood consented to a revelation being at once made to
the archdeacon and Mrs Grantly. 'And I'll tell you what, major; as soon
as ever Mrs Arabin is here, and has given us her own word to act on, you
and I will go over to Hogglestock and astonish them. I should like to go
myself, because, you see, Mrs Crawley is my cousin, and we have taken a
little trouble about this matter.' To this the major assented; but he
altogether declined to assist in Mr Toogood's speculations respecting
the unfortunate Dan Stringer. It was agreed between them that for the
present no visit should be made to the palace, as it was thought that Mr
Thumble had better be allowed to go to Hogglestock duties on the next
Sunday. As matters went, however, Mr Thumble did not do so. He had paid
his last visit to Hogglestock.
It may be as well to explain here that the unfortunate Mr Snapper was
constrained to go out to Hogglestock on the Sunday which was now
approaching--which fell out as follows. It might be all very well for Mr
Toogood to arrange that he would not tell this person or that person of
the news which he had brought down from London; but as he had told the
police at Barchester, of course the tale found its way to the palace. Mr
Thumble heard it, and having come by this time thoroughly to hate
Hogglestock and all that belonged to it, he pleaded to Mr Snapper that
this report offered ample reason why he need not again visit that
detested parish. Mr Snapper did not see it in the same light. 'You may
be sure Mr Crawley will not get into the pulpit after his resignation,
Mr Thumble.'
'His resignation means nothing,' said Thumble.
'It means a great deal,' said Snapper; 'and the duties must be provided
for.'
'I won't provide for them,' said Thumble; 'and so you may tell the
bishop.' In these days Mr Thumble was very angry with the bishop, for
the bishop had not yet seen him since the death of Mrs Proudie.
Mr Snapper had no alternative but to go to the bishop. The bishop in
these days was very mild to those whom he saw, given but to few words,
and a little astray--as though he had had one of his limbs cut off--as
Mr Snapper expressed it to Mrs Snapper. 'I shouldn't wonder if he felt
as though all his limbs were cut off,' said Mrs Snapper; 'you must give
him time, and he'll come round by-and-by.' I am inclined to think that
Mrs Snapper's opinion of the bishop's feelings and condition was
correct. In his difficulty respecting Hogglestock and Mr Thumble, Mr
Snapper went to the bishop, and spoke perhaps a little too harshly of Mr
Thumble.
'I think, upon the whole, Snapper, that you had better go yourself,'
said the bishop.
'Do you think so, my lord?' said Snapper. 'It will be inconvenient.'
'Everything is inconvenient; but you'd better go. And look here,
Snapper, if I were you, I wouldn't say anything out at Hogglestock about
the cheque. We don't know what it may come to yet.' Mr Snapper, with a
heavy heart, left his patron, not at all liking the task that was before
him. But his wife encouraged him to be obedient. He was the owner of a
one-horse carriage, and the work was not, therefore, so hard to him as
it would have been and had been to poor Mr Thumble. And, moreover, his
wife promised to go with him. Mr Snapper and Mrs Snapper did go over to
Hogglestock, and the duty was done. Mrs Snapper spoke a word or two to
Mrs Crawley, and Mr Snapper spoke a word or two to Mr Crawley; but not a
word was said about the news as to Mr Soames's cheque, which was now
almost current in Barchester. Indeed, no whisper about it had as yet
reached Hogglestock.
'One word with you, reverend sir,' said Mr Crawley to the chaplain, as
the latter was coming out of the church, 'as to the parish work, sir,
during the week--I should be glad if you would favour me with your
opinion.'
'About what Mr Crawley?'
'Whether you think that I may be allowed, without scandal, to visit the
sick--and to give instruction in the school.'
'Surely--surely, Mr Crawley. Why not?'
'Mr Thumble gave me to understand that the bishop was very urgent that I
should interfere in no way in the ministrations of the parish. Twice he
did enjoin on me that I should not interfere--unnecessarily, as it
seemed to me.'
'Quite unnecessary,' said Mr Snapper. 'And the bishop will be obliged
to you, Mr Crawley, if you'll just see that things go on all straight.'
'I wish it were possible to know with accuracy what his idea of
straightness is,' said Mr Crawley to his wife. 'It may be that things
are straight to him when they are buried as it were out of sight, and
put away without trouble. I hope it be not so with the bishop.' When he
went into his school and remembered--as he did remember through every
minute of his teaching--that he was to receive no portion of the poor
stipend which was allotted for the clerical duties of the parish, he
told himself that there was gross injustice in the way in which things
were being made straight at Hogglestock.
But we must go back to the major and the archdeacon at Plumstead --in
which comfortable parish things were generally made straight more easily
than at Hogglestock. Henry Grantly went over from Barchester to
Plumstead in a gig from the 'The Dragon', and made his way at once into
his father's study. The archdeacon was seated there with sundry
manuscripts before him, and with one half-finished manuscript--as was
his wont on every Saturday morning. 'Hallo, Harry,' he said. 'I didn't
expect you in the least.' It was barely an hour since he had told Mrs
Grantly that his complaint against his son was that he wouldn't come and
make himself comfortable at the rectory.
'Father,' said he, giving the archdeacon his hand, 'you have heard
nothing yet about Mr Crawley?'
'No,' said the archdeacon, jumping up; 'nothing new;--what is it?' Many
ideas about Mr Crawley at that moment flitted across the archdeacon's
mind. Could it be that the unfortunate man had committed suicide,
overcome by his troubles?
'It has all come out. He got the cheque from my aunt.'
'From your aunt Eleanor?'
'Yes; from my aunt Eleanor. She has telegraphed over from Venice to say
that she gave the identical cheque to Crawley. That is all we know at
present--except that she has written an account of the matter to you,
and that she will be here herself as quick as she can come.'
'Who got the message, Henry?'
'Crawley's lawyer--a fellow named Toogood, a cousin of his wife's--a
very decent fellow,' added the major, remembering how necessary it was
that he should reconcile his father to all the Crawley belongings. 'He's
to be over here on Monday, and then will arrange what is to be done.'
'Done in what way, Henry?'
'There's a great deal to be done yet. Crawley does not know himself at
this moment how the cheque got into his hands. He must be told and
something must be settled about the living. They've taken the living
away from him among them. And then the indictment must be quashed, or
something of that kind done. Toogood has got hold of the scoundrel at
Barchester who really stole the cheque from Soames;--or thinks he has.
It's that Dan Stringer.'
'He's got hold of a regular scamp, then. I never knew any good of Dan
Stringer,' said the archdeacon.
Then Mrs Grantly was told, and the whole story was repeated again, with
many expressions of commiseration in reference to all the Crawleys. The
archdeacon did not join in these at first, being rather shy on that
head. It was very hard for him to have to speak to his son about the
Crawleys as though they were people in all respects estimable and
well-conducted, and satisfactory. Mrs Grantly understood this so well,
that every now and then she said some half-laughing word respecting Mr
Crawley's peculiarities, feeling that in this way she might ease her
husband's difficulties. 'He must be the oddest man that ever lived,'
said Mrs Grantly, 'not to have known where he got the cheque.' The
archdeacon shook his head, and rubbed his hands as he walked about the
room. 'I suppose too much learning has upset him,' said the archdeacon.
'They say he's not very good at talking English, but put him in Greek
and he never stops.'
The archdeacon was perfectly aware that he had to admit Mr Crawley to
his goodwill, and that as for Grace Crawley--it was essentially
necessary that she should be admitted to his heart of hearts. He had
promised as much. It must be acknowledged that Archdeacon Grantly always
kept his promises, and especially such promises as these. And indeed it
was the nature of the man that when he had been angry with those he
loved, he should be unhappy till he had found some escape from his
anger. He could not endure to have to own to himself that he had been
wrong, but he could be content with a very incomplete recognition of his
having been in the right. The posters had been pulled down and Mr
Crawley, as he was now told, had not stolen the cheque. That was
sufficient. If his son would only drink a glass or two of wine with him
comfortably, and talk dutifully about the Plumstead foxes, all should be
held to be right, and Grace Crawley should be received with lavish
paternal embraces. The archdeacon had kissed Grace once, and he felt
that he could do so again without an unpleasant strain upon his
feelings.
'Say something to your father about the property after dinner,' said Mrs
Grantly to her son when they were alone together.
'About what property?'
'About this property, or any property; you know what I mean;--something
to show that you are interested about his affairs. He is doing the best
he can to make things right.' After dinner, over the claret, Mr Thorne's
terrible sin in reference to the trapping of foxes was accordingly again
brought up, and the archdeacon became beautifully irate, and expressed
his animosity --which he did not in the least feel--against an old
friend with an energy which would have delighted his wife, if she could
have heard him. 'I shall tell Thorne my mind, certainly. He and I are
very old friends; we have known each other all our lives; but I cannot
put up with this kind of thing--and I will not. It's all because he's
afraid of his own gamekeeper.' And yet the archdeacon had never ridden
after a fox in his life, and never meant to do so; nor had in truth been
always so very anxious that foxes should be found in his covers. That
fox which had been so fortunately trapped just outside the Plumstead
property afforded a most pleasant escape for the steam of his anger.
When he began to talk to his wife about Mr Thorne's wicked gamekeeper,
she was so sure that all was right, that she said a word of her extreme
desire to see Grace Crawley.
'If he's to marry her, we might as well have her over here,' said the
archdeacon.
'That's just what I was thinking,' said Mrs Grantly. And thus things at
the rectory got themselves arranged.
On the Sunday morning the expected letter from Venice came to hand, and
was read on that morning very anxiously, not only by Mrs Grantly and the
major, but by the archdeacon also, in spite of the sanctity of the day.
Indeed the archdeacon had been very stoutly anti-sabbatarial when the
question of stopping the Sunday post to Plumstead had been mooted in the
village, giving those who on that occasion were the special friends of
the postman to understand that he considered them to be numbskulls, and
little better than idiots. The postman, finding the parson to be against
him, had seen that there was no chance for him, and had allowed the
matter to drop. Mrs Arabin's letter was long and eager, and full of
repetitions, but it did explain clearly to him the exact manner in which
the cheque had found its way into Mr Crawley's hand. 'Francis came up to
me,' she said in her letter--Francis being her husband, the dean--'and
asked me for the money, which I had promised to make up in a packet. The
packet was not ready, and he would not wait, declaring that Mr Crawley
was in such a flurry that he did not like to leave him. I was therefore
to bring it down to the door. I went to my desk, and thinking that I
could spare the twenty pounds as well as the fifty, I put the cheque
into the envelope, together with the notes, and handed the packet to
Francis at the door. I think I told Francis afterwards that I put
seventy pounds into the envelope, instead of fifty, but of this I will
not be sure. At any rate Mr Crawley got Mr Soames's cheque from me.'
These last words she underscored, and then went on to explain how the
cheque had been paid to her a short time before by Dan Stringer.
'Then Toogood was right about the fellow,' said the archdeacon.
'I hope they'll hang him,' said Mrs Grantly. 'He must have known all
the time what dreadful misery he was bringing upon this unfortunate
family.'
'I don't suppose Dan Stringer cared much about that,' said the major.
'Not a straw,' said the archdeacon, and then all hurried off to church;
and the archdeacon preached the sermon in the fabrication of which he
had been interrupted by his son, and which therefore barely enabled him
to turn a quarter of an hour from the giving out of his text. It was his
constant practice to preach for a full twenty minutes.
As Barchester lay on the direct road from Plumstead to Hogglestock, it
was thought well that word should be sent to Mr Toogood, desiring him
not to come out to Plumstead on the Monday morning. Major Grantly
proposed to call for him at the 'Dragon', and to take him from thence to
Hogglestock. 'You had better take your mother's horses all through,'
said the archdeacon. The distance was very nearly twenty miles, and it
was felt by both the mother and the son, that the archdeacon must be in
a good humour when he made such a proposition as that. It was not often
that the rectory carriage-horses were allowed to make long journeys. A
run into Barchester and back, which was altogether under ten miles, was
generally the extent of their work. 'I meant to have posted from
Barchester,' said the major. 'You may as well take the horses through,'
said the archdeacon. 'Your mother will not want them. And I suppose you
might as well bring your friend Toogood back to dinner. We'll give him a
bed.'
'He must be a good sort of man,' said Mrs Grantly; 'for I suppose he has
done this all for love?'
'Yes; and spent a lot of money out of his own pocket too!' said the
major enthusiastically. 'And the joke of it is, that he has been
defending Crawley in Crawley's teeth. Mr Crawley had refused to employ
counsel; but Toogood had made up his mind to have a barrister, on
purpose that there might be a fuss about it in court. He thought that it
would tell with the jury in Crawley's favour.'
'Bring him here, and we'll hear all about that from himself,' said the
archdeacon. The major, before he started, told his mother that he should
call at Framley Parsonage on his way back; but he said nothing on this
subject to his father.
'I'll write to her in a day or two,' said Mrs Grantly, 'and we'll have
things settled pleasantly.'
CHAPTER LXXIV
THE CRAWLEYS ARE INFORMED
Major Grantly made an early start, knowing that he had a long day's work
before him. He had written over-night to Mr Toogood, naming the hour at
which he would reach 'The Dragon', and was there punctual to the moment.
When the attorney came out and got into the open carriage, while the
groom held the steps for him, it was plain to see that the respect in
which he was held at 'The Dragon' was greatly increased. It was already
known that he was going to Plumstead that night, and it was partly
understood that he was engaged with the Grantly and Arabin faction in
defending Mr Crawley the clergyman against the Proudie faction. Dan
Stringer, who was still at the inn, as he saw his enemy get into the
Plumstead carriage, felt himself to be one of the palace party, and felt
that if Mrs Proudie had only lived till after the assizes all this heavy
trouble would not have befallen him. The waiter with the dirty napkin
stood at the door and bowed, thinking perhaps that as the Proudie party
was going down in Barchester, it might be as well to be civil to Mr
Toogood. The days of the Stringers were probably drawing to a close at
the 'The Dragon of Wantly', and there was no knowing who might be the
new landlord.
Henry Grantly and the lawyer found very little to say to each other on
their long way out to Hogglestock. They were thinking, probably, much of
the coming interview, and hardly knew how to express their thoughts to
each other. 'I will not take the carriage up to the house,' said the
major, as there were entering the parish of Hogglestock; 'particularly
as the man must feed the horses.' So they got out of a farmhouse about
half a mile from the church, where the offence of the carriage and the
livery-servant would be well out of Mr Crawley's sight, and from thence
walked towards the parsonage. The church, and the school close to it,
lay on their way, and as they passed by the school door they heard
voices within. 'I'll bet twopence he's there,' said Toogood. 'They tell
me he's always either in one shop or the other. I'll slip in and bring
him out.' Mr Toogood had assumed a comfortable air, as though the day's
work was to be good pastime, and even made occasional attempts at
drollery. He had had his jokes about Dan Stringer, and had attempted to
describe the absurdities of Mr Crawley's visit to Bedford Row. All this
would have angered the major, had he not seen that it was assumed to
cover something below of which Mr Toogood was a little ashamed, but of
which, as the major thought, Mr Toogood had no cause to be ashamed.
When, therefore, Toogood proposed to go into the school and bring Mr
Crawley out, as though the telling of their story would be the easiest
thing in the world, the major did not stop him. Indeed he had no plan of
his own ready. His mind was too intent on the tragedy which had
occurred, and which was now to be brought to a close, to enable him to
form any plan as to the best way of getting up the last scene. So Mr
Toogood, with quick and easy steps, entered the school, leaving the
major still standing in the road. Mr Crawley was in the school--as also
was Jane Crawley. 'So here you are,' said Toogood. 'That's fortunate. I
hope I find you pretty well?'
'If I am not mistaken in the identity, my wife's relative, Mr Toogood?'
said Mr Crawley, stepping down from his humble desk.
'Just so, my friend,' said Toogood, with his hand extended, 'just so;
and there's another gentleman outside who wants to have a word with you.
Perhaps you won't mind stepping out. These are the young
Hogglestockians; are they?'
The young Hogglestockians stared at him, and so did Jane. Jane, who had
before heard of him, did not like him at first sight, seeing that her
father was clearly displeased by the tone of the visitor's address. Mr
Crawley was displeased. There was a familiarity about Mr Toogood which
made him sore, as having been exhibited before his pupils. 'If you will
be pleased to step out, sir, I will follow you,' he said, waving his
hand towards the door. 'Jane, my dear, if you will remain with the
children I will return to you presently. Bobby Studge has failed in
saying his Belief. You had better set him on again from the beginning.
Now, Mr Toogood.' And again he waved his hand towards the door.
'So that's my young cousin, is it?' said Toogood, stretching over and
just managing to touch Jane's fingers--of which act of touching Jane was
very chary. Then he went forth, and Mr Crawley followed him. There was
the major standing in the road and Toogood was anxious to be the first
to communicate the good news. It was the only reward he had proposed to
himself for the money he had expended and the time he had lost and the
trouble he had taken. 'It's all right, old fellow,' he said, clapping
his hand on Mr Crawley's shoulder. 'We've got the right sow by the ear
at last. We know all about it.' Mr Crawley could hardly remember the
time when he had been called an old fellow last, and now he did not like
it; nor, in the confusion of his mind, could he understand the allusion
to the right sow. He supposed that Toogood had come to him about his
trial, but it did not occur to him that the lawyer might be bringing him
news which might make the trial altogether unnecessary. 'If my eyes are
not mistaken, there is my friend, Major Grantly,' said Mr Crawley.
'There he is, as large as life,' said Toogood. 'But stop a moment
before you go to him, and give me your hand. I must have the first shake
of it.' Hereupon Crawley extended his hand. 'That's right. And now let
me tell you we know all about the cheque--Soames's cheque. We know where
you got it. We know who stole it. We know how it came to the person who
gave it to you. It's all very well talking, but when you're in trouble
always go to a lawyer.'
By this time Mr Crawley was looking full into Mr Toogood's face, and
seeing that his cousin's eyes were streaming with tears began to get
some insight into the man's character, and also some very dim insight
into the facts which the man intended to communicate to himself. 'I do
not as yet fully understand you, sir,' he said, 'being perhaps in such
matters somewhat dull of intellect, but it seemeth to me that you are
the messenger of glad tidings, whose feet are beautiful upon the
mountains.'
'Beautiful!' said Toogood. 'By George, I should think they are
beautiful! Don't you hear me tell you that we have found out all about
the cheque, and that you're as right as a trivet?' They were still on
the little causeway leading from the school up the road, and Henry
Grantly was waiting for them at the small wicket-gate. 'Mr Crawley,'
said the major, 'I congratulate you with all my heart. I could not but
accompany my friend, Mr Toogood, when he brought you this good news.'
'I do not even yet altogether comprehend what has been told to me,' said
Crawley, now standing out on the road between the other two men. 'I am
doubtless dull--very dull. May I beg some clearer word of explanation
before I ask you to go with me to my wife?'
'The cheque was given to you by my aunt Eleanor.'
'Your aunt Eleanor!' said Crawley, now altogether in the clouds. Who was
the major's aunt Eleanor? Though he had, no doubt, at different times
heard all the circumstances of the connection, he had never realised the
fact that his daughter's lover was the nephew of his old friend Arabin.
'Yes; by my aunt, Mrs Arabin.'
'She put it into the envelope with the notes,' said Toogood--'slipped
it in without saying a word to anyone. I never heard of a woman doing
such a thing in my life before. If she had died, or if we hadn't caught
her, where should we all have been? Not but what I think I should have
run Dan Stringer to ground too, and worked it out of him.'
'Then, after all, it was given to me by the dean?' said Crawley.
'It was in the envelope, but the dean did not know it,' said the major.
'Gentlemen,' said Mr Crawley. 'I was sure of it. I knew it. Weak as my
mind may be--and at times it is very weak--I was certain that I could
not have erred in such a matter. The more I struggled with my memory the
more fixed with me became the fact--which I had forgotten but for a
moment--that the document had formed a part of that small packet handed
to me by the dean. But look you, sirs--bear with me yet for a moment. I
said that it was so, and the dean denied it.'
'The dean did not know it, man,' said Toogood, almost in a passion.
'Bear with me yet awhile. So far have I been misdoubting the dean--whom
I have long known to be in all things a true and honest gentleman--that
I postponed the elaborated result of my own memory to his word. And I
felt myself the more constrained to do this, because in a moment of
forgetfulness, I had allowed myself to make a false
statement--unwittingly false, indeed, nonetheless very false,
unpardonably false. I had declared without thinking, that the money had
come to me from the hands of Mr Soames, thereby seeming to cast a
reflection upon that gentleman. When I had been guilty of so great a
blunder, of so gross a violation of that ordinary care which should
govern all words between man and man, especially when any question of
money may be in doubt--how could I expect that anyone should accept my
statement when contravened by that made by the dean? Gentlemen, I did
not believe my own memory. Though all the little circumstances of that
envelope, with its rich but perilous freightage, came back upon me from
time to time with an exactness that has appeared to me to be almost
marvellous, yet I have told myself that it was not so! Gentlemen, if you
please, we will go into the house; my wife is there, and should not
longer be left in suspense.' They passed on in silence for a few steps,
till Crawley spoke again. 'Perhaps you will allow me the privilege to be
alone with her for one minute--but for a minute. Her thanks shall not be
delayed, where thanks are so richly due.'
'Of course,' said Toogood, wiping his eyes with a large red bandana
handkerchief. 'By all means. We'll take a little walk. Come, along,
major.' The major had turned his face away, and he also was weeping. 'By
George! I never heard such a thing in all my life,' said Toogood. 'I
wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it. I wouldn't indeed. If I
were to tell that up in London, nobody would believe me.'
'I call that man a hero,' said Grantly.
'I don't know about being a hero. I never quite knew what makes a hero,
if it isn't having three or four girls dying in love for you at once.
But to find a man who was going to let everything in the world go
against him, because he believed another fellow better than himself!
There's many a chap thinks another man is wool-gathering; but this man
has thought he was wool-gathering himself! It's not natural; and the
world wouldn't go on if there many like that. He's beckoning us, and we
had better go in.'
Mr Toogood went first, and the major followed him. When they entered
the front door at the end of the passage, and on entering the room to
the left they found Mr Crawley alone. 'She has fled, as though from an
enemy,' he said, with a little attempt at a laugh; 'but I will pursue
her, and bring her back.'
'No, Mr Crawley, no,' said the lawyer. 'She's a little upset, and all
that kind of thing. We know what women are. Let her alone.'
'Nay, Mr Toogood; but then she would be angered with herself afterwards,
and would lack the comfort of having spoken a word of gratitude. Pardon
me, Major Grantly; but I would not have you leave us till she has seen
you. It is as her cousin says. She is somewhat over-excited. But still,
it will be the best that she should see you. Gentlemen, you will excuse
me.'
Then he went out to fetch his wife, and while he was away not a word was
spoken. The major looked out of one window and Mr Toogood out of the
other, and they waited patiently till they heard the coming steps of the
husband and wife. When the door was opened, Mr Crawley appeared, leading
his wife by the hand. 'My dear,' he said, 'you know Major Grantly. This
is your cousin, Mr Toogood. It is well that you know him too, and
remember his great kindness to us.' But Mrs Crawley could not speak. She
could only sink on the sofa, and hide her face, while she strove in vain
to repress her sobs. She had been very strong through all her husband's
troubles--very strong in bearing for him what he could not bear for
himself, and in fighting on his behalf battles in which he was
altogether unable to couch a lance; but the endurance of so many
troubles and the great overwhelming sorrow at last had so nearly
overpowered her, that she could not sustain the shock of this turn in
their fortunes. 'She was never like this, sirs, when ill news came to
us,' said Mr Crawley, standing somewhat apart from her.
The major sat himself by her side, and put his hand upon hers, and
whispered some word to her about her daughter. Upon this she threw her
arms around him, and kissed his face, and then his hands, and then
looked up into his face through her tears. She murmured some few words,
or attempted to do so. I doubt whether the major understood their
meaning, but he knew very well what was in her heart.
'And now I think we might as well be moving,' said Mr Toogood. 'I'll see
about having the indictment quashed. I'll arrange all that with Walker.
It may be necessary that you should go into Barchester the first day the
judges sit; and if so, I'll come and fetch you. You may be sure I won't
leave the place till it's all square.'
As they were going, Grantly--speaking now altogether with indifference
to Toogood's presence--asked Mr Crawley's leave to be the bearer of
these tidings to his daughter.
'She can hear it in no tones that can be more grateful to her,' said Mr
Crawley.
'I shall ask her for nothing for myself now,' said Grantly. 'It would
be ungenerous. But hereafter--in a few days--when she shall be more at
ease, may I then use your permission--?'
'Major Grantly,' said Mr Crawley solemnly. 'I respect you so highly,
and esteem you so thoroughly, that I give willingly that which you ask.
If my daughter can bring herself to regard you, as a woman should regard
her husband, with the love that can worship and cling and be constant,
she will, I think, have a fair promise of worldly happiness. And for
you, sir, in giving you my girl--if so be it that she is given to you--I
shall bestow upon you a great treasure.' Had Grace been a king's
daughter, with a queen's dowry, the permission to address her could not
have been imparted to her lover with a more thorough appreciation of the
value of privilege conferred.
'He's a rum one,' said Mr Toogood, as they got into the carriage
together; 'but they say he's a very good 'un to go.'
After their departure Jane was sent for, that she might hear the family
news; and when she expressed some feeling not altogether in favour of Mr
Toogood, Mr Crawley thus strove to correct her views. 'He is a man, my
dear, who conceals a warm heart, and an active spirit, and healthy
sympathies, under an affected jocularity of manner, and almost with a
touch of vulgarity. But when the jewel itself is good, any fault in the
casket may be forgiven.'
'Then, papa, the next time I see him I'll like him--if I can,' said
Jane.
The village of Framley lies slightly off the road from Hogglestock to
Barchester--so much so as to add perhaps a mile to the journey if the
traveller goes by the parsonage gate. On their route to Hogglestock our
two travellers had passed Framley without visiting the village, but on
the return journey the major asked Mr Toogood's permission to make the
deviation. 'I'm not in a hurry,' said Toogood. 'I never was more
comfortable in my life. I'll just light a cigar while you go in and see
your friends.' Toogood lit his cigar, and the major, getting down from
the carriage, entered the parsonage. It was his fortune to find Grace
alone. Robarts was in Barchester, and Mrs Robarts was across the road,
at Lufton Court. 'Miss Crawley is certainly in,' the servant told him,
and he soon found himself in Miss Crawley's presence.
'I have only called to tell you the news about your father,' said he.
'What news?'
'We have just come from Hogglestock--your cousin Mr Toogood, that is,
and myself. They have found out all about the cheque. My aunt, Mrs
Arabin, the dean's wife, you know--she gave it to your father.'
'Oh, Major Grantly!'
'It seems so easily settled, does it not?'
'And is it settled?'
'Yes; everything. Everything about that.' Now he had hold of her hand
as if he were going. 'Good-bye. I told your father that I would just
call and tell you.'
'It seems almost more than I can believe.'
'You may believe it; indeed you may.' He still held her hand. 'You will
write to your mother I daresay tonight. Tell her I was here. Good-bye
now.'
'Good-bye,' she said. Her hand was still in his, as she looked up into
his face.
'Dear, dear, Grace! My darling Grace!' Then he took her into his arms
and kissed her, and went his way without another word, feeling that he
had kept his word to her father like a gentleman. Grace, when she was
left alone, thought that she was the happiest girl in Christendom. If
she could only get to her mother, and tell everything, and be told
everything! She had no idea of any promise that her lover may have made
to her father, nor did she make inquiry of her own thoughts as to the
reasons for staying with her so short a time; but looking back at it all
she thought his conduct had been perfect.
In the meantime, the major, with Mr Toogood, was driven home to dinner
at Barchester.
CHAPTER LXXV
MADALINA'S HEART IS BLEEDING
John Eames, as soon as he had left Mrs Arabin at the hotel and had taken
his travelling-bag to his own lodgings, started off for his uncle
Toogood's house. There he found Mrs Toogood, not in the most serene
state of mind as to her husband's absence. Mr Toogood had now been at
Barchester for the best part of a week--spending a good deal of money
at the inn. Mrs Toogood was quite sure that he must be doing that.
Indeed, how could he help himself? Johnny remarked that he did not see
how in such circumstances his uncle was to help himself. And then Mr
Toogood had only written one short scrap of a letter--just three words,
and they were written in triumph. 'Crawley is all right, and I think
I've got the real Simon Pure by the heels.' 'It's all very well, John,'
Mrs Toogood said; 'and of course it would be a terrible thing of the
family if anybody connected with it were made out to be a thief.' 'It
would be quite dreadful,' said Johnny. 'Not that I ever looked upon the
Crawleys as connections of ours. But, however, let that pass. I'm sure
I'm very glad that your uncle should have been able to be of service to
them. But there's reason in the roasting of eggs, and I can tell you
that money is not so plenty in this house that your uncle can afford to
throw it in the Barchester gutters. Think what twelve children are,
John. It might be all very well if Toogood were a bachelor, and if some
lord had left him a fortune.' John Eames did not stay very long in
Tavistock Square. His cousins Polly and Lucy were gone to the play with
Mr Summerkin, and his aunt was not in one of her best humours. He took
his uncle's part as well as he could, and then left Mrs Toogood. The
little allusion to Lord De Guest's generosity had not been pleasant to
him. It seemed to rob him of all his own merit. He had been rather proud
of his journey to Italy, having contrived to spend nearly forty pounds
in ten days. He had done everything in the most expensive way, feeling
that every napoleon wasted had been laid out on behalf Mr Crawley. But,
as Mrs Toogood had just told him, all this was nothing to what Toogood
was doing. Toogood with twelve children was living at his own charges at
Barchester and was neglecting his business besides. 'There's Mr Crump,'
said Mrs Toogood. 'Of course he doesn't like it, and what can I say when
he comes to me?' This was not quite fair on the part of Mrs Toogood, as
Mr Crump had not troubled her even once as yet since her husband's
departure.
What was Johnny to do, when he left Tavistock Square? His club was open
to him. Should he go to his club, play a game of billiards, and have
some supper? When he asked himself the question he knew that he would
not go to his club, and yet he pretended to doubt about it, as he made
his way to a cabstand in Tottenham Court Road. It would be slow, he told
himself, to go to his club. He would have gone to Lily Dale, only that
his intimacy with Mrs Thorne was not sufficient to justify his calling
at her house between nine and ten o'clock at night. But, as he must go
somewhere--and as his intimacy with Lady Demolines was, he thought,
sufficient to justify almost anything--he would go to Bayswater. I
regret to say that he had written a mysterious not from Paris to
Madalina Demolines, saying that he should be in London on this very
night, and that it was just on the cards that he might make his way up
to Porchester Terrace before he went to bed. The note was mysterious,
because it had neither beginning nor ending. It did not contain even
initials. It was written like a telegraph message, and was about as
long. It was the kind of thing Miss Demolines liked, Johnny thought; and
there could be no reason why he should not gratify her. It was her
favourite game. Some people like whist, some like croquet, and some like
intrigue. Madalina probably would have called it romance--because she
was by nature romantic. John, who was made of sterner stuff, laughed at
this. He knew that there was no romance in it. He knew that he was only
amusing himself, and gratifying her at the same time, by a little
innocent pretence. He told himself that it was his nature to prefer the
society of women to that of men. He would have liked the society of Lily
Dale, no doubt, much better than that of Miss Demolines; but as the
society of Lily Dale was not to be had at that moment, the society of
Miss Demolines was the best substitute within his reach. So he got into
a cab and had himself driven to Porchester Terrace. 'Is Lady Demolines
at home?' he said to the servant. He always asked for Lady Demolines.
But the page who was accustomed to open the door for him was less false,
being young, and would now tell him, without any further fiction, that
Miss Madalina was in the drawing-room. Such was the answer he got from
the page on this evening. What Madalina did with her mother on these
occasions he had never yet discovered. There used to be some little
excuses given about Lady Demolines' state of health, but latterly
Madalina had discontinued her references to her mother's headaches. She
was standing in the centre of the drawing-room when he entered it, with
both her hands raised, and an almost terrible expression of mystery in
her face. Her hair, however, had been very carefully arranged so as to
fall with copious carelessness down her shoulders, and altogether she
was looking her best. 'Oh, John,' she said. She called him John by
accident in the tumult of the moment. 'Have you heard what has happened?
But of course you have heard it.'
'Heard what? I have heard nothing,' said Johnny, arrested almost in the
doorway by the nature of the question--and partly also, no doubt, by the
tumult of the moment. He had no idea how terrible a tragedy was in truth
in store for him; but he perceived that the moment was to be tumultuous,
and that he must carry himself accordingly.
'Come in and close the door,' she said. He came in and closed the door.
'Do you mean to say that you haven't heard what has happened in Hook
Court?'
'No;--what has happened in Hook Court?' Miss Demolines threw herself
back into an arm-chair, closed her eyes, and clasped both her hands upon
her forehead. 'What has happened in Hook Court?' said Johnny, walking up
to her.
'I do not think I can bring myself to tell you.'
Then he took one of her hands down from her forehead and held it in
his--which she allowed passively. She was thinking, no doubt, of
something far different from that.
'I never saw you looking better in your life,' said Johnny.
'Don't,' said she. 'How can you talk in that way, when my heart is
bleeding--bleeding.' Then she pulled away her hand, and again clasped it
with the other upon her forehead.
'But why is your heart bleeding? What has happened in Hook Court?'
Still she answered nothing, but she sobbed violently and the heaving of
her bosom showed how tumultuous was the tumult within it. 'You don't
mean to say that Dobbs Broughton has come to grief--that he's to be sold
out?'
'Man,' said Madalina, jumping up from her chair, standing at her full
height, and stretching out both her arms, 'he has destroyed himself!'
The revelation was at last made with so much tragic propriety, in so
excellent a tone, and with such an absence of all the customary
redundancies of commonplace relation, that I think that she must have
rehearsed the scene--either with her mother or with the page. Then there
was a minute's silence, during which she did not move even an eyelid.
She held her outstretched hands without dropping a finger half an inch.
Her face was thrust forward, her chin projecting, with tragic horror;
but there was no vacillation even in her chin. She did not wink an eye,
or alter to the breadth of a hair the aperture of her lips. Surely she
was a great genius if she did it all without previous rehearsal. Then,
before he had thought of words in which to answer her, she let her hands
fall to her side, she closed her eyes, and shook her head, and fell back
again into her chair. 'It's too horrible to be spoken of--or to be
thought about,' she said. 'I could not have brought myself to tell the
tale to a living being--except to you.'
This would naturally have been flattering to Johnny had it not been that
he was in truth absorbed by the story which he had heard.
'Do you mean to tell me,' he said, 'that Broughton has--committed
suicide?' She could not speak of it again, but nodded her head at him
thrice, while her eyes were still closed. 'And how was the manner of
it?' said he, asking the question in a low voice. He could not even as
yet bring himself to believe it. Madalina was so fond of a little
playful intrigue, that even this story might have something in the
nature of fiction. He was not quite sure of the facts, and yet he was
shocked by what he had heard.
'Would you have me repeat to you all the bloody details of that terrible
scene?' she said. 'It is impossible. Go to your friend Dalrymple. He
will tell you. He knows it all. He has been with Maria all through. I
wish--I wish it had not been so.' But nevertheless she did bring herself
to narrate all the details with something more of circumstance than
Eames desired. She soon succeeded in making him understand the tragedy
of Hook Court was a reality, and that poor Dobbs Broughton had brought
his career to an untimely end. She had heard everything--having indeed
gone to Musselboro in the City, and having penetrated even to the
sanctum of Mr Bangles--the reader may remember him, Burton and Bangles,
who kept the stores for Himalaya wines at 22 shillings and 6 pence the
dozen, in Hook Court--was a bachelor, and rather liked the visit, and
told Miss Demolines very freely all he had seen. And when she suggested
that it might be expedient for the sake of the family that she should
come back to Mr Bangles for further information at a subsequent period,
he very politely assured her that she would 'do him proud', whenever she
might please to call at Hook Court. And then he saw her in Lombard
Street, and put her into an omnibus. She was therefore well qualified to
tell Johnny all the particulars of the tragedy--and she did so far
overcome her horror as to tell them all. She told her tale somewhat
after the manner of Aeneas, not forgetting the 'quorum pars magna fui.'
'I feel that it almost makes an old woman of me,' she said, when she had
finished.
'No,' said Johnny, remonstrating, 'not that.'
'But it does. To have been concerned in so terrible a tragedy takes
more of life out of one than ten years of tranquil existence.' As she
had told him nothing of her intercourse with Bangles--with Bangles who
had literally picked the poor wretch up--he did not see how she herself
had been concerned in the matter; but he said nothing about that,
knowing the character of Madalina. 'I shall see--that--body, floating
before my eyes while I live,' she said, 'and the gory wound, and--and--'
'Don't,' said Johnny, recoiling in truth from the picture by which he
was revolted. 'Never again,' she said, 'never again! But you forced it
from me, and now I shall not close my eyes for a week.'
She then became very comfortably confidential, and discussed the affairs
of poor Mrs Dobbs Broughton with a great deal of satisfaction. 'I went
to see her, of course, but she sent me down word to say that the shock
would be too much for her. I do not wonder that she should not see me.
Poor Maria! She came to me for advice, you know, when Dobbs Broughton
first proposed to her; and I was obliged to tell her what I really
thought. I knew her character well? "Dear Maria," I said, "if you think
that you can love him, take him!" "I think I can," she replied. "But,"
said I, "make yourself quite sure about the business." And how has it
turned out? She never loved him. What heart she has she has given to
that wretched Dalrymple.'
'I don't see that he is particularly wretched,' said Johnny, pleading
for his friend.
'He is wretched, and so you'll find. She gave him her heart after
giving her hand to poor Dobbs; and as for the business, there isn't as
much left as will pay for her mourning. I don't wonder that she could
not bring herself to see me.'
'And what has become of the business?'
'It belongs to Mrs Van Siever--to her and Musselboro. Poor Broughton
had some little money, and it has gone among them. Musselboro, who never
had a penny, will be a rich man. Of course you know that he is going to
marry Clara?'
'Nonsense!'
'I always told you that it would be so. And now you may perhaps
acknowledge that Conway Dalrymple's prospects are not very brilliant. I
hope he likes being cut out by Mr Musselboro! Of course he will have to
marry Maria. I do not see how he can escape. Indeed, she is too good for
him;--only after such a marriage as that, there would be an end to all
his prospects as an artist. The best thing for them would be to go to
New Zealand.'
John Eames certainly liked these evenings with Miss Demolines. He sat at
his ease in a comfortable chair, and amused himself by watching her
different little plots. And then she had bright eyes, and she flattered
him, and allowed him to scold her occasionally. And now and again there
might be some more attraction, when she would admit him to take her
hand--or the like. It was better than to sit smoking with men at his
club. But he could not sit up all night even with Madalina Demolines,
and at eleven he got up to take his leave. 'When shall you see Miss
Dale?' she asked him suddenly.
'I do not know,' he answered, frowning at her. He always frowned at her
when she spoke to him of Miss Dale.
'I do not in the least care for your frowns,' she said playfully,
putting up her hands to smooth his brows. 'I think I know you intimately
enough to name your goddess to you.'
'She isn't my goddess.'
'A very cold goddess, I should think, from what I hear. I wish to ask
you for a promise respecting her.'
'What promise?'
'Will you grant it to me?'
'How can I tell till I hear?'
'You must promise me not to speak of me when you see her.'
'But why must I promise that?'
'Promise me.'
'Not unless you tell me why.' Johnny had already assured himself that
nothing could be more improbable than that he should mention the name of
Miss Demolines to Lily Dale.
'Very well, sir. Then you may go. And I must say that unless you can
comply with so slight a request as that, I shall not care to see you
here again. Mr Eames, why should you want to speak evil of me to Miss
Dale?'
'I do not want to speak evil of you.'
'I know that you could not speak of me to her without at least ridicule.
Come, promise me. You shall come here Thursday evening, and I will tell
you why I have asked you.'
'Tell me now.'
She hesitated a moment, and then shook her head. 'No. I cannot tell
you now. My heart is still bleeding with the memory of that poor man's
face. I will not tell you now. And yet is not that you must give me the
promise. Will you not trust me so far as that?'
'I will not speak of you to Miss Dale.'
'There is my own friend! And now, John, mind you are here at half-past
eight on Thursday. Punctually at half-past eight. There is a thing I
have to tell you, which I will tell you then if you will come. I had
thought to have told you today.'
'And why not now?'
'I cannot. My feelings are too many for me. I should never go through
with it after all that has between us about poor Broughton. I should
break down; indeed I should. Go now, for I am tired.' Then having
probably taken a momentary advantage of that more potent attraction to
which we have before alluded, he left the room very suddenly.
He left the room very suddenly because Madalina's movements had been so
sudden, and her words so full of impulse. He had become aware that in
this little game in which he was playing in Porchester Terrace
everything ought to be done after some unaccustomed and special fashion.
So--having clasped Madalina for one moment in his arms--he made a rush
at the room door, and was out on the landing in a second. He was a
little too quick for old Lady Demolines. The skirt of whose
night-dress--as it seemed to Johnny--he saw whisking away, in at another
door. It was nothing, however, to him if old Lady Demolines, who was
always too ill to be seen, chose to roam about her own house in her
night-dress.
When he found himself alone in the street, his mind reverted to Dobbs
Broughton and the fate of the wretched man, and he sauntered slowly down
Paris Gardens, that he might look at the house in which he had dined
with a man who had destroyed himself by his own hands. He stood for a
moment looking up at the windows, in which there was now no light,
thinking of the poor woman whom he had seen in the midst of luxury, and
who was now left a widow in such miserable circumstances! As for the
suggestion that his friend Conway would marry her, he did not believe it
for a moment. He knew too well what the suggestions of his Madalina were
worth, and the motives from which they sprung. But he thought it might
be true that Mrs Van Siever had absorbed all there was of the property,
and possibly, also, that Musselboro was to marry her daughter. At any
rate, he would go to Dalrymple's rooms, and if he could find him, would
learn the truth. He knew enough of Dalrymple's ways of life, and of the
ways of his friend's chambers and studio, to care nothing for the
lateness of the hour, and in a very few minutes he was sitting in
Dalrymple's arm-chair. He found Siph Dunn there, smoking in unperturbed
tranquillity, and as long as that lasted he could ask no questions about
Mrs Broughton. He told them, therefore, of his adventures abroad, and of
Crawley's escape. But at last, having finished his third pipe, Siph Dunn
took his leave.
'Tell me,' said John, as soon as Dunn had closed the door, 'what is this
I hear about Dobbs Broughton?'
'He has blown his brains out. That is all.'
'How terribly shocking!'
'Yes; it shocked us all at first. We are used to it now.'
'And the business?'
'That has gone to the dogs. They say at least that his share of it had
done so.'
'And he was ruined?'
'They say so. That is, Musselboro says so, and Mrs Van Siever.'
'And what do you say, Conway?'
'The less I say the better. I have my hopes--only you're such a
talkative fellow, one can't trust you.'
'I never told any secret of yours, old fellow.'
'Well--that fact is, I have an idea that something may be saved for the
poor woman. I think that they are wronging her. Of course all I can do
is put the matter into lawyer's hands and pay the lawyer's bill. So I
went to your cousin, and he has taken the case up. I hope he won't ruin
me.'
'Then I suppose you are quarrelling with Mrs Van?'
'That doesn't matter. She has quarrelled with me.'
'And what about Jael, Conway? They tell me Jael is going to become Mrs
Musselboro.'
'Who told you that?'
'A bird.'
'Yes; I know who the bird is. I don't think that Jael will become Mrs
Musselboro. I don't think Jael would become Mrs Musselboro, if Jael were
the only woman, and Musselboro the only man in London. To tell you a
little bit of a secret, Johnny, I think that Jael will become the wife
of Conway Dalrymple. That is my opinion; and as far as I can judge, it
is the opinion of Jael also.'
'But not the opinion of Mrs Van. The bird told me another thing,
Conway.'
'What other thing?'
'The bird hinted that all this would end in your marrying the widow of
that poor wretch who destroyed himself.'
'Johnny, my boy,' said the artist after a moment's silence, 'if I give
you a bit of advice, will you profit by it?'
'I'll try, if it's not disagreeable.'
'Whether you profit by it, or whether not, keep it to yourself. I know
the bird better than you do, and I strongly caution you to beware of the
bird. The bird is a bird of prey, and altogether an unclean bird. The
bird wants a mate, and doesn't much care how she gets it. And the bird
wants money, and doesn't care how she gets it. The bird is a decidedly
bad bird, and not at all fit to take the place of domestic hen in a
decent farmyard. In plain English, Johnny, you'll find some day, if you
go over to often to Porchester Terrace, either that you are going to
marry the bird, or else that you are employing your cousin Toogood for
you defence in an action for breach of promise, brought against you by
that venerable old bird, the bird's mamma.'
'If it's to be either, it will be the latter,' said Johnny, as he took
up his hat to go away.
CHAPTER LXXVI
I THINK HE IS LIGHT OF HEART
Mrs Arabin remained one day in town. Mr Toogood in spite of his
asseveration that he would not budge from Barchester till he had seen Mr
Crawley through all his troubles, did run up to London as soon as the
news reached him that John Eames had returned. He came up and took Mrs
Arabin's deposition, which he sent down to Mr Walker. It might still be
necessary, Mrs Arabin was told, that she should go into court, and there
state on oath that she had given the cheque to Mr Crawley; but Mr Walker
was of the opinion that the circumstances would enable the judge to call
upon the grand jury not to find a true bill against Mr Crawley, and that
the whole affair, as far as Mr Crawley was concerned, would thus be
brought to an end. Toogood was still very anxious to place Dan Stringer
in the dock, but Mr Walker declared that they would fail if they made
the attempt. Dan had been examined before the magistrates at Barchester,
and having persisted in his statement that he had heard nothing about Mr
Crawley and the cheque. This he said in the teeth of the words which had
fallen from him unawares in the presence of Mr Toogood. But they could
not punish him for a lie--not even for such a lie as that! He was not
upon oath, and they could not make him responsible to the law because he
had held his tongue upon a matter as to which it was manifest to them
all that he had known the whole history during the entire period of Mr
Crawley's persecution. They could only call upon him to account for his
possession of the cheque, and this he did by saying that it had been
paid to him by Jem Scuttle, who received all moneys appertaining to the
hotel stables, and accounted for them once a week. Jem Scuttle had
simply told him that he had taken the cheque from Mr Soames, and Jem had
since gone to New Zealand. It was quite true that Jem's departure had
followed suspiciously close upon the payment of the rent to Mrs Arabin,
and that Jem had been in close amity with Dan Stringer up to the moment
of his departure. That Dan Stringer had not become honestly possessed of
the cheque, everybody knew; but, nevertheless, the magistrates were of
the opinion, Mr Walker coinciding with them, that there was no evidence
against him sufficient to secure a conviction. The story, however, of Mr
Crawley's injuries was so well known in Barchester, and the feeling
against the man who had permitted him to be thus injured was so strong,
that Dan Stringer did not altogether escape without punishment. Some
rough spirits in Barchester called one night at 'The Dragon of Wantly'
and begged Mr Dan Stringer would be kind enough to come and take a walk
with them that evening; and when it was intimated to them that Dan
Stringer had not just then any desire for exercise, they requested to be
allowed to go into the back parlour and make an evening with Dan
Stringer in that recess. There was a terrible row at 'The Dragon of
Wantly' that night, and Dan with difficulty was rescued by the police.
On the following morning he was smuggled out of Barchester by an early
train, and has never more been seen in that city. Rumours of him,
however, were soon heard, from which it appeared that he had made
himself acquainted with the casual ward of more than one workhouse in
London. His cousin John left the inn almost immediately--as, indeed, he
must have done had there been no question of Mr Soames's cheque--and
then there was nothing more heard of the Stringers in Barchester.
Mrs Arabin remained in town one day, and would have remained longer,
waiting for her husband, had not a letter from her sister impressed upon
her that it might be well that she should be with her father as soon as
possible. 'I don't mean to make you think that there is any immediate
danger,' Mrs Grantly said, 'and, indeed, we cannot say that he is ill;
but it seems that the extremity of old age has come upon him almost
suddenly, and that he is as weak as a child. His only delight is with
children, especially with Posy, whose gravity in her management of him
is wonderful. He has not left his room now for more than a week, and he
eats very little. It may be that he will live for years; but I should be
deceiving you if I did not let you know that both the archdeacon and I
think that the time of his departure from us is near at hand.' After
reading this letter, Mrs Arabin could not wait in town for her husband,
even though he was expected in two days and though she had been told
that her presence in Barchester was not immediately required on behalf
of Mr Crawley.
But during that one day she kept her promise to John Eames by going to
Lily Dale. Mrs Arabin had become very fond of Johnny, and felt that he
deserved the prize which he had been so long trying to win. The reader,
perhaps, may not agree with Mrs Arabin. The reader, who may have caught
a closer insight into Johnny's character than Mrs Arabin had obtained,
may, perhaps, think that a young man who could amuse himself with Miss
Demolines was unworthy of Lily Dale. If so, I may declare for myself
that I and the reader are in accord about John Eames. It is hard to
measure worth and worthlessness in such matters, as there is no standard
for such measurement. My old friend John as certainly no hero--was very
unheroic in many phases of his life; but then, if all the girls are to
wait for heroes, I fear that the difficulties in the way of matrimonial
arrangements, great as they are at present, will be very seriously
enhanced. Johnny was not ecstatic, nor heroic, nor transcendental, nor
very beautiful in his manliness; he was not a man to break his heart for
love or to have his story written in epic; but he was an affectionate,
kindly, honest young man; and I think most girls might have done worse
than take him. Whether he was wise to ask assistance in his love-making
so often as he had done, that may be another question.
Mrs Arabin was intimately acquainted with Mrs Thorne, and therefore
there was nothing odd in her going to Mrs Thorne's house. Mrs Thorne was
very glad to see her, and told her all the Barsetshire news--much more
than Mrs Arabin would have learned in a week at the deanery; for Mrs
Thorne had a marvellous gift of picking up news. She had already heard
the whole story of Mr Soames's cheque, and expressed her conviction that
the least that could be done in amends to Mr Crawley was to make him a
bishop. 'And you see the palace is vacant,' said Mrs Thorne.
'The palace vacant!' said Mrs Arabin.
'It is just as good. Now that Mrs Proudie has gone, I don't suppose the
bishop will account for much. I can assure you, Mrs Arabin, I felt that
poor woman's death so much! She used to regard me as one of the
staunchest of the Proudieites! She once whispered to me such a
delightfully wicked story about the dean and the archdeacon. When I told
her that they were my particular friends, she put on a look of horror.
But I don't think she believed me.' Then Emily Dunstable entered the
room, and with her came Lily Dale. Mrs Arabin had never before seen
Lily, and course they were introduced. 'I am sorry to say that Miss Dale
is going home to Allington tomorrow,' said Emily. 'But she is coming to
Chaldicotes in May,' said Mrs Thorne. 'Of course, Mrs Arabin, you know
what gala doings we are going to have in May?' Then there were various
civil little speeches made on each side, and Mrs Arabin expressed a wish
that she might meet Miss Dale in Barsetshire. But all this did not bring
her nearer to her object.
'I particularly wish to say a word to Miss Dale--here today, if she will
allow me,' said Mrs Arabin.
'I'm sure she will--twenty words; won't you, Lily?' said Mrs Thorne,
preparing to leave the room. Then Mrs Arabin apologised, and Mrs Thorne,
bustling up, said that it did not signify, and Lily, remaining quite
still on the sofa, wondered what it was all about--and in two minutes
Lily and Mrs Arabin were alone together. Lily had just time to surmised
that Mrs Arabin's visit must have some reference to Mr
Crosbie--remembering that Crosbie had married his wife out of
Barsetshire, and forgetting altogether that Mrs Arabin had been just
brought home from Italy by John Eames.
'I am afraid, Miss Dale, you will think me very impertinent,' said Mrs
Arabin.
'I am sure I shall not think that,' said Lily.
'I believe you knew, before Mr Eames started, that he was going to Italy
to find me and my husband?' said Mrs Arabin. Then Lily put Mr Crosbie
altogether out of her head, and became aware that he was not to be the
subject of the coming conversation. She was almost sorry that it was not
so. There was no doubt in her mind as to what she would have said to
anyone who might have taken up Crosbie's cause. On that matter she could
now have given a very decisive answer in a few words. But on that other
matter she was much more in doubt. She remembered, however, every word
of the note she had received from M D. She remembered also the words of
John's note to that young woman. And her heart was still hard against
him. 'Yes,' she said; 'Mr Eames came here one night and told us why he
was going. I was very glad that he was going, because I thought it was
right.'
'You know, of course, how successful he has been? It was I who gave the
cheque to Mr Crawley.'
'So Mrs Thorne has heard. Dr Thorne has written to tell her the whole
story.'
'And now I have come to look for Mr Eames's reward.'
'His reward, Mrs Arabin?'
'Yes; or rather to plead for him. You will not, I hope, be angry with
him because he has told me much of his life story while we were
travelling home together.'
'Oh, no,' said Lily, smiling. 'How could he have chosen a better friend
in whom to trust?'
'He could certainly have chosen none who would take his part more
sincerely. He is so good and amiable! He is so pleasant in his ways, and
so fitted to make a woman happy! And then, Miss Dale, he is also so
devoted!'
'He is an old friend, Mrs Arabin.'
'So he has told me.'
'And we all of us love him dearly. Mamma is very much attached to him.'
'Unless he flatters himself, there is no one belonging to you who would
not wish that he should be nearer and dearer still.'
'It may be so. I do not say that it is not so. Mamma and my uncle are
both fond of him.'
'And does that not go a long way?' said Mrs Arabin.
'It ought not to do so,' said Lily. 'It ought not to go any way at
all.'
'Ought it not? It seems to me that I could never have brought myself to
marry anyone whom my friends had not liked.'
'Ah! that is another thing.'
'But is it not a recommendation to a man that has been so successful
with your friends as to make them all feel that you might trust yourself
to him with perfect safety?' To this Lily made no answer, and Mrs Arabin
went on to plead her friend's cause with all the eloquence she could
use, insisting on all his virtues, his good temper, his kindness, his
constancy--and not forgetting the fact that the world was inclined to
use him very well. Still Lily made no answer. She had promised Mrs
Arabin that she would not regard her interference as impertinent, and
therefore she refrained from any word that might seem to show offence.
Nor did she feel offence. It was something gained by John Eames in
Lily's estimation that he should have such a friend as Mrs Arabin to
take an interest in his welfare. But there was a self-dependence,
perhaps one may call it an obstinacy about Lily Dale, which made her
determined that she would not be driven hither or thither by any
pressure from without. Why had John Eames, at the very moment when he
should have been doing his best to drive from her breast the memory of
past follies--when he would have striven to do so had he really been
earnest in his suit--why at such a moment had he allowed himself to
correspond in terms of affection with such a woman as M D? While Mrs
Arabin was pleading for John Eames, Lily was repeating to herself
certain words which John had written to that woman--'Ever and always
yours unalterably'. Such were not the exact words, but such was the form
in which Lily, dishonestly, chose to repeat them to herself. And why was
it so with her? In the old days she would have forgiven Crosbie any
offence at a word or a look--any possible letter to any M D, let her
have been ever so abominable! Nay--had she not even forgiven him the
offence of deserting herself altogether on behalf of a woman as
detestable as could be any M D of Johnny's choosing--a woman whose only
recommendation had been her title? And yet she would not forgive John
Eames, though the evidence against him was of so flimsy a nature--but
rather strove to turn the flimsiness of that evidence into strength! Why
was it so? Unheroic as he might be, John Eames was surely a better man
and a bigger man that Adolphus Crosbie. It was simply this: she had
fallen in love with the one, and had never fallen in love with the
other! She had fallen in love with the one man, though in her simple way
she had made a struggle against such feeling; and she had not come to
love the other man, though she had told herself that it would be well
that she should do so if it were possible. Again and again she had half
declared to herself that she would take him as her husband and leave the
love to come afterwards; but when the moment came for doing so, she
could not do it.
'May I not say a word of comfort to him?' said Mrs Arabin.
'He will be very comfortable without any such word,' said Lily,
laughing.
'But he is not comfortable; of that you may be very sure.'
'Yours ever and unalterably, J E,' said Lily to herself. 'You do not
doubt his affection?' continued Mrs Arabin.
'I neither doubt it nor credit it.'
'Then I think you wrong him. And the reason why I have ventured to come
to you is that you may know the impression which he has made upon one
who was but the other day a stranger to him. I am sure that he loves
you.'
'I think he is light of heart.'
'Oh, no, Miss Dale.'
'And how am I to become his wife unless I love him well enough myself?
Mrs Arabin, I have made up my mind about it. I shall never become any
man's wife. Mamma and I are all in all together, and we shall remain
together.' And as soon as these words were out of her mouth, she hated
herself for having spoken them. There was a maudlin, missish,
namby-pamby sentimentality about them which disgusted her. She specially
desired to be straightforward, resolute of purpose, honest-spoken, and
free from all touch of affectation. And yet she had excused herself from
marrying John Eames after the fashion of a sick schoolgirl. 'It is not
good talking about it any more,' she said, getting up from her chair
quickly.
'You are not angry with me;--or at any rate you will forgive me?'
'I'm quite sure you have meant to be very good, and I am not a bit
angry.'
'And you will see him before you go?'
'Oh, yes; that is if he likes to come today, or early tomorrow. I go
home tomorrow. I cannot refuse him, because he is such an old
friend--almost like a brother. But it is of no use, Mrs Arabin.' Then
Mrs Arabin kissed her and left her, telling her that Mr Eames would come
to her that afternoon at half-past five. Lily promised that she would be
at home to receive him.
'Won't you ride with us for the last time?' said Emily Dunstable when
Lily gave notice that she would not want the horse on that afternoon.
'No; not today.'
'You'll never have another opportunity of riding with Emily Dunstable,'
said the bride elect; 'at least I hope not.'
'Even under those circumstances I must refuse, though I would give a
guinea to be with you. John Eames is coming here to say good-bye.'
'Oh; then indeed you must not come with us. Lily, what will you say to
him?'
'Nothing.'
'Oh, Lily, think of it.'
'I have thought of it. I have thought of nothing else. I am tired of
thinking of it. It is no good to think of anything so much. What does it
matter?'
'It is very good to have someone to love better than all the world
besides.'
'I have someone,' said Lily, thinking of her mother, but not caring to
descend to the mawkish weakness of talking about her.
'Yes; but someone who will always be with you, to do everything for you;
to be your very own.'
'It is all very well for you,' said Lily, 'and I think that Bernard is
the luckiest fellow in the world; but it will not do for me. I know in
what college I'll take my degree, and I wish they'd let me write the
letters after my name as the men do.'
'What letters, Lily?'
'O M, for Old Maid. I don't see why it shouldn't be as good as BA for
Bachelor of Arts. It would mean a great deal more.'
CHAPTER LXXVII
THE SHATTERED TREE
When Mrs Arabin saw Johnny in the middle of the day, she could hardly
give him much encouragement. And yet she felt by no means sure that he
might not succeed even yet. Lily had been very positive in her answers,
and yet there had been something either in her words or in the tone of
her voice, which had made Mrs Arabin feel that even Lily was not quite
sure of herself. There was still room for relenting. Nothing, however,
had been said which could justify her in bidding John Eames simply to
'go and win'. 'I think he is light of heart,' Lily had said. Those were
the words which, of all that had been spoken, most impressed themselves
on Mrs Arabin's memory. She would not repeat them to her friend, but she
would graft upon them such advice as she had to give him.
And this she did, telling him that she thought perhaps Lily doubted his
actual earnestness. 'I would marry her this moment,' said Johnny. But
that was not enough, as Mrs Arabin knew, to prove his earnestness. Many
men, fickle as weathercocks, are ready to marry at the moment--are ready
to marry at the moment, because they are fickle, and think so little
about it. 'But she hears, perhaps, of your liking other people,' said
Mrs Arabin. 'I don't care a straw for any other person,' said Johnny. 'I
wonder whether if I was to shut myself up in a cage for six months, it
would do any good?' 'If she had the keeping of the cage, perhaps it
might,' said Mrs Arabin. She had nothing more to say on that subject,
but to tell him that Miss Dale would expect him that afternoon at
half-past five. 'I told her that you would come to wish her good-bye,
and she promised to see you.'
'I wish she'd say she wouldn't see me. Then there would be some
chance.'
Between him and Mrs Arabin, the parting was very affectionate. She told
him how thankful she was for the kindness in coming to her, and how
grateful she would ever be--and the dean also--for his attention to her.
'Remember, Mr Eames, that you will always be most welcome at the Deanery
of Barchester. And I do hope that before long you may be there with your
wife.' And so they parted.
He left her at about two, and went to Mr Toogood's office in Bedford
Row. He found his uncle, and the two went out to lunch together in
Holborn. Between them there was no word said about Lily Dale, and John
was glad to have some other subject in his mind for half an hour.
Toogood was full of his triumph about Mr Crawley and of his successes in
Barsetshire. He gave John a long account of his visit to Plumstead, and
expressed his opinion that if all clergymen were like the archdeacon
there would not be much room for Dissenters. 'I've seen a good many
parsons in my time,' said Toogood; 'but I don't think I ever saw such a
one as him. You know he is a clergyman somehow, and he never lets you
forget it; but that's about all. Most of 'em are never contented without
choking you with their white cravats all the time you're with 'em. As
for Crawley himself,' Mr Toogood continued, 'he's not like anybody that
ever was born, saint or sinner, parson or layman. I never heard of such
a man in all my experience. Though he knew where he got the cheque as
well I know it now, he wouldn't say so, because the dean had said it
wasn't so. Somebody ought to write a book about it--indeed they ought.'
Then he told the whole story of Dan Stringer, and how he had found Dan
out, looking at the tope of Dan's hat through the little aperture in the
wall of the inn parlour. 'When I saw the twitch in his hand, John, I
knew he had handled the cheque himself. I don't mean to say that I'm
sharper than another man, and I don't think so; but I do mean to say
that when you are in any difficulty of that sort, you ought to go to a
lawyer. It's his business, and a man does what is his business with
patience and perseverance. It's a pity, though, that the scoundrel
should get off.' Then Eames gave his uncle an account of his Italian
trip, to and fro, and was congratulated also upon his success. John's
great triumph lay in the fact that he had been only two nights in bed,
and that he would not have so far condescended on those occasions but
for the feminine weakness of his fellow-traveller. 'We shan't forget it
all in a hurry--shall we, John?' said Mr Toogood, in a pleasant voice,
as they parted at the door of the luncheon-house in Holborn. Toogood was
returning to his office, and John Eames was to prepare himself for his
last attempt.
He went back to his lodgings, intending at first to change his dress to
make himself smarter for the work before him--but after standing for a
moment or two leaning on the chest of drawers in his bedroom, he gave up
this idea. 'After all that's come and gone,' he said to himself, 'if I
cannot win her as I am now, I cannot win her at all.' And then he swore
to himself a solemn oath, resolving that he would repeat the purport of
it to Lily herself--that this should be the last attempt. 'What's the
use of it? Everybody ridicules me. And I am ridiculous. I am an ass.
It's all very well wanting to be the prime minister; but if you can't be
prime minister, you must do without being prime minister.' Then he
attempted to sing the old song--'Shall I, sighing in despair, die
because a woman's fair? If she be not fair to me, what care I how fair
she be?' But he did care, and he told himself that the song did him no
good. As it was not time for him as yet to go to Lily, he threw himself
on the sofa, and strove to read a book. Then all the weary nights of his
journey prevailed over him, and he fell asleep.
When he woke it wanted quarter to six. He sprang up, and rushing out,
jumped into a cab. 'Berkeley Square--as hard as you can go,' he said.
'Number --.' He thought of Rosalind, and her counsels to lovers as to
the keeping of time, and reflected that in such an emergency as this, he
might really have ruined himself by that unfortunate slumber. When he
got to Mrs Thorne's door he knocked hurriedly, and bustled up to the
drawing-room as though everything depended on his saving a minute. 'I'm
afraid I'm ever so much behind my time,' he said.
'It does not matter in the least,' said Lily. 'As Mrs Arabin said that
perhaps you might call, I would not be out of the way. I suppose that
Sir Raffle was keeping you and that you wouldn't come.'
'Sir Raffle was not keeping me. I fell asleep. That's the truth of
it.'
'I am so sorry that you should have been disturbed!'
'Do not laugh at me, Lily--today. I had been travelling a good deal,
and I suppose I was tired.'
'I won't laugh at you,' she said, and her eyes became full of tears--she
did not know why. But there they were, and she was ashamed to put up her
handkerchief, and she could not bring herself to turn away her face, and
she had no resource but that he should see them.
'Lily!' he said.
'What a paladin you have been, John, rushing all about Europe on your
friend's behalf!'
'Don't talk about that.'
'And such a successful paladin too! Why am I not to talk about it? I am
going home tomorrow, and I mean to talk about nothing else for a week. I
am so very, very, glad that you have saved your cousin.' Then she did
put up her handkerchief, making believe that her tears had been due to
Mr Crawley. But John Eames knew better than that.
'Lily,' he said, 'I've come for the last time. It sounds as though I
meant to threaten you; but you won't take it in that way. I think you
will know what I mean. I have come for the last time--to ask you to be
my wife.' She got up to greet him when he entered, and they were both
still standing. She did not answer him at once, but turning away from
him walked towards the window. 'You knew why I was coming today, Lily?'
'Mrs Arabin told me. I could not be away when you were coming, but
perhaps it would have been better.'
'It is so? Must it be so? Must you say that to me, Lily? Think of it
for a moment, dear.'
'I have thought about it.'
'One word from you, yes or no, spoken is to be everything to me for
always. Lily, cannot you say yes?' She did not answer him, but walked
further away from him to another window. 'Try to say yes. Look round at
me with one look that may only half mean it; that may tell me that it
shall not positively be no for ever.' I think that she almost tried to
turn her face to him; but be that as it may, she kept her eyes steadily
fixed upon the window-pane. 'Lily,' he said, 'it is not that you are
hard-hearted--perhaps not altogether that you do not like me. I think
that you believe things against me that are not true.' As she said this
she moved her foot angrily upon the carpet. She had almost forgotten M
D, but now he had reminded her of the note. She assured herself that she
had never believed anything against him except on evidence that was
incontrovertible. But she was not going to speak to him on such a matter
as that! It would not become her to accuse him. 'Mrs Arabin tells me
that you doubt whether I am earnest,' he said.
Upon hearing this she flashed round upon him almost angrily. 'I never
said that.'
'If you will ask me for any token of earnestness, I will give it to
you.'
'I want no token.'
'The best sign of earnestness a man can give generally in such a matter,
is to show how ready he is to be married.'
'I never said anything about earnestness.'
'At the risk of making you angry I will go on, Lily. Of course when you
tell me that you will have nothing to say to me, I try to amuse
myself'--'Yes; by writing love-letters to M D,' Lily said to
herself--'What is a poor fellow to do? I tell you fairly that when I
leave you I swear to myself that I make love to the first girl I can see
who will listen to me--to twenty, if twenty will let me. I feel I have
failed, and it is so I punish myself for my failure.' There was
something in this which softened her brow, though she did not intend
that it should be so; and she turned away again, that he might not see
that her brow was softened. 'But, Lily, the hope ever comes back again,
and then neither the one nor the twenty are of avail--even to punish me.
When I look forward and see what it might be if you were with me, how
green it all looks and how lovely, in spite of all the vows I have made,
I cannot help coming back again.' She was now again near the window, and
he had not followed her. As she neither turned towards him nor answered
him, he moved from the table near which he was standing on to the rug
before the fire, and leaned with both his elbows on the mantelpiece. He
could still watch her in the mirror above the fireplace, and could see
that she was still seeming to gaze out upon the street. And had he not
moved her? I think he had so far moved her now, that she had ceased to
think of the woman who had written to her --that she had ceased to
reject him in her heart on the score of such levities as that! If there
were M Ds, like sunken rocks, in his course, whose fault was it? He was
ready enough to steer his bark into the tranquil blue waters if only she
would aid him. I think that all his sins on this score were at this
moment forgiven him. He had told her now what to him would be green and
beautiful, and she did not find herself able to disbelieve him. She had
banished M D out of her mind, but in doing so she admitted other
reminiscences into it. And then--was she in a moment to be talked out of
the resolution of years; and was she to give up herself, not because she
loved, but because the man who talked to her talked so well that he
deserved a reward? Was she now to be as light, as foolish, as easy, as
in those former days from which she had learned her wisdom? A picture of
green lovely things could be delicious to her eyes as to his; but even
for such a picture as that the price might be too dear! Of all living
men--of all men living in their present lives--she loved best this man
who was now waiting for some word of answer to his words, and she did
love him dearly; she would have tended him if sick, have supplied him if
in want; have mourned for him if dead, with the bitter grief of true
affection;--but she could not say to herself that he should be her lord
and master, the head of her house, the owner of herself, the ruler of
her life. The shipwreck to which she had once come, and the fierce
regrets which had thence arisen, had forced her to think too much of
these things. 'Lily,' he said, still facing towards the mirror, 'will
you not come to me and speak to me?' She turned round, and stood a
moment looking at him, and then, having again resolved that it could not
be as he wished, she drew near to him. 'Certainly I will speak to you,
John. Here I am.' And she came close to him.
He took both her hands, and looked into her eyes. 'Lily, will you be
mine?'
'No; dear; it cannot be so.'
'Why not, Lily?'
'Because of that other man.'
'And is that to be a bar for ever?'
'Yes; for ever.'
'Do you still love him?'
'No; no, no!'
'Then why should this be so?'
'I cannot tell, dear. It is so. If you take a young tree and split it,
it still lives, perhaps. But it isn't a tree. It is only a fragment.'
'Then be my fragment.'
'So I will, if I can serve you to give standing ground to such a
fragment in some corner of your garden. But I will not have myself
planted out in the middle, for people to look at. What there is left
would die soon.' He still held her hands, and she did not attempt to
draw them away. 'John,' she said, 'next to mamma, I love you better than
all the world. Indeed I do. I can't be your wife, but you need never be
afraid that I shall be more to another than I am to you.'
'That will not serve me,' he said, grasping both her hands till he
almost hurt them, but not knowing that he did so. 'That is no good.'
'It is all the good that I can do you. Indeed I can do you--can do no
one any good. The trees that the storms have splintered are never of
use.'
'And is this to be the end of it, Lily?'
'Not of our loving friendship.'
'Friendship! I hate the word. I hear someone's step, and I had better
leave you. Good-bye.'
'Good-bye, John. Be kinder than that to me as you are going.' He turned
back for a moment, took her hand, and held it tight against his heart,
and then he left her. In the hall he met Mrs Thorne, but, as she said
afterwards, he had been too much knocked about to be able to throw a
word to a dog.
To Mrs Thorne Lily said hardly a word about John Eames, and when her
cousin Bernard questioned her about him she was dumb. And in these days
she could assume a manner, and express herself with her eyes as well as
with her voice, after a fashion, which was apt to silence unwelcome
questions, even though they were intimate with her as was her cousin
Bernard. She had described her feelings more plainly to her lover than
she had ever done to anyone--even to her mother; and having done so she
meant to be silent on that subject for evermore. But of her settled
purpose, she did say some word to Emily Dunstable that night. 'I do
feel,' she said, 'that I have got the thing settled at last.'
'And have you settled it, as you call it, in opposition to the wishes of
all your friends?'
'That is true; and yet I have settled it rightly, and I would not for
worlds have it unsettled again. There are matters on which friends
should not have wishes, or at any rate should not express them.'
'Is that meant to be severe to me?'
'No; not to you. I was thinking about mamma, and Bell, and my uncle,
and Bernard, who all seem to think that I am to be looked upon as a
regular castaway because I am not likely to have a husband of my own. Of
course you, in your position, must think a girl a castaway who isn't
going to be married?'
'I think that a girl who is going to be married has the best of it.'
'And I think a girl who isn't going to be married has the best of
it;--that's all. But I feel that the thing is done now, and I am
contented. For the last six or eight months there has come up, I know
not how, a state of doubt which as made me so wretched that I have done
literally nothing. I haven't been able to finish old Mrs Heard's tippet,
literally because people would talk to me about that dearest of all dear
fellows, John Eames. And yet all along I have known how it would be--as
well as I do now.'
'I cannot understand you, Lily; I can't indeed.'
'I can understand myself. I love him so well--with that intimate,
close, familiar affection--that I could wash his clothes for him
tomorrow, out of pure personal regard, and think it no shame. He could
not ask me to do a single thing for him--except one thing--that I would
refuse. And I'll go further. I would sooner marry him than any other man
I ever saw, or, as I believe, that I ever shall see. And yet I am glad
that it is settled.'
On the next day Lily Dale went down to the Small House of Allington, and
so she passes out of sight. I can only ask the reader to believe that
she was in earnest, and express my opinion, in this last word, that I
shall ever write respecting her, that she will live and die as Lily
Dale.
CHAPTER LXXVIII
THE ARABINS RETURN TO BARCHESTER
In these days Mr Harding was keeping his bed at the deanery, and most of
those who saw him declared that he would never again leave it. The
archdeacon had been slow to believe so, because he had still found his
father-in-law able to talk to him; not indeed with energy--but then Mr
Harding had never been energetic on ordinary matters--but with the same
soft cordial interest in things which had ever been customary with him.
He had latterly been much interested about Mr Crawley, and would make
both the archdeacon and Mrs Grantly tell him all that they had heard,
and what they thought of the case. This of course had been before the
all-important news had been received from Mrs Arabin. Mr Harding was
very anxious. 'Firstly,' he said, 'for the welfare of the poor man, of
whom I cannot bring myself to think ill; and then for the honour of the
cloth in Barchester.' 'We are as liable to have black sheep here as
anywhere,' the archdeacon had replied. 'But, my dear, I do not think the
sheep is black; and we never have had black sheep in Barchester.'
'Haven't we, though?' said the archdeacon, thinking, however, of sheep
who were black of a different kind of blackness from this which was now
attributed to Mr Crawley--of a blackness which was not absolute
blackness to Mr Harding's milder eyes. The archdeacon, when he heard his
father-in-law talk after this fashion, expressed his opinion that he
might live for years. He was just the man to linger on, living in
bed--as indeed he had lingered all his life out of bed. But the doctor
who attended him thought otherwise, as did also Mrs Grantly, and as did
Mrs Baxter, and as also did Posy. 'Grandpa won't get up any more, will
he?' Posy said to Mrs Baxter. 'I hope he will, my dear; and that very
soon.' 'I don't think he will,' said Posy, 'because he said he would
never see the big fiddle again.' 'That comes of being a little
melancholy like, my dear,' said Mrs Baxter.
Mrs Grantly at this time went into Barchester almost every day, and the
archdeacon, who was very often in the city, never went there without
passing half-an-hour with the old man. These two clergymen, essentially
different in their characters and in every detail of conduct, had been
so much thrown together by circumstances that the life of each almost
became part of the life of the other. Although the fact of Mr Harding's
residence at the deanery had of late years thrown him oftener into the
society of the dean than that of his other son-in-law, yet his intimacy
with the archdeacon had been so much earlier, and his memories of the
archdeacon were so much clearer, that he depended almost more upon the
rector of Plumstead, who was absent, than he did upon the dean, whom he
customarily saw every day. It was not so with the daughters. His Nelly,
as he used to call her, had ever been his favourite, and the
circumstances of their joint lives had ever been such, that they had
never been further separated than from one street of Barchester to
another--and that only for a very short period of the married life of
Mrs Arabin's first husband. For all that was soft and tender
therefore--which with Mr Harding was all in the world that was charming
to him--he looked to his youngest daughter; but for authority and
guidance and wisdom, and for information as to what was going on in the
world, he had still turned to his son-in-law the archdeacon--as he had
done for almost forty years. For so long had the archdeacon been potent
as a clergyman in the diocese, and throughout the whole duration of such
potency his word had been law to Mr Harding in most of the affairs of
life--a law generally to be obeyed, and if sometimes broken, still a
law. And now, when all was so nearly over, he would become unhappy if
the archdeacon's visits were far between. Dr Grantly, when he found that
this was so, would not allow that they should be far between.
'He puts me so much in mind of my father,' the archdeacon said to his
wife one day.
'He is not so old as your father was when he died, by many years,' said
Mrs Grantly, 'and I think one sees that difference.'
'Yes; and therefore I say that he may still live for years. My father,
when he took to his bed at last, was manifestly near his death. The
wonder with him was that he continued to live so long. Do you not
remember how the London doctor was put out because his prophecies were
not fulfilled?'
'I remember it well--as if it were yesterday.'
'And in that way there is a great difference. My father, who was
physically a much stronger man, did not succumb so easily. But the
likeness is in their characters. There is the same mild sweetness,
becoming milder and sweeter as they increased in age--a sweetness that
never could believe much evil, but that could believe less, and still
less, as the weakness of age came upon them. No amount of evidence would
induce your father to think that Mr Crawley stole that money.' This was
said of course before the telegram had come from Venice.
'As far as that goes, I agree with him,' said Mrs Grantly, who had her
own reasons for choosing to believe Mr Crawley to be innocent. 'If your
son, my dear, is to marry the man's daughter, it will be as well that
you should at least be able to say that you do not believe that man to
be a thief.'
'That is neither here nor there,' said the archdeacon. 'A jury must
decide it.'
'No jury in Barsetshire shall decide it for me,' said Mrs Grantly.
'I'm sick of Mr Crawley, and I'm sorry I spoke of him,' said the
archdeacon. 'But look at Mrs Proudie. You'll agree that she was not the
most charming woman in the world.'
'She certainly was not,' said Mrs Grantly, who was anxious to encourage
her husband, if she could do so without admitting anything which might
injure herself afterwards.
'And she was at one time violently insolent to your father. And even
the bishop thought to trample on him. Do you remember the bishop's
preaching against your father's chanting? If I ever forget it!' And the
archdeacon slapped his closed fist against his open hand.
'Don't, dear, don't. What is the good of being violent now?'
'Paltry little fool! It will be long enough before such a chaunt as
that is heard in and English cathedral again.' Then Mrs Grantly got up
and kissed her husband, but he, somewhat negligent of the kiss, went on
with his speech. 'But your father remembers nothing of it, and if there
was a single human being who shed a tear in Barchester for that woman, I
believe it was your father. And it was the same with mine. It came to
that at last, that I could not bear to speak to him of any shortcomings
as to one of his own clergymen. I might as well have pricked him with a
penknife. And yet they say men become heartless and unfeeling as they
grow old.'
'Some do, I suppose.'
'Yes; the heartless and unfeeling do. As the bodily strength fails and
the power of control becomes lessened, the natural aptitude of the man
pronounces itself more clearly. I take it that that is it. Had Mrs
Proudie lived to be and hundred and fifty, she would have spoken
spiteful lies on her deathbed.' Then Mrs Grantly told herself that her
husband, should he live to be hundred and fifty, would still be
expressing his horror of Mrs Proudie--even on his deathbed.
As soon as the letter from Mrs Arabin had reached Plumstead, the
archdeacon and his wife arranged that they would both go together to the
deanery. There were the double tidings to be told--those of Mr Crawley's
assured innocence, and those also of Mrs Arabin's instant return. And as
they went together various ideas were passing through their minds in
reference to the marriage of their son with Grace Crawley. They were
both now reconciled to it. Mrs Grantly had long ceased to feel any
opposition to it, even though she had not seen Grace; and the archdeacon
was prepared to give way. Had he not promised that in a certain case he
would give way, and had not that case come to pass? He had no wish to go
back from his word. But he had a difficulty in this--that he liked to
make all the affairs of his life matter for enjoyment, almost for
triumph; but how was he to be triumphant over this marriage, or how even
was he to enjoy it, seeing that he had opposed it so bitterly? Those
posters, though they were now pulled down, had been up on a barn ends
and walls patent--alas, too patent--to all the world of Barsetshire!
'What will Mr Crawley do now, do you suppose?' said Mrs Grantly.
'What will he do?'
'Yes; must he go on at Hogglestock?'
'What else?' said the archdeacon.
'It is a pity something could not be done for him after all he has
undergone. How on earth can he be expected to live there with a wife and
family, and no private means?' To this the archdeacon made no answer.
Mrs Grantly had spoken almost immediately upon their quitting Plumstead,
and the silence was continued till the carriage had entered the suburbs
of the city. Then Mrs Grantly spoke again, asking a question, with some
internal trepidation which, however, she managed to hide from her
husband. 'When poor papa does go, what shall you do about St Ewold's?'
Now, St Ewold's was a rural parish lying about two miles out of
Barchester, the living of which was in the gift of the archdeacon, and
to which the archdeacon had presented to his father-in-law, under
certain circumstances, which need not be repeated in this last chronicle
of Barsetshire. Have they not been written in other chronicles? 'When
poor papa does go, what will you do about St Ewold's?' said Mrs Grantly,
trembling inwardly. A word too much might, as she well knew, settle the
question against Mr Crawley for ever. But were she to postpone the word
till too late, the question would be settled as fatally.
'I haven't thought about it,' he said sharply. 'I don't like thinking
of such things while the incumbent is still living.' Oh, archdeacon,
archdeacon! Unless that other chronicle be a false chronicle, how hast
thou forgotten thyself and thy past life! 'Particularly not, when that
incumbent is your father,' said the archdeacon. Mrs Grantly said nothing
more about St Ewold's. She would have said as much as she had intended
to say if she had succeeded in making the archdeacon understand that St
Ewold's would be a very nice refuge for Mr Crawley after all the
miseries which he had endured at Hogglestock.
They learned as they entered the deanery that Mrs Baxter had already
heard of Mrs Arabin's return. 'Oh yes, ma'am. Mr Harding got a letter
hisself, and I got another--separate; both from Venice, ma'am. But when
master come nobody seems to know.' Mrs Baxter knew that the dean had
gone to Jerusalem, and was inclined to think that from such distant
bournes there was not return to any traveller. The East is always
further than the West in the estimation of the Mrs Baxters of the world.
Had the dean gone to Canada, she would have thought that he might come
back tomorrow. But still there was the news to be told of Mr Crawley,
and there was also joy to be expressed at the sudden coming back of the
much-wished-for mistress of the deanery.
'It's so good of you to come both together,' said Mr Harding.
'We thought that we should be too many for you,' said the archdeacon.
'Too many! Oh dear no. I like to have people by me; and as for voices
and noise, and all that, the more the better. But I am weak. I'm weak in
my legs. I don't think I shall ever stand again.'
'Yes, you will,' said the archdeacon.
'We have brought good news,' said Mrs Grantly.
'It is not good news that Nelly will be home this week? You can't
understand what a joy it is to me. I used to think sometimes, at night,
that I should never see her again. That she would come back in time was
all I have wished for.' He was lying on his back, and as he spoke he
pressed his withered hands together above the bed-clothes. They could
not begin immediately to tell him of Mr Crawley, but as soon as his mind
had turned itself away from the thoughts of his absent daughter, Mrs
Grantly again reverted to the news.'
'We have come to tell you about Mr Crawley, papa.'
'What about him?'
'He is quite innocent.'
'I knew it, my dear. I always said so. Did I not always say so,
archdeacon?'
'Indeed you did. I'll give you that credit.'
'And is it all found out?' asked Mr Harding.
'As far as he is concerned, everything is found out,' said Mrs Grantly.
'Eleanor gave him the cheque herself.'
'Nelly gave it to him?'
'Yes, papa. The dean meant her to give him fifty pounds. But it seems
she got to be soft of heart and made it seventy. She had the cheque by
her, and put it into the envelope with the notes.'
'Some of Stringer's people seem to have stolen the cheque from Mr
Soames,' said the archdeacon.
'Oh dear, I hope not.'
'Somebody must have stolen it, papa.'
'I had hoped not, Susan,' said Mr Harding. Both the archdeacon and Mrs
Grantly knew that it was useless to argue with him on such a point, and
so they let that go.
Then they came to discuss Mr Crawley's present position, and Mr Harding
ventured to ask a question or two as to Grace's chance of marriage. He
did not often interfere in the family arrangements of his son-in-law and
never did so when those family arrangements were concerned with high
matters. He had hardly opened his mouth in reference to the marriage of
that august lady who was now the Marchioness of Hartletop. And of the
Lady Anne, the wife of the Rev Charles Grantly, who was always
prodigiously civil to him, speaking to him very loud, as though he were
deaf because he was old, and bringing cheap presents from London of
which he did not take much heed--of her he rarely said a word, or of her
children, to either of his daughters. But now his grandson, Henry
Grantly, was going to marry a girl of whom he felt that he might speak
without impropriety. 'I suppose it will be a match; won't it, my dears?'
'Not a doubt about it,' said Mrs Grantly. Mr Harding looked at his
son-in-law, but his son-in-law said nothing. The archdeacon did not even
frown--but only moved a little uneasily in his chair.
'Dear, dear! What a comfort it must be,' said the old man.
'I have not seen yet,' said Mrs Grantly; 'but the archdeacon declares
that she is all the graces rolled into one.'
'I never said anything half so absurd,' said the archdeacon.
'But he is really in love with her, papa,' said Mrs Grantly. 'He
confessed to me that he gave her a kiss, and he only saw her once for
five minutes.'
'I should like to give her a kiss,' said Mr Harding.
'So you shall, papa, and I'll bring her here on purpose. As soon as
ever the thing is settled, we mean to ask her to Plumstead.'
'Do you, though? How nice! How happy Henry will be.'
'And if she comes--and of course she will--I'll lose no time in bringing
her over to you. Nelly must see her, of course.'
As they were leaving the room Mr Harding called the archdeacon back, and
taking him by the hand, spoke one word to him in a whisper. 'I don't
like to interfere,' he said; 'but might not Mr Crawley have St Ewold's?'
The archdeacon took up the old man's hand and kissed it. Then he
followed his wife out of the room, without making any answer to Mr
Harding's question.
Three days after this Mrs Arabin reached the deanery, and the joy at her
return was very great. 'My dear, I have been sick for you,' said Mr
Harding.
'Oh, papa, I ought not to have gone.'
'Nay, my dear; do not say that. Would it make my happy that you should
be a prisoner here for ever? It was only when I seemed to get so weak
that I thought about it. I felt that it must be near when they bade me
not to go to the cathedral any more.'
'If I had been here, I could have gone with you, papa.'
'It is better as it is. I know now that I was not fit for it. When your
sister came to me, I never thought of remonstrating. I knew then that I
had seen it for the last time.'
'We need not say that yet, papa.'
'I did think that when you came home we might crawl there together some
warm morning. I did think of that for a time. But it will never be so,
dear. I shall never see anything now that I do not see from here--and
that not for long. Do not cry, Nelly. I have nothing to regret, nothing
to make me unhappy. I know how poor and weak has been my life; but I
know how rich and strong is that other life. Do not cry, Nelly--not till
I am gone; and then not beyond measure. Why should anyone weep for those
who go away full of years--and full of hope?'
On the day but one following the dean reached his home. The final
arrangements of his tour, as well as those of his wife, had been made to
depend on Mr Crawley's trial; for he also had been hurried back by John
Eames's visit to Florence. 'I should have come back at once,' he said to
his wife, 'when they wrote to ask me whether Crawley had taken the
cheque from me, had anybody told me that he was in actual trouble; but I
had no idea that they were charging him with the theft.'
'As far as I can learn, they never really suspected him until after your
answer had come. They had been quite sure that your answer would be in
the affirmative.'
'What he must have endured it is impossible to conceive. I shall go out
to him tomorrow.'
'Would he not come to us?' said Mrs Arabin.
'I doubt it. I will ask him, of course. I will ask them all here. This
about Henry and the girl may make a difference. He has resigned the
living, and some of the palace people are doing the duty.'
'But he can have it again?'
'Oh, yes; he can have it again. For the matter of that, I need simply
to give him back his letter. Only he is so odd--so unlike other people!
And he has tried to live there, and has failed; and is now in debt. I
wonder whether Grantly will give him St Ewold's?'
'I wish he would. But you must ask him. I should not dare.'
As to the matter of the cheque, the dean acknowledged to his wife at
last that he had some recollection of her having told him that she had
made the sum of money up to seventy pounds. 'I don't feel certain of it
now; but I think you must have done so.' 'I am quite sure I could have
done it without telling you,' she replied. 'At any rate you said nothing
of the cheque,' pleaded the dean. 'I don't suppose I did,' said Mrs
Arabin. 'I thought that cheques were like any other money; but I shall
know better for the future.'
On the following morning the dean rode over to Hogglestock, and as he
drew near to the house of his old friend, his spirits flagged--for to
tell the truth, he dreaded the meeting. Since the day on which he had
brought Mr Crawley from a curacy in Cornwall into the diocese of
Barchester, his friend had been a trouble to him rather than a joy. The
trouble had been a trouble of spirit altogether--not all of pocket. He
would willingly have picked the Crawleys out from the pecuniary mud into
which they were for ever falling, time after time, had it been possible.
For, though the dean was hardly to be called a rich man, his lines had
fallen to him not only in pleasant places, but in easy
circumstances--and Mr Crawley's embarrassments, though overwhelming to
him, were not so great as to have been heavy to the dean. But in
striving to do this he had always failed, had always suffered, and had
generally been rebuked. Crawley would attempt to argue with him as to
the improper allotment of Church endowments--declaring that he did not
do so with any reference to his own circumstances, but simply because
the subject was one naturally interesting to clergymen. And this he
would do, as he was waving off with his hand offers of immediate
assistance which were indispensable. Then there had been scenes between
the dean and Mrs Crawley--terribly painful--and which had taken place in
direct disobedience to the husband's positive injunctions. 'Sir,' he had
once said to the dean, 'I request that nothing may pass from your hands
to the hands of my wife.' 'Tush, tush,' the dean had answered. 'I will
have no tushing or pshawing on such a matter. A man's wife is his very
own, the breath of his nostril, the blood of his heart, the rib from his
body. It is for me to rule my wife, and I tell you that I will not have
it.' After that the gifts had come from the hand of Mrs Arabin; and then
again, after that, in the direst hour of his need, Crawley had himself
come and taken money from the dean's hands! The interview had been so
painful that Arabin would hardly have been able to count the money or to
know of what it had consisted, had he taken the notes and cheque out of
the envelope in which his wife had put them. Since that day the two had
not met each other, and since that day these new troubles had come.
Arabin as yet knew but little of the manner in which they had been
borne, except that Crawley had felt himself compelled to resign the
living of Hogglestock. He knew nothing of Mrs Proudie's persecution,
except what he gathered from the fact of the clerical commission of
which he had been informed; but he could imagine that Mrs Proudie would
not lie easy in her bed while a clergyman was doing duty almost under
her nose, who was guilty of the double offence of being accused of
theft, and of having been put into his living by the dean. The dean,
therefore, as he rode on, pictured to himself his old friend in a
terrible condition. And it might be that even now that condition would
hardly have been improved. He was no longer suspected of being a thief;
but he could have no money in his pocket; and it might well be that his
sufferings would have made him almost mad.
The dean also got down and left his horse at a farmyard, as Grantly had
done with his carriage; and walked on first to the school. He had voices
inside, but could not distinguish from them whether Mr Crawley was there
or not. Slowly he opened the door, and looking round saw that Jane
Crawley was in the ascendant. Jane did not know him at once, but told
him when he had introduced himself that her father had gone down to
Hoggle End. He had started two hours ago, but it was impossible to say
when he might be back. 'He sometimes stays all day long with the
brickmakers,' said Jane. Her mother was at home, and she would take the
dean into the house. As she said this she told him that her father was
sometimes better and sometimes worse. 'But he has never been so very,
very bad, since Henry Grantly and mamma's cousin came and told us about
the cheque.' Those words Henry Grantly made the dean understand that
there might yet be a ray of sunshine among the Crawleys.
'There is papa,' said Jane, as they got to the gate. Then they waited
for a few minutes till Mr Crawley came up, very hot, wiping the sweat
from his forehead.
'Crawley,' said the dean, 'I cannot tell you how glad I am to see you,
and how rejoiced I am that this accusation has fallen from you.'
'Verily the news came in time, Arabin,' said the other, 'but it was a
narrow pinch--a narrow pinch. Will you enter, and see my wife?'
CHAPTER LXXIX
MR CRAWLEY SPEAKS OF HIS COAT
At this time Grace had returned from Framley. As long as the terrible
tragedy of the forthcoming trial was dragging itself on she had been
content to stay away, at her mother's bidding. It has not been possible
in these pages to tell of all the advice that had been given to the
ladies of the Crawley family in their great difficulty, and of all the
assistance that had been offered. The elder Lady Lufton and the younger,
and Mrs Robarts had continually been in consultation on the subject; Mrs
Grantly's opinion had been asked and given; and even the Miss Prettymans
and Mrs Walker had found means of expressing themselves. The
communications to Mrs Crawley had been very frequent--though they had
not of course been allowed to reach the ears of Mr Crawley. What was to
be done when the living should be gone and Mr Crawley should be in
prison? Some said that he might be there for six weeks, and some for two
years. Old Lady Lufton made anxious inquiries about Judge Medlicote,
before whom it was said that the trial would be taken. Judge Medlicote
was a Dissenter, and old Lady Lufton was in despair. When she was
assured by some liberally-disposed friend that this would certainly make
no difference, she shook her head woefully. 'I don't know why we are to
have Dissenteres at all,' she said, 'to try people who belong to the
Established Church.' When she heard that Judge Medlicote would certainly
be the judge, she made up her mind that two years would be the least of
it. She would not have minded, she said, if he had been a Roman
Catholic. And whether the punishment might be for six weeks or for two
years, what should be done with the family? Where should they be housed?
How should they be fed? What should be done with the poor man when he
came out of prison? It was a case in which the generous, soft-hearted
old Lady Lufton was almost beside herself. 'As for Grace,' said young
Lady Lufton, 'it will be a great deal better that we should keep her
amongst us. Of course she will become Mrs Grantly, and it will be nicer
for her that it should be so.' In those days the posters had been seen,
and the flitting to Pau had been talked of, and the Framley opinion was
that Grace had better remain at Framley till she should be carried off
to Pau. There were schemes, too, about Jane, but what was to be done for
the wife? And what was to be done for Mr Crawley? Then came the news
from Mrs Arabin, and all interest in Judge Medlicote was at an end.
But even now, after this great escape, what was to be done? As to
Grace, she had felt the absolute necessity of being obedient to her
friends--with the consent of course of her mother--during the great
tribulation of her family. Things were so bad that she had not the heart
to make them worse by giving any unnecessary trouble as to herself.
Having resolved--and having made her mother so understand--that on one
point she would guide herself by her own feelings, she was contented to
go hither and thither as she was told, and to do as she was bid. Her
hope was that Miss Prettyman would allow her to go back to her teaching,
but it had come to be understood among them all that nothing was to be
said on that subject till the trial should be over. Till that time she
would be passive. But then, as I have said, had come the news from Mrs
Arabin, and Grace, with all the others, understood that there would be
no trial. When this was known and acknowledged, she declared her purpose
of going back to Hogglestock. She would go back at once. When asked both
by Lady Lufton and Mrs Robarts why she was in so great a haste, she
merely said that it must be so. She was, as it were, absolved from her
passive obedience to Framley authorities by the diminution of the family
misfortunes.
Mrs Robarts understood the feeling by which Grace was hurried away. 'Do
you know why she is so obstinate?' Lady Lufton asked.
'I think I do,' said Mrs Robarts.
'And what is it?'
'Should Major Grantly renew his offer to her she is under a pledge to
accept him now.'
'Of course he will renew it, and of course she will accept him.'
'Just so. But she prefers that he should come for her to her own
house--because of the poverty. If he chooses to seek her there, I don't
think she will make much difficulty.' Lady Lufton demurred at this, not
however with anger, and expressed a certain amount of mild displeasure.
She did not quite see why Major Grantly should not be allowed to come
and do his love-making comfortably, where there was a decent dinner for
him to eat, and chairs and tables and sofas and carpets. She said that
she thought that something was due to Major Grantly. She was in truth a
little disappointed that she was not allowed to have her own way, and to
arrange the marriage at Framley under her own eye. But, through it all,
she appreciated Grace; and they who knew her well and heard what she
said upon the occasion, understood that her favour was not to be
withdrawn. All young women were divided by the old Lady Lufton into
sheep and goats--very white sheep and very black goats--and Grace was
to be a sheep. Thus it came to pass that Grace Crawley was at home when
the dean visited Hogglestock. 'Mamma,' she said, looking out of the
window, 'there is the dean with papa at the gate.'
'It was a narrow squeak--a very narrow squeak,' Mr Crawley had said when
his friend had congratulated him on his escape. The dean felt at the
moment that not for many years had he heard the incumbent of Hogglestock
speak either of himself or of anything else with so manifest an attempt
at jocularity. Arabin had expected to find the man broken down by the
weight of his sorrows, and lo! at the first moment of their first
interview he himself began to ridicule them! Crawley having thus alluded
to the narrow squeak had asked his visitor to enter the house and see
his wife.
'Of course I will,' said Arabin, 'but I will speak just a word to you
first.' Jane who had accompanied the dean from the school, now left
them, and went into the house to her mother. 'My wife cannot forgive
herself about the cheque,' continued he.
'There is nothing to be forgiven,' said Mr Crawley; 'nothing.'
'She feels that what she did was awkward and foolish. She ought never
to have paid the cheque away in such a manner. She knows that now.'
'It was given--not paid,' said Crawley; and as he spoke something of the
black cloud came back on his face. 'And I am well aware hard Mrs Arabin
strove to take away from the alms she bestowed the bitterness of the
sting of eleemosynary aid. If you please, Arabin, we will not talk any
more of that. I can never forget that I have been a beggar, but I need
not make my beggary the matter of conversation. I hope the Holy Land has
fulfilled your expectation?'
'It has more than done so,' said the dean, bewildered by the sudden
change.
'For myself, it is, of course, impossible that I should ever visit any
scenes except those to which my immediate work may call me--never in
this world. The new Jerusalem is still within my reach--if it be not
forfeited by pride and obstinacy; but the old Jerusalem I can never
behold. Methinks, because it is so, I would sooner stand with my foot on
Mount Olivet, or drink a cup of water in the village of Bethany, than
visit any other spot within the traveller's compass. The sources of the
Nile, of which men talk so much--I see it in the papers and reviews
which the ladies at Framley are so good as to send to my wife--do not
interest me much. I have no ambition to climb Mont Blanc or the
Matterhorn; Rome makes my mouth water but little, nor even Athens much.
I can realise without seeing all that Athens could show me, and can
fancy that the existing truth would destroy more than it would build up.
But to have stood on Calvary!'
'We don't know where Calvary was,' said the dean.
'I fancy that I should know--should know enough,' said the illogical and
unreasonable Mr Crawley. 'Is it true that you can look over from the
spot on which He stood as He came across the brow of the hill, and see
the huge stones of the temple placed there by Solomon's men--as He saw
them--right across the brook Cedron, is it not?'
'It's all there, Crawley--just as your knowledge of it tells you.'
'In the privilege of seeing those places I can almost envy a man
his--money.' The last words he uttered after a pause. He had been about
to say that underneath temptation he could almost envy a man his
promotion; but he bethought himself that on such an occasion as this it
would be better that he should spare the dean. 'And now, if you wish it,
we will go in. I fancy that I see my wife at the window, as though she
were waiting for us.' So saying, he strode on along the little path, and
the dean was fain to follow him, even though he had said so little of
all that he had intended to say.
As soon as he was in with Mrs Crawley he repeated his apology about the
cheque, and found himself better able to explain himself than he could
do when he was alone with the husband. 'Of course, it has been our
fault,' he said.
'Oh, no,' said Mrs Crawley, 'how can you have been at fault when your
only object was to do us good?' But, nevertheless, the dean took the
blame upon his own shoulders, or, rather, upon those of his wife, and
declared himself to be responsible for all the trouble about the cheque.
'Let it go,' said Crawley, after sitting awhile in silence; 'let it
pass.'
'You cannot wonder, Crawley,' said the dean, 'that I should have felt
myself obliged to speak of it.'
'For the future it will be well that it should be forgotten,' said
Crawley; 'or, if not forgotten, treated as though forgotten. And now,
dean, what must I do about the living?'
'Just resume it, as though nothing happened.'
'But that may hardly be done without the bishop's authority. I speak,
of course, with deference to your higher and better information on such
subjects. My experience in the taking up and laying down of livings has
not been extended. But it seemeth to me that though it may certainly be
in your power to nominate me again to the perpetual curacy of the
parish--presuming your patronage to be unlimited and not to reach you in
rotation only--yet the bishop may demand to institute again, and must
so demand, unless he pleases to permit that my letter to him shall be
revoked and cancelled.'
'Of course he will do anything of that kind. He must know the
circumstances as well as you and I do.'
'At present they tell me he is much afflicted by the death of his wife,
and, therefore, can hardly be expected to take immediate action. There
came on the last Sunday one Mr Snapper, his chaplain.'
'We all know Snapper,' said the dean. 'Snapper is not a bad little
fellow.'
'I say nothing of his being bad, my friend, but merely mention the fact
that on Sunday morning last he performed the service in our church. On
the Sunday previous Mr Thumble was here.'
'We all know Thumble, too,' said the dean; 'or, at least, we know
something about him.'
'He has been a thorn in our sides,' said Mrs Crawley, unable to restrain
the expression of her dislike when Mr Thumble's name was mentioned.
'Nay, my dear, nay;--do not allow yourself the use of language so strong
against a brother. Our flesh at that time was somewhat prone to fester,
and little thorns made us very sore.'
'He is a horrible man,' said Jane, almost in a whisper; but the words
were distinctly audible to the dean.
'They need not come any more,' said Arabin.
'That is where I fear we differ. I think they must come--or some others
in their place--till the bishop shall have expressed his pleasure to the
contrary. I have submitted myself to his lordship, and, having done so,
I feel that I cannot again go up into my pulpit till he shall have
authorised me to do so. For a time, Arabin, I combatted the bishop,
believing--then as now--that he put forth his hand against me after a
fashion which the law had not sanctioned. And I made bold to stand in
his presence and tell him that I would not obey him, except in things
legal. But afterwards, when he proceeded formally, through the action of
a commission, I submitted myself. And I regard myself still as being
under his submission.'
It was impossible to shake him. Arabin remained there for more than an
hour, trying to pass on to another subject, but being constantly brought
back by Mr Crawley himself to the fact of his own dependent position.
Nor would he condescend to supplicate the bishop. It was, he surmised,
the duty of Dr Tempest, together with the other four clergymen, to
report to the bishop on the question of the alleged theft; and then
doubtless the bishop, when he had duly considered the report, and--as Mr
Crawley seemed to think was essentially necessary--had sufficiently
recovered from the grief of his wife's death, would, at his leisure,
communicate his decision to Mr Crawley. Nothing could be more complete
than Mr Crawley's humility with respect to the bishop; and he never
seemed to be tired of declaring that he had submitted himself!
And then the dean, finding it to be vain to expect to be left alone with
Mr Crawley for a moment--in vain also to wait for a proper opening for
that which he had to say--rushed violently at his other subject. 'And
now, Mrs Crawley,' he said. 'Mrs Arabin wishes you all to come over to
the deanery for a while and stay with us.'
'Mrs Arabin is too kind,' said Mrs Crawley, looking across at her
husband.
'We should like of all things,' said the dean, with perhaps more of good
nature than of truth. 'Of course you must have been knocked about a good
deal.'
'Indeed we have,' said Mrs Crawley.
'And till you are somewhat settled again, I think that the change of
scene would be good for all of you. Come, Crawley, I'll talk to you
every evening about Jerusalem for as long as you please; and then there
will perhaps come back to us something of the pleasantness of old days.'
As she heard this Mrs Crawley's eyes became full of tears, and she could
not altogether hide them. What she had endured during the last four
months had almost broken her spirit. The burden had at last been too
heavy for her strength. 'You cannot fancy, Crawley, how often I have
thought of the old days and wished that they might return. I have found
it very hard to get an opportunity of saying so much to you; but I will
say it now.'
'It may hardly be as you say,' said Crawley, grimly.
'You mean that the old days can never be brought back?'
'Assuredly they cannot. But it was not that I meant. It may not be
that I and mine should transfer ourselves to your roof and sojourn
there.'
'Why should you not?'
'The reasons are many, and on the face of things. The reason, perhaps,
the most on the face of it is to be found in my wife's gown, and in my
coat.' This Mr Crawley said very gravely, looking neither to the right
nor to the left nor at the face of any of them, nor at his own garment,
nor hers, but straight before him; and when he had so spoken he said not
a word further --not going on to dilate on his poverty as the dean
expected that he would do.
'At such a time such reasons should stand for nothing,' said the dean.
'And why not now as they always do, and always must till the power of
tailors shall have waned, and the daughters of Eve shall toil and spin
no more? Like to like is true, and should be held to be true, of all
societies and of all compacts for co-operation and mutual living. Here,
where, if I may venture to say so, you and I are like to like;--for the
new gloss of your coat;--the dean, as it happened, had on at the moment
a very old coat, his oldest coat, selected perhaps with some view to
this special visit--'does not obtrude itself in my household, as would
be the threadbare texture of mine in yours;--I can open my mouth to you
and converse with you at my ease; you are now to me that Frank Arabin
who has so comforted me and so often confuted me; whom I may perhaps on
occasion have confuted--and perhaps have comforted. But were I sitting
with you in your library in Barchester, my threadbare coat would be too
much for me. I should be silent, if not sullen. I should feel the weight
of all my poverty, and the greater weight of all your wealth. For my
children let them go. I have come to know that they will be better from
me.'
'Papa!' said Jane.
'Papa does not mean it,' said Grace, coming up to him and standing close
to him.
There was silence amongst them for a few moments, and then the master of
the house shook himself--literally shook himself, till he had shaken off
the cloud. He had taken Grace by the hand, and thrusting out the other
arm had got it round Jane's waist. 'When a man has girls, Arabin,' he
said, 'as you have, but not big girls yet like Grace here, of course he
knows that they will fly away.'
'I shall not fly away,' said Jane.
'I don't know what papa means,' said Grace.
Upon the whole the dean thought it the pleasantest visit he had ever
made to Hogglestock, and when he got home he told his wife that he
believed that the accusation made against Mr Crawley had done him good.
'I could not say a word in private to her,' he said, 'but I did promise
that you would go over and see her. On the very next day, Mrs Arabin
went over, and I think that the visit was a comfort to Mrs Crawley.
CHAPTER LXXX
MISS DEMOLINES DESIRES TO BE A FINGER-POST
John Eames had passed Mrs Thorne in the hall of her own house almost
without noticing her as he took his departure from Lily Dale. She had
told him as plainly as words could speak that she could not bring
herself to be his wife--and he had believed her. He had sworn to himself
that if he did not succeed he would never ask again. 'It would be
foolish and unmanly to do so,' he said to himself as he rushed along the
street towards his club. No! That romance was over. At last there had
come an end to it! 'It has taken a good bit out of me,' he said,
arresting his steps suddenly that he might stand still and think of it
all. 'By George, yes! A man doesn't go through that kind of thing
without losing some of the caloric. I couldn't do it again if an angel
came in my way.' he went to his club, and tried to be jolly. But as he
walked home at night, and gave himself time to think over what had taken
place with deliberation, he stopped in the gloom of a deserted street
and leaning against the rails burst into tears. He had really loved her
and she was never to be his. He had wanted her--and it is so painful a
thing to miss what you want when you have done your very best to obtain
it! To struggle in vain always hurts the pride; but the wound made by
the vain struggle for a woman is sorer than any wound so made. He
gnashed his teeth, and struck the railings with his stick; and then he
hurried home, swearing that he would never give another thought to Lily
Dale. In the dead of the night, thinking of it still, he asked himself
whether it would not be a fine thing to wait another ten years, and then
go to her again. In such a way would he not make himself immortal as a
lover beyond any Jacob or Leander?
The next day he went to his office and was very grave. When Sir Raffle
complimented him on being back before his time, he simply said that when
he had accomplished that for which he had gone, he had, of course, come
back. Sir Raffle could not get a word out from him about Mr Crawley. He
was very grave, and intent upon his work. Indeed he was so serious that
he quite afflicted Sir Raffle--whose mock activity felt itself to be
confounded by the official zeal of his private secretary. During the
whole of that day, Johnny was resolving that there could be no cure for
his malady but hard work. He would not only work hard at the office if
he remained there, but he would take to heavy reading. He rather thought
that he would go deep into Greek and do a translation, or take up the
exact sciences and make a name for himself in that way. But as he had
enough for the life of a secluded literary man without his salary, he
rather thought he would give up his office altogether. He had a mutton
chop at home that evening, and spent his time in endeavouring to read
out aloud to himself certain passages from the Iliad--for he had bought
a Homer as he returned from his office. At nine o'clock he went,
half-price, to the Strand Theatre. How he met there his old friend
Boulger and went afterwards to 'The Cock' and had a supper need not here
be told with more accurate detail.
On the evening of the next day he was bound by his appointment to go to
Porchester Terrace. In the moments of his enthusiasm about Homer he had
declared to himself that he would never go near Miss Demolines again.
Why should he? All that kind of thing was nothing to him now. He would
simply send her his compliments and say that he was prevented by
business from keeping his engagement. She, of course, would go on
writing to him for a time, but he would simply leave her letters
unanswered, and the thing, of course, would come to an end at last. He
afterwards said something to Boulger about Miss Demolines--but that was
during the jollity of their supper--and he then declared that he would
follow out that little game. 'I don't see why a fellow isn't to amuse
himself, eh, Boulger, old boy?' Boulger winked and grinned, and said
some amusements were dangerous. 'I don't think that there is any danger
there,' said Johnny. 'I don't believe she is thinking of that kind of
thing herself;--not with me at least. What she likes is the pretence of
mystery; and as it is amusing I don't see why a fellow shouldn't indulge
her.' But that determination was pronounced after two mutton chops at
'The Cock', between one and two o'clock in the morning. On the next day
he was cooler and wiser. Greek he thought might be tedious as he
discovered that he would have to begin again from the very alphabet. He
would therefore abandon that idea. Greek was not the thing for him, but
he would take up the sanitary condition of the poor in London. A fellow
could be of some use in that way. In the meantime he would keep his
appointment with Miss Demolines, simply because it was an appointment. A
gentleman should always his word to a lady!
He did keep his appointment with Miss Demolines, and was with her almost
precisely at the hour she had named. She received him with a mysterious
tranquillity which almost perplexed him. He remembered, however, that
the way to enjoy the society of Miss Demolines was to take her in all
her moods with perfect seriousness, and was therefore very tranquil
himself. On the present occasion she did not rise as she entered the
room, and hardly spoke as she tendered to him the tips of her fingers to
be touched. As she said almost nothing, he said nothing at all, but sank
into a chair and stretched his legs out comfortably before him. It had
been always understood between them that she was to bear the burden of
the conversation.
'You'll have a cup of tea?' she said.
'Yes;--if you do.' Then the page brought the tea, and John Eames amused
himself by swallowing three slices of very thin bread and butter.
'Non for me--thanks,' said Madalina. 'I rarely eat after dinner, and
not often much then. I fancy that I should best like a world in which
there was no eating.'
'A good dinner is a very good thing,' said John. And then there was
again silence. He was aware that some great secret was to be told to him
this evening, but he was much too discreet to show any curiosity upon
that subject. He sipped his tea to the end, and then, having got up to
put his cup down, stood on the rug with his back to the fire. 'Have you
been out today?' he asked.
'Indeed I have.'
'And you are tired.'
'Very tired.'
'Then perhaps I had better not keep you up.'
'Your remaining will make no difference in that respect. I don't
suppose that I shall be in bed for the next four hours. But do as you
like about going.'
'I am in no hurry,' said Johnny. Then he sat down again, stretched out
his legs and made himself comfortable.
'I have been to see that woman,' said Madalina after a pause.
'What woman?'
'Maria Clutterbuck--as I must always call her; for I cannot bring myself
to pronounce the name of that poor wretch who was done to death.'
'He blew his brains out in delirium tremens,' said Johnny.
'And what made him drink?' said Madalina with emphasis. 'Never mind. I
decline altogether to speak of it. Such a scene as I have had! I was
driven at last to tell her what I thought of her. Anything so callous,
so heartless, so selfish, so stone-cold, and so childish, I never saw
before! That Maria was childish and selfish I always knew;--but I
thought there was some heart--a vestige of heart. I found today that
there was none--none. If you please we won't speak of her any more.'
'Certainly not,' said Johnny.
'You need not wonder that I am tired and feverish.'
'That sort of thing is fatiguing, I daresay. I don't know whether we do
not lose more than we gain by those strong emotions.'
'I would rather die and go beneath the sod at once, than live without
them,' said Madalina.
'It's a matter of taste,' said Johnny.
'It is there that the poor wretch is so deficient. She is thinking now,
this moment, of nothing but her creature comforts. That tragedy has not
even stirred her pulses.'
'If her pulses were stirred ever so, that would not make her happy.'
'Happy! Who is happy? Are you happy?'
Johnny thought of Lily Dale and paused before he answered. No;
certainly he was not happy. But he was not going to talk about his
unhappiness with Miss Demolines! 'Of course I am;--as jolly as a
sandboy,' he said.
'Mr Eames,' said Madalina raising herself on her sofa, 'if you can not
express yourself in language more suitable to the occasion and to the
scene than that, I think that you had better--'
'Hold my tongue.'
'Just so;--though I should not have chosen myself to use words so
abruptly discourteous.'
'What did I say:--jolly as a sandboy? There is nothing wrong in that.
What I meant was that I think that the world is a very good sort of
world, and that a man can get along in it very well if he minds his p's
and q's.'
'But suppose it's a woman?'
'Easier still.'
'And suppose she does not mind her p's and q's?'
'Women always do.'
'Do they? Your knowledge of women goes as far as that, does it? Tell me
fairly;--do you think you know anything about women?' Madalina as she
asked the question, looked full into his face, and shook her locks and
smiled. When she shook her locks and smiled, there was a certain
attraction about her of which John Eames was fully sensible. She could
throw a special brightness into her eyes, which, though it probably
betokened nothing beyond ill-natured mischief, seemed to convey a
promise of wit and intellect.
'I don't mean to make any boast about it,' said Johnny.
'I doubt whether you know anything. The pretty simplicity of your
excellent Lily Dale has sufficed for you.'
'Never mind about her,' said Johnny impatiently.
'I do not mind about her in the least. But an insight into that sort of
simplicity will not teach the character of a real woman. You cannot
learn the flavour of wines by sipping sherry and water. For myself I do
not think that I am simple. I own it fairly. If you must have
simplicity, I cannot be to your taste.'
'Nobody likes partridge always,' said Johnny, laughing.
'I understand you, sir. And though what you say is not complimentary, I
am willing to forgive that fault for its truth. I don't consider myself
to be always a partridge, I can assure you. I am as changeable as the
moon.'
'And as fickle?'
'I say nothing about that, sir. I leave you to find that out. It is a
man's business to discover that for himself. If you really do know aught
of women--'
'I did not say that I did.'
'But if you do, you will perhaps have discovered that a woman may be as
changeable as the moon, and yet as true as the sun;--that she may flit
from flower to flower, quite unheeding while no passion exists, but that
a passion fixes her at once. Do you believe me?' Now she looked into his
eyes again, but did not smile and did not shake her locks.
'Oh, yes;--that's true enough. And when they have a lot of children,
then they become steady as milestones.'
'Children!' said Madalina, getting up and walking about the room.
'They do have them, you know,' said Johnny.
'Do you mean to say, sir, that I should be a milestone?'
'A finger-post,' said Johnny, 'to show a fellow the way he ought to go.'
She walked twice across the room without speaking. Then she came and
stood opposite him, still without speaking--and then she walked about
again. 'What could a woman better be, than a finger-post, as you call
it, with such a purpose?'
'Nothing better, of course;--though a milestone to tell a fellow his
distances, is very good.'
'Psha!'
'You don't like the idea of being a milestone?'
'No!'
'Then you can make up your mind to be a finger-post.'
'John, shall I be finger-post for you?.' She stood and looked at him for
a moment or two, with her eyes full of love, as though she were going to
throw herself into his arms. And she would have done so, no doubt,
instantly, had he risen to his legs. As it was, after having gazed at
him for the moment with her love-laden eyes, she flung herself on the
sofa, and hid her face among the cushions.
He had felt that it was coming for the last quarter of an hour--and he
had felt also, that he was quite unable to help himself. He did not
believe that he should ever be reduced to marrying Miss Demolines, but
he did see plainly enough that he was getting into trouble; and yet, for
his life, he could not help himself. The moth who flutters round the
light knows that he is being burned, and yet he cannot fly away from it.
When Madalina had begun to talk to him about woman in general, and then
about herself, and had told him that such a woman as herself--even one
so liable to the disturbance of violent emotions--might yet be as true
and honest as the sun, he knew he ought to get up and make his escape.
He did not exactly know how the catastrophe would come, but he was quite
sure that if he remained there he would be called in some way for a
declaration of his sentiments--and that the call would be one which all
his wit would not enable him to answer with any comfort. It was very
well jesting about milestones, but every jest brought him nearer to the
precipice. He perceived that however ludicrous might be the image which
his words produced, she was clever enough in some way to turn that image
to her own purpose. He had called a woman a finger-post, and forthwith
she had offered to come to him and be a finger-post to him for life!
What was he to say to her? It was clear that he must say something. As
at this moment she was sobbing violently, he could not pass the offer by
as a joke. Women will say that his answer should have been very simple,
and his escape very easy. But men will understand that it is not easy to
reject even a Miss Demolines when she offers herself for matrimony. And,
moreover--as Johnny bethought himself at this crisis of his fate--Lady
Demolines was no doubt at the other side of the drawing-room door, ready
to stop him, should he attempt to run away. In the meantime the sobs on
the sofa became violent, and still more violent. He had not even yet
made up his mind what to do, when Madalina, springing to her feet, stood
before him, with her curls wildly waving and her arms extended. 'Let it
be as though it were unsaid,' she exclaimed. John Eames had not the
slightest objection; but, nevertheless, there was a difficulty even in
this. Were he simply to assent to this latter proposition, it could not
be that the feminine nature of Miss Demolines would be outraged by so
uncomplimentary an acquiescence. He felt that he ought at least to
hesitate a little --to make some pretence at closing upon the rich offer
that had been made to him; only that were he to show any such pretence
the rich offer would, no doubt, be repeated. His Madalina had twitted
him in the earlier part of their interview with knowing nothing of the
nature of women. He did know enough to feel assured that any false step
on his part now would lead him into very serious difficulties. 'Let it
be as though it were unsaid! Why, oh why, have I betrayed myself?'
exclaimed Madalina.
John had now risen from his chair, and coming up to her took her by the
arm and spoke a word. 'Compose yourself,' he said. He spoke in his most
affectionate voice, and he stood very close to her.
'How easy it is to bid me to do that,' said Madalina. 'Tell the sea to
compose itself when it rages.'
'Madalina!' said he.
'Well--what of Madalina? Madalina has lost her own respect--for ever.'
'Do not say that.'
'Oh, John--why did you ever come here? Why? Why did we meet at that
fatal woman's house? Or, meeting so, why did we not part as strangers?
Sir, why have you come here to my mother's house day after day, evening
after evening, if--Oh, heavens, what am I saying? I wonder whether you
will scorn me always?'
'I will never scorn you.'
'And you will pardon me?'
'There is nothing to pardon.'
'And--you will love me?' Then, without waiting for any more encouraging
reply--unable, probably, to wait a moment longer, she sunk upon his
bosom. He caught her of course--and at that moment the drawing-room door
was opened, and Lady Demolines entered the chamber. John Eames detected
a glance at the skirt of the old white dressing gown which he had seen
whisking away on the occasion of his last visit to Porchester Terrace.
But on the present occasion Lady Demolines wore over it a short red
opera cloak, and the cap on her head was ornamented with coloured
ribbons. 'What is this,' she said, 'and why am I thus disturbed?'
Madalina lay motionless in Johnny's arms, while the old woman glowered
at him from under the coloured ribbons. 'Mr Eames, what is that I
behold?' she said.
'Your daughter, madam, seems to be a little unwell,' said Johnny.
Madalina kept her feet firm on the ground, but did not for a moment lose
her purchase against Johnny's waistcoat. Her respiration came very
strong, but they came a good deal stronger when he mentioned the fact
that she was not so well as she might be.
'Unwell!' said Lady Demolines. And John was stricken at the moment with
a conviction that her ladyship must have passed the early part of her
life upon the stage. 'You would trifle with me, sir. Beware that you do
not trifle with her--with Madalina.'
'My mother,' said Madalina; but still she did not give up her purchase,
and the voice seemed to come half from her and half from Johnny. 'Come
to me, my mother.' Then Lady Demolines hastened to her daughter, and
Madalina between them was gradually laid at her length upon the sofa.
The work of laying her out, however, was left almost entirely to the
strong arm of Mr John Eames. 'Thanks, mother,' said Madalina; but she
had not as yet opened her eyes, even for an instant. 'Perhaps I had
better go now,' said Johnny. The old woman looked at him with eyes which
asked whether 'he didn't wish he might get it' as plainly as though the
words had been pronounced. 'Of course I'll wait if I can be of any
service,' said Johnny.
'I must know more of this, sir, before you leave the house,' said Lady
Demolines. He saw that between them both there might probably be a very
bad quarter of an hour in store for him; but he swore to himself that no
union of dragon and tigress should extract from him a word that could be
taken as a promise of marriage.
The old woman was now kneeling by the head of the sofa, and Johnny was
standing close by her side. Suddenly Madalina opened her eyes--opened
them very wide, and gazed around her. Then slowly she raised herself on
the sofa, and turned her face first upon her mother and then upon
Johnny. 'You here, mamma!' she said.
'Dearest one, I am near you. Be not afraid,' said her ladyship.
'Afraid! Why should I be afraid? John! My own John! Mamma, he is my
own.' And she put out her arms to him, as though calling to him to come
to her. Things were now very bad with John Eames --so bad that he would
have given a very considerable lump out of Lord De Guest's legacy to be
able to escape at once into the street. The power of a woman, when she
chooses to use it recklessly, is, for the moment, almost unbounded.
'I hope you find yourself a little better,' said John, struggling to
speak, as though he were not utterly crushed by the occasion.
Lady Demolines slowly raised herself from her knees, helping herself
with her hands against the shoulder of the sofa--for though still very
clever, she was old and stiff--and then offered both her hands to
Johnny. Johnny cautiously took one of them, finding himself unable to
decline them both. 'My son!' she exclaimed; and before he knew where he
was the old woman had succeeded in kissing his nose and whiskers. 'My
son!' she said again.
Now that the time had come for facing the dragon and the tigress in
their wrath. If they were to be faced at all, the time for facing them
had certainly arrived. 'I don't quite understand,' he said, almost in a
whisper. Madalina put out one arm towards him, and the fingers trembled.
Her lips were opened, and the white row of interior ivory might be seen
plainly; but at the present conjuncture of affairs she spoke not a word.
She spoke not a word; but her arm remained stretched towards him, and
her fingers did not cease to tremble.
'You do not understand!' said Lady Demolines, drawing herself back and
looking, in her short open cloak, like a knight who has donned his
cuirass, but has forgotten to put on his leg-gear. And she shook the
bright ribbons of her cap, as a knight in his wrath shakes the crest of
his helmet. 'You do not understand, Mr Eames! What is it, sir, that you
do not understand?'
'There is some misconception, I mean,' said Johnny.
'Mother!' said Madalina, turning her eyes from her recent lover to her
tender parent; trembling all over, but still keeping her hand extended.
'Mother!'
'My darling! But leave him to me, dearest. Compose yourself.'
''Twas the word that he said--this moment; before he pressed me to his
heart.'
'I thought you were fainting,' said Johnny.
'Sir!' said Lady Demolines, as she spoke, shook her crest, and glared at
him, and almost flew at him in her armour.
'It may be that nature has given way with me, and that I have been in a
dream,' said Madalina.
'That which mine eyes saw was no dream,' said Lady Demolines. 'Mr
Eames, I have given you the sweetest name that can fall from an old
woman's lips. I have called you my son.'
'Yes, you did, I know. But, as I said before, there is some mistake. I
know how proud I ought to be, and how happy, and all that kind of thing.
But--' Then there came a screech from Madalina, which would have
awakened the dead, had there been any dead in that house. The page and
cook, however, took no notice of it, whether they were awakened or not.
And having screeched, Madalina stood erect upon the floor, and she also
glared at her recreant lover. The dragon and the tiger were there before
him now, and he knew that it behoved him to look to himself. As he had a
battle to fight, might it not be best to put a bold face upon it? 'The
truth is,' said he, 'that I don't understand this kind of thing.'
'Not understand it, sir?' said the dragon.
'Leave him to me, mother,' said the tigress, shaking her head again, but
with a kind of shake differing from that which she had used before.
'This is my business, and I'll have it out for myself. If he thinks I am
going to put up with this kind of nonsense he's mistaken. I've been
straightforward and above board with you, Mr Eames, and I expect to be
treated in the same way in return. Do you mean to tell my mother that
you deny that we are engaged?'
'Well; yes; I do. I'm very sorry, you know, if I seem to be uncivil--'
'It's because I've no brother,' said the tigress. 'He thinks that I
have no man near me to protect me. But he shall find that I can protect
myself. John Eames, why are you treating me like this?'
'I shall consult my cousin the serjeant tomorrow,' said the dragon. 'In
the meantime he must remain in this house. I shall not allow the front
door to be unlocked for him.'
This, I think, was the bitterest moment of all for Johnny. To be
confined all night in Lady Demolines's drawing-room would, of itself, be
an intolerable nuisance. And then the absurdity of the thing, and the
story that would go abroad! And what would he say to the dragon's cousin
the serjeant, if the serjeant should be brought upon the field before he
was able to escape from it? He did not know what a serjeant might not do
to him in such circumstances. There was one thing no serjeant should do,
and no dragon! Between them all they should never force him to marry the
tigress. At this moment Johnny heard a tramp along the pavement, and he
rushed to the window. Before the dragon or even the tigress could arrest
him, he had thrown open the sash, and had appealed in his difficulty to
the guardian of the night. 'I say, old fellow,' said Johnny, 'don't you
stir from that till I tell you.' The policeman turned his bull's-eye
upon the window, and stood perfectly motionless. 'Now, if you please,
I'll say good-night,' said Johnny. But, as he spoke he still held the
open window in his hand.
'What means this violence in my house?' said the dragon.
'Mamma, you had better let him go,' said the tigress. 'We shall know
where to find him.'
'You will certainly be able to find me,' said Johnny.
'Go,' said the dragon, shaking her crest--shaking all her armour at
him--'dastard, go!'
'Policeman,' shouted Johnny, while he still held the open window in his
hand, 'mind you don't stir till I come out.' The bull's-eye was shifted
a little, but the policeman never said a word.
'I wish you a good-night, Lady Demolines,' said Johnny. 'Good-night,
Miss Demolines.' Then he left the window and made a run for the door.
But the dragon was there before him.
'Let him go, mamma,' said the tigress as she closed the window. 'We
shall only have a rumpus.'
'That will be all,' said Johnny. 'There isn't the slightest use in your
trying to keep me here.'
'And are we never to see you again?' said the tigress, almost
languishing again with one eye.
'Well; no. What would be the use? No man likes to be shut in, you
know.'
'Go, then,' said the tigress; 'but if you think that this is to be the
end of it you'll find yourself wonderfully mistaken. You poor false,
drivelling creature! Lily Dale won't touch you with a pair of tongs.
It's no use your going to her.'
'Go away, sir, this moment, and don't contaminate my room an instant
longer by your presence,' said the dragon, who had observed through the
window the bull's-eye was still in full force before the house. Then
John Eames withdrew, and descending into the hall made his way in the
dark to the front door. For aught he knew there might still be treachery
in regard to the lock; but his heart was comforted as he heard the
footfall of the policeman on the door-step. With much fumbling he
succeeded at last in turning the key and drawing the bolt, and then he
found himself at liberty in the street. Before he even spoke a word to
the policeman he went out into the road and looked up at the window. He
could just see the figure of the dragon's helmet as she was closing the
shutters. It was the last he ever saw of Lady Demolines or her daughter.
'What was it all about?' said the policeman.
'I don't know that I can just tell you,' said Johnny, searching in his
pocket-book for half a sovereign which he tendered to the man. 'There
was a little difficulty, and I'm obliged to you for waiting.'
'There ain't nothing wrong?' said the man suspiciously, hesitating for a
moment before he accepted the coin.
'Nothing on earth. I'll wait with you, while you have the house opened
and inquire, if you wish it. The truth is somebody inside refused to
have the door opened, and I didn't want to stay there all night.'
'They're a rummy couple, if what I hear is true.'
'They are a rummy couple,' said Johnny.
'I suppose it's all right,' said the policeman, taking the money. And
then John walked off home by himself, turning his mind all the
circumstances of his connection with Miss Demolines. Taking his own
conduct as a whole, he was rather proud of it; but he acknowledged to
himself that it would be well that he should keep himself free from the
society of Madalinas for the future.
CHAPTER LXXXI
BARCHESTER CLOISTERS
On the morning of the Sunday after the dean's return, Mr Harding was
lying in his bed, and Posy was sitting on the bed beside him. It was
manifest to all now that he became feebler and feebler from day to day,
and that he would never leave his bed again. Even the archdeacon had
shaken his head, and had acknowledged to his wife that the last day for
her father was near at hand. It would very soon be necessary that he
should elect another vicar for St Ewold's.
'Grandpa won't play cat's-cradle,' said Posy, as Mrs Arabin entered the
room.
'No, darling--not this morning,' said the old man. He himself well knew
that he would never play cat's-cradle again. Even that was over for him
how.
'She teases you, papa,' said Mrs Arabin.
'No, indeed,' said he. 'Posy never teases me;' and he slowly moved his
withered hand down outside the bed, so as to hold the child by her
frock. 'Let her stay with me, my dear.'
'Dr Filgrave is downstairs, papa. You will see him, if he comes up?'
Now Dr Filgrave was the leading physician of Barchester, and nobody of
note in the city--or for that matter of that in the eastern division of
the county--was allowed to start upon the last great journey without
some assistance from him as the hour of going drew nigh. I do not know
that he had much reputation for prolonging life, but he was supposed to
add a grace to the hour of departure. Mr Harding expressed no wish to
see the doctor--had rather declared his conviction that Dr Filgrave
could be of no possible service to him. But he was not a man to
persevere in his objection in opposition to the wishes of his friends
around him; and as soon as the archdeacon had spoken a word on the
subject he assented.
'Of course, my dear, I will see him.'
'And Posy shall come back when he has gone,' said Mrs Arabin.
'Posy will do me more good than Dr Filgrave, I'm quite sure;--but Posy
shall go now.' So Posy scrambled off the bed, and the doctor was ushered
into the room.
'A day or two will see the end of it, archdeacon; I should say a day or
two,' said the doctor, as he met Dr Grantly in the hall. 'I should say
that a day or two will see the end of it. Indeed I will not undertake
that twenty-four hours may not see the close of his earthly troubles. He
has no suffering, no pain, no disturbing cause. Nature simply retires to
rest.' Dr Filgrave, as he said this, made a slow falling motion with his
hands, which alone on various occasions had been thought to be worth all
the money paid for his attendance. 'Perhaps you would wish that I should
step in this evening, Mr Dean? As it happens, I shall be at liberty.'
The dean of course said that he would take it as an additional favour.
Neither the dean nor the archdeacon had the slightest belief in Dr
Filgrave, and yet they would hardly have been contented that their
father-in-law should have departed without him.
'Look at that man, now,' said the archdeacon, when the doctor had gone,
'who talks so glibly about nature going to rest. I've known him all my
life. He's an older man by some months than our dear old friend
upstairs. And he looks as if he were going to attend death-beds in
Barchester for ever.'
'I suppose he is right in what he tells us now?' said the dean.
'No doubt he is; but my belief doesn't come from his saying it.' Then
there was a pause as the two church dignitaries sat together, doing
nothing, feeling that the solemnity of the moment was such that it would
be hardly becoming that they should even attempt to read. 'His going
will make an old man of me,' said the archdeacon. 'It will be different
with you.'
'It will make an old woman of Eleanor, I fear.'
'I seem to have known him all my life,' said the archdeacon. 'I have
known him ever since I left college; and I have known him as one man
seldom does know another. There is nothing that he has done--as I
believe nothing that he has thought--with which I have not been
cognisant. I feel sure that he never had an impure fancy in his mind, or
a faulty wish in his heart. His tenderness has surpassed the tenderness
of a woman; and yet, when occasion came for showing it, he had all the
spirit of a hero. I shall never forget his resignation of the hospital,
and all that I did and said to make him keep it.'
'But he was right?'
'As Septimus Harding he was, I think, right; but it would have been
wrong in any other man. And he was right, too, about the deanery.' For
promotion had come in Mr Harding's way, and he, too, might have been
Dean of Barchester. 'The fact is, he never was wrong. He couldn't go
wrong. He lacked guile, and he feared God--and a man who does both will
never go far astray. I don't think he ever coveted aught in his
life--except a new case for his violoncello and somebody to listen to
him when he played it.' Then the archdeacon got up, and walked about the
room in his enthusiasm; and, perhaps, as he walked some thoughts as to
the sterner ambition of his own life passed through his mind. What
things had he coveted? Had he lacked guile? He told himself that had
feared God--but he was not sure that he was telling himself true even in
that.
During the whole of the morning Mrs Arabin and Mrs Grantly were with
their father, and during the greater part of the day there was absolute
silence in the room. He seemed to sleep; and they, though they knew in
truth that he was not sleeping, feared to disturb him by a word. About
two Mrs Baxter brought him his dinner, and he did rouse himself and
swallowed a spoonful of soup, and half a glass of wine. At this time
Posy came to him, and stood at the bedside, looking at him with her
great wide eyes. She seemed to be aware that life had gone so far with
her dear old friend that she must not be allowed on his bed again. But
he put his hand out to her, and she held it, standing quite still and
silent. When Mrs Baxter came to take away the tray, Posy's mother got
up, and whispered a word to the child. Then Posy went away, and her eyes
never beheld the old man again. That was a day which Posy never
forgot--not though she should live to be much older than her grandfather
was when she thus left him.
'It is so sweet to have you both here,' he said, when he had been lying
silent for nearly an hour after the child had gone. Then they got up,
and came and stood close to him. 'There is nothing left for me to wish,
my dears;--nothing.' Not long afterwards he expressed a desire that the
two husbands--his two sons-in-law --should come to him; and Mrs Arabin
went to them, and brought them into the room. As he took their hands he
merely repeated the same words again. 'There is nothing left for me to
wish, my dears;--nothing.' He never spoke again above his breath; but
ever and anon his daughters, who watched him, could see that he was
praying. The two men did not stay with him long, but returned to the
gloom of the library. The gloom had almost become the darkness of the
night, and they were still sitting there without any light, when Mrs
Baxter entered the room. 'The dear gentleman is no more,' said Mrs
Baxter; and it seemed to the archdeacon that the very moment of his
father's death had repeated itself. When Dr Filgrave called he was told
that his services would be of no further use. 'Dear, dear!' said the
doctor. 'We are all dust, Mrs Baxter; are we not?' There were people in
Barchester who pretended to know how often the doctor had repeated this
little formula during the last thirty years.
There was no violence of sorrow in the house that night; but there were
aching hearts, and one heart so sore that it seemed that no cure for its
anguish could ever reach it. 'He has always been with me,' Mrs Arabin
said to her husband, as he strove to console her. 'It was not that I
loved him better than Susan, but I have felt so much more of his loving
tenderness. The sweetness of his voice has been in my ears almost daily
since I was born.'
They buried him in the cathedral which he had loved so well, and in
which nearly all the work of his life had been done; and all Barchester
was there to see him laid in his grave within the cloisters. There was
no procession of coaches, no hearse, nor was there any attempt at
funereal pomp. From the dean's side door, across the vaulted passage,
and into the transept--over the little step upon which he had so nearly
fallen when last he made his way out of the building--the coffin was
carried on men's shoulders. It was but a short journey from his bedroom
to his grave. But the bell had been tolling sadly all morning, and the
nave and the aisles and the transepts, close up to the door leading from
the transept into the cloister, were crowded with those who had known
the name and the figure and the voice of Mr Harding as long as they had
known anything. Up to this day no one would have said specially that Mr
Harding was a favourite of the town. He had never been forward enough in
anything to become the acknowledged possessor of popularity. But, now
that he was gone, men and women told each other how good he had been.
They remembered the sweetness of his smile, and talked of loving little
words which he had spoken to them--either years ago or the other day,
for his words had always been loving. The dean and the archdeacon came
first, shoulder to shoulder, and after them came their wives. I do not
know that it was the proper order for mourning, but it was a touching
sight to be seen, and was long remembered in Barchester. Painful as it
was for them, the two women would be there, and the two sisters would
walk together;--nor would they go before their husbands. Then there were
the archdeacon's two sons--for the Rev Charles Grantly had come to
Plumstead for the occasion. And in the vaulted passage which runs
between the deanery and the end of the transept all the chapter, with
the choir, the prebendaries, with the fat old chancellor, the precentor,
and the minor canons down to the little choristers--they were all there,
and followed in at the transept door, two by two. And in the transept
they were joined by another clergyman who no one had expected to see
that day. The bishop was there, looking old and worn--almost as though
he were unconscious of what he was doing. Since his wife's death no one
had seen him out of the palace or the palace grounds till that day. But
there he was--and they made way for him into the procession behind the
two ladies--and the archdeacon, when he saw it, resolved that there
should be peace in his heart, if peace were possible.
They made their way into the cloisters where the grave had been dug--as
many as might be allowed to follow. The place indeed was open to all who
chose to come; but they who had only slightly known the man refrained
from pressing upon those who had a right to stand around his coffin. But
there was one other there whom the faithful chronicler of Barchester
should mention. Before any other one had reached the spot, the sexton
and the verger between them had led in between them, among the graves
beneath the cloisters, a blind old man, very old, with a wondrous stoop,
but who must have owned a grand stature before extreme old age had bent
him, and they placed him sitting on a stone in the corner of the
archway. But as soon as the shuffling of steps reached his ears, he
raised himself with the aid of his stick, and stood during the service
leaning against the pillar. The blind man was so old that he might
almost have been Mr Harding's father. This was John Bunce, bedesman from
Hiram's Hospital--and none perhaps there had known Mr Harding better
than he had known him. When the earth had been thrown on to the coffin,
and the service was over, and they were about to disperse, Mrs Arabin
went up to the old man, and taking his hand between hers whispered a
word into his ear. 'Oh, Miss Eleanor!,' he said. 'Oh, Miss Eleanor!'
Within a fortnight he also was lying within the cathedral precincts.
And so they buried Mr Septimus Harding, formerly Warden of Hiram's
Hospital in the city of Barchester, of whom the chronicler may say that
that city never knew a sweeter gentleman or a better Christian.
CHAPTER LXXXII
THE LAST SCENE AT HOGGLESTOCK
The fortnight following Mr Harding's death was passed very quietly at
Hogglestock, for during that time no visitor made an appearance in the
parish except Mr Snapper on the Sundays. Mr Snapper, when he had
completed the service on the first of these Sundays, intimated to Mr
Crawley his opinion that probably that gentleman might himself wish to
resume his duties on the following Sabbath. Mr Crawley, however,
courteously declined to do anything of the kind. He said that it was
quite out of the question that he should do so without a direct
communication made to him from the bishop, or by the bishop's order. The
assizes had, of course, gone by, and all question of the trial was over.
Nevertheless--as Mr Snapper said--the bishop had not, as yet, given any
order. Mr Snapper was of the opinion that the bishop in these days was
not quite himself. He had spoken to the bishop about it, and the bishop
had told him peevishly--'I must say quite peevishly,' Mr Snapper had
said--that nothing was to be done at present. Mr Snapper was not the
less clearly of the opinion that Mr Crawley might resume his duties. To
this, however, Mr Crawley would not assent.
But even during this fortnight Mr Crawley had not remained altogether
neglected. Two days after Mr Harding's death he had received a note from
the dean in which he was advised not to resume the duties at Hogglestock
for the present. 'Of course you can understand that we have a sad house
here for the present,' the dean had said. 'But as soon as ever we are
able to move in the matter we will arrange things for you as comfortably
as we can. I will see the bishop myself.' Mr Crawley had no ambitious
idea of any comfort which might accrue to him beyond that of an
honourable return to his humble preferment at Hogglestock; but,
nevertheless, he was in this case minded to do as the dean counselled
him. He had submitted himself to the bishop, and he would wait till the
bishop absolved him from his submission.
On the day after the funeral, the bishop had sent his compliments to the
dean with an expression of a wish that the dean would call upon him on
any early day that might be convenient with reference to the position of
Mr Crawley of Hogglestock. The note was in the bishop's own handwriting
and was as mild and civil as a bishop's note could be. Of course the
dean named an early day for the interview; but it was necessary before
he went to the bishop that he should discuss the matter with the
archdeacon. If St Ewold's might be given to Mr Crawley, the Hogglestock
difficulties would all be brought to an end. The archdeacon, after the
funeral, had returned to Plumstead, and thither the dean went to him
before he was the bishop. He did succeed--he and Mrs Grantly between
them--but with very great difficulty, in obtaining a conditional
promise. They had both thought that when the archdeacon became fully
aware that Grace was to be his daughter-in-law, he would at once have
been delighted to have an opportunity of extricating from his poverty a
clergyman with whom it was his fate to be closely connected. But he
fought the matter on twenty different points. He declared at first that
as it was his primary duty to give the people of St Ewold's the best
clergyman he could select for them he could not give the preference to
Mr Crawley, because Mr Crawley, in spite of all his zeal and piety, was
a man so quaint in his manners and so eccentric in his mode of speech as
not to be the best clergyman whom he could select. 'What is my old
friend Thorne to do with a man in the parish who won't drink a glass of
wine with him?'. For Ullathorne, the seat of that Mr Wilfred Thorne who
had been so guilty in the matter of the foxes, was situated in the
parish of St Ewold's. When Mrs Grantly proposed that Mr Thorne's consent
should be asked, the archdeacon became very angry. It was his special
duty to the best he could for Mr Thorne, but it was specially his duty
to do so without consulting Mr Thorne about it. As the archdeacon's
objection had been argued simply on the point of a glass of wine, both
the dean and Mrs Grantly thought that he was unreasonable. But they had
their point to gain, and therefore only flattered him. They were quite
sure that Mr Thorne would like to have a clergyman in the parish who
would himself be closely connected with the archdeacon. Then Dr Grantly
alleged that he might find himself in a trap. What if he conferred the
living of St Ewold's on Mr Crawley and after all there should be no
marriage between his son and Grace? 'Of course they'll be married,' said
Mrs Grantly. 'It's all very well for you to say that, my dear; but the
whole family are so queer that there is no knowing what the girl may do.
She may take up some other fad now, and refuse him point blank.' 'She
has never taken up any fad,' said Mrs Grantly, who now mounted almost to
wrath in defence of her future daughter-in-law, 'and you are wrong to
say that she has. She has behaved beautifully: --as nobody knows better
than you do.' Then the archdeacon gave way so far as to promise that St
Ewold's should be offered to Mr Crawley as soon as Grace Crawley was in
truth engaged to Henry Grantly.
After that, the dean went to the palace. There had never been any
quarrelling between the bishop and the dean, either direct or
indirect;--nor, indeed, had the dean every quarrelled even with Mrs
Proudie. But he had belonged the anti-Proudie faction. He had been
brought into the diocese by the Grantly interest; and therefore, during
Mrs Proudie's lifetime, he had always been accounted among the enemies.
There had never been any real intimacy between the houses. Each house
had always been asked to dine with the other house once a year; but it
had been understood that such dinings were ecclesiastico-official, and
not friendly. There had been the same outside diocesan civility between
even the palace and Plumstead. But now, when the great chieftain of the
palace was no more, and the strength of the palace faction was gone,
peace, or perhaps something more than peace--amity, perhaps, might be
more easily arranged with the dean than with the archdeacon. In
preparation for such arrangements the bishop had gone to Mr Harding's
funeral.
And now the dean went to the palace at the bishop's behest. He found
his lordship alone, and was received with almost reverential courtesy.
He thought that the bishop was looking wonderfully aged since he last
saw him, but did not perhaps take into account the absence of clerical
sleekness which was incidental to the bishop's private life in his
private room, and perhaps in a certain measure to his recent affliction.
The dean had been in the habit of regarding Dr Proudie as a man almost
young for his age--having been in the habit of seeing him at his best,
clothed in authority, redolent of the throne, conspicuous as regarded
his apron and outward signs of episcopality. Much of this was now
absent. The bishop, as he rose to greet the dean, shuffled with his old
slippers, and his hair was not brushed so becomingly as used to be the
case when Mrs Proudie was always near him.
It was necessary that a word should be said by each as to the loss which
the other had suffered. 'Mr Dean,' said his lordship, 'allow me to offer
you my condolements in regard to the death of that very excellent
clergyman and most worthy gentleman, your father-in-law.'
'Thank you, my lord. He was excellent and worthy. I do not suppose
that I shall live to see any man who was more so. You also have a
great--a terrible loss.'
'Oh, Mr Dean, yes; yes, indeed, Mr Dean. That was a loss.'
'And hardly past the prime of life!'
'Ah, yes;--just fifty-six--and so strong! Was she not? At least
everybody thought so. And yet she was gone in a minute;--gone in a
minute. I haven't held my head up since, Mr Dean.'
'It was a great loss, my lord; but you must struggle to bear it.'
'I do struggle. I am struggling. But it makes one feel so lonely in
this great house. Ah me! I often wish, Mr Dean, that it had pleased
Providence to have left me in some humble parsonage, where duty would
have been easier than it is here. But I will not trouble you with all
that. What are we to do, Mr Dean, about this poor Mr Crawley.'
'Mr Crawley is a very old friend of mine, and a very dear friend.'
'Is he? Ah! A very worthy man, I am sure, and one who has been much
tried by undeserved adversities.'
'Most severely, my lord.'
'Sitting among the potsherds, like Job; has he not, Mr Dean? Well; let
us hope that is all over. When this accusation about the robbery was
brought against him, I found myself bound to interfere.'
'He has no complaint on that score.'
'I hope not. I have not wished to be harsh, but what could I do, Mr
Dean? They told me that the civil authorities found the evidence so
strong against him that it could not be withstood.'
'It was very strong.'
'And we thought that he should at least be relieved, and we sent for Dr
Tempest, who is his rural dean.' Then the bishop remembering all the
circumstances of that interview with the Dr Tempest--as to which he had
ever felt assured that one of the results was the death of his wife,
whereby there was no longer any 'we' left in the palace of
Barchester--sighed piteously, looking at the dean with a hopeless face.
'Nobody doubts, my lord, that you acted for the best.'
'I hope we did. I think we did. And now what will we do? He has
resigned his living, both to you and to me, as I hear--you being the
patron. It will simply be necessary, I think, that he should ask to have
the letters cancelled. Then, as I take it, there need be no restitution.
You cannot think, Mr Dean, how much I have thought about it all.'
Then the dean unfolded his budget, and explained to the bishop how he
hoped that the living of St Ewold's, which was, after some
ecclesiastical fashion, attached to the rectory of Plumstead, and which
was now vacant by the demise of Mr Harding, might be conferred by the
archdeacon upon Mr Crawley. It was necessary to explain also that this
could not be done quite immediately, and in doing this the dean
encountered some little difficulty. The archdeacon, he said, wished to
be allowed another week to think about it; and therefore perhaps
provision for the duties of Hogglestock might yet be made for a few
Sundays. The bishop, the dean said, might easily understand that, after
what has occurred, Mr Crawley would hardly wish to go again into that
pulpit, unless he did so as resuming duties, which would necessarily be
permanent with him. To all this the bishop assented, but he was
apparently struck with much wonder at the choice made by the archdeacon.
'I should have thought, Mr Dean,' he said, 'that Mr Crawley was the last
man to have suited the archdeacon's choice.'
'The archdeacon and I married sisters, my lord.'
'Oh, ah! yes. And he puts the nomination of St Ewold's at your
disposition. I am sure I shall be delighted to institute so worthy a
gentleman as Mr Crawley.' Then the dean took his leave of the bishop--as
we will also. Poor dear bishop! I am inclined to think that he was right
in his regrets as to the little parsonage. Not that his failure at
Barchester, and his present consciousness of lonely incompetence, were
mainly due to any positive inefficiency on his own part. He might have
been a sufficiently good bishop, had it not been that Mrs Proudie was so
much more a sufficiently good bishop's wife. We will now say farewell to
him, with a hope that the lopped tree may yet become green again, and to
some extent fruitful, although all its beautiful head and richness of
waving foliage have been taken from it.
About a week after this Henry Grantly rode over from Cosby Lodge to
Hogglestock. It has just been said that though the assizes had passed by
and though all question of Mr Crawley's guilt was now set aside, no
visitor had of late made his way over to Hogglestock. I fancy that Grace
Crawley forgot, in the fullness of her memory as to other things, that
Mr Harding, of whose death she heard, had been her lover's
grandfather--and that therefore there might possibly be some delay. Had
there been much said between the mother and the daughter about the
lover, no doubt all this would have been explained; but Grace was very
reticent, and there were other matters in the Hogglestock household
which in those days occupied Mrs Crawley's mind. How were they again to
begin life? for, in very truth, life as it had existed with them before,
had been brought to an end. But Grace remembered well the sort of
compact which existed between her and her lover;--the compact which had
been made in very words between herself and her lover's father. Complete
in her estimation as had been the heaven opened to her by Henry
Grantly's offer, she had refused it all--lest she should bring disgrace
upon him. But the disgrace was not certain; and if her father should be
made free from it, then--then--then Henry Grantly ought to come to her
and be at her feet with all the expedition possible to him. That was her
reading of the compact. She had once declared, when speaking of the
possible disgrace which might attach itself to her family and to her
name, that her poverty did not 'signify a bit'. She was not ashamed of
her father--only of the accusation against her father. Therefore she had
hurried home when that accusation was withdrawn, desirous that her lover
should tell her of his love--if he chose to repeat such telling--amidst
all the poor things of Hogglestock, and not among the chairs, and tables
and good dinners of luxurious Framley. Mrs Robarts had given a true
interpretation to Lady Lufton of the haste which Grace had displayed.
But she need not have been in so great a hurry. She had been at home
already above a fortnight, and as yet he had made no sign. At last she
said a word to her mother. 'Might I not ask to go back to Miss
Prettyman's now, mamma?' 'I think, dear, you had better wait till things
are a little settled. Papa is to hear again from the dean very soon. You
see they are all in great sorrow at Barchester about poor Mr Harding's
death.' 'Grace!' said Jane, rushing into the house almost speechless, at
that moment, 'here he is!--on horseback.' I do not know why Jane should
have talked about Major Grantly as simply 'he'. There had been no
conversation among the sisters to justify her in such a mode of speech.
Grace had not a moment to put two and two together, so that she might
realise the meaning of what her mother had said; but, nevertheless, she
felt at the moment that the man, coming as he had done now, had come
with all commendable speed. How foolish she had been with her wretched
impatience!
There he was certainly, tying his horse to the railing. 'Mamma, what am
I to say to him?'
'Nay, dear; he is your own friend--of your own making. You must say
what you think fit.'
'You are not going?'
'I think we had better, dear. Then she went, and Jane with her, and
Jane opened the door for Major Grantly. Mr Crawley himself was away, at
Hoggle End, and did not return till after Major Grantly had left the
parsonage. Jane, as she greeted the grand gentleman, whom she had seen
and no more than seen, hardly knew what to say to him. When, after a
minute's hesitation, she told him that Grace was in there--pointing to
the sitting-room door, she felt that she had been very awkward. Henry
Grantly, however, did not, I think, feel her awkwardness, being
conscious of some small difficulties of his own. When, however, he found
that Grace was alone, the task before him at once lost half its
difficulties. 'Grace,' he said, 'am I right to come to you now?'
'I do not know,' she said. 'I cannot tell.'
'Dearest Grace, there is no reason on earth now why you should not be my
wife.'
'Is there not?'
'I know of none--if you can love me. You saw my father?'
'Yes, I saw him.'
'And you heard what he said?'
'I hardly remember what he said;--but he kissed me, and I thought he was
very kind.'
What little attempt Henry Grantly then made, thinking that he could do
no better than follow closely the example of so excellent a father, need
not be explained with minuteness. But I think that his first effort was
not successful. Grace was embarrassed and retreated, and it was not till
she had been compelled to give a direct answer to a direct question that
she submitted to allow his arm round her waist. But when she had
answered that question she was almost more humble than becomes a maiden
who has just been wooed and won. A maiden who has been wooed and won,
generally thinks that it is she who has conquered, and chooses to be
triumphant accordingly. But Grace was even mean enough to thank her
lover. 'I do not know why you should be so good to me,' she said.
'Because I love you,' said he, 'better than all the world.'
'By why should you be so good to me as that? Why should you love me? I
am such a poor thing for a man like you to love.'
'I have had the wit to see that you are not a poor thing, Grace; and it
is thus that I have earned my treasure. Some girls are poor things, and
some are rich treasures.'
'If love can make me a treasure, I will be your treasure. And if love
can make me rich, I will be rich for you.' After that I think he had no
difficulty in following in his father's footsteps.
After a while Mrs Crawley came in, and there was much pleasant talking
among them, while Henry Grantly sat happily with his love, as though
waiting for Mr Crawley's return. But though he was there nearly all
morning Mr Crawley did not return. 'I think he likes the brickmakers
better than anybody in the world, except ourselves,' said Grace. 'I
don't know how he will manage to get on without his friends.' Before
Grace has said this, Major Grantly had told all his story, and had
produced a letter from his father, addressed to Mr Crawley, of which the
reader shall have a copy, although at this time the letter had not been
opened. The letter was as follows:-
'PLUMSTEAD RECTORY, May, 186-
'MY DEAR SIR,
'You will no doubt have heard that Mr Harding, the vicar of
St Ewold's, who was the father of my wife and of Mrs Arabin,
has been taken from us. The loss to us of so excellent and
so dear a man has been very great. I have conferred with my
friend the Dean of Barchester as to a new nomination, and I
venture to request your acceptance of the preferment; if it
should suit you to move from Hogglestock to St Ewold's. It
may be as well that I should state plainly my reasons for
making this offer to a gentleman with whom I am not
personally acquainted. Mr Harding, on his death-bed, himself
suggested it, moved thereto by what he had heard of the
cruel and undeserved persecution to which you had been
subjected; as also--on which point he was very urgent in
what he said--by the character which you bear in the diocese
for zeal and piety. I may also add, that the close
connection which, as I understand, is likely to take place
between your family and mine has been an additional reason
for my taking this step, and the long friendship which has
existed between you and my wife's brother-in-law, the Dean
of Barchester, is a third.
'St Ewold's is worth 350 pounds per annum, besides the
house, which is sufficiently commodious for a moderate
family. The population is about twelve hundred, of which
more than a half consists of persons dwelling in an outskirt
of the city--for the parish runs almost into Barchester.
'I shall be glad to hear your reply with as little delay as
may suit your convenience, and in the event of your
accepting the offer--which I sincerely trust that you may be
enable to do--I shall hope to have an early opportunity of
seeing you, with reference to your institution to the
parish.
'Allow me also to say to you and Mrs Crawley that, if we
have been correctly informed as to that other event to which
I have alluded, we both hope that we may have an early
opportunity of making ourselves personally acquainted with
the parents of a young lady who is to be so dear to us. As I
have met your daughter, I may perhaps be allowed to send her
my kindest love. If, as my daughter-in-law, she comes up to
the impression which she gave me at our first meeting, I, at
any rate, shall be satisfied.--I have the honour to be, my
dear sir, you most faithful servant,
'THEOPHILUS GRANTLY'
This letter the archdeacon had shown to his wife, by whom it had not
been very warmly approved. Nothing, Mrs Grantly had said, could be
prettier than what the archdeacon had said about Grace. Mrs Crawley, no
doubt, would be satisfied with that. But Mr Crawley was such a strange
man! 'He will be stranger than I take him to be if he does not accept St
Ewold's,' said the archdeacon. 'But in offering it,' said Mrs Grantly,
'you have not a said a word of your own high opinion of his merits.' 'I
have not a very high opinion of them,' said the archdeacon. 'Your father
had, and I have said so. And as I have the most profound respect for
your father's opinion in such a matter, I have permitted that to
overcome my own hesitation.' This was pretty from the husband to the
wife as it regarded her father, who had now gone from them; and,
therefore, Mrs Grantly accepted it without further argument. The reader
may probably feel assured that the archdeacon had never, during their
joint lives, acted in any church matter upon the advice given to him by
Mr Harding; and it was probably the case also that the living would have
been offered to Mr Crawley, if nothing had been said by Mr Harding on
the subject; but it did not become Mrs Grantly even to think of all
this. The archdeacon, having made his gracious speech about her father,
was not again asked to alter his letter. 'I suppose he will accept it,'
said Mrs Grantly. 'I should think that he probably may,' said the
archdeacon.
So Grace, knowing what was the purport of the letter, sat with it
between her fingers, while her lover sat beside her, full of various
plans for the future. This was his first lover's present to her;--and
what a present it was! Comfort, and happiness, and a pleasant home for
all her family. 'St Ewold's isn't the best house in the world,' said the
major, 'because it is old, and what I call piecemeal; but it is very
pretty, and certainly nice.' 'That is just the sort of parsonage that I
dream about,' said Jane. 'And the garden is pleasant with old trees,'
said the major. 'I always dream about old trees,' said Jane, 'only I'm
afraid I'm too old myself to be let to climb up them now.' Mrs Crawley
said very little, but sat with her eyes full of tears. Was it possible
that, at last, before the world had closed upon her, she was to enjoy
something again of the comforts which she had known in her early years,
and to again surrounded by those decencies of life which of late had
been almost banished from her home of poverty!
Their various plans for the future--for the immediate future--were very
startling. Grace was to go over at once to Plumstead, whither Edith had
been already transferred from Cosby Lodge. That was all very well; there
was nothing very startling or impracticable in that. The Framley ladies,
having none of those doubts as to what was coming which had for a while
perplexed Grace herself, had taken little liberties with her wardrobe,
which enabled such a visit to be made without overwhelming difficulties.
But the major was equally eager--or at any rate imperious--in his
requisition for a visit from Mr and Mrs Crawley themselves to Plumstead
rectory. Mrs Crawley did not dare to put forward the plain unadorned
reasons against it, as Mr Crawley had done when discussing the subject
of a visit to the deanery. Nor could she quite venture to explain that
she feared the archdeacon and her husband would hardly mix well together
in society. With whom, indeed, was it possible that her husband should
mix well, after his long and hardly-tried seclusion? She could only
plead that both her husband and herself were so little used to going out
that she feared--she feared--she feared she knew not what. 'We'll get
over all that,' said the major, almost contemptuously. 'It is only the
first plunge that is disagreeable.' Perhaps the major did not know how
very disagreeable a first plunge may be!
At two o'clock Henry Grantly got up to go. 'I should very much like to
have seen him, but I fear I cannot wait any longer. As it is, the
patience of my horse has been surprising.' Then Grace walked out with
him to the gate and put her hand upon his bridle as he mounted, and
though how wonderful was the power of Fortune, that the goddess should
have sent so gallant a gentleman to be her lord and her lover. 'I
declare I don't quite believe it even yet,' she said, in the letter
which she wrote to Lily Dale that night.
It was four before Mr Crawley returned to his house, and then he was
very weary. There were many sick in these days at Hoggle End, and he had
gone from cottage to cottage through the day. Giles Hoggett was almost
unable to work from rheumatism, but still was of the opinion that
doggedness might carry him on. 'It's been a deal o' service to you,
Muster Crawley,' he said. 'We hears about it all. If you hadn't a been
dogged, where'd you a been now?' With Giles Hoggett and others he had
remained all the day, and now he came home weary and beaten. 'You'll
tell him first,' Grace had said, 'and then I'll give him the letter.'
The wife was the first to tell him of the good fortune that was coming.
He flung himself into the old chair as soon as he entered, and asked for
some bread and tea. 'Jane has already gone for it, dear,' said his wife.
'We have had a visitor here, Josiah.'
'A visitor--what visitor?'
'Grace's own friend--Henry Grantly.'
'Grace, come here, that I may kiss you and bless you,' he said very
solemnly. 'It would seem that the world is going to be very good to
you.'
'Papa, you must read this letter first.'
'Before I kiss my own darling?' Then she knelt at his feet. 'I see,'
he said, taking the letter; 'it is from your lover's father.
Peradventure he signifies his consent, which would surely be needful
before such a marriage would be seemly.'
'It isn't about me, papa, at all.'
'Not about you? If so, that would be most unpromising. But, in any
case, you are my best darling.' Then he kissed her and blessed her, and
slowly opened the letter. His wife had now come close to him, and was
standing over him, touching him, so that she also could read the
archdeacon's letter. Grace, who was still in front of him, could see the
working of his face as he read it; but even she could not tell whether
he was gratified, or offended, or dismayed. When he had got as far as
the first offer of the presentation, he ceased reading it for a while,
and looked round about the room as though lost in thought. 'Let me see
what further he writes to me,' he then said; and after that he continued
the letter slowly to the end. 'Nay, my child, you were in error in
saying that he wrote not about you. 'Tis the writing of you that he has
put some real heart into his words. He writes as though his home would
be welcome to you.'
'And does he not make St Ewold's welcome to you, papa?'
'He makes me welcome to accept it--if I may use the word after the
ordinary and somewhat faulty parlance of mankind.'
'And you will accept it--of course?'
'I know not that, my dear. The acceptance of a cure of souls is a thing
not to be decided on in a moment--as is the colour of a garment or the
shape of a toy. Nor would I condescend to take this thing from the
archdeacon's hands, if I thought that he bestowed it simply that the
father of his daughter-in-law might no longer be accounted poor.'
'Does he say that, papa?'
'He gives it as a collateral reason, basing his offer first on the
kindly expressed judgment of one who is no more. Then he refers to the
friendship of the dean. If he believed that the judgment of his late
father-in-law in so weighty a matter were the best to be relied upon of
all that were at his command, then he would have done well to trust to
it. But in such a case he should have bolstered up a good ground for
action with no collateral supports which are weak--and worse than weak.
However, it shall have my best consideration, whereunto I hope that
wisdom will be given to me where only such wisdom can be had.'
'Josiah,' said his wife to him, when they were alone, 'you will not
refuse it?'
'Not willingly--not if it may be accepted. Alas! you need not urge me,
when the temptation is so strong!'
CHAPTER LXXXIII
MR CRAWLEY IS CONQUERED
It was more than a week before the archdeacon received a reply from Mr
Crawley, during which time the dean had been over to Hogglestock more
than once, as had also Mrs Arabin and Lady Lufton the younger--and there
had been letters written without end, and the archdeacon had been nearly
beside himself. 'A man who pretends to conscientious scruples of that
kind is not fit to have a parish,' he had said to his wife. His wife
understood what he meant, and I trust that the reader may also
understand it. In the ordinary cutting of blocks a very fine razor is
not an appropriate instrument. The archdeacon, moreover, loved the
temporalities of the Church as temporalities. The Church was beautiful
to him because one man by interest might have a thousand a year, while
another man equally good, but without interest, could only have a
hundred. And he liked the men who had the interest a great deal better
than the men who had it not. He had been willing to admit the poor
perpetual curate, who had so long been kept out in the cold, within the
pleasant circle which was warm with ecclesiastical good things, and the
man hesitated--because of scruples, as the dean told him! 'I always
button up my pocket when I hear of scruples,' the archdeacon said.
But at last Mr Crawley condescended to accept St Ewold's.
'Reverend and dear sir,' he said in his letter: 'For the
personal benevolence of the offer made to me in your letter
of the -- instant, I beg to tender you my most grateful
thanks; as also for you generous kindness to me, in telling
me of the high praise bestowed upon me by a gentleman who is
now no more--whose character I have esteemed and whose good
opinion I value. There is, methinks, something inexpressibly
dear to me in the recorded praise of the dead. For the
further instance of the friendship of the Dean of
Barchester, I am also thankful.
'Since the receipt of your letter I have doubted much as to
my fitness for the work you have proposed to entrust to
me--not from any feeling that the parish of St Ewold's may
be beyond my intellectual power, but because the latter
circumstances of my life have been of a nature so strange
and perplexing that they have left me somewhat in doubt as
to my own aptitude for going about among men without giving
offence and becoming a stumbling block.
'Nevertheless, reverend and dear sir, if after this
confession on my part of a certain faulty demeanour with
which I know well that I am afflicted, you are still willing
to put the parish into my hands, I will accept the
charge--instigated to do so by the advice of all whom I have
consulted on the subject; and, in thus accepting it, I
hereby pledge myself to vacate it at a month's warning,
should I be called upon by you to do so at any period within
the next two years. Should I be so far successful during
those twenty-four months as to have satisfied both yourself
and myself, I may then perhaps venture to regard the
preferment as my own in perpetuity for life;--I have the
honour to be, reverend and dear sir, you most humble and
faithful servant,
'JOSIAH CRAWLEY'
'Psha!' said the archdeacon, who professed that he did not at all like
the letter. 'I wonder what he would say if I sent him a month's notice
at next Michaelmas?'
'I'm sure he would go,' said Mrs Grantly.
'The more fool he,' said the archdeacon.
At this time Grace was at the parsonage in a seventh heaven of
happiness. The archdeacon was never rough to her, nor did he make any of
his harsh remarks about her father in her presence. Before her St
Ewold's was spoken of as the home that was to belong to the Crawleys for
the next twenty years. Mrs Grantly was very loving with her, lavishing
upon her pretty presents, and words that were prettier than presents.
Grace's life had hitherto been so destitute of those prettinesses and
softnesses which can hardly be had without money though money alone will
not purchase them, that it seemed to her now that the heavens rained
graciousness upon her. It was not that the archdeacon's watch or her
lover's chain, or Mrs Grantly's locket, or the little toy from Italy
which Mrs Arabin brought to her from the treasures of the deanery,
filled her heart with undue exaltation. It was not that she revelled in
her new delights of silver and gold and shining gems; but that the
silver and gold and shining gems were constant indications to her that
things had changed, not only for her, but for her father and mother, and
brother and sister. She felt now more sure than ever that she could not
have enjoyed her love had she accepted her lover while the disgrace of
the accusation against her father remained. But now--having waited till
that had passed away, everything was a new happiness to her.
At last it was settled that Mr and Mrs Crawley were to come to
Plumstead--and they came. it would be too long to tell now how gradually
had come about that changed state of things which made such a visit
possible. Mr Crawley had at first declared that such a thing was out of
the question. If St Ewold's was to depend upon it St Ewold's must be
given up. And I think that it would have been impossible for him to go
direct from Hogglestock to Plumstead. But it fell out after this wise.
Mr Harding's curate at St Ewold's was nominated to Hogglestock, and the
dean urged upon his friend Crawley the expediency of giving up the house
as quickly as he could do so. Gradually at this time Mr Crawley had been
forced into a certain amount of intimacy with the haunts of men. He had
been twice or thrice at Barchester, and had lunched with the dean. He
had been at Framley for an hour or two, and had been forced into some
communication with old Mr Thorne, the squire of his new parish. The end
of this had been that he had at last consented to transfer himself and
wife and daughter to the deanery for a fortnight. He had preached one
farewell sermon at Hogglestock--not, as he told his audience, as their
pastor, which he had ceased to be now for some two or three months--but
as their old and loving friend, to whom the use of his former pulpit had
been lent, that he might express himself thus among them for the last
time. His sermon was very short, and was preached without book or
notes--but he never once paused for a word or halted in the string or
rhythm of his discourse. The dean was there and declared afterwards that
he had not given him credit for such powers of utterance. 'Any man can
utter out of a full heart,' Crawley had answered. 'In this trumpery
affair about myself, my heart is full! If we could only have our hearts
full in other matters, our utterances thereanent would receive more
attention.' To all of this the dean made no reply.
On the day after this the Crawleys took their final departure from
Hogglestock, all the brickmakers from Hoggle End having assembled on the
occasion, with a purse containing seventeen pounds seven shillings and
sixpence, which they insisted on presenting to Mr Crawley, and as to
which there was a little difficulty. And at the deanery they remained
for a fortnight. How Mrs Crawley, under the guidance of Mrs Arabin, had
there so far trenched upon the revenues of St Ewold's as to provide for
her husband and herself raiment fitting for the worldly splendour of
Plumstead, need not here be told in detail. Suffice to say, the raiment
was forthcoming, and Mr Crawley found himself to be the perplexed
possessor of a black dress coat, in addition to the long frock, coming
nearly to his feet, which was provided for his daily wear. Touching this
garment, there had been some discussion between the dean and the new
vicar. The dean had desired that it should be curtailed in length. The
vicar had remonstrated--but still with something of the weakness of
compliance in his eye. Then the dean had persisted. 'Surely the price of
the cloth wanted to perfect the comeliness of the garment cannot be
much,' said the vicar, almost woefully. After that, the dean relented,
and the comeliness of the coat was made perfect. The new black long
frock, I think, Mr Crawley liked; but the dress coat, with the suit
complete, perplexed him sorely.
With his new coat, and something also, of new manners, he and his wife
went over to Plumstead, leaving Jane at the deanery with Mrs Arabin. The
dean also went to Plumstead. They arrived there not much before dinner,
and as Grace was there before them the first moments were not so bad.
Before Mr Crawley had had time to feel himself lost in the drawing-room,
he was summoned away to prepare himself for dinner--for dinner, and for
the coat, which at the deanery he had been allowed to leave unworn. 'I
would with all my heart that I might retire to rest,' he said to his
wife, when the ceremony had been perfected.
'Do not say so. Go down and take your place with them, and speak your
mind with them--as you so well know how. Who among them can do it so
well?'
'I have been told,' said Mr Crawley, 'that you shall take a cock which
is lord of the farmyard--the cock of all that walk--and when you have
daubed his feathers with mud, he shall be thrashed by every dunghill
coward. I say not that I was ever the cock of the walk, but I know that
they have daubed my feathers.' Then he went down among the other poultry
in the farmyard.
At dinner he was very silent, answering, however, with a sort of
graceful stateliness any word that Mrs Grantly addressed to him. Mr
Thorne, of Ullathorne, was there also to meet his new vicar, as was also
Mr Thorne's very old sister, Miss Monica Thorne. And Lady Anne Grantly
was there--she having come with the expressed intention that the wives
of the two brothers should know each other--but with a warmer desire, I
think, of seeing Mr Crawley, of whom the clerical world had been talking
since some notice of the accusations against him had become general.
There were, therefore, ten or twelve at the dinner-table, and Mr Crawley
had not made one at such a board certainly since his marriage. All went
fairly smooth with him till the ladies left the room; for though Lady
Anne, who sat at his left hand, had perplexed him somewhat with clerical
questions, he had found that he was not called upon for much more than
monosyllabic responses. But in his heart he feared the archdeacon and he
felt that when the ladies were gone the archdeacon would not leave him
alone in his silence.
As soon as the door was closed, the first subject mooted was that of the
Plumstead fox, which had been so basely murdered on Mr Thorne's ground.
Mr Thorne had confessed the iniquity, had dismissed the murderous
gamekeeper, and all was serene. But the greater on that account was the
feasibility of discussing the question, and the archdeacon had a good
deal to say about it. Then Mr Thorne turned to the new vicar, and asked
him whether foxes abounded in Hogglestock. Had he been asked as to the
rats or moles, he would have known more about it.
'Indeed, sir, I know not whether or no there be any foxes in the parish
of Hogglestock. I do not remember me that I ever saw one. It is an
animal whose habits I have not watched.'
'There is an earth at Hoggle Bushes,' said the major; 'and I never knew
it without a litter.'
'I think I know the domestic whereabouts of every fox in Plumstead,'
said the archdeacon, with an ill-natured intention of astonishing Mr
Crawley.
'Of foxes with two legs our friend is speaking, without doubt,' said the
vicar of St Ewold's, with an attempt at grim pleasantry.
'Of them we have none at Plumstead. No--I was speaking of the dear old
fellow with the brush. Pass the bottle, Mr Crawley. Won't you fill your
glass?' Mr Crawley passed the bottle, but would not fill the glass. Then
the dean, looking up slyly, saw the vexation written in the archdeacon's
face. The parson whom the archdeacon feared most of all was the parson
who wouldn't fill his glass.
Then the subject was changed. 'I'm told that the bishop has at last
made his reappearance on his throne,' said the archdeacon.
'He was in the cathedral last Sunday,' said the dean.
'Does he ever mean to preach again?' 'He never did preach very often,'
said the dean.
'A great deal too often, from all people say,' said the archdeacon. 'I
never heard him myself, and never shall, I daresay. You have heard him,
Mr Crawley?'
'I have never had that good fortune, Mr Archdeacon. But living as I
shall now do, so near to the city, I may perhaps be enabled to attend
the cathedral service on some holy-day of the Church, which may not
require prayers in my own rural parish. I think that the clergy of the
diocese should be acquainted with the opinions, and with the voice, and
with the very manner and words of their bishop. As things are now done,
this is not possible. I could wish that there were occasions on which a
bishop might assemble his clergy, and preach to them sermons adapted to
their use.'
'What do you call a bishop's charge, then?'
'It is usually in the printed form that I have received it,' said Mr
Crawley.
'I think we have had quite enough of that kind of thing,' said the
archdeacon.
'He is a man whose conversation is not pleasing to me,' Mr Crawley said
to his wife that night.
'Do not judge him too quickly, Josiah,' his wife said. 'There is so
much of good in him! He is kind, and generous, and I think
affectionate.'
'But he is of the earth, earthy. When you and the other ladies had
retired, the conversation at first fell on the habits and value
of--foxes. I have been informed that in these parts the fox is greatly
prized, as without a fox to run before the dogs, that scampering over
the country which is called hunting, and which delights by the quickness
and perhaps the peril of the exercise, is not relished by the riders. Of
the wisdom or taste herein displayed by the hunters of the day I say
nothing. But it seemed to me that in talking of foxes Dr Grantly was
master of his subject. Thence the topic glided to the duties of a bishop
and to questions of preaching, as to which Dr Grantly was not slow in
offering his opinion. But I thought that I would rather have heard him
talk about the foxes for a week together.' She said nothing more to him,
knowing well how useless it was to attempt to turn him by any argument.
To her thinking the kindness of the archdeacon to them personally
demanded some indulgence in the expression, and even in the formation,
of an opinion, respecting his clerical peculiarities.
On the next day, however, Mr Crawley, having been summoned by the
archdeacon into the library for a little private conversation, found
that he got on better with him. How the archdeacon conquered him may
perhaps be best described by a further narration of what Mr Crawley told
his wife. 'I told him that in regard to money matters, as he called
them, I had nothing to say. I only trusted that his son was aware that
my daughter had no money, and never would have any. "My dear Crawley,"
the archdeacon said--for of late there seems to have grown up in the
world a habit of greater familiarity than that which I think did prevail
when last I moved much among men--"my dear Crawley, I have enough for
both." "I would we stood on more equal ground," I said. Then as he
answered me, he rose from his chair. "We stand," said he, "on the
perfect level on which men can meet each other. We are both gentlemen."
"Sir," I said, rising also, "from the bottom of the heart I agree with
you. I could not have spoken such words; but coming from you who are
rich to me am poor, they are honourable to the one and comfortable to
the other."'
'And after that?'
'He took down from the shelves a volume of some sermons which his father
published many years ago, and presented to me. I have it now under my
arm. It hath the old bishop's manuscript notes, which I will study
carefully.' And thus the archdeacon had hit his bird on both wings.
CHAPTER LXXXIV
CONCLUSION
It now only remains for me to gather together a few loose strings, and
tie them together in a knot, so that my work may not become untwisted.
Early in July, Henry Grantly and Grace Crawley were married in the
parish church of Plumstead--a great impropriety, as to which neither
Archdeacon Grantly nor Mr Crawley could be got to assent for a long
time, but which was at last carried, not simply by a union of Mrs
Grantly and Mrs Crawley, nor even by the assistance of Mrs Arabin, but
by the strong intervention of Lady Lufton herself. 'Of course Miss
Crawley ought to be married from St Ewold's vicarage; but when the
furniture has only been half got in, how is it possible?' When Lady
Lufton thus spoke, the archdeacon gave way, and Mr Crawley hadn't a leg
to stand on. Henry Grantly had not an opinion on the matter. He told his
father that he expected that they would marry him among them, and that
that had been enough for him. As for Grace, nobody even thought of
asking her; and I doubt whether she would have heard anything about the
contest, had not some tidings of it reached her from her lover. Married
they were at Plumstead--and the breakfast was given with all that
luxuriance of plenty which was so dear to the archdeacon's mind. Mr
Crawley was the officiating priest. With his hands dropping before him,
folded humbly, he told the archdeacon--when that Plumstead question had
been finally settled in opposition to his wishes--that he would fain
himself perform the ceremony by which his dearest daughter would be
bound to her marriage duties. 'And who else should?' said the
archdeacon. Mr Crawley muttered that he had not known how far his
reverend brother might have been willing to waive his rights. But the
archdeacon, who was in high good-humour--having just bestowed a little
pony carriage on his new daughter-in-law--only laughed at him; and, if
the rumour which was handed about the families be true, the archdeacon,
before the interview was over, had poked Mr Crawley in the ribs. Mr
Crawley married them; but the archdeacon assisted--and the dean gave the
bride away. The Rev Charles Grantly was there also; and as there was, as
a matter of course, a cloud of curates floating in the distance, Henry
Grantly was perhaps to be excused for declaring to his wife, when the
pair had escaped, that surely no couple had ever been so tightly buckled
since marriage had first become a Church ceremony.
Soon after that, Mr and Mrs Crawley became quiet at St Ewold's, and, as
I think, contented. Her happiness began very quickly. Though she had
been greatly broken by her troubles, the first sight she had of her
husband in his new long frock-coat went far to restore her, and while he
was declaring himself to be a cock so daubed with mud as to be incapable
of crowing, she was congratulating herself on seeing her husband once
more clothed as became his position. And they were lucky, too, as
regarded the squire's house; for Mr Thorne was old, and quiet, and old-
fashioned; and Miss Thorne was older, and though she was not exactly
quiet, she was very old-fashioned indeed. So that there grew to be a
pleasant friendship between Miss Thorne and Mrs Crawley.
Johnny Eames, when last I heard of him, was still a bachelor, and, as I
think, likely to remain so. At last he had utterly thrown over Sir
Raffle Buffle, declaring to his friends that the special duties of
private secretaryship were not exactly to his taste. 'You get so sick at
the thirteenth private note,' he said, 'that you find yourself unable to
carry on the humbug any farther.' But he did not leave his office. 'I'm
the head of a room, you know,' he told Lady Julia De Guest; 'and there's
nothing to trouble me--and a fellow, you know, ought to have something
to do.' Lady Julia told him, with a great deal of energy, that she would
never forgive him if he gave up his office. After that eventful night
when he escaped ignominiously from the house of Lady Demolines under the
protection of the policeman's lantern, he did hear more than once from
Porchester Terrace, and from allies employed by the enemy who was there
resident. 'My cousin the serjeant' proved to be a myth. Johnny found out
all about that Serjeant Runter, who was distantly connected, indeed,
with the late husband of Lady Demolines, but had always persistently
declined to have any intercourse whatever with her ladyship. For the
serjeant was a rising man, and Lady Demolines was not exactly
progressing in the world. Johnny heard nothing from the serjeant; but
from Madalina he got letter after letter. In the first she asked him not
to think too much of the little joke that had occurred. In her second,
she described the vehemence of her love. In her third the bitterness of
her wrath. Her fourth simply invited him to come and dine in Porchester
Terrace. Her fifth was the outpouring of injured innocence. And then
came letters from an attorney. Johnny answered not a word to any of
them, and gradually the letters were discontinued. Within six months of
the receipt of the last, he was delighted by reading among the marriages
in the newspapers, a notice that Peter Bangles, Esq;, of the firm Burton
and Bangles, wine merchants, of Hook Court, had been united to Madalina,
daughter of the late Sir Confucius Demolines, at the church of Peter the
Martyr. 'Most appropriate,' said Johnny, as he read the notice to Conway
Dalrymple, who was then back from his wedding tour; 'for most assuredly
there will now be another Peter the Martyr.'
'I'm not so sure of that,' said Conway, who had heard something of Mr
Peter Bangles. 'There are men who have strong wills of their own and
strong hands of their own.'
'Poor Madalina!' said Johnny. 'If he does beat her, I hope he will do
it tenderly. It may be that a little of it will suit her fevered
temperament.'
Before the summer was over Conway Dalrymple had been married to Clara
Van Siever, and by a singular arrangement of circumstances had married
her with the full approval of old Mrs Van. Mr Musselboro--whose name I
hope has not been altogether forgotten, though the part played by him
has been subordinate--had opposed Dalrymple in the efforts made by the
artist to get something out of Broughton's estate for the benefit of the
widow. From circumstances of which Dalrymple learned the particulars
with the aid of an attorney, it seemed to him that certain facts were
wilfully kept in the dark by Musselboro, and he went with his complaint
to Mrs Van Siever, declaring that he would bring the whole affair into
court, unless all the workings of the firm were made clear to him. Mrs
Van was very insolent to him--and even turned him out of the house. But,
nevertheless, she did not allow Mr Musselboro to escape. Whoever was to
be left in the dark she did not wish it to be herself;--and it began to
dawn upon her that her dear Mr Musselboro was deceiving her. Then she
sent for Dalrymple, and without a word of apology for her former
conduct, put him upon the right track. As he was pushing his inquiries
and working heaven and earth for the unfortunate widow --as to whom he
swore daily that when this matter was settled he would never see her
again, so terrible was she to him with her mock affection and pretended
hysterics, and false moralities--he was told one day that she had gone
off with Mr Musselboro! Mr Musselboro, finding that this was the surest
plain of obtaining for himself the little business in Hook Court,
married the widow of his late partner, and is at this moment probably
carrying a law-suit with Mrs Van. For the law-suit Conway Dalrymple
cared nothing. When the quarrel had become hot between Mrs Van and her
late myrmidon, Clara fell into Conway's hands without opposition; and,
let the law-suit go as it may, there will be enough left of Mrs Van's
money to make the house of Mr and Mrs Conway Dalrymple very comfortable.
The picture of Jael and Sisera was stitched up without any difficulty,
and I daresay most of my readers will remember it hanging on the walls
of the exhibition.
Before I take my leave of the diocese of Barchester for ever, which I
purpose to do in the succeeding paragraph, I desire to be allowed to say
one word of apology for myself, in answer to those who have accused
me--always without bitterness, and generally with tenderness--of having
forgotten, in writing of clergymen, the first and most prominent
characteristic of the ordinary English clergyman's life. I have
described many clergymen, they say, but have spoken of them all as
though their professional duties, their high calling, their daily
workings for the good of those around them, were matters of no moment,
either to me, or in my opinion, to themselves. I would plead, in answer
to this, that my object has been to paint the social and not the
professional lives of clergymen; and that I have been led to do so,
firstly, by a feeling that as no men affect more strongly, by their own
character, the society of those around than do country clergymen, so,
therefore, their social habits have been worth the labour necessary for
painting them; and secondly, by a feeling that though I, as a novelist,
may feel myself entitled to write of clergymen out of their pulpits, as
I may also write of lawyers and doctors, I have no such liberty to write
of them in their pulpits. When I have done so, if I have done so, I have
so far transgressed. There are those who have told me that I have made
all my clergymen bad, and none good. I must venture to hint to such
judges that they have taught their eyes to love a colouring higher than
nature justifies. We are, most of us, apt to love Raphael's madonnas
better than Rembrandt's matrons. But, though we do so, we know that
Rembrandt's matrons existed; but we have a strong belief that no such
woman as Raphael painted ever did exist. In that he painted, as he may
be surmised to have done, for pious purposes--at least for Church
purposes--Raphael was justified; but had he painted so for family
portraiture he would have been false. Had I written an epic about
clergymen, I would have taken St Paul for my model; but describing, as I
have endeavoured to do, such clergymen as I see around me, I could not
venture to be transcendental. For myself I can only say that I shall
always be happy to sit, when allowed to do so, at the table of
Archdeacon Grantly, to walk through the High Street of Barchester arm in
arm with Mr Robarts of Framley, and to stand alone and shed a tear
beneath the modest black stone in the north transept of the cathedral on
which is inscribed the name of Septimus Harding.
And now, if the reader will allow me to seize him affectionately by the
arm, we will together take our last farewell of Barset and of the towers
of Barchester. I may not venture to say to him that, in this country, he
and I together have wandered often through the country lanes, and have
ridden together over the too well-wooded fields, or have stood together
in the cathedral nave listening to the peals of the organ, or have
together sat at good men's tables, or have confronted together the angry
pride of men who were not good. I may not boast that any beside myself
have so realised the place, and the people, and the facts, as to make
such reminiscences possible as those which I should attempt to evoke by
an appeal to perfect fellowship. But to me Barset has been a real
county, and its city a real city, and the spires and towers have been
before my eyes, and the voices of the people are known to my ears, and
the pavement of the city ways are familiar to my footsteps. To them all
I now say farewell. That I have been induced to wander among them too
long by my love for old friendships, and by the sweetness of old faces,
is a fault for which I may perhaps be more readily forgiven, when I
repeat, with solemnity of assurance, that promise made in my title, that
this shall be the last chronicle of Barset.
THE END
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Last Chronicle of Barset
by Anthony Trollope