‘What, the dean’s wife?’ shouted Miss Dunstable, in a voice which made the coachman in the next carriage give a chuck to his horse as he overheard her.
‘The archdeacon’s sister-inlaw!’ screamed Mrs Harold Smith.
‘What might he have not attempted next?’ said Miss Dunstable.
‘She wasn’t the dean’s wife then, you know,’ said Mrs Proudie, explaining.
‘Well, you are a gay set in the chapter, I must say,’ said Miss Dunstable. ‘You ought to make one of them in Barchester, Mr Robarts.’
‘Only perhaps Mrs Robarts might not like it,’ said Mrs Harold Smith.
‘And then the schemes which he tried on with the bishop!’ said Mrs Proudie.
‘It’s all fair in love and war, you know,’ said Miss Dunstable.
‘But he little knew whom he had to deal with when he began that,’ said Mrs Proudie.
‘The bishop was too many for him,’ suggested Mrs Harold Smith, very maliciously.
‘The bishop was not, somebody else was; and he was obliged to leave Barchester in utter disgrace. He has since married the wife of some tallow-chandler.’
‘The wife!’ said Miss Dunstable. ‘What a man!’
‘The widow, I mean; but it’s all one to him.’
‘The gentleman was clearly born when Venus was in the ascendant,’ said Mrs Smith. ‘You clergymen usually are, I believe, Mr Robarts.’ So that Mrs Proudie’s carriage was by no means the dullest as they drove into Barchester that day; and by degrees our friend Mark became accustomed to his companions, and before they reached the palace he acknowledged to himself that Miss Dunstable was very good fun. We cannot linger over the bishop’s dinner, though it was very good of its kind; and as Mr Sowerby contrived to sit next to Miss Dunstable, thereby overturning a little scheme made by Mr Supplehouse, he again shone forth in unclouded good humour. But Mr Harold Smith became impatient immediately on the withdrawal of the cloth. The lecture was to begin at seven, and according to his watch that hour had already come. He declared that Sowerby and Supplehouse were endeavouring to delay matters in order that the Barchesterians might become vexed and impatient; and so the bishop was not allowed to exercise his hospitality in true episcopal fashion.
‘You forget, Sowerby,’ said Supplehouse, ‘that the world here for the last fortnight has been looking forward to nothing else.’
‘The world shall be gratified at once,’ said Mrs Harold, obeying a little nod from Mrs Proudie. ‘Come, my dear,’ and she took hold of Miss Dunstable’s arm, ‘don’t let us keep Barchester waiting. We shall be ready in a quarter of an hour, shall we not, Mrs Proudie?’ and so they sailed off.
‘And we shall have time for one glass of claret, said the bishop.
‘There; that’s seven by the cathedral,’ said Harold Smith, jumping up from his chair as he heard the clock. ‘If the people have come it would not be right in me to keep them waiting, and I shall go.’
‘Just one glass of claret, Mr Smith, and we’ll be off,’ said the bishop.
‘Those women will keep me half an hour,’ said Harold, filling his glass, and drinking it standing. ‘They do it on purpose.’
It was rather late when they all found themselves in the big room of the Mechanic’s Institute; but I do not know whether this on the whole did any harm. Most of Mr Smith’s hearers, excepting the party from the palace, were Barchester tradesmen with their wives and families; and they waited, not impatiently, for the big people. And then the lecture was gratis, a fact which is always borne in mind by an Englishman, when he comes to reckon up and calculate the way in which he is treated. When he pays his money, then he takes his choice; he may be impatient or not as he likes. His sense of justice teaches him so much, and in accordance with that sense he usually acts. So the people on the benches rose graciously when the palace party entered the room. Seats for them had been kept in the front. There were three arm-chairs, which were filled, after some little hesitation, by the bishop, Mrs Proudie, and Miss Dunstable — Mrs Smith positively declining to take one of them; though, as she admitted, her rank as Lady Papua of the islands did give her some claim. And this remark, as it was made quite out loud, reached Mr Smith’s ears as he stood behind a little table on a small raised dais, holding his white kid gloves; and it annoyed him and rather put him out. He did not like that joke about Lady Papua. And then the others of the party sat upon a front bench covered with red cloth. ‘We shall find this very hard and very narrow about the second hour,’ said Mr Sowerby, and Mr Smith on his dais again overheard the words, and dashed his gloves down to the table. He felt that all the room would hear it.
And there were one or two gentlemen on the second seat who shook hands with some of our party. There was Mr Thorne of Ullathorne, a good-natured old bachelor, whose residence was near enough to Barchester to allow of his coming in without much personal inconvenience; and next to him was Mr Harding, an old clergyman of the chapter, with whom Mrs Proudie shook hands very graciously, making way for him to seat himself close behind her if he would so please. But Mr Harding did not so please. Having paid his respects to the bishop he returned quietly to the side of his old friend Mr Thorne, thereby angering Mrs Proudie, as might easily be seen by her face. And Mr Chadwick also was there, the episcopal man of business for the diocese; but he also adhered to the two gentlemen above named. And now that the bishop and the ladies had taken their place, Mr Harold Smith hummed three times distinctly, and then began.
‘It was,’ he said, ‘the most peculiar characteristic of the present era in the British islands that those who were high placed before the world in rank, wealth, and education were willing to come forward and give their time and knowledge without fee or reward, for the advantage and amelioration of those who did not stand so high in the social scale.’ And then he paused for a moment, during which Mrs Smith remarked to Miss Dunstable that that was pretty well for a beginning; and Miss Dunstable replied, ‘that as for herself she felt very grateful to rank, wealth and education.’ Mr Sowerby winked to Mr Supplehouse, who opened his eyes very wide and shrugged his shoulders. But the Barchesterians took it all in good part and gave the lecturer the applause of their hands and feet. And then, well pleased, he recommenced —‘I do not make these remarks with reference to myself —’
‘I hope he’s not going to be modest,’ said Miss Dunstable.
‘It will be quite new if he is,’ replied Mrs Smith.
‘— so much as to many noble and talented lords and members of the Lower House who have lately from time to time devoted themselves to this good work.’ And then he went through a long list of peers and members of Parliament, beginning, of course, with Lord Boanerges, and ending with Mr Green Walker, a young gentleman who had lately been returned by his uncle’s interference for the borough of Crewe Junction, and had immediately made his entrance into public life by giving a lecture on the grammarians of the Latin language as exemplified at Eton School. ‘On the present occasion,’ Mr Smith continued, ‘our object is to learn something as to those grand and magnificent islands which lie far away, beyond the Indies, in the Southern Ocean; the lands of which produce rich spices and glorious fruits, and whose seas are embedded with pearls and corals — Papua and the Philippines, Borneo and the Moluccas. My friends, you are familiar with your maps, and you know the track which the equator makes for itself through those distant oceans.’ And then many heads were turned down, and there was a rustle of leaves; for not a few of those ‘who stood not so high in the social scale’ had brought their maps with them, and refreshed their memories as to the whereabouts of those wondrous islands.
And then Mr Smith also, with a map in his hand, and pointing occasionally to another large map which hung against the wall, went into the geography of the matter. ‘We might have found that out from our atlases, I think, without coming all the way to Barchester,’ said that unsympathetic helpmate Mrs Harold, very cruelly — most illogically too, for there be so many things which we could find out ourselves by search, but which we never do find out unless they be specially told to us; and why should not this latitude and longitude of Labuan be one — or rather two of these things? And then, when he had duly marked the path of the line through Borneo, Celebes, and Gilolo, through the Macassar Strait and the Molucca passage, Mr Harold Smith rose to a higher flight. ‘But what,’ said he, ‘avails all that God can give to man, unless man will open his hand to receive the gift? And what is this opening of the hand but the process of civilization — yes, my friends, the process of civilization? These South Sea islanders have all that a kind Providence can bestow on them; but that all is as nothing without education. That education and that civilization it is for you to bestow upon them — yes, my friends, for you; for you, citizens of Barchester as you are.’ And then he paused again, in order that the feet and hands might go to work. The feet and hands did go to work, during which Mr Smith took a slight drink of water. He was now quite in his element, and had got into the proper way of punching the table with his fists. A few words dropping from Mr Sowerby did now and again find their way to his ears, but the sound of his own voice had brought with it the accustomed charm, and he ran on from platitude to truism, and from truism back to platitude, with an eloquence that was charming to himself.
‘Civilization,’ he exclaimed, lifting his eyes and his hands to the ceiling. ‘O Civilization —’
‘There will not be a chance for us now for the next hour and a half,’ said Mr Supplehouse, groaning. Harold Smith cast one eye down at him, but it immediately flew back to the ceiling.
‘O Civilization! Thou that ennoblest mankind and makest him equal to the gods, what is like unto thee?’ Here Mrs Proudie showed evident signs of disapprobation, which, no doubt would have been shared by the bishop, had not that worthy prelate been asleep. But Mr Smith continued unobservant; or at any rate, regardless. ‘What is like unto thee? Thou art the irrigating stream which makest fertile the barren plain. Till thou comest all is dark and dreary; but at thy advent the noontide sun shines out, the earth gives forth her increase; the deep bowels of the rocks render up their tribute. Forms which were dull and hideous become endowed with grace and beauty, and vegetable existence rises to the scale of celestial life. Then, too, Genius appears clad in a panoply of translucent armour, grasping in his hand the whole terrestrial surface, and making every rood of earth subservient to his purposes;— Genius, the child of Civilization, the mother of the Arts!’ The last little bit, taken from the ‘Pedigree of Progress’, had a great success, and all Barchester went to work with its hands and feet;— all Barchester, except that ill-natured aristocratic front row together with the three arm-chairs at the corner of it. The aristocratic front row now felt itself to be too intimate with civilization to care much about it; and the three arm-chairs, or rather that special one which contained Mrs Proudie, considered that there was a certain heathenness, a papism sentimentality almost amounting to infidelity, contained in the lecturer’s remarks, with which she, a pillar of the Church, could not put up, seated as she was now in public conclave.
‘It is to civilization that we must look,’ continued Mr Harold Smith, descending from poetry to prose as a lecturer well knows how, and thereby showing the value of both —‘for any material progress in these islands; and —’
‘And to Christianity,’ shouted Mrs Proudie, to the great amazement of the assembled people, and to the thorough wakening of the bishop, who, jumping up in his chair at the sound of the well-known voice, exclaimed, ‘Certainly, certainly.’
‘Hear, hear, hear,’ said those on the benches who particularly belonged to Mrs Proudie’s school of divinity in the city, and among the voices was distinctly heard that of a new verger in whose behalf she had greatly interested herself.
‘Oh, yes Christianity, of course,’ said Harold Smith, upon whom the interruption did not seem to have operated favourably.
‘Christianity and Sabbath-day observation,’ exclaimed Mrs Proudie, who, now that she had obtained the ear of the public, seemed well inclined to keep it. ‘Let us never forget that these islanders can never prosper unless they keep the Sabbath holy.’ Poor Mr Smith, having been so rudely dragged from his high horse, was never able to mount it again, and completed the lecture in a manner not at all comfortable to himself. He had there, on the table before him, a huge bundle of statistics, with which he had meant to convince the reason of his hearers, after he had taken full possession of their feelings. But they fell very dull and flat. And at the moment when he was interrupted, he was about to explain that that material progress to which he had alluded could not be attained without money; and that it behoved them, the people of Barchester before him, to come forward with their purses like men and brothers. He did also attempt this; but from the moment of that fatal onslaught from the arm-chair, it was clear to him, and to every one else, that Mrs Proudie was now the hero of the hour. His time had gone by, and the people of Barchester did not care a straw for his appeal. From these causes the lecture was over a full twenty minutes earlier than any one had expected, to the great delight of Messrs Sowerby and Supplehouse, who, on that evening, moved and carried a vote of thanks to Mrs Proudie. For they had gay doings yet before they went to their beds.
‘Robarts, here one moment,’ Mr Sowerby said, as they were standing at the door of the Mechanic’s Institute. Don’t go off with Mr and Mrs Bishop. We are going to have a little supper at the Dragon of Wantly, and, after what we have gone through, upon my word, we want it. You can tell one of the palace servants to let you in.’ Mark considered the proposal wistfully. He would fain have joined the supper party had he dared, but he, like many others of his cloth, had the fear of Mrs Proudie before his eyes. And a very merry supper they had; but poor Mr Harold Smith was not the merriest of the party.
Chapter 7 Sunday Morning
It was, perhaps, quite as well on the whole for Mark Robarts, that he did not go to that supper party. It was eleven o’clock before they sat down and nearly two before the gentlemen were in bed. It must be remembered that he had to preach, on the Sunday morning, a charity sermon on behalf of a mission to Mr Harold Smith’s islanders; and, to tell the truth, it was a task for which he had now very little inclination. When first invited to do this, he had regarded the task seriously enough, as he always did regard such work, and he completed his sermon for the occasion before he left Framley; but, since that, an air of ridicule had been thrown over the whole affair, in which he had joined without much thinking of his own sermon, and this made him now heartily wish that he could choose a discourse upon any other subject. He knew well that the very points on which he had most insisted, were those which had drawn most mirth from Miss Dunstable and Mrs Smith, and had oftenest provoked his own laughter; and how was he now to preach on those matters in a fitting mood, knowing, as he would know, that these two ladies would be looking at him, would endeavour to catch his eye, and would turn him into ridicule as they had already turned the lecturer? In this he did injustice to one of those ladies unconsciously. Miss Dunstable, with all her aptitude for mirth, and we may almost fairly say for frolic, was in no way inclined to ridicule religion or say anything which she thought appertained to it. It may be presumed that among such things she did not include Mrs Proudie, as she was willing enough to laugh at that lady; but Mark, had he known her better, might have been sure that she would have sat out his sermon with perfect propriety.
As it was, however, he did feel considerable uneasiness; and in the morning, he got up early, with the view of seeing what might be done in the way of emendation. He cut out those parts which referred most specially to the islands,— he rejected altogether those names over which they had all laughed together so heartily,— and he inserted a string of genial remarks, very useful, no doubt, which he flattered himself would rob his sermon of all similarity to Harold Smith’s lecture. He had, perhaps, hoped, when writing it, to create some little sensation; but now he would be quite satisfied if it passed without remark. It had been arranged that the party at the hotel should breakfast at eight and start at half-past eight punctually, so as to enable them to reach Chaldicotes in ample time to arrange their dresses before they went to church. The church stood on the grounds, close to that long formal avenue of lime-trees, but within the front gate. Their walk, therefore, after reaching Mr Sowerby’s house, would not be long.
Mrs Proudie, who was herself an early body, would not hear of her guest — and he a clergyman — going out to the inn for his breakfast on a Sunday morning. As regarded that Sabbath-day journey to Chaldicotes, to that she had given her assent, no doubt with much uneasiness of mind; but let them have as little desecration as possible. It was therefore an understood thing that he was to return with his friends; but he should not go without the advantage of family prayers and family breakfast. And so Mrs Proudie on retiring to rest gave the necessary orders, to the great annoyance of her household.
To the great annoyance, at least, of her servants! The bishop himself did not make his appearance till a much later hour. He in all things now supported his wife’s rule; in all things now, I say; for there had been a moment, when in the first flush and pride of his episcopacy, other ideas had filled his mind. Now, however, he gave no opposition to that good woman with whom Providence had blessed him; and in return to his little personal comforts. With what surprise did the bishop now look back upon that unholy war which he had once been tempted to wage against the wife of his bosom? Nor did any of the Miss Proudies show themselves at that early hour. They, perhaps, were absent on a different ground. With them Mrs Proudie had not been so successful as with the bishop. They had wills of their own which became stronger and stronger every day. Of the three with whom Mrs Proudie was blessed one was already in a position to exercise that will in a legitimate way over a very excellent young clergyman in the diocese, the Rev. Optimus Grey; but the other two, having as yet no such opening for their powers of command, were perhaps a little too much inclined to keep themselves in practice at home. But at half-past seven punctually Mrs Proudie was there, and so was the domestic chaplain; so was Mr Robarts, and so were the household servants — all excepting one lazy recreant. ‘Where is Thomas?’ said she of the Argus eyes, standing up with her book of family prayers in her hand. ‘So please you, ma’am, Tummas be bad with the tooth-ache.’ ‘Tooth-ache!’ exclaimed Mrs Proudie; but her eyes said more terrible things than that. ‘Let Thomas come to me before church.’ And then they proceeded to prayers. These were read by the chaplain, as it was proper and decent that they should be; but I cannot but think that Mrs Proudie a little exceeded her office in taking upon herself to pronounce the blessing when the prayers were over. She did it, however, in a clear, sonorous voice, and perhaps with more personal dignity than was within the chaplain’s compass.
Mrs Proudie was rather stern at breakfast, and the vicar of Framley felt an unaccountable desire to get out of the house. In the first place she was not dressed with her usual punctilious attention to the proprieties of her high situation. It was evident that there was to be a further toilet before she sailed up the middle of the cathedral choir. She had on a large loose cap with no other strings than those which were wanted of tying it beneath her chin, a cap with which the household and the chaplain were well acquainted, but which seemed ungracious in the eyes of Mr Robarts, after all the well-dressed holiday doings of the last week. She wore also a large, loose, dark-coloured wrapper, which came well up round her neck, and which was not buoyed out, as were her dresses in general, with an under mechanism of petticoats. It clung to her closely, and added to the inflexibility of her general appearance. And then she had encased her feet in large carpet slippers, which no doubt were comfortable, but which struck her visitor as being strange and unsightly. ‘Do you find difficulty in getting your people together for early morning prayers?’ she said, as she commenced her operations with the teapot.
‘I can’t say that I do,’ said Mark. ‘But then we are seldom so early as this.’
‘Parish clergymen should be early, I think,’ said she. ‘It sets a good example in the village.’
‘I am thinking of having morning prayers in the church,’ said Mr Robarts.
‘That’s nonsense,’ said Mrs Proudie, ‘and usually means worse than nonsense. I know what that comes to. If you have three services on a Sunday and domestic prayers at home, you do very well.’ And so saying she handed him his cup.
‘But I have not three services on Sunday, Mrs Proudie.’
‘Then I think you should have. Where can the poor people be so well off on Sundays as in church? The bishop intends to express a very strong opinion on this subject in his next charge; and then I am sure you will attend to his wishes.’ To this Mark made no answer, but devoted himself to his egg.
‘I suppose you have not a very large establishment at Framley?’ asked Mrs Proudie.
‘What, at the parsonage?’
‘Yes; you live at the parsonage, don’t you?’
‘Certainly — well; not very large, Mrs Proudie; just enough to do the work, make things comfortable, and look after the children.’
‘It is a very fine living,’ said she; ‘very fine. I don’t remember that we have anything so good ourselves,— except at Plumstead, the archdeacon’s place. He has managed to butter his bread very well.’
‘His father was bishop of Barchester.’
‘Oh, yes, I know all about him. Only for that he would barely have risen to archdeacon, I suspect. Let me see; yours is 800 pounds, is it not, Mr Robarts? And you such a young man! I suppose you have insured your life highly.’
‘Pretty well, Mrs Proudie.’
‘And then, too, your wife had some little fortune, had she not? We cannot all fall on our feet like that; can we, Mr White?’ and Mrs Proudie was an imperious woman; but then so also was Lady Lufton; and it may therefore be said that Mr Robarts ought to have been accustomed to feminine domination; but as he sat there munching his toast he could not but make a comparison between the two. Lady Lufton in her little attempts sometimes angered him; but he certainly thought, comparing that lady and the clerical together, that the rule of the former was the lighter and the pleasanter. But then Lady Lufton had given him a living and a wife, and Mrs Proudie had given him nothing. Immediately after breakfast Mr Robarts escaped to the Dragon of Wantly, partly because he had had enough of the matutinal Mrs Proudie, and partly also in order that he might hurry his friends there. He was already becoming fidgety about the time, as Harold Smith had been on the preceding evening; and he did to give Mrs Smith credit for much punctuality. When he arrived at the inn he asked if they had done breakfast, and was immediately told that not one of them was yet down. It was already half-past eight, and they ought to be now under weigh on the road. He immediately went to Mr Sowerby’s room, and found that gentleman shaving himself. ‘Don’t be a bit uneasy,’ said Mr Sowerby. ‘You and Smith shall have my phaeton, and those horses will take you there in an hour. Not, however, but what we shall all be in time. We’ll send round to the whole party and ferret them out.’ And then Mr Sowerby, having evoked manifold aid with various peals of the bell, sent messengers, male and female, flying to all the different rooms.
‘I think I’ll hire a gig and go over at once,’ said Mark. ‘It would not do for me to be late, you know.’
‘It won’t do for any of us to be late; and it’s all nonsense about hiring a gig. It would be just throwing a sovereign away, and we should pass you on the road. Go down and see that the tea is made, and all that; and make them have the bill ready; and, Robarts, you may pay it too, if you like it. But, I believe we may as well leave that to Baron Borneo — eh?’ And then Mark did go down and make the tea, and he did order the bill; and then he walked about the room, looking at his watch, and nervously waiting for the footsteps of his friends. And as he was so employed, he bethought himself whether it was fit that he should be so doing on a Sunday morning; whether it was good that he should be waiting there, in painful anxiety, to gallop over a dozen miles in order that he might not be too late with his sermon; whether his own snug room at home, with Fanny opposite to him, and his bairns crawling on the floor, with his own preparations for his own quiet service, and the warm pressure of Lady Lufton’s hand when that service should be over, was not better than all this. He could not afford not to know Harold Smith, and Mr Sowerby, and the Duke of Omnium, he had said to himself. He had to look to rise in the world, as other men did. But what pleasure had come to him as yet from these intimacies? How much had he hitherto done towards his rising? To speak the truth he was not over well pleased with himself, as he made Mrs Harold Smith’s tea and ordered Mr Sowerby’s mutton-chops on that Sunday morning.
At a little after nine they all assembled; but even then he could not make the ladies understand that there was any cause for hurry; at least Mrs Smith, who was the leader of the party, would not understand it. When Mark again talked of hiring a gig, Miss Dunstable indeed said that she would join him; and seemed to be so far earnest in the matter that Mr Sowerby hurried through his second egg in order to prevent such a catastrophe. And then Mark absolutely did order the gig; whereupon Mrs Smith remarked that in such case she need not hurry herself; but the waiter brought up word that all the horses of the hotel were out, excepting one pair, neither of which could go in single harness. Indeed, half of their stable establishment was already secured by Mr Sowerby’s own party. ‘Then let me have the pair,’ said Mark, almost frantic with delay.
‘Nonsense, Robarts; we are ready now. He won’t want them, James. Come, Supplehouse, have you done?’
‘Then I am to hurry myself, am I?’ said Mrs Harold Smith. ‘What changeable creatures you are! May I be allowed half a cup of tea, Mr Robarts?’ Mark, who was now really angry, turned away to the window. There was no charity in these people, he said to himself. They knew the nature of his distress, and yet they only laughed at him. He did not, perhaps, reflect that he had assisted in the joke against Mr Harold Smith on the previous evening. ‘James,’ said he turning to the waiter, ‘let me have that pair of horses immediately, if you please.’
‘Yes, sir, round in fifteen minutes, sir: only Ned, sir, the post-boy, sir; I fear he’s at his breakfast, sir; but we’ll have him here in less than no time, sir!’ But before Ned and the pair were there, Mrs Smith had absolutely got her bonnet on, and at ten they started. Mark did share the phaeton with Harold Smith, but the phaeton did not go any faster than the other carriages. They led the way, indeed, but that was all; and when the vicar’s watch told him that it was eleven, they were still a mile from Chaldicotes gate, although the horses were in lather of steam; and they had just only entered the village when the church bell ceased to be heard.
‘Come, you are in time, after all,’ said Harold Smith. ‘Better time than I was last night.’ Robarts could not explain to him that the entry of a clergyman into church, of a clergyman who is going to assist in the service, should not be made at the last minute, that it should be staid and decorous, and not done in scrambling haste, with running feet and scant breath.
‘I suppose we’ll stop here, sir,’ said the postillion, as he pulled up his horses short of the church-door, in the midst of the people who were congregating together ready for the service. But Mark had not anticipated being so late, and said at first that it was necessary that he should go on to the house; then, when the horses had again begun to move, he remembered that he could send for his gown, and as he got out of the carriage he gave his orders accordingly. And now the other two carriages were there, and so there was a noise and confusion at the door — very unseemly, as Mark felt it; and the gentlemen spoke in loud voices, and Mrs Harold Smith declared that she had no Prayer-Book, and was much too tired to go in at present; she would go home and rest herself, she said. And two other ladies of the party did so also, leaving Miss Dunstable to go alone;— for which, however, she did not care one button. And then one of the party, who had a nasty habit of swearing, cursed at something as he walked in close to Mark’s elbow; and so they made their way up the church as the Absolution was being read, and Mark Robarts felt thoroughly ashamed of himself. If his rising in the world brought him in contact with such things as these, would it not be better for him that he should do without rising? His sermon went off without any special notice. Mrs Harold Smith was not there, much to his satisfaction; and the others who were did not seem to pay any special attention to it. The subject had lost its novelty; except with the ordinary church congregation, the farmers and labourers of the parish; and the ‘quality’ in the squire’s great pew were content to show their sympathy by a moderate subscription. Miss Dunstable, however, gave a ten-pound note, which swelled up the sum total to a respectable amount — for such a place as Chaldicotes.
‘And now I hope I may never hear another word about New Guinea,’ said Mr Sowerby, as they clustered round the drawing-room fire after church. ‘That subject may be regarded as killed, eh, Harold?’
‘Certainly murdered last night,’ said Mrs Harold, ‘by that awful woman, Mrs Proudie.’
‘I wonder you did not make a dash at her and pull her out of the arm-chair,’ said Miss Dunstable. ‘I was expecting it, and thought that I should come to grief in the scrimmage.’
‘I never knew such a brazen-faced thing before,’ said Miss Kerrigy, a travelling friend of Miss Dunstable’s.
‘Nor I— never; in a public place, too,’ said Dr Easyman, a medical gentleman, who also often accompanied her.
‘As for brass,’ said Mr Supplehouse, ‘she would never stop at anything for want of that. It is well that she has enough, for the poor bishop is but badly provided.’
‘I hardly heard what it was she did say,’ said Harold Smith; ‘so I could not answer her, you know. Something about Sundays, I believe.’
‘She hoped you would not put the South Sea Islanders up to Sabbath travelling,’ said Mr Sowerby.
‘And specially begged that you would establish Lord’s-day schools,’ said Mrs Smith; and then they all went to work, and picked Mrs Proudie to pieces from the top ribbons of her cap down to the sole of her slipper.
‘And then she expects the poor parsons to fall in love with her daughters. That’s the hardest thing of all,’ said Miss Dunstable. But, on the whole, when our vicar went to bed, he did not feel that he had spent a profitable Sunday.
Chapter 8 Gatherum Castle
On the Tuesday morning Mark did receive his wife’s letter, and the ten-pound note, whereby a strong proof was given of the honesty of the post-office people in Barsetshire. That letter, written as it had been in a hurry, while Robin post-boy was drinking a single mug of beer,— well, what of it if he half filled a second time?—-was nevertheless eloquence of his wife’s love and of her great triumph. ‘I have only half a moment to send the money,’ she said, ‘for the postman is here waiting. When I see you, I’ll explain why I am so hurried. Let me know you get it safe. It is all right now, and Lady Lufton was here not a minute ago. She did not quite like it; about Gatherum Castle, I mean; but you’ll hear nothing about it. Only remember that you must dine at Framley Court on Wednesday week. I have promised that for you. You will, won’t you, dearest? I shall come and fetch you away if you attempt to stay longer than you have said. But I’m sure you won’t. God bless you, my own one! Mr Jones gave us the same sermon he preached the second Sunday after Easter. Twice in the same year is too often. God bless you! The children are quite well. Mark sends you a big kiss.—-Your own F.’
Robarts, as he read this letter and crumpled the note up into his pocket, felt that it was much more satisfactory than he deserved. He knew that there must have been a fight, and that his wife, fighting loyally on his behalf, had got the best of it; and he knew also that her victory had not been owing to the goodness of her cause. He frequently declared to himself that he would not be afraid of Lady Lufton; but nevertheless these tidings that no reproaches were to be made to him afforded him great relief. On the following Friday they all went to the duke’s, and found that the bishop and Mrs Proudie were there before them; as were also sundry other people, mostly of some note either in the estimation of the world at large or that of West Barsetshire. Lord Boanerges was there, an old man who would have his own way in everything, and who was regarded by all men — apparently even the duke himself — as an intellectual king, by no means of the constitutional kind — as an intellectual emperor, rather, who took upon himself to rule all questions of mind without the assistance of any ministers whatever. And Baron Brawl was of the party, one of Her Majesty’s puisne Judges, as jovial a guest as ever entered a county house; but given to be rather sharp withal in his jovialities. And there was Mr Green Walker, a young but rising man, the same who lectured not long since on a popular subject to his constituents at the Crewe Junction. Mr Green Walker was a nephew of the Marchioness of Hartletop, and the Marchioness of Hartletop was a friend of the Duke of Omnium’s. Mr Mark Robarts was certainly elated when he ascertained who composed the company of which he had been so earnestly pressed to make a portion. Would it have been wise in him to forgo this on account of the prejudices of Lady Lufton?
As the guests were so many and so great, the huge front portals of Gatherum Castle were thrown open and the vast hall, adorned with trophies — with marble busts from Italy and armour from Wardour Street — was thronged with gentlemen and ladies, and gave forth unwonted echoes to many a footstep. His grace himself, when Mark arrived there with Sowerby and Miss Dunstable — for in this instance Miss Dunstable did travel in the phaeton, while Mark occupied a seat in the dicky — his grace himself was at this moment in the drawing-room and nothing could exceed his urbanity.
‘Oh, Miss Dunstable!’ he said, taking that lady by the hand, and leading her up to the fire, ‘now I feel for the first time that Gatherum Castle has not been built for nothing.’
‘Nobody ever supposed it was, your grace,’ said Miss Dunstable. ‘I am sure the architect did not think so when his bill was paid.’ And Miss Dunstable put her toes on the fender to warm them with as much self-possession as though her father had been a duke also, instead of a quack doctor.
‘We have given the strictest orders about the parrot —,’ said the duke.
‘Ah! but I have not brought him after all;’ said Miss Dunstable.
‘— and I have had an aviary built on purpose,— just such as parrots are used to in their own country. Well, Miss Dunstable, I do call that unkind. Is it too late to send for him?’
‘He and Dr Easyman are travelling together. The truth was, I could not rob the doctor of his companion.’
‘Why? I have had another aviary built for him. I declare, Miss Dunstable, the honour you are doing me is shorn of half its glory. But the poodle — I still trust in the poodle.’
‘And your grace’s trust shall not in that respect be in vain. Where is he, I wonder?’ And Miss Dunstable looked round as though she expected that somebody would certainly have brought her dog in after her. ‘I declare I must go and look for him,— only think if they were to put him among your grace’s dogs,— how his morals would be destroyed!’
‘Miss Dunstable, is that intended to be personal?’ but the lady had turned away from the fire, and the duke was able to welcome his other guests. This he did with much courtesy. ‘Sowerby,’ he said, ‘I am glad you have survived the lecture. I can assure you I had fears for you.’
‘I was brought back to life after considerable delay by the administration of tonics at the Dragon of Wantly. Will your grace allow me to present to you Mr Robarts, who on that occasion was not so fortunate. It was found necessary to carry him off to the palace, where he was obliged to undergo very vigorous treatment.’ And then the duke shook hands with Mr Robarts, assuring him that he was most happy to make his acquaintance. He had often heard of him since he came into the county; and then he asked after Lord Lufton, regretting that he had been unable to induce his lordship to come to Gatherum Castle.
‘But you had a diversion at the lecture, I am told,’ continued the duke. ‘There was a second performance, was there not, who almost eclipsed poor Harold Smith?’ And then Mr Sowerby gave an amusing sketch of the little Proudie episode.
‘It has, of course, ruined your brother-inlaw for ever as a lecturer,’ said the duke, laughing.
‘If so, we shall feel ourselves under the deepest obligations to Mrs Proudie,’ said Mr Sowerby. And then Harold Smith himself came up and received the duke’s sincere and hearty congratulations on the success of his exercise at Barchester. Mark Robarts had now turned away, and his attention was suddenly arrested by the loud voice of Miss Dunstable, who had stumbled across some very dear friends in her passage through the rooms, and who by no means hid from the public her delight upon the occasion.
‘Well — well — well!’ she exclaimed, and then she seized upon a very quiet-looking well-dressed, attractive young woman who was walking towards her, in company with a gentleman. The gentleman and lady, as it turned out, were husband and wife. ‘Well — well — well! I hardly hoped for this.’ And then she took hold of the lady and kissed her enthusiastically, and after that grasped both the gentleman’s hands, shaking them stoutly.
‘And what a deal I shall have to say to you!’ she went on. ‘You’ll upset all my other plans. But, Mary, my dear, how long are you going to stay here? I go — let me see — I forget when, but it’s all put down in a book upstairs. But the next stage is at Mrs Proudie’s. I shan’t meet you there, I suppose. And now, Frank, how’s the governor?’ The gentleman called Frank declared that the governor was all right —‘mad about the hounds, of course, you know.’
‘Well, my dear, that’s better than the hounds being mad about him. But talking of hounds, Frank, how badly they manage their foxes at Chaldicotes! I was out hunting all one day —’
‘You out hunting!’ said the lady called Mary.
‘And why shouldn’t I go out hunting? I’ll tell you what, Mrs Proudie was out hunting too. But they didn’t catch a single fox; and, if you must have the truth, it seemed to me to be rather slow.’
‘You were in the wrong division of the county,’ said the gentleman called Frank.
‘Of course I was. When I really want to practise hunting I’ll go to Greshambury; not a doubt about that.’
‘Or go to Boxall Hill,’ said the lady; ‘you’ll find quite as much zeal there as at Greshambury.’
‘And more discretion, you should add,’ said the gentleman.
‘Ha! Ha! Ha!,’ laughed Miss Dunstable; ‘your discretion indeed! But you have not told me a word about Lady Arabella.’
‘My mother is quite well,’ said the gentleman.
‘And the doctor? By the by, my dear, I’ve had such a letter from the doctor; only two days ago. I’ll show it to you upstairs tomorrow. But, mind, it must be a positive secret. If he goes on in this way he’ll get himself into the Tower or Coventry, or a blue-book, or some dreadful place.’
‘Why? what has he said?’
‘Never mind, Master Frank; I don’t mean to show you this letter, you may be sure of that. But if your wife will swear three times on a poker and tongs that she won’t reveal, I’ll show it to her. And you are quite settled at Boxall Hill, are you?’
‘Frank’s horses are settled; and the dogs nearly so,’ said Frank’s wife; ‘but I can’t boast much of anything else yet.’
‘Well, there’s a good thing coming. I must go and change my things now. But, Mary, mind you get near me this evening; I have such a deal to say to you.’ And then Miss Dunstable marched out of the room.
All this had been said in so loud a voice that it was, as a matter of course, overheard by Mark Robarts — that part of the conversation of course I mean which had come from Miss Dunstable. And then Mark learned that this was young Frank Gresham of Boxall Hill, son of old Mr Gresham of Greshambury. Frank had lately married a great heiress; a greater heiress, men said, even than Miss Dunstable; and as the marriage was hardly as yet more than six months old the Barsetshire world was still full of it.
‘The two heiresses seem to be very loving, don’t they?’ said Mr Supplehouse. ‘Birds of a feather flock together, you know. But they did say some little time ago that young Gresham was to have married Miss Dunstable herself.
‘Miss Dunstable! why, she might almost be his mother,’ said Mark.
‘That made little difference. He was obliged to marry money, and I believe there is no doubt that he did at one time propose to Miss Dunstable.’
‘I have a letter from Lufton,’ Mr Sowerby said to him the next morning. ‘He declares that the delay was all your fault. You were to have told Lady Lufton before you did anything, and he was waiting to write about it till he heard from you. It seems that you never said a word to her ladyship on the subject.’
‘I never did, certainly. My commission from Lufton was to break the matter to her when I found her in a proper humour for receiving it. If you knew Lady Lufton as well as I do, you would know that it is not every day that she would be in a humour for such things.’
‘And so I was to be kept waiting indefinitely because you two between you were afraid of an old woman! However, I have not a word to say against her, and the matter is settled now.’
‘Has the farm been sold?’
‘Not a bit of it. The dowager would not bring her mind to suffer such profanation for the Lufton acres, and so she sold five thousand pounds out of the funds and sent the money to Lufton as a present;— sent it to him without saying a word, only hoping that it would suffice for his wants. I wish I had a mother, I know.’
Mark found it impossible at the moment to make any remark upon what had been told him, but he felt a sudden qualm of conscience and a wish that he was back at Framley instead of Gatherum Castle at the present moment. He knew a good deal respecting Lady Lufton’s income and the manner in which it was spent. It was very handsome for a single lady, but then she lived in a free and open-handed style; her charities were noble; there was no reason why she should save money, and her annual income was usually spent within the year. Mark knew this, and he knew also that nothing short of an impossibility to maintain them would induce her to lessen her charities. She had now given away a portion of her principal to save the property of her son — her son, who was so much more opulent than herself — upon whose means, too, the world made fewer effectual claims. And Mark knew, too, something of the purpose for which this money had gone. There had been unsettled gambling claims between Sowerby and Lord Lufton, originating in affairs of the turf. It had now been going on for four years, almost from the period when Lord Lufton had become of age. He had before now spoken to Robarts on the matter with much bitter anger, alleging that Mr Sowerby was treating him badly, nay, dishonestly — that he was claiming money that was not due to him; and then he declared more than once that he would bring the matter before the Jockey Club. But Mark, knowing that Lord Lufton was not clear-sighted in these matters, and believing it to be impossible that Mr Sowerby should actually endeavour to defraud his friend, had smoothed down the young lord’s anger, and remonstrated him to get the case referred to some private arbiter. All this had afterwards been discussed between Robarts and Mr Sowerby himself, and hence had originated their intimacy. The matter was so referred, Mr Sowerby naming the referee; and Lord Lufton when the matter was given against him, took it easily. His anger was over by that time. ‘I’ve been clean done among them,’ he said to Mark, laughing; ‘but it does not signify; a man must pay for his experience. Of course, Sowerby thinks it all right; I am bound to suppose so.’ And then there had been some further delay as to the amount, and part of the money had been paid to a third person, and a bill had been given, and Heaven and the Jews only knew how much money Lord Lufton had paid in all; and now it was ended by his handing over to some wretched villain of a money-dealer, on behalf of Mr Sowerby, the enormous sum of five thousand pounds, which had been deducted from the means of Lady Lufton!
Mark, as he thought of all this, could not but feel a certain animosity against Mr Sowerby — could not but suspect that he was a bad man. Nay, must he not have known that, he was very bad? And yet he continued walking with him through the duke’s grounds, still talking about Lord Lufton’s affairs, and still listening with interest to what Sowerby told him of his own. ‘No man was ever robbed as I have been,’ said he. ‘But I shall win through yet, in spite of them all. But those Jews, Mark!’— he had become very intimate with him in these latter days —‘whatever you do, keep clear of them. Why, I could paper a room with their signatures; and yet I never had a claim upon one of them, though they always have claims in me!’
I have said that this affair of Lord Lufton’s was ended, but it now appeared to Mark that it was not quite ended. ‘Tell Lufton, you know,’ said Sowerby, ‘that every bit of paper with his name has been taken up, except what that ruffian Tozer has. Tozer may have one bill, I believe,— something that was not given up when it was renewed. But I’ll make my lawyer Gumption get that up. It may cost ten pounds or twenty pounds, not more. You’ll remember that when you see Lufton, will you?’
‘You’ll see Lufton, in all probability, before I shall.’
‘Oh, did not I tell you? He’s going to Framley Court at once; you’ll find him there when you return.’
‘Find him at Framley?’
‘Yes; this little cadeau from his mother has touched his filial heart. He is rushing home to Framley to pay back the dowager’s hard moidores in soft caresses. I wish I had a mother; I know that.’ And Mark still felt that he feared Mr Sowerby, but he could not make up his mind to break away from him.
And there was much talk of politics just then at the castle. Not that the duke joined in with any enthusiasm. He was a Whig — a huge mountain of a colossal Whig — all the world knew that. No opponent would have dreamed of tampering with his Whiggery, nor would any brother Whig have dreamed of doubting it. But he was a Whig who gave very little practical support to any set of men, and very little practical opposition to any other set. He was above troubling himself with such sublunar matters. At election time he supported, and always carried, Whig candidates; and in return he had been appointed lord lieutenant of the county by one Whig minister, and had received the Garter from another. But these things were a matter of course to a Duke of Omnium. He was born to be a lord lieutenant and a Knight of the Garter. But not the less on account of his apathy, or rather quiescence, was it thought that Gatherum Castle was a fitting place in which politicians might express to each other their present hopes and future aims, and concoct together little plots in a half-serious and half-mocking way. Indeed it was hinted that Mr Supplehouse and Harold Smith, with one or two others, were at Gatherum for this express purpose. Mr Fothergill, too, was a noted politician, and was supposed to know the duke’s mind well; and Mr Green Walker, the nephew of the marchioness, was a young man whom the duke desired to have brought forward. Mr Sowerby also was the duke’s own member, and so the occasion suited well for the interchange of a few ideas.
The then prime minister, angry as many men were with him, had not been altogether unsuccessful. He had brought the Russian war to a close, which, if not glorious, was at any rate much more so than Englishmen at one time ventured to hope. And he had had wonderful luck with that Indian Mutiny. It is true that many of those even who voted with him would declare that this was in no way attributable to him. Great men had risen in India and done all that. Even his minister there, the Governor whom he had sent out, was not allowed in those days any credit for the success which was achieved under his orders. There was great reason to doubt the man at the helm. But nevertheless he had been lucky. There is no merit in a public man like success! But now, when the evil days were wellnigh over, came the question whether he had not been too successful. When a man has nailed fortune to his chariot-wheels he is apt to travel about in rather a proud fashion. There are servants who think that their masters cannot do without them; and the public also may occasionally have some such servant. What if this too successful minister were one of them! And then a discreet, commonplace, zealous member of the Lower House does not like to be jeered at, when he does his duty by his constituents and asks a few questions. An all-successful minister who cannot keep his triumph to himself, but must needs drive about in a proud fashion, laughing at commonplace zealous members — laughing even occasionally at members who are by no means commonplace, which is outrageous!—-may it not be as well to ostracize him for a while?’
‘Had we not better throw in our shells against him?’ says Mr Harold Smith.
‘Let us throw in our shells by all means,’ says Mr Supplehouse, mindful of the Juno of his despised charms. And when Mr Supplehouse declares himself an enemy, men know how much it means. They know that that much-belaboured head of affairs must succumb to the terrible blows which are now in store for him. ‘Yes, we will throw in our shells.’ And Mr Supplehouse rises from his chair with gleaming eyes. ‘Has not Greece as noble a son as him? Aye, and much nobler, traitor that he is. We must judge a man by his friends,’ says Mr Supplehouse; and he points away to the East, where our dear allies the French are supposed to live, and where our head of affairs is supposed to have too close intimacy.
They all understand this, even Mr Green Walker. ‘I don’t know that he is any good to any of us at all, now,’ says the talented member for the Crewe-Junction. ‘He’s a great deal too uppish to suit my book; and I know a great many people that think so too. There’s my uncle —’
‘He’s the best fellow in the world,’ said Mr Fothergill, who felt, perhaps, that that coming revelation about Mr Green Walker’s uncle might not be of use to them; ‘but the fact is one gets tired of the same man always. One does not like his partridge every day. As for me, I have nothing to do with it myself; but I would certainly like to change the dish.’
‘If we’re merely to do as we are bid, and have no voice of our own, I don’t see what’s the good of going to the shop at all,’ said Mr Sowerby.
‘Let’s have a change, then,’ said Mr Sowerby. ‘The matter’s pretty much in our own hands.’
‘Altogether,’ said Mr Green Walker. ‘That’s what my uncle always says.’
‘The Manchester men will only be too happy for the chance,’ said Harold Smith.
‘And as for the high and dry gentlemen,’ said Mr Sowerby, ‘it’s not very likely that they will object to pick up the fruit when we shake the tree.’
‘As to picking up the fruit, that’s as may be,’ said Mr Supplehouse. Was he not the man to save the nation? and if so, why should he not pick up the fruit himself? Had not the greatest power in the country pointed him out as such a saviour? What though the country at the present moment needed no more saving, might there not, nevertheless, be a good time coming? Were there not rumours of other wars still prevalent?—-if indeed the actual war then going on was being brought to a close without his assistance by some other species of salvation? He thought of that country to which he had pointed, and of that friend of his enemies, and remembered that there might be still work for a mighty saviour. The public mind was now awake, and understood what it was about. When a man gets into his head an idea that the public voice calls for him, it is astonishing how great becomes his trust in the wisdom of the public. Vox populi, vox Dei. ‘Has it not been so always?’ he says to himself, as he gets up and as he goes to bed. And then Mr Supplehouse felt that he was the master mind there at Gatherum Castle, and that those there were all puppets in his hands. It is such a pleasant thing to feel that one’s friends are puppets, and that the strings are in one’s own possession. But what if Mr Supplehouse himself were a puppet? Some months afterwards, when the much-belaboured head of affairs was in very truth made to retire, when unkind shells were thrown against him in great numbers, when he exclaimed, ‘Et tu, Brute!’ till the words were stereotyped upon his lips, all men in all places talked much about the great Gatherum Castle confederation. The Duke of Omnium, the world said, had taken into his high consideration the state of affairs, and seeing with his eagle’s eye that the welfare of his countrymen at large required that some great step should be initiated, he had at once summoned to his mansion many members of the Lower House, and some also of the House of Lords,— mention was here especially made of the all-venerable and all-wise Lord Boanerges; and men went on to say that there, in deep conclave, he had made known to them his views. It was thus agreed that the head of affairs, Whig as he was, must fall. The country required it, and the duke did his duty. This was the beginning, the world said, of that celebrated confederation, by which the ministry was overturned, and — as the Goody Twoshoes added — the country saved. But the Jupiter was not far wrong. All the credit was due to the Jupiter — in that, as in everything else.
In the meantime the Duke of Omnium entertained his guests in the quiet princely style, but did not condescend to have much conversation on politics either with Mr Supplehouse or with Mr Harold Smith. And as for Lord Boanerges, he spent the morning on which the above-mentioned conversation took place in teaching Miss Dunstable to blow soap-bubbles on scientific principles.
‘Dear, dear!’ said Miss Dunstable, as sparks of knowledge came flying in upon her mind. ‘I always thought that a soap-bubble was a soap-bubble, and I never asked the reason why. One doesn’t, you know, my lord.’
‘Pardon me, Miss Dunstable,’ said the old lord, ‘one does; but nine hundred and ninety-nine do not.’
‘And the nine hundred and ninety-nine have the best of it,’ said Miss Dunstable. ‘What pleasure can one have in a ghost after one has seen the phosphorus rubbed on?’
‘Quite true, my dear lady. “If ignorance be bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.” It all lies in the “if”.’
Then Miss Dunstable began to sing:-
‘“Did I not own Jehovah’s power
How vain were all I know.”’
‘Exactly, exactly, Miss Dunstable,’ said his lordship; ‘but why not own the power and trace the flower as well? Perhaps one might help the other.’ Upon the whole, I am afraid that Lord Boanerges got the best of it. But, then, that is his line. He has been getting the best of it all his life.
It was observed by all that the duke was especially attentive to young Mr Frank Gresham, the gentleman on whose wife Miss Dunstable seized so vehemently. This Mr Gresham was the richest commoner in the county, and it was rumoured that at the next election he would be one of the members for the East Riding. Now the duke had little or nothing to do with the East Riding, and it was well known that young Gresham would be brought forward as a strong Conservative. But, nevertheless, his acres were so extensive and his money so plentiful that he was worth a duke’s notice. Mr Sowerby, also, was almost more than civil to him, as was natural, seeing that this very young man by a mere scratch of his pen could turn a scrap of paper into a bank note of almost fabulous value.
‘So you have the East Barsetshire hounds at Boxall Hill; have you not,’ said the duke.
‘The hounds are there,’ said Frank. ‘But I am not the master.’
‘Oh! I understood —’
‘My father has them. But he finds Boxall Hill more centrical than Greshambury. The dogs and horses have to go shorter distances.’
‘Boxall Hill is very centrical.’
‘Oh, exactly!’
‘And your young gorse coverts are doing well?’
‘Pretty well — gorse won’t thrive everywhere, I find. I wish it would.’
‘That’s just what I say to Fothergill; and then where there’s much woodland you can’t get the vermin to leave it.’
‘But we haven’t a tree at Boxall Hill,’ said Mr Gresham.
‘Ah, yes; you’re new there, certainly; you’ve enough of it at Greshambury in all conscience. There’s a larger extent of wood there than we have; isn’t there, Fothergill?’ Mr Fothergill said that the Greshambury woods were very extensive, but that, perhaps, he thought —
‘Oh, ah! I know,’ said the duke. ‘The Black Forest in its old days was nothing to Gatherum woods, according to Fothergill. And then, again, nothing in East Barsetshire could be equal to anything in West Barsetshire. Isn’t that it; eh, Fothergill?’ Mr Fothergill professed that he had been brought up in that faith and intended to die in it.
‘Your exotics at Boxall Hill are very fine, magnificent!’
‘I’d sooner have one full-grown oak standing in its pride alone,’ said young Gresham, rather grandiloquently, ‘than all the exotics in the world.’
‘They’ll come in due time,’ said the duke.
‘But the due time won’t be in my days. And so they’re going to cut down Chaldicotes Forest, are they, Mr Sowerby.’
‘Well, I can’t tell you that. They are going to disforest it. I have been ranger since I was twenty-two, and I don’t yet know whether that means cutting down.’
‘Not only cutting down, but rooting up,’ said Mr Fothergill.
‘It’s a murderous shame,’ said Frank Gresham; ‘and I will say one thing, I don’t think any but a Whig government would do it.’
‘Ha, ha, ha!’ said his grace. ‘At any rate, I’m sure of this,’ he said, ‘that if a Conservative government did do so, the Whigs would be just as indignant as you are now.’
‘I’ll tell you what you ought to do, Mr Gresham,’ said Sowerby; ‘put in an offer for the whole of the West Barsetshire Crown property; they will be very glad to sell it.’
‘And we should be delighted to welcome you on this side of the border,’ said the duke. Young Gresham did feel rather flattered. There were not many men in the county to whom such an offer could be made without an absurdity. It might be doubted whether the duke himself could purchase the chase of Chaldicotes with ready money; but that he, Gresham, could do so — he and his wife between them — no man did doubt. And then Mr Gresham thought of a former day when he had once been at Gatherum Castle. He had been poor enough then, and the duke had not treated him in the most courteous manner in the world. How hard it is for a rich man not to lean upon his riches! harder, indeed, than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.
All Barsetshire knew — at any rate all West Barsetshire — that Miss Dunstable had been brought down in those parts in order that Mr Sowerby might marry her. It was not surmised that Miss Dunstable herself had had any previous notice of this arrangement, but it was supposed that the thing would turn out as a matter of course. Mr Sowerby had no money, but then he was witty, clever, good-looking, and a member of Parliament. He lived before the world, represented an old family, and had an old place. How could Miss Dunstable possibly do better? She was not so young now, and it was time that she should look about her. The suggestion, as regarded Mr Sowerby, was certainly true, and was not the less so as regarded some of Mr Sowerby’s friends. His sister, Mrs Harold Smith, had devoted herself to the work, and with this view had run up a dear friendship with Miss Dunstable. The bishop had intimated, nodding his head knowingly, that it would be a very good thing. Mrs Proudie had given her adherence. Mr Supplehouse had been made to understand that it must be a case of ‘Pawn off’ with him, as long as he remained in that part of the world; and even the duke himself had desired Mr Fothergill to manage it.
‘He owes me an enormous sum of money,’ said the duke, who held all Mr Sowerby’s title-deeds, ‘and I doubt whether the security will be sufficient.’
‘Your grace will find the security quite insufficient,’ said Mr Fothergill; ‘but nevertheless it would be a good match.’
‘Very good,’ said the duke. And then it became Mr Fothergill’s duty to see that Mr Sowerby and Miss Dunstable became man and wife as speedily as possible. Some of the party, who were more wide awake than others, declared that he had made the offer; others that he was just going to do so; and one very knowing lady went so far at one time as to say that he was making it that moment. Bets also were laid as to the lady’s answer, as to the terms of the settlement, and as to the period of the marriage — of all which poor Miss Dunstable of course knew nothing. Mr Sowerby, in spite of the publicity of his proceedings, proceeded in this matter very well. He said little about it, to those who joked with him, but carried on the fight with what best knowledge he had in these matters. But so much it is given to us to declare with certainty, that he had not proposed on the evening previous to the morning fixed for the departure of Mark Robarts. During the last two days Mr Sowerby’s intimacy with Mark had grown warmer and warmer. He had talked to the vicar confidentially about the doings of these bigwigs now present at the castle, as though there were no other guests there with whom he could speak in so free a manner. He confided, it seemed, much more in Mark than in his brother-inlaw, Harold Smith, or in any of his brother members of Parliament, and had altogether opened his heart to him in this affair of his anticipated marriage. Now Mr Sowerby was a man of mark in the world, and all this flattered our young clergyman not a little. On that evening before Robarts went away Sowerby asked him to come up to his bedroom when the whole party was breaking up, and there got him into an easy chair while he, Sowerby, walked up and down the room.
‘You can hardly tell, my dear fellow,’ said he, ‘the state of nervous anxiety in which this puts me.’
‘Why don’t you ask her and have done with it? She seems to me to be fond of your society.’
‘Ah, it is not that only; there are wheels within wheels;’ and then he walked once or twice up and down the room, during which Mark thought that he might as well go to bed.
‘Not that I mind telling you everything,’ said Sowerby. ‘I am infernally hard up for a little ready money, just at the present moment. It may be, and indeed I think it will be, the case that I shall be ruined in this matter for the want of it.’
‘Could not Harold Smith give it to you?’
‘Ha, ha, ha! you don’t know Harold Smith. Did you ever hear of his lending a man a shilling in his life?’
‘Or Supplehouse?’
‘Lord love you. You see me and Supplehouse together here, and he comes and stays at my house, and all that; but Supplehouse and I are no friends. Look you here, Mark — I would do more for your little finger than for his whole hand, including the pen which he holds in it. Fothergill indeed might — but then I know Fothergill is pressed himself at the present moment. It is deuced hard, isn’t it? I must give up the whole game if I can’t put my hand upon L400, within the next two days.’
‘Ask her for it, herself.’
‘What, the woman I wish to marry! No, Mark, I’m not quite come to that. I would sooner lose her than that.’ Mark sat silent, gazing at the fire and wishing that he was in his own bedroom. He had an idea that Mr Sowerby wished him to produce the L400, and he knew also that he had not L400 in the world, and that if he had he would be acting very foolishly to give it to Mr Sowerby. But, nevertheless, he felt half fascinated by the man, and half afraid of him.
‘Lufton owes it to me to do more than this,’ continued Mr Sowerby, ‘but then Lufton is not here.’
‘Why, he has just paid five thousand pounds to you.’
‘Paid five thousand pounds to me! Indeed he has done no such thing; not a sixpence of it came into my hands. Believe me, Mark, you don’t know the whole of that yet. Not that I mean to say a word against Lufton. He is the soul of honour; though so deucedly dilatory in money matters. He thought he was right all through that affair, but no man was ever so confoundedly wrong. Why, don’t you remember that that was the very view you took yourself.’
‘I remember saying that I thought he was mistaken.’
‘Of course he was mistaken. And dearly that mistake cost me. I had to make good the money for two or three years. And my property is not like his — I wish it were.’
‘Marry Miss Dunstable, and that will set it all right for you.’
‘Ah! so I would if I had this money. At any rate I would bring it to the point. Now, I tell you what, Mark, if you’ll assist me at this strait I’ll never forget it. And the time will come round when I may be able to do something for you.’
‘I have not got a hundred, no, not fifty pounds by me in the world.’
‘Of course you’ve not. Men don’t walk about the streets with L400 in their pockets. I don’t suppose there is a single man here in the house with such a sum at his banker’s, unless it is the duke.’
‘What is it you want, then?’
‘Why, your name, to be sure. Believe me, my dear fellow, I would not ask you really to put your hand into your pocket to such a tune as that. Allow me to draw on you for that amount at three months. Long before that time I shall be flush enough.’ And then, before Mark could answer, he had a bill stamp and pen and ink out on the table before him, and was filling in the bill as though his friend had already given his consent.
‘Upon my word, Sowerby, I had rather not do that.’
‘Why? what are you afraid of?’— Mr Sowerby asked this very sharply. ‘Did you ever hear of my having neglected to take up a bill when it fell due?’ Robarts thought that he had heard of such a thing; but in his confusing he was not exactly sure, and so he said nothing.
‘No, my boy; I have not come to that. Look here: just you write, “Accepted, Mark Robarts,” across that, and then you shall never hear of the transaction again; and you will have obliged me for ever.’
‘As a clergyman it would be wrong of me,’ said Robarts.
‘As a clergyman! Come, Mark. If you don’t like to do as much as that for a friend, say so; but don’t let me have that sort of humbug. If there be one class of men whose names would be found more frequent on the backs of bills in the provincial banks than another, clergymen are that class. Come, old fellow, you won’t throw me over when I am so hard pushed.’ Mark Robarts took the pen and signed the bill. It was the first time in his life that he had ever done such an act. Sowerby then shook him cordially by the hand, and he walked off to his own bedroom a wretched man.
Chapter 9 The Vicar’s Return
The next morning Mr Robarts took leave of all his grand friends with a heavy heart. He had lain awake half the night thinking of what he had done and trying to reconcile himself to his position. He had not well left Mr Sowerby’s room before he felt certain that at the end of three months he would again be troubled about that 400L. As he went along the passage, all the man’s known antecedents crowded upon him much quicker than he could remember them when seated in that arm-chair with the bill stamp before him, and the pen and ink ready to his hand. He remembered what Lord Lufton had told him — how he had complained of having been left in the lurch; he thought of all the stories current throughout the entire country as to the impossibility of getting money from Chaldicotes; he brought to mind the known character of the man, and then he knew that he must prepare himself to make good a portion at least of that heavy payment. Why had he come to this horrid place? Had he not everything at home at Framley at which the heart of man could desire? No; the heart of man can desire deaneries — the heart, that is, of the man vicar; and the heart of the man dean can desire bishoprics; and before the eyes of the man bishop does there not loom the transcendental glory of Lambeth? He had owned to himself that he was ambitious; but he had to own to himself now that he had hitherto taken but a sorry path towards the object of his ambition. On the next morning at breakfast-time, before his horse and gig arrived for him, no one was so bright as his friend Sowerby. ‘So you are off, are you?’ said he.
‘Yes, I shall go this morning.’
‘Say everything that’s kind from me to Lufton. I may possibly see him hunting; otherwise we shan’t meet till the spring. As to my going to Framley, that’s out of the question. Her ladyship would look for my tail, and swear that she smelt brimstone. By-bye, old fellow!’
The German student when he first made his bargain with the devil felt an indescribable attraction to his new friend; and such was the case now with Robarts. He shook Sowerby’s hand very warmly, said that he hoped he should meet him soon somewhere, and professed himself specially anxious to hear how that affair with the lady came off. As he had made his bargain — as he had undertaken to pay nearly half a year’s income for his dear friend — ought he not to have as much value as possible for his money? If the dear friendship of this flash member of Parliament did not represent that value, what else did so? But then he felt, or fancied that he felt, that Mr Sowerby did not care for him so much this morning as he had done on the previous evening. ‘By-bye,’ said Mr Sowerby, but he spoke no word as to such future meetings, nor did he even promise to write. Mr Sowerby probably had many things on his mind; and it might be that it behoved him, having finished one piece of business, immediately to look for another.
The sum for which Robarts had made himself responsible — which he so much feared that he would be called upon to pay — was very nearly half a year’s income; and as yet he had not put by one shilling since he had been married. When he found himself settled in his parsonage, he found also that all the world regarded him as a rich man. He had taken the dictum of all the world as true, and had set himself to work to live comfortably. He had no absolute need of a curate; but he could afford the 70L— as Lady Lufton had said rather injudiciously; and by keeping Jones in the parish he would be acting charitably to a brother clergyman, and would also place himself in a more independent position. Lady Lufton had wished to see her pet clergyman well-to-do and comfortable; but now, as matters had turned out, she much regretted this affair of the curate. Mr Jones, she said to herself more than once, must be made to depart from Framley. He had given his wife a pony-carriage, and for himself he had a saddle-horse, and a second horse for his gig. A man in his position, well-to-do, as he was, required as much as that. He had a footman also, and a gardener and a groom. The two latter were absolutely necessary, but about the former there had been a question. His wife had been decidedly hostile to the footman; but in all such matters as that, to doubt is to be lost. When the footman had been discussed for a week it became quite clear to the master he also was a necessity.
As he drove home that morning he pronounced to himself the doom of that footman, and the doom also of that saddle-horse. They at any rate should go. And then he would spend no more money in trips to Scotland; and above all, he would keep out of the bedrooms of impoverished members of Parliament at the witching hour of midnight. Such resolves did he make to himself wearily how that 400L might be made to be forthcoming. As to any assistance in the matter from Sowerby — of that he gave himself no promise. But he almost felt himself happy again as his wife came out into the porch to meet him with a silk shawl over her head, and pretending to shiver as she watched him descending from his gig. ‘My dear old man,’ she said, as she led him into the warm drawing-room with all his wrappings still around him, ‘you must be starved.’ But Mark during the whole drive had been thinking too much of that transaction in Mr Sowerby’s bedroom to remember that he was cold. Now he had his arms round his own dear Fanny’s waist; but was he to tell her of that transaction? At any rate he would not do it now, while his two boys were in his arms, rubbing the moisture from his whiskers with his kisses. After all, what is there equal to coming home?
‘And so Lufton is here. I say, Frank, gently, old boy,’— Frank was his eldest son —‘you’ll have baby into the fender.’
‘Let me take baby; it’s impossible to hold the two of them, they are so strong,’ said the proud mother. ‘Oh, yes, he came home early yesterday.’
‘Have you seen him?’
‘He was here yesterday, with her ladyship; and I lunched there today. The letter came, you know, in time to stop the Merediths. They don’t go till tomorrow, so you will meet them after all. Sir George is wild about it, but Lady Lufton would have her way. You never saw her in such a state as she is.’
‘Good spirit, eh!’
‘I should think so. All Lord Lufton’s horses are coming, and he’s to be there till March.’
‘Till March!’
‘So her ladyship whispered to me. She could not conceal her triumph at his coming. He’s going to give up Leicestershire this year altogether. I wonder what has brought it all about?’ Mark knew very well what had brought it about; he had been made acquainted, as the reader has also, with the price which Lady Lufton had purchased her son’s visit. But no one had told Mrs Robarts that the mother had made her son a present of five thousand pounds.
‘She’s in a good humour about everything now,’ continued Fanny; ‘so you need say nothing at all about Gatherum Castle.’
‘But she was very angry when she first heard it; was she not?’
‘Well, Mark, to tell the truth, she was; and we had quite a scene there up in her own room upstairs — Justinia and I. She had heard something else that she did not like at the same time; and then — but you know her way. She blazed up quite a lot.’
‘And said all manner of things about me.’
‘About the duke she did. You know she never did like the duke; and for the matter of that, neither do I. I tell you that fairly, Master Mark.’
‘The duke is not so bad as he’s painted.’
‘Ah, that’s what you say about another great person. However, he won’t come here to trouble us, I suppose. And then I left her, not in the best temper in the world; for I blazed up too, you must know.’
‘I am sure you did,’ said Mark, pressing his arm round her waist.
‘And then we were going to have a dreadful war, I thought; and I came home and wrote such a doleful letter to you. But what should happen when I had just closed it, but in came her ladyship — all alone, and — But I can’t tell you what she did or said, only she behaved beautifully; just like herself too; so full of love and truth and honesty. There’s nobody like her, Mark; and she’s better than all the dukes that ever wore — whatever dukes do wear.’
‘Horns and hoofs; that’s their usual apparel, according to you and Lady Lufton,’ said he, remembering what Mr Sowerby had said of himself.
‘You may say what you like about me, Mark, but you shan’t abuse Lady Lufton. And if horns and hoofs mean wickedness and dissipation, I believe it’s not far wrong. But get off your big coat and make yourself comfortable.’ And that was all the scolding that Mark Robarts got from his wife on the occasion of his great iniquity.
‘I will certainly tell her about this bill transaction,’ he said to himself; ‘but not today; not till after I have seen Lufton.’ That evening they dined at Framley Court, and there they met the young lord; they found also Lady Lufton still in high good-humour. Lord Lufton himself was a fine, bright-looking young man; not as tall as Mark Robarts, and with perhaps less intelligence marked on his face; but his features were finer, and there was in his countenance a thorough appearance of good-humour and sweet temper. It was indeed a pleasant face to look upon, and dearly Lady Lufton loved to gaze at it.
‘Well, Mark, so you have been among the Philistines?’ that was his lordship’s first remark. Robarts laughed as he took his friend’s hands, and bethought himself how truly that was the case; that he was, in very truth, already ‘himself in bonds under Philistian yoke’. Alas, alas, it is very hard to break asunder the bonds of the latter-day Philistines. When a Samson does now and then pull a temple down about their ears, is he not sure to be engulfed in the ruin with them? There is not horse-leech that sticks so fast as your latter-day Philistine.
‘So you have caught Sir George, after all,’ said Lady Lufton; and that was nearly all she said in allusion to his absence. There was afterwards some conversation about the lecture, and from her ladyship’s remarks it certainly was apparent that she did not like the people among whom the vicar had been lately staying; but she said no word that was personal to him himself, or that could be taken as a reproach. The little episode of Mrs Proudie’s address in the lecture-room had already reached Framley, and it was only to be expected that Lady Lufton should enjoy the joke. She would affect to believe that the body of the lecture had been given by the bishop’s wife; and afterwards, when Mark described her costume at that Sunday morning breakfast table, Lady Lufton would assume that such had been the dress in which she had addressed her faculties in public.
‘I would have given a five-pound note to have heard it,’ said Sir George.
‘So would not I,’ said Lady Lufton. ‘When one hears of such things described as graphically as Mr Robarts now tells it, one can hardly help laughing. But it would me great pain to see the wife of one of our bishops place herself in such a situation. For he is a bishop after all.’
‘Well, upon my word, my lady, I agree with Meredith,’ said Lord Lufton. ‘It must have been good fun. As it did happen, you know,— as the Church was doomed to disgrace,— I should like to have heard it.’
‘I know you would have been shocked, Ludovic.’
‘I should have got over it in time, mother. It would have been like a bull-fight, I suppose — horrible to see, no doubt, but extremely interesting. And Harold Smith, Mark; what did he do all the while?’
‘It didn’t take so very long, you know,’ said Robarts.
‘And the poor bishop,’ said Lady Meredith; ‘how did he look? I really do pity him.’
‘Well, he was asleep, I think.’
‘What, slept through it all?’ said Sir George.
‘It awakened him; and then he jumped up and said something.’
‘What, out loud, too?’
‘Only one word or so.’
‘What a disgraceful scene,’ said Lady Lufton. ‘To those who remember the good old man who was in the diocese before him, it is perfectly shocking. He confirmed you, Ludovic, and you ought to remember him. It was over at Barchester, and you went and lunched with him afterwards.’
‘I do remember; and especially this, that I never ate such tarts in my life, before or since. The old man particularly called my attention to them, and seemed remarkably pleased that I concurred in his sentiments. There are no such tarts as those going to the palace now, I’ll be bound.’
‘Mrs Proudie will be very happy to do her best for you if you will go and try,’ said Sir George.
‘I beg that he will do no such thing,’ said Lady Lufton; and that was the only severe word she said about any of Mark’s visitings. As Sir George Meredith was there, Robarts could say nothing then to Lord Lufton about Mr Sowerby and Mr Sowerby’s money affairs; but he did make an appointment for a tete-a-tete on the next morning.
‘You must come down and see my nags, Mark; they came today. The Merediths will be off at twelve, and then we can have an hour together.’ Mark said he would, and then went home with his wife under his arm.
‘Well now, is not she kind?’ said Fanny, as soon as they were out on the gravel together.
‘She is kind; kinder than I can tell you at present. But did you ever know anything so bitter as she is to the poor bishop? And really the bishop is not so bad.’
‘Yes; and I know something more bitter; and that is what she thinks of the bishop’s wife. And you know, Mark, it was so unladylike, her getting up in that way. What must the people at Barchester think of her?’
‘As far as I could see, the people of Barchester liked it.’
‘Nonsense, Mark; they could not. But never mind that now. I want you to own that she is good.’ And then Mrs Robarts went on with another long eulogy on the dowager. Since that affair of the pardon-begging at the parsonage, Mrs Robarts hardly knew how to think well enough of her friend. And the evening had been so pleasant after that dreadful storm and threatenings of hurricanes; her husband had been so well received after his lapse of judgement; the wounds that had looked so sore had been so thoroughly healed, and everything was so pleasant. How all of this would have been changed had she known of that little bill! At twelve the next morning the lord and the vicar were walking through the Framley stables together. Quite a commotion had been made there, for the larger portion of those buildings had been of late years seldom been used. But now all was crowding and activity. Seven or eight precious animals had followed Lord Lufton from Leicestershire, and all of them required dimensions that were thought to be rather excessive by the Framley old-fashioned groom. My lord, however, had a head man of his own who took the matter quite into his own hands. Mark, priest as he was, was quite worldly enough to be fond of a good horse; and for some little time allowed Lord Lufton to decant on the merit of this four-year-old filly, and that magnificent Rattlebones colt, out of a Mousetrap mare; but he had other things that lay heavy on his mind, and after bestowing half an hour on the stud, he contrived to get his friend away to the shrubbery walks.
‘So you have settled with old Sowerby,’ Robarts began by saying.
‘Settled with him; yes, but do you know the price?’
‘I believe that you have paid five thousand pounds.’
‘Yes, and about three before; and that is a matter in which I did not really owe one shilling. Whatever I do in future, I’ll keep out of Sowerby’s grip.’
But you don’t think he was unfair to you.’
‘Mark, to tell you the truth, I have banished the affair from my mind, and don’t wish to take it up again. My mother has paid the money to save the property, and of course I must pay her back. But I think I may promise that I will not have any more money dealings with Sowerby. I will not say that he is dishonest, but at any rate he is sharp.’
‘Well, Lufton; what will you say when I tell you that I have put my name to a bill for him, for four hundred pounds?’
‘Say; why I should say —; but you’re joking; a man in your position would never do such a thing.’
‘But I have done it.’ Lord Lufton gave a long low whistle.
‘He asked me the last night that I was there, making a great favour of it, and declaring that no bill of his had ever been dishonoured.’
Lord Lufton whistled again. ‘No bill of his dishonoured! Why, the pocket-books of the Jews are stuffed full of his dishonoured papers! And you have really given him your name for four hundred pounds?’
‘I have certainly.’
‘At what date?’
‘Three months.’
‘And have you thought where you are to get the money?’
‘I know very well that I can’t get it, not at least by that time. The bankers must renew it for me, and I must pay it be degrees. That is, if Sowerby really does not take it up.’
‘It is just as likely he will take up the National Debt.’ Robarts then told him about the projected marriage with Miss Dunstable, giving it as his opinion that the lady would probably accept the gentleman.
‘Not at all improbable,’ said his lordship, ‘for Sowerby is an agreeable fellow; and if it be so, he will have all that he wants for life. But his creditors will gain nothing. The duke, who has his title-deeds, will doubtless get his money, and the estate will in fact belong to the wife. But the small fry, such as you, will not get a shilling.’ Poor Mark! He had an inkling of this before; but it had hardly presented itself to him in such certain terms. It was then, a positive fact, that in punishment for his weakness in having signed the bill he would have to pay, not only four hundred pounds, but four hundred pounds with interest, and expenses of renewal, and commission and bill stamps. Yes; he had certainly got among the Philistines during his visit to the duke. It began to appear to him pretty clearly that it would have been better for him to have relinquished altogether the glories of Chaldicotes and Gatherum Castle.
And now, how was he to tell his wife?
Chapter 10 Lucy Robarts
And now, how was he going to tell his wife? That was the consideration heavy on Mark Robarts’s mind when last we left him; and he turned the matter over in his thoughts before he could bring himself to a resolution. At last he did so, and one may say that it was not altogether a bad one, if only he could carry it out. He would ascertain in what bank that bill of his had been discounted. He would ask Sowerby, and if he could not learn from him, he would go to the three banks in Barchester. That it had been taken to one of them he felt tolerably certain. He would explain to the manager his conviction that he would have to make good the amount, his inability to do so at the end of three months, and the whole state of his income; and then the banker would explain to him how the matter might be arranged. He thought that he could pay 50L every three months with interest. As soon as this should have been concerted with the banker, he would let is wife know all about it. Were he to tell her at the present moment, while the matter was all unsettled, the intelligence would frighten her into illness. But on the next morning there came to him tidings by the hands of Robin postman, which for a long while upset all his plans. The letter was from Exeter. His father had been taken ill, and had very quickly been pronounced to be in danger. That evening — the evening on which his sister wrote — the old man was much worse, and it was desirable that Mark should go off to Exeter as quickly as possible. Of course he went to Exeter — again leaving the Framley souls at the mercy of the Welsh Low Churchman. Framley is only four miles from Silverbridge, and at Silverbridge he was on the direct road to the West. He was, therefore, at Exeter before nightfall on that day. But, nevertheless, he arrived there too late to see his father again alive. The old man’s illness had been sudden and rapid, and he expired without again seeing his eldest son. Mark arrived at the house of mourning just as they were learning to realize the full change in their position.
The doctor’s career had been on the whole successful, but nevertheless, he did not leave behind him as much money as the world had given him credit for possessing. Who ever does? Dr Robarts had educated a large family, had always lived with every comfort, and had never possessed a shilling but what he had earned himself. A physician’s fees come in, no doubt, with comfortable rapidity as soon as rich old gentlemen and middle-aged ladies begin to put their faith in him; but fees run out almost with equal rapidity when a wife and seven children are treated to everything that the world considers most desirable. Mark, as we have seen, had been educated at Harrow and Oxford, and it may be said, therefore, that he had received his patrimony early in life. For Gerald Robarts, the second brother, a commission had been bought in a crack regiment. He also had been lucky, having lived and become a captain in the Crimea; and the purchase-money was lodged for his majority. And John Robarts, the youngest was clerk in the Petty Bag Office, and was already assistant private secretary to Lord Petty Bag himself — a place of considerable trust, if not hitherto of large emolument: and on his education money had been spent freely, for in these days a young man cannot get into the Petty Bag Office without knowing at least three modern languages; and he must be well up in trigonometry too, in Bible theology, or in one dead language — at his option. And the doctor had four daughters. The two elder were married, including that Blanche with whom Lord Lufton was to have fallen in love at the vicar’s wedding. A Devonshire squire had done this in the lord’s place; but on marrying her it was necessary that he should have a few thousand pounds, two or three perhaps, and the old doctor had managed that they should be forthcoming. The elder sister had not been sent away from the paternal mansions quite empty handed. There were, therefore, at the time of the doctor’s death, two children left at home, of whom one only, Lucy, the younger will come much across us in the course of our story.
Mark stayed for ten days at Exeter, he and the Devonshire squire having been named as executors in the will. In this document it was explained that the doctor trusted that providence had been made for most of his children. As for his dear son Mark, he said, he was aware that he need be under no uneasiness. On hearing this read Mark smiled sweetly, and looked very gracious; but, nevertheless, his heart did sink somewhat within him, for there had been a hope that a small windfall, coming now so opportunely, might enable him to rid himself at once of that dreadful Sowerby incubus. And then the will went on to declare that Mary, and Gerald, and Blanche, had also, by God’s providence, been placed beyond want. And here, looking into the squire’s face, one might have thought that his heart fell a little also; for he had not so full a command of his feelings as his brother-inlaw, who had been so much more before the world. To John, the assistant private secretary, was left a legacy of a thousand pounds; and to Jane and Lucy certain sums in certain four per cents., which were quite sufficient to add an efficient value to the hands of those young ladies in the eyes of the most prudent young would be Benedicts. Over and beyond this there was nothing but the furniture, which he desired might be sold, and the proceeds divided among them all. It might come to sixty or seventy pounds a piece, and pay the expenses incidental on is death. And then all men and women there and thereabouts said that old Dr Robarts had done well. His life had been good and prosperous, and his will was just. And Mark, among others, so declared — and was so convinced in spite of his own little disappointment. And on the third morning after the reading of the will Squire Crowdy, of Creamclotted Hall, altogether got over his grief, and said that it was all right. And then it was decided that Jane should go home with him — for there was a brother squire who, it was thought, might have an eye to Jane;— and Lucy, the younger, should be taken to Framley Parsonage. In a fortnight from the receipt of that letter, Mark arrived at his own house with his sister Lucy under his wing.
All this interfered greatly with Mark’s wise resolution as to the Sowerby incubus. In the first place, he could not get to Barchester as soon as he had intended, and then an idea came across him that possibly it might be well that he should borrow the money of his brother John, explaining the circumstances, of course, and paying him due interest. But he had not liked to broach the subject when they were there in Exeter, standing, as it were, over their father’s grave, and so the matter was postponed. There was still ample time for arrangement before the bill would come due, and he would not tell Fanny till he had made up his mind what that arrangement would be. It would kill her, he said to himself over and over again, were he to tell her of it without being able to tell her also that the means of liquidating the debt were to be forthcoming.
And now I must say a word about Lucy Robarts. If one might only go on without those descriptions how pleasant it would be! But Lucy Robarts has to play a forward part in this little drama, and those who care for such matters must be made to understand something of her form and likeness. When last we mentioned her as appearing, though not in any promising position, at her brother’s wedding, she was only sixteen; but now, at the time of her father’s death, somewhat over two years having since elapsed, she was nearly nineteen. Laying aside for the sake of clearness that indefinite term of girl — for girls are girls from the age of three up to forty-three, if not previously married — dropping that generic word, we may say that then, at that wedding of her brother, she was a child; and now, at the death of her father, she was a woman. Nothing, perhaps, adds so much to womanhood, turns the child so quickly into a woman, as such death-bed scenes as these. Hitherto but little has fallen to Lucy to do in the way of woman’s duties. Of money transactions she had known nothing, beyond a jocose attempt to make her annual allowance of twenty-five pounds cover all her personal wants — an attempt which was made jocose by the loving bounty of her father. Her sister, who was three years her elder — for John came in between them — had managed the house; that is, she had made the tea and talked to the housekeeper about the dinners. But Lucy had sat at her father’s elbow, had read to him of evenings when he went to sleep, had brought him his slippers and looked after the comforts of his easy chair. All this she had done as a child; but when she stood at the coffin head, and knelt at the coffin side, then she was a woman.
She was smaller in stature than either of her three sisters, to all of whom had been acceded the praise of being fine woman — a eulogy which the people of Exeter, looking back at the elder sisters, and the general remembrance of them which pervaded the city, were not willing to extend to Lucy. ‘Dear — dear!’ had been said of her; ‘poor Lucy is not like a Robarts at all; is she, now, Mrs Pole?’— for as the daughters had become fine women, so had the sons grown into stalwart men. And then Mrs Pole had answered: ‘Not a bit; is she, now? Only think what Blanche was at her age. But she has fine eyes, for all that; and they do say she is the cleverest of them all.’ And that, too, is so true a description of her that I do know that I can add much to it. She was not like Blanche; for Blanche had bright complexion, and a fine neck, and a noble bust, et vera incessu patuit Dea — a true goddess, that is, as far as the eye went. She had a grand idea, moreover, of an apple-pie, and had not reigned eighteen months at Creamclotted Hall before she knew all the mysteries of pigs and milk, and most of those appertaining to cider and green cheese.
Lucy had no neck at all worth speaking of,— no neck, I mean, that ever produced eloquence; she was brown, too, and had addicted herself in nowise, as she undoubtedly should have done, to larder utility. In regard to the neck and colour, poor girl, she could not help herself; but in that other respect she must be held as having wasted her opportunities. But then what eyes she had! Mrs Pole was right there. They flashed upon you, not always softly; indeed not often softly if you were a stranger to her; but whether softly or savagely, with a brilliancy that dazzled you as you looked at them. And who shall say of what colour they were? Green, probably, for most eyes are green — green or grey, if green be thought uncomely for an eye-colour. But it was not their colour, but their fire, which struck one with such surprise.
Lucy Robarts was thoroughly a brunette. Sometimes the dark tint of her cheek was exquisitely rich and lovely, and the fringes of her eyes were long and soft, and her small teeth, which one so seldom saw, were white as pearls, and her hair, though short, was beautifully soft — by no means black, but yet of so dark a shade of brown. Blanche, too, was noted for fine teeth. They were white and regular and lofty as a new row of houses in a French city. But then when she laughed she was all teeth; as she was all neck when she sat at the piano. But Lucy’s teeth!—-it was only now and again, when in some sudden burst of wonder she would sit for a moment with her lips apart, that the fine finished lines and dainty pearl-white colour of that perfect set of ivory could be seen. Mrs Pole would have said a word of her teeth also, but that to her they had never been made visible. ‘But they do say that she is the cleverest of them all,’ Mrs Pole had added, very properly. The people of Exeter had expressed such an opinion, and had been quite just in doing so. I do not know how it happens, but it always does happen, that everybody in every small town knows which is the brightest-witted in every family. In that respect Mrs Pole had only expressed public opinion, and public opinion was right. Lucy Robarts was blessed with an intelligence keener than that of her brothers and sisters.
‘To tell the truth, Mark, I admire Lucy more than I do Blanche.’ This had been said by Mrs Robarts within a few hours of her having assumed that name. ‘She’s not a beauty, I know, but yet I do.’
‘My dearest Fanny!’ Mark had answered in a tone of surprise.
‘I do then; of course people won’t think so; but I never seem to care about regular beauties. Perhaps I envy them too much.’ What Mark said next need not be repeated, but everybody may be sure that it contained more gross flattery for his young bride. He remembered this, however, and had always called Lucy his wife’s pet. Neither of the sisters had since been at Framley; and though Fanny had spent a week at Exeter on the occasion of Blanche’s marriage, it could hardly be said that she was very intimate with them. Nevertheless, when it became expedient that one of them should go to Framley, the remembrance of what his wife had said immediately induced Mark to make the offer to Lucy; and Jane, who was of a kindred soul with Blanche, was delighted to go to Creamclotted Hall. The acres of Heavybed House, down in that fat Totnes country, adjoined those of Creamclotted Hall, and Heavybed House still wanted a mistress.
Fanny was delighted when the news reached her. It would of course be proper that one of his sisters should live with Mark under their present circumstances, and she was happy to think that that quiet little bright-eyed creature was to come and nestle with her under the same roof. The children should so love her — only not quite so much as they loved mamma; and the snug little room that looks out over the porch, in which the chimney never smokes, should be made ready for her; and she should be allowed her share of driving the pony — which was a great sacrifice of self on the part of Mrs Robarts — and Lady Lufton’s best good-will should be bespoken. In fact, Lucy was not unfortunate in the destination that was laid out for her. Lady Lufton had of course heard of the doctor’s death, and had sent all manner of kind messages to Mark, advising him not to hurry home by any means until everything was settled at Exeter. And then she was told of the new-comer that was expected in the parish. When she heard that it was Lucy, the younger, she was satisfied; for Blanche’s charms, though indisputable, had not been altogether to her taste. If a second Blanche were to arrive there what danger might there not be for young Lord Lufton! ‘Quite right,’ said her ladyship, ‘just what he ought to do. I think I remember the young lady; rather small, is she not, and very retiring?’
‘Rather small and very retiring. What a description!’
‘Never mind, Ludovic; some young ladies must be small, and some at least ought to be retiring. We shall be delighted to make her acquaintance.’
‘I remember your other sister-inlaw very well,’ said Lord Lufton. ‘She was a beautiful woman.’
‘I don’t think you will consider Lucy a beauty,’ said Mrs Robarts.
‘Small, retiring, and —‘so far Lord Lufton had gone, when Mrs Robarts finished by the work ‘plain’. She had liked Lucy’s face, but she had thought that others probably did not think so.
‘Upon my word,‘said Lady Lufton, ‘you don’t deserve to have a sister-inlaw. I remember her very well, and can say that she is not plain. I was very much taken with her manner at your wedding, my dear, and thought more of her than I did of the beauty, I can tell you.’
‘I must confess I do not remember her at all,’ said his lordship. And so the conversation ended. And then at the end of the fortnight Mark arrived with his sister. They did not reach Framley till long after dark — somewhere between six and seven — and by this time it was December. There was snow on the ground, and frost in the air, and no moon, and cautious men when they went on the roads had their horses’ shoes socked. Such being the state of the weather, Mark’s gig had been nearly filled with cloaks and shawls when it was sent over to Silverbridge. And a cart was sent for Lucy’s luggage, and all manner of preparations had been made. Three times had Fanny gone herself to see that the fire burned brightly in the little room over the porch, and at the moment that the sound of the wheels was heard she was engaged in opening her son’s mind as to the nature of an aunt. Hitherto papa and mamma and Lady Lufton were all that he had known, excepting, of course, the satellites of the nursery. And then in three minutes Lucy was standing by the fire. Those three minutes had been taken up by embraces between the husband and wife. Let who would be brought as a visitor to the house, after a fortnight’s absence, she would kiss him before she would welcome anyone else. But then she turned to Lucy, and began to assist her with her cloaks.
‘Oh, thank you,’ said Lucy; ‘I’m not cold,— not very at least. Don’t trouble yourself: I can do it.’ But here she had made a false boast, for her fingers had been so numbed that she could not do or undo anything. They were all in black, of course; but the sombreness of Lucy’s clothes struck Fanny much more than her own. They seemed to have swallowed her up in their blackness, and to have made her almost an emblem of death. She did not look up, but kept her face turned towards the fire, and seemed almost afraid of her position.
‘She may say what she likes, Fanny,’ said Mark, ‘but she is very cold. And so am I,— cold enough. You had better go up with her to her room. We won’t do much in the dressing way to-night; eh, Lucy?’ In the bedroom Lucy thawed a little, and Fanny, as she kissed her, said to herself that she had been wrong as to that work ‘plain’. Lucy, at any rate, was not plain.
‘You’ll be used to us soon,’ said Fanny, ‘and then I hope we shall make you comfortable.’ And she took her sister-inlaw’s hand and pressed it. Lucy looked up at her, and her eyes were then tender enough. ‘I am sure I shall be happy here,’ she said, ‘with you. But — but — dear papa!’ And then they got into each other’s arms, and had a great bout of kissing and crying. ‘Plain,’ said Fanny to herself, as at last she got her guest’s hair smoothed, and the tears washed from her eyes —‘plain! She has the loveliest countenance that I ever looked at in my life!’
‘Your sister is quite beautiful,’ she said to Mark, as they talked her over alone before they went to sleep that night.
‘No, she’s not beautiful; but she’s a very good girl, and clever enough, too, in her sort of way.’
‘I think her perfectly lovely. I never such eyes in my life before.’
‘I’ll leave her in your hands, then; you shall get her a husband.’
‘That mayn’t be so easy. I don’t think she’d marry anybody.’
‘Well, I hope not. But she seems to me to be exactly cut out for an old maid;— to be Aunt Lucy for ever and ever to your bairns.’
‘And so she shall, with all my heart. But I don’t think she will, very long. I have no doubt she will be hard to please; but if I were a man I should fall in love with her at once. Did you ever observe her teeth, Mark?’
‘I don’t think I ever did.’
‘You wouldn’t know whether any one had a tooth in their head, I believe.’
‘No one except you, my dear; and I know all yours by heart.’
‘You are a goose.’
‘And a very sleepy one; so, if you please, I’ll go to roost.’ And thus there was nothing more said about Lucy’s beauty on that occasion.
For the first two days Mrs Robarts did not make much of her sister-inlaw. Lucy, indeed, was not demonstrative; and she was, moreover, one of those few persons — for they are very few — who are contented to go on with their existence without making themselves the centre of any special outward circle. To the ordinary run of minds it is impossible not to do this. A man’s own dinner is to himself so important that he cannot bring himself to believe that it is a matter utterly indifferent to every one else. A lady’s collection of baby-clothes, in early years, and of house linen and curtain-fringes in later life, is so very interesting to her own eyes, that she cannot believe but what other people will rejoice to behold it. I would not, however, be held to regarding this tendency as evil. It leads to conversation of some sort among people, and perhaps to a kind of sympathy. Mrs Jones will look at Mrs White’s linen chest, hoping that Mrs White may be induced to look at hers. One can only pour out of a jug that which is in it. For the most of us, if we do not talk of ourselves, or at any rate of the individual circles of which we are the centre, we can talk of nothing. I cannot hold with those who wish to put down the insignificant chatter of the world. As for myself, I am always happy to look at Mrs Jones’s linen, and never omit an opportunity of giving her the details of my own dinners. But Lucy Robarts had not this gift. She had come there as a stranger into her sister-inlaw’s house, and at first seemed as though she would be contented in simply having her corner in the drawing-room and her place at the parlour table. She did not seem to need the comforts of condolences and open-hearted talking. I do not mean to say that she was moody, that she did not answer when she was spoken to, or that she took no notice of the children; but she did not at once throw herself and all her hopes and sorrows into Fanny’s heart, as Fanny would have had her do.
Mrs Robarts herself was what we call demonstrative. When she was angry with Lady Lufton she showed it. And as since that time her love and admiration for Lady Lufton had increased, she showed that also. When she was in any way displeased with her husband, she could not hide it, even though she tried to do so, and fancied herself successful;— no more than she could hide her warm, constant, overflowing woman’s love. She could not walk through a room laughing on her husband’s arm without seeming to proclaim to every one there that she thought him the best man in it. She was demonstrative, and therefore she was the more disappointed in that Lucy did not rush at once with all her cares into her open heart. ‘She is so quiet,’ Fanny said to her husband.
‘That’s her nature,’ said Mark. ‘She always was quiet as a child. While we were smashing everything, she would never crack a teacup.’
‘I wish she would break something now,‘said Fanny, ‘and then perhaps we should get to talk about it.’ But she did not on this account give over loving her sister-inlaw. She probably valued her the more, unconsciously, for not having those aptitudes with which she herself was endowed. And then after two days, Lady Lufton called; of course it may be supposed that Fanny had said a good deal to her new inmate about Lady Lufton. A neighbour of that kind in the country exercises so large an influence upon the whole tenor of one’s life, that to abstain from such talk is out of the question. Mrs Robarts had been brought up almost under the dowager’s wing, and of course she regarded her as being worthy of much talking. Do not let persons on this account suppose that Mrs Robarts was a tuft-hunter, or a toad-eater. If they do not see the difference, they have yet got to study the earliest principles of human nature.
Lady Lufton called, and Lucy was struck dumb. Fanny was particularly anxious that her ladyship’s first impression should be favourable, and to effect this, she especially endeavoured to throw the two together during that visit. But in this she was unwise. Lady Lufton, however, had woman-craft enough not to be led into any egregious error by Lucy’s silence. ‘And what day will you come and dine with us?’ said Lady Lufton, turning expressly to her old friend Fanny.
‘Oh, do you name the day. We never have many engagements, you know.’
‘Will Thursday, do Miss Robarts? You will meet nobody you know, only my son; so you need not regard it as going out. Fanny here will tell you that stepping over to Framley Court is no more going out, than when you go from one room to another in the parsonage. Is it, Fanny?’ Fanny laughed, and said that stepping over to Framley Court certainly was done so often that perhaps they did not think so much about it as they ought to do.
‘We consider ourselves as a sort of happy family here, Miss Robarts, and are delighted to have the opportunity of including you in the menage.’ Lucy gave her ladyship one of her sweetest smiles, but what she said at that moment was inaudible. It was plain, however, that she could not bring herself even to go as far as Framley Court for her dinner at present. ‘It was very kind of lady Lufton,‘she said to Fanny; ‘but it was so very soon, and — and if they would only go without her, she would be so happy.’ But as the object was to go with her — expressly to take her there — the dinner was adjourned for a short time — sine die.
Chapter 11 Griselda Grantly
It was nearly a month after this that Lucy was first introduced to Lord Lufton, and then it was brought about only by accident. During that time Lady Lufton had been often at the parsonage, and had in a certain degree learned to know Lucy; but the stranger in the parish had never yet plucked up courage to accept one of the numerous invitations that had reached her. Mr Robarts and his wife had frequently been at Framley Court, but the dreaded day of Lucy’s initiation had not yet arrived. She had seen Lord Lufton in church, but hardly as to know him, and beyond that she had not seem him at all. One day, however,— or rather, one evening, for it was already dusk — he overtook her and Mrs Robarts on the road walking towards the vicarage. He had his gun on his shoulder, three pointers were at his heels, and a game-keeper followed a little in the rear.
‘How are you Mrs Robarts?’ he said, almost before he had overtaken them. ‘I have been chasing you along the road for the last half-mile. I never knew ladies walk so fast.’
‘We should be frozen if we were to dawdle about as you gentlemen do,’ and then she stopped and shook hands with him. She forgot at the moment that Lucy and he had not met, and therefore she did not introduce them.
‘Won’t you make me known to your sister-inlaw!’ said he taking off his hat, and bowing to Lucy. ‘I have never yet had the pleasure of meeting her, though we have been neighbours for a month or more.’ Fanny made her excuses and introduced them, and then they went on till they came to Framley Gate, Lord Lufton talking to them both, and Fanny answering for the two, and there they stopped for a moment.
‘I am surprised to see you alone,’ Mrs Robarts had just said; ‘I thought that Captain Culpepper was with you.’
‘The captain has left me for this one day. If you’ll whisper, I’ll tell you where he has gone. I dare not speak it out loud, even to the woods.’
‘To what terrible place can he have taken himself? I’ll have no whispering about such horrors.’
‘He has gone to — to — but you’ll promise not to tell my mother?’
‘Do you promise then?’
‘Oh, yes! I will promise, because I am sure Lady Lufton won’t ask me as to Captain Culpepper’s whereabouts. We won’t tell; will we Lucy?’
‘He has gone to Gatherum Castle for a day’s pheasant-shooting. Now, mind you must not betray us. Her ladyship supposes that he is shut up in his room with a toothache. We did not dare to mention the name to her.’ and then it appeared that Mrs Robarts had some engagement which made it necessary that she should go up and see Lady Lufton, whereas Lucy was intending to walk on to the parsonage alone.
‘And I have promised to go to your husband,’ said Lord Lufton; ‘or rather to your husband’s dog, Ponto. And I will do two other good things — I will carry a brace of pheasants with me, and protect Miss Robarts from the evil spirits of the Framley roads.’ And so Mrs Robarts turned at the gate, and Lucy and his lordship walked off together. Lord Lufton, though he had never before spoken to Miss Robarts, had already found out that she was by no means plain. Though he had hardly seen her except at church, he had already made himself certain that the owner of that face must be worth knowing, and was not sorry to have the present opportunity of speaking to her. ‘So you have an unknown damsel shut up in your castle,’ he had once said to Mrs Robarts. ‘If she be kept a prisoner much longer, I shall find it my duty to come and release her by force of arms.’ He had been there twice with the object of seeing her, but on both occasions Lucy had managed to escape. Now we may say she was fairly caught, and Lord Lufton, taking a pair of pheasants from the gamekeeper, and swinging them over his shoulder, walked off with his prey. ‘You have been here a long time,’ he said, ‘without our having had the pleasure of seeing you.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ said Lucy. Lords had not been frequent among her acquaintance hereto.
‘I will tell Mrs Robarts that she has been confining you illegally, and that we shall release you by force or stratagem.’
‘I-I-I have had a great sorrow lately.’
‘Yes, Miss Robarts; I know you have; and I am only joking, you know. But I do hope that now you will be able to come among us. My mother is so anxious that you should do so.’
‘I am sure she is very kind, and you also — my lord.’
‘I never knew my own father,’ said Lord Lufton, speaking gravely. ‘But I can well understands what a loss you have had.’ And then, after pausing a moment, he continued, ‘I remember Dr Robarts well.’
‘Do you, indeed?’ said Lucy, turning sharply towards him, and speaking now with some animation in her voice. Nobody had yet spoken to her about her father since she had been at Framley. It had been as though the subject was a forbidden one. And how frequently is this the case? When those we love are dead, our friends dread to mention them, though to us who are bereaved no subject would be so pleasant as their names. But we rarely understand how to treat our own sorrow or those of others.
There was once a people in some land — and they may be still there for what I know — who thought it sacrilegious to stay the course of a raging fire. If a house were being burned, burn it must, even though there were facilities for saving it. For who would dare to interfere with the course of the god? Our idea of sorrow is much the same. We think it wicked, or at any rate heartless, to put it out. If a man’s wife be dead, he should go about lugubrious with long face, for at least two years, or perhaps with full length for eighteen months, decreasing gradually during the other six. If he be a man who can quench his sorrow — put out his fire as it were — in less time than that, let him at any rate not show his power!
‘Yes, I remember him,’ continued Lord Lufton. ‘He came twice to Framley, while I was still a boy, consulting with my mother about Mark and myself — whether the Eton floggings were not more efficacious than those of Harrow. He was very kind to me, foreboding all manner of good things on my behalf.’
‘He was very kind to every one,’ said Lucy.
‘I should think he would have been — a kind, good, genial man — just the man to be adored by his own family.’
‘Exactly; and so he was. I do not remember that I ever heard an unkind word from him. There was not a hard tone in his voice. And he was generous as the day.’ Lucy, we have said, was not generally demonstrative, but now, on this subject, and with this absolute stranger, she became almost eloquent.
‘I do not wonder that you should feel his loss, Miss Robarts.’
‘Oh, I do feel it. Mark is the best of brothers, and, as for Fanny, she is too kind and too good to me. But I had always been specially my father’s friend. For the last year or two we had lived so much together!’
‘He was an old man when he died, was he not?’
‘Just seventy, my lord.’
‘Ah, then he was old. My mother is only fifty, and we sometimes call her an old woman. Do you think she looks older than that? We all say that she makes herself out to be so much more ancient than she need do.’
‘Lady Lufton does not dress young.’
‘That is it. She never has, in my memory. She always used to wear black when I first recollect her. She has given that up now; but she is still very sombre; is she not?’
‘I do not like ladies to dress very young, that is, ladies of — of —’
‘Ladies of fifty, shall we say?’
‘Very well; ladies of fifty, if you like it.’
‘Then I am sure you will like my mother.’
They had now turned up through the parsonage wicket, a little gate that opened into the garden at a point on the road nearer than the chief entrance. ‘I suppose I shall find Mark up at the house?’ said he.
‘I dare say you will, my lord.’
‘Well, I’ll go round this way, for my business is partly in the stable. You see I am quite at home here, though you never have seen me before. But Miss Robarts, now that the ice is broken, I hope that we may be friends.’ He then put out his hand, and when she gave him hers he pressed it almost as an old friend might have done. And, indeed, Lucy had talked to him almost as though he were an old friend. For a minute or two she had forgotten that he was a lord and a stranger — had forgotten also to be still and guarded as was her wont. Lord Lufton had spoken to her as though he had really cared to know her; and she, unconsciously, had been taken by the compliment. Lord Lufton, indeed, had not thought much about it — excepting as thus, that he liked the glance of a pair of bright eyes, as most other men do like it. But, on this occasion, the evening had been so dark, that he had hardly seen Lucy’s eyes at all.
‘Well, Lucy, I hope you liked your companion,’ Mrs Robarts said, as the three of them clustered round the drawing-room fire before dinner.
‘Oh yes; pretty well,’ said Lucy.
‘That is not at all complimentary to his lordship.’
‘I did not mean to be complimentary, Fanny.’
‘Lucy is a great deal too matter-of-fact for compliments,’ said Mark.
‘What I meant was, that I had no great opportunity for judging, seeing that I was only with Lord Lufton for about ten minutes.’
‘Ah! but there are girls here who would give their eyes for ten minutes of Lord Lufton to themselves. You do not know how he’s valued. He has the character of being always able to make himself agreeable to ladies at half a minute’s warning.’
‘Perhaps he had not the half-minute’s warning in this case,’ said Lucy,— hypocrite that she was.
‘Poor Lucy,’ said her brother; ‘he was coming up to see Ponto’s shoulder, and I am afraid he was thinking more about the dog than you.’
‘Very likely,’ said Lucy; and then they went in to dinner. Lucy had been a hypocrite, for she had confessed to herself, while dressing, that Lord Lufton had been very pleasant; but then it is allowed to young ladies to be hypocrites when the subject under discussion is the character of a young gentleman.
Soon after that Lucy did dine at Framley Court. Captain Culpepper, in spite of his enormity with reference to Gatherum Castle, was still staying there, as was also a clergyman from the neighbourhood of Barchester with his wife and daughter. This was Archdeacon Grantly, a gentleman whom we have mentioned before, and who was as well known in the diocese as the bishop himself, and more thought of by many clergymen than even that illustrious prelate. Miss Grantly was a young lady not much older than Lucy Robarts, and she also was quiet, and not given to much talking in open company. She was decidedly a beauty; but somewhat statuesque in her loveliness. Her forehead was high and white, but perhaps too like marble to gratify the taste of those who are fond of flesh and blood. Her eyes were large and exquisitely formed, but they seldom showed much emotion. She, indeed, was impassible herself, and betrayed but little of her feelings. Her nose was nearly Grecian, not coming absolutely in a straight line from her forehead, but doing so nearly enough to entitle it to be considered as classical. Her mouth, too, was very fine — artists, at least, said so, and connoisseurs in beauty; but to me she always seemed as though she wanted fulness of lip. But the exquisite symmetry of her cheek and chin and lower face no man could deny. Her hair was light, and being always dressed with considerable care, did not detract from her appearance; but it lacked that richness which gives such luxuriance to feminine loveliness. She was tall and slight, and very graceful in her movements; but there were those who thought that she wanted the ease and abandon of youth. They said that she was too composed and stiff for her age, and that she gave but little to society beyond the beauty of her form and face. There can be no doubt, however, that she was considered by most men and women to be the beauty of Barsetshire, and that gentlemen from neighbouring counties would come many miles through dirty roads on the mere hope of being able to dance with her. Whatever attractions she may have lacked, she had at any rate created for herself a great reputation. She had spent two months of the last spring in London, and even there she had made a sensation; and people had said that Lord Dumbello, Lady Hartletop’s eldest son, had been peculiarly struck with her.
It may be imagined that the archdeacon was proud of her, and so, indeed, was Mrs Grantly — more proud, perhaps, of her daughter’s beauty, than so excellent a woman should have allowed herself to be of such an attribute. Griselda — that was her name — was now an only daughter. One sister she had had, but that sister had died. There were two brothers also left, one in the Church, and the other in the Army. That was the extent of the archdeacon’s family, and as the archdeacon was a very rich man — he was the only child of his father, who had been Bishop of Barchester for a great many years; and in those years it had been worth a man’s while to be Bishop of Barchester — it was supposed that Miss Grantly would have a large fortune. Mrs Grantly, however, had been heard to say, that she was in no hurry to see her daughter established in the world;— ordinary young ladies are merely married, but those of real importance are established;— and this, if anything, added to the value of the prize. Mothers sometimes depreciate their wares by an undue solicitude to dispose of them. But to tell the truth openly and at once — a virtue for which a novelist does not receive very much commendation — Griselda Grantly was, to a certain extent, already given away. Not that she, Griselda, knew anything about it, or that the thrice happy gentleman had been made aware of his good fortune; nor even had the archdeacon been told. But Mrs Grantly and Lady Lufton had been closeted together more than once, and terms had been signed and sealed between them. Not signed on parchment, and sealed with wax, as is the case with treaties made by kings and diplomats — to be broken by the same; but signed with little words, and sealed with certain pressings of the hand — a treaty which between two such contracting parties would be binding enough. And by the terms of this treaty Griselda Grantly was to become Lady Lufton. Lady Lufton had hitherto been fortuned in her matrimonial speculations. She had selected Sir George for her daughter, and Sir George, with the utmost good nature, had fallen in with her views. She had selected Fanny Monsell for Mr Robarts, and Fanny Monsell had not rebelled against her for a moment. There was a prestige of success about her doings, and she felt almost confident that her dear son Ludovic must fall in love with Griselda. As to the lady herself, nothing, Lady Lufton thought, could be much better than such a match for her son. Lady Lufton, I have said, was a good Churchwoman, and the archdeacon was the very type of that branch of the Church which she venerated. The Grantlys, too, were of a good family — not noble, indeed; but in such matters Lady Lufton did not want everything. She was one of those persons who, in placing their hopes at a moderate pitch, may fairly trust to see them realized. She would fain that her son’s wife should be handsome; this she wished for his sake, that he might be proud of his wife, and because men love to look on beauty. But she was afraid of vivacious beauty, of those soft, sparkling feminine charms which spread out as lures for all the world, soft dimples, laughing eyes, luscious lips, conscious smiles, and easy whispers. What if her son should bring her home a rattling, rapid-spoken, painted piece of Eve’s flesh such as this? Would not the glory and joy of her life be over, even though such child of their first mother should have come forth to the present day ennobled by the blood of two dozen successive British peers?
And then, too, Griselda’s money would not be useless. Lady Lufton, with all her high flown ideas, was not an imprudent woman. She knew that her son had been extravagant, though she did not believe that he had been reckless; and she was well content to think that some balsam from the old bishop’s coffers should be made to cure the slight wounds which his early imprudence might have inflicted on the carcass of the family property. And thus, in this way, and for these reasons, Griselda Grantly had been chosen out from all the world to be the future Lady Lufton. Lord Lufton had met Griselda more than once already; had met her before these high contracting parties had come to any terms whatsoever, and had evidently admired her. Lord Dumbello had remained silent one whole evening in London with effable disgust, because Lord Lufton had been rather particular in his attentions; but then Lord Dumbello’s muteness was his most eloquent mode of expression. Both Lady Hartletop and Mrs Grantly, when they saw him, knew very well what he meant. But that match would not exactly have suited Mrs Grantly’s views. The Hartletop people were not in her line. They belonged altogether to another set, being connected, as we have heard before, with the Omnium interest —‘those horrid Gatherum people’, as Lady Lufton would say to her, raising her hands and eyebrows, and shaking her head. Lady Lufton probably thought that they ate babies in pies during their midnight orgies at Gatherum Castle; and that widows were kept in cells, and occasionally put on racks for the amusement of the duke’s guests.
When the Robarts’s party entered the drawing-room the Grantlys were already there, and the archdeacon’s voice sounded loud and imposing in Lucy’s ears, as she heard him speaking while she was yet on the threshold of the door. ‘My dear Lady Lufton, I would believe anything on earth about her — anything. There is nothing too outrageous for her. Had she insisted on going there with the bishop’s apron on, I should not have been surprised.’ And then they all knew that the archdeacon was talking about Mrs Proudie, for Mrs Proudie was his bugbear.
Lady Lufton after receiving her guests introduced Lucy to Griselda Grantly. Miss Grantly smiled graciously, bowed slightly, and then remarked in the lowest voice possible that it was exceedingly cold. A low voice, we know, is an excellent thing in a woman. Lucy, who thought that she was bound to speak, said that it was cold, but that she did not mind it when she was walking. And then Griselda smiled again, somewhat less graciously than before, and so the conversation ended. Miss Grantly was the elder of the two, and having seen most of the world, should have been the best able to talk, but perhaps she was not very anxious for a conversation with Miss Robarts.
‘So, Robarts, I hear that you have been preaching at Chaldicotes,’ said the archdeacon, still rather loudly. ‘I saw Sowerby the other day, and he told me that you gave them the fag end of Mrs Proudie’s lecture.’
‘It was ill-natured of Sowerby to say the fag end,’ said Robarts. ‘We divided the matter into thirds. Harold Smith took the first part, I the last —’
‘And the lady the intervening portion. You have electrified the county between you; but I am told that she had the best of it.’
‘I was so sorry that Mr Robarts went there,’ said Lady Lufton, as she walked into the dining-room leaning on the archdeacon’s arm.
‘I am inclined to think he could not very well have helped himself,’ said the archdeacon, who was never willing to lean heavily on a brother parson, unless on one who had utterly and irrevocably gone away from his side of the Church.
‘Do you think not, archdeacon?’
‘Why, no; Sowerby is a friend of Lufton’s —’
‘Not particularly,’ said poor Lady Lufton, in a deprecating tone.
‘Well, they have been intimate;’ and Robarts, when he was asked to preach at Chaldicotes, could not well refuse.’
‘But then he went afterwards to Gatherum Castle. Not that I am vexed with him at all now, you understand. But it is auch a dangerous house, you know.’
‘So it is.— But the very fact of the duke’s wishing to have a clergyman there, should always be taken as a sign of grace, Lady Lufton. The air was impure, no doubt; but it was less impure with Robarts there than it would have been without him. But, gracious heavens! what blasphemy have I been saying about impure air? Why, the bishop was there!’
‘Yes, the bishop was there,’ said Lady Lufton, and they both understood each other thoroughly.
Lord Lufton took out Mrs Grantly to dinner, and matters were so arranged that Miss Grantly sat on is other side. There was no management apparent in this to anybody; but there she was, while Lucy was placed between her brother and Captain Culpepper. Captain Culpepper was a man with an enormous moustache, and a great aptitude for slaughtering game; but as he had no other strong characteristics it was not probable that he would make himself very agreeable to poor Lucy. She had seen Lord Lufton once, for two minutes, since the day of that walk, and then he had addressed her quite like an old friend. It had been in the parsonage drawing-room, and Fanny had been there. Fanny was now so well accustomed to his lordship, that she thought but little of this, but to Lucy it had been very pleasant. He was not forward or familiar, but kind and gentle, and pleasant; and Lucy did feel that she liked him. Now, on this evening, he had hitherto hardly spoken to her; but then she knew that there were other people in the company to whom he was bound to speak. She was not exactly humble-minded in the usual sense of the word; but she did recognise the fact that her position was less important than that of other people there, and that therefore it was probable that to a certain extent she would be overlooked. But not the less would she have liked to occupy the seat to which Miss Grantly had found her way. She did not want to flirt with Lord Lufton; she was not such a fool as that; but she would have liked to have heard the sound of his voice close to her ear, instead of that of Captain Culpepper’s knife and fork. This was the first occasion on which she had endeavoured to dress herself with care since her father had died; and now, sombre though she was in her deep mourning, she did look very well.
‘There is an expression about her forehead that is full of poetry,’ said Fanny to her husband.
‘Don’t you turn her head, Fanny, and make her believe that she is a beauty,’ Mark had answered.
‘I doubt it is not so easy to turn her head, Mark. There is more in Lucy than you imagine, and so you will find out before long.’ So it was thus that Mrs Robarts prophesied about her sister-inlaw. Had she been asked she might perhaps have said that Lucy’s presence would be dangerous to the Grantly interest at Framley Court.
Lord Lufton’s voice was audible enough as he went on talking to Miss Grantly — his voice, but not his words. He talked in such a way that there was no appearance of whispering, and yet the person to whom he spoke, and she only, could hear what he said. Mrs Grantly the while conversed constantly with Lucy’s brother, who sat at Lucy’s left hand. She never lacked for subjects on which to speak to a country clergyman of the right sort, and thus Griselda was left quite uninterrupted. But Lucy could not but observe that Griselda herself seemed to have very little to say — or at any rate to say very little. Every now and then she did open her mouth, and some word or brace of words would fall from it. But for the most part she seemed to be content in the fact that Lord Lufton was paying her attention. She showed no animation, but sat there still and graceful, composed and classical, as she always was. Lucy, who could not keep her ears from listening or her eyes from looking, thought that had she been there she would have endeavoured to take a more prominent part in the conversation. But then Griselda Grantly probably know much better than Lucy did how to comport herself in such a situation. Perhaps it might be that young men such as Lord Lufton, liked to hear the sound of their own voices.
‘Immense deal of game about here,’ Captain Culpepper said to her towards the end of dinner. It was the second attempt he had made; on the former he had asked her whether she knew any fellows of the 9th.
‘Is there?’ said Lucy. ‘Oh! I saw Lord Lufton the other day with a great armful of pheasants.’
‘An armful! Why we had seven cartloads the other day at Gatherum.’
‘Seven cartloads of pheasants!’ said Lucy, amazed.
‘That’s not so much. We had eight guns, you know. Eight guns will do a deal of work when the game has been well got together. They manage all that capitally at Gatherum. Been at the duke’s, eh?’ Lucy had heard the Framley report as to Gatherum Castle, and said with a sort of shudder that she had never been at that place. After this, Captain Culpepper troubled her no further.
When the ladies had taken themselves to the drawing-room Lucy found herself hardly better off than she had been at the dinner-table. Lady Lufton and Mrs Grantly got themselves on to a sofa together, and there chatted confidently into each other’s ears. Her ladyship had introduced Lucy to Miss Grantly, and then she naturally thought that the young people might do very well together. Mrs Robarts did attempt to bring about a joint conversation, which should include the three, and for ten minutes or so she worked hard at it. But it did not thrive. Miss Grantly was monosyllabic, smiling, however, at every monosyllable; and Lucy found that nothing would occur to her at that moment worthy of being spoken. There she sat, still and motionless, afraid to take up a book, and thinking in her heart how much happier she would have been at home at the parsonage. She was not made for society; she felt sure of that; and another time she would let Mark and Fanny come to Framley Court by themselves. And then the gentlemen came in, and there was another stir in the room. Lady Lufton got up and bustled about; she poked the fire and shifted the candles, spoke a few words to Dr Grantly, whispered something to her son, patted Lucy on the cheek, told Fanny, who was a musician, that they would have a little music, and ended by putting her two hands on Griselda’s shoulders and telling her that the fit of her frock was perfect. For Lady Lufton, though she did dress old herself, as Lucy had said, delighted to see those around her neat and pretty, jaunty and graceful. ‘Dear Lady Lufton!’ said Griselda, putting up her hand so as to press the end of her ladyship’s fingers. It was the first piece of animation she had shown, and Lucy Robarts watched it all. And then there was music, Lucy neither played nor sang; Fanny did both, and for an amateur she did both well. Griselda did not sing, but she played; and did so in a manner that showed that neither her own labour nor her father’s money had been spared in her instruction. Lord Lufton sang also, a little, and Captain Culpepper a very little; so that they got up a concert among them. In the meantime the doctor and Mark stood talking together on the rug before the fire; the two mothers sat contented, watching the billings and the cooings of their offspring — and Lucy sat alone, turning over the leaves of a book of pictures. She made up her mind fully, then and there, that she was quite unfitted by disposition for such work as this. She cared for no one, and no one cared for her. Well, she must go through with it now; but another time she would know better. With her own book and a fireside she never felt herself to be miserable as she was now. She had turned her back to the music for she was sick of seeing Lord Lufton watch the artistic motion of Miss Grantly’s fingers, and was sitting at a small table as far away from the piano as a long room would permit, when she was suddenly roused from her reverie of self-reproach by a voice close behind her: ‘Miss Robarts,’ said the voice, ‘why have you cut us all?’ And Lucy felt that, though she heard the voice plainly, nobody else did. Lord Lufton was now speaking to her as he had before spoken to Miss Grantly.
‘I don’t play, my lord,’ said Lucy, ‘nor yet sing.’
‘That would have made your company so much more valuable to us, for we are terribly badly off for listeners. Perhaps you don’t like the music?’
‘I do like it,— sometimes very much.’
‘And when are the sometimes? But we shall find it all out in time. We shall have unravelled all you mysteries, and read all your riddles by — when shall I say?—-by the end of winter.’
‘I do not know that I have got any mysteries.’
‘Oh, but you have! It is very mysterious in you to come and sit here — with you back to us all —’
‘Oh, Lord Lufton; if I have done wrong —!’ and poor Lucy almost started from her chair, and a deep flush came across her dark neck.
‘No — no; you have done no wrong. I was only joking. It is we who have done you wrong in leaving you to yourself — you who are the greatest stranger among us.’
‘I have been very well, thank you. I don’t care about being left alone. I have always been used to it.’
‘Ah! but we must break you of the habit. We won’t allow you to make a hermit of yourself. But the truth is, Miss Robarts, you don’t know us yet, and therefore you are not quite happy among us.’
‘Oh! Yes I am; you are all very good to me.’
‘You must let us be good to you. At any rate, you must let me do so. You know, don’t you, that Mark and I have been dear friends since we were seven years old. His wife has been my sister’s dearest friend almost as long; and now that you are with them, you must be a dear friend too. You won’t refuse the offer, will you?’

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