The Last Chronicle of Barset

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Up to this period, Mr Walker had not suspected Mr Crawley of anything
dishonest, nor did he suspect him as yet. The poor man had probably
received the money from the dean, and had told the lie about it, not
choosing to own that he had taken money from his rich friend, and
thinking that there would be no further inquiry. He had been very
foolish, and that would be the end of it. Mr Soames was by no means
so good-natured in his belief. "How should my pocket-book have got
into Dean Arabin's hands?" said Mr Soames, almost triumphantly. "And
then I felt sure at the time that I had left it at Crawley's house!"

Mr Walker wrote a letter to the dean, who at that moment was in
Florence, on his way to Rome, from whence he was going on to the Holy
Land. There came back a letter from Mr Arabin, saying that on the
17th of March he had given to Mr Crawley a sum of fifty pounds, and
that the payment had been made with five Bank of England notes of
ten pounds each, which had been handed by him to his friend in the
library at the deanery. The letter was very short, and may, perhaps,
be described as having been almost curt. Mr Walker, in his anxiety to
do the best he could for Mr Crawley, had simply asked a question as
to the nature of the transaction between the two gentlemen, saying
that no doubt the dean's answer would clear up a little mystery which
existed at present respecting a cheque for twenty pounds. The dean
in answer simply stated the fact as it has been given above; but
he wrote to Mr Crawley begging to know what was in truth this new
difficulty, and offering any assistance in his power. He explained
all the circumstances of the money, as he remembered them. The sum
advanced had certainly consisted of fifty pounds, and there had
certainly been five Bank of England notes. He had put the notes
into an envelope, which he had not closed, but had addressed to Mr
Crawley, and had placed this envelope in his friend's hands. He went
on to say that Mrs Arabin would have written, but that she was in
Paris with her son. Mrs Arabin was to remain in Paris during his
absence in the Holy Land, and meet him in Italy on his return. As
she was so much nearer at hand, the dean expressed a hope that Mrs
Crawley would apply to her if there was any trouble.

The letter to Mr Walker was conclusive as to the dean's money. Mr
Crawley had not received Lord Lufton's cheque from the dean. Then
whence had he received it? The poor wife was left by the lawyer to
obtain further information from her husband. Ah, who can tell how
terrible were the scenes between that poor pair of wretches, as the
wife endeavoured to learn the truth from her miserable, half-maddened
husband! That her husband had been honest throughout, she had not
any shadow of doubt. She did not doubt that to her at least he
endeavoured to tell the truth, as far as his poor racked imperfect
memory would allow him to remember what was true and what was not
true. The upshot of it all was that the husband declared that he
still believed that the money had come to him from the dean. He had
kept it by him, not wishing to use it if he could help it. He had
forgotten it,--so he said at times,--having understood from Arabin
that he was to have fifty pounds, and having received more. If it had
not come to him from the dean, then it had been sent to him by the
Prince of Evil for his utter undoing; and there were times in which
he seemed to think that such had been the manner in which the fatal
cheque had reached him. In all that he said he was terribly confused,
contradictory, unintelligible,--speaking almost as a madman might
speak,--ending always in declaring that the cruelty of the world had
been too much for him, that the waters were meeting over his head,
and praying to God's mercy to remove him from the world. It need
hardly be said that his poor wife in these days had a burden on her
shoulders that was more than enough to crush any woman.

She at last acknowledged to Mr Walker that she could not account for
the twenty pounds. She herself would write again to the dean about
it, but she hardly hoped for any further assistance there. "The
dean's answer is very plain," said Mr Walker. "He says that he gave
Mr Crawley five ten-pound notes, and those five notes we have traced
to Mr Crawley's hands." Then Mrs Crawley could say nothing further
beyond making protestations of her husband's innocence.




CHAPTER II

By Heavens He Had Better Not!


I must ask the reader to make the acquaintance of Major Grantly of
Cosby Lodge, before he is introduced to the family of Mr Crawley, at
their parsonage in Hogglestock. It has been said that Major Grantly
had thrown a favourable eye on Grace Crawley,--by which report
occasion was given to all men and women in those parts to hint that
the Crawleys, with all their piety and humility, were very cunning,
and that one of the Grantlys was,--to say the least of it,--very
soft, admitted as it was throughout the county of Barsetshire,
that there was no family therein more widely awake to the affairs
generally of this world and the next combined, than the family of
which Archdeacon Grantly was the respected head and patriarch. Mrs
Walker, the most good-natured woman in Silverbridge, had acknowledged
to her daughter that she could not understand it,--that she could
not see anything at all in Grace Crawley. Mr Walker had shrugged his
shoulders and expressed a confident belief that Major Grantly had
not a shilling of his own beyond his half-pay and his late wife's
fortune, which was only six thousand pounds. Others, who were
ill-natured, had declared that Grace Crawley was little better than a
beggar, and that she could not possibly have acquired the manners of
a gentlewoman. Fletcher the butcher had wondered whether the major
would pay his future father-in-law's debts; and Dr Tempest, the
old Rector of Silverbridge, whose four daughters were all as yet
unmarried, had turned up his old nose, and had hinted that half-pay
majors did not get caught in marriage so easily as that.

Such and such like had been the expressions of the opinion of men
and women in Silverbridge. But the matter had been discussed further
afield than at Silverbridge, and had been allowed to intrude
itself as a most unwelcome subject into the family conclave of the
archdeacon's rectory. To those who have not as yet learned the fact
from the public character and well-appreciated reputation of the
man, let it be known that Archdeacon Grantly was at this time, as
he had been for many years previously, Archdeacon of Barchester and
Rector of Plumstead Episcopi. A rich and prosperous man he had ever
been,--though he also had had his sore troubles, as we all have,--his
having arisen chiefly from want of that higher ecclesiastical
promotion which his soul had coveted, and for which the whole tenour
of his life had especially fitted him. Now, in his green old age, he
had ceased to covet, but had not ceased to repine. He had ceased to
covet aught for himself, but still coveted much for his children; and
for him such a marriage as this which was now suggested for his son,
was encompassed almost with the bitterness of death. "I think it
would kill me," he said to his wife; "by heavens, I think it would be
my death!"

A daughter of the archdeacon had made a splendid matrimonial
alliance,--so splendid that its history was at the time known to all
the aristocracy of the county, and had not been altogether forgotten
by any of those who keep themselves well instructed in the details of
the peerage. Griselda Grantly had married Lord Dumbello, the eldest
son of the Marquis of Hartletop,--than whom no English nobleman was
more puissant, if broad acres, many castles, high title, and stars
and ribbons are any sign of puissance,--and she was now, herself,
Marchioness of Hartletop, with a little Lord Dumbello of her own. The
daughter's visits to the parsonage of her father were of necessity
rare, such necessity having come from her own altered sphere of life.
A Marchioness of Hartletop has special duties which will hardly
permit her to devote herself frequently to the humdrum society of a
clerical father and mother. That it would be so, father and mother
had understood when they sent the fortunate girl forth to a higher
world. But, now and again, since her August marriage, she had laid
her coroneted head upon one of the old rectory pillows for a night
or so, and, on such occasions all the Plumsteadians had been loud in
praise of her condescension. Now it happened that when this second
and more aggravated blast of the evil wind reached the rectory,--the
renewed waft of the tidings as to Major Grantly's infatuation
regarding Miss Grace Crawley, which, on its renewal, seemed to bring
with it something of confirmation,--it chanced, I say, that at that
moment Griselda, Marchioness of Hartletop, was gracing the paternal
mansion. It need hardly be said that the father was not slow to
invoke such a daughter's counsel, and such a sister's aid.

I am not quite sure that the mother would have been equally quick to
ask her daughter's advice, had she been left in the matter entirely
to her own propensities. Mrs Grantly had ever loved her daughter
dearly, and had been very proud of that great success in life which
Griselda had achieved; but in late years, the child had become,
as a woman, separate from the mother, and there had arisen not
unnaturally, a break of that close confidence which in early years
had existed between them. Griselda, Marchioness of Hartletop, was
more than ever a daughter of the archdeacon, even though he might
never see her. Nothing could rob him of the honour of such a
progeny,--nothing, even though there had been actual estrangement
between them. But it was not so with Mrs Grantly. Griselda had done
very well, and Mrs Grantly had rejoiced; but she had lost her child.
Now the major, who had done well also, though in a much lesser
degree, was still her child, moving in the same sphere of life with
her, still dependent in a great degree upon his father's bounty, a
neighbour in the county, a frequent visitor at the parsonage, and
a visitor who could be received without any of that trouble that
attended the unfrequent comings of Griselda, the Marchioness, to the
home of her youth. And for this reason Mrs Grantly, terribly put out
as she was at the idea of a marriage between her son and one standing
so poorly in the world's esteem as Grace Crawley, would not have
brought forward the matter before her daughter, had she been left
to her own desires. A marchioness in one's family is a tower of
strength, no doubt; but there are counsellors so strong that we
do not wish to trust them, lest in the trusting we ourselves be
overwhelmed by their strength. Now Mrs Grantly was by no means
willing to throw her influence into the hands of her titled daughter.

But the titled daughter was consulted and gave her advice. On the
occasion of the present visit to Plumstead she had consented to lay
her head for two nights on the parsonage pillows, and on the second
evening her brother the major was to come over from Cosby Lodge
to meet her. Before his coming the affair of Grace Crawley was
discussed.

"It would break my heart, Griselda," said the archdeacon,
piteously--"and your mother's."

"There is nothing against the girl's character," said Mrs Grantly,
"and the father and mother are gentlefolks by birth; but such a
marriage for Henry would be very unseemly."

"To make it worse, there is this terrible story about him," said the
archdeacon.

"I don't suppose there is much in that," said Mrs Grantly.

"I can't say. There is no knowing. They told me to-day in Barchester
that Soames is pressing the case against him."

"Who is Soames, papa?" asked the marchioness.

"He is Lord Lufton's man of business, my dear."

"Oh, Lord Lufton's man of business!" There was something of a sneer
in the tone of the lady's voice as she mentioned Lord Lufton's name.

"I am told," continued the archdeacon, "that Soames declares the
cheque was taken from a pocket-book which he left by accident in
Crawley's house."

"You don't mean to say, archdeacon, that you think that Mr Crawley--a
clergyman--stole it!" said Mrs Grantly.

"I don't say anything of the kind, my dear. But supposing Mr Crawley
to be as honest as the sun, you wouldn't wish Henry to marry his
daughter."

"Certainly not," said the mother. "It would be an unfitting marriage.
The poor girl has no advantages."

"He is not able even to pay his baker's bill. I always though Arabin
was very wrong to place such a man in such a parish as Hogglestock.
Of course the family could not live there." The Arabin here spoken of
was Dr Arabin, dean of Barchester. The dean and the archdeacon had
married sisters, and there was much intimacy between the families.

"After all it is only rumour, as yet," said Mrs Grantly.

"Fothergill told me only yesterday, that he sees her almost every
day," said the father. "What are we to do, Griselda? You know how
headstrong Henry is." The marchioness sat quite still, looking at the
fire, and made no immediate answer to his address.

"There is nothing for it, but that you should tell him what you
think," said the mother.

"If his sister were to speak to him, it might do much," said the
archdeacon. To this Mrs Grantly said nothing; but Mrs Grantly's
daughter understood very well that her mother's confidence in her was
not equal to her father's. Lady Hartletop said nothing, but still
sat, with impassive face, and eyes fixed upon the fire. "I think
that if you were to speak to him, Griselda, and tell him that he
would disgrace his family, he would be ashamed to go on with such a
marriage," said the father. "He would feel, connected as he is with
Lord Hartletop--"

"I don't think he would feel anything about that," said Mrs Grantly.

"I dare say not," said Lady Hartletop.

"I am sure he ought to feel it," said the father. They were all
silent, and sat looking at the fire.

"I suppose, papa, you allow Henry an income," said Lady Hartletop,
after a while.

"Indeed I do,--eight hundred a year."

"Then I think I should tell him that that must depend upon his
conduct. Mamma, if you won't mind ringing the bell, I will send
for Cecile, and go upstairs and dress." Then the marchioness went
upstairs to dress, and in about an hour the major arrived in his
dog-cart. He also was allowed to go upstairs to dress before anything
was said to him about his great offence.

"Griselda is right," said the archdeacon, speaking to his wife out of
his dressing-room. "She is always right. I never knew a young woman
with more sense than Griselda."

"But you do not mean to say that in any event you would stop Henry's
income?" Mrs Grantly also was dressing, and made reply out of her
bedroom.

"Upon my word, I don't know. As a father I would do anything to
prevent such a marriage as that."

"But if he did marry her in spite of the threat? And he would if he
had once said so."

"Is a father's word, then, to go for nothing; and a father who allows
his son eight hundred a year? If he told the girl that he would be
ruined she couldn't hold him to it."

"My dear, they'd know as well as I do, that you would give way after
three months."

"But why should I give way? Good heavens--!"

"Of course you'd give way, and of course we should have the young
woman here, and of course we should make the best of it."

The idea of having Grace Crawley as a daughter at the Plumstead
Rectory was too much for the archdeacon, and he resented it by
additional vehemence to the tone of his voice, and a nearer personal
approach to the wife of his bosom. All unaccoutred as he was, he
stood in the doorway between the two rooms, and thence fulminated
at his wife his assurances that he would never allow himself to be
immersed in such a depth of humility as that she had suggested. "I
can tell you this, then, that if ever she comes here, I shall take
care to be away. I will never receive her here. You can do as you
please."

"That is just what I cannot do. If I could do as I pleased, I would
put a stop to it at once."

"It seems to me that you want to encourage him. A child about sixteen
years of age!"

"I am told she is nineteen."

"What does it matter if she is fifty-nine? Think of what her bringing
up has been. Think what it would be to have all the Crawleys in our
house for ever, and all their debts, and all their disgrace!"

"I do not know that they have ever been disgraced."

"You'll see. The whole county has heard of the affair of this twenty
pounds. Look at that dear girl upstairs, who has been such a comfort
to us. Do you think it would be fit that she and her husband should
meet such a one as Grace Crawley at our table?"

"I don't think it would do them a bit of harm," said Mrs Grantly.
"But there would be no chance of that, seeing that Griselda's husband
never comes to us."

"He was here the year before last."

"And I never was so tired of a man in all my life."

"Then you prefer the Crawleys, I suppose. This is what you get from
Eleanor's teaching." Eleanor was the dean's wife, and Mrs Grantly's
younger sister. "It has always been a sorrow to me that I ever
brought Arabin into the diocese."

"I never asked you to bring him, archdeacon. But nobody was so glad
as you when he proposed to Eleanor."

"Well, the long and short of it is this, I shall tell Henry to-night
that if he makes a fool of himself with this girl, he must not look
to me any longer for an income. He has about six hundred a year of
his own, and if he chooses to throw himself away, he had better go
and live in the south of France, or in Canada, or where he pleases.
He shan't come here."

"I hope he won't marry the girl, with all my heart," said Mrs
Grantly.

"He had better not. By heavens, he had better not!"

"But if he does, you'll be the first to forgive him."

On hearing this the archdeacon slammed the door, and retired to his
washing apparatus. At the present moment he was very angry with his
wife, but then he was so accustomed to such anger, and was so well
aware that it in truth meant nothing, that it did not make him
unhappy. The archdeacon and Mrs Grantly had now been man and wife for
more than a quarter of a century and had never in truth quarrelled.
He had the most profound respect for her judgment, and the most
implicit reliance on her conduct. She had never yet offended him, or
caused him to repent the hour in which he had made her Mrs Grantly.
But she had come to understand that she might use a woman's privilege
with her tongue; and she used it,--not altogether to his comfort. On
the present occasion he was the more annoyed because he felt that she
might be right. "It would be a positive disgrace, and I never would
see him again," he said to himself. And yet as he said it, he knew
that he would not have the strength of character to carry him through
a prolonged quarrel with his son. "I never would see her,--never,
never!" he said to himself. "And then such an opening as he might
have at his sister's house!"

Major Grantly had been a successful man in life,--with the one
exception of having lost the mother of his child within a twelvemonth
of his marriage and within a few hours of that child's birth. He had
served in India as a very young man, and had been decorated with the
Victoria Cross. Then he had married a lady with some money, and had
left the active service of the army, with the concurring advice of
his own family and that of his wife. He had taken a small place in
his father's county, but the wife for whose comfort he had taken it
had died before she was permitted to see it. Nevertheless he had gone
to reside there, hunting a good deal and farming a little, making
himself popular in the district, and keeping up the good name of
Grantly in a successful way, till--alas,--it had seemed good to him
to throw those favouring eyes on poor Grace Crawley. His wife had now
been dead just two years, and he was still under thirty; no one could
deny it would be right that he should marry again. No one did deny
it. His father had hinted that he ought to do so, and had generously
whispered that if some little increase to the major's present income
were needed, he might possibly be able to do something. "What is the
good of keeping it?" the archdeacon had said in liberal after-dinner
warmth; "I only want it for your brother and yourself." The brother
was a clergyman.

And the major's mother had strongly advised him to marry again
without loss of time. "My dear Henry," she had said, "you'll never be
younger, and youth does go for something. As for dear little Edith,
being a girl, she is almost no impediment. Do you know those two
girls at Chaldicotes?"

"What, Mrs Thorne's nieces?"

"No; they are not her nieces but her cousins. Emily Dunstable is very
handsome;--and as for money--!"

"But what about birth, mother?"

"One can't have everything, my dear."

"As far as I am concerned, I should like to have everything or
nothing," the major said, laughing. Now for him to think of Grace
Crawley after that,--of Grace Crawley who had no money, and no
particular birth, and not even beauty itself,--so at least Mrs
Grantly said,--who had not even enjoyed the ordinary education of
a lady, was too bad. Nothing had been wanting to Emily Dunstable's
education, and it was calculated that she would have at least twenty
thousand pounds on the day of her marriage.

The disappointment of the mother would be the more sore because
she had gone to work upon her little scheme with reference to Miss
Emily Dunstable, and had at first, as she thought, seen her way to
success,--to success in spite of the disparaging words which her son
had spoken to her. Mrs Thorne's house at Chaldicotes,--or Dr Thorne's
house as it should, perhaps, be more properly called, for Dr Thorne
was the husband of Mrs Thorne,--was in these days the pleasantest
house in Barsetshire. No one saw so much company as the Thornes, or
spent so much money in so pleasant a way. The great county families,
the Pallisers and the De Courcys, the Luftons and the Greshams, were
no doubt grander, and some of them were perhaps richer than the
Chaldicote Thornes,--as they were called to distinguish them from the
Thornes of Ullathorne; but none of these people were so pleasant in
their ways, so free in their hospitality, or so easy in their modes
of living, as the doctor and his wife. When first Chaldicotes, a very
old country seat, had by the chances of war fallen into their hands
and been newly furnished, and newly decorated, and newly gardened,
and newly greenhoused and hot-watered by them, many of the county
people had turned up their noses at them. Dear old Lady Lufton had
done so, and had been greatly grieved,--saying nothing, however, of
her grief, when her son and daughter-in-law had broken away from her,
and submitted themselves to the blandishments of the doctor's wife.
And the Grantlys had stood aloof, partly influenced, no doubt, by
their dear and intimate old friend Miss Monica Thorne of Ullathorne,
a lady of the very old school, who, though good as gold and kind as
charity, could not endure that an interloping Mrs Thorne, who never
had a grandfather, should come to honour and glory in the county,
simply because of her riches. Miss Monica Thorne stood out, but Mrs
Grantly gave way, and having once given way found that Dr Thorne, and
Mrs Thorne, and Emily Dunstable, and Chaldicote House together, were
very charming. And the major had been once there with her, and had
made himself very pleasant, and there had certainly been some little
passage of incipient love between him and Miss Dunstable, as to which
Mrs Thorne, who managed everything, seemed to be well pleased. This
had been after the first mention made by Mrs Grantly to her son
of Emily Dunstable's name, but before she had heard any faintest
whispers of his fancy for Grace Crawley; and she had therefore been
justified in hoping,--almost in expecting, that Emily Dunstable would
be her daughter-in-law, and was therefore the more aggrieved when
this terrible Crawley peril first opened itself before her eyes.




CHAPTER III

The Archdeacon's Threat


The dinner-party at the rectory comprised none but the Grantly
family. The marchioness had written to say that she preferred to have
it so. The father had suggested that the Thornes of Ullathorne, very
old friends, might be asked, and the Greshams from Boxall Hill, and
had even promised to endeavour to get old Lady Lufton over to the
rectory, Lady Lufton having in former years been Griselda's warm
friend. But Lady Hartletop had preferred to see her dear mother and
father in privacy. Her brother Henry she would be glad to meet,
and hoped to make some arrangement with him for a short visit to
Hartlebury, her husband's place in Shropshire,--as to which latter
hint, it may, however, be at once said, that nothing further was
spoken after the Crawley alliance had been suggested. And there
had been a very sore point mooted by the daughter in a request made
by her to her father that she might not be called upon to meet
her grandfather, her mother's father. Mr Harding, a clergyman of
Barchester, who was now stricken in years.--"Papa would not have
come," said Mrs Grantly, "but I think,--I do think--" Then she
stopped herself.