The Last Chronicle of Barset

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"My dear archdeacon, who ever expected to see you?" said old Lady
Lufton. Then the two younger women greeted him. And they all smiled
on him pleasantly, and seemed overjoyed to see him. He was, in truth,
a great favourite at Framley, and each of the three was glad to
welcome him. They believed in the archdeacon at Framley, and felt for
him that sort of love which ladies in the country do feel for their
elderly male friends. There was not one of the three who would not
have taken much trouble to get anything for the archdeacon which
they had thought the archdeacon would like. Even old Lady Lufton
remembered what was his favourite soup, and always took care that he
should have it when he dined at the Court. Young Lady Lufton would
bring his tea to him as he sat in his chair. He was petted in the
house, was allowed to poke the fire if he pleased, and called the
servants by their names as though he were at home. He was compelled,
therefore, to smile and to seem pleased; and it was not till after
he had eaten his lunch, and had declared that he must return home
to dinner, that the dowager gave him an opportunity of having the
private conversation which he desired.

"Can I have a few minutes' talk with you?" he said to her, whispering
into her ear as they left the drawing-room together. So she led the
way into her own sitting-room, telling him, as she asked him to
be seated, that she had supposed that something special must have
brought him over to Framley. "I should have asked you to come up
here, even if you had not spoken," she said.

"Then perhaps you know what has brought me over?" said the
archdeacon.

"Not in the least," said Lady Lufton. "I have not an idea. But I did
not flatter myself that you would come so far on a morning call, to
see us three ladies. I hope you did not want to see Ludovic, because
he will not be back till to-morrow."

"I wanted to see you, Lady Lufton."

"That is lucky, as here I am. You may be pretty sure to find me here
any day in the year."

After this there was a little pause. The archdeacon hardly knew how
to begin his story. In the first place he was in doubt whether Lady
Lufton had ever heard of the preposterous match which his son had
proposed to himself to make. In his anger at Plumstead he had felt
sure that she knew all about it, and that she was assisting his son.
But this belief had dwindled as his anger had dwindled; and as the
chaise had entered the parish of Framley he had told himself that
it was quite impossible that she should know anything about it. Her
manner had certainly been altogether in her favour since he had been
in her house. There had been nothing of the consciousness of guilt in
her demeanour. But, nevertheless, there was the coincidence! How had
it come to pass that Grace Crawley and his son should be at Framley
together? It might, indeed, be just possible that Flurry might have
been wrong, and that his son had not been there at all.

"I suppose Miss Crawley is at the parsonage?" he said at last.

"Oh, yes; she is still there, and will remain there I should think
for the next ten days."

"Oh; I did not know," said the archdeacon very coldly.

It seemed to Lady Lufton, who was as innocent as an unborn babe in
the matter of the projected marriage, that her old friend was in a
mind to persecute the Crawleys. He had on a former occasion taken
upon himself to advise that Grace Crawley should not be entertained
at Framley, and now it seemed that he had come all the way from
Plumstead to say something further in the same strain. Lady Lufton,
if he had anything further to say of that kind, would listen to him
as a matter of course. She would listen to him and reply to him
without temper. But she did not approve of it. She told herself
silently that she did not approve of persecution or of interference.
She therefore drew herself up, and pursed her mouth, and put on
something of that look of severity which she could assume very
visibly, if it so pleased her.

"Yes; she is still there, and I think that her visit will do her a
great deal of good," said Lady Lufton.

"When we talk of doing good to people," said the archdeacon, "we
often make terrible mistakes. It so often happens that we don't know
when we are doing good and when we are doing harm."

"That is true, of course, Dr Grantly, and must be so necessarily, as
our wisdom here below is so very limited. But I should think,--as
far as I can see, that is,--that the kindness which my friend Mrs
Robarts is showing to this young lady must be beneficial. You know,
archdeacon, I explained to you before that I could not quite agree
with you in what you said as to leaving these people alone till after
the trial. I thought that help was necessary to them at once."

The archdeacon sighed deeply. He ought to have been somewhat
renovated in spirit by the tone in which Lady Lufton spoke to him,
as it conveyed to him almost an absolute conviction that his first
suspicion was incorrect. But any comfort which might have come to him
from this source was marred by the feeling that he must announce his
own disgrace. At any rate, he must do so, unless he were contented to
go back to Plumstead without having learned anything by his journey.
He changed the tone of his voice, however, and asked a question,--as
it might be altogether on a different subject. "I heard yesterday,"
he said, "that Henry was over here."

"He was here yesterday. He came the evening before, and dined and
slept here, and went home yesterday morning."

"Was Miss Crawley with you that evening?"

"Miss Crawley? No; she would not come. She thinks it best not to go
out while her father is in his present unfortunate position; and she
is right."

"She is quite right in that," said the archdeacon; and then he paused
again. He thought that it would be best for him to make a clean
breast of it, and to trust to Lady Lufton's sympathy. "Did Henry go
up to the parsonage?" he asked.

But still Lady Lufton did not suspect the truth. "I think he did,"
she replied, with an air of surprise. "I think I heard that he went
up there to call on Mrs Robarts after breakfast."

"No, Lady Lufton, he did not go up there to call on Mrs Robarts. He
went up there because he is making a fool of himself about that Miss
Crawley. That is the truth. Now you understand it all. I hope that
Mrs Robarts does not know it. I do hope for her own sake that Mrs
Robarts does not know it."

The archdeacon certainly had no longer any doubt as to Lady Lufton's
innocence when he looked at her face as she heard these tidings. She
had predicted that Grace Crawley would "make havoc", and could not,
therefore, be altogether surprised at the idea that some gentleman
should have fallen in love with her; but she had never suspected
that the havoc might be made so early in her days, or on so great a
quarry. "You don't mean to tell me that Henry Grantly is in love with
Grace Crawley?" she replied.

"I mean to say that he says he is."

"Dear, dear, dear! I'm sure, archdeacon, that you will believe me
when I say that I knew nothing about it."

"I am quite sure of that," said the archdeacon dolefully.

"Or I certainly should not have been glad to see him here. But the
house, you know, is not mine, Dr Grantly. I could have done nothing
if I had known it. But only to think--; well, to be sure. She has not
lost time, at any rate."

Now this was not at all the light in which the archdeacon wished that
the matter should be regarded. He had been desirous that Lady Lufton
should be horror-stricken by the tidings, but it seemed to him that
she regarded the iniquity almost as a good joke. What did it matter
how young or how old the girl might be? She came of poor people,--of
people who had no friends,--of disgraced people; and Lady Lufton
ought to feel that such a marriage would be a terrible misfortune and
a terrible crime. "I need hardly tell you, Lady Lufton," said the
archdeacon, "that I shall set my face against it as far as it is in
my power to do so."

"If they both be resolved I suppose you can hardly prevent it."

"Of course I cannot prevent it. Of course I cannot prevent it. If he
will break my heart and his mother's,--and his sister's,--of course
I cannot prevent it. If he will ruin himself, he must have his own
way."

"Ruin himself, Dr Grantly!"

"They will have enough to live upon,--somewhere in Spain or France."
The scorn expressed in the archdeacon's voice as he spoke of Pau as
being "somewhere in Spain or France", should have been heard to be
understood. "No doubt they will have enough to live upon."

"Do you mean to say that it will make a difference as to your own
property, Dr Grantly?"

"Certainly it will, Lady Lufton. I told Henry when I first heard
of the thing,--before he had definitely made any offer to the
girl,--that I should withdraw from him altogether the allowance that
I now make him, if he married her. And I told him also, that if he
persisted in his folly I should think it my duty to alter my will."

"I am sorry for that, Dr Grantly."

"Sorry! And am I not sorry? Sorrow is no sufficient word. I am
broken-hearted. Lady Lufton, it is killing me. It is indeed. I love
him; I love him;--I love him as you have loved your son. But what is
the use? What can he be to me when he shall have married the daughter
of such a man as that?"

Lady Lufton sat for a while silent, thinking of a certain episode
in her own life. There had been a time when her son was desirous
of making a marriage which she had thought would break her heart.
She had for a time moved heaven and earth,--as far as she knew
how to move them,--to prevent the marriage. But at last she had
yielded,--not from lack of power, for the circumstances had been such
that at the moment of yielding she had still the power in her hand of
staying the marriage,--but she had yielded because she had perceived
that her son was in earnest. She had yielded, and had kissed the
dust; but from the moment in which her lips had so touched the
ground, they had taken great joy in the new daughter whom her son
had brought into the house. Since that she had learned to think
that young people might perhaps be right, and that old people might
perhaps be wrong. This trouble of her friend the archdeacon's was
very like her own trouble. "And he is engaged to her now?" she said,
when those thoughts had passed through her mind.

"Yes;--that is, no. I am not sure. I do not know how to make myself
sure."

"I am sure Major Grantly will tell you all the truth as it exists."

"Yes; he'll tell me the truth,--as far as he knows it. I do not see
that there is much anxiety to spare me in that matter. He is desirous
rather of making me understand that I have no power of saving him
from his own folly. Of course I have no power of saving him."

"But is he engaged to her?"

"He says that she has refused him. But of course that means nothing."

Again the archdeacon's position was very like Lady Lufton's position,
as it had existed before her son's marriage. In that case also the
young lady, who was now Lady Lufton's own daughter and dearest
friend, had refused the lover who proposed to her, although the
marriage was so much to her advantage,--loving him too, the while,
with her whole heart, as it was natural to suppose that Grace Crawley
might so love her lover. The more she thought of the similarity of
the stories, the stronger were her sympathies on the side of poor
Grace. Nevertheless, she would comfort her old friend if she knew
how; and of course she could not but admit to herself that the match
was one which must be a cause of real sorrow to him. "I don't know
why her refusal should mean nothing," said Lady Lufton.

"Of course a girl refuses at first,--a girl, I mean, in such
circumstances as hers. She can't but feel that more is offered to
her than she ought to take, and that she is bound to go through the
ceremony of declining. But my anger is not with her, Lady Lufton."

"I do not see how it can be."

"No; it is not with her. If she becomes his wife I trust that I may
never see her."

"Oh, Dr Grantly!"

"I do; I do. How can it be otherwise with me? But I shall have no
quarrel with her. With him I must quarrel."

"I do not see why," said Lady Lufton.

"You do not? Does he not set me at defiance?"

"At his age surely a son has a right to marry as he pleases."

"If he took her out of the streets, then it would be the same?" said
the archdeacon with bitter anger.

"No;--for such a one would herself be bad."

"Or if she were the daughter of a huckster out of the city?"

"No again;--for in that case her want of education would probably
unfit her for your society."

"Her father's disgrace, then, should be a matter of indifference to
me, Lady Lufton?"

"I did not say so. In the first place, her father is not
disgraced--not as yet; and we do not know whether he may ever be
disgraced. You will hardly be disposed to say that persecution from
the palace disgraces a clergyman in Barsetshire."

"All the same, I believe that the man was guilty," said the
archdeacon.

"Wait and see, my friend, before you condemn him altogether. But, be
that as it may, I acknowledge that the marriage is one which must
naturally be distasteful to you."

"Oh, Lady Lufton! If you only knew! If you only knew!"

"I do know; and I feel for you. But I think that your son has a
right to expect that you should not show the same repugnance to such
a marriage as this as you would have had a right to show had he
suggested to himself such a wife as those at which you had just now
hinted. Of course you can advise him, and make him understand your
feelings; but I cannot think you will be justified in quarrelling
with him, or in changing your views towards him as regards money,
seeing that Miss Crawley is an educated lady, who has done nothing to
forfeit your respect." A heavy cloud came upon the archdeacon's brow
as he heard these words, but he did not make any immediate answer.
"Of course, my friend," continued Lady Lufton, "I should not have
ventured to say so much to you, had you not come to me, as it were,
for my opinion."

"I came here because I thought Henry was here," said the archdeacon.

"If I have said too much, I beg your pardon."

"No; you have not said too much. It is not that. You and I are such
old friends that either may say almost anything to the other."

"Yes;--just so. And therefore I have ventured to speak my mind," said
Lady Lufton.

"Of course;--and I am obliged to you. But, Lady Lufton, you do not
understand yet how this hits me. Everything in life that I have done,
I have done for my children. I am wealthy, but I have not used my
wealth for myself, because I have desired that they should be able
to hold their heads high in the world. All my ambition has been for
them, and all the pleasure which I have anticipated for myself in
my old age is that which I have hoped to receive from their credit.
As for Henry, he might have had anything he wanted from me in the
way of money. He expressed a wish, a few months since, to go into
Parliament, and I promised to help him as far as ever I could go. I
have kept up the game altogether for him. He, the younger son of a
working parish parson, has had everything that could be given to the
eldest son of a country gentleman,--more than is given to the eldest
son of many a peer. I have hoped that he would marry again, but I
have never cared that he should marry for money. I have been willing
to do anything for him myself. But, Lady Lufton, a father does feel
that he should have some return for all this. No one can imagine
that Henry ever supposed that a bride from that wretched place at
Hogglestock would be welcomed among us. He knew that he would break
our hearts, and he did not care for it. That is what I feel. Of
course he has the power to do as he likes;--and of course I have the
power to do as I like also with what is my own."

Lady Lufton was a very good woman, devoted to her duties,
affectionate and just to those about her, truly religious, and
charitable from her nature; but I doubt whether the thorough
worldliness of the archdeacon's appeal struck her as it will strike
the reader. People are so much more worldly in practice than they
are in theory, so much keener after their own gratification in
detail than they are in the abstract, that the narrative of many an
adventure would shock us, though the same adventure would not shock
us in the action. One girl tells another how she has changed her mind
in love; and the friend sympathises with the friend, and perhaps
applauds. Had the story been told in print, the friend who had
listened with equanimity would have read of such vacillation with
indignation. She who vacillated herself would have hated her own
performance when brought before her judgment as a matter in which
she had no personal interest. Very fine things are written every day
about honesty and truth, and men read them with a sort of external
conviction that a man, if he be anything of a man at all, is of
course honest and true. But when the internal convictions are
brought out between two or three who are personally interested
together,--between two or three who feel that their little gathering
is, so to say, "tiled",--those internal convictions differ very much
from the external convictions. This man, in his confidences, asserts
broadly that he does not mean to be thrown over, and that man has a
project for throwing over somebody else; and the intention of each is
that scruples are not to stand in the way of his success. The "Ruat
coelum, fiat justitia," was said, no doubt, from an outside balcony
to a crowd, and the speaker knew that he was talking buncombe. The
"Rem, si possis recte, si non, quocunque modo," was whispered into
the ear in a club smoking-room, and the whisperer intended that his
words should prevail.

Lady Lufton had often heard her friend the archdeacon preach, and she
knew well the high tone which he could take as to the necessity of
trusting to our hopes for the future for all our true happiness;
and yet she sympathised with him when he told her that he was
broken-hearted because his son would take a step which might possibly
interfere with his worldly prosperity. Had the archdeacon been
preaching about matrimony, he would have recommended young men, in
taking wives to themselves, especially to look for young women who
feared the Lord. But in talking about his son's wife, no word as to
her eligibility or non-eligibility in this respect escaped his lips.
Had he talked on the subject till nightfall no such word would have
been spoken. Had any friend of his own, man or woman, in discussing
such a matter with him and asking his advice upon it, alluded to the
fear of the Lord, the allusion would have been distasteful to him
and would have smacked to his palate of hypocrisy. Lady Lufton, who
understood as well as any woman what it is to be "tiled" with a
friend, took all this in good part. The archdeacon had spoken out
of his heart what was in his heart. One of his children had married
a marquis. Another might probably become a bishop,--perhaps an
archbishop. The third might be a county squire,--high among the
county squires. But he could only so become by walking warily;--and
now he was bent on marrying the penniless daughter of an impoverished
half-mad country curate, who was about to be tried for stealing
twenty pounds! Lady Lufton, in spite of all her arguments, could not
refuse her sympathy to her old friend.

"After all, from what you say, I suppose they are not engaged."

"I do not know," said the archdeacon. "I cannot tell!"

"And what do you wish me to do?"

"Oh--nothing. I came over, as I said before, because I thought he was
here. I think it right, before he has absolutely committed himself,
to take every means in my power to make him understand that I shall
withdraw from him all pecuniary assistance,--now and for the future."

"My friend, that threat seems to me to be so terrible."

"It is the only power I have left to me."

"But you, who are so affectionate by nature, would never adhere to
it."

"I will try. I will try my best to be firm. I will at once put
everything beyond my control after my death." The archdeacon, as
he uttered these terrible words,--words which were awful to Lady
Lufton's ears,--resolved that he would endeavour to nurse his own
wrath; but, at the same time, almost hated himself for his own
pusillanimity, because he feared that his wrath would die away before
he should have availed himself of its heat.

"I would do nothing rash of that kind," said Lady Lufton. "Your
object is to prevent the marriage,--not to punish him for it when
once he has made it."

"He is not to have his own way in everything, Lady Lufton."

"But you should first try to prevent it."

"What can I do to prevent it?"

Lady Lufton paused a couple of minutes before she replied. She had a
scheme in her head, but it seemed to her to savour of cruelty. And
yet at present it was her chief duty to assist her old friend, if any
assistance could be given. There could hardly be a doubt that such a
marriage as this, of which they were speaking, was in itself an evil.
In her case, the case of her son, there had been no question of a
trial, of money stolen, of aught that was in truth disgraceful. "I
think if I were you, Dr Grantly," she said, "that I would see the
young lady while I was here."

"See her myself?" said the archdeacon. The idea of seeing Grace
Crawley himself had, up to this moment, never entered his head.

"I think I would do so."

"I think I will," said the archdeacon, after a pause. Then he got up
from his chair. "If I am to do it, I had better do it at once."

"Be gentle with her, my friend." The archdeacon paused again. He
certainly had entertained the idea of encountering Miss Crawley with
severity rather than gentleness. Lady Lufton rose from her seat, and
coming up to him, took one of his hands between her own two. "Be
gentle to her," she said. "You have owned that she has done nothing
wrong." The archdeacon bowed his head in token of assent and left the
room.

Poor Grace Crawley.




CHAPTER LVII

A Double Pledge


The archdeacon, as he walked across from the Court to the parsonage,
was very thoughtful and his steps were very slow. The idea of seeing
Miss Crawley herself had been suggested to him suddenly, and he had
to determine how he could bear himself towards her, and what he would
say to her. Lady Lufton had beseeched him to be gentle with her. Was
the mission one in which gentleness would be possible? Must it not be
his object to make this young lady understand that she could not be
right in desiring to come into his family and share in all his good
things when she had no good things of her own,--nothing but evil
things to bring with her? And how could this be properly explained to
the young lady in gentle terms? Must he not be round with her, and
give her to understand in plain words,--the plainest which he could
use,--that she would not get his good things, though she would most
certainly impose the burden of all her evil things on the man whom
she was proposing to herself as a husband. He remembered very well as
he went, that he had been told that Miss Crawley had herself refused
the offer, feeling herself to be unfit for the honour tendered to
her; but he suspected the sincerity of such a refusal. Calculating
in his own mind the unreasonably great advantages which would be
conferred on such a young lady as Miss Crawley by a marriage with
his son, he declared to himself that any girl must be very wicked
indeed who should expect, or even accept, so much more than was her
due;--but nevertheless he could not bring himself to believe that
any girl, when so tempted, would, in sincerity, decline to commit
this great wickedness. If he was to do any good by seeing Miss
Crawley, must it not consist in a proper explanation to her of the
selfishness, abomination, and altogether damnable blackness of such
wickedness as this on the part of a young woman in her circumstances?
"Heaven and earth!" he must say, "here are you, without a penny in
your pocket, with hardly decent raiment on your back, with a thief
for your father, and you think that you are to come and share all
the wealth that the Grantlys have amassed, that you are to have
a husband with broad acres, a big house, and game preserves, and
become one of a family whose name has never been touched by a single
accusation,--no, not a suspicion? No;--injustice such as that shall
never be done betwixt you and me. You may wring my heart, and you
may ruin my son; but the broad acres and the big house, and the game
preserves, and the rest of it, shall never be your reward for doing
so." How was all that to be told effectively to a young woman in
gentle words? And then how was a man in the archdeacon's position
to be desirous of gentle words,--gentle words which would not be
efficient,--when he knew well in his heart of hearts that he had
nothing but his threats on which to depend. He had no more power of
disinheriting his own son for such an offence as that contemplated
than he had of blowing out his own brains, and he knew that it was
so. He was a man incapable of such persistency of wrath against one
whom he loved. He was neither cruel enough nor strong enough to do
such a thing. He could only threaten to do it, and make what best use
he might of threats, whilst threats might be of avail. In spite of
all that he had said to his wife, to Lady Lufton, and to himself, he
knew very well that if his son did sin in this way he, the father,
would forgive the sin of the son.