The Last Chronicle of Barset (90 page)

‘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 to 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, she had taken great joy in the new daughter whom her son had brought into the house.
¹
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 old trouble. ‘And he is engaged to her now?' she said, when those thoughts had passed through her mind.

‘Yes – that is, no. I am not sure. I do not know how to make myself sure.'

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

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

‘But is he engaged to her?'

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

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

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

‘I do not see how it can be.'

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

‘Oh, Dr Grantly!'

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

‘I do not see why,' said Lady Lufton.

‘You do not? Does he not set me at defiance?'

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

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

‘No – for such a one would herself be bad.'

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

‘No again – or in that case her want of education would probably unfit her for your society.'

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

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

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

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

‘Oh, Lady Lufton! If you only knew! If you only knew!'

‘I do know; and I feel for you. But I think that your son has a right to expect that you should not show the same repugnance to such a marriage as this as you would have had a right to show had he suggested to himself a wife as those at which you had just now hinted. Of course you can advise him, and make him understand your feelings; but I cannot think you will be justified in quarrelling with him, or in changing your views towards him 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 could be welcomed among us. He knew that he would break our hearts, and he did not care for it. That is what I feel. Of course he has the power to do as he likes – and of course I have the power to do as I like also with what is my own.'

Lady Lufton was a very good woman, devoted to her duties, affectionate and just to those about her, truly religious, and charitable from her nature; but I doubt whether the thorough worldliness of the archdeacon's appeal struck her as it will strike the reader. People are so much more worldly in practice than they are in theory, so much keener after their own gratification in detail than they are in the abstract, that the narrative of many an adventure would shock us, though the same adventure would not shock us in the action. One girl tells another how she has changed her mind in love; and the friend sympathises with the friend, and perhaps applauds. Had the story been told in print, the friend who had listened with equanimity would have read of such vacillation with indignation. She who vacillated herself would have hated her own performance when brought before her judgment as a matter in which she had no personal interest. Very fine things are written every day about honesty and truth, and men read them with a sort of external conviction that a man, if he be anything of a man at all, is of course honest and true. But when the internal convictions are brought out between two or three who are personally interested together – between two or three who feel that
their little gathering is, so to say, ‘tiled'
²
– 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 cœlum, fiat justitia,'
³
was said, no doubt, from an outside balcony to a crowd, and the speaker knew that he was talking buncombe.
⁴
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 own son's wife, no word as to her eligibility or non-eligibility in this respect escaped his lips. Had he talked on the subject till nightfall no such word would have been spoken. Had any friend of his own, man or woman, in discussing such a matter with him and asking his advice upon it, alluded to the fear of the Lord, the allusion would have been distasteful to him and would have smacked to his palate of hypocrisy. Lady Lufton, who understood as well as any woman what it is to be ‘tiled' with a friend, took all this in good part. The archdeacon had spoken out of his heart what was in his heart. One of his children had married a marquis. Another might probably become a bishop – perhaps an archbishop. The third might be a county squire – high among 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 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.