Framley Parsonage (7 page)

And there were many others included in the stigma whose sins were political or religious rather than moral. But they were gall and wormwood to Lady Lufton, who regarded them as children of the Lost One, and who grieved
with a mother’s grief when she knew that her son was among them, and felt all a patron’s anger when she heard that her clerical
protégé
was about to seek such society. Mrs Robarts might well say that Lady Lufton would be annoyed.

‘You won’t call at the house before you go, will you?’ the wife asked on the following morning. He was to start after lunch on that day, driving himself in his own gig,
so as to reach Chaldicotes, some twenty-four miles distant, before dinner.

‘No, I think not. What good should I do?’

‘Well, I can’t explain; but I think I should call: partly, perhaps, to show her that as I had determined to go, I was not afraid of telling her so.’

‘Afraid! That’s nonsense, Fanny. I’m not afraid of her. But I don’t see why I should bring down upon myself the disagreeable things
she will say. Besides, I have not time. I must walk up and see Jones about the duties; and then, what with getting ready, I shall have enough to do to get off in time.’

He paid his visit to Mr Jones, the curate, feeling no qualms of conscience there, as he rather boasted of all the members of Parliament he was going to meet, and of the bishop who would be with them. Mr Evan Jones was only his
curate, and in speaking to him on the matter he could talk as though it were quite the proper thing for a vicar to meet his bishop at the house of a county member. And one would be inclined to say that it was proper: only why could he not talk of it in the same tone to Lady Lufton? And then, having kissed his wife and children, he drove off, well pleased with his prospect for the coming ten days,
but already anticipating some discomfort on his return.

On the three following days, Mrs Robarts did not meet her ladyship. She did not exactly take any steps to avoid such a meeting, but she did not purposely go up to the big house. She went to her school as usual, and made one or two calls among the farmers’ wives, but put no foot within the Framley Court grounds. She was braver than her husband,
but even she did not wish to anticipate the evil day.

On the Saturday, just before it began to get dusk, when she was thinking of preparing for the fatal plunge, her friend, Lady Meredith, came to her.

‘So, Fanny, we shall again be so unfortunate as to miss Mr Robarts,’ said her ladyship.

‘Yes. Did you ever know anything so unlucky? But he had promised Mr Sowerby before he heard that you were
coming. Pray do not think that he would have gone away had he known it.’

‘We should have been sorry to keep him from so much more amusing a party.’

‘Now, Justinia, you are unfair. You intend to imply that he has gone to Chaldicotes, because he likes it better than Framley Court; but that is not the case. I hope Lady Lufton does not think that it is.’

Lady Meredith laughed as she put her arm
round her friend’s waist. ‘Don’t lose your eloquence in defending him to me,’ she said. ‘You’ll want all that for my mother.’

‘But is your mother angry?’ asked Mrs Robarts, showing by her countenance, how eager she was for true tidings on the subject.

‘Well, Fanny, you know her ladyship as well as I do. She thinks so very highly of the Vicar of Framley, that she does begrudge him to those politicians
at Chaldicotes.’

‘But, Justinia, the bishop is to be there, you know.’

‘I don’t think that that consideration will at all reconcile my mother to the gentleman’s absence. He ought to be very proud, I know, to find that he is so much thought of. But come, Fanny, I want you to walk back with me, and you can dress at the house. And now we’ll go and look at the children.’

After that, as they walked
together to Framley Court, Mrs Robarts made her friend promise that she would stand by her if any serious attack were made on the absent clergyman.

‘Are you going up to your room at once?’ said the vicar’s wife, as soon as they were inside the porch leading into the hall. Lady Meredith immediately knew what her friend meant, and decided that the evil day should not be postponed. ‘We had better
go in, and have it over,’ she said, ‘and then we shall be comfortable for the evening.’ So the drawing-room door was opened, and there was Lady Lufton alone upon the sofa.

‘Now, mamma,’ said the daughter, ‘you mustn’t scold Fanny much about Mr Robarts. He has gone to preach a charity sermon before the bishop, and under those circumstances, perhaps, he could not refuse.’ This was a stretch on
the part of Lady Meredith – put in with much good nature, no doubt; but still a stretch; for no one had supposed that the bishop would remain at Chaldicotes for the Sunday.

‘How do you do, Fanny?’ said Lady Lufton, getting up. ‘I am not going to scold her; and I don’t know how you can talk such nonsense, Justinia. Of course, we are very sorry not to have Mr
Robarts; more especially as he was
not here the last Sunday that Sir George was with us. I do like to see Mr Robarts in his own church, certainly; and I don’t like any other clergyman there as well. If Fanny takes that for scolding, why –’

‘Oh! no, Lady Lufton; and it’s so kind of you to say so. But Mr Robarts was so sorry that he had accepted this invitation to Chaldicotes, before he heard that Sir George was coming, and –’

‘Oh, I know that Chaldicotes has great attractions which we cannot offer,’ said Lady Lufton.

‘Indeed, it was not that. But he was asked to preach, you know; and Mr Harold Smith –’ Poor Fanny was only making it worse. Had she been worldly wise, she would have accepted the little compliment implied in Lady Lufton’s first rebuke, and then have held her peace.

‘Oh, yes; the Harold Smiths! They are
irresistible, I know. How could any man refuse to join a party, graced both by Mrs Harold Smith and Mrs Proudie – even though his duty should require him to stay away?’

‘Now, mamma –’ said Justinia.

‘Well, my dear, what am I to say? You would not wish me to tell a fib. I don’t like Mrs Harold Smith – at least, what I hear of her; for it has not been my fortune to meet her since her marriage.
It may be conceited; but to own the truth, I think that Mr Robarts would be better off with us at Framley than with the Harold Smiths at Chaldicotes, – even though Mrs Proudie be thrown into the bargain.’

It was nearly dark, and therefore the rising colour in the face of Mrs Robarts could not be seen. She, however, was too good a wife to hear these things said without some anger within her bosom.
She could blame her husband in her own mind; but it was intolerable to her that others should blame him in her hearing.

‘He would undoubtedly be better off,’ she said; ‘but then, Lady Lufton, people can’t always go exactly where they will be best off. Gentlemen sometimes must –’

‘Well – well, my dear, that will do. He has not taken you, at any rate; and so we will forgive him.’ And Lady Lufton
kissed her. ‘As it is,’ – and she affected a low whisper between the two young
wives – ‘as it is, we must e’en put up with poor old Evan Jones. He is to be here to-night, and we must go and dress to receive him.

’ And so they went off. Lady Lufton was quite good enough at heart to like Mrs Robarts all the better for standing up for her absent lord.

C
HALDICOTES
is a house of much more pretension than Framley Court. Indeed, if one looks at the ancient marks about it, rather than at those of the present day, it is a place of very considerable pretension. There is an old forest, not altogether belonging to the property, but attached to it, called the Chase of Chaldicotes. A portion of this forest comes up close behind the
mansion, and of itself gives a character and celebrity to the place. The Chase of Chaldicotes – the greater part of it, at least – is, as all the world knows, Crown property, and now, in these utilitarian days, is to be disforested. In former times it was a great forest, stretching half across the country, almost as far as Silverbridge; and there are bits of it, here and there, still to be seen
at intervals throughout the whole distance; but the larger remaining portion, consisting of aged hollow oaks, centuries old, and wide-spreading withered beeches, stands in the two parishes of Chaldicotes and Uffley. People still come from afar to see the oaks of Chaldicotes, and to hear their feet rustle among the thick autumn leaves. But they will soon come no longer. The giants of past ages are
to give way to wheat and turnips; a ruthless Chancellor of the Exchequer, desregarding old associations and rural beauty, requires money returns from the lands; and the Chase of Chaldicotes is to vanish from the earth’s surface.

Some part of it, however, is the private property of Mr Sowerby, who hitherto, through all his pecuniary distresses, has managed to save from the axe and the auction-mart
that portion of his paternal heritage. The house of Chaldicotes is a large stone building, probably of the time of Charles the Second. It is
approached on both fronts by a heavy double flight of stone steps. In the front of the house a long, solemn, straight avenue through a double row of lime-trees, leads away to lodge-gates, which stand in the centre of the village of Chaldicotes; but to the
rear the windows open upon four different vistas, which run down through the forest: four open green rides, which all converge together at a large iron gateway, the barrier which divides the private grounds from the chase. The Sowerbys, for many generations, have been rangers of the Chase of Chaldicotes, thus having almost as wide an authority over the Crown forest as over their own. But now all
this is to cease, for the forest will be disforested.

It was nearly dark as Mark Robarts drove up through the avenue of lime-trees to the hall-door; but it was easy to see that the house, which was dead and silent as the grave through nine months of the year, was now alive in all its parts. There were lights in many of the windows, and a noise of voices came from the stables, and servants were
moving about, and dogs barked, and the dark gravel before the front steps was cut up with many a coach-wheel.

‘Oh, be that you, sir, Mr Robarts?’ said a groom, taking the parson’s horse by the head, and touching his own hat. ‘I hope I see your reverence well.’

‘Quite well, Bob, thank you. All well at Chaldicotes?’

‘Pretty bobbish, Mr Robarts. Deal of life going on here now, sir. The bishop
and his lady came this morning.’

‘Oh – ah – yes! I understood they were to be here. Any of the young ladies?’

‘One young lady. Miss Olivia, I think they call her, your reverence.’

‘And how’s Mr Sowerby?’

‘Very well, your reverence. He, and Mr Harold Smith, and Mr Fothergill – that’s the duke’s man of business, you know – is getting off their horses now in the stable-yard there.’

‘Home from
hunting – eh, Bob?’

‘Yes, sir, just home, this minute.’ And then Mr Robarts walked into the house, his portmanteau following on a footboy’s shoulder.

It will be seen that our young vicar was very intimate at Chaldicotes; so much so that the groom knew him, and talked
to him about the people in the house. Yes; he was intimate there: much more than he had given the Framley people to understand.
Not that he had wilfully and overtly deceived any one; not that he had ever spoken a false word about Chaldicotes. But he had never boasted at home that he and Sowerby were near allies. Neither had he told them there how often Mr Sowerby and Lord Lufton were together in London. Why trouble women with such matters? Why annoy so excellent a woman as Lady Lufton?

And then Mr Sowerby was one whose
intimacy few young men would wish to reject. He was fifty, and had lived, perhaps, not the most salutary life; but he dressed young, and usually looked well. He was bald, with a good forehead, and sparkling moist eyes. He was a clever man, and a pleasant companion, and always good-humoured when it so suited him. He was a gentleman, too, of high breeding and good birth, whose ancestors had been known
in that county – longer, the farmers around would boast, than those of any landowner in it, unless it be the Thornes of Ullathorne, or perhaps the Greshams of Greshamsbury – much longer than the De Courcys at Courcy Castle. As for the Duke of Omnium, he, comparatively speaking, was a new man.

And then he was a member of Parliament, a friend of some men in power, and of others who might be there;
a man who could talk about the world as one knowing the matter of which he talked. And moreover, whatever might be his ways of life at other times, when in the presence of a clergyman he rarely made himself offensive to clerical tastes. He neither swore, nor brought his vices on the carpet, nor sneered at the faith of the Church. If he was no Churchman himself, he at least knew how to live with
those who were.

How was it possible that such a one as our vicar should not relish the intimacy of Mr Sowerby? It might be very well, he would say to himself, for a woman like Lady Lufton to turn up her nose at him – for Lady Lufton, who spent ten months of the year at Framley Court, and who during those ten months, and for the matter of that, during the two months also which she spent in London,
saw no one out of her own set. Women did not understand such things, the vicar said to himself; even his own wife – good, and nice, and sensible, and intelligent as she was – even
she did not understand that a man in the world must meet all sorts of men; and that in these days it did not do for a clergyman to be a hermit.

’Twas thus that Mark Robarts argued when he found himself called upon to
defend himself before the bar of his own conscience for going to Chaldicotes and increasing his intimacy with Mr Sowerby. He did know that Mr Sowerby was a dangerous man; he was aware that he was over head and ears in debt, and that he had already entangled young Lord Lufton in some pecuniary embarrassment; his conscience did tell him that it would be well for him, as one of Christ’s soldiers, to
look out for companions of a different stamp. But nevertheless he went to Chaldicotes, not satisfied with himself indeed, but repeating to himself a great many arguments why he should be so satisfied.