The Last Chronicle of Barset (7 page)

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 by declaring that the cruelty of the world had been too much for him, that the waters were meeting over his head,
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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.

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 signs 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 to 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 which 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 today 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 thought 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 a 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 this 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 daresay 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.
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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 always was 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,
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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 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 was 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!'