XLIX. NEAR THE CLOSE…

XLIX. NEAR THE CLOSE

I wonder whether any one will read these pages who has never known anything of the bitterness of a family quarrel? If so, I shall have a reader very fortunate, or else very cold-blooded. It would be wrong to say that love produces quarrels; but love does produce those intimate relations of which quarrelling is too often one of the consequences,--one of the consequences which frequently seem to be so natural, and sometimes seem to be unavoidable. One brother rebukes the other,--and what brothers ever lived together between whom there was no such rebuking?--then some warm word is misunderstood and hotter words follow and there is a quarrel. The husband tyrannizes, knowing that it is his duty to direct, and the wife disobeys, or only partially obeys, thinking that a little independence will become her,--and so there is a quarrel. The father, anxious only for his son's good, looks into that son's future with other eyes than those of his son himself,--and so there is a quarrel. They come very easily, these quarrels, but the quittance from them is sometimes terribly difficult. Much of thought is necessary before the angry man can remember that he too in part may have been wrong; and any attempt at such thinking is almost beyond the power of him who is carefully nursing his wrath, lest it cool! But the nursing of such quarrelling kills all happiness. The very man who is nursing his wrath, lest it cool,--his wrath against one whom he loves perhaps the best of all whom it has been given him to love,--is himself wretched as long as it lasts. His anger poisons every pleasure of his life. He is sullen at his meals, and cannot understand his book as he turns its pages. His work, let it be what it may, is ill done. He is full of his quarrel,--nursing it. He is telling himself how much he has loved that wicked one, how many have been his sacrifices for that wicked one, and that now that wicked one is repaying him simply with wickedness! And yet the wicked one is at that very moment dearer to him than ever. If that wicked one could only be forgiven how sweet would the world be again! And yet he nurses his wrath.

So it was in these days with Archdeacon Grantly. He was very angry with his son. It is hardly too much to say that in every moment of his life, whether waking or sleeping, he was thinking of the injury that his son was doing him. He had almost come to forget the fact that his anger had first been roused by the feeling that his son was about to do himself an injury,--to cut his own throat. Various other considerations had now added themselves to that, and filled not only his mind but his daily conversation with his wife. How terrible would be the disgrace to Lord Hartletop, how incurable the injury to Griselda, the marchioness, should the brother-in-law of the one, and the brother of the other, marry the daughter of a convicted thief! "Of himself he would say nothing." So he declared constantly, though of himself he did say a great deal. "Of himself he would say nothing, though of course such a marriage would ruin him in the county." "My dear," said his wife, "that is nonsense. That really is nonsense. I feel sure there is not a single person in the county who would think of the marriage in such a light." Then the archdeacon would have quarrelled with his wife too, had she not been too wise to admit such a quarrel. Mrs. Grantly was very wise and knew that it took two persons to make a quarrel. He told her over and over again that she was in league with her son,--that she was encouraging her son to marry Grace Crawley. "I believe that in your heart you wish it," he once said to her. "No, my dear, I do not wish it. I do not think it a becoming marriage. But if he does marry her, I should wish to receive his wife in my house, and certainly should not quarrel with him." "I will never receive her," the archdeacon had replied; "and as for him, I can only say that in such case I will make no provision for his family."

It will be remembered that the archdeacon had on a former occasion instructed his wife to write to their son and tell him of his father's determination. Mrs. Grantly had so manoeuvred that a little time had been gained, and that those instructions had not been insisted upon in all their bitterness. Since that time Major Grantly had renewed his assurance that he would marry Grace Crawley if Grace Crawley would accept him,--writing on this occasion direct to his father,--and had asked his father whether, in such case, he was to look forward to be disinherited. "It is essential that I should know," the major had said, "because in such case I must take immediate measures for leaving this place." His father had sent him back his letter, writing a few words at the bottom of it. "If you do as you propose above, you must expect nothing from me." The words were written in large round handwriting, very hurriedly, and the son when he received them perfectly understood the mood of his father's mind when he wrote them.

Then there came tidings, addressed on this occasion to Mrs. Grantly, that Cosby Lodge was to be given up. Lady-day had come, and the notice, necessarily to be given at that period, was so given. "I know this will grieve you," Major Grantly had said, "but my father has driven me to it." This, in itself, was a cause of great sorrow, both to the archdeacon and to Mrs. Grantly, as there were circumstances connected with Cosby Lodge which made them think that it was a very desirable residence for their son. "I shall sell everything about the place and go abroad at once," he said in a subsequent letter. "My present idea is that I shall settle myself at Pau, as my income will suffice for me to live there, and education for Edith will be cheap. At any rate I will not continue in England. I could never be happy here in circumstances so altered. Of course I should not have left my profession, unless I had understood from my father that the income arising from it would not be necessary to me. I do not, however, mean to complain, but simply tell you that I shall go." There were many letters between the mother and son in those days. "I shall stay till after the trial," he said. "If she will then go with me, well and good; but whether she will or not, I shall not remain here." All this seemed to Mrs. Grantly to be peculiarly unfortunate, for, had he not resolved to go, things might even yet have righted themselves. From what she could now understand of the character of Miss Crawley, whom she did not know personally, she thought it probable that Grace, in the event of her father being found guilty by the jury, would absolutely and persistently refuse the offer made to her. She would be too good, as Mrs. Grantly put it to herself, to bring misery and disgrace into another family. But should Mr. Crawley be acquitted, and should the marriage then take place, the archdeacon himself might probably be got to forgive it. In either case there would be no necessity for breaking up the house at Cosby Lodge. But her dear son Henry, her best beloved, was obstinate and stiff-necked, and would take no advice. "He is even worse than his father," she said, in her short-lived anger, to her own father, to whom alone at this time she could unburden her griefs, seeking consolation and encouragement.

It was her habit to go over to the deanery at any rate twice a week at this time, and on the occasion of one of the visits so made, she expressed very strongly her distress at the family quarrel which had come among them. The old man took his grandson's part through and through. "I do not at all see why he should not marry the young lady if he likes her. As for money, there ought to be enough without his having to look for a wife with a fortune."

"It is not a question of money, papa."

"And as to rank," continued Mr. Harding, "Henry will not at any rate be going lower than his father did when he married you;--not so low indeed, for at that time I was only a minor canon, and Mr. Crawley is in possession of a benefice."

"Papa, all that is nonsense. It is, indeed."

"Very likely, my dear."

"It is not because Mr. Crawley is only perpetual curate of Hogglestock, that the archdeacon objects to the marriage. It has nothing to do with that at all. At the present moment he is in disgrace."

"Under a cloud, my dear. Let us pray that it may be only a passing cloud."

"All the world thinks that he was guilty. And then he is such a man:--so singular, so unlike anybody else! You know, papa, that I don't think very much of money, merely as money."

"I hope not, my dear. Money is worth thinking of, but it is not worth very much thought."

"But it does give advantages, and the absence of such advantages must be very much felt in the education of a girl. You would hardly wish Henry to marry a young woman who, from want of money, had not been brought up among ladies. It is not Miss Crawley's fault, but such has been her lot. We cannot ignore these deficiencies, papa."

"Certainly not, my dear."

"You would not, for instance, wish that Henry should marry a kitchen-maid."

"But is Miss Crawley a kitchen-maid, Susan?"

"I don't quite say that."

"I am told that she has been educated infinitely better than most of the young ladies in the neighbourhood," said Mr. Harding.

"I believe that her father has taught her Greek; and I suppose she has learned something of French at that school at Silverbridge."

"Then the kitchen-maid theory is sufficiently disposed of," said Mr. Harding, with mild triumph.

"You know what I mean, papa. But the fact is, that it is impossible to deal with men. They will never be reasonable. A marriage such as this would be injurious to Henry; but it will not be ruinous; and as to disinheriting him for it, that would be downright wicked."

"I think so," said Mr. Harding.

"But the archdeacon will look at it as though it would destroy Henry and Edith altogether, while you speak of it as though it were the best thing in the world."

"If the young people love each other, I think it would be the best thing in the world," said Mr. Harding.

"But, papa, you cannot but think that his father's wish should go for something," said Mrs. Grantly, who, desirous as she was on the one side to support her son, could not bear that her husband should, on the other side, be declared to be altogether in the wrong.

"I do not know, my dear," said Mr. Harding; "but I do think, that if the two young people are fond of each other, and if there is anything for them to live upon, it cannot be right to keep them apart. You know, my dear, she is the daughter of a gentleman." Mrs. Grantly upon this left her father almost brusquely, without speaking another word on the subject; for, though she was opposed to the vehement anger of her husband, she could not endure the proposition now made by her father.

Mr. Harding was at this time living all alone in the deanery. For some few years the deanery had been his home, and as his youngest daughter was the dean's wife, there could be no more comfortable resting-place for the evening of his life. During the last month or two the days had gone tediously with him; for he had had the large house all to himself, and he was a man who did not love solitude. It is hard to conceive that the old, whose thoughts have been all thought out, should ever love to live alone. Solitude is surely for the young, who have time before them for the execution of schemes, and who can, therefore, take delight in thinking. In these days the poor old man would wander about the rooms, shambling from one chamber to another, and would feel ashamed when the servants met him ever on the move. He would make little apologies for his uneasiness, which they would accept graciously, understanding, after a fashion, why it was that he was uneasy. "He ain't got nothing to do," said the housemaid to the cook, "and as for reading, they say that some of the young ones can read all day sometimes, and all night too; but, bless you, when you're nigh eighty, reading don't go for much." The housemaid was right as to Mr. Harding's reading. He was not one who had read so much in his earlier days as to enable him to make reading go far with him now that he was near eighty. So he wandered about the room, and sat here for a few minutes, and there for a few minutes, and though he did not sleep much, he made the hours of the night as many as was possible. Every morning he shambled across from the deanery to the cathedral, and attended the morning service, sitting in the stall which he had occupied for fifty years. The distance was very short, not exceeding, indeed, a hundred yards from a side-door in the deanery to another side-door into the cathedral; but short as it was there had come to be a question whether he should be allowed to go alone. It had been feared that he might fall on his passage and hurt himself; for there was a step here, and a step there, and the light was not very good in the purlieus of the old cathedral. A word or two had been said once, and the offer of an arm to help him had been made; but he had rejected the proffered assistance,--softly, indeed, but still firmly,--and every day he tottered off by himself, hardly lifting his feet as he went, and aiding himself on his journey by a hand upon the wall when he thought that nobody was looking at him. But many did see him, and they who knew him,--ladies generally of the city,--would offer him a hand. Nobody was milder in his dislikings than Mr. Harding; but there were ladies in Barchester upon whose arm he would always decline to lean, bowing courteously as he did so, and saying a word or two of constrained civility. There were others whom he would allow to accompany him home to the door of the deanery, with whom he delighted to linger and chat if the morning was warm, and to whom he would tell little stories of his own doings in the cathedral services in the old days, when Bishop Grantly had ruled in the diocese. Never a word did he say against Bishop Proudie, or against Bishop Proudie's wife; but the many words which he did say in praise of Bishop Grantly,--who, by his showing, was surely one of the best of churchmen who ever walked through this vale of sorrow,--were as eloquent in dispraise of the existing prelate as could have been any more clearly-pointed phrases. This daily visit to the cathedral, where he would say his prayers as he had said them for so many years, and listen to the organ, of which he knew all the power and every blemish as though he himself had made the stops and fixed the pipes, was the chief occupation of his life. It was a pity that it could not have been made to cover a larger portion of the day.

It was sometimes sad enough to watch him as he sat alone. He would have a book near him, and for a while would keep it in his hands. It would generally be some volume of good old standard theology with which he had been, or supposed himself to have been, conversant from his youth. But the book would soon be laid aside, and gradually he would move himself away from it, and he would stand about in the room, looking now out of a window from which he would fancy that he could not be seen, or gazing up at some print which he had known for years; and then he would sit down for a while in one chair, and for a while in another, while his mind was wandering back into old days, thinking of old troubles and remembering his old joys. And he had a habit, when he was sure that he was not watched, of creeping up to a great black wooden case, which always stood in one corner of the sitting-room which he occupied in the deanery. Mr. Harding, when he was younger, had been a performer on the violoncello, and in this case there was still the instrument from which he had been wont to extract the sounds which he had so dearly loved. Now in these latter days he never made any attempt to play. Soon after he had come to the deanery there had fallen upon him an illness, and after that he had never again asked for his bow. They who were around him,--his daughter chiefly and her husband,--had given the matter much thought, arguing with themselves whether or no it would be better to invite him to resume the task he had so loved; for of all the works of his life this playing on the violoncello had been the sweetest to him; but even before that illness his hand had greatly failed him, and the dean and Mrs. Arabin had agreed that it would be better to let the matter pass without a word. He had never asked to be allowed to play. He had expressed no regrets. When he himself would propose that his daughter should "give them a little music,"--and he would make such a proposition on every evening that was suitable,--he would never say a word of those former performances at which he himself had taken a part. But it had become known to Mrs. Arabin, through the servants, that he had once dragged the instrument forth from its case when he had thought the house to be nearly deserted; and a wail of sounds had been heard, very low, very short-lived, recurring now and again at fitful intervals. He had at those times attempted to play, as though with a muffled bow,--so that none should know of his vanity and folly. Then there had been further consultations at the deanery, and it had been again agreed that it would be best to say nothing to him of his music.

In these latter days of which I am now speaking he would never draw the instrument out of its case. Indeed he was aware that it was too heavy for him to handle without assistance. But he would open the prison door, and gaze upon the thing that he loved, and he would pass his fingers among the broad strings, and ever and anon he would produce from one of them a low, melancholy, almost unearthly sound. And then he would pause, never daring to produce two such notes in succession,--one close upon the other. And these last sad moans of the old fiddle were now known through the household. They were the ghosts of the melody of days long past. He imagined that his visits to the box were unsuspected,--that none knew of the folly of his old fingers which could not keep themselves from touching the wires; but the voice of the violoncello had been recognized by the servants and by his daughter, and when that low wail was heard through the house,--like the last dying note of a dirge,--they would all know that Mr. Harding was visiting his ancient friend.

When the dean and Mrs. Arabin had first talked of going abroad for a long visit, it had been understood that Mr. Harding should pass the period of their absence with his other daughter at Plumstead; but when the time came he begged of Mrs. Arabin to be allowed to remain in his old rooms. "Of course I shall go backwards and forwards," he had said. "There is nothing I like so much as a change now and then." The result had been that he had gone once to Plumstead during the dean's absence. When he had thus remonstrated, begging to be allowed to remain in Barchester, Mrs. Arabin had declared her intention of giving up her tour. In telling her father of this she had not said that her altered purpose had arisen from her disinclination to leave him alone;--but he had perceived that it was so, and had then consented to be taken over to Plumstead. There was nothing, he said, which he would like so much as going over to Plumstead for four or five months. It had ended in his having his own way altogether. The Arabins had gone upon their tour, and he was left in possession of the deanery. "I should not like to die out of Barchester," he said to himself in excuse to himself for his disinclination to sojourn long under the archdeacon's roof. But, in truth, the archdeacon, who loved him well and who, after a fashion, had always been good to him,--who had always spoken of the connexion which had bound the two families together as the great blessing of his life,--was too rough in his greetings for the old man. Mr. Harding had ever mixed something of fear with his warm affection for his elder son-in-law, and now in these closing hours of his life he could not avoid a certain amount of shrinking from that loud voice,--a certain inaptitude to be quite at ease in that commanding presence. The dean, his second son-in-law, had been a modern friend in comparison with the archdeacon; but the dean was more gentle with him; and then the dean's wife had ever been the dearest to him of human beings. It may be a doubt whether one of the dean's children was not now almost more dear, and whether in these days he did not have more free communication with that little girl than with any other human being. Her name was Susan, but he had always called her Posy, having himself invented for her that soubriquet. When it had been proposed to him to pass the winter and spring at Plumstead, the suggestion had been made alluring by a promise that Posy also should be taken to Mrs. Grantly's house. But he, as we have seen, had remained at the deanery, and Posy had remained with him.

Posy was now five years old, and could talk well, and had her own ideas of things. Posy's eyes,--hers, and no others besides her own,--were allowed to see the inhabitant of the big black case; and now that the deanery was so nearly deserted, Posy's fingers had touched the strings, and had produced an infantine moan. "Grandpa, let me do it again." Twang! It was not, however, in truth, a twang, but a sound as of a prolonged dull, almost deadly, hum-m-m-m-m! On this occasion the moan was not entirely infantine,--Posy's fingers having been something too strong,--and the case was closed and locked, and grandpapa shook his head.

"But Mrs. Baxter won't be angry," said Posy. Mrs. Baxter was the housekeeper in the deanery, and had Mr. Harding under her especial charge.

"No, my darling; Mrs. Baxter will not be angry, but we mustn't disturb the house."

"No," said Posy, with much of important awe in her tone; "we mustn't disturb the house; must we, grandpapa?" And so she gave in her adhesion to the closing of the case. But Posy could play cat's-cradle, and as cat's-cradle did not disturb the house at all, there was a good deal of cat's-cradle played in these days. Posy's fingers were so soft and pretty, so small and deft, that the dear old man delighted in taking the strings from them, and in having them taken from his own by those tender little digits.

On the afternoon after the conversation respecting Grace Crawley which is recorded in the early part of this chapter, a messenger from Barchester went over to Plumstead, and a part of his mission consisted of a note from Mrs. Baxter to Mrs. Grantly, beginning, "Honoured Madam," and informing Mrs. Grantly, among other things, that her "respected papa," as Mrs. Baxter called him, was not quite so well as usual; not that Mrs. Baxter thought there was much the matter. Mr. Harding had been to the cathedral service, as was usual with him, but had come home leaning on a lady's arm, who had thought it well to stay with him at the door till it had been opened for him. After that "Miss Posy" had found him asleep, and had been unable,--or if not unable, unwilling, to wake him. "Miss Posy" had come down to Mrs. Baxter somewhat in a fright, and hence this letter had been written. Mrs. Baxter thought that there was nothing "to fright" Mrs. Grantly, and she wasn't sure that she should have written at all only that Dick was bound to go over to Plumstead with the wool; but as Dick was going, Mrs. Baxter thought it proper to send her duty, and to say that to her humble way of thinking perhaps it might be best that Mr. Harding shouldn't go alone to the cathedral every morning. "If the dear reverend gentleman was to get a tumble, ma'am," said the letter, "it would be awkward." Then Mrs. Grantly remembered that she had left her father almost without a greeting on the previous day, and she resolved that she would go over very early on the following morning,--so early that she would be at the deanery before her father should have gone to the cathedral.

"He ought to have come over here, and not stayed there by himself," said the archdeacon, when his wife told him of her intention.

"It is too late to think of that now, my dear; and one can understand, I think, that he should not like leaving the cathedral as long as he can attend it. The truth is he does not like being out of Barchester."

"He would be much better here," said the archdeacon. "Of course you can have the carriage and go over. We can breakfast at eight; and if you can bring him back with you, do. I should tell him that he ought to come." Mrs. Grantly made no answer to this, knowing very well that she could not bring herself to go beyond the gentlest persuasion with her father, and on the next morning she was at the deanery by ten o'clock. Half-past ten was the hour at which the service began. Mrs. Baxter contrived to meet her before she saw her father, and begged her not to let it be known that any special tidings of Mr. Harding's failing strength had been sent from the deanery to Plumstead. "And how is my father?" asked Mrs. Grantly. "Well, then, ma'am," said Baxter, "in one sense he's finely. He took a morsel of early lamb to his dinner yesterday, and relished it ever so well,--only he gave Miss Posy the best part of it. And then he sat with Miss Posy quite happy for an hour or so. And then he slept in his chair; and you know, ma'am, we never wakes him. And after that old Skulpit toddled up from the hospital,"--this was Hiram's Hospital, of which establishment, in the city of Barchester, Mr. Harding had once been the warden and kind master, as has been told in former chronicles of the city,--"and your papa has said, ma'am, you know, that he is always to see any of the old men when they come up. And Skulpit is sly, and no better than he should be, and got money from your father, ma'am, I know. And then he had just a drop of tea, and after that I took him his glass of port wine with my own hands. And it touched me, ma'am, so it did, when he said, 'Oh, Mrs. Baxter, how good you are; you know well what it is I like.' And then he went to bed. I listened hard,--not from idle cur'osity, ma'am, as you, who know me, will believe, but just because it's becoming to know what he's about, as there might be an accident, you know, ma'am." "You are very good, Mrs. Baxter, very good." "Thank ye, ma'am, for saying so. And so I listened hard; but he didn't go to his music, poor gentleman; and I think he had a quiet night. He doesn't sleep much at nights, poor gentleman, but he's very quiet; leastwise he was last night." This was the bulletin which Mrs. Baxter gave to Mrs. Grantly on that morning before Mrs. Grantly saw her father.

She found him preparing himself for his visit to the cathedral. Some year or two,--but no more,--before the date of which we are speaking, he had still taken some small part in the service; and while he had done so he had of course worn his surplice. Living so close to the cathedral,--so close that he could almost walk out of the house into the transept,--he had kept his surplice in his own room, and had gone down in his vestment. It had been a bitter day to him when he had first found himself constrained to abandon the white garment which he loved. He had encountered some failure in the performance of the slight clerical task allotted to him, and the dean had tenderly advised him to desist. He did not utter one word of remonstrance. "It will perhaps be better," the dean had said. "Yes,--it will be better," Mr. Harding had replied. "Few have had accorded to them the high privilege of serving their Master in His house for so many years,--though few more humbly, or with lower gifts." But on the following morning, and for nearly a week afterwards, he had been unable to face the minor canon and the vergers, and the old women who knew him so well, in his ordinary black garments. At last he went down with the dean, and occupied a stall close to the dean's seat,--far away from that in which he had sat for so many years,--and in this seat he had said his prayers ever since that day. And now his surplices were washed and ironed and folded and put away; but there were moments in which he would stealthily visit them, as he also stealthily visited his friend in the black wooden case. This was very melancholy, and the sadness of it was felt by all those who lived with him; but he never alluded himself to any of those bereavements which age brought upon him. Whatever might be his regrets, he kept them ever within his own breast.

Posy was with him when Mrs. Grantly went up into his room, holding for him his hat and stick while he was engaged in brushing a suspicion of dust from his black gaiters. "Grandpapa, here is aunt Susan," said Posy. The old man looked up with something,--with some slightest sign of that habitual fear which was always aroused within his bosom by visitations from Plumstead. Had Mrs. Arabin thoroughly understood the difference in her father's feeling toward herself and toward her sister, I think she would hardly have gone forth upon any tour while he remained with her in the deanery. It is very hard sometimes to know how intensely we are loved, and of what value our presence is to those who love us! Mrs. Grantly saw the look,--did not analyse it, did not quite understand it,--but felt, as she had so often felt before, that it was not altogether laden with welcome. But all this had nothing to do with the duty on which she had come; nor did it, in the slightest degree, militate against her own affection. "Papa," she said, kissing him, "you are surprised to see me so early?"

"Well, my dear, yes;--but very glad all the same. I hope everybody is well at Plumstead?"

"Everybody, thank you, papa."

"That is well. Posy and I are getting ready for church. Are we not, Posy?"

"Grandpapa is getting ready. Mrs. Baxter won't let me go."

"No, my dear, no;--not yet, Posy. When Posy is a great girl she can go to cathedral every day. Only then, perhaps, Posy won't want to go."

"I thought that, perhaps, papa, you would sit with me a little while this morning, instead of going to morning prayers."

"Certainly, my dear,--certainly. Only I do not like not going;--for who can say how often I may be able to go again? There is so little left, Susan,--so very little left."

After that she had not the heart to ask him to stay, and therefore she went with him. As they passed down the stairs and out of the doors she was astonished to find how weak were his footsteps,--how powerless he was against the slightest misadventure. On this very day he would have tripped at the upward step at the cathedral door had she not been with him. "Oh, papa," she said, "indeed, indeed, you should not come here alone." Then he apologized for his little stumble with many words and much shame, assuring her that anybody might trip on an occasion. It was purely an accident; and though it was a comfort to him to have had her arm, he was sure that he should have recovered himself even had he been alone. He always, he said, kept quite close to the wall, so that there might be no mistake,--no possibility of an accident. All this he said volubly, but with confused words, in the covered stone passage leading into the transept. And, as he thus spoke, Mrs. Grantly made up her mind that her father should never again go to the cathedral alone. He never did go again to the cathedral,--alone.

When they returned to the deanery, Mr. Harding was fluttered, weary, and unwell. When his daughter left him for a few minutes he told Mrs. Baxter, in confidence, the story of his accident, and his great grief that his daughter should have seen it. "Laws amercy, sir, it was a blessing she was with you," said Mrs. Baxter; "it was, indeed, Mr. Harding." Then Mr. Harding had been angry, and spoke almost crossly to Mrs. Baxter; but, before she left the room, he found an opportunity of begging her pardon,--not in a set speech to that effect, but by a little word of gentle kindness, which she had understood perfectly. "Papa," said Mrs. Grantly to him as soon as she had succeeded in getting both Posy and Mrs. Baxter out of the room,--against the doing of which, Mr. Harding had manoeuvred with all his little impotent skill,--"Papa, you must promise me that you will not go to the cathedral again alone, till Eleanor comes home." When he heard the sentence he looked at her with blank misery in his eyes. He made no attempt at remonstrance. He begged for no respite. The word had gone forth, and he knew that it must be obeyed. Though he would have hidden the signs of his weakness had he been able, he would not condescend to plead that he was strong. "If you think it wrong, my dear, I will not go alone," he said. "Papa, I do; indeed, I do. Dear papa, I would not hurt you by saying it if I did not know that I am right." He was sitting with his hand upon the table, and, as she spoke to him, she put her hand upon his, caressing it. "My dear," he said, "you are always right."

She then left him again for awhile, having some business out in the city, and he was alone in his room for an hour. What was there left to him now in the world? Old as he was, and in some things almost childish, nevertheless, he thought of this keenly, and some half-realized remembrance of "the lean and slippered pantaloon" flitted across his mind, causing him a pang. What was there left to him now in the world? Posy and cat's-cradle! Then, in the midst of his regrets, as he sat with his back bent in his old easy-chair, with one arm over the shoulder of the chair, and the other hanging loose by his side, on a sudden there came across his face a smile as sweet as ever brightened the face of man or woman. He had been able to tell himself that he had no ground for complaint,--great ground rather for rejoicing and gratitude. Had not the world and all in it been good to him; had he not children who loved him, who had done him honour, who had been to him always a crown of glory, never a mark for reproach; had not his lines fallen to him in very pleasant places; was it not his happy fate to go and leave it all amidst the good words and kind loving cares of devoted friends? Whose latter days had ever been more blessed than his? And for the future--? It was as he thought of this that that smile came across his face,--as though it were already the face of an angel. And then he muttered to himself a word or two. "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace. Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace."

When Mrs. Grantly returned she found him in jocund spirits. And yet she perceived that he was so weak that when he left his chair he could barely get across the room without assistance. Mrs. Baxter, indeed, had not sent to her too soon, and it was well that the prohibition had come in time to prevent some terrible accident. "Papa," she said, "I think you had better go with me to Plumstead. The carriage is here, and I can take you home so comfortably." But he would not allow himself to be taken on this occasion to Plumstead. He smiled and thanked her, and put his hand into hers, and repeated his promise that he would not leave the house on any occasion without assistance, and declared himself specially thankful to her for coming to him on that special morning;--but he would not be taken to Plumstead. "When the summer comes," he said, "then, if you will have me for a few days!"

He meant no deceit, and yet he had told himself within the last hour that he should never see another summer. He could not tell even his daughter that after such a life as this, after more than fifty years spent in the ministrations of his darling cathedral, it specially behoved him to die,--as he had lived,--at Barchester. He could not say this to his eldest daughter; but had his Eleanor been at home, he could have said it to her. He thought he might yet live to see his Eleanor once again. If this could be given to him he would ask for nothing more.

On the afternoon of the next day, Mrs. Baxter wrote another letter, in which she told Mrs. Grantly that her father had declared, at his usual hour of rising that morning, that as he was not going to the cathedral he would, he thought, lie in bed a little longer. And then he had lain in bed the whole day. "And, perhaps, honoured madam, looking at all things, it's best as he should," said Mrs. Baxter.

L. LADY LUFTON'S PROPOSITION

It was now known throughout Barchester that a commission was to be held by the bishop's orders, at which inquiry would be made,--that is, ecclesiastical inquiry,--as to the guilt imputed to Mr. Crawley in the matter of Mr. Soames's cheque. Sundry rumours had gone abroad as to quarrels which had taken place on the subject among certain clergymen high in office; but these were simply rumours, and nothing was in truth known. There was no more discreet clergyman in all the diocese than Dr. Tempest, and not a word had escaped from him as to the stormy nature of that meeting in the bishop's palace, at which he had attended with the bishop,--and at which Mrs. Proudie had attended also. When it is said that the fact of this coming commission was known to all Barsetshire, allusion is of course made to that portion of the inhabitants of Barsetshire to which clerical matters were dear;--and as such matters were specially dear to the inhabitants of the parish of Framley, the commission was discussed very eagerly in that parish, and was specially discussed by the Dowager Lady Lufton.

And there was a double interest attached to the commission in the parish of Framley by the fact that Mr. Robarts, the vicar, had been invited by Dr. Tempest to be one of the clergymen who were to assist in making the inquiry. "I also propose to ask Mr. Oriel of Greshamsbury to join us," said Dr. Tempest. "The bishop wishes to appoint the other two, and has already named Mr. Thumble and Mr. Quiverful, who are both residents in the city. Perhaps his lordship may be right in thinking it better that the matter should not be left altogether in the hands of clergymen who hold livings in the diocese. You are no doubt aware that neither Mr. Thumble nor Mr. Quiverful do hold any benefice." Mr. Robarts felt,--as everybody else did feel who knew anything of the matter,--that Bishop Proudie was singularly ignorant in his knowledge of men, and that he showed his ignorance on this special occasion. "If he intended to name two such men he should at any rate have named three," said Dr. Thorne. "Mr. Thumble and Mr. Quiverful will simply be outvoted on the first day, and after that will give in their adhesion to the majority." "Mr. Thumble, indeed!" Lady Lufton had said, with much scorn in her voice. To her thinking, it was absurd in the highest degree that such men as Dr. Tempest and her Mr. Robarts should be asked to meet Mr. Thumble and Mr. Quiverful on a matter of ecclesiastical business. Outvoted! Of course they would be outvoted. Of course they would be so paralyzed by fear at finding themselves in the presence of real gentlemen, that they would hardly be able to vote at all. Old Lady Lufton did not in fact utter words so harsh as these; but thoughts as harsh passed through her mind. The reader therefore will understand that much interest was felt on the subject at Framley Court, where Lady Lufton lived with her son and her daughter-in-law.

"They tell me," said Lady Lufton, "that both the archdeacon and Dr. Tempest think it right that a commission should be held. If so, I have no doubt that it is right."

"Mark says that the bishop could hardly do anything else," rejoined Mrs. Robarts.

"I daresay not, my dear. I suppose the bishop has somebody near him to tell him what he may do, and what he may not do. It would be terrible to think of, if it were not so. But yet, when I hear that he has named such men as Mr. Thumble and Mr. Quiverful, I cannot but feel that the whole diocese is disgraced."

"Oh, Lady Lufton, that is such a strong word," said Mrs. Robarts.

"It may be strong, but it is not the less true," said Lady Lufton.

And from talking on the subject of the Crawleys, Lady Lufton soon advanced, first to a desire for some action, and then to acting. "I think, my dear, I will go over and see Mrs. Crawley," said Lady Lufton the elder to Lady Lufton the younger. Lady Lufton the younger had nothing to urge against this; but she did not offer to accompany the elder lady. I attempted to explain in the early part of this story that there still existed a certain understanding between Mrs. Crawley and Lord Lufton's wife, and that kindnesses occasionally passed from Framley Court to Hogglestock Parsonage; but on this occasion young Lady Lufton,--the Lucy Robarts who had once passed certain days of her life with the Crawleys at Hogglestock,--did not choose to accompany her mother-in-law; and therefore Mrs. Robarts was invited to do so. "I think it may comfort her to know that she has our sympathy," the elder woman said to the younger as they made their journey together.

When the carriage stopped before the little wicket-gate, from whence a path led through a ragged garden from the road to Mr. Crawley's house, Lady Lufton hardly knew how to proceed. The servant came to the door of the carriage, and asked for her orders. "H--m--m, ha, yes; I think I'll send in my card;--and say that I hope Mrs. Crawley will be able to see me. Won't that be best; eh, Fanny?" Fanny, otherwise Mrs. Robarts, said that she thought that would be best; and the card and message were carried in.

It was happily the case that Mr. Crawley was not at home. Mr. Crawley was away at Hoggle End, reading to the brickmakers, or turning the mangles of their wives, or teaching them theology, or politics, or history, after his fashion. In these days he spent, perhaps, the happiest hours of his life down at Hoggle End. I say that his absence was a happy chance, because, had he been at home, he would certainly have said something, or done something, to offend Lady Lufton. He would either have refused to see her, or when seeing her he would have bade her hold her peace and not interfere with matters which did not concern her, or,--more probable still,--he would have sat still and sullen, and have spoken not at all. But he was away, and Mrs. Crawley sent out word by the servant that she would be most proud to see her ladyship, if her ladyship would be pleased to alight. Her ladyship did alight, and walked into the parsonage, followed by Mrs. Robarts.

Grace was with her mother. Indeed Jane had been there also when the message was brought in, but she fled into back regions, overcome by shame as to her frock. Grace, I think, would have fled too, had she not been bound in honour to support her mother. Lady Lufton, as she entered, was very gracious, struggling with all the power of her womanhood so to carry herself that there should be no outwardly visible sign of her rank or her wealth,--but not altogether succeeding. Mrs. Robarts, on her first entrance, said only a word or two of greeting to Mrs. Crawley, and kissed Grace, whom she had known intimately in early years. "Lady Lufton," said Mrs. Crawley, "I am afraid this is a very poor place for you to come to; but you have known that of old, and therefore I need hardly apologize."

"Sometimes I like poor places best," said Lady Lufton. Then there was a pause, after which Lady Lufton addressed herself to Grace, seeking some subject for immediate conversation. "You have been down at Allington, my dear, have you not?" Grace, in a whisper, said that she had. "Staying with the Dales, I believe? I know the Dales well by name, and I have always heard that they are charming people."

"I like them very much," said Grace. And then there was another pause.

"I hope your husband is pretty well, Mrs. Crawley?" said Lady Lufton.

"He is pretty well,--not quite strong. I daresay you know, Lady Lufton, that he has things to vex him?" Mrs. Crawley felt that it was the need of the moment that the only possible subject of conversation in that house should be introduced; and therefore she brought it in at once, not loving the subject, but being strongly conscious of the necessity. Lady Lufton meant to be good-natured, and therefore Mrs. Crawley would do all in her power to make Lady Lufton's mission easy to her.

"Indeed yes," said her ladyship; "we do know that."

"We feel so much for you and Mr. Crawley," said Mrs. Robarts; "and are so sure that your sufferings are unmerited." This was not discreet on the part of Mrs. Robarts, as she was the wife of one of the clergymen who had been selected to form the commission of inquiry; and so Lady Lufton told her on their way home.

"You are very kind," said Mrs. Crawley. "We must only bear it with such fortitude as God will give us. We are told that He tempers the wind to the shorn lamb."

"And so He does, my dear," said the old lady, very solemnly. "So He does. Surely you have felt that it is so?"

"I struggle not to complain," said Mrs. Crawley.

"I know that you struggle bravely. I hear of you, and I admire you for it, and I love you." It was still the old lady who was speaking, and now she had at last been roused out of her difficulty as to words, and had risen from her chair, and was standing before Mrs. Crawley. "It is because you do not complain, because you are so great and so good, because your character is so high, and your spirit so firm, that I could not resist the temptation of coming to you. Mrs. Crawley, if you will let me be your friend, I shall be proud of your friendship."

"Your ladyship is too good," said Mrs. Crawley.

"Do not talk to me after that fashion," said Lady Lufton. "If you do I shall be disappointed, and feel myself thrown back. You know what I mean." She paused for an answer; but Mrs. Crawley had no answer to make. She simply shook her head, not knowing why she did so. But we may know. We can understand that she had felt that the friendship offered to her by Lady Lufton was an impossibility. She had decided within her own breast that it was so, though she did not know that she had come to such decision. "I wish you to take me at my word, Mrs. Crawley," continued Lady Lufton. "What can we do for you? We know that you are distressed."

"Yes,--we are distressed."

"And we know how cruel circumstances have been to you. Will you not forgive me for being plain?"

"I have nothing to forgive," said Mrs. Crawley.

"Lady Lufton means," said Mrs. Robarts, "that in asking you to talk openly to her of your affairs, she wishes you to remember that-- I think you know what we mean," said Mrs. Robarts, knowing very well herself what she did mean, but not knowing at all how to express herself.

"Lady Lufton is very kind," said Mrs. Crawley, "and so are you, Mrs. Robarts. I know how good you both are, and for how much it behoves me to be grateful." These words were very cold, and the voice in which they were spoken was very cold. They made Lady Lufton feel that it was beyond her power to proceed with the work of her mission in its intended spirit. It is ever so much easier to proffer kindness graciously than to receive it with grace. Lady Lufton had intended to say, "Let us be women together;--women bound by humanity, and not separated by rank, and let us open our hearts freely. Let us see how we may be of comfort to each other." And could she have succeeded in this, she would have spread out her little plans of succour with so loving a hand that she would have conquered the woman before her. But the suffering spirit cannot descend from its dignity of reticence. It has a nobility of its own, made sacred by many tears, by the flowing of streams of blood from unseen wounds, which cannot descend from its daïs to receive pity and kindness. A consciousness of undeserved woe produces a grandeur of its own, with which the high-souled sufferer will not easily part. Baskets full of eggs, pounds of eleemosynary butter, quarters of given pork, even second-hand clothing from the wardrobe of some richer sister,--even money, unsophisticated money, she could accept. She had learned to know that it was a portion of her allotted misery to take such things,--for the sake of her children and her husband,--and to be thankful for them. She did take them, and was thankful; and in the taking she submitted herself to the rod of cruel circumstances; but she could not even yet bring herself to accept spoken pity from a stranger, and to kiss the speaker.

"Can we not do something to help you?" said Mrs. Robarts. She would not have spoken but that she perceived that Lady Lufton had completed her appeal, and that Mrs. Crawley did not seem prepared to answer it.

"You have done much to help us," said Mrs. Crawley. "The things you have sent to us have been very serviceable."

"But we mean something more than that," said Lady Lufton.

"I do not know what there is more," said Mrs. Crawley. "A bit to eat and something to wear;--that seems to be all that we have to care for now."

"But we were afraid that this coming trial must cause you so much anxiety."

"Of course it causes anxiety;--but what can we do? It must be so. It cannot be put off, or avoided. We have made up our minds to it now, and almost wish that it would come quicker. If it were once over I think that he would be better whatever the result might be."

Then there was another lull in the conversation, and Lady Lufton began to be afraid that her visit would be a failure. She thought that perhaps she might get on better if Grace were not in the room, and she turned over in her mind various schemes for sending her away. And perhaps her task would be easier if Mrs. Robarts also could be banished for a time. "Fanny, my dear," she said at last, boldly, "I know you have a little plan to arrange with Miss Crawley. Perhaps you will be more likely to be successful if you can take a turn with her alone." There was not much subtlety in her ladyship's scheme; but it answered the proposed purpose, and the two elder ladies were soon left face to face, so that Lady Lufton had a fair pretext for making another attempt. "Dear Mrs. Crawley," she said, "I do so long to say a word to you, but I fear that I may be thought to interfere."

"Oh, no, Lady Lufton; I have no feeling of that kind."

"I have asked your daughter and Mrs. Robarts to go out because I can speak more easily to you alone. I wish I could teach you to trust me."

"I do trust you."

"As a friend, I mean;--as a real friend. If it should be the case, Mrs. Crawley, that a jury should give a verdict against your husband,--what will you do then? Perhaps I ought not to suppose that it is possible."

"Of course we know that is possible," said Mrs. Crawley. Her voice was stern, and there was in it a tone almost of offence. As she spoke she did not look at her visitor, but sat with her face averted and her arms akimbo on the table.

"Yes;--it is possible," said Lady Lufton. "I suppose there is not one in the county who does not truly wish that it may not be so. But it is right to be prepared for all alternatives. In such case have you thought what you will do?"

"I do not know what they would do to him," said she.

"I suppose that for some time he would be--"

"Put in prison," said Mrs. Crawley, speaking very quickly, bringing out the words with a sharp eagerness that was quite unusual to her. "They will send him to gaol. Is it not so, Lady Lufton?"

"I suppose it would be so; not for long I should hope; but I presume that such would be the sentence for some short period."

"And I might not go with him?"

"No; that would be impossible."

"And the house, and the living; would they let him have them again when he came out?"

"Ah; that I cannot say. That will depend much, probably, on what these clergymen will report. I hope he will not put himself in opposition to them."

"I do not know. I cannot say. It is probable that he may do so. It is not easy for a man so injured as he has been, and one at the same time so great in intelligence, to submit himself gently to such inquiries. When ill is being done to himself or others he is very prone to oppose it."

"But these gentlemen do not wish to do him ill, Mrs. Crawley."

"I cannot say. I do not know. When I think of it I see that there is nothing but ruin on every side. What is the use of talking of it? Do not be angry, Lady Lufton, if I say that it is of no use."

"But I desire to be of use,--of real use. If it should be the case, Mrs. Crawley, that your husband should be--detained at Barchester--"

"You mean imprisoned, Lady Lufton."

"Yes, I mean imprisoned. If it should be so, then do you bring yourself and your children,--all of them,--over to Framley, and I will find a home for you while he is lost to you."

"Oh, Lady Lufton; I could not do that."

"Yes, you can. You have not heard me yet. It would not be a comfort to you in such a home as that to sit at table with people who are partly strangers to you. But there is a cottage nearly adjoining to the house, which you shall have all to yourself. The bailiff lived in it once, and others have lived in it who belong to the place; but it is empty now and it shall be made comfortable." The tears were now running down Mrs. Crawley's face, so that she could not answer a word. "Of course it is my son's property, and not mine, but he has commissioned me to say that it is most heartily at your service. He begs that in such case you will occupy it. And I beg the same. And your old friend Lucy has desired me also to ask you in her name."

"Lady Lufton, I could not do that," said Mrs. Crawley through her tears.

"You must think better of it, my dear. I do not scruple to advise you, because I am older than you, and have experience of the world." This, I think, taken in the ordinary sense of the words, was a boast on the part of Lady Lufton, for which but little true pretence existed. Lady Lufton's experience of the world at large was not perhaps extensive. Nevertheless she knew what one woman might offer to another, and what one woman might receive from another. "You would be better over with me, my dear, than you could be elsewhere. You will not misunderstand me if I say that, under such circumstances, it would do your husband good that you and your children should be under our protection during his period of temporary seclusion. We stand well in the county. Perhaps I ought not to say so, but I do not know how otherwise to explain myself; and when it is known, by the bishop and others, that you have come to us during that sad time, it will be understood that we think well of Mr. Crawley, in spite of anything that a jury may say of him. Do you see that, my dear? And we do think well of him. I have known of your husband for many years, though I have not personally had the pleasure of much acquaintance with him. He was over at Framley once at my request, and I had great occasion then to respect him. I do respect him; and I shall feel grateful to him if he will allow you to put yourself and your children under my wing, as being an old woman, should this misfortune fall upon him. We hope that it will not fall upon him; but it is always well to be provided for the worst."

In this way Lady Lufton at last made her speech and opened out the proposal with which she had come laden to Hogglestock. While she was speaking Mrs. Crawley's shoulder was still turned to her; but the speaker could see that the quick tears were pouring themselves down the cheeks of the woman whom she addressed. There was a downright honesty of thorough-going well-wishing charity about the proposition which overcame Mrs. Crawley altogether. She did not feel for a moment that it would be possible for her to go to Framley in such circumstances as those which had been suggested. As she thought of it all at the present moment, it seemed to her that her only appropriate home during the terrible period which was coming upon her, would be under the walls of the prison in which her husband would be incarcerated. But she fully appreciated the kindness which had suggested a measure, which, if carried into execution, would make the outside world feel that her husband was respected in the county, despite the degradation to which he was subjected. She felt all this, but her heart was too full to speak.

"Say that it shall be so, my dear," continued Lady Lufton. "Just give me one nod of assent, and the cottage shall be ready for you should it so chance that you should require it."

But Mrs. Crawley did not give the nod of assent. With her face still averted, while the tears were still running down her cheeks, she muttered but a word or two. "I could not do that, Lady Lufton; I could not do that."

"You know at any rate what my wishes are, and as you become calmer you will think of it. There is quite time enough, and I am speaking of an alternative which may never happen. My dear friend Mrs. Robarts, who is now with your daughter, wishes Miss Crawley to go over to Framley Parsonage while this inquiry among the clergymen is going on. They all say it is the most ridiculous thing in all the world,--this inquiry. But the bishop you know is so silly! We all think that if Miss Crawley would go for a week or so to Framley Parsonage, that it will show how happy we all are to receive her. It should be while Mr. Robarts is employed in his part of the work. What do you say, Mrs. Crawley? We at Framley are all clearly of opinion that it will be best that it should be known that the people in the county uphold your husband. Miss Crawley would be back, you know, before the trial comes on. I hope you will let her come, Mrs. Crawley?"

But even to this proposition Mrs. Crawley could give no assent, though she expressed no direct dissent. As regarded her own feelings, she would much have preferred to have been left to live through her misery alone; but she could not but appreciate the kindness which endeavoured to throw over her and hers in their trouble the ægis of first-rate county respectability. She was saved from the necessity of giving a direct answer to this suggestion by the return of Mrs. Robarts and Grace herself. The door was opened slowly, and they crept into the room as though they were aware that their presence would be hardly welcomed.

"Is the carriage there, Fanny?" said Lady Lufton. "It is almost time for us to think of returning home."

Mrs. Robarts said that the carriage was standing within twenty yards of the door.

"Then I think we will make a start," said Lady Lufton. "Have you succeeded in persuading Miss Crawley to come over to Framley in April?"

Mrs. Robarts made no answer to this, but looked at Grace; and Grace looked down upon the ground.

"I have spoken to Mrs. Crawley," said Lady Lufton, "and they will think of it." Then the two ladies took their leave, and walked out to their carriage.

"What does she say about your plan?" Mrs. Robarts asked.

"She is too broken-hearted to say anything," Lady Lufton answered. "Should it happen that he is convicted, we must come over and take her. She will have no power then to resist us in anything."

LI. MRS. DOBBS BROUGHTON PILES HER FAGOTS

The picture still progressed up in Mrs. Dobbs Broughton's room, and the secret was still kept, or supposed to be kept. Miss Van Siever was, at any rate, certain that her mother had heard nothing of it, and Mrs. Broughton reported from day to day that her husband had not as yet interfered. Nevertheless, there was in these days a great gloom upon the Dobbs Broughton household, so much so that Conway Dalrymple had more than once suggested to Mrs. Broughton that the work should be discontinued. But the mistress of the house would not consent to this. In answer to these offers, she was wont to declare in somewhat mysterious language, that any misery coming upon herself was matter of moment to nobody,--hardly even to herself, as she was quite prepared to encounter moral and social death without delay, if not an absolute physical demise; as to which latter alternative, she seemed to think that even that might not be so far distant as some people chose to believe. What was the cause of the gloom over the house neither Conway Dalrymple nor Miss Van Siever understood, and to speak the truth Mrs. Broughton did not quite understand the cause herself. She knew well enough, no doubt, that her husband came home always sullen, and sometimes tipsy, and that things were not going well in the City. She had never understood much about the City, being satisfied with an assurance that had come to her in early days from her friends, that there was a mine of wealth in Hook Court, from whence would always come for her use, house and furniture, a carriage and horses, dresses and jewels, which latter, if not quite real, should be manufactured of the best sham substitute known. Soon after her brilliant marriage with Mr. Dobbs Broughton, she had discovered that the carriage and horses, and the sham jewels, did not lift her so completely into a terrestrial paradise as she had taught herself to expect that they would do. Her brilliant drawing-room, with Dobbs Broughton for a companion, was not an elysium. But though she had found out early in her married life that something was still wanting to her, she had by no means confessed to herself that the carriage and horses and sham jewels were bad, and it can hardly be said that she had repented. She had endeavoured to patch up matters with a little romance, and then had fallen upon Conway Dalrymple,--meaning no harm. Indeed, love with her, as it never could have meant much good, was not likely to mean much harm. That somebody should pretend to love her, to which pretence she might reply by a pretence of friendship,--this was the little excitement which she craved, and by which she had once flattered herself that something of an elysium might yet be created for her. Mr. Dobbs Broughton had unreasonably expressed a dislike to this innocent amusement,--very unreasonably, knowing, as he ought to have known, that he himself did so very little towards providing the necessary elysium by any qualities of his own. For a few weeks this interference from her husband had enhanced the amusement, giving an additional excitement to the game. She felt herself to be a woman misunderstood and ill-used; and to some women there is nothing so charming as a little mild ill-usage, which does not interfere with their creature comforts, with their clothes, or their carriage, or their sham jewels; but suffices to afford them the indulgence of a grievance. Of late, however, Mr. Dobbs Broughton had become a little too rough in his language, and things had gone uncomfortably. She suspected that Conway Dalrymple was not the only cause of all this. She had an idea that Mr. Musselboro and Mrs. Van Siever had it in their power to make themselves unpleasant, and that they were exercising this power. Of his business in the City her husband never spoke to her, nor she to him. Her own fortune had been very small, some couple of thousand pounds or so, and she conceived that she had no pretext on which she could, unasked, interrogate him about his money. She had no knowledge that marriage of itself had given her the right to such interference; and had such knowledge been hers she would have had no desire to interfere. She hoped that the carriage and sham jewels would be continued to her; but she did not know how to frame any question on the subject. Touching the other difficulty,--the Conway Dalrymple difficulty,--she had her ideas. The tenderness of her friendship had been trodden upon and outraged by the rough foot of an overbearing husband, and she was ill-used. She would obey. It was becoming to her as a wife that she should submit. She would give up Conway Dalrymple, and would induce him,--in spite of his violent attachment to herself,--to take a wife. She herself would choose a wife for him. She herself would, with suicidal hands, destroy the romance of her own life, since an overbearing, brutal husband demanded that it should be destroyed. She would sacrifice her own feelings, and do all in her power to bring Conway Dalrymple and Clara Van Siever together. If, after that, some poet did not immortalize her friendship in Byronic verse, she certainly would not get her due. Perhaps Conway Dalrymple would himself become a poet in order that this might be done properly. For it must be understood that, though she expected Conway Dalrymple to marry, she expected also that he should be Byronically wretched after his marriage on account of his love for herself.

But there was certainly something wrong over and beyond the Dalrymple difficulty. The servants were not as civil as they used to be, and her husband, when she suggested to him a little dinner-party, snubbed her most unmercifully. The giving of dinner-parties had been his glory, and she had made the suggestion simply with the view of pleasing him. "If the world were going round the wrong way, a woman would still want a party," he had said, sneering at her. "It was of you I was thinking, Dobbs," she replied; "not of myself. I care little for such gatherings." After that she retired to her own room with a romantic tear in each eye, and told herself that, had chance thrown Conway Dalrymple into her way before she had seen Dobbs Broughton, she would have been the happiest woman in the world. She sat for a while looking into vacancy, and thinking that it would be very nice to break her heart. How should she set about it? Should she take to her bed and grow thin? She would begin by eating no dinner for ever so many days together. At lunch her husband was never present, and therefore the broken heart could be displayed at dinner without much positive suffering. In the meantime she would implore Conway Dalrymple to get himself married with as little delay as possible, and she would lay upon him her positive order to restrain himself from any word of affection addressed to herself. She, at any rate, would be pure, high-minded, and self-sacrificing,--although romantic and poetic also, as was her nature.

The picture was progressing, and so also, as it had come about, was the love-affair between the artist and his model. Conway Dalrymple had begun to think that he might, after all, do worse than make Clara Van Siever his wife. Clara Van Siever was handsome, and undoubtedly clever, and Clara Van Siever's mother was certainly rich. And, in addition to this, the young lady herself began to like the man into whose society she was thrown. The affair seemed to flourish, and Mrs. Dobbs Broughton should have been delighted. She told Clara, with a very serious air, that she was delighted, bidding Clara, at the same time, to be very cautious, as men were so fickle, and as Conway, though the best fellow in the world, was not, perhaps, altogether free from that common vice of men. Indeed, it might have been surmised, from a word or two which Mrs. Broughton allowed to escape, that she considered poor Conway to be more than ordinarily afflicted in that way. Miss Van Siever at first only pouted, and said that there was nothing in it. "There is something in it, my dear, certainly," said Mrs. Dobbs Broughton; "and there can be no earthly reason why there should not be a great deal in it." "There is nothing in it," said Miss Van Siever, impetuously; "and if you will continue to speak of Mr. Dalrymple in that way, I must give up the picture." "As for that," said Mrs. Broughton, "I conceive that we are both of us bound to the young man now, seeing that he has given so much time to the work." "I am not bound to him at all," said Miss Van Siever.

Mrs. Broughton also told Conway Dalrymple that she was delighted,--oh, so much delighted! He had obtained permission to come in one morning before the time of sitting, so that he might work at his canvas independently of his model. As was his custom, he made his own way upstairs and commenced his work alone,--having been expressly told by Mrs. Broughton that she would not come to him till she brought Clara with her. But she did go up to the room in which the artist was painting, without waiting for Miss Van Siever. Indeed, she was at this time so anxious as to the future welfare of her two young friends that she could not restrain herself from speaking either to the one or to the other, whenever any opportunity for such speech came round. To have left Conway Dalrymple at work upstairs without going to him was impossible to her. So she went, and then took the opportunity of expressing to her friend her ideas as to his past and future conduct.

"Yes, it is very good; very good, indeed," she said, standing before the easel, and looking at the half-completed work. "I do not know that you ever did anything better."

"I never can tell myself till a picture is finished whether it is going to be good or not," said Dalrymple, thinking really of his picture and of nothing else.

"I am sure this will be good," she said, "and I suppose it is because you have thrown so much heart into it. It is not mere industry that will produce good work, nor yet skill, nor even genius: more than this is required. The heart of the artist must be thrust with all its gushing tides into the performance." By this time he knew all the tones of her voice and their various meanings, and immediately became aware that at the present moment she was intent upon something beyond the picture. She was preparing for a little scene, and was going to give him some advice. He understood it all, but as he was really desirous of working at his canvas, and was rather averse to having a scene at that moment, he made a little attempt to disconcert her. "It is the heart that gives success," she said, while he was considering how he might best put an extinguisher upon her romance for the occasion.

"Not at all, Mrs. Broughton; success depends on elbow-grease."

"On what, Conway?"

"On elbow-grease,--hard work, that is,--and I must work hard now if I mean to take advantage of to-day's sitting. The truth is, I don't give enough hours of work to it." And he leaned upon his stick, and daubed away briskly at the background, and then stood for a moment looking at his canvas with his head a little on one side, as though he could not withdraw his attention for a moment from the thing he was doing.

"You mean to say, Conway, that you would rather that I should not speak to you."

"Oh, no, Mrs. Broughton, I did not mean that at all."

"I won't interrupt you at your work. What I have to say is perhaps of no great moment. Indeed, words between you and me never can have much importance now. Can they, Conway?"

"I don't see that at all," said he, still working away with his brush.

"Do you not? I do. They should never amount to more,--they can never amount to more than the common, ordinary courtesies of life; what I call the greetings and good-byings of conversation." She said this in a low, melancholy tone of voice, not intending to be in any degree jocose. "How seldom is it that conversation between ordinary friends goes beyond that."

"Don't you think it does?" said Conway, stepping back and taking another look at his picture. "I find myself talking to all manner of people about all manner of things."

"You are different from me. I cannot talk to all manner of people."

"Politics, you know, and art, and a little scandal, and the wars, with a dozen other things, make talking easy enough, I think. I grant you this, that it is very often a great bore. Hardly a day passes that I don't wish to cut out somebody's tongue."

"Do you wish to cut out my tongue, Conway?"

He began to perceive that she was determined to talk about herself, and that there was no remedy. He dreaded it, not because he did not like the woman, but from a conviction that she was going to make some comparison between herself and Clara Van Siever. In his ordinary humour he liked a little pretence at romance, and was rather good at that sort of love-making which in truth means anything but love. But just now he was really thinking of matrimony, and had on this very morning acknowledged to himself that he had become sufficiently attached to Clara Van Siever to justify him in asking her to be his wife. In his present mood he was not anxious for one of those tilts with blunted swords and half-severed lances in the lists of Cupid of which Mrs. Dobbs Broughton was so fond. Nevertheless, if she insisted that he should now descend into the arena and go through the paraphernalia of a mock tournament, he must obey her. It is the hardship of men that when called upon by women for romance, they are bound to be romantic, whether the opportunity serves them or does not. A man must produce romance, or at least submit to it, when duly summoned, even though he should have a sore-throat or a headache. He is a brute if he decline such an encounter,--and feels that, should he so decline persistently, he will ever after be treated as a brute. There are many Potiphar's wives who never dream of any mischief, and Josephs who are very anxious to escape, though they are asked to return only whisper for whisper. Mrs. Dobbs Broughton had asked him whether he wished that her tongue should be cut out, and he had of course replied that her words had always been a joy to him,--never a trouble. It occurred to him as he made his little speech that it would only have served her right if he had answered her quite in another strain; but she was a woman, and was young and pretty, and was entitled to flattery. "They have always been a joy to me," he said, repeating his last words as he strove to continue his work.

"A deadly joy," she replied, not quite knowing what she herself meant. "A deadly joy, Conway. I wish with all my heart that we had never known each other."

"I do not. I will never wish away the happiness of my life, even should it be followed by misery."

"You are a man, and if trouble comes upon you, you can bear it on your own shoulders. A woman suffers more, just because another's shoulders may have to bear the burden."

"When she has got a husband, you mean?"

"Yes,--when she has a husband."

"It's the same with a man when he has a wife." Hitherto the conversation had had so much of milk-and-water in its composition, that Dalrymple found himself able to keep it up and go on with his background at the same time. If she could only be kept in the same dim cloud of sentiment, if the hot rays of the sun of romance could be kept from breaking through the mist till Miss Van Siever should come, it might still be well. He had known her to wander about within the clouds for an hour together, without being able to find her way into the light. "It's all the same with a man when he has got a wife," he said. "Of course one has to suffer for two, when one, so to say, is two."

"And what happens when one has to suffer for three?" she asked.

"You mean when a woman has children?"

"I mean nothing of the kind, Conway; and you must know that I do not, unless your feelings are indeed blunted. But worldly success has, I suppose, blunted them."

"I rather fancy not," he said. "I think they are pretty nearly as sharp as ever."

"I know mine are. Oh, how I wish I could rid myself of them! But it cannot be done. Age will not blunt them,--I am sure of that," said Mrs. Broughton. "I wish it would."

He had determined not to talk about herself if the subject could be in any way avoided; but now he felt that he was driven up into a corner;--now he was forced to speak to her of her own personality. "You have no experience yet as to that. How can you say what age will do?"

"Age does not go by years," said Mrs. Dobbs Broughton. "We all know that. 'His hair was grey, but not with years.' Look here, Conway," and she moved back her tresses from off her temples to show him that there were gray hairs behind. He did not see them; and had they been very visible she might not perhaps have been so ready to exhibit them. "No one can say that length of years has blanched them. I have no secrets from you about my age. One should not be grey before one has reached thirty."

"I did not see a changed hair."

"'Twas the fault of your eyes, then, for there are plenty of them. And what is it has made them grey?"

"They say that hot rooms will do it."

"Hot rooms! No, Conway, it does not come from heated atmosphere. It comes from a cold heart, a chilled heart, a frozen heart, a heart that is all ice." She was getting out of the cloud into the heat now, and he could only hope that Miss Van Siever would come soon. "The world is beginning with you, Conway, and yet you are as old as I am. It is ending with me, and yet I am as young as you are. But I do not know why I talk of all this. It is simply folly,--utter folly. I had not meant to speak of myself; but I did wish to say a few words to you of your own future. I suppose I may still speak to you as a friend?"

"I hope you will always do that."

"Nay,--I will make no such promise. That I will always have a friend's feeling for you, a friend's interest in your welfare, a friend's triumph in your success,--that I will promise. But friendly words, Conway, are sometimes misunderstood."

"Never by me," said he.

"No, not by you,--certainly not by you. I did not mean that. I did not expect that you should misinterpret them." Then she laughed hysterically,--a little low, gurgling, hysterical laugh; and after that she wiped her eyes, and then she smiled, and then she put her hand very gently upon his shoulder. "Thank God, Conway, we are quite safe there,--are we not?"

He had made a blunder, and it was necessary that he should correct it. His watch was lying in the trough of his easel, and he looked at it and wondered why Miss Van Siever was not there. He had tripped, and he must make a little struggle and recover his step. "As I said before, it shall never be misunderstood by me. I have never been vain enough to suppose for a moment that there was any other feeling,--not for a moment. You women can be so careful, while we men are always off our guard! A man loves because he cannot help it; but a woman has been careful, and answers him--with friendship. Perhaps I am wrong to say that I never thought of winning anything more; but I never think of winning more now." Why the mischief didn't Miss Van Siever come! In another five minutes, despite himself, he would be on his knees, making a mock declaration, and she would be pouring forth the vial of her mock wrath, or giving him mock counsel as to the restraint of his passion. He had gone through it all before, and was tired of it; but for his life he did not know how to help himself.

"Conway," said she, gravely, "how dare you address me in such language?"

"Of course it is very wrong; I know that."

"I'm not speaking of myself, now. I have learned to think so little of myself, as even to be indifferent to the feeling of the injury you are doing me. My life is a blank, and I almost think that nothing can hurt me further. I have not heart left enough to break; no, not enough to be broken. It is not of myself that I am thinking, when I ask you how you dare to address me in such language. Do you not know that it is an injury to another?"

"To what other?" asked Conway Dalrymple, whose mind was becoming rather confused, and who was not quite sure whether the other one was Mr. Dobbs Broughton, or somebody else.

"To that poor girl who is coming here now, who is devoted to you, and to whom, I do not doubt, you have uttered words which ought to have made it impossible for you to speak to me as you spoke not a moment since."

Things were becoming very grave and difficult. They would have been very grave, indeed, had not some god saved him by sending Miss Van Siever to his rescue at this moment. He was beginning to think what he would say in answer to the accusation now made, when his eager ear caught the sound of her step upon the stairs; and before the pause in the conversation which the circumstances admitted had given place to the necessity for further speech, Miss Van Siever had knocked at the door and had entered the room. He was rejoiced, and I think that Mrs. Broughton did not regret the interference. It is always well that these little dangerous scenes should be brought to sudden ends. The last details of such romances, if drawn out to their natural conclusions, are apt to be uncomfortable, if not dull. She did not want him to go down on his knees, knowing that the getting up again is always awkward.

"Clara, I began to think you were never coming," said Mrs. Broughton, with her sweetest smile.

"I began to think so myself also," said Clara. "And I believe this must be the last sitting, or, at any rate, the last but one."

"Is anything the matter at home?" said Mrs. Broughton, clasping her hands together.

"Nothing very much; mamma asked me a question or two this morning, and I said I was coming here. Had she asked me why, I should have told her."

"But what did she ask? What did she say?"

"She does not always make herself very intelligible. She complains without telling you what she complains of. But she muttered something about artists which was not complimentary, and I suppose, therefore, that she has a suspicion. She stayed ever so late this morning, and we left the house together. She will ask some direct question to-night, or before long, and then there will be an end of it."

"Let us make the best of our time then," said Dalrymple; and the sitting was arranged; Miss Van Siever went down on her knees with her hammer in her hand, and the work began. Mrs. Broughton had twisted a turban round Clara's head, as she always did on these occasions, and assisted to arrange the drapery. She used to tell herself as she did so, that she was like Isaac, piling the fagots for her own sacrifice. Only Isaac had piled them in ignorance, and she piled them conscious of the sacrificial flames. And Isaac had been saved; whereas it was impossible that the catching of any ram in any thicket could save her. But, nevertheless, she arranged the drapery with all her skill, piling the fagots ever so high for her own pyre. In the meantime Conway Dalrymple painted away, thinking more of his picture than he did of one woman or of the other.

After a while, when Mrs. Broughton had piled the fagots as high as she could pile them, she got up from her seat and prepared to leave the room. Much of the piling consisted, of course, in her own absence during a portion of these sittings. "Conway," she said, as she went, "if this is to be the last sitting, or the last but one, you should make the most of it." Then she threw upon him a very peculiar glance over the head of the kneeling Jael, and withdrew. Jael, who in those moments would be thinking more of the fatigue of her position than of anything else, did not at all take home to herself the peculiar meaning of her friend's words. Conway Dalrymple understood them thoroughly, and thought that he might as well take the advice given to him. He had made up his mind to propose to Miss Van Siever, and why should he not do so now? He went on with his brush for a couple of minutes without saying a word, working as well as he could work, and then resolved that he would at once begin the other task. "Miss Van Siever," he said, "I'm afraid you are tired?"

"Not more than usually tired. It is fatiguing to be slaying Sisera by the hour together. I do get to hate this block." The block was the dummy by which the form of Sisera was supposed to be typified.

"Another sitting will about finish it," said he, "so that you need not positively distress yourself now. Will you rest yourself for a minute or two?" He had already perceived that the attitude in which Clara was posed before him was not one in which an offer of marriage could be received and replied to with advantage.

"Thank you, I am not tired yet," said Clara, not changing the fixed glance of national wrath with which she regarded her wooden Sisera as she held her hammer on high.

"But I am. There; we will rest for a moment." Dalrymple was aware that Mrs. Dobbs Broughton, though she was very assiduous in piling her fagots, never piled them for long together. If he did not make haste she would be back upon them before he could get his word spoken. When he put down his brush, and got up from his chair, and stretched out his arm as a man does when he ceases for a moment from his work, Clara of course got up also, and seated herself. She was used to her turban and her drapery, and therefore thought not of it at all; and he also was used to it, seeing her in it two or three times a week; but now that he intended to accomplish a special purpose, the turban and the drapery seemed to be in the way. "I do so hope you will like the picture," he said, as he was thinking of this.

"I don't think I shall. But you will understand that it is natural that a girl should not like herself in such a portraiture as that."

"I don't know why. I can understand that you specially should not like the picture; but I think that most women in London in your place would at any rate say that they did."

"Are you angry with me?"

"What; for telling the truth? No, indeed." He was standing opposite to his easel, looking at the canvas, shifting his head about so as to change the lights, and observing critically this blemish and that; and yet he was all the while thinking how he had best carry out his purpose. "It will have been a prosperous picture to me," he said at last, "if it leads to the success of which I am ambitious."

"I am told that all you do is successful now,--merely because you do it. That is the worst of success."

"What is the worst of success?"

"That when won by merit it leads to further success, for the gaining of which no merit is necessary."

"I hope it may be so in my case. If it is not I shall have a very poor chance. Clara, I think you must know that I am not talking about my pictures."

"I thought you were."

"Indeed I am not. As for success in my profession, far as I am from thinking I merit it, I feel tolerably certain that I shall obtain it."

"You have obtained it."

"I am in the way to do so. Perhaps one out of ten struggling artists is successful, and for him the profession is very charming. It is certainly a sad feeling that there is so much of chance in the distribution of the prizes. It is a lottery. But one cannot complain of that when one has drawn the prize." Dalrymple was not a man without self-possession, nor was he readily abashed, but he found it easier to talk of his possession than to make his offer. The turban was his difficulty. He had told himself over and over again within the last five minutes, that he would have long since said what he had to say had it not been for the turban. He had been painting all his life from living models,--from women dressed up in this or that costume, to suit the necessities of his picture,--but he had never made love to any of them. They had been simply models to him, and now he found that there was a difficulty. "Of that prize," he said, "I have made myself tolerably sure; but as to the other prize, I do not know. I wonder whether I am to have that." Of course Miss Van Siever understood well what was the prize of which he was speaking; and as she was a young woman with a will and purpose of her own, no doubt she was already prepared with an answer. But it was necessary that the question should be put to her in properly distinct terms. Conway Dalrymple certainly had not put his question in properly distinct terms at present. She did not choose to make any answer to his last words; and therefore simply suggested that as time was pressing he had better go on with his work. "I am quite ready now," said she.

"Stop half a moment. How much more you are thinking of the picture than I am! I do not care twopence for the picture. I will slit the canvas from top to bottom without a groan,--without a single inner groan,--if you will let me."

"For heaven's sake do nothing of the kind! Why should you?"

"Just to show you that it is not for the sake of the picture that I come here. Clara--" Then the door was opened, and Isaac appeared, very weary, having been piling fagots with assiduity, till human nature could pile no more. Conway Dalrymple, who had made his way almost up to Clara's seat, turned round sharply towards his easel, in anger at having been disturbed. He should have been more grateful for all that his Isaac had done for him, and have recognized the fact that the fault had been with himself. Mrs. Broughton had been twelve minutes out of the room. She had counted them to be fifteen,--having no doubt made a mistake as to three,--and had told herself that with such a one as Conway Dalrymple, with so much of the work ready done to his hand for him, fifteen minutes should have been amply sufficient. When we reflect what her own thoughts must have been during the interval,--what it is to have to pile up such fagots as those, how she was, as it were, giving away a fresh morsel of her own heart during each minute that she allowed Clara and Conway Dalrymple to remain together, it cannot surprise us that her eyes should have become dizzy, and that she should not have counted the minutes with accurate correctness. Dalrymple turned to his picture angrily, but Miss Van Siever kept her seat and did not show the slightest emotion.

"My friends," said Mrs. Broughton, "this will not do. This is not working; this is not sitting."

"Mr. Dalrymple has been explaining to me the precarious nature of an artist's profession," said Clara.

"It is not precarious with him," said Mrs. Dobbs Broughton, sententiously.

"Not in a general way, perhaps; but to prove the truth of his words he was going to treat Jael worse than Jael treats Sisera."

"I was going to slit the picture from the top to the bottom."

"And why?" said Mrs. Broughton, putting up her hands to heaven in tragic horror.

"Just to show Miss Van Siever how little I care about it."

"And how little you care about her, too," said Mrs. Broughton.

"She might take that as she liked." After this there was another genuine sitting, and the real work went on as though there had been no episode. Jael fixed her face, and held her hammer as though her mind and heart were solely bent on seeming to be slaying Sisera. Dalrymple turned his eyes from the canvas to the model, and from the model to the canvas, working with his hand all the while, as though that last pathetic "Clara" had never been uttered; and Mrs. Dobbs Broughton reclined on a sofa, looking at them and thinking of her own singularly romantic position, till her mind was filled with a poetic frenzy. In one moment she resolved that she would hate Clara as woman was never hated by woman; and then there were daggers, and poison-cups, and strangling cords in her eye. In the next she was as firmly determined that she would love Mrs. Conway Dalrymple as woman never was loved by woman; and then she saw herself kneeling by a cradle, and tenderly nursing a baby, of which Conway was to be the father and Clara the mother. And so she went to sleep.

For some time Dalrymple did not observe this; but at last there was a little sound,--even the ill-nature of Miss Demolines could hardly have called it a snore,--and he became aware that for practical purposes he and Miss Van Siever were again alone together. "Clara," he said, in a whisper. Mrs. Broughton instantly aroused herself from her slumbers, and rubbed her eyes. "Dear, dear, dear," she said, "I declare it's past one. I'm afraid I must turn you both out. One more sitting, I suppose, will finish it, Conway?"

"Yes, one more," said he. It was always understood that he and Clara should not leave the house together, and therefore he remained painting when she left the room. "And now, Conway," said Mrs. Broughton, "I suppose that all is over?"

"I don't know what you mean by all being over."

"No,--of course not. You look at it in another light, no doubt. Everything is beginning for you. But you must pardon me, for my heart is distracted,--distracted,--distracted!" Then she sat down upon the floor, and burst into tears. What was he to do? He thought that the woman should either give him up altogether, or not give him up. All this fuss about it was irrational! He would not have made love to Clara Van Siever in her room if she had not told him to do so!

"Maria," he said, in a very grave voice, "any sacrifice that is required on my part on your behalf I am ready to make."

"No, sir; the sacrifices shall all be made by me. It is the part of a woman to be ever sacrificial!" Poor Mrs. Dobbs Broughton! "You shall give up nothing. The world is at your feet, and you shall have everything,--youth, beauty, wealth, station, love,--love; and friendship also, if you will accept it from one so poor, so broken, so secluded as I shall be." At each of the last words there had been a desperate sob; and as she was still crouching in the middle of the room, looking up into Dalrymple's face while he stood over her, the scene was one which had much in it that transcended the doings of everyday life, much that would be ever memorable, and much, I have no doubt, that was thoroughly enjoyed by the principal actor. As for Conway Dalrymple, he was so second-rate a personage in the whole thing, that it mattered little whether he enjoyed it or not. I don't think he did enjoy it. "And now, Conway," she said, "I will give you some advice. And when in after-days you shall remember this interview, and reflect how that advice was given you,--with what solemnity,"--here she clasped both her hands together,--"I think that you will follow it. Clara Van Siever will now become your wife."

"I do not know that at all," said Dalrymple.

"Clara Van Siever will now become your wife," repeated Mrs. Broughton in a louder voice, impatient of opposition. "Love her. Cleave to her. Make her flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone. But rule her! Yes, rule her! Let her be your second self, but not your first self. Rule her. Love her. Cleave to her. Do not leave her alone, to feed on her own thoughts as I have done,--as I have been forced to do. Now go. No, Conway, not a word; I will not hear a word. You must go, or I must." Then she rose quickly from her lowly attitude, and prepared herself for a dart at the door. It was better by far that he should go, and so he went.

An American when he has spent a pleasant day will tell you that he has had "a good time." I think that Mrs. Dobbs Broughton, if she had ever spoken the truth of that day's employment, would have acknowledged that she had had "a good time." I think that she enjoyed her morning's work. But as for Conway Dalrymple, I doubt whether he did enjoy his morning's work. "A man may have too much of this sort of thing, and then he becomes very sick of his cake." Such was the nature of his thoughts as he returned to his own abode.

LII. WHY DON'T YOU HAVE AN "IT" FOR YOURSELF?

Of course it came to pass that Lily Dale and Emily Dunstable were soon very intimate, and that they saw each other every day. Indeed, before long they would have been living together in the same house had it not been that the squire had felt reluctant to abandon the independence of his own lodgings. When Mrs. Thorne had pressed her invitation for the second, and then for the third time, asking them both to come to her large house, he had begged his niece to go and leave him alone. "You need not regard me," he had said, speaking not with the whining voice of complaint, but with that thin tinge of melancholy which was usual to him. "I am so much alone down at Allington, that you need not mind leaving me." But Lily would not go on those terms, and therefore they still lived together in the lodgings. Nevertheless Lily was every day at Mrs. Thorne's house, and thus a great intimacy grew up between the girls. Emily Dunstable had neither brother nor sister, and Lily's nearest male relative in her own degree was now Miss Dunstable's betrothed husband. It was natural therefore that they should at any rate try to like each other. It afterwards came to pass that Lily did go to Mrs. Thorne's house, and she stayed there for awhile; but when that occurred the squire had gone back to Allington.

Among other generous kindnesses Mrs. Thorne insisted that Bernard should hire a horse for his cousin Lily. Emily Dunstable rode daily, and of course Captain Dale rode with her;--and now Lily joined the party. Almost before she knew what was being done she found herself provided with hat and habit and horse and whip. It was a way with Mrs. Thorne that they who came within the influence of her immediate sphere should be made to feel that the comforts and luxuries arising from her wealth belonged to a common stock, and were the joint property of them all. Things were not offered and taken and talked about, but they made their appearance, and were used as a matter of course. If you go to stay at a gentleman's house you understand that, as a matter of course, you will be provided with meat and drink. Some hosts furnish you also with cigars. A small number give you stabling and forage for your horse; and a very select few mount you on hunting days, and send you out with a groom and a second horse. Mrs. Thorne went beyond all others in this open-handed hospitality. She had enormous wealth at her command, and had but few of those all-absorbing drains upon wealth which in this country make so many rich men poor. She had no family property,--no place to keep up in which she did not live. She had no retainers to be maintained because they were retainers. She had neither sons nor daughters. Consequently she was able to be lavish in her generosity; and as her heart was very lavish, she would have given her friends gold to eat had gold been good for eating. Indeed there was no measure in her giving,--unless when the idea came upon her that the recipient of her favours was trading on them. Then she could hold her hand very stoutly.

Lily Dale had not liked the idea of being fitted out thus expensively. A box at the opera was all very well, as it was not procured especially for her. And tickets for other theatres did not seem to come unnaturally for a night or two. But her spirit had militated against the hat and the habit and the horse. The whip was a little present from Emily Dunstable, and that of course was accepted with a good grace. Then there came the horse,--as though from the heavens; there seemed to be ten horses, twenty horses, if anybody needed them. All these things seemed to flow naturally into Mrs. Thorne's establishment, like air through the windows. It was very pleasant, but Lily hesitated when she was told that a habit was to be given to her. "My dear old aunt insists," said Emily Dunstable. "Nobody ever thinks of refusing anything from her. If you only knew what some people will take, and some people will even ask, who have nothing to do with her at all!" "But I have nothing to do with her,--in that way I mean," said Lily. "Oh, yes, you have," said Emily. "You and Bernard are as good as brother and sister, and Bernard and I are as good as man and wife, and my aunt and I are as good as mother and daughter. So you see, in a sort of a way you are a child of the house." So Lily accepted the habit; but made a stand at the hat, and paid for that out of her own pocket. When the squire had seen Lily on horseback he asked her questions about it. "It was a hired horse, I suppose?" he said. "I think it came direct from heaven," said Lily. "What do you mean, Lily?" said the squire, angrily. "I mean that when people are so rich and good-natured as Mrs. Thorne it is no good inquiring where things come from. All that I know is that the horses come out of Potts' livery-stable. They talk of Potts as if he were a good-natured man who provides horses for the world without troubling anybody." Then the squire spoke to Bernard about it, saying that he should insist on defraying his niece's expenses. But Bernard swore that he could give his uncle no assistance. "I would not speak to her about such a thing for all the world," said Bernard. "Then I shall," said the squire.

In those days Lily thought much of Johnny Eames,--gave to him perhaps more of that thought which leads to love than she had ever given him before. She still heard the Crawley question discussed every day. Mrs. Thorne, as we all know, was at this time a Barsetshire personage, and was of course interested in Barsetshire subjects; and she was specially anxious in the matter, having strong hopes with reference to the marriage of Major Grantly and Grace, and strong hopes also that Grace's father might escape the fangs of justice. The Crawley case was constantly in Lily's ears, and as constantly she heard high praise awarded to Johnny for his kindness in going after the Arabins. "He must be a fine young fellow," said Mrs. Thorne, "and we'll have him down at Chaldicotes some day. Old Lord De Guest found him out and made a friend of him, and old Lord De Guest was no fool." Lily was not altogether free from a suspicion that Mrs. Thorne knew the story of Johnny's love and was trying to serve Johnny,--as other people had tried to do, very ineffectually. When this suspicion came upon her she would shut her heart against her lover's praises, and swear that she would stand by those two letters which she had written in her book at home. But the suspicion would not be always there, and there did come upon her a conviction that her lover was more esteemed among men and women than she had been accustomed to believe. Her cousin, Bernard Dale, who certainly was regarded in the world as somebody, spoke of him as his equal; whereas in former days Bernard had always regarded Johnny Eames as standing low in the world's regard. Then Lily, when alone, would remember a certain comparison which she once made between Adolphus Crosbie and John Eames, when neither of the men had as yet pleaded his cause to her, and which had been very much in favour of the former. She had then declared that Johnny was a "mere clerk." She had a higher opinion of him now,--a much higher opinion, even though he could never be more to her than a friend.

In these days Lily's new ally, Emily Dunstable, seemed to Lily to be so happy! There was in Emily a complete realization of that idea of ante-nuptial blessedness of which Lily had often thought so much. Whatever Emily did she did for Bernard; and, to give Captain Dale his due, he received all the sweets which were showered upon him with becoming signs of gratitude. I suppose it is always the case at such times that the girl has the best of it, and on this occasion Emily Dunstable certainly made the most of her happiness. "I do envy you," Lily said one day. The acknowledgment seemed to have been extorted from her involuntarily. She did not laugh as she spoke, or follow up what she had said with other words intended to take away the joke of what she had uttered,--had it been a joke; but she sat silent, looking at the girl who was re-arranging flowers which Bernard had brought to her.

"I can't give him up to you, you know," said Emily.

"I don't envy you him, but 'it,'" said Lily.

"Then go and get an 'it' for yourself. Why don't you have an 'it' for yourself? You can have an 'it' to-morrow, if you like,--or two or three, if all that I hear is true."

"No, I can't," said Lily. "Things have gone wrong with me. Don't ask me anything more about it. Pray don't. I shan't speak of it if you do."

"Of course I will not if you tell me I must not."

"I do tell you so. I have been a fool to say anything about it. However, I have got over my envy now, and am ready to go out with your aunt. Here she is."

"Things have gone wrong with me." She repeated the same words to herself over and over again. With all the efforts which she had made she could not quite reconcile herself to the two letters which she had written in the book. This coming up to London, and riding in the Park, and going to the theatres, seemed to unsettle her. At home she had schooled herself down into quiescence, and made herself think that she believed that she was satisfied with the prospects of her life. But now she was all astray again, doubting about herself, hankering after something over and beyond that which seemed to be allotted to her,--but, nevertheless, assuring herself that she never would accept of anything else.

I must not, if I can help it, let the reader suppose that she was softening her heart to John Eames because John Eames was spoken well of in the world. But with all of us, in the opinion which we form of those around us, we take unconsciously the opinion of others. A woman is handsome because the world says so. Music is charming to us because it charms others. We drink our wines with other men's palates, and look at our pictures with other men's eyes. When Lily heard John Eames praised by all around her, it could not be but that she should praise him too,--not out loud, as others did, but in the silence of her heart. And then his constancy to her had been so perfect! If that other one had never come! If it could be that she might begin again, and that she might be spared that episode in her life which had brought him and her together!

"When is Mr. Eames going to be back?" Mrs. Thorne said at dinner one day. On this occasion the squire was dining at Mrs. Thorne's house; and there were three or four others there,--among them a Mr. Harold Smith, who was in Parliament, and his wife, and John Eames's especial friend, Sir Raffle Buffle. The question was addressed to the squire, but the squire was slow to answer, and it was taken up by Sir Raffle Buffle.

"He'll be back on the 15th," said the knight, "unless he means to play truant. I hope he won't do that, as his absence has been a terrible inconvenience to me." Then Sir Raffle explained that John Eames was his private secretary, and that Johnny's journey to the Continent had been made with, and could not have been made without, his sanction. "When I came to hear the story, of course I told him that he must go. 'Eames,' I said, 'take the advice of a man who knows the world. Circumstanced as you are, you are bound to go.' And he went."

"Upon my word that was very good-natured of you," said Mrs. Thorne.

"I never keep a fellow to his desk who has really got important business elsewhere," said Sir Raffle. "The country, I say, can afford to do as much as that for her servants. But then I like to know that the business is business. One doesn't choose to be humbugged."

"I daresay you are humbugged, as you call it, very often," said Harold Smith.

"Perhaps so; perhaps I am; perhaps that is the opinion which they have of me at the Treasury. But you were hardly long enough there, Smith, to have learned much about it, I should say."

"I don't suppose I should have known much about it, as you call it, if I had stayed till Doomsday."

"I daresay not; I daresay not. Men who begin as late as you did never know what official life really means. Now I've been at it all my life, and I think I do understand it."

"It's not a profession I should like unless where it's joined with politics," said Harold Smith.

"But then it's apt to be so short," said Sir Raffle Buffle. Now it had happened once in the life of Mr. Harold Smith that he had been in a Ministry, but, unfortunately, that Ministry had gone out almost within a week of the time of Mr. Smith's adhesion. Sir Raffle and Mr. Smith had known each other for many years, and were accustomed to make civil little speeches to each other in society.

"I'd sooner be a horse in a mill than have to go to an office every day," said Mrs. Smith, coming to her husband's assistance. "You, Sir Raffle, have kept yourself fresh and pleasant through it all; but who besides you ever did?"

"I hope I am fresh," said Sir Raffle; "and as for pleasantness, I will leave that for you to determine."

"There can be but one opinion," said Mrs. Thorne.

The conversation had strayed away from John Eames, and Lily was disappointed. It was a pleasure to her when people talked of him in her hearing, and as a question or two had been asked about him, making him the hero of the moment, it seemed to her that he was being robbed of his due when the little amenities between Mr. and Mrs. Harold Smith and Sir Raffle banished his name from the circle. Nothing more, however, was said of him at dinner, and I fear that he would have been altogether forgotten throughout the evening, had not Lily herself referred,--not to him, which she could not possibly have been induced to do,--but to the subject of his journey. "I wonder whether poor Mr. Crawley will be found guilty?" she said to Sir Raffle up in the drawing-room.

"I am afraid he will; I am afraid he will," said Sir Raffle; "and I fear, my dear Miss Dale, that I must go further than that. I fear I must express an opinion that he is guilty."

"Nothing will ever make me think so," said Lily.

"Ladies are always tender-hearted," said Sir Raffle, "and especially young ladies,--and especially pretty young ladies. I do not wonder that such should be your opinion. But you see, Miss Dale, a man of business has to look at these things in a business light. What I want to know is, where did he get the cheque? He is bound to be explicit in answering that before anybody can acquit him."

"That is just what Mr. Eames has gone abroad to learn."

"It is very well for Eames to go abroad,--though, upon my word, I don't know whether I should not have given him different advice if I had known how much I was to be tormented by his absence. The thing couldn't have happened at a more unfortunate time;--the Ministry going out, and everything. But, as I was saying, it is all very well for him to do what he can. He is related to them, and is bound to save the honour of his relations if it be possible. I like him for going. I always liked him. As I said to my friend De Guest, 'That young man will make his way.' And I rather fancy that the chance word which I spoke then to my valued old friend was not thrown away in Eames's favour. But, my dear Miss Dale, where did Mr. Crawley get that cheque? That's what I want to know. If you can tell me that, then I can tell you whether or no he will be acquitted."

Lily did not feel a strong prepossession in favour of Sir Raffle, in spite of his praise of John Eames. The harsh voice of the man annoyed her, and his egotism offended her. When, much later in the evening, his character came on for discussion between herself and Mrs. Thorne and Emily Dunstable, she had not a word to say in his favour. But still she had been pleased to meet him, because he was the man with whom Johnny's life was most specially concerned. I think that a portion of her dislike to him arose from the fact that in continuing the conversation he did not revert to his private secretary, but preferred to regale her with stories of his own doings in wonderful cases which had partaken of interest similar to that which now attached itself to Mr. Crawley's case. He had known a man who had stolen a hundred pounds, and had never been found out; and another man who had been arrested for stealing two-and-sixpence which was found afterwards sticking to a bit of butter at the bottom of a plate. Mrs. Thorne had heard all this, and had answered him, "Dear me, Sir Raffle," she had said, "what a great many thieves you have had among your acquaintance!" This had rather disconcerted him, and then there had been no more talking about Mr. Crawley.

It had been arranged on this morning that Mr. Dale should return to Allington and leave Lily with Mrs. Thorne. Some special need of his presence at home, real or assumed, had arisen, and he had declared that he must shorten his stay in London by about half the intended period. The need would not have been so pressing, probably, had he not felt that Lily would be more comfortable with Mrs. Thorne than in his lodgings in Sackville Street. Lily had at first declared that she would return with him, but everybody had protested against this. Emily Dunstable had protested against it very stoutly; Mrs. Dale herself had protested against it by letter; and Mrs. Thorne's protest had been quite imperious in its nature. "Indeed, my dear, you'll do nothing of the kind. I'm sure your mother wouldn't wish it. I look upon it as quite essential that you and Emily should learn to know each other." "But we do know each other; don't we, Emily?" said Lily. "Not quite well yet," said Emily. Then Lily had laughed, and so the matter was settled. And now, on this present occasion, Mr. Dale was at Mrs. Thorne's house for the last time. His conscience had been perplexed about Lily's horse, and if anything was to be said it must be said now. The subject was very disagreeable to him, and he was angry with Bernard because Bernard had declined to manage it for him after his own fashion. But he had told himself so often that anything was better than a pecuniary obligation, that he was determined to speak his mind to Mrs. Thorne, and to beg her to allow him to have his way. So he waited till the Harold Smiths were gone, and Sir Raffle Buffle, and then, when Lily was apart with Emily,--for Bernard Dale had left them,--he found himself at last alone with Mrs. Thorne.

"I can't be too much obliged to you," he said, "for your kindness to my girl."

"Oh, laws, that's nothing," said Mrs. Thorne. "We look on her as one of us now."

"I'm sure she is grateful,--very grateful; and so am I. She and Bernard have been brought up so much together that it is very desirable that she should be not unknown to Bernard's wife."

"Exactly,--that's just what I mean. Blood's thicker than water; isn't it? Emily's child, if she has one, will be Lily's cousin."

"Her first-cousin once removed," said the squire, who was accurate in these matters. Then he drew himself up in his seat and compressed his lips together, and prepared himself for his task. It was very disagreeable. Nothing, he thought, could be more disagreeable. "I have a little thing to speak about," he said at last, "which I hope will not offend you."

"About Lily?"

"Yes; about Lily."

"I'm not very easily offended, and I don't know how I could possibly be offended about her."

"I'm an old-fashioned man, Mrs. Thorne, and don't know much about the ways of the world. I have always been down in the country, and maybe I have prejudices. You won't refuse to humour one of them, I hope?"

"You're beginning to frighten me, Mr. Dale; what is it?"

"About Lily's horse."

"Lily's horse! What about her horse? I hope he's not vicious?"

"She is riding every day with your niece," said the squire, thinking it best to stick to his own point.

"It will do her all the good in the world," said Mrs. Thorne.

"Very likely. I don't doubt it. I do not in the least disapprove her riding. But--"

"But what, Mr. Dale?"

"I should be so much obliged if I might be allowed to pay the livery-stable keeper's bill."

"Oh, laws a' mercy."

"I daresay it may sound odd, but as I have a fancy about it, I'm sure you'll gratify me."

"Of course I will. I'll remember it. I'll make it all right with Bernard. Bernard and I have no end of accounts,--or shall have before long,--and we'll make an item of it. Then you can arrange with Bernard afterwards."

Mr. Dale as he got up to go away felt that he was beaten, but he did not know how to carry the battle any further on that occasion. He could not take out his purse and put down the cost of the horse on the table. "I will then speak to my nephew about it," he said, very gravely, as he went away. And he did speak to his nephew about it, and even wrote to him more than once. But it was all to no purpose. Mr. Potts could not be induced to give a separate bill, and,--so said Bernard,--swore at last that he would furnish no account to anybody for horses that went to Mrs. Thorne's door except to Mrs. Thorne herself.

That night Lily took leave of her uncle and remained at Mrs. Thorne's house. As things were now arranged she would, no doubt, be in London when John Eames returned. If he should find her in town--and she told herself that if she was in town he certainly would find her,--he would, doubtless, repeat to her the offer he had so often made before. She never ventured to tell herself that she doubted as to the answer to be made to him. The two letters were written in the book, and must remain there. But she felt that she would have had more courage for persistency down at Allington than she would be able to summon to her assistance up in London. She knew she would be weak, should she be found by him alone in Mrs. Thorne's drawing-room. It would be better for her to make some excuse and go home. She was resolved that she would not become his wife. She could not extricate herself from the dominion of a feeling which she believed to be love for another man. She had given a solemn promise both to her mother and to John Eames that she would not marry that other man; but in doing so she had made a solemn promise to herself that she would not marry John Eames. She had sworn it and would keep her oath. And yet she regretted it! In writing home to her mother the next day, she told Mrs. Dale that all the world was speaking well of John Eames,--that John had won for himself a reputation of his own, and was known far and wide to be a noble fellow. She could not keep herself from praising John Eames, though she knew that such praise might, and would, be used against her at some future time. "Though I cannot love him I will give him his due," she said to herself.

"I wish you would make up your mind to have an 'it' for yourself," Emily Dunstable said to her again that night; "a nice 'it,' so that I could make a friend, perhaps a brother, of him."

"I shall never have an 'it,' if I live to be a hundred," said Lily Dale.

LIII. ROTTEN ROW

Lily had heard nothing as to the difficulty about her horse, and could therefore enjoy her exercise without the drawback of feeling that her uncle was subjected to an annoyance. She was in the habit of going out every day with Bernard and Emily Dunstable, and their party was generally joined by others who would meet them at Mrs. Thorne's house. For Mrs. Thorne was a very hospitable woman, and there were many who liked well enough to go to her house. Late in the afternoon there would be a great congregation of horses before the door,--sometimes as many as a dozen; and then the cavalcade would go off into the Park, and there it would become scattered. As neither Bernard nor Miss Dunstable were unconscionable lovers, Lily in these scatterings did not often find herself neglected or lost. Her cousin would generally remain with her, and as in those days she had no "it" of her own she was well pleased that he should do so.

But it so happened that on a certain afternoon she found herself riding in Rotten Row alone with a certain stout gentleman whom she constantly met at Mrs. Thorne's house. His name was Onesiphorus Dunn, and he was usually called Siph by his intimate friends. It had seemed to Lily that everybody was an intimate friend of Mr. Dunn's, and she was in daily fear lest she should make a mistake and call him Siph herself. Had she done so it would not have mattered in the least. Mr. Dunn, had he observed it at all, would neither have been flattered nor angry. A great many young ladies about London did call him Siph, and to him it was quite natural that they should do so. He was an Irishman, living on the best of everything in the world, with apparently no fortune of his own, and certainly never earning anything. Everybody liked him, and it was admitted on all sides that there was no safer friend in the world, either for young ladies or young men, than Mr. Onesiphorus Dunn. He did not borrow money, and he did not encroach. He did like being asked out to dinner, and he did think that they to whom he gave the light of his countenance in town owed him the return of a week's run in the country. He neither shot, nor hunted nor fished, nor read, and yet he was never in the way in any house. He did play billiards, and whist, and croquet--very badly. He was a good judge of wine, and would occasionally condescend to look after the bottling of it on behalf of some very intimate friend. He was a great friend of Mrs. Thorne's, with whom he always spent ten days in the autumn at Chaldicotes.

Bernard and Emily were not insatiable lovers, but, nevertheless, Mrs. Thorne had thought it proper to provide a fourth in the riding-parties, and had put Mr. Dunn upon this duty. "Don't bother yourself about it, Siph," she had said; "only if those lovers should go off philandering out of sight, our little country lassie might find herself to be nowhere in the Park." Siph had promised to make himself useful, and had done so. There had generally been so large a number in their party that the work imposed on Mr. Dunn had been very light. Lily had never found out that he had been especially consigned to her as her own cavalier, but had seen quite enough of him to be aware that he was a pleasant companion. To her, thinking, as she ever was thinking, about Johnny Eames, Siph was much more agreeable than might have been a younger man who would have endeavoured to make her think about himself.

Thus when she found herself riding alone in Rotten Row with Siph Dunn, she was neither disconcerted nor displeased. He had been talking to her about Lord De Guest, whom he had known,--for Siph knew everybody,--and Lily had begun to wonder whether he knew John Eames. She would have liked to hear the opinion of such a man about John Eames. She was making up her mind that she would say something about the Crawley matter,--not intending of course to mention John Eames's name,--when suddenly her tongue was paralyzed and she could not speak. At that moment they were standing near a corner, where a turning path made an angle in the iron rails, Mr. Dunn having proposed that they should wait there for a few minutes before they returned home, as it was probable that Bernard and Miss Dunstable might come up. They had been there for some five or ten minutes, and Lily had asked her first question about the Crawleys,--inquiring of Mr. Dunn whether he had heard of a terrible accusation which had been made against a clergyman in Barsetshire,--when on a sudden her tongue was paralyzed. As they were standing, Lily's horse was turned towards the diverging path, whereas Mr. Dunn was looking the other way, towards Achilles and Apsley house. Mr. Dunn was nearer to the railings, but though they were thus looking different ways they were so placed that each could see the face of the other. Then, on a sudden, coming slowly towards her along the diverging path and leaning on the arm of another man, she saw,--Adolphus Crosbie.

She had never seen him since a day on which she had parted from him with many kisses,--with warm, pressing, eager kisses,--of which she had been nowhat ashamed. He had then been to her almost as her husband. She had trusted him entirely, and had thrown herself into his arms with a full reliance. There is often much of reticence on the part of a woman towards a man to whom she is engaged, something also of shamefacedness occasionally. There exists a shadow of doubt, at least of that hesitation which shows that in spite of vows the woman knows that a change may come, and that provision for such possible steps backward should always be within her reach. But Lily had cast all such caution to the winds. She had given herself to the man entirely, and had determined that she would sink or swim, stand or fall, live or die, by him and by his truth. He had been as false as hell. She had been in his arms, clinging to him, kissing him, swearing that her only pleasure in the world was to be with him,--with him her treasure, her promised husband; and within a month, a week, he had been false to her. There had come upon her crushing tidings, and she had for days wondered at herself that they had not killed her. But she had lived, and had forgiven him. She had still loved him, and had received new offers from him, which had been answered as the reader knows. But she had never seen him since the day on which she had parted from him at Allington, without a doubt as to his faith. Now he was before her, walking on the footpath, almost within reach of her whip.

He did not recognize her, but as he passed on he did recognize Mr. Onesiphorus Dunn, and stopped to speak to him. Or it might have been that Crosbie's friend Fowler Pratt stopped with this special object,--for Siph Dunn was an intimate friend of Fowler Pratt's. Crosbie and Siph were also acquainted, but in those days Crosbie did not care much for stopping his friends in the Park or elsewhere. He had become moody and discontented, and was generally seen going about the world alone. On this special occasion he was having a little special conversation about money with his very old friend Fowler Pratt.

"What, Siph, is this you? You're always on horseback now," said Fowler Pratt.

"Well, yes; I have gone in a good deal for cavalry work this last month. I've been lucky enough to have a young lady to ride with me." This he said in a whisper, which the distance of Lily justified. "How d'ye do, Crosbie? One doesn't often see you on horseback, or on foot either."

"I've something to do besides going to look or to be looked at," said Crosbie. Then he raised his eyes and saw Lily's side-face, and recognized her. Had he seen her before he had been stopped on his way I think he would have passed on, endeavouring to escape observation. But as it was, his feet had been arrested before he knew of her close vicinity, and now it would seem that he was afraid of her, and was flying from her, were he at once to walk off, leaving his friend behind him. And he knew that she had seen him, and had recognized him, and was now suffering from his presence. He could not but perceive that it was so from the fixedness of her face, and from the constrained manner in which she gazed before her. His friend Fowler Pratt had never seen Miss Dale, though he knew very much of her history. Siph Dunn knew nothing of the history of Crosbie and his love, and was unaware that he and Lily had ever seen each other. There was thus no help near her to extricate her from her difficulty.

"When a man has any work to do in the world," said Siph, "he always boasts of it to his acquaintance, and curses his luck to himself. I have nothing to do and can go about to see and to be seen;--and I must own that I like it."

"Especially the being seen,--eh, Siph?" said Fowler Pratt. "I also have nothing on earth to do, and I come here every day because it is as easy to do that as to go anywhere else."

Crosbie was still looking at Lily. He could not help himself. He could not take his eyes from off her. He could see that she was as pretty as ever, that she was but very little altered. She was, in truth, somewhat stouter than in the old days, but of that he took no special notice. Should he speak to her? Should he try to catch her eye, and then raise his hat? Should he go up to her horse's head boldly, and ask her to let bygones be bygones? He had an idea that of all courses which he could pursue that was the one which she would approve the best,--which would be most efficacious for him, if with her anything from him might have any efficacy. But he could not do it. He did not know what words he might best use. Would it become him humbly to sue to her for pardon? Or should he strive to express his unaltered love by some tone of his voice? Or should he simply ask her after her health? He made one step towards her, and he saw that the face became more rigid and more fixed than before, and then he desisted. He told himself that he was simply hateful to her. He thought that he could perceive that there was no tenderness mixed with her unabated anger.

At this moment Bernard Dale and Emily came close upon him, and Bernard saw him at once. It was through Bernard that Lily and Crosbie had come to know each other. He and Bernard Dale had been fast friends in old times, and had, of course, been bitter enemies since the day of Crosbie's treachery. They had never spoken since, though they had often seen each other, and Dale was not at all disposed to speak to him now. The moment that he recognized Crosbie he looked across to his cousin. For an instant, an idea had flashed across him that he was there by her permission,--with her assent; but it required no second glance to show him that this was not the case. "Dunn," he said, "I think we will ride on," and he put his horse into a trot. Siph, whose ear was very accurate, and who knew at once that something was wrong, trotted on with him, and Lily, of course, was not left behind. "Is there anything the matter?" said Emily to her lover.

"Nothing specially the matter," he replied; "but you were standing in company with the greatest blackguard that ever lived, and I thought we had better change our ground."

"Bernard!" said Lily, flashing on him with all the fire which her eyes could command. Then she remembered that she could not reprimand him for the offence of such abuse in such a company; so she reined in her horse and fell a-weeping.

Siph Dunn, with his wicked cleverness, knew the whole story at once, remembering that he had once heard something of Crosbie having behaved very ill to some one before he married Lady Alexandrina De Courcy. He stopped his horse also, falling a little behind Lily, so that he might not be supposed to have seen her tears, and began to hum a tune. Emily also, though not wickedly clever, understood something of it. "If Bernard says anything to make you angry, I will scold him," she said. Then the two girls rode on together in front, while Bernard fell back with Siph Dunn.

"Pratt," said Crosbie, putting his hand on his friend's shoulder as soon as the party had ridden out of hearing, "do you see that girl there in the dark blue habit?"

"What, the one nearest to the path?"

"Yes; the one nearest to the path. That is Lily Dale."

"Lily Dale!" said Fowler Pratt.

"Yes; that is Lily Dale."

"Did you speak to her?" Pratt asked.

"No; she gave me no chance. She was there but a moment. But it was herself. It seems so odd to me that I should have been thus so near her again." If there was any man to whom Crosbie could have spoken freely about Lily Dale it was this man, Fowler Pratt. Pratt was the oldest friend he had in the world, and it had happened that when he first woke to the misery that he had prepared for himself in throwing over Lily and betrothing himself to his late wife, Pratt had been the first person to whom he had communicated his sorrow. Not that he had ever been really open in his communications. It is not given to such men as Crosbie to speak openly of themselves to their friends. Nor, indeed, was Fowler Pratt one who was fond of listening to such tales. He had no such tales to tell of himself, and he thought that men and women should go through the world quietly, not subjecting themselves or their acquaintances to anxieties and emotions from peculiar conduct. But he was conscientious, and courageous also as well as prudent, and he had dared to tell Crosbie that he was behaving very badly. He had spoken his mind plainly, and had then given all the assistance in his power.

He paused a moment before he replied, weighing, like a prudent man, the force of the words he was about to utter. "It is much better as it is," he said. "It is much better that you should be as strangers for the future."

"I do not see that at all," said Crosbie. They were both leaning on the rails, and so they remained for the next twenty minutes. "I do not see that at all."

"I feel sure of it. What could come of any renewed intercourse,--even if she would allow it?"

"I might make her my wife."

"And do you think that you would be happy with her, or she with you, after what has passed?"

"I do think so."

"I do not. It might be possible that she should bring herself to marry you. Women delight to forgive injuries. They like the excitement of generosity. But she could never forget that you had had a former wife, or the circumstances under which you were married. And as for yourself, you would regret it after the first month. How could you ever speak to her of your love without speaking also of your shame? If a man does marry he should at least be able to hold up his head before his wife."

This was very severe, but Crosbie showed no anger. "I think I should do so," he said,--"after a while."

"And then, about money? Of course you would have to tell her everything."

"Everything--of course."

"It is like enough that she might not regard that,--except that she would feel that if you could not afford to marry her when you were unembarrassed, you can hardly afford to do so when you are over head and ears in debt."

"She has money now."

"After all that has come and gone you would hardly seek Lily Dale because you want to marry a fortune."

"You are too hard on me, Pratt. You know that my only reason for seeking her is that I love her."

"I do not mean to be hard. But I have a very strong opinion that the quarrels of lovers, when they are of so very serious a nature, are a bad basis for the renewal of love. Come, let us go and dress for dinner. I am going to dine with Mrs. Thorne, the millionaire, who married a country doctor, and who used to be called Miss Dunstable."

"I never dine out anywhere now," said Crosbie. And then they walked out of the Park together. Neither of them, of course, knew that Lily Dale was staying at the house at which Fowler Pratt was going to dine.

Lily, as she rode home, did not speak a word. She would have given worlds to be able to talk, but she could not even make a beginning. She heard Bernard and Siph Dunn chatting behind her, and hoped that they would continue to do so till she was safe within the house. They all used her well, for no one tried to draw her into conversation. Once Emily said to her, "Shall we trot a little, Lily?" And then they had moved on quickly, and the misery was soon over. As soon as she was upstairs in the house, she got Emily by herself, and explained all the mystery in a word or two. "I fear I have made a fool of myself. That was the man to whom I was once engaged." "What, Mr. Crosbie?" said Emily, who had heard the whole story from Bernard. "Yes, Mr. Crosbie; pray, do not say a word of it to anybody,--not even to your aunt. I am better now, but I was such a fool. No, dear; I won't go into the drawing-room. I'll go upstairs, and come down ready for dinner."

When she was alone she sat down in her habit, and declared to herself that she certainly would never become the wife of Mr. Crosbie. I do not know why she should make such a declaration. She had promised her mother and John Eames that she would not do so, and that promise would certainly have bound her without any further resolutions on her own part. But, to tell the truth, the vision of the man had disenchanted her. When last she had seen him he had been as it were a god to her; and though, since that day, his conduct to her had been as ungodlike as it well might be, still the memory of the outward signs of his divinity had remained with her. It is difficult to explain how it had come to pass that the glimpse which she had had of him should have altered so much within her mind;--why she should so suddenly have come to regard him in an altered light. It was not simply that he looked to be older, and because his face was careworn. It was not only that he had lost that look of an Apollo which Lily had once in her mirth attributed to him. I think it was chiefly that she herself was older, and could no longer see a god in such a man. She had never regarded John Eames as being gifted with divinity, and had therefore always been making comparisons to his discredit. Any such comparison now would tend quite the other way. Nevertheless she would adhere to the two letters in her book. Since she had seen Mr. Crosbie she was altogether out of love with the prospect of matrimony.

She was in the room when Mr. Pratt was announced, and she at once recognized him as the man who had been with Crosbie. And when, some minutes afterwards, Siph Dunn came into the room, she could see that in their greeting allusion was made to the scene in the Park. But still it was probable that this man would not recognize her, and, if he did so, what would it matter? There were twenty people to sit down to dinner, and the chances were that she would not be called upon to exchange a word with Mr. Pratt. She had now recovered herself, and could speak freely to her friend Siph, and when Siph came and stood near her she thanked him graciously for his escort in the Park. "If it wasn't for you, Mr. Dunn, I really think I should not get any riding at all. Bernard and Miss Dunstable have only one thing to think about, and certainly I am not that one thing." She thought it probable that if she could keep Siph close to her, Mrs. Thorne, who always managed those things herself, might apportion her out to be led to dinner by her good-natured friend. But the fates were averse. The time had now come, and Lily was waiting her turn. "Mr. Fowler Pratt, let me introduce you to Miss Lily Dale," said Mrs. Thorne. Lily could perceive that Mr. Pratt was startled. The sign he gave was the least possible sign in the world; but still it sufficed for Lily to perceive it. She put her hand upon his arm, and walked down with him to the dining-room without giving him the slightest cause to suppose that she knew who he was.

"I think I saw you in the Park riding?" he said.

"Yes, I was there; we go nearly every day."

"I never ride; I was walking."

"It seems to me that the people don't go there to walk, but to stand still," said Lily. "I cannot understand how so many people can bear to loiter about in that way--leaning on the rails and doing nothing."

"It is about as good as the riding, and costs less money. That is all that can be said for it. Do you live chiefly in town?"

"O dear, no; I live altogether in the country. I'm only up here because a cousin is going to be married."

"Captain Dale you mean--to Miss Dunstable?" said Fowler Pratt.

"When they have been joined together in holy matrimony, I shall go down to the country, and never, I suppose, come up to London again."

"You do not like London?"

"Not as a residence, I think," said Lily. "But of course one's likings and dislikings on such a matter depend on circumstances. I live with my mother, and all my relatives live near us. Of course I like the country best, because they are there."

"Young ladies so often have a different way of looking at this subject. I shouldn't wonder if Miss Dunstable's views about it were altogether of another sort. Young ladies generally expect to be taken away from their fathers and mothers, and uncles and aunts."

"But you see I expect to be left with mine," said Lily. After that she turned as much away from Mr. Fowler Pratt as she could, having taken an aversion to him. What business had he to talk to her about being taken away from her uncles and aunts? She had seen him with Mr. Crosbie, and it might be possible that they were intimate friends. It might be that Mr. Pratt was asking questions in Mr. Crosbie's interest. Let that be as it might, she would answer no more questions from him further than ordinary good breeding should require of her.

"She is a nice girl, certainly," said Fowler Pratt to himself, as he walked home, "and I have no doubt would make a good, ordinary, everyday wife. But she is not such a paragon that a man should condescend to grovel in the dirt for her."

That night Lily told Emily Dunstable the whole of Mr. Crosbie's history as far as she knew it, and also explained her new aversion to Mr. Fowler Pratt. "They are very great friends," said Emily. "Bernard has told me so; and you may be sure that Mr. Pratt knew the whole history before he came here. I am so sorry that my aunt asked him."

"It does not signify in the least," said Lily. "Even if I were to meet Mr. Crosbie I don't think I should make such a fool of myself again. As it is, I can only hope he did not see it."

"I am sure he did not."

Then there was a pause, during which Lily sat with her face resting on both her hands. "It is wonderful how much he is altered," she said at last.

"Think how much he has suffered."

"I suppose I am altered as much, only I do not see it in myself."

"I don't know what you were, but I don't think you can have changed much. You no doubt have suffered too, but not as he has done."

"Oh, as for that, I have done very well. I think I'll go to bed now. The riding makes me so sleepy."

LIV. THE CLERICAL COMMISSION

It was at last arranged that the five clergymen selected should meet at Dr. Tempest's house in Silverbridge to make inquiry and report to the bishop whether the circumstances connected with the cheque for twenty pounds were of such a nature as to make it incumbent on him to institute proceedings against Mr. Crawley in the Court of Arches. Dr. Tempest had acted upon the letter which he had received from the bishop, exactly as though there had been no meeting at the palace, no quarrel to the death between him and Mrs. Proudie. He was a prudent man, gifted with the great power of holding his tongue, and had not spoken a word, even to his wife, of what had occurred. After such a victory our old friend the archdeacon would have blown his own trumpet loudly among his friends. Plumstead would have heard of it instantly, and the pæan would have been sung out in the neighbouring parishes of Eiderdown, Stogpingum, and St. Ewolds. The high-street of Barchester would have known of it, and the very bedesmen in Hiram's Hospital would have told among themselves the terrible discomfiture of the bishop and his lady. But Dr. Tempest spoke no word of it to anybody. He wrote letters to the two clergymen named by the bishop, and himself selected two others out of his own rural deanery, and suggested to them all a day at which a preliminary meeting should be held at his own house. The two who were invited by him were Mr. Oriel, the rector of Greshamsbury, and Mr. Robarts, the vicar of Framley. They all assented to the proposition, and on the day named assembled themselves at Silverbridge.

It was now April, and the judges were to come into Barchester before the end of the month. What then could be the use of this ecclesiastical inquiry exactly at the same time? Men and women declared that it was a double prosecution, and that a double prosecution for the same offence was a course of action opposed to the feelings and traditions of the country. Miss Anne Prettyman went so far as to say that it was unconstitutional, and Mary Walker declared that no human being except Mrs. Proudie would ever have been guilty of such cruelty. "Don't tell me about the bishop, John," she said; "the bishop is a cypher." "You may be sure Dr. Tempest would not have a hand in it if it were not right," said John Walker. "My dear Mr. John," said Miss Anne Prettyman, "Dr. Tempest is as hard as a bar of iron, and always was. But I am surprised that Mr. Robarts should take a part in it."

In the meantime, at the palace, Mrs. Proudie had been reduced to learn what was going on from Mr. Thumble. The bishop had never spoken a word to her respecting Mr. Crawley since that terrible day on which Dr. Tempest had witnessed his imbecility,--having absolutely declined to answer when his wife had mentioned the subject. "You won't speak to me about it, my dear?" she had said to him, when he had thus declined, remonstrating more in sorrow than in anger. "No; I won't," the bishop had replied; "there has been a great deal too much talking about it. It has broken my heart already, I know." These were very bad days in the palace. Mrs. Proudie affected to be satisfied with what was being done. She talked to Mr. Thumble about Mr. Crawley and the cheque, as though everything were arranged quite to her satisfaction,--as though everything, indeed, had been arranged by herself. But everybody about the house could see that the manner of the woman was altogether altered. She was milder than usual with the servants and was almost too gentle in her usage of her husband. It seemed as though something had happened to frighten her and break her spirit, and it was whispered about through the palace that she was afraid that the bishop was dying. As for him, he hardly left his own sitting-room in these days, except when he joined the family at breakfast and at dinner. And in his study he did little or nothing. He would smile when his chaplain went to him, and give some trifling verbal directions; but for days he scarcely ever took a pen in his hands, and though he took up many books he read hardly a page. How often he told his wife in those days that he was broken-hearted, no one but his wife ever knew.

"What has happened that you should speak like that?" she said to him once. "What has broken your heart?"

"You," he replied. "You; you have done it."

"Oh, Tom," she said, going back into the memory of very far distant days in her nomenclature, "how can you speak to me so cruelly as that! That it should come to that between you and me, after all!"

"Why did you not go away and leave me that day when I told you?"

"Did you ever know a woman who liked to be turned out of a room in her own house?" said Mrs. Proudie. When Mrs. Proudie had condescended so far as this, it must be admitted that in those days there was great trouble in the palace.

Mr. Thumble, on the day before he went to Silverbridge, asked for an audience with the bishop in order that he might receive instructions. He had been strictly desired to do this by Mrs. Proudie, and had not dared to disobey her injunctions,--thinking, however, himself, that his doing so was inexpedient. "I have got nothing to say to you about it; not a word," said the bishop crossly. "I thought that perhaps you might like to see me before I started," pleaded Mr. Thumble very humbly. "I don't want to see you at all," said the bishop; "you are going there to exercise your own judgment,--if you have got any; and you ought not to come to me." After that Mr. Thumble began to think that Mrs. Proudie was right, and that the bishop was near his dissolution.

Mr. Thumble and Mr. Quiverful went over to Silverbridge together in a gig, hired from the "Dragon of Wantly"--as to the cost of which there arose among them a not unnatural apprehension which amounted at last almost to dismay. "I don't mind it so much for once," said Mr. Quiverful, "but if many such meetings are necessary, I for one can't afford it, and I won't do it. A man with my family can't allow himself to be money out of pocket in that way." "It is hard," said Mr. Thumble. "She ought to pay it herself, out of her own pocket," said Mr. Quiverful. He had had concerns with the palace when Mrs. Proudie was in the full swing of her dominion, and had not as yet begun to suspect that there might possibly be a change.

Mr. Oriel and Mr. Robarts were already sitting with Dr. Tempest when the other two clergymen were shown into the room. When the first greetings were over luncheon was announced, and while they were eating not a word was said about Mr. Crawley. The ladies of the family were not present, and the five clergymen sat round the table alone. It would have been difficult to have got together five gentlemen less likely to act with one mind and one spirit;--and perhaps it was all the better for Mr. Crawley that it should be so. Dr. Tempest himself was a man peculiarly capable of exercising the functions of a judge in such a matter, had he sat alone as a judge; but he was one who would be almost sure to differ from others who sat as equal assessors with him. Mr. Oriel was a gentleman at all points; but he was very shy, very reticent, and altogether uninstructed in the ordinary daily intercourse of man with man. Any one knowing him might have predicted of him that he would be sure on such an occasion as this to be found floundering in a sea of doubts. Mr. Quiverful was the father of a large family, whose whole life had been devoted to fighting a cruel world on behalf of his wife and children. That fight he had fought bravely; but it had left him no energy for any other business. Mr. Thumble was a poor creature,--so poor a creature that, in spite of a small restless ambition to be doing something, he was almost cowed by the hard lines of Dr. Tempest's brow. The Rev. Mark Robarts was a man of the world, and a clever fellow, and did not stand in awe of anybody,--unless it might be, in a very moderate degree, of his patrons the Luftons, whom he was bound to respect; but his cleverness was not the cleverness needed by a judge. He was essentially a partisan, and would be sure to vote against the bishop in such a matter as this now before him. There was a palace faction in the diocese, and an anti-palace faction. Mr. Thumble and Mr. Quiverful belonged to one, and Mr. Oriel and Mr. Robarts to the other. Mr. Thumble was too weak to stick to his faction against the strength of such a man as Dr. Tempest. Mr. Quiverful would be too indifferent to do so,--unless his interest were concerned. Mr. Oriel would be too conscientious to regard his own side on such an occasion as this. But Mark Robarts would be sure to support his friends and oppose his enemies, let the case be what it might. "Now, gentlemen, if you please, we will go into the other room," said Dr. Tempest. They went into the other room, and there they found five chairs arranged for them round the table. Not a word had as yet been said about Mr. Crawley, and no one of the four strangers knew whether Mr. Crawley was to appear before them on that day or not.

"Gentlemen," said Dr. Tempest, seating himself at once in an arm-chair placed at the middle of the table, "I think it will be well to explain to you at first what, as I regard the matter, is the extent of the work which we are called upon to perform. It is of its nature very disagreeable. It cannot but be so, let it be ever so limited. Here is a brother clergyman and a gentleman, living among us, and doing his duty, as we are told, in a most exemplary manner; and suddenly we hear that he is accused of a theft. The matter is brought before the magistrates, of whom I myself was one, and he was committed for trial. There is therefore primâ facie evidence of his guilt. But I do not think that we need go into the question of his guilt at all." When he said this, the other four all looked up at him in astonishment. "I thought that we had been summoned here for that purpose," said Mr. Robarts. "Not at all, as I take it," said the doctor. "Were we to commence any such inquiry, the jury would have given their verdict before we could come to any conclusion; and it would be impossible for us to oppose that verdict, whether it declares this unfortunate gentleman to be innocent or to be guilty. If the jury shall say that he is innocent, there is an end of the matter altogether. He would go back to his parish amidst the sympathy and congratulations of his friends. That is what we should all wish."

"Of course it is," said Mr. Robarts. They all declared that was their desire, as a matter of course; and Mr. Thumble said it louder than any one else.

"But if he be found guilty, then will come that difficulty to the bishop, in which we are bound to give him any assistance within our power."

"Of course we are," said Mr. Thumble, who, having heard his own voice once, and having liked the sound, thought that he might creep into a little importance by using it on any occasion that opened itself for him.

"If you will allow me, sir, I will venture to state my views as shortly as I can," said Dr. Tempest. "That may perhaps be the most expeditious course for us all in the end."

"Oh, certainly," said Mr. Thumble. "I didn't mean to interrupt."

"In the case of his being found guilty," continued the doctor, "there will arise the question whether the punishment awarded to him by the judge should suffice for ecclesiastical purposes. Suppose, for instance, that he should be imprisoned for two months, should he be allowed to return to his living at the expiration of that term?"

"I think he ought," said Mr. Robarts;--"considering all things."

"I don't see why he shouldn't," said Mr. Quiverful.

Mr. Oriel sat listening patiently, and Mr. Thumble looked up to the doctor, expecting to hear some opinion expressed by him with which he might coincide.

"There certainly are reasons why he should not," said Dr. Tempest; "though I by no means say that those reasons are conclusive in the present case. In the first place, a man who has stolen money can hardly be a fitting person to teach others not to steal."

"You must look to the circumstances," said Robarts.

"Yes, that is true; but just bear with me a moment. It cannot, at any rate, be thought that a clergyman should come out of prison and go to his living without any notice from his bishop, simply because he has already been punished under the common law. If this were so, a clergyman might be fined ten days running for being drunk in the street,--five shillings each time,--and at the end of that time might set his bishop at defiance. When a clergyman has shown himself to be utterly unfit for clerical duties, he must not be held to be protected from ecclesiastical censure or from deprivation by the action of the common law."

"But Mr. Crawley has not shown himself to be unfit," said Robarts.

"That is begging the question, Robarts," said the doctor.

"Just so," said Mr. Thumble. Then Mr. Robarts gave a look at Mr. Thumble, and Mr. Thumble retired into his shoes.

"That is the question as to which we are called upon to advise the bishop," continued Dr. Tempest. "And I must say that I think the bishop is right. If he were to allow the matter to pass by without notice,--that is to say, in the event of Mr. Crawley being pronounced to be guilty by a jury,--he would, I think, neglect his duty. Now, I have been informed that the bishop has recommended Mr. Crawley to desist from his duties till the trial be over, and that Mr. Crawley has declined to take the bishop's advice."

"That is true," said Mr. Thumble. "He altogether disregarded the bishop."

"I cannot say that I think he was wrong," said Dr. Tempest.

"I think he was quite right," said Mr. Robarts.

"A bishop in almost all cases is entitled to the obedience of his clergy," said Mr. Oriel.

"I must say that I agree with you, sir," said Mr. Thumble.

"The income is not large, and I suppose that it would have gone with the duties," said Mr. Quiverful. "It is very hard for a man with a family to live when his income has been stopped."

"Be that as it may," continued the doctor, "the bishop feels that it may be his duty to oppose the return of Mr. Crawley to his pulpit, and that he can oppose it in no other way than by proceeding against Mr. Crawley under the Clerical Offences Act. I propose, therefore, that we should invite Mr. Crawley to attend here--"

"Mr. Crawley is not coming here to-day, then?" said Mr. Robarts.

"I thought it useless to ask for his attendance until we had settled on our course of action," said Dr. Tempest. "If we are all agreed, I will beg him to come here on this day week, when we will meet again. And we will then ask him whether he will submit himself to the bishop's decision, in the event of the jury finding him guilty. If he should decline to do so, we can only then form our opinion as to what will be the bishop's duty by reference to the facts as they are elicited at the trial. If Mr. Crawley should choose to make to us any statement as to his own case, of course we shall be willing to receive it. That is my idea of what had better be done; and now, if any gentleman has any other proposition to make, of course we shall be pleased to hear him." Dr. Tempest, as he said this, looked round upon his companions, as though his pleasure, under the circumstances suggested by himself, would be very doubtful.

"I don't suppose we can do anything better," said Mr. Robarts. "I think it a pity, however, that any steps should have been taken by the bishop before the trial."

"The bishop has been placed in a very delicate position," said Mr. Thumble, pleading for his patron.

"I don't know the meaning of the word 'delicate,'" said Robarts. "I think his duty was very clear, to avoid interference whilst the matter is, so to say, before the judge."

"Nobody has anything else to propose?" said Dr. Tempest. "Then I will write to Mr. Crawley, and you, gentlemen, will perhaps do me the honour of meeting me here at one o'clock on this day week." Then the meeting was over, and the four clergymen having shaken hands with Dr. Tempest in the hall, all promised that they would return on that day week. So far, Dr. Tempest had carried his point exactly as he might have done had the four gentlemen been represented by the chairs on which they had sat.

"I shan't come again, all the same, unless I know where I'm to get my expenses," said Mr. Quiverful, as he got into the gig.

"I shall come," said Mr. Thumble, "because I think it a duty. Of course it is a hardship." Mr. Thumble liked the idea of being joined with such men as Dr. Tempest, and Mr. Oriel, and Mr. Robarts, and would any day have paid the expense of a gig from Barchester to Silverbridge out of his own pocket, for the sake of sitting with such benchfellows on any clerical inquiry.

"One's first duty is to one's own wife and family," said Mr. Quiverful.

"Well, yes; in a way, of course, that is quite true, Mr. Quiverful; and when we know how very inadequate are the incomes of the working clergy, we cannot but feel ourselves to be, if I may so say, put upon, when we have to defray the expenses incidental to special duties out of our own pockets. I think, you know,--I don't mind saying this to you,--that the palace should have provided us with a chaise and pair." This was ungrateful on the part of Mr. Thumble, who had been permitted to ride miles upon miles to various outlying clerical duties upon the bishop's worn-out cob. "You see," continued Mr. Thumble, "you and I go specially to represent the palace, and the palace ought to remember that. I think there ought to have been a chaise and pair; I do indeed."

"I don't care much what the conveyance is," said Mr. Quiverful; "but I certainly shall pay nothing more out of my own pocket;--certainly I shall not."

"The result will be that the palace will be thrown over if they don't take care," said Mr. Thumble. "Tempest, however, seems to be pretty steady. Tempest, I think, is steady. You see he is getting tired of parish work, and would like to go into the close. That's what he is looking out for. Did you ever see such a fellow as that Robarts,--just look at him;--quite indecent, wasn't he? He thinks he can have his own way in everything, just because his sister married a lord. I do hate to see all that meanness."

Mark Robarts and Caleb Oriel left Silverbridge in another gig by the same road, and soon passed their brethren, as Mr. Robarts was in the habit of driving a large, quick-stepping horse. The last remarks were being made as the dust from the vicar of Framley's wheels saluted the faces of the two slower clergymen. Mr. Oriel had promised to dine and sleep at Framley, and therefore returned in Mr. Robarts' gig.

"Quite unnecessary, all this fuss; don't you think so?" said Mr. Robarts.

"I am not quite sure," said Mr. Oriel. "I can understand that the bishop may have found a difficulty."

"The bishop, indeed! The bishop doesn't care two straws about it. It's Mrs. Proudie! She has put her finger on the poor man's neck because he has not put his neck beneath her feet; and now she thinks she can crush him,--as she would crush you or me, if it were in her power. That's about the long and the short of the bishop's solicitude."

"You are very hard on him," said Mr. Oriel.

"I know him;--and am not at all hard on him. She is hard upon him if you like. Tempest is fair. He is very fair, and as long as no one meddles with him he won't do amiss. I can't hold my tongue always, but I often know that it is better that I should."

Dr. Tempest said not a word to any one on the subject, not even in his own defence. And yet he was sorely tempted. On the very day of the meeting he dined at Mr. Walker's in Silverbridge, and there submitted to be talked at by all the ladies and most of the gentlemen present, without saying a word in his own defence. And yet a word or two would have been so easy and so conclusive.

"Oh, Dr. Tempest," said Mary Walker, "I am so sorry that you have joined the bishop."

"Are you, my dear?" said he. "It is generally thought well that a parish clergyman should agree with his bishop."

"But you know, Dr. Tempest, that you don't agree with your bishop generally."

"Then it is the more fortunate that I shall be able to agree with him on this occasion."

Major Grantly was present at the dinner, and ventured to ask the doctor in the course of the evening what he thought would be done. "I should not venture to ask such a question, Dr. Tempest," he said, "unless I had the strongest possible reason to justify my anxiety."

"I don't know that I can tell you anything, Major Grantly," said the doctor. "We did not even see Mr. Crawley to-day. But the real truth is that he must stand or fall as the jury shall find him guilty or not guilty. It would be the same in any profession. Could a captain in the army hold up his head in his regiment after he had been tried and found guilty of stealing twenty pounds?"

"I don't think he could," said the major.

"Neither can a clergyman," said the doctor. "The bishop can neither make him nor mar him. It is the jury that must do it."

LV. FRAMLEY PARSONAGE

At this time Grace Crawley was at Framley Parsonage. Old Lady Lufton's strategy had been quite intelligible, but some people said that in point of etiquette and judgment and moral conduct, it was indefensible. Her vicar, Mr. Robarts, had been selected to be one of the clergymen who was to sit in ecclesiastical judgment upon Mr. Crawley, and while he was so sitting Mr. Crawley's daughter was staying in Mr. Robarts' house as a visitor with his wife! It might be that there was no harm in this. Lady Lufton, when the apparent impropriety was pointed out to her by no less a person than Archdeacon Grantly, ridiculed the idea. "My dear archdeacon," Lady Lufton had said, "we all know the bishop to be such a fool and the bishop's wife to be such a knave, that we cannot allow ourselves to be governed in this matter by ordinary rules. Do you not think that it is expedient to show how utterly we disregard his judgment and her malice?" The archdeacon had hesitated much before he spoke to Lady Lufton, whether he should address himself to her or to Mr. Robarts,--or indeed to Mrs. Robarts. But he had become aware that the proposition as to the visit had originated with Lady Lufton, and he had therefore decided on speaking to her. He had not condescended to say a word as to his son, nor would he so condescend. Nor could he go from Lady Lufton to Mr. Robarts, having once failed with her ladyship. Indeed, in giving him his due, we must acknowledge that his disapprobation of Lady Lufton's strategy arose rather from his true conviction as to its impropriety, than from any fear lest this attention paid to Miss Crawley should tend to bring about her marriage with his son. By this time he hated the very name of Crawley. He hated it the more because in hating it he had to put himself for the time on the same side with Mrs. Proudie. But for all that he would not condescend to any unworthy mode of fighting. He thought it wrong that the young lady should be invited to Framley Parsonage at this moment, and he said so to the person who had, as he thought, in truth, given the invitation; but he would not allow his own personal motives to induce him to carry on the argument with Lady Lufton. "The bishop is a fool," he said, "and the bishop's wife is a knave. Nevertheless I would not have had the young lady over to Framley at this moment. If, however, you think it right and Robarts thinks it right, there is an end of it."

"Upon my word we do," said Lady Lufton.

I am induced to think that Mr. Robarts was not quite confident of the expediency of what he was doing by the way in which he mentioned to Mr. Oriel the fact of Miss Crawley's presence at the parsonage as he drove that gentleman home in his gig. They had been talking about Mr. Crawley when he suddenly turned himself round, so that he could look at his companion, and said, "Miss Crawley is staying with us at the parsonage at the present moment."

"What! Mr. Crawley's daughter?" said Mr. Oriel, showing plainly by his voice that the tidings had much surprised him.

"Yes; Mr. Crawley's daughter."

"Oh, indeed. I did not know that you were on those terms with the family."

"We have known them for the last seven or eight years," said Mark; "and though I should be giving you a false notion if I were to say that I myself have known them intimately,--for Crawley is a man whom it is quite impossible to know intimately,--yet the womankind at Framley have known them. My sister stayed with them over at Hogglestock for some time."

"What; Lady Lufton?"

"Yes; my sister Lucy. It was just before her marriage. There was a lot of trouble, and the Crawleys were all ill, and she went to nurse them. And then the old lady took them up, and altogether there came to be a sort of feeling that they were to be regarded as friends. They are always in trouble, and now in this special trouble the women between them have thought it best to have the girl over at Framley. Of course I had a kind of feeling about this commission; but as I knew that it would make no difference with me I did not think it necessary to put my veto upon the visit." Mr. Oriel said nothing further, but Mark Robarts was aware that Mr. Oriel did not quite approve of the visit.

That morning old Lady Lufton herself had come across to the parsonage with the express view of bidding all the parsonage party to come across to the hall to dine. "You can tell Mr. Oriel, Fanny, with Lucy's compliments, how delighted she will be to see him." Old Lady Lufton always spoke of her daughter-in-law as the mistress of the house. "If you think he is particular, you know, we will send a note across." Mrs. Robarts said that she supposed Mr. Oriel would not be particular, but, looking at Grace, made some faint excuse. "You must come, my dear," said Lady Lufton. "Lucy wishes it particularly." Mrs. Robarts did not know how to say that she would not come; and so the matter stood,--when Mrs. Robarts was called upon to leave the room for a moment, and Lady Lufton and Grace were left alone.

"Dear Lady Lufton," said Grace, getting up suddenly from her chair; "will you do me a favour,--a great favour?" She spoke with an energy which quite surprised the old lady, and caused her almost to start from her seat.

"I don't like making promises," said Lady Lufton; "but anything I can do with propriety I will."

"You can do this. Pray let me stay here to-day. You don't understand how I feel about going out while papa is in this way. I know how kind and how good you all are; and when dear Mrs. Robarts asked me here, and mamma said that I had better come, I could not refuse. But indeed, indeed, I had rather not go out to a dinner-party."

"It is not a party, my dear girl," said Lady Lufton, with the kindest voice which she knew how to assume. "And you must remember that my daughter-in-law regards you as so very old a friend! You remember, of course, when she was staying over at Hogglestock?"

"Indeed I do. I remember it well."

"And therefore you should not regard it as going out. There will be nobody there but ourselves and the people from this house."

"But it will be going out, Lady Lufton; and I do hope you will let me stay here. You cannot think how I feel it. Of course I cannot go without something like dressing, and--and--and-- In poor papa's state I feel that I ought not to do anything that looks like gaiety. I ought never to forget it;--not for a moment."

There was a tear in Lady Lufton's eye as she said,--"My dear, you shan't come. You and Fanny shall stop and dine here by yourselves. The gentlemen shall come."

"Do let Mrs. Robarts go, please," said Grace.

"I won't do anything of the kind," said Lady Lufton. Then, when Mrs. Robarts returned to the room, her ladyship explained it all in two words. "Whilst you have been away, my dear, Grace has begged off, and therefore we have decided that Mr. Oriel and Mr. Robarts shall come without you."

"I am so sorry, Mrs. Robarts," said Grace.

"Pooh, pooh," said Lady Lufton. "Fanny and I have known each other quite long enough not to stand on any compliments,--haven't we, my dear? I must get home now, as all the morning has gone by. Fanny my dear, I want to speak to you." Then she expressed her opinion of Grace Crawley as she walked across the parsonage garden with Mrs. Robarts. "She is a very nice girl, and a very good girl, I am sure; and she shows excellent feeling. Whatever happens we must take care of her. And, Fanny, have you observed how handsome she is?"

"We think her very pretty."

"She is more than pretty when she has a little fire in her eyes. She is downright handsome,--or will be when she fills out a little. I tell you what, my dear; she'll make havoc with somebody yet; you see if she doesn't. By--by. Tell the two gentlemen to be up by seven punctually." And then Lady Lufton went home.

Grace so contrived that Mr. Oriel came and went without seeing her. There was a separate nursery breakfast at the parsonage, and by special permission Grace was allowed to have her tea and bread-and-butter on the next morning with the children. "I thought you told me Miss Crawley was here," said Mr. Oriel, as the two clergymen stood waiting for the gig that was to take the visitor away to Barchester.

"So she is," said Robarts; "but she likes to hide herself, because of her father's trouble. You can't blame her."

"No, indeed," said Mr. Oriel.

"Poor girl. If you knew her you would not only pity her, but like her."

"Is she,--what you call--?"

"You mean, is she a lady?"

"Of course she is by birth, and all that," said Mr. Oriel, apologizing for his inquiry.

"I don't think there is another girl in the county so well educated," said Mr. Robarts.

"Indeed! I had no idea of that."

"And we think her a great beauty. As for manners, I never saw a girl with a prettier way of her own."

"Dear me," said Mr. Oriel. "I wish she had come down to breakfast."

It will have been perceived that old Lady Lufton had heard nothing of Major Grantly's offence; that she had no knowledge that Grace had already made havoc, as she had called it,--had, in truth, made very sad havoc, at Plumstead. She did not, therefore, think much about it when her son told her upon her return home from the parsonage on that afternoon that Major Grantly had come over from Cosby Lodge, and that he was going to dine and sleep at Framley Court. Some slight idea of thankfulness came across her mind that she had not betrayed Grace Crawley into a meeting with a stranger. "I asked him to come some day before we went up to town," said his lordship; "and I am glad he has come to-day, as two clergymen to one's self are, at any rate, one too many." So Major Grantly dined and slept at the Court.

But Mrs. Robarts was in a great flurry when she was told of this by her husband on his return from the dinner. Mrs. Crawley had found an opportunity of telling the story of Major Grantly's love to Mrs. Robarts before she had sent her daughter to Framley, knowing that the families were intimate, and thinking it right that there should be some precaution.

"I wonder whether he will come up here," Mrs. Robarts had said.

"Probably not," said the vicar. "He said he was going home early."

"I hope he will not come--for Grace's sake," said Mrs. Robarts. She hesitated whether she should tell her husband. She always did tell him everything. But on this occasion she thought she had no right to do so, and she kept the secret. "Don't do anything to bring him up, dear."

"You needn't be afraid. He won't come," said the vicar. On the following morning, as soon as Mr. Oriel was gone, Mr. Robarts went out,--about his parish he would probably have called it; but in half an hour he might have been seen strolling about the Court stable-yard with Lord Lufton. "Where is Grantly?" asked the vicar. "I don't know where he is," said his lordship. "He has sloped off somewhere." The major had sloped off to the parsonage, well knowing in what nest his dove was lying hid; and he and the vicar had passed each other. The major had gone out at the front gate, and the vicar had gone in at the stable entrance.

The two clergymen had hardly taken their departure when Major Grantly knocked at the parsonage door. He had come so early that Mrs. Robarts had taken no precautions,--even had there been any precautions which she would have thought it right to take. Grace was in the act of coming down the stairs, not having heard the knock at the door, and thus she found her lover in the hall. He had asked, of course, for Mrs. Robarts, and thus they two entered the drawing-room together. They had not had time to speak when the servant opened the drawing-room door to announce the visitor. There had been no word spoken between Mrs. Robarts and Grace about Major Grantly, but the mother had told the daughter of what she had said to Mrs. Robarts.

"Grace," said the major, "I am so glad to find you!" Then he turned to Mrs. Robarts with his open hand. "You won't take it uncivil of me if I say that my visit is not entirely to yourself? I think I may take upon myself to say that I and Miss Crawley are old friends. May I not?"

Grace could not answer a word. "Mrs. Crawley told me that you had known her at Silverbridge," said Mrs. Robarts, driven to say something, but feeling that she was blundering.

"I came over to Framley yesterday because I heard that she was here. Am I wrong to come up here to see her?"

"I think she must answer that for herself, Major Grantly."

"Am I wrong, Grace?" Grace thought that he was the finest gentleman and the noblest lover that had ever shown his devotion to a woman, and was stirred by a mighty resolve that if it ever should be in her power to reward him after any fashion, she would pour out the reward with a very full hand indeed. But what was she to say on the present moment? "Am I wrong, Grace?" he said, repeating his question with so much emphasis, that she was positively driven to answer it.

"I do not think you are wrong at all. How can I say you are wrong when you are so good? If I could be your servant I would serve you. But I can be nothing to you, because of papa's disgrace. Dear Mrs. Robarts, I cannot stay. You must answer him for me." And having thus made her speech she escaped from the room.

It may suffice to say further now that the major did not see Grace again during that visit at Framley.

LVI. THE ARCHDEACON GOES TO FRAMLEY

By some of those unseen telegraphic wires which carry news about the country and make no charge for the conveyance, Archdeacon Grantly heard that his son the major was at Framley. Now in that itself there would have been nothing singular. There had been for years much intimacy between the Lufton family and the Grantly family,--so much that an alliance between the two houses had once been planned, the elders having considered it expedient that the young lord should marry that Griselda who had since mounted higher in the world even than the elders had then projected for her. There had come no such alliance; but the intimacy had not ceased, and there was nothing in itself surprising in the fact that Major Grantly should be staying at Framley Court. But the archdeacon, when he heard the news, bethought him at once of Grace Crawley. Could it be possible that his old friend Lady Lufton,--Lady Lufton whom he had known and trusted all his life, whom he had ever regarded as a pillar of the church in Barsetshire,--should now be untrue to him in a matter so closely affecting his interests? Men when they are worried by fears and teased by adverse circumstances become suspicious of those on whom suspicion should never rest. It was hardly possible, the archdeacon thought, that Lady Lufton should treat him so unworthily,--but the circumstances were strong against his friend. Lady Lufton had induced Miss Crawley to go to Framley, much against his advice, at a time when such a visit seemed to him to be very improper; and it now appeared that his son was to be there at the same time,--a fact of which Lady Lufton had made no mention to him whatever. Why had not Lady Lufton told him that Henry Grantly was coming to Framley Court? The reader, whose interest in the matter will be less keen than was the archdeacon's, will know very well why Lady Lufton had said nothing about the major's visit. The reader will remember that Lady Lufton, when she saw the archdeacon, was as ignorant as to the intended visit as was the archdeacon himself. But the archdeacon was uneasy, troubled, and suspicious;--and he suspected his old friend unworthily.

He spoke to his wife about it within a very few hours of the arrival of the tidings by those invisible wires. He had already told her that Miss Crawley was to go to Framley parsonage, and that he thought that Mrs. Robarts was wrong to receive her at such a time. "It is only intended for good-nature," Mrs. Grantly had said. "It is misplaced good-nature at the present moment," the archdeacon had replied. Mrs. Grantly had not thought it worth her while to undertake at the moment any strong defence of the Framley people. She knew well how odious was the name of Crawley in her husband's ears, and she felt that the less that was said at present about the Crawleys the better for the peace of the rectory at Plumstead. She had therefore allowed the expression of his disapproval to pass unchallenged. But now he came upon her with a more bitter grievance, and she was obliged to argue the matter with him.

"What do you think?" said he; "Henry is at Framley."

"He can hardly be staying there," said Mrs. Grantly, "because I know that he is so very busy at home." The business at home of which the major's mother was speaking was his projected moving from Cosby Lodge, a subject which was also very odious to the archdeacon. He did not wish his son to move from Cosby Lodge. He could not endure the idea that his son should be known throughout the county to be giving up a residence because he could not afford to keep it. The archdeacon could have afforded to keep up two Cosby Lodges for his son, and would have been well pleased to do so, if only his son would not misbehave against him so shamefully! He could not bear that his son should be punished, openly, before the eyes of all Barsetshire. Indeed he did not wish that his son should be punished at all. He simply desired that his son should recognize his father's power to inflict punishment. It would be henbane to Archdeacon Grantly to have a poor son,--a son living at Pau,--among Frenchmen!--because he could not afford to live in England. Why had the archdeacon been careful of his money, adding house to house and field to field? He himself was contented,--so he told himself,--to die as he had lived in a country parsonage, working with the collar round his neck up to the day of his death, if God would allow him so to do. He was ambitious of no grandeur for himself. So he would tell himself,--being partly oblivious of certain episodes in his own life. All his wealth had been got together for his children. He desired that his sons should be fitting brothers for their August sister. And now the son who was nearest to him, whom he was bent upon making a squire in his own county, wanted to marry the daughter of a man who had stolen twenty pounds, and when objection was made to so discreditable a connexion, replied by packing up all his things and saying that he would go and live--at Pau! The archdeacon therefore did not like to hear of his son being very busy at home.

"I don't know whether he's busy or not," said the archdeacon, "but I tell you he is staying at Framley."

"From whom have you heard it?"

"What matter does that make if it is so? I heard it from Flurry."

"Flurry may have been mistaken," said Mrs. Grantly.

"It is not at all likely. Those people always know about such things. He heard it from the Framley keeper. I don't doubt but it's true, and I think that it's a great shame."

"A great shame that Henry should be at Framley! He has been there two or three times every year since he has lived in the county."

"It is a great shame that he should be had over there just at the time when that girl is there also. It is impossible to believe that such a thing is an accident."

"But, archdeacon, you do not mean to say that you think that Lady Lufton has arranged it?"

"I don't know who has arranged it. Somebody has arranged it. If it is Robarts, that is almost worse. One could forgive a woman in such a matter better than one could a man."

"Psha!" Mrs. Grantly's temper was never bitter, but at this moment it was not sweetened by her husband's very uncivil reference to her sex. "The whole idea is nonsense, and you should get it out of your head."

"Am I to get it out of my head that Henry wants to make this girl his wife, and that the two are at this moment at Framley together?" In this the archdeacon was wrong as to his facts. Major Grantly had left Framley on the previous day, having stayed there only one night. "It is coming to that that one can trust no one--no one--literally no one." Mrs. Grantly perfectly understood that the archdeacon, in the agony of the moment, intended to exclude even herself from his confidence by that "no one;" but to this she was indifferent, understanding accurately when his words should be accepted as expressing his thoughts, and when they should be supposed to express only his anger.

"The probability is that no one at Lufton knew anything about Henry's partiality for Miss Crawley," said Mrs. Grantly.

"I tell you I think they are both at Framley together."

"And I tell you that if they are, which I doubt, they are there simply by an accident. Besides, what does it matter? If they choose to marry each other, you and I cannot prevent them. They don't want any assistance from Lady Lufton, or anybody else. They have simply got to make up their own minds, and then no one can hinder them."

"And, therefore, you would like to see them brought together?"

"I say nothing about that, archdeacon; but I do say that we must take these things as they come. What can we do? Henry may go and stay with Lady Lufton if he pleases. You and I cannot prevent him."

After this the archdeacon walked away, and would not argue the matter any further with his wife at that moment. He knew very well that he could not get the better of her, and was apt at such moments to think that she took an unfair advantage of him by keeping her temper. But he could not get out of his head the idea that perhaps on this very day things were being arranged between his son and Grace Crawley at Framley; and he resolved that he himself would go over and see what might be done. He would, at any rate, tell all his trouble to Lady Lufton, and beg his old friend to assist him. He could not think that such a one as he had always known Lady Lufton to be would approve of a marriage between Henry Grantly and Grace Crawley. At any rate, he would learn the truth. He had once been told that Grace Crawley had herself refused to marry his son, feeling that she would do wrong to inflict so great an injury upon any gentleman. He had not believed in so great a virtue. He could not believe in it now,--now, when he heard that Miss Crawley and his son were staying together in the same parish. Somebody must be doing him an injury. It could hardly be chance. But his presence at Framley might even yet have a good effect, and he would at least learn the truth. So he had himself driven to Barchester, and from Barchester he took post-horses to Framley.

As he came near to the village, he grew to be somewhat ashamed of himself, or, at least, nervous as to the mode in which he would proceed. The driver, turning round to him, had suggested that he supposed he was to drive to "My lady's." This injustice to Lord Lufton, to whom the house belonged, and with whom his mother lived as a guest, was very common in the county; for old Lady Lufton had lived at Framley Court through her son's long minority, and had kept the house there till his marriage; and even since his marriage she had been recognized as its presiding genius. It certainly was not the fault of old Lady Lufton, as she always spoke of everything as belonging either to her son or to her daughter-in-law. The archdeacon had been in doubt whether he would go to the Court or to the parsonage. Could he have done exactly as he wished, he would have left the chaise and walked to the parsonage, so as to reach it without the noise and fuss incidental to a postilion's arrival. But that was impossible. He could not drop into Framley as though he had come from the clouds, and, therefore, he told the man to do as he had suggested. "To my lady's?" said the postilion. The archdeacon assented, and the man, with loud cracks of his whip, and with a spasmodic gallop along the short avenue, took the archdeacon up to the door of Lord Lufton's house. He asked for Lord Lufton first, putting on his pleasantest smile, so that the servant should not suspect the purpose, of which he was somewhat ashamed. Was Lord Lufton at home? Lord Lufton was not at home. Lord Lufton had gone up to London that morning, intending to return the day after to-morrow; but both my ladies were at home. So the archdeacon was shown into the room where both my ladies were sitting,--and with them he found Mrs. Robarts. Any one who had become acquainted with the habits of the Framley ladies would have known that this might very probably be the case. The archdeacon himself was as well aware as any one of the modes of life at Framley. The lord's wife was the parson's sister, and the parson's wife had from her infancy been the petted friend of the old lady. Of course they all lived very much together. Of course Mrs. Robarts was as much at home in the drawing-room of Framley Court as she was in her own drawing-room at the parsonage. Nevertheless, the archdeacon thought himself to be hardly used when he found that Mrs. Robarts was at the house.

"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, merely 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 the archdeacon 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 could 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 supposed 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 not I 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. 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 the 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 huxter 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 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 sympathizes 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 sympathized 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 was 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 do 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 for 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!