The Last Chronicle of Barset (76 page)

‘Of course if I go without leave I shall be dismissed.'

‘Of course you will. It is out of the question that a young man should take the bit between his teeth in that way.'

‘As for taking the bit between his teeth, Sir Raffle, I do not think that any man was ever more obedient, perhaps I should say more submissive, than I have been. But there must be a limit to everything.'

‘What do you mean by that, Mr Eames?' said Sir Raffle, turning in anger upon his private secretary. But Johnny disregarded his anger. Johnny, indeed, had made up his mind that Sir Raffle should be very angry. ‘What do you mean, Mr Eames, by saying that there must be a limit? I know nothing about limits. One would suppose that you intended to make an accusation against me.'

‘So I do. I think, Sir Raffle, that you are treating me with great cruelty. I have explained to you that family circumstances –'

‘You have explained nothing, Mr Eames.'

‘Yes, I have, Sir Raffle. I have explained to you that matters relating to my family, which materially affect the honour of a certain one of its members, demand that I should go at once to Florence. You tell me that if I go I shall be dismissed.'

‘Of course you must not go without leave. I never heard of such a thing in all my life.' And Sir Raffle lifted his hands towards heaven, almost in dismay.

‘So I have drawn up a short statement of the circumstances, which I hope may be read at the Board when the question of my dismissal comes before it.'

‘You mean to go, then?'

‘Yes, Sir Raffle; I must go. The honour of a certain branch of my family demands that I should do so. As I have for some time been so especially under you, I thought it would be proper to show you what
I have said before I send my letter in, and therefore I have brought it with me. Here it is.' And Johnny handed to Sir Raffle an official document of large dimensions.

Sir Raffle began to be uncomfortable. He had acquired a character for tyranny in the public service of which he was aware, though he thought that he knew well that he had never deserved it. Some official big-wig – perhaps that Chancellor of the Exchequer of whom he was so fond – had on one occasion hinted to him that a little softness of usage would be compatible with the prejudices of the age. Softness was impossible to Sir Raffle; but his temper was sufficiently under his control to enable him to encounter the rebuke, and to pull himself up from time to time when he found himself tempted to speak loud and to take things with a high hand. He knew that a clerk should not be dismissed for leaving his office, who could show that his absence had been caused by some matter really affecting the interest of his family; and that were he to drive Eames to go on this occasion without leave, Eames would be simply called in to state what was the matter of moment which had taken him away. Probably he had stated that matter of moment in this very document which Sir Raffle was holding in his hand. But Sir Raffle was not willing to be conquered by the document. If it was necessary that he should give way, he would much prefer to give way – out of his own good-nature, let us say – without looking at the document at all. ‘I must, under the circumstances, decline to read this,' said he, ‘unless it should come before me officially,' and he handed back the paper.

‘I thought it best to let you see it if you pleased,' said John Eames. Then he turned round as though he were going to leave the room; but suddenly he turned back again. ‘I don't like to leave you, Sir Raffle, without saying good-bye. I do not suppose we shall meet again. Of course you must do your duty, and I do not wish you to think that I have any personal ill-will against you.' So saying, he put out his hand to Sir Raffle as though to take a final farewell. Sir Raffle looked at him in amazement. He was dressed, as has been said, in black, and did not look like the John Eames of every day to whom Sir Raffle was accustomed.

‘I don't understand this at all,' said Sir Raffle.

‘I was afraid that it was only too plain,' said John Eames.

‘And you must go?'

‘Oh, yes – that's certain. I have pledged myself to go.'

‘Of course I don't know anything of this matter that is so important to your family.'

‘No; you do not,' said Johnny.

‘Can't you explain it to me, then? So that I may have some reason – if there is any reason.'

Then John told the story of Mr Crawley – a considerable portion of the story; and in his telling of it, I think it probable that he put more weight upon the necessity of his mission to Italy than it could have fairly been made to bear. In the course of the narration Sir Raffle did once contrive to suggest that a lawyer by going to Florence might do the business at any rate as well as John Eames. But Johnny denied this. ‘No, Sir Raffle, it is impossible; quite impossible,' he said. ‘If you saw the lawyer who is acting in the matter, Mr Toogood, who is also my uncle, he would tell you the same.' Sir Raffle had already heard something of the story of Mr Crawley, and was now willing to accept the sad tragedy of that case as an excuse for his private secretary's somewhat insubordinate conduct. ‘Under the circumstances, Eames, I suppose you must go; but I think you should have told me all about it before.'

‘I did not like to trouble you, Sir Raffle, with private business.'

‘It is always best to tell the whole of a story,' said Sir Raffle.

Johnny being quite content with the upshot of the negotiations accepted this gentle rebuke in silence, and withdrew. On the next day he appeared again at the office in his ordinary costume, and an idea crossed Sir Raffle's brain that he had been partly ‘done' by the affectation of a costume. ‘I'll be even with him some day yet,' said Sir Raffle to himself.

‘I've got my leave, boys,' said Eames when he went out into the room in which his three friends sat.

‘No!' said Cradell.

‘But I have,' said Johnny.

‘You don't mean that old Huffle Scuffle has given it out of his own head?' said Fisher.

‘Indeed he has,' said Johnny; ‘and bade God bless me into the bargain.'

‘And you didn't give him the oysters?' said Fitz Howard.

‘Not a shell,' said Johnny.

‘I'm blessed if you don't beat cock-fighting,' said Cradell, lost in admiration at his friend's adroitness.

We know how John passed his evening after that. He went first to see Lily Dale at her uncle's lodgings in Sackville Street, from thence he was taken to the presence of the charming Madalina in Porchester Terrace, and then wound up the night with his friend Conway Dalrymple. When he got to his bed he felt himself to have been triumphant, but in spite of his triumph he was ashamed of himself. Why had he left Lily to go to Madalina? As he thought of this he quoted to himself against himself Hamlet's often-quoted appeal to the two portraits.
¹
How could he not despise himself in that he could find any pleasure with Madalina, having a Lily Dale to fill his thoughts? ‘But she is not fair to me,' he said to himself – thinking thus to comfort himself. But he did not comfort himself.

On the next morning early his uncle, Mr Toogood, met him at the Dover Railway Station. ‘Upon my word, Johnny, you're a clever fellow,' said he. ‘I never thought that you'd make it all right with Sir Raffle.'

‘As right as a trivet, uncle. There are some people, if you can only get to learn the length of their feet, you can always fit them with shoes afterwards.'

‘You'll go on direct to Florence, Johnny?'

‘Yes, I think so. From what we have heard, Mrs Arabin must be either there or at Venice, and I don't suppose I could learn from anyone at Paris at which town she is staying at this moment.'

‘Her address is Florence – poste restante,
²
Florence. You will be sure to find out at any of the hotels where she is staying, or where she has been staying.'

‘But when I have found her, I don't suppose she can tell me anything,' said Johnny.

‘Who can tell? She may or she may not. My belief is that the money was her present altogether, and not his. It seems that they don't mix
their moneys. He has always had some scruple about it because of her son by a former marriage, and they always have different accounts at their bankers'. I found that out when I was at Barchester.'

‘But Crawley was his friend.'

‘Yes, Crawley was his friend; but I don't know that fifty-pound notes have always been so plentiful with him. Deans' incomes ain't what they were, you know.'

‘I don't know anything about that,' said Johnny.

‘Well; they are not. And he has nothing of his own, as far as I can learn. It would be just the thing for her to do – to give the money to his friend. At any rate she will tell you whether it was so or not.'

‘And then I will go on to Jerusalem, after him.'

‘Should you find it necessary. He will probably be on his way back, and she will know where you can hit him on the road. You must make him understand that it is essential that he should be here some little time before the trial. You can understand, Johnny' – and as he spoke Mr Toogood lowered his voice to a whisper, though they were walking together on the platform of the railway station, and could not possibly have been overheard by anyone – ‘you can understand that it may be necessary to prove that he is not exactly compos mentis, and if so it will be essential that he should have some influential friend near him. Otherwise that bishop will trample him into the dust.' If Mr Toogood could have seen the bishop at this time and have read the troubles of the poor man's heart, he would hardly have spoken of him as being so terrible a tyrant.

‘I understand all that,' said Johnny.

‘So that, in fact, I shall expect to see you both together,' said Toogood.

‘I hope the dean is a good fellow.'

‘They tell me he is a very good fellow.'

‘I never did see much of bishops or deans as yet,' said Johnny, ‘and I should feel rather awe-struck travelling with one.'

‘I should fancy that a dean is very much like anybody else.'

‘But the man's hat would cow me.'

‘I daresay you'll find him walking about Jerusalem with a wideawake
³
on, and a big stick in his hand, probably smoking a cigar.
Deans contrive to get out of their armour sometimes, as the knights of old used to do. Bishops, I fancy, find it more difficult. Well – good-bye, old fellow. I'm very much obliged to you for going – I am, indeed. I don't doubt but what we shall pull through, somehow.'

Then Mr Toogood went home to breakfast, and from his own house he proceeded to his office. When he had been there an hour or two, there came to him a messenger from the Income-tax Office, with an official note addressed to himself by Sir Raffle Buffle – a note which looked to be very official. Sir Raffle presented his compliments to Mr Toogood, and could Mr Toogood favour Sir R. B. with the present address of Mr John Eames. ‘Old fox,' said Mr Toogood – ‘but then such a stupid old fox! As if it was likely that I should have peached on Johnny if anything was wrong.' So Mr Toogood sent his compliments to Sir Raffle Buffle, and begged to inform Sir R. B. that Mr John Eames was away on very particular family business, which would take him in the first instance to Florence – but that from Florence he would probably have to go on to Jerusalem without the loss of an hour. ‘Stupid old fool!' said Mr Toogood, as he sent off his reply by the messenger.

*

I wonder whether anyone 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 is 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 to 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 not quarrel with him.' ‘I will never receive her,' the archdeacon had replied; ‘and as for him, I can only say that in such a case I will make no provision for his family.'