The Last Chronicle of Barset (88 page)

That morning old Lady Lufton herself had come across to the parsonage with the express view of bidding all the 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 today. 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. Bye-bye. 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-andbutter 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, apologising 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 own 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 today, 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.

*

By some of these 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 recognise his father's power to inflict punishment. It would be henbane to Archdeacon Grantly to have a poor son – a son living in 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.