The Last Chronicle of Barset (93 page)

On the third day after that Henry Grantly did come over to Plumstead. His mother in her letter to him had not explained how it had come to pass that the sale of his furniture would be unnecessary. His father had given him to understand distinctly that his income would be withdrawn from him unless he would express his intention of giving up Miss Crawley; and it had been admitted among them all that Cosby Lodge must be abandoned if this were done. He certainly would not give up Grace Crawley. Sooner than that, he would give up every stick in his possession, and go and live in New Zealand if it were necessary. Not only had Grace's conduct to him made him thus firm, but the natural bent of his own disposition had tended that way also. His father had attempted to dictate to him, and sooner than submit to that he would sell the coat off his back. Had his father confined his opposition to advice, and had Miss Crawley been less firm in her view of her duty, the major might have been less firm also. But things had so gone that he was determined to be fixed as granite. If others would not be moved from their resolves, neither would he. Such being the state of his mind, he could not understand why he was thus summoned to Plumstead. He had already written over to Pau about his house, and it was well that he should, at any rate, see his mother before he started. He was willing, therefore, to go to Plumstead, but he took no steps as to the withdrawal of those auctioneer's bills to which the archdeacon so strongly objected. When he drove into the rectory yard, his father was standing there before him. ‘Henry,' he said, ‘I am very glad to see you. I am very much obliged to you for coming.' Then Henry got out of his cart and shook hands with his father, and the archdeacon began to talk about the weather. ‘Your mother has gone into Barchester to see your grandfather,' said the archdeacon. ‘If you are not tired, we might as well take a walk. I want to go up as far as Flurry's cottage.' The major of course declared that he was not at all tired, and that he should be delighted of all things to go up and see old Flurry, and thus they started. Young Grantly had not even been into the house before he left the yard with his father. Of course, he was thinking of the coming
sale at Cosby Lodge, and of his future life at Pau, and of his injured position in the world. There would be no longer any occasion for him to be solicitous as to the Plumstead foxes. Of course these things were in his mind; but he could not begin to speak of them till his father did so. ‘I'm afraid your grandfather is not very strong,' said the archdeacon, shaking his head. ‘I fear he won't be with us very long.'

‘Is it so bad as that, sir?'

‘Well, you know, he is an old man, Henry; and he was always somewhat old for his age. He will be eighty, if he lives two years longer, I think. But he'll never reach eighty – never. You must go and see him before you go back home; you must indeed.' The major, of course, promised that he would see his grandfather, and the archdeacon told his son how nearly the old man had fallen in the passage between the cathedral and the deanery. In this way they had nearly made their way up to the gamekeeper's cottage without a word of reference to any subject that touched upon the matter of which each of them was of course thinking. Whether the major intended to remain at home or to live at Pau, the subject of Mr Harding's health was a natural topic for conversation between him and his father; but when his father stopped suddenly, and began to tell him how a fox had been trapped on Darvell's farm – ‘and of course it was a Plumstead fox – there can be no doubt that Flurry is right about that' – when the archdeacon spoke of this iniquity with much warmth, and told his son how he had at once written off to Mr Thorne of Ullathorne, and how Mr Thorne had declared that he didn't believe a word of it, and how Flurry had produced the pad of the fox, with the marks of the trap on the skin– then the son began to feel that the ground was becoming very warm, and that he could not go on much longer without rushing into details about Grace Crawley. ‘I've no more doubt that it was one of our foxes than that I stand here,' said the archdeacon.

‘It doesn't matter where the fox was bred. It shouldn't have been trapped,' said the major.

‘Of course not,' said the archdeacon, indignantly. I wonder whether he would have been so keen had a Romanish priest come into his parish, and turned one of his Protestants into a Papist?

Then Flurry came up, and produced the identical pad out of his
pocket. ‘I don't suppose it was intended,' said the major, looking at the interesting relic with scrutinising eyes. ‘I suppose it was caught in a rabbit-trap – eh, Flurry?'

‘I don't see what right a man has with traps at all, when gentlemen is particular about their foxes,' said Flurry. ‘Of course they'd call it rabbits.'

‘I never liked that man on Darvell's farm,' said the archdeacon.

‘Nor I either,' said Flurry. ‘No farmer ought to be on that land who don't have a horse of his own. And if I war Squire Thorne, I wouldn't have no farmer there who didn't keep no horse. When a farmer has a horse of his own, and follies the hounds, there ain't no rabbit-traps – never. How does that come about, Mr Henry? Rabbits! I know very well what rabbits is!'

Mr Henry shook his head, and turned away, and the archdeacon followed him. There was an hypocrisy about this pretended care for the foxes which displeased the major. He could not, of course, tell his father that the foxes were no longer anything to him; but yet he must make it understood that such was his conviction. His mother had written to him, saying that the sale of furniture need not take place. It might be all very well for his mother to say that, or for his father; but, after what had taken place, he could consent to remain in England on no other understanding than that his income should be made permanent to him. Such permanence must not be any longer dependent on his father's caprice. In these days he had come to be somewhat in love with poverty and Pau, and had been feeding on the luxury of his grievance. There is, perhaps, nothing so pleasant as the preparation for self-sacrifice. To give up Cosby Lodge and the foxes, to marry a penniless wife, and to go and live at Pau on six or seven hundred a year, seemed just now to Major Grantly to be a fine thing, and he did not intend to abandon this fine thing without receiving a very clear reason for doing so. ‘I can't quite understand Thorne,' said the archdeacon. ‘He used to be so particular about the foxes, and I don't suppose that a country gentleman will change his ideas because he has given up hunting himself.'

‘Mr Thorne never thought much of Flurry,' said Henry Grantly, with his mind intent upon Pau and his grievance.

‘He might take my word at any rate,' said the archdeacon.

It was a known fact that the archdeacon's solicitude about the Plumstead covers was wholly on behalf of his son the major. The major himself knew this thoroughly, and felt that his father's present special anxiety was intended as a corroboration of the tidings conveyed in his mother's letter. Every word so uttered was meant to have reference to his son's future residence in the country. ‘Father,' he said, turning round shortly, and standing before the archdeacon in the pathway, ‘I think you are quite right about the covers. I feel sure that every gentleman who preserves a fox does good to the country. I am sorry that I shall not have a closer interest in the matter myself.'

‘Why shouldn't you have a closer interest in it?' said the archdeacon.

‘Because I shall be living abroad.'

‘You got your mother's letter?'

‘Yes, I got my mother's letter.'

‘Did she not tell you that you can stay where you are?'

‘Yes, she said so. But, to tell you the truth, sir, I do not like the risk of living beyond my assured income.'

‘But if I justify it?'

‘I do not wish to complain, sir, but you have made me understand that you can, and that in certain circumstances you will, at a moment, withdraw what you give me. Since this was said to me, I have felt myself to be unsafe in such a house as Cosby Lodge.'

The archdeacon did not know how to explain. He had intended that the real explanation should be given by Mrs Grantly, and had been anxious to return to his old relations with his son without any exact terms on his own part. But his son was, as he thought, awkward, and would drive him to some speech that was unnecessary. ‘You need not be unsafe there at all,' he said, half angrily.

‘I must be unsafe if I am not sure of my income.'

‘Your income is not in any danger. But you had better speak to your mother about it. For myself, I think I may say that I have never yet behaved to any of you with harshness. A son should, at any rate, not be offended because a father thinks that he is entitled to some consideration for what he does.'

‘There are some points on which a son cannot give way even to his father, sir.'

‘You had better speak to your mother, Henry. She will explain to you what has taken place. Look at that plantation. You don't remember it, but every tree there was planted since you were born. I bought that farm from old Mr Thorne, when he was purchasing St Ewold's Downs, and it was the first bit of land I ever had of my own.'

‘That is not in Plumstead, I think?'

‘No: this is Plumstead, where we stand, but that's in Eiderdown. The parishes run in and out here. I never bought any other land as cheap as I bought that.'

‘And did old Thorne make a good purchase at St Ewold's?'

‘Yes, I fancy he did. It gave him the whole of the parish, which was a great thing. It is astonishing how land has risen in value since that, and yet rents are not so very much higher. They who buy land now can't have above two-and-a-half for their money.'

‘I wonder people are so fond of land,' said the major.

‘It is a comfortable feeling to know that you stand on your own ground. Land is about the only thing that can't fly away. And then, you see, land gives so much more than the rent. It gives position and influence and political power, to say nothing about the game. We'll go back now. I daresay your mother will be at home by this time.'

The archdeacon was striving to teach a great lesson to his son when he thus spoke of the pleasure which a man feels when he stands upon his own ground. He was bidding his son to understand how great was the position of an heir to a landed property, and how small the position of a man depending on what Dr Grantly himself would have called a scratch income – an income made up of a few odds and ends, a share or two in this company and a share or two in that, a slight venture in foreign stocks, a small mortgage and such-like convenient but uninfluential driblets. A man, no doubt, may live at Pau on driblets; may pay his way and drink his bottle of cheap wine, and enjoy life after a fashion while reading Galignani and looking at the mountains. But – as it seemed to the archdeacon – when there was a choice between this kind of thing, and fox-covers at Plumstead, and a seat among the magistrates of Barsetshire, and an establishment
full of horses, beeves,
¹
swine, carriages, and hayricks, a man brought up as his son had been brought up ought not to be very long in choosing. It never entered into the archdeacon's mind that he was tempting his son; but Henry Grantly felt that he was having the good things of the world shown to him, and that he was being told that they should be his – for a consideration.

The major, in his present mood, looked at the matter from his own point of view, and determined that the consideration was too high. He was pledged not to give up Grace Crawley, and he would not yield on that point, though he might be tempted by all the fox-covers in Barsetshire. At this moment he did not know how far his father was prepared to yield, or how far it was expected that he should yield himself. He was told that he had to speak to his mother. He would speak to his mother, but, in the meantime, he could not bring himself to make a comfortable answer to his father's eloquent praise of landed property. He could not allow himself to be enthusiastic on the matter till he knew what was expected of him if he chose to submit to be made a British squire. At present Galignani and the mountains had their charms for him. There was, therefore, but little conversation between the father and the son as they walked back to the rectory.

Late that night the major heard the whole story from his mother. Gradually, and as though unintentionally, Mrs Grantly told him all she knew of the archdeacon's visit to Framley. Mrs Grantly was quite as anxious as was her husband to keep her son at home, and therefore she omitted in her story those little sneers against Grace which she herself had been tempted to make by the archdeacon's fervour in the girl's favour. The major said as little as was possible while he was being told of his father's adventure, and expressed neither anger nor satisfaction till he had been made thoroughly to understand that Grace had pledged herself not to marry him as long as any suspicion should rest upon her father's name.

‘Your father is quite satisfied with her,' said Mrs Grantly. ‘He thinks that she is behaving very well.'

‘My father had no right to exact such a pledge.'

‘But she made it of her own accord. She was the first to speak about Mr Crawley's supposed guilt. Your father never mentioned it.'

‘He must have led to it; and I think he had no right to do so. He had no right to go to her at all.'

‘Now don't be foolish, Henry.'

‘I don't see that I am foolish.'

‘Yes, you are. A man is foolish if he won't take what he wants without asking exactly how he is to come by it. That your father should be anxious is the most natural thing in the world. You know how high he has always held his own head, and how much he thinks about the characters and position of clergymen. It is not surprising that he should dislike the idea of such a marriage.'

‘Grace Crawley would disgrace no family,' said the lover.

‘That's all very well for you to say, and I'll take your word that it is so – that is as far as the young lady goes herself. And there's your father almost as much in love with her as you are. I don't know what you would have?'