Framley Parsonage Part 69

"And we were like brothers once."

"Yes; we were equal as brothers then--in our fortunes, our tastes, and our modes of life."

"And yet you would begrudge me the pleasure of putting my hand in my pocket, and relieving the inconveniences which have been thrown on you, and those you love better than yourself, by the chances of your fate in life."

"I will live on no man's charity," said Crawley, with an abruptness which amounted almost to an expression of anger.

"And is not that pride?"

"No--yes;--it is a species of pride, but not that pride of which you spoke. A man cannot be honest if he have not some pride. You yourself;--would you not rather starve than become a beggar?"

"I would rather beg than see my wife starve," said Arabin.

Crawley when he heard these words turned sharply round, and stood with his back to the dean, with his hands still behind him, and with his eyes fixed upon the ground.

"But in this case there is no question of begging," continued the dean. "I, out of those superfluities which it has pleased G.o.d to put at my disposal, am anxious to a.s.sist the needs of those whom I love."

"She is not starving," said Crawley, in a voice very bitter, but still intended to be exculpatory of himself.

"No, my dear friend; I know she is not, and do not you be angry with me because I have endeavoured to put the matter to you in the strongest language I could use."

"You look at it, Arabin, from one side only; I can only look at it from the other. It is very sweet to give; I do not doubt that. But the taking of what is given is very bitter. Gift bread chokes in a man's throat and poisons his blood, and sits like lead upon the heart. You have never tried it."

"But that is the very fault for which I blame you. That is the pride which I say you ought to sacrifice."

"And why should I be called on to do so? Is not the labourer worthy of his hire? Am I not able to work, and willing? Have I not always had my shoulder to the collar, and is it right that I should now be contented with the sc.r.a.ps from a rich man's kitchen? Arabin, you and I were equal once and we were then friends, understanding each other's thoughts and sympathizing with each other's sorrows. But it cannot be so now."

"If there be such inability, it is all with you."

"It is all with me,--because in our connection the pain would all be on my side. It would not hurt you to see me at your table with worn shoes and a ragged shirt. I do not think so meanly of you as that.

You would give me your feast to eat though I were not clad a t.i.the as well as the menial behind your chair. But it would hurt me to know that there were those looking at me who thought me unfit to sit in your rooms."

"That is the pride of which I speak;--false pride."

"Call it so if you will; but, Arabin, no preaching of yours can alter it. It is all that is left to me of my manliness. That poor broken reed who is lying there sick,--who has sacrificed all the world to her love for me,--who is the mother of my children, and the partner of my sorrows and the wife of my bosom,--even she cannot change me in this, though she pleads with the eloquence of all her wants. Not even for her can I hold out my hand for a dole."

They had now come back to the door of the house, and Mr. Crawley, hardly conscious of what he was doing, was preparing to enter.

"Will Mrs. Crawley be able to see me if I come in?" said the dean.

"Oh, stop; no; you had better not do so," said Mr. Crawley. "You, no doubt, might be subject to infection, and then Mrs. Arabin would be frightened."

"I do not care about it in the least," said the dean.

"But it is of no use; you had better not. Her room, I fear, is quite unfit for you to see; and the whole house, you know, may be infected."

Dr. Arabin by this time was in the sitting-room; but seeing that his friend was really anxious that he should not go farther, he did not persist.

"It will be a comfort to us, at any rate, to know that Miss Robarts is with her."

"The young lady is very good--very good indeed," said Crawley; "but I trust she will return to her home to-morrow. It is impossible that she should remain in so poor a house as mine. There will be nothing here of all the things that she will want."

The dean thought that Lucy Robarts's wants during her present occupation of nursing would not be so numerous as to make her continued sojourn in Mrs. Crawley's sick room impossible, and therefore took his leave with a satisfied conviction that the poor lady would not be left wholly to the somewhat unskilful nursing of her husband.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

MR. SOWERBY WITHOUT COMPANY.

And now there were going to be wondrous doings in West Ba.r.s.etshire, and men's minds were much disturbed. The fiat had gone forth from the high places, and the Queen had dissolved her faithful Commons. The giants, finding that they could effect little or nothing with the old House, had resolved to try what a new venture would do for them, and the hubbub of a general election was to pervade the country. This produced no inconsiderable irritation and annoyance, for the House was not as yet quite three years old; and members of Parliament, though they naturally feel a const.i.tutional pleasure in meeting their friends and in pressing the hands of their const.i.tuents, are, nevertheless, so far akin to the lower order of humanity that they appreciate the danger of losing their seats; and the certainty of a considerable outlay in their endeavours to retain them is not agreeable to the legislative mind.

Never did the old family fury between the G.o.ds and giants rage higher than at the present moment. The giants declared that every turn which they attempted to take in their country's service had been thwarted by faction, in spite of those benign promises of a.s.sistance made to them only a few weeks since by their opponents; and the G.o.ds answered by a.s.serting that they were driven to this opposition by the Boeotian fatuity of the giants. They had no doubt promised their aid, and were ready to give it to measures that were decently prudent; but not to a bill enabling government at its will to pension aged bishops! No; there must be some limit to their tolerance, and when such attempts as these were made that limit had been clearly pa.s.sed.

All this had taken place openly only a day or two after that casual whisper dropped by Tom Towers at Miss Dunstable's party--by Tom Towers, that most pleasant of all pleasant fellows. And how should he have known it,--he who flutters from one sweetest flower of the garden to another,

"Adding sugar to the pink, and honey to the rose, So loved for what he gives, but taking nothing as he goes"?

But the whisper had grown into a rumour, and the rumour into a fact, and the political world was in a ferment. The giants, furious about their bishops' pension bill, threatened the House--most injudiciously; and then it was beautiful to see how indignant members got up, glowing with honesty, and declared that it was base to conceive that any gentleman in that House could be actuated in his vote by any hopes or fears with reference to his seat. And so matters grew from bad to worse, and these contending parties never hit at each other with such envenomed wrath as they did now;--having entered the ring together so lately with such manifold promises of good-will, respect, and forbearance!

But going from the general to the particular, we may say that nowhere was a deeper consternation spread than in the electoral division of West Ba.r.s.etshire. No sooner had the tidings of the dissolution reached the county than it was known that the duke intended to change his nominee. Mr. Sowerby had now sat for the division since the Reform Bill! He had become one of the county inst.i.tutions, and by the dint of custom and long establishment had been borne with and even liked by the county gentlemen, in spite of his well-known pecuniary irregularities. Now all this was to be changed. No reason had as yet been publicly given, but it was understood that Lord Dumbello was to be returned, although he did not own an acre of land in the county.

It is true that rumour went on to say that Lord Dumbello was about to form close connections with Ba.r.s.etshire. He was on the eve of marrying a young lady, from the other division indeed, and was now engaged, so it was said, in completing arrangements with the government for the purchase of that n.o.ble crown property usually known as the Chace of Chaldicotes. It was also stated--this statement, however, had hitherto been only announced in confidential whispers--that Chaldicotes House itself would soon become the residence of the marquis. The duke was claiming it as his own--would very shortly have completed his claims and taken possession;--and then, by some arrangement between them, it was to be made over to Lord Dumbello.

But very contrary rumours to these got abroad also. Men said--such as dared to oppose the duke, and some few also who did not dare to oppose him when the day of battle came--that it was beyond his grace's power to turn Lord Dumbello into a Ba.r.s.etshire magnate. The crown property--such men said--was to fall into the hands of young Mr. Gresham, of Boxall Hill, in the other division, and that the terms of purchase had been already settled. And as to Mr. Sowerby's property and the house of Chaldicotes--these opponents of the Omnium interest went on to explain--it was by no means as yet so certain that the duke would be able to enter it and take possession. The place was not to be given up to him quietly. A great fight would be made, and it was beginning to be believed that the enormous mortgages would be paid off by a lady of immense wealth. And then a dash of romance was not wanting to make these stories palatable. This lady of immense wealth had been courted by Mr. Sowerby, had acknowledged her love,--but had refused to marry him on account of his character. In testimony of her love, however, she was about to pay all his debts.

It was soon put beyond a rumour, and became manifest enough, that Mr.

Sowerby did not intend to retire from the county in obedience to the duke's behests. A placard was posted through the whole division in which no allusion was made by name to the duke, but in which Mr.

Sowerby warned his friends not to be led away by any report that he intended to retire from the representation of West Ba.r.s.etshire. "He had sat," the placard said, "for the same county during the full period of a quarter of a century, and he would not lightly give up an honour that had been extended to him so often and which he prized so dearly. There were but few men now in the House whose connection with the same body of const.i.tuents had remained unbroken so long as had that which bound him to West Ba.r.s.etshire; and he confidently hoped that that connection might be continued through another period of coming years till he might find himself in the glorious position of being the father of the county members of the House of Commons." The placard said much more than this, and hinted at sundry and various questions, all of great interest to the county; but it did not say one word of the Duke of Omnium, though every one knew what the duke was supposed to be doing in the matter. He was, as it were, a great Llama, shut up in a holy of holies, inscrutable, invisible, inexorable,--not to be seen by men's eyes or heard by their ears, hardly to be mentioned by ordinary men at such periods as these without an inward quaking. But nevertheless, it was he who was supposed to rule them. Euphemism required that his name should be mentioned at no public meetings in connection with the coming election; but, nevertheless, most men in the county believed that he could send his dog up to the House of Commons as member for West Ba.r.s.etshire if it so pleased him.

It was supposed, therefore, that our friend Sowerby would have no chance; but he was lucky in finding a.s.sistance in a quarter from which he certainly had not deserved it. He had been a staunch friend of the G.o.ds during the whole of his political life,--as, indeed, was to be expected, seeing that he had been the duke's nominee; but, nevertheless, on the present occasion, all the giants connected with the county came forward to his rescue. They did not do this with the acknowledged purpose of opposing the duke; they declared that they were actuated by a generous disinclination to see an old county member put from his seat;--but the world knew that the battle was to be waged against the great Llama. It was to be a contest between the powers of aristocracy and the powers of oligarchy, as those powers existed in West Ba.r.s.etshire,--and, it may be added, that democracy would have very little to say to it, on one side or on the other.

The lower order of voters, the small farmers and tradesmen, would no doubt range themselves on the side of the duke, and would endeavour to flatter themselves that they were thereby furthering the views of the liberal side; but they would in fact be led to the poll by an old-fashioned, time-honoured adherence to the will of their great Llama; and by an apprehension of evil if that Llama should arise and shake himself in his wrath. What might not come to the county if the Llama were to walk himself off, he with his satellites and armies and courtiers? There he was, a great Llama; and though he came among them but seldom, and was scarcely seen when he did come, nevertheless--and not the less but rather the more--was obedience to him considered as salutary and opposition regarded as dangerous. A great rural Llama is still sufficiently mighty in rural England.

But the priest of the temple, Mr. Fothergill, was frequent enough in men's eyes, and it was beautiful to hear with how varied a voice he alluded to the things around him and to the changes which were coming. To the small farmers, not only on the Gatherum property but on others also, he spoke of the duke as a beneficent influence, shedding prosperity on all around him, keeping up prices by his presence, and forbidding the poor rates to rise above one and fourpence in the pound by the general employment which he occasioned.

Men must be mad, he thought, who would willingly fly in the duke's face. To the squires from a distance he declared that no one had a right to charge the duke with any interference;--as far, at least, as he knew the duke's mind. People would talk of things of which they understood nothing. Could any one say that he had traced a single request for a vote home to the duke? All this did not alter the settled conviction on men's minds; but it had its effect, and tended to increase the mystery in which the duke's doings were enveloped.

But to his own familiars, to the gentry immediately around him, Mr.

Fothergill merely winked his eye. They knew what was what, and so did he. The duke had never been bit yet in such matters, and Mr.

Fothergill did not think that he would now submit himself to any such operation.

I never heard in what manner and at what rate Mr. Fothergill received remuneration for the various services performed by him with reference to the duke's property in Ba.r.s.etshire; but I am very sure that, whatever might be the amount, he earned it thoroughly. Never was there a more faithful partisan, or one who, in his partisanship, was more discreet. In this matter of the coming election he declared that he himself,--personally, on his own hook,--did intend to bestir himself actively on behalf of Lord Dumbello. Mr. Sowerby was an old friend of his, and a very good fellow. That was true. But all the world must admit that Sowerby was not in the position which a county member ought to occupy. He was a ruined man, and it would not be for his own advantage that he should be maintained in a position which was fit only for a man of property. He knew--he, Fothergill--that Mr.

Sowerby must abandon all right and claim to Chaldicotes; and if so, what would be more absurd than to acknowledge that he had a right and claim to the seat in Parliament? As to Lord Dumbello, it was probable that he would soon become one of the largest landowners in the county; and, as such, who could be more fit for the representation?

Beyond this, Mr. Fothergill was not ashamed to confess--so he said--that he hoped to hold Lord Dumbello's agency. It would be compatible with his other duties, and therefore, as a matter of course, he intended to support Lord Dumbello;--he himself, that is.

As to the duke's mind in the matter--! But I have already explained how Mr. Fothergill disposed of that.

In these days, Mr. Sowerby came down to his own house--for ostensibly it was still his own house--but he came very quietly, and his arrival was hardly known in his own village. Though his placard was stuck up so widely, he himself took no electioneering steps; none, at least, as yet. The protection against arrest which he derived from Parliament would soon be over, and those who were most bitter against the duke averred that steps would be taken to arrest him, should he give sufficient opportunity to the myrmidons of the law. That he would, in such case, be arrested was very likely; but it was not likely that this would be done in any way at the duke's instance. Mr.

Fothergill declared indignantly that this insinuation made him very angry; but he was too prudent a man to be very angry at anything, and he knew how to make capital on his own side of charges such as these which overshot their own mark.