The Last Chronicle of Barset Part 102

THE CROSS-GRAINEDNESS OF MEN.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

By the time that the archdeacon reached Plumstead his enthusiasm in favour of Grace Crawley had somewhat cooled itself; and the language which from time to time he prepared for conveying his impressions to his wife, became less fervid as he approached his home. There was his pledge, and by that he would abide;--and so much he would make both his wife and his son understand. But any idea which he might have entertained for a moment of extending the promise he had given and relaxing that given to him was gone before he saw his own chimneys.

Indeed, I fear he had by that time begun to feel that the only salvation now open to him must come from the jury's verdict. If the jury should declare Mr. Crawley to be guilty, then--; he would not say even to himself that in such case all would be right, but he did feel that much as he might regret the fate of the poor Crawleys, and of the girl whom in his warmth he had declared to be almost an angel, nevertheless to him personally such a verdict would bring consolatory comfort.

"I have seen Miss Crawley," he said to his wife, as soon as he had closed the door of his study, before he had been two minutes out of the chaise. He had determined that he would dash at the subject at once, and he thus carried his resolution into effect.

"You have seen Grace Crawley?"

"Yes; I went up to the parsonage and called upon her. Lady Lufton advised me to do so."

"And Henry?"

"Oh, Henry has gone. He was only there one night. I suppose he saw her, but I am not sure."

"Would not Miss Crawley tell you?"

"I forgot to ask her." Mrs. Grantly, at hearing this, expressed her surprise by opening wide her eyes. He had gone all the way over to Framley on purpose to look after his son, and learn what were his doings, and when there he had forgotten to ask the person who could have given him better information than any one else! "But it does not signify," continued the archdeacon; "she said enough to me to make that of no importance."

"And what did she say?"

"She said that she would never consent to marry Henry as long as there was any suspicion abroad as to her father's guilt."

"And you believe her promise?"

"Certainly I do; I do not doubt it in the least. I put implicit confidence in her. And I have promised her that if her father is acquitted,--I will withdraw my opposition."

"No!"

"But I have. And you would have done the same had you been there."

"I doubt that, my dear. I am not so impulsive as you are."

"You could not have helped yourself. You would have felt yourself obliged to be equally generous with her. She came up to me and she put her hand upon me--" "Psha!" said Mrs. Grantly. "But she did, my dear; and then she said, 'I promise you that I will not become your son's wife while people think that papa stole this money.' What else could I do?"

"And is she pretty?"

"Very pretty; very beautiful."

"And like a lady?"

"Quite like a lady. There is no mistake about that."

"And she behaved well?"

"Admirably," said the archdeacon, who was in a measure compelled to justify the generosity into which he had been betrayed by his feelings.

"Then she is a paragon," said Mrs. Grantly.

"I don't know what you may call a paragon, my dear. I say that she is a lady, and that she is extremely good-looking, and that she behaved very well. I cannot say less in her favour. I am sure you would not say less yourself, if you had been present."

"She must be a wonderful young woman."

"I don't know anything about her being wonderful."

"She must be wonderful when she has succeeded both with the son and with the father."

"I wish you had been there instead of me," said the archdeacon, angrily. Mrs. Grantly very probably wished so also, feeling that in that case a more serene mode of business would have been adopted.

How keenly susceptible the archdeacon still was to the influences of feminine charms, no one knew better than Mrs. Grantly, and whenever she became aware that he had been in this way seduced from the wisdom of his cooler judgment she always felt something akin to indignation against the seducer. As for her husband, she probably told herself at such moments that he was an old goose. "If you had been there, and Henry with you, you would have made a great deal worse job of it than I have done," said the archdeacon.

"I don't say you have made a bad job of it, my dear," said Mrs.

Grantly. "But it's past eight, and you must be terribly in want of your dinner. Had you not better go up and dress?"

In the evening the plan of the future campaign was arranged between them. The archdeacon would not write to his son at all. In pa.s.sing through Barchester he had abandoned his idea of despatching a note from the hotel, feeling that such a note as would be required was not easily written in a hurry. Mrs. Grantly would now write to her son, telling him that circ.u.mstances had changed, that it would be altogether unnecessary for him to sell his furniture, and begging him to come over and see his father without a day's delay. She wrote her letter that night, and read to the archdeacon all that she had written,--with the exception of the postscript:--"You may be quite sure that there will be no unpleasantness with your father." That was the postscript which was not communicated to the archdeacon.

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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sage 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 Romanist 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 scrutinizing 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 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.