The Chronicles of Barsetshire (168 page)

Through all her sorrow—and she was very sorrowful—Mrs. Robarts could not help smiling. And, indeed, there was every now and then something even in Lucy’s look that was almost comic. She acted the irony so well with which she strove to throw ridicule on herself! “Do laugh at me,” she said. “Nothing on earth will do me so much good as that; nothing, unless it be starvation and a whip. If you would only tell me that I must be a sneak and an idiot to care for a man because he is good-looking and a lord!”

“But that has not been the reason. There is a great deal more in Lord Lufton than that; and since I must speak, dear Lucy, I cannot but say that I should not wonder at your being in love with him, only—only that—”

“Only what? Come, out with it. Do not mince matters, or think that I shall be angry with you because you scold me.”

“Only that I should have thought that you would have been too guarded to have—have cared for any gentleman till—till he had shown that he cared for you.”

“Guarded! Yes, that’s it; that’s just the word. But it’s he that should have been guarded. He should have had a fire-guard hung before him—or a love-guard, if you will. Guarded! Was I not guarded, till you all would drag me out? Did I want to go there? And when I was there, did I not make a fool of myself, sitting in a corner, and thinking how much better placed I should have been down in the servants’ hall. Lady Lufton—she dragged me out, and then cautioned me, and then, then— Why is Lady Lufton to have it all her own way? Why am I to be sacrificed for her? I did not want to know Lady Lufton, or any one belonging to her.”

“I cannot think that you have any cause to blame Lady Lufton, nor, perhaps, to blame anybody very much.”

“Well, no, it has been all my own fault; though, for the life of me, Fanny, going back and back, I cannot see where I took the first false step. I do not know where I went wrong. One wrong thing I did, and it is the only thing that I do not regret.”

“What was that, Lucy?”

“I told him a lie.”

Mrs. Robarts was altogether in the dark, and feeling that she was so, she knew that she could not give counsel as a friend or a sister. Lucy had begun by declaring—so Mrs. Robarts thought—that nothing had passed between her and Lord Lufton but words of most trivial import, and yet she now accused herself of falsehood, and declared that that falsehood was the only thing which she did not regret!

“I hope not,” said Mrs. Robarts. “If you did, you were very unlike yourself.”

“But I did, and were he here again, speaking to me in the same way, I should repeat it. I know I should. If I did not, I should have all the world on me. You would frown on me, and be cold. My darling Fanny, how would you look if I really displeasured you?”

“I don’t think you will do that, Lucy.”

“But if I told him the truth I should, should I not? Speak now. But no, Fanny, you need not speak. It was not the fear of you; no, nor even of her: though Heaven knows that her terrible glumness would be quite unendurable.”

“I cannot understand you, Lucy. What truth or what untruth can you have told him, if, as you say, there has been nothing between you but ordinary conversation?”

Lucy then got up from the sofa, and walked twice the length of the room before she spoke. Mrs. Robarts had all the ordinary curiosity—I was going to say, of a woman, but I mean to say, of humanity; and she had, moreover, all the love of a sister. She was both curious and anxious, and remained sitting where she was, silent, and with her eyes fixed on her companion.

“Did I say so?” Lucy said at last. “No, Fanny, you have mistaken me—I did not say that. Ah, yes, about the cow and the dog. All that was true. I was telling you of what his soft words had been while I was becoming such a fool. Since that he has said more.”

“What more has he said, Lucy?”

“I yearn to tell you, if only I can trust you;” and Lucy knelt down at the feet of Mrs. Robarts, looking up into her face and smiling through the remaining drops of her tears. “I would fain tell you, but I do not know you yet—whether you are quite true. I could be true—true against all the world, if my friend told me. I will tell you, Fanny, if you say that you can be true. But if you doubt yourself, if you must whisper all to Mark—then let us be silent.”

There was something almost awful in this to Mrs. Robarts. Hitherto, since their marriage, hardly a thought had passed through her mind which she had not shared with her husband. But now all this had come upon her so suddenly, that she was unable to think whether it would be well that she should become the depositary of such a secret—not to be mentioned to Lucy’s brother, not to be mentioned to her own husband. But who ever yet was offered a secret and declined it? Who at least ever declined a love secret? What sister could do so? Mrs. Robarts, therefore, gave the promise, smoothing Lucy’s hair as she did so, and kissing her forehead and looking into her eyes, which, like a rainbow, were the brighter for her tears. “And what has he said to you, Lucy?”

“What? Only this, that he asked me to be his wife.”

“Lord Lufton proposed to you?”

“Yes; proposed to me! It is not credible, is it? You cannot bring yourself to believe that such a thing happened, can you?” And Lucy rose again to her feet, as the idea of the scorn with which she felt that others would treat her—with which she herself treated herself—made the blood rise to her cheek. “And yet it is not a dream—I think that it is not a dream. I think that he really did.”

“Think, Lucy!”

“Well, I may say that I am sure.”

“A gentleman would not make you a formal proposal, and leave you in doubt as to what he meant.”

“Oh dear, no. There was no doubt at all of that kind—none in the least. Mr. Smith, in asking Miss Jones to do him the honour of becoming Mrs. Smith, never spoke more plainly. I was alluding to the possibility of having dreamt it all.”

“Lucy!”

“Well, it was not a dream. Here, standing here, on this very spot—on that flower of the carpet—he begged me a dozen times to be his wife. I wonder whether you and Mark would let me cut it out and keep it.”

“And what answer did you make to him?”

“I lied to him, and told him that I did not love him.”

“You refused him?”

“Yes; I refused a live lord. There is some satisfaction in having that to think of, is there not? Fanny, was I wicked to tell that falsehood?”

“And why did you refuse him?”

“Why? Can you ask? Think what it would have been to go down to Framley Court, and to tell her ladyship, in the course of conversation, that I was engaged to her son. Think of Lady Lufton. But yet it was not that, Fanny. Had I thought that it was good for him, that he would not have repented, I would have braved anything—for his sake. Even your frown, for you would have frowned. You would have thought it sacrilege for me to marry Lord Lufton! You know you would.”

Mrs. Robarts hardly knew how to say what she thought, or indeed what she ought to think. It was a matter on which much meditation would be required before she could give advice, and there was Lucy expecting counsel from her at that very moment. If Lord Lufton really loved Lucy Robarts, and was loved by Lucy Robarts, why should not they two become man and wife? And yet she did feel that it would be—perhaps not sacrilege, as Lucy had said, but something almost as troublesome. What would Lady Lufton say, or think, or feel? What would she say, and think, and feel as to that parsonage from which so deadly a blow would fall upon her? Would she not accuse the vicar and the vicar’s wife of the blackest ingratitude? Would life be endurable at Framley under such circumstances as those?

“What you tell me so surprises me, that I hardly as yet know how to speak about it,” said Mrs. Robarts.

“It was amazing, was it not? He must have been insane at the time; there can be no other excuse made for him. I wonder whether there is anything of that sort in the family?”

“What; madness?” said Mrs. Robarts, quite in earnest.

“Well, don’t you think he must have been mad when such an idea as that came into his head? But you don’t believe it; I can see that. And yet it is as true as heaven. Standing exactly here, on this spot, he said that he would persevere till I accepted his love. I wonder what made me specially observe that both his feet were within the lines of that division.”

“And you would not accept his love?”

“No; I would have nothing to say to it. Look you, I stood here, and putting my hand upon my heart—for he bade me to do that—I said that I could not love him.”

“And what then?”

“He went away—with a look as though he were heartbroken. He crept away slowly, saying that he was the most wretched soul alive. For a minute I believed him, and could almost have called him back; but no, Fanny, do not think that I am over proud, or conceited about my conquest. He had not reached the gate before he was thanking God for his escape.”

“That I do not believe.”

“But I do; and I thought of Lady Lufton too. How could I bear that she should scorn me, and accuse me of stealing her son’s heart? I know that it is better as it is; but tell me—is a falsehood always wrong, or can it be possible that the end should justify the means? Ought I to have told him the truth, and to have let him know that I could almost kiss the ground on which he stood?”

This was a question for the doctors which Mrs. Robarts would not take upon herself to answer. She would not make that falsehood matter of accusation, but neither would she pronounce for it any absolution. In that matter Lucy must regulate her own conscience.

“And what shall I do next?” said Lucy, still speaking in a tone that was half tragic and half jeering.

“Do?” said Mrs. Robarts.

“Yes, something must be done. If I were a man I should go to Switzerland, of course; or, as the case is a bad one, perhaps as far as Hungary. What is it that girls do? they don’t die nowadays, I believe.”

“Lucy, I do not believe that you care for him one jot. If you were in love you would not speak of it like that.”

“There, there. That’s my only hope. If I could laugh at myself till it had become incredible to you, I also, by degrees, should cease to believe that I had cared for him. But, Fanny, it is very hard. If I were to starve, and rise before day-break, and pinch myself, or do some nasty work—clean the pots and pans and the candlesticks; that I think would do the most good. I have got a piece of sack-cloth, and I mean to wear that, when I have made it up.”

“You are joking now, Lucy, I know.”

“No, by my word; not in the spirit of what I am saying. How shall I act upon my heart, if I do not do it through the blood and the flesh?”

“Do you not pray that God will give you strength to bear these troubles?”

“But how is one to word one’s prayer, or how even to word one’s wishes? I do not know what is the wrong that I have done. I say it boldly; in this matter I cannot see my own fault. I have simply found that I have been a fool.”

It was now quite dark in the room, or would have been so to any one entering it afresh. They had remained there talking till their eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, and would still have remained, had they not suddenly been disturbed by the sound of a horse’s feet.

“There is Mark,” said Fanny, jumping up and running to the bell, that lights might be ready when he should enter.

“I thought he remained in Barchester to-night.”

“And so did I; but he said it might be doubtful. What shall we do if he has not dined?”

That, I believe, is always the first thought in the mind of a good wife when her husband returns home. Has he had his dinner? What can I give him for dinner? Will he like his dinner? Oh dear, oh dear! there is nothing in the house but cold mutton. But on this occasion the lord of the mansion had dined, and came home radiant with good-humour, and owing, perhaps, a little of his radiance to the dean’s claret. “I have told them,” said he, “that they may keep possession of the house for the next two months, and they have agreed to that arrangement.”

“That is very pleasant,” said Mrs. Robarts.

“And I don’t think we shall have so much trouble about the dilapidations after all.”

“I am very glad of that,” said Mrs. Robarts. But nevertheless she was thinking much more of Lucy than of the house in Barchester Close.

“You won’t betray me,” said Lucy, as she gave her sister-in-law a parting kiss at night.

“No; not unless you give me permission.”

“Ah; I shall never do that.”

CHAPTER XXVII

South Audley Street

The Duke of Omnium had notified to Mr. Fothergill his wish that some arrangement should be made about the Chaldicotes mortgages, and Mr. Fothergill had understood what the duke meant as well as though his instructions had been written down with all a lawyer’s verbosity. The duke’s meaning was this, that Chaldicotes was to be swept up and garnered, and made part and parcel of the Gatherum property. It had seemed to the duke that that affair between his friend and Miss Dunstable was hanging fire, and, therefore, it would be well that Chaldicotes should be swept up and garnered. And, moreover, tidings had come into the western division of the county that young Frank Gresham of Boxall Hill was in treaty with the Government for the purchase of all that Crown property called the Chase of Chaldicotes. It had been offered to the duke, but the duke had given no definite answer. Had he got his money back from Mr. Sowerby, he could have forestalled Mr. Gresham; but now that did not seem to be probable, and his grace was resolved that either the one property or the other should be duly garnered. Therefore Mr. Fothergill went up to town, and therefore Mr. Sowerby was, most unwillingly, compelled to have a business interview with Mr. Fothergill. In the meantime, since last we saw him, Mr. Sowerby had learned from his sister the answer which Miss Dunstable had given to his proposition, and knew that he had no further hope in that direction.

There was no further hope thence of absolute deliverance, but there had been a tender of money services. To give Mr. Sowerby his due, he had at once declared that it would be quite out of the question that he should now receive any assistance of that sort from Miss Dunstable; but his sister had explained to him that it would be a mere business transaction; that Miss Dunstable would receive her interest; and that, if she would be content with four per cent., whereas the duke received five, and other creditors six, seven, eight, ten, and Heaven only knows how much more, it might be well for all parties. He, himself, understood, as well as Fothergill had done, what was the meaning of the duke’s message. Chaldicotes was to be gathered up and garnered, as had been done with so many another fair property lying in those regions. It was to be swallowed whole, and the master was to walk out from his old family hall, to leave the old woods that he loved, to give up utterly to another the parks and paddocks and pleasant places which he had known from his earliest infancy, and owned from his earliest manhood.

There can be nothing more bitter to a man than such a surrender. What, compared to this, can be the loss of wealth to one who has himself made it, and brought it together, but has never actually seen it with his bodily eyes? Such wealth has come by one chance, and goes by another: the loss of it is part of the game which the man is playing; and if he cannot lose as well as win, he is a poor, weak, cowardly creature. Such men, as a rule, do know how to bear a mind fairly equal to adversity. But to have squandered the acres which have descended from generation to generation; to be the member of one’s family that has ruined that family; to have swallowed up in one’s own maw all that should have graced one’s children, and one’s grandchildren! It seems to me that the misfortunes of this world can hardly go beyond that!

Mr. Sowerby, in spite of his recklessness and that dare-devil gaiety which he knew so well how to wear and use, felt all this as keenly as any man could feel it. It had been absolutely his own fault. The acres had come to him all his own, and now, before his death, every one of them would have gone bodily into that greedy maw. The duke had bought up nearly all the debts which had been secured upon the property, and now could make a clean sweep of it. Sowerby, when he received that message from Mr. Fothergill, knew well that this was intended; and he knew well also, that when once he should cease to be Mr. Sowerby of Chaldicotes, he need never again hope to be returned as member for West Barsetshire. This world would for him be all over. And what must such a man feel when he reflects that this world is for him all over?

On the morning in question he went to his appointment, still bearing a cheerful countenance. Mr. Fothergill, when in town on such business as this, always had a room at his service in the house of Messrs. Gumption & Gazebee, the duke’s London law agents, and it was thither that Mr. Sowerby had been summoned. The house of business of Messrs. Gumption & Gazebee was in South Audley Street; and it may be said that there was no spot on the whole earth which Mr. Sowerby so hated as he did the gloomy, dingy back sitting-room upstairs in that house. He had been there very often, but had never been there without annoyance. It was a horrid torture-chamber, kept for such dread purposes as these, and no doubt had been furnished, and papered, and curtained with the express object of finally breaking down the spirits of such poor country gentlemen as chanced to be involved. Everything was of a brown crimson—of a crimson that had become brown. Sunlight, real genial light of the sun, never made its way there, and no amount of candles could illumine the gloom of that brownness. The windows were never washed; the ceiling was of a dark brown; the old Turkey carpet was thick with dust, and brown withal. The ungainly office-table, in the middle of the room, had been covered with black leather, but that was now brown. There was a bookcase full of dingy brown law books in a recess on one side of the fireplace, but no one had touched them for years, and over the chimney-piece hung some old legal pedigree table, black with soot. Such was the room which Mr. Fothergill always used in the business house of Messrs. Gumption & Gazebee, in South Audley Street, near to Park Lane.

I once heard this room spoken of by an old friend of mine, one Mr. Gresham of Greshamsbury, the father of Frank Gresham, who was now about to purchase that part of the Chase of Chaldicotes which belonged to the Crown. He also had had evil days, though now happily they were past and gone; and he, too, had sat in that room, and listened to the voice of men who were powerful over his property, and intended to use that power. The idea which he left on my mind was much the same as that which I had entertained, when a boy, of a certain room in the castle of Udolpho. There was a chair in that Udolpho room in which those who sat were dragged out limb by limb, the head one way and the legs another; the fingers were dragged off from the hands, and the teeth out from the jaws, and the hair off the head, and the flesh from the bones, and the joints from their sockets, till there was nothing left but a lifeless trunk seated in the chair. Mr. Gresham, as he told me, always sat in the same seat, and the tortures he suffered when so seated, the dislocations of his property which he was forced to discuss, the operations on his very self which he was forced to witness, made me regard that room as worse than the chamber of Udolpho. He, luckily—a rare instance of good fortune—had lived to see all his bones and joints put together again, and flourishing soundly; but he never could speak of the room without horror.

“No consideration on earth,” he once said to me, very solemnly—”I say none, should make me again enter that room.” And indeed this feeling was so strong with him, that from the day when his affairs took a turn he would never even walk down South Audley Street. On the morning in question into this torture-chamber Mr. Sowerby went, and there, after some two or three minutes, he was joined by Mr. Fothergill.

Mr. Fothergill was, in one respect, like to his friend Sowerby. He enacted two altogether different persons on occasions which were altogether different. Generally speaking, with the world at large, he was a jolly, rollicking, popular man, fond of eating and drinking, known to be devoted to the duke’s interests, and supposed to be somewhat unscrupulous, or at any rate hard, when they were concerned; but in other respects a good-natured fellow: and there was a report about that he had once lent somebody money, without charging him interest or taking security. On the present occasion Sowerby saw at a glance that he had come thither with all the aptitudes and appurtenances of his business about him. He walked into the room with a short, quick step; there was no smile on his face as he shook hands with his old friend; he brought with him a box laden with papers and parchments, and he had not been a minute in the room before he was seated in one of the old dingy chairs.

“How long have you been in town, Fothergill?” said Sowerby, still standing with his back against the chimney. He had resolved on only one thing—that nothing should induce him to touch, look at, or listen to any of those papers. He knew well enough that no good would come of that. He also had his own lawyer, to see that he was pilfered according to rule.

“How long? Since the day before yesterday. I never was so busy in my life. The duke, as usual, wants to have everything done at once.”

“If he wants to have all that I owe him paid at once, he is like to be out in his reckoning.”

“Ah, well; I’m glad you are ready to come quickly to business, because it’s always best. Won’t you come and sit down here?”

“No, thank you; I’ll stand.”

“But we shall have to go through these figures, you know.”

“Not a figure, Fothergill. What good would it do? None to me, and none to you either, as I take it. If there is anything wrong, Potter’s fellows will find it out. What is it the duke wants?”

“Well; to tell the truth, he wants his money.”

“In one sense, and that the main sense, he has got it. He gets his interest regularly, does not he?”

“Pretty well for that, seeing how times are. But, Sowerby, that’s nonsense. You understand the duke as well as I do, and you know very well what he wants. He has given you time, and if you had taken any steps towards getting the money, you might have saved the property.”

“A hundred and eighty thousand pounds! What steps could I take to get that? Fly a bill, and let Tozer have it to get cash on it in the City!”

“We hoped you were going to marry.”

“That’s all off.”

“Then I don’t think you can blame the duke for looking for his own. It does not suit him to have so large a sum standing out any longer. You see, he wants land, and will have it. Had you paid off what you owed him, he would have purchased the Crown property; and now, it seems young Gresham has bid against him, and is to have it. This has riled him, and I may as well tell you fairly, that he is determined to have either money or marbles.”

“You mean that I am to be dispossessed.”

“Well, yes; if you choose to call it so. My instructions are to foreclose at once.”

“Then I must say the duke is treating me most uncommonly ill.”

“Well, Sowerby, I can’t see it.”

“I can, though. He has his money like clock-work; and he has bought up these debts from persons who would have never disturbed me as long as they got their interest.”

“Haven’t you had the seat?”

“The seat! and is it expected that I am to pay for that?”

“I don’t see that any one is asking you to pay for it. You are like a great many other people that I know. You want to eat your cake and have it. You have been eating it for the last twenty years, and now you think yourself very ill-used because the duke wants to have his turn.”

“I shall think myself very ill-used if he sells me out—worse than ill-used. I do not want to use strong language, but it will be more than ill-usage. I can hardly believe that he really means to treat me in that way.”

“It is very hard that he should want his own money!”

“It is not his money that he wants. It is my property.”

“And has he not paid for it? Have you not had the price of your property? Now, Sowerby, it is of no use for you to be angry; you have known for the last three years what was coming on you as well as I did. Why should the duke lend you money without an object? Of course he has his own views. But I do say this; he has not hurried you; and had you been able to do anything to save the place you might have done it. You have had time enough to look about you.”

Sowerby still stood in the place in which he had first fixed himself, and now for a while he remained silent. His face was very stern, and there was in his countenance none of those winning looks which often told so powerfully with his young friends—which had caught Lord Lufton and had charmed Mark Robarts. The world was going against him, and things around him were coming to an end. He was beginning to perceive that he had in truth eaten his cake, and that there was now little left for him to do—unless he chose to blow out his brains. He had said to Lord Lufton that a man’s back should be broad enough for any burden with which he himself might load it. Could he now boast that his back was broad enough and strong enough for this burden? But he had even then, at that bitter moment, a strong remembrance that it behoved him still to be a man. His final ruin was coming on him, and he would soon be swept away out of the knowledge and memory of those with whom he had lived. But, nevertheless, he would bear himself well to the last. It was true that he had made his own bed, and he understood the justice which required him to lie upon it.

During all this time Fothergill occupied himself with the papers. He continued to turn over one sheet after another, as though he were deeply engaged in money considerations and calculations. But, in truth, during all that time he did not read a word, There was nothing there for him to read. The reading and the writing, and the arithmetic in such matters, are done by underlings—not by such big men as Mr. Fothergill. His business was to tell Sowerby that he was to go. All those records there were of very little use. The duke had the power; Sowerby knew that the duke had the power; and Fothergill’s business was to explain that the duke meant to exercise his power. He was used to the work, and went on turning over the papers and pretending to read them, as though his doing so were of the greatest moment.

“I shall see the duke myself,” Mr. Sowerby said at last, and there was something almost dreadful in the sound of his voice.

“You know that the duke won’t see you on a matter of this kind. He never speaks to any one about money; you know that as well as I do.”