The Last Chronicle of Barset (122 page)

He took both her hands, and looked into her eyes. ‘Lily, will you be mine?'

‘No, dear; it cannot be so.'

‘Why not, Lily?'

‘Because of that other man.'

‘And is that to be a bar for ever?'

‘Yes; for ever.'

‘Do you still love him?'

‘No; no, no!'

‘Then why should this be so?'

‘I cannot tell, dear. It is so. If you take a young tree and split it, it still lives, perhaps. But it isn't a tree. It is only a fragment.'

‘Then be my fragment.'

‘So I will, if it can serve you to give standing ground to such a fragment in some corner of your garden. But I will not have myself planted out in the middle, for people to look at. What there is left would die soon.' He still held her hands, and she did not attempt to draw them away. ‘John,' she said, ‘next to mamma, I love you better than all the world. Indeed I do. I can't be your wife, but you need never be afraid that I shall be more to another than I am to you.'

‘That will not serve me,' he said, grasping both her hands till he almost hurt them, but not knowing that he did so. ‘That is no good.'

‘It is all the good that I can do you. Indeed I can do you – can do no one any good. The trees that the storms have splintered are never of use.'

‘And is this to be the end of all, Lily?'

‘Not of our loving friendship.'

‘Friendship! I hate the word. I hear someone's step, and I had better leave you. Good-bye.'

‘Good-bye, John. Be kinder than that to me as you are going.' He turned back for a moment, took her hand, and held it tight against his heart, and then he left her. In the hall he met Mrs Thorne, but, as she said afterwards, he had been too much knocked about to be able to throw a word to a dog.

To Mrs Thorne Lily said hardly a word about John Eames, and when her cousin Bernard questioned her about him she was dumb. And in these days she could assume a manner, and express herself with her eyes as well as with her voice, after a fashion, which was apt to silence unwelcome questioners, even though they were as intimate with her as was her cousin Bernard. She had described her feelings more plainly to her lover than she had ever done to anyone – even to her mother; and having done so she meant to be silent on that subject for evermore. But of her settled purpose she did say some word to Emily Dunstable that night. ‘I do feel,' she said, ‘that I have got the thing settled at last.'

‘And you have settled it, as you call it, in opposition to the wishes of all your friends?'

‘That is true; and yet I have settled it rightly, and I would not for worlds have it unsettled again. There are matters on which friends should not have wishes, or at any rate should not express them.'

‘Is that meant to be severe to me?'

‘No; not to you. I was thinking about mamma, and Bell, and my uncle, and Bernard, who all seem to think that I am to be looked upon as a regular castaway because I am not likely to have a husband of my own. Of course you, in your position, must think a girl a castaway who isn't going to be married?'

‘I think that a girl who is going to be married has the best of it.'

‘And I think a girl who isn't going to be married has the best of it – that's all. But I feel that the thing is done now, and I am contented. For the last six or eight months there has come up, I know not how, a state of doubt which has made me so wretched that I have done literally nothing. I haven't been able to finish old Mrs Heard's tippet, literally because people would talk to me about that dearest of all dear fellows, John Eames. And yet all along I have known how it would be – as well as I do now.'

‘I cannot understand you, Lily; I can't indeed.'

‘I can understand myself. I love him so well – with that intimate, close, familiar affection – that I could wash his clothes for him tomorrow, out of pure personal regard, and think it no shame. He could not ask me to do a single thing for him – except the one thing – that I would refuse. And I'll go further. I would sooner marry him than any other man in the world I ever saw, or, as I believe, that I ever shall see. And yet I am very glad that it is settled.'

On the next day Lily Dale went down to the Small House of Allington, and so she passes out of our sight. I can only ask the reader to believe that she was in earnest, and express my own opinion, in this last word that I shall ever write respecting her, that she will live and die as Lily Dale.

In these days Mr Harding was keeping his bed at the deanery, and most of those who saw him declared that he would never again leave it. The archdeacon had been slow to believe so, because he had still found his father-in-law able to talk to him – not indeed with energy, but then Mr Harding had never been energetic on ordinary matters, but with the same soft cordial interest in things which had ever been customary with him. He had latterly been much interested about Mr Crawley, and would make both the archdeacon and Mrs Grantly tell him all that they heard, and what they thought of the case. This of course had been before the all-important news had been received from Mrs Arabin. Mr Harding was very anxious, ‘Firstly,' as he said, ‘for the welfare of the poor man, of whom I cannot bring myself to think ill; and then for the honour of the cloth in Barchester.' ‘We are as liable to have black sheep here as elsewhere,' the archdeacon replied. ‘But, my dear, I do not think that the sheep is black; and we never have had black sheep in Barchester.' ‘Haven't we, though?' said the archdeacon, thinking, however, of sheep who were black with a different kind of blackness from this which was now attributed to poor Mr Crawley – of a blackness which was not absolute blackness to Mr Harding's milder eyes. The archdeacon, when he heard his father-in-law talk after this fashion, expressed his opinion that he might live yet for years. He was just the man to linger on, living in bed – as indeed he had lingered all his life out of bed. But the doctor who attended him thought otherwise, as did also Mrs Grantly, and as did Mrs Baxter, and as also did Posy. ‘Grandpa won't get up any more, will he?' Posy said to Mrs Baxter. ‘I hope he will, my dear; and that very soon.' ‘I don't think he will,' said Posy, ‘because he said he would never see the big fiddle again.' ‘That comes of his being a little melancholy like, my dear,' said Mrs Baxter.

Mrs Grantly at this time went into Barchester almost every day, and the archdeacon, who was very often in the city, never went there
without passing half an hour with the old man. These two clergymen, essentially different in their characters and in every detail of conduct, had been so much thrown together by circumstances that the life of each had almost become a part of the life of the other. Although the fact of Mr Harding's residence at the deanery had of late years thrown him oftener into the society of the dean than that of his other son-in-law, yet his intimacy with the archdeacon had been so much earlier, and his memories of the archdeacon were so much clearer, that he depended almost more upon the rector of Plumstead, who was absent, than he did upon the dean, whom he customarily saw every day. It was not so with his daughters. His Nelly, as he used to call her, had ever been his favourite, and the circumstances of their joint lives had been such, that they had never been further separated than from one street of Barchester to another – and that only for the very short period of the married life of Mrs Arabin's first husband. For all that was as soft and tender therefore – which with Mr Harding was all in the world that was charming to him – he looked to his youngest daughter; but for authority and guidance and wisdom, and for information as to what was going on in the world, he had still turned to his son-in-law the archdeacon – as he had done for nearly forty years. For so long had the archdeacon been potent as a clergyman in the diocese, and throughout the whole duration of such potency his word had been law to Mr Harding in most of the affairs of life – a law generally to be obeyed, and if sometimes to be broken, still a law. And now, when all was so nearly over, he would become unhappy if the archdeacon's visits were far between. Dr Grantly, when he found that this was so, would not allow that they should be far between.

‘He puts me so much in mind of my father,' the archdeacon said to his wife one day.

‘He is not so old as your father was when he died, by many years,' said Mrs Grantly, ‘and I think one sees that difference.'

‘Yes; and therefore I say that he may still live for years. My father, when he took to his bed at last, was manifestly near his death. The wonder with him was that he continued to live so long. Do you not remember how the London doctor was put out because his prophecies were not fulfilled?'

‘I remember it well – as if it were yesterday.'

‘And in that way there is a great difference. My father, who was physically a much stronger man, did not succumb so easily. But the likeness is in their characters. There is the same mild sweetness, becoming milder and sweeter as they increased in age – a sweetness that never could believe much evil, but that could believe less, and still less, as the weakness of age came on them. No amount of evidence would induce your father to think that Mr Crawley stole that money.' This was said of course before the telegram had come from Venice.

‘As far as that goes I agree with him,' said Mrs Grantly, who had her own reasons for choosing to believe Mr Crawley to be innocent. ‘If your son, my dear, is to marry a man's daughter, it will be as well that you should at least be able to say that you do not believe that man to be a thief.'

‘That is neither here nor there,' said the archdeacon. ‘A jury must decide it.'

‘No jury in Barsetshire shall decide it for me,' said Mrs Grantly.

‘I'm sick of Mr Crawley, and I'm sorry I spoke of him,' said the archdeacon. ‘But look at Mrs Proudie. You'll agree that she was not the most charming woman in the world.'

‘She certainly was not,' said Mrs Grantly, who was anxious to encourage her husband, if she could do so without admitting anything which might injure herself afterwards.

‘And she was at one time violently insolent to your father. And even the bishop thought to trample upon him. Do you remember the bishop's preaching against your father's chanting?
¹
If I ever forget it!' And the archdeacon slapped his closed fist against his open hand.

‘Don't, dear, don't. What is the good of being violent now?'

‘Paltry little fool! It will be long enough before such a chant as that is heard in any English cathedral again.' Then Mrs Grantly got up and kissed her husband, but he, somewhat negligent of the kiss, went on with his speech. ‘But your father remembers nothing of it, and if there was a single human being who shed a tear in Barchester for that woman, I believe it was your father. And it was the same with mine. It came to that at last, that I could not bear to speak to him of any shortcoming as to one of his own clergymen. I might as well have
pricked him with a penknife. And yet they say men become heartless and unfeeling as they grow old!'

‘Some do, I suppose.'

‘Yes; the heartless and unfeeling do. As the bodily strength fails and the power of control becomes lessened, the natural aptitude of the man pronounces itself more clearly. I take it that that is it. Had Mrs Proudie lived to be a hundred and fifty, she would have spoken spiteful lies on her deathbed.' Then Mrs Grantly told herself that her husband, should he live to be a hundred and fifty, would still be expressing his horror of Mrs Proudie – even on his deathbed.

As soon as the letter from Mrs Arabin had reached Plumstead, the archdeacon and his wife arranged that they would both go together to the deanery. There were the double tidings to be told – those of Mr Crawley's assured innocence, and those also of Mrs Arabin's instant return. And as they went together various ideas were passing through their minds in reference to the marriage of their son with Grace Crawley. They were both now reconciled to it. Mrs Grantly had long ceased to feel any opposition to it, even though she had not seen Grace; and the archdeacon was prepared to give way. Had he not promised that in a certain case he would give way, and had not that case now come to pass? He had no wish to go back from his word. But he had a difficulty in this – that he liked to make all the affairs of his life matter for enjoyment, almost for triumph; but how was he to be triumphant over this marriage, or how even was he to enjoy it, seeing that he had opposed it so bitterly? Those posters, though they were now pulled down, had been up on all barn ends and walls, patent – alas, too patent – to all the world of Barsetshire! ‘What will Mr Crawley do now, do you suppose?' said Mrs Grantly.

‘What will he do?'

‘Yes; must he go on at Hogglestock?'

‘What else?' said the archdeacon.

‘It is a pity something could not be done for him after all he has undergone. How on earth can he be expected to live there with a wife and family, and no private means?' To this the archdeacon made no answer. Mrs Grantly had spoken almost immediately upon their quitting Plumstead, and the silence was continued till the carriage
had entered the suburbs of the city. Then Mrs Grantly spoke again, asking a question, with some internal trepidation, which, however, she managed to hide from her husband. ‘When poor papa does go, what shall you do about St Ewold's?' Now, St Ewold's was a rural parish lying about two miles out of Barchester, the living of which was in the gift of the archdeacon, and to which the archdeacon had presented his father-in-law, under certain circumstances, which need not be repeated in this last chronicle of Barsetshire. Have they not been written in other chronicles?
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‘When poor papa does go, what will you do about St Ewold's?' said Mrs Grantly, trembling inwardly. A word too much might, as she well knew, settle the question against Mr Crawley for ever. But were she to postpone the word till too late, the question would be settled as fatally.