The Last Chronicle of Barset (43 page)

‘And I don't like it,' said Miss Van Siever, with some little hesitation in her voice.

‘I don't see anything improper in it, if you mean that,' said Mrs Broughton.

‘But, mamma!'

‘Well, yes; that is the difficulty, no doubt. The only question is, whether your mother is not so very singular, as to make it impossible that you should comply with her in everything.'

‘I am afraid that I do not comply with her in very much,' said Miss Van Siever in her gentlest voice.

‘Oh, Clara!'

‘You drive me to say so, as otherwise I should be a hypocrite. Of course I ought not to have said it before Mr Dalrymple.'

‘You and Mr Dalrymple will understand all about that, I daresay, before the picture is finished,' said Mrs Broughton.

It did not take much persuasion on the part of Conway Dalrymple to get the consent of the younger lady to be painted, or of the elder to allow the sitting to go on in her room. When the question of easels and other apparatus came to be considered Mrs Broughton was rather flustered, and again declared with energy that the whole thing must fall to the ground; but a few more words from the painter restored her, and at last the arrangements were made. As Mrs Dobbs Broughton's dear friend, Madalina Demolines had said, Mrs Dobbs Broughton liked a fevered existence. ‘What will Dobbs say?' she exclaimed more than once. And it was decided at last that Dobbs should know nothing about it as long as it could be kept from him. ‘Of course he shall be told at last,' said his wife. ‘I wouldn't keep anything from the dear fellow for all the world. But if he knew it at first it would be sure to get through Musselboro to your mother.'

‘I certainly shall beg that Mr Broughton may not be taken into confidence if Mr Musselboro is to follow,' said Clara. ‘And it must be understood that I must cease to sit immediately, whatever may be the inconvenience, should mamma speak to me about it.'

This stipulation was made and conceded, and then Miss Van Siever
went away, leaving the artist with Mrs Dobbs Broughton. ‘And now, if you please, Conway, you had better go too,' said the lady, as soon as there had been time for Miss Van Siever to get downstairs and out of the hall-door.

‘Of course you are in a hurry to get rid of me.'

‘Yes, I am.'

‘A little while ago I improperly said that some suggestion of yours was nonsense and you rebuked me for my blunt incivility. Might not I rebuke you now with equal justice?'

‘Do so, if you will – but leave me. I tell you, Conway, that in these matters you must either be guided by me, or you and I must cease to see each other. It does not do that you should remain here with me longer than the time usually allowed for a morning call. Clara has come and gone, and you also must go. I am sorry to disturb you, for you seem to be so very comfortable in that chair.'

‘I am comfortable – and I can look at you. Come – there can be no harm in saying that, if I say nothing else. Well – there, now I am gone.' Whereupon he got up from his arm-chair.

‘But you are not gone while you stand there.'

‘And would you really wish me to marry that girl?'

‘I do – if you can love her.'

‘And what about her love?'

‘You must win it, of course. She is to be won, like any other woman. The fruit won't fall into your mouth merely because you open your lips. You must climb the tree.'

‘Still climbing trees in the Hesperides,'
²
said Conway. ‘Love does that, you know; but it is hard to climb the trees without the love. It seems to me that I have done my climbing – have clomb as high as I knew how, and that the boughs are breaking with me, and that I am likely to get a fall. Do you understand me?'

‘I would rather not understand you.'

‘That is no answer to my question. Do you understand that at this moment I am getting a fall which will break every bone in my skin and put any other climbing out of the question as far as I am concerned? Do you understand that?'

‘No; I do not,' said Mrs Broughton, in a tremulous voice.

‘Then I'll go and make love at once to Clara Van Siever. There's enough of pluck left in me to ask her to marry me, and I suppose I could manage to go through the ceremony if she accepted me.'

‘But I want you to love her,' said Mrs Dobbs Broughton.

‘I daresay I should love her well enough after a bit – that is, if she didn't break my head or comb my hair.
³
I suppose there will be no objection to my saying that you sent me when I ask her?'

‘Conway, you will of course not mention my name to her. I have suggested to you a marriage which I think would tend to make you happy, and would give you a stability in life which you want. It is perhaps better that I should be explicit at once. As an unmarried man I cannot continue to know you. You have said words of late which have driven me to this conclusion. I have thought about it much – too much, perhaps, and I know that I am right. Miss Van Siever has beauty and wealth and intellect, and I think that she would appreciate the love of such a man as you are. Now go.' And Mrs Dobbs Broughton, standing upright, pointed to the door. Conway Dalrymple slowly took his Spanish hat from off the marble slab on which he had laid it, and left the room without saying a word. The interview had been quite long enough, and there was nothing else which he knew how to say with effect.

Croquet is a pretty game out of doors, and chess is delightful in a drawing-room. Battledore and shuttlecock and hunt-the-slipper have also their attractions. Proverbs are good, and cross questions with crooked answers may be made very amusing. But none of these games are equal to the game of love-making – providing that the players can be quite sure that there shall be no heart in the matter. Any touch of heart not only destroys the pleasure of the game, but makes the player awkward and incapable and robs him of his skill. And thus it is that there are many people who cannot play the game at all. A deficiency of some needed internal physical strength prevents the owners of the heart from keeping a proper control over its valves, and thus emotion sets in, and the pulses are accelerated, and feeling supervenes. For such a one to attempt a game of love-making, is as though your friend with the gout should insist on playing croquet. A sense of the ridiculous, if nothing else, should in either case deter the
afflicted one from the attempt. There was no such absurdity with our friend Mrs Dobbs Broughton and Conway Dalrymple. Their valves and pulses were all right. They could play the game without the slightest danger of any inconvenient result – of any inconvenient result, that is, as regarded their own feelings. Blind people cannot see and stupid people cannot understand – and it might be that Mr Dobbs Broughton, being both blind and stupid in such matters, might perceive something of the playing of the game and not know that it was only a game of skill.

When I say that as regarded these two lovers there was nothing of love between them, and that the game was therefore so far innocent, I would not be understood as asserting that these people had no hearts within their bosoms. Mrs Dobbs Broughton probably loved her husband in a sensible, humdrum way, feeling him to be a bore, knowing him to be vulgar, aware that he often took a good deal more wine than was good for him, and that he was almost as uneducated as a hog. Yet she loved him, and showed her love by taking care that he should have things for dinner which he liked to eat. But in this alone there were to be found none of the charms of a fevered existence, and therefore Mrs Dobbs Broughton, requiring those charms for her comfort, played her little game with Conway Dalrymple. And as regarded the artist himself, let no reader presume him to have been heartless because he flirted with Mrs Dobbs Broughton. Doubtless he will marry some day, will have a large family for which he will work hard, and will make a good husband to some stout lady who will be careful in looking after his linen. But on the present occasion he fell into some slight trouble in spite of the innocence of his game. As he quitted his friend's room he heard the hall-door slammed heavily; then there was a quick step on the stairs, and on the landing-place above the first flight he met the master of the house, somewhat flurried, as it seemed, and not looking comfortable, either as regarded his person or his temper. ‘By George, he's been drinking!' Conway said to himself, after the first glance. Now it certainly was the case that poor Dobbs Broughton would sometimes drink at improper hours.

‘What the devil are you doing here?' said Dobbs Broughton to his
friend the artist. ‘You're always here. You're here a doosed sight more than I like.' Husbands when they have been drinking are very apt to make mistakes as to the purport of the game.

‘Why, Dobbs,' said the painter, ‘there's something wrong with you.'

‘No, there ain't. There's nothing wrong; and if there was, what's that to you? I shan't ask you to pay anything for me, I suppose.'

‘Well – I hope not.'

‘I won't have you here, and let that be an end of it. It's all very well when I choose to have a few friends to dinner, but my wife can do very well without your fal-lalling here all day. Will you remember that, if you please?'

Conway Dalrymple, knowing that he had better not argue any question with a drunken man, took himself out of the house, shrugging his shoulders as he thought of the misery which his poor dear playfellow would now be called upon to endure.

On the morning after his visit to Miss Demolines John Eames found himself at the Paddington Station asking for a ticket for Guestwick, and as he picked up his change another gentleman also demanded a ticket for the same place. Had Guestwick been as Liverpool or Manchester, Eames would have thought nothing about it. It is a matter of course that men should always be going from London to Liverpool and Manchester; but it seemed odd to him that two men should want first-class tickets for so small a place as Guestwick at the same moment. And when, afterwards, he was placed by the guard in the same carriage with this other traveller, he could not but feel some little curiosity. The man was four or five years Johnny's senior, a good-looking fellow, with a pleasant face, and the outward appurtenances of a gentleman. The intelligent reader will no doubt be aware
that the stranger was Major Grantly; but the intelligent reader has in this respect had much advantage over John Eames, who up to this time had never even heard of his cousin Grace Crawley's lover. ‘I think you were asking for a ticket for Guestwick,' said Johnny – whereupon the major owned that such was the case. ‘I lived at Guestwick the greater part of my life,' said Johnny, ‘and it's the dullest, dearest little town in all England.' ‘I never was there before,' said the major, ‘and indeed I can hardly say I am going there now. I shall only pass through it.' Then he got out his newspaper, and Johnny also got out his, and for a time there was no conversation between them. John remembered how holy was the errand upon which he was intent, and gathered his thoughts together, resolving that having so great a matter on his mind he would think about nothing else and speak about nothing at all. He was going down to Allington to ask Lily Dale for the last time whether she would be his wife; to ascertain whether he was to be successful or unsuccessful in the one great wish of his life; and, as such was the case with him – as he had in hand a thing so vital, it could be nothing to him whether the chance companion of his voyage was an agreeable or a disagreeable person. He himself, in any of the ordinary circumstances of life, was prone enough to talk with anyone he might meet. He could have travelled for twelve hours together with an old lady, and could listen to her or make her listen to him without half an hour's interruption. But this journey was made on no ordinary occasion, and it behoved him to think of Lily. Therefore, after the first little almost necessary effort at civility, he fell back into gloomy silence. He was going to do his best to win Lily Dale, and this doing of his best would require all his thought and all his energy.

And probably Major Grantly's mind was bent in the same direction. He, too, had this work before him, and could not look upon his work as a thing that was altogether pleasant. He might probably get that which he was intent upon obtaining. He knew – he almost knew – that he had won the heart of the girl whom he was seeking. There had been that between him and her which justified him in supposing that he was dear to her, although no expression of affection had ever passed from her lips to his ears. Men may know all that they require
to know on that subject without any plainly spoken words. Grace Crawley had spoken no word, and yet he had known – at any rate had not doubted, that he could have the place in her heart of which he desired to be the master. She would never surrender herself altogether till she had taught herself to be sure of him to whom she gave herself. But she had listened to him with silence that had not rebuked him, and he had told himself that he might venture, without fear of that rebuke as to which the minds of some men are sensitive to a degree which other men cannot even understand. But for all this Major Grantly could not be altogether happy as to his mission. He would ask Grace Crawley to be his wife; but he would be ruined by his own success. And the remembrance that he would be severed from all his own family by the thing that he was doing, was very bitter to him. In generosity he might be silent about this to Grace, but who can endure to be silent on such a subject to the woman who is to be his wife? And then it would not be possible for him to abstain from explanation. He was now following her down to Allington, a step which he certainly would not have taken but for the misfortune which had befallen her father, and he must explain to her in some sort why he did so. He must say to her – if not in so many words, still almost as plainly as words could speak – I am here now to ask you to be my wife, because you specially require the protection and countenance of the man who loves you, in the present circumstances of your father's affairs. He knew that he was doing right – perhaps had some idea that he was doing nobly; but this very appreciation of his own good qualities made the task before him the more difficult.