The Last Chronicle of Barset (91 page)

Poor Grace Crawley!

The archdeacon, as he walked across from the Court to the parsonage, was very thoughtful and his steps were very slow. The idea of seeing Miss Crawley herself had been suggested to him suddenly, and he had to determine how he could bear himself towards her, and what he would say to her. Lady Lufton had beseeched him to be gentle with her. Was the mission one in which gentleness would be possible? Must it not be his object to make this young lady understand that she could not be right in desiring to come into his family and share in all his good things when she had no good things of her own – nothing but evil things to bring with her? And how could this be properly explained to the young lady in gentle terms? Must he not be round with her, and give her to understand in plain words – the plainest which he could use – that she would not get his good things, though she would most certainly impose the burden of all her evil things on the man whom she was proposing to herself as a husband. He remembered very well as he went, that he had been told that Miss Crawley had herself refused the offer, feeling herself to be unfit for the honour tendered to her; but he suspected the sincerity of such a
refusal. Calculating in his own mind the unreasonably great advantages which would be conferred on such a young lady as Miss Crawley by a marriage with his son, he declared to himself that any girl must be very wicked indeed who should expect, or even accept, so much more than was her due – but nevertheless he could not bring himself to believe that any girl, when so tempted, would, in sincerity, decline to commit this great wickedness. If he was to do any good by seeing Miss Crawley, must it not consist in a proper explanation to her of the selfishness, abomination, and altogether damnable blackness of such wickedness as this on the part of a young woman in her circumstances? ‘Heaven and earth!' he must say, ‘here are you, without a penny in your pocket, with hardly decent raiment on your back, with a thief for your father, and you think that you are to come and share all the wealth that the Grantlys have amassed, that you are to have a husband with broad acres, a big house, and game preserves, and become one of a family whose name has never been touched by a single accusation – no, not a suspicion? No – injustice such as that shall never be done betwixt you and me. You may wring my heart, and you may ruin my son; but the broad acres and the big house, and the game preserves, and the rest of it, shall never be your reward for doing so.' How was all that to be told effectively to a young woman in gentle words? And then how was a man in the archdeacon's position to be desirous of gentle words – gentle words which would not be efficient – when he knew well in his heart of hearts that he had nothing but threats on which to depend. He had no more power of disinheriting his own son for such an offence as that contemplated than he had of blowing out his own brains, and he knew that it was so. He was a man incapable of such persistency of wrath against one whom he loved. He was neither cruel enough nor strong enough to do such a thing. He could only threaten to do it, and make what best use he might of threats, whilst threats might be of avail. In spite of all that he had said to his wife, to Lady Lufton, and to himself, he knew very well that if his son did sin in this way he, the father, would forgive the sin of the son.

In going across from the front gate of the Court to the parsonage there was a place where three roads met,
¹
and on this spot there stood
a finger-post. Round this finger-post there was now pasted a placard, which at once arrested the archdeacon's eye: – ‘Cosby Lodge – Sale of furniture – Growing crops to be sold on the grounds. Three hunters. A brown gelding warranted for saddle or harness!' – The archdeacon himself had given the brown gelding to his son, as a great treasure. – ‘Three Alderney cows, two cow-calves, a low phaeton, a gig, two ricks of hay.' In this fashion were proclaimed in odious details all those comfortable additions to a gentleman's house in the country, with which the archdeacon was so well acquainted. Only last November he had recommended his son to buy a certain new clod-crusher, and the clod-crusher had of course been bought. The bright blue paint upon it had as yet not given way to the stains of the ordinary farmyard muck and mire – and here was the clod-crusher advertised for sale! The archdeacon did not want his son to leave Cosby Lodge. He knew well enough that his son need not leave Cosby Lodge. Why had the foolish fellow been in such a hurry with his hideous ill-conditioned advertisements? Gentle! How was he in such circumstances to be gentle? He raised his umbrella and poked angrily at the disgusting notice. The iron ferrule caught the paper at a chink in the post, and tore it from the top to the bottom. But what was the use? A horrid ugly bill lying torn in such a spot would attract only more attention than one fixed to a post. He could not condescend, however, to give it further attention, but passed on up to the parsonage. Gentle, indeed!

Nevertheless Archdeacon Grantly was a gentleman, and never yet had dealt more harshly with any woman than we have sometimes seen him do with his wife – when he would say to her an angry word or two with a good deal of marital authority. His wife, who knew well what his angry words were worth, never even suggested to herself that she had cause for complaint on that head. Had she known that the archdeacon was about to undertake such a mission as this which he had now in hand, she would not have warned him to be gentle. She, indeed, would have strongly advised him not to undertake the mission, cautioning him that the young lady would probably get the better of him.

‘Grace, my dear,' said Mrs Robarts, coming up into the nursery in
which Miss Crawley was sitting with the children, ‘come out here a moment, will you?' Then Grace left the children and went out into the passage. ‘My dear, there is a gentleman in the drawing-room who asks to see you.'

‘A gentleman, Mrs Robarts! What gentleman?' But Grace, though she asked the question, conceived that the gentleman must be Henry Grantly. Her mind did not suggest to her the possibility of any other gentleman coming to see her.

‘You must not be surprised, or allow yourself to be frightened.'

‘Oh, Mrs Robarts, who is it?'

‘It is Major Grantly's father.'

‘The archdeacon?'

‘Yes, dear; Archdeacon Grantly. He is in the drawing-room.'

‘Must I see him, Mrs Robarts?'

‘Well, Grace – I think you must. I hardly know how you can refuse. He is an intimate friend of everybody here at Framley.'

‘What will he say to me?'

‘Nay; that I cannot tell. I suppose you know –'

‘He has come, no doubt, to bid me have nothing to say to his son. He need not have troubled himself. But he may say what he likes. I am no coward, and I will go to him.'

‘Stop a moment, Grace. Come into my room for an instant. The children have pulled your hair about.' But Grace, though she followed Mrs Robarts into the bedroom would have nothing done to her hair. She was too proud for that – and we may say, also, too little confident in any good which such resources might effect on her behalf. ‘Never mind about that,' she said. ‘What am I to say to him?' Mrs Robarts paused before she replied, feeling that the matter was one which required some deliberation. ‘Tell me what I must say to him?' said Grace, repeating her question.

‘I hardly know what your own feelings are, my dear.'

‘Yes, you do. You do know. If I had all the world to give, I would give it all to Major Grantly.'

‘Tell him that, then.'

‘No, I will not tell him that. Never mind about my frock, Mrs Robarts. I do not care for that. I will tell him that I love his son and
his granddaughter too well to injure them. I will tell him nothing else. I might as well go now.' Mrs Robarts, as she looked at Grace, was astonished at the serenity of her face. And yet when her hand was on the drawing-room door Grace hesitated, looked back, and trembled. Mrs Robarts blew a kiss to her from the stairs; and then the door was opened, and the girl found herself in the presence of the archdeacon. He was standing on the rug, with his back to the fire, and his heavy ecclesiastical hat was placed on the middle of the round table. The hat caught Grace's eye at the moment of her entrance, and she felt that all the thunders of the Church were contained within it. And then the archdeacon himself was so big and so clerical, and so imposing! Her father's aspect was severe, but the severity of her father's face was essentially different from that expressed by the archdeacon. Whatever impression came from her father came from the man himself. There was no outward adornment there; there was, so to say, no wig about Mr Crawley. Now the archdeacon was not exactly adorned; but he was so thoroughly imbued with high clerical belongings and sacerdotal fitnesses as to appear always as a walking, sitting, or standing impersonation of parsondom. To poor Grace, as she entered the room, he appeared to be an impersonation of parsondom in its severest aspect.

‘Miss Crawley, I believe?' said he.

‘Yes, sir,' said she, curtseying ever so slightly, as she stood before him at some considerable distance.

His first idea was that his son must be indeed a fool if he was going to give up Cosby Lodge and all Barsetshire, and retire to Pau, for so slight and unattractive a creature as he now saw before him. But this idea stayed with him only for a moment. As he continued to gaze at her during the interview he came to perceive that there was very much more than he had perceived at the first glance, and that his son, after all, had had eyes to see, though perhaps not a heart to understand.

‘Will you not take a chair?' he said. Then Grace sat down, still at a distance from the archdeacon, and he kept his place upon the rug. He felt that there would be a difficulty in making her feel the full force of his eloquence all across the room; and yet he did not know how to bring himself nearer to her. She became suddenly very
important in his eyes, and he was to some extent afraid of her. She was so slight, so meek, so young; and yet there was about her something so beautifully feminine – and, withal, so like a lady – that he felt instinctively that he could not attack her with harsh words. Had her lips been full, and her colour high, and had her eyes rolled, had she put forth against him any of that ordinary artillery with which youthful feminine batteries are charged, he would have been ready to rush to the combat. But this girl, about whom his son had gone mad, sat there as passively as though she were conscious of the possession of no artillery. There was not a single gun fired from beneath her eyelids. He knew not why, but he respected his son now more than he had respected him for the last two months – more, perhaps, than he had ever respected him before. He was as eager as ever against the marriage – but in thinking of his son in what he said and did after these few moments of the interview, he ceased to think of him with contempt. The creature before him was a woman who grew in his opinion till he began to feel that she was in truth fit to be the wife of his son – if only she were not a pauper, and the daughter of a mad curate, and, alas! too probably, of a thief. Though his feeling towards the girl was changed, his duty to himself, his family, and his son, was the same as ever, and therefore he began his task.

‘Perhaps you had not expected to see me?' he said.

‘No, indeed, sir.'

‘Nor had I intended when I came over here to call on my old friend, Lady Lufton, to come up to this house. But as I knew that you were here, Miss Crawley, I thought that upon the whole it would be better that I should see you.' Then he paused as though he expected that Grace would say something; but Grace had nothing to say. ‘Of course you must understand, Miss Crawley, that I should not venture to speak to you on this subject unless I myself were very closely interested in it.' He had not yet said what was the subject, and it was not probable that Grace should give him any assistance by affecting to understand this without direct explanation from him. She sat quite motionless, and did not even aid him by showing by her altered colour that she understood his purpose. ‘My son has told me,' said he, ‘that he has professed an attachment for you, Miss Crawley.'

Then there was another pause, and Grace felt that she was compelled to say something. ‘Major Grantly has been very good to me,' she said, and then she hated herself for having uttered words which were so tame and unwomanly in their spirit. Of course her lover's father would despise her for having so spoken. After all it did not much signify. If he would only despise her and go away, it would perhaps be for the best.

‘I do not know about being good,' said the archdeacon. ‘I think he is good. I think he means to be good.'

‘I am sure he is good,' said Grace warmly.

‘You know he has a daughter, Miss Crawley?'

‘Oh, yes; I know Edith well.'

‘Of course his first duty is to her. Is it not? And he owes much to his family. Do you not feel that?'

‘Of course I feel it, sir.' The poor girl had always heard Dr Grantly spoken of as the archdeacon, but she did not in the least know what she ought to call him.

‘Now, Miss Crawley, pray listen to me; I will speak to you very openly. I must speak to you openly, because it is my duty on my son's behalf – but I will endeavour to speak to you kindly also. Of yourself I have heard nothing but what is favourable, and there is no reason as yet why I should not respect and esteem you.' Grace told herself that she would do nothing which ought to forfeit his respect and esteem, but that she did not care two straws whether his respect and esteem were bestowed on her or not. She was striving after something very different from that. ‘If my son were to marry you, he would greatly injure himself, and would very greatly injure his child.' Again he paused. He had told her to listen, and she was resolved that she would listen – unless he should say something which might make a word from her necessary at the moment. ‘I do not know whether there does at present exist any engagement between you?'