‘Have you much work in your parish, Mr Robarts?’ she asked. Now, Mark was not aware that she knew his name, or the fact of his having a parish, and was rather surprised by the question. And he had not quite liked the tone in which she had seemed to speak of the bishop and his work. His desire for her further acquaintance was therefore somewhat moderated, and he was not prepared to answer her question with much zeal.
‘All parish clergymen have plenty of work, if they choose to do it.’
‘Ah, that is it; is it not, Mr Robarts? If they choose to do it? A great many do – many that I know, do; and see what a result they have. But many neglect it – and see what a result they have. I think it ought to be the happiest life that a man can lead, that of a parish clergyman, with a wife and family, and a sufficient income.’
‘I think it is,’ said Mark Robarts, asking himself whether the contentment accruing to him from such blessings had made him satisfied at all points. He had all these things of which Miss Dunstable spoke, and yet he had told his wife, the other day, that he could not afford to neglect the acquaintance of a rising politician like Harold Smith.
‘What I find fault with is this,’ continued Miss Dunstable, ‘that we expect clergymen to do their duty, and don’t give them a sufficient income – give them hardly any income at all. Is it not a scandal, that an educated gentleman with a family should be made to work half his life, and perhaps the whole, for a pittance of seventy pounds a year?’
Mark said that it was a scandal, and thought of Mr Evan Jones and his daughter; – and thought also of his own worth, and his own house, and his own nine hundred a year.
‘And yet you clergymen are so proud – aristocratic would be the genteel word, I know – that you won’t take the money of common, ordinary poor people. You must be paid from land and endowments, from tithe and Church property. You can’t bring yourself to work for what you earn, as lawyers and doctors do. It is better that curates should starve than undergo such ignominy as that.’
‘It is a long subject, Miss Dunstable.’
‘A very long one; and that means that I am not to say any more about it.’
‘I did not mean that exactly.’
‘Oh! but you did though, Mr Robarts. And I can take a hint of that kind when I get it. You clergymen like to keep those long subjects for your sermons, when no one can answer you. Now if I have a longing heart’s desire for anything at all in this world, it is to be able to get up into a pulpit, and preach a sermon.’
‘You can’t conceive how soon that appetite would pall upon you, after its first indulgence.’
‘That would depend upon whether I could get people to listen to me. It does not pall upon Mr Spurgeon,1 suppose.’ Then her attention was called away by some question from Mr Sowerby, and Mark Robarts found himself bound to address his conversation to Miss Proudie. Miss Proudie, however, was not thankful, and gave him little but monosyllables for his pains.
‘Of course you know Harold Smith is going to give us a lecture about these islanders,’ Mr Sowerby said to him, as they sat round the fire over their wine after dinner. Mark said that he had been so informed, and should be delighted to be one of the listeners.
‘You are bound to do that, as he is going to listen to you the day afterwards – or, at any rate, to pretend to do so, which is as much as you will do for him. It’ll be a terrible bore – the lecture I mean, not the sermon.’ And he spoke very low into his friend’s ear. ‘Fancy having to drive ten miles after dusk, and ten miles back, to hear Harold Smith talk for two hours about Borneo! One must do it, you know.’
‘I daresay it will be very interesting.’
‘My dear fellow, you haven’t undergone so many of these things as I have. But he’s right to do it. It’s his line of life; and when a man begins a thing he ought to go on with it. Where’s Lufton all this time?’
‘In Scotland, when I last heard from him; but he’s probably at Melton now.’
‘It’s deuced shabby of him, not hunting here in his own county. He escapes all the bore of going to lectures, and giving feeds to the neighbours; that’s why he treats us so. He has no idea of his duty, has he?’
‘Lady Lufton does all that, you know.’
I wish I’d a Mrs Sowerby mère to do it for me. But then Lufton has no constituents to look after – lucky dog! By-the-by, has he spoken to you about selling that outlying bit of land of his in Oxfordshire? It belongs to the Lufton property, and yet it doesn’t. In my mind it gives more trouble than it’s worth.’
Lord Lufton had spoken to Mark about this sale, and had explained to him that such a sacrifice was absolutely necessary, in consequence of certain pecuniary transactions between him, Lord Lufton, and Mr Sowerby. But it was found impracticable to complete the business without Lady Lufton’s knowledge, and her son had commissioned Mr Robarts not only to inform her ladyship, but to talk her over, and to appease her wrath. This commission he had not yet attempted to execute, and it was probable that this visit to Chaldicotes would not do much to facilitate the business.
‘They are the most magnificent islands under the sun,’ said Harold Smith to the bishop.
‘Are they, indeed?’ said the bishop, opening his eyes wide, and assuming a look of intense interest.
‘And the most intelligent people.’
‘Dear me!’ said the bishop.
‘All they want is guidance, encouragement, instruction –’
‘And Christianity,’ suggested the bishop.
‘And Christianity, of course,’ said Mr Smith, remembering that he was speaking to a dignitary of the Church. It was well to humour such people, Mr Smith thought. But the Christianity was to be done in the Sunday sermon, and was not part of his work.
‘And how do you intend to begin with them?’ asked Mr Supple-house, the business of whose life it had been to suggest difficulties.
‘Begin with them – oh – why – it’s very easy to begin with them. The difficulty is to go on with them, after the money is all spent. We’ll begin by explaining to them the benefits of civilization.’
‘Capital plan!’ said Mr Supplehouse. ‘But how do you set about it, Smith?’
‘How do we set about it? How did we set about it with Australia and America? It is very easy to criticize; but in such matters the great thing is to put one’s shoulder to the wheel.’
‘We sent our felons to Australia,’ said Supplehouse, ‘and they began the work for us. And as to America, we exterminated the people instead of civilizing them.’
‘We did not exterminate the inhabitants of India,’ said Harold Smith, angrily.
‘Nor have we attempted to Christianize them, as the bishop so properly wishes to do with your islanders.’
‘Supplehouse, you are not fair,’ said Mr Sowerby, ‘neither to Harold Smith nor to us; – you are making him rehearse his lecture, which is bad for him; and making us hear the rehearsal, which is bad for us.’
‘Supplehouse belongs to a clique which monopolizes the wisdom of England,’ said Harold Smith; ‘or, at any rate, thinks that it does. But the worst of them is that they are given to talk leading articles.’
‘Better that, than talk articles which are not leading,’ said Mr Supplehouse. ‘Some first-class official men do that.’
‘Shall I meet you at the duke’s next week, Mr Robarts,’ said the bishop to him, soon after they had gone into the drawing-room.
Meet him at the duke’s! – the established enemy of Barsetshire mankind, as Lady Lufton regarded his grace! No idea of going to the duke’s had ever entered our hero’s mind; nor had he been aware that the duke was about to entertain any one.
‘No, my lord; I think not. Indeed, I have no acquaintance with his grace.’
‘Oh – ah! I did not know. Because Mr Sowerby is going; and so are the Harold Smiths, and, I think, Mr Supplehouse. An excellent man is the duke; – that is, as regards all the county interests,’ added the bishop, remembering that the moral character of his bachelor grace was not the very be
st in the world.
And then his lordship began to ask some questions about the church affairs of Framley, in which a little interest as to Framley Court was also mixed up, when he was interrupted by a rather sharp voice, to which he instantly attended.
‘Bishop,’ said the rather sharp voice; and the bishop trotted across the room to the back of the sofa, on which his wife was sitting.
‘Miss Dunstable thinks that she will be able to come to us for a couple of days, after we leave the duke’s.’
‘I shall be delighted above all things,’ said the bishop, bowing low to the dominant lady of the day. For be it known to all men, that Miss Dunstable was the great heiress of that name.
‘Mrs Proudie is so very kind as to say that she will take me in, with my poodle, parrot, and pet old woman.’
‘I tell Miss Dunstable, that we shall have quite room for any of her suite,’ said Mrs Proudie. ‘And that it will give us no trouble.’
‘“The labour we delight in physics pain,”’2 said the gallant bishop, bowing low, and putting his hand upon his heart.
In the meantime, Mr Fothergill had got hold of Mark Robarts. Mr Fothergill was a gentleman, and a magistrate of the county, but he occupied the position of managing man on the Duke of Omnium’s estates. He was not exactly his agent; that is to say, he did not receive his rents; but he ‘managed’ for him, saw people, went about the county, wrote letters, supported the electioneering interest, did popularity when it was too much trouble for the duke to do it himself, and was, in fact, invaluable. People in West Barset-shire would often say that they did not know what on earth the duke would do, if it were not for Mr Fothergill. Indeed, Mr Fothergill was useful to the duke.
‘Mr Robarts,’ he said, ‘I am very happy to have the pleasure of meeting you – very happy, indeed. I have often heard of you from our friend Sowerby.’
Mark bowed, and said that he was delighted to have the honour of making Mr Fothergill’s acquaintance.
‘I am commissioned by the Duke of Omnium,’ continued Mr Fothergill, ‘to say how glad he will be if you will join his grace’s party at Gatherum Castle, next week. The bishop will be there, and indeed nearly the whole set who are here now. The duke would have written when he heard that you were to be at Chaldicotes; but things were hardly quite arranged then, so his grace has left it for me to tell you how happy he will be to make your acquaintance in his own house. I have spoken to Sowerby,’ continued Mr Fothergill, ‘and he very much hopes that you will be able to join us.’
Mark felt that his face became red when this proposition was made to him. The party in the county to which he properly belonged – he and his wife, and all that made him happy and respectable – looked upon the Duke of Omnium with horror and amazement; and now he had absolutely received an invitation to the duke’s house! A proposition was made to him that he should be numbered among the duke’s friends!
And though in one sense he was sorry that the proposition was made to him, yet in another he was proud of it. It is not every young man, let his profession be what it may, who can receive overtures of friendship from dukes without some elation. Mark, too, had risen in the world, as far as he had yet risen, by knowing great people; and he certainly had an ambition to rise higher. I will not degrade him by calling him a tuft-hunter; but he undoubtedly had a feeling that the paths most pleasant for a clergyman’s feet were those which were trodden by the great ones of the earth.
Nevertheless, at the moment he declined the duke’s invitation. He was very much flattered, he said, but the duties of his parish would require him to return direct from Chaldicotes to Framley.
‘You need not give me an answer to-night, you know,’ said Mr Fothergill. ‘Before the week is past, we will talk it over with Sowerby and the bishop. It will be a thousand pities, Mr Robarts, if you will allow me to say so, that you should neglect such an opportunity of knowing his grace.’
When Mark went to bed, his mind was still set against going to the duke’s; but, nevertheless, he did feel that it was a pity that he should not do so. After all, was it necessary that he should obey Lady Lufton in all things?
[2]
CHAPTER 4
A Matter of Conscience
IT is no doubt very wrong to long after a naughty thing. But nevertheless we all do so. One may say that hankering after naughty things is the very essence of the evil into which we have been precipitated by Adam’s fall. When we confess that we are all sinners, we confess that we all long after naughty things.
And ambition is a great vice – as Mark Antony told us a long time ago – a great vice, no doubt, if the ambition of the man be with reference to his own advancement, and not to the advancement of others. But then, how many of us are there who are not ambitious in this vicious manner?
And there is nothing viler than the desire to know great people – people of great rank I should say; nothing worse than the hunting of titles and worshipping of wealth. We all know this, and say it every day of our lives. But presuming that a way into the society of Park Lane was open to us, and a way also into that of Bedford Row,1 how many of us are there who would prefer Bedford Row because it is so vile to worship wealth and title?
I am led into these rather trite remarks by the necessity of putting forward some sort of excuse for that frame of mind in which the Rev. Mark Robarts awoke on the morning after his arrival at Chaldicotes. And I trust that the fact of his being a clergyman will not be allowed to press against him unfairly. Clergymen are subject to the same passions as other men; and, as far as I can see, give way to them, in one line or in another, almost as frequently. Every clergyman should, by canonical rule, feel a personal disinclination to a bishopric;2 but yet we do not believe that such personal disinclination is generally very strong.
Mark’s first thoughts when he woke on that morning flew back to Mr Fothergill’s invitation. The duke had sent a special message to say how peculiarly glad he, the duke, would be to make acquaintance with him, the parson! How much of this message had been of Mr Fothergill’s own manufacture, that Mark Robarts did not consider.
He had obtained a living at an age when other young clergymen are beginning to think of a curacy, and he had obtained such a living as middle-aged parsons in their dreams regard as a possible Paradise for their old years. Of course he thought that all these good things had been the results of his own peculiar merits. Of course he felt that he was different from other parsons, – more fitted by nature for intimacy with great persons, more urbane, more polished, and more richly endowed with modern clerical well-to-do aptitudes. He was grateful to Lady Lufton for what she had done for him; but perhaps not so grateful as he should have been.
At any rate he was not Lady Lufton’s servant, nor even her dependant. So much he had repeated to himself on many occasions, and had gone so far as to hint the same idea to his wife. In his career as parish priest he must in most things be the judge of his own actions – and in many also it was his duty to be the judge of those of his patroness. The fact of Lady Lufton having placed him in the living, could by no means make her the proper judge of his actions. This he often said to himself; and he said as often that Lady Lufton certainly had a hankering after such a judgment-seat.
Of whom generally did prime ministers and official bigwigs think it expedient to make bishops and deans? Was it not, as a rule, of those clergymen who had shown themselves able to perform their clerical duties efficiently, and able also to take their place with ease in high society? He was very well off certainly at Framley; but he could never hope for anything beyond Framley, if he allowed himself to regard Lady Lufton as a bugbear. Putting Lady Lufton and her prejudices out of the question, was there any reason why he ought not to accept the duke’s invitation? He could not see that there was any such reason. If any one could be a better judge on such a subject than himself, it must be his bishop. And it was clear that the bishop wished him to go to Gatherum Castle.
The matter was still left open to him. Mr Fothergill had especially
explained that; and therefore his ultimate decision was as yet within his own power. Such a visit would cost him some money, for he knew that a man does not stay at great houses without expense; and then, in spite of his good income, he was not very flush of money. He had been down this year with Lord Lufton in Scotland. Perhaps it might be more prudent for him to return home.
But then an idea came to him that it behoved him as a man and a priest to break through that Framley thraldom under which he felt that he did to a certain extent exist. Was it not the fact that he was about to decline this invitation from fear of Lady Lufton? and if so, was that a motive by which he ought to be actuated? It was incumbent on him to rid himself of that feeling. And in this spirit he got up and dressed.
There was hunting again on that day; and as the hounds were to meet near Chaldicotes, and to draw some coverts lying on the verge of the chase, the ladies were to go in carriages through the drives of the forest, and Mr Robarts was to escort them on horseback. Indeed it was one of those hunting-days got up rather for the ladies than for the sport. Great nuisances they are to steady, middle-aged hunting men; but the young fellows like them because they have thereby an opportunity of showing off their sporting finery, and of doing a little flirtation on horseback. The bishop, also, had been minded to be of the party; so, at least, he had said on the previous evening; and a place in one of the carriages had been set apart for him: but since that, he and Mrs Proudie had discussed the matter in private, and at breakfast his lordship declared that he had changed his mind.
Mr Sowerby was one of those men who are known to be very poor – as poor as debt can make a man – but who, nevertheless, enjoy all the luxuries which money can give. It was believed that he could not live in England out of jail but for his protection as a member of Parliament; and yet it seemed that there was no end to his horses and carriages, his servants and retinue. He had been at this work for a great many years, and practice, they say, makes perfect. Such companions are very dangerous. There is no cholera, no yellow-fever, no small-pox more contagious than debt. If one lives habitually among embarrassed men, one catches it to a certainty. No one had injured the community in this way more fatally than Mr Sowerby. But still he carried on the game himself; and now on this morning carriages and horses thronged at his gate, as though he were as substantially rich as his friend the Duke of Omnium.
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