Framley Parsonage

by Anthony Trollope

  ‘It was arranged, Mr Crawley, when I was here before, that the children had better go away,’ pleaded Lucy.

  ‘I do not remember agreeing to such a measure, Miss Robarts; however ̵ I suppose they cannot be had back to-night?’

  ‘No, not to-night,’ said Lucy. ‘And now I will go in to your wife.’ And then she returned to the house, leaving the two gentlemen at the door. At this moment a labourer’s boy came sauntering by, and the dean obtaining possession of his services for the custody of his horse, was able to dismount and put himself on a more equal footing for conversation with his friend.

  ‘Crawley,’ said he, putting his hand affectionately on his friend’s shoulder, as they both stood leaning on the little rail before the door; ‘that is a good girl – a very good girl.’

  ‘Yes,’ said he slowly; ‘she means well.’

  ‘Nay, but she does well; she does excellently. What can be better than her conduct now? While I was meditating how I might possibly assist your wife in this strait –’

  ‘I want no assistance; none, at least, from man,’ said Crawley, bitterly.

  ‘Oh, my friend, think of what you are saying! Think of the wickedness which must accompany such a state of mind! Have you ever known any man able to walk alone, without assistance from his brother men?’

  Mr Crawley did not make any immediate answer, but putting his arms behind his back and closing his hands, as was his wont when he walked alone thinking of the general bitterness of his lot in life, began to move slowly along the road in front of his house. He did not invite the other to walk with him, but neither was there anything in his manner which seemed to indicate that he had intended to be left to himself. It was a beautiful summer afternoon, at that delicious period of the year when summer has just burst forth from the growth of spring; when the summer is yet but three days old, and all the various shades of green which nature can put forth are still in their unsoiled purity of freshness. The apple blossoms were on the trees, and the hedges were sweet with May. The cuckoo at five o’clock was still sounding his soft summer call with unabated energy, and even the common grasses of the hedgerows were sweet with the fragrance of their new growth. The foliage of the oaks was complete, so that every bough and twig was clothed; but the leaves did not yet hang heavy in masses, and the bend of every bough and the tapering curve of every twig were visible through their light green covering. There is no time of the year equal in beauty to the first week in summer; and no colour which nature gives, not even the gorgeous hues of autumn, which can equal the verdure produced by the first warm suns of May.

  Hogglestock, as has been explained, has little to offer in the way of landskip beauty, and the clergyman’s house at Hogglestock was not placed on a green slopy bank of land, retired from the road, with its windows opening on to a lawn, surrounded by shrubs, with a view of the small church tower seen through them; it had none of that beauty which is so common to the cozy houses of our spiritual pastors in the agricultural parts of England. Hogglestock Parsonage stood bleak beside the road, with no pretty paling lined inside by hollies and laburnum, Portugal laurels and rose-trees. But, nevertheless, even Hogglestock was pretty now. There were apple-trees there covered with blossom, and the hedgerows were in full flower. There were thrushes singing, and here and there an oak-tree stood in the roadside, perfect in its solitary beauty.

  ‘Let us walk on a little,’ said the dean. ‘Miss Robarts is with her now, and you will be better for leaving the room for a few minutes.’

  ‘No,’ said he; ‘I must go back; I cannot leave that young lady to do my work.’

  ‘Stop, Crawley!’ And the dean, putting his hand upon him, stayed him in the road. ‘She is doing her own work, and if you were speaking of her with reference to any other household than your own, you would say so. Is it not a comfort to you to know that your wife has a woman near her at such a time as this; and a woman, too, who can speak to her as one lady does to another?’

  ‘These are comforts which we have no right to expect. I could not have done much for poor Mary; but what a man could have done should not have been wanting.’

  ‘I am sure of it; I know it well. What any man could do by himself you would do – excepting one thing.’ And the dean as he spoke looked full into the other’s face.

  ‘And what is there I would not do?’ said Crawley.

  ‘Sacrifice your own pride.’

  ‘My pride?’

  ‘Yes; your own pride.’

  ‘I have had but little pride this many a day. Arabin, you do not know what my life has been. How is a man to be proud who –’ And then he stopped himself, not wishing to go through the catalogue of those grievances, which, as he thought, had killed the very germs of pride within him, or to insist by spoken words on his poverty, his wants, and the injustice of his position. ‘No; I wish I could be proud; but the world has been too heavy to me, and I have forgotten all that.’

  ‘How long have I known you, Crawley?’

  ‘How long? Ah dear! a lifetime nearly, now.’

  ‘And we were like brothers once.’

  ‘Yes; we were equal as brothers then – in our fortunes, our tastes, and our modes of life.’

  ‘And yet you would begrudge me the pleasure of putting my hand in my pocket, and relieving the inconveniences which have been thrown on you, and those you love better than yourself, by the chances of your fate in life.’

  ‘I will live on no man’s charity,’ said Crawley, with an abruptness which amounted almost to an expression of anger.

  ‘And is not that pride?’

  ‘No – yes; – it is a species of pride, but not that pride of which you spoke. A man cannot be honest if he have not some pride. You yourself; – would you not rather starve than become a beggar?’

  ‘I would rather beg than see my wife starve,’ said Arabin.

  Crawley when he heard these words turned sharply round, and stood with his back to the dean, with his hands still behind him, and with his eyes fixed upon the ground.

  ‘But in this case there is no question of begging,’ continued the dean. ‘I, out of these superfluities which it has pleased God to put at my disposal, am anxious to assist the needs of those whom I love.’

  ‘She is not starving,’ said Crawley, in a voice very bitter, but still intended to be exculpatory of himself.

  ‘No, my dear friend; I know she is not, and do not you be angry with me because I have endeavoured to put the matter to you in the strongest language I could use.’

  ‘You look at it, Arabin, from one side only; I can only look at it from the other. It is very sweet to give; I do not doubt that. But the taking of what is given is very bitter. Gift bread chokes in a man’s throat and poisons his blood, and sits like lead upon the heart. You have never tried it.’

  ‘But that is the very fault for which I blame you. That is the pride which I say you ought to sacrifice.’

  ‘And why should I be called on to do so? Is not the labourer worthy of his hire? Am I not able to work, and willing? Have I not always had my shoulder to the collar, and is it right that I should now be contented with the scraps from a rich man’s kitchen?2 Arabin, you and I were equal once and we were then friends, understanding each other’s thoughts and sympathizing with each other’s sorrows. But it cannot be so now.’

  ‘If there be such inability, it is all with you.’

  ‘It is all with me, – because in our connection the pain would all be on my side. It would not hurt you to see me at your table with worn shoes and a ragged shirt. I do not think so meanly of you as that. You would give me your feast to eat though I were not clad a tithe as well as the menial behind your chair. But it would hurt me to know that there were those looking at me who thought me unfit to sit in your rooms.’

  ‘That is the pride of which I speak; – false pride.’

  ‘Call it so if you will; but, Arabin, no preaching of yours can alter it. It is all that is left to me of my manliness. That poor broken reed who is lying there sick
, – who has sacrificed all the world to her love for me, who is the mother of my children, and the partner of my sorrows and the wife of my bosom, – even she cannot change me in this, though she pleads with the eloquence of all her wants. Not even for her can I hold out my hand for a dole.’

  They had now come back to the door of the house, and Mr Crawley, hardly conscious of what he was doing, was preparing to enter.

  ‘Will Mrs Crawley be able to see me if I come in?’ said the dean.

  ‘Oh, stop; no; you had better not do so,’ said Mr Crawley. ‘You, no doubt, might be subject to infection, and then Mrs Arabin would be frightened.’

  ‘I do not care about it in the least,’ said the dean.

  ‘But it is of no use; you had better not. Her room, I fear, is quite unfit for you to see; and the whole house, you know, may be infected.’

  Dr Arabin by this time was in the sitting-room; but seeing that his friend was really anxious that he should not go farther, he did not persist.

  ‘It will be a comfort to us, at any rate, to know that Miss Robarts is with her.’

  ‘The young lady is very good – very good indeed,’ said Crawley; ‘but I trust she will return to her home to-morrow. It is impossible that she should remain in so poor a house as mine. There will be nothing here of all the things that she will want.’

  The dean thought that Lucy Robarts’ wants during her present occupation of nursing would not be so numerous as to make her continued sojourn in Mrs Crawley’s sick room impossible, and therefore took his leave with a satisfied conviction that the poor lady would not be left wholly to the somewhat unskilful nursing of her husband.

  [13]

  CHAPTER 37

  Mr Sowerby without Company

  AND now there were going to be wondrous doings in West Barset-shire, and men’s minds were much disturbed. The fiat had gone forth from the high places, and the Queen had dissolved her faithful Commons. The giants, finding that they could effect little or nothing with the old House, had resolved to try what a new venture would do for them, and the hubbub of a general election was to pervade the country. This produced no inconsiderable irritation and annoyance, for the House was not as yet quite three years old; and members of Parliament, though they naturally feel a constitutional pleasure in meeting their friends and in pressing the hands of their constituents, are, nevertheless, so far akin to the lower order of humanity that they appreciate the danger of losing their seats; and the certainty of a considerable outlay in their endeavours to retain them is not agreeable to the legislative mind.

  Never did the old family fury between the gods and giants rage higher than at the present moment. The giants declared that every turn which they attempted to take in their country’s service had been thwarted by faction, in spite of those benign promises of assistance made to them only a few weeks since by their opponents; and the gods answered by asserting that they were driven to this opposition by the Boeotian fatuity of the giants. They had no doubt promised their aid, and were ready to give it to measures that were decently prudent; but not to a bill enabling government at its will to pension aged bishops! No; there must be some limit to their tolerance, and when such attempts as these were made that limit had been clearly passed.

  All this had taken place openly only a day or two after that casual whisper dropped by Tom Towers at Miss Dunstable’s party – by Tom Towers, that most pleasant of all pleasant fellows. And how should he have known it, he who flutters from one sweetest flower of the garden to another,

  Adding sugar to the pink, and honey to the rose,

  So loved for what he gives, but taking nothing as he goes?1

  But the whisper had grown into a rumour, and the rumour into a fact, and the political world was in a ferment. The giants, furious about their Bishops’ Pension Bill, threatened the House – most injudiciously; and then it was beautiful to see how indignant members got up, glowing with honesty, and declared that it was base to conceive that any gentleman in that House could be actuated in his vote by any hopes or fears with reference to his seat. And so matters grew from bad to worse, and these contending parties never hit at each other with such envenomed wrath as they did now; – having entered the ring together so lately with such manifold promises of good-will, respect, and forbearance!

  But going from the general to the particular, we may say that nowhere was a deeper consternation spread than in the electoral division of West Barsetshire. No sooner had the tidings of the dissolution reached the county than it was known that the duke intended to change his nominee. Mr Sowerby had now sat for the division since the Reform Bill! He had become one of the county institutions, and by the dint of custom and long establishment had been borne with and even liked by the county gentlemen, in spite of his well known pecuniary irregularities. Now all this was to be changed. No reason had as yet been publicly given, but it was understood that Lord Dumbello was to be returned, although he did not own an acre of land in the county. It is true that rumour went on to say that Lord Dumbello was about to form close connections with Barsetshire. He was on the eve of marrying a young lady, from the other division indeed, and was now engaged, so it was said, in completing arrangements with the government for the purchase of that noble Crown property usually known as the Chase of Chaldicotes. It was also stated – this statement, however, had hitherto been only announced in confidential whispers – that Chaldicotes House itself would soon become the residence of the marquis. The duke was claiming it as his own – would very shortly have completed his claims and taken possession; – and then, by some arrangement between them, it was to be made over to Lord Dumbello.

  But very contrary rumours to these got abroad also. Men said – such as dared to oppose the duke, and some few also who did not dare to oppose him when the day of battle came – that it was beyond his grace’s power to turn Lord Dumbello into a Barsetshire magnate. The Crown property – such men said – was to fall into the hands of young Mr Gresham, of Boxall Hill, in the other division, and that the terms of purchase had been already settled. And as to Mr Sowerby’s property and the house of Chaldicotes – these opponents of the Omnium interest went on to explain – it was by no means as yet so certain that the duke would be able to enter it and take possession. The place was not to be given up to him quietly. A great fight would be made, and it was beginning to be believed that the enormous mortgages would be paid off by a lady of immense wealth. And then a dash of romance was not wanting to make these stories palatable. This lady of immense wealth had been courted by Mr Sowerby, had acknowledged her love, – but had refused to marry him on account of his character. In testimony of her love, however, she was about to pay all his debts.

  It was soon put beyond a rumour, and became manifest enough, that Mr Sowerby did not intend to retire from the county in obedience to the duke’s behests. A placard was posted through the whole division in which no allusion was made by name to the duke, but in which Mr Sowerby warned his friends not to be led away by any report that he intended to retire from the representation of West Barsetshire. ‘He had sat,’ the placard said, ‘for the same county during the full period of a quarter of a century, and he would not lightly give up an honour that had been extended to him so often and which he prized so dearly. There were but few men now in the House whose connection with the same body of constituents had remained unbroken so long as had that which bound him to West Barsetshire; and he confidently hoped that that connection might be continued through another period of coming years till he might find himself in the glorious position of being the father of the county members of the House of Commons.’ The placard said much more than this, and hinted at sundry and various questions, all of great interest to the county; but it did not say one word of the Duke of Omnium, though every one knew what the duke was supposed to be doing in the matter. He was, as it were, a great Llama, shut up in a holy of holies, inscrutable, invisible, inexorable, – not to be seen by men’s eyes or heard by their ears, hardly to be mentioned by ordinary men
at such periods as these without an inward quaking. But nevertheless, it was he who was supposed to rule them. Euphemism required that his name should be mentioned at no public meetings in connection with the coming election; but, nevertheless, most men in the county believed that he could send his dog up to the House of Commons as member for West Barsetshire if it so pleased him.

  It was supposed, therefore, that our friend Sowerby would have no chance; but he was lucky in finding assistance in a quarter from which he certainly had not deserved it. He had been a staunch friend of the gods during the whole of his political life, – as, indeed, was to be expected, seeing that he had been the duke’s nominee; but, nevertheless, on the present occasion, all the giants connected with the county came forward to his rescue. They did not do this with the acknowledged purpose of opposing the duke; they declared that they were actuated by a generous disinclination to see an old county member put from his seat; – but the world knew that the battle was to be waged against the great Llama. It was to be a contest between the powers of aristocracy and the powers of oligarchy, as those powers existed in West Barsetshire, – and, it may be added, that democracy would have very little to say to it, on one side or on the other. The lower order of voters, the small farmers and tradesmen, would no doubt range themselves on the side of the duke, and would endeavour to flatter themselves that they were thereby furthering the views of the Liberal side; but they would in fact be led to the poll by an old-fashioned, time-honoured adherence to the will of their great Llama; and by an apprehension of evil if that Llama should arise and shake himself in his wrath. What might not come to the county if the Llama were to walk himself off, he with his satellites and armies and courtiers? There he was, a great Llama; and though he came among them but seldom, and was scarcely seen when he did come, nevertheless, – and not the less but rather the more – was obedience to him considered as salutary and opposition regarded as dangerous. A great rural Llama is still sufficiently mighty in rural England.