Framley Parsonage (24 page)

When the three months had nearly run out, it so happened that Robarts met his friend Sowerby. Mark had once or twice ridden with Lord Lufton as far as the meet of the hounds, and may, perhaps, have gone a field or two farther on some occasions. The reader must not think that he had taken to hunting, as some parsons do; and it is singular enough that whenever
they do so they always show a special aptitude for the pursuit, as though hunting were an employment peculiarly congenial with a cure of souls in the country. Such a thought would do our vicar injustice. But when Lord Lufton would ask him what on earth could be the harm of riding along the roads to look at the hounds, he hardly knew what sensible answer to give his lordship. It would be absurd
to say that his time would be better employed at home in clerical matters, for it was notorious that he had not clerical pursuits for the employment of half his time. In this way, therefore, he had got into a habit of looking at the hounds, and keeping up his acquaintance in the county, meeting Lord Dumbello, Mr Green Walker, Harold Smith, and other such like sinners; and on one such occasion, as
the three months were nearly closing, he did meet Mr Sowerby.

‘Look here, Sowerby; I want to speak to you for half a moment. What are you doing about that bill?’

‘Bill – bill! what bill? – which bill? The whole bill, and nothing
but the bill. That seems to be the conversation now-a-days of all men, morning, noon, and night.’

‘Don’t you know the bill I signed for you for four hundred pounds?’

‘Did you, though? Was not that rather green of you?’

This did seem strange to Mark. Could it really be the fact that Mr Sowerby had so many bills flying about that he had absolutely forgotten that occurrence in the Gatherum Castle bedroom? And then to be called green by the very man whom he had obliged!

‘Perhaps I was,’ said Mark, in a tone that showed that he was somewhat piqued. ‘But all the
same I should be glad to know how it will be taken up.’

‘Oh, Mark, what a ruffian you are to spoil my day’s sport in this way. Any man but a parson would be too good a Christian for such intense cruelty. But let me see – four hundred pounds? Oh, yes – Tozer has it.’

‘And what will Tozer do with it?’

‘Make money of it; whatever way he may go to work he will do that.’

‘But will Tozer bring it
to me on the 20th?’

‘Oh, Lord, no! Upon my word, Mark, you are deliriously green. A cat would as soon think of killing a mouse directly she got it into her claws. But, joking apart, you need not trouble yourself. Maybe you will hear no more about it; or, perhaps, which no doubt is more probable, I may have to send it to you to be renewed. But you need do nothing till you hear from me or somebody
else.’

‘Only do not let any one come down upon me for the money.’

‘There is not the slightest fear of that. Tally-ho, old fellow! He’s away. Tally-ho! right over by Gossetts’ barn. Come along, and never mind Tozer – “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.” ’ And away they both went together, parson and member of Parliament.

And then again on that occasion Mark went home with a sort of
feeling that the bill did not matter. Tozer would manage it somehow; and it was quite clear that it would not do to tell his wife of it just at present.

On the 21st of that month of February, however, he did receive a reminder that the bill and all concerning it had not merely
been a farce. This was a letter from Mr Sowerby, dated from Chaldicotes, though not bearing the Barchester postmark,
in which that gentleman suggested a renewal – not exactly of the old bill, but of a new one. It seemed to Mark that the letter had been posted in London. If I give it entire, I shall, perhaps, most quickly explain its purport:

‘Chaldicotes, – 20th February, 185 – .

‘M
Y
D
EAR
M
ARK
, – ‘ “Lend not thy name to the money-dealers, for the same is a destruction and a snare.” If that be not in the Proverbs,
it ought to be. Tozer has given me certain signs of his being alive and strong this cold weather. As we can neither of us take up that bill for 4001. at the moment, we must renew it, and pay him his commission and interest, with all the rest of his perquisites, and pickings, and stealings – from all which, I can assure you, Tozer does not keep his hands as he should do.

‘To cover this and some
other little outstanding trifles, I have filled in the new bill for 500
l
., making it due 23rd of May next. Before that time, a certain accident will, I trust, have occurred to your impoverished friend. By-the-by, I never told you how she went off from Gatherum Castle, the morning after you left us, with the Greshams. Cart-ropes would not hold her, even though the duke held them; which he did,
with all the strength of his ducal hands. She would go to meet some doctor of theirs, and so I was put off for that time; but I think that the matter stands in a good train.

‘Do not lose a post in sending back the bill accepted, as Tozer may annoy you – nay, undoubtedly will, if the matter be not in his hand, duly signed by both of us, the day after to-morrow. He is an ungrateful brute; he has
lived on me for these eight years, and would not let me off a single squeeze now to save my life. But I am specially anxious to save you from the annoyance and cost of lawyers’ letters; and if delayed, it might get into the papers.

‘Put it under cover to me, at No. 7, Duke Street, St James’s. I shall be in town by that time.

‘Good-bye, old fellow. That was a decent brush we had the other day
from Cobbold’s Ashes. I wish I could get that brown horse from you. I would not mind going to a hundred and thirty.

‘Yours ever,

‘N.
SOWERBY.’

When Mark had read it through he looked down on his table to see whether the old bill had fallen from the letter; but no, there
was no enclosure, and had been no enclosure but the new bill. And then he read the letter through again, and found that there
was no word about the old bill, – not a syllable, at least, as to its whereabouts. Sowerby did not even say that it would remain in his own hands.

Mark did not in truth know much about such things. It might be that the very fact of his signing this second document would render that first document null and void; and from Sowerby’s silence on the subject, it might be argued that this was so well
known to be the case, that he had not thought of explaining it. But yet Mark could not see how this should be so.

But what was he to do? That threat of cost and lawyers, and specially of the newspapers, did have its effect upon him – as no doubt it was intended to do. And then he was utterly dumbfounded by Sowerby’s impudence in drawing on him for 500
l
. instead of 400
l
., ‘covering,’ as Sowerby
so good-humouredly said, ‘sundry little outstanding trifles.’

But at last he did sign the bill, and sent it off, as Sowerby had directed. What else was he to do?

Fool that he was. A man always can do right, even though he has done wrong before. But that previous wrong adds so much difficulty to the path – a difficulty which increases in tremendous ratio, till a man at last is choked in his struggling,
and is drowned beneath the waters.

And then he put away Sowerby’s letter carefully, locking it up from his wife’s sight. It was a letter that no parish clergyman should have received. So much he acknowledged to himself. But nevertheless it was necessary that he should keep it. And now again for a few hours this affair made him very miserable.

L
ADY LUFTON
had been greatly rejoiced at that good deed which her son did in giving up his Leicestershire hunting, and coming to reside for the winter at Framley. It was proper, and becoming, and comfortable in the extreme. An English nobleman ought to hunt in the county where he himself owns the fields over which he rides; he ought to receive the respect and honour
due to him from his own tenants; he ought to sleep under a roof of his own, and he ought also – so Lady Lufton thought – to fall in love with a young embryo bride of his own mother’s choosing.

And then it was so pleasant to have him there in the house. Lady Lufton was not a woman who allowed her life to be what people in common parlance call dull. She had too many duties, and thought too much
of them, to allow of her suffering from tedium and
ennui
. But nevertheless the house was more joyous to her when he was there. There was a reason for some little gaiety, which would never have been attracted thither by herself, but which, nevertheless, she did enjoy when it was brought about by his presence. She was younger and brighter when he was there, thinking more of the future and less of
the past. She could look at him, and that alone was happiness to her. And then he was pleasant-mannered with her; joking with her on her little old-world prejudices in a tone that was musical to her ear as coming from him; smiling on her, reminding her of those smiles which she had loved so dearly when as yet he was all her own, lying there in his little bed beside her chair. He was kind and gracious
to her, behaving like a good son, at any rate while he was there in her presence. When we add to this, her fears that he might not be so perfect in his conduct when absent, we may well imagine that Lady Lufton was pleased to have him there at Framley Court.

She had hardly said a word to him as to that five thousand
pounds. Many a night, as she lay thinking on her pillow, she said to herself that
no money had ever been better expended, since it had brought him back to his own house. He had thanked her for it in his own open way, declaring that he would pay it back to her during the coming year, and comforting her heart by his rejoicing that the property had not been sold.

‘I don’t like the idea of parting with an acre of it,’ he had said.

‘Of course not, Ludovic. Never let the estate
decrease in your hands. It is only by such resolutions as that that English noblemen and English gentlemen can preserve their country. I cannot bear to see property changing hands.’

‘Well, I suppose it’s a good thing to have land in the market sometimes, so that the millionaires may know what to do with their money.’

‘God forbid that yours should be there!’ And the widow made a little mental
prayer that her son’s acres might be protected from the millionaires and other Philistines.

‘Why, yes: I don’t exactly want to see a Jew tailor investing his earnings at Lufton,’ said the lord.

‘Heaven forbid!’ said the widow.

All this, as I have said, was very nice. It was manifest to her ladyship, from his lordship’s way of talking, that no vital injury had as yet been done: he had no cares
on his mind, and spoke freely about the property: but nevertheless there were clouds even now, at this period of bliss, which somewhat obscured the brilliancy of Lady Lufton’s sky. Why was Ludovic so slow in that affair of Griselda Grantly? why so often in these latter winter days did he saunter over to the parsonage? And then that terrible visit to Gatherum Castle!

What actually did happen at
Gatherum Castle, she never knew. We, however, are more intrusive, less delicate in our inquiries, and we can say. He had a very bad day’s sport with the West Barsetshire. The county is altogether short of foxes, and some one who understands the matter must take that point up before they can do any good. And after that he had had rather a dull dinner with the duke. Sowerby had been there, and in
the evening he and Sowerby had played billiards. Sowerby had won a pound or two, and that had been the extent of the damage done.

But those saunterings over to the parsonage might be more dangerous. Not that it ever occurred to Lady Lufton as possible that her son should fall in love with Lucy Robarts. Lucy’s personal attractions were not of a nature to give ground for such a fear as that. But
he might turn the girl’s head with his chatter; she might be fool enough to fancy any folly; and, moreover, people would talk. Why should he go to the parsonage now more frequently than he had ever done before Lucy came there?

And then her ladyship, in reference to the same trouble, hardly knew how to manage her invitations to the parsonage. These hitherto had been very frequent, and she had
been in the habit of thinking that they could hardly be too much so; but now she was almost afraid to continue the custom. She could not ask the parson and his wife without Lucy; and when Lucy was there, her son would pass the greater part of the evening in talking to her, or playing chess with her. Now this did disturb Lady Lufton not a little.

And then Lucy took it all so quietly. On her first
arrival at Framley she had been so shy, so silent, and so much awe-struck by the grandeur of Framley Court, that Lady Lufton had sympathized with her and encouraged her. She had endeavoured to moderate the blaze of her own splendour, in order that Lucy’s unaccustomed eyes might not be dazzled. But all this was changed now. Lucy could listen to the young lord’s voice by the hour together – without
being dazzled in the least.

Under these circumstances two things occurred to her. She would speak either to her son or to Fanny Robarts, and by a little diplomacy have this evil remedied. And then she had to determine on which step she would take.

‘Nothing could be more reasonable than Ludovic.’ So at least she said to herself over and over again. But then Ludovic understood nothing about such
matters; and he had, moreover, a habit, inherited from his father, of taking the bit between his teeth whenever he suspected interference. Drive him gently without pulling his mouth about, and you might take him anywhere, almost at any pace; but a smart touch, let it be ever so slight, would bring him on his haunches, and then it might be a question whether you could get him another mile that day.
So that on the
whole Lady Lufton thought that the other plan would be the best. I have no doubt that Lady Lufton was right.

She got Fanny up into her own den one afternoon, and seated her discreetly in an easy arm-chair, making her guest take off her bonnet, and showing by various signs that the visit was regarded as one of great moment.