Framley Parsonage (30 page)

Lord Lufton had very much missed her. At first he had not attributed this change to a purposed scheme of action on the part
of any one; nor, indeed, had
he much thought about it, although he had felt himself to be annoyed. But as the period fixed for his departure grew near, it did occur to him as very odd that he should never hear Lucy’s voice unless when she said a few words to his mother, or to her sister-in-law. And then he made up his mind that he would speak to her before he went, and that the mystery should be explained to him.

And he
carried out his purpose, calling at the parsonage on one special afternoon; and it was on the evening of the same day that his mother sang the praises of Griselda Grantly so inopportunely. Robarts, he knew, was then absent from home, and Mrs Robarts was with his mother down at the house, preparing lists of the poor people to be specially attended to in Lady Lufton’s approaching absence. Taking advantage
of this, he walked boldly in through the parsonage garden; asked the gardener, with an indifferent voice, whether either of the ladies were at home, and then caught poor Lucy exactly on the doorstep of the house.

‘Were you going in or out, Miss Robarts?’

‘Well, I was going out,’ said Lucy; and she began to consider how best she might get quit of any prolonged encounter.

‘Oh, going out, were
you? I don’t know whether I may offer to –’

‘Well, Lord Lufton, not exactly, seeing that I am about to pay a visit to our near neighbour, Mrs Podgens. Perhaps, you have no particular call towards Mrs Podgens’ just at present, or to her new baby?’

‘And have you any very particular call that way?’

‘Yes, and especially to Baby Podgens. Baby Podgens is a real little duck – only just two days old.’
And Lucy, as she spoke, progressed a step or two, as though she were determined not to remain there talking on the doorstep.

A slight cloud came across his brow as he saw this, and made him resolve that she should not gain her purpose. He was not going to be foiled in that way by such a girl as Lucy Robarts. He had come there to speak to her, and speak to her he would. There had been enough of
intimacy between them to justify him in demanding, at any rate, as much as that.

‘Miss Robarts,’ he said, ‘I am starting for London to-morrow,
and if I do not say good-bye to you now, I shall not be able to do so at all.’

‘Good-bye, Lord Lufton,’ she said, giving him her hand, and smiling on him with her old genial, good-humoured, racy smile. ‘And mind you bring into Parliament that law which
you promised me for defending my young chickens.’

He took her hand, but that was not all that he wanted. ‘Surely Mrs Podgens and her baby can wait ten minutes. I shall not see you again for months to come, and yet you seem to begrudge me two words.’

‘Not two hundred if they can be of any service to you,’ said she, walking cheerily back into the drawing-room; ‘only I did not think it worth while
to waste your time, as Fanny is not here.’

She was infinitely more collected, more master of herself than he was. Inwardly, she did tremble at the idea of what was coming, but outwardly she showed no agitation – none as yet; if only she could so possess herself as to refrain from doing so, when she heard what he might have to say to her.

He hardly knew what it was for the saying of which he
had so resolutely come thither. He had by no means made up his mind that he loved Lucy Robarts; nor had he made up his mind that, loving her, he would, or that, loving her, he would not, make her his wife. He had never used his mind in the matter in any way, either for good or evil. He had learned to like her and to think that she was very pretty. He had found out that it was very pleasant to talk
to her; whereas, talking to Griselda Grantly, and, indeed, to some other young ladies of his acquaintance, was often hard work. The half-hours which he had spent with Lucy had always been satisfactory to him. He had found himself to be more bright with her than with other people, and more apt to discuss subjects worth discussing; and thus it had come about that he thoroughly liked Lucy Robarts. As
to whether his affection was Platonic or anti-Platonic he had never asked himself; but he had spoken words to her, shortly before that sudden cessation of their intimacy, which might have been taken as anti-Platonic by any girl so disposed to regard them. He had not thrown himself at her feet, and declared himself to be devoured
by a consuming passion; but he had touched her hand as lovers touch
those of women whom they love; he had had his confidences with her, talking to her of his own mother, of his sister, and of his friends; and he had called her his own dear friend Lucy.

All this had been very sweet to her, but very poisonous also. She had declared to herself very frequently that her liking for this young nobleman was as purely a feeling of mere friendship as was that of her brother;
and she had professed to herself that she would give the lie to the world’s cold sarcasms on such subjects. But she had now acknowledged that the sarcasms of the world on that matter, cold though they may be, are not the less true; and having so acknowledged, she had resolved that all close alliance between herself and Lord Lufton must be at an end. She had come to a conclusion, but he had
come to none; and in this frame of mind he was now there with the object of reopening that dangerous friendship which she had had the sense to close.

‘And so you are going to-morrow?’ she said, as soon as they were both within the drawing-room.

‘Yes: I’m off by the early train to-morrow morning, and heaven knows when we may meet again.’

‘Next winter, shall we not?’

‘Yes, for a day or two,
I suppose. I do not know whether I shall pass another winter here. Indeed, one can never say where one will be.’

‘No, one can’t; such as you, at least, cannot. I am not of a migratory tribe myself.’

‘I wish you were.’

‘I’m not a bit obliged to you. Your nomad life does not agree with young ladies.’

‘I think they are taking to it pretty freely, then. We have unprotected young women all about
the world.’

‘And great bores you find them, I suppose?’

‘No; I like it. The more we can get out of old-fashioned grooves the better I am pleased. I should be a radical to-morrow – a regular man of the people, – only I should break my mother’s heart.’

‘Whatever you do, Lord Lufton, do not do that.’

‘That is why I have liked you so much,’ he continued, ‘because you get out of the grooves.’

‘Do I?’

‘Yes; and go along by yourself, guiding your own footsteps; not carried hither and thither, just as your grandmother’s old tramway may chance to take you.’

‘Do you know I have a strong idea that my grandmother’s old tramway will be the safest and the best after all? I have not left it very far, and I certainly mean to go back to it.’

‘That’s impossible! An army of old women, with coils
of ropes made out of time-honoured prejudices, could not drag you back.’

‘No, Lord Lufton; that is true. But one –’ and then she stopped herself. She could not tell him that one loving mother, anxious for her only son, had sufficed to do it. She could not explain to him that this departure from the established tramway had already broken her own rest, and turned her peaceful happy life into a
grievous battle.

‘I know that you are trying to go back,’ he said. ‘Do you think that I have eyes and cannot see? Come, Lucy, you and I have been friends, and we must not part in this way. My mother is a paragon among women. I say it in earnest; – a paragon among women: and her love for me is the perfection of motherly love.’

‘It is, it is; and I am so glad that you acknowledge it.’

‘I should
be worse than a brute did I not do so; but, nevertheless, I cannot allow her to lead me in all things. Were I to do so, I should cease to be a man.’

‘Where can you find any one who will counsel you so truly?’

‘But, nevertheless, I must rule myself. I do not know whether my suspicions may be perfectly just, but I fancy that she has created this estrangement between you and me. Has it not been
so?’

‘Certainly not by speaking to me,’ said Lucy, blushing ruby-red through every vein of her deep tinted face. But though she could not command her blood, her voice was still under her control – her voice and her manner.

‘But has she not done so? You, I know, will tell me nothing but the truth.’

‘I will tell you nothing on this matter, Lord Lufton, whether true or false. It is a subject on
which it does not concern me to speak.’

‘Ah! I understand,’ he said; and rising from his chair, he stood against the chimney-piece with his back to the fire. ‘She cannot leave me alone to choose for myself my own friends, and my own –;’ but he did not fill up the void.

‘But why tell me this, Lord Lufton?’

‘No! I am not to choose my own friends, though they be among the best and purest of God’s
creatures. Lucy, I cannot think that you have ceased to have a regard for me. That you had a regard for me, I am sure.’

She felt that it was almost unmanly of him thus to seek her out, and hunt her down, and then throw upon her the whole weight of the explanation that his coming thither made necessary. But, nevertheless, the truth must be told, and with God’s help she would find strength for
the telling of it.

‘Yes, Lord Lufton, I had a regard for you – and have. By that word you mean something more than the customary feeling of acquaintance which may ordinarily prevail between a gentleman and lady of different families, who have known each other so short a time as we have done?’

‘Yes, something much more,’ said he, with energy.

‘Well, I will not define the much – something closer
than that.’

‘Yes, and warmer, and dearer, and more worthy of two human creatures who value each other’s minds and hearts.’

‘Some such closer regard I have felt for you – very foolishly. Stop! You have made me speak, and do not interrupt me now. Does not your conscience tell you that in doing so I have unwisely deserted those wise old grandmother’s tramways of which you spoke just now? It has
been pleasant to me to do so. I have liked the feeling of independence with which I have thought that I might indulge in an open friendship with such as you are. And your rank, so different from my own, has doubtless made this more attractive.’

‘Nonsense!’

‘Ah! but it has. I know it now. But what will the world say of me as to such an alliance?’

‘The world!’

‘Yes, the world! I am not such
a philosopher as to disregard it, though you may afford to do so. The world will say that I,
the parson’s sister, set my cap at the young lord, and that the young lord had made a fool of me.’

‘The world shall say no such thing!’ said Lord Lufton, very imperiously.

‘Ah! but it will. You can no more stop it, than King Canute could the waters. Your mother has interfered wisely to spare me from
this; and the only favour that I can ask you is, that you will spare me also.’ And then she got up as though she intended at once to walk forth to her visit to Mrs Podgens’ baby.

‘Stop, Lucy!’ he said, putting himself between her and the door.

‘It must not be Lucy any longer, Lord Lufton; I was madly foolish when I first allowed it.’

‘By heavens! but it shall be Lucy – Lucy before all the world.
My Lucy, my own Lucy – my heart’s best friend, and chosen love. Lucy, there is my hand. How long you may have had my heart, it matters not to say now.’

The game was at her feet now, and no doubt she felt her triumph. Her ready wit and speaking lip, not her beauty, had brought him to her side; and now he was forced to acknowledge that her power over him had been supreme. Sooner than leave her
he would risk all. She did feel her triumph; but there was nothing in her face to tell him that she did so.

As to what she would now do she did not for a moment doubt. He had been precipitated into the declaration he had made, not by his love, but by his embarrassment. She had thrown in his teeth the injury which he had done her, and he had then been moved by his generosity to repair that injury
by the noblest sacrifice which he could make. But Lucy Robarts was not the girl to accept a sacrifice.

He had stepped forward as though he were going to clasp her round the waist, but she receded, and got beyond the reach of his hand. ‘Lord Lufton!’ she said, ‘when you are more cool you will know that this is wrong. The best thing for both of us now is to part.’

‘Not the best thing, but the
very worst, till we perfectly understand each other.’

‘Then perfectly understand me, that I cannot be your wife.’

‘Lucy! do you mean that you cannot learn to love me?’

‘I mean that I shall not try. Do not persevere in this, or you will have to hate yourself for your own folly.’

‘But I will persevere, till you accept my love, or say, with your hand on your heart, that you cannot and will not
love me.’

‘Then I must beg you to let me go,’ and having so said, she paused while he walked once or twice hurriedly up and down the room. ‘And, Lord Lufton,’ she continued, ‘if you will leave me now, the words that you have spoken shall be as though they had never been uttered.’

‘I care not who knows that they have been uttered. The sooner that they are known to all the world, the better I
shall be pleased, unless indeed –’

‘Think of your mother, Lord Lufton.’

‘What can I do better than give her as a daughter the best and sweetest girl I have ever met? When my mother really knows you, she will love you as I do. Lucy, say one word to me of comfort.’

‘I will say no word to you that shall injure your future comfort. It is impossible that I should be your wife.’

‘Do you mean that
you cannot love me?’

‘You have no right to press me any further,’ she said; and sat down upon the sofa, with an angry frown upon her forehead.

‘By heavens,’ he said, I will take no such answer from you till you put your hand upon your heart, and say that you cannot love me.’

‘Oh, why should you press me so, Lord Lufton?’

‘Why! because my happiness depends upon it; because it behoves me to
know the very truth. It has come to this, that I love you with my whole heart, and I must know how your heart stands towards me.’