The Chronicles of Barsetshire (149 page)

Mark, priest as he was, was quite worldly enough to be fond of a good horse; and for some little time allowed Lord Lufton to descant on the merit of this four-year-old filly, and that magnificent Rattlebones colt, out of a Mousetrap mare; but he had other things that lay heavy on his mind, and after bestowing half an hour on the stud, he contrived to get his friend away to the shrubbery walks.

“So you have settled with Sowerby,” Robarts began by saying.

“Settled with him; yes, but do you know the price?”

“I believe that you have paid five thousand pounds.”

“Yes, and about three before; and that in a matter in which I did not really owe one shilling. Whatever I do in future, I’ll keep out of Sowerby’s grip.”

“But you don’t think he has been unfair to you.”

“Mark, to tell you the truth I have banished the affair from my mind, and don’t wish to take it up again. My mother has paid the money to save the property, and of course I must pay her back. But I think I may promise that I will not have any more money dealings with Sowerby. I will not say that he is dishonest, but at any rate he is sharp.”

“Well, Lufton; what will you say when I tell you that I have put my name to a bill for him, for four hundred pounds?”

“Say; why I should say—; but you’re joking; a man in your position would never do such a thing.”

“But I have done it.”

Lord Lufton gave a long low whistle.

“He asked me the last night that I was there, making a great favour of it, and declaring that no bill of his had ever yet been dishonoured.”

Lord Lufton whistled again. “No bill of his dishonoured! Why, the pocket-books of the Jews are stuffed full of his dishonoured papers! And you have really given him your name for four hundred pounds?”

“I have certainly.”

“At what date?”

“Three months.”

“And have you thought where you are to get the money?”

“I know very well that I can’t get it, not at least by that time. The bankers must renew it for me, and I must pay it by degrees. That is, if Sowerby really does not take it up.”

“It is just as likely that he will take up the National Debt.”

Robarts then told him about the projected marriage with Miss Dunstable, giving it as his opinion that the lady would probably accept the gentleman.

“Not at all improbable,” said his lordship, “for Sowerby is an agreeable fellow; and if it be so, he will have all that he wants for life. But his creditors will gain nothing. The duke, who has his title-deeds, will doubtless get his money, and the estate will in fact belong to the wife. But the small fry, such as you, will not get a shilling.”

Poor Mark! He had had an inkling of this before; but it had hardly presented itself to him in such certain terms. It was, then, a positive fact, that in punishment for his weakness in having signed that bill he would have to pay, not only four hundred pounds, but four hundred pounds with interest, and expenses of renewal, and commission, and bill stamps. Yes; he had certainly got among the Philistines during that visit of his to the duke. It began to appear to him pretty clearly that it would have been better for him to have relinquished altogether the glories of Chaldicotes and Gatherum Castle.

And now, how was he to tell his wife?

CHAPTER X

Lucy Robarts

And now, how was he to tell his wife? That was the consideration heavy on Mark Robarts’s mind when last we left him; and he turned the matter often in his thoughts before he could bring himself to a resolution. At last he did do so, and one may say that it was not altogether a bad one, if only he could carry it out.

He would ascertain in what bank that bill of his had been discounted. He would ask Sowerby, and if he could not learn from him, he would go to the three banks in Barchester. That it had been taken to one of them he felt tolerably certain. He would explain to the manager his conviction that he would have to make good the amount, his inability to do so at the end of the three months, and the whole state of his income; and then the banker would explain to him how the matter might be arranged. He thought that he could pay £50 every three months with interest. As soon as this should have been concerted with the banker, he would let his wife know all about it. Were he to tell her at the present moment, while the matter was all unsettled, the intelligence would frighten her into illness.

But on the next morning there came to him tidings by the hands of Robin postman, which for a long while upset all his plans. The letter was from Exeter. His father had been taken ill, and had very quickly been pronounced to be in danger. That evening—the evening on which his sister wrote—the old man was much worse, and it was desirable that Mark should go off to Exeter as quickly as possible. Of course he went to Exeter—again leaving the Framley souls at the mercy of the Welsh Low Churchman. Framley is only four miles from Silverbridge, and at Silverbridge he was on the direct road to the West. He was, therefore, at Exeter before nightfall on that day.

But, nevertheless, he arrived there too late to see his father again alive. The old man’s illness had been sudden and rapid, and he expired without again seeing his eldest son. Mark arrived at the house of mourning just as they were learning to realize the full change in their position.

The doctor’s career had been on the whole successful, but nevertheless he did not leave behind him as much money as the world had given him credit for possessing. Who ever does? Dr. Robarts had educated a large family, had always lived with every comfort, and had never possessed a shilling but what he had earned himself. A physician’s fees come in, no doubt, with comfortable rapidity as soon as rich old gentlemen and middle-aged ladies begin to put their faith in him; but fees run out almost with equal rapidity when a wife and seven children are treated to everything that the world considers most desirable. Mark, we have seen, had been educated at Harrow and Oxford, and it may be said, therefore, that he had received his patrimony early in life. For Gerald Robarts, the second brother, a commission had been bought in a crack regiment. He also had been lucky, having lived and become a captain in the Crimea; and the purchase-money was lodged for his majority. And John Robarts, the youngest, was a clerk in the Petty Bag Office, and was already assistant private secretary to the Lord Petty Bag himself—a place of considerable trust, if not hitherto of large emolument; and on his education money had been spent freely, for in these days a young man cannot get into the Petty Bag Office without knowing at least three modern languages; and he must be well up in trigonometry too, in Bible theology, or in one dead language—at his option.

And the doctor had four daughters. The two elder were married, including that Blanche with whom Lord Lufton was to have fallen in love at the vicar’s wedding. A Devonshire squire had done this in the lord’s place; but on marrying her it was necessary that he should have a few thousand pounds, two or three perhaps, and the old doctor had managed that they should be forthcoming. The elder also had not been sent away from the paternal mansion quite empty-handed. There were, therefore, at the time of the doctor’s death two children left at home, of whom one only, Lucy, the younger, will come much across us in the course of our story.

Mark stayed for ten days at Exeter, he and the Devonshire squire having been named as executors in the will. In this document it was explained that the doctor trusted that provision had been made for most of his children. As for his dear son Mark, he said, he was aware that he need be under no uneasiness. On hearing this read Mark smiled sweetly, and looked very gracious; but, nevertheless, his heart did sink somewhat within him, for there had been a hope that a small windfall, coming now so opportunely, might enable him to rid himself at once of that dreadful Sowerby incubus. And then the will went on to declare that Mary, and Gerald, and Blanche, had also, by God’s providence, been placed beyond want. And here, looking into the squire’s face, one might have thought that his heart fell a little also; for he had not so full a command of his feelings as his brother-in-law, who had been so much more before the world. To John, the assistant private secretary, was left a legacy of a thousand pounds; and to Jane and Lucy certain sums in certain four per cents., which were quite sufficient to add an efficient value to the hands of those young ladies in the eyes of most prudent young would-be Benedicts. Over and beyond this there was nothing but the furniture, which he desired might be sold, and the proceeds divided among them all. It might come to sixty or seventy pounds a piece, and pay the expenses incidental on his death.

And then all men and women there and thereabouts said that old Dr. Robarts had done well. His life had been good and prosperous, and his will was just. And Mark, among others, so declared—and was so convinced in spite of his own little disappointment. And on the third morning after the reading of the will Squire Crowdy, of Creamclotted Hall, altogether got over his grief, and said that it was all right. And then it was decided that Jane should go home with him—for there was a brother squire who, it was thought, might have an eye to Jane—and Lucy, the younger, should be taken to Framley parsonage. In a fortnight from the receipt of that letter Mark arrived at his own house with his sister Lucy under his wing.

All this interfered greatly with Mark’s wise resolution as to the Sowerby-bill incubus. In the first place, he could not get to Barchester as soon as he had intended, and then an idea came across him that possibly it might be well that he should borrow the money of his brother John, explaining the circumstances, of course, and paying him due interest. But he had not liked to broach the subject when they were there in Exeter, standing, as it were, over their father’s grave, and so the matter was postponed. There was still ample time for arrangement before the bill would come due, and he would not tell Fanny till he had made up his mind what that arrangement would be. It would kill her, he said to himself over and over again, were he to tell her of it without being able to tell her also that the means of liquidating the debt were to be forthcoming.

And now I must say a word about Lucy Robarts. If one might only go on without those descriptions how pleasant it would all be! But Lucy Robarts has to play a forward part in this little drama, and those who care for such matters must be made to understand something of her form and likeness. When last we mentioned her as appearing, though not in any prominent position, at her brother’s wedding, she was only sixteen; but now, at the time of her father’s death, somewhat over two years having since elapsed, she was nearly nineteen. Laying aside for the sake of clearness that indefinite term of girl—for girls are girls from the age of three up to forty-three, if not previously married—dropping that generic word, we may say that then, at that wedding of her brother, she was a child; and now, at the death of her father, she was a woman.

Nothing, perhaps, adds so much to womanhood, turns the child so quickly into a woman, as such death-bed scenes as these. Hitherto but little had fallen to Lucy to do in the way of woman’s duties. Of money transactions she had known nothing, beyond a jocose attempt to make her annual allowance of twenty-five pounds cover all her personal wants—an attempt which was made jocose by the loving bounty of her father. Her sister, who was three years her elder—for John came in between them—had managed the house; that is, she had made the tea and talked to the house-keeper about the dinners. But Lucy had sat at her father’s elbow, had read to him of evenings when he went to sleep, had brought him his slippers and looked after the comforts of his easy-chair. All this she had done as a child; but when she stood at the coffin head, and knelt at the coffin side, then she was a woman.

She was smaller in stature than either of her three sisters, to all of whom had been acceded the praise of being fine women—a eulogy which the people of Exeter, looking back at the elder sisters, and the general remembrance of them which pervaded the city, were not willing to extend to Lucy. “Dear—dear!” had been said of her; “poor Lucy is not like a Robarts at all; is she, now, Mrs. Pole?”—for as the daughters had become fine women, so had the sons grown into stalwart men. And then Mrs. Pole had answered: “Not a bit; is she, now? Only think what Blanche was at her age. But she has fine eyes, for all that; and they do say she is the cleverest of them all.”

And that, too, is so true a description of her that I do not know that I can add much to it. She was not like Blanche; for Blanche had a bright complexion, and a fine neck, and a noble bust,
et vera incessu patuit Dea
—a true goddess, that is, as far as the eye went. She had a grand idea, moreover, of an apple-pie, and had not reigned eighteen months at Creamclotted Hall before she knew all the mysteries of pigs and milk, and most of those appertaining to cider and green geese. Lucy had no neck at all worth speaking of—no neck, I mean, that ever produced eloquence; she was brown, too, and had addicted herself in nowise, as she undoubtedly should have done, to larder utility. In regard to the neck and colour, poor girl, she could not help herself; but in that other respect she must be held as having wasted her opportunities.

But then what eyes she had! Mrs. Pole was right there. They flashed upon you—not always softly; indeed not often softly if you were a stranger to her; but whether softly or savagely, with a brilliancy that dazzled you as you looked at them. And who shall say of what colour they were? Green, probably, for most eyes are green—green or grey, if green be thought uncomely for an eye-colour. But it was not their colour, but their fire, which struck one with such surprise.

Lucy Robarts was thoroughly a brunette. Sometimes the dark tint of her cheek was exquisitely rich and lovely, and the fringes of her eyes were long and soft, and her small teeth, which one so seldom saw, were white as pearls, and her hair, though short, was beautifully soft—by no means black, but yet of so dark a shade of brown. Blanche, too, was noted for fine teeth. They were white and regular and lofty as a new row of houses in a French city. But then when she laughed she was all teeth; as she was all neck when she sat at the piano. But Lucy’s teeth!—it was only now and again, when in some sudden burst of wonder she would sit for a moment with her lips apart, that the fine finished lines and dainty pearl-white colour of that perfect set of ivory could be seen. Mrs. Pole would have said a word of her teeth also, but that to her they had never been made visible.

“But they do say that she is the cleverest of them all,” Mrs. Pole had added, very properly. The people of Exeter had expressed such an opinion, and had been quite just in doing so. I do not know how it happens, but it always does happen, that everybody in every small town knows which is the brightest-witted in every family. In this respect Mrs. Pole had only expressed public opinion, and public opinion was right. Lucy Robarts was blessed with an intelligence keener than that of her brothers or sisters.

“To tell the truth, Mark, I admire Lucy more than I do Blanche.” This had been said by Mrs. Robarts within a few hours of her having assumed that name. “She’s not a beauty, I know, but yet I do.”

“My dearest Fanny!” Mark had answered in a tone of surprise.

“I do then; of course people won’t think so; but I never seem to care about regular beauties. Perhaps I envy them too much.”

What Mark said next need not be repeated, but everybody may be sure that it contained some gross flattery for his young bride. He remembered this, however, and had always called Lucy his wife’s pet. Neither of the sisters had since that been at Framley; and though Fanny had spent a week at Exeter on the occasion of Blanche’s marriage, it could hardly be said that she was very intimate with them. Nevertheless, when it became expedient that one of them should go to Framley, the remembrance of what his wife had said immediately induced Mark to make the offer to Lucy; and Jane, who was of a kindred soul with Blanche, was delighted to go to Creamclotted Hall. The acres of Heavybed House, down in that fat Totnes country, adjoined those of Creamclotted Hall, and Heavybed House still wanted a mistress.

Fanny was delighted when the news reached her. It would of course be proper that one of his sisters should live with Mark under their present circumstances, and she was happy to think that that quiet little bright-eyed creature was to come and nestle with her under the same roof. The children should so love her—only not quite so much as they loved mamma; and the snug little room that looks out over the porch, in which the chimney never smokes, should be made ready for her; and she should be allowed her share of driving the pony—which was a great sacrifice of self on the part of Mrs. Robarts, and Lady Lufton’s best good-will should be bespoken. In fact, Lucy was not unfortunate in the destination that was laid out for her.

Lady Lufton had of course heard of the doctor’s death, and had sent all manner of kind messages to Mark, advising him not to hurry home by any means until everything was settled at Exeter. And then she was told of the new-comer that was expected in the parish. When she heard that it was Lucy, the younger, she also was satisfied; for Blanche’s charms, though indisputable, had not been altogether to her taste. If a second Blanche were to arrive there what danger might there not be for young Lord Lufton!