The Chronicles of Barsetshire (157 page)

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 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 draw 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 anyone 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 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 amongst 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 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.”

She had now again risen from the sofa, and was looking steadily in his face.

“Lord Lufton,” she said, “I cannot love you,” and as she spoke she did put her hand, as he had desired, upon her heart.

“Then God help me! for I am very wretched. Good-bye, Lucy,” and he stretched out his hand to her.

“Good-bye, my lord. Do not be angry with me.”

“No, no, no!” and without further speech he left the room and the house and hurried home. It was hardly surprising that he should that evening tell his mother that Griselda Grantly would be a companion sufficiently good for his sister. He wanted no such companion.

And when he was well gone—absolutely out of sight from the window—Lucy walked steadily up to her room, locked the door, and then threw herself on the bed. Why—oh! why had she told such a falsehood? Could anything justify her in a lie? Was it not a lie—knowing as she did that she loved him with all her loving heart?

But, then, his mother! and the sneers of the world, which would have declared that she had set her trap, and caught the foolish young lord! Her pride would not have submitted to that. Strong as her love was, yet her pride was, perhaps, stronger—stronger at any rate during that interview.

But how was she to forgive herself the falsehood she had told?

CHAPTER XVII

Mrs. Proudie’s Conversazione

It was grievous to think of the mischief and danger into which Griselda Grantly was brought by the worldliness of her mother in those few weeks previous to Lady Lufton’s arrival in town—very grievous, at least, to her ladyship, as from time to time she heard of what was done in London. Lady Hartletop’s was not the only objectionable house at which Griselda was allowed to reap fresh fashionable laurels. It had been stated openly in the
Morning Post
that that young lady had been the most admired among the beautiful at one of Miss Dunstable’s celebrated
soirées,
and then she was heard of as gracing the drawing-room at Mrs. Proudie’s conversazione.

Of Miss Dunstable herself Lady Lufton was not able openly to allege any evil. She was acquainted, Lady Lufton knew, with very many people of the right sort, and was the dear friend of Lady Lufton’s highly conservative and not very distant neighbours, the Greshams. But then she was also acquainted with so many people of the bad sort. Indeed, she was intimate with everybody, from the Duke of Omnium to old Dowager Lady Goodygaffer, who had represented all the cardinal virtues for the last quarter of a century. She smiled with equal sweetness on treacle and on brimstone; was quite at home at Exeter Hall, having been consulted—so the world said, probably not with exact truth—as to the selection of more than one disagreeably Low Church bishop; and was not less frequent in her attendance at the ecclesiastical doings of a certain terrible prelate in the Midland counties, who was supposed to favour stoles and vespers, and to have no proper Protestant hatred for auricular confession and fish on Fridays. Lady Lufton, who was very staunch, did not like this, and would say of Miss Dunstable that it was impossible to serve both God and Mammon.

But Mrs. Proudie was much more objectionable to her. Seeing how sharp was the feud between the Proudies and the Grantlys down in Barsetshire, how absolutely unable they had always been to carry a decent face towards each other in Church matters, how they headed two parties in the diocese, which were, when brought together, as oil and vinegar, in which battles the whole Lufton influence had always been brought to bear on the Grantly side—seeing all this, I say, Lady Lufton was surprised to hear that Griselda had been taken to Mrs. Proudie’s evening exhibition. “Had the archdeacon been consulted about it,” she said to herself, “this would never have happened.” But there she was wrong, for in matters concerning his daughter’s introduction to the world the archdeacon never interfered.

On the whole, I am inclined to think that Mrs. Grantly understood the world better than did Lady Lufton. In her heart of hearts Mrs. Grantly hated Mrs. Proudie—that is, with that sort of hatred one Christian lady allows herself to feel towards another. Of course Mrs. Grantly forgave Mrs. Proudie all her offences, and wished her well, and was at peace with her, in the Christian sense of the word, as with all other women. But under this forbearance and meekness, and perhaps, we may say, wholly unconnected with it, there was certainly a current of antagonistic feeling which, in the ordinary unconsidered language of every day, men and women do call hatred. This raged and was strong throughout the whole year in Barsetshire, before the eyes of all mankind. But, nevertheless, Mrs. Grantly took Griselda to Mrs. Proudie’s evening parties in London.

In these days Mrs. Proudie considered herself to be by no means the least among bishops’ wives. She had opened the season this year in a new house in Gloucester Place, at which the reception-rooms, at any rate, were all that a lady bishop could desire. Here she had a front drawing-room of very noble dimensions, a second drawing-room rather noble also, though it had lost one of its back corners awkwardly enough, apparently in a jostle with the neighbouring house; and then there was a third—shall we say drawing-room, or closet?—in which Mrs. Proudie delighted to be seen sitting, in order that the world might know that there was a third room; altogether a noble suite, as Mrs. Proudie herself said in confidence to more than one clergyman’s wife from Barsetshire. “A noble suite, indeed, Mrs. Proudie!” the clergymen’s wives from Barsetshire would usually answer.

For some time Mrs. Proudie was much at a loss to know by what sort of party or entertainment she would make herself famous. Balls and suppers were of course out of the question. She did not object to her daughters dancing all night at other houses—at least, of late she had not objected, for the fashionable world required it, and the young ladies had perhaps a will of their own—but dancing at her house—absolutely under the shade of the bishop’s apron—would be a sin and a scandal. And then as to suppers—of all modes in which one may extend one’s hospitality to a large acquaintance, they are the most costly.

“It is horrid to think that we should go out among our friends for the mere sake of eating and drinking,” Mrs. Proudie would say to the clergymen’s wives from Barsetshire. “It shows such a sensual propensity.”

“Indeed it does, Mrs. Proudie; and is so vulgar too!” those ladies would reply.

But the elder among them would remember with regret, the unsparing, open-handed hospitality of Barchester Palace in the good old days of Bishop Grantly—God rest his soul! One old vicar’s wife there was whose answer had not been so courteous—”When we are hungry, Mrs. Proudie,” she had said, “we do all have sensual propensities.”

“It would be much better, Mrs. Athill, if the world would provide for all that at home,” Mrs. Proudie had rapidly replied; with which opinion I must here profess that I cannot by any means bring myself to coincide.

But a conversazione would give play to no sensual propensity, nor occasion that intolerable expense which the gratification of sensual propensities too often produces. Mrs. Proudie felt that the word was not all that she could have desired. It was a little faded by old use and present oblivion, and seemed to address itself to that portion of the London world that is considered blue, rather than fashionable. But, nevertheless, there was a spirituality about it which suited her, and one may also say an economy. And then as regarded fashion, it might perhaps not be beyond the power of a Mrs. Proudie to regild the word with a newly burnished gilding. Some leading person must produce fashion at first hand, and why not Mrs. Proudie?

Her plan was to set the people by the ears talking, if talk they would, or to induce them to show themselves there inert if no more could be got from them. To accommodate with chairs and sofas as many as the furniture of her noble suite of rooms would allow, especially with the two chairs and padded bench against the wall in the back closet—the small inner drawing-room, as she would call it to the clergymen’s wives from Barsetshire—and to let the others stand about upright, or “group themselves,” as she described it. Then four times during the two hours’ period of her conversazione tea and cake were to be handed round on salvers. It is astonishing how far a very little cake will go in this way, particularly if administered tolerably early after dinner. The men can’t eat it, and the women, having no plates and no table, are obliged to abstain. Mrs. Jones knows that she cannot hold a piece of crumbly cake in her hand till it be consumed without doing serious injury to her best dress. When Mrs. Proudie, with her weekly books before her, looked into the financial upshot of her conversazione, her conscience told her that she had done the right thing.

Going out to tea is not a bad thing, if one can contrive to dine early, and then be allowed to sit round a big table with a tea urn in the middle. I would, however, suggest that breakfast cups should always be provided for the gentlemen. And then with pleasant neighbours—or more especially with a pleasant neighbour—the affair is not, according to my taste, by any means the worst phase of society. But I do dislike that handing round, unless it be of a subsidiary thimbleful when the business of the social intercourse has been dinner.

And indeed this handing round has become a vulgar and an intolerable nuisance among us second-class gentry with our eight hundred a year—there or thereabouts—doubly intolerable as being destructive of our natural comforts, and a wretchedly vulgar aping of men with large incomes. The Duke of Omnium and Lady Hartletop are undoubtedly wise to have everything handed round. Friends of mine who occasionally dine at such houses tell me that they get their wine quite as quickly as they can drink it, that their mutton is brought to them without delay, and that the potato bearer follows quick upon the heels of carnifer. Nothing can be more comfortable, and we may no doubt acknowledge that these first-class grandees do understand their material comforts. But we of the eight hundred can no more come up to them in this than we can in their opera-boxes and equipages. May I not say that the usual tether of this class, in the way of carnifers, cup-bearers, and the rest, does not reach beyond neat-handed Phyllis and the greengrocer? and that Phyllis, neat-handed as she probably is, and the greengrocer, though he be ever so active, cannot administer a dinner to twelve people who are prohibited by a Medo-Persian law from all self-administration whatever? And may I not further say that the lamentable consequence to us eight hundreders dining out among each other is this, that we too often get no dinner at all. Phyllis, with the potatoes, cannot reach us till our mutton is devoured, or in a lukewarm state past our power of managing; and Ganymede, the greengrocer, though we admire the skill of his necktie and the whiteness of his unexceptionable gloves, fails to keep us going in sherry.

Seeing a lady the other day in this strait, left without a small modicum of stimulus which was no doubt necessary for her good digestion, I ventured to ask her to drink wine with me. But when I bowed my head at her, she looked at me with all her eyes, struck with amazement. Had I suggested that she should join me in a wild Indian wardance, with nothing on but my paint, her face could not have shown greater astonishment. And yet I should have thought she might have remembered the days when Christian men and women used to drink wine with each other.

God be with the good old days when I could hob-nob with my friend over the table as often as I was inclined to lift my glass to my lips, and make a long arm for a hot potato whenever the exigencies of my plate required it.

I think it may be laid down as a rule in affairs of hospitality, that whatever extra luxury or grandeur we introduce at our tables when guests are with us, should be introduced for the advantage of the guest and not for our own. If, for instance, our dinner be served in a manner different from that usual to us, it should be so served in order that our friends may with more satisfaction eat our repast than our everyday practice would produce on them. But the change should by no means be made to their material detriment in order that our fashion may be acknowledged. Again, if I decorate my sideboard and table, wishing that the eyes of my visitors may rest on that which is elegant and pleasant to the sight, I act in that matter with a becoming sense of hospitality; but if my object be to kill Mrs. Jones with envy at the sight of all my silver trinkets, I am a very mean-spirited fellow. This, in a broad way, will be acknowledged; but if we would bear in mind the same idea at all times—on occasions when the way perhaps may not be so broad, when more thinking may be required to ascertain what is true hospitality, I think we of the eight hundred would make a greater advance towards really entertaining our own friends than by any rearrangement of the actual meats and dishes which we set before them.

Knowing, as we do, that the terms of the Lufton-Grantly alliance had been so solemnly ratified between the two mothers, it is perhaps hardly open to us to suppose that Mrs. Grantly was induced to take her daughter to Mrs. Proudie’s by any knowledge which she may have acquired that Lord Dumbello had promised to grace the bishop’s assembly. It is certainly the fact that high contracting parties do sometimes allow themselves a latitude which would be considered dishonest by contractors of a lower sort; and it may be possible that the archdeacon’s wife did think of that second string with which her bow was furnished. Be that as it may, Lord Dumbello was at Mrs. Proudie’s, and it did so come to pass that Griselda was seated at a corner of a sofa close to which was a vacant space in which his lordship could—”group himself.”

They had not been long there before Lord Dumbello did group himself. “Fine day,” he said, coming up and occupying the vacant position by Miss Grantly’s elbow.

“We were driving to-day, and we thought it rather cold,” said Griselda.

“Deuced cold,” said Lord Dumbello, and then he adjusted his white cravat and touched up his whiskers. Having got so far, he did not proceed to any other immediate conversational efforts; nor did Griselda. But he grouped himself again as became a marquis, and gave very intense satisfaction to Mrs. Proudie.

“This is so kind of you, Lord Dumbello,” said that lady, coming up to him and shaking his hand warmly; “so very kind of you to come to my poor little tea-party.”

“Uncommonly pleasant, I call it,” said his lordship. “I like this sort of thing—no trouble, you know.”

“No; that is the charm of it: isn’t it? no trouble, or fuss, or parade. That’s what I always say. According to my ideas, society consists in giving people facility for an interchange of thoughts—what we call conversation.”

“Aw, yes, exactly.”

“Not in eating and drinking together—eh, Lord Dumbello? And yet the practice of our lives would seem to show that the indulgence of those animal propensities can alone suffice to bring people together. The world in this has surely made a great mistake.”

“I like a good dinner all the same,” said Lord Dumbello.

“Oh, yes, of course—of course. I am by no means one of those who would pretend to preach that our tastes have not been given to us for our enjoyment. Why should things be nice if we are not to like them?”

“A man who can really give a good dinner has learned a great deal,” said Lord Dumbello, with unusual animation.

“An immense deal. It is quite an art in itself: and one which I, at any rate, by no means despise. But we cannot always be eating—can we?”