The Last Chronicle of Barset (28 page)

On the next day, Christmas Day, as the reader will remember,
Grace Crawley was taken up to dine at the big house with the old squire. Mrs Dale's eldest daughter, with her husband, Dr Crofts, was to be there; and also Lily's old friend, who was also especially the old friend of Johnny Eames, Lady Julia De Guest. Grace had endeavoured to be excused from the party, pleading many pleas. But the upshot of all her pleas was this – that while her father's position was so painful she ought not to go out anywhere. In answer to this, Lily Dale, corroborated by her mother, assured her that for her father's sake she ought not to exhibit any such feeling; that in doing so, she would seem to express a doubt as to her father's innocence. Then she allowed herself to be persuaded, telling her friend, however, that she knew the day would be very miserable to her. ‘It will be very humdrum, if you please,' said Lily. ‘Nothing can be more humdrum than Christmas at the Great House. Nevertheless, you must go.'

Coming out of church, Grace was introduced to the old squire. He was a thin, old man, with grey hair, and the smallest possible grey whiskers, with a dry, solemn face; not carrying in his outward gait much of the customary jollity of Christmas. He took his hat off to Grace, and said some word to her as to hoping to have the pleasure of seeing her at dinner. It sounded very cold to her, and she became at once afraid of him. ‘I wish I was not going,' she said to Lily, again. ‘I know he thinks I ought not to go. I shall be so thankful if you will but let me stay.'

‘Don't be foolish, Grace. It all comes from your not knowing him, or understanding him. And how should you understand him? I give you my word that I would tell you if I did not know that he wishes you to go.'

She had to go. ‘Of course I haven't a dress fit. How should I?' she said to Lily. ‘How wrong it is of me to put myself up to such a thing as this.'

‘Your dress is beautiful, child. We are none of us going in evening dresses. Pray believe that I will not make you do wrong. If you won't trust me, can't you trust mamma?'

Of course she went. When the three ladies entered the drawing-room of the Great House they found that Lady Julia had arrived just before
them. Lady Julia immediately took hold of Lily, and led her apart, having a word or two to say about the clerk in the Income-tax Office. I am not sure but what the dear old woman sometimes said a few more words than were expedient, with a view to the object which she had so closely at heart. ‘John is to be with us the first week in February,' she said. ‘I suppose you'll see him before that, as he'll probably be with his mother a few days before he comes to me.'

‘I daresay we shall see him quite in time, Lady Julia,' said Lily.

‘Now, Lily, don't be ill-natured.'

‘I'm the most good-natured young woman alive, Lady Julia, and as for Johnny, he is always as welcome at the Small House as violets in March. Mamma purrs about him when he comes, asking all manner of flattering questions as though he were a cabinet minister at least, and I always admire some little knicknack that he has got, a new ring, or a stud, or a button. There isn't another man in all the world whose buttons I'd look at.'

‘It isn't his buttons, Lily.'

‘Ah, that's just it. I can go as far as his buttons. But come, Lady Julia, this is Christmas-time, and Christmas should be a holiday.'

In the meantime Mrs Dale was occupied with her married daughter and her son-in-law, and the squire had attached himself to poor Grace. ‘You have never been in this part of the country before, Miss Crawley,' he said.

‘No, sir.'

‘It is rather pretty just about here, and Guestwick Manor is a fine place in its way, but we have not so much natural beauty as you have in Barsetshire. Chaldicote Chase is, I think, as pretty as anything in England.'

‘I never saw Chaldicote Chase, sir. It isn't pretty at all at Hogglestock, where we live.'

‘Ah, I forgot. No: it is not very pretty at Hogglestock. That's where the bricks come from.'

‘Papa is clergyman at Hogglestock.'

‘Yes, yes; I remember. Your father is a great scholar. I have often heard of him. I am sorry he should be distressed by this charge they have made. But it will come right at the assizes. They always get at
the truth there. I used to be intimate with a clergyman in Barsetshire of the name of Grantly' – Grace felt that her ears were tingling, and that her face was red – ‘Archdeacon Grantly. His father was bishop of the diocese.'

‘Yes, sir. Archdeacon Grantly lives at Plumstead.'

‘I was staying once with an old friend of mine, Mr Thorne of Ullathorne, who lives close to Plumstead, and saw a good deal of them. I remember thinking Henry Grantly was a very nice lad. He married afterwards.'

‘Yes, sir; but his wife is dead now, and he has got a little girl – Edith Grantly.'

‘Is there no other child?'

‘No, sir; only Edith.'

‘You know him, then?'

‘Yes, sir; I know Major Grantly – and Edith. I never saw Archdeacon Grantly.'

‘Then, my dear, you never saw a very famous pillar of the Church. I remember when people used to talk a great deal about Archdeacon Grantly; but when his time came to be made a bishop, he was not sufficiently new-fangled; and so he got passed by. He is much better off as he is, I should say. Bishops have to work very hard, my dear.'

‘Do they, sir?'

‘So they tell me. And the archdeacon is a wealthy man. So Henry Grantly has got an only daughter? I hope she is a nice child, for I remember liking him well.'

‘She is a very nice child, indeed, Mr Dale. She could not be nicer. And she is so lovely.' Then Mr Dale looked into his young companion's face, struck by the sudden animation of her words, and perceived for the first time that she was very pretty.

After this Grace became accustomed to the strangeness of the faces round her, and managed to eat her dinner without much perturbation of spirit. When after dinner the squire proposed to her that they should drink the health of her papa and mamma, she was almost reduced to tears, and yet she liked him for doing it. It was terrible to her to have them mentioned, knowing as she did that everyone who mentioned them must be aware of their misery – for the misfortune
of her father had become notorious in the country; but it was almost more terrible to her that no allusion should be made to them; for then she would be driven to think that her father was regarded as a man whom the world could not afford to mention. ‘Papa and mamma,' she just murmured, raising her glass to her lips. ‘Grace, dear,' said Lily from across the table, ‘here's papa and mamma, and the young man at Marlborough who is carrying everything before him.' ‘Yes; we won't forget the young man at Marlborough,' said the squire. Grace felt this to be good-natured, because her brother at Marlborough was the one bright spot in her family – and she was comforted.

‘And we will drink the health of my friend, John Eames,' said Lady Julia.

‘John Eames' health,' said the squire, in a low voice.

‘Johnny's health,' said Mrs Dale; but Mrs Dale's voice was not very brisk.

‘John's health,' said Dr Crofts and Mrs Crofts in a breath.

‘Here's the health of Johnny Eames,' said Lily; and her voice was the clearest and the loudest of them all. But she made up her mind that if Lady Julia could not be induced to spare her for the future, she and Lady Julia must quarrel. ‘No one can understand,' she said to her mother that evening, ‘how dreadful it is – this being constantly told before one's family and friends that one ought to marry a certain young man.'

‘She didn't say that, my dear.'

‘I should much prefer that she should, for then I could get up on my legs and answer her off the reel. Of course everybody there understood what she meant – including old John Bates, who stood at the sideboard and coolly drank the toast himself.'

‘He always does that to all the family toasts on Christmas Day. Your uncle likes it.'

‘That wasn't a family toast, and John Bates had no right to drink it.'

After dinner they all played cards – a round game – and the squire put in the stakes. ‘Now, Grace,' said Lily, ‘you are the visitor and you
must win, or else uncle Christopher won't be happy. He always likes a young lady visitor to win.'

‘But I never played a game of cards in my life.'

‘Go and sit next to him and he'll teach you. Uncle Christopher, won't you teach Grace Crawley? She never saw a Pope Joan board
¹
in her life before.'

‘Come here, my dear, and sit next to me. Dear, dear, dear; fancy Henry Grantly having a little girl. What a handsome lad he was. And it seems only yesterday.' If it was so that Lily had said a word to her uncle about Grace and the major, the old squire had become on a sudden very sly. Be that as it may, Grace Crawley thought he was a pleasant old man; and though, while talking to him about Edith, she persisted in not learning to play Pope Joan, so that he could not contrive that she should win, nevertheless the squire took to her very kindly, and told her to come up with Lily and see him sometimes while she was staying at the Small House. The squire in speaking of his sister-in-law's cottage always called it the Small House.

‘Only think of my winning,' said Lady Julia, drawing together her wealth. ‘Well, I'm sure I want it bad enough, for I don't at all know whether I've got any income of my own. It's all John Eames' fault, my dear, for he won't go and make those people settle it in Lincoln's Inn Fields.' Poor Lily, who was standing on the hearthrug, touched her mother's arm. She knew that Johnny's name was lugged in with reference to Lady Julia's money altogether for her benefit. ‘I wonder whether she ever had a Johnny of her own,' she said to her mother, ‘and, if so, whether she liked it when her friends sent the town-crier round to talk about him.'

‘She means to be good-natured,' said Mrs Dale.

‘Of course she does. But it is such a pity when people won't understand.'

‘My uncle didn't bite you after all, Grace,' said Lily to her friend as they were going home at night, by the pathway which led from the garden of one house to the garden of the other.

‘I like Mr Dale very much,' said Grace. ‘He was very kind to me.'

‘There is some queer-looking animal of whom they say that he is
better than he looks, and I always think of that saying when I think of my uncle.'

‘For shame, Lily,' said her mother. ‘Your uncle, for his age, is as good a looking man as I know. And he always looks like just what he is – an English gentleman.'

‘I didn't mean to say a word against his dear old face and figure, mamma; but his heart, and mind, and general disposition, as they come out in experience and days of trial, are so much better than the samples of them which he puts out on the counter for men and women to judge by. He wears well, and he washes well – if you know what I mean, Grace.'

‘Yes; I think I know what you mean.'

‘The Apollos of the world – I don't mean in outward looks, mamma

– but the Apollos in heart, the men – and the women too – who are so full of feeling, so soft-natured, so kind, who never say a cross word, who never get out of bed on the wrong side in the morning – it so often turns out that they won't wash.'

Such was the expression of Miss Lily Dale's experience.

*

The scene which occurred in Hogglestock church on the Sunday after Mr Thumble's first visit to that parish had not been described with absolute accuracy either by the archdeacon in his letter to his son, or by Mrs Thorne. There had been no footman from the palace in attendance on Mr Thumble, nor had there been a battle with the brickmakers; neither had Mr Thumble been put under the pump. But Mr Thumble had gone over, taking his gown and surplice with him, on the Sunday morning, and had intimated to Mr Crawley his intention of performing the service. Mr Crawley, in answer to this,
had assured Mr Thumble that he would not be allowed to open his mouth in the church; and Mr Thumble, not seeing his way to any further successful action, had contented himself with attending the services in his surplice, making thereby a silent protest that he, and not Mr Crawley, ought to have been in the reading-desk and the pulpit.

When Mr Thumble reported himself and his failure at the palace, he strove hard to avoid seeing Mrs Proudie, but not successfully. He knew something of the palace habits, and did manage to reach the bishop alone on the Sunday evening, justifying himself to his lordship for such an interview by the remarkable circumstances of the case and the importance of his late mission. Mrs Proudie always went to church on Sunday evenings, making a point of hearing three services and three sermons every Sunday of her life. On week-days she seldom heard any, having an idea that week-day services were an invention of the High Church enemy, and that they should therefore be vehemently discouraged. Services on saints' days she regarded as rank papacy, and had been known to accuse a clergyman's wife, to her face, of idolatry, because the poor lady had dated a letter, St John's Eve. Mr Thumble, on this Sunday evening, was successful in finding the bishop at home, and alone, but he was not lucky enough to get away before Mrs Proudie returned. The bishop, perhaps, thought that the story of the failure had better reach his wife's ears from Mr Thumble's lips than from his own.

‘Well, Mr Thumble?' said Mrs Proudie, walking into the study, armed in her full Sunday-evening winter panoply, in which she had just descended from her carriage. The church which Mrs Proudie attended in the evening was nearly half a mile from the palace, and the coachman and groom never got a holiday on Sunday night. She was gorgeous in a dark brown silk dress of awful stiffness and terrible dimensions; and on her shoulders she wore a short cloak of velvet and fur, very handsome withal, but so swelling in its proportions on all sides as necessarily to create more of dismay than of admiration in the mind of any ordinary man. And her bonnet was a monstrous helmet with the beaver up, displaying the awful face of the warrior, always ready for combat, and careless to guard itself from attack. The
large contorted bows which she bore were as a grisly crest upon her casque, beautiful, doubtless, but majestic and fear-compelling. In her hand she carried her armour all complete, a prayer-book, a Bible, and a book of hymns. These the footman had brought for her to the study door, but she had thought fit to enter her husband's room with them in her own custody.