‘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 t
o 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 17
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,1 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,2 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 Barset-shire. ‘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 c
ould 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 was 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.
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