第230章

Lady Lufton was a very good woman, devoted to her duties, affectionate and just to those about her, truly religious, and charitable from her nature; but I doubt whether the thorough worldliness of the archdeacon's appeal struck her as it will strike the reader. People are so much more worldly in practice than they are in theory, so much keener after their own gratification in detail than they are in the abstract, that the narrative of many an adventure would shock us, though the same adventure would not shock us in the action. One girl tells another how she has changed her mind in love; and the friend sympathises with the friend, and perhaps applauds. Had the story been told in print, the friend who had listened with equanimity would have read of such vacillation with indignation. She who vacillated herself would have hated her own performance when brought before her judgment as a matter in which she had no personal interest. Very fine things are written every day about honesty and truth, and men read them with a sort of external conviction that a man, if he be anything of a man at all, is of course honest and true. But when the internal convictions are brought out between two or three who are personally interested together--between two or three who feel that their little gathering is, so to say, 'tiled'--those internal convictions differ very much from the external convictions. This man, in his confidences, asserts broadly that he does not mean to be thrown over, and that man has a project for throwing over somebody else; and the intention of each is that scruples are not to stand in the way of his success. The 'Ruat coelum, fiat justitia' was said, no doubt, from an outside balcony to a crowd, and the speaker knew that he was talking buncombe. The 'Rem, si possis recte, si non quocunque modo' was whispered into the ear in a club smoking-room, and the whisperer intended that his words should prevail.

Lady Lufton had often heard her friend the archdeacon preach, and she knew well the high tone which he could take as the necessity of trusting our hopes for the future for all our true happiness; and yet she sympathised with him when he told her that he was broken-hearted because his son would take a step which might possibly interfere with his worldly prosperity. Had the archdeacon been preaching about matrimony, he would have recommended young men, in taking wives to themselves, especially to look for young women who feared the Lord. But in talking about his own son's wife, no word as to her eligibility or non-eligibility in this respect escaped his lips. Had he talked on the subject till nightfall no such word would have been spoken. Had any friend of his own, man or woman, in discussing such a matter with him and asking his advice upon it, alluded to the fear of the Lord, the allusion would have been distasteful to him and would have smacked to his palate of hypocrisy. Lady Lufton, who understood as well as any woman what it is to be 'tiled' with a friend, took all this in good part. The archdeacon had spoken out of his heart what was in his heart.

One of his children had married a marquis. Another might probably become a bishop--perhaps an archbishop. The third might be a county squire--high among the county squires. But he could only so become by walking warily;--and now he was bent on marrying the penniless daughter of an impoverished half-mad country curate, who was about to be tried for stealing twenty pounds! Lady Lufton, in spite of all her arguments, could not refuse her sympathy to her old friend.

'After all, from what you say, I suppose they are not engaged.'

'I do not know,' said the archdeacon. 'I cannot tell!'

'And what do you wish me to do?'

'Oh--nothing. I came over, as I said before, because I thought he was here. I think it right, before he has absolutely committed himself, to take every means in my power to make him understand that I shall withdraw from him all pecuniary assistance--now and for the future.'

'My friend, that threat seems to me to be so terrible.'

'It is the only power I have left to me.'

'But you, who are so affectionate by nature, would never adhere to it.'

'I will try. I will try my best to be firm. I will at once put everything beyond my control after my death.' The archdeacon, as he uttered these terrible words--words which were awful to Lady Lufton's ears--resolved that he would endeavour to nurse his own wrath; but, at the same time, almost hated himself for his own pusillanimity, because he feared that his wrath would die away before he should have availed himself of its heat.

'I would do nothing rash of that kind,' said Lady Lufton. 'Your object is to prevent the marriage--not to punish him for it when once he has made it.'

'He is not to have his own way in everything, Lady Lufton.'

'But you should first try to prevent it.'

'What can I do to prevent it?'

Lady Lufton paused a couple of minutes before she replied. She had a scheme in her head, but it seemed to her to savour of cruelty. And yet at present it was her chief duty to assist her old friend, if any assistance could be given. There could hardly be a doubt that such a marriage as this, of which they were speaking, was in itself an evil. In her case, the case of her son, there had been no question of a trial, of money stolen, of aught that was in truth disgraceful. 'I think if I were you, Dr Grantly,' she said, 'that I would see the young lady while I was here.'

'See her myself?' said the archdeacon. The idea of seeing Grace Crawley himself had, up to this moment, never entered his head.

'I think I would do so.'

'I think I will,' said the archdeacon, after a pause. Then he got up from his chair. 'If I am to do it, I had better do it at once.'

'Be gentle with her, my friend.' The archdeacon paused again. He certainly had entertained the idea of encountering Miss Crawley with severity rather than gentleness. Lady Lufton rose from her seat, and coming up to him, took one of his hands between her own two. 'Be gentle to her,' she said. 'You have owned that she has done nothing wrong.' The archdeacon bowed his head in token of assent and left the room.

Poor Grace Crawley.