Framley Parsonage, Anthony Trollope [popular e readers txt] 📗

war, and was almost grateful to Lady Lufton for her cordiality.

“Dear Lady Lufton,” she said, “it is so kind of you to say so. I have told no one else, and of course would tell no one till you knew it. No one has known her and understood her so well as you have done. And I can assure you of this: that there is no one to whose friendship she looks forward in her new sphere of life with half so much pleasure as she does to yours.”

Lady Lufton did not say much further. She could not declare that she expected much gratification from an intimacy with the future Marchioness of Hartletop. The Hartletops and Luftons must, at any rate for her generation, live in a world apart, and she had now said all that her old friendship with Mrs. Grantly required. Mrs. Grantly understood all this quite as well as did Lady Lufton; but then Mrs. Grantly was much the better woman of the world.

It was arranged that Griselda should come back to Bruton Street for that night, and that her visit should then be brought to a close.

“The archdeacon thinks that for the present I had better remain up in town,” said Mrs. Grantly, “and under the very peculiar circumstances Griselda will be⁠—perhaps more comfortable with me.”

To this Lady Lufton entirely agreed; and so they parted, excellent friends, embracing each other in a most affectionate manner.

That evening Griselda did return to Bruton Street, and Lady Lufton had to go through the further task of congratulating her. This was the more disagreeable of the two, especially so as it had to be thought over beforehand. But the young lady’s excellent good sense and sterling qualities made the task comparatively an easy one. She neither cried, nor was impassioned, nor went into hysterics, nor showed any emotion. She did not even talk of her noble Dumbello⁠—her generous Dumbello. She took Lady Lufton’s kisses almost in silence, thanked her gently for her kindness, and made no allusion to her own future grandeur.

“I think I should like to go to bed early,” she said, “as I must see to my packing up.”

“Richards will do all that for you, my dear.”

“Oh, yes, thank you, nothing can be kinder than Richards. But I’ll just see to my own dresses.” And so she went to bed early.

Lady Lufton did not see her son for the next two days, but when she did, of course she said a word or two about Griselda.

“You have heard the news, Ludovic?” she asked.

“Oh, yes: it’s at all the clubs. I have been overwhelmed with presents of willow branches.”

“You, at any rate, have got nothing to regret,” she said.

“Nor you either, mother. I am sure that you do not think you have. Say that you do not regret it. Dearest mother, say so for my sake. Do you not know in your heart of hearts that she was not suited to be happy as my wife⁠—or to make me happy?”

“Perhaps not,” said Lady Lufton, sighing. And then she kissed her son, and declared to herself that no girl in England could be good enough for him.

XXXI Salmon Fishing in Norway

Lord Dumbello’s engagement with Griselda Grantly was the talk of the town for the next ten days. It formed, at least, one of two subjects which monopolized attention, the other being that dreadful rumour, first put in motion by Tom Towers at Miss Dunstable’s party, as to a threatened dissolution of Parliament.

“Perhaps, after all, it will be the best thing for us,” said Mr. Green Walker, who felt himself to be tolerably safe at Crewe Junction.

“I regard it as a most wicked attempt,” said Harold Smith, who was not equally secure in his own borough, and to whom the expense of an election was disagreeable. “It is done in order that they may get time to tide over the autumn. They won’t gain ten votes by a dissolution, and less than forty would hardly give them a majority. But they have no sense of public duty⁠—none whatever. Indeed, I don’t know who has.”

“No, by Jove; that’s just it. That’s what my aunt Lady Hartletop says; there is no sense of duty left in the world. By the by, what an uncommon fool Dumbello is making himself!” And then the conversation went off to that other topic.

Lord Lufton’s joke against himself about the willow branches was all very well, and nobody dreamed that his heart was sore in that matter. The world was laughing at Lord Dumbello for what it chose to call a foolish match, and Lord Lufton’s friends talked to him about it as though they had never suspected that he could have made an ass of himself in the same direction; but, nevertheless, he was not altogether contented. He by no means wished to marry Griselda; he had declared to himself a dozen times since he had first suspected his mother’s manoeuvres, that no consideration on earth should induce him to do so; he had pronounced her to be cold, insipid, and unattractive in spite of her beauty; and yet he felt almost angry that Lord Dumbello should have been successful. And this, too, was the more inexcusable, seeing that he had never forgotten Lucy Robarts, had never ceased to love her, and that, in holding those various conversations within his own bosom, he was as loud in Lucy’s favour as he was in dispraise of Griselda.

“Your hero, then,” I hear some well-balanced critic say, “is not worth very much.”

In the first place Lord Lufton is not my hero; and in the next place, a man may be very imperfect and yet worth a great deal. A man may be as imperfect as Lord Lufton, and yet worthy of a good mother and a good wife. If not, how many of us are unworthy of the mothers and wives we have! It is my belief that few young men settle themselves down to the work of the