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

But I did so from a mixture of feelings which I need not, perhaps, explain; that most prominent, no doubt, was a fear of your displeasure. And then he came again, not to me but to my brother, and urged his suit to him. Nothing can have been kinder to me, more noble, more loving, more generous, than his conduct. At first I thought, when he was speaking to myself, that he was led on thoughtlessly to say all that he did say. I did not trust his love, though I saw that he did trust it himself. But I could not but trust it when he came again⁠—to my brother, and made his proposal to him. I don’t know whether you will understand me, Lady Lufton; but a girl placed as I am feels ten times more assurance in such a tender of affection as that, than in one made to herself, at the spur of the moment, perhaps. And then you must remember that I⁠—I myself⁠—I loved him from the first. I was foolish enough to think that I could know him and not love him.”

“I saw all that going on,” said Lady Lufton, with a certain assumption of wisdom about her; “and took steps which I hoped would have put a stop to it in time.”

“Everybody saw it. It was a matter of course,” said Lucy, destroying her ladyship’s wisdom at a blow. “Well; I did learn to love him, not meaning to do so; and I do love him with all my heart. It is no use my striving to think that I do not; and I could stand with him at the altar tomorrow and give him my hand, feeling that I was doing my duty by him, as a woman should do. And now he has told you of his love, and I believe in that as I do in my own⁠—” And then for a moment she paused.

“But, my dear Miss Robarts⁠—” began Lady Lufton.

Lucy, however, had now worked herself up into a condition of power, and would not allow her ladyship to interrupt her in her speech.

“I beg your pardon, Lady Lufton; I shall have done directly, and then I will hear you. And so my brother came to me, not urging this suit, expressing no wish for such a marriage, but allowing me to judge for myself, and proposing that I should see your son again on the following morning. Had I done so, I could not but have accepted him. Think of it, Lady Lufton. How could I have done other than accept him, seeing that in my heart I had accepted his love already?”

“Well?” said Lady Lufton, not wishing now to put in any speech of her own.

“I did not see him⁠—I refused to do so⁠—because I was a coward. I could not endure to come into this house as your son’s wife, and be coldly looked on by your son’s mother. Much as I loved him, much as I do love him, dearly as I prize the generous offer which he came down here to repeat to me, I could not live with him to be made the object of your scorn. I sent him word, therefore, that I would have him when you would ask me, and not before.”

And then, having thus pleaded her cause⁠—and pleaded as she believed the cause of her lover also⁠—she ceased from speaking, and prepared herself to listen to the story of King Cophetua.

But Lady Lufton felt considerable difficulty in commencing her speech. In the first place she was by no means a hardhearted or a selfish woman; and were it not that her own son was concerned, and all the glory which was reflected upon her from her son, her sympathies would have been given to Lucy Robarts. As it was, she did sympathize with her, and admire her, and to a certain extent like her. She began also to understand what it was that had brought about her son’s love, and to feel that but for certain unfortunate concomitant circumstances the girl before her might have made a fitting Lady Lufton. Lucy had grown bigger in her eyes while sitting there and talking, and had lost much of that missish want of importance⁠—that lack of social weight which Lady Lufton in her own opinion had always imputed to her. A girl that could thus speak up and explain her own position now, would be able to speak up and explain her own, and perhaps some other positions at any future time.

But not for all or any of these reasons did Lady Lufton think of giving way. The power of making or marring this marriage was placed in her hands, as was very fitting, and that power it behoved her to use, as best she might use it, to her son’s advantage. Much as she might admire Lucy, she could not sacrifice her son to that admiration. The unfortunate concomitant circumstances still remained, and were of sufficient force, as she thought, to make such a marriage inexpedient. Lucy was the sister of a gentleman, who by his peculiar position as parish clergyman of Framley was unfitted to be the brother-in-law of the owner of Framley. Nobody liked clergymen better than Lady Lufton, or was more willing to live with them on terms of affectionate intimacy, but she could not get over the feeling that the clergyman of her own parish⁠—or of her son’s⁠—was a part of her own establishment, of her own appanage⁠—or of his⁠—and that it could not be well that Lord Lufton should marry among his own⁠—dependants. Lady Lufton would not have used the word, but she did think it. And then, too, Lucy’s education had been so deficient. She had had no one about her in early life accustomed to the ways of⁠—of what shall I say, without making Lady Lufton appear more worldly than she was? Lucy’s wants in this respect, not to be defined in words,