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

is no question of begging,” continued the dean. “I, out of those superfluities which it has pleased God to put at my disposal, am anxious to assist the needs of those whom I love.”

“She is not starving,” said Crawley, in a voice very bitter, but still intended to be exculpatory of himself.

“No, my dear friend; I know she is not, and do not you be angry with me because I have endeavoured to put the matter to you in the strongest language I could use.”

“You look at it, Arabin, from one side only; I can only look at it from the other. It is very sweet to give; I do not doubt that. But the taking of what is given is very bitter. Gift bread chokes in a man’s throat and poisons his blood, and sits like lead upon the heart. You have never tried it.”

“But that is the very fault for which I blame you. That is the pride which I say you ought to sacrifice.”

“And why should I be called on to do so? Is not the labourer worthy of his hire? Am I not able to work, and willing? Have I not always had my shoulder to the collar, and is it right that I should now be contented with the scraps from a rich man’s kitchen? Arabin, you and I were equal once and we were then friends, understanding each other’s thoughts and sympathizing with each other’s sorrows. But it cannot be so now.”

“If there be such inability, it is all with you.”

“It is all with me⁠—because in our connection the pain would all be on my side. It would not hurt you to see me at your table with worn shoes and a ragged shirt. I do not think so meanly of you as that. You would give me your feast to eat though I were not clad a tithe as well as the menial behind your chair. But it would hurt me to know that there were those looking at me who thought me unfit to sit in your rooms.”

“That is the pride of which I speak;⁠—false pride.”

“Call it so if you will; but, Arabin, no preaching of yours can alter it. It is all that is left to me of my manliness. That poor broken reed who is lying there sick⁠—who has sacrificed all the world to her love for me⁠—who is the mother of my children, and the partner of my sorrows and the wife of my bosom⁠—even she cannot change me in this, though she pleads with the eloquence of all her wants. Not even for her can I hold out my hand for a dole.”

They had now come back to the door of the house, and Mr. Crawley, hardly conscious of what he was doing, was preparing to enter.

“Will Mrs. Crawley be able to see me if I come in?” said the dean.

“Oh, stop; no; you had better not do so,” said Mr. Crawley. “You, no doubt, might be subject to infection, and then Mrs. Arabin would be frightened.”

“I do not care about it in the least,” said the dean.

“But it is of no use; you had better not. Her room, I fear, is quite unfit for you to see; and the whole house, you know, may be infected.”

Dr. Arabin by this time was in the sitting-room; but seeing that his friend was really anxious that he should not go farther, he did not persist.

“It will be a comfort to us, at any rate, to know that Miss Robarts is with her.”

“The young lady is very good⁠—very good indeed,” said Crawley; “but I trust she will return to her home tomorrow. It is impossible that she should remain in so poor a house as mine. There will be nothing here of all the things that she will want.”

The dean thought that Lucy Robarts’s wants during her present occupation of nursing would not be so numerous as to make her continued sojourn in Mrs. Crawley’s sick room impossible, and therefore took his leave with a satisfied conviction that the poor lady would not be left wholly to the somewhat unskilful nursing of her husband.

XXXVII Mr. Sowerby Without Company

And now there were going to be wondrous doings in West Barsetshire, and men’s minds were much disturbed. The fiat had gone forth from the high places, and the Queen had dissolved her faithful Commons. The giants, finding that they could effect little or nothing with the old House, had resolved to try what a new venture would do for them, and the hubbub of a general election was to pervade the country. This produced no inconsiderable irritation and annoyance, for the House was not as yet quite three years old; and members of Parliament, though they naturally feel a constitutional pleasure in meeting their friends and in pressing the hands of their constituents, are, nevertheless, so far akin to the lower order of humanity that they appreciate the danger of losing their seats; and the certainty of a considerable outlay in their endeavours to retain them is not agreeable to the legislative mind.

Never did the old family fury between the gods and giants rage higher than at the present moment. The giants declared that every turn which they attempted to take in their country’s service had been thwarted by faction, in spite of those benign promises of assistance made to them only a few weeks since by their opponents; and the gods answered by asserting that they were driven to this opposition by the Boeotian fatuity of the giants. They had no doubt promised their aid, and were ready to give it to measures that were decently prudent; but not to a bill enabling government at its will to pension aged bishops! No; there must be some limit to their tolerance, and when such attempts as these were made that limit had been clearly passed.

All this had taken place openly only a day or two after that casual whisper dropped by Tom Towers at