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

returning.” Yes; that is a difficulty which multiplies itself in a fearful ratio as one goes on pleasantly running down the path⁠—whitherward? Had it come to that with him that he could not return⁠—that he could never again hold up his head with a safe conscience as the pastor of his parish! It was Sowerby who had led him into this misery, who had brought on him this ruin? But then had not Sowerby paid him? Had not that stall which he now held in Barchester been Sowerby’s gift? He was a poor man now⁠—a distressed, poverty-stricken man; but nevertheless he wished with all his heart that he had never become a sharer in the good things of the Barchester chapter.

“I shall resign the stall,” he said to his wife that night. “I think I may say that I have made up my mind as to that.”

“But, Mark, will not people say that it is odd?”

“I cannot help it⁠—they must say it. Fanny, I fear that we shall have to bear the saying of harder words than that.”

“Nobody can ever say that you have done anything that is unjust or dishonourable. If there are such men as Mr. Sowerby⁠—”

“The blackness of his fault will not excuse mine.” And then again he sat silent, hiding his eyes, while his wife, sitting by him, held his hand.

“Don’t make yourself wretched, Mark. Matters will all come right yet. It cannot be that the loss of a few hundred pounds should ruin you.”

“It is not the money⁠—it is not the money!”

“But you have done nothing wrong, Mark.”

“How am I to go into the church, and take my place before them all, when everyone will know that bailiffs are in the house?” And then, dropping his head on to the table, he sobbed aloud.

Mark Robarts’ mistake had been mainly this⁠—he had thought to touch pitch and not to be defiled. He, looking out from his pleasant parsonage into the pleasant upper ranks of the world around him, had seen that men and things in those quarters were very engaging. His own parsonage, with his sweet wife, were exceedingly dear to him, and Lady Lufton’s affectionate friendship had its value; but were not these things rather dull for one who had lived in the best sets at Harrow and Oxford;⁠—unless, indeed, he could supplement them with some occasional bursts of more lively life? Cakes and ale were as pleasant to his palate as to the palates of those with whom he had formerly lived at college. He had the same eye to look at a horse, and the same heart to make him go across a country, as they. And then, too, he found that men liked him⁠—men and women also; men and women who were high in worldly standing. His ass’s ears were tickled, and he learned to fancy that he was intended by nature for the society of high people. It seemed as though he were following his appointed course in meeting men and women of the world at the houses of the fashionable and the rich. He was not the first clergyman that had so lived and had so prospered. Yes, clergymen had so lived, and had done their duties in their sphere of life altogether to the satisfaction of their countrymen⁠—and of their sovereigns. Thus Mark Robarts had determined that he would touch pitch, and escape defilement if that were possible. With what result those who have read so far will have perceived.

Late on the following afternoon who should drive up to the parsonage door but Mr. Forrest, the bank manager from Barchester⁠—Mr. Forrest, to whom Sowerby had always pointed as the deus ex machina who, if duly invoked, could relieve them all from their present troubles, and dismiss the whole Tozer family⁠—not howling into the wilderness, as one would have wished to do with that brood of Tozers, but so gorged with prey that from them no further annoyance need be dreaded? All this Mr. Forrest could do; nay, more, most willingly would do! Only let Mark Robarts put himself into the banker’s hand, and blandly sign what documents the banker might desire.

“This is a very unpleasant affair,” said Mr. Forrest as soon as they were closeted together in Mark’s book-room. In answer to which observation the parson acknowledged that it was a very unpleasant affair.

“Mr. Sowerby has managed to put you into the hands of about the worst set of rogues now existing, in their line of business, in London.”

“So I supposed; Curling told me the same.” Curling was the Barchester attorney whose aid he had lately invoked.

“Curling has threatened them that he will expose their whole trade; but one of them who was down here, a man named Tozer, replied, that you had much more to lose by exposure than he had. He went further and declared that he would defy any jury in England to refuse him his money. He swore that he discounted both bills in the regular way of business; and, though this is of course false, I fear that it will be impossible to prove it so. He well knows that you are a clergyman, and that, therefore, he has a stronger hold on you than on other men.”

“The disgrace shall fall on Sowerby,” said Robarts, hardly actuated at the moment by any strong feeling of Christian forgiveness.

“I fear, Mr. Robarts, that he is somewhat in the condition of the Tozers. He will not feel it as you will do.”

“I must bear it, Mr. Forrest, as best I may.”

“Will you allow me, Mr. Robarts, to give you my advice? Perhaps I ought to apologize for intruding it upon you; but as the bills have been presented and dishonoured across my counter, I have, of necessity, become acquainted with the circumstances.”

“I am sure I am very much obliged to you,” said Mark.

“You must pay this money, or, at any rate, the most considerable portion of it;⁠—the whole of it, indeed, with such deduction as a lawyer may be able to induce these hawks to make