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

this more than you can help. The men have ceased doing anything, and they shall leave the place tomorrow morning.”

“And how will the money⁠—be paid?” said the poor clergyman.

“Do not bother yourself about that at present. It shall so be managed that the burden shall fall ultimately on yourself⁠—not on anyone else. But I am sure it must be a comfort to you to know that your wife need not be driven out of her drawing-room.”

“But, Lufton, I cannot allow you⁠—after what has passed⁠—and at the present moment⁠—”

“My dear fellow, I know all about it, and I am coming to that just now. You have employed Curling, and he shall settle it; and upon my word, Mark, you shall pay the bill. But, for the present emergency, the money is at my banker’s.”

“But, Lufton⁠—”

“And to deal honestly, about Curling’s bill I mean, it ought to be as much my affair as your own. It was I that brought you into this mess with Sowerby, and I know now how unjust about it I was to you up in London. But the truth is that Sowerby’s treachery had nearly driven me wild. It has done the same to you since, I have no doubt.”

“He has ruined me,” said Robarts.

“No, he has not done that. No thanks to him though; he would not have scrupled to do it had it come in his way. The fact is, Mark, that you and I cannot conceive the depth of fraud in such a man as that. He is always looking for money; I believe that in all his hours of most friendly intercourse⁠—when he is sitting with you over your wine, and riding beside you in the field⁠—he is still thinking how he can make use of you to tide him over some difficulty. He has lived in that way till he has a pleasure in cheating, and has become so clever in his line of life that if you or I were with him again tomorrow he would again get the better of us. He is a man that must be absolutely avoided; I, at any rate, have learned to know so much.”

In the expression of which opinion Lord Lufton was too hard upon poor Sowerby; as indeed we are all apt to be too hard in forming an opinion upon the rogues of the world. That Mr. Sowerby had been a rogue, I cannot deny. It is roguish to lie, and he had been a great liar. It is roguish to make promises which the promiser knows he cannot perform, and such had been Mr. Sowerby’s daily practice. It is roguish to live on other men’s money, and Mr. Sowerby had long been doing so. It is roguish, at least so I would hold it, to deal willingly with rogues; and Mr. Sowerby had been constant in such dealings. I do not know whether he had not at times fallen even into more palpable roguery than is proved by such practices as those enumerated. Though I have for him some tender feeling, knowing that there was still a touch of gentle bearing round his heart, an abiding taste for better things within him, I cannot acquit him from the great accusation. But, for all that, in spite of his acknowledged roguery, Lord Lufton was too hard upon him in his judgment. There was yet within him the means of repentance, could a locus penitentiae have been supplied to him. He grieved bitterly over his own ill doings, and knew well what changes gentlehood would have demanded from him. Whether or no he had gone too far for all changes⁠—whether the locus penitentiae was for him still a possibility⁠—that was between him and a higher power.

“I have no one to blame but myself,” said Mark, still speaking in the same heartbroken tone and with his face averted from his friend.

The debt would now be paid, and the bailiffs would be expelled; but that would not set him right before the world. It would be known to all men⁠—to all clergymen in the diocese⁠—that the sheriff’s officers had been in charge of Framley Parsonage, and he could never again hold up his head in the close of Barchester.

“My dear fellow, if we were all to make ourselves miserable for such a trifle as this⁠—” said Lord Lufton, putting his arm affectionately on his friend’s shoulder.

“But we are not all clergymen,” said Mark, and as he spoke he turned away to the window and Lord Lufton knew that the tears were on his cheek.

Nothing was then said between them for some moments, after which Lord Lufton again spoke⁠—

“Mark, my dear fellow!”

“Well,” said Mark, with his face still turned towards the window.

“You must remember one thing; in helping you over this stile, which will be really a matter of no inconvenience to me, I have a better right than that even of an old friend; I look upon you now as my brother-in-law.”

Mark turned slowly round, plainly showing the tears upon his face.

“Do you mean,” said he, “that anything more has taken place?”

“I mean to make your sister my wife; she sent me word by you to say that she loved me, and I am not going to stand upon any nonsense after that. If she and I are both willing no one alive has a right to stand between us; and, by heavens, no one shall. I will do nothing secretly, so I tell you that, exactly as I have told her ladyship.”

“But what does she say?”

“She says nothing; but it cannot go on like that. My mother and I cannot live here together if she opposes me in this way. I do not want to frighten your sister by going over to her at Hogglestock, but I expect you to tell her so much as I now tell you, as coming from me; otherwise she will think that I have forgotten her.”

“She will not think that.”

“She need not; goodbye, old fellow. I’ll make it