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

sitting at her little writing table, with her head resting on her arm, and that letter which she had received that morning was lying open on the table before her. Indeed there were two letters now there, one from a London lawyer to herself, and the other from her son to that London lawyer. It needs only be explained that the subject of those letters was the immediate sale of that outlying portion of the Lufton property in Oxfordshire, as to which Mr. Sowerby once spoke. Lord Lufton had told the lawyer that the thing must be done at once, adding that his friend Robarts would have explained the whole affair to his mother. And then the lawyer had written to Lady Lufton, as indeed was necessary; but unfortunately Lady Lufton had not hitherto heard a word of the matter.

In her eyes the sale of family property was horrible; the fact that a young man with some fifteen or twenty thousand a year should require subsidiary money was horrible; that her own son should have not written to her himself was horrible; and it was also horrible that her own pet, the clergyman whom she had brought there to be her son’s friend, should be mixed up in the matter⁠—should be cognizant of it while she was not cognizant⁠—should be employed in it as a go-between and agent in her son’s bad courses. It was all horrible, and Lady Lufton was sitting there with a black brow and an uneasy heart. As regarded our poor parson, we may say that in this matter he was blameless, except that he had hitherto lacked the courage to execute his friend’s commission.

“What is it, Fanny?” said Lady Lufton as soon as the door was opened; “I should have been down in half-an-hour, if you wanted me, Justinia.”

“Fanny has received a letter which makes her wish to speak to you at once,” said Lady Meredith.

“What letter, Fanny?”

Poor Fanny’s heart was in her mouth; she held it in her hand, but had not yet quite made up her mind whether she would show it bodily to Lady Lufton.

“From Mr. Robarts,” she said.

“Well; I suppose he is going to stay another week at Chaldicotes. For my part I should be as well pleased;” and Lady Lufton’s voice was not friendly, for she was thinking of that farm in Oxfordshire. The imprudence of the young is very sore to the prudence of their elders. No woman could be less covetous, less grasping than Lady Lufton; but the sale of a portion of the old family property was to her as the loss of her own heart’s blood.

“Here is the letter, Lady Lufton; perhaps you had better read it;” and Fanny handed it to her, again keeping back the postscript. She had read and reread the letter downstairs, but could not make out whether her husband had intended her to show it. From the line of the argument she thought that he must have done so. At any rate he said for himself more than she could say for him, and so, probably, it was best that her ladyship should see it.

Lady Lufton took it, and read it, and her face grew blacker and blacker. Her mind was set against the writer before she began it, and every word in it tended to make her feel more estranged from him. “Oh, he is going to the palace, is he?⁠—well; he must choose his own friends. Harold Smith one of his party! It’s a pity, my dear, he did not see Miss Proudie before he met you, he might have lived to be the bishop’s chaplain. Gatherum Castle! You don’t mean to tell me that he is going there? Then I tell you fairly, Fanny, that I have done with him.”

“Oh, Lady Lufton, don’t say that,” said Mrs. Robarts, with tears in her eyes.

“Mamma, mamma, don’t speak in that way,” said Lady Meredith.

“But my dear, what am I to say? I must speak in that way. You would not wish me to speak falsehoods, would you? A man must choose for himself, but he can’t live with two different sets of people; at least, not if I belong to one and the Duke of Omnium to the other. The bishop going indeed! If there be anything that I hate it is hypocrisy.”

“There is no hypocrisy in that, Lady Lufton.”

“But I say there is, Fanny. Very strange, indeed! ‘Put off his defence!’ Why should a man need any defence to his wife if he acts in a straightforward way? His own language condemns him: ‘Wrong to stand out!’ Now, will either of you tell me that Mr. Robarts would really have thought it wrong to refuse that invitation? I say that that is hypocrisy. There is no other word for it.”

By this time the poor wife, who had been in tears, was wiping them away and preparing for action. Lady Lufton’s extreme severity gave her courage. She knew that it behoved her to fight for her husband when he was thus attacked. Had Lady Lufton been moderate in her remarks Mrs. Robarts would not have had a word to say.

“My husband may have been ill-judged,” she said, “but he is no hypocrite.”

“Very well, my dear, I dare say you know better than I; but to me it looks extremely like hypocrisy: eh, Justinia?”

“Oh, mamma, do be moderate.”

“Moderate! That’s all very well. How is one to moderate one’s feelings when one has been betrayed?”

“You do not mean that Mr. Robarts has betrayed you?” said the wife.

“Oh, no; of course not.” And then she went on reading the letter: “ ‘Seem to have been standing in judgment upon the duke.’ Might he not use the same argument as to going into any house in the kingdom, however infamous? We must all stand in judgment one upon another in that sense. ‘Crawley!’ Yes; if he were a little more like Mr. Crawley it would be a good thing for me, and for the parish, and for you too, my dear. God