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

armchair to which her patient had lately been promoted. The fever had gone, and Mrs. Crawley was slowly regaining her strength⁠—very slowly, and with frequent caution from the Silverbridge doctor that any attempt at being well too fast might again precipitate her into an abyss of illness and domestic inefficiency.

“I really think I can get about tomorrow,” said she; “and then, dear Lucy, I need not keep you longer from your home.”

“You are in a great hurry to get rid of me, I think. I suppose Mr. Crawley has been complaining again about the cream in his tea.” Mr. Crawley had on one occasion stated his assured conviction that surreptitious daily supplies were being brought into the house, because he had detected the presence of cream instead of milk in his own cup. As, however, the cream had been going for sundry days before this, Miss Robarts had not thought much of his ingenuity in making the discovery.

“Ah, you do not know how he speaks of you when your back is turned.”

“And how does he speak of me? I know you would not have the courage to tell me the whole.”

“No, I have not; for you would think it absurd coming from one who looks like him. He says that if he were to write a poem about womanhood, he would make you the heroine.”

“With a cream-jug in my hand, or else sewing buttons on to a shirt-collar. But he never forgave me about the mutton broth. He told me, in so many words, that I was a⁠—storyteller. And for the matter of that, my dear, so I was.”

“He told me that you were an angel.”

“Goodness gracious!”

“A ministering angel. And so you have been. I can almost feel it in my heart to be glad that I have been ill, seeing that I have had you for my friend.”

“But you might have had that good fortune without the fever.”

“No, I should not. In my married life I have made no friends till my illness brought you to me; nor should I ever really have known you but for that. How should I get to know anyone?”

“You will now, Mrs. Crawley; will you not? Promise that you will. You will come to us at Framley when you are well? You have promised already, you know.”

“You made me do so when I was too weak to refuse.”

“And I shall make you keep your promise too. He shall come, also, if he likes; but you shall come whether he likes or no. And I won’t hear a word about your old dresses. Old dresses will wear as well at Framley as at Hogglestock.”

From all which it will appear that Mrs. Crawley and Lucy Robarts had become very intimate during this period of the nursing; as two women always will, or, at least should do, when shut up for weeks together in the same sick room.

The conversation was still going on between them when the sound of wheels was heard upon the road. It was no highway that passed before the house, and carriages of any sort were not frequent there.

“It is Fanny, I am sure,” said Lucy, rising from her chair.

“There are two horses,” said Mrs. Crawley, distinguishing the noise with the accurate sense of hearing which is always attached to sickness; “and it is not the noise of the pony-carriage.”

“It is a regular carriage,” said Lucy, speaking from the window, “and stopping here. It is somebody from Framley Court, for I know the servant.”

As she spoke a blush came to her forehead. Might it not be Lord Lufton, she thought to herself⁠—forgetting at the moment that Lord Lufton did not go about the country in a close chariot with a fat footman. Intimate as she had become with Mrs. Crawley she had said nothing to her new friend on the subject of her love affair.

The carriage stopped and down came the footman, but nobody spoke to him from the inside.

“He has probably brought something from Framley,” said Lucy, having cream and suchlike matters in her mind; for cream and suchlike matters had come from Framley Court more than once during her sojourn there. “And the carriage, probably, happened to be coming this way.”

But the mystery soon elucidated itself partially, or, perhaps, became more mysterious in another way. The red-armed little girl who had been taken away by her frightened mother in the first burst of the fever had now returned to her place, and at the present moment entered the room, with awestruck face, declaring that Miss Robarts was to go at once to the big lady in the carriage.

“I suppose it’s Lady Lufton,” said Mrs. Crawley.

Lucy’s heart was so absolutely in her mouth that any kind of speech was at the moment impossible to her. Why should Lady Lufton have come thither to Hogglestock, and why should she want to see her, Lucy Robarts, in the carriage? Had not everything between them been settled? And yet⁠—! Lucy, in the moment for thought that was allowed to her, could not determine what might be the probable upshot of such an interview. Her chief feeling was a desire to postpone it for the present instant. But the red-armed little girl would not allow that.

“You are to come at once,” said she.

And then Lucy, without having spoken a word, got up and left the room. She walked downstairs, along the little passage, and out through the small garden, with firm steps, but hardly knowing whither she went, or why. Her presence of mind and self-possession had all deserted her. She knew that she was unable to speak as she should do; she felt that she would have to regret her present behaviour, but yet she could not help herself. Why should Lady Lufton have come to her there? She went on, and the big footman stood with the carriage door open. She stepped up almost unconsciously, and, without knowing how she got there, she found herself seated by Lady Lufton.

To tell the truth her ladyship also was a little at a loss