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

“Oh, Mark, what a ruffian you are to spoil my day’s sport in this way. Any man but a parson would be too good a Christian for such intense cruelty. But let me see⁠—four hundred pounds? Oh, yes⁠—Tozer has it.”

“And what will Tozer do with it?”

“Make money of it; whatever way he may go to work he will do that.”

“But will Tozer bring it to me on the 20th?”

“Oh, Lord, no! Upon my word, Mark, you are deliciously green. A cat would as soon think of killing a mouse directly she got it into her claws. But, joking apart, you need not trouble yourself. Maybe you will hear no more about it; or, perhaps, which no doubt is more probable, I may have to send it to you to be renewed. But you need do nothing till you hear from me or somebody else.”

“Only do not let anyone come down upon me for the money.”

“There is not the slightest fear of that. Tally-ho, old fellow! He’s away. Tally-ho! right over by Gossetts’ barn. Come along, and never mind Tozer⁠—‘Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.’ ” And away they both went together, parson and member of Parliament.

And then again on that occasion Mark went home with a sort of feeling that the bill did not matter. Tozer would manage it somehow; and it was quite clear that it would not do to tell his wife of it just at present.

On the 21st of that month of February, however, he did receive a reminder that the bill and all concerning it had not merely been a farce. This was a letter from Mr. Sowerby, dated from Chaldicotes, though not bearing the Barchester postmark, in which that gentleman suggested a renewal⁠—not exactly of the old bill, but of a new one. It seemed to Mark that the letter had been posted in London. If I give it entire, I shall, perhaps, most quickly explain its purport:

Chaldicotes⁠—20th February, 185-.

My dear Mark⁠—“Lend not thy name to the money-dealers, for the same is a destruction and a snare.” If that be not in the Proverbs, it ought to be. Tozer has given me certain signs of his being alive and strong this cold weather. As we can neither of us take up that bill for £400 at the moment, we must renew it, and pay him his commission and interest, with all the rest of his perquisites, and pickings, and stealings⁠—from all which, I can assure you, Tozer does not keep his hands as he should do.

To cover this and some other little outstanding trifles, I have filled in the new bill for £500, making it due 23rd of May next. Before that time, a certain accident will, I trust, have occurred to your impoverished friend. By the by, I never told you how she went off from Gatherum Castle, the morning after you left us, with the Greshams. Cart-ropes would not hold her, even though the duke held them; which he did, with all the strength of his ducal hands. She would go to meet some doctor of theirs, and so I was put off for that time; but I think that the matter stands in a good train.

Do not lose a post in sending back the bill accepted, as Tozer may annoy you⁠—nay, undoubtedly will, if the matter be not in his hand, duly signed by both of us, the day after tomorrow. He is an ungrateful brute; he has lived on me for these eight years, and would not let me off a single squeeze now to save my life. But I am specially anxious to save you from the annoyance and cost of lawyers’ letters; and if delayed, it might get into the papers.

Put it under cover to me, at No. 7, Duke Street, St. James’s. I shall be in town by that time.

Goodbye, old fellow. That was a decent brush we had the other day from Cobbold’s Ashes. I wish I could get that brown horse from you. I would not mind going to a hundred and thirty.

Yours ever,

N. Sowerby.

When Mark had read it through he looked down on his table to see whether the old bill had fallen from the letter; but no, there was no enclosure, and had been no enclosure but the new bill. And then he read the letter through again, and found that there was no word about the old bill⁠—not a syllable, at least, as to its whereabouts. Sowerby did not even say that it would remain in his own hands.

Mark did not in truth know much about such things. It might be that the very fact of his signing this second document would render that first document null and void; and from Sowerby’s silence on the subject, it might be argued that this was so well known to be the case, that he had not thought of explaining it. But yet Mark could not see how this should be so.

But what was he to do? That threat of cost and lawyers, and specially of the newspapers, did have its effect upon him⁠—as no doubt it was intended to do. And then he was utterly dumbfounded by Sowerby’s impudence in drawing on him for £500 instead of £400, “covering,” as Sowerby so good-humouredly said, “sundry little outstanding trifles.”

But at last he did sign the bill, and sent it off, as Sowerby had directed. What else was he to do?

Fool that he was. A man always can do right, even though he has done wrong before. But that previous wrong adds so much difficulty to the path⁠—a difficulty which increases in tremendous ratio, till a man at last is choked in his struggling, and is drowned beneath the waters.

And then he put away Sowerby’s letter carefully, locking it up from his wife’s sight. It was a letter that no parish clergyman should have received. So much he acknowledged to himself. But nevertheless it was necessary that he should keep it. And