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

face, a true trusting heart, a strong arm, and an humble mind, might do much in teaching those around him that men may be gay and yet not profligate, that women may be devout and yet not dead to the world.

Such had been his ideas as to his own future life; and though many would think that as a clergyman he should have gone about his work with more serious devotion of thought, nevertheless there was some wisdom in them;⁠—some folly also, undoubtedly, as appeared by the troubles into which they led him.

“I will not affect to think that to be bad,” said he to himself, “which in my heart of hearts does not seem to be bad.” And thus he resolved that he might live without contamination among hunting squires. And then, being a man only too prone by nature to do as others did around him, he found by degrees that that could hardly be wrong for him which he admitted to be right for others.

But still his conscience upbraided him, and he declared to himself more than once that after this year he would hunt no more. And then his own Fanny would look at him on his return home on those days in a manner that cut him to the heart. She would say nothing to him. She never inquired in a sneering tone, and with angry eyes, whether he had enjoyed his day’s sport; but when he spoke of it, she could not answer him with enthusiasm; and in other matters which concerned him she was always enthusiastic.

After a while, too, he made matters worse, for about the end of March he did another very foolish thing. He almost consented to buy an expensive horse from Sowerby⁠—an animal which he by no means wanted, and which, if once possessed, would certainly lead him into further trouble. A gentleman, when he has a good horse in his stable, does not like to leave him there eating his head off. If he be a gig-horse, the owner of him will be keen to drive a gig; if a hunter, the happy possessor will wish to be with a pack of hounds.

“Mark,” said Sowerby to him one day, when they were out together, “this brute of mine is so fresh, I can hardly ride him; you are young and strong; change with me for an hour or so.” And then they did change, and the horse on which Robarts found himself mounted went away with him beautifully.

“He’s a splendid animal,” said Mark, when they again met.

“Yes, for a man of your weight. He’s thrown away upon me;⁠—too much of a horse for my purposes. I don’t get along now quite as well as I used to do. He is a nice sort of hunter; just rising six, you know.”

How it came to pass that the price of the splendid animal was mentioned between them, I need not describe with exactness. But it did come to pass that Mr. Sowerby told the parson that the horse should be his for £130.

“And I really wish you’d take him,” said Sowerby. “It would be the means of partially relieving my mind of a great weight.”

Mark looked up into his friend’s face with an air of surprise, for he did not at the moment understand how this should be the case.

“I am afraid, you know, that you will have to put your hand into your pocket sooner or later about that accursed bill⁠—” Mark shrank as the profane word struck his ears⁠—“and I should be glad to think that you had got something in hand in the way of value.”

“Do you mean that I shall have to pay the whole sum of £500?”

“Oh! dear, no; nothing of the kind. But something I dare say you will have to pay: if you like to take Dandy for a hundred and thirty, you can be prepared for that amount when Tozer comes to you. The horse is dog cheap, and you will have a long day for your money.”

Mark at first declared, in a quiet, determined tone, that he did not want the horse; but it afterwards appeared to him that if it were so fated that he must pay a portion of Mr. Sowerby’s debts, he might as well repay himself to any extent within his power. It would be as well perhaps that he should take the horse and sell him. It did not occur to him that by so doing he would put it in Mr. Sowerby’s power to say that some valuable consideration had passed between them with reference to this bill, and that he would be aiding that gentleman in preparing an inextricable confusion of money-matters between them. Mr. Sowerby well knew the value of this. It would enable him to make a plausible story, as he had done in that other case of Lord Lufton.

“Are you going to have Dandy?” Sowerby said to him again.

“I can’t say that I will just at present,” said the parson. “What should I want of him now the season’s over?”

“Exactly, my dear fellow; and what do I want of him now the season’s over? If it were the beginning of October instead of the end of March, Dandy would be up at two hundred and thirty instead of one: in six months’ time that horse will be worth anything you like to ask for him. Look at his bone.”

The vicar did look at his bones, examining the brute in a very knowing and unclerical manner. He lifted the animal’s four feet, one after another, handling the frogs, and measuring with his eye the proportion of the parts; he passed his hand up and down the legs, spanning the bones of the lower joint; he peered into his eyes, took into consideration the width of his chest, the dip of his back, the form of his ribs, the curve of his haunches, and his capabilities for breathing when pressed by work. And then he stood away a