"Anything wrong--no. I don't know whether it would be anything wrong, even if I were to fall in love with him. I wonder whether they cautioned Griselda Grantly when she was here? I suppose when young lords go about, all the girls are cautioned as a matter of course.

Why do they not label him 'dangerous'?" And then again they were silent for a moment, as Mrs. Robarts did not feel that she had anything further to say on the matter.

"'Poison' should be the word with any one so fatal as Lord Lufton; and he ought to be made up of some particular colour, for fear he should be swallowed in mistake."

"You will be safe, you see," said f.a.n.n.y, laughing, "as you have been specially cautioned as to this individual bottle."

"Ah! but what's the use of that after I have had so many doses? It is no good telling me about it now, when the mischief is done,--after I have been taking it for I don't know how long. Dear! dear! dear! and I regarded it as a mere commonplace powder, good for the complexion.

I wonder whether it's too late, or whether there's any antidote?"

Mrs. Robarts did not always quite understand her sister-in-law, and now she was a little at a loss. "I don't think there's much harm done yet on either side," she said, cheerily.

"Ah! you don't know, f.a.n.n.y. But I do think that if I die--as I shall--I feel I shall;--and if so, I do think it ought to go very hard with Lady Lufton. Why didn't she label him 'dangerous' in time?"

And then they went into the house and up to their own rooms.

It was difficult for any one to understand Lucy's state of mind at present, and it can hardly be said that she understood it herself.

She felt that she had received a severe blow in having been thus made the subject of remark with reference to Lord Lufton. She knew that her pleasant evenings at Framley Court were now over, and that she could not again talk to him in an unrestrained tone and without embarra.s.sment. She had felt the air of the whole place to be very cold before her intimacy with him, and now it must be cold again.

Two homes had been open to her, Framley Court and the parsonage; and now, as far as comfort was concerned, she must confine herself to the latter. She could not again be comfortable in Lady Lufton's drawing-room.

But then she could not help asking herself whether Lady Lufton was not right. She had had courage enough, and presence of mind, to joke about the matter when her sister-in-law spoke to her, and yet she was quite aware that it was no joking matter. Lord Lufton had not absolutely made love to her, but he had latterly spoken to her in a manner which she knew was not compatible with that ordinary comfortable masculine friendship with the idea of which she had once satisfied herself. Was not f.a.n.n.y right when she said that intimate friendships of that nature were dangerous things?

Yes, Lucy, very dangerous. Lucy, before she went to bed that night, had owned to herself that they were so; and lying there with sleepless eyes and a moist pillow, she was driven to confess that the label would in truth be now too late, that the caution had come to her after the poison had been swallowed. Was there any antidote? That was all that was left for her to consider. But, nevertheless, on the following morning she could appear quite at her ease. And when Mark had left the house after breakfast, she could still joke with f.a.n.n.y as to Lady Lufton's poison cupboard.

CHAPTER XIV.

MR. CRAWLEY OF HOGGLESTOCK.

And then there was that other trouble in Lady Lufton's mind, the sins, namely, of her selected parson. She had selected him, and she was by no means inclined to give him up, even though his sins against parsondom were grievous. Indeed she was a woman not p.r.o.ne to give up anything, and of all things not p.r.o.ne to give up a _protege_.

The very fact that she herself had selected him was the strongest argument in his favour.

But his sins against parsondom were becoming very grievous in her eyes, and she was at a loss to know what steps to take. She hardly dared to take him to task, him himself. Were she to do so, and should he then tell her to mind her own business--as he probably might do, though not in those words--there would be a schism in the parish; and almost anything would be better than that. The whole work of her life would be upset, all the outlets of her energy would be impeded if not absolutely closed, if a state of things were to come to pa.s.s in which she and the parson of her parish should not be on good terms.

But what was to be done? Early in the winter he had gone to Chaldicotes and to Gatherum Castle, consorting with gamblers, Whigs, atheists, men of loose pleasure, and Proudieites. That she had condoned; and now he was turning out a hunting parson on her hands.

It was all very well for f.a.n.n.y to say that he merely looked at the hounds as he rode about his parish. f.a.n.n.y might be deceived. Being his wife, it might be her duty not to see her husband's iniquities.

But Lady Lufton could not be deceived. She knew very well in what part of the county Cobbold's Ashes lay. It was not in Framley parish, nor in the next parish to it. It was half-way across to Chaldicotes--in the western division; and she had heard of that run in which two horses had been killed, and in which Parson Robarts had won such immortal glory among West Ba.r.s.etshire sportsmen. It was not easy to keep Lady Lufton in the dark as to matters occurring in her own county.

All these things she knew, but as yet had not noticed, grieving over them in her own heart the more on that account. Spoken grief relieves itself; and when one can give counsel, one always hopes at least that that counsel will be effective. To her son she had said, more than once, that it was a pity that Mr. Robarts should follow the hounds.--"The world has agreed that it is unbecoming in a clergyman,"

she would urge, in her deprecatory tone. But her son would by no means give her any comfort. "He doesn't hunt, you know--not as I do,"

he would say. "And if he did, I really don't see the harm of it. A man must have some amus.e.m.e.nt, even if he be an archbishop." "He has amus.e.m.e.nt at home," Lady Lufton would answer. "What does his wife do--and his sister?" This allusion to Lucy, however, was very soon dropped.

Lord Lufton would in no wise help her. He would not even pa.s.sively discourage the vicar, or refrain from offering to give him a seat in going to the meets. Mark and Lord Lufton had been boys together, and his lordship knew that Mark in his heart would enjoy a brush across the country quite as well as he himself; and then what was the harm of it?

Lady Lufton's best aid had been in Mark's own conscience. He had taken himself to task more than once, and had promised himself that he would not become a sporting parson. Indeed, where would be his hopes of ulterior promotion, if he allowed himself to degenerate so far as that? It had been his intention, in reviewing what he considered to be the necessary proprieties of clerical life, in laying out his own future mode of living, to a.s.sume no peculiar sacerdotal strictness; he would not be known as a denouncer of dancing or of card-tables, of theatres or of novel-reading; he would take the world around him as he found it, endeavouring by precept and practice to lend a hand to the gradual amelioration which Christianity is producing; but he would attempt no sudden or majestic reforms. Cake and ale would still be popular, and ginger be hot in the mouth, let him preach ever so--let him be never so solemn a hermit; but a bright 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 p.r.o.ne 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 f.a.n.n.y 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 pa.s.s that the price of the splendid animal was mentioned between them, I need not describe with exactness. But it did come to pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 little, eyeing him from the side, and taking in a general idea of the form and make of the whole. "He seems to stand over a little, I think,"

said the parson.

"It's the lie of the ground. Move him about, Bob. There now, let him stand there."

"He's not perfect," said Mark. "I don't quite like his heels; but no doubt he's a nicish cut of a horse."

"I rather think he is. If he were perfect, as you say, he would not be going into your stables for a hundred and thirty. Do you ever remember to have seen a perfect horse?"

"Your mare Mrs. Gamp was as nearly perfect as possible."

"Even Mrs. Gamp had her faults. In the first place she was a bad feeder. But one certainly doesn't often come across anything much better than Mrs. Gamp." And thus the matter was talked over between them with much stable conversation, all of which tended to make Sowerby more and more oblivious of his friend's sacred profession, and perhaps to make the vicar himself too frequently oblivious of it also. But no: he was not oblivious of it. He was even mindful of it; but mindful of it in such a manner that his thoughts on the subject were nowadays always painful.

There is a parish called Hogglestock lying away quite in the northern extremity of the eastern division of the county--lying also on the borders of the western division. I almost fear that it will become necessary, before this history be completed, to provide a map of Ba.r.s.etshire for the due explanation of all these localities. Framley is also in the northern portion of the county, but just to the south of the grand trunk line of railway from which the branch to Barchester strikes off at a point some thirty miles nearer to London.

The station for Framley Court is Silverbridge, which is, however, in the western division of the county. Hogglestock is to the north of the railway, the line of which, however, runs through a portion of the parish, and it adjoins Framley, though the churches are as much as seven miles apart. Ba.r.s.etshire, taken altogether, is a pleasant green tree-becrowded county, with large bosky hedges, pretty damp deep lanes, and roads with broad gra.s.s margins running along them.

Such is the general nature of the county; but just up in its northern extremity this nature alters. There it is bleak and ugly, with low artificial hedges and without wood; not uncultivated, as it is all portioned out into new-looking large fields, bearing turnips and wheat and mangel, all in due course of agricultural rotation; but it has none of the special beauties of English cultivation. There is not a gentleman's house in the parish of Hogglestock besides that of the clergyman; and this, though it is certainly the house of a gentleman, can hardly be said to be fit to be so. It is ugly, and straight, and small. There is a garden attached to the house, half in front of it and half behind; but this garden, like the rest of the parish, is by no means ornamental, though sufficiently useful. It produces cabbages, but no trees: potatoes of, I believe, an excellent description, but hardly any flowers, and nothing worthy of the name of a shrub. Indeed the whole parish of Hogglestock should have been in the adjoining county, which is by no means so attractive as Ba.r.s.etshire;--a fact well known to those few of my readers who are well acquainted with their own country.