Framley Parsonage Part 41

"But will he be angry?"

"I will manage it. Dear Mrs. Robarts, you must not be surprised at him. His lot is sometimes very hard to bear: such things are so much worse for a man than for a woman."

f.a.n.n.y was not quite prepared to admit this in her own heart, but she made no reply on that head. "I am sure I hope we may be able to be of use to you," she said, "if you will only look upon me as an old friend, and write to me if you want me. I hesitate to come frequently for fear that I should offend him."

And then, by degrees, there was confidence between them, and the poverty-stricken helpmate of the perpetual curate was able to speak of the weight of her burden to the well-to-do young wife of the Barchester prebendary. "It was hard," the former said, "to feel herself so different from the wives of other clergymen around her--to know that they lived softly, while she, with all the work of her hands, and unceasing struggle of her energies, could hardly manage to place wholesome food before her husband and children. It was a terrible thing--a grievous thing to think of, that all the work of her mind should be given up to such subjects as these. But, nevertheless, she could bear it," she said, "as long as he would carry himself like a man, and face his lot boldly before the world."

And then she told how he had been better there at Hogglestock than in their former residence down in Cornwall, and in warm language she expressed her thanks to the friend who had done so much for them.

"Mrs. Arabin told me that she was so anxious you should go to them,"

said Mrs. Robarts.

"Ah, yes; but that I fear is impossible. The children, you know, Mrs.

Robarts."

"I would take care of two of them for you."

"Oh, no; I could not punish you for your goodness in that way. But he would not go. He could go and leave me at home. Sometimes I have thought that it might be so, and I have done all in my power to persuade him. I have told him that if he could mix once more with the world, with the clerical world, you know, that he would be better fitted for the performance of his own duties. But he answers me angrily, that it is impossible--that his coat is not fit for the dean's table," and Mrs. Crawley almost blushed as she spoke of such a reason.

"What! with an old friend like Dr. Arabin? Surely that must be nonsense."

"I know that it is. The dean would be glad to see him with any coat.

But the fact is that he cannot bear to enter the house of a rich man unless his duty calls him there."

"But surely that is a mistake?"

"It is a mistake. But what can I do? I fear that he regards the rich as his enemies. He is pining for the solace of some friend to whom he could talk--for some equal, with a mind educated like his own, to whose thoughts he could listen, and to whom he could speak his own thoughts. But such a friend must be equal, not only in mind, but in purse; and where can he ever find such a man as that?"

"But you may get better preferment."

"Ah, no; and if he did, we are hardly fit for it now. If I could think that I could educate my children; if I could only do something for my poor Grace--"

In answer to this Mrs. Robarts said a word or two, but not much.

She resolved, however, that if she could get her husband's leave, something should be done for Grace. Would it not be a good work? and was it not inc.u.mbent on her to make some kindly use of all the goods with which Providence had blessed herself?

And then they went back to the sitting-room, each again with a young child in her arms, Mrs. Crawley having stowed away in the kitchen the chicken broth and the leg of pork and the supply of eggs. Lucy had been engaged the while with the children, and when the two married ladies entered, they found that a shop had been opened at which all manner of luxuries were being readily sold and purchased at marvellously easy prices; the guava jelly was there, and the oranges, and the sugar-plums, red and yellow and striped; and, moreover, the gingerbread had been taken down in the audacity of their commercial speculations, and the nuts were spread out upon a board, behind which Lucy stood as shop-girl, disposing of them for kisses.

"Mamma, mamma," said Bobby, running up to his mother, "you must buy something of her," and he pointed with his fingers at the shop-girl.

"You must give her two kisses for that heap of barley-sugar." Looking at Bobby's mouth at the time, one would have said that his kisses might be dispensed with.

When they were again in the pony-carriage, behind the impatient Puck, and were well away from the door, f.a.n.n.y was the first to speak.

"How very different those two are," she said; "different in their minds and in their spirit!"

"But how much higher toned is her mind than his! How weak he is in many things, and how strong she is in everything! How false is his pride, and how false his shame!"

"But we must remember what he has to bear. It is not every one that can endure such a life as his without false pride and false shame."

"But she has neither," said Lucy.

"Because you have one hero in a family, does that give you a right to expect another?" said Mrs. Robarts. "Of all my own acquaintance, Mrs.

Crawley, I think, comes nearest to heroism."

And then they pa.s.sed by the Hogglestock school, and Mr. Crawley, when he heard the noise of the wheels, came out.

"You have been very kind," said he, "to remain so long with my poor wife."

"We had a great many things to talk about, after you went."

"It is very kind of you, for she does not often see a friend, now-a-days. Will you have the goodness to tell Mr. Robarts that I shall be here at the school, at eleven o'clock to-morrow?"

And then he bowed, taking off his hat to them, and they drove on.

"If he really does care about her comfort, I shall not think so badly of him," said Lucy.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE GIANTS.

And now about the end of April news arrived almost simultaneously in all quarters of the habitable globe that was terrible in its import to one of the chief persons of our history;--some may think to the chief person in it. All high parliamentary people will doubtless so think, and the wives and daughters of such. The t.i.tans warring against the G.o.ds had been for awhile successful.

Typhoeus and Mimas, Porphyrion and Rhoecus, the giant brood of old, steeped in ignorance and wedded to corruption, had scaled the heights of Olympus, a.s.sisted by that audacious flinger of deadly ponderous missiles, who stands ever ready armed with his terrific sling--Supplehouse, the Enceladus of the press. And in this universal cataclasm of the starry councils, what could a poor Diana do, Diana of the Petty Bag, but abandon her pride of place to some rude Orion?

In other words, the ministry had been compelled to resign, and with them Mr. Harold Smith.

"And so poor Harold is out, before he has well tasted the sweets of office," said Sowerby, writing to his friend the parson; "and as far as I know, the only piece of Church patronage which has fallen in the way of the ministry since he joined it, has made its way down to Framley--to my great joy and contentment." But it hardly tended to Mark's joy and contentment on the same subject that he should be so often reminded of the benefit conferred upon him.

Terrible was this break-down of the ministry, and especially to Harold Smith, who to the last had had confidence in that theory of new blood. He could hardly believe that a large majority of the House should vote against a government which he had only just joined. "If we are to go on in this way," he said to his young friend Green Walker, "the Queen's government cannot be carried on." That alleged difficulty as to carrying on the Queen's government has been frequently mooted in late years since a certain great man first introduced the idea. Nevertheless, the Queen's government is carried on, and the propensity and apt.i.tude of men for this work seems to be not at all on the decrease. If we have but few young statesmen, it is because the old stagers are so fond of the rattle of their harness.

"I really do not see how the Queen's government is to be carried on,"

said Harold Smith to Green Walker, standing in a corner of one of the lobbies of the House of Commons on the first of those days of awful interest, in which the Queen was sending for one crack statesman after another; and some anxious men were beginning to doubt whether or no we should, in truth, be able to obtain the blessing of another cabinet. The G.o.ds had all vanished from their places. Would the giants be good enough to do anything for us or no? There were men who seemed to think that the giants would refuse to do anything for us.

"The House will now be adjourned over till Monday, and I would not be in her Majesty's shoes for something," said Mr. Harold Smith.

"By Jove! no," said Green Walker, who in these days was a stanch Harold Smithian, having felt a pride in joining himself on as a substantial support to a cabinet minister. Had he contented himself with being merely a Brockite, he would have counted as n.o.body. "By Jove! no," and Green Walker opened his eyes and shook his head, as he thought of the perilous condition in which her Majesty must be placed. "I happen to know that Lord ---- won't join them unless he has the Foreign Office," and he mentioned some hundred-handed Gyas supposed to be of the utmost importance to the counsels of the t.i.tans.

"And that, of course, is impossible. I don't see what on earth they are to do. There's Sidonia; they do say that he's making some difficulty now." Now Sidonia was another giant, supposed to be very powerful.

"We all know that the Queen won't see him," said Green Walker, who, being a member of Parliament for the Crewe Junction, and nephew to Lady Hartletop, of course had perfectly correct means of ascertaining what the Queen would do, and what she would not.

"The fact is," said Harold Smith, recurring again to his own situation as an ejected G.o.d, "that the House does not in the least understand what it is about;--doesn't know what it wants. The question I should like to ask them is this: do they intend that the Queen shall have a government, or do they not? Are they prepared to support such men as Sidonia and Lord De Terrier? If so, I am their obedient humble servant; but I shall be very much surprised, that's all." Lord De Terrier was at this time recognized by all men as the leader of the giants.

"And so shall I,--deucedly surprised. They can't do it, you know.

There are the Manchester men. I ought to know something about them down in my country; and I say they can't support Lord De Terrier. It wouldn't be natural."

"Natural! Human nature has come to an end, I think," said Harold Smith, who could hardly understand that the world should conspire to throw over a government which he had joined, and that, too, before the world had waited to see how much he would do for it; "the fact is this, Walker, we have no longer among us any strong feeling of party."

"No, not a d----," said Green Walker, who was very energetic in his present political aspirations.