第8章

The idea of having Grace Crawley as a daughter at the Plumstead Rectory was too much for the archdeacon, and he resented it by additional vehemence to the tone of his voice, and a nearer personal approach to the wife of his bosom. All unaccoutred as he was, he stood in the doorway between the two rooms, and thence fulminated at his wife his assurances that he would never allow himself to be immersed in such a depth of humility as that she had suggested. 'I can tell you this, then, that if ever she comes here, I shall take care to be away. I will never receive her here. You can do as you please.'

'That is just what I cannot do. If I could do as I pleased, I would put a stop to it at once.'

'It seems to me that you want to encourage him. A child about sixteen years of age!'

'I am told she is nineteen.'

'What does it matter if she's fifty-nine? Think of what her bringing up has been. Think what it would be to have all the Crawleys in our house for ever, and all their debts, and all their disgrace!'

'I do not know that they have ever been disgraced.'

'You'll see. The whole county has heard of the affair of this twenty pounds. Look at that dear girl upstairs, who has been such a comfort to us. Do you think it would be fit that she and her husband should meet such a one as Grace Crawley at our table?'

'I don't think it would do them a bit of harm,' said Mrs Grantly. 'But there would be no chance of that, seeing that Griselda's husband never comes to us.'

'He was here the year before last.'

'And I never was so tired of a man in my life.'

'Then you prefer the Crawleys, I suppose. This is what you get from Eleanor's teaching.' Eleanor was the dean's wife, and Mrs Grantly's younger sister. 'It has always been a sorrow to me that I ever brought Arabin into the diocese.'

'I never asked you to bring him, archdeacon. But nobody was so glad as you when he proposed to Eleanor.'

'Well, the long and the short of it is this, I shall tell Henry tonight that if he makes a fool of himself with this girl, he must not look to me any longer for an income. He has about six thousand a year of his own, and if he chooses to throw himself away, he had better go and live in the south of France, or in Canada, or where he pleases. He shan't come here.'

'I hope he won't marry the girl, with all my heart,' said Mrs Grantly.

'He had better not. By heavens, he had better not!'

'But if he does, you'll be the first to forgive him.'

On hearing this the archdeacon slammed the door, and retired to his own washing apparatus. At the present moment he was very angry with his wife, but then he was so accustomed to such anger, and was so well aware that it in truth meant nothing, that it did not make him unhappy. The archdeacon and Mrs Grantly had now been man and wife for more than quarter of a century and had never in truth quarrelled. He had the most profound respect for her judgment, and the most implicit reliance on her conduct. She had never yet offended him, or caused him to repent the hour in which he had made her Mrs Grantly. But she had come to understand that she might use a woman's privilege with her tongue; and she used it--not altogether to his comfort. On the present occasion he was the more annoyed because he felt that she might be right. 'It would be a positive disgrace, and I never would see him again,' he said to himself. And yet as he said it, he knew that he would not have the strength of character to carry him through a prolonged quarrel with his son. 'I never would see her--never, never!' he said to himself. 'And than such an opening as he might have in his sister's house!'