We have already heard what was said on the subject
at the house of Archdeacon Grantly. As the days
passed by, and as other tidings came in, confirmatory
of those which had before reached him, the archdeacon
felt himself unable not to believe in the man’s
guilt. And the fear which he entertained as to
his son’s intended marriage with Grace Crawley,
tended to increase the strength of that belief.
Dr Grantly had been a very successful man in the world,
and on all ordinary occasions had been able to show
that bold front with which success endows a man.
But he still had his moments of weakness, and feared
greatly lest anything of misfortune should touch him
and mar the comely roundness of his prosperity.
He was very wealthy. The wife of his bosom had
been to him all that a wife should be. His reputation
in the clerical world stood very high. His two
sons had hitherto done well in the world, not only
as regarded their happiness, but as to marriage also,
and as to social standing. But how great would
be the fall if his son should at last marry the daughter
of a convicted thief! How would the Proudies rejoice
over him—the Proudies who had been crushed
to the ground by the success of the Hartletop alliance;
and how would the low-church curates, who swarmed
in Barsetshire, gather together and scream in delight
over his dismay! ‘But why should we say
that he is guilty?’ said Mrs Grantly.
’It hardly matters as far as we are concerned,
whether they find him guilty or not,’ said the
archdeacon; ’if Henry marries that girl my heart
will be broken.’
But perhaps to no one except the Crawleys themselves
had the matter caused so much terrible anxiety as
to the archdeacon’s son. He had told his
father that he had made an offer of marriage to Grace
Crawley, and he had told the truth. But there
are perhaps few men who make such offers in direct
terms without having already said and done that which
makes such offers simply necessary as the final closing
of an accepted bargain. It was so at any rate
between Major Grantly and Miss Crawley, and Major
Grantly acknowledged to himself that it was so.
He acknowledged also to himself that as regarded Grace
herself he had no wish to go back from his implied
intentions. Nothing that either his father or
mother might say would shake him in that. But
could it be his duty to bind himself to the family
of a convicted thief? Could it be right that
he should disgrace his father and his mother and his
sister and his one child by such a connexion?
He had a man’s heart, and the poverty of the
Crawleys caused him no solicitude. But he shrank
from the contamination of a prison.
CHAPTER VI
GRACE CRAWLEY
Copyrights
The Last Chronicle of Barset from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
