Framley Parsonage Anthony Trollope (best english novels for beginners .TXT) 📖

and she was very proud of hers. It had been furnished when money was plenty with them, immediately after their marriage, and everything in it was pretty, good, and dear to her. O ladies, who have drawing-rooms in which the things are pretty, good, and dear to you, think of what it would be to have two bailiffs rummaging among them with pen and inkhorn, making a catalogue preparatory to a sheriff’s auction; and all without fault or extravagance of your own! There were things there that had been given to her by Lady Lufton, by Lady Meredith, and other friends, and the idea did occur to her that it might be possible to save them from contamination; but she would not say a word, lest by so saying she might add to Mark’s misery.

“And then the dining-room,” said Jemima cook, in a tone almost of elation.

“Yes; if they please.”

“And then master’s book-room here; or perhaps the bedrooms, if you and master be still here.”

“Any way they please, cook; it does not much signify,” said Mrs. Robarts. But for some days after that Jemima was by no means a favourite with her.

The cook was hardly out of the room before a quick footstep was heard on the gravel before the window, and the hall door was immediately opened.

“Where is your master?” said the well-known voice of Lord Lufton; and then in half a minute he also was in the book-room.

“Mark, my dear fellow, what’s all this?” said he, in a cheery tone and with a pleasant face. “Did not you know that I was here? I came down yesterday; landed from Hamburg only yesterday morning. How do you do, Mrs. Robarts? This is a terrible bore, isn’t it?”

Robarts, at the first moment, hardly knew how to speak to his old friend. He was struck dumb by the disgrace of his position; the more so as his misfortune was one which it was partly in the power of Lord Lufton to remedy. He had never yet borrowed money since he had filled a man’s position, but he had had words about money with the young peer, in which he knew that his friend had wronged him; and for this double reason he was now speechless.

“Mr. Sowerby has betrayed him,” said Mrs. Robarts, wiping the tears from her eyes. Hitherto she had said no word against Sowerby, but now it was necessary to defend her husband.

“No doubt about it. I believe he has always betrayed everyone who has ever trusted him. I told you what he was, some time since; did I not? But, Mark, why on earth have you let it go so far as this? Would not Forrest help you?”

“Mr. Forrest wanted him to sign more bills, and he would not do that,” said Mrs. Robarts, sobbing.

“Bills are like dram-drinking,” said the discreet young lord: “when one once begins, it is very hard to leave off. Is it true that the men are here now, Mark?”

“Yes, they are in the next room.”

“What, in the drawing-room?”

“They are making out a list of the things,” said Mrs. Robarts.

“We must stop that at any rate,” said his lordship, walking off towards the scene of the operations; and as he left the room Mrs. Robarts followed him, leaving her husband by himself.

“Why did you not send down to my mother?” said he, speaking hardly above a whisper, as they stood together in the hall.

“He would not let me.”

“But why not go yourself? or why not have written to me⁠—considering how intimate we are?”

Mrs. Robarts could not explain to him that the peculiar intimacy between him and Lucy must have hindered her from doing so, even if otherwise it might have been possible; but she felt such was the case.

“Well, my men, this is bad work you’re doing here,” said he, walking into the drawing-room. Whereupon the cook curtseyed low, and the bailiffs, knowing his lordship, stopped from their business and put their hands to their foreheads. “You must stop this, if you please⁠—at once. Come, let’s go out into the kitchen, or some place outside. I don’t like to see you here with your big boots and the pen and ink among the furniture.”

“We ain’t a-done no harm, my lord, so please your lordship,” said Jemima cook.

“And we is only a-doing our bounden dooties,” said one of the bailiffs.

“As we is sworn to do, so please your lordship,” said the other.

“And is wery sorry to be unconwenient, my lord, to any gen’leman or lady as is a gen’leman or lady. But accidents will happen, and then what can the likes of us do?” said the first.

“Because we is sworn, my lord,” said the second. But, nevertheless, in spite of their oaths, and in spite also of the stern necessity which they pleaded, they ceased their operations at the instance of the peer. For the name of a lord is still great in England.

“And now leave this, and let Mrs. Robarts go into her drawing-room.”

“And, please your lordship, what is we to do? Who is we to look to?”

In satisfying them absolutely on this point Lord Lufton had to use more than his influence as a peer. It was necessary that he should have pen and paper. But with pen and paper he did satisfy them;⁠—satisfy them so far that they agreed to return to Stubbs’ room, the former hospital, due stipulation having been made for the meals and beer, and there await the order to evacuate the premises which would no doubt, under his lordship’s influence, reach them on the following day. The meaning of all which was that Lord Lufton had undertaken to bear upon his own shoulder the whole debt due by Mr. Robarts.

And then he returned to the book-room where Mark was still standing almost on the spot in which he had placed himself immediately after breakfast. Mrs. Robarts did not return, but went up among the children to counter-order such directions as she had given for the preparation of the nursery for the Philistines. “Mark,” he said, “do not trouble yourself about