Produced by Annie R. McGuire. This book was produced from
scanned images of public domain material from the Google
Print archive.
THE GRAFTONS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE HOUSE OF MERRILEES
EXTON MANOR
THE ELDEST SON
THE SQUIRE'S DAUGHTER
THE HONOUR OF THE CLINTONS
THE GREATEST OF THESE
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH
WATERMEADS
UPSIDONIA
ABINGTON ABBEY
THE GRAFTONS
THE GRAFTONS
_A NOVEL_
BY
ARCHIBALD MARSHALL
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1918
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.
TO
WILLIAM HENRY BATES
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I SURLEY RECTORY 1
II A QUESTION OF PATRONAGE 13
III IN THE GARDEN 27
IV A PRESENTATION 45
V THE SYSTEM 63
VI THE VICAR'S DECISION 80
VII A MORNING RIDE 93
VIII THE BISHOP FINDS A MAN 107
IX THE NEW VICAR 121
X YOUNG GEORGE TAKES ADVICE 136
XI THE SECOND LOVE 151
XII CAROLINE AND BEATRIX 164
XIII PARIS 178
XIV A WEDDING 192
XV AN ACCIDENT 207
XVI MAURICE 218
XVII HOW THEY TOOK IT 235
XVIII MORE OPINIONS 246
XIX AFTER THE WEDDING 261
XX CAROLINE'S HOME-COMING 277
XXI A VISIT 291
XXII THE FAMILY VIEW 307
XXIII AN ENGAGEMENT 318
XXIV BARBARA 327
INTRODUCTION
This novel, though it is complete in itself, deals with the same
characters as "Abington Abbey." Its publication gives me the opportunity
of replying to some criticisms of that novel, which would apply equally
to this one.
The criticisms to which I refer have to do, not with faults of
authorship, to which it would not be becoming to reply, but with matters
for which an apology, or at least an explanation, may be offered.
The first has been that in such times as these a novel dealing with
minor currents of life as they existed before the war is something of an
anachronism. Perhaps it is. In the fourth year of the war, life as it is
depicted in these two novels seems already far away. But what is a
novelist of manners to do, granted the assumption--admittedly
debateable--that he is to go on writing novels at all? He must either
write _about_ the war, in one or other of its far-reaching effects upon
life, or else he must leave it alone altogether. At least, those are the
only alternatives that I have felt to be open to me; and, after having
written one novel with the war as its deliberate climax, I have chosen
the latter. When the war is over, it will be possible to take its
adjustments into account as affecting everyday life, but while it is
going on I do not think it is possible. It looms too big. Minor affairs
would have their values in contrast with it, and truth would suffer.
If further justification were necessary, I think I could find it in the
relief it brings from the heavy weight of the war to turn one's mind to
those happy days in which life presented problems of less appalling
significance than now, and to gain the comforting assurance that those
days will come again. This relief I know to be felt by readers as well
as by writers of fiction.
The second criticism upon which I should like to have my say is that the
life I have depicted in those of my novels whose scenes are laid in the
English country has been for some time a thing of the past, and after
the war may be expected to disappear altogether. My American critics,
kind as most of them are, often seem to accuse me of presenting an
idyllic picture of a state of things which is based upon rotten
foundations, and either of leaving out of account or of deliberately
shutting my eyes to the rottenness.
I should not accept either charge. If it were worth anybody's while to
read through those novels of mine in which the economic conditions of
English landholding are touched upon, I think he would find in the first
place that I have nowhere defended whatever abuses may still attach to
the system, but have frequently satirised them; and in the second place
that economic questions play but a small part in my fictions.
I think that if I had left such questions alone altogether there would
be no criticism to meet. I could point to a dozen novelists who write
about the same sort of people, living in the same surroundings, as I do,
against whom it would not be brought, because they take the conditions
for granted, and their readers take them for granted. If I touch upon
such questions here and there it is because they interest me as factors
in the lives of my characters; but they are not the factors which I have
chosen as the main thesis of my novels, except in one instance. In "The
Old Order Changeth" I did seek to reflect the renewal that is always
going on in English landowning, and always has gone on since the
beginning,--where the new men come in to dispossess the old; and the
social disturbance that takes place at each such upheaval, before the
new become absorbed in their turn into the old.
That is how I see it. Whatever changes may have come and may be coming
in the economic conditions of landholding, and of agricultural labour,
the life of the country house, large or small, goes on much the same as
ever, and will go on. Where it can no longer be supported by the land,
it is supported by money made elsewhere. English people like the flavour
of country life, and it is very seldom that a man who has made his
fortune in business does not eventually buy or rent a country house.
Many of the big estates in the United Kingdom have been acquired of late
years by rich Americans, who buy them, I suppose, not as an investment
in property, but because they also are attracted by the flavour of
English country life. Country houses, from the great house such as is
represented here by Abington Abbey down to the little house such as
Stone Cottage, are scattered all over England, and I should say that in
nine cases out of ten, taking large and small together, the people who
inhabit them have no concern with the land, in the way of drawing any
part of their income from it, or of dealing with it as a productive
agency. They have not come "back to the land" in any essential sense;
they have only come back to the country. I believe that no economic
changes that may affect those who live by the land, whether as employers
or labourers, will much affect the social life of English country
houses.
As far as my novels are concerned, it is simply a question of placing
the sort of people whom I know best in the surroundings of which I like
to write. Where my characters are in direct contact with the business of
the land, or are affected by it, I do not shirk reference to it, as far
as it seems to bear upon the main purpose of my story. But I have not
set out to present an all-round picture of the conditions of country
life in any of the fictional districts I have chosen as the scene of my
novels. The great majority of the inhabitants of any countryside are the
people who work on the land and live by it, and these I have left out
almost entirely; not because I do not recognise their actual importance,
but because in the social scene of my stories they would not appear, or
only in a very minor degree. It may be an unsatisfactory state of things
which divides people off in that way, into social strata, but it
undoubtedly exists, and it is not the business of a novelist to justify
the conditions he finds, but to reflect them; unless, of course, he sets
out to make a discussion of those conditions the basis of his story.
As for my family of Graftons, who are real and dear to me, I have
pictured them in the sunny days of peace. But in my vision, at least,
the shadow of the war lies over them, as it does in retrospect over all
immediately pre-war fictional characters. Dick Mansergh and Maurice
Bradby would have been fighting since the beginning; Young George and
his friend Jimmy would have been caught up in it by this time. In the
slaughter of bright youth that is going on, it would hardly be expected
that not one out of the four would be killed or wounded. George Grafton
would be "doing something," with the men of his generation, and would
hardly be able to regard life now as going so easily for him as to make
of it a spiritual danger. The girls must have known sorrow and a much
changed outlook, unless they have been more fortunate than most.
Yes, these are stories of the past, as much as if they had been written
about people living forty or fifty years ago instead of four or five.
But the shadow will pass away, and life will emerge again into the
sunshine. I have looked forward, in writing them, as much as I have
looked back.
ARCHIBALD MARSHALL.
_March_, 1918.
CHAPTER I
SURLEY RECTORY
The old man lay dying at last. He had lingered on for months, now
getting a little better and giving hope that the end might be deferred
for a time, now sinking, so that it seemed as if it had come; but with
all the alterations in his state moving onwards slowly and surely
towards his rest. Now there was no longer any hope, even for a few days
more. His two daughters and his son sat by his bedside, waiting. There
was nothing to do but to wait, and to think.
It was towards the close of a sunny April day. The windows of the large
eastward-facing room were wide open to admit the fragrant air. The birds
were making a great to do in the Rectory garden, where the flowers of
early spring flaunted their bright colours, and the lawns answered them
with living verdure. Nearly every morning for five and forty years the
old man who was dying had arisen from the bed on which he lay to look
out on this scene. It might almost be said to have been what he had
lived for. At the age of thirty-four, still a young man, with a wife
still younger, and his two little girls, he had come to this assured
haven, with no thought of leaving it until he had lived his life out to
the full, where there was everything to make life what he wished it to
be.
There was the pleasant roomy house, so admirably adapted to the delights
of a quiet home life, the beautiful garden, the glebe and the
outbuildings and the two or three cottages which added what was almost a
little farm to what was almost a country mansion. And there was the
substantial income, which would provide for the pleasures and
hospitalities as well as the responsibilities of country life.
There was a little queer eighteenth century church, hardly more than a
meeting-house, but big enough to hold such proportion of the three
hundred or so inhabitants of the parish of Surley as would make a
practice of attending it. It was to serve them that the Reverend William
Cooper had been appointed to the living by the Bishop of the Diocese,
and the house and the garden and the glebe and the substantial income
were to be the reward of his service. None of the parishioners were very
poor; the income would not be greatly depleted by the calls of charity.
Nor would the time of their ministrant be too much occupied by them,
supposing him to have other uses to which to put it.
He had done his work and taken his reward. There had never been any
question in his mind that the one was not fitted to the other, nor any
sense of diffidence before others who were spending themselves in the
vineyard with material reward barely existent. It had been rather the
other way about. The Rector of Surley was almost a dignitary, by reason
of the reward, and carried himself so before his lesser brethren, but
not with arrogance, for he was an amiable likeable man, and only living
up to his position. These things were so; it was not even necessary to
excuse them, at least in those days.
An amiable likeable man! He had gone about his parish for five and forty
years, until there were only two or three in it who were older than he.
Most of them now living he had christened into the Church, many he had
buried, some he had married, a few he had helped, as one helps friends,
not as one gives doles to the poor. He had touched the lives of all of
them, and they had been satisfied with him. It was not for them to
complain of the established order. These things came from above. If the
Rector of Surley lived in a big house, with a thousand a year, the
Squire lived in a bigger one, with ten thousand a year. The one was no
more explicable than the other, and no more or less to be criticised.
What might come from either to ameliorate the lot of the less fortunate
would depend upon what sort of Squire or Rector there might be.
Lying in his bed, as he had lain for months past, or when his strength
had rallied sitting wrapped up in a big chair by the window, the old man
must sometimes have occupied himself in casting up his accounts
preparatory to the great Audit to which he would soon have to submit
them.
His life had been kindly and useful. He had never turned a deaf ear to
the call of sympathy, nor shirked any of his easy duties, as easy duties
are sometimes apt to be shirked when no punishment is to be expected
from the shirking except from the disapproval of conscience. Probably he
had given more thought to the episodes of his long life as they affected
himself and his family than to the affairs of his ministry.
His wife had managed him until she had died, and then his daughters had
managed him. In neither case had the managing been done in such a way as
to irritate, or to lessen his dignity before the world. Perhaps he had
hardly known that he had been managed, for he had had his own way, and
had not been aware that it was often the way into which he had been
guided. If both wife and daughters had sometimes raised bristles on the
backs of neighbours, it had been his part to smooth them down, and he
had gained liking by the contrast between himself and them. When his
wife had died he would greatly have missed her sure capable hand in the
affairs of life if his daughters had not then been of an age to fill her
place. He was a man to be dependent upon women, and to draw the best
that was in them towards himself.
The guidance exercised by women, however, seldom earns love, even when
it escapes domination, and the guidance exercised by the old Rector's
daughters did not always escape it, though they made his welfare the
chief object in their lives. It was his son whom he loved, and thought
most about, during the long hours in which he lay drifting towards the
end.
He had come to him late in life. He was now not yet twenty-four. If he
had been only a year older the great anxiety which had shadowed the old
man's last months would have been lightened.
The living of Surley was in the gift of the Bishop, but it had been held
by a Cooper for three generations, covering a period of nearly eighty
years. If only it could be handed on to Denis!
He had been ordained in the previous Advent, with a title to his
father's curacy. He had done the work of the parish, with the help, or
oversight, of his sisters, and taken such of the services as is
permitted to a Deacon. The people liked him, and if these matters were
arranged by the popular voice he would certainly have been the next
Rector of Surley. But he would not be eligible for Priest's Orders for
another seven months. It was almost too much to hope that the Bishop
would present a Deacon of only a few months' standing to one of the
richest livings in his gift.
But the old man could not give up hope. These things had been done
before; he had a dozen cases at his fingers' ends. But unfortunately
they were all cases dating back many years, to a time when the fitting
of rewards to work done, or to be done, in the Church, had not seemed of
such importance as now. Fifty years ago nobody would have made any fuss
about such an appointment; now-a-days there would certainly be a fuss.
But he would not admit that there ought to be; he only tacitly accepted
the fact that it was impossible for him to take any steps to bring about
what he so ardently desired.
The Bishop had been to see him during his illness. Perhaps he might have
put in a word then; he had thought beforehand that he might. But he had
not done so. To that extent he accepted the changed conditions. But none
the less he deplored them. He felt it to be hard, for one thing, that he
would have to die without knowing what should happen after him. His own
uncle, whom he had succeeded in the living, had been made contented by a
promise on his deathbed. He himself had known that he would be presented
to the living a month or more before it had become vacant.
Ah! things were ordered better in those days. There was more human
kindliness, and not so many Radicals, to interfere with what had been
established for so long and had worked so well.
The two women and the young man sat by the bedside, speaking sometimes
in low voices to one another, otherwise busy with their thoughts. Now
and then one of them would rise and put a hand to pillow or sheet, but
more to give herself the comfort of performing some little service for
him who would soon be beyond her care than because he still needed it.
For he lay quite still, with eyes closed, breathing faintly as if in
sleep. They would not have known that the end was very near if the
doctor had not told them that the quiet breathing might cease at any
time, and left them to wait for the end.
There was not much emotion in the minds of either of them. The passing
had been too long and too gradual. Their brains were weary, if their
active bodies were not. They had nursed him turn and turn about, with
help from one or another of the faithful women about the house, but the
nursing had made no great demands upon them. Neither would have admitted
to the other that there was a slight sense of relief in the end having
come at last. Gladly they would have kept him with them and spent
themselves in his service, even if he should never speak to them or open
his eyes upon them again. But they had grown used to the idea of losing
him all the same. Life was strong in them, and there would be many
things to do when he had gone.
The end came as the dusk began to gather in the corners of the room,
with a fluttering breath that was like a faint sigh, and a silence
hardly more complete than the silence that had been before. The old
Rector of Surley was dead, and the way was open for a new Rector to be
appointed.
The two sensible self-controlled women, who had for so long given their
service with a cheerful capability that had seemed almost hard in its
efficiency, faced a reaction that neither of them had been prepared for.
They sobbed together, and confessed, each of them, that they had not so
ardently wished that the dear old man should survive for a few hours or
a few days longer than they now wished he had. They would never have him
again alive. The thought was hardly to be borne. Their lives would be
desolate.
This mood lasted all the evening, and was genuine enough in its regret
for a time now past and not valued enough while it had lasted. Denis was
accused, though not to his face, of want of heart, because he said very
little, and had shed no tears whatever. By the end of the evening the
fact that they had, and could still do so, had come to be a consolation.
By the next morning it had become difficult to shed tears at will,
though they still came on occasions, but at rarer intervals. When all
the business in connection with the funeral and the notifying of friends
and relations had to be met they were ready to meet it, and found
satisfaction in the occupations with which every hour of the days that
followed were filled.
The letters and the calls of sympathy were most gratifying, as showing
the high esteem in which the late Rector, and his family, were held. One
of the first to call was Mrs. Carruthers, from Surley Park. There had
been a coolness, but death overrode everything.
The sisters were writing letters at the dining-room table.
"We had better go in together," said Rhoda. "It will be less awkward."
"If she doesn't say anything I don't see why we should," said Ethel.
"Let bygones be bygones, I say, at a time like this."
"I wonder if the Bishop has said anything to her," said Rhoda, as they
went across the hall together. The Bishop of the Diocese was Mrs.
Carruthers's uncle.
Mrs. Carruthers was very young and very pretty; too young, the Misses
Cooper were accustomed to say, and perhaps too pretty, though there
might be two opinions about that, to be mistress of a property like
Surley, which had been left to her unconditionally by her husband. The
old Rector had been fond of her before the dispute had parted the Park
and the Rectory, and even afterwards, for its details had been kept from
him, and he had not realised that the break had been so complete as it
actually had been.
Nothing was said about the cause of dispute, which had been concerned
with the 'goings on' of a dairy-maid at Surley Park. There had been an
episode with a young man, and the Misses Cooper, very stern upon keeping
the morals of the parish up to concert pitch, had fastened themselves
upon it firmly. But it was not the dairy-maid who had been concerned in
the episode, and they and Mrs. Carruthers had differed as to the
relative importance of their unfortunate mistake and of the fact that
there had undoubtedly been something to complain of somewhere.
There were tears in Ella Carruthers's eyes as she came forward to meet
the two sisters. "Oh, I am so sorry," she said. "The dear old man! Of
course one knew the end must be coming, but it doesn't make it less hard
to bear."
Rhoda and Ethel had tears too, to meet this. They had begun almost to
enjoy the bustle, but were glad to be able to show that the sadder
softer feelings still had sway with them. They were also relieved at the
final disappearance of the coolness between themselves and their
neighbour. There had been a formal mending of the breach some months
before, but they had not been in her house since, nor she in theirs.
Soon they were talking to her about their father as if they had always
been friends, and she was giving them genuine consolation by the
affection she showed herself to have entertained towards him. Their
feelings grew warmer, especially when she said, after they had talked
about the old Rector for some time: "I do hope Denis will succeed him. I
am sure that is what he would most have liked."
This, from the Bishop's niece, might or might not be significant. The
Bishop was known to be very fond of her, and had stayed with her once at
Surley Park, during the year in which he had occupied his See. It was
with a sense of excitement that they set themselves to find out exactly
how significant it might be.
"It was the one thing that he really desired," said Rhoda. "I think he
had almost made up his mind to speak a word to the Bishop about it, when
he came over to see him. But I suppose he felt he couldn't. I know he
didn't."
"I fancy," said Ethel, "that he thought he could safely leave it in the
Bishop's hands. After all, it would be far the best thing for the
parish. That is undoubted."
"And the Bishop might be expected to see that," said Rhoda, backing her
up. "He is very wise and far-sighted. And he couldn't help liking and
admiring our dear father."
The statement was almost a question. Ella Carruthers, faintly amused,
treated it as such.
"Oh, no," she said. "He talked to me about him. He felt a great sympathy
with him. I think he realised what his wishes were likely to be about
Denis, though of course he didn't say anything about it to me."
The sisters did not ask themselves how, in that case, she could have
divined the thoughts of her august relative. Both of them brightened
visibly. "I don't like to hope too much," said Rhoda who, as the elder,
always spoke first. "But it _would_ be such a good thing for the
parish."
"Everybody loves Denis," said Ethel. "There is nobody, I don't care who
he is, who could influence them more. And we should be here to help him,
as we always helped our dear father. They know our ways. Of course, one
mustn't put it on personal grounds, but it _would_ seem a pity for all
our work here to be lost."
"We should work wherever we went," said Rhoda. "It is not ourselves we
are thinking of. Neither of us would care to settle down to a selfish
life without trying to influence our fellow-creatures for good. But I do
feel that if we were not permitted to stay on and work here, a great
deal that we have done during the last twenty years and more might be
lost. People so soon relapse."
Ella Carruthers could hardly keep the smile from her lips. The idea of
the parish relapsing into heathendom on the departure of the Misses
Cooper amused her, though, in her softer mood towards them, she only
found it rather pathetic that they should disclaim personal interest in
the decision that was soon to be made. She knew little about the
conditions of Church patronage, and still less as to what her uncle's
ideas on the subject were. But she thought she might 'put in a word'
when he came to the funeral, as he had, most gratifyingly, announced his
intention of doing; she had reason to believe, generally, that her word
had weight with him. She left them with heightened hopes, which, if
hardly justified by any influence in her power to exercise, at least put
the seal upon the reconciliation between her and them.
"She really is kind at heart," said Rhoda, as they went back into the
dining-room, after saying good-bye to her. "I shan't be sorry to be
friends with her again."
"Nobody can say we have kow-towed," said Ethel. "It was the principle we
stood up for, and although we frankly admitted the mistake we made we
have never given way an inch upon that."