The Graftons: A Novel

by Archibald Marshall

Mrs. Mercer wrote her answer and sent it out. When she had done so she sat with a thoughtful look upon her face for some time, which gradually changed to one of decision. Then she went in to her husband's study again, and shut the door after her as if she meant to stay there. This was unusual. She was not made to feel herself welcome in that room in the morning hours.

She was not to be made welcome now. The Vicar had left his writing-table and was walking up and down the room, with a look on his face that was not pleasant to see. It didn't grow any more pleasant as he saw her shut the door behind her with that air which meant that she had something serious to say to him. "My dear, you're just interrupting me in a train of thought," he said in an annoyed voice. "If you want to talk about anything do please wait until lunch time, or at least until the post comes. I shall have a few minutes to spare then."

For answer she sat herself down in a high-backed chair which stood by the empty fireplace. "Albert," she said, "I must speak to you. Things are wrong with us all round, and I am kept out of it all. If I am to be a true wife to you, and stand by your side in all the difficulties and troubles which come to us with the people round, I ought to know what is going on, and not be kept in the dark, as you always keep me."

Tears stood in the little lady's eyes. She had been such a good loyal wife to him, putting all her money at his disposal, and allowing him to treat it as if it were his own, and even as if she ought to be thankful to him for the comfortable home that he could not have given her himself. She had never felt any disturbance of mind on that score, and did not feel any now. They were one, and hers was his. But for the trust and obedience she had given him, never questioning his wisdom, nor failing to take his side in the repeated disputes and estrangements that had come about between them and their neighbours, he did owe her return. The time had come when she could no longer go on putting her whole trust in him, if he did not show some corresponding trust in her.

He stopped in his walking up and down, and stood before her, the arrogant frown and look on his face which she knew so well. But something now told her that she must not be awed into submission by it, as previously she had always been.

"Really, I don't understand you," he said. "You must leave me to conduct my own affairs in my own way, as you have always done. You can help me in the difficulties I have in my work—and they are heavy enough, God knows, with the sort of people I have to deal with here—by giving me peace and quietness in my own home. You can help me in no other way. The troubles I have fall upon my own shoulders, and I am acting rightly by you in trying to keep you unaffected by them."

"But they do not only fall upon you," she said quietly. "We make friends with people, and everything seems to be going happily; and then suddenly we are not friends any longer. Often I have had to find it out for myself, and sometimes you don't even tell me what has happened to cause the change. It was so with the Beckleys. I have never known why we left off being friends with them. And I have never known why there was such disturbance before Mollie Walter was married. It would have been natural, as she was almost like your own daughter, as you so often used to say, that she should have been married from here, and that Mrs. Walter should have stayed on at the Cottage until after she was married. But her house at Wilborough was hurried on for her so that Mollie could be married from there, and you were not even asked to take part in the ceremony."

He had resumed his pacing of the room during the progress of this speech, and his look was not so arrogant as it had been.

"I certainly don't propose to go into old questions of that sort," he said. "They are over and done with, and—"

"I don't wish to go into them either," she said. "I didn't press you to take me into your confidence then, and I won't do it now. But I think you ought to tell me what has been the trouble with the Graftons. You have criticised them from time to time, as you criticise everybody,"—he frowned at this sentence, which was unlike any she had ever used to him—"but we have been on friendly terms with them for over a year. At first we were on very friendly terms with them, and you used to go to the Abbey in just the same way as you used to run in and out of Stone Cottage. They have always been as nice as possible to me, but I couldn't help seeing that they were not as friendly towards you as they had been. When you left off going there in the intimate way you did at first, they still asked us to the house fairly often. But this invitation to dinner to-night is the first we have had from them for weeks."