The Graftons: A Novel

by Archibald Marshall

By the time he had come to the end of this speech, he had forgotten the beginning. But she had not, and a proposal that otherwise would have found her enthusiastic, for she liked change, and the photograph of the house at Darthead had pleased her enormously, left her for the time unmoved. For his account of his interview with Grafton by no means tallied with certain facts in her own possession.

His representation of himself as disapproving of the Graftons to such an extent that he had finally been forced to deliver an ultimatum was one of them. He had overwhelmed them with censure when he had thought he had anything to complain about, but any approach on their part to intimacy had always been responded to by him, and it was only when it showed signs of dropping again that he had reverted to his attitude of disapproval. That disapproval had certainly increased during the last few months, in which the intimacy had been withheld, but he had shown himself almost delighted to receive Grafton's note asking him to come and see him, and had certainly not gone down to the Abbey with any idea of delivering an ultimatum. He had returned in what was almost a fury, and she had sat silent and depressed while he had covered the whole Grafton family with abuse, but had not told her anything of what the new trouble was about; nor had she asked him. And yet he had made no difficulty about her accepting Caroline's invitation to dinner that evening. No doubt he had persuaded himself of the truth of what he was saying, even as he said it, as his way was. But it carried no conviction to her.

"I think," she said quietly, "that it would be better for us to go away from here if we cannot keep friends with any one about us."

Something warned him not to take exception to this speech, or to expatiate further upon the offences he had received. "We can put all that behind us now," he said. "I have not been able to make headway against the forces arrayed against me here, and it will be better for us to start entirely afresh. There is no need to keep up any ill-feeling against even the Graftons. That is why we can dine with them to-night, on the old friendly terms. If I had not decided to leave the place we should have been obliged to refuse their invitation. I think you will find no unpleasantness there, if you do and say nothing to arouse it yourself. When they hear we are going, perhaps they may even be rather sorry. Whoever comes here after me—Grafton will have to find somebody himself, and I wish him luck of the job, for a living of this value—I don't think he will easily find a more devoted parish priest than I have been, or a Vicar's wife more ready to do her duty than you have been, my dear."

This tribute, thoroughly deserved but so rarely paid by him, did not bring instant grateful delighted response from her, as usually it would have done. Her eyes had been forced open, and could not be closed again by a careless word of compliment. She knew that even in his last speech he had not spoken the entire truth to her. His easy words, and his sudden changes, for which there was always a reason, but a reason that would not stand any test of sincerity, sounded different to her now. Would she ever be persuaded and convinced by them again?

He hardly knew how much of truth and how much of falsehood there was in his words himself. Although he had played lightly with the idea of going to Darthead—his friend had asked him if he knew of a curate, but it was not certain that he would accept the offer he would make of himself, or that he had not by this time found one—all his thoughts had been taken up with the fight he was going to have with Grafton. It was to have begun that very evening over Grafton's dinner table, with a statement of exactly where he stood that should be unmistakeable. Yesterday he had been unprepared, but now he had his speeches ready; he had been rehearsing some of them when his wife had come in to him. Grafton would knuckle under; men of the Vicar's temperament never allow for answers to the speeches they compose beforehand.

He had not projected his mind clearly into the future, as to what should happen after he had gained his victory. Grafton had said that if he stayed on at Abington he should no longer treat him as a friend. Perhaps he imagined him so overcome by his defeat that he would hardly dare to hold aloof from him. Perhaps a little whisper of reason in a corner of his mind prepared him for that complete revulsion of feeling which came to him under his wife's unexpected attack, and made him as eager to escape the contest, and to go, as a few minutes earlier he had been to engage in it and to stay on immoveable.

He had hardly had time to gauge the importance of her change of attitude towards him. He had not been able to beat down her awkward enquiries into his conduct as previously he had always nipped the mildest of protests from her, and kept his dominance over her. But he was far from suspecting that his reign of unreason was over. She had gone farther in questioning, and even criticising him, than ever before, but he only had to treat her with a little more care to bring her to his feet again, accepting and for the most part admiring everything that he said or did.

But another little whisper of caution from a corner of his mind warned him that he had better cut the knot of the difficulties which had at last aroused that spirit of revolt in her, get away from it all, and start afresh. His mind swung round instantly to a strong desire to get away from it all, and with credit to himself. Before he had finished the speech in which he broached his new-found intention to her, he saw himself leaving Abington with the warmly expressed regrets of his parishioners in his ears; and, if the vision of an illuminated address and a handsome piece of plate did not present itself to him quite so early, it did later.