The Graftons: A Novel

by Archibald Marshall

A week later the Graftons were invited to dine at the Bishop's Palace. The invitation was sent to Caroline by the Bishop's wife, who indicated in a few terse sentences that a clergyman would be there on inspection, but didn't know it, and was not to know it. If he didn't suit he could go back where he came from, and nobody would be any the worse. Probably her way of putting it had not been authorised by the Bishop, who, however, took Grafton into his library on their arrival, and told him that he thought he had found him the right man.

"He is quite young," he said, "and has not long been married. He has been working hard in a very poor part of London, and I fancy that his health won't stand it much longer. His father was an old friend of mine, and if you like him I think I can persuade him to come to you. He hasn't any money of his own, but what you mentioned the other day will be enough for him. His name is Gerald Prescott."

They went up to the drawing-room, where a little group was standing by one of the windows, admiring the view of the garden, with the piled masonry of the Cathedral rising above the trees which enclosed it. There were four of them. Ella Carruthers and her aunt were talking together apart. The first impression of the group was one of happy youth. They were all talking and laughing together, as if none of them had a care in the world. They were Caroline, the Bishop's chaplain whom she knew already, and Prescott and his wife, with both of whom she had established relations almost upon the first words of introduction.

Grafton's first impression of the man to whom he had been invited to extend his patronage was of one hardly more than a boy. He was very fair, with untidy hair crowning a smooth fresh face, and though his smile was frequent and pleased there was rather a pathetic look as of a tired child about his eyes. His wife looked older than he, though she was actually a few years younger, and not marked by the physical weariness that showed in him. She had rosy cheeks and dark alert eyes, in which there was a motherly look very noticeable when she turned them upon her husband.

Caroline was immensely taken with both of them, they were so simple and so confiding, and so unlike any young couple she had ever met before. Both of them belonged to her world; that was evident by a score of little signs. But they seemed to be quite detached from it, and indeed to have lost interest in it. Their interests were based upon a broad humanity which took no count of social grades. If the Bishop had bethought himself of his niece's protest against the perpetual talk of a clergyman's 'work,' in producing this particular clergyman for inspection, he was abundantly justified by Prescott's conversation. He and his wife both talked of the life they were living, the people they knew, and the things they did, in the same way as they might have talked if he had been an artist, for instance, living in Chelsea. There was the big church in the background, which would correspond to the studio, and what went on there, not to be too much talked about; and all around it the atmosphere of struggle, and tears, and laughter, and the miraculous events that shake the lives of those whose existence is based upon no material certainties, but based all the firmer upon an immoveable trust in a providence that may at any time bring something exciting and beneficial to pass, and at the worst will never let you quite down. The richness of it all was amazing. Instead of the picture of mean streets and drab and sordid lives, into which a man descended from serener heights to fight with poverty and crime, there was a crowded stage of characters of infinite variety, playing with the big things of life which are hidden under a mass of little things in the secured places, but playing with them as the gods might play with them, who must have the biggest toys to amuse them.

"You seem to have a lot of most disreputable acquaintances," said the Bishop's wife, when Prescott had been telling them stories about his friends.

"Oh, yes, we have," he said, with a bright smile. "All the respectable ones go to chapel. But they're so dull that we don't try to get them away. There's no proselytising in our parish."

Caroline began to be afraid, as the life and the pursuits of these young people disclosed themselves, that Abington, with its sparser, more monotonous life, would scarcely attract them, or satisfy them if they came there. But Prescott, who was sitting next to her at dinner, said to her in a low voice: "How do you think she's looking? She's always lived in the country; she's apt to get a little run down in a town."

Caroline reassured him, after a glance at his wife, who looked the picture of health and vigour, and he seemed relieved. "Of course she loves it all," he said. "But it keeps her so on the go. It's very distracting, a town life. Both of us enjoy getting out into the country sometimes. You seem to belong to yourself more."

It was exactly what she had said of herself, finding a town life of such different quality from his distracting for self-possession. "Would you live in the country if you had the choice?" she hazarded.