The Last Chronicle of Barset | Page 8

of her husband's innocence.
CHAPTER II
BY HEAVENS, HE HAD BETTER NOT!
I must ask the reader to make acquaintance with Major Grantly of
Cosby Lodge, before he is introduced to the family of Mr Crawley, at
their parsonage at Hogglestock. It has been said that Major Grantly had
thrown a favourable eye on Grace Crawley--by which report occasion
was given to all men and women in those parts to hint that the
Crawleys, with all their piety and humility, were very cunning, and that
one of the Grantlys was--to say the least of it--very soft, admitted as it
was throughout the county of Barsetshire, that there was no family
therein more widely awake to the affairs generally of this world and the
next combined, than the family of which Archdeacon Grantly was the
respected head and patriarch. Mrs Walker, the most good-natured
woman in Silverbridge, had acknowledged to her daughter that she
could not understand it--that she could not see anything at all in Grace
Crawley. Mr Walker had shrugged his shoulders and expressed a
confident belief that Major Grantly had not a shilling of his own
beyond his half-pay and his late wife's fortune, which was only six
thousand pounds. Others, who were ill-natured, had declared that Grace
Crawley was little better than a beggar, and that she could not possibly
have acquired the manners of a gentlewoman. Fletcher the butcher had
wondered whether the major would pay his future father-in-law's debts;
and Dr Tempest, the old Rector of Silverbridge, whose four daughters
were all as yet unmarried, had turned up his old nose, and had hinted
that half-pay majors did not get caught in marriage so easily as that.
Such and such like had been the expressions of the opinions of men and
women in Silverbridge. But the matter had been discussed further

afield than at Silverbridge, and had been allowed to intrude itself as a
most unwelcome subject into the family conclave of the archdeacon's
rectory. To those who have not as yet learned the fact from the public
character and well-appreciated reputation of the man, let it be known
that Archdeacon Grantly was at this time, as he had been for many
years previously, Archdeacon of Barchester and Rector of Plumstead
Episcopi. A rich and prosperous man he had even been--though he also
had had his sore troubles, as we all have--his having arisen chiefly from
want of that higher ecclesiastical promotion which his soul had coveted,
and for which the whole tenor of his life had especially fitted him. Now,
in his green old age, he had ceased to covet, but had not ceased to
repine. He had ceased to covet aught for himself, but still coveted much
for his children; and for him such a marriage as this which was now
suggested for his son, was encompassed almost with the bitterness of
death. 'I think it would kill me,' he said to his wife; 'by heavens, I think
it would be my death!'
A daughter of the archdeacon had made a splendid matrimonial
alliance--so splendid that its history was at the time known to all the
aristocracy of the county, and had not been altogether forgotten by any
of those who keep themselves well instructed in the details of the
peerage. Griselda Grantly had married Lord Dumbello, the eldest don
of the Marquis of Hartletop--than whom no English nobleman was
more puissant, if broad acres, many castles, high title, and stars and
ribbons are any sign of puissance--and she was now, herself,
Marchioness of Hartletop, with a little Lord Dumbello of her own. The
daughter's visits to the parsonage of her father were of necessity rare,
such necessity having come from her own altered sphere of life. A
Marchioness of Hartletop has special duties which will hardly permit
her to devote herself frequently to the humdrum society of a clerical
mother and father. That it would be so, father and mother had
understood when they sent the fortunate girl forth to a higher world.
But, now and again, since her august marriage, she had laid her
coroneted head upon one of the old rectory pillows for a night or so,
and, on such occasions all the Plumsteadians had been loud in praise of
her condescension. Now it happened that when this second and more
aggravated blast of the evil wind reached the rectory--the renewed waft

as to Major Grantly's infatuation regarding Miss Grace Crawley, which,
on its renewal, seemed to bring with it something of a confirmation--it
chanced, I say, that at that moment Griselda, Marchioness of Hartletop,
was gracing the paternal mansion.
I am not quite sure that the mother would have been equally quick to
ask her daughter's advice, had she been left in the matter entirely to her
own propensities. Mrs Grantly