Doctor Thorne, Anthony Trollope [best book reader .txt] 📗

wedding, Miss Oriel, long before I do at my own.”

 

“I shall not have the slightest objection. It will be so kind of you

to patronise my husband.”

 

“But, by Jove, will he patronise me? I know you’ll marry some awful

bigwig, or some terribly clever fellow; won’t she, Margaretta?”

 

“Miss Oriel was saying so much in praise of you before you came out,”

said Margaretta, “that I began to think that her mind was intent on

remaining at Greshamsbury all her life.”

 

Frank blushed, and Patience laughed. There was but a year’s

difference in their age; Frank, however, was still a boy, though

Patience was fully a woman.

 

“I am ambitious, Lady Margaretta,” said she. “I own it; but I am

moderate in my ambition. I do love Greshamsbury, and if Mr Gresham

had a younger brother, perhaps, you know—”

 

“Another just like myself, I suppose,” said Frank.

 

“Oh, yes. I could not possibly wish for any change.”

 

“Just as eloquent as you are, Frank,” said the Lady Margaretta.

 

“And as good a carver,” said Patience.

 

“Miss Bateson has lost her heart to him for ever, because of his

carving,” said the Lady Margaretta.

 

“But perfection never repeats itself,” said Patience.

 

“Well, you see, I have not got any brothers,” said Frank; “so all I

can do is to sacrifice myself.”

 

“Upon my word, Mr Gresham, I am under more than ordinary obligations

to you; I am indeed,” and Miss Oriel stood still in the path, and

made a very graceful curtsy. “Dear me! only think, Lady Margaretta,

that I should be honoured with an offer from the heir the very moment

he is legally entitled to make one.”

 

“And done with so much true gallantry, too,” said the other;

“expressing himself quite willing to postpone any views of his own or

your advantage.”

 

“Yes,” said Patience; “that’s what I value so much: had he loved me

now, there would have been no merit on his part; but a sacrifice, you

know—”

 

“Yes, ladies are so fond of such sacrifices, Frank, upon my word, I

had no idea you were so very excellent at making speeches.”

 

“Well,” said Frank, “I shouldn’t have said sacrifice, that was a

slip; what I meant was—”

 

“Oh, dear me,” said Patience, “wait a minute; now we are going

to have a regular declaration. Lady Margaretta, you haven’t got

a scent-bottle, have you? And if I should faint, where’s the

garden-chair?”

 

“Oh, but I’m not going to make a declaration at all,” said Frank.

 

“Are you not? Oh! Now, Lady Margaretta, I appeal to you; did you not

understand him to say something very particular?”

 

“Certainly, I thought nothing could be plainer,” said the Lady

Margaretta.

 

“And so, Mr Gresham, I am to be told, that after all it means

nothing,” said Patience, putting her handkerchief up to her eyes.

 

“It means that you are an excellent hand at quizzing a fellow like

me.”

 

“Quizzing! No; but you are an excellent hand at deceiving a poor

girl like me. Well, remember I have got a witness; here is Lady

Margaretta, who heard it all. What a pity it is that my brother is

a clergyman. You calculated on that, I know; or you would never had

served me so.”

 

She said so just as her brother joined them, or rather just as he

had joined Lady Margaretta de Courcy; for her ladyship and Mr Oriel

walked on in advance by themselves. Lady Margaretta had found it

rather dull work, making a third in Miss Oriel’s flirtation with her

cousin; the more so as she was quite accustomed to take a principal

part herself in all such transactions. She therefore not unwillingly

walked on with Mr Oriel. Mr Oriel, it must be conceived, was not a

common, everyday parson, but had points about him which made him

quite fit to associate with an earl’s daughter. And as it was known

that he was not a marrying man, having very exalted ideas on that

point connected with his profession, the Lady Margaretta, of course,

had the less objection to trust herself alone with him.

 

But directly she was gone, Miss Oriel’s tone of banter ceased. It was

very well making a fool of a lad of twenty-one when others were by;

but there might be danger in it when they were alone together.

 

“I don’t know any position on earth more enviable than yours, Mr

Gresham,” said she, quite soberly and earnestly; “how happy you ought

to be.”

 

“What, in being laughed at by you, Miss Oriel, for pretending to be

a man, when you choose to make out that I am only a boy? I can bear

to be laughed at pretty well generally, but I can’t say that your

laughing at me makes me feel so happy as you say I ought to be.”

 

Frank was evidently of an opinion totally different from that of Miss

Oriel. Miss Oriel, when she found herself tête-à-tête with him,

thought it was time to give over flirting; Frank, however, imagined

that it was just the moment for him to begin. So he spoke and looked

very languishing, and put on him quite the airs of an Orlando.

 

“Oh, Mr Gresham, such good friends as you and I may laugh at each

other, may we not?”

 

“You may do what you like, Miss Oriel: beautiful women I believe

always may; but you remember what the spider said to the fly, ‘That

which is sport to you, may be death to me.’” Anyone looking at

Frank’s face as he said this, might well have imagined that he was

breaking his very heart for love of Miss Oriel. Oh, Master Frank!

Master Frank! if you act thus in the green leaf, what will you do in

the dry?

 

While Frank Gresham was thus misbehaving himself, and going on as

though to him belonged the privilege of falling in love with pretty

faces, as it does to ploughboys and other ordinary people, his great

interests were not forgotten by those guardian saints who were so

anxious to shower down on his head all manner of temporal blessings.

 

Another conversation had taken place in the Greshamsbury gardens,

in which nothing light had been allowed to present itself; nothing

frivolous had been spoken. The countess, the Lady Arabella, and Miss

Gresham had been talking over Greshamsbury affairs, and they had

latterly been assisted by the Lady Amelia, than whom no de Courcy

ever born was more wise, more solemn, more prudent, or more proud.

The ponderosity of her qualifications for nobility was sometimes too

much even for her mother, and her devotion to the peerage was such,

that she would certainly have declined a seat in heaven if offered to

her without the promise that it should be in the upper house.

 

The subject first discussed had been Augusta’s prospects. Mr Moffat

had been invited to Courcy Castle, and Augusta had been taken thither

to meet him, with the express intention on the part of the countess,

that they should be man and wife. The countess had been careful to

make it intelligible to her sister-in-law and niece, that though Mr

Moffat would do excellently well for a daughter of Greshamsbury, he

could not be allowed to raise his eyes to a female scion of Courcy

Castle.

 

“Not that we personally dislike him,” said the Lady Amelia; “but rank

has its drawbacks, Augusta.” As the Lady Amelia was now somewhat

nearer forty than thirty, and was still allowed to walk,

 

“In maiden meditation, fancy free,”

 

it may be presumed that in her case rank had been found to have

serious drawbacks.

 

To this Augusta said nothing in objection. Whether desirable by a

de Courcy or not, the match was to be hers, and there was no doubt

whatever as to the wealth of the man whose name she was to take; the

offer had been made, not to her, but to her aunt; the acceptance

had been expressed, not by her, but by her aunt. Had she thought of

recapitulating in her memory all that had ever passed between Mr

Moffat and herself, she would have found that it did not amount to

more than the most ordinary conversation between chance partners

in a ball-room. Nevertheless, she was to be Mrs Moffat. All that Mr

Gresham knew of him was, that when he met the young man for the first

and only time in his life, he found him extremely hard to deal with

in the matter of money. He had insisted on having ten thousand pounds

with his wife, and at last refused to go on with the match unless

he got six thousand pounds. This latter sum the poor squire had

undertaken to pay him.

 

Mr Moffat had been for a year or two M.P. for Barchester; having

been assisted in his views on that ancient city by all the de

Courcy interest. He was a Whig, of course. Not only had Barchester,

departing from the light of other days, returned a Whig member of

Parliament, but it was declared, that at the next election, now near

at hand, a Radical would be sent up, a man pledged to the ballot, to

economies of all sorts, one who would carry out Barchester politics

in all their abrupt, obnoxious, pestilent virulence. This was one

Scatcherd, a great railway contractor, a man who was a native of

Barchester, who had bought property in the neighbourhood, and who had

achieved a sort of popularity there and elsewhere by the violence of

his democratic opposition to the aristocracy. According to this man’s

political tenets, the Conservatives should be laughed at as fools,

but the Whigs should be hated as knaves.

 

Mr Moffat was now coming down to Courcy Castle to look after his

electioneering interests, and Miss Gresham was to return with her

aunt to meet him. The countess was very anxious that Frank should

also accompany them. Her great doctrine, that he must marry money,

had been laid down with authority, and received without doubt. She

now pushed it further, and said that no time should be lost; that

he should not only marry money, but do so very early in life; there

was always danger in delay. The Greshams—of course she alluded only

to the males of the family—were foolishly soft-hearted; no one

could say what might happen. There was that Miss Thorne always at

Greshamsbury.

 

This was more than the Lady Arabella could stand. She protested

that there was at least no ground for supposing that Frank would

absolutely disgrace his family.

 

Still the countess persisted: “Perhaps not,” she said; “but when

young people of perfectly different ranks were allowed to associate

together, there was no saying what danger might arise. They all knew

that old Mr Bateson—the present Mr Bateson’s father—had gone off

with the governess; and young Mr Everbeery, near Taunton, had only

the other day married a cook-maid.”

 

“But Mr Everbeery was always drunk, aunt,” said Augusta, feeling

called upon to say something for her brother.

 

“Never mind, my dear; these things do happen, and they are very

dreadful.”

 

“Horrible!” said the Lady Amelia; “diluting the best blood of the

country, and paving the way for revolutions.” This was very grand;

but, nevertheless, Augusta could not but feel that she perhaps might

be about to dilute the blood of her coming children in marrying the

tailor’s son. She consoled herself by trusting that, at any rate, she

paved the way for no revolutions.

 

“When a thing is so necessary,” said the countess, “it cannot be done

too soon. Now, Arabella, I don’t say that anything will come of it;

but it may: