Doctor Thorne, Anthony Trollope [an ebook reader .TXT] 📗

to Mary’s birth; rumours more horrid than any which had yet been heard?

Augusta had said hardly more than the truth when she spoke of her father being brokenhearted by his debts. His troubles were becoming almost too many for him; and Mr. Gazebee, though no doubt he was an excellent man of business, did not seem to lessen them. Mr. Gazebee, indeed, was continually pointing out how much he owed, and in what a quagmire of difficulties he had entangled himself. Now, to do Mr. Yates Umbleby justice, he had never made himself disagreeable in this manner.

Mr. Gazebee had been doubtless right, when he declared that Sir Louis Scatcherd had not himself the power to take any steps hostile to the squire; but Sir Louis had also been right, when he boasted that, in spite of his father’s will, he could cause others to move in the matter. Others did move, and were moving, and it began to be understood that a moiety, at least, of the remaining Greshamsbury property must be sold. Even this, however, would by no means leave the squire in undisturbed possession of the other moiety. And thus, Mr. Gresham was nearly brokenhearted.

Frank had now been at home a week, and his father had not as yet spoken to him about the family troubles; nor had a word as yet been said between them as to Mary Thorne. It had been agreed that Frank should go away for twelve months, in order that he might forget her. He had been away the twelvemonth, and had now returned, not having forgotten her.

It generally happens, that in every household, one subject of importance occupies it at a time. The subject of importance now mostly thought of in the Greshamsbury household, was the marriage of Beatrice. Lady Arabella had to supply the trousseau for her daughter; the squire had to supply the money for the trousseau; Mr. Gazebee had the task of obtaining the money for the squire. While this was going on, Mr. Gresham was not anxious to talk to his son, either about his own debts or his son’s love. There would be time for these things when the marriage-feast should be over.

So thought the father, but the matter was precipitated by Frank. He also had put off the declaration which he had to make, partly from a wish to spare the squire, but partly also with a view to spare himself. We have all some of that cowardice which induces us to postpone an inevitably evil day. At this time the discussions as to Beatrice’s wedding were frequent in the house, and at one of them Frank had heard his mother repeat the names of the proposed bridesmaids. Mary’s name was not among them, and hence had arisen his attack on his sister.

Lady Arabella had had her reason for naming the list before her son; but she overshot her mark. She wished to show him how totally Mary was forgotten at Greshamsbury; but she only inspired him with a resolve that she should not be forgotten. He accordingly went to his sister; and then, the subject being full on his mind, he resolved at once to discuss it with his father.

“Sir, are you at leisure for five minutes?” he said, entering the room in which the squire was accustomed to sit majestically, to receive his tenants, scold his dependants, and in which, in former happy days, he had always arranged the meets of the Barsetshire hunt.

Mr. Gresham was quite at leisure: when was he not so? But had he been immersed in the deepest business of which he was capable, he would gladly have put it aside at his son’s instance.

“I don’t like to have any secret from you, sir,” said Frank; “nor, for the matter of that, from anybody else”⁠—the anybody else was intended to have reference to his mother⁠—“and, therefore, I would rather tell you at once what I have made up my mind to do.”

Frank’s address was very abrupt, and he felt it was so. He was rather red in the face, and his manner was fluttered. He had quite made up his mind to break the whole affair to his father; but he had hardly made up his mind as to the best mode of doing so.

“Good heavens, Frank! what do you mean? you are not going to do anything rash? What is it you mean, Frank?”

“I don’t think it is rash,” said Frank.

“Sit down, my boy; sit down. What is it that you say you are going to do?”

“Nothing immediately, sir,” said he, rather abashed; “but as I have made up my mind about Mary Thorne⁠—quite made up my mind, I think it right to tell you.”

“Oh, about Mary,” said the squire, almost relieved.

And then Frank, in voluble language, which he hardly, however, had quite under his command, told his father all that had passed between him and Mary. “You see, sir,” said he, “that it is fixed now, and cannot be altered. Nor must it be altered. You asked me to go away for twelve months, and I have done so. It has made no difference, you see. As to our means of living, I am quite willing to do anything that may be best and most prudent. I was thinking, sir, of taking a farm somewhere near here, and living on that.”

The squire sat quite silent for some moments after this communication had been made to him. Frank’s conduct, as a son, had been such that he could not find fault with it; and, in this special matter of his love, how was it possible for him to find fault? He himself was almost as fond of Mary as of a daughter; and, though he too would have been desirous that his son should relieve the estate from its embarrassments by a rich marriage, he did not at all share Lady Arabella’s feelings on the subject. No Countess de Courcy had ever engraved it on the tablets of his mind that the world would come to ruin