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

not to be told of it at all?”

“I shall not think of holding her to her engagement⁠—that is, if⁠—I mean to say, she should have time at any rate for consideration.”

“Oh, I understand,” said the doctor. “She shall have time for consideration. How much shall we give her, squire? three minutes? Go up to her Frank: she is in the drawing-room.”

Frank went to the door, and then hesitated, and returned. “I could not do it,” said he. “I don’t think that I understand it all yet. I am so bewildered that I could not tell her;” and he sat down at the table, and began to sob with emotion.

“And she knows nothing of it?” said the squire.

“Not a word. I thought that I would keep the pleasure of telling her for Frank.”

“She should not be left in suspense,” said the squire.

“Come, Frank, go up to her,” again urged the doctor. “You’ve been ready enough with your visits when you knew that you ought to stay away.”

“I cannot do it,” said Frank, after a pause of some moments; “nor is it right that I should. It would be taking advantage of her.”

“Go to her yourself, doctor; it is you that should do it,” said the squire.

After some further slight delay, the doctor got up, and did go upstairs. He, even, was half afraid of the task. “It must be done,” he said to himself, as his heavy steps mounted the stairs. “But how to tell it?”

When he entered, Mary was standing halfway up the room, as though she had risen to meet him. Her face was troubled, and her eyes were almost wild. The emotion, the hopes, the fears of that morning had almost been too much for her. She had heard the murmuring of the voices in the room below, and had known that one of them was that of her lover. Whether that discussion was to be for her good or ill she did not know; but she felt that further suspense would almost kill her. “I could wait for years,” she said to herself, “if I did but know. If I lost him, I suppose I should bear it, if I did but know.”⁠—Well; she was going to know.

Her uncle met her in the middle of the room. His face was serious, though not sad; too serious to confirm her hopes at that moment of doubt. “What is it, uncle?” she said, taking one of his hands between both of her own. “What is it? Tell me.” And as she looked up into his face with her wild eyes, she almost frightened him.

“Mary,” he said gravely, “you have heard much, I know, of Sir Roger Scatcherd’s great fortune.”

“Yes, yes, yes!”

“Now that poor Sir Louis is dead⁠—”

“Well, uncle, well?”

“It has been left⁠—”

“To Frank! to Mr. Gresham, to the squire!” exclaimed Mary, who felt, with an agony of doubt, that this sudden accession of immense wealth might separate her still further from her lover.

“No, Mary, not to the Greshams; but to yourself.”

“To me!” she cried, and putting both her hands to her forehead, she seemed to be holding her temples together. “To me!”

“Yes, Mary; it is all your own now. To do as you like best with it all⁠—all. May God, in His mercy, enable you to bear the burden, and lighten for you the temptation!”

She had so far moved as to find the nearest chair, and there she was now seated, staring at her uncle with fixed eyes. “Uncle,” she said, “what does it mean?” Then he came, and sitting beside her, he explained, as best he could, the story of her birth, and her kinship with the Scatcherds. “And where is he, uncle?” she said. “Why does he not come to me?”

“I wanted him to come, but he refused. They are both there now, the father and son; shall I fetch them?”

“Fetch them! whom? The squire? No, uncle; but may we go to them?”

“Surely, Mary.”

“But, uncle⁠—”

“Yes, dearest.”

“Is it true? are you sure? For his sake, you know; not for my own. The squire, you know⁠—Oh, uncle! I cannot go.”

“They shall come to you.”

“No⁠—no. I have gone to him such hundreds of times; I will never allow that he shall be sent to me. But, uncle, is it true?”

The doctor, as he went downstairs, muttered something about Sir Abraham Haphazard, and Sir Rickety Giggs; but these great names were much thrown away upon poor Mary. The doctor entered the room first, and the heiress followed him with downcast eyes and timid steps. She was at first afraid to advance, but when she did look up, and saw Frank standing alone by the window, her lover restored her courage, and rushing up to him, she threw herself into his arms. “Oh, Frank; my own Frank! my own Frank! we shall never be separated now.”

XLVII How the Bride Was Received, and Who Were Asked to the Wedding

And thus after all did Frank perform his great duty; he did marry money; or rather, as the wedding has not yet taken place, and is, indeed, as yet hardly talked of, we should more properly say that he had engaged himself to marry money. And then, such a quantity of money! The Scatcherd wealth greatly exceeded the Dunstable wealth; so that our hero may be looked on as having performed his duties in a manner deserving the very highest commendation from all classes of the de Courcy connection.

And he received it. But that was nothing. That he should be fêted by the de Courcys and Greshams, now that he was about to do his duty by his family in so exemplary a manner: that he should be patted on the back, now that he no longer meditated that vile crime which had been so abhorrent to his mother’s soul; this was only natural; this is hardly worthy of remark. But there was another to be fêted, another person to be made a personage, another blessed human mortal about to