Doctor Thorne - Anthony Trollope (historical books to read .txt) 📗
- Author: Anthony Trollope
- Performer: -
Book online «Doctor Thorne - Anthony Trollope (historical books to read .txt) 📗». Author Anthony Trollope
I will, if Lady Arabella will receive me;—only one thing, Trichy.”
“What’s that, dearest?”
“Frank will think that I come after him.”
“Never mind what he thinks. To tell you the truth, Mary, I often call
upon Patience for the sake of finding Caleb. That’s all fair now, you
know.”
Mary very quietly put on her straw bonnet, and said she was ready
to go up to the house. Beatrice was a little fluttered, and showed
it. Mary was, perhaps, a good deal fluttered, but she did not show
it. She had thought a good deal of her first interview with Lady
Arabella, of her first return to the house; but she had resolved
to carry herself as though the matter were easy to her. She would
not allow it to be seen that she felt that she brought with her to
Greshamsbury, comfort, ease, and renewed opulence.
So she put on her straw bonnet and walked up with Beatrice. Everybody
about the place had already heard the news. The old woman at the
lodge curtsied low to her; the gardener, who was mowing the lawn. The
butler, who opened the front door—he must have been watching Mary’s
approach—had manifestly put on a clean white neckcloth for the
occasion.
“God bless you once more, Miss Thorne!” said the old man, in a
half-whisper. Mary was somewhat troubled, for everything seemed,
in a manner, to bow down before her. And why should not everything
bow down before her, seeing that she was in truth the owner of
Greshamsbury?
And then a servant in livery would open the big drawing-room door.
This rather upset both Mary and Beatrice. It became almost impossible
for Mary to enter the room just as she would have done two years ago;
but she got through the difficulty with much self-control.
“Mamma, here’s Mary,” said Beatrice.
Nor was Lady Arabella quite mistress of herself, although she had
studied minutely how to bear herself.
“Oh, Mary, my dear Mary; what can I say to you?” and then, with a
handkerchief to her eyes, she ran forward and hid her face on Miss
Thorne’s shoulders. “What can I say—can you forgive me my anxiety
for my son?”
“How do you do, Lady Arabella?” said Mary.
“My daughter! my child! my Frank’s own bride! Oh, Mary! oh, my child!
If I have seemed unkind to you, it has been through love to him.”
“All these things are over now,” said Mary. “Mr Gresham told me
yesterday that I should be received as Frank’s future wife; and so,
you see, I have come.” And then she slipped through Lady Arabella’s
arms, and sat down, meekly down, on a chair. In five minutes she
had escaped with Beatrice into the schoolroom, and was kissing the
children, and turning over the new trousseau. They were, however,
soon interrupted, and there was, perhaps, some other kissing besides
that of the children.
“You have no business in here at all, Frank,” said Beatrice. “Has he,
Mary?”
“None in the world, I should think.”
“See what he has done to my poplin; I hope you won’t have your things
treated so cruelly. He’ll be careful enough about them.”
“Is Oriel a good hand at packing up finery—eh, Beatrice?” asked
Frank.
“He is, at any rate, too well-behaved to spoil it.” Thus Mary was
again made at home in the household of Greshamsbury.
Lady Arabella did not carry out her little plan of delaying the Oriel
wedding. Her idea had been to add some grandeur to it, in order to
make it a more fitting precursor of that other greater wedding which
was to follow so soon in its wake. But this, with the assistance of
the countess, she found herself able to do without interfering with
poor Mr Oriel’s Sunday arrangements. The countess herself, with the
Ladies Alexandrina and Margaretta, now promised to come, even to this
first affair; and for the other, the whole de Courcy family would
turn out, count and countess, lords and ladies, Honourable Georges
and Honourable Johns. What honour, indeed, could be too great to show
to a bride who had fourteen thousand a year in her own right, or to a
cousin who had done his duty by securing such a bride to himself!
“If the duke be in the country, I am sure he will be happy to come,”
said the countess. “Of course, he will be talking to Frank about
politics. I suppose the squire won’t expect Frank to belong to the
old school now.”
“Frank, of course, will judge for himself, Rosina;—with his
position, you know!” And so things were settled at Courcy Castle.
And then Beatrice was wedded and carried off to the Lakes. Mary, as
she had promised, did stand near her; but not exactly in the gingham
frock of which she had once spoken. She wore on that occasion— But
it will be too much, perhaps, to tell the reader what she wore as
Beatrice’s bridesmaid, seeing that a couple of pages, at least, must
be devoted to her marriage-dress, and seeing, also, that we have only
a few pages to finish everything; the list of visitors, the marriage
settlements, the dress, and all included.
It was in vain that Mary endeavoured to repress Lady Arabella’s
ardour for grand doings. After all, she was to be married from the
doctor’s house, and not from Greshamsbury, and it was the doctor
who should have invited the guests; but, in this matter, he did not
choose to oppose her ladyship’s spirit, and she had it all her own
way.
“What can I do?” said he to Mary. “I have been contradicting her in
everything for the last two years. The least we can do is to let her
have her own way now in a trifle like this.”
But there was one point on which Mary would let nobody have his or
her own way; on which the way to be taken was very manifestly to be
her own. This was touching the marriage settlements. It must not be
supposed, that if Beatrice were married on a Tuesday, Mary could be
married on the Tuesday week following. Ladies with twelve thousand a
year cannot be disposed of in that way: and bridegrooms who do their
duty by marrying money often have to be kept waiting. It was spring,
the early spring, before Frank was made altogether a happy man.
But a word about the settlements. On this subject the doctor thought
he would have been driven mad. Messrs Slow & Bideawhile, as the
lawyers of the Greshamsbury family—it will be understood that Mr
Gazebee’s law business was of quite a different nature, and his
work, as regarded Greshamsbury, was now nearly over—Messrs Slow &
Bideawhile declared that it would never do for them to undertake
alone to draw out the settlements. An heiress, such as Mary, must
have lawyers of her own; half a dozen at least, according to the
apparent opinion of Messrs Slow & Bideawhile. And so the doctor had
to go to other lawyers, and they had again to consult Sir Abraham,
and Mr Snilam on a dozen different heads.
If Frank became tenant in tail, in right of his wife, but under his
father, would he be able to grant leases for more than twenty-one
years? and, if so, to whom would the right of trover belong? As to
flotsam and jetsam—there was a little property, Mr Critic, on the
sea-shore—that was a matter that had to be left unsettled at the
last. Such points as these do take a long time to consider. All
this bewildered the doctor sadly, and Frank himself began to make
accusations that he was to be done out of his wife altogether.
But, as we have said, there was one point on which Mary would have
her own way. The lawyers might tie up as they would on her behalf all
the money, and shares, and mortgages which had belonged to the late
Sir Roger, with this exception, all that had ever appertained to
Greshamsbury should belong to Greshamsbury again; not in perspective,
not to her children, or to her children’s children, but at once.
Frank should be lord of Boxall Hill in his own right; and as to those
other liens on Greshamsbury, let Frank manage that with his father
as he might think fit. She would only trouble herself to see that he
was empowered to do as he did think fit.
“But,” argued the ancient, respectable family attorney to the doctor,
“that amounts to two-thirds of the whole estate. Two-thirds, Dr
Thorne! It is preposterous; I should almost say impossible.” And the
scanty hairs on the poor man’s head almost stood on end as he thought
of the outrageous manner in which the heiress prepared to sacrifice
herself.
“It will all be the same in the end,” said the doctor, trying to make
things smooth. “Of course, their joint object will be to put the
Greshamsbury property together again.”
“But, my dear sir,”—and then, for twenty minutes, the lawyer
went on proving that it would by no means be the same thing; but,
nevertheless, Mary Thorne did have her own way.
In the course of the winter, Lady de Courcy tried very hard to induce
the heiress to visit Courcy Castle, and this request was so backed by
Lady Arabella, that the doctor said he thought she might as well go
there for three or four days. But here, again, Mary was obstinate.
“I don’t see it at all,” she said. “If you make a point of it,
or Frank, or Mr Gresham, I will go; but I can’t see any possible
reason.” The doctor, when so appealed to, would not absolutely say
that he made a point of it, and Mary was tolerably safe as regarded
Frank or the squire. If she went, Frank would be expected to go, and
Frank disliked Courcy Castle almost more than ever. His aunt was now
more than civil to him, and, when they were together, never ceased to
compliment him on the desirable way in which he had done his duty by
his family.
And soon after Christmas a visitor came to Mary, and stayed a
fortnight with her: one whom neither she nor the doctor had expected,
and of whom they had not much more than heard. This was the famous
Miss Dunstable. “Birds of a feather flock together,” said Mrs
Rantaway—late Miss Gushing—when she heard of the visit. “The
railway man’s niece—if you can call her a niece—and the quack’s
daughter will do very well together, no doubt.”
“At any rate, they can count their money-bags,” said Mrs Umbleby.
And in fact, Mary and Miss Dunstable did get on very well together;
and Miss Dunstable made herself quite happy at Greshamsbury, although
some people—including Mrs Rantaway—contrived to spread a report,
that Dr Thorne, jealous of Mary’s money, was going to marry her.
“I shall certainly come and see you turned off,” said Miss Dunstable,
taking leave of her new friend. Miss Dunstable, it must be
acknowledged, was a little too fond of slang; but then, a lady with
her fortune, and of her age, may be fond of almost whatever she
pleases.
And so by degrees the winter wore away—very slowly to Frank, as he
declared often enough; and slowly, perhaps, to Mary also, though she
did not say so. The winter wore away, and the chill, bitter, windy,
early spring came round. The comic almanacs give us dreadful pictures
of January and February; but, in truth, the months which should be
made to look gloomy in England are March and April. Let no man boast
himself that he has
Comments (0)