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Doctor Thorne

by Anthony Trollope · English · Gutenberg #3166 · 1,200,589 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Doctor Thorne

Author: Anthony Trollope


        
Release date: April 1, 2002 [eBook #3166]
                Most recently updated: June 8, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3166

Credits: E-text prepared by Kenneth David Cooper and revised by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOCTOR THORNE ***




DOCTOR THORNE

by

Anthony Trollope

First published in 1858







CONTENTS

         I. The Greshams of Greshamsbury
        II. Long, Long Ago
       III. Dr Thorne
        IV. Lessons from Courcy Castle
         V. Frank Gresham's First Speech
        VI. Frank Gresham's Early Loves
       VII. The Doctor's Garden
      VIII. Matrimonial Prospects
        IX. Sir Roger Scatcherd
         X. Sir Roger's Will
        XI. The Doctor Drinks His Tea
       XII. When Greek Meets Greek, Then Comes the Tug of War
      XIII. The Two Uncles
       XIV. Sentence of Exile
        XV. Courcy
       XVI. Miss Dunstable
      XVII. The Election
     XVIII. The Rivals
       XIX. The Duke of Omnium
        XX. The Proposal
       XXI. Mr Moffat Falls into Trouble
      XXII. Sir Roger Is Unseated
      XXII. Retrospective
      XXIV. Louis Scatcherd
       XXV. Sir Roger Dies
      XXVI. War
     XXVII. Miss Thorne Goes on a Visit
    XXVIII. The Doctor Hears Something to His Advantage
      XXIX. The Donkey Ride
       XXX. Post Prandial
      XXXI. The Small End of the Wedge
     XXXII. Mr Oriel
    XXXIII. A Morning Visit
     XXXIV. A Barouche and Four Arrives at Greshamsbury
      XXXV. Sir Louis Goes Out to Dinner
     XXXVI. Will He Come Again?
    XXXVII. Sir Louis Leaves Greshamsbury
   XXXVIII. De Courcy Precepts and de Courcy Practice
     XXXIX. What the World Says about Blood
        XL. The Two Doctors Change Patients
       XLI. Doctor Thorne Won't Interfere
      XLII. What Can You Give in Return?
     XLIII. The Race of Scatcherd Becomes Extinct
      XLIV. Saturday Evening and Sunday Morning
       XLV. Law Business in London
      XLVI. Our Pet Fox Finds a Tail
     XLVII. How the Bride Was Received, and Who Were Asked
            to the Wedding





CHAPTER I

The Greshams of Greshamsbury


Before the reader is introduced to the modest country medical
practitioner who is to be the chief personage of the following
tale, it will be well that he should be made acquainted with some
particulars as to the locality in which, and the neighbours among
whom, our doctor followed his profession.

There is a county in the west of England not so full of life, indeed,
nor so widely spoken of as some of its manufacturing leviathan
brethren in the north, but which is, nevertheless, very dear to those
who know it well. Its green pastures, its waving wheat, its deep
and shady and--let us add--dirty lanes, its paths and stiles, its
tawny-coloured, well-built rural churches, its avenues of beeches,
and frequent Tudor mansions, its constant county hunt, its social
graces, and the general air of clanship which pervades it, has made
it to its own inhabitants a favoured land of Goshen. It is purely
agricultural; agricultural in its produce, agricultural in its poor,
and agricultural in its pleasures. There are towns in it, of course;
dépôts from whence are brought seeds and groceries, ribbons and
fire-shovels; in which markets are held and county balls are carried
on; which return members to Parliament, generally--in spite of Reform
Bills, past, present, and coming--in accordance with the dictates
of some neighbouring land magnate: from whence emanate the country
postmen, and where is located the supply of post-horses necessary
for county visitings. But these towns add nothing to the importance
of the county; they consist, with the exception of the assize town,
of dull, all but death-like single streets. Each possesses two
pumps, three hotels, ten shops, fifteen beer-houses, a beadle, and a
market-place.

Indeed, the town population of the county reckons for nothing when
the importance of the county is discussed, with the exception, as
before said, of the assize town, which is also a cathedral city.
Herein is a clerical aristocracy, which is certainly not without its
due weight. A resident bishop, a resident dean, an archdeacon, three
or four resident prebendaries, and all their numerous chaplains,
vicars, and ecclesiastical satellites, do make up a society
sufficiently powerful to be counted as something by the county
squirearchy. In other respects the greatness of Barsetshire depends
wholly on the landed powers.

Barsetshire, however, is not now so essentially one whole as it was
before the Reform Bill divided it. There is in these days an East
Barsetshire, and there is a West Barsetshire; and people conversant
with Barsetshire doings declare that they can already decipher some
difference of feeling, some division of interests. The eastern moiety
of the county is more purely Conservative than the western; there
is, or was, a taint of Peelism in the latter; and then, too, the
residence of two such great Whig magnates as the Duke of Omnium and
the Earl de Courcy in that locality in some degree overshadows and
renders less influential the gentlemen who live near them.

It is to East Barsetshire that we are called. When the division above
spoken of was first contemplated, in those stormy days in which
gallant men were still combatting reform ministers, if not with hope,
still with spirit, the battle was fought by none more bravely than
by John Newbold Gresham of Greshamsbury, the member for Barsetshire.
Fate, however, and the Duke of Wellington were adverse, and in the
following Parliament John Newbold Gresham was only member for East
Barsetshire.

Whether or not it was true, as stated at the time, that the aspect of
the men with whom he was called on to associate at St Stephen's broke
his heart, it is not for us now to inquire. It is certainly true that
he did not live to see the first year of the reformed Parliament
brought to a close. The then Mr Gresham was not an old man at the
time of his death, and his eldest son, Francis Newbold Gresham, was a
very young man; but, notwithstanding his youth, and notwithstanding
other grounds of objection which stood in the way of such preferment,
and which must be explained, he was chosen in his father's place.
The father's services had been too recent, too well appreciated, too
thoroughly in unison with the feelings of those around him to allow
of any other choice; and in this way young Frank Gresham found
himself member for East Barsetshire, although the very men who
elected him knew that they had but slender ground for trusting him
with their suffrages.

Frank Gresham, though then only twenty-four years of age, was a
married man, and a father. He had already chosen a wife, and by
his choice had given much ground of distrust to the men of East
Barsetshire. He had married no other than Lady Arabella de Courcy,
the sister of the great Whig earl who lived at Courcy Castle in the
west; that earl who not only voted for the Reform Bill, but had been
infamously active in bringing over other young peers so to vote,
and whose name therefore stank in the nostrils of the staunch Tory
squires of the county.

Not only had Frank Gresham so wedded, but having thus improperly and
unpatriotically chosen a wife, he had added to his sins by becoming
recklessly intimate with his wife's relations. It is true that he
still called himself a Tory, belonged to the club of which his father
had been one of the most honoured members, and in the days of the
great battle got his head broken in a row, on the right side; but,
nevertheless, it was felt by the good men, true and blue, of East
Barsetshire, that a constant sojourner at Courcy Castle could not be
regarded as a consistent Tory. When, however, his father died, that
broken head served him in good stead: his sufferings in the cause
were made the most of; these, in unison with his father's merits,
turned the scale, and it was accordingly decided, at a meeting held
at the George and Dragon, at Barchester, that Frank Gresham should
fill his father's shoes.

But Frank Gresham could not fill his father's shoes; they were too
big for him. He did become member for East Barsetshire, but he was
such a member--so lukewarm, so indifferent, so prone to associate
with the enemies of the good cause, so little willing to fight the
good fight, that he soon disgusted those who most dearly loved the
memory of the old squire.

De Courcy Castle in those days had great allurements for a young man,
and all those allurements were made the most of to win over young
Gresham. His wife, who was a year or two older than himself, was a
fashionable woman, with thorough Whig tastes and aspirations, such
as became the daughter of a great Whig earl; she cared for politics,
or thought that she cared for them, more than her husband did; for
a month or two previous to her engagement she had been attached to
the Court, and had been made to believe that much of the policy of
England's rulers depended on the political intrigues of England's
women. She was one who would fain be doing something if she only
knew how, and the first important attempt she made was to turn her
respectable young Tory husband into a second-rate Whig bantling. As
this lady's character will, it is hoped, show itself in the following
pages, we need not now describe it more closely.

It is not a bad thing to be son-in-law to a potent earl, member of
Parliament for a county, and a possessor of a fine old English seat,
and a fine old English fortune. As a very young man, Frank Gresham
found the life to which he was thus introduced agreeable enough. He
consoled himself as best he might for the blue looks with which he
was greeted by his own party, and took his revenge by consorting more
thoroughly than ever with his political adversaries. Foolishly, like
a foolish moth, he flew to the bright light, and, like the moths,
of course he burnt his wings. Early in 1833 he had become a member
of Parliament, and in the autumn of 1834 the dissolution came.
Young members of three or four-and-twenty do not think much of
dissolutions, forget the fancies of their constituents, and are too
proud of the present to calculate much as to the future. So it was
with Mr Gresham. His father had been member for Barsetshire all his
life, and he looked forward to similar prosperity as though it were
part of his inheritance; but he failed to take any of the steps which
had secured his father's seat.

In the autumn of 1834 the dissolution came, and Frank Gresham, with
his honourable lady wife and all the de Courcys at his back, found
that he had mortally offended the county. To his great disgust
another candidate was brought forward as a fellow to his late
colleague, and though he manfully fought the battle, and spent ten
thousand pounds in the contest, he could not recover his position. A
high Tory, with a great Whig interest to back him, is never a popular
person in England. No one can trust him, though there may be those
who are willing to place him, untrusted, in high positions. Such
was the case with Mr Gresham. There were many who were willing, for
family considerations, to keep him in Parliament; but no one thought
that he was fit to be there. The consequences were, that a bitter
and expensive contest ensued. Frank Gresham, when twitted with being
a Whig, foreswore the de Courcy family; and then, when ridiculed as
having been thrown over by the Tories, foreswore his father's old
friends. So between the two stools he fell to the ground, and, as a
politician, he never again rose to his feet.

He never again rose to his feet; but twice again he made violent
efforts to do so. Elections in East Barsetshire, from various
causes, came quick upon each other in those days, and before he was
eight-and-twenty years of age Mr Gresham had three times contested
the county and been three times beaten. To speak the truth of him,
his own spirit would have been satisfied with the loss of the first
ten thousand pounds; but Lady Arabella was made of higher mettle. She
had married a man with a fine place and a fine fortune; but she had
nevertheless married a commoner and had in so far derogated from her
high birth. She felt that her husband should be by rights a member of
the House of Lords; but, if not, that it was at least essential that
he should have a seat in the lower chamber. She would by degrees sink
into nothing if she allowed herself to sit down, the mere wife of a
mere country squire.

Thus instigated, Mr Gresham repeated the useless contest three times,
and repeated it each time at a serious cost. He lost his money, Lady
Arabella lost her temper, and things at Greshamsbury went on by no
means as prosperously as they had done in the days of the old squire.

In the first twelve years of their marriage, children came fast into
the nursery at Greshamsbury. The first that was born was a boy; and
in those happy halcyon days, when the old squire was still alive,
great was the joy at the birth of an heir to Greshamsbury; bonfires
gleamed through the country-side, oxen were roasted whole, and
the customary paraphernalia of joy, usual to rich Britons on such
occasions were gone through with wondrous éclat. But when the tenth
baby, and the ninth little girl, was brought into the world, the
outward show of joy was not so great.

Then other troubles came on. Some of these little girls were sickly,
some very sickly. Lady Arabella had her faults, and they were such as
were extremely detrimental to her husband's happiness and her own;
but that of being an indifferent mother was not among them. She had
worried her husband daily for years because he was not in Parliament,
she had worried him because he would not furnish the house in Portman
Square, she had worried him because he objected to have more people
every winter at Greshamsbury Park than the house would hold; but now
she changed her tune and worried him because Selina coughed, because
Helena was hectic, because poor Sophy's spine was weak, and Matilda's
appetite was gone.

Worrying from such causes was pardonable it will be said. So it was;
but the manner was hardly pardonable. Selina's cough was certainly
not fairly attributable to the old-fashioned furniture in Portman
Square; nor would Sophy's spine have been materially benefited by
her father having a seat in Parliament; and yet, to have heard Lady
Arabella discussing those matters in family conclave, one would have
thought that she would have expected such results.

As it was, her poor weak darlings were carried about from London to
Brighton, from Brighton to some German baths, from the German baths
back to Torquay, and thence--as regarded the four we have named--to
that bourne from whence no further journey could be made under the
Lady Arabella's directions.

The one son and heir to Greshamsbury was named as his father, Francis
Newbold Gresham. He would have been the hero of our tale had not that
place been pre-occupied by the village doctor. As it is, those who
please may so regard him. It is he who is to be our favourite young
man, to do the love scenes, to have his trials and his difficulties,
and to win through them or not, as the case may be. I am too old now
to be a hard-hearted author, and so it is probable that he may not
die of a broken heart. Those who don't approve of a middle-aged
bachelor country doctor as a hero, may take the heir to Greshamsbury
in his stead, and call the book, if it so please them, "The Loves and
Adventures of Francis Newbold Gresham the Younger."

And Master Frank Gresham was not ill adapted for playing the part
of a hero of this sort. He did not share his sisters' ill-health,
and though the only boy of the family, he excelled all his sisters
in personal appearance. The Greshams from time immemorial had been
handsome. They were broad browed, blue eyed, fair haired, born with
dimples in their chins, and that pleasant, aristocratic dangerous
curl of the upper lip which can equally express good humour or scorn.
Young Frank was every inch a Gresham, and was the darling of his
father's heart.

The de Courcys had never been plain. There was too much hauteur, too
much pride, we may perhaps even fairly say, too much nobility in
their gait and manners, and even in their faces, to allow of their
being considered plain; but they were not a race nurtured by Venus
or Apollo. They were tall and thin, with high cheek-bones, high
foreheads, and large, dignified, cold eyes. The de Courcy girls had
all good hair; and, as they also possessed easy manners and powers
of talking, they managed to pass in the world for beauties till they
were absorbed in the matrimonial market, and the world at large cared
no longer whether they were beauties or not. The Misses Gresham were
made in the de Courcy mould, and were not on this account the less
dear to their mother.

The two eldest, Augusta and Beatrice, lived, and were apparently
likely to live. The four next faded and died one after another--all
in the same sad year--and were laid in the neat, new cemetery at
Torquay. Then came a pair, born at one birth, weak, delicate, frail
little flowers, with dark hair and dark eyes, and thin, long, pale
faces, with long, bony hands, and long bony feet, whom men looked on
as fated to follow their sisters with quick steps. Hitherto, however,
they had not followed them, nor had they suffered as their sisters
had suffered; and some people at Greshamsbury attributed this to the
fact that a change had been made in the family medical practitioner.

Then came the youngest of the flock, she whose birth we have said was
not heralded with loud joy; for when she came into the world, four
others, with pale temples, wan, worn cheeks, and skeleton, white
arms, were awaiting permission to leave it.

Such was the family when, in the year 1854, the eldest son came of
age. He had been educated at Harrow, and was now still at Cambridge;
but, of course, on such a day as this he was at home. That coming of
age must be a delightful time to a young man born to inherit broad
acres and wide wealth. Those full-mouthed congratulations; those
warm prayers with which his manhood is welcomed by the grey-haired
seniors of the county; the affectionate, all but motherly caresses of
neighbouring mothers who have seen him grow up from his cradle, of
mothers who have daughters, perhaps, fair enough, and good enough,
and sweet enough even for him; the soft-spoken, half-bashful, but
tender greetings of the girls, who now, perhaps for the first time,
call him by his stern family name, instructed by instinct rather than
precept that the time has come when the familiar Charles or familiar
John must by them be laid aside; the "lucky dogs," and hints of
silver spoons which are poured into his ears as each young compeer
slaps his back and bids him live a thousand years and then never die;
the shouting of the tenantry, the good wishes of the old farmers who
come up to wring his hand, the kisses which he gets from the farmers'
wives, and the kisses which he gives to the farmers' daughters; all
these things must make the twenty-first birthday pleasant enough to
a young heir. To a youth, however, who feels that he is now liable
to arrest, and that he inherits no other privilege, the pleasure may
very possibly not be quite so keen.

The case with young Frank Gresham may be supposed to much nearer the
former than the latter; but yet the ceremony of his coming of age
was by no means like that which fate had accorded to his father. Mr
Gresham was now an embarrassed man, and though the world did not know
it, or, at any rate, did not know that he was deeply embarrassed, he
had not the heart to throw open his mansion and receive the county
with a free hand as though all things were going well with him.

Nothing was going well with him. Lady Arabella would allow nothing
near him or around him to be well. Everything with him now turned to
vexation; he was no longer a joyous, happy man, and the people of
East Barsetshire did not look for gala doings on a grand scale when
young Gresham came of age.

Gala doings, to a certain extent, there were there. It was in July,
and tables were spread under the oaks for the tenants. Tables were
spread, and meat, and beer, and wine were there, and Frank, as he
walked round and shook his guests by the hand, expressed a hope that
their relations with each other might be long, close, and mutually
advantageous.

We must say a few words now about the place itself. Greshamsbury
Park was a fine old English gentleman's seat--was and is; but we can
assert it more easily in past tense, as we are speaking of it with
reference to a past time. We have spoken of Greshamsbury Park; there
was a park so called, but the mansion itself was generally known as
Greshamsbury House, and did not stand in the park. We may perhaps
best describe it by saying that the village of Greshamsbury consisted
of one long, straggling street, a mile in length, which in the centre
turned sharp round, so that one half of the street lay directly at
right angles to the other. In this angle stood Greshamsbury House,
and the gardens and grounds around it filled up the space so made.
There was an entrance with large gates at each end of the village,
and each gate was guarded by the effigies of two huge pagans with
clubs, such being the crest borne by the family; from each entrance a
broad road, quite straight, running through to a majestic avenue of
limes, led up to the house. This was built in the richest, perhaps we
should rather say in the purest, style of Tudor architecture; so much
so that, though Greshamsbury is less complete than Longleat, less
magnificent than Hatfield, it may in some sense be said to be the
finest specimen of Tudor architecture of which the country can boast.

It stands amid a multitude of trim gardens and stone-built terraces,
divided one from another: these to our eyes are not so attractive as
that broad expanse of lawn by which our country houses are generally
surrounded; but the gardens of Greshamsbury have been celebrated for
two centuries, and any Gresham who would have altered them would have
been considered to have destroyed one of the well-known landmarks of
the family.

Greshamsbury Park--properly so called--spread far away on the other
side of the village. Opposite to the two great gates leading up
to the mansion were two smaller gates, the one opening on to the
stables, kennels, and farm-yard, and the other to the deer park. This
latter was the principal entrance to the demesne, and a grand and
picturesque entrance it was. The avenue of limes which on one side
stretched up to the house, was on the other extended for a quarter of
a mile, and then appeared to be terminated only by an abrupt rise in
the ground. At the entrance there were four savages and four clubs,
two to each portal, and what with the massive iron gates, surmounted
by a stone wall, on which stood the family arms supported by two
other club-bearers, the stone-built lodges, the Doric, ivy-covered
columns which surrounded the circle, the four grim savages, and the
extent of the space itself through which the high road ran, and which
just abutted on the village, the spot was sufficiently significant of
old family greatness.

Those who examined it more closely might see that under the arms was
a scroll bearing the Gresham motto, and that the words were repeated
in smaller letters under each of the savages. "Gardez Gresham,"
had been chosen in the days of motto-choosing probably by some
herald-at-arms as an appropriate legend for signifying the peculiar
attributes of the family. Now, however, unfortunately, men were not
of one mind as to the exact idea signified. Some declared, with much
heraldic warmth, that it was an address to the savages, calling on
them to take care of their patron; while others, with whom I myself
am inclined to agree, averred with equal certainty that it was an
advice to the people at large, especially to those inclined to rebel
against the aristocracy of the county, that they should "beware the
Gresham." The latter signification would betoken strength--so said
the holders of this doctrine; the former weakness. Now the Greshams
were ever a strong people, and never addicted to a false humility.

We will not pretend to decide the question. Alas! either construction
was now equally unsuited to the family fortunes. Such changes had
taken place in England since the Greshams had founded themselves that
no savage could any longer in any way protect them; they must protect
themselves like common folk, or live unprotected. Nor now was it
necessary that any neighbour should shake in his shoes when the
Gresham frowned. It would have been to be wished that the present
Gresham himself could have been as indifferent to the frowns of some
of his neighbours.

But the old symbols remained, and may such symbols long remain among
us; they are still lovely and fit to be loved. They tell us of the
true and manly feelings of other times; and to him who can read
aright, they explain more fully, more truly than any written history
can do, how Englishmen have become what they are. England is not yet
a commercial country in the sense in which that epithet is used for
her; and let us still hope that she will not soon become so. She
might surely as well be called feudal England, or chivalrous England.
If in western civilised Europe there does exist a nation among whom
there are high signors, and with whom the owners of the land are
the true aristocracy, the aristocracy that is trusted as being best
and fittest to rule, that nation is the English. Choose out the ten
leading men of each great European people. Choose them in France, in
Austria, Sardinia, Prussia, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Spain (?), and
then select the ten in England whose names are best known as those of
leading statesmen; the result will show in which country there still
exists the closest attachment to, the sincerest trust in, the old
feudal and now so-called landed interests.

England a commercial country! Yes; as Venice was. She may excel
other nations in commerce, but yet it is not that in which she most
prides herself, in which she most excels. Merchants as such are not
the first men among us; though it perhaps be open, barely open, to
a merchant to become one of them. Buying and selling is good and
necessary; it is very necessary, and may, possibly, be very good; but
it cannot be the noblest work of man; and let us hope that it may not
in our time be esteemed the noblest work of an Englishman.

Greshamsbury Park was very large; it lay on the outside of the angle
formed by the village street, and stretched away on two sides without
apparent limit or boundaries visible from the village road or house.
Indeed, the ground on this side was so broken up into abrupt hills,
and conical-shaped, oak-covered excrescences, which were seen peeping
up through and over each other, that the true extent of the park was
much magnified to the eye. It was very possible for a stranger to get
into it and to find some difficulty in getting out again by any of
its known gates; and such was the beauty of the landscape, that a
lover of scenery would be tempted thus to lose himself.

I have said that on one side lay the kennels, and this will give
me an opportunity of describing here one especial episode, a long
episode, in the life of the existing squire. He had once represented
his county in Parliament, and when he ceased to do so he still felt
an ambition to be connected in some peculiar way with that county's
greatness; he still desired that Gresham of Greshamsbury should be
something more in East Barsetshire than Jackson of the Grange, or
Baker of Mill Hill, or Bateson of Annesgrove. They were all his
friends, and very respectable country gentlemen; but Mr Gresham of
Greshamsbury should be more than this: even he had enough of ambition
to be aware of such a longing. Therefore, when an opportunity
occurred he took to hunting the county.

For this employment he was in every way well suited--unless it was in
the matter of finance. Though he had in his very earliest manly years
given such great offence by indifference to his family politics,
and had in a certain degree fostered the ill-feeling by contesting
the county in opposition to the wishes of his brother squires,
nevertheless, he bore a loved and popular name. Men regretted that he
should not have been what they wished him to be, that he should not
have been such as was the old squire; but when they found that such
was the case, that he could not be great among them as a politician,
they were still willing that he should be great in any other way if
there were county greatness for which he was suited. Now he was known
as an excellent horseman, as a thorough sportsman, as one knowing in
dogs, and tender-hearted as a sucking mother to a litter of young
foxes; he had ridden in the county since he was fifteen, had a fine
voice for a view-hallo, knew every hound by name, and could wind a
horn with sufficient music for all hunting purposes; moreover, he had
come to his property, as was well known through all Barsetshire, with
a clear income of fourteen thousand a year.

Thus, when some old worn-out master of hounds was run to ground,
about a year after Mr Gresham's last contest for the county, it
seemed to all parties to be a pleasant and rational arrangement that
the hounds should go to Greshamsbury. Pleasant, indeed, to all except
the Lady Arabella; and rational, perhaps, to all except the squire
himself.

All this time he was already considerably encumbered. He had spent
much more than he should have done, and so indeed had his wife, in
those two splendid years in which they had figured as great among the
great ones of the earth. Fourteen thousand a year ought to have been
enough to allow a member of Parliament with a young wife and two or
three children to live in London and keep up their country family
mansion; but then the de Courcys were very great people, and Lady
Arabella chose to live as she had been accustomed to do, and as her
sister-in-law the countess lived: now Lord de Courcy had much more
than fourteen thousand a year. Then came the three elections, with
their vast attendant cost, and then those costly expedients to which
gentlemen are forced to have recourse who have lived beyond their
income, and find it impossible so to reduce their establishments as
to live much below it. Thus when the hounds came to Greshamsbury, Mr
Gresham was already a poor man.

Lady Arabella said much to oppose their coming; but Lady Arabella,
though it could hardly be said of her that she was under her
husband's rule, certainly was not entitled to boast that she had him
under hers. She then made her first grand attack as to the furniture
in Portman Square; and was then for the first time specially informed
that the furniture there was not matter of much importance, as she
would not in future be required to move her family to that residence
during the London seasons. The sort of conversations which grew from
such a commencement may be imagined. Had Lady Arabella worried her
lord less, he might perhaps have considered with more coolness the
folly of encountering so prodigious an increase to the expense of his
establishment; had he not spent so much money in a pursuit which his
wife did not enjoy, she might perhaps have been more sparing in her
rebukes as to his indifference to her London pleasures. As it was,
the hounds came to Greshamsbury, and Lady Arabella did go to London
for some period in each year, and the family expenses were by no
means lessened.

The kennels, however, were now again empty. Two years previous to the
time at which our story begins, the hounds had been carried off to
the seat of some richer sportsman. This was more felt by Mr Gresham
than any other misfortune which he had yet incurred. He had been
master of hounds for ten years, and that work he had at any rate done
well. The popularity among his neighbours which he had lost as a
politician he had regained as a sportsman, and he would fain have
remained autocratic in the hunt, had it been possible. But he so
remained much longer than he should have done, and at last they went
away, not without signs and sounds of visible joy on the part of Lady
Arabella.

But we have kept the Greshamsbury tenantry waiting under the
oak-trees by far too long. Yes; when young Frank came of age there
was still enough left at Greshamsbury, still means enough at the
squire's disposal, to light one bonfire, to roast, whole in its skin,
one bullock. Frank's virility came on him not quite unmarked, as
that of the parson's son might do, or the son of the neighbouring
attorney. It could still be reported in the Barsetshire Conservative
_Standard_ that "The beards wagged all" at Greshamsbury, now as they
had done for many centuries on similar festivals. Yes; it was so
reported. But this, like so many other such reports, had but a shadow
of truth in it. "They poured the liquor in," certainly, those who
were there; but the beards did not wag as they had been wont to wag
in former years. Beards won't wag for the telling. The squire was at
his wits' end for money, and the tenants one and all had so heard.
Rents had been raised on them; timber had fallen fast; the lawyer
on the estate was growing rich; tradesmen in Barchester, nay, in
Greshamsbury itself, were beginning to mutter; and the squire himself
would not be merry. Under such circumstances the throats of a
tenantry will still swallow, but their beards will not wag.

"I minds well," said Farmer Oaklerath to his neighbour, "when the
squoire hisself comed of age. Lord love 'ee! There was fun going that
day. There was more yale drank then than's been brewed at the big
house these two years. T'old squoire was a one'er."

"And I minds when squoire was borned; minds it well," said an old
farmer sitting opposite. "Them was the days! It an't that long ago
neither. Squoire a'nt come o' fifty yet; no, nor an't nigh it, though
he looks it. Things be altered at Greemsbury"--such was the rural
pronunciation--"altered sadly, neebor Oaklerath. Well, well; I'll
soon be gone, I will, and so it an't no use talking; but arter paying
one pound fifteen for them acres for more nor fifty year, I didn't
think I'd ever be axed for forty shilling."

Such was the style of conversation which went on at the various
tables. It had certainly been of a very different tone when the
squire was born, when he came of age, and when, just two years
subsequently, his son had been born. On each of these events similar
rural fêtes had been given, and the squire himself had on these
occasions been frequent among his guests. On the first, he had been
carried round by his father, a whole train of ladies and nurses
following. On the second, he had himself mixed in all the sports, the
gayest of the gay, and each tenant had squeezed his way up to the
lawn to get a sight of the Lady Arabella, who, as was already known,
was to come from Courcy Castle to Greshamsbury to be their mistress.
It was little they any of them cared now for the Lady Arabella. On
the third, he himself had borne his child in his arms as his father
had before borne him; he was then in the zenith of his pride, and
though the tenantry whispered that he was somewhat less familiar with
them than of yore, that he had put on somewhat too much of the de
Courcy airs, still he was their squire, their master, the rich man
in whose hand they lay. The old squire was then gone, and they were
proud of the young member and his lady bride in spite of a little
hauteur. None of them were proud of him now.

He walked once round among the guests, and spoke a few words of
welcome at each table; and as he did so the tenants got up and bowed
and wished health to the old squire, happiness to the young one, and
prosperity to Greshamsbury; but, nevertheless, it was but a tame
affair.

There were also other visitors, of the gentle sort, to do honour to
the occasion; but not such swarms, not such a crowd at the mansion
itself and at the houses of the neighbouring gentry as had always
been collected on these former gala doings. Indeed, the party at
Greshamsbury was not a large one, and consisted chiefly of Lady de
Courcy and her suite. Lady Arabella still kept up, as far as she was
able, her close connexion with Courcy Castle. She was there as much
as possible, to which Mr Gresham never objected; and she took her
daughters there whenever she could, though, as regarded the two elder
girls, she was interfered with by Mr Gresham, and not unfrequently by
the girls themselves. Lady Arabella had a pride in her son, though
he was by no means her favourite child. He was, however, the heir of
Greshamsbury, of which fact she was disposed to make the most, and
he was also a fine gainly open-hearted young man, who could not but
be dear to any mother. Lady Arabella did love him dearly, though she
felt a sort of disappointment in regard to him, seeing that he was
not so much like a de Courcy as he should have been. She did love him
dearly; and, therefore, when he came of age she got her sister-in-law
and all the Ladies Amelia, Rosina etc., to come to Greshamsbury; and
she also, with some difficulty, persuaded the Honourable Georges and
the Honourable Johns to be equally condescending. Lord de Courcy
himself was in attendance at the Court--or said that he was--and Lord
Porlock, the eldest son, simply told his aunt when he was invited
that he never bored himself with those sort of things.

Then there were the Bakers, and the Batesons, and the Jacksons, who
all lived near and returned home at night; there was the Reverend
Caleb Oriel, the High-Church rector, with his beautiful sister,
Patience Oriel; there was Mr Yates Umbleby, the attorney and agent;
and there was Dr Thorne, and the doctor's modest, quiet-looking
little niece, Miss Mary.




CHAPTER II

Long, Long Ago


As Dr Thorne is our hero--or I should rather say my hero, a privilege
of selecting for themselves in this respect being left to all my
readers--and as Miss Mary Thorne is to be our heroine, a point on
which no choice whatsoever is left to any one, it is necessary that
they shall be introduced and explained and described in a proper,
formal manner. I quite feel that an apology is due for beginning a
novel with two long dull chapters full of description. I am perfectly
aware of the danger of such a course. In so doing I sin against the
golden rule which requires us all to put our best foot foremost, the
wisdom of which is fully recognised by novelists, myself among the
number. It can hardly be expected that any one will consent to go
through with a fiction that offers so little of allurement in its
first pages; but twist it as I will I cannot do otherwise. I find
that I cannot make poor Mr Gresham hem and haw and turn himself
uneasily in his arm-chair in a natural manner till I have said why
he is uneasy. I cannot bring in my doctor speaking his mind freely
among the bigwigs till I have explained that it is in accordance
with his usual character to do so. This is unartistic on my part,
and shows want of imagination as well as want of skill. Whether or
not I can atone for these faults by straightforward, simple, plain
story-telling--that, indeed, is very doubtful.

Dr Thorne belonged to a family in one sense as good, and at any rate
as old, as that of Mr Gresham; and much older, he was apt to boast,
than that of the de Courcys. This trait in his character is mentioned
first, as it was the weakness for which he was most conspicuous. He
was second cousin to Mr Thorne of Ullathorne, a Barsetshire squire
living in the neighbourhood of Barchester, and who boasted that his
estate had remained in his family, descending from Thorne to Thorne,
longer than had been the case with any other estate or any other
family in the county.

But Dr Thorne was only a second cousin; and, therefore, though he was
entitled to talk of the blood as belonging to some extent to himself,
he had no right to lay claim to any position in the county other than
such as he might win for himself if he chose to locate himself in it.
This was a fact of which no one was more fully aware than our doctor
himself. His father, who had been first cousin of a former Squire
Thorne, had been a clerical dignitary in Barchester, but had been
dead now many years. He had had two sons; one he had educated as a
medical man, but the other, and the younger, whom he had intended
for the Bar, had not betaken himself in any satisfactory way to any
calling. This son had been first rusticated from Oxford, and then
expelled; and thence returning to Barchester, had been the cause to
his father and brother of much suffering.

Old Dr Thorne, the clergyman, died when the two brothers were yet
young men, and left behind him nothing but some household and
other property of the value of about two thousand pounds, which he
bequeathed to Thomas, the elder son, much more than that having been
spent in liquidating debts contracted by the younger. Up to that time
there had been close harmony between the Ullathorne family and that
of the clergyman; but a month or two before the doctor's death--the
period of which we are speaking was about two-and-twenty years before
the commencement of our story--the then Mr Thorne of Ullathorne had
made it understood that he would no longer receive at his house his
cousin Henry, whom he regarded as a disgrace to the family.

Fathers are apt to be more lenient to their sons than uncles to their
nephews, or cousins to each other. Dr Thorne still hoped to reclaim
his black sheep, and thought that the head of his family showed an
unnecessary harshness in putting an obstacle in his way of doing so.
And if the father was warm in support of his profligate son, the
young medical aspirant was warmer in support of his profligate
brother. Dr Thorne, junior, was no roué himself, but perhaps, as a
young man, he had not sufficient abhorrence of his brother's vices.
At any rate, he stuck to him manfully; and when it was signified
in the Close that Henry's company was not considered desirable at
Ullathorne, Dr Thomas Thorne sent word to the squire that under such
circumstances his visits there would also cease.

This was not very prudent, as the young Galen had elected to
establish himself in Barchester, very mainly in expectation of the
help which his Ullathorne connexion would give him. This, however, in
his anger he failed to consider; he was never known, either in early
or in middle life, to consider in his anger those points which were
probably best worth his consideration. This, perhaps, was of the less
moment as his anger was of an unenduring kind, evaporating frequently
with more celerity than he could get the angry words out of his
mouth. With the Ullathorne people, however, he did establish a
quarrel sufficiently permanent to be of vital injury to his medical
prospects.

And then the father died, and the two brothers were left living
together with very little means between them. At this time there
were living, in Barchester, people of the name of Scatcherd. Of that
family, as then existing, we have only to do with two, a brother and
a sister. They were in a low rank of life, the one being a journeyman
stone-mason, and the other an apprentice to a straw-bonnet maker; but
they were, nevertheless, in some sort remarkable people. The sister
was reputed in Barchester to be a model of female beauty of the
strong and robuster cast, and had also a better reputation as being
a girl of good character and honest, womanly conduct. Both of her
beauty and of her reputation her brother was exceedingly proud, and
he was the more so when he learnt that she had been asked in marriage
by a decent master-tradesman in the city.

Roger Scatcherd had also a reputation, but not for beauty or
propriety of conduct. He was known for the best stone-mason in the
four counties, and as the man who could, on occasion, drink the most
alcohol in a given time in the same localities. As a workman, indeed,
he had higher reputate even than this: he was not only a good and
very quick stone-mason, but he had also a capacity for turning other
men into good stone-masons: he had a gift of knowing what a man could
and should do; and, by degrees, he taught himself what five, and ten,
and twenty--latterly, what a thousand and two thousand men might
accomplish among them: this, also, he did with very little aid
from pen and paper, with which he was not, and never became, very
conversant. He had also other gifts and other propensities. He could
talk in a manner dangerous to himself and others; he could persuade
without knowing that he did so; and being himself an extreme
demagogue, in those noisy times just prior to the Reform Bill,
he created a hubbub in Barchester of which he himself had had no
previous conception.

Henry Thorne among his other bad qualities had one which his friends
regarded as worse than all the others, and which perhaps justified
the Ullathorne people in their severity. He loved to consort with
low people. He not only drank--that might have been forgiven--but he
drank in tap-rooms with vulgar drinkers; so said his friends, and so
said his enemies. He denied the charge as being made in the plural
number, and declared that his only low co-reveller was Roger
Scatcherd. With Roger Scatcherd, at any rate, he associated, and
became as democratic as Roger was himself. Now the Thornes of
Ullathorne were of the very highest order of Tory excellence.

Whether or not Mary Scatcherd at once accepted the offer of the
respectable tradesman, I cannot say. After the occurrence of certain
events which must here shortly be told, she declared that she never
had done so. Her brother averred that she most positively had. The
respectable tradesman himself refused to speak on the subject.

It is certain, however, that Scatcherd, who had hitherto been silent
enough about his sister in those social hours which he passed with
his gentleman friend, boasted of the engagement when it was, as he
said, made; and then boasted also of the girl's beauty. Scatcherd, in
spite of his occasional intemperance, looked up in the world, and the
coming marriage of his sister was, he thought, suitable to his own
ambition for his family.

Henry Thorne had already heard of, and already seen, Mary Scatcherd;
but hitherto she had not fallen in the way of his wickedness. Now,
however, when he heard that she was to be decently married, the devil
tempted him to tempt her. It boots not to tell all the tale. It came
out clearly enough when all was told, that he made her most distinct
promises of marriage; he even gave her such in writing; and having
in this way obtained from her her company during some of her little
holidays--her Sundays or summer evenings--he seduced her. Scatcherd
accused him openly of having intoxicated her with drugs; and Thomas
Thorne, who took up the case, ultimately believed the charge. It
became known in Barchester that she was with child, and that the
seducer was Henry Thorne.

Roger Scatcherd, when the news first reached him, filled himself with
drink, and then swore that he would kill them both. With manly wrath,
however, he set forth, first against the man, and that with manly
weapons. He took nothing with him but his fists and a big stick as he
went in search of Henry Thorne.

The two brothers were then lodging together at a farm-house close
abutting on the town. This was not an eligible abode for a medical
practitioner; but the young doctor had not been able to settle
himself eligibly since his father's death; and wishing to put what
constraint he could upon his brother, had so located himself. To this
farm-house came Roger Scatcherd one sultry summer evening, his anger
gleaming from his bloodshot eyes, and his rage heightened to madness
by the rapid pace at which he had run from the city, and by the
ardent spirits which were fermenting within him.

At the very gate of the farm-yard, standing placidly with his
cigar in his mouth, he encountered Henry Thorne. He had thought
of searching for him through the whole premises, of demanding his
victim with loud exclamations, and making his way to him through
all obstacles. In lieu of that, there stood the man before him.

"Well, Roger, what's in the wind?" said Henry Thorne.

They were the last words he ever spoke. He was answered by a blow
from the blackthorn. A contest ensued, which ended in Scatcherd
keeping his word--at any rate, as regarded the worst offender. How
the fatal blow on the temple was struck was never exactly determined:
one medical man said it might have been done in a fight with a
heavy-headed stick; another thought that a stone had been used; a
third suggested a stone-mason's hammer. It seemed, however, to be
proved subsequently that no hammer was taken out, and Scatcherd
himself persisted in declaring that he had taken in his hand no
weapon but the stick. Scatcherd, however, was drunk; and even though
he intended to tell the truth, may have been mistaken. There were,
however, the facts that Thorne was dead; that Scatcherd had sworn
to kill him about an hour previously; and that he had without delay
accomplished his threat. He was arrested and tried for murder; all
the distressing circumstances of the case came out on the trial: he
was found guilty of manslaughter, and sentenced to be imprisoned for
six months. Our readers will probably think that the punishment was
too severe.

Thomas Thorne and the farmer were on the spot soon after Henry Thorne
had fallen. The brother was at first furious for vengeance against
his brother's murderer; but, as the facts came out, as he learnt
what had been the provocation given, what had been the feelings of
Scatcherd when he left the city, determined to punish him who had
ruined his sister, his heart was changed. Those were trying days for
him. It behoved him to do what in him lay to cover his brother's
memory from the obloquy which it deserved; it behoved him also to
save, or to assist to save, from undue punishment the unfortunate man
who had shed his brother's blood; and it behoved him also, at least
so he thought, to look after that poor fallen one whose misfortunes
were less merited than those either of his brother or of hers.

And he was not the man to get through these things lightly, or with
as much ease as he perhaps might conscientiously have done. He would
pay for the defence of the prisoner; he would pay for the defence of
his brother's memory; and he would pay for the poor girl's comforts.
He would do this, and he would allow no one to help him. He stood
alone in the world, and insisted on so standing. Old Mr Thorne
of Ullathorne offered again to open his arms to him; but he had
conceived a foolish idea that his cousin's severity had driven his
brother on to his bad career, and he would consequently accept no
kindness from Ullathorne. Miss Thorne, the old squire's daughter--a
cousin considerably older than himself, to whom he had at one time
been much attached--sent him money; and he returned it to her under a
blank cover. He had still enough for those unhappy purposes which he
had in hand. As to what might happen afterwards, he was then mainly
indifferent.

The affair made much noise in the county, and was inquired into
closely by many of the county magistrates; by none more closely than
by John Newbold Gresham, who was then alive. Mr Gresham was greatly
taken with the energy and justice shown by Dr Thorne on the occasion;
and when the trial was over, he invited him to Greshamsbury. The
visit ended in the doctor establishing himself in that village.

We must return for a moment to Mary Scatcherd. She was saved from the
necessity of encountering her brother's wrath, for that brother was
under arrest for murder before he could get at her. Her immediate
lot, however, was a cruel one. Deep as was her cause for anger
against the man who had so inhumanly used her, still it was natural
that she should turn to him with love rather than with aversion. To
whom else could she in such plight look for love? When, therefore,
she heard that he was slain, her heart sank within her; she turned
her face to the wall, and laid herself down to die: to die a double
death, for herself and the fatherless babe that was now quick within
her.

But, in fact, life had still much to offer, both to her and to her
child. For her it was still destined that she should, in a distant
land, be the worthy wife of a good husband, and the happy mother of
many children. For that embryo one it was destined--but that may not
be so quickly told: to describe her destiny this volume has yet to be
written.

Even in those bitterest days God tempered the wind to the shorn
lamb. Dr Thorne was by her bedside soon after the bloody tidings
had reached her, and did for her more than either her lover or her
brother could have done. When the baby was born, Scatcherd was still
in prison, and had still three months' more confinement to undergo.
The story of her great wrongs and cruel usage was much talked of,
and men said that one who had been so injured should be regarded as
having in nowise sinned at all.

One man, at any rate, so thought. At twilight, one evening, Thorne
was surprised by a visit from a demure Barchester hardware dealer,
whom he did not remember ever to have addressed before. This was the
former lover of poor Mary Scatcherd. He had a proposal to make, and
it was this:--if Mary would consent to leave the country at once, to
leave it without notice from her brother, or talk or éclat on the
matter, he would sell all that he had, marry her, and emigrate.
There was but one condition; she must leave her baby behind her.
The hardware-man could find it in his heart to be generous, to be
generous and true to his love; but he could not be generous enough to
father the seducer's child.

"I could never abide it, sir, if I took it," said he; "and she,--why
in course she would always love it the best."

In praising his generosity, who can mingle any censure for such
manifest prudence? He would still make her the wife of his bosom,
defiled in the eyes of the world as she had been; but she must be
to him the mother of his own children, not the mother of another's
child.

And now again our doctor had a hard task to win through. He saw at
once that it was his duty to use his utmost authority to induce the
poor girl to accept such an offer. She liked the man; and here was
opened to her a course which would have been most desirable, even
before her misfortune. But it is hard to persuade a mother to part
with her first babe; harder, perhaps, when the babe had been so
fathered and so born than when the world has shone brightly on its
earliest hours. She at first refused stoutly: she sent a thousand
loves, a thousand thanks, profusest acknowledgements for his
generosity to the man who showed her that he loved her so well; but
Nature, she said, would not let her leave her child.

"And what will you do for her here, Mary?" said the doctor. Poor Mary
replied to him with a deluge of tears.

"She is my niece," said the doctor, taking up the tiny infant in his
huge hands; "she is already the nearest thing, the only thing that I
have in this world. I am her uncle, Mary. If you will go with this
man I will be father to her and mother to her. Of what bread I eat,
she shall eat; of what cup I drink, she shall drink. See, Mary, here
is the Bible;" and he covered the book with his hand. "Leave her to
me, and by this word she shall be my child."

The mother consented at last; left her baby with the doctor, married,
and went to America. All this was consummated before Roger Scatcherd
was liberated from jail. Some conditions the doctor made. The first
was, that Scatcherd should not know his sister's child was thus
disposed of. Dr Thorne, in undertaking to bring up the baby, did not
choose to encounter any tie with persons who might hereafter claim
to be the girl's relations on the other side. Relations she would
undoubtedly have had none had she been left to live or die as a
workhouse bastard; but should the doctor succeed in life, should he
ultimately be able to make this girl the darling of his own house,
and then the darling of some other house, should she live and win the
heart of some man whom the doctor might delight to call his friend
and nephew; then relations might spring up whose ties would not be
advantageous.

No man plumed himself on good blood more than Dr Thorne; no man had
greater pride in his genealogical tree, and his hundred and thirty
clearly proved descents from MacAdam; no man had a stronger theory
as to the advantage held by men who have grandfathers over those who
have none, or have none worth talking about. Let it not be thought
that our doctor was a perfect character. No, indeed; most far from
perfect. He had within him an inner, stubborn, self-admiring pride,
which made him believe himself to be better and higher than those
around him, and this from some unknown cause which he could hardly
explain to himself. He had a pride in being a poor man of a high
family; he had a pride in repudiating the very family of which he
was proud; and he had a special pride in keeping his pride silently
to himself. His father had been a Thorne, and his mother a Thorold.
There was no better blood to be had in England. It was in the
possession of such properties as these that he condescended to
rejoice; this man, with a man's heart, a man's courage, and a man's
humanity! Other doctors round the county had ditch-water in their
veins; he could boast of a pure ichor, to which that of the great
Omnium family was but a muddy puddle. It was thus that he loved to
excel his brother practitioners, he who might have indulged in the
pride of excelling them both in talent and in energy! We speak now
of his early days; but even in his maturer life, the man, though
mellowed, was the same.

This was the man who now promised to take to his bosom as his own
child a poor bastard whose father was already dead, and whose
mother's family was such as the Scatcherds! It was necessary that
the child's history should be known to none. Except to the mother's
brother it was an object of interest to no one. The mother had for
some short time been talked of; but now the nine-days' wonder was a
wonder no longer. She went off to her far-away home; her husband's
generosity was duly chronicled in the papers, and the babe was left
untalked of and unknown.

It was easy to explain to Scatcherd that the child had not lived.
There was a parting interview between the brother and sister in the
jail, during which, with real tears and unaffected sorrow, the mother
thus accounted for the offspring of her shame. Then she started,
fortunate in her coming fortunes; and the doctor took with him his
charge to the new country in which they were both to live. There he
found for her a fitting home till she should be old enough to sit
at his table and live in his bachelor house; and no one but old Mr
Gresham knew who she was, or whence she had come.

Then Roger Scatcherd, having completed his six months' confinement,
came out of prison.

Roger Scatcherd, though his hands were now red with blood, was to be
pitied. A short time before the days of Henry Thorne's death he had
married a young wife in his own class of life, and had made many
resolves that henceforward his conduct should be such as might become
a married man, and might not disgrace the respectable brother-in-law
he was about to have given him. Such was his condition when he first
heard of his sister's plight. As has been said, he filled himself
with drink and started off on the scent of blood.

During his prison days his wife had to support herself as she might.
The decent articles of furniture which they had put together were
sold; she gave up their little house, and, bowed down by misery, she
also was brought near to death. When he was liberated he at once got
work; but those who have watched the lives of such people know how
hard it is for them to recover lost ground. She became a mother
immediately after his liberation, and when her child was born they
were in direst want; for Scatcherd was again drinking, and his
resolves were blown to the wind.

The doctor was then living at Greshamsbury. He had gone over there
before the day on which he undertook the charge of poor Mary's baby,
and soon found himself settled as the Greshamsbury doctor. This
occurred very soon after the birth of the young heir. His predecessor
in this career had "bettered" himself, or endeavoured to do so, by
seeking the practice of some large town, and Lady Arabella, at a very
critical time, was absolutely left with no other advice than that of
a stranger, picked up, as she declared to Lady de Courcy, somewhere
about Barchester jail, or Barchester court-house, she did not know
which.

Of course Lady Arabella could not suckle the young heir herself.
Ladies Arabella never can. They are gifted with the powers of being
mothers, but not nursing-mothers. Nature gives them bosoms for show,
but not for use. So Lady Arabella had a wet-nurse. At the end of six
months the new doctor found Master Frank was not doing quite so well
as he should do; and after a little trouble it was discovered that
the very excellent young woman who had been sent express from Courcy
Castle to Greshamsbury--a supply being kept up on the lord's demesne
for the family use--was fond of brandy. She was at once sent back to
the castle, of course; and, as Lady de Courcy was too much in dudgeon
to send another, Dr Thorne was allowed to procure one. He thought of
the misery of Roger Scatcherd's wife, thought also of her health,
and strength, and active habits; and thus Mrs Scatcherd became the
foster-mother to young Frank Gresham.

One other episode we must tell of past times. Previous to his
father's death, Dr Thorne was in love. Nor had he altogether sighed
and pleaded in vain; though it had not quite come to that, that the
young lady's friends, or even the young lady herself, had actually
accepted his suit. At that time his name stood well in Barchester.
His father was a prebendary; his cousins and his best friends were
the Thornes of Ullathorne, and the lady, who shall be nameless, was
not thought to be injudicious in listening to the young doctor. But
when Henry Thorne went so far astray, when the old doctor died, when
the young doctor quarrelled with Ullathorne, when the brother was
killed in a disgraceful quarrel, and it turned out that the physician
had nothing but his profession and no settled locality in which to
exercise it; then, indeed, the young lady's friends thought that she
was injudicious, and the young lady herself had not spirit enough, or
love enough, to be disobedient. In those stormy days of the trial she
told Dr Thorne that perhaps it would be wise that they should not see
each other any more.

Dr Thorne, so counselled, at such a moment,--so informed then, when
he most required comfort from his love, at once swore loudly that he
agreed with her. He rushed forth with a bursting heart, and said to
himself that the world was bad, all bad. He saw the lady no more;
and, if I am rightly informed, never again made matrimonial overtures
to any one.




CHAPTER III

Dr Thorne


And thus Dr Thorne became settled for life in the little village of
Greshamsbury. As was then the wont with many country practitioners,
and as should be the wont with them all if they consulted their own
dignity a little less and the comforts of their customers somewhat
more, he added the business of a dispensing apothecary to that of
physician. In doing so, he was of course much reviled. Many people
around him declared that he could not truly be a doctor, or, at any
rate, a doctor to be so called; and his brethren in the art living
around him, though they knew that his diplomas, degrees, and
certificates were all _en règle_, rather countenanced the report.
There was much about this new-comer which did not endear him to his
own profession. In the first place he was a new-comer, and, as such,
was of course to be regarded by other doctors as being _de trop_.
Greshamsbury was only fifteen miles from Barchester, where there was
a regular dépôt of medical skill, and but eight from Silverbridge,
where a properly established physician had been in residence for the
last forty years. Dr Thorne's predecessor at Greshamsbury had been a
humble-minded general practitioner, gifted with a due respect for
the physicians of the county; and he, though he had been allowed to
physic the servants, and sometimes the children of Greshamsbury, had
never had the presumption to put himself on a par with his betters.

Then, also, Dr Thorne, though a graduated physician, though entitled
beyond all dispute to call himself a doctor, according to all the
laws of all the colleges, made it known to the East Barsetshire
world, very soon after he had seated himself at Greshamsbury, that
his rate of pay was to be seven-and-sixpence a visit within a
circuit of five miles, with a proportionally increased charge at
proportionally increased distances. Now there was something low,
mean, unprofessional, and democratic in this; so, at least, said the
children of Æsculapius gathered together in conclave at Barchester.
In the first place, it showed that this Thorne was always thinking
of his money, like an apothecary, as he was; whereas, it would have
behoved him, as a physician, had he had the feelings of a physician
under his hat, to have regarded his own pursuits in a purely
philosophical spirit, and to have taken any gain which might have
accrued as an accidental adjunct to his station in life. A physician
should take his fee without letting his left hand know what his right
hand was doing; it should be taken without a thought, without a look,
without a move of the facial muscles; the true physician should
hardly be aware that the last friendly grasp of the hand had been
made more precious by the touch of gold. Whereas, that fellow Thorne
would lug out half a crown from his breeches pocket and give it in
change for a ten shilling piece. And then it was clear that this man
had no appreciation of the dignity of a learned profession. He might
constantly be seen compounding medicines in the shop, at the left
hand of his front door; not making experiments philosophically in
materia medica for the benefit of coming ages--which, if he did, he
should have done in the seclusion of his study, far from profane
eyes--but positively putting together common powders for rural
bowels, or spreading vulgar ointments for agricultural ailments.

A man of this sort was not fit society for Dr Fillgrave of
Barchester. That must be admitted. And yet he had been found to be
fit society for the old squire of Greshamsbury, whose shoe-ribbons Dr
Fillgrave would not have objected to tie; so high did the old squire
stand in the county just previous to his death. But the spirit of the
Lady Arabella was known by the medical profession of Barsetshire, and
when that good man died it was felt that Thorne's short tenure of
Greshamsbury favour was already over. The Barsetshire regulars were,
however, doomed to disappointment. Our doctor had already contrived
to endear himself to the heir; and though there was not even then
much personal love between him and the Lady Arabella, he kept his
place at the great house unmoved, not only in the nursery and in the
bedrooms, but also at the squire's dining-table.

Now there was in this, it must be admitted, quite enough to make him
unpopular with his brethren; and this feeling was soon shown in a
marked and dignified manner. Dr Fillgrave, who had certainly the
most respectable professional connexion in the county, who had a
reputation to maintain, and who was accustomed to meet, on almost
equal terms, the great medical baronets from the metropolis at the
houses of the nobility--Dr Fillgrave declined to meet Dr Thorne in
consultation. He exceedingly regretted, he said, most exceedingly,
the necessity which he felt of doing so: he had never before had
to perform so painful a duty; but, as a duty which he owed to his
profession, he must perform it. With every feeling of respect for
Lady ----, a sick guest at Greshamsbury--and for Mr Gresham, he must
decline to attend in conjunction with Dr Thorne. If his services
could be made available under any other circumstances, he would go to
Greshamsbury as fast as post-horses could carry him.

Then, indeed, there was war in Barsetshire. If there was on Dr
Thorne's cranium one bump more developed than another, it was that of
combativeness. Not that the doctor was a bully, or even pugnacious,
in the usual sense of the word; he had no disposition to provoke a
fight, no propense love of quarrelling; but there was that in him
which would allow him to yield to no attack. Neither in argument nor
in contest would he ever allow himself to be wrong; never at least to
any one but to himself; and on behalf of his special hobbies, he was
ready to meet the world at large.

It will therefore be understood, that when such a gauntlet was thus
thrown in his very teeth by Dr Fillgrave, he was not slow to take it
up. He addressed a letter to the Barsetshire Conservative _Standard_,
in which he attacked Dr Fillgrave with some considerable acerbity.
Dr Fillgrave responded in four lines, saying that on mature
consideration he had made up his mind not to notice any remarks
that might be made on him by Dr Thorne in the public press. The
Greshamsbury doctor then wrote another letter, more witty and much
more severe than the last; and as this was copied into the Bristol,
Exeter, and Gloucester papers, Dr Fillgrave found it very difficult
to maintain the magnanimity of his reticence. It is sometimes
becoming enough for a man to wrap himself in the dignified toga of
silence, and proclaim himself indifferent to public attacks; but it
is a sort of dignity which it is very difficult to maintain. As well
might a man, when stung to madness by wasps, endeavour to sit in his
chair without moving a muscle, as endure with patience and without
reply the courtesies of a newspaper opponent. Dr Thorne wrote a third
letter, which was too much for medical flesh and blood to bear. Dr
Fillgrave answered it, not, indeed, in his own name, but in that of
a brother doctor; and then the war raged merrily. It is hardly too
much to say that Dr Fillgrave never knew another happy hour. Had he
dreamed of what materials was made that young compounder of doses at
Greshamsbury he would have met him in consultation, morning, noon,
and night, without objection; but having begun the war, he was
constrained to go on with it: his brethren would allow him no
alternative. Thus he was continually being brought up to the fight,
as a prize-fighter may be seen to be, who is carried up round after
round, without any hope on his own part, and who, in each round,
drops to the ground before the very wind of his opponent's blows.

But Dr Fillgrave, though thus weak himself, was backed in practice
and in countenance by nearly all his brethren in the county. The
guinea fee, the principle of _giving_ advice and of selling no
medicine, the great resolve to keep a distinct barrier between
the physician and the apothecary, and, above all, the hatred of
the contamination of a bill, were strong in the medical mind of
Barsetshire. Dr Thorne had the provincial medical world against him,
and so he appealed to the metropolis. The _Lancet_ took the matter up
in his favour, but the _Journal of Medical Science_ was against him;
the _Weekly Chirurgeon_, noted for its medical democracy, upheld him
as a medical prophet, but the _Scalping Knife_, a monthly periodical
got up in dead opposition to the _Lancet_, showed him no mercy. So
the war went on, and our doctor, to a certain extent, became a noted
character.

He had, moreover, other difficulties to encounter in his professional
career. It was something in his favour that he understood his
business; something that he was willing to labour at it with energy;
and resolved to labour at it conscientiously. He had also other
gifts, such as conversational brilliancy, an aptitude for true
good fellowship, firmness in friendship, and general honesty of
disposition, which stood him in stead as he advanced in life. But,
at his first starting, much that belonged to himself personally was
against him. Let him enter what house he would, he entered it with a
conviction, often expressed to himself, that he was equal as a man to
the proprietor, equal as a human being to the proprietress. To age he
would allow deference, and to special recognised talent--at least so
he said; to rank also, he would pay that respect which was its clear
and recognised prerogative; he would let a lord walk out of a room
before him if he did not happen to forget it; in speaking to a duke
he would address him as his Grace; and he would in no way assume a
familiarity with bigger men than himself, allowing to the bigger man
the privilege of making the first advances. But beyond this he would
admit that no man should walk the earth with his head higher than his
own.

He did not talk of these things much; he offended no rank by boasts
of his own equality; he did not absolutely tell the Earl de Courcy in
words, that the privilege of dining at Courcy Castle was to him no
greater than the privilege of dining at Courcy Parsonage; but there
was that in his manner that told it. The feeling in itself was
perhaps good, and was certainly much justified by the manner in which
he bore himself to those below him in rank; but there was folly in
the resolution to run counter to the world's recognised rules on such
matters; and much absurdity in his mode of doing so, seeing that at
heart he was a thorough Conservative. It is hardly too much to say
that he naturally hated a lord at first sight; but, nevertheless, he
would have expended his means, his blood, and spirit, in fighting for
the upper house of Parliament.

Such a disposition, until it was thoroughly understood, did not tend
to ingratiate him with the wives of the country gentlemen among whom
he had to look for practice. And then, also, there was not much in
his individual manner to recommend him to the favour of ladies. He
was brusque, authoritative, given to contradiction, rough though
never dirty in his personal belongings, and inclined to indulge
in a sort of quiet raillery, which sometimes was not thoroughly
understood. People did not always know whether he was laughing
at them or with them; and some people were, perhaps, inclined to
think that a doctor should not laugh at all when called in to act
doctorially.

When he was known, indeed, when the core of the fruit had been
reached, when the huge proportions of that loving trusting heart had
been learned, and understood, and appreciated, when that honesty had
been recognised, that manly, and almost womanly tenderness had been
felt, then, indeed, the doctor was acknowledged to be adequate in his
profession. To trifling ailments he was too often brusque. Seeing
that he accepted money for the cure of such, he should, we may say,
have cured them without an offensive manner. So far he is without
defence. But to real suffering no one found him brusque; no patient
lying painfully on a bed of sickness ever thought him rough.

Another misfortune was, that he was a bachelor. Ladies think, and
I, for one, think that ladies are quite right in so thinking, that
doctors should be married men. All the world feels that a man when
married acquires some of the attributes of an old woman--he becomes,
to a certain extent, a motherly sort of being; he acquires a
conversance with women's ways and women's wants, and loses the wilder
and offensive sparks of his virility. It must be easier to talk to
such a one about Matilda's stomach, and the growing pains in Fanny's
legs, than to a young bachelor. This impediment also stood much in Dr
Thorne's way during his first years at Greshamsbury.

But his wants were not at first great; and though his ambition was
perhaps high, it was not of an impatient nature. The world was his
oyster; but, circumstanced as he was, he knew that it was not for him
to open it with his lancet all at once. He had bread to earn, which
he must earn wearily; he had a character to make, which must come
slowly; it satisfied his soul that, in addition to his immortal
hopes, he had a possible future in this world to which he could look
forward with clear eyes, and advance with a heart that would know no
fainting.

On his first arrival at Greshamsbury he had been put by the squire
into a house, which he still occupied when that squire's grandson
came of age. There were two decent, commodious, private houses in the
village--always excepting the rectory, which stood grandly in its own
grounds, and, therefore, was considered as ranking above the village
residences--of these two Dr Thorne had the smaller. They stood
exactly at the angle before described, on the outer side of it, and
at right angles to each other. They both possessed good stables and
ample gardens; and it may be as well to specify, that Mr Umbleby, the
agent and lawyer to the estate, occupied the larger one.

Here Dr Thorne lived for eleven or twelve years, all alone; and
then for ten or eleven more with his niece, Mary Thorne. Mary was
thirteen when she came to take up permanent abode as mistress of the
establishment--or, at any rate, to act as the only mistress which the
establishment possessed. This advent greatly changed the tenor of
the doctor's ways. He had been before pure bachelor; not a room in
his house had been comfortably furnished; he at first commenced in a
makeshift sort of way, because he had not at his command the means of
commencing otherwise; and he had gone on in the same fashion, because
the exact time had never come at which it was imperative in him to
set his house in order. He had had no fixed hour for his meals, no
fixed place for his books, no fixed wardrobe for his clothes. He had
a few bottles of good wine in his cellar, and occasionally asked a
brother bachelor to take a chop with him; but beyond this he had
touched very little on the cares of housekeeping. A slop-bowl full of
strong tea, together with bread, and butter, and eggs, was produced
for him in the morning, and he expected that at whatever hour he
might arrive in the evening, some food should be presented to him
wherewith to satisfy the cravings of nature; if, in addition to this,
he had another slop-bowl of tea in the evening, he got all that he
ever required, or all, at least, that he ever demanded.

But when Mary came, or rather, when she was about to come, things
were altogether changed at the doctor's. People had hitherto
wondered--and especially Mrs Umbleby--how a gentleman like Dr Thorne
could continue to live in so slovenly a manner; and how people again
wondered, and again especially Mrs Umbleby, how the doctor could
possibly think it necessary to put such a lot of furniture into a
house because a little chit of a girl of twelve years of age was
coming to live with him.

Mrs Umbleby had great scope for her wonder. The doctor made a
thorough revolution in his household, and furnished his house from
the ground to the roof completely. He painted--for the first time
since the commencement of his tenancy--he papered, he carpeted, and
curtained, and mirrored, and linened, and blanketed, as though a Mrs
Thorne with a good fortune were coming home to-morrow; and all for a
girl of twelve years old. "And how," said Mrs Umbleby, to her friend
Miss Gushing, "how did he find out what to buy?" as though the doctor
had been brought up like a wild beast, ignorant of the nature of
tables and chairs, and with no more developed ideas of drawing-room
drapery than an hippopotamus.

To the utter amazement of Mrs Umbleby and Miss Gushing, the doctor
did it all very well. He said nothing about it to any one--he never
did say much about such things--but he furnished his house well and
discreetly; and when Mary Thorne came home from her school at Bath,
to which she had been taken some six years previously, she found
herself called upon to be the presiding genius of a perfect paradise.

It has been said that the doctor had managed to endear himself to the
new squire before the old squire's death, and that, therefore, the
change at Greshamsbury had had no professional ill effects upon him.
Such was the case at the time; but, nevertheless, all did not go
smoothly in the Greshamsbury medical department. There was six or
seven years' difference in age between Mr Gresham and the doctor,
and, moreover, Mr Gresham was young for his age, and the doctor old;
but, nevertheless, there was a very close attachment between them
early in life. This was never thoroughly sundered, and, backed by
this, the doctor did maintain himself for some years before the
fire of Lady Arabella's artillery. But drops falling, if they fall
constantly, will bore through a stone.

Dr Thorne's pretensions, mixed with his subversive professional
democratic tendencies, his seven-and-sixpenny visits, added to his
utter disregard of Lady Arabella's airs, were too much for her
spirit. He brought Frank through his first troubles, and that at
first ingratiated her; he was equally successful with the early
dietary of Augusta and Beatrice; but, as his success was obtained
in direct opposition to the Courcy Castle nursery principles, this
hardly did much in his favour. When the third daughter was born,
he at once declared that she was a very weakly flower, and sternly
forbade the mother to go to London. The mother, loving her babe,
obeyed; but did not the less hate the doctor for the order, which
she firmly believed was given at the instance and express dictation
of Mr Gresham. Then another little girl came into the world, and the
doctor was more imperative than ever as to the nursery rules and the
excellence of country air. Quarrels were thus engendered, and Lady
Arabella was taught to believe that this doctor of her husband's
was after all no Solomon. In her husband's absence she sent for Dr
Fillgrave, giving very express intimation that he would not have to
wound either his eyes or dignity by encountering his enemy; and she
found Dr Fillgrave a great comfort to her.

Then Dr Thorne gave Mr Gresham to understand that, under such
circumstances, he could not visit professionally at Greshamsbury
any longer. The poor squire saw there was no help for it, and though
he still maintained his friendly connexion with his neighbour,
the seven-and-sixpenny visits were at an end. Dr Fillgrave from
Barchester, and the gentleman at Silverbridge, divided the
responsibility between them, and the nursery principles of Courcy
Castle were again in vogue at Greshamsbury.

So things went on for years, and those years were years of sorrow.
We must not ascribe to our doctor's enemies the sufferings, and
sickness, and deaths that occurred. The four frail little ones that
died would probably have been taken had Lady Arabella been more
tolerant of Dr Thorne. But the fact was, that they did die; and that
the mother's heart then got the better of the woman's pride, and Lady
Arabella humbled herself before Dr Thorne. She humbled herself, or
would have done so, had the doctor permitted her. But he, with his
eyes full of tears, stopped the utterance of her apology, took her
two hands in his, pressed them warmly, and assured her that his joy
in returning would be great, for the love that he bore to all that
belonged to Greshamsbury. And so the seven-and-sixpenny visits were
recommenced; and the great triumph of Dr Fillgrave came to an end.

Great was the joy in the Greshamsbury nursery when the second change
took place. Among the doctor's attributes, not hitherto mentioned,
was an aptitude for the society of children. He delighted to talk to
children, and to play with them. He would carry them on his back,
three or four at a time, roll with them on the ground, race with
them in the garden, invent games for them, contrive amusements in
circumstances which seemed quite adverse to all manner of delight;
and, above all, his physic was not nearly so nasty as that which came
from Silverbridge.

He had a great theory as to the happiness of children; and though
he was not disposed altogether to throw over the precepts of
Solomon--always bargaining that he should, under no circumstances,
be himself the executioner--he argued that the principal duty which
a parent owed to a child was to make him happy. Not only was the man
to be made happy--the future man, if that might be possible--but the
existing boy was to be treated with equal favour; and his happiness,
so said the doctor, was of much easier attainment.

"Why struggle after future advantage at the expense of present pain,
seeing that the results were so very doubtful?" Many an opponent of
the doctor had thought to catch him on the hip when so singular a
doctrine was broached; but they were not always successful. "What!"
said his sensible enemies, "is Johnny not to be taught to read
because he does not like it?" "Johnny must read by all means," would
the doctor answer; "but is it necessary that he should not like it?
If the preceptor have it in him, may not Johnny learn, not only to
read, but to like to learn to read?"

"But," would say his enemies, "children must be controlled." "And so
must men also," would say the doctor. "I must not steal your peaches,
nor make love to your wife, nor libel your character. Much as I
might wish through my natural depravity to indulge in such vices,
I am debarred from them without pain, and I may almost say without
unhappiness."

And so the argument went on, neither party convincing the other. But,
in the meantime, the children of the neighbourhood became very fond
of Dr Thorne.

Dr Thorne and the squire were still fast friends, but circumstances
had occurred, spreading themselves now over a period of many years,
which almost made the poor squire uneasy in the doctor's company. Mr
Gresham owed a large sum of money, and he had, moreover, already sold
a portion of his property. Unfortunately it had been the pride of the
Greshams that their acres had descended from one to another without
an entail, so that each possessor of Greshamsbury had had the full
power to dispose of the property as he pleased. Any doubt as to
its going to the male heir had never hitherto been felt. It had
occasionally been encumbered by charges for younger children; but
these charges had been liquidated, and the property had come down
without any burden to the present squire. Now a portion of this had
been sold, and it had been sold to a certain degree through the
agency of Dr Thorne.

This made the squire an unhappy man. No man loved his family name and
honour, his old family blazon and standing more thoroughly than he
did; he was every whit a Gresham at heart; but his spirit had been
weaker than that of his forefathers; and, in his days, for the first
time, the Greshams were to go to the wall! Ten years before the
beginning of our story it had been necessary to raise a large sum of
money to meet and pay off pressing liabilities, and it was found that
this could be done with more material advantage by selling a portion
of the property than in any other way. A portion of it, about a third
of the whole in value, was accordingly sold.

Boxall Hill lay half-way between Greshamsbury and Barchester, and was
known as having the best partridge shooting in the county; as having
on it also a celebrated fox cover, Boxall Gorse, held in very high
repute by Barsetshire sportsmen. There was no residence on the
immediate estate, and it was altogether divided from the remainder of
the Greshamsbury property. This, with many inward and outward groans,
Mr Gresham permitted to be sold.

It was sold, and sold well, by private contract to a native of
Barchester, who, having risen from the world's ranks, had made for
himself great wealth. Somewhat of this man's character must hereafter
be told; it will suffice to say that he relied for advice in money
matters upon Dr Thorne, and that at Dr Thorne's suggestion he had
purchased Boxall Hill, partridge-shooting and gorse cover all
included. He had not only bought Boxall Hill, but had subsequently
lent the squire large sums of money on mortgage, in all which
transactions the doctor had taken part. It had therefore come to pass
that Mr Gresham was not unfrequently called upon to discuss his money
affairs with Dr Thorne, and occasionally to submit to lectures and
advice which might perhaps as well have been omitted.

So much for Dr Thorne. A few words must still be said about Miss Mary
before we rush into our story; the crust will then have been broken,
and the pie will be open to the guests. Little Miss Mary was kept at
a farm-house till she was six; she was then sent to school at Bath,
and transplanted to the doctor's newly furnished house a little more
than six years after that. It must not be supposed that he had lost
sight of his charge during her earlier years. He was much too well
aware of the nature of the promise which he had made to the departing
mother to do that. He had constantly visited his little niece, and
long before the first twelve years of her life were over had lost all
consciousness of his promise, and of his duty to the mother, in the
stronger ties of downright personal love for the only creature that
belonged to him.

When Mary came home the doctor was like a child in his glee. He
prepared surprises for her with as much forethought and trouble as
though he were contriving mines to blow up an enemy. He took her
first into the shop, and then into the kitchen, thence to the
dining-rooms, after that to his and her bedrooms, and so on till
he came to the full glory of the new drawing-room, enhancing the
pleasure by little jokes, and telling her that he should never dare
to come into the last paradise without her permission, and not then
till he had taken off his boots. Child as she was, she understood the
joke, and carried it on like a little queen; and so they soon became
the firmest of friends.

But though Mary was a queen, it was still necessary that she should
be educated. Those were the earlier days in which Lady Arabella had
humbled herself, and to show her humility she invited Mary to share
the music-lessons of Augusta and Beatrice at the great house. A
music-master from Barchester came over three times a week, and
remained for three hours, and if the doctor chose to send his girl
over, she could pick up what was going on without doing any harm.
So said the Lady Arabella. The doctor with many thanks and with no
hesitation, accepted the offer, merely adding, that he had perhaps
better settle separately with Signor Cantabili, the music-master. He
was very much obliged to Lady Arabella for giving his little girl
permission to join her lessons to those of the Miss Greshams.

It need hardly be said that the Lady Arabella was on fire at once.
Settle with Signor Cantabili! No, indeed; she would do that; there
must be no expense whatever incurred in such an arrangement on Miss
Thorne's account! But here, as in most things, the doctor carried his
point. It being the time of the lady's humility, she could not make
as good a fight as she would otherwise have done; and thus she
found, to her great disgust, that Mary Thorne was learning music in
her schoolroom on equal terms, as regarded payment, with her own
daughters. The arrangement having been made could not be broken,
especially as the young lady in nowise made herself disagreeable; and
more especially as the Miss Greshams themselves were very fond of
her.

And so Mary Thorne learnt music at Greshamsbury, and with her music
she learnt other things also; how to behave herself among girls of
her own age; how to speak and talk as other young ladies do; how to
dress herself, and how to move and walk. All which, she, being quick
to learn, learnt without trouble at the great house. Something also
she learnt of French, seeing that the Greshamsbury French governess
was always in the room.

And then, some few years later, there came a rector, and a rector's
sister; and with the latter Mary studied German, and French also.
From the doctor himself she learnt much; the choice, namely, of
English books for her own reading, and habits of thought somewhat
akin to his own, though modified by the feminine softness of her
individual mind.

And so Mary Thorne grew up and was educated. Of her personal
appearance it certainly is my business as an author to say something.
She is my heroine, and, as such, must necessarily be very beautiful;
but, in truth, her mind and inner qualities are more clearly distinct
to my brain than her outward form and features. I know that she was
far from being tall, and far from being showy; that her feet and
hands were small and delicate; that her eyes were bright when looked
at, but not brilliant so as to make their brilliancy palpably
visible to all around her; her hair was dark brown, and worn very
plainly brushed from her forehead; her lips were thin, and her
mouth, perhaps, in general inexpressive, but when she was eager in
conversation it would show itself to be animated with curves of
wondrous energy; and, quiet as she was in manner, sober and demure as
was her usual settled appearance, she could talk, when the fit came
on her, with an energy which in truth surprised those who did not
know her; aye, and sometimes those who did. Energy! nay, it was
occasionally a concentration of passion, which left her for the
moment perfectly unconscious of all other cares but solicitude for
that subject which she might then be advocating.

All her friends, including the doctor, had at times been made unhappy
by this vehemence of character; but yet it was to that very vehemence
that she owed it that all her friends so loved her. It had once
nearly banished her in early years from the Greshamsbury schoolroom;
and yet it ended in making her claim to remain there so strong, that
Lady Arabella could no longer oppose it, even when she had the wish
to do so.

A new French governess had lately come to Greshamsbury, and was, or
was to be, a great pet with Lady Arabella, having all the great gifts
with which a governess can be endowed, and being also a protégée
from the castle. The castle, in Greshamsbury parlance, always meant
that of Courcy. Soon after this a valued little locket belonging to
Augusta Gresham was missing. The French governess had objected to its
being worn in the schoolroom, and it had been sent up to the bedroom
by a young servant-girl, the daughter of a small farmer on the
estate. The locket was missing, and after a while, a considerable
noise in the matter having been made, was found, by the diligence of
the governess, somewhere among the belongings of the English servant.
Great was the anger of Lady Arabella, loud were the protestations
of the girl, mute the woe of her father, piteous the tears of her
mother, inexorable the judgment of the Greshamsbury world. But
something occurred, it matters now not what, to separate Mary Thorne
in opinion from that world at large. Out she then spoke, and to her
face accused the governess of the robbery. For two days Mary was in
disgrace almost as deep as that of the farmer's daughter. But she was
neither quiet nor dumb in her disgrace. When Lady Arabella would not
hear her, she went to Mr Gresham. She forced her uncle to move in the
matter. She gained over to her side, one by one, the potentates of
the parish, and ended by bringing Mam'selle Larron down on her knees
with a confession of the facts. From that time Mary Thorne was dear
to the tenantry of Greshamsbury; and specially dear at one small
household, where a rough-spoken father of a family was often heard to
declare, that for Miss Mary Thorne he'd face man or magistrate, duke
or devil.

And so Mary Thorne grew up under the doctor's eye, and at the
beginning of our tale she was one of the guests assembled at
Greshamsbury on the coming of age of the heir, she herself having
then arrived at the same period of her life.




CHAPTER IV

Lessons from Courcy Castle


It was the first of July, young Frank Gresham's birthday, and the
London season was not yet over; nevertheless, Lady de Courcy had
managed to get down into the country to grace the coming of age
of the heir, bringing with her all the Ladies Amelia, Rosina,
Margaretta, and Alexandrina, together with such of the Honourable
Johns and Georges as could be collected for the occasion.

The Lady Arabella had contrived this year to spend ten weeks in town,
which, by a little stretching, she made to pass for the season; and
had managed, moreover, at last to refurnish, not ingloriously, the
Portman Square drawing-room. She had gone up to London under the
pretext, imperatively urged, of Augusta's teeth--young ladies' teeth
are not unfrequently of value in this way;--and having received
authority for a new carpet, which was really much wanted, had made
such dexterous use of that sanction as to run up an upholsterer's
bill of six or seven hundred pounds. She had of course had her
carriage and horses; the girls of course had gone out; it had been
positively necessary to have a few friends in Portman Square;
and, altogether, the ten weeks had not been unpleasant, and not
inexpensive.

For a few confidential minutes before dinner, Lady de Courcy and her
sister-in-law sat together in the latter's dressing-room, discussing
the unreasonableness of the squire, who had expressed himself with
more than ordinary bitterness as to the folly--he had probably used
some stronger word--of these London proceedings.

"Heavens!" said the countess, with much eager animation; "what can
the man expect? What does he wish you to do?"

"He would like to sell the house in London, and bury us all here for
ever. Mind, I was there only for ten weeks."

"Barely time for the girls to get their teeth properly looked at! But
Arabella, what does he say?" Lady de Courcy was very anxious to learn
the exact truth of the matter, and ascertain, if she could, whether
Mr Gresham was really as poor as he pretended to be.

"Why, he said yesterday that he would have no more going to town at
all; that he was barely able to pay the claims made on him, and keep
up the house here, and that he would not--"

"Would not what?" asked the countess.

"Why, he said that he would not utterly ruin poor Frank."

"Ruin Frank!"

"That's what he said."

"But, surely, Arabella, it is not so bad as that? What possible
reason can there be for him to be in debt?"

"He is always talking of those elections."

"But, my dear, Boxall Hill paid all that off. Of course Frank will
not have such an income as there was when you married into the
family; we all know that. And whom will he have to thank but his
father? But Boxall Hill paid all those debts, and why should there be
any difficulty now?"

"It was those nasty dogs, Rosina," said the Lady Arabella, almost in
tears.

"Well, I for one never approved of the hounds coming to Greshamsbury.
When a man has once involved his property he should not incur any
expenses that are not absolutely necessary. That is a golden rule
which Mr Gresham ought to have remembered. Indeed, I put it to him
nearly in those very words; but Mr Gresham never did, and never will
receive with common civility anything that comes from me."

"I know, Rosina, he never did; and yet where would he have been
but for the de Courcys?" So exclaimed, in her gratitude, the Lady
Arabella; to speak the truth, however, but for the de Courcys, Mr
Gresham might have been at this moment on the top of Boxall Hill,
monarch of all he surveyed.

"As I was saying," continued the countess, "I never approved of the
hounds coming to Greshamsbury; but yet, my dear, the hounds can't
have eaten up everything. A man with ten thousand a year ought to be
able to keep hounds; particularly as he had a subscription."

"He says the subscription was little or nothing."

"That's nonsense, my dear. Now, Arabella, what does he do with his
money? That's the question. Does he gamble?"

"Well," said Lady Arabella, very slowly, "I don't think he does." If
the squire did gamble he must have done it very slyly, for he rarely
went away from Greshamsbury, and certainly very few men looking like
gamblers were in the habit of coming thither as guests. "I don't
think he does gamble." Lady Arabella put her emphasis on the word
gamble, as though her husband, if he might perhaps be charitably
acquitted of that vice, was certainly guilty of every other known in
the civilised world.

"I know he used," said Lady de Courcy, looking very wise, and rather
suspicious. She certainly had sufficient domestic reasons for
disliking the propensity; "I know he used; and when a man begins, he
is hardly ever cured."

"Well, if he does, I don't know it," said the Lady Arabella.

"The money, my dear, must go somewhere. What excuse does he give when
you tell him you want this and that--all the common necessaries of
life, that you have always been used to?"

"He gives no excuse; sometimes he says the family is so large."

"Nonsense! Girls cost nothing; there's only Frank, and he can't have
cost anything yet. Can he be saving money to buy back Boxall Hill?"

"Oh no!" said the Lady Arabella, quickly. "He is not saving anything;
he never did, and never will save, though he is so stingy to me. He
_is_ hard pushed for money, I know that."

"Then where has it gone?" said the Countess de Courcy, with a look of
stern decision.

"Heaven only knows! Now, Augusta is to be married. I must of course
have a few hundred pounds. You should have heard how he groaned when
I asked him for it. Heaven only knows where the money goes!" And the
injured wife wiped a piteous tear from her eye with her fine dress
cambric handkerchief. "I have all the sufferings and privations of
a poor man's wife, but I have none of the consolations. He has no
confidence in me; he never tells me anything; he never talks to
me about his affairs. If he talks to any one it is to that horrid
doctor."

"What, Dr Thorne?" Now the Countess de Courcy hated Dr Thorne with a
holy hatred.

"Yes; Dr Thorne. I believe that he knows everything; and advises
everything, too. Whatever difficulties poor Gresham may have, I do
believe Dr Thorne has brought them about. I do believe it, Rosina."

"Well, that is surprising. Mr Gresham, with all his faults, is
a gentleman; and how he can talk about his affairs with a low
apothecary like that, I, for one, cannot imagine. Lord de Courcy has
not always been to me all that he should have been; far from it." And
Lady de Courcy thought over in her mind injuries of a much graver
description than any that her sister-in-law had ever suffered; "but I
have never known anything like that at Courcy Castle. Surely Umbleby
knows all about it, doesn't he?"

"Not half so much as the doctor," said Lady Arabella.

The countess shook her head slowly; the idea of Mr Gresham, a country
gentleman of good estate like him, making a confidant of a country
doctor was too great a shock for her nerves; and for a while she was
constrained to sit silent before she could recover herself.

"One thing at any rate is certain, Arabella," said the countess,
as soon as she found herself again sufficiently composed to offer
counsel in a properly dictatorial manner. "One thing at any rate is
certain; if Mr Gresham be involved so deeply as you say, Frank has
but one duty before him. He must marry money. The heir of fourteen
thousand a year may indulge himself in looking for blood, as Mr
Gresham did, my dear"--it must be understood that there was very
little compliment in this, as the Lady Arabella had always conceived
herself to be a beauty--"or for beauty, as some men do," continued
the countess, thinking of the choice that the present Earl de Courcy
had made; "but Frank must marry money. I hope he will understand this
early; do make him understand this before he makes a fool of himself;
when a man thoroughly understands this, when he knows what his
circumstances require, why, the matter becomes easy to him. I hope
that Frank understands that he has no alternative. In his position he
must marry money."

But, alas! alas! Frank Gresham had already made a fool of himself.

"Well, my boy, I wish you joy with all my heart," said the Honourable
John, slapping his cousin on the back, as he walked round to the
stable-yard with him before dinner, to inspect a setter puppy of
peculiarly fine breed which had been sent to Frank as a birthday
present. "I wish I were an elder son; but we can't all have that
luck."

"Who wouldn't sooner be the younger son of an earl than the eldest
son of a plain squire?" said Frank, wishing to say something civil in
return for his cousin's civility.

"I wouldn't for one," said the Honourable John. "What chance have I?
There's Porlock as strong as a horse; and then George comes next. And
the governor's good for these twenty years." And the young man sighed
as he reflected what small hope there was that all those who were
nearest and dearest to him should die out of his way, and leave him
to the sweet enjoyment of an earl's coronet and fortune. "Now, you're
sure of your game some day; and as you've no brothers, I suppose the
squire'll let you do pretty well what you like. Besides, he's not so
strong as my governor, though he's younger."

Frank had never looked at his fortune in this light before, and was
so slow and green that he was not much delighted at the prospect now
that it was offered to him. He had always, however, been taught to
look to his cousins, the de Courcys, as men with whom it would be
very expedient that he should be intimate; he therefore showed no
offence, but changed the conversation.

"Shall you hunt with the Barsetshire this season, John? I hope you
will; I shall."

"Well, I don't know. It's very slow. It's all tillage here, or else
woodland. I rather fancy I shall go to Leicestershire when the
partridge-shooting is over. What sort of a lot do you mean to come
out with, Frank?"

Frank became a little red as he answered, "Oh, I shall have two," he
said; "that is, the mare I have had these two years, and the horse my
father gave me this morning."

"What! only those two? and the mare is nothing more than a pony."

"She is fifteen hands," said Frank, offended.

"Well, Frank, I certainly would not stand that," said the Honourable
John. "What, go out before the county with one untrained horse and a
pony; and you the heir to Greshamsbury!"

"I'll have him so trained before November," said Frank, "that
nothing in Barsetshire shall stop him. Peter says"--Peter was
the Greshamsbury stud-groom--"that he tucks up his hind legs
beautifully."

"But who the deuce would think of going to work with one horse; or
two either, if you insist on calling the old pony a huntress? I'll
put you up to a trick, my lad: if you stand that you'll stand
anything; and if you don't mean to go in leading-strings all your
life, now is the time to show it. There's young Baker--Harry Baker,
you know--he came of age last year, and he has as pretty a string of
nags as any one would wish to set eyes on; four hunters and a hack.
Now, if old Baker has four thousand a year it's every shilling he has
got."

This was true, and Frank Gresham, who in the morning had been made so
happy by his father's present of a horse, began to feel that hardly
enough had been done for him. It was true that Mr Baker had only four
thousand a year; but it was also true that he had no other child than
Harry Baker; that he had no great establishment to keep up; that he
owed a shilling to no one; and, also, that he was a great fool in
encouraging a mere boy to ape all the caprices of a man of wealth.
Nevertheless, for a moment, Frank Gresham did feel that, considering
his position, he was being treated rather unworthily.

"Take the matter in your own hands, Frank," said the Honourable John,
seeing the impression that he had made. "Of course the governor knows
very well that you won't put up with such a stable as that. Lord
bless you! I have heard that when he married my aunt, and that was
when he was about your age, he had the best stud in the whole county;
and then he was in Parliament before he was three-and-twenty."

"His father, you know, died when he was very young," said Frank.

"Yes; I know he had a stroke of luck that doesn't fall to everyone;
but--"

Young Frank's face grew dark now instead of red. When his cousin
submitted to him the necessity of having more than two horses for
his own use he could listen to him; but when the same monitor talked
of the chance of a father's death as a stroke of luck, Frank was
too much disgusted to be able to pretend to pass it over with
indifference. What! was he thus to think of his father, whose face
was always lighted up with pleasure when his boy came near to him,
and so rarely bright at any other time? Frank had watched his father
closely enough to be aware of this; he knew how his father delighted
in him; he had had cause to guess that his father had many troubles,
and that he strove hard to banish the memory of them when his son was
with him. He loved his father truly, purely, and thoroughly, liked to
be with him, and would be proud to be his confidant. Could he then
listen quietly while his cousin spoke of the chance of his father's
death as a stroke of luck?

"I shouldn't think it a stroke of luck, John. I should think it the
greatest misfortune in the world."

It is so difficult for a young man to enumerate sententiously a
principle of morality, or even an expression of ordinary good
feeling, without giving himself something of a ridiculous air,
without assuming something of a mock grandeur!

"Oh, of course, my dear fellow," said the Honourable John, laughing;
"that's a matter of course. We all understand that without saying it.
Porlock, of course, would feel exactly the same about the governor;
but if the governor were to walk, I think Porlock would console
himself with the thirty thousand a year."

"I don't know what Porlock would do; he's always quarrelling with my
uncle, I know. I only spoke of myself; I never quarrelled with my
father, and I hope I never shall."

"All right, my lad of wax, all right. I dare say you won't be tried;
but if you are, you'll find before six months are over, that it's a
very nice thing to master of Greshamsbury."

"I'm sure I shouldn't find anything of the kind."

"Very well, so be it. You wouldn't do as young Hatherly did, at
Hatherly Court, in Gloucestershire, when his father kicked the
bucket. You know Hatherly, don't you?"

"No; I never saw him."

"He's Sir Frederick now, and has, or had, one of the finest fortunes
in England, for a commoner; the most of it is gone now. Well, when he
heard of his governor's death, he was in Paris, but he went off to
Hatherly as fast as special train and post-horses would carry him,
and got there just in time for the funeral. As he came back to
Hatherly Court from the church, they were putting up the hatchment
over the door, and Master Fred saw that the undertakers had put at
the bottom 'Resurgam.' You know what that means?"

"Oh, yes," said Frank.

"'I'll come back again,'" said the Honourable John, construing the
Latin for the benefit of his cousin. "'No,' said Fred Hatherly,
looking up at the hatchment; 'I'm blessed if you do, old gentleman.
That would be too much of a joke; I'll take care of that.' So he
got up at night, and he got some fellows with him, and they climbed
up and painted out 'Resurgam,' and they painted into its place,
'Requiescat in pace;' which means, you know, 'you'd a great deal
better stay where you are.' Now I call that good. Fred Hatherly did
that as sure as--as sure as--as sure as anything."

Frank could not help laughing at the story, especially at his
cousin's mode of translating the undertaker's mottoes; and then they
sauntered back from the stables into the house to dress for dinner.

Dr Thorne had come to the house somewhat before dinner-time, at Mr
Gresham's request, and was now sitting with the squire in his own
book-room--so called--while Mary was talking to some of the girls
upstairs.

"I must have ten or twelve thousand pounds; ten at the very least,"
said the squire, who was sitting in his usual arm-chair, close to his
littered table, with his head supported on his hand, looking very
unlike the father of an heir of a noble property, who had that day
come of age.

It was the first of July, and of course there was no fire in the
grate; but, nevertheless, the doctor was standing with his back to
the fireplace, with his coat-tails over his arms, as though he were
engaged, now in summer as he so often was in winter, in talking, and
roasting his hinder person at the same time.

"Twelve thousand pounds! It's a very large sum of money."

"I said ten," said the squire.

"Ten thousand pounds is a very large sum of money. There is no doubt
he'll let you have it. Scatcherd will let you have it; but I know
he'll expect to have the title deeds."

"What! for ten thousand pounds?" said the squire. "There is not a
registered debt against the property but his own and Armstrong's."

"But his own is very large already."

"Armstrong's is nothing; about four-and-twenty thousand pounds."

"Yes; but he comes first, Mr Gresham."

"Well, what of that? To hear you talk, one would think that there was
nothing left of Greshamsbury. What's four-and-twenty thousand pounds?
Does Scatcherd know what rent-roll is?"

"Oh, yes, he knows it well enough: I wish he did not."

"Well, then, why does he make such a bother about a few thousand
pounds? The title-deeds, indeed!"

"What he means is, that he must have ample security to cover what he
has already advanced before he goes on. I wish to goodness you had
no further need to borrow. I did think that things were settled last
year."

"Oh if there's any difficulty, Umbleby will get it for me."

"Yes; and what will you have to pay for it?"

"I'd sooner pay double than be talked to in this way," said the
squire, angrily, and, as he spoke, he got up hurriedly from his
chair, thrust his hands into his trousers-pockets, walked quickly to
the window, and immediately walking back again, threw himself once
more into his chair.

"There are some things a man cannot bear, doctor," said he, beating
the devil's tattoo on the floor with one of his feet, "though God
knows I ought to be patient now, for I am made to bear a good many
things. You had better tell Scatcherd that I am obliged to him for
his offer, but that I will not trouble him."

The doctor during this little outburst had stood quite silent with
his back to the fireplace and his coat-tails hanging over his arms;
but though his voice said nothing, his face said much. He was very
unhappy; he was greatly grieved to find that the squire was so soon
again in want of money, and greatly grieved also to find that this
want had made him so bitter and unjust. Mr Gresham had attacked him;
but as he was determined not to quarrel with Mr Gresham, he refrained
from answering.

The squire also remained silent for a few minutes; but he was not
endowed with the gift of silence, and was soon, as it were, compelled
to speak again.

"Poor Frank!" said he. "I could yet be easy about everything if it
were not for the injury I have done him. Poor Frank!"

The doctor advanced a few paces from off the rug, and taking his hand
out of his pocket, he laid it gently on the squire's shoulder. "Frank
will do very well yet," said the he. "It is not absolutely necessary
that a man should have fourteen thousand pounds a year to be happy."

"My father left me the property entire, and I should leave it entire
to my son;--but you don't understand this."

The doctor did understand the feeling fully. The fact, on the other
hand, was that, long as he had known him, the squire did not
understand the doctor.

"I would you could, Mr Gresham," said the doctor, "so that your mind
might be happier; but that cannot be, and, therefore, I say again,
that Frank will do very well yet, although he will not inherit
fourteen thousand pounds a year; and I would have you say the same
thing to yourself."

"Ah! you don't understand it," persisted the squire. "You don't know
how a man feels when he--Ah, well! it's no use my troubling you with
what cannot be mended. I wonder whether Umbleby is about the place
anywhere?"

The doctor was again standing with his back against the
chimney-piece, and with his hands in his pockets.

"You did not see Umbleby as you came in?" again asked the squire.

"No, I did not; and if you will take my advice you will not see him
now; at any rate with reference to this money."

"I tell you I must get it from someone; you say Scatcherd won't let
me have it."

"No, Mr Gresham; I did not say that."

"Well, you said what was as bad. Augusta is to be married in
September, and the money must be had. I have agreed to give Moffat
six thousand pounds, and he is to have the money down in hard cash."

"Six thousand pounds," said the doctor. "Well, I suppose that is not
more than your daughter should have. But then, five times six are
thirty; thirty thousand pounds will be a large sum to make up."

The father thought to himself that his younger girls were but
children, and that the trouble of arranging their marriage portions
might well be postponed a while. Sufficient for the day is the evil
thereof.

"That Moffat is a griping, hungry fellow," said the squire. "I
suppose Augusta likes him; and, as regards money, it is a good
match."

"If Miss Gresham loves him, that is everything. I am not in love with
him myself; but then, I am not a young lady."

"The de Courcys are very fond of him. Lady de Courcy says that he is
a perfect gentleman, and thought very much of in London."

"Oh! if Lady de Courcy says that, of course, it's all right," said
the doctor, with a quiet sarcasm, that was altogether thrown away on
the squire.

The squire did not like any of the de Courcys; especially, he did not
like Lady de Courcy; but still he was accessible to a certain amount
of gratification in the near connexion which he had with the earl and
countess; and when he wanted to support his family greatness, would
sometimes weakly fall back upon the grandeur of Courcy Castle. It
was only when talking to his wife that he invariably snubbed the
pretensions of his noble relatives.

The two men after this remained silent for a while; and then the
doctor, renewing the subject for which he had been summoned into the
book-room, remarked, that as Scatcherd was now in the country--he
did not say, was now at Boxall Hill, as he did not wish to wound the
squire's ears--perhaps he had better go and see him, and ascertain
in what way this affair of the money might be arranged. There was
no doubt, he said, that Scatcherd would supply the sum required at
a lower rate of interest than that at which it could be procured
through Umbleby's means.

"Very well," said the squire. "I'll leave it in your hands, then. I
think ten thousand pounds will do. And now I'll dress for dinner."
And then the doctor left him.

Perhaps the reader will suppose after this that the doctor had some
pecuniary interest of his own in arranging the squire's loans; or, at
any rate, he will think that the squire must have so thought. Not in
the least; neither had he any such interest, nor did the squire think
that he had any. What Dr Thorne did in this matter the squire well
knew was done for love. But the squire of Greshamsbury was a great
man at Greshamsbury; and it behoved him to maintain the greatness of
his squirehood when discussing his affairs with the village doctor.
So much he had at any rate learnt from his contact with the de
Courcys.

And the doctor--proud, arrogant, contradictory, headstrong as he
was--why did he bear to be thus snubbed? Because he knew that the
squire of Greshamsbury, when struggling with debt and poverty,
required an indulgence for his weakness. Had Mr Gresham been in easy
circumstances, the doctor would by no means have stood so placidly
with his hands in his pockets, and have had Mr Umbleby thus thrown in
his teeth. The doctor loved the squire, loved him as his own oldest
friend; but he loved him ten times better as being in adversity than
he could ever have done had things gone well at Greshamsbury in his
time.

While this was going on downstairs, Mary was sitting upstairs with
Beatrice Gresham in the schoolroom. The old schoolroom, so called,
was now a sitting-room, devoted to the use of the grown-up young
ladies of the family, whereas one of the old nurseries was now the
modern schoolroom. Mary well knew her way to the sanctum, and,
without asking any questions, walked up to it when her uncle went to
the squire. On entering the room she found that Augusta and the Lady
Alexandrina were also there, and she hesitated for a moment at the
door.

"Come in, Mary," said Beatrice, "you know my cousin Alexandrina."
Mary came in, and having shaken hands with her two friends, was
bowing to the lady, when the lady condescended, put out her noble
hand, and touched Miss Thorne's fingers.

Beatrice was Mary's friend, and many heart-burnings and much mental
solicitude did that young lady give to her mother by indulging in
such a friendship. But Beatrice, with some faults, was true at heart,
and she persisted in loving Mary Thorne in spite of the hints which
her mother so frequently gave as to the impropriety of such an
affection.

Nor had Augusta any objection to the society of Miss Thorne. Augusta
was a strong-minded girl, with much of the de Courcy arrogance, but
quite as well inclined to show it in opposition to her mother as in
any other form. To her alone in the house did Lady Arabella show much
deference. She was now going to make a suitable match with a man of
large fortune, who had been procured for her as an eligible _parti_
by her aunt, the countess. She did not pretend, had never pretended,
that she loved Mr Moffat, but she knew, she said, that in the present
state of her father's affairs such a match was expedient. Mr Moffat
was a young man of very large fortune, in Parliament, inclined to
business, and in every way recommendable. He was not a man of birth,
to be sure; that was to be lamented;--in confessing that Mr Moffat
was not a man of birth, Augusta did not go so far as to admit that he
was the son of a tailor; such, however, was the rigid truth in this
matter--he was not a man of birth, that was to be lamented; but in
the present state of affairs at Greshamsbury, she understood well
that it was her duty to postpone her own feelings in some respect. Mr
Moffat would bring fortune; she would bring blood and connexion. And
as she so said, her bosom glowed with strong pride to think that she
would be able to contribute so much more towards the proposed future
partnership than her husband would do.

'Twas thus that Miss Gresham spoke of her match to her dear friends,
her cousins the de Courcys for instance, to Miss Oriel, her sister
Beatrice, and even to Mary Thorne. She had no enthusiasm, she
admitted, but she thought she had good judgment. She thought she
had shown good judgment in accepting Mr Moffat's offer, though she
did not pretend to any romance of affection. And, having so said,
she went to work with considerable mental satisfaction, choosing
furniture, carriages, and clothes, not extravagantly as her mother
would have done, not in deference to sterner dictates of the latest
fashion as her aunt would have done, with none of the girlish glee
in new purchases which Beatrice would have felt, but with sound
judgment. She bought things that were rich, for her husband was to be
rich, and she meant to avail herself of his wealth; she bought things
that were fashionable, for she meant to live in the fashionable
world; but she bought what was good, and strong, and lasting, and
worth its money.

Augusta Gresham had perceived early in life that she could not obtain
success either as an heiress, or as a beauty, nor could she shine
as a wit; she therefore fell back on such qualities as she had, and
determined to win the world as a strong-minded, useful woman. That
which she had of her own was blood; having that, she would in all
ways do what in her lay to enhance its value. Had she not possessed
it, it would to her mind have been the vainest of pretences.

When Mary came in, the wedding preparations were being discussed. The
number and names of the bridesmaids were being settled, the dresses
were on the tapis, the invitations to be given were talked over.
Sensible as Augusta was, she was not above such feminine cares; she
was, indeed, rather anxious that the wedding should go off well. She
was a little ashamed of her tailor's son, and therefore anxious that
things should be as brilliant as possible.

The bridesmaid's names had just been written on a card as Mary
entered the room. There were the Ladies Amelia, Rosina, Margaretta,
and Alexandrina of course at the head of it; then came Beatrice and
the twins; then Miss Oriel, who, though only a parson's sister, was
a person of note, birth, and fortune. After this there had been here
a great discussion whether or not there should be any more. If there
were to be one more there must be two. Now Miss Moffat had expressed
a direct wish, and Augusta, though she would much rather have done
without her, hardly knew how to refuse. Alexandrina--we hope we
may be allowed to drop the "lady" for the sake of brevity, for the
present scene only--was dead against such an unreasonable request.
"We none of us know her, you know; and it would not be comfortable."
Beatrice strongly advocated the future sister-in-law's acceptance
into the bevy; she had her own reasons; she was pained that Mary
Thorne should not be among the number, and if Miss Moffat were
accepted, perhaps Mary might be brought in as her colleague.

"If you have Miss Moffat," said Alexandrina, "you must have dear
Pussy too; and I really think that Pussy is too young; it will be
troublesome." Pussy was the youngest Miss Gresham, who was now only
eight years old, and whose real name was Nina.

"Augusta," said Beatrice, speaking with some slight hesitation, some
soupçon of doubt, before the high authority of her noble cousin, "if
you do have Miss Moffat would you mind asking Mary Thorne to join
her? I think Mary would like it, because, you see, Patience Oriel
is to be one; and we have known Mary much longer than we have known
Patience."

Then out and spake the Lady Alexandrina.

"Beatrice, dear, if you think of what you are asking, I am sure you
will see that it would not do; would not do at all. Miss Thorne is a
very nice girl, I am sure; and, indeed, what little I have seen of
her I highly approve. But, after all, who is she? Mamma, I know,
thinks that Aunt Arabella has been wrong to let her be here so much,
but--"

Beatrice became rather red in the face, and, in spite of the dignity
of her cousin, was preparing to defend her friend.

"Mind, I am not saying a word against Miss Thorne."

"If I am married before her, she shall be one of my bridesmaids,"
said Beatrice.

"That will probably depend on circumstances," said the Lady
Alexandrina; I find that I cannot bring my courteous pen to drop the
title. "But Augusta is very peculiarly situated. Mr Moffat is, you
see, not of the very highest birth; and, therefore, she should take
care that on her side every one about her is well born."

"Then you cannot have Miss Moffat," said Beatrice.

"No; I would not if I could help it," said the cousin.

"But the Thornes are as good a family as the Greshams," said
Beatrice. She had not quite the courage to say, as good as the de
Courcys.

"I dare say they are; and if this was Miss Thorne of Ullathorne,
Augusta probably would not object to her. But can you tell me who
Miss Mary Thorne is?"

"She is Dr Thorne's niece."

"You mean that she is called so; but do you know who her father
was, or who her mother was? I, for one, must own I do not. Mamma, I
believe, does, but--"

At this moment the door opened gently and Mary Thorne entered the
room.

It may easily be conceived, that while Mary was making her
salutations the three other young ladies were a little cast aback.
The Lady Alexandrina, however, quickly recovered herself, and, by her
inimitable presence of mind and facile grace of manner, soon put the
matter on a proper footing.

"We were discussing Miss Gresham's marriage," said she; "I am sure I
may mention to an acquaintance of so long standing as Miss Thorne,
that the first of September has been now fixed for the wedding."

Miss Gresham! Acquaintance of so long standing! Why, Mary and Augusta
Gresham had for years, we will hardly say now for how many, passed
their mornings together in the same schoolroom; had quarrelled, and
squabbled, and caressed and kissed, and been all but as sisters to
each other. Acquaintance indeed! Beatrice felt that her ears were
tingling, and even Augusta was a little ashamed. Mary, however,
knew that the cold words had come from a de Courcy, and not from a
Gresham, and did not, therefore, resent them.

"So it's settled, Augusta, is it?" said she; "the first of September.
I wish you joy with all my heart," and, coming round, she put her arm
over Augusta's shoulder and kissed her. The Lady Alexandrina could
not but think that the doctor's niece uttered her congratulations
very much as though she were speaking to an equal; very much as
though she had a father and mother of her own.

"You will have delicious weather," continued Mary. "September, and
the beginning of October, is the nicest time of the year. If I were
going honeymooning it is just the time of year I would choose."

"I wish you were, Mary," said Beatrice.

"So do not I, dear, till I have found some decent sort of a body to
honeymoon along with me. I won't stir out of Greshamsbury till I have
sent you off before me, at any rate. And where will you go, Augusta?"

"We have not settled that," said Augusta. "Mr Moffat talks of Paris."

"Who ever heard of going to Paris in September?" said the Lady
Alexandrina.

"Or who ever heard of the gentleman having anything to say on the
matter?" said the doctor's niece. "Of course Mr Moffat will go
wherever you are pleased to take him."

The Lady Alexandrina was not pleased to find how completely the
doctor's niece took upon herself to talk, and sit, and act at
Greshamsbury as though she was on a par with the young ladies of
the family. That Beatrice should have allowed this would not have
surprised her; but it was to be expected that Augusta would have
shown better judgment.

"These things require some tact in their management; some delicacy
when high interests are at stake," said she; "I agree with Miss
Thorne in thinking that, in ordinary circumstances, with ordinary
people, perhaps, the lady should have her way. Rank, however, has its
drawbacks, Miss Thorne, as well as its privileges."

"I should not object to the drawbacks," said the doctor's niece,
"presuming them to be of some use; but I fear I might fail in getting
on so well with the privileges."

The Lady Alexandrina looked at her as though not fully aware whether
she intended to be pert. In truth, the Lady Alexandrina was rather in
the dark on the subject. It was almost impossible, it was incredible,
that a fatherless, motherless, doctor's niece should be pert to an
earl's daughter at Greshamsbury, seeing that that earl's daughter was
the cousin of the Miss Greshams. And yet the Lady Alexandrina hardly
knew what other construction to put on the words she had just heard.

It was at any rate clear to her that it was not becoming that she
should just then stay any longer in that room. Whether she intended
to be pert or not, Miss Mary Thorne was, to say the least, very free.
The de Courcy ladies knew what was due to them--no ladies better;
and, therefore, the Lady Alexandrina made up her mind at once to go
to her own bedroom.

"Augusta," she said, rising slowly from her chair with much stately
composure, "it is nearly time to dress; will you come with me? We
have a great deal to settle, you know."

So she swam out of the room, and Augusta, telling Mary that she would
see her again at dinner, swam--no, tried to swim--after her. Miss
Gresham had had great advantages; but she had not been absolutely
brought up at Courcy Castle, and could not as yet quite assume the
Courcy style of swimming.

"There," said Mary, as the door closed behind the rustling muslins
of the ladies. "There, I have made an enemy for ever, perhaps two;
that's satisfactory."

"And why have you done it, Mary? When I am fighting your battles
behind your back, why do you come and upset it all by making the
whole family of the de Courcys dislike you? In such a matter as that,
they'll all go together."

"I am sure they will," said Mary; "whether they would be equally
unanimous in a case of love and charity, that, indeed, is another
question."

"But why should you try to make my cousin angry; you that ought to
have so much sense? Don't you remember what you were saying yourself
the other day, of the absurdity of combatting pretences which the
world sanctions?"

"I do, Trichy, I do; don't scold me now. It is so much easier to
preach than to practise. I do so wish I was a clergyman."

"But you have done so much harm, Mary."

"Have I?" said Mary, kneeling down on the ground at her friend's
feet. "If I humble myself very low; if I kneel through the whole
evening in a corner; if I put my neck down and let all your cousins
trample on it, and then your aunt, would not that make atonement? I
would not object to wearing sackcloth, either; and I'd eat a little
ashes--or, at any rate, I'd try."

"I know you're clever, Mary; but still I think you're a fool. I do,
indeed."

"I am a fool, Trichy, I do confess it; and am not a bit clever; but
don't scold me; you see how humble I am; not only humble but umble,
which I look upon to be the comparative, or, indeed, superlative
degree. Or perhaps there are four degrees; humble, umble, stumble,
tumble; and then, when one is absolutely in the dirt at their feet,
perhaps these big people won't wish one to stoop any further."

"Oh, Mary!"

"And, oh, Trichy! you don't mean to say I mayn't speak out before
you. There, perhaps you'd like to put your foot on my neck." And then
she put her head down to the footstool and kissed Beatrice's feet.

"I'd like, if I dared, to put my hand on your cheek and give you a
good slap for being such a goose."

"Do; do, Trichy: you shall tread on me, or slap me, or kiss me;
whichever you like."

"I can't tell you how vexed I am," said Beatrice; "I wanted to
arrange something."

"Arrange something! What? arrange what? I love arranging. I fancy
myself qualified to be an arranger-general in female matters. I
mean pots and pans, and such like. Of course I don't allude to
extraordinary people and extraordinary circumstances that require
tact, and delicacy, and drawbacks, and that sort of thing."

"Very well, Mary."

"But it's not very well; it's very bad if you look like that. Well,
my pet, there I won't. I won't allude to the noble blood of your
noble relatives either in joke or in earnest. What is it you want to
arrange, Trichy?"

"I want you to be one of Augusta's bridesmaids."

"Good heavens, Beatrice! Are you mad? What! Put me, even for a
morning, into the same category of finery as the noble blood from
Courcy Castle!"

"Patience is to be one."

"But that is no reason why Impatience should be another, and I should
be very impatient under such honours. No, Trichy; joking apart, do
not think of it. Even if Augusta wished it I should refuse. I should
be obliged to refuse. I, too, suffer from pride; a pride quite as
unpardonable as that of others: I could not stand with your four
lady-cousins behind your sister at the altar. In such a galaxy they
would be the stars and I--"

"Why, Mary, all the world knows that you are prettier than any of
them!"

"I am all the world's very humble servant. But, Trichy, I should
not object if I were as ugly as the veiled prophet and they all as
beautiful as Zuleika. The glory of that galaxy will be held to depend
not on its beauty, but on its birth. You know how they would look at
me; how they would scorn me; and there, in church, at the altar, with
all that is solemn round us, I could not return their scorn as I
might do elsewhere. In a room I'm not a bit afraid of them all." And
Mary was again allowing herself to be absorbed by that feeling of
indomitable pride, of antagonism to the pride of others, which she
herself in her cooler moments was the first to blame.

"You often say, Mary, that that sort of arrogance should be despised
and passed over without notice."

"So it should, Trichy. I tell you that as a clergyman tells you to
hate riches. But though the clergyman tells you so, he is not the
less anxious to be rich himself."

"I particularly wish you to be one of Augusta's bridesmaids."

"And I particularly wish to decline the honour; which honour has
not been, and will not be, offered to me. No, Trichy. I will not be
Augusta's bridesmaid, but--but--but--"

"But what, dearest?"

"But, Trichy, when some one else is married, when the new wing has
been built to a house that you know of--"

"Now, Mary, hold your tongue, or you know you'll make me angry."

"I do so like to see you angry. And when that time comes, when that
wedding does take place, then I will be a bridesmaid, Trichy. Yes!
even though I am not invited. Yes! though all the de Courcys in
Barsetshire should tread upon me and obliterate me. Though I should
be as dust among the stars, though I should creep up in calico among
their satins and lace, I will nevertheless be there; close, close to
the bride; to hold something for her, to touch her dress, to feel
that I am near to her, to--to--to--" and she threw her arms round her
companion, and kissed her over and over again. "No, Trichy; I won't
be Augusta's bridesmaid; I'll bide my time for bridesmaiding."

What protestations Beatrice made against the probability of such an
event as foreshadowed in her friend's promise we will not repeat. The
afternoon was advancing, and the ladies also had to dress for dinner,
to do honour to the young heir.




CHAPTER V

Frank Gresham's First Speech


We have said, that over and above those assembled in the house, there
came to the Greshamsbury dinner on Frank's birthday the Jacksons
of the Grange, consisting of Mr and Mrs Jackson; the Batesons from
Annesgrove, viz., Mr and Mrs Bateson, and Miss Bateson, their
daughter--an unmarried lady of about fifty; the Bakers of Mill Hill,
father and son; and Mr Caleb Oriel, the rector, with his beautiful
sister, Patience. Dr Thorne, and his niece Mary, we count among those
already assembled at Greshamsbury.

There was nothing very magnificent in the number of the guests thus
brought together to do honour to young Frank; but he, perhaps, was
called on to take a more prominent part in the proceedings, to be
made more of a hero than would have been the case had half the county
been there. In that case the importance of the guests would have been
so great that Frank would have got off with a half-muttered speech or
two; but now he had to make a separate oration to every one, and very
weary work he found it.

The Batesons, Bakers, and Jacksons were very civil; no doubt the more
so from an unconscious feeling on their part, that as the squire was
known to be a little out at elbows as regards money, any deficiency
on their part might be considered as owing to the present state
of affairs at Greshamsbury. Fourteen thousand a year will receive
honour; in that case there is no doubt, and the man absolutely
possessing it is not apt to be suspicious as to the treatment he may
receive; but the ghost of fourteen thousand a year is not always so
self-assured. Mr Baker, with his moderate income, was a very much
richer man than the squire; and, therefore, he was peculiarly forward
in congratulating Frank on the brilliancy of his prospects.

Poor Frank had hardly anticipated what there would be to do, and
before dinner was announced he was very tired of it. He had no warmer
feeling for any of the grand cousins than a very ordinary cousinly
love; and he had resolved, forgetful of birth and blood, and all
those gigantic considerations which, now that manhood had come upon
him, he was bound always to bear in mind,--he had resolved to sneak
out to dinner comfortably with Mary Thorne if possible; and if not
with Mary, then with his other love, Patience Oriel.

Great, therefore, was his consternation at finding that, after being
kept continually in the foreground for half an hour before dinner, he
had to walk out to the dining-room with his aunt the countess, and
take his father's place for the day at the bottom of the table.

"It will now depend altogether upon yourself, Frank, whether you
maintain or lose that high position in the county which has been held
by the Greshams for so many years," said the countess, as she walked
through the spacious hall, resolving to lose no time in teaching
to her nephew that great lesson which it was so imperative that he
should learn.

Frank took this as an ordinary lecture, meant to inculcate general
good conduct, such as old bores of aunts are apt to inflict on
youthful victims in the shape of nephews and nieces.

"Yes," said Frank; "I suppose so; and I mean to go along all square,
aunt, and no mistake. When I get back to Cambridge, I'll read like
bricks."

His aunt did not care two straws about his reading. It was not by
reading that the Greshams of Greshamsbury had held their heads up in
the county, but by having high blood and plenty of money. The blood
had come naturally to this young man; but it behoved him to look for
the money in a great measure himself. She, Lady de Courcy, could
doubtless help him; she might probably be able to fit him with a wife
who would bring her money onto his birth. His reading was a matter in
which she could in no way assist him; whether his taste might lead
him to prefer books or pictures, or dogs and horses, or turnips in
drills, or old Italian plates and dishes, was a matter which did not
much signify; with which it was not at all necessary that his noble
aunt should trouble herself.

"Oh! you are going to Cambridge again, are you? Well, if your father
wishes it;--though very little is ever gained now by a university
connexion."

"I am to take my degree in October, aunt; and I am determined, at any
rate, that I won't be plucked."

"Plucked!"

"No; I won't be plucked. Baker was plucked last year, and all because
he got into the wrong set at John's. He's an excellent fellow if you
knew him. He got among a set of men who did nothing but smoke and
drink beer. Malthusians, we call them."

"Malthusians!"

"'Malt,' you know, aunt, and 'use;' meaning that they drink beer. So
poor Harry Baker got plucked. I don't know that a fellow's any the
worse; however, I won't get plucked."

By this time the party had taken their place round the long board,
Mr Gresham sitting at the top, in the place usually occupied by Lady
Arabella. She, on the present occasion, sat next to her son on the
one side, as the countess did on the other. If, therefore, Frank now
went astray, it would not be from want of proper leading.

"Aunt, will you have some beef?" said he, as soon as the soup
and fish had been disposed of, anxious to perform the rites of
hospitality now for the first time committed to his charge.

"Do not be in a hurry, Frank," said his mother; "the servants will--"

"Oh! ah! I forgot; there are cutlets and those sort of things. My
hand is not in yet for this work, aunt. Well, as I was saying about
Cambridge--"

"Is Frank to go back to Cambridge, Arabella?" said the countess to
her sister-in-law, speaking across her nephew.

"So his father seems to say."

"Is it not a waste of time?" asked the countess.

"You know I never interfere," said the Lady Arabella; "I never liked
the idea of Cambridge myself at all. All the de Courcys were Christ
Church men; but the Greshams, it seems, were always at Cambridge."

"Would it not be better to send him abroad at once?"

"Much better, I would think," said the Lady Arabella; "but you know,
I never interfere: perhaps you would speak to Mr Gresham."

The countess smiled grimly, and shook her head with a decidedly
negative shake. Had she said out loud to the young man, "Your father
is such an obstinate, pig-headed, ignorant fool, that it is no use
speaking to him; it would be wasting fragrance on the desert air,"
she could not have spoken more plainly. The effect on Frank was this:
that he said to himself, speaking quite as plainly as Lady de Courcy
had spoken by her shake of the face, "My mother and aunt are always
down on the governor, always; but the more they are down on him the
more I'll stick to him. I certainly will take my degree: I will read
like bricks; and I'll begin to-morrow."

"Now will you take some beef, aunt?" This was said out loud.

The Countess de Courcy was very anxious to go on with her lesson
without loss of time; but she could not, while surrounded by guests
and servants, enunciate the great secret: "You must marry money,
Frank; that is your one great duty; that is the matter to be borne
steadfastly in your mind." She could not now, with sufficient weight
and impress of emphasis, pour this wisdom into his ears; the more
especially as he was standing up to his work of carving, and was deep
to his elbows in horse-radish, fat, and gravy. So the countess sat
silent while the banquet proceeded.

"Beef, Harry?" shouted the young heir to his friend Baker. "Oh! but I
see it isn't your turn yet. I beg your pardon, Miss Bateson," and he
sent to that lady a pound and a half of excellent meat, cut out with
great energy in one slice, about half an inch thick.

And so the banquet went on.

Before dinner Frank had found himself obliged to make numerous small
speeches in answer to the numerous individual congratulations of his
friends; but these were as nothing to the one great accumulated onus
of an oration which he had long known that he should have to sustain
after the cloth was taken away. Someone of course would propose his
health, and then there would be a clatter of voices, ladies and
gentlemen, men and girls; and when that was done he would find
himself standing on his legs, with the room about him, going round
and round and round.

Having had a previous hint of this, he had sought advice from his
cousin, the Honourable George, whom he regarded as a dab at speaking;
at least, so he had heard the Honourable George say of himself.

"What the deuce is a fellow to say, George, when he stands up after
the clatter is done?"

"Oh, it's the easiest thing in life," said the cousin. "Only remember
this: you mustn't get astray; that is what they call presence of
mind, you know. I'll tell you what I do, and I'm often called up, you
know; at our agriculturals I always propose the farmers' daughters:
well, what I do is this--I keep my eye steadfastly fixed on one of
the bottles, and never move it."

"On one of the bottles!" said Frank; "wouldn't it be better if I made
a mark of some old covey's head? I don't like looking at the table."

"The old covey'd move, and then you'd be done; besides there isn't
the least use in the world in looking up. I've heard people say, who
go to those sort of dinners every day of their lives, that whenever
anything witty is said; the fellow who says it is sure to be looking
at the mahogany."

"Oh, you know I shan't say anything witty; I'll be quite the other
way."

"But there's no reason you shouldn't learn the manner. That's the way
I succeeded. Fix your eye on one of the bottles; put your thumbs in
your waist-coat pockets; stick out your elbows, bend your knees a
little, and then go ahead."

"Oh, ah! go ahead; that's all very well; but you can't go ahead if
you haven't got any steam."

"A very little does it. There can be nothing so easy as your speech.
When one has to say something new every year about the farmers'
daughters, why one has to use one's brains a bit. Let's see: how will
you begin? Of course, you'll say that you are not accustomed to this
sort of thing; that the honour conferred upon you is too much for
your feelings; that the bright array of beauty and talent around
you quite overpowers your tongue, and all that sort of thing. Then
declare you're a Gresham to the backbone."

"Oh, they know that."

"Well, tell them again. Then of course you must say something about
us; or you'll have the countess as black as Old Nick."

"About my aunt, George? What on earth can I say about her when she's
there herself before me?"

"Before you! of course; that's just the reason. Oh, say any lie you
can think of; you must say something about us. You know we've come
down from London on purpose."

Frank, in spite of the benefit he was receiving from his cousin's
erudition, could not help wishing in his heart that they had all
remained in London; but this he kept to himself. He thanked his
cousin for his hints, and though he did not feel that the trouble
of his mind was completely cured, he began to hope that he might go
through the ordeal without disgracing himself.

Nevertheless, he felt rather sick at heart when Mr Baker got up to
propose the toast as soon as the servants were gone. The servants,
that is, were gone officially; but they were there in a body, men
and women, nurses, cooks, and ladies' maids, coachmen, grooms, and
footmen, standing in two doorways to hear what Master Frank would
say. The old housekeeper headed the maids at one door, standing
boldly inside the room; and the butler controlled the men at the
other, marshalling them back with a drawn corkscrew.

Mr Baker did not say much; but what he did say, he said well. They
had all seen Frank Gresham grow up from a child; and were now
required to welcome as a man amongst them one who was well qualified
to carry on the honour of that loved and respected family. His
young friend, Frank, was every inch a Gresham. Mr Baker omitted to
make mention of the infusion of de Courcy blood, and the countess,
therefore, drew herself up on her chair and looked as though she were
extremely bored. He then alluded tenderly to his own long friendship
with the present squire, Francis Newbold Gresham the elder; and sat
down, begging them to drink health, prosperity, long life, and an
excellent wife to their dear young friend, Francis Newbold Gresham
the younger.

There was a great jingling of glasses, of course; made the merrier
and the louder by the fact that the ladies were still there as
well as the gentlemen. Ladies don't drink toasts frequently; and,
therefore, the occasion coming rarely was the more enjoyed. "God
bless you, Frank!" "Your good health, Frank!" "And especially a
good wife, Frank!" "Two or three of them, Frank!" "Good health and
prosperity to you, Mr Gresham!" "More power to you, Frank, my boy!"
"May God bless you and preserve you, my dear boy!" and then a merry,
sweet, eager voice from the far end of the table, "Frank! Frank! Do
look at me, pray do Frank; I am drinking your health in real wine;
ain't I, papa?" Such were the addresses which greeted Mr Francis
Newbold Gresham the younger as he essayed to rise up on his feet for
the first time since he had come to man's estate.

When the clatter was at an end, and he was fairly on his legs, he
cast a glance before him on the table, to look for a decanter. He
had not much liked his cousin's theory of sticking to the bottle;
nevertheless, in the difficulty of the moment, it was well to have
any system to go by. But, as misfortune would have it, though the
table was covered with bottles, his eye could not catch one. Indeed,
his eye first could catch nothing, for the things swam before him,
and the guests all seemed to dance in their chairs.

Up he got, however, and commenced his speech. As he could not follow
his preceptor's advice as touching the bottle, he adopted his own
crude plan of "making a mark on some old covey's head," and therefore
looked dead at the doctor.

"Upon my word, I am very much obliged to you, gentlemen and ladies,
ladies and gentlemen, I should say, for drinking my health, and
doing me so much honour, and all that sort of thing. Upon my word I
am. Especially to Mr Baker. I don't mean you, Harry, you're not Mr
Baker."

"As much as you're Mr Gresham, Master Frank."

"But I am not Mr Gresham; and I don't mean to be for many a long year
if I can help it; not at any rate till we have had another coming of
age here."

"Bravo, Frank; and whose will that be?"

"That will be my son, and a very fine lad he will be; and I hope
he'll make a better speech than his father. Mr Baker said I was every
inch a Gresham. Well, I hope I am." Here the countess began to look
cold and angry. "I hope the day will never come when my father won't
own me for one."

"There's no fear, no fear," said the doctor, who was almost put out
of countenance by the orator's intense gaze. The countess looked
colder and more angry, and muttered something to herself about a
bear-garden.

"Gardez Gresham; eh? Harry! mind that when you're sticking in a gap
and I'm coming after you. Well, I am sure I am very obliged to you
for the honour you have all done me, especially the ladies, who don't
do this sort of thing on ordinary occasions. I wish they did; don't
you, doctor? And talking of the ladies, my aunt and cousins have come
all the way from London to hear me make this speech, which certainly
is not worth the trouble; but, all the same I am very much obliged
to them." And he looked round and made a little bow at the countess.
"And so I am to Mr and Mrs Jackson, and Mr and Mrs and Miss Bateson,
and Mr Baker--I'm not at all obliged to you, Harry--and to Mr Oriel
and Miss Oriel, and to Mr Umbleby, and to Dr Thorne, and to Mary--I
beg her pardon, I mean Miss Thorne." And then he sat down, amid the
loud plaudits of the company, and a string of blessings which came
from the servants behind him.

After this the ladies rose and departed. As she went, Lady Arabella,
kissed her son's forehead, and then his sisters kissed him, and one
or two of his lady-cousins; and then Miss Bateson shook him by the
hand. "Oh, Miss Bateson," said he, "I thought the kissing was to go
all round." So Miss Bateson laughed and went her way; and Patience
Oriel nodded at him, but Mary Thorne, as she quietly left the room,
almost hidden among the extensive draperies of the grander ladies,
hardly allowed her eyes to meet his.

He got up to hold the door for them as they passed; and as they went,
he managed to take Patience by the hand; he took her hand and pressed
it for a moment, but dropped it quickly, in order that he might go
through the same ceremony with Mary, but Mary was too quick for him.

"Frank," said Mr Gresham, as soon as the door was closed, "bring
your glass here, my boy;" and the father made room for his son close
beside himself. "The ceremony is now over, so you may have your place
of dignity." Frank sat himself down where he was told, and Mr Gresham
put his hand on his son's shoulder and half caressed him, while the
tears stood in his eyes. "I think the doctor is right, Baker, I think
he'll never make us ashamed of him."

"I am sure he never will," said Mr Baker.

"I don't think he ever will," said Dr Thorne.

The tones of the men's voices were very different. Mr Baker did not
care a straw about it; why should he? He had an heir of his own as
well as the squire; one also who was the apple of _his_ eye. But the
doctor,--he did care; he had a niece, to be sure, whom he loved,
perhaps as well as these men loved their sons; but there was room in
his heart also for young Frank Gresham.

After this small exposé of feeling they sat silent for a moment or
two. But silence was not dear to the heart of the Honourable John,
and so he took up the running.

"That's a niceish nag you gave Frank this morning," he said to his
uncle. "I was looking at him before dinner. He is a Monsoon, isn't
he?"

"Well I can't say I know how he was bred," said the squire. "He shows
a good deal of breeding."

"He's a Monsoon, I'm sure," said the Honourable John. "They've all
those ears, and that peculiar dip in the back. I suppose you gave a
goodish figure for him?"

"Not so very much," said the squire.

"He's a trained hunter, I suppose?"

"If not, he soon will be," said the squire.

"Let Frank alone for that," said Harry Baker.

"He jumps beautifully, sir," said Frank. "I haven't tried him myself,
but Peter made him go over the bar two or three times this morning."

The Honourable John was determined to give his cousin a helping hand,
as he considered it. He thought that Frank was very ill-used in being
put off with so incomplete a stud, and thinking also that the son had
not spirit enough to attack his father himself on the subject, the
Honourable John determined to do it for him.

"He's the making of a very nice horse, I don't doubt. I wish you had
a string like him, Frank."

Frank felt the blood rush to his face. He would not for worlds have
his father think that he was discontented, or otherwise than pleased
with the present he had received that morning. He was heartily
ashamed of himself in that he had listened with a certain degree of
complacency to his cousin's tempting; but he had no idea that the
subject would be repeated--and then repeated, too, before his father,
in a manner to vex him on such a day as this, before such people as
were assembled there. He was very angry with his cousin, and for a
moment forgot all his hereditary respect for a de Courcy.

"I tell you what, John," said he, "do you choose your day, some day
early in the season, and come out on the best thing you have, and
I'll bring, not the black horse, but my old mare; and then do you try
and keep near me. If I don't leave you at the back of Godspeed before
long, I'll give you the mare and the horse too."

The Honourable John was not known in Barsetshire as one of the most
forward of its riders. He was a man much addicted to hunting, as far
as the get-up of the thing was concerned; he was great in boots and
breeches; wondrously conversant with bits and bridles; he had quite
a collection of saddles; and patronised every newest invention for
carrying spare shoes, sandwiches, and flasks of sherry. He was
prominent at the cover side;--some people, including the master
of hounds, thought him perhaps a little too loudly prominent;
he affected a familiarity with the dogs, and was on speaking
acquaintance with every man's horse. But when the work was cut out,
when the pace began to be sharp, when it behoved a man either to ride
or visibly to decline to ride, then--so at least said they who had
not the de Courcy interest quite closely at heart--then, in those
heart-stirring moments, the Honourable John was too often found
deficient.

There was, therefore, a considerable laugh at his expense when Frank,
instigated to his innocent boast by a desire to save his father,
challenged his cousin to a trial of prowess. The Honourable John
was not, perhaps, as much accustomed to the ready use of his tongue
as was his honourable brother, seeing that it was not his annual
business to depict the glories of the farmers' daughters; at any
rate, on this occasion he seemed to be at some loss for words; he
shut up, as the slang phrase goes, and made no further allusion to
the necessity of supplying young Gresham with a proper string of
hunters.

But the old squire had understood it all; had understood the meaning
of his nephew's attack; had thoroughly understood also the meaning of
his son's defence, and the feeling which actuated it. He also had
thought of the stableful of horses which had belonged to himself when
he came of age; and of the much more humble position which his son
would have to fill than that which _his_ father had prepared for him.
He thought of this, and was sad enough, though he had sufficient
spirit to hide from his friends around him the fact, that the
Honourable John's arrow had not been discharged in vain.

"He shall have Champion," said the father to himself. "It is time for
me to give it up."

Now Champion was one of the two fine old hunters which the squire
kept for his own use. And it might have been said of him now, at the
period of which we are speaking, that the only really happy moments
of his life were those which he spent in the field. So much as to its
being time for him to give up.




CHAPTER VI

Frank Gresham's Early Loves


It was, we have said, the first of July, and such being the time of
the year, the ladies, after sitting in the drawing-room for half an
hour or so, began to think that they might as well go through the
drawing-room windows on to the lawn. First one slipped out a little
way, and then another; and then they got on to the lawn; and then
they talked of their hats; till, by degrees, the younger ones of the
party, and at last of the elder also, found themselves dressed for
walking.

The windows, both of the drawing-room and the dining-room, looked out
on to the lawn; and it was only natural that the girls should walk
from the former to the latter. It was only natural that they, being
there, should tempt their swains to come to them by the sight of
their broad-brimmed hats and evening dresses; and natural, also, that
the temptation should not be resisted. The squire, therefore, and the
elder male guests soon found themselves alone round their wine.

"Upon my word, we were enchanted by your eloquence, Mr Gresham, were
we not?" said Miss Oriel, turning to one of the de Courcy girls who
was with her.

Miss Oriel was a very pretty girl; a little older than Frank
Gresham,--perhaps a year or so. She had dark hair, large round dark
eyes, a nose a little too broad, a pretty mouth, a beautiful chin,
and, as we have said before, a large fortune;--that is, moderately
large--let us say twenty thousand pounds, there or thereabouts.
She and her brother had been living at Greshamsbury for the last
two years, the living having been purchased for him--such were
Mr Gresham's necessities--during the lifetime of the last old
incumbent. Miss Oriel was in every respect a nice neighbour; she was
good-humoured, lady-like, lively, neither too clever nor too stupid,
belonging to a good family, sufficiently fond of this world's good
things, as became a pretty young lady so endowed, and sufficiently
fond, also, of the other world's good things, as became the mistress
of a clergyman's house.

"Indeed, yes," said the Lady Margaretta. "Frank is very eloquent.
When he described our rapid journey from London, he nearly moved me
to tears. But well as he talks, I think he carves better."

"I wish you'd had to do it, Margaretta; both the carving and
talking."

"Thank you, Frank; you're very civil."

"But there's one comfort, Miss Oriel; it's over now, and done. A
fellow can't be made to come of age twice."

"But you'll take your degree, Mr Gresham; and then, of course,
there'll be another speech; and then you'll get married, and there
will be two or three more."

"I'll speak at your 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: Miss Dunstable is coming down to us next week. Now, we
all know that when old Dunstable died last year, he left over two
hundred thousand to his daughter."

"It is a great deal of money, certainly," said Lady Arabella.

"It would pay off everything, and a great deal more," said the
countess.

"It was ointment, was it not, aunt?" said Augusta.

"I believe so, my dear; something called the ointment of Lebanon, or
something of that sort: but there's no doubt about the money."

"But how old is she, Rosina?" asked the anxious mother.

"About thirty, I suppose; but I don't think that much signifies."

"Thirty," said Lady Arabella, rather dolefully. "And what is she
like? I think that Frank already begins to like girls that are young
and pretty."

"But surely, aunt," said the Lady Amelia, "now that he has come to
man's discretion, he will not refuse to consider all that he owes to
his family. A Mr Gresham of Greshamsbury has a position to support."
The de Courcy scion spoke these last words in the sort of tone that a
parish clergyman would use, in warning some young farmer's son that
he should not put himself on an equal footing with the ploughboys.

It was at last decided that the countess should herself convey to
Frank a special invitation to Courcy Castle, and that when she got
him there, she should do all that lay in her power to prevent his
return to Cambridge, and to further the Dunstable marriage.

"We did think of Miss Dunstable for Porlock, once," she said,
naïvely; "but when we found that it wasn't much over two hundred
thousand, why, that idea fell to the ground." The terms on which the
de Courcy blood might be allowed to dilute itself were, it must be
presumed, very high indeed.

Augusta was sent off to find her brother, and to send him to the
countess in the small drawing-room. Here the countess was to have
her tea, apart from the outer common world, and here, without
interruption, she was to teach her great lesson to her nephew.

Augusta did find her brother, and found him in the worst of bad
society--so at least the stern de Courcys would have thought. Old Mr
Bateson and the governess, Mr Everbeery and his cook's diluted blood,
and ways paved for revolutions, all presented themselves to Augusta's
mind when she found her brother walking with no other company than
Mary Thorne, and walking with her, too, in much too close proximity.

How he had contrived to be off with the old love and so soon on with
the new, or rather, to be off with the new love and again on with the
old, we will not stop to inquire. Had Lady Arabella, in truth, known
all her son's doings in this way, could she have guessed how very
nigh he had approached the iniquity of old Mr Bateson, and to the
folly of young Mr Everbeery, she would in truth have been in a hurry
to send him off to Courcy Castle and Miss Dunstable. Some days
before the commencement of our story, young Frank had sworn in sober
earnest--in what he intended for his most sober earnest, his most
earnest sobriety--that he loved Mary Thorne with a love for which
words could find no sufficient expression--with a love that could
never die, never grow dim, never become less, which no opposition on
the part of others could extinguish, which no opposition on her part
could repel; that he might, could, would, and should have her for his
wife, and that if she told him she didn't love him, he would--

"Oh, oh! Mary; do you love me? Don't you love me? Won't you love me?
Say you will. Oh, Mary, dearest Mary, will you? won't you? do you?
don't you? Come now, you have a right to give a fellow an answer."

With such eloquence had the heir of Greshamsbury, when not yet
twenty-one years of age, attempted to possess himself of the
affections of the doctor's niece. And yet three days afterwards he
was quite ready to flirt with Miss Oriel.

If such things are done in the green wood, what will be done in the
dry?

And what had Mary said when these fervent protestations of an undying
love had been thrown at her feet? Mary, it must be remembered, was
very nearly of the same age as Frank; but, as I and others have so
often said before, "Women grow on the sunny side of the wall." Though
Frank was only a boy, it behoved Mary to be something more than a
girl. Frank might be allowed, without laying himself open to much
just reproach, to throw all of what he believed to be his heart into
a protestation of what he believed to be love; but Mary was in duty
bound to be more thoughtful, more reticent, more aware of the facts
of their position, more careful of her own feelings, and more careful
also of his.

And yet she could not put him down as another young lady might put
down another young gentleman. It is very seldom that a young man,
unless he be tipsy, assumes an unwelcome familiarity in his early
acquaintance with any girl; but when acquaintance has been long and
intimate, familiarity must follow as a matter of course. Frank and
Mary had been so much together in his holidays, had so constantly
consorted together as boys and girls, that, as regarded her, he had
not that innate fear of a woman which represses a young man's tongue;
and she was so used to his good-humour, his fun, and high jovial
spirits, and was, withal, so fond of them and him, that it was very
difficult for her to mark with accurate feeling, and stop with
reserved brow, the shade of change from a boy's liking to a man's
love.

And Beatrice, too, had done harm in this matter. With a spirit
painfully unequal to that of her grand relatives, she had quizzed
Mary and Frank about their early flirtations. This she had done; but
had instinctively avoided doing so before her mother and sister, and
had thus made a secret of it, as it were, between herself, Mary, and
her brother;--had given currency, as it were, to the idea that there
might be something serious between the two. Not that Beatrice had
ever wished to promote a marriage between them, or had even thought
of such a thing. She was girlish, thoughtless, imprudent, inartistic,
and very unlike a de Courcy. Very unlike a de Courcy she was in all
that; but, nevertheless, she had the de Courcy veneration for blood,
and, more than that, she had the Gresham feeling joined to that of
the de Courcys. The Lady Amelia would not for worlds have had the
de Courcy blood defiled; but gold she thought could not defile.
Now Beatrice was ashamed of her sister's marriage, and had often
declared, within her own heart, that nothing could have made her
marry a Mr Moffat.

She had said so also to Mary, and Mary had told her that she was
right. Mary also was proud of blood, was proud of her uncle's blood,
and the two girls talked together in all the warmth of girlish
confidence, of the great glories of family traditions and family
honours. Beatrice had talked in utter ignorance as to her friend's
birth; and Mary, poor Mary, she had talked, being as ignorant; but
not without a strong suspicion that, at some future time, a day of
sorrow would tell her some fearful truth.

On one point Mary's mind was strongly made up. No wealth, no mere
worldly advantage could make any one her superior. If she were born
a gentlewoman, then was she fit to match with any gentleman. Let
the most wealthy man in Europe pour all his wealth at her feet, she
could, if so inclined, give him back at any rate more than that.
That offered at her feet she knew she would never tempt her to yield
up the fortress of her heart, the guardianship of her soul, the
possession of her mind; not that alone, nor that even, as any
possible slightest fraction of a make-weight.

If she were born a gentlewoman! And then came to her mind those
curious questions; what makes a gentleman? what makes a gentlewoman?
What is the inner reality, the spiritualised quintessence of that
privilege in the world which men call rank, which forces the
thousands and hundreds of thousands to bow down before the few elect?
What gives, or can give it, or should give it?

And she answered the question. Absolute, intrinsic, acknowledged,
individual merit must give it to its possessor, let him be whom, and
what, and whence he might. So far the spirit of democracy was strong
with her. Beyond this it could be had but by inheritance, received
as it were second-hand, or twenty-second-hand. And so far the spirit
of aristocracy was strong within her. All this she had, as may be
imagined, learnt in early years from her uncle; and all this she was
at great pains to teach Beatrice Gresham, the chosen of her heart.

When Frank declared that Mary had a right to give him an answer,
he meant that he had a right to expect one. Mary acknowledged this
right, and gave it to him.

"Mr Gresham," she said.

"Oh, Mary; Mr Gresham!"

"Yes, Mr Gresham. It must be Mr Gresham after that. And, moreover, it
must be Miss Thorne as well."

"I'll be shot if it shall, Mary."

"Well; I can't say that I shall be shot if it be not so; but if it be
not so, if you do not agree that it shall be so, I shall be turned
out of Greshamsbury."

"What! you mean my mother?" said Frank.

"Indeed, I mean no such thing," said Mary, with a flash from her eye
that made Frank almost start. "I mean no such thing. I mean you, not
your mother. I am not in the least afraid of Lady Arabella; but I am
afraid of you."

"Afraid of me, Mary!"

"Miss Thorne; pray, pray, remember. It must be Miss Thorne. Do not
turn me out of Greshamsbury. Do not separate me from Beatrice. It
is you that will drive me out; no one else. I could stand my ground
against your mother--I feel I could; but I cannot stand against you
if you treat me otherwise than--than--"

"Otherwise than what? I want to treat you as the girl I have chosen
from all the world as my wife."

"I am sorry you should so soon have found it necessary to make a
choice. But, Mr Gresham, we must not joke about this at present. I am
sure you would not willingly injure me; but if you speak to me, or of
me, again in that way, you will injure me, injure me so much that I
shall be forced to leave Greshamsbury in my own defence. I know you
are too generous to drive me to that."

And so the interview had ended. Frank, of course, went upstairs to
see if his new pocket-pistols were all ready, properly cleaned,
loaded, and capped, should he find, after a few days' experience,
that prolonged existence was unendurable.

However, he managed to live through the subsequent period; doubtless
with a view of preventing any disappointment to his father's guests.




CHAPTER VII

The Doctor's Garden


Mary had contrived to quiet her lover with considerable propriety
of demeanour. Then came on her the somewhat harder task of quieting
herself. Young ladies, on the whole, are perhaps quite as susceptible
of the softer feelings as young gentlemen are. Now Frank Gresham was
handsome, amiable, by no means a fool in intellect, excellent in
heart; and he was, moreover, a gentleman, being the son of Mr Gresham
of Greshamsbury. Mary had been, as it were, brought up to love him.
Had aught but good happened to him, she would have cried as for a
brother. It must not therefore be supposed that when Frank Gresham
told her that he loved her, she had heard it altogether unconcerned.

He had not, perhaps, made his declaration with that propriety of
language in which such scenes are generally described as being
carried on. Ladies may perhaps think that Mary should have been
deterred, by the very boyishness of his manner, from thinking at all
seriously on the subject. His "will you, won't you--do you, don't
you?" does not sound like the poetic raptures of a highly inspired
lover. But, nevertheless, there had been warmth, and a reality in it
not in itself repulsive; and Mary's anger--anger? no, not anger--her
objections to the declarations were probably not based on the
absurdity of her lover's language.

We are inclined to think that these matters are not always discussed
by mortal lovers in the poetically passionate phraseology which is
generally thought to be appropriate for their description. A man
cannot well describe that which he has never seen nor heard; but
the absolute words and acts of one such scene did once come to the
author's knowledge. The couple were by no means plebeian, or below
the proper standard of high bearing and high breeding; they were
a handsome pair, living among educated people, sufficiently given
to mental pursuits, and in every way what a pair of polite lovers
ought to be. The all-important conversation passed in this wise. The
site of the passionate scene was the sea-shore, on which they were
walking, in autumn.

Gentleman. "Well, Miss ----, the long and short of it is this: here
I am; you can take me or leave me."

Lady--scratching a gutter on the sand with her parasol, so as to
allow a little salt water to run out of one hole into another. "Of
course, I know that's all nonsense."

Gentleman. "Nonsense! By Jove, it isn't nonsense at all: come, Jane;
here I am: come, at any rate you can say something."

Lady. "Yes, I suppose I can say something."

Gentleman. "Well, which is it to be; take me or leave me?"

Lady--very slowly, and with a voice perhaps hardly articulate,
carrying on, at the same time, her engineering works on a wider
scale. "Well, I don't exactly want to leave you."

And so the matter was settled: settled with much propriety and
satisfaction; and both the lady and gentleman would have thought, had
they ever thought about the matter at all, that this, the sweetest
moment of their lives, had been graced by all the poetry by which
such moments ought to be hallowed.

When Mary had, as she thought, properly subdued young Frank, the
offer of whose love she, at any rate, knew was, at such a period of
his life, an utter absurdity, then she found it necessary to subdue
herself. What happiness on earth could be greater than the possession
of such a love, had the true possession been justly and honestly
within her reach? What man could be more lovable than such a man as
would grow from such a boy? And then, did she not love him,--love him
already, without waiting for any change? Did she not feel that there
was that about him, about him and about herself, too, which might so
well fit them for each other? It would be so sweet to be the sister
of Beatrice, the daughter of the squire, to belong to Greshamsbury as
a part and parcel of itself.

But though she could not restrain these thoughts, it never for a
moment occurred to her to take Frank's offer in earnest. Though she
was a grown woman, he was still a boy. He would have to see the world
before he settled in it, and would change his mind about woman half a
score of times before he married. Then, too, though she did not like
the Lady Arabella, she felt that she owed something, if not to her
kindness, at least to her forbearance; and she knew, felt inwardly
certain, that she would be doing wrong, that the world would say
she was doing wrong, that her uncle would think her wrong, if she
endeavoured to take advantage of what had passed.

She had not for an instant doubted; not for a moment had she
contemplated it as possible that she should ever become Mrs Gresham
because Frank had offered to make her so; but, nevertheless, she
could not help thinking of what had occurred--of thinking of it, most
probably much more than Frank did himself.

A day or two afterwards, on the evening before Frank's birthday, she
was alone with her uncle, walking in the garden behind their house,
and she then essayed to question him, with the object of learning if
she were fitted by her birth to be the wife of such a one as Frank
Gresham. They were in the habit of walking there together when he
happened to be at home of a summer's evening. This was not often the
case, for his hours of labour extended much beyond those usual to the
upper working world, the hours, namely, between breakfast and dinner;
but those minutes that they did thus pass together, the doctor
regarded as perhaps the pleasantest of his life.

"Uncle," said she, after a while, "what do you think of this marriage
of Miss Gresham's?"

"Well, Minnie"--such was his name of endearment for her--"I can't say
I have thought much about it, and I don't suppose anybody else has
either."

"She must think about it, of course; and so must he, I suppose."

"I'm not so sure of that. Some folks would never get married if they
had to trouble themselves with thinking about it."

"I suppose that's why you never got married, uncle?"

"Either that, or thinking of it too much. One is as bad as the
other."

Mary had not contrived to get at all near her point as yet; so she
had to draw off, and after a while begin again.

"Well, I have been thinking about it, at any rate, uncle."

"That's very good of you; that will save me the trouble; and perhaps
save Miss Gresham too. If you have thought it over thoroughly, that
will do for all."

"I believe Mr Moffat is a man of no family."

"He'll mend in that point, no doubt, when he has got a wife."

"Uncle, you're a goose; and what is worse, a very provoking goose."

"Niece, you're a gander; and what is worse, a very silly gander. What
is Mr Moffat's family to you and me? Mr Moffat has that which ranks
above family honours. He is a very rich man."

"Yes," said Mary, "I know he is rich; and a rich man I suppose can
buy anything--except a woman that is worth having."

"A rich man can buy anything," said the doctor; "not that I meant to
say that Mr Moffat has bought Miss Gresham. I have no doubt that they
will suit each other very well," he added with an air of decisive
authority, as though he had finished the subject.

But his niece was determined not to let him pass so. "Now, uncle,"
said she, "you know you are pretending to a great deal of worldly
wisdom, which, after all, is not wisdom at all in your eyes."

"Am I?"

"You know you are: and as for the impropriety of discussing Miss
Gresham's marriage--"

"I did not say it was improper."

"Oh, yes, you did; of course such things must be discussed. How is
one to have an opinion if one does not get it by looking at the
things which happen around us?"

"Now I am going to be blown up," said Dr Thorne.

"Dear uncle, do be serious with me."

"Well, then, seriously, I hope Miss Gresham will be very happy as Mrs
Moffat."

"Of course you do: so do I. I hope it as much as I can hope what I
don't at all see ground for expecting."

"People constantly hope without any such ground."

"Well, then, I'll hope in this case. But, uncle--"

"Well, my dear?"

"I want your opinion, truly and really. If you were a girl--"

"I am perfectly unable to give any opinion founded on so strange an
hypothesis."

"Well; but if you were a marrying man."

"The hypothesis is quite as much out of my way."

"But, uncle, I am a girl, and perhaps I may marry;--or at any rate
think of marrying some day."

"The latter alternative is certainly possible enough."

"Therefore, in seeing a friend taking such a step, I cannot but
speculate on the matter as though I were myself in her place. If I
were Miss Gresham, should I be right?"

"But, Minnie, you are not Miss Gresham."

"No, I am Mary Thorne; it is a very different thing, I know. I
suppose _I_ might marry any one without degrading myself."

It was almost ill-natured of her to say this; but she had not meant
to say it in the sense which the sounds seemed to bear. She had
failed in being able to bring her uncle to the point she wished
by the road she had planned, and in seeking another road, she had
abruptly fallen into unpleasant places.

"I should be very sorry that my niece should think so," said he; "and
am sorry, too, that she should say so. But, Mary, to tell the truth,
I hardly know at what you are driving. You are, I think, not so clear
minded--certainly, not so clear worded--as is usual with you."

"I will tell you, uncle;" and, instead of looking up into his face,
she turned her eyes down on the green lawn beneath her feet.

"Well, Minnie, what is it?" and he took both her hands in his.

"I think that Miss Gresham should not marry Mr Moffat. I think so
because her family is high and noble, and because he is low and
ignoble. When one has an opinion on such matters, one cannot but
apply it to things and people around one; and having applied my
opinion to her, the next step naturally is to apply it to myself.
Were I Miss Gresham, I would not marry Mr Moffat though he rolled
in gold. I know where to rank Miss Gresham. What I want to know is,
where I ought to rank myself?"

They had been standing when she commenced her last speech; but as
she finished it, the doctor moved on again, and she moved with him.
He walked on slowly without answering her; and she, out of her full
mind, pursued aloud the tenor of her thoughts.

"If a woman feels that she would not lower herself by marrying in
a rank beneath herself, she ought also to feel that she would not
lower a man that she might love by allowing him to marry into a rank
beneath his own--that is, to marry her."

"That does not follow," said the doctor quickly. "A man raises a
woman to his own standard, but a woman must take that of the man she
marries."

Again they were silent, and again they walked on, Mary holding her
uncle's arm with both her hands. She was determined, however, to come
to the point, and after considering for a while how best she might
do it, she ceased to beat any longer about the bush, and asked him a
plain question.

"The Thornes are as good a family as the Greshams, are they not?"

"In absolute genealogy they are, my dear. That is, when I choose to
be an old fool and talk of such matters in a sense different from
that in which they are spoken of by the world at large, I may say
that the Thornes are as good, or perhaps better, than the Greshams,
but I should be sorry to say so seriously to any one. The Greshams
now stand much higher in the county than the Thornes do."

"But they are of the same class."

"Yes, yes; Wilfred Thorne of Ullathorne, and our friend the squire
here, are of the same class."

"But, uncle, I and Augusta Gresham--are we of the same class?"

"Well, Minnie, you would hardly have me boast that I am the same
class with the squire--I, a poor country doctor?"

"You are not answering me fairly, dear uncle; dearest uncle, do you
not know that you are not answering me fairly? You know what I mean.
Have I a right to call the Thornes of Ullathorne my cousins?"

"Mary, Mary, Mary!" said he after a minute's pause, still allowing
his arm to hang loose, that she might hold it with both her hands.
"Mary, Mary, Mary! I would that you had spared me this!"

"I could not have spared it to you for ever, uncle."

"I would that you could have done so; I would that you could!"

"It is over now, uncle: it is told now. I will grieve you no more.
Dear, dear, dearest! I should love you more than ever now; I would,
I would, I would if that were possible. What should I be but for
you? What must I have been but for you?" And she threw herself on
his breast, and clinging with her arms round his neck, kissed his
forehead, cheeks, and lips.

There was nothing more said then on the subject between them. Mary
asked no further question, nor did the doctor volunteer further
information. She would have been most anxious to ask about her
mother's history had she dared to do so; but she did not dare to ask;
she could not bear to be told that her mother had been, perhaps was,
a worthless woman. That she was truly a daughter of a brother of the
doctor, that she did know. Little as she had heard of her relatives
in her early youth, few as had been the words which had fallen from
her uncle in her hearing as to her parentage, she did know this, that
she was the daughter of Henry Thorne, a brother of the doctor, and a
son of the old prebendary. Trifling little things that had occurred,
accidents which could not be prevented, had told her this; but not
a word had ever passed any one's lips as to her mother. The doctor,
when speaking of his youth, had spoken of her father; but no one had
spoken of her mother. She had long known that she was the child of a
Thorne; now she knew also that she was no cousin of the Thornes of
Ullathorne; no cousin, at least, in the world's ordinary language, no
niece indeed of her uncle, unless by his special permission that she
should be so.

When the interview was over, she went up alone to the drawing-room,
and there she sat thinking. She had not been there long before her
uncle came up to her. He did not sit down, or even take off the hat
which he still wore; but coming close to her, and still standing, he
spoke thus:--

"Mary, after what has passed I should be very unjust and very cruel
to you not to tell you one thing more than you have now learned. Your
mother was unfortunate in much, not in everything; but the world,
which is very often stern in such matters, never judged her to have
disgraced herself. I tell you this, my child, in order that you may
respect her memory;" and so saying, he again left her without giving
her time to speak a word.

What he then told her he had told in mercy. He felt what must be her
feelings when she reflected that she had to blush for her mother;
that not only could she not speak of her mother, but that she might
hardly think of her with innocence; and to mitigate such sorrow as
this, and also to do justice to the woman whom hi

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