Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope (epub ebook reader .TXT) 📕

to the house. “Certainly

I will, if Lady Arabella will receive me;—only one thing, Trichy.”

 

“What’s that, dearest?”

 

“Frank will think that I come after him.”

 

“Never mind what he thinks. To tell you the truth, Mary, I often call

upon Patience for the sake of finding Caleb. That’s all fair now, you

know.”

 

Mary very quietly put on her straw bonnet, and said she was ready

to go up to the house. Beatrice was a little fluttered, and showed

it. Mary was, perhaps, a good deal fluttered, but she did not show

it. She had thought a good deal of her first interview with Lady

Arabella, of her first return to the house; but she had resolved

to carry herself as though the matter were easy to her. She would

not allow it to be seen that she felt that she brought with her to

Greshamsbury, comfort, ease, and renewed opulence.

 

So she put on her straw bonnet and walked up with Beatrice. Everybody

about the place had already heard the news. The old woman at the

lodge curtsied low to her; the gardener, who was mowing the lawn. The

butler, who opened the front door—he must have been watching Mary’s

approach—had manifestly put on a clean white neckcloth for the

occasion.

 

“God bless you once more, Miss Thorne!” said the old man, in a

half-whisper. Mary was somewhat troubled, for everything seemed,

in a manner, to bow down before her. And why should not everything

bow down before her, seeing that she was in truth the owner of

Greshamsbury?

 

And then a servant in livery would open the big drawing-room door.

This rather upset both Mary and Beatrice. It became almost impossible

for Mary to enter the room just as she would have done two years ago;

but she got through the difficulty with much self-control.

 

“Mamma, here’s Mary,” said Beatrice.

 

Nor was Lady Arabella quite mistress of herself, although she had

studied minutely how to bear herself.

 

“Oh, Mary, my dear Mary; what can I say to you?” and then, with a

handkerchief to her eyes, she ran forward and hid her face on Miss

Thorne’s shoulders. “What can I say—can you forgive me my anxiety

for my son?”

 

“How do you do, Lady Arabella?” said Mary.

 

“My daughter! my child! my Frank’s own bride! Oh, Mary! oh, my child!

If I have seemed unkind to you, it has been through love to him.”

 

“All these things are over now,” said Mary. “Mr Gresham told me

yesterday that I should be received as Frank’s future wife; and so,

you see, I have come.” And then she slipped through Lady Arabella’s

arms, and sat down, meekly down, on a chair. In five minutes she

had escaped with Beatrice into the schoolroom, and was kissing the

children, and turning over the new trousseau. They were, however,

soon interrupted, and there was, perhaps, some other kissing besides

that of the children.

 

“You have no business in here at all, Frank,” said Beatrice. “Has he,

Mary?”

 

“None in the world, I should think.”

 

“See what he has done to my poplin; I hope you won’t have your things

treated so cruelly. He’ll be careful enough about them.”

 

“Is Oriel a good hand at packing up finery—eh, Beatrice?” asked

Frank.

 

“He is, at any rate, too well-behaved to spoil it.” Thus Mary was

again made at home in the household of Greshamsbury.

 

Lady Arabella did not carry out her little plan of delaying the Oriel

wedding. Her idea had been to add some grandeur to it, in order to

make it a more fitting precursor of that other greater wedding which

was to follow so soon in its wake. But this, with the assistance of

the countess, she found herself able to do without interfering with

poor Mr Oriel’s Sunday arrangements. The countess herself, with the

Ladies Alexandrina and Margaretta, now promised to come, even to this

first affair; and for the other, the whole de Courcy family would

turn out, count and countess, lords and ladies, Honourable Georges

and Honourable Johns. What honour, indeed, could be too great to show

to a bride who had fourteen thousand a year in her own right, or to a

cousin who had done his duty by securing such a bride to himself!

 

“If the duke be in the country, I am sure he will be happy to come,”

said the countess. “Of course, he will be talking to Frank about

politics. I suppose the squire won’t expect Frank to belong to the

old school now.”

 

“Frank, of course, will judge for himself, Rosina;—with his

position, you know!” And so things were settled at Courcy Castle.

 

And then Beatrice was wedded and carried off to the Lakes. Mary, as

she had promised, did stand near her; but not exactly in the gingham

frock of which she had once spoken. She wore on that occasion— But

it will be too much, perhaps, to tell the reader what she wore as

Beatrice’s bridesmaid, seeing that a couple of pages, at least, must

be devoted to her marriage-dress, and seeing, also, that we have only

a few pages to finish everything; the list of visitors, the marriage

settlements, the dress, and all included.

 

It was in vain that Mary endeavoured to repress Lady Arabella’s

ardour for grand doings. After all, she was to be married from the

doctor’s house, and not from Greshamsbury, and it was the doctor

who should have invited the guests; but, in this matter, he did not

choose to oppose her ladyship’s spirit, and she had it all her own

way.

 

“What can I do?” said he to Mary. “I have been contradicting her in

everything for the last two years. The least we can do is to let her

have her own way now in a trifle like this.”

 

But there was one point on which Mary would let nobody have his or

her own way; on which the way to be taken was very manifestly to be

her own. This was touching the marriage settlements. It must not be

supposed, that if Beatrice were married on a Tuesday, Mary could be

married on the Tuesday week following. Ladies with twelve thousand a

year cannot be disposed of in that way: and bridegrooms who do their

duty by marrying money often have to be kept waiting. It was spring,

the early spring, before Frank was made altogether a happy man.

 

But a word about the settlements. On this subject the doctor thought

he would have been driven mad. Messrs Slow & Bideawhile, as the

lawyers of the Greshamsbury family—it will be understood that Mr

Gazebee’s law business was of quite a different nature, and his

work, as regarded Greshamsbury, was now nearly over—Messrs Slow &

Bideawhile declared that it would never do for them to undertake

alone to draw out the settlements. An heiress, such as Mary, must

have lawyers of her own; half a dozen at least, according to the

apparent opinion of Messrs Slow & Bideawhile. And so the doctor had

to go to other lawyers, and they had again to consult Sir Abraham,

and Mr Snilam on a dozen different heads.

 

If Frank became tenant in tail, in right of his wife, but under his

father, would he be able to grant leases for more than twenty-one

years? and, if so, to whom would the right of trover belong? As to

flotsam and jetsam—there was a little property, Mr Critic, on the

sea-shore—that was a matter that had to be left unsettled at the

last. Such points as these do take a long time to consider. All

this bewildered the doctor sadly, and Frank himself began to make

accusations that he was to be done out of his wife altogether.

 

But, as we have said, there was one point on which Mary would have

her own way. The lawyers might tie up as they would on her behalf all

the money, and shares, and mortgages which had belonged to the late

Sir Roger, with this exception, all that had ever appertained to

Greshamsbury should belong to Greshamsbury again; not in perspective,

not to her children, or to her children’s children, but at once.

Frank should be lord of Boxall Hill in his own right; and as to those

other liens on Greshamsbury, let Frank manage that with his father

as he might think fit. She would only trouble herself to see that he

was empowered to do as he did think fit.

 

“But,” argued the ancient, respectable family attorney to the doctor,

“that amounts to two-thirds of the whole estate. Two-thirds, Dr

Thorne! It is preposterous; I should almost say impossible.” And the

scanty hairs on the poor man’s head almost stood on end as he thought

of the outrageous manner in which the heiress prepared to sacrifice

herself.

 

“It will all be the same in the end,” said the doctor, trying to make

things smooth. “Of course, their joint object will be to put the

Greshamsbury property together again.”

 

“But, my dear sir,”—and then, for twenty minutes, the lawyer

went on proving that it would by no means be the same thing; but,

nevertheless, Mary Thorne did have her own way.

 

In the course of the winter, Lady de Courcy tried very hard to induce

the heiress to visit Courcy Castle, and this request was so backed by

Lady Arabella, that the doctor said he thought she might as well go

there for three or four days. But here, again, Mary was obstinate.

 

“I don’t see it at all,” she said. “If you make a point of it,

or Frank, or Mr Gresham, I will go; but I can’t see any possible

reason.” The doctor, when so appealed to, would not absolutely say

that he made a point of it, and Mary was tolerably safe as regarded

Frank or the squire. If she went, Frank would be expected to go, and

Frank disliked Courcy Castle almost more than ever. His aunt was now

more than civil to him, and, when they were together, never ceased to

compliment him on the desirable way in which he had done his duty by

his family.

 

And soon after Christmas a visitor came to Mary, and stayed a

fortnight with her: one whom neither she nor the doctor had expected,

and of whom they had not much more than heard. This was the famous

Miss Dunstable. “Birds of a feather flock together,” said Mrs

Rantaway—late Miss Gushing—when she heard of the visit. “The

railway man’s niece—if you can call her a niece—and the quack’s

daughter will do very well together, no doubt.”

 

“At any rate, they can count their money-bags,” said Mrs Umbleby.

 

And in fact, Mary and Miss Dunstable did get on very well together;

and Miss Dunstable made herself quite happy at Greshamsbury, although

some people—including Mrs Rantaway—contrived to spread a report,

that Dr Thorne, jealous of Mary’s money, was going to marry her.

 

“I shall certainly come and see you turned off,” said Miss Dunstable,

taking leave of her new friend. Miss Dunstable, it must be

acknowledged, was a little too fond of slang; but then, a lady with

her fortune, and of her age, may be fond of almost whatever she

pleases.

 

And so by degrees the winter wore away—very slowly to Frank, as he

declared often enough; and slowly, perhaps, to Mary also, though she

did not say so. The winter wore away, and the chill, bitter, windy,

early spring came round. The comic almanacs give us dreadful pictures

of January and February; but, in truth, the months which should be

made to look gloomy in England are March and April. Let no man boast

himself that he has