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

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“I should prefer Janet to either, seeing that with her I should not

suffer the extreme nuisance of knowing that I was a bore.”

 

“A bore! Mary, to me?”

 

“Yes, Mr Gresham, a bore to you. Having to walk home through the mud

with village young ladies is boring. All gentlemen feel it to be so.”

 

“There is no mud; if there were you would not be allowed to walk at

all.”

 

“Oh! village young ladies never care for such things, though

fashionable gentlemen do.”

 

“I would carry you home, Mary, if it would do you a service,” said

Frank, with considerable pathos in his voice.

 

“Oh, dear me! pray do not, Mr Gresham. I should not like it at all,”

said she: “a wheelbarrow would be preferable to that.”

 

“Of course. Anything would be preferable to my arm, I know.”

 

“Certainly; anything in the way of a conveyance. If I were to act

baby; and you were to act nurse, it really would not be comfortable

for either of us.”

 

Frank Gresham felt disconcerted, though he hardly knew why. He was

striving to say something tender to his lady-love; but every word

that he spoke she turned into joke. Mary did not answer him coldly

or unkindly; but, nevertheless, he was displeased. One does not like

to have one’s little offerings of sentimental service turned into

burlesque when one is in love in earnest. Mary’s jokes had appeared

so easy too; they seemed to come from a heart so little troubled.

This, also, was cause of vexation to Frank. If he could but have

known all, he would, perhaps, have been better pleased.

 

He determined not to be absolutely laughed out of his tenderness.

When, three days ago, he had been repulsed, he had gone away owning

to himself that he had been beaten; owning so much, but owning it

with great sorrow and much shame. Since that he had come of age;

since that he had made speeches, and speeches had been made to him;

since that he had gained courage by flirting with Patience Oriel. No

faint heart ever won a fair lady, as he was well aware; he resolved,

therefore, that his heart should not be faint, and that he would see

whether the fair lady might not be won by becoming audacity.

 

“Mary,” said he, stopping in the path—for they were now near the

spot where it broke out upon the lawn, and they could already hear

the voices of the guests—“Mary, you are unkind to me.”

 

“I am not aware of it, Mr Gresham; but if I am, do not you retaliate.

I am weaker than you, and in your power; do not you, therefore, be

unkind to me.”

 

“You refused my hand just now,” continued he. “Of all the people here

at Greshamsbury, you are the only one that has not wished me joy; the

only one—”

 

“I do wish you joy; I will wish you joy; there is my hand,” and she

frankly put out her ungloved hand. “You are quite man enough to

understand me: there is my hand; I trust you use it only as it is

meant to be used.”

 

He took it in his and pressed it cordially, as he might have done

that of any other friend in such a case; and then—did not drop it

as he should have done. He was not a St Anthony, and it was most

imprudent in Miss Thorne to subject him to such a temptation.

 

“Mary,” said he; “dear Mary! dearest Mary! if you did but know how I

love you!”

 

As he said this, holding Miss Thorne’s hand, he stood on the pathway

with his back towards the lawn and house, and, therefore, did not at

first see his sister Augusta, who had just at that moment come upon

them. Mary blushed up to her straw hat, and, with a quick jerk,

recovered her hand. Augusta saw the motion, and Mary saw that Augusta

had seen it.

 

From my tedious way of telling it, the reader will be led to imagine

that the hand-squeezing had been protracted to a duration quite

incompatible with any objection to such an arrangement on the part of

the lady; but the fault is mine: in no part hers. Were I possessed

of a quick spasmodic style of narrative, I should have been able

to include it all—Frank’s misbehaviour, Mary’s immediate anger,

Augusta’s arrival, and keen, Argus-eyed inspection, and then Mary’s

subsequent misery—in five words and half a dozen dashes and inverted

commas. The thing should have been so told; for, to do Mary justice,

she did not leave her hand in Frank’s a moment longer than she could

help herself.

 

Frank, feeling the hand withdrawn, and hearing, when it was too late,

the step on the gravel, turned sharply round. “Oh, it’s you, is it,

Augusta? Well, what do you want?”

 

Augusta was not naturally very ill-natured, seeing that in her veins

the high de Courcy blood was somewhat tempered by an admixture of

the Gresham attributes; nor was she predisposed to make her brother

her enemy by publishing to the world any of his little tender

peccadilloes; but she could not but bethink herself of what her aunt

had been saying as to the danger of any such encounters as that she

just now had beheld; she could not but start at seeing her brother

thus, on the very brink of the precipice of which the countess had

specially forewarned her mother. She, Augusta, was, as she well knew,

doing her duty by her family by marrying a tailor’s son for whom she

did not care a chip, seeing the tailor’s son was possessed of untold

wealth. Now when one member of a household is making a struggle for a

family, it is painful to see the benefit of that struggle negatived

by the folly of another member. The future Mrs Moffat did feel

aggrieved by the fatuity of the young heir, and, consequently, took

upon herself to look as much like her Aunt de Courcy as she could do.

 

“Well, what is it?” said Frank, looking rather disgusted. “What makes

you stick your chin up and look in that way?” Frank had hitherto been

rather a despot among his sisters, and forgot that the eldest of

them was now passing altogether from under his sway to that of the

tailor’s son.

 

“Frank,” said Augusta, in a tone of voice which did honour to the

great lessons she had lately received. “Aunt de Courcy wants to see

you immediately in the small drawing-room;” and, as she said so, she

resolved to say a few words of advice to Miss Thorne as soon as her

brother should have left them.

 

“In the small drawing-room, does she? Well, Mary, we may as well go

together, for I suppose it is tea-time now.”

 

“You had better go at once, Frank,” said Augusta; “the countess will

be angry if you keep her waiting. She has been expecting you these

twenty minutes. Mary Thorne and I can return together.”

 

There was something in the tone in which the words, “Mary Thorne,”

were uttered, which made Mary at once draw herself up. “I hope,” said

she, “that Mary Thorne will never be any hindrance to either of you.”

 

Frank’s ear had also perceived that there was something in the tone

of his sister’s voice not boding comfort to Mary; he perceived that

the de Courcy blood in Augusta’s veins was already rebelling against

the doctor’s niece on his part, though it had condescended to submit

itself to the tailor’s son on her own part.

 

“Well, I am going,” said he; “but look here Augusta, if you say one

word of Mary—”

 

Oh, Frank! Frank! you boy, you very boy! you goose, you silly goose!

Is that the way you make love, desiring one girl not to tell of

another, as though you were three children, tearing your frocks and

trousers in getting through the same hedge together? Oh, Frank!

Frank! you, the full-blown heir of Greshamsbury? You, a man already

endowed with a man’s discretion? You, the forward rider, that did but

now threaten young Harry Baker and the Honourable John to eclipse

them by prowess in the field? You, of age? Why, thou canst not as yet

have left thy mother’s apron-string!

 

“If you say one word of Mary—”

 

So far had he got in his injunction to his sister, but further than

that, in such a case, was he never destined to proceed. Mary’s

indignation flashed upon him, striking him dumb long before the sound

of her voice reached his ears; and yet she spoke as quick as the

words would come to her call, and somewhat loudly too.

 

“Say one word of Mary, Mr Gresham! And why should she not say as many

words of Mary as she may please? I must tell you all now, Augusta!

and I must also beg you not to be silent for my sake. As far as I am

concerned, tell it to whom you please. This was the second time your

brother—”

 

“Mary, Mary,” said Frank, deprecating her loquacity.

 

“I beg your pardon, Mr Gresham; you have made it necessary that I

should tell your sister all. He has now twice thought it well to

amuse himself by saying to me words which it was ill-natured in him

to speak, and—”

 

“Ill-natured, Mary!”

 

“Ill-natured in him to speak,” continued Mary, “and to which it would

be absurd for me to listen. He probably does the same to others,” she

added, being unable in heart to forget that sharpest of her wounds,

that flirtation of his with Patience Oriel; “but to me it is almost

cruel. Another girl might laugh at him, or listen to him, as she

would choose; but I can do neither. I shall now keep away from

Greshamsbury, at any rate till he has left it; and, Augusta, I can

only beg you to understand, that, as far as I am concerned, there is

nothing which may not be told to all the world.”

 

And, so saying, she walked on a little in advance of them, as proud

as a queen. Had Lady de Courcy herself met her at this moment, she

would almost have felt herself forced to shrink out of the pathway.

“Not say a word of me!” she repeated to herself, but still out loud.

“No word need be left unsaid on my account; none, none.”

 

Augusta followed her, dumfounded at her indignation; and Frank also

followed, but not in silence. When his first surprise at Mary’s

great anger was over, he felt himself called upon to say some word

that might tend to exonerate his lady-love; and some word also of

protestation as to his own purpose.

 

“There is nothing to be told, nothing, at least of Mary,” he said,

speaking to his sister; “but of me, you may tell this, if you choose

to disoblige your brother—that I love Mary Thorne with all my heart;

and that I will never love any one else.”

 

By this time they had reached the lawn, and Mary was able to turn

away from the path which led up to the house. As she left them she

said in a voice, now low enough, “I cannot prevent him from talking

nonsense, Augusta; but you will bear me witness, that I do not

willingly hear it.” And, so saying, she started off almost in a run

towards the distant part of the gardens, in which she saw Beatrice.

 

Frank, as he walked up to the house with his sister, endeavoured to

induce her to give him a promise that she would tell no tales