Dr Thorne

CHAPTER XIV

SEN­TENCE OF EX­ILE

Dr Thorne did not at once go home to his own house. When he reached the Gre­shams­bury gates, he sent his horse to its own sta­ble by one of the peo­ple at the lodge, and then walked on to the man­sion. He had to see the squire on the sub­ject of the forth­com­ing loan, and he had al­so to see the La­dy Ara­bel­la.

The La­dy Ara­bel­la, though she was not per­son­al­ly at­tached to the doc­tor with quite so much warmth as some oth­ers of her fam­ily, still had rea­sons of her own for not dis­pens­ing with his vis­its to the house. She was one of his pa­tients, and a pa­tient fear­ful of the dis­ease with which she was threat­ened. Though she thought the doc­tor to be ar­ro­gant, de­fi­cient as to prop­er­ly sub­mis­sive de­meanour to­wards her­self, an in­sti­ga­tor to mar­ital par­si­mo­ny in her lord, one al­to­geth­er op­posed to her­self and her in­ter­est in Gre­shams­bury pol­itics, nev­er­the­less she did feel trust in him as a med­ical man. She had no wish to be res­cued out of his hands by any Dr Fill­grave, as re­gard­ed that com­plaint of hers, much as she may have de­sired, and did de­sire, to sev­er him from all Gre­shams­bury coun­cils in all mat­ters not touch­ing the heal­ing art.

Now the com­plaint of which the La­dy Ara­bel­la was afraid, was can­cer: and her on­ly present con­fi­dant in this mat­ter was Dr Thorne.

The first of the Gre­shams­bury cir­cle whom he saw was Beat­rice, and he met her in the gar­den.

‘Oh, doc­tor,’ said she, ‘where has Mary been this age? She has not been up here since Frank’s birth­day.’

‘Well, that was on­ly three days ago. Why don’t you go down and fer­ret her out in the vil­lage?’

‘So I have done. I was there just now, and found her out. She was out with Pa­tience Oriel. Pa­tience is all and all with her now. Pa­tience is all very well, but if they throw me over–’

‘My dear Miss Gre­sham, Pa­tience is and al­ways was a virtue.’

‘A poor, beg­gar­ly, sneak­ing virtue af­ter all, doc­tor. They should have come up, see­ing how de­sert­ed I am here. There’s ab­so­lute­ly no­body left.’

‘Has La­dy de Cour­cy gone?’

‘Oh, yes! All the De Cour­cys have gone. I think, be­tween our­selves, Mary stays away be­cause she does not love them too well. They have all gone, and tak­en Au­gus­ta and Frank with them.’

‘Has Frank gone to Cour­cy Cas­tle?’

‘Oh, yes; did you not hear? There was rather a fight about it. Mas­ter Frank want­ed to get off, and was as hard to catch as an eel, and then the count­ess was of­fend­ed; and pa­pa said he didn’t see why Frank was to go if he didn’t like it. Pa­pa is very anx­ious about his de­gree, you know.’

The doc­tor un­der­stood it all as well as though it had been de­scribed to him at full length. The count­ess had claimed her prey, in or­der that she might car­ry him off to Miss Dun­sta­ble’s gold­en em­brace. The prey, not yet old enough and wise enough to con­nect the wor­ship of Plu­tus with that of Venus, had made sundry fu­tile feints and dodges in the vain hope of es­cape. Then the anx­ious moth­er had en­forced the De Cour­cy be­hests with all a moth­er’s au­thor­ity. But the fa­ther, whose ideas on the sub­ject of Miss Dun­sta­ble’s wealth had prob­ably not been con­sult­ed, had, as a mat­ter of course, tak­en ex­act­ly the oth­er side of the ques­tion. The doc­tor did not re­quire to be told all this in or­der to know how the bat­tle had raged. He had not yet heard of the great Dun­sta­ble scheme; but he was suf­fi­cient­ly ac­quaint­ed with Gre­shams­bury tac­tics to un­der­stand that the war had been car­ried on some­what af­ter this fash­ion.

As a rule, when the squire took a point warm­ly to heart, he was wont to car­ry his way against the De Cour­cy in­ter­est. He could be ob­sti­nate enough when it so pleased him, and had be­fore now gone so far as to tell his wife, that her thrice-​no­ble sis­ter-​in-​law might re­main at home at Cour­cy Cas­tle–or, at any rate, not come to Gre­shams­bury–if she could not do so with­out striv­ing to rule him and ev­ery one else when she got here. This had of course been re­peat­ed to the count­ess, who had mere­ly replied to it by a sis­ter­ly whis­per, in which she sor­row­ful­ly in­ti­mat­ed that some men were born brutes, and al­ways would re­main so.

‘I think they all are,’ the La­dy Ara­bel­la had replied; wish­ing, per­haps, to re­mind her sis­ter-​in-​law that the breed of brutes was as ram­pant in West Barset­shire as in the east­ern di­vi­sion of that coun­ty.

The squire, how­ev­er, had not fought on this oc­ca­sion with all his vigour. There had, of course, been some pas­sages be­tween him and his son, and it had been agreed that Frank should go for a fort­night to Cour­cy Cas­tle.

‘We mustn’t quar­rel with them, you know, if we can help it,’ said the fa­ther; ‘and, there­fore, you must go soon­er or lat­er.’

‘Well, I sup­pose so; but you don’t know how dull it is, gov­er­nor.’

‘Don’t I!’ said Gre­sham.

‘There’s a Miss Dun­sta­ble to be there; did you ev­er hear of her, sir?’

‘No, nev­er.’

‘She’s a girl whose fa­ther used to make oint­ment, or some­thing of that sort.’

‘Oh, yes, to be sure; the oint­ment of Lebanon. He used to cov­er all the walls of Lon­don. I haven’t heard of him this year past.’

‘No; that is be­cause he’s dead. Well, she car­ries on the oint­ment now, I be­lieve; at any rate, she has got all the mon­ey. I won­der what she’s like?’

‘You’d bet­ter go and see,’ said the fa­ther, who now be­gan to have some inkling of an idea why the two ladies were so anx­ious to car­ry his son off to Cour­cy Cas­tle at this ex­act time. And so Frank had packed up his best clothes, giv­en a last fond look at the new black horse, re­peat­ed his last spe­cial in­junc­tions to Pe­ter, and had then made one of the state­ly cortege which pro­ceed­ed through the coun­ty from Gre­shams­bury to Cour­cy Cas­tle.

‘I am very glad of that, very,’ said the squire, when he heard that the mon­ey was to be forth­com­ing. ‘I shall get it on eas­ier terms from him than else­where; and it kills me to have con­tin­ual both­er about such things.’ And Mr Gre­sham, feel­ing that that dif­fi­cul­ty was tid­ed over for a time, and that the im­me­di­ate pres­sure of lit­tle debts would be abat­ed, stretched him­self on his easy chair as though he were quite com­fort­able;–one may say al­most elat­ed.

How fre­quent it is that men on their road to ru­in feel ela­tion such as this! A man signs away moi­ety of his sub­stance; nay, that were noth­ing; but a moi­ety of the sub­stance of his chil­dren; he puts his pen to the pa­per that ru­ins him and them; but in do­ing so he frees him­self from a source of im­me­di­ate lit­tle pes­ter­ing, sting­ing trou­bles: and, there­fore, feels as though for­tune has been al­most kind to him.

The doc­tor felt an­gry with him­self for what he had done when he saw how eas­ily the squire adapt­ed him­self to this new loan. ‘It will make Scatcherd’s claim up­on you very heavy,’ said he.

Mr Gre­sham at once read all that was pass­ing through the doc­tor’s mind. ‘Well, what else can I do?’ said he. ‘You wouldn’t have me al­low my daugh­ter to lose this match for the sake of a few thou­sand pounds? It will be well at any rate to have one of them set­tled. Look at that let­ter from Mof­fat.’

The doc­tor took the let­ter and read it. It was a long, wordy, ill-​writ­ten rig­ma­role, in which that amorous gen­tle­man spoke with much rap­ture of his love and de­vo­tion for Miss Gre­sham; but at the same time de­clared, and most pos­itive­ly swore, that the ad­verse cru­el­ty of his cir­cum­stances was such, that it would not al­low him to stand up like a man at the hyme­neal al­tar un­til six thou­sand pounds hard cash had been paid down at his banker’s.

‘It may be all right,’ said the squire; ‘but in my time gen­tle­men were not used to write such let­ters as that to each oth­er.’

The doc­tor shrugged his shoul­ders. He did not know how far he would be jus­ti­fied in say­ing much, even to his friend the squire, in dis­praise of his fu­ture son-​in-​law.

‘I told him that he should have the mon­ey; and one would have thought that that would have been enough for him. Well: I sup­pose Au­gus­ta likes him. I sup­pose she wish­es the match; oth­er­wise, I would give him such an an­swer to that let­ter as would star­tle him a lit­tle.’

‘What set­tle­ment is he to make?’ said Thorne.

‘Oh, that’s sat­is­fac­to­ry enough; couldn’t be more so; a thou­sand a year and the house at Wim­ble­don for her; that’s all very well. But such a lie, you know, Thorne. He’s rolling in mon­ey, and yet he talks of this beg­gar­ly sum as though he couldn’t pos­si­bly stir with­out it.’

‘If I might ven­ture to speak my mind,’ said Thorne.

‘Well?’ said the squire, look­ing at him earnest­ly.

‘I should be in­clined to say that Mr Mof­fat wants to cry off, him­self.’

‘Oh, im­pos­si­ble; quite im­pos­si­ble. In the first place, he was so very anx­ious for the match. In the next place, it is such a great thing for him. And then, he would nev­er dare; you see, he is de­pen­dent on the De Cour­cys for his seat.’

‘But sup­pose he los­es his seat?’

‘But there is not much fear of that, I think. Scatcherd may be a very fine fel­low, but I think they’ll hard­ly re­turn him at Barch­ester.’

‘I don’t un­der­stand much about it,’ said Thorne; ‘but such things do hap­pen.’

‘And you be­lieve that this man ab­so­lute­ly wants to get off the match; ab­so­lute­ly thinks of play­ing such a trick as that on my daugh­ter;–on me?’

‘I don’t say he in­tends to do it; but it looks to me as though he were mak­ing a door for him­self, or try­ing to make a door: if so, your hav­ing the mon­ey will stop him there.’

‘But, Thorne, don’t you think he loves the girl? If I thought not–’

The doc­tor was silent for a mo­ment, and then he said, ‘I am not a love-​mak­ing man my­self, but I think that if I were much in love with a young la­dy, I should not write such a let­ter as that to her fa­ther.’

‘By heav­ens! If I thought so,’ said the squire–’but, Thorne, we can’t judge of those fel­lows as one does of gen­tle­men; they are so used to mak­ing mon­ey, and see­ing mon­ey made, that they have an eye to busi­ness in ev­ery­thing.’

‘Per­haps so, per­haps so,’ mut­tered the doc­tor, show­ing ev­ident­ly that he still doubt­ed the warmth of Mr Mof­fat’s af­fec­tion.

‘The match was none of my mak­ing, and I can­not in­ter­fere now to break it off: it will give her a good po­si­tion in the world; for, af­ter all, mon­ey goes a great way, and it is some­thing to be in Par­lia­ment. I can on­ly hope she likes him. I do tru­ly hope she likes him;’ and the squire al­so showed by the tone of his voice that, though he might hope that his daugh­ter was in love with her in­tend­ed hus­band, he hard­ly con­ceived it to be pos­si­ble that she should be so.

And what was the truth of the mat­ter? Miss Gre­sham was no more in love with Mr Mof­fat than you are–oh, sweet, young, bloom­ing beau­ty! Not a whit more; not, at least, in your sense of the word, nor in mine. She had by no means re­solved with­in her heart that of all the men whom she had ev­er seen, or ev­er could see, he was far away the nicest and the best. That is what you will do when you are in love, if you be good for any­thing. She had no long­ing to sit near to him–the near­er the bet­ter; she had no thought of his taste and his choice when she bought her rib­bons and bon­nets; she had not in­de­scrib­able de­sire that all her fe­male friends should be ev­er talk­ing to her about him. When she wrote to him, she did not copy her let­ters again and again, so that she might be, as it were, ev­er speak­ing to him; she took no spe­cial pride in her­self be­cause he had cho­sen her to be his life’s part­ner. In point of fact, she did not care one straw about him.

And yet she thought she loved him; was, in­deed, quite con­fi­dent that she did so; told her moth­er that she was sure Gus­tavus would wish this, she knew Gus­tavus would like that, and so on; but as for Gus­tavus him­self, she did not care one chip about him.

She was in love with her match just as farm­ers are in love with wheat and eighty shillings a quar­ter; or share­hold­ers–in­no­cent gud­geons–with sev­en and half per cent in­ter­est on their paid up cap­ital. Eighty shillings a quar­ter, and sev­en and half per cent in­ter­est, such were the re­turns which she had been taught to look for in ex­change for her young heart; and, hav­ing ob­tained them, or be­ing thus about to ob­tain them, why should not her young heart be sat­is­fied? Had she not sat her­self down obe­di­ent­ly at the feet of her la­dy Gamaliel, and should she not be re­ward­ed? Yes, in­deed, she shall be re­ward­ed.

And then the doc­tor went to the la­dy. On their med­ical se­crets we will not in­trude; but there were oth­er mat­ters bear­ing on the course of our nar­ra­tive, as to which La­dy Ara­bel­la found it nec­es­sary to say a word of so to the doc­tor; and it is es­sen­tial that we should know what was the tenor of those few words so spo­ken.

How the as­pi­ra­tions, and in­stincts, and feel­ings of a house­hold be­come changed as the young birds be­gin to flut­ter those feath­ered wings, and have half-​formed thoughts of leav­ing the parental nest! A few months back, Frank had reigned al­most au­to­crat­ic over the less­er sub­jects of the king­dom of Gre­shams­bury. The ser­vants, for in­stance, al­ways obeyed him, and his sis­ters nev­er dreamed of telling any­thing which he di­rect­ed should not be told. All his mis­chief, all his trou­bles, and all his loves were con­fid­ed to them, with the sure con­vic­tion that they would nev­er be made to stand in ev­idence against him.

Trust­ing to this well-​as­cer­tained state of things, he had not hes­itat­ed to de­clare his love for Miss Thorne be­fore his sis­ter Au­gus­ta. But his sis­ter Au­gus­ta had now, as it were, been re­ceived in­to the up­per house; hav­ing du­ly prof­it­ed by the lessons of her great in­struc­tress, she was now ad­mit­ted to sit in con­clave with the high­er pow­ers: her sym­pa­thies, of course, be­came changed, and her con­fi­dence was re­moved from the young and gid­dy and giv­en to the an­cient and dis­creet. She was as a school­boy, who, hav­ing fin­ished his school­ing, and be­ing fair­ly forced by ne­ces­si­ty in­to the stern bread-​earn­ing world, un­der­takes the new du­ties of tu­tor­ing. Yes­ter­day he was taught, and fought, of course, against the school­mas­ter; to-​day he teach­es, and fights as keen­ly for him. So it was with Au­gus­ta Gre­sham, when, with care­ful brow, she whis­pered to her moth­er that there was some­thing wrong be­tween Frank and Mary Thorne.

‘Stop it at once, Ara­bel­la: stop it at once,’ the count­ess had said; ‘that, in­deed, will be the ru­in. If he does not mar­ry mon­ey, he is lost. Good heav­ens! the doc­tor’s niece! A girl that no­body knows where she comes from!’

‘He’s go­ing with you to-​mor­row, you know,’ said the anx­ious moth­er.

‘Yes; and that is so far well: if he will be led by me, the evil may be reme­died be­fore he re­turns; but it is very, very hard to lead young men. Ara­bel­la, you must for­bid that girl to come to Gre­shams­bury again on any pre­text what­ev­er. The evil must be stopped at once.’

‘But she is here so much as a mat­ter of course.’

‘Then she must be here as a mat­ter of course no more: there has been fol­ly, very great fol­ly, in hav­ing her here. Of course she would turn out to be a de­sign­ing crea­ture with such temp­ta­tion be­fore her; with such a prize with­in her reach, how could she help it?’

‘I must say, aunt, she an­swered him very prop­er­ly,’ said Au­gus­ta.

‘Non­sense,’ said the count­ess; ‘be­fore you of course she did. Ara­bel­la, the mat­ter must not be left to the girl’s pro­pri­ety. I nev­er knew the pro­pri­ety of a girl of that sort to be fit to be de­pend­ed on yet. If you wish to save the whole fam­ily from ru­in, you must take steps to keep her away from Gre­shams­bury now at once. Now is the time; now that Frank is go­ing away. Where so much, so very much de­pends on a young man’s mar­ry­ing mon­ey, not one day ought to be lost.’

In­sti­gat­ed in this man­ner, La­dy Ara­bel­la re­solved to open her mind to the doc­tor, and to make it in­tel­li­gi­ble to him, that un­der present cir­cum­stances, Mary’s vis­its at Gre­shams­bury had bet­ter be dis­con­tin­ued. She would have giv­en much, how­ev­er, to have es­caped this busi­ness. She had in her time tried one or two falls with the doc­tor, and she was con­scious that she had nev­er yet got the bet­ter of him: and then she was in a slight de­gree afraid of Mary her­self. She had a pre­sen­ti­ment that it would not be so easy to ban­ish Mary from Gre­shams­bury: she was not sure that that young la­dy would not bold­ly as­sert her right to her place in the school-​room; ap­peal loud­ly to the squire, and per­haps, de­clare her de­ter­mi­na­tion of mar­ry­ing the heir, out be­fore them all. The squire would be sure to up­hold her in that, or in any­thing else.

And then, too, there would be the great­est dif­fi­cul­ty in word­ing her re­quest to the doc­tor; and La­dy Ara­bel­la was suf­fi­cient­ly con­scious of her own weak­ness to know that she was not al­ways very good at words. But the doc­tor, when hard pressed, was nev­er at fault: he could say the bit­ter­est things in the qui­etest tone, and La­dy Ara­bel­la had a great dread of these bit­ter things. What, al­so, if he should desert her him­self; with­draw from her his skill and knowl­edge of her bod­ily wants and ail­ments now that he was so nec­es­sary to her? She had once be­fore tak­en that mea­sure of send­ing to Barch­ester for Dr Fill­grave, but it had an­swered with her hard­ly bet­ter than with Sir Roger and La­dy Scatcherd.

When, there­fore, La­dy Ara­bel­la found her­self alone with the doc­tor, and called up­on to say out in what best lan­guage she could se­lect for the oc­ca­sion, she did not feel to very much at her ease. There was that about the man be­fore her which cowed her, in spite of her be­ing the wife of the squire, the sis­ter of an earl, a per­son quite ac­knowl­edged to be of the great world, and the moth­er of a very im­por­tant young man whose af­fec­tions were now about to be called in ques­tion. Nev­er­the­less, there was the task to be done, and with a moth­er’s courage she es­sayed it.

‘Dr Thorne,’ said she, as soon as their med­ical con­fer­ence was at an end, ‘I am very glad you came over to-​day, for I have some­thing spe­cial which I want­ed to say to you:’ so far she got, and then stopped; but, as the doc­tor did not seem in­clined to give her any as­sis­tance, she was forced to floun­der on as best she could.

‘Some­thing very par­tic­ular in­deed. You know what a re­spect and es­teem, and I may say af­fec­tion, we all have for you,’–here the doc­tor made a low bow–’and I may say for Mary al­so;’ here the doc­tor bowed him­self again. ‘We have done what lit­tle we could to be pleas­ant neigh­bours, and I think you’ll be­lieve me when I say that I am a true friend to you and dear Mary–’

The doc­tor knew that some­thing very un­pleas­ant was com­ing, but he could not at all guess what might be its na­ture. He felt, how­ev­er, that he must say some­thing; so he ex­pressed a hope that he was du­ly sen­si­ble of all the acts of kind­ness he had ev­er re­ceived from the squire and the fam­ily at large.

‘I hope, there­fore, my dear doc­tor, you won’t take amiss what I am go­ing to say.’

‘Well, La­dy Ara­bel­la, I’ll en­deav­our not to do so.’

‘I am sure I would not give any pain if I could help it, much less to you. But there are oc­ca­sions, doc­tor, in which du­ty must be paramount; paramount to all oth­er con­sid­er­ations, you know, and, cer­tain­ly, this oc­ca­sion is one of them.’

‘But what is the oc­ca­sion, La­dy Ara­bel­la?’

‘I’ll tell you, doc­tor. You know what Frank’s po­si­tion is?’

‘Frank’s po­si­tion?’

‘Why his po­si­tion in life; an on­ly son, you know.’

‘Oh, yes; I know his po­si­tion in that re­spect; an on­ly son, and his fa­ther’s heir; and a very fine fel­low, he is. You have but one son, La­dy Ara­bel­la, and you may well be proud of him.’

La­dy Ara­bel­la sighed. She did not wish at the present mo­ment to ex­press her­self as be­ing in any way proud of Frank. She was de­sirous rather, on the oth­er hand, of show­ing that she was a good deal ashamed of him; on­ly not quite so much ashamed of him as it be­hoved the doc­tor to be of his niece.’

‘Well, per­haps so; yes,’ said La­dy Ara­bel­la, ‘he is, I be­lieve, a very good young man, with an ex­cel­lent dis­po­si­tion; but, doc­tor, his po­si­tion is very pre­car­ious; and he is just at that time of life when cau­tion is nec­es­sary.’

To the doc­tor’s ears, La­dy Ara­bel­la was now talk­ing of her son as a moth­er might of her in­fant when whoop­ing-​cough was abroad our croup im­mi­nent. ‘There is noth­ing on earth the mat­ter with him, I should say,’ said the doc­tor. ‘He has ev­ery pos­si­ble sign of per­fect health.’

‘Oh yes; his health! Yes, thank God, his health is good; that is a great bless­ing.’ And La­dy Ara­bel­la thought of her four flow­erets that had al­ready fad­ed. ‘I am sure I am most thank­ful to see him grow­ing up so strong. But it is not that I mean, doc­tor.’

‘Then what is it, La­dy Ara­bel­la?’

‘Why, doc­tor, the squire’s po­si­tion with re­gard to mon­ey mat­ters.’

Now the doc­tor un­doubt­ed­ly did know the squire’s po­si­tion with re­gard to mon­ey mat­ters,–knew it much bet­ter than La­dy Ara­bel­la; but he was by no means in­clined to talk on that sub­ject to her la­dy­ship. He re­mained quite silent, there­fore, al­though La­dy Ara­bel­la’s last speech had tak­en the form of a ques­tion. La­dy Ara­bel­la was a lit­tle of­fend­ed at this want of free­dom on his part, and be­come some­what stern­er in her tone–a thought less con­de­scend­ing in her man­ner.

‘The squire has un­for­tu­nate­ly em­bar­rassed the prop­er­ty, and Frank must look for­ward to in­her­it it with very heavy en­cum­brances; I fear very heavy in­deed, though of what ex­act na­ture I am kept in ig­no­rance.’

Look­ing at the doc­tor’s face, she per­ceived that there was no prob­abil­ity what­ev­er that her ig­no­rance would be en­light­ened by him.

‘And, there­fore, it is high­ly nec­es­sary that Frank should be very care­ful.’

‘As to his pri­vate ex­pen­di­ture, you mean?’ said the doc­tor.

‘No; not ex­act­ly that: though of course he must be care­ful as to that, too; that’s of course. But that is not what I mean, doc­tor; his on­ly hope of re­triev­ing his cir­cum­stances is by mar­ry­ing mon­ey.’

‘With ev­ery oth­er con­ju­gal bless­ing that a man can have, I hope he may have that al­so.’ So the doc­tor replied with im­per­turbable face; but not the less did he be­gin to have a shade of sus­pi­cion of what might be the com­ing sub­ject of the con­fer­ence. It would be un­true to say that he had ev­er thought it prob­able that the young heir should fall in love with his niece; that he had ev­er looked for­ward to such a chance, ei­ther with com­pla­cen­cy or with fear; nev­er­the­less, the idea had of late passed through his mind. Some word had fall­en from Mary, some close­ly watched ex­pres­sion of her eye, or some quiver in her lip when Frank’s name was men­tioned, had of late made him in­vol­un­tar­ily think that such a thing might not be im­pos­si­ble; and then, when the chance of Mary be­com­ing the heiress to so large a for­tune had been forced up­on his con­sid­er­ation, he had been un­able to pre­vent him­self from build­ing hap­py cas­tles in the air, as he rode slow­ly home from Box­all Hill. But not a whit the more on that ac­count was he pre­pared to be un­true to the squire’s in­ter­est or to en­cour­age a feel­ing which must be dis­taste­ful to all the squire’s friends.

‘Yes, doc­tor; he must mar­ry mon­ey.’

‘And worth, La­dy Ara­bel­la; and a pure fem­inine heart; and youth and beau­ty. I hope he will mar­ry them all.’

Could it be pos­si­ble, that in speak­ing of a pure fem­inine heart, and youth and beau­ty, and such like gew­gaws, the doc­tor was think­ing of his niece? Could it be that he had ab­so­lute­ly made up his mind to fos­ter and en­cour­age this odi­ous match?

The bare idea made La­dy Ara­bel­la wrath­ful, and her wrath gave her courage. ‘He must mar­ry mon­ey, or he will be a ru­ined man. Now, doc­tor, I am in­formed that things–words that is–have passed be­tween him and Mary which nev­er ought to have been al­lowed.’

And now the doc­tor was wrath­ful. ‘What things? what words?’ said he, ap­pear­ing to La­dy Ara­bel­la as though he rose in his anger near­ly a foot in al­ti­tude be­fore her eyes. ‘What has passed be­tween them? and who says so?’

‘Doc­tor, there have been love-​mak­ings, you may take my word for it; love-​mak­ings of a very, very ad­vanced de­scrip­tion.’

This, the doc­tor could not stand. No, not for Gre­shams­bury and its heir; not for the squire and all his mis­for­tunes; not for La­dy Ara­bel­la and the blood of the De Cour­cys could he stand qui­et and hear Mary ac­cused. He sprang up an­oth­er foot in height, and ex­pand­ed equal­ly in width as he flung back the in­sin­ua­tion.

‘Who says so? Who­ev­er says so, who­ev­er speaks of Miss Thorne in such lan­guage, says what is not true. I will pledge my word–’

‘My dear doc­tor, my dear doc­tor, what took place was quite clear­ly heard; there was no mis­take about it, in­deed.’

‘What took place? What was heard?’

‘Well, then, I don’t want, you know, to make more of it than can be helped. The thing must be stopped, that is all.’

‘What thing? Speak out, La­dy Ara­bel­la. I will not have Mary’s con­duct im­pugned by in­nu­en­does. What is that eaves­drop­pers have heard?’

Dr Thorne, there have been no eaves­drop­pers.’

‘And not tale­bear­ers ei­ther? Will you la­dy­ship oblige me by let­ting me know what is this ac­cu­sa­tion which you bring against my niece?’

‘There has been most pos­itive­ly an of­fer made, Dr Thorne.’

‘And who made it?’

‘Oh, of course I am not go­ing to say but what Frank must have been very im­pru­dent. Of course he has been to blame. There has been fault on both sides, no doubt.’

‘I ut­ter­ly de­ny it. I pos­itive­ly de­ny it. I know noth­ing of the cir­cum­stances; have heard noth­ing about it–’

‘Then of course you can’t say,’ said La­dy Ara­bel­la.

‘I know noth­ing of the cir­cum­stance; have heard noth­ing about it,’ con­tin­ued Dr Thorne; ‘but I do know my niece, and am ready to as­sert that there has not been fault on both sides. Whether there has been any fault on any side, that I do not know.’

‘I can as­sure you, Dr Thorne, that an of­fer was made by Frank; such an of­fer can­not be with­out its al­lure­ments to a young la­dy cir­cum­stanced like your niece.’

‘Al­lure­ments!’ al­most shout­ed the doc­tor, and, as he did so, La­dy Ara­bel­la stepped back a pace or two, re­treat­ing from the fire which shot out of his eyes. ‘But the truth is, La­dy Ara­bel­la, you do not know my niece. If you will have the good­ness to let me un­der­stand what it is that you de­sire I will tell you whether I can com­ply with your wish­es.’

‘Of course it will be very in­ex­pe­di­ent that the young peo­ple should be thrown to­geth­er again;–for the present, I mean.’

‘Well!’

‘Frank has now gone to Cour­cy Cas­tle; and he talks of go­ing from thence to Cam­bridge. But he will doubt­less be here, back­wards and for­wards; and per­haps it will be bet­ter for all par­ties–safer, that is, doc­tor–if Miss Thorne were to dis­con­tin­ue her vis­its to Gre­shams­bury for a while.’

‘Very well!’ thun­dered out the doc­tor. ‘Her vis­its to Gre­shams­bury shall be dis­con­tin­ued.’

‘Of course, doc­tor, this won’t change in­ter­course be­tween us; be­tween you and the and the fam­ily.’

‘Not change it!’ said he. ‘Do you think that I will break bread in a house from whence she has been ig­no­min­ious­ly ban­ished? Do you think that I can sit in friend­ship with those who have spo­ken of her as you have now spo­ken? You have many daugh­ters; what would you say if I ac­cused them one of them as you have ac­cused her?’

‘Ac­cused, doc­tor! No, I don’t ac­cuse her. But pru­dence, you know, does some­times re­quire us–’

‘Very well; pru­dence re­quires you to look af­ter those who be­long to you. And pru­dence re­quires me to look af­ter my one lamb. Good morn­ing, La­dy Ara­bel­la.’

‘But, doc­tor, you are not go­ing to quar­rel with us? You will come when we want you; eh! won’t you?’

Quar­rel! quar­rel with Gre­shams­bury! An­gry as he was, the doc­tor felt that he could ill bear to quar­rel with Gre­shams­bury. A man past fifty can­not eas­ily throw over the ties that have tak­en twen­ty years to form, and wrench him­self away from the var­ious close lig­atures with which, in such a pe­ri­od, he has be­come bound. He could not quar­rel with the squire; he could ill bear to quar­rel with Frank; though he now be­gan to con­ceive that Frank had used him bad­ly, he could not do so; he could not quar­rel with the chil­dren, who had al­most been born in­to his arms; nor even with the very walls, and trees, and grassy knolls with which he was so dear­ly in­ti­mate. He could not pro­claim him­self an en­emy to Gre­shams­bury; and yet he felt that feal­ty to Mary re­quired of him that, for the present, he should put on an en­emy’s guise.

‘If you want me, La­dy Ara­bel­la, and send for me, I will come to you; oth­er­wise, if you please, share the sen­tence which has been passed on Mary. I will now wish you good morn­ing.’ And then bow­ing low to her, he left the room and the house, and saun­tered slow­ly away to his own home.

What was he to say to Mary? He walked very slow­ly, down the Gre­shams­bury av­enue with his hands clasped be­hind his back, think­ing over the whole mat­ter; think­ing of it, or rather try­ing to think of it. When a man’s heart is warm­ly con­cerned in any mat­ter, it is al­most use­less for him to en­deav­our to think of it. In­stead of think­ing, he gives play to his feel­ings, and feeds his pas­sion by in­dulging it. ‘Al­lure­ments!’ he said to him­self, re­peat­ing La­dy Ara­bel­la’s words. ‘A girl cir­cum­stanced like my niece! How ut­ter­ly in­ca­pable is such a wom­an as that to un­der­stand the mind, and the heart, and soul of such a one as Mary Thorne!’ And then his thoughts re­curred to Frank. ‘It has been ill done of him; ill done of him: young as he is, he should have had feel­ing enough to spared me this. A thought­less word has been spo­ken which will now make her mis­er­able!’ And then, as he walked on, he could not di­vest his mind of the re­mem­brance of what had passed be­tween him and Sir Roger. What, if af­ter all, Mary should be­come the heiress to all that mon­ey? What, if she should be­come, in fact, the own­er of Gre­shams­bury? for, in­deed it seemed too pos­si­ble that Sir Roger’s heir would be the own­er of Gre­shams­bury.

The idea was one which he dis­liked to en­ter­tain, but it would re­cur to him again and again. It might be, that a mar­riage be­tween his niece and the nom­inal heir to the es­tate might be of all the match­es the best for young Gre­sham to make. How sweet would be the re­venge, how glo­ri­ous the re­tal­ia­tion on La­dy Ara­bel­la, if, af­ter what had now been said, it should come to pass that all the dif­fi­cul­ties of Gre­shams­bury should be made smooth by Mary’s love, and Mary’s hand! It was a dan­ger­ous sub­ject on which to pon­der. And, as he saun­tered down the road, the doc­tor did his best to ban­ish it from his mind–not al­to­geth­er suc­cess­ful­ly.

But as he went he again en­coun­tered Beat­rice. ‘Tell Mary I went up to her to-​day,’ said she, ‘and that I ex­pect her up here to-​mor­row. If she does not come here, I shall be sav­age.’

‘Do not be sav­age,’ said he, putting out his hand, ‘even though she should not come.’

Beat­rice im­me­di­ate­ly saw that his man­ner with her was not play­ful, and that his face was se­ri­ous. ‘I was on­ly in joke,’ said she; ‘of course I was on­ly jok­ing. But is any­thing the mat­ter? Is Mary ill?’

‘Oh, no; not ill at all; but she will not be here to-​mor­row, nor prob­ably for some time. But, Miss Gre­sham, you must not be sav­age with her.’

Beat­rice tried to in­ter­ro­gate him, but he would not wait to an­swer her ques­tions. While she was speak­ing he bowed to her in his usu­al old-​fash­ioned cour­te­ous way, and passed on out of hear­ing. ‘She will not come up for some time,’ said Beat­rice to her­self. ‘Then mam­ma must have quar­relled with her.’ And at once in her heart she ac­quit­ted her friend of all blame in the mat­ter, what­ev­er it might be, and con­demned her moth­er un­heard.

The doc­tor, when he ar­rived in his own house, had in no­wise made up his mind as to the man­ner in which he would break the mat­ter to Mary; but by the time that he had reached the draw­ing-​room, he had made up his mind to this, that he would put off the evil hour till the mor­row. He would sleep on the mat­ter–lie awake on it, more prob­ably–and then at break­fast, as best he could, tell her what had been said of her.

Mary that evening was more than usu­al­ly in­clined to be play­ful. She had not been quite cer­tain till the morn­ing, whether Frank had ab­so­lute­ly left Gre­shams­bury, and had, there­fore, pre­ferred the com­pa­ny of Miss Oriel to go­ing up to the house. There was a pe­cu­liar cheer­ful­ness about her friend Pa­tience, a feel­ing of sat­is­fac­tion with the world and those in it, which Mary al­ways shared with her; and now she had brought home to the doc­tor’s fire­side, in spite of her young trou­bles, a smil­ing face, if not a heart al­to­geth­er hap­py.

‘Un­cle,’ she said at last, ‘what makes you so som­bre? Shall I read to you?’

‘No; not to-​night, dear­est.’

‘Why, un­cle; what is the mat­ter?’

‘Noth­ing, noth­ing.’

‘Ah, but it is some­thing, and you shall tell me;’ get­ting up, she came over to his arm-​chair, and leant over his shoul­der.

He looked up at her for a minute in si­lence, and then, get­ting up from his chair, passed his arm round her waist, and pressed her close­ly to his heart.

‘My dar­ling!’ he said, al­most con­vul­sive­ly. ‘My best own, truest dar­ling!’ and Mary looked up in­to his face, saw that big tears were run­ning down his cheeks.

But still he told her noth­ing that night.