Dr Thorne

CHAPTER XXXVIII

DE COUR­CY PRE­CEPTS AND DE COUR­CY PRAC­TICE

There is a mode of nov­el-​writ­ing which used to be much in vogue, but which has now gone out of fash­ion. It is, nev­er­the­less, one which is very ex­pres­sive when in good hands, and which en­ables the au­thor to tell his sto­ry, or some por­tion of his sto­ry, with more nat­ural trust than any oth­er, I mean that of fa­mil­iar let­ters. I trust I shall be ex­cused if I at­tempt it as re­gards this one chap­ter; though, it may be, that I shall break down and fall in­to the com­mon­place nar­ra­tive, even be­fore the one chap­ter be com­plet­ed. The cor­re­spon­dents are the La­dy Amelia De Cour­cy and Miss Gre­sham. I, of course, give prece­dence to the high­er rank, but the first epis­tle orig­inat­ed with the lat­ter-​named young la­dy. Let me hope that they will ex­plain them­selves.

‘Miss Gre­sham to La­dy Amelia de Cour­cy

‘Gre­shams­bury House, June 185-

‘MY DEAR­EST AMELIA,

‘I wish to con­sult you on a sub­ject which, as you will per­ceive, is of a most mo­men­tous na­ture. You know how much re­liance I place in your judge­ment and knowl­edge of what is prop­er, and, there­fore, I write to you be­fore speak­ing to any oth­er liv­ing per­son on the sub­ject: not even to mam­ma; for, al­though her judge­ment is good too, she has so many cares and trou­bles, that it is nat­ural that it should be a lit­tle warped when the in­ter­ests of her chil­dren are in­volved. Now that it is all over, I feel that it may pos­si­bly have been so in the case of Mr Mof­fat.

‘You are aware that Mr Mor­timer Gaze­bee is now stay­ing here, and that he has been here for near­ly two months. He is en­gaged in man­ag­ing poor pa­pa’s af­fairs, and mam­ma, who likes him very much, says that he is a most ex­cel­lent man of busi­ness. Of course, you know that he is a ju­nior part­ner in the very old firm of Gump­tion, Gaze­bee, and Gaze­bee, who, I un­der­stand, do not un­der­take any busi­ness at all, ex­cept what comes to them from peers, or com­mon­ers of the very high­est class.

‘I soon per­ceived, dear­est Amelia, that Mr Gaze­bee paid me more than or­di­nary at­ten­tion, and I im­me­di­ate­ly be­came very guard­ed in my man­ner. I cer­tain­ly liked Mr Gaze­bee from the first. His man­ners are quite ex­cel­lent, his con­duct to mam­ma is charm­ing, and, as re­gards my­self, I must say that there has been noth­ing in his be­haviour of which even you could com­plain. He has nev­er at­tempt­ed the slight­est fa­mil­iar­ity, and I will do him the jus­tice to say, that, though he has been very at­ten­tive, he has al­so been very re­spect­ful.

‘I must con­fess that, for the last three weeks, I have thought that he meant some­thing. I might, per­haps, have done more to re­pel him; or I might have con­sult­ed you ear­li­er as to the pro­pri­ety of keep­ing al­to­geth­er out of his way. But you know, Amelia, how of­ten these things lead to noth­ing, and though I thought all along that Mr Gaze­bee was in earnest, I hard­ly liked to say any­thing about it even to you till I was quite cer­tain. If you had ad­vised me, you know, to ac­cept his of­fer, and if, af­ter that, he had nev­er made it, I should have felt so fool­ish.

‘But now he has made it. He came to me yes­ter­day just be­fore din­ner, in the lit­tle draw­ing-​room, and told me, in the most del­icate man­ner, in words that even you could not have but ap­proved, that his high­est am­bi­tion was to be thought wor­thy of my re­gard, and that he felt for me the warmest love, and the most pro­found ad­mi­ra­tion, and the deep­est re­spect. You may say, Amelia, that he is on­ly an at­tor­ney, and I be­lieve that he is an at­tor­ney; but I am sure you would have es­teemed him had you heard the very del­icate way in which he ex­pressed his sen­ti­ments.

‘Some­thing had giv­en me a pre­sen­ti­ment of what he was go­ing to do when I saw him come in­to the room, so that I was on my guard. I tried very hard to show no emo­tion; but I sup­pose I was a lit­tle flur­ried, as I once de­tect­ed my­self call­ing him Mr Mor­timer: his name, you know, is Mor­timer Gaze­bee. I ought not to have done so, cer­tain­ly; but it was not so bad as if I had called him Mor­timer with­out the Mr, was it? I don’t think there could pos­si­bly be a pret­ti­er Chris­tian name than Mor­timer. Well, Amelia, I al­lowed him to ex­press him­self with­out in­ter­rup­tion. He once at­tempt­ed to take my hand; but even this was done with­out any as­sump­tion of fa­mil­iar­ity; and when he saw that I would not per­mit it, he drew back, and fixed his eyes on the ground as though he were ashamed even of that.

‘Of course, I had to give him an an­swer; and though I had ex­pect­ed that some­thing of this sort would take place, I had not made up my mind on the sub­ject. I would not, cer­tain­ly, un­der any cir­cum­stances, ac­cept him with­out con­sult­ing you. If I re­al­ly dis­liked him, of course there would be no doubt; but I can’t say, dear­est Amelia, that I do ab­so­lute­ly dis­like him; and I re­al­ly think that we would make each oth­er very hap­py, if the mar­riage were suit­able as re­gard­ed both our po­si­tions.

‘I col­lect­ed my­self as well as I could, and I re­al­ly do think that you would have said that I did not be­have bad­ly, though the po­si­tion was rather try­ing. I told him that, of course, I was flat­tered by his sen­ti­ments, though much sur­prised at hear­ing them; that since I knew him, I had es­teemed and val­ued him as an ac­quain­tance, but that, look­ing on him as a man of busi­ness, I had nev­er ex­pect­ed any­thing more. I then en­deav­oured to ex­plain to him, that I was not per­haps priv­ileged as some oth­er girls might be, to in­dulge my feel­ings al­to­geth­er: per­haps that was say­ing too much, and might make him think that I was in love with him; but, from the way I said it, I don’t think he would, for I was very much guard­ed in my man­ner, and very col­lect­ed; and then I told him, that in any pro­pos­al of mar­riage that might be made to me, it would be my du­ty to con­sult my fam­ily as much, if not more than my­self.

‘He said, of course; and asked whether he might speak to pa­pa. I tried to make him un­der­stand, that in talk­ing of my fam­ily, I did not ex­act­ly mean pa­pa, or even mam­ma. Of course I was think­ing what was due to the name of Gre­sham. I know very well what pa­pa would say. He would give his con­sent in half a minute; he is so bro­ken-​heart­ed by these debts. And, to tell you the truth, Amelia, I think mam­ma would too. He did not seem quite to com­pre­hend what I meant; but he did say that he knew it was a high am­bi­tion to mar­ry in­to the fam­ily of the Gre­shams. I am sure you would con­fess that he has the most prop­er feel­ings; and as for ex­press­ing them no man could do it bet­ter.

‘He owned that it was am­bi­tion to al­ly him­self with a fam­ily above his own rank in life, and that he looked to do­ing so as a means of ad­vanc­ing him­self. Now this was at any rate hon­est. That was one of his mo­tives, he said; though, of course, not his first: and then he de­clared how tru­ly he was at­tached to me. In an­swer to this, I re­marked that he had known me on­ly a very short time. This, per­haps, was giv­ing him too much en­cour­age­ment; but, at that mo­ment, I hard­ly knew what to say, for I did not wish to hurt his feel­ings. He then spoke of his in­come. He has fif­teen hun­dred a year from the busi­ness, and that will be great­ly in­creased when his fa­ther leaves it; and his fa­ther is much old­er then Mr Gump­tion, though he is on­ly a sec­ond part­ner. Mor­timer Gaze­bee will be the se­nior part­ner him­self be­fore very long; and per­haps that does al­ter his po­si­tion a lit­tle.

‘He has a very nice place down some­where in Sur­rey; I have heard mam­ma say it is quite a gen­tle­man’s place. It is let now; but he will live there when he is mar­ried. And he has prop­er­ty of his own be­sides which he can set­tle. So, you see, he is quite as well off as Mr Oriel; bet­ter, in­deed; and if a man is in a pro­fes­sion, I be­lieve it is con­sid­ered that it does not mat­ter much what. Of course, a cler­gy­man can be a bish­op; but then, I think I have heard that one at­tor­ney did once be­come Lord Chan­cel­lor. I should have my car­riage, you know; I re­mem­ber his say­ing that, es­pe­cial­ly, though I can­not rec­ol­lect how he brought it in.

‘I told him, at last, that I was so much tak­en by sur­prise that I could not give him an an­swer then. He was go­ing up to Lon­don, he said, on the next day, and might he be per­mit­ted to ad­dress me on the same sub­ject when he re­turned? I could not refuse him, you know; and so now I have tak­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty of his ab­sence to write to you for your ad­vice. You un­der­stand the world so very well, and know ex­act­ly what one ought to do in such a strange po­si­tion!

‘I hope I have made it in­tel­li­gi­ble, at least, as to what I have writ­ten about. I have said noth­ing as to my own feel­ings, be­cause I wish you to think on the mat­ter with­out con­sult­ing them. If it would be deroga­to­ry to ac­cept Mr Gaze­bee, I cer­tain­ly would not do so be­cause I hap­pen to like him. If we were to act in that way, what would the world come to, Amelia? Per­haps my ideas may be over­strained; if so, you will tell me.

‘When Mr Oriel pro­posed to Beat­rice, no­body seemed to make any ob­jec­tion. It all seemed to go as a mat­ter of course. She says that his fam­ily is ex­cel­lent; but as far as I can learn, his grand­fa­ther was a gen­er­al in In­dia, and came home very rich. Mr Gaze­bee’s grand­fa­ther was a mem­ber of the firm, and so, I be­lieve, was his great-​grand­fa­ther. Don’t you think this ought to count for some­thing? Be­sides, they have no busi­ness ex­cept with the most aris­to­crat­ic per­sons, such as un­cle De Cour­cy, and the Mar­quis of Kens­ing­ton Gore, and that sort. I men­tion the mar­quis be­cause Mr Mor­timer Gaze­bee is there now. And I know that one of the Gump­tions was once in Par­lia­ment; and I don’t think that any of the Oriels ev­er were. The name of at­tor­ney is cer­tain­ly very bad, is it not, Amelia? but they cer­tain­ly do not seem to be all the same, and I do think that this ought to make a dif­fer­ence. To hear Mr Mor­timer Gaze­bee talk of some at­tor­ney at Barch­ester, you would say that there is quite as much dif­fer­ence be­tween them as be­tween a bish­op and a cu­rate. And so I think there is.

‘I don’t wish at all to speak of my own feel­ings; but if he were not an at­tor­ney, he is, I think, the sort of man I should like. He is very nice in ev­ery way, and if you were not told, I don’t think you would know he was an at­tor­ney. But, dear Amelia, I will be guid­ed by you al­to­geth­er. He is cer­tain­ly much nicer than Mr Mof­fat, and has a great deal more to say for him­self. Of course, Mr Mof­fat hav­ing been in Par­lia­ment, and hav­ing been tak­en up by un­cle De Cour­cy, was in a dif­fer­ent sphere; but I re­al­ly felt al­most re­lieved when he be­haved in that way. With Mor­timer Gaze­bee, I think it would be dif­fer­ent.

‘I shall wait so im­pa­tient­ly for your an­swer, so do pray write at once. I hear some peo­ple say that these sort of things are not so much thought of now as they were once, and that all man­ner of mar­riages are con­sid­ered to be comme il faut. I do not want, you know, to make my­self fool­ish by be­ing too par­tic­ular. Per­haps all these changes are bad, and I rather think they are; but if the world changes, one must change too; one can’t go against the world.

‘So do write and tell me what you think. Do not sup­pose that I dis­like the man, for I re­al­ly can­not say that I do. But I would not for any­thing make an al­liance for which any one bear­ing the name of De Cour­cy would have to blush.

‘Al­ways, dear­est Amelia,’ Your most af­fec­tion­ate cousin ‘AU­GUS­TA GRE­SHAM.

‘PS–I fear Frank is go­ing to be very fool­ish with Mary Thorne. You know it is ab­so­lute­ly im­por­tant that Frank should mar­ry mon­ey.

‘It strikes me as quite pos­si­ble that Mr Mor­timer Gaze­bee may be in Par­lia­ment some of these days. He is just the man for it.’

Poor Au­gus­ta prayed very hard for her hus­band; but she prayed to a bo­som that on this sub­ject was as hard as a flint, and she prayed in vain. Au­gus­ta Gre­sham was twen­ty-​two, La­dy Amelia was thir­ty-​four; was it like­ly that La­dy Amelia would per­mit Au­gus­ta to mar­ry, the is­sue hav­ing thus been left in her hands? Why should Au­gus­ta dero­gate from her po­si­tion by mar­ry­ing be­neath her­self, see­ing that La­dy Amelia had spent so many more years in the world with­out hav­ing found it nec­es­sary to do so? Au­gus­ta’s let­ter was writ­ten on two sheets of note-​pa­per, crossed all over; and La­dy Amelia’s an­swer was al­most equal­ly formidable.

‘La­dy Amelia de Cour­cy to Miss Au­gus­ta Gre­sham

‘Cour­cy Cas­tle, June, 185-

‘MY DEAR AU­GUS­TA,

‘I re­ceived your let­ter yes­ter­day morn­ing, but I have put off an­swer­ing it till this evening, as I have wished to give it very ma­ture con­sid­er­ation. The ques­tion is one which con­cerns, not on­ly your own char­ac­ter, but hap­pi­ness for life, and noth­ing less than very ma­ture con­sid­er­ation would jus­ti­fy me in giv­ing a de­cid­ed opin­ion on the sub­ject.

‘In the first place, I may tell you, that I have not a word to say against Mr Mor­timer Gaze­bee.’ (When Au­gus­ta had read as far as this, her heart sank with­in her; the rest was all leather and prunel­la; she saw at once that the fi­at had gone against her, and that her wish to be­come Mrs Mor­timer Gaze­bee was not to be in­dulged.) ‘I have known him for a long time, and I be­lieve him to be a very re­spectable per­son, and I have no doubt a good man of busi­ness. The firm of Messrs Gump­tion and Gaze­bee stands prob­ably quite among the first at­tor­neys in Lon­don, and I know that pa­pa has a very high opin­ion of them.

‘All of these would be ex­cel­lent ar­gu­ments to use in favour of Mr Gaze­bee as a suit­or, had his pro­pos­als been made to any one in his own rank in life. But you, in con­sid­er­ing the mat­ter, should, I think, look on it in a very dif­fer­ent light. The very fact that you pro­nounce him to be so much su­pe­ri­or to oth­er at­tor­neys, shows in how very low es­teem you hold the pro­fes­sion in gen­er­al. It shows al­so, dear Au­gus­ta, how well aware you are that they are a class of peo­ple among whom you should not seek a part­ner for life.

‘My opin­ion is, that you should make Mr Gaze­bee un­der­stand- very cour­te­ous­ly, of course–that you can­not ac­cept his hand. You ob­serve that he him­self con­fess­es that in mar­ry­ing you he would seek a wife in a rank above his own. Is it not, there­fore, clear, that in mar­ry­ing him, you would de­scend to a rank be­low you own?

‘I shall be very sor­ry if it grieves you; but still it will be bet­ter that you should bear the grief of over­com­ing a tem­po­rary fan­cy, than take a step which may so prob­ably make you un­hap­py; and which some of your friends would cer­tain­ly re­gard as dis­grace­ful.

‘It is not per­mit­ted to us, my dear Au­gus­ta, to think of our­selves in such mat­ters. As you tru­ly say, if we were to act in this way, what would the world come to? It has been God’s plea­sure that we should be born with high blood in our veins. This is a great boon which we both val­ue, but the boon has its re­spon­si­bil­ities as well as its priv­ileges. It is es­tab­lished by law, that the roy­al fam­ily shall not in­ter­mar­ry with sub­jects. In our case there is no law, but the ne­ces­si­ty is not the less felt; we should not in­ter­mar­ry with those who are prob­ably of a low­er rank. Mr Mor­timer Gaze­bee is, af­ter all, on­ly an at­tor­ney; and, al­though you speak of his great-​grand­fa­ther, he is a man of no blood what­so­ev­er. You must ac­knowl­edge that such an ad­mix­ture should be looked on by a De Cour­cy, or even a Gre­sham, as a pol­lu­tion.’ (Here Au­gus­ta got very red, and she felt al­most in­clined to be an­gry with her cousin.) ‘Beat­rice’s mar­riage with Mr Oriel is dif­fer­ent; though, re­mem­ber, I am by no means de­fend­ing that; it may be good or bad, and I have had no op­por­tu­ni­ty of in­quir­ing re­spect­ing Mr Oriel’s fam­ily. Beat­rice, more­over, has nev­er ap­peared to me to feel what was due to her­self in such mat­ters; but, as I said, her mar­riage with Mr Oriel is very dif­fer­ent. Cler­gy­men–par­tic­ular­ly the rec­tors and vi­cars of coun­try parish­es–do be­come priv­ileged above oth­er pro­fes­sion­al men. I could ex­plain why, but it would be too long in a let­ter.

‘Your feel­ings on the sub­ject al­to­geth­er do you great cred­it. I have no doubt that Mr Gre­sham, if asked, would ac­cede to the match; but that is just the rea­son why he should not be asked. It would not be right that I should say any­thing against your fa­ther to you; but it is im­pos­si­ble for any of us not to see that all through life he has thrown away ev­ery ad­van­tage, and sac­ri­ficed his fam­ily. Why is he now in debt, as you say? Why is he not hold­ing the fam­ily seat in Par­lia­ment? Even though you are his daugh­ter, you can­not but feel that you would not do right to con­sult him on such a sub­ject.

‘As to dear aunt, I feel sure, that were she in good health, and left to ex­er­cise her own judge­ment, she would not wish to see you mar­ried to the agent for the fam­ily es­tate. For, dear Au­gus­ta, that is the re­al truth. Mr Gaze­bee of­ten comes here in the way of busi­ness; and though pa­pa al­ways re­ceives him as a gen­tle­man–that is, he dines at ta­ble and all that–he is not on the same foot­ing in the house as the or­di­nary guests and friends of the fam­ily. How would you like to be re­ceived at Cour­cy Cas­tle in the same way?

‘You will say, per­haps, that you would still be pa­pa’s niece; so you would. But you know how strict in such mat­ters pa­pa is, and you must re­mem­ber, that the wife al­ways fol­lows the rank of the hus­band. Pa­pa is ac­cus­tomed to the strict eti­quette of a court, and I am sure that no con­sid­er­ation would in­duce him to re­ceive the es­tate-​agent in the light of a nephew. In­deed, were you to mar­ry Mr Gaze­bee, the house to which he be­longs would, I imag­ine, have to give up the man­age­ment of the prop­er­ty.

‘Even were Mr Gaze­bee in Par­lia­ment–and I do not see how it is prob­able that he should get there–it would not make any dif­fer­ence. You must re­mem­ber, dear­est, that I nev­er was an ad­vo­cate for the Mof­fat match. I ac­qui­esced in it, be­cause mam­ma did so. If I could have had my own way, I would ad­here to all our old pre­scrip­tive prin­ci­ples. Nei­ther mon­ey nor po­si­tion can atone to me for low birth. But the world, alas! is ret­ro­grad­ing; and, ac­cord­ing to the new-​fan­gled doc­trines of the day, a la­dy of blood is not dis­graced by al­ly­ing her­self to a man of wealth, and what may be called quasi- aris­to­crat­ic po­si­tion. I wish it were oth­er­wise; but so it is. And, there­fore, the match with Mr Mof­fat was not dis­grace­ful, though it could not be re­gard­ed as al­to­geth­er sat­is­fac­to­ry.

‘But with Mr Gaze­bee the mat­ter would be al­to­geth­er dif­fer­ent. He is a man earn­ing his bread; hon­est­ly, I dare say, but in a hum­ble po­si­tion. You say he is very re­spectable: I do not doubt it; and so is Mr Scrag­gs, the butch­er at Cour­cy. You see, Au­gus­ta, to what such ar­gu­ments re­duce you.

‘I dare say he may be nicer than Mr Mof­fat, in one way. That is, he may have more small-​talk at his com­mand, and be more clever in all those lit­tle pur­suits and amuse­ments which are val­ued by or­di­nary young ladies. But my opin­ion is, that nei­ther I nor you would be jus­ti­fied in sac­ri­fic­ing our­selves for such amuse­ments. We have high du­ties be­fore us. It may be that the per­for­mance of those du­ties will pro­hib­it us from tak­ing a part in the or­di­nary are­na of the fem­inine world. It is nat­ural that girls should wish to mar­ry; and, there­fore, those who are weak, take the first that come. Those who have more judge­ment, make some sort of se­lec­tion. But the strongest-​mind­ed are, per­haps, those who are able to for­go them­selves and their own fan­cies, and to re­frain from any al­liance that does not tend to the main­te­nance of high prin­ci­ples. Of course, I speak of those who have blood in their veins. You and I need not di­late as to the con­duct of oth­ers.

‘I hope what I have said will con­vince you. In­deed, I know that it on­ly re­quires that you and I should have a lit­tle cousin­ly talk on this mat­ter to be quite in ac­cord. You must now re­main at Gre­shams­bury till Mr Gaze­bee shall re­turn. Im­me­di­ate­ly that he does so, seek an in­ter­view with him; do not wait till he asks for it; then tell him, that when he ad­dressed you, the mat­ter had tak­en you so much by sur­prise, that you were not at the mo­ment able to an­swer him, with that de­ci­sion that the sub­ject de­mand­ed. Tell him, that you are flat­tered–in say­ing this, how­ev­er, you must keep a col­lect­ed coun­te­nance, and be very cold in your man­ner–but that fam­ily rea­sons would for­bid you to avail your­self of his of­fer, even did no oth­er cause pre­vent it.

‘And then, dear Au­gus­ta, come to us here. I know you will be a lit­tle down-​heart­ed af­ter go­ing through this strug­gle; but I will en­deav­our to in­spir­it you. When we are both to­geth­er, you will feel more sen­si­bly the val­ue of that high po­si­tion which you will pre­serve by re­ject­ing Mr Gaze­bee, and will re­gret less acute­ly what­ev­er you may lose.

‘Your very af­fec­tion­ate cousin, ‘AMELIA DE COUR­CY.

‘PS.–I am great­ly grieved about Frank; but I have long feared that he would do some very sil­ly thing. I have heard late­ly that Miss Mary Thorne is not even the le­git­imate niece of your Dr Thorne, but is the daugh­ter of some poor crea­ture who was se­duced by the doc­tor, in Barch­ester. I do not know how true this may be, but I think your broth­er should be put on his guard: it might do good.’

Poor Au­gus­ta! She was in truth to be pitied, for her ef­forts were made with the in­ten­tion of do­ing right ac­cord­ing to her lights. For Mr Mof­fat she had nev­er cared a straw; and when, there­fore, she lost the piece of gild­ing for which she had been in­struct­ed by her moth­er to sell her­self, it was im­pos­si­ble to pity her. But Mr Gaze­bee she would have loved with that sort of love which it was in her pow­er to be­stow. With him she would have been hap­py, re­spectable, and con­tent­ed.

She had writ­ten her let­ter with great care. When the of­fer was made to her, she could not bring her­self to throw La­dy Amelia to the winds and mar­ry the man, as it were, out of her own head. La­dy Amelia had been the tyrant of her life, and so she strove hard to ob­tain her tyrant’s per­mis­sion. She used all her lit­tle cun­ning in show­ing that, af­ter all, Mr Gaze­bee was not so very ple­beian. All her lit­tle cun­ning was ut­ter­ly worth­less. La­dy Amelia’s mind was too strong to be caught with such chaff. Au­gus­ta could not serve God and Mam­mon. She must ei­ther be true to the god of her cousin’s idol­atry, and re­main sin­gle, or serve the Mam­mon of her own in­cli­na­tions, and mar­ry Mr Gaze­bee.

When re-​fold­ing her cousin’s let­ter, af­ter the first pe­rusal, she did for a mo­ment think of re­bel­lion. Could she not be hap­py at the nice place in Sur­rey, hav­ing, as she would have, a car­riage, even though all the De Cour­cys should drop her? It had been put to her that she would not like to be re­ceived at Cour­cy Cas­tle with the scant ci­vil­ity which would be con­sid­ered due to a Mrs Mor­timer Gaze­bee; but what if she could put up with­out be­ing re­ceived at Cour­cy Cas­tle at all? Such ideas did float through her mind, dim­ly.

But her courage failed her. It is so hard to throw off a tyrant; so much eas­ier to yield, when we have been in the habit of yield­ing. This third let­ter, there­fore, was writ­ten; and it is the end of the cor­re­spon­dence.

‘Miss Au­gus­ta Gre­sham to La­dy Amelia de Cour­cy

‘Gre­shams­bury House, Ju­ly, 185-

‘MY DEAR­EST AMELIA,

‘I did not an­swer your let­ter be­fore, be­cause I thought it bet­ter to de­lay do­ing so till Mr Gaze­bee had been here. He came the day be­fore yes­ter­day, and yes­ter­day I did, as near­ly as pos­si­ble, what you ad­vised. Per­haps, on the whole, it will be bet­ter. As you say, rank has its re­spon­si­bil­ities as well as its priv­ileges.

‘I don’t quite un­der­stand what you mean about cler­gy­men, but we can talk that over when we meet. In­deed, it seems to me that if one is to be par­tic­ular about fam­ily–and I am sure I think we ought–one ought to be so with­out ex­cep­tion. If Mr Oriel be a par­venu, Beat­rice’s chil­dren won’t be well born mere­ly be­cause their fa­ther was a cler­gy­man, even though he is a rec­tor. Since my for­mer let­ter, I have heard that Mr Gaze­bee’s great-​great-​great-​grand­fa­ther es­tab­lished the firm; and there are many peo­ple who were no­bod­ies then who are thought to have good blood in their veins now.

‘But I do not say this be­cause I dif­fer from you. I agree with you so ful­ly, that I at once made up my mind to re­ject the man; and, con­se­quent­ly, I have done so.

‘When I told him I could not ac­cept him from fam­ily con­sid­er­ations, he asked me whether I had spo­ken to pa­pa. I told him, no; and that it would be no good, as I had made up my own mind. I don’t think he quite un­der­stood me; but it did not per­haps much mat­ter. You told me to be very cold, and I think that per­haps he thought me less gra­cious than be­fore. In­deed, I fear that when he first spoke, I may seem to have giv­en him too much en­cour­age­ment. How­ev­er, it is all over now; quite over!’ (As Au­gus­ta wrote this, she bare­ly man­aged to save the pa­per be­neath her hand from be­ing moist­ened with the tear which es­caped from her eye.)

‘I do not mind con­fess­ing now,’ she con­tin­ued, ‘at any rate to you, that I did like Mr Gaze­bee a lit­tle. I think his tem­per and dis­po­si­tion would have suit­ed me. But I am quite sat­is­fied that I have done right. He tried very hard to make me change my mind. That is, he said a great many things as to whether I would not put off my de­ci­sion. But I was quite firm. I must say that he be­haved very well, and that I re­al­ly do think he liked me hon­est­ly and tru­ly; but, of course, I could not sac­ri­fice fam­ily con­sid­er­ations on that ac­count.

‘Yes, rank has its re­spon­si­bil­ities as well as its priv­ileges. I will re­mem­ber that. It is nec­es­sary to do so, as oth­er­wise one would be with­out con­so­la­tion for what one has to suf­fer. For I find that one has to suf­fer, Amelia. I know pa­pa would have ad­vised me to mar­ry this man; and so, I dare say, mam­ma would, and Frank, and Beat­rice, if they knew that I liked him. It would not be so bad if we all thought alike about it; but it is hard to have re­spon­si­bil­ities all on one’s own shoul­der; is it not?

‘But I will go over to you, and you will com­fort me. I al­ways feel stronger on this sub­ject at Cour­cy than at Gre­shams­bury. We will have a long talk about it, and then I shall be hap­py again. I pur­pose go­ing on next Fri­day, if that will suit you and dear aunt. I have told mam­ma that you all want­ed me, and she made no ob­jec­tion. Do write at once, dear­est Amelia, for to hear from you now will be my on­ly com­fort.

‘Yours, ev­er most af­fec­tion­ate­ly and obliged, ‘AU­GUS­TA GRE­SHAM.

‘PS.–I told mam­ma what you said about Mary Thorne, and she said, “Yes; I sup­pose all the world knows it now; and if all the world did know it, it makes no dif­fer­ence to Frank.” She seemed very an­gry; so you see it was true.’

Though, by so do­ing, we shall some­what an­tic­ipate the end of our sto­ry, it may be de­sir­able that the full tale of Mr Gaze­bee’s loves should be told here. When Mary is break­ing her heart on her death-​bed in the last chap­ter, or oth­er­wise ac­com­plish­ing her des­tiny, we shall hard­ly find a fit op­por­tu­ni­ty of say­ing much about Mr Gaze­bee and his aris­to­crat­ic bride.

For he did suc­ceed at last in ob­tain­ing a bride in whose veins ran the no­ble De Cour­cy blood, in spite of the high doc­trine preached so elo­quent­ly by the La­dy Amelia. As Au­gus­ta had tru­ly said, he had failed to un­der­stand her. He was led to think, by her man­ner of re­ceiv­ing his first pro­pos­al–and just­ly so, enough–that she liked him, and would ac­cept him; and he was there­fore rather per­plexed by his sec­ond in­ter­view. He tried again and again, and begged per­mis­sion to men­tion the mat­ter to Mr Gre­sham; but Au­gus­ta was very firm, and he at last re­tired in dis­gust. Au­gus­ta went to Cour­cy Cas­tle, and re­ceived from her cousin that con­so­la­tion and re-​strength­en­ing which she so much re­quired.

Four years af­ter­wards–long af­ter the fate of Mary Thorne had fall­en, like a thun­der­bolt, on the in­hab­itants of Gre­shams­bury; when Beat­rice was prepar­ing for her sec­ond ba­by, and each of the twins had her ac­cept­ed lover–Mr Mor­timer Gaze­bee went down to Cour­cy Cas­tle; of course, on a mat­ter of busi­ness. No doubt he dined at the ta­ble, and all that. We have the word of La­dy Amelia, that the earl, with his usu­al good-​na­ture, al­lowed him such priv­ileges. Let us hope that he nev­er en­croached on them.

But on this oc­ca­sion, Mr Gaze­bee stayed a long time at the cas­tle, and sin­gu­lar ru­mours as to the cause of his pro­longed vis­it be­came cur­rent in the lit­tle town. No fe­male scion of the present fam­ily of Cour­cy had, as yet, found a mate. We may imag­ine that ea­gles find it dif­fi­cult to pair when they be­come scarce in their lo­cal­ities; and we all know how hard it has some­times been to get comme il faut hus­bands when there has been any num­ber of Protes­tant princess­es on hand.

Some lit­tle dif­fi­cul­ty had, doubt­less, brought it about that the count­ess was still sur­round­ed by her full bevy of maid­ens. Rank has its re­spon­si­bil­ities as well as its priv­ileges, and these young ladies’ re­spon­si­bil­ities seemed to have con­sist­ed in re­ject­ing any suit­or who may have hith­er­to kneeled to them. But now it was told through Cour­cy, that one suit­or had kneeled, and not in vain; from Cour­cy the ru­mour flew to Barch­ester, and thence came down to Gre­shams­bury, startling the in­hab­itants, and mak­ing one poor heart throb with a vi­olence that would have been piteous had it been known. The suit­or, so named, as Mr Mor­timer Gaze­bee.

Yes; Mr Mor­timer Gaze­bee had now award­ed to him many oth­er priv­ileges than those of din­ing at the ta­ble, and all that. He rode with the young ladies in the park, and they all talked to him very fa­mil­iar­ly be­fore com­pa­ny; all ex­cept La­dy Amelia. The count­ess even called him Mor­timer, and treat­ed him quite as one of the fam­ily.

At last came a let­ter from the count­ess to her dear sis­ter Ara­bel­la. It should be giv­en at length, but that I fear to in­tro­duce an­oth­er epis­tle. It is such an easy mode of writ­ing, and fa­cil­ity is al­ways dan­ger­ous. In this let­ter it was an­nounced with much pre­lim­inary am­bi­gu­ity, that Mor­timer Gaze­bee–who had been found to be a trea­sure in ev­ery way; quite a paragon of men–was about to be tak­en in­to the De Cour­cy bo­som as a child of that house. On that day fort­night, he was des­tined to lead to the al­tar–the La­dy Amelia.

The count­ess then went on to say, that dear Amelia did not write her­self, be­ing so much en­gaged by her com­ing du­ties–the re­spon­si­bil­ities of which she doubt­less ful­ly re­al­ized, as well as the priv­ileges; but she had begged her moth­er to re­quest that the twins should come and act as brides­maids on the oc­ca­sion. Dear Au­gus­ta, she knew, was too much oc­cu­pied in the com­ing event in Mr Oriel’s fam­ily to be able to at­tend.

Mr Mor­timer Gaze­bee was tak­en in­to the De Cour­cy fam­ily, and did lead the La­dy Amelia to the al­tar; and the Gre­sham twins did go there and act as brides­maids. And, which is much more to say for hu­man na­ture, Au­gus­ta did for­give her cousin, and, af­ter a cer­tain in­ter­val, went on a vis­it to that nice place in Sur­rey which she had hoped would be her own home. It would have been a very nice place, Au­gus­ta thought, had not La­dy Amelia Gaze­bee been so very eco­nom­ical.

We must pre­sume that there was some ex­pla­na­tion be­tween them. If so, Au­gus­ta yield­ed to it, and con­fessed it to be sat­is­fac­to­ry. She had al­ways yield­ed to her cousin, and loved her with that sort of love which is be­got­ten be­tween fear and re­spect. Any­thing was bet­ter than quar­relling with her cousin Amelia.

And Mr Mor­timer Gaze­bee did not al­to­geth­er make a bad bar­gain. He nev­er re­ceived a shilling of dowry, but that he had not ex­pect­ed. Nor did he want it. His trou­bles arose from the over­strained econ­omy of his no­ble wife. She would have it, that as she had mar­ried a poor man–Mr Gaze­bee, how­ev­er, was not a poor man–it be­hoved her to man­age her house with great care. Such a match as that she had made–this she told in con­fi­dence to Au­gus­ta–had its re­spon­si­bil­ities as well as its priv­ileges.

But, on the whole, Mr Gaze­bee did not re­pent his bar­gain; when he asked his friends to dine, he could tell them that La­dy Amelia would be glad to see them; his mar­riage gave him some eclat at his club, and some ad­di­tion­al weight in the firm to which he be­longed; he gets his share of the Cour­cy shoot­ing, and is asked about to Gre­shams­bury, and oth­er Barset­shire hous­es, not on­ly ‘to dine at ta­ble and all that’, but to take his part in what­ev­er de­lights coun­try so­ci­ety there has to of­fer. He lives with the great hope that his no­ble fa­ther-​in-​law may some day be able to bring him in­to Par­lia­ment.