Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope (interesting books to read TXT) 📖

he; “I don’t know—it ought to be helped

somehow—I am quite sure you have not been to blame.”

 

“No,” said she, very quietly, as though the position was one quite

a matter of course. “I don’t think I have been very much to blame.

There will be misfortunes sometimes when nobody is to blame.”

 

“I do not quite understand it all,” said the squire; “but if Frank—”

 

“Oh! we will not talk about him,” said she, still laughing gently.

 

“You can understand, Mary, how dear he must be to me; but if—”

 

“Mr Gresham, I would not for worlds be the cause of any

unpleasantness between you and him.”

 

“But I cannot bear to think that we have banished you, Mary.”

 

“It cannot be helped. Things will all come right in time.”

 

“But you will be so lonely here.”

 

“Oh! I shall get over all that. Here, you know, Mr Gresham, ‘I am

monarch of all I survey;’ and there is a great deal in that.”

 

The squire did not quite catch her meaning, but a glimmering of it

did reach him. It was competent to Lady Arabella to banish her from

Greshamsbury; it was within the sphere of the squire’s duties to

prohibit his son from an imprudent match; it was for the Greshams to

guard their Greshamsbury treasure as best they could within their

own territories: but let them beware that they did not attack her on

hers. In obedience to the first expression of their wishes, she had

submitted herself to this public mark of their disapproval because

she had seen at once, with her clear intellect, that they were only

doing that which her conscience must approve. Without a murmur,

therefore, she consented to be pointed at as the young lady who had

been turned out of Greshamsbury because of the young squire. She had

no help for it. But let them take care that they did not go beyond

that. Outside those Greshamsbury gates she and Frank Gresham, she

and Lady Arabella met on equal terms; let them each fight their own

battle.

 

The squire kissed her forehead affectionately and took his leave,

feeling, somehow, that he had been excused and pitied, and made much

of; whereas he had called on his young neighbour with the intention

of excusing, and pitying, and making much of her. He was not

quite comfortable as he left the house; but, nevertheless, he was

sufficiently honest-hearted to own to himself that Mary Thorne was a

fine girl. Only that it was so absolutely necessary that Frank should

marry money—and only, also, that poor Mary was such a birthless

foundling in the world’s esteem—only, but for these things, what a

wife she would have made for that son of his!

 

To one person only did she talk freely on the subject, and that one

was Patience Oriel; and even with her the freedom was rather of the

mind than of the heart. She never said a word of her feeling with

reference to Frank, but she said much of her position in the village,

and of the necessity she was under to keep out of the way.

 

“It is very hard,” said Patience, “that the offence should be all

with him, and the punishment all with you.”

 

“Oh! as for that,” said Mary, laughing, “I will not confess to any

offence, nor yet to any punishment; certainly not to any punishment.”

 

“It comes to the same thing in the end.”

 

“No, not so, Patience; there is always some little sting of disgrace

in punishment: now I am not going to hold myself in the least

disgraced.”

 

“But, Mary, you must meet the Greshams sometimes.”

 

“Meet them! I have not the slightest objection on earth to meet all,

or any of them. They are not a whit dangerous to me, my dear. ‘Tis

I that am the wild beast, and ‘tis they that must avoid me,” and

then she added, after a pause—slightly blushing—“I have not the

slightest objection even to meet him if chance brings him in my way.

Let them look to that. My undertaking goes no further than this, that

I will not be seen within their gates.”

 

But the girls so far understood each other that Patience undertook,

rather than promised, to give Mary what assistance she could; and,

despite Mary’s bravado, she was in such a position that she much

wanted the assistance of such a friend as Miss Oriel.

 

After an absence of some six weeks, Frank, as we have seen, returned

home. Nothing was said to him, except by Beatrice, as to these new

Greshamsbury arrangements; and he, when he found Mary was not at the

place, went boldly to the doctor’s house to seek her. But it has been

seen, also, that she discreetly kept out of his way. This she had

thought fit to do when the time came, although she had been so ready

with her boast that she had no objection on earth to meet him.

 

After that there had been the Christmas vacation, and Mary had again

found discretion to be the better part of valour. This was doubtless

disagreeable enough. She had no particular wish to spend her

Christmas with Miss Oriel’s aunt instead of at her uncle’s fireside.

Indeed, her Christmas festivities had hitherto been kept at

Greshamsbury, the doctor and herself having made a part of the family

circle there assembled. This was out of the question now; and perhaps

the absolute change to old Miss Oriel’s house was better for her than

the lesser change to her uncle’s drawing-room. Besides, how could she

have demeaned herself when she met Frank in their parish church? All

this had been fully understood by Patience, and, therefore, had this

Christmas visit been planned.

 

And then this affair of Frank and Mary Thorne ceased for a while to

be talked of at Greshamsbury, for that other affair of Mr Moffat and

Augusta monopolised the rural attention. Augusta, as we have said,

bore it well, and sustained the public gaze without much flinching.

Her period of martyrdom, however, did not last long, for soon

the news arrived of Frank’s exploit in Pall Mall; and then the

Greshamsburyites forgot to think much more of Augusta, being fully

occupied in thinking of what Frank had done.

 

The tale, as it was first told, declared that Frank had followed Mr

Moffat up into his club; had dragged him thence into the middle of

Pall Mall, and had then slaughtered him on the spot. This was by

degrees modified till a sobered fiction became generally prevalent,

that Mr Moffat was lying somewhere, still alive, but with all his

bones in a general state of compound fracture. This adventure again

brought Frank into the ascendant, and restored to Mary her former

position as the Greshamsbury heroine.

 

“One cannot wonder at his being very angry,” said Beatrice,

discussing the matter with Mary—very imprudently.

 

“Wonder—no; the wonder would have been if he had not been angry. One

might have been quite sure that he would have been angry enough.”

 

“I suppose it was not absolutely right for him to beat Mr Moffat,”

said Beatrice, apologetically.

 

“Not right, Trichy? I think he was very right.”

 

“Not to beat him so very much, Mary!”

 

“Oh, I suppose a man can’t exactly stand measuring how much he does

these things. I like your brother for what he has done, and I say

so frankly—though I suppose I ought to eat my tongue out before I

should say such a thing, eh, Trichy?”

 

“I don’t know that there’s any harm in that,” said Beatrice,

demurely. “If you both liked each other there would be no harm in

that—if that were all.”

 

“Wouldn’t there?” said Mary, in a low tone of bantering satire; “that

is so kind, Trichy, coming from you—from one of the family, you

know.”

 

“You are well aware, Mary, that if I could have my wishes—”

 

“Yes: I am well aware what a paragon of goodness you are. If you

could have your way I should be admitted into heaven again; shouldn’t

I? Only with this proviso, that if a stray angel should ever whisper

to me with bated breath, mistaking me, perchance, for one of his own

class, I should be bound to close my ears to his whispering, and

remind him humbly that I was only a poor mortal. You would trust me

so far, wouldn’t you, Trichy?”

 

“I would trust you in any way, Mary. But I think you are unkind in

saying such things to me.”

 

“Into whatever heaven I am admitted, I will go only on this

understanding: that I am to be as good an angel as any of those

around me.”

 

“But, Mary dear, why do you say this to me?”

 

“Because—because—because—ah me! Why, indeed, but because I have no

one else to say it to. Certainly not because you have deserved it.”

 

“It seems as though you were finding fault with me.”

 

“And so I am; how can I do other than find fault? How can I help

being sore? Trichy, you hardly realise my position; you hardly see

how I am treated; how I am forced to allow myself to be treated

without a sign of complaint. You don’t see it all. If you did, you

would not wonder that I should be sore.”

 

Beatrice did not quite see it all; but she saw enough of it to know

that Mary was to be pitied; so, instead of scolding her friend

for being cross, she threw her arms round her and kissed her

affectionately.

 

But the doctor all this time suffered much more than his niece did.

He could not complain out loudly; he could not aver that his pet lamb

had been ill treated; he could not even have the pleasure of openly

quarrelling with Lady Arabella; but not the less did he feel it to

be most cruel that Mary should have to live before the world as an

outcast, because it had pleased Frank Gresham to fall in love with

her.

 

But his bitterness was not chiefly against Frank. That Frank had been

very foolish he could not but acknowledge; but it was a kind of folly

for which the doctor was able to find excuse. For Lady Arabella’s

cold propriety he could find no excuse.

 

With the squire he had spoken no word on the subject up to this

period of which we are now writing. With her ladyship he had never

spoken on it since that day when she had told him that Mary was

to come no more to Greshamsbury. He never now dined or spent his

evenings at Greshamsbury, and seldom was to be seen at the house,

except when called in professionally. The squire, indeed, he

frequently met; but he either did so in the village, or out on

horseback, or at his own house.

 

When the doctor first heard that Sir Roger had lost his seat, and had

returned to Boxall Hill, he resolved to go over and see him. But the

visit was postponed from day to day, as visits are postponed which

may be made any day, and he did not in fact go till he was summoned

there somewhat peremptorily. A message was brought to him one evening

to say that Sir Roger had been struck by paralysis, and that not a

moment was to be lost.

 

“It always happens at night,” said Mary, who had more sympathy for

the living uncle whom she did know, than for the other dying uncle

whom she did not know.

 

“What matters?—there—just give me my scarf. In all probability I

may not be home to-night—perhaps