Doctor Thorne Part 29

"Dr Thorne, there have been no eavesdroppers."

"And no talebearers either? Will you ladyship oblige me by letting me know what is the 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 circ.u.mstances; have heard nothing about it--"

"Then of course you can't say," said Lady Arabella.

"I know nothing of the circ.u.mstance; have heard nothing about it,"

continued Dr Thorne; "but I do know my niece, and am ready to a.s.sert that there has not been fault on both sides. Whether there has been any fault on any side, that I do not yet know."

"I can a.s.sure you, Dr Thorne, that an offer was made by Frank; such an offer cannot be without its allurements to a young lady circ.u.mstanced 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 the intercourse between us; between you 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 down 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 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 gra.s.sy 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 I will, if you please, share the sentence which has been pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion by indulging it. "Allurements!" he said to himself, repeating Lady Arabella's words. "A girl circ.u.mstanced like my niece! How utterly incapable is such a woman as that to understand the mind, and 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 have 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 to her to-day," said she, "and that I expect her up here to-morrow. If she does not come, 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 pa.s.sed 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 at 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 at her for a minute in silence, and then, getting up from his chair, pa.s.sed 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, looking up into his face, saw that big tears were running down his cheeks.

But still he told her nothing that night.

CHAPTER XV

Courcy

When Frank Gresham expressed to his father an opinion that Courcy Castle was dull, the squire, as may be remembered, did not pretend to differ from him. To men such as the squire, and such as the squire's son, Courcy Castle was dull. To what cla.s.s of men it would not be dull the author is not prepared to say; but it may be presumed that the de Courcys found it to their liking, or they would have made it other than it was.

The castle itself was a huge brick pile, built in the days of William III, which, though they were grand for days of the construction of the Const.i.tution, were not very grand for architecture of a more material description. It had, no doubt, a perfect right to be called a castle, as it was entered by a castle-gate which led into a court, the porter's lodge for which was built as it were into the wall; there were attached to it also two round, stumpy adjuncts, which were, perhaps properly, called towers, though they did not do much in the way of towering; and, moreover, along one side of the house, over what would otherwise have been the cornice, there ran a castellated parapet, through the a.s.sistance of which, the imagination no doubt was intended to supply the muzzles of defiant artillery. But any artillery which would have so presented its muzzle must have been very small, and it may be doubted whether even a bowman could have obtained shelter there.

The grounds about the castle were not very inviting, nor, as grounds, very extensive; though, no doubt, the entire domain was such as suited the importance of so puissant a n.o.bleman as Earl de Courcy.

What, indeed, should have been the park was divided out into various large paddocks. The surface was flat and unbroken; and though there were magnificent elm-trees standing in straight lines, like hedgerows, the timber had not that beautiful, wild, scattered look which generally gives the great charm to English scenery.

The town of Courcy--for the place claimed to rank as a town--was in many particulars like the castle. It was built of dingy-red brick--almost more brown than red--and was solid, dull-looking, ugly and comfortable. It consisted of four streets, which were formed by two roads crossing each other, making at the point of junction a centre for the town. Here stood the Red Lion; had it been called the brown lion, the nomenclature would have been more strictly correct; and here, in the old days of coaching, some life had been wont to stir itself at those hours in the day and night when the Freetraders, Tallyhoes, and Royal Mails changed their horses. But now there was a railway station a mile and a half distant, and the moving life of the town of Courcy was confined to the Red Lion omnibus, which seemed to pa.s.s its entire time in going up and down between the town and the station, quite unembarra.s.sed by any great weight of pa.s.sengers.

There were, so said the Courcyites when away from Courcy, excellent shops in the place; but they were not the less accustomed, when at home among themselves, to complain to each other of the vile extortion with which they were treated by their neighbours. The ironmonger, therefore, though he loudly a.s.serted that he could beat Bristol in the quality of his wares in one direction, and undersell Gloucester in another, bought his tea and sugar on the sly in one of those larger towns; and the grocer, on the other hand, equally distrusted the pots and pans of home production. Trade, therefore, at Courcy, had not thriven since the railway had opened: and, indeed, had any patient inquirer stood at the cross through one entire day, counting customers who entered the neighbouring shops, he might well have wondered that any shops in Courcy could be kept open.