The Last Chronicle of Barset. Anthony Trollope
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without seeming to allude to the disagreeable subject. “My father is very clever,” he said to himself, “very clever. But he isn’t so clever but one can see how clever he is.”
On the next day he went into Silverbridge, intending to call on Miss Prettyman. He had not quite made up his mind what he would say to Miss Prettyman; nor was he called upon to do so, as he never got as far as that lady’s house. While walking up the High Street he saw Mrs. Thorne in her carriage, and, as a matter of course, he stopped to speak to her. He knew Mrs. Thorne quite as intimately as he did her husband, and liked her quite as well. “Major Grantly,” she said, speaking out loud to him, half across the street; “I was very angry with you yesterday. Why did you not come up to dinner? We had a room ready for you and everything.”
“I was not quite well, Mrs. Thorne.”
“Fiddlestick. Don’t tell me of not being well. There was Emily breaking her heart about you.”
“I’m sure Miss Dunstable—”
“To tell you the truth, I think she’ll get over it. It won’t be mortal with her. But do tell me, Major Grantly, what are we to think about this poor Mr. Crawley? It was so good of you to be one of his bailsmen.”
“He would have found twenty in Silverbridge, if he had wanted them.”
“And do you hear that he has defied the bishop? I do so like him for that. Not but what poor Mrs. Proudie is the dearest friend I have in the world, and I’m always fighting a battle with old Lady Lufton on her behalf. But one likes to see one’s friends worsted sometimes, you know.”
“I don’t quite understand what did happen at Hogglestock on Sunday,” said the major.
“Some say he had the bishop’s chaplain put under the pump. I don’t believe that; but there is no doubt that when the poor fellow tried to get into the pulpit, they took him and carried him neck and heels out of the church. But, tell me, Major Grantly, what is to become of the family?”
“Heaven knows!”
“Is it not sad? And that eldest girl is so nice! They tell me that she is perfect,—not only in beauty, but in manners and accomplishments. Everybody says that she talks Greek just as well as she does English, and that she understands philosophy from the top to the bottom.”
“At any rate, she is so good and so lovely that one cannot but pity her now,” said the major.
“You know her, then, Major Grantly? By-the-by, of course you do, as you were staying with her at Framley.”
“Yes, I know her.”
“What is to become of her? I’m going your way. You might as well get into the carriage, and I’ll drive you home. If he is sent to prison,—and they say he must be sent to prison,—what is to become of them?” Then Major Grantly did get into the carriage, and, before he got out again, he had told Mrs. Thorne the whole story of his love.
She listened to him with the closest attention; only interrupting him now and then with little words, intended to signify her approval. He, as he told his tale, did not look her in the face, but sat with his eyes fixed upon her muff. “And now,” he said, glancing up at her almost for the first time as he finished his speech, “and now, Mrs. Thorne, what am I to do?”
“Marry her, of course,” said she, raising her hand aloft and bringing it down heavily upon his knee as she gave her decisive reply.
“H—sh—h,” he exclaimed, looking back in dismay towards the servants.
“Oh, they never hear anything up there. They’re thinking about the last pot of porter they had, or the next they’re to get. Deary me, I am so glad! Of course you’ll marry her.”
“You forget my father.”
“No, I don’t. What has a father to do with it? You’re old enough to please yourself without asking your father. Besides, Lord bless me, the archdeacon isn’t the man to bear malice. He’ll storm and threaten and stop the supplies for a month or so. Then he’ll double them, and take your wife to his bosom, and kiss her and bless her, and all that kind of thing. We all know what parental wrath means in such cases as that.”
“But my sister—”
“As for your sister, don’t talk to me about her. I don’t care two straws about your sister. You must excuse me, Major Grantly, but Lady Hartletop is really too big for my powers of vision.”
“And Edith,—of course, Mrs. Thorne, I can’t be blind to the fact that in many ways such a marriage would be injurious to her. No man wishes to be connected with a convicted thief.”
“No, Major Grantly; but a man does wish to marry the girl that he loves. At least, I suppose so. And what man ever was able to give a more touching proof of his affection than you can do now? If I were you, I’d be at Allington before twelve o’clock tomorrow,—I would indeed. What does it matter about the trumpery cheque? Everybody knows it was a mistake, if he did take it. And surely you would not punish her for that.”
“No,—no; but I don’t suppose she’d think it a punishment.”
“You go and ask her, then. And I’ll tell you what. If she hasn’t a house of her own to be married from, she shall be married from Chaldicotes. We’ll have such a breakfast! And I’ll make as much of her as if she were the daughter of my old friend, the bishop himself,—I will indeed.”
This was Mrs. Thorne’s advice. Before it was completed, Major Grantly had been carried halfway to Chaldicotes. When he left his impetuous friend he was too prudent to make any promise, but he declared that what she had said should have much weight with him.
“You won’t mention it to anybody?” said the major.
“Certainly not, without your leave,” said Mrs. Thorne. “Don’t you know that I’m the soul of honour?”
Chapter XV.
Up in London
Some kind and attentive reader may perhaps remember that Miss Grace Crawley, in a letter written by her to her friend Miss Lily Dale, said a word or two of a certain John. “If it can only be as John wishes it!” And the same reader, if there be one so kind and attentive, may also remember that Miss Lily Dale had declared, in reply, that “about that other subject she would rather say nothing,”—and then she had added, “When one thinks of going beyond friendship,—even if one tries to do so,—there are so many barriers!” From which words the kind and attentive reader, if such reader be in such matters intelligent as well as kind and attentive, may have learned a great deal with reference to Miss Lily Dale.
We will now pay a visit to the John in question,—a certain Mr. John Eames, living in London, a bachelor, as the intelligent reader will certainly have discovered, and cousin to Miss Grace Crawley. Mr. John Eames at the time of our story was a young man, some seven or eight and twenty years of age, living in London, where he was supposed by his friends in the country to have made his mark, and to be something a little out of the common way. But I do not know that he was very much out of the common way, except in the fact that he had had some few thousand pounds left him by an old nobleman, who had been in no way related to him, but who had regarded him with great affection, and who had died some two years since. Before this, John Eames had not been a very poor man, as he filled the comfortable official position of private secretary to the Chief Commissioner of the Income-tax Board, and drew a salary of three hundred and fifty pounds a year from the resources of his country; but when, in addition to this source of official wealth, he became known as the undoubted possessor of a hundred and twenty-eight shares in one of the most prosperous joint-stock banks in the metropolis, which property had been left to him free of legacy duty by the lamented nobleman above named, then Mr. John Eames rose very high indeed as a young man in the estimation of