第215章

And thus after all did Frank perform his duty; he did marry money; or rather, as the wedding has not yet taken place, and is, indeed, as yet hardly talked of, we should more properly say that he had engaged himself to marry money. And then, such a quantity of money! the Scatcherd wealth greatly exceeded the Dunstable wealth; so that our hero may be looked on as having performed his duties in a manner deserving the very highest commendation from all classes of the De Courcy connexion.

And he received it. But that was nothing. That he should be feted by the De Courcys and the Greshams, now that he was about to do his duty by his family in so exemplary a manner: that he should be patted on the back, now that he no longer meditated that vile crime which had been so abhorrent to his mother's soul; this was only natural; this is hardly worthy of remark. But there was another to be feted, another person to be made a personage, another blessed human mortal about to do her duty by the family of Gresham in a manner that deserved, and should receive, Lady Arabella's warmest caresses.

Dear Mary! It was, indeed, not singular that she should be prepared to act so well, seeing that in early youth she had had the advantage of an education in the Greshamsbury nursery; but not on that account was it the less fitting that her virtue should be acknowledged, eulogized, nay, all but worshipped.

How the party at the doctor's got itself broken up, I am not prepared to say. Frank, I know, stayed, and dined there, and his poor mother, who would not retire to rest till she had kissed him, and blessed him, and thanked him for all he was doing for the family, was kept waiting in her dressing-room till a very unreasonable hour of the night.

It was the squire who brought the news up to the house. 'Arabella,' he said, in a low, but somewhat solemn voice, 'you will be surprised at the news I bring you. Mary Thorne is the heiress to all the Scatcherd property!'

'Oh, heavens! Mr Gresham.'

'Yes, indeed,' continued the squire. 'So it is; it is very, very--' But Lady Arabella had fainted. She was a woman who generally had her feelings and her emotions much under her own control; but what she now heard was too much for her. When she came to her senses, the first words that escaped her lips were, 'Dear Mary!'

But the household had to sleep on the news before it could be fully realized. The squire was not by nature a mercenary man. If I have at all succeeded in putting his character before the reader, he will be recognized as one not over attached to money for money's sake. But things had gone so hard with him, the world had become so rough, so ungracious, so full of thorns, the want of means had become an evil so keenly felt in every hour, that it cannot be wondered at that his dreams that night should be of a golden Elysium. The wealth was not coming to him. True. But his chief sorrow had been for his son. Now that son would be his only creditor. It was as though mountains of marble had been taken off his bosom.

But Lady Arabella's dreams flew away at once into the seventh heaven.

Sordid as they certainly were, they were not absolutely selfish. Frank would now certainly be the first commoner in Barsetshire; of course he would represent the county; of course there would be the house in town; it wouldn't be her house, but she was contented that the grandeur should be that of her child. He would have heaven knows what to spend per annum. And that it should come through Mary Thorne! What a blessing she had allowed Mary to be brought into the Greshamsbury nursery! Dear Mary!

'She will of course be one now,' said Beatrice to her sister. With her, at the present moment, 'one' of course meant one of the bevy that was to attend her at the altar. 'Oh dear! how nice! I shan't know what to say to her to-morrow. But I know one thing.'

'What is that?' asked Augusta.

'She will be as mild and meek as a little dove. If she and the doctor had lost every shilling in the world, she would have been proud as an eagle.' It must be acknowledged that Beatrice had had the wit to read Mary's character right.

But Augusta was not quite pleased with the whole affair. Not that she begrudged her brother his luck, or Mary her happiness. But her ideas of right and wrong--perhaps we should rather say Lady Amelia's ideas--would not be fairly carried out.

'After all, Beatrice, this does not alter her birth. I know it is useless saying anything to Frank.'

'Why, you wouldn't break both their hearts now?'

'I don't want to break their hearts, certainly. But there are those who put their dearest and warmest feelings under restraint rather than deviate from what they know to be proper.' Poor Augusta! she was the stern professor of the order of this philosophy; the last in the family who practised with unflinching courage its cruel behests; the last, always excepting the Lady Amelia.

And how slept Frank that night? With him, at least, let us hope, nay, let us say boldly, that his happiest thoughts were not with the wealth which he was to acquire. But yet it would be something to restore Boxall Hill to Greshamsbury; something to give back to his father those rumpled vellum documents, since the departure of which the squire had never had a happy day; nay, something to come forth again to his friends as a gay, young country squire, instead of a farmer, clod-compelling for his bread. We would not have him thought to be better than he was, nor would we wish him to make him of other stuff than nature generally uses. His heart did exult at Mary's wealth; but it leaped higher still when he thought of purer joys.