第31章

Mr Moffat was now coming down to Courcy Castle to look after his electioneering interests, and Miss Gresham was to return with her aunt to meet him. The countess was very anxious that Frank should also accompany them. Her great doctrine, that he must marry money, had been laid down with authority, and received without doubt. She now pushed it further, and said that no time should be lost; that he should not only marry money, but do so very early in life; there was always a danger in delay. The Greshams--of course she alluded only to the males of the family--were foolishly soft-hearted; no one could say what might happen. There was that Miss Thorne always at Greshamsbury.

This was more than Lady Arabella could stand. She protested that there was at least no ground for supposing that Frank would absolutely disgrace his family.

Still the countess continued: 'Perhaps not,' she said; 'but when young people of perfectly different ranks were allowed to associate together, there was no saying what danger might arise. They all know that old Mr Bateson--the present Mr Bateson's father--had gone off with the governess; and young Mr Everbeery, near Taunton, had only the other day married a cook-maid.'

'But Mr Everbeery was always drunk, aunt,' said Augusta, feeling called upon to say something for her brother.

'Never mind, my dear; these things do happen, and they are very dreadful.'

'Horrible!' said the Lady Amelia; 'diluting the best blood of the country, and paving the way for revolution.' This was very grand; but, nevertheless, Augusta could not but feel that she perhaps might be about to dilute the blood of her coming children in marrying the tailor's son. She consoled herself by trusting that, at any rate, she paved the way for no revolution.

'When a thing is so necessary,' said the countess, 'it cannot be done too soon. Now, Arabella, I don't say that anything will come of it; but it may; Miss Dunstable is coming down to us next week. Now, we all know that when old Dunstable died last year, he left over two hundred thousand to his daughter.'

'It is a great deal of money, certainly,' said Lady Arabella.

'It wold pay off everything, and a great deal more,' said the countess.

'It was ointment, was it not, aunt?' said Augusta.

'I believe so, my dear; something called the ointment of Lebanon, or something of that sort: but there's no doubt about the money.'

'But how old is she, Robina?' asked the anxious mother.

'About thirty, I suppose; but I don't think that much signifies.'

'Thirty,' said Lady Arabella, rather dolefully. 'And what is she like? I think that Frank already begins to like girls that are young and pretty.'

'But surely, aunt,' said the Lady Amelia, 'now that he has come to man's discretion, he will not refuse to consider all that he owes to his family. A Mr Gresham of Greshamsbury has a position to support.'

The De Courcy scion spoke these last words in the sort of tone that a parish clergyman would use, in warning some young farmer's son that he should not put himself on an equal footing with the ploughboys.

It was at last decided that the countess should herself convey to Frank a special invitation to Courcy Castle, and that when she got him there, she should do all that lay in her power to prevent his return to Cambridge, and to further the Dunstable marriage.

'We did think of Miss Dunstable for Porlock, once,' she said, naively;

'but when we found that it wasn't much over two hundred thousand, why that idea fell to the ground.' The terms on which the De Courcy blood might be allowed to dilute itself were, it must be presumed, very high indeed.

Augusta was sent off to find her brother, and to send him to the countess in the small drawing-room. Here the countess was to have her tea, apart from the outer common world, and her, without interruption, she was to teach her great lesson to her nephew.

Augusta did find her brother, and found him in the worst of bad society--so at least the stern De Courcys would have thought. Old Mr Bateson and the governess, Mr Everbeery and his cook's diluted blood, and ways paved for revolutions, all presented themselves to Augusta's mind when she found her brother walking with no other company than Mary Thorne, and walking with her, too, in much too close proximity.

How he had contrived to be off with the old love and so soon on with the new, or rather, to be off with the new love and again on with the old, we will not stop to inquire. Had Lady Arabella, in truth, known all her son's doings in this way, could she have guessed how very nigh he had approached the iniquity of old Mr Bateson, and to the folly of young Mr Everbeery, she would in truth have been in a hurry to send him off to Courcy Castle and Miss Dunstable. Some days before the commencement of our story, young Frank had sworn in sober earnest--in what he intended for his most sober earnest, his most earnest sobriety--that he loved Mary Thorne with a love for which words could find no sufficient expression--with a love that could never die, never grow dim, never become less, which no opposition on the part of others could extinguish, which no opposition on her part could repel; that he might, could, would, and should have her for his wife, and that if she told him she didn't love him, he would--'Oh, oh! Mary; do you love me? Don't you love me? Won't you love me? Say you will. Oh, Mary, dearest Mary, will you? won't you? do you? don't you? Come now, you have a right to give a fellow an answer.'

With such eloquence had the heir of Greshamsbury, when not yet twenty-one years of age, attempted to possess himself of the affections of the doctor's niece. And yet three days afterwards he was quite ready to flirt with Miss Oriel.

If such things are done in the green wood, what will be done in the dry?