believe Dr Thorne has brought them about. I do believe it, Rosina.’
‘Well, that is surprising. Mr Gresham with all his faults is a gentleman; and how he can talk about his affairs with a low apothecary like that I, for one, cannot imagine. Lord de Courcy has not always been to me all that he should have been; far from it.’ And Lady de Courcy thought over in her mind injuries of a much graver description than any that her sister-inlaw had ever suffered; ‘but I have never known anything like that at Courcy Castle. Surely Umbleby knows all about it, doesn’t he?’
‘Not half so much as the doctor,’ said Lady Arabella.
The countess shook her head slowly; the idea of Mr Gresham, a country gentleman of good estate like him, making a confidant of a country doctor was too great a shock for her nerves; and for a while she was constrained to sit silent before she could recover herself.
‘One thing at any rate is certain, Arabella,’ said the countess, as soon as she found herself again sufficiently composed to offer counsel in a properly dictatorial manner. ‘One thing at any rate is certain; if Mr Gresham be involved so deeply as you say, Frank has but only one duty before him. He must marry money. The heir of fourteen thousand a year may indulge himself in looking for blood, as Mr Gresham did, my dear’— it must be understood that there was very little compliment in this, as the Lady Arabella had always conceived herself to be a beauty —‘or for beauty, as some men do,’ continued the countess, thinking of the choice that the present Earl de Courcy had made; ‘but Frank must marry money. I hope he will understand this early; do make him understand this before he makes a fool of himself: when a man thoroughly understands this, when he knows what his circumstances require, why, the matter becomes easy to him. I hope that Frank understands that he has no alternative. In his position he must marry money.’
But, alas! alas! Frank Gresham had already made a fool of himself.
‘Well, my boy, I wish you joy with all my heart,’ said the Honourable John, slapping his cousin on the back, as he walked round to the stable-yard with him before dinner, to inspect a setter puppy of peculiarly fine breed which had been sent to Frank as a birthday present. ‘I wish I were an elder son; but we can’t all have that luck.’
‘Who wouldn’t sooner be the younger son of an earl than the eldest son of a plain squire?’ said Frank, wishing to say something civil in return for his cousin’s civility.
‘I wouldn’t for one,’ said the Honourable John. ‘What chance have I? There’s Porlock as strong as a horse; and then George comes next. And the governor’s good for these twenty years.’ And the young man sighed as he reflected what small hope there was that all those who were nearest and dearest to him should die out of his way, and leave him to the sweet enjoyment of an earl’s coronet and fortune. ‘Now, you’re sure of your game some day; and as you’ve no brothers, I suppose the squire’ll let you do pretty well what you like. Besides, he’s not so strong as my governor, though he’s younger.’
Frank had never looked at his fortune in this light before, and was so slow and green that he was not much delighted at the prospect now that it was offered to him. He had always, however, been taught to look to his cousins, the De Courcys, as men with whom it would be very expedient that he should be intimate; he therefore showed no offence, but changed the conversation.
‘Shall you hunt with the Barsetshire this season, John? I hope you will; I shall.’
‘Well, I don’t know. It’s very slow. It’s all tillage here, or else woodland. I rather fancy I shall go to Leicestershire when the partridge-shooting is over. What sort of a lot do you mean to come out with, Frank?’
Frank became a little red as he answered, ‘Oh, I shall have two,’ he said; ‘that is, the mare I have had these two years, and the horse my father gave me this morning.’
‘What! only those two? and the mare is nothing more than a pony.’
‘She is fifteen hands,’ said Frank, offended.
‘Well, Frank, I certainly would not stand that,’ said the Honourable John. ‘What, go out before the county with one untrained horse and a pony; and you the heir to Greshamsbury!’
‘I’ll have him trained before November,’ said Frank, ‘that nothing in Barsetshire will stop him. Peter says’— Peter was the Greshamsbury stud-groom —‘that he tucks up his legs beautifully.’
‘But who the deuce would think of going to work with one horse; or two either, if you insist on calling the old pony a huntress? I’ll put you up to a trick, my lad: if you stand that you’ll stand anything; and if you don’t mean to go in leading-strings all your life, now is the time to show it. There’s young Baker — Harry Baker, you know — he came of age last year, and he has as pretty a string of nags as any one would wish to set eyes on; four hunters and a hack. Now, if old Baker has four thousand a year it’s every shilling he has got.’
This was true, and Frank Gresham, who in the morning had been made so happy by his father’s present of a horse, began to feel that hardly enough had been done for him. It was true that Mr Baker had only four thousand a year; but it was also true that he had no other child than Harry Baker; that he had no great establishment to keep up; that he owed a shilling to no one; and, also, that he was a great fool in encouraging a mere boy to ape all the caprices of a man of wealth. Nevertheless, for a moment, Frank Gresham did feel that, considering his position, he was being treated rather unworthily.
‘Take the matter in your own hands, Frank,’ said the Honourable John, seeing the impression that he had made. ‘Of course the governor knows very well that you won’t put up with such a stable as that. Lord bless you! I have heard that when he married my aunt, and that was when he was about your age, he had the best stud in the whole county; and then he was in Parliament before he was three-and-twenty.’
‘His father, you know, died when he was very young,’ said Frank.
‘Yes; I know he had a stroke of luck that doesn’t fall to everyone; but —’
Young Frank’s face grew dark now instead of red. When his cousin submitted to him the necessity of having more than two horses for his own use he could listen to him; but when the same monitor talked of the chance of a father’s death as a stroke of luck, Frank was too much disgusted to be able pass it over with indifference. What! was he thus to think of his father, whose face was always lighted up with pleasure when his boy came near to him, and so rarely bright at any other time? Frank had watched his father closely enough to be aware of this; he knew how his father delighted in him; he had had cause to guess that his father had many troubles, and that he strove hard to banish the memory of them when his son was with him. He loved his father truly, purely, and thoroughly, liked to be with him, and would be proud to be his confidant. Could he listen quietly while his cousin spoke of the chance of his father’s death as a stroke of luck?
‘I shouldn’t think it a stroke of luck, John. I should think it the greatest misfortune in the world.’
It is so difficult for a young man to enumerate sententiously a principle of morality, or even an expression of ordinary good feeling, without giving himself something of a ridiculous air, without assuming something of a mock grandeur!
‘Oh, of course, my dear fellow,’ said the Honourable John, laughing; ‘that’s a matter of course. We all understand that without saying it. Porlock, of course, would feel exactly the same about the governor; but if the governor were to walk, I think Porlock would console himself with the thirty thousand a year.’
‘I don’t know what Porlock
