Dr Thorne - Anthony Trollope [296]
It was in vain that Mary endeavoured to repress Lady Arabella’s ardour for grand doings. After all, she was to be married from the doctor’s house, and not from Greshamsbury, and it was the doctor who should have invited the guests; but, in this matter, he did not choose to oppose her ladyship’s spirit, and she had it all her own way.
‘What can I do?’ said he to Mary. ‘I have been contradicting her in everything for the last two years. The least we can do is to let her have her own way now in a trifle like this.’
But there was one point on which Mary would let nobody have his or her own way; on which the way to be taken was very manifestly to be her own. This was touching the marriage settlements. It must not be supposed, that if Beatrice were married on a Tuesday, Mary could be married on the Tuesday week following. Ladies with twelve thousand a year cannot be disposed of in that way: and bridegrooms who do their duty by marrying money often have to be kept waiting. It was spring, the early spring, before Frank was made altogether a happy man.
But a word about the settlements. On this subject the doctor thought he would have been driven mad. Messrs Slow & Bideawhile, as the lawyers of the Greshamsbury family – it will be understood that Mr Gazebee’s law business was of quite a different nature, and his work, as regarded Greshamsbury, was now nearly over – Messrs Slow & Bideawhile declared that it would never do for them to undertake alone to draw out the settlements. An heiress, such as Mary, must have lawyers of her own; half a dozen at least, according to the apparent opinion of Messrs Slow & Bideawhile. And so the doctor had to go to other lawyers, and they had again to consult Sir Abraham, and Mr Snilam on a dozen different heads.
If Frank became tenant in tail, in right of his wife, but under his father, would he be able to grant leases for more than twenty-one years? and, if so, to whom would the right of trover belong? As to flotsam and jetsam – there was a little property, Mr Critic, on the seashore – that was a matter that had to be left unsettled at the last. Such points as these do take a long time to consider. All this bewildered the doctor sadly, and Frank himself began to make accusations that he was to be done out of his wife altogether.
But, as we have said, there was one point on which Mary would have her own way. The lawyers might tie up as they would on her behalf all the money, and shares, and mortgages which had belonged to the late Sir Roger, with this exception, all that had ever appertained to Greshamsbury should belong to Greshamsbury again; not in perspective, not to her children, or to her children’s children, but at once. Frank should be lord of Boxall Hill in his own right; and as to those other liens on Greshamsbury, let Frank manage that with his father as he might think fit. She would only trouble herself to see that he was empowered to do as he did think fit.
‘But,’ argued the ancient, respectable family attorney to the doctor, ‘that amounts to two-thirds of the whole estate. Two-thirds, Dr Thorne! It is preposterous; I should almost say impossible.’ And the scanty hairs on the poor man’s head almost stood on end as he thought of the outrageous manner in which the heiress prepared to sacrifice herself.
‘It will all be the same in the end,’ said the doctor, trying to make things smooth. ‘Of course, their joint object will be to put the Greshamsbury property together again.’
‘But, my dear sir,’ – and then, for twenty minutes, the lawyer went on proving that it would by no means be the same thing; but, nevertheless, Mary Thorne did have her own way.
In the course of the winter, Lady de Courcy tried very hard to induce the heiress to visit Courcy Castle, and this request was so backed by Lady Arabella,