Dr Thorne - Anthony Trollope [97]
‘Don’t I?’ said Mr Gresham.
‘There’s a Miss Dunstable to be there; did you ever hear of her, sir?’
‘No, never.’
‘She’s a girl whose father used to make ointment, or something of that sort.’
‘Oh, yes, to be sure; the ointment of Lebanon. He used to cover all the walls in London. I haven’t heard of him this year past.’
‘No; that’s because he’s dead. Well, she carries on the ointment now, I believe; at any rate, she has got all the money. I wonder what she’s like.’
‘You’d better go and see,’ said the father, who now began to have some inkling of an idea why the two ladies were so anxious to carry his son off to Courcy Castle at this exact time. And so Frank had packed up his best clothes, given a last fond look at the new black horse, repeated his last special injunctions to Peter, and had then made one of the stately cortège which proceeded through the county from Greshamsbury to Courcy Castle.
‘I am very glad of that, very,’ said the squire, when he heard that the money was to be forthcoming. ‘I shall get it on easier terms from him than elsewhere; and it kills me to have continual bother about such things.’ And Mr Gresham, feeling that that difficulty was tided over for a time, and that the immediate pressure of little debts would be abated, stretched himself on his easy chair as though he were quite comfortable; – one may say almost elated.
How frequent it is that men on their road to ruin feel elation such as this! A man signs away a moiety of his substance; nay, that were nothing; but a moiety of the substance of his children; he puts his pen to the paper that ruins him and them; but in doing so he frees himself from a score of immediate little pestering, stinging troubles: and, therefore, feels as though fortune had been almost kind to him.
The doctor felt angry with himsclf for what he had done when he saw how easily the squire adapted himself to this new loan. ‘It will make Scatcherd’s claim upon you very heavy,’ said he.
Mr Gresham at once read all that was passing through the doctor’s mind. ‘Well, what else can I do?’ said he. ‘You wouldn’t have me allow my daughter to lose this match for the sake of a few thousand pounds? It will be well at any rate to have one of them settled. Look at that letter from Moffat.’
The doctor took the letter and read it. It was a long, wordy, ill-written rigmarole, in which that amorous gentleman spoke with much rapture of his love and devotion for Miss Gresham; but at the same time declared, and most positively swore, that the adverse cruelty of his circumstances was such, that it would not allow him to stand up like a man at the hymeneal altar until six thousand pounds hard cash had been paid down at his banker’s.
‘It may be all right,’ said the squire; ‘but in my time gentlemen were not used to write such letters as that to each other.’
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. He did not know how far he would be justified in saying much, even to his friend the squire, in dispraise of his future son-in-law.
‘I told him that he should have the money; and one would have thought that that would have been enough for him. Well: I suppose Augusta likes him. I suppose she wishes the match; otherwise, I would give him such an answer to that letter as should startle him a little.’
‘What settlement is he to make?’ said Thorne.
‘Oh, that’s satisfactory enough; couldn’t be more so; a thousand a year and the house at Wimbledon for her; that’s all very well. But such a lie, you know, Thorne. He’s rolling in money, and yet he talks of this beggarly sum as though he couldn’t possibly stir without it.’
‘If I might venture to speak my mind,’ said Thorne.
‘Well?’ said the squire, looking at him earnestly.
‘I should be inclined to say that Mr Moffat wants to cry off, himself.’
‘Oh, impossible; quite impossible. In the first place, he was so very anxious for the match. In the next place, it is such a great thing for him. And then, he would never dare; you see, he is dependent on the De Courcys for his seat.’
‘But suppose he loses his seat?’
‘But