The Last Chronicle of Barset [108]
could reach him; but there still wanted three months to the assizes, and his return might be probably effected before the end of February.
'I was never so distressed in my life,' Mark Robarts said to his wife.
'And you think you have done no good?'
'Only this, that I have convinced myself that the poor man is to responsible for what he does, and that for her sake as well as for his own, some person should be enabled to interfere for his protection.' Then he told Mrs Robarts what Mr Walker had said; also the message which Mr Crawley had sent to the archdeacon. But the both agreed that that message need not be sent any further.
CHAPTER XXII
MAJOR GRANTLY AT HOME
Mrs Thorne had spoken very plainly in the advice which she had given to Major Grantly. That had been Mrs Thorne's advice; and though Major Grantly had no idea of making the journey so rapidly as the lady had proposed, still he thought that he would make it before long, and follow the advice in spirit if not to the letter. Mrs Thorne had asked him if it was fair that the girl should be punished because of the father's fault; and the idea had been sweet to him that the infliction or non-infliction of such punishment should be in his hands. 'You go and ask her,' Mrs Thorne had said. Well;--he would go an ask her. If it should turn out at last that he had married the daughter of a thief, and that he was disinherited for doing so--an arrangement of circumstances which had to teach himself to regard as very probable--he would not love Grace the less on that account, or allow himself for one moment to repent what had done. As he thought of all this he became somewhat in love with a small income, and imagined to himself what honours would be done to him by the Mrs Thornes of the county, when they should come to know in what way he had sacrificed himself to his love. Yes;--they would go and live in Pau. He thought Pau would do. He would have enough income for that;--and Edith would get lessons cheaply, and would learn to talk French fluently. He certainly would do it. He would go down to Allington, and ask Grace to be his wife; and bid her to understand that if she loved him she could not be justified in refusing him by the circumstances of her father's position.
But he must go to Plumstead before he could go to Allington. He was engaged to spend Christmas there, and must go now at once. There was not time for the journey to Allington before he was due at Plumstead. And, moreover, though he could not bring himself to resolve that he would tell his father what he was going to do; --'It would seem as though I were asking his leave!' he said to himself;--he thought he would make a clean breast of it to his mother. It made him sad to think that he should cut the rope which fastened his own boat among the other boats in the home harbour at Plumstead, and that he should go out all alone into strange waters--turned adrift altogether, as it were, from the Grantly fleet. If he could only get the promise of his mother's sympathy for Grace it would be something. He understood--no one better than he--the tendency of all his family to an uprising in the world, which tendency was almost as strong in his mother as his father. And he had been by no means without a similar ambition himself, though with him the ambition had been only fitful, not enduring. He had a brother, a clergyman, a busy, stirring, eloquent London preacher, who got churches built, and was heard of far and wide as a rising man, who had married a certain Lady Anne, the daughter of an earl, and who was already mentioned as a candidate for high places. How his sister was the wife of a marquis, and a leader in the fashionable world, the reader already knows. The archdeacon himself was a rich man, so powerful that he could afford to look down upon a bishop; and Mrs Grantly, though there was left about her something of an old softness of nature, a touch of the former life which had been hers before the stream of her days had run to gold, yet she, too, had taken kindly to wealth and high standing, and
'I was never so distressed in my life,' Mark Robarts said to his wife.
'And you think you have done no good?'
'Only this, that I have convinced myself that the poor man is to responsible for what he does, and that for her sake as well as for his own, some person should be enabled to interfere for his protection.' Then he told Mrs Robarts what Mr Walker had said; also the message which Mr Crawley had sent to the archdeacon. But the both agreed that that message need not be sent any further.
CHAPTER XXII
MAJOR GRANTLY AT HOME
Mrs Thorne had spoken very plainly in the advice which she had given to Major Grantly. That had been Mrs Thorne's advice; and though Major Grantly had no idea of making the journey so rapidly as the lady had proposed, still he thought that he would make it before long, and follow the advice in spirit if not to the letter. Mrs Thorne had asked him if it was fair that the girl should be punished because of the father's fault; and the idea had been sweet to him that the infliction or non-infliction of such punishment should be in his hands. 'You go and ask her,' Mrs Thorne had said. Well;--he would go an ask her. If it should turn out at last that he had married the daughter of a thief, and that he was disinherited for doing so--an arrangement of circumstances which had to teach himself to regard as very probable--he would not love Grace the less on that account, or allow himself for one moment to repent what had done. As he thought of all this he became somewhat in love with a small income, and imagined to himself what honours would be done to him by the Mrs Thornes of the county, when they should come to know in what way he had sacrificed himself to his love. Yes;--they would go and live in Pau. He thought Pau would do. He would have enough income for that;--and Edith would get lessons cheaply, and would learn to talk French fluently. He certainly would do it. He would go down to Allington, and ask Grace to be his wife; and bid her to understand that if she loved him she could not be justified in refusing him by the circumstances of her father's position.
But he must go to Plumstead before he could go to Allington. He was engaged to spend Christmas there, and must go now at once. There was not time for the journey to Allington before he was due at Plumstead. And, moreover, though he could not bring himself to resolve that he would tell his father what he was going to do; --'It would seem as though I were asking his leave!' he said to himself;--he thought he would make a clean breast of it to his mother. It made him sad to think that he should cut the rope which fastened his own boat among the other boats in the home harbour at Plumstead, and that he should go out all alone into strange waters--turned adrift altogether, as it were, from the Grantly fleet. If he could only get the promise of his mother's sympathy for Grace it would be something. He understood--no one better than he--the tendency of all his family to an uprising in the world, which tendency was almost as strong in his mother as his father. And he had been by no means without a similar ambition himself, though with him the ambition had been only fitful, not enduring. He had a brother, a clergyman, a busy, stirring, eloquent London preacher, who got churches built, and was heard of far and wide as a rising man, who had married a certain Lady Anne, the daughter of an earl, and who was already mentioned as a candidate for high places. How his sister was the wife of a marquis, and a leader in the fashionable world, the reader already knows. The archdeacon himself was a rich man, so powerful that he could afford to look down upon a bishop; and Mrs Grantly, though there was left about her something of an old softness of nature, a touch of the former life which had been hers before the stream of her days had run to gold, yet she, too, had taken kindly to wealth and high standing, and