Collected Works of Frances Trollope

by Frances Milton Trollope

  Whatever was the cause, however, such was the fact; and Mr. King was as strongly convinced that men, and not women, should have the management of money, as any lawyer in the world could be — and that is saying a great deal.

  This extreme anxiety on the subject was however, as far as Mary King was concerned, decidedly more masculine than reasonable; for it might have been difficult to find any individual of any sex, or of any age, or in any situation of life, more perfectly capable of taking efficient care of their own concerns than was Mary King at the time her father was thus grievously tormenting himself for fear of the ruin that might fall upon her when he was dead and gone.

  Possessed of very robust and unfailing health, of a clear intellect, and fearless spirit, with much practical information, and much practical prudence, and with the considerable additional advantage of being the unquestioned, and unquestionable heir to a clear property of eight hundred per annum, her unhappy father nevertheless believed in his heart that his dear Mary would in all human probability be utterly ruined and penniless before he should have been six months in his grave.

  The wild folly of these fears was the result of his weak head; but the deep misery they occasioned him was produced by the warm affection of his heart. Never did he lay his head upon his pillow at night that he did not many times murmur to himself ere he closed his venerable eyes in sleep, “What is to become of Mary when I am dead?” Nor when they were again opened to the light, did he ever fail to repeat the same melancholy soliloquy.

  It happened upon a fine sunshiny morning when his daughter had placed him on a favourite bench in the flower-garden, before she herself retreated to her own more remote solitude, that a well-esteemed neighbour of long standing found him there, having been told by a servant that he was somewhere in the garden.

  This neighbour of long standing was an elderly gentleman, some twenty years younger than himself; that is to say that Mr. Mathews, the individual in question, had recently completed his sixty-second year. He was very well-looking and gentlemanlike in appearance, and enjoyed the esteem and good-will of all the neighbourhood; and very deservedly too — for he was not only a well-to-do bachelor, who was always ready to dine out, and make himself agreeable, but moreover he not unfrequently gave very nice little dinners in return. His importance in the neighbourhood, however, was certainly not so great as it would have been had the pretty little mansion and grounds which he occupied been his own property This, however, was not the case; and the consequence was that he had no vote in the county — a circumstance which he often very deeply lamented in secret.

  Having reached the sunny bench whereon his venerable neighbour was enjoying himself, with his hands crossed on the smooth top of his well-used walking-stick, and his eyes enjoying the bright light which enabled him to see clearly all the well-known and well-loved objects that surrounded him there, the usual friendly salutations being exchanged between them, Mr. Mathews placed himself by his side.

  The visitor, as probably most other visitors would have done, immediately turned the conversation upon the beauty of the garden in which they were sitting, its lawn, its shrubbery, and its pretty view over the neighbouring pastures with their noble trees.

  “Yes, Mr. Mathews,” replied the gratified proprietor looking round with a well-pleased, yet half-melancholy smile on the scene which was unchanged in its principal features since the days of his great-grandfather “I do love the old place,” said he, “chiefly, I suppose, for old acquaintance-sake — but a little, I think, for its own beauty too. I do not know any place in the country that I would exchange for it, small as it is.”

  “It is beautiful, Sir, quite beautiful, Mr. King,” returned his neighbour, with equal earnestness and sincerity; “and then it is your own, my good Sir, and every shilling you lay out upon it is just so much money saved, instead of so much money spent. I have often thought, Mr. King, that the most foolish thing I ever did in my life was renting Oak Hill instead of buying it. I might have bought it when I took it first, you know; but just as I was beginning to think that I would propose to my landlord for the purchase, he died, and now it is the property of a young minor, whose guardian most positively refuses to meddle with it. So I must either make up my mind to leave it, or to remain a tenant instead of being a proprietor to the end of my days, perhaps.”

  “You have been unlucky, Mr. Mathews,” replied the venerable owner of the pretty domain they were contemplating. “But I see no reason either why you should remain a tenant to the end of your days, if you would like to be a landlord better. I dare say, sir, that if you would look about you, you might find some place or other to be sold that you might like as well as the Oaks.”

  “Not in this neighbourhood, Mr. King. Not in this neighbourhood, Sir, for I have already been making inquiries, and there is nothing, positively nothing, that is not too far from Weldon to content me.”

  “Why no, Sir, I do not believe there is anything of the kind to be had very near Weldon,” replied the other.

  “And I should not like living at any great distance from it,” was the rejoinder; “I have got to feel myself so comfortably at home among you all, that the going among new people would make me feel like a banished man. So I must learn to be contented as I am, I believe.”

  And then the conversation rambled on to other matters; and after a moderately long visit, Mr. Mathews took his departure, leaving the proprietor of Weldon Grange to his meditations.

  As usual, these meditations fixed themselves upon his daughter and his ducats; but though the home was the same as heretofore, a new light had gleamed upon his imagination which gave the old subject quite a new appearance. “Why should not his daughter marry as other men’s daughters did? Why should she not marry Mr. Mathews?”

  A very few moments after this idea first gleamed upon his brain, sufficed to convince Mr. King that such a marriage would be the very happiest thing that could occur for them all, and so strong was this conviction within him, so much stronger than most others upon which his mind had ever fixed itself, that he suddenly resolved to act upon it without running the risk of being made to give it up, by listening to anything that Mary might say to him against it.

  “There are three things that she cannot contradict,” said he to himself, in the most solemn soliloquy that he had perhaps ever held with his own mind. “Mr. Mathews would immediately come into possession of a house and estate of his own in the most beautiful part of his favourite village; Mary would have a husband that everybody in the parish must allow would be an excellent match for her, and I should be quite at peace and at leisure to prepare myself for passing from this world to a better, with the comfort of knowing that I shall not be leaving her alone in the world with the certainty of being cheated by everybody that comes near her!”

  The heartfelt happiness inspired by these meditations was great indeed, and the only drawback to the perfection of his contentment was a feeling a little approaching to self-reproach because he had never thought of such a scheme before.

  It was quite a pleasure to Mary King to watch the happy expression of her father’s countenance as he sat down to dinner that day; it was long since she had seen him look so cheerful, and his voice when he spoke to her was as gay as his looks. But he did not leave her long in the agreeable persuasion that the cause of this was the feeling himself particularly comfortable and well in health; for no sooner had the servant placed the wine, and the strawberries, and the gooseberries, and the currants, on the table, and closed the door behind him, than he communicated to her the nature of the pleasant thoughts which had caused him to look so particularly well and happy “Do you know, Mary,” he began, “ do you know, my dear, that I have got it into my head that I have let you remain single long enough, and that it is no more than right and proper that I should begin now to think a little about your getting married?”

  Considering that this was the first time in her life that the possibility of her being married had ever been seriously suggested to her by the vo
ice of man, woman, or child, it might have been expected that this sudden opening of the subject by her father might have occasioned her a somewhat startling emotion. It might have been expected, perhaps, that she would have changed colour, or fixed her eyes upon her strawberries, instead of fixing them upon her father’s face.

  But nothing of the kind occurred. Had he told her that he had taken it into his head to have the lawn mowed on the morrow instead of the day after, according to the usual routine at that season, she would have both felt, and betrayed more emotion. As it was, she smiled as all affectionate daughters do smile when smilingly addressed by an aged father, and then said, upon perceiving that he looked as if he were expecting an answer to his little pleasantry, “Don’t be in a hurry about it, papa. I am very well as I am, thank you.”

  Had her father been a younger, or more quick-sighted man, he might perhaps have suspected from her manner that his daughter really had no wish or intention to be married at all; but as it was, no such disagreeable thoughts occurred to him; he was on the contrary perfectly well satisfied with the answer, which he thought was very modest and proper; and after nodding his head very approvingly for a minute or two, he wisely determined to say no more on the subject till he had opened his project to Mr. Mathews; and having come to this very discreet resolution he proceeded to eat exactly as much fruit as his daughter thought it proper to prepare for him, accompanied as usual by three bumper glasses of wine. And then he settled himself to sleep; while the bride elect, having equipped herself in the ever ready bonnet and shawl and taken possession of the last review, walked through the open window upon the lawn, and thence to the favourite bench which had been occupied an hour or two before by her father and her old acquaintance Mr. Mathews, during the conversation which was destined to have so great an influence on her future life.

  CHAPTER IV

  IT will make a long preface somewhat shorter if the reader be told at once that Mr. Mathews, the tenant of the Oaks, listened with no unwilling ear to the gentle hints thrown out by Mr. King, the owner of Weldon Grange, concerning the possibility of a marriage by which the said tenant of the Oaks might become in process of time the owner of Weldon Grange himself.

  But notwithstanding my wish to make this portion of my narrative as brief as possible, I must dilate a little upon my heroine’s manner of receiving the proposal.

  Being fully authorised by his intended son-in-law, Mr. King entered upon the subject with her without any circumlocution whatever, saying in a tone peculiarly clear and distinct, “My dear Mary, our good friend and neighbour Mr. Mathews of the Oaks has commissioned me to ask you if you will permit him to call upon you for the purpose, my dear, of offering you his hand in marriage.”

  Mary King’s eyebrows suddenly mounted nearly an inch towards the top of her forehead as she listened to this announcement; but after the silence of a few seconds she replied, “Don’t let him come here, father, upon any such fool’s errand. You may tell him, if you wish to be civil, that I never intend to marry anybody.”

  “And would not that be sending me upon a fool’s errand, Mary?” returned the old gentleman, gaily “That is what all young ladies say at first, you know, when they receive an offer of marriage. But everybody knows, my dear, that they do not mean what they say.”

  “But I am not a young lady, dear father. I shall be fifty years old my next birthday, and therefore you may very safely venture to believe that I do mean what I say,” — was her grave reply.

  “But you would not wish me to believe you in earnest if you knew how very miserable it would make me, Mary!” he answered in a voice more childishly treble and tremulous than she had ever heard from him before.

  The sudden change was as painful as it was obvious, and shocked her greatly “My dearest father!” she said, “why should my telling you this make you look so miserable? Do you not know that I am much too happy and contented as I am for it to be possible that any change could appear pleasant to me? I love you, father, a great deal better than I could ever love Mr. Mathews, or anybody else. Why therefore should I leave you, in order to go to him.”

  “There would be no occasion for you to leave me at all if you were to marry Mr. Mathews,” rejoined the old man. “That is the beauty of it, Mary! If you will be a good daughter, and do as I would have you, and marry Mr. Mathews, he would come and live here with us; and when I am dead, he and you would keep on living here just the same as if I was alive, — and the thought of that would make me die comfortable.”

  “But why need I be married, at all, father, in order to continue living in your house?” she replied quietly, yet not without energy. “And if I must look forward to the misery of losing you in the course of years, why should I not look forward to remaining here after you are gone? The thinking over the days that are past will be my chief pleasure then, and I am quite sure that I shall not want any husband to refresh my memory.”

  “But you will want a husband to look after your concerns, Mary,” rejoined the old man in accents of the deepest anxiety. “Who will be able and proper to sign the receipts for rent? Who will write to order in wine? Who will say when the drains of the home pastures ought to be looked to? — And oh! Mary! Mary! Who will sit at the side of the fire with you through the long winter evenings? Indeed, indeed you will break my heart, my dear child, if you go on to the last saying that you will not be married?”

  Under any other circumstances Mary King would certainly have felt herself inclined to laugh at this fanciful remonstrance; but large tears were running down the cheeks of her old father, and all propensity to mirth was cured by the sight of them.

  “My dear father!” she exclaimed with more of womanly softness than her voice usually expressed. “My dear father! Do not make yourself really unhappy about it, or you will make me too miserable to know what I ought to say, or what I ought to do. — I am afraid, father, that I should not know how to be a good wife. I am greatly afraid that I should never get to love Mr. Mathews well enough to behave to him as I believe a good wife ought to do.”

  “You say you are not young, Mary,” returned her father, making a violent effort to avoid sobbing as he spoke, “but the words you have just uttered are the words of a romantic baby girl, rather than those of a rational woman of your age. If what I have now said to you has really put marriage into your head for the first time, there may certainly be some excuse for your starting off so violently like a frightened colt, and I am willing to listen, my darling child, to all you have got to say. But if I am patient with you, Mary, you ought to be patient with me. Old as you think yourself, my dear, you know no more of the world than a little child. Your world, my poor girl, has been the parish of Weldon, or at the very most the county of Hertfordshire; and except what you may have got out of your books, you know little or nothing about your fellow-creatures beyond what you have seen among your neighbours. Trust me, Mary, I know what I am talking about, and you do not. It is likely enough I should think, that when you have no longer got your old father to look after, and take care of you, you may like to see a little more of the world than you have done yet, — and there would be no reason at all that I know of, why you should not, if you would only make up your mind to marry Mr. Mathews. You could not have a more proper person, for he is quite a gentleman in every way.”

  “But is it not a rule, father, for people to be in love with one another, when they marry? — And I am not the least bit in love with Mr. Mathews, papa,” returned Mary, trying to look as grave as he did, poor gentleman, but greatly disposed to laugh too, at the idea of being in love with Mr. Mathews.

  “You are making a joke, Mary, of what I say to you, and you ought not to do that when I feel as if my heart was breaking. Old as I am, Mary, my notion is that I am more like to die of sorrow at last, than of old age.”

  These words, together with the look and accent with which they were spoken were sad enough, but they were made ten times sadder by the tears that ran so copiously down the old man’s cheeks as he uttered
them.

  Yet had Mary not been conscious that there was truth in this heavy accusation, and that she really had been very near laughing outright, when thinking of love and Mr. Mathews, neither the words, nor even the piteous tears which accompanied them would have produced the effect upon her that they now did!

  But as it was she felt completely overpowered and subdued, and this was a sensation equally new and insupportable to her. Without in any degree deserving in the abstract the idea of being a conceited person — for Mary King thought very lowly of her own powers of charming, or of attracting in any way the admiration or even the notice of her fellow-creatures, yet nevertheless she was very little accustomed (practically) to feel conscious that she was doing or saying anything that she herself disapproved. But at this moment a sudden pang at her heart brought with it the terrible conviction that she was acting wilfully and wickedly; and in order to escape from this unwonted suffering she threw herself upon her knees before the poor sobbing old man, exclaiming, “I was indeed jesting when I said no, my dearest father, to anything that you so earnestly wish and desire; but I am quite in earnest now, when I tell you that I am quite ready to marry Mr. Mathews, if my doing so will make you feel happier.”

  The only reply that the shaking and greatly agitated old man was capable of making to this was the blessing her, and kissing her again and again; but no words which he could have uttered could have served so effectually and so solemnly to have ratified her promise, as did this eloquent inability to speak; and Mary King left the room, a short time afterwards, as positively engaged to marry Mr. Mathews as if that respectable gentleman had received her plighted faith after long years of the tenderest courtship.