MR. BARRY.
"Good-bye, sir. You ought not to be angry with me. I am sure it will be better for us both to remain as we are." This was said by Miss Dorothy Grey, as a gentleman departed from her and made his way out of the front-door at the Fulham Manor-house. Miss Grey had received an offer of marriage, and had declined it. The offer had been made by a worthy man, he being no other than her father's partner, Mr. Barry.
It may be remembered that, on discussing the affairs of the firm with her father, Dolly Grey had been accustomed to call this partner "the Devil." It was not that she had thought this partner to be specially devilish, nor was he so. It had ever been Miss Grey's object to have the affairs of the firm managed with an integrity which among lawyers might be called Quixotic. Her father she had dubbed "Reason," and herself "Conscience;" but in calling Mr. Barry "the Devil" she had not intended to signify any defalcation from honesty more than ordinary in lawyers' offices. She did, in fact, like Mr. Barry. He would occasionally come out and dine with her father. He was courteous and respectful, and performed his duties with diligence. He spent nobody's money but his own, and not all of that; nor did he look upon the world as a place to which men were sent that they might play. He was nearly forty years old, was clean, a little bald, and healthy in all his ways. There was nothing of a devil about him, except that his conscience was not peculiarly attentive to abstract honesty and abstract virtue. There must, according to him, be always a little "give and take" in the world; but in the pursuit of his profession he gave a great deal more than he took. He thought himself to be an honest practitioner, and yet in all domestic professional conferences with her father Mr. Barry had always been Miss Grey's "Devil."
The possibility of such a request as had been now made had been already discussed between Dolly and her father. Dolly had said that the idea was absurd. Mr. Grey had not seen the absurdity. There had been nothing more common, he had said, than that a young partner should marry an old partner's daughter. "It's not put into the partnership deed?" Dolly had rejoined. But Dolly had never believed that the time would come. Now it had come.
Mr. Barry had as yet possessed no more than a fourth of the business. He had come in without any capital, and had been contented with a fourth. He now suggested to Dolly that on their marriage the business should be equally divided. And he had named the house in which they would live. There was a pleasant, genteel residence on the other side of the water, at Putney. Miss Grey had suggested that the business might be divided in a manner that would be less burdensome to Mr. Barry. As for the house, she could not leave her father. Upon the whole, she had thought that it would be better for both of them that they should remain as they were. By that Miss Grey had not intended to signify that Mr. Barry was to remain single, but that he would have to do so in reference to Miss Grey.
When he was gone Dolly Grey spent the remainder of the afternoon in contemplating what would have been her condition had she agreed to join her lot to that of Mr. Barry, and she came to the conclusion that it would have been simply unendurable. There was nothing of romance in her nature; but as she looked at matrimony, with all its blisses,—and Mr. Barry among them,—she told herself that death would be preferable. "I know myself," she said. "I should come to hate him with a miserable hatred. And then I should hate myself for having done him so great an evil." And as she continued thinking she assured herself that there was but one man with whom she could live, and that that was her father. And then other questions presented themselves to her, which were not so easily answered. What would become of her when he should go? He was now sixty-six, and she was only thirty-two. He was healthy for his age, but would complain of his work. She knew that he must in course of nature go much the first. Ten years he might live, while she might probably be called upon to endure for thirty more. "I shall have to do it all alone," she said; "all alone; without a companion, without one soul to whom I can open my own. But if I were to marry Mr. Barry," she continued, "I should at once be encumbered with a soul to whom I could not open my own. I suppose I shall be enabled to live through it, as do others." Then she began to prepare for her father's coming. As long as he did remain with her she would make the most of him.
"Papa," she said, as she took him by the hand as he entered the house and led him into the dining-room,—"who do you think has been here?"
"Mr. Barry."
"Then he has told you?"
"Not a word,—not even that he was coming. But I saw him as he left the chambers, and he had on a bright hat and a new coat."