The Graftons: A Novel

by Archibald Marshall

She looked rather sadly at the beautiful girl sitting with her. They were in the Long Gallery, in which all the circumstances of this kindly hospitable family were expressed. She had been taken in just as if she belonged to all the wealth and ease, and the wide relationships, herself, and her son was being treated as if he were of it too. But his lot, and hers, were cast in very different places from that of the people who inhabited rooms of this sort, and had the relationships indicated by the photographs that were set about. They were of two different worlds—the world of work and the world of wealth, which never entirely coalesce, though contact is formed here and there between them.

She looked at Caroline and saw her more in the light of the state of life to which she belonged than in that of her essential character. It was the first time that they had met, and though she was strongly attracted to her she had not yet gauged her fine true spirit. It was natural that she should be affected by her outward appearance, which betokened her birth and her station, and seemed to put her altogether out of reach of a young man who had enjoyed none of the advantages of wealth, and had none of the elasticity which enables some to climb up from rungs of the social ladder a good deal lower than that from which he had started.

But before she left Abington, which she did two days after she first saw Caroline, she came to look at her son with new eyes, and it was Caroline who opened them for her.

It is not every mother who loves her ugly duckling better than the handsome ones. Mrs. Bradby took more pride in her other sons than in Maurice, who, until he had made his new start at Abington, had been looked on in his home as something of a failure. Even now, though his new start had seemed to promise success, neither his father nor mother had taken it as anything more than a fortunate finding of the right path for him. There was indeed no more to be seen in it than that. Land Agency is hardly a career in itself. At the best he would live the life that suited him, and gain in time a situation which would enable him to marry. He could never expect more than a modest income and a modest home. He would bring satisfaction to his parents if he worked up to that, but not pride, as their other sons were in the way of doing.

But this beautiful, sweet, clever girl saw a great deal beneath the not very attractive exterior. He might do nothing in the world that would be counted as success. He was hardly in the way of doing anything, and yet she spoke of what he was doing as if it went much deeper than the work in which he was spending his days, and by which he was about to earn his living. He was in his right place in the world, and in tune with big things. This was more than to make the sort of success that his brothers might make in their several careers. If his mother did not think it was more, she at least saw that Maurice was not to be judged by the standards applied to them, and her heart went out to the girl who had found more in him than she had.

It may be supposed that she was on the alert for any sign that Caroline was attracted towards her son in the way that she had divined he was towards her. She was not sure, at the end of her visit that she wasn't; but she was sure that if she was she didn't know it yet, or she would not have spoken of him with that unfettered admiration for his fine qualities. It was natural that she should show warmth of feeling towards him, when he was lying battered and broken by having saved her from the same or from worse injury; but that warmth also was expressed frankly and without reserve. His mother thought, rather sadly, that if Caroline had thought of him as of a young man with whom it was possible to fall in love, she wouldn't have praised him so freely. She was what her surroundings had made her; he was something quite different. She would accept the difference as putting a barrier between them, and from behind that barrier she could give him her liking and admiration and understanding.

So it seemed to Mrs. Bradby, as she drove away from the Abbey, with gratitude for all that she had received there warm in her heart. She had come to see in Caroline, as Caroline saw in Maurice, something deeper than what was shown on the surface, something deeper even than the kindness and goodness that was there for all to see. If Maurice had been older, more sure of himself, it seemed to her in her new view of him that he might have aspired to this girl, in spite of the differences between them. She would not think that they would matter; she was too fine to base herself upon the accidents of her upbringing. She would take a man for what he was, not for his outward seeming. But Maurice was still immature; he would not himself think that he had enough to offer a girl such as Caroline, nor be able to impress her to step out of the conventions that hemmed her round.

It was just as well. Nothing but trouble, it seemed to her, could come from a love declared and returned. Maurice had done so well that he was to be paid as Sub-Agent to the Abington property from the beginning of the year. Mr. Grafton, she knew, had arranged that, who was always so kind. But his kindness could hardly be expected to stand the test of giving his daughter to a young man who would be making barely enough money to keep himself, and was quite outside the circle in which marriages were formed for her and her like. It was, perhaps, something of a comfort to be convinced that Maurice, whatever he might feel towards Caroline, would be too diffident to bring on that complication, and that she would not lend herself to it.

But she had reckoned without the impulsions of youth, of dependence upon one side and of gratitude and pity on the other.