The Graftons: A Novel

by Archibald Marshall

"Will you write and tell me what is happening?"

"Of course I will. Everything."

"If that is happening, shall you try to stop it?"

"What could I do to stop it?" she asked, after a pause.

"You might remind Daddy that all his daughters haven't gone away from him yet. And Caroline, I wish you'd just say something—from yourself, I mean—about me being older, and that you liked having me to talk to and tell things to, after B was married. You did, you know, in the summer holidays. Daddy might see it if you said it about me—that I could be a lot to him, I mean, if he wanted me. Of course you'd have to do it carefully."

Caroline promised to do this, and left Barbara two days later, somewhat comforted, but still rebellious at her exile, at this particular time.

She had given Caroline a good deal to think about. She confided Barbara's fears to Maurice, who expressed himself incredulous. But on such a subject as this he was not much of a guide. His training had not prepared him for judging of a man considerably older than himself, as one who had lived more in the world might have done. Grafton was Caroline's father. He could treat him with respect, and with affection, but hardly as having any of the qualities of youth remaining in him. He thought it very delightful that his family should treat him in the companionable way they did, which was different from any way of parents and children of which he had had experience; but he was still apt to be surprised at certain manifestations of their attitude towards him. Caroline felt all the time that it was even more difficult for him than it was for her to envisage her father as a man who might still desire for himself what belonged by right to youth. It was only difficult for her because he was her father. She had to think of him from outside herself, and she had plenty of experience to guide her in seeing him as a man who might legitimately look for a further period of happiness in marriage, and as quite capable of gaining the love and devotion of a woman much younger than himself, and of keeping it.

"I do want him to be happy," she said, "and in his own way. Of course it would mean that he would give to her a great deal of what we have all had, and that's why poor little Barbara hates it so. But after all it is just what has happened with us—with B and me, and will happen by and bye with Barbara. He isn't less to us than he was, but he's no longer everything. We shouldn't be less to him."

"I think you would," said Maurice. "It isn't quite the same."

The idea still shocked him a little, and for the first time he was unwilling to express all his thoughts to Caroline, for they would seem to reflect upon her father. His simplicity and singleness of purpose went along with some rigidity of mind and outlook. Life presented itself to him in elementary forms, and his ideas, born partly from his very limited experience, had not yet fully expanded under the influence of the great change that had come to himself. It was a man's right course to find his work in the world and to give himself up to it. All the rest would be added in due season, and he must not step out of his path to seek it for himself. He had lately learned that work can have a consecration that will lift it to a still higher plane of rightness; but that discovery had only settled his convictions. He did not think of Grafton as a man who had ever put his work in its proper place. He had seen him only enjoying the fruits of it, and depending upon those fruits for most of his contentment in life. He might not acknowledge it, even to himself, of Caroline's father, and certainly he would not have acknowledged it to her, but his tendency was to regard a man to whom life came so easily as it did to Grafton as liable to be weakened in fibre. He might take to himself gratifications that did not legitimately belong to him. In some respects the conventions of youth are more binding than those of age. Maurice would not have been disturbed at the idea of his father-in-law married again, to a lady of ripe age. He could not accustom himself to the idea of his falling in love at the age of fifty-one, and hoped that Barbara's fears would prove to be unfounded.