The Graftons: A Novel

by Archibald Marshall

"Oh, my darling," he said, "nothing could be better—for me. It's you I'm thinking of."

Barbara had been sent off, protesting, to a 'family' in Paris a fortnight before. She was to come home in August, when Young George would also come home for his summer holidays; otherwise she had declared she would not consent to go at all. Beatrix was in London with Lady Handsworth, enjoying her second season, but not with quite the same youthful abandon as she had enjoyed her first. Miss Waterhouse was away visiting, but would come back shortly, either to Abington or to the house in Cadogan Place, wherever the headquarters of the family should be. Caroline after a week in London had pressed for Abington, and had had her own way. It was true that her way would bring most pleasure to her father. His centre of gravity had changed from London to the country. Except on occasions, his work occupied him not more than three days a week, and with her at Abington his home was indisputably there, as it would not have been otherwise. But he was getting to be a little anxious about this increasing disinclination of hers to follow out the life that seemed natural for a girl of her birth and upbringing. Both his sisters-in-law had spoken to him about it, Lady Grafton as well as Lady Handsworth. She was not doing herself justice. They knew that he did not want to give her up, and there was no necessity for her to marry just yet. But she ought not to cut herself off from the surroundings in which girls of her sort did find husbands, the surroundings in which he himself, and all of them, had found wives and husbands.

He had felt the force of this. Though he hoped to keep Caroline with him for a time longer, the thought of her eventual marriage was never quite absent from his thoughts about her. He did not want it to be, necessarily, what is called a brilliant marriage, though with a girl of Caroline's beauty and charm the most brilliant of marriages would not be more than her due; but he did want her to marry among the people with whom both sides of her family had been connected now for some generations past, and that was conditional, as it seemed to him, upon her keeping 'in the swim.' There was an idea at the back of his mind that her whole-hearted love of a country life was rather unsettling her for the right sort of marriage. It seemed actually to have been responsible for her unwillingness to accept the young man whom for some time past he had thought, not without satisfaction, that she might marry. Francis Parry was still in love with her, and a year ago she had refused him in such a way as not to have made him relinquish all hope of winning her. The young man had told Grafton so rather pathetically not so long before. He had not bothered her, he had said, but wasn't she getting tired of shutting herself away from everybody? Was his chance absolutely gone?

The question had made Grafton bethink himself. When Caroline had definitely refused Francis for the second time a year before he had been well content to have it so. She had said that she had always liked him, and given her father to understand that when she should be ready to marry he would be such a husband as she would choose. It was because she was so happy at home that she did not want to marry yet. But now he was not so sure that it would be a man of the type of Francis Parry whom she would choose. She seemed to have moved away from the sort of life he represented, which was exactly the sort of life that he himself had represented, and to which his daughters had been brought up. The fact that he had refrained hitherto with her from any reference to the young man's plea, although they had talked him over together frankly enough before, showed the extent of his doubts about her. Although he sympathised with her strong preference for this quiet stay-at-home country life, and to a large extent shared it, it seemed almost as if she were moving away from him.

They came to the high beechwood from which the famous view was to be seen. They sat on their horses, and drank in the tonic air which came from the sea across miles of open country. The sun was now high in the sky, and a line of silver in the far distance fulfilled their expectations. For in most conditions of atmosphere the view of the sea was by faith and not by sight.

"Isn't it heavenly!" said Caroline. "Oh, Dad, you must leave me to this; I want to live all my life with it. I shouldn't mind if I never saw London again."

They were going to breakfast at Grays, the seat of the Pemberton family. Bertie Pemberton, the only son, had married a few months before Mollie Walter, who had lived with her mother in a cottage at Abington. He also had forsaken London, to settle down to a country existence for the rest of his life. It had been necessary for him 'to do something' before succeeding to the parental acres, and the something he had chosen to do, after enjoying himself for three years at Oxford, was dealing with stocks and shares. This pursuit would appear to be singularly fitted for a young man with connections but no exaggerated equipment of brain power. But he was a countryman at heart, as had been all his forebears. A few years 'in the City' were his tribute to the larger life. Upon marriage he was quite content to close that chapter. There was enough for him to do with the management of his father's estate as a serious occupation, and with the sports of the field as one hardly less serious.

An old stone-roofed farmhouse, restored and refitted to make it a suitable home for an heir-apparent, was now Mollie's habitation. It stood a little way back from the road, and as Grafton and Caroline rode up she came flying down the flagged path from the house door to greet them. She was like a vision of the summer morning in her sparkling bridal happiness. Caroline embraced her warmly when she had dismounted, with more emotion than she could have expressed. The happiness of others is a moving thing, especially when it rests upon love; and Mollie was supremely happy. Her husband, with a loud-voiced geniality which showed him at least to have nothing to complain of in life, followed her out and added his welcome. Thereafter there was talk and laughter, pride of new possession and sympathy with it, until it was time for the Graftons to ride home again.