Archibald Marshall

“ 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. ”

“ There was a more single-minded devotion in his attitude towards her than in Dick's towards Beatrix. All Dick's life and work would be sweetened by Beatrix's love, but they would be pursued, as the life and work of most men are pursued, for their own ends. Caroline would be the end and aim of Maurice's whole existence.
Grafton was soothed in his spirit by this whole-hearted homage paid to his girl. She was worth every bit of it, but a lover does not always honour his mistress for what she is; it is often enough for him if she is what he wants her to be. ”

“ It was the sense of change and passing in his own life that had descended upon him so heavily as Caroline had driven off from her old home, with her face set towards her new one. With parents happily married, where family life is welded by strong affection and community of taste and pursuit, there comes this sense of breaking up when their children begin to leave them. They are no longer the centre round which their children's lives revolve. Mothers feel it most when their boys go to school, fathers when their daughters marry. ”

“ Young George was impressed. "Did she seem to like him?" he asked.
"She couldn't be expected to show that before me," said Jimmy. "I must say she was as nice as ever. She knows how to treat a fellow a bit younger than herself. There's none of that 'Oh, you're only a little boy' sort of business that some people seem to think so funny."
"If you mean Barbara," said Young George, "it's only her fun. She does the same sort of thing to me, and I don't mind it." ”

“ Caroline smiled to herself sometimes as she thought of the doubts she had felt as to Beatrix marrying without love, or with not enough love. She was made to give herself entirely when she did love, and she now loved Dick with an intensity and completeness that raised him to the seventh heaven of bliss, but seemed to leave little room for any other sort of love. ”

“ I hope you'll trust me to do it."
"My dear boy," Grafton said, "I've got to trust you. She does. It's all I want of you, that you should make her happy, all her life. I've made her happy up till now. But a father can't complete his daughter's life, however much he loves her. Only a husband can do that. She believes you're the one man in the world who can give her all she wants, and because she believes it, I'm bound to believe it too. Tell me the course of life you have in your mind for yourselves. ”

“ She pressed closer to him. "It's lovely to feel one is so much trusted," she said. "But you were right to trust me, darling. No, I know it couldn't have been easy. I've had to do some thinking myself, so as to see how you'd take it. I knew you'd be dear and kind, but I couldn't expect you to see Maurice as I see him, now that I love him. He thinks, you know, that I'm much above him. I'm not, in anything that matters. But in all the things that the world looks at—. That's what we're up against, isn't it, Dad?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ For a moment, as she clung to her, Caroline thought that there were to be the real confidences for which she was aching. She returned her embrace, with her heart in her throat. But Beatrix drew herself away. "He does love me; and I love him," she said, with an air of finality. But there had been ever so little of a pause between the two statements.
Grafton's telegram came early the next morning, "Delighted, my darling; love and blessings. Have wired to Dick, shall be down this evening. Bring him to meet me." ”

“ He's so good and so fine, he ought to have somebody who would simply worship him, and think of nobody else; not somebody who has already thought of somebody else, somebody not to be compared with him."
Caroline wouldn't tell her that she thought it would all come. She knew it would, because now she saw that it was already there, though it was struggling for life through the dead waste of a once living but now withered love. "It's what you feel now, darling, that matters," she said. ”

“ If Dick had been married at eighteen, as one of his shipmates was, we were reckoning it out that he might have a daughter of fourteen now, and she'd only be two years younger than Bunting."
Caroline laughed. "I don't quite see what that has to do with it," she said.
"Oh, I do. What I mean is that because he's our dear old Daddy, we don't think of him as somebody who ought to be falling in love at his time of life. But I don't see why he shouldn't. And he's a million times better-looking than heaps of young men. If he were on the stage lots of silly girls would be in love with him." ”

“ The country was a passion with him, and Caroline had penetrated some of his depths at an early stage, when the rest of the family were only in the state of finding him uncommonly heavy in hand, because his upbringing had not trained him to respond to the easy intimacy which they offered to all whom they thought worthy of it, and had offered to him on his introduction to them under Worthing's wing. Caroline, sweet and kind to all who seemed to need helping in the world, had taken more trouble about him than the rest, but they had all come to accept him by this time for what he was. ”

“ There were to have been guests at the Abbey over the week-end, but a telegram had been received to say that they had been put off. That was all that she had heard from her father, though when he had been away for the whole working week he had always written to her at least once.
He gave her his usual greeting when he got out of the train—"Well, my darling!" and kissed her. The kiss was, if anything, warmer than usual, and she felt an immense lift of love and gratitude towards him. If he had brought himself to accept it! She had hardly dared to hope for that. ”

“ But you're rather a shallow character yourself, and one wouldn't expect you to understand everything about a girl like Caroline. You're also the least little bit of a snob. Most people are, and it's nothing particular against you."
"It's no use trying to make me angry, because you won't succeed. If I can stand being called a snob I can stand anything, and it doesn't make the least impression on me. Besides, it's a ridiculous charge in this connection."
"You don't object to young Bradby for anything that he is in himself; you only object because you don't think he's a good match for Caroline." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Careful preparation deepens the spiritual life, at a time when the young soul is at its most malleable, and open to religious impressions. It is a very blessed opportunity."
He spoke with unction. Grafton looked as if he were suffering from a slight nausea. "I don't care a bit about doctrine," he said. "I do believe in Christianity, and I think I recognise its spirit when I see it. I see it in my daughter Caroline. She hasn't a thought in her head that isn't sweet and good. She never thinks of herself when there's anybody else to think of. ”

“ He laughed again.
"Oh, we know who you mean," said Caroline. "We hope he won't get it either. But why shouldn't Denis?"
"I suppose because all the rest of us would kick up such a fuss," said Mr. Williams, laughing most heartily. "I shouldn't on my own account, but there are lots of older men who have worked hard all their lives who ought to be considered before a young one just beginning. There's nothing to do there either. A young fellow ought to have something to do."
"Oh, I beg your pardon," said Ella. "Rhoda and Ethel find a great deal to do, and Denis is never idle. ”

“ Lady Grafton refrained from saying: "So he ought to be," and said instead: "I'm glad to hear that," but in a tone that made Caroline regret that she had brought his name in. Of course Aunt Mary was incapable of understanding what she and Maurice together might be to her father. "I do love him," she said, "as much as ever; even more, I think, because he's been so good to me. I don't believe anybody in the world loves their father more than I do. It doesn't make me love him less because I love my husband. He knows that."
"Oh, my dear, we're not talking about all that. ”

“ No doubt it has kept him out of a lot of mischief. And I'm rather sorry for him losing them, too, though I don't tell him so. He's too apt to be sorry for himself; and after all, he's got to put up with it, like everybody else."
"How unfeeling you are! I'm not going to hear my dear Mr. Grafton criticised in that way without protesting. If he had really been selfish, as most men are, he would just have gone on amusing himself and hardly have missed the girls at all. It's no discredit to him that he has been so happy in his home that he can't bear it to be broken up." ”

“ The eyes of Beatrix and the Bishop met again, and this time she had great difficulty in preventing herself from embracing him.
"That will only be a part of what we should want to do," Caroline said; "but it would be rather important to have the clergyman on our side. If you want to get people together, he is the best man to do it, and he ought to know them better than anybody."
"Yes, he ought to," said the Bishop's wife.
"He does, if he is the right sort of man," said the Bishop. "I think any incumbent might think himself fortunate in having you to help him in his work, my dear." ”

“ Men are easy enough to judge if you look at them with your eyes open. Of course when you're once in love with them you don't. But you can marry first and fall in love afterwards. It saves lots of bothers and gives you something interesting to do at the beginning of married life, which is apt to be rather dull."
Ella laughed. "I shouldn't care to run that risk," she said. "One's freedom is worth something, after all. I shouldn't want to marry anybody unless I loved him."
"No. You're very young still. You've a right to look for that sort of thing. But there's love and love. ”

“ I sometimes wish that I had set out to be a country gentleman, and dealt with beasts instead of with men."
"You have to deal with both as a landowner," said Ella, "and the men are sometimes more difficult than the beasts."
"The men are beasts sometimes," said the Bishop's wife, who prided herself upon her plain speaking.
"Now, my dear," he said, "we are going to forget all the disputes that beset us as long as we are here, and believe that none of them ever come to disturb the peace of such a place as Surley. Isn't your friend Grafton coming over to see me, Ella? Ah! ”

“ It was Caroline who interpreted his ideas for him further.
"You're quite right, dear Uncle Jimmy," she said. "That's what strikes one when one gets into country life a little. The system may not be perfect, but it works splendidly with the right people to look after it."
Her father smiled at her indulgently. "What do you know about the system?" he asked her.
"Oh, I've been reading," she said. "I read a lot when you are up in London, Dad, and don't want looking after."
"I don't see much wrong with the system," said Richard Mansergh. ”