Part 58 (1/2)
”Wrong! I do not know that she is wrong in that sense. I do not know that you have any right to blame her. Why do not you speak to your grandfather?”
”So I have--as far as it was possible for me. But you do not know Sir Peregrine. No one has any influence over him, but my mother;--and now also your mother.”
”And what does Mrs. Orme say?”
”She will say nothing. I know well that she disapproves of it. She must disapprove of it, though she will not say so. She would rather burn off both her hands than displease my grandfather. She says that he asked her and that she consented.”
”It seems to me that it is for her and you to prevent this.”
”No; it is for your mother to prevent it. Only think of it, Mason.
He is over seventy, and, as he says himself, he will not burden the estate with a new jointure. Why should she do it?”
”You are wronging her there. It is no affair of money. She is not going to marry him for what she can get.”
”Then why should she do it?”
”Because he tells her. These troubles about the lawsuit have turned her head, and she has put herself entirely into his hands. I think she is wrong. I could have protected her from all this evil, and would have done so. I could have done more, I think, than Sir Peregrine can do. But she has thought otherwise, and I do not know that I can help it.”
”But will you speak to her? Will make her perceive that she is injuring a family that is treating her with kindness?”
”If she will come here I will speak to her. I cannot do it there. I cannot go down to your grandfather's house with such an object as that.”
”All the world will turn against her if she marries him,” said Peregrine. And then there was silence between them for a moment or two.
”It seems to me,” said Lucius at last, ”that you wrong my mother very much in this matter, and lay all the blame where but the smallest part of the blame is deserved. She has no idea of money in her mind, or any thought of pecuniary advantage. She is moved solely by what your grandfather has said to her,--and by an insane dread of some coming evil which she thinks may be lessened by his a.s.sistance. You are in the house with them, and can speak to him,--and if you please to her also. I do not see that I can do either.”
”And you will not help me to break it off?”
”Certainly,--if I can see my way.”
”Will you write to her?”
”Well; I will think about it.”
”Whether she be to blame or not it must be your duty as well as mine to prevent such a marriage if it be possible. Think what people will say of it?”
After some further discussion Peregrine remounted his horse, and rode back to The Cleeve, not quite satisfied with young Mason.
”If you do speak to her,--to my mother, do it gently.” Those were the last words whispered by Lucius as Peregrine Orme had his foot in the stirrup.
Young Peregrine Orme, as he rode home, felt that the world was using him very unkindly. Everything was going wrong with him, and an idea entered his head that he might as well go and look for Sir John Franklin at the North Pole, or join some energetic traveller in the middle of Central Africa. He had proposed to Madeline Staveley and had been refused. That in itself caused a load to lie on his heart which was almost unendurable;--and now his grandfather was going to disgrace himself. He had made his little effort to be respectable and discreet, devoting himself to the county hunt and county drawing-rooms, giving up the pleasures of London and the glories of dissipation. And for what?
Then Peregrine began to argue within himself as some others have done before him--
”Were it not better done as others use--” he said to himself, in that or other language; and as he rode slowly into the courtyard of The Cleeve, he thought almost with regret of his old friend Carroty Bob.
CHAPTER x.x.xVII.
PEREGRINE'S ELOQUENCE.