Therefore he started off on the Monday morning after breakfast and walked to Silverbridge, and as he walked he built various castles in the air. Why should he not marry Grace,—if she would have him,—and take her away beyond the reach of her father’s calamity? Why should he not throw over his own people altogether, money, position, society, and all, and give himself up to love? Were he to do so, men might say that he was foolish, but no one could hint that he was dishonourable. His spirit was high enough to teach him to think that such conduct on his part would have in it something of magnificence; but, yet, such was not his purpose. In going to Miss Prettyman it was his intention to apologize for not doing this magnificent thing. His mind was quite made up. Nevertheless he built those castles in the air.
It so happened that he encountered the younger Miss Prettyman in the hall. It would not at all have suited him to reveal to her the purport of his visit, or ask her either to assist his suit or to receive his apologies. Miss Anne Prettyman was too common a personage in the Silverbridge world to be fit for such employment. Miss Anne Prettyman was, indeed, herself submissive to him, and treated him with the courtesy which is due to a superior being. He therefore simply asked her whether he could be allowed to see her sister.
“Surely, Major Grantly;—that is, I think so. It is a little early, but I think she can receive you.”
“It is early, I know; but as I want to say a word or two on business—”
“Oh, on business. I am sure she will see you on business; she will only be too proud. If you will be kind enough to step in here for two minutes.” Then Miss Anne, having deposited the major in the little parlour, ran upstairs with her message to her sister. “Of course it’s about Grace Crawley,” she said to herself as she went. “It can’t be about anything else. I wonder what it is he’s going to say. If he’s going to pop, and the father in all this trouble, he’s the finest fellow that ever trod.” Such were her thoughts as she tapped at the door and announced in the presence of Grace that there was somebody in the hall.
“It’s Major Grantly,” whispered Anne, as soon as Grace had shut the door behind her.
“So I supposed by your telling her not to go into the hall. What has he come to say?”
“How on earth can I tell you that, Annabella? But I suppose he can have only one thing to say after all that has come and gone. He can only have come with one object.”
“He wouldn’t have come to me for that. He would have asked to see herself.”
“But she never goes out now, and he can’t see her.”
“Or he would have gone to them over at Hogglestock,” said Miss Prettyman. “But of course he must come up now he is here. Would you mind telling him? or shall I ring the bell?”
“I’ll tell him. We need not make more fuss than necessary, with the servants, you know. I suppose I’d better not come back with him?”
There was a tone of supplication in the younger sister’s voice as she made the last suggestion, which ought to have melted the heart of the elder; but it was unavailing. “As he has asked to see me, I think you had better not,” said Annabella. Miss Anne Prettyman bore her cross meekly, offered no argument on the subject, and returning to the little parlour where she had left the major, brought him upstairs and ushered him into her sister’s room without even entering it again, herself.
Major Grantly was as intimately acquainted with Miss Anne Prettyman as a man under thirty may well be with a lady nearer fifty than forty, who is not specially connected with him by any family tie; but of Miss Prettyman he knew personally very much less. Miss Prettyman, as has before been said, did not go out, and was therefore not common to the eyes of the Silverbridgians. She did occasionally see her friends in her own house, and Grace Crawley’s lover, as the major had come to be called, had been there on more than one occasion; but of real personal intimacy between them there had hitherto existed none. He might have spoken, perhaps, a dozen words to her in his life. He had now more than a dozen to speak to her, but he hardly knew how to commence them.
She had got up and curtseyed, and had then taken his hand and asked him to sit down. “My sister tells me that you want to see me,” she said, in her softest, mildest voice.
“I do, Miss Prettyman. I want to speak to you about a matter that troubles me very much,—very much indeed.”
“Anything that I can do, Major Grantly—”
“Thank you, yes. I know that you are very good, or I should not have ventured to come to you. Indeed I shouldn’t trouble you now, of course, if it was only about myself. I know very well what a great friend you are to Miss Crawley.”
“Yes, I am. We love Grace dearly here.”
“So do I,” said the major, bluntly; “I love her dearly, too.” Then he paused, as though he thought that Miss Prettyman ought to take up the speech. But Miss Prettyman seemed to think differently, and he was obliged to go on. “I don’t know whether you have ever heard about it, or noticed it, or—or—or—” He felt that he was very awkward, and he blushed. Major as he was, he blushed as he sat before the old woman, trying to tell his story, but not knowing how to tell it. “The truth is, Miss Prettyman, I have done all but ask her to be my wife, and now has come this terrible affair about her father.”
“It is a terrible affair, Major Grantly; very terrible.”
“By Jove, you may say that!”
“Of course Mr. Crawley is as innocent in the matter as you or I are.”
“You think so, Miss Prettyman?”
“Think so! I feel quite sure of it. What; a clergyman of the Church of England, a pious, hardworking country clergyman, whom we have known among us by his good works for years, suddenly turn thief, and pilfer a few pounds! It is not possible, Major Grantly. And the father of such a daughter, too! It is not possible. It may do for men of business to think so, lawyers and such like, who are obliged to think in accordance with the evidence, as they call it; but to my mind the idea is monstrous. I don’t know how he got it, and I don’t care; but I’m quite sure he did not steal it. Whoever heard of anybody becoming so base as that all at once?”
The major was startled by her eloquence, and by the indignant tone of voice in which it was expressed. It seemed to tell him that she would give him no sympathy in that which he had come to say to her, and to upbraid him already in that he was not prepared to do the magnificent thing of which he had thought when he had been building his castles in the air. Why should he not do the magnificent thing? Miss Prettyman’s eloquence was so strong that it half convinced him that the Barchester Club and Mr. Walker had come to a wrong conclusion after all.
“And how does Miss Crawley bear it?” he asked, desirous of postponing for a while any declaration of his own purpose.
“She is very unhappy, of course. Not that she thinks evil of her father.”
“Of course she does not think him guilty.”
“Nobody thinks him so in this house, Major Grantly,” said the little woman, very imperiously. “But Grace is, naturally enough, very sad;—very sad indeed. I do not think I can ask you to see her to-day.”
“I was not thinking of it,” said the major.
“Poor,