Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope (epub ebook reader .TXT) 📕
The two eldest, Augusta and Beatrice, lived, and were apparently likely to live. The four next faded and died one after another--all in the same sad year--and were laid in the neat, new cemetery at Torquay. Then came a pair, born at one birth, weak, delicate, frail little flowers, with dark hair and dark eyes, and thin, long, pale faces, with long, bony hands, and long bony feet, whom men looked on as fated to follow their sisters with quick steps. Hitherto, however, they had not followed them, nor had they suffered as their sisters had suffered; and some people at Greshamsbury attributed this to the fact that a change had been made in the family medical practitioner.
Then came the youngest of the flock, she whose birth we have said was not heralded with loud joy; for when she came into the world, four others, with pale temples, wan, worn cheeks,
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patient, and satisfying himself that the end was now drawing near
with steps terribly quickened, he went down to Greshamsbury.
“How long is this to last, uncle?” said his niece, with sad voice, as
he again prepared to return to Boxall Hill.
“Not long, Mary; do not begrudge him a few more hours of life.”
“No, I do not, uncle. I will say nothing more about it. Is his son
with him?” And then, perversely enough, she persisted in asking
numerous questions about Louis Scatcherd.
“Is he likely to marry, uncle?”
“I hope so, my dear.”
“Will he be so very rich?”
“Yes; ultimately he will be very rich.”
“He will be a baronet, will he not?”
“Yes, my dear.”
“What is he like, uncle?”
“Like—I never know what a young man is like. He is like a man with
red hair.”
“Uncle, you are the worst hand in describing I ever knew. If I’d seen
him for five minutes, I’d be bound to make a portrait of him; and
you, if you were describing a dog, you’d only say what colour his
hair was.”
“Well, he’s a little man.”
“Exactly, just as I should say that Mrs Umbleby had a red-haired
little dog. I wish I had known these Scatcherds, uncle. I do so
admire people that can push themselves in the world. I wish I had
known Sir Roger.”
“You will never know him now, Mary.”
“I suppose not. I am so sorry for him. Is Lady Scatcherd nice?”
“She is an excellent woman.”
“I hope I may know her some day. You are so much there now, uncle; I
wonder whether you ever mention me to them. If you do, tell her from
me how much I grieve for her.”
That same night Dr Thorne again found himself alone with Sir Roger.
The sick man was much more tranquil, and apparently more at ease
than he had been on the preceding night. He said nothing about his
will, and not a word about Mary Thorne; but the doctor knew that
Winterbones and a notary’s clerk from Barchester had been in the
bedroom a great part of the day; and, as he knew also that the great
man of business was accustomed to do his most important work by the
hands of such tools as these, he did not doubt but that the will
had been altered and remodelled. Indeed, he thought it more than
probable, that when it was opened it would be found to be wholly
different in its provisions from that which Sir Roger had already
described.
“Louis is clever enough,” he said, “sharp enough, I mean. He won’t
squander the property.”
“He has good natural abilities,” said the doctor.
“Excellent, excellent,” said the father. “He may do well, very well,
if he can only be kept from this;” and Sir Roger held up the empty
wine-glass which stood by his bedside. “What a life he may have
before him!—and to throw it away for this!” and as he spoke he took
the glass and tossed it across the room. “Oh, doctor! would that it
were all to begin again!”
“We all wish that, I dare say, Scatcherd.”
“No, you don’t wish it. You ain’t worth a shilling, and yet you
regret nothing. I am worth half a million in one way or the other,
and I regret everything—everything—everything!”
“You should not think in that way, Scatcherd; you need not think so.
Yesterday you told Mr Clarke that you were comfortable in your mind.”
Mr Clarke was the clergyman who had visited him.
“Of course I did. What else could I say when he asked me? It wouldn’t
have been civil to have told him that his time and words were
all thrown away. But, Thorne, believe me, when a man’s heart is
sad—sad—sad to the core, a few words from a parson at the last
moment will never make it all right.”
“May He have mercy on you, my friend!—if you will think of Him, and
look to Him, He will have mercy on you.”
“Well—I will try, doctor; but would that it were all to do again.
You’ll see to the old woman for my sake, won’t you?”
“What, Lady Scatcherd?”
“Lady Devil! If anything angers me now it is that ‘ladyship’—her to
be my lady! Why, when I came out of jail that time, the poor creature
had hardly a shoe to her foot. But it wasn’t her fault, Thorne; it
was none of her doing. She never asked for such nonsense.”
“She has been an excellent wife, Scatcherd; and what is more, she
is an excellent woman. She is, and ever will be, one of my dearest
friends.”
“Thank’ee, doctor, thank’ee. Yes; she has been a good wife—better
for a poor man than a rich one; but then, that was what she was born
to. You won’t let her be knocked about by them, will you, Thorne?”
Dr Thorne again assured him, that as long as he lived Lady Scatcherd
should never want one true friend; in making this promise, however,
he managed to drop all allusion to the obnoxious title.
“You’ll be with him as much as possible, won’t you?” again asked the
baronet, after lying quite silent for a quarter of an hour.
“With whom?” said the doctor, who was then all but asleep.
“With my poor boy; with Louis.”
“If he will let me, I will,” said the doctor.
“And, doctor, when you see a glass at his mouth, dash it down; thrust
it down, though you thrust out the teeth with it. When you see that,
Thorne, tell him of his father—tell him what his father might have
been but for that; tell him how his father died like a beast, because
he could not keep himself from drink.”
These, reader, were the last words spoken by Sir Roger Scatcherd. As
he uttered them he rose up in bed with the same vehemence which he
had shown on the former evening. But in the very act of doing so
he was again struck by paralysis, and before nine on the following
morning all was over.
“Oh, my man—my own, own man!” exclaimed the widow, remembering in
the paroxysm of her grief nothing but the loves of their early days;
“the best, the brightest, the cleverest of them all!”
Some weeks after this Sir Roger was buried, with much pomp and
ceremony, within the precincts of Barchester Cathedral; and a
monument was put up to him soon after, in which he was portrayed as
smoothing a block of granite with a mallet and chisel; while his
eagle eye, disdaining such humble work, was fixed upon some intricate
mathematical instrument above him. Could Sir Roger have seen it
himself, he would probably have declared, that no workman was ever
worth his salt who looked one way while he rowed another.
Immediately after the funeral the will was opened, and Dr Thorne
discovered that the clauses of it were exactly identical with those
which his friend had described to him some months back. Nothing had
been altered; nor had the document been unfolded since that strange
codicil was added, in which it was declared that Dr Thorne knew—and
only Dr Thorne—who was the eldest child of the testator’s only
sister. At the same time, however, a joint executor with Dr Thorne
had been named—one Mr Stock, a man of railway fame—and Dr Thorne
himself was made a legatee to the humble extent of a thousand pounds.
A life income of a thousand pounds a year was left to Lady Scatcherd.
War
We need not follow Sir Roger to his grave, nor partake of the baked
meats which were furnished for his funeral banquet. Such men as Sir
Roger Scatcherd are always well buried, and we have already seen that
his glories were duly told to posterity in the graphic diction of his
sepulchral monument. In a few days the doctor had returned to his
quiet home, and Sir Louis found himself reigning at Boxall Hill in
his father’s stead—with, however, a much diminished sway, and, as he
thought it, but a poor exchequer. We must soon return to him and say
something of his career as a baronet; but for the present, we may go
back to our more pleasant friends at Greshamsbury.
But our friends at Greshamsbury had not been making themselves
pleasant—not so pleasant to each other as circumstances would have
admitted. In those days which the doctor had felt himself bound to
pass, if not altogether at Boxall Hill, yet altogether away from his
own home, so as to admit of his being as much as possible with his
patient, Mary had been thrown more than ever with Patience Oriel,
and, also, almost more than ever with Beatrice Gresham. As regarded
Mary, she would doubtless have preferred the companionship of
Patience, though she loved Beatrice far the best; but she had no
choice. When she went to the parsonage Beatrice came there also, and
when Patience came to the doctor’s house Beatrice either accompanied
or followed her. Mary could hardly have rejected their society, even
had she felt it wise to do so. She would in such case have been all
alone, and her severance from the Greshamsbury house and household,
from the big family in which she had for so many years been almost at
home, would have made such solitude almost unendurable.
And then these two girls both knew—not her secret: she had no
secret—but the little history of her ill-treatment. They knew that
though she had been blameless in this matter, yet she had been the
one to bear the punishment; and, as girls and bosom friends, they
could not but sympathise with her, and endow her with heroic
attributes; make her, in fact, as we are doing, their little heroine
for the nonce. This was, perhaps, not serviceable for Mary; but it
was far from being disagreeable.
The tendency to finding matter for hero-worship in Mary’s endurance
was much stronger with Beatrice than with Miss Oriel. Miss Oriel was
the elder, and naturally less afflicted with the sentimentation of
romance. She had thrown herself into Mary’s arms because she had
seen that it was essentially necessary for Mary’s comfort that she
should do so. She was anxious to make her friend smile, and to smile
with her. Beatrice was quite as true in her sympathy; but she rather
wished that she and Mary might weep in unison, shed mutual tears, and
break their hearts together.
Patience had spoken of Frank’s love as a misfortune, of his conduct
as erroneous, and to be excused only by his youth, and had never
appeared to surmise that Mary also might be in love as well as he.
But to Beatrice the affair was a tragic difficulty, admitting of no
solution; a Gordian knot, not to be cut; a misery now and for ever.
She would always talk about Frank when she and Mary were alone; and,
to speak the truth, Mary did not stop her as she perhaps should have
done. As for a marriage between them, that was impossible; Beatrice
was well sure of that: it was Frank’s unfortunate destiny that he
must marry money—money, and, as Beatrice sometimes thoughtlessly
added, cutting Mary to the quick,—money and family also. Under such
circumstances a marriage between them was quite impossible; but not
the less did Beatrice declare, that she would have loved Mary as her
sister-in-law had it been possible; and how worthy Frank was of a
girl’s love, had such love been permissible.
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