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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“Just a little chasse-café,” said he, not exactly understanding
the word he used. “It’s all the go now; and a capital thing for the
stomach.”
“It’s not a capital thing for your stomach;—about the least capital
thing you can take; that is, if you wish to live.”
“Never mind about that now, doctor, but look here. This is what we
call the civil thing—eh?” and he showed the Greshamsbury note. “Not
but what they have an object, of course. I understand all that. Lots
of girls there—eh?”
The doctor took the note and read it. “It is civil,” said he; “very
civil.”
“Well; I shall go, of course. I don’t bear malice because he can’t
pay me the money he owes me. I’ll eat his dinner, and look at the
girls. Have you an invite too, doctor?”
“Yes; I have.”
“And you’ll go?”
“I think not; but that need not deter you. But, Sir Louis—”
“Well! eh! what is it?”
“Step downstairs a moment,” said the doctor, turning to the servant,
“and wait till you are called for. I wish to speak to your master.”
Joe, for a moment, looked up at the baronet’s face, as though he
wanted but the slightest encouragement to disobey the doctor’s
orders; but not seeing it, he slowly retired, and placed himself, of
course, at the keyhole.
And then, the doctor began a long and very useless lecture. The first
object of it was to induce his ward not to get drunk at Greshamsbury;
but having got so far, he went on, and did succeed in frightening
his unhappy guest. Sir Louis did not possess the iron nerves of
his father—nerves which even brandy had not been able to subdue.
The doctor spoke strongly, very strongly; spoke of quick, almost
immediate death in case of further excesses; spoke to him of the
certainty there would be that he could not live to dispose of his own
property if he could not refrain. And thus he did frighten Sir Louis.
The father he had never been able to frighten. But there are men
who, though they fear death hugely, fear present suffering more;
who, indeed, will not bear a moment of pain if there by any mode of
escape. Sir Louis was such: he had no strength of nerve, no courage,
no ability to make a resolution and keep it. He promised the doctor
that he would refrain; and, as he did so, he swallowed down his cup
of coffee and brandy, in which the two articles bore about equal
proportions.
The doctor did, at last, make up his mind to go. Whichever way he
determined, he found that he was not contented with himself. He did
not like to trust Sir Louis by himself, and he did not like to show
that he was angry. Still less did he like the idea of breaking bread
in Lady Arabella’s house till some amends had been made to Mary. But
his heart would not allow him to refuse the petition contained in
the squire’s postscript, and the matter ended in his accepting the
invitation.
This visit of his ward’s was, in every way, pernicious to the doctor.
He could not go about his business, fearing to leave such a man alone
with Mary. On the afternoon of the second day, she escaped to the
parsonage for an hour or so, and then walked away among the lanes,
calling on some of her old friends among the farmers’ wives. But even
then, the doctor was afraid to leave Sir Louis. What could such a
man do, left alone in a village like Greshamsbury? So he stayed at
home, and the two together went over their accounts. The baronet was
particular about his accounts, and said a good deal as to having
Finnie over to Greshamsbury. To this, however, Dr Thorne positively
refused his consent.
The evening passed off better than the preceding one; at least the
early part of it. Sir Louis did not get tipsy; he came up to tea, and
Mary, who did not feel so keenly on the subject as her uncle, almost
wished that he had done so. At ten o’clock he went to bed.
But after that new troubles came on. The doctor had gone downstairs
into his study to make up some of the time which he had lost, and
had just seated himself at his desk, when Janet, without announcing
herself, burst into the room; and Bridget, dissolved in hysterical
tears, with her apron to her eyes, appeared behind the senior
domestic.
“Please, sir,” said Janet, driven by excitement much beyond her
usual pace of speaking, and becoming unintentionally a little less
respectful than usual, “please sir, that ‘ere young man must go out
of this here house; or else no respectable young ‘ooman can’t stop
here; no, indeed, sir; and we be sorry to trouble you, Dr Thorne; so
we be.”
“What young man? Sir Louis?” asked the doctor.
“Oh, no! he abides mostly in bed, and don’t do nothing amiss; least
way not to us. ‘Tan’t him, sir; but his man.”
“Man!” sobbed Bridget from behind. “He an’t no man, nor nothing
like a man. If Tummas had been here, he wouldn’t have dared; so he
wouldn’t.” Thomas was the groom, and, if all Greshamsbury reports
were true, it was probable, that on some happy, future day, Thomas
and Bridget would become one flesh and one bone.
“Please sir,” continued Janet, “there’ll be bad work here if that
‘ere young man doesn’t quit this here house this very night, and I’m
sorry to trouble you, doctor; and so I am. But Tom, he be given to
fight a’most for nothin’. He’s hout now; but if that there young man
be’s here when Tom comes home, Tom will be punching his head; I know
he will.”
“He wouldn’t stand by and see a poor girl put upon; no more he
wouldn’t,” said Bridget, through her tears.
After many futile inquiries, the doctor ascertained that Mr Jonah had
expressed some admiration for Bridget’s youthful charms, and had, in
the absence of Janet, thrown himself at the lady’s feet in a manner
which had not been altogether pleasing to her. She had defended
herself stoutly and loudly, and in the middle of the row Janet had
come down.
“And where is he now?” said the doctor.
“Why, sir,” said Janet, “the poor girl was so put about that she did
give him one touch across the face with the rolling-pin, and he be
all bloody now, in the back kitchen.” At hearing this achievement of
hers thus spoken of, Bridget sobbed more hysterically than ever; but
the doctor, looking at her arm as she held her apron to her face,
thought in his heart that Joe must have had so much the worst of it,
that there could be no possible need for the interference of Thomas
the groom.
And such turned out to be the case. The bridge of Joe’s nose was
broken; and the doctor had to set it for him in a little bedroom at
the village public-house, Bridget having positively refused to go to
bed in the same house with so dreadful a character.
“Quiet now, or I’ll be serving thee the same way; thee see I’ve found
the trick of it.” The doctor could not but hear so much as he made
his way into his own house by the back door, after finishing his
surgical operation. Bridget was recounting to her champion the fracas
that had occurred; and he, as was so natural, was expressing his
admiration at her valour.
Sir Louis Goes Out to Dinner
The next day Joe did not make his appearance, and Sir Louis, with
many execrations, was driven to the terrible necessity of dressing
himself. Then came an unexpected difficulty: how were they to get up
to the house? Walking out to dinner, though it was merely through
the village and up the avenue, seemed to Sir Louis to be a thing
impossible. Indeed, he was not well able to walk at all, and
positively declared that he should never be able to make his way over
the gravel in pumps. His mother would not have thought half as much
of walking from Boxall Hill to Greshamsbury and back again. At last,
the one village fly was sent for, and the matter was arranged.
When they reached the house, it was easy to see that there was some
unwonted bustle. In the drawing-room there was no one but Mr Mortimer
Gazebee, who introduced himself to them both. Sir Louis, who knew
that he was only an attorney, did not take much notice of him, but
the doctor entered into conversation.
“Have you heard that Mr Gresham has come home?” said Mr Gazebee.
“Mr Gresham! I did not know that he had been away.”
“Mr Gresham, junior, I mean.” No, indeed; the doctor had not heard.
Frank had returned unexpectedly just before dinner, and he was now
undergoing his father’s smiles, his mother’s embraces, and his
sisters’ questions.
“Quite unexpectedly,” said Mr Gazebee. “I don’t know what has brought
him back before his time. I suppose he found London too hot.”
“Deuced hot,” said the baronet. “I found it so, at least. I don’t
know what keeps men in London when it’s so hot; except those fellows
who have business to do: they’re paid for it.”
Mr Mortimer Gazebee looked at him. He was managing an estate which
owed Sir Louis an enormous sum of money, and, therefore, he could not
afford to despise the baronet; but he thought to himself, what a very
abject fellow the man would be if he were not a baronet, and had not
a large fortune!
And then the squire came in. His broad, honest face was covered with
a smile when he saw the doctor.
“Thorne,” he said, almost in a whisper, “you’re the best fellow
breathing; I have hardly deserved this.” The doctor, as he took his
old friend’s hand, could not but be glad that he had followed Mary’s
counsel.
“So Frank has come home?”
“Oh, yes; quite unexpectedly. He was to have stayed a week longer in
London. You would hardly know him if you met him. Sir Louis, I beg
your pardon.” And the squire went up to his other guest, who had
remained somewhat sullenly standing in one corner of the room. He was
the man of highest rank present, or to be present, and he expected to
be treated as such.
“I am happy to have the pleasure of making your acquaintance,
Mr Gresham,” said the baronet, intending to be very courteous.
“Though we have not met before, I very often see your name in my
accounts—ha! ha! ha!” and Sir Louis laughed as though he had said
something very good.
The meeting between Lady Arabella and the doctor was rather
distressing to the former; but she managed to get over it. She shook
hands with him graciously, and said that it was a fine day. The
doctor said that it was fine, only perhaps a little rainy. And then
they went into different parts of the room.
When Frank came in, the doctor hardly did know him. His hair was
darker than it had been, and so was his complexion; but his chief
disguise was in a long silken beard, which hung down over his cravat.
The doctor had hitherto not been much in favour of long beards, but
he could not deny that Frank looked very well with the appendage.
“Oh, doctor, I am so delighted to find you here,” said he, coming
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