Doctor Thorne
by
Anthony Trollope
Part 1 out of 12
E-text prepared by KENNETH DAVID COOPER
DR THORNE
by Anthony Trollope
CONTENTS
I THE GRESHAMS OF GRESHAMSBURY
II LONG, LONG AGO
III DR THORNE
IV LESSONS FROM COURCY CASTLE
V FRANK GRESHAM'S FIRST SPEECH
VI FRANK GRESHAM'S EARLY LOVES
VII THE DOCTOR'S GARDEN
VIII MATRIMONIAL PROSPECTS
IX SIR ROGER SCATCHERD
X SIR ROGER'S WILL
XI THE DOCTOR DRINKS HIS TEA
XII WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK, THEN COMES THE TUG OF WAR
XIII THE TWO UNCLES
XIV SENTENCE OF EXILE
XV COURCY
XVII MISS DUNSTABLE
XVIII THE RIVALS
XIX THE DUKE OF OMNIUM
XX THE PROPOSAL
XXI MR MOFFAT FALLS INTO TROUBLE
XXII SIR ROGER IS UNSEATED
XXIII RETROSPECTIVE
XXIV LOUIS SCATCHERD
XXV SIR ROGER DIES
XXVI WAR
XXVII MISS THORNE GOES ON A VISIT
XXVIII THE DOCTOR HEARS SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE
XXIX THE DONKEY RIDE
XXX POST PRANDIAL
XXXI THE SMALL END OF THE WEDGE
XXXII MR ORIEL
XXXIII A MORNING VISIT
XXXIV A BAROUCHE AND FOUR ARRIVES AT GRESHAMSBURY
XXXV SIR LOUIS GOES OUT TO DINNER
XXXVI WILL HE COME AGAIN?
XXXVII SIR LOUIS LEAVES GRESHAMSBURY
XXXVIII DE COURCY PRECEPTS AND DE COURCY PRACTICE
XXXIX WHAT THE WORLD SAYS ABOUT BLOOD
XL THE TWO DOCTORS CHANGE PATIENTS
XLI DOCTOR THORNE WON'T INTERFERE
XLII WHAT CAN YOU GIVE IN RETURN?
XLIII THE RACE OF SCATCHERD BECOMES EXTINCT
XLIV SATURDAY EVENING AND SUNDAY MORNING
XLV LAW BUSINESS IN LONDON
XLVI OUR PET FOX FINDS A TAIL
XLVII HOW THE BRIDE WAS RECEIVED, AND WHO WERE ASKED TO THE WEDDING
CHAPTER I
THE GRESHAMS OF GRESHAMSBURY
Before the reader is introduced to the modest country medical
practitioner who is to be the chief personage of the following tale, it
will be well that he should be made acquainted with some particulars as
to the locality in which, and the neighbours among whom, our doctor
followed his profession.
There is a county in the west of England not so full of life, indeed,
nor so widely spoken of as some of its manufacturing leviathan brethren
in the north, but which is, nevertheless, very dear to those who know
it well. Its green pastures, its waving wheat, its deep and shady
and--let us add--dirty lanes, its paths and stiles, its tawny-coloured,
well-built rural churches, its avenues of beeches, and frequent Tudor
mansions, its constant county hunt, its social graces, and the general
air of clanship which pervades it, has made it to its own inhabitants a
favoured land of Goshen. It is purely agricultural; agricultural in
its produce, agricultural in its poor, and agricultural in its
pleasures. There are towns in it, of course; depots from whence are
brought seeds and groceries, ribbons and fire-shovels; in which markets
are held and county balls are carried on; which return members to
Parliament, generally--in spite of Reform Bills, past, present, and
coming--in accordance with the dictates of some neighbouring land
magnate; from whence emanate the country postmen, and where is located
the supply of post-horses necessary for county visitings. But these
towns add nothing to the importance of the county; dull, all but
death-like single streets. Each possesses two pumps, three hotels, ten
shops, fifteen beer-houses, a beadle, and a market-place.
Indeed, the town population of the county reckons for nothing when the
importance of the county is discussed, with the exception, as before
said, of the assize town, which is also a cathedral city. Herein a
clerical aristocracy, which is certainly not without its due weight. A
resident bishop, a resident dean, an archdeacon, three or four resident
prebendaries, and all their numerous chaplains, vicars, and
ecclesiastical satellites, do make up a society sufficiently powerful
to be counted as something by the county squirearchy. In other respects
the greatness of Barsetshire depends wholly on the landed powers.
Barsetshire, however, is not now so essentially one whole as it was
before the Reform Bill divided it. There is in these days an East
Barsetshire, and there is a West Barsetshire; and people conversant
with Barsetshire doings declare that they can already decipher some
difference of feeling, some division of interests. The eastern moiety
of the county is more purely Conservative than the western; there is,
or was, a taint of Peelism in the latter; and then, too, the residence
of two such great Whig magnates as the Duke of Omnium and the Earl De
Courcy in that locality in some degree overshadows and renders less
influential the gentlemen who live near them.
It is to East Barsetshire that we are called. When the division above
spoken of was first contemplated, in those stormy days in which gallant
men were still combatting reform ministers, if not with hope, still
with spirit, the battle was fought by none more bravely than by John
Newbold Gresham of Greshamsbury, the member for Barsetshire. Fate,
however, and the Duke of Wellington were adverse, and in the following
Parliament John Newbold Gresham was only member for East Barsetshire.
Whether or not it was true, as stated at the time, that the aspect of
the men with whom he was called on to associate at St Stephen's broke
his heart, it is not for us now to inquire. It is certainly true that
he did not live to see the first year of the reformed Parliament
brought to a close.
The then Mr Gresham was not an old man at the time of his death, and
his eldest son, Francie Newbold Gresham, was a very young man; but,
notwithstanding his youth, and notwithstanding other grounds of
objection which stood in the way of such preferment, and which, it must
be explained, he was chosen in his father's place. The father's
services had been too recent, too well appreciated, too thoroughly in
unison with the feelings of those around him to allow of any other
choice; and in this way young Frank Gresham found himself member for
East Barsetshire, although the very men who elected him knew that they
had but slender ground for trusting him with their suffrages.
Frank Gresham, though then only twenty four years of age, was a married
man, and a father. He had already chosen a wife, and by his choice had
given much ground of distrust to the men of East Barsetshire. He had
married no other than Lady Arabella De Courcy, the sister of the great
Whig earl who lived at Courcy Castle in the west; that earl who not
only had voted for the Reform Bill, but had been infamously active in
bringing over other young peers so to vote, and whose name therefore
stank in the nostrils of the staunch Tory squires of the county.
Not only had Frank Gresham so wedded, but having thus improperly and
unpatriotically chosen a wife, he had added to his sins by becoming
recklessly intimate with his wife's relations. It is true that he
still called himself a Tory, belonged to the club of which his father
had been one of the most honoured members, and in the days of the great
battle got his head broken in a row, on the right side; but,
nevertheless, it was felt by the good men, true and blue, of East
Barsetshire, that a constant sojourner at Courcy Castle could not be
regarded as a consistent Tory. When, however, his father died, that
broken head served him in good stead: his sufferings in the cause were
made the most of; these, in unison with his father's merits, turned the
scale, and it was accordingly decided, at a meeting held at the George
and Dragon, at Barchester, that Frank Gresham should fill his father's
shoes.
But Frank Gresham could not fill his father's shoes; they were too big
for him. He did become member for East Barsetshire, but he was such a
member--so lukewarm, so indifferent, so prone to associate with the
enemies of the good cause, so little willing to fight the good fight,
that he soon disgusted those who most dearly loved the memory of the
old squire.
De Courcy Castle in those days had great allurements for a young man,
and all those allurements were made the most of to win over young
Gresham. His wife, who was a year or two older than himself, was a
fashionable woman, with thorough Whig tastes and aspirations, such as
became the daughter of a great Whig earl; she cared for politics, or
thought that she cared for them, more than her husband did; for a month
or two previous to her engagement she had been attached to the Court,
and had been made to believe that much of the policy of England's
rulers depended on the political intrigues of England's women. She was
one who would fain be doing something if she only knew how, and the
first important attempt she made was to turn her respectable young Tory
husband into a second-rate Whig bantling. As this lady's character
will, it is hoped, show itself in the following pages, we need not now
describe it more closely.
It is not a bad thing to be son-in-law to a potent earl, member of
Parliament for a county, and a possessor of a fine old English seat,
and a fine old English fortune. As a very young man, Frank Gresham
found the life to which he was thus introduced agreeable enough. He
consoled himself as best he might for the blue looks with which he was
greeted by his own party, and took his revenge by consorting more
thoroughly than ever with his political adversaries. Foolishly, like a
foolish moth, he flew to the bright light, and, like the moths, of
course he burnt his wings. Early in 1833 he had become a member of
Parliament, and in the autumn of 1834 the dissolution came. Young
members of three had four-and-twenty do not think much of dissolutions,
forget the fancies of their constituents, and are too proud of the
present to calculate much as to the future. So it was with Mr Gresham.
His father had been member for Barsetshire all his life, and he looked
forward to similar prosperity as though it was part of his inheritance;
but he failed to take any of the steps which had secured his father's
seat.
In the autumn of 1834 the dissolution came, and Frank Gresham, with his
honourable lady wife and all the De Courcys at his back, found that he
had mortally offended the county.
To his great disgust another candidate was brought forward as a fellow
to his late colleague, and though he manfully fought the battle, and
spent ten thousand pounds in the contest, he could not recover his
position. A high Tory, with a great Whig interest to back him, is
never a popular person in England. No one can trust him, though there
may be those who are willing to place him, untrusted, in high
positions. Such was the case with Mr Gresham. There were many who
were willing, for family considerations, to keep him in Parliament; but
no one thought that he was fit to be there. The consequences were,
that a bitter and expensive contest ensued. Frank Gresham, when
twitted with being a Whig, foreswore the De Courcy family; and then,
when ridiculed as having been thrown over by the Tories, foreswore his
father's old friends. So between the two stools he fell to the ground,
and, as a politician, he never again rose to his feet.
He never again rose to his feet; but twice again he made violent
efforts to do so. Elections in East Barsetshire, from various causes,
came quick upon each other in those days, and before he was
eight-and-twenty years of age Mr Gresham had three times contested the
county and been three times beaten. To speak the truth of him, his own
spirit would have been satisfied with the loss of the first ten
thousand pounds; but Lady Arabella was made of higher mettle. She had
married a man with a fine place and a fine fortune; but she had
nevertheless married a commoner and had in so far derogated from her
high birth. She felt that her husband should be by rights a member of
the House of Lords; but, if not, that it was at least essential that he
should have a seat in the lower chamber. She would by degrees sink
into nothing if she allowed herself to sit down, the mere wife of a
mere county squire.
Thus instigated, Mr Gresham repeated the useless contest three times,
and repeated it each time at a serious cost. He lost his money, Lady
Arabella lost her temper, and things at Greshamsbury went on by no
means as prosperously as they had done in the days of the old squire.
In the first twelve years of their marriage, children came fast into
the nursery at Greshamsbury. The first that was born was a boy; and in
those happy halcyon days, when the old squire was still alive, great
was the joy at the birth of an heir to Greshamsbury; bonfires gleamed
through the country-side, oxen were roasted whole, and the customary
paraphernalia of joy, usual to rich Britons on such occasions were gone
through with wondrous eclat. But when the tenth baby, and the ninth
little girl, was brought into the world, the outward show of joy was
not so great.
Then other troubles came. Some of these little girls were sickly, some
very sickly. Lady Arabella had her faults, and they were such as were
extremely detrimental to her husband's happiness and her own; but that
of being an indifferent mother was not among them. She had worried her
husband daily for years because he was not in Parliament, she had
worried him because he would not furnish his house in Portman Square,
she had worried him because he objected to have more people carried
every winter at Greshamsbury Park than the house would hold; but now
she changed her tune and worried him because Selina coughed, because
Helena was hectic, because poor Sophy's spine was weak, and Matilda's
appetite was gone.
Worrying from such causes was pardonable it will be said. So it was;
but the manner was hardly pardonable. Selina's cough was certainly not
fairly attributable to the old-fashioned furniture in Portman Square;
nor would Sophy's spine have been materially benefited by her father
having a seat in Parliament; and yet, to have heard Lady Arabella
discussing those matters in family conclave, one would have thought
that she would have expected such results.
As it was, her poor weak darlings were carried about from London to
Brighton, from Brighton to some German baths, from the German baths
back to Torquay, and thence--as regarded the four we have named--to
that bourne from whence no further journey could be made under Lady
Arabella's directions.
The one son and heir to Greshamsbury was named as his father, Francis
Newbold Gresham. He would have been the hero of our tale had not that
place been pre-occupied by the village doctor. As it is, those who
please may regard him. It is he who is to be our favourite young man,
to do the love scenes, to have his trials and his difficulties, and to
win through them or not, as the case may be. I am too old now to be a
hard-hearted author, and so it is probable that he may not die of a
broken heart. Those who don't approve of a middle-aged bachelor
country doctor as a hero, may take the heir to Greshamsbury in his
stead, and call the book, if it so please them, 'The Loves and
Adventures of Francis Newbold Gresham the Younger.'
And Master Frank Gresham was not ill adapted for playing the part of a
hero of this sort. He did not share his sisters' ill-health, and
though the only boy of the family, he excelled all his sisters in
personal appearance. The Greshams from time immemorial had been
handsome. They were broad browed, blue-eyed, fair haired, born with
dimples in their chins, and that pleasant, aristocratic dangerous curl
of the upper lip which can equally express good humour or scorn. Young
Frank was every inch a Gresham, and was the darling of his father's
heart.
The De Courcys had never been plain. There was too much hauteur, too
much pride, we may perhaps even fairly say, too much nobility in their
gait and manners, and even in their faces, to allow of their being
considered plain; but they were not a race nurtured by Venus or
Apollo. They were tall and thin, with high cheek-bones, high
foreheads, and large, dignified, cold eyes. The De Courcy girls all
had good hair; and, as they also possessed easy manners and powers of
talking, they managed to pass in the world for beauties till they were
absorbed in the matrimonial market, and the world at large cared no
longer whether they were beauties or not. The Misses Gresham were made
in the De Courcy mould, and were not on this account the less dear to
their mother.
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, and skeleton, white arms,
were awaiting permission to leave it.
Such was the family when, in the year 1854, the eldest son came of
age. He had been educated at Harrow, and was now still at Cambridge;
but, of course, on such a day as this he was at home. That coming of
age must be a delightful time to a young man born to inherit broad
acres and wide wealth. Those full-mouthed congratulations; those warm
prayers with which his manhood is welcomed by the grey-haired seniors
of the county; the affectionate, all but motherly caresses of
neighbouring mothers who have seen him grow up from his cradle, of
mothers who have daughters, perhaps, fair enough, and good enough, and
sweet enough even for him; the soft-spoken, half-bashful, but tender
greetings of the girls, who now, perhaps for the first time, call him
by his stern family name, instructed by instinct rather than precept
that the time has come when the familiar Charles or familiar John must
by them be laid aside; the 'lucky dogs', and hints of silver spoons
which are poured into his ears as each young compeer slaps his back and
bids him live a thousand years and then never die; the shouting of the
tenantry, the good wishes of the old farmers who come up to wring his
hand, the kisses which he gets from the farmers' wives, and the kisses
which he gives to the farmers' daughters; all these things must make
the twenty-first birthday pleasant enough to a young heir. To a youth,
however, who feels that he is now liable to arrest, and that he
inherits no other privilege, the pleasure may very possibly not be
quite so keen.
The case with young Frank Gresham may be supposed to much nearer the
former than the latter; but yet the ceremony of his coming of age was
by no means like that which fate had accorded to his father. Mr
Gresham was not an embarrassed man, and though the world did not know
it, or, at any rate, did not know that he was deeply embarrassed, he
had not the heart to throw open his mansion and receive the county with
a free hand as though all things were going well for him.
Nothing was going well with him. Lady Arabella would allow nothing
near him or around him to be well. Everything with him was now turned
to vexation; he was no longer a joyous, happy man, and the people of
East Barsetshire did not look for gala doings on a grand scale when
young Gresham came of age.
Gala doings, to a certain extent, there were there. It was in July,
and tables were spread under the oaks for the tenants. Tables were
spread, and meat and beer, and wine were there, and Frank, as he walked
round and shook his guests by the hand, expressed a hope that their
relations with each other might be long, close, and mutually
advantageous.
We must say a few words now about the place itself. Greshamsbury Park
was a fine old Englishman's seat--was and is; but we can assert it more
easily in past tense, as we are speaking of it with reference to a past
time. We have spoken of Greshamsbury Park; there was a park so called,
but the mansion itself was generally known as Greshamsbury House, and
did not stand in the park. We may perhaps best describe it by saying
that the village of Greshamsbury consisted of one long, straggling
street, a mile in length, which in the centre turned sharp round, so
that one half of the street lay directly at right angles to the other.
In this angle stood Greshamsbury House, and the gardens and grounds
around it filled up the space so made. There was an entrance with
large gates at each end of the village, and each gate was guarded by
the effigies of two huge pagans with clubs, such being the crest borne
by the family; from each entrance a broad road, quite straight, running
through a majestic avenue of limes, led up to the house. This was
built in the richest, perhaps we should rather say in the purest, style
of Tudor architecture; so much so that, though Greshamsbury is less
complete than Longleat, less magnificent than Hatfield, it may in some
sense be said to be the finest specimen of Tudor architecture of which
the country can boast.
It stands amid a multitude of trim gardens and stone-built terraces,
divided one from another: these to our eyes are not so attractive as
that broad expanse of lawn by which our country houses are generally
surrounded; but the gardens of Greshamsbury have been celebrated for
two centuries, and any Gresham who would have altered them would have
been considered to have destroyed one of the well-known landmarks of
the family.
Greshamsbury Park--properly so called--spread far away on the other
side of the village. Opposite to the two great gates leading up to the
mansion were two smaller gates, the one opening onto the stables,
kennels, and farm-yard, and the other to the deer park. This latter
was the principal entrance to the demesne, and a grand and picturesque
entrance it was. The avenue of limes which on one side stretched up to
the house, was on the other extended for a quarter of a mile, and then
appeared to be terminated only by an abrupt rise in the ground. At the
entrance there were four savages and four clubs, two to each portal,
and what with the massive iron gates, surmounted by a stone wall, on
which stood the family arms supported by two other club-bearers, the
stone-built lodges, the Doric, ivy-covered columns which surrounded the
circle, the four grim savages, and the extent of the space itself
through which the high road ran, and which just abutted on the village,
the spot was sufficiently significant of old family greatness.
Those who examined it more closely might see that under the arms was a
scroll bearing the Gresham motto, and that the words were repeated in
smaller letters under each of the savages. 'Gardez Gresham', had been
chosen in the days of motto-choosing probably by some herald-at-arms as
an appropriate legend for signifying the peculiar attributes of the
family. Now, however, unfortunately, men were not of one mind as to
the exact idea signified. Some declared, with much heraldic warmth,
that it was an address to the savages, calling on them to take care of
their patron; while others, with whom I myself am inclined to agree,
averred with equal certainty that it was an advice to the people at
large, especially to those inclined to rebel against the aristocracy of
the county, that they should 'beware the Gresham'. The latter
signification would betoken strength--so said the holders of the
doctrine; the former weakness. Now the Greshams were ever a strong
people, and never addicted to humility.
We will not pretend to decide the question. Alas! either construction
was not equally unsuited to the family fortunes. Such changes had taken
place in England since the Greshams had founded themselves that no
savage could any longer in any way protect them; they must protect
themselves like common folk, or live unprotected. Nor now was it
necessary that any neighbour should shake in his shoes when the Gresham
frowned. It would have been to be wished that the present Gresham
himself could have been as indifferent to the frowns of some of his
neighbours.
But the old symbols remained, and may such symbols long remain among
us; they are still lovely and fit to be loved. They tell us of the
true and manly feelings of other times; and to him who can read aright,
they explain more fully, more truly than any written history can do,
how Englishmen have become what they are. England is not yet a
commercial country in the sense that epithet is used for her; and let
us still hope that she will not soon become so. She might surely as
well be called feudal England, or chivalrous England. If in western
civilized Europe, there does exist a nation among whom there are high
signors, and with whom the owners of the land are the true aristocracy,
the aristocracy is trusted as being best and fittest to rule, that
nation is the English. Choose out the ten leading men of each great
European people. Choose them in France, in Austria, Sardinia, Prussia,
Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Spain (?), and then select the ten in England
whose names are best known as those of leading statesmen; the result
will show in which country there still exists the closest attachment
to, the sincerest trust in, the old feudal and now so-called landed
interests.
England a commercial country! Yes; as Venice was. She may excel other
nations in commerce, but yet it is not that in which she most prides
herself, in which she most excels. Merchants as such are not the first
men among us; though it perhaps be open, barely open, to a merchant to
become one of them. Buying and selling is good and necessary; it is
very necessary, and may, possibly, be very good; but it cannot be the
noblest work of man; and let us hope that it may not be in your time be
esteemed the noblest work of any Englishman.
Greshamsbury Park was very large; it lay on the outside of the angle
formed by the village street, and stretched away on two sides without
apparent limit or boundaries visible from the village road or house.
Indeed, the ground on this side was so broken up into abrupt hills, and
conical-shaped, oak-covered excrescences, which were seen peeping up
through and over each other, that the true extent of the park was much
magnified to the eye. It was very possible for a stranger to get into
it and to find some difficulty in getting out again by any of its known
gates; and such was the beauty of the landscape, that a lover or
scenery would be tempted thus to lose himself.
I have said that on one side lay the kennels, and this will give me an
opportunity of describing here one especial episode, a long episode, in
the life of the existing squire.
He had once represented his county in Parliament, and when he ceased to
do so he still felt an ambition to be connected in some peculiar way
with that county's greatness; he still desired that a Gresham of
Greshamsbury should be something more in East Barsetshire, than Jackson
of the Grange, or Baker of Mill Hill, or Bateson of Annesgrove. They
were all his friends, and very respectable country gentlemen; but Mr
Gresham of Greshamsbury should be more than this: even he had enough
ambition to be aware of such a longing. Therefore, when an opportunity
occurred he took to hunting the county.
For this employment he was in every way well suited;--unless it was in
the matter of finance. Though he had in his very earliest manly years
given such great offence by indifference to his family politics, and
had in a certain degree fostered the ill-feeling by contesting the
county in opposition to the wishes of his brother squires,
nevertheless, he bore a loved and popular name. Men regretted that he
should not have been what they wished him to be, that he should not
have been such as was the old squire; but when they found that such was
the case, that he could not be great among them as a politician, they
were still willing that he should be great in any other way if there
were county greatness for which he was suited. Now he was known as an
excellent horseman, as a thorough sportsman, as one knowing in dogs,
and tender-hearted as a sucking mother to a litter of young foxes; he
had ridden in the county since he was fifteen, and had a fine voice for
a view-hallo, knew every hound by name, and could wind a horn with
sufficient music for all hunting purposes; moreover, he had come to his
property, as was well known through all Barsetshire, with a clear
income of fourteen thousand a year.
Thus, when some old worn-out master of hounds was run to ground, about
a year after Mr Gresham's last contest for the county, it seemed to all
parties to be a pleasant and rational arrangement that the hounds
should go to Greshamsbury. Pleasant, indeed, to all except the Lady
Arabella; and rational, perhaps, to all except the squire himself.
All this time he was already considerable encumbered. He had spent
much more than he should have done, and so indeed had his wife, in
those two splendid years in which they had figured as great among the
great ones of the earth. Fourteen thousand a year ought to have been
enough to allow a member of Parliament with a young wife and two or
three children to live in London and keep up their country family
mansion; but then the De Courcys were very great people, and Lady
Arabella chose to live as she had been accustomed to do, and as her
sister-in-law the countess lived; now Lord de Courcy had much more than
fourteen thousand a year. Then came the three elections, with their
vast attendant cost, and then those costly expedients to which
gentlemen are forced to have recourse who have lived beyond their
income and find it impossible to reduce their establishments as to live
much below it. Thus when the hounds came to Greshamsbury, Mr Gresham
was already a poor man.
Lady Arabella said much to oppose their coming; but Lady Arabella,
though it could hardly be said of her that she was under her husband's
rule, certainly was not entitled to boast that she had made him under
hers. She then made her first grand attack as to the furniture in
Portman Square; and was then for the first time specially informed that
the furniture there was not matter of much importance, as she would not
in future be required to move her family to that residence during the
London seasons. The sort of conversation which grew from such a
commencement may be imagined. Had Lady Arabella worried her lord less,
he might perhaps have considered with more coolness the folly of
encountering so prodigious an increase to the expense of his
establishment; had he not spent so much money in a pursuit which his
wife did not enjoy, she might perhaps have been more sparing in her
rebukes as to his indifference to her London pleasures. As it was, the
hounds came to Greshamsbury, and Lady Arabella did go to London for
some period in each year, and the family expenses were by no means
lessened.
The kennels, however, were now again empty. Two years previous to the
time at which our story begins, the hounds had been carried off to the
seat of some richer sportsman. This was more felt by Mr Gresham than
any other misfortune which he had yet incurred. He had been master of
hounds for ten years, and that work he had at any rate done well. The
popularity among his neighbours which he had lost as a politician he
had regained as a sportsman, and he would fain have remained autocratic
in the hunt, had it been possible. But he so remained much longer than
he should have done, and at last they went away, not without signs and
sounds of visible joy on the part of Lady Arabella.
But we have kept the Greshamsbury tenancy waiting under the oak-trees
by far too long. Yes; when young Frank came of age there was still
enough left at Greshamsbury, still means enough at the squire's
disposal, to light one bonfire, to roast, whole in its skin, one
bullock. Frank's virility came on him not quite unmarked, as that of
the parson's sons might do, or the son of a neighbouring attorney. It
could still be reported in the Barsetshire Conservative "Standard" that
'The beards waggled all,' at Greshamsbury, now as they had done for
many centuries on similar festivals. Yes; it was so reported. But
this, like so many other such reports, had but a shadow of truth in
it. 'They poured the liquor in,' certainly, those who were there; but
the beards did not wag as they had been wont to wag in former years.
Beards won't wag for the telling. The squire was at his wits' end for
money, and the tenants one and all had so heard. Rents had been raised
on them; timber had fallen fast; the lawyer on the estate was growing
rich; tradesmen in Barchester, nay, in Greshamsbury itself, were
beginning to mutter; and the squire himself would not be merry. Under
such circumstances the throats of the tenantry will still swallow, but
their beards will not wag.
'I minds well,' said Farmer Oaklerath to his neighbour, 'when the
squire hisself comed of age. Lord love 'ee! There was fun going that
day. There was more yale drank then than's been brewed at the big
house these two years. T'old squoire was a one'er.'
'And I minds when the squoire was borned; minds it well,' said an old
farmer sitting opposite. 'Them was the days! It an't that long age
neither. Squoire a'nt come o' fifty yet; no, nor an't nigh it, though
he looks it. Things be altered at Greemsbury'--such was the rural
pronunciation--'altered sadly, neebor Oaklerath. Well, well; I'll soon
be gone, I will, and so it an't no use talking; but arter paying one
pound fifteen for them acres for more nor fifty year, I didn't think
I'd ever be axed for forty shilling.'
Such was the style of conversation which went on at the various
tables. It had certainly been of a very different tone when the squire
was born, when he came of age, and when, just two years subsequently,
his son had been born. On each of these events similar rural fetes had
been given, and the squire himself had on these occasions been frequent
among his guests. On the first, he had been carried round by his
father, a whole train of ladies and nurses following. On the second,
he had himself mixed in all the sports, the gayest of the gay, and each
tenant had squeezed his way up to the lawn to get a sight of the Lady
Arabella, who, as was already known, was to come from Courcy Castle to
Greshamsbury to be their mistress. It was little they any of them
cared now for the Lady Arabella. On the third, he himself had borne
him; his child in his arms as his father had before borne him; he was
in the zenith of his pride, and though the tenantry had whispered that
he was somewhat less familiar with them than of yore, that he had put
on somewhat too much of the De Courcy airs, still he was their squire,
their master, the rich man in whose hand they lay. The old squire was
then gone, and they were proud of the young member and his lady bride
in spite of a little hauteur. None of them were proud of him now.
He walked once round among the guests, and spoke a few words of welcome
at each table; and as he did so the tenants got up and bowed and wished
health to the old squire, happiness to the young one, and prosperity to
Greshamsbury; but, nevertheless, it was but a tame affair.
There were also other visitors, of the gentle sort, to do honour to the
occasion; but not such swarms, not such a crowd at the mansion itself
and at the houses of the neighbouring gentry as had always been
collected on these former gala doings. Indeed, the party at
Greshamsbury was not a large one, and consisted chiefly of Lady de
Courcy and her suite. Lady Arabella still kept up, as far as she was
able, her close connexion with Courcy Castle. She was there as much as
possible, to which Mr Gresham never objected; and she took her
daughters there whenever she could, though, as regarded the two elder
girls, she was interfered with by Mr Gresham, and not unfrequently by
the girls themselves. Lady Arabella had a pride in her son, though he
was by no means her favourite child. He was, however, the heir of
Greshamsbury, of which fact she was disposed to make the most, and he
was also a fine open-hearted young man, who could not but be dear to
any mother. Lady Arabella did love him dearly, though she felt a sort
of disappointment in regard to him, seeing that he was not so much like
a De Courcy as he should have been. She did love him dearly; and,
therefore, when he came of age she got her sister-in-law and all the
Ladies Amelia, Rosina etc. to come to Greshamsbury; and she also, with
some difficulty, persuaded the Honourable Georges and the Honourable
Johns to be equally condescending. Lord de Courcy himself was in
attendance at the Court--or said that he was--and Lord Porlock, the
eldest son, simply told his aunt when he was invited that he never
bored himself with those sort of things.
Then there were the Bakers, and the Batesons, and the Jacksons, who all
lived near and returned home at night; there was the Reverend Caleb
Oriel, the High-Church rector, with his beautiful sister Patience
Oriel; there was Mr Yates Umbleby, the attorney and agent; and there
was Dr Thorne, and the doctor's modest, quiet-looking little niece,
Miss Mary.
CHAPTER II
LONG, LONG AGO
As Dr Thorne is our hero--or I should rather say my hero, a privilege
of selecting for themselves in this respect being left to all my
readers--and as Miss Mary Thorne is to be our heroine, a point on which
no choice whatsoever is left to any one, it is necessary that they
shall be introduced and explained and described in a proper, formal
manner. I feel quite an apology is due for beginning a novel with two
long dull chapters full of description. I am perfectly aware of the
danger of such a course. In so doing I sin against the golden rule
which requires us all to put our best foot foremost, the wisdom of
which is fully recognized by novelists, myself among the number. It
can hardly be expected that any one will consent to go through with a
fiction that offers so little allurement in its first pages; but twist
it as I will I cannot do otherwise. I find that I cannot make poor Mr
Gresham hem and haw and turn himself uneasily in his arm-chair in a
natural manner till I have said why he is uneasy. I cannot bring my
doctor speaking his mind freely among the bigwigs till I have explained
that it is in accordance with his usual character to do so. This is
unartistic on my part, and shows want of imagination as well as want of
skill. Whether or not I can atone for these faults by straightforward,
simple, plain story-telling--that, indeed, is very doubtful.
Dr Thorne belonged to a family in one sense as good, and at any rate as
old, as that of Mr Gresham; and much older, he was apt to boast, than
that of the De Courcys. This trait in his character is mentioned
first, as it was the weakness for which he was most conspicuous. He
was second cousin to Mr Thorne of Ullathorne, a Barsetshire squire
living in the neighbourhood of Barchester, and who boasted that his
estate had remained in his family, descending from Thorne to Thorne,
longer than had been the case with any other estate or any other family
in the county.
But Dr Thorne was only a second cousin; and, therefore, though he was
entitled to talk of the blood as belonging to some extent to himself,
he had no right to lay claim to any position in the county other than
such as he might win for himself if he chose to locate himself in it.
This was a fact of which no one was more fully aware than our doctor
himself.
His father, who had been first cousin of a former Squire Thorne, had
been a clerical dignitary in Barchester, but had been dead now many
years. He had had two sons; one he had educated as a medical man, but
the other, and the younger, whom he had intended for the Bar, had not
betaken himself in any satisfactory way to any calling. This son had
been first rusticated from Oxford, and then expelled; and thence
returning to Barchester, had been the cause to his father and brother
of much suffering.
Old Dr Thorne, the clergyman, died when the two brothers were yet young
men, and left behind him nothing but some household and other property
of the value of about two thousand pounds, which he bequeathed to
Thomas, the elder son, much more than that having been spent in
liquidating debts contracted by the younger. Up to that time there had
been close harmony between the Ullathorne family and that of the
clergyman; but a month or two before the doctor's death--the period of
which we are speaking was about two-and-twenty years before the
commencement of our story--the then Mr Thorne of Ullathorne had made it
understood that he would no longer receive at his house his cousin
Henry, whom he regarded as a disgrace to the family.
Fathers are apt to be more lenient to their sons than uncles to their
nephews, or cousins to each other. Dr Thorne still hoped to reclaim
his black sheep, and thought that the head of his family showed an
unnecessary harshness in putting an obstacle in his way of doing so.
And if the father was warm in support of his profligate son, the young
medical aspirant was warmer in support of his profligate brother. Dr
Thorne, junior, was no roue himself, but perhaps, as a young man, he
had not sufficient abhorrence of his brother's vices. At any rate, he
stuck to him manfully; and when it was signified in the Close that
Henry's company was not considered desirable at Ullathorne, Dr Thomas
Thorne sent word to the squire that under such circumstances his visits
there would also cease.
This was not very prudent, as the young Galen had elected to establish
himself in Barchester, very mainly in expectation for the help which
his Ullathorne connexion would give him. This, however, in his anger
he failed to consider; he was never known, either in early or in middle
life, to consider in his anger those points which were probably best
worth his consideration. This, perhaps, was of the less moment as his
anger was of an unenduring kind, evaporating frequently with more
celerity than he could get angry words out of his mouth. With the
Ullathorne people, however, he did establish a quarrel sufficiently
permanent to be of vital injury to his medical prospects.
And then the father died, and the two brothers were left living
together with very little means between them. At this time there was
living in Barchester, people of the name of Scatcherd. Of that family,
as then existing, we have only to do with two, a brother and a sister.
They were in a low rank of life, the one being a journeyman
stone-mason, and the other an apprentice to a straw-bonnet maker; but
they were, nevertheless, in some sort remarkable people. The sister
was reputed in Barchester to be a model of female beauty of the strong
and robuster cast, and had also a better reputation as being a girl of
good character and honest, womanly conduct. Both of her beauty and of
her reputation her brother was exceedingly proud, and he was the more
so when he learnt that she had been asked in marriage by a decent
master-tradesman in the city.
Roger Scatcherd had also a reputation, but not for beauty or propriety
of conduct. He was known for the best stone-mason in the four
counties, and as the man who could, on occasion, drink the most alcohol
in a given time in the same localities. As a workman, indeed, he had
higher reputation even than this: he was not only a good and very quick
stone-mason, but he had also a capacity for turning other men into good
stone-masons: he had a gift of knowing what a man could and should do;
and, by degrees, he taught himself what five, and ten, and
twenty--latterly, what a thousand and two thousand men might accomplish
among them: this, also, he did with very little aid from pen and paper,
with which he was not, and never became, very conversant. He had also
other gifts and other propensities. He could talk in a manner
dangerous to himself and to others; he could persuade without knowing
that he did so; and being himself an extreme demagogue, in those noisy
times just prior to the Reform Bill, he created a hubbub in Barchester
of which he himself had had no previous conception.
Henry Thorne among his other bad qualities had one which his friends
regarded as worse than all the others, and which perhaps justified the
Ullathorne people in their severity. He loved to consort with low
people. He not only drank in tap-rooms with vulgar drinkers; so said
his friends, and so said his enemies. He denied the charge as being
made in the plural number, and declared that his only low co-reveller
was Roger Scatcherd. With Roger Scatcherd, at any rate, he associated,
and became as democratic as Roger himself. Now the Thornes of
Ullathorne were of the very highest order of Tory excellence.
Whether or not Mary Scatcherd at once accepted the offer of the
respectable tradesman, I cannot say. After the occurrence of certain
events which must here shortly be told, she declared that she had never
done so. Her brother averred that she most positively had. The
respectable tradesman himself refused to speak on the subject.
It is certain, however, that Scatcherd, who had hitherto been silent
enough about his sister in those social hours which he passed with his
gentleman friend, boasted of the engagement when it was, as he said,
made; and then boasted also of the girl's beauty. Scatcherd, in spite
of his occasional intemperance, looked up in the world, and the coming
marriage of his sister was, he thought, suitable to his own ambition
for his family.
Henry Thorne had already heard of, and already seen, Mary Scatcherd;
but hitherto she had not fallen in the way of his wickedness. Now,
however, when he heard that she was to be decently married, the devil
tempted him to tempt her. It boots not to tell all the tale. It came
out clearly enough when all was told, that he made her most distinct
promises of marriage; he even gave her such in writing; and having in
this way obtained from her her company during some of her little
holidays--her Sundays or summer evenings--he seduced her. Scatcherd
accused him openly of having intoxicated her with drugs; and Thomas
Thorne, who took up the case, ultimately believed the charge. It
became known in Barchester that she was with child, and that the
seducer was Henry Thorne.
Roger Scatcherd, when the news first reached him, filled himself with
drink, and then swore that he would kill them both. With manly wrath,
however, he set forth, first against the man, and that with manly
weapons. He took nothing with him but his fists and a big stick as he
went in search of Henry Thorne.
The two brothers were then lodging together at a farm-house close
abutting on the town. This was not an eligible abode for a medical
practitioner; but the young doctor had not been able to settle himself
eligibly since his father's death; and wishing to put what constraint
he could upon his brother, had so located himself. To this farm-house
came Roger Scatcherd one sultry summer evening, his anger gleaming from
his bloodshot eyes, and his rage heightened to madness by the rapid
pace at which he had run from the city, and by the ardent spirits which
were fermenting within him.
At the very gate of the farm-yard, standing placidly with his cigar in
his mouth, he encountered Henry Thorne. He had thought of searching
for him through the whole premises, of demanding his victim with loud
exclamations, and making his way to him through all obstacles. In lieu
of that, there stood the man before him.
'Well, Roger, what's in the wind?' said Henry Thorne.
They were the last words he ever spoke. He was answered by a blow from
the blackthorn. A contest ensued; which ended in Scatcherd keeping his
word--at any rate, as regarded the worst offender. How the fatal blow
on the temple was struck was never exactly determined; one medical man
said it might have been done in a fight with a heavy-headed stick;
another thought that a stone had been used; a third suggested a
stone-mason's hammer. It seemed, however, to be proved subsequently
that no hammer was taken out, and Scatcherd himself persisted in
declaring that he had taken in his hand no weapon but the stick.
Scatcherd, however, was drunk; and even though he intended to tell the
truth, may have been mistaken. There were, however, the facts that
Thorne was dead; that Scatcherd had sworn to kill him about an hour
previously; and that he had without delay accomplished the threat. He
was arrested and tried with murder, all the distressing circumstances
of the case came out on the trial: he was found guilty of
man-slaughter, and sentenced to be imprisoned for six months. Our
readers will probably think that the punishment was too severe.
Thomas Thorne and the farmer were on the spot soon after Henry Thorne
had fallen. The brother was at first furious for vengeance against his
brother's murderer; but, as the facts came out, as he learnt what had
been the provocation given, what had been the feelings of Scatcherd
when he left the city, determined to punish him who had ruined his
sister, his heart was changed. Those were trying days for him. It
behoved him to do what in him lay to cover his brother's memory from
the obloquy which it deserved; it behoved him also to save, or to
assist to save, from undue punishment the unfortunate man who had shed
his brother's blood; and it behoved him also, at least so he thought,
to look after that poor fallen one whose misfortunes were less merited
than those either of his brother or of hers.
And he was not the man to get through these things lightly, or with as
much ease as he perhaps might conscientiously have done. He would pay
for the defence of the prisoner; he would pay for the defence of his
brother's memory; and he would pay for the poor girl's comforts. He
would do this, and he would allow no one to help him. He stood alone
in the world, and insisted on so standing. Old Mr Thorne of Ullathorne
offered again to open his arms to him; but he had conceived a foolish
idea that his cousin's severity had driven his brother on to his bad
career, and he would consequently accept no kindness from Ullathorne.
Miss Thorne, the old squire's daughter--a cousin considerably older
than himself, to whom he had at one time been much attached--sent him
money; and he returned it to her under a blank cover. He had still
enough for those unhappy purposes which he had in hand. As to what
might happen afterwards, he was then mainly indifferent.
The affair made much noise in the county, and was inquired into closely
by many of the county magistrates; by none more closely than by John
Newbold Gresham, with the energy and justice shown by Dr Thorne on the
occasion; and when the trial was over, he invited him to Greshamsbury.
The visit ended in the doctor establishing himself in the village.
We must return for a moment to Mary Scatcherd. She was saved from the
necessity of encountering her brother's wrath, for that brother was
under arrest for murder before he could get at her. Her immediate lot,
however, was a cruel one. Deep as was her cause for anger against the
man who had so inhumanly used her, still it was natural that she should
turn to him with love rather than with aversion. To whom else could
she in such plight look for love? When, therefore, she heard that he
was slain, her heart sank within her; she turned her face to the wall,
and laid herself down to die; to die a double death, for herself and
the fatherless babe that was now quick within her.
But, in fact, life had still much to offer, both to her and her child.
For her it was still destined that she should, in a distant land, be
the worthy wife of a good husband, and the happy mother of many
children. For that embryo one it was destined--but that may not be so
quickly told: to describe her destiny this volume has yet to be
written.
Even in those bitterest days God tempered the wind to the shorn lamb.
Dr Thorne was by her bedside soon after the bloody tidings had reached
her, and did for her more than either her lover or her brother could
have done. When the baby was born, Scatcherd was still in prison, and
had still three months' more confinement to undergo. The story of her
great wrongs and cruel usage as much talked of, and men said that one
who had been so injured should be regarded as having in nowise sinned
at all.
One man, at any rate, so thought. At twilight, one evening, Thorne was
surprised by a visit from a demure Barchester hardware dealer, whom he
did not remember ever to have addressed before. This was the former
lover of the poor Mary Scatcherd. He had a proposal to make and it was
this:--if Mary would consent to leave the country at once, to leave it
without notice from her brother, or talk or eclat on the matter, he
would sell all that he had, marry her, and emigrate. There was but one
condition; she must leave her baby behind her. The hardware-man could
find it in his heart to be generous, to be generous and true to his
love; but he could not be generous enough to father the seducer's
child.
'I could never abide it, sir, if I took it,' said he; 'and she,--why in
course she would always love it the best.'
In praising his generosity, who can mingle any censure for such
manifest prudence? He would still make her the wife of his bosom,
defiled in the eyes of the world as she had been; but she must be to
him the mother of his own children, not the mother of another's child.
And now again our doctor had a hard task to win through. He saw at
once that it was his duty to use his utmost authority to induce the
poor girl to accept such an offer. She liked the man; and here was
opened to her a course which would have been most desirable, even
before her misfortune. But it is hard to persuade a mother to part
with her first babe; harder, perhaps, when the babe had been so
fathered and so born than when the world has shone brightly on its
earliest hours. She at first refused stoutly: she sent a thousand
loves, a thousand thanks, profusest acknowledgements for his generosity
to the man who showed her that he loved her so well; but Nature, she
said, would not let her leave her child.
'And what will you do for her here, Mary?' said the doctor. Poor Mary
replied to him with a deluge of tears.
'She is my niece,'said the doctor, taking up the tiny infant in his
huge hands; 'she is already the nearest thing, the only thing that I
have in the world. I am her uncle, Mary. If you will go with this man
I will be father to her and mother to her. Of what bread I eat, she
shall eat; of what cup I drink, she shall drink. See, Mary, here is
the Bible;' and he covered the book with his hand, 'Leave her to me,
and by this word she shall be my child.'
The mother consented at last; left her baby with the doctor, married,
and went to America. All this was consummated before Roger Scatcherd
was liberated from jail. Some conditions the doctor made. The first
was, that Scatcherd should not know his sister's child was thus
disposed of. Dr Thorne, in undertaking to bring up the baby, did not
choose to encounter any girl's relations on the other side. Relations
she would undoubtedly have had none had she been left to live or die as
a workhouse bastard; but should the doctor succeed in life, should he
ultimately be able to make this girl the darling of his own house, and
then the darling of some other house, should she live and win the heart
of some man whom the doctor might delight to call his friend and
nephew; then relations might spring up whose ties would not
advantageous.
No man plumed himself on good blood more than Dr Thorne; no man had
greater pride in his genealogical tree, and his hundred and thirty
clearly descendant from MacAdam; no man had a stronger theory as to the
advantage held by men who have grandfathers over those who have none,
or have none worth talking about. Let it not be thought that our
doctor was a perfect character. No, indeed; most far from perfect. He
had within him an inner, stubborn, self-admiring pride, which made him
believe himself to be better and higher than those around him, and this
from some unknown cause which he could hardly explain to himself. He
had a pride in being a poor man of a high family; he had a pride in
repudiating the very family of which he was proud; and he had a special
pride in keeping his pride silently to himself. His father had been a
Thorne, his mother a Thorold. There was no better blood to be had in
England. It was in the possession of such properties as these that he
condescended to rejoice; this man, with a man's heart, a man's courage,
and a man's humanity! Other doctors round the county had ditch-water
in their veins; he could boast of a pure ichor, to which that of the
great Omnium family was but a muddy puddle. It was thus that he loved
to excel his brother practitioners, he who might have indulged in the
pride of excelling them both in talent and in energy! We speak now of
his early days; but even in his maturer life, the man, though mellowed,
was the same.
This was the man who now promised to take to his bosom as his own child
a poor bastard whose father was already dead, and whose mother's family
was such as the Scatcherds! It was necessary that the child's history
should be known to none. Except to the mother's brother it was an
object of interest to no one. The mother had for some short time been
talked of; but now that the nine-days' wonder was a wonder no longer.
She went off to her far-away home; her husband's generosity was duly
chronicled in the papers, and the babe was left untalked of and
unknown.
It was easy to explain to Scatcherd that the child had not lived. There
was a parting interview between the brother and sister in the jail,
during which with real tears and unaffected sorrow, the mother thus
accounted for the offspring of her shame. Then she started, fortunate
in her coming fortunes; and the doctor took with him his charge to the
new country in which they were both to live. There he found for her a
fitting home till she should be old enough to sit at his table and live
in his bachelor house; and no one but old Mr Gresham knew who she was,
or whence she had come.
Then Roger Scatcherd, having completed his six months' confinement,
came out of prison.
Roger Scatcherd, though his hands were now red with blood, was to be
pitied. A short time before the days of Henry Thorne's death he had
married a young wife in his own class of life, and had made many
resolves that henceforward his conduct should be such as might become a
married man, and might not disgrace the respectable brother-in-law he
was about to have given him such was his condition when he first heard
of his sister's plight. As has been said, he filled himself with drink
and started off on the scent of blood.
During his prison days his wife had to support herself as she might.
The decent articles of furniture which they had put together were sold;
she gave up their little house, and, bowed down by misery, she also was
brought near to death. When he was liberated he at once got work; but
those who have watched the lives of such people know how hard it is for
them to recover lost ground. She became a mother immediately after his
liberation, and when her child was born they were in direst want; for
Scatcherd was again drinking, and his resolves were blown to the wind.
The doctor was then living at Greshamsbury. He had gone over there
before the day on which he undertook the charge of poor Mary's baby,
and soon found himself settled as the Greshamsbury doctor. This
occurred very soon after the birth of the young heir. His predecessor
in this career had 'bettered' himself, or endeavoured to do so, by
seeking the practice of some large town, and Lady Arabella, at a very
critical time, was absolutely left with no other advice than that of a
stranger, picked up, as she declared to Lady de Courcy, somewhere
between Barchester jail, or Barchester court-house, she did not know
which.
Of course Lady Arabella could not suckle the young heir herself. Ladies
Arabella never can. They are gifted with the powers of being mothers,
but not nursing-mothers. Nature gives them bosoms for show, but not
for use. So Lady Arabella had a wet-nurse. At the end of six months
the new doctor found Master Frank was not doing quite so well as he
should do; and after a little trouble it was discovered that the very
excellent young woman who had been sent express from Courcy Castle to
Greshamsbury--a supply being kept up on the lord's demesne for the
family use--was fond of brandy. She was at once sent back to the
castle, of course; and, as Lady de Courcy was too much in dudgeon to
send another, Dr Thorne was allowed to procure one. He thought of the
misery of Roger Scatcherd's wife, though also of her health and
strength, and active habits; and thus Mrs Scatcherd became the
foster-mother to young Gresham.
One other episode we must tell of past times. Previous to his father's
death, Dr Thorne was in love. Nor had he altogether sighed and pleaded
in vain; though it had not quite come to that, the young lady's
friends, or even the young lady herself, had actually accepted his
suit. At that time his name stood well in Barchester. His father was
a prebendary; his cousins and his best friends were the Thornes of
Ullathorne, and the lady, who shall be nameless, was not thought to be
injudicious in listening to the young doctor. But when Henry Thorne
went so far astray, when the old doctor died, when the young doctor
quarrelled with Ullathorne, when the brother was killed in a
disgraceful quarrel, and it turned out that the physician had nothing
but his profession and no settled locality in which to exercise it;
then, indeed, the young lady's friends thought that she was
injudicious, and the young lady herself had not spirit enough, or love
enough, to be disobedient. In those stormy days of the trial she told
Dr Thorne, that perhaps it would be wise that they should not see each
other any more.
Dr Thorne, so counselled, at such a moment,--so informed then, when he
most required comfort from his love, at once swore loudly that he
agreed with her. He rushed forth with a bursting heart, and said to
himself that the world was bad, all bad. He saw the lady no more; and,
if I am rightly informed, never again made matrimonial overtures to any
one.
CHAPTER III
DR THORNE
And thus Dr Thorne became settled for life in the little village of
Greshamsbury. As was then the wont with many country practitioners,
and as should be the wont with them all if they consulted their own
dignity a little less and the comforts of their customers somewhat
more, he added the business of a dispensing apothecary to that of a
physician. In doing so, he was of course much reviled. Many people
around him declared that he could not truly be a doctor, or, at any
rate, a doctor to be so called; and his brethren in the art living
round him, though they knew that his diplomas, degrees, and
certificates were all en regle, rather countenanced the report. There
was much about this new-comer which did not endear him to his own
profession. In the first place he was a new-comer, and, as such, was
of course to be regarded by other doctors as being de trop.
Greshamsbury was only fifteen miles from Barchester, where there was a
regular depot of medical skill, and but eight from Silverbridge, where
a properly established physician had been in residence for the last
forty years. Dr Thorne's predecessor at Greshamsbury had been a
humble-minded general practitioner, gifted with a due respect for the
physicians of the county; and he, though he had been allowed to physic
the servants, and sometimes the children of Greshamsbury, had never had
the presumption to put himself on a par with his betters.
Then also, Dr Thorne, though a graduated physician, though entitled
beyond all dispute to call himself a doctor, according to all the laws
of the colleges, made it known to the East Barsetshire world, very soon
after he had seated himself at Greshamsbury, that his rate of pay was
to be seven-and-sixpence a visit within a circuit of five miles, with a
proportionally increased charge at proportionally increased distances.
Now there was something low, mean, unprofessional, and democratic in
this; so, at least, said the children of AEsculapius gathered together
in conclave at Barchester. In the first place, it showed that this
Thorne was always thinking of his money, like an apothecary, as he was;
whereas, it would have behoved him, as a physician, had he had the
feelings of a physician under his hat, to have regarded his own
pursuits in a purely philosophical spirit, and to have taken any gain
which might have accrued as an accidental adjunct to his station in
life. A physician should take his fee without letting his left hand
know what his right hand was doing; it should be taken without a
thought, without a look, without a move of the facial muscles; the true
physician should hardly be aware that the last friendly grasp of the
hand had been more precious by the touch of gold. Whereas, that fellow
Thorne would lug out half a crown from his breeches pocket and give it
in change for a ten shilling piece. And then it was clear that this
man had no appreciation of the dignity of a learned profession. He
might constantly be seen compounding medicines in the shop, at the left
hand of his front door; not making experiments philosophically in
materials medica for the benefit of coming ages--which, if he did, he
should have done in the seclusion of his study, far from profane
eyes--but positively putting together common powders for rural bowels,
or spreading vulgar ointments for agricultural ailments.
A man of this sort was not fit for society for Dr Fillgrave of
Barchester. That must be admitted. And yet he had been found to be
fit society for the old squire of Greshamsbury, whose shoe-ribbons Dr
Fillgrave would not have objected to tie; so high did the old squire
stand in the county just previous to his death. But the spirit of the
Lady Arabella was known by the medical profession of Barsetshire, and
when that good man died it was felt that Thorne's short tenure of
Greshamsbury favour was already over. The Barsetshire regulars were,
however, doomed to disappointment. Our doctor had already contrived to
endear himself to the heir; and though there was not even much personal
love between him and the Lady Arabella, he kept his place at the great
house unmoved, not only in the nursery and in the bedrooms, but also at
the squire's dining-table.
Now there was in this, it must be admitted, quite enough to make him
unpopular with his brethren; and this feeling was soon shown in a
marked and dignified manner. Dr Fillgrave, who had certainly the most
respectable professional connexion in the county, who had a reputation
to maintain, and who was accustomed to meet, on almost equal terms, the
great medical baronets from the metropolis at the houses of the
nobility--Dr Fillgrave declined to meet Dr Thorne in consultation. He
exceedingly regretted, he said, most exceedingly, the necessity he felt
of doing so: he had never before had to perform so painful a duty; but,
as a duty which he owed to his profession, he must perform it. With
every feeling of respect for a Lady,--a sick guest at Greshamsbury,--and
for Mr Gresham, he must decline to attend in conjunction with Dr
Thorne. If his services could be made available under any other
circumstances, he would go to Greshamsbury as fast as post-horses could
carry him.
Then, indeed, there was war in Barsetshire. If there was on Dr
Thorne's cranium one bump more developed than another, it was that of
combativeness. Not that the doctor was a bully, or even pugnacious, in
the usual sense of the word; he had no disposition to provoke a fight,
no propense love of quarrelling; but there was that in him which would
allow him to yield to no attack. Neither in argument nor in contest
would he ever allow himself to be wrong; never at least to anyone but
himself; and on behalf of his special hobbies, he was ready to meet the
world at large.
It will therefore be understood, that when such a gauntlet was thus
thrown in his very teeth by Dr Fillgrave, he was not slow to take it
up. He addressed a letter to the Barsetshire Conservative Standard, in
which he attacked Dr Fillgrave with some considerable acerbity. Dr
Fillgrave responded in four lines, saying that on mature consideration
he had made up his mind not to notice any remarks that might be made on
him by Dr Thorne in the public press. The Greshamsbury doctor then
wrote another letter, more witty and much more severe than the last;
and as this was copied into the Bristol, Exeter, and Gloucester papers,
Dr Fillgrave found it very difficult to maintain the magnanimity of his
reticence. It is sometimes becoming enough for a Mediterranean to wrap
himself in the dignified toga of silence, and proclaim himself
indifferent to public attacks; but it is a sort of dignity which it is
very difficult to maintain. As well might a man, when stung to madness
by wasps, endeavour to sit in his chair without moving a muscle, as
endure with patience and without reply the courtesies of a newspaper
opponent. Dr Thorne wrote a third letter which was too much for
medical flesh and blood to bear. Dr Fillgrave answered it, not,
indeed, in his own name, but in that of a brother doctor; and then the
war raged merrily. It is hardly too much to say that Dr Fillgrave
never knew another happy hour. Had he dreamed of what materials was
made that young compounder of doses at Greshamsbury he would have met
him in consultation, morning, noon, and night, without objection; but
having begun the war, he was constrained to go on with it: his brethren
would allow him no alternative. Thus he was continually being brought
up to the fight, as a prize-fighter may be seen to be, who is carried
up round after round, without any hope on his own part, and who, in
each round, drops to the ground before the very wind of his opponent's
blows.
But Dr Fillgrave, though thus weak himself, was backed in practice and
in countenance by nearly all his brethren in the county. The guinea
fee, the principle of giving advice and of selling no medicine, the
great resolve to keep a distinct barrier between the physician and the
apothecary, and, above all, the hatred of the contamination of a bill,
were strong in the medical mind of Barsetshire. Dr Thorne had the
provincial medical world against him, and so he appealed to the
metropolis. The Lancet took the matter up in his favour, but the
Journal of Medical Science was against him; the Weekly Chirurgeon,
noted for its medical democracy, upheld him as a medical prophet, but
the Scalping Knife, a monthly periodical got up in dead opposition to
the Lancet, showed him no mercy. So the war went on, and our doctor, to
a certain extent, became a noted character.
He had, moreover, other difficulties to encounter in his professional
career. It was something in his favour that he understood his
business; something that he was willing to labour at it with energy;
and resolved to labour at it conscientiously. He had also other gifts,
such as conversational brilliancy, and aptitude for true good
fellowship, firmness in friendship, and general honesty of disposition,
which stood him in stead as he advanced in life. But, at his first
starting, much that belonged to himself personally was against him. Let
him enter what house he would, he entered it with a conviction, often
expressed to himself, that he was equal as a man to the proprietor,
equal as a human being to the proprietress. To age he would allow
deference, and to special recognized talent--at least so he said; to
rank also, he would pay that respect which was its clear and recognized
prerogative; he would let a lord walk out of a room before him if he
did not happen to forget it; in speaking to a duke he would address him
as His Grace; and he would in no way assume a familiarity with bigger
men than himself, allowing to the bigger man the privilege of making
the first advances. But beyond this he would admit that no man should
walk the earth with his head higher than his own.
He did not talk of these things much; he offended no rank by boasts of
his own equality; he did not absolutely tell the Earl de Courcy in
words, that the privilege of dining at Courcy Castle was to him no
greater than the privilege of dining at Courcy Parsonage; but there was
that in his manner that told it. The feeling in itself was perhaps
good, and was certainly much justified by the manner in which he bore
himself to those below him in rank; but there was folly in the
resolution to run counter to the world's recognized rules on such
matters; and much absurdity in his mode of doing so, seeing that at
heart he was a thorough Conservative. It is hardly too much to say
that he naturally hated a lord at first sight; but, nevertheless, he
would have expended his means, his blood, and spirit, in fighting for
the upper house of Parliament.
Such a disposition, until it was thoroughly understood, did not tend to
ingratiate him with the wives of the country gentlemen among whom he
had to look for practice. And then, also, there was not much in his
individual manner to recommend him to the favour of ladies. He was
brusque, authoritative, given to contradiction, rough though never
dirty in his personal belongings, and inclined to indulge in a sort of
quiet raillery, which sometimes was not thoroughly understood. People
did not always know whether he was laughing at them or with them; and
some people were, perhaps, inclined to think that a doctor should not
laugh at all when called in to act doctorially.
When he was known, indeed, when the core of the fruit had been reached,
when the huge proportion of that loving trusting heart had been
learned, and understood, and appreciated, when that honesty had been
recognized, that manly, almost womanly tenderness had been felt, then,
indeed, the doctor was acknowledged to be adequate in his profession.
To trifling ailments he was too often brusque. Seeing that he accepted
money for the cure of such, he should, we may say, have cured them
without an offensive manner. So far he is without defence. But to
real suffering no one found him brusque; no patient lying painfully on
a bed of sickness ever thought him rough.
Another misfortune was, that he was a bachelor. Ladies think, and I,
for one, think that ladies are quite right in so thinking, that doctors
should be married men. All the world feels that a man when married
acquires some of the attributes of the old woman--he becomes, to a
certain extent, a motherly sort of being; he acquires a conversance
with women's ways and women's wants, and loses the wilder and offensive
sparks of his virility. It must be easier to talk to such a one about
Matilda's stomach, and the growing pains in Fanny's legs, than to a
young bachelor. This impediment also stood much in Dr Thorne's way
during his first years at Greshamsbury.
But his wants were not at first great; and though his ambition was
perhaps high, it was not of an impatient nature. The world was his
oyster; but, circumstanced as he was, he knew that it was not for him
to open it with his lancet all at once. He had bread to earn, which he
must earn wearily; he had a character to make, which must come slowly;
it satisfied his soul, that in addition to his immortal hopes, he had a
possible future in this world to which he could look forward with clear
eyes, and advance with his heart that would know no fainting.
On his first arrival at Greshamsbury he had been put by the squire into
a house, which he still occupied when that squire's grandson came of
age. There were two decent, commodious, private houses in the
village--always excepting the rectory, which stood grandly in its own
grounds, and, therefore, was considered as ranking above the village
residences--of these two Dr Thorne had the smaller. They stood exactly
at the angle before described, on the outer side of it, and at right
angles to each other. They possessed good stables and ample gardens;
and it may be as well to specify, that Mr Umbleby, the agent and lawyer
to the estate, occupied the larger one.
Here Dr Thorne lived for eleven or twelve years, all alone; and then
for ten or eleven more with his niece, Mary Thorne. Mary was thirteen
when she came to take up permanent abode as mistress of the
establishment--or, at any rate, to act as the only mistress which the
establishment possessed. This advent greatly changed the tenor of the
doctor's ways. He had been before pure bachelor; not a room in his
house had been comfortably furnished; he at first commenced in a
makeshift sort of way, because he had not at his command the means of
commencing otherwise; and he had gone on in the same fashion, because
the exact time had never come at which it was imperative in him to set
his house in order. He had had no fixed hour for his meals, no fixed
place for his books, no fixed wardrobe for his clothes. He had a few
bottles of good wine in his cellar, and occasionally asked a brother
bachelor to take a chop with him; but beyond this he had touched very
little on the cares of housekeeping. A slop-bowl full of strong tea,
together with bread, and butter, and eggs, was produced for him in the
morning, and he expected that at whatever hour he might arrive in the
evening, some food should be presented to him wherewith to satisfy the
cravings of nature; if, in addition to this, he had another slop-bowl
of tea in the evening, he got all that he ever required, or all, at
least, that he ever demanded.
But when Mary came, or rather, when she was about to come, things were
altogether changed at the doctor's. People had hitherto wondered--and
especially Mrs Umbleby--how a gentleman like Dr Thorne could continue
to live in so slovenly a manner; and how people again wondered, and
again especially Mrs Umbleby, how the doctor could possibly think it
necessary to put such a lot of furniture into a house because a little
chit of a girl of twelve years was coming to live with him.
Mrs Umbleby had great scope for her wonder. The doctor made a thorough
revolution in his household, and furnished his house from the ground to
the roof completely. He painted--for the first time since the
commencement of his tenancy--he papered, he carpeted, as though a Mrs
Thorne with a good fortune were coming home to-morrow; and all for a
girl of twelve years old. 'And now,' said Mrs Umbleby, to her friend
Miss Gushing, 'how did he find out what to buy?' as though the doctor
had been brought up like a wild beast, ignorant of the nature of tables
and chairs, and with no more developed ideas of drawing-room drapery
than an hippopotamus.
To the utter amazement of Mrs Umbleby and Miss Gushing, the doctor did
it very well. He said nothing about it to any one--he never did say
much about such things--but he furnished his house well and discreetly;
and when Mary Thorne came home from her school at Bath, to which she
had been taken some six years previously, she found herself called upon
to be the presiding genius of a perfect paradise.
It has been said that the doctor had managed to endear himself to the
new squire before the old squire's death, and that, therefore, the
change at Greshamsbury had had no professional ill effects upon him.
Such was the case at the time; but, nevertheless, all did not go
smoothly in the Greshamsbury medical department. There was six or
seven years' difference in age between Mr Gresham and the doctor, and
moreover, Mr Gresham was young for his age, and the doctor old; but,
nevertheless, there was a very close attachment between them early in
life. This was never thoroughly sundered, and, backed by this the
doctor did maintain himself for some years before the artillery of Lady
Arabella's artillery. But drops falling, if they fall constantly, will
bore through a stone.
Dr Thorne's pretensions, mixed with his subversive professional
democratic tendencies, his seven-and-sixpenny visits, added to his utter
disregard of Lady Arabella's airs, were too much for her spirit. He
brought Frank through his first troubles, and that at first ingratiated
her; he was equally successful with the early dietary of Augusta and
Beatrice; but, as his success was obtained in direct opposition to the
Courcy Castle nursery principles, this hardly did much in his favour.
When the third daughter was born, he at once declared that she was a
very weakly flower, and sternly forbade the mother to go to London. The
mother, loving her babe, obeyed; but did not the less hate the doctor
for the order, which she firmly believed was given at the instance and
express dictation of Mr Gresham. Then another little girl came into the
world, and the doctor was more imperative than ever as to the nursery
rules and the excellence of country air. Quarrels were thus engendered,
and Lady Arabella was taught to believe that this doctor of her
husband's was after all no Solomon. In her husband's absence she sent
for Dr Fillgrave, giving very express intimation that he would not have
to wound either his eyes or dignity by encountering his enemy; and she
found Dr Fillgrave a great comfort to her.
Then Dr Thorne gave Mr Gresham to understand that, under such
circumstances, he could not visit professionally at Greshamsbury any
longer. The poor squire saw there was no help for it, and though he
maintained his friendly connexion with his neighbour, the
seven-and-sixpenny visits were at an end. Dr Fillgrave from
Barchester, and the gentleman at Silverbridge, divided the
responsibility between them, and the nursery principles of Courcy
Castle were again in vogue at Greshamsbury.
So things went on for years, and those years were years of sorrow. We
must not ascribe to our doctor's enemies the sufferings and sickness,
and deaths that occurred. The four frail little ones that died would
probably have been taken had Lady Arabella been more tolerant of Dr
Thorne. But the fact was, that they did die; and that the mother's
heart then got the better of the woman's pride, and Lady Arabella
humbled herself before Dr Thorne. She humbled herself, or would have
done so, had the doctor permitted her. But he, with his eyes full of
tears, stopped the utterance of her apology, took her two hands in his,
pressed them warmly, and assured her that his joy in returning would be
great, for the love that he bore to all that belonged to Greshamsbury.
And so the seven-and-sixpenny visits were recommenced; and the great
triumph of Dr Fillgrave came to an end.
Great was the joy in the Greshamsbury nursery when the second change
took place. Among the doctor's attributes, not hitherto mentioned, was
an aptitude for the society of children. He delighted to talk to
children, and to play with them. He would carry them on his back,
three or four at a time, roll with them on the ground, race with them
in the garden, invent games for them, contrive amusements in
circumstances which seemed quite adverse to all manner of delight; and,
above all, his physic was not nearly so nasty as that which came from
Silverbridge.
He had a great theory as to the happiness of children; and though he
was not disposed altogether to throw over the precepts of
Solomon--always bargaining that he should, under no circumstances, be
himself the executioner--he argued that the principal duty which a
parent owed to a child was to make him happy. Not only was the man to
be made happy--the future man, if that might be possible--but the
existing boy was to be treated with equal favour; and his happiness, so
said the doctor, was of much easier attainment.
'Why struggle after future advantage at the expense of the present
pain, seeing that the results were so very doubtful?'
Many an opponent of the doctor had thought to catch him on the hip when
so singular a doctrine was broached; but they were not always
successful. 'What!' said his sensible enemies, 'is Johnny not to be
taught to read because he does not like it?' 'Johnny must read by all
means,' would the doctor answer; 'but is it necessary that he should
not like it? If the preceptor have it in him, may not Johnny learn not
only to read, but to like to learn to read?'
'But,' would say his enemies, 'children must be controlled.'
'And so must men also,' would say the doctor. 'I must not steal your
peaches, nor make love to your wife, nor libel your character. Much as
I might wish through my natural depravity to indulge in such vices, I
am debarred from them without pain, and I may almost say without
unhappiness.'
And so the argument went on, neither party convincing the other. But,
in the meantime, the children of the neighbourhood became very fond of
Dr Thorne.
Dr Thorne and the squire were still fast friends, but circumstances had
occurred, spreading themselves now over a period of many years, which
almost made the poor squire uneasy in the doctor's company. Mr Gresham
owed a large sum of money, and he had, moreover, already sold a portion
of his property. Unfortunately it had been the pride of the Greshams
that their acres had descended from one another without an entail, so
that each possessor of Greshamsbury had had the full power to dispose
of the property as he pleased. Any doubt as to its going to the male
heir had never hitherto been felt. It had occasionally been encumbered
by charges for younger children; but these charges had been liquidated,
and the property had come down without any burden to the present
squire. Now a portion of this land had been sold, and it had been sold
to a certain degree through the agency of Dr Thorne.
This made the squire an unhappy man. No man loved his family name and
honour, his old family blazon and standing more thoroughly than he did;
he was every whit a Gresham at heart; but his spirit had been weaker
than that of his forefathers; and, in his days, for the first time, the
Greshams were going to the wall! Ten years before the beginning of our
story it had been necessary to raise a large sum of money to meet and
pay off pressing liabilities, and it was found that this could be done
with more material advantage by selling a portion of the property than
in any other way. A portion of it, about a third of the whole in
value, was accordingly sold.
Boxall Hill lay half between Greshamsbury and Barchester, and was known
as having the best partridge shooting in the county; as having on it
also a celebrated fox cover, Boxall Gorse, held in very high repute by
Barsetshire sportsmen. There was no residence on the immediate estate,
and it was altogether divided from the remained of the Greshamsbury
property. This, with many inward and outward groans, Mr Gresham
permitted to be sold.
It was sold, and sold well, by private contract to a native of
Barchester, who, having risen from the world's ranks, had made for
himself great wealth. Somewhat of this man's character must hereafter
be told; it will suffice to say that he relied for advice in money
matters upon Dr Thorne, and that at Dr Thorne's suggestion he had
purchased Boxall Hill, partridge-shooting and gorse cover all
included. He had not only bought Boxall Hill, but had subsequently
lent the squire large sums of money on mortgage, in all which
transactions the doctor had taken part. It had therefore come to pass
that Mr Gresham was not infrequently called upon to discuss his money
affairs with Dr Thorne, and occasionally to submit to lectures and
advice which might perhaps as well have been omitted.
So much for Dr Thorne. A few words must still be said about Miss Mary
Thorne before we rush into our story; the crust will then have been
broken, and the pie will be open to the guests. Little Miss Mary was
kept at a farm-house till she was six; she was then sent to school at
Bath, and transplanted to the doctor's newly furnished house, a little
more than six years after that. It must not be supposed that he had
lost sight of his charge during her earlier years. He was much too
well aware of the nature of the promise which he had made to the
departing mother to do that. He had constantly visited his little
niece, and long before the first twelve years of her life were over had
lost consciousness of his promise, and of his duty to the mother, in
the stronger ties of downright personal love for the only creature that
belonged to him.
When Mary came home the doctor was like a child in his glee. He
prepared surprises for her with as much forethought and trouble as
though he were contriving mines to blow up an enemy. He took her first
into the shop, and then into the kitchen, thence to the dining-rooms,
after that to his and her bedrooms, and so on till he came to the full
glory of the new drawing-room, enhancing the pleasure by little jokes,
and telling her that he should never dare to come into the last
paradise without her permission, and not then till he had taken off his
boots. Child as she was, she understood the joke, and carried it on
like a little queen; and so they soon became the firmest of friends.
But though Mary was queen, it was still necessary that she should be
educated. Those were the earlier days in which Lady Arabella had
humbled herself, and to show her humility she invited Mary to share the
music-lessons of Augusta and Beatrice at the great house. A
music-master from Barchester came over three times a week, and remained
for three hours, and if the doctor chose to send his girl over, she
could pick up what was going on without doing any harm. So said the
Lady Arabella. The doctor with many thanks and with no hesitation,
accepted the offer, merely adding, that he had perhaps better settle
separately with Signor Cantabili, the music-master. He was very much
obliged to Lady Arabella for giving his little girl permission to join
her lessons to those of the Miss Greshams.
It need hardly be said that the Lady Arabella was on fire at once.
Settle with Signor Cantabili! No, indeed; she would do that; there
must be no expense whatever incurred in such an arrangement on Miss
Thorne's account! But here, as in most things, the doctor carried his
point. It being the time of the lady's humility, she could not make as
good a fight as she would otherwise have done; and thus she found, to
her great disgust, that Mary Thorne was learning music in her
schoolroom on equal terms, as regarded payment, with her own
daughters. The arrangement having been made could not be broken,
especially as the young lady in nowise made herself disagreeable; and
more especially as the Miss Greshams themselves were very fond of her.
And so Mary Thorne learnt music at Greshamsbury, and with her music she
learnt other things also; how to behave herself among girls of her own
age; how to speak and talk as other young ladies do; how to dress
herself, and how to move and walk. All which, she being quick to learn
without trouble at the great house. Something also she learnt of
French, seeing that the Greshamsbury French governess was always in the
room.
And then some few years later, there came a rector, and a rector's
sister; and with the latter Mary studied German and French also. From
the doctor himself she learnt much; the choice, namely, of English
books for her own reading, and habits of thought somewhat akin to his
own, though modified by the feminine softness of her individual mind.
And so Mary Thorne grew up and was educated. Of her personal
appearance it certainly is my business as an author to say something.
She is my heroine, and, as such, must necessarily be very beautiful;
but, in truth, her mind and inner qualities are more clearly distinct
to my brain than her outward form and features. I know that she was
far from being tall, and far from being showy; that her feet and hands
were small and delicate; that her eyes were bright when looked at, but
not brilliant so as to make their brilliancy palpably visible to all
around her; her hair was dark brown, and worn very plainly brushed from
her forehead; her lips were thin, and her mouth, perhaps, in general
inexpressive, but when she was eager in conversation it would show
itself to be animated with curves of wondrous energy; and, quiet as she
was in manner, sober and demure as was her usual settled appearance,
she could talk, when the fit came on her, with an energy which in truth
surprised those who did not know her; aye, and sometimes those who
did. Energy! nay, it was occasionally a concentration of passion,
which left her for the moment perfectly unconscious of all other cares
but solicitude for that subject which she might then be advocating.
All her friends, including the doctor, had at times been made unhappy
by this vehemence of character; but yet it was to that very vehemence
that she owed it that all her friends loved her. It had once nearly
banished her in early years from the Greshamsbury schoolroom; and yet
it ended in making her claim to remain there so strong, that Lady
Arabella could no longer oppose it, even when she had the wish to do
so.
A new French governess had lately come to Greshamsbury, and was, or was
to be, a great pet with Lady Arabella, having all the great gifts with
which a governess can be endowed, and being also a protege from the
castle. The castle, in Greshamsbury parlance, always meant that of
Courcy. Soon after this a valued little locket belonging to Augusta
Gresham was missing. The French governess had objected to its being
worn in the schoolroom, and it had been sent up to the bedroom by a
young servant-girl, the daughter of a small farmer on the estate. The
locket was missing, and after a while, a considerable noise in the
matter having been made, was found, by the diligence of the governess,
somewhere among the belongings of the English servant. Great was the
anger of Lady Arabella, loud were the protestations of the girl, mute
the woe of her father, piteous the tears of her mother, inexorable the
judgment of the Greshamsbury world. But something occurred, it matters
now not what, to separate Mary Thorne in opinion from that world at
large. Out she then spoke, and to her face accused the governess of
the robbery. For two days Mary was in disgrace almost as deep as that
of the farmer's daughter. But she was neither quiet or dumb in her
disgrace. When Lady Arabella would not hear her, she went to Mr
Gresham. She forced her uncle to move in the matter. She gained over
to her side, one by one, the potentates of the parish, and ended by
bringing Mam'selle Larron down on her knees with a confession of the
facts. From that time Mary Thorne was dear to the tenantry of
Greshamsbury; and specially dear to one small household, where a
rough-spoken father of a family was often heard to declare, that for
Miss Mary Thorne he'd face man or magistrate, duke or devil.
And so Mary Thorne grew up under the doctor's eye, and at the beginning
of our tale she was one of the guests assembled at Greshamsbury on the
coming of age of the heir, she herself having then arrived at the same
period of her life.
CHAPTER IV
LESSONS FROM COURCY CASTLE
It was the first of July, young Frank Gresham's birthday, and the
London season was not yet over; nevertheless, Lady de Courcy had
managed to get down into the country to grace the coming of age of the
heir, bringing with her all the Ladies Amelia, Rosina, Margaretta, and
Alexandrina, together with such of the Honourable Johns and Georges as
could be collected for the occasion.
The Lady Arabella had contrived this year to spend ten weeks in town,
which, by a little stretching, she made to pass for the season; and had
managed, moreover, at last to refurnish, not ingloriously, the Portman
Square drawing-room. She had gone up to London under the pretext,
imperatively urged, of Augusta's teeth--young ladies' teeth are not
infrequently of value in this way;--and having received authority for a
new carpet, which was really much wanted, had made such dexterous use
of that sanction as to run up an upholsterer's bill of six or seven
hundred pounds. She had of course had her carriage and horses; the
girls of course had gone out; it had been positively necessary to have
a few friends in Portman Square; and, altogether, the ten weeks had not
been unpleasant, and not inexpensive.
For a few confidential minutes before dinner, Lady de Courcy and her
sister-in-law sat together in the latter's dressing-room, discussing
the unreasonableness of the squire, who had expressed himself with more
than ordinary bitterness as to the folly--he had probably used some
stronger word--of these London proceedings.
'Heavens!' said the countess, with much eager animation; 'what can the
man expect? What does he wish you to do?'
'He would like to sell the house in London, and bury us all here for
ever. Mind, I was there only for ten weeks.'
'Barely time for the girls to get their teeth properly looked at! But
Arabella, what does he say?' Lady de Courcy was very anxious to learn
the exact truth of the matter, and ascertain, if she could, whether Mr
Gresham was really as poor as he pretended to be.
'Why, he said yesterday that he would have no more going to town at
all; that he was barely able to pay the claims made on him, and keep up
the house here, and that he would not--'
'Would not what?' asked the countess.
'Why, he said that he would not utterly ruin poor Frank.'
'Ruin Frank!'
'That's what he said.'
'But, surely, Arabella, it is not so bad as that? What possible reason
can there be for him to be in debt?'
'He is always talking of those elections.'
'But, my dear, Boxall Hill paid all that off. Of course Frank will not
have such an income as there was when you married into the family; we
all know that. And whom will he have to thank but his father? But
Boxall Hill paid all those debts, and why should there be any
difficulty now?'
'It was those nasty dogs, Rosina,' said the Lady Arabella.
'Well, I for one never approved of the hounds coming to Greshamsbury.
When a man has once involved his property he should not incur any
expenses that are not absolutely necessary. That is a golden rule
which Mr Gresham ought to have remembered. Indeed, I put it to him
nearly in those very words; but Mr Gresham never did, and never will
receive with common civility anything that comes from me.'
'I know, Rosina, he never did; and yet where would he have been but for
the De Courcys?' So exclaimed, in her gratitude, the Lady Arabella; to
speak the truth, however, but for the De Courcys, Mr Gresham might have
been at this moment on the top of Boxall Hill, monarch of all he
surveyed.
'As I was saying,' continued the countess, 'I never approved of the
hounds coming to Greshamsbury; but yet, my dear, the hounds can't have
eaten up everything. A man with ten thousand a year ought to be able
to keep hounds; particularly as he had a subscription.'
'He says the subscription was little or nothing.'
'That's nonsense, my dear. Now, Arabella, what does he do with his
money? That's the question. Does he gamble?'
'Well,' said Lady Arabella, very slowly, 'I don't think he does.' If
the squire did gamble he must have done it very slyly, for he rarely
went away from Greshamsbury, and certainly very few men looking like
gamblers were in the habit of coming thither as guests. 'I don't think
he does gamble.' Lady Arabella put her emphasis on the word gamble, as
though her husband, if he might perhaps be charitably acquitted of that
vice, was certainly guilty of every other known in the civilized world.
'I know he used,' said Lady de Courcy, looking very wise, and rather
suspicious. She certainly had sufficient domestic reasons for
disliking the propensity; 'I know he used; and when a man begins, he is
hardly ever cured.'
'Well, if he does, I don't know it,' said the Lady Arabella.
'The money, my dear, must go somewhere. What excuse does he give when
you tell him you want this and that--all the common necessaries of
life, that you have always been used to?'
'He gives no excuse; sometimes he says the family is so large.'
'Nonsense! Girls cost nothing; there's only Frank, and he can't have
cost anything yet. Can he be saving money to buy back Boxall Hill?'
'Oh no!' said the Lady Arabella, quickly. 'He is not saving anything;
he never did, and never will save, though he is so stingy to me. He is
hard pushed for money, I know that.'
'Then where has it gone?' said the Countess de Courcy, with a look of
stern decision.
'Heaven only knows! Now, Augusta is to be married. I must of course
have a few hundred pounds. You should have heard how he groaned when I
asked him for it. Heaven only knows where the money goes!' And the
injured wife wiped a piteous tear from her eye with her fine dress
cambric handkerchief. 'I have all the sufferings and privations of a
poor man's wife, but I have none of the consolations. He has no
confidence in me; he never tells me anything; he never talks to me
about his affairs. If he talks to any one it is to that horrid
doctor.'
'What, Dr Thorne?' Now the Countess de Courcy hated Dr Thorne with a
holy hatred.
'Yes; Dr Thorne. I believe that he knows everything; and advises
everything, too. Whatever difficulties poor Gresham may have, I do
believe Dr Thorne has brought them about. I do believe it, Rosina.'
'Well, that is surprising. Mr Gresham with all his faults is a
gentleman; and how he can talk about his affairs with a low apothecary
like that I, for one, cannot imagine. Lord de Courcy has not always
been to me all that he should have been; far from it.' And Lady de
Courcy thought over in her mind injuries of a much graver description
than any that her sister-in-law had ever suffered; 'but I have never
known anything like that at Courcy Castle. Surely Umbleby knows all
about it, doesn't he?'
'Not half so much as the doctor,' said Lady Arabella.
The countess shook her head slowly; the idea of Mr Gresham, a country
gentleman of good estate like him, making a confidant of a country
doctor was too great a shock for her nerves; and for a while she was
constrained to sit silent before she could recover herself.
'One thing at any rate is certain, Arabella,' said the countess, as
soon as she found herself again sufficiently composed to offer counsel
in a properly dictatorial manner. 'One thing at any rate is certain;
if Mr Gresham be involved so deeply as you say, Frank has but only one
duty before him. He must marry money. The heir of fourteen thousand a
year may indulge himself in looking for blood, as Mr Gresham did, my
dear'--it must be understood that there was very little compliment in
this, as the Lady Arabella had always conceived herself to be a
beauty--'or for beauty, as some men do,' continued the countess,
thinking of the choice that the present Earl de Courcy had made; 'but
Frank must marry money. I hope he will understand this early; do make
him understand this before he makes a fool of himself: when a man
thoroughly understands this, when he knows what his circumstances
require, why, the matter becomes easy to him. I hope that Frank
understands that he has no alternative. In his position he must marry
money.'
But, alas! alas! Frank Gresham had already made a fool of himself.
'Well, my boy, I wish you joy with all my heart,' said the Honourable
John, slapping his cousin on the back, as he walked round to the
stable-yard with him before dinner, to inspect a setter puppy of
peculiarly fine breed which had been sent to Frank as a birthday
present. 'I wish I were an elder son; but we can't all have that
luck.'
'Who wouldn't sooner be the younger son of an earl than the eldest son
of a plain squire?' said Frank, wishing to say something civil in
return for his cousin's civility.
'I wouldn't for one,' said the Honourable John. 'What chance have I?
There's Porlock as strong as a horse; and then George comes next. And
the governor's good for these twenty years.' And the young man sighed
as he reflected what small hope there was that all those who were
nearest and dearest to him should die out of his way, and leave him to
the sweet enjoyment of an earl's coronet and fortune. 'Now, you're
sure of your game some day; and as you've no brothers, I suppose the
squire'll let you do pretty well what you like. Besides, he's not so
strong as my governor, though he's younger.'
Frank had never looked at his fortune in this light before, and was so
slow and green that he was not much delighted at the prospect now that
it was offered to him. He had always, however, been taught to look to
his cousins, the De Courcys, as men with whom it would be very
expedient that he should be intimate; he therefore showed no offence,
but changed the conversation.
'Shall you hunt with the Barsetshire this season, John? I hope you
will; I shall.'
'Well, I don't know. It's very slow. It's all tillage here, or else
woodland. I rather fancy I shall go to Leicestershire when the
partridge-shooting is over. What sort of a lot do you mean to come out
with, Frank?'
Frank became a little red as he answered, 'Oh, I shall have two,' he
said; 'that is, the mare I have had these two years, and the horse my
father gave me this morning.'
'What! only those two? and the mare is nothing more than a pony.'
'She is fifteen hands,' said Frank, offended.
'Well, Frank, I certainly would not stand that,' said the Honourable
John. 'What, go out before the county with one untrained horse and a
pony; and you the heir to Greshamsbury!'
'I'll have him trained before November,' said Frank, 'that nothing in
Barsetshire will stop him. Peter says'--Peter was the Greshamsbury
stud-groom--'that he tucks up his legs beautifully.'
'But who the deuce would think of going to work with one horse; or two
either, if you insist on calling the old pony a huntress? I'll put you
up to a trick, my lad: if you stand that you'll stand anything; and if
you don't mean to go in leading-strings all your life, now is the time
to show it. There's young Baker--Harry Baker, you know--he came of age
last year, and he has as pretty a string of nags as any one would wish
to set eyes on; four hunters and a hack. Now, if old Baker has four
thousand a year it's every shilling he has got.'
This was true, and Frank Gresham, who in the morning had been made so
happy by his father's present of a horse, began to feel that hardly
enough had been done for him. It was true that Mr Baker had only four
thousand a year; but it was also true that he had no other child than
Harry Baker; that he had no great establishment to keep up; that he
owed a shilling to no one; and, also, that he was a great fool in
encouraging a mere boy to ape all the caprices of a man of wealth.
Nevertheless, for a moment, Frank Gresham did feel that, considering
his position, he was being treated rather unworthily.
'Take the matter in your own hands, Frank,' said the Honourable John,
seeing the impression that he had made. 'Of course the governor knows
very well that you won't put up with such a stable as that. Lord bless
you! I have heard that when he married my aunt, and that was when he
was about your age, he had the best stud in the whole county; and then
he was in Parliament before he was three-and-twenty.'
'His father, you know, died when he was very young,' said Frank.
'Yes; I know he had a stroke of luck that doesn't fall to everyone;
but--'
Young Frank's face grew dark now instead of red. When his cousin
submitted to him the necessity of having more than two horses for his
own use he could listen to him; but when the same monitor talked of the
chance of a father's death as a stroke of luck, Frank was too much
disgusted to be able pass it over with indifference. What! was he
thus to think of his father, whose face was always lighted up with
pleasure when his boy came near to him, and so rarely bright at any
other time? Frank had watched his father closely enough to be aware of
this; he knew how his father delighted in him; he had had cause to
guess that his father had many troubles, and that he strove hard to
banish the memory of them when his son was with him. He loved his
father truly, purely, and thoroughly, liked to be with him, and would
be proud to be his confidant. Could he listen quietly while his cousin
spoke of the chance of his father's death as a stroke of luck?
'I shouldn't think it a stroke of luck, John. I should think it the
greatest misfortune in the world.'
It is so difficult for a young man to enumerate sententiously a
principle of morality, or even an expression of ordinary good feeling,
without giving himself something of a ridiculous air, without assuming
something of a mock grandeur!
'Oh, of course, my dear fellow,' said the Honourable John, laughing;
'that's a matter of course. We all understand that without saying it.
Porlock, of course, would feel exactly the same about the governor; but
if the governor were to walk, I think Porlock would console himself
with the thirty thousand a year.'
'I don't know what Porlock would do; he's always quarrelling with my
uncle, I know. I only spoke of myself; I never quarrelled with my
father, and I hope I never shall.'
'All right, my lad of wax, all right. I dare say you won't be tried;
but it you are, you'll find before six months are over, that it's a
very nice thing to master of Greshamsbury.'
'I'm sure I shouldn't find anything of the kind.'
'Very well, so be it. You wouldn't do as young Hatherly did, at
Hatherly Court, in Gloucestershire, when his father kicked the bucket.
You know Hatherly, don't you?'
'No; I never saw him.'
'He's Sir Frederick now, and has, or had, one of the finest fortunes in
England, for a commoner; the most of it is gone now. Well, when he
heard of his governor's death, he was in Paris, but he went off to
Hatherly as fast as special train and post-horses would carry him, and
got there just in time for the funeral. As he came back to Hatherly
Court from the church, they were putting up the hatchment over the
door, and Master Fred saw that the undertakers had put at the bottom
"Resurgam". You know what that means?'
'Oh, yes,' said Frank.
'"I'll come back again."' said the Honourable John, construing the
Latin for the benefit of his cousin. '"NO," said Fred Hatherly,
looking up at the hatchment; "I'm blessed if you do, old gentleman.
That would be too much of a joke; I'll take care of that." So he got
up at night, and he got some fellows with him, and they climbed up and
painted out "Resurgam", and they painted into its place, "Requiescat in
pace"; which means, you know, "you'd a great deal better stay where you
are". Now I call that good. Fred Hatherly did that as sure as--as sure
as--as sure as anything.'
Frank could not help laughing at the story, especially at his cousin's
mode of translating the undertaker's mottoes; and then they sauntered
back from the stables into the house to dress for dinner.
Dr Thorne had come to the house somewhat before dinner-time, at Mr
Gresham's request, and was now sitting with the squire in his own
book-room--so called--while Mary was talking to some of the girls
upstairs.
'I must have ten or twelve thousand pounds; ten at the very least,'
said the squire, who was sitting in his usual arm-chair, close to his
littered table, with his head supported on his hand, looking very
unlike the father of an heir of a noble property, who had that day come
of age.
It was the first of July, and of course there was no fire in the grate;
but, nevertheless, the doctor was standing with his back to the
fireplace, with his coat-tails over his arms, as though he were
engaged, now in summer as he so often was in winter, in talking, and
roasting his hinder person at the same time.
'Twelve thousand pounds! It's a very large sum of money.'
'I said ten,' said the squire.
'Ten thousand pounds is a very large sum of money. There is no doubt
he'll let you have it. Scatcherd will let you have it; but I know
he'll expect to have the title deeds.'
'What! for ten thousand pounds?' said the squire. 'There is not a
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