Dr Thorne (46 page)

‘I am sorry for all this, Mary; very sorry,' said he, standing up, and holding both her hands in his.

‘It can't be helped, sir,' said she, smiling.

‘I don't know,' said he; ‘I don't know – it ought to be helped somehow – I am quite sure you have not been to blame.'

‘No,' said she, very quietly, as though the position was one quite a matter of course. ‘I don't think I have been very much to blame. There will be misfortunes sometimes when nobody is to blame.'

‘I do not quite understand it all,' said the squire; ‘but if Frank–'

‘Oh! we will not talk about him,' said she, still laughing gently.

‘You can understand, Mary, how dear he must be to me; but if– '

‘Mr Gresham, I would not for worlds be the cause of any unpleasantness between you and him.'

‘But I cannot bear to think that we have banished you, Mary.'

‘It cannot be helped. Things will all come right in time.'

‘But you will be so lonely here.'

‘Oh! I shall get over that. Here, you know, Mr Gresham, “I am monarch of all I survey”;
²
and there is a great deal in that.'

The squire did not quite catch her meaning, but a glimmering of it did reach him. It was competent to Lady Arabella to banish her from Greshamsbury; it was within the sphere of the squire's duties to prohibit his son from an imprudent match; it was for the Greshams to guard their Greshamsbury treasure as best they could within their own territories: but let them beware that they did not attack her on hers. In obedience to the first expression of their wishes, she had submitted herself to this public mark of their disapproval because she had seen at once, with her clear intellect, that they were only doing that which her conscience must approve. Without a murmur, therefore, she consented to be pointed at as the young lady who had been turned out of Greshamsbury because of the young squire. She had no help for it. But let them take care that they did not go beyond that. Outside those Greshamsbury
gates she and Frank Gresham, she and Lady Arabella met on equal terms; let them each fight their own battle.

The squire kissed her forehead affectionately and took his leave, feeling, somehow, that he had been excused and pitied, and made much of; whereas he had called on his young neighbour with the intention of excusing, and pitying, and making much of her. He was not quite comfortable as he left the house; but, nevertheless, he was sufficiently honest-hearted to own to himself that Mary Thorne was a fine girl. Only that it was so absolutely necessary that Frank should marry money – and only, also, that poor Mary was such a birthless foundling in the world's esteem – only, but for these things, what a wife she would have made for that son of his!

To one person only did she talk freely on the subject, and that one was Patience Oriel; and even with her the freedom was rather of the mind than of the heart. She never said a word of her feeling with reference to Frank, but she said much of her position in the village, and of the necessity she was under to keep out of the way.

‘It is very hard,' said Patience, ‘that the offence should be all with him, and the punishment all with you.'

‘Oh! as for that,' said Mary, laughing, ‘I will not confess to any offence, nor yet to any punishment; certainly not to any punishment.'

‘It comes to the same thing in the end.'

‘No, not so, Patience; there is always some little sting of disgrace in punishment: now I am not going to hold myself as in the least disgraced.'

‘But, Mary, you must meet the Greshams sometimes.'

‘Meet them! I have not the slightest objection on earth to meet all, or any of them. They are not a whit dangerous to me, my dear. 'Tis I that am the wild beast, and 'tis they that must avoid me,' and then she added, after a pause – slightly blushing – ‘I have not the slightest objection even to meet him if chance brings him in my way. Let them look to that. My undertaking goes no further than this, that I will not be seen within their gates.'

But the girls so far understood each other that Patience undertook, rather than promised, to give Mary what assistance she could; and, despite Mary's bravado, she was in such a position that she much wanted the assistance of such a friend as Miss Oriel.

After an absence of some six weeks, Frank, as we have seen,
returned home. Nothing was said to him, except by Beatrice, as to these new Greshamsbury arrangements; and he, when he found Mary was not at the place, went boldly to the doctor's house to seek her. But it has been seen, also, that she discreetly kept out of his way. This she had thought fit to do when the time came, although she had been so ready with her boast that she had no objection on earth to meet him.

After that there had been the Christmas vacation, and Mary had again found discretion to be the better part of valour. This was doubtless disagreeable enough. She had no particular wish to spend her Christmas with Miss Oriel's aunt instead of at her uncle's fireside. Indeed, her Christmas festivities had hitherto always been kept at Greshamsbury, the doctor and herself having made a part of the family circle there assembled. This was out of the question now; and perhaps the absolute change to old Miss Oriel's house was better for her than the lesser change to her uncle's drawing-room. Besides, how could she have demeaned herself when she met Frank in their parish church? All this had been fully understood by Patience, and, therefore, had this Christmas visit been planned.

And then this affair of Frank and Mary Thorne ceased for a while to be talked of at Greshamsbury, for that other affair of Mr Moffat and Augusta monopolised the rural attention. Augusta, as we have said, bore it well, and sustained the public gaze without much flinching. Her period of martyrdom, however, did not last long, for soon the news arrived of Frank's exploit in Pall Mall; and then the Greshamsburyites forgot to think much more of Augusta, being fully occupied in thinking of what Frank had done.

The tale, as it was first told, declared that Frank had followed Mr Moffat up into his club; had dragged him thence into the middle of Pall Mall, and had then slaughtered him on the spot. This was by degrees modified till a sobered fiction became generally prevalent, that Mr Moffat was lying somewhere, still alive, but with all his bones in a general state of compound fracture. This adventure again brought Frank into the ascendant, and restored to Mary her former position as the Greshamsbury heroine.

‘One cannot wonder at his being very angry,' said Beatrice, discussing the matter with Mary – very imprudently.

‘Wonder – no; the wonder would have been if he had not been
angry. One might have been quite sure that he would have been angry enough.'

‘I suppose it was not absolutely right for him to beat Mr Moffat,' said Beatrice, apologetically.

‘Not right, Trichy? I think it was very right.'

‘Not to beat him so very much, Mary!'

‘Oh, I suppose a man can't exactly stand measuring how much he does these things. I like your brother for what he has done, and I say so frankly – though I suppose I ought to eat my tongue out before I should say such a thing, eh, Trichy?'

‘I don't know that there's any harm in that,' said Beatrice, demurely. ‘If you both liked each other there would be no harm in that – if that were all.'

‘Wouldn't there?' said Mary, in a low tone of bantering satire; ‘that is so kind, Trichy, coming from you – from one of the family, you know.'

‘You are well aware, Mary, that if I could have my wishes –'

‘Yes: I am well aware what a paragon of goodness you are. If you could have your way I should be admitted into heaven again; shouldn't I? Only with this proviso, that if a stray angel should ever whisper to me with bated breath, mistaking me, perchance, for one of his own class, I should be bound to close my ears to his whispering, and remind him humbly that I was only a poor mortal. You would trust me so far wouldn't you, Trichy?'

‘I would trust you in any way, Mary. But I think you are unkind in saying such things to me.'

‘Into whatever heaven I am admitted, I will go only on this understanding: that I am to be as good an angel as any of those around me.'

‘But, Mary dear, why do you say this to me?'

‘Because – because – because – ah me! Why, indeed, but because I have no one else to say it to. Certainly not because you have deserved it.'

‘It seems as though you were finding fault with me.'

‘And so I am; how can I do other than find fault? How can I help being sore? Trichy, you hardly realise my position; you hardly see how I am treated; how I am forced to allow myself to be treated without a sign of complaint. You don't see it all. If you did, you would not wonder that, I should be sore.'

Beatrice did not quite see it all; but she saw enough of it to know that Mary was to be pitied; so, instead of scolding her friend for being cross, she threw her arms round her and kissed her affectionately.

But the doctor all this time suffered much more than his niece did. He could not complain out loudly; he could not aver that his pet lamb had been ill-treated; he could not even have the pleasure of openly quarrelling with Lady Arabella; but not the less did he feel it to be most cruel that Mary should have to live before the world as an outcast, because it had pleased Frank Gresham to fall in love with her.

But his bitterness was not chiefly against Frank. That Frank had been very foolish he could not but acknowledge; but it was a kind of folly for which the doctor was able to find excuse. For Lady Arabella's cold propriety he could find no excuse.

With the squire he had spoken no word on the subject up to this period of which we are now writing. With her ladyship he had never spoken on it since that day when she had told him that Mary was to come no more to Greshamsbury. He never now dined or spent his evenings at Greshamsbury, and seldom was to be seen at the house, except when called in professionally. The squire, indeed, he frequently met; but he either did so in the village, or out on horseback, or at his own house.

When the doctor first heard that Sir Roger had lost his seat, and had returned to Boxall Hill, he resolved to go over and see him. But the visit was postponed from day to day, as visits are postponed which may be made any day, and he did not in fact go till he was summoned there somewhat peremptorily. A message was brought to him one evening to say that Sir Roger had been struck by paralysis, and that not a moment was to be lost.

‘It always happens at night,' said Mary, who had more sympathy for the living uncle whom she did know, than for that other dying uncle whom she did not know.

‘What matters? – there – just give me my scarf. In all probability I may not be home tonight – perhaps not till late tomorrow. God bless you, Mary!' and away the doctor went on his cold bleak ride to Boxall Hill.

‘Who will be his heir?' As the doctor rode along, he could not quite rid his mind of this question. The poor man now about to
die had wealth enough to make many heirs. What if his heart should have softened towards his sister's child! What if Mary should be found in a few days to be possessed of such wealth that the Greshams should be again happy to welcome her at Greshams-bury!

The doctor was not a lover of money – and he did his best to get rid of such pernicious thoughts. But his longings, perhaps, were not so much that Mary should be rich, as that she should have the power of heaping coals of fire upon the heads of those people who had so injured her.

W
HEN
Dr Thorne reached Boxall Hill he found Mr Rerechild from Barchester there before him. Poor Lady Scatcherd, when her husband was stricken by the fit, hardly knew in her dismay what adequate steps to take. She had, as a matter of course, sent for Dr Thorne; but she had thought that in so grave a peril the medical skill of no one man could suffice. It was, she knew, quite out of the question for her to invoke the aid of Dr Fillgrave, whom no earthly persuasion would have brought to Boxall Hill; and as Mr Rerechild was supposed in the Barchester world to be second – though at a long interval – to that great man, she had applied for his assistance.

Now Mr Rerechild was a follower and humble friend of Dr Fillgrave; and was wont to regard anything that came from the Barchester doctor as sure light from the lamp of Æsculapius. He could not therefore be other than an enemy of Dr Thorne. But he was a prudent, discreet man, with a long family, averse to professional hostilities, as knowing that he could make more by medical friends than medical foes, and not at all inclined to take up any man's cudgel to his own detriment. He had, of course, heard of that dreadful affront which had been put upon his friend, as had all the ‘medical world' – all the medical world at least of Barsetshire; and he had often expressed his sympathy with Dr Fillgrave and his abhorrence of Dr Thorne's anti-professional practices. But now that he found himself about to be brought in contact with Dr Thorne, he reflected that the Galen of Greshamsbury was at any rate equal in reputation to him of Barchester; that the one was probably on the rise, whereas the other was already considered by some as rather antiquated; and he therefore wisely resolved that the present would be an excellent opportunity for him to make a friend of Dr Thorne.