Dr Thorne (61 page)

‘Well, no; I hope not in danger, Mr Gresham. I certainly believe I may be justified in expressing a hope that she is not in danger. Her state is, no doubt, rather serious – rather serious – as Dr Century has probably told you'; and Dr Fillgrave made a bow to the old man, who sat quiet in one of the dining-room armchairs.

‘Well, doctor,' said the squire, ‘I have not any grounds on which to doubt your judgement.'

Dr Fillgrave bowed, but with the stiffest, slightest inclination which a head could possibly make. He rather thought that Mr Gresham had no ground for doubting his judgement.

‘Nor do I'

The doctor bowed, and a little, a very little, less stiffly.

‘But, doctor, I think that something ought to be done.'

The doctor this time did his bowing merely with his eyes and mouth. The former he closed for a moment, the latter he pressed; and then decorously rubbed his hands one over the other.

‘I am afraid, Dr Fillgrave, that you and my friend Thorne are not the best friends in the world.'

‘No, Mr Gresham, no; I may go so far as to say we are not.'

‘Well, I am sorry for it –'

‘Perhaps, Mr Gresham, we need hardly discuss it; but there have been circumstances –'

‘I am not going to discuss anything, Dr Fillgrave; I say I am sorry for it, because I believe that prudence will imperatively require Lady Arabella to have Dr Thorne back again. Now, if you would not object to meet him –'

‘Mr Gresham, I beg pardon; I beg pardon, indeed; but you must really excuse me. Dr Thorne has, in my estimation –'

‘But, Dr Fillgrave –'

‘Mr Gresham, you really must excuse me; you really must, indeed. Anything else that I could do for Lady Arabella, I should be most happy to do; but after what has passed, I cannot meet Dr Thorne; I really cannot. You must not ask me to do so, Mr Gresham. And, Mr Gresham,' continued the doctor, ‘I did understand from Lady Arabella that his – that is, Dr Thorne's – conduct to her ladyship had been such – so very outrageous, I may say, that – that – that – of course, Mr Gresham, you know best; but I did think that Lady Arabella herself was quite unwilling to see Dr Thorne again'; and Dr Fillgrave looked very big, and very dignified, and very exclusive.

The squire did not again ask him. He had no warrant for supposing that Lady Arabella would receive Dr Thorne if he did come; and he saw that it was useless to attempt to overcome the rancour of a man so pig-headed as the little Galen now before him. Other propositions were then broached, and it was at last decided that assistance should be sought from London, in the person of the great Sir Omicron Pie.

Sir Omicron came, and Drs Fillgrave and Century were there to meet him. When they all assembled in Lady Arabella's room, the poor woman's heart almost sank within her – as well it might, at such a sight. If she could only reconcile it with her honour, her consistency, with her high De Courcy principles, to send once more for Dr Thorne. Oh, Frank! Frank! to what misery has your disobedience brought your mother!

Sir Omicron and the lesser provincial lights had their consultation, and the lesser lights went their way to Barchester and Silverbridge, leaving Sir Omicron to enjoy the hospitality of Greshamsbury.

‘You should have Thorne back here, Mr Gresham,' said Sir
Omicron, almost in a whisper, when they were quite alone. ‘Dr Fillgrave is a very good man, and so is Dr Century; very good, I am sure. But Thorne has known her ladyship so long.' And then, on the following morning, Sir Omicron also went his way.

And then there was a scene between the squire and her ladyship. Lady Arabella had given herself credit for great good generalship when she found that the squire had been induced to take that pill. We have all heard of the little end of the wedge, and we have most of us an idea that the little end is the difficulty. That pill had been the little end of Lady Arabella's wedge. Up to that period she had been struggling in vain to make a severance between her husband and her enemy. That pill should do the business. She well knew how to make the most of it; to have it published in Greshamsbury that the squire had put his gouty toe into Dr Fillgrave's hands; how to let it be known – especially at that humble house in the corner of the street – that Fillgrave's prescriptions now ran current through the whole establishment. Dr Thorne did hear of it, and did suffer. He had been a true friend to the squire, and he thought the squire should have stood to him more staunchly.

‘After all,' said he to himself, ‘perhaps it's as well – perhaps it will be best that I should leave this place altogether.' And then he thought of Sir Roger and his will, and of Mary and her lover. And then of Mary's birth, and of his own theoretical doctrines as to pure blood. And so his troubles multiplied, and he saw no present daylight through them.

Such had been the way in which Lady Arabella had got in the little end of the wedge. And she would have triumphed joyfully had not her incessant doubts and fears as to herself then come in to check her triumph and destroy her joy. She had not yet confessed to anyone her secret regret for the friend she had driven away. She hardly yet acknowledged to herself that she did regret him; but she was uneasy, frightened, and in low spirits.

‘My dear,' said the squire, sitting down by her bedside, ‘I want to tell you what Sir Omicron said as he went away.'

‘Well?' said her ladyship, sitting up and looking frightened.

‘I don't know how you may take it, Bell; but I think it very good news': the squire never called his wife Bell, except when he wanted her to be on particularly good terms with him.

‘Well?' said she, again. She was not over-anxious to be gracious, and did not reciprocate his familiarity.

‘Sir Omicron says that you should have Thorne back again, and upon my honour, I cannot but agree with him. Now, Thorne is a clever man, a very clever man; nobody denies that; and then, you know –'

‘Why did not Sir Omicron say that to me?' said her ladyship, sharply, all her disposition in Dr Thorne's favour becoming wonderfully damped by her husband's advocacy.

‘I suppose he thought it better to say it to me,' said the squire, rather curtly.

‘He should have spoken to myself,' said Lady Arabella, who, though she did not absolutely doubt her husband's word, gave him credit for having induced and led on Sir Omicron to the uttering of this opinion. ‘Dr Thorne has behaved to me in so gross, so indecent a manner! And then, as I understand, he is absolutely encouraging that girl –'

‘Now, Bell, you are quite wrong –'

‘Of course I am; I always am quite wrong.'

‘Quite wrong in mixing up two things; Dr Thorne as an acquaintance, and Dr Thorne as a doctor.'

‘It is dreadful to have him here, even standing in the room with me. How can one talk to one's doctor openly and confidentially when one looks upon him as one's worst enemy?' And Lady Arabella, softening, almost melted into tears.

‘My dear, you cannot wonder that I should be anxious for you.'

Lady Arabella gave a little snuffle, which might be taken as a not very eloquent expression of thanks for the squire's solicitude, or as an ironical jeer at his want of sincerity.

‘And, therefore, I have not lost a moment in telling you what Sir Omicron said. “You should have Thorne back here”; those were his very words. You can think it over, my dear. And remember this, Bell; if he is to do any good no time should be lost.'

And then the squire left the room, and Lady Arabella remained alone, perplexed by many doubts.

I
MUST
now, shortly – as shortly as it is in my power to do it – introduce a new character to my reader. Mention has been made of the rector of Greshamsbury; but, hitherto, no opportunity has offered itself for the Rev. Caleb Oriel to come upon the boards.

Mr Oriel was a man of family and fortune, who, having gone to Oxford with the usual views of such men, had become inoculated there with very High-Church principles, and had gone into orders influenced by a feeling of enthusiastic love for the priesthood. He was by no means an ascetic – such men, indeed, seldom are – nor was he a devotee. He was a man well able, and certainly willing, to do the work of a parish clergyman; and when he became one, he was efficacious in his profession. But it may perhaps be said of him, without speaking slanderously, that his original calling, as a young man, was rather to the outward and visible signs of religion than to its inward and spiritual graces.

He delighted in lecterns and credence-tables, in services at dark hours of winter mornings when no one would attend, in high waistcoats and narrow white neckties, in chanted services and intoned prayers, and in all the paraphernalia of Anglican formalities which have given such offence to those of our brethren who live in daily fear of the scarlet lady. Many of his friends declared that Mr Oriel would sooner or later deliver himself over body and soul to that lady; but there was no need to fear for him: for though sufficiently enthusiastic to get out of bed at five a.m. on winter mornings – he did so, at least, all through his first winter at Greshamsbury – he was not made of that stuff which is necessary for a staunch, burning, self-denying convert. It was not in him to change his very sleek black coat for a Capuchin's
¹
filthy cassock,
nor his pleasant parsonage for some dirty hole in Rome. And it was better so both for him and others. There are but few, very few, to whom it is given to be a Huss, a Wickliffe, or a Luther;
²
and a man gains but little by being a false Huss, or a false Luther – and his neighbours gain less.

But certain lengths in self-privation Mr Oriel did go; at any rate, for some time. He eschewed matrimony, imagining that it became him as a priest to do so; he fasted rigorously on Fridays; and the neighbours declared that he scourged himself.

Mr Oriel was, as it has been said, a man of fortune; that is to say, when he came of age he was master of thirty thousand pounds. When he took it into his head to go into the Church, his friends bought for him the next presentation to the living of Greshamsbury; and, a year after his ordination, the living falling in, Mr Oriel brought himself and his sister to the rectory.

Mr Oriel soon became popular. He was a dark-haired, good-looking man, of polished manners, agreeable in society, not given to monkish austerities – except in the matter of Fridays – nor yet to the Low-Church severity of demeanour. He was thoroughly a gentleman, good-humoured, inoffensive, and sociable. But he had one fault: he was not a marrying man.

On this ground there was a feeling against him so strong as almost at one time to throw him into serious danger. It was not only that he should be sworn against matrimony in his individual self – he whom fate had made so able to sustain the weight of a wife and family; but what an example was he setting! If other clergymen all around should declare against wives and families, what was to become of the country? What was to be done with the rural districts? The religious observances, as regards women, of a Brigham Young
³
were hardly so bad as this!

There were around Greshamsbury very many unmarried ladies – I believe there generally are so round most such villages. From the great house he did not receive much annoyance. Beatrice was then only just on the verge of being brought out, and was not perhaps inclined to think very much of a young clergyman; and Augusta certainly intended to fly at higher game. But there were the Miss Athelings, the daughters of a neighbouring clergyman, who were ready to go all lengths with him in High-Church matters, except as to that one tremendously papal step of celibacy; and the two
Miss Hesterwells, of Hesterwell Park, the younger of whom boldly declared her purpose of civilising the savage; and Mrs Opie Green, a very pretty widow, with a very pretty jointure, who lived in a very pretty house about a mile from Greshamsbury, and who declared her opinion that Mr Oriel was quite right in his view of a clergyman's position. How could a woman, situated as she was, have the comfort of a clergyman's attention if he were to be regarded just as any other man? She could now know in what light to regard Mr Oriel, and would be able without scruple to avail herself of his zeal. So she did avail herself of his zeal – and that without any scruple.

And then there was Miss Gushing – a young thing. Miss Gushing had a great advantage over the other competitors for the civilisation of Mr Oriel, namely, in this – that she was able to attend his morning services. If Mr Oriel was to be reached in any way, it was probable that he might be reached in this way. If anything could civilise him, this would do it. Therefore, the young thing through all one long, tedious winter, tore herself from her warm bed, and was to be seen – no, not seen, but heard – entering Mr Oriel's church at six o'clock. With indefatigable assiduity the responses were made, uttered from under a close bonnet, and out of a dark corner, in an enthusiastically feminine voice, through the whole winter.